As I Please

Bernard Savage, Head of the EU Delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives said: “At this stage, given our information, we would not say that there has been any legal infringement of constitutional forms. We are not taking sides but, as the High Representative Cathy Ashton has made clear, what we ... Read More

  In all of the hyperbole surrounding Newt Gingrich's storming victory over Mitt Romney in South Carolina, little or no attention has so far been given to the slippery amphibian that bares the same name as the far Right Republican President wannabee.   Readers may therefore be somewhat surprised ... Read More

The dramatic decision by the Maldives Government to close down tourist hotel health spas – following recent noisy protests that claimed they were ‘un Islamic’ - provoked fairly predictable headlines in some of the Western media. Best was the tongue in cheek concern in the London Evening Standard ... Read More

It was an innocuous enough statement. The fact that it referred to an event that had occurred while much of the World – and particularly the Western media – was on holiday, explains why it received such little coverage. But then good news, especially if it is associated with the United Nations ... Read More

News of the demise of Kim Jong Il, leader of the ‘hermit kingdom’, or the World’s last Stalinist State, North Korea, shouldn’t have come as a surprise; after all, he had been quite ill for some time. But his death comes at a highly inconvenient and potentially dangerous time, with his son and heir ... Read More

A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan, once warned that sudden squalls could blow into major storms and often from unexpected places. Not very long afterwards, the Argentinians began to make bellicose noises towards the British ruled Falkland Islands, which they claimed as the Islas ... Read More

Much of the traditional British media seems to be wilfully missing the political story that lies behind the attempts to save the Eurozone from itself. The Right wing media is banging a Eurosceptic drum, replete with pictures of assorted loonies burning EU flags. Meanwhile much of the liberal ... Read More

Occupy St Paul’s! This isn’t the slogan of those who have followed in the wake of the Wall Street protestors, but London’s eponymous cathedral is now surrounded by a tent city of anti capitalist protestors. In truth, there just isn’t the room outside the Bank of England, or the ‘Old Lady of ... Read More

Before history is quickly re-written and the essentials forgotten, the vote that took on Monday night in the House of Commons on whether British voters should be allowed a referendum on membership of the European Union came about because a petition of over one hundred thousand electors demanding ... Read More

  More form Mark Seddon's new book; 'Standing for Something - Life in the Awkward Squad', published this week, is available by buying the book http://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/Standing%20for%20Something/   March 2011: Perched in the offices of 'Big Think', just up from the Flat Iron ... Read More

A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan will forever be remembered for the words ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ eventhough he never actually said them. Callaghan had the misfortune of having his ever so slightly complacent remarks on his country’s dire economic situation turned into tabloid-ese in ... Read More

Sir Brian Urquhart, one of the oldest surviving senior UN staff members, reminded us recently in an article in the New York Times that a former Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjold, had once said; “The United Nations was not created to bring us heaven, but to save us from hell”. Those wise ... Read More

[This article appeared in the Daily Mail]   The British people understand what politicians and diplomats euphemistically refer to as ‘realpolitik’. They accept that sometimes their leaders have to sit down with the most appalling despots, to sup with the devil as it were, for the greater good ... Read More

EVEN President George Bush played lip service to the idea of a ‘two State’ solution for Israel/Palestine. That, after all, is the default position of the international community. It is also the position of the Obama administration, which has nonetheless allowed the Israeli government of Benjamin ... Read More

It simply beggars belief that there are some in the British media who still take the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, even vaguely seriously. On Friday, we were treated to two ‘exclusives’ featuring Blair; on the front pages of The Times and the the Daily Mirror. All this in the same week ... Read More