I'll be talking in the later morning about the problem speechwriters have in making a speaker sound spontaneous. Too many speakers are given a text which gives them no room for improvisation, and does not help them express to the full whatever capacity for good speaking they may have.
The draft speech needs to be written in colloquial language and then laid out in a way which helps the speaker have a conversation with the audience, not give a lecture.
Long time no write. Somewhere between Writer's Block and despair at the surging stupidity seen in all directions. Plus nursing my aching ankle and visiting Liechtenstein on a new ADRg Ambassadors training expedition.
The roleplays in Liechtenstein included a couple of exercises where chairing a meeting was part of the skill. The great thing about delivering training is that you think - perhaps for the first time ever - about why you do what you do, and what works (or not).
Thus chairing a meeting.
The smart way to get results is to define the issues in a positive, light-touch style right at the start, thereby (in effect) ruling various options in, but also implicitly ruling some out. If this is done well, the chair can shape the way the participants themselves look at what is happening.
A good way to start is to say in a very few words what the meeting needs to achieve - and why that achievement matters (obliquely flattering the others present). Then you try to sum up in literally a few words what the key issues are:
Can we agree up front that we need to sort out three things today?
First, Money - how much are we all prepared to put in to the new projects?
Second, Balance - how to divide the available resources between the different priorities. The tricky problem here is the fact that it is much easier to get anything done in country X, but the needs in country Y are much greater.
And third, Leadership. Who will be the figurehead of the project as a whole, and who will have the lead operational responsibility?
Some of the participants may want to add another element (say Urgency, or Security, or Other Partners). Fine. The advantage of the chair spelling out in such simple terms the core questions is that it makes it easier for others to frame/articulate their own concerns in a similarly direct way.
Another skill of a good chair is 'pocketing progress'. If someone makes a concession, go out of the way to say that that move is welcome/helpful. Having done that, be careful about seeking clarification on points of detail: that may give the person concerned the opportunity to backtrack.
Don't ignore 'good listening' skills. Copious notes should not be taken by the chair. The chair should be adept at 'reframing' what a participant has said, again subtly steering the conversation in a helpful and constructive/consensual direction and recalling the key words used at the start:
I think what I'm hearing from you is a willingness to be flexible on Money in return for a greater share in the Leadership. Is that a fair summary?
Also reflect back their 'intensity'. If someone is getting agitated, a good chair should not sit back and smirk but rather show by body language and tone of voice that that person's opinions are being heard:
It's clear that you're very unhappy with how we are tackling Balance. Has anyone any suggestions for how those concerns might be met?
The plan, in other words, is to build a momentum of general goodwill and cooperation, then - having got everyone in some sort of positive frame of mind - start to nail down more controversial details.
All much easier said than done. See eg the skills needed to chair an EU Summit meeting on a new Eurozone Treaty when things get really difficult.
It's in Polish. But the opening passage caught my beady eye.
In it Mr Szczerski notes the sharp tone of criticism directed in that speech towards the UK and claims that Mr Sikorski has confirmed that I "as a private Labour Party supporter" had been a collaborator on the speech.
My latest book review for LSE books was sent in the other day. A review of a compilation of blog writings by successful ex-blogger and junior Minister (under Labour) Tom Harris MP.
Here's the review. I was none too charitable, alas. The whole thing looked like a rather poor rushed job and just did not hang together in any sensible way.
I sometimes muse about publishing in book form some of my own blog writings. But it's not easy to make this work well, as the blog and book genres are quite different:
Nevertheless, these are blog pieces made public as events happened, not brutal senior private diary entries revealed to an amazed world several years later. As Tom Harris puts it in the Introduction,”the blog became an exercise in self-restraint and discipline in how to write in an interesting and even loyal away about politics … What you want is gossip”.
Which is mainly what we get. Tom Harris’ rich but inchoate views on Doctor Who, Genesis and X-Factor are shared with folksy observations on the Westminster world as seen by a busy junior Minister and diligent MP. The book is organised not by date but by themes, which themselves cast light on Tom Harris’ tabloidly parochial instincts: “How do you solve a problem like Gordon?”; “Government: better than the alternative”;“In defence of politics”;“Telly”; and so on. If the European Union was mentioned in any serious way, I certainly missed it.
There may be no better way of presenting such previously blogged material, but the themes scarcely hang together. Effective political blogging delivers what the writer hopes are insightful thoughts on the emerging issues of the day, if not the hour. Detached from the flow of events, individual pieces lose impact and context.
Anyway, no sooner had the review gone up than Tom Harris' vivid political career hit another iceberg. He was forced to step down today from his position as Labour's 'Social Media Tsar' (sic) after producing what was actually (as such things go) quite a good Downfall spoof on Alex Salmond. Which you can see here:
The squawks of synthetic indignation from the SNP might have led a Labour Party with backbone to start producing new Salmond Downfall spoofs every week for the next few years. But no. They caved. It was 'offensive'. And Tom Harris resigned.
Of course the really idiotic thing about all this is that Labour thinks it needs a 'Social Media Tsar' at all. The whole point, Labour, of social media is that it is a spontaneous crowd-sourcing Towers of Babel chaotic phenomenon in which order emerges as it does. It's utterly unsuited to any sort of political busy-body Tsardom. See?
My review led to a funny Twitter-spat out there in the social media cyberspace between me and one @RetiringViolet who may or may not be Violet but is certainly not Retiring in her efforts to portray Mr Harris as someone capable of the profound thought so firmly absent in the book I reviewed:
@CharlesCrawford@TomHarrisMP The last sentence in your review implies u think he had had no profound thought to offer in his blog/remarks
And plenty more of the same. It passed the time on the train as I came back from London after my lunch there was cancelled.
Well. When you review books, you need to call 'em as you see 'em. Otherwise what's the point? I look forward to reviewing in due course Mr Harris' major definitive tome on Political Philosophy. He has time on his hands now to write it.
Part of the problem facing the Eurozoners as they struggle to convince global markets that all is under control so DON'T PANIC is identifying what exactly is the issue which needs solving. After all, they might make a bad situation worse by misdiagnosing what needs to be done.
Views on this differ. In the interests of fair play, here is a studious article (pdf) by C Fred Bergsten and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard which argues that the Eurozone is heading for the right outcome (ie 'comprehensive economic and monetary union') by the crafty ploy of (in effect) eliminating all the wrong ones:
It is imperative to understand that it is not the primary purpose of the ECB, as a political actor, to end market anxieties and thus the euro area crisis as soon as possible. It is instead focused on achieving its priority goals of getting government leaders to fundamentally reform the euro area institutions and structurally overhaul many euro area economies.
Frankfurt cannot directly compel democratically elected European leaders to comply with its wishes but it can refuse to implement a “crisis bazooka” and thereby permit the euro area crisis to continue to put pressure on them to act. A famous American politician has said that “no crisis should be wasted” and the ECB is implementing such a strategy resolutely.
The authors point out that because there is no willingness to allow centralised EU-wide taxation, other arrangements are needed and are edging towards being created, albeit by different EU leaders playing dangerous games of bluff to help get the best deal for their corner:
The reality in the euro area is that, for the foreseeable future and unlike in the United States, the overwhelming majority of government taxation and spending will continue to reside at the member state level for reasons of political legitimacy. Only a minor part will be pooled at the supra-national level. Restricting this spending via a new fiscal compact is consequently the only pragmatic route for now, leaving other aspects of euro area fiscal integration to the future...
The Eurozoners are having to look to the IMF for huge support. But that's OK:
Euro area governments will have successfully shifted part of the costs of any future financial rescues onto the rest of the world. The rest of the world will of course extract a suitable price from the euro area for this service in the form of European political concessions in other policy areas. This could, for instance, be a good time to demand that the euro area consolidate its representation on the IMF board to a single seat and accelerate the transfer of its quota shares to the financially contributing emerging markets...
Basically, their argument goes, they'll have to do what it takes to keep the Eurozone afloat as all the alternatives are far worse. And the record so far shows that despite all the uncertainty and some poor decisions along the way, the trend is in that direction.
Read the piece as a whole. If you are a non-expert, it makes an impressive case.
So far so optimistic.
Then there's John Mauldin of Thoughts from the Frontline, whose wonderful economics newsletters are free. Here are some of his latest observations:
For most of the past two years, European leaders have tried to deal with the problems as though they were short-term liquidity problems: "If we just find the money to buy some more Greek bonds, then Greece can figure out how to solve its problems and then pay us back. Given enough time, the problem can get solved."
They have now arrived at the understanding that it this not a short-term problem. Rather, it's a solvency problem of the various governments, which of course creates a solvency problem for their banks. They are now addressing the problem of solvency and providing capital until such time as certain countries can get their budgets under control and the bond market sees fit to provide the capital they need.
But they are completely ignoring the third and largest problem, and that is massive trade imbalances. Germany exports products to the peripheral European countries, which run trade deficits. As I have shown in several letters, a country cannot reduce private-sector leverage, reduce public-sector leverage and deficits (balance its budget), and run a trade deficit all at the same time. That is simple, unavoidable math, based on 400 years of accounting understanding. Ultimately, there must be a trade surplus if leverage and debt are to be reduced...
Greece cannot print its own money, so unless it leaves the Eurozone, it's stuck. They can default on their debt, but that means they are shut out of the bond market for some period of time. That would force them to make the spending cuts they are now resisting, as they would simply not have enough money to pay their bills.
Even with a 100% haircut they're looking at a shorter but very real depression. And because no one will sell them products they need, like energy and food and medicine, unless they can sell or trade something in return (that trade-deficit problem), they will be forced to change their lifestyles. Wages must drop or productivity rise to be competitive with northern Europe. And that differential is about 30%. I am not certain, as I have not been to Greece in a long time, but my bet is, you won't find many Greeks who think they are overpaid by 30%.
But that is what the market is going to say. And that is the third problem, which Europe is not addressing. Germany and the northern tier are simply more productive than the Southern periphery. (With the possible exception of Northern Italy, but Italy all gets lumped together, which is why many Northern Italians want to be their own country and not have to pay taxes that go to Southern Italy. I am not taking sides, just observing what we read in the papers.) Until Germany consumes more from the peripheral countries or the peripheral countries become more productive, the imbalance will not allow a positive solution...
Sign up to his work to get regular bracing top-ups.
So there it is. Two contrasting styles of beautiful writing, and two very different and clever/informed views on what is happening.
The two views of course may be compatible. A stronger and even coherent Eurozone may emerge from this fiasco - if some countries whose debts are simply unmanageable are paid off to leave it?
Of all the people in the world, you single out 50 Christian families in Beit Jala and expect those who hear you to recoil, cut to the heart by the horrors of that situation. You speak as if the world had no greater shadow to offer.
Thousands have died and are dying in neighbouring Syria, but that gets no mention from you. An entire population is repressed and religious minorities are persecuted in Iran and you say nothing. Muslims who convert to Christianity in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere are put to death, yet you are silent.
In Egypt, Coptic Christians are killed and persecuted and their churches are destroyed, yet you cannot find a sentence in which to condemn it. Christians are not allowed to possess Bibles or to worship or seek converts in Saudi Arabia, yet your voice is not raised.
Christians are murdered and their churches burned to the ground in Nigeria, but I do not hear your voice. Yet Muslims are free to worship, open schools, have their own courts, and missionize in every Western country, yet you do not point out the anomaly...
... In 1949, one year after Israel was founded, the country’s Christian population numbered 34,000 souls. That figure has grown by 345 percent. It is still growing. Between 1995 and 2007, Israeli Christians grew from 120,600 to 151,600, representing a growth rate of 25 percent. In fact, the Christian growth rate outpaced the Jewish growth in Israel in the same period.
It is not a coincidence that Christians thrive in the only non-Muslim state in the Middle East and diminish in all the Muslim states...
I liked this concluding passage which gets towards roughly what I think about the whole Arab/Israeli business, knowing so little professionally about it:
Your fifty families – if, indeed, there are fifty families – will, at worst, face a legal battle, knowing they will be vindicated if their claims are valid. Israel will not set their homes alight, nor gun them down, nor desecrate their churches nor violate their priests nor execute their converts. It will not do to them what the Muslims of Egypt have done in a long and systematic persecution. It will not do to them what the Taliban have done to Christians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will not intimidate or hector or torture or kill them. It’s time this was recognized, especially by a leading churchman like yourself.
There is indeed something baffling or creepy if not bizarre about the way seemingly normal people at Western dinner parties abruptly start to rave against Israel and ignore far worse and far bigger abuses up the road in Syria and other Arab/Muslim countries.
Read the whole thing, and then have a look round Denis' fine blog. He is not prolific, but his work hits heavy targets with unerring accuracy.
We cherish the idea that we clever Westerners have something called 'freedom of the press'.
But what exactly does that expression mean? Does it mean that those who constitute the body of publishing folk who define themselves as 'the press' have special status and associated freedoms which may or may not be enjoyed by the rest of us mere citizens?
Or does it mean that everyone has (in principle) the right to find access to printing devices and then get stuff out there, ie the main newspapers and other large media outlets have no status separate from the rest of us?
I of course incline to the latter view. Indeed, perhaps unwisely I take it for granted.
The whole issue is complicated because once upon a time there was literally no way to get views circulated in any sort of written way other than by getting access to a printing press machine.
This really matters.
Why? Because it goes to the heart of any concept of democracy.
Is there an elite - a 'mainstream media' - who assume to themselves the right to have special freedoms denied to the rest of us? If such an elite group of opinion-formers has some sort of extra legal status, where does that leave laws aimed at defining what sort of speech is allowed during an election campaign, and by whom?
Plus, what happens when as in the USA the majority of mainstream media outlets act as blockers for one political tendency (currently the Obama Democrats)?
Anyway, Volokh Conspiracy (leading US group law blog) takes a good look at rival interpretations of what 'freedome of the press' means in formal US legal/constitutional terms, and explains a lot:
But other judges and scholars — including the Citizens United majority and Justice Brennan — have argued that the “freedom ... of the press” does not protect the press-as-industry, but rather protects everyone’s use of the printing press (and its modern equivalents) as a technology. People or organizations who occasionally rent the technology, for instance by buying newspaper space, broadcast time, or the services of a printing company, are just as protected as newspaper publishers or broadcasters...
Both sides in the debate often appeal at least partly to the constitutional text and its presumed original meaning. The words “the press” in the First Amendment must mean the institutional press, says one side. The words must mean press-as-technology, says the other. Citizens United is unlikely to settle the question, given how sharply the four dissenters and many outside commentators have disagreed with the majority.
So who is right? What light does the “history” referred to by the Citizens United dissent shed on the “text” and the Framers’ “purpose”?
The answer, it turns out, is that people during the Framing era likely understood the text as fitting the press-as-technology model — as securing the right of every person to use communications technology, and not just securing a right belonging exclusively to members of the publishing industry. The text was likely not understood as treating the press-as-industry differently from other people who wanted to rent or borrow the press-as-technology on an occasional basis.
Read the whole thing. It directly affects you both as a reader and as a potential publisher of your own thoughts on the Web or otherwise..
And if you are in any way interested in how the tension between mass printing and personal freedom first emerged, read an awesome book by Adrian Johns on the way mass publishing started. Note especially the startling scope of cheating and stealing as printing presses became more widespread across Europe - Newton and other great scientists had huge problems stopping other brainy people elsewhere in England or on the Continent simply republishing their work and claiming it as their own.
This, by the way, explains why Parliament proclaimed that a copy of every book published had to be sent to the British Museum and other grand 'legal deposit' institutions - there had to be at least one verifiable original against which fraudsters' work might be measured.
The way everyone tried to take advantage of the surging technologies of the day back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is eerily reminiscent of the myriad problems we now face in dealing with Internet piracy and so on.
Adrian Johns explains all this in a magnificent way. I bought his book on the subject while I was at Harvard in 1997 and stupidly lent it to someone, never to get it back.
So in writing this blog post I have just reordered a copy via Amazon. I warmly recommend you do the same - a true book about books:
A reader sent me this email message on New Year's Eve:
I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed reading your sane and authoritative commentaries over the last year. "Spark of hope" indeed! More power to you!
What a kind thought. Sane. Authoritative. Hopeful. Powerful. Yup - that's this website!
Much appreciated.
I have looked at the numbers for readers here in 2011. According to one way of crunching them, I peaked in August with 11,500 unique visitors (ie people, not Google spiders) and hit a low in July (5200 visitors). Over the year as a whole 86,600 unique visitors swung by (some more than once, I suspect), giving 258,000 visits for the year looking at 700,000 pages.
That's just over 7000 unique visitors per month, which given the esoteric, eccentric, annoying and often rather specialist subject-matter of most posts here is OK by me.
It was again especially gratifying that some 30,000 visits lasted for 30 minutes to an hour, or even longer. Some of you really like rummaging around and spending time here. This in fact is why I decided to write a blog and not a book* about my life and times in diplomacy. With the blog I get more readers, and more interaction - a relationship.
My main problem is that I am spreading my declining intellectual jam a bit thinly these days. As well as keeping up some sort of flow of work here (latterly noticeably reduced, but there you are), I emit Tweets at @charlescrawford, write a monthly column for DIPLOMAT magazine, do book reviews for the LSE website and contribute assorted rants to The Commentator. In the last weeks of 2011 I was signed up as a Daily Telegraph blogger too. Not to forget a number of other articles for business and foreign policy websites.
That's a lot of material to create almost every day. And while I am mulling over what if anything to say next on one or other of these outlets, I have to try to earn a living by writing speeches or training or consulting or whatever comes along.
This site has not been any special money-spinner - more a money-loser in terms of the opportunity cost of generating all these words for free. The ads I added to the site this year bring in nothing much so far(!), but I have had a couple of approaches via the site for fee-paying work, including an invitation to give a keynote speech at an event in Romania later this year.
Anyway, many thanks to you all for your support and unobtrusive but wise thoughts. I hop into 2012 still nursing my gammy ankle which I twisted observing the Russian elections in early December. I'll try to be a bit more productive here this year, but don't count on my succeeding. If you don't fine me here I'll be over at one of the other places mentioned above. Or not.
Happy New Year to all
* A reader asks via Twitter - have I written enough words for a book?
Hmm - let's see.
It turns out that a normal book contains anything up to 120,000 words. If we take this one post as average, it has some 500 words. I have written 2400 posts here. Which makes something like 1,250,000 words roughly ten books. That's not counting over 30 DIPLOMAT articles at 1500 words each (three more books!). And all the other website pieces.
So that's something like 15 or more respectably long books. All written just for you. For free!
The wonders of the Internet. Maybe I should make a compendium and try to self-publish via Amazon or something. The perfect gift for next Christmas?
Here is my latest article at DIPLOMAT magazine on the ever-fascinating question of diplomatic and wider media technique in a confusing new world:
Once upon a time diplomats were rarely seen or heard in public. To do their vital work of privately communicating messages between national leaders they needed to be discreet, anonymous, detached, aloof, rarefied. In a word, invisible.
When I joined the Foreign Office in 1979 the rules on such things were clear and strict. UK-based diplomats would never appear in the British media: that was what Ministers were expected (and wanted) to do. Overseas it was slightly different. British diplomats had some discretion to respond to foreign media requests for interviews and statements, but when in doubt, they should check with the FCO News Department in London. No Foreign Minister wanted to have their breakfast ruined by opening the newspaper to find a sensational report of something unexpected or unwelcome proclaimed by an FCO official overseas.
Back then these limitations on diplomatic media appearances made sense: the media themselves were restricted. In Britain and elsewhere there were a tiny number of TV stations and relatively few newspapers. Official foreign policy pronouncements could – and should – be rationed accordingly to keep everything at a suitable level of sobriety.
This all changed. Along came new technology, CNN, the internet, Twitter and Facebook, a proliferation of TV channels available across the planet at any time of day or night, digital radio, blogging. A Tower of Babel. A tsunami of noisy words, comment, pseudo-analysis and even, now and again, some facts. The media are increasingly no longer something separate or ‘above’ the general public. The media are the general public.
Or the general public are the media...
With added free media presentation tips for getting messages out in this hubbub:
One basic lesson came through loud and clear when I trained new FCO diplomats. In a mock interview, one had to act the role of a British spokesman, the other an American spokesman. The young man tasked to pretend to be American was nervous. Yet when we played back the video, he was far more effective. In his nervousness he had said very little, but what he had said came across on the screen as conveying toughness and determination. By contrast his colleague who played the British spokesman had been relaxed and cheerful. Much too relaxed and cheerful: he came across as friendly but frivolous.
My heartfelt advice to any diplomat facing a TV or radio interview? Have only one or two (maximum three) points to get across. Sound positive and firm! Don’t feel obliged to answer the question: simply use the question as the springboard for conveying your core points, then stop.
Above all, keep it simple. The more you say – and above all the more you try to be clever – the more you open yourself up to a devastating jibe from the interviewer. Oh, and when the interview ends remember that the cameras may still be filming you until you’ve left the studio…
One of the things I do on training courses aimed at telling people how to Write with Impact is to cite Shrek. Issues and Shrek are like onions. They have layers.
No piece of writing can address all the layers of any problem. The trick is to show awareness of other layers but focus on one or two of them to help the reader make sense of it all.
Likewise it is a good idea to take a single issue and use it to illustrate a wider point. Or to take a seemingly obscure but nonetheless interesting question and force it to the top of people's attention.
All these devices help achieve the basic rule of good (and therefore impactful) writing: if you want it to be read, make it readable.
One of the best examples from my own career came in early 2004, not long after I arrived in Warsaw from Belgrade. Poland was set to join the European Union. Colossal numbers of Poles were likely to start moving to and fro between Poland and the UK - we had decided to open our Labour market unconditionally, much to the utter disbelief of the Polish leadership.
Once those Poles started moving with the aim of getting richer faster, what would they get up to? I thought it worth analysing one possible source of income - illicit cigarettes.
I did this by spelling out in the simplest possible terms the economics for the average Pole of informal cigarette-selling, even within legal limits.
This telegram wittily called Smoking Ants - Coming Our Way? caused a minor sensation in the Cabinet Office. Officials scrambled round to change the rules to limit the numbers of cigarettes which people from the new EU member states could bring into the UK duty-free.
And, thanks to the miracles of Freedom of Information, I am pleased to share this telegram with you today. The FCO cheekily cut out a line or two on the grounds that UK relations with Poland might be adversely affected(!). But otherwise it's just as I drafted it. A nice example (if I say so myself) of drawing senior attention to an unexpected new problem by delivering work written in a bold way which no-one can avoid reading.
Diplomatic Folly Note: look out for the amusing reference to 'Trilateral' at the end. That was a footling attempt by Tony Blair to set up an inner UK/France/Germany driving force within the EU, which collapsed in no time at all in the face of the obvious objections (not least those emanating from one S Berlusconi).
Thus:
SUBJECT: EU ENLARGEMENT: SMOKING ANTS, COMING OUR WAY?
SUMMARY
1. Incentives for Poles to make a reasonable living in the UK's dodgy cigarette business. Policy contradictions.
DETAIL
2. As a non-smoking connoisseur of Balkan tobacco activities I recently met the local BAT team to talk about regional cigarette smuggling. Some striking conclusions.
The Big Picture
3. BAT have studied tens of thousands of discarded cigarette packets. They conclude that some 70 billion cigarettes are sold legally in Poland every year, with a further 20 billion smoked "illegally" (ie sold outside the official excise structure and smuggled into Poland).
4. A good proportion of this illegal trade is conducted by an army of "ants", individuals who carry small quantities of cigarettes into Poland from points East. But up to 50% of the illegal cigarette business is well organised, involving hundreds of truckloads of cigarettes each containing up to 10 million "sticks". [redacted]
5. The emergence of this lucrative illegal trade can be traced readily back to 2000, when Poland pushed up excise duties. Until then almost all the 90 billion cigarettes smoked in Poland each
year were passing through normal procedures. Smuggling soared with these new higher duties.
6. Sharp price/tax/excise differentials as between Russia, Poland and Western Europe are set to continue. Currently a pack of cigarettes which costs 50 cents in Russia sells for 1.30 dollars in Poland and up to 8 dollars in the UK. These ratios will change somewhat in the coming years as Poland raises the effective price of a pack towards EU levels, thereby giving serious new local incentives to regional smugglers (one good truckload can generate a profit of 1.5 million dollars). BAT expect some 50 billion cigarettes per year to be smuggled from Russia to Western Europe; this generates a 5 billion dollar profit - more than double BAT's own global annual pre-tax profit. Implications for UK of EU Accession
7. BAT point out that as things stand every Polish citizen is allowed to bring legally into the UK 200 cigarettes a trip. But after accession this figure jumps to 3200 cigarettes per trip. A pack of Dunhill can be bought in Poland for about £1 and be sold in a UK pub for up to £3.00. Each Pole entering the UK can hope to make a quick profit on the cigarettes of £250 per trip, not to mention extra money by importing a few bottles of cheap vodka. With a return coach fare of £50 and monthly unemployment benefit here of about £80, it is not difficult for a poor Pole to work out what to do. Better to get involved with UK officialdom by filling in UK benefit forms, or make easy money sitting on a bus?
COMMENT
8. The scale of the illicit cigarette business caused by price/tax differentials as between the UK and continental Europe is obvious and well known. It is part of a global compound interest drama: as rich countries get richer, the absolute wealth we generate gives ever-growing and vast incentives for honest people and gangsters alike to "play the margins". The cigarette price effects of EU enlargement is more of the same, albeit a great deal more of the same. But the upstream consequences of this illegality for the region are considerable.
9. Our Policy contains Contradictions. HMCE/HMT are looking at reducing the amounts of cigarettes which accession nationals can bring into the UK. Meanwhile we and our EU partners laboriously try to "train border guards and customs officials" on the EU's Eastern Borders. But only a couple of truckloads of cigarettes inject more resources into corrupting these official structures than we are injecting into reforming them. The corrupted structures then can be exploited not only by cigarette smugglers but also by human traffickers, global drug dealers and even terrorists - serious security questions here.
10. The cost of all this is not on a scale to destabilise the whole of Polish society as has happened in Serbia, to the point of the assassination of the Prime Minister. But it is a serious and systemic obstacle to reform. Scope for a new, hard look (Trilateral or in another smaller group first?) at what else might be done on the strategic level?
To pass the time and take my mind off my bright blue foot, I have done a couple of quickies for the Telegraph Blog site where there has been a lot of energetic stuff about the EU Summit and all that.
We awoke this morning to various commentators and Twitteristas bewailing the fact that British intransigence has left the UK “isolated". This ridiculous assertion needs to be knocked on the head, once and for all.
If “isolated" means staying well clear of the clumsy and ultimately undemocratic eurozone project, that’s a damn good place to be. The measures needed to prop up the eurozone involve intrusive inspection of national financial affairs by Brussels and other changes (such as harmonising tax rates) which necessarily amount to surrendering national sovereignty to EU HQ. Without the protocol he demanded, David Cameron could not have stood up in the House of Commons and honourably told the British people that the UK would be spared that.
In fact, even with that protocol there would have been in serious risk of eurozone “mission creep" in legal terms had the Lisbon Trinity route been used. Not that that risk has gone away even with the proposed new treaty outside the existing Treaty structure, but it is arguably for now rather more manageable.
Now what?
The proposed new arrangements for the eurozone would have been good had they been introduced right from the start. It is not clear how far if at all they will satisfy the planet’s markets and investors now. The crisis is set to drag on.
More generally, the whole European integration ambition looks like a nervous tightrope walker wobbling more and more severely with each new step. The contortions needed to stay balanced are impressive but grotesque.
As the sheer scale of the new requirements expected in the new treaty become clear – intrusive Brussels inspection of national budgets, balanced budget constitutional provisions and so on – bits will start to fall off the bandwagon. Different local factions will demand some or other political price for conceding their support to these radical changes. Public opinion will be aroused, with demands for referenda here or there. And so on.
The best thing about writing for a national newspaper's website is the giddy delirium of the many comments one attracts, for and against. Many people seem unable to understand what one writes, or miss the self-indulgent witty touches completely, or assume that because I am an ex-Ambassador I a priori am a pompous Sir Humphrey type living on a vast pension blah blah blah.
Therefore you get stuff like this:
Charles Crawford - a breath of fresh air. I bet you don't get many invitations to opine on the BBC!
For the first time, I actually have to agree with much of Mr Crawford has to say. Perhaps he could offer his expertise of the break up of the former Soviet Union during his time in the FCO, for the government for Britain's withdrawal from the EUSSR?
Magisterial and wise as one would expect from a 'Sir Humphrey' enjoying his astronomically high pension at our expense...It's rather majestic when the British Establishment makes a 'fleet turn'; all those wonderful old ships of the line coming round. The trouble is that they need an awful lot of sea room and they already got much too close to a lee shore.
Whatever leads Crawford to the conclusion that an 'amicable separation' is on the books? Why wouldn't our former partners just screw us to the floor as much as they are able? What is the USP that would stop them, if they ever climb out of the mire where they are?
Thank you Charles for your explanation, especially posting the speech by Howe. Incredible how the same old arguments are being trotted out by the same old europhiles ignoring the twenty year interim where *nothing* turned out as predicted. And all the guff about influence--what influence? Although we have wasted a lot of treasure on the european experiment and the most worrisome aspect of our economic outlook is our closeness to the european economic (disaster) zone.
Dave has done more u-turns than a boy racer, so will have no problem with one on this matter. Has to be said, Chas is a definite Rolls Royce blogger. Maybe he could get a job as Foreign Secretary, if he was quickly ennobled.
Walked the dogs earlier - a bit cold but a nice day for it. Notably, no-one from Antwerp, Lower-Saxony, Tuscany or Valencia stopped me for a chat.Looks like the isolation has started to bite
You, sir, sound like a traitor and should be treated as such. I am thinking naked, tar, feathers, high street parade, but maybe this would infringe one or two paragraphs in the EU human rights chapter, or whatever. You display all the characteristics of an aparatchik who forgot that you are/were a servant of the people and in your generous loftiness are throwing some crumbles of your superior intellect to the benighted masses.
That last one hits it bang on the nose.
Anyway, my second one linked to this excellent Economist piece offering a detailed account of what the UK Prime Minister wanted and why he did not get it. Well worth a read if you want to look at some hard-core analysis and not a lot of heated knowledge-free opinion.
What does it all boil down to?
Not enough, if the main aim is to stop the Eurozone failing horribly as the planet's investors think we've all gone mad and draw their money out of the system.
But maybe just enough (for now) if you want to get re-elected as President of France?
Do global investors see this blood-stained arena as a sensible place to park their hard-earned money? No.
While the self-absorbed British commentariat divides into Europhile/Europhobe factions like Bertie Wooster's aunt mastodons bellowing at each other across a primaeval swamp, the real story is that the Summit did not do anything serious to tackle the eurozone's acute credibility problem.
Why did it not do more? Because top European opinion is completely divided on existential questions to do with the moral hazard involved in different eurozone rescue plans. And because step-by-step Europe's leaders have set up structures of such intricacy and complexity that it is next to impossible to identify what needs to be fixed, and then muster the practical agreement to do the fixing.
First, I spent the night in a wonky hotel in downtown Lewes. The room sloped alarmingly in two directions, to the point where anything smooth risked sliding off the table. The sign in the bathroom read thusly: "Shower Mat Ensure the suckers are in contact with the bath fully pressed down" A wearying period of pushing the bath in a downwards direction ensued.
Then I went to the University of Sussex, waving cheerily to a pair of woman strikers at the entrance as I whizzed past their absurd attempts to persuade me to show 'solidarity' with their 'demands'. My visit there was to give a presentation on European Conservatism to a genial seminar of political science students. Not a Chinese/Asian student in sight - they're all doing sciences, not mulling over political theory. Wait! Maybe science IS political theory.
While all this was going on, a strange story broke in Poland.
Some clever-clogs had run a Properties check on the Foreign Ministry's website version of the superb speech by Radek Sikorski in Berlin on Monday. And found that the original version of the document was called 'More Europe' - created by Charles Crawford.
Eeek.
Anyway, the Polish Foreign Ministry has put out a statement to the effect that for substantive and linguistic purposes the Minister had consulted all sorts of people including myself on the speech, and then written it himself , making changes even on the plane to Berlin.
The Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza carries the story and statement if anyone is interested.
So that's that. Anyone who knows Radek Sikorski will recognise his own inimitable style throughout the text.
Meanwhile I have wended my way to Heathrow where I am taking a plane in the morning to Moscow, to spend a jolly weekend as an elections observer for the Duma (parliament) elections on Sunday. My first time back in Russia for years. As Lenin or someone similarly cynical said, "It's not voting. It's counting".
Here in powerful fluent form is Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, speaking today in Berlin about Europe and the Eurozone.
If anyone can find a better peacetime speech by any Polish Foreign Minister or any Polish politician ever, let it be produced!
Not that it is perfect. Too many rather impenetrable statistics at various point. Some sentences are too long or involved.
He even - horror - takes a populist swipe at the UK (bear in mind the German audience and his own credentials as an Oxford graduate), after saying something important about 'subsidiarity'. Note how he abruptly switches to talking to the UK in the second person, as if we were in the room. Fine technique:
The more power and legitimacy we give to federal institutions, the more secure
member states should feel that certain prerogatives, everything to do with national
identity, culture, religion, lifestyle, public morals, and rates of income, corporate and
VAT taxes, should forever remain in the purview of states. Our unity can survive
different working hours or different family law in different countries.
Which brings me to the issue of whether an important member, Britain, can support reform. You have given the Union its common language. The Single Market was largely your brilliant idea. A British commissioner runs our diplomacy. You could lead Europe on defence. You are an indispensable link across the Atlantic.
On the other hand, Eurozone’s collapse would hugely harm your economy. Also, your total sovereign, corporate and household debt exceeds 400% of GDP. Are you sure markets will always favour you? We would prefer you in, but if you can’t join, please allow us to forge ahead. And please start explaining to your people that European decisions are not Brussels’ diktats but results of agreements in which you freely participate.
Fine, forge 'ahead' as you see fit. But pay for it yourselves. Don't expect too much British money if you overdo it. And don't try taxing us by the back door.
Nor is it easy to see from an admittedly befogged UK point of view how giving a turbo-boost to more powers at the European level as Sikorski suggests is in any meaningful way compatible with democracy as hitherto understood. More power to ... the European Parliament? No thanks. (Remember that one? Follow the link to see a German TV station doing a very early job to magnificent effect...)
Above all, isn't a wholesale reorganisation of EU powers lunging in a Far More Europe way as Sikorski suggests completely unrealistic? How to negotiate a new treaty structure of such far-reaching new measures without the whole business getting bogged down in referenda and hopeless controversy? It's not by chance we have what we have. And German voters would have to be mad to allow other Europeans effectively to decide how much German money is transferred out of Germany for wider redistributive purposes.
Nonetheless, if you want to hear the message for More Europe delivered by a European foreign minister in a way calculated to impress an audience from another large member state, this is what it looks like.
This one passage - directed directly at Germany - is really good by any standard. Energetic and thoughtful, but also refeshingly blunt. An authentic contemporary rhetorical masterclass in delivering a tough message ("Listen, you helped get us all into this mess..!") to a foreign audience in their own country with style and grace.
Oh, but note too the hard-nosed Polish caveat tucked away at the end:
What does Poland ask of Germany?
We ask, first of all, that Germany admits that she is the biggest beneficiary of the current arrangements and therefore that she has the biggest obligation to make them sustainable.
Second, as you know best, you are not an innocent victim of others’ profligacy. You, who should have known better, have also broken the Growth and Stability Pact and your banks also recklessly bought risky bonds.
Third, because investors have been selling the bonds of exposed countries and flying to safety, your borrowing costs have been lower than they would have been in normal times.
Fourth, if your neighbours’ economies stall or implode, you greatly suffer, too.
Fifth, that despite your understandable aversion to inflation, you appreciate that the danger of collapse is now a much bigger threat.
Sixth, that because of your size and your history you have a special responsibility to preserve peace and democracy on the continent. Jurgen Habermas has wisely said that "If the European project fails, then there is the question of how long it will take to reach the status quo again. Remember the German Revolution of 1848: When it failed, it took us 100 years to regain the same level of democracy as before."
What, as Poland’s foreign minister, do I regard as the biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland today, on 28th November 2011? It’s not terrorism, it’s not the Taliban, and it’s certainly not German tanks. It’s not even Russian missiles which President Medvedev has just threatened to deploy on the EU’s border.
The biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland would be the collapse of the Euro zone. And I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it.
I will probably be first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.
You have become Europe’s indispensable nation. You may not fail to lead. Not dominate, but to lead in reform. Provided you include us in decision-making, Poland will support you.
I like various Sikorskiesque personal style-touches, such as this feline one:
The Euro zone crisis is a more dramatic manifestation of the European malaise because
its founders created a system in which each of its members has the capacity to bring it
down, with appalling costs to themselves and the entire neighborhood.
The break up would be a crisis of apocalyptic proportions beyond our financial system.
Once the logic of ‘each man for himself’ takes hold, can we really trust everyone to act
communitarian and resist the temptation to settle scores in other areas, such as trade?
Would you really bet the house on the proposition that if the Euro zone breaks up, the
single market, the cornerstone of the European Union, will definitely survive? After all,
messy divorces are more frequent than amicable ones. I have heard of a case in
California in which a couple spent $100,000 disputing custody of the family cat.
And he ends on a note which somehow captures Radek Sikorski's own swashbuckling approach to life:
Peoples in our neighborhood – both East and South – look to us for inspiration.
If we get our act together we can become a proper superpower. In an equal partnership with the United States, we can preserve the power, prosperity and leadership of the West.
But we are standing on the edge of a precipice. This is the scariest moment of my ministerial life but therefore also the most sublime. Future generations will judge us by what we do, or fail to do
Sublime! And sublime because it's scary!? What's he doing standing tall in the howling gale, right on the edge of that precipice, ignoring all the Health and Safety signs put up by Brussels?
What a word to describe being a European foreign minister at a time like this.
Talking of speeches, the problem with being a speechwriter is simple. The better you are, the less anyone should know.
Why? Because if you help write a speech for someone and it goes down well, that someone is likely to want to claim all the credit for the fine words and deft delivery. No speaker (as far as I know) has ever ended a well-received speech by thanking the speechwriter.
Although maybe it would be a good idea to start off a significant speech by thanking the speechwriter and disclaiming any responsibility for the content.
As a joke. Of course.
So how best to get round this and build the business? Not easy.
One approach is that taken by Martin Shovel (fellow member of the UK Speechwriters Guild) at Creativity Works, a busy communications consulting business that offers a full and good range of speechwriting and public-speaking coaching skills. If the client is happy to let it be known that help with a successful speech has been given by Martin and his team, that fact is pushed hard on Twitter and otherwise:
That speech by Clare Gerada (Chair of the UK's Royal College of General Practitioners) has a go at the Coalition's NHS reform proposals and makes it into the US specialist public speaking publication Vital Speeches of the Week:
Of course, it's important that GPs are mindful of resources. We have a responsibility to spend the public's money carefully and wisely. That goes without saying.
But we must never lose sight of the patient as a person, at the heart of our practice.
Patients are not "commodities" to be bought and sold in the health marketplace.
In this brave new cost-driven, competitive, managed-care world, I worry about the effect the language of marketing is having on our clinical relationships.
It's changing the precious relationship between clinician and patient into a crudely costed financial procedure. Turning our patients into aliquots of costed tariffs and us into financial managers of care.
We are already embracing the language of the market when we talk about, for example, care pathways, case management, demand management, productivity, clinical and financial alignment, risk stratification.
All good stirring stuff, if you like that sort of thing. But ultimately (for me) somewhat lacking intellectual substance.
Plus, as careful readers know, I think it unwise to pepper a speech with musty, needy exhortations. It was bad enough when David Miliband gave his dreary speech in Polandin 2009:
The verb need/needs is also used a startling 21 times in the speech. Thus 'we need':
a compelling positive case for the European Union
bold strokes
to deepen cooperation and incentivise reform
to diversify our energy supplies
more solidarity between Member States
to prepare better for energy shortfalls
to make G3 cooperation – US, China and the EU - work
to get better at formulating genuine strategic responses to the really difficult policy questions
to be a key player on the global stage
This strange repetitive exhortatory language detached from any real analysis of the problems is reminiscent of the communist apparatchik from Party HQ standing on a barren collective farm field and addressing the workers.
He hectors them to even greater efforts to bring about the triumph of socialist productivity. They stare blankly at him, lost in their own thoughts and the disappointed emptiness of their blighted lives.
Clare Gerada's speech offers us a veritable Milibandian 19 different uses of the words need and must in a twenty minute speech. Which, I suggest, is far too many.
Anyway, my own magnificent speechwriting efforts stay unobtrusive in the background, as befits the dignity and seniority of the people whom I now and again help. Which is as it should be. But, then, how to market myself and get more speeches to help write?
Today family friend Oliver Cromwell has married Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Hurrah!
The best man needed some support with the speech, so I helped out.
Best Man (BM) speeches are among the most important any male may have to give in life. They are even more occasion-specific than other speeches. Some weddings involve scores of guests and the real problem of addressing a large group in a large room. Others are very small, so the words need a quite different style - much more intimate.
Plus the BM is likely to know many of the people at the wedding well, perhaps very well, but others scarcely at all.
One way or the other, pitching the speech at the right tone which is amusing, touching but perhaps above all inclusive/welcoming is not easy, the more so since there are so few opportunities in life to practise this special genre.
What happens? Experience shows that it is all too easy to drift into a series of ill-assorted (and often crudely ribald) badly delivered and structure-free anecdotes mainly about the groom, which have some resonance for a small number of the guests but embarrass or baffle many others.
Anyway, on this occasion the BM was unsure how to proceed and quite unpractised in public speaking. So we eventually hit upon the idea of turning these uncertainties into an advantage, by replacing much of the speech with a PowerPoint presentation featuring all sorts of funny family photos supported by his choice of words and music.
Which sounds fine. The problem as always is doing it well. If you want to move away from a straightforward speech, you need to make sure that any supporting special effects which sound fine as the ideas go to and fro are going to work on the day.
This has to involve a recce of the room concerned and checking/confirming 200% how any IT or sound equipment is going to set up and operated smoothly. And how all the guests are going to be able to watch the production. Nothing worse than pressing the button after the lights go down and ... nothing happens, or various people can't see/hear it and feel left out..
The point?
It doesn't matter what you do as a Best Man, or how you do it with or without special effects. Keep it simple, warm-hearted and gracious and you won't go far wrong.
I nonetheless await the reports from today's fixture with no little interest...
And if anyone wants to hire me to help with a Best Man (or even a funeral) speech, click here.
From today's Sun on the poignant story of a very fat woman who was dumped by her fiance for an even fatter one - see the third para:
Amanda Hart, 25, had a whirlwind romance with Matt Kemp, 27, when she met him online after struggling for years to find a lover who would accept her size.
They got engaged and started planning their wedding, but just three months before the big day she found out he was cheating on her with even heavier Michelle Flack, 33.
Michelle has now dumped the bigger woman loving fireman and her and Amanda have become firm friends.
Six days since I wrote anything here. The longest gap since the Crawfblog began back in early 2008?
I have been running around, not least to Brussels where my training presentation on Political Reporting to startled European diplomats went down well. I banged on self-indulgently about my life and times writing telegrams back to the FCO (including my highly praised telegram on the morning after Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic was assassinated), urging the following general rules:
if you want it to be read, make it readable
some things are important - but don't matter
no stupid words!
don't be boring
These strictures and accompanying illustrative slides of inter alios Mr Incredible, Clint Eastwood and Spider-Man's Aunt May caught their attention.
Part of the problem with political reporting is getting right the balance between what HQ wants to know and what it needs to know. Usually HQ is several months behind where any given overseas problem 'is' - standard briefs get word-processed and stale, drawing on expired assumptions.
So just as it is right to try to keep HQ up to date, Embassies also need to remember that HQ usually won't be that interested in anything which significantly changes the 'narrative' unless it is dramatic enough to catch the headlines in the HQ country.
Likewise you can say what you like in an urgent telegram, but the dominant thought about any given overseas development back at HQ will be whatever the media are saying that morning about it. Ministers pay more attention to the newspapers read in the car on the way to the office than to diplomatic cables, since any questions they will be asked during the day will draw on that media reporting, even if it is wrong or stupid...
Any public body with the words 'European' in the name has horrible problems with 'the hierarchy'. Information rarely trickles down from on high to the working level, and people have to pull their punches in saying what they think lest the 'hierarchy' object.
One interesting issue thus arose. How should a serious middle-ranking diplomat at an EU mission deal with reporting an election in an African country where the result was largely farcical/manipulated? The problem in this case was the fact that the mission hierarchy and EU HQ and indeed many governments round the world were happy enough to hail this wretched outcome as a victory for continuity and 'stability'. A report calling into question the result as an obvious farce would not be welcomed, or even be allowed to issue.
No easy answer. I quoted my own early disagreements with the British Embassy hierarchy back in 1984 in Belgrade, when I had written the legendary MTS/non-MTS paper warning about problems within communist Yugoslavia. Even though the then Ambassador had disagreed with the paper in important respects, he was gracious enough to send it back to London under cover of a letter explaining what the disagreements were about and what his own view was. London thereby at least had the opportunity to mull intelligently over two very rival interpretations.
This elegant and democratic, clever British outcome was a source of much marvelling amongst the assembled Europeans - none of their bosses would be likely to do anything like that!
So there is no easy answer on how a young diplomat should best deal with a situation where the mission and its policy are at variance with reality, honour and common sense. Of course anyone feeling really upset can launch into the various available grievance/appeal processes, but that merely builds up a reputation as a vainglorious boat-rocker and in any case is a hopeless vehicle for changing policy analysis.
As I said to them, it ultimately comes down to how you want to live. Most of us rationalise such things away on the grounds that it just takes time to change policies, and that much of what 'policy' is ebbs and flows anyway. Sometimes it's better to avoid fighting a losing battle on one issue for the sake of making a difference in another.
If that isn't your style, resign and do something else. But remember that if you do that, the organisation you've left will have one honourable voice fewer - does that really help either?
One final thought.
When I was Ambassador in Warsaw a very senior ex-colleague bow with a global energy company swung by. I asked him what was good or bad about having left the FCO behind.
"The good thing about having left the FCO is that at last I can say what I think!"
That for me was an astounding reply. What had he been saying when he was in the FCO for all those years - what someone else thought?!
Yesterday my Sunday was interrupted by a request from RT-TV (Russia's answer to the BBC's world broadcasts) to take part in a programme talking about the Eurozone in general and Italy in particular.
As they asked nicely and as it was not too far to the BBC Oxford studio where the short session was to be recorded, off I went.
Here is part of the transcript of the interview, with my friend Patrick Young as it happens also featured just below (Patrick knows more than any human being decently should know about software programs running Balkan and other such new stock exchanges).
Off I go:
“All the countries in the eurozone which are getting these debt difficulties are having the same problem. This is because they are in the eurozone and cannot devalue their currencies. In effect they are left with borrowing money from the international market and the other eurozone members. They are left with reducing government spending, which is sacking people, which is not popular with the people who are sacked. They are reduced to putting up taxes, which is not popular with everyone else," ...
“Once you’ve got into these very strong difficult debt situations, the ways out are all very painful. So in both Greece and Italy and in some other eurozone countries the choices available to the leaders of the countries concerned are very limited. That is why the eurozone is coming under stress – because the political and psychological pressures are coming up against the way the whole thing was set up in the first place,”
Crawford emphasised that the crisis in Europe is like an impressive house where the foundations, it turns out, were not very well built. And it is very difficult to repair the foundations while inside the house and without moving somewhere else.
If you're feeling brave, watch the full interview (only some four minutes) by pressing the link above. Lawks, I look tired. Maybe it was clear and fluent enough for the occasion, even if I got a bit too involved in one or two long sentence thoughts. Keep it short - and simple!
Fascinating in a grimly painful way to watch one's own twitches and mannerisms (such as starting each answer with "Well, ...") when part of one's work is training others in how to do media work ha ha.
A random comment below from one Bogdan shows that he/she has not quite grasped the point of a TV interview:
A weaker Italy might appeal to many inside the EU. It would be very interesting indeed if Mr Crawford could as well analyse the dire status of economy in his own country, which should be the UK by the biased style of his article...
The medium is the message, or something. Even in Russia.
Last week I attended the annual FCO remembrance ceremony held in November each year to honour FCO diplomats and colleagues who have been killed while on duty.
I try to attend each year, as my friend and colleague Charles Morpeth was killed in a helicopter crash in Bosnia in 1997 while working for the Office of the High Representative.
The OHR/UN helicopter was making its way along through one of Bosnia's mountain areas, which can be prone to abrupt micro-climate fogs. It did not have enough height to clear a high remote hillside and crashed into it. The Ukrainian crew managed to scramble out to safety, but the OHR/UN passengers inside perished when the petrol tank exploded. Terrible. A memorial pyramid now marks the spot.
Another FCO colleague of mine from my Bosnia days, Roger Short, also worked at the OHR office then. He went on to a posting as HM Consul-General in Istanbul and died in the AQ terrorist attack on the Consulate-General building in November 2003. The offices were being refurbished and he was working from a temporary office near the front gates where the blast took place. As I recall the story, his wife Vicky would have been killed too had she not popped out from the office for some quick shopping.
Eight of our locally engaged Turkish staff died too that day - their names are remembered on the plaque on the wall at the foot of the Grand Staircase where the ceremony takes place. A Roger Short Memorial Fund is hosted from University College at Oxford where he had studied Classics.
I have an indirect connection with one other name on the wall, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was murdered by Greek Marxist terrorists on 8 June 2000. On that day a large gathering of European governments' Balkan experts including myself had gathered in Thessaloníki for a Stability Pact meeting: the sad news affected all present. His untimely death had one positive outcome, namely a huge and finally successful effort to round up the vile 17N fanatics who had carried out a number of other assassinations. Stephen's wife Heather played an important and brave personal role in mobilising Greek public opinion against them.
The FCO ceremony last week touched all the right notes of protocol, dignity and grace. The Foreign Secretary's address is here.
There are now 18 names on the wall, ten of them from that one horrible day in Istanbul. Two more have been added since 2003, colleagues killed in Kirkuk and Basra respectively in 2006. Given the amazing range of difficult and dangerous situations facing FCO staff round the world every year, it is an impressive tribute to the FCO's organisation and cool judgement that many more names aren't there.
As each year passes the ceremony gets no easier for the families of those who were lost. Charles Morpeth's daughter had just been born when he died - she is growing up now. As I wrote here previously:
Perhaps the hardest thing I had to do in my whole diplomatic career was to read out a tribute to Charles at a packed memorial service in Sarajevo cathedral, with his parents and wife Helen sitting in the congregation.
My message then applies to all diplomats as they set out on peacekeeping missions: ‘Any of us could have been in that helicopter. Any of us could be in the next one.’
Most people reading this website will have been brought up to believe that "liberal democracy" is a natural state of affairs. It trundles along in the background for the British public as for the Foreign Office, without needing much attention.
We also were brought up (usually without realising it) to agree with Hayek that only free markets and free voters deliver the free information which allow modern society to work.
Hayek was surely right over the long term. Goodbye USSR. But what about the medium term? Or short term?
What if the sheer complexity of decisions facing national leaders in a democracy combines with greedy or ignorant or pig-headed voters to produce completely stupid results? Could autocracy plus modern IT in practice look more rational and efficient (and therefore more “moral" or at least more credible) at taking strategic decisions, such as not running up state borrowing far beyond the credible capacity of the state to repay its debts?
... You don't have to be a raving Eurosceptic (although of course that helps) to have profound, urgent misgivings about the way the eurozone crisis is eroding European democracy, including our own. The Greek referendum announcement is bad news for manifold practical reasons. Maybe a referendum won't in fact happen. But given the steep collapse Greece now faces, is asking voters to make strategic choices for inevitable sacrifices so unwise an idea?
Bottom line?
I spent most of my professional diplomatic career in one way or the other working hard to build a decent, peaceful democratic Europe. It turns out that the specific model chosen by the continental EU elites is a moral and (worse) philosophical failure.
Am I alone staring at this dangerous disaster and asking myself a painful question: “How do I withdraw my consent from being governed like this?"
Some vivid comments (over 300 and rising), not all humming the same tune:
Charles Crawford? where did he come from comedy central? he makes me laugh, Crawford there is no democrasy son because we were denied a referendum by our political scum,tell us all Crawford,when was the last time the EU accounts were signed off? come on,theres a good lad.
Here here Mr Crawford: Very well written and, in my opinion, irrefutable.
A superb piece of work which rings so true. Events over the past ten years or so, and even more recently, those over the last week have convinced me we do not live in a democracy in the UK and certainly not in the EU...
Charles, very thoughtful piece...If the electoral rules required voters to display some knowledge of the issues at stake I am quite sure more than half the voters who currently vote would be disqualified. I say this having knocked on thousands of doors at elections over three decades and been thoroughly depressed at the sheer pig ignorance of the majority of voters.
Very few few MPS are intellectually qualified to discuss let alone decide the crucial questions raised by the Ambassador. Searingly solid article,Sir.
I know of various people who have been beaten back from writing for national media by the sheer venom and abuse emitted by assorted commenters. So far, within tolerable limits...
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