Blogoir: March

You are no doubt wondering what a condemned man might look like after being tied to a stake then shot at by a few hundred people with machine guns.

The answer?

Not much left except a dark red bloody splodge and a strong smell of singed meat.

With that thought in mind, read Polly Toynbee's piece asserting that the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is a victim of the new wave of puritanism. Thus:

But here's the wake-up call. MPs have been caught napping by the new wave of puritanism...

Those who abuse, belittle and encourage popular contempt for MPs should consider that we need more good people in politics. Observing the excruciating public humiliation of the home secretary's husband for watching a couple of porn movies, with their children cringing indoors, how many potentially good future politicians decided they would rather not invite the world to root through their private life after all?

So far so trite.

Then scroll through the comments, as the angry machine guns start blazing.

I as a public servant for many years never cheated on a single penny, and would have been hauled before a disciplinary tribunal had I done so. I was expected to follow the rules and respect the spirit of the rules.

Quite right too.

Whereas far too many in the current British political leadership - MInisters and MPs and MEPs alike - seem to think that the whole point of the rules is to squeeze as much as they possible can for themselves from the public purse, skulking behind all available formalities and technicalities when they are caught out.

Had I been hauled before a disciplinary hearing for playing fast and loose with my entertainment claim, they would have cited that action as a sign of their own lofty leadership in defending Public Money.

The sheer shamelessness of it is exceeded only by the exhausting hypocrisy.

Bring on the General Election.

As for Guardian columnists. You have had your chance - and been found wanting.

I have too many books. I came from a schoolteacher family which piled up books and never gave any away. If we wanted a book, it was bought.

So, a lot of books. Mostly read at least once. Very few read more than once. Some barely skimmed. They take up space and dust.

Is the Kindle 2 set to change all this, just as the iPod has done away with huge collections of LPs and CDs for millions of people? It lets you download books via wireless. Plus you can link to feeds from your favourite news outlets, blogs and so on. And it can talk to your iPhone so that when you switch from one gizmo to another you carry on reading where you left off!

Plus it has a dictionary and a super search function - no more furrowed brows and wasted time as you try to remember which bopok and which page that quote was on.

And so on. The unwireless Sony Reader is a waste of space in comparison. But Kindle 2 ships only in the USA. Darn.

Thus Josh Marshall:

... we have two big inset shelves where I keep all the books I feel like I need or want ready at hand. And last night, sitting in front of them, I had this dark epiphany. How much longer are these things going to be around? Not my books, though maybe them too. But just books. Physical, paper books. The few hundred or so I was looking at suddenly seemed like they were taking up an awful lot of space, like the whole business could dealt with a lot more cleanly and efficiently, if at some moral loss.

Don't get me wrong. Book books still have some clear advantages. Kindle is a disaster with pictures and maps. But I didn't realize the book might move so rapidly into the realm of endangered modes of distributing the written word. I was thinking maybe decades more.

It will be a lot faster than that.

Books, newspapers, magazines all exist only because they were invented a few hundred years ago as a clever way of passing words to people not standing next to you.

That can be done differently now. And will be.

And, one hopes, far from this signalling the death of reading the whole idea could far faster than we think be rebooted and reborn?

Is here, hosted by Trixy at Is there more to life than shoes? A question which goes unanswered, at least explicitly.

It links inter alia to the most important posting former Ambassador Craig Murray has ever posted, even if he says so himself. The subject is Torture and what he says is:

... the clearest statement the government has ever made that it, as a policy, employs intelligence from torture.

"One example is the question of the use of intelligence provided to the UK by other countries. The provenance of such intelligence is often unclear – partners rarely share details of their sources. All intelligence received, whatever its source, is carefully evaluated, particularly where it is clear that it has been obtained from individuals in detention. The use of intelligence possibly derived through torture presents a very real dilemma, given our unreserved condemnation of torture and our efforts to eradicate it. Where there is intelligence that bears on threats to life, we cannot reject it out of hand. What is quite clear, however, is that information obtained as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence in any criminal or civil proceedings in the UK. It does not matter whether the evidence was obtained here or abroad."

[See] http://www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/pdf15/human-rights-2008

Does he make out the case he claims? Not really.

Why? Because as he knows perfectly well, we have to deal with cruel governments we dislike in all sorts of different ways. That's life. How we process intelligence information we get from them is just part of that wider dilemma, albeit an unusually difficult one.

Which is the more morally revolting, or even downright ridiculous?

To pore carefully over intelligence reports from these governments which you suspect may well have come from torture, yet which look to throw light on possible terrorist attacks against British citizens whom you have a legal duty to protect?

Or to invite the senior representatives of such cruel regimes to a huge reception at UK taxpayers' expense and gloat over how many of them show up - and then howl indignantly at the hypocrisy of everyone else who deals with them? See Craig's account of his lavish Queen's Birthday Party in Tashkent, pp 210-211 in his book Murder in Samarkand, paperback edition.

And so on. Sigh.

Meanwhile this BBRU linked item makes depressing reading in describing the chasm between what is being spent on state education in the UK and the results being achieved. Is it really this bad?

Anyway, the Big News for this site is that I host the Britblog Roundup next week here for the first time.

So anyone who wants to suggest links to lively British blog postings between now and this coming Saturday should send them to britblog at gmail dot com and I'll do my best to include them.

Max Atkinson has picked up my comment as posted on his site about what makes a speech memorable and had a look at the famous speech by Sir Geoffrey Howe seen as a pivotal moment in the events which led to Mrs Thatcher's resignation as Prime Minister. He asked if I knew about the role of Elspeth Howe in its drafting.

Here is the further comment I have posted in response:

Thank you for the link.

This was not one of mine. By then I was at the Embassy in South Africa grappling to end apartheid and Geoffrey Howe was no longer Foreign Secretary. I have no idea if Elspeth Howe contributed to it, but she is a feisty woman and no doubt would have had privileged opportunities to make her views known to her husband...

The full text of the Howe speech is here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1990-11-13/Debate-1.html#Debate-1_head1

It reads very much like his own work - careful and measured to a fault. Apart from the rather clunky cricket metaphor, it is in itself fairly unmemorable as a piece of rhetoric (see eg the warm words for the UK joining the ERM, which did not work out so well).

It nonetheless achieved its legendary status not for what it 'said', but for what it did - namely signal head-on an irreversible dissatisfaction with Mrs Thatcher from one of her previously most loyal colleagues, and so from the heart of her own ranks. It opened the way to her speedy downfall.

It achieved that by attacking Mrs Thatcher and her approach to Europe in a firm, principled but also impeccably honourable Hovian understated way.

Which perhaps is why it was so devastating in its unique way, as a more explicit/'obvious' and/or insulting attack by Sir Geoffrey could have been dismissed as uncharacteristic, unconvincing petulance.

See the contrast between the Dan Hannan go at Gordon Brown and the other UKIP EP speech by Nigel Farage which UKIP are now busy pushing out as per the comment here above. Which is better and has more impact if you are a student of speechwriting? The more spontaneous, vehement Farage club? Or the more mannered but deft Hannan rapier?

All this reinforces the point in that terrific book on communication by Frank Luntz. 'Words that Work': "it's not what you say - it's what they hear".

And, more, what they remember?

Nick Cohen puts a grammatically challenged question:

Who (sic) would you rather trust - the BBC or a blogger?

Back in about 1992 I was moved for the first time ever to write a letter to the BBC to complain about a news-clip from South Africa (where I had just served for four years). The clip contained five or six factual errors in about one minute. Weeks later a form reply appeared saying that my 'views' had been conveyed to the programme editors.

And that was that. My licence fee. No accountability.

Then this episode came along.

And what about the BBC's free ads for Communism?

The problem with the BBC is that it purports to be in some sense 'neutral' and 'professional' but isn't either of those things consistently. 

Hence, the question. 

Is it wise to trust someone who tells the truth 90% of the time and lies 10% of the time?

Or wiser to trust a 'what you see is what you get' blogger who is open about her/his prejudices and who tends to give straight answers when confronted by straight questions?

In terms of coverage of political issues and philosophies, bloggers are doing a better job in making different points of view available. See eg this. How often do libertarian ideas and radical free market appear on the key BBC current affairs outlets or on the exhausted Question Time?

Nick Cohen:

No rival can fill the gaps if the BBC pulls back from comprehensive reliable reporting. Soon, if its camera crews do not go to Nigeria, no one else's will.

Not necessarily true. Nor, if the reports the BBC comes up with are not self-evidently reliable, does it necessarily matter any more. What is a BBC report from Nigeria other than a couple of well-paid people with cameras doing what they think makes sense? Michael Yon shows what can be done by honest, on-the-spot, privately funded, individual intrepid reporting.

Basically, the BBC is the answer to an IT problem of decades ago. It (like newspapers) is no longer needed in its current form. For cost-cutting reasons it has merged Facts with Analysis and Comment, so creating a conceptual mess featuring dumbed-down prima donna journalism with diminished professional responsibility.

Thus it writhes in agony.

One answer might be to keep the framework but under a new management ethos which ruthlessly punishes crass errors of judgement and open up the BBC's infrastructure to market competition (rather like the way different IT companies can use the BT network in the UK to send products to one's home).

Until then, back to Samizdata.

Iain Dale has made it to the Orwell Prize shortlist.

Here is a tirade against this development:

Everywhere you turn there he is doling out another gob of cliche with all the care of a prison kitchen cook slapping down a ladleful of mashed potato on a lag’s tray.

An acute if intemperate observation, based on who knows what experience.

And read the ensuing comments for a study in post-modern aggressive coarse incoherence.

What makes so many otherwise apparently normal people start to behave in an obnoxious way once they start writing on the Internet, I wonder?

Here is a hard-hitting analysis of what is indeed a strange and nasty anti-Israel cartoon by a 'fiery' Australia cartoonist, picked up in various newspapers in the USA which (perhaps) ought to know better.

This might be said to be a first-class Fisking of a cartoon - taking each element of it and explaining why it is objectionable.

Plenty of material in this case.

Dan Hannan MEP has delivered a blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a terse but sharp address in the European Parliament which has been picked up on YouTube and seen by hundreds of thousands of people: 

Dan is well on the libertarian end of the political spectrum in the UK, so it is good to see him getting e-impact on such a scale that the Guardian has to loudly sneer at him - read this silly, sour piece for the torrent of critical comments it has prompted.

Some speech-writing purists might say that His European Parliament salvo is maybe a bit over-scripted - not quite enough spontaneity and brio? So what? It shows an educated and efficient mind doing a vigorous job, which is no doubt why it has proved so popular. See likewise this entry on Dan's blog, ticking off Gordon Brown for his clunky words on the death of Jade Goody - not often one sees the word threnody deployed accurately these days.

Contrast too Dan H with the scruffy, snide Labour spin-doctor Derek Draper in this clip posted by Iain Dale to see the contrast in public political styles - and indeed levels of civilisation - they each represent.

All of which is a roundabout way of leading you to this well-turned posting by communications consultant Max Atkinson which looks in depth at what makes a speech memorable:

So the first thing that struck me about Daniel Hannan’s speech was that almost every sentence conveyed an insult or attack – not just directed at Labour in general, but highly personalised ones aimed at the leader of the Labour Party in particular.

Add to this the fact that it was in front of MEPs in Strasbourg and in the presence of Mr Brown, a distinguished guest who had just made a speech, and the context becomes comparable with that of a cheeky schoolboy standing up at speech day and telling the headmaster exactly what he and others thought of him in full view of all the other pupils, teachers and parents.

Max argues that delivering a truly memorable speech is all about the right person hitting the right spot on the right day - not easy to contrive. I have added a comment which is now up.

On the other hand, it is easy to hit lots of wrong notes through sloppy drafting which normally derives from sloppy thinking. See Matthew Parris enjoying mauling Gordon Brown's European Parliament speech mixed metaphors:

I've just read one of the worst speeches by a British prime minister it's been my misfortune to encounter in 40 years following politics. Wilson had folksy evasiveness; Heath, wooden principle; Thatcher, tin-eared persistence; Blair, slimy charm. In every case you could tell why they'd got the job, even when you hated what they were doing with it.

But this? This hole in the air encased in a suit of clunking verbal armour? This truck-load of clichéd grandiloquence in hopeless pursuit of anything that might count as the faintest apology for an idea? Words fail me.

“So I stand here today proud to be British and proud to be European: representing a country that does not see itself as an island beside Europe but as a country at the centre of Europe, not in Europe's slipstream but firmly in its mainstream.”

Not an island? Airborne in a slipstream? In a river in a mainstream? So much for geography, aeronautics and hydraulics.

Let's tip-toe away from this calamity and listen to some good advice from Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan:

So hold the lettuce.

Your style should never be taller than you are ...

Here is a Daily Mail article picking up a Spanish media analysis rating ... yes, the planet's most gorgeous women politicians. Not exactly journalism at its most serious:

Oh boy, this is going to get me into terrible trouble with Harriet Harman and her sisterhood.

But how come the French have such knockout lovelies for their female politicians? And how come our Hon Lady Members are, well, a little more on the bookish side?

Christine Kelly, newly chosen as France's Minister for Overseas Territories, was photographed today in a bikini. The 39-year-old looks like a model out of a lads' mag. It's not fair.

And here is Ruth Lewy in the Guardian duly attacking it:

What is so galling is that a British national newspaper can maintain an editorial policy that allows this humiliating rubbish to be spewed out. Why is it acceptable to openly bully both the women described and those that read the piece?

... The Mail has always catered to a large female readership, and it does so through persistent humiliation. The Femail section is often laughed off as a self-knowing bit of fun and fluff, home to light gossip, dodgy paparazzi photos and heartwarming stories, but pieces like this demonstrate a much darker side.

The Mail did not make the online poll of female MPs itself (a fact I'm sure it regrets), but it has grasped the opportunity to revel in its objectification. We can no longer allow this ill-informed writing to be given such a platform unchecked.

Hmm. All a bit predictable.

Let's look at the numbers for UK newspaper readership in Q3 and Q4 2008 (in 000s):

Women reading the Guardian:

Women reading the Daily Mail:

According to my keyboard calculator, these figures mean that five times as many women read the Daily Mail every day as read the Guardian. So which is better placed to pronounce on what is humiliating and threatening and what is 'allowed' in respect of commenting on women in politics?

OK, OK. We know that Guardian readers in their small but perfectly formed numbers are the True Keepers of the Shrine of what is intelligent and decent and progressive when it comes to Women and Wimmin alike. But surely too numbers count for something in a democracy?

In fact the Daily Mail is on to something. Far too many people in British public life, men and women alike, take little pride in their appearance.

One of the most dispiriting things about being an Ambassador was watching Ministers and their accompanying official entourages arrive for consultations with their foreign opposite numbers. The group would troop in to the Residence with their battered official briefcases deploying (variously) uncleaned shoes, cheap suits, tired overcoats, polyester ties, ghastly haircuts, frumpy ill-fitting dresses, overweight/unfit bodies.

The contrast betwen how British politicians - men and women alike - present themselves does indeed contrast badly with almost every nationality I can think of, the more so since most other nationalities are paid less well anyway.

Why? Thus:

An undefinable but real enough collective sense of ... tiredness. Some sort of inarticulated glum indifference. A crass pseudo-PoMo pride in not being proud, in having nothing to be proud about, even in dissing the very notion of pride as boring/irrelevant.

Gimmicks such as 'dress down Friday' make things worse. In the USA this means Smart Casual, with plenty of Smart. In the UK civil service it just means scruffy.

And it starts spreading to the rest of the week. Line managers these days are wary of hauling in a junior colleague to tell him/her to smarten up. Could such action lead to Floods of Tears? Procedures for harassment/bullying or somesuch?

Or merely a dreary ennervating unwinnable row about how an out-of-touch 'establishment' is once again trying to impose 'old-fashioned values'?

So standards arising from pride - and pride arising from standards - drift forlornly down, desiccated leaves zig-zagging to earth in a chill autumn breeze.

So, oh Guardian, this is what over a decade of your post-modern cynicism has wrought.

Deal with it.

And don't go whinging about the Daily Mail to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. This awesome song sums up the situation there rather well:

I've got wild, staring eyes.
And I got a strong urge to fly,
But I got nowhere to fly to (-- fly to... fly to... fly to...).
Ooooo babe,
When I pick up the phone,
There's still nobody home.

A strange article from the Guardian about the crisis in the British 'equalities watchdog' (sic) as one by one senior people jump off -  are even hard-core social democrats so appalled by what is happening to their own creations that they are going John Galt?

The deliciously named author of this piece Amelia Gentleman (surely a name which should be banned by any decent collectivist equalities watchdog for its patronising sexist overtones) can not even get the name of the 'watchdog' correct, calling it the Equalities and Human Rights Commission whereas in fact it is the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

She mentions the impending departure from the EHRC of my former boss in the FCO Nicola Brewer, who presided uneasily over the European Directorate of the FCO in her final job before moving over to be the EHRC's first Chief Executive.

What's going on?

It is impossible for us mere mortals to penetrate the Left v More Left v Even More Left ideological siege warfare going on behind the scenes in the publicly funded Equalitariat. But Amelia gives us a teasing clue:

Part of the concern stems from a shift in the tone and style of the new body, which emphasises the concept of "fairness" more than the notions of "equality" and "discrimination", and is less focused on campaigning.

Sounds OK to me. However:

An equality lawyer, who also asked not be named, said: "The problem is that 'fairness', unlike equality, has no basis in law. It's a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it's about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men."

There we have it. A so-called 'equality lawyer' says that 'fairness' has no basis in law.

Has this clueless person actually studied the law? What about the Maxims of Equity and all the common law principles developed over many centuries which have built British law and given the planet the most sophisticated principles of balance and fairness ever devised by humans?

And although it is not totally clear from the text, the implication of the last sentence seems to be that being fair to businesses and white men is something ... unsatisfactory?

All in all, wonderful news.

Maybe by the time the Conservatives get in there will be no-one left in the EHRC building except a redeployable security guard or two, and the whole thing can be shut down without anyone noticing.

My Blogoir statistics creep upwards nicely, with over 5000 Unique Visitors this month.

Most visitors swing by briefly, such being the ephemeral nature of the genre.

But up to 10% of visitors browse around for the best part of an hour.

Which suggests that they are at least intrigued and/or interested/engaged in what they find, and so makes all the effort worthwhile.

Thanks.

This story of awesome feline squalour (plus one dog) reminded me of Nick Lowe's song Marie Provost:

She was a winner, who became the doggie's dinner

The Wikipedia account of the real Marie Prevost is here, claiming that her dachshund Maxie had not eaten her but nipped at her legs after she died trying to revive her.

Rummaging through my career files today I read again the 1997 letter to us from Diana, Princess of Wales expressing thanks for what the Embassy had done to help her on her visit to Bosnia to highlight the dangers of landmines - as it tragically turned out, the last public engagement she undertook and one which the Embassy had to help organise at literally three days' notice(!)...

Here is a Sunday Times report of the visit. The media 'story' at the time as she left Sarajevo of course was not landmines but her relationship with Dodi Fayed.

Her letter to me dated 13 August 1997 must have been one of the final official letters she signed before her fatal car crash on 31 August in Paris.

Something special to keep in the family archives.

Former diplomat Simon Dickson has some positive things to say about FCO bloggers following a seminar he attended:

How do they assess their success? For a couple, they are among the first bloggers in their respective countries, which should score a few credibility points for UK plc. Some quote instances where a particular post gets hundreds of comments; but there are more examples of cases where the blog has led to something else: coverage in traditional media, reaching many times further than the blog itself, or personal contacts made. (I must admit, I'm reaching a similar conclusion myself. It's not about who comes to the blog, it's about where the blog takes me.)

Blogzilla too was there, but was less impressed:

For a government department whose principal aim is to influence and persuade, it felt a curiously clumsy event — even with the organisational assistance of global PR firm Weber Shandwick. A set of (white, balding, upper-middle class) diplomats sat on one side of a row of desks and spoke at an audience that seemed to consist largely of other FCO and Weber Shandwick staff. Comically, the frosty FCO receptionists demanded that laptops be left at the front desk.

More pertinent to my mind is how "authentic" pronouncements can ever be from what is ultimately the UK government's global PR agency. Craig Murray, the ambassador who spoke out over Uzbekistan's torture and murder of political activists, was hounded out of the FCO as a result. Carne Ross, the UK delegation's Middle East expert at the United Nations who testified to the Butler Review that the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK was illegal, left the FCO shortly afterwards. While today's ambassadors stressed their day-to-day independence, there is a strong limit on how far this can be taken.

Why was I not invited, I ask?

Finally, Tony Curzon Price also joined the discussion:

This is obviously the big question for government use of new media. Just as technology allowed disintermediation of finance---and so all the excesses that we are now paying for---so that disintermediation is now hitting the production of knowledge. And we don't want to happen to knowledge what happened to money ...

My own take on this is that there are two views of the business of knowledge making: you are either trying to influence outcomes, or you are trying to "speak truth to power". In the new media, you can't afford to pretend to be doing the one when you're doing the other. The FCO cannot - just cannot - speak truth to power, because it is power. But it can transparently and authentically try to influence.

The bigger question of whether there is anyone left who has the legitimacy to speak truth rather than simply seek influence is a big question for our time.

Not sure I quite understand 'speaking truth to power' - as if they are invariably different. I prefer speaking truth to lies, myself. And why does one need 'legitimacy' to speak truth? That thought may indeed be a big question of our time - but isn't it also really ... creepy?

How does one get on the guest-list for such events, I wonder.

And how much were a 'global PR firm' paid to set it up? How were they selected?

An FOI question coming on?

Yesterday I was at Trent College near Nottingham to give a talk to pupils on Great Negotiations of Our Time, namely:

• The Individual v The Collective
• Knowledge v Belief
• Today v Tomorrow

By way of elucidation for their educational edification I managed to squeeze in Mr Incredible, the Joker, Clint Eastwood and, of course, Shrek. But in the excitement I forgot the joke about the Pole, the Nigerian and the Russian whose wives have just had babies who get muddled up in the hospital ward. Sigh. Next time.

After my talk the Head of the school Gill Dixon with some colleagues and pupils kindly hosted me in the impressive new dining hall and pavilion named after Prince Alexander Obolensky.

Obolensky was a White Russian whose family fled the Communists and came to the UK. He ended up at Trent College and went on from there to Oxford and fame as an outstandingly fleet rugby player representing England.

His finest hour was at Twickenham in 1936, when England beat the New Zealand All Blacks, in good part thanks to two Obolensky tries. Despite the fact that Obolensky had not completed all the formalities needed for British citizenship, he was qualified in the only sense that mattered in those carefree days:

Obolensky was still awaitng naturalization as a British citizen when he was chosen for England. This led to a memorable exchange with the guest of honour, the Prince of Wales - very shortly to become Edward VIII and enjoy a reign little longer than Obolensky's international career.

Introduced to the newcomer, the Prince asked 'By what right do you presume to play for England?'. Not the slightest discomposed, Obolensky responded with icy hauteur 'I attend Oxford University… sir'.. 

Obolensky died in 1940 in a freak training accident when his Hurricane hit a rabbit warren; he crashed from the aircraft because he was not using his safety-harness as it obscured visibility.

Here is one of the immortal Obolensky tries at Twickenham which shows just how fast a runner he was - and the no less immortal accent of the commentator describing it.

I have been busy tweaking my trail-blazing interview for the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme.

This is an exercise in getting senior diplomats to talk for some hours about their life and work and then publish the transcripts for the edification of future generations.

Lots of famous names already there, so my own quixotic entry full of sparkling witticisms and profound insights haha will be in company better than it deserves, as and when it appears.

Meanwhile, back in the present tense, long after former giants of British diplomacy have moved on, the FCO is making a 'tragic descent into mediocrity' according to this Times account of an HR consultants' report which the FCO itself commissioned:

“We have never come across an organisation so stuffed full of talent. How can it continue to get so many obvious ‘common sense’ issues wrong?”

The lame excuse seems to be that the findings were based on a relatively small sample, which by the way included a mere 20 SMS (ie senior) officers who might be thought to be able to give a pretty clear view. And, apparently, did. Plus who decided what sample to go for?

Here is the magnificent report by the Couraud HR consultancy. A trenchant piece of work, describing all sorts of failures which are all the more poignant after the countless man-years spent on New Labour 'management since 1997. Full of tough love:

I wrote in April last year about my own efforts to tackle this presentational issue: A Clean Ministry is a Happy Ministry. This philosophy drove my relaunch of the British Embassy in Belgrade after we reopened diplomatic relations in 2001 - as I describe in the Oral History interview.

Or this cracker:

See here for what I tried to do to change that.

The late Robin Cook who had many strengths alas has something to answer for in all this decay. He made it clear that when the FCO had successes he personally would be taking the credit, whereas when things went wrong he would be blaming the system for underperforming.

With that attitude of profoundly cynical irresponsibility arriving at the top, the descent towards mediocrity was bound to be fairly steep and straight. As indeed has taken place.

Anne Applebaum says that the Obama/Clinton reset button for US/Russia relations is not working:

Anyone who doubts the truth of this need only look at remarks Lavrov himself made last weekend in Brussels ...

The transcript of his remarks, and those of other Russians attending the same conference, do not capture their snide tone, or the scorn with which they dismissed suggestions that Russia's neighbors might have wanted to join NATO because they were afraid of Russia.

To return to the metaphor: If that is how the Russian government sounds after pressing the reset button, I'm not sure that the technical complications that caused the screen to freeze have gone away.

Why is this happening?

It all wends its way back to this purposeful analysis of government targets:

It is precisely now and only now when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy.

Maybe this helps explain why countries and communities who have felt the weight of this madness might still be 'afraid of Russia'.

Because the heirs of the propagators of this evil vision of humanity are still busily at work.

And because the villainous writer of those words is still given an honoured place in the heart of Moscow.

How do Western leaders plan to reset that phenomenon at long last? Are they even aware that it exists as an issue?

President Obama's much-praised message of friendship to Iran got a dusty public response from the Iranians, including some nice imagery:

The new US president sends us a Persian New Year greeting message but in the same accuses us again to support terrorism and to be after nuclear weapons," the supreme leader said in a televised speech ...

"He offers us his hand with a velvet glove under which, however, might be a cast-iron hand," Khamenei added. "We will not accept any offer for negotiations which goes together with force ... we will see and if you (President Obama) really change, then we will change as well..."

Looking at the matter from a technical diplomatic drafting point of view, I can't help feeling that President Obama did not quite get the tone right, especially in this key passage:

I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders. We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.

You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.

Any such address has to tiptoe delicately between sounding too soft for most Americans, and (as in this case) sounding patronising to the Iranians.

Why should any Iranian think that the 'true greatness' of their civilisation comes through 'peaceful means'? Surely a proud military tradition and destroying their enemies are part of that civilisation too, just as they are for the USA? Better to say so straight up?

And the Spidermanic phrase about with real rights comes great responsibilities? Ugh.

It conveys the thought that Iran takes its place among the 'community of nations' as and when and only if the USA wants that to happen. Yet if one wanders down the corridors of the UN one might find an unhealthy majority of UN member state diplomats tending to side with the Iranians in their windy anti-Western rhetoric and nasty ambitions. Who is the more isolated in all this?

Not how I would have crafted it.

Does all this matter? Not much.

The Iranians know that the USA under any management will drive a tough bargain, and will not want to end up with more Carteresque fiascos.

The Democrat Administration will strive to be tough while avoiding a ghastly confrontation. Plus it wants to put some clear rhetorical water between itself and its caricature of the Bush approach which, as is seen from this good real-life example was more than adequate for sending some subtle yet firm messages both to the Iranian people and to the ruling elite.

One way or the other, the problem remains.

If Iran keeps edging towards acquiring a nuclear weapon capability, is anyone going to stop them? 

The other parts of the Obama message were weakly done waffle from the Chauncey Gardiner school of drafting, oddly reminiscent of the stirring but doomed President Dale speech to the Martians in Mars Attacks!

And we know what happened to that President in the ensuing misunderstandings with the excitable Martians.

Skewered. With a Martian flag.

But will Slim Whitman make crazed Iranian extremists brains explode and save America and the world?

Yes!

In the second half of 2011 Poland holds the EU Presidency for the first time.

To get you in the swing of Poland and the EU, here is a new blog by my friend the excellent Polish Gazeta journalist Dominika Pszczólkowska: Poland in the EU.

The point about reading Blogs from other parts of the world is that they see events from quite different angles. See Dominika deftly picking up Ukraine making a fool of itself at the recent NATO/Ukraine Council.

In case your false or even real teeth shoot out trying to pronounce her surname, it goes something like this: P-sh-ch-oow-kov-ska. It comes (I think) from the root of the Polish word for a bee: pszczoła.