Blogoir: June

It's a tiring job reading Tim Worstall's blog every day, as he demolishes one idiotic idea after another, a fevered lumberjack in the wide leafy Forest of Nonsense felling tree after tree with mighty blows.

Where does he find the energy?

For a good example of another tree toppling to the forest floor, try this one, on public funding of science.

There is particularly thick part of the forest called Ritchie. Watch our man hew away here to fine effect.

Chop. Crash.

The latest BBRU is pinkly hosted by Trixy.

It's notable for a link to a profoundly depressing link to a piece noting the OK contents of the free condom device at the British Embassy in Hanoi.

Have these people no taste?

This site always praises good technique.

So let's hear it for the FBI, who have done a most impressive number on cracking open a sophisticated Russian spy ring.

Most of the lurid media reports this morning simply rehash what is in the US Justice Department published material. Check out the two PDFs at the link to read the originals.

One of the accused is one Vicky Pelaez, who appears to be a non-Russian (born in Peru) who married one of the 'illegals' ('Juan Lazaro') and was a prominent anti-imperialist New York journalist. Here she is in full neo-Marxist rant, on Honduras.

This pro-Castro site forlornly tries to froth up a conspiracy theory: because Pelaez was the only Spanish language journalist in New York worth a damn, something had to be done about her!

It will be. The detailed Justice Department accounts of her complicated manoeuvres to help 'Lazaro' contact the Russians and carry large amounts of cash too and fro are most instructive.

This one will run for a long time, revealing all sorts of fascinating details about the Russians' spycraft. It's worth recalling that the key problem with having spies is getting from them any useful information they may have picked up, and indeed communicating with them to set targets and follow progress. How to do that regularly without arousing suspicion?

Hence the mysterious world of Steganography, the art of hiding digital information in a publicly available image.

The FBI reveal many other hi-tech ruses used in this case.

Here is an earlier alleged British attempt to effect clever communication which was very smart - until it wasn't.

Brian Micklethwait asks a pertinent and subversive question.

If we know which Euro currency notes are issued by which country, why not start insisting to be paid only in notes issued by countries which are unlikely to default?

... supposing lots of people do know this, or get to know it, does it not provide a mechanism by means of which mere people might hasten the collapse of the more dubious EUrozone economies, by demanding, when being paid in actual money, to be paid only in Euros printed by the undubious countries?

Perhaps the answer might go: but making such judgments would be, in EUrope, illegal. Maybe so, but that won't stop a black market making minute comparisons between differently lettered Euros, nor will it stop tourists in other parts of the world, planning their EUropean trips, demanding, once they hear such stories, to receive only the kinds of Euros that they would like.

They could, for instance, refuse to accept the wrong kind of Euros, or, if given a mixture of good Euros and bad Euros, sort out the good from the bad and swap the bad ones back for pounds, or dollars, or whatever.

The wrong kinds of Euro notes, from the dubious countries, could soon be treated exactly as if they were forgeries, could they not? The big difference being that these forgeries will be easier to spot...

Wikipedia tells us that we can indeed ascertain which country has issued which notes:

Unlike euro coins, euro notes do not have a national side indicating which country issued them (which is not necessarily where they were printed). This information is instead encoded within the first character of each note's serial number.

The first character of the serial number is a letter which uniquely identifies the country that issues the note.

Thus X denotes Germany, U France and so on. Greece as it happens is Y.

Scope for mischief-making here?

Not much, according to numerous sagacious commenters including Tim Worstall:

... the cash euro is such a tiny part of the money supply across the EU zone. Electronic euros are vastly more important and there is no differentiation between them.

So there.

We all agree that government spending in many Western countries is too high - stupidly high.

We are cranking up debts to pay for current consumption at a rate which suggests to the markets that we have lost our minds. The markets look to charge us higher interest rates, as lending to possibly mad people starts to look more risky.

Once that happens we drift towards Greek-style crisis - the interest on the debt we owe goes far beyond what we can ever afford to pay back. The risk that cash-machines across the Western world suddenly will stop issuing money grows apace...

The latest ploy is to announce 'cuts' in government spending. Shock! How dare they hurt our feelings?

But what exactly is a cut?

Any normal person would think that if the government in any one year spends £Xbn, a cut occurs if the government announces that it will spend only £Ybn, where Y is less than X. And then in fact does spend £Ybn, as promised.

That turns out to be a slippery idea.

Cuts can mean all sorts of things, some of them simultaneously. Thus:

• spending in cash terms goes down in 2012 compared to 2011
• spending in inflation-adjusted terms goes down in 2012 compared to 2011
• spending over the period 2011-2015 will be less than in the period 2009- 2013 (but we'll still spend more)
• the rate of increase of spending will be cut sharply (but we'll still spend more)
• we'll spend much less than we previously said we'd spend (but we'll still spend more)
• the proportion of government spending within the overall economy will go down (but we'll still spend more)

And so on. Guido helps us see what is really happening. No cuts.  

We'll still spend more. Instead of paddling fast to the waterfool of doom we'll paddle much more slowly. Relax! 

What no-one appears to be mentioning is the UK's approach to the EU Budget. This gruesome negotiation comes round again in a couple of years' time.

One thing is obvious in all this jiggery-pokery.

Namely that if we make even these so-called cuts in UK government spending but make no comparable reductions in our contributions to the EU Budget, we are in proportional terms at least increasing our contributions to the EU Budget!

More EU = Less Westminster.

So a key test for our coalition government's resolve and credibility will be how it responds to the usual cry from Brussels that the only direction the EU Budget can go is upwards.

Make no mistake, there are many ways in which EU spending might be not merely curbed but actually reduced.

Commission offices inside and outside (and even the WCs) are awash with banners and posters exhorting their own officials to enjoy the EU's wisdom and programmes.

In following all this as best we can, it is important to keep an eye on the main ball.

Thus this seemingly defiant UK statement about the 2011 EU budget is largely irrelevant:

The chancellor made clear, however, that Britain would oppose a proposal from the European commission to increase the EU budget by 6% next year, a move that would mean a £600m increase in the size of Britain's gross contribution to the EU.

"We had a lively discussion on the proposal for the 2011 EU budget, for which the European commission has proposed a 6% increase, including a 4.5% increase in administration costs" said Osborne.

"I was not alone in saying that this is unacceptable. Many countries are accepting public spending restraints and administration cuts. I am glad that has been noted at this early stage."

He insisted he had not "banged the table" on the EU budget or anything else...

Umm ... why not?

Anyway, NB that the 2011 EU Budget total is an annual total within the overall 2007-2013 Financial Perspective whose size was agreed back in 2005. That money is already committed to the EU, and goes up and down as EU spending patterns unfold over the Framework period.

Thus the EU budget probably has to rise in 2011 as major structural support contracts for Poland's roads and so on start to get drawn down, es anticipated.

No. The big prize is what happens in the 2014-2020 Financial Perspective, and to the UK's rebate within that.

If the UK government refuses to hang in exceedingly tough on that one while 'cutting' services at home, using the UK veto as necessary to block a deal, it will have failed.

That said, keep an eye out for wily French stratagems. What if they offer to 'cut' the Budget and allow the UK to keep most of the Rebate, BUT insist on setting up some sort of EU-level income tax to fund it all..?

And NB too that if there is no agreement on a new EU Budget for the forthcoming Financial Perspective period, the old one is likely to roll over.

In effect the EU Budget can never be cut...

A little-understood feature of modern conflict is the impact of the so-called 'rules of engagement'.

Basically, these rules lay down when it is and is not lawful to shoot at the enemy or otherwise act in self-defence. A version of them should be carried by each soldier on a handy card. This is important - how peacekeeping and other military missions work out often can depends on how a group of nervous young soldiers deal with an angry-looking crowd of locals. Even shooting in the air unless this is strictly necessary can prompt all sorts of escalations in tension very fast.

The only people who care about rules of engagement more than the Western forces abiding by them are the Enemy. The stricter the Western rules on engaging with enemy combatants (eg to reduce the risk of causing civilian casualties), the happier the enemy combatants will be.

Why? Simple.

If you think that Western forces will not shoot at you if you're near civilians, stick near civilians and use them as human shields.

Net result?

Civilian casualties go down - success!

But enemy/insurgent/terrorist casulaties also go down, and Allied casualties go up. Hence Western prospects of defeating the enemy goes down - not so good.

Here's a tricky one. What if local civilians ask you to take risks with civilian lives to help rid them of even more cruel local insurgents once and for all?

Then what? 

Sorry not to have been more active recently, folks. But I have had to travel to Stuttgart, Geneva, Warsaw/Cracow and now Brussels all in the past ten days, while keeping an eye on our attempts to sell Crawford Towers.

My latest manoeuvres involved leading a course on Ethical Dilemmas in Diplomacy. I tried with some success to distinguish between home-based dilemmas, which typically should be managed within the HQ organisation's rules and house culture, and dilemmas at an overseas posting where relationships between colleagues are completely different and things look and feel different.

Plus overseas postings are where policies collide furiously with real life, throwing up all sorts of moral and operational conundrums (or, lawks, should that be conundra?)

What, exactly, is an ethical dilemma for a diplomat representing a democratic country? After all, a dilemma is a dilemma only if you treat it as such - otherwise it's a fact of life.

Should a diplomat brush private moral concerns aside, saying that if the policy has been approved by a fairly elected government in a lawful way, that sets a sufficiently robust moral framework of checks and balances within which to operate?

NB this is not the same as a bland "I was only obeying orders" defence as used by Nazi concentration camp guards, since it presupposes a substantively fair and democratic process leading to the policy concerned - in such cases it arguably is reasonable for an official to outsource part of his/her own conscience to that wider process of consultation and debate.

In any case, what is a fair way to allow diplomats to express private reservations and have them taken into account? And, then, if such a procedure is available but fails to give the unahppy civil servant enough moral certitude, then what?

Should a diplomat who feels that a given policy in aim or outcome is inherently immoral simply resign? Why not? 

One of the few examples of a senior diplomat resigning on an issue of principle was Elizabeth Wilmshurst, an FCO Legal Adviser who in 2003 chose to leave public service when she could not accept that it was lawful to use force against Iraq without a new UN Security Council resolution.

She made a prominent case that the invasion of Iraq was unlawful and so in one or other sense Just Wrong. But let's remember that a significant number of her Legal Adviser colleagues either disagreed with her on the core arguments or, if they saw decisive force in her argument, nonetheless decided to stay within the system and pursue their moral choices in a different way.

Watching this the general public might be tempted to think that the likes of E Wilmshurst and C Murray are in some ways heroic figures, whereas their colleagues who did not leave the system were less principled or even cowardly.

However, would the public really want all the heroic principled people to quit the FCO or the civil service, leaving the shop run by only snivelling jellyfish who remain behind?

One of my very first postings here touched on all this:

Maybe I had lacked imagination previously, but this episode brought home to me for the first time that in my own rather limited and indirect way I was a non-trivial part of (and as it turned out some sort of spokesman for) an elaborate process which had led to some people far away dying violently.

That a diplomatic service career sometimes involved grim moral dilemmas. And that if that was not what I was ready to face in a job, I should get another one.

I still think about that night. For a few hours I was one of the few voices available to the public defending an unpopular UK government decision which had led to military action and numerous deaths in Libya.

I was not myself in any way involved in the policy chain which had brought that decision about. Yet surely as a promising middle-ranking FCO policy officer I somehow had to be seen as more 'involved' in some of the moral responsibility coming with that policy than eg a cleaner or messenger, even if cleaners and messengers themselves played an important functional role in helping that policy be delivered.

Anyway, it was an interesting course which helped shape my own thinking in new ways. 

Is the nice point about training that the trainers often learn more than the course participants?

Excellent NYT piece by Errol Morris via Browser exploring the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the fact that our incompetence/ignorance masks our ability to recognize our incompetence/ignorance:

Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.”  It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism.  There are things we know we don’t know.  And there are things that are unknown unknowns.  We don’t know that we don’t know.” 

He got a lot of grief for that.  And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”

Of course there are different sorts of 'unknowns'. 

Facts I know I don't know (eg the longest river in Uzbekistan).

Facts which may or may not be facts (are there any rivers in Uzbekistan).

And phenomena which I am unaware might even exist (by definition indescribable).

See this:

To me, unknown unknowns enter at two different levels. The first is at the level of risk and problem.  Many tasks in life contain uncertainties that are known — so-called “known unknowns.”  These are potential problems for any venture, but they at least are problems that people can be vigilant about, prepare for, take insurance on, and often head off at the pass. 

Unknown unknown risks, on the other hand, are problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to.

All of which goes to point up the stupidity of wasting too much time on 'risk management matrices', another New Labour blight on public life:

Embassies have to complete every few months a spreadsheet which lays out 'risks' to policy and the accomplishment of our Objectives.

The first demand for one of these arrived in Warsaw, attaching the Asia Directorate's model as a splendid example. I crossly sent back an email saying that maybe, after everything which had happened in the Asia region not that long ago, a risk assessment which omitted the word tsunami might be thought to be a little ... ridiculous? I predicted that in a few years' time these banal exercises like so many others would have collapsed under the weight of their manifold contradictions.

I was told off for being 'unhelpful'.

The real problem in foreign policy objective/target-setting is indeed the unknowable unknowns - the impact of a tsunami on Indonesia's fortunes, or indeed 9/11.

Which again is why it is so stupid to organise British/EU policy round the things the Treasury thinks it can measure.

But then precisely because we are stupid enough to do just that, we can't recognise that stupidity.

QED.

BBC Radio 5 Live has just been poring over poverty in South African townships and today's UK Budget.

They interviewed some township shack-dwellers in Port Elizabeth where, you will remember, veteran collectivist ANC/Communist Govan Mbeki was all against local self-help. With the dismal results now apparent today, albeit not for his ANC/SACP pals in power who live very well indeed.

The township people spoke with commendable energy about their miserable plight, calling again and again for opportunities to work: "Let me come with you to England - I'll feed your dogs".

An ambitious worldview not usually associated with the UK underclasses?

Back to that Budget. Lord Ashdown (Lib Dem) bluntly and correctly blamed Labour for leaving the new coalition government such a feckless debt mountain. He was then asked what the answer was to poverty.

His reply was ... well, wrong.

He said that there is no one answer, but a combination of policies (taxation, education, public services).

In other words, in Paddy Ashdown's mind the answer to poverty is only some or other deft bundle of centralised redistributive measures.

But that assumes that there just IS something to redistribute.

The answer to poverty is wealth. What is wealth?

The combination of human ingenuity and natural resources. Where human ingenuity is suppressed and natural resources are underused or just meagre, you get poverty - the natural state of things.

The only way to end poverty is to identify the motors which create wealth, and the circumstances in which people do all they can to work creatively.

That might mean some centralised government support for the policy framework which lets that happen and eg takes some wealth from the successful to try to boost the prospects of the unsuccessful (although many different ways to do that effectively suggest themselves).

It also means government getting out of the way and not piling on requirements which make it harder for people to work and/or discourage the people who do most to create wealth.

Lord Ashdown asserted that the Fairness agenda was the Lib Dem's gift to the nation, or somesuch.

Not that I am ungrateful for such LibDem munificence.

But perhaps it is not much of a gift if it comes with no sense of how the creation of wealth actually happens?

Ok Ok. He has lots of vivid material to work with these days.

But Mark Steyn continues to surpass himself.

How about his advice to Hillary to dust off her election outfits?

Memo to Secretary Rodham Clinton: Do you find yourself of a quiet evening with a strange craving for chicken dinners and county fairs in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe next summer? Need one of those relaunch books to explain why you’re getting back in the game in your country’s hour of need?

“It Takes a Spillage.”

Or this wonderful cap-doff to British light opera:

Like many of his background here and there, Obama is engaged mostly by abstractions and generalities. Indeed, he is the very model of a modern major generalist. .

... he’s the product of the broader culture: There are millions of people like Barack Obama, the eternal students of a vast lethargic transnational campus for whom global compassion and the multicultural pose are merely the modish gloss on a cult of radical grandiose narcissism.

As someone once said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” When you’ve spent that long waiting in line for yourself, it’s bound to be a disappointment.

Wonderful witty but withering writing.

Will the EU exist in its current form in a million years' time? No!

In 100,000 years' time? No!

In 1000 years' time? No, but there may be traces of its current form.

In 100 years' time? Maybe, but much changed.

In a mere 10 years' time? Probably, but perhaps rather differently organised.

So if the EU as currently configured sooner or later is going to come to an end, the question arises: what factors might bring about its early departure?

The deep issue is Trust.

The whole point of the European Union is that the different member state governments, and rather more reluctantly their voters, proclaim undying trust in each other. This allows shared institutions to be set up and creates a framework within which 'integration' can proceed, overcoming all those centuries-old hatreds and rivalries which have led to calamitous wars.

It is now clear that Trust is once again declining.

Take this disturbing interview (in Polish) with Jan Krzysztof Bielecki. Bielecki was briefly Polish Prime Minister in the early years of the creation of a market economy after communism. He is now a top banker and thinker, one of the smartest people in Poland and an avid football fan.

This interview purports to turn upside-down Poland's dramatically successful open market policies pursued since 1990. Bielecki in particular argues that Poland should no longer welcome foreign capital in strategic privatisations and particularly in the banking sector. That openness to foreign money had been essential in the early transition period, when there was no Polish capital to speak of. But things are different now. 

Bielecki makes his concerns explicit. The fact that so much (some 70%) of Polish bank capital is in foreign hands leaves it open to those foreign interests to suck money out of those banks if they fall into difficulties, a policy said to be favoured by the EU. 

In other words, the sub-text (and not so sub-) is Poland's fear that the fruits of all those years of diligent saving and prudent investment following the end of communism could be snatched by (say) French or German banks to help them deal with the consequences of their own imprudence in (say) Greece and Spain.

Which, in turn, means that Poland - whose population is one of the most 'pro-Europe' in the EU - now has serious doubts about trusting its major partners to look at any interests wider than their own. As Bielecki is one of most influential leaders in Citizens Platform circles, this means that the two candidates in the coming Polish Presidential elections run-off will be toying with openly Poland First ideas.

You might say that Poland has had the benefit of foreign (European) investment when times were good, and so it is fair that Poland shoulder its share of the pain when times are not so good. And you might be right.

The question Bielecki implicitly poses goes unerringly to that central point: what is fair in such circumstances? Who decides where the cost of playing fast and loose with investment decisions should fall?

Should that be done at the strategic level 'above' mere member states? Maybe.

But what if it looks as though in fact those decisions are being taken by a core of member states to defend their own national interests, in this case their rickety banks and/or their flawed political judgement in creating a flawed Eurozone? That they cannot be trusted to act only in the common interest - and to shoulder the costs of their own blunders?

In such 'unfair' circumstances the only way Poland and other member states can defend themselves (and their national wealth) is to start thinking about defining policy in more 'national' terms themselves.

And so the moral logic of the EU as founded on unfailing trust at the highest levels dissolves. As that goes, so too does the will to keep the institutional show on the road.

Which in turn forces to the fore the issue of 'first-mover advantage'. 

Yes, there is Solidarity in staying with the team and furiously paddling as a group to help get the canoe to safety. But if one country suspects (a) that the Eurozone is doomed and (b) that other Eurozone members think the same, does it not pay to jump off the sinking canoe well before it hits the waterfall?

The more so if (c) that country sees other canoe paddlers looking shiftily around as if preparing themselves to jump?

Here's one brilliant lurid scenario by James Bennett in which Germany Shrugs - and jumps:

Nicholas. This is Angela. I am very sorry to have to tell you this, under such circumstances. But you will understand why it must be like this. And I wanted to tell you first.

She relayed her news.

The aides could hear the scream of pure anger as Merkel held the phone away from her ear. The tirade continued for about half a minute. Then there was complete silence. She put the phone back to her ear.

My dear Nicholas, you can hardly complain. After all, you threatened me with the same thing back in May ... If any one suspects that another is about to leave, the only thing to do is leave first. When you threatened to leave, we realized that was the position in which we had been put. So we had to make our preparations.

Sarkozy spoke in a calm, level voice. But I was not serious. It was a bargaining position.

Perhaps. But the Prisoner’s Dilemma requires certainly, not probability.

All of which goes to explain why the Cameron government, far from being 'isolated' in Europe as assorted Guardianistas led by Denis MacShane wailed would happen, is being wooed vigorously by Germany and Paris alike.

Why?

Because they want - and need - British money to help them out of their deep holes.

Raiding Polish banks is just not enough.

While we are thinking about Poland, check out the blog of Monica Ogrodowski, an American of Polish descent now over in Poland on a Fulbright award.

She gives us a beautifully illustrated piece about the Tapestry Triennial exhibition in Lodz, once the 'Manchester of the East' - a huge C19 regional centre for cloth-making with many amazing vast mill complexes, now being transformed into trendy studios and shops/hotels/offices.

Scroll down to the corsets made from candy wrappers - Finnish, of course.

And the cross-stitched holes in old car doors (Lithuania).

Elegantly presented.

The 2010 Presidential elections in Poland, brought forward following the Smolensk air disaster in which President Lech Kaczynski died, have been taking place today.

The results indicate that as expected Bronislaw Komorowski of the Citizens Platform party has won a clear victory over Jaroslaw Kaczynski (Law and Justice) with Grzegorz Napieralski (Democratic Left Alliance) making a respectable showing in third place after some good TV performances. The final results may show the gap between the two front-runners narrowing as rural votes favouring Kaczynski get counted.

As no candidate won a 50% + 1 share of the vote, Poland now sees a second round run-off in two weeks' time between Komorowski and Kaczynski.

Komorowski has had a largely undistinguished election campaign but has maintained his lead over Kaczynski, who did quite well in toning down his previously truculent image and playing deftly to try to win the post-disaster sympathy and national unity vote.

A central part of the Kaczynski twins' appeal for the past twenty years has been their strident insistence that Poland's former communists have been given too many privileges and still manipulate politics excessively. This suggests that the centre left Napieralski votes now up for grabs in the run-off vote will not easily move to Kaczynski, even if the Kaczynski rhetoric likes to emphasise 'social' concerns and the supposed elitism of the urban Citizens Platform leadership.

That said, Kaczynski voters are likely to be more motivated in the run-off process, so the expected lower turn-out will tend to favour Kaczysnki. And Poles will see force in the Kaczynski argument that it is in Poland's interests not to let one party (Citizens Platform) control both government and Presidency.

So while Komorowski is the clear favourite, he will have to work hard to win. He lacks glamour and makes strange gaffes, although he also has no special unpopularity. He will be brooding on the 2005 result when Donald Tusk likewise had a first-round lead but was overhauled by Lech Kaczynski who presented better in the TV debates. Maybe the tensions at high levels in the European Union favours Komorowski somewhat, as his party present themselves as much more credible in making an impact for Poland in EU circles.

My bet this evening? Komorowski to edge home in two weeks' time, something like 53% - 47%.

Which in the circumstances will have been an excellent result for Jaroslaw Kaczynski. But do not rule out a Kaczynski win just yet.

Update:  the early polls published after the close of polling underestimated the Kaczynski performance by over-estimating the Komorowski result.

With most results in, it now looks as if Komorowski has secured only 41% against 37% for Kaczynski, a result which gives Kaczynski a respectable chance to win the run-off.

Back from my European wanderings, just in time to see the worst England football performance of all time.

Really. The worst since the day when a bolt of lightning zapped the primordial ooze and somehow brought forth DNA.

Here's my question.

Why, when the forwards are getting no service from an utterly inept midfield, does the manager bring on ... new forwards?

Who then indeed get no service from the utterly inept midfield?

Good grief.

Well done Serbia.

Slowly but surely the language of lumpen totalitarianism creeps into democratic political life.

Scarcely a day goes by with President Chavez of Venezuela 'seizing' some or other private company, usually with some banal bombastic menacing statements:

A few days ago, during one of the rambling television and radio monologues for which he is notorious, he announced he was “declaring war” on the private sector. The main battleground, it seems, will be the food industry and the principal target the Polar group, which is Venezuela’s biggest private conglomerate owned by the Mendoza family.

The group supplies Venezuelans with many of their basic foods, including margarine, cooking oil and maize flour. It claims to represent nearly 3 per cent of non-oil GDP.

“But you’re mistaken if you think I don’t dare expropriate Polar, Lorenzo Mendoza,” Mr Chavez said, addressing his broadcast remarks to the company chairman.

Then we have this headline in the Times in 2008 (which uses fascist language not reflected in the article itself):

Americans must give the Republicans a good kicking on November 4

What does that 'good kicking' conjure up? A group of cowardly, bullying Clockwork Orange-type thugs viciously piling in to someone on the ground - an image far from moderate, inclusive democratic process which assumes mutual respect and open-minded tolerance.

This violent expression seems to have inflitrated the Labour Party in particular, sneaking in with the influence of Trotskyist activists and their proclivity for street brawling during demonstrations.

Here's a typical example oozing post-modern irony, from a Labour blog written by one Chris Paul. The subject is the National Bullying Helpline - which itself is said to need the incentive structure offered by a bullying boot:

The National Bullying Helpline (NBH) deserve a good kicking, a good metaphorical kicking, for their truly horrendous fails in professional standards.

Most recently we have this appalling example from two senior members of the Obama administration:

Sunday talk show of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar describing their tough dealing with BP by saying, “Our job is basically to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum...”

The “step-on-the-neck” image had the White House seal of approval that was made clear on Monday by Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs. “I think that kind of sums up in that Western Colorado way how – what we’re trying to convey,” Gibbs said.

Not so much Western Colorado as jackbooted Brownshirts in Weimar Germany?

Vile, and inexcusable. President Obama himself quickly but unconvincingly rowed back from that expression, but now has come up with another crude kicking metaphor.

Maybe as his ratings deservedly decline it will dawn on him that by kicking BP he is kicking millions of American shareholders, pension fund stakeholders and workers. But by then real damage to everyone will have been done.

All this sort of thing stems from a dumbed-down populist nervousness in our decaying political classes, manifesting itself in the idea held by many politicians that these days they are entitled to lash out at any opponents and even at their own voters to show how tough they are.

And for a stunning example of this, live on camera, enter US Congressman Bob Etheridge - angry Democrat bully and, we fervently hope, now Official Loser:

It comes round again.

The bewildering inability of an England football team to field a midfield group of players able to tackle hard and/or trap and control and pass the ball with high accuracy/speed almost every time. This time with added goal-keeping cluelessness.

The effect is ingeniously to organise the team so that our best player, Rooney, scarcely gets a single good pass in a dangerous position.

Instead we fall back on the time-honoured ploy of heaving it into the penalty area hoping that someone taller than the defenders will connect with the ball in a helpful way.

Argentina, Spain and Brazil with all their buzzing midfield energy and skill will have us for breakfast, if we somehow scrape through to play them.

Sigh. On to 2014.

Blogging will be light in the coming week (as it has been for the past couple of days) as I am travelling to Geneva/London/Warsaw and then after a weekend on to Brussels.

Today I returned from Strasbourg, the beautiful city which hosts the outlandishly glassy-eyed European Parliament and the rather more sensibly scaled Council of Europe.

The guide mentioned the Nazi destruction of a famous synagogue during WW2, but somehow missed this earlier horrible Strasbourg episode of European ethnic cleansing of all those pesky Jews.

Craig Murray offers some thoughts on where significant cuts might be found in the UK diplomatic effort.

It includes this:

... our Embassies in EU countries remain among the biggest and grandest we possess, reflecting the days when our shifting bilateral relationships with European nations were literally matters of life and death, war and peace.

They are magnificent and madly over-staffed by crazily over senior people. They are a great relic of a bygone age, institutions so grand that their overwhelming presence masks their lack of purpose.

Something in this, although of course many of the UK-based members of our Embassies in Europe are not FCO people anyway, so once again Craig makes a populist noise but gets the core of the argument wrong.

Do we really want to cut to nothing the numbers of people working in sensitive Embassy liaison jobs dealing with drug and cigarette smuggling, or preventing illegal immigration, or promoting UK business? When we instead could cut wasteful foreign development assistance and pay for all these services and eg beef up global anti-corruption initiatives?

In any case, the issue is much wider.

Successive governments have given the EU the right to take decisions binding on us (and on everyone else) by voting. This means that in the case of utterly stupid EU Directives such as the one attempting to control our working hours, the UK economy may be dramatically worse off (extra and unnecessary NHS costs running into billions of pounds) if this Directive gets agreed in the face of our strident opposition.

Which is why it makes sense to have serious UK diplomatic lobbying firepower deployed not only in our own capital and in Brussels, but also in EU member states capitals.

It is (FACT) not realistic to lobby effectively on many highly technical EU issues by telephone or by flying visits of London-based officials. Apart from anything else, some of the people who may be most difficult or need persuading may not speak English, or may be in parts of the local bureaucracy unknown to our London/Brussels teams.

Only an Embassy can see the local scene as a whole and work out where precisely in the system (bureaucracy/Parliament/media or all of them simultaneously) it makes sense to apply special arguments or offer policy deals. It is too risky to leave it to the Brussels people to haggle on the spot - by the time they arrive there, our rival delegations' positions will tend to be set in stone and our chances of blocking a ruinous vote against our interests could be gone...

In short, it is a damn good national investment to maintain significant senior lobbying in a good number of EU capitals - the sums of money at stake far outstrip the puny savings Craig identifies.

For a more detailed explanation of all this, see here.

I have no problem with Craig's idea of scaling back our consular effort (ie the work diplomats do to help Brits who get into trouble overseas), as much of that either can be done by commercial insurance schemes for travellers or not done at all.

But to make that sort of saving requires Ministers frequently to go on TV and tell the great British public that if they hit robbery or illness or earthquakes or volcano dust on their travels overseas, they'll mainly have to sort out their problems for themselves.

And when weeping angry relatives then appear on TV raving against government insensitivity and mean-mindedness after some disaster has hit their family somewhere beyond our shores, Ministers will have to say "Life's tough - don't say you weren't warned...".

Not quite what I expect to happen.

Here is a link I have been sent to a site extolling the benefits of therapeutic writing - writing as a tool to deal with stress, trauma and frustration in your own life.

There are no fewer than 52 hot writing tips.

Such as No 8: Chuck the rules of writing:

Many supporters of therapeutic writing encourage the process of a "mind dump" which is basically just writing down anything and everything that comes to mind without any regard to grammar, spelling, sequence or the usual rules of writing. For new writers, it can be a great way to break the ice and get started.

With which I mainly disagree, of course.

If you get solitary cheap therapy from burbling on to a page, fine by me. But if you want to be read, I say master the rules of writing and spelling - then, armed with immense discipline, you can throw away many rules and still achieve a fine result.

Then there is the general satisfaction from letting it all flop out, as per No 28: Consider a blog:

I suppose my answer to all of my random questions is yes, I should share. Problem is....I need to make the time to do it. Not all of my posts will be profound. Some may be down right silly or maybe even pointless. But that is how life goes, right?

Hmm. Maybe best to stick to No 52: Understand your priorities:

Through your writing you'll learn what it is you really value in life which can show you how to move forward or repair past mistakes.

That's what I try to do here.

A day with my nose press'd hard against the perspiring computer screen writing scenarios for a new course which I lead later this month, all about Ethical Dilemmas in Diplomacy.

As far as I know this is a pioneer course, the first of its kind to be taught to professional practitioners by a former Ambassador.

My general theme is that a diplomatic career brings with it all sorts of explicit or implicit ethical dilemmas. I have written about some of these on my site here, including this example - one of my first ever postings - arising from the US bombing of Libya in 1986.

Part of my research for this course has involved getting from the FCO, UN and elsewhere examples of the sort of guidance they give on ethical issues. In practice this comes down to all sorts of Rules and accompanying procedures on giving effect to Honesty/Integrity, Fairness, Transparency and so on.

Plus there are detailed guidelines on what to do if civil servants feel that the instructions they are getting are incompatible with their private conscience or are otherwise professionally suspect.

The sassy Dutch Foreign Ministry of course does a great job, giving its diplomats lots of simple scenarios where ethical dilemmas arise (eg gettings gifts from foreign contacts, conflicts of interest), then cleverly adding new factors to each scenario to show how moral choices get complex precisely because the different official guidelines may point in different directions of outcome or behaviour.

My conclusion?

Diplomats need to be guided by three things:

• the Rules
• their heads
• and their hearts

Sometimes those three indeed point to quite different practical ways forward, especially in cases when high policy gets tangled up in immediate tactics - and even one's own professional future.

It's fine a Ministry offering you all sorts of ways to 'blow the whistle' on corruption among your superiors. But can you be really sure that if you try to do so, the system will not hit back at you in self-defence? Achieving fleeting media fame as a whistle-blower, but then drifting into career limbo is not necessarily a good outcome?

What if you get urgent intelligence information pointing to some sort of calamity which you can not use to save lives without risking revealing the source and losing other vital information later?

And which is in practice better, and/or what do the public want their diplomats to do?

To go for bold speedy outcomes eg on human rights in benighted foreign lands but risk the death of key local activists, or to chip away at steady slower modest change? The Craig Murray saga offers us all vivid examples of how to be brave and dramatic - and professionally 100% ineffective. 

Myriad questions. Maybe I'll find the odd answer here and there.

If anyone wants me to run this intriguing course for their colleagues or institution, just let me know: mail@charlescrawford.biz