Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0
We are living through a more dangerous period than the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet nobody is talking about it. With Russian ground forces getting pulverised, with its air force still [...]
Seven Recent Observations
On the Budget from Dumb and Dumber As I highlighted in my penultimate blog, Truss is an ideologue. She doesn’t hide it. Her recent budget was a piece of work: [...]
Duolingo and the Future of Geopolitics
For those who don’t know, Duolingo is an awesome app which helps you to learn a language. Each day, for the last 112 days (as Duolingo tells me), I have [...]
Ukraine
Like many people, these last few weeks, I have been glued to the news regarding Russia’s appalling invasion of Ukraine. I have read and watched vast amounts about the conflict [...]
Almost Lost in Translation on the Longest Day (in 2004)
Below is a copy of my email to some friends, which I sent in August 2004, from Yunnan Province, China. That day, I had saved an American’s life. As I [...]
Voices For Burma (Wikipedia entry)
(What follows is my Wikipedia entry for the organisation which I co-founded in 2003: Voices For Burma (VFB). Wikipedia removed the entry, so I add it here for posterity. Hopefully [...]
Buy a Generator, Just in Case
Political nerds like me are fascinated with Dominic Cummings. So interested, in fact, that I pay him a monthly fee to read his excellent newsletter. I know: I have just [...]
Us and Them
Accompanying the scenes of the Kabul evacuation, Pink Floyd’s Us and Them plays on a continuous loop in my head. “Us (us, us, us, us) and them (them, them, them, [...]
Taliban 2.0?
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, my good friend went to the Iranian Embassy in London to collect our visas. In what was a foreboding experience, we had completed [...]
