My friend, mentor, critic and collaborator and great scholar Christopher Pollitt has died after a long illness. You will be hugely missed Christopher.
My thoughts go out to Hilkka and the extended family.
Christopher had a wonderfully dry sense of humour. When my wife Carole became pregnant with our son Alex (my first biological offspring), I emailed Christopher with the news. His response was typical: “don’t worry, the first 30 years is the worst”. Continue reading
Prof. Colin Talbot, Research Associate, University of Cambridge
Sir David Omand, former Director of GCHQ and former Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator for the Government, is to issue a strongly worded warning about threats of external subversion and internal sedition being enhanced by cyber-warfare techniques.
In a lengthy article published in the Journal of Cyber Policy,* Omand warns that the Russian government is continuing in the tradition of the Soviet Union in engaging in ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘active measures’ (aktivinyye meropriatia) to subvert European and American governments.
(*Which I was given pre-publication access to by Sir David, for which thanks).
These can include highly targeted propaganda and misinformation; attacks on ‘critical national infrastructure’ and increasingly extending into the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) – all assisted or enabled by cyber-space. Continue reading
The idea we are now living a “post truth” era has become something of an accepted truism itself, and D’Ancona’s book is one of several to explore this phenomenon.
Let’s start by saying this is a very good book and well worth a read. I haven’t read all of the other ‘post-truth’ books (yet) but this is certainly one I’d recommend.
As you may have guessed, there is a “but” coming, or to be more precise several “buts” which I hope will be seen as constructive criticisms. Continue reading
What Makes People Tick?
Chris Rose, Matador, 2011
In “Values Modes” theory there are three ‘worlds’ of Settlers, Propsectors and Pioneers who are separated by different ‘values’:
(summary on page 23). Continue reading
Public Policy Writing That Matters
David Chrisinger
John Hopkins University Press 2017
David Chrisinger works as an academic and as a “communications specialist at the US Government Accountability Office”. And it matters, especially to a UK audience.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is roughly the equivalent of the UKs National Audit Office (NAO – and indeed it used to be called the Government Audit Office). But there is one very big difference between the NAO and the GAO – the NAO is limited, by law, to only examine the implementation of policy and the achievement of propriety and value for money. The GAO, by contrast, is free to challenge policy itself.
With the Party conference season behind us the big idea back on the agenda is, apparently, socialism versus free-markets. Stirring speeches about the return to socialism rang out from Labour in Brighton, to be met by counter-blasts of free market rhetoric from the Tories in Manchester. It was all quite nostalgia inducing for some of us – forward to the 1980s! And, of course, thoroughly specious from both camps.
In reality the debate quickly descended from the lofty heights of imaginary alternative social systems – neither socialism nor free markets have ever existed and are ever likely to – to a rather more prosaic debate about nationalization versus privatization as almost as devoid of serious thinking as it was the first time around in the 1980s. Continue reading
I have been thinking about THAT SPEECH by Theresa May all day today. Why?
Well, on a very personal level, first I have a cough problem. Not a “here today gone tomorrow” cough problem. I’ve had it chronically since 2009 on and off before that. I’m receiving treatment at a specialist and experimental cough clinic. I recently discovered it may go back to an industrial accident I had in 1970!
Be that as it may, I therefore have some sympathy with anyone caught out by an uncontrollable cough in public speaking situations. I have had them. I have had lectures where I’ve collapsed into fits of coughing so alarming the students got worried I was about to expire. I have had to leave meetings. I have had to decline live radio and TV on days when I knew I was at risk.
So, I understand.
Which is why I am totally and utterly dumfounded by the sycophantic drivel being spouted about “poor Theresa”. Continue reading
