Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 20)
Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986, by Marc Aramini (not finished)
SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, by Vox Day (not finished)
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss

Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 14)
Selected Stories, by Alice Munro
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel
The Commissioner, by Stanley Johnson

sf (non-Who): 10 (YTD 47)
Space Raptor Butt Invasion, by Chuck Tingle
The Builders, by Daniel Polanski
Perfect State, by Brandon Sanderson
Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson
Nethereal, by Brian Niemeyer (did not finish)
Traitor's Blade, by Sebastien de Castell
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong (did not finish)
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian W. Aldiss
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 22)
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone

Comics: 1 (YTD 14)
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey

6,200 pages (YTD 32,600 pages)
2/22 (YTD 41/109) by women (Munro, Dunnett)
1/22 (YTD 10/109) by PoC (Dumas)

Reread: 3 (The Count of Monte Cristo, Dark Horse, The Commissioner), YTD 8

Reading now
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Fanny Kemble and the lovely land, by Constance Wright
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll

Coming soon (perhaps):
Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel, by Jeff Kinney
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
The Secret History of Science Fiction, ed. James Patrick Kelly
Boy, by Roald Dahl
Tales from the Secret Annexe, by Anne Frank
Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Between structure and No-thing: An annotated reader in Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Patrick J. Devlieger
Gráinne, by Keith Roberts
De Mexicaan met twee hoofden, by Joann Sfar
Corona, by Greg Bear
Earthlight, by Arthur C Clarke
A Delicate Truth, by John le Carré
Holes, by Louis Sachar
The Host, by Peter Emshwiller
Ghastly Beyond Belief, eds. Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman
The Last Theorem, by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment, by Bryan Talbot
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich
Tove Jansson: Work and Love, by Tuula Karjalainen
Oracle, by Ian Watson
See How Much I Love You, by Luis Leante
Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, ed. Paul Cornell
The Algebra of Ice, by Lloyd Rose
Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles

Looking behind the Brexit anger

It’s political culture, rather than economics. #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Why Brexit Might Not Happen at All

Wishful thinking, I suspect; though widely shared. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

UK voted for Brexit – but is there a way back?

Difficult to see, but these are the scenarios. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Turkey airport attack: 41 killed #fb

Awful. My favourite airport.
(tags: terrorism turkey )

We’re out of Europe!

How British science is already being hit by Brexit. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu science )

A national catastrophe, and a vacuum in leadership. This is what Britain voted for

@campbellclaret: passionate and mostly right. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

The unbearable lightness of Michael Gove

@jonworth is angry. (As are many of us.)
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Brexit: UK cannot have ‘single market a la carte’, say EU leaders

Of course not. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

What if Labour splits?

Looking at parliamentary rules, and the law.
(tags: ukpolitics )

Brussels sees surge in nationality requests from British residents

Not a *huge* surge, but no surprise.
(tags: ukpolitics Belgium )

Of course the Brexiters didn’t plan. Arsonists never carry water

Actually an extended Paddington Bear analogy.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

2016 Election Forecast | FiveThirtyEight

It begins!
(tags: uspolitics )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Un jour, une colonie mystérieuse partit de l’Espagne et vint aborder à la langue de terre où elle est encore aujourd’hui. Elle arrivait on ne savait d’où et parlait une langue inconnue. Un des chefs, qui entendait le provençal, demanda à la commune de Marseille de leur donner ce promontoire nu et aride, sur lequel ils venaient, comme les matelots antiques, de tirer leurs bâtiments. La demande lui fut accordée, et trois mois après, autour des douze ou quinze bâtiments qui avaient amené ces bohémiens de la mer, un petit village s’élevait.
One day, a mysterious group of colonists set out from Spain and landed on this spit of land, where it still resides today. No one knew where they had come from or what language they spoke. One of the leaders, who understood Provençal, asked the commune of Marseille to give them this bare and arid promontory on to which, like the sailors of Antiquity, they had drawn up their boats. The request was granted and, three months later, a little village grew up around the twelve or fifteen boats that brought these gypsies of the sea.

(In the French original, “bâtiments” in the last sentence is surely a mistake for “bâteaux”?)

I see that it took me roughly a month to read to the end of this – it has 1244 pages of narrative, densely action-packed. I’d read it before of course, once as a teenager and once as an undergraduate, so that must have been at least twenty-five years ago. But it’s great stuff. The start is a bit wobbly as we get the set-up of the happy Edmond Dantès, on the verge of a loving marriage and successful career, brought down by envious rivals; but I think from the moment that Dantès is arrested, the story picks up a momentum that it never again loses despite the tortuous tales of complex vengeance, inflicted on the next generation. Dantès / Monte Cristo’s personal tragedy and retribution are beautifully linked in with French politics, culture and science – Chapter 61, in which Monte Cristo suborns a semaphore operator, is a great circumstantial description of the latest communications technology.

The underlying theme is filial loyalty, and you don’t have to look too far into Dumas’ own life to see where that came from, and justice, though in the end Monte Cristo does temper his vengeance with some mercy, and there’s an early hint that justice may not be all it’s cracked up to be in the gruesome account of an execution in Rome. There is also some illicit sex; the affair between Baroness Danglars and Gérard de Villefort is shameful and engenders one of the less plausible plot twists (and that’s saying something), though the obviously lesbian relationship between Eugénie Danglars and Louise d’Armilly gets more sympathetic treatment. (Incidentally, it’s never said explicitly, but Eugénie narrowly escapes marriage to her long lost brother, her mother’s son by de Villefort.) There’s even some Balkan politics, with the entirely historical fall of Ali Pasha of Ioannina turning out to have a key role in the back story. There are so many brilliant set-pieces – Albert de Morcerf’s encounter with the bandits, old de Villefort revealing the truth behind the death of General d’Épinay, the disgrace of Count de Morcerf in the House of Peers – that you keep turning the many many pages. Very glad that this has not lost its attraction over the decades.

(Incidentally I’m tallying Dumas as a writer of colour.)

This came to the top of my reading list as the book in my catalogue with most LibraryThing owners that I had not yet reviewed online (not counting Watership Down, which I am currently reading at a chapter a week). Holes, by Louis Sachar, has now overtaken A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to be next in the list.

Brexit is great news for the rest of the EU

This is probably more true than I would like it to be. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Volkswagen to Pay Up to $14.7 Billion to Settle Diesel-Emissions Claims

And it won’t end there.
(tags: uspolitics environment )

Second paragraph of third story (“Thinking Warrior”, by Huw Wilkins):

I chamber a smoke round and fire it up into the air to obscure the sniper’s view, then sweep the blank-fronted tower block with the microwave radar.

Another of the Big Finish collections of Doctor Who short stories, this time all set in the year 2040 (an anagram of the year of writing, 2004, though the link is also made with the Doctor’s TARDIS being a Type 40). I didn’t think this was one of the more successful collections, with the linking narrative between the stories (about the invasion of Earth by an entity called the Ethereal) seeming to get in the way a bit. But there were a couple that I really enjoyed – “Artificial Intelligence” by Andy Campbell, a retake of Flowers for Algernon, and “Anteus” by Rebecca Levene featuring a fractured future London which seemed all too much in tune with this month’s events.

Next in sequence is Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, edited by Paul Cornell. I have realised that because I’m reading these at one a month rather than the original publication rate, I’ll be reaching several Christmassy volumes at non-Christmassy times of the year.

The UK and the EEA

Francis Davey on how the UK could stay in the EEA when leaving the EU – if, of course, it wants to.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

The EU referendum: An attempt to analyse the in-play betting

Fascinating.
(tags: gambling eu ukpolitics )

Five Lessons We Urgently Need To Learn From The Remain Campaign’s Failure

“move the focus from factsplaining to building a European culture based on shared values.” Very provocative and probably wise.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Britons swamp Ireland with passport applications

I wonder why?
(tags: ukpolitics ireland eu )

W Is for Why – How bad can a President be?

The new George W. Bush biography. Acidic.
(tags: uspolitics )

A New Justice

How Anthony Kennedy has shifted from conservative to liberal.
(tags: uspolitics )

A Note to My Friends Who Voted Leave

A bit kinder than I feel.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

I made only one nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for the 1941 Retro Hugos. It was:
Weltraumschiff 1 startet

Despite what it says on YouTube, this was apparently made in 1940, not 1937. I doubt that many others nominated it though.

I also nominated Pinocchio in Long Form. It’s 88 minutes long, which is just under the cutoff, but I (and several other voters whose votes were posted on File 770) felt that it belonged in the Long Form category. The Hugo administrators took a different view, so it’s my one nominee on the Short Form final ballot.

My vote is as follows:

6) Looney Tunes: “You Ought to Be in Pictures”

Come on, this is ridiculous. It features Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, who I guess are vaguely fantasy characters as talking animals, and there are some good special effects, but otherwise there’s nothing much sfnal about it. Dubious message: bosses will always beat uppity workers who talk and look funny.

5) Merrie Melodies: “A Wild Hare”

Likewise. It’s apparently the first proper Bugs Bunny film, and so I suppose the fact that it features a talking rabbit qualifies it as sfnal, but there’s no way this is Hugo-worthy. Incidentally, a hare is not the same as a rabbit.

4) No Award

3) Pinocchio.

A Disney classic, this will probably win – I nominated it myself – but I was not all that satisfied on re-watching. Good technically, but some rather serious plot holes. (Incidentally, check out the rather distrurbing clockwork puppets from 06:59 to 7:15 – what the heck???)

2) The Adventures of Superman: “The Baby from Krypton”

The only radio play in the mix (as opposed to two years ago, when we had four radio plays and a TV play than nobody had seen), it’s the origin story of Superman, and does what it says on the tin perfectly competently. Lara, Kal-El’s mother, is played by Agnes Moorehead, later Endora in Bewitched.

1) The Invisible Man Returns.

Brilliant horror film, taking the HG Wells novel to gritty British industrial setting, with lots of upsetting issues about capitalism subtly raised. Vincent Price superb even if we only see him for 60 seconds. Also rather impressed by Nan Grey as the female lead. Gets my vote.

My nominations for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for the 2016 Hugos were unashamedly one-sided. They were:

Doctor Who: Face The Raven
Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died
Doctor Who: Heaven Sent
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
Doctor Who: The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion

One of these made the final ballot, which is about my average.

I’ve tallied results from the File 770 straw poll, which showed the following as favoured nominations in this category by those who contributed:

Doctor Who: Heaven Sent (8)
Jessica Jones: AKA Smile (8)
Person of Interest: If-Then-Else (8)
The Expanse: CQB (8)
Kung Fury (5)
Uncanny Valley (5)
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song (4)
Game of Thrones: Hardhome (4)
Marvel’s Agent Carter: Snafu (4)
Sense8: What’s Going On (4)
Welcome to Night Vale: Triptych (4)
Archer: Drastic Voyage 1+2 (3)
Rick and Monty: Total Rickall (3)
Welcome to Night Vale: The Librarians (3)
Daredevil: Cut Man (2)
Doctor Who: Face the Raven (2)
Doctor Who: Heaven Sent / Hell Bent (2)
Marvel’s Agent Carter: Now is not the End (2)
Orphan Black: Certain Agony of the Battlefield (2)
Orphan Black: Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate (2)
Sense8: I Can’t Leave Her (2)
Steven Universe: The Return / Jail Break/ Full Disclosure (2)
The Expanse: Dulcinea (2)
The Man in the High Castle: A Way Out (2)
The Venture Brothers: All This and Gargantua 2 (2)
and another 79 candidates with a single nomination each.

Two of the top four in the File 770 list did indeed make it to the final ballot. The other three finalists are slate nominations, none of which got a single nomination from the File 770 readers who responded to the straw poll. I think it’s pretty likely that both Person of Interest: If-Then-Else and The Expanse: CQB, as well as some other worthy candidate, were pushed off the ballot by slating.

My own vote is as follows:

6) My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Cutie Map Parts 1 and 2.

I was prepared to give this a fair wind, despite the blatant slate support, but the strident voices of the characters cut right through my brain and I couldn’t take more than three minutes of it.

5) Grimm: Headache.

I managed twenty minutes of this, but just didn’t get it. Not as annoying as My Little Pony, but that’s not saying much

4) No award.

3) Supernatural: Just My Imagination.
I’d never seen a single episode of this show before, and didn’t recognise any of the actors, but this is a good creepy story about childhood fantasies returning and I enjoyed it despite the stench of slating, sufficiently to bump it above No Award.

2) Jessica Jones: AKA Smile.
I’ve been a huge fan of Jessica Jones since I read the original comics, and the webcast series has been a brilliant chilling update. The nominated episode is the climax of the first season, but I think it will be pretty accessible to those who had not seen the rest.

1) Doctor Who: Heaven Sent. Doctor Who has, I admit, been a bit variable of late, but this is a fine fine episode with Capaldi putting in a bravura solo performance and a story based around long long passages of eternity. (Actually it draws on The Curse of Fatal Death, but ends up in a completely different place.) Brilliant.

Anyway, some worthy nominees there and I hope also a couple of worthy winners.

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

Big Data and the Law

Fascinating.
(tags: crime statistics )

UK physics faces huge uncertainty after EU referendum result

Solving the problem of experts by getting rid of ’em.
(tags: eu science ukpolitics )

The EU will treat Britain like Greece

Only worse. Great article – in @Telegraph!
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Brussels bickers over Brexit

The dynamics of the EU’s response. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘So where, you fortunate man, is your charming wife Gelis?’ asked Anselm Adorne, seating himself two places from Nicholas at Master Lamb’s table shortly afterwards. Behind them, Albany’s trumpeter let off a blast, and Julius, in the middle, began cheerfully to cut up his meat.

Fifth in the series of eight novels about Dunnett’s fifteenth-century hero Claes van der Poele, now rebranded Nicolas de Fleury, on a canvas that takes us from a long first section in Scotland at the court of the young James III, to Cyprus, Alexandria and the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. I must confess that I felt Dunnett was not fully in control of her material here. The core of the narrative is the feuding between Claes on the one hand and his estranged wife Gelis and his secret father Simon de St. Pol on the other. I was not convinced by Gelis’s means or motivation; her end game is not at all obvious, and she seems to have almost supernatural means of keeping Claes apart from his son and his treasure (and at one point his liberty in a gruesome torture scene). Claes meantime has acquired his own supernatural powers of divining the location of sought objects and people by pendulum – though this only works as effectively as the plot needs it to. The attention to local historical and geographical detail is still very worthwhile and engaging, but I hope the next book (which I have ordered, naturally) is more coherent.

This was the top book on my non-genre poll from the end of last year. Next on that list is A Delicate Truth, by John Le Carré.

What Europe must do, now that England has decided to leave

Former Taoiseach John Bruton on the next steps.
(tags: eu )

Seven Immediate Lessons From the Brexit Vote

My colleague Geoff Beattie, on what went wrong and what comes next.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

How to apply for an Irish passport

Just in case you wanted to know.
(tags: ireland )

The path to Belgian citizenship: an expat trail guide

Just in case you wanted to know.
(tags: Belgium )

Brexit, devolution and legislative consent

Holyrood and Stormont do *not* have a veto. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics northernireland eu scotland )

Europe Today… and Tomorrow?

@SirGrahamWatson writes of the coming shitstorm (his word). #fb
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Tales from the Coffeeshop: Our hearts go out to those misled Brits

Cyprus commentary. “Call me a reactionary, but I would feel much safer in a Europe under the control of a super-state run by unaccountable, unelected, loan sharks and bureaucrats when the alternative would be a Europe of ultra-nationalist, anti-immigration fascist states.”
(tags: eu ukpolitics cyprus )

I want my country back – Laurie Penny

“This was a working-class revolt, but it is not a working-class victory.”
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss

Last books finished
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian W. Aldiss

Next books
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
Fanny Kemble and the Lovely land, by Constance Wright
Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, edited by Paul Cornell

Books acquired in last week
American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization, by James A. Thurber

EU Referendum Reaction from APCO’s Brussels Office

My colleague @ChairmanYaffle and I reflect.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Will parliament try to foil Brexit?

Matthew Parris thinks so.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

Americans Confused By System Of Government In Which Leader Would Resign After Making Terrible Decision

Ho ho.
(tags: Uspolitics ukpolitics )

How Brexit should be done

The EU has the upper hand.
(tags: eu ukpolitics brexit )

Britain’s Democratic Failure by Kenneth Rogoff

Wider argument against referendums. Sensible.
(tags: ukpolitics voting )

How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic

“Trump didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump.” – A long, but really good article on US politics. Read it.
(tags: Uspolitics )

The independent city state of Bristol

Have had similar reports from elsewhere (eg Cambridge).
(tags: ukpolitics )

I’m too heartbroken to write something original. This is what my colleague Theo and I put together earlier today. Comment there or here.

The UK’s vote to leave the EU will have a number of implications, although the specific, detailed consequences of this unprecedented choice are uncertain. For some it is a brave new world, for others the end of the world, but for all it is terra incognita.

What happens next, from the perspective of Brussels and the wider EU? Even before the vote there were very clear signals from significant European leaders that out would mean out. From early soundings here in Brussels, itself caught in an almost complete (and perhaps symbolic) public transport strike, there is zero appetite to try and renegotiate another deal that might tempt the British back again.

The Council Will be Key

The European Council is the key player in the departure that now seems inevitable. The collected leaders of the EU’s member states, headed by Donald Tusk, hold the reins. There is a meeting of the Council scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, in Brussels. Spaces left in the early draft conclusions of this meeting will need to be filled by something relating to Thursday’s referendum but the question is by what? In part this will be determined by the UK’s actions in the next few hours and over the weekend. The UK will need to bring around governments that may feel threatened by what the result means for their own domestic political futures and it will need to manage the almost inevitable demand that Britain not be allowed to have an easy ride. The realities of the assurances by Leave campaigners that Europe will have to be reasonable will be put to the test within as little as 72 hours. If nothing else the British Prime Minister (or whoever replaces him), possibly bereft of existing relationships with other European leaders, will have to overcome the anger of those on the Council who spent considerable energy and political capital in creating the deal David Cameron brought back, and which the UK has rejected. More likely, and more troubling, is the real feeling in Brussels that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Hollande of France, both having elections next year, will not profit politically by “being nice” to the British, and that other major countries such as Italy and Spain will not hold themselves back either (notably Gibraltar could be a flash point for Madrid).

Uncertainty in the European Parliament

For British Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) the future is currently uncertain. The expectation is that they will serve out their time but there are no real precedents to fall back on. The Parliament is always keen to show its relevance (and power, such as it is), and in the absence of a clear role in the Brexit negotiations that the Council will lead, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some MEPs will be moved to ensure they don’t see Nigel Farage and UKIP sitting across from them for much longer. This could take the form of UK MEPs losing their committee posts and other roles in the mid-term reallocation, due later this year. What is certain is that the political parties within the Parliament will consolidate around the existing power blocks of the EPP, ALDE and S&D. The right of centre EPP will swallow some of what will remain of the British Conservative-led ECR, whilst the UKIP-led EFD might dissolve itself or otherwise break up, in light of its own success, allowing for a realignment of anti-EU MEPs, possibly around Marine Le Pen’s ENF. It seems the current tendency to “grand coalition” solutions and to de fact “back room deals” will go on, and the German perspective will remain the most influential force in the Parliament, by virtue of its strong position in both the EPP and the S&D.

Which Way Out?

The process of exit will hang on when and/or if the UK invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty or, as some have suggested, tries some other route out of the EU. The two-year time limit of Article 50 is very short. When Greenland left the then EEC, it took five years from referendum to exit. Two years might well be long enough to disentangle the UK from the EU institutions, but quite possibly not from the single market or trade arrangements. (Apart from anything else, no UK government official has negotiated a trade agreement since the 1970s.) The departure of the UK also adds a further headache to leaders already wrestling with migration, Greece (still), the fate of the Euro and the dearth of economic growth. Whilst there are certainly medium-term opportunities in relation to lure businesses out of the UK and into the EU, these will take time to realise. One EU official yesterday estimated that the full process of resolving the Brexit will be a huge drain on the time and energy of Europe and the UK for a full decade.

Impact on Other European Countries

For the Republic of Ireland the UK’s departure is an immediate blow. If border control is to be at the heart of the new UK, the land border on the island of Ireland will be its most noticeable manifestation. The psychological as well as commercial impact could be profound. However, in the medium term the fact is that Dublin, already home to many international companies, will be the largest Anglophone city in the EU with a skilled workforce, competitive tax rates and a proven ability to overcome economic crisis. Paris may find it harder to compete for bankers than it thinks.

It will be particularly interesting to see how the EU handles Switzerland in light of the Leave vote. Since 2014’s referendum on limiting immigration, including the newest EU member state of Croatia, the Swiss have been on a collision course with Brussels. The issue was largely put on ice ahead of the UK’s referendum but will Brussels, driven by worries of seeming weak, now be harsh with Switzerland, or will the consequences of another relationship breakdown seem too much to bear?

Long-Term Outlook

Looking at the longer term, the shape of the European Union is going to change considerably in the coming years. Those pro-business member states, focused on jobs and growth in a competitive global marketplace, have lost their champion. The UK’s role as a brake on centralisation and federalisation will vanish, and the natural inclination of certain parts of the European Project to see “more Europe” as the answer to every crisis will be unchecked. Increasingly common budgets, harmonised tax regimes, perhaps even a European army will be quicker to emerge and their implementation deeper and broader. At the same time there are calls for reform of the EU, a restructuring that will somehow lance the rising boil of nationalism and Euroscepticism that isn’t simply confined to one side of the Channel. What form this will take is uncertain, especially as many of the less committed member states were rather hoping the UK would be leading part of this process (not least through its planned but now unlikely Presidency of the European Council in 2017).

Amongst some commentators here in Brussels the referendum has been seen as an odd moment on a somewhat fixed course. Remain would have put the UK back in the EU but not at its heart; as other member states came closer together, the UK would probably have worked hard to stay as it is, effectively becoming an “associate” member of the EU in the coming decades. With a Leave win, the UK may well spend the next few decades slowly reincorporating itself with the EU, if only to access the single market in the only way the EU will allow, thereby becoming in effect an “associate” as well. The difference is of course, that the Remain vote would have kept the UK on the inside of the EU decision-making that will inevitably effect it.

An Uncertain Future

For the leaders of other would be anti-EU referenda, and for their opponents in governments across Europe, the lesson of Thursday 23rd June is that the economic harm of leaving the EU is not the most powerful argument available. It can be countered by driving emotional responses, using issues such as immigration. This clash was characterised as “Project Fear” vs. “Project Hate” in the UK. How this will manifest itself in other states is yet to be seen. President of the European Council Donald Tusk has stated of Brexit “What does not kill us makes us stronger”. He may be right but at the moment in Brussels it is hard to say that the EU is stronger for what has just happened.

Second paragraph of third story (“Postcard”):

It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill, and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blond creature, lit up with neon I suppose at night. She was saying Sleep at my place— that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read, I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare. The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that we’re as good as them.

You may have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of an Alice Munro binge over the last year, generated in the first place by enthusiasm from my wife. These are selected stories from her output in 1968-1994, and they are all good, some of them brilliant, observation of life in southern Ontario (particularly for women) over the decades. “Postcard”, from which I’ve taken an excerpt above, is a particularly good one told by a woman in a doomed relationship that everyone else, including the reader, can see isn’t happening. “Carried Away” is an intricate tale of a librarian, a soldier, and a decapitation. “Dance of the Happy Shades” features the discomfort afflicting the comfortable resulting from a musical performance by children with special needs. In “Fits”, a woman finds her neighbours’ bodies after a murder/suicide pact, but the real story is how the details become known to her community and her husband. All take you into the moment; all recommended.

This came to the top of my reading list as both the most popular non-sf fiction book and the most popular book by a woman on my unread shelves. Next in both categories is another short story collection, Tales from the Secret Annexe by Anne Frank.

No man is an island entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
each man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Fact-Checking Brexit

Hugh has checked the extent of truth or lies in the Remain and Leave campaigns. Read it.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Second paragraph of Chapter 3:

Some well-placed observers believe that this meeting in Crawford, at the start of April 2002 and nearly a full year ahead of the actual invasion, marked the moment at which Tony Blair began to commit Britain to invasion. The hold that the prime minister made a binding, though private pledge.²
²The former British ambassador in Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, told the Chilcot Inquiry he was ‘not entirely clear what degree of convergence was… signed in blood, at the Crawford ranch’ but pointed to the ‘clues in the speech that Tony Blair gave the next day’ in which he mentioned ‘regime change’, Meyer thought, for the first time in public. http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/40453/20091126am-final.pdf, p. 29

In Not the Chilcot Report, Peter Oborne gives a succinct and passionate analysis of the evidence presented to the Chilcot Inquiry, which is now expected to report in July. His findings won’t surprise anyonewho has kept their eyes open. Tony Blair and his government lied about what intelligence reports said about the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (my former colleague Carne Ross is quoted at length). Published intelligence dossiers were manipulated to support the case for war, which legally was pretty much non-existent. I slightly differ from Oborne on the flexibility of the French position immediately pre-war – my recollection of a conversation with a senior French diplomat at the time is that Chirac seemed pretty rigid. But otherwise it seems pretty sound to me.

Oborne makes several further interesting points which I don’t think I’d seen before. He asserts that the British army basically got its ass kicked in both Basra and Helmand, Afghanistan, for the sake of helping the Americans who as it turned out didn’t really want to be helped; that MI5 accurately foresaw that one inevitable result of war in Iraq would be increased homegrown Islamic radicalisation; and that although Blair is probably guilty of war crimes for waging a war of aggression, the fact is that the UK’s veto on the UN Security Council will ensure that he remains safe from prosecution.

He starts and finishes very gloomily. He does not expect the Chilcot report, which apparently runs to over 2 million words, to land any punches, which is why he has written his own analysis of the evidence presented to it. He sees the current UK government as fully on board with the neoconservative project (and repeating the mistakes of Iraq in Libya). Meanwhile the intelligence services have been subverted to the will of the executive, which retains and exploits the monarchical powers acquired by Britain’s unwritten constitution.

What’s particularly interesting is that Oborne is no leftie. He’s the former chief political commentator of the Telegraph, from which post he spectacularly resigned last year, and is associate editor of the Spectator and writes a column for the Daily Mail. I’m well aware of his rabid Euroscepticism and other off-the-wall right-wing views. Yet in this book he refrains from Labour bashing – in fact he has nothing but good things to say of the Labour left-wingers who criticised the rush to war (though omits the Lib Dems who also got it right). If anything that rather strengthens the case he makes. We’ll see what Chilcot has to say.

See my guide to how Referendum night could play out, area by area, hour by hour, now available for download. Enjoy!

Candidates’ Commitment to Human Rights Should Play Crucial Role in UN Secretary-General Election

Who’s failed to deliver?
(tags: humanrights un )

Who Is to Blame for Brexit’s Appeal? British Newspapers

Mr. Johnson and his fellow Brexit proponents are now campaigning against the caricature of the European Union that he himself helped create. They are asking the British people to part with a monster about as real as the one in Loch Ness.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Nicholas Whyte: Brussels policy machinery is actually very open to external input

The Belfast Newsletter prints my email message.
(tags: croatia ukpolitics migration Balkans montenegro eu cyprus moldova kosovo northernireland )

Chicken litter to power up Ballymena biogas plant

Chicken poo illuminates Northern Ireland!
(tags: northernireland )

Second frame of third page:

Tomorrow we’ll have the third round of the presidential election. Schmoll out.

I thought that this was the third in Chroniques de Fin de Siècle, a series of graphic novels by Jacques Santi and Jan Bucquoy which started with Autonomes in 1985 and continued with Mourir à Creys-Malville in 1986. But in fact this is belied by the back cover, which lists Autonomes and Mourir à Creys-Malville as fourth and fifth of a five-book series, Chooz (published in 1988) as third and gives the first two books in the series as Campe de Reforme B and No Man’s Land. To add further confusion, while I do find that Campe de Reforme B is available, there seems to be no book called No Man’s Land by Santi and Bucquoy; instead, the other book available from them is called Au Dolle Mol. A number of on-line sources list Campe de Reforme B and Au Dolle Mol, both published in 1982, as the only two volumes of the adventures of subversive hero Gérard Craan (the chap making a clandestine broadcast in the picture above). The fact is that Chooz features further adventures of Gérard Craan rather than of Gérard Mordant, the hero of Autonomes and Mourir à Creys-Malville. I speculate that Chooz was never meant to be part of the Chroniques de Fin de Siècle sequence but a third volume of the Gerard Craan adventures. The internal chronology doesn’t fit the Chroniques de Fin de Siècle at all – Wallonia has not been annexed by France, and several plot elements are simply repeated. So basically, it’s a bit of a mess.

I can’t recommend it at all. Gérard Craan is a deeply unpleasant chap who enjoys nothing more than a good punchup combined with smashing the system. He allies with an even more unpleasant gang leader whose girlfriend takes a fancy to Gérard and ends up pregnant with twins by both of them (see front cover, below). They attempt to bring the system to its knees by sabotaging the Chooz nuclear reactor to prevent it further poisoning Wallonia. But there is no liberating politics other than overthrowing the caricatures of Chirac and Le Pen who rule this version of 1990s France, and one doubts that the followers of Craan and his allies are any better off for having followed them; those who are still alive at the end of the book, that is. The book was published as co-author Santi was dying in 1988; I wonder if there is a story behind that.

The Brussels Years: The making of Brexit Boris

Those who knew him then reminisce.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

The great superiority complex of the Leave campaign

Britain’s international influence.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

My nominations for the John W. Campbell Award were:

Andy Weir (finalist)
Kelly Robson
L.S. Johnson
Iona Sharma
Sunil Patel

Those who topped the File 770 straw poll were:

Becky Chambers (22)
Andy Weir (22)
Natasha Pulley (16)
Scott Hawkins (10)
Kelly Robson (10)
Alyssa Wong (10)

with nobody else getting more than five. Sebastien de Castell and Pierce Brown were each nominated by one File 770 responder, and Brian Niemeier by none. All of the finalists apart from Alyssa Wong were on the slate; it’s reasonably to assume that Weir would have made it without slate assistance, but Becky Chambers’ exclusion is a travesty.

6) Brian Niemeier. The Hugo packet includes a novel by Niemeier, Nethereal, and a shorter story, “Strange Matter”. I lost patience with the novel within the first hundred pages, an astonishingly dull mixture of magic, sf and combat. The short story had a more original idea but botched the execution. In case it matters to you, Niemeier is a full-on supporter of the Puppies, but more importantly, his writing just isn’t that good. No hesitation in putting him last.

5) No Award. Despite the puppydom, I actually thought that all the others had points of redemption, and I’m feeling in a generous mood.

4) Pierce Brown. I had actually read Red Rising for the Clarke Award last year. My note to fellow judges was as follows: “I thought this was good but not great; leant a little too heavily on Ender and Hunger Games, though to an extent also on Homer, and was frankly turned off by the violence (not all of which was plausible). Readable enough but I won’t be pushing it.”

3) Sebastien de Castell. His novel The Traitor’s Blade was also included in the Hugo packet, and I found it pretty readable, even though sword-and-sorcery isn’t usually my thing. I felt it lost its way a bit towards the end.

2) Alyssa Wong. Her short story “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” is included in the packet, and has already made her the second youngest Nebula winner ever. I thought it was a great piece, but it veers rather far into horror for my taste, and it’s the only writing that I can judge her by.

1) Andy Weir. I quite enjoyed The Martian as a book; I really loved the film, which perhaps makes me view the book more favourably. There’s also a bit of me that feels that the Campbell Award can reasonably recognise precocious achievement, and it’s clear that both Weir and Wong have displayed that. In the end, I enjoyed The Martian just a bit more than “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers”, so Weir gets my vote.

Best Novel (1941/2016) / Best Novella (1941/2016) / Best Novelette (1941/2016) / Best Short Story (1941/2016) / Best Related Work (2016) / Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (1941/2016) / Art categories (1941/2016) / John W. Campbell Award

Clothes, Cameras and Coffee: My Grandma, President of the Earth

A lovely family reminiscence. #fb
(tags: doctorwho photos )

How undemocratic is the EU?

Nothing like its portrayal in the media.
(tags: eu )

Four Goods and a conclusion

Some points in favour of the EU.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Failed Daily Caller ‘Writer’ Throws Temper Tantrum About Being Debunked by snopes.com

Snopes stands up for its own.
(tags: Media )

Letter to an old, old friend who is voting to Leave the EU

Nick Harkaway writes. #fb
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Berlin ready to lure tech firms after Brexit

Choices have consequences.
(tags: eu germany ukpolitics )

As you may know, I was born in Belfast. I grew up in a country which was not at peace. I sat in the back row during the first six months of the 1996-98 talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Peace in Northern Ireland would simply not have been possible without the European dimension, which transformed the relations between the UK and Ireland from a zero-sum game over sovereignty and loyalty, to a co-operative project of shared growth.

I see the Leave campaign asserting that nothing would change between Northern Ireland and the Republic if Britain left the European Union. I can’t reconcile this with their commitment to regain control of Britain’s borders. At the very least, there would need to be customs posts if the UK is no longer in the EU customs union. (And if nothing is going to change, what is Thursday’s vote actually for?)

On similar lines, I recently had a very interesting chat with leading members of the government of Gibraltar, who are very concerned that their delicate relationship with Spain will be critically undermined if the UK votes to leave. Northern Ireland and Gibraltar are both likely to deliver strong votes for Remain on Thursday; these are the people who face the sharp end of the sovereignty question, and perhaps their views matter.

I’ve worked in other troubled parts of the world. I contributed to the 2001 EU-brokered Macedonian peace agreement. I advised Croatia’s negotiators on their EU accession, and Montenegro and Kosovo on how to anchor their independent status in the European framework. In the Balkans, the governments and peoples that were at war with each other in the 1990s are now committed to working out their differences peacefully, in the framework of joining the EU.

I have also advised the Turkish Cypriot leadership and the Moldovan government. In both cases, the attraction of the EU is proving to be crucial in overcoming the deep divisions that have previously erupted into conflict. These are imperfect processes – what process is perfect? – but the shared factor is clear. Compare these two situations, inching forward, with other frozen conflicts in the neighbourhood (Israel/Palestine being the most obvious) which remain intractable and coincidentally have no prospect of European integration.

Britain may well choose to walk away from the project of making and keeping peace in Europe by building a common future. But that will certainly weaken the mission as a whole, increasing the risk of new conflict. I hope it doesn’t happen.

Just two other points, if I may. First, I’m really saddened by the vicious rhetoric about migration that has characterised the campaign. I take it personally. I am a migrant, as are several of my closest relatives. It seems to me, from afar, that if public services in Britain are under stress, that is because of a broader problem with the funding model. Blaming migrants, particularly considering how much they actually contribute to delivery of those services, is a distraction.

I also want to say that, contrary to some perceptions, I find the Brussels policy machinery very open to external input. It’s not surprising that this is the case, given that a broad consensus from business, unions, consumers and citizens is needed to persuade a sufficient majority of elected governments and elected MEPs to agree to any particular proposal. I may have been fortunate – I work on a fairly narrow range of issues – but I really think that this is the single aspect that has been most maliciously reported by the UK media. I’m happy to talk more about this if you have any questions.

Of course, Brexit will be a bonanza for public affairs consultants like me. The process itself will include lots of moving parts to report on and to try and influence; the end result will be more decisions taken in London, where lobbying is barely scrutinised, rather than Brussels, where the demands of transparency are getting tougher. But my pocket does not always rule my head.

Anyway, I’ll be up all night on Thursday, hoping for the best. Good luck.

(Sent to a large number of people this evening – not quite as large as I’d have liked, as Gmail has a limit to the number of messages you can send!)

Second paragraph of third chapter:

After a residence of about a year at Ullswater, Adrian visited London, and came back full of plans for our benefit. You must begin life, he said: you are seventeen, and longer delay would render the necessary apprenticeship more and more irksome. He foresaw that his own life would be one of struggle, and I must partake his labours with him. The better to fit me for this task, we must now separate. He found my name a good passport to preferment, and he had procured for me the situation of private secretary to the Ambassador at Vienna, where I should enter on my career under the best auspices. In two years, I should return to my country, with a name well known and a reputation already founded.

This is in some ways a slightly silly book, but in other ways profoundly interesting. The first half of it is dominated by the debate about the best way forward for Art, and for England, between Adrian – a thinly disguised Percy Bysshe Shelley, who happens to be the displaced heir to the recently abolished British throne – and his more ebullient friend Lord Raymond, who (apologies for the spoiler) eventually dies fighting for the Greeks against the Turks; can you imagine who he might be based on? In the year 2073 there has been no advance on technology since 1826, but our chums can just live in Windsor Castle and pop down to London now and then for a spot of governing. But given the importance of the relationship between Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to literature and especially to sf, it is fascinating to have an insight, even if a fictionalised insight, from one of the protagonists. However the interpersonal relationships bit is not as exciting as I would have liked.

The second half, when a great plague comes and wipes out humanity, is better executed but perhaps not quite as interesting. I recently read The Last Man (aka No Other Man) by Alfred Noyes, written over a century later but, I now realise, leaning a bit on Shelley; in both cases, the surviving central characters flee the post-holocaust England through a devastated France to find refuge in Italy. There are some great descriptions of places Shelley must herself have known quite well, and she doesn’t shirk the awfulness of death by disease (which she had far too much personal experience of). Romantic ideals fail through death of the gallant protagonists. (Adrian, the Shelley character, drowns in a boating accident, in case you were wondering.)

There’s a nice framing narrative of Shelley herself finding the text of the story in prophecy in the cave of the Cumaean Sibyl near Naples. And in general, it’s very interesting as an early example of post-apocalyptic fiction. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in knowing what happened to the author after Frankenstein – which was written 200 years ago this summer.

This came to the top of my pile as the most popular unread book that I acquired in 2014. Next on that list is Earthlight by Arthur C.Clarke – one I have in fact read before, but not for decades.

Episode 17: A Hit For A Miss
First shown: 2 January 1971 (US), 2 April 1971 (UK)
Director: Harry Booth
Writers: Glyn Jones and Harry Booth
Appearing apart from the Double Deckers:
Georgina Simpson as Miss Petit
Damaris Hayman as Miss Finch
Brian Hayes as the Head Master
John Clive, Lucy Griffiths and Bryan Hunt as amdram members

Plot

Billie and Tiger are jealous of the boys’ attraction to Miss Pettit, the new teacher. But they are won over by working together on a show to help an old people’s home.

Soundtrack

The boys alone sing “With A Little Bit Of Love”, by Ivor Slaney and Glyn Jones. It’s one of Jones’ better songs, but the performance is a bit ragged especially on the higher notes, and we definitely miss Billie’s voice keeping them in line.

The climax of the episode, and thus of the entire series, is everyone except Tiger singing “Fat Ladies”, by Ivor Slaney and Michael Begg, the boys in drag. The kindest thing to say is that not all aspects of Double Deckers have aged well.

Glorious Moments

The sequence of the boys attempting to clear up the den is a good bit of slapstick. (NB that the vacuum cleaner doesn’t seem to be plugged in.)

The first song is well-choreographed (shame about the singing).

Less glorious moments

It is a bit jarring to be honest. The scenes where each of the kids sees Miss Pettit as their own fantasy are well dodgy – for Springer she’s a Hawaiian maiden (wrong ocean, folks); for Sticks a Calamity Jane type.

The old people’s home for which they are supposedly raising money is also conspicuous by its absence.

And the “Fat Ladies” song… a very disappointing last note for the show.

What's all this then?

This episode opens up new areas to explore. It’s the first time we’ve seen the gang at school. The boys’ attraction to Miss Pettit, and Billie’s jealousy of her, is the first real acknowledgement of grown-up things like relationships; it’s all bee pretty chaste up till now. If there had been a second series, this might have been fertile ground for plot development. (Or, in fairness, it might just have been excruciating; this episode is a little embarrassing as it is.)

The Hot Teacher trope is one of the oldest in the book, and the usual outcome is, as here, that it’s a learning experience for the pupils without the relationship being consummated (even though we tend to remember the minority where it does lead to mutual romance). It’s rarer though for the boys to have a crush on a young woman teacher; one recent movie which could have fed into this (rather indirectly) might be The Graduate (1967).

Who's That?

Georgina Simpson (Miss Pettit), born in 1946, had a pretty brief acting career between 1967 and 1972, of which the high point was playing Blanche (one of Lucy’s posh Belgian pupils) in a BBC adaptation of Villette earlier in 1970. She married the actor/director Anthony Andrews in 1971. Her family owned Simpsons of Piccadilly, the inspiration for Are You Being Served? – the building now houses the big Waterstone’s.

Damaris Hayman (Miss Pike) is revered by Doctor Who fans as the white witch Miss Hawthorne in The Dæmons (1971). Born in 1929, she appeared in a string of minor character parts from 1953 to 1995. (Doctor Who seems to have been the best known thing she did, but I remember her also in The Small World of Samuel Tweet, a short-lived BBC kids sitcom from 1974.)

Brian Hayes (the Headmaster), born in 1912, has the same name as a member of the European Parliament who I know. His biggest role seems to have been the stationmaster in the 1968 TV version of The Railway Children, which starred Jenny Agutter as Roberta and Gillian “Billie” Bailey as Phyllis. He died in 1983.

John Clive (one of the amdrams), born in 1933, got a couple of leading roles in chldrens shows later in the 1970s – the titular Robert in Roberts Robots (1973), and Rosko in the 1974 show Perils of Pendragon – and then turned to writing from 1977. He died in 2012.

Lucy Griffiths (another amdram), born in 1919, played minor roles of spinsters and then little old ladies from 1952 until 1981; she died in 1982.

Bryan Hunt (third amdram) has six credited roles in IMDB from 1964 to 1971. (There’s also one given for 1999, but I think this must be someone with the same name, as the part is “Young Toby”.)

Where's that?

The school is St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School on Brook Road in Borehamwood, around the corner from the studio. Another scene is shot on Barton Way, ten minutes’ walk from the school.

See you next week…

…well, I’m afraid not. Although the gang cheerfully sing the closing line at the end, this is the final episode. But I will do a roundup post in due course.

Azerbaijan imprisoned me. Pharrell Williams and others should stop helping my jailers.

Khadija speaks out.
(tags: azerbaijan )

Exploring your surroundings through GPS-based games

Unleash the power of location!
(tags: Games Internet )

AGAIN

A sonnet by Roz Kaveney for Jo Cox.
(tags: poetry ukpolitics )

Apple Withholds Support For GOP Convention Because Of Donald Trump

Choices have consequences.
(tags: uspolitics )

Current
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian W. Aldiss
Peter & Max, by Bill Willingham

Last books finished
Nethereal, by Brian Niemeyer (did not finish)
Traitor’s Blade, by Sebastien de Castell
The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett
Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Hidden War, by Michael Armstrong (did not finish)

Last week’s audios
Tenth Doctor/ Donna 1.1 Technophobia by Matt Fitton
Tenth Doctor/ Donna 1.2 Time Reaver by Jenny T Colgan
Tenth Doctor/ Donna 1.3 Death and the Queen by James Goss

Next books
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
The Unwritten Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, by Mike Carey
The Mary-Sue Extrusion, by Dave Stone

Books acquired in last week
The Deep State of Europe: Welcome to Hell, by Basil Coronakis
Britain and Europe: A new settlement?, by Stephen Wall, David Hannay, David Edward, Peter Goldsmith, Robert Cooper, Heather Grabbe, Fraser Cameron, Graham Avery, Malcolm Harbour, Quentin Peel, Kirsty Hughes, Caroline Lucas, Brendan Donnelly and Andrew Duff
The Cyprus Crisis and the Cold War: USSR Duplicity versus US Realpolitik (1974-1977), by Makarios Drousiotis

Eastern Europe Is Both Dreading Brexit and Ready for It

Ivan writes of the consequences.
(tags: slovakia eu czechrepublic ukpolitics serbia hungary poland bulgaria romania )

If you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream, somebody will get sick

Sensible commentary, alas.
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

Five truths about referendums

Quintin reflects.
(tags: eu ukpolitics elections )