Our number two man in Tbilisi got his story published on the Observer web site. That will help raise the profile of the Ajara problem with the international community; we’re starting of course from a very low base…

But I do feel vindicated. I used up a lot of shoe leather three months ago warning people that there was trouble brewing; it duly brewed, but the problem was resolved. Always difficult to point to cause and effect in these things but it’s nice to know we at least got it right, whether or not we helped with the resolution of the problem.

Safely arrived in Dublin, using terminal in my mother’s office, and I still can’t access our work email externally. And the famous Serbia report is actually going to be published within the next couple of hours.

So I’ve taken the unprecedented step of letting colleagues know my private email address; I’m not concerned about privacy, but concerned that they may try and send huge documents which will block my limited space…

I got home eventually to find Anne upstairs reading bedtime stories to F, helped by U. For the first time ever I can recall, U indicated clearly that she wanted to come downstairs with me when I set off to cook dinner; she has always previously wanted to stay with her mother. Very sweet, and of course it didn’t last all that long, but our baby is growing up!

My shaving gel is practically finished. And I’m about to go travelling for five days and was wondering how I would find time and opportunity to buy a new container of it in a strange city – not that I don’t know Dublin well, but I do think it is a strange city!

And then as I picked up the old document bag I hadn’t used for ages, I saw a cylindrical form at the bottom of it – yep – a barely used container of shaving gel, long forgotten from some previous trip. After a somewhat hassling day the evening is looking up.

from both and :

What’s the last thing you ate? beefburgers, beans, peas and reheated pasta with pesto
What’s your favourite cheese? dolce latte
What’s your favourite fish? tuna – not tinned but in decent-sized steaks
What’s your favourite fruit? do lychees count?
When, if ever, did you start liking olives? when I was an undergraduate and started getting into pizzas
When, if ever, did you start liking beer? when I was a teenager and going to school discos
When, if ever, did you start liking shellfish? very early – scampi always a delicacy
What was the best thing your mum/dad/guardian used to make? garlic potatoes in milk
What’s the native specialty of your home town? the infamous Ulster Fry, breakfast with fried egg, fried bacon, fried sausage, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, fried bread, fried soda bread, fried potato bread, and if you’re lucky black and white puddings
What’s your comfort food? pizza
What’s your favourite type of chocolate? dark chocolate
How do you like your steak? medium
How do you like your burger? well done
How do you like your eggs? varies. I do like the American eggs florentine habit but have never dared try it at home.
How do you like your potatoes? mashed with loads of butte and milk and perhaps extra vegetable ingredients as well
How do you take your coffee? white, two sugars
How do you take your tea? normally milk, occasionally sugar – unless it’s herbal in which case always sugar and never milk
What’s your favourite mug? a Midvale School for the Gifted mug which my staff gave me as a birthday present while I was Deputy President of Cambridge University Students Union
What’s your biscuit or cookie of choice? Petit Beurre
What’s your ideal breakfast? I do like Eggs Florentine but couldn’t do it every day. Egg on toast (scrambled, fried or poached) will do fine.
What’s your ideal sandwich? Salmon and mozzarella
What’s your ideal pizza (topping and base)? anchovies
What’s your ideal pie (sweet or savory)? Pecan, with loads of ice cream
What’s your ideal salad? Greek. (Though in the Balkans you sometimes have to be careful about the terminology.)
What food do you always like to have in the fridge? mushrooms; I would say beer but we have a cellar.
What food do you always like to have in the freezer? peas
What food do you always like to have in the cupboard? tinned tuna
What spices can you not live without? garlic, sage, tarragon, basil, oregano, mint, parsley, coriander, cumin, rosemary, thyme, dill – in roughly that order.
What sauces can you not live without? None.
Where do you buy most of your food? supermarket. (And restaurants near work for lunch.)
How often do you go food shopping? at least once a month.
What’s the most you’ve spent on a single food item? €15 for our Christmas chunk of wild boar
What’s the most expensive piece of kitchen equipment you own (excluding ‘white goods’)? We had the whole kitchen redone six months ago so the cost of anything else had faded into distant memory
What’s the last piece of equipment you bought for your kitchen? saucepans
What piece of kitchen equipment could you not live without? one small knife
How many times a week/month do you cook from raw ingredients? two or three times a week
What’s the last thing you cooked from raw ingredients? See above: beefburgers, beans, peas and reheated pasta with pesto
What meats have you eaten besides cow, pig and poultry? venison, bison, lamb, rabbit, snails, goat, duck, kangaroo, crocodile, ostrich, bear. But not yet horse.
What’s the last time you ate something that had fallen on the floor? Weekend.
What’s the last time you ate something you’d picked in the wild? Last month – sage from the garden (if that counts)
Place in order of preference (greatest to least): Indian,Chinese, Thai, Sushi, French, Italian
Place in order of preference: whiskey (single malts), brandy, gin (the only one I really drink), vodka, dark rum, light rum, tequila
Place in order of preference: Garlic, Mint, Basil, Aniseed, Caramel, Lime, Ginger
Place in order of preference: watermelon, strawberry, pineapple, banana, orange, cherry, apple
Place in order of preference: Sex, Food, the Internet, Movies, Sport, Fashion
Bread and spread: heavy brown bread, and creamy butter
What’s your fast food restaurant of choice, and what do you usually order? Pizza Hut, Super Supreme
Pick a city. What are the three best dining experiences you’ve had in that city? Brussels, where I work: La Maison du CygneChez Marius, good for political conspiring.
What’s your choice of tipple at the end of a long day? Either a heavy Belgian beer or a chilled glass of Luxemburgish white wine. This evening it’s a Hoegaarden Grand Cru beer.
What’s the next thing you’ll eat? A pain au chocolat from the tea-lady in the office, for my breakfast tomorrow morning.

First time I’ve tried this:

Economic Left/Right: -0.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.62

Disappointed not to be further left. But I’m getting old… Not too far from Mozart.

I just got one of those fake degree spams, you know:

no degree = no job = no money
get an instant university degree = higher salary

ALL CERTS ARE GENUINE/REAL WHICH IT CAN BE FOUND IN UNIVERSITY RECORD [sic]

–> call 1-240-352-7337 (24hrs)

no neeed [sic] study or test

>> call 1-240-352-7337 (24hrs)

I did the usual by reporting it through spamcop and then wondered if there might be some official body in the US to report this to. And discovered to my surprise that the Deputy Chief Information Officer at the US Dept of Homeland Security, who had previously been a webmaster in the Clinton White House, has been suspended on full pay since last summer for citing bogus degrees from a diploma mill in her CV.

That’s extraordinary enough, that the government department most concerned with security failed to vet its own officials. But I was also stunned by the press coverage describing her as a “Clinton official”. As far as I can tell she actually only faked the degrees when she wanted the Homeland Security job under President Bush. Surely that makes her a “Bush official”?

Vetting your potential employees is so damn important. I’m in the process of hiring someone for one of our very politically sensitive field positions. At this level I tend to ignore the referees provided by the applicant – in this case there were none anyway – and use my own network of contacts to take soundings from friends who I know were previously serving in the same place at the same time – in this case there were three, so I sent off emails to Washington, Stockholm, and another capital city further to the east, all three of which elicited very positive responses. It’s still not enough; the candidate claims to be about to finish a postgraduate degree and I will want sight of at least part of the thesis before I make a decision.

I’m just stunned that the Department of Homeland Security can’t be bothered to take the same degree of care. Slate, as so often, has a kick-ass article about the latest revelations of Bush’s failure on terrorism. I’m beginning to feel that even a war-time president is vulnerable if he appears to be incompetent in fighting the war. American commentators have a tendency to concentrate on the precedents of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR who were all re-elected in wartime. They shouldn’t forget Asquith and Chamberlain. (And the fact that Wilson wasn’t actually at war when the election came.)

Well, this afternoon we had the president of a small African state (though not one that has gained international recognition, which makes it less impressive) meeting my colleagues at one end of the office, and me meeting some of the people I should have met last month at the other end. Still loads of work to do before I go to Dublin on Friday.

Subject: Tonight’s movie at the OSCE has been changed…

Dear All,

Please be advised that tonight’s originally scheduled film, “The Terrorist,” has been canceled and that the somewhat more lighthearted movie, “Lost in Translation,” will be shown in its place.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you–

Best regards,

[X]
Senior Public Information Officer
OSCE Mission in Kosovo

I just shook hands with the Prime Minister of New South Wales, who was visiting a colleague.

And then an advisor to the Prime Minister of Kosovo dropped in for a quick chat.

Now I’m going for lunch. On my own.

William Mayne, author of such great children’s books as Earthfasts and A Swarm in May, is on trial for raping his fans in the 1960s and 70s. Horrible.

[Later edit:] He’s pleaded guilty to 11 counts of indecent assault, in return for the rape charges being dropped.

Up early to see if at least I can get the Serbia paper out the door today. I see there’ve been two policemen killed in Kosovo overnight; it just goes on…

To a more cheerful topic, I hope. I’m going to be in Ireland from Friday to Wednesday, including Tuesday in Belfast. The evenings are busy over the weekend (plus must actually make some time to see my mother with whom I am staying) but I hope to make it to the on Sunday afternoon, though I won’t be there until some time after 3 pm when it starts. On Tuesday I’m lining up meetings with political types during the day, but hope to have Monday and Tuesday evenings free in Belfast, and am available for drinks etc. Let me know if anything is up.

Back to find email working again and large parts of the new Kosovo paper on my desk. Now to try and clear it this evening…

A real shame to be in Budapest for such a short time. Had good meetings with an ambassador, my MP contact and then a seminar at the Central European University. But zero time for sightseeing.

Here in Budapest for a seminar this afternoon, and hoping to work on some stuff by remote control this morning – but office webmail is disabled. Well, I did at least save some of it to my laptop yesterday, so I can work on that for the next two hours.

And then I have a noon meeting with a member of parliament. The Hungarian parliament building is one of the loveliest in the world, but unfortunately the MPs’ offices are all in an office block across the road known (with no sense of irony) as the White House. Can’t wait (!)

Ex-Queen Juliana of the Netherlands died yesterday morning at the age of 94; this morning her eighth great-grandchild was born. My family lived in the Netherlands for a year in 1979-80, just at the time when Juliana abdicated in favour of her daughter Beatrix, and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Dutch royals. They somehow seem a lot less stuffy than the British and considerably brighter than the Belgians, not just on TV but also in person – I’ve met three of Juliana’s grandsons one way or another, and find them – this sounds dreadful – surprisingly intelligent given their family background. Also, though this is irrelevant, Robert Heinlein makes them supreme rulers of the solar system in his novel Double Star. I’ve never dared ask any of the Dutch royals if they have read it. Perhaps at the wedding next month I will acquire enough Dutch courage to do so.

My favourite Dutch royal anecdote was one I first got from someone who claimed to have it directly from Queen Beatrix, but I’ve heard it from several other sources since (there’s at least two internet versions) and my informant is, I know, capable of exaggeration for the sake of a good story. The Queen and her late husband Prince Claus were partly responsible for organising the famous “Bilderberg” conferences, beloved of conspiracy theorists everywhere, where leading policymakers from around the world get together for thinking and drinking. (I’ve been on the fringes of various such events myself, though nothing quite as exalted as Bilderberg, and can confirm that they are a lot less exciting, let alone conspiratorial, than people like to think.)

At these conferences the Queen used to hang around in the back just to keep an ear on what was going on. At one such conference in the late 1980s, Dr David Owen, then the leader of a failing British opposition party, was invited to make a presentation on something or other. He misjudged his audience, his speech went down badly, and he stalked down from the lectern. He spotted this woman he vaguely recognised and assumed, in the heat of the moment, to be one of the conference secretaries, thrust the notes from his speech into her hands and snarled at her that he needed thirty copies of it done immediately. She did the photocopying and had it delivered to his room with a slip of paper saying “with the compliments of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands”. Dr Owen was not invited back to the conferences again for several years.

But what was striking about the Dutch press coverage of Juliana’s death was the sense of emotion even from those who surely cannot remember her as Queen – it’s 24 years ago next month that she abdicated – and also a sense of continuity – the coincidence of the royal birth certainly helps – and of a life lived to its proper span – she abdicated on her 71st birthday, having reigned for more than three decades, and enjoyed a long retirement before old age took its toll a few years ago. Quite different from what I remember of the mood around the British Queen Mother’s death two years ago at the age of 101; there the sense was of the end of an era; I happened to be at a meeting in the Foreign Office when the cortege went past down Whitehall, and one of the younger diplomats present sighed and said, “There’ll only be one more like this.” Somehow the Dutch royals have managed to tap into the Zeitgeist in a way that the Windsors have not.

Going through my late aunt’s genealogy papers, and cross-checking them against the internet, I’ve discovered that the glamorous Colonel Ninian Beall was my 7xgreat grandfather. There seem to be a whole clutch of ancestors who were active in politics in 18th-century Maryland. I knew I must get it from somewhere…

Feeling very virtuous, and also a little tired, as I managed my first bike ride of the year. Not that I got very far, only to the Doode Bemde nature reserve, then the villages of Neerijse and Korbeek-Dijle, with much dismounting and pushing the bike up the hills and through the muddy bits, but it was probably about 8 km and made me feel a bit less horribly unfit. As well as being half-decent weather it’s also the first day for four weeks that I’ve really felt well enough to try, and I’m glad I did.

PS – beware, the Doode Bemde site I linked to above sings a little chant when you open it.

12) Chance Witness: An Outsider’s Life in Politics, by Matthew Parris.

I have a certain sense of loyalty to Clare College, Cambridge, where I spent five mostly happy years between 1986 and 1991, and part of that includes following the careers of my fellow alumni not just from my own year but those who attended after I left (like the sf writer China Miéville) and who graduated before me, or even those who, like the entertainer Richard Stilgoe, the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the mystic philosopher Thomas Merton, had attended for a few terms and got thrown out. (Interestingly my wife, who was also there for four years, cannot relate to my loyalty for the place at all.)

When I arrived, and challenged the Senior Tutor at one of those embarrassing get-to-know-you sherry parties to name someone famous in contemporary public life who had been at Clare, he named Matthew Parris, who had just a few months before resigned one of the safest Tory seats in the country to become presenter of ITV’s best known current affairs program, Weekend World. I didn’t know it at the time, but I encountered his legacy in the college when I served on the committee of the Clare College Students Association and became the resident wonk on constitutional issues; Parris had written the constitution and given the CCSA its name back in 1969. (The year after my term of office the name was again changed, to the Union of Clare Students.)

So I’ve followed his progress since. I’ve seen him in the flesh precisely once, at a Cambridge Union Society debate on the anti-homosexual Clause 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act, where he made a moving and effective speech about being a lonely and shy gay undergraduate at the tail end of the swinging sixties. It went better than his first speech in the Union Society chamber, an embarrassing debacle which he describes in painful detail. In fact much of this autobiography is taken up with embarrassing events described in painful detail. He fails as a diplomat, fails as a politician, and fails as a TV presenter (Weekend World was axed, largely because of Parris’ own lacklustre performance in the chair), before finding his element in written journalism.

As with a lot of autobiography, particularly if it’s written in a confessional style, one has to be cautious about feeling that one has got to know the author; what is written is fascinating, especially about his colonial childhood in Africa and Cyprus, but presumably much is unwritten as well. But I feel I would like Matthew Parris if I were ever to meet him socially. We are both fascinated by politics. I am gradually and reluctantly growing out of the kneejerk reaction that I acquired in the Thatcher years (years which he helped to bring about) that all Tories are irredeemably evil. Much of his thinking is also taken up with gay rights problems, to which I am very sympathetic though much less directly concerned. Also if he has a favourite continent it is probably Africa; I’m a devoted and practising European.

And in fact my career has eerily mapped his. Like him, I graduated from Clare College and headed for a niche which didn’t suit me (in his case, the Foreign Office, in my case, academe). Both of us started working for the research department of a political party in our mid-20s (in his case, a decently paid berth under Chris Patten in the Conservative Party; in my case an unpaid position in the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland). Both our lives were changed by an election when we were 29 (he won his, and became the MP for West Derbyshire; I lost mine – badly – and emigrated to the Balkans). Now I am 36, the age at which he resigned his safe seat to embark on the risky path of a media career. I don’t think the media will be my next destination, and I have more to lose than he did so cannot take the same risks, but my feet sometimes feel itchy…

The other thing I take from the book is what a difference a split second decision can make. The most significant act of Parris’ political career was to rescue a small dog which was drowning in the River Thames, shortly before the 1979 election. The resultant favourable publicity was enough to get him the nomination for West Derbyshire, beating out not only another Clare graduate, Peter Lilley, who later became deputy leader of the party under William Hague, but also a smart London lawyer called Michael Howard, who is now the party’s leader. The most hilarious moment in the book is when a reluctant Mrs Thatcher is compelled to present Parris with an award for his bravery at a ceremony attended also by the dog and its owners. The dog, excited by the occasion, humps Mrs Thatcher’s leg in front of the full scrutiny of the press. Alas, those days were more discreet, and nobody mentioned it at the time. But it gave me a good laugh.

11) Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is perhaps the most fascinating character of the 12th century; first married at thirteen, she divorced King Louis VII of France to marry the future King Henry II or England. I’ve written briefly about my relationship with Eleanor before (doing my M Phil back in 1991 I discovered a medieval horoscope apparently cast for her exact date of birth, 14 December 1123, which is otherwise unrecorded). She’s also a direct ancestor of mine by various genealogical routes. Probably anyone who can trace their family tree to the nobility of any country in Western Europe can say the same.

This book is a collection of academic essays which try to re-contextualise her as a ruler rather than as a romantic figure. Unfortunately for the authors, though fortunately for the reader, the drama of the story frequently pulls them into precisely the type of non-academic psycho-history that they criticise from more popular writers. So, for instance, desperate attempts to be poker-faced and serious about comparisons of Eleanor’s career with those of previous Queens of England, other contemporary noblewomen, her own daughters and grand-daughters, or (a long shot but ultimately convincing) Marie Antoinette 600 years later, end up getting carried away with the drama. (The exceptions, oddly enough, are two dry chapters on Eleanor’s divorce, and several unconvincing ones on her image in contemporary literature – apart from the brief reflection on her portrayal in William Marshal’s reminiscences.)

Lots of material for reflection here on how powerful and/or royal women are portrayed even today, especially now that power is largely divorced from royalty. Just consider the American right’s demonisation of Hillary Clinton, the fascination mutually exerted between Pricess Diana and the press, even the fuss over my friend Mabel. Though Eleanor was in a class apart; this is a woman who still signed herself (and behaved as) Queen of England even during the reigns of her two married sons, when technically the title belonged to Berengaria of Navarre and Isabella of Angouleme.

But for me the standout chapter was a brief one on a vase given by Eleanor as a wedding present to her first husband, and then passed on by him to the abbey of St-Denis, now on display in the Louvre. The vase was originally given to Eleanor’s grandfather, the famously rambunctious troubadour Duke William IX of Aquitaine, by a former ally who was a Muslim ruler in Spain, temporarily on the same side as the local Christians against an external Muslim threat. But it originally appears to have come from Sassanid Persia, probably made there before the 7th-century Islamic conquest; it would have found its way through the Islamic world to al-Andalus, before passing into Christian hands in 1120.

I also liked the chapters on the family funerary arrangements personally planned by Eleanor in her favourite abbey of Fontevraud, where her second husband Henry II (d. 1189), her favourite son Richard the Lion Heart (1199), her daughter Joan (also 1199) and she herself (1204) still rest, their tombs surmounted by lifesize effigies which were apparently unprecedented in Western Europe at the time. It wasn’t what Henry II had planned for his own burial, but an on-the-spot decision appears to have been made by William Marshall when he died unexpectedly; perhaps, I would speculate, assisted by the new king Richard, who certainly was in the vicinity and would have been more inclined to honour his mother’s wishes than his father’s?

Not a book for the casual reader, but for anyone interested in the period it’s absolutely fascinating.

So, Christopher Eccleston is to be the new Doctor Who.

It’s actually quite a good thing to cast an actor who hasn’t yet achieved the status of being a household name. I can’t remember having ever seen Eccleston on screen but he looks right for the part. We shall see.

From Bookslut:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5957,1171560,00.html

I got a pathetic 2 out of 10.

From an article in today’s issue of Vedomosti, a Russian newspaper:

“Албанцы впервые открыто нападают на миротворцев, – говорит Николас Уайт. – В глазах западных держав именно они являются агрессорами”.

Haven’t a clue what it says but I can at least recognise my own name, Николас Уайт.

I see we had a small asteroid come within 46,000 km of the Earth yesterday (not clear if that takes into account the Earth’s 6,000 km radius). Well done Project Spaceguard for picking it up.

Unfortunately as reports here I was much too optimistic about Kosovo in my previous post.

While Kosovo is calm but pulverised, over the other side of the Black Sea the situation in Ajara appears to have calmed down considerably, in a process helped by internationals but largely brokered by the locals themselves. This is a good thing.

Reaction to my BBC interview about the riots in Kosovo:

From: Xxxx
Sent: 18 March 2004 03:55
To: Nicholas Whyte
Subject: Your BBC Kosovo appearance- Bias and dhimmitude

Mr Whyte,

You sound like a Dhimmi(Jihadi appeaser) when you blame the Serbs. The Muslims already got a separate country- Kosovo. It seems that is not enough. Now they want to drive out the Serbs by terrorizing them. Shooting the Serb boy first was the initial step in this plan.

The Islamist can’t coexist anywhere- be it Balkans, Palestine, Kashmir, Philippines or Russia. Have you seen what happened to minorities in these regions. The pattern is obvious to everybody except apologists like you. Give Islamist a finger, then they want your entire arm.

Pansy spineless Britishers like you are the big reason for global terrorism. You appease and embolden these Islamist thugs. People like you have already handed UK to these thugs. Leave the honorable Serbs alone.

Have you ever thought of converting to Islam and ending this charade ? Or your Dhimmi masters in the NGO prefer a British Christian do their talking. I bet they love you.

They love the ‘weak and the meek’, but hate the ‘brave and the free’.

Sincerely,
Xxxx

My reply:

Dear Mr Xxxx,

I’m sorry that you didn’t catch my condemnation of the violence and my characterisation of the Serbian government’s reaction as “restrained”. It was only a short interview, but perhaps it was still too long for your concentration span.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Whyte

Seems that they’re busy out shopping for handbaskets in Kosovo… off to do a gloomy interview about it for BBC World TV (1700 GMT, 1800contintental, for those of you inclined to watch).

Q. In your opinion, was it the right or the wrong thingfor President Eduard Shevardnadze to resign?

Right thing: 93%
Wrong thing: 2%
No opinion: 5%

(One of my colleagues asked, “What was the margin of error?” At that rate it hardly matters…)

Q. Of the prominent Georgian people and characters in Georgian history and popular culture, who is most suitable to be a national hero or leader in current times?

The news here is that Stalin has slipped 4% from last year and now shares second place with Queen Tamara (born 1156, ruled 1184–1213). King David the Builder (born 1073, ruled 1089-1125) comes out far ahead of the rest as always.

Hah, report on Serbia almost out to the next stage of the process. Next up is Azerbaijan.

Dan Savage writes a frank and robust syndicated column every week in which he advises readers about sex acts which I usually have not even heard of before let alone ever participated in. But in this week’s column he has met his match: “rarely do I get a question about a subject, sex act, position, kink, or bodily fluid that I’ve never had the pleasure of addressing before. But your question, PWW, is definitely a first. And a treat! … That’s the kind of question I live for! I almost hate to admit it — I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m as sick a fuck as your grandmother is — but I was thrilled to receive your letter. Thrilled!”

Though in fairness there’s no real evidence that the grandmother is getting off on it.