Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Home working

I've been off-blog for a while attending to family business, of which the central feature was scattering my mother's ashes in her native Kincardineshire.   She was 98 when she died last year and ready to go, so there was no sadness.  We (me and my family, my brother and his family) used the opportunity to hook up with some cousins and second cousins whom we had either never met, or not seen much of.  My grandmother had 12 siblings, and my mother as a result had 64 cousins, so the family tree is a bit complex.  We filled in some gaps, but principally we just enjoyed exchanging family stories.…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Home working

I've been off-blog for a while attending to family business, of which the central feature was scattering my mother's ashes in her native Kincardineshire.   She was 98 when she died last year and ready to go, so there was no sadness.  We (me and my family, my brother and his family) used the opportunity to hook up with some cousins and second cousins whom we had either never met, or not seen much of.  My grandmother had 12 siblings, and my mother as a result had 64 cousins, so the family tree is a bit complex.  We filled in some gaps, but principally we just enjoyed exchanging family stories.…
Read More

Competent cabinets

The cabinet reshuffle has hardly been an exercise in gleaming meritocracy: after much trailing that it would change the gender profile, just two women were added to the numbers of full cabinet members.  This is not, at all, a snide comment on the competences of those who have been promoted.   It is simply that the exercise seems to have been very largely to do with presentation, and not at all to do with competence.  And that's not only unhelpful to the supposed  beneficiaries but runs directly against the cause it's supposedly espousing - better recognition for women. It's good that David Cameron has been sparing in his reshuffles.  Whether…
Read More

C20 Peters

I've been reading Margaret MacMillan's highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries - Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain - were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.  The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm's character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  - at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively…
Read More

Home working

I've been off-blog for a while attending to family business, of which the central feature was scattering my mother's ashes in her native Kincardineshire.   She was 98 when she died last year and ready to go, so there was no sadness.  We (me and my family, my brother and his family) used the opportunity to hook up with some cousins and second cousins whom we had either never met, or not seen much of.  My grandmother had 12 siblings, and my mother as a result had 64 cousins, so the family tree is a bit complex.  We filled in some gaps, but principally we just enjoyed exchanging family stories.…
Read More