From chair of Hertfordshire Health Authority to the voice of Europe in eight years flat?

There would have been few political career trajectories to match it! But that could turn out to be the story of Baroness (Cathy) Ashton, former Labour Leader in the Lords, if things pan out as some hope tonight.

Gordon Brown appears to have dropped the Blair candidacy for president in return for a Brit in the foreign affairs job. And what a job. read more

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Kabul was the emptiest of cities this morning.

The only way to move around – given the universal ban on private vehicles that has successfully staved off the predictable attack by the Taliban – was on foot. The traffic that usually blocks the city vanished.

We found ourselves learning that routes between places we normally travel actually take 20 minutes on foot, rather than an hour by car in the gridlocked streets.

The emptiness just added to the surreality of the occasion. Behind high walls, with foreign dignitaries, an almost virtual president of a virtual government was taking office for another five years. read more

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BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – Just waiting for Gordon Brown to turn up for the European Socialist group meeting in Brussels.

I hear that the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, last week asked Gordon Brown if HE would be the new President of Europe (do you think Charles Clarke put him up to it?). Anyway, Mr Brown said no thanks.

It gives you an idea how very fluid this whole thing has been and still is. read more

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The absurd antics unfolding around the dinner table in Brussels are giving Europe an awful name.

Protective of the national sovereignty of member states, the interests of the citizens of those states have always been represented by their heads of government.

The problem with this way of doing business is that it has all the appearance of hole-in-the-corner anti-democratic activity. read more

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Am on the Eurostar heading for the Brussels carve-up of top jobs.

Word last night from the Blair camp was that their man has pretty much given up on getting the presidency of the European Council.

Word from Paris and Berlin that they see the job as an internal affairs post dealing with issues like the EU budget makes it easier to handle – that was never the job TB was interested in. read more

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It’s tough for a fourth child out of five to take seriously the idea that he should never have been born.

But the effect of society’s choices over family size is undoubtedly worth considering in terms of the effect on climate change.

Some close to the Copenhagen negotiations feel that its the elephant in the room.

Certainly population growth is a vital determinant of how much humanity consumes, but not on the official agenda for those urgent talks to limit global carbon emissions.

So a delicate issue, yet today, for the first time the United Nations issued a report linking demographic pressures to climate change.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UN Population Fund told me today that ‘this is the first time we are clearly speaking about the link between population growth and climate change’.

In 1994 in Cairo the UN did say that population was linked to environment, but this is the first time the body has linked it specifically to climate change.

The report quotes an intriguing study which says that putting the world into a low population growth path, leading to 8 billion rather than 9 billion people on the planet by 2050, would save 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

But it’s not just that: there’s a huge wedge of the world’s population soon to come to child-bearing age … so is the answer for those rapidly growing countries to adopt coercive Chinese-style single child policies?

No, says the UN, this is not about forced population control, but enabling women to decide for themselves to have less children.

Education, empowerment of women, and contraception can all help mitigate climate change, says the report.

Of course almost all the likely growth in world population is happening in developing countries who emit far less Carbon than for example a child in Europe or America.

It’s the process of development that will see that population growth be increasingly carbon intensive.

The middle class in the world – earning at least $8000 a year stands at around 800 million now but is forecast to grow rapidly in the next two decades to 2 billion by 2030.

That’s two billion people who want to fly in planes, drive cars and eat lots of carbon intensive meat.

But that development will also naturally limit population growth as people become richer. so it’s a complex picture.

For now this is a new direction for the UN – the suggestion that condoms aswell as low carbon cars, can limit climate change. But it won’t be discussed in Copenhagen.

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The latest healthcare debate in America isn’t about the “public option” or when the senate will vote on healthcare reform – instead this week everyone is up in arms about new advice over breast cancer screening. read more

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It is a terrible observation, but with another British soldier killed in Afghanistan yesterday we are two military deaths from 100 service people killed in the Afghan War since the beginning of this year.

With the homecomings through Wootton Bassett and the now ever-present cameras and crowds, these are events rarely seen before outside world war.

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It’s wet and windy. The Queen’s carriage is passing just in front me – she’s about to alight at parliament.

I wonder if she’s aware that the government has put a loud hailer on the roof and plastered the carriage with election stickers? And I think they may have hooked up one of those road marking machines to the back so she paints battle lines in her wake.

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