Author: |Posted: 6:04 pm on 20/09/09
Category: Snowblog
This final session of the Pontignano conference is dominated by Obama: whether he will “make it”.
Consensus is that on health care, on a domestic climate change bill, and even in terms of economic recovery, he will…eventually (though he’ll need two terms). How the participants here love Obama – he really does walk on water it seems. read more
Author: |Posted: 8:09 pm on 19/09/09
Category: Snowblog
If you shut your eyes during the debates here in Pontignano you cannot distinguish which nationality the speaker represents.
A generation ago that would not have been true. For a start, fewer of the Italians would have spoken fluent English. Secondly globalization has harmonised much of the discourse.
That said, there is no celebration of the extraordinary creation that, historically, the European Union represents. read more
Author: |Posted: 1:35 pm on 19/09/09
Category: Snowblog
Jack Straw the Justice Secretary talked here about the “granulisation” of politics, the fragmenting of voters’ preparedness to carry on with voting for conventional old order politics.
How serious is it? I have blogged before about the disenchantment of younger voters in Ireland with their leadership and how it may come to deliver a No vote to Lisbon.
Today we are discussing the impact of the crash upon European societies read more
Author: |Posted: 7:25 pm on 18/09/09
Category: Snowblog
This comes to you from the Pontignano conference which brings together British and Italian politicians, business, media, and the rest to debate the issues of the day.
We are gathered in the amazing British Embassy residence – a positively palace like establishment with palm strewn lawns, a first century aqua duct, English roses, a butler, staff, large cars and the rest. Recession, what recession? read more
Author: |Posted: 11:26 am on 08/07/09
Category: World News Blog
By the time you are reading this I hope to be supping on mozzarella di bufala in a medieval Italian hilltop town full of churches stuffed with paintings by Renaissance masters.
The reality will probably be that I shall be going through umpteen security scanners along with some 3000 other journalists queuing for the G8 summit in the earthquake zone of L’Aquila, and helping our cameraman in my own puny way to lug camera and editing gear past Italian police in the summer heat.
