To Be In Florence Is

The Trouble Is That Privacy Is At Once Essential To, And In Tension With, Both Freedom And Security. A Cabinet Minister Who Keeps His Mistress In Satin Sheets At The French Taxpayer's Expense Cannot Justly Object When The Press Exposes His Misuse Of Public Funds. Our Freedom To Scrutinise The Conduct Of Public Figures Trumps That Minister's Claim To Privacy. The Question Is: Where And How Do We Draw The Line Between A Genuine Public Interest And That Which Is Merely What Interests The Public?

Russia Has Lost An Empire But Not Yet Found A Role. Russia Has To Decide What It Wants To Be. And As We Know In Britain, That Takes Some Time. It Is Quite Tough To Lose An Empire And Russia Lost Its Empire Very Rapidly And Very Admirably, That Is To Say Peacefully, It Didn't Fight.

That Said, The Question Remains: How To Strike The Balance Between Free Speech And Mutual Respect In This Mixed-up World, Both Blessed And Cursed With Instant Communication? We Should Not Fight Fire With Fire, Threats With Threats.

Except For Its Worst Inner-city Slums, America Is Not The Primitive Capitalist Jungle Of European Imagination, Where Human Beings Slink Away Like Wounded Animals To Die In Bloodstained Holes.

People Feel That European Institutions Are Remote And Bureaucratic, Run By Shady Cosmopolitan Elites. Britain Is Not Absolutely Exceptional Because If You Look At The Opinion Polls, Those Sentiments Are Now Quite Widespread Also In Continental Europe.