The end of Diplomatic License

Saturday, January 21, 2006
This afternoon I watched the final episode of a programme that has been a weekly TV appointment of mine since the very first edition was broadcast twelve years ago. CNN International has discontinued Diplomatic License, a lively program focusing on global issues and particularly devoted to events at the United Nations. "CNN has decided to cancel Diplomatic License," programme host Richard Roth told viewers last weekend. "Next week will be our last program. We invite you to send us your comments either way, disappointment or good riddance." In this weekend's final edition, a sad and emotional Richard Roth read a large selection of those emails from around the world that expressed anger and disappointment at the programme removal from the CNN schedule.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan will probably have shared their view. He was the first studio guest on Diplomatic License when he was still the UN director of peacekeeping. On the other side of the coin, the decision should please UN critics inside the US government who have often criticised the way the programme consistently projected the United Nations in a positive light. The sudden announcement by CNN, in fact, may not be totally unrelated to the UN scepticism that has creeped in the US administration in recent times. Only a few months ago, outspoken critic of the UN John R. Bolton was appointed as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations taking US-UN relations to one of the lowest points in recent history.

I will miss the weekly programme. Whenever faced by people who insisted that diplomacy was a dull activity, I always referred them to Diplomatic License. Not anymore.

 

Euro divisions

Monday, January 16, 2006
Malta is divided on the spelling of the Maltese Euro notes and coins. The Maltese Council for the Maltese Language suggests the Ewro but the government's preference appears to be to stick to the mainstream Euro spelling as favoured by the European institutions. It's one thing to disagree over spelling. Polarization is common in Malta even on questions of a non-political nature. It's another to be divided over what the Maltese public actually uses in everyday speech. That should be a simple matter of observation. Two popular Maltese columnists reach the same conclusion on the spelling debate but are miles apart on what they hear on the ground. Arguing for English to be recognised as a national language in Malta, Marisa Micallef writes:

All this is lost on those who want us to spell euro as ewro instead of euro! After all, even if it is written as euro, we will still all pronounce it ewro when we speak to each other, and perhaps euro when we travel or trade, if we are sensitive and intelligent enough that is.

Writing in the same paper (and on the same page), Daphne Caruana Galizia says exactly the opposite:

I have yet to encounter anyone who says ewro, even when speaking Maltese. It’s ‘euro’ to everyone I have come across, even those who speak no English at all, because that is precisely how it entered the language, as ‘euro’ and not as ewro.

Both are off the mark. The simple truth is that both Euro and Ewro are used interchangeably by users depending on the mood, setting and disposition. No need to be so categorical about something like that.

 

Against centralisation

Saturday, January 14, 2006
While following a live broadcast of the Liberal Democrats policy conference earlier today, I was surprised to hear the name of Malta cropping up in the middle of one of the key speeches. Chris Huhne, one of the four leadership contenders addressing party activists, was making a case in favour of government policy decentralisation. He repeated a comment that he had already made in another speech last November:

Only one country in the EU is more centralised than Britain, and that is Malta where 100 per cent of tax revenue goes through central government. But Malta has a population only a little larger than Southampton

This time, Huhne compared Malta's size to the London borough of Croydon instead of Southampton and it was the only point of his sober speech which generated laughter from the audience.