Dom Nicholls

Reasons to be cheerful…1..2..3

Today is the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness, although you might not have realised it, given recent headlines. So I thought I’d inject a ray of sunshine by sharing three things that I see in the world today that give me reason to think it may not be all doom and gloom. The first bit of…

High Noon for cyber complacency

Imagine standing next to a railway track and seeing a runaway carriage hurtling down the line towards a group of ten workers. Oblivious to the danger, they will certainly be killed unless the train is diverted onto another track. Luckily, next to you is the lever controlling a set of points that can make this…

Spies like us

There were many interesting details in the report released by the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee on March 5th. Titled Women in the UK Intelligence Community and coinciding with International Women’s Day, it explored issues of diversity in Britain’s three intelligence agencies: SIS (the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6 and focussed on overseas spying), MI5 (the domestic agency)…

The Litvinenko Inquiry – Enemy at the gates

Days 9 to 17 – up to February 27th On Day 15 of the Inquiry, Evgheniy Limarev, a former member of the SVR (Russia’s overseas intelligence agency, formed on the demise of the KGB), was providing evidence. Mr Emmerson, counsel for the Litvinenko family, asked “so, basically, the high-ranking members of the SVR that you…

Kicking the ring

When I was at Sandhurst, the British Army’s officer training establishment, Wednesday afternoons were given over to ‘Academy Sport’. This was an opportunity for us bright, young hopefuls to pursue whichever physical activity was our personal favourite. Almost every sport imaginable was on offer, providing myriad opportunities to get sweaty. Also available was golf. Not being…

Words as weapons

Actress Shirley MacLaine has caused outrage with comments in her memoir suggesting holocaust victims were “balancing their karma from ages before” (see here). The book includes in the sub-title ‘A lifetime of questions, speculations…’ and so on, leaving a lot of caveated wriggle-room. So this might be nothing more than a ham-fisted example of the old…