By Special Request of Baroness Scott and Mark Valladares... Cicero's Songs returns: bigger, longer and uncut. October 1 st marked the half way point of the Estonian Presidency of the European Union. Perhaps for many people such an anniversary is of passing interest at best. Yet the conduct of the Estonian Presidency is reinforcing just how forward looking and innovative the most northerly of the Baltic States has become. Estonia is a country that wants to live in the future, and with its openness and innovation, that future seems a lot closer than almost anywhere else in Europe It is not that Estonia does not “do” the past: the picturesque cobbled streets of old Tallinn have tourist crowds a-plenty enjoying the mediaeval architecture in an Indian summer of sunshine and blue skies. The real point is that Estonia refuses to be a prisoner of its past. Lennart Meri, Estonia’s President in the 1990s- who spent years of his childhood in Siberia- once told me ...
Musings on World events from the perspective of a Social and an Economic Liberal.