Just look at this. A Guardian report about a large and rather over-excited football banner brought into a Belgian football stadium: The banner which said Red or Dead referred to the Standard colours and also showed a drawing of a masked man with a knife and the head of Anderlecht […]
Part of the problem we have with talking about anything is achieving an agreed sense of perspective on what we are talking about. Recall my piece about cycling and risk: It all boils down to our old friend ‘striking a balance’. As a society we have proclaimed that ‘using a handheld […]
Back in the mists of time I wrote this: In a city there’s a nice large green public park, where families and individuals stroll around happily. One day a group of leather-jacketed aggressive foul-mouthed types and some snarly dogs turn up and postion themselves prominently in one corner. This happens […]
My new piece for the Telegraph is on immigration. It turns on the distinction between people who enter the country by following the rules, and those who don’t: Immigrants into the UK fall into different broad categories. Rich people buying an exclusive UK pad. Foreigners ready to invest their money […]
Attentive readers will recall my Near Death Experience in an NHS hospital back in 2011, and the thoughts it prompted on how a large UK hospital works: In one banal way of looking at it, the NHS is a huge quasi-shop. It has ‘customers’ who need ‘products’, so the key […]
One of the few advantages of having Annoying Son home over the Uni holidays is that he draws one’s attention to unusual things. Such as martial arts legend Bruce Lee playing table-tennis. One of Lee’s famed movie techniques was to deploy to devastating effect the nunchaku weapon, two sticks whirling on a […]
A short sharp piece from former US top diplomat Christopher Hill on the problems besetting the borders of many Arab states: In a region where crises seem to be the norm, the Middle East’s latest cycle of violence suggests that something bigger is afoot: the beginning of the dissolution of […]
Here is my latest piece at PunditWire, describing how I dealt with pesky young professionals not paying full attention during my Drafting Skills class last week in Warsaw. The main feature of this one is, of course, the superlative extract from the famous account of how Bertie Wooster is stuck […]
I am whirring away on my Speechwriting book. It takes me back to this effort that I prepared back in 1986 for the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe. The opulent surroundings and fine nourishment of the annual Lord mayor’s Diplomatic Banquet were not an obvious choice for a speech on […]
