Opinion / Mass Media and the Internet

Cheating at Chess

The normally placid backwaters of the chess world are foaming with controversy! Why is world champion Magnus Carlsen refusing to play young US chess player Hans Niemann, while dropping ill-disguised hints or insinuations that Nieman has been cheating? Boo! See eg here: England’s leading female player, Jovanka Houska, accused Carlsen […]

Continue Reading

HM The Queen

It’s hard to say which was the most painful moment of the Funeral of HM The Queen. The TV images during the day were exquisitely done – almost every shot a startling combination of colours and unexpected focus. But for me the small extended procession along a quiet country road […]

Continue Reading

World War Three

My latest DIPLOMAT piece – what if World War Three has started but we haven’t realised? So here we are (at the time of writing this) in mid-January 2022. As usual the British media are agog and aghast at various world issues.  The legal machinations of Prince Andrew.  Australia’s COVID […]

Continue Reading

Zoom Diplomacy

Then there’s this one on the zany new world of Zoom diplomacy: Legend has it that in a room in Number Ten one such special telephone sat unused, to the point where no-one could remember why it was there. One day to the shared consternation of both Prime Minister and […]

Continue Reading

Ukraine: Russia’s Death-Cult

In Budapest this week I learned that an Estonian diplomat recently asked someone from the inner circle of Putin ideologues where all this latest Russian aggressive posturing and behaviour were going to end. “It ends when you stop us”. * * * * * The key features of the current […]

Continue Reading

COVID-19 Unmasked

How to tell if the state compelling us to walk around wearing moist unhygienic masks looking like muzzled dogs makes a scrap of difference in ‘fighting’ (sic) COVID-19? Here’s a study (via a piece posted by Robert Zimmerman) that had unusually controlled conditions (US marines). His piece suggests that masks […]

Continue Reading

Censored by Twitter

My first post here in a while. We’re planning to move house after some 13 years here, and then it was busy again and the weeks flit by. Have you heard of Benford’s Law? Me neither. It turns out that it’s a way of exploring ‘unfabricated’ numbers. The gist of […]

Continue Reading

Last Night of The Proms

Back in 2014 I briefed readers on my interpreting adventures addressing the tumultuous mainly Polish audience for Last Night of The Proms in Krakow: This is a jolly annual gala occasion where Krakow Poles gather en masse lustily to sing Land of Hope and Glory and wave Union Flags and generally have […]

Continue Reading

Passive Aggression, Full Stop

OMG whatever next snowflake teenagers are being triggered by FULL STOPS. Say (who else?) linguists: The debate was reignited after writer Rhiannon Cosslett tweeted: ‘Older people – do you realise that ending a sentence with a full stop comes across as sort of abrupt and unfriendly to younger people in an […]

Continue Reading

The Queen’s Speeches

Following the Channel 5 programme on the public words of Diana, Princess of Wales, the companion programme on the speeches and statements of HM The Queen has appeared. See it here on the Channel 5 catch-up for a few more days (after you’ve picked your way through all sorts of […]

Continue Reading
Older Entries