How much should a political party set out who it would and wouldn’t work with after an election? And is too strict a statement ultimately disrespecting the wishes of the voters? I was prompted to wonder this following a packed public meeting in Lewes last week at...
The job of the journalist is to find a good way to sell a story, ideally with a snappy headline. We are generally observers and describers, rather than actors, but in 2017 it will be vital for those who believe in a compassionate approach to the world to take a giant...
Honours lists are a minefield. Every country has them in some shape or form, and who gets honoured is a matter of great subjectivity. But leaving aside the rights and wrongs of who gets what, the British are relatively rare in that they give certain honours that...
The name ‘Aleppo’ is in this week’s news, but I wonder how many people really get what’s going on there. They should, because – while it’s impossible to know exactly what’s happening – it looks like another round of genocide. And worse still, the events of the past...
Meet KAM, or knitted Andy Murray. Yes, this is a fully knitted model of Andy Murray – even the racket is knitted – and he formed the subject of one of the oddest assignments of my journalistic career. It adds a very different and distinctly bizarre twist to Murray’s...
Do the British really know what makes success? I found myself wondering this after getting seriously irritated at something that really shouldn’t irritate anyone at all. I was watching ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ (yes I sometimes do). My favourite judge is Craig Revel...
How much should a top-level sportsperson be expected to take responsibility for themselves? That’s a question I find myself asking after the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) ruled that Maria Sharapova’s suspension from tennis for taking a banned...
I wrote a story this week that brought into sharp focus just what an awful decision the government’s green light for the Hinkley Point C power station is. The story was for the European NGO lobby group Transport & Environment, for which I’ve been writing for 25...
There are days when two separate but related news stories appear alongside each other on the same day, and no-one makes the link between them. Yesterday was one such day. All the morning media carried the story of the report by the House of Commons Women and...
As a journalist, I’m always interested in what words we use in different situations, and sometimes the choice of one word (or term) over another determines how something I write will be understood. This is why I was very interested in the essay by Carys Afoko in The...
