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Doesn’t getting it right matter?

Pardoning me for mentioning this, but isn’t it about time – now that we seem to have the video and other technology to check sporting action with a chilling degree of accuracy – that, if by chance a referee or other official in charge of proceedings on the field of play makes a [...]

August 18, 2015 // 0 Comments

Waking up and smelling the coffee

Having been smug and secure for decades in my conviction that politics is a simply a game played by politicians, I’m rapidly coming to the view that the EU may be the perfect and least hypocritical example of all. The one thing that can be said for the EU powers-that-be is that at least they make [...]

August 18, 2015 // 0 Comments

Remembering VJ-Day

Yesterday was ‘VJ-Day plus 70 (years)’. I spent it in the company of my father, nearing ninety, who had indicated his intention to watch BBC’s live television coverage of the commemorative service at St Martins-in-the-Field attended by the Queen and Prince Philip and then the equivalent [...]

August 16, 2015 // 0 Comments

Much ado about something

Last night – Saturday 15th August – in front of a less-than-full Twickenham Stadium (official attendance circa 63,000), Stuart Lancaster’s makeshift England team held on to beat Phillipe Saint-Andre’s French equivalent by 19-14 in the first of two ‘warm up’ clashes between them [...]

August 16, 2015 // 0 Comments

Lessons learned by a bloody nose

Next week will mark the seventy-third anniversary of the disastrous Dieppe Raid on 19th August 1942 by British and Canadian troops. For some time the Russians had been lobbying Britain and the Allies to open a second front in north-west Europe in order to relieve the pressure they were under from [...]

August 13, 2015 // 0 Comments

Time to turn the screw

With less than forty days to go to the opening or the 2015 Rugby World Cup the anticipatory excitement is growing. I must declare an immediate interest – I shall reporting on the tournament from the relative safety of my sofa and, unless something radical happens, have no plans to attend a single [...]

August 11, 2015 // 0 Comments

A gem of a day

Yesterday, responding to an invitation, I travelled to a village cricket game on the south coast in glorious sunshine – a journey sadly beset during its last four miles by having to take my place among a gridlocked stream of day-trippers and/or holiday makers on their way to the seaside. I’ve [...]

August 10, 2015 // 0 Comments

Turning the world upside down

Today I wish to address the issue of ‘gender equality’ and in doing so acknowledge that my views may not make me universally popular. There’s nothing I can do about that … The context is (or are) two articles that appear upon the website of The Independent newspaper today. I give you: [...]

August 9, 2015 // 0 Comments

And here’s a ‘V.A.T. on the house’ from me, Arfur …

Way back in the 1980s and early 1990s, though I never really bothered with it once Terry McCann (played by Dennis Waterman) had departed, because – well – Arfur without Terry wasn’t the same was it? – Thames Television’s series Minder was a staple of my recreational [...]

August 7, 2015 // 0 Comments

Life In Squares (review)

Yesterday I noticed that the second episode of Life In Squares, the BBC’s new three-part drama series on the lives and loves of the Bloomsbury Group, was nestling in the advance BBC2 schedule at 9.00pm and decided that I might as well give it a go. I should perhaps point out here that literary [...]

August 4, 2015 // 0 Comments

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