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All over bar the shouting

Last night I watched the BBC big EU Referendum set piece The Great Debate at 8.00pm on BBC1, featuring David Dimbleby as host; a cast of about 8,000 voters in the audience at Wembley Arena; and Boris Johnson, Labour MP Gisela Stuart and Tory minister Andrea Leadsom representing ‘Leave’ and Scot [...]

June 22, 2016 // 0 Comments

And so to the final straight …

Last night, staying with my aged father on the south coast, I tuned in to watch the BBC1’s Question Time EU Referendum live ‘Special’ at 6.45pm in which Prime Minister David Cameron stood on a studio podium and faced an audience of questioners under the stewardship of veteran presenter David [...]

June 20, 2016 // 0 Comments

A fun reunion

Five decades ago – whilst incarcerated in the countryside at public school – my boarding house was joined for a single academic year by an American. In the intervening years we have exchanged occasion letters and latterly emails and last week, when he came to London briefly, we took the [...]

June 19, 2016 // 0 Comments

What’s going on? (as Marvin Gaye once sang)

The awful, tragic, events of yesterday in Birstall, West Yorkshire – when Labour MP for Batley and Spen Jo Cox was killed by a constituent in the street – quite rightly caused all other matters of state and nation to be pushed aside from public attention. Times and incidents like this, such the [...]

June 17, 2016 // 0 Comments

EU Referendum-watch (again)

With just over a week to go to the vote on the EU Referendum there is a certain inevitability about a number of aspects. Both sides are now frenetically reviewing their campaign strategies on a daily basis and accordingly deploying different spokespeople peddling different ‘stories’ in order to [...]

June 14, 2016 // 0 Comments

Back in the old routine

Early yesterday evening I went up to the gym to blow a few cobwebs away by doing what at my age I would call a session (but maybe those under the age of forty might not because it consists of me doing only whatever exercising I can until immediately I feel either body or spirit becoming unwilling). [...]

June 13, 2016 // 0 Comments

Same old, same old

For some reason I thought  of the European Championships in Italy  in 1980: riots in the park and England going out fecklessly. After a few tournaments which went benignly in terms of violence since 1998, when there was again trouble in Marseilles, I saw the same dismal scenes of cafes trashed, [...]

June 12, 2016 // 0 Comments

EU Referendum-watch

My overnight (Saturday into Sunday) trawl of the newspaper websites has revealed reports that Labour MP Chuka Umunna is claiming that if the Referendum outcome is a Brexit victory it will be a win for Far Right ‘dog whistle’ politics; that the latest polls show that the two opposing campaigns [...]

June 12, 2016 // 0 Comments

Rumbling on …

Regular readers of this esteemed organ will be aware that we are currently covering the UK’s EU Referendum campaign almost daily in our own quaint fashion – i.e. commenting upon developments, not reporting upon them – not least because the one ‘fact’ being asserted by politicians [...]

June 11, 2016 // 0 Comments

A memorable evening before the mast

Last night I was a guest at a charity auction banquet to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland held at the Mansion House in the City of London on behalf of the White Ensign Association and The Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity. The dress code was given as ‘Black Tie (with [...]

June 10, 2016 // 0 Comments

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