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World Affairs

The special relationship : is it?

A radio programme I always enjoy is Great Lives presented by Matthew Parris. The format is someone advocates a person as a great life and an expert adds to the background. This week the great  life was the US war time ambassador Gil Winant. He is less remembered than his predecessor Joe Kennedy [...]

May 21, 2015 // 0 Comments

Every time is different

Last night I reached home after very nearly 48 hours ‘before the mast’, which in this instance in my case meant touring northern France and Belgium with my brother and a small party of virgin – and I use that world advisedly – tourists of the battlefields and Commonwealth War Grave [...]

May 6, 2015 // 0 Comments

How the world works

Racial – or should I say ‘national’? – stereotypes may have become somewhat ‘non-politically correct’ in recent times, but that doesn’t mean that people refrain from either privately thinking them and/or uttering them publicly. You know the sort of thing I’m talking about, and you [...]

March 21, 2015 // 0 Comments

Food for thought

In the wake of the Parisian Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket Jihadist massacres/shootouts and the demonstration rallies in France yesterday, both ‘serious’ journalism and social media are awash with a wide range of conflicting opinions as to what happened and why, and how the [...]

January 12, 2015 // 0 Comments

Freedom and balls

Even as I type this at 10.45am on Friday 9th January, the apparent final end to the pursuit of the Jihadists who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre is playing out in the north-east suburbs of Paris in France. These are very difficult times for amateur bloggers such as myself the world over. [...]

January 9, 2015 // 0 Comments

Je suis Charlie mais non Ched Evans

I sent an email of sympathy to a French friend of mine who replied that they died as heroes, pen in hands, not a slow death in hospital. Understandably the country has been transformed by a wave of emotion. One country so far omitted from the debate is Israel. When Israel is attacked, as it has [...]

January 9, 2015 // 0 Comments

A man who ploughed his own furrow

Joe Cocker, the Sheffield-born rock and blues singer died yesterday in America, where he had lived for most of the past forty years. His distinctive rasping, soulful voice earned him many plaudits and fans, not least amongst journalists and major rock artistes around the world. Having always sung [...]

December 23, 2014 // 0 Comments

A mass of contradictions

One of comedian Frankie Howard’s much-loved catch-phrases [used conspiratorially to his audience, whether it was in a theatre or at home watching on television] was “No, don’t laugh – it’s wicked to mock the afflicted …” and I’m somewhat reluctant to invoke it here when [...]

December 10, 2014 // 0 Comments

Remembering a WW2 fighting man

Yesterday I joined my brothers and father at a restaurant in Fulham for an occasional lunch with one of my father’s old school mates D (they first met at public school in the early 1940s) who has been a lifelong friend of the family. Some time ago D’s wife wisely begged leave not to attend [...]

November 5, 2014 // 0 Comments

Stating the obvious

For anyone interested in following corruption and deceit in world sport, this latest piece by Paul Hayward on the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is a must-read – see here – DAILY [...]

November 5, 2014 // 0 Comments

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