Articles

I hope someone at Transport for London is reading. I hope said TfL person, on reading to the end, will take a few minutes to try to find the person I am writing about, and reward him in some way. Yes, it’s one of those ‘restores your faith in human nature’ times. The person in [...]

So I am walking down Victoria Street a couple of hours ago, and a very kindly lady stops me, says hello and asks me why I haven’t blogged for a while. I could tell in her eyes that she knew the answer … This happened a couple of days after I had been walking down [...]

Just arrived in the very wild and wet Scottish Highlands, to be told by all and sundry that ‘this is nothing’ compared with the wetness and wildness of a couple of weeks ago. It is however beautiful as ever. Meanwhile, in an act that even I consider to be a tad close to heathen-ness, I [...]

I know times are hard for a lot of people, and Christmas makes them harder than ever on the financial front, so I hope you don’t mind me using this pre-Christmas blog to ask regular visitors to chip in for a good cause – no, not (this time) Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, or any of [...]

With thanks to my favourite Elvis impersonator, Mark Wright aka@kingswimg72, I bring you his excellent tweet in response to mine asking the question ‘how many of our most important decisions do we make at 4am?’ ’4am is time partners get drunk, argue and break up. The following morning they have to break it to the [...]

I have not mentioned anywhere the attention-seeking, abusive and offensive remarks of a well-known TV presenter about strikers. He was on the TV at the time ‘to launch a new DVD’ so the abusiveness and offensiveness were deliberate and the means of attention-seeking. His publicist will on balance be happy, the DVD will sell well, [...]

As part of my new regime – lost 17 pounds in seven weeks, for which I was surprised to get a round of applause at an awards dinner I hosted last night – I now try to walk at least one journey per day that I would otherwise go by car, taxi, tube or bus. [...]

If anyone has had enough of my tributes to Philip Gould, I will not be offended if you surf immediately to another website. But I feel I should say something about his funeral yesterday, where a packed All Saints church in London W1 said farewell to one of the key architects of New Labour, and [...]

Another sad death in the political world today, with the news of the passing of the Labour MP for Feltham and Heston, Alan Keen. I first got to know Alan when he and his wife Ann, also an MP, were part of the close circle of friends around Neil and Glenys Kinnock when Neil was [...]

I was speaking at a dinner last night to businessmen and women who know a lot more about how the economy works than I do. So I was a bit alarmed to see how many were nodding along when I suggested that what was happening in the eurozone was, frankly, downright scary. Most situations described [...]