Articles

I was at the European Parliament in Brussels earlier this week, taking part in a seminar hosted by Labour MEP Glenis Wilmott on the need for both the EU and member states to face up to the need for better strategies to deal with alcohol abuse, a huge problem across Europe. As well as me [...]

It is a sign of the Prime Minister’s new found defensiveness that he is saying to the Daily Mail things they want to hear, and his team are stressing that today’s Queen’s Speech is no big deal compared with the ‘plan’ to get the economy sorted and growing again. Indeed, such is the playing down [...]

I must thank the people who organised my trip to Northampton today for ensuring the photographers didn’t see me until I was out of the car which collected me from the station, and on my way into the venue. Had they been at the station, they would have had a good photo for any future [...]

I have been buzzing about a bit today, a meeting here, a meeting there, a few gaps in between, but through the day picking up bits and pieces about the trial of mass murderer Anders Breivik. When I was in Oslo a few months ago, I blogged about the extraordinarily mature way that not just [...]

I see the BBC magazine has published my Radio 3 essay on self-doubt, which is broadcast tonight. So here it is. “Where there is doubt, there is no doubt.” I don’t know where that saying originates, but I heard it first from a good friend and famous football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. He uses it [...]

Beautiful sunny day, and with all that is happening, thank heavens I’m off to France later to have a little peek at the elections there. Perfect time of year for France, the government there is not causing through its sheer ineptitude a petrol shortage, the election is finely poised, and there is no chance of [...]

Just caught the BBC TV news headlines. Lead story new planning rules being brought in by the government. Second story a rise in the cost of stamps. So neither of them particularly good stories for the government; the first will lead to lots of angst among countryside campaigners, not to mention NIMBYism; the second will [...]

Whether or not David Cameron rushed forward today’s move on alcohol pricing to distract from the granny tax row, I am pleased he has shown that the issue of Britain’s drink problem is firmly on the agenda. When I was making a recent Panorama on ‘Britain’s Hidden Alcoholics’ I was aware that the Prime Minister [...]

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spokesman, examines the British middle class’s troubled relationship with alcohol and his own long and complicated history with drink. To read the headlines about Britain’s drink problem, you might think it is largely an issue of teenage binge-drinking in town centres up and down the country. You would be very [...]

As the people I make the programmes with will testify, I have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with TV. It’s the F factor, as in F for faff, that holds me back from doing more, and it surprises me that an industry that has become so advanced, and such a big part of our lives, still [...]