Category: “Media”

I don’t know for sure that Euan Ferguson of the Observer does teeline (the form of shorthand in which I was once, many years ago, 120 words a minute proficient). But I think he might. Either that or I mumble – I know I do sometimes, but I thought I was speaking reasonably carefully when [...]

Phil Stephens had a very measured column in the FT last week about the fact that UK PR companies always seemed to be on hand to help less democratic countries than ours with a bit of image advice. I hold no particular candle for the PR industry, but I do quite like it when the [...]

A few weeks ago I took part in a discussion at one of the big internet companies on something called ‘the right to be forgotten.’ The notion – which the giants of the web are not terribly keen on – is that information on the web, even if you put it there yourself, can be [...]

As I know from living with a virtually full-time State schools campaigner, education arouses enormous passions and very strong views. So it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Jamie Oliver’s Dream School idea has attracted so much publicity and debate. Challenging kids plus ‘celebs’ plus stereotypes (some promoted, some challenged), plus a decent marketing [...]

I may not have liked much about Peter Mandelson’s book (“‘insufferably self-indulgent’ – Alastair Campbell” doesn’t seem to have made it to the quotes on the cover of the paperback). However, I totally agree with his defence of the Blair government’s attempts to bring Libya in from the cold. He has written a well-argued piece [...]

I finally caught up with the first episode of Jamie’s Dream School last night. May I begin by ticking off Mr Oliver for using ‘less’ when he meant ‘fewer.’ Tut, tut, as fellow teacher David Starkey might have said; ‘must do better,’ English teacher Simon Callow must tell him. Jamie said the students at Dream [...]

I’ve been away having laptop connection problems so apart from a couple of tweets I have not been able to congratulate Labour’s Dan Jarvis on his excellent by-election win. And yes, of course I knew Lord Sutch was dead when I tweeted asking where was he when he needed him? That was the point — [...]

I don’t agree with every word of Lionel Barber’s Cudlipp Lecture last night, and I hope the FT editor’s larynx was coated in irony when he spoke of Paul Dacre towards the end. But for journalists in particular, but also anyone concerned about the direction of the modern media, it is definitely worth a read. [...]

Ed Miliband will know well enough not to put too much faith in this morning’s poll showing Labour 11 points ahead of the Tories. Better to be ahead than behind, but at this stage of the Parliament it is as much about bad things the Tories are doing – where do I start? – as [...]

The New Statesman this week runs a piece I wrote about what I had learned from reading my diaries of our first two years in power. Here it is … ‘Nobody can accuse you of writing a self-serving memoir,’ said Jonathan Powell when he first read my diaries four years ago as part of the [...]