Alastair's Blog

If I may use a Bullingdon-type expression, I never much fancied the cut of the jib of Chris Huhne when he was Secretary of State for Environment and Climate Change (remember that.) Too much about himself, too fond of the media positioning. I don’t know Ed Davey, his successor, but I wish all power to [...]

Out this morning for a pre-Wiggo-triumph two-hour ride through small French towns and villages, I popped into a little bike shop to get a few bits and bobs. Bradley Wiggins’ yellow helmet took pride of place in the helmet stall. Black socks were doing better than usual. And despite the hefty price tag, the shop [...]

Greetings from France, where this weekend Bradley Wiggins will write himself into the list of great British sportsmen. The Tour de France is one of the greatest and toughest sporting events in the calendar, and to be the first ever Brit to win it, just five years after British Cycling genius Dave Brailsford set that [...]

TweedleGeorge and TweedleDanny were out the other day, dressed in G4S style security jackets, announcing a bit of infrastructure spending. TweedleDanny appeared to have lost the power of speech, but he had retained the power of head movement and was nodding earnestly as TweedleGeorge explained how the difficult decisions taken by the coalition had made [...]

First impressions matter. Nowhere is that more important than in the growth industry of event security. I like my security guards to look like Howard Webb, tall and strong, with a pleasing manner but really firm authority. I do not feel safe when I am patted down by young men half my size with bad skin, [...]

One of the nice things about writing your own blog, rather than a newspaper column, is that you can write what you want when you want, and not be driven by the agenda or deadlines of others. So when you’re a bit overbusy, and a bit over-tired, as I have been in the last few [...]

Unsurprisingly, Guardian readers have been rubbishing my so-called sex scene in today’s paper, where I was one of several writers asked to try to turn on women with words and so further help fuel the incredible Fifty Shades of Grey publicity campaign. As EL James’ S and M trilogy continues to break all records, and [...]

George Osborne is an avid reader of his press cuttings, but his advisers may well be tempted to get him away to a newspaper free zone this weekend. The Chancellor still has plenty of admirers in the media – not least those at The Spectator who helped him prime his grenade attack on Ed Balls, [...]

I have been a bit snowed under, and travelling, in the last few days, so apologies to anyone who came on here and found a short and rather tired blog on why David Cameron was avoiding having an inquiry into the banks. However, by popular demand (i.e one person who read it whilst perusing the [...]

I never fully understood why David Cameron fought so hard to resist an inquiry into the practices of the press. As the Leveson Inquiry has unfolded, the hesitation – finally overwhelmed by the tipping point of Millie Dowler – has become apparent. He has been similarly resistant to the idea of an inquiry into the [...]