Alastair's Blog

On Sunday I posted this guest blog from Kathryn Batten on the review of children’s heart services. As a result, some of the local papers in the areas covered by the review have reported that I was ‘stepping into the campaign’. In fact, as Kathryn knows, I have always been clear that on a subject [...]

I woke up this morning to an avalanche of tweets in response to my asking on the way home from Stratford last night why the US, so dominant in Olympic sport, appear to be so relatively marginal in the Paralympics. It is never possible to predict what will get a big reaction on twitter, but [...]

Much has been made of the contrast between the values and heroics of our Olympians and Paralympians, and the often not so great values and not so great values of our multi-millionaire professional footballers. Well today provides an opportunity for football, football clubs and football stars to show that the caricature is misplaced. I know [...]

There are two big events going on this week, both of which will see people most Brits haven’t heard of till now being propelled to greater prominence. The first is the Paralympics and the day by day, hour by hour rollout of some of the most remarkable sporting and human endeavors of our time. The [...]

Fairly low under the political radar, a review has been going on into the issue of children’s heart surgery. Thankfully, the number of children likely to require heart surgery is small, so it is not an issue directly to affect the majority. But to those it does affect, nothing could be more important. So with [...]

First, before getting onto the subject in the headline, a restatement of the basic message in my excessive tweets re last night’s Paralympics opening ceremony. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Danny Boyle’s Olympics ceremony made me proud to be British, and proud to be Northern. Last night’s made me proud to be a citizen of a country [...]

The excitement (mine) is mounting … Not quite to the peak of the day I trotted out in front of 72000 people at Old Trafford with Diego Maradona (I never talk about it as regulars know) and three other World Cup winners as team-mates … Nor even an excitement to match election days 1997, 2001 [...]

Here is the piece I wrote for The Times on Lance Armstrong yesterday. It was thanks to them that I got to know the Texan cyclist, and this is my reflection on him now, following his decision not to contest further the doping allegations made against him. ‘Losing and dying. It’s the same thing’ — [...]

Following my blog on Mitt Romney appointing Paul Ryan as his running mate, TIME magazine asked me to write a piece for their international edition. Here it is. To win a campaign, you have to make the weather. It is one of my golden rules. But whereas the real weather is measurable to the last [...]

It is technical uselessness, rather than modesty, that prevents me from putting on here the photo I tweeted yesterday from the summit of Mont Ventoux. Now I cannot claim to have got up this legendary Provençal mountain quickly. Indeed, my times over the past few years represent something of a study in ageing. But I [...]