Author: |Posted: 10:35 am on 23/11/09
Category: Copenhagen: Deal or No Deal?, Snowblog
I am standing on the top of one of downtown Sao Paulo’s tallest buildings.
In a panoramic sweep of the city a forest of tower blocks intersperse with the low level splash of orange roofed shanty towns (favelas) stretches in every direction.
It’s late evening and gradually the outline of the towers seeps away to leave their outlines in the lit windows of the homes of 19 million people who live here.
Author: |Posted: 11:00 am on 19/11/09
Category: Snowblog
The absurd antics unfolding around the dinner table in Brussels are giving Europe an awful name.
Protective of the national sovereignty of member states, the interests of the citizens of those states have always been represented by their heads of government.
The problem with this way of doing business is that it has all the appearance of hole-in-the-corner anti-democratic activity. read more
Author: |Posted: 12:40 pm on 18/11/09
Category: Snowblog
It is a terrible observation, but with another British soldier killed in Afghanistan yesterday we are two military deaths from 100 service people killed in the Afghan War since the beginning of this year.
With the homecomings through Wootton Bassett and the now ever-present cameras and crowds, these are events rarely seen before outside world war.
Author: |Posted: 11:26 am on 18/11/09
Category: Snowblog
I emerged from John Mortimer’s memorial Service at London’s Southwark Cathedral, a completely inspiring event – amazing turn out in a sensational location.
There’s been a church there since 606AD. The canon told an American who asked him why he’d built the place so close to the railway!
The music came from Jon Lord, formerly of Deep Purple – hauntingly lovely stuff for flute piano and strings, beautifully played by the Bernardi orchestra. read more
Author: |Posted: 5:07 pm on 17/11/09
Category: Snowblog
A rare thing happened yesterday. My “day job” collided with my volunteer project. Actually, in 20 years on Channel 4 News I don’t think it’s ever happened before.
But after the outing of Belle de Jour – the PhD-wielding academic with an intriguing money-generating enterprise on the side – I felt we should put the other side of the coin. We should talk to some of those who have no choice in the matter and who work at the exploited, grubby end of prostitution.
Author: |Posted: 12:23 pm on 17/11/09
Category: Snowblog
There’s something eerie in the woodshed – and it’s not the resurrection of Sarah Palin flogging her book on Oprah’s show. “Running for the White House in 2012 is not on my radar.” Phew!
No, forget Ms Palin, and we can probably afford to for now. Let’s concentrate instead on the strengthening pound – last night up against the dollar, up against the euro. This has on a little to do with the UK’s improving prospects and much more to do with the current tussle between America and her largest investor, China.
Author: |Posted: 9:10 am on 16/11/09
Category: Snowblog
I continue to find, in talking to people, that it is the disrepute into which parliament has been dragged by the peers and MPs’ expenses scandal that dominates politics over and above party rivalry.
Hence Nick Clegg’s call today to cancel the Queen’s speech this week may have a stronger resonance than at first might appear. Clegg wants to use the last few weeks of this parliament to reform the political system rather than waste time debating a legislative programme that will never be enacted.
Author: |Posted: 6:05 pm on 12/11/09
Category: Snowblog
I am back on my old hobbyhorse of lords’ expenses.
I have now talked to a committee secretary, who informs me that none of their expenses are receipted.
Author: |Posted: 9:24 am on 12/11/09
Category: Snowblog
The cable to the White House from the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, for “no more troops” is a pretty shocking shot across the military’s bows.
Following our own micro consultation with the UK public last night, one’s sense of confusion and mystification over the Afghan war only deepens.
Here in the UK the acid question must surely be whether the damage done to communal relations in Britain from deploying UK troops to engage in action which inevitably sheds Muslim blood, outweighs the risk of blood being shed here by Muslim extremists.
Author: |Posted: 11:02 am on 11/11/09
Category: Snowblog
Armistice Day. The first time since the great war that we have remembered without the presence of anyone who was there.
Today I am in Coventry, a city still scarred by the last world war. Somehow today renders Armistice Day more poignant. More poignant because of the daily toll of young life in the wastes of Helmand.
