Diary

Environment

I'm no global warming expert, but . . .

• 19 March 2007
• 3 comments

Surely the majority of the world's climate change scientists can't be wrong - can they?

Europe

Look up the word "research" and what do you find?

• 12 March 2007

We're obsessed with privacy when it comes to research, while we are happy to tell banks and supermarkets every last detail of our spending habits

Politics

Playing at politics

• 05 March 2007

Gyles and I dared William Hague to go on the programme with a spliff dangling from his lips

Music

My life as a sock puppet

• 26 February 2007

I have become the sort of person who sits in Earls Court watching pop bands warm up and eating steak sandwiches. Who am I?

Asia

From Norway to Hong Kong (via Dubrovnik)

• 19 February 2007

Each time I return to Hong Kong I see something new. But the view is still unbeatable, as are the custard tarts (confiscated, alas, by my wife)

Music

Are we good - or a freaking shambolic dirge?

• 12 February 2007

The rest of the band were smartly dressed for our meeting with Peter Hain. But I looked like a vagrant who should be detained under the Prevention of Making the Place Look Untidy Act

Life & Society

More questions than answers

• 05 February 2007

What is to be done about child abusers? Are a paedophile's drawings a useful outlet? If we invent more crimes there will certainly not be enough prison places

Life & Society

The beauty of booty, especially when it's legal

• 29 January 2007

Gary is a former punk and veteran of the Blair Peach protests. He's now a first-rate community bobby, but even he didn't realise how wonderfully lawless the law can be

UK Politics

A woman's voice in the Bangla chatrooms

• 22 January 2007
• 2 comments

The election is postponed. Depressed, I surf through discussions about lost ideals and lost lives. Then one particular post catches my attention . . .

An unlikely anti-war pin-up

• 15 January 2007

My attitude to columnists critical of political journalists like me is that I'm glad they're saying what they're saying but I can't bring myself to join them