Monthly Archives: January 2018

The Post, the FT, and turning 65

As birthday presents go, I couldn’t have asked for a more timely and worthwhile one than a visit to my favourite London cinema the Clapham Picture House, ‘en famille’ to watch The Post. At one level it was a trip down memory lane , to my rights of passage in journalism, reporting to  newsroom bosses (always male) in  rolled up sleeves, and feeling part of an enterprise that began immersed in  typewriter clatter and reels of telex tape, messenger boys running to deliver urgent copy before proceeding to  Linotype machines, …

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The Catalan Conundrum

  As someone who for personal and professional reasons includes regular visits to Catalonia as part of his year, it is with some  relief that I have managed to experience the region over Christmas and  into the New Year in relative peace, and among friends from a wide political spectrum. But then those of us familiar with the local scene have grown accustomed to  valleys of relative calm prior to resurgent peaks of crisis, a veritable political helter-skelter which baffles most ordinary mortals struggling to catch up. Currently we are …

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Messi & Catalonia

So eat your hat all  you illuminated Catalan nationalists   who thought Lionel Messi would be your standard   bearer all the way to independence and beyond. FC Barcelona had tried its best to keep details on his thoughts on the matter from public scrutiny-but the truth is now out. As reported in the Spanish and Catalan media the Argentine’s latest contract with the club has a specific clause stating that player will be  free to leave the club in the event of Catalan independence having Barca excluded from any major European …

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