Diary

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

Life & Society

The most despicable character ever written

• 08 January 2007
• 15 comments

It seems that any group of activists can get their mates to email the BBC, and the corporation will oblige them with terrified self-censorship

Culture

The shameless jump off the ship

• 18 December 2006
• 1 comment

Bill Clinton looks just as he does on TV, except his thighs are thicker. He and Hillary, to their surprise, were booed in the interval, whether for lateness or previous offences, goodness knows

Life & Society

The empire gets its revenge - on me!

• 11 December 2006

The four men in the lorry cab drove us before them on the narrow causeway like a flock of sheep. We broke into a trot. It was patronising, but not really malicious

Theatre

Richard III and a Russian tale

• 04 December 2006

Born in Belfast and trained in Moscow, I have long found the English soft on Shakespeare's portraits of abusive power. Russian theatre-makers saw the connection decades ago

Politics

Those Sunday Strasbourg moments

• 27 November 2006
• 2 comments

I stomp out, recalling the quote from Gandhi that sustains me at such dishearteningly frequent moments - even when you are in a minority of one, the truth is still the truth