Monthly Archives: March 2011
A noble colleague
Today’s FT includes a thought-provoking and beautifully restrained piece by my former colleague Charles Clover who was expelled from Libya at the weekend and is now back in his Moscow bureau. Apart from being a thoroughly nice human being, Charles is an experienced journalist who has reported with excellence on other hot spots of the Middle East. But he knew he was taking a professional risk by writing a very personal eyewitness account of the incident that led to his expulsion. Charles was breakfasting in his Tripoli hotel and meditating on …
A Better Recipe for demos in London
Former Met senior officer Brian Paddick has provided some worthwhile advice to his former colleagues about how to better control the next anti-cuts demo and prevent it from descending into headline grabbing violence. He suggests quite rightly that prevention rather than reaction is the best remedy and those suspected of planning to turn a peaceful march into a riot should be required to show their faces and be thoroughly searched before hand, and, if necessary ‘taken out’ by being arrested. These are the kind of tactics-together with more focused intelligence …
Bad losers & Good Lovers
There is nothing worse in life but a bad loser, but then there is nothing better than a productive love match. Wenger continues to cry foul over the match at the Nou Camp, thus in denial about the extent to which Arsenal were systematically out played on all fronts. Not only were they pressed successfully by Barca everytime they tried to hold the ball, but struggled throughout the game to contain every avalanche of attack from the opposing side, not to mention their inability to destroy a skilled game …
Suffering in the Nou Camp
I caught up with the Arsenal fan at Gerona airport as we were waiting to catch the plane back to London. He was at the news stand thumbing through a report in an English newspaper of his team’s defeat at the Nou Camp. He seemed a quieter man than the one who, with his mates, had pranced about near the stadium two hours before the match, rat-assed, and singing ‘We’ve got Cesc Fabregas’ over and over again. I felt kind of sorry for him and thought of nothing better to …
Miss hits
Some great ball control, wonderful passing movements, and a nice build up to the good Keita goal but only 1-0 in the end- and against Zaragoza. I lost count of how many lost chances. It was great to have Valdes back. But his anguished look every time he was involved in a clash with an opponent made him look fragile. As for Pep, God knows how many pain killers he was carrying in his bloodstream to get him on his feat. We need to make the most of Pujol’s …
I am a cule supporter of La Roja
The other day I travelled to Arsenal’s Emirates stadium in the company of friends from London’s Penya Blaugrana and some late arrivals from Barcelona. Half-way between the Embankment and Holloway station, we were joined by a group of Arsenal fans. At one point they tried to annoy us with the chants ‘We’ve got Cesc Fabregas, We’ve got Cesc Fabregas’ . Much as I wish that Cesc was at Barca I felt more annoyed hearing a young Catalan tell the Arsenal fans that Spain’s World Cup had left him cold. I …
Spies: Author Talk
Windsor Festival Spring Programme – Spies Bestselling historians Jimmy Burns and Alex Von Tunzelmann talk about espionage during WWII and the Cold War. Jimmy Burns is the author of Papa Spy, the highly acclaimed biography of Jimmy’s father, Tom Burns, who served as an intelligence officer in Madrid during WWII. Alex Von Tunzelmann’s latest book, Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean, discusses the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crises from the perspectives of Kennedy, Castro and the CIA. As …
Shakira Cule Part 2
The news- emanating from Bogota and reproduced in today’s Mundo Deportivo that Shakira has agreed to become a kind of roving ambassador for Barca as well as poor children without a voice can only be welcome. So we are told Shakira’s charitable Foundation Pies Descalzos – an educational trust for underprivileged children in her native Colombia- has formed a strategic alliance with Barca’s foundation, the Fundacio FCB which exists to promote the professed values of the club – solidarity, effort, companionship, friendship, sacrifice, and tolerance. The two foundations are set …
