Author Archives: Jimmy Burns

Saving Battersea Park

Posted on June 25, 2015 in the Blog, Misc category

Battersea Park is not only the jewel in the crown of Wandsworth Council which is responsible , on behalf of rate payers, for its management and care , but also one of London’s most historic, and best loved green spaces, south of the River but easily accessible from west and east London, and just across two Bridges, from Chelsea and Kensington and all points north. The park has been part of my conscious life as a writer, journalist, local resident, and London citizen, for over fifty years. I remember as …

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Serrat at The Barbican

Posted on June 14, 2015 in the Blog, Misc category

Serrat, thanks for the reunion It was around 1984 that I went to my first a concert by Joan Manuel Serrat. Amid tears and songs,  I hugged my wife and those around us. At that time we were experiencing the terminal decline of the military regime in Argentina, the junta that had disappeared after about 9,000 people before provoking a grotesque war with Britain in the Falklands – Two bald men fighting over a comb, said the old Borges. The singer-songer writer Serrat  wanted to see the democracy in Latin …

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Serrat en Londres

Posted on June 13, 2015 in the Blog, Misc category

Era alrededor del 1984 que estuve por primera vez en  un concierto de Joan Manuel Serrat entre lágrimas y cantos, acompañando cada palabra y letra que recitaba, abrazado con mi mujer y con los que nos rodeaban. En esa época vivíamos la decadencia terminal del régimen militar en Argentina, ese junta que había hecho desparecer a unos 9,000 para luego provocar una guerra esperpéntica con el Reino Unido en las Islas Malvinas – dos calvos luchando por un peine, decía el viejo Borges. El Serrat de esa época quería ver …

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Renewing my Barca membership

Posted on May 21, 2015 in the Football, Misc category

Nothing like renewing one’s FC Barcelona membership card-as I’ve just done – at the Camp Nou-to focus one’s mind. Membership does not come cheap and in the many years of being a cule  I haven’t exactly gained much benefit from it. Phones lines are usually busy so it is almost impossible to communicate, let alone vote from London where I live for much of the year. Not being a techo geek, I find the membership section of the Barca website difficult to navigate, and I’ve never managed to get a …

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The privilege of being a Barca fan

Posted on May 6, 2015 in the Football, Misc category

Let me honest. It’s been a long time since I felt as proud of being a Barca fan as tonight when FC Barcelona beat Bayern Munich 3-0. This was a game played by two great sides, charged with emotion, pursued with strength, and delivered with grace by the best player in the world that worked his magic a amidst giants of the game. This was a first leg that should have been a final but will still endure in the memory of any true football fan as a master class, …

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I will vote Labour tomorrow

Posted on May 6, 2015 in the Misc category

No I don’t think Ed Milliband is a natural leader- but he has worked hard to be taken more seriously and deserves greater respect than the misinformation and crude insults launched at him during the campaign by bigots- the lie that having more Scot nats in the UK parliament and voting on certain issues with Labour will lead to a disintegration of the UK (more chance of this happening with a Conservatives in power and pushing for an exit from the EU). No I don’t think Cameron has been a …

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The Beauty of Messi

Posted on March 19, 2015 in the Football category

The Beautyof Messi It was my wife, not a football fan, with me on the night, who summed it all up. “Messi is beautiful.” Now,  that the player is not exactly adonis, still less a narcissist, we all know. He is short and scraggly, long-nosed, walks with a stoop, and has a tendency to clear his throat by spitting, or on a bad day, seemingly throwing up. Nor does he set you on fire when he speaks, with his squeeky Rosario accent, far less musical and evocative than that of …

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Why Cervantes should stay in Gibraltar

Posted on February 12, 2015 in the Uncategorized category

In this turbulent world we live in, there can be few certainties about what may contribute to a better understanding between the peoples of this earth- but I would personally put language and culture high up on my list- if, that is.  both are freed from the stifling intolerance of politics. The news that the Spanish government is to close the Instituto Cervantes in Gibraltar is a backward step in term of engagement between British and Spanish people, given the role it had begun to played in helping new generations …

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Thugs should have no place in football

Posted on January 29, 2015 in the Blog, Misc category

Professional football is not just any sport- at its highest reputational level , it is a money-spinning machine , a show-room of celebrity, as well as talent, of dubious politics, and even less morality, and with enormous social impact, for better or for worse. Players and those who manage them should not be allowed to behave like thugs. Their conduct is one that not only impacts on fans in the stadium, in turn fuelling the most violent and prejuduced attitudes that they may be prone to, but also disrupts domestic …

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Nisman puts Argentina in the dock

Posted on January 20, 2015 in the Uncategorized category

The discovery of the dead body of Argentine judge Alberto Nisman in his Buenos Aires flat has justifiably refocused international attention on a country that has always seemed to inhabit its very own political hinterland somewhere between a western democracy infiltrated by the Mafia and a third world banana republic. Nisman was found dead on Sunday night in his flat on the 13th floor of a luxury tower block in the capital’s prestigious Puerto Madero district just hours away from appearing before the country’s law makers in Congress to explain …

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