Just alerted by former colleagues that Brian Paddick has been decent about me at the Leveson inquiry . Today’s Guardian blog comes out with following : 12.23pm: Brian Paddick, a former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner who is now a Lib Dem politician, has taken the stand as today’s first witness. 12.26pm: Paddick says while he was at the Met he had lunch with staff from the Guardian and the Daily Mirror – although he describes the latter as “more of an audience with Piers Morgan”. He says the Mirror lunch …
Falklands/Malvinas: An Open Letter to Sean Penn
Dear Sean, I am writing in response to your comment in today’s Guardian. We seem to have missed each other when you were recently in Buenos Aires. I note that you were granted a meeting with ‘President Kirchner’ (sic)- that was her late husband. I am surprised your knowledge of Argentine matters did not extend to calling her by her official and family name Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. But don’t worry this kind of slip won’t matter a damn to the current incumbent of the Casa Rosada whose style of …
Poetry vs play station
It felt like a nice tonic seeing Barca play as they did last night-creativity, goals, and much presence of La Cantera –not least Messi who was in overdrive. Only hours earlier I had to suffer two cule friends of mine moaning till the early hours about how this Barca was tired and had run out of ideas and that we could be reaching the end of a cycle i.e over to you Real Madrid. I watched Messi , pure poetry in motion, while thinking of what Vicente Del Bosque told me …
Football’s wise senor
It was a privilege to accompany Vicente del Bosque on his 24 hour visit to London yesterday when he flew the flag for his country at the Spanish tourist office, at a Q &A session at the Lumiere Cinema, and much later at Abel Lusa’s ever welcoming and excellent Cambio de Tercio restaurant on the Old Brompton Road. The fact that he is one of the most successful managers in football history has not gone to his head. On the contrary he remains understated and modest, insisting that he would …
Bruisers in the Camp Nou
Tonight’s second-leg King’s Cup tie between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona at the Camp Nou had a a rough edge to it that almost left a nasty taste. But edge-of-the-seat stuff nonetheless. Who said El Clasico was beginning to get too regular and boring? – I didn’t. This was a reprise performance for both sides with clear echoes of last year’s encounter in which the game was reduced by the thuggery of Real Madrid on one side, and the theatrics of FC Barcelona on the other. That said the game …
Las lecciones que Kate Middleton puede aprender de su abuela política publicado en el Magazine del El Mundo
Autor: Jimmy Burns Marañón Pocas emisiones radiotelevisadas de las difundidas con carácter general pueden presumir de suscitar un cariño tan persistente como el mensaje anual de Navidad de la reina Isabel de Inglaterra. Con su aire de sentido común y sensibilidad solemnes y de firme moralidad cristiana, el monarca más longevo del mundo se identifica con el dolor y el sufrimiento de un mundo convulso al mismo tiempo que brinda palabras de consuelo y esperanza como solo puede hacerlo alguien que debe su existencia tanto al pueblo como a Dios. En …
Barca’s beauty: A view from the Gods
I have to admit that sometimes I thank God I can watch certain matches in the comfort of my sitting room. This is not because I am a couch potato by nature, or that Madrid is cold and wet at this time of year (as is Bar & Co, the boat on the Thames where I sometimes gather with fellow cules) , but because sometimes TV gives you a perspective on a match which you simply cannot capture sitting or standing in the cheapest seat you can get in …
Rick Stein’s Spain
In case you missed it, try and pick up somewhere, sometime on Rick Stein’s Spanish Christmas shown last night on BBC 2. Rick, in my view, is the most human of ‘celebrity’ cooks, with a genuine interest in Spain’s culinary habits, and a deep respect for and understanding of how food and wine –in its varied manifestations-go to the heart of the country’s soul. As someone born in Spain to a Spanish mother and with many years of experience of living and working in the country, I felt privileged to …
Havel and a spy who came in from the cold
If I’d read the character in some spy novel, I would have thought him a figment of the writer’s imagination-so unlike he was from anything I had encountered thus far. It was in the early 1990’s and I was in Oxford attending a weekend conference on the changing post-Cold war intelligence landscape when a friend suggested there was someone among the foreign delegates I might be interested in meeting in a more relaxed atmosphere. I arrived one saturday evening at one of the town’s quieter pubs to find my friend …
Barca rules the World
On June 12th 1963, thousands packed the Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona play Santos FC of Brazil in a friendly , and in particular one player called Edson Arantes do Nascimento Pelé. A year earlier, Santos had won the Brazil Cup, the Campeonato Paulista, the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup.The Brazilian national side won the World Cup that same year. In the following season, Santos went on to win the Copa Brazil, the Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup once again.At the Camp Nou, Barca won 2-0 and yet …
