Journalist, author, broadcaster
While the social media giant has stepped in to tackle Covid falsehoods, Mark Zuckerberg has still been reluctant to clamp down on politicians spreading lies online…. Here’s my latest column, from the i, 13 July 2020.
For 48 hours, Theresa May looked as if she was in control of her government. Last Friday, Britain’s embattled leader called all her ministers to the bucolic prime ministerial bolt hole at Chequers. The UK cabinet, almost two years to the day of the Brexit referendum, would finally agree a collective position on leaving the […]
The day I left Barcelona an open letter appeared hundreds of miles away, in a central European republic, calling on the local government to condemn the Spanish authorities’ violence in Catalonia. The letter – which also demanded the European Union recognise the outcome of Sunday’s vote – appeared in a nation all too familiar with […]
It is inconceivable that a vote for Brexit would not have a negative impact on the (Irish) Border, bringing cost and disruption to trade and to people’s lives. Theresa May, June 2016 Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past. Theresa May, July 2016 Around three hundred roads bisect the circuitous three-hundred-and-ten-mile border […]
This year, finally, I made it to Perugia journalism festival. Now in its 11th year, the festival has long been spoken of in hushed tones as the place to go to learn out about the latest developments in the media, to discover the coolest new newsroom products and approaches. This weekend did not disappoint. I […]
A week or before the US presidential election, I visited Youngstown in eastern Ohio. On a deserted street corner, across from a bail bondsman and a boarded up shop, an elderly white man explained why he was voting for Donald Trump. “This town used to be something. Now it’s nothing,” he told me. “You guys […]
ABERDEEN, Scotland — The Aberdeen Food Bank Partnership is housed in a former fish-filleting warehouse a stone’s throw from the docks, its shelves lined with boxes of tea and porridge oats, packets of pasta and fresh fruit. In a city once known as “Europe’s oil capital,” former oil workers are now queuing for food parcels. […]
BELFAST — Each year, at midnight on July 11, the Belfast skyline lights up with dozens of bonfires. Scattered across the Northern Irish capital, they are a reminder of a deep-rooted conflict that has in recent years lain largely dormant but which some fear could reignite in the wake of the United Kingdom’s vote to […]
GLASGOW — As hundreds of people gathered outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh last week, there were flags of every European Union state, in a sea of Scottish Saltires. “Scotland loves Europe,” declared one placard. “Don’t EU want me baby,” read another. “We want to find a way to respect the democratic mandate for the people of Scotland to stay in […]
At just 17, Nedžad Avdić was convinced his life was over. After days walking bare-footed, starving, thirsty and exhausted through the verdant Bosnian countryside near Srebrenica he was captured by Bosnian Serb forces and loaded onto a lorry alongside thousands of other Muslims. The convoy stopped in a remote field. Nedžad was told to get […]
