Guess what happened to me last weekend? Give up? Well, I was clamped by private clampers on an allegedly “private” road near my Kwik-Fit garage (just to get a bloody MOT!). Four and half hours later I’m still there trying to resolve...

Ok, first a confession. I don’t watch football matches at all! The last one I saw was the World Cup final in 1998 – France’s (actually very boring) 3-0 win over Brazil. But if I travel back in time to when I was about six (travel back...

Now I’m not a big one for sitting in cafes “working”. You know – Wi-Fi Access Here. Frappuccinos R-Us. Delicious Cinnamon Muffins Only £2.65. All that. But I’m reliably informed that cafes are where all the “creatives” hang out...

This post is not for the squeamish. So, Guantánamo Bay. What else is there to say about it? Well, more and more, as it happens. Last week I was talking to a former Guantánamo prisoner who saw a fellow prisoner beaten with clubs for...

I used to like a Friday night 1970s television programme called “Appointment With Fear”. Looking back, it was probably pure period cheese, but – along with John Pertwee-era “Dr Who” – it did the job of scaring me and my brother. (“Neil...

The ubiquitous adverts say “War. Revolution. Family. Punk rock. All part of growing up”. And the “Punk is not ded” illustration is dead-on smart marketing. So, altogether then, every reason to be suspicious of “Persepolis”. It’s an...

If youre a US talk radio host and youve got the vice-president on your station, youre going to put a few listeners questions to him, right? Right. Well thats what Scott Hennen did on station WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota, back in October...

Phew, thats ok then! Death penalty states in American can now go back to executing people with lethal injections. The Supreme Court has ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about these killings and that the state of Kentucky...

Do you remember the scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly* when Clint Eastwood shoots down his Mexican partner just at the moment the hangmans noose tightens around his neck? Clints the sharpshooter, and the two are working a scheme...

Is it NIger (stress on the beginning)? Or is it NigER (long stress on the end)? A whole country and I’m not sure how to pronounce it. And neither, I’ve noticed, do British news-readers when (rarely) they have a news report from there...

The sickening death of Banaz Mahmod is widely covered today. This, you’ll remember, is the case of the young Kurdish woman who was killed by members of her family in London for the “crime” of having a lover her family didn’t approve of...

"Shameful”, “inhumane”, “oppressive”, “indefensible”, “adversarial”, “wholly unjustified”, a “blemish” on Britain’s reputation, and treatment that falls "seriously below the standards to be expected of a humane and civilised society”...

It’s an old media trick (and Rageh Omaar’s already done it on ITV earlier this week ), but it works – so today I’m starting off with ‘Iraq In Numbers’. To quote Amnesty’s (well-titled) ‘Carnage and despair’ report, the figures tell a...

I was thinking about this the other day – surely Iraq has been the most reported-on war in the entire history of the world. Well, ok, the Second World War got a lot of coverage (books, television programmes) but my theory is that it...

Waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques have been saved! On Saturday – in a move anticipated and feared by many observers – outgoing US President George W Bush bravely stepped in to preserve the CIA’s right to use...

Wheres the biggest prison in the world? China? The USA? Russia? No? Any other thoughts? Okay, its a trick question (of a kind), because effectively the worlds biggest prison is the entire Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory occupied...

This blog is from our very own Bibi, who asked me to post it, so... ...another week in the media, and another week with China under the international spotlight in the lead-up to the Games. Now China has reportedly increased its...

We dont always say enough about photos in journalism in this blog - so today I will! First of all, the Guardians got an appalling one on its front page . Its of a massive crowd in Gaza carrying the dead body of a 21-month-old girl...

Hes a judo black belt and likes to be photographed doing manly things like shooting and fishing, but has outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin been a force for good? In a big BBC World Service opinion poll out today opinions are...

Whatever you think of Steven Spielberg - and I think some of his films are great! - you certainly cant keep China, the Olympics and human rights out of the news now. The latest case to come under the spotlight is Yang Chunlin, a former...