Support my legal appeal against Oliver Kamm, Rupert Murdoch and the Times newspaper

Many thanks to all those who have contributed to my legal appeal via this blog. I have now also launched  on Crowdfund site Fundrazr.com. My aim is to raise £7,500 there by early January, to get to my £10K target so I can launch legal actions on a number of fronts against my stalker Oliver Kamm and his complicit employers, the Times newspaper and its owner Rupert Murdoch.
Here is my Crowdfund page. All contributions, large and small are gratefully received. If you are unable to donate, please do spread the word! Many, many thanks!

UPDATE: A write-up of this story and Kamm's obsessive stalking campaigns can be read here. 
Kamm and his arrogant employers clearly think they're above the law. Let's prove them wrong!

FURTHER UPDATE: 10th Feb 2017: Over £4k now raised here and via Fundrazr. Please help me get up to £10k ASAP so I can launch my legal actions. Many thanks to all who have contributed so far.

FURTHER UPDATE: 24th April 2017. A very big 'Thank you' to everyone who has helped me reach my £10K target. Your support is hugely appreciated!. Having reached my first target, I have now begun legal action against Oliver Kamm and his employers - who by now will have received letters from my lawyers. It is quite likely that a lengthy court battle will ensue, so until the matter is resolved,  contributions to my legal fund are still gratefully accepted and appreciated. Many thanks again to everyone who has supported me.

FURTHER UPDATE: 12th June 2017. Over £10.4K has now been raised, but matter not yet resolved (still at the pre-court exchange of lawyers' letters stage) and until then, your contributions are gratefully accepted and appreciated. Many thanks again to everyone who has supported me.

LATEST UPDATE: 21st August 2017: Over £13K now raised, which has been an amazing effort. A very big 'Thanks' to everyone who has contributed. It looks very likely that we'll be heading to court as the matter is not yet resolved and so a lot more money will be needed.  The 'other side' will be hoping I drop my case but I won't until I get redress for what I have been put through. So please help me get justice and turn the tables on my stalker/serial defamer and his vicariously liable employers! All contributions, large or small, are gratefully accepted and appreciated. Many thanks again to everyone who has supported me!

LATEST UPDATE: 4th December 2017: Oliver Kamm has now been sued for libel and harassment. My counsel has advised me not to serve the writ- already lodged at the court in the summer- against his employers and instead focus the action on Kamm. He believes this would have a number of advantages. It is advice that I have decided very reluctantly to accept- (given the arrogant way The Times -and News UK- arrogantly ignored all my very reasonable requests),- but I do not rule out Kamm's employers- including Rupert Murdoch- being brought into a legal action at a later date if this matter is not resolved satisfactorily. We now have over £17K raised but legal costs have been high and I will be stepping up fundraising to pay for the court costs which could be considerable. All contributions, large or small, are gratefully accepted and appreciated. Many thanks again to everyone who has supported me.

Keep Left Jeremy Corbyn, It's the Key to Your Success

My latest column for Sputnik:

For a man who we're repeatedly told is "unelectable," Jeremy Corbyn seems pretty good at winning elections. He's been an MP since 1983, winning his seat eight times at a general election - and in 2015, he increased his vote in Islington North by 5.8%.

Against all the odds — and all the predictions of the "punditocracy," he was elected Labour leader last summer and increased his vote percentage again when challenged for the leadership this summer. That achievement was all the more impressive when you consider the large number of Corbyn supporting members who were prevented from voting in the poll by Labour's NEC and the party's Compliance Unit.

You can read the whole article here

Edward Snowden: The hypocrisy is in the (Washington) Post

My latest article- for RT.com OpEdge

Consider the following: A newspaper receives documents about mass state surveillance from a whistleblower. It publishes a selection of the material. It is awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting of the leaks.
Then, a couple of years later, having made money from the whistleblower and gained a prestigious award - it publishes an editorial arguing that the whistleblower- who had to leave his country, his family and loved ones and claim political asylum in another - does not deserve an official pardon.
Whatever your views are on whistleblowers, I’m sure you’ll agree that the newspaper has behaved pretty reprehensibly. We can talk about hypocrisy, betrayal, double standards, treachery - and also think of quite a few unprintable words to describe what the paper has done.
But really, the behavior of the Washington Post - the newspaper in question - should not surprise us.

You can read the whole piece here.

The Top 10 Western lies about the Syrian conflict

My latest OpEdge for RT.com

Here are 10 of the worst lies that have been peddled by the West regarding Syria, with the aim of giving people living in Western countries an entirely false view of the conflict that has been raging in the Middle East country since 2011.
As in the case of previous US-led wars against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya the lies told in relation to the ongoing conflict in Syria have been quite outrageous.

1. The West has failed to intervene in Syria - and that's been the problem
This oft-repeated claim (only last week the Washington Post was lamenting 'the disastrous non-intervention in Syria') is a complete inversion of the truth....

You can read the whole piece here.

Why Owen Smith is wrong to call for a 2nd EU Referendum

The latest interview with me on the Mike Parr show on BBC Radio Tees. You can listen here (item starts c 19mins).

US exceptionalism: How dare the EU demand US companies pay more tax!

My latest article for RT.com OpEdge- on the Apple tax affair, the EU Commission and Ireland...

The most revealing thing about the European Commission's ruling that Apple should pay Ireland up to €13 billion in back taxes has been the indignant reaction from the US.
Charles Schumer, described by the BBC as ‘a senior Democratic senator’, said: "This is a cheap money grab by the European Commission, targeting US businesses and the US tax base."
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives thundered: “This decision is awful. Slamming a company with a giant tax bill — years after the fact — sends exactly the wrong message to job creators on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The US Treasury slammed the decision as “unfair”. The White House said it was “concerned” about what it described as a “unilateral approach”. Orrin Hatch, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, called the ruling “an extraordinary decision that targets US business by rewriting already existing tax policies.”

You can read the whole article here

Holidaying in Nazi Germany: Booklet promotes tourism just before WWII

My new piece in the Daily Express

THE aim of this booklet is quite frankly, to persuade you to visit Germany.” Nothing remarkable about that you might think.
With its lovely forests, beautiful mountains and historic cities, Germany is a nice country to visit. 
But the date of the booklet gives one a jolt. It’s 1939 – the year the Second World War started. 
I’ve got a rare copy of the LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) Germany via Harwich travel guide, written by Bernard Newman, urging people to take their holidays in Nazi Germany. 
Yes, that’s right, Nazi Germany. “Make 1939 the year you visit Germany” is probably not the best piece of travel advice that’s ever been given, especially if late summer was the time chosen to go. 
Even so, the LNER booklet is a fascinating read, particularly in light of the dramatic events of September 1939. 
Here are some extracts: 

You can read the whole piece here.

Milosevic exonerated as the NATO war machine moves on

My latest piece- on an unreported story: the exoneration, by the ICTY, of Slobodan Milosevic for the most heinous crimes he was charged with.

The ICTY’s exoneration of the late Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia, for war crimes committed in the Bosnia war, proves again we should take NATO claims regarding its ’official enemies’ not with a pinch of salt, but a huge lorry load.

For the past twenty odd years, neocon commentators and 'liberal interventionist' pundits have been telling us at every possible opportunity, that Milosevic (a democratically elected leader in a country where over 20 political parties freely operated)  was an evil genocidal dictator who was to blame for ALL the deaths in the Balkans in the 1990s. Repeat after me in a robotic voice (while making robotic arm movements): 'Milosevic's genocidal aggression' 'Milosevic's genocidal aggression'.
But the official narrative, just like the one that told us that in 2003, Iraq had WMDs which could be launched within 45 minutes, was a deceitful one, designed to justify a regime change-op which the Western elites had long desired.

You can read the whole piece here.

Keeping it Taped: The Golden Age of Video

My new piece, on the golden age of video, from the Daily Express.



According to reports, Funai Electric of Japan, thought to be the last company in the world still making video cassette recorders (VCRs), is to cease production.
Does this mark the end of the video age? If so, what a shame that would be. The VCR changed the way we lived our lives and its impact can’t really be understated. Today we take it for granted that we don’t have to be at home to watch our favourite programmes at the time when they’re being broadcast.
We’ve got the likes of BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and catch-up TV and we can probably see the programme on YouTube too at some point – that’s if we haven’t set our sleek and slimline DVD to record it. 
So it’s hard for the 21st-century generation, brought up on smartphones and smart TVs, to appreciate how revolutionary VCRs were when they first appeared in Britain in the 1970s...

You can read the whole article here.

Following the Chilcot Report, time for a proper reckoning.

My RT.com OpEdge column on Chilcot, and what needs to be done now....

Although Chilcot was not the Establishment cover-up which many feared, it’s also true that it doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know.
The long-awaited and much-delayed Chilcot report, provides a damning indictment of the New Labour government of Tony Blair and the lies that were told in the lead-up to the disastrous Iraq war.
The Iraq war was ‘not a last resort’ but in fact a war of choice. 'Peaceful options' were not exhausted.
In 2003, there was "no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein" - contrary to what Blair and the neocons told us. Intelligence had "not established beyond doubt" that Iraq had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, despite us being told it was a sure thing that Saddam had WMDs.

You can read the whole piece here.

Oh look, another Russian baddie!

My latest article for RT.com.

The BBC have made a new film of the classic 1930 children’s novel Swallows and Amazons, and you'll probably not be surprised to know who the new baddies are.
Arthur Ransome’s book, set in England’s beautiful Lake District region, was about the outdoor adventures of two families of children. But the 2016 adaptation has introduced two new characters to the story. And guess what? They’re Russian spies!
What makes the tampering with the original text all the more objectionable is that Arthur Ransome himself was a Russophile, and an admirer of a certain Vladimir Lenin. Swallows and Amazonsand Shady Soviet Spies? Red Arthur, who shared a flat with Radek and who married Trotsky’s secretary, must be turning in his grave....

You can read the whole piece here.

The Jo Cox tragedy: Why opposing fascism does not mean supporting the EU

My latest column for RT OpEdge.

Despite the calls of her friend Rachel Reeves, a prominent Labour “Remain” campaigner, for the brutal and shocking murder of 41-year- old Labour MP Jo Cox not to be linked to the Referendum campaign, some EU supporters have done exactly that.
Not only has the tragic death of Cox been used to bolster flagging support for “Remain,” it’s also been used by Establishment-friendly commentators to attack the whole idea of having a referendum in the first place.
The Independent reports a “surge in signatures” on a petition calling for the vote to be cancelled.
But it would be wrong, wholly wrong, to change the way we intend to vote on Thursday because of the murder of Jo Cox and it would also be wrong if the referendum were to be cancelled.
Here‘s why....

You can read the whole article here.

A shorter, revised version of the article also appears in today's Morning Star. It can be read here.

One Week to Brexit? The EU Referendum Enters the Final Furlong

My latest on the EU Referendum - written before the brutal murder of MP Jo Cox.

If we see the EU referendum campaign as a two and a half miles horse-race - and why shouldn't we in the week of the Royal Ascot racing festival - then we're now entering the final furlong.
While "Remain" has looked the likeliest winner for much of the contest, latest polls show that "Leave" has now burst clear. Is this a decisive move, or will there be one late rally for Remain?
Interestingly, while three recent opinion polls have all given Leave the lead — by margins of seven, six and one-point — the bookies still have Remain as the odds-on favorites, even though the odds on a Brexit have been shortened to 6-4 with some firms.

You can read the whole piece here:

Orlando massacre: Does the right to bear guns outweigh the right to go out without fear of being shot?'

Interview with me on RT on the terrible massacre in Orlando.

Every time we get the same thing, don’t we? US president comes saying: “This has got to stop, we can’t carry on like this.” What happens – they do carry on like this. We do have so much talk about the right to bear firearms. What about the right to go to a gay club on a Saturday night without the fear of being shot? What about that right – the right of people to go about their business without the fear of being gunned down? The gun lobby in America – the reality is, it’s just too strong.

You can read the whole interview here.

'US should not dictate to EU regarding Russian sanctions - but it has been'

Here you can watch an interview with me this week on RT News with Rory Suchet in Moscow. Subject: The EU sanctions on Russia.

Flushed Away- the demise of Public Toilets in Britain

Public toilets, libraries, pubs, Post Offices and local bank branches are all disappearing in Britain. My new piece for the Daily Express.

Flushed away: The demise of the public toilets in Britain

PUBLIC toilets are disappearing across Britain. Over the past decade a staggering 1,782 toilets have closed, according to the latest research....

You can read the whole article here.

Blair, Chilcot, Trump, Sanders and ... Desmond Carrington

Interview with me on Spain's Talk Radio Europe with the great Pippa Jones. You can listen here.

The Blair Impeachment Project: Time for action at long last

My latest piece for RT.com

With just over six weeks to go before the long-awaited release of the Chilcot report into the Iraq War the calls for former Prime Minister Tony Blair to be properly held to account for the lies he told us in the lead up to the illegal invasion are increasing by the day.

A few days ago, the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Scottish National Party (SNP) Alex Salmond MP, told RT’s Going Underground program that he would like to see Blair impeached by the British Parliament and also stand trial at the International Criminal Court, if the families of those killed and the wider public agreed.

Other MPs have also expressed their support for Salmond’s initiative....

You can read the whole piece here.

We'd Be Doomed! Project Fear Campaign to Keep UK in EU Goes Into Overdrive

 

 

My latest piece on the EU Referendum for Sputnik News....

One the highlights of the television week in the UK is watching Saturday night repeats of the much-loved 1970s comedy show 'Dad's Army'. The classic sitcom - which even outperformed BBC2's much-hyped live Shakespeare "special" featuring Prince Charles - tells the story of a brave, but rather incompetent Home Guard platoon in World War Two.

All the characters are quite wonderful and very-very funny, but a particular favorite of mine is the gloomy undertaker Private Frazer — who's always forecasting doom and disaster. Recently, I've been wondering if Frazer has secretly been put in charge of the Remain campaign, because some of the claims are pure Dad's Army.

You can read the piece in full here.

Architects of disastrous Iraq war are still at large

My latest piece for RT.com

Bombs going off in Iraq? Well, it happens all the time - what's there to see? Let’s all move along shall we?

On Thursday, at least 13 people were killed in a ISIS attack on a café in Baghdad for the 'crime' of watching a football match. The day before at least 88 people were killed in three explosions across Baghdad; scores were injured. 
Yes, these events got some coverage on Western news channels, but they weren’t the main stories.
The neocon war lobby, who, remember, couldn’t stop talking about Iraq in 2002/3, and telling what a terrible threat the country’s WMDs posed to us, would of course like us to forget the country all together now. They’ve told us lots of times we need to ‘move on’ from talking about the 2003 invasion and instead focus on more important things - like how we can topple a secular Syrian president who’s fighting the very same terrorists who are bombing Baghdad.

The next few months though are going to very tricky for the ‘Don’t Mention the Iraq war’ clique...

You can read the whole article here

V-Day - Ignore the neocons and remember the 27m dead

My new piece for RT.com to commemorate Victory Day.

May 9 is Victory Day – the day that Russia commemorates the tremendous sacrifice made by the people of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War.

Many nationalities took part in the fight against the Nazis, but no single country shed anywhere near as much blood as the Soviet Union. Overall, 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in the war. Yes, that’s right: TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION. There’s no typo.
Yet today, for geopolitical reasons, the enormous contribution that the Soviet Union made to the defeat of Hitler’s forces is being deliberately – and shamefully – downplayed by elites in the west...

You can read the whole piece here.

The Sarmada bombing & the selective outrage of Philip Hammond

 My latest article for RT.com- on the double standards of UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond didn’t take long to pin the blame on Thursday’s bombing of a refugee camp near the Turkish border in Syria on President Assad - even though there was no evidence that Syrian air forces were responsible.

"The Assad regime’s contempt for efforts to restore the cessation of hostilities in Syria is clear for all to see," the neocon declared in a bellicose statement.
Not only did Hammond blame the Syrian government for a ’horrifying’ attack, which the government has denied (and which could have been carried out by Al-Nusra Front), he also took a swipe at ’the regime’ for - wait for it - holding a classical music concert in the ruins of Palmyra - the historic city which was liberated from ISIS by Russian and Syrian forces in March.

You can read the whole article here.

The Panama Papers and Privatisation

My new Public Ownership column for the Morning Star- on the link between the Panama Papers and privatisation.

IT ALL began in 1979. That was the year when privatisation was launched in Britain (back then it was called “denationalisation”) and exchange controls were lifted.
On October 23, Thatcher’s chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe stood up in Parliament and announced the abolition of all existing exchange controls — except those applying to Zimbabwe.
The controls which Howe was abolishing had existed for 40 years — and, like public ownership, were an integral part of the social democratic economic system which existed after WWII. But for the Thatcherites they were an unwelcome restriction which prevented the rich from becoming even richer.

You can read the whole column here

Don't blame Obama! The US has always wanted Britain in the EU

My latest for RT OpEdge:

Barack Obama’s call for the UK to stay in the EU has predictably faced an angry response from British eurosceptics. But it’s wrong to get personal as some right-wingers have done and label Obama “anti-British” – he is simply articulating a long-held US policy.

The US wants Britain to vote “Remain” in the June 23 referendum, not because it would be good for Britain, but because a “Yes” vote would be good for America and, in particular, for Wall Street, the State Department and the US military-industrial complex. The US desperately needs the UK to remain in the EU to help it achieve its global economic and military aims. A British withdrawal would make it more likely that a less Atlanticist and less neoliberal EU would emerge, and that Washington’s influence over Europe would be reduced. The only surprising thing about Obama’s pro-EU intervention is that anyone should be surprised by it. Pushing for “Britain in Europe” is what American presidents do.

You can read the whole piece here. 

1926- what was happening in the UK in the year the Queen was born?

It was the year of The General Strike, flappers and Edgar Wallace. My piece on the events of 1926 in the Daily Express.
I was on BBC London too talking about the year 1926. The interview with Nikki Bedi is here (starts at c1hr11mins)

A Charmed Life: David Cameron, the fast-tracked Teflon Tory (Parts One and Two)

My two-parter on David Cameron, the fast-tracked Teflon Tory, for RT.com

The #PanamaPapers leaks have exposed David Cameron as a hypocrite and consequently done great harm to his reputation.
If the political fall-out from the leaks does eventually bring the British Prime Minister down then he can't really complain as he's had a dream ride up to now.
He didn’t deserve to become Conservative Party leader in 2005 as his main rivals for the job were better qualified and more experienced and he most certainly, given his track record in office, didn't deserve to get another term as Prime Minister in 2015.

You can read the rest of Part One here.  Part Two can be read here.

Putin's Q&A: Around the world in 80 questions

My take on Putin's marathon Q & A session, for RT.com

There are more questions than answers’ the American reggae artist Johnny Nash sang in 1972. The same was certainly true of Thursday’s marathon Q & A with Vladimir Putin, when over 3 million questions were sent in by the general public for consideration.
Today’s session, compared to others we've had in the past, was a relatively ‘quickie’ - it ‘only’ lasted three hours thirty-nine minutes - one hour and eight minutes short of Putin’s record, set in 2013.
And the Russian President ‘only’ answered eighty questions. What a slacker!
Even though no records were broken, it was still a pretty impressive watch - particularly for Westerners unused to the rather revolutionary idea of leaders answering a flurry of questions directly put to them by members of the public for hours on end.

You can read the whole piece here.

The #PanamaPapers: If it was a US/Soros-backed plot it backfired badly

My piece on the Panama Papers for RT.com

If ‘Get Putin’ really was the agenda behind the data leaks as some believe, then the plan seems to have backfired as it is US ally David Cameron who is currently feeling the most heat from the revelations....

You can read the whole piece here.
Meanwhile here are extracts from a RT interview with me on why the main charge against David Cameron is one of hypocrisy.

Red Rum: The horse who saved the Grand National

 

 My piece on Grand National history from today's Daily Express.

IT’S watched and bet on by millions but the world’s most famous steeplechase was once in danger of disappearing – until a certain Red Rum came along..

 
It is estimated that 79 per cent of the adult population of Britain will have some form of financial interest in the outcome of tomorrow’s Grand National, with well over £150million being wagered.
A maximum crowd of 72,500 will be in attendance at Aintree, while millions more will be watching the world’s most famous steeplechase on television. It is no exaggeration to say that the Grand National is the one sporting event in Britain that stops the country.
So popular is the race today it is hard to believe that about 45 years ago its very future was in doubt. In the late 1960s and early 1970s people were talking mournfully about how the “Last National” could not be far off.

You can read the whole article here.

Radovan Karadzic deserves punishment - but what about the Neocons?

My latest piece for RT.com OpEdge

The conviction of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic shows that no one is above the law, says the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein.
Karadzic was just sentenced to forty years in jail for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
"No matter how powerful they are, no matter how untouchable they imagine themselves to be, no matter what continent they inhabit, the perpetrators of such crimes must know that they will not escape justice," Al-Hussein said.
But is that really true?

You can read the whole piece here:

Google this! Hillary Clinton and the Syrian regime-change conspiracy

My new piece for RT.com on the HRC emails.

If you’d have said a year ago that the US State Department, Google, and Al Jazeera had been collaborating in pursuance of regime change in Syria, chances are you’d have been casually dismissed as a ‘crank’ and a ‘conspiracy theorist’.
Syria was a people’s uprising against a wicked genocidal Russian-backed dictator and the West had nothing to do with the bloodshed which engulfed the country. If you thought otherwise then you were considered an 'Assad apologist'.
However, thanks to Wikileaks, the Freedom of Information Act, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of a private, non-secure email server, we can see what was really going on behind the curtain.

You can read the whole article here.

RT Sputnik interview with George Galloway on Internet Trolling/Stalking

I was on board the Sputnik with George Galloway and Gayatri on Saturday, talking about my experiences of being stalked and trolled- and agenda driven wikipedia editing. The interview starts at around 12 minutes. Before that there is a good discussion on Turkey.

I'm Confused, can anyone help me? Part 6

Guess what, dear reader.  I'm confused, can anyone help me? Part 6. From RT.com OpEdge.

There are some strange happenings in the world of late and I'm confused. Very confused. Can anyone help me?
The first thing I’m confused about is the claim made this week by Supreme Allied NATO Commander General Strangelove, sorry, Breedlove, that Putin (along with Assad) are deliberately 'weaponizing’ the migration/refugee crisis to ‘overwhelm European structures and break European resolve'.
According to Breedlove, Russia and the Syrian government are deliberately bombing people in Syria to get them to leave the country and cause major problems for Europe. How absolutely deplorable! What utter swines they must be! 
But hang on a minute.
I could have sworn that there was quite a significant refugee crisis before Russian intervention in Syria began last autumn and before the Syrian government launched new offensives.

You can read the whole piece here.

The Murder of Olof Palme: Why we must never forget the Swedish socialist.

My latest piece for RT.Com OpEdge

Thirty years ago today, Swedish PM Olof Palme, one of the true giants of post-war European democratic socialism, was shot dead in Stockholm. The assassination shocked the world. Today, theories still abound as to who was behind his killing.
Palme’s death was a major blow to progressive, left-wing politics, coming as it did during a decade when the left was retreating in the face of neoliberal onslaught. You could argue that the European left has never really recovered from the loss of Palme – and that post-war western European socialism itself was murdered on that cold February night in Stockholm.

You can read the whole article here.

Welcome return of The Good Old Days...

My Daily Express piece on the return of a much-loved television favourite....

Dramatist John Osborne wrote in the 1950s: “The music hall is dying and with it a significant part of England. Some of the heart of England has gone, something that once belonged to everyone…” But now music hall is back.
The Good Old Days, British television’s longest-running variety show, broadcast from 1953 to 1983, is being re-shown on Fridays on BBC Four. 
What a pleasure it has been to watch once again great speciality acts of the past: trick cyclists, comedy drunks, ventriloquists, knife throwers. The Good Old Days aimed to recreate the golden age of music hall. 
The programme came from the ornate Leeds City Varieties Theatre, a Grade II-listed music hall built in 1865. The audience all wore Edwardian-era clothes....


You can read the whole article here.   Above, you can watch a really excellent edition of The Good Old Days, from 1976.
If you enjoy that, here is a petition to the BBC asking them to reshow all existing episodes. It's got 600 signatures at the moment- let's try and get it up to 1,000!

Russian military is rubbish! No hang on, it's actually pretty good

My new column for RT.com OpEdge

Repeat after me: “The Russian military is much weaker than many think, with lots of outdated, dilapidated commie era equipment.” And: “The Russian military is a major threat to us so we need to spend more on our military and renew Trident.”
If these sentences sound contradictory, that’s because they are. My RT OpEdge colleague Bryan Macdonald has coined the phrase ‘Russophrenia’ to describe the condition “where the sufferer believes Russia is both about to collapse, and take over the world.”....

You can read the whole article here:

The US military-industrial complex, a 'non-partisan' think tank and Sputnik

My two latest pieces for RT.com OpEdge.

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex,”' US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said 55 years ago, warning of the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”
Well, Ike was right to warn us. And his farewell address was the first thing I thought of when I read the new report 'Propaganda in Orbit' by the 'non-partisan' US-based policy research institute, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)...

You can read the whole of the piece here- while here, you can read my new piece on 'Bombing Plagiarism' in Syria.

Is the storey over for Bungalows?

My latest piece from the Daily Express

THE figures from the National House Building Council (NHBC) speak for themselves.
While more homes were finished last year than at any time in the past seven years just one in every 50 was a bungalow. That is down from about one in six in the 1980s.
To account for the decline in the building of bungalows, house builders say that elderly people are opting for retirement flats while families want to buy houses. But is falling demand really the reason? Bungalows have been very popular in Britain for many years...

You can read the whole piece here.

Forget War and Peace – 1970s costume drama The Pallisers is the thing to watch

My Guardian piece on the return to British tv screens of the classic 1970s period costume drama The Pallisers.

Its fake backdrops may be creaky and its pacing slow by today’s standards, but The Pallisers, the 1974 BBC Trollope adaptation now on daytime TV, wins you over with its nuance and emotional intelligence

Quality period costume drama is back on the BBC. Not just in War and Peace, but now the return of what I would argue is the best of them all: the 1974 series The Pallisers, which has just started at lunchtimes on BBC2. (It’s not available on iPlayer, but if you want to catch up with the first couple of episodes, you can find them on YouTube.)

You can read the whole piece here.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent: When 'Possibly' & 'Probably' Mean 'Certainly'

My new piece for Sputnik UK:

In my Concise Oxford Dictionary "probable" is defined as "that may be expected to happen or prove true, likely" and "possible" is defined as "that can exist, be done, or happen." But something very strange happened to the English language on Thursday, January 21st, 2016. The words "probably" and "possibly" changed their meaning to "certainly."
The report of Sir Robert Owen QC into the death of Alexander Litvinenko apparently told us for sure that President Putin and the Russian state ordered the killing of the ex-FSB operative.
What the report said was "probable" or "possible" or "could" have happened, was interpreted as being "certain."

You can read the whole piece here:

Davos is the problem, not the solution

My new piece for RT.com OpEdge

In the real world, there’s mass unemployment, an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and the biggest refugee crisis since World War Two.
Meanwhile at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the business, financial and political elites who have helped create the mess we’re in, sipped expensive champagne, networked, and gave us lectures on what we need to be doing to sort things out....

You can read the whole piece here.

Concorde takes off: 40 years ago supersonic travel came to UK...secrets of iconic jet

My new piece from the Daily Express.

IT WAS the day when a longheld aviation dream finally came true. Exactly 40 years ago this week, at 11.40am on Wednesday 21st January 1976, the world’s first commercial supersonic passenger service was launched.
Two Concorde aircraft took off simultaneously, one from Heathrow, the other from Paris, flying respectively to Bahrain and Rio de Janeiro.
For the first time ever air passengers could travel faster than the speed of sound. In fact, on board Concorde, with its cruising speed of 1350mph, passengers could travel twice as fast as the speed of sound.
The supersonic age had truly begun....

You can read the whole article here.

British politics like a Francis Durbridge thriller - nothing is what it seems

My new piece for RT.com:

It’s just over forty years since British television first screened Francis Durbridge’s classic thriller The Doll, in which - much like Britain's present political system - few people and things are what they at first appear.
RT‘s motto is ‘Question More,’ while Francis Durbridge encourages us to question everything and everybody. Without giving away too much of the plots (and you’re in for a real treat if you’ve never see a Durbridge thriller before), the character you thought was the hero’s friend, often turns out to have been plotting against him and is part of some criminal conspiracy. The people you thought were the ‘bad guys’ were actually on the side of justice. The man who’s behaving very suspiciously turns out to have been a detective. But can we even trust the detective?

You can read the whole piece here.

Neil Clark’s Sporting Edge: Where have all the goals gone?

My new Sporting Edge column for RT.com

At half time in the Premier League football program on Saturday there was just one goal in the six 3pm kick-offs. The lack of goals - particularly in the first half of matches - has been a feature of English football this season.
Take Manchester United as an example. On Saturday they were drawing 0-0 at half-time with Swansea, the ninth match in a row at Old Trafford where Louis van Gaal’s team had failed to score in the first 45 minutes. Overall the Premiership’s average of goals per game after this weekend’s fixtures stood at 2.58 - fractionally higher than last season’s 2.57- courtesy of a seven-goal thriller between Everton and Stoke City on 28th December), but lower than any year since 2008-9.
It’s not just in the Premiership where goals are proving hard to come by....

You can read the whole column here.