Salut!

Minding our language: Churchill would approve - if only he'd said it

This is my latest column on words for The National*, Make up your own mind ...

“Dad’s become so right-wing.” So said the elder daughter I once caught inviting a canvasser for Britain’s Conservative party into the house.

Fathers have been called worse. Any hurt feelings soon gave way to the thought that when it comes to politics, words have lost meaning.

Peter Jukes is right: Clodagh Hartley case shows 'press tribalism', rightly so

In his balanced and often engaging account of the calamitous case against "Brooks and others", as the Old Bailey tannoy messages had it, Peter Jukes remarks on the clannishness of newspaper journalists.

"..though I've enjoyed working with them, I've never met quite such a tribal profession," says Jukes, who tweeted and blogged on the entire eight-month process.

And I suppose the widespread relief, even delight, at the acquittal of Clodagh Hartley proves his point well. People who work for newspapers do often feel a collective sense of pride and loyalty, defiance and self-preservation.

Deplore Aqsa Mahmood and the Halane twins but pity the Jihadists' parents

This comment piece* is the result of almost daily reflection, and months of relentless work, on the phenomenon of young western men and women volunteering to abandon useful lives and fight with or lend support to Islamic State or similar. We have heard a lot about Aqsa Mahmood - much of it from her own disturbing messages on social media - and the Manchester twin sisters Zahra and Salma Halane, but what about their parents, and the families of thousands of others would-be jihadists around Europe? ...

The 'Jihadi Hunter', broken families and bitter-sweet endings

So we've had Armistice Day, the mighty cooling towers of Ferrybridge power station and local newspaper closures. Back, inevitably we come to jihad and the wannabe jihadists of the West. This, in large part, is the story* of two men who have not met but whose families were afflicted by the hold extreme Islam exercises over some gullible young men and women ...

A tale of two fathers illustrates the contrasting fortunes of families blighted by the scourge of young western Muslims being lured to conflict by extremists.

Harrow and goodbye: the grim reaper visits another local newspaper

Irish republicans had their own ways of trying to close papers

As Kingshirker, a username I sometimes turn to when posting comments online (its origins are innocent but as interesting as the experience of watching grass grow), my response at the Press Gazette to news of more local newspaper closures was short and angry: 'Shame on these wretched suits. They might as well be making biscuits for all they truly care about good local journalism.' I thought occasion merited a more affectionate look at one of those papers and the following piece now appears at the same site ...

Not the war that ended all war: Armistice Day and reasons to remember

Kim Willsher, a good friend and top-class journalist in Paris, had some moving words to describe why today, the 96th anniversary of the Armistice, falling in this centenary year of the start of the First World War, is important. I hope she will not mind that I repeat them here, from her Facebook page ...

Views of Britain: (2) the squirrel and the birdseed

Yes, I know it's only my back garden. I also know a squirrel is not a cuddly, furry little gem of nature but a rat with bushy tail that chews electricity cables (been there) and generally makes a nuisance of itself.

Views of Britain: (1) the coffee mugs of Ferrybridge

Better photographs have been taken of the wonderful sight that presents itself on the A1, or to be more accurate the A1(M) for this stretch, between Doncaster and Wetherby.

This one was not the work of a seasoned photographer using state-of-the-art equipment to capture the tall, proud cooling towers of the Ferrybridge power station.

Minding our language: Islamic State, Lenin's Tomb and students behaving less badly than supposed

Lenin and H G Wells ponder the NUS position on IS: from Internet Archive Book Images

Wonderful, disgusting, miraculous, outrageous ... there is no end to the list of words that, taken out of context, can assume quite different meanings from what was intended. From my latest column on the use and abuse of language* ...

If I wrote that a play “could have been a work of triumph in the hands of a more convincing cast ”, it would be annoying to find just four words, “a work of triumph”, attached to my name in advertising material.

Since I have not been entrusted with drama reviews since my local newspaper days, I cannot pretend to have been a victim of such distortion. But the history of arts journalism is littered with selective, misleadingly clipped or downright fraudulent quotes attributed to critics by film and theatre marketing people.