Salut!

Spirit of the Blitz needed to counter the ISIL/Daesh threat

You will have seen the awful news from Normandy, telling of the murder of a Catholic priest in his church at Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, just south of Rouen (and twinned, as friends in the North East could have told me, with Gateshead). Here is my analysis* ...

Another day in western Europe brings another attack perpetrated by men claiming to act on behalf of ISIL. A priest aged 85 is savagely murdered while celebrating mass at his own church and another person is left "between life and death", to translate the French phrase to describe the critically injured.

A church in a small town may seem the softest of targets and among the most vile of locations for terrorists to visit their evil on innocents.

Minding our language after Bastille night in Nice: liberté, égalité, fraternité

I intended to have a go at those who jeered the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, at an otherwise dignified homage to the dead of July 14 on the Promenade des Anglais. A report in the usually dependable Nice-Matin suggested heavy Front National involvement in a gesture I considered unseemly. A great friend in Nice assures me that anger with the government, and its perceived security failings ahead of and on the fateful night, goes way beyond the odious FN and is embraced by Nicois of all political opinions. I defer ... this is my latest column on words for The National

So many words, which ones to choose?

All the languages we use possess the richness of expression needed to convey the grief and anger aroused by such grotesque events as the carnage of Bastille night in Nice.

Yet three French words evoked by this man-made disaster seem especially potent: liberté, égalité, fraternité, a high-minded national motto that requires no translation.

A town I love so well. Nice en deuil and I mourn with the Nicois

So I went to Nice, just a two-hour drive away, and did my job as well and with as much professionalism and decency as I could. And I hated every minute that I was there, because of the reason I was there.

The iman who tries to stop Muslim prisoners turning to terrorism

This is my second outing for http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/french-prisons-are-helping-turn-criminals-into-jihadis-who-cheer-mass-murderers-like-salah-abdeslam-1569595. Here I talk to a thoroughly decent French-Tunisian iman trying to stop Muslim prisoners becoming terrorists ....

As Salah Abdeslam, the only known survivor of the terrorist gang that attacked Paris on 13 November 2015, made his high-profile entrance into a prison in the southern suburbs of the capital, the sound of applause could be heard from other inmates.

Theresa May 'dream team' exclusive: shock roles for Dacre, Farage, Le Pen

When Salut! cried out for a new insult-free, post-Brexit atmosphere, it didn't mean fun could not still be had. And Theresa, if it is to be her, may not turn out to be as dangerous as a I fear the snarling Tory right will require her to be; she did make a decent, funny speech at a boozy soiree for the Newspaper Press Fund charity at the Irish Embassy earlier this year so cannot be all bad ...

By our New Britain Editor

Theresa May is poised for an easy finishing sprint to victory in the Tory leadership race after her emphatic win in initial voting by fellow Conservative MPs.

May, who presented herself as pro-Remain during the referendum campaign only to become a enthusiastic born-again Leaver once the vote was declared, has even drafted the outline of her new Cabinet, according to usually reliable sources.

Brexit: ordinary decent voters for Leave and the unfortunate company they kept

Although no one can say the dust has settled, we've now had a week and half to digest the indigestible. The deed has been done and those of us who dislike the result have little choice, if we are democrats, but to lump it.

Of course I'd love to wake up and find a second vote had been held overnight and produced a resounding win for Remain (or Get Back In Before The Doors Are Bolted). Actually, a Remain by one vote would suffice.

Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Bangladesh: should the BBC just accept they're terrorists?

Written before the latest ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh atrocity, in Bangladesh, all the points made in this comment piece for The National (see my work for that newspaper at http://www.thenational.ae/authors/colin-randall) remain valid. it is not, however, any kind of attack on the Beeb, warts and all a great institution, just a reasoned challenge to its reluctance to call terrorists terrorists ...

In the last gestures of worthless lives, three men committed mass murder at Istanbul airport and the BBC naturally devoted much time and countless words to the atrocity.

Two words absent from the BBC’s coverage, except when attributed to an outsider or perhaps uttered mistakenly by a reporter, were terrorist and terrorism.

On this day 100 years ago began the Battle of the Somme

It was not the battle to end all battles and it was certainly not the war to end war. But 100 years ago today began the slaughter or maiming of more than one million men in the Battle of the Somme and it is right we should remember their sacrifice.

The photograph is by an esteemed former colleague, Geoff Pugh, reproduced with his consent, and the context takes us back 10 years. As I have said before, forgive me if you have read this here previously. It bears repetition.