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BEING A JOURNALIST sometimes just involves waiting in a state of wretched anxiety while something you desperately need to happen doesn’t happen. It’s not unusual for me to be sitting hunched over my laptop, stomach acid flowing freely, feeling like it’s burning a hole through a vital organ or two, praying that a simple question I asked seven hours ago to an indifferent press officer is being handled. Knowing but denying the truth that it’s sitting feebly in an inbox about as likely to be read as a letter from the bank. Here I am, in exactly one of those moments. Several hours late forRead More →

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Please see my latest blogpost, another story from my travels around Asia, that has appeared on We Blog the World   One evening as I sat outside my hotel, slouching and sweating in the heat, a young Cambodian boy called Thoi who I had given a few dollars to the day before suddenly arrived out of nowhere. Without any hesitation he repeated an offer from yesterday to visit his home and his family. I had awkwardly but politely declined it then, but this time, maybe just out of sheer curiosity, I decided to take him up on it. As we scrabbled across the dust, dirtRead More →

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I am very pleased to have been taken on by SMS community business news site 160Characters to provide regular news and features to its large membership of SMS industry professionals. I welcome contacts and releases from PR companies operating in this field. Please feel free to contact me.Read More →

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It was the usual haughty performance from the Prime Minister at PMQs. Cameron looked delighted at his own ability to deftly avoid questions on child poverty and public sector suffering, as his party and the liberal democrats next to them chortled and brayed at every witty evasion. There were even a few heart-warming jokes about honourable members’ facial hair grown for Movember. Top fun! Has there even been a more potent example of being out of touch? The anger from Ed Miliband and the Labour opposition, an inoculation-strength dose of the real bad blood that has been let all over the UK, was rejected, ignored,Read More →

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Perhaps it was because a Friday afternoon coffee had turned into a beer, or perhaps it was because I was on my way out of my job as a reporter, that a contact was being unusually honest. As we sank our pints and rued the barren economic climate that had cost this senior property agent his big-bonus lifestyle and me, in part, my job, he volunteered a very simple truth in honest language. “Ben,” he said resignedly, “our system exists in one of only two states: fear or greed”. Speaking for himself and his Mayfair colleagues, he explained how when things are good the industryRead More →

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If there was any doubt in my mind about which way to vote on AV, the ‘no’ campaign has helped clear up the matter. The patronising force-feeding of crudely couched untruths and malevolent over-simplifications instead of presenting us with a well thought-out list of arguments and cogent analysis shows the present system up for all of its flaws. Is it because they think we wouldn’t get our feeble heads around their elevated and lofty arguments? Is it because they don’t know why they are against it themselves they just know that they don’t want change? Is it because they know that if they tried toRead More →

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Ah you have to love the French…(well you don’t have to as most people find).. For the majority of (working) people the idea of drinking at lunchtime is becoming more of a treat than a habit. The fear of returning sheepishly to the office and having to snake past colleagues to slump down at your desk, trying to avoid any contact with your pink and bleary eyes. The inevitable afternoon hangover as the short burst of tipsyness that seemed perfectly sane before subsides by three leaving you feeling wretched and unable to function at anywhere near the usual level. And in most jobs the worstRead More →