The commentators 23-12-15...on ChristmasI stopped believing in Father Christmas around 1971, but I still believe in you, Mother Christmas. We leave a glass of sherry out for Santa, but, quite frankly, you deserve the whole bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream. Here’s hoping you get a rest in between filling Santa’s sack and mucking out the reindeer. I remain – all of us, we all remain – eternally in your debt
- Allison Pearson, Daily Telegraph Countless young people from broken families spend hours shuttling hundreds of miles on motorways between homes on December 25. They down their Christmas dinner at one house and then are expected to eat another a few hours later, many miles and hours away. They are uprooted from one set of family celebrations and dumped into the middle of another lot, where their arrival is very often resented by their step-brothers and stepsisters
- Paul Coleridge, Daily Mail Try swapping most of the animal protein we eat for vegetable protein. It’s not painful, unless we make it so. Many British people used to eat dhal every day. They called it pease pudding, pease pottage or pea soup. As in South Asia, its ingredients varied from place to place and season to season. It’s just one component of a diet that offers plenty of variety – without trashing the great variety of life. I’m not suggesting that you eat no meat or other animal products. I am suggesting that we should all eat far less. Save the splurge for Christmas. And even then, choose carefully
- George Monbiot, The Guardian Tis the season to whip out the credit card. As I type, millions of Britons are undoubtedly flooding into shops or splashing out online full of festive panic: set spending habits to Defcon Christmas. So apologies in advance for the Scroogefest, but latest figures confirm Britain’s supposed economic recovery rests on a personal debt timebomb. When it runs out is unclear, but run out it will - Owen Jones, The Guardian
And so we have a repeat of the Elveden situation where foot soldiers were left to carry the can while the generals who called the shots went free...
Ten Mirror group journalists, including half a dozen former editors, deputy editors and a current high-ranking executive, were "cleared" by the DPP yesterday. Several of them swore under oath at Leveson that hacking never happened at their papers. Some may have done nothing wrong. Others may have orchestrated wholescale criminal activity. We may never know. And that isn't right. The innocent will forever be tainted, while the guilty go unpunished. Editor's blog: A nagging sense of injustice Comment Awards, 2015Teenage ebola diarist honouredTuesday 24 November, 2015
A 13-year-old girl whose diary of life during the ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone made the Observer splash became the youngest winner at the EI Comment Awards in London today. Bintu Sannoh was named young commentariat of the year for this piece about the crisis and two further articles about the stigma and poverty and hunger that came in the wake of the disease. Six months later she was able to return to school - but she writes about how everything had changed, with only a third of pupils having survived. Janan Ganesh emerged the sole double winner of the morning as the Financial Times took pride of place at the ceremony at the RIBA headquarters. He won the top accolade of commentariat of the year, having earlier been named political commentator of 2015.
His paper won the award for the best comment pages, Gillian Tett was business commentator and Michael Skapinker won the new prize for business ethics commentary. The Times also claimed a clutch of prizes: David Aaronovitch was honoured for comment piece of the year for this article after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Jenni Russell won the new diversity award, Hugo Rifkind was arts and culture commentator and Sathnam Sanghera media commentator (in succession to SubScribe). Other winners included Simon Jenkins, Gary Younge and Cory Doctorow of the Guardian, Allister Heath of the Telegraph, Channel 4, and the science writer Philip Ball. The chairman's award went to Andrew Rawnsley, of the Observer, while the Sun punctured the domination of the broadsheets (even if few of them are physically broadsheets these days) by winning the eiDigest special award for its leader column. SubScribe was honoured and surprised to find a place on the individual blogger shortlist, but delighted to see the award go to Matthew Scott, whose excellent Barrister Blogger can be seen here You can see all the winners here and the full shortlists here. Comment archive, 2015 |
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