This blog has passed the 100,000 unique visitors in a month mark in June. It certainly works as a motivator. I remember being happy when we were getting 10,000.

Jamie is co-organising a music festival at Dounce Castle, largely I think because this is the kind of music he likes, and it sounded fun. Makes me wish I were young again. Acts confirmed so far include Francois and The Atlas Mountains Glider Les Bof! The Junipers Adam Stearns My Old Blue Terraplane The Fast [...]

I feel full of energy and – strangely – youth at the moment. The last two nights I did extremely good public meetings with the Global Justice Group in Halesowen http://www.myspace.com/halesowengjg and for Medical Justice in Manchester. http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/ They were vibrant and full meetings – the collection for Medical Justice afterwards raised over three hundred [...]

The Daily Telegraph kindly commissioned a major comment piece from me on Kyrgyzstan, which was published today. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kyrgyzstan/7834619/Kyrgyzstan-Death-dictators-and-the-Soviet-legacy.html It already seems to have fed through into analysis by the BBC’s resident correspondents, which is a good thing. A few months ago I wrote this: Personally, if I had the chance to live in any town [...]

I am watching the World Cup opening ceremony, and it is absolutely breathtaking. The sheer scale, the grandeur, the majestic sweeping order, the colour, the spectacle, of those ranks upon ranks, rows upon serried rows, of absolutely empty orange seats! Bank upon bank, line upon line of starkly empty, glaringly orange seats! It is grandly [...]

You will note that this morning’s piece on Afghanistan was posted at 4am. That is because I was awoken by what sounded like somebody rattling the back door. There was however nothing to be seen. Then at 10.22pm this evening, Nadira received a phone call on her mobile from a witheld number. A heavily accented [...]

Am really rushed off my feet – buying a house, 2 documentaries (one already commissioned), plus film and theatre developments and trying to write 2 books. So sorry for temp lack of blogging.

I am having a fraught time with my attempted house move. It is so strange that I thought I would blog about it. The strangeness may be only a product of the years since I last bought a house. I saw a lovely old home – a Grade 2 listed building, very dilapidated – earlier [...]

Having travelled exensively around the globe, I have never found anywhere where hotels offer such poor value for money as the UK. One thing that particularly annoys me is a charge for guests to access the internet. I was annoyed enough when I was staying in the Dundee Hilton at £110 a night, and being [...]

Yet more cyber attack problems. Here is a look inside my comments editing page. Download file Mmmm – when I click on the link I get the page with full functionality. I do hope that’s only me! I had already deleted hundreds of these nonsense comments this morning. The interesting thing about them is that [...]

This blog had 91,200 unique visitors last month, which is the second best ever. It makes me feel all warm and sociable. Hello, everybody! Please join in and comment – it does make it much more fun.

Back home again after a trip to Glasgow and York. The flu seems to have left me but I feel pretty knackered. Enjoying the election campaign, for the first time really since 1974. I’ll tell you the story of my involvement in that sometime in the next week or two. Speaking in Manchester on Saturday [...]

Really rough with flu today.

Turned out not to be so superior after all. It is sometimes hard to remember it is always wrong to be glad when someone dies. Must stop smiling about Terre Blanche (was that his real name? Too good to be true). If I have to refrain from smiling about the death of Terre Blanche, I [...]

Happy Easter everybody. I am no longer a church-goer, so I can’t remember the answer to this one. If Christ was crucified on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday, surely that’s two days not three? Especially as he had vanished during the night as Mary Magdalen discovered when she turned up in the [...]

All well but very tired after lots of travelling and some behind the scenes electoral work. Blog again tomorrow – off ti bed.

I am still not up to blogging speed yet. While you are waiting, you might like to look at Nadira’s showreel. http://www.nadiramurray.com/showreel.html

I haven’t been taken ill, or shut down by unfriendly fire from governments or lawyers. In 2003 my life collapsed around my ears; I was hopitalised several times and I had neither time nor capacity for personal administration. Over the next couple of years I lost job, income, home and marriage. I was simply unable [...]

I wrote this appreciation of Michael Foot last year. The media ridicule of this good man was a key waymark in this nation’s journey to despising integrity and honesty in politicians, and instead worshipping only slick media presentation. http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/michael_foot.html

Or be a hypnotist. Or be able to “talk away my face” like the great John Wilkes. I was much amused by the comments on this entry in the always interesting einekleinenachtmusik blog. http://einekleinenichtmusik.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-kind-of-world-are-we-creating.html If Persephone were to read Murder in Samarkand, she would find I do in fact consider and answer her question. UPDATE [...]