The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don't have access to politicians, who don't have easy access to official documents, who aren't able to buttonhole people in power.

Journalism is often simply the industrialisation of gossip.

My big toe alone is the size of Yorkshire.

History is either a moral argument with lessons for the here-and-now, or it is merely an accumulation of pointless facts.

Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope.

The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don't have access to politicians, who don't have easy access to official documents, who aren't able to buttonhole people in power.

The only time I penetrated Tony Blair's defenses over Iraq was by keeping eye contact while telling him he never seemed to by sorry