Views From Elsewhere

The politics of fear and defiance: I feel a long way from home today. Watching the coverage of the attack in London Bridge last night, on BBC World. Cradling a cup of tea (from the few remaining English Breakfast teabags I have left) and knowing if I'd been at home last night, I would have been in a cab to the newsroom to help out in an 'all hands on desk' kind of way, without request or invitation, just because. Because that is what we do. I remember reading a description of the BBC Newsroom on 9/11 as 'a newsroom at full tilt' as journalists did just that and turned up on their days off simply to help exhausted colleagues get the news on air. Because that is what we do. We're not out there saving lives like the incredible paramedics, doctors, nurses and policemen, but we do provide a service, a source of information, a sense of unity, reflecting the tone of collective strength and defiance of the nation, as we speak to the people who lived through the events...

Back to basics, back to Blighty: What Brexit, Trump and the Turkish referendum say about modern tribes: When I was asked to write about modern tribes my first thought was what tribes do I belong to? And how do they affect my view of the world? Well, I'm a journalist, I thought, and that's truly not just my job; it's a way of life. It affects the way I approach things and the way I see the world. I ask questions constantly. Much like my three year old niece I am forever asking 'why?'. Because the attitude that something just is the way it is has never sat well with me. If something doesn't make sense to me I ask 'why?' and then generally challenge the response. I can't bear rules or ideas that have no logical reason behind them. But I digress, when I was studying to be a journalist, my course-mates and I all went out for dinner in the first week of term, about 20 of us. These were, smart, largely OxBridge educated people, but I promise you, you ha...