The Crucial Blog

As soon as the London protestors found themselves unable to erect their canvas city at the stock exchange and so moved across to St Paul’s, they unwittingly landed the Church of England in a very unusual place - right at the heart of national debate. From there the CofE has wriggled, fudged and squirmed its way into what can only be described as a PR disaster. Anyone - PR expert or no- would surely have advised...

Who care's about apostrophe's? I do, and those slips were intentional, by the way. I also care about all punctuation, and spelling and grammar, so no doubt this blog will peppered with errors that you'll be pleased to point out. And quite right too. There is a school of thought that all those rules we learnt at our English master's knee are no longer relevant in this fast-moving world ruled by txt spk and foreshortened tweets....

It’s funny isn’t it. For this particular writer the word Blog might have well been Block. A four-letter word that certainly didn’t require repeating due to it’s mind-sweeping qualities. I love words: a well-honed phrase, some clever wordplay, copy that has a rhythm and a music all of its own. I may not always agree with The Sun newspaper but I certainly enjoy the skill and wit of the headline writers.And it’s not always the banner...

News that the iconic charity magazine Big Issue is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week by re-inventing itself with the help of some bold new ideas, may ring warning bells across editorial departments. The revelation that Big Issue founder John Bird plans to re-train some 100 Big Issue sellers as journalists could be seen either as a worrying trend for the future of journalism or alternatively as a brave and far-sighted move to modernise this ageing...