Blogs - Newsroom and Reader Blogs from the Times Series

Dennis Signy OBE is bravely entering the blogosphere — he describes himself as a 'dinosaur' when it comes to technology.
He was a former wartime cub reporter on the Hendon and Finchley Times at £4-a-week and became group editor for 17 years in the late Sixties. He served in Intelligence Corps as a Sergeant in Forties and learned to drive up the Khyber Pass.
He was a football writer in national newspapers for five decades, is author of several football books and former general manager of Brentford FC, former chief executive of Queen's Park Rangers FC and former chairman of the Football Writers Association.

Laying down the law

Fings aint what they used to be. I read that magistrates at Tameside in Greater Manchester gave a conditional discharge to a chap found in possession of heroin and crack cocaine but fined another £175, and £155 costs, for dropping a cigarette butt. Seems to me a drastic way of trying to stop people smoking!

Wot — no civic reception?

Euphoria swept over Underhill on Saturday as "little old Barnet" - one win in 21 games - swept to victory in their League 2 David v Goliath home game against promotion hopeful Bradford City by a thumping 4-1 margin.

Dinosaur in a PC jam

My first encounter with political correctness came in the Eighties when I was taken to task for a reference to an accident "blackspot" in a report in this paper on a Road Safety Committee meeting.

Down among the dread men

The late top-of-the-bill comedian and Fulham FC chairman Tommy Trinder joked about his side's reaction to a continuous flirtation with relegation: "When the players win a corner they want to do a lap of honour".

I'm still alive and coughing

As the sound of Big Ben ushered in the New Year at our apartment, I raised a less than traditional cup to propose a toast to 2009...in Lemsip.

The ghosts of Christmas past

As a callow and skinny teenage youth I spent one Christmas in the mid-1940s on my own based in a bungalow in Peshawar on the NW frontier of India as one of the last of the British Raj. If my memory serves me correctly, I relieved my boredom by driving through the Khyber Pass across to the Afghanistan border when my 60-year-old bearer finished pandering to my needs and went home to his eight children.

A call from a dinosaur

Not even my nearest and dearest would lay claim to me being a handyman or an expert in technology. I am to DIY and computers what Russell Brand is to good taste.

Off to the Tower for Signy

In those carefree 17 years when I was in the front line and the trenches guiding the Times group of newspapers, I was dubbed a "controversial editor" by the Sunday Times in a full page spread examining my front page comment that anti-Semitism was a worse problem in NW London than colour.

I’m making a comeback

Forget the credit crunch. Forget talk of recession. Forget Barnet FCs dismal first half of the season with only three victories in 22 games (not easy that one, mind you).

I feel like a million dollars

Can you believe what you read in the papers? I never thought I'd say that after a lifetime in the profession. I'm a simple soul, a poor old pensioner who promptly pays his bills, coughs up his taxes with just a touch of middle class moaning, has never had an overdraft and has brought up five children.