Joan Smith on The Independent

Joan Smith: It's not older women the BBC lacks. It's women in general

12 February 2012 12:00 AM

It's official: the BBC has a problem with older women. The director-general, Mark Thompson, has admitted as much, acknowledging that the BBC's treatment of Strictly judge Arlene Phillips and former Countryfile presenter Miriam O'Reilly – she won an age-discrimination case against the corporation – has damaged its image. There are "manifestly too few older women broadcasting on the BBC", Thompson admitted. The only bit of that sentence I take issue with is the word "older".

Joan Smith: The opposition in Syria needs our help, and now

05 February 2012 12:00 AM

Here is the brutal truth about Syria: no one knows what to do. Six months after Barack Obama said bluntly that Bashar al-Assad should go, and with the Arab League calling for him to resign, there is no sign that the country's President is willing to listen. Two days ago, on the 30th anniversary of the massacre carried out by his father Hafez al-Assad in the city of Hama, the younger Assad ordered the Syrian army to bombard residential areas of the country's third largest city, Homs. Shocking TV pictures showed buildings ablaze against the night sky, the wounded rushed to makeshift casualty stations inside mosques.

Joan Smith: Strong religious belief is no excuse for intimidation

22 January 2012 12:00 AM

It's been a dreadful week for free speech. A meeting at a prestigious London college had to be abandoned on Monday evening when members of the audience were filmed and threatened by an Islamic extremist. Then the president of a student society at another London college was forced to resign after a Muslim organisation called for a ban on a joky image of the Prophet Mohammed. Finally, on Friday, the author Sir Salman Rushdie cancelled an appearance at India's largest literary festival, saying he feared an assassination attempt after protests by Muslim clerics.

Joan Smith outside the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday

Joan Smith: I've waited for this ever since they told me I'd been hacked

20 January 2012 12:00 AM

Yesterday confirmed the degree of suspicion that was created between husbands and their wives

Joan Smith: The Big Society can be about more than cheap labour

15 January 2012 12:00 AM

During the election campaign two years ago, one of David Cameron's big selling-points was his intention to create a Big Society. He was short on detail but the general idea was that a Conservative government would encourage volunteering and get us more involved in our communities. I suspected it might turn into something more coercive, along the lines of the workfare schemes which have been so controversial in the United States.

Joan Smith: Is Mrs Obama related to Miriam Clegg?

10 January 2012 12:40 AM

The New York Post raised the spectre of a woman making a covert bid for power

Joan Smith: The difference between write and wrong

08 January 2012 12:00 AM

Sending messages in a hurry is not malicious

Joan Smith: Marriage is worthwhile – but not at any price

04 January 2012 12:00 AM

The single most effective means of reducing the number of unhappy relationships is education

Bargain-hunters wait for Selfridges' sale to open on Boxing Day

Joan Smith: I tried to bag a bargain, but I was outrun

01 January 2012 12:00 AM

Our writer wonders why sales shoppers are so mad for accessories

Joan Smith: Hitchens was witty and clever, but he was no secular saint

18 December 2011 12:00 AM

There is a kind of man – witty, dashing, raffishly handsome – who is attractive to both men and women. Lord Byron was one such, and so was the writer Christopher Hitchens, who died on Thursday at the cruelly early age of 62. Appreciations have focused on his ferocious intellect and contempt for cant (another trait he shared with Byron). I admired his disdain for religion, which he maintained to the end, and latterly I enjoyed his forensic demolition of the death-loving cult of jihad.

Joan Smith: Control can lead to family slaughter

15 December 2011 12:00 AM

Whenever one of these tragedies occurs, it always has a long history

Joan Smith: Filling your face with popcorn is not a human right

11 December 2011 12:00 AM

As a breed, Conservative politicians hate the nanny state. So do right-wing columnists, some of whom are still whining about the fact that they can't smoke in public places.

Joan Smith: Dominique Strauss-Kahn is irresistible. Allegedly

04 December 2011 12:00 AM

It could happen to anyone, surely? You walk naked from the bathroom of your hotel suite and encounter a cleaner, who gives your genitals a seductive look. In a moment, and without a word being spoken, the two of you are at it like rabbits. The whole thing's over in six minutes and you put on your clothes, ready to enjoy an agreeable lunch on your way to the airport. Then you board your plane, first-class of course, heading for Paris and Berlin where you have important meetings.