Chris Blackhurst



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Area of interest: Business, City

Journals/Organisation: The Independent | Evening Standard

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Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/chris-blackhurst-8118282.html | http://www.standard.co.uk/biography/chris-blackhurst

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Networks: https://twitter.com/c_blackhurst | http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/chris-blackhurst/80/110/364



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Career: A journalist since 1984, his previous posts include: Deputy Editor at the Independent and Independent on Sunday and Daily Express, and Westminster Correspondent of the Independent. He has written for Management Today for the past 15 years and has contributed to numerous other magazines and publications, as well as writing and presenting two Radio 4 Profiles last year. He edited the City Pages of the Evening Standard from 2002 until he was appointed as Editor of The Independent in 2011 Current position/role: The Independent and Evening Standard: Group Content Director


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Controversy/Criticism: The perfect epitaph for establishment journalism - by Glenn Greenwald: 'If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest who am I to disbelieve them?', says the former editor of The Independent - 15th October

Awards/Honours: He has received awards from the British Press Awards and the London Press Club as well as TSB Financial Journalist of the Year

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Articles:

 * Ukip, not Labour, is now Britain’s most working-class party - Ukip’s grumpy blue rinse and harrumphing ex-army officer image is not the reality - 4th April
 * The new head of the Financial Conduct Authority's determination to shoot first and ask questions later has backfired spectacularly - Midweek View: The FCA must hold itself to at least as high standards as it would expect of a listed company - 3rd April 2014
 * At long last, the Royal and Ancient golf club may admit women. Now for the other all-male bastions of British culture... - We need quotas to see the end of boys club boardrooms - 27th March 2014
 * Snobbery over 'wide-boy chancers'? It's time to embrace entrepreneurial spirit if we want to compete on world stage - Midweek View: No wonder, with that prevailing attitude, so few of our children go on to become innovators and risk-takers - 26th March 2014
 * Banks strive to outsmart us – but it’s not a clever choice - It’s typical of the contempt for the little man in our banks - 25th March 2014
 * How to explain Lloyds' decision not to award full compensation to victims of its PPI mis-selling? - The wheeze they've come up with is deeply cynical - but unsurprising - 25th March 2014
 * Why is Osborne trusting me with my cash? - Now we can all be a little more reckless in retirement - 23rd March 2014
 * 'Ghost gazumping' and other estate agent tricks are inflating house prices – but lack of new homes is root of the problem - Midweek View: They were nice, terraced houses in a smart area. And they were commanding silly, frightening sums - 19th March 2014
 * Apparently it is winning that counts: UK Sport’s approach to distributing funding is deeply troubling - Whenever the BBC trumpeted a “Team GB” medal-winner at the Sochi Winter Olympics and Paralympics..... - 14th March 2014
 * We have a strong, regulated City and foreign money has always been key – so why do some hark back to the past? - Midweek View: We can don rose-tinted glasses but can we really get soppy about corporate raiders and junk bonds? - 12th March 2014
 * Printing money has helped only the rich - The PM is quick to don his hard-hat, but he must also invest in infrastructure - 8th March 2014
 * Forget a prawn cocktail offensive – Labour's hysterical anti-big business stance is causing boardroom disquiet - Midweek View: It shows a level of ignorance and rank hypocrisy and ill-thought-through opportunism that is frightening - 5th March 2014
 * Which?, the vibrant consumer body, is on the side of 'good business', says its chief executive – whoever's in charge at Westminster next year - Midweek View: In other words, Mr Miliband, it's not there to be bandied about as a Labour election accessory, so hands off - 26th February 2014
 * By buying the line that investment bankers rule the world and must be paid accordingly, Barclays may well become the 'Go From' bank - Midweek View: The Go To bank? Go to for what? A queue? Empty seats behind the glass? A machine that doesn't work? - 12th February 2014
 * Gender quotas: Compulsion is needed to increase the number of women in boardrooms - Chairmen pay lip service to women’s demands, but, once they are out of earshot, will revert to their traditional sexism - 29th January 2014
 * Labour's magnificent seven will not make any difference to high street banking, Ed Miliband is merely showboating - As they will have no track record to speak of, they will find it harder to raise capital to fund their activities - 22nd January 2014
 * More banks, Ed? Not your best idea - Miliband’s plan to take five and make it into seven fails to tackle the root of the banking problem - 22nd January 2014
 * Before we get too smug about London's wealth, maybe we should be asking more questions about foreigners with suspicious fortunes - Midweek View: Foreign cash is pouring in. But are these all people we'd like to do business with? - 8th January 2014
 * Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi: Though they have more money, the rich are not so different - As has been shown all too vividly, the rich remain human, with everything that brings - 21st December 2013
 * How many regulators does it take to run British business into the ground? - Midweek View: Reducing the level of scrutiny simply lowers the incentives for regulators to make sound decisions - 18th December 2013
 * Anxious shopkeepers study the runes as Christmas rush gets a late start - Midweek View: Retailers are seeing heavy spending within the M25, but far more caution outside - 11th December 2013
 * Why Vince Cable must break the monopoly of law’s magic circle - Never has so much been charged by so few to so many - 4th December 2013
 * We should have let banks go to the wall. They don’t care about our wellbeing - Midweek View: The City in the past has behaved like a separate country, aloof from all of us - 27th November 2013
 * Banks should be run by bankers to avoid future disasters - There is hardly a bank that has not been the focus of scandal since the collapse of 2008 - 20th November 2013
 * End stagnation and create aspiration with free grammar schools - I did not go to Eton but to a free grammar school that operated along equivalent lines - 14th November 2013
 * It’s BT 1 and Sky 0 as they fight it out in TV football’s big match - With BT’s grabbing of the live Champions League matches for a whistle-inducing £900m - we’ve a genuine, red-blooded contest to sit back and savour - 13th November 2013
 * Fish supper with that scarf, madam? M&S boss faces uphill task - Midweek View: To smash Waitrose at food, Zara at clothes and Net-a-Porter online is well-nigh impossible - 6th November 2013
 * Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg: Where exactly are the UK's equivalent business leaders? - Not nearly enough effort is being put on ambition in our top boardrooms - 25th October 2013
 * The bald truth? I don't miss my hair - Some people might call me slaphead, but at least I'm not going grey - 23rd October 2013
 * Tesco, the friendly grocer, pins hope on image revamp - Midweek View: Make no mistake - the Leahy style belongs to the past - 23rd October 2013
 * Wooing the Chinese is the easy bit. The challenge is to get the British to invest - On this occasion, there was a certain irony in Boris and George’s appeals for the Chinese to spend their money in Britain - 18th October 2013
 * We don't all need to go to university - New 'career colleges' could reverse decades of misguided policy - 16th October 2013
 * Why I'm sure Sir Richard Branson won't find life too taxing on his Caribbean island - Midweek View: He's so rich he can pay whatever Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs throws at him - 16th October 2013
 * Edward Snowden’s secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them - If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest who am I to disbelieve them? - 14th October 2013
 * The hackers’ greatest asset is our complacency - A false tweet from Associated Press claimed Obama had been injured by a bomb - 12th October 2013
 * It was only when I rubbed shoulders with private school children that I realised what we had missed - My school was good at exams - but had no concept of an old boys' network - 11th October 2013
 * Be it Leahy or Ferguson – beware the legacy of a leader who stays too long - This week, Tesco disclosed a slump in first-half profits of 24.5 per cent - 4th October 2013
 * More measured, less shrill, but George Osborne still needs to connect with the real world - Midweek View: He can't even get the current deficit down, yet here he is, talking of having too much money - 2nd October 2013
 * The Michael Spencer I know is utterly disgusted by what his traders got up to - His reaction to the Libor scandal was, in our conversation, one of fury and shock - 27th September 2013
 * Labour's 'use it or lose it' housing plan could build up to a major problem - Midweek View: Reducing home prices is only half the equation. Buyers still have to be able to rustle up the cash - 25th September 2013
 * Portas was just another fall guy for the Government’s lack of ideas - It really is pathetic, this belief of senior politicians that we will be fooled by what amounts to little more than high-profile, public relations-led window-dressing - 20th September 2013
 * Money-men are sitting on their hands – where are all the deals? - Midweek View: In the febrile atmosphere engulfing us CEOs would rather do nothing than risk public opprobrium - 18th September 2013
 * There is another housing bubble… it is high-rise and lacks proper amenities - The Alexander, Richmond Park, Newt & Ferret, Cambridge, Kelly Arms, Swan, Six Bells… all pubs that used to be near my house. Now, all closed and, in most cases, either turned into flats or about to be turned into flats - 13th September 2013
 * It's time we paid attention to Nev and his call centre, not the huge corporations - Midweek View: Small businesses account for half our national income and two-thirds of all employment - 11th September 2013
 * Scallops and Sellotape? How not to lead, by Fred the Shred - Midweek View: The Gogarburn HQ is a great monument to Mr Goodwin's vanity. The detail here is frightening, and laughable - 4th September 2013
 * Even dear old ethical businesses screw up sometimes – as Co-op has done - It’s all very well lauding the Co-op and John Lewis, but these are businesses run by people and the latter have an unfortunate habit of making mistakes - 30th August 2013
 * Foxtons float? Investors must be cunning when it comes to private equity - Midweek View: Investors are wary of clever financial jiggery-pokery that may see a business look brilliant on paper, but in reality it's a dud - 28th August 2013
 * We know the moral case against war, but what about the economic one? - Since 1945, Britain has spent billions on a range of military expeditions - 17th August 2013
 * Cyclists must give way to stay safe - The bicycle needs its own space – and restrictions - 15th August 2013
 * So what's $6bn between friends? Such a big loss and so little fuss - Midweek View: Has a government or business been ragingover the London Whale's exploits? No. Has a client made a civil claim? No - 14th August 2013
 * We’re smitten, Mark. But how far can we go? - We have to get back in the game of wooing mass industrial investment - 9th August 2013
 * In the Aegean it's business as usual, but where are the jobless Greeks? - Midweek View: Unemployment is twice the eurozone average, yet here I am being waited upon by people who are not Greek - 7th August 2013
 * A line on the bar floor. Women not allowed to cross it. That’s golf for you - Ever since I was seven or eight I’ve played golf. There was a club near where we lived and going along there with school friends seemed a natural thing to do - 19th July 2013
 * Insider dealing is still rife in the City no matter how you count the numbers - Midweek View: In 2008, the then chairman of HBOS, Lord Stevenson, told the bank’s shareholders: “There is a strong case for believing that the UK is exceptionally bad at dealing with white-collar crime - 17th July 2013
 * How can a school be judged fairly when an inspector calls ahead? - 12th July 2013
 * Only white shirt I found in M&S was for an orang-utan - Midweek View - 10th July 2013
 * Why build HS2 and waste billions that could be used elsewhere? - I have the feeling this is a sop. Even carried out, it won't solve underlying weakness - 5th July 2013
 * It’s the loyal readers who make this paper what it is - After two years I'm moving on from my role as editor - 21st June 2013
 * Stphen Hester did sterling work in a tough job at RBS – but politics beat him in the end - His reluctance to stay on much beyond 2015 has been used to oust him. It’s a fig leaf - 14th June 2013
 * If you ask me…we would never swap Deborah for Pippa - Pippa Middleton for Deborah Ross? Seriously? As I said at the outset, oh dear - 8th June 2013
 * Images of Woolwich suspects were used in public interest - Dreadful and distressing as they were, reproducing the photographs undeniably served a public purpose - 25th May 2013
 * Endless wrangling, but we’ve had a Leveson breakthrough - There was no chance of the newspaper groups’ alternative charter gaining wide acceptance if it failed this independence test. This is a major step in the right direction - 11th May 2013
 * Stuart Hall's arrest is a tribute to good police work - and one of our journalists - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist for this paper, acted on a reader's letter - 4th May 2013
 * Wakefield’s MMR rant was read out of context - Over the 15 years since Wakefield published his infamous Lancet paper which triggered the MMR controversy, this paper has published many stories highlighting the harm he was causing - 20th April 2013
 * It’s not easy speaking in measured tones about Philpott - Welfare was not to blame - but this man's lifestyle jars nonetheless - 6th April 2013
 * Leveson: We the press only have ourselves to blame - I don't wish for any state involvement in the press, but we did not give enough ground to Cameron in the aftermath of the Leveson report - 21st March 2013
 * The Leveson dispute could destroy our free press - One of the principles that made me want to be a journalist in the first place and to help produce a newspaper such as this one, is at stake - 16th March 2013
 * Why we went our own way on Leveson - The Independent's Editor explains why he, along with colleagues at the Financial Times and The Guardian, has called for a new system of press regulation - 13th March 2013
 * Letter from the Editor: Leveson should blow whistle on those who manipulate the news - Sir Alex Ferguson has barred the Independent from his Carrington press conferences after a report by one our writers detailed his fall-out with Rooney - 9th March 2013
 * Letter From the Editor: It's tough, but not as tough as reporting from a war zone - This was one of those weeks when, as Editor, I freely, but nonetheless uncomfortably, admit to being a hypocrite - 19th January 2013
 * The press was on trial and the judge was jury and defence rolled into one. So what did we expect? - The Editor of The Independent says the man in charge of this Inquiry approached it like a lawyer – alas for both him and us, we’re not in the legal profession - 30th November 2012
 * Leveson ignores the press' positive power - As a wholesale demolition of our trade, Lord Leveson's report takes some beating - 8th September 2012
 * Will Amazon be the new beast in our supermarkets jungle once it gets fresh? - One evening this week, I dined with a senior executive from one of our biggest supermarket groups. I'm covering my tracks because we agreed the conversation was off the record - 25th August 2012
 * How the Sultan of Berkeley Square fell off his throne - There was a period when the City was transfixed by Asil Nadir. He was the poster boy of the Thatcher generation, whose rise followed her own and seemingly stood for the same values of hard work and enterprise - 23rd August 2012
 * There's nothing remotely 'leftie' about celebrating immigration and the NHS - Danny Boyle's Opening Ceremony was dismissed as 'leftie, multicultural crap' by right-wing Tory MP Aidan Burley. Chris Blackhurst, who was there, insists nothing could be further from the truth - 30th July
 * Grammar schools educated people to lead the world. They can do so again - Schools like mine instilled self-confidence. They applauded intellectual prowess - 25th May



News & updates:

 * Independent return: Chris Blackhurst's career in profile - Ex-Independent deputy Chris Blackhurst returns a decade later with career that includes the Express and Armanigate scoop - The Guardian, 1st July 2011



References:


Links:

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Blackhurst