3 Jun 2026

I hate this

But does it matter? — I don’t usually say that sort of thing here. I try to be more measured, less personal. I’m talking about the police face recognition vans obviously. This might not surprise you: I mean that I don’t like them. I’m an old git after all, a man who’s written here before […]

29 Jul 2025

Nearly half a bicycle

The atomic theory in Kilburn — This place (on Kilburn High Road) has been morphing steadily from dry cleaner’s to bike shop over the last few years. I remember being surprised one morning to see a few kids’ bikes lined up for sale outside but I’d say the shop is now approaching 50% bike shop. […]

13 Jan 2025

Where is my patriotism?

Come, love of country, fill my heart… — I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag […]


  • Too easy

    Timothy Garton Ash is doing heroic work on both sides of the Atlantic – more important than ever as the fog of war thickens – to articulate the complicated, nervous,…

    Read more

  • Reporter/cyborg

    On Tuesday, in The Guardian, before the war began, I wrote: “Our proximity to the fighting is unarguable. The collision of network-era news gathering tools, weblogs and interconnected internet communities…

    Read more

  • A natural blogger

    My friend Paul Murphy’s blogging properly now and it’s excellent. Just the right balance of the personal and the public. Self-conscious but not pompous. Ironic but not sarcastic. Textbook blogging…

    Read more

  • Blogrolled by DeLong

    Brad DeLong is a Berkeley economist and a member of the blogging elite. He’s a living (blogging) reminder that sometimes brevity sucks. One of these days I’m going to have…

    Read more

  • Libeskind in New York

    Choosing an architect to replace the twin towers was always going to be a pretty high stakes game. The fact that it was happening in New York City, one of…

    Read more

  • Fantasy social classes

    Got this link to a review of Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class: and how it’s Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life from the Demos Greenhouse. “The Creative…

    Read more

  • A quiet city

    2023 UPDATE: I’d forgotten that the invasion of Iraq, which, when it began, had been so well-telegraphed, filled us all with such dread. I mean we all knew the exact…

    Read more

  • Essential

    As the bombing begins, Azeem reminds me to revisit Where’s Raed, a blog kept, apparently, by a young Iraqi from within Iraq – from Baghdad itself, in fact.

    Read more

  • Digital cinema

    This feature about digital cinema is mostly about the production end (George Lucas has made his last non-digital film and so on) but I think it supports my thesis that…

    Read more

  • It’s been ten years

    Thanks to Neil McIntosh for linking to this piece about Mosaic’s tenth birthday. It is my fervent ambition that one day I will be required, like Jim Clark, to say…

    Read more

  • Guardian.jpgWars, real and virtual

    This week, in my column for The Guardian’s web site, I finally caved in and wrote about the war. We can’t take it for granted that our increasing interconnectedness and…

    Read more

  • Dyke kicks Sky into touch

    A great rift has opened up between the BBC and Sky and more than a decade of servitude is over. The BBC will, from the end of May, broadcast its…

    Read more