Year: 2004

  • The BBC adrift

    Friendless at the seat of power, rudderless at a time of critical danger. What a difference 48 hours can make. I have no idea how things came to this. A…

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  • Saturday Morning Pictures

    I took Olly, 5 and Billie, 4, to The Barbican‘s Family Film Club – a sort of middle class mirror image of the Saturday Morning Cinema of your youth. We…

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  • Inquiring into war

    Here’s a thought. Why don’t we legislate for a statutory, independent inquiry after every war (except, perhaps, those started by others)? The inquiry should be given certain inviolable powers in…

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  • Blair’s political cojones

    Assuming that the top-up fees rebellion was ultimately put down (and pretty brutally put down, by the look of it) by forcing a wedge between the two distinct groups of…

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  • Londonistan

    Illuminating forensic examination of Britain’s increasingly shabby War On Terror from lawyer John Upton in old school liberal conscience, The LRB (I think you only get the first half of…

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  • Ordinary licence fee-payer maxes out BBC

    Crazy economics you got there. The more people that listen, the more it costs you – up to your server licence limit, of course. Illustrates potentially loony outcomes of on-demand…

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  • Optimistic caller

    The phone rings at home. “Hello”. “Is that Abbott’s Engineering?”. No, it’s not. I think you’ve got the wrong number.” “Never mind. Do you sell welding spares?”

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  • Huh?

    Billie, 4, made this at school today. What is it? No idea. I’ll ask her in the morning and let you know (click the small pic for a bigger one).…

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  • Nix the upgrade

    I was sort of idly thinking of upgrading the teeny tiny hard drive in Juliet’s original, Blueberry iBook (too small even to upgrade to Panther, now) but then I read…

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  • Out of his box

    This is the kind of thing those insrutable Finns were after when they abducted Matt Jones and sequestered him in their arctic circle underground think-o-tron. I think it’s quite a…

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