Year: 2005

  • Katrina’s consequences

    How do you govern a country (and prosecute a costly foreign war) when the complacency and incompetence of your administration has just caused thousands of your citizens to be drowned?…

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  • I told you they were weird

    This suit – not a new one, quite worn in fact, and with a very lairy pink tie over the hanger – spent a while in the hedge over the…

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  • Radio Apocalypse

    Voyeuristic I suppose but gripping and scary too. Live radio from a Clear Channel country station in New Orleans. Lots of live telephone reports from the Superdome and other parts…

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  • Katrina journalism

    I don’t know if there’s a name for this kind of journalism but it’s special: written quickly and by the old rules of American journalism. Simple, percussive, emotional and direct.…

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  • A Twentieth Century leader for a Nineteenth Century party half way through the first decade of the Twenty-First. Perfect.

    Go Tories! Don’t dawdle! Pick Clarke! He’s just what you need. I’d love to see you elect the shambling jazz buff: a thoroughly unreconstructed and entirely fossilised political force –…

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  • Do something to improve your sad little life

    Listen you slippery media smartarse, you trendy, ipod-shuffling, probably-up-in Edinburgh for the TV Festival (“Easyjet? Don’t make me laugh. You get a proper breakfast on BA…”), doing a bit of…

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  • Parking people

    Why are 80% of Central London parking attendants from West Africa? Terrific Radio 4 programme (MP3) by Ade Daramy. These guys take terrible stick from God fearing Londoners who think…

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  • For sound geeks

    I really loved this programme (MP3) by elite sound geek Chris Watson on Radio 4 the other day. It’s all about wind. Likewise, I’ve been really enjoying this book by…

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  • Unaccustomed calm

    We live on the main road through our village (we like to call it a village. It is, of course, a twisted suburb – with good access to the M25).…

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  • Buy my old camera

    Japanese business seems to have a better memory than the rest of capitalism (the oldest firm in the world is, after all, Japanese). Canon’s camera museum is a thing of…

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