Year: 2007

  • The unwisdom of streets

    The bin-men used to come on Thursdays. Simple. Since the council introduced ‘Alternate Week Collections‘ nobody knows when they’re coming. We’re all at sea. One day it’s plastic and tin…

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  • The noise in Northants

    There are two sounds on this earth that can make me spontaneously cry. There’s the sound of a great operatic soprano mid-aria and there’s the sound of a top fuel…

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  • Random stuff…

    …because the football’s so boring. Isn’t the Skoda ad lovely? The ‘making-of’ video is a reminder of how good and appropriate old-fashioned, above-the-line investment can be. Don’t cancel your TV…

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  • How does he do it?

    How did Tony Blair turn what ought to have been an ignominious retreat – a defeated backward step from power – into a noble and affecting curtain call? I am,…

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  • Looking for freelancers

    I’m looking for some freelance help with a couple of tasks. A reasonable day rate is available and the project is likely to be fun and to lead to lots…

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  • The fate of the innovator

    Remember Segway? Always doomed. Always ridiculous. A case study in entrepreneurial hubris. It somehow never occurred to anyone at Segway – not designers, not investors, not breathless celebrity boosters –…

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  • Brands are our cathedrals

    Can you imagine a world without brands? Does social media (social networking, social content, social shopping, social this and that…) threaten the very idea of a brand (as it does,…

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  • Random anthropology

    My wife is researching a new haircut. So she finds herself typing the phrase ‘graduated bob‘ (that’s a kind of haircut) into Google Images. The first half a page of…

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  • Shaving for a living

    A couple of months ago I blogged a company called King of Shaves, one whose product I had always admired and whose brand I thought was interesting – unconventional, quite…

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  • More Norman Wisdom than Osama Bin Laden

    They had an election in Nigeria. While they were getting ready to vote someone tried to blow up the Electoral Commission with a truck bomb. Truck bombs are pretty common…

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