Highlights
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. […]
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 […]
Some bullet-points about regulation
In case you’d got the wrong idea about how the ’regulatory state‘ is supposed to work — UPDATED 23 May 2025. I could update this thing daily. Regulation is always a news story in the UK (Search any news service for ‘regulation‘ right now and you’ll get a long list of current news stories about […]
Browse by year
Latest
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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 –…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
More twitter notes
UPDATE: This post recently passed its FIFTH BIRTHDAY! Twitter is a simple application with one real function: notification. Twitter posts are called ‘updates’ (or sometimes ‘tweets’). People use Twitter to…
-
The inevitable Twitter post
I’ve been twittering for a couple of months now. I’m not actually addicted (I could give it up any time) but I’m up to a couple of hundred updates and…