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 […]

6 Sep 2024

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 […]


  • Pinochet and The Partridge Family

    The thing about Pinochet is that he’s a kind of retro dictator. When I was growing up he was the man: the dictator’s dictator. A proper big-hat, braided demagogue. Funded…

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  • Non-personalities hijack event intended for personalities… again

    More evidence that you don’t actually need a personality to be eligible for the premier prize in British sport. Three blocks of wood (one with way too much hair gel)…

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  • Stupid Bush, beligerant Chavez

    Venezuela could soon be the largest producer of oil in the world and will almost certainly be sitting on the largest known reserves. The Chavez experiment is to translate epic…

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  • Stupid Threshers

    It turns out the Thresher promotion I wrote about yesterday was a fake viral campaign and, of course, it also turns out that everyone already knew so my enthusiastic Poirot-style…

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  • Is the Thresher discount coupon a fake viral campaign?

    Let’s get this straight. The Threshers coupon is a con. Or at least a clever pre-Christmas promotion. Let me sketch the background for you foreigners (although I suppose the thing…

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  • What am I on about?

    That last entry was a bit obscure wasn’t it? What I mean is that out there, in the world, there’s an actually existing cyberspace which was invented (or at least…

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  • trashfire

    In Belgrade the rubbish bins are burning. I know this because Bruce Sterling has been taking photographs of them. Blimey. Kind of sends the mind reeling doesn’t it? Co-inventor of…

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  • 21st Century Communications

    So it turns out there’s been something wrong with my email. For a couple of weeks about half of my inbound mail has been routed to a trench in the…

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  • Honk if you don’t blog

    There are still a few non-bloggers left in the world. I’d like to hear from them. I’m writing a piece for a DCMS web site called Projects Etc. Working title:…

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  • Learning how to use Snipperoo

    Ivan’s put a nifty ‘how to‘ movie up over at Snipperoo – explaining how to use Snipperoo to simplify adding a flickr badge to your site, to be specific. Go…

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  • Winding up MPs

    Proper exciting to hear Stef Magdalinski talking about They Work for You on Today in Parliament Friday. MPs of various stripes are pretty pissed off with They Work for You…

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  • Sheila Duke, neé Bowbrick, 1930–2006

    My Aunt Sheila (in the front of this picture), a funny, generous, rude and slightly loopy Cockney who always cheered me up and was a proper anchor for the Bowbricks…

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