11 Jul 2026

Count Binface and electoral theatre

Don’t be a costumed loon — It’s trivially easy to stand for Parliament in the UK. Any loon can do so. You need ten electors to nominate you and £500 for a deposit – and it’s actually been getting easier. The deposit was introduced in 1918 (£150 – quite a lot of money then). Before […]

3 Jun 2026

I hate this

But does it matter? — I don’t usually say that sort of thing here. I try to be more measured, less personal. I’m talking about the police face recognition vans obviously. This might not surprise you: I mean that I don’t like them. I’m an old git after all, a man who’s written here before […]

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 […]


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    Can’t tell you now much it cheers me up to learn that the man behind King of Shaves, my favourite shaving brand, is actually called King. I suppose whatever business…

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  • Is flickr going downmarket?

    I love flickr. Every day something new. A proper source of inspiration. I’m a very loyal customer. But dig in and the place is turning into a branch of Athena…

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  • 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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