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 […]
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Londony things
I drove, on the afternoon of yesterday’s catastrophic elections, across a large slice of North and East London, from suburban Hertfordshire to Stratford in the East End and then –…
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New Yorky things
Nice feature about The New Yorker from Naomi Gryn on Radio 4 the other day and, if you can still get it, you should pick up Metropolis Magazine’s April issue…
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Artists at work
This morning two men came to my house and, with something I can’t call anything but grace, delivered a piano. Watching Sean and his mate from Elstree Piano Removals moving…
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Umlauts. What are they good for?
Moben, a Manchester company that makes fitted kitchens, has been going around with an umlaut over the ‘o’ since 1977 but a few years ago someone (who exactly?) managed to…
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Clarke: you’re a lightweight. You’re fired
Ask any leader, anyone who’s ever led anything. Sometimes you have to fire someone. Sometimes you have to fire them even if it doesn’t really make any sense to do…
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My life as an author
Josette Garcia is O’Reilly‘s UK Press Office – and before that she worked for another, significantly less groovy, tech publisher. She worked there, in fact, when I got my first…
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Warning –
very long sentence aboutvery boring topicStephen Newton, a Manchester PR guru, correctly points out (in a comment) that my long reply to Nicola Stanbridge’s long but slightly off-the-point reply to my long (and witheringly to-the-point)…
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My reply to that BBC reporter
Hi Nicola, Thanks for your thoughtful response. I don’t want to sound like an obsessive or a copyright geek but I think ownership of intellectual property is important in modern…
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What Beavers do on St George’s Day
I spent part of the afternoon at one of those simultaneously anachronistic, life-affirming, frustrating, funny and frankly nauseating events that we’re good at in suburban Britain. It was St George’s…
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The BBC replies
I got a reply to my letter to The Today Programme – from Nicola Stanbridge, the reporter involved, in fact. I haven’t replied yet but will do so tomorrow. In…