Highlights
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 […]
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 […]
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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Testing humanity
We’re very pro-cuddly creatures in our house. Some of our most treasured companions are very realistic fluffy bears, dogs, otters, giraffes, lions and so on and our favourite stories usually…
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Not a lot of people know this
I have a tiny internal Julie Burchill living in my head, against whom I check all my ideas. — (UPDATE: this might be the NME article, but the text in…
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Questions questions
I have many questions about Islam and those cartoons. I wish I could sit down with one of the young, apparently intelligent and obviously articulate spokesmen I see rolled out…
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An open letter (about the Schools White Paper) to grumpy Labour backbenchers
Hello Guys, I’m pretty sure you won’t argue with me when I say that education is important to national competitiveness but I wonder if you’ll agree with me when I…
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Big, stupid cars
If you do the school run in a Land Rover Discovery 3 you’re hauling fifty times your own weight with you (maybe twenty times the weight of your whole family).…
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The unlikeliest survivor
How can one man be so irrelevant and yet, at the same time, so influential? How does John Prescott, a politician who belongs not to the last generation but to…
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Sort of Proustian, really
Germolene used to be pink. It was famously pink. People used to call it ‘pink ointment’. For generations the distinctive colour and thick, putty-like texture defined the whole category. Everybody…
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Cameron again
I schlepped down to Demos at London Bridge to watch David Cameron make an unimpressive speech in which he largely failed to convince his audience that a) Margaret Thatcher believed…
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Fear and loathing in Palestine
How do you get a stalled peace process back on track in the world’s most complicated and fragile region? Well, I’ll be honest, I have no idea (you thought I…
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So why did they do it?
Why did Google cave in to Chinese censorship? Because of American accounting principles. In the US (and, increasingly, elsewhere) a listed business reports to its shareholders every 90 days. The…
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Whalers on our whale
Naturally enough, when London’s poor lost Northern Bottlenose Whale started to get worldwide press I thought I’d see what the less sentimental whaling nations were saying about it. Not much,…
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Would you carry an ID card?
I might carry an ID card. I might carry one that said something like: “the bearer has proven, to the satisfaction of somebody accountable, that he is the person he…