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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The lost leading the lost
The young men who attacked London last week are pitiable – profoundly lost to humanity. Theirs isn’t a religion, nor a cause. It’s a sacrifice cult, a bloody creed designed…
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40° coloureds/cottons
This is how you kill a Sony Ericsson K700i.
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Citizens censored?
Helen Boaden, the BBC’s head of news, quoted in The Guardian, says that: “Within minutes of the first blast we had received images from the public,” says Boaden. “We had…
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I suppose it was inevitable
The Daily Mail’s RSS feed is up so, you’ll be happy to know, you can now read all about tidal waves of dirty immigrants, neighbours from hell, meddling bureaucrats and…
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The wisdom of the mayor
Since Thursday’s bombings, Ken Livingstone’s been telling a story about London as open, tolerant and free – the opposite of the miserable theocratic monocultures advanced by the miserable bombers and…
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The day after infamy
A big city is an amazing thing. It’s obviously more than the sum of its parts. This city’s history makes it wide open, accepting, perhaps incautious and that makes London…
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Things were different in the 1950s
My mother-in-law gave us a little bundle of gorgeous 1950s I-Spy books so I looked them up and found this nice memory of their production back in the Sixties and…
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What’s wrong with Live 8?
Smug, patronising, reductive, counter-productive. Nauseating, clapped-out (McCartney? Sting? The Who?), bullying, sentimental, phoney, boring. Recycling twenty year-old images of suffering people. Providing no insight at all into African subjectivity –…
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What I love
The Extreme Sports Channel. Really. It’s brilliant. Me and Olly sit open-mouthed in front of Freestyle Moto-Cross, Vert skateboarding and Ultra-skidoo (is that what it’s called?). I’m a 42 year-old…