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 […]


  • The food industry is not the enemy

    Ad people are clever – problem-solvers by nature. Stopping them from using celebrities to promote food to kids is dumb because it’s just another creative constraint and ad people eat…

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  • Abu Ghraib Reading

    2023 UPDATE: when I read my old posts from this period I’m surprised and sometimes apalled at how apparently forgiving I was of the solecisms and straightforward lies of those…

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  • Ivan lives

    Ivan and I were partners for years – we started a web site design firm called Webmedia together. Later he went mad and spent three or four years in a…

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  • Staff development

    The thing about those Mirror photos, I think, is not that they always looked like fakes (which they did) but that they really looked more like pages from a training…

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  • Invisible content

    Try this simple test. Go to the BBC Radio 4 web site and find the RealMedia streams for Misha Glenny’s excellent series of talks about European expansion, Brave New Europe.…

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  • But is there a redemption penalty?

    I can’t tell you what a relief it is that God has finally entered the highly competitive sub-prime lending market (from today’s slightly-more-entertaining-than-usual spam).

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  • My Mother-in-law

    I’m not saying she’s strange, but it turns out she’s been keeping a collection of battered 1970s American license plates in the loft. Nobody knows why… And while we’re on…

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  • Passenger information

    Paul complains that I don’t provide a link to a timetable in my entry on The North London Line – so I’ve added one (although the Silverlink web site is…

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  • Ad man blogs

    Russell Davies used to be something important in online advertising – but that was before anyone had heard of online advertising. These days he’s something important in advertising. He’s keeping…

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  • No, really. I’m fine. I didn’t want any Google shares anyway

    Like I said, me and Warren Buffet, we won’t be buying any Google shares in the company’s upcoming IPO. Of course, he could actually buy some if he felt like…

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  • Kitchen sink ethnography

    There was something on the radio the other day about mantelpieces. An academic has been making a close study of what people keep there – she reckons they’re a good…

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  • Making bbc content visible

    Finding anything at The BBC’s web site is close to impossible these days. The site is deep (lots of layers), it’s very wide (lots of channels, departments, shows, regions, teams…),…

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