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 […]
Browse by year
Latest
-
Reports reports reports
In case you haven’t had enough reports lately, here are two really fascinating ones. One that got lots of press when it came out last week (including useful summaries from…
-
The next Stella Vine
The near-legendary Paul Murphy has a show opening on 3 April at the cheeky Transition Gallery in Hackney (London’s Brooklyn). Transition hit the headlines a few weeks ago as home…
-
Following the wrong leader
Peter Preston in The Observer on the ‘
-
Tivo has landed
We’ve adopted a second-hand Tivo (why don’t the cable companies launch their own PVR? What’s wrong with them? Do they like being kicked around by Sky?). PVRs are supposed to…
-
Lovely money
Lots of handsome Bulgarian paper money from a huge private collection of old bank notes, bonds and so on. Bank note design is a fascinating collision of authenticity (not a…
-
A grim kind of hope
Is it perverse to hope, as I do, that the Madrid attrocity is ETA and not Al-Qaeda? If it’s the former, we can expect electoral collapse for the separatists (the…
-
Dyson, Diamond, Didion
Two very good reviews from the New York Review. Cheeky polymath Freeman Dyson on the paranormal and trendy geographer Jared Diamond on Easter Island. Two beautifully-written excerpts (first, second) from…
-
Transport issues in post oil-crisis urban policing in the United States
Important journalism from Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian (the paper that reliably tackles the big issues). I hate to quibble but, even when I was a kid, everybody knew that…
-
Warm white wine, peanuts, outer space, celebrities… Marvelous
The highlight of the week was on Wednesday. First, fantastic French Vietnamese lunch with parent and wife Juliet, baby Rosa, sarcastic artist Paul Murphy and noted author Yolanda Zappaterra (they…
-
Pictures to set a small boy’s pulse racing
Lovely 360 degree QTVRs of aeroplanes (and rockets, of course) from the Smithsonian’s collection and a gallery of equally lovely photos of old tractors and trucks from Antique Power and…
-
Colour photographs from a B&W world
These colour photographs from pre-revolutionary Russia are beautiful and strange. The Library of Congress has made handsome digital images from the three-part glass negatives left by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, photographer…