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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Ordinary licence fee-payer maxes out BBC
Crazy economics you got there. The more people that listen, the more it costs you – up to your server licence limit, of course. Illustrates potentially loony outcomes of on-demand…
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Optimistic caller
The phone rings at home. “Hello”. “Is that Abbott’s Engineering?”. No, it’s not. I think you’ve got the wrong number.” “Never mind. Do you sell welding spares?”
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Nix the upgrade
I was sort of idly thinking of upgrading the teeny tiny hard drive in Juliet’s original, Blueberry iBook (too small even to upgrade to Panther, now) but then I read…
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Out of his box
This is the kind of thing those insrutable Finns were after when they abducted Matt Jones and sequestered him in their arctic circle underground think-o-tron. I think it’s quite a…
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Gaming eMusic
Here’s a good game. See how many albums you can get within your 40 track per month download limit over at eMusic. It hadn’t occurred to me, of course, but…
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A new standard for online news?
So I’ve been living with The Guardian’s Digital Edition for a few weeks and I’m even more convinced. It really is the first good analogue for a real newspaper I’ve…
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Still repulsive after all these years
The Fall were a kind of mysterious, twitchy, paranoid fixture at the edge of my early adult life – at least once I’d sold all those Genesis albums. I’ve got…
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Davies gets his retaliation in first
Meaty and coherent preemptive strike from BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies on Hutton (although last minute delays to the report may make it a bit more preemptive than intended). You’ll need…
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George W Bush makes good decisions
Listen, I don’t mean that they’re all good (or even that many of them are), I mean that he just made two big ones that practically gave me goose bumps…
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The trouble with getting old
If you’ve got an ft.com subscription you should read Martin Wolf’s article about population and pension provision from 6 Jan. He nicely lays out the main issues (with charts) and…
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Best book this Xmas
We’re huge fans of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler round here. Their The Gruffalo is one of our favourite picture books and was turned into the best bit of children’s…