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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A proper innovation from The Guardian
I’ve finally got around to trying The Guardian’s digital edition and I’ve got to tell you it is absolutely brilliant. In fact, I think it might be the first proper…
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Polly Pocket lesbians
I’m getting a lot of pornospam from a web site called tinylesbians.com (I don’t want to link – it’ll only encourage them). I’m reluctant to actually visit the site in…
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I think I invented Reality TV
At the end of 1996 I made a presentation to a TV conference and I filled it with screenshots from a new webcam site that everyone was talking about called…
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Pop culture gewgaws
Over in Hackney (London’s Brooklyn), at the trendy Transition Gallery they’re developing a nice line in twenty-first-century wise-ass barrow-boy pop culture irony. In fact, I think Transition is likely to…
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Borrowed beliefs
So it turns out that Michael Howard’s ‘beliefs’ weren’t borrowed from a tea-towel or a greetings card motto or the dreadful ‘desiderata‘ at all, but from the grimly pompous words…
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Howard’s desiderata
Michael Howard’s sixteen beliefs, published today, read like a National Trust tea-towel with an unsavoury, neo-liberal edge – Max Ehrmann’s syrupy, ubiquitous desiderata rewritten by Keith Joseph – the kind…
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Should have gone to Spec Savers
I was looking for the CAF web site, which is at http://www.caf.org.uk and came across this handsome page at http://www.caf.org.
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Bam, World Heritage Site
Heartbreaking photographs of beautiful, pre-quake Bam (link from Bruce Sterling). Two-thirds of these buildings have been flattened by the earthquake. As I write the apparently well-organised Iranian authorities are announcing…
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New York City and all-you-can-eat
I wanted to write about eMusic six weeks ago, when they switched off their all-you-can-eat subscription package ($9.99 per month for unlimited downloads) but I waited for some press coverage…
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High Street Showbiz
The Economist on the future of retail – playing out in a mall near you if you live in the United States, ever the over-heated laboratory for this kind of…