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 […]


  • Oblomovka Orlowski palaver

    Danny’s got some exasperated and nicely-phrased Orlowski bait over at Oblomovka. The thing about Orlowski is that he’s not an aberration and he won’t be going away any time soon.…

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  • Nice

    Enigmatic Paul Murphy will draw your dog (or your car, or anything really) from a photograph (or from a photograph of somebody else’s dog if you like). Intriguing rumour has…

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  • Ouch

    When I said that Carltonada shareholders might be happy for Allen and Green to spend a little more time with their families, I definitely didn’t expect it all to kick…

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  • Do it yourself… Start your own school…

    I’m at Demos‘ tenth birthday party and I’m bending the ear of Geoff Mulgan ? founder of Demos and, since 1999, a top man in the Number 10 Policy Unit…

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  • A suburban urge

    The 14 year-old in me (so that’s about 1977) really wants one of these instead of one of these (nice cutaway here). I am so suburban (or maybe one of…

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  • Bismarck’s legacy

    Europe’s pension ‘pyramid scheme’ is in terminal crisis. In Italy, public pension payments already account for 15% of GDP annually. Everyone knows that pensions are broken (and Britain’s are rather…

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  • Media overthrow still imminent

    Over in Medialand it’s business as usual. The Telegraph has a new editor (yawn!), Carlton and Granada are to be allowed to merge (did you hear Allen and Green’s surprisingly…

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  • Gibson’s got a nifty kettle metaphor

    William Gibson has stopped blogging to write a new book. He thinks the two activities are incompatible and has a metaphor that makes me feel a bit sick: “The image…

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  • The caffeine economy

    Friday, schlepped around town with Stuart, talking wi-fi with Mike Nutley, veteran New Media Age editor (He’s pleased to point out that his tenure spans the magazine’s fattest ever issue…

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  • A handy colour scheme generator

    This is very groovy, although, since ‘pixy‘, who created it, apparently retains copyright in schemes generated, I wonder what the status of a site (or anything else) created using one…

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  • Nectar Card rejection rejected

    I’ve been playing with Google’s AdWords to advertise my stupid No. I do not have a Nectar Card t-shirts and Google have rejected all of my ads. To summarise: you’re…

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  • Public wi-fi growing up

    The Register with two related wi-fi developments. BT will wholesale its Openzone public wi-fi service and Vodafone will allow business customers to pay for wi-fi access via their phone bills.…

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