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 […]


  • Ofcom FAQ

    A handy primer for Ofcom’s review of public service broadcasting in Q&A form from Maggie Brown in Media Guardian.

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  • Blair, Brown, Bartlet and Blaine

    Tonight we watched The West Wing (the Xmas episode in which Toby is reunited with his convicted felon dad) and Tony Blair’s speech at the Bournemouth conference. We’re about 90%…

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  • Your licence fee in action

    Over at BBC Radio 3, they’re having an Architecture Week and they’ve dug out a lot of interesting archive audio for the web site including, among other things, lectures by…

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  • RIP

    They don’t have much in common, but they’re all gone and the world is measurably poorer without them: Johnny Cash, Hugo Young and Edward Said (an outstanding and honest obit…

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  • Keeping London’s motor running

    From The Economist a few weeks ago (so this is for the outboard brain), an excellent leader and cover story about immigration – particularly to London. As a London fanatic (living…

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  • Are chat rooms public places?

    What are you really doing when you close a lot of hugely popular chat rooms? Looking for a real world analogy: are you just shutting the high maintenance, low profit…

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  • I’m trying not to develop a Nectar Card obsession

    Retailer loyalty schemes don’t work ? research shows that they attract ‘card collectors’ who are, by definition, loyal to no one ? or to everyone, which amounts to the same…

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  • Getting your arse kicked in the USA

    WH Smith is the number 1 book retailer in the UK ? which is enough to make a sensitive bookworm weep ? but, according to The Bookseller (you may need…

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  • 19:57, Sunday 21 September 2003

    Galileo just made its final plunge into Jupiter’s frankly unwelcoming gaseous heart – vapourised, sterilised and thoroughly mashed up as it did so. Goodbye sturdy traveller! We all got pretty…

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  • Keeping track of your favourite newspaper columnists

    I feel I should point out that Mr. Gyford‘s Byliner just gets more awesome and probably ought to be my permament browser homepage. Why hasn’t someone snapped it up and…

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  • Facial hair?

    I’m thinking of growing a moustache.

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  • Good books

    Some really good books from O’Reilly have arrived lately. The Hacks series is going to some really interesting places, taking in Google, Amazon, TiVo and now eBay (I reviewed the…

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