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 […]


  • Holiday diversions, part 2

    A beautiful Summer evening spent at Carter’s gorgeous Steam Fair. Original, often steam-powered fairground rides, lovely painted horses, a proper coconut shy, test your strength, ring toss… and not a…

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  • 6 megapixels and no digital camera…

    If you go into one of those Kodak one-hour photo concessions in just about every High Street you can get your film scanned onto a CD for a few extra…

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  • Secret codes in packaging design

    If you want to tell Kodak to cut your Kodachrome film into strips instead of putting the slides into little plastic mounts you have to snip the corner off the…

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  • A lake in West Cork

    Loch Hyne (pronounced ‘Loch Ine’) was Europe’s first marine nature reserve, a strange and beautiful square kilometre of partly tidal inland lake about as far South and West as you…

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  • Indestructible brands

    Donald McRae on the struggle for survival outside the Premiership. Excellent business journalism by a very good sports writer. “Eleven clubs have been through the mill of administration this year,…

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  • Somebody’s listening

    I’m pleased to be able to tell you that, a few short months after I suggested it, Craig’s List has arrived in London. Danny wrote about it back in June.…

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  • Ugliness

    Isabel Hilton in The Guardian (I do read some other newspapers, it’s just that none of them let me link to their stuff properly!) reminds us how much the current…

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  • Carter, got

    He’s in post, seems to know roughly what’s going on (260 duties on his to do list), writes nicely (or at least his press office does) and he has a…

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  • What was that about a free lunch?

    The bad news about hydrogen is coming in. Alex Farrell at UC Berkeley and David Keith at Carnegie Mellon University conclude that the switch to hydrogen will quite likely just…

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  • Is it just because I’m a boy?

    Yesterday, somewhere in Kent, a train reached 200 miles per hour. When I was a kid – long before the tunnel – I used to find it exciting to stand…

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  • Telly events

    Are you planning to go to either the Edinburgh TV Festival 22–24 August or to the RTS’s Cambridge Convention 18–20 September? If you are, drop me a line.

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  • Spoiler shame? Not really.

    David Liddiment knows his stuff (and his column is one of the several very good reasons to buy Media Guardian Mondays) but he’s reading the BBC’s mission through the distorting…

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