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 […]


  • Code is law, pictures are rubbish

    I put up a few pictures from yesterday’s Oxford conference, The Politics of Code. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try some words.

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  • Need a decent Lighting pun here

    Jane Lighting has won the top job at Channel 5. Story from The Guardian. I’m making a serious attempt to link to newspapers other than The Guardian for media stories…

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  • Top-slicing

    Charles Allen, Chairman of Granada, tells the Royal Television Society that the BBC should be required to hand over 10% of its licence fee revenue to fund public service output…

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  • Proles vs Toffs

    I’ve spent a fascinating day in Oxford at the Politics of Code conference, featuring the estimable Larry Lessig, Esther Dyson et al – and a lot of old friends. It’s…

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  • My favourite search terms

    People arriving at my web site via a search engine are searching for the strangest things. According to my logs the number one search term is “The Gruffalo” which makes…

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  • BBC Charter big guns

    The Guardian confirms that the BBC has responded quickly and seriously to Tessa Jowell’s announcement that Charter renewal won’t be a cake walk. They’ve rolled out two top executives to…

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  • Barry Cox on the future of the BBC

    Barry Cox’s second Oxford University lecture on the future of television, reprinted in

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  • Bridge fanatic

    Another beautiful day in Soho. To Blacks in Dean Street for lunch with John Wilmott. John founded – with his brother Eamonn – Internet Publishing which became Online Magic and,…

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  • Got little kids?

    Throwing out the self-promotional boom a bit further today – to take in my wife Juliet’s latest column at Tigerchild. Juliet’s been writing her funny and frank weekly accounts of…

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  • The manned space programme and human vanity

    Those who doubt that we should continue sending people into space have a point – but only in the short term. As soon as you stretch the time scale out…

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  • Bowbrick at large

    My latest column for Guardian Online is up. It’s headlined Secret of their success and it’s about weblogs and the uniquely conversational tone of really good bloggers.

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  • Perkins is among us

    If you’ve never heard of The Red Herring it might be a bit late for you to catch up. For most of the nineties and throughout the tech boom, the…

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