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 […]


  • How news is made

    Matt Wells writes up last week’s Oxford Media Convention in The Guardian. He focuses on Tessa Jowell’s broad hint that Greg Dyke “can’t take the licence fee for granted” at…

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  • Thin Media

    Milverton Wallace, the NetMedia man, sent me this interview with the man who apparently coined the phrase ‘

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  • Improving on Shannon

    Kevin Werbach directs me to this article from the NY Times about a fascinating extension of Claude Shannon’s basic research to bust historic radio capacity limits.

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  • Hastings on war

    Max Hastings, veteran war correspondent and editor – a thoughtful hawk – doesn’t want a war but doubts that we have a choice in The Sunday Telegraph. “I feel deeply…

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  • The Manolo Blahnik of computers

    How does Apple sustain a business ? a business that even makes a profit occasionally ? on a market share of less than 3% (so low, in fact, that it…

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  • I would like to buy a car

    I really would. But the Ford UK web site doesn’t work on a Macintosh. At least it doesn’t work in Netscape, Mozilla, Safari or Explorer (all latest versions) on two…

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  • STAND and entitlement cards

    The cyber-gerrymanderers (I’m going to keep saying that until it catches on) at STAND have done an extraordinary thing. They’ve reversed the voting for entitlement cards in the UK Government’s…

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  • The Oxford Media Convention

    My day in Oxford at the handsomely endowed Said Business School was fascinating – I’ve written a comment piece about it for The Guardian. Although billed as a conference on…

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  • Mark Thompson at The Oxford Media Convention

    Mark Thompson is Chief Exective of Channel 4. His speech at the Convention was outstanding. His principle point was that the old, Reithian language of public service means little to…

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  • Ed Richards at the Oxford Media Convention

    Ed Richards is The Prime Minister’s priniciple adviser on media matters. He’s a famously shadowy figure (he actually tried to dodge out of the frame as I took his picture!).…

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  • Lord David Currie at the Oxford Media Convention

    Lord Currie is the first Chair of Ofcom. He’s building his rag-tag team (rumoured to be at least 600 strong) and setting terms of reference now in readiness for the…

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  • Paddy Barwise at The Oxford Media Convention

    Paddy Barwise heads the London Business School’s Future Media programme and is a perennial commentator on broadcast regulation issues – particularly ownership and quality. He’s usually defending quality thresholds or…

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