Highlights
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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Citizens censored?
Helen Boaden, the BBC’s head of news, quoted in The Guardian, says that: “Within minutes of the first blast we had received images from the public,” says Boaden. “We had…
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I suppose it was inevitable
The Daily Mail’s RSS feed is up so, you’ll be happy to know, you can now read all about tidal waves of dirty immigrants, neighbours from hell, meddling bureaucrats and…
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The wisdom of the mayor
Since Thursday’s bombings, Ken Livingstone’s been telling a story about London as open, tolerant and free – the opposite of the miserable theocratic monocultures advanced by the miserable bombers and…
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The day after infamy
A big city is an amazing thing. It’s obviously more than the sum of its parts. This city’s history makes it wide open, accepting, perhaps incautious and that makes London…
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Things were different in the 1950s
My mother-in-law gave us a little bundle of gorgeous 1950s I-Spy books so I looked them up and found this nice memory of their production back in the Sixties and…
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What’s wrong with Live 8?
Smug, patronising, reductive, counter-productive. Nauseating, clapped-out (McCartney? Sting? The Who?), bullying, sentimental, phoney, boring. Recycling twenty year-old images of suffering people. Providing no insight at all into African subjectivity –…
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What I love
The Extreme Sports Channel. Really. It’s brilliant. Me and Olly sit open-mouthed in front of Freestyle Moto-Cross, Vert skateboarding and Ultra-skidoo (is that what it’s called?). I’m a 42 year-old…
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Unmonolithic behaviour from Auntie
I don’t know how many State-owned broadcasters there are left in the world (Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Italy…) but can you imagine any one of them having the resources or…
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Being there without being there
Flickr’s Glastonbury tag (and the RSS feed).