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 […]


  • Good links…

    Ivan alerts me to this genuinely amazing web site (with real historic value). Jonathan at Things to this lovely linklog (apparently run by estate agents), David Galbraith to this niche…

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  • Got Bokeh?

    I sold a lens on eBay the other day and my buyer wrote to tell me he’d seen the pics on my weblog and that I have ‘great Bokeh’. So…

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  • A car for cartoon villains

    I can’t tell you how much it cheers me up to learn that the number 2 result for ‘hummer h2‘ at Google is a marvelous bit of brand mischief called…

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  • MP3 thoughts

    The esteemed Phil Gyford just digitised a decade-and-a-half of radio recordings from audio cassette. That sounds like a public service to me – if he now feels able to feed…

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  • Why don’t more cars look like this?

    Saw the two Nissan Figaros in the top pic on a forecourt round the corner – someone’s obviously developing a specialism. Why, meanwhile, in the ocean of car choice, is…

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  • Reading

    Aidan Rankin’s gripping piece from The New Statesman about his experiment with being right-wing. He joined UKIP and spent a couple of years working on policy and campaigns until the…

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  • British, amateurish, brilliant…

    Thank you to the eight staff (I counted them) of the marvelous Circus Ricardo who entertained us Saturday afternoon. An almost perfect treat – artless, funny, very British – the…

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  • $75M well spent

    We saw our first blockbuster of the Summer this weekend – Shrek 2. A complete, delirious pleasure. What impresses me most about great Hollywood output like this is not so…

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  • Tivo for experiences

    Finally, a gadget that allows you to rewind life. A tiny video camera (the manufacturers expect you to clip it to your glasses – but if you got used to…

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  • Getting on the net at Foyle’s

    I’d like to be able to say that I’m a fan of Foyle’s O’Reilly-sponsored free wi-fi hotspot – what with the nice organic food, reasonable coffee and jazz music etc.…

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  • More camphone pics

    More pics from one of my regular traverses of the West End, including one of the many electric cars popping up all over the congestion charging zone and a Portuguese…

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  • Red button finally delivers…

    Every now and then I press the red button on the remote – usually to be greeted by some kind of error or a ‘nothing here yet’ message (of course,…

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