- Blog
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Katrina’s consequences
How do you govern a country (and prosecute a costly foreign war) when the complacency and incompetence of your administration has just caused thousands of your citizens to be drowned? God knows. The British media’s almost gleeful schadenfreude over Katrina’s aftermath makes me sick (they love it: incompetence, anarchy, overflowing toilets, race fear, natural disaster.…
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I told you they were weird
This suit – not a new one, quite worn in fact, and with a very lairy pink tie over the hanger – spent a while in the hedge over the road from our house at the weekend.
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Radio Apocalypse
Voyeuristic I suppose but gripping and scary too. Live radio from a Clear Channel country station in New Orleans. Lots of live telephone reports from the Superdome and other parts of the drowned City and many frightened and angry citizens phoning in looking for help and for lost loved ones. All the local Clear Channel…
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Katrina journalism
I don’t know if there’s a name for this kind of journalism but it’s special: written quickly and by the old rules of American journalism. Simple, percussive, emotional and direct. And, of course, written right in the thick of ‘the big one‘ by someone who lived through it. We don’t do journalism like this in…
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A Twentieth Century leader for a Nineteenth Century party half way through the first decade of the Twenty-First. Perfect.
Go Tories! Don’t dawdle! Pick Clarke! He’s just what you need. I’d love to see you elect the shambling jazz buff: a thoroughly unreconstructed and entirely fossilised political force – and he’ll be practically 70 by the time he meets scary, chromium-plated dynamo Gordon Brown at the next election. Wonderful. You’d better get on with…
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Do something to improve your sad little life
Listen you slippery media smartarse, you trendy, ipod-shuffling, probably-up-in Edinburgh for the TV Festival (“Easyjet? Don’t make me laugh. You get a proper breakfast on BA…”), doing a bit of development work for Living TV, got a bid in for some lottery money, your stupid blog’s on Richard & Judy and your paralysingly boring video…
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Parking people
Why are 80% of Central London parking attendants from West Africa? Terrific Radio 4 programme (MP3) by Ade Daramy. These guys take terrible stick from God fearing Londoners who think it’s OK to throw dog shit, darts and racist language at them because they fight the good fight against out-of-control traffic congestion and antisocial motorists.…
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For sound geeks
I really loved this programme (MP3) by elite sound geek Chris Watson on Radio 4 the other day. It’s all about wind. Likewise, I’ve been really enjoying this book by Bruce and Marty Fries for wannabe sound geeks from O’Reilly.
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Unaccustomed calm
We live on the main road through our village (we like to call it a village. It is, of course, a twisted suburb – with good access to the M25). Anyway, our road is closed at the moment for resurfacing which explains why I’ve been lying on the white line looking up at the August…
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Buy my old camera
Japanese business seems to have a better memory than the rest of capitalism (the oldest firm in the world is, after all, Japanese). Canon’s camera museum is a thing of beauty. An archive like this must do immeasurable good for a consumer tech brand like Canon in the connected era. Of course you’ll probably want…