- Blog
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Titter ye not
Can’t beat a 21st Century Eurovision Song Contest for lessons on the dynamics of the new Europe. Talk about New vs. Old. Fringe vs. centre. East vs. West. Anyway, the fringe is obviously where it’s at now. Those picturesque Eastern European capitals with their glistening waterfronts and their pretty mediaeval old towns and their flat…
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Kids’ media we like
I’m reading the kids the hilarious and wise Clarice Bean Spells Trouble – cleverly illustrated, contemporary and cheeky – and Lauren Child, the brilliant author/illustrator behind the series, covers the waterfront, with picture books for 3–6s and story books for the older kids. We all really look forward to bedtime while we’re reading a Clarice…
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High water mark for 4x4s?
In the news pages of yesterday’s Independent the ‘jump-suited environmentalists‘ from Greenpeace are chaining themselves to the Range Rover production line in Solihull and in the Motoring pull-out John Simister is embarrassed to be seen driving its latest product, the impressively ridiculous Range Rover Sport. I’m still pretty sure that the 4×4 era is nearly…
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Businesses I like
Kall Kwik in Watford. My favourite kind of business: bustling, friendly, helpful, cheap and right, slap bang in the middle of the local economy. Making things happen for other businesses, almost all of them small or tiny. I wonder if there’s a metric for ‘contribution to the local business ecology’? If Watford’s economy is a…
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Dress codes for hooligans
High visibility clothing? How about morning dress? I think we need smarter youth, not day-glo youth. Tails and a top hat at all times please. And nicely pressed while you’re at it. And a cummerbund…
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From the storage unit
It’s 1980. Malcolm McLaren’s making his first, difficult post-punk career change. Lots of fuss in the tabloids (and in the NME) about under-age singer Annabella Lwin. Brief Walkman frenzy (do you remember there was an effort to name them ‘stowaways’?) – lots of cassette-only releases. ‘Cassette culture’, which was a bit like podcasting, I suppose…
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Danny’s got a proper job!
Legendary large-brained stand-up geek celebrity and super-rich libertarian hi-tech pressure group – together at last. Danny O’Brien has gone to work at the EFF. He’s going to be coordinating activists (or, possibly, he’s going to be a coordinated activist). He’s also going to carry on with NTK – still practically the only thing I read…
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Archaeology
‘Storage’ is very ‘now’ isn’t it. Everybody seems to be storing something and it’s obviously a boom business. There are all sorts of reasons for storing stuff, I suppose: you married fashionably late and neither of you can bear to throw away your precious stuff. You divorced and now you have to accommodate the crap…
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Now shut up…
Labour’s Regular (as opposed to XXL) majority is a good thing. Almost everyone agrees (except the Labour leadership and their whips, I suppose) that a Supersized majority of over 150 seats weakens Parliament and produces nasty democratic anomalies – bad laws like the hunting ban, control orders and ID cards, for instance. Almost everyone also…