- Blog
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My wife is desperate
Juliet is up to her neck in Garageband, trying to mash up some samples and loops to produce a backing track for her new enterprise, which is a kids’ party business. If you’re a Garageband wizard, or if you know someone who could help her produce a Norman Cook-quality track on a shoestring, drop her…
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A creature of the Beeb
You know those kids abandoned in the woods and brought up by wolves? Well, I was brought up by the BBC. By Radio 4, to be specific. I mean that about 75% of everything I know and believe was provided for me by an unbroken 8 or 10 hours-per-day Radio 4 habit. And I’m pretty…
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Are the Tories history?
Max Hastings thinks so and, on the face of it, the skewed voting system makes a revival look almost impossible, even for a party in good health. For an ageing party in electoral disarray, about to embark on yet another messy leadership contest and without a coherent policy platform, a real Commons majority must look…
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Howard’s miserable legacy
Michael Howard is a slick political vandal disguised as a toff. When the histories are written this campaign will be remembered for his cynical ‘mainstreaming’ of a particularly ugly xenophobia. For short-term political gain he ‘normalised’ the language of the casual racist. Terms like ‘swamped’, ‘over-run’ and ‘out of control’ are now quite acceptable even…
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What I’m going to be doing this evening
Your activity for the afternoon: try to use this tiny picture of my invitation to tonight’s BBC election night party to create a duplicate good enough to get you into the party (of course, you’ll also need to copy the shiny bits on the other side too). If you get in, approach me and say:…
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An end to deference
Wars, just and unjust, are always, and by definition, the fault of some leader or other. National leaders enter conflict with others for all sorts of reasons, hardly ever pure. The difference now is that the citizenry feels free to say so. The readiness of grief-stricken parents and widows to ‘blame’ Tony Blair (or Geoff…
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Jeremy Clarkson’s worst nightmare
Great news. It’s now possible to an fit an automatic speed limiter to your car so that you simply can’t exceed the speed limit. In fact there’s a trial fleet of cars fitted with these helpful devices cruising around Leeds right now (I think I drove home behind one the other day). It’s connected to…
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The Last Pooh
Listen. You’re going to think I’m a bit stupid for raising this. I mean right now, two days from IMPACT and all that. Anyway, I’m watching the New Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh on Playhouse Disney. Pooh, Piglet and the gang are playing ice hockey (Eeyore is in goal). Why do I find this so annoying? I…
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Oh God…
The tension is unbearable. People (like Brian Walden in his Radio 4 essay) are saying that this is a dull campaign but I disagree. Could it be less dull? Blair’s Nixon moment will affect the outcome not at all (hardly anyone knows who the Attorney General is, let alone what his contribution to the conduct…
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Life after iPod
The night before I left for NYC my iPod died. It’s four years old so I suppose I should be grateful it lasted this long. It went to consumer appliance heaven with a horrible grinding and whining noise, finished off by the sort of goose-sucked-into-jet-turbine howl-and-crunch that you’d think would require an actual goose. Standing…