- Blog
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The best way to read 10,000 word reviews online?
So I renewed my NYRB subscription and this time I went for the cheaper electronic subscription. This will make me feel a bit better about not reading it (and there’ll be no reproachful pile of nicely-bagged newsprint to remind me). If I could get the NYRB through the admirable interface of The Guardian’s new Digital…
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The BBC adrift
Friendless at the seat of power, rudderless at a time of critical danger. What a difference 48 hours can make. I have no idea how things came to this. A year ago the BBC was certified golden – officially untouchable. The talk was all about how to rein in Dyke’s resurgent, inflation-protected juggernaut. Now, after…
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Saturday Morning Pictures
I took Olly, 5 and Billie, 4, to The Barbican‘s Family Film Club – a sort of middle class mirror image of the Saturday Morning Cinema of your youth. We watched Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last and sat on the nicely-carpeted lobby floor to make wobbly clock towers from card and pipe cleaners in a friendly…
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Inquiring into war
Here’s a thought. Why don’t we legislate for a statutory, independent inquiry after every war (except, perhaps, those started by others)? The inquiry should be given certain inviolable powers in advance – the right, for instance, to examine relevant intelligence and to require senior figures to testify – to prevent Governments from limiting the range…
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Blair’s political cojones
Assuming that the top-up fees rebellion was ultimately put down (and pretty brutally put down, by the look of it) by forcing a wedge between the two distinct groups of rebels – those who want to see Blair gone and those who object only to the policy – this is obviously not a great result…
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Londonistan
Illuminating forensic examination of Britain’s increasingly shabby War On Terror from lawyer John Upton in old school liberal conscience, The LRB (I think you only get the first half of this story without a LRB subscription – but that’s still a pretty chunky 6,000 words).
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Ordinary licence fee-payer maxes out BBC
Crazy economics you got there. The more people that listen, the more it costs you – up to your server licence limit, of course. Illustrates potentially loony outcomes of on-demand media distribution and makes quite a good argument for the retention of the broadcast model.
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Optimistic caller
The phone rings at home. “Hello”. “Is that Abbott’s Engineering?”. No, it’s not. I think you’ve got the wrong number.” “Never mind. Do you sell welding spares?”
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Huh?
Billie, 4, made this at school today. What is it? No idea. I’ll ask her in the morning and let you know (click the small pic for a bigger one). Update: it’s a Barbie Car!
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Nix the upgrade
I was sort of idly thinking of upgrading the teeny tiny hard drive in Juliet’s original, Blueberry iBook (too small even to upgrade to Panther, now) but then I read this terrifying account of the sixty five-step operation required to do so.