As a child of the 1970s, I was exposed to this English word: new. Now, before you say that that isn’t anything special, for some reason, in the ’70s, there was an obsession with newness. It wasn’t like the news (by this I mean the plural of new) of Amsterdam or Zealand, but an adjective […]
Category: UK
Posts relating to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and to her territories.
What’s all this Johnny Foreigner type?
After all that bollocks from the Hon J. Rees-Mogg, MP about banning the metric system from the Commons, I thought the Brexit-loving Tories would at least get this right. That #Brexit bill is typeset in Palatino. That was designed by a German. Come on, people, don’t you want to use British typefaces? Tell Johnny Foreigner […]
Wikipedia acts swiftly when criticized, bans an editor for life
When I wrote this post in May 2018, ‘People are waking up to Wikipedia’s abuses’, even I didn’t expect that Wikipedia would act so harshly when it gets criticized on its own platform. One editor decided to create a page on Philip Cross, who (or which) received a great deal of attention that month, […]
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On Boris Johnson’s strategy, Ken Clarke nails it
Ken Clarke has been around long enough (indeed, as the Father of the House, he has been in Parliament for longer than my lifetime) to see through political shenanigans, and Bojo and Brexit are no exception. (Yes, Minister is also instructive.) Ken Clarke nails Boris Johnson's oh so transparent strategy 👏 1. Set conditions which […]
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An expat’s thoughts about Hong Kong
Studio Incendo/Creative Commons 2·0 As an expat, I’ve been asked a few times about what I think of the Hong Kong protests. There’s no straight answer to this. Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order. The British never gave us universal suffrage, so the notion that it was all roses before 1997 is […]
When you let amateurs like Rees-Mogg write style guides
I thought I could be archaic on a few things—I still use diphthongs in text in our publications (æsthetic, Cæsar), the trio of inst., ult. and prox. in written correspondence, and even fuel economy occasionally in mpg (Imperial) because I am useless at ℓ/100 km and too few countries use km/ℓ. However, even I had […]
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I’m still doing election campaign posters, just not what you thought
If I think so little of Big Tech, why do I remain on Twitter? Because of some great people. Like Dan, who Tweeted: If Boris Johnson’s Leadership campaign slogan isn’t ‘Give Britain a BJ’ then he’s not the man I though he was. — Dan (@AceMcWicked) June 24, 2019 Followed by: […]
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The playbook used against Wikileaks
Now for something actually important beyond my first world problems. Journalist Suzie Dawson has a fantastic piece outlining how the smear of ‘serial rapist’ is part of the playbook used against senior members of Wikileaks. Her article is well worth reading, especially in light of how the mainstream media have spun the narrative against […]
How to lose readers: accuse them of something they don’t or wouldn’t do
Here’s a sure-fire way to lose readers and cost you ad revenue. It seems Haymarket’s Autocar (which I have been reading in print since 1980) wasn’t pleased about people using online ad blockers, so it created a warning. The trouble is I don’t use ad blockers. In fact, you can see a massive […]
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Today’s thoughts on Twitter
Momentmal/Pixabay Random thoughts in the last few minutes, blogging as a means of bookmarking: Prediction: sick of all the tracking, advertising and endless bugs, people begin using the telephone feature on their cellphones nearly exclusively. — Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) May 25, 2019 You never know, we may see a rise in the demand […]