Posts relating to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and to her territories.
The Cambridges with their new daughter in her first public appearance; photograph from the Press Association. I haven’t followed the news of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s new baby much, but I was interested to note that when Kensington Palace announced her weight, it was in Imperial only. None of this foreign metric […]
Read More… from In the Empah, the royal baby is 8 lb 3 oz, thank you
The stunning original: the Range Rover Evoque. There has been a lot of ongoing press about Landwind’s copy of the Range Rover Evoque (a road test of the Evoque comes next week in Lucire, incidentally), one of my favourite Sloane Ranger SUVs. There’s no way Landwind would have come up with the design independently, and, […]
I have just under a year before my British passport expires. In the great tradition of apartheid, it’s a British overseas national passport for those of us born in the colonies, and both in 1996 and 2006, I had to use a different form to British citizens. I presume Britain was worried about overseas British […]
Read More… from The trials of being a dual national (or, Kiwis are better at this stuff than Brits)
I was very interested to see this graphic on the Geely Instagram account today: Spot the issue? I commented (and I wonder if they will delete it): ‘I would be a bit worried if the Geely GC7 found 71·5 mph its “flat out” speed. That would make it only as fast as a Citroën […]
Read More… from Geely Vision: as fast as a Citroën 2CV flat out
I was watching France 24 about half an hour after the Charlie Hebdo attack and made the above graphic a few hours later, in support of press freedoms and the victims’ families, and showing solidarity with other members of the media. One friend has made it his Facebook profile photo and I followed suit about […]
You’ve run for office, Jack. What is your favourite political speech? Something from MLK? JFK in Berlin? No, it was a completely fictional one, from the minds of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn: I’m a good European. I believe in Europe. I believe in the European ideal! Never again shall we repeat the bloodshed […]
Read More… from The greatest political speech, by Jim Hacker, MP
For the last few years, I’ve looked back at the events of the year in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. (In fact, in 2009, I looked back at the decade.) Tumblr’s the place I look at these days for these summaries, since it tends to have my random thoughts, ones complemented by very little critical thinking. They […]
I’m one of the few living in the occident who watched President Putin’s end-of-year press conference (all right, I listened to a good part of it while working). While the live translations coming through were distracting, it was better than not knowing what he was saying. It was a rare thing, to see a president […]
Read More… from Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year conference: not as ‘crazy’ as The Independent makes out
I chose my professions because I would be absolutely useless creating TV shows. Here are my top 10 ideas, none of which would likely fly on telly. Downtown Abby. Eight Is Enough sequel. Abby and Tom Bradford move to a swanky San Francisco apartment, now that the kids have left home. But good help […]
Be careful what you say on social media in Britain. English law permits mass surveillance of the big social media platforms, according to Charles Farr, the director-general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, in a statement published last week responding to a case brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil […]
Read More… from When it comes to mass surveillance, forget specificity