A dodgy 2000s’ UK spam list is still doing the rounds in 2022, pretending to be legit

  During February, I received spam from Novuna in the UK, the finance company that’s a subsidiary of Mitsubishi. It wasn’t personally addressed, it was just a general message. I complained via their complaints’ email, only to have the message bounce back as it wasn’t working. However, they did respond on Twitter, unlike less caring […]

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Nostalgia: Money for Nothing

Money for Nothing—image from Amazon Prime, where, as of yesterday, you can watch a presumably cleaner copy than what’s on YouTube.   As a young lad, I enjoyed the Screen One TV movie Money for Nothing (1993), which aired on the BBC in the UK and TV1 here. Not to be confused with the John […]

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COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done, June 28

I haven’t done one of these since February, where I look at the COVID-19 positivity rates of selected countries. The arrows indicate the direction of change since that post. Happily, I imagine with the vaccine roll-outs, we are seeing drops, though there is a new wave in Taiwan, contributing to a rise; other territories showing […]

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My 10 favourite Don Black lyrics

  I’ve bought Don Black’s The Sanest Guy in the Room, which is a great read—you know that it’s piqued your interest if you can do 110 pages in a single sitting. There’s more to go, and it’s entertaining learning a bit about the backgrounds to his songs, ‘Born Free’ arguably his best known. (I […]

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Why I don’t find the Asiatic characters on Little Britain and Come Fly with Me racist

BBC I have a problem with blackface and yellowface, generally when there are more than capable actors who could have taken the role, but I make exceptions in some situations.    Take, for example, the news that Little Britain and Come Fly with Me are being removed from streaming services because of what are now […]

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Stay home. Drive to Durham. Say lies

You couldn’t make this up.    Fortunately for us all, RussInCheshire on Twitter has summed up Cumgate, or whatever it’s being dubbed in the UK.    No matter how bad our politics could get, I think we should be pleased that we have not followed the UK, and that we have dealt with COVID-19 far […]

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Rather locked down than living within a controlled experiment

As a dual national, I hope there’s some exaggeration or selective quoting in the Bristol Post about its report of former police officer Mike Rowland, who’s stuck in Auckland with his wife Yvonne. Apparently, New Zealand is in ‘pandemonium’ and he feels like he’s in ‘Alcatraz’.    As we are most certainly not in pandemonium, […]

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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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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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Remakes: Widows joins other Euston Films series

I see British filmmaker Steve McQueen has remade Lynda La Plante’s Widows.    I was younger than he was when it aired, and didn’t appreciate the storylines to the same extent, though I have recollections of it.    What I did recall was a Smith and Jones sketch, which had a voiceover along these lines: […]

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