January 2010
I'm doing Talking Musical Revolutions on February...
This is the generation of do-it-yourself drug takers, bathroom chemists on the hunt for new highs that are legal and as lethal as the best of the banned stuff. This is a generation of mad scientists. The monsters they experiment on are their own minds. This is the generation that’s given up on pretending that it doesn’t and just does. This is the generation brought up on a diet of adverts that...
“We won’t vote conservative/Because we never have/Everyone lies/Everyone...”
– Glamorous Glue – Morrissey
Who voted for Thatcher? Someone did. Who voted for Blair? Someone did.
Someone who knows the madness of The Daily Mail... →
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If Steve Jobs is The Beatles, the iPad is Let It...
There was a lot of talk that the Apple iPad announcement would be Steve Jobs’s final keynote, the swan-song appearance from the king of the consumer electronics showmen. There was no sign of that. But the previous fire and excitement of his presentations arguably wasn’t there.
The Apple iPad showcase opened with a long period of Jobs browsing on the device which was informative but not...
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Reminder: why the iPad and other tablets are hard...
Just a quick call back to my piece a few weeks back on the workers that build the consumer electronics we’re drooling over. Read it here
The tale of the France Telecom suicides is a...
Francis Le Bras discovered he’d become a corporate nobody when his name disappeared from the organizational chart on the wall of his Paris office. In 2008, Le Bras’s employer, France Telecom SA, cut his job as a writer of software applications for Minitel, a pre-Internet information service for telephone users. While Le Bras, 56, stayed on the payroll, he had no job title, and he says he was...
Tony Blair at the Chilcot Inquiry: one question he...
Tony Blair gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday. As a consummate political operator, he’ll dance around the questions so much he’ll make Fred Astaire look lazy and Alastair Campbell’s testimony look forthcoming. There have already been reports that he’s been staying up until 3am rehearsing for his appearance before the Inquiry.
Expect carefully worded statements that seem like...
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9 commandments for new PRs
I developed this list of simple rules for new PRs dealing with journalists for a talk I did to Lewis PR UK at the end of last year. They’re based on conversations with 20 other professional journalists about their pet PR peeves. If you’d be interested in me delivering the full talk to your agency, drop me a line.
9 commandments for new PRs 1 Most journalists don’t really...
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Shock, horror! Harriet Harman's talking gibberish...
Rod Liddle once opened a column by pondering whether the reader would shag Harriet Harman. He was running with his usual casually offensive misogyny. The real question to ask about Harman and most of the current Government is this – how can a bunch of people who are so ignorant be expected to run the country? Harman’s latest killer quote suggests that cash and good parenting have a direct...
Liz Jones watch: some old crap about a baseball...
This week in my continuing series examining the public collapse of Britain’s most unhinged columnist, Liz has decided to project all her problems with men on the humble baseball cap:
A baseball cap is rude. It means your man is a slob, with a Peter Pan complex. It means he is selfish, unthinking, ungentlemanly and probably hasn’t washed his hair.
Or maybe, I don’t know, his head’s cold? And...
Scientologists are disaster parasites and Haiti is...
It’s not surprising that the Scientologists have arrived in Haiti with their yellow t-shirts and charlatan healing techniques. They rush to disaster zones with unsettling regularity.
The survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami, the attacks of 9/11, the 7/7 bombings, the Beslan school attack have all drawn the attention of Scientology’s yellow shirted Volunteer Ministers.
Their...
If he hadn't been a writer, Neil Gaiman would have...
“I would have wanted to design religions. I’d have a little shop, and people would phone up or come into the shop and they’d say, ‘I’d like a religion’. And I’d say, ‘Cool, O.K. Where do you stand on guilt, and how do you want to fund it? And would you like sort of a belief in the universe as a huge beneficent organ? Or would you like something more complex?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, we’d like...
“I haven’t seen any Scrooge-like spoilsport remarking on the prospect that the...”
– Bruce Sterling, 2010 Predictions: The Well
Blair had Bulger, Cameron has Edlington....
“[The case] is like hammer blows struck against the sleeping conscience of the country, urging us to wake up and look unflinchingly at what we see…we cannot live in a moral vacuum. If we do not learn and then teach the value of what is right and wrong, then the result is simply moral chaos which engulfs us all.” – Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary, 1993. “It is wrong to say that each of...
Elevated terror threat levels: OK, so now what…?
So Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, announced yesterday that the terror threat level has been heightened from Substantial (“an attack is a strong possibility”) to Severe (“an attack is highly likely”)…now what?
The Home Office’s webpage on Terror Threat Levels advises that you should be aware of suspicious items on public transport and vigilant towards suspicious activity but not allow terrorism...
Poem: Esther for never
Tired and drunk what a combination the upstairs neighbours have stripped away the carpet they can hear every sound and I can too the creak of their bed springs a sad wheeze from a mattress that hasn’t seen sex in forever outside the rain is rattling and the birds are awake before I have thought of sleeping tired and drunk there’s a message on the fridge from someone who used to live here it says:...
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Can’t wait for the Apple Tablet? For some workers...
There are codes of conduct. There are audits. But there are still serious labour issues at the Far Eastern factories where the gadgets we crave are made. Most of us know that but our taste for the latest tech forces those concerns to the back of our minds.
Reports of industrial disputes at Wintek Corp, which supplies Apple, Nokia and Motorola, are mentioned in passing. The details are disturbing...
Want to see my writing portfolio, tweets and blog?... →
Made to test AppMakr
Toffs vs chavs? No. It's politicians vs the rest...
Class is back in the foreground of the political agenda – for Labour it’s a stick to bash the Tory toffs with and something for dog-whistling John Denham to try to lure BNP voters back, for the Tories its either irrelevant (Ken Clarke) or at the heart of a poorly explained plan to increase social mobility (David Cameron). But almost all politicians have the same problem – our system changes them....
jeanhannah asked: Wow, where are you paying £650 for a studio? I keep looking but can't find anything in my 'hood (Bethnal/Dalston) where you don't have to sleep in the sink for less than £750.
petiteleo asked: Do you live in London? If so, out of curiosity, how much does it cost to rent a studio?
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BNP blames terrorist plans of party member on...
A BNP party member has pleaded guilty to 22 offensives including collecting information useful for terrorism and possessing explosives and firearms. Terence Gavan, 38, a bus driver from West Yorkshire, turned himself into a suburban racist Rambo with an arsenal of explosives and firearms as well as a vast collective of knives, a samurai sword, crossbow and stungun. So, what did the BNP’s...
Jay-Z backs Kanye: "Imma let you finish…but Kanye...
INTERVIEW: Sometimes his passions ruin him.
JAY-Z: Yeah, which is great. I like that, man! I really do. I mean, no one’s walking around here perfect. Everyone’s gonna make mistakes. That’s part of how you learn. I think Kanye . . . Well, I know he said what he believed. He was telling the truth.
INTERVIEW: To which event are you referring?
JAY-Z: I’m talking about the Taylor Swift thing. I just think the timing of what he did was wrong, and that, of course, overshadowed everything. He believed that “Single Ladies” was a better video. I believed that. I think a lot of people believed that. You can’t give someone Video of the Year if they don’t win Best Female Video. I thought Best Female Video was something you won on the way to Video of the Year. But, hey, I guess it wasn’t—and that’s a whole other conversation about awards shows and artists.
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Liz Jones watch: hates humanity, loves shoulder...
In this dispatch on The Daily Mail’s ongoing exploitation of Liz Jones, Liz lists things she doesn’t like. Essentially, the snow and Christmas have made her hate everyone. Her list of annoyances includes the meagre selection of free-range eggs in Morrisons, people taking photographs of themselves having fun and the phrase “it doesn’t feel like a Friday”. As I wrote the other day, Jones’s column...
