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blech + uk   240

Stella Creasy: 'You can see a perfect storm coming' | Politics | The Guardian
"The Labour MP for Walthamstow has made a name by campaigning against payday loans – an example of her traditional approach to fighting for the dispossessed, she says."
labour  walthamstow  uk  stellacreasy  politics  from instapaper
6 weeks ago by blech
Osborne's budget contains a vicious attack on the regions | guardian.co.uk
Karel Williams: "this was a budget against the north and west, with a vicious and undisclosed regional agenda which has attracted almost no attention – even though output per head in the disadvantaged regions is less than half that in London. And doesn't the failure of coalition backbenches, and Labour, to raise this economic issue, tell us a lot about present-day politics? After the decline of mass parties with strong regional bases, Westminster politics is today all about metropolitan cliques pitching to southern swing voters."
uk  politics  budget  region  economics  from instapaper
9 weeks ago by blech
Roads privatisation: are we going round in circles? | guardian.co.uk
Joe Moran: "I think we've been here before, skirting the issue of road pricing and using the notion we are 'falling behind' to push privatisation." A longer view.
uk  roads  privatisation  politics  traffic  planning  guardian  comment  from instapaper
9 weeks ago by blech
Ambient bus arrival monitor | John Graham-Cumming
Using a Linksys WRT54GL, a Sparkfun 7-segment LED block, and a slightly dismembered model of a Plaxton Pointer single-deck bus to make a display of when the next bus is due. Nice.
uk  london  transport  bus  buses  display  datavis  ambient  via:russelldavies 
9 weeks ago by blech
Railway engineering: the nuts and bolts of hidden beauty | The Guardian
Sarah Bakewell: "Once I saw merely bridges, tunnels and stations, and mostly I didn't even notice these, so busy was I rushing to get over or through them. Now, I see a delicate ecosystem of rivets, cleats, plates, gussets, joggles, spans, arches, ribs of attenuated iron and steel. Scholars can already study railway archives in repositories all over the country, but Network Rail has just put part of its beautiful archive of Victorian and Edwardian infrastructure diagrams on the web."
uk  railway  design  engineering  victorian  illustration  plan  drawing  guardian  via:@joemoransblog 
12 weeks ago by blech
The lull of the Shipping Forecast | BBC News
'The Shipping Forecast may provide vital weather information to sea captains and sailors, but some of the most devoted fans are those who listen to it for its poetic quality.
'"Only recently, some Americans came in, listened to the broadcast and said, 'Well, we don't understand a word of that but it was terrific. Could we have a recording of that to go back and play in our office? No one would believe us otherwise'."'
bbcnews  shippingforecast  culture  uk  radio  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
India tells Britain: We don't want your aid | Telegraph
'Pranab Mukherjee and other Indian ministers tried to terminate Britain’s aid to their booming country last year - but relented after the British begged them to keep taking the money.' 'Last week India rejected the British-built Typhoon jet as preferred candidate for a £6.3 billion warplane deal, despite the Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, saying that Britain’s aid to Delhi was partly “about seeking to sell Typhoon.”'
uk  india  aid  politics  defence  trade  twitter  ifttt  via:@bruces 
february 2012 by blech
Sealand: On the Heap | Simon Sellars
"Sealand has never embraced tourism or outsiders, enhancing the mystique. So when I learnt they were accepting applications for tourist visas, I was amazed. As co-author of Lonely Planet’s recent guide to homemade nations, this, for me, was the grail: a chance to visit the world’s most notorious micronation."
uk  sealand  tourism  datahaven  suffolk  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
City braced for rubbish news | Citywire Money
"Renew currently has 50 bin/screen units in the heart of London, and this will rise to 200 in time for the Olympics. The company calls the idea 'the first of a new generation of “on-the-go” media', and says the editorial team behind the plan will cover breaking news, weather, the arts and sports."
uk  screens  advertising  dooh  twitter  ifttt  via:antimega 
january 2012 by blech
British Institutions: London Underground | FT.com
Matthew Engel: "This is the sixth in my irregular series on British Institutions. After I finished the fifth, I noticed that the themes were becoming familiar: [...] the glory days were over; it was a fight to maintain popularity and relevance; and money was getting ever tighter." "But London Underground is different. It is more expansive and confident now than at any time in memory. How on earth has this happened?" Nice photographs too.
london  underground  tube  infrastructure  funding  uk  institution  business  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
Netflix is about to discover that Britain bites back | GigaOM
Bobbie Johnson: "From the outside, the British and Irish market looks like a vast patchwork of services and providers: perfect territory for a big, swaggering giant to come in and clean up. In fact, the truth is just the opposite: For Netflix to get anything like the success it has had in America, it will need to find out a way to get around Rupert Murdoch and the BBC, two of the world’s most powerful media forces. They have no reason to work with Netflix and every reason to actively work against it."
television  netflix  uk  sky  bbc  murdoch  broadcasting  internet  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
If the Grid can cope with today, it can cope with everything | Carbon Commentary
"The UK’s electricity market is far from perfect, but it is quite robust enough to handle a near hurricane, followed by unexpected falls in wind speed. What further demonstrations that wind turbines are effective providers of electricity could possibly be required?"
uk  electricity  energy  power  grid  renewableenergy  generation  nationalgrid  via:tomtaylor 
january 2012 by blech
My dying friend found kindness to be the rule, not the exception | The Observer
Henry Porter in the Observer on the care Gilbert Adair received from the NHS in his final year.
nhs  health  healthcare  uk  politics  death  via:@joemoransblog  from instapaper
december 2011 by blech
Britain is ruled by the banks, for the banks | The Guardian
Aditya Chakrabortty: "Both the evidence and the voters are against investment bankers. So why do the politicians cling on to them? Part of the answer is financial. ... the City now provides half of all Tory party funds. That is up from just 25% only five years ago." "Running this government are two sons of bankers. Cameron's father was a stockbroker, Clegg's is still chairman of United Trust Bank."

(Side note: the picture is of Canary Wharf, part of the City-as-finance but not City-as-geography or City-as-government. It's arguably more photogenic, though.)
uk  business  cityoflondon  finance  politics  banks  europe  davidcameron  guardian 
december 2011 by blech
Programming should take pride of place in our schools | The Observer
"If we don't change the way ICT is thought about and taught, we're shutting the door on our children's futures." John Naughton on why people shouldn't just be learning programming, but learning why software is so important.
uk  education  programming  development  ict  observer  from instapaper
december 2011 by blech
Why illuminating Stonehenge is an unenlightened idea | guardian.co.uk
Ian Vince: "Modern highway building, and its representation on maps, has conspired to make us view landscapes as the interstitial blocks between roads, the white spaces in the road atlas. The dominant feature in the Stonehenge landscape, as revealed by a glance at any route map of the area, is that of a pennant pointing east formed by the A303 and two other major roads; it is only the neolithic and bronze age remains, spattered like grapeshot across the white spaces of an Ordnance Survey sheet, that break this uncompromising geometry."
maps  roads  uk  stonehenge  astronomy  lightpollution  darkskies 
december 2011 by blech
Every death on every road in Great Britain 1999-2010 | BBC News
"A total of 36,371 people were killed on Britain's roads between 1999 and 2010."
uk  transport  traffic  cars  fatalities  bbcnews  roads  death  maps  visualisation  via:preoccupations  via:@joemoransblog 
december 2011 by blech
Elizabeth Truss in a calculated move on maths | BBC News
On calculators in school: [[ [Truss] had an example of a question set for 11-year-olds in which a calculator was allowed: "These are some prices in a flower shop. Tulips: £1.20 for a bunch; roses: 40p each; daffodils, 55p for a bunch. How many roses can you buy for exactly £2?" ]] Lest you think she's a luddite: [[ "I was a mainstay of my school computer club, and I was happy to spend time programming in BASIC." ]]
uk  education  mathematics  computing  calculator  parliament  bbcnews 
december 2011 by blech
Osborne's autumn statement Britain worse than the 1970s | The Guardian
"What Britain is living through now is worse than the decade that gave us the three-day week and winter of discontent."
uk  politics  economics  austerity  1970s  guardian 
november 2011 by blech
29/11/11 - A turning point in British history | BBC News
"Plan A then was based on three, linked, wrong premises: that Britain could quickly switch to a private, export led model; that the economy is bigger than it actually is; and that consumption could survive the inflation surge imported by the Bank of England."
uk  news  austerity  politics  economics  bbcnews  paulmason 
november 2011 by blech
Free museum entry is a treasure too precious to lose | The Guardian
Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian on free museum entry for national museums, the route to it, and regional museums too.
uk  politics  museum  education  chrissmith  via:@paulpod  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
Back to the glory days of Northern Rock | Tim Harford
"This is surely the stupidest imaginable way to stimulate house building." On the UK government and its attempts to kickstart the housing market.
uk  politics  housing  economics  via:@jamesholloway  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
A Point of View: In praise of wind turbines | BBC News
"The countryside is often a man-made landscape, not a natural idyll, and wind turbines are just part of that tradition, writes Will Self." A good read.
bbc  news  comment  willself  countryside  uk  environment  energy  politics  landscape  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
Why doesn't Britain make things any more? | The Guardian
"In the past 30 years, the UK's manufacturing sector has shrunk by two-thirds, the greatest de-industrialisation of any major nation. It was done in the name of economic modernisation – but what has replaced it?"
guardian  business  politics  industrialisation  manufacturing  uk  via:everyone  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
The signals to motorists are setting a dangerous course | The Guardian
Peter Wilby in the Guardian on cars, fatalities, and the coalition Government's messages to motorists.
guardian  cars  motoring  politics  uk  comment 
november 2011 by blech
HCI Diary: Observation of public transport | Tom Hume
uk  trains  transport  interface  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
This unaccountable Corporation is ripe for protest | The Guardian
George Monbiot on the Corporation of the City of London.
guardian  politics  uk  london  cityoflondon  economics  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
Prince Charles offered a veto over 12 government | The Guardian
via @bobbiejohnson, who noted "this is for anyone I've discussed the royal family with recently. They aren't just celebrities or figureheads".
uk  government  monarchy  from instapaper
october 2011 by blech
Plan to revive 1970s UK satellite | BBC News
On attempts to talk to Prospero for its fortieth birthday, and the hazards therein (such as figuring out how to, when the group that maintained it has been broken up for most of that time). (Sidenote: Britain is the only country to have developed an independent launch to orbit technology... and then abandoned it.)
uk  history  technology  space  forgetting  via:andym  from delicious
september 2011 by blech
Street life | FT.com
"Daniel Meadows’ images of working-class communities in 1970s Britain bear witness to the reinvention of the craft and purpose of photography." Well worth a read, this, on photography, documentation, and working class communities.
photography  danielmeadows  martinparr  uk  history  1970s  manchester  via:@joemoransblog  from delicious
september 2011 by blech
Kids today need a licence to tinker | Technology | The Observer
A great piece from John Naughton in the Observer, hanging off the back of the Eric Schmidt lecture at Edinburgh but (rightly) critiquing too much British computing education as being about learning Word, not learning programming, and highlighting Arduino and the forthcoming Raspberry Pi £15 Linux computer.
uk  technology  education  programming  arduino  linux  computing  from instapaper
august 2011 by blech
Business case for HS2 rail link questioned | guardian.co.uk
"the Queen is reported to be worried about the proposed [HS2] route, with Prince Andrew said to have raised the issue with Treasury officials last year on account of his mother's concern that passing trains would upset her horses at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire, which hosts the Royal Show." Maybe Charles isn't that unlike Elizabeth after all.
railway  uk  monarchy  politics  from delicious
july 2011 by blech
What the Home Front posters of WW2 still mean for us today | Quad Royal
"There were a huge number of posters produced during the war, and so the relatively few we pick out end up telling us as much about ourselves and our present day anxieties as it does about the war." A really good essay at Quad Royal on WW2 posters and what they mean to us now. (I'd love to see a similar post for the US, too.)
uk  poster  art  propaganda  society  austerity  modernism  design  via:mondoagogo  from instapaper
july 2011 by blech
New Statesman - The tax haven in the heart of Britain
There is an institution with a murky history and remarkable powers that acts like a political and financial island within our island nation state. Welcome to the Square Mile and the City of London Corporation.
london  cityoflondon  economics  politics  power  tax  economy  uk  from instapaper
june 2011 by blech
Power Down | diamond geezer
From the archives (via Tom Taylor), diamond geezer on taking down the pylons around the Olympic site in Stratford.
uk  london  ihatetheolympics  stratford  pylons  infrastructure  via:tomtaylor  from delicious
may 2011 by blech
The Gorge - Electricity Pylon Design
Flash Bristow's guide to the changes in British pylon design over the last eighty years or so. This was the best bit of another Jonathan Glancey Guardian piece: http://gu.com/p/2p972/
uk  design  architecture  infrastructure  electricity  energy  guide  pylons  from instapaper
may 2011 by blech
Could pylons ever be pretty? | BBC News
The BBC, starting from a false premise (that pylons aren't pretty already) and going down a complete blind alley (some unbuilt, anthropomorphic, and awful designs) before revealing a couple of interesting nuggets (like the name of the chap who designed the UK's current pylons). Still, overall worth a read.
uk  infrastructure  energy  electricity  pylons  design  via:candacep  from delicious
may 2011 by blech
Product placement ban on British TV lifted | BBC News
"Paid-for references to products and services are now permitted for the first time in shows produced in the UK, including soaps and one-off dramas."
television  uk  media  advertising  ofcom  europe  via:kevan  from delicious
february 2011 by blech
David Wojnarowicz Ruckus, as Viewed From Britain | NYTimes.com
"It has something to do with the ideal of the American Everyman. As with the military or medicine, so with museums, we are by national inclination meddlers. Europeans are not, which is why they have reacted to the Smithsonian flap with the same mildly appalled bafflement that they express toward American opposition to the health care bill. It all seems inexplicable to them." The NYT on Wojnarowicz, Sensation, Tate, the Smithsonian, and attitudes. 
art  culture  nytimes  newspapers  comment  uk  us  europe  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
Railway Alphabet by Kinnear and Calvert | Quad Royal
Spacing rules for Rail Alphabet, discovered recently. Lovely.
uk  design  typography  railways  poster  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
Our peculiar relationship with service stations | Motortorque
"We can all expect to have to pull into a motorway service station from time-to-time." An interview with the author of Food on the Move.
uk  motorway  architecture  food  culture  modernism  1960s  book  interview  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
A brief history of the bus shelter | Joe Moran's blog
"Bus shelters were once boringly functional affairs." Then advertising got involved.
uk  transport  bus  infrastructure  mundane  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
BBC News - Stargazing and dark sky tourism
BBC News Magazine on dark skies and stagazing tourism. "These sights will be explored in BBC Two's Stargazing Live this week, timed to coincide with the meteor shower and partial eclipse."
astronomy  uk  news  bbc  tourism  stargazing  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
Snow scuppers Cameron’s “big society” | New Statesman
via joemoransblog: "Nice piece about snow and the big society by Alice Miles".
uk  weather  politics  culture  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
David Runciman · Look… | LRB
"In a hung parliament, should the MPs who hold the balance of power side with the party that came first in the election, or the party that came second?" An interesting, if short, review of David Laws' book about the coalition horsetrading.
lrb  politics  uk  coalition  libdems  conservatives  culture  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
The Smoke A London Peculiar Board Game | Soho
"Soho! is a game of skill and judgement for 2-6 players of all ages inspired by the two things for which this small, historic patch of London is famous around the globe: its pubs, and its one-way system." Nice. (I miss the magazines, though. Ah well.)
london  smoke  games  uk  tobuy  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
LRB · Stefan Collini · Browne’s Gamble
strangePLperson: one and only Stefan Collini on education cuts in LRB: http://t.co/wFzMcfK
lrb  uk  ecucation  university  funding  government  education  capitalism  choice  finance  from instapaper
october 2010 by blech
New approaches to landscape appreciation | DH2010
"It may be therefore that modern visitors to the Lake District, at least as represented by people who upload geo-tagged photographs to Flickr, follow a tour that is more like the Picturesque tours of Gray than the Romantic experiences of Coleridge or Wordsworth." A non-paywalled summary of the research I posted a couple of days ago.
flickr  uk  geography  geotagging  tourism  via:zool  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Home Page | Mapping the Lakes
"'Mapping the Lakes' is a collaborative and explorative research project. Funded by the British Academy, the pilot project tests whether Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology can be used to further the understanding of the literature of place and space."
geography  uk  lakedistrict  literature  maps  research  gis  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Mapping the English Lake District: a literary GIS | Transactions
"Drawing on work carried out as part of an interdisciplinary project, ‘Mapping the Lakes’, the paper focuses on the ways in which GIS can be used to explore the spatial relationships between two textual accounts of tours of the English Lake District: the proto-Picturesque journey undertaken by the poet, Thomas Gray, in the autumn of 1769; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s self-consciously post-Picturesque ‘circumcursion’ of August 1802." Published in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
uk  maps  literature  gis  geography  via:@barbarahui  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
In praise of … mapping the nation | The Guardian
""Many excellent books have been written about Lakeland but the best literature of all for the walker has been published by the Director General of the Ordnance Survey," Alfred Wainwright wrote over half a century ago in the introduction to his pictorial guides to the Lake District."
uk  guardian  editorial  maps  ordnancesurvey  lakedistrict  via:cityofsound  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Design Research Unit: the firm that branded Britain | guardian.co.uk
"You may not have heard of Britain's most successful design group, but signs of its work can still be seen on streets, pubs, railways and tube stations – quite literally" Make sure to check out the gallery, especially the crazy South Bank architecture plan.
guardian  britishrail  design  history  branding  uk  article  alsopostedon:ffffound  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Correspondent's diary: Ascension Island | The Economist
Speaking of Ascension, this Economist correspondent's diary (annoyingly, reverse-chronological) is well worth a read. "Ascension Island turns on its head the old sailors’ folklore about islands that move from place to place. It sits still, but the world shifts around it in a way that sometimes, unexpectedly, put Ascension Island between an A and a B that people want to get to."
economist  article  islands  uk  culture  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Train fares: From him that hath shall be taken | The Economist
On the likelihood of fare rises for British rail. "Railways have enjoyed a renaissance over the past decade. Passenger numbers have surged and are now at their highest since the second world war." "Yet rail travel is a niche interest. It accounts for just 7% of all journeys."
economist  trains  uk  rail  fares  transport  from delicious
august 2010 by blech
Transport funding: Collision course | The Economist
Speaking of TfL: "With only a few months until publication of the government’s spending review, which will decide which parts of government live and which parts die, the lobbying is in full swing. Particularly fierce arguments are raging around the Department for Transport (DfT), which must make cuts of 25% or more in its budget. That is provoking rows, both nationally and locally." Complete with that old chestnut, Crossrail vs the Tube.
economist  london  dft  tfl  crossrail  tube  transport  uk  from delicious
august 2010 by blech
An appreciation of MySociety’s MapIt service | Unlock
"I will confess to mild chagrin, because as well as having all these wonderful properties, MapIt does almost everything that Unlock Places does for Boundary-Line and Code-Point."
maps  geography  uk  data  geowanking  review  mapit  mysociety  via:zool  from delicious
july 2010 by blech
Mapping points and postcodes to areas | mySociety
"I’m very pleased to announce that mySociety’s upgraded point and postcode lookup service, MaPit, is public and available to all. It can tell you about administrative areas, such as councils, Welsh Assembly constituencies, or civil parishes, by various different lookups including name, point, or postcode."
maps  data  uk  geography  geowanking  service  mysociety  from delicious
july 2010 by blech
Facebook, Electoral Commission launch voter push | BBC News
"In a tie-up with the Electoral Commission, Facebook users who visit the site over the weekend will be asked if they have registered to vote."
uk  election  facebook  politics  bbc  news  from delicious
april 2010 by blech
Collection: The Icarus Project | Flickr
Photos by Robert Harrison from his DIY weather balloon edge-of-space rig.
space  aviation  hacks  photography  uk  technology  flickr 
march 2010 by blech
Father captures Earth from weather balloon | Daily Telegraph
"Robert Harrison used his ingenuity and a collection of cheap parts worth just £500 to take the spectacular shots using a Canon camera which he launched 35km above the planet's surface."
space  aviation  hacks  photography  telegraph  uk  technology  via:deusx 
march 2010 by blech
National Public Transport Access Nodes | data.gov.uk
"NaPTAN is a GB national system for uniquely identifying all the points of access to public transport in GB. It is a core component of the GB national transport information infrastructure and is used by a number of other UK standards and information systems. Every GB station, coach terminus, airport, ferry terminal, bus stop, etc., is allocated at least one identifier."
uk  data  government  transport  bus  railway  data.gov.uk 
march 2010 by blech
Let's visualise the Digital Economy bill | guardian.co.uk
"I've been trying to work out how much the digital economy bill has changed in its progress through the House of Lords. The answer: a lot (that's 263 differences in the bottom-left hand corner). But does it make much sense? Not really - the bill consists of lots of amendments to other acts, such as the Communications Act 2003, so it really is like trying to understand an operating system while only seeing a few of the programs."
politics  uk  digitaleconomybill  guardian  comment  legislation 
march 2010 by blech
Fortress America, London SW4 | Warren Ellis
On the proposed US Embassy in Battersea: "It's a fortress with a fucking moat". (It's worth clicking through to the Guardian for their belaboured pun headline and the either ironic or wrongheaded Glancey commentary.)
architecture  uk  london  us  culture  design  politics 
february 2010 by blech
Ed Miliband declares war on climate sceptics | The Observer
"'It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there,' [Miliband] said."
observer  politics  uk  environment  climatechange  ipcc 
january 2010 by blech
Lighthouses could be switched off | BBC News
"The light at Eastbourne's Beachy Head lighthouse - and five others around England - may soon be turned off." "Most vessels, even smaller ones, now use satellite navigation systems like GPS and no longer rely on the beam from lighthouses." It's a shame, but it's also understandable. I do love lighthouses though.
uk  news  lighthouse  coast  images 
january 2010 by blech
London 2030: our expert predictions | The Observer
Iain Sinclair tries to be funny, Zaha Hadid tries to clam she's seen it already, but Tony Travers' understated summary seems closest to the mark. (It's odd how 2030 doesn't have the ring of the future that 2010 did in 1990; I blame the millennium.)
london  observer  uk  newspaper  urbanism  prediction  future 
january 2010 by blech
London in 2010 – as predicted in 1990 | The Observer
Will Wiles scanned a magazine supplement late last year, and now the Observer has gone back to the original authors to follow up their predictions with what actually happened.
observer  uk  newspaper  urbanism  prediction  history  future  via:antimega 
january 2010 by blech
London in 2010 | Spillway
"The Observer devoted its colour supplement to speculation about what London might be like in 20 years - in 2010" and Will Wiles has preserved it so you can compare it with what came to pass. For example: "The second vision... mostly consists of the removal of things that they don't like [such as] 'high-rise housing' in general." Well, not entirely wrong. "Mostly, these are replaced with open space." Um.
london  observer  uk  newspaper  urbanism  prediction  history  future  via:antimega 
december 2009 by blech
Real-time Activity (Crooktree) | AuroraWatch
Raw UK magnetic data, for use in predicting (and alerting for) auroras.
aurora  astronomy  data  web  uk 
november 2009 by blech
Order Book Part 2 | Parliament
"Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura." Looks a good bet. That's question 60, ref 293006.
guardian  news  journalism  reporting  hansard  parliament  uk 
october 2009 by blech
Crimespotting: make money on the Internet | Times Online
"A network of citizen crimewatchers will be given the chance of winning up to £1,000 by monitoring CCTV security cameras over the internet." Full of ranting comments, presumably not from people who've read David Brin's classic Wired piece, the Transparent Society (or who just wish the CCTV cameras would go away, which seems unlikely to happen).
uk  police  cctv  surveillance  via:migurski 
october 2009 by blech
Borrow a book 'wherever you are' | BBC News
"Millions of book lovers can now borrow items from a public library regardless of where they live, under a new scheme." A scheme across England, Wales and NI. This is good.
uk  books  libraries  lending 
september 2009 by blech
Magazine: Early dinner | BBC News
Laurie Taylor on food and class. A good read (and hopefully a signifier of a good Something Understood tonight).
bbc  news  magazine  comment  uk  class  food  tea 
august 2009 by blech
End of the line for British TVs | BBC News
On the birth and death of the British TV manufacturing industry, with interesting digressions on the fact that we still make programmes and the future of the screen as a focal point for living rooms.
uk  bbc  news  television  manufacturing  culture  business  media  technology 
august 2009 by blech
Ian Jack: Downhill from Here | LRB
Ian Jack reviews "When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies" and remarks that the decade has probably been unfairly maligned.
book  review  politics  1970s  uk  toread 
august 2009 by blech
Our summer forecast | Met Office
"At no time did the Met Office state that Summer 2009 would be hot and dry throughout or forecast a ‘scorcher’." Probably as unlikely to work in terms of changing public perceptions as Michael Fish is ever to have people remember his "but it will be very windy" conclusion the the infamous "hurricane" statement. Ah well.
uk  weather  metoffice 
august 2009 by blech
Birmingham Central Library’s final chapter? | Building Design
"John Madin’s 1974 Birmingham Central Library was designed to be flexible, for a possible future without books. English Heritage would like to see it listed, but the city’s political elite say it is impossible to refurbish for modern needs and want it demolished." Shame.
uk  birmingham  architecture  modernism  library  buildingdesign  via:cityofsound 
august 2009 by blech
Professor Bruce Archer | The Independent
One of the members of the Design Research Unit; this obit (from 2005) is the source of much of the more interesting material on Wikipedia.
design  history  uk  health  nhs  via:@mikelaurie  via:@harrybr 
august 2009 by blech
Scientists gatecrash Secret Garden Party | guardian.co.uk
"Lured by Red Stripe and other totally legal substances, the scientists wowed festivalgoers with the delights of space travel and Jupiter's moons, the neuroscience of music and the propagation of waves in conga lines"
uk  science  education  festival  event  via:gnat 
august 2009 by blech
Will the indie chart rise again? | The Guardian
Bob Stanley on the birth, slow death, and relaunch of the indie chart. 'McNay pinpoints the death of the indie chart to the moment in the early 90s when "the multinationals started boutique labels with independent distribution, meaning they hogged the indie chart. It was all hunky-dory for 10 years, the only chart that mattered for many people, and then the majors hijacked it'
music  guardian  indie  uk  nostalgia  bobstanley  via:tristanf 
july 2009 by blech
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