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Jun 10, 2023: I accidentally one-click bought some climate denialist garbage on Amazon by swiping too hard. I hesitated for a second before returning. Perhaps I …
Jun 3, 2023: I’ve got superstitious over the years over the order I put the vegetables into a ciambotta.
May 31, 2023: Mitigating the risk of extinction from an out of touch and amoral billionaire class should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks …
May 28, 2023: Your occasional guide to understanding the right: Classical Liberal = over-credentialed incel reactionary. Free Speech Absolutist = loves sound of …
May 27, 2023: A coot among the pigeons
May 27, 2023: The already awful Horizon scandal that saw innocent sub-postmasters gaoled because of computer system errors gets worse and worse. Shocking, …
May 16, 2023: I’ve noticed that elites tend to use “intelligent” as a shorthand for “narcissistic, Machiavellian, self-serving” rather than, say, “insightful, …
May 7, 2023: The staff canteen has been replaced by a staff food-bank. You know when you’ve been Toried.
May 2, 2023: Still wrestling with a working (and workable) definition of political centrism. My latest is “bourgeois populism”. I know it’s an …
May 2, 2023: From the media round today, it seems Keir Starmer has decloacked. Disappointingly but unsurprisingly he’s a “centrist dad” neoliberal.
Apr 30, 2023: Citadel. OMFG. I don’t think it’s ironically bad, just absolutely, utterly terrible. Still, attractive leads - though Richard …
Apr 29, 2023: I can recommend Belvoir - pronounced Beaver - Farm Ginger Cordial. I make it at double strength with sparkling water. It’s lovely.
Apr 29, 2023: I don’t get the mint business. Does it really make sense to airlift bagged sprigs of mint from Ethiopia to Blighty?
Apr 28, 2023: When I see people with their Instagrammable dogs, I think of chickens - 3600 years from prestige pet to discarded bones in a polystyrene box with …
Apr 22, 2023: Schrödinger’s civil service is both woke, lazy and incompetent, and orchestrating a devastatingly effective deep-state conspiracy to frustrate …
Apr 19, 2023: Fox News has collapsed beyond degenerate matter and, spinning wildly, has become a griftar.
Apr 18, 2023: The 0816 Overground from Stratford always leaves late. Except when the next three trains are cancelled. Then it leaves 2 minutes early.
Apr 17, 2023: If government has to give incentives to business to invest, doesn’t that imply poorly-regulated and uncompetitive markets?
Apr 15, 2023: Coots are one of nature’s great bricoleurs. This coot is one of a pair who’ve built their nest entirely from rubbish thrown into the Royal …
Apr 9, 2023: A young female pigeon (I think - not 100% expert at pigeon sexing) is roosting on the patio door handle. I know they can be messy birds, but she seem …
Apr 6, 2023: Hello journalists! Voter in a democracy here. Sunak’s government is not the one that made the manifesto commitments in 2019. So, what key pieces …
Apr 5, 2023: 🐦⬛A blackbird is singing over the hiss of the traffic. In the dark. In the rain.
Apr 5, 2023: Poverty and the political right If the right wanted a low-tax small state through democratic means, it would tackle poverty. The poor derive more direct benefit from public services …
Apr 2, 2023: It’s kind of pathetic watching successive senior Tories do their “Chemical Ali” turn over Brexit border chaos. www.theguardian.com Suella Braverman …
Apr 1, 2023: Struggling to get my palm rest out of the packaging because my wrists are so bad.
Apr 1, 2023: I am just beginning the planning now for the 10 year anniversary of this sign not coming down.
Mar 31, 2023: Local drivers need parking practice.
Mar 31, 2023: Sovereignty didn’t matter either The great tragedy of Brexit is that it was just a tactical move by the Tories to win an election and an opportunistic gambit by individual politicians …
Mar 30, 2023: The abandoned Nike outlet is a mirror to the Overground tracks.
Mar 30, 2023: Keir Starmer in drag.
Mar 30, 2023: Capturing Hot Air Tories: The State can’t pick winners. The Mah-Ket will decide our fate. Also Tories: Shackled to the dinosaur EU we can’t take advantage of the New …
Mar 29, 2023: A slice of delicious home-made apple pie with a bit of custard.
Mar 28, 2023: I wonder how many terminal prompts the servers at Telehouse support. Here’s a view of Telehouse North Two at the Tower Hamlets side of Leamouth …
Mar 27, 2023: The bridge on the left supports Aspen Way. On the right, the DLR.
Mar 27, 2023: Let’s see ChatGPT 4 drive a car.
Mar 27, 2023: The customer service fail at Franco Manca Canary Wharf this evening isn’t evenly spread. One young couple were kept waiting to order, had their …
Mar 27, 2023: Honestly the pizza points are not worth the pain of using Franco Manca’s utterly useless app.
Mar 26, 2023: Culinary instruments on display at John Lewis, Canary Wharf.
Mar 25, 2023: Scored a kilo of Panch Puran (Bengali five spice). This is an essential cooking ingredient for me - really elevates brassicaceae.
Mar 24, 2023: Imagine the derision if a member of the working class declared the invention of the shovel the dawn of artificial general intelligence.
Mar 24, 2023: Food courts disconnected from the encumbering shopping mall are an increasingly popular destination in East London. Here’s the Cargo Market Hall …
Mar 23, 2023: A pigeon under the pedestrian ramp at Homerton Station grabs the chance of a bit of morning sun.
Mar 23, 2023: I get it’s disappointing that few high-follower-count folks have left Musk’s horror-platform. Heck, I’m disappointed, too. But let’s not forget …
Mar 22, 2023: Lots of interesting insects at Praia a Mare last summer. Me being me I was mainly taking pictures of the famous local pigeons. But here’s a …
Mar 22, 2023: A couple of key right wing terms: Declinism: the opinion that a bonfire of regulations and tax cuts for the rich is not an industrial strategy. (Plan …
Mar 22, 2023: Every right wing talking head: “Rant, rant, woke this, woke that, rant bathrooms, woke deep state. Why are the left wing establishment declinist …
Mar 21, 2023: If you are over 50, the writing on the labels of food packaging is too tiny.
Mar 21, 2023: What an odd hill Mark Rowley has chosen to die on. Chopping logic over “systemic” vs “institutional” prejudice is way more political than the term …
Mar 21, 2023: I’m looking for a houseplant. Nice display in M&S at Crossrail Place - but they’d sold out of the plants I’d had my eye on. …
Mar 20, 2023: The area south of A13 between Silvertown Way and Freemasons Road was called Cherry Island. Here is our sakura analog.
Mar 18, 2023: Pigeons on the quasi-portico of Canary Wharf Underground Station
Mar 17, 2023: I got up late so my early walk to Canary Wharf this morning was a dash to the Custom House Elizabeth Line station.
Mar 17, 2023: Passing through the Custom House portal to Canary Wharf lives up to its sci-fi name. Two Londons couldn’t be more divided if they were in parallel …
Mar 17, 2023: Manor Road between Canning Town and West Ham, with its temporary pedestrian crossing chicanes, narrow, uneven footpaths, and poor drainage is the …
Mar 16, 2023: “Nat has herpes” is scrawled all over East London. Should I feel sorry for Nat, or does this have another meaning?
Mar 16, 2023: You have got to wonder about the folks who take their dogs to shit outside the school gates.
Mar 16, 2023: In sum, seems like a budget to keep self-interested Tories onside. I guess it presages a ratcheting up of culture war cobblers to gin up Tory …
Mar 16, 2023: Hmm. Seems like the Tories have given back around 2/3 of the recent corporation tax hike in tax reliefs. Corporations already don’t know what to do …
Mar 16, 2023: Imagine if the Tories had given wealthy savers the same pension tax breaks, but required the money be invested in net zero and social housing.
Mar 15, 2023: You need a lot of patience to drive down Morning Lane in the, uh, morning. I walk - and there isn’t much patience on show.
Mar 15, 2023: Fiscal rules Your budget day reminder that outside of political discourse there’s no such thing as fiscal rules. The term was introduced into the UK by Gordon …
Mar 14, 2023: The unimaginative build-it-by-numbers regeneration strategy is to throw up high-rises around public transport hubs, which leaves tracts of East London …
Mar 13, 2023: This is Canary Wharf Station on the Elizabeth Line. It has no direct connection with Canary Wharf Station on the DLR, and neither of those stations …
Mar 13, 2023: Against the grey afternoon sky the silver leaves sprouting from the tree growing out of the taxi aren’t so shiny.
Mar 11, 2023: Flying Tiger - this is the Crossrail Place branch - gimcrack ground zero.
Mar 11, 2023: I can be a bit slow on the uptake. The people who get het up about “declinism” are the same people as “classical liberals” who …
Mar 10, 2023: The Tapping of the Purple Reader is the essential ritual of East London travelling people.
Mar 9, 2023: Public address speakers paired together on the lampposts at Hackney Central station.
Mar 9, 2023: Passenger on the train has a “specially selected” mozzarella and sun dried cherry tomato wood fired sourdough pizza - cook at home - on her lap. The …
Mar 9, 2023: Hackney is gridlocked this morning. The average British car is the size of a small bus these days. Nevertheless most have just the driver.
Mar 9, 2023: The immigration “debate” in the UK is always radioactive. With their small boats stunting the Tories have gone the full Chernobyl. How do they shut it …
Mar 9, 2023: Saw this on my walk to the Hackney office today through sleet and snow. It explains why so many exterior light-fittings in England are round.
Mar 8, 2023: Tory “libertarians” overcome cognitive dissonance by believing free enterprise only applies to people they went to school with or who pay …
Mar 8, 2023: www.theguardian.com Rishi Sunak ‘extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in UK’ Shameful. All the more so because this “law” is merely a …
Mar 7, 2023: The whole display has crashed at EY, Canary Wharf.
Mar 6, 2023: Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line) is an engineering marvel. But they never take account of passengers when designing rail infrastructure.
Mar 5, 2023: Tory Migration-go-round Explained The Tories won’t fix public services, healthcare, housing or infrastructure. If they did, you wouldn’t believe that “the …
Mar 5, 2023: This art piece in Crossrail Place at Canary Wharf is made up of LED tiles. The art itself is maybe a little condescending, but the motion is …
Mar 4, 2023: Almost 45 years in, and I thought that neoliberalism would have its “reflections on forced collectivisation” moment. But nope. It’s …
Mar 4, 2023: The pilot hen is the moorhen who’s always leading the other water birds to the food. This time, she’s jumped out of Telehouse Pond as is …
Mar 4, 2023: One of the interesting things about the Windsor Framework is that it is not, say, the Barnsley Framework.
Mar 3, 2023: The crows are running around on the roof. I can hear the distinctive hopping gait.
Mar 3, 2023: The crow on “crowverlook” duty on the Star Lane office today watches in solitude.
Mar 2, 2023: Gosh @help - am I doing the photoblogging challenge wrong?
Mar 2, 2023: It’s London “nope” weather in Hackney this morning.
Mar 2, 2023: The crazy thing about neoliberals is that they love markets right up to the point that someone tries to create a market in their ideas. Biden has been …
Mar 2, 2023: Highbrow media are setting up Sunak v Starmer as a battle of the centrist dads. Never was a frame so improbable. Sunak is a “state capacity …
Mar 1, 2023: Some tools in the can. Looks pretty secure.
Feb 27, 2023: On changing the brushes on the motors when the battery is flat Leave politics aside a sec and ask yourself, who is being feather-bedded when businesses are uncompetitive, have low productivity and live of rents? …
Feb 25, 2023: Okay. So, thanks to Geofency and Pipedream, I can annoy you all with my arrivals at and departures from selected locations.
Feb 25, 2023: Sense of Wonder There’s this sci-fi trope where our time-travelling hero in the past lets the future know when she is by taking out a classified ad for …
Feb 24, 2023: Are Tories blind to structural problems? Does their privilege lead them to really, truly believe the world is a Disney movie? …
Feb 20, 2023: I like Yubico YubiKeys - sound idea for improving online personal security, I think. I own a couple. But their marcomms is utter kack.
Feb 19, 2023: Bought some nice-looking russets from the local M&S, but they’re rubbish: flavourless and squishy. So making apple pie with what I can find …
Feb 19, 2023: I generally avoid vegetables with trademarks, but Kalettes(TM) are seriously tasty. I braise them with shallots, dried chilli flakes, panch phoran, …
Feb 18, 2023: Alexa seems to like chicken.
Feb 18, 2023: Putting ANPRs on pelican crossings and fining every driver who runs a red light would seem to be an easy money spinner for London.
Feb 18, 2023: Is it that graffiti is not art, or that all that art is is pissing on lampposts?
Feb 18, 2023: Road racer’s engine is louder than the sirens of the police chasing after down the A13
Feb 16, 2023: I’m leaving Stratford International on the DLR from platform 2. Have literally never seen a DLR leave from platform 2 before. Let alone be on it.
Feb 13, 2023: What are the Americans shooting down? De-orbiting Teslas?
Feb 12, 2023: A brief musing on political centrism I’ve struggled with the concept of political centrism. I’ve found its positioning as “moderate” or “in the middle” …
Feb 8, 2023: Uttering sound bites while wearing a high viz jacket is not an industrial strategy.
Feb 5, 2023: Reading Liz Truss’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph, I can only conclude that the UK political right has spent far too long, with way too much …
Feb 3, 2023: Elon Cohaagen cutting off the oxygen in Venusville is fiction, right?
Feb 3, 2023: Reading about power outages and trees exploding from the cold, and the best we’ve got is the wrong kind of snow every decade or so.
Feb 2, 2023: Dockhunt: closer to that journalistic slip of the tongue than the UK chancellor of the exchequer.
Feb 2, 2023: Not sure how public sector workers contribute to the “wage/price spiral” given their labour isn’t sold for profit on the open market.
Feb 2, 2023: The workers being lowered into the sewer are all Irish. This is England! We expect foreigners to clean up our shit.
Feb 2, 2023: What is your worst walk? Mine is Canning Town to the Greenway via Manor Road. Nasty in all weathers.
Jan 31, 2023: The BBC’s review into its taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt output is interesting and worth a look, as is this commentary …
Jan 19, 2023: Newham Council would like people to drive less and walk more. It’s a laudable aim even if, as we heard at the “budget summit” they favour the stick …
Jan 15, 2023: I have some thoughts and comments about reforming NHS bureaucracy. I tried referring myself to Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, but they wouldn’t see …
Jan 13, 2023: www.theguardian.com The UK may avoid a recession for now but it won’t feel like it for many Britain avoids recession because population permanently …
Jan 8, 2023: www.theguardian.com Hedge funds holding up vital debt relief for crisis-hit Sri Lanka, warn economists Bastards will bastard.
Jan 4, 2023: With his sleight of hand promise to cut inflation, Rishi Sunak sure does think his core vote needs help with maths. …
Jan 4, 2023: Seems to me that the people lacking numeracy skills to prosper in the workplace are the Tories. Except the people being let down are you and me. …
Jan 3, 2023: Finished reading: Rentier Capitalism by Brett Chistophers 📚- one of the most insightful books I read all year when it comes to understanding what ails …
Jan 3, 2023: Could a politician or policy wonk explain the difference between “turbocharge” and “supercharge” when used in vacuous rhetoric?
Jan 1, 2023: I managed an average of 11.6km a day of walking or running in 2022. Not the 12km a day I was hoping for, but still pretty pleased.
Jan 1, 2023: The verdict is in. Anyone who voted Leave was duped. I hope once the Tories are out of office, politicians can start being honest about this. …
Jan 1, 2023: Oh-ho! Discovered a mandarin negroni stollen that somehow didn’t get eaten.
Dec 16, 2022: When a poor person slips on the ice, does anyone who matters hear them fall?
Dec 16, 2022: Ungritted pavements in Custom House
Dec 16, 2022: Ungritted streets in Canning Town
Dec 13, 2022: Imagine being so cynical and cruel that you choose a performative immigration and asylum policy over an effective one.
Dec 9, 2022: Temporary if poorly fitted and not working eInk display on the Elizabeth Line
Dec 3, 2022: I’ve run this timeline over and again and the only place neoliberal “meritocracy” ever ends up is fascism.
Nov 25, 2022: Apparently “Singapore on Thames” is gone, and Britain will “become the next Silicon Valley” via regulatory independence. …
Nov 25, 2022: It’s interesting that the Tories say of Brexit that we “voted to change our trading relationship with the EU”. This is of course a consequence of …
Nov 23, 2022: New micro post on the MarsEdit 5 beta. I like the “throwing it out there” aspect. Like others, I think a character count would be nice. …
Nov 22, 2022: Couldn’t get a micro.blog window to show up on the app until I delete the cache. Odd. Anyway, seem to have too many Mastodon accounts. Maybe …
Nov 20, 2022: Enjoying The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video. One thing puzzles me, though. Why are the inhabitants of future London so theatrical, given there is, …
Nov 18, 2022: Theory: the people elect politicians to regulate the markets Practice: the markets pay off politicians to screw over the people
Nov 17, 2022: There’s a distinction between riches and the return to riches. Redistribution isn’t taking from the rich and giving to the poor, it’s lowering the …
Nov 14, 2022: With only weeks to Christmas, the value destruction leaderboard looks like this: Elon Must Liz Truss Vladimir Putin Will nation states …
Nov 14, 2022: www.theguardian.com The cowardly state beholden to “the markets” is back.
Nov 12, 2022: Don’t people like Elon Musk cause real problems for meritocracy’s true believers?
Nov 12, 2022: Leafing through dismal opinion polls this morning, three words characterise Tory supporters: ignorant, complacent, unpleasant.
Nov 7, 2022: “Smart Home” technology would be a lot better if it actually worked.
Nov 7, 2022: All they have got, the TINA neoliberals, the handmaidens to the rentier class, is racist dogwhistles. That’s it. Nothing else.
Mar 6, 2022: Currently reading: How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil 📚: Man likes chicken.
Mar 5, 2022: Not really needing my vegan burgers to have added artificial blood.
Jan 30, 2022: Lagrange is a nice Gemini browser, with an opinionated UI. Amfora is a good looking Gemini client for the terminal.
Jan 30, 2022: I stumbled across Project Gemini, a lightweight internet protocol pitched somewhere between Gopher and HTTP, with a Markdown-lite document format.
Jun 20, 2021: Currently reading: Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott 📚- Reading in …
May 30, 2021: www.theguardian.com PM weds at “secret” ceremony with friends. It’s in all the papers. Words used to mean something.
May 9, 2021: Picnic, early May 2021 To Eat Baby potato salad with steamed green beans, lettuce and tomato, mint, quails eggs, capers and smoked olives Tumeric roast cauliflower and …
Jan 9, 2021: An important day for pigeon science In the colder weather, the plants on the balcony are wilting. At the beginning of the week the pair of pigeons who’ve taken up residence were …
Dec 12, 2020: Signs of the times What does this sign mean? Today, I learned it means: GET OUT OF MY F*ING WAY YOU C*NT. LOOK AT THE F*KING SIGN. GET OUT OF MY WAY. C*NT!
Nov 15, 2020: Sometimes during lockdown I put my coffee in my travel mug.
Mar 8, 2020: A (pedantic) note on King Coot twitter.com/furtherfi… The Community of Coots are too ornery and independent to want anything to do with queens, let alone kings. In times of …
Sep 1, 2019: Moral cesspit? Welcome to Tory Britain. …
Aug 31, 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/31/help-to-buy-loans-benefited-more-rich-than-poor-households Knock me down with a feather.
Aug 29, 2019: Memo to self: O&M and AOV. Don’t ask.
Aug 28, 2019: Is it ever wise to look at micro.blog clients at two minutes to midnight?
Jan 4, 2019: Footling with collaborative writing apps instead of, you know, writing.