Month: August 2006
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Cynicism
There are some awfully cynical letters in today’s Independent. I’m very cynical myself!
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Taking Liquids on Planes
You don’t want to take any liquid onto a plane – it might be explosive. Still – best to get rid of them in a large vat in a crowded airport lounge.
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ITV News/GMTV
Mediaguardian’s carrying a story talking about how ITV News rolled out a news special to follow events today. They may well have, but at around 7.10am this morning when the BBC was carrying live coverage of John Reid and Douglas Alexander reading a live statement (also carried on Five Live), GMTV was in an ad…
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Threat Level – CRITICAL!
Only the other day, I was attempting to lampoon the new government Threat Level index. At the time we were on Severe, but at 6.00am this morning we went to CRITICAL. This means “an attack is expected imminently”. As the world and his mum now knows, anti-terrorist police and security services have foiled a plot…
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Ottakers/Waterstones
At the weekend I noticed that my local Ottakers is to become a Waterstones in a matter of days. The “makeover” is only scheduled to take a day or so, and I expect to see nothing more than signage on the front of the store. The reason for the rush, according to something I read…
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Voicemail Hacking
This evening two men were charged by police with intercepting phone messages. I’ve no idea at this point what’s actually happened, but as far as I can see there are a few ways that this might have happened: * An unchanged pin used by dialling a phone and entering the number. This won’t work on…
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Electric Universe
Electric Universe is this year’s winner of the Aventis Prize for Science Books. David Bodanis has written a great little book that skillfully and simply tells us the story of electricity. Although much, but by no means all, of what he relates in his book had been taught to me in A Level physics lessons…
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The Devil’s Feather
Minette Walters is a crime author I’d not previously read. A few of her books have been adapted for TV – actually probably more have than haven’t – and I’ve watched a couple of those, but the review of this from it’s hardback appearance caught my eye a few months back, so I snapped it…
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The Lincoln Lawyer
I was intrigued by this book sometime last year when I heard Michael Connelly plugging the hardback edition on the Simon Mayo book panel. A regular Thursday afternoon fixture, authors face the potentially tricky prospect of sitting in the studio while a couple of invited guests and some listeners critique their books practically to their…
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Sun and Shadow
Another day, another Scandinavean detective. I’m quite probably addicted to them now. Ake Edwardson is a popular Swedish crime writer who’s written a series of novels featuring Inspector Winter. This is the first of them to be translated into English although it’s clearly not the first in the actual series. It always perplexes me a…
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ITV Turns To Phone-in Competitions
Don’t you absolutely despair of our major commercial television broadcaster when you read a headline like this: ITV turns to phone-in competitions to beat ad slup It turns out that those trivially easy competitions on This Morning earn £9m a year, while ITV Play is expected to bring in £20m this year. This is all…
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London Evening Newspapers
The battle for London newspapers is really warming up now, with news that to combat News International’s thelondonpaper, Associated my morph the currently free lunchtime Standard Lite into London Lite and extend it’s distribution to take it head to head with the thelondonpaper. Like thelondonpaper, it too is going to be distributed by hand –…