Blog Profile / Francis Sedgemore
| URL : | http://sedgemore.com/blog/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Society & Culture | |
| Posts on Regator: | 730 | |
| Posts / Week: | 5 | |
| Archived Since: | July 27, 2010 | |
Blog Post Archive
Cycle ride: Lovely Lea & Springtime Epping Forest Explorer
Ride: Lovely Lea & Springtime Epping Forest Explorer When: Saturday 1 June 2013 Meet: 10:00 @ Cutty Sark Gardens, SE10 9LW (by foot tunnel entrance) There are a number of longer rides that I like to do every season, and Epping Forest is one of them. So, following my last Lovely Lea and Epping Forest [...]
The space age thang
It speaks volumes about the neurotic British obsession with youth that an otherwise interesting lifestylee article on the UK’s first official European Space Agency astronaut carries the headline “Major Tim Peake says he is not too old to go into space”. What on Earth is that all about? I mean, the last thing you want [...]
Is the Venezuelan revolution going down the crapper?
Two months following the death of its little red leader Hugo Chávez, it looks as if his Catholo-Trostskyite revolution may not be so permanent after all. According to an Associated Press report, the “pink tide” at the top of Latin America is fast turning into a shit tide, with nary a sheet of toilet paper [...]
Clearing up a climate of misunderstanding
We hear much talk of a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, or at least we used to. Global warming has since fallen down the political agenda. At the same time there is a challenge to the thesis from mostly but not exclusively right-wing commentators who claim that there is no scientific consensus. They insist [...]
Cycle ride: The Delights of Newham, 18 May 2013
Where: The Delights of Newham (Greenwich feeder) When: Saturday 18 May 2013 Meet: 09:00 @ Cutty Sark Gardens, SE10 9LW (by the foot tunnel entrance) Our friends in Newham are currently running a series of Saturday rides, with support from the borough council. After speaking recently with Bernard McDonnell and Emma Harper of Newham Cyclists, [...]
O Canada, you are so polite.
Unable to sleep last night, I surfed the TV airwaves, alighting upon a SWAT-style police drama that within milliseconds revealed itself to be a Canadian effort. Flashpoint centres on the work of the fictional “Strategic Response Unit” of the Toronto Police, and it’s the usual funky combat fatigues, helmets, goggles, kneepads, assault rifles, pockets bristling [...]
29th place for British press freedom
Reporters Without Borders has just published its World Press Freedom Index for 2013. Apologies for being so parochial, but what immediately strikes me about this document is that it shows the United Kingdom in 29th place out of the 179 states listed. There are no obviously dodgy states above the UK in the latest press [...]
Printed electronics from lab to fab
Whilst the electronics industry and its gadget-addled followers obsess over computer and mobile device processors and advanced graphics capabilities, the more interesting advances are being made in relatively simple technologies that should vastly expand the economic, geographical and cultural scope of microelectronics. Show More Summary
Psst – wanna buy a MacBook?
If any of you, friends and fiends alike, are looking to replace an ageing laptop, or just have money to burn, I have a MacBook Pro 13? with Retina Display for sale. It’s in as-new condition, and is the model which retails for £1,249 on the Apple UK website. Still under warranty, naturally. If you’re [...]
Drums fall silent for unlikely Marlboro Man
English composer Steve Martland has died suddenly at the tender age of 53. The cause of death is not reported, and it comes to me as a bit of a shock. Martland first came to my attention in the early 1980s with his large orchestra piece Babi Yar. I had grown up listening to art [...]
Cycle ride: Locks, Docks & One Smoking Ferry, Sunday 12 May 2013
Following Monday’s 120 kilometre epic, my next ride for the Dog & Bell Crew will be a short and leisurely London loop, being a variation on the late Barry Mason’s Locks, Docks and One Smoking Ferry ride. Only 45 kilometres or thereabouts (70 Li), but still worth getting out of bed for. Starting at Cutty [...]
UKIP – it’s the beer wot did it
Given that every Tom, Dick and Harriet is currently offering expert opinion on why the so-called United Kingdom Independence Party swept to county council power last night, despite being cast by the establishment as a bunch of clowns, loonies, fruitcakes and crypto-nazis, I thought that I might as well offer my tuppence worth. The reason [...]
Turkey – a tough place to be a journalist
The National Union of Journalists yesterday marked Word Press Freedom Day 2013 with a public meeting focused on the plight of journalists in Turkey: a multi-party state and would-be EU member that doesn’t warrant the term democracy given the behaviour of the majority party toward its critics. Turkey recognises in law a thousand and one [...]
On World Press Freedom Day 2013
Today is World Press Freedom Day, as has been every 3 May for the past 20 years. Not that many would notice, mind you, despite the best efforts of UNESCO, the world’s journalists and others in highlighting the need for a news media free of political and corporate interference, and violence inflicted upon the messengers. Britain [...]
Mae’n grim yng Nghymru
A cuckoo returning home to Ceredigion in Wales following a winter holiday in the Congo is reported to have turned back on reaching Somerset in southwest England. “Bugger this!”, said David, “The weather’s shite in Wales, and I’d rather be back in Africa. As well as that, the caterpillars is well tasty there, and the [...]
Nudge Unit in the Thick of It: Stewart Pearson strikes again
I can understand and to a degree sympathise with the Tories’ desire to drag themselves into the 20th century. It must be absolutely ghastly for post-neanderthal British conservatives to have to deal on a daily basis with fruitcakes and nutters. And that’s just the party’s core supporters. However, it absolutely beggars belief that Tory party [...]
UK state sanctions intellectual property theft
Welcome to the world of state-sanctioned intellectual property theft, courtesy of the British government, which last week saw its Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act achieve royal assent. This wide ranging yet little reported new law includes a major change to copyright that will take power away from individual content creators and hand it to commercial [...]
UK benefits claimants – welcome to the digital dark age!
Are you resident in Britain and thinking of making an online claim for pension or welfare benefits? That’s fine as long as you are running the Netscape 7 browser under Windows for Workgroups 3.1 on an IBM-compatible PC with an Intel 80286 processor. Anything more up to date and you are left with no options other [...]
Searching for the keyword
Back in July of last year I came upon a fascinating paper on quantitative linguistics which looks at keywords in text and how they convey content. At the time I struggled to find a context in which to report and comment on the study by Dresden and Bologna physicists Eduardo Altmann, Giampaolo Cristadoro and Mirko [...]
The British Conservative Party – not what it used to be
It says a lot about the once esteemed Conservative and Union Party, and indeed UK politics as a whole, that this statement may be made with only the tiniest hint of irony… “He [Kenneth Clarke] claimed some of its supporters were fruitcakes and nutters, the phrase Cameron first used in 2006, but has subsequently not [...]