A Candle for Notre Dame
Candles in Notre Dame de Paris, August 2004.
No-Brexit Day Redux
Remember when it was early December, and we were all in agony awaiting the first Meaningful Vote on May’s deal, which ended up not happening that month? That was only four months ago. If we have six more months of this, we’re not even halfway through the end of the beginning.
Deal or No Deal? No Idea... Not Ideal
56 hours to go, and we still don’t know if we’re going.
In Extra Time
Once again the UK is potentially days away from crashing out of the EU with no deal, with no clear path to avoiding it. Theresa May is in talks with Jeremy Corbyn about reaching a cross-party agreement which could trade away our freedom of movement and any chance of a people’s vote for some vague statements about post-Brexit negotiating aims. On Monday in Parliament Labour whipped in favour of three indicative motions to find a way forward, but not for Joanna Cherry’s crucial emergency brake, on which many of its MPs abstained. If we crash out because of that, or leave on the barest of terms with Corbyn’s approval, many voters will be abstaining from voting for Labour.
Read More · 4 April 2019 · Comment · Politics
The Hunger Games: Jokingmay Part 1
A BuzzFeed report on EU officials’ responses to the past couple of days of UK political developments has just the best punchline.
Desert Island Links
The fight over the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons.
How Australia’s compulsory voting saved it from Trumpism.
Former British diplomat Robert Cooper on Brexit.
Tim Berners-Lee on where the Web goes from here.
Read More · 23 March 2019 · Comment · Weblog
The Wavering Middle
I’ve long thought that Labour’s switch to selecting its leader via a direct membership vote was a wrong turn, and that the next Tory leadership battle will be disastrous for the same reason.
The Wire
Two weeks until a possible No Deal, and we’re all having to twiddle our thumbs for five days until Meaningful Vote 3 to see what fresh hell awaits us.
At the beginning of last month my family and I caught the train down to Manchester for the weekend, to have a look around its vibrant mix of old and new buildings and attend some special events, like the CBBC tour at MediaCityUK and a Day of Percussion at the Royal Northern College of Music. My son and I had been to Manchester before, but spent all of that trip looking at much smaller buildings, so this was effectively a first proper visit to the city itself. There was a good Martin Parr exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery; we saw Stephenson’s Rocket and the world’s first railway station at the Science and Industry Museum; and I finally got to see the Daniel Libeskind-designed Imperial War Museum North from the inside. I liked it all. Still didn’t manage a curry on Rusholme Street, though.
Here’s the compulsory gallery for Detail, this time posted within a month rather than after 1+ years. (With a few extra photos from last visit which have sat on my hard drive for seven, ahem.)