Blog
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Sep 19
2011Walks, Talks and ...
I’ve just come back from New York, the city that never sleeps – or stops talking as it turns out. Everywhere I went people seemed to be talking, most of them to themselves. Closer examination showed that they weren’t talking to themselves of course, but to someone else, on a mobile phone; that or they were tweeting, texting or updating their Facebook page. Fair enough, the only problem was most of them were doing these things while walking down the sidewalk, sorry, pavement.
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Sep 09
2011Not My Fault Gov
An unusual thing happened the other day. A politician got up on her feet in the House of Commons and apologised. No, she hadn’t committed any kind of personal misdemeanour, she was apologising for a failure in policy. ‘I’m sorry’, she said, ‘we got it wrong. We have listened to the people and have decided to withdraw’, or words to that effect.
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Sep 09
2011It's ...
Most of us have heard of Monty Python, but how many remember the opening sequence? Usually sitting behind a news desk, John Cleese would announce ‘And now …’ before a gloriously bearded old man (Terry Jones I think) would appear for a second and utter the single word ‘It’s’ before the voiceover would add ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ and the familiar martial signature tune would strike up. Much would be conveyed in that ‘It’s’, a sense of anticipation, that something good was coming. What was less obvious was the potential for anger and annoyance such a simple word can carry.
