2010-03-09
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Today’s Pictures: Celling It. Martin Parr, Ascot, 1999, for Magnum Photos. (The entire set is worth a look.)
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An original Marks Barfield sketch of the London Eye, from a BBC News selection of pictures to mark the tenth anniversary of its opening.
2010-03-08
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Maurice Broomfield’s photographs of industrial Britain, from the FT. Paper-making, Bowater Paper Company, Thames Mill, Northfleet, 1960.
Licence Fees Across Europe
After reading one too many commentary pieces on the fall-out of the BBC’s Digital Strategy Review, and hearing the odd friend suggest that the British didn’t know how good they had it, I decided to complile a Google spreadsheet of TV licence fees across Europe.
Once I had a first version out, Chris suggested that I should add a column stating whether there was an ad-free state broadcaster, and that’s there now; there’s also a heatmap visualisation.
Unfortunately, the GBP Equivalent column seems a bit fragile- Google Finance hiccups every now and again and it doesn’t work. Publishing also seems not to allow nice formatting (‘£145.20’ not ‘145.2’), so I’m linking directly to the editing page. Still, hopefully there’s stuff of interest for people there.
2010-03-06
The British Junk Food Report
rentzsch wrote an interesting post on some of the junk food he tried while in the UK for NSConference:
The absolute most-important thing for a U.S.-based traveler to the U.K. is knowing what junk food you should load up on while there. Here’s our report:
Kit Kat Chunky: DON’T BUY. There are far better things to spend 260 (!) calories on.
Really? I love Kit Kat Chunky, although I have a particularly soft spot for the allegedly limited edition Caramel variant. Maybe I’m just dull, or perhaps the mix of biscuit and chocolate is just more my sort of thing.
Wispa: BUY. This was the least-interesting bar to me, but came up the biggest winner.
Its very concept didn’t appeal to me: an “aerated” chocolate bar. More than anything, it seemed like a hack to give you less chocolate for the same price.
If you try only one chocolate bar while in the UK, I recommend Wispa.
Wispa has a competitor, Aero, which is more air, less chocolate. It also comes in a mint version. Personally I find them a bit too light, but occasionally they’re right.
Wheatabix: BUY. Apparently these are State-side, but I never noticed or tried them until I arrived in London. They’re like a fine-grained Shredded Wheat that dissolves much more rapidly in milk. Yummy, if you’re the kind who likes soggy shredded wheat (I do).
Minor correction: the product is called Weetabix. I don’t eat breakfast cereals, though, so I have no other comment.
(Tumblr is stripping the style attributes from the span tags. Sigh.)
2010-03-05
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2010-03-04
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Jonathan Freedland, in a comment piece for the Guardian: The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch.
Some would argue that this is a reductio ad absurdum argument, but I think it gets to the heart of why I’m worried about the report: if the BBC is shrinking, where will it stop?
(My main disagreement with his piece is the blithe acceptance that online content can be scaled back, but I’ve covered that elsewhere.)
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Westminster really seems to have some sort of fever for redesiging its major junctions at the moment. Piccadilly Circus is next, according to the BBC:
Piccadilly Circus will be made pedestrian-friendly as part of a £14m revamp, which will rid the busy central London junction of guard railings.
Westminster Council approved the plan that will see the area go back to what it looked like in 1963, as more than one kilometre of railings are uprooted.
A central island will be built along Piccadilly and Pall Mall and two-way traffic will be reintroduced.
Meanwhile, the firm that planned the revamp of Oxford Circus last year (previously) reports that it’s worked out:
The Atkins-designed Oxford Circus diagonal crossing has proven an instant success with reduced pavement congestion, a doubling of walking speeds and one in six visitors using the diagonal routes.
