iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Looks like the (post-Botley Road reopening) replacement to the 14 bus as a link from the Oxford rail station to the JR Hospital will be an extended 4 route that runs from Botley to Risinghurst (via the High Street & London Road rather than N Oxford & Marston). www.oxfordbus.co.uk/service-chan...

Oxford Bus Company route map showing new 4 bus route, running from Botley in the west to Risinghurst in the east, via the Botley Road, Frideswide Square (for the rail station), the High Street, the JR, and Headington.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Sure thing, Mr Hilter! Good luck in the Minehead by-election!

Screenshot from Monty Python sketch with John Cleese in a Nazi uniform, as “Mr Hilter”, running in the Minehead by-election, saying: “I am not a racialist …”

Screenshot from Monty Python sketch with John Cleese in a Nazi uniform, as “Mr Hilter”, running in the Minehead by-election, saying: “… but — und this is a big ‘but’ …”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

That’s assuming we can overcome our white-hot “outrage” over the weather!

Oxford Times front page: “‘Outrage’ as county gripped by drought”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Some years after my contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Mexican History was published electronically, I was pleased to receive today a copy of the just-released physical book! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Photo of page 409 from the Oxford Handbook of Mexican History:

Chapter 24
Mexico and World War II
Halbert Jones

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

A sunny 31C/88F afternoon in the south of England = “severe weather”

Train cancellation notice:

“This journey has been cancelled because of severe weather”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

A slight subediting oversight here!

“We end up with tourism concentrated in places like London and Edinburgh, but the rest of the economy doesn’t get the benefit of it.

“I think air passenger duty is a part of that – for a family of five coming into the country and travelling, it’s a huge penalty compared to what you pay in Europe.” EXAMPLE OF TAX RATES HERE?

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Having spent a lot of quality time at the AGN in Mexico City, I was excited to discover on a (touristic, non-research) visit to Oviedo, Spain, that the regional authorities of Asturias had the same idea of turning their panopticon prison into an archive.

View of the Asturias regional archives in Oviedo, Spain, housed in an old panopticon prison.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

I only spotted this next rate increase was happening because, having bought stamps online from Royal Mail in the past, they have me pegged as a collector, so they wrote to me, thinking I might be excited to “be among the first to secure the October 2025 Tariff Definitive Stamp”!

Header to a promotional email from Royal Mail: “A New Definitive for a New Tariff”

Text of promotional email: “Hello Halbert,

Be among the first to secure the October 2025 Tariff Definitive Stamp, issued for the new international postage rate for letters up to 100g.

The new stamp, priced at £3.40, features His Majesty The King’s effigy in Dark Green, and is available in three collectible formats:”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

More comparisons — postage rate for int’l letters: UK: £3.40 Netherlands: €2.00 = £1.73 New Zealand: up to NZ$4.70 = up to £2.06* Spain: up to €2.40 = up to £2.08* Switzerland: up to CHF2.50 = up to £2.32* Australia: up to A$4.80 = up to £2.35* *varies by destination, lower within region

A Swiss postage stamp with a value of CHF2.50.

A New Zealand postage stamp with a value of $4.70.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

… and anyway, other postal services manage not to rip their customers off to the same extent on international letters: UK: £3.40 Germany: €1.25 = £1.08 USA: US$1.70 = £1.25 France: €2.10 = £1.82 Canada: C$3.65 = £1.94 Ireland: €2.65 = £2.29 4/4

A US “Global” “Forever” stamp, currently priced at $1.70.

A French international rate stamp. They have gone in for ugly barcodes on stamps, too.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

As recently as 2012, the international letter rate was just £1.10. The (no longer available) “worldwide” stamps sold back then will have been a great investment; they have tripled in value. There were cheaper rates for Europe (68p) and lighter items (like postcards) (76p). Those are gone now. 2/X

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

One of my occasional rants about the UK’s increasingly extortionate international postage rates: After a big hike in April — the point in the year when rate changes are usually made — Royal Mail will next month again raise the price to send a letter or postcard abroad, to £3.40. 1/X

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

The framing here is (as so often) exasperating. The headline: “Trump threatens to strip Rosie O’Donnell of U.S. citizenship” Not until 9 paragraphs in: “Experts said the president does not have the power to take away the citizenship of a U.S.-born citizen.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/u...

“Experts said the president does not have the power to take away the citizenship of a U.S.-born citizen.”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

The media is really hitting the key points in its coverage of the move to strip Harvard of its ability to enrol international students …

Headline in The Times (of London): “British students face ban from Harvard by Trump administration”

CBS News headline: “Trump's Harvard international student ban could derail Belgium's Princess Elisabeth's studies”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Hmm. I suppose knowledge of history might be a bit of ‘spoiler’ here …

BBC iPlayer promotion for “Marie Antoinette”, a “new series”, with the tagline, “Can Marie Antoinette survive her reign?”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Spotted in the city centre today: a reminder that Oxford is home to a significant East Timorese community … and that East Timor is one of handful of countries (along with El Salvador, Panama, and Ecuador to use the US dollar as its official currency.

A signboard outside a Ryman stationers shop, with a Western Union notice giving “our exchange rate to East Timor” as £1=$1.319.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Interesting that Politico yesterday reported the UK move on reinstating the visa requirement for Colombians was opposed by four other government departments (clearly concerned about diplomatic fallout and economic impact) but the Home Office position won out. www.politico.eu/newsletter/l...

“MORE BACKLOG BATTLING: The government has sought to crack down on refuge requests from Colombia, reinstating visa requirements for visitors that were lifted in 2022 — resulting in a surge of 3,300 applications. The Home Office reckons the latest move has closed the door to at least 7,200 claims before the end of the parliament, based on the trend in numbers, or a saving of £128 million. A Labour official said the estimated saving “demonstrates the impact these visa changes can have.”

What’s interesting about this is … four other departments (defense, foreign, culture and business) sought to block the move, but Downing Street rowed in behind the Home Office to give it the green light.”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Traces of a once-greater Great Western Railway, in the West Midlands (beyond where the GWR network now ends, at Banbury)

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 18/10/2024

Looks like the Home Office ad campaign to promote awareness of the transition to eVisas is live …

London bus shelter featuring an ad placed by HM Government: “It’s time to make your UK visa digital”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 05/10/2024

There is a hilarious bit of dialogue in Charles Portis’s “The Dog of the South” in which the narrator — who studied the Civil War at Ole Miss — takes umbrage at the suggestion that Bragg “lost the war.” He keeps coming back to it, pushing back. Maybe Trump also has strong views on CW generalship?

A passage from “The Dog of the South” (p. 66 in my copy):
“Look here, Dr. Symes. I know that Bragg should have been relieved earlier. Everybody knows that today. Joe Johnston, too, but that’s a long way from saying they lost the war.”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 24/09/2024

If implementation of the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) goes ahead as planned this autumn — admittedly, a big “if”, in light of past, and rumoured future, delays — then I have likely had my last passport stamp from a Schengen zone country, very sadly.

A Latvian exit stamp on a passport page, dated 23/09/24.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

The reference to satellite pics of baseball diamonds reminds me of Ollie North presenting similar images from Nicaragua as evidence of Cuban infiltration, blithely unaware that Nicaragua’s love for baseball was a legacy of prior US occupation of the country. (From LeoGrande, “Our Own Backyard”)

“North’s ignorance about Latin America produced some amusing moments. Once, while briefing NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, North showed Brokaw aerial reconnaissance photographs of Nicaragua and pointed out a baseball field. “The interesting thing here is the baseball diamond,” North said knowingly. “Nicaraguans don’t play baseball. Cubans play baseball.” Brokaw thought North was kidding; baseball had been Nicaragua’s national pastime ever since the US Marines occupied the country in the early 20th century. But North was serious.”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 16/09/2024

Just saw the poster again, and noticed an important qualification on the reintroduction of an Oxford-Bristol train service — it’s a direct *Saturday* service, which is rather less useful than one that runs every day … Hopefully more frequent trains, on more days, will follow?

Great Western Railway poster at Oxford rail station announcing reintroduction, after 21 years, of “direct return Saturday services” between Bristol and Oxford.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 16/09/2024

Happy 16 de septiembre to those who celebrate! 🇲🇽

Mexican independence hero Miguel Hidalgo, in a mural by José Clemente Orozco at the Palacio de Gobierno, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 28/08/2024

And the number of places available to applicants from places like Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, and Iceland would absorb quite a large proportion of the 18-30 year old population of those countries if they were all minded to come to the UK! (From www.gov.uk/guidance/imm...)

Screenshot from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-youth-mobility-scheme-eligible-nationals showing number of YMS places available to different nationalities.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 28/08/2024

In some cases, the schemes are set up in such a way that the definition of “youth” is stretched quite a bit! (As seen in this screenshot from www.gov.uk/youth-mobili..., Australians, Canadians, Kiwis, and South Koreans can take part in YMS’s up to age 35.)

Screenshot from https://www.gov.uk/youth-mobility/eligibility showing that eligibility for certain nationalities is for ages 18-35.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

Kew Gardens being awfully coy here about how it came to pass that rubber, “although … native to Brazil,” now is grown “mostly on plantations” in SE Asia. (Rubber seeds smuggled out of the Amazon, cultivated at Kew, and taken to the British colony of Malaya may have played a part.)

Explanatory signage on rubber from the Palm House, Kew Gardens.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 20/08/2024

And, as we know, some bears are smarter than the average bear …

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 25/06/2024

Mentioning as I learned about the book here: Just finished @eriklinstrum.bsky.social ‘s ‘Age of Emergency’. To say I ‘enjoyed’ a work centred on colonial violence doesn’t feel quite right, but it does a great job showing how awareness of that violence permeated UK culture & society at the time.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 07/04/2024

Having spent a lot of time in Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación, I was fascinated to see during a recent visit to Spain that the regional authorities in Asturias *also* had the idea the idea of turning their surplus-to-requirements turn-of-the-20th-century panopticon prison into an archive. 🗃️

Image of regional archive of Asturias (Spain), housed in a former prison.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 28/03/2024

Is this really meant as reassurance? Sounds more lie a threat, considering what a garbage company Thames Water is.

Statement from Thames Water exec: “I’d like to reassure our customers that, despite this announcement, it is business as usual for Thames Water.”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 18/03/2024

¡Feliz 18 de marzo to those who celebrate! 🇲🇽🗃️

President Lázaro Cárdenas announces the expropriation of Mexico’s oil sector, 18 March 1938.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 02/02/2024

Lots of rewards from a teaching career, the UK Government wants everybody know. But earning enough to meet the minimum income requirement to sponsor a non-British partner for a family visa won’t be one of them, once their plans to increase that threshold to £38.7k are in place.

Teaching recruitment advert touting a “£30k minimum starting salary”

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 16/01/2024

Clever advertising (seen on the Tube), but raises a question: Why — other than as a reflection of the lobbying prowess of taxi companies — should cabs have access to bus lanes?

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 05/01/2024

An Air Canada flight from Toronto used to provide an additional daytime transatlantic option to LHR, but I don’t see it in the timetable anymore. Looks like there now is a daytime flight from Halifax, though. Would love to try that one — a very short crossing!

Screenshot of flight tracking app display for AC868 from Halifax to London Heathrow, departing 10:35 AST, arriving 20:35 GMT.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

But for a really mad illustration of the unreasonableness of Royal Mail’s rates, consider that it would actually be cheaper for me to mail cards *from the US* to UK recipients (for $1.50, equivalent to £1.19) than to send them first class *within the UK* (£1.25)!!

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

As a UK sender of Xmas cards, I need to vent my outrage at the fact that the int’l postage rate is now *£2.20*! With apologies to US friends, I’m deferring posting your cards until I’m there after Xmas, so I can send them for the equivalent of 52p (66c, the US domestic rate). Significant savings!

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 03/12/2023

Grateful to @christophkalter.bsky.social for his generosity in sharing with me the new paperback edition of his book on the “retornados” from Portugal’s colonies in Africa. Looking forward to reading it!

A copy of “Postcolonial People: The Return from Africa and the Remaking of Portugal”, by Christoph Kalter.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 23/11/2023

Slightly baffled by this: Sainsbury’s — one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains — insists on knowing “how I heard about them.” Weirdly, “I’m a sentient adult living the UK” doesn’t feature in the drop-down menu of possible answers.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

To be sure, it’s not the first time the military has featured in Aniv de la Rev festivities. In 1945, the holiday saw the triumphant return from the Pacific Theatre of Escuadrón 201, the only Mexican unit to see action in WW2. Its members were enthusiastically received on the streets of the capital.

Members of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force march under an arch erected by the government of the Distrito Federal to welcome them, Mexico City, November 1945.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

Today is the Anniversary of the Revolution holiday in Mexico, marking the date in 1910 when, after fraudulent elections, Francisco Madero called for an uprising against the regime of Porfirio Díaz, kicking off a decade of military struggle and social upheaval.

Image of Francisco I. Madero and the Plan de San Luis.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 09/11/2023

BA’s website says that British and Irish citizens who were born in those countries can get away with just photo ID, but it’s an odd position. Depending on the form of ID, it might or might not say where you were born, and being born in the UK or Ireland no longer necessarily means you’re a citizen.

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 05/11/2023

So, what places are advertising at *you* on social media to encourage you to immigrate/relocate? Nice that there are places eager to have me, I guess, though I suspect some wouldn’t *actually* be glad to see me once they figured out I wasn’t, say, a construction worker or a healthcare professional!

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

You could throw something in about Portugal and informal imperialism …

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

The UK government does offer a few attractive employment opportunities …

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Halbert Jones @halbertjones.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

Perhaps a global history of the postboxes of the British Empire would be a good project. These late imperial specimens are from St Lucia and Cyprus (with the latter featuring my then much younger daughter in a tragic t-shirt).

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