What this site stores on your device. Nothing, until you say so.
One choice, made once, changed whenever you like. This page says exactly what is set when you say yes, what is set when you say no, and how to change your mind.
Last updated 4 September 2026.
The policy in full
What cookies are
A cookie is a small piece of text a website asks your browser to keep, so the site can recognise you or remember something about you next time. Websites must tell you about the cookies they set, and for most kinds, ask first.
What this website sets when you say no
Nothing. No cookies of any kind. The one thing kept is your answer: a small record in your browser's own storage, called hb-consent, so we do not ask you again on every page. It holds a yes or a no and the time you chose, nothing else, and it stays until you change it or clear your browser. There is no login, no basket and no saved state, so nothing here needs a cookie to work.
What this website sets when you say yes
Google Analytics, and only that. It counts visits: which pages are read, how people arrived, roughly where in the world they are, and what kind of device and browser they use. It sets two cookies.
- _ga, kept for two years, a random number that tells one visitor from another.
- _ga_ followed by our property id, kept for two years, which keeps the pages of one visit together.
Google signals and every advertising feature are switched off, so nothing is used to build a profile of you or to show you adverts anywhere. We keep Google's event data for the shortest period Google offers, two months.
Third parties
When you say yes, one request leaves this site, to Google, for the measuring script, and the counts go to Google's servers. Google LLC is in the United States; the transfer is covered by the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and by Google's data processing terms, which apply to us as a Google Analytics customer. When you say no, no request leaves this site for any third party: no analytics, no font service, no advertising tag, no embedded video, no social widget. The typeface is served from our own host.
The banner and what the buttons do
Accept all switches on Google Analytics. Reject all keeps everything off and, if an earlier visit set Google's cookies, deletes them. Choose shows the one thing there is to tick, and Save my choice keeps what you ticked. Accept and Reject sit side by side and each is one click. The banner does not block the page and does not come back once you have chosen.
Changing your mind
Cookie settings, at the foot of every page, opens the banner again with your current answer shown. Change it and the change takes effect at once, on this page and every other. With JavaScript switched off the banner never appears, nothing is measured, and that link brings you here.
The contact form and the newsletter
Sending an enquiry or signing up for The Wire weekly sets nothing on your device. What happens to the details you type is covered by the privacy notice.
Check it yourself
You do not have to take our word for any of this. Open your browser's developer tools on any page of this site and look at the cookies, storage and network panels. Before you choose, and after Reject all: no cookies, one storage entry once you have answered, and no request to any host but ours. After Accept all: Google's two cookies, and requests to googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com.
If this ever changes
If anything else ever needs to store something, this page is updated first to say what it is, what it does and how long it lasts, and where consent is required we ask before anything is set, not after. The date at the top changes with it.