Monthly Archives: April 2017

Apparently our UK press now lies at number 40 in Reporters Without Borders’ ‘Press Freedom Index’. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index; which also describes the methodology.) That’s way below most other ‘developed’ countries of the world, apart from the USA (at no. 43). … Continue reading →

We all need our heroes. They seem to be in rather short supply just now – live ones, anyway. Mine – since the death of Bobby Moore – has long been the pianist, conductor and peacemaker Daniel Barenboim. We went … Continue reading →

For a few years now I’ve been blogging about the Julian Assange case, both here, on the LRB Blogsite, and in Lobster (e.g. http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster71/lob71-assange-again.pdf). This has been based on my historical interest in ‘Secret Service’ activities, and on my present … Continue reading →

The Brexit vote was so close that a number of small things could be claimed to account for it. The deliberate lie on the side of the Brexit battlebus was one I’ve mentioned before: who wouldn’t vote for another £350 … Continue reading →

Many wives these days are electing to stick with their ‘maiden’ names – i.e. those they were born with – rather than automatically adopting their husbands’. That, it seems to me, is an admirable way of escaping from the old-fashioned … Continue reading →

I’m a trusting kind of bloke on the whole. Many would call me naïve, but I’ve found that if you don’t have a suspicious frame of mind, you get on with people better. Of course you’ll be occasionally disappointed, betrayed … Continue reading →

Who would have thought that the time would come when hundreds of thousands of people all over the world would feel constrained, or provoked, to demonstrate in support of science? (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/22/evidence-not-arrogance-uk-supporters-join-global-march-for-science.) There was one in Stockholm, too, yesterday. Nerds in … Continue reading →

‘Why bother listening to that stuff?’ asks Kajsa this morning in bed, as my i-Phone radio app (wonderful!) picks up Nigel Farage wildly berating a phone-in questioner on LBC. (She’s asked me to point out that she was only half … Continue reading →

National moods of nastiness, such as I described – and hopefully exaggerated – in my last post, are usually tied up with widespread pessimism and lack of hope. I don’t get any strong feeling that the Brexiteers, or the Trumpeters … Continue reading →

Brexit has opened a can of worms in more ways than one. I must say I had little idea of the sheer nastiness of many of my compatriots until I started looking more closely into the dark side of the … Continue reading →