I find mildly interesting the number of times that, having posted a blog here, I find the same arguments repeated shortly afterwards in a national press article. Here’s the latest example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/my-generation-free-brexit-voting-betraying-young; with which compare https://bernardjporter.com/2017/03/29/brexit-unfair-to-the-young/. Polly Toynbee’s article is far better, and adduces many more facts and statistics to support her (our) case, but the basic theme is the same.

Noticing this kind of thing before, I’ve wondered whether I wasn’t (a) perhaps having some influence – I get over a thousand ‘views’ per month now, as against fewer than a hundred a year ago; or (b) being plagiarized. I wouldn’t mind the latter in the least, having no claim on or proprietorial interest in my ideas, and simply being pleased to see their being taken up. But there’s obviously a simpler – if less flattering – explanation; which is that, on the basis of the evidence all around us, my thoughts are pretty obvious, to anyone with similar thought processes. Polly Toynbee doesn’t need to have read my blog, and indeed almost certainly hasn’t. (A thousand a month is still pretty feeble – 35 a day?) But because of the immediate nature of a blog, I occasionally get to express these ideas soonest. I’m the first feather in a prevailing wind.

Off to Genoa tomorrow, which may interrupt blogging, but could also furnish me afterwards with material for more. My talk is on ‘Brexit and the British Empire.’ What do Italians think of Brexit? Or of the British Empire, come to that?