Monthly Archives: January 2022

Another dead cat! And the biggest and deadest so far. Not that I’m disputing that there’s a dangerous crisis emerging on the Russia-Ukraine border; but Boris is obviously using it just now to divert attention from his own problems, which … Continue reading →

Proof reading. The most boring of all literary activities, but thankfully finished yesterday, and the corrections sent in. So now I can’t add or change anything; which is a huge relief, even though I know that ideas will keep coming … Continue reading →

Partygate got full coverage in the Swedish media again today, with scenes in the Commons shown on SVT delighting those here who always suspected that Monty Python was fact. In tomorrow’s Dagens Nyheter Katrine Marçal, the paper’s excellent London correspondent, … Continue reading →

Is it true? It’s widely reported that there’s a plot afoot to rescue Boris from the mess he’s got himself  into, and to save his premiership from what threatens to be its rapid, ignominious and well-deserved end, to which the … Continue reading →

First there was Brexit. That didn’t go very well, did it? But then along came Covid 19, to take our attention away from all that. The Government handled that badly too: incompetently and corruptly; so we needed a distraction from … Continue reading →

One would imagine that Boris will need to go very soon.  It must be remembered that many of his backbenchers have distrusted him for years: ‘Boris will always let you down’, as a retiring Tory MP told me was the … Continue reading →

Colonialism and imperialism at the present time are usually discussed in very simplistic moral terms. Are you – and the books written about them – ‘for’ or ‘against’? The fall-back position for most commentators is that imperialism was an unrelieved … Continue reading →

(I’ve finished the copy-editing phase of ‘the book’. But yesterday, just an hour or two later, being asked by a Swedish friend of Kajsa’s what the book was about, I couldn’t for the life of me remember. Dementia? Or simply … Continue reading →

What do you think? Bloomsbury obviously didn’t take to my recommendation of Boris in a hard hat and holding Union Jacks suspended helplessly over the Olympic stadium (you must have seen it); and have have come out with these suggestions. … Continue reading →

Tomorrow I have to get my Identitetskort renewed at the Central Police Station in Stockholm. You need an Identity card, and a ‘Personnummer’, to do almost anything in Sweden. Years ago I used to object strongly to the very idea … Continue reading →