Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Watching Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience on U-Tube reminds me that we shouldn’t take the Victorians too seriously – because they didn’t take themselves all that seriously. Patience mocks everyone, including the mockers themselves; not only aesthetes, its best-known targets, but … Continue reading →

Apparently retirees are now better off than working people in Britain: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/13/pensioners-now-20-a-week-better-off-than-working-households. I’m not surprised. Most of us have good occupational pensions, unlike the next generation. (I would have, if half of it were not going to my ex-wife.) We’ve … Continue reading →

Having been a skeptical student of ‘conspiracy theories’ for many years – arising out of my work on Britain’s secret services – I thought I could distinguish ‘true’ from ‘false’ news fairly easily. But it really is becoming more difficult … Continue reading →

I voted – twice – for Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party, and am still loyal to his ideals and policies. I also think he’s done a good job in many ways, bearing in mind the hostility of … Continue reading →

The National Health Service is our greatest national achievement. It could also be our greatest national asset, if it weren’t currently being starved of funds. Horror stories – patients lying in corridors, delayed operations, elderly patients taking up beds because … Continue reading →

Of course the other way of getting traction from a ‘Reichstag Fire’ (see last post) is to pretend that it happened, but that the lying liberal press are covering it up: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/donald-trump-terror-attacks-are-not-being-reported-media_uk_5898db13e4b076856216ef0e?c8ublprf9ubpxecdi; and: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38890090. Remember the ‘Bowling Green Massacre’? On … Continue reading →

What President Trump could do with now, while his travel ban is suspended by the courts, is a Reichstag fire, and an immigrant close at hand to pin it on. He’s almost said as much: ‘if anything happens now it’s … Continue reading →

Churchill once described democracy as ‘the worst form of Government except for all those others that have been tried from time to time’; and that’s probably the best that can be said for it. Nowhere has it ever produced the … Continue reading →

Now back in Stockholm – where the weather is unseasonably mild – to be confronted by a huge spread in today’s Dagens Nyheter about ‘Swedes with central roles in the American extreme Right’. It’s here, but behind a paywall, I … Continue reading →

We mustn’t confuse the present US regime with those of the recent past, and especially with the ‘Neo-Con’ one behind George W Bush. The following article in next month’s The Atlantic magazine by David Frum, a leading conservative commentator and … Continue reading →