Author Archives: bernardporter2013

So the Tories’ newly appointed Director General of the BBC is pulling a popular satirical TV show because it’s too left-wing (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9354927/BBC-axes-left-wing-satire-Mash-Report-presenter-Nish-Kumar-hits-back.html). This comes on top of the (Tory) Home Secretary’s bringing in new draconian laws against peaceful (but noisy) political demonstrations … Continue reading →

I didn’t watch the Royal (ex-Royal?) interview, though I heard and saw some snippets, inadvertently. I can’t get really interested in Royals until they’re played by proper actors (https://bernardjporter.com/2020/12/01/the-crown/), and preferably with their lines written for them by Shakespeare. But … Continue reading →

So Farage is stepping down as leader of his – third? fourth? – political party to take up a new role in the vanguard of the fight against (a) lockdowns, (b) unpatriotic history – which in this context is what … Continue reading →

Just a note, but it may be significant.  Yesterday I got involved – very unwisely – in a Facebook argument with a Brexiter about the Shamima Begum case (see https://bernardjporter.com/2021/02/28/shamima/). He seemed to have got the basic facts of it entirely wrong, so I … Continue reading →

This book ought to mark the end of Boris Johnson’s political career. It’s about his habit of lying, shamelessly, about anything and everything, as a journalist, a politician and a married man; and about his journalistic sources, Brexit, coronavirus, Corbyn, … Continue reading →

Here’s another reason to feel ashamed of being British just now, and glad of my (dual) Swedish nationality. I don’t want to push historical ‘lessons’ too far, but just to say that the present British government’s determination to prevent Shamima … Continue reading →

I suppose my main objection to ‘sloganising’ (see my last post) is that it oversimplifies issues, to the extent sometimes of getting them completely wrong, and always of misleading us. The same applies to the use of certain words without qualification, like – … Continue reading →

I won’t have been the first to notice how rational political discussion these days has been replaced by slogans, usually consisting of just three words. ‘Get Brexit Done’ seems to have won the last General Election for Boris; following on … Continue reading →

‘History’ – the subject, that is, not the events themselves – has a lot to answer for. (Well, the events themselves too, obviously; but that’s another matter.) I don’t know how important it is in helping to explain our present … Continue reading →

I had thought that seeking refuge in Sweden would release me, blessedly, from the political worry, pain, frustration and rage that I was experiencing almost every minute of my life in the new, post-Brexit UK.  Far away from the sound of … Continue reading →