Author Archives: bernardporter2013

We can’t tell how this will turn out. The best predictions are usually made on the basis of recent history. But that won’t work here. In the long ongoing historical struggle between self and society – a.k.a.Tory and Labour, or … Continue reading →

‘This is not the time for ideology’, said Rishi Sunak, the UK’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Number Ten press conference this afternoon. He meant of course ‘free market’, or ‘laissez-faire’, ideology, of the kind that lay behind … Continue reading →

Is this the end of civilisation as we know it? Or even of life on the planet? (OK; I’ve read too many Sci-Fi disaster novels. Take no notice.) Of course I have little idea of the probable outcome of the … Continue reading →

I don’t really think that Trump’s exemption of Britain and Ireland from his ban on flights from Europe is due to his having golf courses there. Or that Boris’s reluctance to take stronger action against the coronavirus pandemic has anything … Continue reading →

Lynton Crosby has excelled himself here. Remember, he’s Boris Johnson’s Australian political guru (the one before Dominic Cummings) who invented – or at any rate is associated with – the strategy of throwing a dead cat into the room to … Continue reading →

Something to look forward to, as I languish in bed suffering from the coronavirus. I’m showing no signs of it yet, but one case has just been reported in Hull. A whole one! And I’m in an at-risk group twice … Continue reading →

Lovely interview with Jan Morris in today’s Observer. She’s 93. An amazing woman – born male, army officer, Times reporter, climbed Everest, best known as a travel writer, a Welsh nationalist, changed sex, wrote a book about it, Conundrum (I’m afraid I … Continue reading →

The recent propaganda campaign against Labour’s and Corbyn’s alleged ‘anti-semitism’ will go down as the most despicable in recent British political history. (Certainly if I have anything to do with the writing of it!) Those responsible for it – the … Continue reading →

Conspiracy theories are – according to the comedian David Baddiel in his excellent TV programme on ‘Holocaust deniers’ the other evening – ‘how idiots get to feel like intellectuals’. I rather liked that! (All the more so because Baddiel didn’t … Continue reading →

Point number 1: democracy is not the most efficient form of government. Point number 2: that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Efficiency can breed tyranny. One of the major insults I remember being used against the Nazis during and after … Continue reading →