Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Why do people insist on classifying depression as an illness? That’s better, of course, than treating it as a personal weakness – ‘pull yourself together!’ – but it implies that something is wrong with your body or mind. Is this … Continue reading →

Sorry to be so silent, but my blogging time has been taken up with a long and (mainly) instructive conversation on the LRB Blog: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/12/31/bernard-porter/what-is-corbyn-thinking/. I had been hoping to get back to the UK in time to see Channel … Continue reading →

I am so lucky to have Sweden as my bolt-hole from Brexit Britain. The Swedish Minister for the EU, Ann Linde, has just reassured us expats that, whatever happens in the Brexit negotiations, we’re safe, so far as our new … Continue reading →

My posting of a version of my last blog here on the LRB blogsite ruffled some feathers. Immediately a couple of anti-Corbynists leapt in with comments which didn’t begin to address my argument, but simply bad-mouthed JC. He is a ‘coward’, … Continue reading →

Corbyn’s getting a lot of stick just now – certainly on the anti-Brexit Facebook pages I subscribe to – for not clearly coming out in favour of a second referendum, and for ‘Remain’. The relatively left-wing Guardian is especially critical: but … Continue reading →

It’s hard to credit that two millennia of proud British history are about to end like this. (‘Proud’ in the sense that Brits have usually taken pride in  it; unjustifiably in many instances, I’ll grant.) Almost everyone in the wider … Continue reading →

Here’s Kajsa’s and my contribution to the London Review of Books  feature on the ways the Continental press has reacted to Brexit. It’s one of about a dozen, to be published (slightly edited) in the first January issue of the … Continue reading →

This is wonderful, one of the best personal arguments against Brexit that I’ve seen, and justifiably savage about Theresa. I only wish she could read it – highly unlikely, I grant you. Nonetheless, it deserves the widest circulation. http://markasftw.com/lithuanians-elected-me-because-im-british/

Now Theresa May is doing ‘the God thing’, just as Tony Blair used to:  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-reveals-how-her-faith-in-god-makes-her-certain-she-is-doing-the-right-thing-a7442616.html. I don’t need to comment on the seeming hypocrisy of this, in view of her shared responsibility for the policy of ‘Austerity’, contributing to the … Continue reading →

Putin’s support for Brexit makes a lot of sense, though I’m surprised to see him expressing it so openly. The same applies to his alleged backing of Trump in the USA, and all those cunning Russian subterfuges – ‘official’ or … Continue reading →