It’s now a badge of shame to be allowed entry into the US. (And a sign of moral activism to be interviewed under terrorist legislation on entry to the UK).
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That shouldn’t deter us. I’m sorry to say that UK has no pull on my heartstrings. This has been (surprisingly) compounded by the present government. I retch at their eagerness to please the uninformed part of the electorate. I’ve never been a flag waver. I feel secure enough with my identity. What
aug 31, 2025, 4:14 pm • 1 0 • view
astonishes me is how well the UK is thought of by your everyday French person. So many tap me on the back demanding ‘Frexit’. France is heading into a period of economic crisis due to erupt mid-September. I’m on the side of les gilets jaunes (V2.0).My partner and I are lucky insofar as we may beyond
aug 31, 2025, 4:18 pm • 1 0 • view
the socio-economic challenges ahead. I fear a real wave of nationalism behind Jordan Bardella and scrutiny of social media applications will weigh heavily. I’m not a French citizen. I simply have permanent residency status. And luckily I know people in the right places. But I am starting to worry
aug 31, 2025, 4:21 pm • 1 0 • view
about what I write on social media.
aug 31, 2025, 4:22 pm • 1 0 • view
I could wrap up my last few comments, repost them back to Germany in 1933. It’d be tantamount to saying ‘We’ll at least I’m not a Jew’. But this sense of state surveillance is becoming urgent. I’ve had a few ‘go home’ confrontations recently. I despair. How could so much hatred be mustered by so few
aug 31, 2025, 4:27 pm • 1 0 • view
None of the soi-disants liberals have turned out to be terribly liberal. It’s become more a tribal label. I don’t think those in the UK who are still smarting from Brexit have cared to notice what European states, and the EU, are turning into.
aug 31, 2025, 4:36 pm • 1 0 • view
And it’s the current leaders just as much as the populist right who are banging on the door who have moved to repression.
aug 31, 2025, 4:36 pm • 1 0 • view
The worry is, I think, both in the UK and the USA, that voting for some vague or inchoate form of liberalism SAVED one from swinging further left. Corbyn’s career was all but ended by this kind neo-lib buffer zone between conservatism writ large and the ‘loony’ left. But the neo-lib line was pred-
aug 31, 2025, 4:44 pm • 1 0 • view
cated along the lines of ‘more of the same’. My tutor-to-be, the late Peter Lipton, dubbed this position ‘cautionary’ inductivism, though in another context (as opposed to revolutionary inductivism = time for a change given the same data). And this resulted in an attack on a sitting duck, as far as
aug 31, 2025, 4:51 pm • 1 0 • view
the comfortable electorate was concerned. Suddenly this small ‘c’ conservatism was blasted from the water by cries of ‘elitism’, feeding straight into populist anxieties. In many ways, some or other sort of liberalism triggered an inarticulate populist backlash. We paying for that today.
aug 31, 2025, 4:55 pm • 1 0 • view