Welcome to the website of Brian Barder, an overweight old party with left-wing views and multiple strong opinions, addicted to arguing.

About Ephems, Brian’s blog

To access Ephems, click the ‘Blog’ tab at the top of every page.  To receive a notification of all new blog posts by email, click ‘Subscribe’ and write in your email address.  You don’t need to subscribe to write comments on a blog post at the foot of it. Depending on which browser you use, you may be able to tick a box at the bottom of the comment text box to be notified of all new comments on that blog post.

Please write your comment straight into the comment box, or copy-and-paste it from a plain text file written in (e.g.) Notepad.  Please don’t copy-and-paste anything into the comment box from Word.

Many of the blog posts on Ephems are re-published by the left-of-centre website LabourList where they often attract lively and controversial comments: you can read them at http://labourlist.org/author/brian-barder/.

You can see a list of all the blog posts in a particular category by clicking the “Blog” tab at the top, and a list of pieces on the website (not in the blog) by category by clicking the “Other Writings” tab at the top.  You can find a word or phrase wherever it appears in either a blog post or the rest of the website by clicking “Search this Site”.

About Brian

Retired from Diplomatic Service (’65–’94) and Civil Service (’57–’65). Former member (resigned) of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.

Interests: international affairs, civil rights, and the Labour Party, warts and all. One of 52 ex-ambassadors who signed the open letter on the middle east to T Blair.

Cycles slowly in London traffic, listens addictively to classical music, obsessively writes letters to the newspapers (quite a few of which get published) and occasional articles (ditto).

Spends far too much time at the computer writing blog posts and responses to comments on them, commenting on other people’s blogs and sending out innumerable e-mails designed to assuage his morbid fear of being out of touch. Has a smartphone, a Kindle and a Facebook page, and Tweets.  Joined the ranks of septuagenarians in 2004.

Happily married husband of one, father of three, grandfather of two.