Philip Pullman
@PhilipPullman
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Writer (His Dark Materials, etc). Read like a butterfly, write like a bee. 'Strangely wholesome' - Millie Hoskins, United Agents. Rejoiner.
Joined November 2013
That Jeremy Clarkson can write things like that, and publish them unashamed, tells us all we need to know about the way Rupert Murdoch has poisoned and rotted our public life.
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Of course Meghan Markle is attacked by the British press because she's black, and of course Prince Harry is right to defend her. What a foul country this is.
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Every day this country gets a little worse, and every day there's a little less we can do about it.
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To ban conversion therapy, so-called, is good. To make a deliberate exception for trans people is pure, cold-eyed evil. No justification, no reason, no excuse: just to appease the transphobes. Evil.
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Are we obliged to accept Boris Johnson as our prime minister if we play no part in the process of electing him? I don't recognise his right or his fitness to hold that office. Not my prime minister, thanks.
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In himself, Jeremy Clarkson is nothing: a brief loud noise and a brief bad smell. The arse that emitted him, as I said yesterday, is Rupert Murdoch.
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There comes a point in the history of a nation where stupidity is indistinguishable from wickedness. That's where we are now.
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Why is it that if you know someone's position on climate change, you also know their views about Brexit, teaching with phonics, ending the lockdown, and (in all probability) capital punishment?.
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That pin-striped snake Jacob Rees-Mogg explaining how requiring voter ID at polling stations will prevent a problem that hasn't yet arisen made me choke on my lunch. It's a blatant attempt to stop poor people voting, and nothing else.
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Johnson ought to announce his plans to Parliament, not commandeer the TV in order to speak to the nation as if he was the supreme leader in a tinpot tyranny. Away with him.
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The 'prime minister' has finally come out as a dictator. I've had enough of being outraged. We must get rid of him and his loathsome gang as soon and as finally as possible.
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I can't find the words to express my profound admiration for the courage of women and girls in Iran who defy the oppressive hijab laws.
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Rees-Mogg is behaving like the sort of odious prep school creep whose dearest wish is to be Head Boy, and to stand beside the Master looking sanctimonious when other boys are being punished. This is what our system has produced.
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What Elon Musk means, when he talks about freedom of speech, is the freedom to lie without consequences.
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Every so often I think about Brexit, and each time I do I realise again that there is nothing about it that's good. Every single thing about it is bad, destructive, poisonous, and beneficial only to enemies like Putin and Trump and traitors like Johnson.
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People who say 'I can't vote for Labour because they haven't got X right' are objectively voting Conservative. But if you can't bear the idea of voting for Labour or Lib Dem, think of it as voting AGAINST the Tories. Let's get them out, for God's sake.
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Johnson's defence of Cummings is the same as Rees-Mogg's loathsome remarks about the Grenfell victims: if people obeyed the rules, they were stupid. It's the superiority of the spiv, and it's completely unforgivable.
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I've seldom heard about anything nastier than Robert Jenrick's order to paint over the pictures in the asylum centre. Cold, cruel, the act of a soul that's shrivelled and mean to its core. How can he look in the mirror? Utter moral emptiness.
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BUY BOOKS!.And then.READ THEM. But at least buy them.
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Rage and shame at what my country has allowed itself to become, at the government that's appointed itself, at the contemptible worthlessness of the opposition, at the misery so many people are suffering, at the worse that is to come.
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The fuss about BBC salaries is entirely and malevolently confected by Murdoch and Dacre. A pox on them. The BBC is worth every penny.
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Saying this as clearly as I can: Boris Johnson is removing the Covid restrictions because he WANTS the NHS to collapse, so that he has a political excuse for privatising it. Nothing else, not even stupidity, can explain what's going on.
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With all the majestic impartiality of the law, Durham police refrained from investigating Dominic Cummings because he was a friend of the Prime Minister and continue to investigate Keir Starmer because he's the leader of the Labour Party.
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@MarcusRashford @spectator The Spectator is a disgrace to the name of journalism. If they're criticising you, the chances are that you're doing the right thing. Not that there's any doubt about it: you are, and I admire you for it.
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I have never seen anything like this. The world is sliding into an abyss of cruelty and shame.
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In terms both of the sheer number of students affected, and of the crushing unhappiness and life-changing consequences of each individual case, the A Level results fiasco is the clearest proof yet of this government's frivolous incompetence.
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The lengthy sentences on the 'Just Stop Oil' protestors are grotesquely disproportionate. As for the judge forbidding them to explain why they were protesting, it looks. like fascism. I deplore it.
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I hope the BBC finds this all very difficult. Meanwhile, my admiration for Gary Lineker, Ian Wright, and Alan Shearer is unbounded.
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Boris Johnson is orchestrating this on-off-will-they-won't-they nonsense in order to bring out a deal at the last moment. The man is corrupt, decayed, rotten to the centre of his being. Good God, we deserve better.
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The 'Brexit' 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma, and should be boycotted by all literate people.
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Expecting anyone to be able to provide at least one and preferably four pieces of documentary evidence that they were in the UK for every one of the past fifty years is grotesque, brutal, sadistic. I despise the people who run this country.
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America, wake up. Words like 'evil' and 'stupid' are irrelevant: the man is mad. Out of his mind. Deranged. Seeing things that aren't there. He needs to be in psychiatric care. Who among you is going to admit this and take charge of the situation?.
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I long to hear a senior politician say that Brexit was a disaster.
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Today I wore a jacket I hadn't worn for two years. In the pocket I found my green leather pen case containing the pen that wrote His Dark Materials . I knew it would come back to me.
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Each day one member of the House of Commons - they can take it in turn - should denounce Johnson as a liar. It might force the House, or the Speaker, to do something about the man and hold him to account.
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If your son or daughter enjoyed my books when they were young, I'm delighted to hear it. But I'm not, on that account, obliged to limit my expressions of opinion to those you approve of.
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I want to say how grateful I am to everyone working on the HBO/BBC His Dark Materials. It's a joy to see such a wonderful cast (Dafne and Amir of course, but also Terence Stamp, Simone Kirby, and so many others - I wish there was space to list them all).
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John Bolton: go home. And take your chlorinated chicken, your hormone-stuffed beef, your unprincipled warmongering, and your stupid moustache with you.
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@JuliaHB1 You have never done, and will never do in all your life, anything one-hundredth as valuable and important as Greta Thunberg has done already.
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Who is it who awards QCs? Suella Braverman has one, and in view of her decree that government lawyers should no longer warn ministers that a policy is unlawful, she should lose it pronto.
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It's like a nineteenth-century novel. The old man is insane, but no-one dares to say so, and all around Musk and his followers gather like wolves, eager to snatch what they can while his wealth and power last. It will end in rage and ruin.
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Margaret Thatcher made me feel angry. Boris Johnson makes me feel sick.
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BBC News at 4pm interviewed an 'expert' from Migration Watch during an item about the Home Secretary and immigration, without the slightest attempt to explain that MW was a right-wing pressure group. BBC getting worse and worse.
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If the government KNEW that Rwanda tortured and killed political prisoners . Well, I can't find a more appropriate word than plain old evil. Patel, Johnson, Sunak, Truss - all of them. Wicked beyond belief.
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Has any politician ever, anywhere, shown less self-awareness than Liz Truss calling Nicola Sturgeon 'attention-seeking'?.
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Surely it is no coincidence that Boris was restored to us from the shores of death at Easter, of all times? The parallels are uncanny. There is a divine light on his golden hair. Allison Pearson has dissolved into a puddle shaken by little quivers.
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This government is capable of the most heartwarming compassion and tender solicitude. They show it every day to to their billionaire friends and large corporations. If hungry families choose not to be rich, they have only themselves to blame.
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In order to prevent the catastrophic evil of awarding some students higher grades than they deserved, which would lead to the end of civilisation, it was thought better to award them grades lower than they deserved, which would lead to nothing very important.
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Many people here seem to think that the function of the voting system is to give you a warm feeling because you voted with your heart. In the voting booth your brain is more use, frankly. Vote for whoever is more likely to defeat the Tory.
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apparently young people feel that full stops are threatening or angry and messages are friendlier without them bunch of wimps.
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I just want to say how much I admire Jess Phillips.
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It's misleading and unhelpful to tell children that they can do anything if they really want to. No amount of wanting ever got me playing the guitar well. I just didn't have the talent. A blameless lack of talent is not a failure of moral will.
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I likte 'The Repair Shop' very much. In fact I think I can say that I love 'The Repair Shop', because it shows that someone in this bloody awful country is actually making things better.
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Great start. They sneer at the Grenfell victims, they get caught out faking videos, they lose a Cabinet minister, and it's only just begun.
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The Home Office's latest manoeuvre in the Windrush affair - basically to deny any responsibility and refuse to help - is no less sickening and cruel than the rest of what this government does every day. I am ashamed of my own country, angry and ashamed.
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The Cummings bombshell went off with a little pop. The loathsome little goblin told us nothing we didn't already suspect. Johnson is safe, and all I can feel is nausea.
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Re J.K. Rowling: I can't understand anything about this quarrel, and the last time I asked about it I got shouted at by everyone, so I don't know why the hell I bother to try and make sense of it.
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Will someone who has access to the Intelligence and Security Committee report on Russian interference in our politics please leak it to the press at once?.
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@BBCPM @AndrewBowie_MP This is how fascism spreads. Tell lies, repeat them over and over, make people fearful of something that doesn't exist, and then claim that you are the only way of preventing these non-existent horrors. Sickening that politicians should behave like this.
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Delighted as I am with the TV adaptation of HDM, I don't want to be too critical of The GC movie. A magnificent cast, among whom Dakota Blue Richards shone like the polar star, did the best that could be done with the time they had, which simply wasn't enough.
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If anyone reading this hasn't yet registered to vote, please do. We've got till the 26th, and it really is worth it. Thanks!.
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I can join in discussions about my books, because I too have read them, but my opinions have no greater authority than anyone else's just because I wrote them.
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The trouble began when Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools, which consisted of experienced and well-informed men and women whose job included helping and advising, was replaced by Ofsted, whose sole function is to judge and criticise and condemn.
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If I'd paid £250,000 to a lawyer and then learned that he was rolling his eyes and shaking his head behind my testimony, I'd . Wait a minute. We all paid for him! That was our money paying for his eye-rolling and head-shaking!.
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It's time we scraped Rod Liddle off the bottom of the national shoe.
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I've just signed the petition calling on @BorisJohnson @10DowningStreet to stop his war on our #BBC. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to dodge accountability. Please sign and share today. #savethebbc via @38_degrees.
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I think we're all going to have to learn to live without America.
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@jnpaquet @Byline_Media @LBC @Bonn1eGreer @Otto_English @mrjamesob @peterjukes @mk1969 @Harryslaststand @Ofcom @global @JamesRea @guardian @jimwaterson @BuzzFeedUKPol @BuzzFeedUK Extinguish is a transitive verb, you bollock-faced foghorn of ignorance.
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We had a headache, so we shot our foot off. Now we can't walk, and we still have the headache.
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I'm not sure anyone in government realises how important this is.
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Labour will:. Take immediate steps to rejoin the single market and customs union.Set in motion a reform of the voting system to bring about proportional representation by the next election. And if not, why not?.
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When Sajid Javid wants us to stop 'cowering', remember this is Ayn Rand speaking. No need to think it has any connection with truth, reality, or sense.
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I hope Keir Starmer will be the next PM. I wish he was brave enough to tackle Brexit and imaginative enough to bring about electoral reform. I fear he isn't either.
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If some perverted vandal wanted to starve, choke, and finally kill off the art of music in this country, they couldn't do better than impose the suggested visa regulations. Ignorant, brutish folly. Why? Why?.
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Does the election result mean that the BBC will no longer consider Nigel Farage so important they have to have him on all the time? I wouldn't bet on it.
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Oborne's article could hardly be more important. We are being governed by liars, cheats, and crooks, and the media are not just letting this happen but actively encouraging it.
I greatly admire Peter Oborne, one of the bravest journalists we have. Apparently he had real difficulty getting this article published. Please read and RT if you care about Fake News and what it is doing to democracy.
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Damn silly weather forecast just now. The weather will be 'disappointing' (no-one asked you to review it) and temperatures will be 'struggling'. Who gives these people jobs?.
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I'm trying to buy a ticket for a railway journey. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. For God's sake why can't we have a transport system that's easy to use, reliable, and comfortable, and doesn't cost a fortune?.
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What I'm against, more than anything else, is single vision: the inability to see another point of view. For pity's sake, let's enlarge our imaginations.
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Thank you to everyone who tweeted so generously knight-wise. It's very gratifying to have your support, and I guarantee that I shall finish The Secret Commonwealth very soon and never stop fighting for authors, books, readers, bookshops, and libraries.
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The opposition has to persuade people to like the truth more than they like Boris Johnson.
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Lost: a green leather pen case, containing a Montblanc ballpoint pen and an ordinary pencil. I'm particularly attached to the pen, because I wrote His Dark Materials with it. If anyone finds it, I'd appreciate a tweet.
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A triumphant ending for Line of Duty, with all the corrupt cops nailed, is what would have been disappointing. This was downbeat and much better for it. I'm full of admiration.
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I'm off soon. More of this Farage Clarkson Badenoch Trump Vance Musk sewage and it's goodbye Twitter.
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If Keir Starmer needs a big idea, may I suggest a complete reform of the way we're governed, from Parish Councils to the House of Lords. Nothing should be beyond discussion. A gigantic spring clean is just what we need, and everyone would understand why.
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I must be losing weight. I bent down to take the goose out of the oven, stood up to carry it to the table, and my trousers fell down. No-one was able to stop laughing for long enough to take a picture, I'm glad to say.
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Good for Worcester College, Oxford. That's the best way to behave.
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RIP Judith Kerr. She was a lovely person, a creator of delight, and her life is a reminder of why Europe is and should be one place, our home.
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The sort of green activities that all of us can carry out and some of us do, like recycling plastic bottles, will never have much effect. Only action at government level, like making plastic bottles illegal, would begin to make a slight difference.
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Thank you to all those people who are patronising me (I like your books but you've got it all wrong and you don't understand anything and you ought to, etc etc). May I respectfully invite you to change your tone. You're not getting anywhere like this.
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There are good, thoughtful, kind, intelligent people in both camps. There are also filthy-minded, hate-spewing morons. I'm in favour of the former and against the latter. That's it.
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I suppose Jack the Ripper broke the law in a very limited and specific way.
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This is a very good idea, and we should do the same.
Denmark and Poland are refusing to bail out companies registered in offshore tax havens:
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