Hello Everyone!
So, a few weeks ago, I asked you all to send in your questions for a Q&A - and against my better judgement, I’ve decided to do so again.
I enjoyed the last round far more than I thought I would and since I’ve found myself with another (rare) free afternoon and a Bearly Newsworthy issue already drafted and pretty much ready to go, I thought I’d sit down and answer another batch.
Once again, you guys have sent me a mix of the funny, the serious, the existential and the mildly concerning questions - and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Favourite recipe? And where’s the recipe book you were writing?
Ah, yes - the recipe book.
That is currently languishing in what I imagine is quite a dusty MS Word document on my “Wriiting” folder (that is its actual spelling, I’ve just never bothered to fix it) - which in Bear speak translates to “may be finished around the same time as HS2.”
It is sort of going still, it’s just unfortunately quite far down the priority list as I’ve had readjust how many things I can do at once (which is not nearly as many as I convinced myself I could).
As for my favourite recipe at the moment - it’s an Asian style Beef Stew that I’ve started making when I get home - some stewing meat that’s browned in a cast iron pot with some ginger, garlic, fresh chilly and carrots which is then covered with a beef stock, soya sauce and Shaoxing Rice Vinegar and left to cook at 180 degrees for a minimum of two and a half hours. Served with a side of rice and some spring onions.
Well, let’s go for bears, then. If you could be any species of bear on the planet, which one would you choose, and why?
This one’s easy - Sun Bear.
Small, perpetually bemused looking and just ever so slightly chaotic. They’ve got an “I will destroy your picnic, but will look adorable while doing so” look about them which feels spiritually aligned with how I tend to approach politics (and life in general).
Alternatively, a Polar Bear, maybe - stunningly beautiful, cold and constantly annoyed at human beings wrecking the planet with gleeful abandon - or basically every British “leftist” in winter.
Are we right to be concerned about privatisation fears in relation to our NHS, taking into account some of the new private healthcare funding models Streeting is considering.
I don’t think it’s just right - I think it’s rational and necessary. Every time someone in Westminster talks about “reform” (small r) or “modernisation” the translation almost always feels like it’s “outsourcing” instead.
By the sounds of things, Streeting’s approach seems to be that he’s trying to make the NHS more “efficient” which is usually political shorthand for “letting private companies do the easy bits and let the other services handle the slog”.
The problem for me about this all isn’t pragmatism - it’s the direction it’s headed towards. If you start trying to solve NHS waiting lists by sending patients to private hospitals, you’re not fixing the system, you’re just letting it starve a bit more slowly while letting private companies get the upper hand.
I would thoroughly recommend subscribing to
’s Call to Action if you’re interested in an expert view on this.
Why [do] you love your favourite book? Or favourite character from another popular media.
My favourite book sometimes shifts a bit (you’ll note in a later question the Broken Earth Trilogy also gets a shout out) - one day it might be The Dispossessed by Urusla K. Le Guin, because it’s part political philosophy, part emotional gut punch and another it might be the Malazan series by Steven Erikson (which I’m currently reading) because it’s filled with an incredibly subtle thread of politics while also reading like a dark war novel.
On the Character side, it has to be Chrisjen Avasarala, (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo in the TV series) from The Expanse - she’s utterly ruthless, extremely sweary and runs circles around arrogant men in suits.
Basically career goals, minus the space wars (sadly).
Following a controversy on Bake Off this week.. jelly in trifle... Yes or No?
That’s a hard no for me - to Jelly in general, but specifically in trifle.
Trifle, at its very centre, should be boozy, creamy and vaguely adult - not a primary school experiment gone wrong. If I wanted something to disconcertingly wobble while pretending to be dessert, I’d just rewatch Question Time with Nadine Dorries in what appears to be the dedicated Reform UK seat.
Should I wear mini skirts despite being over 50?
Yes. A thousand times yes.
There is no age limit on looking incredible. Wear the skirt, take up space and make anyone who even begins to tell you otherwise reconsider their life choices.
I don’t actually know if you liked Soft Cell but I’d be interested in your thoughts on the sad passing of Dave Ball this week.
There are songs which make up the soundtrack of a generation, and I think Tainted Love was one of those - it was a bit sleazy, melancholy but something that still made you want to dance through the wreckage of what it so subtly describes.
Dave Ball was the synth backbone of that sound, and in his time made weird, queer, unapologetic music mainstream, and without his and Soft Cell’s influence, I don’t think we would have had bands like Pet Shop Boys or Years & Years do as well as they did either.
He was an immensely important part of music history, and the synths are all just a little quieter this week for his passing.
As a sidenote on this, on being asked this, I decided to make 80s synth music videos my playlist to listen to as I wrote my responses to you guys, and it brought me immeasurable happiness - I love myself a good starry fever dream of music videos.
It’s not a question as such (and sorry for going off piste) it’s more of a request that I would love to see you appear on James O’Brien Full Disclosure podcast (In your bear attire, of course). I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did that would be top of it.
If that had to ever happen, it would be, without a doubt in my mind, the most surreal day of my life. Can you imagine me trying to discuss populism and healthcare funding while clearly sweating inside a bear costume under studio lights? It would be a sight to behold!
With that said, James, if you’re reading - let’s make this happen, it would at the very least be very, very entertaining.
Whats your optimal zeitgeist scenario & timing for a General Strike against Billionaire class. What is on your placard?
To be fair, I think optimal time would have been around about 2008, right after the banks crashed and billionaires got government bailouts while the rest of us got austerity and food banks.
However, since time travel isn’t an option (yet), I would have to say the best time is probably now.
My placard would probably read something honest and unprintable like “Tax the rich, feed the poor, and for fuck’s sake, stop pretending trickle-down works.”
Or more succinctly “Eat the Rich (Source Responsibly)”
How does the person who drives the snow plough manage to get to work?
A question that keeps me up at night - presumably there’s a smaller snow plough, kind of like a snowplough support vehicle, and at the end of that chain there’s just one very cold man with a shovel deeply regretting his life choices.
What’s your favourite question?
I think any question that makes me pause and actually think for ten seconds before answering. Alternatively, any question that lets me rant about populism while pretending I’m being casual.
My favourite-favourite questions though are the ones that show just how many of you are as weirdly brilliant, cynical and hopeful about the world as I am.
What’s your favourite fantasy novel / series ? And have you read “The Priory of the Orange Tree?”
I have actually read Priory - I quite enjoyed it, as a rule it’s not completely my style of fantasy book that I enjoy that much, however, I did love the density, the queerness and the fact that it wasn’t another “men do fantasy” nonsense.
As to my favourite fantasy series, my heart absolutely belongs to The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin - it is hands down one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing in any genre that I’ve ever read. The scale of the world she builds is vast, but it is the emotional precision that absolutely wrecks you.
It’s a set of books where at the end I stopped and asked “Christ, is fantasy even allowed to do this?!” It was political, painful, beautiful and every time I reread it (once every two years or so) I find a new line that hits me harder than the one that caught me before.
With the current state of the UK at the moment, if you had the chance to change things would you:
1) Do nothing and ride out the next 10 years
2) Deport all the rot that’s in society
3) Move abroad and if so where?
4) Buy an island and start your own progressive, tolerant society
So, I think at this stage we’re long past the “ride it out” stage and deporting people is more of a Reform/Badenoch-Tory hobby that I’m not too keen to take a part in.
Moving abroad is very tempting, and if you gave my husband half a chance, we’d likely already be en route to either the south of France or Australia, but I suspect that would just mean I would end up writing the same angry columns somewhere sunnier.
So, by default, I will take the island filled with a population of people who believe in empathy, fairness and have strong opinions about trifle. The flag will feature a wooden spoon, a mug of coffee and an exasperated bear.
Your perfect day? (Within this hell fire)
Coffee that tastes like it was made by someone who loves me, no emails coming through before 10am, a run of good news (or, at the very least, no awful catastrophic news) and a few hours to write without doomscrolling.
Throw in a gym session, followed by a nap, a cat on my lap and a delicious curry in the evening and that’s about as close to a perfect day as it gets these days.
What’s a guilty pleasure of yours (beyond politics) that you can share with us?
So, as a rule I don’t really believe in a “guilty” pleasure - life is far, far too short and capitalism seems to be punishment enough, but, if we’re being honest, I have a really worryingly high tolerance for terrible reality television and I’m currently mid-season 3 of Below Deck: Sailing Yacht, which I tend to watch under a blanket, cat on my lap while tutting loudly at just how terribly inappropriate some of the crew can behave while audibly gasping at the minor dramas that happen to the crew.
In addition to this, I also love to lose hours and hours to a good strategy or puzzle game (currently it’s Blue Prince which has been blowing my mind with how good it is).
How is the saga with the barber going?
I went for a haircut just last week - the saga continues.
Lottie’s latest adventure is that she’s going to Paris for six weeks for a masterclass in making Croquembouche (she’s very keen to break the 6 foot record that she holds, but wants it to be truly magnificent). The kids, Tarquin and Penelope, are going with her, leaving myself and Horace to mind the house.
I might use this as a pretence to bringing the saga to a close - perhaps in the six weeks I’m alone at home, I accidentally have a sordid affair with a long time friend of mine, realise that I have the homosexuality and slowly bring my life with Lottie to a close, before starting a new arc with my new lover who is a man who I’ll eventually marry.
It’ll take about six years or so to bring to completion. I’ll keep everyone updated.
Cream first then jam or vice versa? You appear to be sitting on the fence looking at that pic
I am, as you know, a very diplomatic bear when it comes to scones, but fine - let’s end the war.
Cream first. Always cream first. You have to have something stable to spread your jam on, and it does not make any sense whatsoever to do it the other way around because it just gets too damned messy.
There. I said it.
If you could have anyone including figures from history as PM of the UK who would you choose?
It has to be Alan Turing - without any contest.
He was a brilliant, compassionate and fundamentally moral man in a way that most politicians couldn’t even spell. He would have solved half our national crises before breakfast was done and genuinely apologised for the other half by the time lunch rolled round.
Also, the irony of appointing a man that our government utterly destroyed despite him saving this country with his sheer brilliance would be poetic justice of the highest imaginable order.
Is Strictly going to be cancelled? Should Bake Off be cancelled after the presenter scandals? Your views on the TV licence fee, given the BBC’s obvious bias?
I strongly doubt that Strictly will ever be cancelled - it’s one of the last collective serotonin hits that we have left to us, and Bake Off has had more scandals than is reasonable for a show about baking, but it’ll survive too because people love cake.
When it comes to the question of the licence fee - that’s a bit more complicated.
I agree that the BBC is absolutely flawed, biased and more than occasionally ridiculous, but it’s also one of the few institutions holding back the total Murdochification of British media.
I would reform it, but not scrap it, I think - fewer royal documentaries, less time fluffing right-wing politicians, more proper investigative journalism and maybe a mandatory show called “Stop Lying, You Bastards!”
Where is home in South Africa, and what made you decide to leave? Did you go straight to London?
The last place I lived before moving to the UK was Johannesburg (I don’t call it Jozi, I find it insufferable). It was loud, chaotic and often pretty infuriating, but I also learnt a lot of resilience, gallows and how to spot a power cut hours before it happens.
I’m originally from a small rural town somewhere in the middle of the country - a place full of gossip and with a very, very conservative view on life, which meant that staying there as an adult would have been untenable for me. I’ll stay vague on the exact location - if I said it out loud at least a dozen people would suddenly go “ah, so that’s who you are!” and I’m not quite ready to blow my cover just yet.
As to the what made us decide to come to the UK, it’s basically because my husband got offered a job/training opportunity and we were looking for something new as an adventure. The initial plan was to come for a few years, get the experience and maybe have a couple of decent holidays in Europe before possibly going back - something which I believe is now very unlikely to ever happen.
And yes, we came straight to London - which in hindsight was a bit like jumping into the deep-end of adulthood with bricks in our damned pockets, but, we did (somehow) make it work, and the adventure turned into a life and the rain turned out to be a small price to pay for finding our home.
Why is the world on fire?
Sadly it turns out that as soon as you combine late-stage capitalism with algorithmic rage farming, a global empathy deficit and about eight billion people screaming into the interwebs at the same time you get «gestures wildly» this.
I don’t think it’s so much that the world spontaneously combusted as it is that the people that run it keep leaving metaphorical candles unattended next to curtains marked “basic decency.”
We’ve also normalised outrage as entertainment, privatised home and have started treating empathy and compassion as luxury goods.
On the good news front though, most of the fires are. man-made - which means, in theory, they are also fixable.
Why is the kick off for the Saracens v Saints match at stupid ‘O’ clock tonight? Pyjamas anyone?
Because, and I can’t put too fine a point on this, Rugby schedulers are sadists - that’s why. No one who values their sleep - or liver for that matter - should be expected to endure a match that starts when normal people are trying to decide whether to brush their teeth.
That said, watching sports in pyjamas should be entirely appropriate, and to a very large extent, I think it should be encouraged - it’s comfy and it might go as far as preventing people from taking sport just a bit too seriously.
If you’re going to be shouting at men in shorts running into each other after ten at night, you might as well do it wearing flannel.
Would love to know what South African eat for Christmas dinner? Bit early I know.
On this one it’s less a question of what we eat and rather when, because most South Africans tend to do the big Christmas Meal on Christmas Eve and then spend Christmas day recovering with leftovers - usually after church in the morning and preferably next to a swimming pool.
What ends up on the table also depends quite heavily on which tribe as such you belong to - if you’re Afrikaans it’s usually an unapologetic carnivorous feast - something stupidly large, red and roasted and surrounded by enough sides to feed a small army. There’ll be samosas, salads, roasted veggies, garlic prawns, and inevitably a chicken that’s somehow been demoted to “side dish” status.
If you’re an English South African the meal would look a lot like what happens in the UK - Turkey, Ham, roast potatoes, gravy and mild anxiety.
The main difference is that it’s usually about 30 degrees outside and everyone’s sweating themselves half to death in paper crowns.
Just wondered what your thoughts are on the grooming enquiry and the Epstein situation? Would the world be a better place if women were believed rather than dismissed.
I feel like it’s all a bit of a mess at the moment, and it somewhat feels like it was meant to be a mess - a trap laid for Labour that they’ve somehow managed to fall into face-first.
While I do think there is some value in a follow up inquiry, what I find incredibly frustrating is that we already had one that did a huge amount of work - Alexis Jay’s, which I took the time to read through earlier this year. Her findings and recommendations were clear, thorough and compassionate, and yet, years later, we find ourselves with so much of it still sitting in purgatory and not being implemented.
It’s utterly infuriating and frankly, it’s insulting to the victims who have previously gone through hell and back to tell their stories once already.
As for Epstein - the whole situation remains incredibly icky and very, very grim. Giuffre’s book that came out this week I feel was seismic, particularly for a certain prince who keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to fade into the wallpaper, but the big issue is that the US files still haven’t been fully released and this slow drip of scandal and selective revelation is becoming more and more damaging.
It would be better to just rip up the rock, expose all of it and finally let some sunlight disinfect what’s underneath.
And yes, the world would be, without question, a far better place if women were believed the first time they spoke rather than dismissed, doubted or dissected for years after the damage was done.
Bear, I can’t grasp that I am living in a world where Donald Trump is getting away from every dodgy deal he does. I could accept it if he was a real tough gangster but he is just a fucked up estate agent brat. Why is this allowed?
Tragically, it’s because we now live in a world that runs on vibes and loopholes, and Orangina has spent his life mastering both.
He is by no means a criminal mastermind - he’s literally just a man who has discovered that if you say everything with enough confidence, people eventually stop checking the fine print and just let you get on with it. He’s been allowed to normalise the abnormal, and every scandal has just become “just another Tuesday” while every moral outrage gets treated as “just politics” instead of what it actually is - the slow corrosion of democracy.
Combine that with a media ecosystem that’s completely lost its way and you get a man who gets surrounded with fog machines that allow him to get away with murder.
A chateau in France or a vineyard in Italy?
This is a terribly cruel question, because both sound like perfect retirement plans for a bear with a love of good wine.
If you ask my introvert self, he would say Chateau! I could easily spend my days writing in a draughty study, eating too much comte while drinking Sancerre and yelling “merde!” at the news, but, I think the vineyard in Italy would win.
I find the thought of a life spent in between sun-warmed grapes pretending to understand what tannins are and casually referring to my husband as “the Signor Vintner” very, very appealing.
Aaaand, that’s it for this round - thank you all for the brilliant, chaotic questions you’ve sent through.
I was typing out answers as they came in, which made the whole exercise feel incredibly frantic in the best possible way - a bit like a stampede of thoughts, jokes and what mildly looked like provocations.
Apologies to anyone who didn’t manage to get theirs in on time - I’ll try and do another one of these in a few weeks’ time, so keep an eye out on a Friday afternoon and get your questions ready.
On that note, I am stepping away from my computer for the most part for the week - thank you again, and wishing everyone a lovely weekend.
Best,
Bear
Bearly Politics remains stubbornly independent - mostly because no billionaire has yet offered to fund it (their loss, frankly).
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Bear.
Scones. I need to remind you of my previous post BTL on the subject.
Please study carefully. There will be a test later. I will accept no deviation from this edict :)
"My father’s family owned a bakery.
They were Cornish as is 50% of me.
Cream tea!
The argument is a trivial nonsense.
Doesn’t matter which goes on first provided the jam is solid and the cream is clotted.
If either of those components is sub standard the most stable one goes on first.
If both are weak or runny don’t bother. Blend it all up, make into gloopy blobs and throw at your nearest Reform politician".
Brilliant...I love the idea of Alan Turing being PM and your reasoning for appointment.