Jonny Nexus

Category: Current Events

  • Black Lives Matter: A Personal Anecdote

    Some years back, a black friend took me to a Poetry Slam event organised by the Afro-Caribbean Leukaemia Trust. The event, which pitched a team of Black British performance poets against a team of Black American performance poets in a crowd-judged event, was great fun. But it was during the interval that the founder and…

  • You Think 2016 Was Bad?

    As a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking on plots of novels, and so it’s only natural that when I think about events occurring on our world, I try to imagine how they would develop were they events of fiction rather than reality. People talk about 2016 as being the year from hell,…

  • David Cameron Might Just Have Saved The UK

    The most important news from yesterday, other than the referendum result, was David Cameron’s decision to not immediately trigger Article 50, but instead leave that decision to his successor to take, in October at the earliest. Had he triggered it yesterday, as he’d said during the campaign he would, he would have committed the UK…

  • It’s About Identity, Not Democracy

    Brexit supporters often attack the EU for its supposed lack of democracy, saying things like: “What about that President of the Commission? We didn’t elect him!” I’ve heard this time and time again, and I’ve only just realised that I’ve misunderstood it every time. Pro-Europeans such as myself hear it as: We didn’t elect him!…

  • David Cameron’s Constitutional Crisis

    “What we have is what I always wanted, which is one single question, not two questions, not devo max, a very simple single question that has to be put before the end of 2014 so we end the uncertainty.” – David Cameron, October 2012. * * * “If we get a No vote, that will…

  • Scotland and Me: A Personal View

    Firstly, to get the big question out of the way, if I was Scottish, I’d vote yes. Not because I’d think it will be easy. I don’t. I think it might be quite hard – worthwhile things usually are. I’d be voting yes because ultimately I’d rather be a citizen of a small democracy of…

  • Journalistic Intelligence: Too Much To Ask?

    Yesterday, I was reading John Inverdale’s column on sports in City AM. Inverdale is a supposed sports journalist who recently, famously, nearly lost his job with the BBC by making sexist comments live on air about new Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli. So I wouldn’t necessarily expect him to be the sharpest tool in the journalistic…

  • Didn’t Trayvon Martin Have The Right To Stand His Ground?

    To those who believe that George Zimmerman is innocent… Imagine that everything happened pretty much as Zimmerman claimed it did, with one difference: he wasn’t able to get off a shot and as a result Trayvon Martin beat him to death. You’d say that Martin was guilty of murder right? You’d say that if you…

  • Her Name Was Reeva Steenkamp

    To the editors, journalists, proprietors and readers of the Sun and the Daily Star. She was not “The Blade Runner’s Lover”. Her name was Reeva Steenkamp. She was a law school graduate, an activist for women’s rights, a model, and an aspiring TV presenter. Her tragic death deserved to be marked with dignity, not treated…

  • Paralympics: Changing Attitudes

    It’s often said of the Paralympic Games that it exists to challenge and change attitudes to disabilities. We need to stop assuming that disabled people can’t do things and start assuming that they can. Disabled people don’t need to be patronised, applauded like children merely for existing. And I think the Paralympics does trigger exactly…