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# Keeping GOG Bedford Happy
- URL: https://goodoil.news/keeping-gog-bedford-happy/
- Published: 2026-10-21T00:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T00:29:59.000Z
- Description: A little light relief from FSB.
- Author: Reproduced with permission
- Tags: UK Politics, Media

[**Tom Armstrong**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/keeping-gog-bedford-happy?ref=goodoil.news)  
*Just an old fashioned romantic libertarian conservative at heart. Or maybe a romantic conservative libertarian, depending on the stages of the moon.*

GOG Bedford has complained that Free Speech Backlash is “too heavy” and could do with a little light relief. Fair point. We have been serving up liberty, democracy, national sovereignty, history, politics and the occasional looming civilisational catastrophe with the sort of regularity usually associated with the morning post (as used to be). A person can only contemplate the fate of the nation for so many hours before needing a biscuit.

So, GOG, this one’s for you. Put down the weighty tome you are reading. Step away from the urgent heavyweight essay you are writing for us and let the alarm bells have a little rest. They’ve been ringing so long they’re probably entitled to a tea break anyhow.

For anyone new to FSB, we stand for free speech and personal liberty for all, the nation state and secure borders, equality before the law and the sovereignty of the British people. It is quite a list. We also like to have a laugh, although sometimes the laughter gets squeezed between a warning about the state of democracy and a story about a mediaeval king having a very bad afternoon.

But isn’t there is a particular pleasure in being British. It is not that everything is perfect. Far from it. We can produce a queue that extends beyond the horizon, apologise to a chair after bumping into it, and turn a straightforward conversation about the weather into a five-part miniseries. We can lose an argument, win it back, and then apologise for making a fuss. We have a national gift for muddling through, often with a cup of tea in one hand and a strong opinion in the other.

And yet: what a place. Green fields, changing seasons, stubborn villages, busy cities, old pubs, new ideas, ancient stones and a language that lets you call a person ‘a bit of a pillock’ without needing to throw anything. The United Kingdom is full of people who get on with things, help a neighbour, make a joke at their own expense and somehow keep the whole show running even when the instructions have gone missing and the boss is an incompetent fool – on a good day. We may grumble about the country, but that’s partly how we show affection. If Britain were a relative, we’d complain about it over lunch, defend it fiercely to strangers, then send it home with leftovers.

FSB, meanwhile, has been going for two years. Two years! This is a remarkable achievement for a group of people (well, one and a computer genius) who had never done anything like it before. We did not begin with a grand media empire, a book full of industry contacts, a fleet of accountants, a warehouse full of spare editors or a mysterious benefactor in a velvet jacket. We began with enthusiasm, opinions, a keyboard and the sort of confidence that comes from not knowing what the hell you are doing and how many things can go wrong.

Then we learned.

A website needs work. Articles need editing, often badly I’ll grant you, but edited they must be. Technical gremlins appear at the precise moment when you are trying to look as if you know what you are doing. The internet has a remarkable ability to turn one small task into 12 smaller tasks, each of which comes with its own password. And every so often someone asks a sensible question, such as ‘Have you thought about how this works?’ The answer is generally, ‘Yes. We are thinking about it now.’

We’ve done it on a shoestring. Sometimes, if we’re honest, the shoestring has been fraying and the shoes have gone missing. At other times we have operated on fumes: the last bit of energy, the last few minutes of the evening, the last crumb of a snack that was supposed to be for later. But hey ho. We’re still here. The site is still publishing. Readers are still finding us. People still write, comment, argue, disagree and occasionally tell us we’ve got something wrong. And more than a few contribute a bob or two when they can.

That, in the opinion of your grand editor, is a healthy sign. A place where everyone agrees all the time is either a monastery or a very suspicious meeting.

We should also acknowledge that running a small site is not quite as glamorous as it sounds. There are no champagne fountains in the editorial office. There isn’t even be an editorial office. The phrase *newsroom* suggests a room, and perhaps a newsroom. In reality, it’s one person at a computer trying to remember where they saved an article sent in by a reader and wondering whether ‘publish’ means publish now or after one last look at the headline.

Still, there is something satisfying about building a thing from scratch and keeping it going. You start with an idea, make many mistakes, learn a few lessons, then discover there are several more mistakes you haven’t made yet. We have had plenty of chances to give up. We have not. We have had days when the whole enterprise has felt like pushing a shopping trolley with one wonky wheel uphill in a headwind. We pushed anyway. Possibly in the wrong direction at first, but we turned around eventually.

And it has been fun. Not every minute, obviously. Some minutes have been spent staring at a screen and wondering whether it is the website that is broken or just our understanding of the website. But the good bits are real: the articles, the conversations and, most especially, the people who take the time to contribute and the feeling that a small group can still make something useful without waiting for permission from a committee of people whose job titles require two lines.

So, yes, GOG, we hear you. FSB can be heavy. Politics is heavy. The world can be heavy. If you read enough headlines in one sitting, you may begin to suspect that the national mood is being managed by a committee of doom-mongers. Sometimes a little absurdity is not an escape from serious things: it is how we keep our balance while looking at them. A joke can let the air into a room that has become stuffy with solemnity.

Let’s laugh at ourselves, too. We are not a polished machine. We are an outfit that has made it through two years without prior experience, a lavish budget or a magic button labelled ‘Make Everything Easy’. We are learning as we go. We may occasionally sound as though we have just discovered a new problem and are excited to explain it to everyone. We may have an article about a civilisation in crisis sitting beside one about a comic from childhood, a privy renovation or the peculiar joys of growing microgreens. This is not a flaw, we tell ourselves, it’s range. It is also what happens when people are allowed to write about what interests them.

Life, for all its troubles, is good. There are people to meet, things to read, places to visit, meals to share, jokes to make and cups of tea to drink – an activity that remains one of the great British ceremonies. We can worry and care about the country and still enjoy it. We can argue about politics and still laugh at the absurdity of politics. We can take our principles seriously without taking ourselves quite so seriously that we become impossible company.

So here’s to the next year of FSB: more writing, more readers, more spirited debate, fewer technical surprises, and perhaps the occasional article that doesn’t leave everyone feeling they need to lie down in a darkened room. We’ll keep doing our best, with whatever funds, time and energy we can scrape together. If the shoestring snaps, we’ll tie it in a knot. If the fumes run out, we’ll find a petrol station. If the website misbehaves, we’ll glare at it until one of us gives in.

And if any reader wants more light-hearted content, well, write it yourself.

This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/keeping-gog-bedford-happy?ref=goodoil.news).