Ok. Seems I’m getting a little bit of traction here on Substack it’s time for an Ask Me Anything. And I mean anything. Political, serious, funny, neurodiversity, off the cuff random nonsense. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.

Reply with your questions in the comments! Cheers folks!

In this episode, Jack Price-Harbach takes aim at the BBC — its scandals, its critics, and its survival in a world obsessed with outrage. From Boris Johnson dodging Andrew Neil to Gary Lineker calling out “the language of 1930s Germany,” Jack explores how the broadcaster became both a political target and a cultural lifeline.

He examines three defining controversies — the 2019 election interviews, the News Agents fallout, and the Lineker row — before dissecting Donald Trump’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the Beeb and what it means for democracy.

Witty, sharp, and grounded in political insight, this episode doubles as a love letter to Line of Duty, The Fast Show, The Traitors, and Sir David Attenborough — proof that the BBC, flaws and all, still matters.

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Subscribe annually to my substack and you'll get not only a free copy of my upcoming debut novel: Managed Decline '29, you'll also get a 29% discount as a thank you!

In today's substack, Jack Price-Harbach examines the strange relationship between the local bigot at his local swimming pool and how the British people react to issues of public disorder. The initial reaction is less likely to be concern for the victims, but greater concern around the ethnicity of the alleged perpetrators.

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ADHD and Autism can feel like opposite forces trapped in the same brain — one chasing chaos, the other craving control. In this raw, honest episode, Jack Price-Harbach explores what happens when those forces collide.

From the liberating clarity of ADHD medication to the punishing physical side effects of titration, Jack shares the intimate highs and lows of finding the “sweet spot” between focus and burnout. He talks about the anxiety of coming off medication cold turkey, the fear of relapse into distraction, and the strange mix of gratitude and grief that comes with finally understanding how your mind works.

But beyond the pharmacology lies something deeper — the daily balancing act of living with AuDHD. It’s a story about learning self-compassion, recognising limits, and discovering that progress doesn’t always look like stability.

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I sound like a broken record every time I say that I never believed the people of Runcorn would elect a far-right MP to represent them. But as someone who was raised there, and still has many family and friends living there, I find it hard to believe. Racism and xenophobia are not in my hometown’s DNA. Depending on which constituency boundary you happen to live in, you could virtually guarantee that a Labour MP would represent most of Runcorn.

Reform capitalised on a unique situation in Runcorn and Helsby: a deeply unpopular Labour government, a dead Conservative opposition, a by-election triggered by the incumbent MP’s misconduct, and populism being promoted in every corner of the British media as a credible alternative form of governance. My gut feeling is that Sarah Pochin’s victory will be a one-off. Regardless of what happens elsewhere in the country, Sarah alienated many of my fellow Runcornians from the moment she asked her first Prime Minister’s Question.

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Sarah set the tone for her parliamentary career from that point on. At the time, my reaction to this loaded question was to explain how the burqa is statistically a non-issue for her constituents. After doing some quick maths, it’s likely that only around sixteen women in a constituency of approximately seventy thousand even wear one.

If she’s not content with failing to read the room in Westminster, she’s a seasoned pro at it on her own patch. She tried to paint Greenway Road in Runcorn as a hotspot of crime, from littering to domestic violence, caused by illegal immigrants living in HMOs. Thankfully, local residents and even Cheshire Police quickly rubbished her claims as unqualified nonsense. To top it off, she recently had to climb down from claims that she and her team secured funding to keep Runcorn Boxing Club open.

But let’s be honest, you’ve come here to read my reaction to Ms Pochin’s dog whistle on TalkTV. It should be called TalkTube really seems it’s not actually been on broadcast television for ages, but I digress…..

A skilled politician wouldn’t fall so easily for the trap of the “white men are a minority in our own country” bollocks. Sarah didn’t just fall for it. She dived straight in with the grace and technical skill of a Peter Kay John Smith’s running bomb! You might think that having different ethnic minorities of actors in TV adverts isn’t a true reflection of British demographics. I disagree, but it’s a perfectly valid opinion. However, if the point you’re making is that you’re “fed up” with Black and Asian people being represented on television, then I’d be surprised you even know what a television is, because you belong in the Stone Age.

I honestly don’t think people in Runcorn particularly care about the ethnicity of the cast in a television advert. They’re far more likely to care about being able to afford what’s being advertised to them, or being able to afford the cost of the utilities required to even watch that television in the first place. Sadly, increasingly large sections of the British media are feeding the racist hostility that is now so commonplace, and Ms Pochin is not facing any consequences for blowing the dog whistle.

Everyone to the left of the Tories is rightfully outraged by her comments. I applaud the Lib Dems for proposing to bring a formal censure motion to Parliament, and the efforts of other parties to call Reform and Nigel Farage out for tacitly defending the indefensible. But such is the high-speed velocity of the current news cycle that another reason to be outraged will overtake this one in a couple of days. This is all symptomatic of a British society that’s becoming so accustomed to racial prejudice that it’s as commonplace as talking about the weather.

The obsession over small boats arrival numbers is broadcast and debated daily, despite these crossings accounting for just 2% of all immigration into the United Kingdom. Once a month, you’ll not only see a GB News journalist play “spot a migrant” with a live feed in the English Channel, but even more credible outlets like Sky News and the BBC now broadcast their own versions of DinghyWatch. Throw in a political culture where Reform sets the agenda, the Tories try to deny supporting Reform’s views while also denying their responsibility for the huge uptick in these irregular crossings, and a Labour government trying to appease its sacred Red Wall with faux outrage over the issue — and you can see how the diet of discourse has changed from semi-skimmed scepticism to full-fat fascism.

Over the weekend I found myself debating whether the story of Hadush Kebatu, the asylum seeking sex offender who was accidentally released from prison, warranted several BBC Breaking News alerts. It is clearly in the public interest, given the gravity of the error, state incompetence, and the severity of the man’s crimes. But if his name were Harry Kerslake and he were white British, would it have garnered the same level of media attention? I am genuinely unsure.

Maybe I’m just not keeping up with the times? After all, I found myself stuck in a traffic jam in my truck, crawling ever so slowly behind a grey Ford Fiesta with a bumper sticker just as congested as the roads. It read:

“STOP THE BOATS!”

“Illegal immigrants go home!”

“It is not racist to protect your own community.”

This rhetoric was printed on a stencil of a dinghy. How much prejudice can one man stick to one crap car? How much confidence does this driver have that he won’t get pulled over for expressing what I’d consider a provocative opinion? One man’s example of inciting racial hatred is another man’s example of free speech.

Before the Brexit referendum, you could virtually guarantee that Sarah Pochin would have lost the party whip. Since then, the standards to which we hold our MPs have diminished according to party affiliation. A Labour MP can lose the whip for joking in a WhatsApp group that he wanted to say “fuck your bins!” to a constituent who didn’t vote for him. But if you’re a Reform MP, you can get away with it, safe in the knowledge that your discrimination will be willingly overlooked by your higher-ups.

The Price-Harbach Dispatch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Jack Price-Harbach takes aim at the fallen House of York and the obscene double standards that let Britain’s royals dodge accountability. In this blistering, darkly funny essay, Jack examines how privilege shields the powerful—from student halls to Buckingham Palace—and why ordinary people would never get away with what Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson have.

With references to Entitled, Andrew Downie’s explosive audiobook, Jack unpacks the laundry list of accusations surrounding the Queen’s disgraced second son and his ex-wife’s talent for monetising infamy. From unpaid debts to ghostwritten books, from Epstein ties to immunity by birthright, the Yorks emerge as grifters-in-chief of Britain’s decaying monarchy.

But there’s more: Jack argues that Parliament should strip Andrew of every privilege except his naval pension and his princely title—just enough to leave him stacking shelves in poetic disgrace.

A sharp, satirical exploration of class, consequence, and the absurd endurance of royal entitlement.

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Zack Polanski’s Green wave is shaking up British politics—and Jack Price-Harbach isn’t letting it pass unexamined. In this episode, Jack dives into the strange mirror-image populism of Britain’s left and right, and asks what happens when charisma outpaces policy.

From the hypnotic charm of Polanski’s media game to the Liberal Democrats’ struggle for national attention, Jack explores why nuance gets lost in today’s attention economy—and how pragmatic liberalism can still cut through the noise.

He pulls no punches on Ed Davey’s stunts, revisits the tuition fee hangover, and weighs up the appeal and absurdity of eco-socialist dreams like abolishing landlordism. Along the way: water companies, wealth taxes, NATO realism, and a healthy dose of liberal self-deprecation (“Liberalism. Nice, not naughty.”).

The question at the heart of it: Can liberals make pragmatism sexy in an age of slogans and spectacle?

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Jack Price-Harbach dissects the moral absurdity of treating all deaths as equal. With biting humour and unapologetic honesty, he compares the deaths of Charlie Kirk and Ian Watkins — one a reactionary political pundit, the other an unrepentant predator — and asks: do all people deserve the same reverence in death?This episode dives into the limits of forgiveness, hypocrisy in public grief, and the myth of separating art from the artist.

Jack Price-Harbach began writing this just eighteen minutes before the Nobel Committee announced this year’s Peace Prize winners—aware it might be outdated before he even finished. In this episode, he unpacks Donald Trump’s obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize and the irony of a man who fuels division at home while branding himself a peacemaker abroad.

Through sharp commentary and dark humour, Jack reflects on the Gaza ceasefire, Netanyahu’s precarious future, and why genuine peacemakers like María Corina Machado rarely receive the same attention. This episode dissects how the Nobel Peace Prize has shifted from a symbol of sacrifice to a mirror of political performance—and what that says about the age of performative peace.

This is an audio version of my substack post where I talk about the terrorist attack in a Manchester synagogue, and how we should reflect and respond.