Welcome to the Website of Nick Webb – Author

WELCOME to my website about bullshit. There is a hell of a lot of it about and it’s more pervasive than mere (mere?) dishonesty. To be dishonest you have to know what the truth is and decide not to use it, but with bullshit our very language is corrupted. We may not be consciously aware of the surreptitious world view that lurks behind the words we use. Bullshit enables us to deceive ourselves. It is more subtle than just obfuscation or mendacity; bullshit undermines our ability to think.

My name is Nick Webb. For most of my professional life I was a publisher, but not the kind of publisher in a crumpled corduroy suit and a book-lined office. No, I worked for giant corporations with their octopoid fingers up many pies. Actually I preferred it that way; the besetting sin of the publishing business is snobbery, but the organizations for whom I toiled were preoccupied only with the “bottom line”. So I was a commercial publisher with a brow below the socks, and I believed in trustworthy information or a good story rather than smart reviews. G.K. Chesterton is supposed to have said that man does not need art, he needs stories. I say “supposed” because I once quoted this remark to an author who ransacked the entire works of Chesterton with immense expenditure of brain power and time – and could not find it.

The Dictionary of Political Bullshit

I confess that in my time I have been responsible for disseminating a fair tonnage of BS and would like to make amends.