What is the capital of Indonesia?
August 27th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Top of my bucket list is the aspiration – so long as I have the health and wealth – to have visited as many countries as my age. I have now been to 73 countries and I am 71, so I’m currently managlng to hit the target.
The most populous nation is the world that I have not visited is Indonesia which is only outranked in population terms by China, India and the United States, each of which I have experienced.
So I yearn to visit Indonesia, a country of some 70,000 islands, and I try to follow news from this under-reported nation. The latest news is that, since the capital Jakarata is sinking, it is proposed to relocate the political capital about 1,000 km to Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
You can read more about the plan here.
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Who will challenge Trump for the Republican candidacy and will it make any difference?
August 26th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There are still over 20 politicians seeking to become the Democratic candidate in the US presidential election of 2020. I’ve seen most of them interviewed on “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah and any of them would be a dramatic improvement on the current occupant of the White House. Most are very fluent and many are quite liberal in American terms.
But who will dare to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican candidacy? The one challenger so far Bill Weld has made no impact, but, this “Guardian” article records the arrival of a second challenger Joe Walsh who might make a bit more of an impression:
Joe Walsh, a talk radio host and former congressman, said on Sunday he would challenge Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.
“We have someone in the White House who we all know is unfit,” Walsh said in a video announcing his candidacy. Walsh said Trump “lies virtually every time he opens his mouth” and places his own interests over those of the country.
Walsh, 57, served one term as a Republican representative from Illinois between 2011 and 2013 before losing his bid for re-election. Initially an enthusiastic supporter of Trump, he has latterly been one of the president’s most vocal conservative critics.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the 1941 Hitchcock movie “Suspicion”
August 25th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There is a sense in which any film directed by Alfred Hitchcock is a classic but this is one of his lesser-known works. Set in upper-class, rural England, it stars the beautiful Joan Fontaine as Lina, an unworldly young woman who falls immediately and madly in love with a known scoundrel and manipulator called Johnny, played against type by the charming Cary Grant.
The stage sets are utterly obvious, much of the dialogue is very stilted, and the occasions of suspicion are highlighted with no subtlety, but Hitchcock manages to create a dramatic sense of anxiety, not least from repeated use of shadow lines on white floors and ceilings, evoking a spider’s web of deceit and entrapment.
The problem with this film is the ambiguous and unsatisfactory ending which is much less dark than that in the original novel and Hitchcock’s plans for the work, but the studio RKO could not tolerate its star actor Grant being portrayed too far outside the usual moral range of his roles.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Today is International Slavery Day …
August 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
… or, to give it the full official name, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the tragic trans-Atlantic slave trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history.
23 August of each year is the day designated by UNESCO to memorialise the transatlantic slave trade. This date was chosen because, during the night of 22/23 August 1791, on the island of Saint Domingue (now known as Haiti), an uprising began which set forth events which were a major factor in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
So UNESCO Member States organise events every year on this date, inviting participation from young people, educators, artists and intellectuals. As part of the goals of the intercultural UNESCO project, “The Slave Route“, it is an opportunity for collective recognition and focus on the “historic causes, the methods and the consequences” of slavery.
Here in the UK, three cities are especially associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Liverpool, Bristol and London. It was in Liverpool last week that I first visited the International Slavery Museum and first learned of International Slavery Day.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How Netanyahu could lose; how Boris could be beaten; and why voting matters
August 19th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There’s an election going on in Israel right now and incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely expected to retain power, but my friend Eric Lee has written an interesting column for the “Times of Israel” explaining how Netanyahu could lose. The argument rests on the supposition that Israeli Arabs – who comprise a fifth of the nation’s population and have the vote – actually use that vote in similar proportions to Jewish voters.
This column brought to mind the situation in the UK where Boris Johnson is a Prime Minister willing to take the country out of the European Union in a no-deal Brexit although there is no majority for this option in Parliament. There is currently lots of speculation about how he could be blocked and even deposed, but the easiest option would be for the seven Sinn Fein MPs elected in Northern Ireland to take their seats and vote against a Brexit which threatens the Good Friday Agreement, yet this article explains why it won’t happen..
Last Friday, I was in a very wet and windy Manchester to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre of 16 August 1819. That demonstration was a demand for the vote at a time when the suffrage was tiny and Manchester did not have a single seat in Parliament.
While I was in Manchester, I went on a two-hour guided tour of sites associated with Peterloo and an explanation of the historical context. To my astonishment and annoyance, our guide seemed deeply cynical about the capacity of representative democracy to affect meaningful change and, when I engaged him at the end of the tour, it became clear that he was an anarchist.
I have spent my life believing that voting matters and can change things – in Israel, in Britain, in the United States, wherever democracy, however flawed, is available – and I have never missed an opportunity to vote.
Posted in British current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)
The inverted yield curve – or why the American economy might be heading for a recession (followed by the world economy of course)
August 18th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“Every recession of the last 60 years has been preceded by an inverted yield curve. The term is off-puttingly wonky but it just means investors see trouble ahead.
There’s some argument that the oracular power of inversions ain’t what it used to be thanks to the aggressive monetary policies that have been pursued by central banks around the world.
US treasury bonds are regarded as safe investments. Usually investors expect higher returns for tying their money up in long-term bonds than they do for short-term bonds. When long-term bonds offer lower interest rates than short-term ones, the yield curve has inverted.
This week yields on the 10-year treasuries fell below two-year yields for the first time since 2007. Looking at yield curves, the New York Fed now puts the probability of a recession by July 2020 at 31.5%– close to one in three.
But Gus Faucher, PNC bank’s chief economist, still sees inverted yields as “a very reliable indicator”. Faucher is betting on a slowdown rather than a recession next year but either way he argues inverted yield curves are bad news.”
Quote from today’s “Observer” newspaper
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Actor Jeff Daniels warns of the end of democracy in the United States
August 13th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of “Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw”
August 11th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Since the first film in 2001, the “Fast & Furious” series has become Universal’s biggest franchise, currently ranking as the tenth-highest-grossing film series of all time with a combined take of over $5 billion. Now I am not in the demographic at which these films is aimed, but this is the second time that I have allowed a younger friend to take me to a component of the franchise, this one the ninth but the first stand-alone spin-off.
This time eponymous American Luke Hobbs (the huge Dawyne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) and British Deckard Shaw (hard man Jason Statham) are reluctantly compelled to join forces to tackle a scientifically-enhanced villain called Brixton (Idris Elba), each of whom offers and receives considerable bodily violence in the midst of the franchise’s trademark feature of plentiful action sequences usually involving various modes of transport.
We’ve seen Hobbs and Shaw before but a newcomer is Shaw’s sister Hattie played delightfully by Vanessa Kirby and cameo performances come from the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Hart and Helen Mirren. The action is leavened with much humour and the funny lines continue in a whole series of scenes interspersed in the credits.
Just leave your brain at the door of the cinema and enjoy the ride.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Interesting use of language
August 11th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
UK becomes a nation of streamers… but traditional broadcast TV leads the way on UK content.
August 9th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
UAround half of all UK homes now subscribe to TV streaming services, according to a major Ofcom report revealing rapid shifts in the nation’s viewing habits.
Ofcom’s Media Nations report, a comprehensive study of major trends in UK television, radio and audio, published recently finds:
- The number of UK households signed up to the most popular streaming platforms – Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV and Disney Life – increased from 11.2m (39%) in 2018 to 13.3m (47%) in 2019.
- While traditional TV viewing continued to decline in 2018, the UK’s public service broadcasters – BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C – showed more than 100 times more original, homegrown shows than the overseas streaming platforms.
- Traditional viewing still accounts for most TV time (69% – or 3 hours 12 minutes, on average, per day), but this fell by nine minutes in 2017, and by 11 minutes last year.
- Viewers now watch 50 minutes less traditional TV each day than in 2010. This shift is most pronounced among younger people (16-24s), whose viewing of traditional TV has halved in that time.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (2)