Who voted for Hitler?
September 29th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
I’m currently reading “The Shortest History Of Germany” by James Hawes and I’ve reached the section on the rise of Nazism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The explosive rise in the electoral support for the Nazis was amazing – from 2.6% in 1928 to 43.9% in March 1933.
Dawes invites the reader of his book to identify what characteristic was the best indicator as to whether a German would vote for the Nazis. Was it class, gender, education, occupation? Actually it was none of those. It was simply whether the person was Catholic or Protestant with the latter, largely in the north and east, voting disproportionately for Hitler.
A central theme of Dawes’ book is that this cleavage between the west and the south on the one hand and the north and the east on the other remains a key factor in understanding modern Germany.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Citizens Advice super-complaint to CMA on the injustice of loyalty payments
September 28th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
A super-complaint has been lodged today by Citizens Advice with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) calling for the regulator to investigate the loyalty penalty in a number of essential markets: mobile handsets, broadband, mortgages, home insurance and savings.
This practice is considered unfair by 89% of people, and certain vulnerable groups – such as those on low incomes, older people and people with mental health problems – are likely to experience the financial impact of the loyalty penalty disproportionately.
Citizens Advice is calling on the CMA to undertake a thorough market study to investigate all markets where the loyalty penalty may occur, and to propose remedies that can be implemented by the CMA itself, sector regulators and the government.
The CMA has now invited submission of evidence at LoyaltyPenalty@cma.gov.uk. The deadline for doing so is 14 October 2018.
The CMA now has 90 days to investigate and publish its response to the super-complaint. More information can be found on the CMA’s webpage.
Posted in Consumer matters | Comments (2)
The global flu pandemic of 1918 killed at least 50 million – but where did it start?
September 27th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The horror of World War One is estimated to have caused between 15-20 million deaths mainly in Europe but, even before the war ended, a global flu pandemic in 1918-1919 resulted in a further death toll of between 50-100 million and infected around one third of the world’s entire population.
This week, BBC Two television broadcast a documentary titled “The Flu That Killed 50 Million”. At the time and historically, it has been called “the Spanish flu” with the implication that it started in Spain. In fact, the only reason that flu in Spain received so much attention was that the country was neutral in the war and there was no press censorship of the epidemic as there was in the warring nations.
The BBC programme put forward a more recent thesis that Patient Zero in the pandemic was in fact an American in Kansas called Albert Gitchell who contracted the disease from water fowl and then spread it unknowingly through his army camp. Army supply ships brought the flu from the USA to Europe and it rapidly spread throughout the globe. The worst affected country was actually India with some 17 million deaths. Only Australia escaped the scourge by a tight quarantine policy.
Could such a pandemic reoccur? Certainly, but we now know so much more about flu and how to treat it. In 1918-1919, some 3% of those infected died. The television programme suggested that today the maximum death rate would be 1%. So that’s reassuring …
Posted in History | Comments (0)
What’s in a name? A lot more than you think.
September 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Last week, the Office of National Statistics published the most popular baby names in England & Wales for 2017. This gave me an opportunity to up-date my extensive website essay on naming practices around the world where I have drawn out just how different these practices are from our experience in Britain.
- It is assumed that the meaning of names is unknown and unimportant – but (virtually) all names have meaning if only we knew it and, in many, many cultures, names are chosen precisely because of their meaning.
- It is assumed to be respectful to name a child after a parent or grandparent which is commonplace in Western culture – but, in China, it is considered very disrepectful to use even one character from the name of a parent or grandparent.
- It is assumed that given names are gender-specific – but many African and all Chinese given names can be applied to boys and girls.
- It is assumed that, when someone has more than one given name, the first is the one used in everyday life – but in Germany it is the second or the given name nearest the family name that is the ‘call name’.
- It is assumed that people have a single family name – but, in Spain and Portugal, they have two.
- It is assumed that family names are not gender-specific – but, in most Slavonic countries, family names ending with ‘-ov’ and ‘-in’ add an ‘a’ in their female form and Polish and Lithuanian have their own endings for female last names.
- It is assumed that given names come first and family names come last – but the reverse is the case in countries like China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and even Hungary.
- It is assumed that all countries have family names as well as first names – but Myanmar and large parts of India do not have family names.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
Could Texas turn blue? The battle between Cruz and O’Rourke.
September 23rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
In the strange world of American politics, a blue state is one where the Democratic candidate is the winner. Texas has traditionally been a safe red state – that is, Republican. But that might change in the forthcoming US mid-term Congressional elections.
It underlines America’s strange and turbulent political moment that the highest-profile and most intriguing battle in November’s midterm elections is in one of the most predictably Republican states.
“We have a real race in the state of Texas,” the Republican senator Ted Cruz said during a bruising debate with Beto O’Rourke on Friday.
“The hard left is energised, they are angry, many of them are filled with hatred for President Trump.”
These are the opening words of an interesting article in today’s Observer” newspaper. Go O’Rourke!
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of “Love In The Time Of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez
September 21st, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Márquez was born in Colombia in 1927 and died in 2014. This work – one his most famous – was published in 1981 and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. I finally read the work after seeing the film and visiting Colombia, including Cartagena, the Caribbean city where the novel is located (although this is not specifically stated in the text).
I suppose that initially I was put off somewhat by the Penguine English transation which uses small print and by the formatting which is long paragraphs and a mere six (untitled) chapters for the 348 pages. But once one starts to read the novel, it is just such a delight since Márquez has a wonderfully fluid and engaging style. There is no dialogue as such, just occasional quotes from conversations, but the rich narrative sweeps the reader along.
The three main characters are Forentino Ariza and Fermina Daza who are childhood sweethearts and Dr Juvenal Urbino whom she marries after she suddenly rejects her young suitor. When the novel opens Ariza is 76 and Daza is 72, while Urbino is 81 and the subject of a fatal accident. So, having waited for 51 years 9 months and 4 days for Daza to become widowed, Ariza seeks to revive the seemingly doomed love affair, having in the meanwhile never married and never used prostitutes but had an endless number of lovers.
Although few precise dates are given, the long story covers the last half of the 19th century and the first three decades or so of the 20th and Márquez has a magnificent evocation of time and place. This is a novel full of sensuality and sex and of love and loss plus obsessions with fornication, cholera and social etiquette and it is a moving account of the impact of ageing on bodies and minds. So, a really unusual tale but truly a triumph.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Who are the best providers of communications services?
September 19th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Choosing a communications provider should not be simply a matter of price but also of service quality – but which provider is the best for fixed, mobile or broadband?
Fortunately Ofcom provides some very helpful data and I’ve reviewed the latest statistics in my new column on IT matters here.
Today, at Ofcom headquarters, I’ll be a chairing a workshop for comms providers, consumer representatives and Ofcom staffers at which we will discuss the regulator’s latest report on “Comparing Service Quality”.
Posted in Internet, Science & technology | Comments (0)
Why and how we could regulate Internet content
September 18th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Ofcom has today published a discussion document examining the area of harmful internet content. The document is designed to contribute to the debate on how people might be protected from online harm. It considers how lessons from broadcasting regulation might help to inform work by policymakers to tackle the issue.
This follows an interim report in July by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, which recommended that rules given by Parliament to Ofcom to enforce content standards for television and radio should form “a basis for setting standards for online content”.
Today’s document suggests that certain principles from broadcasting regulation could be relevant as policymakers consider issues around online protection. These include protection and assurance; upholding freedom of expression; adaptability over time; transparency; effective enforcement; and independent regulation.
Alongside today’s paper, Ofcom has published joint research with the Information Commissioner’s Office on people’s perception, understanding and experience of online harm. The survey of 1,686 adult internet users finds that 79% have concerns about aspects of going online, and 45% have experienced some form of online harm. The study shows that protection of children is a primary concern, and reveals mixed levels of understanding around what types of media are regulated.
I really welcome this initiative by Ofcom. Almost 13 years ago, I gave a speech at Ofcom arguing for regulation of Internet content.
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
Who has saved more lives than any other person in history? You’ve probably never heard of him.
September 17th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was an English scientist who lived in the 18th century. He discovered the first vaccine, which was for the smallpox virus. This disease was widespread at that time and killed many people. Those who were infected but survived were often left badly scarred.
Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught the cowpox virus did not normally then catch smallpox. Cowpox was very similar to smallpox but less contagious.
He collected pus from the cowpox blisters on a milkmaid’s hands and purposefully infected a small boy. The boy was taken ill for a short while, but was then resistant to any subsequent infections of the cowpox and smallpox viruses. He tested this by infecting the boy with smallpox. No illness occurred. Jenner was therefore the first person to vaccinate someone against infection.
His discovery has subsequently led to the saving of countless millions of lives. I came across his story again recently when I was rewatching “Andrew Marr’s History Of The World” on BBC television.
You can read more about Edward Jenner here.
Posted in History, Science & technology | Comments (0)
When did you last write a letter?: The rapid decline of long-form communication
September 16th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
This week, I have chaired two meetings at which we’ve discussed different forms of communication and which have led me to draw the same conclusion: we are witnessing the rapid decline of long-form personal communications whether in the form of text or voice.
One meeting was at Citizens Advice which is the statutory body representing postal consumers. When we discussed trends in postal volumes, we noted that such volumes have been in decline since the mid 2000s. In fact, volumes have declined by around 40% since 2005.
Personal correspondence, as opposed to business communications, has always been a minority part of mail volumes and has declined much more rapidly. Most personal mail now is greetings cards and genuine letters from one individual to another is now almost entirely a thing of the past. How often do you send a personal letter?
The other meeting was at Ofcom, the statutory regulator for telecommunications as well as postal services. We had an excellent presentation drawing out key data from the regulator’s latest “Communications Market Report”.
One might think that nobody writes personal letters anymore because it is so much easier and cheaper to phone a friend. In fact, the volume of calls on fixed lines has been falling rapidly for years (almost half in the last five years) and and fell by as much as 17% last year alone. OK, so everyone is using mobiles, right? Well, after year after year of growth, call volumes on mobiles have just started to fall too, although by no means as rapidly as for calls on fixed lines (2% last year). How often you you make a phone call for a genuine chat?
Of course, we need to appreciate that voice calls can now be made using a variety of voice apps such as FaceTime and we do not have data for such Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls.
But the reality is that, instead of writing a letter or making a phone call, increasingly consumers are sending messages through e-mail or text or services such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. And a key feature of such messages is that they are short – much shorter than a letter or a phone call. This seems to reflect the life that so many of us live now: fast and furious with time only for short, quick messages and little time to analyse or converse. What do you think?
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (2)