Is the current political crisis in the United States as bad as Watergate?
August 13th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
According to Carl Bernstein – one of the two “Washington Post” reporters who broke the Watergate story 44 years ago – it’s worse:
“Obviously there are similarities, not least of which is part of the story is about undermining the electoral process. You’re also dealing with cover-ups in both instances and special prosecutors.”
“This is worse than Watergate in the sense that the system worked in Watergate and it’s not apparent yet that the system is working in the current situation. No president has done anything like Trump to characterise the American press and its exercise of the first amendment as the enemy of the people, a phrase associated with the greatest despots of the 20th century.”
Full story here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Are you a middle child? If so, it’s your day.
August 12th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
As you probably know, the Americans have a day for almost everything and today they celebrate National Middle Child Day. Two thoughts occur to me.
First, it is widely thought that birth order influences personality and this idea is discussed on the Day’s web site. But I’m not sure how much scientific evidence there is for this notion. Second, in the developed world, the two-child family is now the norm so there are fewer middle children than there were. In China, there has been a one-child policy and, in many developing countries, the size of families is falling rapidly.
I’m actually the eldest of three children, I have a younger sister – to whom I have sent best wishes for National Middle Child Day – and a younger brother.
Posted in Cultural issues, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Who benefits when improvements in life expectancy grind to a halt?
August 11th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
This week, the Office for National Statistics said the UK has experienced one of the largest slowdowns in life expectancy growth among 20 of the world’s leading economies. It confirmed earlier figures that show that, since 2010, Britons’ life expectancy has stopped increasing, with the change most pronounced in women.
There is major debate going on about the causes of this development. Most people believe that Government policy – specifically cuts in benefits and social services – has had a major impact. Others think it is more complicated than that with lifestyle issues – such as the rise in obesity – playing an important part.
What is not in doubt is who is benefitting from the slow down in longevity. It ‘s pension providers. As people are dying unexpectedly early, pension firms are bagging a £1 billion bonanza. This news could make you sick.
More information here.
Posted in Social policy | Comments (0)
A review of the new independent film “Apostasy”
August 10th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The title refers to the renunciation of a faith and in this case we are concerned with the Christian denomination of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. As adherents of The Truth, they do not accept blood transfusion, they do not associate with former members who have been disfellowshipped, and they believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent leading to the New System here on earth. These themes are examined in this accomplished debut feature by writer and director Daniel Kokotajlo who is himself a former Witness.
An unusual feature of the story is that the three leading roles are female: Ivanna (played by Siobhan Finneran) and her daughters Luisa (Sacha Parkinson) and Chloe (Bronwyn James). The Elders are, of course, all men. Shot in Manchester (where I grew up), this is a grim and moving film, but it explains the motivation of the characters in non-judgemental terms, creating a terrible sense of inevitable tragedy.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Word of the day: arctophile
August 9th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
It means: someone who has a fondness for teddy bears, usually a collector of them.
I saw the word in reference to the new film about Christopher Robin, the friend of Winnie The Pooh.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the movie “Ant-Man And The Wasp”
August 8th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
After the mega movie that was “Avengers: Infinity War” – a canvas the size of the universe, a team of super-heroes the size of a small army, and a villain the size of Thanos – the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes miniature with this movie – most of the action in San Franscisco, only two super-heroes, and leading cast members mainly the size of insects before we zoom down to sub-atomic scale.
The plot is small-scale too: no threat to the whole universe but simply a rescue mission of an individual in the context of a narrative that is as much rom-com as sci-fi. What is not small-scale is the comedic element with a funny script and lots of visual humour as Ant-Man flips from human size to insect-size to something half-way and something gigantic.
Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are back in the eponymous roles and this is the first time that a Marvel movie has featured a female super-hero in the title and the first time that two super-heroes have had a romantic relationship.
If anything, The Wasp is the cooler character, since she has wings and blasters, whereas Ant-Man needs another insect to get him around and has no weapons, but only Ant-Man can journey through the quantum tunnel into the quantum void where, following some quantum entanglement, he engages with the quantum realm (as he himself queries: “Do you guys just put the word ‘quantum’ in front of everything?”).
Some star power comes with Michael Douglas as the original Ant-Man and Michelle Pfeiffer as the original Wasp, although sadly we don’t see enough of her (after all, this is the actress who was once “Catwoman”).
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Will Colombia’s peace settlement survive the change of president?
August 7th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Today a new president takes office in the South American state of Colombia. On 17 June, Ivan Duque, the conservative candidate of Democratic Centre – who is alleged to be under the control of the former president Alvaro Uribe – beat the leftist Gustavo Petro (a former member of the guerilla group M-19) standing for Human Columbia.
So, why should that interest me? Well, shortly I am about to make my first ever visit to Colombia (it will be my 73rd country) and Duque campaigned on a programme that was severely critical of the peace agreement with the largest guerilla group FARC which has ended a very long-standing if undeclared civil war.
FARC – which in English is known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia – was founded in 1964 and the war of some five decades between FARC and the state & paramilitaries has caused an estimated 320,000 deaths and almost 7 million displaced.
After many failed attempts and three years of talks, a peace deal was finally agreed in August 2016, but it was very narrowly rejected in a referendum in October 2016 (critics felt that it was too ‘soft’ on the guerillas). Following a whole series of amendments, a new deal was approved by the Congress in December 2016.
The terms of the deal are extensive and complicated and sometimes vague, but largely FARC has honoured the agreement (over 7,000 guerillas have surrender their arms) while the government has been slow to implement important features of the deal (former fighters need training and jobs).
Since the agreement was approved, however, critics of the deal have won the parliamentary elections of March 2018 and the presidential election of June 2018.
We now have to see how much change to the peace agreement will be sought by new president Ivan Duque and how FARC will react to any changes to the deal. Meanwhile negotiations continue with the second largest guerrilla army, the ELN (in English, the National Liberation Army). Furthermore, FARC’s withdrawal from the drug trade – part of the peace agreement – has led to cartels battling to take over the business.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (3)
Our universities need to start teaching economics differently
August 6th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
“Despite the pressure on universities to feed the financial industry with young, focused minds, there are efforts under way to broaden the outlook of economics graduates. The Core project was adopted by 13 UK universities last September and has won £3.7m from the Economic and Social Research Council.
It is an improvement, albeit an incremental one, that brings back a bit of Marxism (though just a discussion of Karl’s labour-market theory). The developers of the programme also claim it has freed itself from neoliberal thinking, which judges markets to be self-adjusting and consumers and businesses to be operating with the same information. The world is full of asymmetric power and information relationships, and Core reflects this.”
This is an extract from an article in this weekend’s “Observer” newspaper which provides a little hope that our universities might start to teach a version of economics that has learned from the crash of 20o8 and reflects how markets work in the real world.
Posted in Social policy | Comments (2)
The rise and fall of the Weimar Republic
August 4th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
In the last couple of weeks, I have attended a set of two lectures at London’s City Literary Institute on the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic in Germany from 1919-1933 delivered by Alison Appleby. Below are some brief extracts from my notes:
What were the achievements of the Weimar Republic by 1926?
- Attempted putsches by Left and Right successfully foiled
- Hyperinflation dealt with and currency stabilised
- Economic indicators were improving
- Improved relations with former enemies France, Britain and USA
- Allied armies were to withdraw early from occupied regions
- Cultural achievements such as Bauhaus and Expressionism
Why did the Weimar Republic not last?
- Institutions were largely dominated by anti-republicans in military and civil service
- Death of Gustav Stresemann in 1929 who could have diluted the Treaty of Versailles
- Political parties supporting Republic lost majority in legislature
- Continuing depression in agriculture meant growing discontent in rural areas
- Modernism and cosmopolitanism alarmed the traditionalists
- Economic recovery was over-dependent on foreign loans and susceptible to global fluctuations
Posted in History | Comments (0)
A review of the summer blockbuster “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”
August 3rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
For Tom Cruise (now 56) as Ethan Hunt, this is his sixth impossible mission in 22 years while, for writer and director Christopher McQuarrie, this is his second successive contribution to the franchise which previously has always had a new director for each episode. But Cruise and McQuarrie have worked on nine movies together over the last 11 years and clearly had a lot of fun on this latest outing which makes little sense plot-wise but delivers again and again in terms of action sequences.
As always, Cruise did his own stunts and famously broke his right ankle while jumping from one building to another in London. He even pilots the helicopter in the final chase sequence, set in Kashmir but shot in New Zealand although, unlike previous segments of the franchise, there is no one big set stunt, rather a whole series involving cars and bikes as well as that copter.
Hunt’s IMF team – Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) – are back of course, but this time we have CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill with a moustache) whose motivations are unclear and a number of interesting female roles, notably Rebecca Ferguson making a welcome return from “Rogue Nation” as hot-shot, former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust and Vanessa Kirby as a criminal broker called the White Widow.
The threat to the world is massive and the resolution could not be more last-minute so, as long as you suspend any critical faculties and simply enjoy the ride, this is a satisfyingly entertaining summer blockbuster.
You can find my reviews of all six “Mission: Impossible” films here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)