Holiday in Cyprus (1): introduction
June 25th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Top of my bucket list is – so long as I have reasonable health and wealth – to have visited as many countries as my age. I’m 70 today and I’m off to Cyprus which will be my 72nd country. It is an organised tour with the company Voyages Jules Verne and involves equal time in the north and the south.
Cyprus is a small nation: an island in the eastern Mediterranean which at its extremes is just 150 miles long from east to west and 100 miles wide from north to south. The estimated population is only just over a million – barely half that of Northern Ireland – although there are almost as many Cypriots living off the island as on it.
In spite of its small size, its location has given it a complicated history with successive occupations by the Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Franks, Venetians, Ottomans, and British. Independence came in 1960 with a constitution which shared power between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities in the ratio 70:30.
But the new state lasted less than a decade and a half when Turkey invaded the north of Cyprus in 1974 occupying 36% of the island.
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A review of “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid”
June 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
I’ve recently viewed again (fourth time) this classic from 1969.
This immensely popular film is a chase movie, a buddy movie, an action-comedy movie, all in the guise of a western. It declares at the beginning: “Most of what follows is true”. Sure there was a Butch and a Kid, played respectively by Paul Newman and Robert Redford at the height of their cinematic allure, but this is a very sanitised view of the Hole in the Wall Gang and the decline of the wild west. For a much more hard-hitting western set in the same period and similarly concluding south of the border, see “The Wild Bunch” which was released the same year.
This film won four Academy Awards. The first went to William Goldman for his sharp sceeenplay with memorable lines like “What do you mean you can’t swim? The fall’ll probably kill ya!” and “Who ARE those guys?” (uttered three times). The second was taken by Conrad Hall for his distinctive cinematography characterised by lots of scenes in sepia. And the other two Oscars were won by Burt Bacharach for his music and the song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”.
Both “Butch Cassidy” and “The Wild Bunch” conclude with a huge Latin American shoot-out, but it is the former that deploys a freeze shot that spares the viewer and immortalises the stars.
If you like classic movies, you can check out my reviews of 60 of them here.
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Whose side is Turkey on?
June 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
“The US and Europe need Turkey for a host of strategic, political, practical and geographical reasons. But Turkey under Erdogan is proving a less than constant friend. Not so much an ally, it is increasingly seen as a threat.”
On the day when Turkey holds hard-fought presidential and parliamentary elections, Simon Tisdall uses an article in the “Observer” newspaper to explain how the country is an increasingly unreliable ally of the West under the dangerous leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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A review of the new movie “Ocean’s Eight”
June 23rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
One effective way of providing more high-profile roles for more talented actresses is to take an existing successful franchise and gender-swap the characters. It was tried with “Ghostbusters” and now we have a female version of the ensemble heist movie that we saw with “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001) [my review here], “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004) [my review here] and “Ocean’s Thirteen” (2007) [my review here].
The three previous works were all directed by Steven Soderbergh who this time is simply a producer, handing the directorial reins to Gary Ross (“The Hunger Games”) who co-wrote the script with Olivia Milch.
There is a wonderful cast list with lots of established talent – headed by Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway – supplemented with some newer screen faces – such as Rihinna and Awkafina – designed to attract a wide (largely female, no doubt) demographic. The other members of the octet, each recruited to bring particular skills to the robbery, are played by Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Paulson and Mindy Kaling.
As if this was not enough thespian stardom, there is a charming cameo from James Cordon and the credits include a long list of famous people as themselves attending the ball at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The actors look cool and the production is flashy in this enjoyable romp, but it is a triumph of style over substance with no real sense of excitement or jeopardy.
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It’s World Refugee Day …
June 20th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
… and the “Guardian” newspaper has produced this special feature.
Faced with a lack of official data, the Dutch activist group United for Intercultural Action has gathered newspaper articles, NGO records and coastguard reports to collect details of the deaths of 34,361 migrants travelling to Europe since the early 1990s.
The List is revealing: deaths do not just occur at sea, but in detention blocks, asylum units and town centres. Some 400 have taken their own lives; more than 600 have died violently at the hands of others.
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Word of the day: mastaba
June 19th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Mastaba is the Arabic word for bench. It is a trapezoid shape which originated in Mesopotamia 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.
Mastaba is also the title of a new 600-tonne, 20-metre high floating sculpture made from more than 7,000 colourful oil barrels which has just been unveiled on London’s Serpentine. It is the work of Bulgarian artist Christo and I’m looking forward to visiting it.
You can see some picture of the structure here.
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Will there really be a Brexit dividend to fund increases to the NHS budget?
June 18th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The Conservative Government has announced that there will be a new funding settlement for the NHS to mark the 70th anniversary of the the creation of the health service. This may well not be enough but the news is welcome.
However, it is unclear how it will be funded. The Prime Minister claims that part of the funding will come from a Brexit dividend when the UK leaves the European Union. Is this true?
The BBC has done a reality check and summarises the situation as follows:
The claim: The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts include an extra £10bn each year from 2019-20 for public spending as a result of leaving the EU – this could be spent on the NHS.
Reality Check verdict: If the UK manages to stop completely its contributions to the EU budget in 2019-20 then there may be some extra money to spend on other things – but in that same year the OBR is predicting that the government will have to borrow an extra £14.7bn as a result of the Brexit vote.
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Is there a solution to the Cyprus problem?
June 15th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
“The Cyprus Problem” by James Ker-Lindsay (2011)
Before I visit a new country, I like to read about the place and, in the case of a forthcoming holiday in Cyprus, it seemed essential to familiarise myself with the issues around the partition of the island and this short and balanced account by an academic at the London School of Economics fitted the bill. In five chapters occupying around 120 pages, Ker-Linsday poses and answers just over 70 questions, presenting the material in convenient bite-sized junks.
Cyprus is a small nation: an island in the eastern Mediterranean which at its extremes is just 150 miles long from east to west and 100 miles wide from north to south. The estimated population is only just over a million – barely half that of Northern Ireland – although there are almost as many Cypriots living off the island as on it. In spite of its small size, its location has given it a complicated history with successive occupations by the Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Franks, Venetians, Ottomans, and British. Independence came in 1960 with a constitution which shared power between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communuities in the ratio 70:30. But the new state lasted less than a decade and a half when Turkey invaded the north of Cyprus in 1974 occupying 36% of the island.
Ker-Lindsay explains that, in the absence of recent data, the figure of 78% is still widely cited as the approximate size of the Greek Cypriot community which is largely located in the south of the island known as the Republic of Cyprus, while 18% is still generally used as the size of the Turkish Cypriot community which is largely located in the northern part of the island which calls itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. He summarises a succession of failed efforts to resolve the Cyprus problem, most notably the Annan Plan of 2004 which envisaged the establishment of a bizonal, bicommunal federal republic.
Ker-Lindsay concludes his book with an examination of the key issues to be addressed in any settlement and the different models that have been proposed to reconcile these issues. On the one hand, he acknowledges that “The current situation can continue indefinitely. After all, there is no conflict on the island.” On the other hand, he argues: “the continuation of the status quo appears to be increasingly unviable. There is a clear imperative for the two sides to reach an agreement”.
He admits of the Cyprus problem that “it appears to be stubbornly immune to all peacemaking initiatives” and notes: “A wit once said that the Cyprus issue is essentially a problem of thirty thousand Turkish troops faced off against thirty thousand Greek Cypriot lawyers. (Or, as someone else put it, while the Turkish army uses warfare, the Greek Cypriots use ‘lawfare’.)”
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How many states should there be in California?
June 14th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
I first heard about it on the American programme “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”; now it’s been picked up by the British media including this item on the BBC website. It’s a proposal to divided the current US state of California into three and the proposition will appear on the ballot paper in November.
The current state of California – the largest by population in the United States with some 40 million people – would be divided into: Northern California, roughly comprising the northern half of the state, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Sacramento; Southern California, stretching from Fresno to the US-Mexico border; and California, comprising six coastal counties between Los Angeles and Monterey.
I had not realised that it was constitutionally possible to divide a state. If approved, the partition of California would mark the first division of a US state since the pro-union West Virginia broke from secessionist Virginia in 1863 during the US civil war.
Will the proposition be approved? An April poll by SurveyUSA found support for the measure among registered voters was just 17%. But this is the age of Trump and Brexit …
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We need to know more about dementia – what are the risk factors and how do we treat it?
June 13th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
I have done several blog postings about a health study on dementia to which I have been invited to contribute. This is a large-scale, longitudinal study based at the Imperial Research Hub at Charing Cross Hospital in London and it is looking particularly at whether the level of beta-amyloid in the brain is a risk factor.
First, I had a four-hour long assessment involving an interview and a whole battery of health checks and cognitive tests. Then I had MRI and PET scans to check respectively whether I have any existing mental problems and the concentration of beta-amyloid in my brain. Following these three sets of tests, I have now been accepted onto the study which will run for three and a half years with further tests every three months.
In the last couple of weeks, I have made two baseline visits to establish my current state of physical and mental health and my current level of cognitive abilities so that, over the coming years, it will be possible to see if my memory deteriorates and if so whether it is possible to identify any risk factors.
Today’s visit lasted three hours. There was a range of physical measures, including weight and blood pressure, and a range of samples, including blood, urine, and saliva (it takes a while to generate 5 ml of the stuff). Then I had another battery of cognitive tests, some assessing numeral, language and spatial skills but most focusing on short-term memory.
One recurrent test involves viewing pictures of 16 random objects. When the medical staffer names a category of object, the subject of the test has to identify and name the relevant object. Then the pictures are withdrawn and you have to try to remember as many as possible of the 16 random objects. After a set period of time, the staffer then prompts you by naming the category of objects that you forgot to see if you can then recall them.
After a completely different test, you are invited again to recall as many as possible of the 16 objects unprompted and then prompted. Then, after another completely different test, you are invited for a third time to record all the objects, again unprompted and then prompted. The idea, I believe, is to see if you are encoding new memories so that you can recall them, even if you need a prompt. Dementia sufferers have problems encoding new memories.
It’s all very interesting but quite exhausting.
Today’s tests were ‘Month zero”. from now on, I’ll have a similar set of tests every quarter (Month 3, 6, 9 ..) until the end of 2021. It’s all in a good cause.
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