Marking Holocaust Memorial Day
January 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
If you know something about history, if you have Jewish friends, if you’ve visited Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, today cannot pass without me remembering the Holocaust.
You can remind yourself of some of the basic facts by reading my review of a book on the subject by a Jewish history teacher whom I met when he was delivering a course about the Holocaust. Never again.
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“Why We Get The Wrong Politicians” by Isabel Hardman (2022)
January 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This analysis of British politicians was first published in 2018 (when it was a winner at the Parliamentary Book Awards) and then revised and updated in 2022. I was given it as a present for Christmas 2023 and therefore read it in a year (2024) when we will have a General Election which is almost certain to return several hundred new Members of Parliament. Hardman is Assistant Editor of “The Spectator” and knows a great deal about Parliament and Parliamentarians. Her book is well-researched and well-written, but ultimately it is dispiriting and – in my view – too critical of individuals and not sufficiently radical in proposing institutional change.
So what does she mean by the wrong politicians? She is right to draw attention to the under-representation, compared to the population as whole, of women and ethnic minorities. In recent years, significant progress – especially by Labour in respect of female MPs – has been achieved, but more needs to be done. I am not sure that it is realistic – or even desirable – to press for more working-class MPs, but certainly it is wrong that such a large proportion of MPS went to a private school (largely a problem for the Conservatives). In a section headed ‘Are they normal?’ Hardman points out that many MPs have had dysfunctional upbringings and exhibit addictive behaviours, but I think that this is true of top achievers in many professions and, in any event, I am not sure how and why selection committees should ‘screen out’ such characteristics.
She explains the incredible pressures of the job: the need to have two homes, the challenges to relationships and parenting, the crazy hours of working, the appalling physical conditions of the Palace of Westminster, the inadequate IT systems, the suffocating control of the whips, the ever-growing volume of constituents’ cases, the vitriol on social media, and even the security risks (MPs were murdered 2016 and 2021). But all of this has nothing to do with MPs being the wrong type of person. We should be thankful that some talented individuals want to endure such hardships.
She is especially critical of MPs behaving ‘wrongly’, notably in their inability adequately to scrutinise legislation and ensure that Bills are likely to achieve what Ministers say they intend. She is right that MPs from the governing party do not challenge Ministers and amendments to Bills proposed by Opposition parties almost never succeed. But this is not the fault of individual MPs; it is a feature of our legislative system. There should be much more scrutiny of draft legislation before it is tabled in the House and much more post-scrutiny of legislation to see whether it has actually worked.
This would require a closer alignment of Bill Committees and Select Committees and more power for the latter. It would also require not just a stronger role for backbench MPs but more involvement of subject experts, think tanks, civil society and – dare one say it – the media (why does the media show more interest in an MP’s sex life than whether a Bill will make poor people even poorer?). And, unpopular as it may be, we need to recognise that MPs need better resources including larger staff in both Parliament and the constituency.
Like so many books on current affairs, Hardman spends much more time describing the problem (which is actually not the wrong politicians but the wrong political processes) and very little time addressing possible remedies. In an informative and enjoyable work of around 340 pages, Hardman devotes just 17 pages to the chapter entitled ‘Can We Get The Right Politicians?’ In particular she avoids the need for constitutional change. On the one hand, she notes “at any one time, over a hundred MPs aren’t actually doing their job as members of the legislature because they are in fact members of the executive” and spends three pages debating the merits of ‘separation of the powers’ before concluding “It isn’t going to happen”. On the other hand, she dismisses much-needed electoral reform in a single sentence.
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What do you know about zero-degree longitude and the international date line?
January 26th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
The location of zero-degree latitude is obvious (the equator), but the location of zero-degree longitude is a purely political decision. It was variously placed at the Canary & Madeira Islands, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, Rome, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, St Petersburg, Pisa, Paris, and Philadelphia (among other places) before it finally settled down in London. No wonder I grew up as a young child thinking that Britain was the centre of the world.
It was in October 1884 that the Greenwich Meridian was selected by 41 delegates representing 25 nations at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C., United States to be the common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world.
But how did we decide on the international date line (IDL)which is the degree of longitude that determines the date of where you are at any given time?
By universally accepted convention, the IDL is essentially 180 degree longitude, but no international organisation, nor any treaty between nations, has fixed the IDL drawn by cartographers: the 1884 International Meridian Conference explicitly refused to propose or agree to any time zones, stating that they were outside its purview.
Conveniently the line 180 degree longitude runs through the least populated part of the globe – the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In many places, the IDL follows the 180 degree meridian exactly. In other places, however, the IDL deviates east or west away from that meridian. These various deviations generally accommodate the political and/or economic affiliations of the affected areas, usually small islands.
Conventionally, the IDL is not drawn into Antarctica on most maps.
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A review of the new film “Leave The World Behind”
January 25th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
I was attracted to this Netflix offering by the impressive cast list: Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon. At first, it looked promising: an apocalyptic setting full of strange events, discordant sounds, and unusual camera angles.
I kept waiting for the slow pace to pick up, for more dramatic sequences, and for a convincing ending but none of that was forthcoming. The film is too long and says too little. Maybe the story worked better as the novel on which it is was based.
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Have you ever watched ASMR videos? Apparently it’s a thing.
January 24th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
If you follow social media, you may have noticed a few of the more than 13 million ASMR videos online. Many of the videos create ASMR-inducing sounds to play out social situations with actions that may trigger a response. The videos have rapidly gained popularity, but they may still leave you wondering: What is ASMR exactly? How does it work? And, does it help as some people suggest?ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response; a term used to describe a tingling, static-like, or goosebumps sensation in response to specific triggering audio or visual stimuli. These sensations are said to spread across the skull or down the back of the neck and, for some, down the spine or limbs. When experiencing ASMR sensations, some people report pleasant feelings of relaxation, calm, sleepiness or well-being.
Not everyone experiences ASMR. For those who do, the experience seems to be in response to various triggers or situations involving sight, touch or sound. The intensity of specific stimuli may vary, and while one person may respond to the sound of whispering, another person may experience ASMR while talking softly or moving slowly.
Not my thing.
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A review of the new movie “The Holdovers”
January 21st, 2024 by Roger Darlington
The odd title refers to those students and staff at an exclusive boys boarding school in New England who are forced to stay behind at Christmas 1970 when everyone else leaves for family and fun. An accomplished director, a brilliant script and three stand-out performances make this comedy-drama a thoroughly enjoyable film that swings back and forth between humour and pathos with ultimately a message of revelation and redemption.The director is Alexander Payne, a man with a distinctive style who has previously given us such successes as “About Schmidt”, “Sideways” and “The Descendants”, but had not had a hit in a while. A recurrent theme in many of his movies is disappointment and here we have that emotion in spades. The scriptwriter is David Hemingson and this is his first writing for the cinema. There are some wonderful one-line zingers (“I thought all the Nazis were in Argentina”) but it is the subtle integration of comedy and sadness that marks this out as superb storytelling.
The lead actor is the one-off Paul Giametti who worked with Payne in “Sideways”. Here he plays an acerbic and bitter classics teacher who does not care what students and faculty think of him as he holds to his own standards. Dominic Sessa impresses in a sensitive first appearance in film as the last student left as everyone else finds somewhere else to go. To complete the golden trilogy of this cast is Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the bereaved head cook who, in spite of her different class, colour and body, brings teacher and pupil together while finding her own sense of escape from the pain of life.
Along the way in this entertaining and moving winter of discontent, you’ll learn why Father Christmas is a false image for the season and how classical history gave us the word punitive.
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And … we’re back
January 21st, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Sorry we’ve been offline for a few weeks, but the tech problems now seem to be sorted.
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A review of the new art house film “The Eternal Daughter”
November 28th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Films made by British writer and director Joanna Hogg make for challenging – but ultimately rewarding – viewing. Following the critical success of her autobiographical works “The Souvenir” (2019) [for my review click here] and “The Souvenir Part II” (2021) [for my review click here] – both of which I admired – comes a work influenced by Hogg’s relationship with her mother (who died during the editing process and therefore never saw it). Like the classic art house movie, nothing much happens and it happens slowly and very little is said but every sentence is laden with meaning.The minimal story concerns a stay at a deserted country house hotel in rural Wales where a middle-aged female filmmaker wants to celebrate her elderly mother’s birthday and craft the outline of her next film. Both the daughter Julie and the mother Rosalind are played by Tilda Swinton in a virtuous performance. Swinton is a lifelong friend of Hogg and played the mother figure in the two sections of “The Souvenir”, while daughter and mother in this latest work have the same names as those in “The Souvenir”, although “The Eternal Daughter” works as a standalone film.
This relationship movie takes the form of a kind of ghost story and many of the tropes of the ghost genre can be found here: whistling wind, creaking windows, swirling mists, empty corridors and unsettling sound. But it is not a scary film, rather a sad one in which a daughter is seen as endlessly trying to please her mother – an all too common affectation.
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A review of the film “Cold Pursuit”
November 27th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
A 2019 film starring Liam Neeson as a character seeking revenge for the death of his son – sounds like something along the well-trodden path of the “Taken” franchise (2008-2014), right? Well, no. This is actually a remake of a Norwegian film “In Order Of Disappearance” (2014) with the same director, Hans Petter Moland.It’s a thriller as a kind of black comedy, but I didn’t find it either thrilling or comedic. Leeson is wasted in the role of a snowplough driver called Nels Coxman (in the original the character was named Nils Dickman) and Laura Dern is massively underutilised as his wife.
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A review of “The Future Of Geography” by Tim Marshall
November 26th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Marshall has had outstanding success with two huge bestsellers: “Prisoners Of Geography” (2015) and “The Power Of Geography” (2021). Like the last chapter of the last book, this work is not really about geography but all about space. In his acknowledgements to this latest book, he thanks his publishers “for the freedom to write what I want”, but clearly the marketing guys insisted that he had to have the word ‘geography’ in the title.Marshall attempts to justify the title: “Outer space is not featureless – it has regions of intense radiation to be navigated, oceans of distance to cross, superhighways where a planet’s gravity can accelerate spaceships, strategic corridors in which to place military and commercial equipment, and land rich in natural resources.” This is really an exaggeration of the analogy. As he admits towards the end of the book: “Space is very, very big. Take the area between low Earth orbit (starting at 160 kilometres above us) and geostationary orbit (35,786 km up). The volume between the two orbits is 190 times larger than the volume of Earth.”)
And how much of this work is really about the future? The first two chapters provide a neat history of the space race between the USA and the USSR. The next six chapters look at the present situation with detailed examination of the space programmes of the USA, Russia and China. Only the final two chapters deal with the future – the one entitled Space Wars’ concedes that “For this decade at least, a war in in space would primarily be about a war on Earth.”
Notwithstanding my quibbles about the title, this latest ‘geography’ work by Marshall is, like his earlier two books, immensely informative and attractively written. So, if you want to know the best place and manner to launch a satellite (near the equator and eastwards), the number of satellites currently up there (over 8,000), or the last time humans walked on the moon (14 December 1972) and if you are inquisitive about the position of the five Lagrange points of the Earth-Sun system, the risk of the Kessler Syndrome, or the reasons why we should go to the Moon and Mars, this is the text for you. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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