Why has it taken so long for the UK to move on regulation of the Internet?
February 13th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
For six years (2000-2005), I was the first independent Chair of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an industry-funded body which combats illegal content, primarily child abuse images, online. We had significant success, certainly in eliminating the hosting of child abuse images in the UK.
However, I was concerned that there was other material online which, while not actually illegal, was highly problematic. But I could not get the industry or the government to address such material because they found the problem too controversial and too difficult.
Therefore I am pleased to see the news that the Government now intends to give the communications regulator Ofcom – on whose Consumer Panel I sat for eight and half years (2004-2012) – new responsibility for regulating harmful content on the Net. There are many issues of principle and practice to address in this initiative but I feel that it is a significant move in the right direction.
However, why has it taken 20 years to step up to the plate on this? Once I was free of the constraints of being IWF Chair, I was able to address this issue publicly and made a number of speeches (including one at Ofcom) and a number of submissions (including one to the Government’s Communications Review).
The detail of what I suggested has been overtaken by events – especially the huge growth in user-generated content online – but the key principles of my approach – that the Net needs some further regulation and that the key issue should be harmful content – have now been taken up by the Government and will eventually be exercised by Ofcom.
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
How many people have been into space?
February 12th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I was born in 1948, so I was a teenager when the so-called Space Race between the USSR and the USA was at its height. It seemed that, every few months, there was a new first: the first satellite in space, the first dog in space, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first space walk, the first manned landing on the moon. It was all so exciting. These days, few people seem to bother about space exploration.
But I was thinking recently: how many people have now been into space? According to Wikipedia (which has a list of them all), using the FAI criterion, as of 4 December 2019, a total of 565 people from 41 countries have gone into space. Of the 565, three people completed a sub-orbital flight, 562 people reached Earth orbit, 24 travelled beyond low Earth orbit, and 12 walked on the moon.
Although the first woman flew into space in 1963 (two years after the first man), it would not be until almost 20 years later (1982) that another flew. Even today, the total number of women who have been into space is only 65.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of the Academy Award-winning film “Parasite”
February 10th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I saw this South Korean work just hours before it won four Academy Awards making it the first non-English language film to win Best Picture in the 92 years of the Oscars. Impressive though “Parasite” is, I’m not sure that it’s quite that good. I would probably have made different choices for Best Picture (“Joker”), Best Director (Sam Mendes) and Best International Film (“Pain And Glory”), but I would certainly agree with the award for Best Original Screenplay.
Writer and director Bong Joon-ho has produced a startingly original and genre-mixing work that starts as an insightful and blistering social satire and then switches dramatically – a bit like the famous “Psycho” – into something much more macabre. There is humour, there is tension, sometimes at the same time. The dialogue is almost continuous so, unless you’re fluent in Korean, I suggest you sit near the screen. More than this, it’s hard to describe without revealing spoilers – which I never do.
Set in Seoul, we meet two very different families: the four Kims, who are desparately poor but oddly unified, and the four Parks (plus their housekeeper), who are outrageously rich but deeply fractured. The two families become progressively more intersecting through a series of deceptions but, just when you think the scamming is complete, more revelations crash into the narrative, building to an unexpected finale. None of the characters totally attract our affection or our displeasure and the viewer can’t help caring in some way for all of them.
Ultimately the work can be seen as not just a critique of class but of the capitalist system that obscenely divides and dehumanises us.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Here’s a wonderful toolkit for all teachers who want to inspire their students
February 10th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
“Values And Visions” is a book written to engage students between 8-16 years old and to empower the teachers of such students with a conceptual framework and no less than 130 practical exercises. This work of over 300 pages looks, feels, and reads like no other book you will have ever seen in a classroom:
- size A4 and ring-bound so that one can open out any part with ease
- full of colour pictures, diagrams, quotes and different styles of text
- shiny, heavy-duty pages that are a joy to hold and likely to last with use
- elegantly-organised material with beautiful and inspirational language
The conceptual framework – what the authors call the Dynamic Learning Cycle – consists of three stages: identification of the values that colour our experience, tools of reflection that enable us to respond to this experience, and purpose and action to flow from this reflection.
Eight tools of reflection are offered, each with lots of incredibly useful exercises:
- stillness which is taking the time and space to quietly reflect
- listening which involves attention, respect and empathy for others
- story which uses short narratives to engage and illuminate
- encounter which examines how we relate to others and the world
- celebration & joy which embraces gratitude and enthusiasm for life
- grieving and letting go which requires a recognition of suffering and loss
- visioning which is imagining a better future for our self or community
- journalling which is a written exploration of our thoughts and feelings
There might have been a time when I was sceptical about some of these concepts and tools but then I met the authors, Georgeanne Lamont and Sally Burns, and worked with them on courses. I saw the hugely beneficial impacts of this imaginative thinking and rich array of engaging exercises, so I know that any teacher and any student would find “Values And Visions” quite truly transformational.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
Now that Brexit is ‘done’, what happens next?
February 7th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
A week ago, the United Kingdom left the European Union after membership of 47 years. In a practical sense, nothing changed because we now have a transition period but, in an emotional sense, everything changed because – depending on your point of view – either we took back or control or (my view) we stupidly cut ourself off from a huge market and a family of nations.
In the hours running up to Brexit, I was at the London School of Economics for a panel session on Brexit involving five expert commentators. A major theme of the evening was that Brexit is far from ‘done’; this is just the beginning.
The Government has talked about this being “an implementation period” but, as one panellist put it, “There is absolutely nothing to implement”. The theory is that we now have a year to negotiate the details of our future relationship with the EU , mainly trade but lots of other issues ranging from fisheries to security.
In reality, all of this month will be involved in the two parties determining their respective negotiating positions and negotiations themselves will not begin until the start of March. The transition period concludes at the end of December, but any deal has to be approved by 32 EU national and regional parliaments which means that any agreement will need to be available by September.
That means that, in truth, there will be a mere seven months to negotiate any agreement. Of course, in a rational world, there is an option of extending the transition period by up to two years, but the Government has ruled this out and, if it was to change its mind, it would have to do this as early as July.
The Government appears to favour something like the EU agreement with Canada. But a Canada-type deal is not on offer from the EU and it does not cover many areas such as energy and financial services. Another option mooted by the Government is a so-called Australia-type deal. But there is no such deal since negotiations between the EU and Oz are still in progress.
If there is no deal, the theory is that we fall back on the terms provided by the World Trade Organisation, but these are minimalist terms and would not cover major sectors such as energy and aviation.
Ivan Rogers, a former UK Permanent Representative to the EU, said “There’s big trouble ahead” and forecast “a major crisis in late 2020”. My guess is that, at the very last moment, a deal will be done but it will be what Rogers called “a skinny deal” leaving a mass of detail still to be sorted out.
Brexit is far from ‘done’. This is going to run and run and run.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (2)
A review of “The Secret Commonwealth” by Philip Pullman
February 5th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This is the second part of the trilogy “The Book Of Dust”, following the original trilogy of “His Dark Materials”. This novel is a sequel to the first three, set some 10 years after them and therefore some 20 years after “La Belle Sauvage” which was the first part of “The Book Of Dust”. The whole of the narrative is set in the same universe as “La Belle Sauvage” which, in the words of “Northern Lights”, is like our own universe “but different in many ways”.
We already knew from the first trilogy that there were people (witches) and places (the world of the dead) when humans and their daemons could be separated, but the shocking revelation of this novel is that Lyra Belacqua/Silvertongue (now a 20 year old Oxford University student) and her pine-marten daemon Pantalaimon are not just separated but estranged, so that they are apart both physically and temperamentally. Even more troubling, we learn that there is trouble in the Far East with men from the mountains (aka The Brotherhood of This Holy Purpose) attacking both a research institute and rose growers because apparently a type of rose oil has some special characteristics in some way connected with the powerful instrument the alethiometer and the strange phenomenon of Dust.
This means that much of the narrative is a constant switching between journeys on the way out to this Far East by Lyra herself, her separated daemaon Pan, and the resouceful Malcolm Polstead (who as a boy rescued Lyra in “La Belle Sauvage” and is now an Oxford scholar). At the same time, they are being tracked by a part of the Magisterium known as the Consistorial Court of Discipline which has an althiometer and someone who can read it – as can Lyra – with the new method (Olivier Bonneville, son the the man who tried to kidnap Lyra some 20 years earlier).
Meanwhile what is the secret commonwealth of the title? We are told little, but advised that it is a “world of half-seen things and half-heard whispers” including “fairies, spirits, hauntings, things of the night”. And we learn no more about Dust itself. As Lyra asks herself: “And Dust? Where did that come in? Was it a metaphor? Was it part of the secret commonwealth?” We are told that” “We need to imagine as well as measure”.
This immensely readable work of some 800 pages finishes with nothing resolved, so that the reader can barely wait for the third and final element in “The Book Of Dust” when hopefully all our questions will be answered.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
American politics in (in)action
February 4th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
- They can’t impeach a president who is as guilty as hell.
- They can’t count caucus votes in one of the least populous states in the union.
If you want to know more about the American political system, check out my guide.
But we Brits can’t be smug.
- We couldn’t hold a clean referendum on the most important constitutional question of our lives.
- It took us three and a half years to implement this deeply flawed decision.
If you want to know more about the British political system, check out my guide.
Two cheers for democracy!
Posted in American current affairs, British current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the latest Clint Eastwood film “Richard Jewell”
February 4th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I’m not sure how well this film will do outside the United States since the titular name will be unfamiliar to non-Americans. Jewell was a security guard at a concert celebrating the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta when he spotted a suspicious backpack and managed to have most of the nearby spectators cleared from the area before three pipe bombs exploded causing one death and injurying over 100. At first he was hailed as a hero but then the FBI and a local newspaper decided that he was the prime suspect for the crime.
Directed by the veteran Clint Eastwood, this a familiar story for him of a brave individual battling against an incompetent and uncaring bureaucracy, last told in his movie “Sully”. Certainly it is well-acted with a convincing portrayal of Jewell, the obese, obssessive, loner, by the little-known Paul Walter Hauser and a fine support cast of better-known actors including Kathy Bates as Jewell’s adoring mother, Jon Hamm as an FBI agent who pursues him, Olivia Wilde as the journalist who sets him up, and Sam Rockwell as the attorney who defends him.
Eastward is an acccomplished fim-maker and story-teller, but this is a by-the-numbers tale that is hardly his best work and understandably it has been criticised for its misleading representation of “Atlanta-Journal Constitution” reporter Kathy Scruggs.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Why does Iowa always vote first anyway?
February 3rd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Today Democratic Party supporters in the state of Iowa will hold caucuses to decide who they want as their candidate in November’s American presidential election. Iowa always goes first in the selection process which gives this small, rural, white state exceptional importance – but why?
Well, it hasn’t in fact always been the case. Democrats started the practice in 1972 and the Republicans followed in 1976. When Jimmy Carter surprisingly won Iowa in 1972 and went on to become both the candidate and the president, the importance of the state being first became firmly established.
“The really important thing to remember about Iowa is not that it’s first because it’s important. Iowa is important because it’s first,” said Kathy O’Bradovich, political columnist for the Des Moines Register
But, still, why does Iowa go first?
It happened after the 1968 Democratic National Convention which was marred by violence over the Vietnam War and racial tension. The Democratic Party nationally and in Iowa decided they wanted to change their process to make it more inclusive.
Part of that meant spreading the presidential nominating schedule out in each state. Since Iowa has one of the more complex processes — precinct caucuses, county conventions, district conventions, followed by a state convention — it had to start really early.
You can learn more here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
“The Night Of The Bayonets” – a World War Two story that you’ve never heard
February 1st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
In the dying days of the Second World War, a group of Georgian soliders rebelled against their German ‘comrades’ on Texel Island off the coast of The Netherlands. It’s an amazing story brought to light by my good friend Eric Lee.
In December, he was interviewed by Dan Snow (also known as “The History Guy”) about his upcoming book, “The Night of the Bayonets”. The interview went live on the History Hit website this week and you can listen to it here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)