A review of the new film “The Dig”
February 2nd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
It’s 1939 and war clouds are gathering over Europe and fighter aircraft – from RAF Martlesham (incidentally now the site of BT’s research centre) – are in the skies over Suffolk. Wealthy landowner and widower Lady Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) engages local excavator Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate the mounds on her land, leading to a wonderful discovery of Anglo-Saxon remains.
This might seem an unlikely narrative for a film but it works very well – in effect telling three inter-linked stories: the revelation that the Dark Ages were not so dark, the classic prejudices of pre-war Britain, and a subplot involving a romance between two young characters (played by Lily James and Johnny Flynn).
Fiennes is brilliant as the wise local and demonstrates a fine Suffolk accent. Mulligan is an odd choice for the role of Pretty since she is a full two decades younger than the character she is portraying, but she is a marvellous actor and I guess that the early declaration that this is “based on a true story” allows for interpretation rather than strict representation.
Having watched this quiet and charming film, one wants to run round immediately to the British Museum to which Pretty donated the Sutton Hoo find but, since Netflix released the movie in the middle of a third coronavirus lockdown, sadly this is not possible.
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The BIGGEST mistake of President Barack Obama
January 30th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Regular readers of this blog with know both that I’m a huge admirer of Barack Obama and that I’m currently reading the first volume of his political memoirs “A Promised Land”.
I’m enjoying the 700-page book enormously – I have read his two previous works – not least because he is a fine writer. BUT there is one grammatical mistake which he makes regularly: he uses a capital letter immediately after a colon.
The first of many examples of this is in the Preface when he talks of the contest between two opposing visions of America: “At the heart of this long-running battle is a simple question: Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals?”
I don’t know whether this mistake (as I see it) is an American thing or an Obama affectation. But it is so wrong.
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In the United States, voter suppression is even higher on the Republican agenda
January 29th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
What most non-Americans do not appreciate is that, in the United States, entitlement to vote and the mechanisms for voting are matters for each of the 50 individual states with therefore substantial variation across the country and a constant tussle to change the rules to favour the political party in state control.
After an election filled with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled down with a surge of bills to further restrict voting access in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The 2021 legislative sessions have begun in all but six states, and state lawmakers have already introduced hundreds of bills aimed at election procedures and voter access – vastly exceeding the number of voting bills introduced by this time last year.
In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, legislators have introduced three times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to this time last year. Twenty-eight states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 106 restrictive bills this year (as compared to 35 such bills in fifteen states in February 2020).
Of course, other state lawmakers are seizing on an energised electorate and persistent interest in democracy reform. To date, thirty-five states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 406 bills to expand voting access (dwarfing the 188 expansive bills that were filed in twenty-nine states as of February 2020). Notably 93 such bills were introduced in New York and New Jersey.
With unprecedented numbers of voters casting their ballots by mail in 2020, legislators across the country have shown particular interest in absentee voting reform, with more than a quarter of voting and election bills addressing absentee voting procedures. Only seven of the forty-one states that have introduced election bills have not proposed policies to alter absentee voting procedures in some way.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the new action movie “Ava”
January 28th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Jessica Chastain is a fine actor, but she clearly wanted an action hero outing because she takes both the eponymous role as a super assassin and a producer credit in this action-filled drama. If male actors have such tough-guy roles as James Bond, Jason Bourne and John Wick, I for one like to see woman actors in strong female roles such as “The Assassin” and “Atomic Blonde”.
Chastain is not the only talent on show here. John Malkovich and Colin Farrell play members of the same organisation of assassins, while Geena Davis and rapper Common are members of her Boston family. So there are some accomplished actors here and there is plenty of brutal action. The problem is the script with a poor storyline and weak dialogue.
But, heh, there are so few new movies around just now and, at the end of another cold and dark day in yet another coronavirus lockdown, for me “Ava” hit the spot for a compact hour and a half.
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Mega-rich recoup COVID-losses in record-time yet billions will live in poverty for at least a decade
January 27th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
In this week of each year, politicians, business leaders and policy wonks gather in the Swiss resort of Davos in Switzerland. This year, the event is happened virtually because of the global pandemic. But, as usual, Oxfam has published its annual review of inequality in the world and the main theme of the 2021 report entitled “The Inequality Virus” is the dramatic increase in inequality caused by the virus.
The report shows that COVID-19 has the potential to increase economic inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began over a century ago. Rising inequality means it could take at least 14 times longer for the number of people living in poverty to return to pre-pandemic levels than it took for the fortunes of the top 1,000, mostly white male, billionaires to bounce back.
Oxfam’s report shows how the rigged economic system is enabling a super-rich elite to amass wealth in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression while billions of people are struggling to make ends meet. It reveals how the pandemic is deepening long-standing economic, racial and gender divides.
- The recession is over for the richest. The world’s ten richest men have seen their combined wealth increase by half a trillion dollars since the pandemic began – more than enough to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone and to ensure no one is pushed into poverty by the pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic has ushered in the worst job crisis in over 90 years with hundreds of millions of people now underemployed or out of work.
- Women are hardest hit, yet again. Globally, women are overrepresented in the low-paid precarious professions that have been hardest hit by the pandemic. If women were represented at the same rate as men in these sectors, 112 million women would no longer be at high risk of losing their incomes or jobs. Women also make up roughly 70 percent of the global health and social care workforce − essential but often poorly paid jobs that put them at greater risk from COVID-19.
- Inequality is costing lives. Afro-descendants in Brazil are 40 percent more likely to die of COVID-19 than White people, while nearly 22,000 Black and Hispanic people in the United States would still be alive if they experienced the same COVID-19 mortality rates as their white counterparts. Infection and mortality rates are higher in poorer areas of countries such as France, India, and Spain while England’s poorest regions experience mortality rates double that of the richest areas.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Covid: UK virus deaths exceed 100,000 since pandemic began
January 26th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
There are three main ways of calculating the death toll from coronavirus: those who died within 28 days of being tested positive for covid (the official government measure announced on the media each day); those who had the virus mentioned on their death certificate (a wider measure from the Office of National Statistics); and excess deaths (a calculation comparing the level of all deaths in a given period to an average of the same period over the previous five years).
Some time ago, deaths from covid in the UK passed the 100,000 mark on the measure of excess deaths. Now the 100,000 figure has been exceeded on the ONS measure. In the next few days, even the Government’s measure will go over 100,000.
Any figure would represent an absolute tragedy for the people who have died and the families and friends whom they have left behind. But, when you remember that – at the beginning of the first lockdown – we were told that we would do well as a nation to keep deaths to 20,000, the current figure is heartbreaking. It is one of the highest death rates in the world.
The UK death toll should start to level off as the vaccines have their beneficial effect, but this nightmare is still far from over. And, if anyone tells you that lots of people die from seasonal flu each winter, remind them that a typical death toll from winter flu is 8,000.
Footnote: Later in the day, the government announced that, by its measure, the death toll had now reached 100,162.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
“A Promised Land” by Barack Obama (5)
January 25th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Obama campaigned for the White House as an anti-war candidate: he had opposed the invasion of Iraq and, in the presidential election campaign, he argued that the war in Afghanistan had been neglected as a result of the focus on Iraq.
Once in the White House, however, he quickly found himself having to back the withdrawal plan for Iraq signed by Bush a month before inauguration and agreed an extra three months for withdrawal of combat troops compared to the timetable he had proposed in the campaign. He took longer to review the situation in Afghanistan but eventually agreed to the deployment of 30,000 extra troops there.
Obama had something of a reputation for taking his time to make decisions and being very deliberative about the process. In these memoirs, he explains that, over two months, he presided over a series of nine two-to-three-hour meetings in the Situation Room to evaluate the military’s plan for Afghanistan.
The irony was that, a mere nine months after becoming president, Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. He acknowledges “the tension between getting a peace prize and expanding a war”.
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What is a fronted adverbial?
January 23rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Apparently this is something that kids are learning at schools these days as discovered by parents who are having to homeschool in lockdown. I confess that I’d never heard of the term until I read an article in today’s “Guardian” newspaper.
Even then, I had no idea what it was and I’m a reasonably well-educated and well-read senior citizen. But I’ve now looked it up.
Adverbials are words or phrases that give more information to the sentence.
“I discovered fronted adverbials, earlier today.”
‘Earlier today’ is the adverbial.
“Earlier today, I discovered fronted adverbials.”
A fronted adverbial is when the adverbial word or phrase is moved to the front of the sentence, before the verb. So here, ‘earlier today’ is a fronted adverbial.
Now you know. Admit it: you’re feeling better.
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A review of the 2017 film “The Circle”
January 22nd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Based on Dave Eggers’ best-selling novel, this movie explains how a powerful information technology company with a huge worldwide customer base – the Circle of the title – plans to introduce a series of clever innovations that seem to solve a social or political ill and introduce transparency and accountability but massively undermine personal space and individual liberty while defying any public or political control.
In the words of the public face of the company Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks – and who wouldn’t trust him?): “Knowing is good, but knowing everything is better”. Completely taken in by the company’s vision is young newcomer Mae Holland (Emma Watson) who declares: “Secrets are lies. Secrets make crimes possible… Secrets need accountability”.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book but, in spite of some fine leading actors, the story does not seem to work so well on the screen as the shortness of time makes for a simplification of the arguments and the lack of drama is more noticeable in a film.
Link: my review of the book click here
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“A Promised Land” by Barack Obama (4)
January 22nd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
There is a famous quote, usually – but wrongly – attributed to the German politician Otto von Bismarck, which was in fact written by the American poet John Godfrey Saxe: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made”.
This observation was in my mind as I read the 50 pages which Obama devotes to explaining the tortuous process which finally led to the enactment of his signature legislative achievement: the Affordable Care Act (ACA) often called Obamacare.
To most non-Americans, the case for reform would look compelling: in spite of the US spending a lot more money per person on healthcare than any other advanced economy, the results were similar or worse and, in spite of Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor, more than 43 million Americans were uninsured.
Even Obama thought the argument was powerful: “When I think back to those early conversations, it’s hard to deny my overconfidence. I was convinced that the logic of healthcare reform was so obvious that even in the face of well-organized opposition I could rally the American people’s support”.
But the legislative process in the US is much more complicated than in other democratic nations, mainly because of the constitutional dispersal of power, the financial clout of lobbyists and campaign funders, and the bitterest political divide in the nation since the civil war.
So the process took over a year and the Bill of 906 pages was only passed with a final vote margin of seven. Even then, a substantial series of compromises was forced on Obama, such as abandonment of ‘the public option’.
But, in spite of four years of Trump’s efforts to destroy Obamacare, it survives and President Biden now has a foundation on which he can build.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)