Obama vs Romney: on the final stretch
October 23rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The United States presidential election is only two weeks away and we have just had the third and final of the debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Romney certainly won the first debate, but Obama came back fighting and probably won the second and third on points. So, how does the election stand now?
Real Clear Politics is an independent and informed web site which tracks American politics in forensic detail. Their average of all the polls currently puts Obama and Romney as effectively tied at 47.2% and 47.6% respectively – a mere half a percentage point separating them. But it’s not the overall vote that will determine the outcome; it’s the result in the Electoral College.
According to the latest assessment by Real Clear Politics, Obama is pretty sure of 201 Electoral College votes, while Romney is fairly certain of 206 votes, with the rest still to play for. That’s a significantly worse position for Obama than a week ago which in turn was worse than the week before. If we look at the best guess of Real Clear Politics on how the uncertain states will break, their estimate is that Obama will win 281 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 257.
That’s a worsening of Obama’s position compared to a week ago, but would still be a win for Obama. If Obama was to lose Ohio, that would be it.
So I’m still hopeful – but even more anxious.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
How to have a good job interview
October 22nd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I spent this afternoon supporting a good friend in carrying out interviews of four young people for a part-time job. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of interviewing (and been interviewed many times) and it always astonishes me how ill-prepared many interviewees are and how weakly they often present themselves.
I was asked so many times by young people how to prepare for such an occasion that I produced advice which I placed on my web site under the heading “How To Have A Good Job Interview”. Following my experience today, I’ve revisited my advice and added a few points.
You can view the advice here. You might find it useful one day or want to recommend it to a relative, friend or colleague.
My interview tips have proved one of the most popular pages on my web site and, over the years, I have added lots more advice on what I have generically called “Life Skills”. You can find 30 sections – everything from “How To Be Happy” to “How To Prepare For Death” – here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
The bombing in Beirut
October 20th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The assassination of Major General Wissam al-Hassan, head of the police intelligence unit in Lebanon, by a car bomb in Beirut is both a personal and a political tragedy. Eight people were killed and many others injured, while the attack will threaten the stability of the government and the country, reviving fears of a return to the horrific civil war of 1975-1990. These pictures convey something of the death and devastation.
Last spring, I was in Beirut and you can read the account of my time in Lebanon here. I have checked on my friends in Beirut. They are well.
While I was in The Levant last year, I read a fascinating and disturbing book which spelled out how historically the small state of Lebanon has always been the cockpit for the wider political and military forces in the troubled region. You can read my review here. It puts this week’s assassination in a context.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Why does the statue of Gladstone have red hands?
October 19th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
As I explained in my previous posting, yesterday I was visiting London’s East End to view a participating location in this week’s Get Online Week events. While I was in the area, I noticed a rather fine statue of the Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) who managed to serve four terms as Chancellor of the Exchequer and four terms as Prime Minister. I was perplexed by the fact that the statue had red hands and took this photograph:
Note the red hands
Once I was home, i searched the Net for further information on the statue and the red hands. I am indebted to Angela Stapleford for this explanation:
“In 1882 a statue to the prime minister, William Gladstone was unveiled at Bow Road. The statue was raised by Theodore Bryant, an industrialist and prominent Liberal. Bryant was Director of the Bryant and May Factory at nearby Fairfield Road whose employees went on strike for three weeks during the “Match Girl” strike of 1888.
Although many of the East End’s Irish population were fond of Gladstone because of his Irish policies and attended the unveiling in support, employees of Bryant and May were angered at the statue’s unveiling.
They claimed that the statue had been paid for by deductions from their wages. The women workers, some as young as 13 were low paid and worked long hours. Some of the workers, “went to the unveiling with stones and bricks in their pockets… later on they surrounded the statue – ‘we paid for it’, they cried savagely – shouting and yelling, and a gruesome story is told that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble, paid for, in truth, by their blood.”
This account was told to Annie Besant at the time of the Match Girl strike six years later. The women who took part in the protest in 1882 were possibly older sisters, mothers or friends of the young women who went on strike later. The story formed part of their collective memory.
At an unknown date since the hands of the Gladstone statue have been painted red.”
Posted in History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
My visit to London’s East End
October 18th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I used to travel a lot through the East End of London because I lived out in Leyton and then Leytonstone for a decade and my son was actually born in the London Hospital at Whitechapel. But, since I moved to north-west London almost three decades ago, I don’t visit the East End that much. Today though, I was over there to visit the Stroudley Walk post office.
Now, over the years, I’ve visited a lot of post offices because I used to be on the Board of Postwatch and then its successor Consumer Focus and I still chair the Post Offices Advisory Group of Consumer Focus. Sadly the location I viewed today is not a shiniest example of the best of the post office network as made plain by this customer comment.
So, what was I doing there? In my capacity as a non-executive Board member of the Online Centres Foundation, I wanted to visit a location involved in Get Online Week which runs from this Monday to this Friday and the OCF Head Office in Sheffield offered me Stroudley Walk post office as a participating location in the city where I live.
If the ambience of the Stroudley Walk post office is less than thrilling, the enthusiasm of the Get Online Week supporters that I met there totally made up for it. Sitting behind a table loaded with leaflets and a laptop were Julie Browne and Rujina Ali who gave me a warm welcome and explained the activities of Poplar HARCA (Housing & Regeneration Community Association) – an organisation covering some 8,500 propertiesi – for which they work.
The Association has six community centres and runs five sessions a week to introduce local residents to the Internet. As well as a web site, they are on Facebook and Twitter and have a magazine called “HARCA Life”.
The Get Online Week venture in Stroudley Walk post office was a friendly affair which had coloured balloons floating over the literature-filled table and a box of sweets on the table. On the side, visitors could have their face painted or pick up leaflets on such health issues as bowel cancer.
The exercise did not simply involve engaging customers entering the premises to transact post office services; half a dozen Association volunteers and staff were out and about outside the post office and in local shops and doctors’ surgeries encouraging local citizens to take some literature or sign up for a course. Their enthusiasm was positively infectious. Well done, guys.
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
An American view of the US presidential election
October 18th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I’ve been blogging a lot about this year’s presidential election in the USA (although nowhere near as much as I did about the 2008 election), but I wanted to share with you the latest analysis from my good American friend Mike Grace with whom Vee and I spent a week earlier this year. He writes:
“The second presidential debate featured a much improved performance by President Obama, but was also one of the most rancorous and personal that I have ever witnessed. The audience was comprised of 500 “uncommitted” voters, although how anyone can be uncommitted just three weeks before the election is a mystery to me considering that our national news has been dominated by presidential politics for more than 18 months.
We politely call them low information voters.
Obama had several good moments, particularly when he dissected the math behind Romney’s economic plan to cut taxes, increase military spending and to preserve middle class tax deductions without increasing the deficit (we call that voodoo economics) and on the Libya issue.
Romney’s best moment came in response to a question where he succinctly listed the administration’s economic failures.
How much this event will effect the outcome remains unknown right now. But the news focus is finally off Obama’s poor performance in the previous debate. Hopefully Obama also has created some doubt over Romney!s promises. Viewership was down to 65 million from 70 million.
Romney is clearly the white candidate if the polls can be believed. He is expected to poll more than 60% better among white voters than Obama, the widest spread since Reagan, which could help overcome his deficit among blacks, Latinos and women since whites vote seven times greater than any other ethnic or racial group.
We have always had our differences as a nation, going beck to our founding. and one would expect that in a country as physically large as America with 300 million people that we will not always agree on everything. But the tenor and tone of the election is among the most bitter that I have ever seen since the Vietnam War protest days which was mostly a generational divide.
I disliked President Bush and his policies, but I did not hate the man or challenge his patriotism (just his intelligence). But a significant portion of Americans HATE President Obama with a venom that is difficult to comprehend. Cable news and right wing talk radio feed these beliefs. I see Americans today more intensely divided since the Civil War over basic philosophical questions about what kind of country we want, our national goals and our place in the world.
Many whites are unnerved about becoming the new minority here. Terrorists pose a perilous threat from which we can’t agree on how to respond. The global economic system seems to be unraveling. Our children and grandchildren face an unknown and uncertain future. And there are many other deeply held core beliefs that separate Americans.
The divide between Red and Blue America runs deeper and more rancorous than ever. I just returned from visiting friends in a retirement community in coastal North Carolina. Residents there actually ostracize one another over their political beliefs. Feelings run so strongly that it is impossible to even have a civil discussion over our differences. If you are for Obama, you must be a socialist or Muslim sympathizer. If you are for Romney, you must be a right-wing nut.
I don’t want to seem overly pessimistic but I don’t think this election will not bring us any closer together no matter who wins.”
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Who are the 25 richest people ever?
October 17th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The web site Celebrity Net Worth has done a calculation which takes account of inflation and come up with some fascinating results.
You’ve probably never heard of the top guy – they’re all men – who was the King of Mali Mansa Musa (c.1280-c.1337). In fact, only three people alive today feature on the list.
Posted in History, Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
A simple graph that shows how the UK is becoming like the USA
October 16th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The graph shows government spending as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product and you can view it – and the accompanying article by Aditya Chakrabortty – here.
Chakrabortty explains the messages of the graph as follows:
“Drawing on IMF figures published last week, the graph compares what will happen to government spending in Britain up to 2017 with the outlook for Germany and the US. And what it shows is that the UK will plunge from public spending on a par with Germany in 2009, to spending less than the US by 2017. Had France, Sweden or Canada been included on this graph, the UK would still come bottom. If George Osborne gets his way, within the next five years, Britain will have a smaller public sector than any other major developed nation.”
He concludes his piece:
“Prepare yourself for welfare to be downsized into American-style workfare, for public-sector jobs to be turned into a second-class employment and for services, from school to healthcare, to demand that users pay more to get something decent. The future is American.”
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Obama vs Romney: how’s it going?
October 15th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The United States presidential election is just three weeks away and we are about to have the second of the three debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. So, below all the media froth, how is the election going?
Real Clear Politics is an independent and informed web site which tracks American politics in forensic detail. Their average of all the polls currently puts Obama and Romney as effectively tied at 47.4% and 47.3% respectively. But it’s not the overall vote that will determine the outcome; it’s the result in the Electoral College.
According to the latest assessment by Real Clear Politics, Obama is pretty sure of 201 Electoral College votes, while Romney is fairly certain of only 191 votes, with the rest still to play for. That’s a significantly worse position for Obama than a week ago. If we look at the best guess of Real Clear Politics on how the uncertain states will break, their estimate is that Obama will win 294 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 244. That’s a slight worsening of Obama’s position compared to a week ago, but would still be a clear win for Obama.
So I’m still hopeful – but anxious.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
The role of the Special Adviser in the British political system
October 14th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
In the political world, they are know as Spads – short for Special Advisers. They are political appointments by Secretaries of State in Britain’s government.
In the Wilson/Callaghan Governments, I was a Special Adviser in two Departments: the Northern Ireland Office and the Home Office. In the Blair/Brown Governments, my son Richard Darlington was a Spad in two other Departments, Education & Skills and International Development, and my daughter-in-law Emily Thomas, was a Spad in still two other Departments, Business, Innovation & Skills and Treasury.
So, there’s a family connection and I believe that Richard and I are the first father and son to have held this unusual but fascinating role – indeed this fact was picked up by the author of an interesting book on the role of Special Advisers which I have a reviewed here.
A new report by the House of Commons Public Administration Committee has led to Sky News doing an item on Spads today in which Richard has a couple of sound bites. You can view it here.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)