A 12-part guide to the UK
July 29th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
As the eyes of the world turn to this country where we are hosting our third Olympic Games, the BBC web site provides a helpful – and amusing – guide to understanding the United Kingdom. I particularly like the sections on accents, class and nationality. Check it out here.
Part of the fun of understanding this country is know what to call it and appreciate its differing participation in international sport. How come we have four teams in the football World Cup but only one in the Olympic Games? And how come in the Olympics we are Team GB instead of Team UK?
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
How could Obama lose?
July 28th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
A recent piece in the “Washington Post” opened with this analysis:
“With 100 days left in the presidential campaign, perhaps the two most vexing questions in American politics are: How could President Obama possibly lose? And, how could he possibly win?
Americans are scared, angry and struggling. They used to talk about job satisfaction; now they talk about just holding on to their jobs. No incumbent since FDR has ever won reelection with unemployment numbers remotely resembling today’s. What voters feel about their lives and dreams in the months leading up to an election tends to stick to the president when they enter the voting booth. And right now what’s sticking to Obama isn’t good.
But it sure helps to face a candidate as uncomfortable in his own skin, as likely to say by accident what he really means and as wrong for the times as Mitt Romney. In an era when even conservatives are populists, enraged about the favors granted the rich and well-connected, Romney is running as a CEO who thinks his taxes are too high. Voters just aren’t warming up to a guy who enjoys firing people and attempts to woo the people of Michigan by referring to his wife’s “couple of Cadillacs.”
If Obama offers what well-paid elites call a “jobless recovery,” Romney offers the only thing worse: a promise to restore the policies that led to the joblessness that made a recovery necessary.”
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics
July 28th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Last night, Vee and I spent four hours watching live on BBC television the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics Games here in our home city of London. We have waited seven years for this time and I even volunteered to be a London Ambassador for the Games (but I was not chosen).
The organiser of the event, filmmaker Danny Boyle, did a brilliant job with limited resources.
We didn’t always know exactly what was going on and we certainly didn’t catch every cultural allusion in an immensely rich tapestry, but the whole thing was exuberant and inventive and it reflected wonderfully the history, creativeness, diversity and values of the UK, all the way from the Industrial Revolution to the World Wide Web. I wonder what Americans made of our celebration of the National Health Service which was created in the year of the last hosting of the Games in London and the year of my birth.
Boyle was serious in commemorating the dead and injured on 7/7, but there was a lightness of touch all the way from the Morrris dancers in rural England to Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude”. I especially loved the humour exhibited in the sequences involving James Bond and Mr Bean. So here is a reminder of my favourite moment:
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)
How democratic is the United States?
July 27th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
On my web site, I have written short guides to the political systems of 11 countries including the United States – see here. Some day, I intend to get round to writing an essay on comparing different political systems and, when I do, one of the points I will draw out is the ease or otherwise of being able to vote.
When I was on holiday in the USA recently [my account here], my attention was drawn to the efforts of so many states to make it harder to vote. Of course, these initiatives are dressed up as efforts to curb voter fraud, but in fact the evidence of fraud is tiny whereas the detrimental impact of the measures on turnout – especially among the poor and ethnic minorities – is clear. The fact that so many of these initiatives are being promoted by Republicans in swing states tells us that the real intention is to damage the Democratic cause and, in doing so, the democratic credentials of these states is called into question.
“Since January 2011, 19 states have passed a total of 24 laws that create hurdles between voters and the ballot box. Some states are newly requiring people to show government-issued photo cards at polling stations. Others have whittled down early voting hours, imposed restrictions on registration of new voters, banned people with criminal records from voting or attempted to purge eligible voters from the electoral roll.
The assault on voter rights is particularly acute in key swing states where the presidential race is likely to be settled. Five of the nine key battleground states identified by the Republican strategist Karl Rove have introduced laws that could suppress turnout – Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.”
This is an extract from a piece in today’s “Guardian” newspaper highlighting the scandal.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (3)
London’s three Olympics: 1908, 1948, 2012
July 25th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
London is the only city to have hosted three Olympic Games. The first was in 1908, the second was 1948 (the year I was born), and this third is this week.
You’ll find an interesting comparison of the three games here.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)
The Olympic torch passes our road …
July 25th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
… but I am not there to see it.
At about 10.30 am this morning, on Day 68 of the Olympic Torch Relay around the UK, the flame passed down Harrow Road in Sudbury Hill in north-west London, just two minutes walk from our home. My wife Vee and brother-in-law Derek were there to see it, together with a good crowd of neighbours and other local citizens.
The Olympic flame is passed from one runner to the next
But I was not able to see the torch because I was in the centre of London at Ofcom’s headquarters attending a meeting of the Communications Consumer Panel. It was my last meeting after an astonishing and very enjoyable eight and a half years on the Panel.
Posted in British current affairs, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Remembering the Battle of Gettysburg
July 23rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
During our recent visit to the United States, we made a one-day visit to the site of the famous American civil war battlefield of Gettysburg [my account here]. I have just finished reading “The Killer Angels”, a brilliant novel by Michael Shaara set during the three days of the conflict [my review here].
I wanted to set the battle of Gettysburg into a wider contact, so I have also read a short history of the American civil war as a whole [my review here]. Really one cannot understand contemporary Amercian politics without having some appreciation of this bloody conflict.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
An amazing act of wartime betrayal
July 22nd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Sometimes we record an interesting programme on the television and do not watch it until some weeks or even months later. So it was only this evening that we viewed a BBC2 programme broadcast on 21 May with the title “The Fall Of Singapore – The Great Betrayal”.
The programme told the astonishing story of how British figures fed military secrets to the Japanese in the 1920s and 1930s which enabled the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor and take Singapore in the early years of World War Two. A key agent of the Japanese was a member of the British aristocracy called William Forbes-Sempill who was the 19th Lord Sempill.
The British secret service MI5 was tracking Sempill’s subterfuge at each step and finally brought the information to the attention of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister, yet astonishingly Sempill was never prosecuted.
You can read a fascinating review of the programme here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How the super rich become much much richer
July 22nd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
“A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.”
You can read the “Observer” news item here and see a fuller analysis here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
The tradition of bun throwing in Abingdon
July 21st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Vee and I spent today in Abingdon visiting our Chinese ‘family’: Zhihao, Hua and five year old Joshua. Abingdon claims to be the oldest continuously populated town in Britain with people living there for some 6,000 years. Certainly it is very proud of its history and traditions.
Two weeks ago, the Abingdon County Hall Museum was reopened and this afternoon we visited the museum which has three floors of exhibits and a wonderful viewing vantage from the roof. I was fascinated to learn that Abingdon has a tradition of fruit bun throwing from the building which stretches back as far as 1760. All sorts of national and royal events have been marked in this way. This strikes me as being such a very English activity and, as a lover all things sweet, I think it is a wonderful idea.
We had a good lunch at a Lebanese restaurant called “Lemon Grove” where we were served by a guy who is a Christian Syrian. Throughout our meal, the restaurant played the haunting music of Fairuz. Just over a year ago, Vee and I visited Syria and Lebanon [an account of our trip here] and the meal reminded us of that happy time before the revolution broke out in Syria a couple of weeks later.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (2)