Word of the day: demonym

November 21st, 2011 by Roger Darlington

This is the name for the resident of a locality – more information here.

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)

Why is America’s political system so dysfunctional? (2)

November 20th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

Just over a week ago, I did a posting about why I thought the United States political system was broken. I invited comments, expected some, and received none.

Well, in the past week, the US Congress took a decision that highlighted the absurdity and sadness of the present political impasse. It decided that the tomato sauce used to make pizzas is a vegetable which it manifestly is not. The point is that it can make a decision on this matter – following heavy lobbying – but it cannot agree a deficit reduction programme or a reform of the healthcare system.

In an interesting article in today’s “Observer” newspaper, the judgment and the analysis in my earlier posting are confirmed. The piece refers to “a growing perception that US politics has become dangerously dysfunctional” (just the word I used).

The reasons are many but dominating factors are too many elections and too much money on elections and lobbying. The article states:

“The influence of money and the development of a “permanent campaign” mentality have gone hand-in-hand. As campaigns stretched out, they required more money. It has to come from somewhere, and so in recent years the lobbying industry has ballooned. Nor is that money free. Special interests, whether a big oil company or union (or even a frozen pizza-maker) expect a return on their investment. The figures alone tell the story. In 2010 lobbyists spent $3.5bn on their activities, up from $1.4bn in 1998. In the same year there were almost 13,000 official lobbyists in the capital, and thousands more unregistered.”

In my posting, i highlighted the US Constitution as a major cause of the dysfunctionality of the American political system. To reduce the number of elections and to curb the money spent on them – not to mention some renegotation of the complex system of check and balances – all require constitutional change and in practice the Constitution is almost unchallengeable. The “Observer” piece puts it this way:

“America’s system of governance, designed by the founding fathers and then jiggled around with since, suddenly seems ill-equipped to deal with the nation’s problems. The checks and balances built into the constitution appear gridlocked, rather than promoting sensible governance. Nor is it just ordinary people who feel this way. America’s inability to get important things done has a global impact. This summer, when ratings agency Standard & Poor’s handed out a first ever downgrade to the world superpower, it was clear why. “The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges,” the agency said.”

You can read the full article here.

I would still welcome comment.

Posted in American current affairs | Comments (7)

Are we winning the global war on drugs?

November 19th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

Well, what do you think? And, while you’re considering the question, bear in mind the following figures:

There are now around 250 million drug users worldwide.
The illicit drugs industry is now worth an estimated $450 billion a year.
An estimated 10 million people are in prison worldwide for drug-related offences.

Clearly the current approach has failed and we need radical new thinking. This is the approach behind the Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform that was launched at the House of Lords this week.

Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)

Word of the day: contestation

November 18th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

I’ve spent the day at the University of Leicester attending a seminar on digital literacy where I made a short presentation on the regulation of content with the convergence of broadcasting and the Internet [see the text on which I based my remarks here].

Now most of the participants in the seminar were academics and they speak a special language. A word that academics love is ‘contest’ – as a verb ‘to contest’, as an adjective ‘contestable’ and – most grandly – as the noun ‘contestation’. Basically this is a fancy way of saying that an argument or an idea can be challenged – and, of course, in academicia any notion can and is challenged.

In the seminar, ‘contestation’ was used twice – on both occasions by a professor.

Posted in Cultural issues, Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)

The Chinese are here again (2)

November 17th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

As I explained in an earlier posting, this week I was in Oxford to lecture to a group of 18 officials from the Chinese municipality of Tianjin. I wanted to stimulate them to ask questions rather than simply listen to a prepared text and they were certainly willing to engage with me. It is always difficult to be sure with such a group whether they are receptive to the messages you are putting over: partly because there is the problem of language and partly because inevitably some participants speak a lot and many not at all.

I was gently and politely challenging of features of the Chinese political system, suggesting that Government should be more open with the media and citizens and less defensive in the face of criticism. But some of the officials felt that the West does not understand China and is unfair in its criticisms of the country over issues like control of the media and human rights.

Some were equally critical of their own media, accusing it of telling lies and sowing dissent. I attempted to point out that, while the Chinese Government does not trust the Chinese media, many Chinese people do not trust their own Government to tell the truth. I felt it wise to choose an illustration that was not too topical, so I mentioned the SARS crisis of 2003 rather than for instance the self-immolation of Tibetan monks at the present time.

A lot of discussion was about the Internet – which is, of course, a great interest of mine. I mentioned my own web site and some of the officials accessed that on their laptops and iPads – lots of new technology here – while I was speaking. They were happily using Google which they cannot do at home. Nobody referred to the ‘Great Firewall of China’ but they reflected the widespread concern among the Chinese political establishment that the Internet has to be controlled so that ‘false messages’ are not promulgated.

While my lecture was about the way Government in Britain communicates with its citizens and how citizens here have access to public information, I emphasised that Britain and China have vastly different histories and cultures and I recognise that China cannot simply adopt British processes and methods, even if it wished to do so. It took us centuries of slow and usually fiercely contested progress to evolve our democratic values and institutions. We cannot expect China to become a democratic state rapidly or easily.

However, the dramatic economic liberalisation that we have seen in China since the mid 1970s and the growing number of Chinese students who are studying abroad – plus the large number of Chinese delegations visiting the West – will have an impact on the political structures and practices in China and the process may well not be under the full control of the Chinese Communist Party.

Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)

That’s one small crawl for Catrin …

November 16th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

… one giant delight for Roger.

This week, my beautiful granddaughter Catrin – now ten months old – started crawling. I collected her from her nursery this afternoon and they told me that she’s been crawling all day. I took her back to her parents’ flat and she was crawling all over the place. It’s wonderful to see her making such progress.

Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)

The Chinese are here again (1)

November 14th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

A year ago, I lectured to a group of 24 Chinese officials from the huge city of Tianjin which is administered by the central government. The title of the lecture was “Government Communications In The UK”. I spoke in the morning and my son Richard addressed them in the afternoon.

I was pleasantly surprised at how open our discussion was and how fresh their thinking was. I blogged about the event and this posting attracted two fascinating comments – one from an American and one from a Chinese. You can read all this here.

Well, another group of 18 officials from Tianjin arrived in the UK on Sunday and will be here for three weeks. In the intervening year, the role of China in the world economy has become even more critical.

Richard and I will be lecturing to the Chinese all day tomorrow. I’m looking forward to more good discussion.

Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (1)

Two reviews of “The Road”

November 13th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

A couple of years ago, I read Cormac McCarthy’s impressive, if bleak, novel “The Road” about a father’s struggle to protect his son in a post-apocalytic land [my review here] and this weekend I caught the faithful film adaptation [my review here].

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)

Do we really live in such a violent age?

November 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington

This week, I had lunch with a longstanding friend and we found ourselves debating whether we were living in the worst of times (impending collapse of capitalism) or the best of times (record levels of longevity).

I mentioned the new work by Steven Pinker called “The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and its Causes” (Allen Lane). The writer himself has summarised the book as follows:

“Believe it or not, violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence. The decline has not been steady; it has not brought violence down to zero; and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from world wars and genocides to the spanking of children and the treatment of animals.

The fact that violence is so pervasive in history, but nonetheless can be brought down, tells us that human nature includes both inclinations toward violence and inclinations toward peace – what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” – and that historical changes have increasingly favoured our better angels. These changes include the development of government, commerce, literacy, and the mixing of ideas and peoples, all of which encourage people to inhibit their impulses, expand their empathy, extricate themselves from their parochial vantage points, and treat violence as a problem to be solved rather than as a contest to be won.”

This is an extract from an “Observer” newspaper piece which includes a fascinating table of death tolls for major violent occurrences in world history.

Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (6)