Who will speak for liberal Britain?
April 3rd, 2017 by Roger Darlington
“In the film adaptation of James Ellroy’s LA Confidential, Officer White (Russell Crowe) makes a home visit to an elderly woman whose daughter is missing. There’s an unpleasant smell coming from the basement. “A rat died behind a wall,” the woman, who is called Mrs Lefferts, says. Crowe investigates and discovers a decomposed body hidden under some sacks. “Was it a rat?” Mrs Lefferts asks. “A big one,” Crowe says. It’s as if the woman had grown used to the smell and could tolerate it as one tolerates changes in the weather.
It is something like this now with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. The electorate can smell that something is seriously wrong and is recoiling, but those closest to the triumvirate of the leader, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott seem oblivious to or unconcerned by the stench of failure. Meanwhile, as a consequence of Brexit, the fractures in the Union widen and deepen, yet Labour abandons all pretence at competent and unified opposition. And so the question remains: who will speak for liberal Britain?”
These are the concluding paragraphs of an article in the “New Statesman” by Jason Cowley. Sadly, I believe that the analysis – though brutal – is fair.
As a lifelong member of the British Labour Party, I despair at the weakness of the Opposition in the House of Commons and the slump in polling support in the country.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
How ‘dark money’ is undermining democracy in Britain (as it already has done in the United States)
April 2nd, 2017 by Roger Darlington
In today’s “Observer” newspaper, there is a news item about how unregulated political expenditure – especially online using social media – seriously influenced the outcome of last summer’s EU referendum and threatens to undermine the fairness of future elections in the UK.
The piece opens:
“An urgent review of “weak and helpless” electoral laws is being demanded by a group of leading academics who say that uncontrolled “dark money” poses a threat to the fundamental principles of British democracy.
A working group set up by the London School of Economics warns that new technology has disrupted British politics to such an extent that current laws are unable to ensure a free and fair election or control the influence of money in politics.
Damian Tambini, director of the media policy project at the LSE, who heads the group made up of leading experts in the field, said that new forms of online campaigning had not only changed the ways that political parties target voters but, crucially, had also altered the ability of big money interests to manipulate political debate.”
We should be grateful to Damian Tambini – whom I know and respect – and his fellow academics for their research on this topic and the policy brief that they have published. We urgently need new legislation and a wider remit and stronger powers for the Electoral Commission.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Happy April Fools’s Day
April 1st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
in the age of Trump and fake news, it’s getting harder to work out what is genuinely an April Fool’s Day story and what is just bizarre reality. The BBC has a compilation of recent stories that seem crazy but are true. I’m pretty sure that this story in this morning’s “Guardian” newspaper is their April Fool’s Day contribution.
But I was almost caught out by my six year old granddaughter Catrin who made a FaceTime call to me from her home in Nairobi. She explained that once again lions had escaped from the Nairobi National Park which is located in the city. This has happened several times before so it was a credible story.
Catrin then told me that she’d seen a lion walking down their road. Now the national park is in the centre of the city and she lives in the suburbs so that could be possible and sounded exciting. It was the huge grin on her face that gave it away. But, boy, I laughed at being had for a few moments. Made my day.
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Can things get any worse for the Labour Party? And when will Corbyn realise that he has to go?
March 31st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
As a lifelong member of the British Labour Party, I despair at the current state of the party and the appalling leadership that it has.
In an article in today’s “Guardian” newspaper, John Harris underlines just how bad things have become for the party as the country approaches Brexit:
“This is, then, arguably the most momentous period the country has entered since 1945 – which brings us to the Labour party, and its quite astounding irrelevance.The basics of its position barely need recounting. Labour has no hope of forming the next government, nor in all likelihood the one after that. Questions about its possible extinction abound.
And its staggering poll deficits leave the Tories to do pretty much as they please. A YouGov poll this week found that – and read this slowly – more people who voted Labour in 2015 would choose May as prime minister than Jeremy Corbyn: across the population as a whole, the idea of the latter as the best option for PM is supported by a miserable 13%.”
Harris concludes concludes his piece:
“But if Brexit is indeed some moment of national rebirth, what kind of country are we going to create? Seizing that opportunity would require the kind of urgency, clarity and energy that Corbyn and his allies simply do not possess. To state the blindingly obvious, if he was as loyal a servant of his party and movement as he often says, he would be on his way.”
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An existential question for the 21st century: how do you change the duvet cover?
March 30th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
You’d think that duvet covers would have openings on two sides to make it easier to change, but that would be too simple. Instead we have to struggle, but you can find some – not entirely serious – advice here.
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So what is this European Union that the UK is so keen to leave?
March 29th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
On the day that the British Prime Minister Theresa May activates Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon to start the process of UK withdrawal from the European Union, you might like to know a little about the formation, structure and operation of the EU. You can find my brief guide here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
How should you make moral decisions?
March 28th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:
Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
What would you do? Which is the most ethical choice?
Suppose there were not five lives at stake if you did nothing but 100 or 1,000 or 10,000? Suppose the one life at stake is somebody you know or like or love? Would these factors change your decision?
The trolley problem thought experiment was first introduced by British philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. I came across it in the book I am reading at the moment: “The Big Picture: On The Origins Of Life, Meaning And The Universe Itself” by Sean Carroll.
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The Putin paradox: how does a leader so distrusted in the West remain so popular at home?
March 27th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
In this article, Dmitri Trenin – Director of the Carnegie Moscow centre – explains:
“Putin has restored Russia’s status of a great power, lost with the Soviet Union. He first tried to fit Russia into an enlarged west, as a senior ally of the US in Nato and a close partner of the EU within a “greater Europe”. When his efforts failed, he steered Russia away from the western orbit, rebuilt the country’s military power and used it to protect Russian security interests in Ukraine – as he saw them – as well as to project force outside the former empire, to send the message to the world that Russia was back in play. Publicly and resolutely, he stood up to US global dominance.”
How do Russians themselves see this? Trenin argues:
“An autocrat with the consent of the governed, Putin has preserved the essential personal freedoms that the Russian people first earned with the demise of the Communist system. People can worship and travel freely; Facebook and Twitter are essentially unrestricted; there are even a few tolerated media outlets overtly in opposition to the Kremlin. Political freedoms, however, are more tightly circumscribed, so as to leave no chance to potential “colour revolutionaries” or politically ambitious exiled oligarchs. For the bulk of the population, this matters little; the relatively few activists have a choice of taking it – or leaving.”
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Which is Donald Trump’s favourite television programme?
March 27th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
As explained in this article, it is “Fox & Friends”, the three-hour ‘news’ & entertainment programme which goes out each weekend morning on the Fox News Channel. Trump watches it religiously and often tweets in response to what he sees on the programme.
Why does he like the programme so much? Simple. The article suggests that: “In Fox & Friends’ world, Trump is never wrong and everyone always loves Trump. It’s quite a contrast with the liberal world of New York City, where the show is filmed.”
The article suggests of the programme “it may well be the most influential television program in the world”. To use three of Trump’s favourite words, this is sad, bad and mad.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
From Kathmandu to London
March 25th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I had a very leisurely lunch today (around three hours) in a Moroccan restaurant called “Sidi Maarouf” on Edgware Road in central London..
I was with my young friend Alexei who is ethnically Russian, was brought up in Moldova, and now lives in Germany. He is such a bright and thoughtful man with a couple of degrees, five languages, and lots of international work experience.
The amazing thing is that I have only met Alexei once before when we spent about half an hour talking in a small aircraft at Kathmandu airport in Nepal as we waited to have an aerial view of Mount Everest. In fact, we never even took off because the weather was so bad so neither of us ever saw the mountain [see here].
That was 14 years ago. Thanks to the Internet which has enabled us to keep in contact and a training course run this week in London by his employer Akamai Technologies, we were able to renew our friendship after a decade and a half. Don’t you just love the Net?
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