Archive for January, 2008
A very busy week
January 19th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve not blogged for a few days because this week has been such a very busy time. I’m the Member for England on the Ofcom Consumer Panel and, on Tuesday, we had our monthly meeting and met our new Chairman Anna Bradley. I’m the Chair of the Greater London Region on the Postwatch Council and, […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
The American presidential election (5)
January 16th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Is there a country in the world that has a more complicated system than the United States for choosing the leading candidates for its Presidential election? Can’t be. To start with, there’s the 50 states. Some have caucuses; some have primaries. Some have closed primaries; some have open primaries; and some have systems in between. […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Can you figure out how this works?
January 15th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
When you’re ready, go to the link here. After reading and carrying out instructions in each window, click on the boy in the lower right corner of the picture. In the last window type in your answer in the white box using the keyboard (there is NO cursor). Watch the paper in the boy’s hand. […]
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (4)
The other American presidential candidate (1)
January 14th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
My wife is half Czech, we have many Czech friends, and we visit the Czech Republic regularly, so we have a passing interest in Czech politics – which never features in the foreign media. At the moment, we have two close Czech friends staying with us for a few days and they’ve drawn our attention […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
How does it work?
January 12th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Marvel at this set of chemical reactions: In 1973, the spectacular demonstration was perfected by Thomas Briggs and Warren Rauscher, two amazing high school science teachers. Some thirty-five years later, chemists are still trying to fully understand how it works. You’ll find an explanation of sorts here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
The power of books
January 11th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
There are more than 100,000 books published a year in the UK. Sixty pages an hour is the average reading speed. A quarter of people in the UK haven’t read a single book in the past year. These are three facts which I have extracted from this article. I love reading books (as I have […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Forgotten World (120): Sweden
January 11th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Sweden is a most unusual European country in that it has not been at war since 1814 and is noted for its policy of neutrality. For most of the last 70 years until 2006, the country was run by the Social Democratic Party through a model involving high taxes and substantial social provision. Now the […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Operation Able Archer
January 10th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve only just watched a recording I made of a weekend Channel Four programme about Operation Able Archer in 1983. It was the closest that we came to World War Three with the exception of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and I confess that I had never heard of it. Fundamentally the crisis came […]
Posted in History | Comments (1)
Forgotten World (119): Quebec
January 10th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Quebec is one of the 10 provinces of Canada. It is the country’s largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division (only the territory of Nunavut is larger). It is the second most populated province with almost 7M citizens out of the country’s total of 33M. The official language of Quebec is French; it […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)
The American presidential election (4)
January 9th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Iowa and now New Hampshire. This is certainly proving to be an utterly fascinating race with the polls consistently wrong and fluctuating fortunes of the various candidates. On the Democratic side, most of the media attention is on Hillary Clinton and ‘my’ candidate Barack Obama, but my good friend Eric Lee – who is American […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)