Archive for April, 2019
A guide to the 20 hopefuls running to be the Democratic candidate for the American presidency
April 30th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In Britain, Brexit may have gone quiet but, in the United States, politics never stops – thanks to constant tweets from President Trump and regular announcements of yet another Democratic politician who would like to be the person to knock Donald out of the White House in November 2020. The list of declared candidates in […]
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
What do you know about the nation of Nauru?
April 29th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I am a fan of the American television series “Madam Secretary” which is broadcast in the UK on the Sky Witness channel. A strength of the series is that – as with “The West Wing” – it features very contemporary and controversial political issues. So, for instance, a recent episode highlighted the impact of climate […]
Posted in Environment, World current affairs | Comments (0)
50 years ago today, I joined the Labour Party
April 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I guess that I’m tribal in my politics: I’ve never missed an opportunity to vote, I’ve never voted anything other than Labour, and I now have half a century of continuous membership of the Labour Party. The Party has been through many travails in that time and indeed is going through great difficulties now with […]
Posted in British current affairs, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
“Observer” journalist Carole Cadwalladr calls out the tech giants in this TED talk
April 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
A review of the novel “Ordinary People” by Diana Evans
April 21st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In the United States in 1976, there was the publication of a novel called “Ordinary People” by Judith Guest which four years later was made into a film of the same title that won four Academy Awards. I saw the film before then reading the book. In Britain in 2018, there was the publication of […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “Red Joan”
April 21st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Melita Norwood was a British civil servant who was recruited as a Soviet agent in 1937 and passed on valuable information about creation of the atomic bomb, yet managed to escape exposure until 1999 when she was 87. Her story is the inspiration for this film in which the character is named Joan Stanley and […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
How many candidates are there for the US presidential election of 2020?
April 20th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
The elections is not until November 2020 – 18 months away. For the Republicans, Donald Trump has been running since he was elected to the White House in November 2016 with regular campaign rallies, the likes of which we have never seen before from an incumbent president. For the Democrats, there is a massive field […]
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
How free is your country’s press?
April 18th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
The respected organisation Reporters Without Borders (RWB) each year publishes a review of the state of press freedom all around the world. This year, the top five are Norway, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark. The bottom five are Vietnam, China, Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan. You can see a ranking of 180 countries and a […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
What are we going to do about the growing challenge of dementia?
April 14th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I have previously done a posting about my participation in a study looking at the health risks which might predict the onset of dementia. The study, conducted by Imperial College in London, is called CHARIOT PRO – a abbreviation for Cognitive Health in Ageing Register: Investigational, Observational, and Trial studies in dementia research: Prospective Readiness […]
Posted in My life & thoughts, Social policy | Comments (2)
The making of American power (5): Trump’s foreign policy
April 12th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This week, I attended the last session of an excellent eight-week evening class at London”s City Literary Institute. The title was “The making of American power: US foreign policy from the Cold War to Trump” and our able lecturer was Jack Gain. Week 8 of the course was about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy over the last […]
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (1)