Archive for December, 2021


What’s the most fearful Christmas that you can imagine?

December 5th, 2021 by Roger Darlington

Something to do with the global pandemic? Perhaps evidence that the newly-discovered Omicron variant is more transmissible, more virulent and more resistant to current vaccines than all previous variants. Something to do with weather, climate or geology? Perhaps something on the scale of the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004 which killed a quarter of a […]

Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)


A review of the new French film “Petite Maman”

December 4th, 2021 by Roger Darlington

Just before the first lockdown in the long-running global pandemic, I saw the French-language “Portrait Of A Lady On Fire” which I loved. In spite of covid restrictions, the same team has now managed to produce the low-budget “Petite Maman” which I was quick to see while it was still in cinemas. Again it is […]

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)


If a substantial sum of money unexpectedly appeared in your bank account, what would you do?

December 4th, 2021 by Roger Darlington

This is what happened in August 2020 to Helen Peters [not her real name] when she found that Her Majesty’s Revenues & Customs (HMRC) deposited in her bank account the sum of £774,839.39. She decided to wait and see what would happen but found herself spending almost £20,000 before contacting a newspaper to ask what […]

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


A review of the film “How I Live Now”

December 3rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington

This 2013 film is something of an oddity and I only checked it out (on television) eight years later because I’m a fan of the work of Irish actress Saoirse Ronan (“Hanna”, “Brooklyn”, “Ammonite”). She plays an American teenager with mental health issues who is sent to spend time with a bohemian English family and […]

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)


Ever heard of the Thucydides’ Trap?

December 2nd, 2021 by Roger Darlington

In foreign policy discussions, this is a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. As he explained, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The term was popularised by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an […]

Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (0)