Photograph courtesy of Flickr user ucumari.
The House of Representatives has rejected a $700bn bailout for stricken Wall Street banks. The cause? Primarily rebellious Republican congressmen, less than 50% of whom backed the Republican administration’s proposal. Why? Because they fear for their seats — approval ratings for the bill vary from 12% to 22%, depending on [...]
Filed under: election2008, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on September 30th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Who’d have thought it could be so complicated? Unisex toilets are everywhere these days, but Manchester seems to have a new innovation: unisex urinals. How liberal. The cause of tension is presumably that the urinals are a little bit exposed. Even men want privacy sometimes. The future can only be unisex cubicles. What a [...]
Filed under: culture, jonathanbirch, socialcohesion, society on September 30th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of World Economic Forum
Last year I made a fairly failsafe prediction that David Cameron would have a good 2008. Gordon Brown’s contempt for PR was only ever going to boost his public image in the short term: foresaking spin is fine until you have a policy to present or defend (say: a tax [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics on September 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »
I was saddened to see Michael Reiss step down today as the Royal Society’s Director of Education. I have been following the furore over his supposedly pro-Creationist remarks — noting the complete absence of incriminating direct quotations in any of the reports. The reality, obviously, is that Reiss is no Creationist. He thinks Creationism is [...]
Filed under: education, jonathanbirch, religion on September 16th, 2008 | No Comments »
They always have to go one better, don’t they? The week Europe tries to recreate the Big Bang, America decides to kick off the Big Crunch. In the eye of the storm stands US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson: perhaps the world’s most powerful man, at least for this week. The kind of financial titan we’d [...]
Filed under: gambling, jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics, uspolitics on September 16th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user senemkaya
As we walked down a street in the quiet Portici neighbourhood of Naples, a campaign van made its slow journey past the ruins of Herculaneum, megaphone blaring (admittedly unknown) political slogans. Though oblivious to its meaning, it certainly made us think of the vastly different political culture that exists in [...]
Filed under: clarepoliticsonholiday, fascism, graffiti, italy on September 8th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user jmtimages
Funny how often you hear talk of the “Great American Novel”, as though the only national identity worth having is one that can be embodied in a book. In the latest much-publicised G.A.N. contender, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (a terrific piece of work notwithstanding the hype), America is not so much [...]
Filed under: barackobama, election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on September 8th, 2008 | No Comments »
