Photograph courtesy of Flickr user 1flatworld.
For me, the story of the U.S. election run-in has not been the story of the inevitable march to power of Barack Obama. It’s been the story of how an immeasurably more experienced candidate — John McCain — has rendered himself unelectable with a solid month of cackhanded campaigning. When [...]
Filed under: election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 28th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user shazam791.
Of all the bizarre and interesting features of the 2008 US presidential election, here’s one you may not have noticed: it’s the first time both tickets have been topped by a serving senator. It guarantees that America’s 44th president will be the third to assume the job from a Senate [...]
Filed under: barackobama, democracy, election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 8th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Army.mil
The 44th President of the United States will be a crisis president. But he won’t just have an economic disaster to deal with. He’ll also inherit twin military deployments in the region between Israel and India — an area we should perhaps think of as one massive region, one massive problem, but [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, barackobama, election2008, iraq, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »
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 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 »
Photograph courtesy of John McCain 2008.
I am hugely enjoying John McCain’s 2008 presidential run — and it’s obvious he is too. I love the witty adverts and the non-messianic tone. I admire his gravitas, his experience, his foreign policy convictions and his efforts to clean up Washington. His astonishing gamble on a 44-year old Alaskan [...]
Filed under: election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on August 30th, 2008 | 8 Comments »
