bill bryson: the body

I love Bill Bryson’s writing! I’ve just finished his excellent book ‘The Body: A Guide for Occupants’. It’s absolutely packed with fascinating observations and detail. In the penultimate chapter (‘Medicine Good and Bad’), for example, here are just a FEW extracts about health in the US (note: by quoting this stuff, I’m not ‘having a go’ at the US – I’m merely aware that, eventually it seems to me, the UK follows America’s ‘lead’ in virtually everything!):

• “With regard to life expectancy… it is not a good idea to be an American”.
• “For every 400 middle-aged Americans who die each year, just 220 die in Australia, 230 in Britain, 290 in Germany and 300 in France”.
• “America spends more on health care than any other nation – two and a half times more per person than the average for all the other developed countries”.
• “Yet despite the generous spending, and the undoubted high quality of American hospitals and health care generally, the US comes just 31^st in global rankings, behind Cyprus, Costa Rica and Chile, and just ahead of Cuba and Albania. How to explain such a paradox? Well, to begin with, and most inescapably, Americans lead more unhealthy lifestyles than most other people... As Allan S Detsky observed in the ‘New Yorker’, ‘Even wealthy Americans are not isolated from a lifestyle filled with oversized food portions, physical inactivity, and stress.’ The average Dutch or Swedish citizen consumes about 20% fewer calories than the average American, for instance.”

Although Bryson (who was born in Iowa, but a British resident for most of his adult life) is enthusiastic about the UK’s NHS, he points out: “For Britain, cancer survival rates are grim and ought to be a matter of national concern”.  He’s also critical about the UK spending “too little” on health care: “The ‘British Medical Journal’ reported in early 2019 that cuts to health and social care budgets between 2010 and 2017 led to about 120,000 early deaths in the UK, a pretty shocking finding”.

Fascinating (and sobering) stuff.

dark waters...

I went along to the Watershed this morning (I know!) to watch Todd Haynes’ “Dark Waters”.

It’s a shocking and true story of a corporate lawyer Robert Bilott (impressively played by Mark Ruffalo) and his decades-long battle against the large chemical company, DuPont, who knowingly dumped toxic materials on local land in West Virginia - poisoning animals… and people.

It’s a frightening story that powerfully underlines the stark reality… corporations rule the world! Corporations have unprecedented power, resources and, crucially, loads of ‘dosh’.

Whatever YOU think, whatever GOVERNMENTS think… Corporations can effectively “do what they like”. If someone argues or disagrees with them (even, it seems, governments), they argue back… and they WIN. They wear opponents down… you don’t stand a chance (whether you’re a business or an individual).

We constantly come up against instances where corporations/companies are fined comparatively paltry sums for breaking the law… and they do so because they know that the huge financial benefits (or, in the case of the ‘Leave’ campaign during the Referendum, for example, political results?) far exceed the penalties - make taking the risks MASSIVELY worthwhile.

Clearly, this story is exceptional in that, thanks to the single-handed determination of a pedantic lawyer, the appalling conduct of a corporation IS exposed… and you have to be aware that all this took place against a backdrop of a corporation who ‘generously’ rewarded communities living adjacent their business undertakings… by helping them to build community centres, libraries and such like (but, in fact, the amounts in question represented a tiny drop in a huge ocean compared with corporation’s high financial rewards). As you might imagine, members of such communities were loathe to find fault with such ‘benefactors’… until Bilott was able to prove that DuPont were (and had been) directly, and knowingly, responsible for hundreds of (early) deaths (and birth deformities) that had taken place within their State over the course of several decades.

DuPont come out of this mess appallingly… after being ‘found out’, they reneged on a vital legal commitment following proof of their guilt (resulting fines far outweighed by not having to pay out damages) – effectively forcing the ‘injured parties’ to fight on a case-to-case basis… with DuPont assuming that individuals would be scared off by the expense and commitment required. But, thankfully, Bilott DOES pursue EACH of the cases… the first results in a fine of more than a million dollars; the second even more; the third well exceeds that… and so on.

The story is utterly frightening… and underlines just how powerless most of us feel in the face of controlling corporations. But, very occasionally, their actions are exposed by amazingly brave individuals who just aren’t prepared to give up without a fight (even if such action might have serious implications for ‘everything’ – their future, their family, and even their own life) in order to expose the truth.  

The headline of a subsequent article in the New York Times (and on which the film was based) summed things up perfectly: “The lawyer who became DuPont’s worst nightmare”.

A brilliant film and one that I think you should see.

trump state visit?

I am utterly APPALLED that Trump has been invited on a state visit to the UK in June…
You will probably be aware that a state visit is a formal visit by a head of state and is normally at the invitation of the Queen, who acts on advice from the government. Were we, the electorate, consulted? Of course not.
Frankly, it beggars belief.
When Trump visited the UK in July last year, he avoided coming to London (“he did not particularly want to come to the capital if he was going to face protests”!). Even so, the bill for policing Trump’s visit was £18million. State visits usually include a procession down the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace (where the Queen would normally host a banquet for around 150 guests “in Mr Trump’s honour”) and, if this were to happen, you can be sure that the police bill will be FAR MORE than £18million! I can only imagine what measures the US security people will insist on being adopted (armed forces? extensive/excessive kettling of crowds?).
It seems that the visit has been arranged to coincide with the 75^th anniversary of the D-day landings and number10 has indicated that the event would be “one of the greatest British military spectacles in recent history” and would include a flypast of 26 types of RAF aircraft and at least 11 Royal Navy ships in the Solent.
I, for one, don’t want to mark the occasion in such a blatant militaristic way.

At a time when the world is failing to come to terms with Climate Change and the UK is struggling with Brexit (not to mention dire funding issues in education, welfare, health and a host of other issues), it’s as if the UK government has decided that a visit from Trump will deflect our attention from such matters.

Ironically, given the state of UK politics at the present time, one is tempted to wonder who will actually be prime minister or in government by the time of Trump's visit!
I absolutely do NOT want to provide Trump with a centre-stage opportunity to share his bigoted, racist, narcissistic, ignorant, dangerous and fatuous opinions.  
It depresses me in the extreme.
This morning’s editorial in The Guardian got it absolutely right in my view:
"Rolling out the red carpet for a US president ought to be easier than this. Britain and America share a ‘special relationship’ which rests on a common language, histories and ideals. Yet Donald Trump makes building on this impossible. He is no friend of this country. The president has repeatedly attacked leading British politicians, singling out London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan. He retweets fascists. On the day news emerged that Mr Trump would be accorded a state visit to Britain, he was threatening to veto a UN resolution against the use of rape as a weapon of war. America has been taken over by a demagogue who sees Brexit as an opportunity for a rabble-rouser to rise here too. He is a dangerous liar whom racists and misogynists think of as one of their own. Mr Trump ought to be held at a distance, not invited for dinner with the Queen… Mr Trump is a media-savvy operator. He uses the world stage as a political advert for his brand of mendacious nationalism. Mr Trump did meet the Queen last year on a flying visit on the way to ceremonies in France to mark the 1918 armistice. Before he arrived, he had attacked Angela Merkel over the level of Germany’s defence spending at a Nato summit. On the day of his meeting with Theresa May he criticised her in an interview with the Sun while lavishing praise on her rival Boris Johnson. He then went to France and mocked the country for not fighting to the last man when under Nazi occupation. One shudders at the thought of headlines generated by a state visit which coincides with the 75th anniversary of D-day.
Mr Trump does not care what Britain, or any other US ally, thinks. He only wants them to know he does not care what they think. That is why Mrs May has failed to change Mr Trump’s mind on the Iran nuclear deal or the Paris agreement on climate change. It is why he rashly committed to withdrawing troops from Syria and Afghanistan without telling allies.
During his last visit, Mr Trump avoided central London due to the expected protests. He will have to endure them this time. John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, refused to offer Mr Trump an invitation to address parliament. He has previously said it was an ‘earned honour’ and not a right. Mr Trump has earned no such distinction. He engineered the most racially divisive US election in years, ranting about Mexican ‘rapists’ and promising a Muslim travel ban. In office his draconian border policy caged migrant children in isolation from their parents. Mr Trump gives the impression of destroying, not defending, democracy. Giving him a platform in Westminster won’t oil the springs of diplomacy. It will just allow another eruption from a fountain of dishonour”.
As I keep saying: “Not In My Name”.

vice…

I went along to the Watershed this afternoon to see Adam McKay’s film ‘Vice’ which, according to Watershed’s blurb, is the “untold story that changed the course of history forever”. Well, I’m not sure that that’s strictly accurate but it’s certainly a fascinating and powerful story (‘biopic’?) about Dick Cheney, one of the world’s most powerful political men, who was Vice President to George W Bush… often cited as the most powerful Vice President in American history.
Christian Bale plays Cheney and he’s stunningly good… and VERY convincing (yet another Oscar contender). Actually, all the main characters were excellent (Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney; Steve Carell as Rumsfeld; Sam Rockwell as Bush).
It purports to be fact rather than fiction. Indeed, at the very start of the film, we’re told:
“The following is a true story. Or as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney is known as one of the most secretive leaders in recent history. But we did our f**king best”!
Cheney went from being Secretary of Defence, to White House Chief of Staff, to a CEO of energy giant Halliburton, and finally to George W Bush’s second in command – although, in the film at least, Cheney seems to pull ALL the strings.

I really didn’t know what to expect from the film… knowing the political history, I was pretty sure it would make me angry (which it did)… but I hadn’t realised that it would also be quite hilarious at times (I know!). There’s almost an element of a Michael Moore film (with its various voice-overs) in the way it’s presented. I found it incredibly scary to realise (if the film is anywhere near accurate) just how much power Cheney had and how he was able to wield it in the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and how corporations were mobilised through influential thinktanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. I’ve read an interview with the director, Adam McKay, in which he describes Cheney, alongside Donald Rumsfeld, as having orchestrated a “rightwing stealth-revolution that ushered in a sustained era of Republican power and idealism” in the late 1970s… with President Reagan claiming that “true individuals don’t need government” and proposing tax breaks for billionaires(?). For me, it was a reminder of the depressing Thatcher Days in the UK in the early 1980s.

Cheney clearly had enormous political power… quiet, focused, deliberate, secretive and, to my mind, incredibly sinister. After all the controversy three years ago about Hillary Clinton using her family's private email server for official communications rather than using official State Department email accounts, I thought it was telling that McKay’s film ended with a list of frightening ‘facts’ that had emerged about Cheney’s Vice President office – including the THOUSANDS of emails that were destroyed in violation of the requirements of the federal records act!

In some ways, I felt that the film was made for the likes of me… someone with ‘liberal principles’(?) who had lived through the Reagan days – as well, obviously, the Twin Towers and the Iraq War – confirming my prejudices perhaps? American Republicans will no doubt dislike McKay’s interpretation of events – even they love Bale’s performance. For me, depressingly, the way matters were hidden or manipulated by Cheney and his entourage echoed much of what I suspect is still happening in the world of politics today – both in the USA and in the UK.

Did I enjoy the film? Well yes I did. I found it both captivating and entertaining (and somewhat frightening) – although, at times, I found the biopic style and voice-overs a little off-putting.
But definitely worthwhile seeing, especially for Christian Bale's performance.

fahrenheit 11/9…

I went along to the Watershed this morning (yes, this morning... again) to see Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 11/9”. The thing about Michael Moore is that you know what you’re going to get, so the film was a predictably impressive, satirical, anti-establishment analysis of Trump (he compares Hitler to Trump), the Republican Party… AND the Democratic Party (they ALL get condemned in their various ways). It seems that Bernie Saunders is one of the very few politicians who comes out of the film in a positive light. In July 2016, Michael Moore (no fan of Trump!) wrote an essay entitled “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win” and was duly labelled as a ‘doomsayer’.
The rest, as they say, is history… and, according to Moore, we’re all complicit.
Sadly, it’s all very well us in the UK shaking our heads in despair of decency and democracy in the US but, frighteningly, the same thing is happening on our own doorstep. There’s a very real sense that corporations and big business (not to mention the odd foreign power) are influencing elections and how we think.
It’s quite a long film (just over 2 hours long), but I found it completely compelling and tremendously persuasive… albeit depressing. Perhaps it dwelt a little too long on the water fiasco at Flint, Michigan (where Moore lives), which he for which he lays at the feet of the state’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder (Moore uses the piece to illustrate what he sees as power, corruption and deception). It’s frequently funny, but it also makes you squirm uncomfortably. One of the key matters from Trump’s election that is highlighted in the film is this: Trump voters 63million; Clinton voters 66million; non-voters 100million. Moore acknowledges that Trump has learnt from other big business leaders that you can get away with negligence and cronyism. The film is certainly a warning (to us all!).

If you’d expected Moore to be rousing and encouraging, you’d be disappointed (but he is powerful and convincing). He suggests that the principal hope might be the next generation (he trumpets the work of the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and the aggressive anti-gun protests they’ve led) or, just possibly, if more people are prepared to stand up and fight against what’s happening in America (he reminds us of the general strike that teachers in West Virginia engaged in over the appalling meanness of their pay, and how that action spread to other states). It's a very impressive film and one that's well worth seeing.

There IS dissent happening across America (and across the UK in the ugly shadow of Brexit) and people ARE calling for change. Resistance is not futile, but is it enough? Is it too late already?
PS: The film's title relies on US date notation to refer to November 9, when Trump's 2016 presidential win was announced (the election took place the day prior). The title simultaneously serves as a callback to Moore's 2004 political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which refers to the date of the September 11 attacks in the United States. Both of Moore's documentary titles are an allusion to the 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (taken from Wikipedia).
PPS: The excellent photograph montage is from The Irish Times.

marching against trump…

They reckon a quarter of a million people were in London yesterday in protest against virtually everything the US president stands for and says (and there were lots of other marches around the country, including Bristol). The protesters were happy, peaceful, dignified, colourful, noisy… and DETERMINED to demonstrate to Mr Trump and the world (as if he would take any notice!) that the UK does NOT love him.
Indeed, we don’t!

Inevitably, today’s newspapers are all about Trump. I suspect that most will convey a similar message to our Guardian newspaper, so (perhaps for the benefit of my American friends?) here are just a couple of brief extracts to give you a flavour:

“The British government did its absolute best – given that the streets of the cities were full of protesters – to lay on a glittering welcome for Mr Trump this week. Blenheim, Sandhurst, Chequers, Windsor – you don’t get much more in the way of British establishment red carpet than that. But this reckoned without the Trump character and, more sinisterly, the Trump political project. The president undermined Mrs May before he even left America. He bullied and lied at the Nato summit in Brussels. He then gave an explosive and deliberately destabilising interview to Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Sun’ on the very day of his arrival in Britain…
This guaranteed that Friday’s press conference at Chequers would be purgatorial for Mrs May and maybe even a little chastening for the president and his team. And so it proved, in spite of what had clearly been the private reading of the diplomatic equivalent of the Riot Act to Mr Trump. But it was not just the rudeness that mattered – though rudeness does matter, a lot, both in personal and in public things. It was the political impact and consequence. That unmistakable consequence is that Mr Trump’s America can no longer be regarded with certainty as a reliable ally for European nations committed to the defence of liberal democracy. That is an epochal change for Britain and for Europe…
A president who supported the Atlantic alliance, the stability of Europe and liberal democratic values – in short, every other US president of the postwar era… would have tried to help, would have seen the EU-UK problem as one that needed solving, and would have used his influence to get America’s European allies to find a shared way forward after Brexit. Such a president would have been doing the right thing. But Mr Trump is not such a president. He is not our ally. He is hostile to our interests and values. He may even, if this goes on, become a material threat…
This week he deliberately inflamed the politics of Europe and of Britain” (Guardian Editorial 14 July).

“This was a far cry from Bill Clinton strolling through Hyde Park during his presidential swansong or Barack Obama dropping in on a primary school in Newport. For Trump, making his first visit to the UK as president, there was no park and no school, no 10 Downing Street, no Houses of Parliament and no Buckingham Palace. Nor was this the state visit that May had promised when she dashed to Washington shortly after Trump took office. The tens of thousands of people marching in the streets of London might have had something to do with it” (David Smith, The Guardian).

Rest assured American friends, there’s never been such UK press comment (and there will have been other similar comments in other newspapers today, I assure you) about ANY president in my entire lifetime!

In order to avoid a transport nightmare on the day itself, I’d travelled up to London the night before and stayed over in Bromley – thanks to my good friend Becki’s kind hospitality. It meant that I was able to get into central London quite early (and seeing the ‘baby trump’ inflatable in Parliament Square as a bonus!). I relaxed over coffee on the Southbank and the sun was shining… so I decided to make my way slowly across town to Portland Place (immediately adjacent the BBC’s Broadcasting House). Initially, I’d planned to take part in the main march (from Portland Place to Trafalgar Square - which was due to start at 2pm) but ended up walking with the Women’s March (Portland Place to Parliament Square – starting at noon) because, when I first arrived just after 11am, there were already crowds gathering. By an absolute fluke, I also met up with my great friends Diane and Steve Eyre, and so we were able to march together (what a very special bonus that was!).

Predictably (I’ve been on a fair few demonstrations in the past, so I know!), I didn’t actually need to have made my own placard – there were literally hundreds provided at street corner pick-ups. But, I’m glad I did… it was MY statement (although I could have added lots of other adjectives describing my opinion of Mr Trump!)… and it provoked lots of positive comment and endorsement.

 

Of course, we all knew that Trump was avoiding London like the plague… but it didn’t matter. Was it worth making the journey to the UK capital for a few hours “just to take part in a political demonstration” that was unlikely(!) to bring a change of heart to this so-called leader of the western world? Yes, absolutely. And, whatsmore, I felt that I was also there representing dozens of family members and friends who weren’t able to make the trip (one of the bonuses of retirement)… and, indeed, in solidarity with my friends from the USA.

Small voices against the extremes of political power… a token gesture? Well, maybe. But actually, I think it wasn’t just a message for Mr Trump… it was message to politicians/political parties throughout the world and, IN PARTICULAR, a message to our own politicians and parties here in the UK.