Peter Rhodes on declining populations, elusive artefacts and comparing Putin with Hitler
China's population has fallen by 2.08 million over two years. China is not alone in facing the challenges of demography and throwing up some fascinating statistical tit-bits in the process. For example, Japan now manufactures more nappies for old people than for babies. The future is damp.
In Digging for Britain (BBC1) TV historian Alice Roberts creates the impression that the wealth and trinkets of empires are waiting to be found just beneath our feet. As they are – sort of. I have a friend who, while walking in the Peak District, dug up a microlith, a tiny, tooled piece of flint used 15,000 years ago for skinning creatures or as an arrow-head. However, to put this in perspective, he is the only friend, colleague or acquaintance I know who has ever dug up anything archaeologically interesting, anywhere.
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron draws this comparison between Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin: “This is like being a foreign minister or a leader of Europe in the 1930s, we have got to not appease Putin.”
There are actually monumental differences between the two dictators yet if you study Hitler's takeover of Czechoslovakia, you find chilling similarities to the language used by Putin about Ukraine: it's not a proper country, our minorities there are being persecuted, we must defend our allies and our borders, and so on. And when the dictator eventually invades, as he planned all along, he gives the command: “To the outside world it must clearly appear that it is merely a peaceful action and not a warlike undertaking.” That was Adolf Hitler in October 1938 but doesn't it sound like Putin describing his “special military operation”?
TV crime-drama alert. Don't miss the excellent Kin (BBC) in which members of a foul-mouthed Irish crime family, some with big beards, slaughter their enemies for honour, history and heroin. Also, don't miss the excellent The Tourist (BBC) in which members of a foul-mouthed Irish crime family, some with big beards, slaughter their enemies for honour, history and heroin.
Having watched both series, I have great sympathy for anyone working for the Irish Tourist Board. Dublin? Nein danke.
