Current affairs

The US Presidential Election Now that the dust has settled on the date when England celebrates Bonfire Night and Europe marked  the 35th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's collapse, let's highlight 2024's November 5th as the occasion of America's Presidential election.   For weeks in the run-up to polling day, all of the experts eshewed predictions about the likely winner.  The Presidential race was, by all accounts, too close to call.  The question is - how in the modern age can all of America's psephologists and experienced pundits so badly misjudge their research as Republicans proved them wrong storming to victory with majority control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.  No need for recounts or for recourse to prolonged legal challenges, and - mercifully, no call to storm the heart of American democracy, the Capitol in Washington DC. Instead emphatic adjectives like momentous, historic and unprecedented appeared in respons...

Three topical issues have grabbed public attention during this beautiful summer. The first was the life-affirming campaign by a County Tyrone mother Charlotte Caldwell to have cannabis oil for medicinal use legalised in the UK.   Health has been newsworthy this month as the UK marks the 70 th anniversary of the foundation of the National Health Service (5 July 1948). By coincidence, Jeanette Lewis’s informative article in Exploring Retirement [i] has reported about Canada’s intention to legalise recreational cannabis this autumn.     She explains that the THC cannabis chemical produces intoxicating effects, whereas its CBD chemical is non-intoxicating.   CBD produces medicinal benefits, including for the treatment of nausea after chemotherapy, for epileptic seizures and for arthritis.    Public sympathy was aroused following the confiscation by customs officials in London of CBD oils which Mrs Caldwell had purchased in Canada.   In...