@lionheart564 yes Chinese civilisation, and Japanese, were more comprehendible to Europeans than African, the kind of literary and artistic culture was more recognisable. (To the extent than when, say, the Benin Bronzes were found in Benin, europeans were convinced they derived from a different culture.)

The concept of different races did exist…[Read more]

@lionheart564 yes scale makes a difference. Not that I think it’s impossible, but the initial circumstances were so different.

And thank you. To be honest, he won’t, but he copes. I’m sorry about your family member, cancer on its own is bad enough luck.

@lionheart564 yes I had a quick look at what healthcare in China consists of, because I realised we might be coming from very different perspectives there. I honestly don’t know what would have become of my boyfriend by now under your system, or any system other than the kind we live under. Which makes me somewhat partial. But I grew up with my…[Read more]

@lionheart564 yes I had a quick look at what healthcare in China consists of, because I realised we might be coming from very different perspectives there. I honestly don’t know what would have become of my boyfriend by now under your system, or any system other than the kind we live under. Which makes me somewhat partial. But I grew up with my…[Read more]

@lionheart564 it is a fact that ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ mean different things to different people. I don’t feel that what Marx was getting at was the kind of ‘communism’ that occurred in China and the USSR.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who lived under the USSR suggested in one of his works that part of the problem there was that people were not…[Read more]

@lionheart564 I have a different experience in the UK- train services, Water companies, both have become less efficient while being profit driven. Admittedly, those are not in direct competition, but also, different energy providers, different internet providers, no good experiences there. This might in part be because ‘government controlled’…[Read more]

Double posted so got rid of one.

@lionheart564 the book sounds very interesting, but I’m also interested at how you watch a television program that discusses the evils of post-slavery racism towards black people and think, so emphatically, ‘what I really want to watch is an episode full of black people being racist towards whites.’

In terms of Doctor Who, the Silerian two-parter…[Read more]

@thane16 I’ve recommended this book to someone else on here, but do see if you get can hold of David Graeber’s ‘Debt: the first 5,000 years’. It’s not objective (no book is in my opinion) but throughly researched and well argued, and very interesting on this history of the idea of ‘The Great God Market’ (and why this is such a good way of putting…[Read more]

@lionheart564 when a company is profit driven it will tend to start to prioritise profits. The NHS, struggling with budgets, will extensively treat elderly people suffering from cancer as well as other medical conditions, spend a lot of money on treatment for people who don’t, for other reasons, have much time left.

I also fear that a company…[Read more]

@lionheart564 how would publicly owned and regulated education and health service companies be in competition with each other, though? If they’re not profit driven, their main order of business is to do as much as they can do with the available budget.

@jimthefish then again Capaldi seems immensely Socttish, and his parents are Irish and Italian…

@lionheart564 the only thing with that argument is that the originals made a lot of social commentary. The Empire is facist, it’s clearly singled as facist, down to the designs of the uniforms. Princess Leia is an important political figure who strangled Jabba the Hutt to death with his own chains. I agree that sub plot, at present, looks as…[Read more]

@lionheart564 that’s an interesting point and thanks for your perspective. It does leave the fact that British people of Chinese ethnicity would have a different emotional response to ‘yellow face’, and are sometimes on the receiving end of racism within this country. So an episode focusing on racism within China would still be problematic and not…[Read more]

I’m wondering if this episode, despite appearances, really is part of the arch.

I’m very disturbed by the way the Chris North character was declaring ‘this is how I become president’ while shooting the spider. We’ve moved from 50’s USA, to a 2018 businessman from the States with ambitions for the presidency. We have a Doctor absolutely and…[Read more]

@nekrosys this current series has been designed as something of a new starting point, not particularly weighed down by history, so it might not be a bad place to start. Alternatively, the beginning of the reboot was the beginning of Who for a lot of people.

The thing about Doctor Who is that it changes with each regeneration, and changes…[Read more]

@geoffers the sad thing is that so many people do think masculinity is that fragile… or I could say that some people’s masculinity is so fragile – or even that the nature of masculinity in a patriarchal society is by definition fragile, since a lot of people (including a lot of writers in the early modern period) were dependent on the support of…[Read more]

@lionheart564 as I pointed out to @hobbyco, Rosa showed female racists, even one he referred to while trying to make a point about portrayal of heterosexuals.

As for racism from people who aren’t white, the last series showed Bill, encountering a blue person for the first time, and inadvertently coming across as, well, a little racist.

@hobbyco wow, that’s quite a stretch.

First episode, bad guy was an alien.

Second episode – yes, I think Art Malik was playing a bad guy. He engineered a death race. So the bad guy was Asian.

Third episode, the bad guy was a white male. The time traveller. It’s interesting that you’ll reference the wife of one of the other characters to make a…[Read more]

@emmakay: that’s always been a part of the show.

Except For That Time: Political and Social Awareness in Doctor Who