England Kilomathon 14 March

Daft name, exaggerated rhetoric, and exorbitant entry fee, but difficult to avoid the challenge if you live in Derby, so here goes...

Schama on Obama's Foreign Policy

Simon Schama's programme, Obama's America: the Price of Freedom, broadcast on the BBC on 12/1/2010, makes the argument that President Harry Truman's handling of the Korean War provides salient lessons for President Obama in Afghanistan. Truman settled for a policy, he suggests, that was 'compromised, messy, local, and realistic.' Containment, supported by the military cost of an American army of over 30,000 men as late as 2009, provided the opportunity for South Korea to experience both prosperity and freedom. The Vietnam war, by contrast, was prompted by John F. Kennedy's promise that the United States would 'pay any price,bear any burden... to assure the survival and the success of liberty.' The result was military failure and the loss of 58,000 American and several million Vietnamese lives. The danger in Afghanistan, Schama seemed to suggest, was to believe that it might be possible to completely crush the Taliban, just as General Douglas MacArthur had believed that he could destroy the Communists in Korea. Obama's statement that American troops might return home as early as July 2011, following a victory created by the steady increase in troops through 2009 and 2010, seems unduly optimistic, when seen from the perspective of the long-term American military presence in Korea. On the other hand, whether containment can be as effective in the very different conditions of the contemporary Middle East as it was in post-World War II Europe or Korea is open to question. A continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan might soon come to seem like an army of occupation.

Irisgate: 'where is god in all of this?'

The continuing exposures of the Robinsons, including the Panorama special on Monday 11 January, prompt a range of reactions. First, religious commitment and claims to biblical purity are not always opposed to personal aggrandisement, ostentatious display or personal insensitivity. There's always something particularly satisfying when a passionate denouncer ( ( particularly from the fundamentalist corner ) of the other people's sins bites the dust. At the same time Peter Robinson's performance at Stormont while his wife was recovering from a failed suicide attempt was notably cool and self-controlled, and suggested someone trying very hard to keep the lid firmly shut. But there was also the unedifying spectacle of lines of sanctimonious men queuing up to denounce yet another 'mad' woman, and the curious spectacle of Dr. Selwyn Black, Iris's political adviser since January 2008, with his storehouse of saved messages and emails. And where in June 2008, was either God or Dr. Black, when Iris denounced homosexuality as an 'abomination'?

Derby tops national list of empty city centre shops

A Local Data Company report published in Summer 2009 shows Derby as having the highest percentage of major urban centre vacancy rates in England and Wales. While the report identifies the recession as a key factor in the rise in empty shops both in Derby and nationally, it tends to neglect the specific local impact of the arrival of Westfield on the city, and the way it has undermined the old centre.

Derby eating and drinking

Derby's Royal Standard makes Guardian list of '10 urban pubs that could be in the countryside.'