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Two of my interests are regulation (I'm a member of the Ofcom Consumer Panel) and blogging (I run two blogs - this one and a professional blog). But regulators and blogs are two words that rarely go together, since regulators are so incredibly cautious about how they communicate with consumers.
An exception is the Food Standards Agency (FSA) where the Chief Scientist runs a blog. He has used the topical 'hook' of Christmas to give some good advice on healthy living here.
I've used some of the quiet time over the Christmas/New Year period to reoganise the film reviews on my web site. There are now well over 500.
You can check them out here.
The Storm botnet, or Storm worm botnet, is a massive network of computers linked by the Storm worm Trojan horse in a botnet, a group of "zombie" computers controlled remotely. It is estimated to run on anything between 1M and 50M computers and those who've put it together clearly have nefarious purposes in mind.
You can read more about it here.
In today's "Observer" newspaper, John Naughton writes of 2008:
"we may finally discover what the Storm 'botnet' - the colossal network of compromised Windows machines someone has been covertly building over the past year - is for. My hunch is that the net is headed for its own version of 9/11. So enjoy it while it lasts. Happy New Year."
The most popular page in my web site collection of life skills advice on 24 matters is that on "How To Be Happy".
In an article in today's "Guardian", Harvard's 'professor of happiness' offers his advice which can be summarized as:
So now you know ....
I find it difficult to think of blogging about anything today other than the death of Benazir Bhutto. Yesterday we were driving up to Leicester to spend the day with a gathering of all the immediate members of my family. On the car radio, we were told that a bomb had gone off at a political rally in Pakistan but that Bhutto had already left the scene. When we reached our gathering, relatives told us of her death.
All violent deaths are horrible, but there is something especially revolting about the murder of people simply for their political views. Sadly the Indian sub-continent has a bloody history of such assassinations including Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Nehru.
In the United States, we saw the assassination of John F Kennedy followed by his younger brother Robert F Kennedy. Even peaceful Sweden has seen the killing of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh.
Fortunately political assassinations are almost unheard of in British public life. However, there was one British prime Minister Spencer Perceval who was assassinated. On 11 May 1812, he was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons on his way to attend an inquiry into the recent Luddite riots. The assassin was John Bellingham, a merchant who had incurred business debts in Russia.
Having spent the morning running [see photo here], Vee's nephew David and his wife Sharon joined the rest of Vee's immediate family to spend Christmas Day with us. They brought along David's Christmas present to Sharon: a Nintendo Wii game console.
Now I'm not into gaming and certainly first person shooter games and fantasy games hold no attraction for me, but I quite enjoyed playing bowling and golf on the Wii - which apparently is aimed at a wider consumer base than many other games consoles.
A few days ago, I blogged about how my biography of the World War Two night intruder ace who was my wife's father keeps coming back into our lives. The Czech Karel Kuttelwascher flew a particular Hawker Hurricane IIC which he called "Night Reaper".
Today, to our astonishment, Vee and I received a Christmas present from her twin sister Mari and her brother-in-law Derek which is a metal cast 1:32 scale model of the "Night Reaper" produced by Corgi. We had no idea that the model existed.
You can see details here.
Clyde McPhatter & The Drfiters say (sing) it much better than me here.
I know that my web site and blogs are visited by up to 5,000 people a day because my traffic statistics tell me exactly what's happening day by day. But it's wonderful when I hear from a visitor I don't know and find that some of the material has proved helpful in some way.
Today I received this e-mail:
"I have two friends, Kath and Margaret, who are currently rowing across the Atlantic together with 20-odd other competing boats. Their site is here. They love daily jokes, and I found your site to be the best source I could find for quality material. Every day I send them a selection from your site, via sat phone. So thanks, on behalf of Kath, Margaret and myself. You are inadvertently making their rather tough days a little brighter and a little easier! You have a huge, wise, and wonderful site."If you want to check out the jokes in question, you'll find them here and here.
I haven't had occasion to think about Uzbekistan for a while, but this morning two matters brought the country to mind.
First, we had a Christmas card from one of the members of the small group with which we toured Uzbekistan last year. You can read my account of that trip here.
Second, I read a newspaper report of the re-election this week of the President of Uzbekistan, the hardliner Islam Karimov who has now been in power since 1991. You can read the article here.
Karimov has around 300 political dissidents and some 8,000 religious prisoners in his brutal jails, while his people live on average wages of $24 (£12) a month.
This evening, I watched the final programme of interviews by 72 year old Michael Parkinson - a compilation of clips from some of the many, many fascinating guests he has had over 36 years on both BBC and ITV.
He was the consummate interviewer who could persuade very public people to reveal very private aspects of their lives and do it in a respectful, caring and often humorous manner. There is simply nobody on British television now doing serious interviews and our media is the poorer for it. Thanks, Parky.
You can see clips of some of his interviews here.
Actually I would have rather liked to be an interviewer myself. i always enjoy encouraging people to talk about themselves and am constantly amazed at how open and revealing people are prepared to be to me. Everybody has a story and everyone can teach me something.
As you will see from my web site essay on naming practices around the world - which I mentioned in a posting earlier this week - I am fascinated by names.
My father was English and my mother was Italian and they named their first child of three - me - Roger. I was always very clear that I was called Roger because my father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force ("Roger, that!").
But recently I came across a King Roger who ruled in Sicily in the 12th century. He extended his empire to embrace much of southern Italy including the Kingdom of Naples.
My mother came from Naples (indeed my parents were married there) and I wonder now whether she was happy with the name because of the echo with a local king. Both my parents are dead, so I can't ask them.
Incidentally King Roger II of Sicily was a politically enlightened and religiously tolerant leader.
One of my favourite sayings is: "It isn't over until it's over - and then it isn't over". This has certainly been the case regarding the book "Night Hawk" which I wrote in 1984 about the life of the Second World War night fighter ace who was my wife's father [his story here]. I keep thinking the story is behind me, but it keeps coming back with something new.
This afternoon, my wife and I were visited by John Weber of Bushey Heath. Now aged 75, he was 10 in 1942 when his father evacuated the family to Buckinghamshire and rented out the family house in Hendon, north London, to a Czech pilot called Flight Lieutenant Karel Kuttelwascher (my wife's farher).
John recalls a newspaper photograph - which he believes was taken at his home - of the Czechoslovak President in exile Eduard Benes presenting a Czech War Cross to Kuttelwascher on 11 August 1942. He would love to locate a copy of the photo to assist him in a painting which he would like to create, but sadly we have never seen such a photo, still less have a copy.
We were able to show John some of our many records of the exploits of Karel Kuttelwascher - but he was able to add to this archive with something totally new to us.
He gave us a DVD of a History Channel programme on the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Now we were well aware that the BBMF has painted one of its Hurricane aircraft in the colours of Kuttelwascher's aircraft [I blogged about this here]. But this programme had wartime footage of Kuttelwascher which we've never seen.
In the short clip, he is asked by an interviewer which is his favourite German aircraft and he responds: "Well, I don't mind. I like them all going down". We have seen a tiny film clip of him and we've heard a tiny audio clip of him, but this is the first time we have seen and heard him in the same piece of media.
Vee was only 15 when her father, the wartime hero, died and she naturally treasures such recollections of him.
John has managed to obtain a copy of my 1984 book "Night Hawk" which he wishes to present to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon since apparently their copy is falling apart. Vee and I were happy to sign it for him.
One of the things I like about this time of years is all the lists that come out about the year just ending. We've just had the information from National Statistics on the most popular baby names for 2007.
This has enabled me to up-date my very comprehensive web site essay on naming practices around the world which you can read here. The bit on new names in England & Wales is here.
What do the latest lists tell us?
First of all, it is striking how traditional most of the names are for both boys and girls, although for the boys it is interesting that the familiar form of names rather than the original version is often preferred - Jack instead of John (first for the 13th year running), Harry instead of Harold, Charlie instead of Charles.
In the case of boys, three of the top nine names begin with the letter 'J'. In the case of girls, five of the top ten names end with the sound 'ee' and 11 of the top 20 names contain one or more of the letter 'l'.
On the other hand, the name David - which is the second most common name in Britain - slipped out of the top 50 of names chosen for babies born in 2004 and has stayed out. Incidentally, a reflection of the changing ethnicity of the English population is that the 17th most popular name is Mohammed and the 38th is Muhammad.
As regular visitors to NightHawk will know, this blog has a strong international flavour on the grounds that Britain is not the world and we all need to know more about other parts of the globe.
Certain countries are proving particularly interesting because of their rate of economic growth and potential for international investment.
In 2003, merchant bankers Goldman Sachs coined the term BRIC which refers to Brazil, Russia, China and India.
Then, in 2003, the same merchant bank came up with the new term N11 or Next 11 referring to Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.
So, if you have money to invest on a global scale, these are economies for you consider. On the other hand, you're probably wondering how you're going to fund the family Christmas.
You have to pity the police - people are calling the emergency number 999 (really it should be 112 now) in ever greater numbers for often trivial reasons.
A compilation of 'non' 999 calls is being made available for the public to listen to in an effort to curb the number of nuisance calls the police receive. Five examples of such calls have been posted on the Cambridgeshire Constabulary website so members of the public can hear some of the non-emergency and nuisance calls that 999 call takers face day in, day out.
Check them out here.
As a member of Postwatch, the consumer watchdog for postal services, I am aware that Royal Mail is now experiencing its busiest time of the year, handling an anticipated over 2 billion letters and cards during the festive period.
Proving that Santa isn’t the only one working hard over Christmas, Royal Mail predicts that today will be its busiest day of the year. 123 million items are expected to enter the system today compared to an average daily figure of 83 million.
By the way, the last recommended posting dates for UK mail are Thursday 20 December for 1st Class and Tuesday 18 December for 2nd Class items.
This week, Sammy Gitau graduated from the University of Manchester with a Masters degree in International Development. So, what's so special about that? Well, Sammy was born into a life of crime and poverty in a Kenyan slum,, only had two years formal education, and was foraging through a rubbish dump when he found a prospectus for Manchester University.
I am a graduate of Manchester University and contribute to the Alumni Fund which played a part in enabling Sammy to obtain his degree and fulfill his dream. You can read his inspiring story here.
At this time of year, we send out Christmas cards to our many friends at home and abroad and, so that they know what we've been doing in the past 12 months, we always include a Christmas newsletter. You can read this year's newsletter here.
On a wall of my study, there is a framed photograph of the Students' Union Council of 1969-70 at the then University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. I'm there at the front in the middle as the sabbatical President for that year. Standing behind me is a Council member who is mentioned in a Christmas card I've just received from an old friend.
It seems that my one-time Council colleague has just celebrated 25 years as a Catholic priest and is now a Bishop. Lord ....
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the infamous rape of Nanjing in China by the armed forces of Japan. I visited Nanjing during a tour of China in 2000 [my account of time in the city here].
For the people of China, the incident is still a raw and and bitter issue. For many in Japan - a country I have also visited - this is something they would rather not think about and about which they are often in denial.
The Wikipedia page on the massacre states:
"The extent of the atrocities is debated between China and Japan, with numbers ranging from some Japanese claims of several hundred] to the Chinese claim of a non-combatant death toll of 300,000. A number of Japanese researchers consider 100,000 – 200,000 to be an approximate value. Other nations usually believe the death toll to be between 150,000 – 300,000."
By and large, the German people have faced up candidly to the horrors of the Nazi regime. The people of Japan would do well to start looking more honestly at the infamous deeds committed by their military in the run up to and during the Second World War.
A few months ago, my sister and I spent a long weekend visiting Sarajevo [my account here]. We heard Bosniak and Serb accounts of the siege of the city - the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, lasting from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 or a total of 1,335 days. This siege was carried out by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Bosnian Serb forces (VRS). It is estimated that more than 12,000 people were killed (including 1,500 children) and 50,000 wounded during the siege, 85% of them civilians.
Today it is reported that Dragomir Milosevic (no relation to Slobodan Milosvic) , a former Bosnian Serb general who led the siege, has been sentenced by the international tribunal at The Hague to 33 years in jail for murder, inhumanity, and the calculated terrorising of hundreds of thousands of civilians. This is some sort of justice for the people of Sarajevo at last.
During our time in the city, we visited Zelena Pijaca Marklale (the Markale produce market) which was the scene of the most infamous atrocity of the siege when on 5 February 1994 a Serb-fired mortar killed 67 civilians and wounded another 200.
Later that weekend, we were told by a Serb source that independent experts had demonstrated that a mortar shell could not have caused such a death toll, that this account was Muslim propaganda, and that instead the Muslims had planted a bomb that caused the deaths in order to win support from the international community.The international court ruled this week that the Serb forces led by Dragomir Milosevic carried out the atrocity.
Even today, many of the Serb war leaders - notably Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić - are still free. But the message from this week's court ruling, both to them and to all those committing crimes against humanity, must be that eventually you will be caught and punished.
A relative of a friend is thinking of setting up a proof-reading service for hotels, restaurants and suchlike in mainland Europe so they can be confident their menus and signage are free of terrible or offensive bloopers in the use of English.
I wonder if readers of NightHawk have encountered examples of poor use of English while on holiday abroad or know of web-sites which collect such things? This would be to provide my friend's relative with some material for the "what we can help you avoid" section of her website.
Over to you ....
In the week in which the Government has issued a 10-year Children's Plan running to 170 pages, it is salutary to appreciate that, although new research shows nearly 41% of the British public believing that there is "very little" child poverty in this country, official statistics reveal that around 3 million child are still in poverty in one of the richest countries on earth.
The Government defines child poverty as children living in a household on less than 60% of median income, adjusted for the composition of the household. The median is the halfway point between the nation's highest and lowest incomes.
When Labour took power in 1997, it inherited the highest levels of child poverty in the European Union which had tripled since 1979. It has found tackling the issue in government harder than it expected.
The Government has a declared target of cutting child poverty from 3 million children in 1999 to 1.7 million in 2010. At present the number of families in child poverty has fallen only to 2.8 million. In fact, there was an increase of 200,000 children living in poverty in 2005-06, the last year for which there are figures.
You can find more information on the situation here and check out the End Child Poverty Campaign web site here.
In this article, it is suggested that political blogging is strongest on the Left in the United States but more vigorous on the Right in Britain.
As someone with a close interest in politics, I've been following the early stages of the race to be the next President of the United States. Of course, the race seems to have been going on for ages already, but the first real results in the primaries - as opposed to vacillating opinion polls - occur in the New Year and the actual election is in November.
The very first actual poll is in Iowa on 3 January. Now most non-Americans are not even sure where Iowa is - it's in the rural mid-West and for a map see here. But, even for Americans, this is certainly not in any sense broadly representative of the US. As an interesting article in today's "Observer" newspaper puts it:
"Iowa is far from a typical slice of America. It has all that electoral power yet it is overwhelmingly white in a country where ethnic minorities are growing. It is a rural place whereas most Americans live in cities. It is a place where corn and the farm dominate politics. It is a state where Republican religious conservatives make up some 40 per cent of the vote."Things become even stranger when one realises that there are only three million Iowans who can vote in the primary, compared say to 23 million Texans or 37 million Californians. But most of them won't vote because this is not an election in the conventional sense. It is a caucus which requires voters to turn up at a meeting and debate the merits of the various candidates before putting up a hand for one candidate. The guess is that only around 100,00 Democrats and 1000,000 Republicans will actually turn up.
On the Republican side, the big three are Mick Huckabee (a religious conservative who has suddenly sprung into the lead), Mitt Romney (another religious conservative but a Mormon to boot), and Rudy Giuliani ( the former New York governor with an odd mix of conservative and liberal positions). On the Democratic side, the big three are Hillary Clinton, the former president's wife who has consistently been in the lead nationally but slipped dramatically in Iowa, Barack Obama, a black candidate who has assumed the lead in Iowa, and John Edwards, one of the most radical of the Democratic field.
I am a long-standing supporter of Barack Obama and have blogged about him regularly since my first posting mentioning him as long ago as April 2004. I think that he genuinely cares about social justice both in the USA and around the world and he is a very effective communicator and brings something fresh to American politics. But my closest American friend Eric is strongly backing Edwards. In fact, the Democratic field is a really strong one and there are few major policy differences between the leading candidates. I hope that Obama pulls off the candidacy but most important is to get a Democrat back in the White House.
The Iowa caucus is quickly followed by the New Hampshire primary - a real vote - on 8 January. 'Super Tuesday', when more than 20 states hold primaries, will be on 5 February. So the first six weeks of 2008 should settle who will be the Presidential candidates for the Democrats and the Republicans and the actual Presidential election is on 4 November. The result has profound implications for all of us around the world.
This week, our dear friends Hua and Zhihao bought us an exceptionally early and incredibly generous Christmas present in the form of a Hitachi 32" LCD television and this weekend our IT guru Eric came over to fit it all up for us. The picture quality is excellent and it is a whole new viewing experience.
We subscribe to Sky and have a Sky+ personal video recorder. So we all set for some good Christmas viewing.
In a sense, the European Union (EU) is always in the British media, but there is very little talk of the institution itself and how it works - instead we have (often misinformed) stories about a row over the budget or the latest proposal from the Commission.
The EU is now an organisation with 27 member states and 495 million citizens. The total area of the territories of the member states is 4,422,773 km² (1,707,642 sq mi). and the EU would be ranked 7th largest nation on earth if it were regarded as a country (3.0% of world's total land area). Considered as a single economy, the EU is the largest in the world with a nominal gross domestic product of 11.8 trillion Euros or 16.6 trillion dollars in 2007 amounting to 31% of the world´s total economic output. The EU is also the largest exporter in the world and the second largest importer
It is a democratic institution with the second largest electorate in the world (Indian is the biggest). The European Parliament has 785 members - Germany has the largest number (99) and Malta has the fewest (5). The UK has 78 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). For the purposes of elections to the European Parliament, the UK is divided into twelve regions and each region has between three and ten MEPs. The institution speaks 23 languages with English and French being the two official languages.
Malta is an archipelago of seven islands including Malta itself, Gozo, Comino, Comminotto and Filfla and has a population of 400,000. Located south of the Italian island of Sicily between Europe and North Africa, it has been occupied by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and latterly France and Britain. Independence from Britain was achieved in 1964 and the country joined the European Union in 2004.
Since becoming an EU member, the tiny island has reported an increasing problem with immigration from north Africa and has requested more help to deal with it. The UN refugee agency has criticised the island's policy of keeping asylum seekers in detention for 18 months.
Malta produces only about 20% of its food needs, has limited freshwater supplies, and has no domestic energy sources. However, its major resources are limestone, a favourable geographic location, and a productive labour force.
I only take one monthly magazine and have it on a postal subscription. It's called "Film Review" and the January 2008 edition arrived today. Pretty crazy, huh? I don't know whey I'm complaining - the cover picture is of Angelina Jolie.
Following the collapse of the military regime of Siad Barre and of the Somali state, the 3 million people of the north-west region of Somaliland declared independence in 1991, but Somaliland remains unrecognised as a sovereign nation. However, in the eyes of at least some international observers, over the last decade and a half, the predominantly Muslim nation has made the transition from an autocratic clan-based society, notorious for its poor governance, conflict and human rights abuses, to a relatively peaceful and progressive democracy.
Somaliland is not yet a fully-fledged democracy and its unwavering observance of human rights is still a long way off. It has a multi-party system but only three political parties are allowed under the constitution. Islam is the state religion and, while non-Islamic faiths are tolerated, their promotion is prohibited. Muslims are not permitted to renounce Islam and the legal system is based on Sharia law which places substantial restrictions on the rights of women.
Kiribati - the former Gilbert Islands - consists of 33 atolls that occupy a vast area in the Pacific. They stretch nearly 4,000 km from east to west, more than 2,000 km from north to south, and straddle the Equator. Many of the atolls are inhabited (the total population is around 100,000) but most of them are very low-lying and at risk from rising sea levels.
The country won independence from the United Kingdom in 1979. The economy is weak and is affected by rises and falls in the world demand for coconut. Fishing licences, foreign aid and money sent home by workers abroad also play their part, as does a trust fund set up with revenues from phosphate mining on the island of Banaba.
It's time for another week of postings in my long-running series called Forgotten World - a look at parts of the world that hardly feature in our media or thoughts. You can check the previous 110 entries here.
Armenia was one of the earliest Christian civilisations and its first churches were founded in the fourth century. An independent republic was proclaimed at the end of the First World War but it was short-lived, lasting only until the beginning of the 1920s when the Bolsheviks incorporated it into the Soviet Union. When that empire in turn collapsed in 1991, Armenia regained independence but retained a Russian military base at Gyumri.
In the mid-1990s the government embarked on an economic reform programme which brought some stability and growth. The country became a member of the Council of Europe in 2001. However, unemployment and poverty remain widespread. Armenia's economic problems are aggravated by a trade blockade, imposed by neighbouring Turkey and Azerbaijan, since the dispute over the enclave Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia has a huge diaspora and has always experienced waves of emigration, but the exodus of recent years has caused real alarm. It is estimated that Armenia has lost up to a quarter of its population since independence, reducing the population to 3 million.
As reported by the BBC and other media, today around 100 million Russians have the chance to vote for their parliament the State Duma. As background, I have written "A Short Guide To The Russian Political System".
I'm really interested in the origin of words and the use of language. A friend of mine who surfs the Net more than is normal (that's Nick again) has discovered the origin of the phrase "pie in the sky".
Perhaps appropriately for a Sunday blog posting by a former trade union official, the phrase turns out to come from a song written by a trade union organisation (the Industrial Workers of the World) in response to a religious movement (the Salvation Army).
Check it our here.
The things you can find on the web (or at least my friend Nick can) - such as the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island!
The idea that there might be parallel universes out there as an explanation of the peculiarities of quantum mechanics is topical as we await the opening in a few days of the first film in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" inventive trilogy [my review of the books start here] which has the notion as central to the plotting.
Indeed it is reported in some quarters that the theory is about to be proved. I'm personally skeptical about the notion, but what is for sure is that it not about to be proved any time soon. Writing in an article in today's "Guardian", Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics and of the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey, states:
"It turns out that there is no proof that the multiverse exists, but rather that one of the main objections to it has been removed by an argument in logic and algebra that has yet to appear in any peer-reviewed scientific journal."