Archive for the ‘Consumer matters’ Category
A review of the classic film “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925)
July 17th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This black white silent film directed by the legendary Sergei Eisenstein narrates the mutiny on the titular vessel in 1905 which can be seen as a forerunner of the two revolutions of 1917. Except for the leader of the mutiny, all the roles were filled by ‘people off the streets’ and, in the Odessa steps […]
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Word of the day: flâneur
May 3rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
A friend used this term today to describe me. I’d never heard of it and had to look it up. Flâneur is a French term meaning ‘stroller’ used by nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire to identify an observer of modern urban life. I guess this captures the essence of my Facebook page, especially since I moved to central […]
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A review of the 2010 film “Letters To Juliet”
January 6th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I once made a day trip to Verona in Italy and visited the courtyard where there is a balcony and statue of Juliet as an evocation of the play by Shakespeare. At the time, I didn’t realise that people left letters to Juliet pressed into the walls and that a volunteer group answered any of […]
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A review of the recent independent film “Monsoon”
December 5th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The story in this film – a search for a sense of cultural identity – is loosely inspired by the experience of writer and director Hong Khaou whose family was forced to flee Cambodia so that he was brought up in Britain. Kit – played by Henry Golding in a more mature role than in […]
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Tenet”
August 29th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
“Tenet” is Christopher Nolan’s 11th film and I have viewed and admired all his previous work except his very first film which I’ve never seen. Of the movies that – like “Tenet” – Nolan wrote as well as directed, I was immensely impressed with “Memento” and “Inception” but struggled with the second half of “Interstellar”. […]
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A review of the novel “The Man In The High Castle” by Philip K Dick
August 26th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I decided to read this 1962 novel after the success of the Amazon television series of the same name broadcast in 40 parts between 2015-2019 even though I never viewed the series. It was immediately apparent to me that Dick’s books are generally better on the screen that on the page – think of “Total […]
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A review of the 2017 film “Wonder”
April 28th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
American schoolboy August ‘Auggie’ Pullman (Jacob Tremblay) is well-supported by his mother (Julia Roberts) – who calls him a “wonder” – and father (Owen Wilson) and he needs all the support he can find since he was born with a serious facial deformity called Mandibulofacial Dysostosis or Treacher Collins Syndrome Based on a novel by […]
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How green is your energy tariff?
November 12th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
A recent examination of the UK energy sector by the independent consumer body Which? commented as follows: “A third of customers believe that if an energy tariff is marked ‘green’ or ‘renewable’ then they expect to get 100% renewable electricity supplied to their home. Another 11% expect that the supplier generates some of the renewable […]
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A review of “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
November 10th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“The Handmaid’s Tale” was published in 1985 and I eventually read it in 1994. When the sequel “The Testaments” was published in 2019, I was keen to read it, but I wanted to reread the original work first. The first book is a record made by a Handmaid called Offred who serves a senior Commander […]
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Why aren’t more consumers engaging with the broadband market?
October 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Recently the consumer organisation Which? published new research – gathering an in-depth understanding of why consumers aren’t engaging in the broadband market. This behavioural research identifies six key barriers to engagement among disengaged consumers: Consumers have low confidence in assessing what they need and identifying a suitable package Consumers are confused about how pricing works […]
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