I feel for the people of Pakistan
June 4th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
In April. I was in Pakistan for a two week holiday. We suffered the cancellation of an internal flight because of the weather and landslides on the road route that we had to take instead.
This year, Pakistan recorded its wettest April Ince 1961 with more than double the usual rainfall for the month. Daytime temperatures in May soared to 8C (14F) above average temperatures recorded for the month over the past 20 years,
Currently Pakistan is experiencing a blistering heatwave that has overstretched an already poor healthcare system. Last week, temperatures in various parts of the country reached highs of 49C (120F), causing a huge demand for power.
The climate crisis is now and everywhere.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Word of the day: nyctohylophobia
June 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
The word means: a fear of dark forests or wooded areas. It occurs in the English translation of the Chinese science fiction novel “Death’s End” by Cixin Liu.
In the context of this novel, the ‘forest’ refers to the theory that, in the vastness of the universe, there are countless other civilisations. The ‘dark’ rests on the notion that no advanced civilisation would want to reveal itself for fear of invasion and annihilation.
It is one way of responding to the Fermi Paradox: that is, why – after long and hard searching – have we not found any evidence for any other life in the infinite space that we call the universe?
Posted in Cultural issues, Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of the action-packed movie “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”
June 1st, 2024 by Roger Darlington
In the beginning, there was “Mad Max” (1979), “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” (1981), and “Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdome” (1985) – none of which I’ve seen – and then, an amazing thirty years later, we had “Mad Max: Fury Road” which was simply stunning. In “Fury Road”, Max was aided by the one-armed, feminist freedom fighter Imperator Furiosa, played wonderfully by a shaved-headed Charlize Theron. Now, a lengthy nine years later, we have a fifth film in the franchise which overlooks Max totally and tells the origin story of Furiosa.
As a young adult, this character is portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy. The role is a real challenge for her: she only appears after a a younger actress plays the warrior as a child, a lot of the time her face is covered or painted, and she only has about 30 lines of dialogue, but she is terrific. Another piece of clever casting is Chris Hemsworth as the cruel, yet comical, Warlord Dementus, leader of the Biker Horde a million miles from his “Thor” persona.
The location shooting – back in Australia, after “Fury Road” in Namibia – is glorious, the zany characters and inventive vehicles are gloriously colourful, and the action is furious and brutal. “Furiosa” does not quite have the drive and drama of “Fury Road”, but it is marvellously entertaining. “Fury Road” was not a massive success at the box office, so director George Miller has done well to win the funding for this prequel. In turn, “Furiosa” has not performed as well as expected, so sadly the franchise may be finished.
Director of all the “Mad Max” movies, Miller is now 79 and, if this is his last work (as well as his longest at two and a half hours), he can retire with dignity.
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The first review of my latest book
May 31st, 2024 by Roger Darlington
My new book – “Rennie & River: Tales From Two Courts” – has just had its first review. The reviewer concludes:
“The real strength of this book – and it is an excellent, stimulating read, into which the reader can dip at their leisure – lies in the concept itself which is quite brilliant; its very simplicity (why not just interview 40 of my neighbours, mused Roger Darlington?) is what I feel makes it so. I can, without hesitation, recommend it to all who are interested in the variations of human experience and the complexity of the human condition.”
To read the full review and/or order the book and/or post your own review, just search on Amazon:
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
A review of a wonderful new Italian film “There’s Still Tomorrow”
May 29th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
I was drawn to this film, partly because the central character is a working-class woman in a post-war Italian city (my mother was living in poverty in Naples at the time), partly because I love the work of the post-war Italian neo-realism movement (this movie is a kind of homage to that style of filmmaking), Part comedy, part drama, part a feminist critique of gender roles and violence against women, it is a triumph that has become one of the highest-grossing films of all time in its home country of Italy.
It borrows from the neo-realistic tradition by being set in Rome in the summer of 1946, by focusing on working-class characters struggling with poverty, and by being shot in black and white and partly on location in the Testaccio district of the capital. But it is a modern take of the neo-realistic movement with elements of fantasy and the alignment of images with the words of songs (not all contemporary).
The outstanding success of the film owes so much to Paola Cortellisi who is known in Italy as a singer and as an actor and comedian, mainly on television. Here she is the director (first time), co-writer and leading actor, playing Delia who earns bits of money from a variety of menial jobs, does all the cooking and cleaning at home, and contrives to look after an abusive husband, three children and an aging father-in-law. By the end of the film, you’ll be in love with Delia, achingly wanting her happiness, but very unsure how she is likely to find it.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
My latest book is a set of revealing portraits of 40 fascinating individuals who all live in the same little corner of central London
May 28th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
- You will meet, as well as magnificent staff, actors, artists, musicians, teachers, lecturers, writers, lawyers, judges, an architect, a television producer, a bioethicist, a political strategist, a BAFTA winner, an Emmy winner, a DJ, a KC, an MBE.
- You will come across people from all over Britain plus Ireland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Singapore, The Gambia, Ghana, Cameroon, Angola, Uganda, South Africa, Australia, the United States, Canada, Colombia. Their ages ranges from early 30s to mid 90s.
- You will find, among an eclectic collection of experiences, stories about being a refugee from the Nazis, growing up during a civil war, living through a coup d’etat, being the subject of an attempted child abduction, going on an umrah in Saudi Arabia, and recollections of apartheid South Africa, 9/11 and Covid.
- Some famous names appear in these narratives such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Attenborough, Zaha Hadid, Queen Elizabeth II, Nelson Mandela, Osama bin Laden, Jimi Hendrix, Anthony Horowitz.
I hope that you will buy the book (just £4.99), read it, and review it. Many thanks.
It’s available now on Amazon:
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
A review of the 1954 classic film “Journey To Italy”
May 24th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Director Roberto Rossellini is best known as a noted creator of the post-war Italian Neorealism movement with works like “Rome, Open City” (1945), but “Journey To Italy” is not a neorealist film (he had moved on by then) and, although it was shot in Italy with an Italian crew, almost all the dialogue is in English and the lead actors are English (George Sanders) and Swedish (Ingrid Bergman who was married to Rossellini at the time). Yet this work is regarded by many critics as Rossellini’s masterpiece, as well as a seminal piece of modernist cinema due to its loose storytelling.
I really enjoyed the location shooting in and around Naples, because my Italian mother came from Naples and took me there twice as a child. However, I found the narrative depressing because it shows a married couple insulting and hurting each other, before eventually deciding on divorce. The final sequence, during a procession in honour of Saint Gennaro, is unconvincing, but I suppose there are a lot of miracles going on at this point.
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes”
May 23rd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Following “Rise Of ..” (2011), “Dawn Of ..” (2014) and “War For ..” (2017), we now (2024) have the fourth film in the current series which makes a total of 10 movies in the whole “Planet Of The Apes” franchise that started as long ago as 1968 (I was in the cinema then).
This work jumps many generations after Caesar’s death from the last in the current series to a world in which apes are well-established in a variety of different communities and humans have become feral. It tells a story of how young ape Noa (Owen Teague) befriends female human Mae (Freya Allan) and defeats tyrannical ape Proximus (Kevin Durand).
As always, it poses questions about the thesis of species superiority and the dangers of intra-species conflict. The settings – it was filmed in Australia – and the motion capture performances are impressive and the film is a worthy addition to this successful rebooting of the franchise. But, at two and a half hours, it is another blockbuster that is simply too long.
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A review of the science fiction novel “The Dark Forest” by Cixin Liu
May 23rd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Following “The Three-Body Problem”, this is the second novel in the ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ trilogy by the noted Chinese science fiction writer. It was first published in Chinese in 2008 and then in English in 2015.
While most of the first novel was set in the near future and concerned the threat of an invasion of Earth by a Trisolar civilisation in four centuries time, most of the first two-thirds of “The Dark Forest” is set in the first 20 years of the so-called Crisis Era and focuses on the Wallfacer programme, which is intended to devise a method of combating this invasion, while the last third is set some two centuries on and describes an encounter between Earth’s new, massive star fleet and an advance probe from the Trisolarians.
It is a wonderful read, characterised by a rapidly-shifting narrative with plenty of surprises. The story is illuminated by lots of Liu’s innovative thinking on radically different strategies for reacting to an invasion by more technologically advanced aliens and on what Earth in 200+ years might look like technologically, socially and politically. A dazzling array of ideas stretches from new forms of clothing, housing, transport and information displays to a plan for the destruction of the entire solar system.
The ‘forest’ of the title is based on the theory that, in the vastness of the universe, there are countless other civilisations. The ‘dark’ of the title rests on the notion that no advanced civilisation would want to reveal itself for fear of invasion and annihilation. It is one way of responding to the Fermi Paradox: that is, why – after long and hard searching – have we not found any evidence for any other life in the infinite space that we call the universe?
“The Three-Body Problem” is long (424 pages); “The Dark Forest” is is even longer (550 pages); and the third novel in the trilogy, “Death’s End”, is longer still (721 pages) – so I’m going to pause my reading for a while.
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Learning lessons from the Post Office scandal
May 22nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
For 23 years, I was a national official with a trade union which represented the staff in the small number of main post offices actually owned by Post Office Limited (POL). Then, for 17 years, I sat on bodies representing customers of post offices.
On one occasion (an awards ceremony), I spent the evening sitting next to Paula Vennells, then CEO of the Post Office. At the time, I thought the business was in good hands. How wrong I was. This week, Vennells appears before the enquiry into the Post Office scandal and rightly her role will be in the spotlight.
But we already know that many individuals and organisations let down those post office owners who were falsely prosecuted: many other managers in POL, members of the Board, POL’s legal advisers, its auditors, Government Ministers and civil servants responsible for Post Office affairs, of course many managers in Fujitsu that supplied the Horizon system, even sections of the media which gave too little attention to the scandal until quite recently, and crucially the Federation (NFSP) that was supposed to represent sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses.
Yet we also know that, huge though this scandal is, there have been many more in a similar vein. Only this week, we have had the report on the scandal of contaminated blood used by the NHS. Time and time again, individuals and organisations are too defensive when challenged and too concerned with neglecting critical evidence and blaming others for institutional mistakes.
We have to learn the lessons. All individuals and organisations with power can misuse or abuse that power and we should not wait until that happens. All organisations – political, public, private, third sector – need to establish proper levels of openness and accountability, systems for internal and external challenge, and independent monitoring and checking, while the Government needs to ensure protection for whistleblowers and enforcement of relevant laws. Sadly this will not happen until there are some cases of corporate fines, docking of bonuses and even individual imprisonment.
I think that sensitive use of artificial intelligence (AI) also has a role to play. AI could have highlighted connections between bugs in the Horizon software and failures to reconcile the accounts of individual post offices. AI might have linked use of specific batches of blood with particular instances of ill-health. We should should use every tool we can find to arrest such scandals.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)