An account of our visit to five countries in Central America
February 24th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
A week ago, Vee and I returned from a three-week holiday visiting five countries in Central America.
If you are a regular reader of NightHawk, you might have been following the 25 daily blog postings that I put up as we toured the region.
I have now put all of these postings into a continuous narrative with some formatting and hyperlinks. You can read it here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Five key questions about the current situation in Ukraine
February 23rd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
- What happens next?
- What’s Russia’s beef in all this?
- Who are the protesters?
- What do they want?
- What now for Yulia Tymoshenko?
You can find some answers here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
After more than 60 years together, couple die 36 hours apart
February 22nd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Read the moving story here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
small changes can have BIG effects
February 21st, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Check out this short video.
Posted in Environment | Comments (0)
OK, it’s official – Britain has had the wettest winter on record
February 20th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
According to the Met Office, winter encompasses the months of December, January and February, so there is still a week to go before it is over. But already it has announced that the UK has had the wettest winter since records began in 1910. You can see the details here.
We’ve been lucky. We live on a hill, so there was no threat of flooding, and we escaped to the sun of Central America for three weeks. But, for many Britons, it has been a truly miserable winter with terrible flooding.
Meanwhile the United States has had record low temperatures and Australia has had record high temperatures. It’s time for us to take climate change seriously and plan for erratic weather for decades ahead.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Anglican bishops lambast Britain’s welfare reforms
February 20th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
“Britain is the world’s seventh largest economy and yet people are going hungry.
Half a million people have visited foodbanks in the UK since last Easter and 5,500 people were admitted to hospital in the UK for malnutrition last year.
One in five mothers report regularly skipping meals to better feed their children, and even more families are just one unexpected bill away from waking up with empty cupboards.
We often hear talk of hard choices. Surely few can be harder than that faced by the tens of thousands of older people who must “heat or eat” each winter, harder than those faced by families whose wages have stayed flat while food prices have gone up 30% in just five years.
Yet beyond even this we must, as a society, face up to the fact that over half of people using foodbanks have been put in that situation by cut backs to and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions.
On March 5th Lent will begin. The Christian tradition has long been at this time to fast, and by doing so draw closer to our neighbour and closer to God.
On March 5th we will begin a time of fasting while half a million regularly go hungry in Britain. We urge those of all faith and none, people of good conscience, to join with us.
There is an acute moral imperative to act. Hundreds of thousands of people are doing so already, as they set up and support foodbanks across the UK. But this is a national crisis, and one we must rise to.
We call on government to do its part: acting to investigate food markets that are failing, to make sure that work pays, and to ensure that the welfare system provides a robust last line of defence against hunger.”
This is the letter from 42 religious leaders sent to Prime Minister David Cameron which is published in the “Mirror” newspaper today.
Posted in British current affairs, Social policy | Comments (0)
How Chinese workers are starting to assert their rights
February 20th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
- China’s workers are shaking off the mantle of individual victims and emerging as a strong, unified and increasingly active collective force.
- They are focused on basic social and economic rights; earning a living wage, creating a safe work environment and being treated with dignity and respect by the employer.
- All too often, however, workers are confronted with authoritarian and exploitative managements who deny them even these basic entitlements and as such conflicts inevitably erupt.
- Strikes are often precipitated and aggravated by the lack of an effective factory trade union and the absence of any mechanism for constructive dialogue between workers and management.
- Many worker protests were ignited by the closure, merger or relocation of factories in Guangdong as the global economic slowdown adversely affected China’s manufacturing industries. Some 40 percent of the strikes recorded by China Labour Bulletin from mid-2011 to the end of 2013 were in the manufacturing sector.
- Workers in the transport sector accounted for 26 percent of the strikes in this period, with taxi drivers staging regular protests across the entire country against high costs, government regulation and unfair completion.
- Teachers staged protests at wage arrears, low pay and attempts by the government to introduce a performance-based pay system in schools.
- Sanitation workers, some of poorest-paid in China, staged numerous strikes and protests in Guangzhou and eventually won a wage increase although the majority are still far from satisfied with their pay and conditions.
- The ability of workers to organize protests was considerably enhanced by the rapid development of social media in China and the widespread availability of cheap smartphones.
- However, workers’ leaders still face widespread resistance from and retaliation by managements. Many workers were sacked or forced to resign in the wake of their strike action.
- Local authorities in China continued to intervene in strikes and worker protests, trying to affect a resolution as quickly as possible by acting as a broker or mediator between workers and managements.
- Police intervened in about 20 percent of the strikes recorded in this period and conflicts sometimes arose leading to beatings and arrests.
- Some municipal and provincial trade union federations did respond favourably to workers’ actions but despite attempts by the Party to energise the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, it remained inert and stuck in the past.
- Labour rights groups, especially those in Guangdong, emerged to play the role a union should be playing, supporting workers in their struggle with management, helping them to conduct collective bargaining and maintaining unity and solidarity.
These are the headline messages from China Labour Bulletin’s new research report on the workers’ movement, published today,
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Word of the day: quidnunc
February 19th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
This word means a person who is eager to know the latest news and gossip.
The word is written behind a picture hanging in a hotel by a character played by Jennifer Aniston in the 2009 movie “Love Happens”. I have no idea why.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the movie “Love Happens”
February 19th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Will the lovely Jennifer Aniston ever make a really good film after her great success in “Friends”? “Love Happens” – which was released in 2009 – is not it, as you will see from my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What’s going on in Venezuela in a nutshell
February 18th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Four days ago, this six-minute video was posted on YouTube by Andreina Nash, a 21 year old Venezuelan-born student living in the USA. You should watch it.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (2)