A review of “Win Win”

March 20th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

If you like independent films with fine acting and a different script, try “Win Win” which I have reviewed here.

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)

Remembering the Musahar – the poorest of the poor

March 19th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

One of our closest friends is Cindy Berman who is Senior Social Development Advisor in the British Government’s Department For International Development (DFID) . She has responsibility for DFID projects in a group of south-east Asian countries ranging from Afghanistan to Vietnam. Last week, she was in India and returned just in time to attend our 30th wedding anniversary.

During this visit to India, Cindy visited a Musahar hamlet in the Baghakhal village in the Gaighat block of Muzaffarpur district in the northern state of Bihar.

The Musahar community is one of the most marginalised communities in India and they are the poorest amongst the poor. The Musahar community is found in the states of Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and north Madhya Pradesh. In Bihar the Musahars have an estimated population of about 4 million individuals (mid way between the populations of Wales and Scotland).

You can read an account of Cindy’s visit here.

This DFID project is an illustration of why the UK, even in a time of austerity, needs to provide aid and support, even to a country developing as fast as India.

Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)

Our 30th wedding anniversary celebration

March 18th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Tomorrow Vee and I will have been married 30 years and today we celebrated the event with lots of family and friends. The stylish venue was the Music Room at the Grim’s Dyke Hotel – the former country residence of Sir William Gilbert – in Harrow Weald near to where we live in north-west London.

There were a total of 44 of us there. My family came from Winchester, Leicester and Manchester and Vee’s family came from Twickenham, Egham, Felpham and Cardiff. Most of our friends came from London and its surroundings, but two of our dearest friends – Jan and Ericka – flew over from Prague. It was a very mixed gathering with people originally from Ireland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Canada, the United States, South Africa and China. There were six children including our beautiful granddaughter Catrin.

Our son Richard proposed a toast to us with an hilarious speech which made lots of fun of me and expressed warm thanks to Vee. I made a short, humorous response explaining how Vee and I had first got together. Two of the children – Saskia (8) and Joshua (4) – gave us little performances.

We took along our wedding photographs from 1982 so that people could see how much we had changed or not. My talented brother Chris took lots of photographs and will be making up a CD for us with a slideshow of pictures set to classical music.

It was a wonderful, wonderful occasion. We are blessed with marvellous families and such supportive friends and it was a delight to share our celebration with them and see them interacting with each other.

Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (8)

My new appointment in the water sector (1)

March 17th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Since I took early retirement from the Communications Workers Union 10 years ago, I have been a portfolio worker with a mix of appointments, mostly representing consumers and mostly in the communications sector. It is in the nature of portfolio working that the mix of responsibilities changes over time.

I have just completed my four-year term as a member of the Board of Consumer Focus and later this year I will finish as the Member for England on the Communications Consumer Panel where I have served an astonishing eight years. So I have been looking for some new challenges. I was recently appointed a non-exective director of the Online Centres Foundation. And I can now announce that I have just been chosen as the independent Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at South East Water.

South East Water supplies drinking water to 2.1 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. It is headquartered in the delightfully named town of Snodland in Kent which I have now visited.

The water regulator Ofwat has required all the 22 water companies in England and Wales to establish a Customer Challenge Group which will have a key role in the next price determination cycle that will result in new price controls for 2016-2020. I am really looking forward to the intellectual challenge of learning about the detail of a new sector and water is such a vital industry that I want to ensure that the consumer voice is at the heart of the company’s business plans and processes. But trust me to enter the water sector just as we have the worst drought in the south east in 30 years.

For an overview of my current portfolio of appointments, see here.

Posted in Environment, My life & thoughts | Comments (8)

My second visit to the Online Centres Foundation

March 16th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Earlier this week, I made a second visit to the Online Centres Foundation in Sheffield, the organisation of which I have just become a non-executive Board member. I went there in my capacity as the Chair of the Board’s Remuneration Committee to attend a staff meeting where we discussed the future remuneration package for the organisation.

As I did on my first visit less than two weeks ago, I took the opportunity to visit one of the 3,800 centres which are supported by OCF in order to train those who know nothing about the use of computers on how to get online and use the Internet. I was accompanied by James Richardson of the Heeley Development Trust who took me to a training session at a sheltered housing complex with the delightful name of “Painted Fabrics”

The name of the location comes from the history of the site which was a factory founded by a woman called Annie Bindon Carter to employ disabled ex-servicemen who had been injured in the Great War. You can read more here.

The training session I attended was for 14 learners who were ably supported by three trainers. Three of the learners were from “Painted Fabrics” itself but the others were from round about and had been attracted to the course by promotional material and encouragement of friends. Not everyone wants to do everything on the Net and it was striking how the way to engage newcomers to the Net is to find a personal interest or connection.

So I spoke to a delightful woman called Yvonne who had recently celebrated her 90th birthday. For her, the great attraction was the ability to use e-mail and she was clearly thrilled to have faund this new skill at something of a late stage in her life. Then there was retired nurse Aileen. She wants to learn more about photography and I showed her a page on my own web site called “How To Take A Good Photograph”. Four of the learners were doing a module on genealogy and one of them showed me a family tree constructed by a relative several decades ago which went back to a family member who was killed in the Crimean War.

I found it both inspiring and humbling to meet these senior citizens who had braved and got through the fear barrier to teach themselves new skills which had given them new abilities and new confidence as well as access to a whole new virtual world.

Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)

Another step to the Internet of things

March 14th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Over three years ago, I wrote a column about the ‘Internet of things’ and it now looks as if it is starting to become a reality.

This week, there was the news that British company Arm Holdings has produced a tiny, battery-operated semi-conductor code-named Flycatcher that will enable a multitude of devices to connect to the Net. It is suggested that, by the end of the decade, some 50 billion everyday objects could be connected in this way.

Posted in Internet | Comments (0)

Should Israel bomb Iran?

March 14th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

I’ve blogged several times before about the possibility that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and the risk that Israel might seek to pre-empt what it sees as an existential threat by bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. I’m sure that President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron are discussing this issue during the latter’s current visit to the United States.

For so many reasons, I believe that an attack by Israel at this time would be wrong and counter-productive and I understand that Obama and Cameron both take the same view. But many Israelis – including Prime Minister Netanyahu – take a different stance. Therefore I was encouraged to read this article by Israeli author David Grossman who argues:

“Instead of a one-dimensional translation of the Israel of 2012 into the Holocaust of European Jewry, one question needs to be asked: is it advisable for Israel, on its own, to enter into a war with Iran, a war whose consequences cannot be foreseen, in order to prevent a future situation that is dangerous indeed but that no one can be sure will ever come to pass? In other words, in order to block a possible disaster in the future, will Israel be driven to initiate a certain disaster in the present?”

Posted in World current affairs | Comments (1)

A review of “Under The Hawthorne Tree”

March 12th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

You’ve probably never hard of this Chinese novel, but you might do because it is achieving amazing sales and has been made into a film. I’ve reviewed it here.

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)

Would you risk your life for a book?

March 12th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

I have only just got round to watching my recording of a programme broadcast by BBC4 a few weeks ago about how a group of people in Sarajevo managed to save a priceless library collection during the siege of 1992-1996. The Gazi Husrav Beg Library was founded in 1537 and held over 10,000 historic works detailing the history of Bosnia.

If you want a quick look at 12 pictures which illustrate this story, go here. If you have time to view the full one-hour programme, go here.

I feel especially moved by this remarkable story, not just because I love books so much, but because a few years ago I visited Sarajevo with my sister [you can read my account here].

Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)