Two reviews of “The Hunger Games”
August 4th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
In the Spring, I saw the film “The Hunger Games” and reviewed it here.
At the time. i was unfamiliar with the trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins, but I decided to use the quieter summer months to read this bestselling series. I have just finished the first part which I have reviewed here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
40 photos of our visit to America
August 4th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
It’s two months since Vee and I spent a couple of weeks on holiday in the United States in the Washington DC and New York City vicinities. I managed to put an account of the trip on my web site as soon as we returned, since I had been writing it up as we went along on my iPad.
However, it has taken me until now to upload 40 photographs to illustrate my text. You can read the text and view the pictures here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Should there be ‘a right to be forgotten’?
August 3rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
At the beginning of the year, European Commissioner Viviane Reding proposed that, as part of the review of European Union privacy laws, there should be a new right to be forgotten [more information here]. The notion has proved controversial with the Harvard Law Review calling it “the biggest threat to free speech on the Internet in the coming decade”.
Believe it or not, this debate around the ownership and control of electronic data popped into my mind in a cinema recently when I was watching the summer blockbuster “The Dark Knight Rises” [my review here]. In this movie, the Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) character, played by Anne Hathaway, seeks a program called “Clean Slate”.
According to Batman, Clean Slate works by typing in one’s name and date of birth and then the program deletes everything about you held on any electronic data base – presumably connected to the Net – anywhere in the world. In Catwoman’s case, this would allow her to turn her back on a life of spectacular cat burglaries and start a fresh life with Bruce Wayne (aka The Batman).
I suppose that we could agree on the extremes of a right to be forgotten. If a drunken student puts photographs of his antics on Facebook and subsequently wishes to delete them, he should have that right. If a master criminal wishes to delete all record of his crimes from police data bases, he should not have any right to do so.
But there are so many cases in between. If a friend of the drunken student has put that picture on her Facebook page, should the student have the right to have her material deleted? If a politician wishes to have his speech supporting public healthcare deleted because he now holds a more Right-wing position, should he have the right to do so? How long should someone’s criminal record be publicly accessible before they are given a chance to start a new life?
Suppose the data in question does not belong to you? Should you have the right to delete an offensive or hurtful comment about you on somebody’s Twitter account? Should you have the right to delete all the data on your purchases held by your local supermarket? How long should Google be allowed to store the information on every web site that you have visited?
Whose data is it anyway?
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
The transformation of the Post Office network
August 2nd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I have a long involvement in postal matters. For 24 years, i was national official with a trade union representing postal works and then, after I left the union, I spent 6 years serving on the Boards of Postwatch and then Consumer Focus which have been the statutory consumer bodies on postal issues. Although I am no longer on the Board of Consumer Focus, I continue to chair the organisation’s Post Offices Advisory Group.
When I first became involved in the post office netwoek, post offices received some 28 million visits a week. That figure is now down to less than 20 million a week. Many young people never visit a post office.
So this summer sees the beginning of the Post Office’s Network Transformation. More than half of traditional sub post offices will convert to new operating models as part of the largest set of planned changes in the Post Office’s history.
By 2015, out of the total 11,800 branches, around 4,000 larger and busier branches will be converted into Post Office Mains and a further 2,000 sub post offices will be converted into Post Office Locals.
Both models will offer extended opening hours. However, Post Office Mains will provide a fuller range of products and services. Post Office Locals will offer consumers a more restricted range of products and services, delivered by trained shop staff from the main counter of retail outlets such as convenience stores and petrol stations.
Following the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ consultation, the Government plans to transfer ownership of the Post Office into a mutual model, such as a co-operative which is owned by and run for the benefit of, current and future members. In the case of a mutual Post Office, this will include operators, staff and consumers.
The Government is suggesting strong consumer representation on the governing body and legislation to police the process of mutualisation. It is important to note that mutualisation will only happen when the network is on a more stable footing and that operators will only be able to share in profits once reinvestment in the network has been prioritised.
Posted in Consumer matters | Comments (0)
China vs India as a new world power
August 1st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
As someone interested in the geo-political picture, I’m fascinated by what might happen as we enter what has been called the post-America world when the USA ceases to have the totally dominant position on the globe that it has enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The obvious candidates for a vital role in a new multi-polar world are China and India, both of which I have visited and admire.
But the news of massive power outages in India in the last few days – affecting more than 700 million or some one in 12 of the planet’s population – highlights the contrast in the infrastructure investment in India and China respectively. Since 2006, China has added about six times more power than India to its national grid each year.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with an Indian businessman during my last trip to China. In my account of the visit, i noted of the conversation:
“The Shanghai Airlines flight from Dalian to Shanghai – a distance of 545 miles (875 km) – was a Boeing 737 and the journey took just under one and a half hours. Roger spent the whole flight talking to a 29 year old Indian guy called Ashish, currently living in London and working as an engineer with the Ford Motor Company. He does business in India and China and commented on how Indians think that they are an emergent superpower on a par with China whereas he believes that India simply does not have the infrastructure of China or the enterprise of the Chinese.”
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
“Love Actually” vs “Valentine’s Day” as a rom-com
August 1st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I really enjoyed the British romantic comedy “Love Actually” and, since its release in 2003, I’ve seen it four times. You can read my review here.
Only this week did I catch up with the 2010 movie “Valentine’s Day” which is clearly an American attempt to replicate the British success. But it doesn’t work as explained in my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
How to spot the big five in Kruger
July 31st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The ‘big five’ are buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino. You can see them all in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. There are two ways to do this.
One is to be incredibly lucky – as I was on a visit to the park in 2004. You can read my account here.
The other way is to use the services of a 16 year old boy who is crowd sourcing on the Internet. You can read about it here.
Posted in Miscellaneous, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Why is America in decline?
July 30th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
During my recent holiday in the United States [my account here], I read an fascinating book entitled “Time To Start Thinking: America And The Spectre Of Decline” [my review here].
Today the “Guardian” has an article by Gary Younge, British but resident in Chicago, with an interesting take on this issue. He comments:
” … while liberals are more likely to see the roots of this crisis as domestic – growing economic inequalities, religious zealotry, corporatisation of media and politics – conservatives are increasingly keen to perceive the primary threat as external: immigrants, Islam, foreigners and foreign trade.”
Yet another illustration of the polarisation of American politics …
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Is humankind causing global warming?
July 30th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The evidence convinced me long ago, but there have still been sceptics, some of them American scientists. But a leading climate change sceptic is now completely persuaded.
In an op-ed piece in the “New York Times”. Professor Richard Muller writes:
“Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.”
What changed his mind?
“My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth.”
The team of scientists based at the University of California, Berkeley, gathered and merged a collection of 14.4m land temperature observations from 44,455 sites across the world dating back to 1753. Previous data sets created by Nasa, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit only went back to the mid-1800s and used a fifth as many weather station records.
Time now to stop debating the reality of climate change and to start tackling the human causes- fast.
Posted in Environment | Comments (0)
A review of “The Dark Knight Rises”
July 29th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
British director Christopher Nolan has given us some wonderful films, but his three Batman offerings must be one of the the most satisfying trilogies in cinema history. You can read my review of his third and last Batman film here.
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