A review of “John Carter”
March 11th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
This weekend saw the opening of the sci-fi blockbuster “John Carter” and I went to see it in 3D and IMAX on the largest screen in Britain. You can read my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of “The Bang Bang Club”
March 10th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I’m a keen movie fan and have a strong interest in politics, so a film with a political subject always attracts me. “The Bang Bang Club” is set in South Africa during the last days of the apartheid regime and you can read my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Hostage taking in Nigeria
March 9th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I think that hostage taking is a particularly cruel and abhorrent crime and I was saddened by the news that Briton Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara died in the attempt by UK Special Forces and Nigerian military to rescue them from an Islamist group in Sokoto.
One of the earliest short stories that I wrote was called simply “The Hostage” and it was set in Nigeria. You can read it here.
Posted in British current affairs, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Word of the day: backronym
March 8th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The word ‘backronym’ is a combination of backward and acronym and has been defined as a “reverse acronym”. A backronym is a phrase constructed purposely, such that an acronym can be formed to a specific desired word.
One of my favourites comes from the James Bond books and films: the organisation SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion or SPECTRE.
For more information on backronyms, see here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (1)
Ever heard of virtual water?
March 7th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
No, neither had I – until, on a recent train journey from London to Sheffield, I found myself sitting next to an environmental activist who works for Friends of the Earth. We spent the whole trip talking about environmental issues and she introduced me to the concept of virtual water.
Water use and scarcity is going to become an increasingly political issue even in industrialised countries like the UK and the USA. We all need to use water more wisely and more sparingly and you’ll find some advice on this topic here.
Posted in Environment | Comments (0)
Are you interested in being a volunteer?
March 7th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I am not a volunteer as such. But, as a portfolio worker, I have a mix of paid and unpaid appointments, so I guess the unpaid appointments – the majority – represent a form of volunteering.
Certainly I am a great supporter of volunteering and a good website to get involved is called Do-it. I came across this organisation during my work for the Online Centres Foundation.
Posted in Miscellaneous, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
The case for more social equality
March 5th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The Equality Trust has just released its fourth quarterly Research Digest. This Digest deals with the relationship between high income inequality and low levels of social mobility. The main points are as follows:
- Social mobility is higher in societies with smaller income differences between rich and poor.
- If we want our children to have equal opportunities in life, reducing income inequality is the mostimportant step we can take towards achieving that goal.
- London School of Economics researchers and the OECD demonstrated separately that social mobility in Britain is worse than in comparable rich market democracies.
- Britons in their early forties have lived in a more unequal country and experienced less equality of opportunity than their fathers experienced.
- The widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) commented in a comprehensive review of the academic literature: “[it is] likely to be very hard to increase social mobility without tackling inequality.
You can read the full analysis here.
Posted in British current affairs, Social policy | Comments (0)
A year of revolution in Syria
March 3rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Exactly one year ago today, my wife and I flew to Damascus to start a 10-day holiday in Syria and Lebanon. Some of our friends thought that we were crazy. But we had booked the holiday six months before, nobody had told us there was going to be an Arab Spring, and at the time everything was quiet in Syria.
In fact, the trip went very smoothly with no security issues. We saw fewer uniformed police than if we had been at home in London (they were probably in plain clothes), there were no demonstrations, and nobody would talk politics with us. Once we reached Lebanon, we found soldiers and armoured personnel carriers in Beirut and politics was on everyone’s lips.
You can read an account of our trip here.
It was only a week or two after we left Syria that the demonstrations started. I assumed that they would be quickly put down, but the brave people of Syria have continued to protest against the dictatorship of the Bashar al-Assad regime and, according to the United Nations, around 7,500 have now been killed by the regime’s security forces. The height of the conflict has been in the besieged city of Homs through which we drove.
Sdaly there will be much more bloodshed before the regime is overthrown and then huge difficulties in the establishment of a democratic alternative, but we wish the Syrian people well. They deserve better.
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)
How should America cut its deficit?
March 3rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
“The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently published an overview of the budget proposals of the four “major” Republican candidates and, in a separate report, examined the latest Obama budget. .. And here’s what it tells us: According to an “intermediate debt scenario,” the budget proposals of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney would all lead to much higher debt a decade from now than the proposals in the 2013 Obama budget. Ron Paul would do better, roughly matching Mr. Obama. But if you look at the details, it turns out that Mr. Paul is assuming trillions of dollars in unspecified and implausible spending cuts. So, in the end, he’s really a spendthrift, too.”
Extract from recent “New York Times” column by Paul Krugman
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
My first visit to the Online Centres Foundation
March 2nd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Almost a month ago, I did a posting about my appointment as a non-executive director at the Online Centres Foundation. At my interview for the position, I explained that, if appointed, i would be keen to meet the staff and visit an online centre as soon as possible and, in the last two days, I have done both, while attending my first meeting of the OCF Board.
There are still some 8.3 million people in the UK who are not online and the OCF does fantastic work supporting a network of some 3,800 online centres throughout England that provide free or low-cost training for those who are taking the first steps to learning how to use a computer and the Net.
OCF is located in Sheffield so I travelled up there from London yesterday. Legally the organisation is a company limited by guarantee and run as a mutual, so that the staff ultimately own and run it. The organisation has 32 staff and I was able to meet many of them and talk particularly to some of the senior management team.
All the OCF staff work in an open plan office on one floor, so that everyone can see and hear everyone else. The staff are very able and really committed so that there is a real buzz about the place. The organisation is headed by an inspirational Chief Executive Helen Milner who has a real passion for the subject and the Foundation.
The Board meeting itself was ably chaired by former Labour MP and Minister Jim Knight. He is one of six non-executive directors and then there are four executive directors, three of whom are elected by the staff. I am the oldest Board member by at least a decade but, since over 60s are a major component of the digitally excluded, it is good to have one oldie on the governing body!
After the Board meeting, there was a meeting of the Remuneration Committee which consists solely of the non-executive directors. Somehow and without any notice, I found myself Chair of RemCom, so I will be back in Sheffield in a fortnight’s time to consult staff on RemCom’s ideas around the remuneration package for the coming year.
This morning, before leaving Sheffield, i visited an online centre accompanied by affable staff member Vic Sterling. She took me to the home of the Sheffield United Football Club – a strange experience for someone like me who, atypically for a man, has no interest in football – because they run an online centre as part of the Senior Blades Club (the football team is known as ‘The Blades’).
There were eight students, all in their 60s and 70s, and they were supported by three tutors who showed great patience in explaining how to do e-mail and surf the web. I spoke particularly to one woman who had had a tumour on her spine and, after the operation to remove it, had been told that she would never walk again. Five years later, she is walking with a stick and she assured me: “If I can learn to walk again, i can learn to use a computer”.
It is stories like this that remind us how the use of the Net can literally transform lives and empower individuals.
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (2)