Visit to the land of Hope and Ellie
February 11th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Just over a month ago, I did a posting about the birth of Hope whose mother Ellie had struggled so much to have her first baby at the age of 47, following miscarriages, IVF treatment in Spain, and numerous medical complications and interventions. Hope is now five weeks old and doing well and Ellie is a different woman – a mother – and doing brilliantly but naturally very tired.
Yesterday I went up to Cambridge to see them both and was able to spend a very happy and contented five or so hours in their company. We went for lunch at a smart pub called “The Green Man”, a five hundred year old building in the Cambridgeshire village of Grantchester, and then on to the charming home of Ellie’s mother Hilda (85 next week). I was given lots of opportunity to hold and cuddle tiny Hope – still only 7 lb – which I loved. She is a real sweetie.
Throughout her troubled pregnancy and happy motherhood, Ellie has been writing a wonderful blog – by turns eloquent, moving and amusing – which you can check out here. This has attracted the attention of the local newspaper which has now invited her to blog for them and you can read the first posting here. The “Cambridge News’ has also run a feature on Ellie and Hope which you can read here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (2)
Should I apply to be the next England football manager?
February 9th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I have just completed my term as a board member of Consumer Focus and I will shortly complete my term as a member of the Communications Consumer Panel, so I am looking for a new paid appointment. I see that there is suddenly a vacancy for the role of manager of the England football team and that the last holder of the position was paid £6 million a year, so I am thinking of applying.
I think that I would be really good at the job. I could be truly independent, because I know absolutely nothing about football and care even less for it, and I would willingly do it for a lower salary than the previous guy and declare now that I would forfeit any bonuses. However, it may be that my half-Italian origins could count against me, since Fabio Capello is the second Italian in the last month to desert a sinking ship.
What do you think? Should I give it a go?
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (3)
Ever heard of Camp Ashraf?
February 8th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
No – neither had I. However, when I was in central London recently, I was approached by an Iranian dissident who is now living in exile in The Netherlands and wanted to talk to me about Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Since I visited Iran two years ago [see my account here], I was interested in what he had to tell me.
Camp Ashraf or Ashraf City is a refugee camp in Iraq’s Diyala province, very close to the border with Iran. It is the headquarters of the exiled People’s Mujahedin of Iran and home to some 3,400 refugees from Iran. In January 2009, its control was formally transferred from the U.S. military to the Iraqi government led by Nouri al-Maliki. He is under strong pressure from the Iranian regime to close down the camp.
The Camp has been attacked several times, the last being in April 2011 when Iraqi security forces stormed the camp and killed as many as 31 and wounded 320 residents and also in October 2010 on the eve of Maliki’s visit to Tehran. The Iraqi Government plans to close the camp but its residents are fearful of their survival outside of it.
The latest situation – as reported by the BBC – can be checked here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A small victory over an unfair system
February 7th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Ten months ago, I did a posting about how I had accompanied a good friend of mine with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to an interview as part of a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) because he had applied for the new Employment & Support Allowance (ESA). He was refused the ESA, he appealed, and today he had his appeal hearing before a judge and a doctor in Reading. I had submitted a written statement in support of his appeal and, as with the original interview, I accompanied him as a friend.
The original assessment awarded my friend no points and judged him fit for work and therefore ineligible for the Allowance. At the end of today’s appeal, he was awarded 18 points and, since 15 or more is needed for the ESA, he was awarded the allowance, backdated to his original refusal, but only for the 12 months allowed under the Coalition Government’s harsher regime. It is a victory of sorts, but this very different result was only achieved after months of further anxiety and is one of almost 40% of appeals that are finding the original assessment flawed. What a crazy and cruel system,
Posted in British current affairs, My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
My new opportunity to promote digital inclusion
February 6th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I was not an early user of the Internet and indeed for a while I really lacked confidence online – as I’ve explained here. But, when I became more familiar with the Net, I became passionate about how it could transform lives, organisations and societies and the desirability of achieving the highest possible number of people online. Today here in the UK over 20% of homes are still not online and there are 8 million people who do not use the Internet,
So I am delighted to have been appointed as a non-executive member of the newly-formed Board of the Online Centres Foundation.The UK online centres central team is funded through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) via the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). Most of the £7.2 million funding goes directly to its network of 3,800 community-based online centres across England. OCF itself has around 30 staff and is based in Sheffield,
The OCF Chief Executive Helen Milner has blogged here about the composition of the new Board. It’s a great team and i’m really looking forward to working with the Foundation’s staff and Board colleagues to bring more and more people online and give them digital skills to obtain the most from the Net.
My current work portfolio now looks like this.
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
Bicentenary of birth of Charles Dickens
February 5th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The wonderful English writer Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 – exactly 200 years ago this week – and died on 8 June 1870.
I confess that, like too many people, I have read very little Dickens since I left school but, last summer, I did read “A Tale Of Two Cities” which I have reviewed here. And, of course, there have been countless television and film adaptations of his works such as the 1958 version of “ATOTC” which I have reviewed here. A month ago, I visited the new Charles Dickens exhibition at the Museum of London.
So the work of Dickens lives on – but so do the social problems that he highlighted in his novels. We may not have the abject poverty of his times, but the devastating impact of the recession on so many lives would doubtless have been the subject of his writing if he were alive today.
As my personal tribute to Dickens, I have used one of his most famous quotes for my Thought For The Week this Sunday:
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen, six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds, nought, and six, result misery”.
Mr Micawber in “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (1)
Now we have snow too
February 4th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The last week has seen bitterly cold weather here in London and today as forecast the snow arrived. Of course, in the last couple of weeks most of Europe has suffered an exceptionally cold spell.
How are things with you?
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Word of the day: stelliferous
February 4th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
So what does such a strange word mean? It is in fact a reference to a period of time – but a period the length of which you will struggle to comprehend.
It all comes from the book “The Five Ages of the Universe” which discusses the history, present state, and probable future of the universe, according to cosmologists’ current understanding. The book divides the timeline of the universe into five eras: the primordial Era, the Stelliferous Era, the Degenerate Era, the Black Hole Era and the Dark Era.
The Stelliferous Era is the current era in which matter is arranged in the form of stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters, and most energy is produced in stars. It is the era in which you and every member of humankind has been, is, or will be in existence.
The Stelliferous Era is the one with bright stars. Before that, the universe did not have stars. After that, the universe will only have brown dwarfs, white dwarfs and black holes.
Posted in Cultural issues, Science & technology | Comments (0)
The political power of “The Lady”
February 3rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington
“The Lady”, the bio pic of the Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, was released in Britain in December but it was too political and too personal for it to attract a large audience. I saw it and was very moved and you can read my review here.
The film has still not been released in the United States – but it will be soon – and there are no plans to show it in Burma itself. But, in Burma, poorly copied pirated versions of the film are selling well and attracting attention as you can read here.
I remember the same thing happening with the film “Cry Freedom”, about the life and death of Steve Biko, which was made when South Africa was still gripped by apartheid – you can read my review here.
Cinema has a powerful role to play in not just entertaining but informing and when it does so about political injustice, or even about wider political issues and processes, the result can be compelling. I have reviewed a range of political films here.
Posted in Cultural issues, World current affairs | Comments (0)
The cost of American democracy
January 30th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
All efforts to curb or contain election spending in the United States have failed and a 2010 Supreme Court ruling effectively abolished spending limits by allowing super Political Action Committees to spend as much as they want (as long as they do not co-ordinate their campaigns with that of an individual candidate – which is no limitation in practice). The result is that election expenditure – already hugh – is ballooning.
These days to run for US President can cost up to a billion dollars. One analysis predicts that the campaign spending this year on presidential, congressional and state elections may exceed $6 billion. How do candidates raise such sums? By appealing to private interests that will expect those interests to be advanced by the candidate in office and by those in office spending an inordinate amount of time fund raising for the next election.
Given all this, it is not surprising that the people elected under this system are often themselves very wealthy. An article in today’s “Guardian” newspaper explains:
“The trend towards oligarchy in the polity is already clear. There are 250 millionaires in Congress. Their median net worth is $891,506, nine times the typical US household. Around 11% are in the nation’s top 1%, including 34 Republicans and 23 Democrats. And that’s before you get to Romney, whose personal wealth is double that of the last eight presidents combined. All of this would be problematic at the best of times, but in a period of rising inequality it is obscene.”
Gary Younge is absolutely right when he comments:
“The issue here is not class envy, hating rich people because they are rich, but class interests – cementing the advantages of the privileged over the rest. The problem is not personal, it’s systemic. In the current climate, it means a group of wealthy people in business will decide which wealthy people in Congress they would like to tell poor people what they can’t have because times are hard. And unless the ruling is overturned there is precious little that can be done about it.”
As the Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi once put it: “The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.” If it takes vast sums to run an election campaign and most candidates are themselves wealthy, how can the interests of most citizens be represented and served?
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (7)