Manchester City vs Manchester United
October 24th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Growing up in Manchester in the 1950s and 1960s [some recollections here], I could not fail to be aware of the rivalry between supporters of Manchester City and fans of Manchester United, although personally I had little interest in football (which is still the case). I particularly remember in 1956 (when I was almost eight) Manchester City winning the FA Cup Final with a German goalkeeper continiung to play (unknowingly) with a broken kneck. And, of course, I recall the sadness of the Munich disaster of 1958 (when I was 10) when so many of Manchester United’s ‘Busby babes’ lost their lives.
Now, in spite of my lack of enthusiasm for sports, it was almost impossible not to pick a football side to support, if only notionally. As I walked to my secondary school each day, I could see the floodlights of the then home of City at Maine Road, so really it was my local side. More significantly, my younger brother developed a passionate interest in football and would play mock games in which he performed the roles of all 22 players. He supported United and, to create a bit of rivalry, I kind of backed City.
After successes in the 1960s and 1970s, City had an utterly humiliating record in the 1980s and 1990s, so my ostensible support was totally unrewarded, while United continued to score success after success. The last decade has seen happier times for City and in 1998 the situation was transformed when the club was purchased by massively rich Abu Dhabi interests. The revival of Manchester City was crowned when this weekend they thrashed old rivals Manchester United by an astonishing 6-1. The last time that United let in six gold at home in the league was 81 years ago.
So, to my brother and all United fans, I say today: “Kick it!”
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
My world has changed
October 22nd, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In the beginning, I had an iPod; then I was a very early adopter of the iPhone; and then I was an immediate adopter of the iPad. Today I finally went over to Apple totally by abandoning the world of the PC and switching to a Mac computer.
I’ve had my latest PC for six years and it has been getting slower and slower and freezing far too often. The Mac should change my world. It’s actually a Mac Mini and I’ve supplemented this with an Apple keyboard, an Apple Magic Mouse and a Samsung monitor.
So everything is different and I’ve a lot to learn – but, heh, I’m already blogging fine so I’m on the way.
Of course, I couldn’t have done any of this on my own. My IT guru and very good friend Eric Lee has spent the day here, setting everything up and transferring everything from the PC to the Mac. Actually it would have been a quicker process if the guy at my local branch of Currys (Neville, you know who you are) had understood more about the requirements of Mac users.
So, thanks a million, Eric – and friends please bear with me if I don’t get everything right with my blogs and the web site or my e-mails in the next few weeks.
Posted in Internet | Comments (2)
A day with the young and the old
October 21st, 2011 by Roger Darlington
I continue to delight in seeing my granddaughter Catrin whenever I can help out her parents with some childminding. She is now nine months old and at nursery and sometimes – like this Tuesday – I collect her from nursery and look after her for a couple of hours till her parents return from work.
On Fridays, Catrin doesn’t go to nursery but spends the morning at a swimming class which she absolutely loves. This morning, I collected her from her class and looked after her for a while. Her little cheeks were red and hot and I learned later that her first tooth has appeared.
We finished up at the Royal Festival Hall where I bought her a banana. As usual, I sliced it up, mashed it, and served it to her with a spoon. But this time I kept half of the banana unsliced and gave her the chance to eat it herself. She adores banana and clearly delighted in the opportunity to feed herself.
“I can feed myself, granddad”
Sitting next to us on the couch was an old man and I engaged him in conversation. He was a Russian who was 75 years old and, as I asked him about his life, a remarkable story was revealed.
He was born in a town called Rostov-on-Don in the south-west of the Soviet Union. In 1942 – when he was just five years old – the German army was sweeping through the Soviet Union and the local authorities were gripped with Stalinist paranoia.
One day, the KGB picked up his father who was never seen again. A few weeks later, they came for his older brother who similarly was never heard of again. So the family fled Russia. They travelled through Azerbaijan and eventually reached Iran where they lived for a while before moving on to India where they witnessed the slaughter between Hindus and Muslims with Indian independence. Finally the family managed to reach Britain where they made their home.
It was magical to see fresh-faced, nine month old Catrin and this 75 year old man with a troubled life etched on his face looking at each other and smiling together.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (3)
A review of “RED”
October 19th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
RED = Retired: Extremely Dangerous. That could describe me, but in fact it’s the title of a movie from last year filled with older stars. You can check out my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Google’s ‘Good To Know’ campaign
October 19th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In a welcome act of social responsibility, Google has this week launched an information campaign
You can check out the advice here.
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
Where now for stem cell research?
October 17th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Eleven years ago, Vee and I were flying from Beijing to London after a trip to China and found ourselves talking to a 25 year old Chinese student who had never been out of China. She was on her way to Oxford University to start a PhD in biochemical engineering.
Dr Hua Ye is now a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University and married with a son of four and Hua, Zhihao and little Joshua are as close to us as family. Indeed last year, we all went on a holiday to China together.
This weekend, Vee and I drove over to Abingdon for one of our regular visits to our Chinese ‘family’. I asked Hua to tell me something about the prospects for stem cell research and she explained to me the potential importance of something called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
For non-scientific readers like me, stem cells are the most basic type of cell in all multi-cellular organisms that can develop into the full variety of specialised cells such as those found in skin or bone and the term pluripotent is a technical way of expressing the potential of these cells to become many different types of more specialised cells.
Now induced pluripotent stem cells are different from natural ones in two important respects. First, whereas natural stem cells come from embryos with all the attendant moral controversy, induced stem cells come from animals and humans. Second, whereas embryonic cells are not a patient’s cells, induced cells could be created from a particular patient so that they would not be rejection problems.
So, in time, we might see major breakthroughs in the treatment of ill-health and the extension of longevity.
If you want more technical detail on iPSCs, you can read the Wikipedia article here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
Blog Action Day: this year, it’s food
October 16th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Today is Blog Action Day when bloggers around the world are encouraged to blog on the same chosen topic. In 2007, it was the environment; in 2008, it was poverty; in 2009, it was climate change; and in 2010, it was water.
This year’s theme is food.
Now two centuries ago, there was a fashion for Malthusianism – ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, which described how unchecked population growth is exponential (1→2→4→8) while the growth of the food supply was expected to be arithmetical (1→2→3→4). Malthus was convinced that we would not be able to feed a much larger population, so that famine and war would be needed to correct the imbalance.
At the time Malthus wrote his book, the world population was just less than 1 billion. Today it is just short of 7 billion. Yet two things are self-evident.
First, thanks to changes in agriculture and technology, we are capable of feeding a population seven times greater than at the time of Malthus. Second, there are massive inequalities in the distribution of food around the world, so that the people of many developing countries suffer from malnutrition and even famine while simultaneously the citizens of most developed countries are being ravished by an obesity epidemic. You can view an illustration of this variation here.
The answers to this contradictory picture are complex and a mixture of the political, economic and personal.
Posted in Social policy, World current affairs | Comments (0)
How happy are you?
October 15th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shares the concern of many that standard macroeconomic statistics like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fail to give a true account of people’s current and future well-being. The OECD has been addressing the issue of measuring progress since 2000, with its latest work publication “How’s Life?” out this week.
On an overall measure of Life Satisfaction, the UK comes 15th out of 40 countries surveyed, while the USA is 12th. The top three are Denmark, Canada and Norway. You can check out the main findings of the OECD report and see a graph summarizing the assessment of each country here.
On my web site, you can find my review of a book on “Happiness” here and my advice on “How To Be Happy” here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Where now for consumer advocacy in the UK?
October 14th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
As I explained in a posting at the time, a year ago today, the Coalition Government announced it’s so-called ‘bonfire of the quangos’ and the public servants who run and staff these bodies are still working through the consequences. My particular interest concerns the consumer movement.
The Government announced that Consumer Focus and the Communications Consumer Panel – on both of which I sit – would be abolished and that most of the functions of these two bodies would be transferred out of the public sector to Citizens Advice.
Over the summer, there was a three-month consultation over a consultation document that sought to suggest how the proposals might work. The closing for submissions has passed and Ministers are expected to make decisions by the end of the year. The plan is that the new arrangements will take effect in April 2013.
However, I have to say that, one year on from the original announcement, the Government’s plans for consumer advocacy in the UK are no clearer – indeed they are less clear.
Whereas originally the plan was that Consumer Focus’s work would go to Citizens Advice, there has recently been a top-level agreement between Citizens Advice and Which? that suggests that Consumer Focus’s work be divided between the two organisations but the allocation of functions is still only very indicative. Meanwhile separate discussions are going on in Scotland and Wales which could lead to very different arrangements for those two nations. Finally, Ofcom has now stated that it no longer wishes to close down the Communications Consumer Panel but would like it to continue.
However this all works out, what is abundantly clear is that the totality of resource devoted to consumer advocacy in Britain at a time of chronic consumer need will be significantly less and, in reaching the new arrangements, we will have caused confusion and anxiety to those working hard for consumers and deflected their time and attention away from the pressing needs of consumers.
Sadly I will soon no longer be contributing to the valuable work of Consumer Focus and the Communications Consumer Panel. My term on the CF Board expires in January and my term on the Consumer Panel expires in March. This means that, in the first quarter of 2012, I will lose both my paid appointments (my other two appointments are unpaid), so I will be looking for new challenges (suggestions welcome).
Posted in Consumer matters | Comments (0)
The differences between rich and poor in the UK
October 13th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
This week, the Equality Trust released its third quarterly Research Digest. Unlike previous releases this is comprised of original research done by freelance researcher Anna Barford. The digest deals with how living standards, education, health and social mobility vary across quintiles (fifths).
In brief:
Social gradients: Incremental increases in income correspond to incremental improvements in outcomes.
Distribution: households in the richest quintile earn almost 15 times more than those in the poorest quintile. Tax and benefits reduce this difference to just over 4 times more.
Perceptions: People tend to misperceive which income group they are in.
Health: Richer groups have a lower risk of mental illness. Poorer groups have higher prevalence of obesity and eat less fruit and fewer vegetables.
Possessions: As groups get richer they have more and bigger cars. Better off groups also have more household insurance than their poorer counterparts.
Education: As parents become more professional, their children have more academic qualifications.
Gender: When individuals’ rather than household incomes are compared, women are disproportionately found in poorer income groups whereas there are more men in richer groups.
Social mobility: Over a 10-year period very few people moved between the top and bottom income quintiles.
You can read the full research brief here.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (1)