“We’re gonna need a bigger buggy”
April 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
I was in central London this morning attending a seminar on media literacy at the London School of Economics, so I sought the opportunity to see my granddaughter Catrin again, since her parents live in town. In fact, today Catrin joined her mother at her consultancy company Aequitas which has its office just off Trafalgar Square.
So I spent a couple of hours with Catrin, mainly in St James’s Park where we made the acquaintance of various ducks and squirrels. Catrin is growing fast and, even though she is not quite three months yet, she has now moved from her original pram to a bigger one.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
The first man in space
April 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Fifty years ago today, the first man went into space. At the time I was 12 and found the whole thing enormously exciting. The Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin became one of the most famous men in history and today we remember his feat.
Of course, the space race between the USSR and the USA was a kind of madness and incredible risks were taken by both nations in the interests of beating the other. The human side of these technological events in well-covered in this book.
Posted in History, Science & technology | Comments (0)
Action For Happiness
April 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
For 50 years, we have aimed at higher incomes – and got them. But the shocking fact is that, despite being much wealthier, surveys show that we’re no happier than we were five decades ago. At the same time we’ve seen an increase in wider social issues, including a worrying rise in levels of anxiety and depression in young people.
Action for Happiness is a movement for positive social change which is bringing together people from all walks of life who want to play a part in creating a happier society for everyone. They launch today with a website and menu of activities.
I’m keen on happiness. I’ve read a book on the subject by one of the people behind Action For Happiness [my review here] and I’ve suggested some tips on “How To Be Happy” [my advice here].
Posted in Social policy | Comments (0)
Forgotten World (237): Diego Garcia
April 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Diego Garcia is a British-administered island in the Indian Ocean. All the 1,500 inhabitants, regardless of ancestry or employment status, were involuntarily, and some claim, forcibly, relocated to other islands in the Chagos Archipelago, or to Mauritius or the Seychelles by 1971 to satisfy the requirements of a U.K./U.S. Exchange of Notes signed in 1966 to depopulate the island when the U.S. constructed a base upon it. To this day, this involuntary relocation decision remains the subject of litigation.
So since 1971, Diego Garcia and its territorial waters out to 3 nautical miles (6 km) have been restricted from public access without permission of the British Government and is exclusively used as a military base, primarily by the United States. The U.S. operates a large naval ship and submarine support base, military air base, communications and space tracking facilities.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
France’s ban on the burqa
April 11th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Today France introduces a ban on the burqa. A similar ban is already in operation in Belgium, likely to be implemented in the Netherlands, and under discussion in Canada, Denmark and Spain.
Bizarrely, in a French population of 64 million, the number of women who cover their face is a tiny figure estimated at between 350 to 2,000. Many Muslims, therefore, see such ban as Islamophobic which I believe it is.
I am a libertarian. I believe that people should be free to behave as they wish unless their behaviour curtails the freedoms of others. The burqa is no threat and the banning of it threatens community relations.
As the British politician Ed Balls, once put it:
“I wouldn’t want to be part of a religion myself where we said to women and girls, ‘You have to wear a veil.’ But I also would not want to be in the kind of society where people were told how to dress when they walked down the streets.”
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (4)
Forgotten World (236): Cote d’Ivoire
April 11th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
It’s time – it’s been almost three months – for one of the regular weeks of postings in my long-running series called Forgotten World – a look at parts of the world that too rarely feature in our media or thoughts. You can check the previous 235 entries here.
In recent months, the media has covered the civil war in Cote d’Ivoire but largely failed to explain its origins. It all goes back, as so many African problems do, to the achievement of independence – in this case, from France in 1960. For more than three decades after independence under the leadership of its first president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the country was conspicuous for its religious and ethnic harmony and its well-developed economy.
However, Houphouet-Boigny invited other Africans into the country, promising them that, if they cleared forest, the land was theirs to plant cocoa and other crops. As a result, by 1990 it was estimated that between and third and a half of the population had come from neighbouring countries, many of them Muslims from nations like Burkina Faso and Mali to the north.
When Houphouet-Boigny died in 1993, splits opened up between the mainly Muslim north and the mainly Christan south and an armed rebellion in 2002 effectively divided the nation in two. The latest manifestation of that divide came in the November 2010 presidential election when, in the view of the international community, the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo was defeated by the Muslim challenger Alassane Ouattara. Meanwhile the 20 million Ivorians are suffering the economic consequences of the protracted conflict.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
What those cuts really mean
April 10th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
The dramatic public expenditure cuts announced by the Coalition Government – too fast and too deep in my view – are only now starting to bite with the commencement of the new financial year and the implementation of new tax and benefit changes nationally and of council budgets locally. The impact on many people’s lives will be profound.
A close friend of mine has been off work for months and diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), an illness which is hard to ‘see’ but utterly devastating in its impact. It means that, while he can still do most non-strenuous activities, he cannot do them for any length of time before exhausting himself. In a typical day, he will only have some two-three hours of mild activity and the remainder of the time he has to rest.
Clearly he cannot work and one would assume that he qualifies for an appropriate benefit. So he applied for the new Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) and he was called for interview as part of a Work Capability Assessment (WCA). He asked me to accompany him as a friend which, of course, I did.
The actual interview commenced one and half hours after the scheduled time and lasted almost one and a half hours. It was clearly a very stressful experience for my friend, not least because every answer to the formulaic questions held the risk of being misunderstood or misrepresented and not obtaining the allowance. However, being fair to the organisation (Atos) and the nurse, I have to say that my friend was given the time and opportunity he needed to put his case and she was genuinely sensitive and caring in how she posed the questions, responded to the answers, and conducted the physical tests.
Therefore I was all the more shocked when the claim for ESA was turned down and the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) declared that he had achieved no qualifying points at all towards eligibility for the benefit. In other words, the DWP consider him fully fit to work. I can understand the wish of successive governments – ESA was created by the previous Labour Government – to reduce dependency on benefits and encourage those who can return to work to do so. But pressurising those who genuinely cannot work to do so and denying them benefits that can make a real difference to quality of life seems unacceptably cruel.
My friend has a right of appeal and I hope that he will exercise it, but I know that he is fearful that the further stress of an appeal process would undermine his physical and psychological health. This whole unfortunate exercise could have the perverse effect of delaying, rather than assisting, his return to health and work.
Posted in British current affairs, My life & thoughts, Social policy | Comments (4)
My new short story
April 9th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
It’s three months since I’ve written a short story but, following encouragement from a friend (thanks, David M), I’ve composed one this weekend that I’ve had in development for four months.
It’s my 27th short story and it’s entitled “A Shot In The Dark”. Check it out here.
If you want to read some of my other short stories, you’ll find them all listed here.
Comments are always welcome.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (6)
Word of the day: facepalm
April 8th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Apparently it’s one of those new cool or ‘with it’ terms. According to Wikipedia:
“Facepalm is a colloquial term referring to the physical gesture of striking one’s own face in a display of exasperation. It is similar in function to a sigh. In Internet discussions, the term is used as an expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, disgust or general woe.”
You can see some visual examples here.
Like, totally whatever – know what I mean?
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Britain’s last circus elephant
April 7th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
She is called Anne and the media has been giving her massive coverage. I was struck by the ailments that she suffers as a creature close to the pension age for a female and the various approaches that are being considered to improving her condition. In an item in the “Guardian”, it is reported:
“Anne is … in pretty good condition. Her back legs, which are racked with arthritis, already seem better, and her dry, cracked skin is improving – she uses the pile of sand as a sort of facial scrub. She is not overweight and does not have the sort of scars and scratches you would expect if she had been routinely abused for a long time. At 57 or thereabouts, she is already older than most elephants in captivity, which suggests she has had a decent life. … Anne is receiving the best care. Experienced vets are being brought in to make sure she is well but Longleat is also hiring experts in reiki, homeopathy and herbal medicine to see if they can help her arthritis and skin problems.”
And how will they know what causes Anne’s improvement: the alternative medicine, the experienced vets, or simply time? I suppose the media could always ask her through a trunk call.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)