Archive for April, 2012


A review of “Midnight In Paris”

April 21st, 2012 by Roger Darlington

I’ve just caught up with the latest Woody Allen movie which I have reviewed here.

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Not silent about silent calls

April 19th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

When I was on the governing bodies of the Internet Watch Foundation and Postwatch, I did lots of media interviews – both radio and television, both recorded and live. But, in my eight years on the Communications Consumer Panel, I’ve not done one – until today. Normally the Chair of the Panel picks up any […]

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World Book Night on the way

April 19th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

You probably don’t know this, but this coming Monday is World Book Night. As I explained in a posting six months ago, I volunteered to be a distributor of one of the 25 books on this year’s list of one million books that will be handed out by some 20,000 givers. I have been selected […]

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How much of your body is made of water?

April 18th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

The answer is apparently two-thirds! How do I know? I picked up this drip of information from this section of the South East Water web site. As I explained in an earlier posting, I recently became Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at the company and so I’ve been visiting the Head Office in Snodland […]

Posted in Environment | Comments (1)


How open is your Internet?

April 16th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

All this week, the “Guardian” newspaper is running a special feature on Internet freedom. As part of the project, the paper has produced an interactive world map with an assessment of how free the Net is in different countries. Check out your situation here.

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Word of the day: augean

April 16th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

I’ve recently been having an e-mail exchange with an Indian political commentator about reform of the Indian political system [see my guide here]. She used the word ‘augean’ and I was impressed that an indian used an English word which I had to look up. The adjective refers to a task which is both hugely […]

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Film appreciation course – part 2

April 15th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Today I was back at the “Guardian” offices for the film appreciation course run by the critic Danny Leigh. Before the day’s programme began proper, we were shown the famous Odessa steps sequence from “Battleship Potemkin” which was copied in the much more recent film “The Untouchables” [my review here]. Section 1 on Opening Sequences […]

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Film appreciation course – part 1

April 14th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a massive movie fan and have written hundreds of film reviews for my web site. I’m spending this weekend at the offices of the “Guardian” newspaper attending a two-day film appreciation course. Most of the event is hosted by Danny Leigh, “Guardian” film writer and […]

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That’s one small step for Catrin …

April 12th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Since the weekend, my granddaughter Catrin has been walking and she is now up to four or five steps at a time. It’s taken a little while – she is almost 15 months – but, of course, all children develop at different paces and she is such a happy and fun baby. She and I […]

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Two attempts by Hollywood to tell the same story

April 10th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

First, I saw “No Strings Attached” [my review here]; then I viewed “Friends With Benefits” [my review here]. Both rom-coms have the same premise and the same conclusion but both are worth watching.

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