Technically, I finished working 17 years ago when I took early retirement on health grounds from the Communication Workers Union after 24 years as a national official with that organisation. In practice, in time I was able largely to address my health issues and continue working part-time through a portfolio of appointments in the consumer world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, over the last couple of decades, I have served on a variety of consumer advocacy bodies – often as chair – in various regulated sectors covering the Internet, telecommunications, broadcasting, posts, water, energy, and financial services (13 altogether). But, over the last three years, I have been on a glide-path to complete retirement, gradually stepping down from one position after another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last such position was Ofcom’s Consumer Forum for Communications which I have chaired for the last four and a half years. Earlier this week, I chaired my 19th quarterly meeting of the Forum which in fact will cease to operate at the end of this month. A colleague on the Forum has posted a kind tribute and a photograph here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am 71 in a few days and I feel that it is time to leave the world of work and enter a new phase in my life. As friends will know, the last three years have seen dramatic changes to my personal circumstances and I am now entering a new and exciting chapter in the mystery that we call life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Technically, I finished working 17 years ago when I took early retirement on health grounds from the Communication Workers Union after 24 years as a national official with that organisation. In practice, in time I was able largely to address my health issues and continue working part-time through a portfolio of appointments in the consumer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24745,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24739\/revisions\/24745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}