High Elms, early sixties

Paul Buckley

Friday evening, with Lyulph to Balliol,for a dinner to celebrate engineering at Ballion and to mark the retirement of Dr Paul Buckley, the Maurice Lubbock Fellow. The Master spoke about the success of engineering at Balliol, and three former students who had been tutored by Paul provided curtain-raisers to the toast. Its great that the Maurice Lubbock Memorial Fund will continue to benefit from Paul's wisdom and experience, as a Tustee.

 

 

At Victoria's party for my birhday

With the Mayor of Bromley and Nick Hopkins. After the ceremony in the Visitors' Centre we looked at the site of the house, and the reconstruction of the ground plan by Nick and his splendid team of volunteers.

High Elms

Friday morning, to High Elms, for a ceremony to mark the completion of a research project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and managed by Nick Hopkins, on the history of the house and the Lubbock family.

Events last week

Tuesday: Meeting at the Equality and Human Rights Commission: Jeremy Corbyn MP, self and Meena Varma representing the APPG on Caste with John Wadham, General Counsel, Razia Karim & Esther Maynard, lawyers, and Ellie Rose, Head of Parliamentary Affairs, to discuss their policy on caste. We were pleased that they support the activation of S 9(5)(a) of the Equality Act, to add caste to the list of protected characteristics, and that they will post a statement accordingly on their website. Wednesday: Meeting with Lulu Todd and Dr Ahmed, to discuss recent developments in the Horn of Africa, and the prospects for enhancing Somaliland's relations with the Commonwealth, the AU etc, as steps towards eventual recognition as an independent state. Thursday: Meeting at the Irish Travellers Movement in Britain offices in Holloway Road, to review the situation at Dale Farm and prospects for a solution that would avoid a further eviction onto yet another roadside. For as long as there are no vacant sites to which Travellers can go. eviction is a zero-sum game: the problem isn't solved, but moved to another location within the same local authority or somewhere else in the county. At the same time the health, education and future prospects of the families who are shunted around the countryside are damaged, leading to increased burdens on taxpayers for decades to come. In the evening, attended the annual meeting of the Sarawak Association where I unexpectedly met cousins John Philip and Marjatta Cunynghame, and Simon Tanlaw, President of the Association, whose mother was the daughter of Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, last of the Rajahs of Sarawak, who ceded the territort to Britain in 1946.

Myelofibrosis

September 20 was Myelofibrosis Awareness Day in the US, see http://bit.ly/SfKg8I You wouldn't expect there to be much awareness of this or other myeloproliferative neoplasms in the UK, but it would be good if there was an information website on all rare blood cancers. What does exist? Either the most elementary descriptions of these diseases, or papers from learned journals that require detailed knowledge of haematology to be understood, with nothing in between.

KIRF fundraising event

At the dinner for Kashmir International Relief Fund, Walthamstow Town Hall, September 20. Over £50,000 was raised in cash and promises for the KIRF's health, education, water and other humanitarian projects.

With Bridy Purcell and Sophie Vale. Bridy interviewed me for an article she's writing for the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain

 

 

Sarafkandi commemoration

 

Packed meeting to commemorate the life of Dr Sadegh Sarafkandi, Leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, assassinated with his comrades by agents of the Iranian régime on September 17, 1992 at the Mykonos restaurant, Berlin. The principal speaker was Abdallah Hassanzadeh, current Leader of the KDPI. Other main speakers were Roya Hakakian, writer and journalist; Parviz Dastmalchi, leading Iranian intellectual and writer, survivor of the Mykonos massacre; Jeremy Corbyn MP, vice-chair of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group; Dr Alireza Nourizadeh, Iranian scholar and contemporary historian, and Golaleh Shrafkandi, member of the leading committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The meeting was organised by Mouloud Swara, UK Representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Bhante, presiding over the ceremony

Close of the ceremony, after the circumambulation. We process three times round the Buddha Grove, concentrating successively on the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha

 

Springhill Anniversary

At the 21st annual celebration of the Buddha Grove at Springhill Prison. This was probably the largest attendance we have ever had, with no less than 15 monks, and 400 people sitting down to a splendid meal provided by the Thai community in the prison canteen. This was the first and most splendid Buddha Grove of the many that now grace the prison system, built by the prisoners themselves under the leadership of the inimitable Sam Cutler, then doing nine years. The governor Tim Newall had the imagination to encourage the project and his successors have welcomed many distinguished guests to the annual commemorations such as the late prisons Minister Lord Williams of Mostyn and the then Director of the Prison Service Martin Narey. It is also an opportunity of celebrating the valuable work of the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy and its Spiritual Director, the Ven Khemadhammo Mahathera (Chao Khun Bhavanaviteht) OBE

Blood test September 10

Main blood parameters from September 10 test. Platelets are within normal range and so are neutrophils. Haemoglobin is low as usual and so are White Blood Cells, but these are not a worry.

Bahrain

At yesterday's Parliamentary Human Rights Group/Index on Censorship seminar on Bahrain with Maryam al-Khawaja, foreign affairs representative of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

With Sue Shutter

My turn

Dilbagh Chana speaks

Chris Rennard speaks

 

With our kind hosts Arvind and Mrs Patel

 

Sarah Teather MP and Lord (Chris) Rennard

Comparing notes with Dilbagh Chana

Fiona Mactaggart MP, first speaker at the Wembley dinner in my honour organised by old friend Arvind Patel , September 9, 2012

At the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, September 9, 2012

Walkabout at the Ahmadiyya Muslim National Convention, with Nasser Butt

Rafiq Hayat, the National Amir, greets me at the end of my speech.