Staff and Benazir

The staff meeting went well. Our team is now so big we can't hold it in a corner of the Towers so we had to go out. Amazing what you discover about your team. We have a former international gymnast apparently. And one of the holder's of the world's largest simultaneous Space Hopping record! It warms the cockles of a CEO 's heart to be surrounded by talent and energy. Long may it continue! I enlivened proceedings by tales from the old days - the 10 years ago when I joined ACEVO as its CEO in the Harrow office; though memo to self, must not become rambling old man going on about the past!

But the evening was a less glorious experience. I went to the screening of a documentary film on Benazir Bhutto. Someone I knew as a vibrant, energetic, amusing and deeply committed young woman murdered. She was a fun friend and the documentary brought home the horrors of her years in prison and the health problems developed while she was held in solitary confinement in a nasty prison in the desert regions. Watching that on film was deeply distressing. I knew (know) most of the family and was fond of her youngest brother who was also murdered - poisoned in a rather nasty way.

Sadly Benazir's tomb is now submerged in the floods. Her Mausoleum, and that of her father Zulfikar, is at Garhi khuda Buxn in the Sind province which has been ravaged by the flood and consequent disease and deaths.

To donate to the DEC's Pakistan Flood Appeal click here.