January to March 2012
DION WAINWRIGHT
This evening it was the turn of retired solicitor Rotarian Dion Wainwright to tell members about his working life.
Whilst young people who attend university do not start earning a salary until they are over twenty-one those who enter the workplace from school today expect to be earning from day one. Dion told of how he obtained a position as an articled clerk with a firm of solicitors at the age of 16 and through passing his exams quickly was admitted as a solicitor by the age of 21. Whilst an articled clerk he was paid no salary and his father had to pay a premium of £350 for the privilege.
He reminisced about attending the Assizes, representing clients at the Licensing Sessions, the partnerships he had worked with and some of the characters he had met along the way.
A vote of thanks was given by President-elect Peter Rhodes.
NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE
When author and journalist Rose George, daughter of Rotarian Sheila Wainwright, accepted an invitation to deliver the club's traditional New Year Message, she was asked to nominate the charity to benefit from that night's raffle. Little wonder she chose Water Aid, an international organisation dedicated to providing clean water and safe sanitation around the world.
The sub-title to Rose's second book "The Big Necessity" is ‘The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters'. And she told Rotary's black tie dinner at the New Brookhouse Club exactly why it matters.
In our own ‘flushed and plumbed world', she said, few of us realised that poor sanitation and the resultant diseases were a huge killer that every four hours led to the deaths of the equivalent of four jumbo jets packed with children.
She talked about the history of sanitation which the British Medical Journal had voted the most significant health development in the past 200 years. "Toilets are the reason for us living to the age we do," said Rose.
The raffle raised £253 for Water Aid Photos.......
