Here's the schematic i followed, i believe it will be something i've screwed up of course.
I've done this so i can have the lcd's contrast adjustable with the arduino, and also control the backlight, for my use i want to turn the backlight on and off when the bus headlights are on or off in the simulator.
I may want to have adjustable backlight control later, but for that i might have to do it the other way using a pwm signal on the backlight pin to vary the voltage... unless the 'lcd.backlight();' can set a value othe than on and off?