It turns out I’m going out for the evening, which happens so rarely I haven’t got my shit together properly (on the plus side, Guardians of the Galaxy). Since I’m going to be entertained – or not, depending on whether it’s as good as my Twitter feed says – let’s all scratch our heads over the weird new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cover:
from BBC.co.uk
Is it commentary on how the novel came out in the sixties, when everyone was screwing children, or did someone click the wrong file and send an illustration of a chocolate box to the cover for Barbies and Hookers?
I may have invented that title.
The Independentquotes a Penguin spokesperson as explaining that the cover represents’“both the light and the dark aspects of life”’ but I swear I read that book a few times as a child and never imagined abject poverty or spoilt children in the form of a creepy doll child…
Seriously, I took A Level English Lit and I can’t link that picture to the book in my head. Anyone got any ideas?!
The government’s gone and bought itself a massive effing boat, the unveiling of which is a massive effing attempt to convince the Scottish people to vote Union. Personally, I would then vote ‘no’ because will the Scottish government have a warship capable of carrying “40 jets and helicopters”? No. Because the Scottish government will not be able to afford a paper bag after independence, having spent everything on large tariffs and taxes it currently avoids as a member of the UK and EU. Or pro-independence celebrations. Or new flags. Or new currency. Or a new national broadcasting service.
This old-ish Guardian article explains the referendum pretty well and suggests that Scotland would, in fact keep the pound and the monarchy. But since when has a newly independent country kept the nice bits about its old state and just gained power? The last countries to join the UN as sovereign states were South Sudan in 2011 (result of civil war in Sudan. Now there is just inter-state war), Montenegro in 2006 (ex-Yugoslavia, ’nuff said) and Timor-Leste in 2002 (ex-Indonesia, massive guerilla war for ages). It’s pretty rare for peaceful states to suddenly declare independence, because usually a region wants sovereignty due to ethnic or religious differences with their neighbours. So, does Scotland have significant ethnic or religious differences from the rest of the UK?
Not really, no.
The UK is traditionally Christian, though secularism is increasing pretty much everywhere; most British people have family from elsewhere in the UK because we’re a small group of islands (most people aren’t hugely British going back a few generations but that’s a rant for another time). As far as I can tell, the biggest “national differences” are accent, traditional choice of alcohol and “national treasures”. Even then it’s dubious because let’s face it everyone loves Shakespeare and Robbie Burns and Lily Allen and Alexander Graham Bell. Okay I’m being facetious and I’ve done absolutely no statistical research for this whole paragraph… but it sounds like the SNP seriously expect to gain independence, keep all the things it likes about Britain, remove all those it doesn’t and magically fix all its problems.
I’m not sure how much longer the football world cup is on for so I’d better chat about it while it’s in the news. To start off, I’m with Gerard when it comes to giving a shit:
Printscreened from the Twitter.
Seriously though, when did football become the biggest sport in Europe? Why has a bloke biting another bloke (which is gross, by the way), garnered such attention? Hopefully because it’s gross, but it’s hard to tell since a lot of big footballers get paid roughly the GDP of some small countries. (I may have invented that statistic. Shut up, I’m on holiday. Sort of.) Actually I’ve been taking a break from news stuff recently because all those actual statistics were bumming me out. Next week I’ll hopefully have regained some sense of typing but in the mean time I think it’s important that we all remember who should be in charge of the England team and probably the 2020 games.
When I was looking for that I found this and it’s flipping brilliant.
If I’m being totally honest, I’m at a point in my life where the first thing I think of when someone mentions World War II – specifically D Day – is this gem of a music video. Then I think of Saving Private Ryan and then I think of my grandmother, who remembers seeing troops come back. Yeah okay let’s not discuss my priorities… the thing is, I know my priorities are a lot better than the Internet’s. Tumblr is celebrating National Donut Day and apart from on actual news websites, I’ve seen relatively little coverage (of D Day in 1944, not Donut Day in mildly obese 2014).
Given that only a few countries were involved directly in D Day, it’s understandable that social media isn’t making a huge flap – especially since it’s commemorative of a time when loads of people were getting bombed or shot, and when most of Europe was a totally shit place to live. But – and this could be Politics revision stress showing itself – I kind of feel like it’s being ignored a bit by the public as a whole. If you think about it, every anniversary of 9/11 gets splashed across every news outlet available. When Osama bin Laden was killed, logging onto Twitter was like seeing the American flag dance. I’m not begrudging the American people their right to celebrate or commemorate events as they see fit (although celebrating with fireworks the death of one dude who was one part of an organisation which almost definitely isn’t as big as the US government made out does seem from a reasonably neutral standpoint to be slightly disproportionate given by that time the impact of the War on Terror on middle eastern states). I’m actually pretty jealous of Veteran’s Day, which let’s face it all countries should have, and hey, Doggles.
If all armies don’t actually use these then GET ON IT PEOPLE. From kyousaya.tumblr.com
But how often do we hear about the German casualties of the Blitz? Or the non-Western families torn apart by the War on Terror? Fun revision fact: between 80 and 90% of terrorism victims in 2012 were from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. As part of learning about humanitarian intervention in Politics we looked how 1971 Pakistan was called West Pakistan and East Pakistan – all the way across India but the same state – wanted independence to be Bangladesh. The East Pakistani government sponsored a genocide which killed between one and three million people in West Pakistan over a little less than a year. This is why a lot of Bangladeshi people moved to the UK around then. As someone with amazingly racist family members, it’s quite useful to know that those people weren’t benefit scrounging immigrants. But the thing is, would so many people be racist if they knew about the genocide? Quite a few probably would and we must console ourselves by hoping that they one day owe their lives to non-British-born doctors, or failing that fall in a puddle of mud somewhere public… I digress from D Day.
My point is, the bittersweet fuzzy feeling I get when I read stories about this guy should occur way more often because I should be seeing way more stories about people who fought for their freedom, and the freedom of others, to celebrate National fucking Donut Day, as started by – I presume, since every other nation knows biscuits are better – the good people of the USA.
I have one of those headaches that makes one’s eyeballs rattle around one’s skull, so this will be quick so I can go and sip a litre of water and resolve to plan the News better in future. Again
is it just me or is there a lot of very stupid stuff going on in the media at the moment? I’ve been busy and ill all week so it feels like ten years since Eurovision (I was going to do this about MEPs and maybe the EU) but in the meantime I swear every time I turn on the news – which is a lot because the rolling news channels are great for snoozing – there’s another old TV dude on trial for peadophilia, or another terrorist attack in Africa and another piece of ‘entertainment news’ that is basically rich people acting exactly the same way as non-rich people except with a camera in the room.
just read everything back and because I’m using the browser on my iPad to do this, I can’t edit it well – I apologise for the rubbish grammar and will fix it when I can. Anyway, my point is: are there ‘patterns’ of news and cycles of what is or isn’t broadcast – or are events cyclical? Heard someone say this week that if that Spanish teacher hadn’t been stabbed, there would probably be no coverage of the students who tried to slip their teacher bleach. (Again, links are hard. Google, darling snowflakes!) The Nigerian girls’ kidnap had appalingly little coverage until the US government noticed what was happening and in the mean time, the Malaysian plane disappearance and the South Korean ferry disaster are minor stories now. Is his because something newer has occurred or because if everybody was exposed to all the news all the time we would always be distracted by it? Is it right that stories are so easy to forget?
just tried the spellcheck and although I can see my mistakes I can’t fix them. Gah, I’ll quit while I’m ahead. If any of what I’ve written has made sense – or even if it hasn’t – let me know what you think!
I never thought I’d do the news about an article on Glamour magazine’s website, but I also thought this pose was exclusive to professional gymnasts, so if you’ve got proof UKIP’s not full of shit now would be a good time to let me know. (Please don’t let me try that outside of my Pilates class.)
Anyway.
Amanda Abbington is Living Below the Line
You guys know how during Comic Relief we sit there eating ice cream trying not to cry at all the little children living in sheds and trying to imagine what it’s like having virtually nothing to eat? Well, an organisation calledLive Below the Line does a thing where people get sponsored to live, food-wise, on £1 a day for five days, so that we can start to imagine what it’s like to live in abject poverty. Amanda Abbington’s done itand has written about it on the Glamour website (beware the distracting scroll-y thing).
To balance out all the procrastinating I did reading about Hilary Duff’s marriage, here are some fun facts about poverty! All info is from my Politics course so I don’t have sources, although I’m sure my teachers would be flattered if you demanded that I asked them to provide sources.
More people have access to a mobile phone than have access to a toilet
It’s estimated that a country takes thirty years after a civil war to reach the level of prosperity that it held before the war
People tend to disagree over exactly how many people are ‘in poverty’ because if the figure sounds too high to tackle, schemes to eradicate it won’t take off. That said, poverty is relative; there are rich people in central Africa and people who can’t afford to eat in the USA. In 2005 it was estimated that about 20% of the world’s population was in poverty
Expanding on that: India’s effing huge general election is on at the moment and one quarter of the electorate is illiterate. Please note that India has a nuclear programme, a space programme and its own version of Hollywood
There is actually enough resources for everyone to have access. Or there would be if richer people were willing to share…
Okay I’m now mildly depressed and quite guilty about the amount I eat. I might try the Below the Line thing when school’s finished – has anyone else ever done it or something similar? I mean, the last time I did anything remotely selfless and food-related was when I gave up biscuits for Lent back when a) biscuits didn’t make me puke and b) I thought taking part in Lent made me a cool atheist…
Those were the days, huh. They were also the days I could write a post without screwing with the colour scheme, so apologies if I made anyone’s eyes go funny!
Technology is not on my side this evening – don’t even get me started on my ability to lose remote controls – so I need you. Yep, you, hi. One of my morning pastimes is reading news headlines off my phone to my friends and occasionally reading aloud a story. Today I learnt I have a Lib Dem voice… Too bad the Lib Dems don’t, muahaha…
Anyway, my favourite stories are the ones that I can make a lot of noise about, like UKIP being stupid. I get to wave my hands about and everything, like I know what I’m taking about. So I’m wondering: what are your favourite news stories? The one that make you actually happy or the ones that make your blood boil or the ones about people being funny, like that Sainsbury’s cash machine?
I’m genuinely interested, and not just because I’m curious to see if it’s just me who loves getting angry at the TV… what are your news-y habits?
I feel like I’m cheating you guys out of some pi-based news chat but my wrist is creaky so here is a video about peanuts and world debt instead:
Bear with me. I first saw this video three or four years ago in Geography and didn’t really get it (WTF trade liberalisation you stupid choir). Then in Politics this week we watched it again and I got it (trade liberalisation is an idea people had to help out those in poverty by giving states loans. It doesn’t work because it inevitably makes sure that states have to borrow more money and cut public spending which usually causes poverty which can cause war which always causes poverty. You brilliant choir).
I challenge you to not have “groundnuts replaced slavery as Senegal’s biggest industry” stuck in your head today… Explaining in more detail would mean more typing so please research it and/or leave a question and I shall endeavour to answer it! Please note I will be using a handful of pages of notes and a section of one undergrad textbook. Said section may have been used to squish a bug judging by the smears over the structural adjustment programme paragraph… metaphor?!
