Done 'em

Done all the blogs I could. Awesome. *Note to self - stay on top next semester*

Now for 2 weeks of 'study break'. What exactly are we studying for? Do we get any money back for these 2 weeks?

Thought not.

Notes to lecturers

I haven't got all of the J&PC readings. If this is a problem let me know!

Week 2 - Culture & Anarchy - Matthew Arnold

This is going to be fun...

I read this thing and was like "Umm...". I still am. So here it goes:-

Arnold says "Culture is a study of perfection". I wouldn’t quite agree with this fully. I think perfection doesn’t exist. It’s a myth. Culture to me is everyday life and what goes on within it. To me, we study culture by wondering what to wear, say, do etc.
The essay states that culture is the ultimate goal in life and if someone is cultured they become perfect. Culture is trying to make yourself perfect and your own mind and opinions part of your whole self. However, because each person wants their own class to rule, in order to make the whole population cultured classes must be done away with to make everyone’s culture the same, As it stands at the moment each class has different values and beliefs and therefore different cultures.

"Culture seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light ...” If only this was true. In the 21st century, this clearly is not the case.

As for the anarchy, is someone that goes against these ‘rules’ an anarchist? Does someone who lives outside the box become part of anarchy?

News story 10 - U2 & Green Day unite to save the world...

How the tables turned the other year eh? The U.S. of America-land needed help. Genuine help. Because their government was to slow and ridiculous to do anything worthwhile to help. Everyone that could of helped were in Iraq and Afghanistan doing something that really isn't worthwhile.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? NO! IT'S BONO!! He's going to save the world again. Well, help New Orleans.

I'm not going to slag off Bono. I'm not one his haters. I'm an admirer. He fronts an awesome band, and has used his celebrity to help promote worthwhile causes like 2005's Make Poverty History. Why not? People will listen to him more than they will Blair and Bush et all. Sure, he's got an ego, but who wouldn't after being in his position for 20 years.

As it turns out, this New Orleans project wasn't even Bono's idea, it was his band mate, The Edge (the fucking awesome guitarist!) who came up with the idea. Raise money by way of music. It's worked in the past. It'll work again. They invited Green Day along for the ride as well, just to make sure an American band was part of an American cause.

I hate Green Day, and I really like U2, so it was going to be interesting. As it turned out, the song they covered 'The Saints are Coming' I didn't like. But that's not vaguely important.

I think the whole of this idea is a really good one. Everybody likes music. Having two of the biggest bands in the world recording a song together is always going to sell, charity or not.

The arguement is made that are the stars invloved doing it for the charity, or themselves and their bank balances? Personally, I think it is madness that people can tink the latter. The last thing that the members of U2 and Green Day need is money and recognition. They've already got all of that and a hell of a lot more. Sure it looks on their behalf, but they can clearly see when those not as fortunate as them need help. They saw this and tried to help rectify the situation. I think that the NME saying that they were going 'to save the world' was a bit OTT, but it got the message across.

A pat on the back for U2 and Green Day. Good on ya.

News story 9 - Gays and the Church

The Church don't like homosexuals. Simple fact. Accoridng to them, it's not what God intended. He created Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Anthony. Can't say I blame them. After all, they have major proof. It's this little book The Bible, you may have heard about it.

Basically, they're not happy about these new gay rights laws that the government are bringing in in April. It means that gay couples can now adopt.

The Catholic Church run almost a third of the voluntary adoption sector, and find homes for around 230 kids each year. The Church want their agencies to be exempt from the new legislations. They are threatening to close their agencies if they don't get what they ask for. This would throw the adoption system into chaos.

Catholic bishops say that they regret that they have come to this view but they cannot continue to operate if the government pressed ahead with these changes. They say it is against Catholic teaching to place children with homosexual couples. They say Catholic teaching is about the foundations of family life. The Catholic Church are particularly unwilling to compromise because the Vatican has declared that the practice is 'gravely immoral'. Well if the Vatican says so, I guess that's as good as Gods word!

Now the Church have a point. They're doing Gods work, so they would have us believe, so they're sticking up for the big man upstairs as much as anything. They have basic family values, so that means kids being brough up with a mum and dad. Not two dads.

Imagine the little kid going to school. "I don't have a mummy, I have two daddies". The kid would be brought up differently to his mates aswell. No dad to talk to about girls, cars, football.

SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!

News story 8 - Don't send them all to prison!

John Reid, bless him. He's had so many promotions in the past couple of years that this week it all seems to have gone to his head. The poor sod has pleaded to judges and magistrates not to send all criminals to prison, just the 'really naughty' ones and the ones that consistently offend.

Just to fill you in on some numbers here:

60,131 - the numbers of prisoners when Labout tok over in 1997.
80,065 - the number currently behind bars, with an extra 450 in police cells.
100,200 - the projected total of prisoners in 2011 if the things keep going as they are currently.
30,000 - the number of prisoners that could be realeased early to ease the presure of the jails.
300 - the number sent to prison since MONDAY.

Heres my solution:

The petty criminals doing time for throwing eggs on Haloween to be given community service when sentenced. That would release around 20,000 I reckon.

The bastards that are doing community service for running over kids nd killin them whilst un-insured etc to take their places. That maybe adds 6/7000 to prison system.

So that leaves roughly 13,000 places left to fill. Then take away from that the 10,000 that will probably be released by the end of the year, and you've got 23,000 places. I should be the Home Secretary. No need for the floating prisons, or to grab disused army camps. That would be daft. Though good old Johnnie has mentioned about building 8000 more jail places. To cut him some slack , I reckon that might actually becmoe quite useful if folllow that stats from earlier.

He promised us the prison ships on Oct 20th last year. He promised us that he was in negotioations with authorities about the army sites on Nov 10h last year. He also promised us that he would get the prison places necessary on Nov 19th last year. I appreciate that being the Home Secretary or an MP in general is probably one of the most difficult things to do, but if your going promise such large things to a very demanding public, the least you could do is follow it up. Instead Johnnie boy has delivered nout.

But it's OK, Blairy baby has spoken. He says "All options are open all the time".

Wicked stuff mate, use one.

News story 7 - Muslim Police

It's OK, dont worry. Our Police Force is not being taken over by Muslims. Infact, a trainee Muslim officer thought she'd not shake the hand of her boss Sir Ian Blair on her pasing out - because of religious reasons.

Understandibly, Sir Ian is furious. A Scotland yard spokesman said that 'this would not normally be tolerated'.

The officer is question is a 21-year-old devout Muslim. We don't no her name mind, because of human rights n'all. But she's allowed to snub her boss, one of the most powerful people in the UK. As it turns out, she doesn't even have an Asian background.

She states that her faith does not allow her to shake hands with any male other than her husband or a close relative. Well she's in the wrong flaming job then. "Your under arrest, but I'm afriad your gonna have to handcuff yourseld. My faith won't let me touch you". I bet the criminal won't beleive his luck! She also refused to have her picture taken with Sir Ian because, she claims, it could be used for 'propoganda'. Oh yeah, she wears one of those hijab head-scarves aswell.

If she is so devout to her faith, how is she going to cope with the pressures and responsabilities of her job. She's based in SW London, so I've no hesitation is thinking that the crime rate is ever so slightly higher than in Falmouth. Has she joined the force to make a statement? Or is she in it for a career? Because if she is, she needs to sort herelf out, because she's going to have major problems otherwise.

I'm of the belief that the British Police Force are here to help keep law and order in this country in a traditional British way. Highering persons who have their heads in the clouds and don't follow a traditional British understanding of life, shouldn't be keeping order in this country.

News Story 6 - Big B(r)other

How annoying is this!? Not only is it thrusted into your face in the papers, it's now on the national bloody news all because an English nobody called an Indian nobody a 'poppadom' (spelling?).

I hate Big Brother. I really, really hate it. In my opinion, the people that watch it are just as moronic as the people inisde 'the house'. It's just shit TV and it's ran it's course. As for the celebrity version, don't get me started. Who the f**k was the journalist? And that bird who looks like Cruella DeVille? Even the 'poppadom' lass in question. Sorry, who's she?

The whole thing really has been blown out of all proportion. Yes Jade was pretty harsh with the whole shouting thing, but I fail to see how calling someone a 'poppodom' racist. If the Indian lass (I don't remember her name of even care) called Jade a 'fry-up' or a 'crumpet', would that be racist too because she's from England? I think it would be if we're going to be using the 'poppadom' quote as a benchmark. I mean, calling this lass an 'poppadom' is no different to calling a Scottish person a 'jock', or a Welsh person a 'taff'. It's absolutley ridiculous.

I personally find it hard to belive that Jade is racist. From what I gather from the misfortune of seeing her face everywhere at the minute, she is completely and utterly interlectually challenged. She was on 'This Morning' yesterday and couldn't even pronouce half of her words correctly. Does this sound like the kind of person that could actually understand what racism is? Another thing is that Jade's dad was mixed-raced and her grandfather was black.

She said nothing derogatory about colour of where this Indian lass is from. My bet is Jade doesn't even know what a poppadom is.

Quite frankly, the coverage this pathetic 'news' story is getting is stupid. Jade isn't racist, just a bit thick. And as for the Indian bird, it's the best thing that could of happened to her. Everyone now knows her name (almost everyone). So expect to see her in a Pantomine this Xmas near you cracking curry jokes.

News story 5 - An 'Illegal' kills again and gets away scott free

This story is from the Sun.

It's becoming a bit of a habit this, writing about death in the most cruel way. None more so than this in my opinion. An illegal immigrant driving an un-insured car, whilst drunk, and without a licsence, killing a 12 year old boy.

But that's just a bit of background info.

After serving just TWO MONTHS behind bars for this hurrendous crime, he's now living rent-free in a council owned flat, living on benefits and handouts, and even has a nice little entertainment system to busy himself when he's not fucking up our country and killing people.

Aaron Chisango, 29, an illegal immigrant (shock, horror) from Zambia, arrived in the UK on a Zimbabwean passport, and has been fighting deportation since 1999. Obviouisly because our country won't send people back to Zimbabwe, this bastard can't go back. So we're stuck with him. And just to really piss us off, he's a member of a Zimbabwean opposition party to help aid his case to stay here.

The victim, Jamie Mason, was mowed down two years ago. Whilst in court, prosecutors ruled that there was not enough evidence to send Chisango down for death by dangerous driving. Can you beleive that?! I can. The only way he would of gone down is by video evidence which would have been personally taken by Chisango himself. This is because of the complete and utter ignoarnce of the CPS. They are rubbish.

The Sun make no point of hiding their opinion of the story and good on them for doing so. The headline reads 'Kill a child, get a council flat'. The opening sentence reads 'An illegal immigrant drink-driver who killed a boy in a crash is living rent-free in a council flat'.

Overall, another sickening story as to how our country is going to the dogs.

Week 3 – Notes on deconstructing ‘the popular’ – Stuart Hall

What is popular culture? Is it listening to the right music? Wearing the right clothes? Is it actually being ‘popular’? I don’t think that there is a right or wrong definition for the phrase. From what I have gathered in the various lectures is that popular culture is everything we do in our lives. It’s everywhere, all the time. Hall goes on in his piece about different definitions of the word ‘popular’. ‘The most common sense meaning: the things which are said to be ‘popular’ because masses of people listen to them, buy them, read them, consume them and seem to enjoy them to the full’. Now this makes perfect sense. The dictionary describes ‘culture’ as “the ideas, customs, and art produced or shared by a particular society”. Popularizing this would in effect, give you popular culture. No? Well I agree with that.

His second explanation of the word ‘popular’ he says he finds easier to live with. ‘Popular culture is all those things that the people do or have done.”. He goes on to argue that this is ‘too descriptive’. “This would virtually make anything which the people have ever done popular culture. Pigeon fancying and stamp collecting, flying ducks on the wall and garden gnomes”. He then says we should possibly find out what popular culture ‘is not’.

And that to me, made very good sense.

Week 5 – The politics of a smile – Patricia Holland

Ever since the dawn of time, men have been seen to have a more dominant role in the world than women. This is shown by world leaders and women only recently being able to vote. It was, and to some degree still is now, in the words of the late, great James Brown, seen as a man’s world.

Now it is argued that the press is becoming more increasingly ‘feminised’, and also increasingly sexualised. Holland asks ‘what makes a woman smile?’ To me, it would appear that the famous page 3 model doesn’t make the woman smile, just turn the page in disgust that still after all these years, the page 3 model is still an icon. The model however, is smiling.

“Importantly a more visual style was also thought to appeal to that other group of new readers, women. A contemporary commentator is on record as saying ‘Men naturally think in abstract concepts, women think in pictures’“(Ryan 1996). By reading this, one would assume that people are trying to blame the possible change in the press upon its female readers. Obviously, this is rubbish. Why would men and female readers be different in the way in which they read?

Holland goes onto state that ‘while real, embodied – if invisible – women continue to have only minimal roles in the shaping of our popular media, the men who produce the pages will continue to build their power on the decorative excess of the women who are pictured on them’.........yep.

Week 7 – The aesthetics of politics and melodrama – Jostein Gripsurd

‘The British distinction between quality and popular press is quite telling: the popular is non-quality.’ So what is the difference between the ‘quality’ press and the ‘popular’ press? By ‘quality’, do we mean the so called ‘upper-class’ readership reading The Times and the Telegraph? By ‘popular’ do we mean the everyday joe-public who like the Mail and Sun? For the past 3 months we have been told that we live within a ‘popular culture’. So this must surely mean it is up to the ‘popular culture’ what they want to read. Gripsurd says ‘people buy the popular papers because their (potential) use value is considered more interesting that that of the so called ‘quality’ papers’. I think the facts and figures of newspapers readerships would prove this.

‘If the material, the news item per se, is not shocking or personal, the popular press will tend to present it as such, for instance by focusing on any traces of shocking or personal aspects of the material in question’. This statement can be seen as being true. For example, the John Prescott affair back in April 2006 was splashed across all the newspapers, as would be expected with such a high profile government character, but it was the tabloids that had the most fun with it. The images of him and his mistress where heaven for the tabloids. My main memory from the time was Richard Littlejohn in the Mail and his column. He’s never hid his disgust for Prescott but he let fly after this. I must admit, made hilarious reading!

Whatever newspaper people read will depend on their upbringing, job and social groups. Why would a builder want to read the Independent on a lunch break when all he wants is a match report and some breasts? Same goes for a highly respected business-man in the city. Why would he want to read the Star when he wants to know the markets and what’s happening in Venezuelan politics?

Week 6 – Photojournalism & the tabloid press – Karin E Becker

There is a well known cliché that is ‘pictures speak louder than words’. In the world of journalism, I think that this can often be the case. Some things do just not need words. The most prime example of this is the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America. The day after these atrocities, every newspapers front page carried almost no words, just images. The Sun spread across to the traditional sporting back pages as well to show us images of one of the planes on impact into the twin towers. The Daily Mail showed us an image taken from a helicopter with lower Manhattan covered in smoke and debris. Because of us knowing what had happened, we needed no words.

In the mid 19th century is when images started to appear regularly in newspapers and magazines. They used wood engravings to illustrate the news. Obviously at this time photos were just impossible due to lack of technology. Now of course, with the vast growth in digital photography, media products can do what they bloody well want with images of any sort.

Today’s newspapers often rely on scandal, sex and celebrity to sell, and perhaps not hard hitting news as was once the purpose (there is an argument that the internet may have something to do with this, but that’s moving away for the subject matter). But history proves that even in the 1920’s, when photos were starting to shape the future of journalism, than scandal, sex and celebrity were a prime player.

Different media players will often use different images to get across there point and opinion. For example, the story a few months ago of a 14 year old boy killing an 11 year old boy in an unprovoked, possible homosexual-kind-of-attack. The Sun lead with a double pager with a huge mug shot of the killer, a nice little picture of the happy go lucky victim, and two massive images of the knife and frying pan in question. Point made perhaps? The Daily Mail had an image of the killer which you might find in a family album, and again a happy image of the victim. Nothing though of any weapons or malice.

Week 4 - Tabloid journalism and the public sphere

Tabloid journalism is generally considered to be synonymous with bad journalism. This assessment of tabloid journalism is not very productive from a social scientific point of view. The argument of this article is that the journalistic other of tabloid journalism has appeared throughout the history of journalism, and that elements and aspects of journalism defined as "bad" in its own time in many cases served the public good as well as, if not better than, journalism considered to be more respectable. Tabloid journalism achieves this by positioning itself, in different ways, as an alternative to the issues, forms and audiences of the journalistic mainstream--as an alternative public sphere.

HAHAHA - LOSER

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