Recession P.O.A, applicants need apply!

First published at http://www.pluto-online.com/?p=1369

The economy is in meltdown.

Investment bankers the world over have been gambling on the future. And have lost.

But nobody realized it was going to happen. Apparently.

The media, the bankers and even the PM have been in the spotlight of the Treasury Select Committee over the past weeks. All ultimately maintaining defiance as to blame lying at their respective doors for their participation, or lack of it, in the national crisis we’re now facing.

Savers have been cheated, consumerism has collapsed, and internationally currencies are retracting accordingly. The bubble has burst.

Globally, a lot has been staked on a system that has so royally faltered. So it’s clear to see why some politicians are having trouble comprehending the situation, and what we should actually be doing about it.

The British Government are planning to pump more money, £2.5 million, into the banks. The failing businesses whose employees have, arguably, committed financial atrocities, not incomparable with crimes on tax payers, often knowingly, around the world.

They intend upon “getting the banks lending again” to give people more credit to get them spending, so people can get mortgages to buy properties.

All sound a bit too familiar?

They are trying to re-prop up this failing system, because it is the only system they know. It is like proving to them that God doesn’t exist.

And their interests are wholly tied up in its survival.

Andy Hornby’s obvious distress in front of the Treasury Select Committee was harrowing, he had invested all of his money in his bank, HBOS, believed in the dream to the bitter end. Proven a fool.

But what should the government really be doing with the money?

Ideally, they would honour savers their money where possible. And the banks that survive survive.

But what money we have needs to be used to fund education and research. Yes, fund it. It will depend upon investment, but we haven’t left ourselves many options. We will fund research into climate change, new technologies and develop medicines: invest in the future.

We have intelligent, educated graduates who will be clambering against joining looming dole queues and young people with uncertain futures and confusing teaching.

Right now, we have no product, nothing to offer in the global economy, and no jobs for the people.

Those people that are being left jobless in the manual professions could begin Pan-European public works projects to improve infrastructure. We could become a cosmopolitan masterpiece.

Should Gordon Brown be publicly flogged? Or is he being punished enough in that it seems like he actually had no grasp of the possibility that this would happen, “end to boom and burst” talk comes to mind here?

Should the bankers have to pay their bonuses back? Are people being rewarded for failure? Probably and probably.

But is divvying up what’s left somehow going to earn us the key to our future? At the end of it all, no. Decide, be fair, but ultimately move on.

Do I think Gordon Brown is up to task? Absolutely not. And Prime Minister’s Question Time still watches like an insight into the Chequers Club… whenever posh men go to clubs.

We are in a very complicated mess. We need someone to fix this, but not with the centre-right, tit-for-tat politics that has got us where we are today. We need new ideas.

So candidates need apply!

Tony Blair must be laughing it up having been the most popular bloke in the country, earning more than his keep in the process and is probably sunning himself on a desert island somewhere right now… If his part in all this isn’t playing much on his conscience.

Student elections- where are all the men?

First published at http://www.pluto-online.com/?p=1264

Student Elections have come around again, as you may, or quite easily may not have noticed. Nominations opened on Monday 2^nd of February, so if Britain’s Obama is out there, please get yourself down to the union for an election pack.

Having a look down the twenty or so posts available, I can’t help but wonder why there is not a position for Men’s Representative…

For those graduating this year, there are five full-time elected officer posts on the Student Affairs Committee (with salary, don’t all scramble at once): President, Education officer, Activities and participation officer, Media officer and Campaigns officer.

Yep, all non-quality specific.

And for those of you still battling through your degrees who are left feeling you could be doing that bit more for yourself and your peers, the Students’ Council has five voluntary positions: Chair of Students’ Council, Women’s Representative, Students with Disabilities Representative, LGBT Representative and Black Students Representative.

Looking at the list above, I can only assume that the lack of a bloke-specific position means that male interests are intrinsically represented in the ‘Chair of Students’ Council’ position, thus, the position might be more accurately described as ‘Male Representative of Students’ Council,’ and therefore, that there must always be a patriarchal slant put on proceedings. Hmm… all sound a bit too familiar ladies?

The point of a Chair is surely to be without biased?

If this is not the case, then in the great bid for equal rights in a (still, let’s face it) male-dominated world, men either feel they have already been able to achieve all the things that they set out to, so a position is not required (job done, let’s go down the pub), or, if the Chair is not necessarily male and is acting in a neutral role, that men are becoming underrepresented.

The Chair of Students’ Council should be drawn from any student who decides to run, so obviously including anyone from any of the groups given their own position above. They are all equally capable of acting in an unbiased way.

But this would of course mean an overrepresentation of one group with the absence of a white-able-bodied straight male student on the board.

Surely there are areas of university life peculiar and of importance to the male student population in the same way that there are for women students, students with disabilities, LGBT students and Black students?

The only solution is to have a Men’s Officer as well, to identify issues relevant to male students and to ensure the needs of male students are reflected in the activity of the Students’ Union, just as all the other officers do for their respective represented groups. And the Chair, by merit alone, be drawn from anyone who applies.

Dispatches examines the Israel-Gaza conflict- the truth and the solution?

First published at http://www.pluto-online.com/?p=1191

Jon Snow’s Dispatches on Channel 4 last night tried to address the question of whether the reporting in Gaza had been able to get to the truth.

Of course, it hasn’t. As we know, foreign journalists have been barred from entering the highly populated region, but they also claimed that the Israelis had been planning the assault for months, and planning how to control the media.

The argument for this can be rationalized. The Israelis believe that Western media treat them unfairly. They believe the 2006 war in Lebanon illustrates this; the media had free reign, and showed much of the violence and death that occurred there.

They believe they were treated unfairly, because they believe the violence is justified, in view of their own feelings of security.

Many of the images flooding our screens have come from journalists already living in Gaza due to the restriction on reporting from the frontline, and the scenes are devastating. Instead of focusing journalists on the attacks from Hamas on Israel, Israel has accidentally engineered it so this footage is in the foreground.

Both Muslim and Jewish families were interviewed in the programme, both arguing that the Western media was favouring the other side. Both arguing that people wouldn’t be able to get to the truth.

They gave a general audience no credit for being able to accept that on both sides people would be trying to show things in their own favour, and so would probably not come to a decision, indiscriminately who was right, or rather, who was the most wrong.

Furthermore, they were not even entertaining the idea that they themselves, no matter their allegiance, might not ever really be receiving the entire truth.

And that the opposing sides ‘truths’ might be mutually exclusive.

A key question was whether the media was justified in showing graphic images of dead bodies in Gaza, those of children, and particularly that of a charred and disfigured body of a five-month-old girl.

In the UK, they, with the exception of a highly edited version shown on the Channel 4 news, did not show it.

Was it too graphic, offensive, inappropriate, or was not showing it too sanitized, not a true reflection of reality?

Although possibly fulfilling their role of informing, although another question is, how informative can selecting to show graphic or less graphic scenes be to the public, how empowered could the public feel with any information to make a difference?

Clearly from how the United Nations tried to intervene quickly, with limited success, and the eventual agreement of a ceasefire which appears to be being breached on both sides, even international peace-keeping bodies cannot ultimately dissuade those who really want to kill each other, from doing just that.

What showing graphic images does highlight is the plight of those that are needlessly suffering, to the people who can’t do a lot about it. If those who are committing the attacks can live with the knowledge that that is what they are doing, then how could anyone persuade them they are wrong? If indeed they are wrong.

The truth is an admirable goal of a journalist, but what is needed is a solution. A solution that is most likely hinged on the efforts of the incoming President Barack Obama.

But is an agreement what either side wants? Their ideals and aims are in such conflict, and even if an official agreement is reached, what is to stop one person with their own cause going against that for what they believe is right?

At a time of frugality, TV ads recruit major stars

First published at http://www.pluto-online.com/?p=1180

What do Carol Vorderman, Charlotte Church, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Dame Edna Everedge and… er… Ringo star all have in common? If I didn’t know, I’d be struggling!

But eagle-eyed TV viewers amongst you (it’s probably just about the only thing you can rely on in these uncertain times) will have spotted them, geriatric Rock legends to national treasures all on adverts on British Television.

Why, you might ask, are such culturally important figures trying to flog me everything from magazines to insurance, to highlighting the terrifically important fact that Norwich Union has changed its name?

Vorderman can be forgiven. Having been asked to take a whopping pay cut at Channel 4, she opted, or was coerced into making her final Countdown.

Joining the dole cue with the rising numbers of 18-24 year olds and recent graduates would probably have been a bit demeaning. So she’s advertising Reveal Magazine instead.

Charlotte Church is advertising Virgin Holidays, making use of those famed vocal cords when not being slated about or recording her Channel 4 show of the same name. Bet she isn’t even a virgin…

With the birth of that second baby you’d be forgiven for thinking she needs the extra cash. But with two celebrity incomes? If she isn’t just selling her soul, we should all be worried.

Ringo, Iggy, Alice, where has it all gone wrong? Norwich Union, or Aviva, have obviously found your price. But was it a high price at a time when we should all be tightening our belts, in which case, shame on you for indulging their decadence, or a low price, as even international superstars can’t ride the gravy train forever?

Did you have all your royalty cheques tied up in Iceland Ringo? Were you fooled by the friendly hedge fund salesman Ig?

Or was it a bright-eyed marketing guru who came up with this age-old way to shift crap, but this time in a bleary-eyed country that is just waking up to a very harsh financial reality?

We don’t need anything else. We all need to be a bit more frugal. We’re done with our celebrity fragrances; the smell of the fear of financial meltdown serves us all with a constant reminder.

We’ve all borrowed beyond our means, apparently no one saw it coming, and no one’s quite sure how we’re going to pay it all back. And still the perverse mind-games, using celebrities to endorse brands so us normal folk can dream that one day too, might we have to change our name to become a star, because what Ultimate Fighting World Champion is called Gaz Thomas?

I’d be surprised if these celebrities are joining the bread line just yet. And I bet they can all sleep at night in their Egyptian cotton bed linen on the 50^th floor of the apartment in New York with the security guards at the door.

But cheers for rubbing it in!

Racist joke received by UClan Student- wrong, or very wrong?

First published at http://www.pluto-online.com/?p=1072

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman… And so the joke goes. But the ‘gags’ sent from 118-118 to a student at UClan, Kameron Abbass, were not about one of these entrenched, playful British sterotypes, they were two, about Asians, and Pakistanis.

The religious beliefs of the recipient have been picked up by the Nationals. He is a Muslim. But mixing the notions of nationality and religion is dangerous territory.

Not all Asians are Muslims, and vice-versa. So Muslims might feel the highlighting of the fact makes them a sort of positive-scapegoat.

You particularly should be offended, because that’s the hot topic, the zeitgeist. Nicely prescribed outrage from the great white media pulpit.

Kameron implied on Rock FM today that had the joke been received by a white person, they would have had a right chuckle and promptly circulated it to their entire phonebook. And probably text the 118 service for another corker.

But this isn’t a fair judgement. I’d like to think that most white people would have been offended. Especially offended that some half-wit somewhere is texting in their name something that they wouldn’t text, let alone think themselves.

And then surely the argument would follow, that if an Asian person had been sent a racist joke about a white person, it would have likewise done the rounds… And so the paranoia continues…

People might argue that as British stereotypes are common-place in the UK, your parents, your hair colour, even your skin colour are all comedians fodder (Richard K. Amos, a Black comedian cannot appear on a panel-show without the frankly not even funny, ‘is it because I’m Black?’ post ironic hilarity), then so too can your ethnic origin.

Or are skin colour and nationality non-transferable humours?

And of the ‘entrenched, playful’ British stereotypes. Are Irish people all too pleased to be the butt of the national joke?

Earlier this year Caerphilly Council in Wales were given a leaflet on acceptable terminology for race relations. In a section on what words or phrases not to use to avoid causing offence, the leaflet informs: ‘The idea of “British” implies a false sense of unity – many Scots, Welsh and Irish resist being called British and the land denoted by the term contains a wide variety of cultures, languages and religions.’

Wandering a little away from words arranged for amusement, it seems I might have been offending people throughout. White and Asian-British alike would be tearing their hair out!

If the texts were intended as a joke, albeit wholly inappropriate and offensive, and obviously constructed by some bored call-centre working moron, I believe the accepted term is that they have ‘fallen flat’.

But what this could turn in to is an all-out attack on our society, which is unfair on the majority of people in the UK who take pride in their nationality, whatever it is, and are happy to live and work alongside each other.

Britain is a country struggling to encompass the different cultures and religious beliefs of its varied citizenry. Making mistakes and making advancements as we go. Bringing this into the public domain might make something out of what could just have been a disciplinary on the one, idiotic culprit.

And obviously any checks that were not being performed on what must be a joke database carnival are done from now on.

If recent standards are anything to go by, whoever wrote the joke should be shot, without pay. In terms of offensiveness, a playful nod towards murdering someone is worse than Brand and Ross’ answering machine messages.

But who’s to say it was a white person anyway?