Poverty.

The poverty line in the UK is £119 a week for a single person, £333 a week for a couple with children. That's £17 a day minimum and £47.57 a day maximum.

22% of people live unde this poverty line.

That is relative poverty.

Internationally, the poverty line is $1.25 a day. That's 78 pence.

1.4 billion people live underneath the poverty line.

That is absolute poverty.

When charity allocation is being decided, a distinction is made between relative and absolute poverty. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people fail to recognise the difference. I'm not denying that poverty in the UK is bad- that would be utterly stupid. Nor am I saying that there shouldn't be movements to end it. That would be even stupider.

What I'm saying is that, when the international aid budget increases and the Daily Mail inevitably starts its tribal whinging, look beyond the scare-mongering and towards what poverty actually means.

The Sex Trade: Trafficking vs. Slavery

The Sex Trade: Trafficking vs. Slavery

Slavery still exists.

We all know the stories of African slaves: torn apart form their families and homes, sold to cruel owners, often whipped or worked to death.
We all know about the rape of liberties and pure cruelty of the 18th century slave trade.
And we all know of the movements to end it.

And yet, in the 21st century, slavery still exists. An estimated 27 million people are working as slaves right now.


How is it still happening? What about the UN?

The UN has rules against slavery- of course. The first law passed against slavery was a product of the UN in 1926. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was agreed in 1948, slavery was declared illegal in all forms everywhere.


But, as awful as it is, the UN just doesn't have the fiscal power to deal with slavery. If the five permanent council members in the UN (Britain, China, Russia, France and the US) were to commit themselves to the abolition of slavery, they probably could. But there are so many deserving problems in the world; how do you split funding?
(on a side note- China is a permanent council member in the UN? Jesus...)

Basically, slavery doesn't happen (as much) the way it used to: people aren't so much bought and sold. People are lured to different countries with the promise of a better life. Of course, the reality is totally different; it's one of blackmail, pressure and stockholm sydrome.

Here's the story of one girl:

A man of about thirty was watching my cousin Jenya and me while we waited for the bus. The man listened closely to our conversation and then he walked up to us and started up small talk, asking us questions like "What time is it?" and "Will bus twelve take me to Coach Park?"

He invited us to a café and we accepted. He treated us to a beer. He told us that he was from Moscow, and he was visiting some friends. We didn't have a clue that our new acquaintance had planned that meeting for a long time. The encounter seemed totally accidental.

Before he had met us, the man had already learned almost everything about Jenya and me. His girlfriend lived in my village, and she told him about our families, what we did, who our friends were, how much our parents made, and what our thoughts were about sex.

"You are so sexy," he said as he held our hands under the table in the cheap café. "Girls like you are being bathed in gold in Moscow. Let's go and you won't regret it. You'll be able to live on your own, afford to get whatever you want, and you'll depend on no one. You will also throw away the stuff you're wearing now and dress like famous actresses. And believe it or not, while living the high life, you'll be earning money for your family," he kept repeating.

Sometimes children are given to slave owners by their own families- the family feels they literally have nothing to offer the children. The slave owners promise a better life for the child.

There was no way to refuse to go with a client. Nobody dared to do it. The girls would be beaten violently and given no money for food. A prostitute was ‘to have a ride' for as many times as had been purchased. Once I was forced to serve twenty-four clients in twenty-four hours. I never got the promised ‘hundred dollar bill from a client.' The client directly paid the Mommy who kept track of all the ‘ridden away' girls. The Mommy later paid the pimp who had delivered the prostitutes to the Point. The pimp gave me and his other girls a hundred Russian rubles each (a bit more than three US dollars) for every ‘ride away.'

Another massive probem is that people don't know their own rights: how can they? If you haven't had an education, you don't know anything more than your daily life. You certainly wouldn't learn about legal protections and entitlements, especially not international ones. And if you don't know about your rights, how can you fight for them?

And street children are also massively at risk. They're forced into begging rings. Children are sometimes intentionally disfigured to attract more money from passersbys. Victims of organized begging rings are often beaten or injured by their traffickers if they don't bring in enough money. They're are also vulnerable to sexual abuse.

What can I do?

-> Educate yourself. Educate others. The problem of contemporary slavery is massive. 27 million people. Some are sex workers, some are made to work manual labour, some work as restavecs (French for "stay with"- basically domestic workers. They're children a lot of the time- for example in Haiti. When a child reaches 15 and they legally must be paid, they're either kicked out onto the street or kept as slaves. Both are awful situations).

-> Buy the book or get it out of the library. Read it.

-> Stop being so casual with the word "slave" and "prostitute". Honestly, the way we use the words minimises their effect and degrades from the suffering that is innately in their definition, and consequently gives them different connotations.

-> Visit this website. They know far more than me.

Depression... in babies?!

Apparently, symptoms of depression have been observed in babies as young as six months.

These include:

-> Lack of interaction with others.
-> Staring/averted gaze or sad facial expressions.
-> Lack of interst in their environment.
-> Slow movements.
-> Sleeping and eating problems.

etc.

If these persevere for longer than three months and no physical reason can be found, then it could be depression (diagnosed via a psychological assessment. How you psychologically assess a baby is beyond me- but then what the hell do I know about psychology?).

A baby is more likely to present with these symptoms if they have a depressive mother- this could be because of genetic or environmental factors.

Dr. Shatkin (director of education and training at New York University's Child Study Centre) estimates this figure to be about 1 in 6 babies.



Ok. Whoa. I know that there are genes which make depression more likely- but for the illness to present in an infant not even a year old? Wow. I always associated depression with maturity, for some reason. Maybe because so many artists and intelligent figures had depression at some at point; depression has stemmed so many stunning pieces of work.

Some people who had depression:
-> William Blake.
-> Charles Beaudelaire.
-> Woody Allen.
-> Agatha Christie.
-> Beyoncé.

and many more great people.

Buuuut, science does not know its debt to imagination. The more we know, the more we can do to counter it.

Anywy, let's have some pictures of happy babies to even this horrible news out:















Awwww! :)

You've gotta love BoJo

Oh, Bojo.

Pope's aide: the UK is a "third world country".

Why?
Because the UK is marked by "a new and aggressive atheism".

So the UK is a third world country... because we have atheists.

But wait a minute, that's not what I meant, cries the aide! Instead he was referring to "Britain's multi-cultural society". Much better...

basically.

.

9/11. RIP.

It strikes me as sad how, with everything, the story is presented, it maybe lingers for a bit- then it's forgotten. Chances are, the people involved in the incident won't be able to forget so easily. A murder, for example. I can't imagine that the suffering of the family/friends would ever cease and yet no one remembers the name of anyone involved for longer than a week or two.

And with 9/11, even though it initially seems like the opposite has happened, I think the same trend has been followed. The incident hasn't been forgotten, yes, but it has been engulfed in conspiracy theories, wars and extremism. Behind all of this lies human suffering (both on 9/11 and as a consequent of it) which isn't so addressed. It's not forgotten, true, but you have to look behind a smoke screen to be able see it.

9/11 should be a reminded of how fragile human life and relations can be. It shouldn't be a site of religious hatred and intolerance. I doubt it's what any of the dead would have wanted. I doubt it's what anyone wants.

Long time no blog!

I guess I'm accustomed to blogging as a form of procrastination and so now that it's the holidays, I'm not having to put off any work using it. That and the fact that I don't really have much to blog about, seeing as I'm spending most days sleeping and, well, being a teenager.

I found an article that made me laugh today, though, entitled "Stingy aliens may call us on cheap rates only"

Considering that aliens are normally presented like this...



(don't ask, that's the first picture that came up when I googled "alien".)

... it's quite difficult to imagine them having qualities like being frugal or neurotic. But all of the unknown signals that scientists have ever seen have only ever lasted around 10 seconds and then were never seen again:

"Frugal aliens would swing a pulsed microwave beam across the disc of the Milky Way, where most of our galaxy's stars reside. "They wouldn't want to target individual stars: there are far too many of them," he says. "Instead, they'd build a powerful beacon, then swing that beacon around and repeat it.

"If aliens did follow that strategy, their signals would not repeat for many months. "Astronomers have seen some unexplained signals that lasted for tens of seconds then were never seen again," says Benford. "Some of those could have been extraterrestrial beacons but there wasn't enough observing time to wait for any repeats."

Chances are, the title of the article was coined to attract attention, but I'll still point out that I think it's incredibly presumptuous and somewhat shallow of us to assume that aliens would have our characteristics. If our characteristics and ethics are a by-product of evolution, then these extraterrestrials would have had to have gone through a similar evolutionary process to us... unless, that is, there are underlying themes in evolutionary and survival ethics, no matter what path the creatures took to reach to their present state. But, of course, we haven't a clue.

You are what you speak.

I found this article in New Scientist.

The general theory with language has been that there are underlying rules; some kind of pattern which connects all languages that ever have been. This is termed "universal grammar" and was put forwards in the 60s by Noam Chomsky. However, a new theory has been presented courtsey of two guys called Evans and Levinson. Their theory is that the language we learn actually shapes our brain.

So what made linguists question the universal grammar theory?

-> It was thought that there would never have been a syllable in any language that begins with a vowel and ends in a consenant if it didn't also have syllables that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel. But this was shown to be wrong when the language Arrernte was found.

-> It was thought that every language would at least have verbs and nouns. Some, however, don't.

-> The fact that where some languages need an entire sentence to depict something, other languages have but one word for the meaning (e.g. In English, for example, you'd say "I cooked the wrong meat for them again". In the Indigenous Australian language Bininj Gun-wok you would say "abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng"). It's hard to see an underlying structure in the two.

But there's a more worrying, or at least more eye opening, side to this discovery:

This theory suggests that humans are more diverse than we thought, with our brains having differences depending on the language environment in which we grew up. And that leads to a disturbing conclusion: every time a language becomes extinct, humanity loses an important piece of diversity.

Considering that half of world languages have gone extinct in the past 500 years, it's scary how much we must have lost with them. Each particular brain structure must have had with it new ideas that we could have used to enrich the world and improve it. With all the problems we're facing, we can't really afford to be losing out on new ideas.
Every time a book is translated, it loses some of its authenticity and some of its original meaning- hence the phrase "lost in translation". If so much can be lost simply by the act of translation, how much do we lose every time a language goes extinct?
I guess the blow is softened if the language evolves into another instead of just disappearing- which I would presume would happen because shifting language would be extremely difficult for a society (the only time I can see it working is if it is a forced change- i.e. imperialism).

On the other hand, there are cultures out there which speak the same language as another country but have different ways of life and societies- for example France and the Republic of Congo which both speak French. On the other hand, there are other recognised languages in the Congo- it's just that France is the official national one.

Also, presuming all of this is true, the evolution of new languages will mean new cultures and new ways of life which is exciting.

"Not all muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslim."

... that is, except the 94% that aren't- or 99.6% depending on which source you look at it. Either way , it's blindingly clear that the assertation of all terrorist being adherents to Islam is utter tripe.

Islamic terrorism - 1 strike
Separatistic terrorsim - 397 strikes
Left wing terrorism - 28 strikes
Right wing terrorism - 0 strikes
Invidual terrorism - 5 strikes
Un-classed terrorism - 11 strikes

Islamic terrorism - 187 people arrested
Separatistic terrorism - 501 people arrested
Left wing terrorism - 58 people arrested
Right wing terrorism - 0 people arrested
Invidual terrorism - 3 arrested
Unclassed - 4 arrested.

Source.

So why are people so terrified of Islam? It probably has a lot to do with the Islamic states in the world which are renouned for their abuse of human rights and lack of respect towards the liberty of women as well as their hostile treatment of rule breakers. However, I don't know of many muslims who don't see said states as anything short of reprehensible- ditto with terrorism. And I suspect that there is no religion out there (out of the big ones, at least) that hasn't had a country run under its name which has done vile things.

There's also things like this article from The Times which informed readers that the Muslim population is rising ten times faster than the rest of society. Firstly, their use of the phrase "the rest of society" is very vague. I'd guess that the number of Jacko fans has increased tenfold since his death let alone the past ten years, and one could easily qualify Micheal Jackson fans as a section of "the rest of society". But I digress. Judging from the table that they provide, they mean in comparasion to other religions.

So let's take a look at this table (sorry, I don't know how to get the whole thing to fit on. Just click on the table to view the whole of it):



Number of Christians: 42, 675 thousand. Number of Muslims: 2, 422 thousand. Err, yeah. Clearly the latter group are a massive threat to society.

The article also quotes an expert who present this change in the Islamic population as something that could lead to changes in politics. This is what he (a professor of demography at Oxford) had to say:

"The implications are very substantial. Some of the Muslim population, by no means all of them, are the least socially and economically integrated of any in the United Kingdom ... and the one most associated with political dissatisfaction. You can't assume that just because the numbers are increasing that all will increase, but it will be one of several reasonable suppositions that might arise."

So in effect, he is saying that there will be more support for Islamic parties. However, I don't know of any Islamic parties. There was the Islamic Party of Britain but they stopped being active in 2006 so I'm not seeing this threat, really. The professor also makes a blanket statement, assuming that all Muslims have the same beliefs and would all want a certain party in power or a certain set of rules enforced. No. Like Christianity, there are many denominations of Islam and it's stupid to assume that even within the denominations, there would be a unanimous consensus.

If you look at the table, it states that the majority of muslims are under 4. That is ridiculous. There is no way that under 4s pose a threat to society. I find it idiotic that an under 4 could even be classified as "muslim". They will not grow up to be militant jihadist because they will grow up British. They will be nationally British and will grow up ingrained into society. So again, where is the threat?

The article attributes this surge in Islamic popularity to:

1. Immigration- which, by the way, is a way of making sure that the menal jobs that no one wants to do are taken. Immigration keeps the NHS afloat and helps reverse the ageing population problem. Plus it's very hard to get citizenship from here if you're not from a country in the EU- and most members of countries in the EU aren't muslim.

2. Higher birth rate- again, an answer to the ageing population. It's a human right to have children and it's not like non-muslims are being barred from having children.

3. Conversion- How dare people exercise their right to freedom of choice with religion! How dare they!

4. Growing willingess to describe themselves as muslim because the western reaction to terrorism and war has strenghtened their identity- I find this one pretty interesting. I think it should be modfied to read "media reaction to terrorism" though because I doubt many muslims have a problem with the west being opposed to terrorism.

The other expert mentioned in the article says that, with the majority of muslims being under 4, a strain will be put on the NHS. I take on board this point. However, I think it's ridiculous to use Islam as a scapegoat for this. Yes, the fact that there are a lot of children will probably put a strain on public services but no, this does not mean that Islam is a threat to the UK. Not to forget that the parents of these children (irrespective of ethnicity or religion) will be paying tax. And remind me who it is that will prevent the ageing population from being a fiscal and moral disaster?



Oh yes. Children.

Toothpaste prevents heart attacks, apparently.

I have this app on my laptop which gives me a news feed that I've set to send feeds only from the UK and NHS choices. For some reason, I never get any news that isn't related to healthcare, but alright. The other thing I've noticed is that all of medical articles have been reported by the Daily Mail which has a reputation of being slightly, er... hyperchondriac. The articles are usually based on a study of about 100 people over an average of around six months which, suffice to say, is hardly enough to draw an adequate conclusion.

Even by their normal cancer-ridden headlines, I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened up my laptop a few days ago and saw an article which claimed that "clean teeth reduce heart risk". And surprise surprise, "reported by the Daily Mail". I sighed. But I nonetheless clicked on the "read more" button which linked me to the NHS choices page where I had expected to see a blatant disregard of the importance of having a large sample size. I thought that the study would have failed to take into account the fact that if you're less likely to brush your teeth, chances are you're less inclined to eat healthily and do physical exercise. Alas, I was wrong. The study was based on 11,689 people over a period of 8 years which is pretty impressive. The researchers also had taken into account other factors:

•When all other possible influences had been taken into account, people who reported poor oral hygiene (who never or rarely brushed their teeth) had a 70% greater risk of cardiovascular disease, compared with those who brushed their teeth twice a day. (Hazard ratio (HR) 1.7 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.3 to 2.3)

•By modelling the link between toothbrushing and inflammatory markers, the researchers say that the fully adjusted model shows a reduced rate of brushing is linked to higher levels of the two markers for inflammation - C reactive protein (ß 0.04, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.08) and fibrinogen (ß 0.08,95% CI –0.01 to 0.18). This suggests a significant association.

The reasoning behind it, in brief, is that oral bacteria, if released into the bloodstream, can attatch to fatty plaques and cause clots. The other possibility is that the inflammation caused by periodontal disease increases plaque build up, which may contribute to swelling of the arteries. I'm still bemused that there can be a connection between the mouth and heart but I guess the beauty of the human body is that everything is connected.

Moral of the story? Brush your teeth, kids!

A question of ethics.

To answer the question of whether or not plants deserve rights (in light of them having senses/possibly feeling pain as I blogged about earlier), we must first ask what it is that defines whether or not something has rights, be it as a moral agent or as a moral patient. I'm going to firstly rule out that anything nonliving has status on the grounds that to have a moral status, you would need interests which could be fulfilled and so you'd need wants and desires. A nonliving object has no desire to "live" and it can't do/have anything to ensure that it carries on existing. Hence it does not have what I have read to be termed "autonomous goodness". Even the most basic living creature has autonomous goodness as it is in its interest to continue living (unless, that is, it is living a life of continued suffering with no pleasure whatsoever). Now, a plant, being living, has at least that.

But the fact is, we've got to eat something to survive and a life without killing is impossible- every time you breathe in, you are killing bacteria. Your immune system has probably destroyed many-a-microbe and the mass of the cells which die every year via apoptosis adds up to your the same mass as your entire body mass. We must therefore establish a hierarchy of moral patients, and I think that there are two ways of doing so. The first is by the amount a living being can experience in terms of pleasure and pain and the second is whether or not a being is sapient and autonomous. The latter probably links into the former because being able to choose your actions and distinguish yourself as independent adds to your quality of life.

Now, I haven't seen anything to suggest that plants are sentient; I mean, I don't even know if animals are and plants seem to be a lot simpler, so on those grounds, I don't believe that plants are entitled to a high moral status. However, now that it has been established that they do have senses, I can deduce that they do feel at least some degree of pleasure and pain which does raise them up on my imaginary hierarchy. Then again, if their nervous system is not as developed as that of animals, the degree of pain which they would feel would not reach the degree that animals do hence they are not as deserving of the title of "moral patient".
In other words, assume that the suffering I inflict is "2". The suffering that a plant can feel is hypothetically "2" and an animal "4". 2+2=4 and 2+4=6, with the latter being higher. Therefore, it is less desireable to inflict pain on the latter (namely the animal).

I think that maybe something that makes life worth living is whether or not you have a future; whether or not you have a way in which you can better yourself and your situation. Plants do not have this (the poor things are rooted to the ground!) but animals can migrate, they can reproduce and so on. Ignoring determinism, this indicates that animals (when I refer to animals, I'm referring to mammalian animals- sheep, cows and so on- namely the kind that we eat) can get more pleasure out of life. On the other hand, I don't know if animals deliberately migrate because they want to secure a better future for themselves. I doubt this, though am by no means sure, and if it is the case, then it slightly drowns out my previous argument about the animals being able to get more pleasure out of life.

As I said, we must eat something in order to survive and in terms of the food chain, it's more efficient to eat a plant than an animal:



I know about fruitarians but I find it extrememly doubtful that you'd be able to get everything you needed from a diet consisting of fruits and nuts. Unless, that is, you turned to vitamin supplements and the like but surely even they would be packaged with paper (which comes from trees)?

For anyone skim reading, you're not actually missing much. The information I have on how developed both plants and animals are is nowhere near enough for a decent conclusion to be drawn. But for now, plants as far as I know are not conscious, thence are not moral patients.


Picture from here.

Plants and sensetivity to pain.

Apparently there has been evidence (not particularly new by any stretch of the imagination but I've only recently stumbled upon it) to show that plants respond to stimuli- with some sources going so far as to claim that they feel pain.

So before I delve into this research, I should point out that I don't understand how this logically is a possibility. To feel pain, you need to be conscious. Maybe you don't need to be sentient or sapient but consciousness is a prerequisite. Since plants have no brains, hence no cerebral cortexes, they can't be conscious. This begs the question: if they aren't conscious, how do they feel pain?

Even is they do feel respond to stimuli (which they probably do), I don't see how we could empirically conclude that they feel "pain" in a way that is equivocal to the way we do. Humans and plants have completely different neurobiolgy and anatomy. Humans feel empathy because of mirror neurons* (which are neurons that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another). If we understand the pain of others, and assume that they feel pain in the same way as us because of mirror neurons, we can't do the same with plants as we have different hormones and nervous systems etc . Thus it would be illogical to conclude that plants feel pain in the same way as us.


Plant neurobiology:

Auxin- is a hormone unique to plants which in charge of growth and plant behaviour. It stimulates the formation of vascular strands and roots. It also regulates vesicle trafficking and gene expression in roots.



Root apices are the "brain-like structure" of a plant. They're very sensetive to auxin and they are involved in lateral root formation (lateral roots are roots that extend from the primary root and anchor the plant to the ground- see picture on the left).

Plant synapses- Two adjecent cells which auxin and other chemicals are transported across. These synapses also play a part in immunology because they are the basis of cell-to-cell adhesions with other organisms (namely bacteria, viruses and so on). The cell-to-cell adhesions are also the active sites of the transport of molecules and metabolites.

And plant nerves:

Vascular strands: acts as a plant endoskeleton (something that holds the plant together) as well as the plant nerves. The leaves have single strands which combine to form the bundle of the stem and the vascular cylinder.

As for xylems and phloems, xylems are involved in the transmission of action-potential-driven electric signals (which cause short lasting events) and phloems are involved in the transmission of hydraulic signals (i.e. water-driven signals).

And root apices are, to quote:

Plant Brains: Each root apex harbours a unit of nervous system of plants. The number of root apices in the plant body is high and all brain-units are interconnected via vascular strands (plant nerves) with their polarly-transported auxin (plant neurotransmitter), to form a serial (parallel) nervous system of plants. The computational and informational capacity of this nervous system based on interconnected parallel units is predicted to be higher than that of the diffuse nervous system of lower animals, or the central nervous system of higher animals/humans.

So all of this concludes that plants do indeed have a nervous system, albeit not as complicated as that of animals. Then again, none of this has specified that plants feel pain, just that they can transfer hormones and electrical impulses. Until I find more conclusive evidence, I won't subscribe to the idea that plants do feel pain, but I do accept that they respond to stimuli.

NB: Obviously, none of this is mine. I've stolen everything from this website and reworded so that it's easier to understand. If you're interested in reading more about human pain and the mechanisms behind it, this website seems pretty interesting.

I think I'm going to follow up this post with another one about the ethical and philosophical implications for me if as a result of this research because I'm not sure about whether or not, in light of this, plants should have more of a moral status.


* Note that the existence and significance of mirror neurons is by no means definitive in humans, although it is generally accepted in monkeys so I'll just give the theory the benefit of the doubt.

You give a little love...

... and it all comes back to you.



Such a cute sentiment. I kind of want this played at my funeral.

I was in this play when I was in Year 8 (Bugsy Malone) and it was a lot of fun. Or at least, it was when I comment on it retrospectively. At the time it was stressful and there were too many rehearsals and I was gutted that I hadn't got a bigger part. But then, everything is good retrospectively; that's way things should be.

Anyhow, I've let a musical do my philosophizing for me today; you give a little love and it all comes back to you!

Productivity...

... really isn't happening. There's more interesting stuff to be doing than reading a GCSE Physics revision guide (like googling the different flavours of hummus that exist).

On the bright side, I only have nine exams left, and four of these you can't revise for (French and English exams). I've not done particularly well on the exams I've done so far judging from speaking to friends and comparing answers but I don't really care. I want to be able to sit and read a book or have fun with friends without feeling guilty.

And after exams, no more GCSEs! What happens now is that I only study subjects I like and we go more in depth with them. I'm very glad.

Oucome of the protests.

There were no clashes at all, the police worked neutrally and effectively and I still saw women wearing hijabs in town today. I'm pretty happy with the outcome (or lack thereof).

I don't know whether to take this as "protests are pointless" because barely a ripple was caused or as something which should restore my faith in humanity because there weren't enough extremists on both sides to do harm. I'll go for the latter because it's nicer.

English Defence League.

Tomorrow the EDL will be marching through Newcastle and the UAF will be there, leading a counter-protest. It will be interesting, to say the least. The couple of protests I've been in which have had counter-demonstrations haven't been particularly constructive- they've essentially been a lot of shouting on both sides. Apparently this time, though, it could be different.

On the EDL website, it harps on about how the protest will be peaceful and how the police have obliged to their requests and it's implied that the police are totally behind them- but the reality is different.

Apparently the police have been warning people to stay indoors because violence could potentially erupt on both sides. I found this on the Unite Against Fascism website (which is, granted, probably biased but it's commentary so can't be that unaccurate):

"When the EDL came to Manchester in October, Muslim graves were desecrated. When the EDL came to Stoke-on-Trent in January, the words "Islam scum" and "EDL" were daubed on a mosque."

I wanted to go clothes shopping with my mum tomorrow but she refused because of the march (she's Muslim and wears a headscarf). It's just sad that they can cause so much fear considering they just seem like a bunch of thugs (and yes, I have looked through their website, though you can pretty much deduce everything you need to from their members). I told her that by not going out, she was submitting to what they wanted, but I really don't blame her; who would want to go out and face people who see you as sub-human and a worthless entity and who are vocal about it? She retalliated by saying that it's better to ignore them (which is incidentally a parenting method for naughty children) as the whole point of their march is for attention which is a fair point, but I still think that ignoring a problem does not make it go away.

I'm all for freedom of speech and criticising Islam (same stands for any religion or political stance) but pissing on graves is really not a great way to do so. Engage in debates, write books, leaflet, campaign and for God's sake, accept the responsibilities that come with rights.

HEY! DW!

Arthur. What a show.

"You got to listen to your heart, listen to the beat, listen to the rhythm, rhythm of the street.

Open up your eyes, open up your ears, get together and makes things better by working together.

It's a simple message and it comes from the heart.

Believe in yourself, or that's the place to start.

What a wonderful kind of day, if we can learn to work and play and get along with each other."

The kid could give Shakespeare a run for his money. It's profound.

Tests.

I was wondering today who came up with the idea of exams and so took the liberty of googling it. Apparently it was the Byazntines (Ancient Greeks, I think).

It's actually an ingenius idea, but exams are so commonplace that they serve as nothing more than worries or pests. The idea of being tested is one central to Islam- life being a test from God- and central to our education system. If we took away exams, what would we have? Learning for the sake of learning? Would people learn for the sake of learning? Would people still follow religions if the concepts of Hell and Heaven were taken away (although, to be fair, Christianity and Islam are the only religions with a focus on Heaven and Hell, and even Christians now deem Hell to be 'an absence of God')?

So, yes, I have exams as of Friday (unless you count the Arabic exams I've had- but they were a resit because I wanted a better grade than the one I got. After having sat the exams, I can predict that I won't get a better grade but that's fine by me). I started revision on Saturday and even that has been fraught with procrastination. I do maintain that exams are a good idea, but that doesn't stop me moaning my way through them. There's no doubt that, however long exams have been along, moaning has been around a lot longer. And even if exams are developed or abolished altogether, moaning will be around for as long as the human race is.

Perspective.

Perspective. Persipicire (to look at closely) +
iv.

It's a beautiful thing. I didn't realise how self-pitying people were until I joined Facebook. It's well nigh impossible to scroll through the f/b home page without seeing that 50 of my friends have joined a group called "OMDZ , I SMILE BUT U HAV NO IDEA WHAT I GO THRU!!1one". Really? To be honest, I don't doubt that some of them have legitimate woes and they by all means have every right to complain. It's just that for a lot of them, I suspect their biggest problem is that two of their friends have broken up, or they're not doing as well at Maths as they should or another such petty problem. It's all fair and well being upset for those reasons, but it's also a tad frustrating for me as an outside observer when they dismiss the suffering of third-worlders and reduce it to "they shouldn't have babies" or "they should do the best with what they have". How can you expect empathy but give none in return?


They're lucky; I'm lucky; chances are you're lucky, but people are immune to the goodness in their lives (and I'm guilty of this too) which is sad. When I was younger, I thought that everyone was happy. This progressed to "most people are happy" when I learned about depression and other mental illnesses. Now I'm coming to realise that barely anyone would classify themselves as "happy" and that's it's hardly a static sentiment anyway. Maybe people have a twisted perception of happiness? Happiness doesn't mean being constantly satisfied and in a constant state of enjoymentent. It just means... being happy.

Endings.

It's bizarre how quickly time passes. It's not even that I'm getting old; I'm sixteen, but it still feels as though time is elapsing beyond what I can comprehend. When I was younger, sixteen seemed like the age where I'd be self-actualised, I'd understand myself and the world, but that's far from the truth. I'm not ready to be able to legally have sex! I am not responsible enough to live on my own, and joining the army is an idea I can't fathom even if it was what I wanted to do. The law deems me mature enough to do so many things, but it completely overestimates me: I'm still a child.

Tomorrow is my last day of compulsory education. Apparently we're meant to be sentimental and emotional about this, but I genuinely do not care. There's no point in saying dramatic goodbyes only to come back three days later for exams. Also, the majority of people I know are coming back to school for sixth form anyway. Yet apparently it's still a time of major change, and it's a time where I should mourn what I've lived for the past few years. I think it's false sentiments, to be honest. Things are going to change, sure, but I completely embrace that because life is somewhat dull at the minute.

Politics-wise, I think Clegg made the right choice by forming a coalition with the Tories, though I doubt the former group will have much say or power in anything. The alternative was to form a coalition with Labour (fine) and some of the other small and patriotic parties (not so fine) or to ignore the opportunity which would have just been disastrous in terms of Lib Dem support.

Child's play

The general election is fast approaching and it's as if the nation has been subjected to a mob of dementors. At the beginning of the campaign, morale was very low; people were sick of Labour but they didn't like the Tories either. It wasn't a case of voting for who you wanted to be in power- rather which party you thought was the lesser of two evils. Democracy had reared its head and it wasn't pretty.

Then the posters went up. "Broken Britain" slogans, airbrushed faces, posters which mocked and bullied the opposition. It was one big war between Labour with their "experienced hand which will lift us out of the recession" and the Tories with their suspiciously hymn book esque manifesto.

And then the debate happened and alas, a new competitor emerged: the Lib Dems .They surfaced as the clear winners, leaving Brown desperately trying a form an allegiance with them. The 10 million who had watched the debate now saw an alternative, and they liked it. The post-interview polls showed a rise in Lib Dem support and a decline in Tory support. But what's interesting is why this happened and whether or not it can last. I think the majority of people never really paid attention to the Lib Dems- they were like the shirt you buy 'cause you quite liked it at the time but then shove at the bottom of your wardrobe and forget about. People were expecting Nick Clegg to fail, but he didn't.

You know the X Factor/BGT contestant who you don't think will be any good (think SuBo here) and have low hopes for, but then they open their mouths and Christ! They can sing? That's Nick. On the other hand, SuBo didn't win BGT in the end. She came close, but the public didn't quite give her what she needed. Oh, and then she had her mental breakdown but we'll just leave it there.

So this begs the question as to whether or not Lib Dem support will be shortlived- already the polls have shown a slight decline in their support. Cameron and Brown will be more ready to scrutinise the Lib Dem's policies and it will be up to Clegg to maintain his newfound support.

Que se sera se sera, and in the meantime, I leave you with a few propsed laws from the Monster Raving Loony Party's manifesto:

-> Hypocrites: It is propsed that politicians be made to swear a "Hippocratic Oath" preventing them by law from being Hypocrites. All politicians should be made to stand by their policies or at least admit that they were wrong.

->Balanced view: All politicians should be made to stand continually on one leg to check how balanced their arguments are. This would reduce political flatulence and soothe the listener's ears.

-> Politicians are shocked: Politicians be fitted with electric collars, the type used to stop dogs barking, and be shocked every time they lie.

-> Never mind the money: Every year the Prime Minister should be tarred and feathered. This will make the job much less appealing and hopefully lead to short-term office for power-hungry MPs.

-> Transport politicians to hospitals: Politicians should be made to use public transport, this wil have many benefits and the saved money will go into hospitals which could then be used to treat said politicians.

Am I the only person who thinks the British general public are missing who the real underdogs are? ;)

What's in a name?

I just spent the last half hour looking up a suitable nickname for this blog; I scoured forums for some inspiration, looked at Yahoo! Answers. I even tried a nickname generator which, needless to say, came up with some absurd (and oddly deviant) suggestions. In the end, I just stole a good ol' French colloquialism because the alternatives were pretentious, misleading or downright silly.



What can I say? Individuality is overrated.