Britain has such a glorious and rich history, full of amazing events and extraordinary people. So to learn today that we are not entirely indigenous to this great Isle was somewhat dissapointing.
Once I got over the initial shock that we are speaking a variant of German and that some of what I thought was our heritage may have been "mythical" and "made up by the Victorians", I took a deep interest in what Chris was saying about the Act Of Union.
I have many links with Ireland, my Dad was born and brought up in Dublin and continues to live in Waterford. I have cousins, aunties and uncles there, and my brother was sent to Northern Ireland with the army to serve for six months. My Dad is very proud of his heritage, I am forever listening to stories about how my family survived the famine as somewhere along the line we were money lenders and other bits and bobs of the Greene family history. But to learn of the hardship the people of Ireland have suffered over the ages made me even more proud to have Irish heritage. Mass genocide, economic destruction and famine are just the start of the problems England has caused in Ireland, so is it any wonder Ireland does not want to become a part of "Great" Britain. What is so great about a country that cannot gain the confidence of another by peaceful means?
I think it is brilliant that Britain was the first country to industrialise, and played a crucial role in developing the world economy and that we have such a brilliant history and ties with many other great countries in the world, but as Chris stated, how can we judge on how best to solve other countries terrorism issues and problems when we cannot even control one in our own country? The whole idea of Britain storming in to help other people to gain face as opposed to solving our own countries issues seems to be a recurring problem.
Let's feed and shelter Africa, when we have a huge poverty problem here, let's go and help America fight the war in Iraq, when our soldiers are being given inadequate food compared to the Americans. It all seems so hypocritical.
I want to leave on a quote from one of my favourite plays "Translations" by Brian Friel. He wrote plays relating to the struggles in Ireland, and along with the Poet Seamus Heaney, had these performed by their theatre company, Field Day. "It is not the literal past, the facts of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language." The marks of the past effect us now in the form of the language we speak, as our language and culture is shaped by our history.
Thursday 26 February 2009
Thursday 19 February 2009
Jade Goody- sad or not?
In 2002 Jade Goody was a figure of public hatred. Whilst in the Big Brother House, she supposedly engaged in sexual activities under a duvet and threatened to "deck" fellow housemates. This was not taken well by the viewers of the iconic show, and she left the house to the public holding placards declaring "kill the pig" and "miss piggy".
In January 2007 Jade again entered the house in the celebrity version of Big Brother, and once again became a hate figure after herself, Jo O'Meara and Danielle Lloyd exchanged racist remarks about Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, referring to her as "Shilpa Poppadom" and declaring that she should "Fuck off home".
Although she made numerous attempts to reconcile the reputation she had ruined for herself, with her best selling perfume line, a DVD, an autobiography, a cookbook and a trip to India, it is only since she has been diagnosed with terminal Cervical Cancer that she has been accepted into society by the masses.
I find it hard to believe that someone who was so hated and who made so many mistakes during her life is only being accepted when told she is dying. There is so much publicity being aimed at her now, even talks of her being filmed whilst she is dying. It shows how unforgiving and shallow the British public really are.
She wants to marry her on-off lover Jack Tweed this Sunday before she dies, and was given a £3,500 wedding dress from Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed as a gift.
In my opinion, its all very sad, but it has been made into a media circus. In last weeks news Bishop Jonathan Blake made headlines for photographing his child on top of their house, for a project in which the children have to be snapped reading in perculiar places. He visited Jade this week. The Bishop arrived in an emergency style vehicle, with the words "On Call Bishop" and "Trauma 999" splashed across the back. It almost seems as though he was making a mockery of the church and made the whole thing more ludicrous.
I appreciate that Jade has been in the media spotlight since 2o02 age 21, but when it gets to the extreme that they want to video her in her dying days, days which she should be comforting her sons, providing reassurance and spending it with the man she loves, it all becomes very hard to feel truley sympathetic toward her when nothing about it seems real.
Jade has come from a turbulent background, with her Dad dying of a heroine overdose and her mum allowing her to roll spliffs since she was four years old, so it is no wonder some of the things she did throughout her life were not always right. But I think, now that she has gained the publics sympathy and affection, she should leave peacefully and gracefully, not in the middle of a media circus, leaving her poor children fond memories of their mother.
In January 2007 Jade again entered the house in the celebrity version of Big Brother, and once again became a hate figure after herself, Jo O'Meara and Danielle Lloyd exchanged racist remarks about Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, referring to her as "Shilpa Poppadom" and declaring that she should "Fuck off home".
Although she made numerous attempts to reconcile the reputation she had ruined for herself, with her best selling perfume line, a DVD, an autobiography, a cookbook and a trip to India, it is only since she has been diagnosed with terminal Cervical Cancer that she has been accepted into society by the masses.
I find it hard to believe that someone who was so hated and who made so many mistakes during her life is only being accepted when told she is dying. There is so much publicity being aimed at her now, even talks of her being filmed whilst she is dying. It shows how unforgiving and shallow the British public really are.
She wants to marry her on-off lover Jack Tweed this Sunday before she dies, and was given a £3,500 wedding dress from Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed as a gift.
In my opinion, its all very sad, but it has been made into a media circus. In last weeks news Bishop Jonathan Blake made headlines for photographing his child on top of their house, for a project in which the children have to be snapped reading in perculiar places. He visited Jade this week. The Bishop arrived in an emergency style vehicle, with the words "On Call Bishop" and "Trauma 999" splashed across the back. It almost seems as though he was making a mockery of the church and made the whole thing more ludicrous.
I appreciate that Jade has been in the media spotlight since 2o02 age 21, but when it gets to the extreme that they want to video her in her dying days, days which she should be comforting her sons, providing reassurance and spending it with the man she loves, it all becomes very hard to feel truley sympathetic toward her when nothing about it seems real.
Jade has come from a turbulent background, with her Dad dying of a heroine overdose and her mum allowing her to roll spliffs since she was four years old, so it is no wonder some of the things she did throughout her life were not always right. But I think, now that she has gained the publics sympathy and affection, she should leave peacefully and gracefully, not in the middle of a media circus, leaving her poor children fond memories of their mother.
Tuesday 17 February 2009
Politics
Politics has always been an area of life I find hard to comprehend. I realise that it occurs constantly in all that we do and say, and trying to avoid itis impossible, yet the whole idea I find very complicated.
Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a subject I do however find incredibly interesting. When I was younger, I always used to ask people, " if we evolved from monkeys, how comes the monkeys in the zoo and thewild haven't evolved into humans yet?" When the theory was raised, it sent me back to a time in my university kitchen, watching the boys I live with running around drunk, tackling eachother to the ground, passing out and stuffing food down their throats like primates. It made me think, how much difference is there between humans today and our monkey ancestors?
I tend to look it at like this, we still do the basic things to survive, we eat, we drink and we reproduce. To do these things as a primate you need to hunt, find a source of water and a mate. In my eyes, we still only need to do these things to survive, we have just made them incredibly complicatedby introducing money, which we get from work and going to university, and complicated dating techniques, why can't it all be based on the smells we emit to possible partners?
We are still all aiming toward the same thing, we live and we die, we just need to survive inbetween. A bleak outlook on life I agree, but really, has itnever crossed your mind that we would be happier as monkeys?
The quote, "Man is born free, yet everywhere is in chains", from Rousseau has always spoken to me. We are all born into this world and our parents have hopes and dreams for us, yet we are all under a form of control thatrestricts us doing what we really want! So, why do we obey the state? Referring to the Government and Politics book, when a government has legitimacy, it does not necessarily mean that it is the right way to be ruled.
In a time of recession, and massive job loss, Gordon Brown sits in Parliament making decisions for our future, with no money worries himself. As Marxists would argue, there needs to be a revolution against the unequal distribution of wealth. We are under afalse class conciousness in which we have elected these people to control our futures, with the impression that they will make things better, so why is this happening? Perhaps we need a charismatic as opposed to a rationallegal type of authority to restore the hopes of the country, well at least mine anyway.
Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a subject I do however find incredibly interesting. When I was younger, I always used to ask people, " if we evolved from monkeys, how comes the monkeys in the zoo and thewild haven't evolved into humans yet?" When the theory was raised, it sent me back to a time in my university kitchen, watching the boys I live with running around drunk, tackling eachother to the ground, passing out and stuffing food down their throats like primates. It made me think, how much difference is there between humans today and our monkey ancestors?
I tend to look it at like this, we still do the basic things to survive, we eat, we drink and we reproduce. To do these things as a primate you need to hunt, find a source of water and a mate. In my eyes, we still only need to do these things to survive, we have just made them incredibly complicatedby introducing money, which we get from work and going to university, and complicated dating techniques, why can't it all be based on the smells we emit to possible partners?
We are still all aiming toward the same thing, we live and we die, we just need to survive inbetween. A bleak outlook on life I agree, but really, has itnever crossed your mind that we would be happier as monkeys?
The quote, "Man is born free, yet everywhere is in chains", from Rousseau has always spoken to me. We are all born into this world and our parents have hopes and dreams for us, yet we are all under a form of control thatrestricts us doing what we really want! So, why do we obey the state? Referring to the Government and Politics book, when a government has legitimacy, it does not necessarily mean that it is the right way to be ruled.
In a time of recession, and massive job loss, Gordon Brown sits in Parliament making decisions for our future, with no money worries himself. As Marxists would argue, there needs to be a revolution against the unequal distribution of wealth. We are under afalse class conciousness in which we have elected these people to control our futures, with the impression that they will make things better, so why is this happening? Perhaps we need a charismatic as opposed to a rationallegal type of authority to restore the hopes of the country, well at least mine anyway.
Monday 16 February 2009
Welcome :)
The idea of putting my personal thoughts and opinions on the internet is somewhat daunting to me, seeing as how no one listens to me when I speak, I figure why do they want to see what I write! But due to the insistence of my tutor..a blog is essential, I can no longer "ponse" off of other people's ideas. So here goes! World be ready to here the ramblings of a teenage girl who likes to moan about a lot of stuff...especially my university housemates :@!!
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