Something I feel the need to share...

Looking at a picture of his infantry regiment the Grenadier Guards, my brother started to reel off the names of the boys who he trained with who had died in Afghanistan recently. It bought a tear to my eye. So many of the young men I was looking at in the photograph were dead now. These young men that had trained with my brother, been through exactly the same processes and been sent to the same places were dead. Not only is it a pointless war, it is just turning into a game of luck for those who are there, I can't imagine how awful it must be to be there, and what is worse is that my brother said, the majority of the young boys who are out there at the moment don't even know why they were sent. Bring our boys back....

Citizen Kane

I seem to always relate back to Sociology when I see anything remotley related to class struggle. So I may have been watching Citizen Kane with the wrong ideas but hey ho! Here is what I took from it.

Kane started out trying to protect the interests of the underclass, using his power to bring the real news to the people even though he was loosing money. He came across as very modest, and not wanting special treatment (the scene in the news room when he asks them all to sit). He genuinley wanted to tell the news honestly.

It seemed however that the richer he became, buying "someone who collects diamonds" and marrying the President's niece, made him loose site of what he started out to achieve. "People will think what I tell them to think". It made me think about Marxism, and the Bourgeoise pretending to have the interests of the Proleteriat at heart but actually just mystifying issues and creating an aura of false class conciousness.

I may not have been taking what I should from the film, but with regard to Freudianism, the only ideas that seem to stand out to me were the fact that he went to work and his first wife stayed at home, (this seemed like a huge issue as there like 6 cuts to them eating dinner everynight and her questioning why he is always at the paper) and also the fact that he forced his second wife into a career she no longer enjoyed because HE had payed for it. I think this relates to the whole idea that woman are lesser men and an inferior sex etc....stupid ideas.

I suppose the film was meant to portray how power can bring your eventual downfall, and it was an okay watch, but I do not see how it could have ever been hailed as the greatest film of our time. I had a lot of interest in comparing Kane to Branson and Murdoch though.

WINOL week 1

Already in the knowledge I was not able to attend Monday's team meeting, I emailed ahead. However, due to lack of communication between the features team, the features editor was not informed and I was confronted as to why I was not there. Not a good start. But, as I am organised, I had my ideas ready to pitch and emailed them through slightly peeved that I was being accused of skiving off! The feedback came through and I was given the go ahead to get writing.

I spent the majority of Tuesday trying to get through to the the people I needed to speak to, but with no luck. So I had to switch the angles of my stories. I was given till 6pm Wednesday to get my two stories done, which seemed like a mighty long time, but when it came to it I was lucky I had that long. I uploaded them to the site Wednesday and thought all was well. Untill I checked my email in the evening and was told that we were all meant to be in on the Wednesday. Not an issue, just a case of misinformation. Apart from the lack of communication, which I believe has now been resolved as people have set up a facebook group etc etc, I think my stories went okay, although not totally thrilling to read, but that is Health and Wellbeing for you....very dry!