Political correctness takes the bacon

Photo from www.ardnamushrooms.co.uk

First of all; Apologies to the terrriblepun - If it even can be called that... And now on to the story. Okay, so I had BBC 5 Live on in the background the other night, when suddenly they mention Honley C of E Primary and Kirklees - Kirklees is the name of our local government and Honley is two villages over from me. I went to Honley High - Would have gone to the primary too but there was a clerical mixup and I lost my place...

Anyway, I instantly turn up the radio and turn up the sound wondering why on earth Honley C of E would be mentioned on a national radio station. Turns out the school is putting on a play for the parents. Okay, so nothing new there - It's a dramatizization of the story the Three Little Pigs....Again - Nothing strange there.

But the school had made the decision that the play the 'Three Little Pigs' would be insensitive to Muslims because they don't eat pigs, and of course in the story the wolf tries to, so instead of pigs it would be the... 'Three Little Puppies'...For heavens sake!

That has got to be one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard in my life! For a start Honley Primary is a Church of England school, meaning it's a Christian school - So technically there should be no Muslims there to be offended in the first place!

That said, my C of E in the next village over had about half a dozen Muslim students when I was there, as well as some Jewish and an odd Jehovah's witness - The school bent over backwards to not offend them and kind of forgot it was supposed to teach Christianity...We never even read from the Bible - Just some good morals and ethics book.

Anyway, the 'best' part of this story has got to be the fact that nobody even complained about it being called the Three Little Pigs, plus a man who phoned in because he was Muslim himself said that the idea anyone from his religion would be offended by the story was just not true.

5 Live then interviewed a member of Kirlees council who said the decision was all the school's own decision, and had nothing to do with them.

Actually no - the story's 'best' part is that about ten minutes after the interview with the 'man from Kirklees' a statement was issued that Honley wouldn't be changing the pigs to puppies after all. Probably because they got told off for being so idiotic.

I must admit when they first started talking about changing the pigs to puppies i couldn't think why they would do that - The only reason I came up with was that fat people were somehow offended - The Muslim/Kosher aspect didn't even enter in my mind at all.

I suppose now is when I should write a summing up paragraph about the state of education today and the problems/stupidity of excessive political correctness..But I think the story kind of speaks for itself...

YouTube is getting sued

Picture from www.youtube.com

You Tube and it's parent company Google are being sued with a £517 million lawsuit ($1 billion) by Viacom for copyright infringement of the clips available on You Tube for people to watch for free.

For those who don't know Viacom is the US media company that owns MTV and Comedy Central, and today they filed the law suit in New York, bringing the copyright argument between Viacom and Google to a head.

Viacom claims that they own the rights to over 160 thousand illegally uploaded clips on YouTube, and have being demanding for months that pirated clips are removed - Along with several other high profile companies such as Disney, Time Warner, and ABC.

I also read on Guardian.co.uk that Viacom released a statement attacking You Tube, saying it had; "built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.''

I think that the whole thing is getting slightly out of hand now, I mean surely a line should be drawn on what is and isn't copyright infringement? Sure all those copyrighted music videos and tv show clips are uploaded, but in a lot of cases you can't actually buy them on dvd or people have being recommended a show and want to see what it's like first.

Also, with YouTube you are only viewing the clips, it's not designed as a watch and download site, so it's more like a large TV station with hundreds of chanels you can choose to watch than anything. If all these clips keep being removed I think it will it just mean less advertising for the companies in general and a huge increase on illegal downloads.

Plus I don't see a lot of these companies creating YouTube accounts and putting the clips up themselves - Sure CBS has an account and uploads things, but not like whole episodes or movies, etc... Of things that won't be released to DVD or haven't yet.

Anyway, I don't believe that YouTube 'exploits the devotion of fans', I think it's up to the people who own the copyright to help make their material accessable in the first place, so if it exploits anything, it's the weakness of the companies to supply for the demand in the changing technological world, etc... But that's just my opinion.


To read the full story go to Times Online or Guardian.co.uk.

Stories I missed reporting on part 1...

Photo from www.celebrity-gossip.net (edit by me)

On Friday 23rd of February in Amsterdam at Hugh Grant's Dutch premire of Music & Lyrics - Where a woman jumped out from the crowd and handcuffed herself to him, where she stayed for ten minutes till she was cut free by firemen and hauled off to the local police station.

The woman - Cielke Sijben, a Dutch journalist wasn't a mad stalker fan or anything. She did it as part of a stunt organised by her and her crew from Dutch network 101 tv. They wanted to see if Cielke could walk down the red carpet with Hugh, so decided handcuffs were the way to go, because if she just dashed over and took his arm, body guards would easly haul her away.

Cielke didn't actually think they could do it (otherwise she would have dressed up for the occasion) but thought she'd try anyway, so was suprised how easy it was to reach Hugh and slap on the cuffs.

She introduced herself and explained, etc... So as to not worry Hugh too much, and when she was cut free she was taken off to the police station, but wasn't actually charged.

I got most of the story from Cielke herself from when she appeared on BBC radio station 5 Live to talk about it, though additional information came from starpulse.

I don't think doing what she did makes her a maniac as such (who wouldn't want to walk down the red carpet with a celebrity?) and if she had asked they probably would have said no - even for a publicity stunt, afterall celebrities and journalists in general don't have that great a relationship.

No, in my opinion the only thing that posibly be a bit mad is that she chose Hugh Grant - No offence to him of course, it's just I can think of a few celebrities I'd much rather handuff myself to on the red carpet, (not that that is really my style of course though) and no, I'm not going to give examples...

Not dead yet!

Hey everyone, I'm still alive and interested in my blog, though wow it's been a long time since i've posted! I apologise for that, (almost two weeks to be exact) and I've missed commenting on a few stories I've come across in the meantime which I'm annoyed about, so will have a recent newstory round up of the best ones tomorrow.

But I do have a relativly good excuse for not posting for so long - That thing some people know as 'real life'.

From Thursday 22nd of February to Sunday my little cousin (12) was staying over, and with him being here, and sleeping on the floor of my room, it was impossible to be able to concentrate long enough to post once - let alone every day, due to the fact he seems to have the mental age of about 6, so he wouldn't leave me alone, and kept closing my programs, stealing the mouse, pulling on the keyboard, writing gibberish, jumping on me, turning off my computer from the power button, etc... And he refused to treat me as an authoritive figure/adult because I'm 17 - so in his mind just a kid, so telling him off/hitting him round the head/banning him from watching a dvd/me reading to him/whatever else he wanted, etc... but that would do either nothing to stop him misbehaving, or make him go into a full blown tantrum.


The reason I'm explaining this is because it has hit on an (I think) interesting subject. I say this because I know several children, (mostly boys) around the 11-13 pre-teen age who act as if they are half the age they are - & the one common factor between all of them is the fact their parents had them late in life. Which makes me wonder if it's not just coincidence, but more a behavioural and mental pattern due to how a lot of parents in their early to mid (and in some case even late) 40's raise their children and how the chirldren in turn react to their parents when they become more aware of things like the fact their parents are much older than their friend's parents, etc...
But I'll save that article/discussion/debate, call it what you will for later in the week.

Anyway, on Sunday night my useless immune system got hit by a virus, so considering the fact I was ill to begin with, getting a fever, throwing up, hallucinating (pretty whacked out ones too), sneezing and coughing, (also setting off my tonsillitus) wasn't the best thing to happen...But got rid of that now, except for my cough which has stuck around with the tonsillitus.

And finally, the past couple of days didn't have time to post as I was busy planning a week trip to Cleveland, Ohio in America with one of my best friends in July. Yes - Not one of the most obvious tourist spots in the states, but one of my other friends is moving out there on March 12th, so it's a chance to see her, and there's a gig we want to see in Lakeside on while we're there. Reason for telling you that is because i'll be doing a diary on the trip when it happens, and also a few articles in relation to planning it. (Not least a few rants on certain policies in some/all of the American states.. And then there's the little matter of 'Amendment 2', but not going to go into that now...)

Okay, so that's pretty much me up to date, thank you all my readers, and especially those who leave comments, and sorry for not replying to some of the comments left on or after the 21st of Frb that I wasn't able to reply to, and i'll try and catch up on all your blogs within the next couple of days.

Is Jackson's star treatment to blame for a woman's death?

Picture from www.michael-jackson.com

On Friday, the family of Manuela Gomez Ruiz told "Good Morning America" A show on ABC how on February 15th 2006, their mother who was in a Californian hospital after suffering a heart attack was moved from the primary trauma room to a smaller room in the hospital to make way for Michael Jackson who was being admitted with flu-like symptoms. Mrs Ruiz who was 74 had two more heart attacks the following day and died whilst Mr Jackson was discharged on the 16th.

Family members of Mrs Ruiz are appalled at the treatment her grandmother was given just because Michael Jackson was a celebrity and are planning to sue both Marian Medical Centre and Mr Jackson himself for being to blame for her suffering the second and third heart attacks which led to her death.

The hospital said due to legal restrictions couldn't comment on Mrs Ruiz's case in particular, but did say:
"We are confident, however, that our patients have and continue to receive high-quality, compassionate and timely care."

A statement from Michael Jackson's publicist Raymone Bain deny's the accusation, saying that the singer offers his condolences to Mrs Ruiz's family but also:
"It is outrageous that Michael Jackson's name would be invoked into a situation of which he had no authority or control... He was a patient himself."

Well, it seems to me trouble and lawsuits are following Michael Jackson wherever he goes, but this is kind of getting into murky territory. There's no doubt in my mind that celebrities like Jackson do get special treatment, even when they are being blacklisted - Michael actually went into hospital during the start of his child molestation trial, stalling procedures. (Some say on purpose.)

However, can Michael be blamed if the hospital made the decision themselves to move Mrs Ruiz, because we don't know certain facts like whether or not Jackson demanded star treatment during his overnight stay as a patient.

Then there's the question of whether or not Mrs Ruiz suffered the extra heart attacks in response of being moved, or if she was still going to die regardless. So as I said, it is really murky territory.

My sympathy goes out to Mrs Ruiz's family, and I'm not saying if they do file charges that they are doing it for the money, a lot of people can't take the fact that it was just their loved one's time to go, so start looking for scapegoats.

But even though I am not a fan of Jackson, I do think it rather interesting that it took Mrs Ruiz's family just over a year to speak out on the matter...

Full story found on courttv.com.

British teenagers & gangs targeted by new gun laws

Picture copyright of

http://www.brentbrain.org.uk

As I scanned the headlines on the web, a story from Times Online stuck out in my head. It was about how Tony Blair has today announced that the government will be reviewing the laws and proposals for crimes involving guns, in particular making the minimum age someone can go to prison for being in pocession of a firearm 17 rather than 21 as it is now. - So as to discourage gangs from giving younger members guns.

The full story as reported can be found here.

Now, I totally agree that a crackdown on gun crime in the UK is the way to go, especially in the light of the rising amount of gun crime in London in recent weeks. However in the article Mr Blair is quoted as saying:

“It is about a specific problem within a specific criminal culture to do with guns and gangs, which doesn’t make it any less serious, incidentally, but I think it’s important therefore that we address that actual issue. How do we make sure that these groups of young people within these specific criminal cultures, who are getting into gangs at an early age and using guns, how do we clamp down on them very hard and provide solutions for that?”

I'm sorry but I really don't believe it's just a few misguided teenagers entering into gangs causing the problems - What about those smuggling them in in the first place, or manufacturing them here. Then there's the theives and drug racketeers, etc... It's not just people joinging gangs at a young age who are 'packing heat'.

But the fact remains that this is Britain, not America - Nobody should be packing heat except possibly special branches of the police.

It is probably easy to tell I am not Tony Blair's biggest fan, but I do agree with what he's doing, I just don't like the fact that he's putting all the blame onto today's youth, and not admitting that maybe if his labour government had been more tough on immigration and smuggling laws - As well as actually having a decent policy of 'Education! Education! Education!' like he was always banging on about, then maybe there wouldn't be any major problem with gangs now.

Tony Blair isn't even admitting that the plans to review the UK's gun laws have come because of the sudden influx of gun crime and murders hitting the headlines (Most occuring in London) in the past month or so. Because I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't happened, or more specifically hadn't happened in such a closed time period, Tony Blair wouldn't have made that announcement.

After reading the article I went on good old Google and I found the below chart from this page on the BBC news site.
Ok, technically this doesn't go up to 2006/7, but it does prove that Labour didn't do much to put a stop to the crimes being committed with firearms over their first term in power - Not that the figures the Tories left behind were great either.

I think today is actually one of the first times Tony Blair has properly and publically addressed the problem in any form, and even though I have no evidence in front of me to back this up, judging by the chart on my left, the gun crime figures for the present can only be even higher.

Now I don't know what those of you reading think about the story, or of the opinions and conclusions I have drawn from it, but I'm interested in hearing what others think, so leave a comment and tell me.