Back to university: Juggling metaphor and Watergate-gate
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Culture, Personal, Politics, University, comedy
Well I went back to universery today (Tuesday) for the start of my classes, On Tuesdays I have a double whammy of lectures, applied marketing stategy in the morning and political communication in the afternoon. As always with marketing, the lecture was full of buzzwords which I personally get amusement from; I may very well make up a bingo card for next week.(Buzzword Bingo iPhone app) The class appeard to be nothing out of the ordinary, when a surreal moment occured. In the second half we had a change of lecturer, and we ended up watching a video of man juggling, which seemed to last forever but it was infact more like 5 mins. This, he explained, was a metaphor for marketing, the music in the video was marketing strategy and the balls were the four p’s of marketing (product, place, promotion, price)
The second lecture, on political communication was an introduction lecture discussing the media’s role in providing political information (or disinformation) and the issues that arrise, such as it being essential for democracy yet paradoxically potentially harmful. There was a point at which we got asked to say which political orentiation various newspapers biases lie. I answewred the first one, and while I could have answered them all I didn’t, simply because I don’t think it’s my role to answer every question, a point which relates somewhat to this post by Plashing Vole. However when the group got asked for an answer for the Daily Mail I was so close to saying the BNP/National Front, I really wish I did now 
Somewhere along the line Watergate got mentioned I couldn’t help but laugh due to thinking about the Mitchell and Webb sketch regarding the use of the word “-gate” as a suffix applied to all scandals. Unfortunatly I couldn’t find a clip online to post, only thing I could find was part of the script:
Mr. DAVID MITCHELL (actor, “That Mitchell and Webb Look”): (as character) I was just going to say that my eye was caught by this whole scandal in America.
Mr. ROBERT WEBB (actor, “That Mitchell and Webb Look”): (as character) Oh, the scandal in America. Yeah, that is interesting. That must be the biggest scandal since Watergategate.
Mr. MITCHELL: (as character) Watergategate? Isn’t it just Watergate?
Mr. WEBB: (as character) No. That would mean it was just about water. No, it was a scandal or gate, add the suffix gate, that’s what you do with a scandal, involving the Watergate Hotel. So it was called the Watergate scandal, or Watergategate.
Inevitably in the search for a clip I ended up watching other things on Youtube, of which two of the clips I’m going to share here, the first one is one of my favourite sketches from That Mitchell and Webb look based on The Good Samaritan:
I then somehow stumbled across this video “A Brief History of America” and to be honest I really don’t know what to think about it, it’s seems to me to be both funny; in places and yet shocking.
Tags: America, Buzzword, comedy, Juggling, Lectures, Marketing, Media, Politics, Samaritan, University Daily Mail, Watergate
My Political Views (Quiz)
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Politics, Web
My Political Views
I am a center-left social libertarian
Left: 1.76, Libertarian: 3.74
Political Spectrum Quiz
The PlashingVole, at his blog www.Plashingvole.blogspot.com, took the above quiz to determine political views, after seeing it there I decided to give it a shot about a week back, and got the above result. I think that sums me up quite nicely, on my facebook page I’m listed as variable, but I consider myself to be more sympathetic towards the left, as depicted on the diagram. So all be it a little online quiz, I was rather pleased with it.
Tags: Left, Libertarian, Political, Politics, Quiz, Social, Views
BNP Friends.
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Media, News, Politics, Topical
There is, as I’m sure your aware, a plethora of material wrote on the Internet; as well as other mediums, berating the BNP (British National Party) and I’m going not try and add too much to it simply because others have and continue to write better and more passionate pieces about the subject. However, surprise to say, it is, of course, an unthinkable travesty that people would and have voted for them, for which there could be many reasons, again which I do not really want to get into.
The reason for bringing up the BNP is because before and after the European election I’ve had many a conversation on politics regarding the election with people who do not consider themselves political, and much of what they had to say did very much interest me. Without naming people and specific situations there seemed to be a large minority, lets say 35-45% who seemed to think the BNP “deserve a chance” as “we might as well give them a try”. But this sentiment, as far as I can see, wasn’t generated as a protest vote, one person, which I would never ever have expected, went on a massive, and the is no other word for it, Racist rant about jobs and “kicking ‘em out” and all the other stuff you expect to here.
All but one of these people actually claimed to vote for the BNP, as many recognized they were a racist party, therefore rendering them unable to vote for them (I’d guess it’s just due to social stigma rather than anything else) despite having so called “good” policies. I tried to press them on there policies, but they claimed no other party would act on immigration, which seems to be one of the biggest issues. Why is this? Probably because of the recession and they are a convenient scapegoat, but I’m sure some of the people I spoke till still harbored the view that immigration is the most pressing issue for them before the recession. I’d guess it’s because of the press, but then again that is an easy scapegoat in itself, I do not want, nay-say I do not believe in the hypodermic syringe media effects model but when I speak to some people at work about news, and particularly there opinions on it, it really does make me wonder.
The point of this disjointed blog post is that you really can’t pinpoint who a BNP supporter is, we all of course have preconceptions but I did consider most of my friends as being fairly rational people, evidently not. Again I reiterate, it was a minority, all be it sizable, and of course it does not reflect my views.
Tags: BNP, Friends, Media, Politics, Racism, Views
General Election 09/10: Vote Blue and Get New New Labour?
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under News, Politics, Rant, blog
I’ve always, as long as I can remember, been interested, to some degree, in politics. Today, on my much needed day off from work I’m watching the local election results come in, and unsurprisingly Labour are being absolutely trounced, although it’s currently early days.
Watching the coverage I cannot help but think about the next general election, be it this, or more likely next, year. I describe my politics on facebook as being variable, I’m very much a floating voter, in fact I’ve not voted for the same party twice so far, although I’ve only had the chance to vote three times so far in my lifetime, and never in a general election. I tend to, like most young voters, vote based on specific issues that are of personal interest/concern, for example in the just gone european election for me the main issue was the lisbon treaty, which I dislike not out of any nationalism, far from it, but out of the infringement of rights that seem to come with it.
Putting on my conspiratorial and rant hats on, I can’t help but think that the fall of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party is being purposely orchestrated to ensure that Cameron’s Tories get into power to continue the legacy of Blair’s New Labour. Treating “the public” as a mass of people which are easily manipulated it’s easy to see what is happening. Labour is being portrayed as being incompetent, so you don’t want to vote for them, the Lib Dems are seen as a wasted vote as “it’s obvious” they will never win, so people are going to flood to the Tories to demonstrate they want change without realizing they will get nothing but the same, essentially. I believe Labour and Conservatives, generally speaking, are the same thing, with minor differences that get exaggerated to make the public believe they have a choice when essentially their in fact voting for different sides of the same coin, the only real way to get change is to vote for anyone else but the main two, but unfortunately this will not happen, at least domestically, due to politics being forever framed as a battle between left and right ideologies, between a battle between Labour and Conservatives, and nothing more.
No wonder voter turn out, particularly amongst the young, drops year on year, it’s not due to a dislike of politics as far as I can see, it’s about a disenchantment with it, a feeling of “what’s the point?” The reason for this is not that people are fools, they understand what is going on, but what is damaging is apathy, a change can be made, be it through the election system or via other means, but people cannot be bothered, and it is this is rather damaging to our “liberal democratic” society.
In other news, Britain’s got talent has finished, but at least Big Brother is Back! Forget religion, Reality TV is the modern opiate of the people
Tags: Big Brother, Conservatives, Europe, Labour, New Labour, Politics, Rant, Society, Tories, UK
Tom Clancy and Georgia
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Current Affairs, Game, Web
“Watch this 2002 trailer for Tom Clancy’s video game ‘Ghost Recon’. It appears to be an exact scenario of the Ossetia invasion by US led Georgian forces. Even the year 2008 is correct in the trailer. Could it be that kids who watched this in 2002 might actually be of the age to be on the ground executing the plan as magically predicted by Tom Clancy?”
(From Curry.com)
