"When tragedy occurs, we ought to properly support the families, including the recognition of an entitlement to appropriate bereavement leave.”
MP Angela Smith called earlier this month for more employers to be more sympathetic with regards to compassionate leave. Admirable, until you add the fact that she is not appealing for everyone who faces a "tragedy", but just families of armed service personnel.
It is faintly immoral to 'rank' people's deaths is this way. Is it worse if your son dies because he was a soldier than a criminal? Should you be rewarded for your child or partner's career choice with more time off if they die?
Even that the death occurs outside of the country isn't a justification. Many other families have children or parents who live or work abroad.
I'm not saying people shouldn't get compassionate leave. But it should be given out equally, not a legal guideline set out privileging armed forces' families over all others.
http://www.labourmatters.com/sheffield-labour/mps-call-for-forces-families-to-get-bereavement-leave-guarantee/
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
REWIEW: The Road (Spoliers)
Having spent the last two days in the library next to my friend who was reading The Road I wasn't labouring under any misconception that an afternoon watching it would be uplifting.
Unrelentingly bleak, the feeling of fear and discomfort so brilliantly portrayed by Viggo Mortensen is conveyed to the viewer with incredible, realistic post-apocalyptic landscapes and a sense that something is always about to go wrong.
The flash backs play a key part in this too; the back story, the human element, what has been lost - home, sunlight, beauty, family.
And then this is up-ed by some brutal scenes; inner-eds of a just cannibalised man, a light less basement-come-larder full of naked mad men, an arrow pulled out of a calf, baths of blood. Harrowing. and not for the faint hearted.
But the most faint hearted of all is the child in the film who plays the other half of the central duologue (Viggo being the first). Despite having always lived in post-apocalypse America the boy cannot fend for himself at all and is not in anyway hardened to what he sees; there are several times when a dying of something resembling TB father has to carry him away from danger because he can't run, he can't fire the gun, when hiding he makes noise, and he is incapable of alerting his father to danger, again just makes noise. He seems incredibly ungrateful for what his father does;protesting when his father fires back at someone who has just shot him in the leg, getting angry when they leave places that have been safe havens because of impending danger, placing himself in harms way through trusting other people and then behaving like a spoilt brat when his father tries to protect him and themselves from it.
He represents the hope for mankind, the inherent innocence and good of humanity. Trusting; rejecting revenge, killing and selfishness. A true child. And as such he obviously couldn't fend for himself, couldn't kill, couldn't adapt; and can't be expected to.
Bollocks. It is a picture of the social construct of Western childhood placed in a world it wouldn't have survived in.
There are children all over the world who have faced hell, a subject which haunts me at the moment as I am researching a dissertation on child soldiers. The Road's presentation of childhood, this inherent goodness that stands against our bleak world and adult destruction, belittles every child who has ever adapted, and picked up a gun and learnt to fight so they don't die. They are failures because they would have helped their dad pull the cart not sulk at the back. Like "real" children.
In the film you see Mortensen loose his trust in other men, become bitter and selfish. And he doesn't survive. What does this say?
The Road, although brilliant and beautiful, condemns each one of us who see ourselves as Viggo, or even as one of the "bad guys", as lost, gone wrong, nonreturnable, in need of childlike goodness to save us. And when you're only 21 that's a pretty grim outlook. For children who live in this world and have had to go through real life apocolypses it's even worse.
Lets not have, 'as long as you're good children, you'll be ok'. Thats not fair. Its not a choice everyone has.
Unrelentingly bleak, the feeling of fear and discomfort so brilliantly portrayed by Viggo Mortensen is conveyed to the viewer with incredible, realistic post-apocalyptic landscapes and a sense that something is always about to go wrong.
The flash backs play a key part in this too; the back story, the human element, what has been lost - home, sunlight, beauty, family.
And then this is up-ed by some brutal scenes; inner-eds of a just cannibalised man, a light less basement-come-larder full of naked mad men, an arrow pulled out of a calf, baths of blood. Harrowing. and not for the faint hearted.
But the most faint hearted of all is the child in the film who plays the other half of the central duologue (Viggo being the first). Despite having always lived in post-apocalypse America the boy cannot fend for himself at all and is not in anyway hardened to what he sees; there are several times when a dying of something resembling TB father has to carry him away from danger because he can't run, he can't fire the gun, when hiding he makes noise, and he is incapable of alerting his father to danger, again just makes noise. He seems incredibly ungrateful for what his father does;protesting when his father fires back at someone who has just shot him in the leg, getting angry when they leave places that have been safe havens because of impending danger, placing himself in harms way through trusting other people and then behaving like a spoilt brat when his father tries to protect him and themselves from it.
He represents the hope for mankind, the inherent innocence and good of humanity. Trusting; rejecting revenge, killing and selfishness. A true child. And as such he obviously couldn't fend for himself, couldn't kill, couldn't adapt; and can't be expected to.
Bollocks. It is a picture of the social construct of Western childhood placed in a world it wouldn't have survived in.
There are children all over the world who have faced hell, a subject which haunts me at the moment as I am researching a dissertation on child soldiers. The Road's presentation of childhood, this inherent goodness that stands against our bleak world and adult destruction, belittles every child who has ever adapted, and picked up a gun and learnt to fight so they don't die. They are failures because they would have helped their dad pull the cart not sulk at the back. Like "real" children.
In the film you see Mortensen loose his trust in other men, become bitter and selfish. And he doesn't survive. What does this say?
The Road, although brilliant and beautiful, condemns each one of us who see ourselves as Viggo, or even as one of the "bad guys", as lost, gone wrong, nonreturnable, in need of childlike goodness to save us. And when you're only 21 that's a pretty grim outlook. For children who live in this world and have had to go through real life apocolypses it's even worse.
Lets not have, 'as long as you're good children, you'll be ok'. Thats not fair. Its not a choice everyone has.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
It's ok to carry a knife, as long as you're a home owner
Happy New Year
and happy new blog - http://argyattemptsapostgrad.blogspot.com - everything I can learn, find out, beg, borrow and steal about applying for masters courses as I go about it myself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders
Piano playing, M&S wearing Myleene Klass has been told off for brandishing a kitchen knife at 'youths' in her garden. A gasp goes up from middle England - can we not even protect ourselves in our own home? Thank god for David Cameron, the superman with a plan to be more lenient on people who bludgeon buglers to death.
These youths - presumably wearing hoodies. probably scarfs too. clearly to cover their own illegal weapons rather than because they too get cold when it snows - were 'peering' in at her windows. Intrusive yes, and unpleasant, but not necessarily threatening. They would probably have been gotten rid of with the banging on the window alone, and if not a call to the police. They were certainly not in the house itself and aren't reported as having made any any action towards Klass, therefore I wouldn't say it was technically self defence.
And there's the problem. One man's self defence is 'I woke up to find a balaclava-d man going through the drawers in my room with an uncovered gun in his hand so I hit him over the head with my bed side lamp.' Another's is 'I saw some kid at the bottom of my garden. he looked suspicious. so I stabbed him with a bread knife.'
You would end up with a situation where "they carry knives so i can", or a call to more widely legalise guns. And the shockingly high gun crime figures in America show that it only makes things worse.
I've had a penknife since I was a kid. I live in the country and its useful. But my dad always told me the worst thing I could do was carry it in self defence. Because if I get that out truth is my assailant will probably trump me and respond much more strongly than they would otherwise have done.
Our society isn't perfect, but lets not give up and make allowances for violence but keep trying for a weaponless, peaceful country, with police not vigilante justice.
The friendliest O.A.Ps in the world...
An old man named Roger asked me to cross him over the road in the snow. Having acquiesced he took my arm, told me he was only joking he didn't need help, he just liked to get people to. I was the third that day.
A woman on the train moved her bag so I could put mine on the luggage rack, telling me sternly it was too heavy to go on my lap and then gave me a copy of Heat.
and happy new blog - http://argyattemptsapostgrad.blogspot.com - everything I can learn, find out, beg, borrow and steal about applying for masters courses as I go about it myself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders
Piano playing, M&S wearing Myleene Klass has been told off for brandishing a kitchen knife at 'youths' in her garden. A gasp goes up from middle England - can we not even protect ourselves in our own home? Thank god for David Cameron, the superman with a plan to be more lenient on people who bludgeon buglers to death.
These youths - presumably wearing hoodies. probably scarfs too. clearly to cover their own illegal weapons rather than because they too get cold when it snows - were 'peering' in at her windows. Intrusive yes, and unpleasant, but not necessarily threatening. They would probably have been gotten rid of with the banging on the window alone, and if not a call to the police. They were certainly not in the house itself and aren't reported as having made any any action towards Klass, therefore I wouldn't say it was technically self defence.
And there's the problem. One man's self defence is 'I woke up to find a balaclava-d man going through the drawers in my room with an uncovered gun in his hand so I hit him over the head with my bed side lamp.' Another's is 'I saw some kid at the bottom of my garden. he looked suspicious. so I stabbed him with a bread knife.'
You would end up with a situation where "they carry knives so i can", or a call to more widely legalise guns. And the shockingly high gun crime figures in America show that it only makes things worse.
I've had a penknife since I was a kid. I live in the country and its useful. But my dad always told me the worst thing I could do was carry it in self defence. Because if I get that out truth is my assailant will probably trump me and respond much more strongly than they would otherwise have done.
Our society isn't perfect, but lets not give up and make allowances for violence but keep trying for a weaponless, peaceful country, with police not vigilante justice.
The friendliest O.A.Ps in the world...
An old man named Roger asked me to cross him over the road in the snow. Having acquiesced he took my arm, told me he was only joking he didn't need help, he just liked to get people to. I was the third that day.
A woman on the train moved her bag so I could put mine on the luggage rack, telling me sternly it was too heavy to go on my lap and then gave me a copy of Heat.
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