LNGI, D3
Today is going to be just meager commentary on certain interesting news items with no real snark directed at the paper itself. I know, disappointing, isn't it. But even I must rest sometimes.
The latest fad with regard to future development of the town seems to be floating houses, planned on the mouth of the river running through the town. Both the planned areas seem to be meant for the more wealthy folk, which appaears to be the case with most new developments. Fancy buildings put up with loads of money, just waiting for all those IT- equivalents for 80's yuppies. Nobody seems interested in building affordable housing, but then there isn't as much profit in it, is there. Meanwhile, a researcher proclaims that the temporary-job society that has received so much press, doesn't in fact exist, that it was all just a statistical illusion. And at the same time, food prices are predicted to go up drastically. Someone has calculated that the price of feeding a family of four will go up €3000 in two years, not a small sum if you're not particularly wealthy.
So we have the rising of prices which will hit the poorest the hardest, more expensive housing planned for the wealthy upper rung, and an expert effectively nullifying the experience of countless of people trying hard to land a job they could stay at. So the poor get poorer and the rich get richer while an expert tells the poor they aren't really getting that much poorer after all.
In domestic politics an amusing parallel has arisen. A National Coalition (right wing) politician is calling for citizens to rat out the current prime minister to the constitutional section of the parliament for lying. According to her, a person who has been known to lie is not suitable to be a prime minister and she's calling for a moral audit of sorts to be performed on him. Her main point is that if he lied about such a small thing as where he met his ex, there's no telling who else he has lied to or who else he will lie to. And the whole thing reminds me eerily about that little witchhunt machinated by the Republicans in the US a few years back. Luckily the right wing here lacks sufficient unity of wingnuttery to bring something like that about. So far. Personally I'm of the opinion that if someone manages to show me a politician who has never lied I'll give up my wordly life and join a convent for surely the end will be nigh.
Random observation: If the Venezuelan president was branded dictatorial last week in a proper article, then this time it was the right wingers who're getting the short straw of apparent language bias. In an item concerning the Spanish election the headline boldly states that the right wing disrupted the election, whereas in the article itself the disruption amounts to them attempting to give out leaflets in the election rooms. Factually the headline was correct, but the connotations it aroused were something more serious than what the right wingers actually did.
Interestingly enough there seems to be an influx of articles on Japanese-influenced popular and/or youth culture in the newspaper right now. First they claimed adults don't get manga and now they have interviewed a couple of girls about cosplay. I couldn't help noticing that both of them gave as their motivation a fascination for the strange and the exotic. I have to wonder how the targets of such thoughts would feel about it, since exoticism does often veer uncomfortably close to a freak show. The middle-aged spinster in me desperately wants to label this as a youthful fad, while the culture critic finds the practice of importing a foreign cultural concept as it is into an environment where it's completely uprooted, similarly problematic to the phenomenon of Ye Olde Pubbe. For what sort of authenticity can there be when an alien feature is propped up in a situation where it can have no real roots?
Of course this coming from a person who has taken a strong liking to Japanese clothing themself. I would point out in my defence though, that I do remain aware of the alien nature of what I'm importing and am not even attempting to claim any kind of authenticity. Rather I'm taking a cultural feature I like and accommodating it to suit my own surroundings. I will always remain a western person in a western context who just happens to wear Japanese clothing and I feel any attempt on my part to import the culture authentically is not only doomed to fail, but also dangerously close to a false claim of ownership.
The latest fad with regard to future development of the town seems to be floating houses, planned on the mouth of the river running through the town. Both the planned areas seem to be meant for the more wealthy folk, which appaears to be the case with most new developments. Fancy buildings put up with loads of money, just waiting for all those IT- equivalents for 80's yuppies. Nobody seems interested in building affordable housing, but then there isn't as much profit in it, is there. Meanwhile, a researcher proclaims that the temporary-job society that has received so much press, doesn't in fact exist, that it was all just a statistical illusion. And at the same time, food prices are predicted to go up drastically. Someone has calculated that the price of feeding a family of four will go up €3000 in two years, not a small sum if you're not particularly wealthy.
So we have the rising of prices which will hit the poorest the hardest, more expensive housing planned for the wealthy upper rung, and an expert effectively nullifying the experience of countless of people trying hard to land a job they could stay at. So the poor get poorer and the rich get richer while an expert tells the poor they aren't really getting that much poorer after all.
In domestic politics an amusing parallel has arisen. A National Coalition (right wing) politician is calling for citizens to rat out the current prime minister to the constitutional section of the parliament for lying. According to her, a person who has been known to lie is not suitable to be a prime minister and she's calling for a moral audit of sorts to be performed on him. Her main point is that if he lied about such a small thing as where he met his ex, there's no telling who else he has lied to or who else he will lie to. And the whole thing reminds me eerily about that little witchhunt machinated by the Republicans in the US a few years back. Luckily the right wing here lacks sufficient unity of wingnuttery to bring something like that about. So far. Personally I'm of the opinion that if someone manages to show me a politician who has never lied I'll give up my wordly life and join a convent for surely the end will be nigh.
Random observation: If the Venezuelan president was branded dictatorial last week in a proper article, then this time it was the right wingers who're getting the short straw of apparent language bias. In an item concerning the Spanish election the headline boldly states that the right wing disrupted the election, whereas in the article itself the disruption amounts to them attempting to give out leaflets in the election rooms. Factually the headline was correct, but the connotations it aroused were something more serious than what the right wingers actually did.
Interestingly enough there seems to be an influx of articles on Japanese-influenced popular and/or youth culture in the newspaper right now. First they claimed adults don't get manga and now they have interviewed a couple of girls about cosplay. I couldn't help noticing that both of them gave as their motivation a fascination for the strange and the exotic. I have to wonder how the targets of such thoughts would feel about it, since exoticism does often veer uncomfortably close to a freak show. The middle-aged spinster in me desperately wants to label this as a youthful fad, while the culture critic finds the practice of importing a foreign cultural concept as it is into an environment where it's completely uprooted, similarly problematic to the phenomenon of Ye Olde Pubbe. For what sort of authenticity can there be when an alien feature is propped up in a situation where it can have no real roots?
Of course this coming from a person who has taken a strong liking to Japanese clothing themself. I would point out in my defence though, that I do remain aware of the alien nature of what I'm importing and am not even attempting to claim any kind of authenticity. Rather I'm taking a cultural feature I like and accommodating it to suit my own surroundings. I will always remain a western person in a western context who just happens to wear Japanese clothing and I feel any attempt on my part to import the culture authentically is not only doomed to fail, but also dangerously close to a false claim of ownership.