It's that time of week again...
My boss has just issued a crackdown on non-work related internet time. Answer? Lj, of course! :D
On the plus side, there's one less fascist in the world. The down side? Apparently thousands attended the funeral of Austria's Joerg Haider. Scary.
I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, it's an attractive proposal for anyone trying to deal with youth 'crime' (technically nothing he did was a crime, but unemployment and loafing around seem to cause a lot of problems here), but on the other hand it goes against most civil liberties and about 90% of my principles. Hmmm... I suppose there isn't an easy or quick answer to anything, unfortunately.
The government has just announced that it wants to reduce the levels of migrant workers in this country, or at least put a cap on them. They cite economic reasons (fewer jobs for everyone, etc.), but when British workers don't want to do the jobs that have to be done, especially in farming, even if they're being paid above minimum wage, then I really don't see what a cap will do, except make things worse.
Abroad, the Iraqis have staged an anti-US rally, quelle surprise.
One week on, Mugabe is still being an ass. And just scanning the Africa pages on the BBC news website is disturbing. In all the links present, only about three deal with anything positive at all. I have to admit, I know very little about Africa; my education at school tended to centre on Europe and the US. It's pretty depressing really: you'd think eleven years of compulsory education would be enough to cover everything needed for a basic knowledge of the world, including current affairs, but it really isn't. Either that, or we're being taught in completely the wrong way. Mind you, they don't teach much in that area at university either, unless you do something akin to Development Studies.
In the US, Florida is in the election spotlight with just eighteen days left before the vote. I can't believe it's nearly here... it seems so strange. It's the first US election that I've paid any in-depth attention to and it's thrown up some very interesting questions and observations, mostly centring on how flawed democracy, especially within its biggest exporter, is.
Scary Sarah has also put her foot in it again, leaving Joe Biden to take an easy swing at her.
How could this happen? It makes me so bloody furious when education expenses are cut - especially considering the size of the US military budget. Maybe if more people were more highly and better educated there wouldn't be a need for expensive war on abstract concepts. Just a thought.
The French are still not overly keen on the Americans. Le Monde speaks of Sarkozy traveling to Camp David in order to 'persuade' Bush to sign up to a global financial recovery plan. CNN on the other hand, paints it as a far more mutual affair with a slightly heavier emphasis on Bush's role.
On another immigration front, apparently there's some sort of pan-European-African conference going on to do with immigration. My French isn't that great, but it's clear that whatever happens it'll have a greater effect in France than anywhere else in Europe: the French have had notoriously bad race relations problems, especially with African migrants.
And I think that's quite enough for one day, don't you?
On the plus side, there's one less fascist in the world. The down side? Apparently thousands attended the funeral of Austria's Joerg Haider. Scary.
I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, it's an attractive proposal for anyone trying to deal with youth 'crime' (technically nothing he did was a crime, but unemployment and loafing around seem to cause a lot of problems here), but on the other hand it goes against most civil liberties and about 90% of my principles. Hmmm... I suppose there isn't an easy or quick answer to anything, unfortunately.
The government has just announced that it wants to reduce the levels of migrant workers in this country, or at least put a cap on them. They cite economic reasons (fewer jobs for everyone, etc.), but when British workers don't want to do the jobs that have to be done, especially in farming, even if they're being paid above minimum wage, then I really don't see what a cap will do, except make things worse.
Abroad, the Iraqis have staged an anti-US rally, quelle surprise.
One week on, Mugabe is still being an ass. And just scanning the Africa pages on the BBC news website is disturbing. In all the links present, only about three deal with anything positive at all. I have to admit, I know very little about Africa; my education at school tended to centre on Europe and the US. It's pretty depressing really: you'd think eleven years of compulsory education would be enough to cover everything needed for a basic knowledge of the world, including current affairs, but it really isn't. Either that, or we're being taught in completely the wrong way. Mind you, they don't teach much in that area at university either, unless you do something akin to Development Studies.
In the US, Florida is in the election spotlight with just eighteen days left before the vote. I can't believe it's nearly here... it seems so strange. It's the first US election that I've paid any in-depth attention to and it's thrown up some very interesting questions and observations, mostly centring on how flawed democracy, especially within its biggest exporter, is.
Scary Sarah has also put her foot in it again, leaving Joe Biden to take an easy swing at her.
How could this happen? It makes me so bloody furious when education expenses are cut - especially considering the size of the US military budget. Maybe if more people were more highly and better educated there wouldn't be a need for expensive war on abstract concepts. Just a thought.
The French are still not overly keen on the Americans. Le Monde speaks of Sarkozy traveling to Camp David in order to 'persuade' Bush to sign up to a global financial recovery plan. CNN on the other hand, paints it as a far more mutual affair with a slightly heavier emphasis on Bush's role.
On another immigration front, apparently there's some sort of pan-European-African conference going on to do with immigration. My French isn't that great, but it's clear that whatever happens it'll have a greater effect in France than anywhere else in Europe: the French have had notoriously bad race relations problems, especially with African migrants.
And I think that's quite enough for one day, don't you?