One Sunday recently while staying in London I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between The Strand and The Embankment. It’s kind of a luxury, rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers; there is a beautiful tailor’s, a fine chapel, established by The Knight’s Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and a Rose Garden, which I never promised you.

My mate John and I were wandering there together, him expertly proselytizing on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. “What’s going on there mate?” John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. “Maggie Thatcher,” he said. “Comes here every week to water them flowers.” The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn’t til an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing Comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her and give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon.

When I was a kid Margaret Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring — I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four; she remained in power till I was 15; I am, it’s safe to say, one of Thatcher’s children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?

I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. I don’t know if they ever voted for her, I don’t know if they liked her; my dad I suspect did, he had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility, but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent, so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant.

As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it’d be a kid’s memory bank account at a neurological Nat West where you’re encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs) I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. And the miners. And the single mums. The dockers. The poll-tax rioters. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually.

Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. I didn’t know what to think of this fearsome woman.

Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that “there is no such thing as society,” that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Either way I’m an adult now and none of those things are on telly anymore, so there’s no excuse for apathy.

When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley’s death he famously responded, “Elvis died when he joined the army” — meaning, of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signaled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem.

When I awoke today on L.A. time, my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. It’d be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. “I thought I’d be overjoyed, but really it’s just… another one bites the dust…” This demonstrates I suppose that if you opposed Thatcher’s ideas it is likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one’s enemies.

Perhaps, though, Thatcher “the monster” didn’t die this week from a stroke; perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven defeated from Downing Street, ousted by her own party. By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively antiestablishment enough to regard her disdainfully. I’d unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support; I was on my own. We are all on our own. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher’s acolytes and fellow “Munsters evacuee,” said when the National Union of Miners eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided, “[We] broke not just a strike, but a spell.” The spell he’s referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. The spell of community.

Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they’d already paid for through tax. I just now watched the British Gas one again, it’s like a whimsical live action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him.

“The News” was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren Baroness, through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally, not direct from the steel teat. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawly Moira Stewart — delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. To use a less bizarre analogy: If Thatcher was the headmistress, they were junior school teachers, authoritative but warm enough that you could call them ‘Mum’ by accident. You could never call Margaret ‘Mother’ by mistake; for a national matriarch, she was oddly unmaternal. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. “Thatcher as mother” seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema; how could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? In the Meryl Streep film, it’s the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. Knocking up a flan for Dennis or helping Carol with her algebra or Mark with his gunrunning are jarring distractions from the main narrative: woman as warrior queen.

It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of Girl Power. I don’t see that. She is an anomaly, a product of the freak-conomy of her time. Barack Obama interestingly said in his statement that she had “broken the glass ceiling for other women.” Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism.

I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. I’d become a delinquent by then, living on heroin and benefit fraud.

There were sporadic resurrections; to drape a hankie over a model BA plane tailfin because she disliked the unpatriotic logo with which they’d replaced the Union Jack (maybe don’t privatize BA then) or to shuffle about some country pile arm in arm with a dithery Pinochet and tell us all what a fine fellow he was. It always irks when right-wing folk demonstrate in a familial or exclusive setting the values that they deny in a broader social context. They’re happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies; they’ll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they’re down on their luck; they’ll find opportunities in business for people they care about. I hope I’m not being reductive, but it seems Thatcher’s time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behavior that it’s much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others.

Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? Given the nature of her legacy, “survival of the fittest” — a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation, it isn’t surprising that there are parties this week in Liverpool, Glasgow and Brixton — from where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness?

The blunt, pathetic reality is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she’s all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and “follow the bear.” What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neoliberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people’s pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn funeral are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.

I can’t articulate with the skill of either of “the Marks,” Steel or Thomas, why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain, but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship — it’s just not British.

I do not yet know what effect Margaret Thatcher has had on me as an individual or on the character of our country as we continue to evolve. As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them.

This is an article written by Russell Brand and is taken from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-brand/margaret-thatcher-our-unm_b_3046390.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Newsnight did a report last week on the effect of the Occupy Movement and whether they were still campaigning.
Last year, those who were outraged at being in the exploited 99% gained worldwide recognition after protesting about the inequalities of the 1% and superbanks. A year on, the voices seem to have grown hoarse in the media however, the demonstrations still live on through performance poetry. Here is a video of a visual poetry performance I found on youtube, that explains the reasons for the Occupy Movement in the United States of America.

One of the most anticipated and talked about films this year so far has been Les Misérables. Based on the West End musical of them same name, the plot brings alive the story of the Great French Revolution during the nineteenth century. Without giving away too many spoilers, beneath the continuous singing and dancing, there is an underlying fundamental subject matter of the horrors of social injustice of France in the 1800s.

 A main concern is how the order in society can change a person from being decent and honest into a criminal and social outcast. This is seen through the character of Fantine, played by Anne Hathaway, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of this severely malnourished and desperate young mother. As a woman, she is treated terribly by French society after being left to raise her illegitimate daughter without any support. With her reputation in ruins after being sacked from her factory job for supposedly being immoral, she believes she has no other option but to resort to prostitution, ironically.

The character of Valjean, played by Hugh Jackman, is another example of how corrupt the system of government and society is in France during that period of time. Valjean serves nineteen long and brutal years in a prison where he was treated like a slave for merely stealing bread, yet there are criminals who have murdered and carried out big robberies who only seem to be imprisoned for short sentences.

The French “plebs” wanted change from all this and so started to uprise, although in real life they probably did so without bursting in to song every five minutes. As the film ever so musically explains; they dreamed a dream and fought back for a life worth living!

Overall, this is a poignant and heartwarming tale of history that will leave you singing the words of “On My Own” for days after.

More than 350 prisoners have died horrifically after an overcrowded Honduras Prison burned down. The disastrous blaze has been described as one of the world’s worst-ever prison fires, due to prisoners perishing in the shower areas in the hope that water would defuse the flames and some prisoners being burnt so badly that their remains will only be identified by DNA or dental records.

The atrocious fire was started by a prisoner who purposefully set his bed on fire, leaving his hysterical cellmate to phone state governor Paola Castro, for desperately needed help. Fire crews were called but they could not enter the prison because the guards initially thought the commotion was due to violent riots amongst the prisoners. After waiting for 30 minutes, the fire crew were finally allowed access but faced further setbacks when none of the 12 guards could find the keys to unlock the prison barracks.

Family members of the victims are suspicious of this version of events and have protested by throwing sticks at police and screaming ‘murderers’ at them. Carmen Sapeda, the sister of a convict, said, “This was no accident. This was planned from inside the prison.”

The prison was extremely congested, with a lack of food or hygiene and with 70 to 105 inmates having to squeeze into four-level bunk beds. The prison was only built for 500 but was bursting with 856 prisoners and more than half of the convicts had never been charged, let alone convicted with any sort of crime. This was due to the fact they were awaiting trial or were just suspected gang members. In some extreme cases, some of the prisoners had been locked up just for having a tattoo.

Prison historian Michael P Roth, a Professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville in Texas, said, “Prisoners set fires in their cells all the time, either for attention, to attack someone- or some people just like fire.”

Investigations will take place.  

Kate Middleton visited my local town of Stockton-on-Tees in October, to meet the families involved in the charity Action on Addiction. The sun was unusually shining, so I went along with my friends for an afternoon of waiting ages just to catch a slight glimpse of the future Queen of Britain.

There was quite a good turnout outside the CRI Stockton Recovery Service centre when we arrived, with hundreds of people stood with union jack flags and their cameras already poised. The atmosphere was filled with an excited buzz as we waited and after about an hour, the royal cars arrived. Stood a good distance away from the centre, I wasn’t tall enough to peer over people’s heads to see Kate Middleton enter the building- however, I heard from people’s murmurings that she looked great and it was so weird she was actually in Teesside. She came out of the centre after about 20minutes and I saw a quick flash of her curled hair and fixed smile. My first thought was that she looked exactly like she does in all the glossy magazines and newspapers; perfectly polished and graceful. She stayed where she was for a while, then bent down to talk to a toddler who was supposed to hand her some flowers but the child did not let go of them and laughter rippled through the crowd.

She began to wander down the street to meet and collect gifts from the patient people in the crowd, including local primary schools. A few people managed to take pictures however it was virtually impossible to take a good look as she was completely surrounded by press and security. My attempt at a picture was pretty pathetic, as you can barely tell who it is and looks like a random picture from the internet. I was getting ready to capture a good shot as she neared where we were stood but suddenly, her cars pulled up in front of us and she was whisked into the backseat. As her car passed, she waved at us and then she was gone. It was brief and from a distance, but I will still be counting it as my first official sighting of a royal, of course.

First of all, if you are an animal lover to the point where you can’t bear to see repeated animal-related deaths- do not go and see this film!

This is a story about survival. An Indian teenage boy named Pi sets sail on a cargo ship with his family after they decide to leave their homeland of India for political reasons and move to Canada instead. They also leave behind the Zoo that they own but take the animals with them on the ship, including a tiger named Richard Parker.

During this trip, there is a huge storm and the cargo boat sinks. Pi’s family drown but crewmembers push Pi aboard a lifeboat and although he tries to save them too, all he ends up with on his lifeboat are a zebra, hyena, orangutan and the savage Richard Parker. The hyena eats the zebra and orangutan but is then eaten itself by the tiger and so Pi is left to fight for survival- not only as a castaway adrift in the middle of the ocean, but also from a hungry, meat-eating wild tiger.

The most powerful aspect in this story is the sheer lengths the human body and mind is capable of going to in order to survive. Pi has to alter previous beliefs including vegetarianism in order to hunt and live on a diet of fish, as there is no other food for him to ultimately eat. He also has to sweep his morality aside and defend himself almost barbarically when attacked by other creatures, in order to continue living. The audience therefore has to question just what actions are deemed appropriate or not when a person is faced with several life-or-death situations. 

Overall, Life Of Pi is a thought provoking and poignant film and a real eye opener about the human condition. Also, this film won best picture at the Oscars recently and it is no wonder- it is a stunning visual piece. A definite must-see! 

Kate Middleton was admitted to hospital last month and it was revealed that she was pregnant with the future heir of the throne to Britain. This news was overshadowed however, by a prank call made by Australian Radio DJs, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, who pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles. They were joking but were given confidential information by the hospital in error and suddenly Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse involved, was at the centre of a media storm. Unable to cope with what happened, she sadly killed herself and now the radio hosts are in hiding trying to come to terms with a joke that was meant to be an entertaining prank and good coverage for their show but went terribly wrong.

The radio hosts were not professional for a number of reasons. The nurse did not give her permission to be recorded and played on air- she was duped and fooled and didn’t realise what was happening.

Yes, she was wrong to give out those confidential and private details but she received the call in the early hours of the morning, due to time differences in Britain and Australia. As a result, the call was made towards the end of a clearly long night shift and almost feasible that perhaps the Queen would phone at an obscure, quiet time when members of the public and media would hopefully be fast asleep and not looking to intrude.

The DJs should have hung up as soon as the nurse started giving the details and they should not have let it get that far- although they were not expecting their impressions would be believed real and so had not prepared how to carry the joke on when they were taken seriously.

Most importantly, the nurse will have been publically humiliated as literally almost the whole world was laughing at her mistake, leading to potential awkwardness when she ventured outside or at work- with her even being in trouble with her employers.

Her life must have completely changed overnight, without her receiving guidance and help with how to deal with the sudden worldwide recognition and attention. 

However, I don’t think the Australian DJs are wholly to blame.

They gave an interview about a week after Jacintha’s death, looking visibly shaken and clearly upset, whilst apologising repeatedly and whispering that they never meant to hurt anybody. It was not meant to be a personal attack on the nurse but just a joke segment of the show aimed to entertain viewers.

The media probably hounded the poor nurse and also the hospital- making it a bigger deal than it should have been. Jacintha’s life was probably invaded by reporters who desperately wanted even a small piece of coverage.

She suffered from depression and had tried to commit suicide in the past. Clearly, she couldn’t deal with this nightmare and felt isolated, lacking in support she obviously needed.

The joke went too far and it was unfortunate that it was Jacintha who was on the receiving end of it. It is a terrible tragedy but the DJs are not responsible. Instead of pointing the finger of blame and ostracising the radio hosts, the focus should instead be on giving everyone involved the right support. This includes the traumatised DJs and also the partner and children of Jacintha who lost their mother just before Christmas.

(Source: tsomeday)

Last week, Thought Catalog’s Jayne Ricco wrote an article asking if it was “okay to judge Rihanna for getting back together with her abuser,” as Instagram recently confirmed what everyone I know feared: RiRi and Breezy are back on — and canoodling in our hipsta-filters. Although Ricco states that Rihanna has the agency to be with whomever she likes, she poses a central question:

But is it really anti-woman or anti-feminist to say that I don’t think any woman should knowingly return to a relationship where she faces real physical harm? Why are none of us allowed to think and say that? Aren’t there some things in life about which we are allowed to proclaim, ‘No, I don’t believe that is ever okay’?…Why, in certain situations, like Rihanna’s, can we not say that we disagree with her choice without being labeled judgmental or anti-feminist? At some point, when can we say that physical safety simply must take precedence over the emotional complexities that make it difficult for a victim to leave her abuser?…Is it terrible to say that while I would be saddened if he hurt her again and of course don’t want it to happen, I will have less sympathy for her than I did the first time?

These are interesting inquiries, and Ricco seeks to answer them through a sometimes thoughtful and exceedingly well-intentioned exploration of the scandal and Rihanna’s “situation” — from her own experience in representing abuse victims. Unlike many abuse survivors, Ricco states that Rihanna has the financial, social or matrimonial means to leave her abuser. If she were to leave, Rihanna doesn’t have to worry about divorce court or custody battles and could seek therapy to help sever her personal and emotional ties with him. If she were to leave, she would have security to protect her and a nation of people on her side. If she were to leave, we would be with her in solidarity.

And much of that is true. However, I also know that getting back with your abuser tends to be the norm, rather than the exception. On the average, it takes women seven tries to leave, and most women will go back at least once. My mother put up with months of abuse from her ex-husband — leaving and coming back — before she found the strength to leave for good. Staying wasn’t about finances or keeping a family together; she just needed to leave when she was ready, when she knew she couldn’t take any more. It was an addiction she needed to figure out how to quit.

Do I agree with her choice to remain in that relationship for that long or to go back to a guy who beat her in the face with a box fan? No, of course not. But if I want to be a supportive child or the feminist I hope I am, I need to respect the decisions of women I don’t agree with. The meaning of the term “feminist” is complicated, and if you polled a room full of feminists on what that label means to them, you would likely get a different answer from each respondent. To me, my feminism is rooted not in burning bras (although that sounds like fun), but in realizing that women are individuals with their own agency, who reserve the right to make their own choices over their bodies, their selfhoods, their relationships and their lives. I don’t have to agree with those decisions — whether that’s shaving their head or getting an abortion — and I don’t have to endorse Rihanna’s relationship. It’s not mine to endorse.

As a feminist, I support Rihanna not because I think she made a good decision or that if she just takes him back, he’ll change. Chris Brown might not change, and he very well could abuse her again. However, the question of sympathy bothers me, as denying Rihanna compassion for future abuse leads to a slippery slope of victim blaming. We live in an abuse culture, where women and men are made to feel that they were at fault when they are abused, where my partner once blamed me for being sexually assaulted at a party. I was told I was “scum” and a “cheater” for letting my assailant’s hand over my mouth and muffle my sobs — like the women who are called “sluts” for dressing a certain way and told that behavior invites rape. They are told they are “asking for it.”

Such victim blaming ignores the fact that this is a system. Victim blaming alleges that the problem isn’t the society that defends abusers, silences survivors, forces victims to internalize their self-hatred and oppression and trivializes this cycle of abuse. The problem isn’t that other women thought so little of Rihanna for getting beaten up that they went on Twitter to invite Chris Brown to hit them. The problem is Rihanna for putting herself in that situation and not fitting our idea of how a woman should behave. A complicated issue gets boiled down to her perceived lack of intelligence: “How can she be so stupid?” How can you ask that? This misses the point.

In the comment section of Ricco’s article, two respondents gave perfect voice to this line of thinking. User “Lubey Doo” wrote, “It would be cool if someone whipped her ass because they were mad at her getting back with the guy that whipped her ass.” If this isn’t enough for you, someone named “Bootney Lee Farnsworth” (which I hope to God isn’t his real name) added, “Hopefully this time he finishes her off.” This idea of corrective abuse to teach abuse is symbolic of a society that shows a zero tolerance policy for women who act outside of popular expectations, one where we constantly ask women to be judged for our approval, to be “liked” by meeting those expectations. As Jessica Valenti recently put it, “she…with the most likes wins,” and a little girl can’t even shave her head without half of America freaking out about it.

This problem isn’t just about Rihanna, and you don’t have to like her or follow her music to care about supporting women’s choices. The problem is that we refuse to treat women as adults capable of making their own decisions and mistakes, that we paternalistically govern women’s lives (in public or in private), that we obsess over what they do with their bodies, that we lord over them by public forum and blame them for not being perfect. We say we care about women’s choices, and if we do, we need to stand in solidarity by using this moment to start meaningful dialogues around the systemic issues women face. Instead of holding Rihanna accountable for being abused and shaming her for it, we need to create a world that reduces harm and allows those who need to it seek help. We don’t need to ask anything of Rihanna. We need to ask it of ourselves.

This is an article by Nico Lang, taken from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nico-lang/rihanna-chris-brown_b_2276985.html