Does anyone actually (not) care about the Royal Wedding?

If pushed, I’d describe myself as morally and politically opposed to the monarchy. I say if pushed because whilst I fundamentally disagree with an institution premised upon the hereditary rule of one family, especially one which believe they have a divine right to govern, I know that in actuality they are little more than a glorified (literally) tax-dodging tourist attraction. Although they do retain certain prerogative powers, we all know these are purely ceremonial and that their main role now is simply to give us something to put on stamps.

I feel the need to clarify this because like many people, with the Royal wedding looming, I frequently find myself engaging in conversations about ‘Kate and Will’s Big Day’. Given my views then, why is it that my assertions that I don’t care are ringing hollow?

In November, when William and Kate’s engagement was announced, Royalists and tea-towel manufacturers throughout the country must have jumped for joy. Since that time though, the Royal wedding drum has been banged with ever increasing ferocity and attendance at the 24 hour media circus has been made compulsory.  

Faced with such overblown and sickening displays of celebration, as people rejoiced in the union of two complete strangers, many, (myself included), took solace in cynicism, declaring to anyone that would listen that we didn’t care about the Royal wedding. But therein lies the point: if people were really so uninterested in the Royal wedding, would they really feel the need to tell everyone? And I suppose that goes for writing blogs too.

Take Republic for instance, the group “campaigning for a democratic alternative to the monarchy”. The London borough of Camden recently cancelled a Republic organised “Not the Royal Wedding” street party set to take place on the 29^th April. As stated at the outset, my views could be seen as broadly in agreement with Republic’s ethos, the main difference being, I’d rather get the day off work than not. In fact, if the Royal family could guarantee a minimum of one death and/or marriage a year which could be taken as public holiday I’d quite happily reconsider my position on them altogether. Furthermore, not only is an anti-monarchy protest which takes place on a public holiday due to the Royal wedding ironic, it also calls to mind Shakespeare’s famous line from Hamlet: “The Lady doth protest too much, methinks ”. After all considering we don’t hear much about Republic throughout the rest of the year and as their cleverly named “I’m not a Royal wedding mug” mug, sold on their website indicates, perhaps the Windsor/Middleton marriage isn’t such a bad day for them as they are making out.   

If I’m being brutally honest my dislike for the Royal wedding doesn’t really have anything to do with my views on the Royal family, more my dislike of those who so vociferously like them; and even this is born out of a fear that we are more alike than I’d care to admit. Aside from the day off, another indisputably good thing about the wedding itself, is that it will put an end to the insufferable Royal wedding build up. Finally we can stop engaging in small talk about Kate’s poor choice of cake decorator or Prince Phillip’s insistence that the father of the bride should foot the entire bill, and get back to the serious business of debating the day’s weather.

Propaganda 2.0

In James Cameron’s 3D epic Avatar, the US government uses remotely operated clones to infiltrate and attempt to colonise an alien race. Despite great critical acclaim and estimating takings of over $2.7bn worldwide, it was famously overlooked in the 2009 Oscars, with the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director instead going to The Hurt Locker, a gritty and realistic take on the trails and tribulations of a bomb disposal unit in the Iraq war. If, as many commentators speculated at the time, Avatar was snubbed because its allegorical science fiction take on American activities in the Middle East was deemed too far-fetched and outlandish when compared with the understated authenticity of The Hurt Locker, then perhaps now is a good time for the Academy to consider reviewing their decision.

News that the Pentagon is developing an “online persona management service” or, in plain English, the capability for a single person to operate a number of fake social media accounts in order to counteract anti-American sentiment online, brings Cameron’s film back to mind. Quite why it requires a multi-million dollar contract to create what is essentially a number of phony Facebook accounts is unclear, however the US’s desire to “counter enemy propaganda” (Bill Speaks US Central Command), is nothing new.  

Scarcely a conflict goes by where the battle for hearts and minds cliché isn’t trotted out. The only difference now being, that this battleground is increasingly found online. According to the plans tabled, military controlled social networking accounts, or “sock puppets” as they have disparagingly come to be known, will not be permitted to be used on English language websites, instead focusing on Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto speaking audiences. Not only does this demonstrate an uncomfortable double-standard in the implementation of this programme, it is also reveals the complexity involved in modern 21^st century propaganda.

Government agents may wistfully look back to days gone by, when the spreading of a particular political agenda, was an altogether much simpler task. Taking Hollywood again as an inspiration, Jean Jacques Annaud’s 2001 film, Enemy At The Gates, tells the real life story of a duel fought between a German and Russian sniper at the battle of Stalingrad. As shown in the film however, the story of this duel soon becomes more important than the actual exploits of the snipers. As a young political officer played by Joseph Fiennes puts it:  “We must tell magnificent stories, stories that extol sacrifice, bravery, courage. We must give them hope, pride, a desire to fight. We must make them believe in the victory. Yes, we need make examples, yes, but examples to follow. What we need, are heroes”

Despite being taken to task by a number of historians on questions of its accuracy, (ironically there is a school of thought who argue the German sniper was fabricated by Soviet intelligence at the time, to boost the legend of their own man); Enemy At The Gates reveals the relative ease with which certain tactical embellishments became the accepted version of the truth. Indeed, it begs the question why back then they didn’t just make it all up, after all, its not as if people had access to the internet to verify the information they were being told. Not like now. It certainly seems paradoxical that whilst technological advances have encouraged the creation of ever-more sophisticated propaganda, they have simultaneously made it easier for the more investigative-minded to expose misinformation. 

All that was needed to conscript people into the army for the First World War was a picture of a man with a big moustache pointing at them. Ninety years later however, the government had to produce a widely criticised 19 page document, much of it cut and paste, to attempt to engender public support for the Iraq war, and that hardly worked did it? Gone are the days when you could simply give your enemy a wooden horse large enough to fit an army inside and be thanked for your generosity. For better or worse people are naturally much more sceptical these days and technology has played a major role in aiding that scepticism. The slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On”, was used to keep peoples’ spirits up throughout the dark days of the Second World War, I’d imagine that its impact would have been somewhat lessened had it been encountered trending on Twitter. What’s more an unforeseen impact in the ascendency of the internet has been to give the lesser power in any dispute the opportunity to gain an equal share of voice. Although it may be embarrassing for the United States to have so far been unable to capture Osama Bin Laden, this embarrassment is compounded by the fact that Bin Laden is able to publicise his avoidance of capture by periodically uploading Youtube videos. With this in mind you can’t help but feeling a sense of futility about this latest propaganda venture and I doubt it will take long for the first “sock puppet” to be outed as the fictional construct of some IT graduate from the Midwest, probably not too long after he ends his first status update with the word “lol”.

There’s Plenty More Fish in the Net

How enlightened we are, how open-minded and unprejudiced: we can now have civilised debates about the pros and cons of political self-determination for Arab sates that may want to elect fundamental religious leaders. We can positively urge gay sportsmen (and women), to come out publically and consign yet one more taboo to the annals of history. 

We can even write Jedi under ‘religion’ on the census form without fear of oppression from The Federation. Surely though our greatest achievement in the pursuit of total tolerance is the end of persecution to a group who previously had carried the greatest of social stigma; I am of course referring to those who use internet dating sites.

According to researchers at Stanford University, online dating is increasingly replacing more traditional methods as the preferred medium for singles to meet new people; and let’s be honest, they should know. The correlation is simple: as dating sites become more popular, the embarrassment associated with using them decreases.

For those interested in surfing for love online, the water has never been safer. As with any good swimming pool however, (I’m not sure this metaphor has any more legs), there are a few simple rules it’s worth noting. And ‘no heavy petting’ isn’t one of them.

1) Don’t Shoot The Messenger

Whereas conventional romances tend to start with a chat up line or conversation, internet liaisons begin with a message. Think of a prospective date like a prospective job: good ones are likely to be inundated with applications. But whilst a generic cutting letter won’t cut it, the schoolyard rules of not trying too hard, (or at least not being seen to), still apply. Try and find the middle ground between standing out from the crowd and portraying yourself as the life and soul of every party going.

Oh and anyone who describes themselves as crazy, out of the ordinary, chirpy or kooky is, more often than not, likely to be an acronym of the aforementioned words.

2)    Manage Your Expectations

Romance isn’t dead. But just because knights in shining armour and damsels in distress, have so far avoided extinction, doesn’t mean they’re ten a penny either. As a bare minimum you should at least try and meet the person you’ve been infatuating over once in person. This way you can rule out the possibility that it’s all just been an elaborate hoax co-ordinated from you housemate’s laptop.

3)     Keep the Sabbath

Saturday night is good for a lot of things: dancing according to the film Saturday Night Fever; fighting, according to Elton John and dancing again according to Whigfield. Under no circumstances however should a Saturday night be used as the trialling ground for a first date.

Have a bad date on a week night and what have you lost really? The latest plot instalment from a soap so uninspiring that when you come to catch-up the day after, it already feels like you’re watching a repeat? Lose a Saturday however and you’ve lost the week’s silver lining and pot of gold all in one and what’s more you won’t get another stab at it for the next 7 days.

4)    Pick Your Venue Wisely

Know a great little pub so jam packed full of character you half expect Mickey Mouse to be glass collecting? Put your favourite song on the jukebox on as you walk in do they? Rustle you up a quick snack even though they’ve officially stopped serving will they?

Well do yourself a favour then and keep schtum. That is unless you want to walk in there and find that girl who didn’t laugh at any of your jokes and made disparaging comments about your favourite shirt drinking in there with the gym instructor.

5)     Beware The Difficult Second Date

A difficult one this: you’ve successfully negotiated the first four steps, so successfully in fact that you’ve even managed to secure a second date. Problems over? Well, not always. Often the anxiety associated with a first date causes the parties involved to outperform. All that nervous energy manifests itself into a flurry of well-pitched compliments, witty one liners and fascinating anecdotes.

Come the inevitable reunion however, it quickly becomes clear that you’ve set the bar too high. Neither of you are able to reproduce the repartee you made seem so effortless first time around. You’re unable to divert attention from the awkward silences that ensue with the story about that time you led a group of German tourists on an impromptu conga line round the library, because you already told it first time round. Quite simply you’ve overplayed you hand and so have they. And in lieu of being able to deliver what was a quite frankly an unsustainably high quality of date discussion, it all ends a bit anti-climatically; and not in the good way.

I’m not sure there’s much to offer by way of advice here; you’ll just know when it’s happened, which it never has to me. 

I know what you did last semester

Feel like bringing down the Government or at least a prominent member thereof, but not too sure you’ve got the stamina for all that full blown revolution malarkey, what with all the shouting and the shoe waving involved? Maybe you’re claustrophobic and the thought of waiting round in a square with thousands of other people for hours on end causes you to hyperventilate, hey, you may even have a job to go to. Well fear not, because now you too can do your bit for the cause and the only thing you’ll need is a red pen. 

On Tuesday, German Defence Minister, Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, resigned his Cabinet position, following accusations of plagiarism after his Doctoral thesis on the origins of the US and EU constitutions was shown to include significant amounts of text copied verbatim from other research papers. Guttenberg, who has proven to be a headline writers dream, is yet to answer allegations that he also plagiarised his own name from that of a villain in an unpublished Sherlock Holmes adventure

Barely days later it came to light that Saif al-Islam, the son of the only human being currently more mental than Charlie Sheen, Colonel Gaddafi; had apparently plagiarised his PhD thesis at the London School of Economics back in 2008. LSE are currently investigating the legitimacy of al-Islam’s work and state that they retain the power to revoke his degree if he is found guilty of plagiarism. Taking no chances however, the university’s director has already resigned, which gives a bit of an indication as to the way this one may go.  

I’ll go out on a limb here and state that plagiarism probably isn’t the worst crime either Gadaffi junior or senior have committed this week and nor is it likely to knock, ‘avoid capture and imminent death’, from the top of their list of current priorities. But nonetheless it’s an inconvenience and one that represents a new threat to the reputations of public figures, namely the validity of their academic record. 

So what is plagiarism? Surprisingly, for a relatively simple concept, what constitutes plagiarism remains the source of some debate. Traditionally plagiarism has been thought of the process whereby an individual passes someone else’s ideas or work off as their own, and for the vast majority, especially those in academic institutions, this remains true today. Increasingly however, this traditional view has come under attack by those who dispute the validity of plagiarism as a concept. When last month German author Helen Hegemann was found to have copied entire passages at length from a lesser-well known book into her critically acclaimed novel Axolotl Roadkill, she responded somewhat brazenly: “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity”. This followed news in October that the Supreme Court of the Philippines had allowed one of its magistrates to submit plagiarised material, some of it from Wikipedia, in a major trial, stating only that the party involved had: “at times suffered in formatting lapses”

In primary school, as with many things, it was all so much clearer: you either used your entire body to shield what you were writing from your classmates, so diligently that not even a NASA satellite would be able to read your unique take on the nine times table, or your work got copied; simple. If you failed in your task and your classmate got a glimpse of your work, you cried out “Miss, he’s copying!” in shrill monotone, and after a brief telling off the whole charade started again. But at least then everybody knew where they were: there were the plagiarisers and the plagiarised and no conflation between the two. You didn’t hear little Johnny arguing, after being caught copying somebody else’s answers for the fourteenth time that day, that he found the entire notion of intellectual property inherently flawed did you?

Nowadays, the internet has changed the game and despite the advent of anti-plagiarism software, the sheer volume of data available online means that cheats have become increasingly hard to spot, as was proven in the case of both Guttenberg and al-Islam. After all, both men were awarded their PhD’s at the time, and only had them challenged subsequently following what we can only assume is a great deal more scrutiny than most students received, no doubt due to a desire from parties unknown to discredit them from their political positions. A recent article on the BBC website sensationally titled: Plagiarism: The Ctrl C, Ctrl V boom, offers examiners tips in spotting plagiarism in students’ work: “You might notice a sudden variation - from good language to bad, from academic tone to journalistic tone. The pronouns go from single to plural, a sentence is cut off in the middle, or a strange reference to Australia appears”, says Judith Carroll, author of A Handbook for Deterring Plagiarism in Higher Education; although if the strange and inexplicable reference to Australia is anything to go by, we may suspect Ms Carroll of copying this passage from elsewhere too. Furthermore, what the article neglects to mention is The Guardian’s recent report which revealed the extent of “churnalism”, or wholesale reproduction of press releases without verification that goes on in the media at large.

So there it is: it’s becoming increasingly hard to know whether the material we read has been written by the stated author, or merely copied from another source. I may have simply cut and paste this article from an even more obscure blog. You’ll never know. But beware, because as nobody else has ever said before: there’s always someone, somewhere with a big nose, who knows, who’ll trip you up and laugh when you fall. And with that in mind, choose you least favourite public figure, start trawling through their old-schoolbooks, hope to find some irregularities and watch them come tumbling down.

Bibliography

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YE9Kthyaco

I read the news today, oh boy.

If, as is often said, no news is good news, then it would logically seem to follow that most news is invariably bad. This depressingly bleak assessment certainly seems to be ringing truer and louder than ever at the moment. 

The death tolls caused by natural disasters Down Under and popular uprisings in the Middle East jostle for the attention of a fickle media and quite rightly so. Events such as these, far away though they may be, are of real international concern and significance and people in this country are genuinely interested in them. But whilst sad news is never something to be greeted lightly, there is something slightly inappropriate in the way the media have reported on these events.

On Wednesday, following news overnight of the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, The Sun newspaper, ran with the headline: "10 Brits Dead in Kiwi Quake". Then, the following day, with the focus of the press having switched 10,000 miles back to Libya, The Daily Mail's front page declared: "British rescue turns to farce: Hundreds of terrified Britons trapped in Libya". Although somewhat unusually, The Mail decided to shun the colon in the headline, opting instead to punctuate with the slightly less conventional, but in no way grammatically inferior, St George's Cross. Presumably in case we mistook them for some of those no good Johnny foreigners.

Though both articles are broadly concerned with the major issues of the day, their overemphasis on the plight of British people in these situations is in danger of detracting from the real story. That British people are trapped in Libya is news, but it is surely news of secondary importance when compared with the sea change currently underway in that country. Likewise, and this is obviously a more sensitive subject, reporting how many British people are estimated to have died in the Christchurch earthquake is absolutely crucial, but it does seem in bad taste to do so without making reference to the total loss of life.  

Clearly there are issues of representation at play here, with the British media needing to appeal to the expectations of British people, who are after all are their primary audience. Cultural proximity also plays a role, that is to say that we are most interested in events affecting people that we can most identify with, in this case people of the same nationality. A clear example of this latter point can be seen in the reporting of last month’s devastating floods in Queensland, Australia, which happened to coincide with similar events in Sri Lanka, Brazil and Malaysia. Despite the fact that the number of casualties was actually greater in the South East Asian and South American disasters; the coverage of the flooding in Australia was unquestionably given greater press prominence in this country. The common language, colonial history, sporting rivalry and First World economy shared between Britain and Australia, not to mention the considerable numbers of British expats living Down Under, makes Australian affairs automatically more newsworthy than those in less familiar countries.  

Such press bias however reached ridiculous proportions on Thursday evening, when the BBC News at Ten led with the story of the difficulties incurred at Tripoli airport as British nationals sought to flee the increasingly volatile situation in Libya. The BBC showed footage of David Cameron apologising for the airport’s poor conditions as trapped British Citizens testified to a lack of organization, big queues and long waits. Without wanting to make light of the trials and tribulations of people trying to flee a country in the grips of what could well turn into a civil war, the inconvenienced travel arrangements of British citizens should not take precedence over events of greater importance in the news of this, or indeed any other, country. 

News is a subjective construct: decisions made by editors and producers determine what tomorrow’s big stories will be and when these decisions are made it is only right that those elements which are most likely to appeal to a British audience are pulled out. But this process, if not handled sensitively, can lead to a distortion of the facts, in which a marginal national involvement becomes the central focus of coverage, as in the evacuation of British citizens from Libya. Ultimately there isn’t going to be a newsworthy “British” angle to every international news story and if journalists seek to artificially insert one, they risk reporting on events which are, when compared to momentous changes in history, inconsequential.  

When the chips are down

Given what’s been going on in the Middle East of late, you can just about be excused if an event taking place somewhat closer to home and of equal seismic significance has, so far, escaped your attention. I am of course talking about National Chip Week, 2011.

Yep, sandwiched between World Day of Social Justice (Feb 20) and International Women’s Day (March 8), like a chip butty served between two pieces of United Nation’s endorsed bread, is our very own National Chip Week. Starting today, National Chip Week will run until Friday and is this year celebrating its 20^th anniversary of raising awareness, consumption and sales of the humble chip.

Presumably, righting the wrongs of social and gender inequalities the world over only takes 24 hours; whereas making people aware of the merits of fried potato requires a whole working week. And whilst International Women’s Day and World Day of Social Justice rely on the backing of the lowly United Nations, National Chip Week receives its benefaction from the mysterious and powerful Potato Council! Because whilst all this may appear innocent enough, scratch beneath the golden-brown crispy surface and you’ll find something a bit more sinister going on.

In the boom years, if you can remember that far back, we were all told to eat healthily. In fact you couldn’t walk around Westminster without bumping into some celebrity chef, badgering ministers to serve less deep fried doner kebabs and more sous vide celery in schools. Chips were out in the cold and in their place the Government ruthlessly administered a strict policy of five portions of fruit and vegetables per person. For a time, instead of filling awkward silences with mundane chats about the weather, we’d enquire whether complete strangers were getting their five a day and how. 

But that was then and this is now; and now things are very different. For a start nobody’s got any money anymore, least of all the Government. Well that’s not entirely true; fish and chip shops have actually got more money nowadays. Lauded as a recession-buster, (or batterer, sorry); chip shops are actually doing better than ever and are currently worth £1.2bn a year to the UK economy. That means £1 of every £100 spent on food in this country is spent in a fish and chip shop. That kind of money carries a fair amount of clout. Rumours abound that it was the dark forces of the chip lobby that shipped Jamie Oliver off to America to unleash his unique style of mockney irritation on an entirely unsuspecting public.  

                                  

This should not come as much of a surprise. It is a characteristic of Big Business that it exerts its often undesirable influence on governments. Big Coal, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, they’ve all done it in the past and now it seems it’s the turn of Big Potatoes.

Look closely at the policies of the coalition and the influence is clear to see, hidden in plain sight. Take the Big Society, often dismissed as a meaningless phrase used to put a positive spin on the removal of state assistance and subsequent second-coming of Dickensian-esque inequality. But seen in the light of the government’s secret tie up with the bigwigs at the Potato Council, all that talk of salt of the earth types, chipping in to get us out of the frying pan of recession seems to suddenly make a bit of sense. Indeed the only interpretation of the Big Society that actually makes sense is a wholly literal one. Our society will indeed be bigger under the coalition: it’ll be positively obese if they get their way. 

It’s nothing short of brainwashing; neuro-linguistic programming to make us all eat as many chips as possible, but to what ends? To clog up the arteries of the trouble making youth with saturated fats, thus making them easier to kettle in future protests? I wouldn’t like to say…though I wouldn’t mind another kettle chip.

We’re all hypocrites now….

Whilst tourist boards in Latin America and Eastern Europe were still busy thanking Jeremy Clarkson for his latest endearing remarks, two other social pariahs, Richard “smash it” Keys and Andy Gray, were welcomed back into the media fold this week taking the morning slot on TalkSport radio.  

The prodigal sons return was greeted with considerably less fanfare than their ignominious departure from Sky two weeks ago and I couldn’t help but be a little disheartened by the announcement from TalkSport programme director Moz Dee, (since when has that passed for a name by the way?), that Keys and Gray’s remit will not extend to current affairs or politics. I was sincerely looking forward to Gray’s take on the Middle East peace process, though I do worry if he would be fully able to articulate his views without the use of his trusty supercomputer. I guess now we’ll never know.   

Like Clarkson, Keys and Gray are well placed to testify to the enduring truth that everybody loves a good witch hunt. Disregarding the severity of their indiscretions for a moment, most people’s overriding feeling, myself included, was not anger at their comments, but pleasure in seeing the once mighty and impossibly smug fall from grace.

However, a confession: since that time I have missed listening to their infuriating commentary and forced ‘banter’ when watching football on Sky, not because I enjoyed it, far from it; I have missed it because it never failed to rile and at times incense me. In short: I have missed not being annoyed by Keys and Gray. I’ve missed the feeling of personal offence caused when they said something I knew was complete nonsense, (zonal marking anyone?).  

We all have our own guilty pleasures, I’m sure. The Daily Mail, The Jeremy Kyle Show, Simon Cowell, Fox News; these may all divide opinion, but you can be sure that those people who are annoyed most by any of the above, take the greatest pleasure in seeking out the source of their annoyance. I know I do.

If I was a practitioner of beer-mat psychology, which of course I am, I’d argue that the feeling of indignation we get from these sources allows us, in our own heads, to feel morally and intellectually superior to the spouters of these views. And to shatter the illusion somewhat, I’m sure that all of these people are aware of this. I’m sure they revel in it, they long to be the person we all love to hate and adopt the pantomime persona we all clamour for accordingly. There are those that go too far of course, those that we just hate: the Richard Littlejohns and the Robert Killroy Silks of this world. The type of people that if you were to get into a fight with and somebody said “leave it they’re not worth it”, they’d actually be correct, but you wouldn’t ‘cos they’re just that annoying.  But by and large these nasty pieces of work are in the minority.  

There are also those on the other side, the self-righteous, those whose moral compasses seemed to be tuned to a higher frequency than the rest of ours and aren’t they just determined to let the rest of us know about it.

It is this group, which argue that TalkSport shouldn’t be employing denounced sexists like Keys and Gray, who have obviously never had the pleasure of tuning into medium wave 1053.  I fear Mike Graham and Eamon Dunphy may be shunning Keys and Gray in the TalkSport canteen as we speak for believing the earth is round and being part of the political correctness gone mad brigade. 

This type of argument insults the intelligence of football fans who mostly know drivel when they hear it and can identify prejudice and discrimination for themselves. That isn’t to say TalkSport is prejudice free, it most certainly isn’t, but most listeners are aware of this fact, they listen to it for precisely the guilty pleasure reasons discussed above. Some even have a nickname for the programme in which the word “Talk” remains and “Sport” is replaced by another word beginning with “S”, though I can’t for the life of me think what…