Tag Archives: Politics

How I went from news avoider to a news junky in just 11 years.

Posted on by

I used to be one of those people who never read the news or watched it on TV or paid attention when it interrupted the music on the radio station. It was too depressing and not all that interesting and had nothing to do with me.

And then I met Simon. And he is a news junky. He reads blogs and newspapers online and off and Twitter feeds and links and so on and so forth. He reads hard news, satire, right wing, left wing, moderate. Northern Irish, English, Scottish and American. And others. He thrives on information.

And I caught the bug. Not right away or all of a sudden but gradually I began, at least, reading headlines. And Twitter blurbs.

Photo source: http://www.contenthook.com/

And then US politics got interesting as now President Obama and Hillary Clinton faced off for the Democratic Presidential Nomination eight years ago.

And so I started downloading apps to read news on. And bookmarking news sites.

And got hooked on knowledge.
Which isn’t surprising as I’ve always enjoyed learning things I want to learn.

And so I too am now a news junky. Not perhaps to Simon’s level, as he shed a tear when TeleText went off the telly (may be a slight exaggeration), but enough to be informed as to what is going on in the world.

So are you a junky? An avoider? Somewhere in the middle?

Changes…

Posted on by

So you may have noticed that the last few posts have had very little to do with me and my family and my health and more about the wider world.

Honestly? I was boring myself. How many times can you write about how ill you are? I’m also becoming very aware that Adam is becoming his own person and has an inherent right to privacy, even though I honestly believe most privacy is gone.

So I’m changing the focus of the blog.

I’m going to start leaning more towards the political and social rather than the personal.

Of course there will still be personal posts.

But posts will be further apart (as they have been) and be of a more political slant.

I hope you’ll stick around anyway and see what I have to say.

It could be interesting.

Hey, Look! A Change!

Posted on by

Except, you know, not really.

I am talking about, of course, the new Pope. Pope Francis I.

There being a new Pope is about a meaningful for me as who the President of Latvia is, but it was still interesting to watch it happen. Just as it was in 2005.

What has me chortling is the cries of ‘but he’s against abortion!’

‘He won’t approve condoms and save millions of African lives!’

‘He won’t approve gay marriage!’

No shit Sherlock.

No matter his background or how ‘liberal’ he may appear or that he’s a Jesuit? He’s still the leader of the Catholic church.

And there are certain things that will never change within that organization.

Don’t kid yourself they ever will.

The Times? They Don’t Change At All.

Posted on by

So I was thinking more on how I don’t think things change, no matter who is in power, or how things change and then go straight back when the ‘other guys’ get in power.

And I can hear a voice in the back of my head saying ‘what about gay rights and feminism and racial relations?’

Well, what about them?

It’s been 44 years since the Stonewall Riots in New York began the gay rights movement. A number I can easily remember as it is the same year I was born, 1969. And we are still fighting for gay rights. Right to marry. To adopt. To just have the same rights as someone who is born with the ability and desire to love the opposite rather than the same sex.

And feminism. It’s been about 50 years since that started. Do women get equal pay? How many female members of Congress are there? Members of Parliament? CEOs? Presidents of the United States  have there been?

Race? It was 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of that bus. Has Dr King’s dream come true? Do ‘…all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,…’ ‘…join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”‘

Do they?

Or did I have to find an alternate route to my son’s school on Monday because the road was closed due to a Security Alert triggered by a suspicious package on a railway bridge between our house and his school?

So don’t tell me change happens or stays or keeps. Don’t tell me, as I read in an article where New York Irish Pub owners defended the name of a drink called an Irish Car Bomb because ‘the troubles were so long ago, they are practically forgotten’, that the world is better or safer or evener or equalier than it was before.

Tell it to the gang rape victim in Delhi. Or the teenager who was raped by footballers, where that the whole town tried to cover it up in the US.

The world is unequal and uneven and unfair. And how will we know it no longer is?

People won’t know or need the term ‘White Privilege.’ We won ‘t need International Women’s Day. We won’t need Gay Pride. Or Black Pride Month. Or a million other things that we need to do, and do loudly, to be heard.

It’s been half a century since most of this stuff started.

When is going to end?

Be The Change, Not The Whinging About the Need For Change

Posted on by

I am so so tired of the whinging.

All over FB and MN and Twitter and probably Google+ and every where else.

They are destroying our NHS. They are taking away our benefits. They are lying about social security, benefits users, my next door neighbour, their own policies.

Well, what are you doing about it, other than bitching on Social Media? Have you signed a petition? Gone to a protest? Written your MP/Congress Person?

Or are you sitting behind your computer whinging on the internet hoping someone else is going to be the change?

What am I doing? Not a blessed thing. Why? Because I honestly think it does no good. This government will pass things (both US and UK). The next government will pass things to put things back the way they were before the last government passed things. And vice versa. Over and over again, until the end of the earth. Everything resets back to zero at some point. It always has and it always will.

So I am not being the change. But I am also not whinging about the change. Or only rarely and briefly.

Also, I have no electoral voice in the UK and never will. And I have no local electoral voice in the US, even though I am registered to vote in California. As a US Citizen who has declared they will never return to the US, my voting power is limited. I am allowed to vote for Senators and Congressmen. I am not allowed to vote for State Senators or Congressmen or whatever they have in California. Quite right too.

But honestly, the rest of you are exhausting. Either shut up or put up.

Be the change or stop whinging about the need for change.

Or tell me to fuck off.

Your choice.