Life After the Woolwich Attack

Last week, Adebolajo and Adebowale, were both sentenced to life imprisonment, nine months after their brutal attack on Drummer Lee Rigby on a South London street.

The pair were sentenced in their absence after brawling with security guards during Mr Justice Sweeny's opening sentencing remarks. This brings around a legal resolution wanted by all. But how can the family move on after losing a loved one in such a tragic and public way?

Lee Rigby's funeral

Most of us would have seen the upsetting images taken on Artillery Place, Woolwich, in the immediate aftermath of the attack. We were horrified at the sight of an unshaken man calmly addressing a camera phone, while brandishing a blood-soaked cleaver. He stood in front of a man, who laid in the road in a puddle of blood.

The Woolwich Murder

I was in Woolwich on that day. 22 May 2013. I live there. Fortunately, I was safely in our flat at 2:20pm. I was oblivious anything had happened. Then, helicopters kept circling around and around, and the sounds of distant sirens could be heard. However, after nearly a year of living there, I've become immune to that. Then I read a strange Tweet that stated that something had happened in Woolwich. No more than that. I went to Google. Two men had been shot after brandishing swords, barely a ten minutes walk away.

Telling it from my point of view is not interesting in the slightest. However, I haven't stopped thinking about it. Especially since I found out, many hours later, that it was being classified as an act of terrorism, and that they had beheaded a serving soilder. Those pictures on the television that evening will forever be imprinted in my brain. There has been much discussion as to whether that picture of Michael Adebolajo, the man with bloodied hands holding the meat cleaver, speaking to the camera, should have ever been used. They were distressing for me, let alone a young child walking past a newsagents on the way to school the next morning.

April: The Month Stuff Happened

Well, I suppose April 2013 will be written in quite a few history books over the years. Some might say that it hasn't exactly been a slow news month. This month has seen my Godson turn 1, the upgrading of our Broadband package and me getting a few articles published in a local newspaper. As important as these things are to me, they are not events that are going to make it into the history books.

One of the most devastating stories was the Boston bombs on the 15th of April. The tragic scenes were shared around the world within minutes, and thanks to the Internet, I had pictures filling up my Twitter feed. I love being on Twitter to watch stories like this develop, however, it is never long before people start making inappropriate jokes and flexing their Photoshop skills. Things inevitably begin to turn ugly, and soon you can't believe anything. As someone else rather eloquently put it:

Twitter does its best work in the first five minutes after a disaster, and its worst in the twelve hours after that.
— Matt Roller (@rolldiggity) April 15, 2013

Ashamed To Be Human

I have concluded I don't suit the human race. I think I would be much more comfortable at being part of another species on planet Earth, such as a rabbit or a tortoise. They always seem quite happy and contented and unbothered by what is happening in the news. A rabbit’s hutch will be lined with newspaper, but being a rabbit I wouldn't be able to read the text nor really be able to understand the context of the pictures. And even if I could understand it, I'd either eat or poo on the offending article. It's easy as a rabbit. I can even wiggle my nose and ears like a rabbit. Maybe I was meant to be a rabbit? Or if you believe in reincarnation, maybe I was once a rabbit. I wish I had a simple life like a rabbit, where I couldn't get offended.

Why am I considering the rabbit’s life? Well, the news the past two days has completely depressed, revolted and ashamed me. I am part of a species that murders. I know it's hardly a news flash: “Human Race Murder”. I'm thinking more about a specific murder carried out yesterday; a murder of a bad man. A terrible man. A man most would agree didn't deserve to live in the first place. However, what has bothered me more is not the murder itself, but the aftermath. His death has been glorified, and that is what I have a problem with.

Almost every newspaper carried a picture, on the front page, of Colonel Gadaffi. His lifeless face, covered with blood and a bullet hole in his head, is a picture which can be seen everywhere today. The Mirror had the worst, most disgusting picture and The Sun had a headline, which seemed to be full of pride at his death: "That's For Lockerbie", with the sub-heading "And for Yvonne Fletcher. And IRA Semtex Bomb victims." That headline is typical of The Sun, and its approach to anything done by, or as a result of, our Army. They are often blinded by a sense of pride. Morality doesn't come into their field of approach to news stories like this.

I hate myself for having to put his picture in my blog, but I just wanted to share the front cover. You can hate me and call me hypocritical if you like...

It comes to something when the human race uses technology to spread footage of a man being tortured and killed, all done within minutes of the event happening. Within an hour of hearing about the capture and possible death of Gadaffi, I was seeing pictures on the BBC Website, and video footage on their news channel, of his dead, bloodied and beaten body. The BBC defended it, by stating that they used the video to convey the scale of the "dramatic and gruesome" events. This is the same for every international news outlet in the country. To me, that is just seems wrong. It seems inhuman to put the face of a dead man everywhere; we wouldn't even treat an animal in that way.

Of course, we have to appreciate that as a nation, we are cynical enough to take the opinion that we won't believe something until we have seen it, and studied it for ourselves. Seeing as we can't all fly to Libya and poke the body ourselves; video footage is the next best thing. Saying to news outlets that they cannot show the pictures in their papers, and websites and news channels would be censorship, and I am against censorship. I just believe that we don't need to see these pictures over and over and over and over again. He isn't a very attractive man in the first place, let alone dead, bruised and bloodied. Why couldn't it just be confined to the Internet and after the watershed on TV? It seems wrong to have this man, who has essentially been 'happy slapped', in this state, as a picture to symbolise Thursday 20th October 2011.

To take an extreme view; we wouldn't do this to a victim. If Gadaffi had captured, then beaten and killed an innocent person in public and filmed it and uploaded the video to the Internet, the media would handle the whole event with moral decency. The same was done with Osama Bin Laden in May. We had a blurry, inconspicuous picture of a body said to be him, which was plastered everywhere. It seems revolting to do this, time after time. WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

It seems the newspapers have become the medieval equivalent to putting heads of bad people, on spikes for others to treat as they will. It dehumanised them. Now, the papers print the picture of a lifeless head on the front page instead.

There is also the argument of whether he should have been killed in the first place, and even the circumstances of the death are hazy. We have a video of Gadaffi in a bad way, being dragged through the streets of his home town, after been beaten up and having blood pouring off of his face. Then the next video we have is of him lying dead with a small bullet hole. Apparently it was cross fire. However, chances are, it was an emotional person, who probably knew some victims of Gadaffi's regime, and then, consumed with hate, put a gun to his head and blew his brains out (metaphorically).

However, now he is dead, people will never know the truth. People will never know his darkest secrets (which is possibly a relief for Western countries, who were heavily affiliated with him). He can never be tried in court, and can never be punished in the humanly correct way. Many questions will remain unanswered. How can a 'new Libya' claim to be any better than Gadaffi, when they begin like this? But then again, his trial was expected to have taken 10 year. It could be said to have been a waste of money and time. I know I will still disagree with his death, and especially how our media have dealt with it.

If God existed, and I was him, I would be putting the human race on the naughty step. No, don't argue and sulk, you done a bad thing, now sit there quietly until I say so; especially you media bastards!

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!

I blame those pesky neutrinos. If you have seen the film '2012', you will know why. I only watched it very recently for the first time after buying it cheap in HMV. It is possibly one of the best disaster movies I have seen. I'll give you a quick synopsis in case you have not seen it. Essentially, neutrinos from a solar flare penetrate the Earth and warm up with Earth's core. (Already, the film has got the 'sciencey' bit wrong in that Neutrinos do not behave in that sort of way...). There are lots people running around and warning each other about the impending doom. The year 2012 arrives and lots on mini-quakes start to occur across the globe, and this causes cracks in the Earth's surface. The movie follows a family as they try to outrun the disaster, in which they drive through crumbling cities and fly around the World, getting help from people they meet along the way. They make it to China where the World's richest and most deserved get a pass onto one of numerous arks, along with every species of animal, in a modern-day adaption of the tale of Noah. By this point, you have to forget that millions of people have died in tsunamis, eruptions of super volcanoes, epic earthquakes and other natural disasters, so you can buy into the fact that everyone on these arks are happy that they are saved. The destruction of Earth stops as quickly as it started, and everyone moves to Africa. They probably live happily ever after. Finished.

The film 2012 is based around the idea of the Mayan's Calendar, which states that on the 21st of December, 2012, the World will come to an end. This, of course, is only a theory, but conspiracy theorists and movie directors find this a great idea to exploit. There is a possibility to this, albeit a slight one, in that our Sun's solar activity is going to intensify and let out huge solar flares as part of its 11 year cycle that coincidentally reaches its peak in 2012. These are not going to heat our World up to a point which we all fall into the Earth's core however. At worst, it will destroy our communication systems, and you know, to a stroppy teenager who can't text their mate down the road because of the inconvenience caused by the Sun, it may probably seem like the end of the world.

The film, although brilliant if you remove yourself from rational thought, is so far from possibility, it becomes laughable. Much like another apocalyptic movie, ‘The Day After Tomorrow', in that everything happens with such speed, if you were a deep sleeper, you'd miss the whole event.

However, maybe these laughable films are actually, slowly, becoming a reality. We're only three months into 2011 and already Australia has been flooded and hit by a hurricane, New Zealand has been rocked by an Earthquake and Japan has been almost destroyed by a horrific Earthquake which resulted in a huge tsunami and (at the time of writing) is about to be vaporised by a huge nuclear explosion, should you choose believe the news. The closer we get to 2012, should we expect an increase in even worse global events happening? The apocalypse is only one calendar away! Imagine the irony; just as the middle-eastern countries release themselves from the oppression of unfair Governments, they end up killed by a super volcano in the middle of Egypt. Also, why are we even bothered by increased tuition fees and a slashed NHS budget? We'd have all drowned in a freak tsunami from the Irish Sea by the time the effects really hit us. Damn you Neutrinos! Damn you!

In all seriousness (and those are three words you read rarely on this blog), the recent events in Japan are absolutely terrible. Seeing those initial pictures on the News on the 11th March, really depressed me. It scared me. It is horrifying. I just don't know what to say. A confirmed number of over 8,000 people have lost their lives, and another 13,000 are missing. The devastation is beyond imaginable, and I'm sure the true extent is impossible to try and convey on the news. However, still, the media 'flood' to this event like Cheetahs to a limping Zebra.

Every fifteen minutes for the first few days on 24 Hour News channels, we were shown the same videos, which involved aerial shots of huge tides sweeping away towns, cars floating about like plastic ducks and amateur footage of people running upstairs after spotting the water gushing into their homes. The media were keen to keep this story fresh, so they, as they always do, talked to irrelevant people who knew less than them. My favourite example is when a news presenter was talking to an English person in Japan through Skype. Great idea, but when the person lives the other side of the country, how is he supposed to know how people who have lost their homes and family, are coping?

Then each night a reporter would go and stand in front of a devastating scene to illustrate how bad this event was. This has ranged from standing in front of a ferry which was swept aground and now sitting atop a building, to a wrecked lorry mounted upon a pile of rubbish. I'm expecting the news reporters to become desperate and just start standing in front of a field of corpses, while he delivers his piece to camera with a deadpan expression on his face.

This is the tsunami the Japanese side of the North Pacific...

You really do have to admire the Japanese people though. If this event happened anywhere else in the World, the News channels would have hours of footage in which women do pieces to camera while sobbing uncontrollably, while others are behind them in the foetus position while screaming in a foreign language. I have seen no clips like that from the Japanese. They just seem to have accepted it and have resolved to carry on and sort out the aftermath as soon as possible. In fact, they seem to be more British than I. They really have taken the motto "Keep Calm and Carry On" to heart. For that, I think the Japanese are the strongest and most admirable race on our Earth.  I am proud to be of the same species as them. The Americans however, I am not. When news hit America that a big tide was on its way, they wept at the camera continuously, and prayed to God. All they got was a slightly bigger wave than normal. Yet still, they cried at the camera, telling us how scared this made them feel.

This is the 'tsunami' the American side of the North Pacific...

"Dear America, Grow some balls. Signed, Britain."

Mind you, we Brits are still guilty of finding misfortune at the misery of another nation. The past week has just been filled with people stating that Nuclear Power is unsafe and dangerous due to the recent danger caused by the Japanese Earthquake. On the contrary, I think this is a testament to how safe Nuclear Power is and how safe the systems put in place are. One of the most powerful Earthquakes in recent memory strikes not far from these sites, and then huge tidal waves swept through. This is the same Earthquake that made skyscrapers many miles away sway, and the same tsunami that swept many building from their foundations. Yet, for the most part, these buildings remained in tack.

The word 'meltdown' has been thrown across the media and Internet a lot of recent days, and this is a word which has the power to strike panic into one’s mind. It's one of those buzzwords that aren’t a used a lot, but when it is used: Woah, you better run away screaming! I'm not going to claim to know a great deal about Nuclear energy, but those explosions were caused by the formation of hydrogen gas when the cooling equipment failed to work and the hot rods and steam reacted with each other. Why did the cooling equipment not work? Damaged power supplies stopped them working. This isn't a demonstration of how dangerous nuclear power is; it's a demonstrating of how fragile our World is.

I, and I am sure a lot of other people paying attention to this story, have learnt a lot/had our memories refreshed about Nuclear Power. The news, although sometimes morally wrong, can be very informative when it needs to make the ignorant masses understand important news events. In your face Jamie's Dream School! Give us devastation and computer animations with things blowing up, in amongst some words from the periodic table and innuendos such as 'rods becoming hot', we, as a nation, are well away.

Anyway, my biggest of sympathies go to Japanese people, but, I'm sure they will rebuild their destroyed towns and communities to something much better than they previously had and put us to shame again. It's the Japanese way.

The Snow-Pocalypse

Snow? That white stuff that falls from the sky and lands on the ground so we can build snowmen and throw snowballs. Last week? Country grinding to a halt? Roads not being gritted? People crashing their cars as a result of the snow? Thousands of schools being cancelled? People being stuck in their homes? A shortage of food in some areas? Over a foot of the stuff? Nope, no-one told me about. You would have thought a thing like that would at least be mentioned on the news.

I'm only yanking your chain and 'having you on'. Of course I remember the snow. How could I not? My retina's are still burnt after the light glaring off it blinded me everytime I walked past the window. I still walk out the door and see mounds of the stuff on fields and by the roads where men dressed in scarves and hats once stood proudly. Down in Kent we had almost a foot of the white stuff and for an entire week people moaned endlessly about it.

I'm blaming the snow for me failing my driving test. Technically it didn't affect me at all, but I feel left out not having something to moan about. I missed one day of school as a result of the snow, which wasn't that bad considering how bad the news made it sound. If I sat and watched the news I would be Agoraphobic by now. You would think there were viscous polar bears wondering the streets and lurking around every corner was an angry penguin holding a deadly bomb which would destroy the Earth. It was snow, not the apocalypse. I think it is pretty amazing how a beautiful white landscape can strike such fear into people. Do you think people who live in places like Switzerland look out the window every morning clutching a cross praying for their lives to be spared? No - they live with it.

Nick Griffin must have cried with delight when he opened his curtains on the morning of the initial snowfall to realise his dream of a white Britain had finally come true. He must have felt the same excitement of every eight year old child. If I was eight and saw that there was an entire foot of snow outside, chances are I would be frothing at the mouth after collapsing to ground at the single thought of all the wonderful things I could do in the snow. I could build an Igloo, maybe a giant snowman which would come to life or make snow angles. I could make the worlds the largest snowball and throw it at my mate so he was paralysed for the rest of his life. Oh, that would be sooo cool. Of course I'm not eight though. I'm seventeen with exams to pass and a life to continue to try and live. My first thought upon seeing the weather man forecast snow was "Well that's going to be a bugger isn't it."
It has become the coldest winter on record for 30 years with more snow expected in the next few days. A few years ago I would love this fact and praying every night that it does snow. It's just a palaver now I'm mature; which is kind of depressing really. Didn't get much snow when I was young enough to enjoy it, and now, if anything, I don't want it to snow. Sure, it is pretty and has given me plenty of perfect images to add to my photography coursework, but still it doesn't feel me excitement.

Our nation becomes so obsessed with snow when it does finally come. I counted the word 'snow' being said 54 times in one half hour news show. Now, that is just a ridiculous amount of times. Every ten minutes the man on the news or the radio would be warning us not to travel unless it was strictly necessary. However, news teams across the country rushed out into the snow to make a live link to prove it is actually snowing outside of London. Up north, they got so desperate for news that the local news station actually went to a village which had no snow. Every news station had images and videos of people slipping and face-planting the pathment. They had footage of cars struggling to drive up a steep hill and having to reverse down. Images of hundreds of cars parked up by the side of the road where people had given up. It the news images looked like a scene from BBC One's Survivor's, or maybe one of the Doctor Who episodes where the Master comes along and something awful happens to man-kind; just before The Doctor comes on to save us once again. Unfortunately this wasn't the case, but that's how extreme it looked.
The news was quick to report that a policeman went sledging down a hill with his riot shield. Now I personally think that is very inventive and indeed that man should go on the next series of Dragons Den. Instead, he and his fellow police officers who joined him got reprimanded. This is how our nation got the reputation of being boring, strict people. It was only a bit of fun.
Then on every news show, there was a poor reporter standing at some Gritting Depot to say that they're working through the night to grit the roads and there were 'Dwindling supplies'. In fairness, there isn't a great deal of fun to be had from Gritting Depot's. No-one cares about them during the summer, so just because it's snowing slightly outside, these people become our saviours and when they can't grit one small, unused street, we tell them they're useless. How unappreciative are we as a nation?
Then we constantly moan at the weather forecasters who keep predicting the weather 6 months in advance incorrectly. To be honest, that has got to be one of the worst things to try and predict. Why do we want to know what the weather is going to be in six months time anyway? People lived perfectly fine 20 years ago before we could it. It seems like a waste of time to me really. This is effectively trying to predict the future, and fortune tellers have a reputation for not being accurate. However, they do try and again, we show no appreciation for them trying. The same as we show no appreciation for the postman that still delivers the post in his shorts. If Rugby players think they're men, then they should try getting up at 5 in the morning in the snow to deliver bills.

Everytime it snows as well, people moan about how our country pathetically grounds to halt when it snows because we see how America cope with much more snow than us, and places like Switzerland cope with it all the time. The idea of their airports closing, trains breaking down and people taking the day of work seems ridiculous to them. Kids still manage to go to school despite the fact they've had to tie tennis rackets to their feet. It is ridiculous in comparison to them, but how often do we get snow like this. Not very often, and if Global Warming isn't a myth (which I believe it is to a certain respect) then we won't have to deal with snow for much longer anyway. I reckon we should just stop moaning and enjoy the snow when it comes. Stop being such boring people Britain and embrace the next round of apocalyptic snow.

I did see two brilliant things during the snow however. They both prove how rude and immature we can be when given the chance. The first was a giant erect penis which had been constructed in someone's front garden. Not only that, but disturbingly they went to a great deal of effort to make it look realistic, let's put it that way. The other was a snowman with a carrot and two lumps of coal like most traditional snowmen. However, these were not in the traditional place, and where infact put in a position to resemble a certain part of a man's lower anatomy. Such humour our nation when it snow, but as soon as it melts, everyone goes back to their BMW's, a suit and a briefcase to continue life as a mature adult.

I don't want to grow up.

Here is a video of a man slipping on the ice on an Irish News program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CT0a-Hgumo

Who Decides The Importance of News Stories?

That is a question that I've always wanted to know the answer to, but more so in the recent few months, as I would like to meet the person to see if they really are a complete and utter idiot. The relevance of the story on the public and the world is how I would decide the importance, and is how you would expect them to be ordered. The news is now ordered in a way to grab an audience and compete against other news programs/channels for ratings. The recent Michael Jackson death is a good example of this.

Everyone loved Michael Jackson, that much has been made obvious to us over the past 5 days, and every day since his death it has been the main news headline. Did he die as a result of the drugs he was taking? Did he die because of the stress of his upcoming tour at the O2 Arena? Who will get custody of his children? These are the questions that the news programs have been answering before bomb attacks in Iraq are discussed, the still increasing Swine Flu cases and forgetting the death of Farrah Fawcett, who died the same day as Michael Jackson and was big news until Jackson died, then her dead corpse just got pushed to the back of the news headline to make way for the freshly decaying dead corpse of Michael Jackson.

Another example of similar news stories being ordered differently is the metro crash in America last week which killed 9 people, and the Spanish train that blew up and killed 13 people a few days ago. The metro crash was the news headline of the day, and lots of emotional people were interviewed to give their experience of the tragic accident. Whereas the train explosion in Spain, which had more casualties, barely got a mention on the news, apart from a few dramatic images which made it look like a scene from a Tom Cruise film.
In case you're not aware of this story, a cargo train full of flammable gases blew up as it went through a train station, and as well as killing 13 people and injuring many more, it turned the surrounding area into a small village that looked like it had been hit by a nuclear bomb. In comparison to two trains colliding, I think the incident in Spain is actually bigger news myself. Geographical positioning and the countries power is usually the contributor to whether something is headline news or whether it gets featured in a quick 20 second news round-up. A fatal accident in America will get much more media coverage than a fatal accident in a less powerful country like Spain, as showed in the recent news.
It even counts for news stories over in the United Kingdom. If someone gets stabbed in London, its headline news, and Gordon Brown comes on the TV and gives his condolences to the family and someone from Scotland Yard will give an update on suspects. If someone gets stabbed in Summerset, it would barely get covered by local news teams, and not the national news, that’s for sure. I know if they covered every stabbing, the first 20 minutes of every news report would be a list of deaths, but that is yet another example of some guy sitting in the ITN newsroom deciding what the public want to hear, and making a decision of whether something is important or not.

I can't have a moan at the media, without bringing up Jade Goody, who died a few months ago of cervical cancer. I'm sure you remember that, because all the gossip magazines have talked about since is her death and how Jack Tweed is coping with the loss. Just because she was in the media spotlight, we all decided that was more important than every other woman in the country who was dying or suffering with cervical cancer. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Numerous members of my family have had cancer, as have a lot of people’s families, and at no point did the prime minister call them brave, or Okay! Magazine never done a tribute to them. And why is she any different? All because she was on Big Brother.
People will argue that without her, thousands of women would never have had themselves checked out, but that was only because the media kept pushing the subject (something good had to come out of it all). At no point did Goody actively tell women to get themselves checked out. She did not die with dignity and it wasn't just her fault, it was the media's fault too. It was the fault of the news for constantly reminding us she was dying. And when she did die, we were shown footage of people crying and flowers being laid outside her house. That is why the death of Michael Jackson has been was compared to Goody's death; the constant media coverage after the death. Now it has become boring. What we need is Michael Jackson's body to spontaneously combust, destroying the whole of America to liven it up and make the story interesting again.

I'm not that sympathetic over celebrity deaths like Michael Jackson and Jade Goody, because people die every day. Maybe a Plumber from Leeds isn't as important as an American who has made a huge contribution to music or a women who has kept the tabloid papers and the gossip magazines in business, however they are still people, so why the news reporter can't just say 'Jade Goody has finally died... Now onto something more important - Barak Obama has just saved the world yet again, this time he managed to stop a meteor from colliding with the Earth.'

It can't all be blamed on the media though; it can also be blamed on you, the British public. It's because you've forced us to live in the world of celebrity, where all everyone seems to care about is either a celebrity’s personal life or who will be the next person to be evicted from the Big Brother house. And with written media dying out because of new technologies, the papers have had try harder to get readers. The Internet means people can access the news up to date, when they want and choose what they do and do not want to read/listen to and is also free.

The news today is concentrated on the recent hot weather. Announcing that today Kent was 4 Degrees Celsius warmer than the Caribbean. It's not a competition. I personally don't really care where we are hotter than, and everyone getting giddy at the thought that we are hotter than the Caribbean islands, but then I don't care about a lot of things on the news. Do I care that 4 people will serve a 44 years sentence between them for smuggling drugs into Britain? No. Do I really care that there is no prospect of a post office sell off? Not particularly. Do I even care that Gordon Brown insists he is honest about his expenses? Nope, couldn't give a flying monkeys (strange expression that).

So why do I even watch the news or buy the Guardian if I don't care about the news? I don't know really, because if I really want to know something, I would go onto the BBC website and have a look. That's sorted then, I won't watch the news again (for a while at least).

Toodles m’dearys
xXXx

Just one more thing. Have a look at this video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELyTBXzfQJ8 It appeals to me because it involves Hitler and is rather funny on the subject of Michael Jackson’s death. Have a look, you won’t regret.

BBC News 24 Say 'He Touched All Generations'

Have you heard? Well, there's this little rumour going around that Michael Jackson may have died from a Cardiac Arrest. There are so many jokes which I could say about Michael Jackson's life and subsequent death, but a majority of which are very inappropriate, and I won't lower myself to saying them, as a lot of people have done and instead I'm writing a blog to show a little bit of respect. I have decided that I am not going mention his recent history in the media, but shall stick to the good points about him and how he has been conveyed in the past 18 hours; well I will try my best anyway.

Let me just draw your attention to a blog I wrote in February entitled "'Z-lebrities' In Need (of Sympathy)" in which I moan about two people. Jade Goody and Michael Jackson, moaning about how they both try and get sympathy from the public through their health situations and now within 4 months both have died. It's only a coincidence, but it did seem I had created a hit list, or a list of people Max Clifford advisees.
Max Clifford was on BBC News 24 talking about MJ's death, and he managed to bring the conversation around to saying how brilliant Jade Goody was. When will people shut up about her? Anyway, I digress.

Everyone knows Michael Jackson, and a lot of people like his music, whether it's in the times of The Jackson 5 or whether he was black or white at the time of recording. He is an icon of pop music as the news keep telling us, and of course that is true. He has the biggest selling album, meaning he had a huge amount of money, but how to spend it? Numerous operations. He went from looking incredibly normal in his early days when he was still black in his Billie Jean and Thriller music videos, to looking like a complete and utter freak.

Some 18 hours later after the news first broke on Sky News and BBC News 24, it was still considered to be breaking news by the news channels and Sky's headline throughout has been very blunt - 'MICHAEL JACKSON IS DEAD'. There is only so much these news channels can say though, and it wasn't long before they started repeating themselves, and constantly telling us that he was dead and just showing helicopter footage of the hospital and a small crowd of people outside it, why the newsreaders kept saying how tragic this sudden death was and how it will affect millions across the world and Interviewing irrelevant people.
Both BBC and Sky News managed to get footage of the ambulance reversing out of the Jackson residence and then the dead body being put in a van and taken to a coroner. During the night they had interviews with people who vaguely knew him and had met him once or twice to tell their memories of him. Then it was time to round up the sobbing American idiots to ask how they felt of this tragic event. Most of them were crying and saying how they loved him so much. He seems to have some rather hardcore fans, that has to be said.

Since the news was first told to us about the death of Michael Jackson, that is all we have heard. News reports on the radio just simply say 'Michael Jackson has died from a cardiac arrest.' Forgetting the conflict in Iraq about the election results, or the babysitter who murdered a child and not paying any notice that Swine Flu outbreaks have increased substantially in the past 24 hours. Michael Jackson dying is the only piece of news we need to here, and has been compared to the likes of Elvis and John Lennon by the media. They were all icons of their times and all died early. Comparisons have even been found to Diana, and now you can't compare anything to Diana without comparing it to Jade Goody also - The peoples princess of the 21st Century so I keep being reminded. Anyway, I've digressed again.

Another thing that annoys me is the Americans and that they can be manipulated to feel anything. Should the media tell them to feel angry towards someone, then my goodness, they'll go around with a rather angry expression upon their faces. If the media tells them that to feel sad and cry over the death of a pop star, then they will go out into the streets and cry, then the media will capture them crying, and the most distressed looking one will be put on TV to show the emotions in an exaggerated form. Rather ridiculous looking, well from the point of view of a cynical man anyway.

Gordon Brown can never resist commenting on events like these, so he comes along and says it's upsetting news, and then in a bid to outdo him, David Cameron comments on it saying that he grew up listening to Michael Jackson, to make his connection to the public and make him seem like a normal guy. Then we get introduced to a face we haven't seen since he appeared on I'm A Celebrity... Good friend, Uri Geller. Telling us how Michael Jackson was a misunderstood soul and reminding us that he was upset, with a smile on his face. Probably because he hasn't been on TV for such a long time. In between all these pointless interviews with pointless people giving their pointless opinions, the news channels kept spontaneously changing to a music channel, who seemed to have Michael Jackson's songs on repeat, which again, the newsreader would speak over this and tell us something we already knew, for example that Michael Jackson was dead.

And every part of the media has been affected by this. News channels have had to find things to fill the time when nothing was happening, TV shows like Loose Women were gossiping about this loss of life. Journalists have been relying on Twitter, and not everything is real on Twitter, so they then put false information upon their newspaper's website. Telling us that David Miliband was upset, or at one point that Harrison Ford had died. The Internet was nearly broken by everyone logging in to find out whether Jackson was really dead. Twitter failed for 20 minutes, as did Google and Facebook reported an increase in status changes. 'Bob Bobson iz upset dat Michael Jackson iz dead. R.I.P. What a legend!'

His last tour was due to start in a few weeks also, entitled 'This Is It', and now they've all been cancelled would you believe it. A lot of people have said that the stress of doing these tours is what has caused him to die suddenly. Well I'm quite happy sitting at home listening to his music on my iPod. Admittedly, I only have 18 songs, and I'm not exactly a hardcore fan, but it has been a way of killing an hour and 20 minutes of my time listening to a selection of great tunes and has kept me entertained doing little dances as I sit here and write this blog.

I'm glad that no-one has really been mentioning all the allegations of Jackson's alleged paedophilia, because that isn't what I want him remembered for. He should be remembered as an icon of pop who created music that will live forever and remembered by most for his classic songs as Billie Jean, Thriller, Bad, Smooth Criminal, Beat It, Black Or White, Way You Make Me Feel and more than I can't be arse to name. Should you meet a person that makes a joke, making light of his death, you have permission to give them a good slap.
However, I still haven't found the answer to my question which I asked at the end on the blog I mentioned at the start of this blog. I am rather intrigued by this, as I'm sure you are:
What colour is Michael Jackson's penis? Black or White?
Or actually, does he even have a penis?

Try not to be to upset about it.
Toodles m’dearys
xXXx

Oh, and here is a link to a video on Youtube that Michael Jackson and Britain’s Got Talent fans may enjoy... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2YEX60XNJ0

Newsreaders, Reading Gossip Magazines

The latest ‘trend’ amongst the serious ‘newsreaders’ is to essentially, pick up a copy of The Sun and OK magazine and just read it out. Who cares about the fires in Australia killing over 200 people, or 45 people dying in a plane crash in America, or even the Credit Crunch – that was so last year. No, the things everyone wants to know about it are 13 year old fathers, who aren’t the father and dying celebrities getting married.

What happened to the days when you turned on the TV and 6PM or 10PM or whenever and heard about important stuff that affects the day to day lives of normal folk? I’ll tell you what happened; we harnessed the power of 24 hour news, and decided to repeat 15 minutes of news, over and over again.

They ran out of stuff to say, so they picked up The Sun and some ‘clever’ spark thought, “We could make the news longer by telling people gossip instead of telling them about Russia turning of our Gas.” So now when the news is on, we get told which celebrities are getting divorced, and get breaking news on the American women who had octuplets.

You may recognise the woman in the picture above as Mika Brzezinski from a few years ago. She is the newsreader who refused to read the story about Paris Hilton coming out of prison and set fire to her script in protest. She is one of the people who helps believe that there is still hope for the human race; there are newsreaders that will stand up and say no to nonsense news! And I thank her.

At the moment, when you turn the TV on, the headline news is either about Jade Goody’s cancer (see yesterdays blog for more details), and 13 year old boys who claim to be the father of a 16 year olds child, as well as two other boys. She’s a slut essentially, just get over it. There is no need to spark another debate on whether children are educated enough about sex. If that teenager is going to have sex, then they will have sex, it won’t matter that when they were 10 they got told that ‘Unprotected sex leads to STD’s and babies’. Another story (which involves Twitter), is that Lily Allen and Parez Hilton (whoever he is) are having an argument over the modern blogging phenomenon – Twitter.

Then after that load of nonsense, the newsreader turns around and says ‘In other news’, where he or she will tell us something important finally, which is usually connected to either terrorism, credit crunch or some member of parliament getting up to certain ‘shenanigans’. This is the stuff we want to know.

I mean what will be next? Will I turn on the evening news with the headline story being; ‘Breaking News - Michael Jackson reveals colour of his penis. Find out which colour, after the break.’
You never know, weirder things have happened.