The U.K. election - who wins?

The Liberal Democrats
Leader: Nick Clegg
Slogan: "Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain."

The Conservatives
Leader: David Cameron
Slogan: "We can't go on like this."

Labour Party
Leader: Gordon Brown
Slogan: "A future fair for all."

The U.K. general election is very close to an end, and the Conservatives are leading the race with over 50 Members of Parliament more than the Labour. In my opinion, the Conservative Party should form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats due to their common interests in cases such as economy and health care. At the same time, Great Britain goes through a rough time right now in terms of the economy and it is risky to start a coalition "project" that has never been tried in this country before. It can lead to strides and disagreements within the government.

"Blind Side"

Last English class we saw a movie called "Blind Side". In the film we meet a 17 year old homeless boy named Michael Oher. He has gone through his life living in various foster families. Every time he establishes himself in the new family, he runs away, until he meets the Tuohy family. The mother of the family, Leigh Anne, includes him in their warmth and he stays there for a long period of time. She also adopts him. Due to Michael's enourmous stature and incredible strength, he becomes a professional American Football player. Because of his athletic ability and grade improvements Michael receives numerous scholarship propositions. His entire foster family has enrolled in the University of Mississippi and it is expected of Michael to do it as well. The NCAA starts to investigate the case and tells him that they believe the Tuohy included him in their family just because they saw his potential in sports and wanted him to represent their family in the University of Mississippi. Michael feels extremely disappointed when hearing this and flees once again. The movie ends with Michael choosing another university and returning to his foster family.

The Road after finished reading

In my winter break I finished reading The Road, but due to certain incidents I have not been able to write my blog entry yet. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, the book was written by the famous author Cormac McCarthy. In the novel we meet a man and his young son whose names are not described. They find themselves surrounding a destroyed, ashened earth with only a few fellow survivors of mankind. Among them are cannibals, with a complete lack of empathy and care for people other than themselves. They travel in groups and the boy and his father are in a constant struggle of shelter from their presence. There are also other survivors that are in the boy and his fathers situation, but they are a minority. The father and son are always starving, always cautiously alert, only carrying a grocery cart with a few blankets and a gun with two bullets of which they are to use either to protect themselves against the cannibals following their tracks, or for the father to finish their lives before the desperate despair consumes them both. Their destination is the southern part of America, but when they arrive at the coast the fatal need of food leads to a tearful destiny for one of them.

In my previous blog entry I stated a negative view towards the book. My opinion dramatically changed as I read further on. McCarthy's way of describing the post-apocalyptic earth is simply astonishing. His description of the relationship between the boy and the father is even more compelling. Both of them are the reason the other one is still alive. The fact that they are so dependent on each other brings them really close. When I read the book I had a feeling of wanting to continue because of the unawareness of their situation. I strongly recommend you to read this journey of horror, attachment and love.

U.K. politics

Today in class, we were assigned the task to act as journalists reporting from the Question Time on February the 24th in the British House of Commons. Me and my friend Camilla chose to represent a newspaper that supported the Labour Party.

Task 1
Question Time, February 24th
In British politics it is common that the members of parliament, usually shortened down to MPs, meets the Government Ministers to ask questions concerning various political subjects. These questions are known as "oral questions" and takes place at the start of business on a daily basis, in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In the lower house (House of Commons), each government department are obligated to answer questions according to a rota called the Order of Oral Questions. The difference between the Question Time in the two houses are that the questions from the Lords are to the government as a whole, but the questions from the Commons goes to the particular government departments. This is due to the division of power in the two houses; the House of Commons has more power than the House of Lords.

Every Wednesday, the Prime Minister participates in Question Time in the House of Commons for half an hour. The questions from the MPs are dropped at least three days in advance. The session starts with a question from one of the MPs about the Prime Minister's engagements. Following the Prime Minister's answer, the MP can raise a question concerning a particular political issue, usually of a current significance. The leader of the Opposition are then allowed to follow up on either this topic, or change to another topic.

On February 24th, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown started the engagement talk with a tribute to the troops in Afghanistan. The tribute was followed with a discussion about the economy.
The question that were asked to the Prime Minister in this particular meeting were in general about health care and economy. The Leader of the Opposition (the Conservatives), David Cameron, stated that the GNP (Gross National Product) per capita is lower today than before Brown entered the role as Prime Minister, and that he thereby leaves the country poorer than when he entered the position. Cameron talked with a massive empathy and tried his best to gain the MPs support. It seemed that Brown had a more relaxed appearance than his opponent Cameron. Brown replied with saying that the total GNP per capita is higher now than in 1997. Cameron accused Gordon Brown for lying and asked him to stand up with a straight face and tell the audience that the statement actually was true. Brown replied that he had answered the question three times already. It was obvious that Cameron had not prepared himself well enough for the debate.

Task 2
The importance of TV debates in terms of politics
This year’s election in Britain will be different. Every Wednesday the U.K. prime minister meets the House of Commons for what they call a “Question Time”. In 2010 this debate will be sent on television all over Britain, and many people believe this will have a huge impact on the election.
Although intensive debates can help a candidate, once the contest begins, it is almost impossible for the candidates to hide their true character. An example is when McCain performed poorly on a debate sent on TV. Just as the camera had picked up McCain's nervous laughter, manic grin and habit of cutting his opponent off, many people lost some of their respect for the U.S. presidential candidate. In other words, these debates could be the best chance British voters have of experiencing a moment of truth during this campaign.
It has been set a lot of rules for this new type of question time. The BBC, ITV and Sky and the three main political parties have agreed on the rules for live prime ministerial debates in the run-up to the election of 2010. The three 90-minute sessions will begin by focusing on domestic policies, international affairs and the economy. The studio audiences will then be able to ask questions on any subject, with television viewers doing the same via e-mail. The Labor Partys Gordon Brown, Lib Dem Nick Clegg and Tory David Cameron have welcomed the news.
The first debate, focusing on domestic affairs, will be held in the north-west of England.
The second, themed on global issues, will take place in south-west England. The third debate will be dealing with the economy. The applause will be restricted to the beginning and end of the debates and the audience will not be allowed to respond to the leaders' answers. Some of the other rules that are set for these debates are that the audience will, as I mentioned above, have the opportunity to pose questions, but no heckling. The leaders will have to make a one minute opening statement on the theme of the debate. Further on they have one minute to answer each question, and one minute to respond to the answers. The leaders also have to shake hands at the end of the debate.

Television has influenced the presidential elections in the United States for many years, in both a good and bad way. The media circus around presidential elections has made candidates to pursue a better image, but as I mentioned above it also can affect them negatively. The candidates that look bad or for example get nervous in front of the cameras can loose a lot of votes this way, but on the opposite, TV performance naturally makes a positive turn for the candidates. President Clinton is a good example to mention. Many people did not know much about him, who he was or what he stood for, but he made a fantastic apperance on television and in the media: Great presence, a good looking guy, smart and friendly – these factors made a turning point in his career. The media loved him, and the American people started to pay more attention to him – this helped him to win two elections in a row.

The Road

The Road is a book written by Cormac McCarthy. The book has received the Pulitzer Prize and is soon to be a cinema movie, February the 19th to be correct. The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where the world has gone trough a crisis and is completely destroyed. We never get to know exactly what has happened. Only a tiny percentage of mankind have managed to survive. The book follows a father and a son on their journey throughout nothingness and ruins of the former American continent. As in the way they manage to survive, it seems to me like they have lived under these circumstances for many years. At the beginning of the book they are located in the northern part of the United States, and their goal is to get to the Southern part before the winter arrives. The country is completely lawless and they have to stay low due to other survivors, amongst them criminals and murderers. At first I thought that maybe the world had gone through a massive pandemic illness which caused all of the human population to turn mean on each other, but as I read further I understood that it is the disastrous conditions that have made the surviving human beings to kill each other. Imagine living under those circumstances. I believe most of us would have changed our behaviour dramatically. The basic instincts would have overshadowed everything else.

However, the boy and the father meet a fellow survivor in their path down south. The boy wants to help the man, but the father knows that they can't let a stranger's needs come in front of their own. The father's son whose name is unmentioned in the book seems to understand that they don't have much time left on the surface of the destroyed earth. He also says to his father that he wants to stay with his mom, which is dead. This basically means that he would rather die than living under such circumstances. There are flashbacks in the book which indicates that his mom gave birth to him and later took her own life.
In my opinion, I quite don't see how this book has received that vast amount of prizes and acclaims yet. I hope it reaches up to my expectations as the story goes further on.

A new method of working

Right now in class, all of the classmates are collaborating together as a group. Our teacher has splitted us up in groups of five and given us various tasks. One of the groups is the front desk. Their responsibility is to divide material, prioritize, approve material and give the other groups time limits. My group is called the research group. Our job is to find and gather relevant material and send it to the other groups. Then we have the journalists, whose jobs are to write blogs and send them to the teachers, designers and the front desk. The fourth group consists of the teachers. They make criteria rubrics in terms of the test we are having next week. They also write the test questions. At last we have the designers. They create so-called Glogs and Photostories with the gathered material.

I liked this varation of working. Some got more to do than others, but at the same time I believe that everybody learned something new today.

Nobama

Last week in class, we saw a documentary made by Alexandra Pelosi. The movie was filmed during the election race in America between Barack Obama and John McCain. Pelosi had chosen to focus on McCain's supporters and their view on Obama. I found it very interesting to see that many of them actually seemed more engaged in preventing Obama from becoming president than McCain to actually become the president. Some of the interviewees began crying when asked about how they thought America would develop if Obama was elected. Not tears of bliss, but bitter, scared thoughts.

Several interviewees drew a connection between Obama and Germany's imperial chancellor during WWII, Adolf Hitler. They compared Obama's and Hitler's charisma and their way of speaking to the crowd. I have to add that another argument for the comparison was the situation America was in during the election and the situation Germany was in during Hitler's party NSDAP's election.
But still, the comparison really blew my mind. How can one compare one of the most racist men in history and an African-American man, solely based on their speaking gifts? I tried to put myself in their situation. The American presidential line-up throughout the history has consisted mostly of middle-aged to old white men. As for the recent history, neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush jr. were impressive speakers. And so Obama enters the history, a colored man quite young for his coming goal. For the American conservatives this may have come as a shock.

Some of the Southerners also admit this in the documentary. One of the men interviewed actually states that "America is not ready for a colored man as president. I believe the society is moving too fast. If it were up to me, you shouldn't have the ability to vote." when talking to the female interviewer. First I found this statement very provoking, but after some thought I have to say that at least he has the guts to stand for his opinion. America is a country of liberty and he should be able to believe in whatever he wants to.

As you could see in the documentary, most of McCains "hard voters" lived in the inland of America. I allow myself to generalize a little bit: many of them were typical Christian rednecks. They were very religious and worked hard in the agriculture industry. They called themselves "real Americans" and pointed at the fact that they worked hard to keep the wheels of the country turning. Many of them did not believe Obama cared enough for them.

Now I have only mentioned a few of the comparisons and statements concerning Obama shown in the documentary. Other examples of comparisons were that Obama was the Antichrist and that he was the devil in human form. Some simply pointed at the fact that he is a "nigger" and therefore not able to fill the presidential role. In my opinion, many of these people seemed like they were living in the past. They were simply Christian, farm-working Americans that were not ready for such a dramatically change.

I strongly recommend the documentary. You can find it on Youtube. Here are the links:
Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.
Enjoy!