Shouldn’t newsreaders just stick to familiar metaphor’s, tired old cliche’s just turn an audience off. In this case your comment on the news reader who couldn’t even get it right is justly valid:
Can I ask whether or not it did indeed turn you off the program or did it instill in you a deeper ranging interest in the hope that the presenter would continue his tirade of malpropism’s? Maybe the question is did the audience really care or even notice?
Getting a weekend takeaway in this country is almost as natural as washing on a daily basis. Come the weekend after a hard week’s work when there is no food left in the house and no effort left in the body to cook, the only viable option is hitting up one of the many wide ranging culinary establishments the high street has to offer.
Then again there are those takeaway restaurants that are not always the easiest to spot. In desperation of having no suitable location some of these estabilishments are often converted ground floors of houses. The waiting room of a takeaway restaurant is interesting enough in itself. There you can usually find a wall bracketed TV playing a feast of Saturday night shows like Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway - oh lucky you to have stumbled in at such unfortunate timing.
After paying your fees and receiving your little banquet you then have to prepare yourself for war. Outside there lurks several hooded youths who menacingly stand around swearing and smoking, casting intimidatory glances. Forgive them, they know not what they do. Years from now they will have refuted their ways and assimilated into British society, forming the new landed gentry of tomorrow, but until then just get home safely.
So eventually you do get home, eat your greasy feast and retire yourself to a lazy night in. “The food was well worth it” you think to yourself; “but I’ll do the washing up tomorrow”. Wakng up the next day with the stench of grease lingering in the air and an awkward stomach you swear to yourself never again, but like a bad rash you try not to itch, you always go back.
One of England’s finest takeaway establishments, source: http://www.leeds.gov.uk/images/2005/week33/b8b57234-fbc3-4cc3-
I sometimes wish England could boast some more impressive flora and fauna. Instead of our native foxes, who are often very dignified but very scraggy can we not make a swap deal with the Phillipines?
Come on, it could be like football stickers. Our fox for your tarsier monkey? Obviously it would go to a good home right in the sticker album (or captivity pen) of the British landcape. Imagine encountering this little critter on a nice brisk wildlife walk.
Clearly we don’t have the ecosystem for such a cutsey little creature to survive but just this once can’t we just accept the horrendous facts of global warming and hope that our climate comes in line with that of the tropics? If we imagine just for a second what other wonderful creatures we could provide a home for:
Doesn’t this guy remind you slightly of a certain British PM currently in power?
Wow! You are describing an experience I have regular pain with in leiu of my particular transmogrification over my teen years. First there was the provisional driving licence at the age of 16, with a army style crew cut, then there was the real drivers licence that came at a time I had particularly long hair but still used the same old picture. Then fast forward four years, I still have the same picture on the ID but a completely different facial outlook (more weighty, more pale). Even my friends find it difficult to accept that this picture on my driving licence is me and they have scrutinised my face many times over, ‘you were so ugly’ they echo, perhaps I still I am.
Never has anything dominated the lives of OAPS, housewives and students alike as much as that of television soap operas. Here in England our most popular soap operas receive a large proportion of viewing figures, transform a lot of disparate people into immobile coach potatoes and wreak havoc on our perceptions of society. The blur between reality and fiction is sometimes an all too confusing juxtaposition for certain innocents in our society. These are the people that spit and shout abuse at actors playing particular villains when they go about the everyday, the people that fail to realize that it’s all just an act.
Eastenders; set in the (obvious) East End of London along with Coronation Street (Manchester) and Emmerdale (Yorkshire) command the weekly prime time slots (between 7-9pm). Then there are those shows heavily indebted to the student armies; Hollyoaks (Cheshire) and Neighbours (Melbourne!). Neighbours aside, what these shows all give us is a particular sense of ‘Englishness’ wrapped up into thirty minute decompressions. Coronation Street takes us on a swooping tour of suburban Manchester life, full of industrialized factories, cobbled streets, terraced houses and the occasional scene of domestic violence or two. Eastenders being its racier counterpart shows all the grime of inner city life in our nation’s capital in a rather bleak or nihilistic way. Nothing good or any prolonged period of happiness really seems to befall the characters in this show, the seeming continual onslaught of calamities and life crisis seem enough to drive even the most hardened individual to the pits of utter despair.
Then there is Emmerdale which for some strange reason has a massive Finnish following. Obviously rural small village life has seeming familiarity with the Scandinavian audience, but are they well prepared enough for some of the more crazy storylines this show has had to endure in the past: plane crashes, fires, suprising demolitions? Studying the English soap opera is a fascinating way of analyzing the ways we choose to portray these parts of England; unfortunately for us reality falls away in the need to attract large viewing figures.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/03/19/eastenders987y34636.jpg : Your typical Eastend night in the local
http://www.solarnavigator.net/films_movies_actors/television/tv_images/coronation_street_rovers_return_inn.jpg: The nice cobbled streets of Greater Manchester.
http://www.crazybrits.co.uk/2007/10/26/robin-hoodlessness/
An interesting idea and I agree that we can’t move past the stern judgments of our society on those that effectively ‘steal’. But can’t we deploy the old ‘is it morally wrong to steal a loaf of bread if your starving’ argument? If those that really need it are being deprived of things that others have in surplus I think having a nice little vigilante figure setting the balance right is beneficial rather than conducive to society.
For a large number of people buying a newspaper at the weekend is almost a religious ritual. There are those out there who are affiliated with certain publications in an almost devout – deity like relationship. These are the people who can never be torn from that publication they most commonly read. They are the people who would rather spit in the face, or rather the headlines, of competing publications when faced with the dilemma of insufficient stock levels. They may even get violent and throttle the unsuspecting vulnerable news agent who assumed it was safe to flick through the day’s tabloid headlines as they perch at the cash register.
Newspapers also tell us a lot about the person. Tabloid readers are usually insensitive to broader world affairs and want the cheap thrill of reading about some banal celebrity event. The tabloid reader is easily satisfied but generally restless; they often have to supplement their reading with the odd gossip mag or two, or five, or ten. Then there are those who buy newspapers purely for the nice little extra’s that usually accompany the weekend issues. Once these people get home the main bulk of the newspaper is discarded completely and becomes yesterday’s news in the very prescience of today. The item in question’s (usually an unsuccessful album or film) worth is in some views lower than the variety of interesting and exciting articles that the publication itself provides.
Buying a newspaper for the most recent Vinnie Jones film is absolutely fine, but please consider maybe reading a few of the articles next time such whimsical decisions are entertained. You never know you might just discover something interesting about the world.
Vinnie Jones, a hollywood downfall as of late?
The new buzzword amongst British youth these days is making the rounds in varying contexts of the everyday environment. The word in question: “safe”, is commonly used to describe something that is stable, secure, structured; or any other ‘s’ related adjective that fittingly posits it in a similar frame of reference.
‘That’s safe’, ‘He’s safe’, ‘It’s going to be safe’ can all be encountered in any confrontation with today’s youth culture. The terms use itself does fittingly have the same connotations. To say one is ‘safe’ is to say they are a cool creature, not likely to be irritating or unruly. In this way the words usage is much the same in similarity to its traditional use: ‘it’s locked in a safe place’. Again, to say: ‘it’s going to be safe’, is supposed to appear a tempting prospect to those it concerns who may feel the topic in question is going to be boring or a waste of time. Those who should amply respond: “No way man, that’s going to be well unsafe”.
New speakers to the language may be particularly confused when encountering the term in this new colloquial realm. People are not referring to safe houses, or safety first, or safety in numbers, it is rather simply that they are using it is an alternative to the tired adjective ‘cool’. Finally after sharing this knowledge I urge all my readers out there to be safe, not from sexual predators, not from drugs, not from sexual diseases, but rather to just be safe, be cool, be relaxed. Be Safe!
Plain lazy, opinionated, messy, unhygienic, loud, troublesome, unreliable – (to name just some of the adjectives commonly in discourse with them). Is the english student really deserving of such a bad rap?
Let’s turn to my own experiences. It is true I have heard some real horror stories, students tearing down furniture, walls, or even each other from houses they are commonly letting. Does this mean that the average British landlord has every right to rip us off? Many sight their concerns over the violent seething underbelly that they assume exists in most students, commonly housing the idea that all students are destructive types intent on causing injury to their property. Maybe in some areas of the country such attitudes can be justly validated, but why in areas where students have a proven record of being conscientous, mindful people must they continue to be oppressed by their landlord and letting agent?
The world can take note that the modern student is feeling the oppressive effects of corporate business and private landowners. We are tired of being stereotyped as apathetic and uncaring. The truth is most of us recognise the stresses and strains of owning property, we work hard to keep that property over our heads and we ensure that good care is taken in order to reflect positively on oursleves. England must look after it’s students more carefully and show us some more sympathy. We are helping to build this country and to take it further into the twenty first century, we do not need our elder community’s to foster such resentments toward us.
Source : http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/assets/messy_desk_contest_winner.jpg
In no way do student’s rooms look like they’ve been worked in as much as this.
In the early part of this century a particular television show aired by the BBC went hugely global. This show depended largely on the comedy behind its realism, which was that of a setting in the office of a paper company located in England. The shows leading actors became global successes and can now be found permeating into the highest roles available in the movie industry. To the foreign audience it was surprisingly successful despite its boundaries; such as a heavy reliance on irony and satire that a lot of audiences sometimes fail to make sense of. To us at home, it became an achingly real counterpart to the many people within this country that work in the environment of an office.
The English office is a feral beast, one that I have recently just come to know. Inside it lurks a wealth and variety of strange and wonderful creatures. There is the office geek, completely unable to say anything of any interest. There is the office psycho, who looks as if they have broken free from the shackles of a straight jacket and spends the remainder of their days twitching nervously and growling. There is the office predator, the leering male who offers to complete the work of any female coworker and constantly hovers and flits in between each one. There is the office wide boy, who thinks he’s everyone’s best friend and constantly boasts of his own productivity. There is the office grafter, constantly stressed and moaning, who takes their work home and agonizes over every last detail. Then there are the ambivalent ones, the unhygienic ones, the comedians and those that are always sick. Almost always accompanying this host of wild characters is a strangely eerie managerial type who one often wonders how it came to be that they ever showed promise for such seniority.
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