Totalitarianism is a political system where the state has complete control over everyone and everything. The government has limitless power through total control of both the public and the private sector. Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are both examples of totalitarian governments, so this gives us a clue as to what they often involve; genocide. A totalitarian government cannot begin overnight however, the public are cleverly manipulated into allowing it to gradually begin. This can be seen in George Orwell's 1984, where Winston Smith, completely drawn into the government propaganda accepts that 2+2=5.
How to start a totalitarian government (For Dummies)
1. Remove Individuality: Start chipping away at peoples individuality, maybe introduce a swanky new compulsory dress code to make sure that everybody looks the same, we are all one!
2. Break up groups: Social groups, religious groups, academic groups, BAN THEM ALL. Ensure that people are mingling with strangers, people that they don't care about, after all, we are all one!
3. Create Isolation: Remove contact from each other and from the rest of the world, we don't care about them. People can't rise against us on their own.
4. Control the media: Take over the media, people will read the news that we want them to. The history books are full of lies as well, erase them, we can start fresh. We can't have those pesky teachers lying as well, better get rid of them and employ some government trained staff.
5. Create fear: This can be achieved by creating a common enemy, but not being too specific about it. Let's choose the short people, what have they ever done for us? Everybody hates them anyway, don't you? Anybody that looks short, or is reported for being short, or thinks they might be short, or has short parents can be executed. Get those trouble makers out of the way. Our increased police presence, many of whom are secret, should make sure that nobody speaks bad of us, or thinks bad of us, or looks like they might be thinking badly of us.
Sorted, now we have a country ready for our totalitarian government. People are scared of being executed, so they do as they are told. This includes executing our enemies, as they don't want to become enemies themselves. Be sure to stay inconsistent, with random executions from time to time, just to keep people on their toes!
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a German Jewish political theorist, who focused many of her writings on the idea of power, her most famous book, The origins of Totalitarianism explores Naziism and Stalinism and how they were allowed to exist. She comes to the conclusion that the Holocaust had nothing to do with eradicating Jews, but was simply about absolute power and consitency in that power. She reported for The New Yorker on the Trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key organisers of the holocaust. Whilst describing this trial she coined the phrase, 'the banality of evil.' This describes the way in which evil is often simply a result of thoughtlessness. She concluded that Eichmann's only crime, was not thinking about his actions and the consequences that they would have, and simply following orders. In the trial, Eichmann declared that he had always tried to follow Kant's categorical imperative, he saw Hitler as the moral legislator of his actions, when inn actual fact, A. Arendt refutes this, stating that he had taken the wrong lesson from Kant's work and that he should have been following his moral self as a legislator, and he had also failed to follow 'the golden rule'. She claims that he consoled himself by believing that he was no longer the 'master of his own deeds'.
Wednesday 14 December 2011
Sigmund Freud
Last night I made a Freudian slip, I was having dinner with my girlfriend and instead of asking her to pass the butter, I said "You've ruined my life you evil whore!"
Only joking. I don't have a girlfriend.
ANYHOW, Sigmund Freud was a late 19th -20th century neurologist/psychologist/scientist/philosopher, who invented psychoanalysis. He is the most famous name in modern psychological thinking and has had a huge influence in the worlds of philosophy and science.
Freud removed the enlightenment idea of humans being naturally good or naturally bad, he believed that peoples personalities were influenced by 3 important parts; the id, the ego and the super ego. His idea of a human at birth was not completely dissimilar to that of Hobbes, he believed humans were naturally nasty, and fuelled by sex and violence, only seeking their own pleasure. This is the id side of a human personality.
Freud claimed that the id is the most dominant of the three characteristics, this is the natural, subconscious human instinct part of the mind, aiming towards instant self-gratification, an untrained bundle of animalistic instincts. The id doesn't care for morality, or good and evil, it can be seen clearly in a new born baby, crying simply for its own needs and desires.
The id is in constant battle with the ego, which is the second part of the human personality, and unfortunately, the weakest. It is our reason, our principle of reality, it tries to keep control of the id and super ego, but seems to have little luck.
The super-ego is the third part of the human personality and is the only part which is not present at birth, it is something that we develop as we grow through parenting restraints, social norms and religion taught morals. It is our conscience, or the angel on our shoulder battling against the id. The only problem with the angel, is that it has ridiculously high expectations. It wants perfection, and is responsible for the guilt felt when perfection is not achieved.
To make this easier to visualise, let's get Plato involved!
Plato's analogy of a chariot imagines reason (the ego) as a chariot driver, there are two horses pulling the chariot, one is tame and noble (can horses be noble?) And the other is a bit mental. These represent the super-ego and the id. The chariot is hard to steer as both horses want to go in different direction, but in Plato's analogy, the driver would keep control of the two horses. If Freud was to rewrite the analogy, the driver would be dragged along against his will, trying his best to keep a slight bit of control.
Freud had an obsession for sex that some might describe as unhealthy, when conducting his psychoanalysis he came to the conclusion that what was causing many people's neurosis was repressed sexual desire coming to light due to a setback in one of the three key stages in a child's sexual development.
Oral stage 0-1 year: Everything is orally focused, pleasure comes from the mouth, this stems from breast feeding and is why children are constantly trying to put things in their mouths at a young age.
Anal stage 1-3 years - Pleasure comes from the anus, going to the toilet is a thrill! Toilet training can make this a difficult time for a child, and if there is any struggle with toilet training, the child can become anally retentive, meaning that they may suffer from OCDs at an older age.
Phallic stage 3-6 years - This is where Freud becomes a bit strange. Boys begin to focus on their genitals, and decide that they want to have sex with their mum and kill their dad through jealousy. Fortunately at this stage, the wimpy little ego does it's bit and reasons with your sexually aggressive (and confused) id, that your father is stronger than you, he may castrate you and this whole thing might be a bit weird anyway.
Throughout the next few years, a child begins to develop what he has learnt throughout this time, before he eventually hits the latency stage when his own sexuality becomes important, followed by puberty (or the genitals stage) where adult relationships can be focused on.
So, that's what Freud did, in a nutshell. Although he would refer to himself as a scientist, other scientists would reject this. There is little empirical evidence for anything that he says, it is often vague and cannot realistically (or humanely) be tested, but his work for psychology and philosophy of mind cannot be disregarded. He is often scrutinised and criticised and praised, but it seems unlikely that he will ever stop being discussed.
Only joking. I don't have a girlfriend.
ANYHOW, Sigmund Freud was a late 19th -20th century neurologist/psychologist/scientist/philosopher, who invented psychoanalysis. He is the most famous name in modern psychological thinking and has had a huge influence in the worlds of philosophy and science.
Freud removed the enlightenment idea of humans being naturally good or naturally bad, he believed that peoples personalities were influenced by 3 important parts; the id, the ego and the super ego. His idea of a human at birth was not completely dissimilar to that of Hobbes, he believed humans were naturally nasty, and fuelled by sex and violence, only seeking their own pleasure. This is the id side of a human personality.
Freud claimed that the id is the most dominant of the three characteristics, this is the natural, subconscious human instinct part of the mind, aiming towards instant self-gratification, an untrained bundle of animalistic instincts. The id doesn't care for morality, or good and evil, it can be seen clearly in a new born baby, crying simply for its own needs and desires.
The id is in constant battle with the ego, which is the second part of the human personality, and unfortunately, the weakest. It is our reason, our principle of reality, it tries to keep control of the id and super ego, but seems to have little luck.
The super-ego is the third part of the human personality and is the only part which is not present at birth, it is something that we develop as we grow through parenting restraints, social norms and religion taught morals. It is our conscience, or the angel on our shoulder battling against the id. The only problem with the angel, is that it has ridiculously high expectations. It wants perfection, and is responsible for the guilt felt when perfection is not achieved.
To make this easier to visualise, let's get Plato involved!
Plato's analogy of a chariot imagines reason (the ego) as a chariot driver, there are two horses pulling the chariot, one is tame and noble (can horses be noble?) And the other is a bit mental. These represent the super-ego and the id. The chariot is hard to steer as both horses want to go in different direction, but in Plato's analogy, the driver would keep control of the two horses. If Freud was to rewrite the analogy, the driver would be dragged along against his will, trying his best to keep a slight bit of control.
Freud had an obsession for sex that some might describe as unhealthy, when conducting his psychoanalysis he came to the conclusion that what was causing many people's neurosis was repressed sexual desire coming to light due to a setback in one of the three key stages in a child's sexual development.
Oral stage 0-1 year: Everything is orally focused, pleasure comes from the mouth, this stems from breast feeding and is why children are constantly trying to put things in their mouths at a young age.
Anal stage 1-3 years - Pleasure comes from the anus, going to the toilet is a thrill! Toilet training can make this a difficult time for a child, and if there is any struggle with toilet training, the child can become anally retentive, meaning that they may suffer from OCDs at an older age.
Phallic stage 3-6 years - This is where Freud becomes a bit strange. Boys begin to focus on their genitals, and decide that they want to have sex with their mum and kill their dad through jealousy. Fortunately at this stage, the wimpy little ego does it's bit and reasons with your sexually aggressive (and confused) id, that your father is stronger than you, he may castrate you and this whole thing might be a bit weird anyway.
Throughout the next few years, a child begins to develop what he has learnt throughout this time, before he eventually hits the latency stage when his own sexuality becomes important, followed by puberty (or the genitals stage) where adult relationships can be focused on.
So, that's what Freud did, in a nutshell. Although he would refer to himself as a scientist, other scientists would reject this. There is little empirical evidence for anything that he says, it is often vague and cannot realistically (or humanely) be tested, but his work for psychology and philosophy of mind cannot be disregarded. He is often scrutinised and criticised and praised, but it seems unlikely that he will ever stop being discussed.
Existentialism Notes
What is existentialism?
· Apparently, a very difficult term to define, Wikipedia define it as "a term applied to 19th and 20th century philosophers who shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject." So a kind of human philosophy.
Here are some characteristics that existentialist thinkers are believed to share:
· An obsession with how to live one’s life, and the belief that philosophical and psychological thinking can help
· Lack of attention to social questions e.g, politics and the state.
· But a lot of attention on the questions that people should focus on in their lives, these include, what happens after death, what is the meaning of life, Relationships with god. You know, all of the really difficult questions that no one can ever answer.
· The belief that life doesn’t have any pre-determined value or meaning, but that the individual has to create this for themselves through their own experiences of life by living life, not by asking
questions.
· Existential choices and values are primarily demonstrated in acts, rather than words.
· Focused on everyday struggles in individual existence, existentialists often use literary references, rather than abstract philosophical thinking to show these everyday struggles.
· The idea of Human free will tends to be seen as obvious in existentialist writing.
HUMANS ARE NOT LIKE CHAIRS. CHAIRS ARE PURPOSE BUILT FOR SITTING ON. HUMANS ARE NOT PURPOSE BUILT FOR SITTING ON, HUMANS ARE NOT PURPOSE
BUILT FOR ANYTHING!
Human Knowledge is fallible and limited.
Jean Paul Sartre isinto ACTING, he reckons that everyone’s individual acts change something in the world.
The ripples of actions are like ripples on the sea, they go on and on and on.
For example: I publish these notes on my blog.
People read them and gain a false understanding of existentialism.
Existentialism slowly gets badly interpreted throughout the world etc. etc.
OR
I don’t publish these notes.
Somebody has to take time in studying existentialism properly
This helps to spread a more informed interpretation of existentialism etc. etc.
BOB’S YOUR UNCLE
Every act opens a Pandora’s Box, once you’ve done it, there is no undoing it. Unless you’ve done it on a computer, then you can just click undo. BUT CAN YOU UNDO THAT?
Sartre sees all of that ^^ as an ontological fact, a description of life.
Sartre was famously imprisoned by the Nazis, and remarked "I have never felt so free" He was a prisoner and nothing more, he did not have to worry about the affect that this would have on the world. He saw writing as the act of human freedom. He categoirised the world into three:
1.Things that exist for themselves
2. Human beings who exist for themselves
3. Human beings that exist for others. e.g slaves. He saw these people as, 'in bad faith'.
SO
SO
Existentialists believe that life for humans is potentially TERRIFYING because:
1. Everything that we do is so uncertain and unplanned
2. Everything we do has such a huge impact on the world.
Basically every act, so everything ever (except a thought) is a massive responsibility. A burden.
Acts are not trivial; your acts define you as a human being.
Put in the shortest form: "Living without certainty and with personal responsibility is a nearly unbearable burden." (Bob Corbett)
German philosopher Martin Heidegger focused on the structures of being and existence. He believed that life was all about making your own decisions. He claimed that life for a social being was inauthentic, as their decisions could easily be shaped by others. He believed that a person's past was full of guilt and regret, a persons present was full of fear and dread for the future and that the future remained unknown. He believed that we should live for the moment, stop feeling guilty about the past, and remain indifferent about the future, so that it wouldn't cloyud or present decisions. He believed that we should stop wasting time thinking about life and just live it.
Sunday 11 December 2011
WINOL: Critical Reflection. Term 1
WINOL Critical reflection: Term 1
For Winchester News Online this term I was given the role of Sports reporter, and, more specifically, Correspondent for Winchester City FC. throughout this term however, I have worked at Winchester City FC, Basingstoke Town FC, Eastleigh FC, AFC Totton, Basingstoke Bison ice hockey and Winchester Knights basketball, as well as producing a feature from Winchester Boxing Club, and producing news stories on funding for a wheelchair athletics club, and on Winchester's sports stadium being used as an Olympic training ground. It's fair to say that my role this year turned out to be as an all-round Sports correspondent, and this is something that I enjoyed, I feel experiencing different environments and atmospheres massively aided my development in producing packages for WINOL Sportsweek.
In week 1, I filmed Winchester city, as they beat Blackfield and Langley 6-0. Even with my Sports editor with me to help out, I struggled. My white-balance was poor, making the pitch look slightly blue at times. The bright, sunny day didn't help my poor understanding of camera lighting settings, but this is no excuse, it was something that I would have to work on. I also struggled to keep up with the match, particularly when zooming in, I found myself filming with the camera completely zoomed out for large parts of the match, which led to my final footage looking as though it had been filmed from far away, without a second camera to get close up to the action, this never makes for good enough footage. After filming I had to edit my raw footage down in to a 2 minute package, rediscovering Final Cut Pro was my biggest hurdle of week one, and even after editing my piece down with some help, I still didn't feel completely comfortable with this software.
In week 1, I was also asked to present the sports news in the main bulletin. I think that my part in this went reasonably well for my first time presenting, but the bulletin as a whole went out 15 minutes late, due to a lack of preparation from the team something that we all accepted could not happen again. I was told that my presenting was generally good, but Angus told me that it would have been worth pre-planning the handover between the main presenter and the sports presenter, the handover that we used was a very simple "thanks!", whereas some more colloquial chat wouldn't have gone amiss. This was the only chance I got to present, I would have liked the chance to present Sportsweek while I was part of the sports team, but hopefully this is something that I will get the chance to do in the second term.
Week 2 got off to a pretty terrible start, involving me missing a coach back from London, meaning that I would miss the Winchester City game that I was scheduled to film, fortunately another member of the sports team was available to take over from me. I therefore had to find a sports news story and have it ready in time for Wednesday. I found a story about Winchester sports stadium being lined up as a potential training ground for an Olympic team, I arranged an interview with Alex Trumble from the University and got some good, experimental shots of the stadium, our guest editor that week, Rachael Canter of BBC south enjoyed the piece and told me that this is the sort of news that would make it in to one of their bulletins, which is obviously the standard that I am aiming for, the problem that I saw with the story, was that despite the sports stadium being proposed as a potential training ground for Olympic athletes, it had so far recieved very little interest from any Olympic teams looking for somewhere to train. My main lesson learnt this week was to make sure that mistakes like missing coaches are not acceptable, and I was lucky to have somebody available to take over from me.
The following week gave me my most experimental piece from the first term as a sports reporter. We had been looking for some new sports to film, as we were concerned that Sportsweek was a little bit football heavy, so I made contact with Winchester boxing club, and went along to a training session on a Monday night. Before I went, I received instructions to get involved, and make the package a hands-on feature. When we arrived, the boxing club was little more than a shed, meaning that space was limited. I also didn't feel particularly welcome in the club, and this is where I needed more confidence to ask for interviews and not be afraid of getting in the way. I got some reasonably good shots of the training taking place, and eventually asked if I could get in the ring, and have a sparring session with one of the boxers. he punched me a lot, and it hurt, but it made for great footage (although wearing a helmet may have been a good idea). I was also completely unable to keep my guard up, which probably added to the entertainment value of the feature. As I was finishing with a piece to camera, with a boxer on a punch bag in the background, he punched me in the back of the head, which really added to the light hearted, fun, gonzo journalism aspect of the feature. This could easily have been a fantastic package for WINOL, but I let myself down with sound problems. The gun microphone was not close enough to me, and in a building with poor acoustics, my piece to camera at the start sounded terrible, the framing of the shot was also not as good as it should have been. The piece was spiked from the main bulletin, but still made it into Sportsweek. I was advised to completely redo the piece, but I feel much of it couldn't have been recreated in the same way again, particularly not the punch at the end. The style of the piece however, is something that I intend to do again sometime. Brian pointed me in the direction of Mike Bushell's journalism for the BBC, as he often gets involved in a strange sport or activity; this is the sort of thing that I would like to emulate for WINOL when I get another opportunity.
The feature can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DV1nhYWIjg
Mike Bushell takes the "Ziptrek Plunge":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5huPOhAMK0
From this point on I was primarily filming football, and my camera skills improved weekly, particularly when filming with a HD shooting kit, I felt as though my packages were reaching the standards that were expected of them, on some occasions I helped colleagues by filming behind a goal with a second camera and this gave me good scope to experiment with different shots. My voiceovers were still a weakness, as I often left gaps and felt that my voice sounded too downbeat and at times sombre about something that I should have sounded enthusiastic about. My final package was filming the Basingstoke Bison ice hockey game, and this was something that really tested my filming ability as the game is so fast moving and action packed. My voiceover on this was better, and I feel I produced an overall good package. It was good enough to be used on the website of the Shropshire Star newspaper, which is a good industry standard level to be working at, particularly for my first term of filming sports. The sports team as a whole have all worked so hard, and made sport an important part of WINOL. We have formed good relationships with the clubs that we work with, they are happy that we are filming their games as it is the only chance that they get to watch their own performances. It feels like we are providing a service to people, and as journalists, that should always be our goal.
http://www.shropshirestar.com/sport/2011/12/12/highlights-basingstoke-bison-v-telford-tigers/
In an attempt to recreate the success of last year’s third years, we decided to broadcast live coverage of the November 30 public service strikes around the country. This was always going to be an ambitious project but it was one that we felt capable of achieving. The presenting took place in a union building in Southampton, and we had correspondents following the action in Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and London, as well as reporters from John Moores University in Liverpool. I was based in Basingstoke with Lee, a member of the news team and two first years who were acting as runners. I also had the task before the day, to pre-record a package on the police, and what their tactics would be if things got out of hand. Unfortunately, no one from the police was willing to speak to me and I had to make do with a statement. I paraphrased the statement in a piece to camera standing in front of the Hampshire police headquarters. For a first proper piece to camera I thought it was okay, I even got moved on by the police which means I must have been doing something right. The main problem was the lack of content in the piece, due to nobody being willing to speak to me.
The day of strikes was an overall success, and as far as we are aware, it was the most watched student broadcast ever, which is obviously something quite special. We had a few problems with microphones and cameras, but that was out of our control, everybody worked hard to make it work as well as it did. The main downfall of the day, was the lack of action, I think that to an extent we were expecting a repeat of the student demonstrations earlier in the year, which would have made for better footage, the protests were all relatively peaceful and well policed.
In terms of WINOL and WINOL Sportsweek as a whole, I think it has been a good term, in that we have all improved so much from week one, but they are still far from perfect, every week there is something that can be criticised, and it would be great if we could come as close to industry standard as is possible with the resources we have at our disposal. There are occasional black holes in packages, sometimes shots are still badly framed and the sound levels are often inconsistent throughout the programme. The present stories that people are been getting however are of the highest that I have ever seen from a student news programme. We beat all of our competitors and this is reflected in our consistently high viewing figures. On the main WINOL website, sport is trailing behind news in viewing figures, but sports has a whole different audience on Youtube, Sportsweek often reaching over 1000 views, on top of those who watch sport in the news bulletin, and those who click the sports tab on the website. We have a real audience of people interested in local sports.
As well as WINOL, I have also been a member of the radio society this year, and throughout December, Sound Radio was granted a temporary RSL licence. I was asked if the weekly show that I presented with a friend could take place on a daily basis whilst we were broadcasting on 87.7FM and I felt like this was an opportunity that would be silly to decline. The show that we presented was previously a show promoting new and 'under the radar' music. Being on FM during the day, we had to change our show to a wider audience, we were now on community radio as opposed to student radio meaning primarily playing pop music, this was tough at first, because our main discussion point previously was the music that we were playing. Instead, we bought a newspaper daily, and discussed amusing news stories, this generally worked quite well, but doing a 2 hour show five days a week, we sometimes lacked things to talk about, due to a lack of outside content. I feel as though my style on the radio is quite good, I'm quite relaxed, and able to think quickly in difficult situations. We were following OFCOM regulations at all times which meant we had to be careful about what was said at all times, thankfully we avoided breaking any of the regulations. A high point of the show was arranging an interview with singer-songwriter Dave Giles, who is set to be performing in Winchester in February. The interview sounded professional and It was a good, relevant feature for community radio.
For Winchester News Online this term I was given the role of Sports reporter, and, more specifically, Correspondent for Winchester City FC. throughout this term however, I have worked at Winchester City FC, Basingstoke Town FC, Eastleigh FC, AFC Totton, Basingstoke Bison ice hockey and Winchester Knights basketball, as well as producing a feature from Winchester Boxing Club, and producing news stories on funding for a wheelchair athletics club, and on Winchester's sports stadium being used as an Olympic training ground. It's fair to say that my role this year turned out to be as an all-round Sports correspondent, and this is something that I enjoyed, I feel experiencing different environments and atmospheres massively aided my development in producing packages for WINOL Sportsweek.
In week 1, I filmed Winchester city, as they beat Blackfield and Langley 6-0. Even with my Sports editor with me to help out, I struggled. My white-balance was poor, making the pitch look slightly blue at times. The bright, sunny day didn't help my poor understanding of camera lighting settings, but this is no excuse, it was something that I would have to work on. I also struggled to keep up with the match, particularly when zooming in, I found myself filming with the camera completely zoomed out for large parts of the match, which led to my final footage looking as though it had been filmed from far away, without a second camera to get close up to the action, this never makes for good enough footage. After filming I had to edit my raw footage down in to a 2 minute package, rediscovering Final Cut Pro was my biggest hurdle of week one, and even after editing my piece down with some help, I still didn't feel completely comfortable with this software.
In week 1, I was also asked to present the sports news in the main bulletin. I think that my part in this went reasonably well for my first time presenting, but the bulletin as a whole went out 15 minutes late, due to a lack of preparation from the team something that we all accepted could not happen again. I was told that my presenting was generally good, but Angus told me that it would have been worth pre-planning the handover between the main presenter and the sports presenter, the handover that we used was a very simple "thanks!", whereas some more colloquial chat wouldn't have gone amiss. This was the only chance I got to present, I would have liked the chance to present Sportsweek while I was part of the sports team, but hopefully this is something that I will get the chance to do in the second term.
Week 2 got off to a pretty terrible start, involving me missing a coach back from London, meaning that I would miss the Winchester City game that I was scheduled to film, fortunately another member of the sports team was available to take over from me. I therefore had to find a sports news story and have it ready in time for Wednesday. I found a story about Winchester sports stadium being lined up as a potential training ground for an Olympic team, I arranged an interview with Alex Trumble from the University and got some good, experimental shots of the stadium, our guest editor that week, Rachael Canter of BBC south enjoyed the piece and told me that this is the sort of news that would make it in to one of their bulletins, which is obviously the standard that I am aiming for, the problem that I saw with the story, was that despite the sports stadium being proposed as a potential training ground for Olympic athletes, it had so far recieved very little interest from any Olympic teams looking for somewhere to train. My main lesson learnt this week was to make sure that mistakes like missing coaches are not acceptable, and I was lucky to have somebody available to take over from me.
The following week gave me my most experimental piece from the first term as a sports reporter. We had been looking for some new sports to film, as we were concerned that Sportsweek was a little bit football heavy, so I made contact with Winchester boxing club, and went along to a training session on a Monday night. Before I went, I received instructions to get involved, and make the package a hands-on feature. When we arrived, the boxing club was little more than a shed, meaning that space was limited. I also didn't feel particularly welcome in the club, and this is where I needed more confidence to ask for interviews and not be afraid of getting in the way. I got some reasonably good shots of the training taking place, and eventually asked if I could get in the ring, and have a sparring session with one of the boxers. he punched me a lot, and it hurt, but it made for great footage (although wearing a helmet may have been a good idea). I was also completely unable to keep my guard up, which probably added to the entertainment value of the feature. As I was finishing with a piece to camera, with a boxer on a punch bag in the background, he punched me in the back of the head, which really added to the light hearted, fun, gonzo journalism aspect of the feature. This could easily have been a fantastic package for WINOL, but I let myself down with sound problems. The gun microphone was not close enough to me, and in a building with poor acoustics, my piece to camera at the start sounded terrible, the framing of the shot was also not as good as it should have been. The piece was spiked from the main bulletin, but still made it into Sportsweek. I was advised to completely redo the piece, but I feel much of it couldn't have been recreated in the same way again, particularly not the punch at the end. The style of the piece however, is something that I intend to do again sometime. Brian pointed me in the direction of Mike Bushell's journalism for the BBC, as he often gets involved in a strange sport or activity; this is the sort of thing that I would like to emulate for WINOL when I get another opportunity.
The feature can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DV1nhYWIjg
Mike Bushell takes the "Ziptrek Plunge":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5huPOhAMK0
From this point on I was primarily filming football, and my camera skills improved weekly, particularly when filming with a HD shooting kit, I felt as though my packages were reaching the standards that were expected of them, on some occasions I helped colleagues by filming behind a goal with a second camera and this gave me good scope to experiment with different shots. My voiceovers were still a weakness, as I often left gaps and felt that my voice sounded too downbeat and at times sombre about something that I should have sounded enthusiastic about. My final package was filming the Basingstoke Bison ice hockey game, and this was something that really tested my filming ability as the game is so fast moving and action packed. My voiceover on this was better, and I feel I produced an overall good package. It was good enough to be used on the website of the Shropshire Star newspaper, which is a good industry standard level to be working at, particularly for my first term of filming sports. The sports team as a whole have all worked so hard, and made sport an important part of WINOL. We have formed good relationships with the clubs that we work with, they are happy that we are filming their games as it is the only chance that they get to watch their own performances. It feels like we are providing a service to people, and as journalists, that should always be our goal.
http://www.shropshirestar.com/sport/2011/12/12/highlights-basingstoke-bison-v-telford-tigers/
In an attempt to recreate the success of last year’s third years, we decided to broadcast live coverage of the November 30 public service strikes around the country. This was always going to be an ambitious project but it was one that we felt capable of achieving. The presenting took place in a union building in Southampton, and we had correspondents following the action in Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and London, as well as reporters from John Moores University in Liverpool. I was based in Basingstoke with Lee, a member of the news team and two first years who were acting as runners. I also had the task before the day, to pre-record a package on the police, and what their tactics would be if things got out of hand. Unfortunately, no one from the police was willing to speak to me and I had to make do with a statement. I paraphrased the statement in a piece to camera standing in front of the Hampshire police headquarters. For a first proper piece to camera I thought it was okay, I even got moved on by the police which means I must have been doing something right. The main problem was the lack of content in the piece, due to nobody being willing to speak to me.
The day of strikes was an overall success, and as far as we are aware, it was the most watched student broadcast ever, which is obviously something quite special. We had a few problems with microphones and cameras, but that was out of our control, everybody worked hard to make it work as well as it did. The main downfall of the day, was the lack of action, I think that to an extent we were expecting a repeat of the student demonstrations earlier in the year, which would have made for better footage, the protests were all relatively peaceful and well policed.
In terms of WINOL and WINOL Sportsweek as a whole, I think it has been a good term, in that we have all improved so much from week one, but they are still far from perfect, every week there is something that can be criticised, and it would be great if we could come as close to industry standard as is possible with the resources we have at our disposal. There are occasional black holes in packages, sometimes shots are still badly framed and the sound levels are often inconsistent throughout the programme. The present stories that people are been getting however are of the highest that I have ever seen from a student news programme. We beat all of our competitors and this is reflected in our consistently high viewing figures. On the main WINOL website, sport is trailing behind news in viewing figures, but sports has a whole different audience on Youtube, Sportsweek often reaching over 1000 views, on top of those who watch sport in the news bulletin, and those who click the sports tab on the website. We have a real audience of people interested in local sports.
As well as WINOL, I have also been a member of the radio society this year, and throughout December, Sound Radio was granted a temporary RSL licence. I was asked if the weekly show that I presented with a friend could take place on a daily basis whilst we were broadcasting on 87.7FM and I felt like this was an opportunity that would be silly to decline. The show that we presented was previously a show promoting new and 'under the radar' music. Being on FM during the day, we had to change our show to a wider audience, we were now on community radio as opposed to student radio meaning primarily playing pop music, this was tough at first, because our main discussion point previously was the music that we were playing. Instead, we bought a newspaper daily, and discussed amusing news stories, this generally worked quite well, but doing a 2 hour show five days a week, we sometimes lacked things to talk about, due to a lack of outside content. I feel as though my style on the radio is quite good, I'm quite relaxed, and able to think quickly in difficult situations. We were following OFCOM regulations at all times which meant we had to be careful about what was said at all times, thankfully we avoided breaking any of the regulations. A high point of the show was arranging an interview with singer-songwriter Dave Giles, who is set to be performing in Winchester in February. The interview sounded professional and It was a good, relevant feature for community radio.
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was a British economist best known for his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which was published in 1936, a time of mass global unemployment and depression. People were beginning to come to the conclusion that capitalism had failed and that the only way to restore economic normality would be to nationalise means of production. Many were even considering other systems, socialism was rising and the idea of communism may have been coming across as a glamorous alternative to capitalism.
The general Theory argues against the classical economic theory that without government interference, the market would naturally establish full employment equilibrium, meaning that supply would create its own demand and employment levels would indicate this. He suggests that liberalism is not the answer. It was widely argued by classic economists that in times of high unemployment, workers should be willing to lower their wages in order to allow businesses to continue to be profitable. Keynes was realistic about the fact that in reality, people are usually unwilling to do this; he describes this notion as naive. He believed that wages regulate demand. Money needs to be injected by the state, wages can be raised which would raise demand for jobs and therefore increase production. Lowering wages would mean people would have less money to consume, meaning production would slow down, causing more unemployment. This would continue in a circle, ruining the economy. He also refutes Say’s law, the idea that if a product is good, supply will automatically create demand.
Keynes argues in the general theory that demand is what is important in governing economic activity. In a state of unemployment, the only way to increase employment and productivity is for the government to increase expenditure, either for consumption, or investment. He wrote in 1928 ""Let us be up and doing, using our idle resources to increase our wealth, With men and plans unemployed, it is ridiculous to say that we cannot afford these new developments. It is precisely with these plants and these men that we shall afford them". He saw that financial failures often had narrow and technical causes, and argued the solution could also be narrow and technical.
Paul Krugman (Nobel prize winner!) sums up the conclusions reached in 'The General Theory' with four bullet points.
- Economies can and often do suffer from an overall lack of demand, which leads to involuntary unemployment
- The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and painfully
- Government policies to increase demand, by contrast, can reduce unemployment quickly
4 . Sometimes increasing the money supply won’t be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, and government spending must step into the breach
It should be noted that Keynes was not in favour of complete governmental control of the entire economy, he thought that less intrusive policy would still ensure adequate demand, which would therefore allow the market to flourish successfully.
There have been a number of criticisms made at Keynes, one key criticism being that he mistook an episode for a trend. He believed that the situation in the 1930s would be the norm going forward, in reality, interest rates have never been as low since (despite a sharp drop in recent years).
Krugman states that When Keynes first proposed these ideas, they were unthinkable. He believes that one of the great achievements of The General Theory is that it proposed the ideas so well as to make them thinkable. Another blatant success is that many of Keynes' ideas now seem obvious, where they were once seen as radical, even scary, innovations. His ideas were even described as ‘evil’ by William Buckley.
One possible reason for the success of The General Theory is that Keynes chose to limit down the scope of his writing, he chose not to speculate upon the reasons that the economy found its way into depression in the first place, simply on how more employment could be created in order to get out of it. It is a static model rather than a dynamic model. Keynes wanted to allow us to discard the idea that every boom must be followed by a bust. Krugman states that in reality, most people nowadays, perhaps without realising it, are in fact Keynesian. If a politician promises to create employment through lowering taxes, giving the public more money to spend, this is a Keynesian philosophy, similarly the idea that the recent global economic crisis was caused by a loss of confidence between banks and businesses, this too is a Keynesian idea. As a piece of economic theory, Krugman rates it as highly as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, in that it changes the way in which we look at the world.
It has been argued that many of Keynes' ideas have been watered down by sympathisers keen to find compromise with classical economists, a year after the book was published, Keynes suffered a heart attack and had to spend most of his time resting, He did begin to recover in 1939, by which point most of his efforts were focused on a financial system helping Britain to afford World War 2. He died in 1946.
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