Rap = Violence...Please!

We’ve all heard the argument before; rap music is evil, it’s turning the black young inner city youth into animals, they all want to kill each other and aim to imitate what they hear from rap music. Really, are the youth that stupid?

I think not.

For one, commercial rap music is increasingly bought by white, middle-class youth and secondly, most of the youth do not even listen to the type of music these critics blame for the violence.

Yes kids are easily influenced from an early age, they do imitate what they see, hear etc but the youth are also conscious beings who know exactly what they are doing when they are doing it. Why would they hide from the police if they didn’t know they were committing a crime? Let the youth take most if not all of the responsibility for their actions instead of placing the blame on someone or something else who more than likely, has nothing to do with the youths. The things that sway our views and attitudes to life rely mainly on the people WE interact with on a daily basis and/or the situations we put ourselves in and our responses to these situations. I listen to rap music, I live in a notorious area in south London yet I do not feel the need to pull a gun on anyone, I do not sell drugs nor do I take them. OK, OK, you can say it’s because I’m a woman so I’m less likely too but believe it or not, more women are increasingly turning to gang violence (don’t mess with us, seriously).

By the age of 16 or even as young as 12 you should know right from wrong. Of course we hear the odd news about an 8 year old murdering his or her brother because s/he was ‘imitating Chucky’, however I would blame the guardian for allowing someone so young to watch such a film in the first place. In saying that though, I can understand that it is not always easy to monitor your child 24/7. I remember watching ‘Chucky’, it really did nothing for me and certainly didn’t encourage me to commit an act of violence.

I believe the drive for violence comes from other factors such as the child’s parents or who they choose to hang out with as much as the child’s own mind. I admit, parents only have a limited amount of control over their kids, especially in the adolescent stage. This is because kids around the age of 16 want to go out and be with their friends and while they are at school, parents are not around or they cant be around because they’re working, all this limits control levels. However, I also believe that it is up to the parents to attempt to know what type of friends their kids are hanging with and then to take appropriate action as my parents did/do with us. It’s hard but possible. Blaming outside influences such as the government, teachers, rap music, violent TV is not the solution. Who else can I blame for my actions but myself? Rarely do any of these mediums actually tell any of these kids to commit a particular crime.

Money is the root of most of these industries. They will continue to sport violence on TV/cinema because it’s what we want to see and what we want to see we will pay for. It’s like a cycle. Would tobacco companies continue making cigarettes if no one smoked them? The industry responds to the demands of the consumer so I suppose I can say we are as much to blame. If we watch violence, how can we expect the youth not to watch them? If we listen to violence, more times than not, the kids will too. So who’s to blame?

To hold rap responsible for violence is extremely unfair. For one, there are many different forms of rap, take the difference between 50 Cent and Kanye West for an easy example. In addition, an image on the news showing dead people and men with guns in Iraq is just as violent if not worse because it’s real.

To quote a comment: “Frankly if you're going to shoot someone in order to gain respect, then that's not because you've been watching rap videos, it's because you're a idiot.”

Ya get me tho!

Source:

The Guardian (Comments are updated frequently).

Voyage In The Sun

Once again I’ve been slacking, I haven’t updated in a little while. However this week I have been busy because I’m leaving for Greece tomorrow, just for a week, not long, not long enough actually but it's better than nothing I suppose.

I haven’t packed yet and I’ve got one or two things to sort out. I’m sure I’ll forget something but like my friends mum said ‘Whatever you forget, someone else will have’. I sure hope so, nothing worse than forgetting something vital and being stuck for a week without it.

I’ve heard a few things about Greece especially regarding fires because it’s been so hot out there. I mean, I know it’s supposed to make sense and this may seem like a silly question but what is the correlation between the temperature being so hot and fires? I mean, I can’t imagine a fire just suddenly starting because the sun’s out. This may seem silly but I live in London, we really don’t have that problem here. Well anyway, with that news, I’m dreading the heat. I’ll probably spend most of my days eating when I’m not sleeping and sleeping when I’m not eating or partying when I’m not doing either!

My first holiday in a while so it should be fun.

Flooding

I’m sure a lot of you have heard a lot about the amount of flooding here in the UK. I must say, it’s pretty ironic because just a few months ago they were complaining about a drought, enough to impose a hose pipe ban. I suppose the saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ has reached a whole new level. It’s sad to see so many people leave their homes because of flooding but what’s worse is the fact that people are without drinking water.

Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Seeing it on TV is one thing but it brought it all home for me when I visited OHara’s blog and she had actual pictures from her window. It's like they built the houses in the middle of a stream!Over here in London the water level is being kept under control and the flood barriers are holding out but the rain hasn’t stopped falling so there is still a risk.

Is Feminism A Good Thing?

Well we all know there are two sides to every story, I don’t particularly believe this is true but what the hell do I know. With the question regarding feminism and whether it’s a good thing, well….I’m not so sure it is.

There are many branches to the feminist theory but I won’t bore you with all of them simply because I don’t know them myself but let’s just say that they strive to achieve some sort of equality between men and women in the work place and possibly life in general. Yea, that sounds about right. If a man and a woman are doing the same role they should be rewarded equally don’t you think?

As for life in general, well, how does one ‘equally’ bear and raise a child? When I go to the supermarket I see a lot of women with push chairs and toddlers shopping. I see some men but not half as many men as women. Now personally, I believe that woman and child have that ‘special’ maternal bond, this may be because the child has lived inside his/her mother for 9 months. He/she has become accustomed to the mothers movements and habits, the sound of her voice way before it has entered the real world. For men, you can only start this bond after the child has been born or maybe you can speak to the child while it’s in the womb to give yourself a head start. Women play a bigger part in raising their child. It’s just natural I would assume. They also play a large role in the running of the house domestically. When I was younger I was the one who done the majority of the house work and cooking (after my mother of course). I had an older brother who helped sometimes but the responsibility was mainly on me. I use to ask why I was the one who had to do the housework to which my mum would reply ‘because you’re a girl’ or ‘it’s training for the future’. What?...Training?! As far as I was concerned I went to school just like my brother, I had a part time job like him AND I still had to do housework? Gimme a break will ya, I still got homework to do! It didn’t seem fair to me at all. Later on I realised that even though women and men work to keep the house in order financially, women were responsible for the house domestically and this included looking after the children. So were the ways of my family and many others I presume.

Furthermore if a woman is playing a large part in raising her child and looking after the house, this means that work takes second place. Employees are aware of this and are sometimes quite reluctant to employ young women or (especially) women with kids whereas men, much more than women, are less likely to have this problem and are therefore unlikely to be penalised for this. From a business point of view, men are in this sense much more reliable candidates than women. I am more than aware that some men also face this burden, especially if for some particular reason; the mother is not around to look after her child. But let’s face it, these cases are considerably less for men than they are for women. It makes me consider whether liberal feminism is worth the time and effort. Can there ever really be equality in the work place/political environment when the duties the majority of men and women have, differ so much? It seems to me that women generally make the bigger sacrifices when it comes to family and because of this, are some how excluded or discriminated against.

So if I was to break all this down I would say; women and men work equally (women with generally less pay than men don’t forget) but women have the added duty of looking after the home while men have the added duty of…???

Just saying it how I see it.

At The Bus Stop

Why do things like this always happen to me?

A couple of days ago I was on my way to central London, early morning around 9am. I was standing at the bus stop brooding over how long the bus was taking when this woman with a hat, jacket and some track suit bottoms started walking in my direction. Now the bus stop was half full so before she could reach me she had to walk past a few people. She had a bottle of…something in her hand, I don’t know what it was but it didn’t look like anything alcoholic. I turned from her to the direction the bus was suppose to come from, I thought she’d walk past me like she was doing to everyone else. All of a sudden she started talking to me – it’s always me that people feel the need to ask directions or the confused people like to talk to for some strange reason – she said something about a large screw driver in New Cross that attacked her. At this point I was thinking ‘I really haven’t got time for this’ even though I was waiting at the bus stop, I was also praying she wouldn’t spill any of her drink on my clothes. She tried to show me the marks on her hand, I instinctively looked and just kept nodding and turning away praying for the bus to come. Two buses did come but neither were for me. At this point people were staring at us, I hate when people do that, what’s the use in staring? It doesn’t help it actually makes things worse.

I really wanted her to stop talking to me so I said ‘Well why don’t you go to the police?’ hoping that she would think that was a good idea and be on her way, instead she said they wouldn’t believe her. At that point I just stopped responding, I really didn’t want to provoke her and my eye was on the open bottle all the time. She started talking some more about something or another but I really couldn’t concentrate and this bus was getting on my nerves because it was taking FOREVER. This woman next to me kept going on and on about something (the screw driver?) and then she said ‘come on, lets go’. I looked at her and just calmly said I had somewhere I had to be so I couldn’t go with her hence the reason I’m standing here at this bus stop. She looked me over and started mumbling about the Pukka pad I was holding, I just nodded and looked away, hoping she would get the hint.

Another woman was walking past us and she went to ask her for a cigarette. I thought I was free and I was still wondering where the hell this bus was. Then she came back to me as if we were having a really important conversation. I stopped nodding and responding but I kept up the constant looks for the bus and I think she got the hint because eventually she said bye and left.

Two minutes after that, the bus came.

A Smoke-Free View

I KNEW there was something big happening in London that I didn't cover. England has now banned smoking in enclosed spaces. They call it a smoke-free England but it’s more like smoke-less. We still have a lot of smog and people can still smoke just not in clubs, pubs or public buildings. I went out last Saturday or so and I must admit it was odd (and great) to have the club smoke-free – well almost, with the kind of clubs I got to, people don’t tend to abide by the rules until they’ve been caught at least once. Anyway I should say it was nice to have the club mostly smokeless. My hair didn’t smell of smoke and my clothes didn’t either, not too much anyway.

I went onto the Smoke Free England website to check it out. It just basically lists the rules and regulations regarding business, community and individuals. It also lists the effects of smoking on the smoker and others which I’m sure ALL smokers (and others) know about already. The fines are quite high actually mostly to businesses or owners of the smoke-free property - £2500 is the highest.

People smoking never really bothered me. I have few friends that smoke so I’m rarely around smokers often. What does bother me however, is the amount of times smokers at work go for a ‘cigarette breaks’. Why the hell should they be allowed to take timeout to go kill themselves a bit more when you’ve got people like myself who DON’T smoke sitting at the computer working? Can I get a ‘snack break’ where I go get some snacks from the shop or a ‘can’t be bothered break’ where I just can’t be bothered to work for 10 mins or so? Giving employees the chance to go on cig breaks is more of an encouragment than anything else.

The ban will hopefully encourage more people to give up smoking. I’m sure it’s not easy and we have a lot of company’s exploiting smokers with their chewing gums and patches when all they really need is Will power. You decided to start smoking and you can also decide not to. For the rest of us, we can only hope to enjoy a slightly cleaner air.

All Work And No Play

I’ve just spent 11 hours of my life shopping in west end. Now this may seem like I’m some sort of shoppaholic but I’m the opposite. I hate shopping but you know, sometimes it has to be done. The problem with me and my shopping habits is that I tend to leave major gaps in between so that I end up spending for hours when I AM forced to do it.

It’s a chore not a hobby, it isn’t fun, it’s tiring.

Yes, contrary to popular belief (AK) there are SOME women who actually hate shopping. There, I said it. You can say I’m lying if you want but I speak the truth. We are not all controlled by ‘70% off’ sales in Miss Selfridges and Topshop or by a famous person's new clothing line which has just been launched. Why, in the world, would I go crazy over spending my own money? It’s not just the money, it’s trying on clothes, looking for the best bargains etc. I’m tired just writing about it.

Today my friend and I decided to leave extra early. We left at 9am to get to west in good time to beat the crowds. In my mind I was hoping to buy what I needed and be out of there by 12 before the lunch crew mobbed the stores. Well, as you can imagine, it didn’t exactly work out like that. By 12 we weren’t even one quarter into our little shopping spree and when lunch time struck the place was swarming with people and yes, that included (Shock! Shock! Horror! Horror!) MEN as well! I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Anyway on and on the shopping spree went and on and on the time flew. I started to become quite agitated around 4pm about the time my feet started hurting and the bag in my hand started to weigh me down. We had eaten and I was tired, I wanted to go home but I pushed myself because I knew that if I didn’t finish this here, I would have to come back another day and I really didn’t want that. In the end, after 11 and a half hours – started at 10am or so, got home at 9:30 – I still didn’t manage to get all I wanted. I’m not going back anytime soon though, I guess I just have to leave it for a little while.

This is the agony I refer to as, shopping.