Tag: BBC

News in Briefs 03/06/12

Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twel…damn there’s a lot of boats on the River Thames today. I hope one of them doesn’t sink, although I admit that I do have my fingers crossed. Still, it’s better than listening to more garbage from a banker/politician/some random civilian. I just wish that the BBC would reveal to me the news for today.

Political Oops of the Week

This is going to sound awful, but I laughed at the Syria massacre this week. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but you are wrong. I wasn’t laughing at the fact that many people were slaughtered by armed terrorists, or as the rest of the world call it: the Syrian Government. I was laughing at the fact that the UN is so inept and is so useless that it’s laughable.

Instead of actually taking action this week all they did was repeatedly condemn it with meaningless words on the news channel, as well as promising action that will never come. But it’s not just because what happened this time, it’s because it happens all the time. If you are really so “outraged” then surely you should be doing something about it?

You know I consider this a political oops because it shadows the failed League of Nations from the early 20th century. And we all know what happened when the failure of that organisation grew and grew. We ended up dealing with the single biggest conflict in human history. I’m not saying that the Syria massacre is going to cause that, but it really does highlight the failures of the organisation when it comes to actually enforcing its will across the globe.

Fire planet
This will be your fault, UN. Condemn that!

The Painful…

The fact that Piers Morgan hasn’t been assassinated yet, the unfortunate truth that people are starving all over the world, but nothing was more painful than what I had to witness on Saturday night. Yes, England v Belgium. That was perhaps the single most painful thing I’ve had to watch in very recent memory. If England honestly believe that they stand a chance against any relevant teams then they are sadly mistaken.

What the game last night showed was that sometimes football can be the most mind numbing experience on the planet. England simple held their shape and waited for Belgium to give them the ball, and when they had the ball they just passed it around without making many incisive movements. The only good part was the end as that’s when they actually decided to play football.

Crusader
That about sums up England's authenticity.

All England v Belgium showed was that the team is still weak. It’s still a team of individuals playing for themselves. And they are still inferior to many other countries on the planet. The English league might be the best league in the world, but that’s certainly not because of the English players.

…And the Pointless

We’ve all seen the story about the British woman who was caught smuggling cocaine in Indonesia; the Bali area to be exact. Rachel Dougall was the woman involved in this. She was arrested at the airport with over 4kg of cocaine in blocks, and that’s about £1.56m in street value. And all she could do was try to defend herself by saying that she did it for her sons who were under threat from bad people in Britain. Well boo hoo!

The fact is that you are guilty. You have been caught smuggling cocaine into Indonesia. The authorities were right when in similar terms they expressed that they couldn’t care less and it makes absolutely no difference. She did it. End of story.

What irritates me is that the BBC is acting as if she is the victim here though. She is not the victim. She is a felon and Britain can’t help her as she has broken the laws of that country. And now we are listening to stories about how she’s losing her mind in the police holding cells. Good! That’s how it’s supposed to work, it’s called prison. Just because our prisons are softer than a caramel-covered marshmallow doesn’t mean everybody else’s is. You are guilty. You are going to die. And you have nobody to blame but yourself. Now please just end the almost-daily coverage of her, please.

The So Outrageous that it’s Borderline Hilarious

Do you know when some lard-packing doughnut master walks down the street and you just think to yourself: “What a fat bastard.”? Well if you act on it in the future then that could be a hate crime. Unbelievably, MPs were actually debating the idea on making calling someone fat a hate crime. What an absolute joke this country really is sometimes. If you’re fat, you’re fat. It’s not a hate crime, it’s the truth. If you can’t fit through the doors at your local fast food restaurant then you are fat; or you’re wearing a large costume.

Fat ass

If this went through then it would be on par with racism and being homophobic. So if you’re a fat bastard and somebody refers to you as such then you could get them arrested. But in reality there’s not even any reasoning behind this. With racism you are born the colour you are so you can’t change a thing. With homophobic remarks you have the tastes you do and you can’t change that. If you’re fat then you can probably change that. The problem is that you are too busy sitting down eating an extra-large curry and threatening to blow a hole in the sofa with a mini nuclear warhead coming out of your rectal launch sites.

I’m quite frankly tired of this idea that we have to make everybody feel great about themselves. Why a disgusting, overweight tub of goo should be made to feel great about themselves when what they are doing is on the level of self-harm is beyond rational thought. We seem to think slicing your wrists open in a dark corner of your black-painted bedroom is a problem, so why not binge eating and making yourself into the second coming of Godzilla?

So maybe next week won’t be so bleak and irritating after all…

Your Kids Are Depressed? No They’re ******* Not!

If there’s anything that’s truly a fixture of the world we live in then it certainly has to be the fact that we always have to think that every child is depressed because they’re not happy. A recent BBC article really highlighted the whole depressed people thing today as it reported that 1,000 under 18s had been referred to mental health teams in Sussex.

Sad child

We’ve actually had this turn up quite a few times now as a few years ago there was a big media storm over the subscribing of antidepressants to young people. Now, depression is a strange beast. It’s not something that’s imaginary, like certain people would have you believe. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is weak either. What it means is that when depression is genuine something needs to be done. The problem is that you can be diagnosed with depression at the slightest thing these days.

Obviously, the number of children who are depressed is going to be higher due to the fact that this isn’t something that was taken seriously; mental health problems as a whole weren’t taken seriously. We also have to acknowledge that our population has increased significantly over the years so the number of depressed people will naturally increase.

What people have to acknowledge is that being sad once in a while does not equal depression. Depression can come in many forms, but it isn’t occasional. Some depressed people may switch between happy and sad every few hours, or it may even be prolonged periods of happy and sad over months. This is depression and these people need help, they are the genuine ones, and many of the ones who claim to have depression today won’t fall into these groups.

What would make a child fall into depression, though?

I’m not going to go into the blatantly obvious things like an abusive household because that’s plain obvious and it would be an insult to dedicate half of a page to it. Some people believe that the accessibility of the world’s events is to blame. There’s no doubt that the world is a depressing place to be in, and this worry and anxiety that’s always permeated the mass media will naturally fall on the heads of children. And children will have access to all of this stuff because they are usually more technology orientated than most adults.

Another reason? Well there’s the argument that the stress of school is a major factor, but I completely disagree with this for the most part as that’s always been present and we are seeing a spike in the number of depressed children in recent years. I would agree that those who are bullied on a regular basis may garner some depression as being bullied is a traumatic experience. I, myself, was bullied and I had a horrible time for years, but luckily for me the chav bastard died at the age of 18 from an ‘unlucky’ brain aneurysm. I’m very happy about what happened and it did lift a weight off my shoulders as I did believe that justice was done, but such karmic justice isn’t present for many people. I understand that many children who don’t have their bullying issues resolved will feel cheated, and that will certainly contribute to depression.

Dead guy
An over exaggerated representation of karmic justice.

However, what I believe the main reason is is the lack of parental love in the world these days. There’s no getting away from the fact that many depressed people don’t have the support or regular companionship of their parents. And this can be attributed to many things. Some may argue that it’s declining family values. Some may argue that it’s because most families tend to have both parents who work for long periods these days. I believe that it’s due to the fact that many parents don’t realise what they are doing. If a parent decides to forgo spending time with their child for an hour or two then what happens? Usually, absolutely nothing so they believe that everything is ok when really it’s not.

This is usually when we start seeing the spoiled brat who has all of these presents and gifts and yet they are still upset. Many people can’t fathom why someone with everything could be so upset. But what they don’t take into account is that material goods can’t substitute long-term love and affection. It just doesn’t work. There’s absolutely no correlation between amount of material goods and long-term happiness. In fact, that’s how those with everything can still become depressed. This is due to a psychological incident known as hedonic adaptation (or the hedonic treadmill), which is where humans become happy when they receive material goods and revert back to emotional stability after the initial period of euphoria is over.

Materials are temporary. Love is forever. That’s why your kids are supposedly depressed.