Israel/Lebanon

What a mess! We're all surely appalled at the personal cost of the conflict to both Lebanese and Israeli. It's always the innocent who suufer most in war and our prayers go out to them. But - and its a big "but", there is a terrorist organisation, Hizbollah, firing missiles into Israel from residential areas of Lebanon. What is Israel to do? These attacks and incursions by hizbollah have been going on for ages, and Israel cannot simply sit back and let them do it. Let's face it, if the Scottish started picking off English people in Berwick on Tweed (I think that's England!), while saying that England should not really exist, I think the English would be fighting back too! War is terrible, but its not always wrong. It wasn't wrong to confront Hitler in the 1940's, and its not wrong to combat world terrorism now. Blair and Bush were right to go into Iraq, and Israel is right to go into Lebanon. If we don't stand up against terrorists, the threat to the world is very real.

Controversial - I'd love to get some comments on this one!

Pretensious pronounciation

Have you noticed how some journalists - and other rather pretensious people (have I spelt that right?- meaning people who put on airs & graces) tend to try and pronounce foreign place names in a "foreign" way?? So instead of the English "Baghdad" (Bagdad) they say "Bugdad". And "Bassra" instead of the English Bazra. And "Bungladay-ish" instead of "Bangladesh." There was a tragic earthquake a couple of years ago in a place called Bam, and people insisted on pronouncning it "Barm". What's wrong with English?? (OK, I say Ma-Yor-ka, not "Ma-Jor-ka" so I suppose I'm as bad!

Graduation

Yesterday - 14th July 2006 - I graduated with an MA In Mass Communications from Leicester University. It was a great occasion, lots of pomp and ceremony. But it does make you ask, with all these people - thousands over several days - getting degrees, and the same thing going on at every Uni in the country, doesn't it devalue the degree, especially 1st degrees? If pretty well anyone can get one, it does seem to! Anyway, I am very pleased with my achievement!

Where has E gone?

Notice how people often don't pronounce the "e" in words? Seems to be a modern phenomenon. So "weather" becomes "wather", and "terrorist" becomes "tarrorist" They do it with all kinds of e-words. "Banefit", "walcome", "tallyvision" Its amazing! Next time you listen to the news or weather, especially on ITV or commercial radio, see if you notice as wall!

Lost art of communica8ing

Its all about image these days. A lot of the media, esp yoof media, doesn't reallly communicate anything meaningful! Just fast miving images to create a "feel", or radio promos that you ca't reallu hear or understand - they just make a noise which attempts to communicate "cool". And yet proper voices that talk to you are what people want. Poeple want to relate to people, not be sold an image.

people called Daz

There seem to be a lot of guys called Daz these days. First there was Daz Sampson on Eurovision, then I heard a guy called Daz phone into Chris Evans, then there was someone called Daz on Deal or No Deal (great show!) . What does it mean? Daz used to be a washing powder! (Do they still make it?) Is it short for Dave, or Derek, or Daniel? Wierd!