Con-Dem Government and in America: DADT Repeal..

So I have neglected this blog, for a while. I know, I know, it's bad...
I've had a lot on my mind recently, ok?!
What? I hear you ask... Ok so brief personal bit in this normally fairly news-y blog...
Mainly just the usual thing.. A million essays to write, presentations to give and things to do, while also being ill.
Lots and lots of Breakdance training (yay!) and epically failing in a battle or two (Cringe)

Right, back to the important stuff!
Firstly I want to talk about the DADT repeal that was on the cards. People were excited and it looked promising, the senate needed a majority of 60 votes to pass the repeal.
Did it happen? No.
this is something which pisses me off beyond all belief, America is a country that claims itself to be all about equal rights of human beings, yet time and time again it shows the rest of the world that it has no idea how to have a truly equal society. 
I really hope that this repeal gets passed in some other way.
For those of you who don't actually know what DADT is... Run away now!
(But for real, let me explain to you what it is and how it works)
DADT is short for Don't Ask Don't Tell.
It's the policy which is employed by the US Armed forces. What it means is that those in the armed forces are not asked to disclose their sexuality and therefore they cannot get dismissed from the army. However, as soon as they disclose that they are homosexual (thus gay) they are instantly dismissed from the army. Which means that they army condones forceful closeting, which I think is absolutely ridiculous and something which really needs to be stopped because it's disgraceful.
Surely a country which has always been seen as 'the new world' should be more forward thinking and allow all ethnicities, sexual preferences and genders in their armies? We've just about got the all ethnicities and genders, but this sexual preferences thing still seems to be a major issue with them...


Part 2 is to come later!!

Just a little thing I had to write for uni

A Man Threatens to Jump off Burnaby Bridge

Rail traffic disrupted after a man threatened to jump off Burnaby Road railway bridge this morning.

The unnamed man, in his thirties and from Southsea, was seen on the railway bridge at 8.30am by a passer by.

The police immediately contacted network rail, who shut off the power to the live rail. There were no trains leaving from Portsmouth Harbour station until noon, but disruptions were minimal as there were only three trains backed into station.
It is suspected that the man was on the bridge because his wife had taken their two children and left after having an affair with another man.

Johnnie Duncan, a WHSmiths assistant manager, dialled 999. Mr Duncan was on his way to work when he spotted the man on the bridge, “It was very scary,” he said, the man “was waving his arms around and inching closer to the edge.”

While the man was up there a crowd gathered, some of whom were shouting at him to jump. Something which Detective Inspector Sharon Wheeler described as “rabid with stupidity.”

He would not come down until Father Maurice O'Reilly of St. Theresa's in Southsea, his parish priest, showed up on the scene. Father O'Reilly, who has recently had major heart surgery, was hauled up the embankment by police officers to calm the man down. “The only tricky part was climbing up the bank as I'm not as young as I used to be,” Father O'Reilly said.

After about ten minutes Father O'Reilly put his arm around the man's shoulders and they were escorted safely back down to the road by police officers.

The man has been taken to hospital for a medical check up, and there may be charges pending.

England and France sharing resources and a nuclear weapon testing facility

Excuse me, what the fuck was that?!
They are TESTING nuclear weapons? Have they learned nothing from the past decades of what testing nuclear weapons does to the people and the areas surrounding the nuclear testing facility?!
It's a bit hypocritical as well seeing as Sarkozy was urging other people to follow his lead and disarm their nuclear armaments testing facilities... which is has now rearmed.
It's incredibly infuriating as the only thing that these weapons are good for are mutual destruction of whoever is involved in the fighting, and possible of a lot more destruction of the surrounding countries depending on how large the target is and whether it is an island or not...
It's so annoying that we have taken a step back with the rearmament of these sorts of facilities.

On the bright side, they have developed a new method for detecting cancerous tumours, with a virus which used the illuminating cells from a jelly fish. Slight glitch at the moment is the fact that the virus still spreads, so those who have continued the research from the guy who actually isolated the gene reckon it will be about another five years until it is ready for clinical trials.. But hey everything like this is positive as it's a step closer to beating cancer, as it allows them to detect the tumours more quickly and various cancers more easily - inevitably allowing to save many lives.

One Million Ruptured Eardrums and One Ruptured Throat

The Vuvuzelas have created a whole new type of injury:
"A Ruptured Throat"
This woman was blowing so hard (Yes that's what she said) and has ruptured her throat...
Now, for me this is good news. Yes that sounds harsh and I am sorry that this woman has ruptured her throat; However, it also means that Vuvuzelas may just be blown less. Maybe, just maybe people will get worried about the health risks of these annoying things and realise that it's alright to just leave the things lying there, without using them and annoying everyone in the world watching the football, the people in the stadium as well as the people who are on the field representing their country. Because, needless to say they are ALL annoyed, because Vuvuzelas are more annoying than a mosquito inside of your mosquito net taunting you all night and then waking up the next morning to find you have bites all over your hands and your face, the TWO bits that were sticking out from under your duvet.
Therefore, Fifa needs to get off their high horse, accept that the vuvuzelas were a bad, very bad idea and ban the fucking things.
Simples.

Cannabis, Holland and the Rumours about lib dem.

Suddenly facebook groups have jumped up out of nowhere talking about how Lib Dem wants to legalise cannabis, yet when you check their manifesto you shall find no evidence of it at all. All it states is that policies should be based on scientists' advice. It annoys me immensely that there are so many people who are naive enough to just go along with it and not check it out for themselves. It took me about three minutes to find the manifesto and its section on drugs. To me it just seems like another vicious rumour spread by the other parties to try and make the Lib Dems seem like the worst people to possibly be in the government as a major player to those who do not support drug use. Furthermore, what people seem to forget is that even if this was what they believed in there is no way that it could possibly happen - they would be in a coalition government and therefore it wouldn't get passed as too many of the other parties would majorly disagree with the idea. Some people have attributed this (fictional) policy to Nick Clegg's half Dutch existence - something which is simply absurd. Just because we [the Dutch] are more open to this sort of thing, doesn't mean we feel it should be implemented all over the world. The most amusing thing that I have found is that due to the tolerance policy we have lower drug rates than quite a few countries around the world, including the UK and the USA. I would like to clear something up though, which to me is important. As much as we tolerate weed it is not legal as such. Technically "coffee shops" do not exist, weed is often no longer sold to tourists and not everyone smokes weed all the time. As the figures show roughly 15% of the people has tried it, that's all.
The reason why Coffee Shops have the name they do is because it is illegal to sell alcohol and weed in the same building, therefore one cannot buy alcohol in these places - hence coffee shop. (I know legislative it is a bit weird as they don't technically exist) Moreover, it is allowed to have three to five female cannabis plants at home for own use.
So those who have followed this and thought Oh my god what are they doing. Or those who are extremely excited about it, you are wrong, it's not happening and you have merely been duped by other parties trying to portray themselves as better. It is pathetic how the democracy of today has changed from one that is positive and is merely parties distinguishing themselves from others by positive comments towards themselves to parties trying to beat other parties down with negative slanter and banter. It makes me so angry because it is completely illogical, and to me absolutely disgusting.

LGBT community

Ok, I have slightly neglected this blog but have been extremely busy recently. Exams are about a month away and I'm terrified.
But what I would like to talk about today is the LGBT community - for those of you ignorant enough to not know what that means it is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual [community].
I was asked to fill out a bbc questionaire which talks about the representation of the LGB community (they ignored the T, which I pointed out) and it has made me realise that there isn't a lot of representation in the media of anything which is still seen as remotely out of the ordinary. Which just seems absolutely ridiculous as really the LGBT community should not really be seen as a seperate one as really being Homosexual, Bisexual, Heterosexual or Transexual shouldn't matter at all - all it means is that you are attracted to someone else in the world and that you feel a certain way about yourself.
Where I live it's still very much "out there" to be out and proud, which to me as an absurd idea as I'm from Holland - you don't get much more relaxed about those sorts of issues than in Holland, really.
What should be made is a documentary, to show the narrowminded, precarious, obstreporous snobs what many people have to go through every single day. The amount of abuse you get, the lack of understanding and so much misconception on the whole subject. So I would you to talk to a person on the street, see what they think. Because you might just be surprised, and see that I'm right.

FAIL!

The Copenhagen Climate Meeting FAILED.

They didn't come to a good conclcusion, not all together anyway.

I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were "discussing it". His msn personal message read: ‘why has the Copenhagen meeting been allowed to fail?’

because it is impossible not to piss people off when you shove however many people in a room and try to get to a single conclusion

you can't do it

and then as much as obama was trying to solve somethhing

he just pissed people off by coming to a conclusion with a very small group of people

and leaving others out

Him:

honestly, you can do it, easily, especially for something as important and necessary as this was

Me:

no you can't

if you involve developing countries

Him:

and he did, but that is because they were the only ones who actually wanted to do anything, rather than leaving others out

Me:

the developing countries need to go through the industry boom that we have already been through to get themselves out of development status

therefore they won't accept it

some will feel singled out

some will have personal grudges

some will just plain disagree

you can't reach a conclusion to single targets with that amount of people

thats like trying to get

all of year 12 and 13 to agree on what food to have (single dish) for dinner every day for a year

everyone will have some different ideas, needs and values..

which means it would probably become something vegetarian, or chicken

in this case, that was obama talking to a small group of people

Him:

I disagree completely

Me:

by trying to please everyone

they have failed

and pissed off everybody

Him:

of course there are problems, but they can be overcome

Me:

not in the short time that they have had

Him:

the simple answer to your example, is to have more than one dish

Me:

yes, but that is not what they were trying to do.

Him:

although people can always think of examples which are very irrelevent to the discussion

Me:

they were trying to decide on a single dish

Him:

and they could have tried for longer

Me:

they were trying to decide on a single standard limit... a single dish as it were

everyone the same targets

and it failed

because that can't be done

Him:

it can be done, it requires will, but it is possible

Me:

yeah, they could do it if they set a low standard

but that would piss people off everywhere

because china is not going to agree to a 20% emission cut by 2020

they are currently going through there own "industrial revolution"

which requires them to build more power plants and other polluting things, because they're not going to go completely nuclear

the only thing china has promised so far is to cut the intensity of their carbon admissions

Him:

what I'm saying is that china should want to cut more

Me:

they should, but they won't because they need to get through their revolution.

furthermore they want to maintain sino-american and sino-british relations

which are relatively new.

and if you tell them that's not allowed, they are not going to be happy...

every other country, which is now in the first world, has been allowed to go through that period. whereas by telling them they have to cut it all, means that they are not allowed to become a truly developed country

which they would percieve unfair

which when you look at it that way is understandable.

Him:

understandable, yes, but still wrong

Him:

I hate how countries are so obsessed over their economy

Me:

but without a substantial economy it would be impossible to have people out of poverty

without substantial economies there is no third world aid

it would be nice if everyone could have all of their debts written off

so all of us

the WHOLE world

can start

with a clean slate

have everyone developed to the same point, without debt and without poverty

and allow them to start again

Him:

If the richest peopple in the world wanted to solve poverty, it really would not be that difficult

Me:

yes but the richest people in the world don't want to

Him:

If countries stopped pouring money into the armed forces and into areas that matter, it would be so much better

but they should!

Me:

*I partially agree with your last statement, except for the fact that there are still issues that need to be resolved.. look at the arab-israeli crisis

that requires an army

Him

it requires an agreement, a solution involving talking

not an army

Me:

*however, the problems there are paradoxical

*and people are still fighting

Me:

which is why they should see sense and stop