pogoism

Eurovision was last night. Germany took it seriously and won. In fairness, it was a good song. Especially her cute accent…

And the UK‘s dreadful entry came last. *sigh*

But! By FAR the best bit of the show (for me anyway) was that awesome flash mob across Europe! Seriously, fantastic. Even though it was pre-recorded.

Maybe just a little? Don’t be. I read a great article on HuffPo the other day, “The Dark Side of Dubai“.

A few highlights of what Dubai is *actually* like…

• You can get put in jail for having a cheque bounce. For up to 3 years.
• If you have to go to court, better hope you speak Arabic.
• If you have any debts at all, you can’t leave the country. Which means you’re effectively imprisoned in Dubai.
• Who built Dubai? Not the expats… it was immigrants, mainly from south Asia, brought to Dubai with promises of an easy life and riches. The reality is far from that. Bad pay, passports confiscated, long work hours in searing heat and squalid living conditions are typical of a Dubai construction worker.

So if you can go to jail in Dubai for a cheque bouncing, what happens if you can’t pay back a $60bn loan? Oh, nothing? Funny that.

1. Florence and the Machine’s album. I heard it at a friend’s house a few weeks ago. Go listen to it on Spotify. I dare you not to fall in love with the track “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)”.

2. The Thick of It on BBC Two. I’ve never watched this show before. It’s Armando Iannucci’s satirical political comedy. Sort of like The Office, only less difficult to watch, and funnier. It follows the Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship, and it’s head Nicola Murray. Currently trying to get my hand on the first 2 series…

3. Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Great biography of Abraham Lincoln. Wanted to find out more about him, as Obama has styled himself as a modern day Lincoln. Still plowing through it (it’s long), but it’s a great and easy read.

And what I didn’t like…

Voter’s repealing the gay marriage law in Maine. One day, hopefully, the bigots will disappear and realise that to deny happiness and equality to people is, frankly, sickening.

Last post for today, I promise. (Can you tell I’m avoiding writing my report?)

Saw this on the Rachel Maddow Show on Friday, it’s sheer genius:

From their website:

Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network of health insurance CEOs, HMO lobbyists, talk-show hosts, and others profiting off of our broken health care system.

We’ll do whatever it takes to ensure another decade where your pain is our gain. After all, when it comes to health insurance, if we ain’t broke, why fix it?

Yes, they’re taking the piss :)

The teabagging video to end all teabagging videos…

Astonishing stuff.

Ryanair in their infinite wisdom have suggested people could stand on short flights, if it meant the flight price was free, or 50% of the full fare. They’ve even gone so far as design some “vertical seating”. In true Ryanair class, they’ve changed their corporate song to “I’m Still Standing”. Gotta be better than this, though…

So, would you stand on a short flight, if it meant standing for free, or 50% of the fare? I know I would… Comment me, and let me know!

This is late news, but I really wanted to write something about it…

Every few years, the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland surveys the population of Northern Ireland to determine how people feel about different minorities in the country, and the results of their latest study are frankly shocking.

Here are some of the results:

• 51% would mind having a Traveller as a neighbour or as an in-law, and 38% said they would mind having a Traveller as a work colleague.
• 35% would mind having a close relative in a relationship with a lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) person, and 23% said they would mind having an LGB person as a work colleague or neighbour.
• 28% would mind having a migrant worker as an in-law, and 23% and 22% respectively would mind having a migrant worker as a neighbour or a work colleague.

Seriously. That means, assuming I have 2 neighbours, the chance is almost 50% that one of them will have a problem living next to me, as a gay man. That’s ridiculous. Why on earth should it matter to anyone if their next door neighbour is gay or lesbian?! I can usually see things from other people’s points of view, but in this case, I really can’t fathom it.

Most of the negative views in the survey were towards Travellers (28%), but LGB people weren’t far behind, at 21%, and Eastern European migrants at 20%. Given the trouble last month, where migrants were effectively forced out of their homes, that doesn’t bode well for the gays.

To make all this even worse, when ECNI did the last survey, the number of people who minded living next to a LGB person stood at 14%. Now it’s 23%. That’s right, it’s gone up. How does that happen?! How does bigotry and discrimination go up?!

It’s not so bad though, and I certainly don’t want to portray Northern Ireland as a bigotted hell-hole. From my own two years of living there, I’ve experienced very little in the way of discrimination, and I certainly feel safer being myself in Belfast than I do in my hometown, 30 miles away from London.

• Laura Ling and Euna Lee, 2 American journalists working for Current.TV, caught (supposedly) on North Korean soil, sentenced to 12 years hard labour. Effectively a death sentence.
• Dr. Tiller, one of the few remaining late-term abortion doctors in the US, executed while at a church service in Wichita, KS. His alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, arrested. At his funeral, a portrait of him was shown, with the simple words “Trust Women” written beneath it in flowers.
• Conservatives gain control in almost all councils in this week’s English local elections.
• The UK government is generally falling to pieces.
• The results of the European elections are in, and the left are suffering badly, Oh, and the BNP gained 2 seats. Europe-wide, the far-right and anti-immigration parties did well, and voter turnout stood at 43%.

On the brighter side this week, Obama delivered his much-hyped speech to the Muslim world. If you haven’t seen it yet, take 15 minutes and read it, it’s well worth it.

Here’s some cute things falling asleep to restore your faith in humanity :)

These are fantastic! A guy called Michael Gregory has been using a nifty piece of software called Auto-Tune that alters singer’s voices to create the perfect pitch, and has been doing it to news clips to create these videos. They’re really, really good – go watch!