Oh Dear,

Sometimes, I start reading things for essays - particularly opinions or articles posted on the internet, and the only thing I can think is, oh dear, just oooooh dear. This essay is proving to be worse than most.

I'm writing about 'hate speech' and whether or not it would be a threat to our freedom of speech to restrict it. It seems like it ought to be simple to answer - surely anything which dictates what we can or cannot say is a restriction on our freedom of speech, but then again, that is dependent upon a few other factors. 

Freedom of speech doesn't actually define speech as flapping skin, bone and muscle to form intelligent (or unintelligent) noises which other people can understand (or try to), neither does it simply refer to this and the written (or typed, in this day and age) word. When you read 'freedom of speech', your brain should instead insert a phrase such as 'freedom of expression in any auditory, visual or physical form that is not more harming to others than the restrictions would be to the person who wishes to express in such a format', but that's a bit of a handful to write or type at once, and textbooks are large enough as it is. 

Now, why do we define the 'speech' part of freedom of speech in this way? Probably because we like to protest pretty loudly, and actions apparently 'speak' louder than words. If one person who disapproved of the war in Irak and Arghanistan spoke up, we wouldn't hear it, if ten spoke up, we still wouldn't hear it, but if hundreds marched along the streets of London, we would begin to hear it. The loudest shout from this was of course the burning of poppies, which caused public outrage

BUT...

restrictions on freedom of expression etc. must be neutral, so we can't say that burning poppies is not okay, we'd have to say that burning all symbols is not okay, but then we would need to define symbols. There's also the problem that it could be seen as restricting protests against the government, even though most would see the action as a disrespect to the military. 

Freedom of speech is one of the those tricky ones, because I would love to say that Nick Eriksen wasn't allowed to say that any kind of rape is much like chocolate cake, but if that was a law, he'd possibly be holding political office as well as his controversial views. We could also be talking in the language of 1984 saying this band is double plus good, whereas war is double plus ungood. 

Whilst it's true that the Westboro Baptist Church upset grieving families at funerals across America, as well as other activists of an opposing view, the fact is that their idiocy sparks a debate that can only be a good thing. Of course we know it is nothing more than assertions of someone who is completely ignorant and deluded to say that soldiers deaths are caused by America's lax attitude to homosexuality, but then again, we only know that because the debate is there and the thought is there. That line of thinking has changed people's views, whether we want to admit it or not. 

Still, watching the Louis Theroux documentaries about the Westboro Baptist Church, My Hometown Fanatics by Stacey Dooley and reading both The Londonist and Daily Mail's take on the Eriksen blog, I can't help but thinking it would be at least double good if people couldn't say all these horrible things to each other, because in the end, we just trade insult for insult and inadvertently teach children that it's an okay situation to be a part of. 

Forwards and Backwards,

For those of you who have never had to deal with me in the flesh, you may not realise that there is one thing I really don't do very well at, and not, it's not staying healthy for more than a few hours at a time.

More than anything, I really don't deal with change. But a lot of things change. 

There are a lot of things changing in my life right now, but I'll only mention a few. The biggest one is probably my housemates changing.

If you're not careful, and you're not particularly good at keeping up with people (guilty) then your flatmates can become very much the make up of your social circle, or at least the inner ring of it. Let's face it, if you're sharing a house, you're going to be spending either a lot of time together or a lot of time locked up in your room. 

I will admit as quickly as any of us that there have been ups and downs, but the saying 'better the devil you know' exists for a reason. I've conducted a couple of viewings around the property, and it feels a little bit like I've walked in to a bar, kissed the first available (and willing) stranger, then asked them to marry me, and I don't really know how to do anything other than that.

Another big change is to my timetable. All of a sudden there's a 30 credit module which I have no lectures and no exam for. That's kind of a scary thought. Whilst I have no intention of leaving my dissertation until the week before it is due, it is still scary that there is no weekly structure for such a large part of my degree.

Something which terrifies me is that - as I have been saying for a few months - the Craptop is on its way out. It's terminally ill, and clinging on to dear life. What's dearer? The laptop that I think I want instead. And what's so wrong with that? 

Well, other than the price tag, there are other drawbacks. The biggest drawback simply has to be that I have limited experience with buying laptops. The first and last laptop which I have ever purchased/had purchased for me was the aforementioned Craptop, and it never really made it up the hill for it all to go downhill from there. I would love to be able to put enough trust in a sales assistant to walk in and say 'I want a fast, reliable, but reasonably lightweight laptop with X amount of memory and Z programs already installed. Go,' but I work in retail and I know that not everyone has the attitude that I do towards it.

And lastly, I'm going to be on the verge of finishing university in about 13/14 months. That is just terrifying, and the people I started with - well, the vast majority of them are graduating this year. 

I know not all change is bad, but all change is slightly nerve racking. No one has a crystal ball, but I guess you just have to put your feet together and jump. 

Wired for Sound,

Over the last few months, my GP has been investigating just why my heart hasn't appeared to be working very well over the last year or two, and so far conclusions have been..., I'm going to go with mixed. 

The first test they decided was necessary was a blood test, which would have been fine, but I really. hate. needles. Thankfully the nurse was lovely and I managed to get through it, only to find out that my iron level was significantly lower than what it ought to be. My doctor had a small eureka moment, and decided that was to blame for my palpitations, but sent me for an ECG just in case. 

After a whole month or so long episode of my GP and the hospital losing my report in translation several times over, a copy finally arrived that said cardiology wanted to do some more testing. Oh, and since I'd finished the iron supplement tablets I had been on, could I please have another blood test?

I was all 'it'll be fine' until just before they were about to stick me with the needle, at which point I turned into nothing more than chicken manure *exchange for the ever popular, yet vulgar insult you all know and love* and was convince I couldn't do it. Little voice in my head goes - do what? You sit there and hold your arm out. What precisely do you have to do?, but I, of course, didn't listen and proceeded to say Sod it to Keep Calm and Carry On, and went straight for panic station at the ready. I'm sure the show was hilarious. 

So that lead me to another ECG - which I find really weird if I'm entirely honest. I guess I just don't understand people when they say 'and relax' and expect that those words are going to bring you to a relaxed state. Also, I'm a naturally nervous person. I'm not sure if I've ever encountered this thing you call 'relax' and if I have, I can't identify it - but this time I got another test thrown in for free, and got to have an ultrasound scan of my heart, too. It's a boy, hence it's lazy and sometimes a little slow. (I jest, I joke...) 

And with all that coming up clean, the last resort is to stick me to a monitor for 48 hours and see if anything crops up.

We woke up at seven this morning to get to the hospital for nine, and it took less than five minutes for them to attach the monitor, give me the paper work and a few instructions - thankfully they also gave me spare connector pads, because my skin has already had a reaction to one of them! I'm still really glad that Ben came with me though, because I was not feeling awesome this morning. If you think they are lying when they say that asthmatics ought to stay in doors, you are wrong - believe me.

The monitor thing is like lugging around a 90s Nokia brick, but for some reason, if I have it in my pocket, I think I have my phone (subsequently leaving the phone in another room) and then I wonder why it's not gone off for a while. Suffice it to say, my acquaintance with the bloody thing has got off to a rocky start, at best, and I've got to find some way to get to sleep with it on. I have a feeling this is going to be a fun night. 

What's Actually the Point?,

So, hate speech. It sucks, doesn't it? But then again, we have certain rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I don't want anyone to get the wrong end of the stick if this doesn't come out clearly - I'm not against freedom of expression or speech in any way. 

BUT

I'm currently researching for an End of Year Assignment that I'm writing about 'hate speech' and 'freedom of speech' and one of my search results was Amnesty International. I've never been overly clear how I feel about them before, but this article is swaying me more towards dislike than anything else.

So the headline says 'JAILED FOR WAVING A FLAG' which would make me expect that the man the article is focused upon was involved in a protest where he rather innocently carried a flag, was a part of a parade including a flag, or that he just really likes Fun with Flags with Sheldon Cooper, and decided he wanted to wave one of his own. Obviously, in any of those situations, being arrested and jailed is bordering on the ridiculous. 

Another big but though...

The article then explains that he was, in fact, leading a peaceful protest, then goes on to use a lot of emotive language about his trial and current sentence. Granted, some people aren't going to see the problems here, but here they are: 

Large masses of people (e.g. protests) don't always stay peaceful and can actually be pretty intimidating and cause a lot of other disruption, even if they do stay peaceful, 

In a lot of countries, the right to protest is protected - not damaged - by laws which require permission to stage marches etc, in order to allow for procedures to be put in place to ensure public safety,

It seems as though Amnesty are just trying to throw all these emotive situations at the reader in order to have them sign the petition. If the issue is freedom of speech, make it freedom of speech, not every other thing you can find in the case to take issue with, 

And my favorite one, just because America and Western Europe have decided something is an 'unalienable right' does't mean it is afforded to everyone even within their own borders, so how the heck are we supposed to start stamping our feet because the rest of the world doesn't live up to our standards? 

It's one of the things which really annoyed me about Michelle Obama's visit in China. In a country where we know there are restrictions on information and the internet etc, it's a pretty hostile move to go in and say - not quite in these words, but I'm sure you'll forgive me - 'you ought to be more like what the West thinks everyone should be'. 

Granted, I'm looking at it from a very privileged position; I know that. I admit that I'm a very lucky, white, middle class - ish - woman who is lucky enough to be in education, to have a forum where I can post my views and not worry that I'll get arrested for them, and that I'm from one of these countries which seem to prize free flow of information, but this is one of those things that really bugs me with human rights:

We do not own the world. Britain, America, in fact, no country, has the right to steamroller over another countries views. Granted, there are certain customs we ought to protect people from, such as FGM and young women being married as soon as they have their first period, but the difference is, they're not laws that have been discussed by elected officials, or the accepted leader of a country. To me, there is a difference. 

Rant over. 

Does It Feel Like a Tuesday?,

My very simple answer to that one is no, it does not feel like a Tuesday. 

My university timetable this year means I have a three day weekend (Saturday to Monday) and so the start of my week (Tuesday) is where I get 'that Monday feeling' aka the first day of the new week where pajamas are banned as a wardrobe option and you have abandon your duvet and hope it will take you back later. Normally, it doesn't really bother me so much, but today, it's driving me nutty. 

Part of that is due to the fact that my Tuesdays are normally a reasonably easy day. Come in, sit through two hours of lecture and then go home, but today I have a meeting at lunch and am working this evening. And I spent the weekend in Budapest. Yeah, that makes 'that Monday feeling' even more sucky than a hangover.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I turned 21 just under a week ago, and after puzzling for a long time as to what I did actually want for my birthday, my parents and I agreed that a little weekend city break was the perfect option, and Budapest held some kind of appeal even though I had less than no idea what was there other than the River Danube. Even so, the trip was booked, we were packed and ready to f*off to another country for a few days - the only obstacles being getting up at 3am and driving to Stansted. Ugh. 

What I found amazing - other than the pilot not knowing that in order to land, we must first take off... - was that when we landed, the sun was bright and the temperature was creeping it's way up to 22◦ and then it stayed there for most of the day. I was as pink as one of the Care Bears that evening. 

It was a weekend of a lot of walking - a lot of the interesting architecture and the shopping district is all down by the river, which we were staying about 2miles from - but the chimney cake and the views definitely made up for it, and even the Terror Museum was well worth a look, even though there wasn't much of it actually translated into English (and where it was, the mistakes were kind of distracting!) 

Something that was more interesting (as in, well, that's odd) than interesting (as in, ooooh, that's catching my interest) was the set up of our room. I haven't quite figured out why the bathroom had a window that looked out into the bedroom, but perhaps I don't want to know the reason. Don't get me wrong it's frosted up to normal human shoulder height (so up to the level of my nose) and there is a blind over it, but the design flaw to that is that the pully for the blind is on the OUTSIDE! It's rather peculiar, but as long as you are sharing with someone you trust or don't mind seeing you in the shower, it's not too odd I guess.

I can't decide if the best part was that I got to spend so much time with Ben (sorry, I know that's cheesy :P) or the fact that he ordered breakfast in bed for us on our last morning there. Drinking Hungarian fizzy wine and having dippy eggs and pancakes was a pretty special way to start our last day out there, and shopping was obviously the best way to end it. 

Something to keep in mind is, if you go to the same shops we have over here, the pricing is going to be the same, but it doesn't require going off of the beaten track in order to find something local and a lot cheaper. I was really surprised by the relatively low cost of food, and even cheaper cost of alcohol, though I wouldn't have been quite so surprised if there were the same amount of stag parties on the plane out there as the plane coming home. The fact that you can get a shot of Jaeger, or Unicum for as little as 290Ft (about 80p) in bars on the main street makes it pretty attractive for such events. 

If you want to take a look at some of the photos, you'll have to check out my Instagram or Facebook. :) 

Originally,

This blog was going to be me complaining about something which actually has a meaning, but I've just taken attempt number two at doing an Asda shop and not being upset by all the things that I can't have, so let's go with something less meaningful, but getting more of my emotional response at the moment. 

I'm used to being slightly considerate of what I eat because of things that can be unexpectedly not vegetarian, but because of the way my stomach is behaving with diary at the moment - as a clarification, eggs are not dairy - I'm having to check the packets of everything to make sure there's no milk or cheese or cream in anything, because otherwise it will make me feel sick for hours. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to eat!!

Even the salad dressing I was looking at on Asda's website apparently contains milk, which is just ridiculous! Cheese makes up half of my diet, when I feel like crap I drink a glass of milk, so this is just insanity. It has essentially dropped my diet on it's head and I have massive cravings for crisps and chocolate all the time. 

Add to this the fact that my favourite sweets are apparently no longer being manufactured and I'm sure that it's just to torture my sweet tooth. 

Ah well, wine and bon bons it is.

After The Party,

or rather the realisation. 

So, it happens quite a lot that I have these big realisations about novels or characters and I tend to get really excited about them and have all this energy - it's like I'm running around going YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
at the top of my lungs for a day, but then the next day starts and it seems I have been drained of all enthusiasm and motivation. It's king of tough to think about having another uphill slog after you thought that you were done with the uphill slog of one novel, and that is how it can feel sometimes. 

Whilst I am happy to be able to get back to writing about two of my favourite characters, there is more to it than just that, isn't there? And I'm good at anticipating all the rubbish that comes after. 

Let's face it - if I write a new piece to the novel, I have to find a place to put it. I then need to give it a full read through in order to make sure it makes sense, I then have to edit it and format it -- Then and only then will it actually be finished. -.-

I'm beginning to wonder myself if that will ever happen.