On British culture (sometimes)

I'm so fucking sick of hearing about Jade Goody.

I can't express how much I do not want Jade to die of cancer, largely because I don't want anyone to die of cancer, or of anything else. I'm just thoroughly disappointed in Britain (as I usually am these days) for making a role model of this nasty little woman.

She is famous for being famous, rode into celebrity through a reality TV programme (she didn't even win) and milked it for all it was worth, more so than any other individual who appeared on the programme. She was dropped from an anti-bullying campaign because she was a nasty, cliquey, racist bully on the programme. She's Britain's Paris Hilton. She has spent the last 4 years doing everything within her power to keep the attention on her and is worth £4m as a result.

I can actually understand why she'd want to rake in as much money as possible at the moment to support her sons after she's gone, but my point is that amidst all this Jade Goody sudden-praise, everyone forgets that thousands of good people in similar situations die with very little to offer their family, very little to comfort them, without the moral support of about a gazillion celebrities. They don't get wedding tents, they get hospital beds.

I'm even angering myself by wasting time typing about her, but I've just reminded myself of the time when the House of Commons actually took the time to discuss what needed to be done about Jade Goody when she totally shattered UK relations with India with her whole racist fiasco.

So basically, it's not only the media wasting their time talking about this nasty piece of work when there are actual things going on the in the world, it's our government as well.

MORE COMPLAINTS.
Further on the general state of the UK, this morning, the Metro put four tall, leggy girls in kilts, posed all sexy-like on the front of the newspaper, to advertise what? Golf. I took the newspaper and I wrote "Sex Sells... ...Golf" on it and pointed it out to a girl who is in my class. I complained to her that people are actually stupid enough to fall for this anti-feminist rubbish, to which she replied, "Yeah, and they haven't even got nice legs."

Something else which is ridiculous is the proposal to raise the drinking age to 21. Now, apparently this wouldn't affect anyone who is over 18 now, there'd be a rollover type thing, so it wouldn't affect me personally. What I do care about, however, is the idea that it would become criminal for someone who is legally an adult to make their own decision about whether or not to consume alcohol and whether or not they can do so responsibly. I admit Britain has an extremely complex drinking problem, but the idea that those who create the problem are mostly 18-21 is absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who has waited in the taxi queue at Central Station at 3.30am know that that is ridiculous - we all know the amazingly diverse variety of arseholes who make up the UK's irresponsible drinkers. Infantilising and criminalising our youth, in transparent, brown-nosing imitation of North America is basically going to solve fuck-all.

AND, my final complaint of the day. There is another proposal, to include oral and tactile sex to within the definition of sex, thereby criminalising under-16's who have oral/tactile sex, even if they're not having penetrative sex. So, instead of expanding sex education lessons to include actual things (my guidance teacher said, "no one here looks gay so we're not going to do that bit" then put on the A-Z of sex video which showed a boy pretending to give a lick out to an ice cream.), they're just going to ban any kind of sexual contact altogether. Protecting youth is one thing, but this is just another case of infantilising and criminalising young people and is a result of pure societal discomfort. Parents don't want to broach the topic of their teenage offspring being sexual beings, so they just ban everything sexual that they can think of. Sheer discomfort. I suppose next they'll ban condoms, then they'll ban kissing, lest it send out the message that sex is acceptable. Did you know that there was actual OPPOSITION to the HPV immunisation offered to teenage girls a year or so ago, because it might send out the message that sex is acceptable?

Bloody ridiculous culture.