Why I Haven't Been Updating

I feel like an explanation of what's been keeping me away from blogging is in order.

One number, two words: 7,500. Word. Dissertation.

In case you're wondering what that looks like, my final page count is 32. This number includes, a title page an index page and a two page Bibliography.

Yes, I made this in Paint using Copy and Paste.
I'm talented.

Mine was simply called "Parliamentary Communication in the 21st Century." I would post it online for any of you at all interested in reading any of this, if I wasn't scared someone would steal it and I would get in a lot of academic trouble. Being a Journalism and Political Science major though, it should be fairly obvious what my paper discussed.

Combine this with a Presentation on this paper, another 3,000 word paper, one British Politics written Final, one Diversity in the British Workplace Final, another presentation and one American Foreign Policy Final, I've been more than stressed for the past few weeks. Especially because most of those were intermixed with my last two weeks of work.

Anywho, now my classes are done and I am left with four completely free days in London to do whatever my heart desires.

But no, I will not be only blogging. Just blogging more often.

Because I Had to Attend Some Protests

There were two moments this semester where I wanted to be back in the United States. The first was when Gabrielle Giffords was shot, and I suddenly longed for fast-paced American television coverage again. The second was when protesters surrounded the Wisconsin Capitol building for weeks to argue against Governor Scott Walker's Budget Bill which ended collective bargaining rights.

So partly just for missing out on those protests, I had to attend the protests going on here in London at the end of March. Depending on which estimates you followed, turnout throughout the day ranged from 500,000 to 800,000 people. Either way, they were the biggest protests in London since the one in 2003 against the Iraq War which drew about 500,000 people.

Similar to the movements back in Wisconsin, the protests were predominantly organized by a union: the Trades Union Congress. However, the protest drew crowds of people protesting any and all of the Government's multitude of cuts to public services, particularly the NHS, education and disability allowances.

The protests also became the biggest example to me of just how more biased the media in Britain is than in the States. Tweets throughout the day either called the protesters "violent anarchists" or simply focused on the high turnout and Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband's speech in Hyde Park.

The Guardian wrote, "Vast majority were ordinary people wanting to make voice heard, but small group of rioters seemed bent on trouble."

Covering the same protests, The Telegraph used the headline "the militants behind the violence" and wrote, "a ragtag army of anarchists, squatters, student militants, environmental activists and radical academics planned the spin-off protests that led to violence during Saturday's march against cuts."

Twitter was fun that Saturday.

Given, there was some violence. A group of protesters broke into a building and pretty much held it hostage for a few hours. Others broke the window of a Topshop and splattered paint on some police officers. This is ridiculously unfortunate, mostly because police officers are also facing job losses and changes to their retirement benefits. Other than that, they blocked traffic. Which is what happens when about 500,000 people protest...




I learned afterward that there was also some damage to the Ritz hotel. I didn't go past this side of the building unfortunately though.

Looks fine, doesn't it?




Police officers keeping a watch over the crowd.

The march ended in Hyde Park,
and a bunch of people crowded
this statue of Achilles.

And now for some of the best signs:

I think this is proof that Britons and Europeans have different views towards socialism than Americans.

I think it's also noteworthy to say that protests attract a variety of more "extreme" views. Did I see a sign supporting communism? Yes. Do I think the majority of protesters were arguing for communism? No.



In case this one is difficult to read, it says: "No American style Health Care here."

...Oops. Sorry GB.





Here's a short video I was able to grab of the protests. Sorry for any poor quality... I tried.


Below: That's a picture of Samantha Cameron. Humour prevails.

Of Sun and Disasters

For the past few days, it has been obvious around London-town that Spring is on the way. In a city that spends the majority of the year overcast, people definitely celebrate when the sun is shining. Everyone you meet seems more cheerful and even tourists bouncing around the Tube seem more excited by historic London.

Which is why, when the sun came out (finally) for a Saturday afternoon, I decided not to waste the opportunity and visit Hyde Park. It's a short journey from my house and the views of the park are absolutely amazing. People were going out on the lake on paddle-boats, roller blading, walking with their dogs, biking and just out enjoying the sunshine. I even saw two people on horses.

It's absolutely beautiful, and some flowers were already in bloom. It's been a balmy 50 degrees Fahrenheit in London lately, which I think many Londoners may consider still fairly cold but I consider spring. (One London lesson I've realized, though, is that the English seem to have a huge appreciation for the green space in their country and cities. I suspect this is because the English people haven't always had open space to enjoy, whereas Americans have had thousands of acres of land to do where they can do whatever the want.)

I would love to see this in the summer, although it may also be completely swamped with people through June, July and August.

Still. Beautiful.


So that was my outing for the weekend. Schoolwork has been taking over my life as of late, but I will try to share as much as I can when I can.

In other news, there was obviously a huge earthquake in Japan on Friday. And there's nothing like this headline at the end of the day to put your life in perspective:

This has shocked me. At first because of the best friend I have studying in Japan and the family of another best friend who lives in Japan. Luckily, they were both fine. Then, I was shocked because of the extent of the damage Japan has seen over the last few days. So best of luck to everyone still in Japan! Stay safe and best wishes!

Why The World Needs Apparition

There are too many different and important things going on in two of my favorite cities. All I want is to be able to go to work, and then apparate back to Madison to watch the rallies at Capitol Square.

Seriously, there are no words for how much this story makes me want to be back in Madison. Governor Walker dictatorially deciding to scrap collective bargaining rights for state and local employees? A) Ridiculous. B) Please. I should be there. Either to cover it or to participate. (Are any of you lovely people participating? What do you think of the protests?)

I was surprised by the video on that article and excited. When was the last time students protested at the Capitol against something?

I'm not sure how I feel about all the Facebook events though. It's great to see word spread about these kind of 'movements' on Facebook and to see people enthusiastic about them online. But are people actually doing it?

Anyway, I would love to see how all this stuff is going down in Madison. Which is Reason #1 why we need apparition.

Reason #2 is because the sun was shining and the birds were singing in London today, and you all should have been there. I also saw the inside of a BBC studio and the Thames through the window of a Parliamentary Committee room. So that was exciting.

Now back to real homework. Oh yeah, it's still studying abroad, isn't it? Fantastic.

A Not So Touristy Weekend

This weekend, we decided to do some more creative things with our time. We've lived in London for a month now, so the tourist traps start to look like traps. And we start to get annoyed when "new" people crowd the Tube and don't know where they're going.

So we started Saturday afternoon off by exploring a Vintage store. Apparently this is a traveling Vintage event too, which we thought was worth checking out.

Surprisingly, some of the stuff was fairly expensive. Half of the clothes were real vintage - 60s, 70s, or 80s style - which I would need to be more creative to find a way to wear it. Or it was really cute clothes that were the same price as the nearest Primark or Topshop, two of the cheaper and decent stores in London.

The area also came complete with a bowling alley, a pub, and a small cafe, with racks of clothes stacked on the floor above and around these extra downstairs pit stops.

A signature purchase: I invested in a nice change purse. The frequent use of British coins, rather than 'notes', was literally making my clutch burst at the seams. The change purse is way more functional for Europe.

On Sunday, we celebrated the Chinese New Year in Trafalgar Square and Chinatown, where streets were closed off and decorated.

It was pretty cool. Trafalgar Square was packed. So then the lesson of the day became that the distance from one historic place to another is not as far as it seems on the Tube. I walked from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly Circus to Chinatown in about 15 minutes.

When you're on the Tube, the distance you travel between those points feels a lot longer.

Anyway, Chinese New Year turned out to be pretty cool, despite the lack of free food that some people thought would be there. Really, there were a ton of booths set up selling Chinese New Year trinkets and noisemakers, the streets were decorated, and there were some stages set up with entertainment. The only entertainment I actually saw was Kung Fu Panda.

That was exciting.

Then... we once again digressed in to more tourist stuff.

Introducing: The Natural History Museum.

This museum is part of a series of museums in South Kensington, about a 20 minute journey from my flat in Earl's Court. The building is absolutely breathtaking.

The best part of the actual museum was probably the dinosaur fossils on the first floor. The one on the left was pretty cool. There's also some galleries on the floor above, so you could look down over this dinosaur almost anywhere you go in the museum. After about an hour though, we felt like we had seen the best parts of the museum and decided to head out.

Except we ended up going the wrong way on a bus and ended up in Harrod's.

I've never walked through Harrod's before.

Looking at the building in and of itself is kind of stunning.

Going inside and glancing at some of the price tags is literally jaw-dropping.

Totally worth a step inside though, even if you're only walking through it to take advantage of the heat before reaching the Tube station, like we did.



In other news this past Sunday, my neighborhood was fairly excited about the Chelsea v. Liverpool match. [That's an understatement, folks.] It was a big deal because Chelsea had just signed a previous Liverpool player, Fernando Tores, in a record-breaking 50 million pound deal.

And Chelsea still lost 0-1 against Liverpool.

There were some pretty depressed people in blue and white walking around Earl's Court that night. So that topped any thoughts I had about the Super Bowl for awhile.

Phew. It was a busy, but incredible weekend. Note to self: busy weekends are better on so many levels.

In the News

The Super Bowl was yesterday! Usually I just watch the Super Bowl every year to see the awesome advertisements. I seriously mute the TV during the game, and watch the commercials. It's fun. Unfortunately I've had to check out all the $3 million dollar ads on YouTube this year. Still, seeing this was one of the best parts of the morning after coverage:


I've watched this three times today. Once at work without the sound on.

I did stay up to watch the game a little bit. Mostly because, instead of ads, BBC had some random commentators talking about the game. We're pretty sure one of them didn't even know what a receiver was.

Quality.

I can't disclose who I rooted for though, because my Dad will disown me if I rooted for the Packers, and I'm pretty sure I'd lose half my friends if I rooted for the Steelers.

Anyway, you Wisconsin folks will be glad to know you got a full page in the London Evening Standard. Except it was mostly about Christina Aguilera messing up the national anthem, the Black Eyed Peas, and a shot of George Bush. Instead, the game was reduced, not to a sentence, but a clause:

Former president George Bush, and film stars Jennifer Aniston, Michael Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones were in the crowd in Texas to watch the Green bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25.

That's it. Well, and this bit about Aaron Rodgers at the bottom of the Sport section.

So what's happening in British news?

-Chelsea lost against Liverpool in their first game after the 50 million pound deal to sign Tores, who played for Liverpool previously. That was kind of a big deal. I was slightly and irrationally a little worried about walking outside after the game... I also still want a Chelsea scarf.

-Assange's trial. In the standard, there's a big headline that his extradition "will risk him being sent to Guantanamo" and his lawyer said, "there is a real risk that he could be subject to the death penalty." There's a more in-depth article on BBC.

And since it's only Monday, I'll leave any more news for later.

In the News

Sometimes I feel like half of my job is essentially keeping up with the news. Which is fantastic, because that's what I do in the good ol' States anyway. Now, I just need to keep up with British news, start to recognize names and Committees I've never heard of before and be able to write about all of it.

So here are some of the news items that seem to be continually popping up on my computer at work. And yes, most of them have the word "cuts" in the headline...

EMA Cuts
I mentioned this topic a bit in my post about student protests, but it deserves a little more recognition. The Coalition government basically decided to cut the Educational Maintenance Allowances, which help certain students pay for their educational expenses.

Scrapping this plan set off more student protests, and basically every Labour MP endlessly criticized the government for changing the British institution of accessible higher education.

Go England, Go.




Forestry Commission Woodlands Sell-Off
Yes, this seems random. Yes, I have spent a good deal of time researching it. It turns out that while the United States is full of random forests and field, Great Britain is the size of the state of New York. So when the government plans to take 15% of public forests and woodlands and sell them to private owners, people get slightly upset. Especially when millions of people go to the English countryside for recreation and whatnot...

But having the ability to to make 100 million pounds by selling publicly owned forests: priceless to a coalition government pledging to stimulate the economy by cutting the deficit.


NHS "Reforms"
To the average American citizen, the UK's National Health Service probably seems like one of those outrageous European health care systems. The UK has actually had the NHS since after World War Two, when the overwhelming majority Labour government adopted the system in 1948 as a wartime and emergency health service. NHS is now a publicly funded health care system, a valued institution in the UK and the only still-standing achievement of the Labour government majority following World War Two. It never actually was supposed to grow as large as it is today, but from what I have heard the British still view it as one of their idyllic institutions.

The NHS came under scrutiny two weeks ago, however, when Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to drastically cut the NHS budget in favor of reducing the deficit. Scrapping the NHS would be one of the biggest cuts in the UK government since the infamous Margaret Thatcher.

Deja vu, right?


In other news circulating Portcullis House... which I unfortunately don't have the time or space to discuss thoroughly enough... ahem...

-The protests in Egypt. Cameron and Obama discussed the Egyptian protests. The House of Commons also held a debate today on them. This is going to be a huge international issue.

-AV filibustering was still occurring as of yesterday... Today the Labour peers finally reached a deal in the vote though.

-And Ed Miliband, the Labour Party leader, is a square.
To fully understand how the British public perceives Ed Milliband, check out Awkward Ed Miliband Moments.
And now you know everything.

British Filibustering

There's an electoral reform referendum circling through Parliament at the moment, with the final vote currently set to occur on May 2nd. The referendum would change the current first-past-the-post electoral system, where simply the candidate with the most votes is elected. The problem with this system in the UK is that many of the MPs didn't receive more than 50% of the votes.




Instead, the AV system the referendum would put in place would allow voters to rank the candidates based on preference. If there still isn't a clear winner, they would take the voters' second preferences into account until a candidate receives more than 50% of the votes.





But today, the House of Lords members (aka, peers) are basically filibustering the bill, except the press doesn't call it that. So as I read the London Evening Standard, the paper they distribute at the Underground, I stumbled upon the article about their "tactics."

It's the best thing ever.

The lead reads: "Labour peers were accused of 'behaving like dinosaurs' today by forcing the House of Lords to debate plans to reform the voting system through the night."

Priceless.

The article goes on to say MPs were sleeping in their offices or staying up all night trying to delay the bill.

"Labour lords were unrepentant, joking over bacon and eggs this morning about winning medals for endurance and warning of more of the same.
Debate on the ninth day of committee stage was still going strong as the Standard went to press, having begun at 3.48pm yesterday.
It was fractious and bizarre in equal measure, with accusations of abuses of parliamentary procedure combined with time-consuming discussion on arcane subjects such as the UK's last living cannibal."

...What?

The article says Labour is trying to delay the bill because it also reduces the number of MPs and redraws constituency boundaries (...gerrymandering?)

"Camp beds and sheets were laid on by Lords authorities, and tea and coffee provided through the night "so peers don't expire" as one source put it.
...
But Baroness Warsi said the filibustering would turn people off politics. "You can laugh at the scenario and spirits are high but the serious part of it is this is a weird way to pass legislation. It is an abuse of the process."