The 2010 election is exciting for everyone with the 3 main parties all fighting to become the government and run the country in a better way than the others so they think. To be honest i think it will be the highest turn out ever for an election because of all the problems that have been happening with crime, the economy and the wars people will want to vote for either change or to stay the same either way loads of people will vote.

The age group of 18-25 is properly the least informed and least caring of all people who are going to vote and that’s even if people between these ages vote. For me I believe this is the least caring and informed group among the country because either they don’t actually care at the moment or they haven’t been informed. Knowing everything about politics or the 3 different parties is very difficult as there is a lot to know and think about and unless you spend time looking it up for yourself or you study politics you don’t know. I know a small amount about politics but not enough to vote no one has informed me but only pushed their opinions on me which I don’t care about and tell me to vote for the party they support. The only other information I have got is when these politicians send you a leaflet through the post with their overpaid face on it and say vote for me I do good or I will do better than the other overpaid guy. It’s sort of like begging for your vote so they are still able to claim for their 2nd home and then have a nice garden and have their house coated in gold with their family member being paid a ridiculous amount to watch blue movies. In fact one of the things I know is that they have more holidays than everyone, get paid a lot, don’t have to go to parliament a lot and now we are controlled by Europe they don’t even make our laws anymore so why do we need them or vote for them.

The people who aren’t planning to vote these elections i really don’t blame them at all they are properly just fed up with the country and everything that has happened. They might just be one of the people who believe no matter who is in charge nothing will change at the moment because of the problems. Other reason could be that although Labour have made all these problems with their laws if another party comes in and cleans all that up with that they will make their own laws and changes will just bring along another set of problems that are different. People who don’t care no more are people who have lost faith in the country and don’t care because we aren’t going to be listened to and nothing will change because of them. This was what i think was like in America but then Barack Obama come along and has changed the views of people and made people believe and have faith once again. Problem here is we either have Gordon brown who really cannot do anything right, David Cameron a rich guy which is just saying we will do better than labour yay!! (not) or some guy who don’t actually know about!.


http://www.alovelyworld.com/webgb/gimage/gb26.jpg

Then there are the people are just too lazy to vote who can’t be bothered to go to the polling station and make their opinion not count once again. These people are just stupid as going to make your vote doesn’t take a lot of time and effort so it’s worth doing it just so you can say and think you voted in your countries election.
The main concerns i have which affect my vote will be the war in Afghanistan and the problems with the NHS. With the NHS i think it has gone completely downhill and more concerned about making the service as efficient as possible moneywise rather than the concern of people’s health and wellbeing. Despite record amounts of money being spent on the NHS and spending growing every year it still seems things are getting worse like the conditions in hospitals, standards of employees like doctors and nurses. There are too many targets on money in the hospitals rather than on the patients and how many are cured and recovered meaning number 1 in the hospital is money saving. We need to get away from targets in the NHS and concentrate on the welfare of people rather than trying to save money when the money coming in is actually increasing.

Another major issue affecting my vote will be the decisions made on the Afghanistan war and the defence budget for the war as well. There is no way we can leave their without finishing the job as it would cause more damage to our country by doing this but we need to make sure that each soldier is equipped to do the job they are doing. As well as making more helicopters available for the troops to use and getting rid of all these rules in the camps which bring down morale like refusing to pay for the post they get sent to get to Afghanistan (not sure if that is still true or not now). To win this war is vital for national security and we should be supporting our troops in the country so whoever is more committed to supporting our troops and making national security secure.

blog prompt 6 and 7

A couple of the things which make the world go round and lets people live and do the things they want to do this present day is resources, money and transport. In an ideal world we would have unlimited resources to use and money wouldn’t be a problem for countries or people and transport would be very cheap, easy, quick and sustainable. Unfortunately these are all the problems that the world and the countries and people are facing at the moment because of the way we live and have developed. There would be a debate of whether there is a transport problem or not either way we would still have to change the transport system and what we use to run it.


http://www.obsidianlaunch.com/TPEntrepreneur/graphics/oil.jpg

My views on the transport system is that it works and it carries people in a decent time and gets them there safely with transport in the country taking you to most destinations you can think of in the UK. There is only a transport problem in the country at the moment if you think there is a problem but if you don’t think there is a problem then to you there isn’t one. I think there is only one problem with transport and that is what fuel we are using to run the transport system as that is the only part which isn’t sustainable. If i was going to be a bit picky i would also say that sometimes transport isn’t very reliable such as virgin trains never run on time and are usually cancelled. Transport by cars is exactly the same as other transport that it needs to run on fuel which is sustainable to the world so we are able to keep running automobiles because without petrol cars would be obsolete. It would also affect everything to do with goods i.e. getting the raw material transporting it and then making it into a product and transporting it that whole process would not work and break down. So you have to look at the way we rely on travel to provide us with everything and wonder how much longer we can keep this up and how much oil is left to fund our need.
the benefits of motorized transport allow us to live like we do today, do the things we want to do today like go on holiday buy goods that weren’t always available go places we could never go before. But with all these benefits of motorized transport there are also going to be costs we would need to make such as using resources which we know aren’t renewable at a ridiculous rate. So what are the costs of motorized transport here are some I thought of
• Major use and reliance on fossil fuels
• Use of resources to make motorized vehicles
• Congestion
• Accidents that are caused
• Reliance
• Carbon dioxide emissions (don’t believe it but thought I’d put it in)
All these are problems just transport brings on its own without acknowledging the people who drive these motorized vehicles and all the things they do which affect other thing as well.
This calls out the need for a sustainable fuel which we will be able to use over and over again without it ever depleting one bit and wouldn’t give off emissions but then again i might as well wish for £1m pounds to be in my bed when I wake up. Some people believe that we have faced all problems by developing and using technology to solve problems but that was when the world didn’t matter so we did what we want. With this problem we are trying to find a sustainable fuel which doesn’t affect anything and can use over and over again. This is the only problem which needs to be addressed in motorized vehicles right now all other problems can wait and will have to wait other it will be too late. To address the other problems we need to have fuel if we address say congestion and everybody can drive freely without too much congestion what happens when we have no fuel to drive freely without any congestion. There have been some advances with cars with Toyota having a car which runs using a hydrogen fuel cell which is emission free and hydrogen can be reproduced easily although not sure about the price. Then there is also electric cars which are being made available in England and not those silly G-whizz cars but proper cars but with an electric engine.



http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2007/12/g-whizz-car_415x275.jpg

What motorized transport has allowed us to do is everything we wanted to be able to do and now we have done it we have properly thought we could have done it better. We rely such much on motorized transport that if we were to lose it no one would survive, no one would know what to do or even how to do it. The only and one way I think we can still have our motorised transport is with a sustainable fuel it will let us carry on living the way we are but without the use of fossil fuels and loads of pollution. Tackling this one problem will allow us to address the other issues without the worry of fuel or pollution.

blog prompt 5 christmas time!!

Christmas is a time to relax, enjoy yourself, see family and for many people in the UK and other parts of the world to have a well deserved day off work. It is a big event in the Christian calendar and is well celebrated so with these celebration also means unsustainable use of basically everything. There isn’t another day which is as big as Christmas where presents are received and given, more food is consumed and bought than usual and when people are generally happy and not moaning about things for once. For it or any other festival which religions celebrate to be called unsustainable is correct and is understood but most people properly just don’t care at this time. There isn’t going to be another time of year you can do this it’s a one off each year so people should have the right to be unsustainable eat too much, use to much packaging and waste stuff. The only people who would moan about these events using too much packaging and excess food and other bits would be the eco-hippies/warriors who don’t take a day’s break from annoying ordinary people. My opinion is that everybody knows, no one cares, I don’t care it’s once a year for each religion they should let people just get on with it each year and not say nothing. But as soon as it’s over people can’t carry on living that unsustainable which I think people should realise. We live in the 21st century where celebration of religious festivals is only celebrated by the real religious people but it’s usually just a time of year to get presents eat too much and get drunk possibly. Most kids these days might not even know about the history of Christmas and why people celebrate it they might not even know who Jesus even is in extreme cases.

http://i-love-cartoons.com/snags/clipart/christmas/peanuts/Christmas-Snoopy-Lights-Tree.jpg

Christmas at this very moment in time isn’t sustainable and hasn’t been for decades ever since it was turned from a religious celebration into a commercial event for companies to make money. Santa Claus originally wore green clothing until Coca Cola stepped in and changed it into red for Cola and made the famous commercial I think everyone knows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogetBqMgau0 (January 2010)

Any person who thinks about their Christmas celebration will think back and whether they were sustainable will be the last thing that pops into most people’s heads that is because it isn’t a worry on these days. I have never thought about whether Christmas was sustainable or not until I have been given this blog to write about it. It has never crossed my mind that thought about it because I was bought up in the commercial Christmas and not when it actually meant something I suppose. A sustainable Christmas would be an even more expensive Christmas than usual which nobody wants as it a lot of money anyways but that brings the question if you’re not religious why would you celebrate it? But it’s because of the point I’ve made that Christmas is not religious no more nor is it sustainable and it isn’t going to change in the near future as the world and companies revolve around money and Christmas is a major money spinner!

There are two ways in which Christmas would work in a changed world and that is either only the truly religious people celebrate it or you make an attempt to make it sustainable and make people change how they celebrate it. If only truly religious people celebrated it then it would cut down on a lot of people celebrating it meaning a lot less would be wasted and sold etc but this would mean damaging to the economy and to businesses. This would also mean that it would also still be unfair to just let religious people get extra days off work and people who aren’t get less days off so you would have to make it fair and equal in that way as well. The 2nd way would be to try and convince or make people be more sustainable would properly be a lot harder than the first way. To make people be sustainable this time of year is a bit like to fly using a fridge and a fridge magnet it’s never going to happen unless there is a miracle. Going back to the point made earlier that this is the only time of year where people relax be a bit more unsustainable than usual and get away from work life and get to see family friends. It is generally just a nice good day for people and there’s not many like that in England and many other places in the world. So I do think the “do-gooders” should just leave it alone and relax a bit it’s not like this is happening 24/7, 365 days a year it’s just once for each religion and I think they should respect the fact it is religious even if most people who celebrate it aren’t actually religious.

First of all I would like to ask who do you think will win the X-factor this year? Or even who did you want to win the show? It’s a very important issue at the moment I think.

It isn’t of any surprise to me that there is only one broadsheet newspaper which is in the top 5 selling newspapers in the country. Newspapers like the guardian and the telegraph isn’t really a newspaper which everybody can read and is more towards a certain class i.e. the middle class and its unlikely your see an average person like a builder reading a paper like that. That is why The Sun is the best selling newspaper because its audience is the normal everyday person basically what is known as a commoner and outstrips the middle class by far. The broadsheet papers do cover the serious issues going on the world there will certainly be an article about it somewhere in the paper. But depending on the issue and how important they view it will be where it is put in the paper and amount of coverage it gets. As an avid reader of the sun I’ve seen what I think could be seen as important issues in a little column article whilst in other newspapers it’s been front page or at least given page coverage. But the way they set out the newspaper and amount of coverage they put in is because of what audience reads their newspaper and all paper will differ in that way.

I don’t pick up a newspaper and read it because it is full of stuff I don’t want to read or hear about I pick it up and read it because it’s the paper which gives me the stories which are interesting or worth reading. Reading The sun gives me the all the information about the important issues which I want to know about and if I don’t want to hear about it I will skip but it also gives me the other bits of news I would rather hear and finds better to read. Of course they need to cover the serious issues because it’s also a shock thing seeing it so people will pick it up and buy it to read about this serious issue. But everyone knows that depending on the views on the paper some information might not be said and it will be very biased towards what the owner of the paper thinks. To be honest I want to know about the big issues in the paper and find them interesting and its good knowing what is happening in the world around you. But I don’t want to sit there all day reading about doom and gloom not something which makes me happy that’s why I would like to be informed but also know weird funny news like a cat doing a pull up.





In a newspapers role though is to inform and let people know about the serious issues in the world because that is one of the main reasons they are about. I think it is a newspapers duty to let people know about all events going on all around the world especially as people who come here from foreign countries will want to know any news about their home country. If their role wasn’t to inform people about events or news about serious issues would there even be a point of newspapers? It’s even in their name. Although they can choose not to inform people about serious issues they mostly pick and choose which events to cover more or to put in mostly depending on what they think will sell more. I do think it is their role to do so but they will only think in terms of what will carry on selling papers. There might be a serious issue in somewhere not very well covered in the world which the paper might not view worth covering but the people might want to know about it or vice versa.

But this is then influenced by the owner and what the people will read and want to read so there has to be a balance and a sort of mutual agreement. But someone who has read the Sun for a long time isn’t just going to go that’s it I am switching over to The Telegraph it’s very unlikely to happen. This is because mainly the paper people read reflects their beliefs and what they think is right and wrong but it also influences their views as well. Such as recently I know the sun recently has stop supporting labour and has started to support David Cameron and the Conservatives and I pretty much guarantee that most of the readers have read this and have done the same thing. This is because of their role to inform people of the news in the way they view it and what they believe in a way which is very powerful and influential and people these days are like sheep they follow.

In my opinion I do believe that these shows do have a lot of influence in the country and that have a lot of power in the fields that they are in. Such as X-factor highest rating show in England people are obsessed with it and can never miss an episode of it and any person that now wins it is guaranteed to have a number hit at the Christmas time. Simon Cowell creator of the show is a very powerful man in the music industry because he knows exactly what he is doing and can create entertainment and hype about people which makes money. He is properly the only person in the country that could make" Jedward" stars in the UK as they are terrible performers but funny as hell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnyAUXx40tU

The other high rating shows is Coronation street on ITV which I cannot watch and don’t find it interesting or entertaining at all. But this show doesn’t have influence on the media or on the world you never hear in the news someone has copied something bad or good in Coronation Street in the news. Even if someone did decide to copy something or get influenced by the show it would be to sit at home and watch TV with a cuppa or to sit in the pub and chat and the last time I checked that isn’t a bad thing at all.





Most TV shows which actually have power and influence things in this country is normally actually in a positive manner. How many kids do you think watch the X-factor or Britain’s Got Talent and aspire to use their talent for something good or entertaining or to become a famous singer or dancer? So these sorts of shows should be given power and influence because it gets young people into good things and not into crime and gangs and stuff like that. Take away that influence they have people might just play Grand Theft Auto much more and decide to go on a killing rampage because they think its fun. So although I think these shows are very powerful and influential it is good because of the way they use it for positive stuff and not negative stuff.



With newspapers I think they do have influence in both a positive and negative way and they choose to use it to their advantage. Newspapers have views which they reflect onto other people in a way which changes their views to what they want people to believe which I think gives them no freedom to think for themselves. But it also their fault for following this influence and not ignoring it and having a mind of their own in a way. They are also very powerful in another way because their readers tend to have the same views if both the paper and readers don’t believe in something and want to change it they can sometimes have the power to change this. Especially in politics if people don’t agree with a decision and neither does the paper sometimes a petition will be made and the bigger it gets and more aware people become of it the more it puts pressure on political figures in this case. I know the sun have done quite a few of these in the last few years which have made people change their decision or even give tougher sentences to people.

The way that news tabloids have got this power and influence on some decisions is because of the way people have felt they have been treated and don’t feel like they have a voice. So to encourage people to come together basically makes it into one big voice which then people cannot ignore no more so the more people get disgruntled and make a issue out of something to more people cannot ignore it. Besides we are the people paying tax and make the economy keep going and so people don’t want to be ignored even if they are giving news tabloids their power which increases their power and influence. So although I agree they are given too much power they mostly use it for positive influence and in ways that people want to and if people were happy and not fed up of not being listened to or ignored them maybe these parties wouldn’t have as much power and influence as they have now.

Leave on a lighter note that I think Stacey should win X-factor as I think she deserves it more than the other people in the competition.

3rd geography blog

One of the central themes underpinning sustainable development is equality and fairness. This is reflected in the concept of 'empowered citizenship'- in that we can all make a contribution to making our community (our local area, our region, our country, our planet) a better place now and in the future.

Some important areas are quite difficult to understand. Science, economics, politics are often quite difficult to comprehend and yet are central to decisions that are made by others about our lives.


To what extent do you think that it is your duty as a citizen to be 'informed'? Are you informed? How do you get to be informed about serious issues? To what extent do you think that you should leave the complicated decisions up to others ?

One part of making development sustainable is by speaking to people and getting their opinions and what they would recommend in order to make it sustainable. Say if you are planning a development in an area which is rural or in a small village in Africa and you want to make it sustainable you will need to inform the locals and get their knowledge on the area and skills in order to make it successful. Without informing these people of your intentions and what you want to do you could make the development a disaster and could make the environment and quality of life worse. In the 21st century I think everyone should have a voice and say in decisions involving their country and even more in what is happening in their local area or community. Without a voice to be heard people are basically robots being told what to do and not having a choice or say in anything which affects their lives.

Even though some of the decisions that need to be made can be hard to make and people may not have a clue at all about the decision or the impacts they should be provided with the information so they can make a decision which has a positive impact. Although this doesn’t occur in some countries in the world as they are a communist state and don’t have no say in the matter and I see these people as robots. Even though in recent years America has decided some of these countries need to be like America and have attempted to change them either through political ways or by war. Typical America really thinking they are the best thing since sliced bread!.

In England where I have lived all my life I do think that as a citizen of the country who has lived here all my life I do think that I should be informed about events and decisions which affect the country and local area as I am living there. Although I don’t think that people who have lived here for under 5 years should have a voice in our country as they have only been here for a limited time and I don’t think these people will know what is best for the country or their local area at this point. Saying that I think that I should be informed about everything that goes on in the country there are some issues which I will not find out or be informed about. These are though for very good reasons such as for national security so if MI5 decided to tell everyone the intelligence they had then there would be a major threat to national security.

There are also many political and economic issues which we should be informed about such as what is going on around the world which involves our country and economically. I think that everyone would like to be informed that England are now in a record high debt as it is just nice to know that we are completely f**ked for generations to come. Some exceptions apply here though that there are some things which we can’t be informed of for reasons of security or it makes the current government look bad. So when lets say a council is planning to improve the local area and are going to invest in money the area they should look towards the community to let them know what need or want to improve the area. Although if they wanted to make the development or improvement sustainable citizens might not be the best people to speak to as you would need someone qualified to tell and show you how to do something like that. But I still think that people should be involved in the decisions though sometimes you need professionals or qualified people to either guide people and make the right decision for the area and environment.



I would say that I am a fairly informed people about events going on in the country, county and town that I live in. this is because I regularly look at www.bbc.co.uk/news which gives me news not only about the country but also the world so it allows me to keep up to date with issues going on. I also read a national newspaper which I find interesting though most people properly don’t and think its crap (you will properly guess what newspaper I am talking about if not then it’s the Sun) and read the local newspaper which gets put through my door at home every week (when I was living at home). These are all ways that I keep informed about issues and other things which are going on in the country and in my local area. I also like to keep informed about my old area which I moved from 3 years ago and I know that there is some interesting development going on there. It has one of the largest regeneration schemes going on there which will create new jobs, houses, 3 schools, high quality open spaces and many other things all for the tidy sum of £4 billion or so they say. This is a major development which is going to be made environmentally sustainable and people have been informed about this going on but they haven’t had a say on the project and has all been done under their noses. There was some opposition to the project for a while one of the main arguments the amount of traffic that will be created in an already congested area. Websites for this development are: http://www.barnet.gov.uk/regeneration-cricklewood and http://www.brentcrosscricklewood.com/.

Being informed about serious issues are usually found out by people and myself from the media as there are many different types media which people use and can be spread to a wide audience very quickly. I find out serious issues mainly from the media from things such as the TV, Radio, Internet and newspapers which are very easy to access that is why it is easy to get informed from these sources. Other ways I have been informed about serious issues is sometimes by the post but this is rarely when people send letters to inform or put leaflets depending on the target audience. As I work for the royal mail (don’t talk to me about the company I know it’s sh*t and I agree!) they have sent me letters in the last few months giving me information on the strike and encouraging me and other employees not to strike so it wouldn’t damage the company. This is a situation where I had a say in the issue and was informed because it was to do with my own job so it was very relevant to me and was the employees choice and idea to use this course of action. I also get told about some issues from my parents who find out stuff which I don’t know or don’t find out first in the news and media which are relevant to the country or local area.

I said that I think that everyone should have a voice in decisions that involve the country or local area they live in because it affects where they live and their life. But I also agree that there has to be exceptions to this as not everyone will know the in’s and out’s of what the decision is being made about and might make a bad decision which will have a negative impact. Such as if you were planning to build houses in a local area and everyone had a say in where they would be built you would need people to know the sites very well and the negatives and positives of each site. So if you had a Brownfield and Greenfield site in order to be sustainable the Brownfield site would be the better bet but would cost more than the Greenfield site so just on hearing that people might pick the Greenfield because of fears of taxes going up in the local area. When the better decision would be on the Brownfield site as it is more sustainable and better for the local environment. So even if you give people a decision on complicated decisions most people will look to just make everything easy and better for themselves which is very selfish rather than look at the wider picture. This is why although everyone should have a voice in complicated decisions sometimes you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and think that sometimes decisions should to a group of professionals or more qualified people. But in some complicated decisions people should be informed and have a say because after all we live in a democracy.

Al gore An Inconvenient Truth!

To what extent do you think this was deserved? Having watched this film in class did you feel that your opinion (or perhaps the opinion of others) to the issue of climate change could be positively influenced? What did you think of this film? Was it effective?


An inconvenient truth?

Al Gore’s movie The Inconvenient truth was his way of trying to show the world how we are destroying the planet and making “global warming” worse. The movie is known worldwide and a success and also meant that Al Gore and the IPCC won the noble peace prize for the year for creating awareness on the subject. The movie led to quite a few awards being awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC as it also won an academy award for documentary feature and even then got released as a book which also won quite a few awards. The reason that the noble peace prize was awarded was because “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are need to counteract such change”.

According to the noble prize website we need to take notice of this movie other wise bad things will happen very soon such as
People fighting just to live
Competition for energy sources
Civil wars and anarchy
Large scale migration
Heavy burden on worlds most vulnerable countries

Al Gore is apparently the single most individual to strengthen the struggle against climate change and creating greater worldwide understanding of the measure which needs to be undertaken and adopted and says “action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control”. For me he is not the single individual to strengthen any struggle in the world especially one against climate change as he just seems to be creating publicity for himself because of a failed presidential career went down the toilet. Winning the noble peace prize for a movie/documentary which is basically a man giving a college lecture in front of random people in countries around the world ( yes flying around the world on a private jet to tell people they are killing the world is not being a hypocrite) is not something I think is deserved at all. There are properly many people and scientists out in the world who have worked decades on trying to make a difference and have never got recognition for what they have done. But because Al Gore is a more high profile figure in the world he gets awarded the award which I think has more to do with profile than anything else take Barack Obama winning the noble peace prize recently despite only being a president for 200 odd days and not doing much either I might add.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/03/20/enviro%2520gore.jpg&imgrefurl=http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2008/03/the_many_sides_of_al_gore.shtml&usg=__y1sJijCbp7HISXID4r0gLku8S0k=&h=1440&w=1124&sz=291&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=fCxhCuNgx2U4IM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=117&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dal%2Bgore%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1


Having watched half the movie which I hated as I do not like Al Gore or anything he says my opinion of climate change has not changed one bit at all and even if my opinion would change it wouldn’t be because of anything that Al Gore said. It would properly influence or make people think if like they didn’t know much about climate change and wanted to give an idea of sort of what is happening in the environment at the moment. Although people watching it who don’t have much of an interest or didn’t know much their opinion is more likely to change because of the fear factor he put in and also because it is a very bias argument. He doesn’t put in two sides of the argument about climate change about what the sceptics think and that’s because of what the movie is about and putting information like that in would ruin the point of the movie so its unfair in that way. Because of all the people who hate Al Gore (like me!!!!) and people who disagreed with the movie and most things it said there are quite a few spoofs and funny pictures of Al Gore on the internet.


http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://robertd.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/gore-doomsday.jpg&imgrefurl=http://robertd.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/sunday-funny-2/&usg=__l0aQ1p9N704PKf9uBvf3uUwZLg8=&h=403&w=525&sz=78&hl=en&start=28&um=1&tbnid=b0JCQNprCbf_3M:&tbnh=101&tbnw=132&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dal%2Bgore%2Bfunny%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18%26um%3D1


There was also a spoof video released on you tube said to be done by an amateur about An Inconvenient truth but later turned out to be produced from a company called DCI. Which weirdly its clients include multi-national oil company Exxonmobile slightly suspicious eh!.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article700813.ece
Here is the video which has produced by DCI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzHN73nQAzk



Watching the movie I can only see the only way people changing their opinions would be through the fear factor which Al Gore tries to get into people. There is no other way people would be positively influenced by someone who is filmed flying around on a private jet to China and all around America to tell people they are killing the earth. My opinion wasn’t positively influenced by this movie it had the opposite effect as far as I am concerned after all these so called scary facts and predictions of what will happen to the earth I was really more concerned of when I will get to stop watching the movie!. It has also been noted that a lot of the scientific facts and information which Al Gore used was from biased scientists or just plain lie with someone finding 35 facts which were completely wrong about the PowerPoint he presented.
http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/35-scientific-errors-or-intentional-lies-in-an-inconvenient-truth/

This to me shows that he purposely made it seem much worse than what it is just to give himself a higher profile and using it to stop being forgotten and keep his terrible career going as politics has failed for him. Al Gore said he should have been the next president of the USA and said if he was elected America would have been a complete different place to how Bush has run the country. I do agree with him in that respect but just because not a lot of people could have done a worse job than Bush in running America. The only thing I question about his political career is that he was a vice president and could have had an influence on Bill Clinton in making the country more green but he didn’t?. so why of a sudden after his political career fails does he now say that he would of made America green and it would be a better place when he already had some sort of influence in how the country was run in the first place. He even called for America to drop all its dependence on carbon based fuels and to turn to green energy within 10 years. He got highly criticised for this as by doing that as people were saying trillions of dollars of infrastructure and industry would be destroyed and America would have to go cold turkey which would cripple the economy. To me this shows that Al Gore doesn’t really have a clue and is just saying stuff which is environmentally friendly for a good reputation when he knows certain things are impossible in certain time frames

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2435841/Al-Gore-calls-for-all-US-energy-to-be-made-renewable-within-10-years.html

The movie wasn’t the best movie I have seen in my life (Finding Nemo and Heat are above it) and was thoroughly boring!!. For me it was more of a college lecture on climate change and then in-between it was a documentary of Al Gore’s life and what he has done. A movie which is meant to be about climate change and what could happen was a bit weird when Al Gore was driving a massive pick up truck was showing people where he crashed when he was 14 and where he used to live with his dad. I mean I really could not care about any of that information if he thought people really cared about his life story so much then maybe he should of just made one of his life. But then I suppose no-one would go watch it and he wouldn’t get the sort of profile he wanted to get. It was also a bit odd how an Apple computer kept on popping up on the screen a lot not what he was doing on the laptop mainly just the company logo of Apple bit strange how that happened hmmmmmmmmm.
Just because I didn’t like the film doesn’t mean that no-one else in the world wouldn’t like it as it was generally well received around the globe with some schools even making it available for education purposes. In that sense it was quite effective as many countries which didn’t take it seriously sat up and listened and have properly tried to do more about climate change than what they were doing. It did raise the profile of the theory global warming and was one of the reasons that the noble peace prize was awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC. Although around places in the world it was very well received in countries and won quite a few awards there was places where it wasn’t received as well. One person who didn’t receive it very well was a man called Richard S. Lindzen who opposed Al Gores movie saying it was a bias presentation that was trying to exploit the fears of the public for his own political gain and wrote an very anti-gore article. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597

Another person who objected against the inconvenient truth was Stuart Dimmock who didn’t want the movie to be released to every secondary school in the UK to be used for education purposes. He argued against the movie saying that he was biased towards one political view point and that he would only allow to movies to be shown if another movie showing the opposite view point was shown and explained as well. He also stated that the movie had 9 major flaws in it and was inaccurate and that’s another reason why the movie shouldn’t be shown in schools. http://www.newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html. Another educational group the National Science Teachers Association also refused 50,000 copies of the tapes saying that it doesn’t give out 3rd party materials to teachers in the association due to an agreement made in 2001. Although they did say they made the tapes available for the teachers to have if they wanted but not many took up this offer http://www.nsta.org/about/pressroom.aspx?id=52977. Some people said the tape was refused because of the links they have with shell oil company as they put money in a fund for prizes for teachers and can have an influence on the association.

In all Al Gores movie was received well by quite a few people but was also badly received by a lot of people as well. A lot of people criticised Gore for potentially making a documentary on global warming but then being unsustainable flying in a private jet with a film crew around the world. Also for his house using a lot more energy than the average American home and using even more after he made environmentally improvements on it. Also it was said to have many errors in the movie and many lies which he made to be much worse than they actually are. But it was well received in some places because he won many awards and won the noble peace prize so it some people must of found it interesting and good for him to win prizes like that. I overall didn’t like the movie thought it was a load of nonsense and I don’t believe in anything Al Gore says and even try’s to say and would rather he gave up and went and sat at home instead of preaching to the people of the world so we can all rest!!!.



http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/Believinginglo128439919139536056.jpg

What actions could you (in theory) undertake that would improve the 'sustainability' of your lifestyle? What might be preventing you from doing these?


There are many actions which I could take which would improve the sustainability of my lifestyle but it depends on whether I am willing to do these actions or am I actually bothered?. Improving the sustainability of my lifestyle would take a lot of time and effort from me to succeed in doing so it wouldn’t’t just be like carrying on normally. There are many different ways how I would go around improving the sustainability some quite simple and other more complicated. In order to try and think how I could make my lifestyle more sustainable I thought that I would need to find out what I do I which is sustainable and where am I wasting products or energy. To find this out over a 7 day period I decided to write down everything I used, wasted, recycled, reused and good deeds I did which will go towards making me more sustainable and helping the environment. I then put this into a table to show what I did use and waste:

From the table I can see that as a person I do waste a lot of packaging and waste a lot of energy just from being lazy and in some cases falling asleep. I do recycle and reuse some items such as bottles, cans, cardboard, paper, water bottles and bags but there are a lot more items which I could recycle or reuse if I could be bothered. Being a bit of an eco-warrior I did encourage other people to recycle their stuff instead of throwing it in the bin (after many threats!!!) which helps out and makes my flat and flatmates more sustainable. But other from those small ways of being sustainable there is not much past their which I have done or in some cases could have done. One way I think that I could be more sustainable as a person is by recycling more of the packaging I use instead of throwing it away into normal bins or look more into the packaging to find out if it is recyclable and also where can I recycle it. This then just cannot just count on me recycling it as a person because if some packaging was recyclable and I wanted to recycle it there would have to be the provision for me to recycle this item. Other ways I could be more sustainable is when I work and buy drinks and food I usually just leave the packaging in the van I am driving instead of putting it in a recycling bin which means it most properly gets thrown in a normal bin. This is just down to me being lazy and just wanting to get out of boring work and go home and sit down and chill :).

www.binworld.co.uk

Another way in which I could improve the sustainability of my lifestyle is to not use electrical appliances such as my TV, Xbox and laptop for prolonged periods of time when I am not doing much. Also not to fall asleep whilst watching TV or even not turning the TV on at all when I go to bed would stop me wasting energy when there is no need to use any at all!!. I also tend to leave my laptop on charge when I go out and when I go to lessons and other things as I don’t think about turning it off it doesn’t occur to me to do this. So if I was trying to make my lifestyle more sustainable I would always check that it was turned off after use or turned off when it doesn’t need to be on. I don’t tend to leave hot water running for long periods of time just every now and again I do sometimes although I shouldn’t be doing this at all and should look to stop this if improving the sustainability of my life.

Apart from these bad points I do something’s which are sustainable and are good to the environment all the time. Such as recycling all paper and magazines I buy during the week especially as I buy a paper every day and a magazine every week so to not recycle them would be like a crime!. Also I do tend to turn off lights for other people when they leave them on and always turning off lights after I left a room and making use of natural light when possible. Other sustainable things I do is not buying water bottles and just reusing them for when I am going to play football or when going to lectures so I don’t waste money as well so helps on two fronts J. I also have bought bags for life from Asda for when I go and do my shopping so I don’t grab loads and loads and loads and loads of plastic carrier bags which don’t get recycled and have 1 or 2 bags which I shove all my shopping in, this also makes my life easier at the same time

http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/media/resources/radiowaves_live/images/story/13431/recycle%20sign_t.jpg

So summarise what I could do as a person as a person to be more sustainable is to recycle more items, waste less energy, don’t make to much food (only on certain occasion’s) which is easier said than done.

It can be hard to make my lifestyle more sustainable because sometimes there will not be the provision to be sustainable and sometimes I will just be lazy and think I can’t be bothered this little bit won’t make a difference anyway. This is one constraint which stops me from doing anything extra which would make my life sustainable by not thinking about doing it and not thinking it will make any difference and not knowing if it can be recycled and not bothering to find out. This is just down to a lack of knowledge of what can be recycled and what cannot be recycled and also just down to me being plain lazy. Being lazy is properly what it mostly comes down to when looking at how sustainable my life is to be honest and not being bothered in some cases.

Other ways which could prevent me from doing this is also the lack of provision provided by the area where I live. Most councils have recycling teams which collect your recycling and then take it away and they also inform you of what bin to put the stuff you can recycle away in. This is all good and helpful but what if there are things which they don’t provide the provision for? What are you meant to do throw it away with normal rubbish or take it to a separate facility where you might have to pay for. If it were me I would throw it away with normal rubbish as I don’t have the time to do separate things like that which I am guessing the majority of the population do as well. As I am living in university halls there are 3 bins in which to put recyclable items into which can be ruined by people putting random rubbish in those bins and the signs on the bins aren’t very clear on what you can and can’t. We haven’t been told of what to do if we have a recyclable item but can’t put it into one of those bins, so in the end gets thrown in the normal bin. There are many other items and things that could be done to give us more knowledge of what we should do, what we can and can’t do but we haven’t been informed about any of this. As far as I can remember we never even got told we have to 100% recycle anything leaving it down to personal preference which means everything will be put in the bin. Its not anyone’s fault in a way because this generation is the one which is most critical in terms of protecting the environment and “global warming” (its in brackets because I don’t believe in it just making a point) but we are programmed to function in a wasteful way and will take a lot in order to make people change!!!!.