Politics and the media

 Hasn’t the last five years felt like a long time?  In the run up to the December 2019 General Election four and a half years ago, I remember using social media to say “do your own research, and go vote for whatever you believe in”. There was, and still is, some reason in that - youth turnout in politics is still so lamentably low, and it’s partly why we see political change that does nothing to help young people. So do please vote on Thursday. But perhaps I was overly naïve in the run-up to that election, because things are a lot different now. In 2019, I was disenfranchised with the political system, cynical of all politicians looking to support their own political careers. After the wave of Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected result in 2017,  why was it to be too different this time? And would it have had that much of a consequence? The last five years have laid bare everything I could - and maybe should - have learnt before. There are no positive words to describe what Boris J...

It does not take a genius to spot the obvious contradictions in geopolitical narratives of Western governments and media evident over the past few decades. The US' post-9/11 botched "war on terror", that created a generation of instability in the Middle East, has served as the driver for European countries to lament the subsequent influx of migrants and legitimise the xenophobic desires of far-right parties. More recently, the same states have rightfully isolated Russia for their invasion of Ukraine - despite the similarity to their atrocities after 2001. Yet in the past three months, they have managed to brazenly exhibit their hypocrisy to an extent that I, and evidently many others, find astounding. And any long-time readers will know I've been more than happy to highlight duplicity of Western countries on this blog, so that should tell you something about how bizarre recent events feel. Source: UNRWA, via The Wire In response to the militant group Hamas' terror...

In some ways, this blog comes full circle to the very second post I wrote on  here circa six years ago .  That time, in the aftermath of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the blog focused on how names and stories appeal to our emotion more than facts and figures. Boy can I see the difference in writing style - 17 year old Kabir bizarrely quoted Stalin in making the point.  What I grappled with, and have done for a while since, is the unnatural and paradoxically natural emotional response to scales of tragedy. Hundreds of thousands dying is harder to comprehend than ten that are accompanied by names and faces. Yet more people dying is obviously worse globally. Ironically, I forgot the shooting’s details, which in itself encapsulates the point.  These limits of human empathy are (at least to me) fascinating, but they pose some problems in the globalised, interconnected world we now live in. In a world where our media consumption plays such a key role in how we ...

As I sit back in Sheffield procrastinating from a dissertation, it feels a good time to reflect upon the last couple of months. I've been privileged enough to spend much of it in Lobitos, Northern Peru. It is a vastly different place to back home in the UK (I'm not just talking about the weather - though that was a pleasant change), and having the experience to volunteer for a local NGO, EcoSwell, has illuminated a lot of things to me.  In many ways, my time in Lobitos is the closest I've come ( so far? ) to living in a different country - even then six weeks is a drop in the ocean. It is a tendency of holidaymakers to romanticise life abroad because, well, usually you're there on holiday and any break from regular working life is welcome. It is invariably the same for me, as frequently I was surrounded by other Western volunteers, but Lobitos' remoteness made it feel more culturally immersive than other trips abroad. First and foremost, it was striking to see the i...

On one hand, the prospect of an extra bank holiday brings an inescapable sense of pleasure, bringing the 4-day week count in May to three. For once, we’re 60% of the way towards a week structure that better incorporates wellbeing into the drive of economic productivity.  Yet on the other, I cannot escape the nagging question that accompanies the outwardly normal date of Saturday 6th May 2023. People from a myriad of cultures will descend on London, with many more watching on from afar, to celebrate King Charles III’s coronation.   In the most polite, British way possible, sorry, why is this happening?   Cultural heritage goes a long way for lots of people, partly due to its inescapable connection to our identities. Owing to my own multicultural background, I would be one of the first to recognise the day-to-day impact that identity has on our perceptions of the world. Boiled down to its very essence, the British monarchy is a cultural tool that has shaped the identity of ...

I've sat down to draft a blog a few times in the past few weeks, but for various reasons, not returned to them. And yet combined, they knit together to form a story that was painfully evident to so many of us: the current British government is not incompetent, they simply do not care. There has felt like a fundamental chasm between the Conservative government and the people for a while now, not least in October, when Rishi Sunak was hurriedly put in place as Prime Minister with very limited democratic process. For all his failings (and there are endless), Boris Johnson won a General Election, providing him with a mandate to implement policy. When he got himself in one-too-many a scandal, Liz Truss was chosen as his successor by the ~200k members of the Conservative Party, less than a month before she crashed the economy - leading to Sunak.  The erosion of democracy that this represents is best illustrated by how the country has been governed. Since Johnson's landslide election ...