New film done!

I've just made another short film. It's about a young boy who is alone on his birthday. I tried to find a suitable line from a poem that fits the theme (usually Byron), but came up short this time, so I simply called it Birthday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCTFwWTs1Ak

The Adequately-ClothedPhilanthropist

Here's my new film - a satire of programmes like Undercover Boss and The Secret Millionaire. All shot locally and features music by myself and Trouserdog!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A3G0p_qAFw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

A Clockwork Orange and the Society of Choice.

In A Clockwork Orange the stability of the state trumps the individual's happiness.
Crisis of cultural capital. Alex has an ambitious sense of cultural capital. This is expressed through consumption, particularly the consumption of music. .
The downfall of Alex arguably begins when Dim criticise Alex's consumption of Beethoven.
Whenever the gang of droogs attack Alex orchestrates the violence as art.
Alex uses art to kill the cat lady, and then kills part of himself by denying that art, and the world of high culture.
From a sociological standpoint young people present themselves in opposition to the norm. As youth couldn't change society, they have always tried to change things symbolically.
However there are arguments against. Some claim that young people given too much prominence in social change; that they merely reproduce orthodoxy.
In 2002 Boudrillard states "what if TV represented nothing more than itself in its message? "It's funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."
We are arguably implicit in the society depicted in A Clockwork Orange.

From Droogs to Dogs - Gang Warfare

The absence of academic research leads to a distorted media dominated view of gangs.
Youth gangs are the latest 'folk devil.'
This is significant if policy makers in government use media sources as a base of action.
There are problematic connotations, including young people in inner cities, males, ethnic minorities etc, and demonization of areas such as Moss Side.
The government's response to gangs has always been to suppress gang culture, rather than to address the underlying problems.
In 2009 Chris Grayling said that Manchester has the same level of gang culture as the U.S, despite no empirical evidence of this.
After the riots in 2011, the government declared a 'war on gang culture,' and a US export on gang culture was flown over, as the perception was that gangs were heavily involved. However, in Manchester 187 people were arrested, and 5 were known as gang members. (2.6 percent)
In schools in areas reputed to be associated with gangs, students and teachers reported no gang problems. Instead, there were more pressing issues such as domestic violence and child exploitation.

Session 1 - 'The Passions of Youth'. Dr Melanie Tebbutt (MMU)

Anthony Burgess had a humdrum existence of being young. It was an ordinary working-class youth spent in Manchester. He lived above a pub which gave him a sense of cynicism and independence.
He felt an outsider at school.
As the sociologist Richard Hoggart described, most working-class boys drifted into gangs. These gangs provided a transition from childhood into adulthood. Burgess described gangs as having an 'innate pack mentality.' Youth workers at the time however, said that drifting into a pack was a natural part of being a working-class boy.
In 1928 Burgess started at Xaverian College after passing the scholarship. Here he noticed that the tensions between the high and low cultures were apparent. He had several hobbies whilst at school, and he disliked an education system that discounted passion in hobbies.
After returning to the UK in 1959 after teaching in Malaysia, Burgess found a new and unfamiliar youth culture.
In Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy he presents a very negative perception of youth; in particular the Americanisation that was prevalent with teenagers, or as Hoggart dubbed them, 'Jukebox Boys'.
Burgess decided to avoid using Americanised slang, or any type of youth slang and set A Clockwork Orange in the future to avoid his language becoming dated.
Burgess believed that "violence among young people is an aspect of the desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy."
The key difference between Hoggart and Burgess is that Hoggart looked back to an idealised version of the working-class, a belief that the working-class youth had the potential to 'return' to an ideal that was linked to the past. Burgess however, was horrified by what he saw and how he perceived the future.
Both however, believed in the power of learning.

They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anthonybur399536.html#MyzmjLMAKj9CXtZk.99

They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anthonybur399536.html#MyzmjLMAKj9CXtZk.99

Day of the Droogs Symposium at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

On the 29th January I attended a series of lectures on a new approach to Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. We were told that this was the first of its kind in the world! What follows are my notes from each of the papers presented, along with commentary.

We Can Beat the Bedroom Tax!

Tomorrow on the 24th June at 7pm, we are holding a meeting in the Cornerstone building in Silverdale, Newcastle-Under-Lyme. We will be discussing how we can fight against the bedroom tax. It is organised by the Newcastle-Under-Lyme Socialist Party and TUSC Against Cuts. I will be speaking, along with Andy Bentley, former leader of the Federation Against the Poll Tax. All welcome!