American Gangsters

Sitting in class, reading the factual text "Gangland, USA" about the extensiveness of gangs in the US, one thing made me think. The Medias way of portraying gangsters and their life is in fact quite special. From being a group with a bad reputation and violent members, the gangsters in the US have become extremely popular. If you turn on MTV at any time during the day you will in most cases, within the time lap of about 10 minutes, see a music video portraying the glamorous life of a gangster. And sure, this affects youth.

There is no secret that many children in the US, and other places in the world for that matter, don’t have the life they deserve. They are living with problems at home, have the wrong friends, the school system is failing them. These children are left to fight their own battle and become open for new ways of living. The solution for many is turning to drugs and gangs. Here they find a family who cares and have their backs. The fact that it’s illegal and dangerous I don't really think matters to these young people. Many of them have been neglected since they were born and don't really know any other way of making a life for themselves.

So in what way do the media help encourage young people to get involved with this type of lifestyle? Well, as mentioned, music videos are an important factor. We all know that mixing sound and image is one of the strongest ways of convincing. For children, finding themselves to be quite easy influenced, the media has a lot of control. The way of talking, dressing, walking and so on in music videos is being picked up by the young children and they are taking it out on the streets in their hometowns. The superstars on MTV maybe with this, helping to increase the ratio of gangsters in the US. They make it look great to live the gangster lifestyle with fast cars, beautiful women and a lot of "bling". But it's important to remember that not all famous people help sell the gangster lifestyle to kids. In the video clip below you see a clip from the group "The Game"s single "House of Pain. Here we get to see a different side of the gangster life that show the true colors of being a gangster.

The Edublogger's Student Competition.

"What difference has blogging made to your life at school and home e.g. how has it changed how you learn, the challenges of blogging and how teachers might make the process easier"

Well, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical to start blogging at school. I really couldn't see the leaning benefit and got a bit cranky. So I went in to this whole thing kind of halfhearted and not really enthusiastic. Now on the other hand, I have another opinion. Blogging is good to get variety during the school day. Especially at my school were we only have one subject each day. So during five hours of English, it's good to have different things do to! When it comes to the learning benefit I can actually see it now;) Posting things on our blogs where other people actually can read it, makes you want to do it well and look over your grammar once more. Of course it's hard to always find out what to write, I mean all topics aren't that exiting, but I guess that's just school, with or without blogging! Our teacher is pretty good at commenting on our blogs and that makes it more fun to post new things because we know she actually reads it!

I don't think blogging has made a difference in my life at home. I don't blog about other things than schoolwork, but maybe in the future I will make a personal blog, blogging about things I really care about.

Parliaments in Britain

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. Is alone has parliamentary sovereignty, conferring it ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and its territories. At its head is the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth ІІ.

The parliament is bicameral, which means that they have two houses. An upper house – the House of Lords, and a lower house – the House of Commons. The Queen is the third component of Parliament. The House of Lords includes three different types of members: the Lords Spiritual (the senior bishops of the Church of England), the Lords Temporal (members of the Peerage, a part of the British honor system) and Law Lords (judges that carry out the House of Lords’ judicial responsibilities). All members of the House of Lords are not elected by the population at large, but are appointed by the Queen on advice of the Prime Minister. The members of the House of Lords are often called Peers and there are now 750 Peers in the House of Lords.

The House of Commons is a democratically elected chamber. The people in the UK elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent their interests and proposing new laws. There are 646 Members of Parliament (MPs). Almost all belong to one of the ten political parties represented in Parliament. The three biggest parties at present, in order of size, are Labor, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The leader of the party with the largest number of MPs is the Prime Minister who selects Members for their party to form Her Majesty’s Government. MPs split their time between working in Parliament itself, working in the constituency that elected them, and working for their political party. Some MPs from the ruling party become government ministers with specific responsibilities in certain areas, such as Health or Defense. The UK is divided into 646 areas called constituencies. During an election everyone eligible to cast a vote in a constituency (constituents) selects one candidate to be their MP. The candidate who gets the most votes becomes the MP for that area until the next election.

The Houses of Parliament, also known as the Palace of Westminster, is in the centre of London. As well as the home of the UK Parliament, it is also a royal palace and former residence of great kings. The Palace comprises many famous sites including the green-colored House of Commons Chamber and the red-colored House of Lords Chamber where political decisions are made to this day. It also includes the famous Clock Tower, popularly known as Big Ben.

Northern Ireland

In 1170 Ireland became the first English colony and during Henry VIIIs reign (1507-1547) all of Ireland was controlled by England. In 1610 Scottish Protestants began settling in Northern Ireland. In 1916 the Easter Rising found place, where the Irish republicans wanted home rule, and this marked the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. The war of independence in Ireland ended with a truce on 11 July 1921. The conflict had reached a stalemate. In 1922 the Island was divided into an Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. The Irish Free State was not completely independent though, the British crown still had power. In 1937 the Irish Free State became totally independent and was now a republic; Republic of Ireland.

The Irish Civil War started in June 1922 and lasted until May 1923. The War was a direct consequence of the creation of the Irish Free State. That's because the Irish Free State Army supported the agreement that divided Ireland. The IRA was opposed to the agreement. The war was in the end won by the Free State Army. For a long time there have been problems between the Catholics and the Protestants. The Irish were Catholics, but the English and Scottish who settled in Northern Ireland were Protestants. Here the Irish Catholics were poor and suppressed by the Protestants.

Today there are 60% Protestants in the Northern Ireland, most of who feel they belong to the UK. Of the 40% Catholics most feel they should be independent from the UK/ be part of the Republic of Ireland.