Did anyone say Spring???

St Anne’s Churchyard in Limehouse (East London) today:

Nearly Spring

Wonderful weather today and I had the good fortune of having time this morning to go for a walk around central London and see some of the beautiful spring flowers. Thought I should share (all taken on my mobile, so not amazing quality):

The End of Summer

Couldn’t make it to Green Party conference (yet again) due to a few unavoidable things. I really wanted to go, but fingers crossed I will finally manage it at the conference in the spring!

The weekend hasn’t been wasted and I’ve had lots of chances to have fun! Both the Thames festival and open house have been happening this weekend, with the grand finale of the last weekend of summer due to be a firework display on the river. Last night, Southwark bridge was closed to traffic so that lots of independent stalls could sell a variety of produce: a big feast on the Thames. Open house has been giving thousands the opportunity to see the insides of buildings they normally only walk past: I had the chance to have a guided tour around UCL and many other places were open. Luckily the weather was suitably brilliant – a fantastic end to London’s summer!

London never fails to amaze and the true diversity displayed this weekend is testament to that and has made for a very enjoyable two days so far. Fingers crossed the finale will be just as good…

I have also managed to break free of Microsoft this weekend and install the operating system Linux on my computer. It works well and completes all the functions I need very efficiently. Best of all, it is open source. Unfortunately, the BBC’s new iPlayer doesn’t work on Linux (a real travesty!). Our public service broadcaster should be making sure that all of its services work on all major platforms. Apparently, it is in talks with a lobby of Linux users with regards to providing some kind of service for Linux users: hopefully sooner rather than later!

Anyway, I’d best be off: fireworks on the Thames in soon!

studentmedic

Season’s Greetings!

Studentmedic wishes all his readers a great time this festive season and will be back with more in the new year (although, I might put a few odd bits up on here during the holiday!). Apologies for the lack of posting in the past few weeks.

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Just for today, an article from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/6205223.stm

Deary deary me, I never realized that homophobic views were not only legal to hold but also rewarded with compensation. I would be very surprised if the material they wanted to put up, far from containing the love that Jesus is said to have preached, was full of hate.

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Well worth having a look at on The Daily (Maybe) is the 11th Carnival of Socialism on Sex and Gender.

studentmedic

Protest and other things…

Interesting protest today. Very diverse, which was pleasing. I got to speak to a great range of people from across the political spectrum. Afterwards, I went for a wander and a bite to eat with a bunch of Young Greens. Was nice to get to meet even more interesting people! Lots of people have blogged on the march including Derek Wall, Jim Jay, and Peter Sanderson.

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Today, the BBC did a great propaganda piece on life as a royal marine. I have never seen such blatant propaganda on the BBC and frankly was very disappointed. I honestly thought more than this… It showed all the ”good” bits of being a marine and glamorized all the bad bits to the extent where it was not journalism at all, just a propaganda piece. It was almost half an hour long too! I wish I could find information about it on the net, but I can’t. There will be follow-up programmes too apparently – the military couldn’t have paid for better publicity than this! I think it is time I wrote a letter of protest to the relevant watchdog! (Update 5/11/06: Found an article on BBC News about the ’series’)
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On a completely non-related matter, on the way home from the protest I had the most crazy experience on the train.

Two men boarded the carriage I was sitting in and sat right next to me (American Man and British Man, for the purposes of the following commentary). The ensuing conversation was an eye-opener! Truly it was!

AmericanMan began by saying how he needed a ”broad” who appreciated him. He then began a rant about how awful and unfair it is that ”broads these days don’t give blow jobs” (completely seriously and frankly). He said he needed ”fat broads” so that he could get blow jobs from them more easily but that stupid, ignorant people think that he is disgusting for liking fat girls. [At this stage, I realized that I had a picked up a comedy comic from the protest and dug it out so that I could sit and laugh without causing too much of a scene!] BritishMan’s response was that ”it shouldn’t be an issue for other people that you like fat broads – you need what you need”. Similar conversation went on for about 15 minutes until the oafs finally left the train and I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the idea that people still exist with such views and feel that they can have a serious and frank discussion on such terms without even a hint of shame!

They spoke as if the new civil rights battle should be for a man’s right to get a blow job from girls on-demand. ”These days” – as if in the past, ”broads” lined up to give men sexual favors! I think most people didn’t have any problem with him liking fat girls: their problem, like mine, was the reasoning he used for liking fat girls (nothing to do with notions of love but to do with notions of sexual expedience!) Deary me, it is at times like this when I feel like I live on a different planet from some people!!!

studentmedic