Daily Archives: 4 October, 2010

Modern bullying, homophobia and self-esteem among the young

by suzannahrobinson

Tyler Clementi – the victim of murder? Involuntary manslaughter? His own low self esteem, thin skin and inability to take a joke? Gravity?

Livestreamed by his room mate from a hidden camera, Tyler was exposed on the internet having sex with another man. His subsequent suicide, declared in his final facebook status, is a tragedy for him, for his family and for our generation. The media is labelling this as just another instance of cyber bullying, but the perpetrator could get several years in prison.

So what’s the problem here? The easy access to publicity that makes total humiliation simple? The latent homophobia that made it an even better scoop for his room mate? Or original low self esteem and a feeling of isolation that affects so many freshers and other young people? Our generation needs to prove that we’re better than this.

Suzy

Osborne’s vision for the future

by suzannahrobinson

Contrary to the pre-election promises of both the Tories and the LibDems that child benefits were not to be called into question, they are now to be cut to all those individuals earning over the 40% tax rate. Obviously these middle to high earners won’t miss the hundreds or thousands of pounds they should have been entitled to as much as lower earners. This child benefits cut is therefore “not as bad as it could have been”, as opposed to those that will follow it, which I fear will be bad, worse and ugly.

While this policy compares favourably with Victorian conservatism, when the lower classes were discouraged from having children in order to leave greater space and resources for the “better quality” middle class offspring, it doesn’t show much of a departure fro recent Tory policy. It still manages to hit women hardest, especially by discriminating against single mothers. The massive loophole meanwhile, maintained for purposes of “simplicity”, allows for high earning couples to benefit, as long as each partner earns less than 44 thousand alone.

It also leaves the coalition sending the public yet another mixed message – marriage is good, raising children is bad. I’d be excited to find out the rest of Gideon’s plans for our families, if I wasn’t too busy quaking in my boots.

Suzy

Unity is Essential

by Eriic

“Oh, who would ever wanna be King?” Chris Martin of Coldplay wailed out over the Labour conference after Ed Miliband’s acceptance speech as the new leader of our party. And as his elder brother David may now testify, he has a point. After creeping home thanks to our system for electing the leader (the Alternative Vote, which we will probably have to sell to the wider electorate in a referendum), Ed arguably has a far more difficult task ahead of him than his brother would have had, thanks to our hostile media which takes the Blair view that only “a millimetre to the left of new Labour” would spell doom for our electoral prospects.

However, if he is savvy and true to his instincts, Ed can reconcile the interests of working people who face losing their jobs in the eye-watering Con-Dem cuts and charm the “squeezed middle” voters (according to the BBC this week, a wage of £78,000 per annum is somehow middle class) by using the charge that “it was the unions wot won it” to his advantage. If it was indeed the unions who pushed Ed over the fifty per cent threshold rather than there merely being a majority of Labour members who would have preferred him to David – as was the case, when second preferences for the other defeated candidates are accounted for – then Ed can rightly say that the unions cannot rebel against the line he is taking, because they backed him above everyone else after all. This would allow him to present himself as a credible alternative to the coalition; a mature politician who appreciates that there needs to be cuts and it is wrong to oppose for its own sake, but that the way the coalition is going about them is appallingly unfair and regressive in the extreme.

As for the shadow cabinet, it would be a shame and a disaster for the country if recent history were allowed to repeat itself and we ended up with another feud at the top of the party, where the man who assumed he was headed for the top job was usurped at the last minute by a charismatic young contender. I hope that David can stay in the shadow cabinet and serve under his brother, as he is clearly talented and formidable. I hope his backers can live with that and keep quiet.

However, enough post-match analysis. After all, there are jobs and livelihoods at stake; there is a realistic prospect of a market in universities; the NHS is being practically privatised and the police is about to be run by partial and elected commissioners, in an ideological crusade against the welfare state and a sense of community. It is imperative, more than it has ever been since the 1980s, that Labour unites as a party – not old, not new, not next, not anything – and goes on to win the next election. It has the leader, with charm, insight and a sense of social justice; it has the unions on side, most of whom appreciate that strikes unless absolutely necessary get us nowhere; it has an increasing membership and of course the Liberal Democrats, who make life much easier for us by spitting in the face of most of their core supporters. We must not pander to the media and their absurd analysis of “Red Ed” and fraternal hatred, and instead pander to the people.

Luke Jones