Innocence Project - Decision of the Warner Case

The case of Mr. Warner: I think that the CCRC was right to decline Mr. Warner’s appeal and this is because the trail itself was deemed safe, this is important as it means that there was nothing wrong with the way the case was treated, furthermore they can place Mr. Warner inside Mr. And Mrs. Pools home, which is mighty incriminating in itself, especially since he lied about going into the house at all. It is also important to note that Warner had been at the pub the night of the murder and was therefore drunk, he claims that the only reason he went to try and rob them is because the front door was already open, then when he tried to leave he saw someone outside so he decided to use something from a draw to force open the back window in order to escape, which further incriminates him as it puts his fingerprints on the draw where the murder weapon was taken from. His own actions seemed to have condemned him insofar as the day after the Pools were found dead he had washed his clothes and left Easthampton wearing the same boots that he wore previously, which seem to suggest some amount of guilt.

However, it is important to note that there are many loose ends in this case, which are enough to cast at least some doubt. For example, a man who was said to be covered in blood called a taxi the night which was never really developed into anything more, no interviews of this man were conducted, you could just assume that he had been in a fight with someone. Furthermore, it is suspicious that the front door was open before Warner got there because this suggests that Warner wasn’t the only person to go into their home that night and the person who did previously could well have been the murderer, but then on the other hand you could just say that Warner was lying about this. Moreover, there is no incriminating evidence that Warner was even upstairs, which is important because this is where they were found dead and it is apparent that they were also murdered upstairs, the only evidence that had that he could have been upstairs is that the jumper Warner left had fibres from upstairs on it, but this could just be passed off as a piece of contaminated evidence, insofar as someone could have touched something upstairs and then touched the jumper. Furthermore, from the number of times that the Pools had been stabbed, you would assume that would leave a lot of blood on his clothing but his clothes had no blood stains on them at all, however you could argue that he merely kept washing his clothes. So I believe that there is doubt there but not really enough to merit the CCRC getting further involved, they were right to dismiss the appeal.

Radio Feature - Pokémon!

This video is an assignment that I have been set for my Journalism course, basically we were told to write a short feature for Radio, and it could be based on any topic that we like, so naturally I chose Pokemon... Below is the audio track that i have recorded and script.
Just Be T Dubs, the audio's not really that great, I got a few words wrong but I just strode through, enjoy.

After being asked to write about something for people to actually listen to me talking about and not just read it, I jumped at the opportunity to talk about one of the things I’m fairly certain I know a lot about – this happens to be Pokémon, shocking right?

When I mention Pokémon, I assume all of you listening will instantly think about making the toughest decision of your life as a child, in the old game boy games at least – do you pick Charmander, Bulbasaur or Squirtle? It does take a long time to figure out which Pokémon you want because it’ll be with you for the whole game. For me however, this always ends the same way – picking Charmander. Then you’re enthralled with starting off your very own Pokémon adventure, ranging from beating up your rival, doing chores for Professor Oak and then eventually getting down to catching all the Pokémon and on the road to be a Pokémon master.

So the idea is to catch them all, this has been drilled into the heads of children who had what I like to call, a “complete” childhood as it is the theme song to the season one of Pokémon. Sounds simple enough right? Just go round beating up wild Pokémon and throwing balls at them to catch them. You’d think this would be an easy job when there are only 151 Pokémon, right? Wrong. The producers thought it would be great to add a million more Pokémon to the equation, making it pretty much impossible to keep track of the number of Pokémon, I personally get confused after 151. I mean, why change it? My best memories of playing the Pokémon games and watching the TV series were of starting out in Pallet town, seeing our hero who we all know and love, Ash Ketchum getting his first ever Pokémon, his famous Pikachu. 

So yeah, from this there are many adventures – everyone has to remember the emotional rollercoaster episode of Ash first obtaining his Charmander. There Charmander is, abandoned out in a storm with his tail, once proud and aflame, slowly dimming because of the treacherous storm. That is until Ash hears of an abandoned Charmander in the rain and instantly takes it upon himself to save this lost and afraid Pokémon, people around the world will remember this episode and it really embodies the love that our hero has for Pokémon and what they mean to him, in turn this Charmander wholeheartedly trusts Ash and agrees to go with him – rejecting his old trainer who left him in the storm. It’s episodes like these that I recall when I talk about Pokémon, not the newest episodes that have all kinds of different Pokémon involved in them - they just tend to sound silly to me.

As the years have progressed, Pokémon progressed with them leaving behind the old and, in my opinion, favourable “generation I” Pokémon and replaced them, essentially, with new kinds of Pokémon which I feel don’t measure up to the original. This process has been going on for many years now – the new Pokémon that are brought in are known as different generations, so it goes from Generation I to Generation V so far. I tried to watch one of the new Pokémon seasons and after seeing the starter Pokémon are called things like “Oshawatt”, I don’t even know what this is, but it’s blue and like the size of a small rock, I was disgusted that it was not the amazing Pokémon that we all know and love such as Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur, im fairly certain that the producers must be running out of ideas of new Pokémon until they eventually bring it all back to the amazing days of generation I. 

One thing that hasn’t changed through the years is, of course, the endeavours of the evil Team Rocket and their constant ingenious, but ultimately futile, attempts to try and steal Pokémon to appease their malevolent boss and leader of Team Rocket. Team Rocket is in every single episode as far as I know and they managed to sing their official theme tune to, foolishly, alert our heroes of their presence and even their intent in every single episode! These guys are a classic signature of Pokémon that I hope will never change, I mean who doesn't want to see Jessie, James and Meowth blast off again? Anyway, I believe that I’ve rambled sufficiently to bore you all, sorry about that! Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s broadcast.

Radio Journalism - Lecture 2

Here are my notes on our second radio journalism lecture; we have found out that different government bodies for TV and Radio show the different ratings and figures that radio / TV stations have and these are:

TV – BARB (figures for TV)

Radio – RAJAR (figures for radio)

When it comes to target audiences and demographics, I mentioned in my last radio post that the target audiences are divided up into different frameworks, when it comes to social class it is done like so:

A – Upper middle class, professional

B – Middle class, management / well paid jobs

C1 – Lower middle class, junior management, desk worker

C2 – Skilled working class, skilled manual workers

D – Working class semi, unskilled manual work

E – State pensions / depending on welfare to live

How to carry out a good interview

Generally, a good interview will sound like a unscripted conversation, but to get to that stage you will need to have a good knowledge of the equipment that is being used, for example knowing how to work thee recording devices properly and not messing it up (certainly not like what I did once when recording someone a on our task last week...) and also it doesn't hurt to have sensible questions, obvs. When it comes to the recording devices you must make sure that before you set off to record you know the device is actually working / has enough battery power but if not then just buy / have some spare batteries with you, oh and I mentioned earlier make sure you’re recording...

You must be careful when working with the microphones and this is because they can be very sensitive so make sure you don’t rustle and paper or plastic bags near them and make sure to not move around too much otherwise the microphone will pick it up and it will ruin the quality of the recording. You must also make sure that you plug the microphone in to the correct port, otherwise, well you know, it won’t pick up sound...

When it comes to recording you must make sure that if you balls up what you’re saying like when asking a question or replying, don’t turn off the machine or stop recording, just try again because after all you can edit it out when you upload it on to your computer later, so don’t worry! You will want to have some ambience when recording, because it just adds some nice background noise to your recording, essentially giving it more authenticity.

Choosing a place to record is also important; you shouldn’t always go for a silent room, consider what sounds are around you because they will add to the recording, eg the sound of a heater or various other machines will then be in your recording and possibly drown out someone speaking. Try to avoid rooms with echoes (unless of course you want that in there) but if necessary try standing next to curtains or furniture because that will help the recording.

Your questions are very important when conducting an interview, a good interview will essentially sound like an unscripted conversation, so following this you mustn’t write out a huge list of questions that you want to get in there, it’s better to make a few notes / ideas or have a few questions that you can build on. Make sure that you listen to the answers, so if something interesting is said then help develop it by asking supplementary questions, but remember that in general questions should be straightforward and simple, plus pretty simple but one question at a time. 

Finally, the last few things to remember are no closed or leading questions, make sure you do your research beforehand and when a participant is answering make sure you don’t talk over them, just nod silently until they finish talking. Well, this concludes my blitzing of blog posts, I think this has been a productive start to a Sunday, hope you enjoyed oh and I’ll try and keep on top of it now, im slowly getting back into the University routine of just blogging not because I have to but because I want to, im getting there but yeah, hope you’ve enjoyed avid readers.

Stay classy x

The Paradigm of Change, Hegel, Kant and Schopenhaur - HCJ

Since there is a hell of a lot to go over and understand in this blog post im going to try and keep it as brief as possible so bare with me. Just a little reminder for myself – chronologically is goes Kant, Hegel and then Schopenhauer. Cool.

Paradigm: This is a connected way of thinking across all knowledge, think of it as a framework, this concept was introduced by Thomas Kuhn and according to him people are always thinking in certain paradigms and throughout history many paradigm shifts have occurred, for example people used to collectively think that the world was flat but it was discovered that the world is in fact a globe, this changed everyone’s way of thinking and is what we call a paradigm shift.

Hegel: Hegel was a historicist, this means that he believed history was always destined to follow a set course and that all things in the past and things that are still to pass all happen for one reason or another and this is linked to the idea of “God’s plan”. He calls this the Zeit Geist; this is a German term that literally translates to time ghost or spirit of time and this idea states that although something my change altogether, it is still the same thing at the heart of it, for example if you were to change the bricks of a house one by one every day the house will remain a house but will look different, the same can be said about human cells that die out and re-grow constantly.

Immanuel Kant: Kant is sometimes considered the first of the German idealists. German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Kant, and went hand in hand with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. Hegel was hugely influential throughout the nineteenth century; by its end, according to my boy Russell, "the leading academic philosophers, both in America and Britain, were largely Hegelian"

Kant has the words “My life has been guided by two great mysteries – the starry heavens above and the moral law within” etched on his gravestone. Kant was a self-made pro and took it upon himself to directly oppose Hume and bring back metaphysics as Hume pretty much destroyed it with his logic. Kant was against Hume’s Fork idea:

Hume’s Fork = Matter of fact (can be investigated) A Posteriori, Vs.

                        Relation of ideas (things are true by definition) A Priori

Hume’s A Priori = a proposition that can’t be denied without contradiction – eg a circle is not round.

Kant’s A Priori = this is more pessimistic – if it can be figured out without experience of it but at the same time is not true by definition.

Synthetic A Priori is also scientific A Priori and so therefore we can know that arithmetic fits into this as 2+4 = 6, because we can figure it out and it relates to other things / aspects that we know to be true.

Analytic A Priori is more like geometry – eg all triangles have 3 sides. While Synthetic A Posteriori is more like oranges don’t taste like acid or whatever.

Still with me? Cause im sure not... Just two more things that I need to clarify and then we’re done! Yayyy J anyway, just two key words:

Phenomena = creation of the mind

Noumena = this is the real thing in itself, which apparently we can never know.

Hegel and the Zeit Geist: The idea of the Zeit Geist is that is must always know itself in order to avoid its ‘fall’, this fall comes about when the Geist struggles to know itself and in turn becomes alienated and this means it is no longer the same thing and has changed with time.

Hegel’s Dialectical Reasoning:
First there is a thesis (the beginning) and this comes to change through an antithesis and this in turn creates a synthesis, in Hegel’s view of history he saw:

·         Thesis = rise / fall of Greece

·         Antithesis = middle ages

·         Synthesis = reform / renaissance

Following this, the German state was in his eyes the equivalent to Ancient Greece and this cycle will continue until a utopia is reached in the end.

However, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both disagree with Hegel saying that his view on history is far too linear; and with that the famous quote, “The Owl of Minerva does not fully spread her wings until the parting of the day” which means that we cannot fully know something without it happening first and looking back on it and studying it – as Chris hilariously said it’s like having a blacked out windshield in a car while driving and only having the rear view mirror and seeing all the bodies you’re hitting means that you should probably slow down, or stop driving altogether.

Schopenhauer: Not really much to say about this guy but he introduced the idea of existentialism which is an insane idea (pretty much). Ontology - this is what something is when it isn't being perceived: eg if a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is around to hear is, does it still make a sound... The sound should be there but it's not being perceived so can we really be sure? (is what Schopenhauer says at least). He also mentions Phenomenology and this is what something is when it is being.

Video Killed The Radio Star - Radio Lecture 1

I realise that I have been out of the blogging for a while now but im here to change this! Im slowly getting back into my old routines of blogging small amounts and it’s not good! So here I am, catching up, I have a few posts to do today so enjoy :)

Radio broadcasting is far more immediate, intimate and person than broadcasts you will see on TV; this has always been the case and is why radio is usually preferred to some people. Additionally, radio journalism has many different formats:

Headlines: These, as you probably guessed, summarise the story and precede a bulletin.

Bulletins: Bulletins are usually 2 – 5 minutes, having two-way voices, snippets from interviews and press conferences; it is usually read by a journalist or a news reader.

News Programmes: These programmes have a headline / short story and they explore stories in much greater depth and include more related stories, furthermore they also feature debate and live broadcasts.

Magazine Programmes: These programmes can be narrow / wide ranging, they are less likely to include headlines / bulletins but they will bring up topical or timeless issues, focusing in more of the gossipy stuff in the news.

Documentaries: Documentaries are pretty much extended packages / features that explore a particular subject / issue in much greater depth than any magazine though it will draw on the same conventions and types of content.

Target Audiences: As per usual, this is defined by defined by age or demographic (A, B, C1, C2, D). Age is categorised into groups of 10 or 20 years, 16-24, 25 - 44 for example, the style and format will be dictated by the target audience to which the station aims its output.

That’s all for my brief introduction to Radio, hope it’s been insightful. Oh and you stay classy, Planet Earth.

A Tale of Two Revolutions - HCJ

This is the story all about how England's life got flipped turned upside down now I’d like to take a minute just sit right there and I’ll tell you about how it became the United Kingdom... you get it :)

1707 brought about the first of two Acts of Union with Scotland, though this could have gone either way and we could have been a Scottish Empire. Before this however, The Darien scheme was formulated and this was an unsuccessful attempt by Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called 'New Caledonia' in the 1690s. From its inception the undertaking was rife with poor planning, weak leadership, and lack of demand for trade goods and devastating epidemics of disease and increasing shortage of food; it was finally abandoned after a siege by Spanish forces in April, 1700. As the Darien company was backed by about a quarter of the money circulating in Scotland, its failure left the nobles and landowners pretty much crippled  and this is pretty much what lead to Scotland surrendering to the first Act of Union.

The second Act of Union came about in 1801 and this union was with Ireland, this was achievable because of the state of Ireland at the time, the land was rife with famine and revolution.

Never Waste a Good Crisis: England managed to benefit greatly from the French Revolution - during the Napoleonic War, many expenses had to be paid; this lead to the creation of the Income Tax of 1799 to try and pay for the war. After the war British Naval Power was absolute, so much so that they could control the main ports of France and block off their trade routes entirely. This in turn created a boom for British exports, so much so that the British were even manufacturing the clothes for the French Army - England pretty much decided to take a step back and make the most of all the turmoil and spent it’s time to build and maintain its new empire. The Transatlantic Triangular Trade was established and this regrettably included the Slave Trade, this was during the late 16th Century and transported over a million slaves, 17th Century saw three million and in the 18th Century at least seven million people being transported as slaves in these abhorrent Coffin Ships.

The War Ends: Since the war was now over, this meant that the economic boom was coming to an end, for example all the soldiers returning from the war were left unemployed, mostly because they were farmers and due to the Enclosures Act* many land owners were forced off their land and into the city. The government also introduced the Corn Law in 1815, which placed a huge tariff on imported goods. The Corn Laws were very important because people were importing far too much because all of the farmers were at war so no-one could buy home grown resources - therefore when all the farmers returned from the war the government had to protect British farm industry by placing the Corn Laws in effect.

*Enclosures Act was an act of parliament that forced people off the land and into the cities; this meant overcrowded cities because people who were living off the land were pretty much an extended family acting as a unit of production.

During the 1760's England became the workshop of the world, this was because of the Industrial Revolution and Manchester's population just kept growing and growing, which lead to massive overcrowding of the city and made living standards pretty dire. So Manchester was the centre of the industrial revolution which, though hard to believe, made it one of the most important places ever, this however had its drawbacks, since the introduction of these new factories and new machines brought with them a load of pollution - this in turn lead to illness and people living very short lives.

Cotton was a very important resource for the industrial revolution and these raw materials came from the slave plantations in the American south, and if things couldn't get much worse new inventions such as the gaslight allowed for people to work night shifts, this meant longer hours and increased health risks.

Reform Act 1832: The people were growing increasingly restless due to the state of the country and this lead to the public calling for radical Parliamentary Reform – William Cobbett, who was a huge radical, supported such campaigns and ended up in prison because of it. Parliament was getting worried for any more outbreaks of revolution or rebellion so the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832 was introduced – this however was more of a smoothing over than a solution.

The Poor: The new Poor Law Act 1834 - The Poor Law Amendment Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government that reformed the country's poverty relief system - it was a very Benthamite policy based on Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is pretty much happiness overriding pain in aspects of life - it appears to be very idealistic insofar as it makes choices based on how much happiness the choice brings to an individual and how little pain it gives, so it’s like a thought process of when we weigh out whether or not to go to a lecture or a seminar, yes it might on occasion be boring but in the end we're going to get a damn good degree out of it (:

William Cobbett and Charles Dickens: My notes on Cobbett and Dickens are all covered in my Seminar Paper about William Cobbett and Rural Rides - so heres the link if you want to read

William Cobbett and Charles Dickens

WILLIAM COBBETT - RURAL RIDES SEMINAR PAPER

This is going to be my first blog post of this year and of course it had to be a monster of a post - my seminar paper about William Cobbett the cantankerous old devil that thought it would be fun to ride around the country to see the relationship between land owners and the labourers. Hope you enjoy!

Context:

England benefitted greatly from the French revolution, this is because the Napoleonic War was a very costly time and it saw the creation of the “Income Tax” in 1799 to help pay for the war. The Battle of Waterloo was eventually won by the Seventh Coalition (England, Nassau, Prussia, Brunswick, Hanover and United Netherlands), and managed to defeat the leader Napoleon Bonaparte and after this the British Navy had gained total naval power – they now controlled the waterways that gave them the means to block off the French trade routes, allowing the British trade to grow.

Britain now experienced an economic boom thanks to the trans-Atlantic triangular trading of cotton, sugar and slaves (slavery was ultimately abolished in 1833 thanks to William Wilberforce and the Anti-Slavery Society). Furthermore, this time period also saw Scotland and Ireland being joined with England, consolidated by two separate “Acts of Union” one in 1707 for Scotland and the second in 1801 with Ireland, which together formed the United Kingdom. The Industrial Revolution brought about a new  age of technology and this meant that many farm workers were forced off their land and made to move into cities such as Manchester to find work in these new pollution spewing factories. Manchester eventually became the centre of the Industrial Revolution – its population was rapidly increasing and this was because many former farm labourers were looking for work.

This brought about the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were in effect from 1815 – 1846 and the laws were brought in to try and maintain the agricultural industry – it planted a gigantic import tariff on any cheap corn shipped from abroad, which meant that people would want to buy British home grown instead. It was during this period when William Cobbett wrote Rural Rides.

The people were growing increasingly restless due to the state of the country and this lead to the public calling for radical Parliamentary Reform – Cobbett, who was a huge radical, supported such campaigns and ended up in prison. Parliament was getting worried for any more outbreaks of revolution or rebellion so the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832 was introduced – this however was more of a smoothing over than a solution.

Charles Dickens, William Cobbett and Rural Rides:

William Cobbett was born 1763 and grew up in the countryside. Cobbett worked and grew up as a farm labourer until he was 20 years old and then he went off and joined the army for 15 years. While in the army he was branded a bit bad news when he exposed a thief of stealing resources and so he fled to France and taught English refugees. Cobbett pioneered his own newspaper entitled the Political Register, which was distinctly conservative until he moved to a more radical stance as the years progressed and this is what lead to him calling for Parliamentary Reform and landed him in jail because of it. After being in jail, Cobbett’s enthusiasm and resolve was now stronger than ever, so much so that he even began campaigning against newspaper tax (which was essentially a tax on the news) and also bringing attention to freedom of speech.

The News tax had become a problem for all newspapers because the price on them skyrocketed which meant that only the more affluent people that could afford them could read them – which meant they were probably trying to freeze Cobbett out of the news market. From this introduction to Cobbett I think it’s pretty clear to see what motivates him to force reform and even his inspiration for Rural Rides.

William Cobbett was constantly angry with Parliament due to the constant flow of decisions being made without any real concern or insight into the rural lives that it was having a profound impact on. Cobbett despised the landowners that had turned their back on the community and environment that he himself grew up in, this can be seen through how he explains the existence of the farm workers as walking skeletons. One of the key themes present throughout Rural Rides is arguably a huge feeling of nostalgia – he talks about the people planting different kinds of trees (pine trees) means that they are “destroying the beauty of the estate”. As mentioned earlier Cobbett wholeheartedly believed that these landlords and landowners had no idea about the rural areas and were slowly destroying the culture that Cobbett found so familiar and safe. This is where we can see hints of nostalgia – like when you go back to a place you used to know and find that it has been altered radically.

When it comes to Cobbett, it’s always beneficial to mention Charles Dickens; though the two had their differences they were both campaigning for pretty much the same thing. That being said, Dickens was far more successful in his campaigning, he managed to make himself more approachable to the middle-classes – Dickens did attack the establishment in his famous novel “Bleak House” as he describes it as a sort of thick fog, which paints a rather macabre picture.

Cobbett and Dickens go hand in hand when it comes to their thoughts about the government being infatuated with industry and profit – here Dickens focuses primarily on the people who are living in urban areas (as opposed to Cobbett who focuses on rural) and how the industrial revolution has lead to many lives being ruined; the machines and factories produce far too much pollution so people would fall ill, places were overcrowded, poverty was rife and the poor were being majorly exploited and this was all going on within the key cities of the time so Manchester and London for example would have borderline un-inhabitable.

Jean Jacques Rousseau and Cobbett

Rousseau was born 28 June 1712 in Geneva. He was a philosopher, writer, and the driving force behind the period known as 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy had a profound impact on the French and he pretty much influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political and educational thought. 

Rousseau and Cobbett had a surprising amount of equal ground when it came to their ideas, insofar as the idea of natural beauty which Rousseau alludes to in his writing primarily when he talks about the statue of man being slowly eroded by change until it is unrecognisable. This is related to how Cobbett feels that things would have been perfectly fine if the industrial revolution never happened and we allowed things to play out according to nature, not to go and make all these abhorrent machines. That being said Cobbett seems like he would be content with his success while a man like Rousseau would have wanted more and more, for example he detest the idea of any kind of land ownership so it makes sense that he would want to ban land ownership.