Should Internet charge for England game?

Upon this publication, time will have told how many England fans will have paid to watch their country on the internet against Ukraine. Of course there are those die-hard fans that will have made the pilgrimage to Kiev, whilst those that could not make the journey, but would never miss a second of their beloved Three Lions, will certainly have forked out to watch.
Read more

Big Brother isn’t watching…but Facebook is

Have you updated your Facebook status today? Or perhaps uploaded some pictures whilst spending a few moments to become a fan of Roast Dinners or Sleeping?

If so, you are not alone, in fact you are actually in the middle of an expanding mob of cyber-based networking. In April 2009, Facebook recorded over 200 million active users on their website, uploading around 850 million photographs each month, and collectively managing to spend 3.5 billion minutes per day procrastinating, stalking, fine tuning their profile or attending to important matters such as finding out which Skins Character they can most relate to through a handful of simple questions.
Read more

A‘pork’alypse Now

It is a “threat to the whole of humanity” exclaimed the front page of The Sun last week. I’d always envisioned something much more cataclysmic. In Independence Day it was aliens that threatened existence, in Deep Impact it was a massive asteroid…in reality, according to The Sun at least, it is flu contracted from a pig farm in Mexico. It certainly could’ve brought an interesting twist to the plot of Babe 2: Pig in the city. In 2006, there were fifteen predictions that the world was going to end, most of which were prophesized centuries ago. These included catastrophic climate change occurrences like a super-volcano or the destruction of the Ozone layer, an all-out nuclear war and even a robot takeover but not one of them foresaw a swine flu pandemic. Even the black hole experiment was more exciting than this. Read more

A Bit of a State

In 2003 the BBC created a thriller that instantly received critical acclaim from many of Britain’s newspapers. Now Hollywood has got its mitts on it and moved the centre of the attention away from Westminster and into the world of Washington DC and Capitol Hill.
Read more

Aldi’s £40,000 graduate scheme

For those panicking about finding graduate jobs this summer, you’d do well to look for a job with budget supermarket Aldi. Renowned for low prices and a minimalist attitude, Aldi boasts a graduate scheme with benefits including a company car, mobile phone and a starting salary of £40,000, surpassing starting salaries with both the Civil Service and many City jobs.
Read more

Proportionate media response

The article printed in the Badger last week, ‘Media ignores student protest’ asked why the British media, in particular the BBC had been ignoring the student occupation protests across the country. I have no intention of defending the BBC, but while it seemed strange to some that there was no mainstream coverage of the student protests, it seems strange to me that it was expected at all.

Read more

Joseph finds his funny bone…

Outside my bedroom window is a street light. A street light that also serves as an advertising space for what’s on at the Theatre Royal. So, after three gusty winter months of listening to various signs rattling away advertising numerous shows I noticed that no longer was it ‘Swan Lake’ or ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ but ‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’. Prompted by the sign, my ‘things to do in Brighton before graduating list’ and the shameful admission that after living here for four years I’d never been to the theatre, I went to buy myself a ticket.
Read more

Media ignores student protest

I can’t help but get the distinct feeling that something strange is going on.

The air seems thick with talk of Palestine, Israel, occupations, boycotts, support, debate, argument. Student and media occupation web-sites are popping up everywhere. Anything ranging from between 16 to 18 universities are, or have been, occupied in the recent weeks in solidarity with Palestine. Read more

Sergeant’s a major disappointment

The biggest financial crisis since 1929, a humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the beginning of a transition period that will culminate in the USA’s first African-American president. All these things might seem important at first glance but it appears that our guardians-of-moral-virtue, the media, have other ideas. On the 19th November, a BBC journalist felt forced to hold a press conference. In most cases this would mean that a weapons inspector had committed suicide or a camera man had been shot dead in Helmand Province, but not this time. Read more

VC no-show for BBC Interview

The Vice-Chancellor Michael Farthing failed to appear at a BBC radio debate about the changing face of the University of Sussex last week.
Read more