WHERE IS BRITAIN’S OBAMA?

ANOTHER week, another storm for the Prime Minister. Gordon Brown’s leadership skills were once again called into question by the media and a number of Labour party heavy weights.

After the furore to get a one to one with US President, Barak Obama at the UN and G20 – which left many pondering the ‘special relationship’ –Brown has ambled on to Brighton and to the Labour Party conference.

It has made me think about the up coming general election next year. Labour seems to be floundering and as Alistair Darling put it, has ‘lost the will to live’. The Conservatives don’t seem to be offering anything new or different apart from ‘savage cuts’, which could possibly worsen the UK’s economy. What choice is there?

Britain needs a change, the public are crying out for it. After the events earlier in the year regarding the MPs expenses scandal, there was a chance for real change and reform in British politics. The public felt disconnected to Westminster and many had lost confidence in their MPs. So far nothing has happened and it looks as though nothing will.

Remember though, It is not just Parliament that needs reform. The gap between rich and poor is the greatest since the 60’s. There need’s to be a tighter grip on the financial system to prevent a repeat of last September. The list could go on.

So it seems Britain is crying out for it’s own Obama, who unfortunately doesn’t seem to exist.

A LITTLE NIBBLE TO KEEP YOU GOING

YES I am back. Two weeks later then promised. I couldn’t even keep to my word of a regular blog each week. Lets forget about the blank spaces and pretend we were all in a coma for a good few days. Good. Frankly I was feeling a little uninspired by the news. It wasn’t as though there were no important stories, it was just I wasn’t gripped by any to investigate further. Not good news for a ‘journo’ in training.

Don’t worry I haven’t been completely uninspired. I have a few ideas I want to develop over the next few weeks. Until then here is a little nibble to suppress you literary hunger.

We are firmly into the annual party political conference season. Kicking off with the Lib Dems. I am sure a vast majority of the population have little, to no idea that this is taking place. It seems that this how politics seems to work in Britain today. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem party leader (apparently a third of voters have never heard of him) announced that the party will need to seriously consider outlining policies on cuts in public spending prior to the election in contrast to previous elections. There are also hints that the vote winning policy of scrapping student tuition fees could be dropped from the next manifesto.

If only tuition fees had been scrapped already. The past few weeks have seen thousands of students wondering if they will be able to go to university at all this term. The government and Student Finance England, have - to put it bluntly - cocked up big time. It is estimated that 50,000 students will be left without finance at the start of the term due to a delay in processing applications. With a phone line that is permanently busy and a Direct Gov website that is constantly useless it’s a case of waiting for the post. We’ll just have to wait around and twiddle our thumbs nervously.

Back to party conference, Clegg makes his key speech tomorrow. We might find out a little more about the party’s direction, if we are lucky.

BACK TO BLOG

FIRST of all, welcome back from the summer and welcome to a slightly refreshed and newly re-named blog.

It has been a bit of a disappointing summer this year. The promised BBQ weather from the Met Office failed to ignite confirming that we now only have two seasons; the rainy, cold season and the very rainy, very cold season.

If you want to try and get a little sun and top up on your vitamin D the only way is to go abroad. It’s no use relying on the good old ‘British Summer’. I myself have just come back from a two-week holiday in Europe and there was something that really stood out to me. It wasn’t the continental café culture, or the slower pace of the Mediterranean lifestyle. It was the amount of large people that I saw. I’m not talking about the odd paunch or bingo wings, I mean the almost obese. Weight has really become an issue.

I’m not trying to write this in an offensive or hurtful way, but the number of really fat people on the beach was shocking. People would sit and eat rubbish purely for sake of having something to do. This really wasn’t an expected sight on a Greek Island.

We, the west are consuming too much food, not only junk food either. It seems wasteful and counterproductive. It’s almost offensive to those in the world who do not have access to the amounts of food that we do.

Not only do we eat too much food we also waste too much as well. According WRAP (a quango who work to reduce waste) we throw out an estimated 6.7 million tons of food in the UK alone. This is a staggering amount and I am sure we are all guilty of throwing good food away. Love Food, Hate Waste, is a website which can give you recipes for left over food in your fridge. It may just be worth taking a look at before you start throwing out the almost off carrots at the bottom of your fridge.

Finally on another note, I must hold my hands up to the fact that I have been very bad at posting on this blog. When I started in 2008 I had intended to add a new entry at least every week. But as you can see from the vast white spaces below this hasn’t really happened. I have decided to set myself the task again, so it’s back to blog and watch this space. Hopefully it will be filled by next week.