And as to the rest of us - peoples and nations of the world, that is (but more especially European ones)...the mind simply boggles at the possibilities... . Let's see, just for starters, we have - potentially - a: *Nexit (no longer evidently, following the Netherlands' recent election). *Frexit (let's see how the French go in their upcoming presidential election). *Gerxit (Germany's election hasteneth greatly also, though the word rhymes with a less than complimentary anglicism!) But how do the other - long-term - European nations fare?
Well, Spain would undergo a *Spexit - Portugal a *Porexit, i.e. a really bad Euro-exit! - Belgium a *Belexit (they'd really go ballistic, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it, since they're the very base, the veritable heartland of the 'European Project', alongside little 'ole Luxembourg, which'd experience a *Luxit or Lexit, probably pretty similar to Belgium, only more ambiguous... .
In brief, we'd also have a *De-exit (for Denmark), the Danes being contrarians by nature - a *Swexit (for Sweden), the Swedes invariably (furiously) sweating it - and a *Fixit for the Finns, Finland ever being a bit of a fix-it society, or at least *Finxit (i.e. thinking it if not always carrying though on their grand resolve.) In other words the Finns'd fix the whole thing (i.e. the European Project) from top to bottom and inside out!
As far as the present-day constituent members of the United Kingdom are concerned, well, in addition to the general(ized) Brexit, how about *Scotchit (sure, a bit of a (linguistic) stretch, but it not only speaks for itself - something the Scots have never been backward about coming forward to do, but it does perfect justice to the Scottish position without doing huge injustice or disservice to the English language); *Walexit (i.e. "We'll exit", seemingly the Welsh response in their assent in the recent referendum, or even 'well-exit', indicating an all's well that end's well attitude to the whole thing); The Northern Irish could be *Nixit (which again fits with their - overall - remain position, even suggesting the whole enterprise of brexiting should not only be nixed, or nipped at the bud, but even, for good measure, nuked if necessary (not to put too strong a point upon it!) The Irish themselves, looking on **askance from the sidelines as it were, are aptly enough in an *Irkxit about the whole affair, while the English themselves simply want to *Exit once and for all - end of story!
Yet as to all the other current - or future 'wannabe' - European nations: to be continued (soon enough)...
**Appropriately enough, according to my ever handy Chambers Concise Disctionary, to look or view [something] askance means: 'to look (at) with disdain, disapprobation, envy, or (now usually) suspicion'!
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Go Great Britain's 'Gaggle' of Gutsy Gals
Let's hear it once again for Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who apparently didn't budge a millimetre as she met today with England's equally gutsy Prime Minister, Theresa May; in May's steely refusal to swerve a smidgen from keeping Great Britain together, and in Sturgeon's unwillingness to waver in her resolution to hold another referendum upon Scotland's bid to leave the United Kingdom. My *ROGET'S 21ST CENTURY THESAURUS defines gutsy as 'bold, brave', with these synonyms: 'courageous, determined, gallant, game, indomitable, intrepid, mettlesome, plucky, resolute, spirited, spunky, staunch, unfearful, valiant.' Yeah, all the above - with knobs on: go ye gutsy **'gals'!
While in the spirit of peace and reconciliation engendered over and through the Good Friday talks that finally brought some peace and stability to Northern Ireland's previously fractious politics - and moreover violence-wracked society - and even saw ***'the Reverend' Ian Paisley and his erstwhile, recently deceased, antagonist, ex-IRA *****assassin Martin McGuinness, come together (as, evidently, the best of buddies eventually), and witnessed Paisley's wife, accordingly, recently show up for McGuinness' funeral service, let's hope and wish for that much-troubled land 'the best of British' (greatly excusing my choice of pun here!), as it proceeds to - likewise, please pardon the awful 'modernism' - 'go forward' at this politically-fraught time...
*Edited, Princeton Language Institute, The Philip Lief Group, Inc., 1992/1993.
**Please don't accuse me of demeaning either Ms May or Ms Sturgeon by the use of that synonym for girls, 'gals' (rather than women or ladies); but hey, assonance - good 'ole-fashioned rhyme - is a fairly fussy thing!
***And I'm sure that that Protestant of Protestants himself wouldn't have an issue with my own refusal, as an equally staunch and hopefully as forthright and brave Protestant, to use a term - i.e. 'reverend' - that our Lord and Saviour ****Himself denounced while explaining such terms should be reserved for God (and His Son) alone.
****The Holy Bible (Matthew 23:28-30).
*****While not - remotely - seeking thusly to diminish or devalue the lingering sense of horror and disgust and outrage felt to this day by Lord Norman Tebbit and his wife and the families of those other folk either impaired for life or so savagely blown to smithereens at that terror-ridden Conservative Party conference in England back in the 80s.
While in the spirit of peace and reconciliation engendered over and through the Good Friday talks that finally brought some peace and stability to Northern Ireland's previously fractious politics - and moreover violence-wracked society - and even saw ***'the Reverend' Ian Paisley and his erstwhile, recently deceased, antagonist, ex-IRA *****assassin Martin McGuinness, come together (as, evidently, the best of buddies eventually), and witnessed Paisley's wife, accordingly, recently show up for McGuinness' funeral service, let's hope and wish for that much-troubled land 'the best of British' (greatly excusing my choice of pun here!), as it proceeds to - likewise, please pardon the awful 'modernism' - 'go forward' at this politically-fraught time...
*Edited, Princeton Language Institute, The Philip Lief Group, Inc., 1992/1993.
**Please don't accuse me of demeaning either Ms May or Ms Sturgeon by the use of that synonym for girls, 'gals' (rather than women or ladies); but hey, assonance - good 'ole-fashioned rhyme - is a fairly fussy thing!
***And I'm sure that that Protestant of Protestants himself wouldn't have an issue with my own refusal, as an equally staunch and hopefully as forthright and brave Protestant, to use a term - i.e. 'reverend' - that our Lord and Saviour ****Himself denounced while explaining such terms should be reserved for God (and His Son) alone.
****The Holy Bible (Matthew 23:28-30).
*****While not - remotely - seeking thusly to diminish or devalue the lingering sense of horror and disgust and outrage felt to this day by Lord Norman Tebbit and his wife and the families of those other folk either impaired for life or so savagely blown to smithereens at that terror-ridden Conservative Party conference in England back in the 80s.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Let the Childrens' Voices Be Heard
*'Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun:
And look! The tears of the
oppressed,
But they have no comforter-
On the side of their oppressors
there was power,
But they have no comforter.'
**Good reporting job, you! (that is, Brigitte Purcell, of Aotearoa-New Zealand's nightly news show, (TV3's) 'Newshub', on Sunday (March 19th)): on your inspired and inspiring ***news item on the Indian newspaper Balaknama, created and run by street kids in that land.
Their tale and quest means much to me, as it was as a young adult, a teenage student at my local high school that I spent lots of time researching and writing and interviewing folk for various news reports, feature-length investigative articles, and opinion/editorial 'pieces'/columns throughout my years there - for our at times (long before my own, I must hasten to add!) nationally-renowned, even sometimes reviled, student newspaper Mercury - as well as serving briefly as KVHS (now Kaikorai Valley College, then Kaikorai Valley High School)'s representative on the International Year of the Child's Dunedin City Council-organized 'Student Council for a Day'.
But back to the subject of our musings here: all credit and (moral) power to Shonna, Jyoti, and their colleagues, creators of and contributors to this (?twelve-year-old), monthly eight-page paper, representing, literally-speaking, 'the voice of the children'; speaking thus on behalf of themselves and their fellow Indian street kids, with children sharing their own true-life stories in special support groups editor Shonna et al have set up (partly for that very purpose). Yes, they've all 'been there and done (or perhaps, more accurately, experienced) that'...and so are in a unique position to champion their own...speaking truth to power, as some would say; in their own unique sphere of influence (however powerless onlookers might regard them).
So may their tribe flourish, going from strength to strength, and, however scoffed at or doubtless scorned by some, nevertheless constituting real 'movers and shakers' in their caste-wracked Indian society, as they seek to deal with and to that deep-seated scourge of their great land, the seemingly ineradicable bane and evil of child exploitation...supposedly long since eradicated from 'our own' Western lands (by the likes of ****'the Reverend' (?Samuel) Waddell/Weddell here in Dunedin in his famous 1888 sermon upon 'the sin of cheapness').
Yes, let's hear it one more time for these youthful journalists/newspaper pioneers as they doughtily confront the inequities upon the streets of India, in the process fearlessly exposing the iniquitous perpetrators thereof, and thus and so inevitably 'earning' the ire and opposition of the (relatively) rich and powerful in their society. Real investigative journalism is sadly pretty well the relic of a bygone age here in the West, so may its embers yet burn on in Shonna and Jyoti's writings in their ancient, remarkable and mysterious land.
*King Solomon in his (near deathbed, repentant-laden) book of Ecclesiastes (4:1): as cited in
The Holy Bible, The New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers Inc, Nashville, 1983. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
**To use a mannerism borrowed from the classic late 70s'/early 80s' sitcom 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin', a phraseology peculiar, if I recall rightly, to Reggie's brother - whose name I (presently) can't recall.
***One of numerous such in-depth 'magazine'-style news items, incidentally, over recent weeks, months and years...which is but one of innumerable instances of the sheer quality of their nightly 6 p.m. news programme, despite persistent - and moreover wholly ill-founded - suggestions to the contrary. By the by - I'll add at no extra cost - the apparent fact that Nzers who watch the box (at that time slot) on a regular basis prefer TV1 News - not to mention TV1's Seven Sharp over against either TV3's former show, The Story, or its recent equivalent The Project - says a heckuva lot more about peoples' (I must hasten to add, pretty well media-induced) collective inattention span alongside en masse obsession with trivia, the sensational and/or pure *****'human interest', even tabloid journalism - over against the substantial and important these days - than anything else... . Certainly it is no reflection upon the relative quality of the respective news offerings on TV1's & TV3's weeknightly 6 p.m. news bulletins.
The comparison may initially seem altogether irrelevant, but the closest analogy I can make is of those who scoff and sneer at a piece of genuine, authentic art, while celebrating the doling out of thousands, even millions, for and upon the latest bits of out-and-out, way out there crud, even crass ******biz-art(e): 'artwork' so-called (served up to an unwitting and witless, aesthetically-deprived and emasculated public under the all-embracing rubric of 'modern art'). Those doing so thus make a commentary, yea, an unerring judgment even, not so much upon the relative quality, or lack thereof, of a particular artwork so-called, but rather, I'd respectfully suggest, upon their own conspicuous lack of good taste: end of story.
****As I've often enough noted elsewhere - in line with my Master's example - not a term I'd tend to use!
*****I say this, neither to deride human interest stories as such, nor to suggest there's no place whatsoever for them in the broader scheme of journalism - after all, positive, so-called 'feel good' news is every bit as legitimate 'news' (and accordingly 'newsworthy') and hence deserves its place alongside the rather relentless stream of negative 'real-life' journalism the Western public is almost constantly inundated with these days; its simply that some journos seem to wallow, even revel in the same at the very moment that far more pressing at times even, dare I suggest, earth-shattering (or at least, at times if only in its implications, deeply fraught) news is simply screaming out to be covered, and moreover covered properly. (In some ways it could even be said that Balakhama seems to be a conduit of both these news streams at the same time - i.e. 'human interest' items and the utmost serious issues and story lines, though without the same emphasis, obviously, upon that purely 'good news' variety of material.)
******How d'ya like it, i.e. that new word I've just created/coined? I quite do, to be perfectly blunt.
And look! The tears of the
oppressed,
But they have no comforter-
On the side of their oppressors
there was power,
But they have no comforter.'
**Good reporting job, you! (that is, Brigitte Purcell, of Aotearoa-New Zealand's nightly news show, (TV3's) 'Newshub', on Sunday (March 19th)): on your inspired and inspiring ***news item on the Indian newspaper Balaknama, created and run by street kids in that land.
Their tale and quest means much to me, as it was as a young adult, a teenage student at my local high school that I spent lots of time researching and writing and interviewing folk for various news reports, feature-length investigative articles, and opinion/editorial 'pieces'/columns throughout my years there - for our at times (long before my own, I must hasten to add!) nationally-renowned, even sometimes reviled, student newspaper Mercury - as well as serving briefly as KVHS (now Kaikorai Valley College, then Kaikorai Valley High School)'s representative on the International Year of the Child's Dunedin City Council-organized 'Student Council for a Day'.
But back to the subject of our musings here: all credit and (moral) power to Shonna, Jyoti, and their colleagues, creators of and contributors to this (?twelve-year-old), monthly eight-page paper, representing, literally-speaking, 'the voice of the children'; speaking thus on behalf of themselves and their fellow Indian street kids, with children sharing their own true-life stories in special support groups editor Shonna et al have set up (partly for that very purpose). Yes, they've all 'been there and done (or perhaps, more accurately, experienced) that'...and so are in a unique position to champion their own...speaking truth to power, as some would say; in their own unique sphere of influence (however powerless onlookers might regard them).
So may their tribe flourish, going from strength to strength, and, however scoffed at or doubtless scorned by some, nevertheless constituting real 'movers and shakers' in their caste-wracked Indian society, as they seek to deal with and to that deep-seated scourge of their great land, the seemingly ineradicable bane and evil of child exploitation...supposedly long since eradicated from 'our own' Western lands (by the likes of ****'the Reverend' (?Samuel) Waddell/Weddell here in Dunedin in his famous 1888 sermon upon 'the sin of cheapness').
Yes, let's hear it one more time for these youthful journalists/newspaper pioneers as they doughtily confront the inequities upon the streets of India, in the process fearlessly exposing the iniquitous perpetrators thereof, and thus and so inevitably 'earning' the ire and opposition of the (relatively) rich and powerful in their society. Real investigative journalism is sadly pretty well the relic of a bygone age here in the West, so may its embers yet burn on in Shonna and Jyoti's writings in their ancient, remarkable and mysterious land.
*King Solomon in his (near deathbed, repentant-laden) book of Ecclesiastes (4:1): as cited in
The Holy Bible, The New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers Inc, Nashville, 1983. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
**To use a mannerism borrowed from the classic late 70s'/early 80s' sitcom 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin', a phraseology peculiar, if I recall rightly, to Reggie's brother - whose name I (presently) can't recall.
***One of numerous such in-depth 'magazine'-style news items, incidentally, over recent weeks, months and years...which is but one of innumerable instances of the sheer quality of their nightly 6 p.m. news programme, despite persistent - and moreover wholly ill-founded - suggestions to the contrary. By the by - I'll add at no extra cost - the apparent fact that Nzers who watch the box (at that time slot) on a regular basis prefer TV1 News - not to mention TV1's Seven Sharp over against either TV3's former show, The Story, or its recent equivalent The Project - says a heckuva lot more about peoples' (I must hasten to add, pretty well media-induced) collective inattention span alongside en masse obsession with trivia, the sensational and/or pure *****'human interest', even tabloid journalism - over against the substantial and important these days - than anything else... . Certainly it is no reflection upon the relative quality of the respective news offerings on TV1's & TV3's weeknightly 6 p.m. news bulletins.
The comparison may initially seem altogether irrelevant, but the closest analogy I can make is of those who scoff and sneer at a piece of genuine, authentic art, while celebrating the doling out of thousands, even millions, for and upon the latest bits of out-and-out, way out there crud, even crass ******biz-art(e): 'artwork' so-called (served up to an unwitting and witless, aesthetically-deprived and emasculated public under the all-embracing rubric of 'modern art'). Those doing so thus make a commentary, yea, an unerring judgment even, not so much upon the relative quality, or lack thereof, of a particular artwork so-called, but rather, I'd respectfully suggest, upon their own conspicuous lack of good taste: end of story.
****As I've often enough noted elsewhere - in line with my Master's example - not a term I'd tend to use!
*****I say this, neither to deride human interest stories as such, nor to suggest there's no place whatsoever for them in the broader scheme of journalism - after all, positive, so-called 'feel good' news is every bit as legitimate 'news' (and accordingly 'newsworthy') and hence deserves its place alongside the rather relentless stream of negative 'real-life' journalism the Western public is almost constantly inundated with these days; its simply that some journos seem to wallow, even revel in the same at the very moment that far more pressing at times even, dare I suggest, earth-shattering (or at least, at times if only in its implications, deeply fraught) news is simply screaming out to be covered, and moreover covered properly. (In some ways it could even be said that Balakhama seems to be a conduit of both these news streams at the same time - i.e. 'human interest' items and the utmost serious issues and story lines, though without the same emphasis, obviously, upon that purely 'good news' variety of material.)
******How d'ya like it, i.e. that new word I've just created/coined? I quite do, to be perfectly blunt.
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