Obesity in the name of vanity


overweight kids

Most countries around the world are now ‘blessed’ or ‘plagued’, depending on your opinion, with ‘The shopping Mall’ These are often the social meeting place and besides the shopping, eating, and window shopping, which goes on in abundance, there is another ‘blight’ on the landscape.

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Are we still doing this?

Construction workerHaving recently read a lot of the going’s on in The US, and in the UK (less so) regarding the divide between the white race and people of colour, it compelled me to put fingers to keyboard to recall a couple of experiences which happened to me.

I am from England, and grew up in a relatively normal environment, at a time when people of colour were established in society to a large degree, but were still not near the finishing line (we are  nearer now, but still not there). I lived in several cities in England and experienced mild forms of racism (implicit, mainly through preconceptions), but overall, led relatively good life. I worked in The City of London for financial institutions for more than a decade, and found in the main, people to be sensitive, even in a white, male dominated arena.

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Bias

biasNewspapers, radio, TV, magazines, blogs, the internet. All of these things are sources of news. We have never had so much choice as to where we receive our news from.
With the emergence several decades ago, of media corporations, who own many outlets of news, we have become more and more subject to the views of the people who own these organisations.

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Cant’ speak English? pay here, sign there.

As one of the millions of English teachers around the world, I take great pride in my job. I also take immense pleasure from hearing that my students have passed international exams such as IELTS, and TOEFL, or even improved their English to some degree. As a teacher, these are the reasons why we do our job.

So I have to say that I was seiously dismayed to see the following documentary by BBC’s Panorama recently.

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Asian class. Pale face.

Blue eyed blonde

The topic of Asian culture is one of those aspects of life, which if one is not exposed to, stays in the realms of the unknown. There are many perceptions of the Asian culture by western society, such as; the superstitions, the wide variety of exotic food,  the obsession with many things western, and more. This is not the focus of the article though. The focus is on education; namely English.

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Don’t lie to me

Why is it that this line is constantly in movies from the US, but they are some of the worst offenders on the planet! Do they think that this line instills any sense of honesty into their audiences?

The line is “DON’T LIE TO ME!!”   (No doubt you may have heard and seen this once or twice).

This is something I have heard for many years on chat shows, in movies, in cop series(mostly), and I get the “we don’t want to teach our kids or youth to lie” angle, but hey!!! Lies are all around us.

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