Radio News Story 4

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Script:

More than ten thousand hospital appointments have been missed in Andover War Memorial and the Royal Hampshire County Hospital between April and September.

Winchester and Eastleigh NHs Trust are now asking patients to notify hospitals is they can no longer make an appointment.

Missed appointments will not result in patients being referred back to their GP.

A patient from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital explained how it could affect him.

Radio News Story 3

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A ‘wheels to work’ scheme is being introduced in the Winchester district to help sixteen to twenty five years old, who have limited access to public transport, get to work, college or interviews.

This scheme allows young people to borrow mopeds for a maximum of twelve months which will cost twelve pounds per week.

Winchester City Council and Hampshire County Council have given funding for twelve mopeds to be fully taxed and insured, so young people, who cannot afford their own cars, have some means of transport.

News Day 2 Bulletin

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Two robbers threatened a cashier on Sunday night in the Shell garage on Weyhill Road, Andover.

The employee gave the men the remaining money in the till after being threatened with a metal bar and a firearm.

It is known that the men drove away in blue Renualt Clio, but detectives are encouraging anyone who was at the petrol station, near the time of the incident, to give any information they have to help with the enquiry.

Potholes are causing a dramatic increase in the number of insurance claims due to damage on cars and bicycles.

To repair all major potholes on our roads one hundred and forty million pounds will be deducted from the council’s budget, as each pothole costs seventy pounds to repair.

The AA has been tracking this increase for the last two years.

Two hundred thousand pounds has been awarded to Fareham Borough Council in order to create an Eco-town within Hampshire.

The Eco-town will consist of seven thousand new homes, schools, shops, community centres and a large amount of open space.

Money will also go towards a new ‘green’ development site, which will focus on green space and renewable energy.

Executive Leader for Fareham Borough Council, Sean Woodward, said this will have a positive impact on local neighbourhoods.

AUDIO

Money will be raised for homeless charities as people take part in ‘Winchester Walk for the Homeless’ on Sunday the 9^th of May.

Fifty thousand pound is hoping to be raised by people walking to sites such as the Itchen River and returning to Winchester Cathedral.

Celebrations will be held at the Cathedral between 12 and 3:30 for people who have taken part.

News Day 2: Eco-Town

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Script:

£200,000 has been awarded to Fareham Borough Council in order to create an eco-town within Hampshire.

The eco-town will consist of 7,000 new homes, schools, shops, community centres and a large amount of open space.
Money will also go towards a new 'green' development site which will focus on green space and renewable energy.

Executive Leader for Fareham Borough Council, Seàn Woodward, said this programme will have a positive impact on local neighbourhoods.

William Cobbett & Charles Dickens - HCJ Lecture

• Cobbett: Born in March 1763 and died in June 1835. He was known for being a pamphleteer, farmer and journalist.
• His main belief was that in order to end the poverty of farm labourers, there needed to be a reform in the government and an abolition of ‘rotten boroughs’ – Boroughs which could gain undue and unrepresentative influence within Parliament.
• Cobbett was an anti-radical who became a radical. The thing that changed him was the plight of farm workers in the early 19^th Century. He thought that rapid industrialisation was going to destroy traditional ways of life.
• Cobbett spent about 20 years abroad, in America and France, in the army but when he returned from war, he was shocked at the state of the countryside.
• "When farmers became gentlemen, labourers became slaves."
• Cobbett has no time for the government that taxed farmers, or the army who he says, are free loaders, or the church and it’s tithes.
• He was nearly 60 when he began writing Rural Rides.
• He then went on to write the Political Register which was read by the working class.
• A tax on newspapers led Cobbett to publish the Political Register as a pamphlet, which had a circulation of 40,000.
• He was put in Newgate prison for sedition and fled to America to avoid another jail term. Cobbett was charged with libel three times after returning.

　

• Dickens:
• Charles Dickens was born 7^th February 1812 and died 9^th June 1870. He was an English novelist.
• He was interested in particular times in Reform. Oliver Twist is a good example of this, as it was concerned with the Benthamite Utilitarian Poor Law, which he saw as an oppression regime for people.
• In Bleak House the particular abuse that he’s bothered by is the Court of Chancery – and the law cases that went on for generations and cost a fortune. But it becomes a metaphor for all that’s wrong with Victorian Society.
• Dickens was disappointed with the law.
• As a writer he is calling on his reader to act. "Dear Reader! It rests with you and me whether similar things shall be or not."

• A tale of two revolutions – and two perspectives – Urban (Dickens) and Rural (Cobbett)
• England did well from the French Revolution – it was very expensive during Napoleonic War – income tax was created in 1799 to pay for the war effort.
• British Naval power was absolute (certainly after 1805) and the blockades of the French ports destroyed French trade and created a boom for British exports – to such an extent that British manufacturers were actually clothing the French Army.
• With the other European armies occupied, the British started building it’s empire – India, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka – trading monopoly with South America
• The Transatlantic Trade – enormously profitable for Britain – 16^th Century one million slaves transported from Africa to America – 17^th Century three million – 18^th Century seven million. Abolition of Slavery Act 1833.
• Textiles made up 60% of exports. Coal output doubled between 1750 and 1800.
• Manchester went from 17,000 to 18,000 people from 1760 to 1830. The city was seen as revolutionary, it was something that had never before been seen. Marx and Engels.
• Cotton was key to the Industrial Revolution – the raw material came from the slave plantations in the American South – but it was the modern Lancashire which produced the finished article – mainly for export.
• Inventions (Gas light) allowed process to be done in enormous factories by mostly women and children.
• The end of the war meant end of the boom – this caused widespread unemployment and a steep fall in wages. In response to this the government brought in the Corn Laws which put in a tariff on imported grains.
• Conditions in towns and cities were dire – most people lived in slums and Cholera was common.
• The penalty of brutal repression on any sort of dissent and strict penal penalties (exportation – tolpuddle martyrs) was effective in short term
• Peterloo (steamed from Waterloo) Massacre – 1819 Manchester – cavalry charged a crowd of 60,000 demanding parliamentary reform – 11 people died.
• The protesters demanded that growing industrial towns of Britain should have the right to elect MPs. Less than 2% of the population had the vote at the time, and resentment was sharpened by the ‘rotten boroughs’ such as the village Old Sarum which had 11 voters and two MPs. Manchester and Leeds had none. Reform Act 1832.
• Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 meant that bread became cheaper but wages could be lowered because workers could survive on less.
• Farming:
• Enclosures had ended the idea of landholding peasantry – and there was nothing to stop the transfer of the workforce from non-industrial to industrial.
• Population had been rising only slowly or not even rising – from about five million people at the end of the 17^th Century until the middle of the 18^th Century.
• (Seminar notes – Cobbett wants to see people working for a living on the countryside – but there is no countryside left)
• After 1770 is started to rise dramatically – doubling every fifty years after that – although Cobbett disputed that with evidence of the populations in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
• Swing Riots – Rural labourers opposed to the use of new advanced technology such as threshing machine

• The Poor:
  The poor were looked after by the Speenhamland System which was devised as a means to alleviate the distress caused by high grain prices.
• Means Tested was a top up for wages, which was dependent on the number of children a family had and the price of bread.
• The immediate impact of paying this poor rate, fell on the land owners of the parish concerned.
• New Poor Law Act 1834. The Act that stated that no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the Poor Law Authorities except in a workhouse.
• Bentham argued that people did what was pleasant and would not do what was unpleasant, therefore if people were not to claim relief, the relief had to be unpleasant. This was the core of the argument for ‘stigmatising’ relief, making it in the happy phrase of the time, ‘an abject of wholesome horror’.
• The Act effectively criminalised the Poor

• Ireland (Act of Union 1801)
  Joined UK in this year
• During the years of famine, Ireland was a new exporter of food, armed troops escorted the crops to the ports to be exported to England. The export of livestock actually increased during the famine years.

　

Facebook Abuser

Reading the Sun today, I came across a story which I found quite disturbing mainly due to the lack of public awareness.

Dyanne Littler was engaged to a man who she met on Facebook and thought she knew well. It turns out that she knew little about him because police chose to keep his criminal past a secret. Peter Chapman raped and murdered a 17-year-old girl, but Dyanne knew nothing about this until police informed her, luckily before she married him.

Dyanne Littler deserved to know the truth about the man she was about to marry, but he became a danger to society, as no one knew the truth, which brought him that much closer to almost hurting someone else.

Peter Chapman uses a fake identity on Facebook to talk to females. This is how he met Ashleigh Hall the 17-year-old girl, who he murdered. Ashleigh’s mother asked Facebook to install a panic button, so girls can report men who they think may be dangerous. Facebook have rejected this request though. Something like a panic button would make social networking sites, like Facebook, that much safer for young girls who can be easily manipulated. I find it odd that Facebook have rejected this request because the more the site is misused, the worse the reputation of Facebook will be.

Newsday 1: Student Accommodation Proposal

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Winchester landlords may need approval from local authorities if they wish to turn new properties into student digs.

The government plan to give local authorities the power to stop landlords placing three or more tenants, who are not related, in a new property.

Fiona Boothe, Branch Manager of Personal Homefinders, explained what may come of this proposal.

AUDIO:

"I think this would have a far more, more of an impact on the students themselves, every year we struggle in Winchester to house the students and there's never enough student accommodation. So this will have a devastating effect on the students far more than it would landlords, 'cos landlords would just adjust, to the type of tenants they will get."

The Philosophical Views of Kant and Hegel

Kant was an 18th century German philosopher who was born in 1724 and died in 1804. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the sequence of the theory of knowledge during the enlightenment. He believed in democracy and had strong views regarding the Rights of Man which is clear when he states, "There can be nothing more dreadful that that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another."

Kant's most important book is the 'Critique of Reason' which is written with the aim to prove that knowledge cannot always transcend experience however knowledge is in effect a priori and is not always taken from experience.


German idealism is similar to the Romanticism movement, and Kant was the founder of German Idealism. Characteristics of German Idealists are as follows:

- The critique of knowledge as a means of reaching philosophical conclusions is emphasized by Kant and accepted by his followers.
- There is an emphasis on mind as oppose to matter which in the end leads to the assertion that only mind exists.
- There is a passionate rejection of Utilitarian ethics (greatest good for the greatest number) in favour of systems which are held to be demonstrated by abstract philosophical arguments.
- They made innovations in theory, but they did so in the interests of religion.


Kant uses the term priori which means we have knowledge prior to experiencing things. Kant's theory states that if the mind can think only in terms of causality, then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect.


Kant made a distinction between these terms, 'analytic' and 'synthetic', and 'a priori' and 'empirical'. An 'analytic' proposition is one which the predicate is part of the subject, for example, 'a tall man is a man' or 'an equilateral triangle is a triangle'. However, all propositions that we know only through experience are 'synthetic'. 'Synthetic' means something is made up of several other things, so here take the example of a cake, in order to make a cake you need flour, eggs and sugar, which therefore demonstrates that the cake is synthetic. An 'empirical' proposition is one which we cannot know except by the help of sense-perception, either our own or someone else's who we trust. And lastly, 'a priori' proposition is one which is more likely to have a basis other than experience. Here Russell gave the example of a child learning arithmetic where they may use objects to illustrate numbers. So 2 marbles plus 2 marbles equals 4 marbles, however, when the concept is understood the marbles are no longer needed.

Kant established a question to prove that although the law on causality is not analytic, it is still known as a priori. He said, "How are synthetic judgements a priori possible?" Meaning how are unnatural judgements possible if you have knowledge based on something other than experience?

Kant's philosophy on space and time is that they are not concepts they are forms of intutition. With this he created 12 categories which are derived from the forms of the syllogism. All of the categories are possible and are all subjective like space and time.

Also within the 'Critique of Reason' Kant states there are only three proofs to the existence of God:
- The ontological proof which defines God as the most real being;
- The cosmological proof which means if anything exists then an absolutely necessary Being must exist;
- And the physicotheological proof which means the univers exhibits an order which is evidence of purpose.

The other philosopher we have been looking at was Hegel, 1770-1831.

Hegel concluded the movement in German philosophy which started with Kant.
Hegel saw that nothing is ultimately and completely real except the Whole. One of Hegel's famous statements is 'the real is rational and the rational is real'. An empiricist will view certain aspects to be facts when they are irrational.

Hegel's idea that the Whole is completely real leads him to state that the Whole is called the 'Absolute' which is spiritual.
He has a metaphysical outlook to which he distinguished himself to other men with two aspects; one is his emphasis on logic and the other is the triasic movement called the 'dialectic'.
Two examples are given to illustrate his dialectic methods:
- He assumes that the Absolute is Pure Being'. No qualities have been assigned to the Being so it is nothing.
- And this leads to assuming the Absolute is Becoming but nothing becomes from this.

Hegel has set out a process which is essential to the understanding of the result. He says it is impossible to reach the truth except by going through all the steps of the dialectic. Imagine knowledge as a triangle to which there are three aspects of gaining knowledge. This process begins with sense perception, whereby there is only awareness of the object.
Then through sceptical criticism of the sense, it becomes purely subjective. To conclude it reaches the stage of self-knowledge where the subject and the object are no longer distinct. It is said that the highest form of knowledge is self-conciousness and the Absolute must possess this quality.

Hegel also believed that nothing was wholly false and nothing that we know can be wholly true. The Absolute is thought thinking about itself.

He explains that you cannot distinguish between ethical sense and the logical sense as logical perfection consistss of being a 'perfect' whole without independent parts but united like a human body.

Another one of Hegel's strong beliefs is that there is no freedom without law, so wherever there is law there is freedom.

As Hegel was a German philosopher, he believed that the German spirit is the spirit of the new world. Many people may disagree with Hegel when he states that there is no real State in America, because a real State requires a division of classes into rich and poor. He then goes on to say that the State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth.

'The State is the reality of the moral idea'. If the State existed only for the interests of individuals, an individual might or might not be a member of the State. It is said that the duty of a citizen is entirely confined to upholding the substantial individuality and independence and sovereignty of his own State.

Hegel's next statement was very interesting, as I think it may contrast other philosopher's beliefs. 'It is good to have wars from time to time, [because] war is the condition in which we take seriously the vanity of temporal goods and things.'