The election

I usually try to shy away from non-media related blog posts and especially about topics like politics! I have only done one really politically focussed post before about UKIP and the correlation between their media exposure and votes. Politics is a tricky and quite often sensitive topic to blog about. It’s easy for someone like myself who doesn’t fully understand all the policies to contradict and generalise when discussing politics. For someone who primarily blogs about television shows from a mostly objective perspective, I was wary about doing this post. It won’t be completely clear, easy to comprehend or make a lot of sense but I wanted to just unload my thoughts about the recent election and current political parties.

This week, in the United Kingdom, we have had a general election. Following six weeks of campaigning and various television appearances (the debates that weren’t quite conventional), voters went to the polling stations on Thursday and cast their votes to decide who should be the next government. I saw the exit poll and the first result come in from Sunderland (Labour) before I gave in and went to bed. I wished I had stayed up to watch more of the results as there is a sense of excitement and anxiety but I would definitely have been more of a zombie at work yesterday if I had! I caught up on the results during the day at work, watching on the BBC website as the map of the UK turned more blue (Conservative). By midday, Cameron had got a majority Conservative government and three other party leaders had resigned. The most unpredictable outcome.

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Reggie Yates: Extreme Russia

Recently I have been watching the documentary series Reggie Yates: Extreme Russia on BBC Three. I stumbled upon it by accident but became very intrigued, catching up on the first episode on iplayer and then watching the other two episodes of the series on television.

The series was split into three locations in Russia and three topics: Far Right and nationalist groups in Moscow, homosexuality and homophobia in St Petersburg and aspiring teen models in Siberia.

I would recommend this series as it is a really interesting watch. This is partly due to how the documentaries were made and the use of Reggie as a presenter.

What a fracas!

March was a month of big news stories. These included the upcoming general election, Richard III’s reburial, a terrorist attack in a Tunisian museum and the plane crash in the French Alps. Despite all these big, rolling news stories, another story seemed to dominate in the newspapers and television news: Jeremy Clarkson’s fracas with a producer on Top Gear. Even when there wasn’t much to report such as Jeremy Clarkson saying he hadn’t heard anything, it still became news probably much to the annoyance of the BBC.

The Casual Vacancy

A three-part adaptation of J K Rowling’s first book post-Harry Potter was recently on the BBC over the last few Sunday nights. The Casual Vacancy is a book which examines class, families, death and numerous societal issues. Adapted by Sarah Phelps and approved by J K Rowling herself, the book was made into a mini-series as a collaboration between BBC and HBO.

As with any book to screen adaptation, there are concerns from fans that important parts are changed or left out completely and this version of The Casual Vacancy was no exception. I shall discuss some of these changes and my thoughts on the series in this blog post. There were parts that were done exceptionally well but some bitter disappointments as well.

Abigail Lawrie as Krystal Weedon in The Casual Vacancy

All this fuss over a pink bus

This week, Labour unveiled their plans to talk to women and encourage them to vote at the next general election in May. This came in the form of a pink van which would travel around Britain and allow MPs or prospective candidates to speak to women about their concerns regarding politics and politicians with the aim of getting the women to vote in the election by listening to them.

Labour’s controversial pink van

However, since it has been unveiled it has been debated, ridiculed, questioned and torn apart by not only the press and Twitter users (as would be expected) but also television news and chat shows.

Don’t stop the music

I’ve been meaning to write a post about the Don’t Stop the Music documentary for a while amongst other topics but haven’t felt that committed to writing about them, like there’s been no drive to write a good blog post. After hearing some local youth music related news this week, I have felt compelled to write about the concept of the programme and the reality of youth music in Britain. I’ve touched upon some of the issues in my previous blog post ‘Thank you for the (youth) music!’ which I wrote following my last youth concert.

BBC Wales on the move

On the 10th June, BBC Wales unveiled the design and plans for their new broadcasting house. Apart from drama which is based in the specially constructed village Roath Lock in Cardiff Bay, the rest of BBC Wales (online, tv and radio) are based in broadcasting house in Llandaff. The building in Llandaff has been the BBC’s home in Wales for the past 50 years.

All the broadcasters in Wales have made decisions recently about moving their headquarters and buildings to new sites. However, the BBC’s plan has been deemed controversial and the corporation has been accused of a “breach of faith” by some former politicians. Here I will discuss the BBC’s plans in more detail and the pros and cons to their move.

The exposure of the ‘Right’

When I started this blog, the purpose was to keep up my writing and write posts about television. In my About Me section, I do mention that I would cover other topics but this is mainly a blog about television as that is an area I am really interested in. I am now writing a post on a topic I never thought I would: POLITICS. Though I suppose I can link this post to the blog’s main purpose as I want to examine the exposure given to certain political groups on television and especially social media.