Yelling into an uninhabited cave

This week, N-Dubz singer Tulisa has had a twitter spat with Lord Sugar about her right to judge talent, specifically the X Factor. As Tulisa pointed out surprisingly articulately, both parties came from (and I’m quoting an N-Dubz song) “Practically nothing to thousands screaming our name”, or in the case of Sugar, people sitting opposite him trying to impress him and his trusty minions elves Nick and Karen.

Both came from relatively modest backgrounds. Sugar was born into a council flat environment, left school at 16 and sold electrical goods out the back of his van by his own volition. Tulisa also came from a tough background, a violent family and no qualifications when she left school.

They each went on to become successful in their own field. Sugar became a success due to his natural business nous, hard work and ruthlessness, and Tulisa because she knew someone with an auto tune machine (citation needed).

But the point is, neither of them matter. I mean really, if it wasn’t for Wednesday and Saturday night television, we probably wouldn’t have heard of either, or at least they wouldn’t be in the public eye. No decision that either one of them makes will actively have an effect of the way we live our lives, and they way we feel most of the time. The only people who are really affected by these two are the media, who are dependent on being able to report which nightclub in Ibiza Lord Sugar is falling out of, or the next shrewd investment Tulisa is venturing into. Or maybe it’s the other way round, I always get these two confused.

They are both classic cases in point of the typical rags to riches story that many of the lower classes in our society are encourage to aspire to, the ultimate proof of social mobility. Other examples include most footballers. Carlton Cole came from a lower class family in Croydon to rise to the ultimate footballing pinnacle, the number 9 shirt of West Ham United. JK Rowling went from being on benefits to being worth around $1 billion. But none of these people matter to us.

Interestingly, JK Rowling was listed as the 48th most powerful celebrity in 2007. At this point, she was releasing the last book in her Harry Potter series, and millions of people wanted to read it. She was encouraging people to give to charity, something that had been close to her heart even when she wasn’t famous. But she wasn’t changing the world, changing the way we live our lives and changing how we feel. Apart from when she killed off Hedwig, I’m not sure I’ve ever fully recovered emotionally.

The key word in the phrase ‘most powerful celebrity’ is ‘celebrity’. Celebrities are designed to give us an interest in the outside world, give us someone to look up to and give us someone to relate to. They are not designed to change or effect our lives, and hence they are not powerful. The people with power in the world are rarely people we can relate to, mostly people we don’t look up to and almost never someone who has come from a humble background. 10 points if you spotted before this point that this was a moan about politics.

Our government is currently primarily made up of the Conservative Party. These are largely people who come from privately educated backgrounds with their path to power paved by their parents’ contacts book.

David Cameron is the most powerful man in Britain politically speaking, and he is exceptionally clever. However, he did follow his father into Eton before going to Oxford. Only the rich can afford to be part of the Bullingdon Club, and Cameron was one of them. This is where he met the man who is now (terrifyingly) the most powerful man in London, Boris Johnson.

No one is saying that Cameron isn’t clever. But maybe’s he’s the smartest who’s rich enough to hang with the rich, the cleverest to have come out of the upper-middle classes. Perhaps the key question is not should he have power, but would he have power if he didn’t come from such a privileged background? And what about those better suited to power, who can’t afford to go to Eton?

The problem won't be solved right here, right now. This is a problem that can only be solved by an overhaul of the entire system. This is just an irritated blog by an irritated blogger. Perhaps being aware of the problem is the most we can do at the moment, so more people can get involved when the issue comes up next. Yes, getting annoyed that the system we live in can feel like yelling into an uninhabited cave, but there’s a chance, just a tiny chance, that someone will here the echo. Because social mobility is an important factor in the fair society that we want to live in. Otherwise, no one would’ve ever heard of Tulisa. 

Cinematic Procrastination

Oh no. I just blogged all over the internet. Again. Sorry

I haven’t done one of these since early June, which happens to be pretty much the last time I was supposed to be doing any work. For some reason, there seems to be no reason to spend my time doing this unless I have something ‘more important’ that I should be doing, like studying for exams. As soon as I actually have the free time to spend blogging, I find myself doing others things like eating and continuously refreshing the BBC News page in the hope that something has happened in the 4 minutes since I last looked.

Filling 6 weeks always does end up as some sort of challenge, especially without a holiday this year. This has lead to me film-binging throughout the entire summer, which may partly go to explaining why I am so unfit. But I have seen some great films, and some bad ones. This summer alone I have seen:

• The Godfather
• Something’s Gotta Give
• Donnie Darko
• Shawshank Redemption
• LOTR-The fellowship of the ring, extended edition
• My Summer of Love
• The Dark Knight Rises
• Taken
• The Social Network
• The Matrix
• Ted
• The Amazing Spiderman
• Tim Burton’s Batman
• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Supremacy
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• The Big Lebowski
• Virgin Territory
• Scarface
• Rain Man
• Mission Impossible 1,2,3 and 4

Looking back, I probably could’ve been more productive. Given that you can add to this list a whole series of The West Wing, all of The Newsroom and Veep, Wallander (all hail Kenneth Branagh), Line of Duty and all the terrible films I’ve seen but were so unmemorable that I’ve forgotten them already.

However, my parents have started pestering me to start work for school this year. Hence I’m finding time to blog. And for all 3 of my dedicated fans, I promise that I will blog more in the near future. I also promise that they will be less self-indulgent and more interesting than this was. Sorry.