OK, I admit, like many others I love to see celebrities make complete fools of themselves on the television, but after watching this weekends episode of Strictly Come Dancing I have been thinking that maybe what celebrities do for our entertainment, sometimes is taken a little bit too far.
On hearing that Ann Widdecombe was to be on this years Strictly, I was relishing the thought of seeing the loud mouthed Tory floundering around the dance floor and as predicted for the first few weeks it was quite entertaining. However, many weeks later it is all starting just to get way too predictable and I never thought this possible, but I feel a little bit sorry for her.
She can’t dance and will never be able to, but yet the people of Britain vote to keep her in week after week just to see what moves dance partner Anton Du Beke is going to get her to do next week, and she ultimately is just embarrassing herself for our entertainment. It’s the whole John Sergeant thing again, apart from ‘Widde’ (as I affectionately call her) is too stubborn to drop out like Sergeant did.
But that’s the problem, where do you draw the line on shows like Strictly or the X Factor, when do they stop being entertainment shows and start being talent contests? It hardly seems fair when people who can actually dance get voted out, for example like Jimmy Mistry did the other week, and then we have ‘Widde’ who is kept in purely for entertainment purposes.
The same goes for the X Factor, it is meant to be singing contest yet Wagner, who clearly can not sing half as well as the other contestants, is being voted in every week, because Louis Walsh dresses him up and makes him do an ‘entertaining’ performance every week. I would like to know if Wagner knows that the public are laughing at him, not with him?
It would seem that television broadcasters also seem obliged to allow ‘rubbish’ people on to our TV screens and it all points into the direction of the most important things to them; viewing figures and making money, all at the expense of someone’s dignity. Saying that though these people didn’t have to take part in these shows but is it worth it just to get your face and name on the nations TV screens?
Maybe both Widdecombe and Wagner will go home this weekend? But I very much doubt it. They will both stay in until the public realises that talented people are losing out purely so we can get our entertainment fix, but then again who am I to complain, isn’t that what television is for?
A Student Dilemma
Cuts, cuts and more cuts is all we seem to hear about in the news at present.
It seems that every day we wake up to hear more of how honest and hard working people are having their pay reduced or ultimately losing their jobs as the government tries to save money up and down the country. Southampton, where I currently live and study, is of course part of the sobering mix.
With news that Southampton City Council is set to axe 250 jobs by next year and enforcing pay cuts for all its staff in order to save £25million by the end of 2012, including senior staff; it seems that no-one is safe from the looming hand of unemployment.
So what does this mean for students who will not only be looking for jobs in Southampton but all over the country after they graduate? Many will be looking for jobs in areas like local councils and the NHS, all which are suffering as the government tightens its belt.
Should us students be worried that there may not be any jobs for us to go into or are people already resigned to the fact that it will be extremely hard to get into employment? Not only do we have to compete with other graduates up and down the country but we also will be competing with all the people who have been made redundant by these job cuts and are looking to get back into work. These workers have already had many years experience within their profession and don’t need to be trained from scratch.
According to the National Office of Statistics, unemployment for graduates during the recession increased faster compared to the UK as a whole, with the unemployment rates of graduates hitting 20 per cent in the third quarter of 2010; that is one in five who were looking for work but couldn’t find any.
With national unemployment standing at 2.5 million at the end of November 2010, the figures from before and all the doom and gloom we see, it is quite hard to be positive as soon to be graduates, it is hard to be positive about our job prospects as soon-to-be graduates. Will we find jobs and manage to build ourselves a successful career in our chosen fields?
Solent University’s vocational focus though means we have received the right training and teaching to enable us to go straight into our chosen career paths. Through this we should all have faith in our degrees.
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