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Two girls in the office were trying to get the printer to print on headed paper via manual feed.
R: It’s not going in!
T: What do you mean?
R: It’s there but it’s just not sucking it in!
T: Right, now try again.
R: Ok, I’ll try and push it in this time.
T: Yeah, push!
R: Oh, it’s sucking!
I know, anything for entertainment in the office…
Playing the race card is getting a bit old now.
Apparently, in July this year, a black woman won the title of Miss England. The first black woman to do so.
Then 2 weeks ago, she was stripped of her title due to her alleged involvement in a nightclub cat-fight over her man.
In an interview I read of her in The Sunday Times Magazine, she lamented why so few have come out to support her and why her winning Miss England should be a much bigger deal than it is.
“If I was the first black Miss America, I wouldn’t be able to sit at this table talking to you, I’d be mobbed.”
Woman, having a black person win a beauty pageant in America 26 years ago was a big deal because racial tensions back then were much higher than it is today and racial equality was still a comparatively new concept. The fact that no one is falling over themselves to make a big deal out of a non-white Miss England is because it is so much less of an issue these days. Consider this an achievement. Consider this proof that we have in fact come a long way. Consider this as progress. Consider this an acknowledgment that you, a black person, is being treated so much more equally now than back in the day when Vanessa Williams won Miss America and that is why no special hoo-hah is being made over you being black.
However, I suspect the main and bigger reason why there is little reporting in the media is simply because people don’t give a shit about beauty pageants anymore. Towards the end of the interview, the article basically answers her questions:
“Britain fell out of love with Miss World in the late 1980s…’Things got so bad I had to do it in Blackpool one year because we had no sponsors, no TV backing, no media interest at all.’ Miss England used to be held at the Dorchester; now it is at a Hilton under the A40.”
I think using your race or ethnicity as a basis of claim for every alleged injustice against you is really just taking the piss and unfairly undercuts the cases of real racial discriminations that occur. It will eventually end up working against you and other ethnic minorities. Remember the boy who cried wolf?
What would you think if I write to Boris Johnson to complain about the lack of packing space for bikes in Chinatown and proceed to exclaim that that is evidence of racial discrimination by his government by assuming that Asians don’t cycle and continue by assusing him of ignoring and not supporting the minority Asian cycling population? Look! He is building bike racks in and around white neighbourhoods but not in Chinatown! Perhaps I should form the London Asian Cycling Coalition (hey, not a bad name actually!) and sue his administration for racial injustice?
While writing that, I will conveniently overlook that fact that bike parking is also a premium in locations like Covent Garden and he is basically just not providing enough amenities in the whole of London in general for an activity that he has so enthusiastically advocated for.
Racial discrimiation, ignorance, and injustices do occur, but don’t take the piss and over do it. Sometimes, when things don’t go your way, you have only yourself to blame.
Girls. Learn how to punch and where to punch.
If you, like me, do some form of boxing classes, learn to do bare-knuckle punches (without the gloves) as well.
Otherwise, you might end up fracturing your hand like I did by punching Nasty square on his shoulder bone, making contact with my ring-finger and pinky knuckles, causing my hand to fold in on itself like delicate origami.
Consequently, you’ll get snickered at by the guy and his friends, workmates and, most embarassingly, your physiotherapist; contributing to the long-(guy)-held belief that girls can’t punch. Which is, really, detrimental to the progress of female empowerment. And it’s not true anyways, since his friends always recoil in pain when the guy in question boasts about my boxing prowness by asking me to demo-punch them.
Ok, maybe just my ability to give one single punch to unsuspecting innocent people.
It’s bad PR for East London as well when your GP asks whether you were involved in a fight.
I so wish.
At least being in a street brawl sounds way cooler than a meek “Yeah…I…um…broke my hand punching my….*ahem*….boyfriend.”
Damn it.
Dear Vue,
My boyfriend and I went to see a film at Vue Islington last night as a treat. But we left having spent about £27 and feeling scammed and ripped off.
First, the sizes and prices of the popcorn and soft drinks sold were unreasonably oversized and overpriced. Instead of selling smaller, more normal portions for a more reasonable price, Vue has to sell unhealthily large sizes just so you can charge more. Customers then are made to feel like they have no cause for complaint because the sizes are so big and we feel like we have to eat and drink all of it since we paid so much. The size of the Sprite we had was basically diabetes in a cup.
We then walked into the cinema to find that half of the seats are reserved as “VIP” seats, whereby customers have to pay more to have a seat reserved. From what I could see, there isn’t a significant difference in terms of comfort, and it looks more like a method to get customers to pay more for what we deserve anyways – reserved seats.
Because it’s free seating for standard ticket holders, we have to go into the cinema extra early to make sure we have seats with a reasonable view of the screen. After paying almost £10 for a ticket, then £7 for an unnecessarily oversized soft drink and popcorn, and having to go in early to get nicer seats, we are made to sit through almost half an hour of advertisements.
Our tickets say the movie starts at 9.10pm. We sat there advert after advert and the movie only started at almost 9.40pm. That is outrageous and unacceptable. It makes me think whether free seating was created, not only to make us pay extra for reserved seats, but also to create a captive audience to watch those hideous adverts.
Regardless of whether we enjoyed the movie we saw or not, our experience was severely dampened by the policies of Vue which made us felt like were designed to squeeze every penny out of us.
We left feeling scammed and ripped off. Vue, you could be assured that the next time we want to see a movie, Vue will definitely not be our choice of cinema and I definitely will not recommend Vue to anyone.
Yours sincerely,
Dora
Exterior wall of freetown Christiania, Copenhagen.
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