Okay, I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea how this blogging stuff works, especially when it comes to something like politics. Personal stuff? No problem. Reviews? Piss easy. Politics? QUE?! Anyways, in true enterprising fashion I'll try my damndest to think of something to talk about and homework is as good a place as any to start.
So, from what I gathered from the lecture, Empirical...stuff, is things that can be proven through direct observation, gathering of evidence, basically stuff you can see with your eyes that you can't argue with. I guess one current event that's economically empirical is the current recession. The GDP of the country shrank for two successive quarters in Britain, fulfilling the definition of an actual recession (the good news is that the God-awful term "credit crunch" can play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself).
Mervyn King, who our whole lecture group now knows is the Governor of the Bank of England after being shouted at for not knowing it one lecture, has helped ease the collective brown trouser time in the country by saying...we're financially buggered. Oh. On top of this we've got some experts saying it'll be worse than 1929 and we'll all be carrying our wages home in the 4x4's that we can no longer afford to run and we'll resort to eating the leather of our designer label shoes and handbags which seemed such a good idea at the time.
However, such is the cyclical nature of these things that a boom will follow the bust at some stage. Also, Our Lord And Savior President Obama is in office now, so we no longer have the most powerful country in the world run by a government with the effectiveness of Team Rocket and the eloquence of the mountain men from Deliverance.
A priori I understand as being something that can't be explicitly proven until it actually happens. So for example, Westboro Baptist Church from the States were banned from entering Britain to protest at a play in Basingstoke called 'The Laramie Project', about a man called Matthew Sheppard who was murdered for being gay.
The reasons for their hate-holiday being cancelled was, the Home Office argued, to prevent them from potentially inciting hatred. In response to not being allowed in the UK they added a page to their website, charmingly titled God Hates The United Kingdom.
Now, while there's no guarantee that their protest would've been nothing but peaceful, it's highly likely that the claims of inticing hatred would've been accurate. The Westboro Baptist Church has been dogged with controversy in the USA due to its picketing of soliders funerals, as well as the funerals of homosexuals and AIDS victims. They claim that these acts are the acts of God, who's punishing humanity for its tolerance towards homosexuality and other things they view as sinful. This is also the same Church that was followed around by Louis Theroux in his BBC2 documentary: 'The Most Hated Family In Britain' and Keith Allen in his Channel 4 documentary 'Keith Allen Will Burn In Hell'. They also provided the only situation where I've actually liked Michael Moore in this clip from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_fAYl4Th4
Personally, I'm not sure I think they should've been prevented from entering the country. I don't agree with a single one of their opinions, but I also don't think they should be blocked from being able to air those views, even if they are forceful. Moreover, it would've made a great piece for our course.
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