Naturally as a student, who studies English Law, I learn a fair amount about the EU but as my understanding of the EU grows, I get more annoyed by the media gives rise to all these misconceptions about it.
I'm sure anyone, who's studied UK law and quite possibly the law of a member state of the EU will be aware of the fact that the media always seem to amalgamate The Council of Europe (the body responsible for the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights) with the European Union and therefore make out that the European Union is responsible for the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. It's true that a member state needs a good record regarding respect of human rights to become a member state of the EU, so a member state is quite likely to be part of the Council of Europe but that doesn't make the Council of Europe a part of the European Union. This conception naturally gives people, who support anti-EU parties like UKIP, the wrong reasons to support such parties, when they hear stories about the ECtHR taking human rights too far by deciding that young men and young women should have to pay the same rate of car insurance, etc.
However, the misconception about the EU that annoys me most is the idea that the European Commission makes most of the EU's laws and so a lot of a member states rules are therefore made by an unelected body. It's true to say that the European Commission proposes most of the EU's legislation but what we aren't told, is that the Commission's proposals don't become law until the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of Europe) has agreed to pass such legislation and the European Parliament has had a chance to propose amendments (which the European Council agrees with) to the legislation. The European Council is made up of ministers from each member state and citizens of each member state vote for the European Parliament, so although the proposals are made by an unelected body, the content and legal status of the proposals are dependant on the decisions of elected bodies. There are also a fair amount of standing committees (and no doubt similar bodies in other member states) in Parliament that scrutinise the Commission's proposals and send their recommendations to the ministers of the European Council, so government and Parliament still play quite a big role in the legislation, which affects Britain. It is therefore ridiculous to use this fact to make it seem as though being part of the EU means that we've been taken over by a non-democratic body, although I agree that the European Parliament and perhaps the European Council should have a greater role to play in this legislative process.
Moreover, the role that Parliament plays in the passing of EU legislation depends on the type of legislation that has been introduced. There are 3 types of legislation: regulations, decisions and directives. Parliament has less of a role in passing decisions and regulations of the EU because they are essentially decided by the process described in the paragraph above. Directives are also subject to the same process but Parliament decides how directives should be implemented because these are the sorts of laws, that cannot be decided in their entirety by the EU because the efficiency of such laws would be subjective to the individual country, so it is better to let the member state decide how these laws should be implemented in their country. This therefore means that when we see the directive embodied in UK law, it will be embodied in the form of an act, unlike the regulations and decisions, which have names that make it clear that they originate from the EU. Admittedly because of indirect effect, the directive can be used when it is passed by the European Council, without being developed by Parliament, if the meaning of the directive is clear and there is nothing further that must be clarified by Parliament, before it can be legally enforced. There is a particular problem as regards clarity because one judge could enforce a directive (which has not been developed by Parliament) because he thinks it's meaning is clear, whereas another judge might choose to not enforce it because he feels it is ambiguous, so this can cause problems with regard to the principle of the rule of law because a citizen could be unaware of the rule their case will be subject to. Nevertheless, it is still an example of how the EU doesn't always limit Parliament's role in passing legislation.
It should also be remembered that the principle of subsidiarity is an important part of the EU because it means that the EU will only pass legislation in a certain area of law because the extent or the effect of this area of law is such that the EU would pass a more efficient law than the individual member state. This principle is so important to the EU that they have published a document known as, the "Protocol on the Application of the Principles of Subsidiarity and Proportionality", which obliges the Commission to have a wide consultation before proposing laws. This means that the Parliament or Chamber has eight weeks to send the Commission a reasoned opinion as to why a proposal does not conform to the principle of subsidiarity, after they have received the particular legislative proposal. Nevertheless, there are problems regarding the extent of the principle, that have been raised by the Kompetenz-Kompetenz question because the European Court of Justice has at times been known to push the boundaries of subsidiarity, when making decisions about the extent of a law. All the same, this is still an important concept, which is given a lot of consideration by the EU, to the extent that there are certain competences they won't assume, so it means that no Parliament of any member state will lose their entire power to make laws.
So although the EU is a powerful body, it's not as powerful as it can be made out to be.
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Monday, 26 December 2011
Should the European Court of Human Rights focus on a more select group of issues/claims?
Now that I've covered issues relating to university life and my course, I'd like to write more about current issues within the British and European legal system.
I'm sure many of you will be aware of the fact that some minister's are currently trying to suggest that the European Court of Human Rights should merely focus on "major issues of principle". Clarke believes that the ECtHR should focus on what the Daily Telegraph refers to as "major issues such as freedom and torture and not minor compensation claims".
Words cannot express my anger at this suggestion from Britain and Switzerland. I was angry enough, when the Conservatives said that they had plans to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 because this appeared to be a way to win votes from those, who have been convinced by rubbish written by newspapers such as the Daily Mail that rapists have been allowed to leave jail early because of this act.
The main point of the Human Rights Act is that public authorities have to behave to act in a way that is compatible with this act. Nevertheless, it only affects judges' judgements in the sense that they have to interpret the laws so that they are in line with this act. As can be seen in the case of Ghaidan v Mendoza, this power that section 3 of the act gives judges allows judges to modify the meaning of legislation that affects their judgement, so long as it does not conflict with the purpose of legislation. Section 4 of the act makes it quite clear that judges can only declare legislation as incompatible with this act, if they cannot find a way to interpret legislation in such a way that it is in line with the act whilst simultaneously fulfilling the purpose of the incompatible act. So the Human Rights Act is clearly not the reason for scenarios such as rapists getting out of jail early, etc.
Furthermore, as Tom Bingham said in his article about this act (which was published shortly before his death in 2010), it would take us back to a time, where individuals had to pay £30,000 (this pre HRA 1998 figure could very well have increased with inflation) in order to make sure that the outcome of their case was the result of judgement that was in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. So repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 would mean that the poorest people in our society would be less likely to be able to ensure that the judgements of their cases were in line with the convention.
As you can imagine, I was relieved when the coalition with the Liberal Democrats stopped the Conservatives from repealing the act. But it seems that the grounds for my relief had weak foundations because limiting the power of the ECtHR is inherently worse.
The whole reason why the convention was drawn up was to limit the likelihood of dictators like Hitler from being able to being able to have such power in the future. So naturally the ECtHR was set up to make sure that countries, who signed the convention, adhered to the rights enshrined in the convention.
Kenneth Clarke might claim that this has led to a culture of people claiming compensation on the grounds that "something has been done to your dog" but I'd love to know which case he's referring to when he says this, because it sounds an awful lot like the rumour started by Theresa May that an illegal immigrant couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat in the UK. I find it hard to believe that someone would spend so much money on taking a case to the ECtHR because something had been done to their dog.
Moreover amongst issues that he defines as "minor compensation claims", he includes the issue of people challenging the blanket ban on full time prisoners being able to vote. The notion of this issue not being worthy of scrutiny from the ECtHR disgusts me. The right to fair representation is something that many people such as Emeline Pankhurst have suffered for. What's more, many people such as those currently holding protests in Russia are an example of how many people still suffer for the right to fair representation. Indeed countries of the European Union criticise countries like Russia for not holding fair elections, so how can Clarke then describe the right to representation as a right which is merely used to claim compensation? In general, if we start saying that it's more important for the ECtHR to uphold some rights in comparison to others, then that is to say that some of the suffering, which people endured under the Nazis, other dictatorships, and so on, is less meaningful.
Furthermore, what one might define as a "major issue" is subjective to the person. For example, (I don't want to focus too much on the right to fair representation) nowadays the good majority of us would think it cruel to deny women the right to vote but I'm sure that at the time of the protests by suffragettes many people thought that the suffragettes were just campaigning about the "minor" issue of women not being able to vote, so I think we can conclude that there are a lot of serious issues regarding human rights, which could potentially be defined as "minor". We could therefore destroy the efficiency of the convention, if we categorised some alleged breaches of the convention as "minor compensation claims".
It naturally suits a country's government to say that ECtHR to focus on what they deem to be "major issues" because it means that they don't have to pay so much in compensation to victims of human rights abuse and it gives them a better image because there'll be less cases in the newspaper of the ECtHR saying that a right enshrined in the convention was breached. But if we change the role of the ECtHR so that a country's laws/legal system are less open to foreign scrutiny then we would be destroying the purpose of the establishment of the court, which was to make sure that the courts and laws did comply with the convention.
I'm sure many of you will be aware of the fact that some minister's are currently trying to suggest that the European Court of Human Rights should merely focus on "major issues of principle". Clarke believes that the ECtHR should focus on what the Daily Telegraph refers to as "major issues such as freedom and torture and not minor compensation claims".
Words cannot express my anger at this suggestion from Britain and Switzerland. I was angry enough, when the Conservatives said that they had plans to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 because this appeared to be a way to win votes from those, who have been convinced by rubbish written by newspapers such as the Daily Mail that rapists have been allowed to leave jail early because of this act.
The main point of the Human Rights Act is that public authorities have to behave to act in a way that is compatible with this act. Nevertheless, it only affects judges' judgements in the sense that they have to interpret the laws so that they are in line with this act. As can be seen in the case of Ghaidan v Mendoza, this power that section 3 of the act gives judges allows judges to modify the meaning of legislation that affects their judgement, so long as it does not conflict with the purpose of legislation. Section 4 of the act makes it quite clear that judges can only declare legislation as incompatible with this act, if they cannot find a way to interpret legislation in such a way that it is in line with the act whilst simultaneously fulfilling the purpose of the incompatible act. So the Human Rights Act is clearly not the reason for scenarios such as rapists getting out of jail early, etc.
Furthermore, as Tom Bingham said in his article about this act (which was published shortly before his death in 2010), it would take us back to a time, where individuals had to pay £30,000 (this pre HRA 1998 figure could very well have increased with inflation) in order to make sure that the outcome of their case was the result of judgement that was in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. So repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 would mean that the poorest people in our society would be less likely to be able to ensure that the judgements of their cases were in line with the convention.
As you can imagine, I was relieved when the coalition with the Liberal Democrats stopped the Conservatives from repealing the act. But it seems that the grounds for my relief had weak foundations because limiting the power of the ECtHR is inherently worse.
The whole reason why the convention was drawn up was to limit the likelihood of dictators like Hitler from being able to being able to have such power in the future. So naturally the ECtHR was set up to make sure that countries, who signed the convention, adhered to the rights enshrined in the convention.
Kenneth Clarke might claim that this has led to a culture of people claiming compensation on the grounds that "something has been done to your dog" but I'd love to know which case he's referring to when he says this, because it sounds an awful lot like the rumour started by Theresa May that an illegal immigrant couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat in the UK. I find it hard to believe that someone would spend so much money on taking a case to the ECtHR because something had been done to their dog.
Moreover amongst issues that he defines as "minor compensation claims", he includes the issue of people challenging the blanket ban on full time prisoners being able to vote. The notion of this issue not being worthy of scrutiny from the ECtHR disgusts me. The right to fair representation is something that many people such as Emeline Pankhurst have suffered for. What's more, many people such as those currently holding protests in Russia are an example of how many people still suffer for the right to fair representation. Indeed countries of the European Union criticise countries like Russia for not holding fair elections, so how can Clarke then describe the right to representation as a right which is merely used to claim compensation? In general, if we start saying that it's more important for the ECtHR to uphold some rights in comparison to others, then that is to say that some of the suffering, which people endured under the Nazis, other dictatorships, and so on, is less meaningful.
Furthermore, what one might define as a "major issue" is subjective to the person. For example, (I don't want to focus too much on the right to fair representation) nowadays the good majority of us would think it cruel to deny women the right to vote but I'm sure that at the time of the protests by suffragettes many people thought that the suffragettes were just campaigning about the "minor" issue of women not being able to vote, so I think we can conclude that there are a lot of serious issues regarding human rights, which could potentially be defined as "minor". We could therefore destroy the efficiency of the convention, if we categorised some alleged breaches of the convention as "minor compensation claims".
It naturally suits a country's government to say that ECtHR to focus on what they deem to be "major issues" because it means that they don't have to pay so much in compensation to victims of human rights abuse and it gives them a better image because there'll be less cases in the newspaper of the ECtHR saying that a right enshrined in the convention was breached. But if we change the role of the ECtHR so that a country's laws/legal system are less open to foreign scrutiny then we would be destroying the purpose of the establishment of the court, which was to make sure that the courts and laws did comply with the convention.
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Am I happy with my law course?
As a student of the University of Sussex I thought I'd tell you about my opinions regarding the law course here because an open day can only tell you so much about the particular department.
Sussex is currently one or two places short of being one of the top 20 universities for law and it's grade requirements for law are now AAA-AAB. The Times university league table rated them as being the 8th best university for law but no other university league table ranks them as being quite so good for the subject. They generally emphasised the fact that they're trying to encourage more university league tables to recognise them as a top ten university during freshers week but I don't feel that they're doing enough to be a top ten university for the subject.
The top ten universities like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, KCL, Nottingham, Durham, etc. will ask that you do preliminary reading before you get there, so that means that you should have you're text books before you get there, so that you can get on with work as soon as possible. Sussex does not take this attitude because they did not set us any preliminary reading and we didn't even know which text books we were supposed to have until the week after freshers week. To me this would be an obvious feature of the law degree to change if they want to be considered generally as a top ten university for this subject.
There are many cases of the university making us do exercises, where we spend too much time on the easier parts of a law degree. For example, for our first Frameworks of English Law Seminar all we had to do was a referencing exercise. I don't doubt that there are benefits of doing this exercise because it does take a while to get used to the referencing used in law but we could have covered more ground than the way in which cases/journals/etc. are referenced. What's more we did this seminar in the third week of the course, when we really could have done it in the first week of the course. I'm also not very happy with my (associate) tutor for this module because he sometimes doesn't get facts, which are written in the text book, right.
I was also not very impressed with the first public law seminar. The first exercise for it entailed the construction of a flow chart of the UK's constitutional power, followed by a second exercise of the purpose of constitutions and a third exercise where we defined the rule of law. Admittedly the work we do for seminars now is a bit harder but we still get questions, where the answers are pretty obvious, like "name 5-10 constitutional conventions". I was pushed harder for Politics AS level than I currently am for Public Law. I'm generally not happy with the staff in charge of this module because my public law lecturer for this term openly admitted to gaps in his knowledge and didn't like us to "ask [him] hard questions" and my seminar tutor's only knowledge of law comes from a conversion course. This meant that my seminar tutor was not able to answer the question of whether the fact that Parliament didn't convene on weekends was a convention. Furthermore, as soon as I read Jowell & Oliver's, The Changing Constitution, it became apparent to me that my lecturer had taken the majority of his information from there. My problem with the Public Law department is that we generally don't go into enough depth because it wasn't until I got home and started revising that I realised that we hadn't covered anything on the criticisms of Dicey's doctrine regarding the rule of law and the question of sovereignty regarding the constitutional acts, that have been brought in in the past few years.
I'm happy that my tutors and lecturers for Tort Law and Contract Law have enough knowledge of the subjects but I still have a few problems with these departments. My first two Contract Law seminars were about the conditions of offer and acceptance (if you haven't studied law this is the most basic condition for forming a legally binding contract), so we had less time to spend on more complicated parts of Contract Law like privity of contract (the idea that only the parties involved in the contract have the legal power to enforce the contract). My sister also disapproved of the text book we were recommended (Koffman and Macdonald) because it doesn't go into enough depth, so I have had to replace this with McKendrick. The text book (Markesinis) we were recommended for Tort Law is good. My criticisms of the Tort Law department would be that my first two lecturers were not great because although they're very intelligent they don't seem to like lecturing. The first lecturer was very monotonous and didn't engage us by asking questions and the next one was too intelligent for the job and so he would spend too much time illustrating his points and go off on a tangent to the point where he'd get through an average of three power point slides per lecture.
I had two other offers from Essex and Exeter and I don't regret choosing Sussex over these two universities but I really wish I was at a better university like UCL, etc. You can read my reasons for choosing Sussex over these two universities on the blog I wrote about having a gap year.
Sussex is currently one or two places short of being one of the top 20 universities for law and it's grade requirements for law are now AAA-AAB. The Times university league table rated them as being the 8th best university for law but no other university league table ranks them as being quite so good for the subject. They generally emphasised the fact that they're trying to encourage more university league tables to recognise them as a top ten university during freshers week but I don't feel that they're doing enough to be a top ten university for the subject.
The top ten universities like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, KCL, Nottingham, Durham, etc. will ask that you do preliminary reading before you get there, so that means that you should have you're text books before you get there, so that you can get on with work as soon as possible. Sussex does not take this attitude because they did not set us any preliminary reading and we didn't even know which text books we were supposed to have until the week after freshers week. To me this would be an obvious feature of the law degree to change if they want to be considered generally as a top ten university for this subject.
There are many cases of the university making us do exercises, where we spend too much time on the easier parts of a law degree. For example, for our first Frameworks of English Law Seminar all we had to do was a referencing exercise. I don't doubt that there are benefits of doing this exercise because it does take a while to get used to the referencing used in law but we could have covered more ground than the way in which cases/journals/etc. are referenced. What's more we did this seminar in the third week of the course, when we really could have done it in the first week of the course. I'm also not very happy with my (associate) tutor for this module because he sometimes doesn't get facts, which are written in the text book, right.
I was also not very impressed with the first public law seminar. The first exercise for it entailed the construction of a flow chart of the UK's constitutional power, followed by a second exercise of the purpose of constitutions and a third exercise where we defined the rule of law. Admittedly the work we do for seminars now is a bit harder but we still get questions, where the answers are pretty obvious, like "name 5-10 constitutional conventions". I was pushed harder for Politics AS level than I currently am for Public Law. I'm generally not happy with the staff in charge of this module because my public law lecturer for this term openly admitted to gaps in his knowledge and didn't like us to "ask [him] hard questions" and my seminar tutor's only knowledge of law comes from a conversion course. This meant that my seminar tutor was not able to answer the question of whether the fact that Parliament didn't convene on weekends was a convention. Furthermore, as soon as I read Jowell & Oliver's, The Changing Constitution, it became apparent to me that my lecturer had taken the majority of his information from there. My problem with the Public Law department is that we generally don't go into enough depth because it wasn't until I got home and started revising that I realised that we hadn't covered anything on the criticisms of Dicey's doctrine regarding the rule of law and the question of sovereignty regarding the constitutional acts, that have been brought in in the past few years.
I'm happy that my tutors and lecturers for Tort Law and Contract Law have enough knowledge of the subjects but I still have a few problems with these departments. My first two Contract Law seminars were about the conditions of offer and acceptance (if you haven't studied law this is the most basic condition for forming a legally binding contract), so we had less time to spend on more complicated parts of Contract Law like privity of contract (the idea that only the parties involved in the contract have the legal power to enforce the contract). My sister also disapproved of the text book we were recommended (Koffman and Macdonald) because it doesn't go into enough depth, so I have had to replace this with McKendrick. The text book (Markesinis) we were recommended for Tort Law is good. My criticisms of the Tort Law department would be that my first two lecturers were not great because although they're very intelligent they don't seem to like lecturing. The first lecturer was very monotonous and didn't engage us by asking questions and the next one was too intelligent for the job and so he would spend too much time illustrating his points and go off on a tangent to the point where he'd get through an average of three power point slides per lecture.
I had two other offers from Essex and Exeter and I don't regret choosing Sussex over these two universities but I really wish I was at a better university like UCL, etc. You can read my reasons for choosing Sussex over these two universities on the blog I wrote about having a gap year.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
A law student's work load
As you've probably know by now, law students have pretty hectic work loads. During fresher's week one of the first things we were told was that law degrees require the most reading and that whilst most first years will be having an introductory year, where the work load isn't so tough, law students have a tough work load for the whole of their three years at university.
They say that if you're doing the work properly, the degree is meant to occupy 35 hours of each week. I, however, have found that I seem to spend pretty much all of my time thinking about work, unless I'm out doing the weekly shop. One of my friends, who is also very dedicated to doing well is also finding that this is the case. This is admittedly in part because I'm genuinely not interested in going out clubbing, so I just use this as an excuse. You also could say that I do set aside to do an Arabic class and the homework for that, so it's not that bad. But even if I dedicate all the free time I have to doing the reading, I tend to find that I don't get it all done. Another friend agreed with me when I said that I've either read the majority of the cases and barely pages in the relevant chapter of the text book or a lot of the text book and barely any cases. So as you can see, the first term of university is not the easiest for a law student.
Our academic advisor told us at the beginning that we would almost certainly find that we would struggle with the work load at the beginning and that we should therefore go and see her, when we found that this was the case. So naturally, I went to go and see her when I'd struggled with getting all the reading done in the first few weeks and she said that there was no particular way out of the problem because a law student has to struggle in order to find a way of dealing with all the reading.
Since having this appointment with her, I've stopped reading so many judgements of cases and I tend to use a West Law/Lexis analysis in order to learn the majority of cases. I've also stopped making as many notes on what I read because this takes up a huge amount of time and you often won't refer back to what you've written. I tend to just make notes if the text I'm reading is so dense that the only way of taking it in is to make notes on it. Nevertheless, I am considering making more notes because I don't feel like I remember so much of what we covered in the past few weeks.
I'm not entirely sure if this is necessary because there were other reasons that could explain why I can't remember so much information from the last few weeks. I had a test and I had some essays and case notes to write, so that meant that there was less time to do the necessary reading.
If you're reading this as a prospective law student, then I hope you still remain a prospective law student. Although law is a hard degree, I still love it and I still think it's worth all the time you have to give up for it. I just want you to be aware of the work load you will face. I know a lot of people, who've either had trouble settling in or want to see their boyfriend, and therefore go and see their boyfriend/family/etc. each weekend but this really is not advisable because they often find that they don't get a lot of work done this way and therefore get behind by doing this. So my objective of writing this post is to make you aware of the commitment necessary for a law degree.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
My preferred sorts of law
So now that I've covered my issues regarding university life in general, I thought I'd write about my experience of my law degree and the modules I enjoy. My modules for this year are Public Law, Contract Law, Tort Law and Frameworks of English Law (often known as English Legal Systems). I'll deal with each of these modules respectively.
Public Law
Public Law is my least favourite module because it's very theoretical. Some would say that Public Law is one of the better modules because there aren't so many cases to learn, so you have to worry less about backing up every point you make with a case. This can in a sense this can be advantageous as it means that you have less to remember for an exam but from the point of view interest, it can be quite boring because you get less of a chance to see how the law is applied and interpreted. This can be an easy module if you've done Politics at AS level but this does not mean that there won't still be a fair amount of reading to do for this module. At first I took too much advantage of the fact that I'd done politics because I seemed to get away with my knowledge from AS Politics, reading some of Colin Munro and just looking at the lecture power points when I was preparing for seminars but I soon learnt that this was a bad idea when I got a better textbook (ie. Bradley & Ewing) and soon realised that I didn't know as much as I should know. I also realised that I didn't know as much as I should know when I had to write my first essay for Public Law.
Tort and Contract Law
I've written about these two sorts of law under one heading because as all lawyers will know, they overlap quite a lot since tort law is about compensation. These two sorts of law are my favourite sorts of law because this is where you DO get to see the law being applied and interpreted. It's really interesting to see how the judges decide the outcome of a complicated case. Overall I prefer contract law but there are many people who would prefer tort law. One of the reasons why I love contract law so much is because you have the opportunity to read a lot about Lord Denning and the way in which he tried to change the law by his judgements.
Tort law should be interesting and it certainly is when you read about it but I've not found it as interesting as contract law because my first two tort law lecturers were rather unenthusiastic lecturers, who seemed to be pretty bored of having to perform the exact same lecture for another year. Nevertheless, now I've got my contract law lecturer for tort law and I'm enjoying it so much more, so you'll probably find that the sort of law you enjoy will very much depend on your lecturer.
Frameworks of English Law/English Legal systems
Not all universities will offer this module but the universities that do will often make you study this module. It's often not the same as studying the other modules because it's often just a half-module, that doesn't require that you do an exam. Nevertheless it is interesting to see how exactly the English Legal System works. You study how the EU and the Human Rights Act 1998 affects us, the general principles of how judges make their judgements, European legal methods, how laws are drafted and how judges interpret the law.
If you are reading this as someone, who has studied law or is currently studying law, I'd be interested to know which sorts of law you prefer.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
The drinking culture
I'm sure you're aware of the fact that the majority of students spend a fair amount of time drinking to the point where they get drunk. I'm glad to say that I'm not one of those people but I've often been encouraged to do so.
One of my flat mates has told me that I'm "missing out". Another flat mate has told me that I can't "be at university for 3 years without getting drunk". Before I got to university, I was even told that it was no wonder that I wasn't "invited to parties", if I wasn't prepared to drink. All of these comments have all the same never managed to persuade me that I should drink because I just cannot stand the taste of alcohol.
I used to think that I was one of few people, who didn't like the taste of alcohol. It wasn't until I got to university that I realised/found out that most people don't like the taste of alcohol and that they only drink it so that they can have a good time.
Nevertheless I still can't see the appeal of drinking/getting drunk because as far as I can see it just consists of a night of acting in an idiotic manner and laughing at things, which just aren't that funny. For instance, some of my flat mates were laughing about a night when they went out and got drunk and some guys jumped off a table, one of whom crashed into someone's neck to the point where they could have been killed, and then they got back home and there was nothing to eat so one of them had to make bacon sandwiches. I really cannot see any comic value whatsoever in this story. Furthermore, I can't understand why anyone would want to go through the experience of drinking such nasty tasting liquid and paying to do this in order to laugh at things, which just are not that funny. Because I don't drink alcohol I save enough money to justify the act of shopping at Waitrose and I can have much more fun by buying a nice used CD/DVD from Amazon, that costs £1.26 or a little more with postage and packaging included. These sorts of things bring far more satisfaction to my life than drinking ever could.
People often justify drinking in the name of confidence but there is no excuse that annoys me more. When you consider the late Amy Winehouse, she took to drinking for this reasoning because she found it hard to deal with the celebrity/social elite lifestyle, it's quite clear though that this hardly made her life better though. Generally this justification for drinking is the exact reason why people often become alcoholics, so it's really encouraging people to resolve their problems in the wrong way.
If anything I find the drinking culture sad. I see people almost living for these drunken nights out because they find no other satisfaction with their life when really it would be better to discover a hobby/interest as this would make one far more satisfied with life than drinking ever would or indeed could.
One of my flat mates has told me that I'm "missing out". Another flat mate has told me that I can't "be at university for 3 years without getting drunk". Before I got to university, I was even told that it was no wonder that I wasn't "invited to parties", if I wasn't prepared to drink. All of these comments have all the same never managed to persuade me that I should drink because I just cannot stand the taste of alcohol.
I used to think that I was one of few people, who didn't like the taste of alcohol. It wasn't until I got to university that I realised/found out that most people don't like the taste of alcohol and that they only drink it so that they can have a good time.
Nevertheless I still can't see the appeal of drinking/getting drunk because as far as I can see it just consists of a night of acting in an idiotic manner and laughing at things, which just aren't that funny. For instance, some of my flat mates were laughing about a night when they went out and got drunk and some guys jumped off a table, one of whom crashed into someone's neck to the point where they could have been killed, and then they got back home and there was nothing to eat so one of them had to make bacon sandwiches. I really cannot see any comic value whatsoever in this story. Furthermore, I can't understand why anyone would want to go through the experience of drinking such nasty tasting liquid and paying to do this in order to laugh at things, which just are not that funny. Because I don't drink alcohol I save enough money to justify the act of shopping at Waitrose and I can have much more fun by buying a nice used CD/DVD from Amazon, that costs £1.26 or a little more with postage and packaging included. These sorts of things bring far more satisfaction to my life than drinking ever could.
People often justify drinking in the name of confidence but there is no excuse that annoys me more. When you consider the late Amy Winehouse, she took to drinking for this reasoning because she found it hard to deal with the celebrity/social elite lifestyle, it's quite clear though that this hardly made her life better though. Generally this justification for drinking is the exact reason why people often become alcoholics, so it's really encouraging people to resolve their problems in the wrong way.
If anything I find the drinking culture sad. I see people almost living for these drunken nights out because they find no other satisfaction with their life when really it would be better to discover a hobby/interest as this would make one far more satisfied with life than drinking ever would or indeed could.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
The importance of being a geek
I'm sure some of you will remember reading the part of my first post,
where I said that I tended to not hang out with my flat mates because
they don't want to talk about academic subjects. Really all my friends
are geeks because I have so many academic issues on my mind, that I need
studious friends in order to feel satisfied, although there are of
course more personal reasons as to why they are my friends.
I don't just see this fear of being a geek among people my age, I also see it amongst my lecturers. My lecturers will often say that they read a report, are looking forward to an important event in their field of study because they're "sad" or sarcastically say that they did/do this because they're "cool".
But for years I've been trying to work out why it's often seen as a bad thing to be a geek.
I can't see the satisfaction of living a life, where you aren't a geek because anyone, who I've known to not be a geek or indeed not have something that they are really interested in, seems to just be bored. I've often found that these sorts of people resort to bitching/gossiping or other wasteful activities such as watching Big Brother/I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to fill their time and just generally activities which only bring temporary satisfaction with life. By being a geek life is so much more interesting and rewarding. Having geeky friends is also useful because it means that you can discuss ideas for projects you need to complete, learn how to study more efficiently and reinforce the things you've learnt.
The other reason why I get annoyed by people frowning upon the act of being a geek is that it is so clear that we need geeks in order to live in a world that functions well. Take for example Alan Turing, it was his work on the enigma machines that led to us working out Germany's encrypted messages in order to solve World War Two. Furthermore, professors, people who go into scientific research, etc. are often geeks and those people are responsible for developments in society. Indeed it's societies such as China in its days of a communist economy, the Congo that aren't so developed for the precise reason that they killed off members of the intelligentsia like professors. So unless people don't want their country to continue to develop, are they thinking when they frown upon someone for being a geek?
Currently the only possible explanation I can currently think of as to why society isn't more accommodating of geeks is that it makes those, who aren't more studious, feel embarrassed because they feel out of their depth and feel that geeks outsmart them and make them feel stupid. I'm willing to think that I might be wrong in this issue but that is currently the only logical explanation I can think of for this problem. It was certainly the case that Hitler, Stalin and Mao killed off the intelligentsia because they were more intelligent than them aswell as often being critical of them.
I don't just see this fear of being a geek among people my age, I also see it amongst my lecturers. My lecturers will often say that they read a report, are looking forward to an important event in their field of study because they're "sad" or sarcastically say that they did/do this because they're "cool".
But for years I've been trying to work out why it's often seen as a bad thing to be a geek.
I can't see the satisfaction of living a life, where you aren't a geek because anyone, who I've known to not be a geek or indeed not have something that they are really interested in, seems to just be bored. I've often found that these sorts of people resort to bitching/gossiping or other wasteful activities such as watching Big Brother/I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to fill their time and just generally activities which only bring temporary satisfaction with life. By being a geek life is so much more interesting and rewarding. Having geeky friends is also useful because it means that you can discuss ideas for projects you need to complete, learn how to study more efficiently and reinforce the things you've learnt.
The other reason why I get annoyed by people frowning upon the act of being a geek is that it is so clear that we need geeks in order to live in a world that functions well. Take for example Alan Turing, it was his work on the enigma machines that led to us working out Germany's encrypted messages in order to solve World War Two. Furthermore, professors, people who go into scientific research, etc. are often geeks and those people are responsible for developments in society. Indeed it's societies such as China in its days of a communist economy, the Congo that aren't so developed for the precise reason that they killed off members of the intelligentsia like professors. So unless people don't want their country to continue to develop, are they thinking when they frown upon someone for being a geek?
Currently the only possible explanation I can currently think of as to why society isn't more accommodating of geeks is that it makes those, who aren't more studious, feel embarrassed because they feel out of their depth and feel that geeks outsmart them and make them feel stupid. I'm willing to think that I might be wrong in this issue but that is currently the only logical explanation I can think of for this problem. It was certainly the case that Hitler, Stalin and Mao killed off the intelligentsia because they were more intelligent than them aswell as often being critical of them.
Starting at university
I've been intending to start a new blog about my time at university
for a while but I've not had the time to do this so far since I'm a busy
law student. I've got so many blog posts to make about university and
studying law, that it's hard to know where to begin. So I thought I'd
begin by telling you about how university was to begin with.
Although I was really glad to finally begin university after a boring gap year, where I had no one my age around me, student life started to get to me in the second week because it was hard to begin with.
One of the first problems with being a student is that you don't tend to have anyone, who you know, who you can turn to, around you, so at first you feel really lonely and as if the problems you have weigh on your mind. I thought that that was a problem when I was on my gap year but I at least had my parents to talk to then, whereas when you start at university it's hard to turn to someone the minute something goes wrong because it's not like school, where you're constantly surrounded by people. At university you see people when they walk into the kitchen or you go to seminars and lectures and possibly societies and extra-curricular activities. Admittedly this changes as you establish your friendship group because you begin to work out who you can trust and who you are closest to.
Nevertheless some people will have an easier time establishing their friendship group than others. Some people in my building/flat got on really well with each other, whereas I tend to find that although the people in my flat are nice people, they're not people I get on really well with. I get on quite well with 2 out of my 5 flat mates because one of them's really interested in international relations and current affairs and another shares my interest in ancient history and anthropology but they still have traits about them that really annoy me and mean that I can't be completely honest with them. I don't tend to get on well with my other flat mates because they only ever want to talk about a select group of topics like partying and don't talk so much about geeky topics.
I'd say that you start to establish your friendship group more clearly when you start your course and you meet more people, who are interested in the subject you study and who are doing more of the things that you are doing and indeed experiencing more of the problems that you are experiencing. I began making friends with people on my course via Facebook, when I discovered other lawyers through the Sussex freshers page, so one of my first friends on the course was someone who I happened to recognise from Facebook. I started to get to know other people, when I talked to the people sitting next to me in lectures. Nevertheless most of the people I spoke to in the first fortnight after getting to university, are not the people I speak to most nowadays. I became friends with one of my best friends on my course by complete accident, when I accidentally slept in during my seminar and had to go to a later version of the same seminar because although we didn't speak to each other during the seminar, we started talking to each other in our lecture on the next day as a result of the fact that we'd been in the same seminar. My friendship group changed a lot as a result of this because I met lots of other people through her.
I didn't think my friendship group would change a lot after a few weeks of hanging around with her and her friends but it suddenly did when this guy in my contract law seminar started talking to me after my seminar because he liked my enthusiasm, so he wanted to start a study group with me. As a result of this I started sitting next to him in a lot of my lectures. I know you're probably thinking that this is the start of a friendship that will become a relationship but it's really not because he has a girlfriend and he's a blond, so he's not my kind. I became better friends with a girl I met through mooting as a result of this, so it looks as if my friendship group could change again. It's not to say that I'm not still friends with the girl I met by accident and her group of friends because I am but at the moment I'm spending less time with her. I'm starting to finally talk to other people in/from my seminars and meet other people through them, so my friendship group at the end of the year could be very different to what it was at the beginning of this year.
I'm very careful as to who I associate with because I already paid the price of getting bad GCSE results by being surrounded by the wrong group of friends, who didn't take a great interest in their studies, so I'm eager to be surrounded by people who are interested in doing well and who I can share ideas with. That doesn't mean that I won't associate with people, who aren't so committed to their studies, because of course I will be polite to them and talk to them, if I need their help, and they can be really nice to talk to but I try to keep them at arms length, otherwise they probably won't be a good influence on me. If this is the case, I'll probably end up being friends with a lot of foreign students and black people because I tend to find that they are the most focused since foreign students have to pay to go to English university out of their own money and black people are often marginalised.
I feel less lonely than I did when I started university but I still feel closer to my friends from my last two years of school and for the foreseeable future, I can't see this situation changing.
The other part of starting university, that it takes a while to get used used to is the fact that you have to do all your domestic chores. This tired me out a lot in freshers week because I wasn't used to doing all my chores. But doing my domestic chores aswell as studying started to drive me mad after freshers week because law degrees are enough work on their own, so doing domestic chores aswell as studying law took a while to get used to.
I got around the problem of doing laundry by going back to my room to study, whilst my washing was still in the machine, and going back for it 35 minutes later. As soon as I could I got a clothes horse, so that I didn't have to pay for the tumble dryer but I found that it also saved me time aswell as money since it means that I don't have to plan my time around putting my clothes in the tumble dryer, since I can hang my clothes up to dry as I please.
All the same cooking and shopping are definitely the chores that it takes longest to get used to doing, since they are the most time-consuming chores. I tend to only cook foods that will take 30 minutes too cook, although sometimes I will spend 40 minutes cooking. I therefore don't cook anything like meat, moussaka, lasagne, etc., and I tend to cook/make pizza, fish, omlettes, eggs, pasta, quiche, fish cakes, prawns and mushrooms on toast and rice dishes. I often don't bother boiling my vegetables and instead eat them whilst the main part of my meal is in the oven/on the hob. On the whole I only go shopping once a week because I usually have lectures and seminars on 5 days on the week, so it makes more sense to go shopping at the weekend.
Although I was really glad to finally begin university after a boring gap year, where I had no one my age around me, student life started to get to me in the second week because it was hard to begin with.
One of the first problems with being a student is that you don't tend to have anyone, who you know, who you can turn to, around you, so at first you feel really lonely and as if the problems you have weigh on your mind. I thought that that was a problem when I was on my gap year but I at least had my parents to talk to then, whereas when you start at university it's hard to turn to someone the minute something goes wrong because it's not like school, where you're constantly surrounded by people. At university you see people when they walk into the kitchen or you go to seminars and lectures and possibly societies and extra-curricular activities. Admittedly this changes as you establish your friendship group because you begin to work out who you can trust and who you are closest to.
Nevertheless some people will have an easier time establishing their friendship group than others. Some people in my building/flat got on really well with each other, whereas I tend to find that although the people in my flat are nice people, they're not people I get on really well with. I get on quite well with 2 out of my 5 flat mates because one of them's really interested in international relations and current affairs and another shares my interest in ancient history and anthropology but they still have traits about them that really annoy me and mean that I can't be completely honest with them. I don't tend to get on well with my other flat mates because they only ever want to talk about a select group of topics like partying and don't talk so much about geeky topics.
I'd say that you start to establish your friendship group more clearly when you start your course and you meet more people, who are interested in the subject you study and who are doing more of the things that you are doing and indeed experiencing more of the problems that you are experiencing. I began making friends with people on my course via Facebook, when I discovered other lawyers through the Sussex freshers page, so one of my first friends on the course was someone who I happened to recognise from Facebook. I started to get to know other people, when I talked to the people sitting next to me in lectures. Nevertheless most of the people I spoke to in the first fortnight after getting to university, are not the people I speak to most nowadays. I became friends with one of my best friends on my course by complete accident, when I accidentally slept in during my seminar and had to go to a later version of the same seminar because although we didn't speak to each other during the seminar, we started talking to each other in our lecture on the next day as a result of the fact that we'd been in the same seminar. My friendship group changed a lot as a result of this because I met lots of other people through her.
I didn't think my friendship group would change a lot after a few weeks of hanging around with her and her friends but it suddenly did when this guy in my contract law seminar started talking to me after my seminar because he liked my enthusiasm, so he wanted to start a study group with me. As a result of this I started sitting next to him in a lot of my lectures. I know you're probably thinking that this is the start of a friendship that will become a relationship but it's really not because he has a girlfriend and he's a blond, so he's not my kind. I became better friends with a girl I met through mooting as a result of this, so it looks as if my friendship group could change again. It's not to say that I'm not still friends with the girl I met by accident and her group of friends because I am but at the moment I'm spending less time with her. I'm starting to finally talk to other people in/from my seminars and meet other people through them, so my friendship group at the end of the year could be very different to what it was at the beginning of this year.
I'm very careful as to who I associate with because I already paid the price of getting bad GCSE results by being surrounded by the wrong group of friends, who didn't take a great interest in their studies, so I'm eager to be surrounded by people who are interested in doing well and who I can share ideas with. That doesn't mean that I won't associate with people, who aren't so committed to their studies, because of course I will be polite to them and talk to them, if I need their help, and they can be really nice to talk to but I try to keep them at arms length, otherwise they probably won't be a good influence on me. If this is the case, I'll probably end up being friends with a lot of foreign students and black people because I tend to find that they are the most focused since foreign students have to pay to go to English university out of their own money and black people are often marginalised.
I feel less lonely than I did when I started university but I still feel closer to my friends from my last two years of school and for the foreseeable future, I can't see this situation changing.
The other part of starting university, that it takes a while to get used used to is the fact that you have to do all your domestic chores. This tired me out a lot in freshers week because I wasn't used to doing all my chores. But doing my domestic chores aswell as studying started to drive me mad after freshers week because law degrees are enough work on their own, so doing domestic chores aswell as studying law took a while to get used to.
I got around the problem of doing laundry by going back to my room to study, whilst my washing was still in the machine, and going back for it 35 minutes later. As soon as I could I got a clothes horse, so that I didn't have to pay for the tumble dryer but I found that it also saved me time aswell as money since it means that I don't have to plan my time around putting my clothes in the tumble dryer, since I can hang my clothes up to dry as I please.
All the same cooking and shopping are definitely the chores that it takes longest to get used to doing, since they are the most time-consuming chores. I tend to only cook foods that will take 30 minutes too cook, although sometimes I will spend 40 minutes cooking. I therefore don't cook anything like meat, moussaka, lasagne, etc., and I tend to cook/make pizza, fish, omlettes, eggs, pasta, quiche, fish cakes, prawns and mushrooms on toast and rice dishes. I often don't bother boiling my vegetables and instead eat them whilst the main part of my meal is in the oven/on the hob. On the whole I only go shopping once a week because I usually have lectures and seminars on 5 days on the week, so it makes more sense to go shopping at the weekend.
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