As a driver, the new Northern Irish road safety advert on speeding really caught my eye this week.
For those of you who are yet to see it, it shows a man which we assume is off to work, alongside a class full of children who are off on a school trip. We see the children playing exploring and finishing with a picnic packed lunch. This is where we see the man’s car flip over the wall, where the children are enjoying there lunch.The car flips as the children are helpless. Obviously it all ends in tradegy, showing an empty classroom and ‘Shame On You’.Closing message, but is this too far on an already distressing advert?
The message? It’s an in-your-face look at the amount of children which have been killed due to speeding since 2000 which has hit 28 children. Doesn’t sound much? It is a whole classroom full of children, and what if it was yours? Why should we sacrifice a child for every driver which is ignorant to the consequences of speeding? Just SLOW DOWN.
This advert won’t be shown before 9pm as it ‘contains content which some people may find distressing’ but I think it is something which will effect some of those regular speeders – especially those who have had the near misses.
So, if you all read my previous post (Sex Sells… To The Highest Bidder) about Elizabeth Raine auctioning off her own virginity.
Well, shock horror, she’s pulled out. (I laughed at that lame innuendo)A week after revealing her face, ELizabeth Raine pulls out of her virginity auction
She said: ‘With the blessings of my management and the high bidders, I have decided to put a stop to this kerfuffle (to describe it nicely) and return my focus to my medical training,’
Kerfuffle? Selling your virginity is a ‘Kerfuffle’? Right.
To be fair, thank god she has seen sense. You can imagine the rich, lonely guys who have been bidding – of course she was going to end it! The bidding had reached $801k. It was effectively high-end prostitution.
Only a short post on this to avoid repeating myself, but are you glad its over? Has she seen sense, or missed out on a whooping $801k??
Since January this year after watching an interview on BBC News, it was hard not to feel compelled to follow Stephen Sutton’s story online and in the newspapers.
It is something which has gone viral; i see it all over my timeline regularly, on the news, and trending on twitter. For those of you who haven’t heard about his story – climb out of your deep dark hole and switch your laptop on! (Or just read this post!)Here’s Stephen Sutton (A widely used image from the press and online)
So, to get you up to date: Stephen was born in 1994 (just five months younger than myself!)Through primary and secondary school he was an active and, by the sounds of it, a very very smart boy! I mean, all A’s and A*’s, wow. But just prior to finishing his GCSEs he was first diagnosed with cancer – bowel cancer to be precise. Since the 6th of September 2010 his cancer come and gone and spread. To this day, every year Stephen celebrates his ‘Cancerversary’ on this day!
So what would you do? You’ve got cancer, you’ve barely finished education. This is what i was asking myself whilst I was thinking about writing this blog. Stephen was suddenly totally different to all of his friends, he had the big C. At that age i don’t think i knew anyone with cancer – i probably didn’t really know what it was. Ignorant to cancer, I would see it as a death sentence. But not Stephen!
Shortly after his first diagnosis he began to attend the Teenage Cancer Trust conferences, as well as carrying on with his everyday life! He went through with his A levels (Just like me!). He went for interviews for uni (just like me!). He even continued to drum for his band (Not like me, but only because I’m not cool enough to have a band).
I’m truly inspired. Obviously, at the age of 19 (nearly 20, just saying) I’m more aware of what cancer is. It is on our screens everyday – whether it be on the soaps in the evening, articles in the newspapers or even family members and friends.
But Stephen’s cancer is incurable, and it is heartbreaking. We’ve all seen (or should have seen) all the effort he has put into raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust as well as living his life to the full – even if he has a shorter time that us to do that.
Even with losing the use of his left leg, he has raised over £1million! I mean, WOW! Last time i tried to raise money was a silly pool competition… raised probably £100 (Yes, I was proud at the time…).This is Stephen fulfilling his bucket list! (Yep, now we all want to hug an elephant.)
He’s such an inspiration to young people to become more charitable, and it shouldn’t take for us all to get an incurable disease. If you read my previous post (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) about the #NoMakeUpSelfie, it just proves that every little helps.
Josie Cunningham… Another tragic fame-hunter has hit our press. I remember reading about the NHS boob job and thinking ‘WOW, I couldn’t even get braces and she gets boobs!’
And here she is again with this Big Brother baby scandal! You’ll be happy to know (as was I) that she has been ruled out of this series… unfortunately, she claims that she’s in talks for the next series. *Sighs*.Josie Cunningham posing after her NHS boob job (This and more images from josiecunningham.com)I think the most shocking bit about this story was that she already has kids? Yes, double take. She doesn’t want this baby to ruin her chances to be famous… but what happens to these children she has already given birth to when she has her 10-15 minutes of fame? You can’t bear to imagine can you? (I know I can’t).
So, trying to keep this slightly more balanced than I’m being at the moment…
People do have abortions – hence why it isn’t illegal. And I would imagine that a strong reason to why people have abortions is because of their career or because they aren’t in love with the person who got them there in the first place. These are the two reasons to why Josie Cunningham has said she wanted an abortion.
Granted, selling a story about her abortion to get on Big Brother was definitely a rookie error, I mean, what did she expect? A round of applause, a fan club or just this place on Big Brother?
Now, after feeling her baby kick (and probably felling the backlash from the whole of Britain) she is keeping the baby.
So what do we think? Will she be accepted on Big Brother next year? And is it right that the press have attacked her previous decision for an abortion to further her career?
Let me know here at #Newsblast
This is something which I have been following for a while from America: ‘Craiglist Killer Miranda Barbour is the world’s worst serial killer’, or so the Express has debated.
When I think ‘serial killer’, I can’t lie, I think of an old creepy man hidden in dark little alleyways, burying his victims in the back garden. (Watching the Fred West documentaries with my mum probably hasn’t helped my impressions).
But this killer threw my judgements. It immediately grabbed me! This woman is my age, just 19 years old! The press describes her as a young and beautiful girl:
“The petite 19-year-old with long dark brown hair, her porcelain face framed by spectacles, seems too delicate for such savagery,” (The Express 20/02/2014). Barbour being led to court in Sunbury. It is unknown whether her claims are true, she admits: “Who knows what’s real, since I’m crazy.”Initially I was surprised by the way they are feminising her, especially for a woman who admits to killing over 22 people (admitting her favourite murder weapon is a knife). But really, it just shows that serial killers don’t have a uniform.
What initially brought me to this was an article that popped up on Facebook whereby she attempted to kill herself. Over a month ago, Miranda Barbour decided to kill herself in Pennsylvania’s Northumberland County Prison – but failed. She had smashed a light bulb in her cell but couldn’t find a good enough shard to do the job. Talk about first world problems… well, I did think to myself, as a tweet, it would be #suicideproblems. She told Newsweek in an exclusive jailhouse interview that she didn’t want to end it all; she just wanted to hit the reset button. “I believe in reincarnation,” she says. “I wanted a fresh start.”
She has no regrets about Troy LaFerrara, or about the other 22 people she claims to have killed. “I felt no regret. None,” she said. “I didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.” Troy LaFerrara apparently “deserved” to die. She advertised on Craigslist (Like Gumtree for us English people) offering “companionship for $100 (That’s about £60). Which is cheap compared to Elizabeth Raine’s virginity! (Read my previous post Sex Sells… To The Highest Bidder).
She claimed she was 16 (two years below the legal age for sex in America) to which she claims: “He told me that it was OK. If he would have said no that he wasn’t going through with the arrangement, I would have let him go.” So, OK, he’s obviously a bit pervy and that, but really? Killing him? I wouldn’t say he deserved strangling and stabbing 20 times! Troy LaFerrara’s family arrive at the Northumberland County courthouse on December 20th 2013She’s only charged with one count of murder (That of Troy LaFerrara) but claims that after joining a satanic cult since the age of 13, her killing spree rampaged across America before she was finally arrested in North Caroline.
So, who knows? She admits “Who knows what’s real, since I’m crazy.” She is currently undergoing a psychiatric evaluation and says: “I’m interested to see what they find.”
Why do you think? Does being in a cult cause this kind of behaviour? Or maybe she is crazy?
So, my morning snoop through Facebook brought something very out of the ordinary to my attention. My eyes were reading the words but my brain couldn’t quite believe it. Did I really just read an article in the Metro suggesting an American medical student is AUCTIONING her virginity? A 28-year-old woman, using the alias Elizabeth Raine, is selling her first ever sexual encounter. Unbelievable.Here’s the woman in question ready to sell off her virginity,
I don’t know whether it’s just me but when I hear that mind tries to race to some sort of conclusion… First I thought, ‘wow I bet Susan Boyle wished she had thought of that’ (Sorry Susan) and then, more seriously, the other half of my brain thinks, is she real?
So obviously I had to ruin my whole morning routine and sit and read this. And then read her website (http://www.elizabeth-raine.com/index.html). And then, the only thing left to do was to tell you lovely people.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude. But selling your virginity? Really? I understand money worries (I’m a student, we are all the same) especially at the end of term when you are stretching out the last of your loan but, wow. This is something else. I mean, is it prostitution? I know that offering sex services for money is legal (after just researching it a second ago) but something about this just seems wrong.
But, if you are to read anything else today (other than my other amazing posts) have a good look at her own personal website. Wow, I mean, I know people with a high opinion of themselves but hers reaches astronomical levels:
“I am a sensually stunning, highly educated, and charismatic American woman who has placed a 12-hour date with me atop the auction block. And did I mention I’m a virgin?”
I read that and think, people like this give women a bad name. The question to why she is a virgin has been answered – she loves herself. Automatically I labelled her one of the Regina George’s of the world (ignoring the virgin part – obviously).
She’s not all bad though, to add some balance into this one-man debate, she is giving 35% of the money she earns to charity. We don’t know exactly which one yet but wants to find one which brings education to women in developing countries – her reasoning being “I simply do not need all of this money”. How kind.
Currently the top bid is at $550,000 (Approx. £327,000) after just over a month of being online. Still plenty of time to put your bids in guys, it doesn’t end for another week (7th May)
On that note, I’ll leave you with a closing statement from her.
“Lastly, I would like to add that while my virginity does have a price, my self-respect is absolutely priceless. I ask you to please keep this in mind as well.”
#NewsBlast 