I've never wanted to smack six people so badly.

Interesting program on the BBC last night called Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. Basically the BBC sent six British young people off to Indonesia and Thailand to work in the food industry that they regularly purchase from. The insight into the food industry there was undoubtedly excellent and worth a prime time broadcast, but the reasoning behind sending along six condescending brats escapes me, and the results were nothing less than cringe-worthy.

Here are Thai and Indonesian people, welcoming tourists and a camera crew into their home, then have those same tourists turn around to tell them how much they pity them and how they should be 'so proud' of what they're doing for their families. If someone came into my home and told me I was comendable for living in what they viewed as an appalling dump, there would be slaps all round.

Of course the working conditions, sex trade and pricing are unjust in these countries, and of course something needs to be done to help spur on the development of industry, agriculture and workers rights in these countries, but it isn't as if the same people working there have no pride. It was nothing less than insulting.

Here's a clip from last night's programme.



Not the best example of what I'm arguing about but still pisses me off.


Some choons throughout the whole thing though.

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

I found an old paperback copy of The Penguin Complete Lewis Carroll this morning, with a little note to yours truly on the first leaf. I think it was a gift from a poet friend of the mothers who I haven't seen in a very long time. Pretty cool though eh? I never actually read it, I think I must have been very young and found it too difficult. Also I don't think my parents were the type to read to us as children, which in it's own way is a good thing I suppose. Anyhow I'm reading it now and I like it just as much as I think I would have if I'd read it years ago.

However, it turns out Carroll wasn't a very amiable fellow, regarding adults anyway, and this I found out before I even got to the first chapter. Why in the world would anyone do that? It's a pity that people feel the need to crush those little illusions you have about really fantastic authors that you grew up reading. C.S. Lewis was a misogynist, and J.M. Barrie was also a bit of a weirdo, or so I read. Both Narnia and Peter Pan have been tainted for me thanks to people poking their noses in where they shouldn't. The next person who researches a famous author would want to be careful.

Feist. No. Likey.

Never will I read a know-it-all introduction again. Scholars, pfft.