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pickupyourwill
Posts: 3,135
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pickupyourwill
Posts: 3,135
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On a totally different subject you've got me fuming again about an advert I've seen on Billboards across the UK disseminated by our National Health Service. It says something along the lines of
'Q: What do teenagers most worry about these days?
A: Their parents smoking and then dying from smoking related diseases....(*see our research...)'
As you so eloquently stated this too irritates the piss out of me.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs and terrible impact of smoking, as an ex-smoker / smoker / ex-smoker / smoker myself, as well as youth-worker and researcher I feel this is completely appropriating another vulnerable group's trauma for a completely unrelated politically driven agenda (political with a small 'p' here).
The kids I've worked with who are increasingly killing themselves are not fucking worried about their parents dying of smoking, they are worried about the bullying they face on a daily basis in school, over the internet and mobile phones, by major schisms in our society's ability to tolerate 'difference', individuality, self-expression, openness (of sexuality, fashion, lifestyle, values...), by completely fractured self-esteem; and by the impossibility of ever finding 'home'. In fact many of them would be fucking glad if their step-dad or mother died of a terribly painful smoking related illness to be honest.
It begs the question, what 'research' was carried out?:
'Q: Are you worried about your family smoking? Answer, 'yes' - 85%! Bingo!
We are getting subjected to major intellectual manipulation here people. Only solution I can see is to educate ourselves and each other and learn to think for ourselves and think critically about every message which is shone right in our eyes. Teach your children how to identify propaganda before you teach them to cross the fucking road these days methinks!
Grrrrrrr......
By the way as a male I totally agreed with everything you wrote, and even if people don't agree with your philosophy a broader message (for me at least) is surely 'learn to recognise an agenda when you see one' - profit, govt. targets, warmongering, the insecurities being pedalled by the mass mass media, whatever.'
OK, I'll stop now before I start on the celebrity-filled magazines I see in some of my offices.... can you believe posh spice has lost 2lbs and Amy Winehouse has put on two herself? shocking, by the way, tell me more about your eating disorder darling......
Bollocks to the lot of 'em!
[Edit] NB, in order to reassure some of the rightly civic minded people who come here, I should say I am personally much more involved with the theoretical, rather than 'support' side of youth-work these days (having done my time and paid my dues at the sharp-end in previous times). I do think it is important that the people who are providing the direct support to vulnerable people are as stable, centred and balanced as it is possible to be in this life and amongst these circumstances (frankly, this ain't me babe!). Bearing in mind that this is a short piece of writing rather than biographical fact, I hope people will indulge me by sparing me the need to reveal my entire life-history here! I'm really talking about worrying trends nationally and globally which are affecting my colleagues and peers these days, and most affecting the groups of people and individuals I have worked closely with in the past.
Finally apologies to pickupyourwill if I have appropriated your striking post!
Ok, no more apologies....:)
(thanks for that one Mozza)
phew!
Send my credentials to the house of detention