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London descending into chaos. This title is what myself and my group choose to be the eye catching headline of our community newspaper. Extinction rebellion activist are making sure they are heard and listened to as they put London into chaos. Protesters have said they need “the shock factor” to be heard. They have defiantly lived up to their word as 600 people have already been arrested. People are going to drastic measures and are causing a lot of danger to themselves and others, a man delayed the subway as he clambered onto the top of a train, others have been glueing themselves to buildings. Sleeping on the roads have caused great delays to London commuters. Shockingly mothers have been seen bringing babies along to the protest. The police have started to crack down on the Extinction Rebellion as they want to “get London moving” after nine days of them causing distribution. Although officers have found themselves under fire from members of the labour party. The Metropolitan police have implemented a ban on any assembly of the climate change protesters in London, which means if anybody is caught congregating in groups of two or more faces being arrested. But this action was quickly criticised by the labour party, including shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and shadow policing minister Louise Haigh, who described the ban as “grotesque”. Extinction rebellion describes itself as an “international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction”, “it is entered around the belief that humanity is approaching a point of ecological and societal collapse as a result of man made climate change”. As this issue grows more and more out of control, we hold our breath at what we may see next from the protesters, and what lengths they will go to to be heard.

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This task for me was more difficult than others, I struggle to be open about my opinion as conflict is something I tend to steer clear off. My topic of discussion was about same sex marriage, talking to the older generation was extremely interesting to me as their views around certain situations tend to stay very traditional and not always the most open minded. When it comes to the topic of same sex marriage I can not express how much I accept it and agree with it. It is still a rather new hot topic for this generation, and I often forget that many countries are still far from accepting it. I spoke to a range of people who where various ages, I found that the older the person was, the harder it was for them to talk about it. This does not go for all old people though, many older people are very accepting of same sex marriage. Same sex marriage has only been legal since the 29th of March 2014 in the UK. Fifty years after homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales, 72 other countries and territories worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex relationships, including 45 in which sexual relationships between women are outlawed. Shockingly there are still eighty countries that homosexuality can result in a death penalty, and plenty more in which homosexuality acts can result in a prison sentence. Study show that Western Europe and the western hemisphere are the most tolerant. But Britain was by no means a frontrunner when it moved 50 years ago to partly decriminalise homosexuality, actually 20 other countries had already started this journey and led the way, these countries include France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina, all of these countries had legalised it far before 1900. As I spoke to a particular old man, I could tell me even mentioning same sex marriage made him extremely uncomfortable, he began to tell me that in his day this was not a thing, it was never spoken off. He some what could not get his head around the idea of two people of the same sex would ever have feelings of lust and love towards each other. He assured me that is opinion was down to the generation he was brought up in, and how same sex marriage was frowned upon which lead to him being uncomfortable talking about it.

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I decided I was going to focus on an issue and crisis that involved realities of mine, I wanted to choose this story as I wanted to educate myself and understand what exactly happened to Thomas cook. Thomas cook very recently went into liquidation, this company is responsible for millions of children’s happy holiday memories including myself. How could such a successful and large company, overnight turn into such chaos?

The holiday company was founded in Market Harbourgh in 1841 by a business man called none the less Thomas Cook. The company quickly grew successful, and 178 years later the company had gone global, with staggering annual sales of £9bn, the company boasted 19 million customers a year, and had 22,00 staff working in 16 countries, Thomas Cook was nationalised in 1948. However, the world was changing at a very fast rate, the travel world had moved on from temperance day trips, therefore the modern business and leisure market was of course changing too. Unfortunately there was many factors in the company crumbling, financial, social and even meteorological. The firm also had tough online competitors, and the rise of the low cost airlines where started to grown in popularity. Families and many other holiday makers where starting to put their own holidays together, putting travel agents at risk. Last summer it was reported Thomas Cook were trading just below 150p, but after many profit warnings, the price has fallen to just a fraction of that. Sadly, in May Thomas Cook reported a £1.5bn loss for the first half of its financial year, with £1.1bn of the loss caused by the decision to write down the value of My Travel, the business it merged with in 2007. Brexit did not help the firm in the slightest, as thousands of brits delayed their holidays plans. The company reportedly put its airline up for sale in an attempt to raise badly needed funds, Thomas Cook later announced it was in advanced talks with its banks and largest shareholder, Chinas Fosun. The company’s boss, Peter Fankhauser, reported the firm had “worked exhaustively” to salvage the rescue package and it was “deeply distressing” that they couldn’t save the company. Around 600,000 people including 150,000 brits, including my close relatives, have been stranded after the collapse of the company. And thousands of  heartbroken employees are devastated to wake up to the news they are all jobless and unemployed.

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A discussion that caught my attention and interest in class was a video that showed a classroom full of young children, they were faced with the simple task of drawing a policeman, fire fighter and a surgeon. All of the children got stuck into the task only to be surprised with the news that someone from each of the three categories was coming in. As they entered, the children quickly realised they were women. The children looked shocked and surprised, with one child shouting out “ you aren’t a real fire fighter”. The drawings were collected afterwards and every single child had drawn a man for each category. Stereotypes are typical in some jobs, these are young children and hopefully the message would have been clear to them and they will hopefully remember this is the future. We are trying to squash gender stereotypes. This task was asked asked to more and more children nationwide, the results came in as 81% of children drew nurses as females, 88% of children drew builders drew builders as male and  80% of children drew bankers as males. Dr Richard Woolfson, child psychologist and author on child development said “ The psychological danger of stereotypes like this during childhood is that children’s future career ambitions and employment aspirations can be unnecessarily limited by their own rigid job-gender perceptions and expectations, irrespective of their actual ability, and that children might fail to even consider job possibilities associated with the opposite gender. I think its great children are being introduced to this reality, no job is defined by a gender, and that they can aspire to do any job they want, I also think the children that where affected by that lesson where extremely inspired too.

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I found the lead event for week 6-7 extremely interesting. My knowledge of global issues is sparse, but after the lecture I found myself to be much more aware, and wanted to do further research. Three speakers came in, fighting for your vote in which you thought was the most threatening to our society. Robert Johnson spoke about Pandemics, Angels Trias spoke about Artificial Intelligence and Kit Barton spoke about Nuclear weapons. All three of these topics are extremely serious, I found nuclear weapons to be the biggest threat though. This is due to Kits very interesting debate. The debate started off with the title “Worse than you think” therefore catching your attention, what made my decision of which of the threats is the most serious was his numbers of survival rate. One box held the title “Normal” another holding the title “Catastrophe” and the final box said “Nuclear weapons”. Kit then went on to show the survival rate, normal had 100%, catastrophe had 1% and nuclear weapons had 0%, he explained that if a tragedy were to happen where only 1% survived, there is still 70million people, therefore the population will soon grow again and can recover, but if 0% is whipped out then there is no future. There’s non recovery. Nuclear weapons are a much more serious matter than I ever though, I wanted to find out some more history on them, I learnt the first nuclear weapons were bombs which were delivered my airplanes, warheads were then developed for strategic ballistic missiles, these nuclear weapons are by far the most serious and powerful. Smaller weapons have been developed such as ones for artillery projectiles, land mines, antisubmarine depth charges, torpedoes and shorter range ballistic and cruise missiles. I do believe this lecture was useful as I learnt a lot, and I will pass the knowledge I know to others. I live in Scotland, I found out that the “Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde lies on the western coast of Scotland, 40km of west Glasgow in the Faslane Area, very close to where I live, a nuclear submarine fleet is based on that sight. I came away form the lecture eggar to widen my knowledge on all of the topics discussed.

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I reviewed the Lead event 4-5, four drama students came in to preform scenes of scenarios and how people might react. The first scene was based around a group of students meeting up to discuss a group presentation, but unfortunately one of the group members isn’t there. The first round is rather negative, with group members demanding to know where she was and why she hadn’t turned up, this lead to one of the members reluctantly having to tell them its to do with a private family issue to do with finance, one of the group members showed she did not care and said “we all have financial issues, she should be here” which in some ways is rather selfish, yes its not great she wasn’t there but the situation could have been handled a lot better. The drama students then went on to round 2, this round the students where more understanding and instead of discussing their anger, they decided they could move onto something else. This approach was a lot more calm and understanding. The third round was again more understanding, the group agree that if a teacher where to ask where the work was, they would explain she hadn’t made it in. It was interesting to see the same situation handled very different, this situation is is very common, and I think it was good for Regents students to see different reactions. The drama students then went on to show another scene, this time showing a group of three students meeting uo to discuss what work they had done, the leader explained to the group she was extremely busy over the weekend, the other members explain they worked on it together, in the first round the leader was annoyed and was shocked to see the other members had worked together without her, this caused frustration and the group was immediately frosty, awkward and uncomfortble. Round two showed the leader being more honest, this lead to the group being more understanding. Round three showed the group working as a team, getting over the issue quickly to then come up with the solution. The scenes showed ever day problems, different people handle situations, but this lecture was a good way to see what the outcome was when people reacted differently, it may be frustrating at the time, but acting calmly about it, and working as a group is much better than getting angry rather than working on together.

Our task of communicating with a wider society began with us getting into small groups, my group constituted of three, myself, Fiona and Nicholas. We brain stormed many ideas that we believed would be a great asset to the university, and something that the students would really enjoy and value. We thought of a relaxation room, a place solely for group presentations, a society where people could mingle with people who are from there country and a juice bar etc. We started out by thinking what we personally would like to see on campus, the idea of a juice bar became a strong competitor. We discussed how there wasn’t anywhere that did healthy food, and how much we would love to grab a fresh healthy smoothie before class. The juice bar is what we went with. I think my group worked well, we made a spider diagram that showed our plans and thoughts. We agreed we would sell smoothies, protein shakes, snacks and more vegan and vegetarian options. Our group really enjoyed creating our new juice bar, it was a great way to get to know my fellow team mates also.

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Our juice bar spider diagram

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Global perspectives has consisted of many different tasks over the weeks, I can truly say it has definitely widened my knowledge and really helped with my confidence. I didn’t know anyone in my class, but from the very first Wednesday I quickly became comfortable around the other students, and making some friends. Over the weeks you find out lots about people, I have learnt a lot about the world just by talking to other members of the class, such as there being a death penalty for being gay in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Somalia, which have the death penalty for same-sex relationships, this was shocking news to me. What I love about Regents is the fact there are people from all over the world, it was interesting to see what views they held, and how they were brought up. I have learned that I have to speak up in situations to get things done, I didn’t realise how much confidence I really had when it comes to talking and presenting in class. I hope I can bring this new found confidence to my interior design course, as I have struggled to present my work to an audience due to nerves. It has really helped in my leadership skills, being to shy has been a real problem in the past, but over the weeks I have felt more comfortable to speak up in class discussions and group work, I feel it has really helped my leadership skills and can’t wait to use them in my future. The lead events have been really interesting, in lead event 4-5, actors came in to preform scenes about problems and scenarios we may face in our time at university, being able to see the same situation being played out three times with very different response to the problems was great to see. This showed us different reactions, and how these reactions totally changed the outcome of the problem. Another lead event I found to be very interesting was week 6-7, I left the lecture wanting to know more. I already felt as if I held more knowledge of the different threats they spoke about. I had very slim knowledgeable of Nuclear weapons, Pandemics and Artificial Intelligence, I know feel I want to know a lot more. It wad extremely interesting, and hopefully I will get a chance to share what I learnt with friends and family. In task 5, I really enjoyed working in a group to produce our idea on a juice bar. I felt we worked well, and I learnt that brainstorming in a group can be a lot more interesting than being on your own. It was great to see how our idea of a juice bar grow. I will defiantly use brainstorming in a group in my degree, as a simple idea can grow very fast with other contributing. I think I need to know more about general knowledge, and in the future I can’t wait to learn more.