Fear and Hope

One of the greatest blessings in my life are my friends. I get to spend my life with the kind of people who make a room brighter just by being there. The kind of people whose first response is always kindness and tolerance, who dream about doing brilliant things, who listen to the world and want to explore it. And being around these kind of people makes me want to be a better person, to deserve the love I receive from them and be able to try and return it.

Then the news is full of anger and violence and pain. Distorted people, blurring away from the cameras, fists in the air. We stand for ourselves. Not them. Out. An eye for an eye. 

And they seem to think hate is good. One EDL member was asked on twitter what the difference between the neo-Nazi's, KKK and the EDL is (by and anti-EDL protester). His response: 

"easy to prove [that the EDL are different from the other groups] ..the Kkk hate black people nazis hated the jews and the edl hate muslims.....the only connection is hate ...so"

The only connection is hate, he said. And that's okay, of course, because it's not the Jews. Not black people. And not white people either.

But I'm lucky. I was always loved and taught to love. Trying to be loving is easy. So I try to understand. Hate begets hate; people who are hurt lash back. I don't like the EDL or the BNP or  UKIP. I hate what they stand for; everything about them repels me, and as a white British Christian I'd like to distance myself and everything I stand for from everything they claim to stand for, and the associations they make with white, British nationality, and even Christianity. 

But it is tempting to hate them sometimes. To sneer. To slap back, violent protest against violent protest, swearword for swearword. I'm a guardian reading leftie; of course I'd like to shout at Farage or Griffin. I'd love to tell Tommy Robinson where he can stuff his Britain. 

But we're trying to be better than that. And again I'm reminded how blessed I am. There's the Hope Not Hate movement, the mosque which opened its doors to the EDL, the good, sensible people who stand up to point out that extremists don't stand for the majority, who rebut mad nonsense with calmly-stated facts. A terrifying amount of people are trying to make hate the norm in this country - in this world - but more are responding with hope and peace. When the EDL protest, when the terrorists bomb towns or blow up cars, when rockets fly over walls instead of over our one planet, there are people who light candles, who pull children out of the wrecked buildings, who hold talks. John Green, in his video response to the Boston Bombings, called these people the helpers:

'If you look at those videos [the Boston bombing clips] you see two extraordinary things [...] all these flags lined up together, none higher than any other... those 96 flags of people running the Boston marathon are side by side because they stand for a larger us, an us sharing a human endeavour that doesn't require a 'them'. And the flags aren't blown over by the explosion, but within seconds some of those flags do come down. They come down when people, onlookers, first responders tear down the barricades to get to the injured. 'Look for the helpers', the great Mr Rogers said about tragedy, 'You will always find people who are helping.'  [...] Think I'm cool living in a world with flags, but I am most proud to live in a world where no flag flies above any other. There are people who don't want to live in that world [...]  but I know that we are not going to give it up. And I know that we can always look in hope to the helpers, and endeavour to be among them.'

John Green,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2X1gA5apcU, April 16th 2013

I don't think I can put it better than that. 

J.R.

Surviving University - Making the Choice (Guest Blog)

• The first blog post on Life at University is guest-written by Amy Cunningham, who is a first-year psychology student at the University of East London. 

  
  

  Living and studying in London, sounds fun right? Experience the best nightlife ever right? Live in the countries capital and see all it has to offer sounds like the best time anyone could ever have!

  I am here to warn you about choosing the right university for you. I after not going to visit (because it automatically sounded like the best choice I could make) started out on my venture at the University of East London studying Psychology Extended (BSc) a 4 year course.

  After my first few months in London I knew it wasn't for me, yeah London's great for a day out but the hassle of living there isn't great. I've been stuck on a cramped tube far too many times for my liking which leads me to my first point, getting round London is a pain! It takes me an hour to get to work and double the time for me to get to Euston than it does for me to get from Euston to Milton Keynes! I also have to add the traumatic night bus that you have to get after a night out or its a £70-£100 taxi ride! Not to add the £11 for a single vodka and lemonade needless to say I don't go out in London much! I once had to endure a 4 hour (no that's not a typo) bus home from a gig in Brixton which I have to say was one of the most horrific experiences of my life!

  Ahh the dreaded finding a house in second year, now before my friends and I decided that staying in London was a definite no we had a look around, some of the houses were quite cheap if you wanted to live in an awful rat infested dump with one of the highest crime rates I've ever seen! We did find some nice apartments in a relatively safe area close to campus and were nice and modern, but would cost around £1,300-£1,500 a month not including bills for a three bed room apartment. Looks like that would be the loan gone sooner rather than later! London would be a nice place to live if you could afford to live in central, a girl I worked with and her boyfriend rented a room near oxford street shared bathroom and kitchen no living room and they paid £1000 a month for what was pretty much a room!

  The course... well I don't even know where to start with this one! So considering I have A-Level English one would think that I knew how to write sentences and paragraphs, evidently not. I done 6 modules this year and 2 of them were about how to use punctuation, sentence structure and how to write paragraphs. A lecture that sticks out was the one on how to use power point, highlight of my year I'd have to say! Another 2 of the modules pretty much taught A-Level psychology maybe bringing one or two different studies to learn but nothing majorly different! Another module was doing debates which were alright but still nothing amazing! And the final module we conducted our own experiment which I'd say was the only module I remotely enjoyed except the lecture side of it was A-Level research methods zzz!

  Your university choice, do have a look at how good (or bad in my case) your university is. A girl that lived in my halls had a guest speaker a few weeks ago whose advice was to write on your CV that she attended Royal Docks Business School not UEL so they'll actually look at her application rather than throw it in the bin. Yes I know a degree is a degree and everyone studies the same for it blah blah blah! But let's be honest, nobody wants to waste £24,000 in university fees alone and 3 or more years of their life to not get the best possible job at the end of it!

  These are all factors you should look at before going to university, I know you go to study and all that but lets be honest everyone needs a good night out where they can get absolutely mortal and not worry about a 2 hour bus journey home! Look at how far your are away from town and if it's easy to get around... not everyone has £70 for a taxi! This is not just for nights out but you'll want to be reasonably close to go out for dinner (because cooking sucks) or to just go out and about in general! Also being close to a supermarket helps (you'll thank me for this) carrying a million bags of shopping for half an hour is not fun! Also have a little look at the house prices (don't forget bills!) because lets face it halls is fun for a while but when it gets to your second/third year and you have a lot of deadlines your not going to want a load of noisy first years disrupting you! Make sure your course absolutely blows your mind! I am so excited about my new course in Southampton it's unreal! University is not compulsory and if your not going to enjoy it your not going to do well and trust me when I say there's no one there to push you to do the work you'll just get kicked off the module, full stop. You're going to be investing a lot of time and money into these next 3 years of your life make sure your not going to waste it by going to an undervalued university, were all doing this because we want to have a career in our chosen subject, make sure you have the best opportunity to do that! Finally, just have fun this is going to be one of the best experiences of your life, enjoy it!