Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 February 2014

Review #10 - Enron by Lucy Prebble

Enron is the famous story of the company Enron's collapse. I didn't even know this existed until by friend Aimee pressed it into my hand so we could have fun train literary discussions.

The plot was really interesting. I'm normally not a fan of "true stories" because I often end up uninterested by them but woah was this good. The dialouge and imagery really helped with this, as well as the choppy sentences as Enron started to collapse.

One image in particular I loved. Raptors are used to demonstrate the other companies in Enron.  The only thing is I didn't know if the author meant the eagle or the dinosaur. I read it thinking of it as the dinosaur but eagle seems to make more sense because of eagles representing the American Dream. The Raptors were good visual representatives of what was happening. How do I love thee metaphors? Let me count the ways.

I feel like Sofia Coppella's The Bling Ring was influenced by this play, in the dialouge and the way the story feels. However The Bling Ring is much more extravagant than this play.

There was one scene (scene two) that seemed to have no real input into the plot of the play. I did find out that it was about the relationships between two of the characters but it could have been done more tastefully.

In the theatre there is an expression called "breaking the fourth wall" (I learned this from scrubs videos on YouTube). Enron did it all the time, characters addressed the audience. I didn't like this. Perhaps it's to do with the fact in school plays I was always always a narrator (seriously I've been a tree, skeleton, viking, roman and a sheep narrator on different occasions) and this felt like the play was being narrated. I also felt it was a lazy way to explain what was going on.

Overall I'd give this four stars but also I'd put it on "books to read before you die" because of its relevance to politics and culture.

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

I want to be a doctor #2 - ObamaCare

ObamaCare came into action on October 1st in the USA and the other day I took the time to understand what this is, how it affects Americans and why on earth the government shut down.

The main issue with the US health system is that it's too expensive. It's main objective is making profit and that's not right. Yes, every business has to make money because that's how growth occurs however, when your profiteering hurts people, and it does, what you are doing is wrong. The US citizens pay more tax proportionately than the UK in health care which is perverse as our health care is free.

ObamaCare is not like the NHS. That suprised me. The NHS provides every British citizen with free health care. ObamaCare provides everyone with insurance. The basic idea is that everyone is entitled to health care so everyone must have insurance. If you are below a certain level of the poverty line the government pays for your insurance and that is what the Republicans are against. There are also different levels of insurance depending on how much coverage you want.

This means now it is illegal to not have health insurance. However, now less wealthy people who are just above this poverty line have to pay for insurance, meaning that these people now have the biggest problems.

But what I don't get is why, WHY, the American Government shut down over this. Why is one political party in America against health care for all? Why shouldn't people pay so your country is healthy? Even if you support capitalism in the extremes, don't you want a fitter workforce? Not giving people free health care is similar to cave man civilisation:

If you are ill then you die.

It just feels like there's a lack of compassion within the Republicans and I feel like that is the biggest problem with American society, not the obesity, not books that will "ruin your children", not alcohol, not TV. It is your lack of caring towards those that need it most.

So start your government up. You are fighting an argument that has a moral argument that is so crystal clear I wonder what you're trying to prove.

Care about your people and they will care for you.