Thursday 19 February 2009

Is it ethical to advertise alcohol?

There are lots of advertisements that are trying to convince more and more people to buy alcohol, but is it ethical to advertise it? According to all the possibilities that teenagers who are under the legal age might consume alcohol and also cause problems because of it, etc. However, not all the alcoholic drinks are bad for us, there are some people regularly drink it for their own health.

The way of advertising alcohol is very important. Nowadays, some people get addicted on drinking, sometimes ended up with binge drinking; in addition if the idea of the advertisements lead people to the wrong side, then it's likely to be an encouragement in telling them to drink more and more. On the other hand, for instance, when advertising alcohol for people to drink healthily, such as a glass of red wine everyday, then this could be a benefit for people, on both knowledge and health.

Businesses also want more profit in what they are selling, throughout advertisements they are likely to get more attention from consumers. For my opnion, it's crucial for them to ensure the market research has done it properly, this is all about people's behaviour and attitude towards alcoholic drinks. Even though there are other drinks that are non-alcoholic but the shape/packaging are just like those real alcoholic drinks. In this case, they are trying to satisfy people who are under age but still could feel they are a part of the group.

It's hard to say whether is ethical to advertise alcohol or not because it would remains to be controversial. However, there are both benefits and drawbacks for people to consider when buying alcoholic drinks, so I think advertisements are just playing a role of influences that people might change they think of drinking alcohol, either is good or bad, for example.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Facebook - Online Communication Service

What's with the addiction of using Facebook? Most adolescents, even mature adults, they are all getting more and more obssessed with this kind of online communication tool to keep in contact with their friends, relatives, etc. However there's always oppotunities that people don't know they could be set in danger; strangers are everywhere and it's unpredictable and unpreventable, ususally it's out of our expectations.

Of what we have to be aware of is the language being used and various behaviours/actions/attitudes that would appeared on these online communication services. Throughout our personal observation, we should have known what's so fascinating about it; people can simply make friends from all over the world at any time, any place and under any conditions they wished to. It seems friendly and it's convenient comparing to arrange an appointment, for instance.

Anyhow, we really should be careful of this kind of service due to some of the inconvenience, such as fraudulency, spamming, etc. that would cause us a bigger trouble that we might not have thought of.

What does the high divorce rate tell us about the state of marriage and the family?

Nowadays, there an increasing number of couples divorced and leads to the high divorce rates. However, what does this imply on any effects on the state of marriage and the family? In fact, it is really a severe issue that there's a relationship that relates them altogether.

As we know the reasons of why the divorce rates are getting higher, it maybe domestic violence, difficulties in satisfying the living of family members, etc. What influences have been made to the state of marriage are that, due to the increasing divorce rates, people are likely to be more cautious about what they are doing or going to do. In the mean time, many people are more likely to be cohabiting with each other rather than getting married so urgent.

On the other hand, when a marriage comes to the development of a family, it just look as wonderful as they thought. However there are still many possibilities for spouses getting divorce and it is just as high as we can see; according to a resource from Guardian.co.uk, "...in 2002 the number of divorces increased by 2.7% to 147,735 - the highest annual total since 1996." Although the extract is from the year of 2003, but still the figure is shocking as it say it was 7-year high for divorce rates.

The influences on families can cause chaos as well, such as the childhood of small children, as they are still innocent but inevitably have to face the complexities made by their parents/adults. The responsibilities within family seems to be disappeared as such decision of getting divorce has been made; in another words, either they rushed for a marriage without any further consideration or couldn't think of a way to sort out the problems between the two.

The Marxist perspective on the family

The Marxist perspective comes from Frederick Engel, which it stressed on the patriarchal structure of families. Basically the Marxism suggested males are the dominant of the whole family. For instance, it's essential to solve the problem of the inheritance of the private property in order to pass them to their children/heirs; in another words, it's unlikely for women to be a part of the responsibilities because they've been designed to be controlled by the family in the Marxist view.

The socialisation in the Marxist view is that the family socialise children into accepting values of capitalism, which to be clear with the status/level within hierarchy. The bourgeois nuclear family emerged with capitalism, this leads to the patriarchal power of male to be dominating the inheritance property. Women, on the opposite side, would be powerless for any decisions to be made within the family but only to obey.

Females would have more domestic work at home whilst males are working, communicating and socialising more outside. They rear children and look after their husbands due to the non-costly domestic works/choirs.

Families also act as a safety valve toward those bourgeoisie men, which diverts their stress, anger and frustration. Meanwhile, Marxists also state their perspective of males would be less likely to go on trike throughout families play an important role to take responsibilities of them.

As in unit of consumption, families consume goods and services that provided by the capitalism. The Marxist view doesn't take in part of the family diversity, they believe that the nuclear family is determined by our economy nowadays.

Wednesday 4 February 2009

Wildcat Strike

Wildcat strike, when you see the word 'wild', it usually demonstrates something that would surprise you or cause people's attentions. However, here the word wildcat strike means the unofficial strike that taken by the trade union; they have secret ballot where they vote surreptitiously.

As we know British workers are complaining about the unfair situation where refineries are employing more foreign workers instead of them; therefore they decided to go on strike. The Lincolnshire refinery has brought in Italian and Portuguese contractors, this results a big issue of the trade union go on strike. It seems totally unreasonable why they would get redundant because of foreign workers, they are the local habitat anyway.

Although for those refineries, they are also suffering under the credit crisis, the current condition is not as well as before. This cause them think of to employ foreign workers in order to reduce their production cost; the workers are all from the EU therefore the UK couldn't take in charge of them.

Anyhow, British workers' action of wildcat strike can be seen as a dilemma just like the refineries are suffering from the economic downturn; thus in some case, they should try to get an agreement on having ACAS in order to balance the complicated situation.

Monday 2 February 2009

Online pawnbroker for consumers in a pinch


Have you ever been to a pawnshop before? This online pawnbroker is a really good idea for people who need to borrow a large amount of money. It's quite convenient that the business brings up the convenient form of short-term credit, rather than the alternative of bank overdraft and payday loans.

It gives people the convenience where they couldn't borrow a short time loans from banks. The progress is really simple, just by filling out the application form to describe the value of the thing they want to pawn, also according to the resource, it says a borrower is offered a loan of up to 40% of an item’s value, which is reasonable for people to be beneficial from this online pawnshop.

Everyone is offered the same rate which indicates the equity of the service. However, Borro is now only available in the UK but they are still trying to advertise throughout the Europe and US, in order to devote into a bigger market therefore there could be more feedbacks from customers; moreover, they could think of more to enhance their service.

Sunday 1 February 2009

Hyperlocal newspaper turns blogs into print

People get real time information from the newspaper, online news website, etc. Here's an invention that would turns newspaper blogs into physical prints, it sounds normal to me; however I found out something that's quite interesting after I read the article of this novelty idea.

Basically the idea is telling us that online news blog entries will be printed out, the important thing is the layout of the newspaper will be just like the same as the online blogs. It would be quite interesting to have the layout similar with the contents which appear on the Internet. Imagine you are holding a newspaper just like you're browsing a website, that would be very fascinating.

The printed newspaper will also include photos, puzzles, events, reader comments and as it says that other items of local interests. They also offer services such as newspapers will be distributed to neighborhood pickup points in the morning and afternoon, especially it will be different editions.

This might substistutes the original local newspaper, however it depends on how people think and need them.