Interesting News Of The Week 16/07/2012

The weeks seem to go so fast now.
Here's this weeks stories.

Spelling Screw Up

The first story this week is do with the Olympics and a torchbearer who got a new tattoo to celebrate her role in the Olympic torch relay.

Here's the story.

Jerri Peterson, from Atlanta in the US, carried the torch through Derby on 30 June after being nominated by the hotel chain she worked for.

You may be thinking, whats that got to do with spelling?

Well, that's not the main part of the story.

Before coming to England, she had decided to spend $10 (or £6.50) on a tattoo to mark the occasion.

After having the tattoo it was a while later the 54-year-old noticed it featured the mis-spelling "Oylmpic" rather than "Olympic", whoops bit of a mistake there on the artists behalf.

Mrs Peterson was one of 70 international employees selected by her firm to take part in the relay as a thank you for her years of charity work, she said: "I always wanted to have a tattoo but I never quite felt passionate about any one thing to have it put on my body permanently", but this event seemed to be significant enough for her.

She said to reporters "When I was selected for this wonderful honour, I thought 'that's it - I'm ready to have my tattoo'.".
She booked a session with a "really good" tattoo artist in her home state of Georgia, and took a friend along for moral support.

Initially she was delighted with how it looked and it was only when she sent a photo of the tattoo to a friend that the spelling mistake was pointed out.

She then said: "I looked at it and I was so disappointed. I called my husband and he giggled a little bit. Then I started laughing about it and I've laughed ever since.", obviously feeling more comfortable with the mistake after confiding in her husband, which naturally you would.

Mrs Peterson pointed out the mistake to the tattoo artist responsible but declined his offer to correct it.

She said: "He felt so bad when he found out. He wanted to fix it but I decided I want to keep it. It's fine.", she then finished the interview by saying "It's the Oy-limpics, it's as unique as I am.", what a nice way to look at the situation.

If any of you are wondering what this incorrect tattoo looks like here's a picture courtesy of the BBC news team:

£276,000 Victoria Cross

This story is one that's not got anything to do with the Olympics, I thought seeing as it's going to be in most news stories now I would include one that isn't, this story is to do with the Victoria cross which was awarded in World War I.

The first Victoria Cross awarded to a private in World War I has just sold for £276,000 at an auction, that's right £276,000.

The medal, awarded to Private Sidney Godley of East Grinstead, West Sussex, England. The medal originally was expected to fetch up to £180,000 and was valued around that price.

Godley manned a machine-gun position defending Nimy Bridge in Mons while under fire from German soldiers in the first weeks of the war.

A second VC was awarded posthumously to a Gloucestershire soldier around the same time and that was sold for £240,000 at the same auction.

Oliver Pepys of Spink auction house in London, where the medal was sold described Godley's medal as "hugely important". He said to reporters "The Godley VC is one of the most distinguished medal groups of the Great War, so it was not surprising that it attracted much interest. I am delighted that the sale drew attention to such a valiant man.".

Now what I don't understand is if the medal is "hugely important" and part of the "most distinguished medal group", then why would people even consider selling them, they are a great part of history and can be fantastic things to pass down through the generations to show families histories.

The medal was originally presented with the top military honour to Godley by King George V in 1919 after he spent four years as a prisoner of war and unfortunately for us the auctioneers are not identifying the seller, probably due to pride issues.

Well lets have a little more information on Godley.
He was 25 when he was sent to the Western Front with the 4th Royal Fusiliers and was badly wounded in the attack, on 23 August 1914.

At the time of the attack he had shrapnel in his back and a bullet in his skull, but still persisted to protect British positions in the face of a German onslaught until he was captured.

During his four years as a prisoner in Germany, he was told by his captors that he had been awarded the VC and was invited to dine with the Germans one Christmas Day in recognition of the honour, which seemed a nice gesture from the Germans, showing they can't have all been bad, even though they were made out to be.

Godley unfortunately died in 1957 aged 68 and was buried with full military honours in Loughton Cemetery in Essex.

Since his death blue plaques have been placed at East Grinstead Town Council offices and at the house in Torrington Drive, Loughton, where he lived for some time.

Here's a picture of what the cross looks like for any of you who are unsure:

Summary of the week

Time for the summary, this week we have tattoo artists getting all caught up in the "Oylmpic" games and people selling off medals from the wars just for money, so much for family values.

Interesting News Of The Week 18/06/2012

I'm on time this week, so lets get straight into it.
Here's the stories.

Louise Mensch launches rival to Twitter

The first story this week is a link between politics (a politician) and social networking.

Here's a summary of the story in over 140 and 180 words.

Conservative MP Louise Mensch has launched a microblogging site to rival Twitter.

Ms Mensch is a Twitter user with almost 60,000 followers but said she has grown "frustrated" with it.

Yeah, that's right, as you can see from the title a politician has started her own site, to rival Twitter, this could be fun too see how her site goes.
She's named her new site, Menshn (Linked for you to have a look), she aims to keep conversations on topic and allows 180 character posts which is 40 more than Twitter, big difference there, that's more hashtags people.

She also shares the site, she jointly owns it with ex-Labour digital adviser Luke Bozier, the thing is though it's only available in the US but aims to launch in the UK before the London Olympics, which could be a great advantage.

Discussion on Menshn has initially been restricted to the US election, so at the moment it appears to be more of a political site, but Ms Mensch says it will expand to reflect users' interests.

When new members join they gain 100 randomly selected subscribers, equivalent to Twitter followers, so instead of waiting for people to follow you, you get 100 straight away, nice.
Mr Bozier said: "With all the great political forums out there, we noticed that there was no place to talk about politics live.", so it is for politics, I'm getting confused now, seems like a bit of a let down.

She described her site as "A permanent place to go online to talk about the things you're most interested in.", where as Twitter users can organise discussions through the use of hashtags or searching by keyword and choose whose Tweets they read by following or unfollowing other users.

The new site has had a largely hostile reaction from Twitter users so far, with some accusing Ms Mensch of vanity and predicting that the site will flop, which could be expected if she keeps the site to politics, but we will see.

The Corby MP has insisted the site's name is not a pun on her surname, as it is spelt differently, and is, rather, a play on the word "mention", if I'm honest I'm not quite sure if I believe that or not, but it's possible.
Users who type "menschn.com" into web browsers are currently being redirected to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament site, whoops, not exactly what they were looking for.

Ms Mensch, who was a "chick lit" novelist before becoming an MP in 2010, said she hopes the site would attract Twitter users who find the site "frustrating", I wonder how many people besides herself actually find Twitter frustrating.

There's no video for this story so here a picture promoting the site:

New O-level-style exams could replace GCSEs

I've selected this as my second story this week as it applies to not only me but anyone else who has or is taking their GCSE's, so in a way this could become a worldwide story.

In simple terms this story is about the reconstruction or changing of the educational system as we know it.

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove plans to scrap GCSEs for England and return to O-level style exams, so back to the good old days.

It's been said that Mr Gove believes GCSEs "have gone beyond the point of rescue", does that mean they are now pointless?

The proposed changes have been planned to be brought in for pupils from autumn 2014, so for anyone who is currently in year 8 or year 2 of secondary school (depending on the school layout), would see to the biggest change to the exams system for a generation.

Less academic pupils would sit a different "more straightforward" exam, like the old CSE's, well at least they are accounting for the less fortunate of us.
Labour says Mr Gove must explain his changes to teachers and pupils, so he'd have to have one on one meetings with all teachers and then group ones for each set of students all over the country, that could be fun.

GCSEs replaced O-levels and CSEs in the mid-1980s.
Under that system, the more academic (smarter) teenagers took O-levels while others took CSEs (Certificates of Secondary Education).
Now a similar system could return, although the names of the new exams are yet to be decided.

There was a leak to the daily mail just as tens of thousands of teenagers finish their GCSE and A-level exams, meaning that those exams may not be worth as much as the news ones.
As control of education in the UK is devolved, Mr Gove's plans are for England only (at the moment), It will be up to Wales and Northern Ireland to decide whether to follow suit.
In Scotland, pupils take Standard Grades and Highers rather than GCSEs and A-levels, so they would probably not be affected.

The plan is for students to begin studying what the leaked document says will be "tougher" O-level style exams in English, maths and the sciences (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) from September 2014 they would take their exams in 2016, two years later due to students having to stay in education till they are 18.

So, pupils starting their GCSE courses in September 2013 could be the last to take them, and also probably the last to be effected.

Already, the new academy schools (like my secondary school has just become), which are state-funded but semi-independent, do not have to follow the national curriculum.

It is also said the government plans to scrap the traditional benchmark on which secondary schools in England are measured, that being the requirement for pupils to get five good GCSEs (grades A* to C) including maths and English.

Schools would continue to be measured on the government's new benchmark, known as "The English Baccalaureate", which counts how many pupils in a school have good GCSEs in English, maths, two sciences, geography, history and a foreign language.
Well I'll tell you what, I'm glad I don't have to do all that.

Their isn't actually a video for this story but here's a video of Mr Gove's speech on ICT and the national curriculum:

Summary of the week

So this week we've got politics and politicians taking the social networking by storm (not) and the national curriculum being changed dramatically, bye bye GCSE's.


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