Ageism is the stereotyping of, prejudice against or discrimination against an individual due to his or her age. Usually this refers to older people, those aged 50 years or older, though it can also related to young professionals, teens and even children.

Why Is Ageism Bad?

Like all forms of discrimination, ageism makes assumptions about individuals, their abilities, their circumstances, their preferences and much more, simply because of one factor – in this case, their ages. This is neither fair nor just and a variety of organisations and individuals are working hard towards highlighting and eradicating ageism in the United Kingdom.

Is Ageism Against the Law?

Yes. The Employment Equality Act (Age) Regulations 2006 protects people aged 50 and over from being discriminated against in the areas of employment and education. These Regulations discuss age equality in the hiring of new workers, how workers are treated in the workplace, and age equality in firing, redundancies and retirement (as well as the educational equivalents). Employment equality for younger workers is dealt with in other legislation, and educational concerns regarding young people are often dealt with on a case by case basis at particular educational institutions.

For more information follow this link;

http://www.aboutequalopportunities.co.uk/ageism.html

http://www.marketsegmentation.com/what_are_psychographics.html

This creates an anomaly where a family with one higher-rate taxpayer earning just over the £44,000 threshold will lose the benefit, but another family that enjoys joint earnings of up to £87,752 with two earners neither of which is a higher-rate taxpayer could still receive the benefit.

Around 15% of families, that’s about 1.2 million families, will be affected.

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/10/child-benefit-cuts-and-what-they-mean-for-you-232241/

If you would like to see a video of George Osbourne announcing the cuts then follow this link;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/20/spending-review-2010-osborne-cuts

The Agreement accompanying the BBC Charter requires us to apply “generally accepted standards so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion of offensive and harmful material“. The understanding of what constitutes ‘generally accepted standards’ will evolve over time and will be informed by relevant research.  Applying ‘generally accepted standards’ is a matter of judgement, taking account of the content, the context in which it appears and editorial justification.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/page/guidelines-harm-introduction/

If you want to see Mark Lawson’s article then follow this link;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/oct/28/paul-ogrady-live-tv-tory-rant

My group was given the easy task of defending dolf Hitler, no biggy.

I will say however that none of the opinions stated in the presentation reflect the opinions of the group members, but I have got to admit some parts were quite funny.

We ended our presentation with a poem brilliantly written by Lawrence Sedgwick, it took him about 5-10 minutes to write it but it had the whole class in stitches, it was brilliant

In my group was Simon Chambers, Sam Reeman, Kyle Terry and Lawrence who I mentioned above, it was a fun presentation to do, as nervous as we all were ^^

The student I interviewed was Richard Pettman, he is a member of my class who puts on music shows at beacon court every month, I decided to interview him about this as I felt it was an interesting topic to interview him about and I wanted the students to know about it when they listen to the podcast, also it affects the students outside of college (well the ones that go anyway) so it was relevant to the assignment task.

I interviewed Richard about a month ago as that was when we had to the do the task.

I interviewed Richard in the radio studio in college as I needed a place where my digital recorder would not pick up any background noise and in the radio studio there is no background noise for the digital recorder to pick up.

I interviewed Richard with the questions that I had prepared beforehand so it didn’t sound like I was making up questions to ask him on the spot.

I felt quite good when interviewing as it helped me to do my project and it helped me to get information necessary for me achieving the grade for my assignment.

The assignment that I done the most primary research for was my Healthy Body, Healthy Mind project, the primary research I conducted was surveys.

The people I surveyed were students at midkent college between the ages of 16-21, I obviously surveyed them about smoking as that was the topic of my Healthy Body Healthy Mind video. I wanted to survey these people about smoking as I wanted to get an idea of some of their reasons for smoking and have a look at their expenditures when it comes to smoking. I surveyed these people at around May time so for all I know some of the results in my surveys could have changed since then! As the people I surveyed were students I obviously surveyed them whilst in college. I surveyed them by Printing off a certain number of copies of my survey and passing them around for people to fill them in.

The questions I asked my audience were:

1. What Gender are you? I asked this as I feel that it is important as it’s nice to know what gender your audience is.
2. How old are you? I asked this because if you know what age your audience is then you can get an idea of how bad it can affect the audience as in certain ages smoking is worse.
3. How long have you smoked? I asked this because I felt that I felt that if you know how long someone has been smoking for then you can tell if it will be easier to help them as if they have been smoking for a long time then it will be much harder to help them.
4. Are you aware of the effects of smoking on your body? I asked this as i believe that you need to know if a smoker knows what they are doing to their body, if they know what they are doing then it would make your task a lot easier to help them but if they didn’t then you could immediately get them the help they need.
5. Is there any particular reason you smoke? If so why? I asked this because I feel it is good to know why they smoke, some people tend to start due to peer pressure so it’s good to know whether they are smoking on their own will or because their “mates” do it.
6. Have you ever tried quitting? I asked this question because I feel that if they have tried quitting then you can ask them why they stopped trying and you can help them go right where they went wrong when trying to quit.
7. Are you aware of the resources available to you regarding quitting? I asked this because if they don’t know the resources then you can give them resources immediately e.g. Numbers for NHS help lines, quit kits etc.
8. How much do you spend on cigarettes per week? I asked this question because I feel if you have an idea of how much they spend per week you can see how much they are spending a year and you could try to convince them that they could be spending that money every year on something else, something much better.

Conducting these surveys gave me a sense of knowlodge in that I could potentially help people who require it by giving them the necessary information.

Facts from the book “Smoking: Volume 38”

• Hand rolled cigarettes are fairly popular amongst 16-24 year olds, while 97% smoke ready-made cigarettes , 19% say they smoke hand-rolled cigarettes (24% men, 13% women)
• In November 1993 the Health Education Authority declared that it costs £610 million a year to treat ‘smoking-related diseases’.
• Over the past 30 years cigarette smoking has been associated with 50 diseases or causes of deaths, some of them are heart disease, high blood pressure, blood vessel diseases, cerebral thrombosis and cerebral haemorrhage.

Facts from the book “Tobacco and Health”

1. The tar in cigarette smoke damages your cells in the airways of the lungs. Eventually this can produce cells that grow uncomfortably which can ultimately lead to lung cancer or cancer of the voice box.
2. Children that grow up with parents that smoke are more likely to develop lung problems
3. The risk of sudden death in children is increased when their parents smoker.
4. Most smokers start out as teenagers.