Word: britishism
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...That's the idea behind an initiative called Give Your Vote, in which U.K. citizens will voluntarily give up their votes in the parliamentary elections expected to take place May 6 to residents in the developing world. The aim is less to tip the British elections one way or the other than to highlight the limitations of local decision-making in an increasingly interconnected world. "Right now, the people making decisions on things like climate change aren't getting their authority from the guy in Bangladesh whose house is being flooded," says James Sadri, one of the founders of Egality...
...British rock impresario and Africa aid promoter Bob Geldof, a.k.a. "Saint Bob," was back in the headlines this past week after blowing his stack at the BBC for a story it aired alleging that Ethiopian rebels had diverted 95% of the $100 million in Ethiopian famine relief raised in the mid-1980s - much of it by Geldof's iconic Band Aid concert...
...which I talk about the video's cultural relevance (the Oscars). Then I'll point out that the trailer's formulaic script, in which the characters satirize the genre by describing themselves in relation to the film, has been done before. I'll provide a few examples, such as British broadcaster Charlie Booker's "How to Report the News" segment and The Onion's fake story "Some Bulls___ Happening Somewhere...
...Hong Kong, the everyday laws of the People's Republic do not apply. Since the British handover in 1997, the former colonial entrepôt has been governed as a special administrative region (SAR) of China under the principle of "one country, two systems," and it looks a lot more like a democracy than the mainland. It has a free press, independent bewigged judges (a legacy of the British) and regularly scheduled elections - although there are no direct elections for the SAR's Chief Executive or for half of the legislature, which has seats reserved for "functional constituencies" representing various...
...This isn't the first roadblock on Hong Kong's long march toward democracy. The British routinely co-opted or marginalized opponents to colonial rule until the 1980s, when they finally allowed a certain number of local district councilors to be elected. In the early 1990s, the first legislative elections were held, but after the handover, the Chinese temporarily replaced the whole legislature. Since then, it has postponed democracy twice. In 2004, Beijing decreed that Hong Kong could not have universal suffrage before 2012. In 2007, after the pan-democrats defeated a package of reforms almost identical to the ones...