If games can be made to look bad so can films or well anything.

Well seeing as Games have been made to look like nothing but violence in a short montage by the White House I wanted to talk about this and show how you could easily do this with something else, so I have taken scenes from film and TV and edited them into a sloppy montage of violence and gore.. featuring Walking Dead, Robocop, Day of the Dead, Carrie, and Casino. There are probably worse out there but these ones jumped into my mind. Now its important to mention I like these films but I just recognize how out of context they look awful. I could do the same with music or books.

I kind of like what I did with Robocop and Walking dead as I took out some of the bits where you cut away from the gore to peoples reactions and this kind of makes it feel far more unrelenting than it actually does in the film/show. I kept the scene from Casino largely in tact, I have to admit its not the bloodiest but if you put yourself in the characters perspectives it is quiet unrelenting. I mostly used scenes with baseball bats as there seemed to be a lot of that in the video game based one but out, but I figured I should throw some Robocop in as they seem to be suggesting games make people want to shoot places up.

In all honesty I don't think violence in games, or books, or films, makes people want to be violent, violence has existed for a lot longer than any of these mediums have. The simple truth is that when things go wrong people most often just look for scapegoats instead of really tackling the real issues as most often the real issues are very hard to deal with, and in dealing with them there is the risk or either raising other issues or upsetting people, so its just much easier to try to push the blame on anything you can and then bury your head in the sand.

NEWS RANT#1 The Lady who wants Fortnite banned

OK so if you have been visiting this blog for any length of time then you will be aware of what NEWS RANT is, basically its my news posts where I talk about either one or a bunch of things which have been in the news recently that have gotten my attention that I have felt compelled to talk about.

This time I am talking about the Lady who wants to ban the video game Fortnite because her under age child cant regulate himself. If you are not familiar with this story then it is from a piece on a UK morning breakfast show called This Morning where they did an interview with a Lady  who thinks that 'Fortnite is endangering our teens because she says her son stopped socializing and became aggressive and moody when he was told he could no longer play. This was Broadcast on 07/03/2018 I figured I would mix things up a little though and make this the First NEWS RANT to be a youtube video instead of me just ranting in text. So here it is down below for you to hopefully enjoy. I would also like to mention that this video is dedicated to my Mother. It is mothers day here in the UK this Sunday, unfortunately my mum passed away a few years ago but she was a constant source of support for me and this seemed fitting giving the time of year plus the fact this is essentially talking about parenting.

NEWS RANT The Goverment should grant Alfie's parents wishes and an update to my Oxfam rant.

OK so I am back News Ranting again

So the Home Office have denied a family's plea for there six year old boy to be given medical cannabis. So Six year old Alfie Dingley, from Kenilworth in Warwickshire, suffers up to 30 violent epileptic seizures a day. You might wonder why I am talking about this and well one of the key reasons is that I am an epileptic myself. For those of you who are not epileptics I am not going to get massively technical here but just let me tell you that having a fit sucks. You suffer not only from the fit, but from the injuries you take while falling the pain you feel in your head after, the disorientation and headaches after, its not the same for everyone but its certainly not happy happy fun time.

Anyways Alfie was taken to the Netherlands to take a cannabis-based medication in September. While he was there he was prescribed cannabis oil by a pediatric neurologist, and this saw his seizures reduce dramatically in both number, duration and severity.At one point while in the UK, Alfie had 3,000 seizures and 48 hospital visits in a year, but while abroad he went 24 days without a single attack. When you are having fits every day or practically every day when you are feeling ill because of this almost constantly you get to the point where you are just so sick of being ill, where you would look for anything to help, would do anything to help. It is hard to be a sufferer of epilepsy but as someone who had it from around the age of 6 I can tell you I think it is even harder for someones parents. Alfie's mum knows how much he suffers and knows that something could help her little boy to be happier and live a better life and yet here the home office is telling her he cant have it.

The Home Office when asked about this said that the drug "cannot be practically prescribed, administered or supplied to the public". They also added that it can only be used for research. I know some people will just say its the law and expect this to be answer enough but its about time we cut the crap here. The UK is absolutely full of drugs, Cannabis is pretty much everywhere, the police are fighting this war on drugs and they are absolutely losing. We can not hold Cannabis down, we can not stop drug dealers from making huge wads of money on it, so lets screw it all and just legalize it. Lets make it legal and tax it and actually make an on the books profit from it so the money goes somewhere decent and helps the country but more importantly so that little Alfie can get the few drops of Cannabis oil he needs a day so that he doesn't have to needlessly suffer. I think its about time we came up with a way to make other people feel our illnesses even just for a second as no one should have to tell Alfie's parents that he is not allowed the medication he needs to make his life better without having to first walk a day in Alfie's shoes without having to feel what he feels and struggle the way he struggles. All I can say to end this is that I hope things get better for Alfie somehow.

OK I also feel I need to do a quick update on my Oxfam Rant. I commented that I didn't care about the whole prostitution thing and that if people wanted to pay for that as long as it was out of there own money and not the charities money then I simply didn't care. Well it seems that what was first announced was the tip of the iceberg. If I had known more at the time then I would have said more. I have thought about revisiting this topic several times over the last few days but the story has just never stopped growing but now seemed as good a time as any to do a quick catch up.

Since I last wrote about the situation all sorts has been said there have been allegations that there were big parties thrown with prostitutes, where girls were wearing Oxfam T-shirts, running around half-naked, full on orgies, that some of the sex workers were between 14 and 16 years old and therefore below the age of consent. There were other allegations of things such as bullying, intimidation, harassment and the use of 'pornographic and illegal material' on work computers the story just seemed to grow and grow without an end. The government said they were going to look into Oxfams funding, one of there celebrity ambassadors stepped down many people stopped donating to them.

Now I don't want to go into massive depth about all of this but I just want to say that... Yes bad things have happened in regard to Oxfam if you want to you can read up on them in far more detail on various news sites as I don't want to do a massive in depth piece on it, but what I do want to say is that some people have been shockingly quick to stick the boot into Oxfam in general. Now stop and think about it Oxfam is huge and many many people work for them, they have lots of volunteers working in shops doing there best to help the cause while also gaining some experience for themselves, yes some people have done wrong in one way or another but lets not tar everyone with the same brush. Yes I condemn anyone who has generally been a dick but lets not be a dick about those who have been doing nothing but good.

Well thats it for now join me for more News Rant basically the next time something in the news causes me to want to moan and go on a bit.

NEWS RANT: The Oxfam Situation and Peters been a bad wabbit.

Oxfam's deputy chief executive has resigned over the handling of a sex scandal involving aid workers. So whats all of this about in short well Oxfam (which is a British Charity for those reading this from other parts of the world) is accused of concealing the findings of an inquiry into claims staff used prostitutes while delivering aid in Haiti in 2011.

Penny Lawrence said she was "ashamed" and takes full responsibility. I personally don't think she should but we will get into that later. Part of Oxfams funding is gotten through donations but they actually get more money from the government. Oxfam which denies a cover-up has met with the International Development Secretary in a bid to prevent its government funding from being cut.

A million and one things have been said about this whole situation, apparently this was being investigated but kind of on the hush hush. The government is now wanting all of the gory details and from my point of view it is wanting Oxfam to get on its knees and beg which if you ask me is pretty rich when you look at some of the things politicians have been caught doing. It was only just before Christmas when seven Conservative MP's were facing various investigations one of which had allegedly acted inappropriately  towards a young activist, as well as having“extreme” pornography on one of his government computers. Add to this the fact we used to have a Prime Minister who apparently put his John Tomas in a dead pigs mouth and this feels like it is all a pointless witch hunt.

I have but two questions I want answered about this whole situation and those questions are who paid for the prostitutes, and did the people using them pay out of there own money or was government money or donation money used? If they paid themselves then hey thats there own business and I don't really want to hear about it. If they spend there time working in other countries helping other people get valuable aid then what they do in there free time is there own business.

I wouldnt personally pay to have sex with a prostitute but I dont feel I have the right to take the moral high ground and to tell people that they cant do that or to say I am better than someone who does, that would make me a judgmental asshole.

OK so thats not the only thing in the news I have felt the need to talk about I have also felt the need to talk about Peter Rabbit. The makers of the new film Peter Rabbit have apologized after facing a backlash over their depiction of a character's allergy. OK so obviously the Peter Rabbit film is based on the books of the same name. In the film there is a scene in which a character who suffers a blackberry allergy is pelted with them by a gang of bunnies. Now I need to admit I haven't seen the film yet but I know the character pelted is the son of the man who turned Peter's dad into a pie. So I am going to go out on a limb here and imagine that most likely he is the bad guy of the piece and if he is anything like his old man then he wants to turn the bunnies into a pie, so this pelting is most likely in self defense and also its in a film and being done by cartoon rabbits so its also incredibly fictional.

Well apparently campaigners condemned the scene and some Twitter users adopted the hashtag #boycottpeterrabbit. The charity Kids with Food Allergies Foundation said in a Facebook post "food allergy 'jokes' are harmful to our community". Well I don't have a food allergy so maybe I just don't get this whole thing, I do however have a whole heap of other issues all of which I am perfectly willing to take the piss out of. Yet apparently a petition calling on Sony Pictures to apologize also attracted thousands of signatures. OK so now even if someone wants to murder you and eat you then you cant take advantage of a medical condition they have to save your life because that would be wrong? It is getting to the point where you cant make a joke about anything in even the most gentle way without somebody trying there darn best to be offended by it.

When you get down to it both of these stories are about people choosing to be offended, they are getting all mad and getting there panties in a bunch, what they are actually wanting is to impose there will, they don't want anyone else to have the freedom to laugh at something they personally don't find funny or to do something they wouldn't do. Well as always I hope this gives you all something to think about.

NEWS RANT: My oppinion on the Deaf Lady who complained about a Little Mix concert and what this means for everyone

So yesterday I was reading the news, something I try to do at least every other day, when I came across a story which I felt I needed to comment on. Now I have always considered myself a bit of an advocate for disabilities particularly mental health, part of this is because I am disabled myself, I suffer from PTSD, Epilepsy and I also have some hearing difficulties, its hard to explain but essentially there is nothing wrong with either ear but my brain doesn't register the sound entering one ear, sometimes what I hear through this ear is muffled and sometimes I simply cant hear anything at all, sometimes its even worse than that and I can hear horrid buzzing and static. So usually you would think that I would have the back of anyone with a disability but right now I am actually about to call a disabled person an idiot, a money grabbing idiot at that, so I thought I should clarify that I am not a healthy person playing lets laugh at the impaired here.

Sometime last year, a woman called Sally Reynolds bought six tickets to see Little Mix in concert on the 1st of September at the South of England Event Center in Sussex. Now this Lady is deaf and so are two of her friends who she booked tickets for and their daughters who are all able to hear.
Well Sally decided that she wanted to enjoy it as much as anyone else and well technically due to the law or to be precise the Equality Act of 2010 this was her right. The law states that any organization supplying a service to the public is under a duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that a disabled person's experience is as close as possible to that of someone without a disability. OK so this law sounds brilliant in principle, it sounds like something I would usually really get behind. So what did Sally want? Well she asked the organizers, LHG Live, to provide a British Sign Language interpreter.

She was initially offered carer tickets and told that she could bring her own interpreter, but she didn't consider that met her needs or amounted to full access. OK so I can sort of understand this its not like all of us have a go to interpreter who is totally up for dropping whatever they have going on to run to music concerts with us.

Apparently she asked two or three times, if they could please provide an interpreter and got told no with no explanation provided. She argued that she wanted to share the same experience her daughter was going to have and that she just wanted access to the songs. OK well this is strike one on the dumb-ometer even if your were the same age, sex, race, gender, intelligence bracket etcetera you are never going to have the same experience as someone else, we all experience different things in different ways, having someone wave there hands and visually explain the songs will not no matter how good it is be the same experience. Still some people will say I am being a bit pedantic here and that I know what she means but with the way the law is worded this very well could be something that gets talked about in court.

With just days to go before the concert, and no interpreter in place, Sally  decided to instruct lawyers to apply for a court injunction to force LHG Live to provide a British Sign Language interpreter. It worked. Hours before the hearing was due to take place, LHG Live agreed. When they got to the concert when Little Mix took to the stage their lyrics were interpreted by a specialist interpreter from the company Performance Interpreting. However, the concert had started with two supporting acts and the interpreter had not been booked to cover them.

OK so lets hear a little bit of what Sally had to say about it all "I felt that we were really part of the Little Mix experience, but because it was so good I realized that we had missed out on the first two acts.''.... "So it was very much a disparity of experience compared with everyone else. We only got access to the last act. If you went to a film can you imagine only getting access to the last 20 minutes? "We had paid for our tickets like everyone else." OK again I am going to nit pick here, no it is nothing like going to see a film and only getting access to the last twenty minutes, what the other people did had no connection to Little Mix, it wasn't a continuation of what had gone before. Occasionally an opening act is the absolute dogs bollocks and is better than the person you have gone to, the person you have paid for but a lot of the time they are simply just filler. Also you need to consider who is paying for the interpretor and the equipment needed etcetera, if its coming out of Little Mix's money or the places money fair enough they can very easily afford it but if its coming out of Little Mix's pot can we really expect all minor acts to actually realistically be able to afford to provide these sort of things?.

So what did LHG Live have to say about it all? Well lets look at some quotes from them "We received a request from Sally Reynolds to supply an interpreter.
"We consulted with her recommended agency and agreed to provide the professional interpreter of her choice for the Little Mix show. "This included specific staging and lighting, and a set list in advance." LHG Live also provided upgraded tickets, access to private accessible toilets and all public announcements on giant screens either side of the main stage. OK so to me it sounds like they actually did quiet a lot for her especially seeing as they did it with no pay for it, lets face it they paid the single regular ticket prices and because of the law they got a whole bunch of extra stuff for the same money.

Sally Reynolds is now issuing legal proceedings for the failure to make reasonable adjustments, in the form of supplying an interpreter, for the whole concert. Her solicitor Chris Fry, managing partner of Fry Law, believes the action shines a light on a wider point. "People with sensory impairment actually want to attend musical and sporting events just as anybody else does," he says.
"The fact that you have a hearing impairment or sight loss doesn't mean that you don't want to be at the event. "So it is important that venues and promoters recognise that the legal duties to make reasonable adjustments extend to them. "It is an important way of making society more inclusive."

For Cate (Sally's daughter) though, it's all much simpler. "Sometimes my mum doesn't get to have the experience to go to places because sometimes there aren't interpreters," she says. "I really love my mum, and I want her to come to the concerts with me." OK something that needs saying here Sally your kids should be more important than you, have you stopped to think that your bitching and whining about this actually hurt your daughters enjoyment of this experience? Most parents will attend shit that they really have no desire to attend, listen to music they'd sooner cut there ears off than listen to. I went to see a film in 3D that my daughter really wanted to see despite the fact that with my messed up brain the 3D made my brain hurt like hell and actually made me feel ill for hours afterwards, did I moan and cry and demand that 3D be somehow reworked so that it didn't hurt my brain (Apparently there are about 20% or so of people who simply cant deal with 3D, I am probably wrong on the exact figures but I don't want to go all research master here)? No I let her enjoy it, I hid how I felt and actually put my daughters enjoyment and her feelings ahead of my own. This is what I do 99% of the time this is what a good parent usually does. Also I think it needs pointing out that yeah the event organizer wasn't exactly quick to help you, and yes it might have taken a legal threat to get them off of there butts in the first place but they actually did quiet a lot in the end to try and help you enjoy the show so having a response to this which basically equals turning around and spitting in there face for it is pretty much a dick move in my books.

 What the law says is that there is a duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that a disabled person's experience is as close as possible to that of someone without a disability. I don't personally consider a company or band having to spend mountains and mountains of cash on one or a small group of people to be reasonable in this case they provided specific staging and lighting, a set list in advance, upgraded tickets (at no extra cost), access to private accessible toilets and giant screens either side of the main stage just for these people to enhance there enjoyment of the show. I suffer from something called Vacancy's where I can go blank for periods of time, OK so if I attended a Little Mix concert should I have the legal right to demand they re-sing the last 30 seconds of song because I blanked out and missed it? Where does it all end?

OK yes Little Mix and this big ass venue company can afford to lay on piles and piles of extra stuff for someone who health wise is at a disadvantage, and it is great to help people where you can but there needs to be limits to it and this could make some dangerous precedents. If this lady wins then technically people could go around demanding sign interpretors at any gig, well fair enough for mega stars but what about poor sods who play to like 50 people in a pub at most its not like there going to be able to afford to provide a TV and a song listening and an interpretor without going into the red is it?

I think the lady involved is and has been using her disability to try and get all she can get and actually paints the disabled in a bad light, it runs the risk of making people actually think ''oh shit'' when someone disabled wants to attend there show.

NEWS RANT: Swatter charged and bail set, my opinion.

OK so I meant to talk about this back when it happened but I don't think I did. I am sure I have made it very plain that I don't really like online competitive games like shooters and such. I like playing first person shooters dont get me wrong but online you just end up being surrounded by pricks, people screaming at you telling you that they are going to screw your sister, accusing you of cheating if you do well, telling you that you suck if your doing poorly, basically I game to get away from pricks and hassle and escape into another world so I am not going to spend that time with screaming idiots. I have played online with friends before on things like Halo 3 and Gears of War and had a great time but playing with random people is just not my jam at all.

I didn't think the whole online competitive crap could get any worse and then people started doing something called swatting. OK so basically people decided that it would be a good idea to call the police on opponents/other people playing a video game in the hope the police would think the gun noises etc were noises of some kind of violence and bust in there.It is a deeply messed up thing to do as not only does it put the person whose address has been given to the police in danger it also wastes the time of various emergency service. When the police are answering a fake call they are taken away from doing actual police work, from stopping real crimes.

Well towards the end of December a 28-year-old man was shot and killed by a US police officer after the police arrived at a reported hostage situation. At a press conference the police said it was a false call meant to draw SWAT officers to the scene and that it appeared to have been linked to an argument over Call of Duty. Well today the Swatter (the person who made the fake call) Twenty-five-year-old Tyler Barriss was charged in the US state of Kansas for involuntary manslaughter and two other counts because of his call that led to a police man killing an unarmed 28-year-old. The maximum sentence varies but if found guilty, Barriss could face a hefty fine and years in prison.

Police say that Barriss had called police to report a hostage situation, telling officers on 28 December 2017 that he had his family at gunpoint and had doused the house with gasoline. He then gave them an address for 28-year-old Andrew Finch, who was shot and killed by an officer when he answered the door. That officer is now on paid administrative leave. I don't know what caused the officer to shoot so I cant comment on if he jumped the gun or not but I am sure that this will have unfortunately greatly effected and continue to effect the officers life and career.

Barriss reportedly made the call after an argument between two Call of Duty players led to one giving the other an address. That player then reportedly gave the address to Barriss, who was known in the community for swatting. The address turned out to be unrelated to anyone involved with the dispute, however, and instead led police to Finch and ultimately lead to his death.

Barriss was also charged with giving false alarm and interference with law enforcement. His bond is set at $500,000 (£364,100) which is pretty darn high so I guess he is going to be sitting in jail unable to pay it. There are a few questions I have one of which is will the guy who gave Barriss the address be done for anything? I mean if I told a nutter I knew would burn down a house the address for a good house he could burn wouldn't I be at least partially guilty if anyone died in the fire? The guy who gave out the random address I also hope at the very least realizes the part he has played in someones death and feels bad about it, I mean there was no reason for him to give any address at all. Its all a very very sad situation which makes me feel bad in general. I guess I hope that this guy gets nailed to the wall and it encourages other people to stop and think before being dicks but I don't really see that happening, I think whatever happens people will still scream and shout and threaten each other online.

News Rant: Depression in Japan and the body in Aokigahara forest showed on youtube

OK so I want to do one of my posts/rants about things that I have read in the news recently, there are a two subjects I am going to touch upon so just in case one of these doesn't interest you I will start each new topic with the first word of the first paragraph in bold and larger/underlined.

One of the things I pride myself on as a person is that I am always willing to look at other cultures and other ideas. I guess that I am simply an inquisitive soul. I have always had a bit of a soft spot for Japan, maybe its the Anime and Manga, or an early exposure to show like Monkey, or a life time of playing the Video Games most of which have Japanese origins, but its a place that for one reason or another has always interested me.

I have written quiet a bit about mental health so I was surprised to learn that up until the late 1990s in Japan, "depression" was a word rarely heard outside psychiatric circles. It was in fact claimed by some that this was simply because people in Japan didn't suffer depression. They had the same sad or lost feelings that we might have but they didn't become depressed instead they found ways to tunnel these feelings into various avenues which would allow them to carry on with life. Basically it was felt that they used there low moods to create works of art or other such things.

Japan has had a very different medical tradition to countries such as mine (the UK) they tend to have looked at depression as primarily a physical issue rather than a combination of physical and psychological. Depression as a diagnosis was rarely used but people suffering from what we would see as classic symptoms of depression would most commonly be told by their doctors that they needed rest.

Originally the makers of the drug Prozac had pretty much given up on the idea of trying to sell it to Japan. This changed when  a Japanese drugs firm came up with a  remarkable marketing campaign. They spread the word about depression referring to it as kokoro no kaze  which translates as ''a cold of the soul''.  The idea was pushed that anyone could suffer from depression but with medication it could be treated. It was after this that the number of people diagnosed with a mood disorder in Japan doubled in just four years, and the market for anti-depressants boomed.

The acceptance of the idea of depression and the use of drugs to combat it wasn't the end of things though celebrities came out and admitted that they had suffered from depression, to a certain degree it became almost fashionable to admit that you had suffered from a bout of depression. Parents of those who had committed suicide after having been overworked started taking there passed loved ones companies to court. What had once been a sort of hushed up and ignored thing was now being talked about. Suicide had previously been seen as straightforward and sometimes noble but now things were far less clear cut.  A suicide prevention law was passed in 2006, pledging to reduce suicide rates and declaring suicide a social rather than just a private problem.

 In some ways Japan has even done things in this area that we have not. Since 2015 Japan has brought in workplace stress checks which is something that we do not have. Workers complete a  questionnaire covering causes and symptoms of stress  which is assessed by doctors and nurses, the results of which lead to medical care for those who need it and not only that but the results are kept confidential from employers. This is mandatory for companies with more than 50 staff, and smaller businesses are also encouraged to do the same. Do I think that this is something we should do over here? In honesty my answer to this question would be yes most definitely, but I do realise that putting something like this into practise could be very complicated and might actually come with its own issues.

OK so something else I want to talk about which is not totally unrelated which was in the news was a story about an American YouTuber with more than 15 million subscribers who posted a video online which showed the body of a suicide victim. There is a forest in Japan (Aokigahara forest) which people basically visit to commit suicide, its been the subject of stories, legends and even a film, and this YouTube vlogger Logan Paul visited it, while there he filmed a video for his channel which actually showed him and his friends finding a dead body he then posted this video online with the title "We found a dead body in the Japanese suicide forest". The video was viewed more than a million times before it was taken down, it showed the dead man's body with his face blurred. The guy has tonnes of young viewers so this stunt has caused absolutely bucket loads of controversy. He claimed that he went there to do a video which was based on the haunted aspects of the place, and that he wanted to raise awareness of suicide in an effort to save lives, he has done the usual all singing all dancing apology but I am here to talk about what I make of the whole situation.

Would I visit Aokigahara forest? Yes I would. I do think that it would be a terrible dark place to visit but I do think that its important to talk about depression and about suicide and that places can be awful but can also need to be talked about but it needs to be talked about in the right way. If I had been filming the forest and had come across a body then the camera would have been turned off straight away, I would have had respect for the poor man who had unfortunately ended his life. I would have also stopped to think about my audience, showing a corpse on your video when you know your product is consumed by miners is just a really shitty thing to do. I hope that this is the last stupid thing that he does and I really hope that he truly understands that he has done wrong and that he has not just apologised as a form of damage limitation to try and keep as much of his reputation and viewing figures as possible but because he actually regrets what he has done, unfortunately I don't think this is the case but I guess time will tell.

News Rant: Girls as young as 9 are having unneeded labiaplasty, why and what can be done about it?

I know that this is usually a blog about Video Games and other forms of entertainment, but every so often I have looked at news or polotics when I feel it is important to do so, if you are only here for the Games etc and want to skip this post out then rfeel free I wont hold it against you, but I just felt this topic was important.

OK so I wanted to take a look at a few things in the news that had made me just stop and feel the need to rant, this was supposed to be a piece where one by one I tackled various pieces of news and the issues I had with them but then I read one piece and I just couldn't write about anything else. I read the news that apparently Girls as young as nine are opting to have surgery on their well for want of a better term private area. Doctors have apparently said that this is because of body insecurities and they have claimed that these insecurities stem from social media and pornography.

Now I know you might think that I found this article in some uninformed rag but I actually read about it in the Independent. Naomi Crouch, a leading adolescent gynaecologist, talked to the BBC and told them that she is concerned GPs are referring young girls for unneeded labiaplasty(This is  an operation where the lips of the vagina are shortened or reshaped). She said that she is yet to see a young girl who needs the operation and feels that they are getting the operation when it is completely unnecessary, this is not just her opinion Paquita de Zulueta, a GP for more than 30 years, agreed with Crouch’s concerns, also mentioning that this was a modern problem, I feel I should include the following quote from her as its important “I'm seeing young girls around 11, 12, 13 thinking there's something wrong with their vulva - that they're the wrong shape, the wrong size, and really expressing almost disgust,”. I dont know about anyone else but I am deeply troubled by the concept of anyone as young as 11, 12 or 13 looking at any part of themselves physical or emotional and feeling disgust. If a person can so easily learn to hate a part of themselves at such an early point in there life then it is utterly terrifying to picture where this individual might end up, how they might feel about themselves when they are another 10 or 20 or even 40 years older. It has been proven that the emotional scars from bullying can last for a horrific amount of time and that's when its people you can potentially escape trying to rip you to pieces, what about when you have been trained to rip yourself apart emotionally and mentally from the inside?

It is believed that this phenomena is down to  pornography and social media leading to girls having an incorrect idea of how things should look, meaning that people are having the operation out of a fear that the bits they have simply look wrong instead of because they have an actual medical abnormality. A lot of people will probably be shocked by this whole news piece for lots of reasons least of which is the fact that girls from as young as 9 are seeing pornography. All of us want to think that children are innocent, we want to see 9 year olds as playing with My Little Pony and we like to think that they don't have to deal with anything serious, we would like to think the most serious question that enters there mind is should they ask for chocolate or strawberry milk but the worlds not like that anymore and maybe it never truly was. You might be able to keep your kid away from things but other kids will see things and then talk to your kid, as a parent you kind of need to be ready to tackle any question or worry your child might have and this can be a very challenging situation with many parents preferring to try to bury there heads in the sand.

In 2015-16, more than 200 girls under 18 had labiaplasty on the NHS, with more than 150 of these girls being under 15. Now several plastic surgeons have come out to try and say that there is nothing wrong with this and people have a right to seek help to change how they look if it makes them feel uncomfortable, but lets face it this sort of thing keeps them in work so there opinion is hardly a none biased one. The biggest issue is that this is most likely just the tip of the iceberg, I don't see this problem going away anytime soon in fact I would expect the figures to get worse and worse.

What can I say other than its just another troubling sign of the way our world is. People are so media saturated now days peoples opinions are shaped by it without them even realising it, there fears are magnified by it. A great many people are simply so brainwashed by a photoshoped celebrity reality that when they look in the mirror no matter how they look they will see something which does not match this glossy image they have been sold. People will buy all manner of face creams, toothpastes and dieting pills to try and match the blueprints they have been given by the media and when this proves futile they will look at even more drastic measures like starvation diets and plastic surgery and this is just made all the more worrying by the fact that children are now exhibiting this behaviour. The real troubling thing is that children seem to be falling even deeper down the rabbit hole, they cant remember a time before the information overloaded world we live in now, the TV, Internet and Magazines brainwash them and they look to us and in a great many cases they see an almost equally brainwashed larger version of themselves uncomfortable in there own skin, crushed by the weight of everything desperate to fit some ever changing concept of perfection.

It is easy to point at problems, to say that something is wrong and that it needs to change, but it is far more complex to actually do something about it. I may hold a degree in Social Science and have a background relating to child development but this does not mean that I hold all of the answers, this is after all a very large and complex problem and I doubt anyone person could wave a magic wand and sort it out, but I do feel that the first few things that need to happen is for awareness of this situation to be raised and for a discourse to get underway, people need to know about it and they need to talk about it only then can we start to look for ways to tackle it.

A few easy points for consideration are that we as individuals need to think about the way we talk about ourselves in front of children. Are you always mentioning your own weight or unhappiness with your looks in front of children? If so then maybe you need to stop and think that you are in fact adding and structurally enhancing a culture of criticism. Now I am not saying that its wrong for you to want to shed a few pounds or to live a healthier life style but you don't want to perpetuate the idea that your looks make you any more or less important as a person, children pick up on far more than most people would imagine, emotionally beating yourself up in front of one can send the message that its OK to do this. I think we also need to start complimenting the youth of today on none physical attributes, for example there compassion for others, or there sense of humour , we need to teach people and teach them from an early age that there is far more to being a person than simply how you look.We have a hard road to walk and many challenges to face if we want society to be less superficial and if we want young people to be free to be who they are without constantly questioning if there normal but if any road is worth walking its this one.