J'Accuse - Emile Zola

The Drefus Affair was what originally inspired Emile Zola to write one of the most controversial pieces of writing in history, one that proved victorious to Journalism. The lecture was probably one of my favorites and I found it so interesting how miscarriages of justice can so easily be made. The whole way through, I was picturing myself in Drefus's position and I can't even begin to imagine how he must of felt being framed from a
crime, he never committed.

It all began back when Drefus was a member of the French Army. He had attended military school, he should have come second in his tests however, he was heavily discriminated against because he was from a Jewish family and as a result, he was marked with '0'. In 1894, a French spy, also a cleaning lady found secret documents in a German bin meaning somebody within the French Army had been supplying the Germans with secret documents. The French found this deeply embarrassing that within their army, they had a traitor. Not knowing who this was, and wanting to 'resolve the issue' quickly, the found a Jew and sentenced him to life time imprisonment on Devils Island. This innocent Jew, was Drefus. They sent Drefus onto the island and locked him in a cell with no windows, he was only fed rotten food and was no longer allowed human contact. As a horrifying result, Drefus lost the ability to speak and his teeth fell out.
Before being sentenced to imprisonment at Devils Island, Drefus had a trail, naturally he was innocent and he should have been found innocent at the trial, but evidence was not supplied due to 'the protection of National Security.' This meant Drefus was found guilty and there was no way of proving him innocent. He had been given a death sentence in many ways, and the French Army were keen to get him sent over to the island and believed that this would be the end of the case. However, they were wrong. Enter Emile Zola.

Emile Zola was a Journalist of the time and was present at Drefus's trial. He was outraged by the decision to send Drefus to Devil's Island despite there being no real evidence to suggest that he was guilty. His anger was further fueled in 1896, when the Chief of French Military Intelligence, LT Colonel Picquart, found evidence to suggest that Drefus was innocent after all, and actually Esterhazy, another man within the French Army was guilty. When he raised this with his seniors, they refused to listen and sent him to Tuinisa as a method of to try and silence him. The French Army had already suffered enough humiliation for having a traitor in the first place, without it then being revealed to the public that they had imprisoned the wrong man. As a result of this, when a trial was held with Esterhazy, the court found him innocent to cover up any further embarrassment for the French Army. Unfortunately, a Journalist was in the wings waiting to produce a piece of writing that would reveal the true errors of the French Army and hopefully release an innocent man from a terrible fate. 


The article known as J'Accuse did exactly what it promised and Zola wrote lists and lists of people within the French Army he accused of being corrupt, he named and shamed Esterhazy and declared Drefus's innocence. Being experience at his job, Zola knew the consequences of publishing this, as it was full to the brim of defamation meaning he could be imprisoned himself under libel laws. He published it anyway. Within hours of its release, there was complete anarchy and uproar and true to his suspicions, Zola was trialled and found guilty of libel, he was sentenced to imprisonment but he fled to London and escaped. There began a Civil War.
Under a new government, Drefus was offered a new trial, but during the trial Drefus's solicitor was shot from behind meaning that another almighty miscarriage of justice occured, when Drefus was found guilty for a second time under 'extenuating circumstances'. He was eventually pardoned in 1889.


Throughout J'Accuse, it is clear that Zola is very passionate about Drefus's innocence, not only because of the sacrifice he is making but by also referring to the whole affair as a 'stain' on the presidency, ultimately making the president think about how he would be remembered, and how as a Journalist it is his 'duty to speak' on behalf of the people and on behalf of Drefus. 


This whole lecture, I found incredibly interesting. It made me so angry and made me want to make a difference. I cannot wait to be part of the Innocence Project in Year Three, although it will probably be shocking as well as completely compelling. 

Rural Rides

William Cobbett, part farmer, part Journalist wrote Rural Rides during the early 19th Century as a method of documenting and taking note of agricultural conditions across England. He rode a horse across the land and noted down any of his findings. 

As a child, Cobbett grew up in rural surroundings so being in the countryside was something he was very familiar with and naturally, a topic that was very dear to him. And as you would expect, he was very opinionated on what a countryside should be, therefore any changes in this, Cobbett did not approve of. To some people, Cobbett was also thought of as a campaigner, and Rural Rides confirmed this, although far from being extreme, Cobbett does attack the industrial revolution for the 'damage' it caused to the countryside.

Throughout Rural Rides, Cobbett upholds a very negative attitude towards the changes he has witnessed in the countryside and complains on some occasions that it will never go back to 'the good old days' or the days in which he remembers it to be better than what he was experiencing at the time. Although somewhat of a cliche, that phrase reminds me of my grandad telling me about the 'good old days' when he was in the army. I always appreciated his stories and enjoyed them but I always found it difficult to appreciate what was meant by 'the good old days' as obviously I was not there, and the current time is probably what will become 'the good old days' for me in the distant future. I think that can be applied to this text, as although we can understand what is meant by the phrase, it is difficult for us to relate or make a connection with the text as obviously we were not there to experience it with him. He uses extremely negative adjectives to describe the countryside including 'dull' and 'ugly'. 

Now, whenever I travel through a countryside, I never find it ugly, I find it quite tranquil and peaceful and pretty. Clearly Cobbett would have something to say about this! It is quite saddening as a reader, to think that he felt the countryside had changed so negatively that it would cause him to say it was ugly. 

Cobbett also has concerns about farmers and the people of the market who benefit from farmed produce, by saying that due to new laws, the divide between rich and poor people will grow, meaning that those poorer people and farmers using the old system will eventually become bankrupted whilst the rich people who can afford the new systems will be engulfed in wealth. The laws Cobbett was referring too included the Corn Laws, which meant that British Corn was cheaper as exported corn would be taxed, all in all strengthening the power of land owners.

Cobbett felt that working class people were being exploited by the new systems and as a result, tried to make a link to Charles Dickens who was also writing at that time. However, on the contrary, Dickens was writing about the growth in poverty and crime in the towns due to a larger population and people coming from the countryside seeking employment. Well known books such as 'Oliver Twist' demonstrate this. 

Cobbett never really gained anything out of Rural Rides and he certainly didn't make much of a difference despite his efforts. I did enjoy reading it, and I can see how passionate he was about the changes that had happened in the countryside, and if we are honest he was correct. However, Rural Rides has never really been seen as a famous or well known piece of writing.

District Councils Vs County Councils

It is fair to say that if I were to be asked a few weeks ago what the differences between the District and the County Council were, I would probably look a little blank and then tell you I didn’t know.

But now I do….

The clue is really in the name in terms of the two council’s sizes, the County Council is naturally bigger as that Council governs over a larger area, i.e Hampshire County Council governs the whole of Hampshire. However, District Councils govern a small body within the county council’s domain. For example, Winchester City Council. The two have very different budgets for expenses, that being because of not the only size of the area they govern but also because of the difference in responsibilities, which I will come onto shortly.

Local government is run using a two-tier system and tasks are distributed between the County Council and the District Council.

The County Council has several members and the general public votes these in every four years. From these elected members, a Cabinet is drawn and this essentially acts as a group of people representing certain areas within the Council that come together when making decisions, it is then their task to choose a Council Leader. For example, Ken Thorber is the current leader for Hampshire County Council.

Although, the leader usually holds the ‘final say’ when making decisions, the Cabinet cast their opinion too. Having attended a Council Meeting, I saw members of the Cabinet for Hampshire County Council casting their opinions on potential changes to adult social care.

Unlike the District Council, the County Council has Civil Servants. These are important members of the Council but are not elected in; they are permanent figures. The general public as taxpayers, pay for the salary of the Civil Servants. In most cases, the Chief Executive is paid higher than the Prime Minister!

County Councils are usually responsible for tasks including Fire and Rescue services, education, waste disposal and other tasks that affect the county as a whole.

District Council as mentioned above will control a smaller area within a particular county. The members of the District Council will be elected but only by those living in that particular area. For example, residents of Winchester will vote for the members within Winchester City Council. The leader of the District Council is usually determined by which political party has the majority, in Winchester City Council’s case, Kelsie Learney is the current leader, as she is the representative for the Liberal Democrats and they hold the majority within Winchester.

The District Council’s responsibilities are more minor issues but ones that are just as important and may be overlooked by the County Council. For example, road/pavement repairs, tax collection, waste collection, council housing etc. I was interested to find out, having attended a talk held by Kelsie Learney, that there is actually a website called fixmystreet.com that allows residents to post their worries or complaints, and this acts as a form of communication between the residents of Winchester and Winchester City Council.

I’ll be the first to admit that I do still find Councils quite tricky to get head around, but I have learnt so much more knowledge now that I had originally. I think one of the most important things I learnt was that although both Councils have such different responsibilities, it is the way the work together that makes local government work successfully.

Word Count - 574

Radio Bulletin.

Finally, it's here. My radio bulletin.
Sit back, listen and hopefully enjoy.
Just follow the link below...

http://soundcloud.com/bdavies10/becky-final-best-bulletin

Radio Script #2

England will see a rise in prescription charges from April 1st, this year. The current fee stands at £7.20 per item but this will rise by 20 pence to £7.40.
Alongside this, The Department of Health have also announced that fees for dental care will also rise.
Prescription charges will remain free for those living in Wales or Northern Ireland and Scotland will follow suit from April 1st.

This is what Sue Champney, Dispenser for Lloyds Pharmacy,  had to say about the upcoming prescription fee rise...

*Audio cut here*

Kant and Hegal

Immanuel Kant was the philosophical founder of German Idealism, a school of thought which bared a very strong connection to Romanticism. He was a great believer in democracy and much of his earlier work was centralised around science rather than philosophy. He did not agree with empiricism and his belief in a priori knowledge demonstrated this, as this is something empiricists such as John Locke would have strongly disagreed with.

According to Kant, knowledge was split up into two main categories; Analytic and Synthetic knowledge.
The first meaning that an answer can be found within the subject. An example taken from Bertrand Russell is that 'a tall man is a man.' It follows the laws of contradiction as 'a tall man is not a man' would be contradictory of what is being said. This is an example of pure reason or deductive logic. Kant claimed that this type of knowledge was not very useful and if all our knowledge were to be Analytic, we would not know anything.

His second category of knowledge, Synthetic knowledge is one which Kant preferred. Synthetic knowledge is not analytic. An example would be to say that every rose is a flower, although this part is Analytic, when we say that the rose looks beautiful, the idea of beauty is Synthetic.

A priori knowledge is knowledge that is not taught through experience. An example would be a child who is learning maths. The child may use some marbles to understand mathematical concepts but once the knowledge is learnt, the child will no longer need to use the marbles to understand that same concept.
Synthetic A priori simply combines both synthetic knowledge with a priori knowledge and this is something Kant was a firm believer of. An example to demonstrate this would be geography. We know the country we live in exists, this is the a priori part, however, the idea that other countries also exist is the synthetic part of knowledge. When we put this together we create Synthetic A Priori knowledge.

Kant suggested that the outer world causes matters of sensation and our own human mental apparatus places these sensations into time and space. He claims that both space and time are a mental perception and do not actually exist, he called this 'Intuition.' He created twelve categories of a priori concepts:
1. Of Quantity - unity,plurality and totality
2. Of Quality - reality, limitation and negation
3. Of Relation - substance and accident, cause and effect and reciprocity
4. Of Modality - possibility, existence and necessity.

Kant believed that these categories could be applied to whatever we experience in life, but there is no reason to suppose that they can be applicable to things in themselves.

A big part of Kant's work involved proving the existence of God while dismissing any intellectual proofs. He suggested that there are three proofs of God's existence through pure reason. They are the ontological proof, the cosmological proof and the physiological proof.  The first defines God as the most real being, the second says that if anything exists then an absolute being must exist. Now I know I exist, an absolute being must exist and the third suggests that the universe exhibits an order which is evidence of purpose.

God, freedom and immortality, according to Kant are the three 'ideas of reason'.

....

Hegal was another philosopher whom Kant had been very influential on, although Hegal did at times disagree with Kant. Hegal much like Kant, did not agree with empiricism.
Hegal held a belief that nothing was true except the whole which he referred to as the 'absolute.' He believed the whole was made up of a complex system of the sort called an 'organism.' He claimed that separate things in life are not illusions but they each are lesser or greater in terms of reality, which are aspects of the whole.
Hegal used the term 'the absolute idea', this essentially means that we can all be driven on the mere force of logic from any suggested predicate of the absolute to the final conclusion of the dictate. Hegal's dialect method  begins with the idea that the absolute is an 'absolute being' and is 'pure'. He claims that it is impossible to reach the truth without going through all the steps of the dialect. According to Hegal, self consciousness is the highest form of knowledge. Hegal suggests that the best way to find freedom is to simply obey the law, without law he claims that there can never be freedom. An 'organic' society.

Hegal holds the view that the state is there for the purpose of the people, this is a direct disagreement to empiricists who would hold the view that the people are there for the purpose of the state.

Radio Script.

Winchester Cathedral has seen an extension for the first time in over 500 years. The grand opening of  the Fluery Building is set to go ahead on Saturday 5th March after having been recently under construction. It will provide extra storage space, a boiler room and new toilets.

The creation of the new Fluery building was made possible due to a generous donation of £819,000 from friends of the Cathedral. The extension was the work of Peter Bird, the Cathedral Architect who sadly passed away in its final days of construction.