Theresa May stands firm on Donald Trump state visit as thousands protest

I found this news article on "The Guardian." It was publiseh to describe how the Prime minister says ‘UK takes a different approach’ but defends invitation despite growing outrage over US travel ban.

Theresa May defended the decision to invite Donald Trump on a state visit as thousands of protesters took to the streets across the UK and more than 1.5 million people signed a petition to try to stop the trip from going ahead.
The prime minister made the briefest of responses to the domestic uproar over the US president’s attempt to ban travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, insisting that the “UK takes a different approach”.
Thousands protest across UK in wake of US travel ban.

Addressing the issue during a joint press conference with the Irish taoiseach, Enda Kenny, May stood by the red carpet invitation she had made during her meeting with Trump in the White House on Friday.
“The United States is a close ally of the United Kingdom. We work together across many areas of mutual interest and we have that special relationship between us,” she said. “I have issued that invitation for a state visit for President Trump to the United Kingdom and that invitation stands.”
However, she refused to go further and criticise her American counterpart despite mass condemnation of his decision to bar nationals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days. 

Thousands took to the streets in cities across the UK, including Manchester, Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh and in London. Crowds gathered just metres from the gates of Downing Street, chanting: “Shame on May.”
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, wrote to the prime minister to urge her to listen to more than a million Britons who had called on her to cancel the state visit, in which Trump could address both houses of parliament. “This world defeated segregation, we defeated apartheid and we will defeat this nasty policy created to sow division and hatred,” he said. “His invite should be withdrawn until the executive orders are gone and every element of them repealed.”
Some shadow cabinet members joined protestors, including Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary.
Earlier, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, warned MPs not to demonise Trump or compare him to Adolf Hitler in a statement on the escalating row.
Johnson told parliament that British passport holders with dual nationalities would now not be affected by the US travel ban after further conversations with senior figures within the White House.
Following confusion caused by a US embassy notice telling UK dual nationals from the affected countries not to travel to the US, he said: “I’m able to provide the following clarification: the general principle is that all British passport holders remain welcome to travel to the US.

Woman jailed for nine years for plot to let man rape daughter, seven

For this weeks, weekly news, I found a story on ‘The Guardian” webpage. It was published on Monday, 23^rd January 2017 for the ‘crime’ section of the news page.

The story is set in Wales, and talks about a woman who plotted to let a paedophile rape her seven-year-old daughter and has now been jailed for nine years.

“The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, planned a sexual attack on the girl with Stuart Bailey in a series of “depraved” text messages, Cardiff crown court heard.

She also sent the 54-year-old a naked picture of her daughter and bought sleeping pills to drug her, the court was told.

The pair exchanged dozens of messages and the offences only came to light when the woman’s partner found the messages on her phone and reported her, the court heard.”

Bailey, who was jailed for a total of 13 years, and the woman were found guilty of conspiracy to rape a girl aged under 13 after a trial in December.

At an earlier hearing the woman admitted distributing five indecent images of a child and Bailey admitted possessing those images.

The judge, the recorder of Cardiff, Eleri Rees QC, said Bailey was prolific in contacting a number of women on the dating website Plenty Of Fish. She said a pattern emerged whereby Bailey quickly turned to talking about perverted and unlawful sexual activity, seeing how far he could push the women.

“The discussion, unless cut short by the women, would then escalate to you encouraging them to [engage in] sexual activity with children,” she said.

The mother, who was described as “vulnerable and gullible” by Rees, asked Bailey at one point what she would get out of the plan to rape her daughter and Bailey responded by mentioning sums of £200 to £300, the court heard.

Lucy Crowther, for Bailey, said her client was “totally ashamed of his behaviour and his actions, which he acknowledges will affect his grown-up children and his partner, who is currently standing by him”.

Alex Greenwood, defending the woman, said social services had identified her as a person at risk of being manipulated by men prior to the offences and that was what had happened.

He said she had been “bullied, cajoled and blackmailed” by Bailey.

Both defendants were made the subject of sexual harm prevention orders and given one year of additional licence to serve.

B3: How effectively were your three main texts marketed.

Within the TV industry, my three main texts include;

“Great British Bake Off” (GBBO), “Gogglebox” and “Im a celebrity” (IAC).

All three shows use a wide range of different marketing techniques, which help them to appeal to as well as, attract it’s target audience.

First of all, GBBO and IAC are both flagship, seasonal programmes and therefore, the marketing techniques they use are very similar.

Both of the shows have a broad social media advertisement, allowing viewers to download their app and vote for the contestants and use hashtags to talk about the show, leading more people to come across the opinions and find out about them. Social media is very effective for the two shows as a big part of their targeted audience are young people who often spend a large part of their day on social media apps and find out about most information from there.

In addition, the shows have seasonal advertising just before they come on TV to ensure watchers are aware that the show is coming on.

Gogglebox is however, different in this context. This is because the show is annual, meaning that it is aired constantly and therefore, not as much ‘ hype’ is needed before it comes on. In addition, “Gogglebox” is aired on a commercial station, Channel 4. This means that the channels main income comes from the adverts they show, meaning that they will be showing a broad range of ads not only about the shows they air but also about many products such as shops and food. This therefore means, that the TV advertisements for the show is much less effective than for “The Great British Bake-Off’ which, is aired on BBC One. The station is a non-commercial channel meaning that it does not need to place any product advertisement and so can spend more time to show ads for their shows such as the GGBO.

Weekly News

NHS patient caught selling his drugs in undercover film

I found the story on the BBC News page. It was published on 16^th January 2017. The whole situation took place in Birmingham, UK.

The story describes how a patient has been caught in an undercover BBC film illegally selling prescription drugs which cost the NHS £10,000 a year.

The man charged BBC reporter Jonathan Gibson £250 for a box of Enbrel, a specialist arthritis drug.

He said he was prescribed a box every four weeks and sold any that went unused.

In this instance he put it on eBay, where other prescription drugs were also being advertised.

A spokesperson for the online auction site said a number of listings had been removed, adding: "eBay sellers are prohibited from listing prescription drugs, in line with rules set by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.”

Media Industry

The music industry is part of the Creative Arts Business which includes cinema and theatre, where music is an integral part of their activities. The aim of the music industry is to make money from a product; music, by designing and selling it. While selling within the music industry, the concept is the same as in any other business; to sell a product for more than it costs to make it, and so create a profit that is used to pay the creators of the music. Economic work released shows true value of core UK music industry. In 2013, a report was released by the UK Music revealing that the economic contribution of the core UK music industry is £3.5bn. This is made up of: £1.6bn from musicians, composers and songwriters; £634 m from recorded music; £662m from live music; £402m from music publishing; £151m from music representatives; £80m from music producers, recording studios; £1.4bn the value of exports; 101,680 full time jobs.

In the 2000s, a majority of the music market is controlled by three major corporate labels: the French-owned Universal Music Group, the Japanese-owned Sony Music Entertainment, and the US-owned Warner Music Group. These labels represent the majority of the music sold, making up as much as 80% of the music market or more depending on the year. Labels outside of these three major labels are referred to as independent labels.

The product ‘music’ is created by talented composers and musicians and then produced by a record company. It is delivered to us the public in a way that we can hear it as recorded music through CDs or online downloads on Apple music or Spotify. This process is called distribution. Furthermore, performances are also arranged so that we can see the musicians perform live in a suitable venue such as the o2 Arena. The largest portion of the live music market for concerts and tours is controlled by Live Nation, who is a former subsidiary of iHeartMedia Inc, which is the largest owner of radio stations in the United States. Creative Artists Agency is a large talent management and booking company which represents singers and bands.

The current headliners of each of the three major corporate labels:

• Universal Music Group – Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Luke Bryan, Drake, Abba, The Beatles
• Sony Music Entertainment – AC/DC, James Arthur, Beyonce, Chris Brown, The Chainsmokers
• Warner Music Group – Madonna, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, David Guetta, Wiz Khalifa

The music industry is a very competitive market. As a result, promotion is used to inform the public about what music is available. Record companies pay for the production, promotion and distribution of music. This is expensive and comes out of the royalties paid to musicians, producer, composers and the record company when the music is exploited. Royalties are very small sums of money paid to musicians, composers, writers, and the record company each time a song is ‘exploited’, that is played on the radio, TV or bought as a CD/download.

Due to the development in technology, more platforms are emerging now, giving the audience a much broader range of sources they can use to obtain new as well as, existing music from. These include;

• Amazon Prime Music - offers more than a million music tracks or albums to streaming over the internet or download for offline listening without you having to purchase them outright.
• Soundcloud - the world's leading social sound platform where anyone can listen to or create sounds and share them everywhere.
• Youtube - a free video sharing website that makes it easy to watch online videos, where you can even create and upload your own videos to share with others
• Itunes - provides the user with access to more than 250 genre-focused stations. iTunes Radio also creates stations around the artists, songs, or genres you choose
• Spotify - gives you the power to choose and create stations based on your selection results or listen to pre-selected stations based on genre. You can also discover new music to add to your favorites.
• Apple Music - a music-streaming service, developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing, curated playlists
• Tidal - a subscription-based music streaming service that rivals the likes of Spotify but targets audiophiles who want higher-quality, lossless audio. It also offers high-definition music videos and curated editorial content from big names in the music industry including its owner, Jay Z.