Sunday, May 20, 2007

SUCCESS!!!

'Mars gets veggie status back'

BBC link

Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to "upset" vegetarians.
The firm had said it would change the whey used in some of its products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme, rennet.

The Vegetarian Society organised a campaign against the move, asking members to voice their concerns to parent company Masterfoods.

Mars said it became "very clear, very quickly" that it had made a mistake.

In just one week, more than 6,000 people bombarded the company, which produces the Mars, Snickers, Maltesers and Galaxy brands, with phone and e-mail complaints.

Forty MPs also signed a petition to voice their opposition.

Fiona Dawson, managing director of Mars UK, said the company had listened to customers and decided to reverse its decision.

"The consumer is our boss and we had lots of feedback from consumers who were unhappy about the change," Ms Dawson said.

"It became very clear, very quickly that we had made a mistake, for which I am sorry.

"There are three million vegetarians in the UK and not only did we disappoint them, but we upset a lot of the consumers."

'Principled decision'

The Vegetarian Society had called the move by Mars "incomprehensible" and "a backward step" at a time when consumers were increasingly concerned about "the provenance of their food".

We are very pleased that they now recognise the importance of integrity to all their customers, especially vegetarians

Dr Annette Pinner
Vegetarian Society

Mars replied that, by admitting its products were no longer suitable for "extremely strict vegetarians", it was making a "principled decision".

Now it insists it will begin changing its recipes back immediately.

Dr Annette Pinner, chief executive of the Vegetarian Society, said she was pleased Mars had been "honest enough" to admit it had "made a mistake".

"A Masterfoods representative has made contact with us and we are very pleased that they now recognise the importance of integrity to all their customers, especially vegetarians," she added.

Rennet is extracted from calves' stomachs and was to have been used in the ice cream versions of all Masterfoods' bars too
.

It looks like they realised they made a stupid decision by trying to use whey derived from animal rennet. I'm glad it has been revoked, but I will still be a little wary of their products from now on. Which is a shame.

Friday, May 18, 2007

So, for some reason I thought I'd try something a little different and post some videos I have found which I believe to be 'quite interesting' and erm...quite rare, dare I say it. In this segment, I am posting some Tool and Christian Death videos.

So without further a do and for your viewing pleasure:

TOOL

Stinkfist


Parabola


Aenema



Lateralus (not an official video, but I was impressed)


Schism (less rare I know, but still...)









CHRISTIAN DEATH

Church of No Return



Between Youth



Zero Sex (for some reason this amused me for its quite appalling and Valor-esque sex-obsessed nature, but worth a look none the less...)



We Fall Like Love


Believers of the Unpure




&that's all for now. Normal posting will resume soon.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

I can't believe I'm writing this at nearly 1am. I'm soo sooo bored, but thought I might as well. Gahh. I'm in the IC. I'm knackered, having worked for 9 hours today.

Might go to bed soon. Any minute now I shall walk back...

yes...any minute. Now.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

The Eurovision Song Contest was last night. I stayed in and watched it.
As you may already know, Serbia won.



Well that's over for another year.
Fun fun.

So far today, I have been struggling to decide which modules to take for my final year. I'm thinking to do Free Speech and Censorship in the first term as my unrestricted module, and perhaps Political Communication(JNL312) in the spring. But I'm unsure whether to take PolCom as it's a 3 hour exam and essay...and urgh...aparently the lecturer isn't the most inspiring of people...and if I have him for Free Speech and Censorship (JNL315)in the Autumn, it might be something like boring overload!!! So I may yet do a module in Philosophy (you can do one from another department to the value of 20 credits) as long as I get it checked by the department first and so forth. Also, as long as I meet the criteria of 120 credits for next year I will be fine.

Good news however. I am going to be seeing TOOL not once, but TWICE over the summer, for Gary's birthday! Which I know is just gonna be beyond AWESOME. I can't wait, I'm sooo sooo excited!! Oh and also, I bought ISIS tickets for in two weeks time, when Gary and his mate are gonna come up and we can go see them, on Sat 26th :) yayyyyyy.

Work wise, it is getting done. Slowly but surely. I've nearly completed my Quark Xpress page, which I had to recreate from a real life newspage. I think it's all pretty accurate, however I shall have to check every minute detail, so as not to lose out on valuable marks. Other than that, my web news stories are nearly complete. I have four of them done. So only have to find one more...the deadline for that is Friday, so I have plenty of time. I will start my research for it today and then over Tues-Fri I will just focus on that and hopefully get it done. Yay. The essay I did over Easter so I just have to print that off, it's not something I really need to worry about. Hmm what else? Oh I had my 'News Day' on Friday the 11th...bloody hell was that stressful! Yet rewarding.

Me and Holly latched onto a story happening in Hackenthorpe, where an elderly person's residential care home was opening...so we decided to drive down there and have a look at it. We got an interview with someone in charge (unfortunately the manager was off sick, so we make the most of these bad situations...) and we got to speak to some really sweet elderly people. One was an old guy called Gerald who was showing us all of his paintings he had done. Yet another was an old lady who didn't really like her new carehome all that much, but made the most of it nevertheless. I felt kinda sorry for her, I'd hate to die in a carehome. But I guess that is happening to thousands of elderly people every day. Grim.

We got lost trying to find the darn place though! Which took up about an hour out of our journey...we got laughed at by guys on the way there, telling us we had gone in completely the wrong direction! :p Arrgh. &also the traffic was incredibly bad that day- I mean, EVERYWHERE was teaming with traffic and all those bloody red lights we kept having to stop at...I swear we ran a few out of sheer stress after a while. Bloody Sheffield, it's so hard to drive around (apparently the second worst in the country, after London).

In the afternoon once we got back to the newsroom, we wrote up our stories and made them into a 'wrap' which is a radio piece with a voicer...which then goes to a clip of the residents speaking (gives a sense of 'actuality') before moving back to the reporter speaking, which gives it a final closing sentence, so to speak. The radio bulletins were done by the hour, at 1pm, 2pm, 3pm and the final one being at 4 o'clock, with a couple of minutes of sport and weather attached to the last one. I think by the end of it, we had shown that we could produce stories like on a typical Radio Day and move them on, etc. It was kinda fun in a way, but highly, highly stressful!!!

I didn't exactly appreciate my housemates arriving in from clubland at like, 3am that morning either,shouting and screaming! That didn't help much. Infact it woke me up and I barely got a decent night's kip after that. Grrrrr.

Nevermind, it's over with now. Unfortunately, I have to write up a 1500 word+ critical evaluation of the news day assessment...I have to write of what I learnt, criticise my team members (we were in a team of 12) and write about what we did best...and it has to be handed in by May 25th. I've already written around 500 or so words, so I'm not doing too bad. But it's just...more work. Yeuch. Still, at least it is getting done.

I just wish it would stop raining.

19 days until I finish for the summer however :)

xo

Monday, May 07, 2007

So...this hasn't been updated in a while. I've been really busy working on my news website, which may I say is looking rather spiffy right now. I have three of my stories up on there- two of which I have managed to accomplish this week :) which is good news. Unfortunately, I now have to do two more, but hell, with there being two more weeks (or slightly less) until the JNL308 assessments are wrapped up for good, I thought there'd be no harm in taking a weekend off.

I went to a masquerade ball for my friend Holly's 21st last night, which was sooooo much fun! I was very drunk on the punch at Holly's house however, so by the time I got into Pop Tarts I was wasted and the effects of which I have still been feeling this morning :p not too pleasant needless to say. I was wearing my pretty black and flowery dress which I got from Jane Norman about Christmas time. Also I had my pretty little mask on, which is a butterfly mask with holographic colour type wings :) (not that I really got to wear it that much, but it does look rather pretty and I'm sure I will be able to find other uses for it ;) hehe.

Some of the masks at the party last night were err...interesting! One of them was a mask on a stick, which was a picture of Holly pulling a funny face, her tongue out and eyes in a 'Urgh' kind of movement! hahaha. Oh the hilarity.

Pop Tarts was good fun. As I say, I was hammered. Ermm... I came back to mine and was in bed by about 3am though, so was safe and sound :) Yay.

Today has mainly involved nursing a hangover and feeling like crap. I only started to feel somewhat human again about 4 o'clock. Yep. I could barely make myself any lunch I was so dizzy and when I got up at one point I was finding it difficult to keep myself standing. But I started to feel nourished again after a much needed plate of beans on toast and a couple of grapes, mmmm :) yay.

Have spent the rest of the day after recovering, just chilling :) which is always good. I left my jacket at Holly's house however, so will have to pick that up sometime tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow- I think I will be going to the Fuzz BBQ :) which I'm hoping to enjoy. It's a meal in the day- you get like a burger and drink (hope there's a veggie option, I think I remember there being one last year)and then in the evening you get to listen to lots of different bands (well maybe one or two). I think Zombina and the Skeletones are playing and I'm sure some other bands are too...who I'm not quite aware of. Plus a couple of DJ's. Or something like that. Should be fun. Plus I can come home at any point if I get too bored as I'm sure you get a wristband or to keep half the ticket or er, something like that. Anyway it's a Bank Holiday Monday so I will be needing a much deserved rest :) yayy...

Oh and in terms of news, I am much amused that Paris Hilton has been sent to prison for 45 days. All I can say to that is :) 'you're not so high and mighty after all'. I do like her, but anyone who thinks they're above the law...deserves to get shot down. Had off.

Also, I'm not too impressed with this... Mars ...why. WHY???!!

It seems like a completely backwards move on the behalf of Galaxy.

"Due to a change in the ingredients used in our chocolate recipes from 1st May 2007 many of our products now contain whey. This is a by-product of the cheese making process and uses rennet derived from an animal source. Therefore we feel it is for individual vegetarians to judge whether they are comfortable in consuming cheese products that do not bear a vegetarian symbol; we would consider our products to fall into this same category.

This includes Galaxy, Mars, Bounty, Celebrations, Maltesers, Milky Way, Revels, Snickers, Topic and Twix.

Products that are currently in store or that you may have already purchased that carry a Best Before Date of 1st October or before are still suitable for your consumption, however if you have purchased any products with a best before after this date then we will be more than happy to refund the value of the product. Please see attached lists for further information."


This may cause some protest...
I love Flyte, Galaxy bars, Bounty, Revels and Maltesers! Plus Snickers ain't bad either...

I guess now more than ever, I will be consuming more dark chocolate. Which I love don't get me wrong, but some of those chocolates in the list above are my favourite. Damn it. Oh well. At least there's always good ol' Cadbury...