Lilysmedia's Blog

For our contractual and legal assignment we had to write what we understood as being the Stig.

The Stig is the name that the BBC television programme Top Gear gave to their racing driver. He is only known as the Stig and he is a mysterious racing driver that no one seems to really know much about as they are not supposed to know about his real identity. He is the guy that test drives their cars around the Top Gear track to see how well they drive and to see how well they can handle tight corners and fast speeds.

For one of our assignments we had to write about the meaning of intellectual property and also ageism. I found out what intellectual property meant and this was:

Intellectual property refers to things created in someone’s mind. It’s when someone comes up with an idea for something e.g. a new character and as it is them who thought of it, it is then their own intellectual property as they thought of the idea and it was created by them therefore they own it.

Intellectual property gets put into two categories and these are: industrial property and copyright. Industrial property includes things like industrial designs, trademarks and inventions. These are the property of people like those in building companies for example as they have to make the plans and designs for a new building or something similar before they can start to make it.

Copyright includes literary work and artistic work such as drawings, novels, poems, films, musical work, photography and many more. These are the work of people like authors, film producers/directors and musicians. The books they write, the films they produce and the music they write all belong to the one person that came up with the idea for it originally. Copyright protects an authors or musicians way of how they choose to express themselves, however they don’t protect the ideas that they have come up with in the first place to be able to express themselves.

I also found out what ageism meant and this was:

Ageism is basically when someone says someone else can’t do something because of their age.  Its discriminating against people in a certain age range and isn’t very fair on them when these people being a certain age may feel that they are still perfectly able of doing it. Some people may think that, for example, elderly people can’t do a lot of what they could do when they were younger like running around playing games however there are some older people that go running every day so that they can stay fit and healthy and because they enjoy the exercise.

For example on a programme called Countryfile, they dropped some of the presenters and hired new younger ones. They dropped the presenters Miriam O’Reily, Juliet Morris and Michaela Strachan and then hired new presenters, Julia Bradbury and Matt Baker however they kept John Craven on the show who was also older than these new younger presenters.  This was ageism as they told her that the programme was being ‘refreshed’ and they told her she should be ‘careful with those wrinkles when high definition comes in’.

These are both for an assignment we have to do about the Stig from Top Gear and Miriam O’Reily who was a presenter on Countryfile.

For one of our assignments we had to work in pairs on a debate topic we had been given by one of our tutors. My debate was to be against the banning of same sex relationships on television before 9pm.

For the research me and my partner looked up gay rights and the history of gays and same sex relationships.

For the research about the history of gays I used this website: www.stonewall.org.uk

Part of  the research I found is:

• In 1995, Gay Times magazine went on sale in high street stores for the first time.
• In 1998, two British Labour MP’s, David Borrow and Gordon Marsden came out as gay.
• 22nd June 1998, the British House of Commons voted to set the age of consent for gay men to 16.
• Nick Brown MP became the first British Cabinet minister to come out publicly as gay while in post.
• In 1999 Law society proposed that unmarried partners, including same sex couples, should be legally recognised.
• In 2000 Government lifts the ban on lesbian and gay men serving in the armed forces.
• In 2001 age of consent was reduced to 16.
• First same sex partnerhips registered in London. 
• In 2002 equal rights granted to same sex couples applying for adoption.
• Alan Duncan became the first serving British Conservative Paarty MP to voluntarily come out publicly as gay.
• In 2005 first civl partnerships take place in Northern Ireland on 19th December 2005 followed by Scotland on 20th December and then England and Wales on 21st December.