Rahat’s Online Journal

In a one bedroom flat above a busy takeaway Richard, a former car salesman, is on the verge of eviction with his past months’ rent overdue. If he doesn’t come up with a good enough excuse, he will be forced to be separated from his teenage daughter. “If I can’t even keep a roof over my daughters head, I’ve failed as a parent,” he says. Richard will have no choice but to take refuge on the streets.” I don’t know how I will sleep at night knowing that my daughter is away from me.” Listening to Richard’s story made me wonder why poverty is ignored by so many in the UK.

Next month Richard will be left with no choice but to say goodbye to his daughter. His daughter is now part of the 3.7 million children who live in poverty with statistics showing that she has only a 34% chance of only receiving 5 GCSE’s, including the core subjects. It will be tough for her to get a job with that number GCSE’s; she would struggle to have a family over own. “I have no choice but to give her up for a better education, better lifestyle.” Now because ‘poverty isn’t a problem in the UK’ children like Richard’s daughter are going to suffer in the years to come.

Should Richard get evicted he is going to end up on the streets as part of the 170,000 homeless in London. Homelessness has had a 30% increase in the last year. George Young a former Tory MP calls the homeless, “What you step on when you walk out of the opera.” This is outrage to many of the homeless, as the ones Mr Young refers to as dirt are the ones who are delivering your Chinese on a Sunday pulling pints on a Friday night. Many of the considered homeless are working but at minimum wage which is no where near enough to survive in  a major city like London. Richard’s lost all hope and is now starting to think people like Sir George are correct, “I certainly don’t want to get in their way, after all they are letting me live in their country.” Sir George thinks poverty isn’t the problem in the UK, he thinks people like Richard aren’t proactive, they’re lazy to me is this is an insult as I have gone through struggles similar to Richard and if anything I was more active during that situation.

If Richard ends up on the streets there will be only one way to feed himself without him being trampled over people like Sir George, and that will be going to the food banks across London. Richard will have to take one of the 519,342 three day emergency food packages that were handed out during April to September. But one of the most shocking facts about this stat is that 43.52% of the people who took a package still had somewhere to live. Showing us that poverty is a big issue in the UK even if you aren’t homeless. People volunteer to help people like Richard at food banks and one person I spoke to was a woman named Hope. Ironically “hope” isn’t really the word that springs to mind for any of the people mentioned.

Ron Suskind uses many language techniques such as metaphors and one quote that shows this is: “The arduous odyssey of Cedric.” From this quote we can deduce that Ron Suskind is trying to say that Cedric is enduring a tough, hard lone journey. Suskind describes Cedric’s journey as arduous, meaning tiring and strenuous. We know that it is a journey Cedric is taking alone as Suskind uses the term ‘odyssey’ which is a Greek myth where the main character in the story, Odysseus, goes on a long and tough journey alone just like Cedric. Also when Suskind says “the arduous odyssey of Cedric.” Suskind is telling us that this is Cedrics story in the making.

He sat on his leather armchair by the warming fireplace, his frail body glistening from the light of the fire. He swirled his red wine in his glass, the finest wine only from the biggest chateau in France. He took a sip of the common mans salary. He then placed his glass on his mahogany table. His raw boned sticks for fingers left a shadow on the wall behind from the light of the fire. The shadow looking like a spider ready to pounce on top of the wrinkly old mans head. The man got up from his chair leaving a vague imprint on the chair. He stretched his limbs with each joint cracking as he did. The old man then went up to his moose head hunting trophy and stroked its fur with his slender hands. He recieved a knock at the door soon after, the old man rushed to the door and opened it, there was no one there. The old man turned to the left to look at his mirror only to see someone standing next to him, but when he checked either side of him no one was there. He went to get a drink of water to calm him down but once again the intruder was there, staring at him. The infiltrator seemed as bewildered as the old man.

Quote 1.

” If you only took the kids who need this most, the ones who somehow excel at terrible schools, who swim upstream but are still far behind academically, you wouldn’t get enough eventually accepted to M.I.T. to justify the program.”

Quote 2.

” But where I start from is so far behind where some other kids are, I have to run twice the distance to catch up.”

Quote 3.

” Being a minority and a high achiever means you have to carry extra baggage about who you are, and where you belong. That puts them at risk.”

Quote 4.

” He is overwhelmed by the blistering workload: six-hours each day of intensive classes, study sessions with tutors each night, endless hours more of homework.”

Why microscopes are useful in the study of cell biology?

Microscopes are useful because cells in biology are so so small they cannot me be seen with the naked eye. Light microscopes usually look at objects from 1cm to 1μm these include such objects as fruit fly, hair, cell and bacteria.

The difference between magnification and resolution.

Magnification is being able to make small objects look larger and resolution is being able to tell the difference between two objects from each other.