Hip-Hop music is it worth the listen?

Hip-Hop. My favourite genre of music. I love the lyrics, stories and beats. However I am fed up of all the negative press that goes along with it. I know that I am not the only one. Is the music I love really worth listening too? its full of violence sex and swearing. Real hip-hop heads know that there is more to rap than that. However the masses don't. My question is, is rap music too blame for the way society is?

Nike - high quality clothing, low quality ethics?

Nike has been accused over the years for the exploitation of its factory workers overseas and for endorsing child labour. Nike had factories in places such as South Korea and Taiwan but moved out because workers wanted higher wages which were above poverty level wages. Therefore they relocated to countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and Indonesia to save money.

Recently factory workers in Honduras claim that when Nike shut down two manufacturing plants in January 2009, the employees were denied severance pay totaling more than $2.5 million.

Children in Vietnam are making Nike shoes worth £70 and only being payed 12p an hour. Nike makes billions yet still pays employees peanuts in comparison to what they make in earnings. Image is everything to Nike. They spend an estimated $280 million a year on celebrity endorsement. They have had people such Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan to endorse their brand in the past.

Clearly child labour is not right, however despite these facts about how Nike has treated its workers, does it still deter you from purchasing their products and can anything really be done to help eradicate the exploitation of workers?

Ticketing Scams

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) recently has received increasing numbers of complaints from consumers who have been conned into buying fake tickets for sports, music and other events.

PR Company 3 Monkeys Communications in conjunction with the

OFT wanted to raise awareness of the issue and help consumers

differentiate between legitimate and fake ticket websites.

Their objectives were to:

- Increase the awareness of online ticketing scams amongst all consumers with a focus on festival fans.

- Drive people to Consumer Direct, OFT’s consumer-facing website, where consumers can lodge complaints and find information and advice.

- Work with local authority Trading Standards Services across the country to drive grass-roots awareness.

They called their campaign “Just Tick It”. They created a simple, short checklist of points for consumers to “tick off” when buying tickets online.

Based on consumer research they did they found that 1 in 5 people knew someone who had bought tickets from scam websites. 1 in 12 had been scammed themselves losing on average £80 each.

Therefore the digital agency created a fake ticket website, linked to a

page with tips on how to work out if a ticket website is genuine or not.

My question is 'how safe do we feel when purchasing tickets online? Is the apparent convenience and ease with which it takes a risk worth taking'?