The Jet Engine and Leisure Air Travel :: essays research papers

The Jet Engine and Leisure Air Travel Air transport for European tourists got off to a shaky start in the late 1920s.But it was to be thirty years before leisure air travel was to appeal to anyone but the rich and adventurous. High cost, fear of flying and the absence of toilets in early airliners (an unfortunate combination) were the main deterrents; the unpressurized aircraft of the inter-war years were noisy, slow and not especially comfortable despite the efforts of some airlines to make aircraft cabins resemble the first-class state- rooms of an ocean liner. This changed fundamentally after 1958: with the introduction into airline service of the Boeing 707, the Douglas DC-8 and the de Havilland Comet 4, aircraft were capable of flying fast, high and with hitherto unknown smoothness. The jet age had arrived. This paper considers this â€Å"age† and its impact on tourism in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that while the revolution in European leisure air travel that took place in these years was obviously the result of social and economic change (more disposable income, a greater propensity to take foreign holidays and the entry of new capital into the independent airline industry), there was also a critical additional factor. This was the breakthrough in transport technology represented by the jet engine and it is on this aeronautical artifact that the paper’s main focus will lie. 1 Technological change was crucial to the process of economic and social modernisation in both the 19 th and 20 th centuries. New technologies of power generation, manufacturing, transport and communications changed the world and shrunk time and space. What is generally termed â€Å"Fordism† grew out of the mass production of automobiles to encompass a whole array of practices and institutions that now underpin modern Western society 2 . In the wake of Fordist mass production, a Fordist lifestyle of mass consumption set in after 1950 and this included the international tourist industry, the single largest and fastest-growing industry in the world 3 . The technological change that triggered and accompanied this explosion in tourist activity was the introduction of the jet engine. Indeed the jet engine has been as vital a part of social modernisation as mass tourism itself. The jet engine’s evolution and dominance in aerospace propulsion since 1950 is traditionally described in terms of the transfer of technology from military to civilian usage: the turbo- jet grew out of the Second World War and the preparation for it, and was later installed in civil

Commentary: Different?

The text is a monologue and inspired by two other kinds of texts. Alan Bennett's â€Å"Talking Heads† and (to a lesser extent) a text I discovered by Carol Ann Duffy called Comprehensive. It is present in the AQA English Language and Literature Anthology for 2003, 2004, 2005. The purpose of the text is as a means of entertaining an audience of a younger age (possibly in between the ages of 12-18) that are aware of the groups of people concerned (who are usually teenagers themselves) and also of their colloquialisms. This targets mostly those who are affected or annoyed by these types of people within their daily lives. (People in the Birmingham area of this age are more likely to understand the dialect). A person that fits into this category should hopefully find that the text is true to real life, and also quite amusing. The piece begins as one of Alan Bennett's â€Å"Talking Heads† would. As his works were written with the assumption that they would be visual for a watching audience as well as just for a listening audience, he wrote, what could be referred to as stage directions in italics at the top of each monologue. I have done this also as I think it sets the scene well and perhaps gives away more information about each character. The genre of the piece (monologue) does not really confine me in terms of the subject matter or layout but I feel that its genre is evident from merely viewing the layout and maybe reading the first paragraph. I did not feel it suitable for either person to greet the audience, as they would be talking to a camera and not a person. This also would not aid me in any way when putting across my attitudes. Instead I continued straight into both characters speeches as a means of making the passage run more smoothly. There is not just a single attitude that I am trying to get across in writing this text but they are all linked in that my ‘complaints' all refer to the groups known to me and many others as â€Å"greebos† and â€Å"Kevs†. I have attempted to explain these two groups of people's attitudes (as I see it as an outsider looking in) towards their own lives and, more importantly, to each other. I have also made clear use of slang with each person to show the listener how confusing some of the slang that teenager's use today is and how the language varies between the different groups (i.e. one would rarely hear a ‘greebo' say the word â€Å"wicked† unless it were as a means of imitating a ‘kev'). I have tried to show how humorous some of the words and phrases used sound, and in some cases, how they make no sense whatsoever, for example, the names of these groups alone are somewhat confusing and do not give us any clue as to what it means to be a member of these groups. Even though I am familiar with these groups, I do not know where their group names or the language they use is derived from. They have both somehow managed to inherit a kind of stereotype description, which everyone can refer to if either the word â€Å"greebo† or â€Å"Kev† is used. Part of the message that I am trying to put across is trying to, explain that most â€Å"Kevs† and â€Å"greebos† do not fit their stereotype description at all. For example, according to Tom, Jack and ‘his kind' do not like the game of football, â€Å"what kind of a person doesn't like football!?†, when clearly Jack states that he has â€Å"got a season ticket for City† and he enjoys going to the games. â€Å"Filthy scum get outta Brum'† â€Å"Bopping† around in their â€Å"Rocky P's† Tom and Jack speak in an informal manner (shown above), as if they are talking to a friend instead of in a more impersonal way. They both presume that the listener understands the slang that they use. I felt that if they didn't do this, then my attitude towards the language that they use would seem less obvious. Despite their supposed initial feelings of being comfortable talking at a camera, towards the end of both monologues the boys both seem to feel threatened after arriving at the subject of befriending a member of the opposite group. At this point there are a lot of stops and stutterings marked by â€Å"†¦Ã¢â‚¬ , and finally – seemingly as a means of escape – both come to an abrupt end and what looks like a farewell without an explanation of where they have to rush off to and why they have to go wherever they are going so quickly! In reality, the stereotype â€Å"greebo† is exactly as the â€Å"kev† describes and the stereotype â€Å"kev† is exactly how Jack describes, but their minds do not seem to be open enough or able to grasp the concept that not all of the opposing group are like this. If what Tom Foster believes were true then there would not be many â€Å"greebos† alive to get exasperated about because presumably they will have all â€Å"slit their wrists†. Only in extreme cases only are their faces covered in piercings and not all of them despise football (as I have shown using Jack). The â€Å"greebo† that I have used in my monologue does not give us any evidence that he worships Satan either despite what the â€Å"kev† believes and the â€Å"kev† is even in a relationship with a â€Å"greebo† despite this being against his ethics. When talking about Eminem, (a music artist popular with both groups) Jack refers to him as â€Å"one of us†. When he says this the listener would realise what he means by â€Å"us† even though he gives us no clue as to what it means. This shows that he knows that he is part of a group (the â€Å"greebos†) and by saying that he is one of them is a way of making his music only acceptable for them to listen to rather than â€Å"Kevs†, and as he continues he explains that â€Å"Kevs† listen to his music for the wrong reasons almost saying that they should not be permitted to listen to it. â€Å"cos they'll get thinking that he is one of them† â€Å"These ‘greebo's' sicken me†. These quotes show that they talk down on each other as if they were somehow of a lower class and referring to each other as â€Å"them† gives a feeling of hostility even though they are so similar in many ways. The only real difference is in the clothes that they wear and the music that they listen to. Although it may seem that I have exaggerated the amount of times that both Tom and Jack use slang I assure you this is no exaggeration: â€Å"He's the only safe one†. The word â€Å"safe† is just one of the slang words used by Jack in his monologue. If he were using Standard English then he would have said â€Å"He is the only one that is trustworthy and that I like.† I emphasise the separate groups pronunciation of words as a means of making the monologues appear more like spontaneous speech as (if the piece were to be acted out as it should be) this would be the way I would want the ‘actors' to speak. I also tried to do this by changing the subject abruptly in various places throughout the monologues. i.e. â€Å". It's never about the music with them, just baselines and how â€Å"tweaked† the snare drum is, whatever that means. So anyway, we decided that they were takin over too much in Birmingham so†¦Ã¢â‚¬  They accuse and criticise each other for doing the same things while oblivious to the fact that meanwhile members of the opposite group are accusing them of doing the same thing. For example, Jack says â€Å"It's never about the music with them† while earlier on in Toms monologue he says, â€Å"We go for the music, not to get ‘wasted'† This insinuates of course that it is never about the music for â€Å"greebos† either. If we took both peoples word for it then neither of them listens to music because they want to listen to music. I don't though and find these accusations preposterous. I believe the way in which each person ends the conversation. The language that they both use is comedic and further helps me to convey how both groups rather weird variation of the English language baffles me. Despite this, ending their monologues in the ways that they do sums up both characters.

Racial Inequality Is A Multidimensional Problem Essay

At the time I was 20 years old. Being underage I had of course bought liquor through someone older, and back then, due to the hurdles it took to obtain decent alcohol even a pack of Corona was regarded as a great drink. It was the kind of days where every party was a remake of the film Project X and you never knew who or what you would end up with at the end of the night. Needless to say, we were all young back then and saw the world as our oyster; it was up to us to pry it open with our own hands. As Wiz Khalifa put it, we were young, wild, and free. Looking back, it never crossed our minds that at the end of the night we would be a lot older, controlled, and oppressed. Racial inequality is a multidimensional problem in America. If the problem was simply minorities in America are less well off than their white counterparts, the problem could have been solved long ago. 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