Notre Dame Now welcomed Ross Greer, Member of the Scottish Parliament for the West of Scotland region and GreenParty into the studio on Friday 24th to talk about the climate emergency, Fortnite, Piers Morgan, life as the youngest MSP, Snapchat and what Ross is interested in outside of politics.
Zara Crawford (S1) and Mhairi Moore (S5) interviewed Ross with Darren Adams (S6) as our producer.
Notre Dame Now Episode 2 – Ross Greer MSP
We asked Ross the following Questions:
00:15 Is the Scottish Government correct to announce a climate emergency?
1:07 Should there be a ban on North Sea oil extraction? Why?
2:07 What was it like being the youngest MSP ever in the Scottish Parliament?
4:56 How did it feel over taking the Lib Dem’s as the fourth biggest party in the Scottish Parliament?
6:49 As a Green MSP, will you support the Scottish Government’s calls for an 2nd independence referendum?
Why do you support Scottish independence?
8:45 Could you tell us a little bit about your hobbies and interests outside of politics? What do you do to relax and take your mind off things?
11:08 Do you think it’s worthwhile for school pupils to take part in the school climate strikes? What are your thoughts on this issue?
14:07 You had a famous argument with piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain… have you had a restorative conversation since then?
16:58 What are the benefits of disarming our nuclear weapons when critics argue that we need them as a deterrent in order to protect the UK?
20:27 Do you advocate people 'going vegan' to help the Earth?
23:40 The 26th United Nations Conference on Climate change is to take place in Glasgow this year and will be attended by influential world leaders - what is your message to them and what can the people of Inverclyde do to influence them?
28:16 What should i be doing in my home, to reduce global warming?
30:59 You have been campaigning on the issue of School Meal debt, can you tell us more about this and why it matters?
Notre Dame Now had the pleasure of welcoming Stuart McMillan MSP (SNP) for the Greenock and Inverclyde constituency, into the studio for an exclusive and in depth interview.
Higher Modern Studies students Mhairi and Jamie took Mr McMillan to task on his favourite moments as a piper, his thoughts on Brexit and the work he does as an MSP for the people in our constituency.
This interview is part of a series of interviews aimed at enabling our pupils to engage with our wider community and promote active and responsible citizens. We are looking forward to bringing you more interviews from our regional MSPS’s Jamie Greene MSP (Conservative) and Neil Bibby MSP (Labour). We have reached out to representatives of all parties of our regional MSP’s and hope to add more interviewees in the coming weeks.
Once again thank you to Mr McMillan for taking time out to participate.
Thank you to our production team Darren Adams and Amy Medinelli and Notre Dame’s Music Department for their collaboratrion.
You can listen to the full interview by clicking the play button, or skip to question that interest you by using our guide below.
Guide:
From 0:47 seconds you can hear Mhairi ask
Stuart what he does as an MSP that
affects the people of Inverclyde.
From 1:45 Jamie asks what it’s like
being the Scottish parliament'spiper and
if Stuart has any highlights.
From 3:00 minutes Mhairi asks what can be
done to reduce tension in politics in light
of recent accusations of inappropriate language
in parliament.
From 5:30 Jamie asks Stuart if he
thinks Boris Johnson is fit to be the
Prime Minister and follows this up with
some tough questioning. Careful listeners
can also hear our talented musicians playing
“Ghostbusters” in the background!
From 8:19 Mhairi asks why the SNP campaign
to remain in the EU but leave the UK and
what the advantages of EU membership are
for Scotland.
From 16:20 Mhairi asks Stuart McMillan MSP
about No Deal Brexit - if the only way
to stop it is to back a deal, why doesn’t
the SNP back one?
Finally from 19:20 seconds, Mhairi asks
about the work Stuart McMillan does
in the constituency.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) started roughly ten years ago with a controversial decision surrounding it, the casting of Robert Downey JR as the main character in their first film, Iron Man. The decision, to everyone’s surprise, paid off and Iron Man was a big hit. The hits kept coming, leading eventually to the film Black Panther.
Black Panther was a film set around a black superhero, the first black superhero in comics, directed and in part written by an African American director, Ryan Coogler. The film, as with most of Coogler’s films, was highly political, with a clear message about Black rights being present throughout the film. The film was highly successful, making over 1billion dollars worldwide coming in first, as of its opening week, as the highest grossing superhero film in America.
So where is this all leading to? To one of Marvel’s newest films, Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel Stars Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, the main character of the film, and Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, a prominent character in previous Marvel films.
The plot centres around the character of Carol Danvers, who becomes one of the universes’ most powerful heroes after earth is caught in the crossfires of a galaxy wide war.
In an interview with my media teacher, Mr Murray, I asked if the choice to make a film with a female lead was due to the success of Black Panther. In response he said “Probably, and it is probably long overdue, not just in the MCU but in modern film making in general”.
I asked him if he thought that the political subtext of the film could cause a loss of financial profit for Marvel. He responded with “There were rumours that people were going to boycott the film; however, it does have the largest presales of tickets out of any of the MCU’s films”
Lastly, I asked what kind of impact a successful Captain Marvel would have on the MCU. He replied “There will probably be more opportunity of for a wider range of actors and characters. Up until Black Panther the main characters of Marvel films were largely strong white male characters, there wasn’t huge diversity”.
So, does Captain Marvel spell the end of the MCU? It looks highly unlikely that the film will be a failure – let alone the cinematic universe that is a part of.
They say it’s the most important meal of the day and pupils at Notre Dame High School agree about the absolute brilliance of breakfast.
Pupils and staff can’t seem to get enough of the new scheme Magic Breakfast which provides a free breakfast for everyone before the school day starts. And it’s even solved the (seemingly impossible) challenge of getting pupils off their mobile phones!
‘Magic Breakfast’ offers a variety of delicious grub, such as bagels, cereal, fresh orange juice and many more nutritious foods. Breakfast prepares pupils for classes and skipping it can cause a lack of motivation and, most importantly, focus.
Although only in its early days “Magic Breakfast” has already had a huge positive impact for our school as now many more students have access to a breakfast who normally would skip breakfast. They are now loving the opportunity of meeting up with friends and enjoying time together.
And it is this bringing pupils together that is turning out to be the truly magical part. Many pupils are getting into school earlier to meet with their friends for a chat before its heads down and hard work for the rest of the day. ‘Magic Breakfast’ is helping to maintain strong friendships and increasing the overall happiness of pupils across all six years groups.
Depute Head Teacher Margaret McKernan spearheaded the initiative and explained: “It’s got really busy since we started two weeks ago. I think there are more pupils getting in on time who I know are often late. It’s a nice start to the day. You see everyone around, not on their phones, but actually engaging and chatting with their pals. I thinks there more interaction between groups of friends and shy pupils have been coming up with their friends after the first week.”
S5 pupil, Lucy McFarlane, 16, said: “I really enjoy it. There’s quite a lot of variety of breakfasts to have. I normally have Shreddies and an orange juice but then, on Pancake Tuesday, I mixed it up and had a pancake as well. It’s a great way for you to meet up with friends and have a good little laugh over breakfast. We don’t always get that time in our exam year to keep friendships going.”
Magic Breakfast is a charity that supplies breakfast items to school to stop teenagers going hungry during the day and rather than targeting certain types of people it is free to all to enjoy.
The Rights Respecting School Award is an initiative run by UNICEF UK which encourages schools to place the UNCRC at the heart of its ethos and curriculum. A Rights Respecting School not only teaches about children’s rights; it also models rights and respect in all its relationships, whether between children or between children and adults.
In the UK, there are nearly 4,800 schools that are involved in the Rights Respecting School Award, which ensures that all children are entitled to rights and know what is right and wrong, in that school. One of these schools is mine – Notre Dame High School in Greenock.
Our school has rules to ensure that adults must respect our rights and vice versa, as well as kids should also be caring about each other. We all agree that we must respect everyone’s rights equally.
We learn that we should not only respect the rights of our classmates but also the rights of the teachers too. We signed to agree that everyone’s rights will be respected, and we accept our responsibilities in School.
I feel that Rights respecting School is very interesting because pupils can voice their opinion. I am grateful that I can speak my mind as I know that there are other parts of the world where children and adults don’t have these rights.
Megan Alford’s Economic Aspirations for young people.
Every two years, since 1999, thousands of students in Scotland put themselves forward in hopes to be selected to be representative of the Scottish Youth Parliament. Megan Alford, S4 student of Notre Dame High School is campaigning to get a seat to represent Inverclyde’s young people in the Scottish Youth Parliament. Currently, Megan is trying to take on the role in an attempt change the economic status for school children living in the area.
“I want to make a difference.” – Megan Alford, 2019.
The Scottish Youth Parliament is an organisation that enables young people from the ages of 14-25 to have their voice heard about the future of Scottish politics, and the opportunity to run their own campaign in anticipate of being elected. It creates a community of young people who strive to create a better future for Scotland’s youths.
When interviewed about the Scottish youth parliament, Megan said she enjoys participating because it gives young people an input on current issues, they are passionate about. She also mentions that it is great to meet other people involved with the campaign and learn views and opinions of other participants in the Scottish Youth Parliament.
Megan believes that minimum wage should be risen for pupils who are working the same number of hours as a working adult, she also thinks that pupils from 4th 5th and 6th year should have more opportunities to get more involved in their community. Megan believes she is a great candidate for Inverclyde as she is confident and open to new ideas that she is presented with.
Lent is finally here, and many people are giving up things like chocolate, crisps, biscuits or commonly with some pupils giving up on giving up. The three main things to do for lent are fasting, giving to charity and praying. Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, the day when we receive ashes (that sort of feels like a little bit of a face mask experience) to remember that we are all mortal and one day will just be dust, which helps with the phrase of being our best in the time that we have. Until then, we make promises, sometimes people manage to keep them, sometimes they cannot. We interviewed two pupils who were interested in answering, one pupil commented that: “I’ve tried to eat less snacky foods such as crisps, chocolate…I’d like to think I’d last the whole forty days, but yeah it might not be that long” another pupil has said: “I’ve tried to give up chocolate, but I’ve not did that well… I’ll probably last a minute and a half; my goal is a minute in a half.” Both pupils were not very optimistic about how long they would be able to avoid giving into what they had been trying to avoid. Personally, I myself am not very good at keeping on top of the giving up, in the past, I tried to give up sweets, however, I slipped up once and ended up giving up all together. Or else I try to give up cake, then I would specify to chocolate cake, then big cake, then ultimately realise that, I already failed. Whatever your target is to avoid, good luck with avoiding the temptations that come along with Lent. Even when we don’t meet our goals we can still become better people.
On the 30th October 2018 I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of one of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s projects, known as ‘Lessons From Auschwitz’, which aims to educate every person from every background in the UK about the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance. In retrospect, before going on this trip I didn’t know what to expect because visiting a site of genocide wasn’t something I thought I’d get an opportunity to do. One of the key messages that was repeated to us was “We learn from history that we do not learn from history”, a quote from Georg Hegel, a German philosopher. To me, this is a simple but very powerful quote because it is open for personal interpretation of what it means and illustrates that we should never commit previous events such as the Holocaust because it will leave an everlasting impact.
At the seminar prior to the trip we had the opportunity to listen to the testimony of a Holocaust survivor, Eva Clarke, who was born in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria on the 29th April 1945; Mauthausen was liberated on the 5th May. She told us that if the gas chambers hadn’t been blown up on April 28th and the Americans hadn’t liberated the camp days after she was born, both herself and her mother wouldn’t have survived. I think that we are very lucky to have an organisation such as the Holocaust Educational Trust, who bring in survivors who are willing to share their testimony because we are living in a time period where there are still survivors alive and the future generations won’t have that.
“We learn from history, that we do not learn from history”
Josephine Chan (S6)
When we arrived at Auschwitz, we had the opportunity to explore the blocks that used to house those imprisoned by the perpetrators and the most profound moment for me was when I saw the room where some of the hair that was shaven from the women were kept. As humans we identify so much with our hair and to have it stripped from us would be like robbing us of our identities. This shows that the perpetrators were metaphorically trying to remove those victimised from existence and this is harrowing because the victims were never given a choice. There was another room which housed the suitcases and items of clothing belonging to the victims, including shoe polish and sets of house keys and this was very upsetting because the victims genuinely thought that they would one day return home. One of the most impactful experiences for me was when we went to see the last remaining gas chamber in Auschwitz because although I knew it was real, it just felt really unfathomable because so many people had been murdered there thinking they were going to shower.
On reflection of this journey, I have learned so much more about the Holocaust and it really has been an eye-opening experience. A message that I took from the seminar after the trip was ‘never forget’, highlighting that although the reality of the Holocaust was horrifying, we should never forget what happened as it will act as a reminder of what should never happen again.
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If you would like to know more about Auscwitz-Birkenau or the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust please follow the link below.
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