Welcome to Sparliament

Hi there and welcome to the first post for Sparliament : Politics in Action, a political blog aimed at informing, expressing opinions, and letting you in on why all this stuff should matter to you. I’ll also be aiming to provide you with as much objective, fact-checkable information as I can, complete with links (and wikipedia entries!) so that you can form your own, probably-different-than-mine opinions in an intelligent and informed way.     First a bit about myself: My name is Anna Jean McDougall and I’m currently a student of Media and Communications (with a minor in Spanish and Latin American Studies) at the University of Sydney, Australia. I’ve been working casually in the media industry during my studies for almost two years, and my current job is at Australian Associated Press as a Broadcast Monitor. As such, my work allows me a lot of time listening to news headlines, reports, interviews and discussion panels on a variety of political issues.Also a warning: I have a tendency to get distracted so at time the posts may veer off from the course of mainstream politics and delve into a philosophical theory, an event or issue that ticks me off, or simply the cultural and social landscape of other parts of the world or other problems ranging from human rights to vegetarianism to something funny I’ve noticed about the differences between Spanish and English. It’s free range opinion day, every day, here at Sparliament. As such I always welcome comments involving constructive criticism, and I don’t mind a nice clean debate that doesn’t debase itself with insults or a closed mind. So all in all, I hope you enjoy Sparliament and all it (eventually) has to offer!Yours truly, Anna McDougall  P.S. If you feel there’s a topic you would like me to look at, or an issue you’re currently dealing with, you can send it to me at anna.mcdougall@optusnet.com.au