The Little Red Ball - University independent (acting)

The brief was to create a 1 minute short film based around the word 'unique'. Written and directed by Josh Wright.

Date My Dog - Live studio show (presenting)

I was proud to be a part of this intriguing television format, as the cheesy host for Date My Dog - a show conceived of by Molly Van Der Borgh, an upcoming television talent. The idea behind the programme pitched aimed to find love for one lucky lady, as her three potential partners dating her dog to decide who was committed and could 'handle her hound'.

Congratulations to the team, the contestants, Penny the pooch and especially Molly.
 

One Mile Apart: fitting the profile (opinions)

Stop and Search powers are put in place to protect society. This law give police officers the right to question and inspect any citizen for weapons, drugs, stolen property or anything that could be used in a crime. But how do they deduce who to stop and search? 1. If serious violence could take place, 2. If you are carrying a weapon or have carried one before, 3. You're in a specific location or area. All but the second demand a police officer to use their own judgement and determine from who could be a criminal based on their appearance and body language.

Fitting the profile: Joshua Saunders |  Photography: One Mile Away

A recurring theme I've witnessed with my own eyes has been black teenagers and adults stopped and searched by police, while white friends are allowed to walk by without being searched.

Our country's legal system abides by the foundation that a person is 'innocent until proven guilty' but under the stop and search powers, police officers, and from my experience of West Midlands Police, appear to be targeting black males more than any others race. The apparent profile appears to be a black male wearing a tracksuit, chains, or a hoodie. A profile which naturally must mean an individual who fits that description is carry either a gun or a knife, is a part of gang culture or is simply up to no good.

In Channel 4 documentary Miles Apart, which was released a couple of weeks ago this issue became evidently more apparent. The programme recorded former gang members from Birmingham's Johnson Crew and Burger Bar Boys attempting to cease the warfare, which until recently was still ongoing between the two rival groups, as it has been for the past few of decades.

Throughout the course of the film, West Midlands Police pursued host Dylan Duffus and filmmaker Penny Woolcock. The team filmed during the Birmingham Riots of 2011, and also recorded every interaction the pair had with the police, who demanded their tapes several times and even searched Woolcock's house. Fortunately she had hidden them elsewhere in a friend's China cabinet, or the film may never have been made. West Midlands Police went onto threaten the pair and Channel 4 that if they did not put up a credit at the end of their documentary declaring that the police may have been portrayed in a negative then they would attempt to sue them for a second time. The first unsuccessful court case was for Woolcock's refusal to hand over the film rushes, which they claimed could contain evidence of criminal activity.

In the documentary the police were shown in a negative way, not through editing but via the raw footage depicting police officers searching black males for nothing more than a stereotyped and prejudicial fear that assumes that any black individual fitting the profile could be a danger to society. This unfair presumption widens the gap between police and the society they serve, and in future, instead of trying ban a film which accurately represented action of some officers from West Midlands Police force, they should be accountable, learn from it and change.

Social media mobs strike again as Youth PCC Paris Brown resigns

Legal in Amsterdam (documentary voiceover)

Photography by Chu

Recently a talented Bournemouth television production team visited Amsterdam to ask the question, how long will cannabis remain legal in Amsterdam?

Coffee shops frequent the streets of Amsterdam, but dissimilar to the UK and many other coutries in the world they are permitted to sell cannabis.

Marijuana, weed, hash, pot, reefer, grass, dope, ganja, Mary Jane, whatever name you know it by, under Amsterdam law, a person is legally allowed to buy five grams of marijuana and carry up to 30 grams. With the average gram of hash priced at around €6, according to online travel guide Time Out Amsterdam, a steady inflow of tourism supporting the cannabis industry is unsurprising.

But how do the citizen of Amsterdam feel about the haze of cannabis use in their city?

Legal in Amsterdam (2013) was produced, filmed and edited by Bournemouth University Television Production students: Scott Craig, Hannah Hussey, Tyron Porter, James Rogers, Josie Dudley, Diamond King and Mia Konstantinovaite. I provided the voiceover.

Give it a watch to hear intriguing debate on the cannabis culture in Amsterdam...

Legal in Amsterdam (2013) from Scott Craig on Vimeo.

Energy drinks: the canned caffeine creeping into our children's lives

Click on the issuu reader below to view and read the article below. Design in the layout of The Sunday Times Magazine (no copyright intended)

Energy drinks: the canned caffeine creeping into our children's lives

From the playgrounds to students studying late into the night and partying early into the morning hours. Joshua Saunders investigates how energy drinks are not only stealing our kids's sleep but could be putting their lives at risk.

A gaggle of five school children, no older than eleven, stand at the side of a compact cornershop, metres away from Pimlico tube station. They’re discussing which drink to buy, admiring the rack of sugared beverages before them. “This one’s the cheapest,” says a freckled blond haired boy, pointing to an energy drink.

His friends consider the recommendation, glancing over the endless array of fizzy caffeinated beverages before them. All but two of them purchase the home brand energy drink available at their fingertips for 39 pence.

At the time I was a spectator watching as the shopkeeper scans the cans that bear the warning ‘not recommended for children’. Unaware or disinterested he waives their age aside and sells drinks they were not intended to consume.

Several days previously to this, in November last year, the parents of young Anais Fournier lost a lawsuit of ‘wrongful death’ against energy drink corporation Monster. Anais, who was only 14 at the time, had consumed two 24-ounce cans of Monster Mega Energy. She suffered cardiac arrest after taking in 480mg of caffeine, the equivalent to 14 cans of Coca Cola, which she had drank in just over 24 hours, which aggravated an underlying heart condition. Neither Anais or her parents were aware of this weakness that was caused by a genetic disorder.

The coroner concluded that “cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity complicating mitral valve regurgitation in the setting of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome” was responsible for her death. “Anything that weakens the heart can increase sensitivity to caffeine’s cardiovascular impacts,” commented cardiologist Rita Redberg.

This sensitivity to caffeine and a lack of knowledge about how caffeine affects younger people and their bodies is to blame for the sad story of young Anais. Her parents decided to switch off her life support machine after she had lay dormant in a medically induced coma for six days. This is not the only case of where a child has been hospitalised after consuming energy drinks.

The case shocked the world, casting doubt and uncertainty over the safety of energy drinks, leaving many of us, myself included, questioning: how many more children and teenagers could be at risk?

Despite this the British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) documented in 2011, that we as a nation drank 495 million litres of energy drinks, the equivalent of 198 Olympic sized swimming pools.

The market leader is Red Bull, which is the third best selling soft drink in Britain selling more than 230 million cans last year.

“Red Bull gives you wings,” “Unleash the beast,” “Party like a Rockstar,” “Go Full Throttle or go home” are a few of the common slogans employed by energy drink advertisers to entice purchasers displaying the uplifting energized effect of what some refer to as ‘canned adrenaline’.

The BSDA, who represent the soft drinks industry, issued a code of practice to prevent people below the age of 16 from being targeted by advertising for energy drinks. But despite this, many large companies sponsor extreme sports, skateboarders, sportsmen and competitions that are predominantly watched and participated in by children and teenagers.

Mother Tina Brazier from Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham was concerned to find that Jacob, her son, had been consuming between five and six cans of energy drinks a day at their local skatepark. 

“Red Bull have their own sections on extreme sports channels and the majority of their audience is at the lower end of the teenage scale, who then aspire to be like them,” says Tina. “My nine year old’s obsessed with skateboarding programmes. So now he’s being drip fed by the same advertising.”

Jacob was 13 when he developed a series of bladder infections and at times was urinating blood. Doctors could not pin down after to a specific cause, even after numerous tests. “One evening he kept going to the toilet, and then he’d go to the toilet again he’d say, ‘it’s not fair my tummy’s hurting.'”

“It seemed that there was a direct correlation between the energy drinks he was having and the effects it was having on his bladder. It was irritating him a lot.”

A Canadian health report suggests that children aged 13 and under should not take any more than 2.5mg of caffeine per kg of body weight. The average weight for a 12-13 year old hovers around seven to eight stone, meaning the highest amount of caffeine children of that age should consume is 119 mg.

However in the average 500ml can of energy drinks Monster and Rockstar there is 160mg of caffeine, and the slightly denser 475ml can of Red Bull contains fractionally less.

“Jacob seems very hyper when he’s had them, speaking at twenty million miles per hour, unable to sit still and fidgeting,” Tina explained. “He now knows he can’t have them, but they are quite blinkered at that age and so doesn’t consider things.” Weeks earlier this innocent naivety was highlighted to Tina, when her nine-year-old son returned from the shop with a ‘ginormous can of monster’. “Three young children can go into a shop and freely buy energy drinks, with legislation they wouldn’t be able to do that,” she stressed.

Currently there is no legislation to prevent a child of any age from purchasing energy drinks. The only barrier between kids and energy drinks are the shopkeepers, whether they choose to sell to minors is at their own discretion. 

“You can buy them in the shops and drink as much as you can, which is where some of the health concerns come in,” says Dr Michael Duncan of Coventry University’s biomolecular and sport science department. He said: “energy drinks are packed up as a ready to go high caffeine solution,” not tailored to an individual’s own tolerance level.

One report, from the University of Miami’s paediatrics department suggests, “These drinks have been reported in association with serious adverse effects, especially in children, adolescents, and young adults with seizures, diabetes, cardiac abnormalities, mood and behavioral disorders or those who take certain medications.”

They warned that high-caffeine drinks could “exacerbate cardiac conditions” in children resulting in “hypertension, irregular heartbeats and even sudden death.”

We put our queries to three of the largest energy drinks companies. Neither Monster, Red Bull nor Relentless replied to our questions about the safety of their products towards teenagers and children. However in previous statements they have made the following comments: “Red Bull should be part of a balanced and varied diet as well as a healthy lifestyle.” Monster - “Our products are safe based on both our and the industry’s long track record and the scientific evidence supporting the safety of our ingredients.” No comment from Relentless could be found.

“The reality is they’re very accessible and popular and you see kids drinking energy drinks all the time,” says MP Robert Wilson. The Reading East representative is calling for clarity on whether they pose risk or danger to young consumers. “Without looking thoroughly at what ingredients like taurine do to the body from state-commissioned research, we’re effectively playing a game of Russian Roulette. It’s time we took this issue rather more seriously,” he added.

Across the pond in Canada there are now laws preventing any non-resealable energy drinks from containing more than 180mg of caffeine. But Huffington Post columnist Steven LaFleur opposes the newly implemented laws believing, “For the amount of resources required to implement this type of legislation you could run all kinds of public education or health efforts.”

As of December 2014, under EU law all energy drinks companies will be forced to disclose the caffeine content per 100ml on the front of their cans. Along with the current requirements stating ‘high caffeine content’ and ‘not recommended for children, or pregnant or breastfeeding women’.

But is this enough - will labelling effectively cull the younger generation’s thirst for caffeinated drinks? The answer I suspect is no. Similarly, if laws were passed banning shopkeepers from selling energy drinks to children it risks making them into another adolescent taboo. The only effective measure against children putting themselves in harm’s way is education. Although at a time where the wallets of the taxpayer are tighter than an anaconda’s grip, public outreach programmes could also be out of the question.

“If you have a mature and honest conversation with your children about the effects of caffeine and sugar, I think you have a better chance of influencing their behaviour than any broad [legislative] approach,” suggests Steven LaFleur. And perhaps responsibility should be returned to us, the sensible parents, family, neighbours and friends of caffeine consuming kids...

Experts allude to the fact that further research must be done, specifically into the ingredients taurine, guarana and other stimulants to unravel how truly safe energy drinks are. But until that definitive point they are still available in more than 140 countries worldwide and all that we can do is try to educate young people about safe and moderate caffeine consumption

Have your say by tweeting @altenergy or message @saundersjoshua

Dance teacher Lou Coel from Northampton, said:

“One girl I teach brought an energy drink to my lesson, she’s nine. At that age they shouldn’t be having them because they will be bouncing off the walls one minute, then sleeping and feeling depressed the next.”

Mumsnet member Becca Cobham from Lydney said:

“Kids that age are drinking them to get a buzz, and they are stimulants. You worry that they could found out about something stronger, like legal highs on the internet."

 

Student Ashley Humber, 19, from Christchurch said:

“I've gone through phases where I've polished off a six pack of Red Bull in a morning, in two hours. I've been there in cold sweats, really scatty and not unsure of where I am, everything feels different.”

 

Television production student Loti Bradley, 21, from Lincolnshire said:

"They made me feel more awake and stimulated so I could get on with work and improve my concentration but in the end I was relying on them rather than having them for enjoyment."

Click on the links below to find out more