This is actually trending worldwide via Twitter for more than a couple of hours this 20th of September 2011. And man this is retarded.
Let's admit that planking is pointless. It's made simply for kicks and it's fun for those who practice it that way. But to have your political power focus on something like this is absurd.
via SunStar
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
MANILA -- Quezon City Representative Winston Castelo seeks to ban “planking” or the act of lying down like planks saying “life and limb are pretty much at risk” after student protesters disrupted traffic in Metro Manila Monday.
During the transport strike Monday led by Pinag-Isang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operators Nationwide (Piston), the League of Filipino Students staged “planking sessions” along Espana road in Sampaloc, Manila to show support for the protest against oil price hikes.
“Parents and teachers have reason to be alarmed if these similar protest actions will have as a scheme and scene otherwise warm and living bodies laid down across street highways as though they were offerings to the gods,” Castelo said in the explanatory note of House Bill 5316.
“The parent in me tells me that this precedent in the case of the this massive transport strike where militant street protesters who are students of various schools have to lie down or serve as ‘planks’ across the road to disrupt what should be normal traffic could just be very dangerous in the future. Life and limb are pretty much at risks here were unbelieving bus drivers or law enforcement authorities might just ram through these warm and living bodies rolled out on highways”, Castelo added.
The lawmaker added in his proposed legislation that the Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education should draft a Code of Student Conduct in case elementary and high school students “who may have militant or radical student leaders engaged in street protests or demonstrations.”
“Lest this picture read in newspapers or posted in the internet might evolve into a new mindset that just might go viral or very contagious, let it be nipped in the bud. The Filipino psyche of our young children in school is under attack – right here and now,” Castelo said. (Kathrina Alvarez/Sunnex)
It's funny mainly because the whole point is how people who were protesting were planking and it endangers their lives. I mean really. If they just protested without planking and formed a human chain, even while sitting down, to halt anything, I guess you won't consider that dangerous or life-threatening? Anti-Human-Chain-While-Sitting-On-the-Road Act of 2011, any takers?
Parent or not, the common sense in me tells that planking isn't much of an important thing to focus on. Wouldn't you rather have focused on something that would contribute as to why there was a strike in the first place? Where's the focus here?
I just don't get it. There are a lot of fuckin important things to thrive on, not to mention to lay money on. This practically involves money, FYI. Any bill does. And to spend funds on such a stupid hype is just idiocy, but sometimes known as corruption, at its best.
Besides, file it now it'd be approved like when... 2020? When planking's died and spacing is the new hype!
Funny logic from Twitter user @DonManganar
RT "@unlawyer: Only students are prohibited from planking by the proposed Anti-Planking Act of 2011." - Yet another reason to finish school kids!
Try coming up with something which can actually help society.
And hey, if people die of something like planking, then good. It somehow served the world a favor.
This billl sets in motion agencies of government concerned with education, namely, the Dep Ed and the CHED to be now taken to task.
Dep Ed on the one hand and CHED on the other, will then draft a Code of Student Conduct which will prescribe what should be the universal rules and regulations that could be applied in both private and public schools, colleges or universities.
There will be positive externalities and perhaps even negative ones when either Dep Ed or CHED turns out to be overzealous over the affairs of students outside of the confines of the schools. It is like asking, begging if you may, the school to exercise their ‘extra parental’ authority over its students especially on matters such as street rallies or similar protest actions that tend to veer away from the real purpose why they are in school.
We might tell of changing attitudes as though attitudes like planking are a fad or a craze. For instance, it used to be that UP is ‘turbulent’. Today, it has seemed to have ceased to be one. Perhaps, most street rallies or demonstrations are no longer UP-led, much less, UP-composed.
The point therefore is that, this bill plants the seed of a new consciousness, a culture you might say toward a more disciplined studentry, a more disciplined society writ large.
That it sent shark-attacks-effect on our political beach (as some are quick to say that it violates the freedom of expression, coming out as it did on the anniversary day of martial law in this country)is beyond the intent of the author.
That it was thought to ban planking of any form and under any circumstances is clearly and at bottom, not the true intent and purpose of the measure.
Neither is the bill intended to be understood by plankers who are in the first place quite violently against any move, especially by legislative feat, to make it ‘unlawful’.
But just how many are parents who approve of their sons and daughters going into planking? Ordinarily, one can say that any parent in his right mind will discourage his son or daughter to plank. And planking on a dirty road associated as it did with a massive transport strike is just out of tract.
Well, perhaps, we can call for sobriety than throw ad hominems. Let us take time to sit down and debate, if need be than place anyone in disrespect that he does not deserve.
Just because the twitting world was against it doesn’t mean the bill is anything of the stereotypes or labels that have been tagged into it.
If the bill were an exercise in futility, it still is part of the territory.
First off thanks for giving your insight
Now. If your main point is to help students concentrate more on studies, given that you raised the main point of being in school, planking is definitely out of track.
If such activity is deemed to be somewhat dangerous in any form, that somehow concerns students alone, then by all means, ask schools to cooperate and discourage planking to their students. It is after all a fact that they have the power to exercise certain regulations within their jurisdiction. Certain rules to follow that abide by the school’s law without any need for a complicated bill that only entails the unnecessary usage of the public’s money. Do you think the schools are responsible and insightful enough to see the point of a no-planking rule? Then coordinate.
FYI, planking is indeed a FAD. A hype. A craze. It was so famous back then that a lot of people went for it, regardless whether they are students or not. And guess what? The craze has died down. Really humorous the way this bill is 10years late. By the time it’s done, it won’t matter anymore. Comparing it with UP being recognized as ‘turbulent’ is irrelevant as that is considered as stereotyping.
I still don’t get how parents should be concerned of planking out of all things. I guess drugs, guns, and their livelihood is much less of a concern to focus on… and so is the reason why these people were on strike in the first place.
And so what if the road’s dirty? Everything is, unless our government actually does something to clean society literally. They can start with the buses that all day every day smoke belch along EDSA without being reprimanded. How about strengthening that?
For the record, I am NOT a planker, which leaves me out of that ‘violent reaction’ and constricted thought by the plankers you’ve mentioned. Rather, I am one of the many members of society who sees the uselessness of creating and spending for something that is not going to matter in a couple of months considering that it will take even more than that for this movement to be officially banned. Where’s the foresight over the shelflife and purpose of this?
I am not riding the bandwagon via the Tweeting that has happened, that would be rather shallow