Black Lives Matter: Racism at London protest: BBC News Review

hello and welcome to News Review I Neil and joining me across on the other side

of London is Katherine hi Katherine hello Niall hello everyone

now what story have you got for us today well today we're looking at the black

lives matter protests that have been happening in a lot of countries around

the world okay let's find out some more about that from this BBC Radio 4 news

bulletin the Prime Minister has condemned what he called racist thuggery

after clashes between protesters and police in central London crowds of

mainly white men gathered around the Sir Winston Churchill statue in Parliament

Square saying they wanted to protect it from vandalism by anti racism

demonstrators so following the death in the United States of George Floyd there

have been black lives matter protests all over the world now recently in the

British city of Bristol protesters removed the statue of a man called

Edward Coulston who was a slave trader and they threw it into the river now

people are now worried about the statue of Winston Churchill outside the UK

Parliament houses of parliament and at the weekend there were a lot of protests

around this statue a lot of far-right demonstrators surrounded the statue

there was some violence with the police and over a hundred people were arrested

okay well you've been looking at the headlines around this story and you've

picked out three words and expressions what do you have

we have thuggery clash and headed off buggery clash and headed off so your

first headline please with that word thuggery so first we're going to Sky

News here in the UK the headline more than a hundred arrested at protests as

PM condemns racist thuggery thuggery violent behavior yes this word is

spelled th u gg e or Y and it's pronounced thuggery now

let's take the root of this word folk th Eugene Neal you know what a thug is

don't you I do a thug is a violent person somebody who enjoys creating

violence yes like a hooligan or a bully that's right

and we often hear this word in connection with that word you said

they're hooligan connected to football violence for example yes we could talk

about the football thugs a football thug is a somebody who creates a lot of

disturbance who fights at football matches just because they like fighting

quite frankly and if we take so the thug is a known for a person fugly is a noun

for the behavior so in this case Boris Johnson the UK Prime Minister was

talking about racist thuggery EE based on race but we can talk about all sorts

of we could talk about football thuggery and that means the thuggish behavior

which is the objective focus thuggery footballs Pythagorean his violent

aggressive behavior at football matches that's right can a woman be a thug yes a

woman can be a thug it's interesting if you look in the dictionaries they often

talk about em the the lot of them say it's a man it's a violent aggressive man

but in fact anybody can displays thuggish behavior whether they're male

or female that's right okay let's now have a summary of that word

time now for our second headline then please yes now we're going to the I

still in the UK the headline black lives matter protests resumed after far-right

clash with police in London clash here just meaning fight yes okay so the word

is clash sea and a SH clash and clash is an onomatopoeic word that means it

sounds like a sound so what's a clash Neal well for example two pieces of

metal hitting each other let's say swords seeing as we're talking about

fights they create a clash yes in those fantasy dramas things like Game of

Thrones everybody's fighting with metal weapons like swords and they have metal

shields to defend themselves and as these two pieces of metal hit each other

you get this clashing noise the noise of metal hitting metal is a clash but the

word clash also describes the fight itself you've got two people clashing on

the battlefield and that's the use of clash in this case a clash is a fight

it's an aggressive confrontation here the fight or the confrontation the

aggression was between the police and the far-right demonstrators but you can

also use the word clash when there isn't any violence just to describe a

disagreement a strong disagreement I think sometimes Neil I've seen you

clashing with people in meetings occasionally well I try not to and I

definitely wouldn't bring a sword no you wouldn't bring a sword to a meeting but

if you have a disagreement with somebody and you kind of yeah it's a slightly

angry disagreement or it's a very you know serious disagreement one on one you

can call that a clash we often see clashing in Parliament there we yes

politicians clash with each other often they have

angry arguments in the political in the political arena but you can clash with

somebody at home as well you might say I'm I clash with my husband over

childcare and the prepositions are you clash with somebody over something yeah

and we we see this word a lot in headlines don't we it's not necessarily

something you would use in your everyday speech not as much as headlines we love

it because it's a really dramatic word and fight is a good word but clash has a

lot of drama to it so headline news headline writers really like this word

clash okay let's have a summary

we have another video on the subject of racism which you might like to watch

where can they find it Catherine yes it's a story about racism in the UK and

if you click the link in the description you'll go straight to it

time for our next headline please yes we're BBC news here in the UK the

headline clashes headed off by police at Glasgow statue protests headed off

prevent it from happening yes so two words in this vocabulary item

now headed H EA D et of Oh double f headed off no this is a

phrasal verb it's a past of the verb head off head off you'll be pleased to

know Nia that this isn't about removing anybody's head yes that is good to know

it's also it's also not really connected to another phrasal verb also head off

which means to start going somewhere not so much though if you head off on a

journey or you head off towards something you start moving in that

particular direction so it's not about starting a journey it's more to do with

presenting somebody else completing their journey so in this case the

Glasgow protestors Glasgow is a city in Scotland in the UK they have a statue

there the protestors wanted to get to this statue so they headed off in that

direction but the police got to the statue first and they stopped the

demonstrators from reaching their target so if you head somebody off or you had

something of you stop it from completing its journey and we often can hear this

word used to describe for example planning to prevent something bad

happening in the future like we could say that flood defences headed

off the threat of flooding yes absolutely yes most definitely or

perhaps I headed off a tantrum from my children by buying them ice cream yes

you can head off a lot of bar de Vence pie with ice cream with kids okay let's

have a summary time now then for a recap of the vocabulary yes we had burglary

violent behavior we had clash which means fight and

headed off prevented from happening if you'd like to test yourself on the

vocabulary there's a quiz on our website BBC learning english.com stay safe see

you next time goodbye bye