On Friday I did a day's work at The Doncaster Free Press, and gee mom, it was fun. It was unpaid. But that's not the end of the world it's just, I'm told, that the job market is very difficult at the moment. And it is: the newspaper industry isn't in the rudest of health these days, and the newsroom is often the place where cuts are first made, which is daft. But work experience is the only thing that's going to get me a job, so I need as much of it as possible. Plus, I'd never been to Doncaster before, and, as my mother always used to tell me: "Doncaster, Nick, is a magical world, an emerald floating in murky South Yorkshire, where the streets are paved with opportunity and the buildings all made from diamond. My mum sometimes lets her imagination run away with her.
I had to be there for 9 O'clock on Friday morning. The train left at about a quarter to eight, which meant waking up at quarter to seven. This was going to be a bit of a problem because I'm not very good at getting up very early when it's not part of a routine, and I wasn't in much of a routine. In the end, I had a bit of a mare and got about an hour's sleep, which wasn't the best preparation. A lot of the fault for my shitty night's sleep should be laid at the tiny feet of next door's baby, who cried loudly once an hour 'til 5am, the little arsehole. But also I find it very hard to get to sleep whatever the situation, so it's not all the baby's fault. I do still, though, bear it a strong grudge that will be hard to shake. But anyway, sleeping. Sleeping has never been my forté. It runs in the family; and often on occasions where I'm with my mum and brother, we all talk about how hard we find it to get to sleep, how it's such a massive pain in the arse, and swap techniques on how to conquer our nightly foe. These include tried and tested classics, such as doing "A to Zs". "A to Zs" are mum's favourite, and involve going through the alphabet thinking of one of a 'thing' for each letter. You pick a topic, like English footballers or something, and begin. It's like a really long, slow, tedious game of Scattergories.
The intention of the "A to Z" is I think to bore yourself to sleep, in the hope that the monotony of the activity will eventually send you off the land of nod without you noticing. But I really like trivia, in all in many wondrous forms, so this technique often just feels like revision, and I end up agonising over it for ages, stuck on thinking of a British sitcom character beginning with G. Up to that point [Arnold Rimmer, Blackadder, Cybil Fawlty, Dave Lister ( 2 red Dwarf characters, naughty naughty), Edward Elizabeth Hitler, Frank Spencer] has been easy. But then I got stuck on G, which often happens. I leant over and had a drink of water, turned over the pillow so my head was on the cold bit, and lay there, thinking. This is the part where you're meant to fall asleep. But I never fall asleep at this point. Instead, I lie there repeating names beginning with G in an internal monologue, which, were to it to be written down, would sound absolutely fucking mental. And look like this.
"Graham Graham Graham Graham...Glenn Glenn Glenn Glenn Glenn...Glenn Parsons? There's definitely not a sitcom character called Glenn Parsons. Geoff, Geoff, Geoff from Byker Grove? Not allowed, don't know his surname. And he's from Byker Grove. Gary..? Gary. Gary! Gary Sparrow!
And then I think about Nicholas Lyndhurst in all his many, hilarious guises, for what seems like half an hour, before suddenly snapping back into the room. How long have I just been thinking about Nicholas Lyndhurst for? For fuck's sake! Right, sitcom characters beginning with H...
It continued like that until about 5am, having originally got into bed at about midnight. It had got to the stage where I was almost resigned to getting no sleep whatsoever. If I fell asleep now, I wouldn't be happy at being woken up again an hour and a half later. At best, I'd be very grouchy. After a while though, after my sub-conscious had finally decided to shut up, I nodded off. An hour and a half later, very grouchily I woke up to the foul-mouthed Scottish voice of James Naughtie, managing not to call anyone a cunt as he read the news.
I got Doncaster at 8.20 and decided to have a little wander around. The night before, harnessing the magical wizzardry of Google Maps, I'd sat and sorted out the route, and drawn a little map in my notebook. In possession of a terrible sense of direction, hunches and imagined shortcuts frequently lead to disaster. So I wandered around. And Doncaster's nice, like a bigger, more prosperous Rotherham. After walking through the town centre for half an hour, I didn't see one boarded up shop, or fight, and the streets had a pleasant busyness.
After being let into the newspaper office, and shown around a bit, I got introduced to around a dozen of the staff, whose names I forgot almost straight away. This made getting their attention difficult later on in the day, as I had nothing to call to them which wouldn't sound rude. I hardly ever call anyone mate; it just feels forced when I do. Taxi drivers, shop keepers, and youths on the street sometimes, but not always. Anyway, it didn't matter, as I had some work to do. I interviewed seven new recruits to the army who'd just signed up to the local regiment, and wrote an article about it, before doing two 'nibs' about a charity thing and an MP visiting a pharmacy. I enjoyed every minute of it, despite being knackered, and after all the temp jobs, it felt good to be being asked to do jobs that play to my limited strengths. I have a personality that makes me feel constantly out of my depth, like an imposter, and I need to learn to ignore it.
I've had a few people saying they read this rambling bollocks, including, I'm informed, at least one Belgian. This is nice, and makes me want to make it good.
It's my dad's 62nd birthday coming up and I need to go and buy him some squash balls, so I think I'll leave it at that.
Wait! One other thing. I need to find a new quiz to go to in Sheffield. If you're in the very narrow Sheffield-based, quiz-going readers, tell me one, because the Lescar Tuesday nighter is becoming increasingly difficult to win.
Got them Short Round Blues.
As I sit, eating peanuts and watching Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom, cursing the evil imagination which came up with Short Round, the wise-cracking little arsehole, I feel it's time for another entry. I don't especially have much to say or anything particularly pressing on my mind, so I don't think it'll be very long. But hey! Good things come in disappointingly inadequate packages. Incidentally, I bloody love Indiana Jones films, they're the genius of Spielberg in full flow. But Temple of Doom is often pretty lame and frequently a wee bit racist. Chilled monkey brains, anyone?
This last week I've been applying for jobs and signing on, increasing the burden on our shitty state. I used to feel nervous and guilty about claiming jobseekers allowance, worried that one of the friendly staff would stand up and expose my soft, middle class underbelly to the baying scroungers who prowl the Cavendish Court Job Centre. But that was a stupid, exaggerated assumption and one that I've grown out of. Everyone there just wants some help, and Britain's wellfare state is a universally wonderful thing, no matter what the right-wing press say. The guarantee of financial assistance to the unemployed gives people a sense of respect and, more importantly, stops people having to resort to crime for money. The Coalition's cuts policy is going create hundreds of thousands of more unemployed in the next couple of years, who will have to go somewhere. A lot of them will go to Cavendish Court.
This policy, parroted in the Mail, will also make it easier for companies to sack employees - introducing a mandatory fee to bring a case to an employment tribunal, as well as doubling the length of time a person needs to be employed there if they wish to do so. With each new policy this government further injures its own people, under the bullshit auspice of cutting red tape.
On Friday I'm off to Doncaster to work for their newspaper for a day. I have no idea what I'll be doing yet, but I'm really excited about it, if a little worried I'm going to balls it up. I'll let you know how it goes.
Begin and begin again
And so, cowed, eyes to the floor, shuffling back in ungainly novelty Christmas slippers, I blog once more. It's been a while since I last had the urge to commit any thoughts, anywhere at all really, let alone online. I started this blog as an attempt to poke myself into productivity and perhaps to give me a better understanding of my own, deeply unhelpful subconscious. But it didn't quite work like that. Distractions appeared, waving with shiny excitement for me to come and play. Xbox, weed, and arrival of my housemate Anna ensured that there was always something else to do, something more easy to commit to.
Left to its own devices, my brain cannibalises itself with criticism and insults. I look in the mirror and see a fat, unemployable cunt with no future, and stare blankly into eyes that were once happy. I don't think this is a particularly new thing, I've always seen the hurdles rather than the finishing line, giving up at things before I've even got started. But is the answer not to look in the mirror, to ignore your problems and muddle on? Of course not, if I carry on doing that before I know it I'll be 30, bitter and alone. So I'll write, and I'll earn a living, and I'll leave that miserable bastard of a subconscious behind.
One of the reasons I stopped doing this was because I thought no one at all was reading it, that I was just solipsistically whining to an empty space. But then, on new years, a strange chap called Ryan, in his quaintly aggressive way, said he'd been reading my blog in the past and that he was a little disappointed that it had ground to a halt. He's a charming man, and had recently been bitten in the face by a dog. This came as a surprise and an encouragement, and showed me that even if only one person is reading, no matter how foolish and incomprehensible he is, that's more than enough. So thank you Ryan, you may have saved my life. He hasn't, and that's an overly dramatic thing to say about a drunken conversation, but I felt this paragraph was lacking pep and so I decided to take some artistic licence.
What is true and not an exaggeration is that since Christmas I've lost 7 lbs and am tantalisingly close to dipping under the 15 stone barrier for the first time since I was a teenager. And, I've got a shift coming up at the Doncaster Free Press, a proper, actual newspaper read by genuine people with their fingers and hands. Though it is Doncaster so maybe not the usual quota of fingers, but it's a bloody start, right? It's an opportunity I have to grasp, like any good murderer with tell you, with both hands and not let go. Even if it's only a very short opportunity, it's in the profession I've chosen and not as part of some debilitating, mundane temporary assignment from a job agency.
So here's to new starts and positivity, yeah? Yeah!
Left to its own devices, my brain cannibalises itself with criticism and insults. I look in the mirror and see a fat, unemployable cunt with no future, and stare blankly into eyes that were once happy. I don't think this is a particularly new thing, I've always seen the hurdles rather than the finishing line, giving up at things before I've even got started. But is the answer not to look in the mirror, to ignore your problems and muddle on? Of course not, if I carry on doing that before I know it I'll be 30, bitter and alone. So I'll write, and I'll earn a living, and I'll leave that miserable bastard of a subconscious behind.
One of the reasons I stopped doing this was because I thought no one at all was reading it, that I was just solipsistically whining to an empty space. But then, on new years, a strange chap called Ryan, in his quaintly aggressive way, said he'd been reading my blog in the past and that he was a little disappointed that it had ground to a halt. He's a charming man, and had recently been bitten in the face by a dog. This came as a surprise and an encouragement, and showed me that even if only one person is reading, no matter how foolish and incomprehensible he is, that's more than enough. So thank you Ryan, you may have saved my life. He hasn't, and that's an overly dramatic thing to say about a drunken conversation, but I felt this paragraph was lacking pep and so I decided to take some artistic licence.
What is true and not an exaggeration is that since Christmas I've lost 7 lbs and am tantalisingly close to dipping under the 15 stone barrier for the first time since I was a teenager. And, I've got a shift coming up at the Doncaster Free Press, a proper, actual newspaper read by genuine people with their fingers and hands. Though it is Doncaster so maybe not the usual quota of fingers, but it's a bloody start, right? It's an opportunity I have to grasp, like any good murderer with tell you, with both hands and not let go. Even if it's only a very short opportunity, it's in the profession I've chosen and not as part of some debilitating, mundane temporary assignment from a job agency.
So here's to new starts and positivity, yeah? Yeah!
Undiplomatic Cable
The Daily Telegraph has gone too far with it's latest piece of sparkling undercover journalism, and the editor and reporters concerned should think deeply about where their paper is heading.
If you're not familiar with the story then allow me, dear reader, to fill you in. As it were. So, over several days the Telegraph sent a pair of female reporters to a string of Lib Dem constituency surgeries, posing as single mothers facing difficulties with benefits. Hours of conversations were recorded, and the resulting sting has stung the arses of leading MPs - Deputy Leader of the House David Heath, Business Secretary Vince Cable, and Transport Minister Norman Baker, to name three. The quotes which the reporters eventually managed to glean, presumably after sieving through swathes of uninteresting bullshit, have cost Cable some of his already limited responsibilities; the others were forced into either apologies or denials.
Very good, congratulations Telegraph. This is almost as big as the expenses shitstorm you created, after being handed all the evidence.
I think this is different, though. For two reasons. The first lies in the paper's reaction to the recent Wikileaks disclosure of American War documents and ambassadorial cables. In these articles the paper has wheeled out a pair of its more bizarre looking journalists to call Wikileaks 'delinquent' and undemocratic, as well as snidily referring to Julian Assange as a 'glamorous hero', but only until people get sick of him. Of course, there is a difference between what Wikileaks does and the greasy tactics the Telegraph employed in stinging Vince Cable. The latter is certainly more dishonest. But to carp madly on about Wikileaks being undemocratic, providing mainly conjecture and gossamer-thin, we-knew-all-this-shit-already reasons for the criticism is a nonsense.
Then, in the 11th paragraph, the crux of my beef:
"Private conversations, even when they are not at the level of the diplomatic communiqué, are generally considered to be no-go areas for journalists, because it is recognised that professional life of any kind would be virtually unsustainable without the possibility of confidential communication."
Too bloody right!
The second objection I have concerns the nature of their sting. These undercover reporters were posing as constituents at an MP's surgery, a place where beleaguered Lib Dem MPs would be seeking to regain some popularity from their voters after all the messiness of the Coalition agreements. The headlines they generated - breathtaking incites such as George Osbourne not being in touch with problems of the common man - did nothing but cover up and distract people from the absolute shit-tonne of bad press that should be heading the way of the Conservatives.
Undercover reporting, according to Bob Steele of Poynter Online "can support substantive, compelling journalism that serves citizens and society", but this is not the case with the Telegraph's sting on Vince Cable. The information they recovered, which amounts to little more than bitching, serves no public interest. If the reporters suspected Cable would let slip that the coalition planned to renege on their promise not to raise university tuition fees, or that under new proposals the entire stock of Britain's forest land could be sold to foreign multinationals in a massive landgrab, then there would have been some point to it.
But this was nothing, it was an insignificant drop in the ocean of contempt already felt for our MPs, and will probably stop them being at all candid in even the safest of circumstances, and that can only be a bad thing.
If you're not familiar with the story then allow me, dear reader, to fill you in. As it were. So, over several days the Telegraph sent a pair of female reporters to a string of Lib Dem constituency surgeries, posing as single mothers facing difficulties with benefits. Hours of conversations were recorded, and the resulting sting has stung the arses of leading MPs - Deputy Leader of the House David Heath, Business Secretary Vince Cable, and Transport Minister Norman Baker, to name three. The quotes which the reporters eventually managed to glean, presumably after sieving through swathes of uninteresting bullshit, have cost Cable some of his already limited responsibilities; the others were forced into either apologies or denials.
Very good, congratulations Telegraph. This is almost as big as the expenses shitstorm you created, after being handed all the evidence.
I think this is different, though. For two reasons. The first lies in the paper's reaction to the recent Wikileaks disclosure of American War documents and ambassadorial cables. In these articles the paper has wheeled out a pair of its more bizarre looking journalists to call Wikileaks 'delinquent' and undemocratic, as well as snidily referring to Julian Assange as a 'glamorous hero', but only until people get sick of him. Of course, there is a difference between what Wikileaks does and the greasy tactics the Telegraph employed in stinging Vince Cable. The latter is certainly more dishonest. But to carp madly on about Wikileaks being undemocratic, providing mainly conjecture and gossamer-thin, we-knew-all-this-shit-already reasons for the criticism is a nonsense.
Then, in the 11th paragraph, the crux of my beef:
"Private conversations, even when they are not at the level of the diplomatic communiqué, are generally considered to be no-go areas for journalists, because it is recognised that professional life of any kind would be virtually unsustainable without the possibility of confidential communication."
Too bloody right!
The second objection I have concerns the nature of their sting. These undercover reporters were posing as constituents at an MP's surgery, a place where beleaguered Lib Dem MPs would be seeking to regain some popularity from their voters after all the messiness of the Coalition agreements. The headlines they generated - breathtaking incites such as George Osbourne not being in touch with problems of the common man - did nothing but cover up and distract people from the absolute shit-tonne of bad press that should be heading the way of the Conservatives.
Undercover reporting, according to Bob Steele of Poynter Online "can support substantive, compelling journalism that serves citizens and society", but this is not the case with the Telegraph's sting on Vince Cable. The information they recovered, which amounts to little more than bitching, serves no public interest. If the reporters suspected Cable would let slip that the coalition planned to renege on their promise not to raise university tuition fees, or that under new proposals the entire stock of Britain's forest land could be sold to foreign multinationals in a massive landgrab, then there would have been some point to it.
But this was nothing, it was an insignificant drop in the ocean of contempt already felt for our MPs, and will probably stop them being at all candid in even the safest of circumstances, and that can only be a bad thing.
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