Tag: Journalism

Exclusive: Cleveland Police Ill-Prepared for Apocalypse

I don’t want to alarm anyone living in Middlesbrough any more than they already will be – having woken up and, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, remembered that they live in Middlesbrough – but far from ‘Putting People First’, Cleveland Police doesn’t have your back; in fact it would appear that they are perfectly content for you and your loved ones to burn in the fires of prophecy.

I put in a Freedom of Information request last month to their HQ; I found a popular template, which helped make me sound smart, and added my query, which didn’t: Continue reading “Exclusive: Cleveland Police Ill-Prepared for Apocalypse” →

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Me, Talking

These next two tracks were exercises both in writing for broadcast and recording. I can only hope that the subjects were made up, but even so, pieces of a baby found flushed down a toilet? Really? I didn’t realise Bret Easton Ellis was writing NCTJ exams.

I think these examples of my effete lisp are proof positive that should this journalism malarky go to the dogs, there’s always work for me in pre-war Hampshire commentating lawn bowls.

On an almost unrelated note, would any Teesside based single ladies over the age of thirty that could imagine this voice, tinged with impatience, slurring suggestions of a sexual nature through their letterbox at 3am please get in contact. Please. Continue reading “Me, Talking” →

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Several Hundred Words About Money

Northern light, by Don McPhee
Sad about something? Don’t even bother reading this then – have another piece of chocolate, you deserve it, everything’s going to be just fine.

In Britain, welfare amounts to over 30% of overall public spending. If we ignore the bail outs – and we should, because £1.2 trillion could have built schools on the moon – then that’s the single largest area of public expenditure; a provision to guarantee a basic standard of living for all those in financial need.

The Welfare Reform Bill of 2011 was the biggest change to the welfare system for over 60 years. One element is the introduction of Universal Credit, a ‘streamlined’ replacement for six of the main means-tested benefits and tax credits that is said will ‘ensure work always pays.’

A fortnight ago, another change – the replacement of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – was the reason hundreds of thousands of Twitter users were trending #spartacusreport, relating to Responsible Reform, a 37 page independent report into the alleged general awfulness of the DLA reforms. Continue reading “Several Hundred Words About Money” →

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Three Years of Cuts and Closures

As I mentioned already, I intended on working my weird rant against non-recyclers into the last real work of the year – the vox pop assignment. However, the apathy of others and the growing realisation that I am just another hypocrite – three paychecks and some half decent head in a fast car away from turning my back on mother nature and concreting over the lot – gave me pause for thought.

I’ll get back to it in due course, once I get my mojo back. In the meantime I decided to work on something probably everyone’s sick of reading about by now but it remains a subject that really gets people’s backs up, and with good reason.

I have censored the names and faces of the people I spoke to as I’m not sure of the rules on putting stuff like this online without permission; it was hard enough to get anyone to speak to me as it was (I was mostly in the pub, mostly) so I’m going to play it safe and only let my teacher see the full version. Continue reading “Three Years of Cuts and Closures” →

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Lingerie, Whiskey and Burning Flags

Two Chinese Pandas are being loaned to Edinburgh Zoo. The thinking is that they’ll be so cold they’ll have to fuck continuously to keep from freezing to death.

Hey, am I wearing lipstick? When I’m getting fucked I want to make sure my face looks pretty.

– George Jung, Blow

I put the news in my brain today. It didn’t help my depression. Not one bit.

I hear the cuts with which we are being punished for the avarice and incompetence of our betters is going to plunge this country into a Dickensian level of class divide and destitution; the eurozone is breaking apart, another mistake that will have us all over the sodomy table before the decade is up.

Stories of increasing numbers of honour killings and the grooming of children are a proud racist’s wet dream – proof positive in their bloodshot eyes that if they were right about Europe then how about all these dirty immigrants taking British jobs. All the while the justice system is too PC to tackle problems by race, leaving the idiots among us to judge entire swaths of their communities by the diabolical actions of a few. Continue reading “Lingerie, Whiskey and Burning Flags” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three

G.A.Harker. Don Quixote: Windmill
‘Tis better to gasp one’s last breath twixt the unspoiled hill and valley than suffer the ignominy of the turbines!

Question Time. BBC One, 10.35 Thu, 17 Nov 2011

Against a more newsworthy day’s backdrop of the biggest strikes in 30 years and my own Senior Lecturer – a former journalist at the News of the World – being arrested in connection with the Leveson phonehacking enquiry (later bailed until March), I have a deadline. I should’ve written this a week ago but I’m shit and lazy and I think I might be losing it, again. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three” →

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The Press: Articulating Our Rage or Skullfucking Our Souls?

Another devil’s advocate exercise; this one weighing the pros and cons of a free press. Mark Lewis, speaking at today’s Leveson inquiry had far more intelligent, insightful things to say on the matter.

This kind of writing is good fun but can also be quite confusing; I often need to take a step back to reaffirm my beliefs having just convinced myself, for example, that Squirrels are the real source of all the pain and sadness in the world.

Totally Nuts
Squirrels: Plotting our Demise?

“The press should be free to do what it wants.”

A Government should be answerable to its electorate and the press should be the voice for those that have no voice.

Numerous cases such as the expenses scandal; bribery of public officials; David Kelly and the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction; the sometimes heavy handed tactics used by Police during protests and riots; the developing rift in the coalition – none of these would have come to light if the same institution implicated in wrongdoing controlled the method with which it is held publicly accountable. Continue reading “The Press: Articulating Our Rage or Skullfucking Our Souls?” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Two

Empty bottles and cans; a big bag of papers and a broken piece of redundant electronics – a typical week’s worth for an unmarried male in his thirties. Teenagers produce twice this.

I’ve spent the majority of my adult life living abroad, and for the most part I found it more bearable than not doing so; but if history has taught us anything it is that all foreigners are little more than vile savages before a fear of the Christian Lord and a good command of the Queen’s is raped into them.

One thing that some of them do seem a hell of a lot better than us at though is recycling; from India’s slums to the supermarkets of Denmark, it is understood that there is money in ‘waste’, be it sorting through what others throw away or collecting the deposit on all the dog-end filled empty bottles littering your apartment after a party. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Two” →

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