Saga Zone

As reported in the Daily Mail today, social networking sites are now finding niches.

Bebo is used by those under 16.

Myspace is offers "Myspace Music" and is used by bands as a marketing tool.

Facebook is primarily used by the under-30's. and is seen as a student-centric tool.

Dogbook is a Facebook application that allows canines to maintain an online presence.

I have no idea what Web sites dogs look at.

www.givethedogabone.com?

I sound barking mad.

Now social networking sites specifically for the elderly are taking off.

Saga Zone, part of the Saga Group, which offers services for old people.

The signup page is easy to navigate and is completly free.

I feel Saga Zone will take off.

Let's hope it stays application free.

Pettiness

Some people in life can be so petty.

Up until yesterday I had on my door a photo of one of my (16 year old) sister's guinea pigs.

She took the photo a while ago and gave it to me before I left the dreaming spires of Oxford for university.

Our housing is managed by a company called Unilet.

This afternoon I came home from Webdesign to find my pig picture in the bin.

No attempt had been made to slip it under my door.

Given that one of my housemates was in, the Unilet official could have given it to her.

But it was just stuck it in the bin.

Had I not seen it, it would have gone the next day when the cleaners came.

My housemate was told that pictures on the outside of doors were a fire risk.

How?

Are photographs going to burst into flames?

I enjoy my degree, I like the people on my course and I like my flatmates.

However, it seems pettiness is everywhere.

Will the tigers be wiped out?

The Independent today leads on the wipeout of tigers in India.

Between 2000 and 2007, the numbers of tigers lowered from 5000 to 1300.

During the 1900's, India had around 100,000 animals.

Tigers are also declining in China and Indonesia.

If more is not done to prevent poaching, by 2025 they will be extinct throughout the world.

The World Wildlife Fund has more information on what can be done to prevent their extinction

According to Mahendra Shresta of Save The Tiger Fund, global commitment from NGO's and governments is needed to save the tigers.

Online Newspapers: Web 2:0 guide

I have a keen interest in the evolution of newspapers on the Internet.

Below I have written a guide for local newspaper journalists (which can also be used by others).

Want to attract more readers?

For my website I have been researching the rise of online newspapers and their interactive content.

This website will be up and running within a few weeks.

I will link to it when it is.

These are my thoughts, after discussion with David Dunkley Gyimah and others on my course.

Ways newspapers can improve their online content:

1. Remember, writing for the Web is different for writing for a print publication or a television script.

You will be writing for search engines such as Google and MSN Search.

Therefore, do not make your text too blocky.

Include key words in your text, so robots are able to rank your webpage at the top of each search.

Notice how each of my paragraphs are one or two sentences.

Most of them are less than twenty words.

Don't simply republish newspaper copy.

When people perform a search, they will usually only look through the first page of results.

Sometimes they will go as far as the second page, but never further.

Key Words:

Use key words. Make your key words as specific as possible.

For example, what key words would you use for this story?

Would you use very common words such as hospital?

Those words will bring up millions of hits.

Use specific phrases such as "Whittingdon Chairman" or "Peter Farmer"

To prove it:

Hospital typed into Google: 236,000,000 hits.

Whittingdon Chairman typed into Google: 65 hits (without parenthesis). With parenthesis: 0 hits.

So if the Camden New Journal had used the latter as a key word, their site would be the only result on the page.



2. Include links within the body of your text, using the code as described here.

Don't put them all at the very bottom.

3. Web 2.0 is key.

Web 2.0 involves the use of interactive content to increase the power and options of the reader.

If someone comes to your website, they will come for Web 1.0, and stay for Web 2.0

Some websites such as the Sun Online fully understand this.

Other websites, such as the Independent Online, do not.

My website will offer a comparison of both sites, and I will list here the main features of Web 2.0 that every online newspaper site should use.

Web 2:0 tools for online newspapers:

Use an RSS Feed:

Firstly, an RSS feed is essential.

As Netmag points out, unlike e-mail there is no fear of spam.

Readers nervous of revealing their identity need not worry.

This allows people to use Google Reader or another website to subscribe to content from your site without actually visiting it.

You can use Feedburner to create a RSS feed of your site.

So far, 1,068,275 feeds have been burnt using Feedburner.

Google Reader:

And don't be afraid of using Google Reader yourself to subscribe to blogs and news sites such as BBC.co.uk.

Myself, I subscribe to blogs such as Adrian Monck and newsfeeds from the online edition of Press Gazette.

All you need is a gmail address. If you want a gmail address contact me via my gmail adddress (richbrennangladstoneATgooglemail.com). Remove the AT and replace with @. All I ask is you link to my blog on your site.

I have 49 left at the moment.

Once you have a Gmail address, this is how you use Google Reader. If you already know this, scroll down to the next sub-heading, "Journalist blogging".

Sign in and go to "My Account"

Look for "My Services"

Then click on "Google Reader"

Each time you wish to add a new blog click on "Add Subscription" and enter a URL.

It is simple and automatically updates.

Feedburner can also be used with other readers such as Newsgator, My Yahoo. A burnt feed can be embedded on a website.

Journalist blogging:

While some journalists such as the Mail's Peter Hitchens blog, many do not.

Given that a blog allows those who do not normally buy your paper or read your online newspaper to discover more about you, why aren't you blogging?

I use Blogger but will change to Wordpress by the end of the year.

Wordpress is better for interactive content.

I will post how to use Blogger sometime this week, and Wordpress once I have used it for a fortnight or so.

I started in June 2007, and now blog every day. Usually it is twice a day, but it can be up to four or five times.

And I also have a life.

Blogging is not the domain of geeks, despite what Kate Russell may say on the BBC (and no doubt she'll be blogging within the next six months).

Messageboards:

The Daily Mail online messageboardsare the best ones I have seen on a newspaper web site.

You can build a message board using hosting sites such as Positive Internet

Provide a general guide to message boards.

Remember, older readers will know little of Web 2.0 content, but will still want to pick it up.

The Mail's website, for example, has a link asking "what is an rss feed"?

Soundslides:

Soundslides enables the creation of a slideshow to the sound of an .mp3 (audio) file.

This has been used by papers in the USA and will push up your "hits".

If you are a journalist reporting on the Notting Hill Carnival, you could take a montage of photos using a digital camera.

Then you could use a Minidisc recorder to interview some revelers.

Then use Soundslides to marry the two together, and post it on your website.


4. Consider whether you want people to have to pay for articles.

While this is a way of raising revenue, it may put readers off.

If you really want to charge for content, don't charge for all the articles. Have at least half the articles free.

Only a minority will want to pay online.


5. Don't put links to PDF's within a page.

Maybe this is a bit obvious, but PDF's are opened by Adobe.

Adobe takes ages to load.

SomethingAwful published a guide on how to optimise Adobe, which I will try and link to when I find it.

Even so, most readers will not have visited SomethingAwful and will be angry when they must open a PDF to discover more on the story.

A PDF's text cannot be copied into an e-mail.

Therefore, its interactivity is limited.


6. Be very careful.

Don't type words over and over again to push yourself up Google rankings.

Don't use keywords that don't apply to your content.

And don't use doorway pages: These are pages containing many instances of a word, that link to a site with few instances of a word

BMW did the latter and were removed from Google listings by Google. It has now been re-included As Matt Cutts' blog points out, read the guidelines before submitting your site to Google.

How not to get banned by Google.

I will go into some of the terms used within this document in greater depth if asked.

This leads on to my last point

7. Submit your site to search engines.

For Google, visit this link

Only include the main page of your site, as a well-written site should be indexed by Google.

I have not submitted a Sitemap of my blog, as I found Google indexed my site better without one.

(touch virtual wood)

Coming up:

If your paper does not yet have a web site, I will run through the basics of Dreamweaver and other site building services once I have completed my site.

I will discuss how to plan your website and how to create a template.

If you have found this useful, why not write a comment below or link to me?

I am keen to work on online content when I have finished my degree.

If anyone is interested in hiring me, I will send my CV and a covering letter.

I will also look at any media websites you would like improved.

I live on campus at Westminister University and can easily commute in for an interview.

Check out my blog posts on My Experience Of Journalism and Be Gentle: It's My First Time: Or Life As A Westminster Journalism Blogger for more information on my knowledge of journalism.

Smoking in The Smoke

This is the text of an article I wrote on the July smoking ban

It was published today in Westminster University's student newspaper, the Smoke.

The controversial public smoking ban introduced on the 1st July has seen a dramatic improvement in the air quality, with researchers from the Tobacco Control Collecting Centre in Warwick visiting 59 establishments where smoking was a common health hazard around the country, in a study funded by Cancer Research UK.

As revealed at the National Cancer Research Institute Conference, the exposure of an employee to secondhand smoke on average was the equivalent of smoking 190 cigarettes a year before the legislation was brought in three months ago. After the legislation, the exposure lowered to the equivalent of 44 cigarettes a year.

Cotnine, a by-product of tobacco smoke exposure which is though to have an effect on the chances of developing Altzheimer’s, disease, was also found to have been four times more prevalent in June than in August.

The study also found that concerns about a negative impact on trade proved to be unfounded. Before the ban, more than half of the owners surveyed were concerned about damage to trade.

After the ban, 70% either had a positive or neutral view of the ban’s effect. In each establishment, the owner, four employees and four customers took part in the study.

Prior to the legislation, 84 per cent of employees thought second hand smoke at work put their health at risk and just one month on, just over half of employees believe their health is better as a result of the law. Customers agreed with almost 80 per cent thinking the health of employees is better post legislation. Overall, the results of the study were extremly postive for those who supported the ban.

Coca-Cola disguise

Aya Tsukioka, a Japanese designer, has invented a vending machine costume, according to the New York Times pullout in yesterday's Observer

This will enable people walking on their own to disguise themselves to avoid a pursuer.

Like the UK, you can get bulletproof school uniforms as well.

I wonder if the fake vending machine will take off over here?

It seems in this country we're quite used to vending machines that don't dispense anything anyway.

Chauncey Bailey

The Observer Magazine today has a feature on Chauncey Bailey, a former editor of the Oakland Post.

He was murdered this August, allegedly by an organised criminal network known as the Bakery.

What came through from the article was how Chauncey became the centre of the community through his determination to write to help.

There is a quote from the story that sums him up "When he wrote up a story he would often take its characters under his wing".

Another striking feature of the article is the difference between Bailey and Yusuf Bay.

Both grew up in a city with a high murder rate and the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Yet Bailey decided that journalism was the best way to help himself and his community, while Bay set up an organized crime network and failed to pay back a $1.1m loan.

Happily, while Bay's criminal network is dissolving, Bailey's work is being continued.

The Chauncey Bailey Project has been set up to continue his work.

I never met Chauncey Bailey, but I would liked to have done.


Another obituary for Bailey, from Inside Bay Area

An article by Chauncey Bailey

Votes at 16?

The SNP have backed lowering the voting age to 16

Where do you stand on this issue?

The Votes At Sixteen campaign highlights that at 16 people can get married but are unable to vote.

This is a fair point, yet you could use this to argue for the drinking and smoking age restrictions to be lowered to 16.

And lowering the voting age, while it will allow more people to vote, won't solve the problem of convergence among political parties.

Many people don't feel their views are represented.

But I feel it will make sixteen year olds feel more responsible.

It will also make them feel part of society.

I know you could use that argument to give eight-year olds the vote, but sixteen is a better cut off point.

So I support the campaign.

And let's do a few other things to improve democracy.

Let's have general election voting over two days, Sunday and Monday, so people are able to vote even if they are busy on one of the days.

Let's have a debate on postal voting: can we clear up the corruption surronding it.

And let's have fixed-term Parliments so the Prime Minister can't call an election during a good patch.

I don't agree with US-style term limits however.

If the Prime Minister was not up for re-election, would he worry about his actions as much?

One final tweak. Let's reconnect our ministers with public transport.

Let's get rid of their offical cars and watch them commute in each day.

Maybe then they'd sort out Network Rail.

Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs:

If you were on BBC’s Desert Island Discs, what ten records would you choose?

And what would be your luxury object?

My ten would be:

1. Vide Cor Meum. A beautiful operatic number written specifically for the film Hannibal, Vide Cor Meum is also on the excellent soundtrack, although it is spoilt at the end by the voiceover of Sir Antony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and dramatic music.


2. The Chosen Few’s Drift Away. A beautiful, uplifting reggae song, which moves from a downbeat ending to the upbeat middle seamlessly.


3. Audience’s I Had A Dream. I only heard this song yesterday, off the Life On Mars soundtrack, but I know it’s going to be in my top ten for a while.


4. Desmond Dekker and the Specials: Easy Snappin’ I drive the person living below me insane by repeatedly playing this song.


5. Shudder To Think’s Ballard of Maxwell Demon, as featured in the enveloping film Velvet Goldmine. It’s also on the highly recommended Velvet Goldmine soundtrack.

6. Guns N Roses: November Rain. I’m not that into classic rock, but I do like Guns N Roses after a friend introduced them to me at the Portland Rock Bar in Hove via a tribute band. An excellent song of love and knowing.


7. Also from Velvet Goldmine, Shudder To Think: Hot Ones. I have to admit I have heard only two songs by Shudder To Think, however I’d quite like to hear more.

8. Tony Benn: Prophecy: War Against Iraq. Featuring Charles Bailey’s ambient groove, a powerful speech which draws on the Suez Crisis and the foundation of the United Nations.


9. John Lennon: Imagine. Although I like T.T. Ross’ cover from the excellent Trojan Beatles Tribute boxset (the best Trojan boxset so far), Lennon’s original is the best.


10. KLF: Doctoring The Tardis (from Meet The Parents).

I mainly like reggae and 70’s music, although I also listen to punk (mainly The Clash), Echo and The Bunnymen, The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Specials. Tony Benn’s Greatest Hits is often on my CD player as well.

What would my luxury item be? I know I get the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

I think it would be cheating to choose another person, the Internet or an animal.

It would probably drive me mad to be stuck with only one person for years anyway.

I think I would like a swimming pool.

Brighton

Up until this summer, I was an undergraduate student at the University of Sussex.

I miss the joys of the London Road pub crawl.

Myself and two of my friends lived on New England Road, at the top of London Road.

Our favourite haunt was the Hare and Hounds, with its Open Mic night and mute plasma televisions.

Given that the pub was on a corner , one could sit with a pint on a plush sofa and look out at the traffic roaring past.

The most imaginative pub was a short walk away, the London to Brighton Hog.

Sadly it has now changed it’s name to the World’s End.

The pub sign used to depict a genial pig leaning out of a 1930’s saloon.

We used to speculate about the Hog.

Was he the owner of the pub, a muscular figure who was a cross between Brick-Top and a cigar-chomping Del Boy?

An anthromorphic gangster with a sock full of pig meal in his trotter?

We used to ponder this as we walked to the next pub, the Druid’s Head.

Sometimes the Druid would be throbbing to the sounds of a pair of decks near the toilet.

Once or twice they even served free potatoes at the bar. I presume the chef got carried away and went into that common state of mind among cooks, spud overdrive.

The round wooden tables and amount of small candles made it another ideal place for a pint.

We would usually end up at the Hobgoblin, a pub with frequent open mic nights and a variety of alternative themes.

I do miss having everything in walking distance. Even when I lived in Hollingdean, I’d quiet happily walk into town and back, through the Lanes and past the pier.

I can walk into Harrow of course, but somehow it isn’t the same.

I’ve been to one of the pubs there, but there was no real theme.
And while the pubs around Central London are nice, there is a feeling of neatness.

Brighton is London’s seagull-saturated little brother, with a bigger record collection and multi-coloured hair.

I’ll be back there soon to see various friends and to stroll along the pebble piled beach, the crowds swarming around me.

Maybe the Hog will be watching from his penthouse sty…

Be gentle,it's my first time.

This is my first blog, although I have written offline for the Badger and Smoke student newspapers, as well as for the Swindon Advertiser and Bucks Herald during my 2006 work experience.

I was lucky enough to have the Swindon Advertiser print my feature article on the Swindon Mela, under my byline.

Sadly it is not on the website, although I have kept a printed copy.

I've been blogging since June 2007, with my first post on an e-mail from Chris Horrie where he linked to information on the course.

During this time, I have been visited by Associated Newspapers (for my review of "The History Of The Times: The Murdoch Years", and the expatriate South African newspaper.

According to ClustrMaps, I've had 1,892 vists since the 4th of August, when I installed the widget.

However, the most popular content on my blog involved Madeleine McCann.

I will therefore try to blog more on this topic whenever a new angle to the story occurs.

Although I might stop short of following them around like Sky News.

However, while there are some subjects I am determined to blog on, mainly related to my course and the news agenda, I want to know what you are interested in.

Why not write below subjects you want me to discuss.

I'm not sure if I should write more about my personal life and what I enjoy doing when I'm not in class.

My best friend also has a blog, and when he came down to Westminster two days ago we discussed blogging over a pint.

In my view, that's the best location for a disscussion on blogging.

I've also burnt my feed, so you can subscribe to me in Google Reader or Yahoo if you want to.

You can also see the blogs of other students on my course under "Westminister Journos"

So far on my course, we've been studying shorthand with Richard Ward (Shorthand Society President), gettting to grips with the news agenda (taught by Andrew Grant-Adamson, and Webdesign with videojournalist David Dunkley Gyimah.

We've also been taking part in Bootcamp, which sounds like we've all joined the army but actually involves improving our writing skills.

If you want to know more about the course, why not find my e-mail in my Profile and contact me?

But regarding blog content, the ball is in your court.

House Prices

People seem to no longer regard a house as somewhere to live.

Instead they treat it like an investment.

Conservative newspapers such as the Daily Mail know their target audience well.

They run so many house price stories that Private Eye regularly mock them.


“House Prices to rise when House Prices rise” and “Will Nuclear War cause House Prices to fall.”

It doesn’t make much difference to the lives of Daily Mail readers if house prices go up or down.

They’ll still have a house.

But there is one group of people who are being crippled by high house prices.

First time buyers.

Many are nurses, police officers, teachers.

Low paid yet carrying out the most important jobs in society.

The Government appear to be making moves to tackle this problem.

But we need to change the mentality of those who spend their time drooling over property pages.

Next time you watch the revolting Location, Location, Location, consider a teacher who can’t afford a home after two decades in her job.

Margaret Thatcher and her monetarist cronies spent eighteen years selling off anything that wasn’t nailed down.

And they sold off council houses, depleting the housing stock.

Before you had a situation where people rented cheaply from local authorities instead of owning a house.

Now in many parts of London rents are crippling public sector workers as well.

Even in Brighton I’d pay seventy pounds a week for a room.

And don’t forget those who own second homes.
Fair enough if you work abroad or have family there.

But buying a holiday home in Continental Europe and only using it four weeks of the year is beyond the pale.

It stokes up anti-British resentment. Why the local authorities in France and Spain do not give locals priority over the British I do not understand.

If you value your public sector workers, why not support Defend Council Housing?

Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern

I have been reading “Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern” by John Gray.

The author is the Professor of European Thought at the London School Of Economics.

Describing Al Qaeda as “suicide warriors”, John Gray views the September 11th attacks as destroying “the West’s ruling myth”.

Gray claims the Positivists are the original modernisers, and that they have three main tenants.

1. History is driven by the power of science.
2. Science will enable natural scarcity to be overcome.
3. Progress in science enables progress in ethics.

Modernity is currently seen as benign, and this has been destroyed by modernised terrorism.

The global operation of Al Qaeda, their anarchic structure and its alleged desire to control Saudi oil (a desire that I was not aware off) make the network of terrorist cells the most deadly of modernisers.

Modern Western life has also inspired Al Qaeda and its agents such as Osama Bin Laden. John Gray alleges Al Qaeda and the former Taliban regime are linked, and points to the removal of women from society and the murderous response to homosexuality.

Gray’s book is unsurprisingly very clinical, and at times disturbing. He describes mass genocide-for example in Rwanda or Sierra Leone- and concentration camps-whether used used by the British or the Soviet Union-as modern inventions, and calls revolutionary terror a modern invention.

I strongly disagree.

Throughout history the powerful have used murder to crush rebellions, and every battle was in one sense a rebellion, one power rebelling against the ways or finances of another.

However “radical Islam” does seem to be a modern invention.

I use the quote marks because I feel religion is being used by those who wish to see a more brutal society, as they believe in a perverse form of order.

You can have a benign religion or a brutal religion.

Religion depends on interpretation.

As Tony Benn says

“It’s one thing to die for your faith, it’s another to kill for your doctrine.”

Gray also presents a history of the word “modern” and claims we have no idea what it means, which I would have thought presented a few difficulties in writing the book. He sees a future in each country constructing its own modernity.

Yet do people define themselves by their country? What about when people go travelling?

If one state permits murder, should other states respect that? What would happen to the UN?

And if this worked so well in the past, why were there so many conflicts?

I feel Gray is trying to apply logic to a fluid world.

Liberal Democrat Latest: Nick Clegg's Agenda

Liberal Democrat leadership contender Nick Clegg has set out his agenda

Third place in the next election will not be good enough, says Clegg, whose surname conjours up a retiree in a Gannex mac bumbling around Yorkshire with two cronies.

It remains to be seen which Last Of The Summer Wine character will represent Chris Huhne.

Other Clegg proposals include local courts, where criminals will have to explain themselves to victims.

Clegg also calls for a more democratic European Union, although he does not go into specifics.

And no mention of hurling down hills in a tin bath...

Decline And Fool

Have I Got News For is back.

When I was a teenager, Friday nights always revolved around the offerings of Have I Got News For You.

My family would stop all other tasks in order to laugh at the barbed and almost always justified attacks on pompous Tories, overpaid celebrities famous despite their minuscule talent and the higher echelons of the BBC.

The balance of humorous political commentator and well-informed comedian, sandwiched by the slightly tongue-in-cheek smoothie host, ensured that any guest booking, with the odd exception (very odd in the case of Edwina Currie) would be a triumph.

Sadly, like the BBC itself, which seems to be chasing reality shows instead of dramas and documentaries, Have I Got News For You has lost almost all of its glory, and sits forlornly in the corner of the schedules.

Not even the promise to show unseen material as part of the Saturday repeat can lift enthusiasm in the show.

For me the show’s crumble can be traced back to two terrible decisions, one debatable and one not so.

The first was the decision to remove Angus Deayton.

While some have argued, most notably Ian Hislop’s Private Eye, that Angus would have been seen as a hypocrite attacking others while having been discovered taking cocaine, this argument can be countered by the fact that the incident was mentioned only once in the four shows between the denouncement by a tabloid-newspaper clad Merton and Deayton’s enforced retirement.

Once Angus left to host a thousand Sky clip shows, the floodgates of mediocrity opened, pouring in mostly talentless guest presenters.

For every Jack Dee, with deadpan delivery and a reasonably low profile, there were half a dozen Joan Collinses, who insisted on building the show around themselves.

Bruce Forsyth hijacked the medium to create a tedious and nonsensical spoof version of Play Your Cards Right, which took up time needed for satire, as well as a Conveyor Belt Connection round.

And when Joan Collins told us how her vagina was stuck together, it could have been The Friday Night Project.

Throughout the eight serieses of Have I Got News For You, producers and team captains praised the new format, perhaps feeling that viewers were too bereft of attention to watch the same chair each week, ignoring the fact that other popular shows like QI do not rotate the host.

Without a strong host in the chair who understood how to get comedy gems out of Hislop and Merton, the team captains’ contributions became banal and lazy.

On the first show of the previous series, Merton spent much of the time sneering at his guest Krishnan Guru-Murphy “Is Richard and Judy the name of the quiz? No!” instead of going for proper targets.

This is another reason why we are being made fools of by the decision to use guest presenters.

Every time the show takes a shot at YouTube videos or John Prescott’s figure, it misses an opportunity to point out a misdeed done by the powerful which has been little noted by the mass media.

I remember that Have I Got News For You used to inform, now it only jumps on the most popular stories and tries to make cheap quips which they think will appeal to a populist audience.

If a story cannot be linked to “popular culture” which in reality means the most marketed mainstream bands and the most mainstream celebrities, it rarely features.

So what can be done to reverse the rot? The appointment of a new permanent presenter is essential, with possible choices being Dara O’Brien or Alexander Armstrong.

Secondly, Have I Got News For You needs to return to its irreverent roots.

Perhaps a move back to BBC2 on Friday would help, as well as the replacement of the flagging Merton with someone like Marcus Brigstocke.

If these cannot be fulfilled, the show should be killed off, and a new, vibrant satirical show put in its place.

The current series is not as bad as previous series, from what I’ve seen so far.

But it’s still a long way from the show I grew up with.

Rory Bremner's Madeleine McCann gaff

Rory Bremner has been criticized for a sketch where it is suggested Gordon Brown will find Madeleine McCann on the eve of an election.

One viewer who complained, David Cairnie, said he found the sketch "despicable".

"I wish to register my abhorrence at a supposed 'joke' proffered by Bremner, Bird and Fortune," he added.

"They suggested that Gordon Brown might produce and hold up Madeleine McCann on the eve of an election as a vote-winning move. It seems that Channel 4 has reached a new level in despicable taste."

I have not seen the sketch in question, but I doubt Bremner was intending to satirize Madeliene McCann. There is nothing funny about a child going missing. However, Gordon Brown is a regular topic in the show. It seems more likely he was the target.

So Gordon Brown was satrized in a way that offended some people.

Well, if satire never offended anyone we'd never have got past the first broadcast of That Was The Week That Was.

Let's hope that none of the complainents put their foot through their television, unlike one person who complained about the 1976 Bill Grundy/Sex Pistols Interview.

Bremner Bird and Fortune is the last decent satirical television programme in the UK.

It's on Sundays at 7pm on Channel 4.

Liberal Democrats: Choices

As the Blow Monkeys would sing "You talk about choice". And it's everywhere.

You can choose your school. You can choose your hospital.

But one area where choice seems to be seeping away is in politics.


And the Liberal Democrats seem to have falllen victim to this

No fundamental policy disagreements?

What choice does that give Liberal Democrat party members?

I remember the 2006 conference. The smell of debate everywhere, from tax to nukes.

And don't forget the fight between the Orange Book lovers and the left of the party.

If candidates with differing views don't come forward, perhaps another lyric from Choices will be appropriate.

"The castle that you build on is made out of sand."

Shakespeare

Shakespeare is still a cornerstone of British culture.

It has survived the horrors of “instant books”, churned out by a minor celebrity.

The defining quote on “instant books” is from Ian Hislop in 1995, when he appeared on the once-great Have I Got News For You alongside Paula Yates.

“I hear the book only took you a week. Did you have writers’ block or something?”

At the moment I have taken Antony and Cleopatra out of the Harrow Learning Resources Centre.

I studied it at school when I was seventeen.

Shakespeare puts poetry in the mouths of all his characters, from the highest Roman emperor to the lowest slave.

Everyone is equal in their expression.

Shakespeare even survives the translation into other mediums.

The best film ever made of a Shakespeare play is Roman Polanski’s Macbeth.

It is neither sensationalised nor sanitized.

We are not told what to feel, we are simply a presence.

The reason I love Shakespeare: and in particular Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, is because of the prose.

“The triple pillar of the world transformed into a strumpet’s fool”.

Antony is part of the triumvirate, so he is the third pillar holding up the Roman Empire. Cleopatra is described by Philo as a strumpet, as he feels she weakens Antony’s concentration on his duties. And love is the transformer.

Could J.K. Rowling write to that degree?

It is interesting to discover that the study of Shakespeare in schools is limited to the English-speaking world.

My friend Rosie went to school in France, and did not study Shakespeare. Instead she studied Rousseau.

Perhaps neither Rousseau or Shakespeare translate well.

Or, more likely, the study of literature is linked in some way to nationality.

Firstly, we desire to study what we see as part of us. And you can’t visit a theatre in Britain without seeing a Shakespeare play advertised sometime in the future.

Secondly, those who write the curriculum no doubt desire some kind of national identity to be kept, and view studying certain texts as key to this.

It would be interesting if we had a day when the news was read in imitation of the prose of Shakespeare.

A report on Iran could become a sonnet rich in imagery.

NUJ Student Press Card

My NUJ Student Press Card arrived earlier this week.

It's surprisngly big but still fits between my Oyster and X90 card.

Although the picture of me isn't as good as the one on my student card, it's still nice to have.

I do look like a cross between Russ from Hollyoaks and the Owl of the Remove, however.

No furtive rustling in the carriage?

For my Webdesign course I am researching the future of newspapers.

Hopefully the rise of the free newspaper (such as Metro) will give newspapers a reprieve from cultural death.

It is quite scary to imagine a world without them.

Envisage an Underground carriage full of commuters with handheld computers or MP3 players.

No one able to get a news fix by glancing at a front page.

No quiet rustling as a tabloid is unfolded.

Just the sound of thirty electronic devices bleeping and clicking away.

And judging by the number of people unable to turn off keyboard bleeps, people like it when their device makes pointless noises.

If I have to listen to that every journey, I will rebel against the wholly electronic media age.

I will strap myself to the roof of the Underground carriage each time I make a journey.

Let’s hope newspapers survive for a few decades longer.

Otherwise I’d better log off and try and find some industrial strength tape.

As you can see, I haven’t even worked how to strap myself to the train yet…

Enemybook

Enemybook is a Facebook application developed by MIT student Kevin Matulef.

According to the Guardian, so far 1,200 have added the Facebook application.

It allows you to display people as enemies on your Facebook page, and also to tell your friends to enemy someone.
The Enemybook home page features a guide to how the Facebook application works

With Facebook a popular networking site among schoolchildren, I wonder if this application will increase cyberbullying.

Imagine if one class member was added as an enemy by the rest of the class.

Perhaps it is time for some Facebook applications to have an age restriction.

But I am not sure how this would happen.

I'm Backing Brian Paddick

I am very pleased that Brian Paddick, the former Lambeth police commander, is a Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor.

I hope he will be selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate.

Brian Paddick is realistic about the hopelessness of our current drugs policy.

We cannot keep spending finite police resources on prosecuting those in possession of cannabis.

There is a concern over the mental health effects of cannabis, which I share.

Yet due to low morale and low pay, the British police are stretched to the limit.

We don’t need our police filling in paperwork because they’ve arrested a youth smoking a joint.

We need them policing clubland at weekends, chasing joyriders and arresting serious offenders.

Just consider how few rapes are prosecuted in this country.


According to a BBC news story a few months ago, only 5% of rapes result in a conviction

Public rallies took place in Lambeth after Paddick was transferred after a press outcry.


Ken Livingstone has been a decent Mayor of London, yet his support for hardline religious leaders makes him questionable.

Brian Paddick will build on Ken’s success and clean up this great city.

And don’t even think about Boris Johnson.

According to Private Eye, journalists were not allowed in to his campaign launch unless they wore pro-Boris stickers.

Boris Johnson wants to ban under-16’s from travelling free on public transport, because some of them cause trouble.

The latter is very true.

Yet bored children causing trouble on public transport will simply cause trouble in their own streets if banned from buses.

Brian Paddick also wants to power the London Underground via renewable energy.

What a good idea. Has Ken Livingstone thought of that?


Not even Green Party candidate Sian Berry has mentioned it on her campaign website


I’ll be blogging on the mayoral race throughout its stages.

But I’ll be very disappointed with the Liberal Democrats if Brian Paddick is not selected.

The party is too dull. Kennedy is no longer leader and their best talent are still backbench MP’s.

It seems those of a more superficial bent are backing Boris.

Do you really want a Conservative running London?

Do you remember the recession during John Major’s tenancy of Number 10?

Section 28 destroying the lives of gay teenagers?

Our industrial sector ravenged, making us the laughing stock of Europe.

Vote for a radical alternative to Ken.

News on Brian Paddick's campaign:

You can recieve more news via the web, Facebook or Twitter (text 'follow brianpaddick' (without the quotes) to 07624 801 423.

Brian Reade

Brian Reade’s column in yesterday’s Mirror really made me angry

There is nothing wrong with columnists writing controversial material to stimulate debate.

In fact, I would regard this as an essential part of any magazine or newspaper.

Yet Reade’s argument is less convincing than any tale spun by Jeffrey Archer.

Let us deconstruct.

Firstly, Reade’s designation of the political journalist as Peregrine was clearly designed to alienate Mirror readers.

Unless Peregrine Worsthorne had been speaking to him.

Secondly, Reade does not provide any evidence that when the political journalist said “the stories that really affect our lives”, he meant stories from inside Westminster.

And just because 90% of the people Reade knows drool over the McCann story with their plastic empathy, it doesn’t follow that this repeats across the country.

No doubt many of the 90% are Mirror journalists who monitor the news so they can discover what to write about.

Apparently anyone who doesn’t agree with the high level of coverage that the disappearance of a four-year-old five months ago gets is a snob.

Well, dust off my topper and turn my nose skyward.

Nobody has anything but sympathy for Madeleine.

But it isn't the most important item on the news agenda.

Like it or not, what happens in Westminster affects us all.

That is where laws are passed and governments formed.

Perhaps Brian Reade is the one who should be treated with contempt.

Liberal Democrat Leadership Candidates: The Hemming Way

The latest news on the Liberal Democrat Leadership is that there are three candidates,

1.Chris Huhne (13/5 according to Guido Fawkes),

2.Nick Clegg (1/2), who described a list of offences New Labour had created at the 2006 Liberal Democrat conference.

3. John Hemming.
MP for Birmingham Yardley.
A Birmingham City Councillor.

If Hemming wins, the Liberal Democrats will be doing things the Hemming way...

Article 19

Article 19 is a global human rights organisation, with an emphasis on freedom of expression.

Currently they are campaigning to free imprisoned Burmese politican and campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi, as well


The organisation has an excellent website for journalists.

It follows the grid system and is easy to navigate.

I first came across it this summer while I was browsing the Westminster Journalism site, and I have signed up to the free e-mail updates. I highly recommend them.

Most of the e-mails are press releases urging action in a part of the world.

Article 19 is a worthy cause and you can
donate money here

Facebook

Facebook is the online curate’s egg-good in places.

That’s a high compliment considering how tedious many social interaction sites are.

Bebo is a good example of this, a site that always makes me feel like someone has vomited a bellyful of misspelt words onto their profile.

Inevitably, Bebo profiles are accompanied by videos to rival the worst of You Tube, such as two teenagers pouring beer all over themselves while sitting in their car.

However, Facebook does have some downsides. The first is the Anglocentric nature of its networking.

While America and the UK have regional networks, countries such as Poland and Germany have only educational and country-wide networks, which seems ridiculously lazy.

As a result various other versions of Facebook not in English are springing up, geared towards a single country or language.

I’m also astonished by the plethora of applications springing up.

While I don’t share the sentiments of one of my friends, who said he was “disappointed that Facebook ha[d] turned into goddamn myspace”, I do wonder what precisely people get out of them.

Fancy turning someone into a zombie while hurling sheep and buying drinks for friends? There is even a Facebook group set up to protest against the spread of these types of applications.

I wonder what applications they will develop next.

Maybe one that lets you compare naked pictures of your friends, rather like a spoof television show from the mind of Chris Morris.

Still, if I can keep in touch with friends in Boston or Baton Rouge, browse Facebook groups such as “Jeremy Kyle should be Prime Minister” while lamenting the demise of culture or watch people in the LRC browse 400 photos of drunken students throwing kebabs like zombies while under the influence of cheap drink, I’m not complaining.

Liberal Democrat Latest

It seems like only yesterday that I was listening to Menzies Campbell strut his stuff at the Liberal Democrat Conference in 2006 at the Brighton Centre.

Campbell was referred to fondly by the delegates as "Uncle Ming", yet he came across to me as uncomfortable, unlike a speech by former leader Charles Kennedy.

And now-just over a year on-he's resigned, with the Lib Dems dropping to 11% in the polls. It makes me concerned that we face a future with a two-party system, with neither party differing in policy in some areas.

It looks like Nick Clegg will be the successor-although he seems dispassionate.

Royal Mail talks

It seems that the postal strike could be coming to an end after CWU representatives and Royal Mail have agreed to talks.

There have been a program of rolling strikes over the summer, crippling mail deliveries, and ever since late September the majority of postal staff have been on strike continously.

I have every sympathy with the CWU, given the failure of the Government to support the postal industry in the way it bailed out Northern Rock, and the obsession with competition.

Last week Tony Benn wrote on this subject in the Guardian, and made the point that other public services such as the police run at a loss.

Dispatches

Building on the success of last Friday’s excellent lecture on financial regulation, a subject that I’m particularly keen to specialize in, today’s lecture was given by a Dispatches reporter.

She has been working on a programme dealing with late-term abortions and the procedures undergone during them, which will be broadcast next Wednesday on Channel 4 at 10:40pm.

The first person to make a film on Osama Bin Laden, she has also reported on Iraq and cirrhosis of the liver caused by excessive drinking.
The latter involved a mobile liver testing station being set up in Manchester, which resulted in over 50% of visitors being diagnosed with liver problems, no doubt saving many lives.

We were also privileged to watch extracts from the Dispatches documentaries she has made, working with production companies such as Oxford based Quicksilver Media Limited.

These included a report on the brutality used in the American prison system, which seems to have spilled over into America’s “boot camps” (thankfully, our own boot camp is civilised) and the mass infiltration of the Iraqi police by Shia militias.

So would I like to be a reporter on Dispatches? Emphatically yes.

Although my degree focus mainly on print journalism, I feel I will still get a good grounding in broadcast journalism. Speaking to one of my friends on the print strand after the lecture, we were discussing how it seems to be easier to move from print journalism to broadcast than from broadcast journalism to print.

While much of the media concentrates on a tedious story about Gordon Brown not calling an election, Royal Mail is in chaos due to the determination of the management to cut costs at the expense of wages and pension schemes, children are being shot across London and Manchester by a generation that seems to be losing hope, and the Olympics are causing house prices to further rise.

All these, and many more stories, rely on programmes such as Dispatches to tell them.

That famous last line “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one of them” still rings true.

Diana Inquest Accident at Paris Ritz

Rather ironically, the coach carrying the Diana jurors has crashed outside the Paris Ritz, colliding with a police motorcycle escort. A tire burst and the wheel trim came off. However, no-one was hurt, although the motorcyclist did fall off his bike.

Poorly written Yahoo News story here
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20071008/tuk-diana-inquest-coach-crashes-at-paris-45dbed5_2.html

Metro story here:
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=69341&in_page_id=34

More Time For Politics

Tony Benn is a prolific diarist as well as a parliamentary legend.

Nine volumes have been published so far, covering the years from 1940 (when he was still a schoolchild) to early 2007.

The Diaries improve with time, with the first three volumes differing little from a standard political biography, although Benn’s years as the Postmaster General give a taste of the radical and amusing content found in the latter diaries.

From 1970, however, Benn starts to examine life outside the confines of the Labour Party and the constituency, and begins his interest in trade unionism and grassroots politics.

The next three decades see his unique chronicling of the disintegration of the 1974-9 Labour Government, the brutality of Thatcherism, the miners’ strike and the rise of New Labour.

This Thursday I was able to purchase a copy of the latest volume, “More Time For Politics”.

It was interesting to note that the Harrow Waterstones only had one copy (which was on order).

An assistant told me this was evidence of the political apathy of the borough, and that most of the stock was academic due to the large number of schools in the area.

However, I did spy a copy of “Free At Last”. Therefore, I took a break from shorthand and my notes on Central Government and travelled to Euston Station, just a short walk from University College London and a branch of Waterstones which, like the other Central London branches, had multiple copies.

Ruth Winstone states in her introduction that she wishes to juxtapose the small details of life, such as Benn’s quest for his favourite three-cheese pizza, and the great and newsworthy events, such as September 11^th and Benn’s pleas for peace in the aftermath.

The Diary shows Benn as enjoying the small things in life as well as the major successes like the million-strong anti-war march, and taking comfort in small pleasures when setbacks or tragedies occur.

One such tragedy overshadows the whole volume: the death of Benn’s wife Caroline in late 2000.

The first few months of the Diary are interspaced with the realisation of the emptiness created when you lose someone close to you, and the little routines and certainties involving them are severed.

Benn also makes more note of his remaining family than in previous editions, with his children filling the gap left by his wife’s death.

Iraq is of course the central theme in these Diaries, with Benn noting the change in the Labour Party. However, even here a family element intervenes, as his son Hilary is now a Cabinet Minister.

Benn is upbeat about the difference Hilary’s position makes to the New Labour government “I just laughed out loud and danced around the office-I was so proud”, and is also concerned not to jeopardize his son’s career.

“Not only do I not want to endanger Hilary…Caroline would reconstitute herself out of her ashes and strangle me if I did anything to endanger him”.

The greater focus on family as the Diaries age seems to reflect the fact that Benn has also aged, and his children are now grown up and succeeding in various roles.

The thread of personal loss involving both his family (Caroline and her sister) and friends (Ron Todd, Sir Edward Heath) runs parallel with the thread of sadness at the horrific loss of life throughout the years Benn is writing, first in New York, when Benn predicts that Britain will support America, and then in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To add a personal note, the one thing that sets these Diaries apart from the other volumes is that I can read Benn’s account of events we were both at-though of course I am not mentioned once!

An example is the 2006 Liberal Democrat Conference, which I attended after my local MP suggested it.

It was during the first week of my residency in Hollingdean and I remember the enjoyment of getting up each day and being surrounded by news reporters and journalists (and yes, Matthew Paris is cheerful even when rushing off to another story) as well as Liberal Democrat grandees.

Tony Benn was speaking there to a fringe event-which I attended-and he records his surprise at receiving a standing ovation and his memories of the Grand Hotel, which reminded him of staying there as Labour Party chairman in 1971, just after the first Wilson government was (in my view tragically) defeated.

Benn also recalls his speech at a benefit concert for Flt. Lt. Malcom Kendall-Smith, where I met the former during the interval.

In Benn’s diaries, he praises Mark Steel (who is always excellent) and remembers Vivienne Westwood getting mixed up with Vietnam and Iraq during her talk. Ironically, both of missed the latter acts.

The most important faculty to keep during life is your sense of humour, and Benn (who regularly reduces audiences to gales of laughter during his talks) has thankfully never lost his, and hopefully never well.

When someone writes a hateful letter to him (and does not even sign it, not desiring a conversation) which calls his wife “ghastly”, Benn records the letter in full and says underneath “So at least I haven’t sold out”.

It cannot be easy for someone to watch the institution he has given his life to and been an active member of all his life come to power as “a rotten government”, and Benn’s optimism is phenomenal.

Would I criticize Tony Benn for any of the comments he makes in his Diary?

The satirist Craig Brown paints Benn as saying one thing one day and saying another the next, but that is the nature of a diary, it records a mind being changed.

I am undecided about his meeting with Saddam Hussain in February 2003, which Alistair Campbell described in his diaries as “turn[ing] my stomach”. Was the interview naïve or did was it a well-intentioned move towards stopping a war?

Benn’s description of Tariq Aziz as a “nice guy” was even more surprising, although he did note that Bush 41^st and Margaret Thatcher had also met Aziz. It is interesting how that is never remarked upon by journalists, unlike Donald Rumsfeld’s two meeting with Saddam

However, one can never agree with everything anyone else believes, however close personally or politically we feel to them, and this is in my view a good thing.

Benn’s diaries rise head and shoulders above the efforts of Castle, Crossman, and even Clark.

They are a mine of information on the British state and the actions of governments since 1951. They are a record of cartoons of the day, some shocking in their conservative bias (I recommend a flick through Benn’s Diaries from 1980-90 to find some raw specimens).

And they are also humorous and full of warmth. A quiet day in Brighton would often find me spending an hour or so re-reading Benn’s accounts of events such as the Suez crisis or the miner’s strike.

Whether you are left of Galloway or right of Tebbit, younger than a first-time voter or older than Benn himself, I recommend all volumes of Benn’s diaries (though only read the paunchy single-volume edition if you cannot track down the others). The latest one is in the bookshops, as is its predecessor, while the others are available in second-hand shops or online.

Central London Burma March

Today I joined ten thousand red-clad marchers as we protested outside Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament at the brutality of the military regime in Burma and the inaction of the international community. The march was organized by the Burmese Democratic Movement Association, http://www.bdmauk.org, and I heard about it from an Article 19 e-mail on Friday.

We set off from outside Tate Britain just after eleven o’clock, followed by a ridiculously large police presence including several vans full of police officers and a police helicopter which flew above us just before we set off. Why so many police were drafted in to monitor peaceful demonstrators I do not understand, except perhaps to reinforce the crackdown on peaceful protests. Obviously, police were needed to guide demonstrators along the route and stop the traffic, but the number of police actually standing along the cordon directing people was miniscule-around twenty or so-compared to those inside the police vans. There were also two mounted police officers keeping pace with us as we drew near to Whitehall. I did not take any photographs while we were marching. I am sorry for this, but it is difficult to keep up with the other marchers and take pictures, and often people are very bad at avoiding bumping others. However, I took a few photos towards the end of the Trafalgar Square rally, and tried-with limited success-to record some of the speeches on my Dictaphone. There are some more photos on my Facebook, although I do not consider them nearly as good as the ones here.

We arrived in Trafalgar Square around 12:50, having chanted our way through London for an hour and a half, and heard speeches from Burmese activists and Amnesty International representatives, which emphasized the determination of the monks and the moral weakness of the junta. A quote from Aung San Suu Kyi sums up the mood of the marchers and the message they sent to the many journalists there. “All the military have are arms”. Around me were thousands of protesters, of all ages, wearing red headbands and carrying black Amnesty placards. Petitions were circulating through the crowd while the odd drummer set all this to rhythmic music.

Mistaken Identity

Apparently I am beautiful.

I have been added to MSN by men from Argentina convinced that I am a woman on Flickr with the account name "brennybaby", as my hotmail address begins with "brenny_baby". Curiously though, none of them had found this blog. I discovered this on Monday night while spending half an hour or so on Facebook in a break from shorthand. An MSN window opened and one of the two screenames online that I did not recognise began to talk to me in Spanish. My understanding of Spanish, despite having a friend from that country, is worse than the acting in Hollyoaks so it was a relief when I found my message could speak English. After a short discussion, during which he told me "my friend says you are beautiful", we established who I was (although I am curious about the other brennybaby. I have seen her Flicker account but am curious as to what she does for a living). I also sent a link to this blog to him and others. If you received this blog link after contacting me thinking I am an attractive woman from Argentina when in fact I am a male journalism student from Britain, hello!

This Sunday, should I have time and wake up before 10 (difficult due to the idiots who scream and run shopping trolleys around outside my window, it's like being back on the Sandhills Estate in East Oxford), I intend to go to Speakers Corner and record via my Dictaphone some of the speeches. I'll probably go via the X90.

Britain is not the only country with a Speakers' Corner. Amsterdam, Australia and Canada all have variations on this theme, as do Singapore and Trinidad and Tobago. Singapore is interesting because there are restrictions. According to Wikipedia, you must register with the police first. Speeches are also subject to national laws. An article on the designated area in Singapore is linked below.

http://www.singapore-window.org/sw00/000904it.htm

Dead or Alive?

This morning's Express carries a large photo of Madeleine grinning.

On each side are two columns.

The first says "She's Dead..." and gives reasons why she might be. The second says "She's Alive..." and gives reasons why she might be.

It's laid out rather like a "Top Trumps" card. Instead of ratings like "Engine size" or "Age", there are "Sedatives", "Mileage" and "Police Claims".


And the tabloids complain about Patrick Kielty...