an immedia reaction

As I was browsing through a discarded copy of The Sun on the train back from Shrewsbury this evening, I stopped to have a quick read of the extracts from Cherie Blair’s memoirs.

There was a box-out section on the left-hand page of a double page spread with a picture of an almost completely naked woman at the top. It turned out to be an account of how Alastair Campbell reacted to news that The Sun was going to publish topless pictures of Carole Caplin, Cherie’s lifestyle guru. Apart from thinking wow, she has really odd nipples, I was intensely amused not only by the brazenness of the paper in re-printing one of aforesaid photos which apparently caused dear Tone such a headache but mainly by the paper’s decision to star out the vowel in “t*ts”. I mean come on people, they’re right there, staring at you from the top of article. The damage is done. Have the courage of your convictions. Write the word “tits”. Is the effect of that particular, uncensored four-letter word really going to be any worse than a picture of a woman naked except for her knickers?

The main body of the extract dealt with dear Tone’s reaction to David Kelly’s death. Apparently it crushed him and he immediately ordered an investigation. Good for him. However, what struck me most was Cherie’s description of events leading up to this. She wrote about the BBC’s row with Downing Street, and how the allegations of dossier sex-upifying had been proved untrue by the Hutton Inquiry (Hannah’s inner monologue cuts in: “Yes Cherie, the Hutton Inquiry, that most unbiased of processes, which no one other than you is convinced by) and the issues surrounding the anonymity of Andrew Gilligan’s source. And then, as I recall, her words were: “Dr Kelly had been named.” She didn’t say who by.

I was powerfully reminded of myself as a small child, after having had a fight with my younger sister, being asked by my mother why the younger child was crying, saying: “She got hurt.” Got hurt by who was obvious, even if I could never bring myself to say it.

I’m tempted to infer from Cherie’s choice of phrase that the decision to release David Kelly’s name to the press, even if not a decision made by Blair himself, was a decision made by his administration that backfired horribly. It’s good of Cherie to let us know how contrite he was. Wasn’t he a nice man and a wonderful Prime Minister?

Ok this is just getting bizarre now. For whatever reason, the majority of spam comments on this blog are about medication of some kind usually to do with curing impotence. I have taken measures to try to reduce the number of such comments that are held in moderation, as I get sent an e-mail alert each time a comment is created, and the spam makes it hard to find the very few genuine comments I actually get.

These steps have worked, but I’m starting to suspect that whatever is spamming me is keeping track of whatever I’m blocking and is now directing different spam in my direction. I’ve recently had spam comments advertising office furniture and kitchens.

I logged in just now and there were only two comments. And all they said was
“Trucks” and “Mercedes Benz”. Double-you tee eff indeed…

The exchange between Frank Field and Alistair Darling in this article on the BBC News website gives me one more reason to love Frank Field.

A promising figure in the early Blair administration, Frank Field was re-shuffled out of cabinet fairly early on, due to actually having good ideas and daring to challenge the leadership. As I remember anyway.. I was only 13 at the time, so I freely admit I may not have perfect recall of this. However, he went on to become an active backbencher, the kind of politician who actually makes a name for themselves by working to improve things for people. Something of a maverick in his party, but one that raises their own profile by actually doing their job as a representative of the people. Rather than by being appointed to high office and having no time for such trivial things as they’re too busy cocking up national policy. Ahem.

And while admittedly he was onto something of a winner with his fight against the proposed scrapping of the 10p tax rate, which Everyone with a capital E seemed to consider A Bad Move^TM on the part of the government, the fact that he admits that personally dislikes Gordon Brown only increases my admiration of him.

Genuine honesty is so rare in politics. We’re reduced to the meeja telling us: “We’re fairly sure X hates Y”. I can’t help feeling that politics would appeal so much more to the general public if politicians came out and said “Well actually, we dislike each other intensely, but we’re doing our best to work together.” And then, when policies didn’t work, we’d know why and who to blame. And we wouldn’t have to put up with all this waffle about circumstances, funding, political climate and so on.

Alistair Darling was very gracious in his acknowledgement of Frank Field’s apology, but if only he had had the balls to say: “We made a mistake, and now we’re worried you’re going to trash us in this by-election. We’re very sorry, please vote for us. Everyone knows the Tories I rubbish.” Or something.

You never know… it might just work…

I’ve not had my new mac very long and it’s very different to the ones I trained on when doing my journalism course. I remember a lot of how the interface is set up and where you have to go to do certain actions, and even the ancient macs we have at work follow the rule that closing the programme window itself doesn’t mean you have exited the programme.

However, I think I have finally managed to work out how to copy photos from my photo library into a separate file and edit them without the changes I make being applied in the original folder to the original file. But it was rather annoying that this didn’t happen automatically. And when I open each file to edit it, iPhoto opens it as a new “event”. When you download images off your camera, it groups them by date taken, which is very useful, but calling the copied image a whole new event, really isn’t. But, it’s early days yet and I’m still quite taken with it.

Since persuading my ex that he really wanted to give me a pro Flickr account as a Christmas present, I’ve been quite taken with the site, but still use Facebook more. Flickr’s management of photos is infinitely superior, but I haven’t dared get sucked in to all the networking aspects of it, for fear of losing even more of my soul to the internet.

However, I noticed today that it lets you create badges of your images and thought I would draw your attention to some of my photos of the balloon flight I enjoyed yesterday morning, as a feature assignment for the paper.

I wanted to edit the source code to condense the rectangle widthways and expand it heightwise but couldn’t see where in the code it might be written. I think it’s written in css, any suggestions what I might be looking for..?

Edit: After copy-posting some code The Telf suggested, I’ve now got this a more manageable size, and managed to change the height as well as the width…

I then generated some more source code in flickr to see if I could work out whether I could change the number of photos you’re allowed to display. The options are something like 1, 3, 5 and 10. I I’d like something like 12 or 9. But either I wasn’t looking in the right place to see where the numbers changed (I generated code for 10 pictures and then 5 and tried to compare the two… I guess I could always copy past them into a word document and go through it line by line.. sigh.) or they won’t let you modify it to that extent…

Still, the current display is better than was. So I shall continue messing for a while longer

So between holidaying in Thailand and acquiring a new boyfriend (which has necessitated a lot of commuting to Birmingham and London), you might have noticed I haven’t been posting much. I will do my best to rectify that over the next few days, though this weekend will be suitably hectic with trips down to London then back up to Brum, returning to Ludlow early on Sunday in order to sing in church.. but I digress.

Although, I haven’t been living in London for a while and the whole mayoral election saga has largely passed me by, I would be interested in the thoughts of anyone who is currently living there (or has reason to spend a lot of time there) on this article in The Guardian, which basically accuses The Evening Standard of conducting a highly biased campaign against Ken Livingstone. Was this the case? Did anyone notice? Or are none of you city sophisticates reading newspapers anymore?

Incidentally, for those interested, there is now a “Boris: Not in My Name” group on Facebook should anyone feel the urge to gather in large groups and commiserate that the capital will shortly be going to the dogs…

However, let’s wait and see. A friend of mine has interesting theory. The Tories know Boris is a political nightmare, but he’s a popular one. A Tory mayor is a considerable asset, which they won’t want to screw up. Boris may become little more than a puppet mayor, with the real decisions being made by advisors. That’s not much comfort if you’re still not on side with most Tory policy.. but it may at least mean he is prevented from implementing some of his dafter ideas.

So by now, the whole world knows Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 is a baggage-handling disaster. In print, on air and online, people who should know better have been queueing up to say that this just goes to show Britain can’t handle major building projects and it’s a worldwide embarrassment that we’re this incompetent.

I say to them: Shut up. Yes, it’s quite blatantly ridiculous that there were baggage handling problems on the very first day but I can’t see that there’s anything particularly British about this. Other countries have baggage handling problems too you know.

Maybe not just after terminals have opened, but I’m currently in Bangkok, Thailand. A new international airport opened here in 2006 to replace the old one at Don Muang. Within six months, Don Muang was back in service for some international flights, because the new terminal couldn’t cope with the numbers. And it’s the second largest terminal in the world. Ok, it was six months before that happened, and I don’t know whether that was how long it the Thais to realise it was a problem, or how long it took them to think of a solution. But still, airport problems are not unique to Britain.

People have drawn comparisons with the Millennium Dome and the Millennium Bridge, sayng T5 is yet another example of how bad we are this. But what about all those engingeering projects that worked and that we can be proud of? The Emirates Stadium for Arsenal? The newly-refurbished St Pancras Station which now receives the Eurostar? The London Eye? I seem to recall the London Eye wasn’t a British-initiated project, but it’s now run by British Airways. And they’ve had, what, one breakdown in the last eight years? That’s pretty good going by anyone’s reckoning.

So, in my not so humble opinion, the problem is not British engineering, or British project management. It’s the British attitude. We just love to complain and we love to blame ourselves. I’m not an expert on the ins and outs of who co-ordinated T5 and how and yes, I will say again, if you have baggage handling problems on the first day your flagship terminal opens you should be very ashamed, but last time I checked, wasn’t the British Airports Authority, who are partly responsible, run by a Spanish company…?

The idea that badly behaved children could have their DNA placed on a database to monitor them before they become full-blown criminals, as it were, horrifies me.

It sounds like something out of Minority Report. DNA testing has proved a remarkable tool for solving crimes years after they took place. Leaps in technology have meant many people have been brought to justice who would have otherwise avoided detection. This is a good thing. But we must draw the line somewhere. This is a gross violation of civil liberties. Innocent until proven guilty? Anyone?

If you think someone is at risk of turning into a criminal, change their situation. Educate them, give them opportunities. Discipline them early so they get the message that bad behaviour is not rewarded. Anything but this.

Fortunately, it seems the comments were an individual’s personal views and not those of the establishment. But God help us if Gary Pugh ever gets into any kind of position to implement such crazy ideas. There are enough children on that database already, who have committed no crime and have no criminal record.

This wasn’t the article I originally wanted to link to, but I couldn’t find the one I read earlier. That article had some random statistic in it saying something like 72% of ASBOs were given to people aged under 21. I know nothing about the credibility of such a figure.. but in the light of my last post, I can’t help wonder, if that statistic is true, whether it reflects society’s general criminalisation of people under 21, rather than a genuine problem with potential young offenders.

This piece which appeared on the BBC site last week touched on a lot of issues that I feel very strongly about.

I’m only going to deal with one in particular here, but it’s also worth noting that I feel vindicated by the description of a climate of “managed fear” where “children” are constantly texting parents to re-assure them they’re safe. I feel it’s an extension of the problem our society has with its constant obsession with paedophiles. And we all know what Hannah thinks about that. Humph. A second issue raised that I have strong views on is the place of “good” news stories in today’s media agenda, but more on that another time.

The main thrust of the article is about the perception of “children” by the public and the media. Research has shown the most common portrayals of “young people” in news stories are as victims, celebrities or criminals. All three categories have the potential to be degrading to “young people” (given the “value” attached to “celebrity” these days…) and none are hugely useful labels for society as a whole.

In my professional life lately, I have written a number of broadly positive stories about “young people.” This included a feature where I went on a police drive around to meet the local hoodie population who, if you believed certain local councillors are to be found regularly shagging in local greenery and are constantly plastered. Yes, some of the people I met were slightly drunk, but none of them were being hugely anti-social. Three lads even broke into an impromptu dance routine for us, playing an mp3 file on one of their mobiles. Happen in London, it would not.

There are certain sections of Ludlow who like to think there is an anti-social behaviour problem here. If you ask me, they have no idea. Ludlow is a paradise compared to numerous larger places. Yet, negative coverage of “the young” nationwide has had a trickle down effect on perceptions of “the yoof” here and though there are some troublemakers, the majority are guilty of nothing more than wanting something to do.

So, where I can counter this with positive stories about “young people”, I do.

Now, you are probably noticing the proliferation of quotation marks as I have attempted to describe that section of the population which is not adult. The problem is this: it is incredibly difficult to write about anyone under 21 without sounding patronising/stupid/just plain wrong.

In my experience, and I was one once, young people don’t call themselves “young people.” At the age of 23, with a full-time job, I would happily refer to myself as a young professional. But I tie myself in knots when trying to refer to people younger than myself.
Children - only covers people upto the age of 12
Teenagers - only covers people aged 13 - 19
Kids - patronising
Youngsters - even more so
Youth - has connotations of referring only to males and, at a push, Nazi brainwashing
Young people - too generic, too constructed, I’m technically a young person, (I know I am, everyone I meet over 60, and there’s quite a few of those around here, tells me I am) but I’m not convinced that term is meant to apply to me.

You see, back then (and now, if I’m honest), I didn’t think of myself as a young person. I was (and am) Hannah. Hannah likes watching Have I Got News For You and reading Discworld novels. Hannah likes going to the theatre and to the cinema and watching live bands. And concerts. Hannah has a diverse range of interests not linked to her age.

I think what I’m trying to see is that we need to start seeing people who aren’t legally adults as people, before we see them as anything else. Yes, some of their needs will be specifically related to their age, but they are human first and foremost. And they should be treated as such rather than demonised on the one hand or hedged around with patronising jargon on the other.

And while this next video may not meet my exacting standards for being as good as the original, the use of so much fruit for such a purpose has to be met with, at the very least, a great deal of respect.

I also admire the humour created by the wanton destruction of a window and the toad falling out of the drain pipe. And I find it very fitting that an advert which uses a cover version of a song is then parodied itself in this fashion.