Friday 24 October 2008
Friday 19 September 2008
Industry confessionals
Despite having to pay City University £9000 of my father’s pension and another £8000 of rent to a Haringay landlord, I must go and work for some local newspapers. For free. I will then eventually qualify to enter City. Then I will achieve the £17,000 MA which will lead to a £12,000 job. Righto.
Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press are the two major local newspaper stables and have maintained an embarrassingly high profile over the last six months. Local print journalism has taken a massive blow to the financial broadside since the property market began its downward spiral, for a very simple reason - advertising.
Papers were once graced by a rich crop of property advertising which, since the housing market downturn, has become a thinning scalp. As the advertising funds tighten, so do newspaper company belts and hacks are forced to work extra long shifts to cover work left by gaps in the workforce. If a reporter leaves, it is more than likely he will not be replaced, and his work is quietly absorbed by the grumbling colleagues who remain. This is bad news for everyone; the quality of journalism (already questionable) goes down and hopeful graduates don’t get the jobs which overworked reporters don’t really want to be doing in the first place.
However, in our attempts to ingratiate ourselves into this loveless industry, we prostitute ourselves on a weekly basis at some middle-of-the-road regional. I begin my first placement in a bad temper - an entire summer of work experience means I have no cash to see my friends, buy any smart work clothes or learn to drive. In fact I can’t really afford to do this placement at all, but this is a problem overlooked by generations of the public schoolboys who call the shots. Polly Toynbee can call herself a social champion when she makes work experience illegal under the Slavery Abolition Act. Until then, she can shut up.
* Mary “Darey” Bishop, Bordon Post. See next entry for further info.
Friday 15 August 2008
Leam Courier's In praise of....public benches
It is a truth universally unacknowledged that there is nowhere to sit down in
Thursday 14 August 2008
Leam Courier - Gen Y
There are some fashionable buzzwords being bandied about by the press this week. Leading the league table of overused phrases is ‘narcissism’, usually in reference to Barack Obama’s image heavy presidential campaign. Outdoing even Narcissus, not only does he coo over his own reflection, but inflicts it on the global public.
Wednesday 25 June 2008
Warwick Shootout - "Watch"
Due to a mixture of creativity, stubbornness and, frankly, distilled genius we won Best Performer (Will), Best Direction and Best Film.
Sunday 2 March 2008
ITS - Immuno Technologically Shitty syndrome
Monday 11 February 2008
Disproportional representation
Voter apathy is a bad habit at so young an age. This being an exceptionally middle-class university, disdain at proletarian ignorance during the general elections usually results in ‘Well...it’s probably a good thing half the population don’t vote. They wouldn’t even know what they’re voting for.’ The SU aren’t quite as cack-handed as the Blair government, but it might be if you don’t tell it what to do. You’re not ‘the population’; you’re in the top 5% of intelligent people in this country. Unless you go to Score.
I covered the elections night on Saturday for RaW. People who asked me about it were generally impressed at the fact that the winning candidate (Stuart ‘Tommo’ Thomas) obtained almost double the votes than rival Peter Ptashko. I told them to fuck off. 1712 votes made Tommo’s victory. That's not an impressive feat. There are approximately 20,000 union members and about 12% of you voted. 1712 people do not represent the
There were some interesting claims in the manifestos which needed serious grilling from the students to ascertain their veracity. How exactly did James Berragan intend to overrule the University and encourage such publications as the Sanctuary? How did Peter Ptashko finally pull off a lecture-free Freshers’ Week? Did Peter Thomas actually have any policies of his own or was he just a Tory Party bitch? Frankly I found all of the presidential candidates an unprepossessing bunch and voted for persistent underdog R.O.N. Although I voted for Woolley second, solely because it was nice to come across something resembling a sense of humour. ‘Nuts about Students’ didn’t quite cut it for me.
Elections intrigues are actually quite interesting, if you look into them. For example, a certain member of the democracy committee is allegedly under investigation for mouthing off about the rivals of a wannabe Sports Officer. Who is, incidentally, her boyfriend. Meanwhile, it’s likely that Tommo garnered a good proportion of his votes from Warwick Snow Society, of which he happens to be President. Warwick Snow isn’t the only society to attempt to monopolise the elections campaigns; there are also candidate clusters from RAG and of course the Tories. RAG, it appears, has won the day showing the
I have, at best, an ambiguous relationship with the SU. I don’t like how soft drinks cost as much as alcohol on a night out. I dislike its insistent monopolisation of student creativity (i.e. a vicious dislike of the Sanctuary). I think that flirt! was a really, REALLY bad idea. I don’t quite understand why it has a pro-life stance. But I do realise that anyone who dislikes any aspect of the SU should probably make things change by voting. This isn’t the general election, and actually, your vote does make a difference. Get involved. Come on....propose a motion to get rid of Score at the next Union Council meeting. You know you want to. No? Bugger...