Being the new girl
I suppose it would be quite an anticlimax if I didn’t mention how my first week of work went. After all, I did spend months whinging about being unemployed and so surely writing about being employed in the media is much more interesting?
This last week has been one of the longest in my life apart from periods of major examinations at school and university of course.
For those of you who do not know, I have been given a standard lower-end of the pay scale media job as a member of the editorial team for a well-known travel organisation. The building I work in is a large, blue sardine tin nestled around a vast, grey car park fringed with dozens more large blue sardine tins. Unlike Bloomberg’s opulent offices in the Capital or the shiny, modern Guardian Media Group building in Manchester – I am plunged back to reality. This is what the first rung has to be unless your daddy chums it up with the players on Fleet Street. Glamour has very little to do with a job’s appeal to me, after all, I picked Journalism as my choice career and not… well to be honest there are very few jobs out there that are glamourous 100% of the time that spring to mind. Victoria Beckham, whatever she does, that seems to be quite glamorous.
Anyway, meeting, greeting and forgetting names followed by pictures taken for my security pass, a tour of the canteen and the girl’s loos, here’s your desk, ok.
Only a week in and I have been given actual countries to look after and style guides for the differing publications to revise. Style guides like I have never encountered before. Style guides to my mind denote tone of voice, use of certain vocabulary and stock phrases and writing with a particular demographic in mind with the notion of creativity piping into the work you do at the same time. The style guides I have been studying are disected to the point of obsession. The omission of sentences in favour of bullet points, removing full stops at the ends of sentences, not mentioning about hairdressers.
On Friday I found myself wondering if I would ever actually get to do any writing. Considering on journalism work experience you are given reams of picture stories to write up and chase for interviews, I have to admit missing the creativity and speaking to human beings and using my short hand except when taking notes from one of my very sweet senior colleagues.
How much can you tell from a week? I am busy enough to know I am earning my salary but I am not sure how comfortable I am yet. In all honesty, I feel quite different from my colleagues, but maybe that is just down to being the new girl.
And so when I go into work tomorrow I will be combing through ready-prepared text on the system and changing it to fit in with the style guide. No actual writing. More copying, pasting and making sentences into bullet points where applicable.
All of the above misgivings can be put down to being new but at this stage, not only do I miss my journalism classmates from Salford like crazy, but I miss Journalism.
I can relate all of this to being seven years old and starting at my new school in Leicester after moving down from Glasgow. Literally no friends, in the eyes of other seven year olds I might as well have been beamed down from Mars, and I was nervous, looking around for Dairsie House and the teachers that knew me and talked like me. Same feeling but one I haven’t had since moving down to England. Not even moving to Secondary school or Uni replicated this. Secondary school, you go there with loads of other kids from your old school and Uni everybody’s new and drinking heavily to get over the first week. This was cold turkey-style newness and having gone through it before, I know it doesn’t last very long.
But still, I have a nagging doubt.
Maybe I’m not cut out for editorial work, maybe I’m meant to be a reporter. I’m worried that I’m not going to be pushed hard enough.
Still, early days, early days. And at least I get to wear nice shoes (reporters don’t wear heels because there’s to much leg-work) and I’m getting paid more than a trainee reporter. The deadlines are the same with this job which is exciting, speaking to people based all around the world is fun too. The stuff I proofread is incredible and nothing if not inspiring! Touring Borneo, majestic 5* resorts in Dubai, boutique hotels in Paris, sprawling villas on tiny Greek Islands, what adventurous youngster could resist?
Stay tuned, and hopefully my next blog will be full of the exciting people I have spoken to and the amazing places I have written about.
Filed under: Aspirations, Writing, employment | Leave a Comment
Tags: Journalism, reporter, Work, Doubt, new job, nerves, style guides, editorial
The reformation of the Government which was promised to us in 1996 has, if nothing else, reversed and regressed back to the bad old days of pomp and hierarchy. The whole ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude of The Commons stinks. There is no better word to encompass my feeling towards the last weeks of reluctant coughing up of ill-gotten expense claims and wild, almost archaeic and dated notions of what The House of Commons is supposed to be. The clue is in the name.
I was watching Question Time’s Llanndudno edition last night and praying the demon pumping citric acid up Jacqui Smith’s rectum would stop because her face alone was a sour enough response to the fire she was under from an insightful man in the audience who had clearly done his homework and taken the MP quite by surprise. The audience member lobbed huge numbers at her and, for a period which must have felt like a long drawn-out colonic to residents of Spin Land, the camera switched from the audience to Smith to the audience to Smith exaggerating her incredulous expression all the more.
The question was more or less, why didn’t she have to pay back the sum equivalent to a journalist’s salary, on the expenses she claimed on her sister’s house? Smith’s answer was that the committe overseeing all duck-pond type expenses had let her off (lots of reasons, none of which the public are likely to remember or care about). So why, the gentelman says, is she listening to what a committe thinks and not what the voters think en mass? Jacqui Smith deflected this with another milk-curdling expression that she was doing what she was told by the committee, they had decided what would happen. A huge reel of stoney-faced ‘unreserved apologies’ cascaded out when the audience piped up, predictably, about adult videos, and the matter was swiftly muffled by that which serves a such a magnificent distraction – sleeze.
That did not make reassuring viewing. It is no good only making changes to a corrupt system when people take notice, and not the other 99.9% of the time. Just as it is no good apologising and writing a healthy summed cheque just because a committee tells you to, or indeed the opposite and puting the cheque book back in your handbag when a committee lets you off, much like offering to buy a drink for a friend in the pub and they tell you they’ll get this round. Purse goes back in the bag, you get the G&T you would have bought anyway and had the money for but your mate puts it on his tab. Bob’s your uncle. All of the Government’s money is just one huge bar tab now anyway, isn’t it? Too bad we’re a trillion pounds in debt.
I can’t put my finger on what out of the whole segment of QT that bothered me the most – after all it could have just been the expression on Smith’s face, but overall it was like watching a really bad parallell park that you know is never going to happen but the bloody driver keeps shifting anyway rather than drive off and find a better parking space.
Perhaps it was the shocked reaction and ‘this is ridiculous’ attitude that could have so easily been spluttered by my own MP, Alan Duncan, during his August rant about MPs living on ‘rations’ now all eyes are on their claims and extravagances. To them it is like the builders are in to work on their member’s club and they’re coming inside and using the newly carpeted upstairs toilets.
This attitude was then refreshed while listening to a breakfast report on today’s milestone Youth Parliament debate taking place in the Commons. Forgive me, but I can’t remember the name of the politician being questioned as I was flinging together what ended up being a really disgusting salad, however, the gist was that he didn’t believe the UKYP holidng a debate in the Commons was appropriate.
Hello? Democracy calling! Who does he think the Commons belongs to? It’s not his mother’s front room reserved for the vicar and the president of the gardening club! The UKYP are a legitimate, political organisation supporiting mainstream parties and their views and voicing the needs and suggestions of a young generation which is frequently misconstrued or ignored by patronising, snobby, old fogies. The Commons belongs to the people, it is the place the MPs we have elected get across our best interests and it is not a private members club. Because that is what needs to be changed otherwise more serious problems will arise at the next election, namely extreme parties growing in popularity because extreme changes do need to be made where the system is concerned.
The more we dig up, the more politicians seem to receed back into this little club, be it relying on a committee to give them an excuse and a get-out-of-jail-free card (a mere board-game trifle that seems very apt given the current mood) and the Houses of Parliament and all the perks that come with it. It is a giant members-only lounge for some people who need to be made aware that even without the perks, with just their basic net earnings they still have it a whole lot better than most of the people in this country and so they can afford to release some of their hot air and float back down to earth and understand just what we, the people, think of them.
Filed under: News, Politics, Writing | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alan Duncan, committee, Commons, election, expenses, House of Commons, Jacqui Smith, members club, pomp, Question Time, UKYP, voters
The advent of social networking has exploded the traditional media field. The last week has demonstrated this fact beautifully, proving all the more pointedly that the popular voice can now shout louder than any headline. This has rung true in the case of Jan Moir’s misguided column on the speculated drama surrounding the death of Boyzone’s squeaky clean Stephen Gately, as well as the debate surrounding BNP leader Nick Griffin’s invitation onto today’s watershed edition of BBC Question Time.
On the eve of Stephen Gately’s funeral, Daily Mail columnist, Jan Moir, published an article which needn’t be repeated but the general gist insinuated that the pop icon’s natural death was allegedly not as such, and the rest of the article reeked of homophobia and presumptuous scandal sniffing. While the country was still reeling from the death of a man whose public persona was take-home-to-meet-your-mother-immaculate and whose good-boy image had never faltered under the long-lenses of the paps, what journalist would ever write something so upsetting without even a moment’s consideration for public opinion? Or indeed the back-handedness of writing an antagonising column about a man who can’t retort?
Nevertheless, the article was published and those more left-of-the-middle of us were blissfully unaware of the poisonous thing until Twitter King Stephen Fry alerted us all:
I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.12:27 PM Oct 16th from Tweetie
After that post, the internet caught fire and every news outlet wanted a piece of the action. I was tweeting live while this all took place. It was like throwing a chunk of rump steak into a pool of sharks. The Twitter-frenzy that occurred in the hour following the point (and points that superceded) was thrilling to watch and to participate in.
Some critics have speculated that Stephen Fry played a Peid Piper role, maybe so, however Mr Fry does post regularly and never before has one micro-blog of his generated so much interest. And the more interest that accumulated the more the distaste for Jan Moir snowballed. With not a little bit of cunning, Mr Fry reminded us all of the Press Complaints Commission whose website crashed within seconds as the complaints hurtled off keyboards and into inboxes. The incident according to The Guardian has warranted 2,200 complaints and rising, and it would be naive to think that was without a little bit of Twitter hysteria.
There is something so inclusive about joining in with the cyber angry mob. Marching on Parliament Square it ain’t but the invincibility it grants you transforms you into a lap-top activist!
A similar mood is occurring today as the media prepares for Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. There has been great opposition to the invitation the BBC offered to the leader of the British National Party to appear on the respected political broadcast. Quite rightly, why should the re-branded National Front with the same roots to Nazism and fascism have the privilege of airtime courtesy of the licence payer? The public is divided and I can sympathise with both sides.
However, I do believe were I not a journalist I would be firmly in the outrage camp. Thanks to the little, obnoxious, curiosity bug that journalism implanted in my system, I am interested in watching Griffin squirm under the fire of the public in the audience and of course the panel consisting of Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, Shadow minister for Community Cohesion, Baroness Warsi, Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne and writer Bonnie Greer.
My father is firmly in the outrage camp and is unconvinced that Chair, David Dimbleby will make the debate as tough as possible for Griffin in favour of mediation. My mother the lawyer, quite uncharacteristically, is awaiting the contretemps with a glint of blood-lust in her eye.
Freedom of Speech gives the BNP the right to spout their undeniably racist, prejudiced and backward venom, however many people do not want to see their representatives on their televisions (let alone consider the perks of the green room). There is a fear that the publicity the BNP will receive will attract disenfranchised protest voters, lasso increased support and by putting them alongside mainstream parties validates their organisation. All of these are very real factors to consider. It is also to be noted that many BNP supporters will be in the audience. Regardless, the debate tonight will make history and hopefully the lashes of indignation Griffin will openly suffer will be enough to change the minds of those on the cusp of putting their votes in the hands of fascism. This is surely the point of this remarkable edition of Question Time rather than just a sordid ratings-booster?
As a journalist, I want to see what happens. Twitter is already simmering with anticipation and many, myself included, have resolved to live-action tweet as the show is broadcast live on air.
It’s a beautiful thing when democracy shouts the loudest and Twitter appears to be a lot more powerful than any of the other social networking functions we may or may not subscribe to. Twitter pools public opinion and gives people the chance to say, without fear of being shouted down or refused a right of reply, to express themselves.
Follow me as Rosebiscuit and join in on the debate tonight at 10.35pm as Question Time airs on BBC One. Watch live on BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/
I’d also like to draw your attention to a rather more glamorous writer’s similar blog entry regarding Jan Moir’s unfortunate column. Please visit Ms Coco LaVerne’s blog at http://mscocolaverne.blogspot.com/
Filed under: Journalism, News, Politics, Twitter, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: Twitter, tweeting, Jan Moir, Daily Mail, Stephen Gately, Nick Griffin, BNP, British National Party, Boyzone, Question Time, David Dimbleby, Politics, racism, fascism, democracy, outrage
Last Thursday I went to the Job Centre for the very last time. I was pleasantly surprised that I can keep claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance right up to the day before my new job starts. For everything I have said about the Job Centre regime, that’s a pretty decent little perk. After all, it is £50 a week more than one would be getting otherwise! As my mother would say:
“It’s better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.”
Hmm, yes. But then many things are.
After everything we have gone through together, the Job Centre and me, we’ve had some good times. Getting my travel expenses back for unnecessary appointments regarding my ‘progress’ or ‘return to work seminars’ was definitely a high point as was having to repeat all of my close and personal details after they lost my file putting back my first payment by a week. The letter of apology after the fight with the two harpies who berated me for continuing to write irregardless of the fact I was neither part of an arrangement no would I have received payment was a fun note to read.
The rest of it was a nightmare.
Hoop-jumping and bureaucracy aside, there are still people sitting on those rough, navy sofas near the powered doors who go every week at the same time to collect their benefits and catch up with their buddies who have been going at the same time as them every two weeks for months or even longer.
How I shall miss listening in on the overweight woman, the gigantic teenage lad with hands like saddles, the older lady with the pram, the middle-aged man with long, greasy hair and uniform leather jacket… They are the ensemble cast of Job Centre which airs every fortnight on a Thursday afternoon and I see now that I was only ever going to have a cameo appearance.
Although the crowds are getting smaller, hopefully because all the University and school leavers have found work rather than been defeated by the ogres defending their precious system, one group remains. Stubbornly clinging on to the benefits system like the greasy stains cling to the inside of a china teapot, there are those who quite blatantly do as much as possible in order to keep from joining the work-a-day majority.
Having gone through this tedious system for a quarter of a year, I have an understanding of the sorts of tests you are put to in order to deserve your allowance. The fortnightly guilt for having no interviews, the interrogation process which makes your story of tedium, rejection and disappointment sound incredible even though every word is the truth, the thankless effort, the little curve balls they throw in here and there, and the boxes you have to tick. Those who have no inclination to work and every intention to keep on receiving benefits certainly bust a gut to ensure that never changes.
Take last Monday, my 13 week review (thank you for my £4 travel expenses, Mr Government, it went towards some bubbly on Wednesday). Luckily for me I had a customer services job lined up before I got my media job offer because otherwise I sensed that I was going to be placed somewhere for minimum wage just to keep the books looking healthy. The man interviewing me had a list of job titles and phone numbers on the desk, ready to hand over with a little nudge of the telephone as if to spoon-feed me work like my efforts thusfar had been misguided and demonstrably unsuccessful as a result of lofty ideas and a haughty attitude.
Similarly, I was not treated like a Jobseeker, more a sponger and job-dodger. Thankfully the recession job-freeze is beginning to thaw, although it will take some time before things return to normal as unemployment is a lagging indicator. From my experience, the Jobcentre were completely unprepared for the flux of educated, disenfranchised young people with skills and ambition. The Jobcentre’s remit is to help and counsel people having difficulties in the job market and I saw very little advice geared towards those who already had the experience, skills and student debt who were merely caught up in this plague.
So I got a lot out of my relationship with the Job Centre, less than I had deducted for tax at my last job which is comforting to know because in theory I paid for myself. It was like a needy, sour relationship one inch away from Jeremy Kyle. Hopefully I won’t ever have to return, I never say never but hopefully.
All I know is that leaving that beige, carpeted office with the desks and the couches and the pictures of frighteningly normal-looking people smiling out of brushed steel frames on the walls, it felt exactly the same as graduating.
Filed under: Work, job hunt, money, rite of passage, unemployment | 1 Comment
Tags: employment, expenses, graduating, Job Centre, job hunt, jobs, jobseekers allowance, tax, unemployment
The ring from the first rung
Incredibly and after four months of futile searching, disappointment and destitution I have been offered a real job.
Bzzzzzz bzzzzz bzzzzz Fucking handbag, where’s my fucking phone? Hello?
Hello, is that Rose?
Speaking.
Rose it’s **** calling from ****** ****. We met on Monday.
Oh hi! Shiiiiit, I’m not emotionally prepared for rejection today.
Rose, how did you think you got on at Monday’s interview?
Uhmmm. Yes, I enjoyed it. That sounds lame. It was a challenge, hahaha. I was a bit nervous. Why are they asking me that? Did I get it? If not that is a mean question to ask. Hope I played it down enough so that a rejection isn’t too much to handle and if I got it it doesn’t sound like I am hysterical.
Well would you be interested in the position?
Yes, absolutely. Did I get it? Tell me NOW.
We have you down to start on the 2nd November, is that ok? And we’ll send your HR stuff on to you. We are really looking forward to working with you.
Oh my God, you’ve made my year! Veeeeering into hysterical, Rose. It’s a job, not the lotto jackpot for feck sake, woman!
That’s a bit dramatic. Shit, picking up on hysteria. Can’t let her know I’m mental before I’ve even been sent the contract, they need to find that out in their own time.
Err. What I mean is, I really really wanted this position, thank you so much. I’ve been unemployed for four months and I have the loan collectors practically climbing into my purse and this position means I can start my career!
Well I’m pleased to hear that. So we’ll see you on Monday the 2nd November. What did she just say? That sounded like important information but I was too busy listening to the sound of my own heartbeat thumping my rib cage. Better not ask her to repeat herself in case I sound mad.
Thank you so much, ****! Bye then.
Bye, Rose.
Hee hee!!!
There was other stuff too that she said but that was the general idea.
So now my blog will be changing tack somewhat, my gripes about the Job Centre are soon going to end and I can now write about what it is like working on the bottom rung of the journalism ladder.
If I can get a job in this crazy industry, anybody can. Trust me, I am not the shiniest penny in the piggybank. I am just a normal girl, from a normal family, with average GCSE results trying to make a career for herself and I’m really looking forward to telling you about how it all starts.
Filed under: Work, Writing, job hunt, unemployment | 2 Comments
I am back in my comfort zone. A lovely, white, ovular swivel chair with my lovely, white iBook on the desk in front of me, after a trying day. At least I made some money from it in Government subsidised travel expenses.
0900hrs at Stamford Job Centre for my 13 week review. I hate going to the Job Centre at the start of the business day because I swear they open it late purely to dangle us in front of the public for a few minutes longer out of spite.
Anyway, for those of you who are lucky enough not to know; the 13 week review is a proactive way of identifying the flaws in your job search and generally what you’re doing wrong. I am lucky enough to have been offered some Christmas Season work for a relatively well-known camping/hiking/outdoor-type retailer as of next week so I could saunter into this meeting knowing they needn’t bother as I will be signing off on Thursday.
In addition, just to fully establish my innate (even if dormant until very recently) employability to the Job Centre chap who kept on leering at my chest, I was booked in for a job interview this very afternoon.
Luckily, with one bird in the hand and another one in the bush, I was off the hook and merrily made my way home with travel expenses jingling in my pocket. I very nearly whistled a jovial tune upon exiting the Job Centre but resisted.
The job interview was the first career-relevant I had been invited to since June. Yes. I have applied to over 70 jobs in Journalism, Media, Publishing and PR and this was only job interview #2. I won’t divulge what the position is or where it is but it’d set me up in a nice little editorial career for a well known organisation in a branch of journalism I’d honestly love to be more involved in.
I had been rehearsing my stock interview phrases since last night. I have entered all my bung job interviews with a relaxed attitude knowing I am capable of the task and if I don’t get it, I won’t be crying myself to sleep but today I had true stage fright. Today’s interview was for a job I actually want. P r e s s u r e.
My interviewers were both fashionable, young and clearly successful women. In my freshly ironed, specially bought blouse and trusty black trouser suit I felt like the misfit at school trying to convince the really cool girls who didn’t know me that well that I wasn’t a freak and was actually completely normal. Let me join your gang!
Panic set in and the ability to form complete sentences started to escape me. I think I rambled on about how I came to know my previous employer for a long time but that’s only because it was a left-field question about techniques you use to settle in to new environments. Luckily the more senior of the two interviewers was a Manchester girl! Rambling on about Salford, The Manchester Evening News and living in my beloved Northern city struck a chord – I hope.
Then, after the probing questions ran out, a Competency Test. To be completed in 30 minutes sharp. It is important to bear in mind that I had no time piece, lacked the sense to switch on my mobile lest precious moments escape me, and generally assumed that my internal awareness of time would be an accurate enough measure.
The first element of the test, as far as I could tell, was to prove that I was not dyslexic. Ask me any other day of my life if I am dyslexic and I’d say no. Today I appeared to be afflicted with an acute and short-term bout of the learning difficulty. This first task involved finding the correctly spelled word out of the four options, all of which look like they could be correct. I know how to spell, lets just clarify that now, but the pressure got to me and I began honestly thinking that ‘accommodate’ was actually spelled ‘acomadate’ – which could work?
The next part involved synthesizing the sort of copy the job required me to be able to write. Without having the sense to check how I was doing for time, I worked on guessing the passage of time according to my words per minute average… a risky venture. I did the main part of that exercise before moving on to the next section to ensure the test at least looked finished when I handed it in.
Two enormous pages of copy. Spot the typos. A document of that size and a test such as this, what did I expect to find… 10? I found two. I bloody hope there were only two otherwise I’m going to look even more stupid that I felt.
Time enough to scribble down the remainder of part two. Interview over.
Did it go well? I haven’t the foggiest. All I know is that I want this job. Not only is it interesting, engaging and relevant but the place and people are… for want of a better phrase… really cool.
Whatever the outcome I am signing off on Thursday, which has been my dream ever since I opened those brown, powered doors into the God of bureaucracy’s S&M themed wet dream AKA the Job Centre.
And the good news is if the career job doesn’t pan out then I can give my family outdoor leisure wear for Christmas with my staff discount.
Filed under: Work, Writing, job hunt, unemployment | 1 Comment
Who these days has the inclination to use their influence to change what ought to be changed?
Barack Obama’s historic parade into power resounded with optimism and promises of change. The three political party conferences over the last month left the echoes of stirring keynote speeches orating notions of solidarity and fortitude ringing in our ears.
When are we going to see any of this? When will an individual such as Gary McKinnon benefit from this?
Gary McKinnon’s unfortunate stumble into the realm of terrorism seven years ago was a product of a talent for coding or as the US press would have it believed, ‘hacking’. Using comparatively basic software, McKinnon managed to break into the heart of the US Pentagon’s computer network using standard passwords and his own knack with computing. Dangerous territory for any foreigner to trespass onto, whatever the excuse.
McKinnon has been branded a terrorist despite never intending to hurt anybody nor actually doing any harm or indeed having any apparent motive despite satisfying a compulsion to worry away at the thread that was leading him into serious trouble.
It seems to me that the only damage as a consequence to McKinnon’s ill-fated project was done to both the prides of American security chiefs and to McKinnon’s livelihood and that of his family. The Pentagon have stepped up their network passwords, firewalls have been fortified, and McKinnon remains (inexplicably) Public Enemy Number One for the interim.
McKinnon has Asperger Syndrome. Whether you believe this mitigating circumstance to be immaterial or not, this is his Defence’s choice hook. I am not going to venture in to the ins and outs of the syndrome as I am sure enough of us know how it affects somebody we know and how greatly it can vary in seriousness, however, even without this playing a factor in the case, 70 years in an American penitentiary seems to be a hysterical punishment given the crime.
McKinnon’s fate, after several failed appeals including to the American Supreme Court, appears before him and the news reading public like a bottomless pit. 70 years and a terrorist charge stamped to your forehead while being frogmarched into an American prison with paedophiles, murderers and rapists is equivalent to a death sentence. Add Asperger Syndrome into the increasingly unbelievable cocktail and it spells the end for McKinnon.
One particularly Fox-News fueled demographic of the US is already crying our for him to be fried, motored by the biased and injust reporting style of some far-right, Nationalistic broadcasts. Such broadcasts have rendered McKinnon’s ‘trial’ unfair as American law does not account for Contempt of Court with the same stringent legislation as in the UK.
I am not suggesting that McKinnon should be let off. I am not a law-maker, nor am I a politician. But if you compare McKinnon’s crimes with those alleged of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, AKA the Lockerbie Bomber who was released last month, then a balance must be struck by the West.
The British legal system works on the basis of protecting the vulnerable and seeing that justice is done according to the merit of each case. We do not operate on an eye-for-an-eye or a capital punishment system. Our cross-Atlantic cousins are demonstrably less merciful. Talking of which, Hilary Clinton is in the UK today, I wonder if McKinnon’s case will be raised over a cup of PG Tips in the refreshments room at one of her appointments? Or are we all too polite to raise our voices in front of the self-titled Super Power preferring to be meek and subservient lest we piss off the biggest kid in the playground?
Which brings me to my next point. Why hasn’t more been said by our Government? I took it upon myself to write to my MP, Alan Duncan and to all my MEPs. I have thusfar received two replies. Please remember, I wrote to them because of their influential position in British, nay world politics, and not because of their job specification.
Hmm… And?
Many thanks for your letter to Emma McClarkin, raising your concerns about the Gary McKinnon case.
Please be assured that we are looking into the matter and will contact you as soon as possible with a more detailed response.
Best wishes,
Neelam Cartmell
Assistant to Emma McClarkin MEP
Again, can I be blamed for thinking that those with power haven’t a clue when to use it? We vote politicians into power for their integrity. There is nothing to be said of looking over one’s shoulder all the time.
Watch this space.
Filed under: Journalism, News, Politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: British government, change, crime, current affairs, Gary McKinnon, hacking, MEP, News, penitentiary, Pentagon, punishment, USA
An A-Z of Unemployment
Following the popularity of my A-Z of Journalism written earlier this year, I have decided its about time to give it the appropriate sequel of an A-Z of Unemployment.
A – Allowance. Or rather Jobseekers Allowance. The miserable fortnightly routine of queuing up to reel off the usual spiel about the futile job searches and interviews that came to nothing only to have your little grey book signed and a cursory £50 deposited into the bank. Although life would be a lot harder without the JSA, the process of getting your hands on it is like a constant battle with the Job Centre bureaucrats, none of whom seem to be convinced of your plight… Have you seen Harry Potter? The Job Centre consultants remind me of the goblins who run Gringotts.
B – Bank. You know your statements look about as impressive to them as a dead cat floating in a canal… steer clear and hope you can stay above the shark infested waters.
C – Curriculum Vitae. The daily grind of job hunting followed by the laborious but necessary task of tailoring one’s CV for the particular job. You find yourself using peculiar phrases in this and your covering letter like “I relished the opportunity”… even reading them back immediately after writing it you think to yourself, “I sound like a cock.” But we send them off anyway only to tailor the next one after clicking ’send’ to find there is a howling spelling mistake in your opening sentence. Genius.
D – Day-time television. Sadly the 9 – 5 routine of our employed counterparts is reflected only in the GMTV – Paul O’Grady routine of the jobless and at home with special attention given to Jeremy Kyle, This Morning, Loose Women and Doctors.
E – Equal Opportunities. See F. But generally I feel very jarred telling people my ethnicity, sex, sexual preference, marital status and bra size in an attempt to bump out somebody’s Personnel Quota. And in the instance where you are given the option not to disclose, don’t you feel like that will be held against you?
F - Forms. Bloody forms. Job hunting can yield some interesting opportunities however if you are anything like me then all the enthusiasm flies out the window when you realise that it is an application form you need to fill in rather than the routine CV and cover letter. These rigid, awkward and tediously long-winded documents are designed to challenge your valour and enthusiasm in some HR gremlin’s world of quests and tests born out of a meaningless and bored existence. Sadly, applications forms tend to go through HR departments and paper sifting so only those who have completed their form exactly to the HR gremlin’s exact specification stand even a ghost of a chance.
G – Guardian. The Guardian jobs website is a hotbed of exciting, brand new, well paid media jobs. None of which you will even get as far as interview for as they are so popular it is highly unlikely your CV will even be viewed let alone considered for shortlisting. Worse than some websites, see H. I recently received a rare rejection from a job applied for via the Guardian telling me in no uncertain terms that I should abandon all hope now as no less than 400 people had applied for that particular vacancy.
H – Hold The Front Page. Journos only – this site is supposed the be the first port of call for job-hunting journos. Sadly, in the current climate each advertising employer can expect over 250 applications per vacancy from this supposedly little-known industry website. Still, odds of winning the lottery remain lower as of yet than getting a job via this website so I remain hopeful.
I – Interviews! If you are lucky enough to get any sort of interview the trick is not to do it like Spud from Trainspotting, although waiting in a bland lobby in your monkey suit being scowled at by the thing behind reception makes you wonder if drugs are indeed the answer to this Hell you have stumbled into. I prefer to go into job interviews with desperation written all over my face and a few bad jokes and some spurts of verbal diarrhea to add colour to an already dismal situation. If you are going for the job just for the money then for Gods sake don’t admit it in as many words.
J - Job Centre Plus. A hilarious little government organisation, utterly under-equipped for the current flux of people who are either unemployed graduates, school leavers who have not been given the chance of a university place and have absolutely no experience in the job market, and skilled redundancy victims. I remain skeptical of their pearls of wisdom… after all, who should ask for careers advice from a careers adviser?
K - Kick up the backside. Swiftly too. We all need one occasionally, be it from the Job Centre, the thought of getting a fantastic job or family members who are sick of the sight of you.
L - Letters. Slim letters are nearly always bad… or contain a letter stating that your application was received but if you don’t hear back within 10 days it has been rejected and please don’t contact us because we can’t be buggared… which is basically a rejection written by somebody who hasn’t got the balls to tell you so. One line that keeps on resurfacing in my growing collection of rejections is ‘Unfortunately due to the unusually high number of applications…’ And you needn’t read any further. Fat letters are considered good, they contain organisation pamphlets, maps, equal opportunities forms, reference forms to send on to your inundated (and irritated) referees. But sadly fat letters are an endangered species, rarely glimpsed owing to the current jobs cull.
M – Misleading adverts. Usually posted by crafty agencies who actually have much more banal jobs in mind for you.
N – Not a sausage. Self explanatory.
O – Optimism. Very important to distract ourselves with optimism otherwise we are reminded of the reality of the situation. See Z.
P – Profiling. Some websites offer to send you jobs alerts that are relevant after you submit a generic CV and tick a lot of options. In the case of ticking the media box you end up getting a very full inbox thanks to the constant stream of minimum wage call centre jobs cleverly relabeled ‘Media Sales Executive’. Do not be fooled, this does nothing but hinder your daily jobs search thanks to this meaningless and time-consuming inconvenience.
Q – Qualifications. Mean nothing really. Its more who you know than what you know or how many certificates you have to back that up…
R – Return to Work Session. Yes the Job Centre makes another appearance on the list thanks to the bright spark that thought that an additional weekend seminar on how to search for jobs online and let everybody know about agencies and volunteering would get people off Jobseeker’s Allowance. Either because they would miraculously find a job through that hour of their life they will never get back or because people won’t bother and so won’t be entitled to benefits the next week. I hope he/she did not get any sort bonus as a result of that piss-poor brain fart.
S – Statistics. I am one of the 2.5 million registered unemployed in the UK this year. Numbers that big don’t really mean much and it does little for our solidarity to be reminded of the 947,000 20 – 24 year old unemployed demographic… a group I am also classed under. Lets see if it shrinks after Christmas.
T - Tests. We did them in order to get to this point in our lives and we are still doing them now. Not the metaphorical ‘test’ of will that unemployment forces you to battle with day in day out, but the tests they made you do when you register at agencies. You know the sort, the ones that ask you to do simple tasks but only give you one click of the mouse before the program takes it down to be a wrong answer and you are branded an underachiever at Microsoft Word, which, lets face it, my generation are pretty much pre-programmed to tackle. Nevertheless, tests in data entry, making pie charts on Excel and typing speed are now an essential process in the humiliating circus that is Job-Hunting.
U – Unpaid work. Work experience, voluntary work, call it what you like but it cannot guarantee a job at the end, however it does keep your CV fresh even if the jobs you are given are thankless tasks and you have to spend another week of your life sheepishly desk hopping around a newsroom with one too few desks asking journalists for something to do because you’ve been spell-checking and re-reading the same bleeding picture story for an hour now. Take heed as some Job Centres inexplicably dislike the notion of you receiving your JSA on top of working unpaid for an organisation in an attempt to maximise your employability.
V - Versatility. An important and essential thing to get across especially when applying for jobs that you really do want but have little actual experience in. Versatility means offering an employer a lot of good things sort of like what they are looking for and hope that nobody applied who is extremely competent at the one single thing they are looking for. Usually crops up in CVs under the adjectives, flexible, adaptable and ‘ready for anything’. The versatility ruse hardly ever works but if it does then you have to maintain the pretense.
W – Waiting. Waiting for that call, for the reply, for the email… waiting for any kind of news even if it is a rejection.
X – Xanax. A drug commonly prescribed for anxiety and moderate depression. Self explanatory.
Y – Yard arm. Important constraint to maintain when driven to drink.
Z – Zero. Zero job, zero money, zero plans. Lets all jump off a bridge together!
And there we have it. A rather slim towards the end alphabetic attempt to quantify unemployment.
Filed under: Journalism, Work, Writing, job hunt, unemployment | 4 Comments
Tags: Alphabet, applications, drink, Job Centre, job hunt, jobless, jobseekers allowance, unemployment
New Years Job Solutions
Day 79 of being officially unemployed and I am now utterly convinced that my career will advance no further than this wretched stasis before Christmas.
Therefore, taking the notion of advancement on board rather than that of day time television, I am compiling some preemptive New Years Resolutions with regards to my success in the jobs market.
New Years Job Solutions
- If I haven’t got a sniff of a career job by Spring 2010 then I will use the rest of my savings and my inheritance ISA to do a Cordon Bleu course to give me an edge in the food writing jobs market. I have given this a lot of thought and consideration and I am loathed to spend more money on training at this stage however when it comes to the thousands of supermarket mags, food programs, cook book publishers and other opportunities – I need an edge, man.
- I am going to get www.rosebrooke.co.uk online (really soon actually) so I can get Thoughts of a Media Impostor a larger audience and perhaps gain a vital contact or two through publicity.
- I will continue to persistently write to my local publications, radio stations and TV stations telling them their organisations need me. I will continue to do this to the point of a court order against me.
- I will continue to spend a lot of postage on futile applications in response to adverts on the Hold the Frontpage and Guardian websites… lightning could strike…
- …I could win the lottery too of course and start my own paper which would make everything a lot easier and I could provide jobs for some poor out-of-work journos and editorial staff but as that is such an unlikely series of events I am only including it as a musing in my cunning plan.
- Enough of that nonsense. I will remain dogged and steadfast in my endeavours and not succumb to the sinking-ship pull of the dull/ easy/ dead-end life I am determined not to be sucked into.
- I will continue to apply for uber competitive media jobs even after all of my peers have given up.
Wish me luck!
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