Dream Destinations

Very quick post today. I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, revealing my intense desire to explore the world a lot more than i already have. The idea is that, if i was stupendously, stupidly rich and decided to buy 10 apartments, in 10 different cities across the world, where would they be and why.

1. Berlin - My favourite city i have ever visited by far, possibly due to an idealised school trip, but the whole point is that I've now got more money than sense, so 1 brilliant week is actually a perfectly reasonable basis for buying an apartment. It would also serve as a good base to explore Northern and Eastern Europe.

2. Barcelona - I loved my one experience of Spanish culture and Barcelona is supposed to be one of the cultural capitals of not just Spain but Europe as a whole. The sunshine, the art, the architecture and the history of fighting against fascism all appeal, as well as the fact that I could venture out across the Mediterranean from there.

3. Accra - My mother's side of the family spent several years in Ghana, I would want to have a home somewhere in Africa and because of my families link to the country I've always felt a strange affinity with it.

4. New Delhi - One of the main motivations behind having homes spread out across the world is that it would allow me to experience a range of really different cultures in a more lasting way than a week's holiday ever could. Delhi would allow me to explore India, a country with lots of different cultures within it's borders and some incredible sights to see.

5. Tokyo - Japan manages to cram several of the most advanced cities in the world with some incredibly beautiful mountains and scenery. Tokyo would be a fascinating place to live for periods of time, but I don't know if I could cope with living somewhere quite that crowded for all that long. Perhaps I'd have to buy an apartment on the outskirts, from what I understand their public transport system. Also, when combined with Delhi and my next choice, I'd be set up nicely to visit almost anywhere in the Eastern hemisphere.

6. Wellington - If the Lord of the Rings films are anything to go by, a home in New Zealand would be worth the money just for the incredible scenery on show whenever I ventured out of the city. It is also not too far away from Sydney and the East coast of Australia.

7. Buenos Aires - I'd want a base in South America and I'd go for the Argentinean capital over Rio De Janeiro for the comparative safety and slightly less painful class divide. However I'd still be making regular visits to Brazil, Peru and Chile from there, taking in plenty of football matches and soaking up the, at times excessive, passion they have for the game.

8. Bridgetown - Barbados's capital shouldn't need much justification, it's Barbados, who wouldn't want some kind of home there if they could afford it, to escape to the beaches whenever possible.

9. New York & 10. San Francisco - I put these two together because the U.S is the only country I'd have two homes in, because it would be hard to do justice to it otherwise. I'd love to be a complete walking cliché and buy a classic muscle car (admittedly I'd have to learn how to drive first) and then drive across the country, trying to visit every single state, enjoying the freedom and opportunities that having scary amounts of money could offer.

However what's crucial to add to this list is that no matter what happens, I would make sure I always had a house in Sheffield, simply because despite their many undoubted wonders, I can't imagine any of the cities listed above ever feeling like home in the way Sheffield does.

Today's song is one that came on in a bar while I was having dinner this evening with a friend and I'd forgotten just how good a track it is.

Cynophobia

I’m currently on a week’s work experience at the Derbyshire Times, a paper which covers Chesterfield and the surrounding small towns and villages. I’ve been given a task that they want me to go out and complete at some point tomorrow and I have pretty mixed feelings about the idea.

Objectively it’s an interesting opportunity to follow up on a potentially interesting story, a chance to practice interviews in person rather than simply over the phone and a chance to practice a different kind of journalism to simply writing news in brief segments. Subjectively however it sounds really quite terrifying.

That is because the story is all about dogs. And not just cute, friendly dogs. The reason I’m being sent to a park in Chesterfield is that there’ve been a couple of attacks by violent dogs, on other dogs. Now I should point out that I have what pretty much amounts to a phobia of dogs. They scare the bijeezus out of me so, if I was making a straightforward choice, I would never opt to go into a park and start walking up to dog owners, or more accurately, their dogs.

I have never been fully able to justify why dogs freak me out so damn much, hence why I class it as a phobia (the title is apparently the word for that phobia) rather than a perfectly rational fear. I think it’s at least partly down to the combination of their capability for serious violence and their unpredictability; I can’t understand or reason with them.

I tend to be able to develop a greater sense of calm around a dog once I’ve spent a bit of time with it, it’s how I’ve become acclimatised to my friend’s pet dogs. However I remember just how terrified I was when I met them the first time and tomorrow is going to be full of meeting dogs for the first time without any chance to begin to get used to them. Somehow I doubt that a high quantity of individual meetings will have the same calming effect as spending a high quantity of time with an individual dog.

However I’m grateful for the opportunity I have at this paper and I appreciate that there is a value to learning what conducting an interview is like when a long way out of my comfort zone. It doesn’t change the fact though that I would rather sit in a cell with a convicted murderer and ask them personal questions, than walk right up to someone walking their dog and deliberately get their attention.

I’ll do my best on the job and will try and come across as confidently as I can, but whether or not I manage to seem calm, I can absolutely guarantee that my heart will be pounding in my chest throughout.

Clip Joint

I’m shattered and have an early start tomorrow, commuting to Chesterfield for a week’s work experience at The Derbyshire Times, so this is going to be a shorter than usual blog.

I just want to draw your attention to a quite cool and/or geeky film blog that the Guardian run every Wednesday called “Clip Joint”. My mum pointed it out to me as something that would appeal and I’m glad she did. The basic premise is that each week a Guardian reader selects five films, or more often specific scenes which fit within a certain topic; sometimes these topics are broad and obvious, like affairs, other times they’re a little more obscure, like lamps. Usually Youtube clips are embedded alongside a brief justification for their inclusion, then below the previous week’s author lists the 5 favourite suggestions left in the comment section below.

It’s a good and entertaining blog which has a habit of listing films together that would never normally make it into the same article and I’d advise you check it out sometime.

Today's song is one I've now got stuck in my head thanks to watching 'Inception' this evening.

Not Penalties Again

It’s a feeling I’ve felt many summers, the disappointment complimented by a frustrating sense of inevitability. It’s the feeling of watching an England football team crash out of a major international tournament after showing some initial promise. I’m just used to the feeling being limited to years ending in an even number. But this evening I watched as the England Women’s team took on France in the quarter finals of the world cup and lost. On penalties.

It was a spirited performance by England, but in the end, as is so often the case with the men’s team, deep down most fans will know they were beaten by a superior team. The French side passed the ball better, controlled possession and created many more chances than their English counterparts. But in that stereotypically English style, it was a plucky and determined performance, one which for the majority of the second half looked like it would earn us a place in the semi-finals.

It wasn’t to be and an 88^th minute equaliser caused the game to extra time, where tired, cramping legs were forced to keep going, with striker Kelly Smith hobbling around the pitch with an injury which would have meant the end of her game had boss Hope Powell not already used all three substitutes. The half hour ticked by and we were faced with English football’s nemesis, the penalty shootout.

It started nicely enough with the French player missing the first penalty and Smith stepping up to ignore the pain and hammer the ball into the corner of the net before celebrating in true Stuart Pearce style with pumped fists and veins popping. From then on though the French penalties were assured and when England captain Faye White missed the 5^th penalty the game was lost, 1-1 after normal time and 4-3 on penalties.

The result is a shame because throughout the tournament there have been real moments of quality from some of the England players, with Smith, Ellen White, Karen Carney and Jill Scott all looking impressive. Sadly however they seem to, as a team, suffer from the same irritating tendency to panic in big games and lose any kind of passing rhythm or accuracy.

The bigger shame however is that the BBC really didn’t take advantage of having the rights to this Women’s World Cup, only screening the England matches (apart from the final which will be on BBC3 a week on Sunday) and they were shown via the red button, buried away where no one might accidentally stumble across them. The BBC had the opportunity to really make a statement about the rising profile of the women’s game, putting the England games on BBC 1 or 2 and I believe they should also have organised a nightly highlights show somewhere amongst their schedule, allowing fans to see not just England’s team, but also the standard of football produced by Germany, Brazil, Sweden and the U.S. They’ve dropped the ball by choosing to go for a bare minimum of coverage and hiding what little they did commit to.

Women’s football in the U.K is growing, with increased investment, a re-organised Premier league and a fully fledged Champions League to aspire to compete in, but TV coverage needs to increase hand in hand with the growing stature of the game, because it is through bringing the game to a wider audience and exposing more people to the fact that the standard is getting better and better, that more girls will start playing football for school teams and getting signed up for clubs, thus strengthening both the profile of the sport and the National team.

Canada have been chosen to host the 2015 World Cup, but I really hope England apply to host one soon, because International quality Women’s football being played in stadium’s around the country could be just what is needed to really bring the Women’s game closer to the Men’s in terms of attention and acceptance. It’s unlikely to get anywhere close within my lifetime perhaps, but I see no reason why in the next few years it couldn’t become a valued sister to the Men’s game, where during World Cups and European Championships games are shown in prime time slots on major channels, where newspaper and internet coverage is much more extensive and where a number of England’s star players become well known names.

Today's song is one I've not listened to in ages, but as with other songs that I've posted before, I stumbled across it while listening to a playlist I made on iTunes several months ago. It's called "Hell" and is by 'Tegan and Sara'.

1 Way To Waste An Afternoon

The internet is full of almost limitless ways to waste hours of your day, from Facebook, to online games and reading arguments on Youtube that have nothing to do with the original video. However these days my distraction of choice is a website called ‘Cracked.com’; the self proclaimed only American humour site on the internet (a claim which does a terrible disservice to ‘The Onion’ which offers an extremely satirical and often just plain silly take on American politics and culture).

The majority of ‘Cracked.com’ is made up of lists, top 5s and top 10s, on all manner of topics, combining humour and genuine intelligence to make some incredibly funny stories that actually can be quite informative as well, so long as you mostly want to learn random trivia that only carries any value during arguments in a pub.

The two main topics that seem to get covered more than most are films and science, sometimes combining the two to look at the lies Hollywood passes off as scientifically or physically possible.

The articles are well written and entertaining, but the true genius/evil of the site is by surrounding every story with related links, so while reading one page, you end up adding two or three more to your “read before doing something more useful” list, creating a potentially never ending situation where you never get any closer to leaving the site.

I’ll recommend a few different articles that I’ve enjoyed over the past few days, but really I’d just advise you to go on the site’s homepage and just go from there, jumping from story to story until you realise you were meant to leave the house 20 minutes ago. You could find one detailing 5 romantic gestures in films that would be a little less sweet in real life, or if you’re one of my male readers, find out the scientific reasons why no matter how hard you try your girlfriend’s dad is going to hate you. You might be interested to find out about the evil genius that is your cat, or want to read about some fan theories that actually make more sense than the films themselves. Perhaps you’d prefer to discover the 5 most incredible incidents of extreme bravery/insanity in the history of war, or maybe you’d find a list of 7 natural events that scientists can’t explain more appealing. Basically, if you’re looking to waste some time or avoid some work, you could do an awful lot worse than go on ‘Cracked.com’ and see what geeky, pedantic or just plain weird stuff you can find.

Seeing as I've been watching their set at T in the Park while writing this, it seems appropriate I end today's post with an Arctic Monkeys song, one off of their new album, which after a couple of listens sounds a lot more interesting than their third effort.

The End Of The (News of the) World

There was less than 24 hours between me writing a blog condemning The News of the World for their utter lack of moral or journalistic standards and said paper being closed down by the Murdoch family. Now I’m not saying the two are necessarily linked, but maybe I need to be careful, perhaps I don’t know the strength of my own journalism.

In all seriousness though I don’t think anyone expected Murdoch to take this step, or at least not so soon. James Murdoch, son of Rupert and the man who currently is chairman of News Corporation said in an official statement that the 168 year old newspaper’s Sunday edition would be it’s last. He said: “The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.” Here is a link to the statement in full.

It’s a surprising but perhaps wise move to attempt to deflect the criticism away from him and his family and draw a clear line under the scandal. However I am of the opinion that that can’t be allowed to happen; shutting the paper down is a meaningless gesture if the higher up staff members who were responsible or at least complicit in the behaviour don’t face the correct criminal charges. By that I mean that making hundreds of journalists, copy editors and picture desk staff redundant is not just hollow but also arguably cruel, if Rebecca Brooks and a number of other key staff members are just shifted into a different high paid job within the Murdoch empire.

The decision was almost certainly influenced by two factors; firstly, one by one advertisers were pulling out from the paper and in the current climate no newspaper can survive without advertising revenue for any length of time, there was no indication that the situation at the paper was going to improve or it become viable again for big companies to be linked to the paper, so they are in one way just cutting their financial losses now rather than trying to play King Cnut and hold back the inevitable. The second factor is that by shutting down the now diseased institution the Murdoch empire hope that they will be seen to have reduced their share of the UK market and acted in the “proper” manner, so as to improve their chances of succeeding in their attempted total takeover of BSkyB, a takeover which looked safe until the latest string of revelations and has looked in serious doubt this week as the government has come under increasing pressure to carry out a full and thorough investigation into the stranglehold on competition the move would give them and simply whether the key board members are morally fit to be gaining such a share of the UK media pie. It perhaps will even allow Murdoch to keep hold of Sky News, something that looked like it would have to be sacrificed previously in order for any deal to go ahead.

It’s also been an interesting example of the power Twitter can have on big corporations, as a number of individuals, including liberal blogger Sunny Hundal, have attempted to organise the campaign to pressure advertisers to pull out of the paper, making sure no company could claim not to know the strength of public opinion. Twitter offers the chance to organise masses of people to make simple, yet telling actions which can have a much grander result than the humble action would suggest.

There’s rumours going around, and could be backed up by something Murdoch mentioned in passing in his statement, that the family have handed the police a paper trail leading right to Andy Coulson’s desk, and that he may be arrested within a day or two, but that is one I’ll have to keep an eye on.

Another element that the closure of the paper cannot be allowed to bury is the police involvement, with allegations of some officers taking up to £30,000 from journalists for stories and information. This is just as serious as the hacking and needs to have an inquiry into both these specific allegations and any questions of how widespread this corruption is.

Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg and every other MP have a responsibility to make sure Cameron is forced to hold judge led inquiry into the scandal. This goes beyond party politics and has to be treated as such, both Labour and the Conservatives have been a little too cosy with Murdoch and his empire for the past three decades and they can’t allow the power of the empire to put them off from making sure they are properly investigated.

The fallout from this afternoon’s decision will be being felt in both British politics and the national media for months if not years, and it will be a long time before anyone can say how big a blow this will be to Murdoch, how big a step it was towards the responsible people being held accountable and the victims being properly compensated.

Though I feel no sorrow for the passing of The News of the World, an institution clearly so corrupt it couldn’t be allowed to survive, I do feel sorry for the huge number of staff at the paper who I am sure played no part in these scandals, who just wanted to work at a newspaper and earn a sufficient wage to support their families.

It is for these innocent people who are losing their jobs, that we have to ensure that the staff higher up the ladder, the board members and even the Murdoch’s themselves face the repercussions for their actions and for the atmosphere they allowed to develop within the newspaper. We as a nation, both as individuals through social media and petitions and our elected officials need to keep the pressure on the Murdochs, on the Government and on the police to do the right thing and see that the responsible parties feel the full force of the law.

For more information and all the latest news and opinion, The Guardian are doing a live blog as I write, so check that out here.

Today's song is off of the most recent Frank Turner album, one which has been stuck in my head all day, so now hopefully it can be stuck in your's too.

The People Who Give Journalists A Bad Name

The last fortnight hasn’t been a good one for journalism; first there was the Daily Mail sinking to a new low, then the controversy surrounding Johann Hari’s lies and now there’s more revelations about the News of the World and the utter lack of moral standards that exists within that institution.

I wrote about the Daily Mail story last week here.

As for Johann Hari, he’s a writer for The Independent, one of their lead feature writers, famous for both his interviews and his passionate arguments; he’s a journalist I previously held in high regard because though I may not always have agreed with him 100%, I enjoyed reading his articles for the passionate coverage he offers. However in the past two weeks it has been discovered that he has not always actually upheld the standards expected of him, especially considering that he is a recipient of the Orwell prize for political journalism. It has been revealed that he has substituted quotes in a number of his interviews, choosing to use words previously written by the interviewee for actual quotes collected in the interviews, where the written words are clearer. Now this isn’t exactly plagiarism but it’s also not honest journalism, it’s deceitful and actually a little baffling. It shows an element of ego because if there was a quote from a previous work by the interviewee he could just have included it with a simple, “In his previous work....” rather than trying to claim that they had said the perfect quote during the interview. Hari published an apology of sorts in The Independent last week but it has seriously damaged my respect for him as a journalist because he has proven that the implicit trust that any interviews included have been represented faithfully can’t be there in any of his articles. I don’t think it’s a case of him deliberately aiming to mislead readers for any malicious reason, but a lack of malice doesn’t excuse a display of very poor journalistic standards.

Then there’s The News of the World, the worst of the three in my opinion. Most people, whether or not you’re particularly interested in the news I’m sure will have heard bits and pieces about the phone hacking scandal. An almost painfully simplistic take on it is that the paper, over a period of years, hired private investigators to access celebrities and news figures answer phones so as to get hold of gossip and news that they otherwise wouldn't have. This is highly illegal and extremely duplicitous, there’ve been arrests and there’s been heaps of coverage, but an already worrying story became sickening this week due to two new discoveries about the extent of their illegal action.

First the news came out, thanks to an investigation by The Guardian and The New York Times, as well as a number of other organisations, that when in 2002 teenager Milly Dowler was abducted and murdered, The NOTW hired an investigator to hack her voicemail, who then proceeded to delete some messages in order to allow more to arrive, giving the family reason to believe that Milly might still be alive. It also meant that potentially valuable evidence in the case was denied to the police.

This is such a heinous act, to intrude on and exploit the grief and trauma of a family attempting to cope with such a tragic event, that you really would have believed that we had discovered the worst details about the scandal.

Then it emerges that the police were at the very least suspicious that Milly and her family’s phones were being targeted by the paper, yet didn’t investigate or follow up the suspicions. The new phone hacking investigations have also led to the families of a number of other teens who have been tragically murdered being contacted to let them know that their phones have been targeted by the paper.

But even that isn't the worst thing about the practices of The News of the World, because in the past few days it has also emerged that the paper hacked the voicemails of the families of victims of the 7/7 bombings. To exploit the grieving families after one of the worst terrorist attacks on our nation is just abhorrent, but it appears to be symptomatic of the way The News of the World behaved on a regular basis. Rebecca Brooks, editor of the paper at that point, is under pressure to resign, but like Andy Coulson during the earlier hacking investigation she is claiming she was completely unaware of the hacking, but even with my limited knowledge of how newspapers work, I refuse to believe that the editor wasn’t aware of how these scoops were being made.

Interestingly a number of advertisers are pulling their adverts from The News of the World, but unless they pull them from all News International products then it is unlikely to really hit Murdoch’s pockets all that hard.

I hope there is a full and effective investigation into these latest allegations and the government really consider whether the full takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation, the corporation which includes News International (publishers of the NOTW, the Sun and the Times) can go ahead, when there have to be serious questions asked about whether the people on the News Corporation board qualify as “fit and proper”.

As an aspiring journalist all three of these issues have been particularly depressing for me because at a time when sales are already far too low and the age of the newspaper seems to be moving ever closer to its end, practices like these only serve to discredit papers further, causing people to lose what little trust and interest they had in them in the first place.

I'd not listened to today's song in a while, but it came on while my iPod was on shuffle and i was reminded of just how good an album "The XX's" debut effort was.