Taking Out The Trash

Scribbling

The lack of posts can be explained by a serious excess of work.
So take a bow E&T magazine where I've been looking at gecko feet, as well as Flipside where inaminate objects have taken interest and something for The Guardian this Friday which should prove interesting.

Giving and taking away

The Guardian published a piece by me this week on how one an Irish Traveller will be getting an MBE one week - and a battle at the High Court the next.

Bridgette Jones will be at Buckingham Palace next month to collect an MBE for service to her community.

A week later she will be at the high court hoping that her home outside Canterbury will not be taken from her.

"They give you a medal with one hand and they try and take your home away with the other," she says.

Jones, known to everyone as Bridie, has championed Traveller rights for the last 15 years. During that time she says that overt racism against Gypsies and Travellers may have diminished in the UK but discrimination still exists - nowhere more so than in planning regulations. Since 2001 she has been fighting to stay on the plot of land that she, her son, daughter and seven grandchildren call home.

"It has been seven long and depressing years," she says. "We have been given planning permission by the county council and by two inspectors but some villagers have set up a group to stop us and they keep appealing. It is very aggravating. You have children born and bred on that land."

Through her work with the Canterbury Gypsy Traveller Support Group, Jones gets a lot of calls from Travellers about similar planning problems.

"In some cases it is just ethnic cleansing," she claims. "In Basildon the council is spending £3m on bailiffs to evict Travellers from a site. There are 300 children on that site and some are sick and some are dying. We're supposed to be in a credit crunch and yet they spend all this money to put people off their own land."

Jones began volunteering back in 1992, working with young people in Kent. She found then that ethnic minority children didn't access traditional youth services so she tried to open up the services to the whole community.

"I've always tried to break down barriers and build bridges," she says. "When I get a phone call now I try to make sure they get the right services and go to the right people. It's about bringing people around a table and discussing problems."

When Jones got the letter in the post back in October with the royal motif on it, asking if she would accept an MBE she thought it was a joke. A follow-up letter inviting her to the palace in March was met by "complete out-and-out shock".

Jones has been to Downing Street to petition for Traveller rights on several occasions, but she just plans on enjoying this trip. She is saving her energy for the high court battle.

"People get very angry when they see what is happening in Italy with [Roma]Gypsies," she says , "but I don't think people know that it [discrimination] is on their own doorstep."

ENDS

Big brass balls get kicking

Bristol Evening Post Watch gives both barrels to a particularly inviting target.
The city's premier only evening paper has been running a campaign called bristol Fights Back which is supposed to be abot how the city is refusing to be crunched by the credit crisis.
And meanwhile it's sacking 45 members of staff.
That's some brass balls.
Sometimes when you have such a juicy target you get a bit of blood lust and start trying to make too many bullseyes at once.
BEPW nicely, methodically and deliciously rudely rips apart the banal and hypocritical campaign. It's not the idea of it - it's a great idea - it's that the Post is too hamstrung by its outlook: suck up to business and smack down the workers.

Dishing it out big time

The world has fallen in on Jeni Barnett and LBC after they tried to pick a fight with Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre.

To recap: Jeni hosts a phone-in on LBC where she prattles on about so-called MMR fears without the slightest idea what she is talking about. Simply being a parent is, it seems, excuse enough to give someone airtime to talk crap and scare other parents. So when Ben posts an extended clip ofthe show to prove how awful it is, LBC suits start talking about copyright infringement.

Now everyone has decided to have a pop at LBC and Jeni and take their excuses and operation apart. Not living in London, I didn't even know Jeni existed before a couple of days ago but now she is indelibly linked in my mind with a particular kind of selfishly irrational behaviour. You know, the one where people drive their kids to school in 4x4s and park in the no parking zone while talking on the telephone.

Ben provides an extensive update here.

And now another one here. The world falling in Jeni and LBC means Ben Goldacre and his supporters are now being accused of bullying. Ben's temperate response to that accusation is well done; even if my comments above are more about playing the man rather than the ball.

It's the way we tell 'em

Interesting post from Alison Gow over at the Liverpool Daily Post on the difference between bloggers and journalists.
Apparently it's the similarities that are important.
I'm not convinced by Alison's argument simply because millions of people shouting out their experiences requires filtering and assessment otherwise you drown in a sea of noise. That editorialising is stil done best by journalists. It's just not that quick.
But it's a good argument and well put by someone who does web 2.0 journalism far far better than I can.

On dishing it out and taking it

Rather marvellous post from Ben Goldacre about LBC getting all shirty because he dared post a long clip of one of the presenters getting the MMR issue, how shall we say, completely arse and about face.
The LBC lawyers have written to Goldacre asking him to cease and desist because he's infringing their copyright (and nothing at all to do with writing embarassing things about them, oh no).
It's always very dodgy when journalists resort to libel lawyers. They really ought to know better.
One of my first ever libel threats (you remember them like you do the first time you realised Santa wasn't real) was from a Sunday Times journalist. This venerable hack was annoyed because I'd written that his speculative musings on who would be selected for a particular parliamentary seat were wide of the mark. They were, but we still wrote an apology.
It is quite possible that LBC's Jeni Barnett didn't want the suits involved and is mouthing "that's not the way to handle it".
What sympathy I have is tempered by the fact that on her blog she shows no contrition, no understanding and little empathy. She writes:

 "I am not a scientist, I would not claim to be a scientist. When tested on the contents of the MMR vaccine I told the truth. I did not have the facts to hand. Was I ill informed? Yes.As a responsible broadcaster I should have been better prepared as a parent, however, I can fight my corner. I don't know everything that goes into cigarettes but I do know they are harmful."

The difference with her and other parents is that she is in a postion of authority and her programme sets the terms of debate for the public.
That last sentence is beyond belief. The reason you know that cigarettes are harmful, Jeni, is because Richard Doll and many others carried out a huge amount of research to prove the link between smoking and lung cancer. That was then, slowly, reported by the media. There is no evidence to back-up your belief in the MMR scare; just the media storm.
Next we'll have Jeni on why the Earth is flat ("I don't know much but it's obvious all the water would just keep washing away from you.")
And as figures produced just recently show; falling vaccination rates cused by the wholly wrong and media-led MMR scare are having real and debilitating effects on children today.
It's not good enough to be a little ignorant and a bit fluffy and think you're just helping confused parents take control. You need to take this stuff seriously or you need to go and find a job where you can't cause damage to other people.

Same number of chips, less wrapping

The news that the Bristol Evening Post and the Western Daily Press are to shed around 45 jobs is just the latest in a raft of local journalism redundancies.

Just looking at Wiltshire, ITV West are in the process of cutting editorial staff in half, while the Salisbury Journal, Wiltshire Times and Gazett & Herald have all lost staff. The Bath Chronicle used to be a daily with four editions including two specifically for Wiltshire. It is now published just once a week. It's website lists a pathetic three reporters.

There can be no clearer sign that people will get less service, not a leaner service, because of these cuts than the news that the Western Daily could become no more than a Metro for rural areas.

However, when the Chronicle went weekly we were told that the Western Daily would be able to take up some of the slack. That promise lasted all of 18 months.

The WDP isn't all to my taste. It's the house journal of the Countryside Alliance but at least it covers rural issues rather than write patronising articles about barn conversions.

And when I was starting as a reporter we all looked to the WDP as the place to work before making it in Fleet Street.

Life hasn't stopped in Wiltshire, councils haven't given up making decisions, courts aren't shut for business and businesses keep going. So who is going to tell us about it?

It's worth bearing in mind that Northcliffe (the Daily Mail's regional arm which owns the Bristol and Bath papers) made an operating profit last year of £68m. Admittedly that was down on the £90m+ the year before, but the idea that local newspapers are a financial blackhole isfalse.

It's that owners have unrealistic and greedy expectations about profit. I thought that attitude was going to be shelved in light of the new economic climate we were all living in?

Mani pulite

Labour peer Toby Harris writes on being approached by the Sunday Times in their peers-for-sale sting but turning them down.
Very interesting to hear this side.
Hat tip: Hopi Sen via Bob Piper

BBC cant

The decision by the BBC not to screen the emergency appeal for Gaza is pretty poor. As others have pointed out - they've done it in the past and not queried that the aid might not reach those in need.
Censorship works best when people censor themselves without prompting from others and this is a pretty good example.
But if you do want to contribute then you can do so here.

An editor writhes

Great post on the Bristol Evening Post Watch blog about the hypocrisy and downright nastiness of the editorial comment.

I was about to say that I wish the BEPW bog would update more often . . . but then who am I to talk.

Apparently the paper and its sister title are expected to announced redundancies today. My commiserations - it's your management that should be walking Spanish.

Update: confirmed that the the Post and Western Daily looking at 45 redundancies. Let's hope the NUJ chapel which fought for so long to get recognition can successfully reduce the sackings to a minimum.