Tag Archives: The Guardian

New Kids on the Block

01/28/2012 By in Press & Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Rarely is anyone judged for who they really are. As anyone who has ever attended a party or social gathering will already know, new friends and acquaintances will invariably want to know ‘what you do’ for a living. It’s unsurprising really. Perhaps it is just human nature for us to compartmentalise our personalities and responsibilities in this way. Graduates lose their progressive status within a year of leaving university. Thereafter some of the greatest young minds on this planet will be defined by their occupation – waitress, drug dealer and freelance blogger; or as they are more commonly known in the Eurozone – unemployed.

Our preoccupation with status has been further amplified by the sheer number of people who have a handle or profile promoting their job and lifestyle. Such a culture inevitably leads to people branding their identities and heightening status anxiety to extraordinary levels. Alas in the words of the late Virginia Woolf ‘the eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages’. The lowly shelf-stacker at Tesco, who has read the works of Joyce, Mishima and Ezra Pound, is certainly not going to feel any better by spending too much time on LinkedIn.

Although there is a light blogging alternative to the online brand phenomenon, where nobody knows your name or what you do. Tumblr is an offbeat social media service with a pop-culture twist. Irreverent by nature and heavily meme based, the Tumblr generation is largely college educated and they post endless streams of fashion, photography and literacy quotes in splendid anonymity. With no comments or trolls, there is something highly refreshing about Tumblr’s eccentricity and complete disregard for how we all have to make a living. Nobody cares what you do, it’s all about what you feel and know to be true.

Predominately US-based and with over 120 million users every month, Tumblr has given rise to some of the most entertaining and offbeat blogs around today. From the sexual intellectualism of Book Porn, soppy boredom of Dogs on Trains and the late great Kim Jong-Il looking at things, Tumblr is a wonderful place to waste time. A digital scrapbook for the creative moths of this world, there is something refreshing how people can express themselves so vividly online in such a weird and odd fashion.

However, success comes at a price and while the light blogging service remains the domain of hyper-intelligent college kids. Old media organisations such as The Guardian and New Yorker now want a piece of the digital action. With traditional newspapers spreading their ‘content’ online, there is a danger Tumblr will succumb to the wishes of large media groups wanting to promote their corporate image. Indeed it has probably happened already such is the power of big business.

But while people remain weird and strange there will always be a place for the marginalised and ignored on Tumblr. It remains somewhere pure and anonymous and relatively untainted by the status obsession culture found on other networks. And while the pressure to be someone will never cease and every fresh handshake and sideways air kiss will inevitably be followed by an enquiry into your occupation. There is now a small place where outside thoughts no longer have to be our cages, and where labyrinth minds can express themselves freely on laptops in unkempt bedrooms and solitary library chambers.

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The Last of the Monoglots

10/04/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As an island nation geographically isolated from continental Europe, speaking foreign languages has never been Britain’s forte. With the majority of English speaking residents having no practical need to speak anything else, most UK citizens have never bothered to learn a foreign language. Apart from going on holiday a few weeks a year, where the hotel staff, waiters and tourist information guides inevitably all speak English anyway. What incentive do you have to learn a new language that you will probably never use? Speaking foreign languages in Britain is essentially a bourgeois luxury – a cultural reference point for the urban middle classes, a demographic who want to order a bottle of Bourgogne Pinot Noir with their friends on holiday.

With the majority of the population immune to foreign languages, the number of students taking A-levels in England and Wales has fallen to a new low. Likewise Scotland is not faring any better with more than half of all foreign language assistants in state schools axed due to budget cuts. In a provincial region such as Aberdeenshire, which is geographically isolated even in the context of Scotland, the majority of students don’t leave the North East after graduating. Bordering only England what practical incentive does an English speaking child in Scotland have to learn German or French? A truck driver from Luxembourg or Switzerland will be expected to speak at least three or four languages in order to communicate with their clients. Linguistic exchanges are certainly not something a Scottish driver has to worry about when he or she travels through Cumbria to England.

With the English language establishing itself as the global lingua franca due to the British Empire and the economic dominance of the United States, British citizens don’t really have much incentive to learn any language other than their own. If France had won the Seven Years’ War and North America became a French colony then the English language might have been seriously challenged. Such is the historical power of this Anglo-American hegemony then unless British students are learning new languages purely for intellectual reasons the rewards are pretty slim. Understanding all the grammatical peculiarities, complexities and declensions is a tall order, like learning a code, and then you have to be confident enough to express yourself fluently.

The UK education secretary, Michael Gove, has proposed that every child aged five or over should be learning a foreign language at school. Speaking in the Guardian newspaper, Gove says “understanding a modern foreign language helps you understand English better” and “there is no one who is fluent in a foreign language who isn’t a masterful user of their own language”. It’s hard to dispute this and teaching languages at nursery level, where children can learn easily is probably the best way ahead. What language should these children learn to speak though? English still remains the superpower of languages despite Mandarin’s numerical advantage. Will young children ever have the chance to converse in French, German or Spanish?

Languages were never meant to be the ornamental indulgences of the upper-middle classes. Speaking in a foreign tongue requires constant practice and attention. As native speakers of the global language, British citizens are almost given a carte blanche to be lazy. Unless you can practice a new language on a regular basis then these early linguistic abilities are incredibly fragile. Britain is arguably a victim of her geographical isolation and imperial past when it comes to learning new languages.

In the Tamil Nadu state of Southern India, most citizens can speak Tamil, Telugu, Malayam and Kanada by the age of twelve. With the majority of South Indians having to learn the state language of Hindi and English to communicate with the outside world, Britain’s monolingualism looks increasingly parochial. If the UK education secretary’s proposals are implemented on a national scale then perhaps in thirty or forty year’s time, the current generation of monoglots will be an endangered species. Somehow you don’t need to speak three languages to realise not even the most successful of human empires will last forever.

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In these plagued streets

08/10/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Much has been made about the social alienation felt by the London rioters this week. Confused, bewildered and completely unable to relate to haiku of despair on their television screens; the middle-classes have been scrambling for reasons behind the violence. Overcrowding, poverty and unemployment are to blame say the left. But rioting is about power and there are deeply complex reasons for why these incidents have taken place. As police sirens and helicopters pierce through from my South Hackney window, it’s important to remember that social alienation is not the reserve of ‘feral rats’ smashing up apartment stores.

Nearly everyday I buy my groceries at the nearby Co-op across the road, and while it’s a bit expensive and the food isn’t very good, I usually can’t be bothered walking anywhere else. I’ve been going to the same shop for over two years and everyday I meet the same dead-eyed man behind the till who never fails to blank me. Now if I were scanning pints of milk, biscuits and ham slices for eight hours a day, I suppose I wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about greeting the next customer either. It’s just that after two long years, I had hoped the sad lonely man would have recognised me by now. Alas this is modern day London and community relations are forever a transient affair.

Living in a transaction based society, I could have easily been using one of those bleeping machines at the Co-op such was the human void. At the nearby Tesco store, which have spread across the country like a virus, I experience the same robotic gestures and beeping devices on a regular basis. With nobody holding any allegiances to anyone and affluence the only barometer of success, I find myself an isolated consumer on a residential council estate. Foreign flatmates share my living space and outside the post-war estate is full of anonymous strangers who only know themselves.

Inner cities are harsh, unforgiving environments where the architecture is brutal and greenery is a luxury confined to the affluent suburbs. Everyday I say good morning to the little black lady cleaning the stairwell and she is my only community friend. Next door is a Spanish speaking family but I don’t know their names or what they do, and this is despite being their neighbour for over two years. All I do know is that they have the world’s most irritating dog and I can’t imagine what her shrill barking does for community relations. Apart from that I could die tomorrow and nobody on the estate would even notice. Living in a metropolis where nobody seems to care or know each other, it creates a social void where respect is very much a currency in decline.

However, there is one family on the estate that everybody recognises but not in a good way. Sitting on their concrete patio with the door wide open, the family are a Channel 5 documentary in waiting. In fact they represent a grotesque parody of Britain’s ‘Sick Society’. The kids are always topless and sit outdoors next to a flea ridden mattress, with streams of rubbish spilling out from the hallway onto the pavement. Sipping tins of cider and low price lager all day long, the fat family provide a comic spectacle to an otherwise faceless community.

Outside their kitchen window, they have a carved wooden emblem stating ‘Hello, Welcome and Piss Off’ as a greeting to strangers. Presumably this is to ward off evil spirits. Sadly it tells you all you ever needed to know about this family. Such charming manners don’t usually encourage people to ask about their well being. One can only wonder if their kids took part in the rioting this week. On the surface they suffer from all the swamp conditions of a sick society – poverty, boredom, unemployment and a perennial lack of space. But judging by the size of them rioting would probably seem like far too much work. Violence has now spread to other English cities with similar social conditions. Meanwhile across the road at the Co-op, the sad lonely man remains dead-eyed and aloof, swiping hummus, Galaxy chocolate and copies of The Guardian to familiar looking strangers.

Faded Seaside Glamour

04/10/2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Brighton is the undisputed liberal capital of the UK and a proverbial honeypot for decadent Londoners. The seaside town’s bohemian reputation has seen it become the equivalent of Shoreditch-On-Sea with its massive gay and lesbian scene and an increasingly left-wing population. If you want to buy the Guardian in Brighton on a Saturday then don’t bother. It has already sold out. Brighton’s liberal ascendancy peaked in May 2010 when Caroline Lucas was elected as Britain’s first ever Green MP. The Green Party’s landmark victory only further confirmed the town’s reputation as a fantasy world of boutique hedonism, vegan restaurants and G-string clubbing. More than 30,000 people live in Brighton and travel the 53 miles to work in London every day and many of them are wealthy media types.

However, Brighton hasn’t always been an arty liberal utopia and up until 1997, Brighton Pavilion had consistently voted for the Conservative Party. So what happened to what happened to all the Tories in that blue-rinse retirement home by the sea? Well Brighton might have become a Guardian reading refugee camp since the late 1990s but it remains a shifting city of conflicting values. Britain’s favourite seaside town retains an affiliation with the English working-class and is still affectionately known for serving fish and chips, ice cream and lobster bellied men on the pebbled shore. Protestants of the flesh can be found wearing sunglasses and reading Rupert Murdoch’s finest on deckchairs on Brighton Beach during the long summer months.

Anyone walking along Brighton Pier will marvel at the views at sunset but the structure itself is a bona fide cultural Chernobyl. Somewhere where you go to fall in love and get stabbed simultaneously. Britons of all social classes love the seaside and wealthy playboys echo Brighton’s decadent past by chasing each other on speed boats on sunny afternoons. Trudging back over pebbles and sand, a strange dust will land on your hand as dozens of grand Edwardian hotels stare out towards the English Channel along the Marine Parade.

Such grand emblems of historic wealth are unlikely to be occupied by counter-culture hippies. These luxury hotels remain the spiritual home of Conservative Party MPs, who secretly long for a return to the 1980s, when they didn’t have to go up north to Birmingham or Manchester for their party conference season. Blue rinsed traditions still retain their historic prominence in 21st century Brighton, which remains socially diverse with different groups co-existing in relative harmony.

It appears the demographic shift towards bohemian liberalism has not stopped Brighton from becoming the drug- injecting death capital of the UK. Understandably the Golden Syringe trophy is unlikely to take centre stage on the tourist board’s website but English seaside resorts have always been pretty seedy. A haven for criminality and smuggling for centuries, novelist Peter James has suggested Brighton is one of the top favourite places for criminals to live in the UK.

With seaports on both sides and a nearby airport with no custom post, masses of unguarded coastlines and London only an hour train journey away. Brighton is easy to escape and has a massive drug market with its two universities, booming club scene and arty middle-class residents with experimental tastes. Now one of the most exciting British cities, the seaside resort has been mentally rebuilt in a different order with many of its old Tory characteristics obliterated. Society is always changing and is forever being rebuilt and having its old assumptions challenged. The town, after all, remains the truth, and its residents the shifting fable.

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Squatting is Free

02/27/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Squatting is hot property in London after the Really Free School set up class in Guy Ritchie’s six million pound townhouse in Fitzroy Square. The Free School’s aims are somewhat unclear but their primary cause is to expose the marketisation of higher education. The squatters have organised a full programme of lectures, seminars, classes and film screenings to provide what they consider to be an alternative to formal education. Although from reading their online manifesto, I suspect their chief propagandist did not attend many English Literature tutorials with sentences such as “Freeskool iz not a zoo. We have unicorns to fly and kingdoms to destroy”.

But regardless of their lofty aspirations, the Free School’s subsequent eviction from Fitzroy Square to a nearby 200 year old pub in Rathbone Street. The education rebels have provoked a national debate about the virtue of squatting in a country with 870,000 empty buildings. In a lively discussion on Comment is Free, one Guardian reader expressed the view that “squats provide an alternative setup outside the mainstream where people are not bound by dull things like paying the rent, financial planning, justification and subordination”.

While nobody wants to pay rent or be subject to financial constraints, squatting does evoke the cuckoo conundrum as handsomely illustrated in this episode of BBC Springwatch. The nest of a reed warbler is taken over by a cuckoo chick and commands the warblers to feed him until he reaches a truly monstrous size. As a stunned observer of this ritual begging routine, I do wonder how evolution has allowed these lazy upstarts carte blanche to live rent free in a fiercely competitive and unfair world.

And while squatters can live a bohemian lifestyle in abandoned properties without paying any rent. The majority of ordinary citizens pay high rates and taxes for public services most squatters take for granted. Fairness is at the moral heart of the squatting debate and left-wing journalist Laurie Penny eloquently argues in their favour.

It is manifestly in the interests of those who own and hold all this disused property, including the millionaires who make up the Cabinet, to misrepresent Britain’s 15,000 squatters and occupiers as in the words of the Times — a “dangerous scourge”. Otherwise the hundreds of thousands of people paying 90% of their salary for poky rooms hours from their places of work might start getting ideas.

With affordable housing in short supply and millions of young people confined to paying huge portions of their wages for rented boxes in the sky. Britain’s housing crisis is likely to continue and squatters often divide local communities when they take up residence in nearby abandoned buildings. As when a group of anti-materialist hippies began squatting in an abandoned Walkabout pub in Islington last spring they eventually overcame suspicion and became a welcome addition to the local community.

In stark contrast this Australian documentary from 1983 about punk squatters in North London provoked a less welcoming response from residents. Squatters are always likely to divide opinion and as long as law abiding citizens passively acquiesce in a society that tolerates obscene bank bonuses and tax avoidance from multi-national corporations. Then it doesn’t matter whether squatters are middle class students rebelling against their “oppressive” parents, anarchist punks or free education activists taking over luxury buildings. If wealthy property owners are careless enough to leave houses vacant for years and do nothing about it, then it is hardly surprising if cuckoo’s fly in and expect to be taken care of by the wealthy.

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Arrested Development

02/06/2011 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

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After the Guardian revealed Lord Wei of Shoreditch is unable to fulfil his Big Society duties because working for free is incompatible with ‘having a life’. Lord Wei not only exposed the sham of a government expecting people to work for nothing in an era of massive spending cuts. Moreover it shone a torch on the murky world of corporate exploitation in the modern workplace. Earlier this week Richard Bilton’s excellent BBC documentary showed how class continues to restrict access to professions and well-paid careers to all but an exclusive pool of well-connected individuals.

Anyone looking for work in the publishing, fashion or media industry will already be familiar with internships. The vast majority of media jobs in Britain are based in London and anyone lucky enough to receive an offer can be expected to work for 3 months unpaid and still have no guarantee of employment. With 1 in 10 graduates now out of work, I can recall my struggle to make a break through after graduating from the University of Glasgow in 2004.

After the privilege of studying at a world-class 15th Century institution, the harsh reality of finding stimulating employment became all too apparent when I temped for the financial services industry. While I wanted to use my creative writing skills for a living, I sorely lacked confidence and with no connections, I found myself trapped in a vicious circle of dead end temping jobs to pay the rent. Glasgow is the call-centre capital of Europe and after graduating, I would turn up every day for £6.04 an hour wearing a Britney Spears headset on behalf of the Scottish Co-Operative Group.

With my dignity in tatters, I quickly realised that in order to improve myself, I had to go down the Scottish voluntary route. By doing so I religiously scoured the internet and worked for free on behalf of tourist boards, local restaurant guides and a global university website. Eventually I quit my administrative day job to focus entirely on voluntary writing positions I had initially agreed to fulfil in my spare time.

On not wanting to let my future references down, I eventually gave them my full working week for nearly 5 months and used credit cards to pay the rent. Clearly unsustainable I fortunately managed to get a salaried media job in London as a result of my volunteering and agreed to move down south.

While I have clearly benefited from volunteering and believe it is often a necessary passage for young people to get ahead. Anyone doing a voluntary internship in London will have astronomical overheads compared to what I had to pay in Glasgow where the cost of living is far cheaper.

If young graduates want a media job in London then they will be expected to serve not one but several unpaid internships before getting a salaried position. Expecting people to work for nothing inevitably favours upper-middle class children from the South East, who have financial support or live within commuting distance of their parent’s home. This new aristocracy of coming from a home owning family is increasingly divisive and helps to form an unfair and disproportionate workplace in some of the most desirable sectors.

Once you’re inside the door then depending on your employer it is increasingly down to the dark arts of networking and internal friendships to progress. While it would be desirable to think you can progress through ability and hard work alone, I often find social intelligence and the ability to ‘work a room’ is all too prominent in making that elusive connection to get ahead. From a personal perspective I have always found the charm offensive very difficult because I don’t have a silver tongue to seduce random strangers at launch parties, meetings or screening invites. We are all made differently and the path ahead is not always going to be a fair or equal one.

When Labour leader Ed Miliband spoke of the British promise being under threat by cuts to public spending. He tapped into a deeper trend of how the current generation cannot expect to exceed the wealth and standard of living of their parents. There is nothing clever about making the best jobs only for the rich and by narrowing the best opportunities to rich home owning families it only serves to create an increasingly divided and unequal society.

Clearly there are social, moral and long-term economic benefits from having a well educated workforce and to frighten off potential students from poorer or lower-middle class backgrounds is foolhardy in the extreme. It makes me extremely angry that higher education is perceived solely as a means for people to make money.

Surely in the current economic climate our future values have to change. We should be looking to create a fairer, balanced and more equal society instead of this myopic chase of prosperity. Even by writing inside a rented box in the sky for nothing, I am still enormously proud of my university education and feel it should be open and accessible to anyone. Something even Lord Wei would agree about as he reduces his voluntary hours in order to pay the bills.

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