Student Protests

Captain Tact was texting me at my temp job earlier today to register his disgust at the way the press have covered the London student protests. Prior to hearing from him, all I’d read was part of a statement from the head of the MET describing the trouble makers as “a small but significant” minority, although the attack on the royals had filtered through my caffeine deprived senses to a certain extent.

“What are they saying,” I texted back, looking through old biology papers to see if the diagram I needed to do had been drawn before. It had not.

“Mainly banging on about the desecration of war memorials and attacks on the royal family. Nothing about the people stuck on the bridge.”

It transpired that one of the captain's friends, currently studying in London, had gone along to the protest at 3pm but on seeing the violence he decided to leave. He was prevented from doing so, detained on Westminster Bridge for over four hours without access to food, water, or the other accoutrements to which he has become accustomed.

“That’s what they always focus on,” I responded, adverbally. “Good news isn’t news, hence no mention of the protests in Scotland [which have all been pretty peaceful]… This is where social media helps because we can hear the other side to it almost as it happens. Sod the press. We know the truth and can pass it on.”

Having said that, not everyone in the world is using social media to follow the likes of Laurie Penny and Shiv Malik as they take to the streets of London. Especially not when they’re supposed to be working. And even fewer are aware of intrepid Edinburgh journos tirelessly following the boringly peaceful events up here. In which case, I suppose the captain has a point – the vast majority of people are presumably only getting the headlines given them by the national papers.

I thought I’d use my lunch break to find out what those were. Everyone said the same thing.

The Guardian had - “live coverage of all the latest news and reaction to the protests, in which the Prince of Wales’s car was attacked.”

The Daily Telegraph – “Prince Charles and Camilla attack: someone could have been shot”

The Mail – “Rioting mob who attacked Charles and Camilla were lucky not to be shot.”

The Sun – “Royal Car Attacked – Charles and Camilla stunned as demo yobs wreck limo.”

The Daily Mirror, meanwhile, came up with the restrained, “CAMILLA ATTACK TERROR”, but sadly I can’t actually get on to the News of the World website at work to see their thoughts because it is blocked for being ‘tasteless and offensive’.

Scottish papers joined in too. The Press and Journal went with the boring but accurate “Charles and Camilla caught up in riot over tuition fees”; The Herald opted for the musical sounding “The Fire of London”; whilst the Scotsman website posted “Royal Car attacked as student rioters run riot in London.” Darn those riot-running rioters.

This one headline – PAINT THROWN AT CAR, NOBODY HURT – is arguably not the most interesting part of what went on in Parliament Square yesterday. What about INNOCENT BYSTANDERS TRAPPED ON BRIDGE or Laurie Penny’s afore-linked eyewitness account which can be partially summarised by, POLICE BATTER CHILDREN.

Presumably those headlines aren’t dramatic enough? They mainly involve good for nothing students who want the government they voted for to honour their pre-election promises, which is boring. And nobody can empathise with students, they’ve all got ideas above their station and smell of toast. Meanwhile the story everyone went for in the end (that was Charles and Camilla getting a horrible fright, lest we forget) had violence worthy of caps lock. And celebrities to boot! Kind of…

Coincidentally, right after having this conversation, filmmaker Chris Salt aka @oblongpictures reiterated my initial point by tweeting:

Why protests turn bad: 5live yesterday “All very calm at the moment so no real story yet. We’ll cross live if there are any developments.”

‘Developments’ meaning bad behaviour from protesters, or the involvement of famous people.

I am curious to know why people in a creative industry like the media can’t find an attention grabbing headline in the fact that 30, 000 odd people turned up to protest in the first place. Surely that’s interesting? Isn’t it indicative of something? Nobody thinks they all turned up to chuck flares at police horses – but why were they there? Have any of them examined the new policy in detail? Is it really as bad as all that?

Epiphany

It is done.

Over the past few months I have gradually teched up; obtaining a new laptop that stays on when unplugged, an intertron friendly phone, and a cool tripod that can wrap itself around things should the need arise. Slowly but surely I have read and returned most of my library books, the total receding from over 40 to 17 (technically staff are allowed 20 so this is a genuine result). I have completed the paperwork to register with two temp agencies, Pertemps and Blue Arrow. And today I received a letter confirming that the council have noticed my resignation, and will duly not be paying me for my last three days on account of the fact I’ve already taken my annual leave for the year.

Yes, after 20 months of bewildering daily abuse - punctuated by regular outbreaks of therapeutic team alcoholism - I am leaving my job.

In some ways, this is a monumentally stupid thing to do. If there were no jobs about when I graduated, then the market must be into minus opportunities now. Scaremongering from all over the world indicates that the situation doesn’t look like improving drastically for a couple more years. And what industry is it I am trying to claw my way into? The totally stable, always expanding, not at all panicked world of journalism.

Staying with the council would mean I could work my way into middle management and sit there with a regular income, gradually doing less and less to earn it, until my retirement at 75. I would be financially able to get on with doing all the things that people generally do to distract themselves from the fact they have a job in middle management – going to the pictures, gardening, and improving myself in various ways (learning Spanish, maybe, or taking up golf). It’d be alright, and anyway, how many people do you know that actually enjoy what they do?

But it is not to be. I’ve just turned 25 and for some reason it feels like the time to get aspirational. After all, when else will I have the opportunity to walk into something so potentially ruinous with my eyes open all the way to eleven? If I continue the way I have been, before I know it there’ll be things like mortgages and dependants to think about, and I’ll be sitting in an open plan office reading the mass emails about the new bins and wondering whatever happened to that plan I had to be a journalist from the age of 9. Grim. It’s time to give freelancing the time and energy it deserves, and myself the opportunity to make it work.

And if it all goes tits up I can always go back.

They Took Our Jerbs

Today I took a multiple choice quiz on totaljobs to find out what sorts of things I should be applying for. It came up with a summary of my working style, which was this:

"Your style is characterised by independence and a drive to maintain your free spirit in your dealings with people and events. You are warm and enthusiastic but you tend to hide your light, being fairly introverted, not really needing other people. Other people find it difficult to understand you but nevertheless are attracted to you, seeing enviable glimpses of your true character.

You judge things according to your values, taking little note of the preferences of others. In a choice of career it will be important to you to clarify for yourself the choices that are open and the implications they have with respect to your values. In the right place with the right people and work you can be intensely loyal. In this sense it is important to you to believe in the work you undertake; that will improve your performance many fold."

I take exception to the ignoring other people’s preferences part, because over the last year I’ve gotten quite good at factoring in what other people want to do / want me to do and creating entire projects round it. But other than that it seems spookily accurate for a quiz that consists entirely of ticky boxes…

Anyway the upshot of all this is that I would be alright in sales, service (including retail) and social work, but would suck at engineering, computer programming, or anything scientific. Curses! I have been deluding myself for so long into thinking that I can become an IT guy irrespective of my complete void of interest and/or knowledge! Still, better to find out now than continue down the road of applying for voluntary posts on the large hadron collider. I see now that was a silly plan.