The BBC rolled out its new-look BBC News website redesign today amid much fanfare. It’s attracted a lot of comment, not just on the site itself but also across the media-reporting media. Taking out all the “if it ain’t broke, why fix it” remarks, of which there were very many, there still seemed to be [...]
Disability Living Allowance – a personal experience
Published in June 24th, 2010
Tuesday’s Budget contained the not-entirely-unexpected announcement of cuts to benefits. There was a general expectation that Incapacity Benefit (IB) and its new incarnation, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), both of which are claimed by many disabled people, would be targeted. IB is frequently in the news for its renown as a benefit that is relatively [...]
Future of Manchester under the microscope
Published in May 18th, 2010
A couple of recent events have thrown the future of Manchester into sharp focus as pundits and citizens both look at ways to develop the city in a fitting manner for the future. Manchester is the UK’s third city in terms of size but its second in many other respects. Culturally, it’s been a major [...]
The sale of MEN
Published in February 10th, 2010
Several zillion words were written yesterday on the sale of the Manchester Evening News to Trinity Mirror – the details, the commentary, and the rest of the speculation. I’m not going to rehash what’s already been said.But, as a freelance journalist working in my adopted city of Manchester, I’ve had time to ponder what it [...]
The learning curve
Published in December 8th, 2009
My thirst for knowledge never seems to diminish. There are always things I’m curious about, want to know more about, pique my interest enough to go exploring further. Much of my curiosity is transient – I’ll read a blog and look up something on Wikipedia or remember something someone mentioned in passing and do a [...]
TEDx Manchester – some thoughts
Published in October 3rd, 2009
I attended TEDx Manchester yesterday – a half-day of presentations and debate on technology, entertainment and design (the TED of the title). I’m still digesting much of what was put out, because there was an awful lot packed into the five-hour programme. Apparently, too, this was the biggest TED event in Europe to date – [...]
Expenses – MPs vs journalists
Published in May 12th, 2009
National treasure Stephen Fry has waded into the debate about MPs’ expenses, claiming that MPs are not really doing anything much wrong, and stating very bluntly that journalists are far worse when it comes to fiddling expenses. I have news for Stephen. The expenses culture for journalists ended a long time ago – at least [...]
Blogging against disablism
Published in May 1st, 2009
Did you know that one in six people in the UK has a disability of some sort? No? Neither did I until quite recently. It’s a shocking statistic, not so much because of the figure of 17%, but because disability is so underreported that when it does make the press people’s life stories become stereotyped [...]
Local news, local action
Published in March 28th, 2009
Anyone who pays any attention to the news cannot have failed to hear of the swingeing cuts in staff being made at newspapers and magazines up and down the UK. Thousands of journalists jobs have disappeared over the last year. Some papers and magazines have been closed down. Over the last couple of weeks, people [...]
TwitterTitters – Ta-dah!
Published in March 4th, 2009
Or how we exploited social media to change the world… Less than a month ago, fellow journalist Linda Jones asked me to join her on a project to raise money for Comic Relief using the medium of Twitter. What a rollercoaster it has been! By harnessing Twitter, we somehow managed to create an entire book [...]
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