Western tragedies remind us that we could be next

The world watched in horror yesterday as two bombs were detonated close to the Boston Marathon’s finishing line, killing at least two and injuring over a hundred. Twitter sprang into overdrive, graphic photos of the atrocity flooded the internet, and frenzied speculation about who might be responsible soon began.

But amidst the shock and sorrow, a number of people were quick to point out that over 30 people died in bombings in Iraq on the same day. And while the manner in which this fact was relayed might have been somewhat insensitive – proffered as some kind of body count one-upmanship – it does raise questions about how we apportion sympathy to lost innocent lives on account of their geographical location.

It strikes me that the real reason we found ourselves so affected by the attack in Boston is not just sympathy, but rather that it was an incident you or I could have easily been the victims of. The sweltering, burnt out streets of war torn areas in the Middle East might seem like the usual backdrop for terrorist incidents, but a sunny city in the USA? Almost unheard of, and all the more shocking for it.

The quote that was bandied around the most amidst the online chaos yesterday was one from Fred Rogers, who said: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” And in Boston yesterday, as the rolling photos, videos and reportage showed, that rang true.

But where are the helpers in Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan? Where are the helpers in countries that see 10 times this level of terror and destruction every day? A 50 word nib in the back pages of a newspaper reporting mass deaths in the Middle East does not compare to the front page of almost every Western news outlet demanding answers for yesterday’s horror in Boston.  Why don’t we ask for answers unless it happens close to home?

What took place in the USA yesterday is an utterly tragic and shocking state of affairs, worsened by the fact an innocent child was one of the victims. But innocent children and innocent lives are taken every single day around the world by people planting explosives, and to value the death of one over the other simply because they come from somewhere similar to ourselves is just wrong. Every human life is sacred, and we should feel equally moved by the loss of one, no matter from where in the world it is taken.

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Events like yesterday’s often seek to make people temporary media heroes, but Carlos Arredondo (pictured above)’s story is a truly astonishing account of the horrors some people are subjected to, and their unwavering resilience in the face of extreme adversity. 

The strongest female voice in politics is gone. Will there ever be another?

As someone who was born after Margaret Thatcher stepped down from office, the Iron Lady has been a remarkably present figure throughout my life. Perhaps it was because she was the local MP for my area before taking up residence at Downing Street, or the fact she was admired by one parent whilst despised by the other. But more than that, more than any policy she ever triumphed or failed with, the inimitable Mrs T did something that had never happened before or since: she proved that politics could be a woman’s game.

Thatcher’s politics might leave me cold, but her conviction does anything but. As I sat in the newsroom at lunchtime today, watching interview after interview with Tory peers, and the ex-PM’s former colleagues, that achievement was yet again hammered home. I watched as a conveyor belt of wrinkled old Etonians were asked to comment on Thatcher, on her policies, and her life, and her input, and couldn’t help but wonder where her female contemporaries might be. Surely it was for them, and not her male counterparts, that a woman at the forefront of British politics truly meant something.

I talk about the lack of women in male dominated areas of life somewhat frequently – in fact, I often think I should write about something else. But then I notice an all-male panel show, or a political conference entirely devoid of female journalists, and can’t help but put pen back to paper. In a government with woefully few female politicians, most of whom are forgettable faces drawn in to keep up the appearance of addressing the gender gap, Thatcher’s rise to the top of her game and ability to stay there for over a decade is all the more meaningful.

While I found many of her policies to be rather deplorable, Thatcher’s belief in politics, and belief in herself, do offer a glimmer of retribution.  A politician who can be respected is something I’m yet to see. I have never heard the current state of politics more accurately summed up than by comedian Zoe Lyons, who two years ago proffered: “We now have the blandest politicians in Europe. Cameron, Clegg, Miliband – if there was a General Election tomorrow, I wouldn’t know which middle class, middle aged, bland suited, wet lipped, big foreheaded Oxford graduate to punch in the face first.”

British politics has become an increasingly sorry state of affairs, where so-called ‘leaders’ are little more than media monkeys spouting watered down policies that have no real meaning. It is bitterly ironic that in their desperation to show themselves as characters, as men of the people, that Camereggiband has become little more than political white noise. Thatcher didn’t need to tweet, or draft in house pets in a desperate bid for attention. She cared about her country, and though the way she showed this was wildly divisive, no one can doubt her genuine desire to make a difference.

When Roger Ebert passed away last week, tributes poured out in memory of the great writer who spent much of his career destroying that of others with an acerbic flick of his pen. But praise and adulation were heaped upon him because, whether what he said was good or bad, he had an innate understanding of his craft. You may have disagreed with a review or two, but nobody could say the man couldn’t write.

And similarly, while Thatcher’s policies directly impacted some in a most terrible fashion, she understood the game she was playing. It is easy to look back retrospectively and insist that there were better ways to bring coal mining to an end, but the reality was that there was a job that needed doing, and she was the only one with the guts to pull the plug. A politician can never make everyone happy – that goes against the very nature of democracy, where there will always be a majority and minority – but one whose legacy remains as prominent as Thatcher’s has and will speaks volumes for what she achieved. The vast majority of politics revolves around papering over the cracks left by the last government, and while she had inherited an economically damaged country in a perpetual state of rule by an overpaid boys club, adversity seemed to propel her forward.

What worries me most about Thatcher’s death is not the Bieber generation tweeting their desperate confusion about why someone’s name they don’t recognise is trending. What is far more concerning than that is how Britain’s only ever female leader being gone will impact the future of women in politics. I struggle to believe that the likes of Baroness Warsi or Nadine Dorries will positively influence young girls contemplating a career in politics – there are simply no role models, no female tour-de-force frontbenchers who show girls that they can be a party minority and win.

I find it almost impossible to get my head around the fact that out of 75 Prime Ministers, in a country where 51 per cent of the population is female, we have been outnumbered by male leaders in 98.7 per cent of British history. And now, in a society that is supposedly gender equal, we cannot produce one female politician prepared to run for the top spot – which makes Thatcher’s victory at a time where women’s place was in the kitchen all the more significant.

The Time I Contemplated a Major PR Stunt

So here’s the thing: it turns out getting a job you actually want can be quite hard. Who knew? Well, all of us, I suppose. But there’s something quite different about pondering the world of unemployment from the security of your shared shithole at university, and actually living out the uncertainty in glorious technicolour.

I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen to me after I graduated, so I decided that my best option would be fleeing the country. This ended up as a sort of four-month-double-fleeing-spectacular, starting off with me working on a magazine in Edinburgh for a month and then tootling off to New York for three more to work at a newspaper. Both were totally brilliant in a number of ways, but were finite jobs that had an all too quick expiry date.

So a couple of days before Christmas, I came back to London. Over the festive period, I was still jet-lagged and high enough on mulled wine fumes to temporarily forget the overwhelming and crushing reality that I was sort of unemployed, or a ‘freelancer,’ as us wacky lot in the biz call it. Aren’t journalists a card.

And then some quite good things started happening, like me getting interviews for jobs that I wanted, and getting to the final rounds of grad schemes for major newspapers that I didn’t want, and then I got paid to do actual journalism for an actual company that was actually really good. That job may have only lasted a week, but getting paid for doing almost nothing and reading endless magazines was like a bloody holiday. Stella English, you don’t know what side your bread’s buttered, love.

Right so anyway, then that thing happened where the shit hits the fan and you end up getting a faecal facemask, and life was becoming annoying because I was mostly wearing velour (sometimes in PUBLIC) and just bumbling along not really achieving anything. I coped for about two weeks with the whole desperately-sending-emails-out-to-everyone-in-the-world shebang and then caved, because I am a human who is weak and needs money for overpriced sushi. So I took a job in a car parking appeals office and spent four days hating the world and everyone in it who was employed by people that weren’t thieving bastards making those whose elderly relatives had just died cough up £80 for parking a millimetre outside the allotted bay.

Within my four days of torture at the ticket place, where I know for a fact dreams go to die, I was thankfully offered a sort of mini-job at a newspaper. I think it’s a job because I do get actual money for it (although it’s pretty much pennies), but the gig only lasts for five weeks, which makes me unsure.

Anyway, there is a point to all this, or maybe several points, and they are coming very soon. In my new job type thingy, where I am sort of redoing a lot of work formerly done by other people, I decided to google what my predecessors were doing now. I did this because this is maybe what a journalist would do (I’m not entirely sure if I am one yet, although I’ve been paid enough times to make me think it hasn’t all been a weird banking accident). It is also maybe what a stalker would do, but sometimes I’m really not sure there’s a difference.

So I googled the guy and found a piece written by him on The Guardian’s website. This chappy had taken a load of business cards and doorstepped every national paper and big magazine company around over the space of a couple of weeks, handing them out to anyone who would take them. In the article, he said he had been offered two jobs that could ‘make him.’

This instantly reminded me of the grad who put his big old mug on a billboard and asked people to hire him. And then he got hired. So I started to wonder, were big PR stunts the only way to actually get recognised in the field? I thought writing for publications since the age of 13, being deputy editor of a magazine at 20, moving to New York at 21 and freelancing all the while for national newspapers et al might be worth something, but apparently I was very wrong. Billboards, my friends. They are the mark of a true genius.

In spite of my bitterness, I do sort of understand why employers would see the attraction of someone who job hunts batshit crazy style like the aforementioned two. I’m not exactly risk averse – in the last few months I’ve lived abroad illegally, moved in with random flatmates I found on Craigslist and narrowly avoided a lawsuit – but there’s something about these big LOOK AT ME statements that I’m not sure are quite my style.

I realised the other day that I sit right next to the editor of the paper’s office, and that if I were to do some kind of big weird gesture, he should probably be the recipient (for proximity reasons, mainly). I’m not really sure about this stunt malarkey, though. For some reason, the only thing I could think of was filling his office with peanuts, but that is quite a shit idea (although if he really loved peanuts he might be like ‘OMG peanuts? How did you know?!’, and then gobble them up excitedly. Or, die of an anaphylactic shock. It’s really hard to know what is fucking stupid and what is totally genius in relation to industrial sized quantities of salted nuts).

When I stopped thinking about the peanuts idea (how many bags of KPs would I need to fill the entire place? Etc etc), I did briefly muse upon the fact that both of the stunters, as I shall term them, were male. This may sound a bit trite, but given the news this week that female graduates earn far less than their male contemporaries, it sort of seemed to tie in. The main reason for the pay gap was that women would ask for far lower starting salaries, while men would value themselves higher. In short: they’re bolder, and it’s paying off for them. So maybe it’s time for women to start doing extroverted crap and being cocksure (sans the cock, heheheurgghh), because we deserve equal pay, and we shouldn’t be afraid to ask for it.

If only I could come to some kind of decision about the peanuts.

The Free Press is Costing Interns Dearly

Rarely a day goes by on Twitter without some kind of large scale spat taking place, and amidst dodging the heavily manufactured uproar about Jack Whitehall being an aberration to society, or whatever it is the tabloids are claiming, something of actual importance was brought to light yesterday.

The escalating row about unpaid internships was highlighted by Guido Fawkes, who criticised left wing organisations Political Scrapbook and Left Foot Forward for preaching about fairness and justice – but refusing to pay their own workies. The Commentator also came under fire for the same crime – although they were quick to defend themselves on Twitter by saying they had never let an intern go unpaid – but these blogs just seem to be tiny drops in the ocean of intern exploitation.

Exploitation might seem like a strong word, but that’s what it is. When it comes to the media, or journalism specifically, there seem to be few rules or regulations about what you can be made to do for free. While outsiders might question why young journos fresh out of university sign up for this in the first place, the truth of the matter is that there really is no other option. In this industry, the choices are either forking out for an extra journalism degree (because the £30k you spent on getting an undergraduate one isn’t enough), or start working somewhere for free on the off chance that maybe, one day, they’ll offer you a few pennies for your trouble.

There are two major problems with this culture of working for free, the most pressing of which is, to my mind, the way it makes journalism an elitist industry. The average person comes out of university saddled with tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt, and can’t afford to keep working for nothing until they finally land a job they actually want. The only people who can afford to this – and these are largely the people who could also afford to go to university – are those who can rely on the bank of mum and dad to bail them out. Journalism is increasingly becoming a luxury career, one only available to the middle and upper classes, and this simply is not right. Privilege alone does not make a good writer, and newspapers and websites alike would do well to remember this. By refusing to pay interns, they are denying would be journalists no less talented than their richer peers the opportunity to succeed in their field. They are denying themselves the opportunity to publish some of the best up and coming writers in the country. And they are denying people the ability to dream big, because they are unabashedly promoting the mantra that money makes the world go round, and that anybody without it may as well not bother.

The second issue with the incessant debate, and then re-debate, about unpaid internships is that they never actually come from the mouths of babes. I cannot begin to express how disappointing I find it that the mainstream press occasionally opts to berate those who do not pay their interns – yet it is never the interns who get the chance to speak up on a national platform. It is the staffers at these publications who get to boost their own profile as apparent do-gooders and do what they’re paid to do, rather than those actually in the thick of the unethical process. If you want a real story, go to the heart of the source – not to unaffected observers. I studied philosophy as part of my degree (bear with me here), and an issue we often discussed was whether knowledge could ever really be complete without first-hand experience. For example, can Prince Charles ever really know how black slaves felt in colonial America? He might have read every history book on the planet, but surely no amount of literature can ever compensate for  what it feels like to be the target of injustice. Similarly, although of course on a far lesser scale, nothing written by full time paid journalists can ever truly encapsulate what it feels like to slog your guts out for free and spend every penny you have pursuing a career dream that may ultimately come to nothing.

Since graduating with a 2:1 in an academic degree from a Redbrick university in summer 2012, I have had a few writing gigs that have cumulatively earned me around £1500. That’s £1500 in around seven months. I spent the last three of those in New York, again interning on a newspaper where I didn’t even have the luxury of reimbursed travel (this has also happened to me at nationals in England), let alone payment for the dozens of articles they happily churned out with my name on them. The way I see it, if I’m decent enough to be published, I should be getting paid for it. And yet, like so many others in my shoes, we continue desperately fighting each other for unpaid positions because, quite frankly, the only other option is giving up. I’m lucky to have parents who recognise how hard I have worked for eight years (yes, I had my first article published aged 13) and thus are just about holding off on forcing me into the job centre, but not everyone has this privilege, and publications hiring interns are intelligent enough to know this. The only way of restoring justice to this system is for newspapers and the like to fix up and start doing the right thing. People shouldn’t be punished for wanting to be journalists, they should be encouraged, and the current climate of unpaid labour is doing the exact opposite.

 

Protected: A Londoner in New York part 8: Faeces and Famous People

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Chris Brown – Singer. Violent thug. Total fucking idiot.

I’ve had a sneaking suspicion for a while now that Chris Brown is the worst person. Now obviously, he doesn’t quite beat Hitler/Stalin and co in the baddie dictator rankings, but when it comes to displaying a flagrant lack of morality, self-awareness or even normal social behaviour, he’s coming top every time.

The Chris Brown story goes something like this: American teenager releases a bunch of generic “R&B” (we all know it’s pop) tracks, gets super famous, starts sleeping with Rihanna, punches her in the face, feels mild public wrath for a while and then everyone quickly forgets about it and buys millions of his records. And then, THEN, as if him shitting all over every domestic violence case in history wasn’t enough, he went and got a tattoo of a beaten woman’s face on his neck. I mean, really, Chris? Was there not one tiny little moment where you thought that might not be a good idea? Neck tattoos are questionable at best, but one seemingly depicting the girlfriend you battered wouldn’t be my first choice for body art.

Part of me hopes that all of the pictures are fakes, and that those haughty keyboard warriors have been at it with the Photoshop again in the absence of socialising with real humans. But unless this is all a massive publicity stunt, the ink really is what it appears, making Brown guilty of unparalleled idiocy. If someone killed a person, and claimed that it was all a big mistake and they’re a good boy really, tattooing a picture of a bloodied corpse on a visible part of the body might be deemed pretty fucking stupid. But lo and behold, Chris has got an answer for those people, because it’s not actually meant to look like Rihanna. Which makes it completely fine – normal, even. Apparently.

The biggest part of the Chris Brown problem is not his vile neck ink but the fact someone guilty of an offence as serious as domestic violence, pictures of which circulated worldwide, is allowed to nestle right back in the bosom of the celebrity sphere. In a judicial system where a student is arrested and imprisoned for drunken racist tweets, the fact the singer not only escaped a custodial sentence but is being marketed as some kind of role model for young people is pretty darn sickening. I’m not saying that people who make mistakes don’t deserve a second chance, but there is something about Brown’s smug remorselessness and incessant throwing of fuel onto the fire that makes him an unworthy candidate for public affection.

We know that Rihanna’s forgiven him blah blah blah, which is all very well and good, but makes this whole shebang seem like a giant and unending publicity stunt. The fact she released the pictures to a gossip website in the first place seems odd in itself, and then came the crying interview with Oprah followed by the apparent reconciliation between the pair, making it all look a little staged. I also thought her decision to release a song with lyrics stating ‘chains and whips excite me’ after being violently abused was a little off key – sure, we all know that isn’t pertaining to the daily chores – but she does have a certain responsibility to her millions of young fans hanging on her every word and action. The way she’s handled it appears a little irresponsible to me at least, but I guess if Brown hadn’t punched her in the first place, she wouldn’t have to handle this at all.

Brown certainly isn’t the first, and won’t be the last, person with a criminal record to make it as a multi-millionaire celebrity. In fact, I have always found it a little perturbing that actor Mark Wahlberg has become such a US national treasure given the fact he was a racist thug in his teens and actually blinded someone. That person must be pretty hacked off whenever Wahlberg’s films are on TV. Except HE CAN’T SEE THEM. Because he’s blind. Because Mark Wahlberg blinded him.

Anyway, I digress. What I’m saying is that I understand people make mistakes, but I take umbrage at society’s apparent ability to forgive and forget celebrity misdemeanours so easily when they are so quick to proffer vigilante justice in the cases of mere mortals. Celebrities are just people, and if anything, they should monitor their behaviour even more rigorously than the rest of us given their outrageous pay packets and their status as role models of this sleb obsessed generation.

Where does ignorance end and racism begin?

When John Terry allegedly called fellow footballer Anton Ferdinand a ‘fucking black cunt’ last year, the nation did a collective gasp of outrage. The pitch has always been home to high tensions and low behaviour, but moving swiftly from adulterer to racist was not the kind of transfer many had forecast for the Chelsea defender.

The trial, which began today, sees John Terry accused of a racially aggravated public order offence: a crime whose maximum punishment is a £2,500 fine and no possibility of a jail term. But what I can’t understand is how, should Terry have simply called Ferdinand a ‘fucking cunt’, he would have been completely spared reprimand and got off scot-free. I don’t mean to suggest that footballers should be tried for cursing at each other, but there needs to be some kind of standardisation against foul language that is far more inclusive.

At this point in time, we do not know the verdict and whether Terry in fact did use Ferdinand’s race as a target for insult. I’m not sure, however, that it really matters. By all accounts, Terry is no saint, and his behaviour both on and off the pitch in recent years has been less than exemplary. But what seems somewhat inconsistent is the way in which the British public are formally disciplined for use of unsavoury language. Every day, there are a number of utterly vile outpourings both online and on the streets that involve people being mercilessly verbally abused. I cannot comprehend that it is acceptable, or at least can go without any kind of rebuke, if people use any and every foul word under the sun as long as it doesn’t refer to a person’s race.

I of course have no idea what Terry’s feelings are towards people of other races, but as someone with an apparent tendency for profanities, this particular instance just seems to be an example of his ignorance. In the heat of the moment, and amidst the taunts being levelled at him by Ferdinand, it might just be that he is an idiot, as opposed to a racist. This doesn’t make his behaviour right by any stretch of the imagination, but punishable by law? I’m not convinced.

I have tried to formulate some kind of reasoning for why using the word ‘black’ as part of an insult is deemed so ‘obscene’ (as the Mirror’s headline reads) in today’s society. On the one hand, as the colour of one’s skin is something people are born with, it seems little different than using hair colour or something of that ilk as part of an affront. On the other, race is something that is deeply entrenched in global social history, and as such, some still feel the sting of past prejudices. The vast majority of the world is no way near as progressive or accepting as it needs to be, and for those in minorities, feeling like those opinions are still rife must cut pretty deep.

In this case, though, things seem slightly different. Terry was not exhibiting any kinds of distaste towards black players in general, or making a comment that played upon former injustices that may have aggrieved generations of people (as tweets from disgraced student Liam Stacey did). To my mind, using the word ‘black’ in the way Terry is alleged to have done could be substituted for ‘ginger’ or any other adjective that in many ways shows society’s insecurities, and its frenetic desire to display racial tolerance, as the real reason behind these harsh punishments.

Unfortunately, the lines between racism, ignorance and abuse have become too blurred to punish people appropriately much of the time. A fantastic post written in The Guardian today by Mehdi Hasan talks of the online trolling he is subjected to, which sees him regularly called a Jihadist and extremist simply for being a Muslim. In a response written by the ever subtle-as-a-sledgehammer Rod Liddle, he (condescendingly) makes the point that journalists are all subject to online abuse, it is simply the content that differs as it is made more personal to the attacked. Whilst I disagree with much of what Liddle says, and don’t believe someone’s race should be used against them in any way, ultimately we should have a duty to crack down on all forms of abuse, and not just that aimed at ethnic minorities. The amount of disgusting filth regularly doled out against women, homosexuals and any other group who happen to be the target of the day is simply unacceptable, and if someone can call another a ‘fucking gay cunt’ and get away with it, I struggle to see how Terry’s alleged racism is any worse.

The rise and fall of part-time patriotism

As an August-born baby, summer has always been my favourite time of year. But all the season’s had to show for itself thus far is soggy weather, a bunch of tax dodging celebs and as usual, the part time patriotism that comes to light during sports tournaments. Yes, as if the Jubilee didn’t send us into enough of a bunting induced tizz, the Euro has been on hand to satisfy all our flag waving needs. And now that the England team is out of the contest? We have Andy Murray, a man who has come under criticism in the past for allegedly expressing anti-English sentiments, to pin our hopes of Great British glory upon.

Indeed, it’s that time of year again where people eat strawberries and pretend to give a shit about a man they forgot existed for the past eleven months. Where were his legions of fans when he got to the finals of the Dubai Open? Who was cheering him on in the quarterfinals of the French Open? I’d hazard a guess that it wasn’t very many of us. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with backing the home favourite if you actually take an interest in that sport in the first place, but what I can’t get my head around is people suddenly caring about something purely because it proffers the chance of a Brit actually winning something. If you ask me, the nation never got over England getting pwned by the Frenchies at the Battle of Hastings and have been desperately scratching around for victory ever since. IT WAS IN 1066, PEOPLE. Time to let it go.

There seems to be something about sport that brings out the worst in its fans, many of whom have earned our fair isles a bad rep for hooliganism, and nurtures an unhealthy obsession with ‘our boys bringing [insert sporting competition name here] home.’ There is also the unfortunate attitude towards those of us who haven’t decked all our worldly possessions with EDL-esque memorabilia, which apparently translates as being ‘anti-British.’ I mean, really? I wouldn’t say I’m particularly patriotic, but not caring what happens to the English football team (unless they choose to donate their frankly sickening salaries to charity) does not mean I hate the United Kingdom. It simply means that when these big sporting events roll around, I appreciate the same things I always do, and don’t suddenly affect admiration for a bunch of jumped up ‘athletes’ who spend more time on the floor crying to the referee than playing the game people are supposed to be watching.

This part time patriotism is a decidedly fickle pastime, and in many ways, I feel sorry for the sportspeople lauded as heroes before they are cruelly erased from the public’s consciousness upon defeat. I also question the apparent need to support people who have the same watered down nationality as us purely because we were both born somewhere between Land’s End and John o’ Groats. Shouldn’t we back the people whose skills we actually admire, as opposed to those whose passports are the same colour as our own?

I genuinely wish Andy Murray the best of luck at Wimbledon, as I do all the competitors, because I take a passing interest in tennis and thus feel qualified to express some half-hearted sentiments about it. But to the legions of broken hearted fans wondering what to do with their flag festooned faces/cars/houses once the Jubilee/sports season is over, I suggest you take a long hard look at how ridiculous these fleeting pro UK infatuations are. Shred the bunting and move on – it’s for the common good, and surely any true Brit wants that.

A Carr-less Mistake

This week, an investigation by The Times uncovered that comedian Jimmy Carr had been sheltering £3.3m per year from the tax man by using the controversial offshore K2 scheme. Instead of paying 50% of his earnings over £150,000, Carr has been paying just 1% through a tax avoidance system that is, worryingly, entirely legal. Much debate has ensued over whether it is the fault of the government for allowing such loopholes to exist, or Carr’s for having the audacity to pocket the overwhelming majority of his millions. One thing that is for sure, though, is that while his reputation has been mildly tarnished, the entire debacle has largely served to boost Carr’s profile and give him more funny fodder for his stand-up shows.

Like many others, I watched Friday night’s 8 Out of 10 Cats purely to see how Carr would react to the inevitable jibes launched at him. Having apologised on Twitter for his ‘terrible error of judgement’ and promising to ‘conduct [his] financial affairs much more responsibly’, many seemed satisfied that he’d done wrong, been found out and pledged to stop being a naughty, tax dodging boy. But while the apology seemed reasonable enough, I was less convinced by the assumed air of self-deprecation he displayed on the show. I understand, of course, that he has been backed into such a corner that whatever his next move was, it would seem inauthentic, but his regular appeals of ‘yeah it’s all my fault, guys, I’m a terrible person’ did little to convince me he was actually sorry. Sorry his cover-up has been exposed, certainly, but actually sorry for what he’s done? I’m not so sure.

The thing is, the papers are regularly littered with tales of benefit cheats scrounging an extra £50 per week from the government purely because they are too lazy to get jobs. But my vehement disapproval of anyone who tries to squeeze the system for more than they are owed is far outweighed by my feelings towards the behaviour of those select few millionaires who deem themselves exempt from the taxation system. The amount that benefit scroungers accrue is so pitifully minimal in comparison to the likes of what Carr and his tax dodging cronies get away with that the finger pointing hand of the media seems, with the exception of this incident, to be exposing the wrong people entirely.

When asked why he got involved with the Jersey based K2 scheme in the first place, Carr replied that he ‘never really thought about it.’ Now this is something I find a little hard to believe. Ignoring the fact that Carr is a Cambridge educated man, the fact any forty year old with a shred of common sense would enter into something so patently immoral and unjust without thinking the consequences through seems wildly unlikely. Add to this that Carr is one of the country’s most famous comedians, and being found out would undoubtedly cause a mini scandal, and the whole thing becomes even more implausible. Maybe he really did get involve with K2 without a second thought. Or maybe he’s a dirty liar. I guess we’ll have to wait for his next autobiography to find out.

Indeed, the most galling part of the situation has to be that Carr is set to make even more money from his money making scheme by making jokes about his money making scheme. Realising this, a remorseful (or even socially savvy) person might offer to donate a large proportion of the money he has sheltered to charity, but the comedian has thus far abstained from doing so, reaffirming my opinion that any upset he feels will be the result of being found out, not of the immorality of his actions. While I agree that such loopholes should not exist at all, the fact people actively decide to exploit these corrupt opportunities not only makes a mockery of Cameron’s elusive Big Society but shows a rather unpleasant side to the people we revere at the highest level of the social order – celebrities. It seems to me that entering the K2 scheme is kind of like stealing that bag of sweets from Woolworths as a child: we all knew we could probably do it without getting caught, but decided against it because it was just plain wrong. For Carr, however, that £3.3m bag of sweets clearly proved just too tempting.

Don’t Mention It

When Jack Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006, I wonder if he saw it as the conviction aiding, celeb stalking battlefield it has become today. The site is no longer a mere social platform but evidence; evidence of stupid things people have said, stupid things people have said back and a retraction of said stupid things in the hopes their tweets haven’t been print screened and shown to the authorities.

Over the weekend, a mini Twitter fight broke out between Alice Vincent, an Editorial Assistant at the Huffington Post, and writer Giles Coren. After she likened his latest article to a Mumsnet post, he responded with ‘go fuck yourself, you barren old hag,’ causing journalists, celebrities and many a mere mortal to rush to pick a side. And, several days later, the Twitterstorm is still whirling.

Although Coren’s rudeness was evidently uncalled for, the entire debacle does raise some interesting questions about how criticism should best be dealt with over Twitter. Most people I follow choose to @ the person they are taking issue with, which sends that message directly to them, rather than doing the decent thing and slating them behind their back. It is one thing to disagree with someone’s work, but contacting them personally to say so? Much as it pains me, I would have to agree with Coren on this, who later tweeted ‘why can’t they just talk about what a cunt i am without me knowing? It’s what i assume most people do anyway.’ My rule of thumb is, don’t say anything on Twitter that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. And that has kept me out of trouble…sort of.

As someone who cannot see the point of petty Twitter disputes, finding myself involved in one was a rather unfortunate experience. After interviewing a reasonably well known comedian for my university newspaper, of which he was an alumnus, I politely tweeted him asking if he wouldn’t mind retweeting the link. Having been to his show the night before and fought to get the interview featured on the front page of our paper, I thought he might like to repay the favour. But instead of just retweeting it like a normal, put upon celebrity (the poor dears), he sent me a number of tweets telling me that he wasn’t going to retweet it because he thought it made him look narcissistic.

I mean, really? I thought he might have the tiniest modicum of empathy for a student journo trying to whack up the blog hits and just press the retweet button. But no, there I was, about ten tweets later, desperately trying to articulate myself in 140 characters and doing what I swore I never would – arguing with a semi-celeb on Twitter. After several condescending tweets from him, I decided to revert back to plan A which always endures – kill them with kindness. Someone says something unpleasant? Be really bloody nice back. And there it was: problem solved, him and I the best of virtual buddies once more, safe in the knowledge that we were both big headed enough to think that we were right and that was good enough for us (although I actually was right, obviously).

I’m not really sure what the moral of the story is here, but I think it goes something like this: people are really touchy about their children. If you criticise something someone has written about them, shit’s gonna go down. And, in turn, if you then go way over the top with your response to that criticism, you are going to end up looking like a humourless twat. Continuing to respond rudely to insulting tweets as Coren has done over the past few days isn’t big and it isn’t clever – at the end of the day, if you put yourself in the public eye, you have to accept that people are going to pass an opinion on you – favourable or otherwise.  With only a fraction of the Twitter followers Coren has (he seems to enjoy lording his 100,000 strong followership over people), I still get my fair share of negative responses to my work. And do you know what? That’s okay with me. They aren’t ‘trolling’ – they’re just disagreeing, and there’s a difference. When you write an article, you are essentially creating a product and asking people to try it – without them trying it, you wouldn’t be able to have that product at all, and without them giving feedback, you’d never be able to improve it. It may not be nice to have people directly tell you your work is shit, but then you either shouldn’t write shit things, or accept that not everything you do is going to please the majority. It’s better to be divisive than dull anyway – more people might hate you, but you’ll still have a job at the end of it.