It all comes down to Money in the End

Recently my uni invited various bigwigs from the magazine industry to chat to me and my fellow journalism students. Among the luminaries on the panel, were the Huffington Post’s very own blogs’ editor Jody Thompson, and the Editorial Director of IPC Media, Steve Sutherland. One of the questions the panel were asked was whether they thought there was any future in magazines. Steve replied that it wasn’t whether there was a future in magazines we should worry about, but who was going to pay the journalists.

The current debate over the Telegraph Online’s new pay wall reminded me of this.

I’m in two minds over this. On the one hand, as the type of left leaning liberal politico that only a twenty one year old can be, I would quite like all forms of media to be like the NHS, free at point of access. But that’s also the part of my brain that reckons we should do away with money in its entirety and head back to the barter system.

On the other hand, the more rational part of my brain is saying that that can’t possible work. Besides, to paraphrase one of my favourite YouTube vloggers, in the future I’d quite like a roof over my head, and to eat food that isn’t super noodles.

Journalism is changing, rapidly. That’s why my course is giving me the skills to work in print, in broadcasting and on the internet. Now I want to work in print in the sense that I would like to work for newspapers or magazines. I’m a writer, by both preference and skill. But I’m also not stupid enough to assume that when I graduate the print side of the business will be the same as it is now. Local newspapers are rapidly disappearing, and with the exception of the i, all the major newspapers have seen a massive drop in circulation since January last year. If I want to work for newspapers, it’s probably going to have to be online.

As mentioned above, I would quite like to have a house and food in the future, and just because things have been moved online, doesn’t mean that there will suddenly be loads of money freed up to pay people. The savings made on printing costs won’t cut it. You still have to pay rent on the buildings, maintenance on the servers, and pay all the people who aren’t necessarily journalists, - lawyers and photographers for example.

The internet is supposed to be free. That’s why Tim Berners-Lee never patented it. He didn’t want to put it beyond the use of anyone. But that spirit of altruism makes it difficult for people who are hoping to make money from it. Advertising, however lucrative, will not cover all the costs that running a newspaper incurs. We also forget that the newspaper business is just that, a business. It’s about telling people about what’s going on, but it’s also about making a profit. If you can’t do it solely off advertising, you have to find another way.  Pay walls, are that other way.

Do I like it? No.

Is this the way it’s going to have to be so we can have newspapers in the future? Yes.

Really, it all comes down to money in the end.

Is Conservatism in the US, Through?

The US politician Barry Goldwater was known in his day as “Mr Conservative.” However, in his book The Conscience of the Conservative he wrote:

 “‎I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.”

This prophecy by Goldwater now appears to be coming to pass. A recent poll on behalf of CNN by ORC International found that 54% of Americans view the Republican Party – the bastion of American Conservatism – in an unfavourable light, this stretching across every major demographic, men, women, the young, the old, the rich, the poor and every region of the US, except the south. The GOP is viewed by most as “out of touch” and the party of “stuffy old men,”

Yet despite this, the GOP still seems to have not learnt its lesson.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this past weekend. Not only was Sarah Palin the guest of honour, giving a fire and brimstone speech that condemned the President she and John McCain lost to in 2008, a “liar,” but the CPAC straw poll of potential Presidential candidates was won by Rand Paul, Tea Party darling and poster boy of everything that the American people rejected at the last election.

What the members of the GOP have failed to understand is that no matter how often they offer up sacrificial tax cuts at the shrine of St Reagan, the majority of American people and what they want from a government have moved on. Not only have they realised that under a Republican administration, they tend to end up with less money in their pockets, or without access to healthcare they desperately need, they are also starting to get sick of the hypocrisy that comes with the Republican platform. Any party that promises small, unobtrusive government and then tries to federally legislate whether or not a woman can get an abortion, is one that most probably has duplex vexillum (double standards) as its motto

Despite their last two presidential candidates running on a hard right platform and then losing, the majority of potential candidates for 2016 are those on the far right of the party – Rand Paul and Rick Santorum being two possibilities. Meanwhile moderate candidates who could win, such as Jon Huntsman or Chris Christie, are slammed for being RINOs and too moderate.

Unless the Republican party can modernise quickly, pushing out the Tea Party cuckoos in the conservative nest and, as Goldwater said, effectively communicate why what they believe is best for the American people, than they will continue to get no-where and we will soon witness between twelve and sixteen years of Democrat dominance while the American right, will descend into a bloody and protracted civil war.

Unless the Republican Party learns from its fellow conservative parties and make itself relevant once again, than as Goldwater feared, conservatism in the US, may well be through.

New Boss: Not quite the same as the old boss

"Now, I would like to give you a blessing, but first I want to ask you for a favour. Before the bishop blesses the people, I ask that you pray to the Lord so that he blesses me. This is the prayer of the people who are asking for the blessing of their bishop.”

On the surface, Pope Francis bears many similarities to his predecessor. My dreams for an African Pope having been dashed, the Cardinals it seems stuck to the traditional model, an elderly white man. But that only accounts for physical similarity. Beneath the surface however, the newly elected Pope Francis couldn’t be more different from the Pope Emeritus.

This was apparent from his first appearance as Pontiff. As seen in the quote above, while traditionally most new Popes bless the Church before retiring, Pope Francis asked instead for the people to bless him. This, combined with his apparently going to his hotel and paying his bill personally yesterday rather than have someone from the Vatican staff do it, suggests he is going to bring a measure of new blood to the Holy City.

This of course is to be expected. As Cardinal Bergoglio he had never had a Church job outside of his native Argentina. Unlike Pope Benedict who was very much a Vatican insider, and a career theologian, Francis’ entire career has been spent in parish ministry, first as priest, than as Bishop, Archbishop and Cardinal

This is what the Catholic Church needs. Rocked by a decade of scandal and accusations of being out of touch with the needs of everyday people – a bad thing for the world’s largest church – the last thing they needed to do was pick someone similar to Pope Benedict. While I’m sure that whoever came second on the ballot would have made an excellent Pope, the choice of Pope Francis suggests that the Catholic Church realises that it needs to move forward.

The church has the power to do immense good, to influence policy, to change public opinion and to raise money for good causes. For every accusation of corruption within the Catholic Church, there are thousands of untold stories, of everyday Catholics doing good work, through charities and such like. This is something that Pope Francis – a Jesuit who chose his name in honour of Francis of Assisi patron saint of the poor – understands. A man who took the bus to work when Archbishop of Buenos Aries will not be one who allows the Catholic Church to continue along its current path

On the surface and theologically Pope Francis may seem similar to Pope Benedict, but one can only hope that in the long run it will turn out that – as his actions in the first few days of his reign have suggested – he will mark the start of a new chapter in the history of the church. The new boss being in fact quite different from the old boss is something I believe the Catholic Church desperately needs

In Defence of Gents

I have already called out Lad Culture in this blog, arguing that any form of behaviour by men which demeans, or upsets women is abominable, but pointing out that luckily it’s not representative of every single member of the male sex.

I repeat. Lad Culture is not representative of every (or even most) members of the male sex.

The recent article in the Huffington Post on the harassment of female students at UK universities was incredibly well written and I’m not suggesting that such harassment is not a major problem that requires dealing with urgently. As mentioned above, behaviour that makes women feel uncomfortable or threatened is unacceptable and has no place in our society. However, I have a major problem with the article in that it seemed to suggest – perhaps inadvertently – that Lad Culture and the sexist behaviour that comes with it, is the culture of every male student at university in the UK.

Um. Yeah. No.

According to the latest statistics available from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (for the year 2011-12) there are currently about 2,496,645 full and part time students at university in the UK. Of these about 1,089,685 are men. To suggest that all of these men have at some point engaged in some form of deliberate sexist behaviour is ludicrous. To suggest that even 50% of them, (some 544,842 people) do is laughable.

This, I stress, is not to suggest that there is not a major problem in our universities. Clearly, there is,  if over 68% of female students claim that at some point  they have been the victim of sexual harassment. I will agree that maybe guys don’t always know that they are doing. Things that we may consider harmless little jokes, girls may find offensive. But in my experience once this has been pointed out, those jokes have usually petered out fairly rapidly.

The problem seems to be that of stereotyping. The stereotyped image – not helped by sites like UniLAD - of a male university student is of a hard drinking, banter mad, sexist frat boy. The stereotype of sports’ team members was even worse. In fact sports teams were called out specifically in the article. But the point about stereotypes is that they aren’t accurate. I know quite a few members of sports teams and while they do like a drink, I doubt that any of them would ever engage in any form of sexual harassment. Similarly I know quite a few guys who might be considered “lads”, but once again, I’m fairly confident that they know where the line is, and wouldn’t cross it.

Once again, it is clear that there is a problem about unacceptable male behaviour at British universities, and it is one that needs to be dealt with urgently. But to suggest, even accidently, that this is behaviour typical of every guy, is both unfair, and, as the statistics will back up, extremely unlikely. Gentlemen do exist, and there are rather a lot of us out there.

The Cassandra of the Cabinet

(Two blogs this week. Lucky people)

It can’t be easy being Vince Cable. Since the early 2000s he has been making predictions about the state and the future of the British economy. He predicted the possibility of the 2008 financial crisis long before anyone else saw it coming. But like the Cassandra of myth, who was cursed by the gods to have her predictions ignored, Cable’s prophecies have been slapped down at every turn.

He was put down by the Prime Minister again this week, when in response to the suggestion by Mr Cable that it might be a good idea to raise spending on housing, school building, road and rail projects, Mr Cameron argued that there was “no magic money tree” and there would be no change or shift in the government economic strategy. He argued that despite what Labour and the more vocal Lib Dems might say, the government’s austerity measures were not to blame for the lack of economic growth, a claim he said was backed by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

This was wrong for two reasons.

Firstly, the OBR has called out the PM for “misrepresenting its position” with regard to the economy, stating that actually they do believe that the government’s cuts have had some effect on the lack of economic growth over the last few years. Secondly, while it is true that rates of unemployment fell by some 37,000, the number of people having to use some form of food bank has increased. The Trussell Trust, who run 172 food banks across the country, have said that between 2011 and 2012 they fed over 128,687 people nationwide, and they expect that number to increase to over 230,000 during 2013. It’s clear that while austerity maybe working in some areas, it’s also hurting people badly in others. And despite all of Cameron’s talks about how we are all in it together, he’s not the one having to feed his family via a charity.

I have never claimed to be any sort of economic genius, but it seems fairly obvious to me that reducing the amount of money people have in their pockets is no way to grow the economy. The people at the credit rating company Moody’s have already spotted this. If people are worried they aren’t going to have money enough to pay their bills, they aren’t going to spend it either in the high street or online and therefore the private sector will not grow and the government will be unable to raise the money it needs through taxes on spending and profits. Austerity on its own will never work. It has to be combined with a certain amount of investment by government to kick start economic activity. However, it appears that the government have either not picked up on this idea, or are totally ignoring it. At the end of the day, it won’t be them who will be harmed by that course of action.

Meanwhile, Cable – the Man Who Should be Chancellor – will continue to be ignored and the rest of us, will look on, wondering exactly when the government will realise that they are going the wrong way, and will engage in yet another – but this time necessary – U turn.

Labour's got the Blues

Labour has been through a number of different guises over the years. To begin with we had just Labour, the party of Attlee and Bevan, who overhauled the Welfare State and put a positive spin on socialism. Then we had New Labour, an attempt to capture the centre ground of politics after eighteen years of right wing Thatcherism. Now we have Ed Miliband’s One Nation Labour, or as it is also known. Blue Labour.

The problem with this? The UK already has too many True Blue Parties.

The Eastleigh by-election proved this. The Liberal Democrats may have retained the seat, but Labour limped into fourth place, piped to the post by the Conservatives and – the big shock of the night – UKIP, who took second place. And while the Lib Dem colours may still be orange, I strongly suspect that new MP Mike Thornton will be found on the ring wing of the party – the so called Orange Bookers – who share more ideological similarities than differences with the Tories.

Now you may argue that Labour were never going to win in Eastleigh, a Hampshire constituency and a seat as likely to be ideologically conservative as any. But the point of Miliband’s “One Nation Labour” campaign is to try and persuade people that Labour is not just the party of the working classes and the regions, but the party of everyone. That it can appeal to the conservative commuter hubs of Hampshire as much as it can appeal to the industrial heartlands of the north. Its aim is to convince disenfranchised Tory voters that they have a home in Labour.

But Eastleigh has proved that there is already a party ready and willing to take on marginalised Tories.. If a small “c” Conservative voter is angry at the way that Cameron is turning their party into a group of sandal wearing tree huggers, they are more likely to switch to UKIP with its promises of small government, low taxes and a decent debate over Europe, than they are to start singing the Red Flag.

If Milliband is serious about winning the next election and not just keeping the Labour leadership warm for someone else, than he needs to stop trying to present the Labour party as the Conservatives under another name. Current evidence suggests that the British electorate are tired of the same old politics and parties hugging the centre ground and are more willing to respond to parties who aren’t afraid to hold different opinions or represent different ideologies. With no UKIP equivalent on the British left, the Labour party has plenty of room to manoeuvre. If Milliband wants Labour to take back Number 10, then he needs to move the party away from the centre and show the country exactly what makes Labour different.

The British people are tired of the same old policies being enacted by two rotating parties. It’s time for Labour to ditch the blue and take up its old red colours once again.