Breakdown # 1,769

I'm not a crier. Really, I'm not. I'm not the type of girl that cries at chick flicks or a particulary harrowing episode of Gossip girl. But there is something about doing this journalism course that has me in tears at least once a week.

Sometimes it is born out of frustration (1500 words on the West Lothian question? Are you having a laugh?!)
Other times its because there will always be someone that wants to try and beat you down and bitch about you on twitter or other such sites and eventually that sort of thing will wear you down and you get to thinking, "well, what is the point?" Well, the point is my mother taught me better than that. I won't quit because some silly girl coughs "bitch" at me or feels that they need to take the time out of their lives to tweet about something I've said/done/wore or anything else they can think of. Don't you have something better to do?

But more often than not I can cry a river because I feel that I'm not good enough to do this course. That at some point someone is gonna turn round and say; "You, be a journalist? Really?" But I still continue on anyways because I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. 1000 words on privacy laws? Bring it on! 100wpm in shorthand? I'm on it!

Because as Bob Dylan once said "If you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose."

And as he also said, "A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

A bit sexist but I know what the dude meant :)

I'd rather have a job wiping David Cameron's a@*e

Yesterday at college I was handed an application form for a work experience at a well-known Scottish tabloid newspaper.

My first instinct was to say “na, no thanks” but then I thought, well, maybe I’m being too hasty here. This is a work placement on a national newspaper, doing proper journalism; writing an article that stands a good chance of being published. Am I being a fool here to turn it down?

But I have always followed my gut reaction to things and I realised that despite this being a great opportunity I just couldn’t bring myself to begin filling in my details on this application form; it just didn’t sit right with me. Maybe I am being complete idiot but at least I am an idiot with some integrity and principles. How can you write for a newspaper or a magazine for that matter, if you don’t believe or agree with what they stand for or what they print? I feel that I would be selling my soul to the devil for just perhaps a glimmer of a chance of getting a job at the end of it. I’d rather do it on my own even if it meant knocking on doors, making phone calls or sending out emails everyday for a year or so to try and get a job. I know that eventually I will get there; I have enough determination and drive.

I’m not cocky or think that my writing is on par with that of the staff of say, the Guardian, and I will be more than happy to work on a local newspaper, but just one whose beliefs I share.

So the application form will remain untouched in my folder. I will keep it as a reminder not to sell out and to stand by my beliefs. Working for a tabloid? I’d rather have a job wiping David Cameron’s arse.

I need love too, but I don't go looking for it in the supermarket

In the wake of celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson being caught shoplifting at Tesco, all kinds of reasons why have come to the surface, apologies were made, clever headlines were dreamt up by the tabloids ( The Sun went with 'Ready Steady Crook' oh how we laughed......)

Still, celebrity shoplifting is a source of hilarity, not outrage.

We don't know why he stole some coleslaw when he was buying hundreds of pounds worth of champagne at the same time. We don't know why Tesco watched him do this five times before they decided to step in.

Since being caught stealing, according to him, he cries himself to sleep. He has all kinds of deep-rooted psychological difficulties from childhood abuse, to his business collapsing, to bereavements and goodness knows what else. He is now going to get the treatment he needs. It's a shame we don't have Shoplifters Anonymous as they do in America. Celebrity shoplifting is seen as a cry for help across the Atlantic. Embarrassing? Yes. Evil? Not so much. Who can forget the "Free Winona" T-shirts?

 

These people don't steal because they need stuff that they just can't afford. They steal because they are stressed/addicted to painkillers/have a deep desire to be loved. Fair play, I kinda understand that. But everybody wants to be loved, including me, but I don't feel the need to go wandering around the aisles in my local supermarket looking for it.

 

It seems to me that it's so much easier for people to blame what they do on some sort of mental illness or stress or pressures at work than actually take some responsibility for their actions. I'm no expert, far from it , despite suffering from a mental illness myself, and I am sure that shoplifting may be some symptom or reaction to some buried psychological problem that is buried deep down, but what if it is just in fact well, stealing?

 

While celebrity shoplifters are seen as rather amusing in the media, when it is just us "normal folk" that decide to fill our trolleys without paying, it becomes this outrage in society. Seems to me there is some sort of double standards going on here. One rule for them and another for everyone else. What is fair about that?