Little city, big plans

I like quiet.
The stillness of the early morning, the silence of snow in winter, no noise is good noise as far as I’m concerned.
But I am annoyed at myself for the quietness on this blog.
There are reasons (excuses?) aplenty. But, still, I should know better.
The main reason has been my new job - my new 9-5, [...]

MPs get censored, living on treasure island and green lines

A mid-week round up taking in rude MPs, the hunt for gold and creating green spaces:
A Labour MP claims to have been stripped of some of his parliamentary allowance over his blogging activity.
Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West (my former local MP), has caused a little consternation in parliamentary circles for his less than generous observation [...]

Caring about poverty – Blog Action Day 2008

I consider myself a very lucky man.
I’ve always been a glass half full type and for so many reasons I’ve always felt I’m extremely fortunate.
The last two years or so haven’t exactly been planned or even worked out in the way either Rachel or I envisaged.
But that is exactly why I consider myself to be lucky.
I [...]

BAD is good

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day and the theme this year is poverty.
Bloggers around the world will be writing posts and taking part in events to raise awareness about a wide variety of issues.
In Birmingham tomorrow a group of bloggers have got together to offer a free social media surgery to local voluntary groups and charities.
There’s [...]

We care a lot

Yesterday was a day of achievement, but one which produced very high levels of frustration.
I got lots done throughout the day, unfortunately none of it was paid work.

(Me working on a laptop, not yesterday)
From shopping, a bit of cleaning, tackling the washing backlog, ranting against our unpredictable washing machine and then coaxing it back into life, [...]

Its not all work, work, work, you know

I’m not entirely sure the dust has actually settled on this week’s announcement of a radical shake-up of TrinityMirror’s newspaper publishing operation in the Midlands.
Such is the scale of the changes being proposed, the fall-out will be swirling around for some time to come.
For one thing there’s the 90-day consultation process involving all 300-odd editorial staff, [...]

The last Post or trumpeting a brave new world?

There was talk of a radical relaunch of The Birmingham Post when I joined in 2001 and just about every year until I left in 2006.
Now the bold changes are actually about to happen [Edit - my second take on the plans is here].
And they are certainly radical, impacting across all TrinityMirror’s titles in the Midlands.
The [...]

Writers’ block, the business of sport and telling stories

I didn’t really miss too much on my 10-day break – apart from war in the Caucuses, the fastest jogger on Earth and the tale of two Birminghams.
So a short catch up.
Fellow WMBN member DJ Francis gives his views on the future of journalism, suggesting the confusion and turmoil the industry is finding itself wrapped [...]

The old, the new and the different

There’s appears to have been a flurry of blogging activity in recent weeks regarding the collision of three apparently different worlds – blogging, journalism and PR.
As I’m trying to inhabit all three worlds at the same time, it has proved an interesting and illuminating time.
I’ll admit my head has been sent spinning by some of [...]

Take your marks for Olympic overkill

The 2008 Olympic Games all set to start with the usual mixture of daft opening ceremonies and navel-gazing about British hopes, particularly in athletics, to look forward to again.
However, the Beijing Games are likely to throw up a genuinely interesting first.
Even in such a short space of time since the last Olympics were held in [...]