Guardian from 1969. Photo: mikeyashworth

Last Thursday, the Guardian announced they will be opening their doors in a few weeks time, hosting a range of talks, workshops and interactive sessions on everything from sport to culture, comedy and politics. Understandably, this is stimulating a variety of responses.

With over 200 separate events taking place across the weekend, there is sure to be something for everyone, though obviously it will attract a great number of journalists too.

Despite the steep price tag of £60 for the whole weekend, it’s an interesting and innovative idea for the Guardian to stimulate interest from a range of interest groups and age ranges.

We all know that newspapers are declining in circulation as fewer people are willing to pay for news. At first glance, this open event could appear to look like a pure money-making scheme with little substance to fill this funding gap, but the idea behind it opens up far more doors than that.

A newspaper that is almost 200 years old, the Guardian’s print readership is suffering more than ever before. Yet, in digital and online media, it is at the forefront of the revolution. The world of news is going through an incredible transformation, and the Guardian appears to be embracing that. The past few years have seen increasing hits on its website, the launch of its iPad app, and exclusive online content.

This weekend is not just a journalism conference to attract writers from across the field, it’s an innovative display to make the Guardian come alive. Newspapers are no longer able to market themselves as simply a source of news, they have to become more than that, which is exactly what this weekend appears to be trying to demonstrate.  Through a variety of content and tailored for a wide audience, this is an attempt to open the Guardian up to a new, exciting audience, and to change the way they think about newspapers.

By marketing it as a ‘festival’ experience, the Guardian appear to be breaking the bubble of a ‘newspaper’ as just for news; something that you pick up along with some milk at the corner shop, or flick through in Costa. To me at least, it seems an attempt to completely redefine the boundaries of what a newspaper is, and how people can engage with it on a multitude of different platforms.

Not least, the open weekend will be a valuable weekend to anyone with career aspirations in journalism. The ability to wander around the Guardian buildings, hassle the journalists, see how everything is edited and put together is usually pretty limited without harassing the news desk for work experience. Aside from a cultural fun weekend of activities and talks, the Guardian’s Open Weekend is set to be a valuable insight into the changing world of journalism; surely an event not to be missed for the wannabe journos, if us poor students can scrape together £60.

The Boar through the ages

To go into journalism during the current climate, you must be either very brave, or very stupid. Or both. I met a German exchange journalist on my first day of work experience at The Times who laughed when I told him that journalism wasn’t dead. Or at least I thought he was laughing – it’s hard to tell with Germans.

I explained how I thought that journalism was changing, not dying. Like a magnificent phoenix emerging from the ashes of burnt copies of News of the World. Not like many, who see it brutally battered by the next generation of kids who would think it highly uncool to be seen carrying a real newspaper around, apart from as a fashion statement.

We no longer pay for news. We simply don’t need to. If we don’t get it on the TV, we get it online, on our phones or thrust in our faces on the Tube. Unfortunately, this means that publications that do still charge for news – such as newspapers – are suffering. Pens, pencils and illegible scrawl are being sucked out of life as we know it as journalists attempt to cling onto their already low paid jobs. Every day, we hear of more cuts to the media industry.

In the past few weeks the BBC and The Times, to name two, have announced drastic cutbacks and job-losses within their own institutions. We’ve heard that theBBC are trying to save £670 million by featuring more repeats on television, and cutting around 2,000 jobs to try and save yet money.After the announcement that the Foreign Office will no longer be financially supporting BBC World Service, they have also announced the closures of 32 language centres and the loss of 650 jobs over the next three years. This comes at a time when The Times and The Sunday Times are set to make 150 editorial job cuts to try and slash costs by around 15 per cent.

The effect of these cuts will be catastrophic. As more and more redundancies and cuts are made, the work load will pile onto those journalists who manage to hang onto their jobs. They have little time to do anything other than what is on their plate, which, from my experience at the Boar, means that investigative journalism is pushed to one side for another day with more hours in it.

How can these institutions justify the elimination of one in seven of their editorial roles and still expect to have a world-class standard investigative journalism? It’s easy to scoff at the phrase ‘world-class’, but just think. Would we condemn Nick Davies for uncovering the hacking scandal, or the Telegraph journalists who unveiled the desperate deceit of the MPs expenses? No, probably not.

British journalism should proud of these scoops. This is the standard which we must uphold and advance upon. This journalism must be funded; it must be allowed to continue. With the extensive cuts soon to affect a multitude of British journalists, this might not be possible for much longer.

It is crucial that after the hacking scandal saga associated with the News of the World that we work towards restoring trust in the media, without restricting practises to such an extent that we compromise honest, decent journalism. We need the time, the people and the funds in order to do this. Not more cuts or redundancies.

The way we view our news is changing, and this will open up more opportunities as doors shut. People always want to know what’s happening in the world, and with increased globalisation and greater awareness of the international community, the need for 24 hour world news grows larger ever day. But we must bear in mind the effects that the decline of the newspaper, and indeed the media as a whole, is having. The shift from print to online has had a massive impact on the industry. These job losses mean that accurate, effective, investigative journalism will lose out, and the truth will remain concealed more and more frequently.

As journalists, we must speak out. We will not sit in silence. We will not allow this to happen without voicing our opinions. We will speak up and let everyone know that these cuts cannot be allowed continue. British journalism is on the line, and we cannot afford to lose it.

As published in The Boar, the University of Warwick students’ newspaper, Wednesday 23 November 2011.

Is Young Apprentice truly a gateway to success or just a comedy in disguise? Toby Steinberg and Natasha Clark discuss for The Boar.

Toby Steinberg:

To the delight of everyone, Young Apprentice is back. Last time, following the intriguing premise that the only demographic less likable than the regular candidates would be one which combined the same knack for self-promotion with a streak of grindingly irritating precocity, the show was a huge hit. Alan Sugar, newly promoted to divine God-King, is apparently once more in need of the business acumen of a snivelling little piss-weasel to save his financial empire (and perhaps, to succeed him). Luckily, the BBC have managed to find the only other bunch of teenagers in Britain, willing to give up their summers for the appetizing prospect of performing degrading services for a grim yet fuzzy overlord for the very slim chance of a job offer.

Now, former stars of the Young Apprentice have gone onto work in such glamorous institutions as the Warwick SU, so participation is clearly the gateway to unlimited success. That’s the only explanation for the amount of conniving and backstairs bile generated for this paltry reward.

Either that, or the candidates just have an inherent humanity deficit.

The clearest villain of the series is Harry M, arrogant, unfashionably posh and the only participant who looks like he permanently lives in his suit. Now, it’s pretty cheap to quote the Apprenti’s inevitably grandstanding website bios, but hey, I’m a pretty cheap kind of guy. Harry claims to have “[unrivalled] intellect, motivation, confidence and business instinct”, gifts which have presumably guided him to alienate himself from the others. His immediate, obvious rival is Northern Irish lad, James, a sort of disheveled mole creature with a voice straight from hell’s own call centre, who claims “I have integrity, but when winning gets in the way of integrity, [it] goes out the window”. The rest of the contestants fade into anonymity against these two practiced bastards, though Haya, shows promise with her belief in being ‘uncompromising’ to annoy as effectively as either of them at points.

The tasks are as pointless as ever, with success relying upon either an immediate grasp of a different business each week or, more commonly luck. As such, watching Alan gruffly chastise this group of novices has only become more ludicrous. Most striking of all, however, is that despite the sense that these characters are to be mocked and humiliated for their zealous ambition, simultaneously there’s the implication, unique to this version, that they are also admirable high achievers, the best of their generation.

Friends, they are not the future. The best of mankind spent their teenage holidays pissing around in parks and watching television. These smug punks spent their time sucking up to a bored millionaire for our amusement. Watch with contempt.

Natasha Clark:

The Young Apprentice. A bunch of stupid, overkeen, arrogant teenagers embarking on a competition which will transform their lives, gloss over the need for a university education and fast track them into a high flying career of fast cars and impromptu business trips. Apparently.

Still, we mustn’t be too harsh and patronise the little ones with their big dreams. Sucking up to a bored millionaire is still a hell of a lot more than most kids at the age of 16 are doing, or indeed one big kid at 21, writing for university newspapers, watching far too much TV and swinging on banisters in their spare time.

The application process for The Young Apprentice must be pretty tough, even if it does let through mostly idiots. These idiots, however, are the brightest and cockiest of a massive bunch of idiots, and we must commend them for getting a cut above the rest of morons.

Just because the tasks are meaningless and a terribly inaccurate representation of the real life workplace, doesn’t mean that the tasks hold no value: it’s better than no experience whatsoever. In a university world dominated by extra curricular activities, CV writing workshops and Law fairs, a bit of fake ‘real life experience’ will certainly not go amiss.

Those candidates who can apply themselves to a variety of tasks will inevitably be more employable, and the experience itself is a handy eye-opener to some of the things that business hopefuls may be exposed to in their futures. Just because most of them can’t get a grasp on it, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be allowed to laugh at their misfortune. On the contrary, it’s the total opposite; it’s even easier to make fun of those who are younger than us anyway, we’re bigger after all.

Success, ultimately does require a complicated combination of luck, not having a prick like Harry M in your team to argue with and team work. We can only live in hope, that this process will teach them some of the above. The point to remember, however, that this is all for fun. Shoving a group of pubescent teenagers in a house in London for ten weeks would be funny enough but we have Big Brother for that. Place them in an unrealistic business situation where they have little to no experience, common sense or intelligence? Priceless. This shows is, ultimately, comedy disguised as some form of drama-reality hybrid. Embrace it, with caution.

Published in The Boar Volume 34, issue 4, Tuesday 22 November 2011.

It was just a day where we remembered the fallen. An important day, yes, but just another day. We remember those who died in the many battles throughout many wars over many years. We wear poppies. We fall silent for 2 minutes at 11am. We reflect. We hold services around the country. Special programmes are broadcast on television. The last post is played.

November 11 and the neighbouring Remembrance Sunday hold similar connotations for most people. As pupils at school we would stand in assembly and listen to the names of those from our school who died in the two world wars, after a mad scramble as the teachers would check all of us had a poppy pinned to our chests. As a teenager at work we would insist on serving no customers at 11am for those two minutes, and the music was turned off. At home we would observe the silence of those around the country as clips of such were broadcasted all over the country to the solemn sound of the last post.

Today, in Leamington, it was a slow realisation, as it is during a busy day. Many were beginning their Christmas shopping. I was on route to Next for my partner to buy jeans. He pointed to his watch, I looked at mine. We stood.

Looking around the Parade, many had already stopped. We turned our heads to the end of the street, where the Remembrance service was taking place by the war memorial. We squinted and peered into the sun, a golden glow emitted from down the hill. Gradually, everyone looked. Everyone fell silent. Everyone stopped. We all stared into the light, as if we expected something to come out of it.

The Somme and Ypres battlefields tour was a unique and moving experience for all of us who enjoyed it. A mixture of sixth form students travelled to northern France and were given a three-day tour around individual battlefields and memorial grounds with guides.

As an emotional person who wells up at news items on a regular basis, I of course expected to be moved by this experience. I visited the exact same grave a friend had visited a year previously, and saw rows upon rows of identical stones, ironically framed by a backdrop of clear blue sky, colourful flowers and a cheerful sun. I took hundreds of pictures of gravestones, of poppies, of names in their thousands engraved on walls, memorial statues and tiny wooden crosses.

While I am adamant (as a history student should be) that we all should study the past in order to remember, to learn and to prevent repetition of the same mistakes, I think this was an experience where my knowledge clouded my vision. The experience of war was not an experience to me, nor will it ever be. The personal aspect of these men, some as young as 13, who had perished for our country, was lost on a student with no memories, no stories from grandparents, just photographs, film clips and pages from text books.

It was not until the final day of the trip where the emotions (and tears) began flowing. The last stop on our tour was at Caterpillar

Valley Cemetary, a beautiful but small graveyard and memorial overlooking fields for miles around. The students of the Royal Latin School lay a wreath, as they do every year, upon the grave of an ex-Latiner who died in the war. I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t thought to pack tissues, but needed them.

On the return to the ferry, we listened to this song. I still tear up when I hear it.

We all think we know the meaning of Remembrance Sunday, but you won’t until you have some reason, someone, something, to

make it personal to you. That sounds ridiculously selfish, but it’s true. For me, it was the knowledge that some man once sat in the same place I sat, learned at my school, who had given up his life to fight for thousands of others. It could be a relative, a story, or anything.

History needs personalisation in order to mean something to us individually, and that’s why every year on this day I won’t remember seemingly meaningless fields of poppies, graves, death and destruction. I will remember Private E.W Broughton from the Warwickshire Regt. who died on 23 July 1916, aged 23. “We asked for him life. Thou gavest him life eternal.”

Guardian debate: Hacking and the future of the press. Photo: Tash Clark

“Once we lose reporters, we’re all fucked.” – Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian, September 29^th 2011.

Everyone must be sick of hearing about, talking about and reading about hacking and the News of The World scandal by now, surely? Wrong.

Almost all seats were filled at the Royal Institution of Great Britain a few weeks ago for the Guardian debate: ‘After hacking: How can the press restore trust?’

The fantastically acclaimed and highly renowned panel included Krishnan Guru-Murthy as chair, presenter for Channel 4 News, Sylvie Kauffmann, Editor of Le Monde, George Eustice, former Press Secretary to David Cameron, Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian, and to top it all off, Carl Bernstein himself; one half of the famous journalistic duo who uncovered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. An event not to be missed for aspiring journalists such as us at The Boar, and clearly a number of the general public too.

The evening began with a short video covering the current situation. Murdoch, Milly Dowler, News of the World. The scandal that changed politics, changed perceptions, and changed the media forever.

Alan Rusbridger introduced the debate with a short introduction of the mass impact the scandal has had, the influence of Murdoch on the media itself and the political system. He commended the “outstanding journalism” of Nick Davies, the Guardian journalist who uncovered the “bleak story of journalism at its worst.” Trust, he notes, is key.

The chair began by asking the question we all want to know, from the man all of us would love to speak to. Carl Bernstein: what are, if any, the parallels between the hacking scandal and Watergate? Considerable “remarkable” parallels, he insists immediately. Referring to the criminality of both scandals, he is quick to criticise, yet insists, like many media analysts have done, that the consumers have the responsibility to control the content of the papers.

He attacks the consumer culture that has developed in the tabloid newspaper, of the fine line between reporting in the public interest, and for the interest of the public. Who are we to judge those who hacked others’ phones, when it is the paper’s readers who demand such detail about the private lives of all we see around us? Of course, it is still the consensus, around the room and beyond, that journalists at NOTW had gone too far.

Bernstein, who well and truly dominated the debate, continued to defend the rights of the freedom of the press, however, to uncover the truth, and to hold those in power to true account. Despite a quirk from a member of the audience asking if the delving into private documents and other potentially immoral activities carried out by himself and Woodward in the 1970s were justified, he swept up this criticism flawlessly and instantly continued his argument advocating more total and free press powers.

George Eustice, on the other hand, seemed fairly content with the system of self regulation currently in place in the UK. He argued that the rules of the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) and other such regulators should be more strictly enforced, with sanctions for those who do not abide. Throughout the debate, he repeatedly mentioned ‘the code’, arguing that journalists “shouldn’t fear regulation”, seeming completely oblivious to the fact that ‘the code’ clearly hasn’t worked. At all.

A fresher perspective was brought to the evening by Sylvie Kauffmann, who uttered that the prospect of phone hacking would be “unthinkable” in France, as if somehow it was morally acceptable in England. In her opinion, the French culture is very different, and there is just not the same appetite for gossip-related news, yet she does note that their “credibility is not very good either”. Dominique Strauss-Kahn might beg to differ. Instead, she continued, people value their privacy. Another quirk was made by what appeared to be a French audience member who chirped in a comment about newspapers in France hiring private investigators, to which she responded “not in the printed press.” Perhaps French newspapers aren’t as squeaky clean as Sylvie makes them out to be…

Back to the question in hand, the debate turned to how best to restore the lost trust in the press. The two factions that emerged were increased (Eustice) and decreased (Bernstein) regulation, and when thrown to the audience, they voted (by a small majority) for less regulation. Bernstein called for more freedom, a “tool of shame” while Eustice pressed for more strictly enforced rules. Kauffman says that she’s unsure it’s the right thing to do and Rusbridger remains somewhere in the middle on the topic, yet insists that it’s not going to go away.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous blog, Bernstein reiterated my point that there can never be non-biased “accurate” reporting, and there are no such thing are true facts. “The idea that truth is reducible to that part is opinion and that part is scientific fact is getting us into a dangerous area of pseudo-science.” It is a result of the writer, the influences of him/her and the ways in which they choose to pursue the story, which generates the angle of the story and its final outcome.

This is an important aspect to remember when discussing the differences between middle-class definitions of tabloids (reported to be unreliable, full of gossip and biased) in comparison with broadsheets (squeaky-clean, and non-biased), which are commonly thought to be of completely different newspaper leagues, each abiding by their own standards.

Bernstein consented to the idea of a change in our culture to repair the damage done, and as reluctant as he was to a lack of press freedom, he agreed that there should be more transparency within newspapers themselves, instead of simply asking other institutions to be. Coincidentally, Nick Davies’ book ‘Flat Earth News’, which I am currently reading, also advocates this need for newspapers to open up, and to abide by the moral codes which they so fiercely uphold.

This, I believe, is the key to restoring press trust. By making sure that the press offer some attempts of transparency and regulation as every other business, banks and branch of government do, we can begin to start to build up public trust again. Without this, the press subject themselves to a high level of criticism as they place themselves on a pedestal, indicating their moral superiority to the rest of the world.

Some might argue that journalists must maintain a higher standard of secrecy and protect their methods in order to carry out a high quality of journalism. In no respect do I advocate compromising those methods used in order to expose the truth and hold those in power to account for their actions. I simply insist that some compromise needs to be made to show the general public that the press is not something to be fear. Bernstein noted that the press “routinely abuses [its] freedom by violating people’s privacy and defaming”, and we must do something to stop this, to put trust back in the press.

Photograph: captain_ambiance

Last week, The Guardian revealed details of a leaked memo which contained information of future Government plans to “win back female voters”. As a woman with an interest for politics, I’m all ears.

The Government are concerned that their promise to be the most ‘family friendly government ever’ is not being fulfilled, and plan to win back a proportion of lost female votes with a new package of policies aimed directly at women.

Polls showed that support for the Tories from women aged 18 – 24 has dropped from 30% in 2010 to just 18% in 2011, and for the Liberal Democrats from 34% to 8%. Albeit a small demographic, mainly of young women without children who will be unlikely to be affected by these policies, female support for the Coalition has fallen at all levels.

These plans include: (taken from the Guardian online article)

• Frontloading child benefit to help parents struggling with childcare and lost earnings in their children’s first years.
• Working towards a “proper” ban on advertising to children
• Introducing personal budgets for maternity services to allow women to shop around for services.
• Developing a strategy – “including possibly cross-party work” – to ensure there are more female candidates for mayoral posts, elected police commissions and local enterprise partnerships.
• Changing plans for the new universal credit to give it to women automatically, instead of allowing the applicant to nominate a household member.
• Setting up a website to allow women to anonymously disclose and compare their salaried with others in their industry.
• Criminalising forced marriage because the “signals sent out by opting not to criminalise is a bad one”.
• Holding a No. 10 summit for women in business.

Hurrah, the Government have finally realised there are two sexes in the country! Women do have a place in society – we’re not living in the dark ages – and should be respected as a vital voter. In the wake of the recent riots, it was noted by David Cameron that the roots of the problems seen lay within the family structure, and women are surely at the heart of that and therefore must be considered more carefully within government.

Yet, after reading the brief outlines of some of the proposed measures designed to ‘win’ over more women at the next election, I can’t help feeling that a few main groups have been missed in an attempt to group all women together under one umbrella. It appears that, 92 years after women secured the right to vote, politicians still feel that women are an absurd social group to be explicitly targeted, when in turn others such as religion, age and certainly class seem to be of much more importance.

The family woman. The Coalition’s promise to be the most ‘family friendly government ever’ have cleverly assumed that to win over more women, then family policy is the way to go. New laws targeting children and advertising, maternity services and child benefits could be rolled out to women across the country.

I’m sure all the parents on ‘Mumsnet’ who played a prominent part at the last election would be singing Cameron’s praises, if they weren’t all grumbling about the cuts to child benefit, the child’s trust fund, the changes to EMA and child tax credits. It’s clear that the Coalition has a lot of work to do to win back their support.

However, the implementing most of these policies mean that students, career-driven women, and anyone without a family is more or less ignored in the Government’s attempts to pull in female voters, with just a few policies being aimed at those groups who should be targeted equally to mothers.

Would someone care to tell me how a 19-year old career-driven university student is to be affected by these changes? Or my grandmother, retired and living alone? These policies are not aimed at female voters, they are aimed at mothers. According to some studies, up to one in five women in Britain will not have children. A strong twenty percent of women could be left out by most of these policies.

The only way I will be affected by the summer holidays being shorter is the slight increase of a traffic rush on my way to work. In fact, I’d really be better off if the lil’ ‘uns stayed at home for longer if this means my chances of getting a decent parking space or cinema seat are increased.

But most of all, where does the woman with a decent salary fit in? Recently in the news, it was estimated that women’s salaries wouldn’t catch up with men’s for almost another century. How do the government think that a women’s wage-comparing website will help with that?

“Excuse me, Sir, but I’ve found out that Mrs Smith from Southampton is doing the same job as me in management consultancy and is getting paid £4,000 more per year than I am… I was just wondering…” I’m not seeing it. Most people are aware that women get paid significantly less than their female counterparts. Those in charge have no desire to change them.

The women in business summit will undoubtedly have an impact on these, and hopefully be the key to changing attitudes in this field. However, just one measure on this list included for the representation of women in business does not go far enough.

As for the lack of representation of women in politics, thank goodness the government have realised something that’s been staring everyone in the face for the past… forever. I only have to look to my students’ union for proof that women are under-represented. This year just one out of seven full-time sabbatical officer positions is filled by a woman, and in Union Council just a handful of seats will be filled by female elects. This pattern is repeated right to the top, with just 144 women out of 650 MPs elected in 2010.

The government want to combat this by securing more women into top jobs. In itself, this is a good thing. However, is it really beneficial to engage in a positive discrimination process in which women may be pressured into positions they don’t want to be in, or in other cases may occupy a place which could have better been filled by a more competent or better-skilled man?

Surely a better way of aiding women into top careers would be to encourage girls at a younger age to aim high, so they have the confidence and ambitions of their own to attempt to reach the top.

After being told countless times at the last election that women are the key to the future, Yvonne Cooper’s message seems to resound in the back of my mind. “Women don’t want more spin and communications professionals, they want fundamental changes to government policy. This panicked reaction shows that once again, the Tories are treating the women of this country as an afterthought.” It would be nice if the Government actually thought we were they key to the future and had an important role to play in the making of this country rather than as a way to win back votes in time for the next general election.

It appears as if the Government are playing to their own stereotypes. As honourable as I’m sure their intentions will genuinely sound to many mothers, as the memo states – it’s all about winning over the votes. By implementing these policies, the Government are drawing all women under one roof and ignoring the wider spectrum. Students, driven career women, middle-aged women with grown up children and the elderly will be ignored in these attempts to win over females. By focusing on the key group of women as ‘mothers’, the Government is reinforcing the stereotypes it really ought to be trying to break. Whilst I admire the coalition’s attempts to be the most “family friendly” government ever, they must remember that in this ‘broken Britain’ we’re living in, not every woman has a happy marriage, kids and a picket fence.

Photography: Bryan Gosline

Have you ever had a clear out of your room, your attic or chest of drawers and found photos of you when you were small? You know the ones – massive dusty albums, glossy pictures that were actually printed on something? In the bath, making snow angels wrapped up in limitless layers of coats, hats and scarves, frolicking about in a few millimetres of snow?

Photos where you couldn’t mask over the spots you had in Photoshop, or make your boobs look bigger or your skin more tanned. Photos where the only way you could change anything was in a dark-room, which I’ll admit, I have no clue how to use.

But most importantly, they were actually printed, on proper paper. Usually glossy. Also usually warned fiercely by Dad not to touch the edges of the picture and smudge then, on pain of death. That was the reality. Holding onto a photograph, holding onto a memory.

One of my favourite recent memories of my family is all of us crowded around photograph albums a few weeks before I went to university, pouring over pictures of us my sister and I from when we were born up to the age of about 13. All neatly filed and organised away in the attic – they weren’t seen a lot – but when they were, the emotions sparked by them pulled our family together as if we never knew the meaning of the word.

Going through old photo albums is partially becoming a lost phenomenon with the digital age. Of course, all professional photographers, those stuck in the dark ages of film and obsessive mothers with alphabetically and chronologically ordered childhood pictures feel the need to develop photos, but the majority of us, sadly, don’t anymore.

Why bother? They’re all on Facebook. The internet – supposedly – will be around for ever, so there’s no need to print them out when I can flick through them online. And my friends’ ones. And my cousins’. And basically anyone I want. Right?

Noting when I cleared out my room that firstly, I had a stack of photography magazines that I hadn’t read for ages, and secondly that the photo frames on my window sill hadn’t been updated for years – and even then they were just print-outs from my first digital camera – I decided that the time had come for printed photographs to make a decidedly snappy comeback.

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I picked up a disposable film camera from Sainsbury’s and spent a few days wandering around Leamington taking pictures of… well whatever really. Us, the flat, the scenery… anything. After using a big SLR with zoom and decent flash for a few years, going back to a disposable was quite a shock, if not a challenge!

We developed them soon after, ending up with a few nice coupley ones, a couple of us dancing around Stratford-Upon-Avon and a few rather embarrassing ones, including a shot of my arse sitting on the sofa next to my laptop charger (which will never, I repeat, never, be uploaded to Facebook as long as anyone will live).

The plan is to put them in some frames and albums, and actually make some use of them. The problem is that too many photos remain stuck on the internet on myFace or BeBook or something else, or permanently attached to hard-drives and never seen. What if either of the two were to crash, and 5 years of unprinted pictures online were wiped from existence?

Photos online are now more about showing off than remembering. So many pictures shout ‘look how cool I am jumping off a boat/at this popular persons’ party/shaking hands with David Cameron’ etc rather than giving yourself a record of a great experience.

My Mother’s solution to this ‘digital revolution’ a few years back was a digital photo-frame, which was used for a bit before being tucked up away in a small drawer somewhere. It was nice while it lasted, but fairly short-lived and drained electricity. It never really replaced the value of those printed photos either.

Glossy, printed, real photos are priceless, and well worth the fun and £7.99 printing cost. [Snapfish.com do prints and often promote offers for dirt cheap too, if you're looking.] Sitting on the sofa with my family, giggling over the funny photos, cringing over the embarrassing ones and tearing up over the sad ones – that’s what we should expect to get out of taking photos, printing them out, and actually holding them. The emotion has been lost in computers, the internet, comments and likes, which can’t ever replace the emotions felt when remembering the past, the people, the places. Photographs are a way of recording the past so we can remember it in the future, when it seems a bit misty and far away. To compare our past to our present, to see how far we’ve come, how immature and stupid we used to be. To make us laugh, smirk, think or weep. The real joy of printed photos is just that, the feeling.

Keep reading, and any comments on my writing and ideas are so appreciated, so please so get in touch!

All the best, Tash x

Note 19th September 2011: I’m also in the top 300 Politics bloggers 2011! Hurrah!

Clear-up effort in Hackney. Photography: www.edufiend.com

After five days of riots, I will probably flick on the BBC News tonight to see more scenes of disturbances which have taken place this evening across England. Recent developments have seen the first deaths due to the disorder in a car accident, and another man has died in hospital after he was attacked by looters when defending his community (Mirror front page 10 August). Where’s the hope, respect or love in that?

From London to Bristol and Manchester to Milton Keynes, the fires have been spreading across the country, with arrests reaching over 1400.

Thousands of emergency calls, 16,000 police officers patrolling the streets, buildings burning, burglaries, looting and random attacks have filled the headlines and shocked the country.

But no more of that doom and gloom. Dave has announced that the ‘fightback’ is underway, and it is hoped that all the people who have been committing these atrocities will be put to justice.

Despite being glued to the TV the past few nights, I have, like most people, been incredibly angry, upset and disappointed by the behaviour I have seen.

But despite searching for the solution, debating the problems or questioning police tactics, I’ve tried to see the human spirit in this situation and shed some light in the dark, some flickering flame of hope for humanity.

Perhaps the first – and probably only – picture of the riots that has made me smile is that of Boris Johnson defiantly holding a broom above his head as yesterday he visited affected areas to help with the clean up effort. Such an example is a small inspiration, as barriers between politicians and people are somewhat broken for a small amount of time.

It wasn’t just Boris who was keen to help put the city of London back together. Yesterday morning, footage showed crowds of people waiting patiently outside the police tape with brooms and spades in the hope they would be allowed back onto the street to help clear up the wreckage of the previous few days of vandalism and arson. The expectancy of this group and the keen attitude they showed to help return the city to normality as quickly as possible shows that people do still care about their communities.

Even those who lived too far away to help raised the profile on Twitter with the hashtag #riotclearup.

An MP noted that it was amazing how much people care about their community, their city, their country.

During the riots themselves, we have seen extraordinary acts of bravery. The courage of many to stand up to defend their buildings and shops from rioters and looters without the help of the police is incredibly admirable. I’ve read of people linking arms and standing in front of buildings and pressuring away rioters. There have been reports of organised resistance in Turkish and Kurdish areas to defend their own properties and businesses with nothing but baseball bats. A Facebook group has launched in support of those. Such bravery can only be looked up to, when the police cannot always be there to defend every single person affected by these riots.

A fund for a local man whose barber shop was destroyed during the riots and has no money or insurance to repair it has been launched by three interns at BBN on Blogger entitled Keep Aaron Cutting, collecting over £11,000 so far.

The famous clips of a Malaysian man being helped up by a group of other men who then robbed him and walked away as stood bleeding and in shock. Another blog has been set up on Tumblr, with people voting on how to do something nice for him. Suggestions include paying for his dental costs, his student fees or for his family to come and see him. It has also been taking donations.

A campaign I’ve recently come across on Twitter and been invited to on Facebook is the Operation Cup of Tea, which campaigns for everyone to stay at home and drink tea instead of rioting. The popularity of this has been amazing, and has been trending on Twitter for days On their website they are selling a new brand of anti-riot tea, described as containing “a special blend of darjeeling, which will help you to relax and unwind, dispelling any urge you may have to go out and riot.”

This video of the founder, Sam Pepper, is pretty inspiring, and makes me feel proud of members of our generation, a lot of whom do give a shit about something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6zPqPg6dPQ

Some other entertaining Facebook groups include ‘Looting basmati rice when Argos is next door because you’re a fucking idiot’ and ‘The awkward moment where we should have believed the Kaiser Chiefs’ which have been posting funny quirks, photos and videos on the site for fans.

After all of this, something also may be able to be gathered from the fact that at least all the politicians are coming together to condemn this violence. Empty and simple words they may be, collaboration and agreement from the three main parties – even if the government is broken and divided – is something to look to in these troubled times.

I am not attempting to downgrade the situation, its importance or its significance. The disgusting scenes from the past few days have shown that there are real problems in Britain that need to be addressed, and the behaviour of many to be held to account. However, these few examples which are probably accompanied by more, show me at least that there is still some spirit, some community and some respect still left in Britain.

Photography: bibicall

At 23.40 on July 16^th 2011, my childhood officially ended. I know, some may say you cannot put a limit on your childhood, others say that your childhood never truly ends. But bear with me a second, if you will. I just saw the final instalment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

(I did relive my childhood, as it goes, three days later when I saw it again.)

It’s been described as amazing, epic, the best of the lot, and I was definitely not disappointed, despite originally being a fan of the books. I’ve learnt to sort of separate the two, and I’ve not felt let down in the slightest.

While there was no specific sob-fest moment for me where tears streamed uncontrollably down my face, turning me into a mascara-stained howling wreck in the corner of Cineworld screen 12, instead there were many moments which made my eyes well up; Neville’s heroic speech to Voldemort, the final fall of Bellatrix at the hands of none other than dedicated mother Mrs Weasley, and Harry’s final walk through the Great Hall, past all the characters from the past seven year series, looking on as he goes.

Probably the highlight of the film was the flashbacks of Snape’s memories, revealing all the anomalies and unanswered questioned JK Rowling had left hanging for seven books. Finally we realised why Snape had seemed to be two-timing everyone all the time, why he never quite made sense, why Dumbledore trusted him. He was a good guy after all, and my heart really felt for him.

As a massive Lord of the Rings fan too, the epic Battle of Hogwarts scene echoed the Battle of Helms Deep in The Two Towers and the final Battle for Middle Earth in the Return of the King. It was definitely due to the splitting of the final novel into two parts that made it possible to spend the valuable time needed on this amazing sequence.

The special effects – as usual -  were incredible, which I imagine will only be enhanced with 3D and some unique ‘Harry Potter’ style glasses. I especially liked the broomstick chase against the magical flames in the room of requirement and the nice scenic view of the Hogwarts grounds we got as Harry and Voldemort zoomed around the castle.

Perhaps we have to remember that the cringey ‘19 years later’ episode which finished off the eight film series is an effective way of rounding off what actually not an adults book, but a children’s one, though in reality it is somewhere in between. I highly doubt Harry would be greying by his late thirties or that Ginny would flick her hair so similar to the style of Nicola (the ginger one from Girls Aloud) despite knowing relatively little about the muggle world.

To enhance the personal aspect to the fighting action, however, I wish they’d been a bit more specific on the individual battles the characters had with Voldemort’s Army as it seemed at times to be a little detached.

I also felt that a few details from the book were missed out, such as Lupin and Tonks’ son, (of whom Harry was the Godfather and was meant to see off on Platform 9 ¾) was never acknowledged as being born at all. The first instalment mentioned “Wait until you hear the news… Lupin and I-” before being rudely interrupted by Mad-Eye Moody, whose death was also only glanced upon.

Fourteen years have passed since the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone was first published in the UK in 1997, which has led to the growth of Harry Potter into the most popular franchise ever. Hundreds of thousands of fans camped out to catch a glimpse of the cast before the premier in Trafalgar square and queued for hours to see the film at the midnight showings across the country. I personally own a Harry Potter hat, wand, broomstick (albeit borrowed), t-shirt, four video games, various sticker albums, all the DVDs of the films, a Potter pokedex style device, JK Rowling’s extra books ‘Quiddich Through the Ages’ and ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ and probably a bit more merchandise hiding amongst the rubbish in my wardrobe. I even dressed up as Ginny for World Book Day when I was about 11 (you’d be surprised at the lack of ginger characters there are in children’s books).

But what even is childhood? Can you really put a time limit on it anyway? The age of consent to have sex in Britain is 16, but does that make you an adult? The voting age is 18, but does having a say in the running of the country mean you are no longer a child? It is said that our bodies may not stop growing until our early twenties or our brain until our thirties. One could spend hours (and probably there are people that do) pondering the psychology of it all, the development of our brains and where childhood really ends.

For me, Harry Potter was my childhood, or at least the latter part of it. I remember when I was bought the first book for Christmas and put it on the shelf for later, thinking it looked a bit odd. As soon as I started reading it, however, I never looked back. All my copies are worn and battered from multiple re-reads, and there’s a ribena stain near the end of the fifth book too. The countless hours I spent reading until it was too dark to see or my torch batteries ran out remain priceless to me. The times I woke up during the night after a nightmare and would pick up the books, reading the chapters that comforted me again and again can’t be forgotten. The excitement of when the next instalment came out cannot be explained, and the hours which followed where I sat in my room reading it until it was done was only intensified by the joy of seeing scenes only ever imagined in my head played out on the big screen.

There are hundreds of thousands of people across the world who will never forget the magic that Harry Potter brought to their lives. Her ideas were inspirational to many, and the world she built up so easy to become wrapped up in. Despite the books and films coming to an end, as we all knew they would, no true fan will ever say goodbye to Harry, and those who were affected by him will never forget the laughter, the amazement and the tears that he brought them.

It’s ironic that as I wrote most of this entry, my boyfriend is sat beside me playing PS3 games. I think I might go and join him, but only to play Harry Potter. Never grow up completely.