Billy Sups Up

Bonus points to anyone that can name this song:

“Hey, don't write yourself off yet, It's only in your head you feel left out or looked down on. Just try your best, try everything you can.

Everything (everything) will be just fine, everything (everything) will be alright (alright).”

I cast my mind back to a time almost a year ago (February 2010) to be exact.  That’s when I signed up for News Associates, officially.  Having decided in the December previous that it was the place for me. 

I distinctly remember the interview that followed the exam, I distinctly remember how News Associates were still operating under the old system, the old system where I already had the Reporting (news-writing as it was then called) already under my belt.  I distinctly remember being told I wouldn’t need to re-do it.  I distinctly remember the first day at News Associates and being told the course had changed, they were operating under a different system, and I’d have to re-do Reporting.

Tomorrow, I really do have to re-do Reporting.  The irony that it was the one module I ended up flunking isn’t lost on me.

However, I can write.  I know I can write.  I’m not Billy Big Bollocks, but I do not have the BBC on my CV without being able to write.

However, anyone that knows me knows I’ve always been a bit hit and miss with these things.  But like a cat with 9 lives, I’ve always landed on my feet.  And I’m hoping the same applies again tomorrow.  Last chance saloon, got to pull a performance out.

On the 8 May 2010 Leeds United needed to beat Bristol Rovers to secure promotion to the Championship.   For most of the 11 players on duty it was the biggest game they had ever played, against a team that were no great shakes in League 1.  As the second half got under way they found themselves 1-0 down with less than 40 minutes remaining.  Not only did they have their own destiny to play for, they had the hopes of 38,000 in the ground and millions more around the world on their shoulders.  No one associated with Leeds United wanted yet another play-off attempt.

Out of the depths they plucked goals in the 59th and 63rd minutes to secure the win that guaranteed promotion.

Now I am not, and never will be, a professional footballer, but this is the task that awaits me tomorrow.

So for myself, Will, Debs, Anna & Jack (I think that’s it), then I’m looking to my favourite song of 2010 for inspiration “Don’t Stop Believing”.

And for anyone that read my rants on the News Associates Facebook wall from Friday through to Monday, then just to say, yes, even now knowing my result I maintain I would not have sat the resit tomorrow if I didn’t have the results.

Stubborn? Stupid? You decide.  This Is Me Being Me, That’s Just The Way I Am (after 5 months of me, I’m sure you all know that).

Wish me luck; I’m off to read those [facking] yellow sheets so that [by and large] I can get [in their faces] one last time.

The Bell Has Rung For The Last Lap...

So here we go again, New Year, same as the old year.  For the next three weeks at least. 

January 24 is the date of my final two exams.  The date of my final day at 111 Piccadilly.

That thought fills me with dread and now I am fully beginning to appreciate the beauty and generosity of having my old job to go back to in February.

But, god willing and all fingers and toes crossed I will hopefully be fully NCTJ qualified by then and be ready to unleash my talents on the huge pool of jobs out there.  Ok, tiny pool. Fountain. Well. Pond. Stream. Puddle….a brief sojourn back in Bradford does have some appeal though - measured primarily in £s!

It was about this time last year that I made the decision that 2010 would be the year I embarked on the NCTJ fast track course.  And now here I am, about to complete.  The pre Christmas stress of exams and portfolio are out the window, and are replaced with the slightly less stressful sport and court reporting modules.

I am still nervously checking the members section of the NCTJ site waiting for them to update the exam results – until then I’m still not convinced I’ve passed Law or PA.   Maybe that’s just me?  Reporting results also seem to be taking forever to come through, and I’m not sure what Richard’s thoughts on my portfolio will be.  Cutting and sticking was never my strong point!

Christmas passed by in a haze of eating, drinking, football and fireworks and thoughts of work did not figure very highly.  Now as the return of the snow reminds us that we are still in the depths of Winter, so the dreaded words “court reporting mock” remind me that there is still a long way to go yet.

Like a lower league football team,  leading at half time against a Premier league team in the FA Cup (January 3^rd, Remember the date…) it’s worth remembering that the job is still only half complete.

Proud To Be British? By the end of 2011 you won't be, not in Cameron's Britain

There is a distinct difference between being a supporter of something, and being an apologist for that same thing, or for elements connected to that thing.
I am a Leeds United supporter, but I am not a Ken Bates apologist, and I do not claim to support everything he does in the name of the club.

In the same way, I am a Labour party supporter, member to be exact.  But I am not, and will not be an apologist for everything they do - and I do not claim to be so.

There is a folk song the chorus of which is: “We’ll sweep away the old year, and bring the New Year in...”
However, looking back now at the start of 2011 as the black clouds of austerity blow in over the horizon, are you proud, can you be proud that Labour were deposed?  Or more accurately, can any of us be proud of the Government that we have been lumbered with? Anybody that is probably won't be by this time next year.

I would prefer to direct your thoughts to the Joni Mitchell lyrics in Big Yellow Taxi: "Don't it always seem to go, That you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Before we all start getting carried away with the optimism of the New Year, and dreaming up resolutions which doubtless we’ll break before the week is out, allow me, if I may, to direct your attention towards an excellent column in yesterday’s Sunday Mirror.  Written by Jason Cowley it outlines in stark detail what 2011 may really hold in store for Britain:

"Like most people of a certain age, I can ­recall exactly where I was and what I was doing on the day Lady Diana married Prince Charles in the summer of 1981.

I was 15 and, along with nearly everyone else, caught up in the excitement of it all.

But even then, nothing seemed quite right to me. A gilded princess, golden carriages, the opulence of St Paul’s Cathedral – what did any of this have to say about life in modern Britain?

In the intervening period, ­everything and nothing has changed. And the similarities ­between 1981 and 2011 are striking, including plans for another ­national holiday to celebrate ­another royal wedding in April.

In 1981, Britain was in turmoil. The chill wind of Thatcherism was blowing through the land. ­Unemployment was rising sharply. There was social unrest and riots in the inner cities.

A Tory ­government had used an ­“emergency budget” to herald a new age of austerity. VAT was ­increased from 8 to 15 per cent.

There were punitive cuts in ­public spending.

The welfare state was under assault. Labour was in ­retreat.

Today there’s a comparable sense of crisis.

Trade union leader Brendan Barber has warned that it will be a “horrible year for the coalition” as the fightback against the cuts begins in earnest.

The details of the Big Squeeze to come are stark. On Tuesday, VAT goes up from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent as David Cameron and his chums start to pick our pockets.

VAT is a regressive tax, which hits the poor hardest, because it is they who are compelled to spend. George Osborne, the Chancellor, has said that the VAT rise – which will cost the average household £450 a year – is “unavoidable”, just as David Cameron used his new year message to reiterate that the cuts were “tough but necessary”.

But let’s be straight on this.

These are political decisions by the ­Bullingdon Brothers, not ­economic necessities.

There were alternatives.

For example, the Government could have introduced a far steeper levy on the reckless bankers.

Britain is, according to Gavin Kelly, head of the ­Resolution ­Foundation and a former deputy chief of staff at 10 Downing Street, in “the midst of the biggest squeeze on living standards since the 1970s”.

In real terms, wages are falling just as the cost of living is rising. Over the next few months ­everything from train fares to fuel duty will increase sharply.

Meanwhile, cuts in tax credits and to welfare benefits will make an already difficult situation worse for millions.

On top of this, as many as one million people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, ­including 100,000 graduates. They are the so-called Lost Generation.

In 1981, the soundtrack to a summer of social unrest was “Ghost Town” by the Specials, an anti-Thatcher protest song which went to number one.

“No job to be found in this country,” sang the Specials. “Government leaving the youth on the shelf. Can’t go on no more. The people getting ­angry.”

Any of this sound ­familiar?"

Viva La Revolution!