ChristopherWhite.info

I handed in my notice at work the other day. I’ve only been at Campaign for seven weeks.

Understandably, they weren’t best pleased.

“I don’t think you’ve behaved very well,” my editor said, and perhaps she has a point¹.Certainly were I in her position I’d hit the fucking roof. And yet at the same time, if I were ever in a situation where an employee showed up one day and told me they’d turned down a job paying over 50% more than their current salary (and particularly one that’s within their area of interest/expertise²), I’d be half-tempted to fire them for being a gibbering idiot.

But a thought occurred last night: for all the talk in some circles about nasty businesses exploiting their workers, employees leaving, at some point, for something better or better-paid is actually expected. The equivalent from the company – firing an employee simply to replace them with someone better/cheaper/faster – is at the very least frowned upon and probably constitutes unfair dismissal³.

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1 Mind you, she doesn’t know this was the second interview I’d had since starting at Campaign -– both for jobs I’d applied for before applying for this one, however. The first was for a science writing job on The ENDS Report for which I’d had to return the writing test by the day I started at Campaign. At the time (as I was re-leaving home) my dad also seemed to frown upon my willingness to change jobs so readily, but he’d begun work in an age where reciprocal loyalty between employee and employer was a given –- ironic since most of the industry in town, which will soon come to include his employers, has pissed off abroad.
2 As the assistant editor of Interactions, the Institute of Physics’s newspaper.
3 Though not after seven weeks, obviously

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Just before Christmas I asked the Home Office — out of curiosity more than anything else — how many ways there are that they’re aware of in which it is possible to compromise the proposed National Identity Card, as the scheme stands¹.

The National Identity and Passport Service replied that they’re not obliged to provide the information as it fails the public interest test, stating:

[I]t is not in the public interest to disclose IPS’s strategies or tactics for dealing with fraud as this information may provide valuable intelligence to the perpretators of crime.

If the Home Office thinks that a simple number consists of “strategies or tactics”, then we’re in more trouble than I thought.

Or, bearing in mind that they took three more than the maximum 20 working days allowed by the Freedom of Information act to tell me that they can’t tell me, could they have refused simply because it’d be embarrasing for them?
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1 This supposes that they know how they’re going to implement it, which I’ll admit is a totally unwarranted assumption.

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All it took was 90 days and a threat of legal action.

Freelancing is great.

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Fighting fire with fire, non?

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Having just spent two weeks on work experience at the Pink Paper¹, the best story (ie most original one) I’ve been working on turned out to be a bit of a nothing. With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been fairly obvious, and once I’d got the bit between my teeth I let myself get a touch blinded by wanting to get a good story. Lesson learned, though – what I was there for, after all.

The story itself was that the wi-fi internet service in Heathrow airport (terminal three, in this case) was blocking access to all gay rights websites — the International Lesbian and Gay Association, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Peter Tatchell’s site — because of what the internet filtering programme, SiteCoach, deemed to be “Harmful Content”.

I was assured by a very nice (though audibly annoyed) woman from T-Mobile, who provide the wi-fi internet to terminals three and four, that it was a technical cockup and nothing more sinister. A spokesman for the SiteCoach program told me² that the sites in question would be added to the “safe list” straight away, so they’d never be blocked, and that it wasn’t strictly speaking blocked anyway – rather the real world filter interrupts the pages loading, in the case of Peter Tachell’s site, because it found the phrase “teenage sex” in the bibliography section.

But that says more about mindless censorship than it does about anything else, about the ludicrous implicit assumption that a website containing the words — and just words — “teenage sex” should automatically be barred from potential access by children.

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1 I know.
2 And addressed me as “Mr White”, one of many things that get right on my nipples for no particular reason.

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Not very long at all before deadline for Spwci issue two, and I’ve just realised that we’ve promised the chance to win a free tour of haunted Cardiff on the front cover, and don’t actually have a competition inside. Bugger.

And then the printer jammed, and I had to spend ten minutes fixing it so we could print out proofs.

I dread to think what this process was like before we had all this technology.

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While I’m working with batty psychics, hypnotists and ghostbusters, half of my class is producing a nature and adventure sports magazine.

They’ve just tried to get a quote off Bill Oddie. His agent asked if there would be any payment.

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Asking the NUS whether the events on Channel 4’s Shipwrecked - contestant Lucy Buchanan changing her racist views after a few exchanges with the other contestants - undermine their “No-Platform” policy somewhat, they replied with this:

Ruqayyah Collector, NUS Black Student’s[1] Officer said:
“NUS’ No Platform policy states that racists and fascists should not be provided with an opportunity to speak to an audience at any NUS event, and that no member of the National Executive Committee will share a public platform with a racist or fascist.

What this policy does is to take a proactive stance against racism and fascism, ensuring that all of our members are treated equally and not subjected to verbal abuse on the basis of their race, religion or ethnic origin at any of our events.

This does not mean we would not challenge racism in any other way or in any other context - we have a dedicated anti-racism and anti-fascism committee to do just that. What is does mean is that we are not giving racist organisations more legitimacy, exposure or air-time by allowing them to speak at our events, nor will we allow them to promote views which could be deeply upsetting and offensive to attendees.

NUS has a duty to provide environments free from discrimination for those who attend our events, and that is why we continue to hold a No Platform Policy.”

That’s not really answering the question, but I’ll take it as a No.

[1] No, I’ve no idea why there’s an officer to represent one black student.

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I wish I’d seen this before I wrote this.

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Last week, we had a visit from Cardiff Crown Court judge Stephen Hopkins - known among the rest of the circuit judges as “hang ‘em high Hopkins”.When the newspaper and broadcast students visited the court in November, he was in the middle of a trial of a mother and father and two uncles charged with sexually abusing their children/nieces. After that he presided over four consecutive rape trials.

I’m glad I don’t have to sit in a court and listen to that all day.

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