If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
It was only when I lived and worked in Honduras briefly aged 21 and suffered daily cat-calls, hisses and spitting from local men in the street, that something truly and irrevocably sank in. Being treated differently for occupying a female body wasn't just frustrating and irritating.
Despite using cocaine every night for the final three of my six years working in the City, I only once traded high - and, after an horrific eight hours getting increasingly jumpy and disconcerted, quickly learned never to do it again.
Mrs Thatcher won three elections in a row - so despite those who always criticised her - she definitely got through to large sections of the British public. And we can all learn some very useful lessons from her commitment to handling media interviews professionally - whatever our political views.
The decision of the BBC and John Sweeney to enter North Korea undercover with a group of LSE students raises a number of important questions relating to the ethics of the media. Chiefly whether they were putting the students in harm's way, but also if they'd made them fully aware of the risks involved beforehand.
There is something irresistible about a free newspaper or magazine. Human nature is such that we can't help but pick them up, regardless of their qual...
It was late October in 1863 when Ebenezer Cobb Morley and his contemporaries gathered together in London's Freemason's Tavern, near to where Holborn tube station is today, to establish a code of rules for the regulation of football. Fast forward to today and the modern game is unrecognisable from those humble beginnings. Its global audience has never been bigger with interest in the English game growing year-on-year. With this comes huge expectation, from fans, players, managers and the media...
The people throwing street parties shouldn't be condemned, they should be listened to. Is it any wonder, at a time when we are being told we need to tighten our belts that during Thatcher's funeral which will be funded by the state, many people are planning to turn up and protest? The dismantling of the welfare state and the NHS at present is the Conservative party's continuation of Thatcher's ideology of yesterday.
This is not a story that can be understood from headlines alone, partly because in Britain the headlines have so often wildly distorted the truth. Despite what you may have read, there is no threat by British politicians to interfere with press freedom. There is, however, a powerful consensus for change.
All of this hype and the dynamic nature of the media industry means that it attracts thousands of creative minds each year. In fact, the UK's creative industries are a real success story; they employ around 1.5million people and according to the official stats, generate £70,000 every minute for the UK economy.
We need to create a situation where kids don't constantly have their minds polluted by money-grabbing ad-men.
Thatcher's real legacy is that self-interest has become the driving force, socially and economically, for everyone regardless of whether they are on the left, the right or that irritating bit in the middle.
As a practicing lawyer frequently representing a cross-section of victims ranging from A-listers to politicians, while at the same time also having a significant number of journalists and publishers on my client list, I often have to change hats when arguing for press freedom on the one hand, and striving to protect the basic reputational and other rights of the ordinary man on the street on the other.
In all the coverage following Margaret Thatcher's death, very few headlines have been made by the fact that she had dementia. Many refer to her 'failing health' and 'deterioration', and report the stroke that caused her passing, but it seems that mentioning the word dementia when you are talking about a former prime minister is rather taboo.
There are problems with the welfare system in the UK. Nobody is saying that there are not. There are some people who see it as a meal ticket which saves them from having to do some real work, but they are not the majority.
Clearly it's wrong to speak ill of the dead... at least it is if you're operating one of the myriad London-based news channels, which are currently hurling a tsunami of rosy-hued (or is that 'balanced'?) tributes at viewers and readers about the death of the notable former UK prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.
Rather than making me into a Tory, my experience of life in Britain under Thatcher ensured that I would never vote Conservative.
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