The Eastleigh by-election result, as told in GIFs

Many people have been asking me about my verdict on Eastleigh by-election result, especially due to my exercise in UKIP baiting the other day.

Rather than go through a long winded post again about a by-election making points already made by my colleagues across the media, I thought I'd turn to my sadly neglected personal blog. I feel my views can be better represented in GIFs of the other person to win big this week and became an international darling in the process, Jessica Lawrence.

The Liberal Democrats

When I try to think of something witty and original to say about Mike Thornton:

UKIP

When UKIP tried to act like they are an unstoppable force in politics and 'coming in second is like coming in first' when they beat the 'Sarah Palin' candidate of a governing party which is widely despised by the electorate.

And failed to beat the party where the outgoing MP is about to be sentenced for perverting the course of justice, the former chief executive is engulfed in a sleaze/sex scandal and the leader is accused of lying.

Seriously, even George Galloway has won an election with Respect.

TWICE.

It can't be that hard.

The Conservatives

Whenever Maria Hutchings opened her mouth.

Labour

When Labour try to justify their result, saying they weren't going to win anyway.

Thanks to London Grumblr for the gifs.

I need a hobby...

I have decided I need a new hobby.

Having devoted myself to journalism these past few years my original hobby, writing, has been slowly taken over and turned into a professional endeavour meaning I have no real answer for the question 'what do you do in your spare time?'

Of course, I do all the normal 21 year old girl things like watching TV, listening to music and drinking too much but what I need is a cool and interesting hobby, like sky diving, or painting, or photography. Or at least something I can use Instagram to document (as this seems to be the go to move for all those achingly cool types I see on Twitter).

Because, in 2012, if you can't take a slightly grainy looking picture of yourself doing it, holding an Iphone afloat and pouting then its probably not worth doing.

I remember back when I still had a reasonable amount of money and my life wasn't completely occupied with work/my career/escape plans I used to be reasonably fun (I've never been cool). I used to listen to good (ish) music and while I was never one of those annoying people who go find unsigned bands (who are normally unsigned for a reason) and act superior to those who listen to 'mainstream music' I knew my arse from my elbow when it came to the slightly under the radar musicians and artists.

Since the heady days of my youth (aka during my GCSEs when I never did any work) I've become too utilitarian about everything. As I do not what to be a music journalist so why bother spending too much time with it?  I may love fashion but I don't have the money for clothes and I lack that certain type of creativity to make new ones. Although I can sew even if that's mainly sewing buttons back on the cardigans and shirts I've had for about five years.

I wouldn't say I've been more boring, just perhaps a bit more two dimensional and I've lost a lot of what I once loved in life. That is probably contributing to my unhappiness at the moment (other than being unemployed).

My career has to remain my priority, and whilst I'm still poor, I can't afford to adopt a home that involved spending money. So that leaves me doing something indoors and probably in the house.

Which, given the idea was originally designed to stop me going stir crazy, may not be ideal.

Damn, how on earth can I become a cool and important twenty something without one?

Of course, I don't even have an Iphone or Android phone so I can't use Instagram anyway.

My life is over.



 

Leeds Fest: I'm Not Cut Out For This Sort of Thing

(NB: Yeah, I haven't updated this in forever. My bad. Being unemployed is busy work apparently.)

 Last week I went to my very first music festival. In this day and age and in my circle of friends, this is seen as bizarre and abnormal that a girl of almost 22 could have gone through life without attending at least one festival, especially as Leeds Festival is (sort of) on my doorstep. However, despite having a blast, I can confirm that festivals really aren't for me and it likely I will never go again for the following reasons:

 1. Cost. Leeds Fest is approximately £200 per person for a weekend ticket. I went on a day ticket which cost nearly £100. Now, that was the upper limit of my entire weekly budget including food, bills and fun when I lived in Birmingham. Now that I'm on the dole, it would take me two weeks to save up for a one day ticket. Luckily, my parents bought two one day tickets for my sister's birthday and she need an over 18 with her to get her into the park. Looking around, wearing the clothes I've had for a couple of years I saw a lot of perfectly manicured, with artfully messy blonde hair decorated with the overpriced floral headbands you could buy on the way in and clothes that have been painstakingly put together in a way to suggest they'd just thrown them on this morning. And loads of hipsters. I have never been one of those girls, nor will I ever be able to take them seriously. I realise the reason I feel like everyone goes to festivals is because everyone I know has overindulgent parents. For the vast majority of people in the UK, the idea of going to a festival rather than just watching it on TV is a laughable expense. Even if they could scrap together the money for the ticket (and the overpriced food and drink inside), they could go on a mini break somewhere warm for that amount of money.

 2.Cleanliness. I don't like mud OK. I don't like public toilets. I don't like not being able to wash my hands over a sink with soap and hot water. I don't like communal showers.

3.Crowds. I've never been a big fan of large crowds as they need to bring out the claustrophobia in me. However this is ten times worse at a festival because you are constantly having to watch out for weird people trying to crowd surf on your head and people throwing their own urine around. Incidentally, throwing urine at someone is classed as assault but doesn't seem to stop people at festival who, despite being able to buy a £100-200 ticket, seem to prefer to act as they were raised by wolves. That and when you are frequently getting knocked over by people suddenly frantically moshing and/or fighting nearby its never easy to avoid bruising.

4.Tiredness. By the end of the day, my feet really, really hurt. And the next morning I could barely get out of bed I was so tired. Bear in mind I only went for a day and I am 21. There is something so exhaustingly about listening to bands play all day and never sitting down (though I assume its worse for the performers). I clearly don't have the stamina.

However, one thing I will say about my experiment with Leeds Fest is that the live music is unbeatable. Having been a fan of the Foo Fighters for several years, I was really only there for them and whilst I wasn't particularly interested in some of the line up on the Main Stage, getting the Kaiser Chiefs and Foo Fighters in a 2 for 1 deal was pretty awesome. There is a great atmosphere at a festival (when you're not being squashed or assaulted) that its always good to experience once in your life. But maybe not every year.

Late At Night When My Internal Monologue Should Really Go To Sleep

Sometimes I think I shouldn't publicise my inner thought stream if I want to be taken seriously as a grown up journalist.


However, now that a few freelancing excursions have taken place that make me feel like a real journalist (it feels much like I'm sure Pinocchio felt the day he became a real boy) I have come to the conclusion I'm not going to manage the 'grown up' half of the equation.


That digression aside onto the original purpose of this blog form of late night stream of consciousness. I remember a stand up routine from Irish comedian Ed Byrne about the banality of most men's thoughts. He said that women should not ask what men are thinking because most of the time its something stupid like thinking 'what it would be like to be a spy'.


Now I'm thinking about what it would be like to be a mermaid.


Think about it, you get to go anywhere in the world you want never having to worry about worldly cares like future careers, friends and paying rent. You can travel to the four corners of the Earth, your hair is always shiny with lots of free seashell accessories and hang out with all your fish friends whose only concern is to avoid any stray sharks and don't bother with those ridiculous 'feelings' that your human friends are so obsessed with.

And I'd get a really shiny tail.

Maybe I should be less concerned with those who don't take me seriously and worry about those who seriously think I need to be carted off to the funny farm.

Because they're probably right.

Dear Men...I Promise We're Not All As Mental As Samantha Brick Has Made Out.

Dear Men of the World,

It may have come to your attention in a recent Femail article that Samantha Brick believes us women are all jealous, insecure harpies that spend our every waking moments studying our reflections, bewailing our imperfections and viciously despising any more beautiful rival that strays into our path. You see, all that Nobel Prize winning, career climbing and generally running the world that we do can never been enough because we are not being universally fawned on for our skilful use of the cosmetics industry to compliment the accident of genetics that is our face.


However I assure you we are not all that mental. Some of us have even developed enough insight to recognise that the way we look is not, or at least should not be, our defining feature and have enough grace to not care that much. You see some of us, unlike Ms Brick, have even developed enough personality to not need to rely on our looks as a reason why people don't like us.


For my part, I do not consider receiving a free glass of champagne from an airplane pilot for being pretty as a boring regularity as I possess enough gratitude and humility to take it as an unexpected compliment. I too have been called 'beautiful' by both kind and creepy strangers. When I was five a man on a tram in San Francisco told my mother that I was a beautiful little girl, gave me some money and hopped off to never been seen again. When I was seventeen I was followed through a market in Xian, China by a 'blinking' man who I later worked out was trying to wink at me as the Western custom had not transferred properly. I was also given a paper rose by a man in a pub when I was eighteen who said he'd made early in the evening and I was the only girl he'd seen worth giving it too (the romance of this gesture however is rather lost on the fact that it occurred in a Wetherspoons).


However I do not see these three isolated incidents as a sign of my aesthetic superiority to other women, more a sign of being 'mildly attractive' in common with around about 95% of the female population. I do not expect women to hate me for telling these stories, when they do I assume its due to the fact I'm the kind of girl who spends 75% of her time with boys rather than because of my face.


Although it is true that when I see a pretty girl I do sometimes think 'wow she's pretty, what a bitch' this sentiment does not normally last longer the time it takes to think it. You see men, we are often irrational, emotional and do have a tendency to hate each other but were not all that shallow.


I wonder if Ms Brick ever wondered if rather than hating for her looks, women hate her for her?

Yours sincerely

An only 'semi-mad' woman.

Protest ALL THE THINGS!

Protest ALL THE THINGS...Or How I Learnt To Stop Worrying About My Future And Make Memes Instead


Being a student at the University of Birmingham is being more comedic than usual. Although most universities can argue that they too have their own OMCO, their own Drinks to Go man, their own version of Fab 'N' Fresh based depravity, their own 'Overhead on Campus' but few have their own, long running sideshow like our venerable Guild of Students and its ongoing 'he said, no he said' war throughout this academic year.


I know I should take it seriously. It is serious. Whilst it was announced today that graduates are just as likely to be unemployed as GCSE school leavers, Cameron and his merry band of millionaires continue on with their dastardly plot to rob the poor student to feed the rich bankers' bonuses aided and abetted by the Big Bad Wolf of Higher Education; Birmingham's very own Vice-Chancellor Professor David Eastwood (though I may be mixing up my folk tale metaphors there). Students and young people more generally are victims over a resurgence in the 'blame da yoof' bandwagon because they assume we won't fight back unless our mummies and daddies help us. How dare we want fair access to education! How dare we want to be paid for the work we do! We're such ingrates. Its good that there are people ready to fight and be imprisoned for our rights and I feel the requisite solidarity and anger for those still facing the university's ire over their actions but I really wish they would go about it in a way that wasn't so rife for a piss take.


Take the 'Protest the Protest Ban' on campus last week that went hopelessly awry(ish). As a girl in my seminar said 'So its a protest...about not being able to protest?' There has to be some sort of philosophical name for the Dr Strangelovian 'You can't fight in here, this is a war room' logic of it all.


It started out sensibly enough with one impassioned (and remarkably brave) first year girl's well-delivered speech about being screwed and silenced like Imogen Thomas (too much? I'm paraphrasing- her summary was far more eloquent and a lot less crass than mine)was not what students signed up (and paid £3000/£9000 a year) for. Then the more seasoned members of the movement got on the mic and so the rhetoric flowed. During one speech I was waiting for it to end in a roar of 'Students of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains'. And from that point onwards, given that the sabbatical officers were already running around like headless chickens and shouting at each other, I knew it was going to descend into some form of 'Anarchy by the Clocktower'.


There was an admirable plan of a march from Mermaid Square in the Guild of Students to the Clocktower (by Aston Webb and the home of Eastwood's office)- a distance of approximately 100 feet. Of course this didn't happen (I have no idea why the Guild expected it would) and I soon found myself watching about twenty people hammering on an office window (whether or not it was Eastwood's is undetermined) shouting 'Are you worth a grand a day'. This tiny dose of hilarity was completed by a comment from a passer-by who pointed out that as Eastwood has recently taken a 10% pay rise on his existing £392,000 a year salary, he is earning considerably more than a grand a day.


Afterward it descended even further into madness as we made the next stop on our pilgrimage; outside student services where Simon Furse, 2nd year student and scapegoat for the university's frustrations with the Occupation in November, was supposed to be 'disciplined' before his hearing was postponed. Whilst listening to the banging on the windows and the shouts of 'We are Simon Furse' I couldn't help but wonder if I were to start with 'I'm Spartacus' how many would join in.*

Now the Guild is at war with itself over 'health and safety' and the battle lines are being drawn for more pointless bickering. People criticise students as lazy, apathetic and drunk but can you really blame us?

We tried to protest, we signed the petitions, we voted Liberal Democrat and we stormed the Milibank Centre to stand up for ourselves but no-one listened. So can you really blame us for giving up? The government don't give a crap about us and we may discuss them as a 'general' mass but most members of the general public don't give a crap about anyone but themselves and their children; in the eyes of the middle class keeping the riff raff out of higher education is probably seen as a good thing. So we go to FAB, we make memes complaining about Virgin Media or mocking Mark Harrop because what else are we supposed to do? The government is about to screw us before we get to university, the universities will screw us while we're there and they will get private companies to screw us for no money when we leave. Why both shouting if no-one is listening?

In Chile, Camilla Vallejo managed to bring the entire country to its knees in 2011 to get freer access to education. In Britain, Charlie Gilmour swung off a war memorial and got sent to prison. We want something to believe in and a leader to rally around but we've yet to see anything get behind. That's why we're burying our heads in memes.

On the outside we may be laughing but trust us, on the inside we're banging our heads on the table.

*An alternative title would be 'We're All Spartacus Now'

Valentine's Day? I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon

I have always been a Valentine's Day sceptic.

When you say you don't celebrate it people always give you a knowing smirk and suggest that its perhaps because I don't have 'someone special'.

Now, I may not have a boyfriend but I am in possession of a couple brain cells and I honestly do not say this from the 'rebelling against it because I know I'll die alone' position.

In fact I can't help thinking that if I did have a boyfriend I may break up with him just for these 24 hours so I didn't have to buy into all the usual saccharine crap forced down our throats every year.

I hate romance, I hate sentiment, I don't like poetry or chick flicks and I have never sat and dreamed about my wedding day.

The whole thing makes me feel quite nauseous actually.

But yet somehow I am still oddly a romantic; I saw a boy today buying flowers for his girlfriend and I'll admit for a moment my heart melted. He was adorable.

Then it froze again and I was back to cynicism.

I don't believe that you should tell someone you love them just because its Valentine's Day. Why not give your girlfriend a present because its April 23rd and you think they're pretty. Why not take them out to dinner because its a nice evening?

Now maybe this is me being a diva and is biased by my expectation of being treated like a princess on more than just my birthday or Valentine's (this may also be too do with why I currently don't have a boyfriend).

If you buy someone a generic teddy bear or bouquet of roses on special offer how are you showing you care? Why not get her something she actually likes?

For me that's pizza, a movie where there are lots of explosions and witty banter in and writing my dissertation for me.

But that's just me.