I am trialling a new time scale, the HV. Do not confuse it with HGV or even HIV. The HV is a period of four months based on the standard unit of Hygienist Visits. Just as the farmer talks of ‘three winters past’ or the Red Indian counts moons, so now you might hear me say ’just a couple of HV’s ago’ or ‘it was six HV’s last Tuesday’. Its a bit of a mouthfull at first, but you quickly wonder how you ever managed without.
I am always shocked how quickly HV’s come around. It is clinically proven that HV events themselves are impossible to remember, especially it seems in SW6, where each is now augured by a cheery text alert from ‘your hygienist.’
Oh no she isn’t mine! She is a fully functioning member of a monstrous regiment, The Tooth Taliban. ‘Mine’ holds the rank of ‘Floss Boss’. Her ukase are sharia (only her eyes are visible) and being in no position to disagree, I buckle under. (Prod about and you will find a rotten pun in there.)
But as a measure of time passing, the HV is perfect. It is regular, inevitable, requires little thought, the outcome being the same whether I brush before and after every mouthful, or never, and the astronomical cost clocks up on my bank statements, back to my very first rinse or swallow.
Click to Comment // Posted on Thursday 26 March 2009 // General
Being a hack on a local paper means knocking on people’s doors, often at times of extreme grief and asking them ‘how they feel.’ The reporter will try to get a photo of the dead husband, injured son, a peek at the child’s bedroom or any other snippet with which to write a better story. It’s not a lot of fun (I hated it) but it’s what reporters do. The Press Complaints Commission has a Code of Conduct, designed to protect children in particular and the public from the worst intrusions of a sex money and power obsessed tabloid machine. But the PCC has come in for a lot of criticism which can be summed up as ‘the PCC is a toothless self serving watchdog, made up of industry insiders and editors, ie. the fox guarding the coop etc’. So what does the PCC do, they act real tough. Yes, they pick on some local reporter in Wales to make an example of! Naturally they make a complete horlicks of it. The gist is this. The reporter hears about a road accident and turns up at the house of a friend of the victim to get some information. A girl wearing her school uniform answers the door. The reporter quickly realises she may be under 16 (she is 15 and Sec 6 PCC Code says parental consent is needed) so leaves immediately and nothing appears in the paper. Despite this her father complains to the PCC. Instead of rejecting it, perhaps explaining that the reporter was just doing his/her job, the PCC uphold the complaint! It makes you proud. And to read this in the same week as Gerry McKann gave evidence to the Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee about the excesses he and his wife faced, about which the PCC did next to nothing. So we enter another self-inflicted flagellation, with everyone chanting ‘its time for draconian laws to curb the beast.’ No its not. The PCC just needs to do a lot better.
Click to Comment // Posted on Tuesday 17 March 2009 // General
NEW guidance for editors on coverage of suicide, data protection, privacy and a range of other issues is published today.
A second edition of The Editors’ Codebook - official handbook to the Editors’ Code of Practice that is at the heart of the press self-regulatory system administered by the Press Complaints Commission - is launched to reflect the rapidly changing media scene. The book, first published in 2005 to help journalists and members of the public understand how the Code worked in practice, has been substantially revised to include the latest landmark cases handled by the PCC, especially in areas of privacy and intrusion into grief. There are new Briefings on reporting suicide, on complaints about websites and on investigative journalism. A radical redesign means an extra 40 pc of content fits into a slimmer A5 format, colour-coded for easy reference. The book, by Ian Beales, Secretary of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, is also available in pdf format – hyperlinked to PCC adjudications - on the Committee’s website: www.editorscode.org.uk/the_code_book.html
Key features include:
· Suicide: A major expansion of the Codebook’s coverage of reporting on suicide includes important new guidance in the aftermath of the series of deaths of young people in and around Bridgend, South Wales. The Samaritans and Papyrus, leading organisations engaged in the prevention of suicide, have welcomed the book’s new guidance.
· Data protection: New briefings collate the efforts made by the Code Committee, the PCC and the press industry to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act and other legislation. The book stresses that journalists must stay within both the law and the Code.
· Privacy: Extended case studies include latest PCC rulings on intrusion into privacy - with guidance on photographing people without consent; on revealing pregnancies; and on journalists joining police raids.
· Harassment: The Codebook highlights the success of the PCC’s system of private advisory notices alerting editors to requests from people who do not wish to be pursued by the media.
Copies can be obtained from the Press Complaints Commission: price £5 including postage. There are discounts for orders of more than 25 copies. To place an order contact: Tonia Milton at tonia.milton@pcc.org.uk
For further information on The Editors Codebook or the Editors’ Code Committee: Contact Ian Beales: ianbeales@mac.com
Phone: 01453 860577. Mobile 0771 577 0400
Note
• The Editors’ Code Committee writes, reviews and revises the Code of Practice administered by the Press Complaints Commission. Its members are: Chairman: Paul Dacre, Daily Mail; Neil Benson, Trinity Mirror’s regional newspapers; Adrian Faber, Express and Star, Wolverhampton; Douglas Melloy, Rotherham and South Yorkshire Advertiser; Ian Murray, Southern Evening Echo; David Pollington, The Sunday Post; Jonathan Grun, Press Association; Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian; June Smith-Sheppard, Pick Me Up magazine; Neil Wallis, News of the World; Harriet Wilson, Conde Nast magazines; John Witherow, Sunday Times.
Click to Comment // Posted on Monday 9 March 2009 // General
If you have then click here http://skype.com/intl/en-gb/download/skype/windows/ go to the bottom of the page and download the previous version.
Click to Comment // Posted on Friday 6 March 2009 // General
