Words Dept.: category

I’ve been a freelance journalist for a little over a year now and can’t help noticing that it’s taking a hell of a lot longer to get paid than it did when I had a full-time job. In fact, I’ve found that during the last year it’s actually taken 49 days, on average, between invoicing [...]

Last weekend my girlfriend bought a coat from TK Maxx in Stockport that contains fur. You wouldn’t know by looking at it, since the fur is on the inside. TK Maxx doesn’t have a particularly good track record in this area. The chain has been caught out previously, selling real fur marked up as fake. Others have [...]

Here are a few instantaneous thoughts on the sad closure of Crain’s Manchester Business, which was announced today. As a local business journalist who was very occasionally (ahem) scooped by the paper, it goes without saying that I have lots of respect for their journalists. But here’s a few quick thoughts on what went wrong: 1. They [...]

I don’t really get the point – journalistically, poetically, metaphorically or otherwise – of the Observer’s 3,000-word Miranda Sawyer-authored feature on the joy of Nando’s today. The feelgood piece, with the headline How Nando’s conquered Britain, is the type of advertising money can’t by, as Sawyer mooches around a couple of branches of the restaurant chain [...]

Apologies for not getting back to you. I’m here now, it’s OK. I’ve been thinking a lot about newspapers recently. About how I never buy one anymore except when I’m going on a long train journey, about the supposed closure of the Observer (which isn’t now happening), about what I can’t help thinking is gross [...]

Look at this picture I captured from the news earlier. I’m surprised the BBC allowed Michael O’Leary, boss of “low-cost” airline Ryanair, on air in this get-up. The point is to publicise some new routes from Leeds to fifty miles outside a number of European cities. In the most shameless and embarrassing way possible. I [...]

There’s something a tiny bit contemptuous about Asda’s response to the recent story that its £70 flat-pack bike is only slightly less dangerous than an un-earthed electric chair standing in a puddle downwind from Niagara Falls on a moderately blustery day. Mark Brown, director of the Association of Cycle Traders, noticed that in the TV [...]

When Guardian Media Group’s MEN Media announced last month that it was cutting a load of jobs at the Manchester Evening News and closing several local newspaper offices, there was a feeling from the NUJ and some staff that one of the reasons for the severity of the cuts was to protect Channel M. As [...]

I keep reading that the new 50% income tax rate unveiled in the Budget on Wednesday is going to lead to a “brain drain” of which we should all be dreadfully afraid. Apparently, all the clever people who earn more than £150,000 a year are threatening to leave the country, with catastrophic consequences. The Telegraph [...]

Interesting to see the Sunday Express has focused specifically on “adult films” in its story today about Jacqui Smith’s abuse of her expense account. Amid a wealth of details about what the Home Secretary has spent public money on, late-night pay-per-view porn has presumably been flagged up for the headline on the basis that it [...]