Justice for Joanna....and all the others

Well folks. It's been a while. My excuse is that I have been busy actually being a journalist, other than just aspiring to be one. Plus I have a swanky new laptop in which to continue my frequent musings.

There's pretty much only one story that I can't get off my mind at the moment. I thank God every day for the wonder that is the Sky News iPhone App, with its screaming yellow 'Breaking News' banners to satiate my news hungry mind.
Yep, I'm talking about Joanna Yeates. Normal girl, walking home after a night in the pub, stops off to get a pizza and some cider before continuing home. A week later, her body is found dumped in the snow.

It's SURREAL!!! How can that happen? It scares me because that is such a normal, mundane routine. Each day the case gets a bit more tragic. Today  it emerges the poor girl could have been strangled with her own sock. Unbelievable.

It makes me so sad for Joanna and her family who are completely devastated. Their lovely daughter who had her whole life ahead of her, as well as a glittering career as an architect.

But it does make me wonder, and forgive my cynicism, if the press would have devoted so much coverage to Joanna, had she not been an attractive, middle class young woman with a promising career ahead, to make the story a little bit more tragic.
It goes back to a story I wrote a few years ago just after Madeleine McCann went missing. (If you've read this, you've probably gathered by now that this is something I feel a tad strongly about).
Hundreds, literally hundreds, of young boys and girls go missing or get murdered in the UK every day. So why do only some get press coverage and others don't? Why do some fit the criteria in some ways and others are forgotten?
Not for a second does Joanna not deserve this amount of press coverage. She deserves every effort that is humanely possible  and police working 24 hours round the clock to find her killer.

But so do the killers of every other murdered person in the UK. Whatever class they are.

Jamie vs The World

Good programme on Channel 4 recently. You've probably heard of it: Jamie's American Food Revolution.

In a nutshell, Jamie Oliver, chef/campaigner/ general hero and master of the food universe, goes to the statistically unhealthiest city in the United States - Huntington in West Virginia, spends time with school dinnerladies, high school students and families and tries to get them to change their eating ways for the better.

I think it makes great viewing. I thought I was no saint when it comes to junk food but these primary school kids are given pizza for breakfast and their lunchtime french fries are considered one of their 5 vegetables a day. Is it any wonder the majority of the American nation are obese?

The people of Huntington can't stand Jamie because they feel he is belittling their way of life. They see this UK celebrity waltzing in to their little American town with all his wealth and status, demanding they swap their processed chicken nuggets for fresh chicken drumsticks, trying to change people's habits of a lifetime. And they hate him for it.

"No-one understands me." Jamie says in today's Guardian. "You think I'm going to America to make money? That is probably the worst financial use of my time in the world, going to America next year, cos there's no money in TV, and they don't buy books. I just really want to get school food sorted, and it ain't going to get sorted by the government."

And I agree with him, though all I wanted to eat for lunch aged seven was jam sandwiches and Quavers. Luckily, packed lunches were common practice at my school and I had a health conscious mother. So I think it's really refreshing to see Jamie try to change such depressing bad habits like feeding a ten year old doughnuts for breakfast. He is giving the younger generation a second chance for their future. What chance do they have in life for their health and bodies, eating stuff like that on a daily basis? It's sad that Jamie has to go to such extreme lengths to make it happen and that he gets so slated for it.

However, the show won him an Emmy, so every cloud and all that....

More terror threats

I’m a few weeks late with this, but I’ve been thinking about the nine year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Almost a decade has passed and I still can’t watch those images of the burning Twin Towers without gasping in complete shock. It both fascinates and sickens me. At the time I remember thinking I was watching part of a film. I was 14 and had never seen anything like it in my life. But the horror of that day was just a pre-cursor of what was and still is to come in our society.

The news today of a foiled terror plot on London and other cities makes my blood boil. I’m not even going to try and go into all the Al-Qaeda stuff, because I don’t and never will understand. Why human beings desire to kill other human beings. Why some are so intent on mass devastation to the world that they sacrifice their own lives in the process. How they possess such an intense hatred for innocent people who live their lives differently to how they do.

“America will never ever forget the events of 9/11.  We will always be bruised.” someone I met in the USA told me in 2005. And though they have moved on, cliché as it may sound, I could definitely sense the devastation at Ground Zero when I went there.

If the latest foiled terror plot is true, and not just a media exaggeration, then thank God for the people working to eradicate these plots to destroy humanity.

It’s a complete pain in the arse not being able to take bottles of water on the plane when going abroad. It’s a ball ache having to put your Chanel makeup in a Sainsbury’s sandwich bag at the airport. It’s also really annoying being frisked to death and having a good pair of tweezers taken off you before boarding the plane.

But I would rather every single one of these pedantic procedures a hundred times over, than risk being blown up halfway over the Atlantic by a delusional extremist believing they are doing the right thing.

It makes me sick to think there are people like this walking next to us in the street or sat on the same bus. 7/7 was a revelation. This time the killers were born and bred Brits. And their plots will continue to be foiled but they will do it again. It is just a case of when.

Mummy Miliband's Dilemma

After years of hard slog, sleepless nights and endless campaigning, when your youngest son becomes just one step away from reaching the zenith of his political career, a mother’s heart must surely be bursting with joy and maternal pride.

It’s understandable she would be excitedly babbling to anyone in Waitrose who’ll listen, that her son is the new Labour Party Leader whilst conducting the weekly shop. It’s understandable that she hold a ‘Congratulations, Mummy’s Little Soldier!’ party in her dining room. Any proud mother would be completely justified in her excitement and happiness for her hardworking son.

But spare a thought for Marion Kozak this week. A woman for whom the phrase ‘bittersweet’ is the understatement of the millennium. One half of her is proud as punch for her darling Ed, the underdog. The other half is wracked with sorrow for David, whom everyone, including himself, had pegged as the new Gord.

It was bad enough that Marion’s two beloved boys were competing in the Labour Party race in the first place. She is said to have told people that it would have made her life much less stressful, had her sons become academics than politicians.

So she must have anticipated some form of sibling rivalry. But this week’s outcome is a lifetime away from the tantrums over tricycles, way back in yesteryear. The position in which Marion is in this week must make her yearn for the days her boys wrestled over the biscuit tin.

Poor David, assuming he was a dead cert for the job he had spent months, if not years, prepping for, had already written his acceptance speech when out of the blue he was suddenly shafted at the eleventh hour by his geeky little brother Ed.

Now David’s political career is in doubt – and can things ever be the same for the Brothers Miliband again? A schoolfriend of the brothers said: "They cannot be the same after this. I have seen it (politics tearing families apart) happen and I can see it happening between them."

What then for their poor mother? She was said to be so distraught about the results of the contest that she could not bear to even watch it. Are we to assume that all Miliband family soirees of the future will be exercises in walking on eggshells? Snarls over the Christmas turkey?

Seriously though, I feel for all involved in this delicate situation. For Ed, who cannot fully bask in the glory of his achievement because it is undoubtedly tinged with guilt and sadness for his brother. For David, who had been the Leader favourite for years, and has had a shock to the system with Ed’s ‘usurpation’ spoiling the natural order of things. I met David three years ago, when he was Environment Secretary and I was on placement at Manchester Evening News, shadowing the Political Editor. Although a bit cocky, he definitely had the ‘je ne sais quoi’ I personally think is a requisite in politics, and I would have put money on the fact he would one day be in the running for Prime Minister, which is why I was more than a little bit surprised when I heard he had been abruptly ousted.
But I especially feel for Marion, whose conflicting emotions this week, must feel like turmoil.
Still – worse things have happened at sea.

A brilliant read.......

You might think I seem to have a morbid fascination for true crime, judging by one of my previous posts, but I wanted to write here about a book I’ve been reading recently. I can’t remember when, if ever, a book has ever made such an impact on me emotionally, I really can’t. It’s a truly incredible read and I really recommend it as a story of courage and tenacity.

‘For the Love of Julie’ is written by Ann Ming, whose daughter Julie suddenly disappeared from her home one night in November 1989 after finishing work delivering pizzas. Ann, who had been babysitting Julie’s toddler son, was due to meet Julie the next morning but Julie had completely vanished. Because mother and daughter were so close, Ann knew immediately that something terrible had happened.
But after police searched Julie’s house, there was still no sign of her. Three months later, Ann was in Julie’s bathroom when she smelled a terrible stench coming from the bath. Noticing the bath panel was coming loose, she took it off and found herself staring at her daughter’s body, bundled up in blankets.

It didn’t take long for the police to track down her killer, a local man well known for violent crime, Billy Dunlop. He went to trial but the jury were unable to reach a verdict, because there was no official cause of death, due to the body being so badly decomposed after being hidden for three months. After a further re-trial, the jury were yet again unable to decide on his guilt, so Dunlop was formally acquitted, despite evidence such as his fingerprints on Julie’s keys and fibres from his jumper being found on her body.

It wasn’t long before Billy Dunlop was boasting to anyone who would listen how he had committed ‘the perfect murder’ and got off scot free. And because of the law of Double Jeopardy, which means the same person cannot be tried for the same murder case twice, essentially – he had done just that.

Ann Ming, frenzied with grief and anger, began what would be a fifteen year campaign for justice for Julie – she battled furiously to change the law of 800 years that had been enshrined in the Magna Carta. Year after year, she met with MP’s, Home Secretaries, judges, wrote dozens of impact statements, went directly to the House of Lords and gave impassioned pleas – she stopped at nothing. And eventually, it paid off. The law of double jeopardy was finally changed in 2006, to allow criminals to be re-tried for a crime they had previously been acquitted of.

Billy Dunlop had made a big mistake in bragging about his ‘perfect murder’. Seventeen years after Julie Hogg was strangled in her living room and stuffed under her own bath, her murderer was found guilty and sentenced to life.

Reading the whole story, of how Ann found her daughter’s body and how she never ever gave up her tireless campaign for justice for her daughter, makes you go cold. I can’t stop thinking about this story – a moving story of a mother’s complete love for her child. And tragic as the story is, with everything she has done, Ann has ultimately ensured that something positive has come out of Julie’s death, and that she did not die in vain.

READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!

Liar, liar....

This weekend, I was standing in front of the mirror trying to decide which, out of a plethora of my very best dresses, would be the best to wear to the upmarket restaurant I was going to be gracing that night.
After a good twenty minutes of getting nowhere, I enlisted the help of my laid-back boyfriend for a man’s opinion.
“Wear that nice black and white one,” he suggested. “You look great in that.”
“What about this one?” I said, pulling out one of my favourite dresses – a slinky burnt orange number which I totally love because it’s great at making me look a good few pounds lighter than I actually am. Score!
“To tell you the truth,” said my lovely boyfriend. “I’ve not told you this before, but I’ve never actually liked that dress.”
Well, he had barely got the words out before he was avalanched with a tirade of my apoplectic rage, accusations and various four letter words.
How could he be so mean? How could he dislike my lovely little dress? I had been walking around thinking I looked sensational when apparently; all my boyfriend could see was some kind of orange apparition.
“I’m just being honest,” he protested, wide-eyed. “I love most of your clothes, but I’m just not keen on that dress.”
After I had calmed down and put away the hairdryer that I was about to throw, it got me thinking about honesty in relationships. Women claim that they just want honesty from their other halves, but when it’s the kind of honesty they don’t want to hear – well, the gloves come off.
Which is why I was extremely amused to read Mavis Cheek’s article in today’s Daily Mail, entitled: “Why lying is good for you: Even tiny fibs harm relationships according to the new radical honesty movement.”
Apparently, some psychiatrist/guru named Brad Blanton, (who for some reason, makes me envisage a character from that old TV show Malibu) a pioneer of this honesty movement, says that we can only transform our lives for the better by being completely honest. That means that even telling the littlest of white lies, can be potentially detrimental to our relationships.
But, let’s be honest – how easy is it lie in our day to day lives? The answer? Very!

“No thanks, I’ve just got some brand new windows,” to the persistent double glazing salesman on the phone. Or “I think your hair is totally innovative and looks fantastic,” to your friend who has just got her hair chopped, spiked and dyed electric blue.

So is the latter type of fib more acceptable because we know if we said what we really thought, we would be offending the other person? In other words, we’re lying to protect their feelings, because who wants to be told they look a big blue ridiculous mess??

Mavis Cheek says in her article that these so called ‘comforting lies’ are a woman’s ‘social cement’ in a cruel modern world, which to an extent I agree with, but Brad Blanton’s ‘Radical Honesty’ resonates with me far more. What is the point of a relationship if you cannot be totally honest with each other? As Blanton says, ‘It's the kind of authentic sharing that creates the possibility of love and intimacy.’

“No you can’t read a map and you cannot sing to save your life but I love you anyway,” is to me, worth much more than, “You have the most amazing voice I’ve ever heard – Mariah should be quaking in her boots,” whilst secretly thinking: ‘I’ve never heard anything more terrible in my life.’ Because the former is HONEST.

So, I won’t lie and say that next time my boyfriend gives me a harsh dose of his brutally honest opinion, I’ll embrace it with sing-song gratitude. I’ll no doubt kick off and stew in my own anger for a few minutes. But at the end of the day, it’s honesty, and that’s all I can ask for.

'Booking' the Trend

Today's Guardian features a (to me anyway) fascinating debate about the world’s favourite underrated contemporary writers in its Book Blog.

Yesterday’s edition explored the most overrated writers – a topic I can get a bit loquacious on when it comes to overrated books. I think I am most definitely in the minority here, but the likes of Harry Potter and Twilight have made as much impact on me as the latest series of Big Brother (that is none whatsoever).

Twilight is a series the world seems to have gone bananas for. OK, so I can understand the Robert Pattinson hoopla. But lovestruck vampires? What happened to the mad passion of classic protagonists like Heathcliff and Cathy or Blanche and Stanley?

Just to be clear, I am categorically NOT slating those who like to read contemporary books like this at all. Nor am I slating the books themselves, even if it seems like I am. I think anything that encourages more people to read can never be a bad thing. But I, personally, struggle to understand what can be learned from books like Twilight and Harry Potter. Yet an avid fan of both could challenge me and ask what can be learned from the classics, or even if we need to learn from books at all. Which leads me to an interesting debate. What is the point of literature?

Well for me, it’s about a journey of education, discovery and escapism. I admire authors who enable their readers to think hard. It requires effort to do so. There’s nothing wrong with taking an ‘easy read’ on holiday to read on the beach. Nor with feeding your mind with trivia every once in a while. We all do it. But why hail books as ‘modern classics’ when they are generally lacking in substance?

Adrian Mole - world's greatest diarist

Modern life demands quick fixes to everything and books like Twilight mirror this culture in requiring no depth of thought. Am I jumping to conclusions when I assume that a large number of young people today have only started reading the Twilight series because of its good looking lead male in the movie version?

I hate the thought of the ‘classic’ books being overlooked. By ‘classic’ I mean books that continue to ask questions and go some way to providing many of the answers. When JD Salinger died earlier this year, he left one of the greatest pieces of modern literature in his legacy, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. A lot of young people today have never even heard of it.

Probably my favourite literature series of all time and what I would definitely peg as ‘modern classics’ are the Adrian Mole diaries. I have followed his life's trials and tribulations since I was about 12 and can honestly say, no other book has taught me so much about the society in which we live. Granted, it is quite politically one sided but through Adrian Mole, author Sue Townsend completely captures the zeitgeist of both the 1980s and modern times. Reading the series from the beginning teaches the reader about how Thatcherism paved the way for how society is today. The books are superbly written and balance the right amount of utter hilarity and pathos. I can’t praise them enough.

And a lot of modern books today are excellent too. Through literature, people can learn about people, and that must mean some sort of progression and development. Without good books in the world, people will never be able to find themselves, and society will simply stagnate.