Visa V-Signs and Sundry Gripes of Wrath

Personal freedoms are once again on the agenda here in Beijing. But what can you say about a regime that limits the right to associate, denies you representation, will brook no appeals, peruses your phone records and demands intrusive financial and personal details off family and friends?

Well you could say: “Sod off British Embassy. Stop dicking about and give my girlfriend the two week visa to visit the UK that we have spent seemingly every minute of the last month trying to secure.” Bastards.

So, embittered as I am by trans-continental temporary immigrational ineptitude, let’s have a jolly good stalk around the latest from How-Do Land for a spot of spleenial ventrification.

Okay, let’s find something worthy of a little wrath…

Bolton Wondering and the Scott Frees

First stop, as always, the regional press. Somehow I find the abiding sound of them gleefully investing in newer and more pneumatic ways of driving home their own casket retaining rods quite relaxing.

Not so warm a welcome for Tony

Guy, guys – punters will look at outdoor news portals for world cup qualifiers and 9/11s but items like: “New Bus Passes on the Way” and “Thieves Stole a Bolton Wanderers FC Shirt During a Burglary in Wigan” (both genuine “breaking stories” btw!) really can wait until the shopping’s stashed. (Incidentally can anyone suggest a site likely to have fewer page impressions than “www.visitbolton.com”?)

No doubt more junior members of Manchester’s First Friday Club wiped away a nostalgic tear this week on the 86 years, 1 month and 15 days anniversary of the centenary leader in the Manchester Guardian by Scott Trust founder, CP Scott, when he addressed readers thusly:

“Let anyone take a file of this paper, or for that matter any one of half a dozen other papers, and compare its whole make-up and leading features today with what they were five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, and he will realise how large has been the growth, how considerable the achievement. And this is what makes the work of a newspaper worthy and interesting.”

How pleased he must have been that his twenty first century GMG counterparts saw fit to mark the occasion with the announcement of its “North West Pet Idol” competition.

I, myself, would have gladly assented to be a Peterloo massacre back in 1819 if only I could have been sure that a newspaper group, whose launch my sacrifice inspired, would one day print a series of pictures of budgies wearing amusing hats.

The force is not so strong in this one...

At a time when the North West seems riddled with quasi-governmental bodies squandering cash on unwanted, ill-thought-out, badly-presented regional re-branding (lack of) initiatives, its leading newspaper sees fit to forefront cats in cardies and hamsters in hairnets in lieu of anything more substantial.

Any newspaper in the process of shifting its profit model entirely away from cover price is ultimately setting itself up to satisfy its advertisers rather than its readers – and local government recruitment spend, in all of its many guises, would leave a big hole in the figures of any ad manager should it decide to decamp.

Let’s leave the last words on this matter to old CP, pondering on the matter back in his 1921 centenary address and I think this is worth citing at length:

“There must be competence, to start with, on the business side, just as there must be in any large undertaking, but it is a mistake to suppose that the business side of a paper should dominate, as sometimes happens, not without distressing consequences. A newspaper to be of value should be a unity, and every part of it should equally understand and respond to the purposes and ideals which animate it. Between its two sides there should be a happy marriage, and editor and business manager should march hand in hand, the first, be it well understood, just an inch or two in advance.”

Somehow I think Mr Horrocks, Mr Rix and a gerbil slightly resembling (in poor light and at a distance) the man who once played Captain Bird’s Eye, were not entirely what he had in mind.

Time to hit the re-set button I think.

Multi-Doloured Job Swap

Neild: traveller in time

For myself, I would have punched it frantically back in the Summer of 1999 when I realized what a huge mistake I had made in leaving the fruitful pastures of Adline for the launch of the inevitably doomed North West-based Marketeer.

I reckon it took the three of us who jumped ship – myself, James O’Donnell and Laurissa Cairney – about six days to realize we’d made a massive cock-up in joining the Carnyx Group, publishers of the Drum.

There was a huge culture clash – the Adline ethos had long been a bit “rock and roll” ,- work hard, play very hard, stay-up-all-night-to-finish-the-magazine-whilst-eating-pizza-and- chugging-red-wine-if-you-had-to sort of thing. This did not mesh at all well with the far more staid Carnyx Culture.
 
This cultural divide was insurmountable. We wanted to write articles like: “Ten ways to tell if your agency is on drugs”, whilst they wanted “Significant developments in fulfillment house technology since the mid-nineties.”

Strangely enough, it has been following the developments of Larry Neild, formerly city editor of the Liverpool Daily Post that has put me very much in mind of those long ago Marketeer days.

Neild had a cozy billet where he was well thought of (well largely), but tossed it all aside on the promise of a new career as the drive time presenter on City Talk, which sadly never materialized. I wonder at which point Neild would have punched the re-set button?

I dare say he will make a comfortable enough living post-The Post – with part-time work at October Communications, Liverpool Confidential and an obviously compensatory weekly spot on City Talk, but I can’t help but think he was better off where he was.

And, it has to be said, so was the Post.

His replacement as a weekly columnist on the Post, as has been widely documented and commented upon, is the well-known North West broadcaster and host of the forthcoming How-Do Awards, Jim Hancock.

Hancock: nice bloke, good columnist?

Talking of job swaps – does it strike anyone else as odd that whilst the newly advertiser friendly Daily Sport is going comparatively jumbo funbag free, the young mums of Lancashire are being urged to air their puppies by the region’s Primary Care Trust?

Could it be that exiled Daily Sport editor, the impeccably named Dave Beevers, has moved from the pubic sector to the public? And is it just me who finds the blokes emailing the www.beastar.org.uk”website pleading for campaign literature for personal use whilst pledging support for the right of young mums to play “pap idol” in their local hypermarket just a little suspect?

Staying on the job front, bad timing from The Merseyside Partnership with the launch of its “hunt for an agency to help market the region as a world-class conference destination” The lucky agency will get to market the region as: “an attractive conference option, one that is accessible, has the right infrastructure in place and offers something special in the way of a tourist proposition”.

The bad timing isn’t particularly in terms of the short-lead time so favoured by Liverpudlian public bodies (with presentations expected in early April – i.e. next week!), but more because it precludes the obvious candidate from stepping forth – Michael Welsh, that (alleged) by-word for marketing mendacity will, in all likelihood, be unavoidably detained for the duration of the year long contract.
 
Cometh the hour, cometh the custodial sentence.

The MILFY Stars Are On Me…

Wilde: Magnetic attraction

So far the thinking seems to be that the still MILF-ish Kim Wilde is the ideal figure for Magnet as stay at home mums will identify with her as she’s content to do the gardening and gratefully polish her ceramics, whilst hubby discretely mid-life crises with a dodgy bird from the office whose only experiences of work surfaces is face down against them whilst being taken roughly from behind.
 
Danielle Lloyd is an even more obvious choice for microwaved post-pub burgers – after all she’s hardly likely to be welcome down the Star of Bengal is she?

What then of latest signing – Coleen Nolan as the face of parental Internet control? Just what is the agency trying to tell us here: “Hey kids, whatever the temptation, don’t be lured by an MP3 of “I’m in the mood for dancing”?” Truly a salutary lesson.

Or perhaps someone has got wind of my latest venture, a pioneering bid to introduce “Nolan-porn” to a jaded market – I’ve tentatively called my first downloadable torrent: “Don’t you make my brown eye blue.” You read it here first.

Either way, I am minded to launch a new How-Do competition- a bid to find the least appropriate celeb for endorsing a product or service. I’ll kick proceedings off by nominating a well known Gloucester serial killer as the new face of Jersey social services. I’ve even got a jingle: “It’s the kids Fred West rejects, that makes Haut de Garenne the best”. Similar examples more than welcome.

Lloyd: gratuitous use

Tony Murray is thinking the Great Wall is pretty great, but no substitute for Jaffa Cakes or chips in gravy. If he has accidentally failed to offend you this week, please email details of a cause particularly close your heart to tonymurray37@hotmail.com and we’ll pencil some serious disapprobation in for next week.

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