November 14, 2004

• My last blog-entry was rather mis-understood by Portia and others, it was meant to reflect the lies I was told at the time I did not even know that people could lie in that way.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  My father NEVER discussed the war, he just said he had to kill people and he would never want to kill again. He was angry when a son of mine joined the army.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Anyway, from a blog where I keep some comments, largely because my memory of events comes and vanishes, I would like to repeat some of my newspaper-story pieces.

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  Ah, I remember calling at an old ladies house once, to seek comments for my “Day’s Of Yore” page, and she said to me “my toilet’s blocked, can you unblock it?” Sure it was blocked, that hadn’t stopped her using it, fancy cleaning out a toilet full of s***? It took me twenty minutes. Then the old lady refused to give me the interview saying she never read local papers.

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  The media in the United Kingdom is only “free” when the government and it’s bogeymen wish it to be so.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Newspapers need firms to advertise, firms give money to the government, criticise a firm or upset a government and advertisers pull out. The only papers that do try to get away with the truth are the alternative lifestyle press, and years of trashing such papers and sueing them and raiding their offices have forced them all to the wall.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I once had a lot of my private papers taken away merely because I had troubled someone high up in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and asked them awkward questions about an army-led killing.

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  a reporter from another coal-area newspaper found proof that some of the so called scabs were not strike-breaking but going in to wreck the coal-faces and pit-heads, so when the strike was over the coal miners would be laid off. The reporter was knocked over by a hit and run driver whom the police seemed rather uneager to search for, and at the reporter’s funeral, his house was broken into and the only things missing were his notes and the “proof”.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  ( note, the above was true. They can kill me if they like. Screw CGHQ!)

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  I learnt language as a reporter, if a woman is telling you how she got beaten up, you can’t just guess what she said or re-ask her.  You have to get it right else you will upset her more (and your editor) “be teff ‘e wanted mon fair tallyman lad” I had to write in shorthand as “To be truthful, he wanted the dept-collectors money sir” though in the paper I would put her saying “tally-man” and “lad” but not as saying “teff”.

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  Before my stroke I could type at least 60wpm, though my copywriter did most of my typing. Now I am down to one finger with another ready for the capitals.

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  Our paper was a small one with few staff, we had dedicated amateurs writing for us, but because the pay was low or non-existent, they never bothered to write most weeks, so Joe Muggins here became all sorts of people, old-young-male-female… (which is why I can write as a blackie fortuna one day, A Rev Toby another, Tiffy Witherington another and Sophie Morgan another. The newspaper trade demands it in both verse and prose!) Quite often I wrote the gardening column, the Prayer for the week column, (so much for being an athiest) a children’s column (which I’ve wrote about before) as well as country matters and “stories”.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  —–

  
  

  (To be continued)

  
  

   

  
  

  Poems of mine are on my LordPineapple site
  

  • 5:02 pm
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