Steampunks for a new Europe

I want to be a steampunk – one of that rather jolly gang who dress in Victorian style, tote “eye”-pads and discourse on the finer points of H G Wells. I’d fit in rather well, with my peculiar taste for ancient sci-fi, enjoyment of the company of the Roma and love of science (but complete inability to understand most of it). Besides which I have a rather wonderful silver-haired Edwardian style husband who would look fabulous in a tweed outfit with a weskit. 

The thing that most appeals is the sense of optimism and endeavour; the lovely feeling that technology can make the world a better place, and that you should never forget to say a polite word and doff your cap. As I trudge into the office to write about human trafficking, neo-Nazis and the failures of democracy, the steampunks ‘ sunny disposition seems a thousand miles away from the real world. 

Yet in my new avatar (Lady Kathryn Boppington- Twatt or some such) I must attempt to bring the values of yesteryear to bear on the sad gloom of today. Well, why not?

Potter into the office on the penny farthing, salute the guardians of the law at the main portal. Calls from those chaps at the wireless about that white-slaving report: child gangs on the streets of England, too appalling!! But reason will prevail surely, as we chide the leaders of that great nation to secure protection for these poor mites. 

Our Great Forum on democracy is approaching in the most promising manner, and all will be revealed at the meetings here in our hallowed Palais on the 8^th to 12^th of October next.  We will be inviting a large number of courageous bloggers from the empires of Russia and Turkey, and even the Orient , where recent Exciting Events may encourage us all in pursuit of this great task. Democracy is one of our most fundamental values!  No more are we in a world where we have to throw ourselves under horses! Votes for all !

The Swiss, I hear, have invented a charming machine to count votes. Could see it used in the next American Presidential elections I wager! A great day for democracy indeed!

The March of the Women - mostly round in circles?

Handicapped in the three legged race?

When I first saw the British hit series Life on Mars, I was convinced it was a documentary. Obviously, these guys were the 1970s Northern police force I had first encountered as a cub reporter up in Yorkshire; but the big give-away was the lovely fictional PC Annie, by equal measure ignored, victimised and goggled over by the men.

Once upon a time I might have been a police officer. Careers advice being what it was at the time, the most inspirational piece of role-modelling I saw was a police dog at a jobs fair...seemed like a good way of earning money to me. What put me off, however (besides the fact that I would have immediately poked out the eyes of my first commanding officer) was the fact that women PCs could be seen, but as far as I could tell, not heard.

(Valerie Singleton, on the other hand, my childhood idea of a "journalist" managed to travel to the Ganges, interview interesting people and make useful household items with sticky-back plastic)

With the commentariat over the past few weeks making much of whether rape is rape, and whether Naomi Wolf is a fake feminist now she has stopped faking orgasms, I decided it was time to do a proper review of my life so far.

1970s - blonde cub reporter with large breasts. Police believe me dim. Consequently get shitloads of scoops.

1980s (early) - blonde hair cut short. Shuffle around in large mac covered in badges. Picket the porn shops in Leeds and join the reclaim the night march, narrowly miss being murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper.

1980s (middle) - live in Toulouse, France. Cannot find bra large enough to fit me. Apparently I "trouble" the local menfolk.

1980s (late) - serious job with Labour-oriented local Council. Everyone swears themselves to perfect equality. Get huge amounts of male attention and a frisky social life as a result.

1990 - cut hair very short. Get the job.

1994 - move to Strasbourg, join team of French women who spend their lunchtimes (and most of the afternoon) at the beauty salon. No prospects of either interesting conversation or promotion.

2000 - live in Kosovo. No need to wash. In fact, no possibility to wash. Feel at one with the male sex.

mid 2000 - get female boss with high maintenance whims. Get promotion.

2010 - get male boss. Make coffee.

So, on the strength of my own Lebenslauf ( as the Germans say) I guess that the march to equality is not so much that of an army of soldier ants, but more like trying to do the shopping after a heavy session at the pub. Wander into the supermarket, pick up something that looks good, try to remember what you put on the list that you accidentally left on the kitchen table, get diverted into the chocolate department and end up coming out with nothing that is a. what you need b. of any use whatsoever. 

Still, I suppose it could be worse. At least now I have the distinction of being invited onto the women's senior management group at work. Main agenda item: how do you get that promotion?

Still selling stories? Time to close the chequebook.

Ethical communications - at what cost?

Some time ago, my good friend and fellow trainer Tony Charlesworth and I found ourselves in Sarajevo at the request of the UNHCR to give tips on media work to lawyers working with people trying to recover their property as they returned to their homes after the war. The lawyers, quite rightly, needed to know how to attract journalists to their story, with the benign aim of reaching out through the newspapers, radio and television screens to their prospective clients.

Prepping before the visit, I asked what the best media channel was in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and got the unsurprising answer that it was television. I protested that radio was usually a quicker route (these were definitely the days Before Facebook), but they explained that as a vast majority of the population was unemployed and stuck in front of the screen for most of the day, then the goggle box was definitely the best way to go.

Then they shocked me. How, they asked, could they afford the price they had to pay to get a story on TV?

Hold on a minute, are we talking advertising? No, they replied, we need to pay journalists to carry stories.

Two days of media training later, I was pretty sure that the lawyers would have good enough material to attract the hacks. They’d learnt how to create a message, how to find a human story, and how to get a reporter to respond.

I never did learn how they fared after the second session, but I left with the assumption that the journalists of Bosnia and Herzegovina were in the same learning curve as others in South East Europe, and that as the people with the stories became wiser about how to present themselves, then the journalists too would start to professionalise. BBC, Thompson, Reuters and Deutschwelle were beginning their outreach into the area, and my hopes for change were high.

This week, joining the PRO.PR conference in Maribor, and finding myself back on the Balkans Beat after a gap of nearly seven years, I was taken aback to hear my early experiences echoed from the conference floor. B & H is now seeing its own wave of young PR professionals coming to the fore, and they too are bemoaning the need to pay journalist to run stories.

So much has changed in the country: the independent Communications Regulatory Agency is now in place; a press code has been adopted, along with a press council; libel and defamation has been decriminalised; a Freedom of Access to Information Law has been passed and what was once a state-owned broadcaster is now a public service broadcasting system. Many of the people who want to work with journalists now know how to present a story so that it appeals, and would never dream of using money as a bargaining chip.Yet the tradition of stories for favours still remains, and partisan journalism is still in evidence.

But hang on a minute, who am I to judge? My own country, once happy to preach to the countries of south east Europe, is now mired in phone-tapping revelations; the Germans are just recovering from a scandal involving the media that brought down their president;  and there are almost daily exposes into the antics of political spin doctors all over Europe. 

Who can take the moral high ground? It looks like communications ethics is really ripe for review in Europe!

Tweeting in sickness and in health

In all the various posts since my visit to India, I've talked in a high-falutin' sort of way about the importance of social media and how the women of the world need to work the Internet just like they work the daily gossip. 

I've preached on about how this wave of webbed-up women can turn around the politics of the Arab world, how it can bring education to the Roma, how it can solve the problems of India's rural poor. Even my Gutenberg offerings in New Europe for women's day generally nagged about how all women needed rights, not just the women on top, as it were. (Gutenberg on women)

But back in Tiergarten, reality bites. Husband gets a horrible pain in the stomach, I do the mercy dash to the hospital and it's intensive care for the week. 

Anyone in this position - be it with husband, kids or parents - will recognise the plight. The fight to get the info you need from clammed up white coaters. The trips too and from the hospital, snacking on nuts and seed - although luckily Offenburg has the foresight to provide a cake shop. The calculations of how much special leave I can take without it eating into the yearly allowance......oh yes, and the duty to tell all the friends and relations. 

My man, as you might now, is the ultimate social butterfly, and has managed to keep friends that he knew at the age of eight. This is generally a trait I admire greatly, but faced with the prospect of telling all of his lonely languishing, I sort of wished that he was more hermit-like in his approach to networking. 

Social media to the rescue! A few seconds on Facebook and health bulletins are going out to the world. Just a couple of emails for the older fashioned of his friends, and a couple of calls to family, and suddenly everything becomes a lot easier.  I would have tweeted, but fear that the friend's club is not yet that advanced. 

Who would have thought. The social media, panacea to all your medical woes.

Little beings....even smaller rights

New Gutenberg, just written last week by yours truly. I'm back on an well-trodden path; children's rights. The Council of Europe launched the latest four year plan this week, and this was my bit to tell the world.

The very next day the Guardian reported that 40 kids had been granted £2m compensation because the British government imprisoned them. For absolutely no identifiable reason. Many of them had been tortured, imprisoned and abused in the countries they were fleeing from. They just got more of the same.

This a long and stony path. 1996 saw me running the press room at the first World Congress against Sexual Exploitation. Nobody knew much about it at the time. In the meantime, the whole issue became mega. Paedos were the target du jour, with News of the World editor Rebekah Wade (then Brooks) making her mark as the baddie hunter who roused the crowd against the innocent. Scores of Catholic priests were outed as abusers; internet grooming took over from the man with a mac and sweeties in the park.

Oh how clever and sophisticated we are now. We look after kids, have international treaties to protect them, question our right to smack them, give them education and opportunities and the chance to build a better life.

Oh yeah?

Here I am 16 years later working with Roma girls who are expected to get married when they are barely out of puberty, thrown out of schools and stigmatised; reading reports about kids kept in prison.... and still hearing the same stories - children and young people fear violence, daren't speak about sex abuse and face a grim future created by the greed and mendacity of their elders.

Yes, it's us adults that need to get our act together. It's easy to chuck money at a problem, or react with anger. But come on, what are we doing?

Small person still equals smaller rights, it seems.

On stolen babies and supremacy

If there is one of all the miserable stories about Roma life that drills right through to my soul, it is the story of the women who visited the normal maternity hospitals to give birth, only to find that they had been sterilized against their consent as they gave birth to their babies.

No, this is not a story of the 20th century eugenics craze in Scandinavia or some horror story from the Nazi past. It happened only a few years ago, in a newly democratic country, which should have known better.

On journalists and judges

the Human Rights maze?

What is the point of justice if it remains behind closed doors? An obvious question, you might think. After all, what is the alternative to openness? Kangaroo courts, show trials and Josef K dying “like a dog”?

For journalists, the idea that courts are transparent is likely to raise a hollow laugh at best. Most journalists – especially in the UK – have been brought up to see the court doors as a barrier to be beaten down in search of a good story. At the same time, judges and lawyers know very well that justice can only be served in neutral, disinterested, circumstances, and that an unruly press can constitute one of the greatest threats to the purity of their deliberations and decisions. As usual, the truth lies somewhere between.