A Nation of Strikers

Napoleon once said that the United Kingdom was "a nation of shopkeepers" something he meant as an insult but which we took to heart and are proud of. Now I wonder, if someone remarked that we were a nation of strikers would be hold the title as proudly? Strikes seem to be rife in the last few decades- tube workers, public sector workers, miners. You name the job, they've probably striked.

Striking seems to be the first port of call for any dispute and is something which not only disrupts that particular area but can have a knock on effect for the entire country. Today the topic is once again in the news as public sector workers downed tools over rows about pensions. Among the picket liners were teachers, customs officers and job centre workers. The row, as far as I can gather, is because they are expected to work for longer, increase the amount of money they put into their pension and not have a pay increase. These are necessary measures for the future. The pension age has not been reconsidered for many years but the age at which we are dying has risen substantially. So the state is paying for people to be retired for longer.

In case you hadn't noticed, we are in a recession. The only way we can get out of a recession is to save money and it seems billions a year being saved by raising the retirement age seems like a small sacrifice for those of us it will affect. The one thing you should know about me before we get into my whole argument is that I am not political. At least I wasn't until I came to university. I got caught up in the politics of our students union for two years, then the general election came along and being one of the most interesting and closely contested in years, it was rather gripping. Ever since, I've paid a lot more attention to the world. I still have no political leaning- I wholeheartedly hate Nick Clegg for reneging on his promise to students that got him into government in the first place, but that doesn't mean I support all of Labour's policies, nor do I support all of Cameron's.

But on the pensions and retirement argument I can see the logic in raising the age of retirement. All the health freaks out there that made us panic about eating too much red meat, white meat, fish, eggs, ice cream, tea or any other such ludicrous idea they come up with next (I'm sure the Daily Mail will have one for us in the morning) now have to deal with the consequences of making us all much healthier. The consequence is that we are living longer but working the same length of time we were working a decade ago.

Therefore, we need to work for longer, stop relying on the government to keep us going until we pop our clogs. Unfortunately that means that some people, myself included, are now looking at an extra four or five years of work. And for some people retirement was close and now is much further. But, someone had to make the sacrifice, and would we rather be selfish now and argue the point so that our children and grandchildren have to work an extra ten or twenty years on top of what they will have to now? Wouldn't we rather make the small sacrifice ourselves than see our country bankrupt just in time for our future generations to pick up the pieces??

Personally I think that future generations have enough to deal with- global warming is supposedly going to drown the entire world in their lifetime, the apocalypse will be coming during their time and now we want to dump an extra ten years of work on them just so that we can have 30 years of retirement, rather than 25?? Not for me. I'd rather take the plunge now, stop whining and build a better future for my children, and their children and hopefully their children too.

The strikers today are the most selfish of all. They have pensions, they will have a comfortable retirement while people in the private sectors- the writers, the cleaners, the shop assistants, the people who keep the country ticking over- will be wondering if next week's pension will be enough to keep them warm in the winter. The knock on effect of their day off to complain about how an extra four years of work might lead them to an early grave (when actually statistics show that people who are active, i.e. doing labour every day, live longer) is that the queues to get into the country were twice as long (as if that were even possible), the school children did not get taught and the private sector workers had to lose a days pay to care for their children who should have been in school. And lets face it, their days pay is much more valuable to them than an argument against a government who are happy to negotiate ever could be.

I may not be the most political of people but I know the type of world I want my children to grow up in and I want to know that I have done everything in my power to be the best it could be. Perhaps the teachers should be thinking about the children rather than their retirement fund as well. That's what they're paid for after all.

Life after an Undergraduate Degree

Well it’s finally over. Time to enter the real and very scary world of jobs, homes and pets. After three years of dedication I am coming away from the University of Salford with a 2:1 (almost definitely) in Journalism and Sociology.

For the past four weeks I have been applying for any job I think I have a chance of getting. Originally the plan was to apply for as many journalism opportunities as possible but I soon realised that doing so was limiting my chances of getting a job. So I widened my net to retail, media and anything I think I could do.

Another week later I realised I had to cast my net even further. So now I am applying for jobs in towns I am 400 miles away from, my hometowns of Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells.

Now, I am a fairly optimistic person but four weeks of rejections is enough to get Little Miss Sunshine herself down. At this point I am considering anything. And yet somehow I still have hope that someone out there MUST want to hire me. So I’m not letting it get me down too much.

So other than searching high and low for the elusive job, what else is there to look forward to once your degree is over?

Well, you get to pay ridiculous amounts of money to hire a silly gown and hat (I’m trying to sound nonchalant about the mortar board when in all honesty I’m hopping with excitement in my head) to the only company in the country that provides them to almost every university.

You also get to have the debate with your parents about how much they are allowed to clap/cheer/cry during the Graduation Ceremony. My thinking is my mother is allowed to clap normally, not open her mouth and save the tears for the car journey home as she drives away from me. My mothers thinking is she isn’t bothered what everyone else thinks, she’s proud of the first family member to graduate from university and she doesn’t care how much she embarrasses me! Great.

The only aspect of life after a degree that I am looking forward to is simple- I get to get my very first pet of my own. As it stands I don’t have a job, therefore I cannot get a home. Without a home I should not get a pet but in my head I have already pictured the perfect cat and I know that I will get it in the next year. It is ginger and white, with little flecks of black through it, a very playful cat who will cuddle up with me when I get home from a long day in the office and stick a lasagne for one in the microwave. That is the dream.

For some of you reading this you might think it sounds depressing. You might be wondering why I am choosing to enter this adult world when technically I could stave off adulthood for another year with a Masters. The truth is, though I was tempted by a Masters in Social Media (being the perfect complimentary Masters to my course), another year of education sounds banal, and a little like I am hiding from the inevitable.

For many it is the perfectly logical next step but in the past six months I have really outgrown education and to continue with it, I fear, would make me disillusioned with the system (more so than I am already) and would set me back in life, rather than propel me forward.

No doubt in six months I’ll be screaming for the days when I didn’t have to think for myself, I just had to listen to the adult stood in front of me and repeat what he said in an exam.

Good luck to those of you brave enough to tackle an MA, and to those also in the throng of graduates trying to find a job in the impossible market. Until I get a job there will be little for me to say so thanks for listening and hope to have some good news for you soon!

Media City UK visit

Pods, hot rooms, preparation areas, hero suites and Christie tiles. It sounds like the blue print for a new spaceship being launched but no, this is what is making it’s way to the students of the University of Salford in September 2011.

Unfortunately for me I have just completed my three years of study here but it didn’t stop me from having a little poke around the rapidly finalising MediaCityUK on Thursday.

Until now the MediaCityUK was an area kind of near me that I’d been hearing about for three years, the main reason I ever chose to come to Salford to study and the thing that lecturers were always saying would be our big opportunity. It had never solidified itself in my mind that this really was going to be a hub of media creativity right on my doorstep.

But a ten minute taxi ride later I was starting to see just how within my grasp this really was. With four other Student Reps, two members of staff and the Vice President for the schools affected on board (pictured above, picture 2), we went on a tour of the University of Salford floors in a bid to get a better idea of the transformation of the Salford Quays taking place.

Taking us round were Andrew Cooper, Academic Director of MediaCityUK, Callum Macdonald, Site Manager for Overbury and newly appointed Operations Director for MediaCity Nick Horan.

Overbury are the refurbishment specialists in charge of making Andrew Cooper’s dream a reality. They were given the shell of the building, and an impressive shell it is too (pictured above, picture 4), and are basically interior designers en masse, boasting sites such as Canary Wharf before winning the bid for this project. With 236 builders working on our four floors alone, it’s easy to see how the building site we visited will be completed in 11 weeks ready for the handover on August 29th.

As we walked round each floor the areas in front of us were brought to life with a little imagination (which shouldn’t be hard with so much creativity flowing all around). For me personally I was obviously most interested in finding the journalism suites and I was not disappointed.

For those of you not familiar with the University of Salford I’m going to give you a little bit of background at this stage so that it puts the MediaCityUK area into perspective for you. The current building that houses the journalism courses used to be a factory several decades ago.

The most infamous thing about the Adelphi building is that it is a maze. For my first year of university I would walk through a door expecting to know where I was and find myself in an entirely different section of the building, I could never find the canteen two days in a row and the school office was an absolute mystery to me. After three years I can still be led to a brand new room that I never knew existed and not be able to find it a few hours later. For the journalism rooms you had to find your way to the basement. I know it sounds easy, just keep going down, but the basement is blocked off into various sections. The costume department for the performing arts students is apparently down there as well but being an old factory all the sections of the basement cannot be connected so they could be next to each other but you’d still have to go all the way upstairs and find a new set of stairs to lead you down there. And of course in the basement there is no natural light.

Contrast this to what I am about to tell you and you can understand why exactly I am awed by MediaCityUK to this extent. On the third floor, in a corner overlooking the MediaCity Studios there is a News Preparation Area, fully equipped newsroom which can connect to the TV and radio rooms in the other floors, a presentation space with adjoining control room with specially made state-of-the-art equipment that wouldn’t be out of place in the BBC and Sky studios and a huge newsroom, the biggest room on the floor (pictured above, picture 1). All of these have floor to ceiling windows, air conditioning and every software you could possibly want as a trainee journalist.

But don’t worry, if journalism isn’t your cup of tea the other floors have something for everyone, after all the four floors are going to be home to 39 Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses in a few short months. The third floor is also home to the video editing suites, the ground floor has three black-walled studios which can be used for vocal recordings, filming, theatre productions and so much more.

By the entrance to this magnificent building is one of the most exciting aspects of the move- the Egg. The Egg is an oval stage in the centre of the ground floor, unmissable and therefore the perfect place for displays and performances. What makes it so exciting is that a wall can be built in the centre of this zone to make a room used for seminars or two stage areas. It is the wall that is most interesting because it is built out of Christie tiles, I fairly new invention that act as a projection screen. Films, Twitter feeds and much more can be projected onto the whole wall or onto one tile of it, making it part of the enticing technological developments within the complex.

And this development is not all about the students either. The staff at the University will benefit from magnificent views over the Quays, the 9,000 seating piazza and all the attractions of the area (pictured above, picture 3) as well as a transformation of the way they can work. Floors two and three are open plan areas, with pods for semi-private conversations and hot rooms for entirely private discussions.

Andrew Cooper said that the floors were designed as such because he wants “everyone, including staff, to feel they can move freely” and it certainly does give that impression. On the third floor there is a huge open space with the above ITV floors looking into it. This, Andrew Cooper says, is to help staff and students alike to “use this building as much as possible to display the talents” and who wouldn’t want to with such an important audience on their doorstep?

The original statement about the partnership between the University of Salford and the MediaCityUK was: “It will be an extension of the university’s main campus, acting both as a showcase for cutting-edge projects and exhibitions, and a hub for research and teaching activities.” and it certainly seems to have delivered so far.

Such a good investment, I am sorely tempted to return to education just for the perks of the building which, just with those four floors, is bigger than any other building on the Salford University campus. Watch this space!