Wannabe Hacks is part journalism blog, part pseudo-scientific experiment. The five young men at the heart of it (of which I am one) are the equivalent of laboratory mice, undergoing intense testing in the hope of discovering an answer to a question as unfathomable as a cure for cancer: “What is the best way of getting a job in the media?'”
As any good experiment, Wannabe Hacks has one important variable– the means by which the five wannabe hacks take to crowbar themselves into an already over-subscribed profession. To that end, each writes under a different alias. The Intern, or Nick Petrie to his friends, decided against formal journalism training and opted instead to graze the fields of journalism internships in the hope of securing of job. The Student, yours truly, is a postgraduate student at the prestigious City University London where I am studying an MA in Newspaper Journalism. The Freelancer is Matthew Caines, who, since graduating in 2009, has worked independently and written for numerous national publications. The Detective, aka Ned Murray, is doing an MA in Investigative Journalism, hoping to prove that there is more to postgraduate journalism study than news. And finally we have The Chancer, Tom Clarke, another MA student at City, who left everything to the last minute. As all of the quintet are recent graduates from a Redbrick, Wannabe Hacks is what your secondary school science teacher would call a ‘fair test’. The question is: whose path will yield the skills and qualities to get them a job as a journalist first.

Wannabe Hacks came into being because the five of us got bored of being fed ‘industry advice’ by journalists who 1) already had jobs and 2) whose experiences co-existed with the use of the metal printing press. We discovered little content actually came from wannabe journos trying to get their foot in the door. So we set up Wannabe Hacks to narrate our exciting but often daunting journey and to help other potential journalists along the way.

Although the site has only been up and running a smidgen under two months, so much has been learnt already, in particular what it means to run with an idea. For weeks before Wannabe Hacks went live, we struggled with nailing down how often we would blog and what we would blog about. We had a vision for what the site looked like. But with no financial backing, we resorted to pestering people on Twitter, hoping to find a kind soul to magic us up a website for free. It wasn’t until The Guardian’s Martin Belam told us to “get started. Tomorrow”, that we realised a pretty homepage wouldn’t guarantee us any hits.
On that advice, we joined the merry band of blogs on WordPress. Faster than you could say ‘graduates poised for more media job woes’, we were up and running. In the meantime a young web designer agreed to make us a custom homepage for nothing and we scraped together £30 for web hosting for the future. An arduous task then but Wannabe Hacks is slowly resembling the space for debate on journalism that we envisaged.

Our advice for young journalists, however far you are down the rocky road to hackdom, is be prepared to fail. We were well aware before we started that Wannabe Hacks might not take off, and that we may have to drop it and move onto to something else. We still may do. But- and this is key- there is always that something else, another avenue to try your luck. You don’t need to know the editor of a national but you do need to be unwavering in your commitment to becoming a hack.

How will Oxford be affected by the cuts?

Given the high proportion of Oxford people employed in the public sector (education, health-care and other services), Oxford is likely to be hit hard. But we will be hit as service-users as well as workers. Oxfordshire NHS is set to cut at least 1,900 jobs in the next few years. The County Council has to find deep cuts in spending on education and social care services. It has already lifted the cap on charging the elderly and disabled for social care. A possible indication of the kind of thing to come is the closure over the summer of a centre for the homeless, the Gap in Park End Street, as the City Council, County Council and NHS withdrew funds.

How will they affect people on low incomes?

Very badly. A study by Howard Reed and Tim Horton estimates that cuts in public services on the scale proposed in the 2010 Emergency Budget will add up to the equivalent of a more than 20% cut in real income for those in the poorest 10% as compared with a less than 2% cut for the richest 10%. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the new reforms to tax and cash benefits announced in this Budget hit the poorer harder, as a proportion of income, than the better off. These measures hit the poorest, for example, by changing the rules on the indexation of benefits and putting a cap on Housing Benefit.

Is the north of of England losing out?

The Reed-Horton study also did an analysis of the regional impact (within England) of the cuts in public services spending announced in June 2010. It estimated that, relative to income, the cuts in public services will hit the North and the Midlands hardest (though London is likely to be hardest hit in absolute terms). This study only focuses on cuts to public services, moreover, and doesn’t factor in the cuts to cash benefits. I suspect that doing so would accentuate the regional disparity we see rather than reduce it.

Should we have ring-fenced the NHS, or will this simply exacerbate problems elsewhere?

With respect, this is the wrong question. The key question is why the government thinks we should cut the deficit mainly through spending cuts and not through extra tax. The fairest way of sharing the load of paying off the deficit (‘we’re all in it together’) is through the tax system, because one readily calibrate the tax so that the better off carry a proportionately heavier load. By contrast, putting the emphasis on spending cuts almost inevitably shifts the burden onto the more vulnerable in society.

What happened

Oh, you know the drill. Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy becomes Principal of Brasenose. Boy and girl use College expenses money in what, it is alleged, were unauthorised expenditures. It’s an expenses scandal of the classic kind. Principal Roger Cashmore and his wife went to Greece, North America and Pakistan. All the while, the story goes, they were charging BNC fee-payers for upgraded Business Class travel. In one case, according to a Brasenose report, ‘authorisation was expressly denied but the trip went ahead regardless’. Cashmore obviously denies this. He claims that he was not not granted authorisation, if you get my drift. This wily donnish manouevring didn’t work: the governors of Brasenose appear to have sacked Prof. Cashmore in an attempt to restore their credibility. That’s not the line. The line is he’s gone on research leave. It’s research leave which involves taking up two salaried positions, but they don’t want me to tell you that.

What the papers said

It’s a Cherwell exclusive, whoopee! And because we’re Oxford journos we get to write the story for the nationals as well. And by the nationals I mean the Telegraph. As ever it was the Oxford angle that sold it rather than anything else. Anyway Cashmore was hardly hounded out by the press- it was merely that an internal memo was leaked. Not so exciting. In truth it was a non-ish story, with the intense drama of a geeky Father Christmas lookalike sitting in aeroplane seats a few inches wider than normal- which, let’s face it, is what happened.

What now?

Name-living-up-to continues apace: Cashmore has just been appointed chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority at twenty-five grand for two days’ work a month. He’s also our new chairman of the Nuclear Research Advisory Council- £315 a day to you, guv’nor. Fee-payers and donors haven’t seen their money wasted this badly since, er, it was used to subsidise the administration of Brasenose expenses. Given that Oxford is a public body (in the same way the NKVD was a public body) you’d think there’d be some kind of uproar about this. Clearly there are more important scandals. Still, let’s look on the bright side. Brasenose, like the property developers they effectively are, will be looking for a new Principal. In immortal Porterhouse style the academic wranglings will be amusing to watch. But what of the money? Lost, I fear, in the bank accounts of British Airways. For the donors and fee-payers of Brasenose, it’s a pretty crap situation. They get nothing. He still wins.

Paddy Ashdown could have been Prime Minister. But no. He was leader of the Liberal Democrats instead, slogging it out on what George Lucas might call the ‘Outer Rim of British politics’. He was party leader from 1988 to 1999. He’s a great elder statesman. So why won’t he join them in Government? “I’m nearly seventy for fuck’s sake’, he bristles. ‘My time for big jobs is over.”

Unlike most politicians Ashdown is a man of many identities: born Jeremy, nicknamed Paddy, and now elevated to the peerage as Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon. He came from nowhere- never went to university, not particularly interested in politics until his ’30s, and before that a soldier with the SBS. Despite, or perhaps because of this, he’s an amiable chap. Even before I meet him at the Union, his stately procession down St Michael’s Street is accompanied by recognising shouts from passing tourists and, especially, inebriated tramps. He greets all with a chortling ‘why hello there!’ and a bone-crushing shake of the hand.

Ashdown is here on behalf of the excellent student charity Oxford Aid to the Balkans, but I’m here to talk about other stuff. Such as, is the West in decline? “Yeah. The thing is that power is migrating fast out of the institutions of the nation-state which we created, and on to the global stage. The real powers that are growing are the powers that are no longer affected by borders. The globalisation of power is one of the phenomena of our time.”

A common Liberal theme is to accept the decline of British and Western power in global power-politics. This is an accurate stereotype, fitted by Ashdown. “We’ve moved away from a mono-polar world. I think the pattern of world power will look much like Europe in the nineteenth century. Canning called it the European Areopagiticus, the European concert of powers. We are seeing the end of five hundred years of western power, western institutions and western values. The west used to even 10 years ago propose and dispose in every corner of the world. It can no longer do so.” Different values mean different ideologies, and hence conflict. Though Ashdown isn’t so worried it’ll bring about war. “If you realise that globalisation and unregulated power is a key issue you can make it safer by creating institutions that will bring governance and the rule of law to the global space.”
What of Great Britain’s role in this new global order? It’s Europe, Europe, Europe I’m afraid. “Our strength internationally will depend on our ability to be able to create genuine integration in European policy. And the more we can do that the more we will be taken seriously by the US. Now, no one is doing that. No one is saying it. The population is hostile to it. But that remains the fact.

“The reality of it” he broods mournfully, supping at a crisp pint of Young’s, “is that Europe will either deepen or die. And if it doesn’t deepen we have consigned ourselves to perfectly sovereign corks bobbing around in the wake of other people’s ocean liners.” I rather like these Ashdown-isms. Dumbledorean in style and substance, not unlike the man himself. (He’s not infallible though, later referring to a quotation by Keynes as by Bernard Shaw. Sacrilege!)

His views on British politics are distinctly Coalitionish. “I think the mismatch between a centralised system that tries to dominate everything and the reality of the way which people live their lives is what is breaking up politics.

“The solution really is to reduce Westminster to an institution which looks after only those things which must be looked after at the level of the state and hand as much power back down to people in their own communities. I think one of the baleful developments of our time is that politics has been professionalised. You go into it at the age of eighteen in short pants. I arrived in this by accident.”

But what we need above all, in the age of economic uncertainty, is an end to managerialism. ‘You can’t run politics without creeds. We have been trying to but you can’t.’

Ashdown thinks Con-Demnation will last five years. ‘If you were a betting man, I’m not sure you’d put much money on it. But do you know I think it will. It has surprised me- it really has- for three reasons. First there is genuine congeniality which stretches quite a long way down, it is not just Cameron and Clegg. Secondly in a strange way, I hadn’t spotted it but Nick had, Cameron wants to be Disraeli. I’m not sure it’s our job to help him be Disraeli, but there is a reformist streak there. The coalition agreement is a genuinely reforming document. The third thing is the public is prepared to give us a chance. They can see how bad the economic situation is and are prepared to give us a space to put that right. Even if the outcome is pretty painful.”

Many say that outcome will be painful for the Lib Dems as well, as their support haemorrhages to the two bigger parties. On this the Peer is chirpy. “There is always a possibility. You can’t be in politics unless you take risks, and that is what I could never tolerate about the old Liberals. If you want to be a cosy furry little think-tank on the edges of British politics whose ideas are always robbed by others then fine. Don’t take any risk. You have to make compromises about power. The party understands that now.”

All the same, the Lib Dems being the main coalition partner is still a way off. “We have our fate in our own hands. Look we can fuck up, in which case we get smashed. On the other hand if we show- and I think that Nick has a real ability to show- that we can handle power, that we can take tough decisions, if he handles that well he looks like an alternative Prime Minister at the end of this process.”

That little ambition is behind Paddy these days. What does he want to do now? “My garden my grandchildren- and my eighth book! The 17th anniversary history of the Cockleshell Heroes. I shall really enjoy that paddling up the Gironde, struggling up the Pyrenees. Then I will see what happens after that!”

The season of midterm elections in the United States is upon us, and with primaries out of the way, battles between candidates of the major parties are already underway. But in the debates now taking place nationwide, there’s a new breed of candidate afoot.

I’m not talking about the Tea Party, although they’ve certainly produced their fair share of lightning-bolt upsets in the race for Senate and House seats. Some of their female candidates for the Senate like Sharron Angle in Nevada or Christine O’Donnell in Delaware might provide high shock value, but for so many people, it’s more of a disbelieving shock that they actually won their primaries. More intriguing by far are the female pro-business candidates in Connecticut and California, places where the Tea Party movement is not as firmly rooted and where independent businesswomen have instead taken the reins, intending to capitalize on their experience in an election where the economy takes precedence over all else.

In Connecticut, Linda McMahon defeated Rob Simmons in the Senate primary, a respectable politician with a track record of state leadership and national service. Her prior claim to fame stems from her family’s building of World Wrestling Entertainment. She’s used her millions in various ways – she has invested a lot in self-financing her campaign, but earlier in life set some aside for the purchase of a swanky yacht entitled “Sexy Bitch”.

On the opposite coast, Carly Fiorina is using her background as a former executive at Hewlett-Packard to promote her candidacy for the Senate as one of bringing business expertise to the political world. Fellow Californian Meg Whitman extols the same sort of message, asserting that her decade-long tenure as CEO and President of eBay gives her the experience necessary to bring true financial reform to her state if she is elected governor.

Only time will tell if these women will be given the chance to prove their claims. But one thing is certainly clear – the Republican party, and by extension the American political landscape, has permanently been altered. No longer will the Grand Old Party be seen solely as a bastion of male dominance. And women, who usually vote Democrat in larger numbers, may begin to re-examine their choices. In 2008, Hillary Clinton’s famous 18 million cracks in the presidential glass ceiling represented a breakthrough for female politicians. Two years later, the ceiling of the branches of Republican Party – Senate, House, and gubernatorial – already broken through in a few places, may be shattered completely, by a trifecta of blonde billionaires.