is posession ownership?

So I was reading john steinbeck's grapes of wrath on the train on my way home. I would like to mention that this was earlier than normal as my wisdom teeth seem to feel the need to assault my nervous system, making staring at a computer screen unbearable. I am surrounded by scousers who won't shut up and seem to have a borderline fetish for perculiar smelling perfume, I would be worried about them reading this over my shoulder, but I think that their efforts are spent 100% on annoying the whole train.
Anyway, their in-carriage antics and a line in john steinbeck got me thinking about ownership. Like who owns this carriage? I know that if it is damaged it is the train company who pay for it or if it is sold it is them who get the money for it. But do they own it? In terms of financial investment yes. In terms of emotional investment no. I sit on this carriage on my way home from work every day, it has far more relevance to me than the guy who sells it.
The same can be said of football clubs, with the news of an imminent liverpool takeover and the headlines screaming 'liverpool to have new owners!' I wonder, does the paying off of those debts really mean that you OWN the club? No, it gives you the chance to be loved by those who really own the club, the fans.
After all ownership is infinite, it does not negate a profit, a stakeholding, a place on the board, it simply means that you control the club. Fans stop going to watch then there is no club, there is a team, an empty stadium and a warehouse full of replica shirts, there are no owners, simply stewards.

Ipad-dling

The newest Apple product, the Ipad, is without a doubt the biggest waste of money ever. How do I quantify this? Well its like a mix between a macbook and an Iphone, in theory awesome but in actuality fairly awkward and forced. It could be compared to a liger, a half tiger half lion, in theory it should be the king of all animals and a potential new dominant species. In reality it is a sick experiment which created a hybrid with a short life expectancy and severe genetic problems.

This is the same with the Ipad, for me it seems like an awkward stopover between the the Iphone 3G and the Iphone 4. They realise that due to the popularity of the iphone 3G, and the mass use of it, that people are unlikely to be able to justify getting a new Iphone when their 3G works perfectly well. This is where the Ipad fits in, this beautiful (yet kind of retarded) Rapunsel, throwing down her hair for all technophiles and pretentious douches to climb up and increase Apple's profits even more.

Having seen Ipads, I came to realise that they are awkwardly sized and fairly difficult to use. Maybe useful for long train journeys to keep you entertained, but if you are likely to try and use them for anything practical then this may well result in a crooked back and an expensive orthopaedic bill. That's the beauty of a laptop that an Ipad doesn't give you, it is the 90 degree useage, that it has this perfectly formed shape whichallows you to sit with it on your lap, on a table or almost anywhere that you care to use it. That is the reason that the shape has been around for the past 15 years.

The one advantage that I can see for the Ipad is in its mobility when being used around and office, it can be used to take notes or it can be used to maybe create drawings whilst walking around. I get the feeling that there may be a cheap

er option to this though...

This may be slightly cheaper than the newer version that can also do the same thing that your laptop has been able to do for the past 5 years...

So if you feel like wasting £887, go for an Ipad, if you want to save your money and maybe wait to get your electronic rocks off with the Iphone 4 then just buy a clipboard and stick with your laptop.

Back in the field

So turns out that moving back to Kent has suddenly become boring. With the concept of never moving back to a mouldy and slightly overpopulated student area forever dissapated I am forced into a world of twee cottages, bleating sheep and German tourists. The family thing is good for a while, however my house has become less of a family space and more of a family plus four random foreign people having sex in the rooms below me.

Thats right, I have come back to a half house half bed and breakfast complete with a shelf of the fridge totally out of bounds, the constant threat of having guests with a baby and the fantastic idea that I am awoken during the night every time somebody uses the en-suite below me. Oh, and I have no bathroom to use. Thats right folks I have the use of four rooms in a house of eleven, and those rooms are all subject to a harsh noise limit.

According to my parents though I have nothing to complain about because I don't have to pay any rent whilst I'm staying here and if I don't like it then perhaps I should get a job and move out. This is a fair point, apart from the fact that in order to make my three year £20,000 degree worthwhile I need to do an internship to get a decent job. So this will be at least three months of having no money, not being able to go out due to this problem, leaving with strangers in my house and arriving home with strangers in my house. The next three months are going to be financial hell and this financial hell will coincide with no social life, no loud noises and constantly being woken up by people with weak bladders.

I had planned on making my general outlook on life more positive, but it appears that won't be happening anytime I am living in this house for the next six months.

Its been a while...

Like a guilty lover who has found pastures new, then realised that those pastures were awful, I have come back grovelling to my blog. My past few months have been spent going slightly insane at my desk whilst reading about people who have been dead for over 1000 years.

So here I am, a triumphant return, like Che Guevara entering Havana or Trajan entering Rome.

Now, I have finished my university degree. This is a pretty scary prospect and has led me to sleepless nights and frequent moods as there appears to be NO JOBS ANYWHERE. My CV tends to lend itself to journalism, however the chances of me getting a job in journalism are almost non-existant.

I went for an interview at a recruitment company and they told me that I gave a superb interview but I had such a passion for journalism that I would never be able to have the same passion for recruitment, so that £25,000 first year job went out the window. My recruiter then told me that she would look at publishing jobs for me, which I am yet to hear back from.

Luckily I have got something to do in the three months from July, as I was lucky enough to get an internship in London with tomorrows company. They are essentially a business think-tank who give advice to companies and help to organise companies to be more stable and sustainable. It is an awesome opportunity which will hopefully lead me to a job at the end of it.

The problem that has arisen because of this is that my parents seem to be fairly against the concept of me working for a company without being paid for it. It does seem like a depressing prospect that in order to get a good job now you have to sacrifice a starting salary in order to move up in the world. A lot of this has come down to the economic problems meaning that more people are flooding the markets, but will this lead to a certain monopoly of high end jobs in the future?

In order to pay for this internship I will be working for two or three evenings a week to afford just the train fare each week. This is going to be a difficult time for me and I will have to put 100% in during the day and the only break I will have on most nights will be the train home. A lot of people will not even get this opportunity, so the only people who are likely to be in the same position as me in 4 months time are going to be those with parents who can afford to support them whilst they do an internship. This is likely to be something that continues in to the foreseeable future, so this is likely to create a hereditary lineage of the top jobs. No longer can meritocracy occur in business whilst the concept of an internship is the best possible way to get into a job. A CV is the only way to judge people, and it does not give an accurate perception of them as a person, only the professional actions undertaken. If the majority of people cannot afford to take this professional action then meritocracy can no longer take place, and where will this leave us in 15 years?

Up Brown Creek

This week Gordon Brown has been slated for his reported bullying of aides and those close to him. He has bullied them in order to get what he wants in an aggressive way, although this has not been proven I can say accurately from experience that this is true.

I myself, as well as many of the people around me in my life have been bullied by Gordon Brown, and we can all vouch for the fact that he is a malicious, vindictive and bitter man. He has ruined my life, he has made me almost unemployable. I am not the only one, in fact there are millions of others in the UK at the moment who have the same feeling.

He may not have sprayed saliva into my face as he was shouting at me, he may not have got me in a headlock and given me a noogie, he may not have flushed my head in a toilet. He has literally stolen my lunch money, all 20,000 pounds worth of it.

Gordon Brown and his administration have slipped the proverbial rohypnol into the drink of the student population, and seemingly without us knowing it taken advantage of a helpless semi-concious undergraduate generation.

The first of his and Blair's crimes came with the introduction of university fees in the first place, something that Labour gave us very early on in their then fledgling monopoly over the UK political scene. Two months after their election they decided to implement tuition fees after the Dearing enquiry results were published (an enquiry commissioned by Mr Grey himself John Major). This was a move described by the, probably drunk but always loveable, Charles Kennedy as 'One of the most pernicious political acts that has taken place.' This came from a government that later promised to get 50% of their youth into university education. Am I the only person to see this as the Labour government grabbing our ankles holding us upside down and shaking until they have everything we own and we are left red faced on the floor?

Next came the top-up fees, yet another student favourite. This came only three years after we re-elected these vagabonds back to lead our country with the promise that they would not introduce top up fees. They decided to leave this one particularly ambiguous so that they could not be totally blamed. Universities can now set their own tuition fees, with a cap of £3,000. How many universities actually charge less than £3,000 per year? None that I have ever heard of. After all its the equivalent of a Sainsbury's basic ball of mozzarella, it tastes the same as most other mozarellas but you can't trust it because it costs less.

However I think that the worst thing that he has done is fucked up our futures. Staring at an entourage with half the emails saying 'sorry we had over 4,000 applicants for 2 places' is an indictment to how bad things are for us. Not only are we paying £20,000 for a degree, but much like opening an account with Northern Rock, it would appear that my money is now worthless.

As Gordon Brown would have now had to pay well over £40,000 for his level of post A level education, but at the time paid nothing is an indictment to how out of touch this government is.

I hate being busy

As i sat at my desk for hours and hours earlier, writing various letters to companies and trying to do as much of my disseration as possible. I thought that the thing that i would miss the most about spending my entire time at my desk would be the chance to chill out and do nothing. That is not the case at all.
Do you want to know what i miss the most when i am typing for hours and hours on my laptop? I miss sitting on my laptop for hours typing...Thats right, what i just said made absolutely no sense, much like the majority of the essays that i am currently writing. What i actually mean is that i miss feeling that i have the time to sit down (admittedly like i am now) and just type whatever i have on my mind. It is very very strange that i miss work (kind of). I am writing my editorial this week, and i am incredibly excited. How pathetic am i?
Plus here is a tip, ever fancy making yourself feel like a don, just write cover letters for yourself all day applying for jobs. I feel like a fucking legend.

I have written some absolute shit on here haven't I?

So I was just reading one of my friends blogs today, which is amazing, not just because of the incredible intelligence and wit (she goes to Oxford) but also at the incredible insight that I have now gained into her life. These deeply personal, sometimes troubling but infinitely interesting subjects are thoughts that she has obviously felt compelled to write down and tell people about, and this is one of the bravest things that I can think of anybody to do.

A few years ago I had a dreadful, life changing, emotionally shattering experience and the thought of putting it on here scares me. To think that people knew why I thought in a certain way, why I can and can't deal with certain situations, sounds, pictures is literally petrifying. My parents don't even know the depth that I sank to afterwards, which is maybe an indictment to how I am a fairly withdrawn person. I can't even remember how many times I have cried about it (less so now) and I think that only 2 people have ever seen me doing it.

Does this show that I am a victim of being sucked in to the man libido of not wanting to be seen crying or is it that I don't want people to see me at my weakest moment? I think perhaps the latter. I recently had a mini argument with somebody over the concept of writing an article from a personal view. The other person argued that it does not make good writing, that all journalism should be objective and that it is not something that should be published. I think that personal writing makes the best stories and shows the most emotion, after all what better way is there to get into somebody else's head, than letting them crawl inside yours?