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European elections for dummies

I have never voted at a polling station before. I was born a month too late to vote in the UK general election in 2005, and in the local elections of 2008 I voted by post. So when I suddenly realised I was eligible to vote in the European elections in under two weeks time, I panicked. What I know about Europe I learned for a public administration exam, and that was dry at the best of times. So I set myself the challenge of seeing what was happening online and through social networking that might help me. And it turns out, rather a lot. So for anyone else struggling with the idea, here is a quick rundown of the main online resources that might be able to help you find your feet - and a good indication of how well European politics is coping with the blogosphere.

How do you know who to vote for?

Step in Euprofiler. It's a bit lengthy, but stick with it. This site asks you a range of questions about your opinions on social welfare, immigration, security, integration and the like and then maps your responses with the party "most like you", both in the UK and in Europe at large. Admittedly it's not an exact science, but it's a good starting point to know where you might start reading around.

Flickr, MySpace and Facebook

Visit the European parliament's Flickr page to have see how various elements of the campaign are getting underway across the continent, and there are also MySpace and Facebook pages. Both are using similar viral tactics to Obama, with buttons or badges which can be embedded into profiles, although they lack the iconic edge that saw pictures of Obama appear on hundreds of thousands of people's own personal web space. The Facebook site is definately worth checking out. There are discussion strands on first-time voting, among other issues, and all sorts of links to other web projects happening in collaberation with the poll.

One of these includes a quaint resource on the European Parliament's own web site. The interactive time machine aims to explain (in very simply terms) what the EU has been doing for the last 30 years. It's obviously going to have a certain level of bias, but kudos to their web team for trying something different. There's also a very extensive delicious page for more in-depth reading on everything from gender equality in European democracy to sites analysing individuals MEP's voting records.

Further reading

A couple of the most interesting sites I came across were CanEUhearme? and thinkaboutit.eu. The first site is a competition run in conjunction with MTV designed to get primarily young voters to send in their videoa/pictures to make a statement about what it's like to be part of Europe. Although the competition is its main purpose, there is also other useful information, links and polls relating particularly to young, politically-minded Europeans, and they're on Twitter.

Once you've got an grip of the basics (I'm still not sure whether I have), thinkaboutit.eu is the next step for dicussing some of the more complex issues involved in the EU. The site is part of an international blogging competition organised by the European Journalism Centre and there are bloggers from each of the 27 states (three from the UK) who have been writing on European issues that matter to them. One of the UK bloggers Katrina Bishop gives a frank account of navigating her way through European politics, combining serious analysis with lighter content like "broadcast bingo"- measuring the number of times politicians use cliches in party political broadcasts. It's a good way to break up what can otherwise be a painful subject to push through.

YouTube and Twitter

Finally, the EU parliament do of course have a YouTube channel. The videos range from adverts reminding people to vote, explanatory vignettes on how the EU works, and clips from mini studios that have been placed around the UK for members of the public to "put their questions" to Europe.

But as mentioned earlier, the EU machine and individual MPs seem to be lagging behind on one vital ingredient- Twitter. According to one bit of research, only 27 out of a possible 736 MPs are using Twitter and two-thirds have never even heard of the site. However, this site acts as a forum for all tweeting MEPs, and suggests they are doing better than that.

There is also a way of keeping up with the bigger debate about the elections in the Twitterverse- TweetElect09 keeps up with EU-related tweets in real-time, analysing and categorising them by country, candidiate and other variables. Hash tag #eu09 is also up and running.

So there you have it - a fool-proof guide to the European elections using social networking tools. I'm hoping later in the week to write another post about what specific candidates are up to on the web, and I know there will be loads of really great blogs on a whole range of European topics, but for someone who started off today knowing very little about what was happening, I now feel a bit more connected. Hopefully no-one is left feeling the same same way as the girl in this slightly odd promotion video.

Living with HIV and haemophilia

This is a piece I wrote for my training newsaper, the Cardiff Evening News.

Like any new grandparent, Haydn Lewis was thrilled to welcome his first grandchild into his Cardiff home. But as the carpenter from Penylan played with his week-old grandson, it did not escape him this was a moment he thought he would never live to see. “I am 52 and I have Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, HIV and I have been diagnosed with liver cancer as a result of the Hepatitis C,” said Mr Lewis. “I would drive myself mad if I thought about it all the time.”

For the last 23 years, Mr Lewis has been one of 1,246 members of the haemophiliac community infected with the HIV virus, and one of more than 5,000 haemophiliacs who contracted Hepatitis C, as a result of contaminated blood imported from the USA in the early 1980s. Haemophilia is a hereditary condition that means an individual’s blood does not clot properly. But American blood used to treat the condition between 1979 and 1985 was taken from paid donors with a high risk of HIV and Hepatitis C infection, such as drugs users and prisoners, and the imported blood found its way into NHS treatments for haemophiliacs.

Panic surrounding Aids and HIV in the early eighties was at its height, and both governments and the public knew little about the virus. But the Government has since refused to hold a public inquiry into the mistakes that led to the tragedy, and for many years documents relating to the scandal were reported missing. These documents were found in 2006, and on Monday Lord Archer of Sandwell will present findings from an independent inquiry that many hope will provide a clearer picture of what happened more than two decades ago.

The impact on the lives of those affected has been devastating. Of more than 1,200 people infected with HIV, less than 350 are left. Three-quarters of those who contracted Hepatitis C have died. And these numbers do not consider “infected intimates”- the spouses of haemophiliacs who were infected before their partners were diagnosed.

In Cardiff, the issue has particular resonance. One of the earliest cases of haemophiliac HIV infection was identified in the city as early as 1983, and the Heath Hospital’s haemophilia unit was the home of Professor Arthur Bloom, a leading figure in haemophilia treatment, who the unit is now named after.

Mr Lewis (pictured, age 50), whose mother was a carrier of the haemophilia gene and older brother Gareth is also a HIV haemophiliac, suspects he was unknowingly treated with contaminated blood from 1979 but was not diagnosed with HIV until 1985. By this time he had already married his wife, Gaynor, 52, and they had two sons. Gaynor, who has been married to Haydn for 33 years, unwittingly contracted HIV from her husband.

“It has had an absolutely profound, fundamental affect on my life,” Mr Lewis said. “I had to give up my job and have not worked for 15 years. I am constantly juggling my health and my wife’s.
“Just think what my two boys have had to grow up with, with both of their parents’ lives in the balance.”

Neither of Mr Lewis’s sons, now aged 32 and 30, were infected, but their father suffered another blow in September last year when he was diagnosed with liver cancer – a direct result of his Hepatitis C infection. He is on the transplant waiting list, but without a new liver his life expectancy will be reduced to a matter of months.

In to 2009, the campaign for a voice for this often forgotten group is also being led from the Welsh capital. Frustrated by the lack of Government cooperation, Mr Lewis approached MP for Cardiff Central, Jenny Willott, three years ago.
“When Haydn first came to me it all sounded like a conspiracy theory,” said the Liberal Democrat MP. "But the more I dug, the more suspicions it raised. It seems to me that with 5,000 people infected by NHS treatment, I think it should be automatic that there is an inquiry into what happened.”

She said despite numerous parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests to the Department of Health, responses were rarely received and no one from the department was officially represented at the Archer inquiry. The Department of Health could not be reached for comment for this article.

There is support available. TaintedBlood is a campaign group set up by victims, with Mr Lewis as a founding member. And in 1988 the government founded the Macfarlane Trust to provide financial support and guidance for those affected, giving out around £3.4 million in aid to patients each year. Chief executive, Martin Harvey, said: “We might help someone with a small business start up or a new washing machine – anything to make the difference.” But victims have never received any compensation, aside from ex gratia settlements the Government paid out in 1991 under the condition victims did not try to sue for future infections.

When Lord Archer (the inquiry is pictured here) publishes his report next week, many would like it to provide answers for those patients still alive and for the many affected partners, widows and children. Although all blood products have been tested since 1985, revelations earlier this week a haemophiliac who died recently carryied the CJD virus (the human form of mad cow disease), has put 4,000 haemophiliacs on yet another “at risk” register and suggest there are still lessons to be learned.

But Mr Lewis, Ms Willott, and Mr Harvey are not confident that will happen. “I think the Department of Health will probably say that’s all very interesting but there’s nothing which can be done,” said Mr Harvey. For Ms Willott and Mr Lewis, they simply want the Department of Health to acknowledge the report’s findings, before deciding on the next course of action.

Mr Lewis said: “I am angrier now about the way the Government has dealt with this than I am about being infected. It is absolutely shameful. I am a human being and I deserve respect. All I have had is contempt.” But despite everything, he remains upbeat. “Seeing my new grandson has given me the biggest boost and zest for life, more than any chemical combination,” he said. “You just get on with it, with a smile of your face and a constructive attitude to each day.”

The tweeting elite

The explosion in commentary and coverage of the Twitter phenomenon is great for the fledgling website. As technology and media commentators alike continue to debate how the website can ever make money, the increase in users is testament to its popularity as a social media tool, regardless of whether it is turning a profit or not.

But one thing I have noticed, which has coincided with Twitter's rising star, is a wiff of twitter elitism. In the spirit of Charlie Brooker's (@CharltonBrooker) recent new media dictionary, we'll call this tweetism.

Tweeitsm can be defined as a certain level of snobbery about who is joining Twitter, and most importantly, the quality of their Tweets. This could be a reaction to celebrities jumping on the band wagon (see here for a great summary of influential Welsh Twitter users). In line with this, my first inckling this was happening was when, sat at my desk 10 days ago with Twhirl pinging away in the background, Jonathan Ross (@wossy) informed his 60, 047 followers disgraced comedian and fellow BBC exile Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) would be joining Twitter. Keen to see how this would pan out (some might call it schadenfreude), I signed up to the @rustyrockets fan club. Within 10 minutes, Brand had almost 10,000 followers. He now has 21, 218.

And what were his first words into this most trendy of new media spaces? "I have come to join you please be gentle with me, I have been feeling vulnerable...yet implausibly, sexy." Typical Brand, not many surprises there. But some of the tweets in reply, on my feed at least, expressed a cyncism about what people like Brand could bring to the forum, and, I felt, an inherent assumption about what Twitter should be about. That assumption was twitter was for those 'in the know' on subjects relating to new media, and not much else.

Firstly, I agree with the notion of good Twitter etiquette. And I will freely admit the majority of the 113 people I follow are in some way linked to journalism. This is not something I should, or will, apologise for; social media forums are primarily platforms for creating groups of shared interests. But it got me thinking about what we, as journalists, are using Twitter for. Is it just a case of journalists tweeting at other journalists about all things, well, journalism? If so, this is a very closed space.

If the purpose of forums like Twitter is to network, then this should be extended beyond our own colleagues, and could provide great opportunities for communication with your audience and public. In fact, this is what Jonathon Ross is doing by "following back" and engaging with a huge proportion of the people who follow him. If Twitter continues to grow at its current rate, and you get the readers of, say, a regional paper to contact their district reporter in this manner it could build up a much more personal service. Applications such as TwitterLocal can help to facilitate this.

Typing "business card twitter" into the site's search function brings up a whole host of conversations about whether it's appropriate to give your Twitter address out to clients etc. Some are forging ahead and doing so (picture taken from here). I say yes- it's another way to connect to your community- plus it can help combat the increasingly tight time constraints journalists are under.

Of course journalists will be early adopters for this kind of technology, and I would be interested to know whether others are in fact connecting with "client" commuities for business purposes. But I look forward to a time where my network at least, isn't quite so inward looking. Tweetism is on its way out.

Lest we forget

I saw this a couple of days ago. Due to being in the midst of the month from hell work-wise I haven't had a chance to get it up here, but thought it was important to post something before it slips my, and the rest of the world's, mind.

While it may seem every journalist and media outfit has been transfixed on the events in American and Washington, on Monday From the Frontline reported (on Twitter, obviously) the shocking statistic that in the first 20 days of 2009 more than 10 journalists have been killed around the globe. Although by no means a satisfactory figure, by way of comparison there were 41 confirmed industry deaths in the whole of 2008. The latest was a young Russian reporter, Anastasia Baburova, who worked for the same anti-Kremlin newspaper as Anna Politkovskaya (pictured).

I'm sure many blog posts could, and have, been filled with musings on the perils of working in Russia, and their government's apparent failure to react, but the other deaths in the list were just as shocking. The eerie case of Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of Sri Lankan paper the Sunday Leader, who wrote an editorial in preparation for his own muder. Nepalese journalist Uma Singh, "hacked to death" by 15 men, as well as three journalists killed in the Gazan/Israeli fighting, and deaths in Pakistan and Somalia.

These journalists were all working in very dangerous parts of the world, many in countries known for this most extreme form of press restriction. But it reminded me of Rodney Pinder of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) when he said all journalists should take responsibility for their own safety seriously, no matter what part of the world they are in. In my blog post Crying lone wolf, I talked about how becoming multi-media journalists could be isolating us from our colleagues. I wonder whether there's a point at which this isolation could become dangeous. Being able to multi-task suddenly seems irrelevant when you're stuck in a situation you can't get out of. The case of the student journalist in Calais last year is a haunting case in point.

The INSI safety code should be essential reading for any trainee journalist, especially if, as Rory Cellan-Jones said, we are moving towards a more lonesome way of working. By keeping an eye on those reporters who have ended up dying for their story, perhaps something can be learned from their sacrifice. The counter on INSI's home page for "journalists and media staff killed in 2009" is a sad indication there will be more to come.

Capturing Cardiff: Finding comfort in the crunch

It is fair to say the credit crunch has produced a whole host of losers. But one surprising winner has risen out of the ashes of bad debt and sub-prime mortgages.

After years of declining attendance, people are returning to houses of worship throughout the UK. Church of England congregations are reporting a rise in numbers, and Christmas addresses from religious leaders claimed difficult times have caused people to turn to spiritual outlets to make sense of their morality-poor, debt-filled lives. In his seasonal speech the Bishop of Manchester Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch said: “We are being shocked into seeing that there are more important values to own and cherish”.

But in a quiet corner of Cardiff, just a stone’s throw from City Road, there is another religious group experiencing an influx of followers. Standing in the shadows of the sprawling St Peter’s Catholic Church is an altogether less assuming building. This is Cardiff Buddhist Centre, and although there are now others, 10 years ago this was the only place in the Welsh capital the Buddhist community, or sangha, had to practice.

Jenny Franks, 71, of Pentwyn, has been a volunteer at the centre for six-and-a-half years. She agreed the last 18 months have seen an increase in the number of people through their doors.

“If we go by the numbers on our books, we have seen an increase,” she said “But not all of those will stay. They might take something away and in a few months or years, they might come back.

“Right now people are scared, and I think they are looking for something spiritual to help them. Here we say nothing is permanent, and we have seen that in the world around us recently. It can be hard to come to terms with and our door is always open.”

This arms-open attitude and a rejection of the materialistic side of life may be what is causing Buddhism’s stock to rise as everything else crashes. As one blogger, a stockbroker-turned-Buddhist, said: “Buddhism tells us that we will suffer for our passions, our greed...and our ignorance”. Perhaps people want to suffer no more.

Although Buddhism has many different branches, broadly it teaches awareness and insight into the world around you to become a better person. It has no god or gods, with Buddha himself being held more as a role model than an idol, and Jenny suggests this can be an attraction for many who are turned off by traditional Western religions. Its focus is on practice through meditation.

The Cardiff centre was started in 1998 by two men, Pramudita and Surana (Buddhists do not take last names), who bought the building and transformed it into the centre which today houses an office, library, kitchen, shop, and two shrine rooms for meditation.



The centre is part of the Friends of the Western Order of Buddhists (FWOB), a branch of Buddhism designed to fit well with the trappings of Western life. This compromise between East and West sees more than 100 people coming through their doors for meditation, advice, or just a cup of tea, each week. The centre doesn’t charge for most of its classes but asks for a donation, or dana, meaning generosity. Where they do charge, there is a lower price option for those on income support or without work. With reports of new job losses every day, this could prove an important consideration for many people.

Nicola Paterson, 39, and a former journalist from Roath, first came to the centre seven years ago after she was diagnosed with MS. She now volunteers there two afternoons a week.

She said: “Generally what is admired is making lots of money, having a good job, going on nice holidays, having the perfect partner. But there is no perfect life, and if you’re relying on superficial, material things, you won’t feel nourished.

“People can come here to find out what a sangah is and how it works. Some people just come to meditate and don’t become Buddhists and that’s absolutely fine. Others become a mitra [a friend of the Buddhists] while some ask for ordination and become a Buddhist member. Whatever your choice, it is an oasis here.” This "pick’n’mix" philosophy can be appealing when compared to the more directive services and guidance provided by Christianity.


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At the Wednesday night meditation class, 25 people crowd into the front room of the centre with cups of tea and flapjack. Around half of them have never been before, such as 28-year-old PhD student Ross Wadey.

He said: “When I drove past the centre I was expecting something bigger, especially compared to the huge church directly opposite. They’re like two extremes of religious expression. Everyone here is friendly, and very relaxed. I can see the centre having a purpose, especially at times like these.”

Hasty or hero? Al-Zaidi bears his sole

The "shoe-thrower of Baghdad", as Muntazer al-Zaidi has now been dubbed by the Independent, has caused ripples of controvery the world over. The blogosphere went into over-drive with people posting the undeniabily amazing (if unintentionally farcical) video footage and people the world over have rejoiced at the sight of al-Zaidi's brave action. In a world of global communication, he has become an over-night hero for all those opposed to the allied occupation in Iraq.


So I was interested to see in yesterday's paper a comment from another Iraqi. Hamza Mahdi, a Baghdad shop keeper, was quoted saying: "I don't like Bush, but I don't agree with this action, it's not civilised. Journalists should use pen and paper to make their point, not their shoes". Is he right? Did al-Zaidi's action demonstrate the dangers of a journalist being too close to a story?

Obviously this "closeness" was through no fault of his own. Considering he has watched his country fall down around his ears, not to mention the fact he was kidnapped and badly beaten in 2007, one can hardly even begin to imagine, let alone blame him for the strength of his anger against those he feels are responisble. But it raises an important question about when emotion stops you doing your job. Have his actions aided understanding? I would suggest not. Although blogs and editorials have been almost unanimously in support of him, discussion has largely been of his daring action, not the motivation and stories behind it. The only thing I know for certain is that to throw shoes in an Arab country is not a good idea, despite the fact I can now do it for myself.

It reminded me of another example where a journalist's actions took away from the gravity of the situation. John Sweeney's outburst during a BBC Panormama investigation into the Church of Scientology has achieved almost legendary status. But can you remember what you actually learned from the programme about scientology? Thought not.


I am not for one moment taking away from the resentment al-Zaidi feels towards Bush. In my opinion it is understandable and justified. But I think it raises the very real problem journalists face when reporting on any difficult, complex and emotive situation to balance their own emotions with getting a story across, as Hamza Mahdi says, using a pen and paper. Or whatever the digital version of that is now. al-Zaidi's actions have wider inferences that go way beyond his shoe size.