"They won’t be selling their story, minister”

That was the headline in the Daily Mail a few days ago and it is true what they say, a headline can grab attention and make you want to read on.

This was about the four British soldiers killed in Iraq and while this raised questions about women serving on the front line in Iraq, this blog is going to focus on the hostages that were freed after being captured in Iran and especially the two that “sold” their stories. Arthur Batchelor or “Mr Bean” as he now seems to have become known and Faye Turney who was Leading Seaman which has resulted in this .

Although the Sun newspaper has defended its decision to pay for her story and Mr Batchelor said he was under the impression that everyone was going to sell their story, he only spoke to a local paper and he received only a tenth of what Faye Turney received it has still caused uproar.
The Daily Mail article cites examples of postings from www.rumnation.co.uk and www.arrse.co.uk which are military chatrooms and lists some of them and the feelings towards the selling off the stories.

This has a lot of people talking and sharing a lot of different views, like this one from Kate Bevan: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2007/04/trevor_mcdonald_deserves_more.html
and this one from Toby Harnden: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/tobyharnden/april07/disgracefiasco.htm
and this one from Alison Ford:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/04/selling_stories.html
This is another blog with a brief insight into quite a few perspectives (might have to scroll down a bit!)
http://joesharkeyat.blogspot.com/

They both present interesting views but the general feeling of consensus seems to be that the stories should not have been sold, they should not have made money out of their ordeals but is it their fault for sellin the stories or the MOD’s for letting them sell their stories?
I mean, we can all criticise from our position can’t we? But we haven’t been through what they went through as I am sure it was hard. However, that does not (in my opinion) give them a free right to sell their stories to the media, ”tell” their stories and let the media use its public watchdog and fourth estate roles can be recognised but to offer money…it just shows the competitiveness in the industry and how financially influential it is becoming.

Whatever the moral high ground here is, the fact remains that the stories have been sold and told whether it was right or not. This does highlight the need to control this though because personally I do not think it was right for serving military personnel to be allowed “exceptional circumstances” to sell their stories…what about the families of people that have died serving in wars and those injured..if one group of people can why can’t everyone? I don’t think that would be good for the media or the image of Britain.

I’ll leave you with the below blog link and it leaves you with some interesting things to think about in the industry that we all hope to represent in a few years:
http://www.wordblog.co.uk/2007/04/09/while-sailors-sell-their-stories-parents-are-barred-from-telling-of-nightmare/

Fletcher, Duncan b Consistantly bad results after 7 years

The analysis into England’s Cricket at the world cup now begins. A news conference is to be held today which may signal Duncan Fletcher being sacked or receive a vote of confidence and Michael Vaughan could also be dropped or relieved of the captiancy.
To be honest something needs to be done, doesn’t it? Only winning Kenya, Canada, Ireland and Bangladesh (no disrepect to these teams but̷ is not good enough and we are quite rightly dumped out of the World Cup. (see this blog by Martin Gough from the BBC)
I feel I should make a supportive point here though, if we had won the Sri Lanka match (lost by 1 run) or the South Africa match then things would be very different but that’s the fickle nature and the fine line between success and failure.
It may be a drastic measure but in a way, I agree with David Lloyd’s comments that change needs to be radical - of course that may not be the case, we may leave it and improve or change drastically and stay the same (we can’t get much worse!)
It was not just the defeat to South Africa it was the manner of it (here is the link to the scorecard if you can bear it). From Nelson (111) for three to 121 for 8. Typical old style England collapse and even after we managed to limp over 150 it was the turn of the bowlers.
Fair enough, they did not have much to bowl at, fair enough it was almost over without a ball being bowled but this was the match presented as a “quarter-final” with the winners going through to the quarter finals and South Africa came out all guns blazing instead of nurdling their way to their measly target. However, England (again) had no answer as SA reached 157-1 off 19.2 overs and won it very easily indeed. The result looked bad but the performance rubbed it in even more…we didn’t deserve a place in the quarter finals.
On a more postive note is the Ireland team, despite yesterday’s result against Sri Lanka, they had surprised a lot of people with their passion, commitment and skill at the World Cup 07 and I would like to say they were a credit to the world cup - minnows doing something they weren’t tipped to do and pouring their heart and soul into evey game.
As for my tip on who is going to win? It doesn’t matter- England are out so I couldn’t care less. As for are we going to win our last match - I hope so, but it doesn’t really matter does it, except for some pride and to leave the tournament on a high.
Like my previous post stated this world cup will always be remembered for this and I just hope that justice can be done so that family/friends of Bob Woolmer can know the truth.