That’s not surprising. Building relationships with employers and gaining experience working in your chosen industry can go a long way in getting you the job that you want. This is now so important that many students and graduates are willing to work for free. But clearly not everyone can afford to work without getting paid. And they shouldn’t have to according to a new report by The Institute for Public Policy Research and the campaign group Internocracy.

The two groups have claimed that offering unpaid internships is against the law. Apparently interns have the same rights as staff members on the company’s payroll and therefore they should receive the minimum wage. It makes sense if you think about it. But with many firms and PR agencies offering unpaid internships or just offering to pay for expenses, it’s clear that few employers are aware that this is the case.

The Institute for Public Policy Research and Internocracy are doing a good job of raising awareness about this law, but I seriously doubt that things are going to change any time soon. Are interns really going to put their fledgling career in danger by taking legal action against a company? I don’t think so. Are employers going to be as willing to take on interns if they’ve got to add them to the payroll and offer them the minimum wage? Probably not.

Sadly unpaid internships instantly put students and graduates from low income families at a disadvantage against those with families that can afford to help them out financially. For employers this means that they could be missing out on the chance to meet and employ some bright young sparks, purely because of money.

I don’t know what the solution to this is. Employers have got it hard enough at the moment, without having to pay an intern £4.83 – £5.80 an hour, depending on their age. Equally new graduates and students are faced with the massive challenge of finding employment, whilst the UK is still recovering from the recession, so many will be willing to do anything to get a job.

What are your thoughts on this? Were you aware that interns have a legal right to be paid the minimum wage? Are you currently doing unpaid work experience?

If I were to cut out all of the articles and adverts that I read and found interesting, and placed them in a pile, I’m sure that pile would be much smaller than the pile of paper ready for the recycling bin. The sports supplement exemplifies this perfectly; I have no interest in sport so this huge wad of paper goes straight in the bin. What an utter waste!

Surely there must be some way for newspapers to provide a more tailored news service that gives their audience exactly what they want. Like an iPlayer for news.

RSS feeds go some way in providing people with a way of subscribing to the types of news they are interested in, but I think newspapers could go further in providing a customised service.

Newspapers could provide a totally tailored news service by employing RSS feeds to offer subscribers a wider range of choice. For example rather than being able to subscribe to news about sport you could subscribe to articles purely about badminton.

Using keywords to tag articles could allow users to subscribe to news about particular people, companies, countries or whatever. This could all then be fed into a single personalised and customisable RSS feed that the user can subscribe to and read on their smartphone, PDA or computer. Or they could pump all of this news into a Guardian24 style PDF that the user could read on their eBook reader or even print out.

I imagine this could be funded with advertising or a subscribtion service, but whether users would be willing to subscribe I’m not sure. Would you rather pay to subscribe to a personalised RSS feed or put up with advertising?

The claim follows reports that Harringey Council spent more than £3.4m on publicity during the 07/08 financial year, of which £2.2m was spent on PR (communications and other expenditure). It is suggested that had Harringey Council spent that money on child protection and social workers instead of PR, Baby P might have received the care he needed and still be alive and well today.

It may be true that had Harringey Council spent another £2m on child protection Baby P might still be alive, but I think it’s wrong to blame that on PR. If the council hadn’t paid its phone or electricity bills they could have spent more money on child protection too.

I think it shows a real misunderstanding of PR and devalues the industry as a whole. It implies that PR is a luxury that council’s can simply do without. If Harringey Council had spent the money on child protection instead of PR I suspect tax payers in the area would be pretty disgruntled. How would they know that the council had spent an extra £2m on child protection without the council spending money on PR to let them know?

The article goes on to report the terrible news that Harringey Council is now spending money on crisis PR. If they hadn’t spent money on crisis PR and either gave no comment or put people forward who had received no media training, they would have fueled yet more criticism by the media. Really the council are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

The sad fact remains that Baby P is dead. No amount of spending on crisis PR or child protection can change that now.

I’m not sure I agree. Certainly paid for blogs produced by professional bloggers or PROs has had an impact on the blogosphere, but I don’t believe that it’s killed off the blogosphere as professional and amateur bloggers blog for different reasons.

Professional bloggers blog to share news or their opinions about issues affecting the industry they work in, as well as to network, whereas amateur bloggers blog to share their thoughts and ideas, and to keep in contact with friends and family. As long as the barriers to entry stay low, amateur and professional bloggers can co-exist.

Further proof that the blogosphere is far from dead comes in the form of Technorati’s recent ‘Blogosphere 2008′ report, which reveals that 79 per cent of bloggers write personal blogs. This hardly makes amateur bloggers sound like a dying breed.

Instead of pointing the finger at PROs or professional bloggers I would suggest that social networking sites, such as Facebook, have had the biggest impact on the blogosphere. Since many amateur bloggers blog to share news and photographs with friends and family it is no surprise that some have swapped blogs for social networking sites.

Midtown London is defined as the triangular sized area above the Thames, which stretches from Trafalgar Square in the West, to St Paul’s in the East, up to King’s Cross in the North – where I live.

Apparently the area is now cool thanks to big name media companies and designers, such as Alexander McQueen and Agent Provocateur, flocking to the area to take advantage of the more competitive rents.

I’m not sure this really makes the area cool or is a sign that Midtown London is escaping the economic downturn. In a recession it’s not uncommon for businesses to reduce their costs by relocating or downsizing to a less expensive office. But it’s a good angle and I like it!

It would appear that man, Boris Johnson was listening. Or at least his aides were.

Teaming up with a famous young Londoner like Lily is a very shrewd way for the new Mayor of London to position himself as a proactive crime fighter committed to reducing the levels of knife crime in the City. That said I very much doubt that a photoshoot with Lily and a brainstorming session will make a massive difference. Kids won’t stop carrying knives because Lily says so. Kids will stop carrying knives when they feel safe on the streets.

I think many knife holders are carrying knives to protect themselves rather than to commit crimes. So rather than a knife amnesty or a Knife Aid type concert I think working to publicise initiatives setup to lower the rates of crime and news that crime rates have dropped will have a bigger effect.

A good example of this is the news released today that the rate of recorded crime has nearly halved since 1995, and is 9% down on last year. However I doubt that will be on the front page of the newspapers tomorrow. Especially since the BBC has reported that another youth has been knifed to death tonight, and tomorrow is the day of Ben Kinsella’s funeral.

The media should cut down on sensationalist reporting of crime that just heightens people’s fears and focus on the facts, no matter how mundane they are. But sadly I think selling papers is more of a priority than saving lives. The BBC has an article reporting a similar idea here, and a nonsense article here claiming that Nike has shelved its Air Stab trainer because of fears it promotes knife crime. That shoe has nothing to do with knives – it’s a stability shoe!

Thibault helped answer about a million of my questions and gave some brilliant answers as well as an insight into the French blogosphere. This should help hugely when I consider language barriers and cultural differences that affect blogging.

He said that not all businesses should blog especially if they are, “Blogging about something that no one care about like the CEO’s new hair cut.” This ties in great with an article I have by Janet Street-Porter from the Independent called ‘Just Blog Off!’ about the uninteresting Waitrose blog written by the MD about his weight loss.

So I urge you to check out Fashion Fox. It’s a great resource run by a great person! Also if you are interested in fashion, Thibault runs two fashion blogs Chaussure-femmes.com and Lingerie-Meets-Underwear.com