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Ladies ladies everywhere ant not a one in sight!!!!!


woolybanana

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For what it is worth this is my experience. I trained and qualified as a journalist (including a full 3 year apprenticeship) back in the early 70's when the way in was through local papers. Most local papers were staffed by ambitious young things - around 50/50 men and women on their way up, and old men on their way down from the 'heights' of Fleet street, either totally burned out or alcoholics barely holding down their job.

The mainstay of these papers' content was local government news. This involved attending local council meetings two or three times a week. If you were unlucky enough to work in an area where the political representation was finely balanced with a few independents holding the power then committee meetings went on till 11 pm or midnight. You had to be back in the office next morning bright and ready to write up the reports having called in to the local nick for breakfast and a look at the overnight incident log. No overtime, no time off in lieu.

Once you were through your indentures you could move on. But where? Move up the ladder to dailies or Fleet Street where the hours were even worse and the lifestyle quite unappealing to most young women or get out to a magazine or into industry.

I stuck it for five years, working all hours, married to a sports reporter who worked weekends. When a job came up writing for a newspaper in industry I took it and let my ambitions of Fleet Street glory fade.

In return I had a 9-6-ish job, five day week, double the salary. When I had children I set up as a freelance and over the years made a good living writing for different industrial giants.

Dreams and ambitions may have gone by the board, but I kept on writing for a living, and kept my work and home life balance.

My contemporaries on that local paper? One real star, last seen on CNN in the middle east and married four times. He was always going to make it.

One woman on the Sunday Times, she made it but never married, never had a family. The rest, took similar paths to me or stayed in the provinces where the rewards are a wonderful sense of the community and a very poor salary.

I know things have changed but really it's a lifestyle choice - and if you want a real family life National newspaper journalism is probably one of the most difficult career choices you can make.

At least it is less of an old boys club, and you dont get away with working in an alcoholic stupor any more.

Sorry to go on, and on ......... but in my opinion women still cant have it all.

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Well, I did some of the same on the Weston-super-mare Mercury and Somersetshire Herald, circulation 35,000, fire, flood and bribes to tell it right. Great fun, but not for life. No way to have a family  if one went up the ladder, so how a lady could do it and have babies and things, I just dunno.
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[quote user="moto"]From my experience, the UK ladies are totally identifiable. Desperately trying to mix-and-match with what the French ladies wear, but getting it horribly wrong. For a start, you need to shed  pounds and pounds of that colossal silhouette you manoeuvre from pillar to post every single day. Admit it! You are F.A.T.  Just look in the mirror stark-naked.  Are you French?  Nope!  Stop eating French bread, cheese and croissants and it will bring rewards. Also, your mouth is a VERY important exercise area. If you were to exercise your body as much as your mouth, Playboy magazine would ask you for a photoshoot!
[/quote]

Journalistic article on monday confirms your plaint.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8935097/Sitting-down-makes-your-bum-bigger.html

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My bum was always big and when I worked in a bank we rarely sat, us young'uns ran all the time.

 

I'm afraid moto must be a city dweller, the ladies in my village were of rather grander proportions than skinny; although the ones that were, were heavy smokers, which is dead sexy nez pah........ ah yes, one died in her early 40's of lung cancer, but my was she thin and she was nice.

I have a feeling that you don't really understand women Wooly...... don't worry about it, it is the natural state for most men I know

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