One of the handful of lesbians who have broken my heart by rejecting my advances oh so cruelly tips me off how the organ for journalists, The Press Gazette, is bleating on about poor freelancers. Good God these guys are idiots.
Most journalists are nice middle class kids from a pampered upbringing who think that being a hack is jolly wheeze. Perhaps that is why the number of freelance "journalists" in the UK is surging. Data from the Labour Force Survey which shows a surge in the number of freelance journalists in the UK to 34,000 in 2016 from 18,000 a year earlier. Government statistics found that 84,000 people in total categorised themselves as journalists, compared to 64,000 in 2015.
Oh what a jolly life, good school, university and then lets head off and be like Polly Toynbee and Owen Jones or even try to be a good journalist. The trouble is that journalism is jolly hard. In the old days when I did a spot of freelancing on the side I could knock out 1500, fairly tedious, words in a couple of hours and send it off with an invoice for £300 + VAT. I really did not have to do that many extra hours after the day job to be earning a fair old whack. An hour a day keeps the candyman at bay.
But the deadwood press (papers and mags) are dying. Younger people either can't read or want to go online. Fixed costs are high and thus the business model is increasingly broken - there are fewer and fewer titles who will request freelance work. Online publications see evil Google steal most of their ad revenue so they are not flush with cash either. The bottom line is that there is less need for freelancers yet more pampered university educated kids want that work.
And thus the Press Gazette is horrified that one third of freelancers are now earning so little that they are reliant on state benefits to live.
What is to be done? Simple tell the brats to go get a proper job and stop relying on taxpayer handouts to get by because you have so little work. Why the hell should ordinary folks do unpleasant jobs to pay taxes so that young Francesca and Archie can work relatively few hours doing a "job" they love to earn peanuts so requiring state subsidy to continue.
Tell the spoiled brats to fuck off and make themselves available for real work. If you are not making a real living as a journalist it is probably because you are no bloody good and so why should the state subsidise your fantasy?
Who knows if there was a culling of freelancers then freelance rates might increase a bit. That is how market forces work. Or should work. But the pampered liberal elite and their ghastly offspring don't believe in market forces when it starts to hurt them.
The Press Gazette headline should have been "1/3 of middle class brats demand more handouts from taxes appropriated from the hard working poor with real jobs"