Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • One writing app to rule them all

    There’s been a fun discussion on Twitter about the various kinds of writers, how they organise their workflow and what apps they use. This image has made a lot of us laugh.

    Journalist workflow alignment text

    The last option, “write directly into the CMS”, is listed under Chaotic Evil. And it is. If you’re a working writer and you have any choice, and I know not everybody does, don’t write directly into a content management system.

    There are several reasons for that. The first and most important one is that if the CMS crashes, or something on your computer crashes, you may need to start all over again and you don’t have a backup. Whereas if like me you write first and then copy it to the CMS, a crash is only a minor irritation.

    I had a conversation once with a younger colleague who clearly thought I was daft for writing locally and then going into the CMS. Just do it directly, he said, before the CMS crashed and wiped out his day’s work.

    The risk of that happening is particularly important if, like me, you’re paid by the word. If you have to write the same article twice because the CMS crashed, you’ve effectively cut your hourly rate in half. With so much freelance writing barely making minimum wage in the first place, that’s potentially disastrous. Many of us are barely paid enough to write a piece once, never mind twice.

    It also has an opportunity cost. For the financial reasons I’ve just mentioned freelancing these days is often about achieving a certain volume of work to pay the rent. That means your days are often very packed. There’s very little wiggle room there, so if you get your work done and then have to do it again that can have a knock-on effect on the rest of the day. It might mean not hitting your next deadline, or having to cancel social plans so that you can.

    Another key consideration for freelance writers is that if you don’t have a local copy of your work, a problem with the CMS or the closure of that particular publication can mean you end up without any copies of anything you’ve done. In recent months several publications I’ve written for have closed down, but everything I’ve written for them is right here on my Mac.

    Last but not least, if you work for multiple clients the likelihood that they’ll all use the same platforms and software is very small. Even individual departments of the same company use different things, so for example today I’m doing work for a publisher that uses a CMS but for a department that uses Google Docs instead. In a typical week I’ll write for a half dozen different clients, none of whom have the same submission requirements.

    For me at, least, the solution is to use the same writing app for everything. I write almost everything in Ulysses, which then enables me to copy and paste into CMSes, export to Word format, PDF or rich text, paste formatted copy into email… you get the idea.

    There are many apps that do what Ulysses do; I just happen to like the way Ulysses does it.

    The benefits of doing everything in Ulysses is that the actual writing process never changes. There are no different CMSes to learn, no different interfaces to remember, no apps to relearn. The app I’m writing in always looks the same, works the same, uses the same keyboard shortcuts, displays the same fonts.

    That matters because it means I waste exactly zero time trying to remember how anything works. 100% of my writing time is spent writing. When I’m finished I can then export the document in whatever format the client wants.

    It also means I have an archive of everything I write for absolutely everybody, and that archive is all stored in the most widely supported format of all: plain text.

    That’s because Ulysses enables me to use a writing language called Markdown, which is plain text with a few additional tags for things like links and formatting.

    Here’s an example of how that looks when I’m working.

    I press the hash key for a title, press it twice for a subtitle, type numbers at the beginning of lines for a numbered list and so on.

    Plain text means the system requirements are tiny, performance is blazingly fast and I can search my entire archive instantly. I can also synchronise that entire archive with my phone, iPad and laptop so I’ve always got access to all of it.

    CMSes are useful things, I know. But if you’re freelancing for lots of different people I think it’s worth taking the extra time – and it isn’t much extra time – to do everything in your favourite text editor first and then put it into the appropriate format or publishing platform. It’s a lesson I’ve learnt the hard way. I hope you don’t learn it the same way.

  • Competence and cronyism

    The UK, which is very far away from China, has a population of around 66 million people and has officially recorded 635,000 cases of COVID-19 and 43,000 deaths.

    Vietnam, which has a long land border with China, has a population of 95 million people. It has recorded 1,113 cases and 35 deaths.

    The difference isn’t some special Asian COVID-resistant DNA, as some of the more unhinged right-wing commentators have suggested, or the Vietnamese government suppressing the real scale of the virus; doctors on the ground say the figures match their experiences. It’s that Asia has learnt lessons from previous pandemics and applied them competently.

    To take just one example, in Vietnam temperature checks were introduced in Hanoi airport in January before human to human transmission had even been confirmed. In the UK, we started trialling temperature checks for Heathrow arrivals in late May, two months after we went into lockdown. Vietnam began contact tracing and quarantining in January. As The Guardian reports, the UK track and trace system wasn’t announced until late May and it still isn’t working.

    the government’s Sage scientific advisers have concluded NHS test and trace is not working.

    Too few people are getting tested, results are coming back too slowly and not enough people are sticking to the instructions to isolate, they say.

    The system “is having a marginal impact on transmission”, as a result, and unless it grows as fast as the epidemic that impact will only wane.

    One of the reasons it isn’t working is that the government decided to outsource everything to private firms instead of using existing public health services. The Guardian again:

    The percentage of people reached and asked to provide details of recent close contacts [by the national test and trace system] hit its lowest level since June at the end of September, with performance worsening steadily over the month. It means about 25% of contacts are not reached at all.

    Our World In Data has a fascinating and comprehensive explanation of how and why Vietnam responded to COVID. Not everything could have been replicated elsewhere, but in its conclusion the report says that many lessons are applicable to other countries: investing in public health infrastructure, taking early action to curb community spread, having a thorough contact tracing system, quarantining based on possible exposure rather than symptoms, and clear, consistent and serious public communication.

    When Vietnam did lockdown and contact tracing, it did it properly. Here, the time lockdown was supposed to buy us wasn’t spent on building an effective track and trace system; it was spent enriching the Government’s mates and giving lucrative contracts to cronies. That’s already killed thousands of people, and it looks likely to kill very many more.

  • Tourism, large tables and Tinder dates

    Helen Rosner, the New Yorker’s roving food correspondent, is a great writer. And this is a great article: although it’s about New York I think it has resonance here too. It’s called The Uncertain Promises of Indoor Dining in New York City.

    This grinding moral calculus leaves us with a fallacious sense of personal responsibility and misplaced blame. In recent months, I’ve seen chefs and restaurateurs lash out on social media at those whom they deem insufficiently supportive of the industry’s return. Those declining to eat in restaurants during the pandemic, they argue, are complicit in the economic suffering of their businesses and employees. (The crisis is unimaginably severe, and the stress is nearly unbearable, but such a position seems rooted more in existential terror than in logic.) There are, of course, ways to be supportive without prioritizing capital over safety: early in the pandemic, when the mass extinction of small businesses was looming, I purchased more logo-emblazoned sweatshirts, coffee mugs, and tote bags than one human ever ought to own, and encouraged everybody I knew to do the same. Still, it is obvious that restaurants will not be saved by T-shirt sales alone. I’ve found a measure of relief in a simple piece of advice passed along by a friend: pick three businesses that matter to you and your community—a manageable number—and then pour everything you can into making sure they come out O.K. on the other side. But, in September, during a Zoom conversation I had with the chef David Chang to promote his new memoir, he put the same idea in more dire terms, invoking philosophy’s infamous trolley problem: “I think ninety per cent of independent restaurants are going to die,” he said. “We need to start to choose which ones we want to prop up.”

  • Rainbows

    The COVID-related adoption of the rainbow flag to mean “I like the NHS” has caused dismay for many LGBT+ people. It’s not because they’re snowflakes. It’s because some of the flags, badges and other merchandise have appropriated two things: the Pride flag, and the logo of a very specific NHS initiative that’s been running for several years.

    The original NHS rainbow was, well, a rainbow: seven colours in a semi-circle with clouds at either end. Here’s one.

    But we’re seeing more and more of this. This is a “Thank You NHS Hero” flag from Amazon:

    As you can see, it bears a strong resemblance to the Rainbow NHS Badge, shown below.

    The former is cheap Amazon tat. The latter is the logo of a specific initiative to improve access to healthcare.

    The Rainbow NHS Badge programme was created because many LGBT+ people have experienced appalling treatment from healthcare workers. Those experiences, and hearing about those experiences, can make LGBT+ people very wary of accessing NHS services. That reluctance can cost lives.

    To try to address this, the Rainbow NHS badge project was created in late 2017. The aim was to create “a strong visual symbol to say to LGBT+ people accessing NHS healthcare, ‘I am a good person to talk to about LGBT+ issues and I will do my best to help you if I need it.’” The badge combined two instantly recognisable images: the NHS logo and the Pride flag.

    There’s a potted history of the whole programme here.

    It’s not just a badge. It’s also a commitment to equal healthcare and equal treatment, something LGBT+ people cannot take for granted. Prior to COVID, the badges were in use in 223 NHS trusts in England with more to follow and it was also rolling out to GP practices and other organisations.

    Rainbows are important to LGBT+ people. They indicate safe spaces in a world that’s often very unsafe; in the NHS, they indicate that somebody is safe to talk to. The horizontal Pride flag is recognised globally as a symbol of LGBT+ people and LGBT+ inclusion.

    Now, though, we’re being told that any and all rainbow flags – including the Pride flag – mean the NHS. They don’t.

    Here’s The Portal Bookshop:

    I appreciate the rainbow arguments seem silly to anyone on the outside but let me put it this way.

    For years, if you saw the rainbow flag up somewhere, queer people knew they would be safe there.

    Now? Is it safe? Or does that person support the NHS – and want to send you to it?

    The Pride flag is not a rainbow, but it’s beginning to be used by people who don’t know the difference. So the use of the six-colour pride flag in NHS-related branding and merchandise – and clothes shops and supermarkets have been particularly bad for this, cynically rejigging their Pride ranges to make them about the NHS instead – is taking a very specific symbol and ignoring its meaning. As The Portal bookshop put it on Twitter, it’s having “a symbol of safety and unity snatched out from under us in six months flat.”

    If there’s a silver lining to this cloud, it’s that it’s driving adoption of a newer, alternative Pride flag called the Progressive Pride flag. It was designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018 and adds more colours to represent people of different colours and genders.

    As Tom Haynes wrote on TheTab.com:

    I’m certainly not trying to tell you LGBT+ people own the very concept of rainbows… but the way brands and the Tories have taken the rainbow and ran with it is uncomfortable to watch. Looking at summer streets full of boomers dangling actual Pride flags with NHS written on them, it’s hard not to to think: yeah this is a form of erasure. There’s a nuance here that most people are missing.

  • Lots of food isn’t labelled

    The UK government’s decision to relax food standards to allow imports of poor quality, appallingly produced and potentially hazardous US beef, poultry and pork is disgusting, of course, but some people are arguing that it isn’t a big deal: we can just read the labels and choose not to buy it.

    But that’s only true for raw food that we buy in shops. As Jay Rayner points out on Twitter, there are lots of places where food won’t be labelled: cafés, restaurants, canteens, pre-made sandwiches…

    Not in food service it wont: that sandwich you buy on the run, that school meal your child eats, that lunch you get served in hospital; indeed in any food service operation. No labeling at all.

  • Why trans people go private

    There’s a good piece by GenderGP head of patient services Adi Ni Dhálaigh Gourdialsing in PinkNews about trans people accessing private healthcare.

    In 2016, the Women and Equalities Commission bravely and unreservedly found that: “The NHS is failing in its legal duty under the Equality Act in this regard. There is a lack of continuing professional development (CPD) and training in this area amongst GPs. There is also a lack of clarity about referral pathways for Gender Identity Services. And the NHS as an employer and commissioner is failing to ensure zero tolerance of transphobic behaviour amongst staff and contractors.”

    Fast forward to 2020 and little has changed. We still have: No NICE guidelines on the medical interventions available for gender incongruence; no standards of medical education set for this area of healthcare by the General Medical Council; no continuing professional development (this is the responsibility of the Royal Colleges and Postgraduate Deaneries); no agreed standards of care for NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups; no UK-wide medical guidelines; and healthcare that is provided in super-specialised clinics, which are supposed to cater for just 500 patient cases per year.

    I’ve been involved in a few consultations about trans healthcare recently and absolutely none of the issues being raised in the consultations are new. Trans people go private or self-medicate because in many parts of the UK the NHS tells them to wait nearly six years before they can discuss getting any kind of treatment.

  • Watching women

    This is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever read. Gillian Frank and Lauren Gutterman, for Jezebel: How the ‘Girl Watching’ Fad of the 1960s Taught Men to Harass Women.

    In the spring of 1968, 21-year-old Francine Gottfried began working as an IBM machine operator at a data processing plant in lower Manhattan. Gottfried walked past the New York Stock Exchange to get from the subway to work each day, and she soon attracted a group of Wall Street workers who gaped at her large breasts and verbally harassed her. Over the following months, men circulated the details of her daily schedule—she typically emerged from the Broad Street subway at 1:28 pm for her afternoon shift—and the crowd grew.

    By September, Gottfried’s body and the men’s aggressive behavior had become national news: “Boom and Bust on Wall Street,” read one New York Magazinearticle. According to the Associated Press, the group of men stalkers reached more than 5,000 on a single day; another news outlet claimed the group hit a record of 10,000.

  • Intended consequences

    The anti-trans mob and their evangelical Christian pals are behind a judicial review that could have chilling effects on young women’s access to contraception. That’s not a potential unintended consequence. It’s the whole point.

    Stonewall’s Nancy Kelley, writing in the i Paper:

    If [we] chip away at the idea that children and young people are not fit to know what’s best for them, we open the door towards eroding Gillick Competency. ‘Gillick’ was a case in 1985 which established that young people under the age of 16 can consent to their own medical treatment, without the need for parental knowledge or permission.

    Gillick is a cornerstone of children and young people’s rights and helps ensure young people can access the healthcare service they may need, including abortion, contraception or sexual health services.

    So, this case isn’t just about healthcare for trans young people, it’s about a much wider issue: whether we believe children and young people have a right to treat their bodies as their own.

    The lawyers representing the people bringing the case say it would push Gillick to ‘breaking point‘. This would give a green light to those who want to use this an opportunity to roll back the healthcare rights of not just LGBT young people, but all young people.

    Getting rid of Gillick is a key goal of the religious right, who do not want any teenagers to have access to contraception or sexual health services. The anti-trans women hoping the verdict goes against the NHS are either willing accomplices or deeply, deeply stupid.

  • This is what cancelling looks like

    This week, the BBC and The Times both went after the private GP service GenderGP, an ongoing target of the anti-trans mob.

    I’ve written about GenderGP before: it’s a practice that enables trans people to access healthcare privately when the NHS expects them to wait for many years for an initial assessment. I’m a former patient, so I can attest that while it isn’t perfect it is also serious and professional in its prescribing. It certainly isn’t handing out HRT like sweeties.

    The reporting was full of innuendo but didn’t find anything significant to report. Despite this, the UK’s pharmacy regulator has responded to the bad publicity and removed GenderGP’s ability to prescribe HRT to trans people with immediate effect.

    Overnight, thousands of trans adults have had their private healthcare stopped – not because GenderGP has been proven to have done anything wrong, but because two of the most powerful media outlets in the country have targeted it.

    The anti-trans mob, of course, are rejoicing about this. Removing life-saving trans healthcare from thousands of adults, as far as they’re concerned, is something to celebrate.

    Trans people will continue to need medicine. By shutting down safe, legal services, all that’s going to happen is that trans people will turn to possibly unsafe services instead. If you’re one of the people affected, there’s a good thread of (safe) options here.

    Once again this gives the lie to the idea that any of this is about ‘reasonable concerns’ or ‘protecting women’. These people want us dead.

  • Faith in the system

    Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A bigot does bigoted things that reflect badly on their employer, they get the boot, and the Christian Legal Centre tries to make them a free speech hero. Said centre is then handed its arse on a plate by a tribunal judge who points out the bleeding obvious: you can believe what you like, but you can’t behave how you like.

    This week’s case features Karen Higgs, who worked at her son’s Church of England primary school as a pastoral assistant and who was sacked for railing against the same school’s relationship lessons very vocally online. “THEY ARE BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN!” You know the kind of thing.

    The reason you can’t do this kind of thing is because it brings your employer into disrepute.

    Every employment contract I’ve ever signed had one of those clauses. It’s a standard bit of boilerplate that means  that you can’t go around bad-mouthing your employer and expect to stay employed. For example, if you work for a restaurant and tell loads of people on Facebook that the food is shite and you hate the customers, you shouldn’t clear your diary for the next staff Christmas party. 

    The Church of England makes it very clear that its schools value “All God’s Children”, not just the straight cisgender ones with straight cisgender parents, and it has a very clear policy on anti-LGBT+ bullying and how staff in primary schools should discuss issues such as same-sex parenting and trans parents.

    In particular it says that primary schools should “promote a strong anti-bullying stance that shows that HBT [homophobic, biphobic and transphobic] remarks and behaviour are unacceptable.” Posting homophobic and transphobic things online is of course in direct conflict with that.

    In her defence, Higgs claimed that it was okay to rail against same-sex marriages because while “I am aware that same-sex marriages are now recognised under UK law… I believe that is contrary to God’s law”. But while they may be bound by God’s law in their head, they’re bound by UK law at work.

    As school governor Stephen Conlan told the tribunal: “You can post your beliefs without posting this sort of language and it is perfectly possible to communicate your beliefs without using such strong language.”

    I feel sorry for the people of faith who these clowns claim to represent. The people demanding “religious freedom” to defame and demonise others don’t represent anybody but themselves. They’re not devout. They’re just dicks.