Jo Ind

At last, I can reveal I have a new business card….

It’s not wonky in real life – that’s down to the photographer’s skill and creativity.

Since February I’ve been working for Maverick Television, the company that brought us Embarassing Bodies and How to Look Good Naked, to make a ground-breaking website for the NHS in the West Midlands.

We’ve still got a little way to go to be where we want to be but the password of NHS local was lifted yesterday.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the public relations industry and I certainly don’t hate people who work in it. Some of my best friends…..(Jayne Howarth, Ros Dodd etc). Unlike some journalists I actually feel grateful to good PR firms. Let’s be honest, in recent years working on a newspaper would have been far harder without them.

What I hate is doing PR. That’s all.

I feel the need to say this because since I’ve been a self-employed writer, at least once a week I get a call from somone I’ve featured in the Birmingham Post in the past, who wants me to write about them again. They suppose that now I’m freelance I’m only to happy to tout my work round a range of publications and, they imagine, earn a multiple fee from them.

To which I can only say that I would sooner pickle my head. In fact I DID say exactly that to one hopeful – he still didn’t understand I didn’t want the job. (more…)

I love my new boss.  I like her ideals, her approach to life, her attitude to business. They echo my own.

I know she has my best interests at heart – as I do hers. It’s not uncommon, even in the best of organisations, to feel a degree of ambivalence towards your employers.  You are prepared to work hard and put yourself out, but, quite rightly, there are limits as to how far you will go on their behalf.

I don’t feel like that towards my new boss. I would go to the ends of the earth for her and her family. She has my complete, unconditional support.

(more…)