Socialism & Tourism #2: Transdniestr

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Prior to the release of my new travel article about socialist tourism, I will be previewing a few of the socialist states featured. This time, it’s Transdniestr.

Following Poland’s 1989 overthrow of the commies, Soviet states toppled like pissed dominoes. Within two years the USSR had gone and socialism in Europe was finished. Or so you might think. Actually, as Poland and co. marched towards democracy, one sliver of Eastern Europe was left behind.

Transdniestr, a teensy region in the east of Moldova, broke away from the then Socialist Republic in 1990, following ominous rumblings of reform from Chişinău. After a two-year girly fight, a fresh yet familiar socialist system was formed under cuddly, pastry-faced autocrat Igor Smirnov… and it’s one which continues unopposed to this day. Continue reading →

Socialism & Tourism #1: Republic of Cuba

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Prior to the July release of my new travel article about socialist tourism, I’ll be previewing a few of the commie states featured. First up, it’s Cuba.

Let’s begin with the most visited communist state in the world. In many ways, Cuba is your classic Caribbean paradise isle: home to pristine beaches, poncy hotels, sweaty nightclubs and overpriced trinkets. Yet with socialist giveaways on every corner, from omnipresent Che murals to dilapidated American Buicks, it doesn’t take Tony Robinson levels of surface-scratching to see that Cuba is an island unlike any other.

Socialist since 1959, the country now boasts over two-and-a-half million tourists – including law-dodging Yanks – each year. While most stick to the bespoke capitalist bubbles along the coast, sipping mojitos, smoking Montechristos and swaying to samba music, an intrepid few venture inland to see Castro’s Cuba for what it really is: a steaming great mass of socialist contradictions. Continue reading →

Cheryl Cole: Geordie Martyr?

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

There are many perfectly good reasons to sack Cheryl Cole, but her Newcastle accent shouldn’t be one of them

Three weeks. That’s all it took. Three measly weeks for Cheryl Cole’s role as chief mollycoddler of the musically mental to be savagely snatched away. Word has it, she was axed for her accent.

Of course, that may just have been a convenient motive to get shot of her: perhaps, behind the scenes, Fox execs were really sweating over her lack of profile Stateside; or at her dull, nodding-dog-style screen presence. But if we believe the News of the World (and why shouldn’t we?), it all came down to the way she speaks. In the 21st century, when television should celebrate and embrace diversity, that’s surely a damning indictment of America’s tolerance of English accents. Continue reading →

Propaganda: Marketing for the Masses

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 17TH NOVEMBER 2009 BY RED C MAG]

Have you ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four? It’s about an everyman living under an oppressive totalitarian regime. The ‘proles’ are kept in a controlled state of poverty, living under almost constant surveillance and being ‘educated’ on a daily basis to believe in the inherent good of their government and the inherent evil of others. All in all, it’s a terrifying fiction. Well, if you can call it that. In fact, the regime in the novel closely resembles many real-life regimes of the twentieth century. And, much like the citizens of George Orwell’s dystopian world, the billions of human beings living under these govenments were mostly genuine and wholehearted believers. Their corrupt leaders successfully brainwashed them into thinking they were living the good life, even while terrible things (war, poverty, oppression) were happening all around them.

It’s a mightily impressive feat. So impressive, in fact, that you can’t help but wonder… how on earth did they do it? Continue reading →

The Marketing Might of Music Streaming

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 24TH SEPTEMBER 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

Do you like music? Okay, stupid question: I might as well ask if you like converting oxygen into carbon dioxide, or Christmas Dinner. Everyone loves a good tune – with the possible exception of Andrew Lloyd Webber – and there’s nothing better than getting it for nothing. Remember how the holy grail of free music lured an entire generation into the open paws of that creepy Napster cat? Until the Recording Industry Association tied the bugger up in a burlap sack and chucked it in the Mississippi, of course.

Now, after a miserable half-decade of having to fork over cash for music, the free tunes are back; and it’s all thanks to applications like Spotify, we7 and Grooveshark. Music streaming services like these have become incredibly popular in an impossibly short amount of time, and they’re already having a big impact on the way music is made, distributed and charted. But forget all that. The important bit for us to realise is this: with all new forms of music consumption come all new advertising opportunities… Continue reading →

Weird Beards and Other Bohemian Oddities

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

I have had a travel article published in the May issue of stalkingElk – a brand new comedy satire magazine, for which I’m the official ‘roaming correspondent’. It’s all about the more hidden and unusual side of Prague, and here’s how it starts:

“The Czechs have given us many great words over the years: from ‘pistol’ to ‘polka’, ‘robot’ to ‘howitzer’. But when it comes to haughty pomposity, nothing beats ‘Bohemian’. A drama student’s wet dream of a moniker, it tells the world you are both somebody with artistic leanings, who refuses to conform to the conventional standards of behaviour, and a pretentious tit. So surely Prague, as the capital of Bohemia, is the world’s least conventional city. Well, if that means it has some weird shit then yes. Yes it does.

Here’s just a small sample of Prague’s many peculiarities…”

If you’d like to read more of ‘Weird Beards and Other Bohemian Oddities’, you can click here for the whole article. Or if you want to read more of the kind, you can visit the stalkingElk website and buy the whole mag for just £3. Bargain!

Billygean’s Blog: Hooray for the Humdrum

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 17TH DECEMBER 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. There are several I enjoy – travel blog Going Local is an absolute delight, for example, and James and The Blue Cat is consistently chucklesome – but there are many more that incense me. Like spite-filled celeb rumour mill Perez Hilton, an ever-present reminder of humankind’s inexorable retreat into idiocy. Though it’s the ‘personal diaries’ that have traditionally acquired the majority of my goat.

“Come on”, I thought. “Wake up and smell the narcissism. How can you be so arrogant as to expect total strangers to give a flying fig about the mundane happenings of your mundane life? It’s the 21st century equivalent of popping round the neighbours’ to show off snaps from your latest break in Bognor.” Continue reading →

The Great Potential of Petition Marketing

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 8TH JUNE 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

Here’s a question: how do you feel about Paris Hilton? Personally I have nothing against the pointless, insipid, spoilt, undernourished, narcissistic, empty-headed, fame-raping little brat… but I know others feel differently.

When Ms. Hilton was found guilty of drink driving in 2006, her PR team decided to harness the power of public outcry in a campaign to request her pardon. The Free Paris Hilton petition – which includes the incredible declaration “Paris provides beauty and excitement to our otherwise mundane lives” – received a fairly impressive 33,000 signatures. Unfortunately, a counter petition requesting that the socialite serve her full sentence was signed by over 91,000 people and featured on several major news channels in the US. Proof, if it were needed, that not everybody shares my innate capacity for forgiveness. Continue reading →

Bohemian Oddity #3: Mezi Ploty Festival

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Prior to the late April release of my new travel article in stalkingElk, I’ll be previewing a few of the Bohemian oddities that will be featured. This final post is about Prague’s maddest – in every sense – music festival.

There are some amazing music festivals in Europe. If you were so inclined, you could start the party season at the multimedia, Renaissance subculture festival Netmage in Bologna, take a break at the arty, classical ponce-fest that is St. Magnus on Orkney and then end your summer with the intimately Arctic mish-mash rave of Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik. But for all Europe’s unusual, eclectic music festivals, none come close to the bizarre two-day summer music and theatre bonanza that is Prague’s Mezi Ploty. Continue reading →

Alrite R’kid? Why I Love the Manc Accent

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 28TH JANUARY 2010 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

When I was growing up in a quiet little town in the south of England, I was always jealous of people with accents. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, to be able to ask for jellied eels, or a sausage barm, without sounding like a ponce. Wouldn’t it be bloody brilliant if the sound of my voice alone communicated a deep-rooted link to the precise location of my upbringing.

I do, of course, have vocal indicators that identify me as southern English. Many can even place my accent in the south east. But am I from Basildon or from Basingstoke; from Berkshire or from Kent? My part-BBC, part-Estuary English style of speech gives few pointers to a precise location. The fact is, millions of people across a large part of the country speak in much the same boring way as I do. My voice is a poor compass. It’s hardly surprising, then, that I dreamt of having a real accent. Continue reading →