Recent journalism
Ellie writes regularly for a range of publications. Some of her recent articles are below.
We should admire Jade Goody
The Independent
February 17 2009
This morning I did something I had been putting off for a while, and I did it purely because the coverage of Jade Goody's cervical cancer in the newspapers prompted me to. I rang my doctor's surgery and asked them to tell me when my next smear test is due. Not yet, it turned out - smear tests should be carried out every three years and my last one was in September 2007. I think about smear tests more than most people, because in my early twenties (the age for testing has subsequently been raised to 25) I had a series of abnormal test results leading to a procedure called a Large Loop Excision of the Transformation Zone (LLETZ), which is where the abnormal cells are cut out. Read more...
It's OK, Angelina. We've all done it
The Independent
January 30 2009
From speaking to friends who have young children, I know that getting dressed to leave the house in the morning is not necessarily an easy feat once you are a parent. Not only do you need clothes that have escaped any bodily fluids coming out of your child, but you need the time to ensure that your outfit is cleaned, ironed and has matching accessories, not to mention finding your hairbrush and remembering to clean your teeth. Angelina Jolie has six children. Even with Brad Pitt on hand to baby-sit, kissing all of the kids to say goodbye means running the gamut of 12 sticky hands and six runny noses before leaving the house, with plenty of scope for having to get dressed all over again. Read more...
The way to end Oxbridge elitism
The Independent
January 19 2009
A session at the weekend's Fabian Society Conference called "One idea to make Britain fairer" was a Dragon's Den-style event in which five policy suggestions were championed by delegates, commented on by a panel and voted on by an audience of members of the Labour-affiliated think tank. Much to the distress of the session's chair, higher education minister David Lammy, one of the joint winners was a suggestion for a cap on the number of places at Oxford and Cambridge given to privately-educated students. This was advocated by Sarah Vero, a parliamentary researcher. Read more...
Fairy tales prepare children for reality
The Independent
January 7 2009
Have you heard the story about the beautiful but poor girl who lived with her father? One day her father met a nice woman who went on to become her stepmother. She helped the girl with her homework, encouraged her to achieve all that she could and bought her lovely clothes, even doing her hair nicely with ribbons for the local ball where she fell desperately in love with a prince. Or what about that story about the two children who went for a walk in the woods one day leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so that they could get home? Fortunately the breadcrumbs were still there later so they found their way home in time for dinner. Boring aren't they? Read more...
I hang on the Queen's every word
The Independent
December 23 2008
When tragedy becomes history
The Guardian,/strong>
December 16 2008
A HIPs for the unwary job seeker
The Independent
December 4 2008
Would you accept the offer of a new job if you knew that three members of the team you were joining had all left their posts within six months? Or if you were aware that bullying was rife? What if you knew that your team was marked for redundancy if profits fall? In less uncertain economic times you may have taken a risk, knowing another opportunity would be just around the corner if this one failed. But now, with new jobs few and far between, this would be pretty unwise. Which is why the time is ripe for the Government to bring a new element of compulsion into the employment process and introduce the JIP, or Job Information Pack. Read more...
Politicians must dress to impress
The Independent
November 20 2008
I went to a fancy-dress party last weekend where each guest was asked to dress as a cartoon character. I didn't exactly enter into the spirit of the event: I found a cat mask for £1 and on a friend's advice said I was Milady, the cat from the 1980s cartoon Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds (based, of course, on The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas). The other guests put rather more effort into things but among the Scooby-Doos and the Barney Rubbles there was one who caused us much angst - a white man in a brown outfit and a "blacked up" face. He wasn't blacked up in the traditional sense, he told us, but had instead come as Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo, an apparently legendary character from an episode of the animated series South Park. Lots of middle-class head-scratching ensued as we tried to work out whether blacking up is acceptable if you are not portraying a person. Read more...
We don't want 'great actors' today
The Independent
September 29 2008
I know it's a bit macabre but I subscribe to an American email service called celebritydeathbeeper.com. It sends email alerts whenever a celebrity dies, and means you can keep up to date with who is still around. This saves you the embarrassment of going on holiday and missing the news for a few weeks then later finding yourself musing to friends why so-and-so hasn't made any films lately only to be told they're dead. Usually I've never heard of people in the death beeper emails - obscure musicians or American game show hosts. But I knew who Paul Newman was of course, when the email popped into my inbox. Everyone knows Paul Newman, even if for my generation it is as much for salad dressings as his film roles. Read more...
British men and the art of seduction
The Independent
July 29 2008
Macmillan are going to publish Love Letters of Great Men, an invention by the makers of the film version of Sex and the City which, until now, didn't exist. The book, which Carrie reads while in bed with her lover Mr Big, and which he copies and sends in emails in order to woo her back after leaving her standing at the altar, includes letters by Pliny, Henry VIII, Mozart and Napoleon. Leaving aside the question of whether Henry VIII, divorced from two wives and murderer of two more, should be feted as an example of how to woo a woman, I am not convinced that sending love letters is the way to a woman's heart. Read more...
Such cheap snobbery about Wayne's wedding
The Independent
June 13 2008
I'm getting married in eight days' time. We would have done it yesterday, but Westlife had already been booked by Wayne and Coleen. Actually, that's not true. Our mate James is DJing for us instead, and we're having a slightly less glamorous ceremony than theirs on the Italian Riviera, by opting for Walthamstow Register Office instead. But despite being convinced that my own nuptials are in the best possible taste, as opposed to all the other weddings that are far less classy than my own, I'm not going to join in the snobbery when it comes to Wayne and Coleen. Read more...
Sex education? Don't expect it from teachers
The Independent
6 May 2008
The NSPCC, which runs the Childline helpline for children to ring with their problems, has said that nearly 50 children a day call its helpline because they feel under pressure to have sex, and has called for schools to teach the emotional side of sex alongside the biological facts. I'm not sure that I would have been happy being taught about emotions by my teachers. I am friends with several teachers and their love lives are just as complex and emotional as anyone else's. Read more...
A hard pill to swallow
The Guardian
5 May 2008
The news isn't good for the morning-after pill. A constitutional court ruling in Chile recently banned the public health system from distributing free emergency contraception. In some parts of the US, there are legislative attempts to make access to the pill more difficult on the grounds that it is a abortion-inducing medicine. And while doctors in Italy who refused two women emergency contraception may face sanctions, there is no shortage of political an religious leaders supporting them. Read more...
Emergency Call
Progress Online
28 April 2008
At the moment pharmacists will usually only give emergency contraception to the person who needs it and at the point of needing it. So if a woman can't get to the doctors or pharmacist after unprotected sex, neither can she ask her partner, friend or mother to go for her, and nor can she just go to her bathroom cabinet and use emergency supplies. Guarding emergency contraception in this way suggests that women are not able to work out when they need emergency contraception, and cannot answer a few simple questions to determine whether it is the right course of action. Read more...
Now it's Prezza's turn to show his feminine side
The Independent
21 April 2008
At the now-closed Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green, there used to be a competition during the interval where audience members were given two seemingly unconnected subjects and asked to come up with a joke linking the two. George Bush and a McDonald's happy meal, for example, to which an answer might be that they are both full of crap and trying to take over the world. Not once though did they ever think of asking the audience to set their minds to John Prescott and Princess Diana, though if they had, a few similarities could have been drawn. Read more...
We should admire Jade Goody
The Independent
February 17 2009
This morning I did something I had been putting off for a while, and I did it purely because the coverage of Jade Goody's cervical cancer in the newspapers prompted me to. I rang my doctor's surgery and asked them to tell me when my next smear test is due. Not yet, it turned out - smear tests should be carried out every three years and my last one was in September 2007. I think about smear tests more than most people, because in my early twenties (the age for testing has subsequently been raised to 25) I had a series of abnormal test results leading to a procedure called a Large Loop Excision of the Transformation Zone (LLETZ), which is where the abnormal cells are cut out. Read more...
It's OK, Angelina. We've all done it
The Independent
January 30 2009
From speaking to friends who have young children, I know that getting dressed to leave the house in the morning is not necessarily an easy feat once you are a parent. Not only do you need clothes that have escaped any bodily fluids coming out of your child, but you need the time to ensure that your outfit is cleaned, ironed and has matching accessories, not to mention finding your hairbrush and remembering to clean your teeth. Angelina Jolie has six children. Even with Brad Pitt on hand to baby-sit, kissing all of the kids to say goodbye means running the gamut of 12 sticky hands and six runny noses before leaving the house, with plenty of scope for having to get dressed all over again. Read more...
The way to end Oxbridge elitism
The Independent
January 19 2009
A session at the weekend's Fabian Society Conference called "One idea to make Britain fairer" was a Dragon's Den-style event in which five policy suggestions were championed by delegates, commented on by a panel and voted on by an audience of members of the Labour-affiliated think tank. Much to the distress of the session's chair, higher education minister David Lammy, one of the joint winners was a suggestion for a cap on the number of places at Oxford and Cambridge given to privately-educated students. This was advocated by Sarah Vero, a parliamentary researcher. Read more...
Fairy tales prepare children for reality
The Independent
January 7 2009
Have you heard the story about the beautiful but poor girl who lived with her father? One day her father met a nice woman who went on to become her stepmother. She helped the girl with her homework, encouraged her to achieve all that she could and bought her lovely clothes, even doing her hair nicely with ribbons for the local ball where she fell desperately in love with a prince. Or what about that story about the two children who went for a walk in the woods one day leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so that they could get home? Fortunately the breadcrumbs were still there later so they found their way home in time for dinner. Boring aren't they? Read more...
I hang on the Queen's every word
The Independent
December 23 2008
My favourite part of Christmas, after the food and the presents of course, is the Queen's Christmas broadcast. Watching this was such an important part of my childhood Christmases that I am often quite surprised to find that most families don't do the same. Please understand, this wasn't out of support for the concept of monarchy, but so that we could spend the rest of afternoon picking the speech apart and so that we could have a family sweepstake on what colour she would be wearing (last year was yellow, the year before was green, I'm plumping for red this year). The best Queen's Christmas broadcast, in my lifetime at least, was her memorable annus horribilis in 1992. I wouldn't go as far as saying that it made the Queen seem normal, but it did at least provide us with a phrase that entered the public consciousness. Conversely, last year's was one of the worst I have heard… Read more...
When tragedy becomes history
The Guardian,/strong>
December 16 2008
:
Lockerbie academy had already broken up for the Christmas holidays on Wednesday 21 December 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 from London Heathrow to New York's JFK airport exploded over the town, an hour into the flight, killing all 259 people on board and 11 local people. Because the school was empty and had the space and catering facilities, it became a centre of activity for rescue workers and the troops brought in to help find the dead, gather their belongings and piece together the remains of the plane. For many people worldwide, the name of the town became synonymous with the disaster. But for students attending the school now, the explosion on board Pan Am 103 is something that happened before they were born. So how does a school at the centre of a tragedy like this ensure students learn about events in recent history that happened to their community? Read more…A HIPs for the unwary job seeker
The Independent
December 4 2008
Would you accept the offer of a new job if you knew that three members of the team you were joining had all left their posts within six months? Or if you were aware that bullying was rife? What if you knew that your team was marked for redundancy if profits fall? In less uncertain economic times you may have taken a risk, knowing another opportunity would be just around the corner if this one failed. But now, with new jobs few and far between, this would be pretty unwise. Which is why the time is ripe for the Government to bring a new element of compulsion into the employment process and introduce the JIP, or Job Information Pack. Read more...
Politicians must dress to impress
The Independent
November 20 2008
I went to a fancy-dress party last weekend where each guest was asked to dress as a cartoon character. I didn't exactly enter into the spirit of the event: I found a cat mask for £1 and on a friend's advice said I was Milady, the cat from the 1980s cartoon Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds (based, of course, on The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas). The other guests put rather more effort into things but among the Scooby-Doos and the Barney Rubbles there was one who caused us much angst - a white man in a brown outfit and a "blacked up" face. He wasn't blacked up in the traditional sense, he told us, but had instead come as Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo, an apparently legendary character from an episode of the animated series South Park. Lots of middle-class head-scratching ensued as we tried to work out whether blacking up is acceptable if you are not portraying a person. Read more...
We don't want 'great actors' today
The Independent
September 29 2008
I know it's a bit macabre but I subscribe to an American email service called celebritydeathbeeper.com. It sends email alerts whenever a celebrity dies, and means you can keep up to date with who is still around. This saves you the embarrassment of going on holiday and missing the news for a few weeks then later finding yourself musing to friends why so-and-so hasn't made any films lately only to be told they're dead. Usually I've never heard of people in the death beeper emails - obscure musicians or American game show hosts. But I knew who Paul Newman was of course, when the email popped into my inbox. Everyone knows Paul Newman, even if for my generation it is as much for salad dressings as his film roles. Read more...
British men and the art of seduction
The Independent
July 29 2008
Macmillan are going to publish Love Letters of Great Men, an invention by the makers of the film version of Sex and the City which, until now, didn't exist. The book, which Carrie reads while in bed with her lover Mr Big, and which he copies and sends in emails in order to woo her back after leaving her standing at the altar, includes letters by Pliny, Henry VIII, Mozart and Napoleon. Leaving aside the question of whether Henry VIII, divorced from two wives and murderer of two more, should be feted as an example of how to woo a woman, I am not convinced that sending love letters is the way to a woman's heart. Read more...
Such cheap snobbery about Wayne's wedding
The Independent
June 13 2008
I'm getting married in eight days' time. We would have done it yesterday, but Westlife had already been booked by Wayne and Coleen. Actually, that's not true. Our mate James is DJing for us instead, and we're having a slightly less glamorous ceremony than theirs on the Italian Riviera, by opting for Walthamstow Register Office instead. But despite being convinced that my own nuptials are in the best possible taste, as opposed to all the other weddings that are far less classy than my own, I'm not going to join in the snobbery when it comes to Wayne and Coleen. Read more...
Sex education? Don't expect it from teachers
The Independent
6 May 2008
The NSPCC, which runs the Childline helpline for children to ring with their problems, has said that nearly 50 children a day call its helpline because they feel under pressure to have sex, and has called for schools to teach the emotional side of sex alongside the biological facts. I'm not sure that I would have been happy being taught about emotions by my teachers. I am friends with several teachers and their love lives are just as complex and emotional as anyone else's. Read more...
A hard pill to swallow
The Guardian
5 May 2008
The news isn't good for the morning-after pill. A constitutional court ruling in Chile recently banned the public health system from distributing free emergency contraception. In some parts of the US, there are legislative attempts to make access to the pill more difficult on the grounds that it is a abortion-inducing medicine. And while doctors in Italy who refused two women emergency contraception may face sanctions, there is no shortage of political an religious leaders supporting them. Read more...
Emergency Call
Progress Online
28 April 2008
At the moment pharmacists will usually only give emergency contraception to the person who needs it and at the point of needing it. So if a woman can't get to the doctors or pharmacist after unprotected sex, neither can she ask her partner, friend or mother to go for her, and nor can she just go to her bathroom cabinet and use emergency supplies. Guarding emergency contraception in this way suggests that women are not able to work out when they need emergency contraception, and cannot answer a few simple questions to determine whether it is the right course of action. Read more...
Now it's Prezza's turn to show his feminine side
The Independent
21 April 2008
At the now-closed Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green, there used to be a competition during the interval where audience members were given two seemingly unconnected subjects and asked to come up with a joke linking the two. George Bush and a McDonald's happy meal, for example, to which an answer might be that they are both full of crap and trying to take over the world. Not once though did they ever think of asking the audience to set their minds to John Prescott and Princess Diana, though if they had, a few similarities could have been drawn. Read more...