It’s caring enough about your offspring to bother to punish them when they have done wrong. This is not an easy task because it requires effort – effort that once made shows a child in a very subtle way how much you care about their future wellbeing.

It is also caring enough to nurture them and give them the best life chances you possibly can. To pick them up when they are feeling low and struggling, to make sure they know that with the right hard work and behaviour there are endless opportunities out there for them.

In the aftermath of the riots that have been happening across the country this week, society could learn a lot from good parenting.

First, we need to clamp down on the young people who have looted shops and in some cases set fire to homes and attacked innocent civilians and policemen/women. We need to show them that these abhorrent actions have not gone unnoticed and will have severe repercussions.

But the job does not end there. No matter how unpopular it may seem at the moment, after the punishment needs to come the nurturing and care.

You can’t just beat someone with a stick, send them back to a life which they are clearly not feeling happy and fulfilled in, and then expect that anything will change.

The sense of entitlement that has crept up within our society needs to be smothered, but so too does this growing societal trend which silently dictates that people should be left to their own devices and if they make mistakes and don’t ‘measure up’ they will be cajoled and punished but never respected or nurtured.

The message needs to get through that society expects better from those that took part in the riots because they are part of this society. And at the same time society needs to start keeping its end of the deal by making more of an effort to support members of its youth who are feeling so disengaged they are quite willing to destroy everything around them.

Clearly, not enough is being done at the moment to support these people – I don’t think we could have been given a clearer signal of that fact this week. The concept of ‘tough love’ needs an urgent revisit.

By Sophie Hudson

But last Friday I took part in an event which was to change my views on it forever, making me much more certain of my stance on it. I slept rough in London for charity.

I was undercover at least, in Spitalfields market. But I was in a sleeping bag, there was no heating, and the only thing between me and the pavement for an entire November night was a very thin piece of cardboard.

It was an uncomfortable experience to say the least. I gritted my teeth and got on with it though, knowing that within only a few hours I’d be able to go home and get into a nice warm bed.

When I woke up just after 6am I was cold, I ached all over and I just generally felt very tired and stale. At that moment, whilst most the people around me were still asleep and it was eerily quiet, I suddenly wondered what it would feel like if options were not open to me at that point in time.

I wondered how I would be feeling if my only option for the day was to gather up my sleeping bag and bit of cardboard and head out onto the street to beg for money. What if I couldn’t go home and have a shower? What if I couldn’t go and brush my teeth? What if there was no food for me waiting in my fridge? What if I knew I would be sleeping rough again that night?

Anyone who is living a life in which those ‘what ifs’ are their daily reality is not in that position out of choice. A home is something most of us take for granted, and to be without one on a constant basis must be utterly miserable and one of the least care-free existences anyone can fathom.

There are no lengths we shouldn’t be going to as a society to put an end to homelessness. Since Friday I’ve already made a promise to myself that I will do all I personally can to help alleviate the situation in some way. Whether that is by donating money to a charity, becoming a trustee or volunteering in a soup kitchen I am not yet sure.

One thing I am sure of though is that there is no easy solution to a problem like homelessness, but that everything must be done to find one. It’s something that homeless people themselves have very little, if any power, to change. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to help pull them back out of that constant struggle.

By Sophie Hudson

I’d rather not go into laborious detail as to why, but it has something to do with a 15,000 word dissertation and starting my first proper job in journalism at Third Sector magazine as the fundraising reporter.

This blog will now be resuming normal practice though, with the aim of getting at least one or two posts up a week. And I will also be blogging occasionally for Third Sector; incidentally one of my first posts for the magazine can be found here.

By Sophie Hudson

According to an article in the Times, one million turtle hatchlings could be heading for the slick. And they could be slowly poisoned by the oil, as it is drawn to the seaweed they cling to in their early years.

This all follows reports that a sperm whale, an endangered animal, may have been killed as a result of the spill. The 25-foot-long creature was found dead with multiple shark bites 77 miles away from the oil.

And this is just two species out of so very many which have been disastrously affected. I haven’t yet mentioned the hundreds of birds and fish and other beautiful creatures which have been mercilessly killed.

I can’t say I’ve agreed with all of Obama’s speeches regarding this ecological disaster. His loaded-sounding ‘British Petroleum’ comments were reactionary and in my opinion showed him in one of the worst lights since he was elected as President.

He seemed to be saying purely what he felt the American public wanted to hear rather than thinking things through and speaking fairly with balanced thought for the ramification of his words.

But one thing I do agree with is his strong stance that we need to break our dependency on oil.

This spill has shown in a fast-forward, quick-result way the unfixable damage we are doing to our planet every day through the way we live. Becuase of our selfish dependency on things like cars and planes, innocent animals are now losing their lives.

In a similar way, but much more slowly, many species will slowly start to die out all together through global warming because of the way we treat the planet every day.

I am not innocent myself here. I have as much dependency on oil as the next person. I drive a car. I go on holiday by plane.

Bu these are such trivial actions. They are not about survival, they are purely about enjoyment. And yet so often we are seeing the price for such actions paid for with lives.

We must do everything we can to try and find a clean, viable alternative to oil. It is probably unlikely that we will manage this any time soon, but it is at least worth a shot. It is unrealistic however that we are all going to completely stop all activities which depend on using some form of generated energy.

It’s just so sad that yet again there are so many innocent parties having to suffer because of our selfish actions. So that we can go on holiday or get ourselves from A to B on a day to day basis animals have to lose their lives. And this just doesn’t seem in any way right to me.

By Sophie Hudson

In a football match it seems there are so many characters, or players, and you are at such a distance from them on the screen most of the time, that it is difficult to really analyse their individual performance. Maybe with practice at watching football matches this would get easier. But I will try to analyse a couple of them here.

I am no football expert, but to my mind Green really didn’t mean to let that goal in, he tried his best, and to be honest I’m just left feeling quite sorry for him rather than angry that this mistake occurred.

He saved a number of other goals from going in and was clearly devastated that he did let one through. It literally seemed to slip through his fingers, and we’re all human and make little errors so I hope people are not too harsh on him.

Another individual I must mention is Heskey. I was watching the game with someone who informed me that usually he gets a lot of stick for not being terribly good, but in my humble opinion he seemed to be doing a lot of great stuff last night. The commentators kept mentioning him, and he got the ball closer to the goal on a number of occasions. He definitely seemed to be a key player in last night’s game.

The game in general was a far more exciting affair than I would have expected. I found myself becoming strangely patriotic. And whilst there was no moment as uplifting as when Gerrard scored his goal very early in the game, I have never felt such a momentary sinking feeling as when the USA kind of scored a goal.

The rules of the game did sometimes confuse me though.

Even though a few years ago someone gave me a great analogy about shoe shopping to help me understand the offside rule, I still found the whole thing rather complicated to get my head round yesterday. And was it just me or did the referee seem to be handing out a surprising amount of cards? He appeared to think he was playing a game of solitaire rather than football.

On the costumes, or kits, England wearing white seems to be a rather silly choice. They were getting numerous grass stains, especially on their socks, so looked really quite messy by the end of the match. It’s going to be a very tough cleaning job for someone as well. Maybe a stripy red and white outfit would have been a more sensible choice.

It was quite long. Maybe just by about 20 minutes. I think I’d be more inclined to watch it again if it was slightly shorter, as by about the 70 minute mark they were starting to lose my attention if I’m being honest.

Overall I found football match-watching to be a pretty enjoyable experience, and much more entertaining than I had expected. I even found myself yelling at the screen a few times, which I surprised myself with. I’m not totally sure I would call it a ‘beautiful game’ though, as I understand it is often called.

Even so, I am very much looking forward to watching our next game. Come on England!

By Sophie Hudson

There is no need to dramatise an event like this though. It is more than ‘dramatic’ enough already. But some of the reporting I’ve seen on both the TV and in the papers has been so flamboyantly exaggerated, it’s made the whole thing look like some kind of dramatic twist in East Enders rather than a truly shocking and sad real-life event.

Friday’s headline in The Sun topped it all off, with: “Psycho cabbie flipped over £100k tax bill”.

A psychotic illness, which the Sun seems to be inferring Bird had, is a very serious and burdensome condition that many people around the word have to live with.

I’m currently coming towards the end of a Masters in Journalism. As part of the course this year we attended a press conference with Shift, an organisation which works to remove mental ill-health discrimination. During this the organisation briefed us on how badly the press handle mental illness in their reporting.

And because they are so flippant with the use of words such as ‘psycho’, we start to believe that mental illness is a key driving force when it comes to horrific crimes.

In fact I was myself very surprised to find out during the press conference that the odds of being killed by a stranger who is mentally ill is one in 10 million. That is the same chances as being struck by lightning.

In fact the sad reality of the situation is that people with a mental illness are more likely to be victims of attacks themselves, due to under-recognised hate crimes directed towards them through no fault of their own.

And apart from all this, I am yet to hear any concrete evidence which shows Bird had a mental illness. I have read the above article in the Sun and even there they fail to adequately explain the use of the word ‘psycho’ in their headline.

Accuracy is key in journalism. Reporters need to understand how much of an impact they can and do have on people’s perceptions. They shouldn’t ‘use’ events like those which have occurred in Cumbria this week to sell newspapers, or up viewing figures.

They should report such sensitive topics with great care and respect. And I would like to think that we are not all so hardened in today’s society that we cannot understand the magnitude of a massacre when it is put to us in plain, simple language.

By Sophie Hudson

Although I personally stand by what I wrote about the film below, she explains well why some may not enjoy watching it.

But, in my opinion, anyone who takes satc seriously enough to think it could make any kind of religious, feminist or social statement really needs to get a reality check and calm themselves down.

I saw the new film this weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And no, I wasn’t sat in the cinema thinking I was witnessing some kind of a life lesson. I didn’t sit there thinking it was either a really clever or really stupid statement about feminism. I didn’t sit there thinking that maybe I should be modelling my life on that of either Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte or Miranda.

And this is because it is a film. It is fictional. It is not real, it’s just a bit of fun. And anyone who goes to see this film will be well aware of this fact in advance.

On the length ‘issue’, which seems to upsetting a lot of people, thank goodness it is 146 minutes long. I was waiting two years for this film and there’s always a chance it could be the last one in the franchise. If it was any shorter I would have been very disappointed.

Oh and a quick word of advice to all those who do have a problem with this. Next time you see a film, you are able to see its length beforehand. Someone has, remarkably, already timed it for you.

The thing that annoys me about all of this satc-bashing is that there are far ‘worse’ rom-coms out there. Ones with far less realism about relationships. Ones where there is zero character development. Ones where there are no laugh-out-moments, so really they are just ‘roms’.

And that’s just the romantic comedies. What about all the gangsta-style films and TV shows which glamourise violence and make it seem ok to be a thug for a living? Or all the action blockbusters there have been which completely ignore any kind of human diversity. All the characters are vacant stereotypes and rarely differ between one buget-breaking action adventure to the next.

But no one cares about any of this or rips into these films for all their obvious weaknesses because we are all aware that this is the kind of thing these types of films always entail. They are telling a story, with fictional characters which are there purely for our entertainment.

And satc2 is no different, we are given what we expect to be given and what we have been given for the past 12 years of the franchise.

Take, for example the complaint that Samantha is offensive in satc2. Yes, she certainly is. But as far as I remember, Samantha has always been offensive. I’m not sure why everyone has suddenly decided to become outraged by her now. She’s a character and she does and says a lot of things that the rest of us would never do or say.

On top of this the film does at least make an effort to be balanced through Miranda’s character, who makes a constant effort throughout to encourage Samantha to be less offensive towards the culture in Abu Dhabi.

None of this is particularly relevant though, as I wasn’t there to get a lesson in religious politics. I was there to see a light-hearted film during which I could switch off from the week’s stresses, see some pretty clothes and find out what was going on with four of my favourite FICTIONAL characters. And funnily enough, this was exactly what the film provided.

People really need to stop trying to intellectualise something which so knowingly daft.

By Sophie Hudson

I remember I was watching TV with my mum about a year ago when an advert came on for the morning after pill. I told her I was disgusted that they could show such a thing as an advert, like it was some kind of convenience product you can pick up at the supermarket should you fancy one.

I actually made a comment at the time, thinking I was being ridiculous and melodramatic, that next on our screens would be adverts for abortions. I honestly never thought the day would come though. Yet here we are, a year later.

First of all let me get something straight. I am not anti-abortion. I am very much pro-choice. And if a woman feels like the right decision for her is to have an abortion then I fully respect and support that.

I’ve never been in a position of needing to make that decision myself. I don’t think I would have one. But I certainly wouldn’t rule out the possibility that I might have one.

But it would be a harrowing choice to have to make. It is something I would take very seriously. I would be making a decision on whether it was better for my baby to die than to have the chance of living. And then there are the possible psychological consequences I could be living with for the rest of my life. Many women who have had an abortion say that they never, ever get over it or recover from their decision.

But with adverts like this entering our daily lives, we are in grave danger of cheapening this huge, potentially highly damaging decision.

And anyone who bangs on about sexual health as a reason for adverts like this is so very misguided. According to the Guardian, Marie Stopes, the sexual health clinic which the advert is from, said it “took the decision to screen the commercial after a study found fewer than half of UK adults knew where to go for specialist advice about an unplanned pregnancy other than their GP.”

OTHER THAN THEIR GP. Are they not listening to themselves? People are clearly well-aware that they can turn to their GP if they need advice on the matter. I’m also guessing that people are well-aware they could easily Google the issue and be confronted by plenty of trustworthy advice from organisation such as Marie Stopes themselves and the NHS.

In fact, to prove this, I have just Googled ‘abortion advice’. The NHS came up as the first result and Marie Stopes are third.

And this is without even going into the countless helplines there are out there and the fact that we live in the kind of society nowadays where most people would be able to find someone personally who they could talk things through with, and get support from, when it comes to making such a huge decision.

People do not need some crass advert to encourage them into seeing abortion as a no-big-deal quick fix when it comes to an unwanted pregnancy. We do not need to be any more desensitised to killing an unwanted baby than we already are.

Abortion is a very important woman’s right. But it is also potentially psychologically, and sometimes even physically, highly damaging for the woman concerned. It is something which should be entered into on the understanding that it is an absolute last-resort option. Something which we should try to avoid at all costs.

An abortion is not a condom. And quite frankly it is starting to get the same treatment as one in our media, and that really scares me.

By Sophie Hudson

The article, written by Ed Caesar, in general seems to be rather scathing about wannabe journalists. It almost insinuates that any of us who have the audacity for wanting to enter the profession must be either slightly mad or completely ignorant of what the whole process is going to entail.

“Why would anyone choose to become a journalist in this climate?” the article asks. Before explaining that: “In the early years, at least, the hours will be weird, the money derisory, the burden Sisyphean. You will also enjoy the added anxiety of having no idea what the industry will look like in 10 years.”

And Caesar is keen to point out that “next month, around 3,000 students will complete postgraduate diplomas in journalism and media studies, and a further 30,000 will receive degrees in these subjects”. But this, to me, is irrelevant.

Not all of these students will want to enter into the profession. And many of them will not have done well enough in their degree or diploma for it to be worth even adding to their CV. And a degree or diploma does not a journalist make. The majority of them will simply not be determined or good enough to crack into the industry.

And this number probably does not even begin to compare to the amount of economics, business, management and maths graduates who will be wanting to enter into accountancy, consultancy and the like. And this in a time when the recession hit these businesses often just as hard, or if not then possibly harder, than it hit journalism.

Yes, the traditional newspaper print media is dying a slow death. But that does not mean that journalism in general is. I for one have already started to see an increase in the number of jobs advertised on Gorkana in the past few months.

And I can only hope that Rupert Murdoch’s looming experiment with charging for internet content is going to be highly successful. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be, as long as others follow him as soon as possible and the BBC do start to tone down their free internet news content.

On top of this, we have the extra readership the iPad is bound to bring to look forward to and the fact that many magazines have actually recently enjoyed increased readership figures to keep us feeling positive.

I’m not saying it is going to be easy but I am determined to remain optimistic about my prospects. Nothing is impossible. I’ve just been watching BBC Young Musician 2010 and if 14-year-olds are able to train hard and perform music from memory to that kind of breath-taking standard, then I am going to stay positive about my chances of cracking into journalism.

It is exactly these types of ‘scare stories’ which turn journalists into a laughing stock as a profession. I wish there had to be more balance to journalism. Perhaps then we wouldn’t all be dismally ebbing our way towards featuring “somewhere between MPs and estate agents in the sliding scale of disgustingness,” as Caesar himself puts it.

By Sophie Hudson

P.S. Just to be extra optimistic, if you’re reading this and you’re hiring my email is: sophie.i.hudson *AT* gmail.com.