John: Angry letters to the editor

Feb 25 2010 by John Avison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

RECENTLY I have been obliged to take a serious and professional interest in things that begin ‘Dear Editor’.

There’s a kind of justice in this, a ‘what goes around, comes around’ feel to it.

My first job in journalism came as an invitation from the late great Bernard Kaye, editor of the Dewsbury Reporter Series as it was then.

It came because I wrote a letter to the Mirfield Reporter decrying the fact that in the latest Budget, old age pensions were scheduled to rise, while student grants were not.

Why throw money at the past and penny-pinch the future? This was the main thrust of the argument.

You can imagine the furore. Every pensioner in the district got out the green ink – or was it bile? – and slung gallons of it in my direction.

Their argument was that they hadn’t fought two World Wars and got themselves full of shrapnel and Dig For Victory cabbage for some spotty juvenile to tell them it was time to climb on the scrap-heap.

Anyway, Bernard Kaye phoned me out of the blue with the life-changing words: “You seem like somebody with strong opinions who can put them into writing. Want a job in reporting, laddie?”

Well, at the time, all I was doing was painting landscapes and dog portraits, and there was not a lot of regular money in that.

Journalism, on the other hand, was not badly paid at all in those days. Within a week I was shaking Mr Kaye’s hand and looking for a second-hand typewriter.

The first thing I was told about journalism is that there is a story behind every door. It’s an optimistic rule but not always true.