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This might not be a popular view – it may even be contentious – but there needs to be some balance against the hysteria that has surrounded the recent calls for state control of the media.

This is an incredibly complex issue so attempting to simplify things is fraught with difficulties – but here goes…

Point 1: ‘phone hacking is not necessarily a bad thing
Consider this scenario: journalists hacking the ‘phone of Milly Dowler were able to unearth vital information that enabled the police to find her alive and return her to her family. Her mother would be on TV praising the investigative efforts of the News Of The World, saying the paper had saved her daughter’s life when the police were coming up with blanks. Nobody would have cared how it was achieved, the newspaper would have survived and Leveson would never have happened. Or: what if ‘phone hacking had exposed Jimmy Saville to be a paedophile while he was still alive and unveiled a vile network that was preying on vulnerable young people? Once again, even if undercover work was not praised it would surely not be vilified. Such is the fine thread that all these issues hang on.
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We love the sense you get when you give money to people who are more needy than you are. On Friday 14th December Sue and Josh went to Birmingham to donate money to the Birmingham City Mission charity.

The Birmingham City Mission helps the homeless, the elderly, children and families in poverty. For the homeless they hold a care centre and they provide a meal every night along with any other food that the homeless want to take away with them. For the elderly they will arrange a visit to see what is wrong and prioritise to see whether they need urgent attention or can wait. They hold short exercises, informal Christian services, socializing, quizzes, slide shows and crafts.

Changeworks gave £250 to the charity while Sue added £250 out of her own money. We hope to do more to help charities like these by donating money to them.

We spent all day filming the Travis Perkins Forklift Truck Driver of the Year competition in snowy Northampton for one of our major clients, Briggs Equipment.

The event focused on health and safety and damage reduction in a fun and entertaining way, drawing on the competiveness of the forklift truck drivers that took part.

The event is an important one as it rewards safe and efficient driving practise and lets the forklift truck drivers become heroes for a day. Twenty-five drivers were selected for the event and there were three different trials that were to be completed by them:
1.    High trial-This was where a forklift truck was used to play basketball.
2.    Tag & Stack-This was where they had to quickly stack and un-stack.
3.    Wide-Where they had to take a wide load around a course as quickly as possible.

The winner, Norman Moss, got a glass trophy with £500 pounds worth of retail vouchers. All the participants got a Briggs giveaway bag which included hats, pens etc.

We thoroughly enjoyed the day and had lots of fun filming the drivers at their best. We here at Changeworks look forward to doing more ideas like these the New Year.

The front cover

We have helped one of our clients, Briggs Equipment, to the front page of the magazine WLN (World Logistics News) with an image that we took. The article was about Briggs acquisition of one of their main competitors Barloworld Handling LTD.

The image that we took was in Cannock near the Briggs Equipment building. We climbed a steep hill minding all the brambles along the way and we had to set up the camera stand on the hill, although on a slanted part of the hill, and the camera would be put on a thirty second timer where it would collect all the lights that the cars give off and just turn the cars into lights going around the Briggs building.

There were a few problems to encounter in getting the image where we had to climb a steep hill and mind the brambles when climbing up on the hill and then there was trying to position the camera stand where it could still stand while o

n a slope and of course the freezing cold which was mainly due to the icy wind that was blowing. We were stood atop the hill for about one hour and a half trying to get the right picture and wait for the sky to get darker.

Sue’s top tips for shooting night time photography:
- Carry a torch so you don’t trip over anything.
-Wear warm high visibility jackets
-Slow down the shutter speed to 20-30 seconds
-Remote control fire shutter speed using the mirror facing up
-Set the white balance to tungsten
-Use a graduated neutral density filter

We here at Changeworks love gaining front page coverage for all our clients and would love to see more front page coverage in the near future.

Ingestre Hall

On Wednesday 14th November we shot four different videos at the iconic location of Ingestre Hall Residential Arts Centre for one of our clients, MLR Business Consultants.

Ingestre Hall is on the outskirts of Stafford and has a rich history dating all the way back to 1613 when it was built on the site of a manor house which was pulled down. In there it holds monuments of the previous owners of the house like the Chetwynd, Talbot and Shrewsbury family dating back over 400 years. It was badly damaged by fire in 1882 but was rebuilt with new rooms with the house having a few refurbishments since then. It is now owned by the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and is used as a Residential Arts Centre area.

Each of the four videos that we filmed will be edited into 2-3 minute advice films. One of the videos is about appraisals and performance management, distinguishing the difference between the two and what is involved. The second video is about New Year’s resolutions and how to stick to them. The third video looks at how to get best value for money on training and the fourth video explores sales training and all the different types of training there is for this field.

MLR Business Consultants Ltd design and deliver a range of tailored management training programmes and business development coaching initiatives for a wide range of industries.