Don't Let the B*****ds Get You Down

Description

Every day we are issued with new directives from those who are trying to run our lives and grim news about the recession is beamed at us constantly. On top of that, we work longer hours, so we increasingly enlist helpers to manage the home we hardly spend any time in. We're also snowed under by conflicting advice for the myriad of decisions to be made - do we buy vegetables that have been flown half way round the world, or let peasant farmers go bust as we cut down on our air miles? The list seems endless, and confusing. It's enough to drive you round the f***ing bend - but there's no point in letting it get to you. This book is your guide to keeping your spirits up, cutting through the crap and deciding what rules you're going to live your life by, on your terms, and sod everyone else. To achieve your goal of smiling through the credit crisis, it's time to learn some new rules. In this new book from Janet Street-Porter, her tips and wisdom will help you make changes and adapt to the new regime of our world today. Take a deep breath, decide what you won't bother doing any more and substitute activities that give you pleasure and make your limited resources go further. The book's many chapters help you navigate through life with the right attitude in order to really be in charge. Red Tape focuses on negotiating your way through rules and regulations from councils to insurance brokers. Money tells you how to get your bank working for you instead of the other way around and gives advice on how to budget according to your lifestyle without stifling the good stuff. Forget the old way of doing things: an A-Z of the new social strategy for new circumstances advises on everything from giving presents to dumping your partner. And Mumbo Jumbo translates the boring and convoluted speak of politicians, health officials, and supermarket labelling into plain English for the rest of us. Life is a journey and we're experiencing a bumpy patch - but if you think creatively and stick to your guns, there's no reason why you shouldn't emerge from it unscathed and a great deal happier.

Janet Street-Porter's successful career in the media spans nearly 40 years. Starting as a columnist on the Daily Mail at the age of 21, she then wrote for many national newspapers and magazines including the Observer, the Telegraph, the London Evening Standard, Vogue and Harpers. She edited the Independent on Sunday for two years. She currently writes regular weekly columns for the Independent on Sunday and the Daily Mail, and was short listed as columnist of the year in the 2007 press awards. She helped to launch commercial radio in the UK with a daily show on LBC, and went on to devise and present hundreds of television programmes for ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC. She has won a BAFTA for originality and the Prix Italia for Arts programming. In 2004 Janet wrote and presented a successful one-woman show at the Edinburgh Festival, which then toured the UK. She has written two volumes of memoirs, Baggage and Fallout. She appears in a wide range of television programming, from I'm a Celebrity... in 2004, to regular appearances on Question Time and GMTV, Deadline for ITV2 and So you think you can Teach for Five, as well as documentaries for Sky. She has been a regular contributor in four series of C4's F Word, as well as Grand Designs Live. Last year, her abrasive guide to coping with modern living, Life's Too F***ing Short, was a bestseller. Janet is Vice President of the Ramblers Association, as well as a Trustee of the Science Museum, and in 2009 she was awarded an MA from UCA (University for the Creative Arts).