I am a freelance PR consultant specialising in promotional and business copywriting, communications planning and business development for charities and small businesses. In my time I’ve worked full time or as a consultant for government departments, the BBC and a range of other organisations of various sizes and degrees of dysfunctionality. Now I’m using my experience to work with clients who can make use of it. I am, as you would expect, the soul of discretion when I’m working for my clients – all opinions expressed here are strictly personal.
In theory this blog is about running a small communications business but it seems to have a mind of its own and will keep digressing into dentistry, history, government, politics, feminism, age and bicycle-rickshaws. One day I really will get some discipline going round here. In the meantime, I hope you find something you like.
Sole Trader PR 
Hey Penny, I used to think that being a freelancer was utterly terrifying – no knowing of where the next job is coming from etc, but now I’m not so bothered. Somehow after five years of growing more disciplined and less sniffy about getting out there, promoting myself, and Getting Work, I feel better able to cope with the looming recession. Of course you can’t magic jobs out of thin air, but psychologically I feel better prepared to cope with the uncertainty than someone who has been in a ‘secure’ job for a long time and suddenly loses it.
You mention you’ve worked for the Beeb. That’s a case in point. I do a lot of scriptwriting for them, but on a freelance basis. I know of people who work in-house and their whole personality is geared around ‘being a BBC Person’. Then the Beeb as they do, suddenly drop you (and often as Edward Stourton of The Today Programme found out – through someone else – they didn’t have the courtesy to tell him to his face!) and you lose your job and your identity which you’ve tacked to the BBC. Suddenly you have nothing.
Yack yack. I should be working. So much for ‘discipline’.
Jane