The Hampstead Trash

The Hampstead Trash (or Hampstead Trash) is an online satirical and critical blog created by students of Hampstead School, North London. The blog takes the format of a satirical periodical, such as Private Eye, and releases weekly articles that fall into three categories: a critical argument upon a specific aspect of the school, a spoof on the school using fictional characters or events, or a spoof that uses real events. In September 2013, the blog gained media attention after a local newspaper picked up the story that its former head writer, Kinnan Zaloom, had been expelled from the school because of his involvement with The Hampstead Trash; news reports suggested that Kinnan's prospective university and the police had also been informed about the blog by the Head of Hampstead School. This event has been referred to by the blog as 'Trashgate'.
The blog claims to get between 200-300 hits a day, escalating to 10,000 a day during 'Trashgate' and the weeks following, and to be read by teachers, students and parents alike.
History
The Hampstead Trash was launched on 10 February 2013, with an article from Zaloom mimicking the Head's Message on the school website. The blog originally had four writers (referred to as the 'founding members' on the blog), all acting under pseudonyms, who set out the general implied goals of the blog in the first few articles. The blog, among other issues, repeatedly points out alleged inadequacies of the School Council, a lack of democracy within the school, disorganisation within the school, over-emphasis on uniform (which the blog claims to be to the detriment of students' education), lack of funding to the departments and 'needless' over-expenditure, such as banners and advertisement. A recurring feature of the more critical articles is the apparent hypocrisy of the school's management, or exposing the fallacies that the school allegedly poses.
The blog says in its About page that it was originally conceived as a student movement, much like a union, to give students of Hampstead School a better voice over their education.
The first four students to begin the Hampstead Trash in February 2013 went under the pseudonyms SLUDGE (later revealed to be Kinnan Zaloom) in his 'Obituary' article, Heywood Jablome, Cllr. Hugh G. Rection and Dale E. Mayle. At the end of the academic year, SLUDGE left the blog with his Obituary article, as well as Dale E. Mayle leaving as well. Hugh G. Rection and Heywood Jablome are still active writers since the beginning of the 2013-2014 academic year, and since Penn Name, Phyllis Stine, Drew Peacock and E. Rex Sean have joined, bringing the number of current writers up to six, and the total to eight.
Trashgate
On 15 July, a week before the end of the school year, Year 13 student and head writer for the Trash, Kinnan Zaloom, posted his 'Obituary' article, killing off his character on the blog, and releasing his actual name. The day after the article was release, he was summoned to a private conference room by School Management, who banished him from the school grounds for casting the school in a bad light publicly. The Head later contacted the police over the issue, as well as Glasgow University, Zaloom's prospective University. The Head said of the article that it was 'mad writings' as it mentioned anarchistic ideologies, as well as condemning its use of 'fruity language'. Since the story was published by the Camden New Journal, the actions of the Head have been branded 'malicious' and 'vindictive'.
It was not until September 2013 that the Camden New Journal, the local newspaper, picked up the story, which made the front page. The story then went viral, reaching many national papers and news vendors, such as the Evening Standard, Daily Mail, LBC, BBC Radio, The Huffington Post and an ex-student of Hampstead Rowenna Davis reporting on it for the Guardian to name but a few.
Apart from the actions against Kinnan Zaloom by the Head, another action of the Head was heavily lambasted by both the blog and public during the Trashgate period, was the blocking of the blog's URL on the school servers. The Trash, when talking on it, cited UNICEF Rights of a Child that were being contravened by doing this, a charter that Hampstead School signed up to recently.
On 7 September 2013, two days after the release of the Camden New Journal article, the blog's editorial team (that now replaced the role SLUDGE had played) released a response to the Trashgate debacle, with the intention of setting the record straight. It talked on and answered some of the points raised over Kinnan and the blog in the media, including the idea of dismissing the Head. The article reaffirmed the cause of the Trash, and said they did not want anyone out of a job. The article was reported on in the next issue of the Camden New Journal, which quoted the article saying:
"Every day that passes wherein the ban on the blog still exists serves to demonstrate how little the Head can stand criticism of any sort. To clarify, at no point have we ever criticised a teacher or a student. Equally, we understand that the Head wishes to protect the image of the school that he has painstakingly built up, but by having knee-jerk reactions such as blocking us and condemning us only comes off worse in the long run, as we have seen over the past few days.
We know Kinnan and the Head will never see eye-to-eye, but we need to stop focusing on the media circus and start focusing on the issues this blog was set up to address. We are here to address issues and voice opinions. We are entitled to our opinions."
Due to use Kinnan Zaloom's use of swearing (or 'Fruity language') in the article, the story received mixed opinions over the matter. However, the debacle brought the blog a sizeable number of hits and a larger reader base; many commentators citing the Streisand Effect.
Mailmerge
On 13 January 2014, the Hampstead Trash published an exposé article, detailing their discovery of a document on the school's open server that detailed personal information on over four hundred students and their parents/carers. The article said that the document contained "addresses, phone numbers and in some cases emails". The article also stated that the Hampstead Trash had contacted the school a week before publishing the article, and had made sure the document had been made inaccessible before publication. The Thursday after which, the story was published by local newspaper the Ham and High. The school was forced to report itself to the Independent Commissioner's Office over the security breach, but no further action was taken by the ICO. Speaking on the verdict, the blog commented:
"The Hampstead Trash feels it unfortunate that the Information Commissioner's Office does not take the data breach seriously enough to pursue any line of inquiry, however, we are thankful that no fine was imposed on the school, as this would have detracted from much needed funds. We have implored the school to apologise to all students and assure them that an incident such as this will never occur again; neither request being fulfilled by the school in either message form or the Ham & High article."
Anniversary
In February 2014, the blog celebrated its one-year anniversary, posting numerous commemorative articles in the run-up to the anniversary, as well as a return article from Kinnan Zaloom. The Trash also released a Yearbook, in PDF and Kindle Edition, which showcased notable articles from the past year in chronology, as well as commentary from writers past and present. In that period, the Ham and High published an interview with the writers of the Trash, that commemorated the one year anniversary.
Recurring Themes and Characters
Themes
Throughout the blog's history, it has popularised several running themes and jokes, which link articles and generate humour for frequent readers. Phenomena popularised by the blog are the Doughnut Cartels within the school; a comment on the black market trade of cookies and other baked goods between students that is prevalent at Hampstead, as well as the apparent division of the 'Quad', the school's central square, that is likened to the splitting of Germany after WWII into East and West.
In November 2013, the Hampstead Trash released a new section to their blog, Szemelileaks, that mimics the website Wikileaks. The page distributes PDF files of documents acquired by the Trash that they deem the school would not want in the public domain. The Trash, despite all documents being real, claims that they are acquired by another fictional character, Julie LaSange.
Characters
Much like the Private Eye, the Hampstead Trash has created many characters in their articles, some interweaving between articles, that are used to create a point of view from a specific political stance, or to generate humour. As well as the characters of the writers being fictitious, all the Councillors featured in 'Leaked Minutes' articles are named Abdi. Also, there are characters that reoccur such as Oscar Oolong and Preston Montgomery Sadleton, who are supposed to represent the far right wing, Sylvia Ryver-Raine, who is supposed to represent the far-left wing and green and Kevin the Pervy Aye-aye, who is their unofficially elected School Mascot. The Blog does not name any individuals, apart from the Head teacher, who has been given many names throughout the duration of the blog, such as Admiral General, Disembodies/Decapitated Head, or a parody of his name, such as Sxhnjhdbgjhbfkowski or Szummerlovingkowski, as well as being likened on several occasions to Idi Amin.
The blog has also related to historical events and current affairs in articles. For example, the Trash mentions a character called Mohammed Labaanah King, who is supposed to represent Martin Luther King Jr. and the use of the name Berlin Wall to describe the wooden wall erected whilst building work was going on (hence East and West Quad). The blog has also used the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, Pope Francis and the NUT strike among others for material.
Running Jokes
There are numerous running jokes, many of which hark back from the Trash's inception and still are prevalent in articles today. The blog's slogan, "This is a Good Blog", is a parody of the much quoted Ofsted report of Hampstead, that said that "This is a Good School". This has been parodied throughout articles to imply something is not good or noteworthy, such as the 'Wooden Curtain' being photographed with a poster that read: "This is a Good Wall". Another running joke is the parody of the Senior Leadership Team, which is normally abbreviated to SLT, and so is subject to alternate words being used for the acronym, such as 'Strip Ludo Team' and 'Self Lubrication Trust'.

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