Friday, 20 November 2009

Autumnal Friday Conundrum

Easy one.

Which leaves are best for piling up and running through? Maple's aesthetically good, beech leaves are dry and crinkly - depends on what you're looking for in a good autumn afternoon.

Comments are open…

Oh yes. My weekend starts here.

A goodly haul today:
Irene Gammel (ed.), Making Avonlea: L. M. Montgomery and Popular Culture (U of Toronto Press 2002)
Irene Gammel (ed.), The Intimate Life of L. M. Montgomery (U of Toronto Press 2005) - probably not as racy as you think it is
Siân James, A Small Country (Collins, 1979).

and finally

Star Trek (the new film). Man cannot live on Anne of Green Gables and Stephen Greenblatt alone.

The Rolling Stones - they haven't sold out

Or rather, they sold out very early indeed, as this Rice Krispies ad from the 1960s demonstrates:


Aren't children creepy?

They certainly were today, anyway.

I go swimming three times a week, and on Friday, a load of 9 year-olds (possibly, I can't tell anymore) are changing into their togs as I'm leaving. Usually, they're boisterous: loud, laughing and chaotic. Their teacher is a soi-disant cool guy, and he's normally quite chatty too.

Not today. It felt like The Midwich Cuckoos. They came in, changed and headed off to the pool in total silence. No shuffling, no whispering, no laughter, no instructions from their teacher or requests to him. They lined up and marched off as though they were all being controlled by some central intelligence. Very disconcerting.

Stilig!

Things guaranteed to make me happy:
Copenhagen
Bicycles
Good photography.

So imagine my joy when Neal sent me a link which combines all three. Enjoy.

Thursday, 19 November 2009

Sorry students!

I just talked for almost two hours on Why Iago Isn't The Bad Guy In Othello And Why God Is. Failed to build in much interaction. Still, it was a fun exercise in critical theory.

Only one session left this week… and an awful lot of marking.

Still hurting from the football. But some books have helped. On Kim and Ben's recommendation, Kathleen Jamie's Findings, and a very rare pamphlet, Decca Treuhaft's (aka Jessica Mitford's) 1956 Lifeitselfmanship, an affectionately humorous guide to Leftwing Linguistics, and a witty riposte to her sister Nancy's Noblesse Oblige, which listed U (Upper-class) and Non-U usages.

e.g.
Non-U - serviette, dentures, lounge. U - Napkin, False teeth, Hall or dining room.

Non-L: Suggesting a bum plan. L: projecting an incorrect perspective.
Non-L: Time will tell whether that plan was OK. L: The correctness of that policy will be tested in the crucible of struggle.

Lifeitselfmanship is a typed brochure with line drawings. The very few copies were sold for 1 shilling. I've just paid £30 and think it's a bargain.

Cynical Ben - time on his hands

I've lost track of how many blogs Cynical Ben has now. He's just added another two, which are rather promising:

http://thegloriousdecade.blogspot.com/

http://topseventyalbum.blogspot.com/
for which I believe I took the photographs.

Three Cheers for Stoke-on-Trent

I've detailed the joys of Stoke recently. I left out its history of far-right politics, the massive unemployment, its sheer, defiant ugliness and Port Vale.

Now it's lauded in the national press for being the first city in the UK to sign up to the 10:10 pledge - to reduce emissions by 10% during 2010 - a really tough challenge in city destroyed by obsessive and socially-destructive road building (take six towns federated into a city, then stick a ring-road round each of them!), and formerly dependent on heavy industry (now gone, so no easy wins there).

Politicians always come out with this rubbish about bright green futures regenerating cities marooned by history (shades of Harold Wilson), but it might, might happen this time.

Oh, and Cynical Ben's wrong. Oatcakes are great. They're like wholemeal chapatis.

Aarghhh. La France perfide.

Good morning! I'm feeling fantastic and sickened at one and the same time. I went fencing in Shrewsbury last night for the first time in an age, worked hard, lost some fights I shouldn't have and won some I also shouldn't have. Saw old friends and got a workout.

It also meant that I didn't have to watch the Ireland match which, as kind comments on the previous post and this report show, was a travesty: Ireland went out to a goal produced by two hand balls. Everyone's bending over to avoid calling Thierry Henry a cheat, but that's what he's done - and I've always admired him. Yes, the referee and linesmen should have seen it, but he should have had done the honourable thing: but perhaps that just shows how out of step I am with modern sport. Then again, acknowledging the other guy's hit in fencing if the ref hasn't seen it is still done at all levels in fencing.

Who to support now? England? Obviously I'm pleased for Lou's New Zealand. Now Ireland's out, they have a clear run to the final. Ahem.

Right, back to my Othello lecture - got to have it ready for the Braille translator by 11.

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Back to the sharp end

Finally, for the first time in a couple of months, I'm getting the train to Shrewsbury to go fencing. I'll be embarrassingly bad, but it doesn't matter. I couldn't avoid it even if I wanted to: I've been dumped with organising the West Midlands entry to a big youth team event - 2/3 days around the 20th December. What brilliant timing, though I suppose it gives parents a few days' peace while they do some Christmas shopping.

Anyone with a CRB certificate want to do some chaperoning, refereeing, coaching etc. etc.? My favourite job is patrolling the corridors at 3 a.m.

 I'm thinking of you, Saxon.

Hope Ireland beat France tonight. Then we can crush Lou's beloved New Zealand in the first round of the World Cup.

Is this the most sexist advert ever made?

Depressingly, it probably isn't, but it must be close. Reducing women to component parts. Mmm… dehumanising.

Bloggers of the World: Unite!

Lady Butscombe (no, me neither), another member of the permanent political class who has found that the world does indeed owe her a living, thinks UK bloggers should be regulated by the Press Complaints Commission, that famously balanced, impartial and fearsome watchdog which does such a good job managing the printed media.

We're not impressed. This (overlong) letter is being sent to the PCC, and you can add your name to it here:


Dear Lady Buscombe,
Re: Extension of PCC regulation to UK Blogs/Blogging
We write in regard to your apparent proposal that the PCC should consider extending its remit to the 'blogosphere' as reported by Ian Burrell of the Independent on 16 November 2009.
While we are grateful for your interest in our activities we must regretfully decline your kind offer of future PCC regulation.
Frankly, we do not feel that the further development of blogging as an interactive medium that facilitates the free exchange of ideas and opinions will benefit from regulation by a body representing an industry with, in the main, substantially lower ethical standards and practices than those already practiced by the vast majority of established British bloggers.
Although we would not wish you believe that this criticism relates to all your members – The Guardian, in particular, has adopted a number of practices, not least the appointment of a Readers' Editor to deal with complaints, which we consider to be the current gold standard in ethical journalistic practice amongst national newspapers – it is nevertheless the case that the vast majority of national newspaper titles routinely fall well short of both those, and our own, standards and that our direct experience of dealing with the PCC shows the organisation to be, in the main, complicit in those failings.
To give but one recent example of bad practice, of the many that bloggers have documented in over the last few years, an article published by the Tabloid Watch blog in October, documented, in some considerable detail, the tortuous process that one of its readers had to go through in order to get the News of the World to retract a manifestly untrue and inflammatory statement by one of its regular columnists, Carole Malone.


In this particular column, published in July 2009, Malone made use of an all-too-common and utterly racist myth that 'immigrants' (meaning asylum seekers) receive free cars on arriving in the UK, a myth that is most closely associated with the propaganda output of the British National Party. Extract of Malone article:
"All you have to do to get everything Britain has to offer is to turn up illegally with some sob story of how your own country is too dangerous or that you're a lesbian who'll be shot if you stay there and Hey Presto, it's like you've won the lottery! And, in effect, they HAVE.
Free houses, free cars, free healthcare and free money. Hell, they don't even have to work or speak the language. Even the suggestion they should is seen as racist in Brown's Britain.
They can just live as they did before, only with a whole heap more money and zero responsibility to the country providing it."
What we find most striking about the process documented by Tabloid Watch is the extent to which the PCC actively sought to facilitate the News of the World's efforts to avoid undertaking practices that we, as bloggers, take for granted as being standard practice in our corner of the internet: i.e. the prominent publication of an honest and open correction of a factual error on the original article in which the error, itself, was made.
Instead, as we invariably find to be standard practice amongst, particularly, tabloid newspapers; the correction and cursory apologywhen it was grudgingly issued after what Tabloid Watch described as 'two months of wrangling' – appeared in a location other than that of Malone's column in the newspaper's print edition and on its website on a page utterly divorced from the article to which it relates, which was removed its entirety, and in such a way that only someone searching specifically for the retraction would ever be likely to find it.
To all intents and purposes, the retraction might as well not have been issued, for all that it would be apparent to visitors to the News of World's website that it had ever been made.
This is but one clear example of a practice that would be unacceptable amongst established bloggers and one of many that bloggers who specialise in monitoring the national press for accuracy have documented in recent years.
For a blogger to engage in such practices, which include 'stealth editing' of articles, after publication, to avoid owning up to factual errors and removing and/or refusing to publish critical comments from readers, especially those that highlight and correct factual errors.
For an established blogger to adopt such practices would do incalculable damage to their public reputation; this being, after all, all that we have to trade on.
To the vast majority of national newspapers such conduct is no more than standard operating practice.
Consequently we would suggest that before your even consider turning your attention to our activities, you should direct your energies towards putting your own house in proper order.
Should you succeed in raising the ethical standards and practices of the majority of the national press, particularly the tabloids, to our level then we may be inclined to reconsider our position.
Until that happens, any attempt by the Press Complaints Commission to regulate the activities of bloggers will be strenuously resisted at every possible turn.
Regards,

Gather round, my co-religionist Catholics

The godless, heathens and heretics (I'm looking at you, Left Behind) have had the gaming world to themselves for too long. It's time for good Romans to fire up the Xbox!

Doomed, we're all doomed!

I'm not joking. The only levity to be gained from this very credible report (abstract only) is that by the time we hit 6C above norm (in 2100), I will be dead. It's sad that the best I can hope for in my life is that it will be over by the time that mass human, animal and vegetable extinction occurs. Still, it'll make life interesting for our children and grandchildren.

The media coverage suggests that it's possible to avert this utter disaster - but the scientist points out that emissions have risen over the past decade, by 29%. Every opportunity we're given to take climate change seriously, we've avoided. Our politicians pay lip service and we chuck the occasional newspaper in the recycling bin, but as a race, we don't really believe that what's going to happen will happen. It's too far off or too complicated.

My students think it's hilarious (or embarrassing) that I don't drive and that I'm genuinely terrified of the consequences. They just don't care enough to change their lives - and to be fair, we need to change society far more radically than swapping to recycled loo paper or unplugging iPod chargers.

The current plan is to try to limit temperature change to 2C above the norm - leading to aberrant weather, migration, some extinctions: bad, but not awful. Can we do it? Can we bollocks:

"This is very different to the trend we need to be on to limit global climate change to 2C [the level required to avoid dangerous climate change]." That would require CO2 emissions from all sources to peak between 2015 and 2020 and that the global per capita emissions be decreased to 1 tonne of CO2 by 2050. Currently the average US citizen emits 19.9 tonnes per year and UK citizens emit 9.3 tonnes.

Now back to an Othello lecture - it fills in the time before I gratefully shuffle off this mortal coil.

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Well, well, well

despite being exhausting, today was fun and positive (see, serene me still trying). The last set of student presentations were thoughtful and even witty and I learned a few things. The meeting with Very Important People in The Hegemon wasn't brilliant, but there's a smaller and more focused one tomorrow which could be more productive.

Finally, it's time to find some food. I haven't even had a cup of tea since last night, let alone sustenance. Wonder if the canteen has any gruel left.

Boulot, métro, dodo…

So what's the news out there today? I've been teaching continuously since 9, apart from another meeting with senior management, and more teaching to come. I'm feeling left out! On the plus side, I've seen the best first-year presentations in years this morning, and some decent second-year ones. Third years are up next, covering 'how to be a spin doctor', which I find fascinating, so no doubt that will be fun.

Congratulations?

Emma and I went for a drink last night to celebrate her seventh anniversary of immigrating to this great nation. I like to think she blended in well, fitted out in a lovely bowler hat and cricket whites, tucking into salt and vinegar Yorkshire scratchings and discussing the routes we took to the pub. That about sums up Britishness, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Monday, 16 November 2009

Live book buying

Anita showed me this: you can see what people are buying from one web bookshop, in real time! Strangely addictive!

Students: has your loan come through yet?

I think the student loan system is despicable. I think selling the loan book off to corporations is utterly despicable, and I think that the massive delays in getting the cash to 150,000  students was reprehensible and despicable.

I've now run out of adjectives for the massive bonuses for Student Loan Company bosses announced today. Perhaps you should come up with a few, and put them on a postcard to:

Student Loans Company
100 Bothwell Street
Glasgow
G2 7JD

Dr. de Jour, I presume?

Anonymity is tricky to maintain, even on The Plashing Vole. It's harder still for successful bloggers, such as Belle de Jour, who even managed to produce books and a not-very-good ITV series based on her prostitution blog without being exposed (fnarr fnarr).

Turns out now that she's a serious research scientist, one who works at the appropriately-named (and important) BIRCH, and outed herself apparently from boredom, though I can't help thinking that the tabloids will have been on her tail (oo-er) for years now. She was a call girl to fund the closing stages of her PhD. Wish I'd thought of that. I was a (terrible) supply teacher and visiting lecturer at The Hegemon, which is prostitution of an entirely different kind.

Update: of course revelation was driven by the tabloids, in this case our friends at the Daily Goosestep:


"We went to the Times willingly, after the Mail had their reporters warned off my work premises by the police"

The new impartiality

Having been driven to restrict myself to uncontroversial nostrums by the fear of The Dole Queue, I have decided to strive for balance in all things, which will - allegedly - lead to serenity.

The effects are fearsome. I just read Charlie Brooker's latest missive, in which he condemns Christmas advertising ('Jamie Oliver tours Britain handing out free vol-au-vents to greedy members of the public, like a zookeeper throwing sprats to a load of barking seals'). Horrified to find my new self agreeing with him, my internal organs began to mutiny. They were placated only by extended exposure to the Anti-Brooker, despite my neurons pleading for sweet release.

Who could the Anti-Brooker be? Watch the video… if you dare. Poor Cynical will be sawing his ears from his head with whatever implement is nearest, and who could blame him? How long do you think this serene, calm me is going to last?

You shall be hanged from the neck until you are dead

… even if your judge and prosecutor are having an affair. Meanwhile in Texas (where else?), democracy rules - leading to judges being elected on a 'pro-prosecution' ticket. God knows the UK system is set up to maintain the dominance of white, male, privately-educated Oxbridge types, but it does mean that mob rule isn't the order of the day.

Stoke and Culture… in the same sentence

Last night's Radio 4 Pick of the Week was hosted by a Potter and featured a show about the potential revival of the pottery industry - and mentioned oatcakes. Added to this, I spent half an hour at Stoke station on Saturday, and I'm feeling nostalgic. Stoke-on-Trent has a bad reputation for being an ugly, unemployed, fascist-infested hope-sink. A largely deserved reputation, though I would balance those with: Primitive Methodism, formerly strong trades unionism, beautiful ceramics, Arnold Bennett, Mrs. Craik (another Stoke-Irish oddity), Slash, Lemmy, Nick Hancock, Stanley Matthews, Gordon Banks, Peter Shilton, embarrassing Tory DJ Bruno Brookes, embarrassing TV presenter (and Brookes ex) Anthea Turner and Stoke City.

Regeneration is largely on hold, but Anita, who has emigrated from Dublin to Stoke (no, me neither) has plunged into Stoke's cultural renaissance, and draws my attention to the British Ceramics Biennial. You've only until 29th November to see it though.

Hooray, back at work

Morning slackers! Here we are again, back in the belly of the Hegemon and I'm already panicking about the enormous amount of work piling up… lectures, marking, admin, resistance.

Though my weekend was one of those in which cares disappear. When I was a youngster, I despised the booted, hearty types who lit out for the trail whenever possible. A wood fire and a good book were all I ever wanted. So imagine my surprise to find myself bounding out of bed, noting the gale forecast and thinking 'brilliant'. There are few more exhilarating sensations than standing on top of a rocky outcrop in driving rain and rushing wind. If muddiness is an index of fun - we had it.

Where were we? The Cloud, outside Congleton (between Manchester and Stoke). It lived up to its name - the panoramic views available on a clear day were absent, though we could see the Jodrell Bank radio telescope. Lunch was a selection of fine cheeses (thanks Anita) and various other delicacies, taken hunched under a rhododendron.

The other notable spot was the fine neolithic burial chamber we visited, massive and proud. The sun gradually appeared, firstly over Wales, then Liverpool and eventually near us, low and gentle so that the fields glowed bright green as though we were in the glens of Antrim. Then home for a night in the pub not watching Ireland lose to France. At least the rugby draw against Australia the next day was some compensation.

No pictures, as I thought the weather would be too awful to take my camera out. Thanks, as always, to Dan for organising everything. He's now infantilised the Map Twats - we're incapable of buying so much as a bus ticket without him now!

Friday, 13 November 2009

A quality bit of Irish sporting humour

Emma sent me this today - Anita informs that it's been floating around, under various guises, for a good few years. Funny if you like sporting rivalries and find Sarkozy risible.

I had a patient in the back of my cab. Very rude man

I forgot to mention the highlight of my hospital trip. We took a taxi back. The driver opened the conversation with 'which one of you's been to the hospital then?', which I thought was a) obvious in one sense - both of us and b) nosy in the other sense. We curtly indicated which one of it was, in a 'that's very intrusive, this conversation is now over' tone, only for the cabby to follow it with 'what's wrong with you then? Is it a fever?' and shake the subject as a greedy dog might with a meaty bone.

As for his opinions on Indian partition… inaccurate, bigoted and gruesome.

Brutal Friday conundrum

Who needs an educational spade through the head?

Jeremy Clarkson springs to mind, because he thinks he leads a silent army of common-sense blokes beset by enviro-lesbians. I know people think he's just teasing people like me, but they're wrong.

Tom Cruise. I've seen Far and Away.

Whoever invented the footballers' knot.

It's not all doom and gloom though

As George Eliot wrote, 'the world outside books is not a happy place' (or something similar). It's great inside though, and I've just taken delivery of another consignment. A wall is rising around my desk…

Rubio and Waterston's Norton critical edition of Anne of Green Gables;
Lauter and Fitzgerald's anthology Literature, Class and Culture (rather too American for my plans, but fascinating anyway);
Kate Roberts's The Awakening, a new translation by Siân James (whose A Small Country is a wonderful, rich text) which looks excellent.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls

It's also been an emotional week or so in many ways, outside the daily grind of institutional problems. My boss's father died, as did the mother of a close friend, and in such situations, empathy naturally leads to consideration of mortality and its effect on those left behind. With death in mind, it's odd noticing how often it appears in daily existence - in texts discussed in class, on TV or in games.

As a student, I had little experience of losing loved ones (my grandfathers are both dead, but that's it), and literary texts on the subject were little more than admirable exercises in style. I've not experienced much more myself, but as friends have suffered losses (Cynical Ben's father died not long ago, too young, and another friend's husband committed suicide recently), my responses to the attempts of creative writers to express emotion becomes more visceral and emotional, as my Poetry students may have noticed when we read Silkin's poem on the death of his young son.

There are no words for emotions, a poet once said - but we keep trying. The more we experience, the harder it is to find them: words are often completely inadequate to the situation.

More happily, I got round to writing to my only surviving school teacher (well, the only one I'd  swerve to avoid), via his last known workplace. This morning, I received a witty, erudite and friendly letter from him, full of a decade's upheaval which has ended in happiness and comfort - few things are better for the spirits than a relationship refounded, as I've found out a few times in the recent past.

What a long and strange week it's been

Happy Friday, cybermates. How I am looking forward to a foaming jug of ale after the day ends (one workshop on Greek love poetry and a 5 p.m. project tutorial), then tomorrow the Map Twats are walking the Cloud, near Congleton before an evening watching Ireland trounce les françaises at soccer.

After all my frenzied preparation this week, the Othello lecture went fine. I thought I had a mere 25 minutes of Olivier's overacting to struggle through before confronting the Big Issues, but actually the old ham strung out Act 5 for an hour. It didn't take long for students to actually and openly laugh at his terrible performance, and I can't say I blame them.

After that, it was off to New Cross with a student taken ill (I'm an effective lecturer, but the effects aren't always positive), which was less dramatic and more pleasant than you might think - we talked about music and books for a few hours while the madness of A+E went on around us.

Imagine my joy when I returned to find that Neal had prepared a delicious broccoli and Stilton soup for me. How I'll miss him when he leaves the West Midlands. Perhaps I'll have to hobble him, as in Misery.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Lovely, lovely books

Yes, the trucks are now rolling in. Lots of wonderful Welsh literature, and some hardcore Anne.

Today's haul:
Kate Roberts' One Bright Morning, translated by Gillian Clarke (a brilliant writer herself);
Kate Roberts' Y Lon Wen / The White Lane (also translated by Clarke);
Lynette Roberts' Collected Poems (inspired by the Lynette Roberts conference I didn't go to);
Fintan O'Toole's Ship of Fools, about the rape and pillage of the Irish economy by a clique of greedy, tightknit bankers, businessmen and politicians;
Cecily Devereux's edition of Anne of Green Gables;
Barry, Doody and Jones's Annotated Anne of Green Gables (which looks rather wet, actually).

Mmmm…

How to be effortlessly cool

First, it helps to be a Welsh rock star.
Then, use a magic cape and helmet to transport yourself to Welsh Argentina for a madcap quest for your eccentric Welsh-Argentinian pop star relative.
Make sure to be attacked by penguins.

Easy. Read all about it here.

Forward to the Workers' Syndicalist State

The Tories have been muttering about instituting Easyjet-style local service provision (mm, what a vote-winner) and the Labour Party have had to find a localised model of service provision to avoid looking like centralist Soviets (not that I mind centralisation much - especially as I find myself living in an evil Tory/Lib Dem council).

The model they've gone for is one of workers' control: users and staff of anything from hospitals to leisure centres running places without too much control from the centre.

I'm all for it. Yes, things will end up being plotted by hyperactive busybodies, but the theory is sound, because the theory is Syndicalism, a splinter of communism which appealed to the Welsh miners and others in the 1930s (and got several of them in trouble with the CPGB Central Committee. Under syndicalism, the workforce of any particular industry, via their democratic union, controlled the means of production. Industries would be run co-operatively and would trade resources with other syndicalist industries. The profit motive and capitalist class would wither away. The theory suggests that government wouldn't be necessary because all workers would operate with the good of society in mind, and thus all would behave well. Personally, I think that a government of some sort would be required to adjudicate, distribute and set priorities (and conduct diplomacy, defence and public services), but it would be minimal compared with the Soviet and capitalist models.

Syndicalism rocks - and its time has come. Though I've probably just ruined its chances by identifying its origins in such as disreputable lefty idea.

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

From the ridiculous to the sublime

Two pieces which always take me somewhere better: Tallis's Spem in Alium and Allegri's Miserere.

The clip of Spem in Alium isn't brilliant - you really need full stereo and massively high volume, but you can get the idea. Ignore the pictures and the religious content. Give it the full 10 minutes - you really need to let the multiple voices (8 choirs of soprano, tenor, alto and two basses) pile up with incredible power.



Allegri's piece was originally restricted solely to the Vatican, until naughty  14-yr old Mozart memorised it and wrote it down when he got outside. It's more tranquil, though it's a sinner begging for mercy. The repeating solo soprano (first heard around 1.40) is just stunning. Sublime is the word.

Could be worse…

Industrial relations aren't brilliant here, and we don't see much of management, but at least we aren't the Washington Times, which has closed the management floor to staff, and has armed guards in the pressroom! At what point should those employees wonder about their working conditions.

'Type faster, or I'll blow your brains out, punk'.

Blogging my way out of a job

I'm under considerable pressure - from friends - to remove posts related to my institution and job. The sharp-eyed amongst you may notice that specific references and adjectives have been removed or replaced. My friends are wrong in principle and right on pragmatic grounds.

There's a discussion of this in relation to Twitter here. Makes good, if slightly uncomfortable sense.

Beardy Weirdy

I've noticed (and mentioned to friends) the preponderance of beards on indie musicians recently. Beards are definitely signifiers of seriousness at the moment (even to Wayne Rooney and David Beckham) but also of authenticity - a riposte to the waxed, primped, heavily-prepared confection of people like, well, David Beckham in an earlier phase.

Thankfully, a better writer than I has mused on the subject of beards in music, taking a Barthian approach (Barthes analysed Roman hairstyles in films). Enjoy it here.

It's all doom and gloom down at t'Guardian

People are losing their jobs elsewhere, even in the heart of the chattering classes. Yes, my favourite newspaper is shedding people and sections. Hopefully they'll be treated well, though Fleet Street has a saying about liberal papers treating their staff worse than reactionary ones.

The Guardian has declines recently - the supplements, such as Environment, have been reduced to allow more journalists to spend time on important stories about Amy Winehouse, The Wire, celebrity sport columns and whatever Tanya Gold thinks we should know about her on any particular day. Now they're ceasing to publish the Technology supplement - an innovative and (you'd think) essential part of a forward-looking newspaper. I'd drop the TV listings personally and cut the 'essential clothes under £3000' dross.

Over at the Observer, the decent magazines are going: Sport Monthly, Woman and Music. All that will be left is the Department for Supporting Illegal Wars Based on Falsified Evidence and (hopefully), Rawnsley and Mitchell who, let's face it, needs the work. I certainly won't miss Escape (the travel section), lacking a cat in need of litter material.

Does it matter? Newspapers are migrating to the web - and losing millions of pounds in doing so. Murdoch plans to put his papers' sites behind a pay wall, while others, like the Guardian rely on advertising (which is why they're going bust). I love the accessibility of the web versions - but I also love the flow, convenience and portability of the newspaper, the ability to tear bits out, write on them, pass them over to your friends, fashion them into sunhats…

Witticisms aside though, it is a bit worrying - loads of US newspapers have closed, and UK ones are struggling, despite having a much better readership. We need spiky, independent journalism. Can't we ban the Daily Mail instead, and forcibly transfer their readers? It would be like being sent on an involuntary and unpleasant foreign exchange holiday. They don't like our clothes (sandals), our food (muesli), our relaxed attitudes to sex, drugs and politics… but they'd be transformed after a few months - into nice people.

The bookalanche rumbles

I've rather foolishly ordered loads of books recently. A certain large internet shop promises that they're on the way, but the only thing I've received this week is Gammel and Epperly's L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture - sent by a very trusting distributor prior to payment. Lucky I'm an honest fellow (as Iago repeatedly says).

Heeee's back!

Hello. Did you enjoy the peace and quiet while I was away? A torrent of bloggable things occurred to me - my thoughts are pretty much permanently accompanied by the sound of imaginary keys clacking these days. This is not a good thing.

However - what a waste of time yesterday was. For the second time, the case was cancelled because the accused changed his mind at the last moment. The offence occurred over a year ago. He was convicted of some charges at the Magistrate's Court some time ago, and has been in prison ever since. Six months ago I dragged myself, via three buses, to Brierley Hill Crown Court for the big event - cancelled after 6 hours in a waiting room because he sacked his lawyers. Fair enough, that's his right. The state paid for his translator to come up from London and stay overnight, and for the victims' translator to do the same. Plus the cost of the lawyers and court officials. He was then given time to instruct new representatives, but apparently decided to defend himself.

Until yesterday afternoon, when he decided that he needed lawyers after all. So another hearing will happen in a few weeks to decide that, then there'll be another hearing several months later, after the new lawyers familiarise themselves with the case. Meanwhile, the victims must be losing all faith in the system and I wouldn't be surprised to find that they give up and go back to their home country, especially with the recession biting. The accused will then go free.

I feel a bit weird sounding so angry about this. I'm utterly lefty-liberal about the justice system. Basically I think it's all wrong. Except now. This guy is genuinely and seriously mentally and physically dangerous, as I found out in the simplest way possible. I want him locked up - perhaps in a secure mental institution, perhaps in prison (I don't know what his state is) - until he isn't dangerous any more. I want him to receive the best treatment in court and afterwards, to have the benefit of all his rights, but at the same time, I know he's utterly guilty because I was involved, and there's been no benefit to anyone of all these delays, including him.

Anyway, off to write my Othello lecture. Or rewrite it.

Monday, 9 November 2009

A good way to spend money

I've had this conversation a few times this week: what would you do with the £45,000,000 lottery win scooped by a couple in Wales and by a syndicate of workers?

One thing I'd do is pick my least favourite people in the world and hire a team of people to follow them everywhere they go. You could have a bunch of people shouting 'sanctimonious war criminal' at Tony Blair or 'read a book' at George Bush 24 hours per day, or perhaps hound the director-general of the BBC with quotations from Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Bargain Hunt or Cash in the Attic or most Radio 4 'comedy' until he made a personal apology to every licence payer.

Then it struck me: we don't need lottery wins. We just need a lot of people to donate a small amount of money to cover flights, loudhailers and bail money, and get volunteers. We could, and I'm sorry to use such terribly trendy language, 'crowdsource' the cash. Who's with me? I said, WHO'S WITH ME?

Joe Crow, we salute you

He's a lost genius. Ex-Prefect/Nightingale, he's a bit of a cult icon, one who, according to his ex-bandmates, has a huge collection of music he's never released. Here's the track which made his name - a study in electronic isolation - Compulsion.

Culture alert

It's November and my choice on The Culture, Cheese and Pineapple. I've proposed some reading (Kate Roberts's wonderful Feet in Chains, originally Traed Mewn Cyffion) and a creative task - responses to autumn, because I want to kick piles of leaves over.

By the way, does the phrase 'there are pockets of excellence' mean that there's a lot of very poor work done? I can't help thinking that it does. Insulting…

You have a day off, you lucky people

I'm appearing in court tomorrow. No, it's not the libel courts, nor have I been arraigned on some horrendous crime (stealing books, stalking people with hairstyles). I'm giving evidence - hopefully. This trial's been cancelled before, and it's dragged on for over a year now… getting more like Jarndyce v Jarndyce by the week.

I'll tell you all about it on my release. Return! I meant return!

Try to survive without me, and without speculating on what I've been up to.

Justice?

You may know that Britain's libel laws are heavily skewed in favour of rich people and corporations. Being right is no defence, and nor is freedom of speech, unlike the US. Lots of foreign people are suing in the UK courts over articles published elsewhere in the world because they'll get what they want here and not elsewhere. Books which have never been published in the UK have been subject to libel judgements because a single person has ordered one from Amazon US, newspapers with a circulation of 100-200 in the UK have been sued out of existence too.

It's got so bad that the US Congress has passed laws setting aside UK libel judgements, and now US newspapers (a couple of hundred are sent over for expats wanting the baseball results) are planning to cease publication here at all, just in case.

Madness. This country has become a playground for the corrupt and oppressive, thanks to the sterling work of people like Mr. Justice Eady.

Us 10-Them 0, pointlessly

Rounds of applause for coherent, intellectually well-founded comments from the staff: lots.
Rounds of applause for management - nil.

No doubt both sides (and it's very sad that we're on sides) left the room muttering that the other lot are pigheaded, recalcitrant bastards, but we're right. I made a point, and a lot of other people made detailed, precise and relevant comments which won't make the slightest bit of difference, but at least they know how strongly we all feel. Not a single comment made was supportive of what's being done to us and the students.

A good debate ensued about what 'consultation' means. As far as I can tell, we mean 'a process in which changes are made by discussing and designing them through dialogue between interested parties'. From what they said, it means 'we'll decide stuff (vaguely) and then tell you to do it'.

Oh yes, the bosses were upset by the suggestion that students might not like the changes. Apparently, none of you should know anything about it. I wonder when you will be officially informed, as many of you will be taking modules next year and it's a completely different system.

Anyway, it won't make any difference. The decisions are made - these meetings are useful only because we can let off steam.

Ding! Round 2

Off to another meeting with The Exalted Ones. Will try not to preface my comments with 'Still here then?'… It's about the new system. My thoughts: rushed, pedagogically unjustified, liable to damage recruitment, and imposed without consultation.

There - opinion expressed without unpleasantness. Perhaps this is the way ahead.

Polymathic showoff

I'm a big fan of John Adams's post-minimalist music (if you aren't particularly into this stuff, but have seen The Truman Show, he wrote the soundtrack and is the beardy guy playing keyboards in the control room).

However - he can also write, rather brilliantly, as this short story on his blog shows. There's something quite haunting about it.

Another brilliant pronouncement

I don't watch The Apprentice. I can't stand Tories or yuppies, and despise its brand of capitalism. However, Alan Sugar seems to have soaked into the fabric of society like some kind of ineradicable pollution. His announcement today:

Women are their own worst enemies

calls for the simple rejoinder 'Not while you're around Alan'.

Remind me again why everyone from the BBC to the government think he's some kind of genius rather than a shameless and rather dim self-promoter with a mouth bigger than his brain. The Clarkson of business, without the charm or self-awareness.

Urge to kill - rising.

Morning humans. I've had a very relaxing and pleasant weekend, so obviously I'm raring to snark, though I was challenged to spend a week being relentlessly upbeat here on The Plashing Vole.

I reject that challenge.

As you know, I'm a big fan of LibraryThing, especially the Early Reviewers section - last month I was sent a free proof copy of Paul Auster's latest book, Invisible. However, some synopses tell you all you don't need to know. I certainly haven't requested this one:
The basics of The Five-Minute Miracle came to Tara Springett, a psychotherapist, in meditation one day.

Friday, 6 November 2009

This is what I feel like listening to

Cage's 4'33". Bliss. See you next week.

Friday conundrum again - a serious one

Do I delete everything I've said about work and never mention it again, and pretend that everything's fine? What are the implications? Good friends are pointing out that in a sacking situation, people with loud mouths are likely to go first.

TF it's Friday

It's been a bad week - illness, stress, requesting the Maximum Leader's resignation, then walking into an academic racial minefield, so I'm bunking off for the afternoon, once the admin's done. Stafford's Italian market, a wander round the marshes (very Dickensian) with the Map Twats, and no ranting about anything. No, really.

Thursday, 5 November 2009

NO ATTACHMENTS OR VIDEO STOP ART OR OBSOLETE STOP

An amusing columnette in the Guardian on the (slight) return of telegrams, terse little haiku which can overturn a life. My favourite of the ones quoted is childish but funny:

When Lord Lovat led a massively destructive commando raid on the Lofoten Islands in 1941, he sent a telegram from the local post office to one A Hitler in Berlin: "LAST SPEECH SAID GERMAN TROOPS WOULD MEET BRITISH WHEREVER THEY LANDED STOP WHERE ARE THEY".

Capitalism's bizarre appropriations

We're all used to - and I'm still infuriated by - adverts buying up music by bands I like, especially when the band has lost control of their work. But it's the way of the world. Capitalism refreshes itself by appropriating the energy and attitude of youth and other cultures, killing them in the process.

Now, Alex Ross points out that a certain manufacturer of very expensive jeans which aren't intrinsically better than any other brand, has incorporated Charles Ives and Walt Whitman into an ad. Ives was a brilliant modernist composer, though he never let during his successful career as an insurance executive, and Whitman was the demonstratively homosexual bard of 19th-century American expansionism. It's always possible that the company thought it was buying the music of Owen Pallett, who's mixed Ives into his own piece, but it's weird, nonetheless, and culturally insensitive. Does it cheapen the music, or bring the ad to the level of art?

Your opinion please

I spent the afternoon firstly at a union meeting (very productive), then showing Laurence Olivier's Othello on DVD. It's the only performance the university had available on DVD - there are some ancient video tapes, but one has white man Anthony Hopkins playing Othello. Another features Laurence Fishburne, but it's only 'based on' the play, and the Willard White version has its own problems (and I didn't see it on the shelf).

Olivier plays the lead role. He's a brilliant actor, but there's no getting round the fact that he's blacked-up for the role, and looks ludicrous. It's a fascinating insight into the racial politics of the 1960s, and of the theatre world - but it's also very uncomfortable, to put it mildly.

The question is: should this performance not be screened, ever? My class is racially diverse and (I hope) antiracist. Olivier's film is 45 years old. Should we show it and talk about the cultural situation which somehow made it OK for him to black up, or should we see it as so unquestionably racist that it should never be seen again? Should students of colour be protected from seeing this stuff? Some would say: it happened and needs talking about. Others would say: these students have plenty of experience with racism, why add to it?

So - what would you have done? At least one student is upset, and it's really on my mind. Here's a clip - Olivier appears about 3 and a half minutes in:

Dead or alive, it's all binary oppositions round here

Amidst all the excitement yesterday, I failed to mark the passing of Claude Lévi-Strauss, without whom linguists, anthropologists, literary critics and many others would simply be wandering around describing everything as 'nice' or 'interesting'.

Astonishingly, having died at the age of 100, the inventor of structuralism (alongside the structural linguists) outlived not only his own theory, but its successor, poststructuralism (both approaches are fascinating, and still 'work', but other critical trends have supplanted them, such as postcolonialism).

Lévi-Strauss was a little suspicious of his ideas being used outside anthropology, the field in which he challenged Western concepts of civilisation and primitivism. His insight was to posit that 'reality' is a mental concept of comparisons and alternatives - binary oppositions - rather than an objective fact. The linguistic demonstration is simple: 'cat' has no relationship to the small furry animal referred to, but it's distinguished from 'rat' - another small furry animal - through the subsitution of a single letter: the opposition determines the way we understand the world.

For Lévi-Strauss, structural linguistics was a branch of social science, because the principles by which we organise experience (such as symbolism) could uncover the structures of the brain. His work has become central to cultural studies and important for literary criticism - a great thinker has passed away.

Oh Captain, My Captain!

Yesterday, I posted a newspaper article which expressed the rules about what constitutes a completing student, from 2006.

A colleague has found the proper government rules - in force since 2004. Our institution's Wizard of Oz described all this stuff as unknown, 'arcane' and not relevant to modular courses.

Let's see what the rules state, shall we?


1.      A student, who fails to complete (that is, undergo the final assessment of, or pass) any module within the year of programme of study is to be returned as a non-completion for all activity in that year. However, an exception is allowed for full-time students where the module is in addition to the standard requirements for full-time study.
Non-completions
14.     Non-completion is defined in terms of modular programmes of study.
These rules have been in force for 5 years, the leadership board is very highly paid and receives 'performance related pay' as a 'contractual right', they've instituted an intellectually vacuous new curriculum, are sacking 250 FTEs and being fined several million pounds. What would you suggest 'taking full responsibility' means?

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

We're at the mercy of Luxembourg now

David Cameron has listed the stuff he plans to demand from Europe should he become PM. Amongst them - withdrawing from the 'charter of fundamental rights' and the 'social chapter', because he obviously believes that British citizens and residents should be free from pesky restrictions such as safe employment conditions and human rights.

Luckily, these things need a unanimous vote of EU nations. So let's pick a small one, such as Luxembourg, and beg them to vote no. Alternatively, let's all NOT VOTE TORY. Just an idea…

Science 1 - Government by tabloid 0

Professor Nutt, recently sacked as head of the government's advisory council on drugs for… er… giving advice on drugs has written a guest editorial in New Scientist. It's, well, calm and sensible.

A little taster:
The message for the British government is a simple one: don't exclude rational argument in order to exploit a visceral public response. Politicians have to win the hearts and minds of their electorate. If your policy is informed by an underlying moral imperative, be open about what that is, and don't try to disguise it with a veneer of pseudo-science. We ignore scientific evidence at our peril.

Please Mr Postman

Actually, thanks, Mr Postman. Today I received an advance proof copy of Paul Auster's latest, Invisible thanks to Librarything's Early Reviewer's group, The Coming Insurrection (download it free in English or French through that link) by The Invisible Committee (the manifesto of the Tarnac 9 group of French communists) and Kats Karavan, a 4 CD compilation of Peel favourites. Yummy. Though I'm surprised that the Nightingales aren't on it.

The Coming Insurrection is a bracing piece of revolutionary rhetoric - but I can't help feeling that any movement whose manifestos are elegantly published by Semiotext(e) and MIT Press is one that's become a bourgeois fetish object already. I downloaded a copy a long time ago, when Tarnac was in the news, but the book is a beautiful piece of design, revelling in its anonymity - available via Amazon. How this differs from 70s students waving Mao's Little Red Book, I don't know. I do know that, however much sense is in the publication, it's already dead.

'When ideas fail, words come in very handy'

So wrote Goethe, in Faust.

I mention it only because the VIPs in suits waffled that they'd 'accepted responsibility'. They might suspend performance related pay this year (performance of hundreds of job cuts, misleading the government, withdrawing from league tables, imposing a vacuous new curriculum and reducing staff morale to zero) but then again they might not. They set the agenda, they talked a lot. The nature of the new curriculum wasn't even reached. I did ask the aforesaid VIPs to resign - declined! Clearly 'responsibility' means something else on their pay grade.

The most interesting bit was when it was claimed that all universities have been caught out by an 'arcane' rule change about what a completing student means (e.g. the university gets paid when a student completes (hands in the final piece of work, not necessarily passes) the year's modules.

?

This has been public knowledge for a very long time. Peter Knight wrote about it, with examples, in the Guardian Education section in 2006! He was V-C at UCE, so if he knew about it, why didn't our lot?

Let's see what Professor Knight said, three and a half years ago:
The committee has ruled that the university is funded for a student if, and only if, the student completes every aspect of the year's work in that academic year. Any postponement of a final assessment, any resit, will almost certainly result in the student being regarded as a "non-completer" and not fundable, even if the academic decision is that the student can proceed to the next year of study.

'The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance'

So said Shelley. He wasn't being negative.

I had a good, satisfying rant yesterday, about my institution's desperation to reduce education to the cold, alienated transmission of commodified facts, tailored to suit the demands of capitalism (because that's working really well, isn't it?).

Then yesterday, having finished Greg Bear's rather exciting Darwin's Radio (a gene thriller), I watched Horizon, the BBC documentary strand. This week, it was an hour on Einsteinian Relativity and quantum physics (extra-UK readers: it'll be on Youtube in no time). The fascinating thing is that relativity brilliantly describes the workings of the universe, and so does quantum physics, equally brilliantly. Unfortunately, they're completely incompatible, and this show focused on black holes to explore the dilemma.

The film consisted of arty graphics (it's basically impossible to represent the stuff that's out there, but they did their best) and moodily posed shots of physics boffins doing their stuff.

What was most profound was that they all kept saying, elegantly, 'we don't know what the hell is going on'. The point is - and Vice-Chancellor, I hope you're taking notes - that they all said this with massive, goofy grins on their faces: I couldn't help grinning back, caught up in their love of pure, intellectual pursuit. It's exciting, romantic, fascinating.

The absence of certainty is what drives proper educators. We love throwing ideas around, testing them, discarding them, modifying them. Can you imagine turning up at a local call centre and saying to them 'We'll offer this course to your employees if you give us £50,000. By the end of it, they'll understand that there aren't any right answers, only more questions. It'll totally destabilise their conception of the universe. They'll love it'?

That's what's going to happen. It's going to be boring, short-sighted and culturally damaging. It'll also be economically damaging, because training people to be more obedient drones definitely won't lead to innovation or invention.

I'm off to a meeting with the Ultimate Authorities now. Toodle-pip.

Welcome to Vichy

As I've mentioned before my illustrious institution's student paper is locked in a cupboard, bound and gagged in case some rogue student journalist thinks that massive job cuts, ill thought-out curriculum changes, bigger classes and alienated teachers might, possibly, be news.

Luckily, some thoughtful Walsallian (is that the word) has collated the stories in one place, on theyamyam.com, a site for all things Walsall. (For non-Black Country readers, the local dialect and people are called yam yams, referring to certain grammatical and pronunciation variants).

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

Perfect Harmonium

This is an extract from John Adams's Harmonium, one of my favourite pieces of music of all time, one of the pieces that provides solace, excitement or passion whenever I need it.






This second piece is the first of three extracts from Vaughan Williams's Flos Campi, basically a viola concerto. I've a huge soft spot for V-W, but some of his work has been played to death - such as The Lark Ascending - and sounds a bit saccharine. Not this. It's dark, mysterious and strangely beautiful.


Amazing - actual academic work!

I've just written and sent off a conference paper proposal for the British Association of Canadian Studies 2010 conference, on Anne of Green Gables as a metonym for the Canadian Project - lots of Kristeva, racial and cultural theory and a dose of cheek: I'm not a Canadian Studies bloke, but the novels are so interesting that I thought I should get something out of them.

And the first step, of course, is to spend £80+ on variant editions of the texts. Damn.

Oh look, Peter Mandelson's still a rightwing wanker!

Depressing headline of the day:

Universities to enter consumer age

This won't, of course, apply to the elite universities. Oxford, Cambridge and the institutions to which the élites send their children, will carry on in their own rather lovely way. Instead, Mandelson is determined to make universities the equivalent of McDonalds.

Let's be clear. Universities shouldn't be consumerist. Students should come here to educate themselves, with help from us. The customer-shop relationship means that they will - already do - expect to be provided with facts to be recycled, leading to a certificate.

This is just wrong. Education is a mutual process of discovery and self-discovery. The qualification is a by-product. I don't want to churn out obedient work-units, shrink-wrapped for a dumb job doing what they're told. I want to encourage bloody-mindedness, critical thinking and a thirst for intellectual exploration. Consumerism is utterly abhorrent to me, though it's hard to resist: it's passive and ideologically loaded. Universities shouldn't be forced to fall into line by an intellectual mediocrity like Mandelson, who never met a rich man he didn't like.

Mandelson says that universities should follow the demands of business rather than being closed circles: nonsense. Businesses are machines which express ideological and cultural positions. Universities should lead business, because we're the people paid to give serious thought to social concerns.

What Mandelson really wants is what this institution is hell-bent on providing: web-based learning and a craven, grovelling structure in which students are made happy by making everything easier.

Web-learning is weak. Real learning is a product of face-to-face argument and discussion, not the passive delivery of powerpoints or online fora. Real people, discussing things in real time, to each others' faces, is a profound experience. It's also expensive.

I want my students to be happy. However, the 'consumer-led' model means 'the customer is always right'. They're not always right. One of the deepest, most productive experiences of my student life was the (frequent) revelation that there are multiple viewpoints on any subjects, and that my position was stupid, weak or ill thought through. My tutors were never that unkind, but the discovery of your own ignorance is a seminal moment. Paying customers don't want to be contradicted - good students want to hear opposing and alternative views.

The other problem with fees and the consumer model is that it implies that the only beneficiary of the education available is that one individual student. In the humanist tradition, we all benefit from an educated individual. The learning spreads through the community via that individual's daily life and work - and so we should all appreciate, and pay for, that education, knowing that the cash will be returned via a) the higher tax paid and b) the social good done throughout the individual's life. Learning must not be a selfish, greedy experience - it should be undertaken for the public good.

And like I say, all this will only impact places like mine. Ritzer's right - it's one kind of education for us, and the old model for the élites who impose this stuff on everybody else. It doesn't matter though. Resistance is utterly futile.

On a lighter note, wasn't University Challenge easy last night? I even got the question about Laplacean mathematics right!

Mmmmeetings

Despite actually not being able to speak, I'm spending most of this week attending meetings: a departmental one that's bound to be fractious, an open meeting with the Lords and Masters tomorrow which (I hope) is going to be interesting - damn having lost my voice - then a Union meeting on Thursday, which should feature a lot of the old-time religion to boost our spirits.

Oh well - in case I'm better by Thursday, I'm reading a load of Greenblatt for my Othello lecture, which is always fun.

I'm also listening to Pantera, over and over again. It suits my mood.

Monday, 2 November 2009

What we can learn from Baroness Verma

Oooh, a real Baroness coming to talk to the Business School. She's a Tory peer (appointed, obviously - failed to get elected in Hull and Wolverhampton) and shadow minister for Children, Schools and Families. What will she talk about?

'Achieving in Business and Education'.

Excellent. I wonder if she'll share the same kind of insights that the BBC investigative programme, Panorama, found when they investigated her string of care homes? Complaints upheld by the Care Commission…

Should be fascinating.

Poppy or not?

A quick question to the UK readers - others are very welcome to comment on the issue.

Are you wearing a poppy?

Some background: poppies are sold and worn very widely indeed during this time of year. The charity thus aided is the Royal British Legion, which cares for ex-forces veterans. Everybody appearing on television wears one - except for the occasional Sinn Féin representative.

I don't wear one. I think it's fundamentally wrong to commemorate the veterans of one side. These soldiers may have been conscripts and they may have been enthusiastic killers. In a sense, this doesn't matter so much - they're all in need of help. However, by singling out one side, we're assuming that all others were enthusiastically on the wrong side and the poppy sellers say things like 'support our boys'. We're also enabling successive governments to get away without caring for veterans properly, and (though this may not be the intention, it's certainly how many people feel), it's a visible sign of patriotic chauvinism, hence Nick Griffin's latest comments.

I'm of Irish heritage. It's less than a hundred years since members of my family fought in a bloody war of independence against the UK, and the history of the past 600 years has been one in which the British fought some just wars and an awful lot of unjust ones. Individual soldiers are largely not to blame, but I just can't bring myself to participate in this way. I'd rather pay more tax to fund NHS care for ex-servicemen, vote for a government which doesn't send boys to illegal and/or pointless wars, or support a global veterans' charity.

It's an emotive issue, and I'm aware that my stance may not be entirely rational, but it's how I feel. Some of these soldiers saved the West from the Nazis - others took aim at my family. However, the appeal's couched in terms like 'our boys' and 'our heroes'. They're not my heroes.

The alternative is the White Poppy, the Peace Pledge Union's attempt to commemorate the fallen of all sides while opposing the concomitant potential glorification of militarism apparent in the red poppy campaign - although I'm not a pacifist.

There's one final irony to the current Red Poppy campaign: while soldiers on all sides are dying in Afghanistan, millions of real red poppies are flowing out of the country as heroin, seemingly unaffected by the presence of hundreds of thousands of troops, arriving here and devastating thousands of lives.

Not all our politicians are corrupt. Some are weirdo nutters too.

As evidence, here's Ben Goldacre's latest Bad Science column from the Guardian. It's a joy. Some are just ignorant (yes, Brooks Newmark, we're looking at you), prompting this reply from cleverclogs MP Dr. Evan Harris:

“The honourable Member for Braintree cited evidence from The Sun, so I want to refer to a recent edition of the British Medical Journal”).

Others are pretty much certifiable, which has never been a bar to high office in the UK:

“It is no good people saying that just because we cannot prove something, it does not work… I believe that the Department needs to be very open to the idea of energy transfers…


“In 2001 I raised in the House the influence of the moon, on the basis of the evidence then that at certain phases of the moon there are more accidents. Surgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective and the police have to put more people on the street.” 
 “I am talking about a long-standing discipline—an art and a science—that has been with us since ancient Egyptian, Roman, Babylonian and Assyrian times. It is part of the Chinese, Muslim and Hindu cultures… Criticism is deeply offensive to those cultures,” says Tredinnnick: “and I have a Muslim college in my constituency.” 
Any attempts to challenge Tredinnick’s ideas are based, he explains, on “superstition, ignorance and prejudice” by scientists who are “deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced too, which is troubling.”
Well done, David Tredinnick. See, not all Tory MPs are selfish, baby-eating arms dealers. Some of them are mentally unwell.

Not that the government's any better. They have a Drugs Advisory Council which recommends how we should regulate recreational drugs. Their chairman, Professor Nutt, pointed out that having Ecstasy in the same division of harm/illegality as crack cocaine, is a bit silly - it just persuades potential drug users that the state doesn't know what it's doing. The government ignored all the council's sound advice, and sacked Nutt for pointing out (quite calmly) that they seem to prefer the Daily Mail's moral judgments over actual medical fact. I know this is hardly a surprise, but it's still depressing.

Monstrous Monday

Hello all. Survived the trick or treaters? I live in an apartment block, so didn't get any (slightly disappointing - I could have abused them via videophone. Anyway, Iustin and Laura, Emma, Neal and I all toddled off to Howard's haunted house in the woods, which he'd customised: body parts, werewolves and electrical devices all over the place. The less said about the sex doll in the driver's seat of Howard's matt black '69 Cutlass, the better…

I was dressed as the priest from The Omen, complete with cross (constructed by Neal), and my massive, brass-bound 19th-century Bible. In Welsh. It's still there - someone snaffled it, but I trust Howard to find it. We drank rough wine, chatted to lots of students and colleagues for as long as we could stand, danced a little, and like good old people in our 30s, were sound asleep by 3 o'clock. Well, Neal and Emma were snoring away in my armchairs, very uncomfortably, while I watched The Thick of It before retiring. All hail Howard!

I didn't take photos, as I left my camera at work, but Emma did take some, which I've posted here. Don't be scared!

Sunday was therefore a bit of a washout. I fed the animals, we all sat round reading The Observer and The Irish Times, then I went to bed, having completely lost my voice. This is still the case - I'm at work, slaving away, but won't be starring in Tosca (or any lectures) for a while yet…

Friday, 30 October 2009

Wishing all an horrific Hallowe'en

Doing anything? I'm off to a colleague's party, if I can concoct a decent costume. It's a terrible yankee concoction, but my chums are all literate chaps and chapesses, so we'll be celebrating Samhain, the original Irish festival from which the new thing springs. Light a candle for the departed and put it in your western window, and construct a Brazen Head (though Cowper Powys's book of the same name isn't really related, though it is a monolithic masterpiece).

Wet music for Cynical Ben

I have a soft spot for music with emotional intelligence and maturity, just as much as I love teen punk lo-fi. Some of it would make Ben stamp on children's feet just to rebalance the emotions.

Amongst my secret pleasures are 10,000 Maniacs and the solo work of their former lead singer, Natalie Merchant.


Headlines to gladden the heart

'Blair Hopes for EU Presidency Sinking Fast'.

Good. He'd be bad for Britain and bad for Europe. Asserting that a UK citizen would be automatically good for the UK is imperialistic and chauvinistic.

Meanwhile, if you think you're an elf, this is the place to go: Otherkin.net. No, really. Thanks to Steve.

Friday conundrum again

Courtesy of Emma:
Using ten words or fewer, how would you change the world?

I offer you this:
Got a hairstyle? Then step this way into my camp.
or
Voting Tory? Take this pill, it'll all be over soon.
or
Try reading books. You'll soon be a better person.
or
The Daily Mail was closed and its editor shot today.
or
Leave the car at home. Walk to work. Plant trees.

Idlewild leave me itching

…for more, obviously. They also left me itching in a very literal sense. What is it with ageing indie fans? Are they immune to the charms of hygiene? Despite their infestations, they all had girlfriends/boyfriends too. Grrrr. Revolting, isn't it? I got home and nearly burned all my clothes before spending an hour in the bath frantically scrubbing away in case the critters survived the journey from Birmingham. The whole of Manchester's infested too: I returned from the Blog Awards with lots of bites on the ankles. I blame Fleet Foxes: they repopularised beards in the indie fraternity, and that leads to trampiness (c.f. Super Furry Animals).

Anyway, apart from that, it was a great evening. We had a fine meal at the small, older branch of Café Soya, Birmingham's finest Vietnamese restaurant, a couple of lovely ales at the Victoria then off to the new Academy (good room, unpleasant and extortionately priced beer). Downstairs, the revolting Calvin Harris attracted crowds off young attention-seekers, while upstairs we more sober and (mostly older) types congregated for some earnest rock.

Idlewild were, plainly speaking, magnificent, though they too have succumbed to the 'beard = credible' disease. The new album is a return to their early-REM fuzzy folk-rock template, but shorn of the extra performers featured on the record, they just plain rocked, striding the small stage as though they were on at Glastonbury. What really impresses me is that their songs are emotionally intelligent and literate without pretension, which is a really difficult trick to pull off. The only problem with a six-album band is that so many great tracks are excluded. Three thumbs up.