'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.

Brown paper parcels tied up with string…

Happy Bastille Day - how I love sharing a birthday with a purge of the idle rich.

I went straight to work from my parents today, and was greeted by two wondrous things. The first was a massive pile of parcels: seemingly all the books I've ordered recently have come in the same delivery. OK, it looks like I've bought myself a load of birthday presents, but I'm still childishly excited by opening parcels and smelling new paper.

One of the books was To Hell With Culture: Anarchism and Twentieth-Century Literature edited by H. Gustav Klaus and Stephen Knight, the latter of whom was one of my PhD external examiners. Funny that to buy the book at its cheapest (£25 second hand), it had to go from Wales to India and then be sent to me… Coincidentally, Knight wrote the definitive 'biography' of Robin Hood, and another of the books which arrived today was Adam Thorpe's revisionist Hodd. The others were the massive pile of OUP sale books (on medieval literature, modernism and the Victorians), Kiberd's new book on Joyce's Ulysses, and most wonderfully, the fourth volume of the Moomins strip cartoons. Just as a physical object, Drawn and Quarterly (PDF sample on that page) have produced a thing of beauty.

The other weird and wondrous thing this morning was receiving an email from Hilary Wright. It took me a few minutes to work out that this was my sister, returned from honeymoon and starting a new life with a new name. Regardless of your views on marriage and surnames, it felt like a significant moment even to those around her: I have a sister but after 26 years, her new position in the world and new relationship to us all are aurally and visibly announced.

Stand not upon the order of your going

Damn. Just ordered another book, for £21: Klaus and Knight's 'To Hell with Culture': Anarchism in Twentieth Century British Literature: Anarchism and Twentieth-century British Literature. Stephen Knight was one of my PhD external examiners, and I'm a sucker for 'politics in literature' books. It's been an expensive day though…

Quick break now for coffee then a piece on Cromwell's internal political pressure which I'm particularly looking forward to.

It's Malcolm Wanklyn (buy this book or this one). He's got a very small audience which is desperately disappointing, as he's started with a fantastic review of his experience of deconstruction as it affected historiography, especially seventeenth-century history. The focus is the many Oliver Cromwell's: left hero, left villain, inspiration to Hitler and Mussolini, fundamentalist or freedom fighter, hammer of Scotland and Ireland etc. etc. Malcolm's concentrating on the military career and the various ways in which it can be seen. Malcolm sees OC as taken up by radical politicians (the Fiery Spirits) who saw him as God's General who would win the war and persuade the undecided that Cromwell was the tool of Godliness.

It turns out that Cromwell used these people to achieve power, and tamed their radicalism for his own ends. This draws on an existing debate about whether or not Cromwell was radical or not - he certainly crushed the leftists such as the Levellers and Diggers. He was certainly a tolerationist in the early years - he didn't agree with the Scottish Presbyterians that any minority Protestants and Catholics should be crushed.

Despite his later military successes, Cromwell's early martial victories were a mixture of being in the right place at the right time, down to other peoples' successes, and a good degree of spin as the Fiery Spirits sought their 'god's general' - trying Waller, the Earl of Manchester and the Earl of Essex first.

I should mention what a great speaker Malcolm is: enthusiastic, total command of his subject, rarely needs notes, dynamic delivery.

Final session is on Manorial Rights of Wreck - didn't catch by whom. Apparently, some lord of the manor has turned up a 12th century right to ownership anything out to sea as far as a barrel of Hambrough/Humber (no, me neither) can be seen floating on a clear day by a man on horseback from a clifftop (supposedly 3 miles!) - conflicting with all sorts of other laws. The speaker's a law lecturer who is a diver. He's found loads of excellent stuff, but before he could give it to a museum via the crown, the lord of the manor claimed ownership. The git. Anyway, it's raised a host of quite interesting legal questions.

Quick guide for you scavengers:

stuff above water - Wreck. Belongs to the owner or the lord of the manor if no owner turns up.

Below high water - belongs to the Lord High Admiralty since time immemorial, which legally means 1189. Common law jurisdiction follows the tide as it comes and goes.

A derelict is an abandoned vessel floating or sunk below low water - and belongs to the Admiralty in British waters. The Tubantia was a hot case - a Dutch ship sunk and believed to be carrying gold. Turned out it had a cargo of Edam!

Update - a Hambrough/humber barrel = corruption of Hamburg Barrel - a 45 gallon drum used by the Hanseatic League. Phew.