Student Grant

I knew last night's edition of Question Time would be a humdinger. Left-leaning Medhi Hasan versus the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts days after that paper called Miliband Sr. 'evil' promised fireworks, and we got them.



So that was fun. But for me, the presence of Grant Shapps, MP, Conservative Party Chairman and possible money-launderer, was equally attractive. You see, Grant and I have history. It was me who complained to the Advertising Standards about his shady company's practice of putting together crappy little money-making documents, selling them under the names of 'Michael Green MP' and other pseudonyms, and proclaiming endorsements from large numbers of people who don't exist. As a result, Shapps agreed to withdraw the adverts rather than face an ASA ruling. His companies were also banned from Google's rankings for 'scraping': stealing other sites' copy to attract clicks.

The most amusing bit was when Shapps was asked by the media about my complaint: he dismissed it as 'politically motivated', which seems a bit strange coming from a man who has devoted at least one of his personalities to being an MP and Chairman of Britain's oldest political parties.

So as you can imagine, I look forward to Grant's appearances on shows like QT with considerable relish. For me, the English language developed solely to provide the word 'glib' for application to Mr Shapps. Last night's episode was a true vintage. Smug, sneering, evasive, patronising, facetious and mendacious, good old Grant gave a master-class in modern Conservative manners.

But amongst all the other fun, one sentence Grant uttered caught my attention. While evading any discussion of the economy in favour of another unfounded attack on Keynesianism, he said to Yvette Cooper of the Labour Party 'You can't just magic money from nowhere' (around the 50 minute mark). 'That's funny', I thought. I have a dim memory of Grant Shapps' alter ego Michael Green insisting (for money) that you really can. In fact, isn't that his entire business model?

Two minutes later, I find this delightful document from the Shapps family firm, HowToCorp.

And what a magnificent opus it is:

Michael Green spent 12 years building his conventional offline business before turning his hand to online marketing on a strictly part-time basis.
And from a standing start – as recently as February 2002 – Michael has created his online How To Corp business empire! 

Part-time is right!

And how does one make all this money?

you can make money overnight, you can have success, you can earn a 6 figure income, you can do all of these things 

Easy: sack your staff:

I have been in the printing business for 12 years, you could not find a more traditional, conventional business than printing, you have stock, you have paper, people and management, all those personnel issues and so on....
What attracted me to the internet business model is that I can do away with all of those things and I can make as much money or more money, but it goes directly into my pocket, it doesn't go to anyone else, I don't need staff, I don't need premises. 

The rest of this dismal document is blindingly obvious business tips of the kind you get from 5 minutes' Googling, although I was amused by the suggestion that other internet marketers can't be trusted:

very well known names in internet marketing…sell similar 'How To' products and I think they are very dishonest 

Not like Grant/Michael at all. Interestingly, he also plugs 'Costly Internet Blunders' by one 'Rick Adams', also published by the Shapps company. Is Rick actually Grant? Who can tell? But that particular volume is no longer available. Perhaps it's being updated to include the sorry tale of Grant Shapps.

'Michael Green' is a very honest man. It says so here:

Protect your own success by preventing others from stealing what’s rightfully yours.

I am seeing people in real time trying to steal my products 

And yet here's the Daily Telegraph reporting that his company has been caught plagiarising software. I hope Grant's having a serious word with…himself.

But having read all 24 pages of Michael Green's guide to making a mint, what actually is the secret? Well, here we go! All you need to do is

Click Here And Discover How To Make 'Real' Money Online By Developing & Selling Your Very Own Products.
Find Out About Michael Green's Private System For Creating Wealth - Now Revealed For The First Time In His Amazing New Easy-To-Follow Toolkit. 

That's right. The big secret is that you need to buy another Michael Green business guide.

Ironically, given that 'Michael Green' is actually a senior government politician, you can still get 'How To Bounce Back From Recession', which I presume the rest of the Conservative Party hasn't read, or we'd all be rich again.

Remember, folks: there's an election in 2015.

'I am just going outside and may be some time'

Good morning everybody. I trust the snow is 'deep and crisp and even' where you are. I'm off to the annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English, held at this time at Gregynog, the beautiful stately home in Mid-Wales owned by the University of Wales. Coincidentally, exactly where the heaviest snow is forecast.

Being a spring conference, the weather has always been, well, variable: I've been there in heavy snow and in hot sunshine before. Last time, it was all daffodils, bluebells and cute little baa-lambs. I shall take my camera today for a compare-and-contrast set.

Anyway, it's great to get away for a few days. No mobile phone reception. No marking (the pile glares at me from the top of the filing cabinet). Just people I like talking seriously and interestingly about the things I like. I'll go for a walk around the estate, drink fine ale in the cellar bar and catch up on all the academic gossip. Or alternatively, hide in the corner trying not to catch anybody's eye. There's also the launch of the new Uncollected Poems of RS Thomas edited by Tony Brown and Jason Walford Davies, and a new edition of Tony Brown's short biography of the poet. Tony supervised my MA so I'm biased, but here's my review: 2 thumbs up – a classic!

Meanwhile, did you see Question Time last night? This one called for an extra-large bag of the horse tranquillisers I now require to get through an edition of the show. It really was a barrel-scraping shocker, quite the worst episode in an already depressing series. The panel nowadays consists solely of predictable trolls picked (successfully) to cause outrage rather than to shine a light on pressing issues, while the audiences are getting more and more racist and reactionary. I strongly suspect local political parties have found some way to game the ticketing procedure. Last night featured Michael Gove, one of the most astoundingly arrogant and patronising politicians of recent years, Mark Littlewood (a think-tank lobbyist who combines the economics of Pinochet with the human warmth of a hungry Komodo dragon), Anthony Horowitz the writer who turned out to be an ideal potential press officer for Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, Emily Thornberry of the Labour Party who struggled valiantly to get a word in edgeways, and Natalie Bennett of the Green Party who barely got to speak.

The lowlight of the show was Gove responding to a question about whether he ever listens to advice by interrupting Thornberry extremely rudely with the words 'yada yada' (from 47.45). He also repeatedly lied, particularly on job creation. He claimed (as the government always does) that 1 million new private sector jobs have been created. To my certain knowledge, over 180,000 of those are not 'new': they're FE academics who've been reclassified as private sector, despite still working for and being paid by state-run institutions. He also claimed that the recession was caused by state spending and not banks being over-leveraged in pursuit of unsustainable and frankly stupid financial instruments, leading to us having to bail them out, and a number of other direct lies.  He said we were 'living beyond our means'. This is the same Michael Gove who 'flipped' his tax-payer funded home and charged us £7000 for a television.

And while I'm on the subject, this former Murdoch employee married to a current Murdoch employee managed to give a sterling and principled defence of press freedom without once referring to his former colleagues' use of press freedom: to hack the phone of a murdered teenage girl; to hack the phones of celebrities, their secretaries, their families and their friends in pursuit not of wrongdoing in the corridors of power, but to find out whether they were pregnant, or dating, or putting on weight, or losing weight; to set private detectives on hacking victims' lawyers and on Crimewatch presenters; to build up dossiers on political opponents and on and on ad infinitum. Did the Murdoch press uncover the parliamentary expenses scandal? No. Catch Jonathan Aitken or Jeffrey Archer? No. Expose Jimmy Savile? No. They bugged and burgled (to steal a phrase) across the world to monster the innocent and harvest ridiculous, pointless gossip. As far as I'm concerned, Michael Gove is merely on secondment from Murdoch. Or perhaps Alpha Centauri. We're just the mugs paying for him.

As an anecdote, here's a clip from The Brains Trust, a BBC Radio and then TV show from the 1940s onwards:



And to unite the two rants of the day's blogging, here's Anthony Hopkins playing Gwyn Thomas appearing on The Brains Trust in the dramatisation of his autobiography A Few Selected Exits: I wrote my PhD on Thomas.

On repeat…

The clip above is of Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato, which has provided my marking soundtrack for the day. It's a Dutch version of minimalism: much more melodious and European than the American version, which draws on rock, blues and African influences to a far greater extent. Canto Ostinato can last for a mere couple of hours or a full day, because it's built on repeated sections which the composer likened to genetic code. The weakness of the piece is its sweetness: it can quite easily turn into aural wallpaper in the wrong hands, whereas 'classic' minimalism's motorik rigour demands attention.

So in a way, ten Holt's piece is perfect for the marking I've been doing today: online forums examining a Satanic soliloquy in Milton's Paradise Lost (Book IV, 358-92) and asking them to draw on their close reading skills and critical reading to explore Satan's characterisation. Given that a large number of students are asked to consider the same few lines, the result is much like Canto Ostinato for the marker: lots of repetition, quite a lot of pleasure, but little variation or risk-taking. I find it hard to take in too much in a single session, and to reply with much originality 30 times, though I do my best. Certainly the standard was high and there are moments of light relief. 'What's Satan's state of mind here', I asked. 'Pissed off', came the reply, accurately enough. 

What else has been going on? Well, talking of sterile repetition, I watched Question Time last night, despite knowing in advance the response of every panellist. Last night's crew could have formed the celebrity cast for Huis Clos ('l'enfer, c'est les autres): imagine being trapped forever with Melanie Phillips, Stephen Twigg, Bob Crow, Ken Clarke and a UKIP candidate, all endlessly rehearsing manufactured outrage. I'm used to the audience consisting of racists and conspiracists, but the BBC seems to have decided that panellists should all now essentially behave like trolls. Just once I'd like to watch an episode in which some of the commentators expressed a degree of humility or self-doubt. When David Miliband visited The Hegemon, I asked him if there was any room for self-doubt in modern politics and he literally did not understand the question. I think it's important to be open to challenge and self-examination. The other day I had a long exchange on Twitter with someone about education. We disagreed on absolutely everything, but did so thoughtfully and respectfully. It was really enjoyable to swap ideas without treating the other as a deluded moron. But political life has no room for complexity, ambiguity or doubt. To get anywhere, you have to behave as though whatever you're saying at any given moment is obviously and permanently and completely true, despite knowing that very few things outside gravity fulfil these conditions. We have always been at war with Oceania. If you remember otherwise, your memory is clearly at fault. 

Melanie wrote a book calling London 'Londonistan' and tends to believe that if you disagree with her in the tiniest way on anything at all, then you personally are guilty for 9/11 and the Holocaust. 

Bob Crow: reminds me of the junior Vogon in The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: '"Resistance is useless," bellowed the guard, and then added, "You see if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know."

Still, Mad Mel managed to be unhinged, insensitive, paranoid and viciously reactionary without denouncing Islam, which is a major achievement for her. Either that, or I've gone deaf. Between her reactionary certainty and Bob Crow's bellowing and blinkered brand of socialism (I like him, but I'd love a bit more nuance: I imagine he starts breakfast by demanding his wife provides THE WORKERS' MUESLI NOT AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE BUT IMMEDIATELY BEFORE CAPITALIST BANKERS TAKE IT AWAY TO FEED TO THEIR PONIES, whereas Melanie Phillips would merely announce that the cereal box is empty because Islamofascist anti-Semites have brainwashed ordinary people into renouncing their Traditional Breakfasting Values), before long, I was entertaining myself by imagining Bob and Mel scarfing down the free warm white wine backstage before rutting like animals in the Green Room. 

An image that will not quickly go away, unfortunately.  

The Abominable Snowvole

Afternoon everybody. And what a lovely one it is for me too. I love cold weather and snow (as you can tell from the picture above this post. Snow and bopping Wolves on the nose.

Today's thick blanket of snow is having a therapeutic effect on me. Having watched Question Time last night, I'm sorely in need of a Mogadon Cocktail. Grant Shapps was on (just the one of him this time), lying with his half-Blair, half-Delboy smirk. Then Caroline Flint, the Labour's Party's Madame Mao only more rightwing and less charismatic. Roland Rudd, another Tory, Mary Beard (whom I like) and the egregious Nigel Farage.

And if you think that was a panel of gargoyles, the Lincoln audience was living proof that we're only an EU referendum away from pogroms, flaming torches, pitchforks and crosses burning on lawns. If I learned one thing from last night's episode it's this: however lovely the Cathedral may be, never go to Lincoln.

What most enraged me about the show was the panellists' determination – with the honourable exception of Mary Beard, who didn't have a political or financial dog in the fight – to lie, distort and mislead for tactical advantage. Not a shred of idealism or principle between them. Especially Shapps, who while he attacked Labour's (tepid) Europeanism failed to mention that the traitorous Fritz-lover who signed the Single European Act was one Margaret Thatcher. Nor that the Charlemagne Prize for efforts on behalf of European Unity was once awarded to that notorious garlic. Meanwhile, Mr Farage failed to explain why one economic and political superstate encompassing several national and linguistic groups, nations and economies is oppressive (the EU), while opposing Welsh and Scots nationalism.

And while we're on the subject, I find that the more opposed to immigration a British person is, the prouder they are of the British Empire – which as far as my admittedly weak grasp of history gets me, involved lots of heavily armed British people immigrating to lots of other peoples' countries, taking their jobs, land, wives, children, gold etc… Or am I missing something? Perhaps it's just that British people only like repressive superstates when it's them doing the repression. Having to reason things through with foreigners as equals… it's just not cricket!


So here's my point of view on the European Union.


Maybe it's because I'm an Irish citizen with recent ancestors who fought the British on two continents, but I find all this Empire nostalgia plain embarrassing. Give it up! Have some self-respect. Look at Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. They all had a go at being imperialist powers. Some of them behaved even worse than you Brits (looking at you, Belgium). But they moved on. They don't sigh with regret at what they lost. They're all rich, peaceful and (mostly) nice to each other inside and outside their borders. They don't wander round the world tugging at America's sleeve shouting 'me too, me too'. They don't feel the need to wave nuclear weapons in people's faces as though the power to devastate the planet somehow confers the right to moral and political leadership. That's the politics of the playground. I don't think the British realise that far from leading an 'English-speaking world', their white colonies slightly pity them and everybody else hasn't yet forgiven or forgotten. This fantasy of once again standing alone (i.e. just being America's butler) is embarrassing.

Europe's full of interesting, quirky, well-meaning and rich cultures. Why not just try being one of them? Just for a bit. You don't have to eat the horse or drink the local moonshine. You can keep your clothes on at the beach. Nobody's going to force you to replace that can of Carling with a Belgian fruit beer or a German Dunkel. Your kebabs are safe, as are your awful trains, nightclubs and architecture. You don't even have to learn anybody else's language, or stop believing that they all think in English and are just trying to be difficult.

David Cameron debuts a new look for his Europe speech

Just try negotiating rather than shouting at everybody like a country-sized street drinker with a grudge.

I'm for it. This is unfashionable on the hard left of which I count myself a part, but I see it as an extension of the left's internationalist tradition. I wouldn't keep the EU we have – much of it is a capitalist plot – but I'd happily be a member of the United Socialist States of Europe. Even the EU we have is better than living in a UK stuck on its own.

Why? Because the EU has consistently given British workers and citizens better protection than the British Government. Whatever party's in charge, British governments serve their corporate masters. Remember Tony Blair? When he wasn't prosecuting illegal wars, he wandered the world boasting that Britain had the 'most flexible' workforce in the West, by which he meant 'least protection against exploitation, unfair dismissal, unsafe working condition', the worst pay, the worst benefits and the fewest rights of organisation of any European country. In office, he took the UK out of the Social Chapter, ensuring that British workers could be made to work for longer with even fewer protections. The British Establishment's Utopia is one in which the masses work for low pay in the services industry: doing each other's nails, picking orders in an Amazon compound, offering oral pleasure in out-of-the-way lay-bys. No union rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no collective bargaining, no health and safety laws. Result? Massive shareholder gains, workers unimportant.

Then enter the Tories and their Lib Dem puppies. They've spent the past two years stripping away what little was left of these protections, and mounting a sustained attack on the European Court of Human Rights. It's not an EU body, but it still has Johnny Foreigner making rude comments about Britain's nasty little habit of kidnapping suspects, suspending habeas corpus, turning a blind eye to torture, suppressing war crimes yada yada yada. My MP wants us to delete the Human Rights Act because apparently we've all got too many rights. Yes, you heard me. Too many!

And there are a few other things the Europeans gave us apart from decent justice and workers' protection. Clean Air: Boris Johnson is currently lobbying to prevent EU prosecution for decades' of illegal levels of pollution in London's air. Clean water. Some semblance (however insane) of a farming and fishing policy which isn't just 'help yourself lads'. Decent transport and infrastructure: go anywhere outside Central London and you'll find a discreet EU flag next to major improvements because South Wales, Scotland, the North-East and all sorts of other areas have been left to rot by the cosmopolitan financiers and their tame UK political parties. Who dredged and cleaned the Thames? The EU. Who's paying to electrify the North-West train system? Not the train companies: the EU! Who gave the UK £2.282bn for research and development? Those perfidious Europeans! Who keeps those rabidly anti-European farmers in business? Europe! How much does it cost us? Well, if you earn £50,000 a year, you give the EU £70. That's even better value than the licence fee!

There's just one more thing Europe gave us. Peace. I'm really enjoying it. Before the EU there were lots of wars between European states. Since the 1950s when it was founded: none. No more gas chambers, no border squabbles, no military coups in member states. Ireland fought the British for hundreds of years. And now we're partners. The British v the French, the French v the Germans, the French v Spain, Spain v the Netherlands, Germany v Poland… I could go on. But never again.

So apart from workers' rights, justice, a cleaner environment, decent transport, infrastructure investment and peace, what did the Europeans ever give us?

Oh yes: sensible, thoughtful politics without the braying, brachiating willy-waving of cynical, dishonest blowhards of the type we get over here.

EU Super-state? Yes please.

And now I'm off to build a snow Nigel Farage. He'll like it: it'll be blanc de blancs.

Today's lesson

1. Christmas drinks on a Thursday are not a good idea. Especially when you have to represent someone in a disciplinary case the next morning.

2. Several pints of real ale are not good preparation for watching BBC's Question Time. When I watch it sober, I'm in a state of fury. Slightly tipsy and all the inhibitions are off, as anyone who follows @PlashingVole on Twitter will know by this morning.

Still, at least Will Self was on: the modernist ex-junkie who makes everybody else sound bonkers through the calm application of fact and thoughtfulness. Dumb-ass of the Week goes to government minister Justine Greening, whose excuse for not knowing a fairly prominent fact was 'I wasn't alive then' (i.e. the 1960s). Justine: I wasn't alive in 1945, but I still know who won WW2. Similarly, I know about Victorian sexuality, medieval literacy, and Renaissance architecture, despite being as yet unconceived. Personal experience is not required for the acquisition of knowledge.

Anyway, I'm off to this disciplinary hearing, wearing my most severe suit and all brushed up. I'll leave you with something amusing. You may know that I had a letter in the Guardian the other day, on the subject of Stoke and decentralising government. The problem with using your real name in the public press is that you attract… well… loons. Here's an email I got this morning (I've removed the gentleman's email and name):

I hope this is of interest to you ..........I enjoyed your letter in London's Guardian, the London elite  only allow us .... such freedoms because we cannot do anything with it?
From John Lacklands Magna Carta to Rooseveldt and Churchills Atlantic Charter - of 1941.

Could you read this conversation with Boris Johnsons personal drone I am sure its a very worthy pursuit....thankyou   THE ENGLISH EMBASSY. CENTRAL ENGLAND. YORK COUNTY. PONTEFRACT. ELMSALL SANDFORD RD.  WF9 2XL  Tel: ENGLAND 1977641791  You New Yorkers don't appear to sell out your own Country to makea living as The Thieving  Looneys do!

  The Looneys are thieves, it must be recognized that London is our Competitor - not our Representative!
  The Looneys are thieves, it must be recognized that London is our Competitor - not our Representative!

1. THE ENGLISH SCOTS AND IRISH and WELSH were promised their freedom from LONDON'S rule when CHURCHILL and ROOSEVELDT signed THE ATLANTIC CHARTER of 1941. The ENGLISH are still waiting for their freedom from LONDONS kleptomanic dictatorship. Please read the enclosed

Why are we English invisible, why are we unrepresented,why are we overrun by others who refuse to recognise our own Country and our true Identity to enable them to manipulate us as they please. Why should we be british for thieves in London, why is our National Identity refused us… because  London is our competitor ... not our representative!
THE ANSWER IS … LONDON The KLEPTOCRATIC CITY-STATE THE RISE OF GHORMENGHAST … AS PREDICTED GREETINGS FROM THE (only) ENGLISH EMBASSY in the World – I wonder why? Why is there no English Government … who stole our Identity so as to make more of it’s own! Only City’s have Empire’s. Why should we English be told to be british by every pipsqueak and moribund public and private artificial construct in London’s arsenal of manifestations, why comply when it brings no relevent democratic or economic benefits to us of any kind.
Why are we subjected to a continual barrage of specious yet invasive media advertisements??? adversiding against us in programme film and paper form while the entirely selfish rogue Capital of …. britain exploits us systematically. Some magnificent scam, thieving away with our sensibilities: the whole edifice is a manufactured entity. I would have thought the Commonwealth Countries would get wise in time but even they remain silent … mysteriously servile and compliant without making any form of humanitarian representation about this blatant abuse of England and the English people. Scotland Wales and Ireland have their own governments why are we English absent from the realm of Nations – who made us invisible.
A Dictator doesn’t have to be a person, history proves conclusively that a dictator can be a City exploiting its position for its own advantage. All of China bankrolled the Olympic Games for Beijing’s cultural emancipation – imagine who bankrolls London year on year on year who’s invisible assets back up every event it manages … 365-24-7? Who pays for its almost countless public attractions it’s – Bloodsucking Intellectual Troposphere, London’s Royal Family, London’s Parliament, London’s Museums, London’s Art Galleries, London’s Orchestras. London’s Theatres and Opera’s – a mutual apprecion society with no visible means of support!
—–Original Message—–
From: Mayor of London
To: 
Sent: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:41
Subject: RE: MGLA310810-8353 LONDON – When are you going to declare UDI and allow us our freedom?
Dear Mr
Thank you for your email of 26 August and for your comments about London and the
economy in England. I have been asked to reply.
The Mayor would not agree with your analysis of the situation. London (with
about 12% of the UK’s population) contributes more to the Treasury than any
other region; its economy is greater than that of Scotland, Northern Ireland,
Wales and the East Midlands combined. He believes that to maintain its position,
the capital needs continued investment, but with greater freedom for the
boroughs to decide how money is spent. Then Mayor has said
“Londoners already do more than their fair share. We pay much more in tax than
we get back in public expenditure. We are driving the economy into recovery.
Londoners are, on average, 30% more productive than the rest of the UK, plus
those who leave take their skills and experiences with them, honed in the
world’s business capital.
“London has consistently replenished the Treasury coffers over the last twenty
years. What we want is a fair deal, only a fair deal, and will give a great deal
back to the nation.”
Dear Ms Phillips,
You represent a blatantly geofascist entity you have virtually all our Headquarters of Every Possible Branch of Business, our Embassies of The World – our Seaports, our Airports, our Television Companies, our Newspapers, our Civil Service … our Union Headquarters – what don’t you have – can you tell me how to make bricks without straw?
Value for money … no way – how could you be because you are not working for – us! We know just how far you -”we”- we means nothing to you … our Identity is bought and sold – we have been transported . How dare you manipulate us so blithely whilst committing daylight robbery upon our possessions – you are not OUR Capital.
When are you going to declare U.D.I. and give us our freedom, then we can have our own Headquarters and Embassies Television Radoi and Newspaper Media, Seaports and Airports our Civil Service etc … why continue with this charlatan’s charade We have absolutely nothing in common and are destined to become – sworn enemies if this grim ritual of habitual exploitation continues! I am certain Mayor Boris Johnson knows his Livy … it’s time for you to go! Don’t waste any time.
sincerely
Just an Englishman.
If you are interested in reading more, please visit our website:http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/championing-london/vision-and-strategyhttp://www.london.gov.uk/championing-london/central-government/investing-recoveryhttp://www.london.gov.uk/media/press_releases_mayoral/mayor-calls-government-help-get-london-working I hope that this information is of interest and thank you for taking the time to write to the Mayor.
Ruth Phillips Public Liaison Officer Greater London Authority — Submitted on 2010-08-26 17:27 First Name: Email: Subject: When are you going to declare UDI? Message:
Only Citys have Empires – and Empires only recognise colonies
Dear Sir, According to The Atlantic Charter of 1941 signed by Winston Spencer Churchill and Franklin Delano Rooseveldt every Country in Europe would have the benefit of their own democratically elected government once the Second World War was over. What of England – how did we disappear….
Cicero…. Nunc te patria, quae communis est parens omnium nostrum, oditac metuit etiam dui nihil te indicat niside parricidio suo cogitare; huis tu neque auctoritatem vebere nec iudicium sequere nec vim pertimesces….

1. 
   

 THE ENGLISH EMBASSY. CENTRAL ENGLAND. YORK COUNTY. PONTE FRACT. ELMSALL. MINSTHORPE. SANDFORD ROAD. WF9 2XL TEL: 01977641791
Back England�s bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup and London as a Candidate Host City .... again. Visithttp://www.england2018bid.com or Text �England� to 62018 GREATER LONDON 

Live-blogging the Uppalopacalypse

Probably 40 people here - a scattering of staff. On the panel: Emma Reynolds MP, Paul Uppal MP, Jane Nelson from the university Executive and Ken Harris the SU President, moderated by Dan, a very good student activist who looks somewhere between 1970s Gerry Adams and Ricky Tomlinson in that family comedy whose name I can't remember. The mood so far is muted expectation. Uppal's in a very decent suit (he is, in case you don't know, a multimillionaire). Jane's wearing pop-art polka dots and Emma is in scarlet and resembles Kathy Newman from Channel 4 news.

A little misleading: Ms. Reynolds is a lot smilier than this photo implies. On the right is Ken, the SU President. 

Ken in full flow

First q: is education a public good?
ER: Yes. We're concerned about it. The original fees was controversial but at least we capped it. We increased the quality of education and improved provision. The government is taking funding away from humanities and creative subjects. The funding cut is almost privatisation.

They say living well is the best revenge, eh Paul?

PU: Yes, it is a public good and I benefited from it. It is a universal truth that parties in power impose fees and in opposition oppose them. That illustrates the heart of the issue. Tuition fees came from the Browne Inquiry. If we have an honest and mature discussion, we must say that the route was a fait accompli. More private money is the reality to get an education system fit for the twenty-first century. £9000 is a good news story: applications are actually up. You have to be careful to look for the positives though I appreciate it's difficult for some. I got a free education but didn't get a grant. I value education. It's been a foundation for me. Those in opposition always oppose but always go impose it in power.

JN: it's a public and private good. Neither party has tackled the issue head on. Participation was very low when I went to university but tax was very high: juggling that balance is always difficult. The policy we now have is a mishmash and won't reduce government expenditure in the short or medium term.

ER chatting to a student after the event

KH: It's a public good. I wouldn't be here otherwise: working with a family, I decided to come back to education, calculated on affording £3000. Now I wouldn't have left my job to go to university. It's a barrier to higher education. My oldest son (13) is already making me worry about the costs of university in a few years' time. My sister has 4 children: she can't afford to send her children. We don't all come from a privileged background but we can still succeed and it looks like the door is closing.

Q2: Now the fees are trebled, will a sector of society be put off?
ER: I am really concerned about this. Applications are up here but the national rate is 10% down. It's not black and white but £27000 is a lot of debt for the start of your life. Getting on the housing ladder is harder, the jobs are harder to find. This might lead to fewer students. I went to Oxford: I don't want the elite universities to bar the brightest from going there. We already have a problem in that very few of their students come from the state school system. I don't want to discourage people though. Education is also a private benefit, hence our introduction of fees: 60% of young people not in HE need help too.

ER meets an overseas student. Paul Uppal had a train to catch and couldn't hang around. Damn: I wanted his autograph. 

JN: I'm quite optimistic. There aren't many other options post-school at the moment. The detail of how the funding works has been obscured by the politics: you don't pay fees until you're earning £21k. When you start repaying what you owe, it relates to your earnings, not your debt, so if you go to an expensive university, you simply repay for longer. It's all income related. When fees went up to £3000 in 2006, applications peaked the year before, dipped, then levelled out again.
PU: Try to take the politics out of it. Debt or investment? The advantage of having a degree is enormous. It's a matter of perception. At the Grammar School they see this as an opportunity to grasp (?!). Earn above £41k and you pay more. We've faced choices in government and if we want first-class education this is the best option on the table. I've been to India in recent months: their students covet an English university education: a UK Plc brand (vomit). I'm optimistic. My extended family won't be put off.
KH: I've been fortunate to work on student recruitment for 2012. 95% of them don't like fees but still intend to come here. There aren't any jobs out there. It will lead to a more informed choice of subject and discussion of earning potential. With the focus on STEM, what about arts and humanities, where's the creativity? What legacy are we going to leave behind?

From the floor: I think the HE system needs a kick up the backside. The people responsible are dimwits running education - civil servants, think tanks: targets etc. miss the whole point of education. We're letting students down badly. Under Blair, education didn't lead to jobs. We need plasterers and engineers and having to import them.

Q2: Should degrees be focussed on jobs?
PU: There can be a disconnect between provision and the work ethic and what employers want. The chair of the Black Country LEP is working on school-business involvement. The 9 primary schools and 3 secondary schools improved their GCSE results by 25%. The preparation for a life in work hasn't been explored enough. Vocational training needs more attention.
ER: when I was at school in Codsall I did several language exchanges. In Spain, they don't often do degrees in non-vocational subjects. Our system is better than that. Academic studies encourage people to think and make arguments, which is why other countries in Europe envy us. I take the point that we need to concentrate on non-university people to provide skills but we're not going to survive with low-skilled workers in a globalised system. Young people need skills transferable between lots of jobs. I'm proud we expanded the university population. China and India are producing thousands [millions, I think] of graduates and we can't be left behind.
KH: Degrees fit for jobs? We've shut down the manufacturing. We've seen Birmingham's car factories go, my employer Cadbury's is declining. We need to go back into schools and provide better role models and celebrate success and achievement so that kids naturally want to go to university. We have a society of get-rich, get-famous and we need to stop this kind of aspiration.
JN: The majority of graduate jobs don't ask for a specific subject: employers actually want the ability to think. Even if you do a technical degree, a 40 year career can't depend only on a 3 year degree: these things date very quickly. Most graduates will have 10 jobs: the particular skills they need for their first job won't sustain them: it's the other qualities they acquire.

From the floor: 'quite a lot of degrees don't go out of fashion: philosophy, for example'.
JN: As a politics and philosophy graduate, I completely agree with you. Distinguishing between what's necessary and sufficient is one skill I use regularly.
ER: my degree is PPE - very useful
PU: I studied politics too.

Chair: employability - unemployment is at a high. What does the audience think?
From the floor: you learn a lot at university that isn't on the curriculum - political socialisation. I've been here for many years and have watched governments remove all sorts of subsidies. There's been a concerted effort by both parties to shift the balance of what both young and older people learn in university. If we look at the privatisation argument, the public/private funding split was 55/45 in England in 2009. Getting rid of grants, bringing in fees in stages educates students in a narrower way: to expect low-paid routine jobs and a life of wage-slavery. Blunkett and Browne et al made the case that you pay for what you get out of it: individualisation, marketisation, competition. What students don't learn is mutuality, support, empathy: the postwar values once supported by both parties.

JN: on political socialisation - I've seen the expansion of the system and its intake make universities much less rarefied places. The extra-curricular concerns coping with families etc, rather than living away in isolated activities. Students now aren't shut off from everyday life: they're more grounded. There are some advantages to that.
ER: being at uni isn't just about the education. It's about socialisation but I agree with Jane that expanding the intake creates a much more diverse social environment. When my parents were at university, the percentage was tiny. It's fair to ask students to make a contribution but now we're insisting in arts and humanities that you pay for the whole thing. I think that's the danger with the 85% cut in the teaching grant.
KH: People do learn different things at university, but the fees system is commercialising education. Coventry is bringing in the Netto degree at £48000. Some people - mature, mortgaged - will be tempted by that. What people won't realise is that you won't get the things that come with a full university: library, academic support, an SU, social interaction… If I wanted to be lectured at then go away I'd have done an online degree. I've really appreciated interaction with students at seminars and elsewhere. With new providers offering cut-price degrees the learning experience is going to be completely different. We'll have multiple tiers of institution and the employers will judge you on the institution not the degree classification.
PU: I was at Matthew Boulton Technical College for A-levels. At university I was the only non-white person there. Met my first double-barrelled person. That social aspect explodes vocabulary and soft skills. I took that from university more than anything else. The fundamental aspect is human interaction. People talk about new media but human interaction is the authentic extra yard that seals the deal. If college can enhance those skills, that's something that's still an asset. My relatives have been transformed by university. But increasingly preparation for modern work is for 9-10 careers. Social interaction and networking is essential for this.

Q3: You mentioned non-white faces Mr Uppal. After several years of lobbying, the government is considering whether or not to include caste under the Equality Act. It hasn't been done yet despite the report finding discrimination in the UK. Will you lobby for this?
PU: This predates the current government. It's not an issue that's come onto my radar. Give me your details.
Q. That tells me about your position and caste status: had you belonged to a lower caste, you'd be aware of it. Had you been a victim you'd have been concerned.
PU: Some of my best friends are lower-caste.

Me: tax breaks on property developers or cuts in disabled property? You're a millionaire.
Uppal: I haven't called for tax breaks. You're just reading it that way. I am independently wealthy. I'm not a developer I'm an investor [eh? Isn't that worse? He's contributed nothing to society. He also got a bit huffy that I wasn't 'looking at' him - I was typing his response. Apparently his assistant was looking a bit twitchy too].
ER: I think taxes should increase. I agree those with broader shoulders should pay more. I don't think the 50p tax rate should be abandoned and I don't think bankers bonuses should carry on. It's not right that the incredibly wealthy get too far ahead. We need equality - not just 'equality of opportunity'. Unequal societies have higher crime, worse health and more expensive health systems. We need to take tough measures to tackle this. On the benefit changes it's disgraceful that if you've had cancer, you lose your ESA after a year because you're deemed to be better. There is a real problem with fairness with this government.
KH: If you can afford to pay more, you should. What we're doing now is taxing the poor. If you're on low wages, your cash goes on taxable expenditure - heating etc. The changes are moving us backwards. We're supposed to be civilised. These changes are abandoning the old sick and disabled. We're all going to be old.
PU: On who should share the burden of course it should be carried by those with broader shoulders. I think we should keep the 50p tax rate. But inequality grew at a phenomenal rate under Labour and venture capitalists paid less tax than their cleaners. I'm sorry Emma chose to be partisan. Welfare reform is important. I have been dirt poor. There's no nobility in poverty. My government will provide a ladder out of poverty which is why I voted for the Welfare Reform Bill.
ER: I'm a politican and I'm Labour. Our divisions are healthy. I did say we didn't do enough but we did redistribute. Even Peter Mandelson is no longer relaxed about people getting filthy rich. The crisis has underlined that people risking our money are still being rewarded. We need to fix a culture in those sectors that are out of control.
JH: I support the 50p rate and taxing the rich. But the system of tax and benefits is hugely complex, as is student funding. At least income tax is simple and there.
PU: Lib Dem idea of raising the threshold is good.

From the floor: I've got 2 disabled children. We didn't choose to have genetically-poorly children. My wife had to give up to care for them. Cutting their support isn't a route out of poverty. Raising the tax threshold doesn't help: care allowance will have no effect on that whatsoever.
ER: I agree. I don't understand why welfare reform is hitting people like the disabled. The government shouldn't make it more difficult.

Time's almost up! Oh god - feels like we've hardly started.

Q4: Do we trust markets to solve employability or do we look to government to solve the unemployment crisis?
ER: Both. Government sets the conditions. We're losing public AND private sector jobs - this is economic madness. There do have to be spending cuts or tax rises, but too much too quickly puts people on the dole, damaging the public funds. Another quarter of negative growth puts us into recession officially.
KH: It has to be both. My first job was in a government office. There was a lot of waste - nobody seemed to care. Reforms are good but the cuts are too big. Something needs to be done but I do know personally that it's too easy not to work and be on benefits - that needs to be reformed.
JN: I'd like to see government money going into public infrastructure, especially public transport - a win/win approach.
PU: It's a combination. Of course I disagree with Emma. Credibility is the watchword. Governments not seen as credible are dumped by bondholders non-politically [this is utterly naive and/or deceptive]. Bondholders approve of what the UK government is doing. I will lobby for public infrastructure if you want. There is good news out there: the trade gap is lower than since April 2003.

No interest in green questions at all! I didn't realise it was meant to be a theme of the evening: I'm massively concerned about the environment and feel awful when my students scoff at green issues.

Q5: Why is the government not enforcing benefit scrounging crackdowns with harsh punishments? I know people scamming the system who are never punished.
PU: It's at both ends of the scale. People want fairness at the bottom as well as the top. Work should always pay. A lady on Rugby Street told me that [he's used this one before kids] she's ridiculed by her neighbours for going out to work.
ER: I agree with what Paul said. There's a lot of focus on scroungers - but we need to find jobs for people, and tax-evaders get away with a lot more than benefit scroungers.
[Actually - the benefits system suffers from massive errors and minor fraud, and plenty of people don't claim what they're entitled to - but it suits the Tories and New Labour's right wing to bang on about scroungers, something Emma didn't do].

Time's up - so soon.
Final score. 
Jane Nelson: I like Jane. She's got a sharp mind and humanist values tempered by experience and a strategic outlook.

Paul Uppal. I'll admit it up front: I already don't like him. Today saw a tactic I've seen before. When he's amongst friends, he spouts hardline neoconservative viciousness. When he's in front of an audience like this, he attempts to manufacture a post-ideological consensus: he keeps saying things like 'let's not bring politics into this'. Er… he's an MP. What this actually means is 'I'm dealing with reality, you're playing games', and it's a way of closing down debate by making people like me sound rude. I have to admit that I didn't ask my question entirely coherently, but he was rattled, from what others say. He's very smooth and practised.

Emma Reynolds: I'm a Labour member, so you'll probably expect me to be on her side, though I will point out that I'm from the irredentist neo-Trotskyite Time For A Purge wing of the party (or in my tradition, the Party). But - she's brilliant. A really good communicator with a first-class mind but also the human qualities lacking in so many politicians. She also likes a bit of a fight: she clearly believes that with ideology comes competition for ideas and allegiance which we should be proud of. A bit of a star.

Ken Harris: he's the SU President. The institution's been moribund for years, until Ken, who is a very charismatic guy, started the recovery. He's a mature student, working-class with kids, and his politics are populist/centrist: not predictable. Always good value on a panel.

Final event of the evening: the Vice-Chancellor popped up to gloat about Sunderland's win against Stoke. Bah. I almost got to the end of the week without bumping into him. You win, VC!

So THAT's what happened to the public intellectuals

A few weeks ago, I posted a long and quite diffuse piece on the declining prominence of public intellectuals: leading thinkers who used the mass media to introduce a degree of thoughtfulness and complexity into public debates. It got republished by the LSE Impact site, and by an American site too, so clearly it's not just me.

I was thinking about it again last night, having decided for some reason to watch the BBC's Question Time programme, in which political and public figures are invited to respond to current affairs questions from the general public. It's the TV version of BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?, which also has an unlistenably reactionary phone-in element, Any Answers?, the nearest this country gets to Alabama.



The shows have a long and arguably proud history, but they're also at the heart of the problem.  The format of several politicians plus a couple of 'colourful' or eccentric celebrities lends itself to propaganda and demagoguery: the pressure to be entertaining leads to the selection of controversialists who have media careers to push, while the politicians have become less and less thoughtful. 24 news, media monitoring and a hysterical press means that any politician on the show is forced to remain robotically 'on-message', parroting the briefing of the party's communications team. Individuality, ambiguity and indifference are in short supply. Last night's episode featured Baroness Warsi, a Tory who couldn't get an MPs seat because a) she's quite stupid and b) the Tory party is still very racist, and Stephen Twigg, a former New Labour MP. Neither of them had a single intelligent thing to say, because they were obsessed with repeating their party's 'talking points': Twigg was dull, while Warsi wheeled out inappropriate and unoriginal attack lines because she was incapable of responding to questions in an individual and flexible fashion. The other two guests were Charles Moore, a conservative but quite interesting journalist, and Germaine Greer, exactly the kind of media star picked for her predictably 'outrageous' opinions. Only Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, was intelligent, responsive and measured - which led to Baroness Warsi denouncing her for not being an imperialist. To see the daughter of Pakistani immigrants proclaiming her love for the British Empire was shocking - a triumph of ambition and ideological inflexibility over intelligence.

Rather than take the Douglas Adams approach occasionally ('I refuse to answer the question on the grounds that I don't know the answer', he once said), panellists feel they have to have a definitive response to everything.

Shows like this act as gatekeepers of public opinion. Germaine Greer should understand that she's there not for her media-friendly intellect, but to give the audience a little frisson - ooh, isn't she outrageous with her slightly wacky ideas? The show exists to maintain the dominance of a narrow version of political and intellectual life: the BBC's apology for not editing the 9/11 edition, in which the public expressed harsher opinions than politicians was incredibly high-handed, while the Nick Griffin episode was used not as an opportunity to expose his views as laughable, but for all sorts of celebrities to hold their noses and grab hold of the high ground. I also think that shows like this are dangerous because they imply some sort of accessibility and accountability. Politicians show up, run the risk of being booed sometimes, and feel they've 'faced' the public. It's fraudulent: they're exhaustively briefed on the party line, and their job is to make this preheated pap sound like their own opinions. If they get away with it, they report back to HQ that 'the line' has been propagated: there's no chance that they get back into the limo and ponder another panellist's ideas, or - heaven forbid - something an audience member said. The show looks like 'citizens' two cents' but it's actually a thinly-disguised propaganda outlet.

Question Time is the victim of political and celebrity culture. It's fallen into the trap of believing that everything is a party-political issue requiring representation - this leads only to the robotic utterances of Twigg, Warsi and their colleagues - while restricting discourse to a narrow field by adding a couple of guests by whom we're meant to be outraged or thrilled at their zaniness - Caroline Lucas manages to escape this trap by being hugely intelligent, whereas Greer and people like Alex James don't. Guests who don't take the same discursive approach, who don't accept the playing field set by the party politicians and received opinion are there to be laughed at or reviled - maintaining cultural and political hegemony by excluding whole swathes of opinion rather than examining them. Cannier guests - and I'd very much place Germaine Greer in this category - work out exactly what's wanted of them. She's tailored her 'product', or become a 'brand'. Having started out as a glorious radical feminist who made a huge difference to public culture, she is now a professional celebrity, reliably wheeling out slightly wacky opinions and good personalised putdowns: she adds the appearance of edgy radicalism while making no serious contribution to moving the goalposts away from the mainstream game. She's 'colour' rather than a threat to consensus. She knows this - it's how she makes her living.

Here's one of the most awful episodes: unelected Lord Adonis and Baroness Williams, Tory know-nothing loan-shark advertiser Carol Vorderman, comedy politician Boris Johnson and (thank Christ) Will Self, a man who eats morons for breakfast, though even he isn't immune from the 'opinions for money' syndrome.



Excerpts from the 9/11 episode:



What would I like? More boring guests. Experts. People who don't see an appearance as the route to occasional gigs on News 24 and a column in GQ or the Guardian if they manage to crack out a couple of zingers. People who don't feel the need to frame every question within the paradigm of party politics or triangulation. People whose careers don't depend on repeating a party line in the hope of preferment. People who introduce subordinate clauses to their answers and don't depend on audience applause for validation. People who aren't afraid to say that a question is complicated, difficult or even not worth discussing.

It's not likely to happen. The combination of rolling news (which creates vast swathes of space and time looking for something to fill it) and the gotcha politics of parties with no real ideological differences means that politicians in particular are terrified of saying anything which might give the opposition the chance to attack them for five minutes on Sky News. The cardinal sins in our public discourse are doubt and delay. A politician - or anyone else in the public eye - who says 'I'll need to think about that' is automatically painted as incompetent or untrustworthy. Egg donation? Libya? CDOs? Bankers' bonuses? Steve Jobs? Scottish independence? You've got to churn out the opinions without ever being given the time to research and ponder. (And yes, I know that's a little cheeky given that I'm a blogger).

Lest you think I'm feeling sorry for the politicians, I'm not. It's their fault. The determination to sound decisive and certain on every single event and issue communicates a contempt for the citizens. They've decided that we're all morons, and that we want and believe in the possibility of absolute conviction. We've been trained to belief that uncertainty = weakness, that any politician who doesn't have a snappy answer is out of his or her depth. I don't think that's true: in our own lives we're capable of holding multiple, contradictory or temporary opinions. In my profession, ambiguity and complexity are the highest virtues of contemporary literary studies. So why should we expect our politicians to hold the key to the Ultimate Questions? It's because we've been trained to assume that speed and simplicity of response equates to intelligence.

New Labour was the classic example. An élite group of highly-educated people from private schools, Oxbridge and political careers (very few of them were working class or had ever held jobs outside politics), they were fed the idea that the voters were angry, dumb and often racist. Rather than work out whether this was true, try to change opinions if so, or even meet some of these people, New Labour decided to pander to these perceived questions. It's hard to imagine now, but political communication relied on incredibly simplistic messages (pledge cards, sentences without verbs promising happy families or reduced immigration), while the serious politics (deregulation, interest rates, complicated diplomacy) was hidden away - too boring and complicated for the voters. Now, we're all experts in credit default swaps, bond markets and the intricacies of Syrian opposition groups (aren't we?), but our politicians haven't caught up: they're still treating us like hyperactive children to be pacified until our attention span means something shinier catches our collective eyes.

OK, I've strayed somewhat from my main point. Question Time isn't the cause of political cynicism, celebrity vacuity and the restriction of political discourse to an elite version of 'mainstream' - but it's symptomatic of a degraded and exhausted public sphere.

My Nuremberg

In advance of the UCU lecturers' strike (that'll show 'em) on November 30th - defending our pensions - our hitherto moribund SU is hosting a Question Time on Thursday, 5-7, in place of actually supporting us. In the absence of anyone better, I'll be on the panel with Melanie Philips, Alan Sugar and Alex James some SU representatives, students and university officials.

Post questions in advance or just turn up - it'll be enormous fun.