Hypocrisy, thy name is Uppal!

My mediocre MP managed to get his pennorth in the parliamentary debate on bombing Libya. Oddly enough for a man with a formal post in the All-Parliamentary Group on Saudia Arabia (main activity: justifying one of the most savage and ruthless regimes in the world), he's posing as a liberal interventionist when it comes to Libya.

I know that there might be charges of hypocrisy and that people are asking why we are choosing Libya and not Bahrain, why we are not addressing the situation in Yemen and why we are choosing to act in this specific situation, but we can only deal with the situation as it is presented to us.

All this shows is - of course - that politicians are devoid of principle: they can see which way the wind is blowing and adapt their rhetoric accordingly. What Uppal says (amongst the habitual reference to how heroic his family is and suspiciously apposite quotes) is utterly meaningless. The 'situation' in Bahrain is that 70% of the population is shut out from economic and civic society by a ruling class which looks only after itself. Now it's called in Paul's Saudi friends to crush the population. That does make Paul a hypocrite because he's in favour of liberation in Libya now that Gaddafi's no longer wanted, and simultaneously in favour of massive repression in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring countries because… well, as far as I can see, because he like rich, repressive regimes. The Saudis buy guns (to use on their neighbours' civilians) and sell oil. We don't want to disturb that little carousel.

Some poor sixth-formers had the misfortune to be accompanied by Uppal on a trip to Auschwitz. I wonder if he managed to refrain from plugging his self-interested views on taxation and from handing out Conservative propaganda. Uppal's feeling about the experience is heartfelt:

On reflection, there were many lessons to learn about that journey but one thing was more pertinent than anything else in my discussions with those sixth formers-they wondered how we had let that tyranny and oppression come to fruition

Yes, that's right. Tyranny and oppression are bad. Unless it's your Saudi paymasters and their friends. How have these things come about? Because unintelligent and selfish Conservative multimillionaires prefer to sell weapons to tyrants who'll do their realpolitik bidding.

Not his finest moment.

Solidarity, Baby!

We're striking on Thursday (not me, I'm away, damn it), and the National Union of Students fully supports us:

NUS President Aaron Porter was quoted in the Guardian on Monday saying  "huge cuts to university budgets ideologically imposed by this government pose a massive threat to jobs and education. NUS has worked closely with UCU throughout our campaigns to oppose government cuts and stands in solidarity with their strike action next week." The NUS has also written to the Employers’ Pension Forum urging them to meet UCU to resolve the dispute over USS.

Well, not quite. The President of our SU is a minion of management and takes a rather different view.

As a union we have to promote the idea of using the time to study. We are encouraging students to who are affected to use the time to catch up on work. Remember that there are two main unions at this university, UCU and Unison.  Unison are not striking.

I had a meeting with X [the man he seems to think is his boss] last week to discuss the University's stance on this. He informed us that the university will not be re-running any missed lectures and have no obligation to do so.  All they will do is make the work available for students.  For me, this is unacceptable as it means students are missing out. Lecturers are not providing an alternative for students and it is because of this that we are unable o support.

the groups decision is that that we do support lecturers but we have to put "students' First", A should have made this clear to you.

As I'm sure you will understand, we find ourselves in a difficult situation here, but we are a Students' Union and our first duty is always to you the student.  Students are affected adversely by the strike abut are not to blame for the situation we are in.  Students expect to be taught and receive the education they have paid for. 

He seems to have forgotten that he's elected to take the bigger picture - not act as a complaints desk or shop assistant. Students will miss a day's formal teaching. If the university and government get their way, they'll miss out on staff being able to pick them out from a crowd, staff who aren't working two jobs, and staff who aren't completely demoralised.

Clearly his election didn't include a literacy test either.

Banks 1, Japan 0

Apparently the Japanese tsunami is going to cost them 'as much as £145bn'. That's a lot of money. How will we ever find enough cash to help them out?

Oh wait. The UK found £20bn to bail out the banks, according to the Bank of England. The US handed over $100bn. The total cost to the UK economy in lost output is £7.4 trillion.

Funny how fast the banks got their (our) cash. Funny how slow it's going to be to help the Japanese. I'm going to phone my bank and ask them to send the money I lent them via the government to Japan.

Congratulations Utah

How sweet. Utah has added another state symbol to the list (why do Americans do this?). This time, it's a gun. Not even a hunting rifle. A Browning (so-called because of it's effect on the victim's undercrackers) semi-automatic pistol. Because when the rest of the US comes for its multiple wives, Utah's got to be ready?

I have readers in Utah. Is happiness a warm gun? Or is this plain crazy? Will kids be taught a list in school? State cute bird (gull), state fluffy animal (bee), state murder weapon?

Reminder: gun murders in the US last year - almost 10,000. 16204 murders in total. So while the NRA's right that 'guns don't kill people, people do', it's pretty clear that they prefer to do it with a gun. Even in Utah (It's the orange one above red Arizona). But now they can do it patriotically.

And finally…

I got (of course) a couple of books today. McGarry's biography of Eoin O'Duffy and a pocket Welsh grammar, as my Gramadeg Cymraeg is about 900 pages long and weighs a ton. O'Duffy was an IRA hero during the revolution, then commander of the Defence Forces and the Garda Siochana, but he was a wrong 'un. The secret alcoholism and homosexuality (despite a life of public conservative moralising) I can live with - but he became leader of Ireland's Fascists, the Blueshirts. Hilariously, his pathetic bunch were sent home after one battle when they tried to help Franco in Spain - useless and untrustworthy.

Ireland's potential Führer? 

Very pleasingly, a lot of them were killed at Jarama, possibly even at the hands of their socialist compatriots. O'Duffy went from bad to worse - negotiating with the Nazis to get the IRA involved in anti-British sabotage (despite having proclaimed that the IRA were communists). Disgustingly, he still got a state funeral in 1944. Disappointingly, Fine Gael, O'Duffy's political party, is now in government. Politics hasn't moved on from the Civil War, so we have the grotesque sight of a rightwing capitalist party which smashed the economy being replaced by a rightwing capitalist party which would have smashed the economy in exactly the same way if they'd been in charge. What a bright future…

Anyway, I'll leave you with a snippet of another unpleasant man's diary - Evelyn Waugh on visiting neighbouring Birmingham and Shropshire. He must have travelled through The Dark Place but obviously thought it unworthy of comment:

I went to Birmingham yesterday to watch Mrs. G. It is a disgusting town with villas and slums and ready-made clothes shops and Chambers of Commerce. 

Kitsch me if you can

The final pictures of Macclesfield as the sun went down. Rest here.

Click on these for larger versions.

Yuck

Neal makes a break for it.

We opted for the pub instead of Evensong

No doubt a salubrious emporium.

At the setting of the sun

We managed to find two top rural real-ale pubs on the way, although sitting down was much easier than standing up… These pictures were taken between the Wild Boar in Wincle and The Hanging Gate in Lansley, which has a terrace looking west over rolling hills. More pictures here.

The world's most pointless stile?

The Bullstones prehistoric stone circle, with Shutlingsloe in the background. Very impressive remains. Some hippies had left money in the rock's hollow. For some reason, I left it there. Now I wonder why. It's probably the remains of a barrow. A Celtic urn burial was found there - not sure where it is now. 

Jodrell Bank radio telescope at sunset

All this said to us was 'this is a great sledging field'.

Camper Dan Beethoven

Have you ever seen a man so camp? (More pics here, or click these ones to engorge).

Cheshire County Council's footpath markings and stiles are brilliant. But this one was confusing…

I knew him, Horatio…

Mmm… gander. Sauce…

Like the saturation and vignetting? One day I'll start talking about bokeh. Then you'll be sorry.

I love rust. And barbed wire.

Down in the valley

Down in Greasley Valley is Mareknowles farm - clearly a very ancient ruin. I love decay. Click here for the rest of the day's photos or click on these for larger versions.

The Elephant Tree

Hobbit Neal

All Cheshire farms have outdoor amenities

Evocative, isn't it?

A spring in my step

More pictures: whole set here.

Post-production makes the day look rather more apocalyptic than it actually was - I got sunburned

That distant odd shape is a curlew. Really.

Neal and Dan were highly amused at an authoritarian Trotskyist finding lambs so cute

Cute now. Tasty later.

Neal on a scheduled, prehistoric ancient monument

Insert your own… joke.

Out and about

I've been too busy to blog today - so much work (thanks to the 5 great students who came to class and talked about Cwmardy this afternoon: I really enjoyed, sod the rest) and planning for the strike on Thursday.

At the weekend, the Map Twats had a day out, at long last. We started at Macclesfield's finest pie shop (mmmm hare and venison and pheasant in one package) and headed along the canal, up Sutton Common overlooking Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope on the Cheshire Plain, along Wincle Minn and Bosley Minn, taking in ruins, prehistoric monuments, sheep and pubs along the way. It was a beautiful day. Lambs gambolled, and kestrels, larks and curlews frolicked around us as we wended our way from ridge to ridge. I'm still aching, to be honest. Here are some pictures - click on them to enlarge, or see the rest here.

Shutlingsloe and clouds

You can take the boy out of the The Dark Place…

Top quality dry-stone walling

Shutlingsloe bathed in sun

Rust tanker

Don't fence me in…

We Like the (Super) Moon

…Because It Is Close To Us.

Well, it was a few kilometres closer on Saturday night, so I took a few photographs (300mm lens, various apertures and speed). They're only handheld, but they look OK, I think. More here, or click these to embiggen.

Spring has sprung

It's March 21st: spring equinox. The sun's shining and I'm ignoring the strike, the massive pile of work, the government and all the other misery.

I arrived at work to find this beautiful, hand-made daffodil waiting for me: thanks to C, who seems to spend an awful lot of her time cheering everybody up everybody else. If you live in Bridgnorth, you may find them scattered around the town, much as crocheted snowflakes were hung from the trees at Christmas.

Going down?

Anybody going to see Submarine, the new coming-of-age film? I'm feeling rather smug: I bought the hardcover book by Joe Dunthorne quite a while ago, before an adaptation was in the air, and loved it. Stupidly though, I toyed with putting it on the curriculum but decided that it wouldn't stay in print long enough.

I don't know if it'll be a good film, but the book's excellent - funny, heartfelt, dark, and blessed with fantastic unreliable narration which was what really caught my eye.

All together now for St. Patrick

Going out last night was quite annoying: an English midlands town packed with English people wearing Guinness hats AS THOUGH IT WAS SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE. As the owner of an Irish passport, I celebrated by drinking real ales and going for a curry, as is traditional.

However, if you're wondering why that silly hat seemed appropriate, and why you feel so bad today, here's an Hibernian air to explain it all, with a catchy beat.

Meanwhile on the lighter side

Here's Super Mario re-made as a first-person shooter. It's fun.



It's even more fun if you turn off the sound and play The Folk Implosion's Natural One instead. They synch up beautifully to give you a cartoon psychotic episode. You might need two windows open to play them at the same time - I've got the track on my computer.

Universities: deprofessionalisation in action

I generally distrust Frank Furedi, sociologist and cult leader, but he's dead right on the replacement of academic judgement with software and non-academic departments (hence the grotesque refusal of extra time to a student who'd just given birth prematurely and damagingly - overturned after intervention from teachers).

I have become conscious of a growing tendency to marginalise the role and devalue the status of academic judgement. Increasingly, the term "academic judgement" is used defensively in response to a complaint about a particular decision. In official documents, the term refers to decisions that cannot and should not be challenged by students.

One example in this place was the smug way in which an educationalist (!) on my PGCE informed me that the software now existed to 'mark' essays without human involvement, and was in use over in the States. Apparently all I had to do was give the computer a list of synonyms and it would compare the essay to my ideal answer. So if it was a medical examination, 'scalpel' would get you full marks, 'knife' some marks and 'spoon' no marks. 


This guy was overjoyed. No more marking!


Er…no. No more education. I don't have an ideal answer in mind ever. I have an ideal way of approaching the question (read a lot, think about it). I deliberately write questions which invite students to propose their own primary texts. I want to be surprised. I don't want to be a slave to a machine which says '77% match' or '42% plagiarised'. Despite the best efforts of the institution, I'm not an administrator. At least, not yet.

Of course all professionals require the freedom to judge. When confronted with complex and indeterminate problems, professionals need to be able to exercise discretion. Many of the problems faced by professionals are context-based and require more than formulaic responses.

Whether they like it or not, academics judge all the time and expect to be judged by others.

It is not for nothing that words such as "review", "moderate", "adjudicate", "assess", "referee" and "evaluate" have become an integral component of higher education discourse. Academics are continually expected to make judgements about the value of scientific findings, research proposals, articles submitted to journals and the performance of students. The language used to describe the material we read and the people we encounter - "scholarly", "original", "sophisticated", "significant" - communicates statements of judgement.

The point of employing people with experience, research and higher qualifications is that we're lateral thinkers who want to spend time with our students. 

Good teachers are not only experts in their subject, they also understand their students and can interpret their responses to classroom experience. Consequently, when they make a judgement call, it is informed by their reading of the circumstances of a specific individual or group of students. This is a response that is guided by disciplinary knowledge and a bit of practical wisdom.

We don't give 'right' answers because we know there aren't any. We give the right questions. Unfortunately, we take up a lot more time, money and space than the marking machine - but we know more. How inconvenient.


Where Furedi goes wrong is to object to the idea that we should be supportive and uncritical of students' work, as though this is widespread. 

New lecturers are informed that "good practice" demands that they be "supportive" and "positive" and guarded in the criticism they make of their students. While university teachers are not expected to hand out smiley stickers, they are encouraged not to be negative and to blunt the force of their criticism.

I mark like this: cheats get pointed and clear comments about what they've done. Poor work by students who try hard get supportive and helpful advice. Poor work by lazy gits is returned with stern but helpful advice, and good work by anyone is praised while ways to improve are always provided. I don't see the point of being dismissively rude - it helps nobody. Even with the cheats I don't just write 'you are a disgusting plagiarist': I explain why plagiarism is self-defeating and disgusting. The PGCE course I took was largely useless, but I've always been supported by my bosses and colleagues when I've taken a view on a students' work. We always swap papers around to check that we're marking fairly and appropriately. I've had my comments and marks adjusted when I've got it wrong, and I've done it to other people - it's a learning experience for us too. 


One student told me recently that my marking was 'one-sided'. I hadn't actually marked that essay - not turning up to anything means he doesn't actually know what we look like, and it turned out that 'one-sided' referred to the marker's assertion that the essay in question was a) nothing to do with the question and b)cut-and-pasted from the internet. The judgemental git. 


So I don't feel that there's too much pressure to soft-soap our 'customers', though it does occur. There is still room for academic judgement, though it's true that institutional pressures are reducing the scope for this. Will it increase? It will if managers lose sight of the fact that we aren't here to produce happy customers, but educated people who've been pushed to their intellectual limits. We shouldn't be obstructive and holier-than-thou in the face of people who've suffered and sacrificed to be here, but we shouldn't be softening our academic standards and losing our academic autonomy to the demands of the market or the convenience of service departments within The Hegemon. 

The values of institutionalised standardisation, calculability and measurable achievement mean there is little call for judgement. When the ways for achieving a learning outcome are carefully prescribed, what is required is after-the-event measurement and box-ticking, and not deliberation and judgement.

Universities: where the issues are thrashed out

Actually, forget that: any comments the university doesn't like are deleted from its Facebook page, according to a source. Try not to think of the page as a means of communicating with students and the wider community. Think of it as an advert disguised as a means of communicating with students and the wider community.

Which means that the people running the site either have no idea what digital media is all about, or have been taking lessons from corporate PR departments.

Meanwhile, inhabitants of The Dark Place and students at The Hegemon are invited to join Wolverhampton's first UK Uncut action! Meet 19th March, 11.30, Queen Square for satirical frolics.

If you like science and swearing, this is for you

If you've escaped the omnipresence of Professor Brian Cox, you're lucky. He's a clever man being paid lots of money to travel the world pretending not to seem so clever, while flicking his fringe.

BAe v Libyan civilians: the big showdown

Now that the UN has voted to bomb Libya, let's have a look at what Gaddafi will use to fight back.

The US, UK, France, Bosnia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Colombia, South Africa and Portugal voted to take action. China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India abstained.

Curiously enough, they're the ones that exported a lot of weapons to Libya. Then again, so did all the western countries that voted to take action. Clearly this is going to be a brilliant sales opportunity for FN rifles of Belgium, BAe, France's Mirage jets and a myriad of other suppliers: pages 160 and 161 of this EU report tells us that pretty much every EU country except for Ireland bunged the Libyans some kit in 2009-10, to the tune of billions of Euro. With all sides armed by the West, we'll really see what stuff functions well in these 'heightened circumstances' and what doesn't.

What has Britain sold them? £200m of stuff just in Jan-October 2010, according to the Guardian:

However, equipment listed as cleared for export to Libya last year include "teargas/irritant ammunition" and "training teargas/irritant ammunition", "military cameras" and components for "surveillance equipment and targeting equipment".

Other items cleared for supply to Libya were "accessories" for military small arms training, and technology for "military communications equipment", small arms ammunition, weapon sights, sniper rifles, "command and control vehicles", radio jamming equipment and what is described as "civil explosive detection/identification equipment". Also listed as cleared for export to Libya is "command communications control and intelligence equipment".

Private Eye says the UK has also flogged them £30m of military aircraft and 'bombing computers', APC's, water cannon, heavy machine guns, lots of anti-civilian weaponry and 'a spacecraft'. All this while the PM goes round calling for democracy.

In our story at the beginning of the week headed Bomber release 'will lead to contracts' we mentioned that BAE Systems could be one of the beneficiaries of the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as contracts to upgrade Libya's defence equipment began to come into the UK.

We mentioned in the piece that MBDA Missile Systems, partly owned by BAE, was reckoned to have recently signed a contract to supply Libya with anti-tank missiles and that the former chief operating officer of MBDA Guy Griffiths went to Libya with Tony Blair in 2007.

We also mentioned in the piece that we had asked BAE to comment on our story but they had not come back to us. This wasn't to suggest that BAE was avoiding the issue, of course, and indeed it appears the reason we had no immediate response was simply down to key people being away during the summer break.

BAE has now given defencemanagement.com its response and it is as follows: 

"Regarding future business with Libya, BAE Systems, like all defence companies, would only consider business within constraints of UK and US defence export licensing policies."

My guess is that if you've been on a sales trip to Libya with the Prime Minister (this was 2009: David Cameron took a planeload with him a couple of weeks ago), then the 'constraints' are pretty relaxed. 


If you want to ask British Aerospace what they've sold Gaddafi, you can e-mail them. Rather helpfully, they've got a special address: 
libya@baesystems.com 
for quick ordering.