Papal bull

Here's a song that could have been written for the Papal Conclave which as you know, vents white smoke when a Pope has been elected and black smoke when a ballot is inconclusive.



It's Tindersticks' 'Black Smoke'. 'I told myself I was greedy for it… checking out my reflection' – rather appropriate for the red-hats jockeying for power in the Church. 

What else has caught my attention today. Well, I've got lots of preparation and marking to do, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate. It doesn't help that my colleague kept hold of my marking pile for a whole week but still wants them done within the time limit. Not helpful and not conducive to me turning to the pile first. 

Instead, I've been reading, teaching Paradise Lost (today's question: is it as misogynist as one might think?) and opening parcels of books. Mostly a pile of Jim Crace novels for a research project, plus a reprint of Alec Waugh's The Loom of Youth, fuelling my 1920s-1930s obsession. In pursuit of this, I've also been reading the interesting James Laver's 1933 collection of mock-epic satires, Ladies' Mistakes. It's a knowing and witty homage to Pope's work, full of film-stars, trips on the underground and weedy young gentlemen transformed into studs by a moment's dalliance. It's also very funny, and beautifully illustrated by Thomas Lowinsky. Highly recommended! It felt quite strange to be reading Bright Young Thing poetry in the utilitarian atmosphere of the works canteen. 

What else? Well, I read an appalling report pitch on the virtues of online education by one Sir Michael Barber and his chums Donnelly and Rizvi, who basically thinks that online videos mean everyone can be taught by 'celebrity academics'. As he said to that reactionary know-nothing John Humphries on Radio 4, 

Why would you go to the quite ordinary lecture by a quite ordinary lecturer when you can get Niall Ferguson online?

Er… Mostly because 'celebrity academics' have stopped thinking by the time they get famous. They hit on a big idea. Then they make TV programmes about it. The producers ask them to cut out all the waffly bits and sharpen the lines. Complexity and ambiguity are lost. They start to believe their own reviews and get suspicious of alternative or newer approaches. They certainly get fed up with the 'ordinary' academic's cycle of writing, submitting to peer-review, rewriting and re-submitting. What do these people have to say to a Celebrity Academic? Niall Ferguson is an ideal case in point: his books are largely polemic these days, facts and opinions shaped to suit his ideological perspective rather than exploring events or ideas. 

I have another anecdote which may explain why you might prefer the 'quite ordinary lecture' to the superstar. A young friend of mine was sent off to an Oxford study weekend as part of his preparation for university applications. Simon Schama was dangled in front of the aspiring scholars as bait. 'What shall I say to him, Dad?', my chum asked his father, who had been taught by the good professor in the early 1980s. 'Ask him if he's read and marked my essays yet', replied Dad. 

Anecdotal, it's true. But the Celebrity Academic (and quite a lot of high-flying non-celebrity academics) rarely trouble themselves with undergraduate lectures, tutorials, and marking. After all, what are hourly-paid PhD graduates and post-grads for? You're more likely to find the Celebrity Academic in the departure lounge or Radio 4's Green Room than slaving over a module guide or attending the Staff-Student Forum. 

But what of the other element of Barber's rather silly claim? Why not watch a video at a time of your choosing from the comfort of your own home? I've gone on about this rather a lot in the past, but nobody's listened so I'll say it again. A video lecture is a very useful resource. You can play it and replay it and stop it to make notes and extract a good deal of wisdom from it. But what you can't do is put up your hand to ask a question, or make a point, or disagree. The online video implies that you have no role other than to accept what's put in front of you. This is particularly true of the Celebrity Academic Video, which is more like an MTV pop promo than an educational event. Here is a Star, it says. Worship it and a few flakes of star-dust might fall about your shoulders. 

What's entirely absent is the glorious possibility that you, yes YOU might have something to say, and that all the other people watching might equally have something interesting and intelligent to say about the subject in question. That you might speak to each other, and pursue the lecturer's thoughts. If you watch a video, you're part of the mass audience. If you come to a real-life lecture, you're a participant. You can stop me to ask for clarification, to propose another idea, to put me right (these things happen to me all the time) and I will respond, often delighted that somebody's listening and thinking. The Celebrity Video Star will never, ever be halted mid-flow by somebody else's idea. Additionally, the Video Star can never tell you you're wrong, or that you need to work harder, or read more. You're the consumer, the customer, and you are Always Right. That's why the real-life encounter is Education and the online video is a simulation of education in which the Celebrity is simply 'product'. 

Of course, the most eminent researchers are not always the best teachers, nor is fame an index of quality either: where I work, many quiet, modest teachers earn their students' respect without showiness. In the brave new world, they'll be discarded or reduced to the level of piece-work marking machines. Despite this, they'll still know when a student is struggling, or has worked the night-shift to keep the family fed, or has a particularly personal response to a text or loves one special critical approach: all the things about which the remote Celebrity Academic will not give one solitary hoot. 

The Celebrity Academic is the grinning, styled face of a pyramid scheme Victorian in its outlook: that Great Men (and women) deliver Enlightenment from on high (hence my application of Capitals to this blog post) to the undifferentiated masses. This is of course what's known technically as 'bollocks'. Take my Milton class today. Afterwards, I went downstairs to Ye Olde Slopperie for some gruel and spotted a group of the students slurping sugary drinks and pointing at bits of Paradise Lost. They were educating themselves and each other: hopefully agreeing with bits of the lecture and disagreeing with other bits. You don't get that from watching a video in your home or on your phone. 'No man is an island', some clever bloke once wrote, and it's never more true than in education. You don't simply absorb a lecture's words and become educated: you think about them, talk about them, test them in debate. Then you're educated - but that's not a very profitable model. It requires buildings and staff and libraries and all those things – particularly emotional and intellectual commitment and bravery – which can't be assigned an IP address and be billed via Direct Debit. And that's ignoring the issue of control. Who do you want decided on the curriculum? Some TV-friendly bloviator and his corporate chums, or people you know personally, and know you?

But we shouldn't expect Sir Michael to acknowledge this: he's the Chief Education Adviser at Pearson, a company betting the farm on replacing Ordinary Lecturers You Can Talk To with Celebrity Academics' Greatest Hits, for money. He is, simply, a salesman. 

Will the children of Barber and Co. be educated via video-link? You bet your ass they won't. They'll be buying physical access to the Dreaming Spires like all the rich kids. Video's for the plebs. Which is what really annoys me. Educational technology can be brilliant. Look at the Open University and the wonderful things it does. I personally use forums and Twitter and all sorts of lovely toys in my teaching. What I don't do is employ shiny things to disguise the fact that what Pearson, Clay Shirky (who thinks video-Ed is the educational Napster) and their friends in government want isn't better education: it's cheaper education for the great unwashed. 

But don't just take my word for it. Here's Andrew Ng on the value of classroom interaction:

“If you think about your favorite teacher you had back in college and the conversations you had with him or her, there’s just no way to replace that with a computer,” Ng said. “But you need to figure out the economics and the logistics to hire more teachers to deliver those sorts of amazing interactions.”

Who he? Only the founder of Coursera, one of the world's biggest (and most interesting) online-education providers. 

What's the link between my original subject (the Papal conclave) and the Barber report? Simple: they're both hierarchical models which valorize the linear transmission of uncontested truths to the obedient masses without any possibility of the masses contributing, let alone seeking their own way to enlightenment. I may have been brought up a Catholic but when it comes to education, I'm a thoroughgoing Protestant. 

Lies by omission and distortion

Great news for The Dark Place, according to Paul Uppal MP, the secretive millionaire:

As the Minister may be aware, the number of private sector jobs in the west midlands decreased under the last Labour Government. Will he welcome the news, as I do, that Jaguar Land Rover is increasing investment in the engine plant in Wolverhampton by £150 million, creating an additional 700 high-skilled jobs?

Once we strip away the tired old rhetoric of 'the last Labour Government', we appear to have some facts about JLR's expansion plans. 

But not so fast, Paul.  

For a start, the plant is the product of heavy subsidies from taxpayers' funds, council and central government – and all under the auspices of the 'last Labour government', which essentially bribed Tata Motors to come to the city. Interventionism in action: not the kind of think Paul approves of, unless it's tax cuts for commercial landlords. 

But aside from this, there's one whopping lie by omission here. Dodgy Paul rather misdirects us with his talk of 'private sector jobs' under the 'last Labour government'. Apart from the fact that a subsidised factory rather blurs the line between private and public sector employment, Paul rather naughtily avoids the current government's record. What's this?

Unemployment rises in West Midlands despite UK-wide fall

The West Midlands was the only English region to see unemployment rise in the last quarter as more than 5,000 people were added to the jobless list.The total number of people out of work in the region stood at 233,000 during the three months from June to August, which represents a rate of 8.6 per cent.
Unemployment fell or remained the same in every other English region – but increased in Scotland and Northern Ireland – as UK-wide joblessness fell by 50,000 in the same period to 2.53 million, the lowest since the spring, giving a rate of 7.9 per cent.

So the policies Paul has loyally voted through have actually made things worse in his own back yard, whereas the policies of the 'last Labour government' have actually helped! But never mind the wider West Midlands: what about Paul's own city? Surely the 'tough choices' he's voted for have helped here? Let's ask the local, rabidly Conservative newspaper.

Wolverhampton bucks national trend as city's unemployment rises 

Jobless queues in Wolverhampton are getting longer, new figures revealed today – bucking the national trend of unemployment falling for the first time in almost a year.

But we shouldn't take the word of the Express and Swastika on this. Let's turn to Paul's neighbouring constituency, Wolverhampton South-East. Its MP Pat McFadden asked the UK Statistics Authority for the figures for May 2010 (the end of the 'last Labour Government' and January 2013.

Number of people(1) claiming jobseeker's allowance in Wolverhampton South East constituency
	All people	Aged 18 to 24
May 2010	4,285	1,230
January 2013	4,775	1,380

Ouch. So much for 'tough choices' starting to work – and I doubt Uppal's constituency is any better. 

So in fact what Paul's trying to avoid saying is that the only bright spot in this benighted city's future is a Labour policy decision continued by a Labour city council, while the Conservative policy he voted for has actually made the city's inhabitants poorer. 

And if you think this is all historical, have a look at today's manufacturing figures. Here are the adjectives being used to describe it: 'awful', 'appalling', 'dreadful', 'poor', 'miserable'…

Slow hand-clap for Mr Uppal, both for his politics and his dishonesty.  

Just another Monday…

Good afternoon all. Apologies for the late appearance of my daily dispatch from the educational front line.

The big news of the day is the government limiting student loan increases to 1%, well under the rate of inflation. This means of course that universities will have less money with which to buy equipment, maintain their estates and staff classrooms. Students will also have less money on which to live, which will hurt local economies, particularly in communities heavily dependent on students. It's just another part of the Tories' war on the most vulnerable: it's tax cuts for the rich and funding cuts for the very poor.

This is of course economic madness. Give the very rich more money and they'll invest it, or hide it. Give people with not much a little more and they'll spend it: students can't save, they spend their money on kebabs, clothes, ecstasy tablets and occasionally books, benefiting the local economy. But the government got its sums massively wrong when they decided to lend students £9000 per year rather than £3000 (hugely overestimating repayment rates), so charging students more is actually going to cost taxpayers more! This is a damaging and reactionary attempt to ameliorate the damage.

And of course we're still going to spend £25bn on new nuclear weapons. Household essentials!

As for the rest of the day - bit of teaching, a good deal of apocalyptic rumour-mongering (not from me) about our department, and preparation for tomorrow's class on J. G. Farrell's very good novel Troubles. Published in 1970, it depicts the dying days of Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy in the run-up to the Civil War through the allegorical medium of a decaying hotel populated by marooned – and utterly bonkers – toffs under social and political siege from the lower classes, Catholics and 'Shinners' (Sinn Féin activists) whom we rarely see. It's all focalised through the perspective of the Major: English, kindly but utterly bewildered by the Ascendancy and its enemies: he represents the despairing English, imperialists with little comprehension or interest in Ireland. As William Gladstone put it, Ireland's tragedy is that 'the Irish never forget and the English never remember' (though of course it's not in the past to be remembered: the Irish on both sides of the border live with the consequences of imperialism daily).

The other fuss today is the Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce sentencing: he prevailed upon her to take his speeding points, then they lied about it for ten years after Pryce determined to bring down her unfaithful husband when he deserted her. They both got 8 months' prison for perverting the course of justice. The core of the affair, I guess, is hubris: both parties were ambitious, driven people for whom the law is a minor inconvenience compared to the great deeds they thought they were doing. Since politics became a profession, it's attracted strange people and made them worse: it's rare to find a well-adjusted person given that the higher echelons of political life demands obedience, permanent surveillance, moral perfection and no space for spontaneity, privacy and family life.

These people have the same problems as you and I, to which is added a rather dangerous sense of being on a mission, a lust for power (in many cases). For some, this leads to risk-taking: didgy deals, influence peddling, or baroque sexual activities. Some – like Huhne – develop a Messiah complex. Others are more straightforwardly greedy, selfish or corrupt. Others are place-seekers and some are in it just to do good, but find themselves bound and gagged by tactical consideration, party machinations or simply the need to 'get on' in a system designed to produce enough warm bodies to win votes without fuelling the cynical and destructive pages of newspapers with stories of 'splits', 'gaffes' and the like, not independent thinkers.

Huhne reminds me of Al Capone in one very narrow sense: a man with few personal charms who nonetheless behaved as though only his interests mattered is brought down by a tiny crime from his distant past, rather than some grand crime. That's the thing with Visionaries: they never worry about the little things which will come back to bite you. I don't think the other parties should be celebrating this story: their ranks all contain the arrogant, the weak and the pushy and the stories will keep on coming.

Should Huhne and Pryce have gone to jail? Lots of the commentary now is couched in terms of 'what a tragedy' or 'what a waste of public resources'. Well, lots of people go to prison for lesser crimes without it being called a tragedy - because they're neither rich nor famous. It is true, however, that the prisons are over-full and the sentences aren't likely to affect their future behaviour very much. The only reason I can see for a prison sentence in this case is the deterrent effect: it shows the rest of us that the rich and powerful aren't exempt. Except, of course, they are: Huhne and Pryce are the morsels tossed to the crowd while the meat continues to be consumed by others. Take the BAe corruption case from a few years ago: the government intervened because it would damage ongoing arms deals between the UK and Saudi Arabia. BAe, owned and then subsidised by the British government, bribed Saudi royals millions (perhaps billions) to buy BAe weapons. When it looked like the game was up, the Saudis complained to Blair and the trial was cancelled. That's the point at which I lost any residual faith in British justice. It's always been corrupt and arbitrary, but here we had a government openly acting on the principle that the law didn't apply to the rich and the powerful.

More recently, of course, we had HSBC, the bank which was so happy to work for drug cartels and terrorists that it actually widened the cash desks in Mexico to accept bigger bundles of blood-stained money. Did anyone go to prison? Of course not. HSBC paid a 'settlement' which means nothing more than a fee to carry on regardless. Meanwhile, street drug dealers get banged up for long, long sentences.

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.  

It'll Be All Reich On The Night

Did you see what I did there? Did you?

So anyway, last night saw rocking up at Birmingham's Town Hall (a lovely venue) to see Steve Reich in person performing his early classic Clapping Music, then a series of his work across the decades culminating in Radio Rewrite, his take on two Radiohead songs performed for the first time ever in London the night before. I posted some videos of most of the pieces yesterday, so go there to hear them.

It was every bit as wonderful as I hoped. Reich wandered on stage dressed in his trademark baggy black clothes and scruffy black baseball cap and launched into Clapping Music without fanfare, alongside David Hockings. The performance was spell-binding and as close to perfect as I've ever heard it. After that, it was Electric Counterpoint, the piece for electric guitar and pre-recorded tracks, performed by Mats Bergström. It's a long, intense piece and it was funny watching Bergström almost throw some rock shapes as he was torn between Classical Training and electric guitar's history. As a performance though: faultless. That was followed by 2x5, another piece scored for rock instruments. I have to say that I felt it drifted a little: too much like Reich by numbers. The dread words 'Tubular Bells' floated through my brain. It wasn't the performance: I've never quite warmed to this piece.

After the interval we got Radio Rewrite, very loosely based on these Radiohead songs:





Never having heard them until two minutes ago, I couldn't tell what Reich had taken from Radiohead during last night's performance, but I do think the new piece is a masterpiece on its own message. It's recognizably Reich, with all the musical tics that identify his practice, but it's also lyrical and jagged in ways he doesn't often employ. It felt much more emotional than much of Reich's work. I suppose a cynic might say that a septaguenarian picking up rock bands could be seen as a little desperate, but in this case I disagree: he's seen something intriguing in Radiohead's work and done something special to it without losing his own unique voice. Radiohead fans shouldn't expect to spot too much of their heroes' tracks: this isn't a cover version or even a set of variations.

Here's a live recording made the night before at the London world premiere:



Watch while it's hot: I suspect the lawyers will take it down soon.

and here's Reich talking about the new piece:



The final piece was Reich's Double Sextet, one of my very favourite pieces, and beautifully, passionately performed by the London Sinfonietta: I found myself rocking back and forth to the motorik rhythms more than once. It was a surprise to see a conductor lead them, I'm so used to Reich's work being performed without one. At the end, Reich (who'd been sitting modestly in the audience throughout) was brought out for long, loud, deserved ovations which he very bashfully tried to direct towards the performers, entirely in keeping with his ethic. Reich's programme notes were interesting too: he pointed out that there are 400 Masses which incorporate a single French folk song (L'Homme Armée) and lists all the composers who incorporated contemporary popular music into their work (no mention of Vaughan Williams though) and suggested that the estrangement between classical and pop was a temporary one occasioned by the ultra-elitist serialists, now largely forgotten. I don't know: I like serialism, but I can see his point and it's a good leftwing one too.

As to the audience: very much as expected. Some older classical concert-goers, some proper 70s prog hippies, acres of hipster spectacles and skinny jeans, intrigued Radiohead obsessives and some school trips thanks to the Town Hall/Symphony Hall's week of Reich-related outreach activity. As we left, we could hear several groups of kids trying out Clapping Music for themselves, which was rather lovely.

They come over here, taking our front pages…

I wonder what people would have said ten years ago when asked to describe a Romanian or Bulgarian. Perhaps some highly-informed people would have muttered darkly about Ceaucescu (Romania) or poisoned umbrellas (Bulgaria), mentioned Romania's origins as a Roman military veterans' resettlement colony (which is why Romanian is so close to Latin) or noted that even by the standards of the USSR, these countries were extremely repressive.

Now of course, thanks to the viciousness of the tabloid press and the briefings of the government, we all know that millions of Bulgarians and Romanians are riding donkeys to Dover ready to rob the UK blind both individually and via the benefits system. Don't we? That's certainly the impression given by the media which is happy to lie, distort and mislead in pursuit of a readership apparently consisting of paranoid, reactionary, gullible fools. Apparently it's perfectly OK for millions of British people to fan out across Europe in search of sun and cheap housing, but not for anyone else.

People of Britain: get over yourselves. Yes, life here can be great, but (and I hate to have to say this to you), your international reputation is rather poor. Having spent 400 years invading and ransacking other people's countries, and the last 50 bombing and subverting them whenever the US clicks its fingers, Abroad has formed the impression that life in the UK is just Not All That.

I've worked with, socialised with and lived with Romanians and Bulgarians for many years. Emigrants are usually a society's pioneers: hard-working, committed and determined. No doubt we see the best of a country's population when we associate with their exiles. Sure, they aren't perfect: at least one Romanian I know objects to the Daily Mail's coverage because it depicts 'Gypsies, not Romanians', which suggests – to put it mildly – that Romania has its own racial divisions too. It's weird, too. The Daily Express, Daily Mail and Telegraph are all huge supporters of the 'hard-working families' doing their best… as long as they aren't foreign. They're also big fans of the British Empire too, which was little more than heavily-armed illegal immigration on a global scale.

But why is the British press so racist (and stupid and opportunist, of course)? Does it really think so little of its readers that it can just airily ascribe this country's problems to 'them'? Are British people totally uninterested in the messy, complex, interesting realities of life in other countries? Sadly, they probably are: at least one of my local students had never heard of Wales, which can be glimpsed from the top floor of my office block. Even more shamefully, the tabloids are owned by the kind of people they disapprove of: Murdoch is an American citizen of Australian origin, the Telegraph's owners live like Bond baddies on a (tax-free) Channel Island. The Daily Mail's owner is French (but only for tax purposes) while Richard Desmond of the Express is a leading member of the Jewish community and should know better about how migrants and religious minorities have been treated. In particular, the above headline ('Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britain) could just as easily be applied to Jews: Jewish courts are recognised by the British legal system, which I generally think is a good thing. Shame Mr Desmond can't extend this to Islamic citizens.

This is probably why there's not a single report in the UK press about the so-called 'Bulgarian Spring', going on right now after Plamen Goranov set himself alight in protest at the government's corruption and incompetence. But that doesn't suit the narrative. Let's just perpetuate vicious, mean stereotypes, egged on by politicians who know that the way to retain power is to appeal to the electorate's lowest impulse. What a way to run a country.

Good article on Bulgaria, immigration discourse and media filters here, by one of our graduates. With thanks to BC for the tip.

Fighting Tories!

As you may know, my appalling MP is a Secretive Millionaire, having made his pile in property speculation (adding the sum of 0 to human knowledge and happiness). He spends his time in Parliament covertly promoting the interests of… himself, particularly when it comes to tax-payer subsidy. Mr Uppal wants tax breaks for commercial property owners (himself) so that he and his friends don't have to drop their rents to match market demand: instead he can collect a cheque from us while leaving his properties empty until prices rise again. Imagine being unemployed and telling the job centre that you'd like to stay on benefits until salaries rise to meet your expectations. It's basically the same thing.

But this time, Lazy Paul has met his nemesis, in the shape of another Tory MP! Having made some pointless intervention, Uppal's comment was followed by one Richard Harrington, MP for Watford. In the course of his speech, we got this:

My second suggestion will probably make me extremely unpopular, in particular with my hon. Friend Paul Uppal. Although the Government cannot do much about the role of small commercial landlords, those landlords are absolutely deluded about their ability to get the rents they ask. Their mentality is to ask for yesterday’s rent; because a shop was rented out 10 years ago at £40,000, they will keep it empty for three, four or five years under the delusion that they will get the same rent, and notwithstanding the fact that they are paying empty property rates, which I point out to the Minister it is right for them to be doing. If the vast array of small commercial landlords are listening to the debate or reading Hansard tomorrow, which I accept is completely unlikely, I have a suggestion that might help, although it is not the panacea for everything. As MPs, local councillors and people involved in the community, we could persuade small operators to come into some of those empty shops, but landlords asking for a rent that they once got 10 years ago makes it almost impossible.

Now as a Tory, Mr Harrington is a moral, political and economic vacuum, just like Mr Uppal. But in this case, he's an honest one. He's openly capitalist, in that he clearly believes that those who live by the market should die by the market, rather than demanding state aid. Mr Uppal, on the other hand, is a dishonest capitalist (the most common sort): he thinks that capitalists deserve bail-outs whereas ordinary citizens don't. Which is why we have welfare cuts for disabled children and multibillion £ subsidies for banks and speculators.

I know which kind of Tory I prefer. It ain't Uppal.

Work work work

Afternoon all. I've been quiet today because I've been too busy to become outraged by anything. First of all we had a seminar on Paradise Lost Book IX. Rather wonderfully, we talked for 90 minutes on just one small chunk of lines, and they came up with interpretations that hadn't occurred to me. I love it when I learn in seminars as well as the students. Sadly though, we all agreed that we couldn't answer the big questions posed in PL: free will, the origins of evil, is Milton blaming Eve solely. Maybe next time.

After that, it was a staff seminar on routes to and strategies for publication, which was useful and interesting. On the way, I stopped at our UCU campaign against casualisation. Certainly neither of my departments could survive without the hourly-paid staff whom we exploit massively. We used to have a pathway to fractional contracts, but it's been abandoned. So we won't pay to train and educate our teachers, nor give them proper employment rights or support their research: we'll just selfishly leach off their hard work and good will, safe in the knowledge that there will always be more desperate people ready to replace anyone who gets above their station. Some of our visiting lecturers have published more (and better) than us, and teach way more hours than permanent full-timers, yet we can't even regularise their employment.

And a banner on the website advertising the 'anti-casualisation' action was deemed 'offensive' by the Director of Marketing. That'll be the Director of Marketing whose Twitter feed includes these gems:

Now that's how to run a university's communications department!

And now I'm off to see Steve Reich!

The joy of repetition really is in me…

Bonus points if you know where I stole that title from.

Anyway, if you tune in to Radio 3 tonight, you can hear one of my very favourite composers performing a world premier of his new work, live in London. The composer is Steve Reich, and the piece is Radio Rewrite, written after Reich came across Radiohead and liked what he heard. Reich famously doesn't 'get' pop music (he's a jazz fan), so Radiohead must really have impressed him. It's also a sly tribute to pop music's magpie tendencies: The Orb's rather lovely Little Fluffy Clouds is built on a sample of Reich's Electric Counterpoint. Actually, I don't 'get' Radiohead either. I quite liked the album that sounded like Aphex Twin's Ventolin but otherwise they don't do much for me. Although most of my music is pretty gloomy, I tend to side with Cher in Clueless when she teased her over-serious college student stepbrother for his taste in 'complaint rock'.

At the concert, Reich will also perform his early piece Clapping Music, which highlights all the technical aspects of his version of minimalism, Electric Counterpoint, 2 x 5 and Double Sextet. And here's a taste of all of them except Radio Rewrite, which isn't available.

This is the recent live performance of Clapping Music at a music festival, by Steve Reich and David Cossin. Reich's the one on the right.



Here's Electric Counterpoint. It requires the guitarist to pre-record some tracks then play live against (with?) them. You Radiohead fans might enjoy the version by Jonny Greenwood, their guitarist. It's rather good - as is Greenwood's own experimental music, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, a Penderecki tribute.



Here's 2 x 5: not my favourite Reich piece, but it has some thrilling moments. It's another one scored basically for a rock band.



And here's part one of Double Sextet, which is one of my Reich favourites.



Will I be tuning in to this historic live broadcast tonight?

Er… no. Because tomorrow night, I'll be at Birmingham Town Hall where Reich and Co will be doing the whole thing all over again. I would say 'join me' but you can't: it sold out ages ago. Don't worry though: I'll tell you all about it on Thursday. Does that sound smug? Because I'm feeling smug. At least, I think that's what it is. I don't normally have anything to feel smug about so I'm not sure. But it probably is smugness I'm feeling.

Meanwhile, my latest classical purchase is a collection called Mystery Variations on Colombi's Chiacona: in which loads of contemporary composers wrote variations on Colombi's piece for Anssi Karttunen, the cellist. It's really, really good.

Back from the Smoke

Afternoon all. I've just finished a class on Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, which is appropriate because I spent the weekend partying with family and friends. It was my nephew's christening so it was off to That London, staying with my old university friend Adam and Katie his wife. We dined and drank to excess, then had a day of proper tourism: up the London Eye, a walk along the South Bank, then more gustatory pleasures. On the Sunday it was off to beautiful Greenwich for the christening, conducted at a  Catholic church which was both Happy and Clappy. The guitars were only drowned out by the unruly children and the dog someone brought to Mass: it seemed to enjoy the music even less than I did…

So - a few photos taken along the Thames. I won't bore you with the family portraits, but the whole set is here. Otherwise, click these to enlarge.

I wanted to go up the Shard to do some photography but it's booked up for months

St. Paul's illuminated in a shaft of sunlight. God smiles on photographers.

Curiously enough, Adam gave me a V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes costume that very evening!

We saw these parkour kids on the Thames 'beach' so I fired off a few shots

On the roof of the old GLC County Hall: one of the best views in the world.

Beautifully lit, and spotted by my companions. No doubt some urban evangelical will nick this for the cover of a patronising street bible.

The book stalls on the South Bank. One of my favourite places. 

This child stole my lens cap!

Another shot of the book stalls.

Eastleigh: everybody loses

Lots of feverish speculation around about what the Eastleigh by-election 'means' for 2015. So here's some more.

Nothing.

That's what this by-election result means for all the parties. Let's look at them one-by-one.

The Liberal Democrats.
It was their seat. The previous MP is probably going to prison for a serious criminal offence, and the campaign was conducted in the midst of a media frenzy about an obscure apparatchik's (alleged) disgusting treatment of women. Now they're going round saying that if they can win under those circumstances, they'll be fine in the 2015 election. I reckon this is nonsense. It was a straight fight between Lib Dems and the Tories: two hated government parties. Angry Tories have an easy protest vote in UKIP. The kind of Lib Dems in constituencies like Eastleigh wouldn't vote Labour as a protest because it would let the Tories in. I don't think this means that they'll be OK in constituencies up and down the country in 2015 - just that they may do better in straight Tory v Lib Dem marginals. Eastleigh was a safe Lib Dem seat which is now a marginal one: on this kind of 14% drop, all their marginals will vanish.

The Tories.
They ran a dreadful campaign, in which their candidate was a UKIP clone, kept away from public scrutiny after making offensive and outlandish statements. They may have learned that shifting to UKIP territory on Europe only helps UKIP, but I doubt it. They've learned that the Lib Dems are still preferably in many voters' eyes to the Conservatives, but that's probably about it. But this was a by-election: control of the government wasn't in doubt, and I think they can probably assume that many UKIP votes were cast safe in that knowledge. When it comes to electing a government, lots of UKIP supporters will vote Tory to keep out the Lib Dems and Labour. The core vote strategy won't get the Tories a majority, but I don't think the UKIP sky is falling on their heads. They thought it was, hence the campaign they ran – and look at the result.

Labour.
It's a long time since Eastleigh was Labour territory. Lots of Blairites and Tories will be attacking the current leadership for managing nothing more than a 0.2% increase in the vote. I'm more sanguine. A very short campaign doesn't give a new-look party time to persuade any electorate of anything. Labour just doesn't have a natural constituency in Eastleigh yet, and expectations of a surge of enthusiasm were ludicrous. The protest voters were rightwingers who were never going to put their crosses in the Labour box. I also think that the despite all the evils the Liberal Democrats have perpetuated through joining the coalition, voters would still rather see and Lib Dem winning than a Tory. Therefore I think some Labour supporters will have swallowed a mouthful of vomit and voted tactically for the Lib Dems.

I have no doubt that if a Labour MP went under a bus in the Northern heartlands, Lib Dem and Tory candidates polling 9% or whatever would be shrugging their shoulders and accepting it rather than beating themselves up for not pulling off a miracle.

UKIP.
No doubt they're on the rise, but I'm not convinced this is a breakthrough. For all the reasons delineated above, I think this is a protest vote which won't be replicated or bettered in general elections when the government of the country is at stake. The Tories will tack towards UKIP because the tiny rump Tory membership is overwhelmingly barking mad, and UKIP will continue to operate as an amusing, sometimes dangerous, ginger group. This was an election about disgust with the mainstream political parties and Farage capitalised on it, but it's a high water mark. I think UKIP will suck away some Tories and allow Lib Dem and Labour candidates to win marginals: the Tories will adopt a core vote strategy to counter that and we'll get used to coalition governments (because the Tory core vote isn't enough to win outright) and some UKIP voters will return to the Tories to keep Labour out.

Additionally, Farage's crew should expect more scrutiny in future. I was amused to see him blithely assert the general criminal tendencies of Romanians and Bulgarians yesterday: yet the UK locks up more people than Romania and Bulgaria, which suggests British people have a greater natural propensity to commit crime.

Even more interestingly, if UKIP was an independent country, it would far outstrip every other country on earth for its rate of imprisonment. Currently, the United States has a higher rate of incarceration than any other country on earth: 716 per 100,000. So 0.716% of Americans commit crimes so heinous that they go to prison. But what of UKIP? 10% of UKIP's MEPs went from Parliament to Prison (including Tom Wise the thief and Ashley Mote – ironically – the benefit fraudster: Nikki Sinclaire has been arrested for fraud so the stats might actually be heading upwards). If I were Romania and Bulgaria, I'd be banning UKIP members from entering the country for fear of a crime wave.

Join the Masons

Morning everybody. Lots to do today, including finishing a column for the university magazine and seeing lots of dissertation students - mostly those who don't realise quite how good they are: my job today is to point out exactly how much work they've done and how much sense it makes.

There is a spectre haunting The Hegemon: the spectre of Mason

Firstly though, here are a few photos of last night's inaugural professorial lecture by Paul Mason, the distinguished Newsnight economics journalist, and now Visiting Professor. The main theme of the night was the crash and whether or not it fits executed Soviet economist Kondratiev's theory of long waves (Stalin's henchmen realised what he didn't: that the wave refuted Marxist belief in the historical inevitability of Marxism). 

'Peoples and countries will be pitched against each other' as we struggle to get out of the slump he said. There's a reckoning to be paid for the past 20 years or so of economic madness: the question is who pays it, and whether we take a lot of pain now or a massive amount of pain later (for instance, we could inflate our way out of debt now, but everybody's savings would disappear overnight). In a really serious slump, you see things like party political broadcasts being conducted by candlelight, as he remembers happening in the 1970s (send me a link, someone?).

Mason's shadow makes a point

 It was complex, thoughtful and pretty gloomy. Mason himself spoke authoritatively and passionately: he thinks in the long term and clearly cares about actual people rather than economic models and states. He felt that elite groups such as those who meet at Davos are in a state of some panic, and have little conception or interest in the public good. We shouldn't look to China either: they don't want to be a hegemonic power setting and keeping to standards of behaviour. Instead, we should expect a prolonged period of post-globalisation protectionism (we can already see it happening in sneaky devaluation, which just shifts economic problems onto other countries): we just have to hope that it isn't fascists leading this charge. Or, he said, we could easily inflate our way out of trouble in no time: just start a war with Iran. Oil prices will rocket, so will inflation, debts wiped out. There are a few down sides to this of course…

This chap was sitting in front of me. I was very distracted by his directional haircut.

 The discussion also took in the big one of UK economics: the supposed high-tech manufacturing miracle which politicians always say is coming won't help employment. Modern factories are virtually deserted. So what is everybody else meant to do? We can't sustain an economy based on people serving each other coffee for low wages: there's no demand available now that credit-fuelled spending is off the table. I don't have the answer to that one, and nor does Mason. But he thinks we should be worrying about it. Plenty of people on the left (Marx, deriving it from Hegel) looked forward to the end of work, whereas others believe in the Dignity of Labour. Here's Marx's vision of the perfect society:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

He also made the point that technology doesn't lead booms: oceans of cheap money lead to tech booms as investors seek risky bets. This reminded me of David Harvey's work. In it, he says that the credit crunch wasn't caused by too little cash in the system, but too much. The Germans saved all their money. They therefore got low interest payments on their cash. So they started showering it on risky, silly investments: obscenely high mortgages in Ireland, speculative Spanish building, weird derivatives, CDOs, MBSs and the rest of the alphabet soup. The more money went in, the safer it looked: after all, risk had been 'sliced and diced'. When actually, it just meant that everybody held debt with absolutely no idea of its provenance or actual risk. When the penny dropped, panic was the only sane response. Bingo: the crunch.

He's got the whole world in his hands

Other highlights: Mason reckons embittered Mervyn King (outgoing chair of the Bank of England) believes he saved the UK economy from a much, much worse fate by quietly allowing the pound to devalue in 2008, propping up exports to some extent.

Finally, Mason cautioned students even on the most vocational of courses to cherish the opportunity to engage with ideas, pure and simple. Music to my ears.

The rest of the photos I took are here.

Blogging, medieval style

I've been presented with a book by a comrade returning in triumph from Japan, carefully chosen with me in mind. It's Essays in Idleness: the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko. Kenko was a 14th century monk with – as he put it – 'nothing better to do' than jot down his thoughts, observations, opinions, anecdotes, accounts of customs and ceremonies. 

But the boy Kenko isn't simply a cultural magpie. He's an artist. These short essays (like Montaigne's without the enormous self-confidence?) are jewels. Some are tiny, no more than a sentence or two. He understands the central notion of Japanese philosophy: that transience (our own and that of things he observes) confers beauty and significance. 

The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known. 

Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.

I particularly like Essay 75:

I wonder what feelings inspire a man to complain of "having nothing to do." I am happiest when I have nothing to distract me and I am completely alone.
If a man conforms to society, his mind will be captured by the filth of the outside world, and he is easily led astray; if he mingles in society, he must be careful that his words do not offend others, and what he says will not at all be what he feels in his heart. He will joke with others only to quarrel with them, now resentful, now happy, his feelings in constant turmoil. Calculations of advantage will wantonly intrude, and not a moment will be free from considerations of profit and loss. Intoxication is added to delusion, and in a state of inebriation the man dreams. People are all alike: they spend their days running about frantically, oblivious to their insanity. 

Even if a man has not yet discovered the path of enlightenment, as long as he removes himself from his worldly ties, leads a quiet life, and maintains his peace of mind by avoiding entanglements, he may be said to be happy, at least for the time being.

It is written in Maka Shikan, " Break your ties with your daily activities, with personal affairs, with your arts, and with learning."

His essays are beautifully, elegantly simple, even in translation. He has charm, tact and style, and he's not always consistent in his opinions. Oh, and he's convinced that the world is going to hell in a hand-cart.

In short, he is or should be the patron saint of bloggers. 

Papal Bull

I couldn't resist the confluence of two momentous events: the Papal Conclave and the Eastleigh By-election

Cardinal 1: What are we here for?
Cardinal 2: We're electing a replacement for that self-righteous guy who had to resign under the weight of his past misdeeds and threw the whole organisation into disarray just as its corrosive culture of sexual impropriety emerged into the open
Cardinal 1. Oh yes. Poor Mr Huhne. 

Rhodes: bang to rights

One of my favourite writers can be found over at Days of Enlightenment. He's an Eeyore-ish character: grumpy, depressed and misanthropic. The only person he find more disappointing than the broad mass of humanity is, well, himself. It makes great reading.

Today, he has managed to break through the miasma of self-criticism to spend a few minutes contemplating the output of Peter Rhodes, the world's worst local journalist, in pursuit of a forlorn plea for love thinly disguised (like a decent Renaissance sonnet) as a rejection of the romantic chase:

talentless, self-Googling, weasel-faced, regional hack Peter Rhodes; a woman-hating, over-the-hill-that-never-had-a-gradient, bullying, benign tumor of a man spouting half-baked toytown reactionary opinion so uninspired that it makes you think that maybe Littlejohn isn’t so bad after all. To be fair, I shouldn’t knock Rhodes. He provides a valuable service for which I am eternally grateful. Namely that I often think the person I hate most in the world is myself. Then I remember that pointless prick is still breathing and things don’t seem quite so bad after all. So thanks for that, Pete.

'Day's is usually a gentle sort. He reminds me of Moley in The Wind in the Willows: shy, retiring and a thoroughly good chap. He's worth devoting a few minutes of your time to.

Nuclear holocaust: once more for slow learners

I wake today to this headline:

Labour to join Tories in backing a £25bn deal to renew Trident fleet

and the story starts with this:

Labour will fight the next general election on a pledge to retain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, senior party sources have said. 

So actually, it starts with a direct untruth: Britain doesn't have an 'independent' 'deterrent'. The nukes are largely built, maintained and in some cases rented from the United States. Americans build them. Americans maintain them. Americans provide the satellite targeting information required to fire them. Can we imagine launching one without American permission and technical help? I don't think so.

So not independent. What about 'deterrent'? Well, it's true that the UK hasn't got into any wars at all since it acquired nukes in the 1950s. Unless you count Northern Ireland. And Malaya. Kenya. Suez. Korea of course. A little covert involvement in Vietnam via the Commonwealth. Libya. The Falklands. Iraq (the first time). Iraq (the second time), Afghanistan, Mali, and of course Mr Cameron has now threatened us with 'generational conflict', which sounds like something from Orwell. Bombs have exploded on buses and on tubes.

So yes, it's true that Luxembourg, Andorra and the Vatican have refrained from raining death from above upon the UK, and that may be attributable to the 'nuclear deterrent' if you want to believe that. But the boffins in Tory and Labour think-tanks appear not to have noticed that the UK's enemies are not cackling dictators intent on wiping out their enemies. North Korea has a magnificent line in rhetorical invective, but its citizens eat grass and it survives on China's sufferance. China doesn't need to nuke anybody: it owns the US economy through its investment in American debt. Iran wants nukes because it feels threatened by Israel's nukes. India and Pakistan have nukes because they hate each other and fear China.

The UK faces no enemies who might be usefully dealt with through the judicious application of nuclear weapons. Its enemies tend to be suicide bombers from British streets. Nuclear annihiliation won't deter someone who welcomes death, and even the Tories' hatred of the North won't stretch to dropping 10 megatons on Bradford. The same applies to enemies from abroad. Are we going to nuke Somalia? Or the bits of Mali and Nigeria which harbour opponents? Can we guarantee that only the bad guys are atomised?

Would the UK drop nuclear weapons on non-nuclear enemies? The Americans did it to Japan and the world has been a sadder, more suspicious place ever since. Britain would be a pariah state for ever if it did so. What's the threshold for such an action? It's the act of a psychopath. Governments spend a lot of time condemning acts and groups as 'terrorism'. What is more purely, completely, terrorist than basing your political authority on the ability to kill absolutely everybody both now and in future generations in pursuit of a temporary disagreement?

The UK military knows this. It increasingly doesn't want £25bn spent on useless weaponry in a period of budget cuts, £25bn which would build a lot of ships and buy a lot of boots. There is no possible war using nuclear weapons that doesn't end in the wholesale destruction of entire countries and peoples. If it's true that the UK is in more danger now than ever (mostly, I submit, because it keeps invading places), it needs conventional weaponry: not Doomsday devices.

So that's the military case dismissed. On to the legal case. It is, and has been since international law was codified, illegal to target civilians. Yes, most countries have done so: Dresden, Coventry, most of Vietnam – but the rather thin defence is that they were 'collateral damage': not the intended target but unfortunate bystanders. It's Israel's standard defence for bombing Palestinian schools and hospitals.

You can't do this with nuclear weapons. A nuke atomises every man, woman, child, sparrow, gnat and flower over a huge area. It poisons the earth and air and water for generations. Any use of nuclear weapons is therefore illegal. The political defence of course is that possession of nukes makes the use of nukes less likely, through the deterrent effect – which is both madness and as I've explained above, ridiculous.

The only genuine defence for the possession of nuclear weapons is Labour Cold War hawk Aneurin Bevan's impassioned plea to the Party not to send him 'naked into the conference chamber'. It's instructive that he framed the possession of nuclear weapons in such terms: there is a distinctly sexual, phallic aspect to nuclear power. Bevin firmly believed that Britain had no credibility in world affairs unless it too possessed the power to kill millions of people and poison vast swathes of the planet. He may, sadly, have been right: under the soothing tones of our politicians, the only thing our political classes respect is savage violence.

This is the law of the playground, of the hostage taker, of the spree killer. Respect me, or I'll blow your head off.

I'm ashamed and disappointed that my party still clings to this doctrine. Underneath the bluster, it's cowardice: fear of the big boys pointing and laughing at the little boy who doesn't have a gun. It's time to grow up. Bevin's nukes were a prosthetic to wear in place of an Empire, part of the embarrassing and unseemly British obsession with remaining 'important'. It doesn't have to be like that. The world is full of decent, honest, principled and highly respected countries who don't, in the last resort, depend for their authority on possessing the ability to turn large areas of the globe into toxic cinders. Japan. Germany. Italy. Australia. New Zealand. Denmark. Sweden. Norway. Spain. Brazil. Chile. Canada. South Africa. Ireland. It's time to accept that possession of nuclear weapons is a tacit admission of political, diplomatic and moral failure: not of significance.

Labour has a chance to puncture the self-delusion of the bullies. It can divert that £25bn towards conventional weaponry if it must, or towards diplomacy. It can demonstrate that even for Security Council chair-holders, respect can be acquired without possessing the means to the Apocalypse. It can become a leading realist, showing the others that the nuclear obsession is a military and political dead end.

Sadly, Labour doesn't want any part of this. Not due to any principle, but simply because it is scared of the Daily Mail, which will echo cynical Tory accusations of being 'soft on defence'. It's not true, of course: Labour has shown an unseemly haste to get into any wars going, however illegal. But short-term tactics will always trump principle in this rotten excuse for a polity. I'm not surprised that the Conservative Party is and always will be keen on nukes: their politics are and always have been honestly and openly based on oppression, dominance and violence, because it believes that people are essentially animals. But Labour: Labour always professed to be more humane.

My politics are based on hope and aspiration towards a better future. Time and again, even my own party demonstrates that it prefers the certainty of small-c conservatism, war, cynicism, distrust and fear.