Sorry students (and my boss)

I should have been marking essays today, and just couldn't face it. So I ran away to Manchester for a day of culture. First up - the Manchester Art Gallery, which has a stunning pre-Raphaelite collection and a lot of other good paintings too. I was particularly pleased to get an eyeball level view of Ford Madox Brown's Work, a multilayered, slightly satirical work which featured in a very good Victorian literature lecture to which I went recently. I nicked the image from the wonderful Victorian Web

Whilst there, I had coffee with my lawyer, which made me feel very sophisticated. Actually, however, Jo is the long-suffering wife of Cynical Ben (yes, readers, he's taken), for whom I was officially Least Worst Best Man - there were three of us. She also returned my Map Twats flask, which I'd left at their abode on a previous walking trip: a joyful reunion. 

After that, skip a couple of blocks and you get to the John Rylands Library, an incredible mock-Gothic reading room stuffed with the finest collection of texts you'll ever see, from Egyptian papyri to early Gospels to Caxton, a Shakespeare First Folio and first Sonnets, a Gutenberg book and a first edition of Joyce's Ulysses, of which I've now seen three of the 1000 copies printed - the one for sale was €40,000. The core of the collection was the Spencer family's library - Diana's family gave up reading in the 19th century and sold the lot. Seriously though, if you like books, or architecture, or mad Victorian schemes for public improvement, the Rylands is amazing. (Both the Art Gallery and the Library are free, by the way).

Lunch in Chinatown, then home having only purchased two books: E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World which is utterly charming and you should all buy a copy, and a comparative book on different poetic forms which you may not appreciate so much. 

We should do the world a favour

…by embracing our own extinction for the sake of the planet. Today's Guardian polls climate change scientists. 85% don't believe we can restrict global warming to 2 degrees - though only 39% believe it's scientifically impossible. It's governments, politics and economics which make it impossible. 2 degrees will make things difficult. The expected 4-5 degrees will cause mass extinctions, human misery, economic disasters and huge political instability. As usual, it's the poor, darker, innocent people who'll suffer first. Sadly for me, I probably won't be dead before it starts impacting on us.

Morning Glory

The dawn chorus started at 5.46 this morning. Thousands of avian voices all singing - yes, I'm afraid so - 'are you looking at my bird?'.

Bookings for weddings and children's parties are coming in unexpectedly slowly.

Forward to the Web Revolution

I'm getting hits from Canada and Algeria from people searching for Damian Mcbride. Hopefully they aren't from politicians wanting to hire him. So anyway, some of my readers are clearly interested in politics but are too shy to comment.

In case any of you missed it, my take on McBride is this: the Tories are utter scum, and there's loads of political ammunition available. What socialists shouldn't do is reach for gossip about people's private lives, especially false allegations. Let's just tell people what the Tories are actually like - arrogant, vicious, self-interested individualists who would serve up granny's mechanically-recovered spinal tissue as burgers to their children if it won them a vote. We all know that the Labour government (as opposed to the party members) are collectively addicted to the meanest, most selfish facets of conservatism, but we needn't decline to the state where we take Guido Fawkes and his ilk as a model of progressive campaigning.

A breath of fresh air

(picture from homepages.nildram.co.uk/.../ picsurroundbidd.htm)
So how are you all? I've been away from my Mac for a couple of days, and mighty liberating it is too. Unfortunately, I've been away from the pool and too close to chocolate.

Alongside my good chum Hannah, I visited Mow Cop, a weird, wonderful gritstone peak with views as far as Wales, Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, Liverpool and, er, Stoke. Not only is it a natural wonder, it's significant in Methodist history as the centre of the Primitive Methodist connexion - Hugh Bourne and somebody else held open-air pray-a-thons by the folly at the top. They were also called Ranters, presumably by those who remembered the Civil War Ranters sect a hundred and fifty years earlier. The village still has a Wicker Man air, perched precariously on the slopes, a different chapel on every street and fewer genes than families.

But before you dismiss the Primitives (and other Methodists) as just another branch of an odd Eastern religion which got taken up by an empire as a method of holding itself together, remember this: these chapels instilled democracy into the working classes. They elected their own leaders, or rejected leaders altogether. Men, and in the case of the Primitives, women, honed their speaking skills in the Big Seat, learned the power of concerted action, and in many cases went on to found trades unions and lead the Chartist movement. Michael Foot claimed that his brand of socialism owed 'more to Methodism than to Marx'. I think that's a shame, but one can't deny the central role of these churches in forming an independent, democratic, working-class.

Gentler pursuits today - Trentham Gardens, a former mansion house abandoned by the Duke of Sutherland in prewar days when Stoke declined as a fashionable resort, and now revived. Saw monkey, but not otters.

Reading conundrum

I always worry, when going away for a few days, how many books to take. I never get it right. I'm probably here in rural Shropshire for 3-4 days, so I thought 3 biggish books should be enough. Then I went to bed at 12.30 last night thinking I'd read a few pages of Mark Radcliffe's book. 2 hours later I'd finished it. Even though it's randomly unstructured and not particularly profound (Pooterish?), Radcliffe's essential niceness shines through, so it was worth reading. So that leaves two books (Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt and J. G. Farrell's Troubles, unless I rush out to the booksellers tomorrow. Perhaps I shall.

Jolly well done chaps

Stoke City 1 - 1 - Newcastle United. And, for Ben, hearty congratulations to Manchester United for their plucky victory over Sunderland. One more victory and we'll be safe. Above, I reproduce a picture of the Stoke City team celebrating in the traditional fashion after another good match.

1. The Hon. Ricardo Fuller.

2. Mr. James 'Beano' Beattie.

3. His Grace the Duke of Hanley, Ryan Shawcross.

4. Sir Wilkinson Wilkinson

5. Glenn Whelan, Bt.

6. Lord Delap, 'Strongarm'.

7. Sir Matthew Etherington.

8. His Majesty Thomas Sorenson I of Denmark.

9, Mr Liam 'Lawro' Lawrence.

2 other gentlemen temporarily detained by constabulary for post-prandial, sherry-fuelled highjinks.

Country Life

Well I'm at home. I've done the mandatory religious observance to keep the Aged Parents happy, and am sitting in the sun. The thing about being out in the countryside is that it's so noisy - more birds than I can identify screaming to be fed by their parents, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional fox - all accentuated by the absence of my usual auditory input: sirens, gunshots, car stereos, bad music played on mobile phones, people hawking up mucus onto the streets, revving engines.

As it's a holiday, I'll offer some free advice to my media students. If you are going to use the web for 'additional resources', avoid sites like 'megaessays.com', 'freeessays.com' and most of all, '8thgradeessays.com'. 8th grade is US high school for 12 year-olds. My superpower is being able to detect plagiarism in seconds so I will catch you, and it's not worth it. You're all intelligent enough and resourceful enough to find your way to the library and read some university level texts. If you get away with using American high school essays, you might get your degree but you won't have become educated. There's a difference between having a certificate and having acquired the literary and critical skills which make you a unique, skilled reader. If you only care about the certificate, of course, then good luck to you, but I think that's rather depressing.

The wages of spin

Damian McBride, Derek Draper and LabourList (a propagandist mirror of the much more independent conservative.home) are so utterly embarrassing for the left. They're symptomatic of a party hierarchy that's totally lost sight of its purpose and of any strategic aims. Rather than communicate the positive benefits of a Labour government, or the genuinely evil aims of the Tories, they've decided, because they all read Guido Fawkes and the other nasty-minded Tory bloggers, that the voters don't care about ideas. Instead, think these toads, gossip and ad hominem attacks are what matters in politics now. They're so tragically old-fashioned it's sad. They read Fukuyama's The End of History in the 90s and believed the argument that socialism was dead and capitalism had won. Once there's no ideological debate, party politics becomes a matter of marketing, of triangulation and of personalities.

But capitalism is utterly wounded now. The Tories have a clear line on this: taxpayers should save capitalism and the rich, and then everything will be alright. Labour are screwed because it took so much psychological effort to become capitalists that they can't get out of their 90s mindset that anyone with a Blackberry and a second home is automatically morally and politically superior to us all. So the party minions like McBride et al. ape their opposition and waste their time with silly stunts, persuading everybody that there isn't a single politician out there who actually cares about the country rather than himself. Actually, there are - people like Paul Flynn, Norman Baker and Dennis Skinner.

I can quit any time

Got to switch off now - just ordered a biography of Tom Wintringham, a hero of the British left. He's interesting on his own, but I'm really looking for histories of the Common Wealth Party, a 1940s liberal Socialist party which had 5 MPs at one point, including Wintringham. Any know of any?

Shazam! Pow!

I'm not really one for comics. Or even graphic novels, other than Alan Moore and Green Lantern, but I thought Bostin' Heroes deserved maximum respect, simply for being set in the Black Country (not a racist term, foreign readers) and for having a decent sense of humour.

Dammit

Just thinking about buying books makes me buy one. I've just ordered Mudslingers: The Twenty-Five Dirtiest Political Campaigns in History. I'm hoping to learn a lot!

A minor regression

I planned to have a few days off book-purchasing. I almost made it, until I found Cheesman and Williams' Rebels, Pretenders and Impostors in a remainders shop yesterday. I blame the cheese I'd just bought - the author's name subliminally called to me, and I've got a soft spot for the losers, maniacs and delusional characters who set themselves up as monarchs or 'true' heirs to various states. They remind us all that even hereditary monarchies such as Britain are always the product of shenanigans in virtually every generation (abdications, madness, seeking distant palatable heirs, executions etc.).

Perhaps they remind us too that most people aren't democrats: how many of you dreamed as children of being King, Queen or Prince, and how many of you, despite your manifest good qualities, will ever become one? The answer, of course, is to become a republic, in which you or your children can become head of state by persuading your fellow citizens of your merits. Then you'll discover that you have rights as a human being living in a democratic society, not merely gracelessly handed out as a reward for obedience. Off with their heads!

Football - and more important things

Well, it's a big day for football - in serious as well as lighthearted ways. Firstly, Liverpool are playing Blackburn on the nearest day to the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster: poor stadium design coupled with aggressive, thoughtless policing led to the deaths of 94 people. The BBC broadcast a rightfully passionate, pointed program this morning which moved me to tears. It ended with a radio broadcaster (I didn't catch his name) ending his analysis later on that day with 'The gymnasium is today being used as a mortuary. And the sun shines'. That's top quality broadcasting.

The other wonderful part of the show was the section which reminded us why Rupert Murdoch, News International and The Sun are so utterly evil. While others mourned, the paper's front-page stories accused Liverpool fans of urinating on the police and robbing the bodies of the fans - complete lies from start to finish, but great for newspaper sales. It took 20 years to admit that the stories were untrue, and to this day Liverpudlians who support any of the local teams won't buy The Sun. I urge you to join in. It's too late for some of those fans, but the business model continues. Lies, slander and poison are the meat and drink of tabloid journalism, and none are quite so greedy as The Sun and its Sunday version, The News of the World. Liverpudlians are accused of being over-sentimental (they are a mix of Welsh and Irish), but in this case, staying bitter is absolutely the right thing to do. A proper inquiry was never held into Hillsborough and The Sun remains evil.

It reminded me of a period in which football was a matter of huge, mass emotion - sometimes violent, sometimes sentimental. Footage of the Liverpool team of the time reminded me of how much we've missed - so many Liverpool players spoke with Liverpool accents, shared surnames with the victims and some lost neighbours and friends - how many of the current Premiership players live anywhere near the average fan (who is more likely to be a middle-class high-earner anyway)? Hearing John Aldridge describe attending the funerals of fathers and their sons, of two sisters, was heartbreaking. On another level, these men remind me of a vanished (and probably quite unpleasant) time in other ways. Many of them speak the language of the fans, they don't have advisers, agents, lawyers and PR employees polishing every word, weighing every statement, looking out for themselves, or beating people up in nightclubs. These men were fans and from the people. On the other hand, safe stadia require massive amounts of money, and ticket prices are going to do it, so perhaps hugely expensive days out are the price we have to pay for safety.

On a lighter note, Stoke has the chance to strike a blow for honest football and the past today, by beating the arrogant, pseudo-galactico chancers of Newcastle United. If only it were MUFC we were sending down (as we did once in the 1970s), but anyone will do. One more win - or even a couple of draws - will do nicely.

Vaccines = good. Celebrities = gaping cultural void

Mindless celebs who think that being able to wave at photographers qualifies them as doctors, scientists and theologians actually kill people because morons (or ordinary people lost in the echo chamber of postmodern existence) listen to them. Marina Hyde, of whom I'm no fan, makes this point wittily in the Guardian.

Meanwhile, a somewhat angrier American has founded the Jenny McCarthy Bodycount, which logs the number of vaccine-preventable deaths for whom he blames this woman, who went from stripping for Playboy and dating film stars to 'writing' anti-vaccine books seemingly unhindered by shame, self-consciousness, scientific training or any of the other qualities we should admire in human beings.

Turkish delight

This is a video made by Ceylan, who directed the film I saw yesterday. It captures his slow, Proustian way…

The Kilpeck Sheela

I couldn't get a decent photo, so here's somebody else's, from their very good site on Sheelas:

And finally

Wolverhampton Station, Neal up the Lickey Hills, Danish for 'sale', Biblical fresco at Lydbury North.

While I'm in a visual mood

… I'll tease my friends. Hilary is the Liberty statue from a 4th July celebration, the toad appeared in my parents' garden, and the posh blokes include David Cameron (2), Boris Johnson (6) and George Osborne (8) - they've suppressed the picture but I grabbed it before they traced every copy. Neal is straining at the Black Country Living Museum.

A few more pictures of today's Old Devils trip

(That's a Kingsley Amis reference, by the way - a step up from Last of the Summer Wine).

Bits out for the lads

Neal, Gerry, Mark and I went to sunny Herefordshire today to see the Sheela-na-gig at Kilpeck, a 12th-century church with a bit of castle left. The carvings were stunning the scenery was beautiful, lambs were gambolling and trees were blossoming. We arsed around a bit, then went on to Hereford, Ludlow and Bridgnorth via all the back roads through Richard's Castle and the Clees, taking in fine beer and food in the 14th-century wattle-and-daub Black Swan in at Much Dewchurch. Lots of photos here.

Easter bunny

My friend Gerry asks me to post something cheery and seasonal, and has supplied an image. If you are of a sensitive disposition, it's probably too late.

La Police Vous Parle

The rozzers have been extremely active on the PR front recently, so I thought I'd show an earlier reaction to authoritarian propaganda, from the 1968 student insurrection.

HW Monkey

HW Monkey
Originally uploaded by Foreign Correspondences

FW Monkey

FW Monkey

BC Monkey

BC Monkey
Originally uploaded by Foreign Correspondences

Monkey!

In my haste to depart the office, I forgot to wish you all a good holiday. I'm having a day off tomorrow, going to see a Sheela-na-gig on a Herefordshire church with some pals. Then on Saturday it's back to the bosom of my family to restart some old arguments and eat too much while I mark. I won't abandon Plashing Vole completely but may actually get some fresh air.

Tonight, I saw my colleagues and friends Ben and Frank, and with Hilary - an escaped colleague and friend - we got ourselves a little culture by seeing 3 Monkeys, a beautiful, sombre, Turkish film, at The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton's best arthouse cinema (only arthouse cinema). It's a mix of Eugene O'Neill, Strindberg, Ibsen and Pinter - with perhaps a bit of Huis Clos thrown in for good measure. The photography and pacing are stunning - and for the rest of you, there's a gangster, a murder and some trains.

Fame at last

One of my rants (not a very focussed one) about mobile tracking, is excerpted in the Guardian! I don't live in a Faraday cage with a foil hat on really.

Yet more utter nonsense.

My institution is facing rationalisation, redundancies, module restrictions and cutbacks to 'aid' 'retention'.

In France, students and lecturers faced with the same kind of managerial 'activity' are holding 24-hour lectures, readings and walks. Here, we're paying expensive external consultants large amounts of money to run focus groups about 'brand identity'. Brilliant. Let's call it, er, let's think, how about 'Wolverhampton University'? That'll be £30,000 (at a conservative guess).

Suicidally, I've just sent another angry e-mail to the 'Director of Marketing and Communications'.

Garlic cures AIDS - yeah, right.

I've banged on about Ben Goldacre and Badscience.net relentlessly. Fearless exposing the small dishonesties and major frauds of pharmaceutical companies, media outlets, universities for hire, 'alternative therapists' and 'Dr' Gillian McKeith alike, he performs a public service.

Ben's book, Bad Science is a must-read because it gives all the tools required to challenge any of the 'wonder-drug' / X causes or cures cancer / scientific shampoo bollocks shovelled at us.

Now, he's making available the chapter on Mathias Rath which was dropped from the book because the dangerous charlatan was suing Ben and The Guardian. Now the case is over (Rath lost), you can read how a man claimed that cancer sufferers should drop their medication in favour of vitamin pills, because the pharmaceutical companies were deliberately poisoning them for profit.

However, this was just the start. South Africa has 6.3 million AIDS sufferers, and 25% of the population has HIV. Along comes Rath, with adverts reading 'Multivitamin treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug' and 'Multivitamins cut the risk of developing AIDS', with clinics dispensing these 'vitamins'.

Needless to say, these are lies from start to finish. Yes, major pharmaceutical companies are capitalist whores, but there is a serious legal framework which demands drug testing before a product is licensed. Rath's rubbish isn't licensed or tested, and he lied and lied and lied about his 'research'. In tandem with Thabo Mbeki's conspiracy-theorist approach to AIDS, the death toll in South Africa rose by 330,000. Millions of South Africans believed Rath and his denialist friends, leading to mass deaths.

So when you whinge on about not trusting doctors or pharmaceutical companies, remember this: that your sophisticated scepticism round dinner tables might sound terribly clever, but it's killing people on a huge scale. Pharmaceutical companies are deceitful, capitalist liars, but they have to operate within a strong regulatory and legal system which makes them behave… in the West, at least. Your doctor IS on your side. S/he's trained and the drugs are the end-product of years of experimentation. Kneejerk rejection of rationalist science kills people - kooks here and poor, uneducated, oppressed people 'there'. Read the chapter: the extent of the lies, shenanigans and plain stupidity will horrify you.

I'm not weird after all

Sales of Pride and Prejudice with Zombies have hit 4000 on pre-orders alone - clearly a lot of horror fans have been hankering for some Regency manners, and a lot of Austen fans are thirsting for blood.

All must have mottos

My housemate had a package of parking instructions in the post. It was published by Wolverhampton Council and APCOA, a purveyor of parking spaces whose motto is: The World of Parking.

Is this the least attractive world ever? I've heard of worlds of adventure, hurt, sleaze and many others. I've never dreamed of a world of parking. It sounds very boring indeed. Why should every company try to make itself sound profound or caring by having a stupid motto? Any further contenders?

Ploughing my lonely furrow

Today is very student-centred. I've reluctantly put aside my PGCE essay (it's 1000 words too long anyway) to read some project drafts and do some marking, seeing as I'm on holiday (ahem - still in the office). Bear this in mind when you students leave posts today - I may be marking your essay!

Cynical Ben presumably has the day off, seeing as he's approaching 20 posts today. He too is motivated by football, books and teasing me, so I'm sure you'll all get on together beautifully. As to the soundtrack for my day, I'm listening to a compilation of weird covers Mark did for me. Ozzy and Frank Zappa doing 'Stayin' Alive' is quite odd, whereas Altered Images' version of 'Jeepster' is lovely.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

You may have seen some rather Orwellian police adverts around recently. This site has collected some subvertised versions you may enjoy. The one I've chosen was funny before. Now Ian Tomlinson's dead, it's rather more sombre.

Wig out

I don't sing the praises of non-Britpop indie bands nearly enough - I love Field Mice, Galaxie 500, Low, Ride, Stereolab, Velocette, The Go-Betweens and loads of others and have well over 20,000 records in my room to prove it (and no money). Turn up your speakers and rock (metronomically and exponentially) to Super-Electric by Stereolab.

A softer note on which to end the day

I mentioned Joan Baez's 'Diamonds and Rust' earlier, and thought you might like to hear it, sung by her in her prime. I saw her a couple of years ago, and her voice is possible even richer. If you don't know her story: she was a folk star in the 60s revival, socially progressive and serious, then she gave Bob Dylan his big break. They had a relationship and he dumped her (and can be seen being cruel to her on Pennebaker's film), moving on to become a megastar, though I believe they made friends again. I love this song because it merges tenderness and hurt, along with a grown-up ruefulness about the naivety of love ('Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there'). If your tastes are more rock, listen to the Judas Priest version here (it starts to RAWK about 3.22).

New book… world saved

A massive tome, Mackenzie's The Victorian Vision lands with a crash on my doormat. Everything you might ever need to know about Victorian art, politics, culture, gender relations, racial concepts etc. etc.

May is shaping up

… to be a great month for culture. ATP, the Star Trek movie, and Pride and Prejudice With Zombies, about which I blogged a couple of months ago, and which is now available from some behemoth online corporations. I also got Hunger and the new Doves album, Kingdom of Rust in the post today. I've always had a soft spot for them. They're like a happier version of Tindersticks (and the title reminds me of Joan Baez's heartbreaking 'Diamonds and Rust', about her split with Bob Dylan). The video is a live performance from 1975.

Feels like I've lost a limb

IT services have managed to fiddle with the servers so that Mac users can't send mail out - so don't feel snubbed if I don't reply to you today. The utter gits.

You can still send me mail, or post to my blog.

Back now - all the mockery from IT services about Macs was worth it because it was their fault!

Ian Tomlinson RIP

I said a few days ago that the G20 riots had descended into the traditional police riot, and the footage of Ian Tomlinson (a man trying to get home from work) being bludgeoned by the police despite the fact that he was walking away with his hands in his pockets vindicates this. Is he our Blair Peach?

There is a cultural problem with the police at the moment, one which reminds me of the 1980s. They're spending an awful lot of time quietly briefing politicians and newspapers that mass violence is coming, and that they'll be going in hard: the very antithesis of their legal duty to FACILITATE protest. The police in this country have always been a reactionary and politicised force - witness the industrial disputes and the weirdo religious pronouncements of the 1980s, and the backlash which greeted Ian Blair's attempts to humanise the Met.

After the facts, their PR people are concentrating on selling a rosy version of events, as though they're working for a washing-powder company rather than a service supposedly existing to serve the public. Public bodies must be held to account, but they also have a duty to take far more care. Police PR mustn't be a marketing exercise, or be seen as an offence-defence role. One appalling example was the police injury list from Kingsnorth's environmental protest. The cops told the media and politicians that 70 officers had been injured during the £5m+ operation. However, a Liberal Democrat Freedom of Information request revealed no injuries sustained by attacks or scuffles with protestors. The 'injuries' ranged from toothache to bee stings, taking in 'officer injured sitting in car'.

This isn't just funny: it's a serious attempt to deceive readers of already pro-police newspapers and legislators. There's a sustained attempt to consolidate the extra powers afforded to the police after September 11th and use them against all forms of protest, as Mark Thomas et al. have repeatedly demonstrated. The National Extremism Tactical Unit is undertaking surveillance of peaceful protestors and journalists as though they are terrorists, and other secretive units are prepared to treat us all as threats to state security, rather than as concerned citizens.

Nor should individual policemen be allowed to escape scrutiny by ordinary citizens or by the courts: the ban on filming cops is an attempt to hide misdeeds, and a recent police brutality court case saw officers refusing to give evidence.

We've all been conditioned to see the police as 'on our side', despite their track record: the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad (aptly named: they committed a lot of serious racist crime), the Miners' Strike, and on and on. I've challenged a police officer for completely over-reacting to some loud kids at Wolverhampton station - a minor but scary event - and I'd recommend you do the same. They work for us and need reminding of this sometimes,

Association football

Stoke have suffered badly from referees trapped in the headlights of big teams this year: Manchester United and Chelsea both beat us with goals deep into 'injury time' despite no significant injuries or delays occurring.

So I'm assuming that the Man U - Porto ref was a) incredibly brave; b) foreign and c) heavily guarded when he actually blew the whistle for full time after Porto scored a 90th minute equaliser. If he'd been local, a few minutes would have been found. Perhaps Tevez could have been delayed by a difficult shoelace conundrum, Ferguson might have had a headache, ANYTHING.

I get readers: odd ones

I had a visitor from Catonsville, Maryland in the middle of the night. To this blog, you understand. I'm not sure I'd have wanted him or her visiting my house because they'd Googled 'computational linguistics porn'.

I'm stunned. I know a lot of computational linguistics practitioners, and they've never mentioned the field. Is it an underground thing? Or is this person ahead of the curve? There may be a gap in the market?

'Hi there. I'm here to, uh, resolve your anaphora'.

'Oh, thank God you're here. I've also been struggling with automatic abstracting'.

'Yes, I can see that by the rips in your lingerie. Want some Natural Language Processing advice?

'Why, you're one cunning linguist!'

I thankyewverymuch, I'm available for weddings and children's parties.

Blogging - an odd medium

I've mentioned this before, but it's strange what people respond to. Quite a few posts on favourite books - but no response to my suggestion that polluters be summarily executed. I assume that silence = consent.

Read Swift's A Modest Proposal?

Abandon hope

Hopefully you all know that ours is the last generation to live a 'first-world' lifestyle, thanks to the destructive effects of… er … our first-world lifestyle (meanwhile everybody else is suffering now). Neal's sent me a link to this video, which graphically demonstrates the real, physical impact of our selfishness on the world. It details the ever-decreasing Arctic ice coverage - without it, we're entering a period of accelerating temperature rises with associated feedback. Soon it will be too late - feedback means that there's no going back and we'll end up like Venus.

Licence fee - whinge, whinge, whinge.

People sometimes whinge to me about the licence fee being a rip-off, or an unfair, compulsory tax. Never mind that it pays for 100+ radio stations, several TV channels - at least one of which will appeal to you - the World Service and the whole transmission system AND doesn't carry adverts.

Last night's BBC2 vindicated the licence fee for me (despite the Orwellian ads about paying up or being hunted down). Heroes, followed by some variable quality Mitchell and Webb, then Stuart Lee (he won't be appearing on commercial TV anytime soon), then a stunning Cancer Special Newsnight which didn't mention God or 'alternative' (i.e. evil, made-up preying on the vulnerable) medicine, followed by The Wire. Two of these are American shows - fine. They're good quality and cost millions of pounds per episode, and we get them for £140 per year.

Thanks, readers

Interesting suggestions (keep them coming). I'd forgotten about The Master and the Margarita but agree - it's stunning. I'd also forgotten to list Jane Austen, whose works I go back to several times a year. I'm not so keen on On The Road, though I used to be many years ago. There's just something so self-involved about hippies and proto-hippies. The same goes for Coelho and that whole band of self-styled spiritual gits. They're a result of the 1960s radicals failing to get anywhere. Faced with political defeat, they decided to look inside themselves rather than take the serious choices required to save the world. They couldn't accept the external authority of organised religion, so they made up a load of old cobblers - from Scientology to self-help - and made pots of dosh on the way. I hate it. The only books I'd happily burn are those under 'Mind, Body, Spirit'. Savonarola was right.

Let's be clear, the only rules you need for a happier life in the West are:

1. Eat less.

2. Walk more.

3. Try to be more kind to people. Even students. Not Tories - they deserve a spade through the face.

4. Buy fewer things.

5. Read more.

Did anyone watch Stuart Lee's Comedy Vehicle last night? The man is a genius because he's intelligent, has a sense of the absurd, and is right about the gaping cultural void in our lives which we seem only to be able to fill through the purchase of pointless, empty objets. We've exchanged our messy, tasteless, jumbly, interesting lives for houses, clothes and activities designed to make ourselves indistinguishable from the 'lifestyles' of show-homes and the fake nuclear families featured in adverts. Resist! Swap your plasma TV for a ferret, or a book, or a train-set - whatever makes you happy in your own odd way - and stop worrying about what other people think of your lifestyle.

(Easy for me to say, of course - I'm used to the condescension or pity evinced by students, friends, family when my 'career' comes up).

And so to bed

Well, not quite. But I am going home now. I only ordered one book today (Vince Cable's The Storm), received Season one of the original Star Trek (for work, of course) and received the news that I don't have to appear in court tomorrow. This is always good to hear - my reign of terror continues.

Actually, I don't have to give evidence in a case because the defence have accepted my statement without question. It's true: I did fly in from Krypton, land on the hoodlum's head, melt his knife with laser eyes then delivered him to the Chief of Police with a tortured pun (actually, that last bit's quite true to life). I still have to attend the crown court for the more serious charges so I'll still get to shout 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth', though I've never seen the whole film because the sight of Tom Cruise makes me grind my teeth and be randomly cruel to babies.

A literary question

What book has changed your life? What one book should people read? What one book shouldn't anyone read. I tried these questions on my first-year students and discovered that nobody likes 19th-century novels any more.

My answers:

Changed my life: Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Book everyone should read: more tricky - so many good ones, so many for particular reasons. The Communist Manifesto? The Wind in the Willows? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Don't touch with a bargepole: The Lord of the Rings. Atlas Shrugged. The Book of Mormon. Left Behind. Any of Dickens' 'funny' novels. The Narnia novels. Loads more…

A solution to our excess consumption

In conversation with Neal, I had a brainwave not unconnected to watching Logan's Run recently. Give everyone a carbon ration at birth. When they've used their ration, it's execution time. After all, polluting kills people, at home and abroad. If you shorten somebody else's life, you should have yours shortened. We could all have a little electronic card with a countdown which cuts years off every time you fill up your SUV (I hate that term: what sport is it?) or take a flight. No trading allowed. This scheme will be retrospective, so all the wankers with Audi SUVs driving round Wolverhampton should report to the football stadium for 'processing' tomorrow morning.

The mode of execution (the 'quietus') would be asphyxiation by Range Rover exhaust pipe. It seems just and appropriate.

A lot of poorer countries won't be affected but the West will be depopulated - and therefore cleaner and emptier for occupation by said poorer cousins. Some people might opt to live a short and fun-packed life, and that would be fine. I'm very boring, so I'd be happy with a long, carbon-poor life.

Your comments?

Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaal

I should be working but I'm paralysed with joy - Premiership survival assured and by such a sweet method: beating West Brom yet again. 26 games, 1 defeat. Altogether now: 'We always beat West Brom'.

Actually, I'll quite miss West Brazilwich, and having them replaced with Wolverhampton isn't really a fair exchange. If people think Stoke play - ahem - 'direct' or 'physical' football, wait until they see the yam-yams hack their way to 0-0 results.

To my friends: note that SCFC are now above Blackburn Rovers, above all the other promoted teams, and above Newcastle etc. etc. We'll turn Newcastle over on Saturday, beat whoever we have left at home, then end the season by being the first team (I think) to beat Arsenal at Highbury this season. Probably.

Auf Wiedersehn, Pet

My old housemate Felix visited for a day - he's a cool German doing an internship in London and living in Chalfont St Peter, which I always thought was an Agatha Christie setting - or perhaps one of Bertie Wooster's friends.

More walking photos

Oops… forgot the landscape.

These boots are made for walking… again

Two of us Map Twats went walking up Caer Caradoc this weekend: good cheese, steep hills and a brilliant hill-fort. I've stuck photos on Flickr, but here's a taster.

Happy Birthday, old man (2)

Friday night saw a party for Mike Cunningham's 50th birthday party, held at the rather wonderful Café Maxsim's in Wolverhampton. For those of you who don't know Mr. C, he's a dry, witty politics lecturer, an inveterate author of witty letters to the Guardian, and (on the debit side), a Crystal Palace fan. Photos here

Death is in my sights today

Firstly this week, sympathies to Demented Demon (he's a nice chap, despite the monicker). His grandfather died alone in hospital recently, and on when the death certificate appeared did it become clear that he'd died of C. difficile.

It's a times like this when some really good poetry might help; when the rationalities are simply too cold. I suggested Tennyson's In Memoriam, though perhaps some Larkin or Hardy might suffice. Above all, my favourite poem about young men coping with death is 'Poem', by Simon Armitage,

Simon Armitage, ‘Poem’.

Frank O’Hara was open on the desk

but I went straight for the directory.

Nick was out, Joey was engaged, Jim was

just making coffee and why didn’t I

come over. I had Astrud Gilberto

singing ‘Bim Bom’ on my Sony Walkman

and the sun was drying the damp slates on

the rooftops. I walked in without ringing

and he still wasn’t dressed or shaved when we

topped up the coffee with his old man’s scotch

(it was only half ten but what the hell)

and took the newspapers into the porch.

Talking Heads were on the radio. I

was just about to mention the football

when he said, ‘Look, will you help me clear her

wardrobe out?’ I said, ‘Sure Jim, anything’.

Recommendations?

A new pleasure

What could be finer than sitting in my office, eating pheasant and champagne paté with a spoon? Shame it isn't a wood-panelled, book-lined study overlooking a river and a quad, but still. 'I always take a glass of champagne at eleven'.

O Brave New World

I blogged recently about a Digital Media lecture on social networking I went to - and asked for your responses to the new social formations promised by the information age. One of the participants has certainly responded to our suggestions that social-networking trains us to surrender personal information to any authority, commercial and public: the gentleman behind Unluckydip.com is closing down many of his accounts.

If you're bothered, matey, read this: 'Facebook users unwittingly reveal details' and this: 'Mobiles could spell the end of privacy': basically, Google et al. are tempting you to run location-sensitive applications - so that they (and whoever is tapping in to your account) and all the world's advertisers, know where you are for the rest of your life.

On the other hand, if you think technology can be fun, you'd be right. You can now use free Guardian APIs to do odd stuff, and one fan has tracked the history and characteristics of swearing in the Guardian. According to the graph, 'wank' is much underused. To the comment boards!

Damn…

I've just been to my colleague Rosie's lecture on the Victorians. As usual, it's a high point of the year for its breadth and vision. And so, I ended up slipping back into the office to buy The Victorian Vision, because she ended with a great quote from said book.

Nomenclature

My carefully worded complaint to management about the silent exclusion of all the humanities subjects from our new name was noted in much the same way that the Milky Way will react to the arrival of the Voyager probes (if they're going that way).

Anonymous friends responded in their own ways:

BCU: Performance, Media and English

Birmingham: College of Art and Law

De Montfort: Faculty of Humanities

Gloucestershire: Department of Humanities

Keele: School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Leicester: Faculty of Arts

Warwick: Faculty of Arts

Worcester: Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts

Wolverhampton: School of Law, Social Sciences, and Communications

Doubleplus good. He pushed the picture out of his mind. Humanities were a false memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally.

Orion? At this time of year?

Dan got quite shirty with me a few months ago when I misidentified a constellation. Now, serendipitously, xkcd has immortalised the exchange:

I stand corrected

Rosetta, who has started blogging at 90 and has clearly had a fascinating life, has bought over 400 hundred books this year! She's also a cartographer, and thus qualifies as an honorary member of our walking gang, the Map Twats (Caer Caradoc this Saturday: it has a hill fort and may have been the site of Caractacus's final defeat by the Romans). Book-buying clearly is competitive, at least in our corner of the web. We salute you! Cool dress, by the way.

Panoramic view from Caer Caradoc.

Dear Cynical Ben

Book-buying isn't a competitive sport. So leaving comments about your 157 purchases this year (does your wife know?) is unkind - and I don't have lots of 10p library sales round here. Now I'm feeling inadequate. Thanks, mate. Now I've got to go into town and buy 50-odd books to salve the hurt.

I live in the first circle

Not of Hell. Though in Dante's Inferno, I'd be in good company because this is where all the Greek and Arabic philosophers dwell - all those who haven't sinned but weren't Christian and therefore can't be saved. Saladin's there, as are the Hebrew figures from the Old Testament and of course, unbaptized babies.

No, apparently I qualify for the first circle of bookbuyers who are saving publishers from the worst of the economic crash. According to the Literary Review, for which my parents gave me a subscription for Christmas,

First-circle book buyers are stubborn in their habits. The largest proportion of them are women over thirty, and they are the chief sustainers of the fiction market. On average, first-circle readers buy up to twenty books a year, and if there is a twenty-first or a twenty-second that takes their fancy, they will buy that too. If they really like a book they buy multiple copies of it to give as presents.

Now apart from being a woman (and let's face it, life takes us to strange places so let's not rule it out yet), I fit most of this bill. I've bought a lot of copies of Thoreau's Walden for people in my time, I'm over 30 (hard to believe, looking at my angelic, youthful complexion) and I buy … oh, more than 20 per year. It's 105 so far this year which is just over one per day, not including books bought for other people.

So OK, you could, as Laura has done, describe this as a disease, or an addiction (thanks Neal), but I prefer to see it as a) doing my economic and literary duty and b) saving the environment by insulating my hovel. They make me happy too. Except for the ones which depress me (pretty much anything on politics and the environment: we are clearly all going to die slowly, miserable and avoidably because we'd all rather stick our fingers in our ears, shout la-la-la and then drive our SUVs to the airport for a weekend break - if that's you, kill yourself. I mean that, you selfish, evil, poisoning bastards).

Next Hill North

is a site dedicated to exploring social issues such as community cohesion, notions of multiculturalism and diversity and will provide insights, research and training to those on the frontline of local politics, social provision and governance. Their first report, by Mike Waite and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, examines the perceived crisis in multiculturalism, and proposes ways to recuperate harmonious, diverse local societies, and is an important intervention in the debate about how we regenerate communities split by discord and suspicion.

Now the day is over…

Today was sort of successful: I didn't buy any books - though I did receive one, James Naughtie's The Accidental American, a biography of Blair. Thanks (and Happy Birthday) to Sarah, who spotted it in a library sale. Happy Birthday to Mark too!

Meanwhile in London, police were only allowing protestors to leave if they identified themselves and allowed themselves to be photographed. This just isn't legal. The police don't have the right to demand identification unless you've committed a crime. Photography seems to be a grey area, but why should innocent people go on a database unless they've committed an offence?

Know your rights!

A holier approach to moral disease

As endorsed by Pharyngula

Join the sisterhood

My dear sister Maura has sent me this article which claims that having a sister leads to better mental health, increased motivation, more friends and a richer social life. I have four sisters and a brother, yet the voices in my head are telling me not believe it.

All I ever wanted as a child was peace and quiet to read books. Come to think of it, that's all I want now. What's your experience? Certainly my sisters were often at war and some still have complicated relationships with each other.

I can't recall the verbatim quote, and I'm not at home, but Jessica Mitford was asked if having sisters helped with life's obstacles. Her reply was 'But sisters are life's obstacles', or something very similar.

Mind your language

I'm really not doing well today. I've already ranted to this senior apparatchik about the name of the school and now I've forced her to apologise for and stop using the phrase 'loony left'. It's so contemptuous - and cedes all the political ground left of Pinochet.

I may soon have a more hands-on media experience: selling The Big Issue.

Names are important

Those of you who know me professionally will be aware that I teach English Literature and Media Studies (and various other things on the side). So I'm in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences.

Except that I'm not. Now I'm in the School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications. Does this make me feel valued, loved and secure? It bloody doesn't. Does it make me feel that the Executive is a) incompetent and b) contemptuous of a large proportion of the school's activities? It bloody does.

What really angers me (and my colleagues here on the PGCE are using the phrase 'red mist' about me) is that Law, Social Sciences and Communications doesn't cover: English Lit, History, Politics, War Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, European Studies, Cultural Studies, Languages, Women's Studies, American Studies and only reductively, obliquely covers Linguistics, English Language, PR, Media Studies, Cultural Studies. Not only does this list cover more than half our degree courses, it covers way more than half of our students. Grrrr.

Deepest joy

PGCE today - and we have a chance to interrogate the architects of the new, utterly dumbed-down own-goal new teaching and school reorganisation. Battery power only this morning so may have to abandon Plashing Vole.

I'm not feeling happy - the word for the morning is 'patronised'.

I've had a couple of gin slings

Ben rightly points out the essential silliness of today's protests because he's a democrat. I accept this, but would like to suggest that it's a start: I posted this in his comments but cross-post for your delectation.

Tie-die and slogans don't equal effective protest. But the argument is usually: wear a suit, get elected, then we'll take you seriously. But the syndicalists made the point that engagement with the system of established values blunts the legitimate objection to the system. Sometimes, violence is legitimate. Not the kind of pathetic protest we saw today, but the kind of serious, sustained resistance which the Tolpuddle martyrs, the Diggers, the Fifth Monarchists, the Peasants Revolt, the Monmouth Revolt, the '45, the Rebecca Riots, the Luddites, the Victorians who made early Peelers wear leather collars, the suffragists (just to cite British examples because it would be too easy to mention Irish and other ones) indulged in. One of the things I really respect about the English, Welsh, Scots etc. is that the people used to know how to resist. You cut Charles II's head off and ran plenty of other despots out of town, then forgot about it. Stop accepting that protest has to be 'legitimate': what does that mean? Who defines legitimacy? The American revolutionaries saw themselves as British patriots resisting illegitimate state control, and the police force nothing more than the armed wing of the upper classes for a couple of centuries ( and again during the miners' strike).

Slogans, witty placards and a few smashed windows won't bring about the revolution: it will delay it because it lets off steam. Serious, organised and sustained violence will, as it did in Kenya, Ireland, the 13 colonies, Poland, France, Italy, Cuba and many other countries. The problem with Britain is that the people were trained to legitimise the state because its power was trained on others (marginal groups, foreigners) to the extent that the British (or English, Welsh and Scots) forgot that power resides with them. Goverments rule by assumed consent - time to withdraw it. Today's protests were schoolyard histrionics - the lessons from history are that serious weaponry and strategic plans are required if you want to achieve serious change. Unless, of course, people just want a softer version of the status quo.

Thwarted

I was going to do lots more work, but got turfed out for a fire alarm. Now I just have to go for a drink for Laura's birthday.

The G20 demonstrations seem to have turned into the traditional police riot. Monbiot sums it up but most other accounts seem to tally.

Oops, I Did It Again

Oops. I went out to buy a birthday card and accidentally bought 4 more books: Ackroyd's retelling of The Canterbury Tales, Mark Steel's What's Going On?, Mark Radcliffe's Thank You For The Days (I interviewed him once - what an incredibly decent, kind man) and Madresfield: The Real Brideshead, because I know the area and quite like some of Waugh's work.

Meanwhile, while I buy books and write essays on blended learning, my heart's in London, where comrades are expending their energy in ineffectual but fun ways.

My liver hurts

Voles are usually quite abstemious, but this week I went out for dinner on Sunday (Japanese in Brum, on my own), Thai on Monday (Henriette's last day working in the department), Vietnamese with my sister in Birmingham yesterday (skilled but jobless? Join VSO, for whom she codes), tonight's Laura's birthday drinks, tomorrow might just be free as Sarah's birthday drink is during the day while I'm doing a PGCE session, then there's another birthday surprise dinner for someone else on Friday. It's almost like I have a social life! Happy birthday too to Kate, who isn't in Wolves any longer (lucky git).

Is the worm turning?

I've always thought that the UK has been a puppet/client state of the US, since 1945. However, according to Seymour Hersh, David Miliband and the head of MI6 visited Syria without permission from the Americans. This really is a shocker. Reagan of course invaded the former British territory of Grenada without mentioning it to his friend Thatcher, but the British haven't done anything without clearing it with Uncle Sam since Suez, which was a disaster.

The way Hersh tells it, Cheney was furious. How dare the Brits use their initiative?

Sorry Cynical Ben

He doesn't like it when I do this because he thinks blogs should feature the author's original thoughts. Isn't that sweet? I'm posting this strip because I've done exactly this, frequently.

He gets readers

I'm always pleased when 35 people read my blog in a day (actually, 35 views doesn't mean 35 unique visitors). Imagine my jealousy: Pharyngula got 2, 296, 911 visitors last month. That's more than 35 a day, English students!

Note to self - it's not a competition.