Won't somebody think of the children?

Don't take your kids to the new Muppets movie. Despite it being a Hollywood production replete with the inevitable corporate tie-ins, Fox News has announced that it's eco-communist propaganda:

"Liberal Hollywood depicting a successful businessman as evil – that's not new," said Bolling. He asked his guest, media-bias alarmist Dan Gainor, if Hollywood was deliberately trying to brainwash kids.
"Absolutely," said Gainor. "And they've been doing it for decades." He pointed out that oil could be used to "light a hospital" or "fuel an ambulance". "They don't want to tell that story," he said.
Bolling's Fox News colleague Andrea Tantaros chimed in, saying: "I just wish liberals could leave little kids alone." Bolling wondered aloud why the Muppets couldn't, for once, "have the evil person be the Obama administration". It only remained for him to throw up his hands and cry: "Where are we? Communist China?"

Which compared with Jeremy Clarkson, is small beer indeed. And more to the point: what children's literature isn't subversive? All the good stuff, at least. The Phantom Tollbooth is, for me, a Derridean deconstruction of language and signifier. Goldilocks crosses the animal human divide, while even the dumbest pubescent girl will spot the barely-hidden sexual messages of Red Riding Hood. Hell, even Bugs Bunny's eternal tormenting of Elmer Fudd is a clear attack on the armed rapaciousness of Big Farmer and the hunting fraternity.

Virtually every kids' book ever written preaches the joys of sharing and the misery attendant on being a selfish bully. Whenever I meet a Tory or a banker, I have to assume that they read only the nasty stuff: Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, both of which promote greed, racism and individualism in the service of a cruel and vengeful god, and in which the daily toil of the ordinary person is utterly insignificant.

Like this bit, the smashing of Isengard by angry trees.



Apparently if you're an industrial worker, you're a despicable, degraded monster deserving a cruel death, not empathy or advice from a friendly trades unionist. You don't get a name, or agency. You're just a Morlock in the blind service of evil. You hate trees and the trees are going to kill you, rightfully so. For Tolkien, apparently, being working-class means you have no culture, no rights and no future. The world - as all the positive characters keep saying - is descending into darkness, and the victory over Sauron is really only the last hurrah of the ancient and (don't forget), racially pure. Miscegenation is a cause for sadness (when it's 'good' races like Elves and the better sort of men), and for evil when it's the lower orders.

This is what really bothers me about Tolkien and Narnia: the idea that there is no progress, only decay. That racial purity and wisdom are automatically linked. That the darker your skin or the more X chromosomes you have, the dumber and more passive you should be. Who could fail to be revolted by the way Susan is excluded from Narnia for developing an interest in lipstick and boys? Or the way the children die horribly in a train wreck, with the words 'school is over. The holidays have begun', as though life on earth is no more meaningful than sitting in the waiting room?

Now run along before Gandalf rips off your face, peasants. And read Alison Lurie's Don't Tell The Grown-ups.

On the agenda

It's a fun-packed day today: marking the three Shakespeare forums on which I've fallen behind, counselling the lost sheep about their dissertations, going for a swim and then going to a discussion of black holes. In a pub. Oh, and following the Leveson Inquiry too. Enthralling.

The soundtrack to the day is Adam Green's Sixes and Sevens, another £3 CD bought out of curiosity. It's rather fun: a mix of Kurt Weill, Tom Waits and nursery rhymes. I saw his former Moldy Peaches partner Kimya Dawson at ATP once: similar faux-naif fun.

Putting the FUN into Fundamentalism

A chance conversation reminded me of the Lost Age of non-commercial indie music, which died out when Britpop became chart fodder. One scene was 'grebo': defiantly uncool West Midlanders in big shorts, para boots and churning out sometimes quite catchy club-influenced hits. Ned's Atomic Dustbin (2 bass guitars!), Pop Will Eat Itself, The Wonder Stuff: good serviceable student music.

This is Ned's' biggest hit: Kill Your Television:



And you need some PWEI: gritty yet wittily postmodern forward thinkers: rap, rock and funk mixed together to provide such gems as this, and frankly odd paean of praise to football and a porn-star turned rightwing politician 'Touched By The Hand of Cicciolina'.



Even better was the occasional crossover with the UK hip-hop scene. Who, pre-9/11, couldn't fail to love Fun Da Mental: politically-conscious angry Muslim metal-rappers? Happy days…

Trouble in Paradise

There's a by-election in Feltham and Heston, a political fact which normally wouldn't detain even a nerd like me for a moment, were it not for this glorious little spat.

According to the Conservative Party,

‘We are fighting hard across the constituency and receiving a very positive feedback on the doorstep. There’s all to play for.

Of course there is (by which I mean that the Tories are going to lose very badly indeed). The fun is that some naughty Tory has leaked a rather bitter and angry exchange of emails between two Tory MP's running the campaign. You can read the whole thing here, but these are some choice extracts:
Michael Fabricant (campaign organiser begging MPs' staff to help out:

We are asking every MP to donate 3 x half-days to this Campaign. If you haven’t already done so, please make sure he or she does so!! …you will be included in all the Bulletins sent to MPs so they have no excuse when they ‘accidentally’ delete my important messages!

Bob Stewart (aggrieved MP who turned up to do some canvassing):

Who the hell do you think you are? I am furious.  

The vast majority of people were out and those that were in wouldn’t open the door. I don’t blame them for that. As I was canvassing there was a drugs raid and the UK Border Agency were doing a simultaneous operation. We probably looked like people from the Social Services, Police, Special Branch or UK Border Agency. There is absolutely no chance of us winning there. I wasted my time all day today and I will not be doing so again. 

They don't need the Lib Dems to fight with: they'll do it by themselves.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I don't know if you've been following the American Presidential nomination campaigns, but it's a fascinating example of why we are doomed to a future of environmental misery, scientific ignorance and social decay.

The primary system pitches potential party candidates against each other in a bitter, gladiatorial contest. Any voter registered as a supporter (not member) of the party can vote in their statewide poll. In some ways, it's quite useful: the flaws of the candidate can be highlighted before the actual national election. On the other hand, those flaws are exposed for the nation to see even years before the candidate faces the official vote. Additionally, the public can become bored with the candidate very early on.

Apart from the obscene amounts of money soaked up by essentially 3 years of campaigning during a 4-year election cycle, the major problem for the American 2-party system is extremism. This year's Republican candidates are Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain (until yesterday), Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich. All of them are hugely rich, privileged people - and all of them are running as political 'outsiders': even Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican Congress against Bill Clinton. He's up to his neck in lobbying corruption and accusations of hypocrisy: while pursuing Clinton for the Lewinsky affair, he was conducting several of his own…

The problem with the primary system is this: to win the nomination, you have to appeal to the minority of voters who turn out. This is the hardcore: those who want a candidate exactly like them, which means loudly proclaiming your fundamentalist Christianity, attacking science, denying that there's anything wrong with the environment at all, wielding heavy artillery at every opportunity, and promising to deport anyone who's ever looked longingly at a taco.

Which is all very well: but it pays no attention to the rest of the country. The Republicans are facing a liked but not massively popular incumbent in Obama. There's a percentage of the country which will switch to the Republicans without too much guilt if their candidate is reasonably centrist (by American standards: horrendously conservative by our's). But this is exactly what won't happen. The most reasonable Republican candidate is Mitt Romney, the billionaire Mormon: but even he's had to abandon all common sense and drink the extremist Kool-Aid. So the Republicans will get a candidate in their image - and lose heavily. It's a problem common to political parties everywhere: true believers are often a bit odd, whereas the plausible candidates can't always be trusted (looking at you, Blair), but it seems to be magnified in the US, where the Republicans are becoming a narrow, bitter faith-based sect, and the Democrats are simply technocratic avatars of the status quo with very little in the way of actual, y'know, beliefs. 

It's the old conundrum: electable or true believer? I'm pretty certain that there's a big chunk of potential ordinary decent Republicans out there who espouse small-town conservative values who are essentially disenfranchised by the activists' extremism.

And while we're at it, yesterday's Doonesbury is a magnificent attack on Rick Perry and election funding.

Science + Beer = Good

Tomorrow, in a fine pub in Birmingham (the Jekyll and Hyde, appropriately), it's Café Scientifique:

informal and lively discussion events around contemporary science issues that take place in local bars, cafes and pubs.  Taking place on the first Tuesday of every month, we feature a variety of local scientists and engineers, talking about their work and how it affects the average person in the street.  Always fun, sometimes controversial, these events are a great way to get to the heart of the matter.

What a wonderful idea, and one we should steal as part of our university's outreach programme: arts, media, current affairs - we could attract a totally new audience. We could turn up in gurdwaras, union halls, village halls, libraries, shopping centres… I'd have to pass a hat round, of course.

Black holes tomorrow. See you there?

If You Build It, They Will (not) Come

So, I'm sitting here at the university, surrounded by a buffet and empty space. We're hosting a Saturday University: a series of interesting talks designed to attract part-time students to think about taking on a BA in Humanities. It's a fascinating course, designed to tease out the deeper questions about our philosophical and cultural activities.

The day is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing: reaching out to the community in new ways, providing stimulating and challenging opportunities to people who might not otherwise get a chance.

Why aren't they here? Who knows? We blanketed local radio and other outlets with publicity. We reached out to local groups. Perhaps it's us, perhaps it's the time of year, Christmas shopping, local difficulties. Or perhaps it's symptomatic of a wider cultural malaise. I just don't know.

What to do for the rest of the day? I intend to get naked and take a run through the sacred groves of academe (i.e. the corridors).

The horror…

A colleague just sent me a link to candidates for the worst album art of all time. They're pretty shocking, but one in particular caught my eye:

This is Kevin Rowland, to whom The Hegemon is awarding an honorary doctorate, not for this album, but for his wonderful music as Dexys Midnight Runners. I suppose we should respect his bravery. Not everyone can carry off a pearl necklace and mutton-chop sideburns.

Shamefully, I temporarily possessed this album. It was, I assume, his mid-life crisis work. I was sent a review copy for the student newspaper I edited. So bad was it, that I hurled the CD from a high window. Shame really: it only sold 400 copies and is something of a collector's item now!

To take the taste away, here's my very favourite Dexys song: 'Plan B' (dedicated to George Osborne). To me it's pop perfection: insanely catchy, yearning, melancholic, repays repeated listening, timeless.

#Occupy Goes To The Opera

How cool is this? The Occupy crowd went to the Met Opera House in New York last night, to point out the injustice of the 1% claiming that philanthropy excuses them from paying taxes. I love opera myself, but the problem with philanthropy is that it gets spent on things that make the rich feel good: opera, donkey charities, art funds while claiming that they're doing good. With taxes, democracy decides where the money needs to go.

But I digress. The Occupy people don't hate opera either. And, it turns out, the opera people don't hate Occupy. The performance was Philip Glass's Satyagraha, his sprawling minimalist eco-conscious, democratic masterpiece based on Ghandi's early life. When it was all over, the composer himself strolled past the police blocks - with some of the opera-goers - to quote the Bhagavad-Gita to the multitude (from about 3.00):

"When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again."

As slogans go, that's not bad.

From the vaults

I picked up a cheap used CD a few weeks ago. It appealed on every level: 1990, moody looking pair on the front, one holding a viola, and nothing about them on the interweb I could find. £3 for a new experience? Bargain.

The album is Swans and Turtles, by Mark Springer and Sarah Sarhandi. She's a viola player and composer, I guess you'd say: she exists in the space between classical and jazz and pop. Potentially unutterably pretentious, you might think, but no. Mr. Springer? I have no idea. There's nothing about him anywhere - and no youtube footage of any of it. Even Last.fm has very little, and one comment from someone who did the same as me.

What's the music like? Well, I'm a sucker for the viola anywhere: Vaughan Williams' Flos Campi is one of my favourite pieces of music, and the same goes for Morton Feldman's The Viola in My Life. They say the cello is lovely because it's closest to the human voice's range - I reckon the viola is close too. Terrible violinist though I was, I always assume that I'd be a better viola-ist just because there's the wonderful warm hum about a viola. This album sounds to me like a mix of Vaughan Williams, Delius, the minimalists, 4AD, the Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500/Damon and Naomi and Madder Rose. Soft, melodic, but with an underlying edge. Melancholic, sure but sweet too.

It's so good that I've rather naughtily uploaded some for your delectation. Hope they work.

This is what democracy looks like

If you follow American politics at all, you'll know there's a long and dishonourable tradition of trying to keep undesirables of the electoral roll, going back to the Civil Rights era. Sometimes it's bureaucratic: demanding more forms of identification than the poor and mobile are like to have or be able to afford, sometimes it's about intimidation and disinformation. It's happening here too: the Conservatives are about to abolish compulsory registration, in the hope that the poor and mobile (students, temporary workers etc) don't bother, leaving elections in the hands of the stable Daily Mail reading classes.

Ray Lutz is a candidate for the Democratic Party. He set up a voter registration desk in the Civic Center Plaza, where there's an Occupy camp: and was arrested for trespassing (remember me blogging about pseudo-public space a few weeks ago?).



Don't be a Klutz: vote for Lutz!

Nothing is real

There's a perfectly respectable philosophical position which states that if it's possible to build a simulation of the universe, then it's probably already been done, and we're part of it: see Bostrom's article in Philosophical Quarterly v. 53 no. 211 (2003) for a discussion. Or see Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy:





If it's not true already, it soon will be:

Parting shots

The last few from the Pensions March of November 30th. Rest here.

Now is the winter of our discontent…

Ken Purchase, former Labour MP

Rob Marris, former MP

The long march…

Some more favourites from yesterday's protest. Rest here, or click these for larger versions.

These teachers are getting younger and younger

Maybe this is what the Mail meant by the 'bloated' public sector.

Meet the marchers

Contrary to the hysteria of the Daily Mail, which yesterday was openly triumphant at the prospect of 710,000 sackings from the 'bloated' public sector, yesterday's protest was packed with saddened, brave, lovely people. The people who teach you, clean your streets, wipe your bottom (as a baby and as an older person), help you with your benefits, make sure you don't drown in the local pool… all the things you might miss if you're not Jeremy Clarkson.

Apart from the incredible cold, picketing was rather fun. Not many people crossed the line, and those who did tended to look embarrassed about it. The Vice-Chancellor came to have an amiable chat, and loads of people honked and waved in support. No abuse this time, unlike previous actions. I was fed lovely pastries by well-wishers, and another scab managed to hit 'reply to all' when grovelling to management, so that's another one off the Christmas card list.

The rally was stunningly well-attended. I met lots of my students, some of them striking from their own public sector jobs, and even the speeches were short and punchy. Hearing former New Labour MP Rob Marris sound left-wing was very weird. Mind you, after 18 months of Paul Uppal, Pinochet's starting to look a bit pinko.

Here are a few of my favourite shots: click on them to enlarge. The rest are here.

Possibly my favourite of the lot. Lady with Vuvuzela. 

Ah, Vice-Chancellor, how nice of you to join us.

Where do they get their ideas?

It seems that lazy plutocrat and self-serving Tory MP Paul Uppal hasn't stirred his stumps much recently - after all, there's nothing politically pressing to deal with at the moment, is there?

So I moseyed on over to his website to see what he was up to, and discovered 'his' statement on the Chancellor's speech. It is, of course, written by a machine at Tory Central Office (and not one familiar with how humans speak: many of the individual phrases return thousands of hits because they're so tired, like this one, this one, this one and this one). Some phrases are lifted from those social Darwinist scum at the Taxpayers' Alliance (chaired by an offshore tax evader), such as 'hard working taxpayers, businesses. What about single people, the unemployed and those exempt from paying tax? They're citizens too!

This mealy-mouthed speech basically says: the recession's not our fault, you might find yourself starving in the gutters, but the bond traders are happy so yah boo sucks to you. (For your information, Paul, UK gilts returns aren't low because you're doing so well: it's because there's nowhere safe to invest any money: low demand leads to low rates. Even I know that, and my degrees are in Welsh literature).

Suspecting that this guff was centrally written and distributed to vacuous backbenchers (surely no-one actually writes this stuff?), I had a quick look round. Uppal's certainly quick off the mark - most of it's not up elsewhere yet. Except for the opening, which he's plagiarised from another speech Osborne made:

George Osborne today announced an Autumn Statement which is designed in tough times for tough times.

Or as Channel 4 has it:

The plan we have set out is designed in tough times for tough times. 

Tougher for us than for multimillionaire property parasite Paul, of course.

Other bits do appear elsewhere, like this economic masterstroke:

We will introduce a National Loan Guarantee Scheme

It promises to underwrite the bankers (SURPRISE!) if they deign to lend any cash to us oiks. But Gideon didn't think it up himself:

We will introduce a National Loan Guarantee Scheme… to underwrite bank lending to businesses. 

Who are these economic geniuses? Er… the British Empire Party. Who? Well, they're fantasy politicians too: it's part of a game called eRepublik, in which Atlantis has only recently sunk beneath the waves. Say what you like about these chaps, they understand the true values of the Conservative Party and where they come from.

Union Maid

A couple of tracks to remind us of our proud union culture.

Pete Seeger singing Woody Guthrie's 'Union Maid':



And here's the Dropkick Murphys' version of the classic 'Which Side Are You On?' ('Will you be a lousy scab or will you be a man?').



or if you prefer a less rocky version:

On the eve of battle

So, dear readers, you won't be hearing from me tomorrow, unless I manage to snatch a few minutes from our pickets and rally to document the workers' struggle. I've got a Moomins flask (mint tea) and a hip flask (raw meths).



Joking aside, striking's no fun, especially in the cold and rain, but it's got to be done. Today George Osborne yet again decided that passengers on private jets don't have to pay tax. Meanwhile, he and his millionaire friends have decided that cleaners, nurses, teachers and civil servants should work longer, pay more and get less. We're not being asked to contribute more in return for a decent retirement: we're being asked to contribute more to subsidise the tax-evasion and trickery of the financial sector.

I won't get many years' pension contributions: an MA, a PhD and years of casual labour saw to that. Nor will I get many years' pension: my retirement age will be 68 and men live to about 78-80. I'm not demanding a yacht with a Zimmer frame ramp, but I would like not to have to worry about how to heat my hovel.

Some of my friends in the private sector ask why I should cling on to 'gold-plated' pensions when they don't get much. They're looking at it wrongly: don't drag us down, organise and pull yourselves up. There's no lack of money. The Teachers' Pension Fund, the NHS pension pot: they're all fully funded. Likewise in the private sector: if there's enough money for CEOs to earn on average 140 times more than the employee, there's enough money for decent pensions too.

Don't forget, pensions aren't some kind of reward: they're deferred wages. Increasing our contributions while cutting our pensions is a thinly-disguised pay cut. Oh, and to correct a common misconception: we're docked 1/260th of our wages every time we strike. This time, we've finally managed to persuade the boss that the cash should go into the Student Hardship fund, rather than into the coffers.

It's good for the economy as well. Pensions are spent, often in the local economy, whereas share dividends, bonuses and high executive pay is hidden away offshore, where it can't pay the local baker, car mechanic or cleaner, let alone build schools and hospitals. Decent wages and pensions make the economy go round.

Come and say hello tomorrow. We're not wreckers or militants. We're workers, just like you, and we're doing this for everyone. Bring cake.

Storm clouds gather…

As is traditional on strike days, the weather is going to be awful: cold, wet and gloomy. Tonight, however, the sunset is spectacular. Even The Hegemon looks good:

News Bounty

Good morning, readerinos! After yesterday's mammoth editing session (I reduced a paper from 19000 to 8500 words - each one soaked in blood), I'm back with a vengeance. Sort of. I've to write a lecture on Literature in the West Midlands (all suggestions welcome) for Saturday's promotional event. So far, I have a massive list, and I'm attempting to construct a spine for it, probably along the lines of 'The West Midlands: Culturally Impenetrable (And That's Just The Accent)'.

The other excitement of the day is the Chancellor's speech on the state of the British economy. Normally, one word would do ('screwed'), but his job is to repeat the very tired mantra 'we inherited a mess from the last Labour government' - they'll be his dying words - and pretend that slashing services to the poor and subsidising his rich mates with new airports and motorways is a reasonable and workable solution. No doubt he'll also say 'greenest government ever', despite the Tories' despicable secret support for Canadian oil sands production and his get-out-of-jail-free bribe to the worst polluters.

And the Leveson inquiry is ongoing! It's a banquet of news! Now to persuade the media students to have a look… Talking of them, I'm spending my lunchtime leafleting the little darlings to explain tomorrow's strike action. Free stickers to anyone who doesn't spit at me.

Anyway, in tribute to the victims of Torynomics, here's a song about us:

At long last!

Finally, I've been abused by someone on the internet. Lord knows I've tried: I've discussed Israel and Palestine (yes, Americans, Palestine is a place and a nation), criticised Tolkien and even suggested that Paul Uppal MP is a lazy, selfish hound. To no avail.

Until today. Our management demanded to know who is planning to work on Wednesday, when all sane public sector employees are taking industrial action. One silly scabby sausage hit 'reply to all', so that everyone knows who doesn't care about solidarity (average pension of our support staff: £3500-4000).

So I posted this on Twitter:

Advice to scabs: if you're planning to work on #Nov30 it's best not to hit 'reply to all' when management asks who's going to scab.

and received this response from @MatofKilburnia, who claims to be leftwing:

scab is a hateful word of intimidation. Very disappointed to see it being used in 2011

you are a bully

Oooh! Scrap scrap scrap…

I'm not really a bully. I've resisted the temptation to publicly name and shame my 'colleague'. The bullies are the management who know perfectly well (because I've told them repeatedly) that members don't have to inform management about taking action in advance. It's an attempt to pick people off by intimidating them.

And if anyone thinks the word 'scab' is bullying, I'd direct them to Lewis Jones's Cwmardy, in which a miner who refuses to join the union is left to hold up a 3-ton coal cart himself: an excellent lesson in the shortcomings of individualism.

Anyway, must go. I've got some duffings-up to administer round the back by the bins. Give me your lunch money or you'll get some too.

Finger on the pulse

I'm a little worried about the calibre of journalist employed by the Daily Mail. Here we are on Mumsnet, appealing to the denizens of that site to cough up stories of their marital difficulties for money. All in pursuit of a story about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is apparently fed up with 'her philandering husband'.

Marital Tipping Points

 (25 Posts)

Add message | Report | Message poster

MEDIA: Katie Freelance Thu 17-Nov-11 10:51:26

I'm writing a feature for the Daily Mail about marital tipping points, for our Femail section. It comes in the wake of news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is reported to be finally considering divorce from her philandering husband - she put up with years of affairs but then reports that he had been text messaging escort girls became the straw that broke the camel's back. We are looking for good stories where women have tolerated bad behaviour for a long time only for something to finally prompt then to say enough is enough and to look at why that was. Ideally we'd like you to be identified and provide a photo but we'd also consider strong anonymous stories. In the former instance we could pay a small fee. Please do get in touch if you think you can help or know anyone who might want to take part - we are looking to feature a number of different stories. You can contact me via mumsnet or via my personal email address www.kathrynknight.com. Many thanks, Katie

The only minor wrinkle is that Dominique is the philandering husband in question: he's married to Anne. Poor little Daily Mail journalist is a) too xenophobic to know that other nations have different naming conventions and b) too lazy to look up DSK's details.

The Mumsnetters have once again demonstrated their feeding-frenzy shark abilities in the comments section…

And if you're tempted to sell a story to the Mail, read this salutary and miserable tale.

The finest minds of a generation…

I particularly enjoyed this demolition: Louise Mensch MP, a particularly smug, hard-right Tory MP who apparently should be exempted from criticism because she's on Twitter and married to Metallica's manager, ripped apart from some cuddly, ageing comedians.



The word for Ms. Mensch is 'hubris'.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, I know it was yesterday, but I was busy (though maybe I shouldn't worry: the number of visitors increased in my absence. There's a lesson for someone - me - in that).

In honour of the other America, the one which didn't just vote in Congress that pizza is a vegetable, here's a cranky old cynic offering his alternative Thanksgiving message:

Sigh…

You may have noticed my general absence from the ether yesterday: I'm utterly swamped with marking, preparation, planning for next week's strike, writing the extra lecture on Literature and the West Midlands for the special University Day we're having in a weeks time, and all the other myriad things which all seem to need doing right now.

Coincidentally, this jolly piece popped up on my iPod this morning: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's 'Another Day Full of Dread' (though it's actually quietly defiant):



And it's so wonderful to hear John Peel's voice. I miss his show very much.

Academic democracy, California Style

Over in the US, the rumble over the casual assaults made on passive, peaceful students by the police - called in by the Vice-Chancellor for 'health and safety' reasons, continues.

After an English professor wrote an open letter to the VC calling for her to resign, the English Department has posted a similar demand on its website.

It couldn't happen here, I think. We tend not to use organisational subgroups as the basis for political action, though if something terrible happened, I'm pretty sure all my colleagues would collectively protest. More prosaically: we don't control our own websites. It takes months for material to appear, and it's never quite sure who has the magic passwords and software.

Borne aloft on dragons' wings

Sad to say, Anne McCaffrey died today. At least, it might be sad - everybody's got to go, and she was 85. But her passing is another reminder of my misspent teenage years. Misspent, that is, in reading everything I could get my hands on. Without any quality control, I just consumed everything I could. Fantasy infuriated my parents: their devotion to Catholicism was apparently a different matter entirely and not up for critical discussion. I guess a period of indiscriminate reading is a form of training: learning tastes, identifying elements to which we respond emotionally, learning what writing works and what doesn't.

Anne McCaffrey's novels were a staple of my teens. The Dragonrider series was set in a colonised planet on which de-technologised (it's a word now, OK?) humans existed in a kind of symbiosis with dragons: unlike our own cultural landscape, Pern's dragons are the good guys and the humans often weak, flawed and small-minded. There was also some kind of cyclical catastrophe involving a nearby planet, the details of which both escape me and evoke a familiar feeling of tedium. McCaffrey's death is a reminder of how much I've changed. At the time, everything she wrote meant a lot to me, and for that I'm grateful. Her work provided comfort, expanded my imaginative and emotional range, offered alternatives to my humdrum daily life. But like Tolkien's work, I find them unreadable now. I tried recently: the characterisation is paper-thin (ho ho), the dialogue unbearably stilted and the plots weak and repetitive. But I don't resent those years reading such work. I learned from them, and I used those books in ways that 'high' literature might not have suited. We have complex relationships with culture. What's supposedly 'good for you' might not be what you need or are ready for. We tell our students that meaning is created by the reader, not by the author: anyone can derive something good from something bad. Obviously Jeffrey Archer and Dan Brown are glaring exception, but it's generally true.

More specifically related to McCaffrey, her work represented an interesting strand in contemporary literature. Like all science fiction and fantasy, it was only superficially about imaginary planets. In reality, what she explored was the pressures facing us in the here and now. By depicting the struggles of a complex, anti-exploitative but primitive society, one which retained a spirituality and environmental consciousness which some claim we've lost, she posited alternative, more harmonious ways to live, often with a vaguely Celtic tinge. I'm more of a fan of hard-left political speculative fiction of the Ken McLeods et al, or the eco-feminism of Tepper, but there's a space for the hippy utopianism of McCaffrey and Spinrad - and decent female authors are still too rare in SF and fantasy.

I've got reservations about McCaffrey's work, but without her, our imaginations would be poorer. At least, mine would be.

Support your student activists

While the SU of my institution is a craven and frail beast, other students are working hard to make sure that this government's attack on education as a public good isn't forgotten: Cambridge students forced David Willetts (who earlier this week encouraged discount institutions to start up in old office blocks, while admitting that he wouldn't want his kids to attend them) to abandon a speech, then occupied the building, and Birmingham University students have set up an alternative university in an occupied building (follow their exploits here).

You might question the tactics, especially given the UK's overwhelmingly rightwing media, but I think they should be encouraged. In the 1960s, students across the world, even the UK, occupied their centres of learning to demand that universities stopped being mouthpieces of hegemony, and started critiquing the status quo. I don't think our current crop of protesters are as engaged with theory: Marcuse, Laing and Gramsci aren't on anyone's lips now, sadly - but their aims are laudable. Take the banking crash: virtually no academic economists predicted it. Instead, influential academics operated as paid consultants and board members, producing the analytical work which promised everything would be all right. Only people outside the magic circle pointed out that the Emperor was dipping his dangly bits in our soup. It's time universities led opinion, not bowed to the fashionable orthodoxies.

Despite this afternoon's media students not knowing about the Leveson inquiry, or how the press operates, the vast majority are intellectually curious and idealistic. We shouldn't stamp on this, but encourage it. I'm on strike next week, because the space I use to examine cultural nostrums is being eroded. The students' struggle is just as valid. They aren't greedily demanding special privileges - they're demanding that we all recognise the liberatory potential of education and its benefits for all.

How Shakespeare Can Improve Your Sex Life

No, not a learned disquisition into the romantic and sexual themes in Shakespeare's plays: I've done a lot of that recently and in any case, you lot don't pay me.

Instead, a clip from - against my better judgement - a musical (Kiss Me Kate, an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew), in which two gangsters persuade the leading man that a firm grasp of Shakespeare will make a chap irresistible to the ladies. Male students, take note:

The girls today in society
Go for classical poetry,
So to win their hearts one must quote with ease
Aeschylus and Euripides.
But the poet of them all
Who will start 'em simply ravin'
Is the poet people call
The bard of Stratford-on-Avon.

Brush up your Shakespeare,
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow.
Just declaim a few lines from "Othella"
And they think you're a heckuva fella.
If your blonde won't respond when you flatter 'er
Tell her what Tony told Cleopaterer,
And if still, to be shocked, she pretends well,
Just remind her that "All's Well That Ends Well."
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kowtow.



And if your dramatic tastes are more classically-inclined, here's Christopher Reeve in Hamlet:

Public Service Announcement

Special lecture organised by the Royal Institute of Philosophy:

Are you wondering how the current transformations affecting the Higher Education system in the UK will be affecting you and your university in the long term? Are you puzzled by the cacophony of educational reforms, and struggling to flesh out the underlying ideas driving the current changes?

'The Politics of the University' by Professor Andrew Vincent. MC401, 4.30-6 December 7th.

Everything's perfectly under control

What a busy day. 9-11: write lecture and mark essays. 11-1: deliver lecture on The Tempest. 1-3: lecture/seminar on media regulation and freedom ('can you give us a clue?' said one). I really enjoyed today's teaching, despite horror that the media students didn't know about the phone-hacking story. Nobody fell asleep in my Shakespeare lecture and we touched on some interesting angles.

However, all isn't entirely plain sailing. I went out yesterday to buy posh truffles, a book and a card for a colleague's birthday. A birthday which turns out to be… in July. Ah well. Count the months and consider it a conception present. Or an early Christmas present.

The dew appears to have fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning

A little snatch of Marvin the Paranoid Android before I go:

I was doing so well too…

Damn it, I've just fallen off the book wagon. I've bought relatively few recently - 2/3 per week instead of ten (currently reading Norman Davies's very interesting Vanished Kingdoms (though I'm not sure what to get out of it beyond fascination other than awareness that all states are temporary) and just finished Jonathan Coe's funny, emotional The House of Sleep), but having a bad day's teaching yesterday, combined with a trip to the bookshop to buy a birthday present, meant that temptation was too strong.

It's all comfort reading: volume 1 of Matthews and Sweeney's very faithful graphic adaptation of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (which might come in useful in several modules), P. D. James's Pride and Prejudice murder mystery Death Comes To Pemberley (despite not being too happy handing cash over to a Tory peer and despite this hilarious negative review), and on the recommendation of friends, Wodehouse's Leave it to Psmith, one of his Blandings novels.

I went for a swim today. It was enough to make me consider voting Tory, even for the Egregious Uppal. Thanks to the massive cuts in school sports budgets and free swimming for old people, I had an entire 25-metre municipal pool all to myself. In this case, we certainly weren't all in it together. I was in it, and they weren't. Though I wasn't in it in the altogether. Ugh.

The mob's got nothing on Lansley

The Health Secretary has cracked the problem of NHS funding: his face. 

The Conservative cabinet minister's face appears on bedside entertainment systems on a continuous loop saying that their care "really matters to me" and asking them to thank NHS staff.

If they want to turn him off, they have to register under a system which sees patients charged more than £5 a day to access TV, email and phone services.

he insisted he was delivering "a useful message" and pointed out that patients had the choice of watching something more interesting – if they registered

I can only applaud. £5 per day to avoid his smirking contempt is a bargain, despite it being extortionate. It comes to £1825 per year, a mere £1679.50 more expensive than the licence fee and £1393 cheaper than the basic Sky package. 


Still, when someone's weakened through illness, that's the best time to mug them. It horrifies me that hospitals are now seen as retail opportunities for a captive audience. I read recently that a hospital down south has a Marks and Spencer Food outlet. That really highlights the north/south divide: my local infirmary has a Greggs bakery, retailing bacon sandwiches, pasties and other assorted unhealthy products to the cardiac patients, morbidly obese and others. Local phone calls cost patients more than calling Australia from home: and it's old people on reduced incomes who spend most time in hospital. So much for joined-up health…


Sadly, the monitors don't play this Andrew Lansley song:





PS. I'm only joking about these charges making money for the NHS: it all goes to private companies like Hospedia.

How not to conduct a survey

One of the dreariest tasks I've undertaken in the past is teaching research methods for social sciences: not my forte at all. But clearly it's quite important.

I've just responded to an Apple survey about my latest purchase, an iPhone. Oh good, I thought. An opportunity to highlight the pros and cons of the device. But no: the questions were largely 'where have you sought support?' and 'are you satisfied?'. No boxes to provide detailed feedback (I like the phone, but the battery life is appalling), and one final kicker: despite this bit

We value and appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation!

(and no, I can't understand why there's an exclamation mark there other than to fake enthusiasm) the last line is:

For any issues with your iPhone please contact your carrier for support.

which sounds like 'run along and don't bother us' to me. Survey fail, customer relations fail.

Pep up with some Northern Soul

This is what I play to cheer myself up: Northern Soul. It grew up in Stoke, Wigan and Blackpool as DJs competed for the most obscure floor-fillers imported from the US. The drug of choice was speed (though another powder - talcum - was also necessary), the moves were spectacular, and the clothes, well, they were distinctive. You can still spot the occasional Northern Soul fanatic on the streets.

There's no angst about in Northern Soul: the songs were designed to facilitate primitive mating rituals by providing men and women with opportunities for displays of gymnastic prowess.

Dobie Gray's 'Out on the Floor' has everything you could ever want from a pop song:



If this one (Human Beinz's cover of the Isley Brothers' 'Nobody But Me') doesn't make you wanna dance, you must be clinically dead:





And finally Al Wilson's lust-fuelled 'The Snake':

"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed…"*

I am actually feeling pretty low right now. Despite having a lovely weekend and a very successful run in the President's Cup fencing competition (won 5-1, 5-1, 5-0, 5-0, 5-2 and lost one 5-2), one bad class has left me very gloomy indeed. First up was my 2 hours on social class and literature: pretty one-sided, but I think it went OK. But it was followed by seminar on media and the political economy which was utterly disastrous. Even the regularly talkative bright ones didn't know how the BBC and Sky were funded, hadn't heard about the phone-hacking, didn't care about concepts like the 'public sphere'. They don't watch news or documentaries. They're consumers of entertainment, and have absolutely no interest in being citizens. These are media students who by and large (there are exceptions) don't watch, read or listen to news.

I often write here about my students in fairly idealistic terms, and I'm usually right, but this is one of the those times in which I feel old and weird. They're not individually responsible for this state of consumerist apathy: it's exactly what hegemonic elites want from the populace.

The political class has won: the majority of my students either think government is something distantly done to them, or - as several have said to me - are content to assume that governments basically do the right thing and should be left alone by us and by the media. The idea that there's an Occupy generation radicalised by student fees, environmental degradation or the depression is fantasy.

So I'm feeling gloomy. I try hard to be enthusiastic and non-judgemental in my seminars, but when you're faced with total silence and blankness every time you pose a question or raise an idea, you have to know when you're beaten. If I'd thought they hadn't understood the lecture, we'd have had something to work with. Impenetrable indifference can't be beaten. Any tips? I gave up and sent them away after 45 minutes instead of 2 hours. The department will be penalised for not using or releasing the room, some of the students will feel short-changed, and I feel defeated, but it's better than a 2-hour hostage (lack of) drama.

*quoting Marvin the Paranoid Android. Most of my personality is a melange of Marvin, Arthur Dent, Jim Hacker and Mole.

Solidarity: UC Davis Students and Staff

I occasionally have to exchange heated words with management in my role as union activist and freelance git, but we have it easy compared with our colleagues across the water. As the Occupy movement takes in university campuses throughout the US, the response from academic managers has been brutal: call in the cops and let them do what they want

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

A particular irony in this case is the cause: the University of California at Davis protest was against… police brutality. The quotation above comes from an angry, impassioned and admirable letter from a Professor of English at UC Davis to his Chancellor. I hope this isn't what we're heading for here.

PS: the pepper-spraying cop is now appearing in a number of famous paintings:

PPS: For a much more reasoned discussion of the pepper-spraying, head over, as usual, to Music for Deckchair's piece.

I for one welcome our new alien overlords

So: Greece has a technocratic government. So does Italy ('technocratic' in both cases meaning 'entirely unelected'). I hate being on the same side of an argument as Silvio Berlusconi, but he's right to object to the imposition of political leaders without the consent of the people. Over in Spain, they've had an election: the rather good Socialist Party has lost in a landslide to the conservative People's Party. There wasn't any battle of ideas: the Socialists were forced to promise massive austerity and the PP promised even more.

Both parties are subject to the whims of the market:

From a market standpoint, an absolute majority for the PP is just what the doctor ordered," Nicholas Spiro, of Sovereign Strategy told Reuters in London. "The risk, however, is that more retrenchment pushes the economy back into recession."

Thanks to Nick, who's one of the few money men prepared to speak the truth: the markets reject democracy. They don't need it, and sometimes it gets in the way. He also exposes the hypocrisy of the financial world: they're bankrupting countries which don't impose massive public service cuts, but when the cuts actually destroy any chance of economic recovery (I'm looking at you, Osborne), the bond markets punish governments again. It's win-win - if you're a banker.

We're used to the constant droning of the Tory phrase 'free-market democracy', the Thatcherite dream. Hopefully recent events have persuaded you that the emphasis is - and always has been - on the 'free-market' element: ever since the Chicago Boys imposed monetarism on Chile, at the invitation of its bloody dictator Pinochet, the rights of high finance to do what it wants has been paramount: the aspirations and values of mere citizens have come a very poor second. What you and I want is now immaterial.

Not, of course, that 'free market' means what you think it means. No, the term refers to the demands of Western financial institutions to operate without regulations even after taxpayers have to bail them out at the price of national bankruptcy, and the rights of Western nations to dump goods in developing countries without worrying about what happens to nascent local producers.

What we're seeing in Europe is simply what we've done to African, Asian and South American countries for 50 years. It looks a bit more civilised because the New Technocratic Elites turn up in sleek Mercedes limousines rather than tanks, but the effect is the same. The new boss is the market, which has no conscience, so long-term view, and no sense of hubris. We settled their losses and didn't reform them: why wouldn't they then embark on an orgy of profitable destruction? It's like giving an axe-murderer and Arts Council grant and sharpening his axe for him.

The Spanish, Greek and Italian governments no longer have any public duty to perform: they operate the levers at the direction of the bond markets. No doubt they tell themselves that appeasing the markets will lead to stability and the public good, but it doesn't wash. A serious system of inter-governmental lending, a fiscal structure which allows European nations to vary their interest rates to suit local conditions, and a severe curbing of bond trading will bring stability and realism to national finances. As it is, we're at the mercy of greedy young men whose idea of the future stretches as far as the annual bonus and their next line of coke.

RIP Jamie Ackerman

Jamie was a bright, funny popular kid, and an excellent fencer, the son of one of my team-mates. I met him a few times at competitions. He was killed in a traffic accident a few days ago - the driver of the car which hit his scooter has been arrested for dangerous driving.

He'd have been competing this weekend at his home club's Leon Paul Junior Series event - a minute's round of applause is planned to mark his passing. The other plan to mark his passing is to place a flotilla of rubber ducks at the end of his piste: he always put one down when he was fencing, which amused me hugely.

Occupy London: dead friends in high places

Talking of Burne-Jones, he hated St. Paul's, and his friends moved his memorial service to Westminster Abbey, because to the artist, St. Paul's was the symbol of capitalist and political triumphalism.

St. Paul's was a building that 'crushed and depressed' him both aesthetically and politically. He loathed its architectural pomp and emptiness and its status as the place of worship of the stock exchange, the bankers, the commercial world of London that Burne-Jones despised and loathed. It was nonsense, he decided, to put mosaics there, useless to try to do anything with so unpromising, corrupt and unsympathetic a building - 'but let it chill the should of man and gently prepare him for the next glacial cataclysm'. 

How times have changed. Quotation from MacCarthy's biography of Burne-Jones.

Occupy LSX has now taken possession of a USB building. More power to them.

A word from the wise

A three-hour meeting aside, I've got nothing done today. But I'm heartened by the words of Edward Burne-Jones, the Victorian painter whose magnificent biography by Fiona MacCarthy I've just finished:
I get to work with reluctance at 10, wish I was dead at eleven, get hungry at 12, and all the rest of the day wish I was a gentleman and hadn't to paint.

His thing was deeply symbolic Arthurian-related art, stylistically reminiscent of the early Italian Renaissance. Here's King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. He particularly liked painting kings surrounded by mystically fruity women…

Sadly, he wasn't all good. He once fired a maid for 'being ugly'.

Welcome to Gattaca

Hello everybody. I'm back where I belong: surrounded by marking, settled in my stained and knackered chair.

I had an interesting day in London: meeting the Olympic Organising Committee people in their glass fortress down at Canary Wharf.

One of the many stunning views from the Olympic Development Office on the 21st-23rd floor

As expected, the chaps and chapesses were identical to those depicted in the BBC comedy Twenty Twelve. I soon realised that the way to success was to abandon complete sentences toute suite: every time I saw a pair of designer glasses atop a modishly-shaved head, I removed a verb from my next sentence. God help me, I even deployed 'facilitate' and 'empower' like weapons, though my soul screamed within me.

Having given a lecture recently on non-space, the privatisation of public space and urban development, using Canary Wharf as an example, I was pleased to discover that it's as disturbingly dystopian as I expected. Everything is new. Nothing is rooted in the area's history. Materials are shiny, disposable, unreferential. It could have been Chicago, New York, Capetown or Sydney. Open space is designed for surveillance and security. Inside and out, paranoia is disguised as luxury and service: host of polite men in well-cut suits 'facilitate' your arrival, but it's clear that they're capable of extreme violence and hostility should you look in any way suspicious.

Such architecture breeds suitable people. The population of Canary Wharf is straight out of Gattaca or Logan's Run: bar the odd cleaner, it's the whitest population I've ever seen. They all dress the same: expensive but inconspicuous suits, open shirts, close-cropped hair. The women are permitted skirts and no jacket, but the look is the same. This is money, but serious money: no flamboyance, no individuality (I did toy with wandering in to Citibank or one of the many others and asking for a refund: despite the self-imposed isolation of this clannish place, the bailout means that we own virtually all these institutions).

The contrast with the rest of London was extreme: on my way home, I walked along Jermyn Street, through Burlington Arcade, along Bond Street, Harley Street and eventually back to Euston. These areas are moneyed in a different way: flashy cars (I watched a Bentley cut up an emergency ambulance at the lights and realised that we truly live in the Land of Clarkson, the mink cape worn by the Russian woman who elbowed me out of the way even though I'd stepped back as far as I could, loud tweeds on the men, shops full of diamonds and cashmere. Banking money is discreet - old money and buccaneers want to proclaim their loot in ostentatious and very public ways.

A total game-changer…

You won't be hearing much - if anything - from me tomorrow. I've a meeting at the Canary Wharf headquarters of the Olympics Organising Committee.

I'm imagining that it's something like this:



Mind you, this is my vision of what 'going to London' means. Lines and lines and lines and lines…



After that, it's a slap-up feed in a local hostelry to celebrate the expulsion from Paradise of our colleague Alison, who seems to think that salvation lies in not working here with the rest of us Morlocks. She may be right.

In search of media ethics

The difficult questions of truth, objectivity and ethics in news was our subject today. I inflicted a piece of Melanie Phillips at her most vicious and insinuating on the kids, but also these clips from Drop the Dead Donkey, leading into a discussion of fact, deeper truths, news' media's tendency towards news that lends itself to simple emotions and gripping stories - culminating in (hopefully) destroying any faith they may have in the notion of objective truth.

Lessons from history

While my students settle down to a task, I'll just point this out (thanks to Em):

Ireland beat the Soviet Union too. Singlehanded. That was the beginning of the end for them. Beating Estonia 5-1 on aggregate was child's play. Well done to England for beating Sweden for the first time in 43 years too. 

Graduating to the dole queue

Today's youth unemployment figures are out. The UK now has 1.016 million young people unable to find work. I look at the bright eager (sometimes) faces in my classes and wonder what's going to happen to them. Some are optimistic - and some watch the news.

It's so utterly depressing, and yet the political discourse seems so hostile. I watched Newsnight's discussion of this last night. A Tory minister sat there and told them all about temporary schemes, while the CEO of a profit-making 'training company' lectured them about polishing up CVs and making themselves employable.

She would, of course, suggest that the problem is something she's got rich fixing, but it's a lie. My students are employable. They're bright, thoughtful and desperate. The failing isn't some internal quality: it's structural. We've built an economy on low wages for jobs which tax-evading corporations can shift abroad at the drop of a subsidy. With 2.5m people unemployed, what chance will an inexperiences 21-year old have? The stories the studio guests told were so familiar from my own desultory attempts to find a job in the mid-90s. No experience, no job - but nobody is willing to give you experience. These kids were used to never receiving even an acknowledgement that an application has been received: news to the politicians, not to anybody else.

David Cameron's first job was in the Conservative Party's research department, secured after a phone call from someone in Buckingham Palace. After that, it was off to the PR department of Carlton Communications, a very poor TV company with a reputation for hiring well-connected Tories. Nice life for some…

One of the most pernicious schemes promoted by government is internships: working for free for a period to gain experience. Sounds nice, doesn't it? But internships are acquired through contacts, which gives an advantage to well-connected middle-class people, and working-class kids can't afford to do them, because months of unpaid labour means parental support for travel, food, accommodation, clothes and all the other things paid work usually provides - it's a scam to maintain inequality.

The other rip-off is the apprenticeship scheme: minimal wages while you learn a trade. Again, it's a great idea, and one of the backbones of vanished industrial life. But look closely, and we discover that supermarkets are rebranding shelf-stacking as 'apprenticeships', as a way to reduce the wages of the very poorest, while failing to pass on any meaningful skills. That strikes me as the very worst sort of cynicism.

I wish I could sound more optimistic. Yes, some people are doing degrees that may not add to the sum of human knowledge. Some don't work very hard. Some are unrealistic. But from what I see, most of my students are more aware of the challenges facing them than I was when I graduated. We need to find meaningful, lucrative work for everybody - not just the graduates but the millions who don't - or can't - go to university. Capitalism, based on the transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest, just won't do it.