And it's Mac compatible. I so want one.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
How globalised capitalism sterilises and kills pigs
1. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Ireland make contraceptive pills (very ironic choice of location)
2. Waste water full of hormones is sent to a second company (Cara Environmental Technology - full marks for lovely greenwashing name) for disposal.
3. Second company sells it to a third company, Bioland - in Belgium.
4. Third company - in Belgium - sells it to a fourth - Dutch - company as a component in pig-feed treacle.
5. Thousands of pigs are fed hormone laced feed made by several more companies who've bought the treacle from the fourth company.
6. The pigs are infertile.
7. 50,000 infertile pigs are killed. $145 million is lost.
Wyeth has admitted 4 of 18 charges. Cara denies them all.
Bingo! Our greed for cheap meat leads to an mass deaths in and industry made economically viable by waste, pointless transport and pollution.
Full report here.
2. Waste water full of hormones is sent to a second company (Cara Environmental Technology - full marks for lovely greenwashing name) for disposal.
3. Second company sells it to a third company, Bioland - in Belgium.
4. Third company - in Belgium - sells it to a fourth - Dutch - company as a component in pig-feed treacle.
5. Thousands of pigs are fed hormone laced feed made by several more companies who've bought the treacle from the fourth company.
6. The pigs are infertile.
7. 50,000 infertile pigs are killed. $145 million is lost.
Wyeth has admitted 4 of 18 charges. Cara denies them all.
Bingo! Our greed for cheap meat leads to an mass deaths in and industry made economically viable by waste, pointless transport and pollution.
Full report here.
Postmodernism in the classroom
We're on to the 'grammar of identity' - how we narrate ourselves and our histories. What's the risk: 'producing a static genre of self' (Hill, 2000) - the idea that the individual has reached a point of perfection which experience shouldn't change. This is something I've experienced in class - students who aren't curious because their lives are fine exactly as they are. But I really don't think that ending 'celebrating diversity', as we've just been told to do, will help. We're being told to go beyond the 'piety' of evoking the cultural wounds of oppression to avoid 'refus[ing' any type of modification, amplification, or meaningful metamorphosis in the face of unfamiliar experiences' (Hill).
This is dodgy. Yes, identity politics is limited, but I can't reconcile a privileged Anglo-Saxon white bourgeois telling the poor, black and colonialised that it's time to move on from the effects of empire and colonialism - despite the effects still being experienced. I'm not convinced that many people are 'held' by their cultural inheritance - they already are dynamic and individual, while not forgetting their histories.
Another colleague singled out.
The solution seems to be that individuals are 'singular'. Yet this makes the mistake of assuming that we are somehow self-created, rather than a confluence of experiences and cultural inheritances. The experiences and the inheritances aren't unique - but the combination is. We aren't stable and fixed - we are dynamic constructs rather than fixed points.
As an aside: Last of the Summer Wine has been cancelled, after 37 years.
Student should 'organise who they are through ambition'. Hmmm…
We should forget 'cross-cultural encounters' and encourage students to distance themselves from their roots. Implicitly, this means the black and foreign ones - implicit because we don't 'celebrate' the Anglo-imperialist pasts of our white English students. We shouldn't only 'celebrate' students' roots - but how does this apply to a diverse classroom? All this would be fine if we didn't exist within a society that is still culturally white, imperialist, Western and capitalist. It's not a level playing field. We still need to critique the dominant narrative, to learn more about the marginalised cultures which she's trying to move past.
We should 'move beyond self-defeating concepts of difference', especially nationalism. Fine if we're combatting BNP nationalism - not so fine if you're nationalist Northern Irish, or Palestinian.
Baudrillardist's being mentioned again - apparently his book on Baudrillard is beautiful and more intelligible than Baudrillard (proved by her definition of Baudrillardian exchange).
Maybe I'm being cruel, but I've heard a melange of 30 year old theorists used to basically say that it's time to stop worrying about global inequality, cultural hegemony and so on - individual 'exchanges' are what matters, so let's be nice to each other on a personal level and our students will be 'global citizens' without having to know a single thing about global politics, history or economics. No sense of how this is meant to tie in with teaching, nor any of how British students are meant to experience the world other than by sitting in class with overseas ones.
Questions.
Executive Board Professor at the heart of the new curriculum:
doesn't too much conceptual fluidity affect mental health?
Response: there needs to be safe pedagogical strategies to avoid this. Eh? Are some questions off limits?
Dean of Students:
Student discomfort with classification - should we not get involved in asking for some classifications?
My thoughts - doesn't self-classification give some people strength?)
Her - there's a debate to be held about that. We should have a box for 'prefer not to say'.
An outsider!
Please don't attack 'assistant bricklayers' (it was a snide aside in the speech) - don't throw away cultural inheritance.
A - I don't think you could even if you wanted to.
The V-C!!!!
'Safe environment' is important. Identity is therapeutic. What about creating a safe environment for students who can't all go on exchanges?
A- 'put in their path experiences' - 'virtually' - this is vacuous - 'in modest ways'.
I'd like to chase the useless appropriation of Baudrillard, but as there's a colleague here who wrote a book on him, I'll leave it to him.
Colleague from philosophy:
Can't underestimate the conflict between equality and diversity agendas, and what motivates a more humanist encounter-based system of encounters. Latter eliminates the need for the first. The first will have effects. What we want to do is not have events which remind us of what we are/were, but these things happen.
I'm very uncomfortable with this discourse. It individualises identity and therefore ignores the fact that if you're white, Western and middle-class, you're going to have a sweet life compared with others, in this country or elsewhere. If you're black, you're likely to have a lower educational level, lower earnings, fewer employment opportunities, worse housing, a degraded environment, a criminal record, worse nutrition and so on. We need to remember and examine this and the effects of this.
I've just asked about this.
'not a satisfactory answer, but there's a line between understanding the power structures and taking up a victimist structure. Students should look for room to manoeuvre'.
Baudrillarist:
You do understand Baudrillard (!) But Vole's criticised you for being postmodern but you're not.
Her - it's postmodern-light.
Him. We don't have identities. You could say that mental illness emerges from identities. Taking identity too abstractly causes problems.
So: let's all be lighthearted postmodernists and institute safe 'exchanges' between students rather than harp on about boring old cultural politics (and actual politics).
That's all folks. Hope you're enlightened.
This is dodgy. Yes, identity politics is limited, but I can't reconcile a privileged Anglo-Saxon white bourgeois telling the poor, black and colonialised that it's time to move on from the effects of empire and colonialism - despite the effects still being experienced. I'm not convinced that many people are 'held' by their cultural inheritance - they already are dynamic and individual, while not forgetting their histories.
Another colleague singled out.
The solution seems to be that individuals are 'singular'. Yet this makes the mistake of assuming that we are somehow self-created, rather than a confluence of experiences and cultural inheritances. The experiences and the inheritances aren't unique - but the combination is. We aren't stable and fixed - we are dynamic constructs rather than fixed points.
As an aside: Last of the Summer Wine has been cancelled, after 37 years.
Student should 'organise who they are through ambition'. Hmmm…
We should forget 'cross-cultural encounters' and encourage students to distance themselves from their roots. Implicitly, this means the black and foreign ones - implicit because we don't 'celebrate' the Anglo-imperialist pasts of our white English students. We shouldn't only 'celebrate' students' roots - but how does this apply to a diverse classroom? All this would be fine if we didn't exist within a society that is still culturally white, imperialist, Western and capitalist. It's not a level playing field. We still need to critique the dominant narrative, to learn more about the marginalised cultures which she's trying to move past.
We should 'move beyond self-defeating concepts of difference', especially nationalism. Fine if we're combatting BNP nationalism - not so fine if you're nationalist Northern Irish, or Palestinian.
Baudrillardist's being mentioned again - apparently his book on Baudrillard is beautiful and more intelligible than Baudrillard (proved by her definition of Baudrillardian exchange).
Maybe I'm being cruel, but I've heard a melange of 30 year old theorists used to basically say that it's time to stop worrying about global inequality, cultural hegemony and so on - individual 'exchanges' are what matters, so let's be nice to each other on a personal level and our students will be 'global citizens' without having to know a single thing about global politics, history or economics. No sense of how this is meant to tie in with teaching, nor any of how British students are meant to experience the world other than by sitting in class with overseas ones.
Questions.
Executive Board Professor at the heart of the new curriculum:
doesn't too much conceptual fluidity affect mental health?
Response: there needs to be safe pedagogical strategies to avoid this. Eh? Are some questions off limits?
Dean of Students:
Student discomfort with classification - should we not get involved in asking for some classifications?
My thoughts - doesn't self-classification give some people strength?)
Her - there's a debate to be held about that. We should have a box for 'prefer not to say'.
An outsider!
Please don't attack 'assistant bricklayers' (it was a snide aside in the speech) - don't throw away cultural inheritance.
A - I don't think you could even if you wanted to.
The V-C!!!!
'Safe environment' is important. Identity is therapeutic. What about creating a safe environment for students who can't all go on exchanges?
A- 'put in their path experiences' - 'virtually' - this is vacuous - 'in modest ways'.
I'd like to chase the useless appropriation of Baudrillard, but as there's a colleague here who wrote a book on him, I'll leave it to him.
Colleague from philosophy:
Can't underestimate the conflict between equality and diversity agendas, and what motivates a more humanist encounter-based system of encounters. Latter eliminates the need for the first. The first will have effects. What we want to do is not have events which remind us of what we are/were, but these things happen.
I'm very uncomfortable with this discourse. It individualises identity and therefore ignores the fact that if you're white, Western and middle-class, you're going to have a sweet life compared with others, in this country or elsewhere. If you're black, you're likely to have a lower educational level, lower earnings, fewer employment opportunities, worse housing, a degraded environment, a criminal record, worse nutrition and so on. We need to remember and examine this and the effects of this.
I've just asked about this.
'not a satisfactory answer, but there's a line between understanding the power structures and taking up a victimist structure. Students should look for room to manoeuvre'.
Baudrillarist:
You do understand Baudrillard (!) But Vole's criticised you for being postmodern but you're not.
Her - it's postmodern-light.
Him. We don't have identities. You could say that mental illness emerges from identities. Taking identity too abstractly causes problems.
So: let's all be lighthearted postmodernists and institute safe 'exchanges' between students rather than harp on about boring old cultural politics (and actual politics).
That's all folks. Hope you're enlightened.
Singularity and students, cont.
Apparently students don't like the reductiveness of ethnic origin questionnaires. OK, but is it really a surprise that they don't reflect the complexity of human existence?
Oh no - Baudrillard's been mentioned - and not in a particularly informed sense. It's 'absurd to reduce people to one element'. I totally agree. I suspect you do too. What I don't understand is why it takes a professor to tell us this. In fact, I don't think it does. I know this. You know this. Only the BNP doesn't know this.
Now we're on to an attack on the postcolonialist take on Orientalism. Anti-imperialism is too simplistically binary.
Bingo! 9/11's been mentioned. In passing, because obviously that's all it deserves because it was very simple.
She says that cultural relativism leads students to feel that they know nothing if they're aware that they're from a privileged hegemonic society. I reject this - it means that they know something very profound - that most facts are culturally informed rather than universally true.
Now she's saying that the use of Western/non-Western is Eurocentric.
Well blow me down - Said said this magisterially in Orientalism (1978) - it informs everything media and literature lecturers say, I would think. We grew up with it, and its successors.
Oh no - Baudrillard's been mentioned - and not in a particularly informed sense. It's 'absurd to reduce people to one element'. I totally agree. I suspect you do too. What I don't understand is why it takes a professor to tell us this. In fact, I don't think it does. I know this. You know this. Only the BNP doesn't know this.
Now we're on to an attack on the postcolonialist take on Orientalism. Anti-imperialism is too simplistically binary.
Bingo! 9/11's been mentioned. In passing, because obviously that's all it deserves because it was very simple.
She says that cultural relativism leads students to feel that they know nothing if they're aware that they're from a privileged hegemonic society. I reject this - it means that they know something very profound - that most facts are culturally informed rather than universally true.
Now she's saying that the use of Western/non-Western is Eurocentric.
Well blow me down - Said said this magisterially in Orientalism (1978) - it informs everything media and literature lecturers say, I would think. We grew up with it, and its successors.
Global citizenship: WTF? 2
And we've already slagged off the speaker's comprehensive school as 'an academy for Essex girl training' with some limited pseudo-left justification - claims that this comprehensive limited working-class students to menial intellectual labour. We're into post-Marxist revisionism of the kind beloved by the RCP and Spiked/Institute of Ideas, I suspect.
Rejects class analysis as overly reductive and 'romanticised' in its attitude towards the working class - ironic given that Eton and the landed gentry now run the place.
I'd rather romanticise the working class than dismiss them as Essex girls, especially from the privileged position of a professor, the 'one who got away', as we're being covertly invited to see her… to me, her presence is proof that the comprehensive system works.
This sociologist is now saying that 'fiction is more truthful than facts'. In its place, true - but we're being asked to teach according to untheorised ideas. However, Clifford Geertz and 'thick description' (popular in 1980s literary theory) have been mentioned, so it's not all bad.
By the way, 'complexify' isn't a word. 'Complicate' is.
She's just said that 'oppressive teaching' might be 'familiar to a lot of you'. Given that the audience consists of her teaching colleagues, I can't help thinking that's a dig.
Anne Frank's been presented on 'the violence of classification', along with Fanon. Does this breach Godwin's Law or is Frank OK? We're not very far in.
Frank's quote is 'the time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews', to illustrate the negative side of classification. What about self-classification: Jews do that, as much as anyone. Should we ignore it?
We're being exhorted not to 'classify' students in groups. Evidence that we do? The idea is that classifications are cultural constructions - not a revelation. She does concede that some classifications are OK. Now physiognomy is being cited - a very relevant reference given that Lombroso died - already discredited - in 1909. He developed the 'science' of identifying criminals based on physical measurement.
Rejects class analysis as overly reductive and 'romanticised' in its attitude towards the working class - ironic given that Eton and the landed gentry now run the place.
I'd rather romanticise the working class than dismiss them as Essex girls, especially from the privileged position of a professor, the 'one who got away', as we're being covertly invited to see her… to me, her presence is proof that the comprehensive system works.
This sociologist is now saying that 'fiction is more truthful than facts'. In its place, true - but we're being asked to teach according to untheorised ideas. However, Clifford Geertz and 'thick description' (popular in 1980s literary theory) have been mentioned, so it's not all bad.
By the way, 'complexify' isn't a word. 'Complicate' is.
She's just said that 'oppressive teaching' might be 'familiar to a lot of you'. Given that the audience consists of her teaching colleagues, I can't help thinking that's a dig.
Anne Frank's been presented on 'the violence of classification', along with Fanon. Does this breach Godwin's Law or is Frank OK? We're not very far in.
Frank's quote is 'the time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews', to illustrate the negative side of classification. What about self-classification: Jews do that, as much as anyone. Should we ignore it?
We're being exhorted not to 'classify' students in groups. Evidence that we do? The idea is that classifications are cultural constructions - not a revelation. She does concede that some classifications are OK. Now physiognomy is being cited - a very relevant reference given that Lombroso died - already discredited - in 1909. He developed the 'science' of identifying criminals based on physical measurement.
Global citizenship: WTF? 1
Here we are, ready to go. The lights are low and we're ready to go.
Public lecture? All I can see are forty colleagues, desperate to work out what the hell this is (plus the guilty parties - management hacks and co who've foisted this stuff - whatever it is - on us).
Presenter's career is divided between what she's doing now and 'academic posts' by the person introducing her, which seems like a Freudian slip to me.
Oh dear. Global Citizenship has disappeared already - not a great start to something that's meant to inform our teaching. Title is now 'thinking of difference differently'. I assume that Derridean différance is not on the agenda. We're into 'singularity' in sociological and pedagogical terms, i.e. what happens when we try to teach students from many different cultures. Looks like we'll be thinking about cultural relativism.
Public lecture? All I can see are forty colleagues, desperate to work out what the hell this is (plus the guilty parties - management hacks and co who've foisted this stuff - whatever it is - on us).
Presenter's career is divided between what she's doing now and 'academic posts' by the person introducing her, which seems like a Freudian slip to me.
Oh dear. Global Citizenship has disappeared already - not a great start to something that's meant to inform our teaching. Title is now 'thinking of difference differently'. I assume that Derridean différance is not on the agenda. We're into 'singularity' in sociological and pedagogical terms, i.e. what happens when we try to teach students from many different cultures. Looks like we'll be thinking about cultural relativism.
Back to the music
Another entry in my marathon run-through of all the stuff on my hard drive.
We've reached Bert Jansch, particularly his albums Edge of a Dream, which is recent, and It Don't Bother Me, which isn't.
Jansch was one of those ubiquitous figures on the folk, rock and even jazz scenes in the 60s. Everywhere you looked, he popped up in or with groups - he was a member of Pentangle and played with loads of others. His guitar style was so compelling that people like Neil Young and Jimmy Page admired him hugely and learned a lot from him. His solo music tended to be dark, late-night stuff, though never minimal enough to hide his virtuoso guitar ability.
It Don't Bother Me is really early - 1965 - before he founded folk-rockers Pentangle, and it's great. Edge of a Dream is Jansch hanging around with the indie kids who adored him: Johnny Marr, Hope Sandoval (swoon, who frequently plays his stuff, and has him on her records), Bernard Butler, as well as 60s mates Dave Swarbrick and Ralph McTell. Good stuff to listen to over a whiskey.
Here's 'Needle of Death', his famous song about a friend who overdosed on heroin.
This one's Angie - from It Don't Bother Me: Zoot will love the guitar playing.
'On the Edge of a Dream', with Bernard Butler and 'The River Bank' with Butler and Marr.
We've reached Bert Jansch, particularly his albums Edge of a Dream, which is recent, and It Don't Bother Me, which isn't.
Jansch was one of those ubiquitous figures on the folk, rock and even jazz scenes in the 60s. Everywhere you looked, he popped up in or with groups - he was a member of Pentangle and played with loads of others. His guitar style was so compelling that people like Neil Young and Jimmy Page admired him hugely and learned a lot from him. His solo music tended to be dark, late-night stuff, though never minimal enough to hide his virtuoso guitar ability.
It Don't Bother Me is really early - 1965 - before he founded folk-rockers Pentangle, and it's great. Edge of a Dream is Jansch hanging around with the indie kids who adored him: Johnny Marr, Hope Sandoval (swoon, who frequently plays his stuff, and has him on her records), Bernard Butler, as well as 60s mates Dave Swarbrick and Ralph McTell. Good stuff to listen to over a whiskey.
Here's 'Needle of Death', his famous song about a friend who overdosed on heroin.
This one's Angie - from It Don't Bother Me: Zoot will love the guitar playing.
'On the Edge of a Dream', with Bernard Butler and 'The River Bank' with Butler and Marr.
Exciting public lecture tonight
All our students now have to achieve 'global citizenship' as one of their 'graduate attributes'. Despite being the teachers, we've not been told what 'global citizenship' actually means, despite repeatedly asking for pedagogical leadership. It was, in fact, described as a 'hollow space' when someone asked the question at a staff meeting.
I do know that 'global citizenship' doesn't involve learning another language - our degree courses are now all suspended, and the non-degree courses in languages are going to cost extra, which will make students flock to them.
So anyway, there's a public lecture on the subject tonight, where I'm hoping to find that it doesn't involve flogging policing degrees to rich dictatorships. Perhaps I'll blog it. Feel free to come along.
Meanwhile, sympathy is due to my friend Judith, who's returned from a Belgian holiday with a cold. She's feeling a little Phlegmish…
Sorry.
I do know that 'global citizenship' doesn't involve learning another language - our degree courses are now all suspended, and the non-degree courses in languages are going to cost extra, which will make students flock to them.
So anyway, there's a public lecture on the subject tonight, where I'm hoping to find that it doesn't involve flogging policing degrees to rich dictatorships. Perhaps I'll blog it. Feel free to come along.
Meanwhile, sympathy is due to my friend Judith, who's returned from a Belgian holiday with a cold. She's feeling a little Phlegmish…
Sorry.
I won't give Uppal
Several weeks since I asked my new MP, Paul Singh Uppal, a number of simple, unobtrusive and polite questions, as constituent to MP. No reply yet. Perhaps he doesn't have e-mail.
In his honour, here's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, singing 'The Waiting'. It's got a great chorus.
In his honour, here's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, singing 'The Waiting'. It's got a great chorus.
Students: cast off your Google
My colleagues and I are quite tired, having marked literally thousands of scripts between us. Some are brilliant, many are fine, some are awful and a fair percentage are plagiarised.
What really tires us is reading the exact same thing over and over and over again. Often it's our own lectures, or the same single book, but most of the time, it's paraphrases or cut-and-pastes from the same limited set of useless websites.
Try this: ask yourself what the theme and argument of your essay is. Go to the module reading list and have a look at the books. Look at what the authors have been reading. Think of an example from your own experience and talk about it in the light of what you've read. Tweaking (or not even bothering to tweak) somebody else's thoughts doesn't gain you any grades. Taking risks and trying to say something distinctive (it doesn't have to be innovative at this stage) will definitely get you credit. I've far more respect for risk-takers than for recyclers.
John Adams, the brilliant composer, has a very stylishly-written blog. In this entry, he's plagued by people who think that, because they can operate music composition software, they're composers. His words resonate for me too: don't rush to a computer. Take some time to think things through first, and you'll produce something personal, rather than an institutionalised piece of boiler-plate.
What really tires us is reading the exact same thing over and over and over again. Often it's our own lectures, or the same single book, but most of the time, it's paraphrases or cut-and-pastes from the same limited set of useless websites.
Try this: ask yourself what the theme and argument of your essay is. Go to the module reading list and have a look at the books. Look at what the authors have been reading. Think of an example from your own experience and talk about it in the light of what you've read. Tweaking (or not even bothering to tweak) somebody else's thoughts doesn't gain you any grades. Taking risks and trying to say something distinctive (it doesn't have to be innovative at this stage) will definitely get you credit. I've far more respect for risk-takers than for recyclers.
John Adams, the brilliant composer, has a very stylishly-written blog. In this entry, he's plagued by people who think that, because they can operate music composition software, they're composers. His words resonate for me too: don't rush to a computer. Take some time to think things through first, and you'll produce something personal, rather than an institutionalised piece of boiler-plate.
Haven’t you noticed that everything you do is so tediously predictable? I know these programs can be useful—I have one on my hard drive as well, but I try not to be a slave to its built-in stupidities. Why don’t you go back to square one, get some old-fashioned manuscript paper, maybe a pencil—that’s a wooden tubular object with lead at one end and an eraser on the other—and try writing your stuff without being hog-tied by this inflexible piece of software…
And the award for joined-up thinking goes to…
…The Vatican.
Specifically, for putting Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor (an Englishman, despite his name) in charge of their inquiry into the Irish church's institutional facilitating of clerical child abuse.
Yes, that is the Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor who ignored warnings that Father Michael Hill was a danger to children, didn't report him, and moved him to a different post, where he abused more children.
The Irish situation is part of the postcolonial legacy (I knew I could blame the British somehow). The Catholic church never supported Irish independence as an institution, though many priests did so individually. When the Church was illegal, rebels and clerics made common cause and identified the fight for religious freedom with that for national freedom, which suited both sides down to the ground. When the British bowed to pressure and legalised Catholicism in 1829, the Church swapped sides because it always sticks like glue to power. Some say that's where it went wrong in 312AD, when Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire, eventually becoming the official religion: a persecuted Church will be sympathetic to the persecuted - a state church will cling to power however evilly it is wielded.
That's what happened in Ireland. The Church had the nationalist movement in its pocket, because rebels fully identified being Catholic with being Irish. As services were in Latin, Irish withered away in one of the places it could have thrived (Welsh, banned in most areas of life, was saved by its use in Chapel). The Church preached reactionary messages which became the core of Irish nationalism whereas other countries' nationalists incorporated class politics too. Meanwhile, the Church itself, gradually gaining control of education at most levels, preached against Irish independence.
When Independence came about, the Church was sanctified at the heart of the new state. In particular, it had total control of the educational system - partly from religious devotion, partly because a poor new country had no funds and energy to start from scratch. Allowing the Church to carry on meant one less thing to worry about.
It simply handed the country's children over to a church which had no concern for local situations, the rights of the individual, the needs of the state and a conscious rejection of democracy and oversight. The Church's priority was the maintenance of its own hegemony. Almost every single politician, businessman, local government official, doctor, dentist, teacher and policeman was educated by the Catholic church from a toddler to a graduate.
Very few, therefore, were capable of conceptualising the country, the people or the state other than as Catholic entities above all: the demands of the Church were paramount. So it was easy to develop the mindset that complaints were automatically groundless or isolated aberrance. The state and the tiny elite that ran education, the justice system, the civil service and the business class were captured by the Church and that was the end of it.
What changed this situation? The gradual onset of European secularism, I guess. The growing body of evidence that hegemony had warped the national consciousness. Perhaps the example of emigrants who'd thrived in a more open society. The sharper conflicts in the North, possibly. There was a 60s moment in Ireland, but it was short and muted - contraception and divorce were only fully legalised in the 1990s.
Maybe the parallels should be with Albania, or Romania - states founded and moulded in the weird grip of a single vision, now blinking in the sunlight of ideological diversity.
Specifically, for putting Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor (an Englishman, despite his name) in charge of their inquiry into the Irish church's institutional facilitating of clerical child abuse.
Yes, that is the Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor who ignored warnings that Father Michael Hill was a danger to children, didn't report him, and moved him to a different post, where he abused more children.
The Irish situation is part of the postcolonial legacy (I knew I could blame the British somehow). The Catholic church never supported Irish independence as an institution, though many priests did so individually. When the Church was illegal, rebels and clerics made common cause and identified the fight for religious freedom with that for national freedom, which suited both sides down to the ground. When the British bowed to pressure and legalised Catholicism in 1829, the Church swapped sides because it always sticks like glue to power. Some say that's where it went wrong in 312AD, when Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire, eventually becoming the official religion: a persecuted Church will be sympathetic to the persecuted - a state church will cling to power however evilly it is wielded.
That's what happened in Ireland. The Church had the nationalist movement in its pocket, because rebels fully identified being Catholic with being Irish. As services were in Latin, Irish withered away in one of the places it could have thrived (Welsh, banned in most areas of life, was saved by its use in Chapel). The Church preached reactionary messages which became the core of Irish nationalism whereas other countries' nationalists incorporated class politics too. Meanwhile, the Church itself, gradually gaining control of education at most levels, preached against Irish independence.
When Independence came about, the Church was sanctified at the heart of the new state. In particular, it had total control of the educational system - partly from religious devotion, partly because a poor new country had no funds and energy to start from scratch. Allowing the Church to carry on meant one less thing to worry about.
It simply handed the country's children over to a church which had no concern for local situations, the rights of the individual, the needs of the state and a conscious rejection of democracy and oversight. The Church's priority was the maintenance of its own hegemony. Almost every single politician, businessman, local government official, doctor, dentist, teacher and policeman was educated by the Catholic church from a toddler to a graduate.
Very few, therefore, were capable of conceptualising the country, the people or the state other than as Catholic entities above all: the demands of the Church were paramount. So it was easy to develop the mindset that complaints were automatically groundless or isolated aberrance. The state and the tiny elite that ran education, the justice system, the civil service and the business class were captured by the Church and that was the end of it.
What changed this situation? The gradual onset of European secularism, I guess. The growing body of evidence that hegemony had warped the national consciousness. Perhaps the example of emigrants who'd thrived in a more open society. The sharper conflicts in the North, possibly. There was a 60s moment in Ireland, but it was short and muted - contraception and divorce were only fully legalised in the 1990s.
Maybe the parallels should be with Albania, or Romania - states founded and moulded in the weird grip of a single vision, now blinking in the sunlight of ideological diversity.
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Building the book barricade
The post today brings me a letter from a nutty cousin and another course of books in my office wall.
Victorian sex-and-horror freak Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams, a strange, hallucinogenic book of 1907 set in a mystical version of Wales and suburban London, republished by the Library of Wales. Also his 1894 horror, The Great God Pan, republished in the same series.
Yippie jester Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book (I didn't), a 60s revolutionary manifesto: 'a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika'. We should have listened. The link is to the complete text. Hoffman would approve.
Eric Hobsbawm's 1959 history of disorganised 19th-century resistance, Primitive Rebels.
Joseph Campbell's nutty but influential attempt to construct an overarching narrative of all the world's mythologies, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It's like Propp meets Jung and they do too much speed.
A new edition of Bert Coombes's 'autobiography', These Poor Hands. I've a Left Book Club edition from 1939, but this is a scholarly one. Coombes claimed to be an adopted Welshman, coming from Herefordshire to become a miner, and it's a classic of industrial writing. Actually, he was from Wolverhampton, and the fiction doesn't stop there (though modern scholarship holds that all memoirs are fictional constructs, as are their authors.
Finally (for today), novelist and academic Angharad Price's O! Tyn y Gorchudd in a rather wonderful parallel text edition - it's translated on the right hand page by Lloyd Jones (a good writer himself and very interesting man) as The Life of Rebecca Jones. The original title translates as O! Tear Away The Veil, which sounds rather good to me, but Jones thinks otherwise. The Welsh edition won the Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod and Wales Book of the Year, but I bought it because it's been favourably likened to Kate Roberts, for me the greatest short-form writer of the twentieth century.
Try the Welsh language Radio Cymru adaptation here.
Time to go home. Nos da.
Victorian sex-and-horror freak Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams, a strange, hallucinogenic book of 1907 set in a mystical version of Wales and suburban London, republished by the Library of Wales. Also his 1894 horror, The Great God Pan, republished in the same series.
Yippie jester Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book (I didn't), a 60s revolutionary manifesto: 'a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika'. We should have listened. The link is to the complete text. Hoffman would approve.
Eric Hobsbawm's 1959 history of disorganised 19th-century resistance, Primitive Rebels.
Joseph Campbell's nutty but influential attempt to construct an overarching narrative of all the world's mythologies, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It's like Propp meets Jung and they do too much speed.
A new edition of Bert Coombes's 'autobiography', These Poor Hands. I've a Left Book Club edition from 1939, but this is a scholarly one. Coombes claimed to be an adopted Welshman, coming from Herefordshire to become a miner, and it's a classic of industrial writing. Actually, he was from Wolverhampton, and the fiction doesn't stop there (though modern scholarship holds that all memoirs are fictional constructs, as are their authors.
Finally (for today), novelist and academic Angharad Price's O! Tyn y Gorchudd in a rather wonderful parallel text edition - it's translated on the right hand page by Lloyd Jones (a good writer himself and very interesting man) as The Life of Rebecca Jones. The original title translates as O! Tear Away The Veil, which sounds rather good to me, but Jones thinks otherwise. The Welsh edition won the Prose Medal at the National Eisteddfod and Wales Book of the Year, but I bought it because it's been favourably likened to Kate Roberts, for me the greatest short-form writer of the twentieth century.
Try the Welsh language Radio Cymru adaptation here.
Time to go home. Nos da.
Should Sun journalists get the vote?
It's been all go on the Nazi front today: the Sun ran a poll on 'should gays be allowed in the government?' and Richard Littlejohn, the hateful Mail's vanguard nutter chuntered on, as he usually does, about all Liberal Democrats being gay and other weird expostulation.
Vacillating class traitors, yes. All gay: probably not, and who cares anyway? Thieves in the Cabinet - bit of a problem with that to be honest, but then, I'm against the landed gentry running the country too. I'm supremely indifferent about the proliferation of similar genitalia in Lib Dem beds.
So here's an antidote: Stewart Lee, Britain's finest comedian, and one of the country's most intelligent and thoughtful people, on 'political correctness gone mad' (thanks to Neal).
Vacillating class traitors, yes. All gay: probably not, and who cares anyway? Thieves in the Cabinet - bit of a problem with that to be honest, but then, I'm against the landed gentry running the country too. I'm supremely indifferent about the proliferation of similar genitalia in Lib Dem beds.
So here's an antidote: Stewart Lee, Britain's finest comedian, and one of the country's most intelligent and thoughtful people, on 'political correctness gone mad' (thanks to Neal).
At last, boring lesbians
Whenever a lesbian appears on British TV, you can pretty much assume two things:
1. Andrew Davies has some involvement: he specialises in 'sexing up' drama, and told friends that Tipping the Velvet would be on every lesbian's Christmas present list.
2. Said lesbians will be sent up from the Sad Heterosexual Male Fantasy department, i.e. women more used to posing in Nuts magazine faking it for the dads rather than merely being lesbian having rounded lives of their own.
Those days are over. We are in a new world, in which it's OK to be a boring lesbian who doesn't (or hardly ever) cavorts titillatingly for men who forgot to switch off the TV after Top Gear.
How do I know this? Because I sat through The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister last night. I'd vaguely heard of Lister before - she was an early 19th-century Yorkshire landed aristo and mining entrepreneur who wrote a 4 million word diary detailing her (surprisingly active and semi-open) lesbian love life, her social life and her business dealings, with the juicier bits in code.
The BBC has triumphed, if it was actually attempting to normalise lesbianism by making it boring. The acting was, of course, magnificent, as it always is in Period Drama. Yet the nuances, the complications, the thrills and the disasters of this woman's life were rendered dull by omission. Even with 90 minutes to play with, all these things were communicated by the occasional frown and overcast sky (good in their own way, but there was just so much shoehorning of facts into didactic dialogue rushed through in a second). All men were, of course, dull, evil or boorish (oh, OK, I see their point). It was an identikit Period Drama with a touch of soap opera, which just happened to be about a Daughter of Bilitis.
Weirdly, the following programme, a documentary (Revealing Anne Lister) featuring Sue Perkins tracing Lister's life, was far more dramatic (!), interesting and informative, despite being half an hour shorter.
I'm a bit wary of the casting - Perkins is gay, so she'll do - but she is always intelligent and empathetic. She drew on the work of a number of formidably informed and down-to-earth academics and local historians to produce a dual narrative: a personal story in which Lister alternates between appalling, selfish and reactionary, and proud, strong, modern heroine, and a much wider cultural history taking in the change between landed aristocracy and industrial dynasties, the nature of female friendship, Northern social hierarchies and much much more. Watch that, then watch the dramatisation.
PS. Lister's life was pretty short on amusement - between the bouts of lovemaking, she abandoned lovers to the madhouse, fought vicious turf-wars with rival industrialists and chased heiresses in a coldly predatory manner (she's a Thatcherite). So when the misery overwhelms you while watching the drama, remember that Anne Lister and nasty Mr Rawton are played by Maxine Peake and Dean Kelly, who were lovers Veronica and Kev in Manc scum drama Shameless.
1. Andrew Davies has some involvement: he specialises in 'sexing up' drama, and told friends that Tipping the Velvet would be on every lesbian's Christmas present list.
2. Said lesbians will be sent up from the Sad Heterosexual Male Fantasy department, i.e. women more used to posing in Nuts magazine faking it for the dads rather than merely being lesbian having rounded lives of their own.
Those days are over. We are in a new world, in which it's OK to be a boring lesbian who doesn't (or hardly ever) cavorts titillatingly for men who forgot to switch off the TV after Top Gear.
How do I know this? Because I sat through The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister last night. I'd vaguely heard of Lister before - she was an early 19th-century Yorkshire landed aristo and mining entrepreneur who wrote a 4 million word diary detailing her (surprisingly active and semi-open) lesbian love life, her social life and her business dealings, with the juicier bits in code.
The BBC has triumphed, if it was actually attempting to normalise lesbianism by making it boring. The acting was, of course, magnificent, as it always is in Period Drama. Yet the nuances, the complications, the thrills and the disasters of this woman's life were rendered dull by omission. Even with 90 minutes to play with, all these things were communicated by the occasional frown and overcast sky (good in their own way, but there was just so much shoehorning of facts into didactic dialogue rushed through in a second). All men were, of course, dull, evil or boorish (oh, OK, I see their point). It was an identikit Period Drama with a touch of soap opera, which just happened to be about a Daughter of Bilitis.
Weirdly, the following programme, a documentary (Revealing Anne Lister) featuring Sue Perkins tracing Lister's life, was far more dramatic (!), interesting and informative, despite being half an hour shorter.
I'm a bit wary of the casting - Perkins is gay, so she'll do - but she is always intelligent and empathetic. She drew on the work of a number of formidably informed and down-to-earth academics and local historians to produce a dual narrative: a personal story in which Lister alternates between appalling, selfish and reactionary, and proud, strong, modern heroine, and a much wider cultural history taking in the change between landed aristocracy and industrial dynasties, the nature of female friendship, Northern social hierarchies and much much more. Watch that, then watch the dramatisation.
PS. Lister's life was pretty short on amusement - between the bouts of lovemaking, she abandoned lovers to the madhouse, fought vicious turf-wars with rival industrialists and chased heiresses in a coldly predatory manner (she's a Thatcherite). So when the misery overwhelms you while watching the drama, remember that Anne Lister and nasty Mr Rawton are played by Maxine Peake and Dean Kelly, who were lovers Veronica and Kev in Manc scum drama Shameless.
Name that Colleague!
This is from George Orwell's 'Clink', a short essay about his failed attempt to be sent to prison for research purposes. He got hammered on whisky and spent a weekend in the cells. Afterwards:
This exactly describes the situation of one of my colleagues. Any guesses?
PS. Orwell died at 47, of TB. I doubt the smoking helped.
I had only twopence and had had nothing to eat all day except bread and marg., and was damnably hungry; however, as always happens when it is a choice between tobacco and food, I bought tobacco with my twopence.
This exactly describes the situation of one of my colleagues. Any guesses?
PS. Orwell died at 47, of TB. I doubt the smoking helped.
Lies, damn lies… and Tory Scum
The government has released a list of all the public servants earning more than £150,000, i.e. more than the Prime Minister.
The idea is to shame them into taking pay cuts, or at least not pursuing pay rises. Ok, you might say, it's wrong for a civil servant to earn so much money - some are on £275,000 per year, though I reckon running the NHS, for instance, is a hell of a job.
Well, up to a point. The trick the Tories have pulled is to make the comparison with the Prime Minister, despite successive PM's freezing or reducing their salaries every year to make themselves look good in front of the voters (and it's easy for Cameron - he's a multimillionaire).
I'm a supporter of CEOs earning no more than 10-15 times the wage of the lowest-paid employee. But why are we humiliating the civil servants? Let's look at Bob Diamond (£80 million, despite the bank losing massive amounts) or Bart Becht, who 'earned' £90 million last year, 1374 times that of the average Reckitt Benckiser employee. Do these gentlemen work harder for £90m than they would for £10m? I bet they don't pay much tax either… If you read The Spirit Level, it turns out that more equal companies and states are more successful, and that the rich benefit from equality too!
Despite this subtle attack on the state from the Tories, there are definitely some employees whose greed is blatant and unsustainable - it's weird that many of the highest paid work in the Ministry of Defence, whereas the Treasury only has 4 top earners.
My boss is a prime example. She's on £230,000. That's several tens of thousands more than the Prime Minister before he took a pay cut. Now it's £100,000 more than the Prime Minister. That's £240,000 for getting us a massive fine from the government, £240,000 for sacking 150 people to pay the fine, £230,000 for cutting courses and dumbing-down the degrees. £230,000 for failure.
Except, of course that by her lights, she's a success. She's negotiated a massive salary. The end. It's just a business, and success is a matter of individual enrichment.
The idea is to shame them into taking pay cuts, or at least not pursuing pay rises. Ok, you might say, it's wrong for a civil servant to earn so much money - some are on £275,000 per year, though I reckon running the NHS, for instance, is a hell of a job.
Well, up to a point. The trick the Tories have pulled is to make the comparison with the Prime Minister, despite successive PM's freezing or reducing their salaries every year to make themselves look good in front of the voters (and it's easy for Cameron - he's a multimillionaire).
I'm a supporter of CEOs earning no more than 10-15 times the wage of the lowest-paid employee. But why are we humiliating the civil servants? Let's look at Bob Diamond (£80 million, despite the bank losing massive amounts) or Bart Becht, who 'earned' £90 million last year, 1374 times that of the average Reckitt Benckiser employee. Do these gentlemen work harder for £90m than they would for £10m? I bet they don't pay much tax either… If you read The Spirit Level, it turns out that more equal companies and states are more successful, and that the rich benefit from equality too!
Despite this subtle attack on the state from the Tories, there are definitely some employees whose greed is blatant and unsustainable - it's weird that many of the highest paid work in the Ministry of Defence, whereas the Treasury only has 4 top earners.
My boss is a prime example. She's on £230,000. That's several tens of thousands more than the Prime Minister before he took a pay cut. Now it's £100,000 more than the Prime Minister. That's £240,000 for getting us a massive fine from the government, £240,000 for sacking 150 people to pay the fine, £230,000 for cutting courses and dumbing-down the degrees. £230,000 for failure.
Except, of course that by her lights, she's a success. She's negotiated a massive salary. The end. It's just a business, and success is a matter of individual enrichment.
Wolverines!
The big news (to me at least) apart from David Laws's defenestration (guilty, but the Daily Telegraph is clearly on a homophobic, anti-Lib Dem crusade to destabilise the coalition from the right), is the remake of infamous, awful, horrendously racist and rightwing 1980s film, Red Dawn.
This kind of rubbish always appears when a nation is culturally stressed: the 80s was packed with neo-fascist militarism in response to getting a huge and well-deserved hammering in Vietnam.
The interesting thing about Red Dawn the remake is that the evil, invading Other is no longer the Soviet Union with support from Cuba and the Mexicans, but China - clearly Hollywood's bothered by that country's financial, military and soft power.
Why is it that Americans are so keen to produce films in which they're the plucky underdogs resisting the cruel oppressors. A quick review of history: it happened ONCE, when you (very impressively) chucked the British out (though they burned the White House in 1812). Since then, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Cuba (repeatedly), Diego Garcia, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Iraq have reason to differ - and that's not including all the countries tossed around by your mates. The US hasn't been the resistance since 1789.
Star Trek, the Rebel Alliance, the A-Team (now a film too), Red Dawn, Terminator, Jaws and a host of other texts suggest that you're in deep denial about being the Empire. At least in the 1950s, your Westerns featured a sheriff who was sure that he was Doing The Right Thing, enforcing justice and the American Way even if that did mostly consist of killing as many Native Americans as possible. Now you seem insecure, always looking for ways to appear the plucky underdog. Give it up. The first stage is to admit that you are a global superpower. Then you can think about the responsibilities that brings, rather than pretending that you're the victims here.
Meanwhile, here's a thought. It looks like the European hegemony is well and truly over, thanks to the activities of the bond markets. America may well be next, given that China's buying up Africa and quietly collecting as much US Treasury debt as possible. The question is, why fight it? You obviously approve of superpowers dominating the globe - give someone else a go.
One fascinating fact about the Red Dawn remake that supports my suggestion that it's time to ask somebody else for help is this: the scenes of urban devastation were all filmed in Detroit, because that's what it looks like - one of the former richest cities in the US has lost a massive chunk of its population to drugs, drink, murder and escape. Huge swathes of residential and industrial areas are abandoned and the economy is dead. Well done, capitalism. (New Orleans has also been used for post-apocalypse scenes too).
If you're not convinced, read Gwyneth Jones's Rainbow Bridge, in which the assorted rock stars and hippies who've been forced to take over England after representative government collapses, eventually realise that a Chinese takeover is by far the best option, and devote their efforts to persuading the remains of the armed forces and other bands to choose life over principle (there's a lot of sex and Arthuriana in it too).
OK, I'm mostly joking - the Chinese regime is almost as awful as some of our allies, such as Saudi Arabia. But as the product of Britain's colonial rapaciousness, I've learned a thing or two. Subaltern cultures adapt, survive and maybe even prosper. States aren't innocent, or they don't remain so - they all want to invade someone. If you do it enough, and use the right weaponry, you get a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Me? I'd like the Norwegians to invade, or one of their neighbours. Seriously. Greener, good food, high taxes, great healthcare, high degree of equality, low crime, less conspicuous consumption, better welfare provision, better education - and yet they're still much, much richer than the Anglo countries. Ask the CIA!
This kind of rubbish always appears when a nation is culturally stressed: the 80s was packed with neo-fascist militarism in response to getting a huge and well-deserved hammering in Vietnam.
The interesting thing about Red Dawn the remake is that the evil, invading Other is no longer the Soviet Union with support from Cuba and the Mexicans, but China - clearly Hollywood's bothered by that country's financial, military and soft power.
Why is it that Americans are so keen to produce films in which they're the plucky underdogs resisting the cruel oppressors. A quick review of history: it happened ONCE, when you (very impressively) chucked the British out (though they burned the White House in 1812). Since then, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Cuba (repeatedly), Diego Garcia, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Iraq have reason to differ - and that's not including all the countries tossed around by your mates. The US hasn't been the resistance since 1789.
Star Trek, the Rebel Alliance, the A-Team (now a film too), Red Dawn, Terminator, Jaws and a host of other texts suggest that you're in deep denial about being the Empire. At least in the 1950s, your Westerns featured a sheriff who was sure that he was Doing The Right Thing, enforcing justice and the American Way even if that did mostly consist of killing as many Native Americans as possible. Now you seem insecure, always looking for ways to appear the plucky underdog. Give it up. The first stage is to admit that you are a global superpower. Then you can think about the responsibilities that brings, rather than pretending that you're the victims here.
Meanwhile, here's a thought. It looks like the European hegemony is well and truly over, thanks to the activities of the bond markets. America may well be next, given that China's buying up Africa and quietly collecting as much US Treasury debt as possible. The question is, why fight it? You obviously approve of superpowers dominating the globe - give someone else a go.
One fascinating fact about the Red Dawn remake that supports my suggestion that it's time to ask somebody else for help is this: the scenes of urban devastation were all filmed in Detroit, because that's what it looks like - one of the former richest cities in the US has lost a massive chunk of its population to drugs, drink, murder and escape. Huge swathes of residential and industrial areas are abandoned and the economy is dead. Well done, capitalism. (New Orleans has also been used for post-apocalypse scenes too).
If you're not convinced, read Gwyneth Jones's Rainbow Bridge, in which the assorted rock stars and hippies who've been forced to take over England after representative government collapses, eventually realise that a Chinese takeover is by far the best option, and devote their efforts to persuading the remains of the armed forces and other bands to choose life over principle (there's a lot of sex and Arthuriana in it too).
OK, I'm mostly joking - the Chinese regime is almost as awful as some of our allies, such as Saudi Arabia. But as the product of Britain's colonial rapaciousness, I've learned a thing or two. Subaltern cultures adapt, survive and maybe even prosper. States aren't innocent, or they don't remain so - they all want to invade someone. If you do it enough, and use the right weaponry, you get a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Me? I'd like the Norwegians to invade, or one of their neighbours. Seriously. Greener, good food, high taxes, great healthcare, high degree of equality, low crime, less conspicuous consumption, better welfare provision, better education - and yet they're still much, much richer than the Anglo countries. Ask the CIA!
O David! A spoonful of sugar will help the medicine go down
The big story this weekend was multimillionaire Treasury Minister David Laws being caught claiming rent money from the taxpayer and giving it to his long-term secret partner: MPs are forbidden from renting from partners to avoid the sense that they're scamming us.
Coincidentally, I watched Mary Poppins yesterday. The whole thing. Despite Dick Van Dyke's awful, awful accent, it's a fascinating film, covering imperialism, masculinity, childhood, suffrage (OK for the upper classes, not OK for the serving classes), class and high finance - Mr Banks's bank collapses because young Michael's tuppence is grabbed by the greedy directors and he demands it back, leading to a run.
Ironically, Michael Banks and David Laws are rather similar:
Despite Mr. Banks's protestations that banks are reliable, ration, friendly and well-run, this song reveals the ugly, vampiric truth. There's a glorious irony in most of the words, especially this: 'prudently, fruitfully, frugally invested…' - presumably not in CDOs, CDSs, derivatives and all the rest of the modern banking world's attempts at alchemy:
Coincidentally, I watched Mary Poppins yesterday. The whole thing. Despite Dick Van Dyke's awful, awful accent, it's a fascinating film, covering imperialism, masculinity, childhood, suffrage (OK for the upper classes, not OK for the serving classes), class and high finance - Mr Banks's bank collapses because young Michael's tuppence is grabbed by the greedy directors and he demands it back, leading to a run.
Ironically, Michael Banks and David Laws are rather similar:
Despite Mr. Banks's protestations that banks are reliable, ration, friendly and well-run, this song reveals the ugly, vampiric truth. There's a glorious irony in most of the words, especially this: 'prudently, fruitfully, frugally invested…' - presumably not in CDOs, CDSs, derivatives and all the rest of the modern banking world's attempts at alchemy:
A World Without Dan
It's too terrible to contemplate. The Map Twats went walking between Ludlow and Richard's Castle this weekend. It was muddy, wet and gloomy in the trackless commercial forests. We didn't reach Richard's Castle because, although we had maps (I bought two in a lovely independent bookshop in Ludlow), we didn't have a Dan (he has a cold, and he's starting an actual job today). We wandered round endless paths, confused and increasingly grumpy.
Obviously, I got my recriminations in first, but this is the internet, and is therefore the official place to settle scores.
Yes, I got us lost as soon as we left Ludlow. BUT: I was right when I said 'Richard's castle is over that ridge'. It was. We ignored the ridge and trudged off in a different direction. Actually, I enjoyed the day, though we walked a goodly bit further than intended. I hope that our meanderings spell out a very rude word, viewed from space.
It wasn't much of a day to take photos, but I put a very few here. Neal took the insect ones, and I played with them. Click on them for a larger view.
Obviously, I got my recriminations in first, but this is the internet, and is therefore the official place to settle scores.
Yes, I got us lost as soon as we left Ludlow. BUT: I was right when I said 'Richard's castle is over that ridge'. It was. We ignored the ridge and trudged off in a different direction. Actually, I enjoyed the day, though we walked a goodly bit further than intended. I hope that our meanderings spell out a very rude word, viewed from space.
It wasn't much of a day to take photos, but I put a very few here. Neal took the insect ones, and I played with them. Click on them for a larger view.
Friday, 28 May 2010
Hands off our schools
I'm not a parent, as far as I know (joke, mother), but y'know, kids are the future and all that.
So I'm a bit worried by the government's plan to privatise 'free' schools from local democratic control. Michael Gove's big idea is to let all schools run themselves or pay companies to do it for them. Parents unhappy with their kids' school can set up a new one, to be run by private companies (even though this means there'll be wasted capacity).
I like local authority control because: a) I can vote against a party which is screwing it up, and hopefully turf them out b) a school backed by a big council can get better deals on services than a single school c) I don't want schools to become profit-centres for businesses d) 'free' schools are a way for a small group of loudmouths to get rid of the poor, dark, disabled and annoying kids.
e) local authorities will make decisions which are right (hopefully) for the community, not to privilege a small bunch who shout loudly. Also, it's part of this 'big society' thing, which is a huge red herring for the middle classes. The Tories/Lib Dems aren't offering us control over the really important stuff - interest rates, regulating the financial sector, defence policy, environmental regulation, transport etc. They simply want to be left to get on with the stuff that really benefits their elite group, while middle class, Daily Mail-reading parents think they're 'empowered' by negotiating with the lawyers and accountant from the hard-nosed companies (Capita? Securicor? Serco? the usual suspects, anyway) who will run these schools.
It's privatisation+deceit.
I'm also not impressed by government dictating state school policy with a 66% privately-educated cabinet, most of them multimillionaires (Cameron, Clegg, Osborne to name just some) and most of whose kids are at private schools. Porridge for us, caviar for them.
If your kid's school is crap, get involved and improve it. Don't buy yourself out of it, with your own money or with ours. Read this.
So I'm a bit worried by the government's plan to privatise 'free' schools from local democratic control. Michael Gove's big idea is to let all schools run themselves or pay companies to do it for them. Parents unhappy with their kids' school can set up a new one, to be run by private companies (even though this means there'll be wasted capacity).
I like local authority control because: a) I can vote against a party which is screwing it up, and hopefully turf them out b) a school backed by a big council can get better deals on services than a single school c) I don't want schools to become profit-centres for businesses d) 'free' schools are a way for a small group of loudmouths to get rid of the poor, dark, disabled and annoying kids.
e) local authorities will make decisions which are right (hopefully) for the community, not to privilege a small bunch who shout loudly. Also, it's part of this 'big society' thing, which is a huge red herring for the middle classes. The Tories/Lib Dems aren't offering us control over the really important stuff - interest rates, regulating the financial sector, defence policy, environmental regulation, transport etc. They simply want to be left to get on with the stuff that really benefits their elite group, while middle class, Daily Mail-reading parents think they're 'empowered' by negotiating with the lawyers and accountant from the hard-nosed companies (Capita? Securicor? Serco? the usual suspects, anyway) who will run these schools.
It's privatisation+deceit.
I'm also not impressed by government dictating state school policy with a 66% privately-educated cabinet, most of them multimillionaires (Cameron, Clegg, Osborne to name just some) and most of whose kids are at private schools. Porridge for us, caviar for them.
If your kid's school is crap, get involved and improve it. Don't buy yourself out of it, with your own money or with ours. Read this.
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