What I'm reading…

In yet more proof that fiction is an essential guide to human behaviour, I'm processing the News of the World story by reading Howard Brenton's and David Hare's 1985 'Fleet Street Comedy', Pravda. Here's the Frank Rich quotation from the New York Times review which is on the back cover:

Pravda is an epic comedy: part The Front Page, part Arturo Ui - in which a press baron resembling Rupert Murdoch… does battle with over 30 characters as he conquers Fleet Street journalism and, by implication, liberal England's soul.

Mr Le Roux, the Murdoch avatar, turns broadsheets into tabloids and poisons the public sphere by deliberately dumbing-down the debate, while truth is replaced with whatever suits the business aims of his company. It's got leaks, dishonesty, fraud, arrogance, betrayal and incompetence.


Here's an extract on the nature of press-politician relationships:

The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart, and democracy itself cannot function. There must be an essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night – ‘A source close to the Prime Minister’, meaning ‘the Prime Minister’. Yes. This mutual relationship is a good thing, and if it can be made concrete, formalised by an actual commercial arrangement...If I, for instance, were to offer you my private skill and influence, and in return you were to guarantee me access to your newspapers, if the channels of free expression were to be...(He pauses)...channelled in my direction, if ‘Man Of Steel’ were to be a regular feature, a column, written by myself, by me then democracy would be safeguarded. And we would have a very satisfactory deal.

Pravda; Act I Scene III 

Sound familiar?

A good day's work

Yesterday felt like several days rolled into one, by my lazy standards.
I wrote and sent a solid proposal for a conference.
Then I applied power tools to a narrowboat (yes, you've got Paddy back on the canals like it's 1830).
Then I drank carrot whisky with astrophysicists.

All in all, not a bad day. Now run along, Vole's got a little headache.

Damn his eyes…

My pal UnluckyDip has started a photo blog of pun-based shop names. I've been planning that for ages. I'll have to send him my crop: I encourage you to do the same. I particularly love Sherlock Homes in Stoke, and Con Hair in Manchester.

Not all doom and gloom

My colleague Ms. E-Mentor has won a National Teaching Fellowship for her work on electronic learning and teaching! While many - especially in management - see e-learning as a cheap and easy way to dispense with expensive rooms/staff/discussion, she's seen the intellectual advantages to mixed-media learning, inspired by

Morris’s famous statement, “I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few” (‘The Lesser Arts’, 1877)

The Unruly Professor?

There's a debate going on about the value of humanities teachers claiming to be radically disruptive to the intellectual, philosophical and social status quo.

Although there were external dangers, argued Robert Post, dean of Yale Law School, the humanities also faced a number of "internal threats". Many scholars in the field claimed that their work was "inherently disruptive" and possessed "the charismatic authority of art rather than mere disciplinary competence". This, suggested Professor Post, was a huge error.

I'm suspicious. Most of us, I would think, believe that guiding students to and through thought-provoking literature in thought-provoking ways, might help them to treat and see the world differently when they leave. Get a critical mass of these enlightened thinkers and hegemony is threatened, goes the thinking.

Of course, it's a fantasy. There are totemic self-promoting radicals: Zizek, Chomsky, Bloom (on the conservative-radical wing) and others. But I think they perform another function, one which would enrage them. They're signifiers of academic freedom, the lipstick on the pig. To their supporters, they evince radical truths. To their detractors, they're publicly-funded subversives. To both groups, they're convenient icons of what's right and wrong about academia.

The rest of us are quietly liberal or actually conservative. While telling the students how wonderful Judith Butler and Foucault are, we connive in the process of churning out obedient work drones. Look at university finance/banking departments: they promoted the perfectibility of investment through ever more complex financial instruments, leading to global ruin. Not much radical thinking going on there. Or if there was, it didn't reach the bankers, politicians and regulators. And that's the wider truth: while we pretend that being vaguely subversive in class makes a difference, the status quo marginalises us even further. We're licensed clowns, and a degree is a three-year gap period for the kids in which they can pretend that gender, sexuality, race, class, identity, literature, social structures are radically mutable. Then they put on a suit and make money for The Man.

I wish we were 'inherently disruptive', that my work was Art, with the licence that implies. But it's not, and we need to stop kidding ourselves. We're not revolutionary leaders engaged on a grand project to reshape society.

Furthermore, academic freedom was essentially a bargain with the public about "the rights of scholars to make judgements in the name of the scholarly standards of their discipline". Those who undermined disciplinary professionalism were likely to regret the consequences, he suggested.

Professor Post's point is that we abuse our compact with the taxpayer if we promote grand ideals over disciplinary competence, and that their patience will wane: he assumes, of course, that the taxpayer is a cowed, conservative individual. How I wish he were wrong.

We need mavericks in academia: we just need to stop thinking that we're important in the outside world.

A vision of my future

…and Mark's present: he has 15,000+ books and his ceilings collapsed quite some time ago.

This is actually an art installation for VIA advertising agency which has moved into a former public library in Portland (presumably Oregon). This is, of course, the kind of thing that these disgusting people might think 'ironic'. I prefer to assume that the artist is using the books as a kind of threat: that they represent erudition and conscience, eternally promising to break through the psychic defences ad execs raise against the possibility that morality might invade their daily lives. The artwork is in the basement - unlikely to be seen too often I suppose, but symbolically representing the unconscious which always threatens to irrupt into the consciousness.

It's pleasing to imagine that the shades of the building's former upright purpose might crowd round its new and unwelcome inhabitants.

This Charming Man…

No, not Morrissey, but expenses-cheat Jonathan Djanogly MP (Tory, obviously), who employed private detectives to spy on his own constituents - including using deception to gain information! 

Mr Djanogly paid detectives £5,000 to monitor his constituents covertly, The Daily Telegraph revealed…Mr Djanogly, the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, employed the firm Morris Chase International to investigate his constituents after The Daily Telegraph published an article about his expenses.  

The private detectives’ report was sent to his office at the law firm SJ Berwin, where the MP worked until 2009. In the report, the detectives admit using subterfuge to gain information.

Astonishing. Not content with the authority, power and respect afforded (still) to Members of Parliament, they're so paranoid, suspicious and vicious that some of them imagine that it's acceptable to actually run intel on ordinary citizens. It's been downhill for Huntingdon for centuries: Oliver Cromwell was from the town (MP for 1628-29, later MP for Cambridge); succeeded rather later by John Major, and now this execrable lowlife.


Mr Djanogly is now a Minister in the Justice Department. 


I wonder if Mr Uppal is doing the same thing to me. I can just imagine their reports:
Day 1. Target went to work. Typed sarcastically. Bought books. Shouted at Newsnight.
Day 2. Target went to work. Typed sarcastically. Bought books. Shouted at Newsnight.
Day 3. Target went to work. Typed sarcastically. Bought books. Went swimming. Investigator receiving counselling for trauma. Shouted at Newsnight.
Day 4. Target went to work. Typed sarcastically. Bought books. Shouted at Newsnight.


Ad infinitum.

Another blow for celebrity culture

One of the things I most hate about modern culture is its assumption that because a person is good at one thing (acting, miming, being amusingly drunk), they're automatically multitalented, and intelligent. Thus we move from talent to 'celebrity', in which the doings and sayings of anyone famous become somehow important. 


But sometimes this comes back to bite us on the collective bottom. Lee Ryan's famous comment on September 11th ('Who gives a fuck about New York when elephants are being killed?') now has a rival: Morrissey.

The controversial former The Smiths star was on stage at a show in Warsaw, Poland on Sunday night (24th July 2011) when he gave his thoughts on the two terror attacks in Oslo, which claimed the lives of at least 76 people.

According to Britain's Daily Mirror, before starting his track 'Meat Is Murder', the outspoken vegetarian told the crowd, "We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown... Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald's and Kentucky Fried S**t every day."

Morrissey saddens me. Once so talented, now a shadow of his former self. Away from the music, he seems to have assumed that because the media listens to him, he must be some kind of intellectual. His comments on immigration to Britain never cease to appal me: the son of Irish immigrants attacking other immigrants. Ugh. On this one, it's so entirely obvious how wrong he is that I'm not going to wear out my keyboard explaining it to you.


Obviously it's a bit cheeky of a provincial blogger to suggest that other people have delighted us long enough (as Austen put it) with their opinions, but at least I'm not parlaying some other form of achievement into a bully pulpit. 


Although… one of the delights of new media, especially Twitter, is the unmediated potential. I assume that every public statement made by someone famous is entirely scripted by a PR adviser. But because everybody has a mobile, and every celebrity will have an iPhone, they're more likely to wrest control of the easier media from their advisers, though the smarter PR agents will be on top of this. Angry, drunk, coked-up or merely dim celebrities will be tweeting their every 'thought' before the PA can stop them. And this can only be a good thing, because it rips away the glitz and reveals the flawed, often monstrous human. The end of celebrity culture can only be hastened.  Huzzah!

The Day They Signed the Death Warrant For The NHS

It's not my headline. It's not the Guardian's. It's not in the Morning Star or the Socialist Worker. 


It's in the Daily Telegraph. And it goes on to say this, amongst other things.

This means that in these areas, the NHS will no longer exist. Sure, the logo will still be there, but the NHS will no longer be national, any more than British Telecom is.

There is no doubt that this signals the first wave of privatising the NHS. Yet MPs of all persuasions continue to be deluded.   

The White Paper is a docile, fluffy, patient-focused document, with much talk of choice and empowerment. This is in stark contrast to the Bill, which almost exclusively focuses on opening up the NHS to private providers. The Bill is written in dense legal terminology, making any detailed analysis time-consuming and difficult.

But anyone who does study it will find little more than a road map for destroying the NHS, turning it into a cash cow for the corporate sector. The focus is on transforming public sector provision into an entirely market-led system, throwing open every service to private providers.

Previous pieces of legislation that existed to ensure the NHS remained in public ownership are weakened or removed entirely in the Bill. Even the role of Secretary of State is altered so that he is no longer responsible for the NHS. There are 15 clauses (ss125-131, 168-175) that will allow private companies to buy and asset-strip NHS facilities. Clause s12 specifically enables the privatisation of high-security psychiatric services.

Does that sound as if the NHS, or the interests of patients, are being protected?

If the Daily Telegraph - the Tories' most loyal friend, and not known for its sympathy towards the public services - think that the NHS is being killed, then it's a) right and b) deeply worrying. 


The author even suggests that MPs are too lazy to read the Bill, and that the Prime Minister and Health Secretary are deliberately lying to us:

The health secretary and the Prime Minister assure us the NHS will not be privatised when the legislation they are pushing through explicitly suggests otherwise.

The Bill enters the report stage and third reading on September 6 and 7. At the end of this, MPs will be voting on the future of your NHS. Is it safe in their hands?

I think a reprieve may be too late. 

This is what an angry man with a brain can do

Yes! Someone's posted Will Self's virtuoso onslaught on the mush of platitudes which pass as politics and regeneration. So here it is.

(I'm a little bit guilty: I've volunteered for the Olympics. I feel compromised, slathered in disgusting branding and now doing my bit to efface East London's grimy, messy, lovely culture.  Ah well, a man alone can't solve the world's riddles).

Bright tomorrow…

Only one book in the post today, the new edition of Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker, translated by Russell Goulbourne (translators are important).

I'm a walker, though not often a solitary one: my friends are all walkers too. Rousseau's piece is a classic in the walker-philosopher tradition: I'd add the promeneur movement and their friends, like Perec. In English, there's a group around the psychogeographer Iain Sinclair: men (always) who attempt to recuperate unofficial history, culture and city growth through the slow, subjective accumulation of observation via walking.

There's a tentative split visible: Rousseau's walking is an aid to self-analysis. He's interested in impressions, epistemology (the study of knowledge) and self-development. In a sense, the Reveries are in at the start of the self-help movement, one I deeply distrust as narcissistic and apolitical, though there's a perfectly good argument that Romanticism, by challenging rationalism and objectivity, is radical on another plane. The promeneurs seem to straddle the divide: by keenly observing the currents and zephyrs of a city's everyday (quotidien), they privilege personal insight and refuse objective analysis, but at the same time, their attention is  focused outwardly, rather than using the walk to look inwards. The psychogeographers are much more political, sometimes with a capital 'P': what they see is the imposition of values and priorities from the top, ignoring Raymond Williams's assertion that 'Culture is Ordinary'.

Interestingly, pop music is interested in the possibilities of walking too. Here are a couple of relevant tracks (and what a rich term for a song that is):





And some top quality Northern Soul:

Propaganda and popular culture

I'm reading the latest Louie Knight noir-parody, The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still. It's good, but I can't help feeling it's jumped the shark a little. There are some good political bits though, and it's set in places with which I'm familiar - Wales and Shrewsbury.

Some sections are exactly the kind of thing I say. Like this speech, delivered on the approach to Shrewsbury railway station, which sits between the castle (on the left) and the prison (to the right):

If you steal small things, you get a room on the right with a view of the river and the railway station. If you steal big things - like counties - you get a room on the left also with a view of the river and the railway station. The room is bigger, and the food is better. You have about as equal a chance of having your throat slit while you sleep… they are just descended from the better armed robbers. It's like a great Welshman once said: 'Who made ten thousand people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?'.

(It was, of course, David Lloyd George).

To go with it, here's a bit of Swedish indie-poppers The Radio Dept.: the little speech at the start is charming, naive and true.

All hail…

…Will Self.

I have never seen anyone destroy an opponent's arguments with such silky skill as last night's attack by the author on the plastic 'legacy' of the Olympics. Last night's Newsnight featured a lovely piece by psychogeographer Iain Sinclair on the top-down 'iconic' regeneration of East London, followed by Self ripping apart Tessa Jowell's claim that a shopping centre and an 'academy' for shopping centre employees are suitable legacies for the borough.

Unfortunately, it's not on Youtube, It's now on Youtube: see it here. but you can see the Self section here (for now), and the whole show here (OB 20.35, Iain Sinclair piece 32.35, Will Self v Jowell 37.37). It's like watching a tiger toy with a mouse. He rips apart the linguistic blancmange used by all management types and employs actual intellect to take the long view - something our triangulating politicians can no longer handle. Compelling TV.

Gone, and forgotten.

If you haven't been inducted into the cult of Jake Thackray, it's about time. Veering between tender, loving, rude and sarcastic, his unique brand of Yorkshire folk/chanson is hugely enjoyable (and he's a great guitarist). You do have to listen to the lyrics though.

Slipping behind in the relevance stakes

I got two books today, proper wonk-volumes. One was Medhi Hasan's biography of the Milibands ('Oxford-politics-fratricide') and the other Off Message: The Complete Antidote to Political Humbug, Bob Marshall Andrew's autobiography. He was the splendidly independent, witty and ferocious Labour MP of whom Party HQ despaired. I was hugely impressed by a video clip in which he bawled at a racist voter 'Don't vote for me!'.

I'm slipping behind in the relevance stakes because the Booker Prize long list is up, and I haven't read an single one of them, for the first time ever.

Dorothy Parker said…

This is Dorothy Parker's telegram to her editor:

THIS IS INSTEAD OF TELEPHONING BECAUSE I CANT LOOK YOU IN THE VOICE. I SIMPLY CANNOT GET THAT THING DONE YET NEVER HAVE DONE SUCH HARD NIGHT AND DAY WORK NEVER HAVE SO WANTED ANYTHING TO BE GOOD AND ALL I HAVE IS A PILE OF PAPER COVERED WITH WRONG WORDS. CAN ONLY KEEP AT IT AND HOPE TO HEAVEN TO GET IT DONE. DONT KNOW WHY IT IS SO TERRIBLY DIFFICULT OR I SO TERRIBLY INCOMPETANT=

I can sympathise. I find it very difficult to get any serious writing done - paralysed by fear of ignorance, of not being able to find anything original to say, of putting ammunition into the hands of my peers - despite publication being the only way to thrive in academia.

It was the same for my PhD. Eventually desperation and shame provided the motivation to complete the thesis. Before that, I had long periods of reading massive amounts and never putting pen to paper. I stopped answering supervisors' emails. Then phone calls. Then letters. I'd go to the university if I had to teach, and sneaked in and out. All the time of course, questions about how the thesis was going were met with enthusiastic explanations of where it was going. Talking a good thesis is easy. Writing one isn't.

Blogging's different: it's just my stream of consciousness spewing out. As Ben says, if I wrote research at the rate I blogged, I'd have several books out by now. True: but academic texts require more than a neat turn of phrase and some hyperlinks.

And now I'm stuck again. I have two conference papers which need turning into articles, a chapter which needs rewriting for a journal and an abstract to write. Any advice?

Off with their heads

When monarchists get desperate, they start claiming that having a royal family brings in tourist millions. It is, of course, nonsense: the most profitable royal palace in the world is Versailles, which is distinctly unoccupied thanks to some unpleasantness in 1789 (and on several dates subsequently).

So it's bloody cheeky of our moronic Chancellor to suddenly blame Britain's latest awful economic figures on the extra bank holiday imposed on us for the most recent royal wedding. Apart from anything else, I'd have thought that economies don't stop on those days - the service sector (flags, ice-creams, barbecues and beers, day-tripper petrol sales etc) takes over for a day. Certainly the papers were full of claims of an economic boost.

So Gideon's claim is both nonsensical and a sign of panic. In reality, the economy is tanking because he's fixated on ideological imperatives: 'free-market' signifiers underpinned by state support for his friends in the banking sector. What we actually need is massive state intervention - such as gargantuan green tech and infrastructure improvements - which will modernise the economy and improve our quality of life, while employing millions. But because the Tories don't believe in the state doing anything other than bailing out their investment banking mates (rather than bailing us out), it won't happen.

As to the monarchists: I'd have far more respect for them if they restricted their arguments to the symbolic/spiritual/intangibles. Once they rely on the value-for-money idea, they're admitting the distinct possibility that if the situation changes (and I think it has), then their idols could be unceremoniously retired on the advice of an accountant. So essentially, they don't really believe in monarchism at all - just carnival barking.

I'm a Republican, so ironically, I actually do believe in the importance of symbolism and sentiment - more than these economic monarchists. Having a monarch tells the citizens that the most important aspects of a society are forever closed to them. I'm an Irish citizen: I could move there and run for President (on a books/science/atheism/internment for speculators and bankers ticket) if I wanted. But not here.

The usual boring argument against an elected head of state is that you'd get some awful tosser like Richard Branson or Alan Sugar elected. I doubt it: Ireland's Presidents have tended to be rather better than its Taoisighs (Prime Ministers). In any case, the point of democracy is that you'd get someone the majority wanted. If you can't accept that, you're not a democrat. A country which elected Branson or Sugar would be a disgusting nation - but at least you'd be able to tell from one glance, rather than putting lipstick on the pig by having a hereditary set of inbred imports with good manners.

So just in case we do get Democracy in the UK, here's my ticket:

a large number of you would require remedial re-education in austere camps. Sorry, but you've done some awful things. ITV. Reading the News of the World. Crying over Diana. Not just buying Louise Bagshawe's books, but electing her to Parliament. Deciding cars are more important than people who actually live in cities. Permitting the ongoing existence of the Daily Mail. Hating 'Europe' and living in a World War 2 fantasy. Moaning about immigrants (I always assume that if you don't like 'asylum seekers', then you actively enjoy the idea of people being tortured. 

Anyone who isn't a farmer but owns an SUV would be chained to the central reservation of Spaghetti Junction for a year or two. 

Paying school fees? Then you'll be taxed at 90% and rehoused in Tower Hamlets. To remind you of what you aspired to, you'll be caned on the bottom on the hour by a street thug chanting 'it never did me any harm'.  

Anyone who voted for university cuts and school building improvement abolition to be served/treated/taught only by uneducated illiterates. 

Voted Tory? Lobotomy. In the private medical sector, operations to be performed by the lowest bidder. 

Connived in closing libraries? A year in a cell with a Jeffrey Archer audiobook playing on a loop, 24 hours a day. 

Hunting fan? You'll love your new accommodation. In the lion enclosure. 

What can we do for Michael Gove and David Willetts? I'd like to imprison them in the Sun's newsroom, and force them to write and read out the astrology column over and over again, sustained only on the worst kebabs known to humanity. Because that's the society they're imposing on the rest of us, while reserving the delightful existence of their class for themselves. Once a month they'll be put in stocks and forced to recite dissertations on Tourism and Leisure Management in front of a jeering crowd. 

Jeremy Clarkson will only be permitted to travel by skateboard, or perhaps a pedal car. Citizens will be permitted to punch him in the face every time he essays one of those long pauses which always herald an offensive comment.

Tax evaders (corporate and individual) will be dyed blue. If they interact with anything paid for out of the public purse, they can be charged on the spot by any and all passing taxpayers. So: roads. Clean air. Pavements.  People who've been to school (even private schools, which are all subsidised by being charities!). Subsidised opera. Historic buildings. Healthcare. Fire engines. Police. Defence. 

I could go on… Add your own policies in the comments box.

Be a teacher…?

One of my favourite MA students called in today. She's doing a piece on teacher recruitment, and drew my attention to this series of Armstrong and Miller spoof adverts.

Now, I have a problem with A+M. They're funny gag-writers with good performance skills, but there's something disturbing about some very posh men writing rightwing, quite reactionary gags about young people and public servants. The famous WW2 RAF Men-speaking 21st-century youth slang  sketch is a case in point: beautifully written, uncannily good ear for language and delivery, but the underlying message is that today's kids lack honesty, decency, bravery, backbone and altruism. I doubt this is true. Without a war and conscription, we're unlikely to find out, though the grace and compassion displayed by Norwegian youths under fire this week rather demolishes Armstrong and Miller's thesis.

The same goes for these fake teaching ads. I'm a teacher, though at a university rather than schools. I did spend a couple of years doing supply teaching in terrifying secondary schools while doing my PhD, and I gained a health respect for most teachers. I did an English degree, so a PGCE was always a possibility, the classic fallback for most of my class.

I'd have been an idiot to go into teaching for want of anything better to do. They work harder than I do, and the demands on their time, patience and humour are immense. How are we ever going to value education properly if privately-educated toffs poke fun at those who dedicate themselves to teaching with little expectation of thanks, respect or riches?

Not that Armstrong and Miller are entirely wrong. I'm in education because a) I'm unemployable elsewhere, b) I have a short attention span, and most importantly c) I want to brainwash the young in pursuit of revolution. Obviously.

There's life in Uppal yet

Oh look, our multimillionaire property developer MP, Paul Uppal, is pretending to like buses on the occasion of the Dark Place's new bus station (mindful of Thatcher's dictum that a 25-year old man on a bus should count himself a failure, Paul makes sure he's not actually snapped on one):

It must be a difficult one for him: his constant refrains are that the economy can only be revived through property development, and that state spending must be slashed. But the bus station is property development paid for by the state - a fact he utterly fails to mention, despite voting against state spending at every opportunity.

Luckily, Paul's a modern capitalist. By this, I mean he's like the banks: they're all about the free market until they need billions from the taxpayers to bail them out of recessions they caused.

I should point out that the retail space provided in the new facility is empty. Why someone thought that the answer to a town with 28% of its shops empty was… new shops, is beyond me.

Soundtrack for Uppal's journey? 'Road to Nowhere'? 'Highway to Hell'?

Guess the celebrity

I don't normally delve into celebrity culture, but this one I couldn't resist:

The high court has extended a gagging order obtained by a leading actor to prevent reporting of his "sexual relationship" with a former escort girl.

I have no idea who the individuals are, nor do I care. But at least popular culture provides a ready-made reconstruction of the Hollywood/prostitution interface (and this scene makes it very clear that business and prostitution are equivalent capitalist activities).