Shappocalypse

I was out of the office for a whole 11 hours overnight, but what an 11 hours they've been.

If you buy The Independent (no, seriously), you'll have noticed that their front page ('Exclusive: Tory Chairman Rocked by 'get rich quick probe'' despite the Guardian diary printing the story a few days ago) 'reveals' that Grant Shapps is under investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority for his pseudonymic business activities, after a complaint by a blogger. There's also an editorial calling on Shapps to go. The story is also reported in the news section of the Guardian, the New Statesman, by Sky News and of course the Welwyn and Hatfield Times.

That blogger is me. I'd like to make some simple points.

Here's my original post about the curious triple lives of Grant Shapps ('he's three of the sharpest business brains in the Conservative Party') and the frankly seedy and cynical material published by HowToCorp. Click here for my follow-up piece about the ASA agreeing to undertake an investigation. The full story of Shapps' chequered any multi-monickered life is summarised here.

'Friends of Grant Shapps' (which always means Grant Shapps) have made two points to the news organisations. The first is that 'any blogger' can make mischief by firing off a complaint. Very true. The joy of blogging and new media is that an amateur can devote time and resources to stories which a news organisation may not have the patience for. That doesn't make any complaint any less valid. A blogger is firstly a citizen: the tools employed are beside the point - and for a man whose business involved stealing other web-writers material, it's a bloody cheeky point.

The second accusation is that my complaint is 'politically motivated'. This is a bit strange coming from a politician. The Chair of the Conservative Party, no less. And from a man who deleted details of his funding from Wikipedia and posed as a Liberal Democrat to disrupt their party business, it's very rum indeed. One would have thought that any sign of political engagement would be welcomed in a cynical age…

I'm not sure why Grant Shapps thinks my complaint is 'politically motivated'. Indeed, I don't know why he has any comment to make at all. My complaint to the ASA did not mention Mr Shapps. It drew the organisation's attention to a company whose supposed leaders may not have existed, and questioned the veracity of the company's testimonials from satisfied customers. This last, I suspect, is where the real dirt is, by the way. Mr Shapps tells us he has no connection with HowToCorp any more - it's his wife's company now. Furthermore, he's not asked me what my motivation is. I think I'd complain about any organisation which behaves like this, whether connected to a Tory or a Labour representative.

However, I will make one political point. Go back to my original post. Read the 'How To Get Out of a Recession' and compare it to the government's programme. While Shapps ran the company, he made a fortune from plagiarising web material and from publishing frankly ridiculous get-rich-quick guides. We are in the middle of one of the deepest recessions in modern history. To have a prominent Member of Parliament recommending and practicing sharp practice, voodoo economics and flaky schemes is a disgrace. The country requires fundamental, structural economic change. From my perspective, it needs leftwing policies: from the government's, hardline monetarist and free market solutions seem attractive. Neither side recommends the kind of quick-buck hucksterism Mr Shapps and now his wife promote. His ability to maintain a double economic life does him no credit.

Mr Shapps has now spoken to the Welwyn and Hatfield Times.

But Mr Vole has since published the letter on his personal blog The Plashing Vole – even though the ASA explicitly asked the correspondence be kept private.
The point was made by Mr Shapps himself, who said he thought the ASA would take a “dim view” of the leaked letter.
Now the ASA has said it could close the investigation if it chooses to.
An ASA spokesman told the WHT: “We are aware that the complainant has published our correspondence despite requests to keep it confidential.
“The ASA reserves the right to close the investigation if the complainant does not respect our request.”

I declined that request. No mention was made to me by the ASA of closing the investigation if I publicised the investigation - the right has not been reserved. If Mr Shapps is trying to close down an investigation on these grounds, it shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm for examining the substance of the matter. Considering Mr Shapps posed as a Lib Dem to infiltrate one of their online forums, you'd think he'd approve of low-down dirty tactics… Although frankly I'm bemused as to why he's getting involved at all - I complained about a company he neither owns nor controls. What's his interest?

PS. Paul Uppal: I've not forgotten about you, by the way.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the… genre

A genre’s landscape should be littered with used tropes half-visible through their own smoke & surrounded by salvage artists with welding sets, otherwise it isn’t a genre at all. 

says M John Harrison. He goes on to discuss the supposed death of science fiction and fantasy - a claim made every three weeks, as far as I can tell. Which genres aren't permanently dead or in the ambulance? It's a matter of perspective. From where I'm standing, romantic fiction is dead, killed off by celebrity journalism, porn culture or exhaustion, but I'm sure on close inspection you'd find signs of re-birth: different sexualities and new formations, for instance. Look at Fifty Shades of Grey: its melding of the worse features of romance with the limpest emulation of BDSM porn will no doubt inspire a generation of cynical hacks, and maybe even some genuinely exploratory writing. Science fiction certainly isn't dead: from the corpse of the previous generation spawns the maggots of the next - every genre sprouts sub-genres. Perhaps the term 'science fiction' should be retired, however - we have the New Weird, Speculative Fiction, Steampunk, Alternative History, Alternative Futures, Cyberpunk, Space Opera, Hard SF and many others. Saying you're an SF fan is like saying you like music - tantamount to announcing that you're an ignorant know-nothing bum who likes a tune you can whistle. I'm guessing the same applies to all literary genres. 

However, what does happen to popular fiction sub-genres is exactly the same as what happens to any sub-group: appropriation. Once punk music emerged from the gutters, every major label told its house bands to grow mohicans and add naughty words to their songs. Result: punk was dead the day it hit Top of the Pops and mohican wigs appeared in Camden Market for the tourists. Away from the media gaze, real punk bands sneered and worked on whatever came next. I'd say the same thing has happened with SF: once almost every Hollywood movie is an adaptation (Watchmen, Green Lantern, X-Men), a disaster movie (War of the Worlds, Cloverfield) or any other vaguely sciencey presentation, it becomes just another popcorn kernel to momentarily distract the mainstream before going back into hibernation for a few decades - like the Western before it. Which is a shame, because most genres respond to the cultural needs of the climates in which they exist. But as I say, it's a matter of perspective. Out there in school playgrounds, comic stores and - above all - the internet, new texts and new variations on genres are arising, and what we think of as the defining characteristics of the genre are scorned as hopelessly outdated by those in the know. 

Paul Kincaid, whom M John Harrison references, thinks that inadequate boundary policing is at issue: SF is fading into literary fiction, he thinks. I think: brilliant. They'll revive each other. Literary fiction is a weird and indistinct genre, if it is one at all, and it's too often the preserve of authors who think they can see past all those proles busy tweeting each other rude jokes, whereas SF has been variously the preserve of techno-fascists, techno-determinists, techno-utopians, militarists, and a whole host of others who could do with some literary skills and perspectives. Besides, Kincaid is probably just looking in the wrong place: no doubt the borders between SF and porn, SF and romance, SF and poetry, SF and travel and all the other genres are being over-run. See, I'm slipping into imperialistic language: it's a common problem with genre discussions, especially the traditionally masculine ones: men are so concerned with purity, resistance, autonomy. 

Let's abandon the idea of genres as distinct territories and consider them as tendencies or characteristics instead. That way, we can focus on the genuinely creative work instead. Returning temporarily to the border metaphor, it's my feeling that the work which exists on the borders with other genres is the interesting stuff. A text situated right in the middle of a generic expanse, equally distanced from all other genres, is likely to be boring and over-familiar. There are exceptions, of course: Die Hard is a masterpiece because it's a summation of it's genre's best aspects - the same goes for lots of Westerns. But at the same time, it's the weird stuff around the edges that is often more interesting in a cultural and literary sense: the revisionist Westerns, for example, which evoke a sense not that the Western is a dying genre (though it was) but that the ideological underpinnings of the classic Western were rotting - and had perhaps always been rotten. 

Kincaid knows this. As he says: 

Within any art form there are individuals or movements that attempt to push the boundaries in various ways. They are concerned with seeing what new can be done, what more can be done with the form. Often, though not always, they are initially viewed with dismay or disdain by aficionados of the art, though in retrospect they are generally viewed as being the innovators who mark an important developmental stage in the history of the form.

What Kincaid and Harrison have discerned is not the exhaustion of science fiction as a genre, but the exhaustion of the institutions which foster and propagate science fiction: publishers content to promote the profitably familiar. It's the same in music: Classic FM is the epitome of the embalmer's art because it only plays music which has been on adverts, or sounds indistinguishable from what's been on adverts. In the process, it's cheapened the genuinely interesting music is does scatter amongst the dross: Vaughan Williams, for instance, who has been transformed from spiky iconoclast into twinkly English Grandfather. 

But I don't despair. Where there's a Classic FM or a mainstream SF publisher, there's a Radio 3 and a range of pirate stations. By the time Jeff Noon, Cory Doctorow and China Miéville attract major-label imitators, they'll be doing something else, and a new generation will be distributing supposedly un-popular work underground. Some publishers and some readers are conservative - but enough aren't, and literary movements operate on a timescale long enough to bring about gradual change. 

So don't stress about genre. It's only partly in the hands of the author, the publisher, the bookseller and the jacket artist. It's also in your hands. If you think Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or certain Jeanette Winterson is in or near SF - read it like that and ignore their self-serving denials. Don't just browse the SF shelf - you'll find weirdness and science and far-flung settings and fear of/fascination with technology and social change in plenty of other places. Genre's like that: it shapes your expectations but your generic expectations dictate your readings. Take this sentence from Pride and Prejudice:

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

I used to ask my students to write down the tone of voice they imagined seemed appropriate. Then I'd ask one person to read it romantically, one to read it sarcastically, and one to read it 'neutrally'. The way in which you read that one sentence determines the meaning of the rest of the novel to you - and it will differ to the meanings acquired by the person next to you. For me, it drips with satire: my Austen is the one who disguises horror at the encroaching dangers of Regency womanhood with sharp, sharp humour. Her women face social abysses: only a few survive. But it's equally easy to read the texts as lovely sparkling romances in which nice intelligent demure girls are rewarded with the right man by being good judges of character. 

I haven't picked Jane Austen as a random example. Amongst my extensive collection, I have editions repackaged as 'chick-lit' (pastel handwriting, dresses, pink) and Austen mash-ups, including two Austen-porn novels and two Austen/Zombies and Austen/Sea-Monsters novels, plus P D James's Death Comes to Pemberley, which is far more offensive and disgusting than either Pride and Prejudice with Zombies or Jane Austen: Hidden Lusts. Most of these novels aroused utter fury amongst the Janeites because they're resistant both to generic miscegenation and any tinkering with their heroine's work (weird, really: Victorian Shakespearians liked tacking happy endings onto his tragedies without concern for purity). Both PPwZ and JA:HL have tried to do something bold, and they've done it with some panache and charm. Both authors also know how Austen's dialogue and plotting work: you have to understand the wiring before you put up the Christmas light. PD James, on the other hand, grafts a murder mystery on to Jane Austen without giving a second's thought to Austen's interests or literary style: James appears to think that it's easy, and drops massive clanger after massive clanger. The genre-mashers, on the other hand, have taken the key elements of different genres and welded them together to considerable effect. 

Take your chainsaw to your genre of choice and weld it to something else until you can't tell which bit originated where. 

Seder-Masochism

This is an extract from the yet-to-be produced Seder-Masochism by Nina Paley. I think its animated history of Palestine/Israel should infuriate pretty much everybody.



I think I recognised 75% of the tribes/nations/states featured. Feeling pretty good about that.

Poem for National Poetry Day

I don't read as much poetry as I feel I should. Which is a complex cultural position in which to be, especially for someone who once ran the Introduction to Poetry module. Why do I feel I should read more poetry? Perhaps because it's the oldest genre, and therefore privileged. Perhaps because it used to be the mode for high-achieving gentlemen (failed again…). Maybe because it's the premier literary field as far as the canon goes. Or is it because poetry is held to be the genre which gives the greatest access to the emotions? Being 'emotionally dead', as I was once described, perhaps spending some time with Rossetti, RS Thomas, Spenser and co will resurrect me? 

All bollocks, of course: a lot of poetry is vicious, forbidding and bitter: the idea that it's some kind of well of human kindness is a post-Victorian attempt to make literature 'nice' and tidy - probably for 'the kids', an entirely misguided effort given that a lot of children and vicious, forbidding and bitter, and like to read novels which offer them similar joys. I read a fair amount of poetry: RS, O'Donoghue, Millay and plenty more, and it's singularly failed to make me a nicer or more caring person. I read poetry for its reflective qualities - I don't often read plot-driven work, but go for those which take short-cuts to the core of an issue, and those which make me think about the complex relationship between language and thought. I don't read poetry for therapy, or for 'answers' - that's the kind of rubbish you get on birthday cards. I do think poetry's special because it's a way of making sometimes quite ordinary things strange, which is very necessary in a culture which has hijacked pretty much everything for the purposes of making us consume more stuff. 

As it's National Poetry Day, here are a couple of my favourites. First, Edna St Vincent Millay's 'Sonnet XLIII'. It's a female incursion into the previously masculine sexual history of the sonnet - but also a plangent reflection on a sexual life which has drawn to a close. 


What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Although Simon Armitage stood up the Map Twats on his supposed perambulation of the Pennines, here's 'Poem', which was always received well on my Intro to Poetry courses. It's so deceptively shallow - inviting you to dismiss the narrator as a self-regarding young man - until the final couple of lines, when you realise (I hope) that he - and we (or men at least) - are brought face to face with mortality and our emotional denial. (A 'Sony Walkman', kids, was what rich kids had before iPods existed). And no, I don't know why the stanza breaks are there either. 

Frank O'Hara was open on the desk

but I went straight for the directory.

Nick was out, Joey was engaged, Jim was

just making coffee and why didn't I

come over. I had Astrud Gilberto 

singing 'Bim Bom' on my Sony Walkman

and the sun was drying the damp slates on

the rooftops. I walked in without ringing

and he still wasn't dressed or shaved when we

topped up the coffee with his old man's Scotch

(it was only half ten but what the hell)

and took the newspapers into the porch.

Talking Heads were on the radio. I

was just about to mention the football

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

wardrobe out?' I said 'Sure Jim, anything.'

Oddly enough, my colleague Paul McDonald has just won the John Clare poetry prize with a poem about another ageing Jim:

John Clare Poetry Prize 2012

Lucky Jim

Paul McDonald

1st Prize: Adult Category

I went to Brenda’s house for dinner

She’s clearing out the fridge which meant

A first course of fishcakes and yoghurt

Lucky they’re compatible, she said.

Main course prawns, peas

And croquette potatoes;

Angel cake with ice-cream for afters.

She’s clearing out her cupboards too: Jim’s stuff.

I scored a pair of Argyle socks.

Lucky they’re in fashion, she said.

We debated widow’s pensions

But weren’t sure of the details;

She plans to pick a booklet up from Age Concern.

She’s terminating Sky – making do

With Free View and knitting.

Lucky I’m a reader, she said.

She’s cancelling the Racing Post,

Arranging for collection

Of his hearing aid, tablets, and orthopaedic bed.

His Lotto numbers will survive: I just have a feeling, she said.

And finally one to puncture the rather smug jollity of National Poetry Day: RS Thomas's 'Death of a Poet':

Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?

His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred 
The easier rhythms of the heart 
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.

Physics 101 for Mitt Romney

Ahead of the Presidential debate tonight, I thought I'd help Willard Mitt Romney out a little. 

He recently said this, after his wife's plane had to make an emergency landing due to smoke in the cabin:

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no – and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous.

1. Fires need oxygen. So adding more isn't a great idea.
2. Air in a plane is pressurised. Air outside is very thin. So if you open the window, all the air inside will want to go outside to equalise the pressure. 

Here's a diagram of what happens if Mitt Romney opens the window of his executive jet: click to enlarge. 

Books in… and it's only Tuesday.

Oh dear. A bit of an avalanche this week.

Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse - after a recommendation by a Twitter contact. It's a set of essays on cultural criticism, mostly exploring the relationship between history and other literary forms - Vico, Croce, Derrida and Foucault make significant appearances.

Brian Baker, Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000. My PhD was about masculinity in 1930s Welsh novels, so I need to catch up on subsequent developments.

Eric Linklater, The Impregnable Women. It's an invasion novel and a re-telling of the Lysistrata story (women go on sex-strike to end a war). Unfortunately for Linklater, he published this tale of a French invasion of Britain in… 1938. So much for foresight.

Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: more good quality scientific muck-raking from the good doctor.

Jonathan Meades, Museums Without Walls: another blast of polemic from one of the best cultural and architectural critics in the business.

Barry England, Figures in a Landscape. Ben said it was good. It won the Booker in 1969 and it's a 'horrors of war' novel.

Philip Pullman, Galatea. Pullman's rather deranged-looking fantasy novel for adults. Nazis! Zombies! He doesn't like to talk about it. He also doesn't like to talk about 1972's The Haunted Storm, but I don't have £750 spare to buy a copy of that. My friend Mark has it though, picked up for pennies in a charity shop as usual…

Finally, two new Moomins reprints: the comic strips Moomin's Winter Follies and Moominvalley Turns Jungle. Because they're charming and wise.

O Brave New World

As you may know, I'm very leftwing, a voracious reader of science fiction, a skeptic and a huge fan of techno-idealism, of the kind peddled by BoingBoing, Ben Goldacre, Cory Doctorow, Richard Stallman and the Makers. Out there on the web, at Maker Faires (with Arduino we can change the world!) and similar events, one can exist in a bubble of altruism, creativity and kindness. Obviously I don't contribute to these in any way because I'm a crabbed and bitter man. But I can envy their optimism: to them, the radically decentred post-industrial networked world will empower the fundamentally-decent majority of humanity. We'll help each other. We'll find ways round our current unequal, resource-hungry and unjust political and economic structures, shorn of the need to seek profit and advantage in our dealings with each other. It's a kind of utopian techno-libertarian communism and it's massively attractive.

Being suspicious and (against my will) cynical, I was therefore far less surprised by the emergence of the dark side of the Makers than many others. I don't know if you've come across 3-D printers yet: essentially they use powdered plastic heat formers to construct pretty much anything once you've downloaded the schematics. They hold the promise of networked, on-demand manufacture. Once they're cheap enough, for example, you won't have to hunt for a new toilet stop-cock, replacement door handle or toothbrush holder. You'll download the blueprint and your printer will extrude a new one. Delightful.

Or so we thought…

Enter Defense Distributed. They're radical idealists of a sort. An American sort. They think the world will be a far better place if everybody is armed to the teeth. And they have - or rather had - a solution to America's most pressing problem: not enough guns. Why not print one out at home?



It might (at the moment) be single-use, but you can always print another one. You won't have to present any pesky ID, have a sanity check or criminal records review. Your freshly-extruded gun won't have any history or identifying marks, and you can melt it down after you murder someone with it. Anybody can have a gun. State and legal oversight vanished completely - which is what both the idealists and the psychopaths want. O Brave New World!

Unfortunately for them, their leased printer was confiscated by the owner - though it's not at all clear that what Defense Distributed had in mind with the Wiki Weapon is illegal, given that American gun laws are utterly ridiculous. But this is only a temporary setback, caused by a rental hiccup (and some technical limitations). It won't be long before wholly-owned printers will be churning out Saturday Night Specials in LA, Manchester and anywhere else there's demand.

There are drawbacks to anarchism and libertarianism - this is a prime example.

Morning has thoroughly broken

Crawled into work late today, thanks to staying in the office until 8.45 last night. Though I should admit that 45 minutes of that was usefully employed watching Saturday's Doctor Who - very satisfying. I'm glad Rory's dead, by the way. Acting requires more than the ability to look left, then right, quite quickly.

So, on to today's tasks. I'm about to see another final year dissertation student. I have no idea what she wants to write about, and fervently hope she does. Yesterday's wants to do a piece on Milton, CS Lewis and Pullman: familiar but should yield something decent. I've also acquired three MA dissertation supervisions. One is looking at classical music in popular culture, which could be very interesting. Another is writing about satirical versions of the interwar country house novel, which is exciting, and a third has just sent me a huge list of approaches to the later work of JG Ballard - so quite a variety.

Also on the agenda today - further research for my Welsh travel paper - the clock's ticking. More lecture-writing, and hopefully a swim. I'll also keep an eye on Ed Miliband's speech. I'll tell you a secret: I voted for Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election. I wanted to vote for John McDonnell because he's a socialist, but he didn't get enough nominations to be on the ballot paper. I saw David Miliband as mini-Blair: he's got blood on his hands through his time in the Cabinet, and his subsequent life which involves him making principled speeches to political groups while taking fees from a range of repressive governments confirms me in my opinion that he's just another apparatchik of real-politik and neoliberal business as usual. Electable, perhaps, but what's the point of that if the result is continued injustice, political cowardice and intellectual limitation.

I don't see Ed Miliband as some kind of leftwing hero either, but I do think he's fundamentally decent, understands what the challenging issues are, and generally tends towards the right thing. I've met him too. He's a bit goofy but he's refreshingly uninterested in being slick. It's not caring about stuff like that which will make him immune to the ridicule. I'm actually looking forward to a geeky Prime Minister. Those who set themselves up as globe-trotting Maximum Leaders find themselves invading places just to maintain the image of decisiveness and masculinity. It might not suit the news agenda, but I'd quite like a PM who'll openly say that issues are complicated, need thought and might not lead to clear outcomes. Government's difficult and complex: distrust those who would reduce it to simple choices. If you haven't noticed, this is the Age of the Geek: Dawkins, Goldacre, Cox and Co.

No doubt Ed will tack with the wind from the Daily Mail and the pollsters when the time comes. He'll disappoint - of course. But I still think I voted the right way.

2018 - A Review

I don't always sit around in my pants shouting at the TV. Sometimes I read books. When nobody's looking, I read stuff most of my colleagues would dismiss as trash. Except Mark. He has 15,000 pulp novels in his house. So jealous.

The other day I picked this one up very cheaply.

I bought it because a) it's by James Blish who is rather interesting; b) I can't resist books which pick a specific date in the future and c) I liked the cover.

Turns out that it is an interesting book after all. It was published in 1957, and was also known as They Shall Have Stars. Blish was a highly trained biologist who worked in the pharmaceutical industry and also for the Tobacco Institute. Due to Cosmic Justice, he died of lung cancer, but not before publishing a wheelbarrow load of Star Trek novelisations, the Cities in Flight masterpieces and many, many other novels.

Year 2018! is much more than a pulp novel. It's not very well-written, to be honest. I assumed Blish was a British author trying to sound American, given the mish-mash of British terms scattered throughout the novel's otherwise cowboy-hero discourse, but no, he was American so that doesn't explain it. The plot doesn't really hang together - it's a book which wants to communicate a couple of ideas rather than tell a story - and the characterisation is barely more sophisticated than charcoal stick men on a cave wall.

However, the book is interesting in other ways. Primarily, it expresses very clear contempt for Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist witch-hunts - pretty brave in 1957. I don't know if the American edition was more cautious, or whether pulp SF was below the radar of the security state and therefore free to say what it wanted. By 2018, the US is indistinguishable from the Soviets: repressive, security obsessed and moribund. The security state ensures that free-thinking politicians and scientists are hunted down, so that scientific and social development is impossible. The Soviets will soon take over Earth - not that life will change very much - but (and this is where the plot comes in), it turns out that 'Pfitzner' (Blish was employed by Pfizer) has developed an immortality pill.

Blish is pretty happy to accept that Earth's political systems will be wrecked by the development. But there's a solution! Thanks to the subversive activities of a Senator who understands the value of research science for its own sake (now there's a bit of real fantasy), the Americans have also developed an anti-gravity drive ('spindizzy') which enables intergalactic colonisation when allied to the immortality pill. All this is bundled up with the construction and decay of a massive pointless Bridge on Jupiter (yes, in 2018) which exists as the space version of Moby Dick in, well, Moby Dick - they build it because they (just about) can.

So off they go… but if you're thinking that this ends up being yet more Into the American West in space, you'd be mistaken: the chronology at the end depicts a future in which humanity eventually becomes enfolded into a higher race's universal civilisation: Blish's concerns are science, reason, skepticism and a fairly healthy degree of cynicism about human society.

OK: next book up is probably Claire Kilroy's satire of the Irish Celtic Tiger. Very little scientific fantasy, a lot more people saying 'fock', 'howya' and 'story, bud?'. Probably.

"We Proudly Serve". Ugh

That's the slogan in my building's coffee outlet. It's accompanied by the logo of a well-known American firm, though interestingly the name doesn't appear anywhere other than on the copyright notice printed on the piece of cardboard that's meant to stop you burning your hands on the cup.

So somebody's more 'ashamed' than 'proud'. Which is curious in itself.

But the phrase itself is curious. 'We Proudly Serve'. It's vaguely militarist of course - I could imagine the Marine Corps adopting it. Serve is ambiguous: it means at once to furnish us with a particular brand of coffee, but also forces the workers and franchisee to smile through gritted teeth as they become the bonded labourers of coffee capitalism.

It's part of a new phase of capitalism too. Remember the 'choice' agenda? It moved from the service industries into public services. We're told that 'choice' will now ensure good schools and hospitals rather than concentrating on making all of them good. Instead, Virgin and Serco will compete to give you a choice of straitjackets and catheters, just when you may be wishing you could just dial 999 and go to the nearest hospital.

Conversely, business has rediscovered what governments are abandoning: monopolies. 'We Proudly Serve' is part of a re-branding of monopoly. This summer, thanks to a commercial deal, only Visa card holders could buy Olympic tickets. Once at the venues, the cash points were covered in decals reading 'We Are Proud To Accept Only Visa' and the shops refused all other cards. Rather than the rhetoric of choice covering the grim reality, the single word 'Proud' now works as two fingers up to the consumer. Use our product or get out. It shows us exactly how valued we are as customers, of course: 'proud' is just an extra little insult that reminds us that our wishes are at the very bottom of the list.

It's humiliating for the workers too. I suspect the Olympics shop workers were on the minimum wage or near. Our catering staff are on zero-hours, low-pay contracts. They don't, quite frankly, give a shit about branding. Why should they be 'proud' to serve one particular corporate behemoth's product? Why, come to think of it, are we 'branding' our café at all. Why not have some self-pride and name it 'Hegemon University Café' rather than importing some second-hand glamour from GloboCorp?

Anyway, back to work at my university. Motto: 'a university to be proud of'. Though every time I see it I mutter 'a university of which to be proud'.

Monstrous Monday

Morning everybody. Lots to do today in my new guise as a fully-functioning researching and teaching machine. Ahem. Never mind that both this morning's dissertation supervision students are late for their appointments…

The plan for the day is a) finishing taking notes on Alan Plater's Beiderbecke trilogy for a joint paper. Done! Then I'm going to be reading more on nineteenth-century travel writing for a paper I'm doing on George Borrow and O M Edwards - must stop reading and start writing at some point. I'm also teaching Media, Culture and Society, though it's tempting to think that one new concept is probably enough for some of these students. I also have to contact all my union members, organise a class trip to a reading which may or may not collide with some visiting speakers, and and and there's definitely something else, but at this point my brain is leaking out onto my corduroy shoulders so, you know, whatever.

However, I do recall the weekend with some clarity, which for me is quite an achievement. Firstly, the nearest (in age, of five) sibling got married in New Zealand. I'm assured by text messages that everything went ahead so congratulations to them both. Secondly, I went to a concert by the magnificent CBSO in Symphony Hall. On the programme was some Weber (fun short overture), Bruch's First Violin Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. The Bruch was glorious 19th-century virtuoso stuff - new to me as I tend towards the 20th century, but lovely.

Here's Yossif Ivanov, the soloist. His playing was magnificent, and the tone of his 1699 Stradivarius (the Lady Tennant) was just stunning. Though I have to say that when he turned up with a goatee, a Mao shirt and long waistcoat, I was strongly reminded of Little Britain's deluded hypnotist ('look into the eyes, not around the eyes, into the eyes; and you're under').

Then after the interval was the much more substantial Tchaikovsky - aside from a slightly drifting third movement, it was stunning: powerful, moving and beautifully played.

Here's Joshua Bell playing the Bruch:



and the Bolivar Orchestra playing the fourth movement of the Tchaikovsky:

Nuptials

Over the sea, where the hobbits grow, one of my sisters marries tomorrow. I won't be there - devotion to my students (they look at you with those big soft eyes and you'd swear they understand every word you say) and an air ticket price of £4000 keeps me here in the Midlands. Besides, what could I find to blog about down in New Zealand? Mountains? Clean air? Rugby? Bah!

I've been to the weddings of two sisters and a brother already, and there's one more held in reserve, so I know how these things work. And yet, I'm rather sad I'm not there, if only to warn the unfortunate chap. All my sisters are rather fiery, and all choose quiet likeable husbands. And in any case, I didn't find out she'd emigrated until she didn't turn up to Christmas lunch… six months later. 

Instead of the festivities, I'm off to a Bruch concert, which should be magnificent. See you all on Monday. 

Shapps Fell…

Update for new readers: further developments can be found here. 

(OK, that may be one of my weakest puns ever. And therefore one of my favourites).

You may recall that I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about Grant Shapps MP posing as 'Michael Green' and/or 'Sebastian Fox' to flog dubious and potentially illegal business guides, software and SEO scripts. After a bit of digging, I decided that the enthusiastic endorsements by happy customers of HowToCorp might be just as fictional as Grant's alter egos.

I have a reply from the ASA. They're going to conduct a proper investigation. This might be a little uncomfortable for Shapps and his wife Belinda. They will have to demonstrate the existence of Fox, Green and the endorsers… which might be a tad difficult. Here's the text (click to enlarge):

Be A Dictator

I'm currently transcribing useful quotes from Alan Plater's Beiderbecke Trilogy for a paper on representations of jazz in popular fiction - including John Crace's All That Follows and Jackie Kay's Trumpet.

I'm trying to use the new dictation software built into Apple's Mountain Lion software. I don't know if it's my weird voice, nasal tones or mixed-up accent, but the results are, well, mixed. Take this sentence:

The sound of Beiderbecke’s plain comet Barnstable near understrapper was given iPhone a conducted tour of his record child

It's like having a computer designed by James Joyce. The actual sentence is:

The sound of Beiderbecke's plaintive cornet danced upon the air and Trevor was giving Ivan a conducted tour of his record shelves.

Bloody thing. It recognises 'Beiderbecke' but not 'Trevor'? Anyone else having problems with it?

Smilin' Sid has something to say

Morning everybody (well, it's morning here and how I wish it wasn't). You may have noticed that my blogging has declined from last year's high of about four posts a day to one or two. Is he losing his touch, commentators are asking? Perhaps I am. Or perhaps this course of compulsory psychiatric therapy has soothed my inner demons, resulting in less rage to go round. It might, of course, be that I have so much work to do and so little time. Or a combination of all three. But hopefully I'll find an equilibrium of fewer, higher quality posts (note the importance of that comma).

On today's agenda: actually do some research; see some new students; write some lectures; go to another high level meeting as part of my union casework to be told that The Hegemon's senior staff can behave as viciously as they like. Bullying isn't minuted. Anything un-minuted hasn't happened. Therefore bullying doesn't happen. At least, that's the result of the last investigation I instigated. Then my member gets frustrated at the union's impotence and another bit of hope dies. This kind of misery is what gets the Tories up in the morning, but it's no fun for me seeing grown men and women weep.

Anyway, what else is going on? Well, I read a rather wonderful book yesterday, Shogan's The Battle of Blair Mountain. It's the story of the West Virginia miners and their union in the 1919-1921 period. Many of them fought in the First World War and came back demanding union recognition and fair wages. What they got was state corruption, Federal hostility and martial law. Highlights include gun massacres by private detectives, assassinations, 10,000 shots exchanged between miners and mine guard in a single day, the US Army Air Corps bombing miners from the skies, armoured trains raking tent cities with machine gun fire, imprisonment without trial for reading particular newspapers, bribery of judges, the suspension of habeas corpus, treason trials, and in the end, a state civil war.

The miners lost, as did working-class politics and the left in general, making the United States a safe place for vicious exploitation, as it is now. West Virginia is still a mining state, and a poisonous one. The favoured technique is 'mountain top removal', which employs massive amounts of explosives to do exactly that. The environment is fouled by the mining and the coal-burning, but the companies still own the state and its politicians, while the miners have been persuaded that any mitigation is an attack on their jobs: from revolutionaries then are descended reactionaries now.

We tend to forget that the American Dream's individualism isn't eternal: there have been mass movements and class movements throughout that great country's history, from the Farm Labor parties to Chicago's socialists and anarchists - massacred on May Day, the General Motors rebellion, the Jewish socialists of New York, the Socialists and Communists of Minnesota, the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania and Mother Jones (from Cork!) across the country, Chavez's United Farm Workers, to say nothing of the abolitionist and African-American movements and parties.

Smilin' Sid Hatfield

Here's a key scene from John Sayles's film of the Blair Mountain story, Matewan. The Sheriff is Smilin' Sid Hatfield, who defended the miners from the company goons - he was eventually assassinated on the steps of the courthouse by private detectives who then planted a gun on him and escaped conviction. The United Mine Workers also made a silent movie called Smilin' Sid, which was pretty advanced PR< but the only copy was apparently stolen from the National Archives.



I wouldn't claim that my union work is quite as heroic as these men and women - but it reminds me of what our political enemies would like to see: workers' solidarity smashed, workers' protection abolished, individualism reigning.

Know Thy Place

You may remember that I posted a piece deconstructing a job advert for A. C. Grayling's New College for the Humanities, the £18,000 per year institution staffed (now and then) by Celebrity Academics what you may have seen on TV, and by exploited, underpaid hourly staff.

Then I read this astonishingly good piece on NCH by Historian on the Edge, who is rather an academic star, unlike me.

Cue some rather unhinged abuse by Suzannah Lipscombe, who lists 'broadcaster' before 'academic' in her Twitter CV and rather sadly terms herself '@sixteenthcgirl', now one of the academic butlers to the 60 young lords and ladies who've entered the hallowed portals of NCH, and by @Happy_Glorious: not someone with a critical view of British imperialism, then. NCH will be teaching from The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson's triumphalist, reductive and error-strewn 'history' book and TV series. So you just know that it's going to be at the cutting edge of historiography. @Happy_Glorious describes her interests as 'history and trivia'. Though a glance at her output suggests that she has trouble telling them apart.

So I'm quite glad that they think Historian, my friend @Bad_Ambassador and I are 'bigoted', 'nasty' and 'moronic', 'ludicrously uninformed', 'stupid' and incapable of 'real research' for critiquing NCH (which @Happy_Glorious describes as 'something good').

So to be clear: The New College of the Humanities is a reactionary, outdated, private-equity funded bastion of snobbery and washed-up academic approaches with TV stars on the banners and underpaid toilers in the class rooms. It is a finishing school for rich people who want their world-views reinforced rather than challenged. It deliberately excludes the knowledge-hungry poor and its imminent failure is going to be very satisfying indeed.

I wasn't going to be so rude, but they started handing out the insults first!

The Romneyshambles

So much of American politics depresses me. I see a Democratic President whose symbolism doesn't quite make up for the fact that his policies would be considered absurdly rightwing in Europe being pilloried as a 'socialist' by a Republican party that's far removed from its foundation by Abraham Lincoln and friends to assault slavery.

Willard Mitt Romney isn't just a cold, calculating plutocrat whose only aim is to capture the US Government for his class (as if it wasn't already in their hands: 80% of Representatives and Senators are millionaires), but an incompetent hypocrite. He receives tax breaks for a dressage horse which competed in the Olympics (like him, it lost). He's building a massive new 8th house (probably, I lost count) with a car elevator. While demanding 'American jobs', his business specialised in exporting jobs overseas and closing American factories, and he opposed government bail-outs for America's auto industry.

As this Democrat ad points out, while Romney was declaring that 'my job is not to care' about the 47% of Americans too poor to pay income tax - though they pay a lot of state, property and sales taxes - he has reduced his tax bill from the official 35% top rate to about 14%, and keeps his money in a surprising number of countries which aren't the United States of America. No wonder he won't show the American public his records.



Here's a chilling thought for you. When John McCain considered Romney as his vice-presidential running mate, he saw 23 years of Romney's tax returns. He then promptly chose Sarah Palin as his candidate instead. I really think Americans deserve to see what scared off John McCain

Ambush of the week

Dave Hartnett was until a few days ago the head of HRMC, the government's tax collectors. Creatively - thinking outside the box, one might say - he saw it as his job not to collect tax, but to allow major corporations such as Vodafone and Goldman Sachs to avoid paying tax. Illegally, as Private Eye's long-running investigation shows.

Dave's corporate mates wanted to thank him for his long years of service, with a slap-up feed at an Oxford college (they're for hire): bow ties, candles, champers. Cue UK Uncut with a lovely ambush and some delightful replies from the assorted tycoons ('we'll set the dogs on you', 'scum').

Enjoy.

Talking of Plebs, here's the New College of the Humanities

You may have heard of the New College of the Humanities. It's the £18,000 per year private college which has hired a lot of very famous, greedy celebrity academics to fly in now and then and tend to the demands of those rich students who either won't or can't mix with the hoi polloi of more proletarian institutions such as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Exeter and the like. If you think £18,000 is a lot, bear in mind that it's about half the cost of the kind of public school attended by these kids. It's a discount for them, and it keeps out the oiks. And anyway, airport academics cost a lot of money.

Also: the college doesn't award degrees. What you'll get is access to the University of London's degrees via external student status, which costs money. 

So the big question is: who's going to do the teaching? Will it be Richard Dawkins, David Cannadine, Linda Colley, Niall Ferguson, Steve Jones, Christopher Pinker and the other gruesome pseudo-liberals who've found that actually they would like to end their careers at a finishing school? Don't you believe it. NCH has fallen back on that tried and tested way to sweat their assets: exploitation and outsourcing. 

For instance, try this job ad for a teacher of English language. 

Salary: Hourly rate dependent on qualifications and experience  

So: no agreed rate for the job because NCH doesn't hold with any of that national pay bargaining, trades union nonsense. No, the employee must pit her/his individual labour against a private-equity company and come to some kind of agreement. Security of tenure? Dear me, no: such old thinking:

Contract type: Fixed

Well, at least the employee will be paid handsomely to devote some of his or her time to  the research which keeps teaching relevant and outstanding?

Contract term: 7th January – 22nd March 2013

Well, not exactly. You're paid by the hour just for your teaching, and as soon as term finishes, you're out of the door. Maybe we'll hire you again in September and expect you to have new material prepared, but between March and September you can sign on. After all, Ferguson, Cannadine et al. cost a lot of money, and economies must be made somewhere. 

But Vole, hold your horses! What's this?

While this appointment is fixed term, there is a strong possibility that should the appointee prove satisfactory, she or he will be offered a permanent full-time position starting in the academic year 2013-14.

Ooh, a 'strong possibility'! With that kind of security, I'll put down the deposit on that second Bentley! Who needs collective agreements anyway? So, what does a hungry academic have to do to qualify for this three month hourly-paid position?

An established research record, publications record and evidence of potential for producing distinguished research within the field of English are essential. You will combine this with excellent communication, presentation, organisational and interpersonal skills as well as sympathy for the aims of the College and the ability and willingness to both assist in its collegiate life and undertake pastoral responsibilities.

During the Hilary Term you will give two lectures per week on the course ‘Introduction to English Language’, which is part of the University of London International Programme BA in English Literature. This course introduces students to basic concepts in the study of the English language, linguistics, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. O 

So despite being paid only for 20 hours' teaching with no security, NCH is looking for someone with a great deal of experience, an enviable publications record, prominent standing in the academic community and ('presentation') a neat haircut. You'll have to be a cheerleader for the college's noble mission of reserving quality education for the ultra-privileged and accept that while they want research, they have no intention of paying you to produce any. Oh, and you have to wipe the poor darlings' bottoms and occasionally stand bail (I've read P. G. Wodehouse: I know what 'pastoral responsibilities' means in these circles). If you don't know what 'Hilary Term' is, you're an Oik and won't get the job. 

Worried that the teaching encompasses virtually every area of linguistics, and yet they want highly-distinguished researcher to cover all these very wide bases? There's more!

Preference may be given to those candidates able to teach sociolinguistics, and/or the literature of the later Middle Ages.

Riiiggggghhhhhtttttt. They don't just want a recognised expert in English linguistics. They want one who dabbles in Medieval Literature too! Because they always go together… unless they've a specific candidate in mind already. Surely not!

Mind you, they probably need an English generalist, if only to check their spelling:

Teaching expertise in medieaval literature 

I can tell you're all desperate to polish your CVs and get up that academic chimney. Plebs of the Academic World: Know Your Place!

The Pathetic Fallacy

'It was a dark and stormy night'. The wind-lashed heath (King Lear). 

This is the Pathetic Fallacy, according to John Ruskin:

 Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke—  

They rowed in across the rolling foam– 

The cruel, crawling foam.

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'Pathetic Fallacy'.

In short, the Pathetic Fallacy is the use of external objects or systems, such as the weather, to reflect on the emotional conditions of protagonists. I mention it only because this is the first day of teaching here at the Hegemon, and the weather is atrocious. It's grey, wet, cold and windy. The joy of a full year of intellectual discovery is somewhat overshadowed by the odorous steam rising from the ranks of students and staff sitting in their chafing, sodden clothes. 

Personally I love this kind of weather, but only when I'm out tramping the moors. Instead, I'm inside, trying to avoid the next job: recording a video message for my sister's wedding in New Zealand next week. An enjoyable task, of course, were I not cursed with a face like a gibbous moon and the kind of voice which makes John Major sound mellifluous. 

How was your weekend? I went to the Shropshire Open fencing competition, mostly because it's local and I'm one of the organisers. Buoyed by a surprising 3rd place at the Keele Open a while back, I hoped for a decent result. Hope evaporated about 30 seconds after arriving, when the entry list was revealed to consist of a) bright young international fencers b) top fencers coming out of retirement and c) me. My first two fights were against internationals and I lost them 5-4. Then I beat somebody I'd taken a strong dislike to at the Olympics, as well as one other fencer which was heartening, before losing unexpectedly to another guy. That gave me a bad ranking for the second round and I came up against the 5th and 8th seeds… only 2 victories in that pool, leading to a 15-11 defeat against one of the top seeds in the direct elimination round. 

Disappointing, especially when the bruises and strains began to show the next day. Mostly I lost because the better fencers had a wider repertoire of moves and adapted to my style quicker than I did to theirs. A little bit of me wishes I had the gall to harangue referees whenever they get it wrong or simply disagree with me, ululate at every point and change my weapons whenever my opponent scores - but I'm just not that type, nor do I have the desperate need to win which drives them. Anyway, I had a good time and picked up lots of ideas about how to improve. Good samosas too!