Operator? There's a problem with my line.

Vodafone: they're not listening

Things Vodafone wants and which the state funds through taxation:

An educated workforce

A legal system for enforcing bill payment

 A telecommunications infrastructure

A distribution network to ensure that when you decide your phone is a month too old, you can get a new one on the spot

A healthcare system to keep employees and customers alive and texting. It even asks no questions when Vodafone users 'fall' on their phones while doing naked DIY and find the said phone lodged somewhere intimate. 

A benefits system which subsidises Vodafone employees' low pay. 

The advanced technology training required to design and build a satellite and computer-based technology which enables you to view grainy pornography from anywhere in the country (except my flat in a populous central city).

A Foreign Office and Business Office which makes damn sure those pesky Congolese don't start asking for salaries and masks while mining the precious metals required.

Amount Vodafone made in profit from UK operations this year:

£1.3,000,000,000 

Amount Vodafone pays in corporation tax to fund all these things:

£0.0

CEO's salary:

£14,000,000

Cuts to public services this year:

Disabled children's support

SureStart

School Building

NHS infrastructure and staffing

Policing

Armed services

Environmental protection

Tax collectors

Youth services

Employment service

Higher Education

and many more

Thanks to Vodafone and their friends, we will become poorer, sicker and thicker. Then they'll complain that their sales are down and the UK is an unstable market. At no point will they wonder whether they've contributed to this state of affairs at all. 

Obviously it's not just Vodafone amongst telecom firms, or business in general: Tesco are the biggest thieves. But as I have a Vodafone contract, they make me angriest. 

Triumph

What a wonderful weekend. I spent it at Trentham Gardens, on an intensive, challenging but hugely enjoyable photography day. Armed with my trusty D7000, 50mm f/1/8, an 18-55, 70-200 and rather crappy Sigma 70-300, I turned up prepared to be dazzled. Trained professionals and animal handlers coached us in the finer points of the art of animal photography, and we all came away with a portfolio of which to be proud.

… Is what I wanted to be writing this morning. But for the fourth time, my birthday present from 11 months ago was cancelled and now I've given up. This time it was the weather (which turned out OK, but the cancellation was decided on Thursday), and previous occasions were called off due to low numbers.

As it happens, I had rather an excellent weekend: great company, huge amounts of reading and a day in the countryside visiting my dear old ma. Culturally, Radio 4's 7 hour dramatisation of Joyce's Ulysses, interspersed with learned commentary from Mark Lawson and friends, was a sublime experience. The acting was uniformly magnificent, the cuts judicious (the full version takes about 29 hours) and the writing, of course, was the height of literary perception. If you haven't read it, do. But not in one go - that's not how it works.

Plan for the day: I was meant to be at my annual appraisal, but my boss isn't here. I assume that means he's realised that I am academic perfection incarnated and appraisal would be an insult. Default victory to me, Plashing Vole lives to brainwash, propagandise (did you know Propaganda was originally the Vatican's missionary wing, catering for non-Catholic countries such as Britain?) and mislead for another year. Woo! And indeed Hoo!

Update: just had my appraisal. Got to write more articles… but I knew that already. Very supportive and friendly discussion. The system works!

A novel experience

Over at Tales from the Reading Room, they're discussing the relationship between psychoanalysis and reading (books have a subconscious, and the relationship between the reader and the text is psychologically flawed): you don't have to accept Freudian or other psychological claims to recognise that literary analysis and psychological analysis can follow very similar paths.

One of the books mentioned is Peter Brooks' Reading for the Plot, and wonderful book which heavily influenced me, and which I always recommend to students, alongside Rimon-Kenan's Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Fish's Is There A Text In This Class? and Suleiman's Authoritarian Fictions.

Mrs. Litlove summarises Brooks' position thus:

akin to the Freudian fort-da game. Freud noticed his grandchild in his pram playing with a toy which he threw away from him, with the cry of ‘Fort!’, and then pulled back with the word ‘Da!’. Freud believed that in this way, the child was symbolically coming to terms with the absence of the mother. He could invest the toy with emotions towards the mother and make it go away (fort) and then bring it back at will (da), thus mastering the discomfort and anxiety he felt at the prospect of separation. Peter Brooks believed that plot worked in the same way. At the start of a novel, a problem is posed, something – truth, meaning – is posited as missing, and the plot works to resolve the enigma or the absence. We accept that our sense of significance (‘What does it all mean?’) will go away from us for a time, in the safe knowledge that it will be returned to us in a satisfying way at the end of the book.

In short, the act of reading is both a risky and a confident venture. The reader outsources autonomy to the absent author, trusting him or her to guide her towards something significant. This seems a little goal-oriented to me, but we'll press on for now (ironically, of course). With formulaic fiction, the problem is simple: whodunnit, or will he marry her and so on. The nature of the solution tells you a lot about the author's ideology, and that of the literary market which got the text to you. With the stuff we like to call 'literature', the problem might be more abstract - human nature, for instance. With what I consider literature, the 'problem' might be either unresolved and unresolvable, or permanently absent: the meaning might reside solely in the reading experience, with the denial of resolution a demonstration of this residual meaning.

(In passing: do we need to 'trust' the authors? Isn't a suspicious or a 'go on, impress me' reading equally acceptable? Is the author even there to be trusted? We all know now that the text is merely the physical signifier of a cultural network: author-publisher-marketer-consumer/reader. Are we trusting the author or are we testing our own judgement? I buy most of my own books, according to some semi-conscious criteria. Reading might be an aspirational act, or a performative one, a way of joining the 'group of people who read books like these'. It may represent an attempt to placate one's 'better' self, or indulge one's earthier side - if we are indeed divided between conscious and subconscious as Freud felt).

Handing over this interpretive control isn't something to do lightly. I know a book isn't working for me when I find myself checking the synopsis on the flyleaf or back cover to compare it with my reading experience so far. Sometimes it's a bad synopsis. Sometimes their emphasis - for sales purposes - is misleading (like the Sweeney Todd trailer which never quite found the space to mention that the film is a musical). Sometimes it betrays my insecurity, lack of trust or moronic goal-oriented consumption: when's the action going to happen? When do they do it? How do they catch him? 

If you - or the author or the marketers - have misinterpreted the nature of the text, you might feel cheated by the lack of neat ending in some texts. This feels wrong. We've all been led to believe by narrative that life has a beginning, a middle and an end. Justice will prevail. People will learn to be nicer to each other. They all live happily ever after. Death-bed repentance and forgiveness. All becomes clear. 

Sorry. All untrue. They're just the stories we tell each other to make the space between birth and death seem significant. Top marks for making the attempt, but wrong. Which is a very roundabout way (as seems fitting) to point out that tomorrow is Bloom's Day, on which we pay tribute to a novel - for want of a better word - which rejects such comforting fabrications in favour of a rambling (though carefully constructed) voyage through the consciousness of several people, a city and a culture. Underpinned with a curious structure but bursting with vitality, it's the ultimate novel in Brooks' sense: you can only surrender to it and hope that meaning emerges somehow. 

However, Ulysses also challenges Brooks' narrative: the book resists consumption - few people finish it, and it's almost unreadable in a conventional sense. Furthermore, texts don't yield up meaning if you put enough effort and faith in. They reveal - if they're any good - multiple meanings, both simultaneously and when you re-read them. The words stay the same but you change: meaning isn't in the book, it's produced with the book. Ulysses is the ultimate test of this, but even the glossiest, dumbest book in the airport concession should seem different (better, worse, or a host of ways) if you should ever go back to it. Though that's the last thing their authors want. If you accept that plot resolution is all that matters, you'll buy another one, rather than have another, more critical, go at the same one. (Actually, that's too harsh: like Brooks, I agree that there's nothing wrong with 'reading for the plot' - but there's always more). 

Anyway, enjoy Bloom's Day. Then see what effect all this has on your Andy McNabs and Jeremy Clarkson's. 

If I was thinner, taller, braver

Were I not a short fat bloke who reads books for a living, I'd be out there with these men and women. In an era when organised sport - particularly Tour cycling - is both sanitised by corporate interests and devoid of integrity as competitors pushed by sponsorship and commerce fuel themselves with ever more esoteric (and dangerous) drugs, underground, amateur sport is the only place you can find the rawest, purest form of competition, unadulterated by owners, TV, sponsors and greed. No procession of support cars, no motorcycle vanguard, no cleared roads or scantily-clad sex-objects. Just speed and danger.

Thine appraisal is now due.

University of CAMBRIDGE

  

Self Appraisal - Strictly Confidential on Pain of Drawing and Quartering 

                                       Appraisee: NEWTON, ISAAC

                                   

                                       Appraiser: PROFESSOR CHRONOTIS

                                              School/Dept: ALCHEMY, THEOLOGY AND APPLIED     NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

                                       Interview Date: 18^th June 1687

Guidance Notes for Completion of the Self Appraisal

The purpose of this document is for you to highlight the issues you wish to discuss in your appraisal. It need only be very brief - bullet points and brief comments will be sufficient. The detail will be discussed in your appraisal interview. Your Self-Appraisal must contain the following:

    Performance:

This yeare, I once againe completed manny Ingenious and Bold Experimentations. My Alchemical Researches are proceeding with Alacrity and with the Aide of an Grant from ye ESPRC, the Great Work will reach fruition before ye Year of Our Lorde 1688, in time for ye Grand Inquisition of Out-Putte.

It is True that I have notte published an Booke since mine Letters on Opticks (1676), yet God Willing, Principia Mathematica (Jussu Societatis Regiae ac Typis Josephi Streater. Prostat apud plures Bibliopolas, London) and ‘Certaine Calculations of ye Size and Disposition of Solomon’s Temple, With Additional Remarks on ye Harmonisation of Godly and Herettical Calenders’ may be at the Press of within an Yeare.

I do Confess and Shrive my self for my most Lamentable Failure to attend an single colloquy of ye College Quality Committee, ye People Stratagems Workstream III Committee, and ye Dominie-Pupil Open Forum.

Mine working Conditions deteriorate annually. No fewer than IV amanuenses did Expire of ye Dropsy since mine last Appraisal, and ye absence of Computational Contrivances lead to mine Failure to provide ye compulsory Blended Learning Entitlement. Additionally, I required Solitude and Galenic Attention for ye start of ye Academic Semester following a Grevious yet Interesting Injury accorded to my Person by an Apple Descending From ye Heavens unto mine Cranium. Ye Occupational Health Chamberlain hath Forbidden me from under-taking any more Work in ye Field for fright at further Injury.

I do Regret ye failure to demonstrate Impact of mine Experimentations in ye academic yeare. Should mine Labours on Gravity, Opticks and Fluxions fail to attract ye Approbation of ye Peasantry, I will accept ye Voluntary Redundancy to make room for an Younger and Sexier Experimenter to whom ye Tattle-Sheets, Mummer-Shows and Chap-Books shall devote Time and Space. Such as ye Fop Cox and that damn'd Simpering Worsley. 

Please give your Self Appraisal to your appraiser at least two weeks in advance of your appraisal interview.

                                       Signature: Isaac Newton, his hand

                                       Given this Day, 15^th June 1687 anno domino

Appraiser's Comments: 

While Mr Newton's efforts in the fields of Alchemy and Biblical Geometry are rated 4* and are to be commended, once again we cannot recommend awarding Tenure nor promotion, due to his unseemly, Heretical and fruitless obsession with 'Gravitation'. He appears to believe that one or two books over the course of his career will be sufficient to secure his reputation. This arrogant and self-centred attitude betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the current funding arrangements, in which regular publication in reputable journals is far more important than so-called 'breakthroughs'. Mr. Newton's insistence that his output is comprehensible only by Mr Leibniz is unacceptable, as we have ascertained that 'Choco' spends most of his time inventing something called a 'biscuit'. 


His apple-related injury has led to many acrimonious disputes, supported by his Union caseworker, resulting in a period in the Dungeon for the pair of them. Mr. Newton is not a team player, as his repeated refusal to attend committees demonstrates. His attitude towards impact and the public diffusion of his work is Lamentable: he insists on publishing in Latin, despite the long-overdue abolition of our Department of Barbarian Tongues. His pursuit of abstract and in-applicable Experimentations, and neglect of Applied Natural Philosophy which will aid Men of Business (such as his Alchemical researches) demonstrates a Fundamental refusal to accord with ye Spirit of ye Age. Should Mr. Newton's attitude not improve by the next Semester, we recommend Racking and a Course of Leeches. 

  

Hail Lycerius, General Secretary of the World

Lycerius, you may have heard on the radio or other media, has been playing the same game of Civilization II for ten whole years (or several thousand years in-game time). He is now far into a dystopian future in which the ravaged earth is divided between his Communist dictatorship and two other aggressive empires.

The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation.
There are 3 remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.

 big cities are a thing of the distant past. Roughly 90% of the worlds population (at it's peak 2000 years ago) has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm. Engineers (late game worker units) are always busy continuously building roads so that new armies can reach the front lines. Roads that are destroyed the very next turn when the enemy goes. So there isn't any time to clear swamps or clean up the nuclear fallout. 

And of course the UN is no good at all at peace-keeping. Fascinating how one man's game pretty much mimics what I think is happening to us. Perhaps less war in our future, but the reckless destruction of the globe is very much around the corner.

Hearing this story warmed the very cockles of my heart in a way that hasn't happened since I last saw a child fall over. Civilization II was both the core of my being and the darkest moments of my student life many years ago. To that game I owe my status as an Apple Macintosh user - because Civilisation II didn't exist on Macs and I wanted my life back.

Imagine the scene. A scummy shared student house in rainy North Wales. A ground floor room packed with books and quite possible the worst PC ever made, the Time PII 8.4Gb piece of beige shit. I bought it to start my MA (everything was hand-written on my BA) and after a few months of getting it fixed (a courier told me he kept his family fed on carting broken TIME PCs around), I bought the computer game I'd seen the big boys playing in the students' union media office. I was transfixed: a game which allows you to macro- and micromanage an entire planet. Nerd heaven.

Sadly, I sucked at the game. Not my fault, you understand. Capitalism's fault. The game-play is clearly ideologically rigged to prevent players succeeding by running a peaceable, green, communist regime. This is clearly where it departs from the real world, as I intend to demonstrate just as soon as I can get you bastards in the camps and rebuild the world according to me. I loved Civilization II (and very much didn't love Civ III or Alpha Centauri), but became very, very frustrated with this political bias. So I played it less and less. However, my friend Richard - an addictive personality - really took to it. Not having a computer of his own, he basically moved into my room. 'Just one more go' was his catchphrase - usually uttered at 6 a.m. as I begged him to go home so I could get a couple of hours' sleep before going to university. At one point, I recall being quite ill and deliriously watching him removed the PC, screen, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc etc so that he could carry on playing without becoming infected. At no point did it cross his mind to make me a cup of tea or Marmite on toast, or even check that I was still alive. This is the kind of thing we had to do in those days, before blogging, Facebook and Twitter, you know.

Gradually it became clear that the only way to ever sleep - or work - again was to dump the PC. I also had a little problem with Minesweeper too. I never bothered with speed, but concentrated on adding more and more mines to successfully clear. Someone told me that Macs didn't have any games, so my mind was made up. Soon enough, the university chucked 50 Mac IISe machines into a skip and I got hold of one (curiously enough, it contained the membership list of an Edinburgh Freemasons' Lodge) and my problems were over (and I rarely saw Resentful Richard again). Although there's a Mac version of the new Civ… many times I've been tempted to buy it. No doubt Civ II seems hilariously archaic compared to the stuff you young chaps and chapesses run: little video, no prostitution or murder, blocky graphics, lots of statistics and little gore… but it was and I suspect still is, compelling.

I salute Lycerius. I'm amazed he's still able to run it on whatever ancient machine it's compatible with, I admire his patience, his dedication and his optimism. One day - with the help of the Redditors - he'll achieve his goal of world domination. Rather scarily given the past few years, their collective wisdom recommends turning to Fundamentalism as a system of government and smiting everyone in reach.

And then he'll step blinking into the sunshine, wondering what on earth he can do with the rest of his life.

Buy something, or you're nicked

Every time I open the newspaper, I see something prefigured in the science fiction of Jeff Noon, William Gibson or Ken MacLeod. We're not going to be travelling to other galaxies or going back in time, but we are gradually building a kind of corporate dystopia, a la Gattaca, Bladerunner, Robocop most explicitly and similar texts.



The future won't feel like Robocop. You personally might not be manhandled by brutal corpocops. But you're probably not mentally unwell, young or black. The streets will be clean and there won't be any raised voices. But the near future is becoming dystopian in a far more insidious way. It might seem innocuous, but the deployment of 100 militaristic security officers on the streets of Manchester is a further step away from the perfectly reasonable expectation that as citizens, we have the freedom to walk the streets and the expectation that should we commit crimes, we are arrested by public servants and tried by our peers.

These ex-police officers patrolling the shopping areas of Manchester will look like officers - they'll be wearing stab vests, and carrying radios and cameras. The company which employs them is even negotiation to get them the authority to levy fines on people for minor offences.

Think about that for a second. Despite the numerous examples of police brutality and corruption available, the police service is employed by us and is accountable to us through the courts, local authorities and parliament. We pay them extremely well and expect them to protect us. These cut-price cops won't have any requirement to prevent crimes against us, or against the public sphere. Low-paid and responsible only to corporations, they'll stand by and watch while your granny gets mugged. Why not? There's nothing in it for them, and they're probably not insured to get involved. At the same time, we're giving away to these corporate security guards the right to punish us - without trial - when we do something that offends their employers. Clearly there's only one kind of crime that matters to the Conservatives - crimes against business.

This is such a bad idea that even the cops - formerly the armed wing of the Conservative Party, though the Tories are doing their very best to alienate them - think it's a step too far.  This will happen in your town too. My own awful MP and his cronies in WVOne explicitly see this city's centre as a retail space only: nothing else will be permitted.

Public space is being handed over by councils entranced by shiny presentations and promises of zero-tolerance on litter - but what will also go is the catholic anarchy of urban space: the poor, the rich, the young, the old, the amblers and strollers and buskers and natters and campaigners and loafers will all be swept away with them. How will you appeal against being made to move on by these retail bouncers? You won't.

Thankfully, resistance is possible… as Mallrats makes clear.

The Spirit Level

The Spirit Level is a book which uses publicly available statistics on health, earnings, taxation and a host of other figures to make a very simple point: it doesn't matter whether you live in a rich or poor country: the happiest, safest and healthiest populations are in more equal societies. Another reason, by the way, to move to Scandinavia in addition to their stylish architecture, spectacles and bicycles. I was so impressed by the book that I helped get the authors to visit the university to present their case to the students.

There's now a film in production, and you can donate towards getting it made. I've given them a little of my book money. You should too. They only need $9000 more. And David Cameron will hate it.


The Spirit Level Documentary Trailer from Literally Films on Vimeo.

Top Gun…

Very tediously, the US state department accused the Russians of selling attack helicopters to Syria. Obviously, it's revolting that any country should be helping that regime kill its civilians.

But let's not think for a second that Hillary Clinton has suddenly become some kind of peacenik. This isn't about principle: it's about realpolitik and tactics. It's a sales dispute. Let's just have a look at the countries to which the UK sells arms in the area.

This is the 2011 report. It involves £500m sales to Iran. £200m to Saudia Arabia (which used UK military equipment to help the Bahrainis to crush the democracy movement), £70m to Israel, which ruthlessly crushes dissent in the occupied territories, lots to the previous dictatorships in Egypt, ammunition to the Syrian regime, and lots of other sales to the whole panoply of vicious dictatorships which sell us oil.

Talking of Bahrain, I wonder why the US had nothing to say about 70% of its population being denied any kind of political or economic freedom. Oh yes, it's because it's the main port for the US Navy fleet in the area. Which is why the US is still selling the regime weapons.

Like the UK, the US sells (and often just gives) weaponry to all these deeply unpleasant states. It's partly to keep the oil flowing. It's partly Keynesian economics: even US-funded weapons keep Americans in employment. It's also an economic trade-off which makes the flow of oil money to the East look slightly less imbalanced, and it's to some extent a trade-off for persuading these countries not to invade Israel… another recipient of American military largesse. The economic case is becoming more and more important, as these arms lobbyists and analysts demonstrate:

"US defence companies are definitely looking overseas as a market opportunity that may offset some of the reductions in the US military budget that almost everybody expects to be coming down the pipe. The supply is there coming from the companies, but that doesn't change the fact that there is also demand."
Brian Finlay, the director of the Managing Across Boundaries programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington, noted that US defence companies had formed a powerful lobby that has risen in prominence during the economic downturn.
"We're seeing arms producers across the country, and interests across the country really coalescing to form a pretty significant lobbying bloc, and to complete the perfect storm this is also happening at a time of fiscal restraint and a wider economic downturn here in the United States."
"Jobs are pretty hard to come by, and jobs that are available in these industries pay pretty well. They're good jobs. It makes it even a more potent political issue for the administration."

When nobody's buying cars, sporting goods or whatever else keeps an economy afloat, death's the only expanding market. There's always demand for things with which to kill people, and if demand does drop, you can always stoke up a little regional tension. Look at Greece, a country with no enemies but a vicious rivalry with Turkey, and spend over 4% of its budget on weaponry, the highest percentage in Europe. If they stop spending, you can expect Labour, Tory and Lib Dem MPs with military factories in their constituencies to start begging for Greece to be bailed out. Peace is very bad for the economy.

Arabs: our country needs YOU to go out and die for our marginal constituencies.

Everyone's a winner. Yay for democracy. When convenient.

Won't somebody rid me of this troublesome MP?

Well, Paul Uppal's back from his extended holiday from his responsibilities. Sadly, he's far from refreshed. Once again, he's hawking jaded and predictable talking points around like a child who's learned to use a potty.

Some years ago, a prominent immigration lawyer told me that the two main drivers of immigration are, first, the perception—right or wrong—that we have an overtly generous welfare system in the UK; and secondly, lax human rights legislation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in this statement and through our welfare reforms, we are tackling those issues head-on?
The shadow Home Secretary talked about a bond. Does my right hon. Friend not find that ironic and perhaps politically opportunistic, given that, when in power, Labour considered such a measure but chose to put it to one side, but in opposition they sing a different tune?

Oh dear. I've suddenly got Morrissey's 'Asian Rut' song going round my head. It's not pleasant. Why Morrissey? Because like Uppal, Morrissey's the son of immigrants who has somehow managed to find common cause with fascists like the BNP and their Conservative fellow-travellers. There's something utterly sickening about a man casually raising suspicion of immigrants for political advantage in general - but doing so after having been the beneficiary of a humane immigration policy.

Let's note in passing that Uppal always has a useful source to quote - a constituent who uses Parliamentary language to express opinions identical to Uppal's, for instance. Very convenient.

I like the 'right or wrong' bit (and for the sake of kindness, let's assume the 'overtly' is a transcription error rather than one of vocabulary). It makes him look impartial, when we all know very well that he means 'wrong'. For information, here's what refugees are entitled to:

• Almost all asylum seekers are not allowed to work and are forced to rely on state support – this can be as little as £5 a day to live on.

• Asylum seekers do not jump the queue for council housing and they cannot choose where they live.
 The accommodation allocated to them is not paid for by the local council. It is nearly always ‘hard to let’ properties, where other people do not want to live.

And here's what immigrants (non-EU ones have to prove they've got a large chunk of cash before they arrive) may claim:

anyone who does not have ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain)or British citizenship will have "no recourse to public funds" marked in their passports; this includes visitors, people on spouse visas, students, work visa holders, etc. However, once someone has ILR they have the same entitlements as British citizens in the same circumstances, they can access JSA, Housing Benefit, go on the council waiting list, etc.

OK? Not exactly the land of milk and honey.

Moving on. What exactly is a 'lax' human right? Is it Britain's recognition that all humans have the right to life, safety and a family? Which rights, exactly, would he like to withdraw? Shelter from torture? From all of us? Or just the vulnerable? Does he want to withdraw his own parents' human rights? Or just some nebulous 'others'?

I'd have thought that the 'main drivers' of immigration to the UK are exactly the same reasons which brought his parents here. The British Empire (I notice Uppal and his friends never condemn that violent and unwelcome mass movement of people to other peoples' countries) spread English round the globe and sucked in the labour and goods of its constituent nations. When it withdrew, people like Paul's parents found themselves a long way from their national origins and were naturally drawn to the colonial power because it was rich. Personally, I think the UK should be paying reparations to the countries it looted, and abandoned without industry, economies and democratic government.

I'm sorry to be so personal, but I've got to, provoked by Paul's cynicism. He make no distinction between refugees and economic migrants - but nor would I wish to. My family is partly made up of economic immigrants from Ireland. Given what the UK did to Ireland and other countries, you could argue that we're owed something. More importantly, migrants contribute hugely to the economy - Paul's made millions and I'll presume - for the sake of argument - that he pays tax. Without migration, Paul wouldn't be here (I'll resist the obvious point).

What the Tories want to do is impose a massive cash bond on immigrants. The idea is that we keep out the poor. I think this is sickening. Many of the most innovative and creative contributors to society have been dirt poor, and worked their way up. Would Paul's parents have got in if they'd had to find £19,000?

Even more so than usual, I find Uppal's behaviour sickening and cynical. To pull up the ladder behind him in pursuit of BNP votes is his lowest point yet. I hope his constituents - many of them poor, hardworking Asians - agree with me.

The dew has again fallen with a particularly sickening thud…

Morning everybody! How are you all?

This is me being empathetic and emotionally warm? Is it working? I ask only because I've got another session with the 'consultant' who's actually an occupational psychologist, and she asked me to do an online personality test. Despite my reservations about 'positive psychology' (oddly, a subject discussed on radio 4 this morning), I filled in the 240 questions as honestly as possible.

The report, however, has severely damaged my natural optimism. It gives you 24 ranked strengths, but looking closely, the analysis is deeply flawed. For instance, the last one is this:

Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith 

You have strong and coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe. You know where you fit in the larger scheme. Your beliefs shape your actions and are a source of comfort to you.

Which is odd because the questionnaire asks several questions about religion and 'beliefs' but none about ideology or politics. Let's be clear about my beliefs. I believe in the general description of quantum physics, and in entropy. I do not believe in any 'higher purpose' or 'meaning' to the universe (other than '42'). I believe that we are individually performing a microscopic version of the eventual entropic universe death. We shuffle towards the grave and anything we do in-between birth and death is merely displacement activity. I've chosen to read a lot and to attempt to meliorate the world's misery through politics. And blogging. In some tiny way, I hope to make life more bearable and pleasant for others, but I'm well aware that any contribution is minuscule.

OK. Next 'strength':

Hope, optimism, and future-mindednessYou expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You believe that the future is something that you can control.

No. All of that is entirely wrong. Next!

Creativity, ingenuity, and originalityThinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Christ no. That scoffing sound you hear is everyone I've ever met, laughing at whoever constructed this questionnaire. What's coming next?

Industry, diligence, and perseveranceYou work hard to finish what you start. No matter the project, you "get it out the door" in timely fashion. You do not get distracted when you work, and you take satisfaction in completing tasks.

Zest, enthusiasm, and energyRegardless of what you do, you approach it with excitement and energy. You never do anything halfway or halfheartedly. For you, life is an adventure.

Oh dear me no. I'm nervous and often transfixed by anxiety like a lazy rabbit in the headlights.

And then the rest reveals a complete methodological failure: the responses tell me how other people perceive me, and how I am … based on my answers. This is of course utter nonsense: what the questions elicit is my perception of what other people think, and a view of how I perceive myself, not what this mythical 'I' actually is like.

Perspective (wisdom)

Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.

Bravery and valor You are a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain. You speak up for what is right even if there is opposition. You act on your convictions.

Citizenship, teamwork, and loyalty You excel as a member of a group. You are a loyal and dedicated teammate, you always do your share, and you work hard for the success of your group.

And for the record, I don't think this is what you all think of me. I'd be insufferable. And students: if you submit this kind of thing for your dissertations, we'll be having some long and painful conversations.

Sorry about the formatting - bloody Blogger. Anyway, I'm off to write a passage on times I've experienced 'flow', or total absorption in an activity. Tempted to cite blogging…

Before this meeting - my union's AGM, a casework meeting and several other duties. And in the background, John Major and Ed Miliband at Leveson. Be still, my aching heart!

Shamelessly stolen

Here's video of a presentation about a magnificent piece of research. Students were asked to cheat - individually or collectively - on a cybersecurity exam. They all succeeded, in ingenious ways - you'll laugh yourself silly with this one. Even better, they called the paper 'Embracing the Kobayashi Maru' - massive bonus points for a Star Trek reference.



You can read an early version of their paper here - the final version is in a paywalled journal, even though (as US military employees), American taxpayers have already paid.

Of course it's still rightwing nonsense - despite the US releasing Stuxnet, it's only 'our adversaries' who cheat. OK then… But the research is still valid.

Death comes to the Critic

In an idle moment (of which I have few, these days), I reread Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man, in which Death is fired and becomes a farm labourer while the universe tries to cope with an absence of expiration. It's funny and of course rather tender. Death himself is faced with the difficulty of understanding humans and they ways we cope with the knowledge of permanent oblivion, and he comes to admire us. He also has a keen eye for human nature:

There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another - language was just there to hide their thoughts. 

Which is rather perceptive literary criticism. Who'd have thought Pratchett was a Derridean post-structuralist?

I also remembered another good line from Miéville's Railsea, which uses Moby Dick to explore narrative and obsession, but with trains - it follows rather nicely from Pratchett's point. Here's Captain Naphi explaining her obsession with catching the giant mole:

'You know how careful are philosophies', Naphi said. 'How meanings are evasive. They hate to be parsed. Here again came the cunning of unreason. I was creaking, lost, knowing that the ivory-coloured beast had evaded my harpoon & continued his opaque diggers, resisting close reading & a solution to his mystery. I bellowed, & swore that one day I would submit him to a sharp & bladey interpretation'.

Which is funny because Moby Dick's whale is a symbol onto which multiple interpretations are cast, and because it's what we literary critics do. Well, others do. I stay in port telling people that my last interpretation was THIS BIG.

Books in the post today? Glad you asked. Pratchett's children's book The World of Poo, Alan Warner's new one (again about trains, but also a Scottish bildungsroman), The Deadman's Pedal. Another Scottish classic, Kelman's The Busconductor Hines, and Sheila Rowbotham's history of radical industrial-period women, Dreamers of a New Day.

Dispatches from the Front Line

Comrades, fraternal greetings from the Annual Congress of the Universities and Colleges Union. Ice-picks and kulaks must be left at the door on pain of internal exile to Stoke-on-Trent. Manchester is of course as wonderful as it always is. As soon as I stepped off the train, I was handed a free umbrella, better than the one I came with. It was to promote an advertising agency. Sadly (for them) I have absolutely no memory what it's called, nor any need to engage their services. But thanks anyway!

OK, I'm in a satirical mood, but I'm enjoying myself hugely. Running the gauntlet of the sectarian newspaper sellers at the door was hugely nostalgic - reminded me of my days in the NUS, sabotaging composite motions and introducing Trotskyists to Third Position Neo-Trotskyists and watching the sparks fly. What larks...

This morning I availed myself of the Morning Star, The Socialist, the Socialist Worker, the Socialist Appeal (the fact that the second Google result for that is 'split' tells you all you need to know about the Peoples' Front of Judea/Judean Peoples' Front nature of leftwing micropolitics) and - most ironically - Unity, the bulletin of one of the Communist Parties. For all my teasing, I find it utterly depressing that the various sects would rather spend their time explaining why the other sects have betrayed socialist unity than actually pursuing it. And then pursuing the Tories. I suppose it's a tacit admission that we lack the skills to persuade the public - bickering amongst ourselves is a form of displacement activity.

Everyone here is rather formidably magnificent - years of paper-selling, street-corner hectoring and of course lecturing have equipped them to deliver beautiful, pithy speeches designed to get us on our feet: one guy moved seamlessly from Marx to his toddler son. I contributed a very, very short and nervous declamation and retired, quaking. It may surprise some of you to learn that in person, we voles are shy and retiring creatures.

We've voted to reject the 1% pay offer (which makes it the fourth year of pay cuts, as inflation is much higher than 1%), to oppose the National Student Survey as methodologically flawed and capable of being used as a weapon against individual members and departments, and to achieve world peace, Cuban freedom and an end to sexism. Whether the outside world will act on these decisions is of course as yet unclear. But on the whole, it's wonderful to see people talking out important ideas seriously. Because we're all highly trained academics, we're both right on everything and good at arguing our points - but it's a bit sad that we're speaking into a vacuum. The really important work is the everyday casework and advocacy we do on our colleagues' behalf, that I can't tell you about.

OK, I'm off to a session of media training and political communication. See you on the barricades, comrades.

Literary meandering

I've read a few novels recently, some of which you might like. The first was David Lodge's 1965 comic novel The British Museum Is Falling Down. Its central character is a struggling PhD candidate who's simultaneously dreading his wife becoming pregnant again. As good Catholics, they find their life is pretty much ruined by the stress of counting the days in the Natural Rhythm then the suspense of working out whether their guilty sex will lead to further poverty… It's a period piece (no pun intended) now, of course, but it's an insight into the travails of ordinary decent Catholics who tried to stick to the rules. Now of course, most believers quietly ignore the rules set by the Vatican.

If Catholic guilt isn't your thing, there's a lot more to entertain you. The novel's set in a single day, like Ulysses, and each chapter is a beautiful parody or pastiche of a range of writers, Joyce included. It also has plenty to say about literature and academic study. Such as:

“Literature is mostly about having sex and not having children. Life is the other way around”

and two characters play a game I also indulge in: dreaming up new laws for when they're in total charge and can abuse the legal system simply to annoy their enemies. With REF (the stupid government research assessment) and the consequent rush to publication, this one very much appealed:

 Academic Publications Act: the government will undertake to subsidise the publication of a monthly periodical, about the size of a telephone directory and printed in columns on Bible paper, which will publish all scholarly articles, notes, correspondence etc. submitted to it, irrespective of merit or interest. All existing journals will be abolished. This will eliminate the element of invidious competition in academic appointments and promotions, which will be offered to candidates in alphabetical order.

That rather appeals to me, as a feckless slackademic whose initials are almost as close to the start of the alphabet as our hero Adam Appleby.

In the afterword, Lodge talks about another of his themes of the novel, The Anxiety of Influence, to use the term deployed by Bloom to describe the sense all authors get that they're merely repeating millennia of perfectly good extant literature. He quotes Flann O'Brien's At-Swim-Two-Birds (one of the greatest novels ever written) on the subject:

The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before - usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effective preclude mountebanks upstarts, thimbleriggers, and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature. 

Though one might say TS Eliot, Joyce and many others have already put this into practice.  My students certainly would.

The other novel I read is China Miéville's rather magnificent Railsea, his speculative fiction retelling of Moby Dick, in which the oceans have been replaced by railway lines and the Captain obsessively seeks not whales but a giant feral mole. It's a rollicking story, but like Melville's novel, it's about narrative and meaning, though more explicitly so: the Captain refers to the Moldywarpe as 'that burrowing signifier', and the narrator's interventions are playful, postmodern takes on the process of story-telling. Highly recommended.

Cheerio!

I'm not sure how many more of these web-telegrams you'll be receiving from me this week. I'm popping of in an hour's time to attend the University and College Union annual conference, which lasts until SUNDAY? What we'll find to talk about, I don't know. It's been such a dull year in the world of education.

Still, I'm ready. I've opted for summer-weight lovat tweed with correspondent shoes for the day-time - with two choices of cravat - and of course full evening dress for the nocturnal festivities. Armed with a trusty silk umbrella, I'm ready for everything Manchester and the SWP can throw at me.

Glancing through the programme, I can see that we'll have an awfully jolly time reconciling composite motions, but in the rare moments away from the nitty-gritty, I intend to vote for Palestinian freedom, Cuban solidarity, the end of tuition fees, the abolition of misogyny and world peace. And if that doesn't do the trick, I don't know what will!

Actually, despite my teasing - born of many years attending NUS conference - I'm looking forward to it. We've been battered and abused for two years by this government, and it doesn't look like stopping. Students are being exploited, the job's getting harder and we need to follow the Quebec model (now the largest protest in Canadian history) and resist. However, I do dread the tedious sectarian bickering of the various groupuscules who think wresting control of a motion will lead to revolution by Saturday…

Round the Wrekin…

I'd never heard this phrase until I moved to the Dark Place. Apparently it means doing something in a long-winded fashion - the Wrekin juts out of the Shropshire plain and can be seen for 50 miles around. I took a few pictures while I was up there the other day, though I wasn't quick enough to snap the deer. Rest here.

This little caterpillar chap was literally hanging around. 

The Nightingales - live on stage!

A few more shots of the Gales performing at the Slade Rooms. Rest here. Click these ones to enlarge. I'm getting the hang of gig photography, I think. I haven't got great big wide-aperture long lenses, so I stick my 50mm f/1.8 on, go up to about ISO 1000 and take multiple shots whenever the light changes. I don't use flash, but then I almost never do under any circumstances, though I must try some rear-curtain photography at some point. I'd like to exchange my 1.8 for a 1.4 at some point, then add the Tokina 11-16 and (when I win life's lottery), an f/2.8 400mm lens (about £6000). And a native bearer to carry it.

The Nightingales Sang In Berkeley Square

Well, not quite in Berkeley Square. More like a subway and then The Dark Place's finest small venue, The Slade Rooms. Named in honour of the town's greatest artists. The Gales sound is a monstrous mix of lacerating Black Country dry wit, krautrock and kosmische - glorious.

Here are some of the photos I took for them before and during the gig. I wanted to do a few more, and use my 1915 Kodak too, but time ran out. Hopefully the band like them. The rest are here.

The Return of the King…

Welcome back, subjects, welcome back? Have you had a surfeit of faux-1950s reactionary bunting, sandwiches, knickers and beer? I managed to avoid the vast majority of the jubimadness, though I was pleasantly surprised by the way capitalism managed to so comprehensively cheapen the whole thing - even the sex shop round the corner from my flat (Vole Towers is in the most salubrious area of town) managed to get in on the act, with union flag posters inviting royalists to celebrate by visiting during 'jubilee opening hours'. The pop concert sounded like utter dross too - the usual parade of dull but inoffensive mimers, from Tom Jones to Robbie Williams to Queen's Brian May. I don't know whether it was him or the palace which was more confused by that invitation. They probably thought he was a relative, he thought it was to mark the band's 60th anniversary. Anyway, the sheer tawdriness of the entire event cheered me up mightily.

As for me, I had a great weekend. Chief pleasures were doing a (sadly short) photoshoot with the Nightingales, then attending their gig in Wolverhampton. Before an audience of friends and family, they played a storming set - anchored by rock-steady drums and bass rather than the previous line-up's mindless drug hoovers, the new sound - krautrock, post-punk with just enough early-70s guitar heroism overlaid by Robert's driest vocals - was triumphant. I've seen them so many times and often wanted my ears to fall off, but not this time. They're on tour - catch them while you can.

Other highlights - a walk up The Ercall and The Wrekin, quality hills in Shropshire. Deer, jays, rabbits, cuckoos, caterpillars, buzzards, martins, larks - all animal life was there. I'll stick up some photos later, but now I'm off to an English Department Away Day. Although 'Away' in this case means - literally - 'upstairs'.