Goodbye, Breakfast with Wogan

Terry Wogan does his last breakfast show tomorrow: the end of en era.

Wogan's brand of broadcasting is unique. Yes, other presenters interact with newsreaders, producers and traffic news announcers, but no-one else manages to include the listener, who can be made to feel with other shows like an eavesdropper on a private conversation. Yes, other presenters read out listeners' comments, but Wogan's constant self-deprecation and his delight at his loving audience's mock-insults is a far cry from those who select only the fawning messages — Steve Wright in particular clearly adores reading out the words "I love your show".

Wogan's very voice sets him apart from the younger broadcasters: rich, deep, warm, ( Radio 2's more recent male presenters have voices that are lighter, higher, less distinct from each other.)

Wogan has managed to keep the spirit of old-fashioned and traditional British humour fresh, alive and kicking — double entendres, rhymes built up then deflected at the last moment, jokes that sail very close to the wind indeed… Not entirely clean fun, but innocently mucky, introducing a particular kind of humour to younger audiences who have no idea who the Lord Chamberlain was nor what machinations writers went through to avoid his blue pencil.

Wogan isn't retiring completely — he starts a new show on Sundays from February — but the morning commute won't be the same again. The laughs and the thought-provoking comments, the fun and the sense of belonging to a community, being "in" with the in-jokes, even if you haven't tuned in for weeks: all of that will be history from tomorrow, leaving only the bittersweetness of nostagia.

Wogan set an unmatchable standard and will leave a gap that cannot be filled.

Thanks, Terry, for making mornings something to look forward to.

No room for doubt

From the Rugby Review, w/c 5 November 2009:

So, let's be absolutely clear: they definitely want a woman, then?

W(h)ither compassion?

Have I Got News For You last night showed a clip of a large and distressed lady being confronted with a pile of yellow lumps of what clearly represented the excess fat content of her body.

It made me wonder when, and how, our society stopped addressing the reasons for problems such as overeating — including depression, shyness, low self-esteem, overwork, worry and stress — in favour of public castigation and humiliation, surely more likely to exacerbate underlying causes.

I didn't sign up to live in a shame culture and I can't see that it has (m)any merits. Perhaps a decade ago we were a little too compassionate, too concerned with root causes, too fluffy-touchy-feely-it's-not-your-fault; but this is too much compensation. Has social compassion withered entirely?

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

The House of Commons' expenses row trundles on, with MPs now complaining that Sir Thomas Legg's claim limits aren't fair, apparently still unable to comprehend that it "wasn't fair" to grab quite so much money in the first place, and to spend it on luxuries and fripperies well beyond the dreams, never mind the grasp, of many taxpayers.

Harriet Harman is quoted as saying that "This is about the reputation, not of one political party, but of the whole of the House of Commons". This is indeed true (despite the inherent hypocrisy, given her own recent failure to obey the law), although, again, any reference to the unfairness on the taxpayer is notably lacking.

The MPs' continuing failure to display any dignity whatsoever, or even to understand that dignity is a requirement of the job, is depressing. It's going to be a long time before they earn back any public respect - and it won't start until they stop behaving like spoilt children.

Arena-sized university classes?

Trinity College, Cambridge, has purchased O2, the arena formerly known as the Millennium Dome. University class sizes are reportedly increasing, but this seems extreme.

Academia: a place of short-term, part-time contracts

Alice Eardley's piece in the Boar, student newpaper of the University of Warwick, details clearly, concisely and with nicely-judged passion the appalling conditions under which many university teachers work.

Long on hours and responsibilities, short on pay, rights, training and opportunities for career evaluation and guidance, office space, formal support and security. In short, no respect — except, thank goodness, from students, the vast majority of whom show their appreciation enthusiastically and are the reason that such teachers battle on.

Vegas

Please, Vegas Casino, understand that if I don't want to join you, sending me 100 simultanous emails is not going to make me change my mind - quite the opposite, in fact.

People who shouldn't be allowed to drive 1

Amazing how many drivers feel the need to look at their passengers while they are driving.

Here's a tip: if you have something to say to your passenger so important that you need to watch how they are taking it, save it for when you aren't doing 70 on the motorway!

NHS money-wasting 1

Whose brilliant idea was it to spend £8,000 on a handbook to advise nurses on climate change?

NHS ruined by its own obesity

Only a few weeks ago, MPs, including Gordon Brown, were queuing up to defend the National Health Service from its detractors in the USA; now it turns out that the government has commissioned a consultancy report on the NHS, which has recommended excising 10% of its budget.

Last week, a report by the Patients Association revealed that many supposed professionals don't think nursing is about looking after sick people at all. This week's consultancy document lists a raft of ways in which the NHS could save money, including not bothering to perform hysterectomies or varicose vein surgery. The study identified "staff productivity" as a major problem area where improvements could save £2.4 billion.
The Times says that "Productivity is notoriously difficult to measure in an organisation as large as the NHS", although it is not clear whether this statement is a paraphrase of something in the McKinsey report or the viewpoint of the journalist. Either way, it's not actually accurate: it's not the size of the NHS that makes "productivity" difficult to measure, but the hugeness of what McKinsey & Co would probably call "units", but normal people call "hospitals".

Time was when hospitals were smaller, much much smaller. There were also more of them, located in places that patients and staff could get to easily, and by public transport. In smaller hospitals employees all knew each other. They worked directly for the hospital, not agencies, and everyone from consultants to cleaners felt a sense of belonging and possession. Smaller hospitals meant fewer security issues: there weren't so many entrances and anyone unfamiliar was quickly noticed. In smaller hospitals, patients — that's what they were called then: no faffing around with surveys considering whether the sick might prefer to be known as "clients" or "customers" or "stakeholders" — could find their way around. Smaller hospitals had (just) enough staff and of the right sort: a sufficiency, but not a plethora, of managers; nurses who wanted to nurse and who treated patients like individuals not statistics. MRSA was unheard of in smaller hospitals: the cleaners gave a damn — after all, they ate in the canteen and lived in the nurses' home too — and Matron went round the place every day to check that everyone's job was properly done. (Admittedly, the title did need changing to accommodate a new generation of male nurses, but the point about duties remains.)

At Chelsea Hospital for Women (1916-1988), the average waiting time for routine surgery, major or minor, was about six weeks. No-one, but no-one, got past Doreen on switchboard during the day, or Nick the chief porter at night, without proving legitimate purpose. Christmas was wonderful and the good will lasted all year. Every department hosted a party, each with its very distinct character (the engineers had theirs in February to cheer everyone up) and everyone went to as many as they could and socialised together: doctors, nurses, clerical and managerial staff, cleaners and porters. It made staff feel part of a community in which they were keen to reinvest. On the rare occasions a patient died, the whole place mourned.

But in the 1980s the accountants started taking over the world. It was inevitable that they would look at hospitals and decide to amalgamate them into megahospitals. Matrons became administrators, managers first instead of nurses, rebranded as Chief Nursing Officers who grudgingly allowed a single Christmas party and were apparently incapable of understanding that community was the glue keeping the NHS together. Smaller hospitals were pulled down to make way for enormous concrete complexes, with lots of technological equipment, but fragmented and segregated departments. The NHS sacked its cleaners, and cleaning — a quite important function in a hospital — was taken over by the agency with the most competitive tender (small was beautiful there, apparently), its rootless staff paid peanuts, and problems reported via a double chain of command too distant to be effective. In those circumstances, MRSA was just waiting to happen. In the megahospital security is a nightmare. In physical terms, violence has escalated to an all time high; and patients' digitized records are vulnerable to a range of problems: breaches and losses (including that perennial favourite, the unencrypted and mislaid or stolen laptop), hacks and crashes.
A few small hospitals still exist, but it's a struggle, even though there is much they can offer,. The bloated NHS is so busy with bureaucracy — KSF, health reforms, targets — there's barely time for patient care. No wonder nurses have given up actual nursing. No wonder "productivity" is problematic.
Megahospitals are simply too big to be workable, too huge to achieve the sense of community required to provide a service and job satisfaction, too enormous for individual patients to feel they matter much. However many "managers" the NHS employs — and some out there who would say it's far too many already — these monstrosities have become unmanageable.

University places

Let's get this straight: offering more university places isn't going to help anyone if there aren't the graduate-level jobs for students to feed into after their degree.

There's been a flurry of discussion about increasing university places this year, with Gordon Brown offering an extra 10,000 places, despite proposed cuts in the education budget. This year's improved A-level successes mean that more 18 year olds than ever before are competing for a place at university, thousands are being turned down and universities are calling for an expansion now for semester-based courses starting in the new year.

Professor Les Ebdon, Chair of Million+, has today published an article in the Telegraph insisting that university places be made available for all who want them. He highlights the disappointment of applicants who have been turned down, despite reaching or closely matching the grades required for entry.

The concern shown by schools, universities and politicians for those unable to obtain a place is laudable, but also problematic. The recession has cut the number of graduate places, so that this year's graduates are struggling to find jobs at a level suited to their educational achievements or, frankly, much lower than that level. Many are choosing to increase their already unthinkable debts by studying for a Master's degree in the hope that the world will magically have turned out right by next September, and the old joke about graduates flipping burgers at McDonald's has long ceased to be even wryly amusing for the many who are subsisting on part-time work in catering and call centres.

Let's apply some common sense to the scenario. Begin with the fact that there now aren't enough non-graduate jobs, so more 18 years olds want to go to university. Easy solution: expand university. More happy students, more university teachers (almost undoubtedly employed on short-term, part-time, hourly-based contracts, but that is a different story: for now they at least have some work, if not packages where they can benefit from sick pay, maternity leave, proper pensions and redundancy payments when their services are no longer required). Fewer people on the dole, so more happy policians. Result!

But what then? Even if the recession has ended and the number of graduate positions returned to pre-recession levels by the time this year's already-increased intake of students graduates, there will be even more graduates fighting for graduate-level jobs. Perhaps the number of graduate-level jobs will increase; but perhaps not. Or perhaps non-graduate jobs will also have increased to pre-recession levels by then and fewer 18 year olds will want to go to university: that's another easy solution, isn't it? Decrease the number of places again (and take away jobs from all those short-term, part-time, hourly-based teachers…). Perhaps, however, expectations will have been raised and they will still want to study for a degree. Will the funding be available for a permanent expansion of university places, or will today's 15 year olds be facing disappointment when their A-level results arrive?

The current situation is deeply unpleasant and pretty scary for many people (whatever their age), but pleas and demands for additional university places smack of short-term thinking just as much as the government's own "plans" to aid the economy by creating "soft jobs" and putting off migrant workers. With spending cuts about to come into force in education and elsewhere, how are these additional university places to be funded? If graduates don't find graduate-level jobs, they are unlikely to be earning enough to start repaying their loans (the threshold is currently £15,000 per annum) and thus to put money back into the system.

The point of having a degree is being lost within the debate about recession, unemployment and what to do about this summer's degree applicants. Someone needs to be looking much further ahead and offering clear long-term plans.

Pointless research 3: Zombies would take over and kill everyone - it's official

Philip Munz from Carleton University and the University of Ottawa's Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J. Smith? — that question mark isn't a typo, by the way: Smith?'s blog confirms that the question mark is a formal part of his name — have just published a scholarly article called "When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of a Zombie Infection", demonstrating that such an outbreak could only be contained by swift and destructive action. Science imitates art.

The writers clearly feel the need to explain that "the scenarios considered are obviously not realistic", but justify their work by continuing: "it is nevertheless instructive to develop mathematical models for an unusual outbreak" (p. 146). Elsewhere, however, the phrasing used rather suggests that they have having difficulty separating real life from the films of George A. Romero, Sam Raimi and Co. The article's final paragraph, for example, eschews the conditional tense in concluding that

a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

Joe Imad is quoted as saying: "Modelling zombies would be the same as modelling swine flu, with some differences for sure, but it is much more interesting to read." So it's the same, but different.

There's a worrying implication here that some scientists find their subject boring. Perhaps the writers are hoping for a wider audience than scholarly papers usually achieve. Or perhaps they've got their eye on the Zombie Research Society Awards.

No front bottoms?

The Daily Telegraph seems to be suffering from an outbreak of inexplicable coyness in a report on a new surgical technique performed "through the tummy button". The "belly-button" also appears, but not the navel or umbilicus, although there is apparently no bar on reproducing the terms vagina, adenomyosis or hysterectomy.

Students might benefit from working first

The Association of School and College Leaders wants A-Level candidates to be able to apply to university after they have received their results. This is an excellent idea; but only if it leads to students working for a year before starting their degree studies. In addition to giving them a taste of the world outside education, this would provide school-leavers with experience of full-time work — helpful in planning study timetables and working to deadlines at university, which requires greater automony than school, and in understanding the kinds of requirements employers have, such as team-working — and an opportunity to earn, save and practise managing their own money, not to mention items to make their CVs look fuller.

Given rising unemployment levels, however, it's unlikely to happen. After all, hasn't the number of university places been increased to keep students off the unemployment lists?

Short rations

So Alan Duncan thinks MPs are treated like "s**t" and forced to exist on "rations", does he? Parliament's website gives the following data on MPs' salaries:

The current annual salary for an MP is £64,766. In addition, MPs receive allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, having somewhere to live in London and in their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency.

The list of allowances for 2009 includes the following:

Staffing Maximum of £103,812
Administrative & Office £22,393
Personal Additional Accommodation 24,222
London Costs Allowance £7,500
Winding-up £42,068
Communications Maximum of £10,400

MPs's allowances can reach more than £160,000 in addition to the "basic" salary. The continuing expenses scandal has revealed both politicians' arrogance and the fact that their personal financial experiences bear little resemblance to that of an appreciable number of the voting public.

The Conservatives clearly hope that improving poll results against Labour's recent showing will win them the next General Election. However, Alan Duncan's apparent inability to manage his personal budget (not to mention his appalling lack of professionalism) begs the question of how well equipped the Tories are to manage departmental and national finances.

Social mobility: what is the problem?

Peter Mandelson's increasingly hostile accusations that candidates from poor backgrounds are being deliberately rejected by "elite" universities are now proved beyond doubt to be based on bias, as a new report demonstrates that potential applicants are being influenced by their schools and teachers not to try for top universities, which are perceived to be out of their league. This research has been conducted by the Sutton Trust, a body whose mission coincides with Mandelson's in aiming to '"improve educational opportunities for young people from non-priviledged backgrounds and increase social mobility".

While the perennially biassed are rethinking their stance (always supposing, of course, that they are prepared to accept the evidence), they would be wise to consider the word "elite", which they so often employ pejoratively. The Oxford English Dictionary supplies a succinct definition: "The choice part or flower (of society, or of any body or class of persons)". This certainly supports the idea of a chosen few; yet the same term or concept applied elsewhere, for example in sport, contains no sense of denigration at all, either overt or implicit. Earlier this year, for instance, when Sheffield University's Media Centre headlined a news release "Universities' sporting elite showcase their star potential", these sports specialists were clearly viewed as a good thing. The term was used equally positively in a House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts report for 2005-6 entitled "UK Sport: Supporting elite athletes", while in April 2006 an item reporting on increased financial support for UK sportspeople in preparation for the 2012 Olympics proudly announced "£65m funding boost for elite sport".

The application of the term "elite" in sporting contexts explicitly refers to the best; after all, the best are the ones who win sporting events. Those who are not good at sport must learn early on that life is indeed not a level playing field; but many, perhaps most, may find something else at which they excel where their sporting peers do not and cannot.

So, if elitism is embraced and valorised in sport, why is the word "elite" purely negative when applied to academia? Just like sporting selection panels, universities want to select the best applicants, regardless of background. Just as in sport, league tables are paramount and "excellence" in global competition a requirement for winning and maintaining funding; isn't it incumbent upon universities to attract and accept the best candidates then, just as it is for football clubs to identify and select the best tyro players to train for the future? The British Olympic Association was allowed to rewrite its ski-jumping rules to exclude competitors not in the world top 50, in order to avoid successors to Eddie the Eagle. So an elite is in fact a good thing; after all, who wants delicate brain surgery or a complex heart operation to be performed by someone who was accepted for medical training to fulfil a social quota, not because of aptitude and ability?

Now there is unambiguous evidence to the contrary, it's time to ask why Mandelson and Co have so doggedly insisted that their plans for social mobility have been thwarted by "elite" universities? It's an insistence all the more surprising given that many academics lean politically left, as demonstrated by the policies of their union, the UCU, and the stance of their newspaper of choice, the Guardian.

The answer can only be is that it's easier (and cheaper) to demonise universities than to turn around the schools that are failing to supply "the disadvantaged" with the education they need to deal with everyday life, never mind a degree. The schools' failures are, of course, the politicians' own.

Last of the chainstore-free zones?

Good luck to Holmfirth residents who are campaigning against Tesco, and any other superstore, gaining a toehold in their town. Tesco might insist that its proposed new store would offer residents "more choice", but a quick look around Britain's ghost town centres and their boring identikit out-of-centre store-parks demonstrates exactly what that "choice" really means in the long term. Tesco's profits are already bloated beyond comprehension, sense or justice. Let's hope "Keep Holmfirth Special" is successful, and can shows the way forward for other small towns that want to keep or claw back their individuality.

BBC programme plugs

In general, I'm a staunch supporter of the BBC (though dubious about Alan Yentob's insistence that entertainers need on-expenses wining and dining to attract them to the corporation). There are always several programmes a year which justify my compulsory contribution to its coffers — most things involving David Attenborough, for example, or the wonderful Yellowstone — and these days it also pays for the watch-online facility.

What does irritate me is its persistent self-advertising. Particularly annoying are the radio trailers for television programmes with lots of intense dialogue and sound effects that are virtually meaningless without the visuals; these are usually for dramas, such as EastEnders, that surely have a high enough audience already.

Today, Radio Two subjected its late afternoon listeners to the same trailer for the loathesome Alan Carr's radio show twice within the space of thirty minutes. Once seemed too much; the second time had me switching on a CD instead.

Sexism: an unlevel playing field

When is sexism not sexism? When it's by females against males.

Just as some feminists (for example, Luce Irigaray) presume that only females can be victims of rape, sexism is predominantly interpreted as if only females can be targets. Not so. There seems to be an ever-increasing number of females who routinely make the sort of comments to or about males that, were the situation reversed, would have the women demanding the full force of the law be applied.

Perpetrators of female-to-male sexism frequently present or describe themselves as feminists, apparently without perceiving any need to explore the ambiguity between their political stance, itself based on perceptions of sexual inequality and sexed ill-treatment, and their misandrous attitude.

The unqualified assumption that sexism equates to misogyny can appear in sources that initially seem unbiassed. The website Stop Sexist Remarks, for example, launched in November 2008, features female and male contributors. Its name articulates both a need and an intention to eliminate any and all forms of sexist commentary; however, this impression is soon contradicted by the opening words of its mission statement:

Sexist remarks — words designed to belittle, control, embarrass, or hurt. They are used to stop conversations, put women down, and maintain power. We hear them at neighborhood barbecues, work, and family reunions.

This expresses an unqualified assumption that females are the sole victims of sexist remarks; there's no attempt to balance the manifest lack of bias in the site's name with the overt bias in its stated purpose, nor apparently any recognition of the inherent contradition.

The site seems to be based in the USA and thus may reflect a reality very different from the UK's, but given that the UK has a Minister for Women and Equality and the White House a Council on Women and Girls (both titles clearly affirming proclivity), perhaps not. I would estimate, however, that in the last few years more than three quarters of the sexist remarks I have read in published work or heard in a public forum have been made by females about males. The tone is sometimes mock-hostile, à la Jo Brand, but far more often openly contentious. Those making the remarks heatedly (and often with no regard to relevance in the immediate or historical context) declare their feminism, denounce misogyny as if females could do no wrong, and assert their right to make misandrous remarks.

It is depressing to realize that the "battle of the sexes" is alive and well and living all over the world in cultures that pass judgement on the treatment of women in countries whose attitudes are denounced as "backward". An unchecked and increasingly commonplace misandry, apparently supported by political approval, fans its flames, while the voices of genuine victims of sexism (regardless of gender) are too often drowned out by those who assume their gender equates to victimhood.

Return of the Son of the Barbecue Summer

"Barbecue summer could return" runs a cautiously optimistic online Daily Telegraph headline this morning. Since its information comes from a Met. Office report, maybe it's time to get out the thermals…

The Met. Office now seems to be blaming the media for misinterpreting its summer forecast, resulting in public "misconceptions" that the weather was to be largely hot and dry. The media does indeed get things wrong from time to time, but as noted in an earlier post, the Met. Office unambigously stated in its "Summer Forecast 2009" that "Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer". Instead of blaming the media for spreading ill-founded hope, perhaps the Met. Office should make sure its published reports leave no possible room for doubt.

The Naming of Parts

The latest report on the state of primary school education in England, based on Key Stage 2 assessments, states that 40% of primary school pupils are failing to achieve the required level (level 4 or above) in English.

The opposition parties, not surprisingly, are blaming Labour. However, in the Conservatives' case ast least, this is somewhat disingenuous. Ripple fade back to Bristol, 1997, where my friend, S, was working as a supply primary teaching since graduating from a four-year teaching training degree at a post-1992 university.

One afternoon, S rang me in a panic. She had been assigned to a "posh" school where she was expected to teach adjectives and adverbs, and she had no idea what these were, never mind how to teach them. Could I help? Well, yes: I could and I did, rather wondering what her alma mater had been teaching her for four years.

Years later, I am still wondering what is being taught in schools. Students studying literature often arrive at university without an understanding of the basic terminology and use of language. Adjectives and adverbs are employed indiscriminately, and past participles incorrectly (sat for seated is almost ubiquitous); the nomenclature of verb tenses is unknown; students seem unaware that the expression of the English present tense can be simple or continuous, and find it hard to grasp the nuances in meaning between the two; sentences are filled with subclauses and continue for half a page with little punctuation and sometimes no active verb. (Many, however, have been taught more sophisticated expressions; lexis and register are recent buzzwords.) Consulting a dictionary is an alien concept.

Schoolteachers have long complained that grammar is "boring" for students (do they really mean for themselves?) and promoted a more flexible approach to teaching based on "encouraging creativity". Yet the naming of parts is a basic principle in every activity. Children are accustomed to learning specialized terms in a range of hobbies and interests: music has its notes, rhythms and scales, ballet its steps and movements, football its moves and rules. Withholding the specialized terms of language does not encourage creativity, but conflicts with the way all specialist pursuits, creative, sporting or academic, must be learnt.

The government has recently promised a further expansion of higher education, with a focus on science, engineering, mathematics and technology; but undergraduates in these disciplines need effective communication skills to understand their subjects and articulate their knowledge. Language is fundamental to all learning and is the key to self-expression in all degree courses, not just those in languages, linguistics or literature: mathematicians, scientists and information technologists also need an understanding of oral and written language in order to communicate adequately in their academic subjects and in their future jobs.

With more people than ever going on to study degrees, schools need to teach sound English expression and that, just like football and music, includes the naming of parts.

"A barbeque summer"?

The Met. Office is backtracking over the forecast it published earlier in the year, the one promising "a barbeque summer".

Despite low temperatures and much rain, the Met. Office insists that its forcast wasn't actually inaccurate, because the temperatures in June were a whole degree Celsius above average and rainfall was below the average for the period.

What the Met. Office is saying now: "When we are looking at seasonal forecasts, we are looking at the season as a whole, not a specific day or week". What it said on 30 April (not, as might be imagine, April 1) was: "Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer". So both the forecast and the backtrack are considering the season as a whole.
Following a change in Consumer Law in the UK in 2008, fortune-tellers are required to advise customers that their predictions are not "experimentally proven". Isn't it time the Met. Office was required to do the same? Or perhaps it should sell off its expensive equipment and invest in some seaweed.

Pandora's Box (1)

The Guardian's comment page today considers the future of British universities, complaining that "Every expansion since the redbricks were built has been branded an expansion too far by an elite convinced that only they are [sic] fit to benefit from university. If they [sic] had prevailed,* many of today's lawyers and accountants would instead be consigned to dead-end jobs".

That seems to express precisely why the universities should have been left alone.

* The internet version substitutes "had had their way" for "prevailed".

Going up, but there's no way back

Labour's obsession with what it sees as the universities' "failure" (never its own) to accommodate the working classes ignores the fact that an academy education is but one factor involved in social mobility.
As Jenni Russell observes, "Anyone who hopes to be socially mobile has, by definition, to learn to read a culture that is not the one they [sic] grew up with". This means learning to identify and adopt the behaviour of a different class in order to fit into both professional and social situations. (Of course, it also means joining Labour's "enemy", the middle classes, and thus accepting its contempt and hatred, a point apparently beyond the understanding of Millburn, Mandelson & Co. As Shakespeare put it, "this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof").
As always, Labour seems concerned to present social mobility as something that can only benefit the socially mobile; Tony Harrison's biographical poem "Bookends" suggests otherwise, clearly warning that headlong mobility can cause rifts nothing can heal:

I
Baked the day she suddenly dropped deadwe chew it slowly that last apple pie.
Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don't try.

You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The "scholar" me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,
too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass
and she not here to tell us we're alike!

Your life's all shattered into smithereens.

Back in our silences and sullen looks,
for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between 's
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.


II

The stone's too full. The wording must be terse.
There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it--

Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse.
It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we're on our third)
you said you'd always been a clumsy talker
and couldn't find another, shorter word
for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can't still cut:

You're supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can't tell them what the fuck to put!

I've got to find the right words on my own.

I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can't squeeze more love into their stone.

Blood, they say, is thicker than water; it may be that fear of disloyalty and family breaches need addressing if Labour is serious about tackling the reasons for faltering social mobility.

Wookey Witch

Wookey Hole has appointed a witch, to be known as Carla Calamity, on a salary of £50,000 pro rata.

Now that wasn't an option the Careers Service mentioned at school…

"As a Christian and a paediatrician…"

Dr Sheila Matthews, a paediatrician sacked for requesting permission to abstain from voting in adoption cases involving same-sex applicants, has been reinstated, but will not now be involved in the decision-marking panel.

Dr Matthews maintains that her opposition to same-sex adoptive parents is a professional opinion, based on her research into the subject. So why muddy the waters by referring to her religious beliefs? Publicising that she holds her views "As a Christian and a paediatrician…" completely compromises her professional objectivity.

The Christian Legal Centre (a body whose subjective stance is eponymously stated) insists that Dr Matthews should also be reinstated to the voting panel and allowed to abstain in cases where prospective adopters are a single-sex couple. This is patently nonsensical and might well compromise the panel's objectivity and operational validity - suppose, for example, that all the panel members chose to abstain for religious or other personal reasons.

Dr Matthews should either commit to carrying out whole-heartedly the tasks required of the panel (for which she would presumably be remunerated), formulating a decision on the unique merits of each case and basing her final decision only on her professional appreciation of the case, or she should not be on the panel at all.

Woof!

The BBC reports that civilians who have been given powers to issue penalty notices and fines for dog fouling "have been vetted and trained"…

More university places (follow-up)

With £100 million due to be cut from the education budget, reports of the existence of a secret list featuring up to 30 universities thought to be in danger of financial failure in the next year, and news that 50% of graduates are earning below the repayment threshold, how exactly is the government planning to fund the 10,000 extra university places announced only a week ago?

And with grants frozen and fees rising, who will be able to take advantage of the additional places?

Windows 7 hype

Windows 7 will be released in a couple of months and has already attracted controversy, not least because Microsoft quickly withdrew its much-hyped promotional pre-order price scheme.
The reportedly huge number of preorders is not necessarily evidence that the latest version of this operating system is being breathlessly anticipated by countless multitudes of excited, expectant and grateful customers. The promotional price is likely to have played a major part, since it reduced the cost of the home version from a bloated £149 to £49.

The flocking customers, however, are just as likely to be evidence of a desperate hope that Win7 will have resolved the many and frequent issues encountered by Vista users. Indeed, so many customers flocked to place orders on the day pre-ordering opened that Microsoft's online shop crashed… which seems to say it all.

Thinking "left-of-centre"

Ben Stephenson, head of drama commissioning at the BBC, has apparently caused outrage by his declaration that the Beeb should promote "peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking".

It's not entirely clear how the characteristics Stephenson is encouraging will lead to better programme-making, given that some of the terms imply a lack of flexibility in approach; originality might be more welcome to licence-payer and evader alike.

However, critical responses have focused on the term "left-of-centre", which has been interpreted – apparently without pause to consider the term in context – to mean "Left-of-centre", suggesting a political bias inappropriate to the corporation. (The BBC has rather suggested its own guilt by apparently pointing to Boris Johnson's single appearance in EastEnders as evidence of political neutrality.)

Stephenson insists he was using not using the term politically, but to indicate a slanted approach, as in "left-field", which certainly seems more meaningful than a political connotation in context. To avoid confusion in future, perhaps Stephenson should employ the phrase "off-centre". This might still be interpreted politically, but at least the direction of any potential bias is ambiguous.

Digital television

The UK government plans to switch off analogue TV services by 2012. Given that digital signals are often interrupted by severe weather, including the rainstorms that seem to have become ever more frequent throughout Britain, does it also have some secret plan to improve the weather?

Pandemic: a definition

Pandemic: hysteria affecting everyone; a democratic panic.

Wolf! Wolf!

It's becoming increasingly difficult to evaluate the seriousness of global health threats. Concern about swine flu seems to be fluctuating hourly, ranging from "We're all doomed" prognostications to more pragmatic "It's flu. So?" shrugs.

In the UK, the government appears unable to decide where swine flu should feature in its ever-increasing list of serious issues. Worry, don't worry, worry, don't worry… the instructions alter frequently. In a decision that must surely have boosted Royal Mail's income, the NHS sent letters out some weeks ago to remind individuals of their "unique personal NHS Number[s]"; the term "pandemic" occurred no less than three times. A vaccination programme is being rolled out, although it's unclear how many doses will be available before the start of the "normal" flu season and, as the vaccine isn't produced in the UK, there are fears that it may not arrive at all. Now there are mutterings about schools not reopening at the beginning of the autumn term for fear of spreading the virus.

At present, fewer people are suffering from swine flu than from déjà vu: these scares are becoming commonplace. In 2003/4, the severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] virus was being reported as a potential global killer; in 2005/6, it was the turn of avian flu, with experts insisting that 50% of the global population might die. Swine flu itself isn't a new virus: in its June 2009 Bulletin, the World Health Organisation looked back to 1976 when an outbreak in the USA led to plans to vaccinate the whole population; the threatened pandemic failed to happen and the government lost credibility.

This is a useful warning. Governments, health authorities and other organizations need to be more responsible about the information they publish and way it is published. While there have indeed been deaths from the present outbreak of swine flu, and may well be more, the mixed messages being sent out help no-one.

This is a situation in which govenments need to be less enthusiastic about embracing openness. Shout "Pandemic!" too often and no-one will believe it any more. One day, and perhaps that day will be soon, there will indeed be a pandemic, a global outbreak whose threat is real and widespread. If the idea of pandemic is linked only with scaremongering, it will, as in the story of The Boy who Cried "Wolf!", be all the harder to convince people of its reality.

More university places

Earlier this month, the Association of Graduate Recruiters reported that the number of graduate positions had decreased by 25%, with 48 graduates competing for each post and starting salaries frozen.

Now Gordon Brown promises to provide up to 10,000 extra university places to accommodate increasing demand fuelled by recession and rising unemployment. Perhaps the recession will be a distant memory by the time the additional students graduate and there will be degree-level posts for all. Or perhaps this idea is as short-term as the contracts of the academics likely to be employed to teach them, and simply a way to keep more people off the unemployment lists.

Pointless research 2: the "solicitation purr"

Dr Karen McComb has discovered that cats use special "soliciting purrs" to manipulate their owners. Quite how this improves humanity's - or even felinity's - lot is unclear, although McComb is gracious enough to thank "Archie, Clyde, Fuzzy, Hippolythe, Marbles, Max, Mojo, Morgan, McKee, Pepo [and] Socks" for services rendered. Who is using whom?

Pointless research 1: wallets with baby photos

Professor Richard Wiseman has conducted a study into the return of lost wallets. The experiment had wallets with various different contents placed around Edinburgh. The results suggest that people are more likely to reunite a wallet with its owner if the wallet contains a photograph of a baby; many more of these were returned than the wallets with other contents, such as family group photographs, puppy pictures and charity donation receipts.

It's mildly interesting, but don't bother to hunt out a cute baby picture just yet. Although Wiseman professes himself "amazed" by the high number of sample wallets returned (a depressingly paltry 42%), as none of the samples contained any money, it seems unlikely to reflect what would happen outside the experimental box. After all, most people who lose wallets would probably have money and/or credits cards in them…