The ERT Symphony Orchestra and chorus, all sacked overnight, continue to perform in protest.
Hat tip to J and J
Hat tip to J and J
Monday, June 17, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Under the radar
Choose your enemies carefully. Immigrants, criminals, lawyers? You should be on safe ground. Justice, liberty and equality before the law? Then you could be in trouble. The problem is, they are all intrinsically linked. The government hopes that people will notice the former, but not the latter as it pushes through changes in legal aid. Maybe that is why they have escaped too much media attention.
Here are two excellent short articles from Nick Cohen and Francis FitzGibbon. Both highlight that one of the main consequence of the changes will be to protect government actions from legal scrutiny and redress. Cohen puts it succinctly,
The proposals feature three common themes that run through much government policy making.
1. They privilege anecdote over evidence and ignore research.
2. They provide opportunities for private corporations to be given a monopoly, enabling them to make risk-free money from government contracts rather than entrepreneurial activity. (Eddie Stobart, the road haulage firm, intends to bid!).
3. The losers are the poor.
And we are seeing a slow, incremental centralisation of power in the hands of ministers who are not overly keen on criticism of their brilliant new ideas.
Here are two excellent short articles from Nick Cohen and Francis FitzGibbon. Both highlight that one of the main consequence of the changes will be to protect government actions from legal scrutiny and redress. Cohen puts it succinctly,
If Britain had a liberal constitution, or any kind of constitution, the proposals would be seen for what they are: an assault on fundamental rights that shifts power from the individual to the state.FitzGibbon highlights some of the proposed changes. Rather than bringing "price competition into the criminal legal aid market," they are proposing a bidding process for local monopolies that deprive clients of any choice.
There are currently about 1600 solicitors’ firms in England and Wales accredited by the government to do legal aid work. That number will drop to 400, each of which will be assigned a geographical area; big firms will be allowed to bid for multiple contracts. Contracts will be awarded to the lowest bidder, with the ceiling for bids set at 17.5 per cent below current rates. The winners will be allocated all the work, or a guaranteed proportion of it, in their area. A client will not be able to choose who represents him, but Grayling doesn’t think this matters since ‘I don’t believe that most people who find themselves in our criminal justice system are great connoisseurs of legal skills.’ Fees will be paid per case (at the moment lawyers are paid according to how long they spend on a particular case), making it financially unviable to spend the necessary time to prepare more complicated cases properly. The sensible thing would be to increase turnover by advising a rapid guilty plea.It is a recipe for miscarriages of justice.
The proposals feature three common themes that run through much government policy making.
1. They privilege anecdote over evidence and ignore research.
2. They provide opportunities for private corporations to be given a monopoly, enabling them to make risk-free money from government contracts rather than entrepreneurial activity. (Eddie Stobart, the road haulage firm, intends to bid!).
3. The losers are the poor.
And we are seeing a slow, incremental centralisation of power in the hands of ministers who are not overly keen on criticism of their brilliant new ideas.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Vampire-free zone
Who could resist two strings of plump fresh garlic from the back of a hawker's van for five euros?
Only one thing to do. Make skordalia. Pungent and spectacularly anti-social unless shared.
Skordalia with Potato
INGREDIENTS
7-8 garlic cloves
1 pound of potatoes
1 cup olive oil
Red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
Salt
DIRECTIONS
1. Peel the potatoes cut in cubes and boil in water until soft.
2. Once boiled, strain and mix with a hand mixer until smooth.
3. In a food processor process the garlic cloves with a bit of salt until it is a paste.
4. Add ½ of the olive oil in the food processor and continue mixing.
5. Add the garlic paste to the potato and mix with a wooden spoon.
6. Add the rest of the olive oil gradually, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing until oil is absorbed.
7. Add a bit of red wine vinegar for taste, mix well.
Skordalia with Bread
Follow the same recipe but instead of using potatoes, use 10 ounces of stale bread (without the crust) soaked in water and vinegar. Squeeze well and then mix and work the mixture with the garlic paste with a fork or with your hands until it is well combined. Than add the olive oil gradually.
Skordalia with Walnuts
INGREDIENTS
4-5 garlic cloves
2 ½ ounces of walnuts
1 large slice stale bread
¾ cup olive oil
Red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
Salt
DIRECTIONS
1. Grind the walnuts.
2. In a food processor process the garlic cloves with a bit of salt until it is a paste.
3. Add the walnuts to the garlic paste and mix well.
4. Soak the bread (without the crust in water and vinegar) and then squeeze well.
5. Mix the bread with the walnuts and garlic mixture. Mix until smooth.
6. Add olive oil gradually until olive oil is absorbed.
7. Add a bit of red wine vinegar for taste.
From here.
And the traditional method:
Skordalia with Potato
INGREDIENTS
7-8 garlic cloves
1 pound of potatoes
1 cup olive oil
Red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
Salt
DIRECTIONS
1. Peel the potatoes cut in cubes and boil in water until soft.
2. Once boiled, strain and mix with a hand mixer until smooth.
3. In a food processor process the garlic cloves with a bit of salt until it is a paste.
4. Add ½ of the olive oil in the food processor and continue mixing.
5. Add the garlic paste to the potato and mix with a wooden spoon.
6. Add the rest of the olive oil gradually, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing until oil is absorbed.
7. Add a bit of red wine vinegar for taste, mix well.
Skordalia with Bread
Follow the same recipe but instead of using potatoes, use 10 ounces of stale bread (without the crust) soaked in water and vinegar. Squeeze well and then mix and work the mixture with the garlic paste with a fork or with your hands until it is well combined. Than add the olive oil gradually.
Skordalia with Walnuts
INGREDIENTS
4-5 garlic cloves
2 ½ ounces of walnuts
1 large slice stale bread
¾ cup olive oil
Red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
Salt
DIRECTIONS
1. Grind the walnuts.
2. In a food processor process the garlic cloves with a bit of salt until it is a paste.
3. Add the walnuts to the garlic paste and mix well.
4. Soak the bread (without the crust in water and vinegar) and then squeeze well.
5. Mix the bread with the walnuts and garlic mixture. Mix until smooth.
6. Add olive oil gradually until olive oil is absorbed.
7. Add a bit of red wine vinegar for taste.
From here.
And the traditional method:
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Though this be madness ...
... yet ... no, it is still madness.
I am back in Greece. The rain has poured down. The news gets more curious by the day. Let's get this right. It began with the exposure of basic and serious errors in one of the intellectual foundations of debt reduction through austerity and then was followed by the IMF's mea culpa about getting serious elements of the policy wrong. The EU and the ECB dispute this and everybody keeps on doing the same thing. The Greek government, desperate to find more cuts, closes down ERT (the Greek public broadcaster, the equivalent of the BBC) immediately, promising to open up a new organisation later in the year. There is a general strike in response (yes, another one) and the Horton Village Choir join the protests by singing "Over the Rainbow" outside the ERT radio offices in Volos.
If you are looking for sanity, the Horton Village Choir are probably your best bet - idiosyncratic sanity, but sane none the less. As for the rest ... pass.
UPDATE
via
I am back in Greece. The rain has poured down. The news gets more curious by the day. Let's get this right. It began with the exposure of basic and serious errors in one of the intellectual foundations of debt reduction through austerity and then was followed by the IMF's mea culpa about getting serious elements of the policy wrong. The EU and the ECB dispute this and everybody keeps on doing the same thing. The Greek government, desperate to find more cuts, closes down ERT (the Greek public broadcaster, the equivalent of the BBC) immediately, promising to open up a new organisation later in the year. There is a general strike in response (yes, another one) and the Horton Village Choir join the protests by singing "Over the Rainbow" outside the ERT radio offices in Volos.
If you are looking for sanity, the Horton Village Choir are probably your best bet - idiosyncratic sanity, but sane none the less. As for the rest ... pass.
UPDATE
Monday, June 10, 2013
In praise of relevance
If there is one group of people who have never stood up in front of a group of craft apprentices and try to interest them in something that they had no desire to know and saw no need to know, it is the the one that argues against the concept of 'relevance' in education. Howard Jacobson has just added an elegant contribution to the genre.
Rather than exclusion, 'relevance' is a process of inclusion, of broadening the curriculum not segmenting it. In my own discipline of history, those specialists beavering away in working class, women's and black history have broadened our understanding of the past. History is the better for it. My forthcoming book (shameless, utterly shameless) is another example, arguing for the need to include a range of neglected thinkers in the intellectual history of the 19th century radical milieu. Every curriculum is of necessity a selection. All the advocates of 'relevance' are saying is that the selection that underpinned the traditional curriculum WAS a process of exclusion and that we need to include the histories that were rejected and marginalised as well. We need Nelson, Wilberforce AND Mary Seacole, not one or the other.
If this process gives students someone they can identify with all well and good, but here I echo one of Jacobson's main points:
But there is one other point that the critics miss. Their assumption is that a 'relevant' curriculum is fixed and static. In reality, a curriculum only maps out what can become an open-ended journey and what matters is the starting point. If people are going to set out on that journey, then they need to be able to take that first step. This means that you have to start from where the students are. 'Relevance' is only one tool in making learning accessible and interesting. And it is only the beginning. Once people are engaged then everything opens out, not simply the 'relevant'. I could fill this blog with anecdotes about how people have started with a narrow 'relevant' focus and ended up with much wider horizons (my favourite is story is that of a woman I worked with in HE who began her journey into education by doing an evening course in belly dancing). I sometimes wonder if, without that start, they would ever have made it.
Jacobson concludes,
Jacobson is a lovely writer, but his rhetorical flourishes don't convince here. For example, what on earth does "It’s not history’s job to be relevant to us; it’s our job to be relevant to history" mean? Then again, analogy is the last refuge of a dodgy argument and this one is a pearler: "A person who has trouble learning to drive isn’t advantaged by being taught only how to crash". Eh? To me the problem is that education is an ideological battlefield, especially history for some unfathomable reason. These ideological wars are often fought with confused concepts and can be far removed from the reality faced by the poor bloody infantry. It is tough enough on the front line without the determined attempt by the inexpert to remove one item from their armoury.
I remember where I was when “relevance” entered the education debate. I remember where I was standing, what window I was looking out of, what bleak landscape I surveyed. That it would come to no good – that it demeaned those it pretended to help by assuming limits to their curiosity; that it denied those it offered to empower, cutting off their access to “irrelevant” intellectual pleasure and enlightenment; that it was in every essential philistine in that it narrowed the definition of learning to the chance precincts of an individual’s class or upbringing – I was certain. The education system I benefited from assumed an equality of eagerness for knowledge, and an equality of right to acquire it. “Relevance”, as the Children’s Laureate’s urgency to promote a lost literacy proves, has benefited no one.The problem with the debate is that it confuses definitions of what is meant by 'relevance'. Jacobson assumes that 'relevance' is a process of exclusion. It labels and limits. Students are ghettoised by gender, ethnicity and class, being taught only what is deemed appropriate to them. Utterly patronising, it reflects the world of the eleven plus exam where children were divided and segregated according to supposed aptitudes and their life chances determined by external authorities. They are denied the deep pleasures of education that the elite take for granted. I have every sympathy with his revulsion. Only this is not what it means.
Rather than exclusion, 'relevance' is a process of inclusion, of broadening the curriculum not segmenting it. In my own discipline of history, those specialists beavering away in working class, women's and black history have broadened our understanding of the past. History is the better for it. My forthcoming book (shameless, utterly shameless) is another example, arguing for the need to include a range of neglected thinkers in the intellectual history of the 19th century radical milieu. Every curriculum is of necessity a selection. All the advocates of 'relevance' are saying is that the selection that underpinned the traditional curriculum WAS a process of exclusion and that we need to include the histories that were rejected and marginalised as well. We need Nelson, Wilberforce AND Mary Seacole, not one or the other.
If this process gives students someone they can identify with all well and good, but here I echo one of Jacobson's main points:
I certainly see the argument for schoolchildren to be introduced early to the great issues that bear on racism – the Holocaust and slavery, for example – but that’s not because of the special relevance they have for Jews and black people. It’s because knowing about them matters to everyone.Precisely. Inclusion matters to us all.
But there is one other point that the critics miss. Their assumption is that a 'relevant' curriculum is fixed and static. In reality, a curriculum only maps out what can become an open-ended journey and what matters is the starting point. If people are going to set out on that journey, then they need to be able to take that first step. This means that you have to start from where the students are. 'Relevance' is only one tool in making learning accessible and interesting. And it is only the beginning. Once people are engaged then everything opens out, not simply the 'relevant'. I could fill this blog with anecdotes about how people have started with a narrow 'relevant' focus and ended up with much wider horizons (my favourite is story is that of a woman I worked with in HE who began her journey into education by doing an evening course in belly dancing). I sometimes wonder if, without that start, they would ever have made it.
Jacobson concludes,
The answer to a history course that doesn’t interest children is not more digestible history; it’s better history teaching.This is a cop out. Clearly curriculum plays a role in deciding whether someone enjoys something or not. There are bits of history that leave me completely cold, no one could interest me in them. Yet there are others that have caught me by surprise and turned into enthusiasms. There will always be students who are not interested in history. That is because they are not interested in history. Learning cannot be forced. But it is a lot more likely to happen if a student thinks that there is some point to it. And there is always the chance that some can be enticed in if the door is open and inviting. The idea of 'relevance' is simply to make that door open a little wider.
Jacobson is a lovely writer, but his rhetorical flourishes don't convince here. For example, what on earth does "It’s not history’s job to be relevant to us; it’s our job to be relevant to history" mean? Then again, analogy is the last refuge of a dodgy argument and this one is a pearler: "A person who has trouble learning to drive isn’t advantaged by being taught only how to crash". Eh? To me the problem is that education is an ideological battlefield, especially history for some unfathomable reason. These ideological wars are often fought with confused concepts and can be far removed from the reality faced by the poor bloody infantry. It is tough enough on the front line without the determined attempt by the inexpert to remove one item from their armoury.
Sunday, June 09, 2013
Wilting
The death has been announced of the wonderful comic novelist, Tom Sharpe. He is one of the few writers who made me laugh out loud and, despite the darkly murderous and sexually explicit absurdities he weaved his characters into, he remained a liberal moralist.
Charles Nevin uses his death to locate him within the campus novel genre. This is a little unfair as much of his work is not set on any campus at all and his greatest educational comic creation, Henry Wilt, worked in the less rarefied setting of a technical college, teaching liberal studies. Boy, was that a thankless job. My stint doing it at what was then the Manchester College of Building was mercifully brief. I had fun with the bricklayers, who wound up an observer by playing a Derek and Clive tape, but Carpenters and Joiners Three on the Friday afternoon on the final day of their block release is seared into my brain. The asphalters were legendary, but no novice would be let anywhere near them. Sharpe's Oxbridge novel, Porterhouse Blue, is a hoot. But it is Wilt that is the ultimate in capturing the despair and the ideals of someone caught up by an insane system and beaten into submission by Meat One.
Nevin's piece is good though and I liked this observation made by David Lodge:
Adult education was always an anomaly, but it became a sea of laughter and enjoyment in an increasingly utilitarian desert. I remember one hideously tortuous faculty away-day when, after our Centre's presentation, I heard someone mutter, "I had heard that they are rather strange in that department". Yes, it has become puritanical.
The word "strange" was completely wrong. Instead, I would have used a memorable phrase coined by Tom Sharpe in his second Wilt book, The Wilt Alternative. What we were was "idiosyncratically sane," as indeed was Tom Sharpe. Both he and the wonderfully ill-disciplined and anarchic world of adult education will be sorely missed.
Charles Nevin uses his death to locate him within the campus novel genre. This is a little unfair as much of his work is not set on any campus at all and his greatest educational comic creation, Henry Wilt, worked in the less rarefied setting of a technical college, teaching liberal studies. Boy, was that a thankless job. My stint doing it at what was then the Manchester College of Building was mercifully brief. I had fun with the bricklayers, who wound up an observer by playing a Derek and Clive tape, but Carpenters and Joiners Three on the Friday afternoon on the final day of their block release is seared into my brain. The asphalters were legendary, but no novice would be let anywhere near them. Sharpe's Oxbridge novel, Porterhouse Blue, is a hoot. But it is Wilt that is the ultimate in capturing the despair and the ideals of someone caught up by an insane system and beaten into submission by Meat One.
Nevin's piece is good though and I liked this observation made by David Lodge:
"Universities became more and more dominated by a management culture which became less and less tolerant of eccentric behaviour. It became puritanical in a way. I was quite relieved to leave the university [Lodge retired from teaching at Birmingham University in 1987] … My impression is that now it's not so much fun."It has to be said that some of the behaviour that was tolerated, should never have been. It was rank bad practice. But he is right that the fun has gone. Maybe I am looking back at fond memories of my younger self, but if Universities were fun adult education was a riot. It was very serious, but also sociable, inclusive and emotionally engaging. It was a heady mix of a personal lifeline and thrilling new opportunity. And some of my students certainly knew how to party.
Adult education was always an anomaly, but it became a sea of laughter and enjoyment in an increasingly utilitarian desert. I remember one hideously tortuous faculty away-day when, after our Centre's presentation, I heard someone mutter, "I had heard that they are rather strange in that department". Yes, it has become puritanical.
The word "strange" was completely wrong. Instead, I would have used a memorable phrase coined by Tom Sharpe in his second Wilt book, The Wilt Alternative. What we were was "idiosyncratically sane," as indeed was Tom Sharpe. Both he and the wonderfully ill-disciplined and anarchic world of adult education will be sorely missed.
Thursday, June 06, 2013
History lessons
I don't like historical analogies. Events are never analogous and by using an analogy to explain them you can get things badly wrong. Most analogies are rhetorical tools, often used to create guilt by association - nazis, apartheid, etc., etc - without doing anything for our understanding of reality. Except...
This impassioned plea for action makes a comparison between the Syrian and Spanish civil wars. And it holds together. Of course the causes and the protagonists are completely different. Spain in the thirties tells you nothing about the Middle East today. The analogy is not about the war itself, but about the international response. In Spain the democracies cobbled together a non-intervention pact that all nations signed up to, even Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was only the democracies that abided by it. The Axis powers armed Franco, provided transport, sent planes and troops to swing the balance in Franco's favour. The British and French scrupulously embargoed arms to the Republican side. The vacuum was filled by Stalin, who used the opportunity to liquidate his enemies, even at the expense of fighting the war. It was the intervention from hell.
So what is happening in Syria? Russia is arming Assad to the teeth. Iran is deeply involved. Hezbollah militias have crossed the border to fight for Assad and may have turned the tide in his favour. The rebels are relying on support that is coming in from Sunni nations and going to Islamist groups. The west is doing little or nothing. Another intervention from hell.
The specifics are different, but the pattern of behaviour is the same. Democrats are left weakened and the contest begins to evolve into one between two sides, neither of whom you would want to win. In the meantime, civil society is destroyed, crimes against humanity are rife, ordinary people are subjected to the most appalling atrocities.
What this is showing once again is that non-intervention has profound consequences. It is not a neutral act. Proposals for peace conferences that will not be respected, even if they take place at all, are merely a fig leaf to cover the embarrassment of the poorly endowed. And so, when discussing the worth or otherwise of any international conflict, it is not enough to point out what went wrong. It is also important to consider the consequences of doing nothing and to see that inaction is rarely cost-free.
This impassioned plea for action makes a comparison between the Syrian and Spanish civil wars. And it holds together. Of course the causes and the protagonists are completely different. Spain in the thirties tells you nothing about the Middle East today. The analogy is not about the war itself, but about the international response. In Spain the democracies cobbled together a non-intervention pact that all nations signed up to, even Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was only the democracies that abided by it. The Axis powers armed Franco, provided transport, sent planes and troops to swing the balance in Franco's favour. The British and French scrupulously embargoed arms to the Republican side. The vacuum was filled by Stalin, who used the opportunity to liquidate his enemies, even at the expense of fighting the war. It was the intervention from hell.
So what is happening in Syria? Russia is arming Assad to the teeth. Iran is deeply involved. Hezbollah militias have crossed the border to fight for Assad and may have turned the tide in his favour. The rebels are relying on support that is coming in from Sunni nations and going to Islamist groups. The west is doing little or nothing. Another intervention from hell.
The specifics are different, but the pattern of behaviour is the same. Democrats are left weakened and the contest begins to evolve into one between two sides, neither of whom you would want to win. In the meantime, civil society is destroyed, crimes against humanity are rife, ordinary people are subjected to the most appalling atrocities.
What this is showing once again is that non-intervention has profound consequences. It is not a neutral act. Proposals for peace conferences that will not be respected, even if they take place at all, are merely a fig leaf to cover the embarrassment of the poorly endowed. And so, when discussing the worth or otherwise of any international conflict, it is not enough to point out what went wrong. It is also important to consider the consequences of doing nothing and to see that inaction is rarely cost-free.
What took them so long?
The IMF has admitted that there were serious mistakes in the the bailout programmes imposed on Greece. I and many, many others could have told them that years ago. Never mind, the first stage in adjusting policy to match reality is to admit error, even if it is hedged round with justifications and many of the underlying assumptions are unchanged.
The report holds its hands up to admit that:
UPDATE
A splendid editorial here
The report holds its hands up to admit that:
Market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30 percent of its deposits, and the economy encountered a much deeper-than-expected recession with exceptionally high unemployment. Public debt remained too high and eventually had to be restructured, with collateral damage for bank balance sheets that were also weakened by the recession. Competitiveness improved somewhat on the back of falling wages, but structural reforms stalled and productivity gains proved elusive.The human and political cost? Can't find much about that. But maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of an acknowledgement that there needs to be a policy change. Though how long this may take ...
UPDATE
A splendid editorial here
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Mills and Boon
1. The Spirit of '69
I don't know when the word 'relationship' began to be used. It seems such a technical, dispassionate term. Maybe it was part of the political revision of language that was meant to remove emotion. Seeing as the predominant associated sentiment was hate, there was a point to it. But for love? Other words are redolent with breathless tension – 'affairs', 'flings' and 'liaisons'. There is the naughty wink implied by the not so innocent 'hanky-panky' and 'carrying on'. In contrast, we have the coyness of 'courting'. Then there is the depth of feeling seeping through 'desire', 'passion' and 'romance'. And if there was one word I wouldn't use about supporting a football team, it is 'relationship'.
Yes, this post is about football.
I was inspired to write this by a lovely series of posts from George Szirtes about the role of Manchester United in his life (starting here). In an act of spectacular unoriginality, shameless copying or hero worship (you can decide George), I have decided to do the same about my experience.
If Barbara Cartland had not been obsessed by winsome, virtuous women meeting square-jawed, though tender hearted, alpha males, she could have turned out potboilers about true love instead; the passion of the football fan. George would fit in well with both. Lean, intelligent, with a fearsome work ethic, he is also, of course, a poet and so would make a marvellous romantic hero. His great virtue is constancy. I, on the other hand, am certainly not lean, love my sleep and am a master of prevarication. And when it comes to football, I have wavered. Mine is a more complicated story.
It goes back to 1964. I grew up in the suburbs of South London and the father of a school friend took me to my first football match, Crystal Palace against Charlton Athletic. Palace won 3-1. I still have the programme. We sat in the old stand and at the end of the game we clambered over a low partition to reach the exit quickly. Tubby and hesitant, I lingered at the top only to be given a helping hand by an impatient fan who pushed me off. Nobody was concerned with my sense of indignity. I was ten days past my twelfth birthday.
Most children's football education comes from their families; they inherit their teams. My father had been a top class amateur footballer but had died when I was four. I had no knowledge of his allegiance other than the fact that he had played for Clapton when they won the FA Amateur Cup in 1924 and 1925.
I was interested, uneducated in the game and had a free choice. It was another friend, then a Manchester United fan, who went with me to a handful of matches. We saw Palace again against Coventry City in 1967 when they were on the verge of promotion under Jimmy Hill and went to a match at Tottenham. Then, in 1968, he was given tickets for Fulham against Manchester United and asked me along. It was a different experience; a packed ground was overrun with United supporters as they won 4-0 on the way to the European Cup. George Best scored twice, one a fierce shot at the near post. I remember waiting in long queues at the underground station whilst a police horse lazily nibbled my friend's new, trendy hairstyle. That didn't do it either, but a lingering affection for two clubs was eating away at me.
It was in the tail end of the 1967-68 season that I became a fully-fledged fan. And I chose Palace. It was a non-descript season for them and, in some perverse way, that attracted me more than the allure of the soon to be European champions. Palace finished eleventh in the second division. I also continued to watch United whenever they were in London, but I gave my heart to Crystal Palace. Both my two friends came to the matches with me and in time the United fan was converted to become a zealous Palace supporter.
Romantic attachment is indefinable. There were two rivals for my heart. Manchester United, exciting, glamorous offering the promise of eternal bliss (though none of us knew then that we would have to wait twenty-five years for consummation) and Palace, offering moments of hope and then never failing to disappoint, a floosy in a scruffy ground with open terracing and grass banking. Selhurst Park or Old Trafford? It was no contest. I chose Selhurst. And then the miracle happened.
1968-69 season started with three wins, but after a few setbacks it became clear that we were promotion contenders. The first division beckoned and Leeds United were sensationally defeated in the League Cup. Promotion was sealed in a tremendous final home game. 2-0 down at halftime to Fulham, Palace fought back to win 3-2 and finish second in the table behind Brian Clough's Derby County. We three friends were part of the crowd that invaded the pitch as the team appeared in the directors' box, stripped off their shirts and threw them to the crowd. Then they threw their socks and had to be restrained from removing their shorts.
We made our way back elated. Even at sixteen I was acutely aware of mortality, so I screwed up my eyes and hoped that I would not die before I saw Palace play in the first division.
When the fixture list came out, the first game was at home to Manchester United. There was something odd about the way the two clubs were to be entangled in more than my life.
2. Boom and Bust
The 2-2 draw with United in Palace's first game in the top division remained the highlight of a season that was one long struggle against relegation. In the final fixture of the season, an agonising 1-0 victory over Manchester City gave Palace a chance of staying up depending on the results of relegation rivals Sheffield Wednesday's final two games, played the following weeks. Sheffield needed three points to send us down in their place. The first was, inevitably, at Manchester United. And, to my horror, United failed to keep Palace up as Wednesday forced a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford. It was down to the last match against Manchester City, a win would have been enough. The news came through on the radio. City had won 2-1 and Palace were saved.
This triumph only opened the way to more suffering. Two more seasons of struggle and dramatic escapes culminated in the appointment of Malcolm Allison as manager. He took Palace down two divisions. They were relegated to division three in the same season United went down to division two.
But then the revival began. The start of it was the cup run of 1976. Palace went all the way to the semi-final as a third division club before the fans' hearts were broken as the team froze and lost to second division Southampton. But stunning away wins at Leeds, Sunderland and Chelsea are etched in my memory, just as I am etched on YouTube. Shortly after Palace's second goal I am there in the crowd, celebrating. There is a screen grab below.
Allison had another influence. He admired Milan and when he was at Manchester City used their red and black stripes as City's away kit. He did a similar thing at Palace. Out went the traditional claret and blue and in came red and dark blue stripes, together with a new crest and nickname of eagles. It is a change I have never wholly reconciled myself with.
We three friends all still went to matches together when we could, but we were young, wanted more from life, and everything was changing. One had moved away to live in the countryside and in September of 1976 I moved to Manchester.
3. Manchester
Manchester saw a change in my attendance patterns. I went to most United home games and Palace away games in the north. I was still a Palace fan but saw more of United. And the centrality of football in my life was fading. I had taken redundancy, studied at evening classes and entered the University of Salford. I was on my way to becoming an adult education lecturer and academic. Saturday afternoons were now reserved for essay writing with the football commentary on the radio. The year I left work, Palace had been promoted to division two. At the end of my first year at university they had won the second division championship under Terry Venables. Their young side had such a bright future they were dubbed 'the team of the eighties'. The year I graduated they finished bottom of the first division and had been relegated again.
Something else was happening too. My old life was slipping away. The three friends who had shared school, football and youth had drifted apart. We lost contact and though United were beginning to win more of my affection, I had started to fall out of love with football.
The eighties were heartless years and the football matched. Ruthlessly pragmatic, the pace had quickened and skill declined as two sides packed midfield and played high offside traps denying the space and time given to the longhaired artists of the sixties and seventies. But it was events off the pitch that got to me.
We should not romanticise the stadia of my youth. The crowd violence was real and ever-present. But the hard work, investment, social engagement and rebuilding that was necessary to confront the problem was entirely absent. Instead, club chairman competed with each other in savagery. One talked of birching hooligans on the pitch, another of turning flamethrowers on them. It was if the boardrooms of our football clubs were inhabited by the Taliban. These were the only businesses I knew of that wished to inflict brutal violence on their customers. It was only rhetoric, but what they were allowed to do was contemptuous of the ordinary fan, punished them for their loyalty and, it can be argued, was an act of class hatred.
Whilst those who could afford it sat in the stands with good views and relatively civilised conditions, the rest were physically caged on the terraces behind spiked steel fences. The grounds were crumbling, toilets were disgusting and I got tired of being crushed at inadequate entrances and exits and having my view obscured by fencing. The violence struck first. When I saw corpses being carried out of Heysel, I thought, "It's not worth it. I don't want to go any more". And all the time I was certain that there would be more deaths. I was convinced that one day those bloody fences would kill a lot of decent working class people. They did. Ninety-six of them.
In the meantime I had discovered a fresh love. I was taken to rugby league and fell for it both on and off the pitch. Here was a sport with a deep working-class ethic, demanding extraordinary levels of skill and courage, which was wonderfully entertaining. Off the pitch, there was no fencing, no segregation and, despite a large proportion of the crowd being pissed, no violence – just witty and abusive banter. Living within easy travelling distance of greats like Wigan or St Helens, who did I choose? Swinton. Another floosy. Another abusive affair. Over the years Swinton has provided a constant source of disappointment sprinkled with the odd moment of hope, just to keep you hooked. It was a new Crystal Palace. This time, there was no alternative temptation winking at me in the corner. I have stayed true and blue.
4. Eric
In the meantime, Palace had revived with a new young manager, Steve Coppell, who had played on the wing for Manchester United. And they reached the FA Cup Final; their opponents were, of course, Manchester United. The semi-final against Liverpool was televised live, but was on the same day as Swinton were playing at Huddersfield. I stood in front of the TV, ready to jump in the car the moment the match ended, expecting a heavy defeat. Instead it went to extra time and Palace won 4-3. We sped to Huddersfield and got there seconds before the kick off. I was wearing a Palace scarf to go with my Swinton one.
The final marked a turning point for me. A dramatic and dazzlingly entertaining draw at Wembley was followed by a replay in those days before things were settled by penalties. This time Palace decided to try and win by kicking the opposition off the pitch. It was a horrible, negative performance and they went down to a deserved 1-0 defeat. Later, with allegations of racism in the boardroom, it was hard to sustain affection. And then came Eric.
Romantic novels are not complete without a strong, dark, temperamental and, preferably, foreign hero who sweeps the heroine off her feet. United signed Cantona. There he was, Heathcliff and Rochester rolled into one. I saw his first game at Old Trafford. I was expecting fancy footwork. Instead, he played deeper and ran the game. The skill was there but so was the strength. He was utterly dominant. I had a new boyhood hero in my forties.
Cantona was the catalyst that opened up an unbelievable chapter in the history of United and I became a Cantona fan, probably more so than a United fan. His weakness lay in his fierce temper, a product of his pride and intelligence. He did not suffer fools gladly, once calling his national team manager a "shitbag". As a result, his greatest moment of fame was to attack an abusive spectator, leaping into the crowd with a kung-fu kick, at, where else, Crystal Palace.
Though never quite the same when he retired, I continued to follow United, seeing some wonderful football and enjoying the success of the season of the treble. The joy was palpable, but restrained by something inside. Was it just because I was older, or was it the nagging guilt of infidelity? And once again I was losing my love of football.
The game itself was better, but the economics of it caused me moral unease. It was not just the obscene amounts of money, nor even the greed of the Premier League; it was what was happening to fans. In the eighties the issue of football violence had been dealt with by punishment, now the tactic was more profitable, exclusion by price - gentrification. I and many others began to be priced out, even though I was in a comfortable middle class profession. Corporate guests got the best seats as stadia were redeveloped. And as football gentrified, it became fashionable. Politicians adopted unconvincing allegiances to appear as ordinary guys. Ownership changed. Plutocrats came in. I didn't like it and the contrast with Rugby League was striking. I stopped going and became an armchair fan. In the meantime, Palace went into administration and nearly ceased to exist. So did Swinton.
5. Reunited
Crystal Palace were receding from my life. I still looked out for scores, though even forgot to do that at times. I watched United on TV and followed Swinton home and away, going to exotic places such as Dewsbury and Barrow. Even that became more truncated as I got my house in Greece and Rugby League became a summer sport. Then, something else happened. I got an email out of the blue from an old friend who I hadn't been in contact with for more than thirty years. It could never have happened without the Internet. This set in train a series of conversations about "whatever happened to …". A bit of Googling and we found out. Those three schoolboys who stood on the Holmesdale Road End, who ran on to the pitch in 1969 and who suffered the agonies of the 1976 cup run, were back in touch.
We were radically different people from the ones who drifted apart. I was an academic on the verge of publishing my first book, another was an entertainer and disc jockey who lived in Spain, the third was a playwright living on an organic farm. We decided to meet and where else could we go but to a Palace match.
Reunions are difficult, something that Milan Kundera depicted in his post-communist novel, Ignorance, where he built his narrative on a reunion between one person who escaped and his old comrades who remained trapped in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. For a time the past holds, but there is a void, those years without conversations, those life experiences about which they were mutually ignorant. It could only end in disappointment and distance. This is also the case with an old football team. Some players were unknown, even the supporters' chants were different; everyone was talking of matches you hadn't seen. There was an ache of regret at the missing years. But the bond was there, Palace won, the joy was deep and the shared weekend was alcoholically magic.
Yet friendships cannot solely rest on a shared past. They have to have a present and build a future. And that future will, inevitably, be centred around football. An era has come to an end at United with the retirement of Ferguson. A new one is beginning at Palace with sanity returning to the boardroom and a dramatic promotion to the Premiership by winning the play-off final at Wembley. It hurt not being there. My first love had stirred. The texts from the friend who went flowed. Emails buzzed over to Spain.
The star of the play-offs was Wilfried Zaha. Twenty-years-old, extravagantly talented, but very raw, he showed something else in those games, strength and courage. He has the makings of a very great player indeed. But he too is off. To Manchester United. In interviews he showed himself to be articulate and determined to leave a legacy at the club that had nurtured him for ten years. Even if he goes on to be a United great, you get the feeling that he will never lose his affection for his first team. I can identify with that. Crystal Palace are back in my life, but I also might just become a Zaha fan.
The power of first love is part of the armoury of cliché that the romantic novelist carries into battle. The best subvert the genre; others embellish it with purple prose. But there is an alternative literary device, a cyclical view of life. Though our physical lives are unavoidably linear, our destinies are linked to our pasts. Circles are closing; old ties are proving stronger than I thought. And you know what? It feels good.
I don't know when the word 'relationship' began to be used. It seems such a technical, dispassionate term. Maybe it was part of the political revision of language that was meant to remove emotion. Seeing as the predominant associated sentiment was hate, there was a point to it. But for love? Other words are redolent with breathless tension – 'affairs', 'flings' and 'liaisons'. There is the naughty wink implied by the not so innocent 'hanky-panky' and 'carrying on'. In contrast, we have the coyness of 'courting'. Then there is the depth of feeling seeping through 'desire', 'passion' and 'romance'. And if there was one word I wouldn't use about supporting a football team, it is 'relationship'.
Yes, this post is about football.
I was inspired to write this by a lovely series of posts from George Szirtes about the role of Manchester United in his life (starting here). In an act of spectacular unoriginality, shameless copying or hero worship (you can decide George), I have decided to do the same about my experience.
If Barbara Cartland had not been obsessed by winsome, virtuous women meeting square-jawed, though tender hearted, alpha males, she could have turned out potboilers about true love instead; the passion of the football fan. George would fit in well with both. Lean, intelligent, with a fearsome work ethic, he is also, of course, a poet and so would make a marvellous romantic hero. His great virtue is constancy. I, on the other hand, am certainly not lean, love my sleep and am a master of prevarication. And when it comes to football, I have wavered. Mine is a more complicated story.
It goes back to 1964. I grew up in the suburbs of South London and the father of a school friend took me to my first football match, Crystal Palace against Charlton Athletic. Palace won 3-1. I still have the programme. We sat in the old stand and at the end of the game we clambered over a low partition to reach the exit quickly. Tubby and hesitant, I lingered at the top only to be given a helping hand by an impatient fan who pushed me off. Nobody was concerned with my sense of indignity. I was ten days past my twelfth birthday.
Most children's football education comes from their families; they inherit their teams. My father had been a top class amateur footballer but had died when I was four. I had no knowledge of his allegiance other than the fact that he had played for Clapton when they won the FA Amateur Cup in 1924 and 1925.
I was interested, uneducated in the game and had a free choice. It was another friend, then a Manchester United fan, who went with me to a handful of matches. We saw Palace again against Coventry City in 1967 when they were on the verge of promotion under Jimmy Hill and went to a match at Tottenham. Then, in 1968, he was given tickets for Fulham against Manchester United and asked me along. It was a different experience; a packed ground was overrun with United supporters as they won 4-0 on the way to the European Cup. George Best scored twice, one a fierce shot at the near post. I remember waiting in long queues at the underground station whilst a police horse lazily nibbled my friend's new, trendy hairstyle. That didn't do it either, but a lingering affection for two clubs was eating away at me.
It was in the tail end of the 1967-68 season that I became a fully-fledged fan. And I chose Palace. It was a non-descript season for them and, in some perverse way, that attracted me more than the allure of the soon to be European champions. Palace finished eleventh in the second division. I also continued to watch United whenever they were in London, but I gave my heart to Crystal Palace. Both my two friends came to the matches with me and in time the United fan was converted to become a zealous Palace supporter.
Romantic attachment is indefinable. There were two rivals for my heart. Manchester United, exciting, glamorous offering the promise of eternal bliss (though none of us knew then that we would have to wait twenty-five years for consummation) and Palace, offering moments of hope and then never failing to disappoint, a floosy in a scruffy ground with open terracing and grass banking. Selhurst Park or Old Trafford? It was no contest. I chose Selhurst. And then the miracle happened.
1968-69 season started with three wins, but after a few setbacks it became clear that we were promotion contenders. The first division beckoned and Leeds United were sensationally defeated in the League Cup. Promotion was sealed in a tremendous final home game. 2-0 down at halftime to Fulham, Palace fought back to win 3-2 and finish second in the table behind Brian Clough's Derby County. We three friends were part of the crowd that invaded the pitch as the team appeared in the directors' box, stripped off their shirts and threw them to the crowd. Then they threw their socks and had to be restrained from removing their shorts.
We made our way back elated. Even at sixteen I was acutely aware of mortality, so I screwed up my eyes and hoped that I would not die before I saw Palace play in the first division.
When the fixture list came out, the first game was at home to Manchester United. There was something odd about the way the two clubs were to be entangled in more than my life.
2. Boom and Bust
The 2-2 draw with United in Palace's first game in the top division remained the highlight of a season that was one long struggle against relegation. In the final fixture of the season, an agonising 1-0 victory over Manchester City gave Palace a chance of staying up depending on the results of relegation rivals Sheffield Wednesday's final two games, played the following weeks. Sheffield needed three points to send us down in their place. The first was, inevitably, at Manchester United. And, to my horror, United failed to keep Palace up as Wednesday forced a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford. It was down to the last match against Manchester City, a win would have been enough. The news came through on the radio. City had won 2-1 and Palace were saved.
This triumph only opened the way to more suffering. Two more seasons of struggle and dramatic escapes culminated in the appointment of Malcolm Allison as manager. He took Palace down two divisions. They were relegated to division three in the same season United went down to division two.
But then the revival began. The start of it was the cup run of 1976. Palace went all the way to the semi-final as a third division club before the fans' hearts were broken as the team froze and lost to second division Southampton. But stunning away wins at Leeds, Sunderland and Chelsea are etched in my memory, just as I am etched on YouTube. Shortly after Palace's second goal I am there in the crowd, celebrating. There is a screen grab below.
Allison had another influence. He admired Milan and when he was at Manchester City used their red and black stripes as City's away kit. He did a similar thing at Palace. Out went the traditional claret and blue and in came red and dark blue stripes, together with a new crest and nickname of eagles. It is a change I have never wholly reconciled myself with.
We three friends all still went to matches together when we could, but we were young, wanted more from life, and everything was changing. One had moved away to live in the countryside and in September of 1976 I moved to Manchester.
3. Manchester
Manchester saw a change in my attendance patterns. I went to most United home games and Palace away games in the north. I was still a Palace fan but saw more of United. And the centrality of football in my life was fading. I had taken redundancy, studied at evening classes and entered the University of Salford. I was on my way to becoming an adult education lecturer and academic. Saturday afternoons were now reserved for essay writing with the football commentary on the radio. The year I left work, Palace had been promoted to division two. At the end of my first year at university they had won the second division championship under Terry Venables. Their young side had such a bright future they were dubbed 'the team of the eighties'. The year I graduated they finished bottom of the first division and had been relegated again.
Something else was happening too. My old life was slipping away. The three friends who had shared school, football and youth had drifted apart. We lost contact and though United were beginning to win more of my affection, I had started to fall out of love with football.
The eighties were heartless years and the football matched. Ruthlessly pragmatic, the pace had quickened and skill declined as two sides packed midfield and played high offside traps denying the space and time given to the longhaired artists of the sixties and seventies. But it was events off the pitch that got to me.
We should not romanticise the stadia of my youth. The crowd violence was real and ever-present. But the hard work, investment, social engagement and rebuilding that was necessary to confront the problem was entirely absent. Instead, club chairman competed with each other in savagery. One talked of birching hooligans on the pitch, another of turning flamethrowers on them. It was if the boardrooms of our football clubs were inhabited by the Taliban. These were the only businesses I knew of that wished to inflict brutal violence on their customers. It was only rhetoric, but what they were allowed to do was contemptuous of the ordinary fan, punished them for their loyalty and, it can be argued, was an act of class hatred.
Whilst those who could afford it sat in the stands with good views and relatively civilised conditions, the rest were physically caged on the terraces behind spiked steel fences. The grounds were crumbling, toilets were disgusting and I got tired of being crushed at inadequate entrances and exits and having my view obscured by fencing. The violence struck first. When I saw corpses being carried out of Heysel, I thought, "It's not worth it. I don't want to go any more". And all the time I was certain that there would be more deaths. I was convinced that one day those bloody fences would kill a lot of decent working class people. They did. Ninety-six of them.
In the meantime I had discovered a fresh love. I was taken to rugby league and fell for it both on and off the pitch. Here was a sport with a deep working-class ethic, demanding extraordinary levels of skill and courage, which was wonderfully entertaining. Off the pitch, there was no fencing, no segregation and, despite a large proportion of the crowd being pissed, no violence – just witty and abusive banter. Living within easy travelling distance of greats like Wigan or St Helens, who did I choose? Swinton. Another floosy. Another abusive affair. Over the years Swinton has provided a constant source of disappointment sprinkled with the odd moment of hope, just to keep you hooked. It was a new Crystal Palace. This time, there was no alternative temptation winking at me in the corner. I have stayed true and blue.
4. Eric
In the meantime, Palace had revived with a new young manager, Steve Coppell, who had played on the wing for Manchester United. And they reached the FA Cup Final; their opponents were, of course, Manchester United. The semi-final against Liverpool was televised live, but was on the same day as Swinton were playing at Huddersfield. I stood in front of the TV, ready to jump in the car the moment the match ended, expecting a heavy defeat. Instead it went to extra time and Palace won 4-3. We sped to Huddersfield and got there seconds before the kick off. I was wearing a Palace scarf to go with my Swinton one.
The final marked a turning point for me. A dramatic and dazzlingly entertaining draw at Wembley was followed by a replay in those days before things were settled by penalties. This time Palace decided to try and win by kicking the opposition off the pitch. It was a horrible, negative performance and they went down to a deserved 1-0 defeat. Later, with allegations of racism in the boardroom, it was hard to sustain affection. And then came Eric.
Romantic novels are not complete without a strong, dark, temperamental and, preferably, foreign hero who sweeps the heroine off her feet. United signed Cantona. There he was, Heathcliff and Rochester rolled into one. I saw his first game at Old Trafford. I was expecting fancy footwork. Instead, he played deeper and ran the game. The skill was there but so was the strength. He was utterly dominant. I had a new boyhood hero in my forties.
Cantona was the catalyst that opened up an unbelievable chapter in the history of United and I became a Cantona fan, probably more so than a United fan. His weakness lay in his fierce temper, a product of his pride and intelligence. He did not suffer fools gladly, once calling his national team manager a "shitbag". As a result, his greatest moment of fame was to attack an abusive spectator, leaping into the crowd with a kung-fu kick, at, where else, Crystal Palace.
Though never quite the same when he retired, I continued to follow United, seeing some wonderful football and enjoying the success of the season of the treble. The joy was palpable, but restrained by something inside. Was it just because I was older, or was it the nagging guilt of infidelity? And once again I was losing my love of football.
The game itself was better, but the economics of it caused me moral unease. It was not just the obscene amounts of money, nor even the greed of the Premier League; it was what was happening to fans. In the eighties the issue of football violence had been dealt with by punishment, now the tactic was more profitable, exclusion by price - gentrification. I and many others began to be priced out, even though I was in a comfortable middle class profession. Corporate guests got the best seats as stadia were redeveloped. And as football gentrified, it became fashionable. Politicians adopted unconvincing allegiances to appear as ordinary guys. Ownership changed. Plutocrats came in. I didn't like it and the contrast with Rugby League was striking. I stopped going and became an armchair fan. In the meantime, Palace went into administration and nearly ceased to exist. So did Swinton.
5. Reunited
Crystal Palace were receding from my life. I still looked out for scores, though even forgot to do that at times. I watched United on TV and followed Swinton home and away, going to exotic places such as Dewsbury and Barrow. Even that became more truncated as I got my house in Greece and Rugby League became a summer sport. Then, something else happened. I got an email out of the blue from an old friend who I hadn't been in contact with for more than thirty years. It could never have happened without the Internet. This set in train a series of conversations about "whatever happened to …". A bit of Googling and we found out. Those three schoolboys who stood on the Holmesdale Road End, who ran on to the pitch in 1969 and who suffered the agonies of the 1976 cup run, were back in touch.
We were radically different people from the ones who drifted apart. I was an academic on the verge of publishing my first book, another was an entertainer and disc jockey who lived in Spain, the third was a playwright living on an organic farm. We decided to meet and where else could we go but to a Palace match.
Reunions are difficult, something that Milan Kundera depicted in his post-communist novel, Ignorance, where he built his narrative on a reunion between one person who escaped and his old comrades who remained trapped in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. For a time the past holds, but there is a void, those years without conversations, those life experiences about which they were mutually ignorant. It could only end in disappointment and distance. This is also the case with an old football team. Some players were unknown, even the supporters' chants were different; everyone was talking of matches you hadn't seen. There was an ache of regret at the missing years. But the bond was there, Palace won, the joy was deep and the shared weekend was alcoholically magic.
Yet friendships cannot solely rest on a shared past. They have to have a present and build a future. And that future will, inevitably, be centred around football. An era has come to an end at United with the retirement of Ferguson. A new one is beginning at Palace with sanity returning to the boardroom and a dramatic promotion to the Premiership by winning the play-off final at Wembley. It hurt not being there. My first love had stirred. The texts from the friend who went flowed. Emails buzzed over to Spain.
The star of the play-offs was Wilfried Zaha. Twenty-years-old, extravagantly talented, but very raw, he showed something else in those games, strength and courage. He has the makings of a very great player indeed. But he too is off. To Manchester United. In interviews he showed himself to be articulate and determined to leave a legacy at the club that had nurtured him for ten years. Even if he goes on to be a United great, you get the feeling that he will never lose his affection for his first team. I can identify with that. Crystal Palace are back in my life, but I also might just become a Zaha fan.
The power of first love is part of the armoury of cliché that the romantic novelist carries into battle. The best subvert the genre; others embellish it with purple prose. But there is an alternative literary device, a cyclical view of life. Though our physical lives are unavoidably linear, our destinies are linked to our pasts. Circles are closing; old ties are proving stronger than I thought. And you know what? It feels good.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
In praise of disobedience
Schindler's Ark gave a marvellous example of how in a criminal world it takes a criminal to accomplish great acts of morality. Similarly, when faced with an act of political stupidity, it is the bureaucrat that knows how to fix it. The 'bedroom tax', a reduction in housing benefit to be paid to people deemed to be over-occupying houses because they have a 'spare' bedroom, even if they use it, has proved to be expensive and, at times, cruel. So how do you deal with it? It is relatively simple, if time consuming. Find a way to call that room something else - a study, a box room, a 'non-specific' room. (The non-specific room is a masterpiece of bureaucratic jargon being used to thwart bureaucracy.) Leeds City Council point out why they are doing it:
Councillor Peter Gruen, the Labour member responsible for neighbourhoods, planning and support services, said it would cost the council more to evict tenants and rehouse them than it would to simply accept that many could not pay for the underoccupation charge.There is a more general point to be made here. People do not always obey orders. Often they find ways round them. Disobedience to authority is just as human a characteristic as obedience. For that we should be grateful. It can save lives.
He said: "The idea of taxing poor people for bedroom tax is perverse. The charges we incur in legal fees chasing up the increasing rent arrears from the last two months is farcical. It costs the courts far more money to evict people."
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Progress
The Internet is to blame. We have forgotten how to socialise with real people. Our concentration spans are being destroyed. It used to be the cinema. Or the telly. Or anything new. But whatever it is, we're doomed.
A few years ago Kirkpatrick Sale wrote, presumably on a computer, that: "computers are steering the world toward social inequity and disintegration." John Michell has added, "To institutionalize the dark ages by giving authority to the metric system would be an act of folly inconceivable in any other age but our own." Yes, you read that right. The metric system. Apparently imperial measures are "sacred measures" that unify the "macrocosmic body of the universe and the human microcosm." A few more kilometres down the long road to hell.
Modern medicine is killing us. We need 'natural' remedies. Big pharma is enslaving and poisoning us. The obesity epidemic means that we're all going to die! (This is, of course, technically true, the big question is when).
Our populations are ageing, we are all living longer (er, what was that about big pharma and obesity again?), we have a pensions crisis, there are too many people in the world! Ah, Thomas Malthus, you have never been forgotten.
Life is suffused with arbitrary tragedies, but in general we are living longer and healthier lives. Yet, some misanthropists see this as unmitigated bad news. Industrialisation has brought real environmental dangers, but also the means to understand their mechanisms and to take action to mitigate them. (Though it has also produced lobbyists determined to stop us; life is never simple). And yes, population growth does have profound environmental consequences. So, how do we limit the pressures of population? Well, if this report is anything to go by, by living longer, more prosperous lives. And watching telly. And not only because it restricts the amount of time available for sex.
Hat tip - Paulie
A few years ago Kirkpatrick Sale wrote, presumably on a computer, that: "computers are steering the world toward social inequity and disintegration." John Michell has added, "To institutionalize the dark ages by giving authority to the metric system would be an act of folly inconceivable in any other age but our own." Yes, you read that right. The metric system. Apparently imperial measures are "sacred measures" that unify the "macrocosmic body of the universe and the human microcosm." A few more kilometres down the long road to hell.
Modern medicine is killing us. We need 'natural' remedies. Big pharma is enslaving and poisoning us. The obesity epidemic means that we're all going to die! (This is, of course, technically true, the big question is when).
Our populations are ageing, we are all living longer (er, what was that about big pharma and obesity again?), we have a pensions crisis, there are too many people in the world! Ah, Thomas Malthus, you have never been forgotten.
Life is suffused with arbitrary tragedies, but in general we are living longer and healthier lives. Yet, some misanthropists see this as unmitigated bad news. Industrialisation has brought real environmental dangers, but also the means to understand their mechanisms and to take action to mitigate them. (Though it has also produced lobbyists determined to stop us; life is never simple). And yes, population growth does have profound environmental consequences. So, how do we limit the pressures of population? Well, if this report is anything to go by, by living longer, more prosperous lives. And watching telly. And not only because it restricts the amount of time available for sex.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the transition to a low fertility regime, deemed necessary by almost all environmentalists, requires substantial modernization, particularly in the socio-cultural realm. Television depresses fertility because many of its offerings provide a model of middle class families successfully grappling with the transition from tradition to modernity, helped by the fact that they have few children to support.It appears that modernity offers the solution to the problems of modernity. We may not be doomed after all – unless the lobbyists win that is.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Mr Tory
Back in the UK, feeling cold and decidedly grumpy; an ideal time to pick an argument, which I did over Michael Gove's 'Mr Men' attack on his critics. Some people have praised it, but I am unimpressed.
The speech starts in a curious way for someone so attached to the concept of rigour, a misquotation in the wrong context. Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, which is what I presume he is alluding to, does not contain the line, "Truth is beauty and beauty is truth". It ends with the following:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Gove thinks that we need to know a bit more than that; quite rightly so.
This misquote is one of a bewildering set of sub-headings (all taken from a conservative literary canon; Wordsworth, Kipling, Tennyson amongst others) sprinkled throughout the text often with little relevance to what follows. It is as if a dictionary of quotations had been mined to lend the speech literary pretentions. Stylistic quirkiness apart, Gove promises to "abjure ... Ciceronian rhetorical tricks", and then fills his speech with them.
Let's start with one bit that I agree with him over, English Language. I have been dispirited by the standard of written English in many undergraduate essays recently. It has been even more worrying in that in trying to work with some students on improving their writing they lack even the most basic knowledge of grammar. Explaining what a verb is should not be part of my job. The worst thing from my point of view is that it takes so long to mark the bloody things. Nothing is more likely to make me come over all Goveish.
Given the interrelationship between language, class and power, this is a critical issue. As too is his defence of liberal learning, high standards and quality vocational training. Who could disagree? And this is the point. Jamie Whyte puts it beautifully:
The speech is supposed to be an answer to his critics, so how does he deal with them? Does he answer their criticisms? Of course not. He deploys three more tricks. The first is to ignore substantive issues and instead attack an imputed motive. Talking of a letter signed by 100 academics in the Guardian he says:
Now for the second trick, the centrepiece of the speech and the bit the media have picked up on, Mr Men and the teaching of history. What he is doing is choosing an extreme example and launch an attack using it as if it was the norm. This is a typical straw man argument. Now, to my inexpert eyes, the Mr Men lesson looks, well, pretty grim. But where does it come from? Is it widely employed in schools? Actually, it is from here; a commercial, private web site, run by someone teaching in the independent sector in France. There is no evidence of its use in English schools. It looks as if Gove's researchers have trawled the web to find something they could ridicule. The whole of schools' history teaching is tainted through guilt by association, despite there being no evidence of any such association existing. But as a tactic it has worked magnificently. Gove's proposals have been ignored as press coverage focuses on the irrelevant and unrepresentative Mr Men and the Nazis.
Finally, out comes a tired, old stalwart; misrepresentation and scorn. This made me recall something from my adult education days in North Yorkshire. Anyone working in community outreach knows that the most difficult thing for a prospective student is taking that first step over the door. The local Training and Education Council tried to deal with this by sponsoring a bite-sized courses week. Free ten to twenty minute sessions on simple skills or interesting facts (we ran local history sessions) were held in locations all over the region. The aim was to tempt people in for the first time then give them the information and guidance about doing something more serious. It was a moderate success, but a PR disaster. One of the sessions showed a quick and easy way to get a duvet into its cover. The local press had a field day with headlines about colleges running courses on duvet stuffing, dumbing down, wasting public money on rubbish instead of proper education, all the usual guff. The result was that they killed the idea, it never happened again.
Gove's speech does the same thing, picking on some ideas suggested for use, predominantly, in primary school history teaching. Here he conflates two things; methods that are used to engage students at the beginning of their learning with what they do by the time they have reached the end. I can assure you that my history seminars are entirely free of cartoon characters, but did any of my students start getting a love of the subject from learning in this way? I certainly didn't get mine from Richard J Evans; it came from reading Ladybird Books in the late 1950s. If you want to engage people, you have to do it with material that is appropriate to their age, prior knowledge, etc. This isn't having low aspirations, it is about finding ways to get people to enjoy learning and laying the foundations for more serious study and adult methods at a later stage. Again, he uses this to shift his attention away from his critics who argue that the methods he favours are those that turned generations of young kids off history for life.
There is much more in there too. It is a speech that uses all the tricks in the politician's toolbox. You should not be surprised. Michael Gove is a politician and an ambitious one at that. Nor should you be surprised by his ideologically driven history syllabus. Sure it is nationalist, but then so is Gove, saying that he would vote to leave the EU. Nor should you be astonished that his pedagogy is conservative, he is a Tory. What else would it be? And it certainly should not be a shock that the cumulative effect of his measures is to centralise power over education policy in Whitehall, after all he is only following the road first laid out by Kenneth Baker in a previous Conservative administration.
The fight is on for the future of education. Gove is there in the blue corner, confident and pugnacious, ducking and weaving. This doesn't worry me. My anxiety comes when I look over to the red corner. There, fear haunts his opponent's eyes and there is no strategy to defend against such a clever right hand lead. In poor condition, the best the left's champion can hope for is to deflect the blows. Delivering the knockout punch is a distant dream.
UPDATE
The Historical Association gets under his guard and lands a couple of shots here and here.
Thanks to Anne
The speech starts in a curious way for someone so attached to the concept of rigour, a misquotation in the wrong context. Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, which is what I presume he is alluding to, does not contain the line, "Truth is beauty and beauty is truth". It ends with the following:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Gove thinks that we need to know a bit more than that; quite rightly so.
This misquote is one of a bewildering set of sub-headings (all taken from a conservative literary canon; Wordsworth, Kipling, Tennyson amongst others) sprinkled throughout the text often with little relevance to what follows. It is as if a dictionary of quotations had been mined to lend the speech literary pretentions. Stylistic quirkiness apart, Gove promises to "abjure ... Ciceronian rhetorical tricks", and then fills his speech with them.
Let's start with one bit that I agree with him over, English Language. I have been dispirited by the standard of written English in many undergraduate essays recently. It has been even more worrying in that in trying to work with some students on improving their writing they lack even the most basic knowledge of grammar. Explaining what a verb is should not be part of my job. The worst thing from my point of view is that it takes so long to mark the bloody things. Nothing is more likely to make me come over all Goveish.
Given the interrelationship between language, class and power, this is a critical issue. As too is his defence of liberal learning, high standards and quality vocational training. Who could disagree? And this is the point. Jamie Whyte puts it beautifully:
A simple test for substance in political statements is whether anyone sane would disagree. If a politician declares it his aim to make the people of Britain healthy, wealthy and wise he tells you nothing useful... In a healthy democracy ... political discussion would focus on the difficult and controversial issues where reasonable people disagree.This rhetorical device is used throughout the speech. You are so busy applauding the sentiment, you forget that the debate is not about whether English Language teaching should be improved, it is about whether, for example, a "screening check at age six" is the right way to go about it. He dodges the debate on specific policies by begging the question, assuming that his are the only answers to the issues he raises. Rhetoric on uncontentious ends suppresses debate on contentious means.
The speech is supposed to be an answer to his critics, so how does he deal with them? Does he answer their criticisms? Of course not. He deploys three more tricks. The first is to ignore substantive issues and instead attack an imputed motive. Talking of a letter signed by 100 academics in the Guardian he says:
The assumption lying behind the letter was that the level of aspiration embodied in the current curriculum, its associated teaching methods and our national examinations was already high enough.The letter says nothing of the sort. And then he continues:
And I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.Having shown what thoroughly bad people they are, he does not need to inconvenience himself with the fact that, rightly or wrongly, they are concerned that his policies could damage aspiration, lower achievements and narrow horizons. He is not dealing with what his critics are actually saying, but the motives that he has invented for them.
Now for the second trick, the centrepiece of the speech and the bit the media have picked up on, Mr Men and the teaching of history. What he is doing is choosing an extreme example and launch an attack using it as if it was the norm. This is a typical straw man argument. Now, to my inexpert eyes, the Mr Men lesson looks, well, pretty grim. But where does it come from? Is it widely employed in schools? Actually, it is from here; a commercial, private web site, run by someone teaching in the independent sector in France. There is no evidence of its use in English schools. It looks as if Gove's researchers have trawled the web to find something they could ridicule. The whole of schools' history teaching is tainted through guilt by association, despite there being no evidence of any such association existing. But as a tactic it has worked magnificently. Gove's proposals have been ignored as press coverage focuses on the irrelevant and unrepresentative Mr Men and the Nazis.
Finally, out comes a tired, old stalwart; misrepresentation and scorn. This made me recall something from my adult education days in North Yorkshire. Anyone working in community outreach knows that the most difficult thing for a prospective student is taking that first step over the door. The local Training and Education Council tried to deal with this by sponsoring a bite-sized courses week. Free ten to twenty minute sessions on simple skills or interesting facts (we ran local history sessions) were held in locations all over the region. The aim was to tempt people in for the first time then give them the information and guidance about doing something more serious. It was a moderate success, but a PR disaster. One of the sessions showed a quick and easy way to get a duvet into its cover. The local press had a field day with headlines about colleges running courses on duvet stuffing, dumbing down, wasting public money on rubbish instead of proper education, all the usual guff. The result was that they killed the idea, it never happened again.
Gove's speech does the same thing, picking on some ideas suggested for use, predominantly, in primary school history teaching. Here he conflates two things; methods that are used to engage students at the beginning of their learning with what they do by the time they have reached the end. I can assure you that my history seminars are entirely free of cartoon characters, but did any of my students start getting a love of the subject from learning in this way? I certainly didn't get mine from Richard J Evans; it came from reading Ladybird Books in the late 1950s. If you want to engage people, you have to do it with material that is appropriate to their age, prior knowledge, etc. This isn't having low aspirations, it is about finding ways to get people to enjoy learning and laying the foundations for more serious study and adult methods at a later stage. Again, he uses this to shift his attention away from his critics who argue that the methods he favours are those that turned generations of young kids off history for life.
There is much more in there too. It is a speech that uses all the tricks in the politician's toolbox. You should not be surprised. Michael Gove is a politician and an ambitious one at that. Nor should you be surprised by his ideologically driven history syllabus. Sure it is nationalist, but then so is Gove, saying that he would vote to leave the EU. Nor should you be astonished that his pedagogy is conservative, he is a Tory. What else would it be? And it certainly should not be a shock that the cumulative effect of his measures is to centralise power over education policy in Whitehall, after all he is only following the road first laid out by Kenneth Baker in a previous Conservative administration.
The fight is on for the future of education. Gove is there in the blue corner, confident and pugnacious, ducking and weaving. This doesn't worry me. My anxiety comes when I look over to the red corner. There, fear haunts his opponent's eyes and there is no strategy to defend against such a clever right hand lead. In poor condition, the best the left's champion can hope for is to deflect the blows. Delivering the knockout punch is a distant dream.
UPDATE
The Historical Association gets under his guard and lands a couple of shots here and here.
Thanks to Anne
Monday, May 06, 2013
Friday, May 03, 2013
Avast
This has to be the story of the week.
Members of a North Devon WI were left embarrassed after a number of them had dressed up as pirates for a talk by a former sea captain who has been held hostage by Somali pirates for several weeks...
"There he was delivering this harrowing story about how he was held hostage and feared for his life, and we were all sitting there dressed as Captain Hook".
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