Employability (again). It’s not about jobs: it’s about “embedding entrepreneurial thinking in your curriculum.” That's a quote.

Just over a year ago I wrote a blog post about how I was required to spend an hour-long seminar in a history course at my university to teach CVs.  This was my department’s way of conforming to the government’s “Employability Agenda”, which pushes a version of “employability” into academic curricula.  The post is here.  http://sonofsar.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00Z&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=19

A shorter version of the post appeared in the Times Higher Education in March 2013.  Here it is: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/employability-agenda-isnt-working/2002639.article

The THE article in particular evoked some agreement and some critical comment, most of the latter taking one of two lines.  The first and most hostile one claimed that I did not care about students’ job prospects.  I had in fact made clear that I actively support students’ with their employment prospects by clearly explaining  the “transferable skills” I teach on their courses, by spending as much time as students ask for discussing their futures, and by writing the best letters of reference I can.  But such things are often lost on the ideologically enraged.  The second and friendlier line of comment focused on ways in which the embedding of employability that I described could be made a bit softer.

Ironically, it was the first line of commentary that got closest to my point (hence, I suppose, its hostility).  That is, that “employability” is not so much about getting students jobs as about ideologically indoctrinating them to accept modern corporate-capitalist practices as normal.  Now, to be clear, I have no doubt about the perfect good faith of most of my colleagues who are involved in implementing employability in the curriculum, including the one, someone I like and admire very much, who devised the CV seminar.  I just think they’re wrong in thinking that employability is a benign or at least apolitical mission to help students get jobs. 

In the above post and article I made the following points in support of the case that “employability” is actually highly political.  Not party-political (indeed it was introduced by New Labour and has simply been continued by the Conservatives and the other party they’re in government with, the ones who made a cast-iron promise to abolish fees and thereby remove one of the foundation stones of the privatisation and corporatisation of higher education).  But political in the sense that it serves a broader pro-corporate-capitalist ideological agenda by using academic courses to normalise modern corporate business practices and to encourage students to adopt such key facets of ideal modern corporate employee behaviour as interpersonal competition as the means of individual advancement, as opposed, say, to unionism as a means to collective advancement and the general social good.  Or some other set of values that might emerge from universities, were they to continue with their traditional emphasis on free-thinking rather than adopting the employability agenda’s focus on free-market thinking.

I pointed out, for example, that responsibility for universities no longer lies with the Department of Education, but with the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills, and that’s where the “employability agenda” originates.  That if “employability” was about jobs, rather than about using education as a form of indoctrination, universities would be encouraged to invest more in Careers Offices, which employ experts in … employability, rather than being encouraged to “embed” in academic curricula what are actually very particular interpretations of what “employability” is, and that are quite different from the un-ideologically-driven “transferrable skills” that academics have always taught, such as grammar, how to structure an argument, and … critical thinking.  And that indeed the whole clunky vocabulary of modern corporatism (including words like “embed”) is the very language of the “employability” agenda.  (For more on that, see this other post: http://sonofsar.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/cascading-emails-or-bizguistics-and.html.)

You can see these points developed via the links above.  The point of this post is, after admitting that many were unconvinced by my argument that “employability” is deeply political in its inspiration and implications, is to add another piece of evidence that I hope some will find more convincing. 

The other day all staff in my university received an email entitled “Understanding and embedding entrepreneurial thinking in your curriculum.” The email identified its audience as follows: “Target Group – All Staff, particularly those involved in curriculum or module design or employability.”  The email offered “a three day course for any member of staff who wants to be able to embed entrepreneurial thinking … into their existing curriculum, and in doing so prepare their students for the highly changeable, flexible and challenging workplaces of the future.” The course would be “delivered by Professor [Xxxxx Xxxxx], an expert in driving the move towards the Entrepreneurial University.” 

The agenda--“to embed entrepreneurial thinking in your curriculum”—could hardly be more clear or explicit.  True, it is voluntary at the moment, at least for academics if not for the students subsequently taught by the ones who volunteer to learn “to embed entrepreneurial thinking.”   But given what this email indicates about how the “employability agenda” is moving forward, so to speak, I wonder how long before such courses are compulsory.  I’ve been told, for example, that I must repeat the CV seminar I first blogged about.  I will because I must, involuntarily.

  

Anyway, contrast the idea of embedding “entrepreneurial thinking in your curriculum” with how most of us in the past were presented with the idea and the point of our higher education.  When I went to university I hoped and was assured that its purpose was to open my mind, to learn critical thinking skills, to think about how the world might be different.  Yes, I would hopefully get a good job afterwards, and I did, but I was never told and never wanted to be told that that was the main point of my education.  And certainly not that I was going to be embedded with entrepreneurialism.  Those who want to be “entrepreneurial” have plenty of chances to be so.  There’s ample opportunity and incentive to become so outside universities, and universities do not stop people being so.  My university education did not try to make me oppose “entrepreneurial thinking”, but nor did it indoctrinate me to accept it.  It was about opening minds, not about closing minds by embedding particular systems of thought.

As for preparing students for the “highly changeable, flexible and challenging workplaces of the future….”: is it now literally the business of higher education to encourage students to accept as givens such modern flexibilities as unpaid internships, zero-hours contracts, short-term contracts, and all the other Dickensian violations of working people’s rights, interests, and well-being that modern corporations have been entrepreneurially bringing back?  Are our students expected to accept these things for themselves, or are we to teach them that it’s fine to impose these conditions on others while pocketing colossal bonuses for doing so?  Are they to be taught, perhaps in Development Studies modules, that when workplaces become too “changeable, flexible and challenging” for first-world legal systems, these conditions can still be imposed on workers in poorer countries whose governments have more entrepreneurial attitudes to pay, conditions, and death  in the workplace?  Are new Geography modules going to focus on identifying off-shore tax havens?  How far will all this go?  The above may seem fanciful to some, but all of these examples of entrepreneurialism are practiced by the same people who are driving the employability/entrepreneurship agenda in our universities.     

If things keep going as they are, then what will soon become fanciful is the idea of teaching students to question the very idea of “highly changeable, flexible and challenging workplaces”.  Of teaching students to think about what “highly changeable, flexible and challenging workplaces” do to individuals, families, communities, societies, and countries.  And of teaching students to think about alternatives to “highly changeable, flexible and challenging workplaces.”  Some of us still engage in this kind of open-minded teaching and learning, but will it still be possible to do so when “the move towards the Entrepreneurial University” is completed? 

     

On complaints to the BBC about the coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela, by fans of the sitcom Mrs. Brown's Boys

Apparently some 850 people have complained to the BBC about the corporation’s coverage of the news of the death of Nelson Mandela, many of them apparently upset by the initial announcement forcing them to miss the last ten minutes of utterly inexplicable and indescribably execrable sitcom Mrs. Brown’s Boys.  What I find most dispiriting about these situations, though, is how the BBC usually defaults to cringe-mode, taking such complaints seriously, as if the kind of people who make them should actually be taken seriously.  I wish sometimes the BBC would give a bit of aggro back to those who give it to them, and do so because they assume the BBC won’t give it back.  I therefore offer the following as a form-letter the BBC might send as a response to Mrs. Brown’s Boys boys (I expect most of them are boys).
  

The letter might also serve at least as an attitudinal template for responses to attacks the BBC is all too frequently subjected to by the usual subjects. Namely, the minions of the Murdoch press, ever eager to attack a national treasure in order to pay obeisance to their lord and master, their press-baron Skeletor, and the wild-eyed, mad-haired, port-reeking, saloon-bar Tory-boors, ever eager to immortalise their imbecility in Hansard. 

Anyway, here’s the letter.

Dear Viewer,

We are sorry* you feel discommoded by our coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela.  However, Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison and then became the first black and indeed democratic president of South Africa, and did more for the cause of human freedom than anyone else in our time.  We therefore felt that the passing of this great icon of justice was a more urgent and significant matter than your desire to watch the last 10 minutes of Mrs. Brown’s Boys.  We thus stand by our decision, and we suggest, furthermore, that you really ought to get a fucking grip.

Yours sincerely,
The BBC

*Not sorry

The Gettysburg Address & Abraham Lincoln’s debt to Daniel Webster

If you’ve clicked on this blog post then there’s a good chance you’ll already know that today is the 150^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s delivery of his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the memorial to those who died at the three-day Pennsylvania battle in July 1863.  Even by the fabulous standards of American oratory, it’s a corker. Here it is, and below that are a few uncharacteristically brief words by me about a few lesser-known aspects of the great speech’s intellectual provenance.

            “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

            Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

            But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”    

[There are actually several slightly different text versions of the speech, but the above is the most commonly cited one, and is the one inscribed on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and on display in the Lincoln Room of the White House. It’s named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, who asked Lincoln for a copy to use when fundraising for soldiers and for whom Lincoln wrote and signed it in 1864.]

What’s well enough known about the Gettysburg Address is its invocation of the US Declaration of Independence.  Four score and seven years ago in 1863 was 1776, when indeed the Continental Congress brought forth a new nation in a declaration that said indeed that all men are created equal and entitled to liberty. Also: life and the pursuit of happiness.  What’s less well known, at least today (if not in 1863), is the speech’s invocation of the US Constitution (drafted in 1787, ratified in 1788, and put into effect in 1789).  And the invocation of the Constitution in the speech in turn is less well known because what’s also less well known is Lincoln’s intellectual and rhetorical debt to a US Senator from Massachusetts named Daniel Webster (1782-1852), who made a then-very-famous speech also about the Union during a controversy that took place a generation earlier.

Briefly, the Nullification Controversy began in 1828 with the passing of a federal tariff on imported goods, raising pre-existing tariffs dating to 1816 to 25-50 percent, designed to protect budding American manufacturers.  Southerners, South Carolinians especially, objected to paying higher prices raised by this 1828 “Tariff of Abominations” that effectively advantaged northerners, especially New Englanders.  The controversy reached crisis-point in 1832 when a special convention South Carolina “nullified” the tariff within the state, and President Andrew Jackson sent gunboats into Charleston harbour to uphold federal law if necessary.  No shots were fired on this occasion, as Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky brokered a compromise whereby the tariff was gradually lowered in subsequent years. 

Some historians, notably William Freehling (Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836), argue (entirely convincingly imo) that this controversy was less about the tariff and more about South Carolinians exploring ways that they might in the future defend the institution of slavery.  And indeed during the long controversy they developed the substance of constitutional theories they would employ to justify secession from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln (who they saw as a threat to slavery) as President in 1860.  In 1830, for example, Robert Hayne of South Carolina argued in the US Senate for “state compact theory”—that the individual states retained their original sovereignty, that the federal Union was a mere “compact” between the sovereign states and not itself a sovereign entity, that the federal government was a mere “agent” of the states, that the states could therefore “interpose” their sovereign authority against the federal government, and that the states could thus nullify a federal law or even indeed secede from the Union.  In two extended responses to Hayne, Daniel Webster made a rather different argument about the nature of the federal Union.  For Webster, the states were not sovereign at all; the people were.  And it was the people who, in the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787, had created the Union.  The US Constitution, after all, begins with the words “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  The states could therefore absolutely not interpose against the people’s sovereign authority as constitutionally expressed through the federal government.  Indeed in a speech of January 26-27 1830 known as the “Second Response to Hayne”, Webster said the following: “It is, Sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”  Lincoln’s particular formulation was “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but it’s clear that Lincoln was borrowing.

Webster ended his responses to Hayne with the following rhetorical flourish.  “When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shine on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterwards"; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, - Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”

Webster died in October 1852, and while he lived to see the Union under even greater threat than it had been when he made his great speech, he didn’t live to see the Civil War. But in playing his part in saving the Union that Webster spoke so eloquently for, Lincoln more than paid his dues to his rhetorical forefather.

 

A Question for Royal Baby Reporters; Or, What Have I Become?

Update on 4 May 2020

I originally wrote this post as a kind of allegory of what I saw more and more of during my later days at Swansea University--people collaborating with the rapid spread of neo-liberal practices in UK universities. At that time I thought a lot about how people respond when such forces make themselves felt: some resist; some act like nothing's happening because they're either vulnerable, or cowardly, or foolish; others collaborate, some for the reasons just described, others out of ideological commitment or amoral ambition. This post is about the collaborators. And about how to avoid becoming one. And now it comes back to my mind as I watch the UK news and see Chris Witty and all the other NHS medical higher-ups standing alongside Johnson, Hancock, Gove, Patel, and that idiot foreign secretary whose name I've temporarily forgotten and can't be arsed to look up, or whatever minister happens to be misinforming everyone on any given day. I wonder--as they knowingly mangle the figures of the dead and actively collaborate with the cover up of the homicidal austerity-crippling of the NHS and government incompetence as causes of so many unnecessary deaths, and with the succcess narrative that this cynical government is concocting before our eyes--if they wonder: what have I become?       

Update on 22 December 2013

Last night on BBC 2 I watched a programme called “Moments in Time” about memorable news photos of 2013. It focused mostly on the truths photos can reveal, only occasionally hinting at how they can deceive, or how the media can use them to create their own realities, like Dick Cheney does. It was an interesting programme all the same, yet one part of it was quite disturbing, at least to me.  That was a section about how a Daily Express photographer ensconced himself for four days in July in a fourth-floor room opposite St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington in order to secure a photo that from a high-angle that would show the face of the then-expected Prince George. There was no critical comment on this, no questioning the ethics of such subterfuge to obtain the kind of picture that the baby’s parents seemed to be trying to avoid. Odious Boris-sister Rachel Johnson was the only commentator, and she just emitted unctuous guffs about how the picture would make even the “most cynical republican” go out and buy a “coronation mug”. Well, I’ve got news for you, Odious Boris-sister Rachel Johnson. No it wouldn’t. Because, as the post below argues, the people on the street waiting for the birth, and especially the one hiding in a garret, who I didn’t know about before, were “basically doing the same job as the ones who chased this baby’s grandmother into that tunnel in Paris.” It’s only monarchists who find this kind of thing acceptable.

Anyway, here's the original post of 22 July 2013.

It seems that a royal baby is about to be born. This sentence suggests that this post may be out of date very soon, indeed perhaps before it’s even written, but it won’t be because it’s not really about the baby, so please carry on reading. So, anyway, for several days, dozens of journalists and TV reporters, maybe hundreds, have been waiting outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital, in Paddington, in London. Waiting. Waiting and waiting. Waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby. And why are they waiting? So that they might be able to take a photo of the woman, or the baby, or the father, or maybe the father hanging the baby out of a window in what would soon be a legendary display of Michael-Jackson-style parenting. But probably not. The most they’ll probably get is some pictures of the parents and their minders eventually leaving the hospital in some days’ time carrying some lump of sumptuous swaddling in which there is, somewhere, quite deliberately quite well hidden, a baby. The parents might show a bit of the baby, maybe a peek of part of its new-born face. But even if the reporters get that, who the hell cares? All babies look the same anyway.  Just small, pudge-faced sub-humans incapable of expressing anything facially or otherwise except dumb incomprehension at who or even what they are supposed to be. So what they’re waiting for, these journalists and reporters, is, basically, nothing. What they’re really there for is for the sake of being there, of being in roughly the same vicinity, when a young woman . . . has a baby. The utter douchebags. 

Indeed they’ve been waiting so long now that they have in fact become news. Last night I saw the reporters  . . . on the news, reported on by other reporters while sitting under umbrellas doubling as parasols in London’s unseasonable summertime sunshine, smoking cigarettes, eating crisps, especially the ones who really need to stop eating crisps, while waiting. Waiting and waiting.  Waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby. I almost feel sorry for them. Some of them, anyway. Nicholas Witchell, for example, seems like a nice man, though certainly a deeply vacuous one, and I certainly felt sorry for him after the abuse he received from Prince Charles, that unconstitutional-secret-MP-letter-writing-tax-money-taking-tax-dodging-homeopathy-believing-in-new-architecture-hating-Poundbury-creating-shit-biscuit-selling buffoon. And maybe some of these reporters are as nice and to-be-pitied as Nicholas Witchell. Maybe some of them love what they do and genuinely, believe they are actually contributing something to society. But, in aggregate, these people are basically doing the same job as the ones who chased this baby’s grandmother into that tunnel that night in Paris. They are hoping, in fact actively planning, that this new human being’s life begins in a storm of flashbulbs, just as the other one’s ended. As if we are no more the wiser about these things now than we were then. Which, evidently, we are not.*

And so I ask myself, while they’re sitting there, waiting, waiting and waiting, waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby, if they are using the time to ask themselves a question: what have I become? For some of them, answering that question won’t be as difficult as it ought to be. Some of them might be perfectly happy with what they are. Maybe they think they’re truly improving the lives of this country’s many royal watchers and enthusiasts, and that doing so is not at all related to anything one might call an always dangerous and occasionally fatal pantomime of modern monarchy. Maybe they really don’t think of themselves as the privatised, out-sourced PR machine of an insanely outdated insult to modern concepts of democracy and equality. Maybe they don’t think of themselves as justifying the giving of millions of taxpayers’ pounds to already-very-rich tax dodgers with countless enormous houses, while their colleagues act as the privatised, out-sourced hate-generating machine for The Collaboration Government, justifying the deprivation of taxpayers’ money to those who are in immediate danger of losing the one home they have. 

That, of course, is just some people’s opinion (yes, including mine, though I’m no republican hard-liner, believing indeed that there are worse and more dangerous insults to modern democracy, such as Nick Clegg and David Cameron**). But at the very least some of them might wonder, as they sit there waiting, waiting, waiting, for a young woman . . . to have a baby, what became of their original ambitions? Is this what they thought they’d be doing in July 2013 when they first conceived the idea of a career in journalism? As they sit there, do they wonder what became of the dreams they had when they started their journalism degrees? Did they apply for their first jobs hoping to combat evil in the world? Hoping to expose corruption in business or politics, or business and politics? Did they hope to reveal poverty in unknown places, to make people want to make it a thing of the past? Did they hope to report on wars in the hoping of doing at least a little bit to end all wars? Did they hope, all those years ago, to try to make the world a better place? If so, do they wonder, now, as they sit there, waiting for a young woman . . . to have a baby, scattered across the pavement and the road, almost literally the litter of their former hopes and dreams: what have I become?

And why did I become what I am, they might also ask? Some no doubt are there because they want to be. These people are either ideologically committed to individualism (their own, that is, always) over all other concerns, or they’re just sociopaths. It doesn’t much matter which, even if there’s any actual difference, which there isn’t. Most people of course are not quite so venal. They will be there more or less reluctantly, perhaps wishing they were doing something more worthy, but are, perhaps they say to themselves, just following orders. I kind of understand. It’s very difficult not to be institutionalised in these ways, in the media or indeed in all kinds of institutions, with all the carrots that institutions offer and the sticks they beat you with. Militant individualists/sociopaths love carrots. They love carrots so much they’ll do anything for them. They’ll dress their actions up as giving people what they want, and they’d be at least partly right—but that of course happily for them coincides with their institutions’ profit-maximising economic models, and the more profits they make for the institution the more they as individuals will be promoted and paid by their institutions. So it’s really just about the carrots. The others, the more reluctant, generally love carrots too. I mean, who doesn’t like a carrot? But they will generally be more scared of the sticks than they are lustful of the carrots. And sticks are scary. Institutions can use sticks to just poke you and demoralise you, they can beat you with them, and they can even use them to chase you off their premises so that you end up on the street. Though not this time as a paid-up member of the institutionalised or even freelance paparazzi: this time as a tramp. 

What lesson is there, then, in the sight of these reporters on the road, these standing, sitting, squatting, crisp-eating street statues of sold-out dreams? For the incorrigibly individualistic and sociopathic, obviously none. But for those who’ve been turned that way, and for the rest, the reluctant but scared, maybe. For those starting their careers, like those students I just saw graduate, our future most-likely leaders, certainly. Yes, we all have to compromise to one degree or another. No one can be perfect in an imperfect world. But there are some general rules one can follow. First, I suppose, remember, or don’t forget, your ideals and dreams. Then, measure your life’s achievements, at any stage in that life, against those (assuming they involved making the world a better place rather than a worse one). Conversely, don’t measure yourself by the often spurious affirmation of the kind of people you would once have despised. Grow your own carrots, in other words. Obviously, these are indeed general rules, but I suppose in each particular case where you might want to apply them, you can ask: does doing this mean that I, at least metaphorically speaking, am eating, sleeping, and excreting in the street in the hope of making other human beings’ lives less private, pleasant, and safe than they ought to be? And if enough people follow these general guidelines, if enough people really want to make the world a better place, then together perhaps we can make it one.        

* This is the point Hilary Mantel was making in that article (only, obviously, much more intelligently and eloquently than me).

** Obviously I’m joking, though I’m also totally serious, and I will expand upon and attempt to justify this seemingly ludicrous statement some time soon.

Why I don’t hate the Boden Bumpkins; Or, why I really quite like Mumford & Sons

The appearance of Mumford & Sons at Glastonbury pleased a lot of people, but, if my twitter timeline is anything to go by, it also generated a lot of hate.  Well, I say hate.  It was actually mostly just piss-taking, but, nevertheless, piss-taking with some resentment included.  Here’s why I think the resentment is misguided, or at least misdirected.

The first thing that emerges from the mockery is that it doesn’t really derive from tastes in music or from regard for the Mumfords’ musical talent.  The former if not the latter comes up sometimes, but something else is happening.  The main critique seems to be that they went to public (i.e. private) school, that they’re posh, that they must therefore owe their success to privilege above talent, and that they’re therefore not authentic (whatever authenticity is).  Let me say first, I think I kind of get this animus.  Music, like sports, is supposed to be one of society’s few level playing fields, where working-class people with talent get a rare fair shot, so it’s aggravating to see those who are over-privileged in other areas eating up the scraps as well as the lion’s share of life’s offerings. That’s perhaps more true now than ever.  Twenty years ago our poshest of posh actors called themselves such relatively ordinary things as Hugh Grant, then along came someone who openly referred to himself as Rupert Everett, and now we’ve gone the full Benedict Cumberbatch.  And of course, most fundamentally (and seriously), and not at all unrelatedly, our Blatcherite classless society has given us a government of Old Etonian, Bullingdon millionaires who are clearly intent on consigning the post-war experiment in (greater) social democracy and fairness to the history books they think it belongs in.  It seems there is nothing we can do to stop the poshist take-over the world, so what we do is mock.  Indeed in these days and times I’ve even indulged myself in some Mumford mickey-taking, calling them the Boden Bumpkins on previous occasions as well as here.  But I still think it’s not right.    

Let’s leave aside the economic inaccessibility and social exclusiveness of such sports as boating, golf, motor racing, tennis, etc., and let’s leave aside this and the previous governments’ selling off of sports fields and thereby profiteering from the destruction of ordinary people’s dreams, not to mention the nation’s health and all the other general benefits that come from universal accessibility to sport and exercise facilities, though the myth of the music industry as a field of fair play will come under attack shortly.  Surely the real problem here is not that the Mumford boys went to public schools but that anyone does.  Believe that private schools should be allowed to exist if you will, but let’s be honest about them.  The entire point of public schools is to give the kids whose parents can afford them an unfair advantage over those whose parents can’t.  Wealthy people do not fork out x-thousands of pounds a year for something they could have for free without expecting something back in return.  Therefore no serious discussion of equal opportunity can begin without the proposition to abolish class segregation in education.  So, ridiculing Mumford & Sons for being public schoolboys may be cathartic, but it doesn’t help us deal with poshism any more than mocking Hitler’s missing man-egg helped defeat Nazism.  In any case, what would we prefer Mumford and his Sons to do?  Go into the wildcat wing of the banking industry and aid and abet the economic ruination of the nation on its next tiresomely predictable occasion?  In fact, rather than that, they’ve chosen to entertain people and enrich people’s lives with their music.  Good for them, I say.  And let’s hope the next Fred Goodwin wants to spend a bit more time fiddling with his banjo and a bit less time spunking the nation's money away.

You may or not like the Mumfords’ music.  Personally, I do.  I love bluegrass, folk, and rock & roll, and I think the Mumfordian fusion makes a fantastic sound.  I find their song lyrics a bit obscure, being more of a “Because you’re mine, I walk the line” kind of guy.  But that’s purely personal taste and, in any case, that line’s already taken and people need to try something new.  But the resentment isn’t so much borne of taste as of a sense that poshos can’t be “authentic”.  I leave it to people more expert than me to question the very notion of authenticity, but I admit again that Mumford & Sons are up against it on this count.  Public schoolboys doing folk music?  Not as obviously or as pathetically and dispiritingly fabricated as Gordon Brown pretending to listen to the Polar Baboons, but I see the point.  And yet, John Lennon wasn’t the working-class hero he wanted to be, yet he generally gets more pleb-cred than the poorer Paul McCartney.  Also, those regarded as unimpeachably authentic both by background and artistic integrity are rarely consistently so.  In the 1970s and ’80s, though it pains me to admit it, Johnny Cash made more cheese than France.  Anyway, perhaps the Mumfords’ undisguised poshness is a sort of unlikely gift; their literariness mixed with mandolins gives us something new and interesting, like an unexpectedly entertaining cameo by Laurence Olivier in an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard.  And, in any case, perhaps the Mumfords actually do have a kind of “authenticity”.  They were schoolmates who formed a band, whatever school their parents sent them to, and by all accounts they worked hard, touring endlessly to gain a diverse and highly appreciative fan-base.  They write their own songs and they play their own instruments, which brings up what they’re importantly not.  They’re not just another boyband/girlband rolling off the production line of Cowell Enterprises.  And they’re not Justin Beiber, that monstrous pop goblin and corporate-sponsored totem of the industrialised, for-profit sexualisation of the under-age-female marketing opportunity.  So, okay, Mumford & Sons may not be genuine good ol’ boys, but they’re  really not the genuinely bad guys either. 
 

Cascading emails; Or, bizguistics and power in modern academia

The other day, everyone in arts and humanities and adult continuing education at my university received from our head of sector a remarkably unremarkable email. I presume everyone across the university got the same one forwarded to them too, or, rather, cascaded to them too.  It was unremarkable in the sense that we receive emails like this one all the time these days, and remarkable for exactly the same reason. I’m not going to mention the name or job title of the original sender. I have no wish to criticise any individual I work with, and in fact no reason to do so. That person was doing a perfectly fine job, given the job s/he is given to do. And indeed that’s the point—this is about institutions speaking, not individuals. 

The email originated from my university’s Marketing Department following instructions from something called the Service Excellence Forum. It provided an “email template signature and generic external email response ... in line with the University’s branding and Welsh Language Scheme.” The template gave us “eg John Smith,” “eg Development and Marketing Manager / Rheolwr Marchnata a Datblygu Busnes” of “Commercial and Campus Services / Gwasanaethau Masnachol a Champws” in “Estates and Facilities Management / Rheoli Ystadau a Chyfleusterau”. Finally, the email’s sender (not the person of the job title above) requested that heads of sector “cascade” the template to all their staff.

I have no problem with the idea of a generic email signature. Our work-email accounts belong to our universities and so our employers have a right to see that they’re being represented in them in pretty much whatever way they wish. And for a Welsh University to require us to use Welsh seems to me to be entirely right in all possible ways. And in fact, as a non-Welsh speaker, I’m grateful that someone’s gone to the trouble of providing some Welsh for me for this purpose. That said, it would be nice to know whether “the University’s branding” came first as a matter of literary elegance or because someone felt it matters more than Welsh, or because Welsh is part of our branding (as opposed to being quite properly a cultural/political representation of the native language of Wales, where the University is). I expect it has nothing to do with literacy elegance. Indeed, my problem with the email is with how all this was communicated, specifically the bizguistics*, and what that represents about who runs universities today.     

I did a small amount of research (in the Oxford English Dictionary) on the word that caught my attention most: “cascade.”  It comes from the Italian cascata, from cascare “to fall,” and entered English via French in the mid-seventeenth century, at about the same time as religious fanaticism. It is of course usually used as a noun, meaning “a small waterfall, typically one of several that fall in stages down a steep rocky slope.” But also meaning “a process whereby something, typically information or knowledge, is successively passed on,” as in accord with the usage above. Although it can also mean “a stunt performed for cinematic imitation or entertainment,” which may also accord with what was going on above. And it’s a verb too, most commonly meaning “(of water) pour downwards rapidly and in large quantities,” but also “pass (something) on to a succession of others.”  It has other meanings too, or had them, including being an archaic slang term for vomiting.   

So, its usage in the email above is not wrong. Nevertheless, it was chosen from a number of more familiar alternatives, including “communicate,” “pass on,” or, by far the most obvious one, obvious because it’s embedded in the language of the act of emailing itself, “forward.”  But, rather, the one chosen was from the lexicon of bizguistics, not surprisingly perhaps, coming as it does from the Marketing Department via the Service Excellence Forum. And as every department must have mission statements, business plans, etc.  And because, as 2008 and its consequences are proving, as is proven at least once every generation, profit motives and big-business methods are the foundations of all things that are excellent. Anyway, also, those alternative words or terms carry no suggestion of hierarchy, whereas “cascade” carries the implication of a downwards direction of communication. Some dictionary definitions, as above, use “pass on,” but the term originates from “fall.” Water and other things may move in various directions, but when they cascade we understand that they go down. Who knows how consciously, deliberately, or precisely people use words when they use them, but certainly to me as a recipient of this email I heard the instructions being cascaded down. That is, from the Marketing Department and the Service Excellence Forum *down* to ordinary academic staff.  And the example used in the template itself?  It’s not e.g. Dr Whatsit or Professor Thingummybobs of the Department of Something Studies.  No, it’s the Development and Marketing Manager of Commercial and Campus Services in Estates and Facilities Management. Those are the people who run the place, after all.

*The word bizguistics is a new one, as far as I can tell. I checked on Google and it’s not there, so I claim it as my own invention. I like it because as a badly spelt and hideously inelegant neologism it imitates with perfect irony what business people, at least in their corporate incarnations, do with language. Indeed it seems to me almost to embody what they do. A bizguis might be a monster that consumes words as greedily as it does everything else, mangling them in its gurgling intestines, and then noisily cascading them as a toxic stream of stinking diarrhoea.  Rather as large corporations consume people, digesting whatever of them they can use, and then shitting out what remains of their souls.

How to create the Big Society in 2013; or, why not open your own workhouse, hospital, or private school?

Pity poor David Cameron. During the General Election he was famously unable to explain the meaning of his Big Society idea, even to fellow Tories who are as happy as he is to eviscerate the public sector and the welfare state.* In the two years and more since then, and at the half-way point of the Parliament, a point at which he and Quisling Clegg are reporting on today, he has still had difficulties communicating his big idea, at least in words, even if its meaning is clear enough in government actions that are eviscerating the public sector and the welfare state. But of course you don’t want to look like you actually enjoy the human suffering that results from these actions, as that might undermine your image as a “compassionate conservative”** and might make voters think that you are just the same old Nasty Party, and you wouldn’t want people to think those things. So you need some kind of cover—nothing that will stop you from destroying the NHS, people’s livelihoods, and civil society as we know it, just a fig leaf to hide your tumescence while you’re doing these things. [*It’s actually apparently the big idea of his policy advisor Steve Hilton, whose other big ideas include the abolition of maternity leave, the decommissioning of Job Centres, and “cloudbusting” as a means to improve the British weather. ** This idea came from George W. Bush. Remember that, the modern Tories get ideas from George W. Bush. George W. Bush.]  

But what fig leaf? What distraction? That’s the difficult bit. You’ve tried to show that you’re an environmentalist by tooling about on the tundra on a jet-ski, but the communist media just said you were a mentalist for belching greenhouse gasses directly into the Arctic sky. You tried hugging hoodies, but they do uncouth gestures behind your back and should be killed. So, “I believe in a Big Society” it is. But what is it? I mean, what exactly the fuck is it?

You can see what a struggle it is for the Prime Minister to think of what it is when he approaches the press, as he often does, looking thinky. As you may have seen on TV, in newspapers, etc., he has a special expression and set of mannerisms for these picture-me-thinky occasions. He looks downwards, squints his eyes, furrows his brow, and, the thinky-look coup de grace, he strokes his chin. Yes, he actually strokes his chin. As if people actually do that when they think, he strokes his chin. With these absurd hamtastic gestures, he actually looks like a picture of Rodin’s Thinker as rendered by a particularly dim six-year-old, except that even the dimmest six-year old could see through this ludicrous show-thinking and has actually drawn the Camerodin as a scathing cartoon of contemptible affectation. You’d think. And yet perhaps, in Cameron’s case, it really isn’t affectation. Perhaps Cameron’s think-act is actually not some sort of pathetic and patronising public performance, a theatrical simulation of thoughtfulness for the delectation of an electorate he believes to be as profoundly stupid as he seems to be. Perhaps he’s really thinking. Genuinely using these physical gestures as means to muster something up between his ears, such as, for example, the meaning of the words Magna Carta, although why the leading lawmaker in the land would need to know anything about boring old constitutional law is anybody’s guess, so let’s get back to the important stuff. Maybe, for real, David Cameron actually does look downwards, squinting his eyes, furrowing his brow, and stroking his chin, when he thinks. Perhaps the cognitive process really is genuinely that much of an effort for him. Pity poor David Cameron.

If that’s the case, if he really does have to scratch his chin and so on when he thinks, then it makes you wonder what he does when he reads. Does his forefinger roam across the page, tracing out the shapes of his favourite booky-wooky characters, Mister Greedy, Mister Hacker, and (Never) Mister Bonus? And when he encounters actual words that he needs to communicate from the page to his brain, do his lips move? My guess is they don’t, but only because he barely has any lips. Instead, his mouth just consists of a little round opening, an under-sized aperture which, situated as it is between his strangely smooth, hairless, pink, and therefore distinctly buttocky-looking cheeks, bears an unfortunate but striking resemblance to an anus. Not unfortunate because of how he looks; one shouldn’t judge Cameron on appearances alone, even if he does have buttocky cheeks and even if his mouth does look like a bumhole. But unfortunate because of the coincidence of how he looks and what he says when he speaks. That is, when speaking, he not only sounds but he actually looks like a man who’s talking out of his arse.

Anyway, that’s enough of these cheap digs. It’s time to get back to the seriarse point here. Given that it’s the New Year and that Mister Carsemoron is in the third year of his Premiarseship, I thought I’d suggest some ways to give his Big Society idea a boost, to show how the Prime Ministarse might communicate what the Big Society is really all about even to the dimmest member of the Tory Backbench 1322 Committee. Here, then, are my top three ideas for getting government off the people’s backs and for mending Broken Britain.

Big Society Idea No. 1
Turn your second home into a Workshop for Winter Fuel Allowance Scroungers. As a member of Alarm Clock Britain, I’m sure you’re tired of walking every morning to work past the closed curtains of the over-heated houses of Britain’s brittle-boned pension cheats, especially as you often find three generations of these superannuated semi-skeletal scavengers in one family. We can’t go on like this. If government cuts the red tape, however, you can put them in your Workshop, perhaps producing on-switches for iPhones or eye-holes for Nike trainers, which will reduce the welfare bill that caused the current economic crisis, help the environment by eliminating the greedy heating so-called entitlements of these so-called old people, with their dependency culture.  At the same time you can turn these work-shy coffin-dodgers into useful members of society by producing goods that raise GDP and produce profits for working families like yours and mine. Also, with thousands of them now working for more proportionate living needs while competing in the labour market, other wealth-creators will be able to reduce the national wage bill that caused the current economic crisis. And don’t be disincentivised by the prospect of higher taxes on the profits you make from your new labour force. Just don’t pay any taxes. After all, the Prime Minister’s own father placed his money in an overseas tax haven, freeing his wealth to buy his son an Eton education so the little Master could become Prime Mister, so why shouldn’t you do the same?

Big Society Idea No. 2
Turn your third home into a hospital for Health Care Scroungers. As a member of Alarm Clock Britain, I’m sure you’re tired of walking to work every morning past the closed curtains of the over-funded hospitals of Britain’s broken-boned and pasty-faced malingerers, especially as you often find three generations of them dying, giving birth, and being born in one family, with their dependency culture. We can’t go on like this. If the government cuts the red tape, however, then there’s no need to overburden tax payers with so-called health-care so-called experts such as surgeons, doctors, nurses, caterers, and cleaners, who are opposed to reform because of their vested interests. And don’t be disincentivised by the costs of the saws, mops and buckets, and coffins you will need. Thinks outside the box. For many years the voluntary sector has been there to fix the NHS inefficiency gap in the form of charity-loving volunteer celebrities who will raise money in return for nothing more than a little quality time with your younger and more deceased patients.    

Big Society Idea No. 3
Turn your fourth home into a private school. As the government reforms the economy, there will be no shortage of bankers who wish to give their children the opportunity to go to fee-paying institutions, rather than to the increasingly impoverished state ones with their inefficient, smelly, left-wing teachers and starving urchins. Furthermore, opening your own private school will ensure that even the more intellectually-challenged children of the wealthy can still go to Oxford, become members of the government, and perhaps even become a Prime Minister who doesn’t know what Magna Carta means. See, it’s a piece of piss—they pay you a fortune and you don’t even have to give them a fucking education! And then, double bonus, with their non-education, they can go on to nourish the Big Society even further. And don’t be disincentivising from profiteering from your “educational” enterprise because, like other private schools, you can claim charitable status, and therefore, like so many of your customers’ parents, you won’t pay taxes.

And that, people, is what the Big Society is all about.

My new day with the Daily Telegraph: or, how to tell lies and influence people

One day on my summer hols eighteen months ago here in France I found myself unable to obtain my usual Guardian, and the only British newspaper available was the Daily Telegraph. Given this lemon, I made a lemsip, and revealed to the world the dark Tory propaganda hidden in the pages of what otherwise looks like a happy-go-lucky celebrity gossip publication. Here is a link to my groundbreaking blog post. http://stevesarson.blogspot.fr/2011/07/being-on-holiday-is-of-course-on-whole.html and a little follow-up to it http://stevesarson.blogspot.fr/2011/07/anarchic-tiny-and-elf-like-ps-to.html    

This year on my winter hols in the same place I found myself in the same situation, so I once again discarded my Guardianista sandals, shaved off my beard, put on my red blazer and weird white horse-riding stocking-type trouser-wear, and, with riding crop in hand, decided to see if, tally-ho, my revelatory post had shamed the editors into changing their devious ways. Amazingly, it didn’t. So, here’s another deconstruction of some articles from a random edition of the Hatey Torygraph, specifically that of Saturday 29 December 2012.

One Page 1, the lead story, unless you count the picture of Bradley Wiggins and story of him accepting the title Sir so he can modestly decline to be called Sir: “State school quotas face axe”.  The subtitle has the spin in the tail, though: “Minister prepare to back down on plans to force top universities to discriminate against private schools”.  There you go: “discriminate against private schools”.  The first line takes up the theme: “CONTROVERSIAL admissions rules intended to force leading universities to take more students from state schools are to be reviewed after protests.” As before, the dissonance between Poshograph headlines and stories soon becomes clear, or clearer at any rate, because, of course, encouraging universities to take more students from state schools is not the same as discriminating against private ones. At no point at all does the article explain in what way any private school or private school boy or girl would be hurt by more access for those from state schools, or indeed be discriminated against in any way. Instead, the Lie-ograph merely asserts the impression of injustice by using words such as “CONTROVERSIAL” and “after protests”. 

Other words that pop up: “Critics”.  But they remain unnamed, presumably because speaking out against inequality and injustice is so dangerous. The only person named here is the author, Tim Ross, the paper’s own “Political Correspondent”, who presumably sees himself as brave enough to speak out, like some sort of Martin Luther King of the British Upper Crust who has a dream that one day his children will not be judged by the quality of their minds but by the size of daddy’s bank account and his willingness to buy his children a centre-forward position on the downwards slope of an unlevel playing field. Yet such is the awfulness of today’s anti-elitism that Tross raises the spectre of Stalinism-style tyranny, stating that (unidentified) “Head teachers accused the Government of pursuing a ‘Communist-style’ agenda of social engineering....” You are of course given to understand that being able to purchase a place at Oxbridge via private secondary education, a place that might have gone to a state-school student with a lesser education and even (but by no means necessarily) lower A Level grades, but who nevertheless has higher intelligence and greater potential, is not social engineering. It is, presumably, the natural order of things. The argument for ensuring more equal accessibility for state-school students (what the policy is really about) is dealt with by a couple of sources cited saying that school background is an ineffective way to predict the HE potential of students. Yes, and presumably that’s why rich parents are willing to pay enormous sums to send their children to private schools: because they’re not better resourced and because top universities don’t presently discriminate in favour of private schools. But that’s another story; not one you’ll find in the Etonograph.

That’s class done, now gender. Turn to page 7 and you won’t find actually find any of the more choice quotations from the Book of Jeremiah, but you will find a story headlined “Women don’t ask, so they don’t get the same wages as men.” So, to give the paper some credit, it acknowledges at least on this occasion, the existence of the pay gap. But, it turns out, it’s women’s own fault, so they’re you go. Below that, “Make love? We’d rather lose a few pounds.” Separate sphere, same story. Then below that, “Mothers can’t see if their child is too fat.” Obesity crisis? Blame women. The only other major story on this page, besides one slyly implying that a Welshman is being ridiculous and over-sensitive for insisting on being spoken to in his native language in a shop in his home town by an assistant who was herself Welsh-speaking, is “Danger UXB. Boy digs up bomb with his Christmas gift metal detector.” It is complete with a picture of Danger Boy holding his metal detector in a horizontal position. As this is not the correct position for proper usage of a metal detector, it’s almost as if the picture is posed to make it look like Danger Boy is holding a machine gun, or some other deeply subtle symbol of masculinity. Fortunately, he was a slim boy who had not been subjected to obesity by an overbearing mother force-feeding him pies, or else his natural daredevil boyishness might have resulted in his corpulent figure being blasted over half of Norfolk. Because of his mum. Women, eh?  

On page 8, we have “Mandrake”, or Tim Walker as he is also called, presumably so that if you combine the two names you can come up with anagrams with the word “Wanker” in them. He has a delightful little piece called “Miliband’s journey” in which in a mere 132 words manages to point out or claim that Ed Miliband is Jewish and anti-Israeli, and that the Labour is anti-Semitic. Which ought to keep both the paper’s Nazi and its Zionist readers happy. Top chap, that Lit Dreamkam Wanker.    

So, we’ve had class, gender, and race. Just one more about class. Page 12: “Before you go, here’s £100 to clean your council house.” In which “Nearly 400 council tenants were paid £100 each to tidy their own homes before they moved out, costing the taxpayer £38,000” by “Labour-run Norwich council.” Presumably, none of the council house tenants were themselves taxpayers? The Hellinahandbasketgraph quotes a council member saying “This schemes saves us money on having to clear out hose homes.” And that “Fast re-letting reduces the potential for costly vandalism and squatting.” But I think we all know what the red-faced reader is going to bark out from his saloon bar stool in the golf club, don’t we?

There is more, plenty more. But you’ll have to do it for yourself from now on. I can’t do any more. It is simply too much to bear.