Disney & the Future of Star Wars; or, how about a Sci-Fi Mash-Up with Star Trek, Dr. Who, & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

Update: 4 May 2020. None of the stories below was commissioned by Disney and will not be appearing at a cinema near you any time soon. Nevertheless, May the Fourth be with you.
   

The recently announced [October 2012] Disney takeover of George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise is causing a great deal of grief and gnashing of teeth.  Aficionados of the Sci-Fi classic seem concerned that the promised new films will somehow be Disnified, perhaps with a regiment of Stormtroopers unrealistically defeated by Seven Dwarves, or the Millennium Falcon risibly outmanoeuvred by a flying elephant, or some other harbinger of the End of Days. But Star Wars lovers needn’t worry. There is surely enough cultural capital in the Vaderverse to sustain at least the promised Star Wars 7, 8, and 9 without having to adulterate these artworks with childish foolishness. And if the new makers are running out of ideas when they decide to story-board Star Wars 10 plus, there’s still no need for them to stoop to having a Wookie in a light-sabre-death-fight with Donald Duck, or, worse, Princess Leia being enslaved by a mouse. Instead, and much more appropriately, they can find interesting inter-textual synergies with other Sci-Fi franchises, such as Star Trek, Dr. Who, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Indeed, below are some possible plots for Star Wars 10, 11, and 12 based on exactly these potential scenarios.  And some guesses about how, in artistic and entrepreneurial terms, it might all pan out.     

Star Wars 10: “Space Seed”

The Kardashians and their evil leader, Kim, are planning to conquer the entire Galactic entertainment industry and, consequently, the political structures of the whole Milky Way. Luke and the gang are determined to stop them, but don’t have the military or, more importantly, the media resources to do it alone. They therefore team up with internationally well-connected Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the second iteration of the Starship Enterprise in order to defeat the dastardly scheme. In a dramatic twist, Captain Picard, immediately after ordering the final attack on the Kardashians’ Hollywood lair by bellowing “MAKE IT SHOOOOW” in an unnecessarily loud voice suited more to the requirements of live theatre than to film-making and television, is mauled to death by a Wookie who has become deranged with anger at the injustice of such an appalling ham taking a lead role while he, a superior actor, is invisible to the audience, hidden as he is in what he later describes to police psychologists as “a fucking wanking Bigfoot suit.”      

In a subplot, Princess Leia, inevitably sidelined when the real space-ship and laser-gun action narrative begins, goes on a week-long Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blaster bender on Betelgeuse 5, until rescued by a semi-retired Captain James T. Kirk, who restores her to mental and physical health with his “Space Seed,” after seducing her with a cornographically humorous invitation back to his Space Hotel room to see his “Force.”

                    The Kardashians’ evil leader, Kim (right) and sibling henchperson Kourtney.

Star Wars 11: The League of Cybermen Strikes Back

The League of Cybermen, having failed to take over the Earth and the Milky Way, are planning to conquer a galaxy far, far away. Luke and the gang are determined to stop them, but don’t have the military or, more importantly, the time-travel facilities to do it alone. They therefore team up with Doctor Who in order to defeat the dastardly scheme. In a comedic twist, Han Solo cannot get the hang of flying the Tardis, and there are hilarious scenes of him stalling it, going round in circles, and landing it on its roof, until, in exasperation, he hands over the controls to a gigantic space bear. Solo blames the machinery, calling it a “goddamned un-aerodynamic bean tin.” The Doctor explains that because space is a vacuum there is in fact no need for aerodynamic shaping of space ships, and nor indeed for time-travel vehicles. This information offends Solo’s belief in a universe dominated by symbolically masculine geometries, so he punches The Doctor in the face.

In a subplot, C3PO becomes surprisingly aroused by the rearward attentions of K9, but the tinny cyber-romance scenes are panned by critics because of the young director’s ambitious but lamentably ill-judged attempts at an arty allegorical referencing of Blade Runner, including a confusing, unfeasible, and frankly tragic dual role-play by Harrison Ford.

Star Wars 12: So Long, and Thanks for All the Pish

The Chinese government and the warrior people of Krikkit are planning to conquer the galactic headquarters of the Brockian Ultra-Cricket Association in order to sell the broadcast rights to Sky TV, depriving terrestrial television viewers of free-to-air sports coverage. Luke and the gang are determined to stop them, but don’t have the military or, more importantly, the political connections to do it alone. They therefore team up with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox in order to defeat the dastardly scheme. In a casting twist, after lobbying about negative cinematic representations of Asian Americans, the role of the insanely sadistic chief of the Chinese Secret Service is offered to Alan Rickman. In the film, Rickman holds the Dalai Lama and Yoda hostage, hoping to use their wisdom in dealing with the cunning and double-crossing Rupert Murdoch, who is also played by Alan Rickman. The day is ultimately saved by Darth Vader (who, following the death of Sir Alec Guinness, is played by Alan Rickman), when he turns away from The Dark Side after being told by his brutal bodyguard and sidekick, played by Sean Bean, that one simply does not associate with a man as evil as Rupert Murdoch. 

In a subplot, after many, many lifetimes of sexual abstinence, the Dalai Lama and Yoda find themselves strangely attracted to each other, and an ultimately unresolved homoerotic will-they-won’t-they scenario ensues. 

Sadly, Star Wars 12 bypasses cinemas and DVD release, going straight to Channel 5 and Fox TV, where its only viewers mistake it for a documentary. Disney decides to discontinue the franchise for the good of all humankind, and the producers and directors spend the rest of their lives in the Hollywood Hills giving poolside interviews to large young men with over-sized beards and small young men with over-sized spectacles for broadcast on their niche-audience You Tube channels.

          

The Rhetoric of David Cameron’s Speech to the Conservative Party today at the Birmingham Party Conference; or, the Conservative PC Lies in Scameron’s Ansprache to the Lizard People today at the Nuremberg Rally.

The Tories, with their US Republican ideological soulmates, long-ago came up with the term “Political Correctness” to describe liberal-left attempts to find respectful language to refer to non-white people, LGBT people, disabled people, and so on.  Of course, the term itself is a kind of political correctness that allows them to demean these efforts to respect others, dismiss others' rights to self-representation, and which constructs such respect for and rights of others as oppression of their own freedom of speech. Or, put another way, their freedom to continue routinely (and without comic effect or political inversion) using words like darkies, benders, mongoes, spazzers, and so on.  There is indeed a whole lexicon of Conservative Political Correctness at work today.  I’ve written before (as have others) about how you can’t say “cuts” anymore; nowadays you have to say “efficiencies,” or at least I wrote about it when I saw Tory Not-Even-Slightly-Secret-Agent Nick Robinson using that whitewashing and factually misleading word: http://stevesarson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-long-tweet-to-nick-robinson.html.  Similarly, in ConPC-speak, the term “something for nothing culture” now applies to people who actually have nothing, rather than people who inherited large fortunes that their parents acquired by maximising them in tax-havens (or low-tax havens and no-tax havens as they might much more accurately be called).  And, of course, the word “not,” in the ConPC dicktionary* means “and break up, privatise, and thereby abolish”: as in the election pledge that “We’ll cut the deficit, not and break up, privatise, and thereby abolish the NHS.” (*Not a typo.) 

I’m writing this as David Cameron (David Scameron) is delivering his keynote speech (Ansprache) to the party faithful (fellow Lizard-People) at today's Conservative Party Conference (Nuremberg Rally).  There will be lots of ConPC (lies) in the Asprache, and in light (the obfuscatory darkness) of the litany of enormously damaging dishonesty I have decided to publish this brand new blogpost about ConPC rhetoric as it might be applied in a Tory version of a history textbook (reheated version of this:

http://stevesarson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-glossary-of-terms-for-tory-history.html with a new context and introduction and one extra joke: at the end below, if you've read this lazy rehash already and want to skip to the only new bit).  

Medieval Society. Early Big Society.

Feudalism. Social responsibility.

Serfdom. Internship.

The Peasants’ Revolt. Class hatred (orig. David Starkey).

Enclosure. Land management efficiencies (necessary and unavoidable, there is no alternative, and it's not at all driven by class-interest or ideology).

The English/British/Civil War/s/Wars of the Three Kingdoms (etc.) / The Interregnum / The Glorious Revolution. The Unfortunate Disruptions.

The Renaissance/Enlightenment/Scientific Revolution. The Birth of Capitalism (orig. Niall Ferguson).

The Birth of Capitalism. The Enlightenment / The Great Going Forward (orig. Niall Ferguson).  

Imperialism/colonialism. Global democratisation (orig. Niall Ferguson).

Empire. Free-trade zone (orig. Niall Ferguson).

The Atlantic Slave Trade. African Labour Recruitment System THAT WAS ABOLISHED BY THE BRITISH (orig. Simon Schama).   

Slavery. Free Labour.

France. South Dorsetshire.

Germany. Unser Vaterland.

World War I. The Unfortunate Incident.

World War II. The Even More Unfortunate Incident.

Europe. Northern Africa.

The United States. Daddy.

Margaret Thatcher. Mummy.

Chartism. (See Peasants’ Revolt.)

Suffragettes. Lesbians.

The Working Classes. The Help (orig. Lucy Worsley).

The Welfare State. The Failed Soviet Union (orig. Dominic Sandbrook).

The National Health Service. The Sixty-Year Mistake. The Medical Business Opportunity.

The Tabloid Press. Our Friends in the North.

Bankers. Masters of the Universe.

Boris. Person born and raised in single-parent household.

A Glossary of Terms for a Tory History Textbook; or, how to teach freshers historiographical semiology

With the new term starting soon, my university campus is undergoing its annual replenishment with fresh-faced first-years (albeit fewer of them this year, for some reason) filled with kittenish excitement, scampering about their wondrous new world with their over-sized eyes and enormous ears. And some of them are historians. But most of those won’t previously have studied history as they will in university, and some of them won’t like the new way of approaching the subject as a subject, as opposed to the subject as a succession of events.  And they will, at least initially, express their alienation with various degrees of mewing and pooing.* (*Just seeing how far I can push this kitten metaphor.  And also I’ve just got a kitten.)

But history isn’t just a succession of events.  It’s many other things too, among which it’s an academic discipline.  That is, it’s a subject made by objects, namely historians.  Contrary to the appearance of some of us, historians are humans.  As humans we carry all kinds of memes, including consciously-held ideological principles (such as a belief in the Dawkinsian memetics), and, more trickily because they’re more likely to be held unconsciously, deeper ideational assumptions that undergird those ideological principles (such as a belief in the modern, western, scientific methods of enquiry that helped Richard Dawkins theorize the existence of memes).  Moreover, our ideological principles and ideational assumptions are reflected in the very words we use when crafting our reflections on our subject, again both consciously and unconsciously.  So it is that the articles and books historians write might well be well-meant attempts to reconstruct history as a subject, but they are also the productions of imperfect objects wittingly and unwittingly spunking their own intellectual DNA all over their work.  And to say this is not to spout some post-modern hocus pocus.  Some post-modernists may claim to have discovered subjectivity in historical writing, just as some 1960s hippies claimed they discovered sex, but it was the very pre-post-modern E. H. Carr who rightly reminded us that to study history you also have to study the historian.   

Put it all like that to the average fresher, however, and you are likely to be confronted by wide-eyed incredulity, first at the unfamiliar academic jargon, and, second, at the use of the word spunking.  So you have to break the neophytes in gently. In an attempt to do so, we have a freshers’ course here at Swansea called Making History.  Yes, “making” history.  That is, it’s about how we produce and present history (and by “we” I don't just mean academic historians in the traditonal sense but also librarians, TV producers, film makers, and anyone else who creates representations of the past).  And one of the things we try to introduce new students to on this course, to employ more technical terms than spunking, is the semiology of historical writing, the semiotics of individual historians, and indeed the subtextual subjectivities inherent in history as historiography.

To that effect, early in the course we make the students read a not-so-subtle article from the Daily Express that purports to reveal left-wing bias and consequent “dumbing-down”* in the teaching of history in today’s politically-correct Britain. (*“Dumbing down” is an almost unfathomably complex historical phenomenon that only its most sophisticated theorists are capable of understanding.  It is in no way a concept of such vacuity that its serious usage is so staggeringly and yet unintentionally ironic that it would make your brain melt if you dwelt on it for too long.)  Reading and discussing this article is really a morbidly fascinating excercise in deconstructing double bluff in a text that claims to expose bias but which itself is biased to the point of the most fantastical inventiveness. Equally interesting is analysing the process by which the distortion happens, attempting to determine whether it lies solely in the mental retardation and moral depravity of Richard Desmond, or whether it just panders to its swivel-eyed, frothy-mouthed, hairy-nostrilled, Diana-obsessed saloon-bar-boor readership, or whether these producers and consumers conspire in a lie-reinforcing loop of crypto-fascist philosophising and neo-Jeremiacal prophesying.

Anyway, I really wanted to have a pop at this lamentable lamentation right here in my blog, which I could then show to students. But then I realised that doing so would give too much away before the actual classroom exercises, effectively spoonfeeding, when another of the points of university learning is that a lot of it should be auto-didactic.  And that should certainly remain the case even in the future of high fees, or else we will be short-changing students on their £9,000 annual investments (and hopefully university senior managers will maintain this ideal against any countervailing pressures, rather than indulging in unprincipled, careerist caving to the powers-that-be).  Also, it’s possible that in the above I might already have given students the tiniest hint of an orientation towards the beginnings of an interpretative lead, which would be very bad indeed.  However, all is not lost.  Listening to certain Collaboration politicians spouting a certain word repeatedly in recent times, and hearing the Conservative Party Political Editor Nick Robinson parrot that word, I began to form an idea about how to teach new students about semiology. 

The word is “efficiencies.” What the word actually means is cuts, specifically cuts in public services (I add that qualification, by the way, in case you thought I meant cuts in bankers’ bonuses perhaps, or cuts in the tax loopholes used by Tory Party donors, which I didn’t, because the word cuts does not apply in any way in these areas).  Anyway, the thing about the term “efficiencies” is that it is meant to signify something while hiding something else, in this instance creating an illusion of cuts in public-service funding that occur without cuts taking place in actual public service provision. These sorts of linguistic gynmastics can also distort the reality of things to the point of suggesting the perfect opposite of their effects, in this instance when cuts actually lead to inefficiencies. Like when “efficiencies” mean that institutions can’t afford to replace ITC equipment, for example, so softwear systems crash, hardware packs up, and so everything takes ten times longer than it needs to, if it ever gets done at all. I pointed this out, using specific examples, to the Prime Minister’s spokesman/woman/person/thing/gimp Nick Robinson in a series of tweets that I then blogged here: http://stevesarson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-long-tweet-to-nick-robinson.html. He hasn't replied or in any way thanked me.

This of course is just one of a panoply of words and terms used by the modern master of mendacity David Cameron (post-Bliar, anyway—poor old Gordon Brown was just too tired and/or mad to still be able to lie convincingly by the time he finally became Prime Minister, and therefore lost the last election).  Others include such words as “equality” and “fairness,” slithering easily off the Old Etonian’s tongue even as he knowingly orients economic structures and social institutions even more to the benefit of the rich and to the detriment of the poor than was the case already.  And then there’s what is apparently the Prime Minister's favourite term: Big Society—a term that even Camerrhoids don’t seem fully to understand, but which, as far as I can tell, implies a return to the good old days of Victorian philanthropy, which, not coincidentally, requires the even more conspicuously unmentioned actuality of the bad old days of Victorian poverty.

Which brings me from words back to the idea.  The idea is for a glossary of terms that might similarly illustrate hidden biases in language, although part of the point here is that the hidden meanings are not actually that hard to find if you care to look into it a little bit.  In turn, this might provide a nice, gentle introduction to first-years to the importance of words, and to show them that semiotics is not mere semantics.  So, below, after this customarily long-winded and winding introduction, is a glossary of terms for a Tory history textbook.  The currently used tried-and-tested and widely-accepted terms are on the left.  On the right (see what I did there?—hurrr) are the new Tory terms, agreeable to the kinds of newspapers and the kinds of swivel-eyed, frothy-mouthed, hairy-nostrilled, Diana-obsessed saloon-bar-boors who do so much of Cameron’s work for him. Yes, some of these terms come from the New Labour era, but that of course should be no surprise to anyone and does not diminish for a minute their essential Toryism.

Medieval Society. Early Big Society.

Feudalism. Social responsibility.

Serfdom. Internship.

The Peasants’ Revolt. Class hatred (orig. David Starkey).

Enclosure. Land management efficiencies (necessary and unavoidable, no alternative, and not at all driven by ideology or class-interest).

The English/British/Civil War/s/Wars of the Three Kingdoms (etc.) / The Interregnum / The Glorious Revolution. The Unfortunate Disruptions.

The Renaissance/Enlightenment/Scientific Revolution. The Birth of Capitalism (orig. Niall Ferguson).

The Birth of Capitalism. The Enlightenment / The Great Going Forward (orig. Niall Ferguson). 

Imperialism/colonialism. Global democratisation (orig. Niall Ferguson).

Empire. Free-trade zone (orig. Niall Ferguson).

The Atlantic Slave Trade. African Labour Recruitment System THAT WAS ABOLISHED BY THE BRITISH (orig. Simon Schama).   

Slavery. Free Labour.

France. South Dorsetshire.

Germany. Unser Vaterland.

World War I. The Unfortunate Incident.

World War II. The Even More Unfortunate Incident.

Europe. Northern Africa.

The United States. Daddy.

Margaret Thatcher. Mummy.

Chartism. (See Peasants’ Revolt.)

Suffragettes. Lesbians.

The Working Classes. The Help (orig. Lucy Worsley).

The Welfare State. The Failed Soviet Union (orig. Dominic Sandbrook).

The National Health Service. The Sixty-Year Mistake. The Medical Business Opportunity.

The Tabloid Press. Our Friends in the North.

Bankers. Masters of the Universe.

 

You get the idea. Word.

Defining Nick Clegg (or at least a kind of Cleggous phenomenology)

So Nick “Your Vote” Clegg has been at it again.  You know, lying, backsliding, you know the drill.  Longish ago, in the general election, his words about the NHS, tuition fees, and pretty much everything else that rolled off his slivery tongue have been contradicted by what he's since done. Back then, he was turned by the Bullingdon-wing of the Tory Party.  More recently, yesterday in fact, it turns out he originally intended in a speech to refer to opponents of equal marriage as bigots.  When found out, though, he said it was a “mistake” and that in fact he wouldn’t “insult” a spade by calling it a spade. To add a layer of irony to the otherwise simply twattish, this time he was turned by the traditional-(anti-gay)-marriage-defending-wing of a Church that was founded by a priapic syphilitic for the purpose of obtaining a divorce in order to produce a male heir to a throne he sat on to such tyrannical effect, and that was then re-founded by a “Virgin Queen” who never got married.  And there it is, Clegg-world in a nutshell, an absolutely batshit nutshell.  (Yes, I meant slivery.)

Of course, the original broken election promises are the worst of all the Cleggfucks we’ve been subjected to since that election.  In that campaign he made commitments that many people (myself included) voted for, and has since done the opposite of what those people gave him a mandate for.  He has thus done violence to democracy itself, as well as terrible damage to the people The Collaboration has committed itself to hurting to immeasurable but indubitably enormous effect.  (For a previous critique of a FibDem and an explanation of that term you can go to: http://stevesarson.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/danny-alexander-and-pathetic-drivelling.html.)  And while dedicated Liberal Democrats (by which I mean people dedicated to the Liberal Democratic Party, but who clearly don’t give a Tom Tit about liberality or democracy) will continue to vote for whatever their leaders claim to believe in next time around, I don’t think any voters who voted for them on the basis of their purported principles will be doing so again. At least as long as Nick Your Vote Clegg and all his fellow collaborators are in charge (including Vince This is My Power Cable).  But it does of course raise once again the question of who is Nick Clegg?  Or, rather, who is Nick Clegg today?  Because, for sure, being “Nick Clegg” is, at any one time, an entirely temporary condition.  So the question is actually quite pointless, except in as much as it throws up opportunities for pointing and laughing, which, we can safely presume, will remain a legal activity for as long as Nick Clegg doesn’t promise that it will.

So, who is Nick Clegg?  Let’s try to define Clegg, but just, as I say, for a bit of a laugh.  Certainly, the kindest things you can say about him are that he’s open-minded, receptive to new ideas, flexible, and likes working with others.  These might well be suitable and indeed desirable qualities in the right circumstances, such as being a fictional or at least fictionalised character in a satirical sitcom that skewers the amorality and consequent hypocrisies of certain types of power-hungry politicians.  Although preferably not one written by Armando Iannucci, a satirist who now sells his wares to Sky, which perhaps finally unlocks the mystery of how it is that the characters he creates are such perfect incarnations of amorality and hypocrisy.  Sadly, however, Clegg’s qualities are entirely unsuited and indeed are or ought to be absolutely antithetical to being an actual party-leader in a real-world democracy.  Indeed, in these respects he’s about useful as Iannuccism is as a political philosophy, or even as a serious as well as piss-taking (i.e. properly satirical) critique of politics.  For more and much greater expertise on Iannuccian politics, in fact anti-politics, see: http://nottspolitics.org/2012/06/18/the-anti-politics-of-the-thick-of-it/

But, just because defining “Clegg” as Clegg is pointless, on account what we might also generously refer to as his mercuriality, doesn’t mean we can’t use the word “Clegg” as a prefix (or for that matter a suffix, but I’m going here with prefix) for all kinds of things that are Cleggacious; that is, things that reflect the characteristics of Nick Clegg.  Politicians’ names have long been used for their illustrative qualities beyond their immediate context but still in related contexts, sometimes in metaphorical and other allusory fashions.  Thus “Machiavellian” needn’t just narrowly refer to a Florentine renaissance philosopher’s expertise in high-order, low-down political chicanery, but can also refer more broadly to unscrupulous shenanigans in modern politics, office politics, business more widely, and in the administration of football associations. And just as “Stalinist” refers most directly to a ruthless dictator who murderously attempted to control all aspects of life in the old Soviet Union, it might also refer to a particularly odious ex- who tried to supervise every moment of your time, monitored your communications, and burned photographs of your previous partners.  It is in these latter spirits that I think we can define “Clegg” the word, if not Clegg the man, and try to identify an essence of Clegg, a Cleggness, perhaps even a kind of meta-Clegg, or a sort of phenomenology of the Cleggous.

Cleggot: one who claims to oppose bigotry and bullying until confronted by bigots and bullies, whereupon he or she (he) teams up with bigots and bullies.

Clegg (verb form): 1. To obtain votes by deception.  2. An inconvenient bodily motion associated with a particular kind of frightening incident, as in “The new boy promised to protect Tom and Scud from the beastly bullies, but then the fiendish Flashman appeared and, alas, the poor chap clegged his pants.”  3. The act of abandoning your erstwhile friends in an unprincipled and cowardly fashion.  As in, “The new boy promised to help Tom and Scud protect the tuck shop in which all the lads had invested together, but when Flashman and his friends came along he clegged-it as quickly as he could (although bearing in mind that he’d also clegged himself, his gait had a rather awkward prospect!), leaving his former friends overwhelmed and the greedy fiends free to steal everyone else’s goodies.”

Cleggottery: unlike a lottery, which has constant rules and in which everyone has an equal chance of winning and losing, a cleggottery has rules that change once the game is over, to the effect that all the winnings are then given to bankers and their political enablers, all ex-private schoolboys with vast amounts of inherited wealth originally generated by off-shore no-tax schemes.

Cleggervane: A sort of a-moral compass that at one moment follows the direction of the wind, but which, when manipulated by evil forces, turns at a Clegg-Angle.

Clegg-Angle: an angle of exactly 180-degrees, and, in fact, therefore, not actually an “angle” at all.

Cleggebrae: an internal apparently skeletal structure than can give an organism an appearance of considerable substance, but which is illusory, and so the organism will in fact quickly decay into insubstantiality. That is, what bananas are made of that makes them look all firm and yellow and lovely to begin with but then turns them into a shitty-looking mush of transcendental hideousness.   

     

Cleggeology: a specialist field within the discipline of geology that explores illusory and unstable terrestrial phenomena such as mirages, shifting ground, and quicksand.

Cleoggology: a kind of secular theology that involves the study of ineffable phenomena, self-contradicting pseudo-philosophies, and charming prophecies that will never be fulfilled.

Clegguistics: the ability to speak on all levels of untruth in many different languages.

Post-clegguistics: the inability to speak any kind of truth in any language.

Cleggygraph: a kind of polygraph that can see into the future and is thus equipped to unmask those who can lie so convincingly that only events that have not yet happened can uncover their mendacity.  Unfortunately, the cleggygraph is still only at a conceptual level of development, and so for now voters (and, if only vote-stealing was actually a crime, the police) must continue to make judgments based on Cleggsperience.

Cleggsperience: the fact of having been lied to on such a scale that you could never possibly believe the particular chubby-faced interlocutor again. It can lead to feelings of incleggulousness, to which only the cleggulous are immune.   

Incleggulous: a feeling of shock at a betrayal of such transparency and moral enormity that is beyond the relatively innocuous feeling of mere incredulousness.  As in, “Oh my God! I thought I was voting for a socially progressive political platform as expressed in the official Xxxxxxx-Xxxxxxxx Party Manifesto, but in government they are betraying their democratic promises and are actually dismantling the very fabric of the civil society I believe in and upon which all things decent and just must depend. I am absolutely incleggulous!”

    

Cleggulous: the ability to be fooled a second time by someone who has already proven themselves to be a most fantastical liar.  This ability represents such an extreme form of delusion that it is in fact a form of mental disability, although experts are divided on whether or not it actually constitutes an illness.  Nevertheless, the degree of intellectual debility required to be medically certifiable as cleggulous was illustrated by George W. Bush when he said, as he did in Nashville, Tennessee, on 17 September 2002, “Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me -- you can’t get fooled again.”

Cleggology: an apology that is so breath-takingly ill-judged and of such staggering inadequacy that absolutely no one takes it in the least bit seriously and all everyone can do is laugh, mock, and make spoof youtube videos out of it.    

           

 

A long tweet to Nick Robinson

Dear @bbcnickrobinson, I see you’ve taken to using the word “efficiencies” for government cuts, 1/10

@bbcnickrobinson so I would like to tell you why “efficiencies” is an inaccurate term. 2/10

@bbcnickrobinson My old computer, which my university can’t afford to replace right now, 3/10

@bbcnickrobinson has just crashed 6 times in an hour, costing me a great deal of time. 4/10

@bbcnickrobinson This is just one small example of 1000s every day in universities, 5/10

@bbcnickrobinson and millions across the public sector, of how cuts cause inefficiencies. 6/10

@bbcnickrobinson Of course no proper journalist would knowingly use inaccurate terms, 7/10

@bbcnickrobinson & so now I’ve explained to you how inaccurate this term is, 8/10

@bbcnickrobinson you no longer have any good reason for using it. 9/10

@bbcnickrobinson You’re welcome. 10/10     

The Olympic Opening Ceremony as Popular History and Public Enterprise; or, in your face, David Cameron

18 July 2020. Apparently, last night there was a repeat of the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, so I thought I'd revive this. It's sad, though, looking back on it. As the post makes clear, Danny Boyle's ceremony seems to celebrate the best of Britain--the parts that are proudly progressive, multicultural, and outward looking. It seems like a very different place today.   

2 January 2013. I wrote this post last summer and just add this note now in appreciation of Danny Boyle's decision to turn down a knighthood in the New Year's Honours because, as he put it, he is "proud to be an equal citizen." That of course is entirely consistent with the spirit of the Olympic ceremony that he directed. Something obviously lost on whoever decided to offer him this spurious form of recognition. Public life today is densely packed with venal people of no principle, although it has been in the past as well. But, whatever, how great it is to see a person of such talent show such adherence to principle. Yay to Danny Boyle. The man deserves a knighthood....

Back to July:      

Like many others, when I first heard what is now clear were the injudicious leaks that Danny Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony was going to feature green fields, farms, sheep, chickens, and cricket, I indulged in the unpleasant cynicism that is the birthright of all freeborn Britons. While others made clever jokes on Twitter about large piles of burning mad cows, I made a lame effort about an entire nation pooing itself with embarrassment, my equally lame excuse for which is that I was indulging in the unpleasant scatology that is the birthright of all freeborn Britons. Watching the ceremony the other night, however, I found myself caught up in the magic of the show, entranced by the technical prowess, awed by the artistic awesomeness, seduced by the sentiments, and filled with patriotic pride. It was like I’d turned into an American, or something.

And even in the cold light of post-ceremonial reflection, I still feel the same. Sure, in a show that first featured a representation of British history, and then of modern British culture, that lasted a little less than 90 minutes and had to appeal not just to a partial but to a national and not just to a national but to a global audience, there was bound to be something for everyone but also, by the same token, something for everyone to complain about. First off, I was scrunch-faced with deep concern about the history and present state of the nation being represented largely though the medium of contempoweh darnce. Soon enough, however, the cynic in me was overwhelmed with admiration for the technical miracles achieved by the set people, as well as by the obvious artistic brilliance of the performers. Even the latter wasn’t too badly undermined by Kenneth Branagh’s adoption of the hamminess that is apparently obligatory for all Britain’s “great” actooors. On the other hand, to give Branagh the benefit of the doubt, Victorian cameras took a long time to take in enough light to make a picture, so photographic subjects had to stand still and maintain the same facial expression for a long time, and expressionless stiffness verging on sternness is the easiest apparent attitude to maintain for what must have seemed like forever for people for whom having their picture taken undoubtedly felt even more excruciatingly unnatural than it does for most of us today. So, maybe, contrary to pictorial evidence of an overly formal-looking stiff-neck, Isambard Kingdom Brunel in real life really was a nostril-flaring gurn-merchant with a theatrically shit-eating grin. 

Anyway, then I thought, well, what do I want here? Or, rather more to the point, what does the world want here? An actual history lecture? Of course not. Especially as media types today seem to believe there are only two historians suitable for big occasions. That would have meant either Starkey the Dinosaur boring on about Henry VIII, again, or, worse still, yet more nostril flaming hamminess but this time provided by the post-tumescent totem of post-imperial diminishment that is Niall Ferguson. So, really, I was pretty glad that it was an entertainer and not a historian who was paid to portray Britain on this occasion. And I’m glad too that that entertainer was Danny Boyle. We could after all have ended up with a qwhite tedious festival of twee by Richard Curtis, or, worse, of the ghastly petit-bourgeois snobbery and spite that for some inexplicable reason makes Mike Leigh so popular. But no, the working-class Lancastrian of Irish-Catholic origin who went to a Welsh University (Bangor) was the right choice to give us what we needed. 

But did he give us what we needed? I think he did. Sure, I’ve seen some people say what he failed to give us, and the historian in me knows it’s a true point if not necessarily a fair one, such as the police beating up strikers and suffragists. I myself was ultimately dashed in my hopes of seeing a gigantic Godzilla-figure in a blonde wig and a blue dress ferociously smashing down the industrial-era chimneys with an gigantic handbag. But Boyle’s mission no doubt was to come up with unifying themes we could all celebrate, given the occasion. And, given the occasion, given that consideration, he could have come up with something arse-achingly anodyne. Yet, in fact, given the occasion and necessary consideration, Boyle came up with something that struck me as highly thought-provoking and perhaps surprisingly subversive. 

First, those fields, farms, and cricket pitches were peopled by peasants rather than knights in shining armour doing their derring doo doo. Then, out of that weird hill thing at the end of the stadium, emerged industrial workers, hundreds of them, and Jarrow marchers, and suffragists, and migrants off the Windrush. Excellent—a people’s history! And on the latter point, the Windrush people for once weren’t represented as Britain’s first black people. There were people of all races in the pre-industrial part of the show too, quite rightly in a representation of a country that had a population of up to and perhaps over 20,000 non-white people in the eighteenth century. Yes, there were capitalists, the best of them represented by Brunel, if perhaps less so by Gurnagh, but the others looked a bit useless and shifty to me, waving their arms about and vaguely giving directions while the working people did the actual work of building Britain and making it what it is, right up to the hardcore steelmaking of the Olympic rings themselves. This was not unalloyed celebration, though. This section of the show was called “Pandemonium,” recalling Milton’s hell in Paradise Lost, raising the spectre of the suffering of early industrial and even some of today’s working people, and there was a Great War memorial moment, reminding us of the horror of industrialised armed conflict. But it’s also as if Boyle was saying that Thatcher might have unmade these industries, but these industries were made by these people, and so it was these people who made Britain what it is even to this very day. That Britain is about its makers, its workers, not its un-makers, its Thatchers. Prime Minister and vicious, right-wing Death-Moomin David Cameron is probably too dim to get it, but, nevertheless in your face, David Cameron.

Another in-your-face-David-Cameron moment came with the arrival of the dancing nurses and patients of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Apparently, Cameron gave out 17 tickets to the opening ceremony to “Big Society” volunteers. Seventeen. Danny Boyle gave us 600 dancing NHS staff and patients—trained, professional public servants and members of the public they serve. What a wonderful celebration of an institution that manifestly benefits all and that therefore our currently governing Eton and wannabe Eton millionaire elitists so transparently despise and want to destroy.  There are pictures of the dancers and of that hands-off-our-NHS slogan all over the internet now, daring Cameron and his bully boys to have a go. It was also interesting to see the nurses, doctors, and patients dressed in old-style uniforms and bed ware, and to see the beds with distinctly old-fashioned-looking metal frames. As if to say that this institution is part of our history, and, Cameron, if you make a speech tomorrow pretending to celebrate this celebration of British history, you’re celebrating the NHS. Of course, Cameron and his born-to-rule bully brigade will remain as arrogantly able as they always have been to pretend to respect the NHS while taking what action they can to destroy it, but Boyle has given them a warning and has given those of us who oppose them a new and gorgeous and globally celebrated totem of resistance. We will put it in your face, David Cameron. Reminder: Aneurin Bevan, architect of the NHS, described Tories as “lower than vermin.” He was correct.

The NHS, particularly in period costume, and still surviving at the point of writing, of course links the past and the present, the history and the present state of the nation. On the latter, the Boyle show was, for me, just as great and satisfying. People asked in the past how the British ceremony could top China’s, raising the rather dubious question of whether Olympic ceremonies are actually supposed to be as competitive as the sporting events themselves. Well, if one must, one can change the rules—Danny Boyle didn’t necessarily go for the faster, higher, stronger that a much larger country with a totalitarian regime’s control of people and resources can muster, but whereas the People’s Republic dubbed a child singer’s voice but replaced her in the stadium with a “prettier” example, Boyle had a choir of children with hearing-impairments and other disabilities singing God Save the Queen. Even the subject of the song herself managed to raise her facial register a notch or two above the “what the heck was thet?” expression that we know and love her for. Not that these ceremonies should be competitions for national supremacy, as opposed to celebrations of the great things all nations and peoples have. Boyle made the point himself when he said “The ceremony is very proud, but I hope in a modest way,” a point about a Best of Britain attitude that was somehow missed by those politicians and media people who bored on the following day about how Boyle showed how Britain is Best. We also had Emeli Sande doing a bonkers but beautiful version of Abide with Me, with her nose ring.  And we had Millie Small, the Beatles, the Kinks, the Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Jam, The Specials, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Arctic Monkeys, and Dizzee Rascal, as well as, quite rightly of course, a bit of Shakespeare, Blake, and Elgar. And he gave us a bit of a laugh at ourselves too (never a strong feature of totalitarians or Tories), with James Bond (and not just Daniel Craig but also National Treasure David Beckham speed-boating up the Thames, Bond-fashion), with “the Queen” parachuting into the stadium, and with Mr. Bean among the London Symphony Orchestra and then sending up Chariots of Fire (and, with his beach-running shenanigans, perhaps sending up the very silly British or at least English sense that we have a unique “sense of fair play”—and what better place to laugh at our darker flipside, the implication that Johnny Foreigner is a bladdy cheater, than the kick-off of the Olympic Games?). Happily, and importantly, and tellingly, Danny Boyle did not wheel out Cliff Richard. Nor did we have Elton John whoring his once-great homage to Marilyn Monroe into a brown-nosing travesty of a tribute to spoilt royalty, or any other such buttock-clench-inducing betrayal of the point of post-rock-and-roll popular music. We also had celebrations of British film and TV and of the people who watch them, and of modern communications, all ultimately personalised in the form of the internet-originating romance of Frankie and June, interestingly old-fashioned names for two very modern-looking mixed-race young people—all symbolising British people who are happily connected and united across generations and races, with no false talk of “dividing lines of...”, and scenes with sentiments far, far, far from the fear-mongering, divisive, hateful, and actually anti-patriotic cant of the Daily Mail and of David Cameron’s “Broken Britain.” 

And indeed no cynicism about the internet, portrayed here as a phenomenon that can and does bring us together far more than it divides us. Danny Boyle even had Tim Berners-Lee in the show, and described him as “the scientist who invented the World Wide Web, and even more important than that he put it in trust, made no personal gain,” leaving it “free to us all.” How different again from the Cameronian cynicism that says that the best can only be produced via motives of profit (unless it’s care of the elderly, disabled, and otherwise disadvantaged, in which the work can be done by unpaid “Big Society volunteers” with random levels of training, competence, and commitment). And that brings us back to the politics of the ceremony. Asked by the Daily Telegraph whether his ceremony was “overtly political,” Danny Boyle denied that it was overt. “The sensibility of the show is very personal,” he said “.... we had no agenda other than values that we think are true.” It seemed to me pretty clear from its contents what the show’s true values were. It was also pretty clear what the message of the method of the show’s creation is or certainly ought to be. That is, isn’t it great what Danny Boyle and his dedicated team of not-for-profit creatives, organisers, and artists could do with the investment of £27 million of public money (a sum, let us never forget, that would barely fill one board of bankers’ bonus bags with taxpayers’ bailout cash)? They certainly did a better job than the go-getter entrepreneurs of G4SClub7, the for-profit “security” firm that couldn’t spot a terrorist threat if a large man with an eye patch and hook-hands walked past them carrying a black spherical object with the word “BOMB” written on it. Thankfully, we have the (still) state-funded, non-profit-making dedicated professionals of the police force and the army to bail us out yet again from the cut-price incompetence of money-minded racketeers.  In your face, David Cameron, in your shiny, hammy, wobbly stupid face. 

“Foul Play” by “Cowboy” Journalists; or, how to be an internet troll.

Regular readers of my rants will know that from time to time (regularly and often) I criticise what I see as dangerous and destructive ethics and practices increasingly being forced on academia from without and within.  If you’re not a regular reader, check out the last two posts and you’ll see what I mean.  It was with some widening of the eyes therefore the other morning that I read an email from one of my bosses about “allegations” and “accusations” made against my employer, Swansea University.  (It was very clear what said boss felt about the accuracy of these allegations and accusations, but as it was an email from him to staff I don’t feel it’s right for me to put anything but the neutral terms he used into the public domain.)  I soon realised, though, by virtue of another email, that in momentarily thinking that the first missive might have something to do with something I’d written, I was vastly overestimating my own significance.  The momentary relief that followed, however, was very soon replaced with anger at the second email and, on this occasion, total sympathy with my boss and empathy with his sentiments.  I trust that my previous perhaps all-too-well-documented criticisms of the current state of the sector I work in will only add weight to the defence I make here of my colleagues and my institution against what I will say is certainly an appallingly unfair attack in terms of its methodology and I would guess at this stage an appallingly unfair one in factual terms.  (I’d say here as well that even in my critical moments I am in fact defending my colleagues and my institutions and indeed academia itself, however much some inside and outside of academia may disagree with that self-assessment.)

The attack I read that morning came from a group that calls itself UK Academic Monitor, or, to give it its IT moniker, ukacademicmonitor.org.  The essential accusations are that certain colleagues of mine in a cognate department wrongly declined to award a student a PhD degree at his first attempted defence of his thesis, then unfairly denied the student the opportunity to appeal against the deferment of his degree award—before awarding the student his PhD at his second attempted defence just under a year later.  It’s perfectly normal, by the way, for PhDs to be deferred, which means go back, do some revisions, and defend the thesis again after a period of time commensurate with the extent of revisions required—thus allowing the maintenance of standards while giving a student a second chance, rather than saying at the end of his or her three or more years, that’s it, one strike and you’re out, you’ve failed, end of, bugger off.  It seems to me an obviously sensible and fair procedure in general, though, admittedly, unfairness is always possible in particular cases.  But, anyway, my university more broadly is accused of failing to have sufficiently robust procedures to prevent these alleged injustices or to discipline the colleagues concerned for committing them and indeed in engaging in secrecy and a cover-up of these misdeeds and failures.  Now, as a historian, and as, I hope, a fair-minded person, I hereby provide a link to the accusations that was emailed to me and all my colleagues, as produced by UKAM and as is on their website.  I believe that one of the first things that may become clear from your reading of this report, though, is that its writers did not do those they are accusing or indeed you the reader the same basic courtesy.  The criticisms that follow are, like this one, mostly methodological.  They are not about the case itself, but about the conduct of UKAM.  They alone, however, ought to cast some considerable doubt, to say the very least, on UKAM’s supposed findings about this case.  You can find their findings and from there their homepage here: http://www.ukacademicmonitor.org/

Indeed the first thing that becomes clear is that it is not at all clear who UKAM is or are (I’m going to assume the organisation consists of more than one individual, though, and call them are from here on in).  As I’ve said, they call themselves UK Academic Monitor, which is very grand.  That “UK” and that “Academic” might invite readers of their website to suppose that UK Academic Monitoring are some kind of official authority.  That they are perhaps legitimated if not licensed by an independent university sector investigator (such as a University Visitor, analogous to the Police Complaints Authority or the Press Complaints Commission, for example), or by the government itself (a kind of educational ombudsman or a QUANGO, maybe), or, best and most appropriate of all, given the circumstances, by the National Union of Students whose job it is, after all, to look after students’ interests.  All I can find about UKAM, however, is a kind of mission statement on their website (linked above) and a short chain of likes and mentions of them on Facebook—from just three pages worth of citations a Google search threw up, suggesting the group is new as well as unauthorised by anyone but its website founders.  Also, Swansea so far is their only target, although their website indicates that there is at least a plurality and implies that the generality of UK universities are short-changing their students and covering it up.  But, anyway, the point is there are no known associations with any known authorities by which one might know the provenance or judge the legitimacy of UKAM. 

Indeed there is no way of knowing anything about them at all, as neither do its members name themselves as individuals.  They might argue back on that count, I suppose, that they are maintaining anonymity for their own personal protection.  To which I answer (and from here on in I switch register and address UKAM directly): guys, you’re alleging unfairness to university students—it’s not exactly Ayan Hirsi Ali territory, is it?  And if you’re worried about the effects on your career prospects (as opposed to your lives, like Ayan Hirsi Ali), well, as I say, I frequently have a go at the authorities over me and it might get me in trouble one day and it might already have buggered up my promotion prospects, but that doesn’t bloody well stop me doing so and from doing it under my own name with my name, contact details, photo, and bio all there for anyone and everyone to see.  I know a lot of others go under pseudonyms, but in all cases they give enough away so you know where they’re coming from and usually enough so you can even figure out who they actually are, rather like eighteenth-century radical pamphleteers who called themselves Cato and Plato but who weren’t fooling anyone and who knew they weren’t fooling anyone.  It’s a matter of honesty and honour. 

It’s also a basic principle of justice that any kind of accused person, whether accused by the media or in a court of law, is entitled to know the identity of their accuser and thereby among other things to have a fair chance to answer back and explain or defend themselves.  Whoever you are, UK Academic Monitor, like some vigilante group, you have deprived those you accuse of these basic rights. 

It’s also a matter of your own credibility with anyone who might read you.  First of all, how can anyone take your accusations of secrecy and cover-ups on the part of others seriously when you refuse to reveal anything about who you are?  It’s just a little hypocritical, isn’t it?  And really, more seriously still, how dare you—HOW VERY BLOODY DARE YOU—“name and shame” others as you, exposing them to extremely serious accusations, while protecting yourselves with anonymity.  I guess you think of yourselves as masked avengers of some kind.  To me you’re just cyber-muggers, nothing more than bullies in balaclavas.  Also, how can anyone credit anything you say, hypocritical or not, when no one even knows who you are?  For all anyone knows, you could be anyone at all.  You might be perfectly nice, decent, fair-minded people (and just be misguided and if so perhaps now regretful of your balaclava-wearing antics), and maybe you’re simply out to the help the less powerful and the aggrieved.  On the hand, you might be just a bunch of internet trolls.  Or, worse, you could be undercover Daily Mail journalists.  No one has any way of telling.  At the very least, one might quite reasonably suspect that you have some sort of axe to grind, and that for that reason, whatever it is, you might be less than fair and partial, and you might even be total liars.  Who knows?  I don’t.  I can’t.  No one can. 

That said, and continuing with theme of your methods, having read your accusations, I can see that you are at the very least manifestly less than fair and partial.  Or, rather, having read between the lines of your accusations, I can see that you are indeed at the very least less than fair and partial, as it’s what you don’t say as much what you do say that says so much about you and possibly about your accusations as well.  Just as your title, UK Academic Monitoring, gives an impression of legitimacy, so your long narrative of events gives an impression of authoritatively forensic investigation.  But, just as there are no affiliations, links, or even individual names to go with your title and therefore there is no real legitimacy, so there is something missing from your narrative, and therefore from its authority.  And it’s rather a big thing too: namely, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY.  Did you give any of the people you shamelessly named, and who you accused of serious malpractice, a chance to answer or explain themselves?  Did you even ask a university spokesperson for a comment before you attempted to blacken an institution’s name in cyberspace?  If you did, and they refused to comment for whatever reason, you do not say, and nor do you give what might in the circumstances be perfectly good reasons for not doing so.  Even the basest tabloid journalists at least make a show of asking for comments from those they accuse of whatever they accuse them of.  They might not be sincere and might not relate their accusers’ answers fairly or properly, but even then at least they acknowledge the existence of and make at least a show of following these basic rules of fair and proper journalism.  You don’t even do that. 

Because you apparently forewarned no one of the accusations you made the other day, I no more than anyone can comment on their factual veracity.  And, unlike you, I’m not going to take half a story and present it as fact.  That is why all I’ve done so far is take your anonymity and your story-gathering or presentational methodologies, and comment on those alone.  If you are the perfectly nice, decent, fair-minded (but misguided) people I acknowledged you might be, then I hope you will retract your accusations or at least revise them extensively accordingly.  I’m certainly not going to comment on the student or his case.  He may very well have felt aggrieved at his deferral and at the difficulties of the appeal process, for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, fairly or otherwise.  These things happen in all organisations.  That’s meant neutrally and it’s all I can fairly say.  I do know, though, that the student got his PhD from Swansea University, and I trust my colleagues enough to presume that he deserved it.  And I know he got his degree because you said so in your story, albeit very late in your story, indeed very, very late in your story.  I guess that putting the happy ending at the beginning, even though it’s a rather crucial part of the story as a whole, would have put your hoped-for readers off reading the rest of what turns out in fact to be not much of a story at all: student gets PhD—difficult process, as it often is, it’s the highest academic qualification anyone can get after all, but he got it. 

A couple of other facts I do know and will comment on.  I know the people you accuse of all the above, and who you labelled “Cowboy Academics” in yesterday’s version of your web story and committers of “Foul Play” in a previous iteration of it.  They are not cowboys and they do not do foul play.  They are highly dedicated and professional people who are in university teaching to help people get degrees, not to hinder them.  So I say the following with the fullest confidence.  At the end of your narrative you say that “the public, and, more importantly, the thousands of students who,” you proclaim, rather hubristically it seems to me, “will now have second thoughts about applying” to Swansea, are the best judges of whether Swansea is a university worth applying to or not.  Yes, there’s some truth in that, your hubris aside.  I suggest that “the public” or those prospective students indeed come to Swansea and talk with the members of staff concerned (you named them, so they’ll be easy enough to find), and indeed any members of staff, and to other Swansea students, and see what we say we have to say and to offer, and then these prospective students can make the judgement in fairness, having had the chance you didn’t given them to see if there’s another side to all of this.  They definitely shouldn’t and I hope won’t make any judgements about my colleagues or about Swansea University on the basis of manifestly one-sided accusations made by anonymous, untraceable, unknowable, faceless, unaccountable people like you.        

A couple of final things....  If you want to have a go back at me, you can easily do so as you have my name, contact details, picture, bio, etc.  You know who I am and can easily find me.  But if you do have a go at me, and indeed if you have a go at anyone else for that matter, how about you do it fair and square and equal?  That is, how about you take your mask off so I and others can see who you are?  And finally, if you want to put right anything you feel is wrong or unfair in what I’ve said about you in the above, please reply in the box below and I will acknowledge and correct all verifiable errors.  I hope you will see fit to offer others the same opportunity in the future.

PS I put a link to this post on UKAM's Facebook site this morning.  They have since taken it down and issued a denial of my claims while depriving of access to them.  Which couldn't be in closer accord with what I claim about them.     

PPS http://whois.domaintools.com/ukacademicmonitor.com