Dr Tassano's notes

20 June 2011

Branching out into oppression

The purpose of mediocratic ideology is the same as that of Marxist ideology: to make life impossible for genuine intellectuals, i.e. those who might generate real cultural progress. To mask the issue, an ersatz system of high culture has been built up, designed to perpetuate and reinforce the ideology, and to ensure no assistance is given to those whom the system carefully excludes.

reproduced (with kind permission) from The Custodian:

Shop-o-Mart has announced a major new initiative to help identify and ‘support’ the nation’s hidden chocoholics

Hidden chocoholics are people who despite having what experts would label as a mild chocolate addiction (“chocolism”) do not recognise themselves as such. Encouraged by the results of a successful trial earlier this year where Shop-o-Mart stores in the South West worked with the Devonshire Council Busybody Trust to identify hidden chocoholics, Shop-o-Mart has agreed to partner with the Department of Health to roll out a similar scheme nationwide.

Shop-o-Mart identified hidden chocoholics by using research from Torquay University’s Department of Social Justice, based on careful prying into individual customers’ Reward Card transactions, which showed that many customers purchase chocolates at a rate in excess of Department of Health guidelines. Shop-o-Mart staff were then coached by the Busybody Trust to identify these customers and to ask them whether they had an above-average fondness for chocolate. If a customer indicated that they thought they might, they were politely but firmly pointed towards trained members of the Busybody Trust team who were conveniently based in the store.

Since excess chocolate consumption sometimes leads to a loss of regularity, the use of laxatives can be a useful indicator of the condition. Pharmacists working in trial Shop-o-Mart stores therefore received coaching to help identify customers that suffer from chocolism, by posing the question “have you been consuming high levels of chocolate over the past fortnight?” whenever laxatives were purchased, along with the usual standard questions (is the medicine for yourself, have you used it before, are you taking other medication, are you planning to kill yourself, etc). If a customer answered yes, or appeared not to know, or looked confused or baffled, the pharmacist would simply direct them to the Busybody staff, again conveniently based in-store.

These two simple initiatives led to over 140 people being encouraged to sign up to the Devonshire Chocolists Register in a couple of months, around 140 times the number of new joiners the Register would normally expect. Signing up to the Register meant that the chocolists could gain access to the help, advice and monitoring they clearly need. By expanding the initiative it is hoped that Shop-o-Mart and the Department of Health will be able to identify many, many more hidden chocoholics.

Connie Jackson, Shop-o-Mart’s “Colleague Engagement Director” (a.k.a. Personnelkommandant) comments:

“All our stores play an active role in the communities they serve, so we are delighted to announce this new initiative. Research shows that around 38.7 million people in the UK suffer from chocolism but many are not receiving the help and support they need. When we launched the trial in Devonshire we learnt that not only were many of our customers chocolists but a number of our ‘colleagues’ [formerly known as staff] working in store were too. Needless to say, they were quickly marched along to the local Busybody Trust.

Simple initiatives like this can make a big difference, and we are excited that we can play a part in exposing hundreds and thousands of hidden chocoholics across the country and enable them to receive support, by institutionalisation where necessary.”

• Sainsbury’s should be boycotted by anyone with even a passing interest in civil liberties.

The author of this blog is an unsalaried academic. Like his colleagues, he is excluded from the academic system because of the way that system is currently run. (The phrase “sausage factory” was recently used by a government minister, expressing part of the problem.) As a result, he is unable to write in detail about intellectual issues to which he could be contributing, and has to limit himself to brief blog comments.

We appeal to readers, who think that views not currently represented in the academic world should receive expression, to do what they can to help Oxford Forum. Both Left and Right have their own vested interests which are incompatible with supporting unbiased research. Those who (whatever their own views) recognise the importance of impartial analysis, regardless of whether it buttresses prevailing fashions, should support our work.

06 June 2011

Herbal medicine
.
Internet vs. traditional publishing
.
Jokes, now deceased & off the twig
.
Kazuo Ishiguro
.
Libraries, dismantling of
.
Massive Attack

Not humanities as we knew them
.
Oxford University and deflating gasbags
.
Physics and antiphysics
.
Quentin Lumsden
.
Riots, academic
.
Stephen Fry

Television comedy
.
University expansion vs. contraction
.
Voting systems
.
Women on boards
.
X-rated speech
.
Yanks and their sensibilities
.
Zero tolerance of misspelling

aphorism of the month:

It is superfluous to be humble on one’s own behalf; so many people are willing to do it for one.
Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science

food for grey cells:

New particle contradicts standard theory?

02 May 2011

notepad: psychological reflections from an ignored genius

on the purpose of society:

Society begins to appear much less unreasonable when one realizes its true function. It is there to help everyone to keep their minds off reality. This follows automatically from the fact that it is an association of sane people, and it has already been shown that sanity arises from the continual insertion of ‘other people’ into any space into which a metaphysical problem might intrude.

It is therefore quite irrelevant to criticize society as though it were there for some other purpose – to keep everyone alive and well-fed in an efficient manner, say. Some degree of inefficiency is essential to create interesting opportunities for emotional reaction. (Of course, criticizing society, though irrelevant, is undeniably of value as an emotional distraction for sane people.)

Incidentally, it should be noticed that ‘keeping everyone alive and well-fed’ is the highest social aim which the sane mind can accept without reservation or discomfort. This is because everyone is capable of eating – and so are animals and plants – so this qualifies magnificently as a ‘real’ piece of ‘real life’. There are other reasons in its favour as well, of course, such as the fact that well-fed people do not usually become more single-minded, purposeful, or interested in metaphysics.

It has been seen that the object of a sane upbringing is increasingly to direct all emotion towards objects which involve other people. Now basically the situation of being finite is an infinitely frustrating one, which would be expected to arouse sensations of desperation and aggression – as indeed it may sometimes be seen to do in very young children. I am aware that I must be careful, in using the word aggression, to state that I do not mean aggression directed towards people. What I mean is an impersonal drive directed against reality – it is difficult to give examples but it may be presumed that geniuses who are at all worthy of the name preserve a small degree of this.

However, since all emotion must be directed towards people, it is obvious that the only form of aggression which a sane person can understand is aggression against people, which is probably better described as sadism or cruelty.

Now it is obvious that the open expression of cruelty towards other people would have a destructive effect upon society, apart from being unprofitable to the human evasion in other ways. So the usual way in which aggression is displaced onto other people is in the form of a desire that they should be limited. This, after all, is very logical. If the true source of your anger is that you are limited yourself, and you wish to displace this anger onto some other person, what could be more natural than that you should wish them to be limited as well.

This desire is usually expressed in the form of a desire for social justice, in one form or another. (‘In this life you have to learn that you can’t have it all your own way.’ ‘Well he can’t expect to be treated as an exception for ever.’ ‘It’s time he learnt to accept his limitations.’ ‘Don’t you think you should try to think more what other people want? We all have to do things we don’t like.’ ‘Why should they have all the advantages.’)

This means that society is not only the chief source of compensation to a sane person, but his chief instrument of revenge against other people. It is useless to point out that there is no need to revenge himself upon them. If he were ever to admit that they were not responsible for his finite predicament, he would have to direct his hatred against the finite predicament itself, and this would be frustrating. It is this frustration that the human evasion exists to evade.

Celia Green, The Human Evasion, pp.34-36

[30 May]

on the anthropomorphic nature of the concept of ‘cause’:

We shall argue that on the macroscopic level of everyday experience a phenomenon, or action, or characteristic, is regarded as ‘causal’ in a given situation if it has a functional role in an explanatory story. In the macroscopic realm of everyday experience there are causal stories, or models, or mechanisms, to account for why things happen as they do. These stories are constructed for the purpose of trying to explain a phenomenon. Certain events, actions, and characteristics are selected out of a total situation to fit into the particular causal story which is intended. For example, an engineer explaining the workings of a steam engine might leave the noise made by the whistle out of his causal story, as it does not form a necessary part of his explanation of how the steam engine works. As far as he is concerned, it is epiphenomenal. This was the example given by T. H. Huxley (1874) when introducing the concept of an epiphenomenon.

Macroscopic causal stories always depend on an arbitrary selection by the observer of what is to be included, based on what appear to him to be meaningful relationships. The elements in the causal story can always themselves be seen as elements of other causal stories, including ones which are seemingly more fundamental and which can be regarded as answering the question ‘why?’ about the part of the supposedly causal sequence to which they relate. If the process of asking ‘why?’ is continued far enough, supposing that we are dealing with physical events, we arrive at the microscopic realm of ultimate physical description. On the macroscopic level, if we pick out something which seems irrelevant to a particular causal story, in the sense that it plays no functional role in it, such as the whistle on a train, we do not question its ontological status, because it is clear that it forms a part of other causal stories which we do not happen to be considering at present.

Causal relations at the macrolevel are invariably probabilistic rather than strictly nomic. In a causal story, a ‘cause’ is an event which has made its ‘effect’ more likely. Even when it is ‘practically certain’ that a cause is sufficient to bring about its effect, it is always possible that some other event may intervene which breaks the connection and prevents the effect. The difficulties which the literature on causation has attempted to address are to a large extent those which arise from the features which are introduced into causation by the ‘contingency’ factor at the macrolevel. In particular, ‘causation’ seems to imply some kind of determination, necessity or compulsion, and it is difficult to account for these concepts in the context of contingent relationships.

We shall refer to the level of the most fundamental physical relations as the ‘micro-nomic’ level or ‘microlevel’ for brevity. On this level, we shall argue, nomic regularity is the only remaining feature of what are to be labelled as ‘causal’ relations. On the micro-nomic level we are less tempted to select parts of the total situation as constituting a causal story which we find particularly meaningful. On this level we have laws which describe the relationships we observe, in the form of mathematical equations. We shall be arguing that on the microlevel, functional roles in causal stories are much less easy to assign. At the level of ultimate physical description every phenomenon has equal causal status as part of the total description. Another way of putting this is that the concept of the cause-effect distinction has become inapplicable. On this level, the question of which parts of the total description may be left out as less functional or less important do not apply. Such concepts as ‘function’, ‘importance’, or ‘causal efficacy’, which may enter into explanatory stories on the macroscopic level, do not arise, except in the context of models or ‘microcausal stories’, which (we shall argue) should be regarded as fictions.

Celia Green, The Lost Cause, pp.36-37

[23 May]

on freedom from interference:

Neo-tribal morality actively rejects territorial morality. Territorial morality accepted the right of the individual to be protected from the hostility of other individuals, and even from the collectivity of individuals called the state. Its prescriptions were almost entirely negative. Now you have no right to regard others as hostile and, in principle, anything goes.

No doubt this mirrors paleo-tribal morality. You would not have much hope of the priest with the sacrificial knife respecting your right to dissent. The legal safeguards against intrusion, imprisonment, unconsidered responses, etc. have all been explicitly eroded, along with who knows how much invisible erosion in the way of beating up, pressure to make false confessions for police convenience, etc. A television programme some twenty years ago said the old safeguards were no longer needed, now the law had become so enlightened and compassionate. So the agents of the collective, entitled to regard themselves as benevolent, may invade individual territories at will.

I said to someone, ‘Once you abandon principles, there is no limit on how far the oppression of individuals might go. Why shouldn’t there be a holocaust? Perhaps not of Jews, but some other section of the population that people disliked.’ ‘But they are British people,’ she said. ‘I know they would always behave decently. I was at school with them.’ (I trust the members of my tribe to behave like members of my tribe.)

I would certainly feel a great deal safer if the protective principles had not been abandoned. One of them was, you were only guilty of a crime you had actually committed. Even if you were known to have thought about something and planned it, you only became guilty by doing it. If you thought better of it at the last moment, you were innocent. Now, as you know, inclinations and interests can incur the penalties of constant interference and supervision (a serious intrusion into your freedom to live your existing life in your own way) or actual incarceration and ‘treatment’.

Territorial morality would seriously inhibit neo-tribal morality, which wishes to invade the individual’s territory at will, to do him good, provide him with ‘treatment’, prevent all sorts of possible mishaps, protect him and others from himself (but not from the agents of the collective). I would prefer living in a society in which territorial morality prevailed. Restraint on presumptuous and unsolicited (at least by me) advice, and restraint on unprincipled ideological interference, would have saved my life, and my parent’s lives, from being ruined by my education.

In the Morte d’Arthur, Sir Bors encounters a damsel (or damsels) who threaten to kill themselves if he will not have sex with them. He refuses, quite correctly, on the grounds that it would be a sin on his part, and his only duty is to preserve himself from sin. It is not his business to prevent other people from committing sins by sinning himself.

I wish the modern world retained some recognition of this sort of principle. In fact the basic moral principle, of respect for the individual’s right to determine his own priorities within the existential situation, is constantly overridden and never even enunciated.

When I recently met some educational experts, I pointed out that an age-limit restriction was depriving a young person’s parents or guardians of the right to evaluate the priorities in his individual life for themselves, or on his behalf. This appeared to irritate them.

Of course the old-fashioned principle was that a person’s liberty should not be restricted unless he was exercising it to damage the liberty of others, but if that is not limited to the simplest kinds of objective physical damage, it loses all its force, even if any reference to it is made. Once you apply it to psychological states, anything goes. Someone taking exams before a certain age is damaging the liberty of others to be free from the jealousy and resentment caused by seeing someone doing something they cannot do themselves.

Celia Green, Letters from Exile, pp.31-32

[16 May]

on the abstract concept of royalty:

The concept of centralisation is closely related to that of kingship; this is more obvious with the higher forms of centralisation, but even in the elementary forms some relationship may be perceived.

Let us therefore consider analytically why the concept of kingship should have any relationship at all with the ability to perceive the fact of existence. If you do perceive the fact of existence, what you perceive is that you are in a position of the ultimate degree of uncertainty. You have not the slightest idea what everything is existing for, nor what you have got to do with it. You do not know what is important about the situation, nor how important it is. If you are to decide what is to be done about the situation, there is no one to consult but yourself; and you do not know how important your decisions are.

Now human psychology in its ordinary state is not prepared to accept the responsibility for being in this situation; consequently it does not perceive at all that it is in this situation. And when I talk about ‘being in’ it, I do not mean verbalising about it, as some existentialists have done. You may of course verbalise about arbitrary decisions, and commitment, and so forth, while remaining entirely within the emotional range of normal psychology.

Now the position of being a king, in its most abstract form, is that you are responsible for deciding about important things, and there is no authority higher than yourself to refer to.

Ordinarily human psychology accepts no responsibility; makes no decisions, has no sense of importance, and believes itself justified in its attitudes by some kind of consensus of social agreement.

(Of course you may say that is too sweeping, and that there are some senses in which people do make decisions, have things they think are important, and so on; but in the sense in which I am meaning these things they certainly do not.)

It must be understood that I am using kingship as an entirely psychological concept; unfortunately, I am afraid it will suggest to people associations with political power, and hence of power over other people. However, these associations have nothing to do with the sense in which I am using the concept. I have already said that it is to be understood in the most abstract form, and the only way that power enters into it is in the sense in which someone making decisions of indefinable importance may be said to have power over the situation (whatever it is) in so far as his decisions are able to affect the situation.

You may say, if all I am talking about is a psychological position of decision-making in the most abstract sense, why should I prefer the concept of kingship to that of, say, presidenthood. After all, the President of the United States has to make important decisions and there is no higher authority to which he can refer; he is put there by the electorate for just that purpose. However, the trouble with a president or any elected or appointed maker of decisions is that he gets into his position by first obtaining the approval of a number, maybe an inordinately large number, of other people. It is not an intrinsic quality of his own that he is this sort of decision-maker.

On the other hand, the idea of royalty contains an implication of inalienable significance. Few people these days have much to say in favour of the idea of aristocracy; but a hereditary upper class in a society has at least this to recommend it: that there are a number of people who may be a bit freer than the rest of feeling that they have got to prove their worth to other people before they can get on to making up their minds about anything or deciding what is to be done about it. So they are somewhat nearer to the existential decision-making position, and likely to be somewhat better at running things in an effective way in practice.

Celia Green, Advice to Clever Children, pp.140-142

[9 May]

“Young people wonder how the adult world can be so boring. The secret is that it is not boring to adults because they have learnt to enjoy simple things like covert malice at one another’s expense. This is why they talk so much about the value of human understanding and sympathy. It has a certain rarity value in their world.”
Celia Green, Advice to Clever Children

“The one thing people are unconditional about is putting other people in the wrong. They will deprive themselves of everything they want rather than miss the opportunity of doing this.”
ibid.

“Human nature: vindictiveness lightly coated with dishonesty.”
Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science

[2 May]

We appeal to readers, who think that views not currently represented in the academic world should receive expression, to do what they can to help Oxford Forum. Both Left and Right have their own vested interests which are incompatible with supporting unbiased research. Those who (whatever their own views) recognise the importance of impartial analysis, regardless of whether it buttresses prevailing fashions, should support our work.

04 April 2011

notepad: April

• In June I wrote:

in any context where you need to consider reality in the broadest sense — risks, the possibility of unforeseen events, unpredictability, limitations of human psychology — it [the mediocratic way of running things] is potentially disastrous.

The collapse and semi-permanent degradation of the global banking system is merely the first serious large-scale symptom of the new landscape. Others will follow, I am fairly certain.

Now I am not wishing to boast of Nostradamus-like qualities. At the time I wrote this, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was rumbling on, but it was not clear how much it could be attributed to corner-cutting or to having a relaxed attitude about quality control. I now gather there was at least a certain amount of sloppiness, probably more on the part of companies other than BP to whom parts of the work had been outsourced, but unfortunately I do not have time to carry out unpaid research into the published documents to assess how much was lack of care, how much genuinely unforeseeable circumstances.
Similarly, in the case of Fukushima, I do not wish to make assertions about inadequate diligence. I have always thought of the Japanese as a managerially skilful nation, though perhaps a little too inclined to believe in the wisdom of the collective and the superiority of doing things according to scientific principles. If I had had to guess the first place where mediocracy in a nuclear context would strike, I would not have tipped Japan.
Nevertheless, it is tempting to imagine the conversation that might have taken place thirty or forty years ago.
“But Hotashi-san, I wonder whether we should not reconsider the decision to locate the new power station halfway between Quakeville and Tsunami-on-Sea?”
“No need to concern yourself. Our top scientists have verified that an earthquake, when it strikes, will almost certainly occur 150 km west of the location, leading to no appreciable damage to the facility itself.”
“Very well, Hotashi-san, I will proceed immediately with making arrangements.”

• It could be argued that science, in the sense of expanding knowledge, is always a good thing. However, one can be overenthusiastic in its application, especially if assuming that one knows all there is to know, and that niggling uncertainties can be dismissed as minor. An excessive passion for the application of scientific methods or models is often linked to collectivist ideologies, and possibly post-War Japan exhibits a mild case of this syndrome.
In the novel An Artist of the Floating World, the painter Masuji Ono — formerly a celebrity but now (in 1949) discredited by perceived association with wartime propaganda, and an object of disapproval for his own family — reports a conversation with his son-in-law Taro.

Taro’s manner became suddenly very earnest ... “The changes we made after the war are now beginning to bear fruit at all levels of the company. We feel very optimistic about the future. Within the next ten years, provided we all do our best, KNC should be a name recognized not just all over Japan but all over the world.”
...
“Excuse me, Taro,” I put in at this point. “Of course, I'm sure you have every reason to be optimistic at KNC. But I've been meaning to ask you, is it in your opinion entirely for the good that so many sweeping changes were made at your firm after the war? I hear there is hardly any of the old management left.” My son-in-law smiled thoughtfully, then said: “I appreciate very much Father's concern. Youth and vigour alone will not always produce the best results. But in all frankness, Father, a complete overhaul was called for. We needed new leaders with a new approach appropriate to the world of today.”

Ono is often interpreted simply as a self-deluded character unwilling to admit his mistakes, along the lines of Stevens (the butler) in The Remains of the Day, but I think we can allow author Kazuo Ishiguro a little more layeredness in this context. When Ono questions Taro further, it is not clear where the reader's sympathies are meant to lie.

“Of course, of course. And I've no doubt your new leaders are the most capable of men. But tell me, Taro, don't you worry at times we might be a little too hasty in following the Americans? I would be the first to agree many of the old ways must now be erased for ever, but don't you think sometimes some good things are being thrown out with the bad?”

• A few days after the PM first threatened a no-fly zone over Libya, the Royal Navy decommissioned its last operational aircraft carrier (Ark Royal), apparently because the government's recent strategic defence review could “envisage few circumstances where the ability to deploy air power from the sea will be essential” (Daily Mail, 17 March). I suspect the excuse that “circumstances could not have been envisaged” is one we shall hear more of in the coming decades. I believe in Japan the technique of making sensible assumptions about the future is sometimes referred to as the “just-in-time” method. If correctly applied, the technique is extremely successful, 99.9 percent of the time.
Mediocracy: it could turn out to be the “killer app” of the developed world. Literally.
[4 April]

• Hotshot analyst Quentin Lumsden believes in the super-cycle theory, and I am inclined to trust his judgment. His stock-picking track record is phenomenal.
Of course, it is one thing to recognise a trend and make the most of it, quite another to find it unambiguously positive. I am somewhat baffled by other analysts who wax lyrical about how marvellous it is that the emerging economies are “growing their middle classes” (the new euphemism for raising per capita GDP) while the West declines into its sunset era, and how this fits with social justice. Personally, I would not rush to get quite so enthused. Whatever merits — moral, political, social — there might be in being forced to take up a less dominant and less economically secure position, it seems to me that the people of the West, particularly those under the age of 60, are not well psychologically placed to cope with such a change. Let us hope that the transition is gradual enough for them to become acclimatised to it, and that it does not come about in the form of a sudden discontinuity, as a result of artificial tinkering to hold off economic pain as long as possible.

• The volume of journalistic hot air that has resulted from Fukushima is quite staggering. Perhaps I am reading the wrong people, but most of it seems to have taken the form of asserting that we should not overreact about the dangers of nuclear. When even the Guardian and The Times join the swell of macho nonchalance, insisting that expansion of nuclear power must forge ahead regardless, I start to worry about the presence of groupthink. Some of the commentators may of course have been talking their own book.

• The economic assessments have also typically been shaky. In line with aggressive pooh-poohing about the radiation aspects have come assertions that the world will benefit from the disaster. One commentator, admittedly not prone to this Panglossianism, cited a Victorian philosopher to support the argument that damage does not generate more wealth by encouraging spending, as has been suggested. Why one should need to invoke an obscure nineteenth-century writer to make this point I do not know.
The basic issue is that, for an economy such as Japan's, already operating at below-maximum capacity, an exogenous shock of the kind that HND* damage and reconstruction represents (however it is financed) might in due course result in (a) a higher-output equilibrium, or it might (b) have the opposite effect. It is impossible to say for certain at this stage, though no doubt one can construct complex mathematical models which ‘prove’ either (a) or (b), according to taste.

• People leaving state schools are “unfit for work”? Old hat. It was suggested a number of years ago, on the Educational Conscription blog. As was pointed out then, another two years of the same thing is hardly likely to solve the problem.

• It's an ill-starred day in the history of the English language when a British national newspaper finally succumbs to declining standards of spelling and starts to print typos in its main offering. (I am not of course including the Grauniad, which crossed that hurdle many years ago.) I was therefore saddened to read a key columnist for the Mail on Sunday committing a blooper. The culprit is James Forsyth, who I had assumed was being packaged as a sort of conservative super-nerd (this image seems to have become popular of late, for reasons that are not clear to me), so it is particularly unfortunate that it should occur in his column. Last month, Forsyth wrote that

This country’s [tax] planning system is a mess. It is complicated and unpredictable. Economists have long regarded it as one of the principle obstacles to growth in this country.

Principal, dear boy, principal.
Typos, mis-apostrophes and bad grammar are becoming a normal feature of everyday reading material. Many of the newsletters I read are liberally strewn with them by now, when five years ago they were conspicuously absent.
[11 April]

* Higashi Nihon Dai-Shinsai (Great Eastern Japan Earthquake disaster)

• Herewith a grant application: my colleagues and I hereby apply for initial funding of the order of £200,000 p.a. for 5 years. This is strictly a pump-priming level of finance, which would enable us to do some preliminary research and outline further major projects. These would probably principally be in the area of normal perception and perceptual anomalies (psychology and physiology thereof).
A capitalist with sense should be able to see that what is going on inside mainstream academia is extremely unlikely ever to lead to radical advances in understanding, and should be able to back his or her own judgment, rather than official endorsements, in deciding whether a given individual would be capable of making such advances if supported.
Of course the “sausage factory” goes through the motions, spending lots of money (most of it taxpayers’) and sounding triumphant about the resulting minor additions to what are getting to be very stale intellectual frameworks. A person with a bit of critical faculty, and not taken in by the PR machinery of the collective, should be able to see this for what it is: piffle, and tendentious piffle at that.
I am aware that most billionaires are more concerned with their public image than with generating long-term improvements. If there’s an ostentatious body with a name like “The Mr and Mrs Bloggs Foundation for Philanthropy”, you can be fairly certain you are dealing with a case of the former. The desire to make genuine advances in knowledge happen is rare, even among capitalists, but it is not unknown. The rewards, in terms of prestige, could be considerable. At least you would be providing one set of people with what they actually want; with a chance of something dramatic coming out of it. Contrast this with supporting global ‘aid’ projects, where one can easily do more harm than good, if good is measured by benefit to individuals rather than reinforcement of regimes and ideologies.
[18 April]

• Is there anything more tedious than politics? Yes: political theory. I am finding it hard to force myself to be interested in the detailed pros and cons of different voting systems. Why are we being compelled to choose? If we had had a referendum to decide whether to have a referendum about AV, I suspect it would have garnered no more than a 10% Yes vote. On the other hand, a referendum to decide whether to have a referendum on reducing politicians’ power over our lives by leaving the EU would, I imagine, have produced at least 20% Yeses (to having a referendum), possibly far more. So why are we having this referendum? Because politicians have decided we ought to have it, and are exercising their power over our lives.
I have no obvious preferences one way or the other, though I seem to recall a piece of folk wisdom about whether to dig while in a hole. Some French academics are disparaging AV by claiming that “continuity is a sign of good governance”, but should one take any notice of what academics, or the French, think?
I am however sorely tempted to vote No purely because I resent being manipulated. When I receive (a) an official application form for a postal vote in the referendum, in the same envelope as (b) a leaflet wallpapered with media personalities urging me to vote Yes, I call that manipulation. I am surprised this is even legal but it certainly seems dodgy from an ethical standpoint. I suppose this is an application of the dubious theory of nudge, the principle of which is that it is acceptable to manipulate people provided it is done in a direction of which the il-liberal elite approves.

• Spellwatch. Opening a Private Eye for the first time in months, what is the first thing I see? Picture of a GP practice meeting, with one of the doctors looking inebriated. Caption:

“The patient's never want to see Ken and he's usually pissed, so I vote he looks after the NHS.”

The humour makes more sense if you read it as “patients”, but is the apparent misspelling part of the joke? Shurely we should be told.
(Note to cartoonist: I recommend emailing the caption next time, rather than phoning it in. Texting is also unreliable, as office staff will not be able to copy-and-paste from it.)

• If newspaper reports are to be believed, no one in Britain now claims to be upper-class. Not a single person. It would appear that even HRH Prince William, and Mrs Samantha “SamCam” Cameron (daughter of the 8th Baronet of Normanby), are “middle-class”. It is, frankly, scandalous that the idea of aristocracy has become so besmirched by decades of media- and university-driven propaganda that it is now regarded as akin to wife-beating or prostitution. Someone needs to stand up for the concept by showing willingness to be associated with it. In the absence of other candidates for this heroic mission, I should like to offer myself.
I used to think of myself as middle-class, and am still willing to defend the (old) virtues of that species, but I am getting to feel increasingly disidentified with it as it is in practice. The middle class seems more and more to be composed of bourgeois bourgeois-haters, hairshirting and breast-beating about the sinfulness of their own kind — their supposed sharp-elbowedness, their wicked golfclubbing and tennis-playing exclusivities, which they naively imagine are confined to their own milieu. Thundering from their pulpits, they demand that their own stranglehold on the cultural citadels be smashed in favour of the deserving poor. Such tirades usually seem designed to affect not the speakers themselves or their offspring, but the lives of other members of their class.

I did not attend Eton or Harrow, nor are there any titles in my family tree of which I am aware — though there is a story that one of my ancestors, allegedly the first private banker in Russia, was offered one by the then Tsar but (somewhat short-sightedly, in my opinion) turned it down. My father was not even a millionaire, and I am fairly certain I have never in my life received any kind of advantage through parental string-pulling or via an Old Boys’ Network. Nevertheless, I am confident that, in terms of genes, I make the grade. (Confidence, I understand, is half the battle.) As we live in an age in which merit supposedly trumps birth, it seems to me appropriate that I should now claim this unwanted distinction for myself, and others who care to follow.
Anyone else who feels they are innately upper-class but trapped in a working-class or middle-class persona should consider moving nearby and joining forces with us. The old upper class is burnt out. Time for a new one.
[25 April]

aphorism of the month:

There is nothing so risky as security.
Celia Green, Advice to Clever Children

07 March 2011

Nobbling the little guy

More and more, this society feels like a tacit civil war between the state, with its armies of employees, and the few of us still left who are not involved with it in some way, whether in making up the rules or implementing them. No shots are fired, but it is a conflict nonetheless.

Medics? More or less employees of the government, and even the few who have nothing to do with the NHS have their behaviour set by the others. Teachers — ditto. Large corporations — mostly in tune with the government and its ideology. Accountants? Much of their work is government-related, if you include statutory audits. Lawyers? Subordinates of the modern legal environment with its willingness to bend individual rights in favour of collective interests, though a few of them were sufficiently independent-minded to come out against Labour’s authoritarian enthusiasms. Who does that leave? Those who run, and work for, medium-sized and smaller businesses.

As for public-sector employees, it is practically open warfare by now. The myth that these people are our servants has long been abandoned. Their role now is that of priests: primary sources for the new morality, and supremely confident in their role of telling civilians how it is going to be.

The back of the latest magazine from my local district council helpfully recommends that you check your builder is a registered waste carrier, then cheerfully announces that if you do not,

YOU FACE AN UNLIMITED FINE OR EVEN PRISON. It’s your responsibility to get rid of your rubbish so use a registered waste carrier.

Inside the magazine there are (as always) smiling faces of happy residents, but it is getting hard to avoid noticing the menacing undertone.

On the subject of doctors. These once had to consider the wishes of their patients, but only as long as there was some sense in which patients were clients who could decamp to a rival. (Economic incentive is a concept one does not come across very often in analyses of medicine, whether by doctors or academics.) Now that their answerability is largely to their new paymaster, the government, patients’ wishes can go to blazes. From the medics’ point of view there are many more pressing requirements: coping with excess demand; dealing with stupidity, aggression and inability to speak English; as well as the usual power- and profit-maximising motives. Public criticism likes to focus on drug companies, but in reality the medical industry is a fairly unified beast by now, with GPs at the bottom end of the supply chain.

Where does free-market “alternative medicine” fit into this? Roughly speaking, it does not. The profession’s incentives are mostly in the direction of wishing it would go away. Would you expect the Guild of Chemists to support the position of an alchemist, let alone to recommend him? More likely that it would campaign to make alchemy illegal.

The impending threat to destroy the business of herbalists, who are mostly smaller enterprises, and (so far) independent of the state machinery, is an outrage. For its drivers we must look to the hostility of the monopolised medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry, masked by the usual line that their supposed expertise empowers them to make unquestionable judgments about what is in everyone’s best interests. Having the EU’s pro-intervention systems as a lever helps as well, of course. In the lobbying competition at Brussels, what chance do herbalists have against the likes of AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and the British Medical Association?

The law is due to change at the end of April. As is often the case these days, no one knows precisely how it will be implemented — a violation of the principle that people ought to be able to work out how the law will affect them. Will herbal products, particularly tinctures, continue to be available via mail order? Some say yes, some say no. Whatever happens, the EU’s interventionist machine has been mobilising against the supplements industry for years, and will no doubt continue to do so unless more actively opposed.

Write* to, or email, your MP to demand that herbal products, including capsules and tinctures, continue to be available in shops and by mail order. I recommend you do not follow the line advocated by some herbalist bodies, of demanding that the profession become regulated (ostensibly to make life easier for herbalists in the future), as this is likely, in my opinion, to make things worse.

Further information on the impending legal changes affecting herbal supplements:
The Independent
Daniel Hannan MEP
Joining Hands in Health — petition

I am grateful to Steve Dagnell and Patina Blakeney for making me aware of the problem.

* address: House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

aphorism of the month:

The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.
Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science

next post: 4 April

15 February 2011

“You cannot [and will not] go on as you are.”

Matthew d’Ancona, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, comments on Nick Clegg’s demand to vice chancellors that British universities should do more to widen access, and on his accusation that they are acting as instruments of social segregation. Clegg’s demand echoes one made earlier in the year by Simon Hughes, the government’s advisor on access to higher education. Mr Hughes said that

Every university should … recruit on the basis of no more people coming from the private sector than there are in the public as a whole.

In other words, it should be assumed (a) that there cannot be any differences in ability between different sections of the population which are not due to ‘bad’ factors e.g. poor environment, (b) student admission should be determined by prevailing ideas of ‘fairness’, to some extent (the extent to be determined by the state) regardless of prima facie ability.

Mr Hughes told the universities:

You cannot expect to go on as you are. It [presumably, government bullying so far] has failed miserably.

It is interesting to note how the meaning of words has changed over time. I was not familiar with the use of “recruit” to refer to admissions. The Oxford Dictionary defines the word as
1. to enlist someone in the armed forces,
2. to enrol someone as a member or worker in an organisation,
3. to persuade to do or help with something.
I suppose these are all senses now relevant to the concept of student; particularly perhaps the first, given that students seem to be expected to help members of faculty with fighting for political causes; if necessary, by taking to the streets.

In Chambers's Dictionary of 1952, a university is defined as “an institution of higher learning, with power to grant degrees”. In the 2006 Oxford Dictionary, the emphasis seems to have subtly changed, in recognition of the new conveyor-belt model: “a high-level academic institution, in which students study for degrees and academic research is done”. (From an ancillary “power to grant degrees”; to “students studying for degrees” being the primary business in hand.)

The 2006 definition already seems out of date, however. May I suggest, for a future edition, the following: “an institution which promotes social justice, by allowing the intellectually disadvantaged to study, and teach, ideologically acceptable material”.

Does d’Ancona have anything critical to say about the idea that universities, formerly marked by a reputedly above-normal level of impartiality, should now assist with delivering the political elite’s vision of the morally acceptable society? No. Mr d’Ancona, like Mr Cameron and his coterie, appears to be a thoroughly modern Conservative. Definition of a modern Conservative: “one who has accepted and absorbed the phoney insights of leftist ideology”. Alternatively: “one who feigns having accepted/absorbed leftist ideas”. I am not sure which is worse.

But perhaps one should not be too hard on Mr d’Ancona. After all, the people running universities have scarcely put up more resistance to being told they should admit on the basis of ‘fairness’, not ability, than Mr d’Ancona did in his column. And this is not surprising, given that those people have already accepted that ‘fairness’ should influence the questions, and answers, of academic research, and done so largely without prompting.

The so-called Office for Fair Access should be abolished, at the earliest opportunity.

Of course, the business of tweaking civil society to try to make it conform to the il-liberal elite’s tastes is not confined to the universities. Every area of life is under assault. The public sector is already groaning under the weight of ‘equality’ initiatives; now it is the turn of the private sector gradually to bend to the will of the politico-intellectual class. According to Nick Clegg, this type of thing is not social engineering but creating a “genuinely fair playing field”. What, I wonder, would Mr Clegg count as social engineering? (A worrying thought.)

The Libdemtories seem to be acting like an extension of Labour, being apparently happy to embrace most of the old stuff, except perhaps where civil liberties are too blatantly at stake. Why would David Cameron ask former Labour trade minister Mervyn Davies to chair a review into whether there ‘should’ be more “diversity” on company boards? How, pray, is this “Big Society” rather than the usual top-down morality? Selection to executive corporate positions is probably as Darwinian as it gets in the jobs market, outside proprietary trading, so why should we think external analysts are any better at gauging what would be efficient? Is it not obvious that this is about ideology, not efficiency?

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the Davies review, about to be published,

will demand that FTSE100 companies set clear targets [for female representation on company boards], and say if there is not significant change in the next two years, more draconian action should be taken. It is believed quotas could follow.

The whole thing is nonsense and demonstrates the usual rationality gap, where ideological assumptions in need of argument or evidence are simply glossed over. “Everyone needs to be involved in getting this right — it’s a partnership”, someone is quoted as saying. No it isn’t. It is not a partnership, it is a limited liability corporation owned by shareholders, with the collective trying to muscle in.

Apparently the PM asked Lord Davies to look in particular at Norway,

where the government set a 40% board quota in 2004 that all companies had to hit. The policy is considered a success, with women's representation on boards now nearing the target from a low of 6% in 2002.

A “success”? If you had a policy to execute adulterers, and then found after six years that the number of executions for adultery had risen by several hundred percent, would that be considered a “success”? A success, if it means anything, ought to mean Norwegian companies now behave more profitably, innovatively, responsibly or whatever your idea of a good company involves. No evidence of this is adduced, and I doubt you could find any. But it is no good looking for logic when dealing with topics like this. Ideology trumps reality, and if the conflict between the two is too obvious you just arrange for reality to become taboo — i.e. a thing that “cannot be mentioned in polite society”, to use David Willetts’s phrase.

Does the Telegraph commentariat have anything interesting to say on the matter? A bit of counterblast perhaps?

Lord Davies has been struck by evidence that greater diversity at the top of corporations tends to avert worrying group think, and that a less macho air when it comes to decision-making can make for better decisions.

... this is a more sophisticated argument that a greater diversity at the top of organisations, based wholly on the merit of successful candidates, is a matter of good governance ... Chairmen — who set the tone for hiring the board — are drinking in the last chance saloon. Quotas may be a blunt instrument but Lord Davies is keeping it in his back pocket just in case.

Well, never mind.

I did not use to bother buying the Telegraph, as I could not see the point of reading a posher but less analytical version of the Guardian. But having sampled a couple of issues, I think I shall be picking it up more often. It really is quite inspiring.

next post: 7th March

The author of this blog is an unsalaried academic. Like his colleagues, he is excluded from the academic system because of the way that system is currently run. (The phrase “sausage factory” was recently used by a government minister, expressing part of the problem.) As a result, he is unable to write in detail about intellectual issues to which he could be contributing, and has to limit himself to brief blog comments.

We appeal to readers, who think that views not currently represented in the academic world should receive expression, to do what they can to help Oxford Forum. Both Left and Right have their own vested interests which are incompatible with supporting unbiased research. Those who, whatever their own views, recognise the importance of impartial analysis, regardless of whether it buttresses prevailing fashions, should consider supporting our work.

09 February 2011

Servicing the status quo

• What hurdles does one have to jump nowadays in order to become a qualified philosopher? Judging by the output of some of its practitioners, the training provided is high on ideological correctness but low on how to construct coherent arguments. Martin Cohen, editor of The Philosopher, writes about the university cuts in relation to laissez-faire doctrine, but it is hard to extract any meaningful insights or arguments from his article, beyond noting that he disapproves of the cuts.
Cohen seems to think, among other things, that students are incapable of making “rational decisions” about the costs and benefits of studying, that university education is a “public work” which markets are incapable of providing, and that the middles classes have (unfairly) “swamped college education”. Some of his paragraphs could have come from the Guardian’s online comments section.

Even as we cut education to the bone, there will still be cash found to keep the financial markets afloat. There will still be £1 billion for research into pumping carbon dioxide into holes under the North Sea. There's always money for launching wars or propping up overstretched financial institutions, because of course they are not exactly choices (let alone market ones), but responses to crises.

Cohen invokes J.S. Mill, the original libertarian, as support for opposition to the cuts. Could one stretch Mill’s education exception to the liberty principle to cover massive state subsidies for university teaching, allowing half the population to study subjects ranging from engineering to waste management or tournament golf? Possibly if one is motivated enough, given that Mill’s comments in this area were a little vague. Cohen's assertion that the cuts are a reversal “of the principles of classical liberalism and laissez-faire economics” is, however, simply bizarre.

• Philosopher Peter Hallward, who was briefly mentioned in the previous post, is a better speechwriter than Cohen but shows little more evidence of analytical as opposed to ideological skills. Professor Hallward, who joined the student demonstration of 9 December, tells us that

Students and staff have mobilised in unprecedented numbers and unprecedented ways to oppose these disastrous education cuts.

Unprecedented ways indeed. According to Hallward's account of the demo, “most of what violence there was … began well after the vast kettling operation was set up”. This may be true, and I daresay police behaviour was heavy-handed to the point of brutality on that day, but we have to remember that the first demo, on 10 November, involved the vandalising of property including smashing the windows of Tory Party HQ, and someone throwing a fire extinguisher onto police from a height.
Does Professor Hallward have any comments about the violence of the earlier demo? Apparently not. I wonder whether, if Labour were still in power, and had implemented similar measures (which I suspect they would have had to), similar damage would have been done to their HQ. Perhaps philosophers and other academics would have been more understanding in that case, which no doubt would have had a restraining effect on their students.
Does Hallward discuss the fact that the strains on academic state subsidy are largely the result of its over-expansion during the last twenty years? No. Instead, we get colourful invective of the leftist variety, as in the following extract.

For decades, the corporate interests that promoted and then implemented their neoliberal “reforms” sought to present them as a form of modernising improvement, one carried by the inexorable progress of history towards the untrammelled pursuit of profit “for the benefit of all”. For decades, this grotesque distortion of reality has helped to mask a relentless assault on the remnants of our not-yet-for-profit services and resources, and to persuade many of those sheltering in the more privileged parts of the world to tolerate such “development” as a necessary price to be paid for their comfort and security. Not any more. The days of “there is no alternative” are rapidly becoming a distant memory, and all over Europe the bankers’ masks have begun hiding behind police visors.

Hallward cites Foucault in support of his interpretation of the cuts: the successful exercise of power is “proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms”. Why is it that those who attempt to wield the insights of postmodernist philosophy rarely seem to realise that those insights could illuminate, a fortiori, their own relationship to societal mechanisms? In an age of political transparency and academic gobbledygook, the best illustration of Foucault’s principle is surely the high-culture establishment. The exercise of academic power — being able to say who will and who will not be allowed to work as a publicly remunerated intellectual — is indeed proportional to academia’s ability to hide its own intellectual mechanisms, an ability that has not been so great since the era of scholasticism.

• Times ‘Higher’ Education at the moment seems to be full of anti-cuts breast-beating, and jeremiads about the risks to culture and the young, presumably by people who are fearful about their jobs. Aeron Davis is a lecturer in “political communication” whose research (the Guardian informs us) has uncovered that politicians tend to have little experience outside politics. According to Dr Davis, the reason there has not been a public backlash against the idea of cutting excess academic jobs and student places is not because taxpayers outside academia have little sympathy with the people who face being pruned, but because

those who are viewed as authorities by politicians and journalists [i.e. vice-chancellors] kept quiet, and so the government forged ahead.

Despite the public’s apparent lack of interest, Davis claims there is “palpable unease and anger” about the proposed cuts — and about the fact that “the government” (surely this should be “some Tories”?) is “trying to drastically reduce immigration” — among

teachers, artists, nurses, doctors, musicians, lawyers, council workers, the police, and many more …

Davis maintains that all these teachers, artists, nurses etc. are concerned “that treasured institutions and services will be wiped out”. Perhaps it is genuinely bad for philosophy if (say) Middlesex philosophy department closes, but I very much doubt it has been “treasured” by a significant number of non-academics.

• Terry Eagleton complains about the new bias in favour of financing STEM subjects, and the reduced level of support for the humanities. But would the average voter be as sympathetic to funding archaeology or linguistics as to gene therapy or alternative fuel technology? Eagleton does not address this issue, blaming the bias on government short-sightedness, and invoking Thatcher as the villain in the time-honoured leftist tradition — despite the fact that the poor woman ceased to have any meaningful influence over British life more than twenty years ago.
In theory there is something in the argument that the humanities can have important benefits for society, and that losing them impoverishes our culture. In effect, however, we have lost them already. Biased humanities, ruling out any world view other than the institutionally preferred one, are worse than no humanities at all.

What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future.

Apart from the historical placing, Professor Eagleton is quite right. The humanities now service the ideological status quo: interventionism, (pseudo)egalitarianism, physicalism, reductionism. The culture of genuine openness and debate is gone, ditched in favour of producing the ‘right’ answers — those which are thought to be socially improving.

next post: 15th February

The author of this blog is an unsalaried academic. Like his colleagues, he is excluded from the academic system because of the way that system is currently run. (The phrase “sausage factory” was recently used by a government minister, expressing part of the problem.) As a result, he is unable to write in detail about intellectual issues to which he could be contributing, and has to limit himself to brief blog comments.

We appeal to readers, who think that views not currently represented in the academic world should receive expression, to do what they can to help Oxford Forum. Both Left and Right have their own vested interests which are incompatible with supporting unbiased research. Those who, whatever their own views, recognise the importance of impartial analysis, regardless of whether it buttresses prevailing fashions, should consider supporting our work.

03 January 2011

notepad: January

• According to the Philosophers’ Magazine, one of the ideas of the 21st century is equality of intelligence. Philosophy lecturer Nina Power tells us that, unfortunately,

we live in an age where we see a resurgence of the idea that some people are fundamentally less intelligent than others.

I knew the idea of innate ability was unfashionable, but I had not realised its denial had become entrenched to the point that one speaks of “resurgence”.
To help avoid the unpalatable, academic philosophers can offer us the “contemporary axiom or assertion that everyone is equally intelligent”. According to this, anyone

can relatively quickly understand complex arguments and formulae that have taken very clever people a long time to work out ... everyone has the potential to understand anything.

It is hard to know whether these assertions define their terms in such a way as to render themselves vacuous, or whether they are simply false. Not surprisingly, they take their inspiration from a French postmodernist, Jacques Rancière, who proposes a radical (almost metaphysical) form of egalitarianism.

Equality may also be something one wishes for in a future to come, after fundamental shifts in the arrangement and order of society. But this is not Rancière’s point at all. Equality is not something to be achieved, but something to be presupposed, universally. Everyone is equally intelligent.

The axiom of equal intelligence has important implications for education. Quoting from fellow philosopher and Rancière expert Peter Hallward (a key player in last year’s Middlesex Philosophy drama), Dr Power suggests that

“superior knowledge ceases to be a necessary qualification of the teacher, just as the process of explanation … ceases to be an integral part of teaching.”

The idea that teachers may be no more knowledgeable — at, say, spelling or arithmetic — than their pupils, and in any case need not be any good at explaining what they do know, may have applications to the UK’s state education system, though probably not in the way that Power or Hallward intends. [3rd Jan]

• Max Hastings sounds angry.

This screwed-up, bitter geek with a grudge against the institutions of the West has become a master of the anarchic universe created by the internet.

Like others of his kind, he has discovered that without resources or mandate, it is possible to become a publisher of fantastic power, leapfrogging every traditional constraint imposed by the need for a geographical base, plant or corporate structure.

Who is this tirade really aimed at, I wonder. Julian Assange? The blogosphere? The entire internet? Sir Max seems to disapprove of people who, “without resources or mandate”, are able to “leapfrog every traditional constraint”, and get an audience for their views or activities, regardless.
In the good old days, traditional constraints, such as the need to find a publisher, kept a lot of people out of print who did not deserve to be in print, as well as a few who did. Now, it may seem, anyone with a bee under his or her bonnet can turn into a global talking head with an audience of thousands or even millions, however apparently potty or dangerous they are. Is it beneficial for the quality of debate, or for culture generally?
What this line of reasoning leaves out is that decades of anti-culture, and pseudo-egalitarian, ideology have distorted mainstream publishing, so that it now consists in large part of (a) products brainless enough to appeal to a dumbed-down mass market (cookbooks, celebrity autobiographies), (b) products so abstruse and vacuous they would not be read at all without the presence of an artificial ‘university’ industry putting them on its reading lists.
“Traditional constraints” no longer function as quality-selecting devices in the way they once did. We have a culture market of sorts, but one that bears little relation to what would obtain without the massive levels of intervention and redistribution to which it is subject. Sadly, many conservatives have themselves contributed to the rot by standing up too feebly for old-fashioned standards (if at all), or have even profited from it, e.g. by writing books of revisionist history.
The other thing analyses such as Hastings’ ignore is the ephemerality of the web. A blogger may get hundreds of comments every day, but if he keeled over tomorrow would his postings leave any lasting effect on the political or cultural scene? It is doubtful. Academic exiles may be ‘free’ to post their thoughts on the web for anyone else to read, but it is a far cry from getting them disseminated via a broadsheet newspaper, let alone via a book put out by a prestigious and well-connected publisher, or via an academic journal. You could write a philosophical treatise to rival the Tractatus, but publishing it exclusively on the web would get you nowhere. [10th Jan]

• One seems to get past one’s sell-by date very quickly these days in BBC-world. I feel sorry for older BBC presenters (I mean those born before 1985), it cannot be easy for them. According to a BBC reviewer, Massive Attack — who, incidentally, were unfairly excluded from the Catholic Church’s Top Ten Albums Of All Time (surely Mezzanine should rank above Supernatural) — are no longer trendy.

Startling as this may be to thirtysomethings who grew up in prescribed awe of Massive Attack, but a whole new generation has arisen in the 12 years since their last pivotal album, Mezzanine, a generation to whom the Bristol duo are at best peripheral.

Ouch. Who are those marvellous artistes, I find myself pondering, who are not peripheral to the interests of the new generation? Kanye West feat Justin Timberlake, perhaps.
Seriously, it may be the case that Massive are past their peak. In looking for possible future successors, you could certainly do worse than this. Yes, for what it is worth, British popular music is still the best in the world, X Factor notwithstanding. Harvard may beat Oxford, but Kasabian trumps Kings of Leon.
By the way, US comedy normally outclasses UK but some things, I think you will agree, are just a little too cheesy. [17th Jan]

• Re local government cutbacks. Why is it that the only two useful consumer services that councils offer — libraries and waste collection — are either being eliminated or becoming unusable, while council jobs with titles like “well-being coordinator” continue to be freely advertised? The answer is simple: these two services are too much about doing what individuals want, and not enough about the preferences of the providers. Libraries allow people to choose which books they want to read — so the wrong books must be excluded, books in general must be phased out in favour of social forms of entertainment (movies, internet) or, if this still leaves too much scope for autonomy, libraries must be closed. Waste collection allows people to choose what materials to eject from their households — so there must be more and more rules about the ‘wrong’ kinds of waste which will not be collected, and rules about how ‘right’ waste will only be collected if it is first reprocessed in prescribed ways, or, if this still generates too much advantage for citizens, collection of waste must be stopped at the slightest sign of difficulty and householders encouraged to take it themselves to the city dump, conveniently located five miles away. Have a nice day. [24th Jan]

• To take it as given that we need an expanding university system is, as I have argued elsewhere, a position sorely in need of hard evidence, yet it continues to be espoused by government ministers.

If you want high-quality expanding universities, which we all know we need in the age of India and China and global competition ... (David Cameron)

It is not clear how more graduates, whether in Mickey Mouse subjects or in ‘serious’ ones such as economics or psychology, are going to help in competing with India or China. Keeping up with billions of people willing to buckle down and do useful things would seem to require that less of our population’s available time and energy be taken up by pseudo-work such as public sector pen-pushing, social work and other ‘services’ which the elite thinks you ought to have, management consultancy, legal work relating to a rising mountain of state intervention, spurious ‘learning’ etc. This seems more likely to involve a contracting university system.
The whole notion of “competing with” is in any case hopelessly vague. Are we trying to do what they do, only better or cheaper? Then surely we need more of what they have, namely gumption and elbow grease, and probably also less state interference. Or are we trying to offer things they cannot? I suppose one could produce more lawyers, engineers and computer scientists in the hope that others will want to import those services from us, but it seems a high-risk strategy. If Asia can imitate the West’s manufacturing, only better, it will not be long before it can imitate and improve on the West’s professional services.
The 2006 Leitch Review, commissioned by Labour to produce the desired answer i.e. a need to further massively expand higher education (allegedly to help us “compete”, but in reality probably to destroy any advantages enjoyed by the hated bourgeoisie), is one of the most risible pieces of pseudo-research produced in the last twenty years, yet its conclusions — not based on meaningful argument or evidence — continue to be echoed by members of the political and intellectual classes. The Review lumped degrees together with vocational training under “skills”, but for many degrees it is unclear what skills are being fostered, let alone how they can contribute to the problem of competing globally.
According to justcourses.com, the ten most popular UK degree courses are law, Design Studies, psychology, business, management, Computer Science, English, medicine, Sports Science and Social Work. Of these, the only two which conceivably generate skills that businesses might need significantly more of in order to compete with India and China are “Design Studies” and “Computer Science”, but is a degree really the best way to acquire those skills? I doubt it.

• Common sense may however be starting to creep back, with regard to a ludicrous system in which half the population mortgage themselves to the tune of several £ tens of thousands for the sake of qualifications with values ranging from doubtful to nil. Deloitte has announced it will start to hire school-leavers, and KPMG seems to be toying with the idea as well. Now all we need is for other employers to see the light and follow suit. Then we might, after a delay of a few decades, be able to return to a scenario in which residential university education is something limited to (a) the academically gifted, financed by bursaries, (b) those with enough parental or other private funding to indulge their taste for the college experience; the whole thing covering a proportion of the population no greater than 5%.
I would not myself see anything wrong with having (b) as well as (a). My colleague Celia Green has explained to me the advantages of the social mixing such a system generates. It enables the cleverest to make contact with the offspring of the richest and most influential, allowing the former to share some of the networking advantages of the latter, which is the kind of focused meritocracy that can actually do a country some good, and is probably as much meritocracy as you can hope for in an educational context. Anything beyond this is just top-down morality. [31st Jan]

• Postscript re TV comedy. Do I still believe in the Special Relationship? I do now, having watched Episodes, a new series created by Americans and produced by Hat Trick. Transnational productions have a poor track record, so it is an achievement to have generated something that is funny without straining, managing to combine the best aspects of British and American humour while softening the worst. US/UK, coffee and cream. We should be thankful the pre-contract internal memos were not EaziLeaked, or the delicate negotiations might have been scuppered. [31st Jan]

The author of this blog is an unsalaried academic. Like his colleagues, he is excluded from the academic system because of the way that system is currently run. (The phrase “sausage factory” was recently used by a government minister, expressing part of the problem.) As a result, he is unable to write in detail about intellectual issues to which he could be contributing, and has to limit himself to brief blog comments.

If Oxford Forum were provided with financial support, he and his colleagues would be able to work properly on a number of issues; and views which are currently not represented in the academic world would receive due expression.