Rough beast slouches, police force crouches

john

As in Paris, so in London; the lumpen proletariat are on the march. Only to be stopped by forcers outside government control. Social Fascism anyone?

davvers

"Rent-a-mob" is alive and literally kicking.

zibby

"the lumpen proetariat are on the march" Haven't they been on the march and now they are being called to action?

CyN

Sorry, but I think this is a bit of a non-story. So the police got it wrong? Perhaps what this incident proves nothing more than intelligence is never going to be an exact science. But at least the only innocent bystander that got injured this time was a plate glass window rather than a member of the public.

Nick

How do we know that undercover policemen weren't part of the mob smashing windows at Millbank? It'll be interesting to see how many prosecutions are made.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

This is just crazy, the police couldn't do anything, they seem afraid, bunch of uncivilised kids from middle class lefty backgrounds wanted everything for free they have to earn it and get good grades and then try to get some kind of scholarships if they want free things, or maybe they have to get some kind of jobs to pay for their education, life is easy for them, nothing should be free I see this young students sitting around posh cafes and bars in London like they are from some kind of aristocratic families, all their money go to drinks and shopping, Why they have to get free education and who is going to pay for it?

Geneviève de Brabant

"A report, by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, found that officers risked losing public support by using aggressive and confusing tactics to tackle protests, their methods were outdated and inadequate, and paid insufficient regard to human rights obligations."

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary is clearly a progressive coterie. The reason why the public increasingly despise the police is that they fail to deal swiftly with criminals yet find time to harass the law-abiding.

Tarka the Ploughman

Oh for goodness sake... it's about time British people took to the streets and said enough's enough...ok should have happened under ZanuLabour (there was lots to protest about) but we shouldn't forget Wat Tyler. Jack Straw (the real one), John Ball (the priest), Gerard Winstanley (the Digger), John Lilburne and Orator Hunt are part of our history as well. We shouldn't accept everything that government imposes upon us lightly...but we do. This was hardly the Summer of 68...

Tarka the Ploughman

@Margaret Muller-Johansson

Isn't part of the problem that, in this our United Kingdom, students in England get a raw deal compared with those in Scotland and Wales? Do they want something for nothing? None of the students protesting on Wednesday would be affected by the increases in tuition fees, which don't come into effect until 2012...

RPK

I think investigation by the Met will show those police on the front line at Millbank were left exposed for so long because they dialled 999 for back up and we all know how long it takes to get a response
My advice would have been to dial Neuf Neuf Neuf and get the French CRS to come and sort out the little perishers
Sad really innit

Dr Michael Salt

I see that a few academics are hailing the riot as a "a great triumph". I note that these academics tend to teach subjects like "media and communication". What a surprise.

Useless academics teaching useless students to do useless things.... and all at our expense. Welcome to modern Britain.

Stephen Green

Did MetroPlod set this up deliberately so as to pressurise Cameron to go easy on the Police Force (NOT SERVICE) so far as the government cost cutting exercise was concerned?
Could well be and if so some prosecutions are due.
Quis custodes etc

Richard

Dr Michael Salt,

Did you have to pay fees of £9,000 a year for your own higher education?

And what are your criteria for the usefulness or uselessness of an academic subject? I'll pay you the compliment here of assuming you are not merely expressing a lazy prejudice.

Veracity

The police are losing it Whenever was there a demo in London in recent years that was peaceful? It is not rocket science

John.

Richard: £9,000 is the cap not the norm. The fees are only repayable by those who would be able to repay them: namely by those earning over £21,000 per annum. How unfair is that? With the country in unimaginable debt, where do you imagine the money for free higher education would come from? The Scots get free higher education from British subsidies - that IS unfair, but no-one has ever said one solitary word about it - for fear of upsetting our brothers over the border doubtless.

Richard

John,

Whether £9,000 will be the cap or the norm remains to be seen. When the £3,000 fee was introduced it was notionally an upper limit but quickly became the standard charge. At the very least, it seems unlikely that many degrees will charge less than £7,000.

My point, in any case, was that there is something very ungracious about people who got their own higher education for free taking a sneering or intolerant tone about these protests. Did they at the time feel obliged to pay back the state support they had received?

Where should the money to pay back the deficit come from? Well, most of it was incurred in order to bail out the banks, as a result of the greedy irresponsibility of people on almost unimaginably high salaries and bonuses. Yesterday it was reported that one bank alone is going to pay out bonuses worth 1.6bn, about a third of the annual UK higher education budget. Explain to me how that makes moral sense.

John.

Richard: That was then, this is now. There was no astronomical debt to be paid then and there certainly is now.

Peter T

People have a right to protest, but do they have a right to protest. However, do they have a right to protest whilst concealing their identity? I think not.

Richard

John,

But that astronomical debt is not the fault of young people about to become students, is it? It's the fault of extremely wealthy people in the financial sector and the politicians who, acting on a Tory-inspired phliosophy, failed to regulate that sector effectively. Why shouldn't those responsible pay, especially as they are much better able to afford it? But instead we now see a new round of bonuses about to be paid out - 'astronomical' and 'unimaginable' figures, to use your words. Does it surprise you that ordinary people asked to pay the bill are furious?

blue_&_white_avenger

Part of the underlying problem lies in Labour's commitment to provide university education to the majority of the populace.
Those of us who went to College, 20-50 years ago were not saddled with debt; true - but the country could afford to subsidise the 5 or 10% of the elite who had the obvious ability to utilise higher education and from whom the country benefited ultimately. By insisting that every Tom Dick & Harry should be university-educated, the government has undermined the value of college education, has bankrupted the country & provided ammunition for the malcontenets who want more & more while giving less & less

pterodactyl

Richard: "Yesterday it was reported that one bank alone is going to pay out bonuses worth 1.6bn, about a third of the annual UK higher education budget. Explain to me how that makes moral sense."

Once morals were abandoned, those high up in the banks realised they could legally write themselves cheques drawn on the money they were supposed to be looking after and call it 'bonuses'.

It is like trusting someone with the keys to your shop for a day, telling them to take anything they want from the shop for their trouble, and then returning at the end of the day to find they have taken all the stock home for themselves. In full accordance with the agreement and totally legal, but, from a moral standpoint, this is called stealing.

Richard

Blue and White Avenger,

Certainly, the expansion over the last twenty years (it began well before New Labour came to power)raised difficult questions about how to fund universities. Your assumption seems to be that only five or ten percent of the population has the ability to take an undergraduate degree. Hence your snooty comments about 'every Tom, Dick and Harry'. But what is your evidence that the new students aren't up to it? The vast majority of the increased intake has succeeded, year on year, in passing the courses, under a quality audit system far more ferocious than anything dreamt of twenty years ago. You would have to fall back on an assertion about declining standards and easier examinations, but evidence for that is notoriously difficult to establish. What if forty per cent or more of the population is capable of benefiting from higher education? Why should most of them be denied it? And let's not assume that the old elitist system was a pure meritocracy. There were mediocre students then, as there are now, and the public schools, especially, had very cosy relationships with universities.

If we are moving away from the argument that these increased fees are because of the deficit - which, as I say above, is the fault of people much better equipped to pay for it - then we can perhaps have a serious discussion about how an expanded system, a mass system, should be paid for. I agree, it's a difficult question, requiring some compromises. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any contribution by the individual. I didn't like the present £3,000 fee when it came in, but I must admit it seems workable for most students. Perhaps a free system really isn't compatible with a mass system (though funding from general income tax is the fairest way of all). But what we are faced with now is a denial that there is any public value at all in a wide range of academic disciplines - all but the so-called STEM subjects. They are being redefined as purely private interests, as if there were no public value at all in the provision of a culture of rigorous questioning of ideas and values; as if private material wealth were the only benefit to come from an education. It seems to me that in this notion there is an implicit, insinuating authoritarianism - a delegitimising of questioning and criticism, and a notion that participation in intellectual life should be the preserve of the rich.

John.

Richard: On the "Today" programme a few days ago a prominent employer stated that the standard of contemporary degrees is far below that of the time before 40% of school-leavers were encouraged to go up to university. He should know. It was also said that many undergraduates would profit far more from being taught some kind of technical skill. Why place such a premium on abstract rational intelligence? Does it mean that some perfectly loveable and good person with a technical and practical skill is worth less and less worthy of love, than someone with a degree in physics? Of course not. To presume that university education is the yardstick of human worth is unwarranted snobbishness. It is said that many undergraduates never actually wanted to go to university in the first place. I don't know how true that is. But I'm prepared to believe it is. It is clear also that many spurious university courses have had to be invented so as to make room for, and make it possible for, under-qualified undergraduates to go to a university. This is a collosal waste of the state's limited funds and of the undergraduates' time. Many graduates are never able to use their degrees, partly because the degrees concerned are in such abstruse and absurd subjects.

Richard

John,

'He should know.' Why? How?

'It is clear also that many spurious university courses have had to be invented.' What is your evidence for this, and 'spurious' by what criteria?

Who said anything about how worthy of love people are?

'Many graduates are never able to use their degrees, partly because the degrees concerned are in such abstruse and absurd subjects.' Would you like to give some examples, and say why those subjects seem absurd to you?

John.

Richard, He shoud know because he's been employing recent graduates for a very long time. Compare 1970's or 1950's "O" level examination papers with today's equivalents and judge for yourself whether there's not a marked decline in standards. Look at the courses on offer in universities now yourself and come to your own conclusions - "Golf Studies", Media Studies" for e.g Do these imply rigorous exercise of the intelligence in your opinion? If they do, then I cannot agree with you.

John.

Richard: I said "worthy of love", because it would seem to be implied, by you amongst others, that people are to be less esteemed, even despised because of not being graduates.

Richard

John,

You write: 'I said "worthy of love", because it would seem to be implied, by you amongst others, that people are to be less esteemed, even despised because of not being graduates.'

Nothing I have said implies this. Please quote any phrase of mine that can fairly be said to bear this implication. I would not express such a view; it is not what I think, and I cannot see why you would draw that conclusion. It did occur to me that you were making this suggestion purely to divert attention from the argument I was making, but perhaps not - perhaps you sincerely read me in that way, but I cannot understand how.

For your anecdotal point about the employer on Radio 4 to have any substance, we would have to know a lot more. How much does he know about the content of the curriculum of the degrees all his employees took, across twenty years or more? Is he making detailed comparisons year by year? What sort of expertise does his industry require of employees anyway? Is he talking about Maths, Natural Sciences, Engineering, Georgraphy, English? You can't make assumptions about declining standards in all subjects on the basis of one or two. If you are presenting this as evidence, it has to be evidence that one is able to question in some way. A lot of effort has been made within universities and by government bodies to monitor standards across the years. Are you suggesting that all that should be discounted?

I agree with you that fulfilling work can take many forms, practical, intellectual, artistic, craftsmanlike and nurturing of others. Many jobs combine several or all of these attributes. Indeed, I think you make too categorical a distinction between the theoretical and the practical, or between rational intelligence and other kinds. Intellect and emotion, mind and body, aren't really separable, and most university courses can be called practical as well as intellectual. I readily agree that university isn't the only way to fulfilment; there are many others. But it is a very significant way - the opportunity to engage deeply with a subject and encounter the work others have done before is profoundly enriching. It can be taken up or resumed at any point in life, and the effects last a lifetime. I want everyone who wants this benefit, and can pass the exams to get in, to have the opportunity, and I think the nature of the experience is betrayed by the assumption that the only value of it is its function as a job-qualification.

I don't know about Golf Studies, but Media Studies, always the whipping-boy, is most unfairly represented as useless. In a culture dominated by the mass media, how can you suggest that it is unimportant to have people with the skills of understanding and criticising the various genres and the ways they present information? How else are we to be discriminating, sceptical and resistant?

I think I read somewhere, by the way, that Melanie read English Literature at university. Correct me if I'm wrong. Presumably the value of that subject is established, therefore.

John.

Richard: I repeat - compare O level, A level and university finals' exam papers from 60, 50 or 40 years ago with their present-day equivalents and come to your own conclusions. I would think that employers don't concentrate on any particular degree subject, but rather on the standard of literacy, numeracy and general ability of the prospective graduate employees. But, in any case, comparing exam papers in all subjects may be an easier way to find out whether standards have fallen or not. And this you can do for yourself. What you say about the benefits of a university education is true, but, again how many contemporary degree courses provide these benefits? Not a few undergraduates arrive, at the present time, for their first year, lacking knowledge of grammar, spelling and punctuation and unable to write essays. That was definitely not the case up till, say, the mid 70's or so. The result is that much of the first year is spent presenting students with what they should have known when they left primary school. As for the question of love - it seemed to me that the emphasis placed on university education and its advantages by you implied that those lacking such an experience were not only worse off but also less worthy of respect and, lacking such respect, less likely to be esteemed. Perhaps love was not the most appropriate word to have used. I hardly think that a university is necessary to be able to level intelligent criticism at the various products of the media, indeed people do it all the time every time they choose a radio or television programme, and buy a newspaper or magazine.

Richard

John,

An employer, speaking as an employer, would be likely to regard the value and standard of a degree purely in terms of how well it seemed to have equipped people to perform particular professional tasks. I don't see the value of a degree purely, or even mainly, in those terms. It does function as a job-qualification, but to me that is not its only or main value. That's where I quarrel with the way these matters are nearly always talked about in public debate. I believe that love of the subjects themselves, and reverence for them, is one of the most important things a good degree course teaches.

The implication of the government's policy, now, is that there is no public value, only private advantage, in studying any but the STEM subjects. Even the value of those subjects is only seen in financial terms. The only kind of value recognised is value to the economy, without debate about what is valuable in other ways.

This connects with another of Melanie's recent topics of indignation - the 'happiness' survey. Some of the criteria suggested may seem a bit suspect, but at least - as one of the responses to that blog says - an attempt is being made to see value as something other than a monetary figure. The contribution that the academic Arts and Humanities make to the general culture is like the contribution made by all the arts - not quantifiable but nevertheless vital. Actually, even in financial terms it's much greater than government policy implies (the cultural and heritage industries are amongst our biggest earners), but that's another story.

Comparing old exam papers with current ones might tell us a little, but we would have to analyse the information carefully, especially as the GCSE was a replacement not for O-Levels alone but for the old CSEs also. It was an attempt to combine those two categories. At degree level, in the subjects I know, the questions on the papers have not become easier, especially. Intellectual fashions and preoccupations change from decade to decade, as do vocabularies, but I can't see any great difference in the diffculty of the questions - and it all depends on what kind of answers are valued, anyway.

Yes, you can be intelligently critical of the mass media without a degree, but a degree is an attempt to produce a general culture that is better informed, familiar with a variety of ideas and viewpoints, and has as many confident participants in intellectual life as possible. That's what current policies are placing at risk.

John.

Richard: Much of what you say is good sense and not what I would quarrel with. A love and reverence for subjects studied is indeed a far better reason for justifying expenditure on making courses available and subsidising students so as to make it possible for them to engage in such study. However, the government is prsumably interested in getting a return for money spent on higher education in the form of employable graduates who will engender substantial income for the state. Without this hard-nosed attitude, the money would not be forthcoming. So far as governments are concerned, graduates are an investment. One cannot get away from it. From personal experience I can confidently say that ignorance of grammar, spelling and punctuation is now widespread where it was fairly rare from say the 50's till the late 70's and the ability to do mental arithmetic seems almost to have vanished. Most school leavers up until around 30 years ago could express themselves grammatically correctly in well spelt and punctuated sentences, and also do mental arithmetic with no difficulty at all. Just look around you now and see what the situation is like.

Richard

John,

Thank you for that conciliatory and kind response. I have to admit that I share your concern about standards of grammar and punctuation. It's only anecdotal and impressionistic, but my perception too is standards in these specific - but very foundational - skills have got worse. Whether most school leavers thirty years ago were competent, I can't say (it seems a bit doubtful), but certainly too many now are poor at this, including university undergraduates. The reasons seem hard to discern. Perhaps it is something to do with reading habits - the manner as well as the quantity of reading - and the dominance of television and online entertainment. The culture of texting and twitter doesn't help (though it would if the convention were that text-messages should be correctly spelled and punctuated). Maybe schools don't teach grammar and punctuation forcefully enough, though that isn't my impression whenever I go into schools or talk to teachers about it. At university level, the difficulty often seems to be in persuading students to attach importance to it; once you do that, many can improve quite abruptly.

Celato

John:

Apologies for coming late to this post and addressing a question you raised some days ago (Nov 16th).

You suggested that subjects like Golf Studies and Media Studies didn't require 'the rigorous exercise of intelligence'.

In my experience as a university lecturer, the focus on 'subject' is a red herring. You could run a course in Noddy Studies, set an essay asking students to compare and contrast Enid Blyton's influence on British culture with Shakespeare's, and receive brilliantly literate critiques (drawing on a wide range of analytical skills and knowledge) from perhaps three out of sixty students.

The rest would be a mixed bag ranging from not-at-all-bad to bloody awful.

Everything hinges on assessment criteria for EXCELLENCE. Nothing else is significant.