Despatch Box Delusions

I'm writing this not as someone who was worked in an advisory role for this and previous governments, and is upset at not getting any invites to Westminster/Whitehall parties last year, but as someone dismayed that anybody with a University education such as the man stood by the Despatch Box yesterday could possibly think anybody (everybody?) is so stupid that they'll believe any of the absurdities he told at PMQs. 

I've been given many elaborate and inconsistent excuses by HE students over the last 20 years of working in HE, but nothing like our PM's desperate attempts to tell the world that a party didn't happen, but if it did (which it didn't), then no rules were broken as he's been assured that the guidance was followed by the people who attended the party which wasn't a party even though it didn't actually happen!

Cummings and Goings On

Reproduced in its entirety (almost) from https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1265449109449777160.html

Written by: @RussInCheshire

1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything
2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn't care how things looked 
3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered
4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign
5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation 
6. He began by saying he wasn't speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street
7. Then the self-styled "enemy of the Islington media elite" said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington
8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis
9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important 
10. Sadly he couldn't get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home
11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours 
12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG
13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family's sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands 
14. He explained that he'd warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog
15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he'd returned from Durham
16. And anyway, if he'd warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react
17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week
18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with "wonky eyes", he drove his child to hospital
19. Then he said that to test his "wonky eyes" he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads 
20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the "eye test", cos she could have driven them back to London
21. Then it was revealed the "eye test" trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife's birthday
22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left
23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Dunham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you'd definitely do if you weren't hiding anything
24. A govt scientific advisor said "more people will die" as a result of what Cummings had done.
25. Boris Johnson said he "wouldn't mark Cummings " down for what he'd done. 
26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct
27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well 
28. Johnson said Cummings' "story rings true" because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses
29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was "blind as a bat" 
30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was "wise" to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight
31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this 
32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.
33. And then a minister finally resigned 
34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go
35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they're all left-wingers 
36. Then a vicar asked Matt Hancock if other people who had been fined for doing exactly what Cummings did would get their fine dropped. Matt Hancock said he'd suggest it to the govt
37. The govt said no within an hour. Cummings' statement had lasted longer than that 
38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?
39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%
40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt 
41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.
42. We still face Brexit under this lot.
43. It's 4 years until an election
44. And it's still only Wednesday

"Yeah but yeah but yeah but Stephen Kinnock"
1 Kinnock wasn't infected, so wasn't self isolating
2 Kinnock was delivering food to elderly parents: permitted
3 Labour didn't make the policy breached
4 Kinnock isn't an advisor to Starmer
5 Kinnock didn't attempt to hide it
6 Kinnock didn't break regulations on staying overnight
7 Kinnock's friends didn't say it was OK for *him* to break the law, just not everyone else
8 When Kinnock did it, two senior govt advisors in the UK hadn't already had to resign for the same offence
9 Kinnock's wife didn't write an article in The Spectator describing his experience of lockdown in London, which mislead the public
10 Kinnock wasn't required to inform the Number 10 of his whereabouts, meaning there's a bigger cover-up.

So. What happens next? Johnson will hope this blows over, and in a couple of weeks we'll all forget. But how likely is it people will forget their mum died alone?
Or that they couldn't meet their grandkids for months?
Or their business failed cos nobody could leave home?
They say everyone remembered where they were when Kennedy was shot, or 9/11 happened.
Well this is similar, but it didn't happen miles away - it happened in your home.
We will all remember Covid19, even if we lost nobody.
And Cummings is a key event.
It won't be forgotten.
The instinct for Johnson will be: make something big happen that drags attention away.
But what big announcement could there be?
His schools thing yesterday was totally ignored.
Any "we're opening" announcement will be met by distrust and fear. That route out is closed ..

Political Mathematics

Many years of interacting with MPs, advisors and policy makers has made me very sceptical when any of them start to use numbers to illustrate a point: the latest of which is the London Mayoral hopeful Rory Stewart who claims in this week's Sunday Times to have slept in 50 different homes around London as part of his ‘Come Kip With Me’ scheme.

However, as he apparently only launched his campaign in the second week of February, a whole 27 days before Sunday, this means that Mr Stewart would have to have slept in almost two homes a night every night, never spending an evening at home, for his claim to be true.

He also says that “you learn an amazing amount because you’re spending 14 hours with somebody”, which means he wants us to believe that he's spent 700 hours in other people’s homes over the last 27 days.

Which is an admirable amount of effort when there are only 648 hours in 27 days ….

Double Standards? Or Just Very Standard Hypocrisy?

Watching the news in my London hotel where the lead story has been around England’s participation (or not as a result of the chemical attack in Salisbury) at the World Cup, a thought hit me like a football below the waist. As the Conservative Party has apparently received around £3million in donations from Russian associates in just over five years:

• Are they proposing to give it all back if the Football Association try and bring Vladimir Putin to book?
• Or is it just some headline-grabbing grandstanding from politicians out of touch with more than just higher education?

Blowing things up out of all proportion

On the way back from London yesterday I picked up a copy of the free paper to read on the train home, and in it was an article about the new Mayor banning adverts like this one from the Underground System.

It includes several quotes from Mr Khan about his parenting, demeaning images, and:

“Nobody should feel pressurised, while they travel on the Tube ..... and I want to send a clear message to the advertising industry about this.”

Now I realise that he's not been in the job very long, but surely one of his staff could have briefed him that it's not a pneumatic tube running under the streets of our capital city....?

Leading by Example

Only a day now to the big kick off and until there's some actual football for the media to cover at the expense of well, pretty much everything, the newspapers have been getting in the mood with some very odd "World-Cup related" articles.

The free newspaper in my hotel (I'm in Birmingham prior to a NSS conference) has got 32 pop stars to review the anthems of the competing countries. None of them are very complimentary, which as I'm familiar with some of their own stuff via my daughter's attempts at singing along to her iPod, is particularly ironic.

For example (no pun or play on words intended), Example — a singer, songwriter and rapper — doesn't like Argentina’s tune as it's "hard to sing along to and the words sound like something the Gallagher brothers might have written".

Having heard some of his stuff - second hand admittedly - I've looked up what I thought were the lyrics to a recent single, and had my suspicions confirmed.

His song All The Wrong Places contains this snippet of wisdom:

Like a rabbit in the headlights
Get your head right
Start a new life
Shiver in the moonlight

Not exactly worth adopting as any country's national anthem is it?
Not only does it not appear to have any consistency of phrasing of syllables, there's also a few substantial flaws.
Would any rabbit in the headlights even consider going to get his head right? The very nature of the phrase suggests that confusion and indecisiveness is presumed, and if the animal in question was in full command of its faculties then surely it wouldn’t be stranded in the headlights, about to get run over?

Equally, the idea that a rabbit seconds from becoming a stain on the tarmac is in any position to be embarking on grand lifestyle changes is at best optimistic. At this point in a rabbit's life it really is too late to consider the big questions.

As for shivering in the moonlight; it's hard to imagine a more pointless act in the circumstances. Mr Example really should be imploring Mr Bunny to get the hell out of the way. Anything else is pointless.

I agree that there are some very dreary national anthems out there, but it's hard to see how any of them could be improved by utilising Mr Example's lyrical insight.

Twerky with Trimmings

I'm now back from yesterday's learner technology conference on big data where we learnt, amongst other things such as how the concept of learner analytics and big data can be used in educational contexts, what the country thinks is this year's best Christmas cracker joke.
Apparently its: "What does Miley Cyrus have for Christmas?" Answer "Twerky!"

Not withstanding that most of us are getting very bored with the whole twerking thing, especially those of us who live in Yorkshire (e.g. multiple hearings of the very unfunny "where does a Yorkshire man go every day?" "T'werk"), we should at the very least be pleased that cracker humour is at last reaching the 21st century, even if we have a government that with regards to Higher Education is still in the 1950s.

It's now been a week since our Chancellor announced the removal of the cap on student numbers by saying that “this year we have the highest proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds applying to university ever” and that the cap will be removed “at publicly-funded higher education institutions in England by 2015-16”, with "alternative providers also being freed in a similar manner that year". Note that there's no mention of colleges. And still nothing to explain where they fit in. They're not HEIs, so are they "alternative"? The impact on franchised provision we work out (or guess), but what about directly-funded numbers? How can FECs plan for the next three years? What consideration do they need to give to validation agreements?

Fifty plus years of HE delivery in non-HE institutions and it's still some sort of governmental blind spot despite Vince Cable claiming to know all about Higher Nationals because his brother has got one (no, not a joke, I was at the conference where he said it).
Maybe nobody in the treasury consulted him.

Or maybe the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was too busy considering the devastating effect that a nation singing Jingle Bells might have on the two-horse open sleigh industry...

Grave Doubts

It's in the news this week that archaeologists have discovered the final resting place of Alexander the Great.
Or maybe they haven't.
It's possible - well probable - that it's actually the ancient tomb of an anonymous Macedonian John Doe. Not that I'm cynical or anything, but it's easy to see why funding-hungry historians would make a headline-grabbing announcement that the Greek Culture Ministry has described as "overbold" speculation. The Greek public are apparently getting excited about the claim that the grave 370 miles north of Athens is that of Alexander, even though it doesn't quite stack up against the conventionally-accepted historical narrative that after his death in Babylon his body was taken to Alexandria in a honey-filled sarcophagus. Where he's resting now is admittedly a mystery, but ancient scribes recorded that some Romans like Pompey, Augustus and Julius Caesar visited his tomb in Egypt, with Caligula reportedly swiping the warrior's breastplate for a souvenir.

Next thing you know someone will be digging up a car park in a city like Leicester where I am now and claiming to have found the body of one of England's kings.
Oh...

Huffing and Puffing and Not Blowing the House Down

Only a couple of weeks ago Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, was asserting that a society without religion is doomed to moral and social collapse. "You cannot expect the foundations of western civilisation to crumble and leave the rest of the building intact."

Quite where he gets his evidence from isn't clear (for example there's an irrelevant Facebook statistic about the "Friend" status of the under-35s) but a recent YouGov poll has come out since stating that only 25% of 18-24 year olds believe in God, and a mere 14% think that religion is, "on balance", a good thing.
So has an obvious absence of religious faith produced a generation of difficult-to-teach shallow hedonists? Does this, as Dr Sacks would presumably expect, mean that a decline in religion is leading us towards some radically new societal structure?

Nope, not a bit of it. Those surveyed confirmed that they are in most respects at least as level headed and conventional as their predecessors, with over 60 % looking forward to marriage and children and owning their own home. In other words, a significant majority expressing approval for the foundations of western civilisation, or what is normally described as traditional family values and its attendant structures.

Evidence eh? What would religious leaders do without it?

Weigh to go

Many of us who prefer to quote scientific data instead of diet or exercise to feel fitter have yet another reason to rejoice today as we've now got a much healthier body mass index without doing anything at all.

This is due to the formula we've been using to calculate body fat getting declared faulty by a University of Oxford Professor of Numerical Analysis. Nick Trefethen says that the original formula devised by Adolphe Quetelet in the 1830s underestimates how much broader tall people are on average. Trefethen's adjustment means that tall people (e.g six footers like me) who were previously misled into thinking they were fatter than they were are now thinner, but conversely what were up to yesterday short, normal people now count as overweight.

As Newton said, for every action, there's an an equal and opposite reaction.
Science eh?
Much better than exercise...

Post-Christmas Post

Today's BBC website carries the news that scientists have discovered that the original kilogram, the standard by which all weight is measured, has become slightly heavier since it was cast from platinum-iridium in France 137 years ago. This is apparently due to small amounts of pollution collecting on its surface, and as a result, everything else has become lighter, including us.

As Peter Cumpson, professor of MicroElectroMechanical systems at Newcastle University, puts it "It is a really tiny effect, but strictly speaking we are all slightly lighter than we were in the late 1800s."
This means that I'm now sat in a Belfast hotel room weighing less than I thought I did when I left home, even though my weight has stayed exactly the same.

Not only that, but as the distance in kilometres between here and home is based on the speed of light, which is derived from how fast light might travel between two fixed points even though Albert Einstein declared that there were no fixed points, I'm now convincing myself that post-Christmas gym exertions aren't worth the effort. After all, if each walk down the drive is actually a slightly further distance travelled, but in the same amount of time as before, surely I must have got faster as well as lighter?

Just need someone to sort Time out and I can convince myself that I'm getting younger as well...

Not Barking (mad) up the Wrong Tree

Nice to read in this morning's paper that the House of Lords has at last voted to remove a law criminalising the use of insulting language in Britain.

Although it'll be early next year before MPs are asked to finally decide on the Lord's amendment, the decision is long overdue as it follows a long series of headline-grabbing arrests and prosecutions ranging from an Oxford student asking a police officer if his horse was gay (Thames Valley police described it as homophobic and "offensive to people passing by"), to a Newcastle teenager getting fined £50 with £150 costs for saying "woof" to two labradors.

Not only does this mean that atheist pensioner John Richards will be able to put up a sign in his window saying "religions are fairy stories for adults" without the threat of arrest by the local Lincolnshire constabulary for "causing alarm and distress", I can now go out and say boo to next door's goose and keep my CRB status intact ..

Siege Mentality

I'm currently sat in the bar at the Institute of Directors after a rather long awards ceremony; just round the corner from where Julian Assange is claiming asylum inside the Ecuadorian Embassy besiege with deluded supporters and news crews.

Although he might claim that this is some sort of freedom, I'd personally be thinking of ways to extricate myself from what looks like a nondescript prison building with better-than-the-norm views from some of the windows.

Some here have suggested that he might be smuggled out in an overly-large diplomatic bag, but as the drinks have flowed some more creative options have been put forward....

• Simulate death by self hypnosis like James Coburn's Flint and be taken from the embassy in a coffin and flown to Quito for a hero's funeral. (Kevin)
• Wear a prosthetic mask and disguise himself as the Ecuadorian ambassador so leave Britain on a diplomatic passport. (Bob D)
• Publicly arrange for Madame Tussuad's to make a waxwork of the Wikileaks founder, and then after one its top modellers has "recreated" his features take the completed "waxwork" out of the embassy in full view of press, police and demonstrators. (Dermot)
• Disguise himself as a washerwoman in the style of Mr Toad and slip boldly past the oblivious police, steal an aeroplane and then fly out of the reach of British justice. (Pippa)
• Simply walk out of the front door with his hands in the air and see if anybody actually cares...

Disreputable Behaviour

I'm currently watching Sky News in a London hotel prior to tomorrow's assessment conference and wondering how exactly Fred Goodwin has "brought the honours system into disrepute"? He didn't award himself the knighthood that the queen has just withdrawn; all he did was accept it. You could probably argue that he brought himself into disrepute by graceless behaviour and reckless management of the Royal Bank of Scotland. And you could also make a case that he brought the banking industry into disrepute (admittedly in conjunction with many other supposedly leading lights). But the honours system? That charge really ought to be levelled at those who recommended and confirmed the award for "services to banking" for someone who was effectively just gambling with someone else's money.

Now, it's not that I'm particularly advocating that (the now) Mr Goodwin deserves to keep his knighthood, but unlike previously dispossessed knights, he is not a criminal or a traitor, just someone who didn't turn out to have been quite so brilliant a banker as they thought him to be when bestowing the award in the first place. So it occurs to me that if you consider the many still-knighted leading bankers who must be grateful to Fred Goodwin for effectively taking the public flak on their behalf, you might conceivably say that he's performed his fellow money men a great service. And doesn't great service eventually lead to honours? A knighthood perhaps?....

Troweller in Error

Much as I agree that gardening is important, after all the Office for National Statistics has declared it to be one of the few activities which make people of all income levels and national origins happier, but television gardener Alan Titchmarsh has told this week's Radio Times that "Gardening is more important than politics [because] it has a consistent point of view".

No explanation is supplied as to how he considers domestic agriculture on any scale able to hold a viewpoint, consistent or otherwise, or why political variability is apparently undesirable (surely the point of democracy is that change can, and does, happen?), but those of us who thought the appeal of gardening to be creative joy, useful solitude or a connection to nature, are now aware that in addition to the pruning, planting and potting: there's philosophy!

Skullduggery

Today's BBC Science website headlines the revelation that anthropologists from Oxford University have examined 55 human skulls from various parts of the world and concluded that we in the North have bigger brains than those who hail from the South.

According to lead author Eiluned Pearce: "We found a positive relationship between absolute latitude ... and cranial capacity" which suggests that a few tens of thousands of years peering through the gloom of long winters and brief springs has enlarged northern brains in the same sort of way that a series of gym sessions is likely to increase the size of one's biceps/pectorals/deltoids/etc.

The Royal Society's Biology Letters journal goes on to say that this hasn't necessarily made Northerners more intelligent, however, it is now over 200 years since Canon Sydney Smith, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (born in Woodford, Essex but obviously in possession of something akin to a Big Northern Brain) pre-empted the team's doubts on the matter by saying:
"Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?".

Of course, it's now only natural modesty which prevents me speculating as to whether or not next week's news might confirm the Pope's religion or enlighten us on what bears do in the woods....

28 Hours Later

I'm glad to report that yesterday's trip to Leicester to deliver a series of critical thinking workshops was completely untroubled by the zombie invasions which the local authority has today admitted that it is not prepared for.

Apparently, a recent Freedom of Information request by a "concerned citizen" asks of of the City Council :
"Can you please let us know what provisions you have in place in the event of a zombie invasion? Having watched several films it is clear that preparation for such an event is poor and one that councils throughout the kingdom must prepare for.
Please provide any information you may have."

Lynn Wyeth, head of information governance, responded by saying that she was unaware of any specific reference to a zombie attack in the council's emergency plan, however some elements of it could be applied if the situation arose.

Nice to know, but as there's even been an official reply to this stupidity, I'm betting that it won't be long before some Health and Safety obsessed jobsworth insists that people like me incorporate dealing with the walking dead into our pre-workshop introduction along with what to do if the fire alarm goes off...

New Bond-Style Super-Villain Reveals Himself!

As someone who uses lots of trains, the news that Dr Sang-Woo Kim of the Sung-Kyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea has discovered a way of charging mobile phones by talking into them strikes me as more of a threat to Western civilisation than anything the late Osama bin Laden could have dreamt up.

At the moment, the technology can convert 100 decibels (about the same level as a busy road) into 50 millivolts of electricity, which isn't enough to charge a phone.

But give it time, and then won’t using public transport be fun? If, like me, you're irritated by sitting near an overly-loud, mind-numbing ‘I’m on a train . . . hello? . . . no, I said I’m on a train . . . ’ conversation, how's travel going to be remotely tolerable when there's a carriage full of half-wits screaming into their Nokias because they forgot to charge them up overnight?

Forget al-Qaeda, the electronics department of Sung-Kyunkwan University needs flattening.
Now!

Beyond the Pale..

The BBC today reports that Fulham have become the latest football club to erect a statue outside. This famous old institution has joined the likes of Liverpool, with Bill Shankly outside Anfield, Ipswich who've got Sir Bobby Robson standing proud outside Portman Road and Leeds with Billy Bremner's arms forever raised in triumph at Elland Road by putting Michael Jackson on a pedestal.

Yep, you read that right, Wacko Jacko, the "King of Pop", a man with a history of extremely questionable behaviour, who according to the club's owner and chairman Mohammed Al Fayed, "loved Fulham and wanted to attend all of the matches". Although he only actually managed to turn up once (for a match against Wigan in 1999), Mr Al Fayed apparently thinks "it is something that I and everybody else should be proud of".

Proud?
Will the Jackson statue become more plastic as the years go by; just like the real thing?
Will it lighten over time; just like the real thing?
And will children be allowed to touch it; just like the ...

The times they aren't a changing...

With apologies to Bob Dylan

I've just taken a short detour through Trafalgar Square on the way to King's Cross (which is where I am now) to join the crowd which had gathered to look at a faulty clock!

This particular malfunctioning time piece is the OMEGA London 2012 countdown clock which is (or was an hour ago) stuck on 500 days and 7:06:56 less than a day after it was unveiled to commemorate the 500th day before next year's Games, and that tickets for the event(s) are now on sale.

Is this matter of national embarassment or an innovative and unique way of publicising that we're going to host next year's Olympics by inventing a stopped clock that isn't right twice a day?