The Unloved

Samantha Morton's semi biographical television film on growing up in an institution. Set in Nottingham, this is a bleak picture of the town. It is a bleak picture of the care system of course, but I think the location is important.

Expenses scandal

I bought the Telegraph today.

For the first time. It will be the last too. Telegraph readers are clearly people with time, and space, on their hands. It's just so impractical. If you can't read it on the bus, it's not worth reading.

Daily Mail

...slanders a hero.

Not Bob Dylan

more Malcolm Bradbury

..for your intellectual delight.

"the media age, the age of simulation.... The age of no ideology, only hyperreality.... The streets are filled with gangs and terrorists, the women rage with anger, everyone lives for themselves.... down in the street people kill for drugs and kicks. Too little reality, also too much. Every- where, wild fantasies, everyone wants a violent illusion. Life is a movie, death a plot ending, no stories are real. And even the philosophers think in unrealities, [as] they describe a world of no ethics, no humanism, no self."

There Are Thousands of Alternatives

This video of a journalist reporting on the G8 protests is great:

Capitalism

You have got to love the BBC meeting the masses - 'who are these people? Why do they behave this way? What newspaper do they read, the Express?! I'm lost in a sea of Express readers....'

Quite ugly

artworks. Even if they are meant to be ironically ugly. I'm not sorry Morrissey.

Enlightening thought of the moment

"Democracy, the free market," she muses, do you really think they can save us? ... Marxism [was] a great idea, democracy [is] just a small idea. It promises hope, and it gives you [Kentucky] Fried Chicken."

Malcolm Bradbury.

The Melbourne Model

I love this. It is a promotion video for a theatrical performance put on at Melbourne University Student Union. They came up with a musical to document the trials and tribulations of the new academic regime that has been put in place there. Based on the American system, the Melbourne Model largely removes the opportunity for students to specialise. It is impossible to imagine something so critical of university management being put on at any British institution, probably because Australia is subject to a legal process called Voluntary Student Unionism. In short, students have to pay (quite a lot for people without an income) to be a member of the SU, making it a completely separate organisation from the university.

New Zealand

The teenager found guilty of the brutal murder of Scottish tourist Karen Aim in NZ has become the youngest person to be given a life sentence in the country's history.

Times article

Italian history

My enlightening fact of the week is:

"The Garibaldi biscuit was named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian general and leader of the fight to unify Italy, who made a popular visit to Tynemouth in England in 1854. It was here he accidentally sat on an Eccles Cake and 'invented' the biscuit."

I wish I could be in Manchester on 2nd July, because Kraftwerk are playing at the Velodrome, but alas, my exam on this very Italian history (Gramsci, to be specific) is on the 4th.

http://www.mif.co.uk/events/kraftwerk/

I'm

---

Totally Wired

SU elections

One can always rely on members of Conservative Future to prove to us just how ignorant they are.

Oxbridge

Is not exceptional. The AHRC doesn't recognise their undergraduate MAs.

"If a student does not have experience of formal postgraduate study, they may
be eligible for a studentship only if they can demonstrate evidence of
sustained experience beyond undergraduate degree level that is specifically
relevant to their proposed research topic, and could be considered equivalent
to Master’s study. A student and their RO will need to be able to justify why
this experience qualifies them exceptionally as prepared for doctoral
research without prior formal postgraduate training. On their own, the
following are not considered as ‘exceptional’ in terms of qualifying a student
for doctoral study:
• An undergraduate MA from Oxford or Cambridge
• An undergraduate MA from a Scottish University
• A four-year undergraduate degree
• The completion of a dissertation as part of an undergraduate degree."

I'm a little bit bitter.

Just as an amendment to that, this is also quite interesting:

"Certain departments or ROs are ineligible to hold doctoral awards on behalf
of students in 2009 because of their low doctoral submission rates in past
years. Those concerned are listed below:
• School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool
• Manchester Metroplitan University"

And a second amendment, the AHRC details which subjects it accepts:

"Librarianship, Information and
Museum Studies
• Archives
• Computational Studies
• Conservation Science
• Heritage Management
• Information Management
• Information Retrieval
• Information Science
• Journalism
• Library Studies
• Management
• Museum and Gallery Studies
• Publishing
• Records Management
• User Studies"

.....what exactly is user studies?!

Years of Refusal

The new Morrissey album is out on MONDAY. There has been a fair amount of promotion (all on the BBC), a Radio 2 interview and live performance on Johnathon Ross, which I'm currently watching. Every time he appears on Ross's show, he pretends to have a distaste for the broadcaster, but we know that really, he loves it.