So far this year I have had three invitations to act as external examiner for a doctoral thesis. I accepted all three, but it appears that I won’t be doing any of them. Why?

I regularly act as an external examiner for taught courses in my field, and for PhD theses. I enjoy doing this; it’s rewarding and stimulating and, although not highly paid, it is part of the reciprocal activity – like reviewing books and articles – without which academic life would seize up. Increasingly, however, I am being asked to produce my passport in order to be appointed. Until recently this was an exceptional request, and my refusal to comply was accepted, if not with good grace. On one occasion the viva was arranged, I had read the thesis and drafted my report when I saw the request. The university at first insisted that there was no alternative, but eventually backed down.

This year, however, three universities have de-appointed me when I explained why I would not comply with the request, even though in all three cases the viva date had been provisionally agreed and the thesis submitted. In all three cases it was then necessary for my colleagues to identify and appoint an alternative external examiner, with the result being a very long delay for the student.

So why are they asking to see my papers, and why am I refusing? The procedure seems to be one driven by HR within universities, and usually attributed to UKBA requirements to demonstrate that all employees have the right to work in the UK. One or two have said that the new procedures follow discussions between Universities UK and UKBA in 2010; but many universities (including my own) do not follow this procedure.

The legal position, as I understand it, is that an employer who does not check an employee’s right to work in the UK has no defence if the employee subsequently turns out to be working illegally, and therefore it is reasonable to carry out whatever checks appear to be necessary. But think about it: the overwhelming majority of external examiners are already employed full-time at UK universities, and can therefore be assumed to be working legally in the UK. Realistically, if it suddenly turned out that I was working here illegally, the authorities would be very interested in talking to my main employer (who of course has a record of my passport details). But would they also want to track down every university for whom I had been an external examiner, or every publisher for whom I had reviewed a book proposal? Clearly the procedure is absurd as well as being a nuisance for everyone. It has been applied unthinkingly on the basis of new procedures for permanent or casual employees, without reflecting on whether it is actually necessary. In any case, an external examiner can’t be an employee of the university awarding the degree, because then she/he would be ineligible to be an external examiner.

But why am I refusing to comply? Surely it is only a minor inconvenience, not worth making a fuss over and thereby causing problems for colleagues (academics and administrators) and especially students at a very sensitive time? In my case, it is because I think it is important to stand up to petty regulation of this kind, to stand up against the mindset that says we should meekly comply with the demands of ‘authority’ without questioning them. I also think it is worth resisting, wherever we can, the encroaching demand to ‘show our papers’ in a variety of circumstances. I have valued living in a country where people have been able to go about their business without being checked on, called upon to prove who we are and to do as we are told, and I am angry to see this being eroded. Others share my view: a letter to The Guardian in April 2009, signed by 37 senior academics, called for a boycott, and there has been similar correspondence more recently in the Times Higher Education Supplement. It has not caught on yet, but some of us are still trying.

Universities are terrified of UKBA, especially since the punishment of London Met last year, and have implemented new processes for monitoring students, such as weekly signing in (which of course proves virtually nothing). I have a PhD student from Iran who came here to escape from state surveillance and is seriously upset at being subject to it here. Another, from East Africa, took a month’s holiday simply to have a break from signing in; she continued working throughout. It is partly because of them that I am choosing to be awkward. I have also asked my own university to review the appropriateness of these arrangements, which they are doing, and I attempt to get the requirement waived for my students as often as possible.

When I originally asked our own Research Degrees Office if we made similar requests of external examiners, the answer was “of course not – they’d tell us to get lost”. Maybe it’s time we all told them to get lost...

Sluts and shits

Saturday, 4 June 2011 (posted in error on wrong blog)

Sluts and shits

There were a lot of complaints about Melanie Phillips' behaviour on the Moral Maze last week. There was an interesting discussion on Feedback, when the producer defended her in what I thought was a pretty arrogant way. (Sisters under the skin, maybe.) http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2011/05/feedback_slut_walks_and_the_mo.html.
The problem with the debate on Feedback was that it seemed to be about whether Phillips had behaved badly or not, which kind of misses the point. She is clearly an extremely unpleasant person, and I'm not sure what's to be gained by persuading her to try to hide the fact. Better just to get rid of her, or not listen to the Moral Maze, which is Ivor's preferred solution. Frankly I'd rather chew my fingers to the bone while not listening to her.

The topic of the original programme was 'slutwalks' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13320785), which leads me to another observation. The chief objection to the police officer's comment, and many similar ones by police and others, has been that it suggests women are to blame if they are attacked; to which the response is 'we're not blaming women or saying it's their fault, just advocating sensible precautions.' What I haven't seen, though, is any evidence that women who dress modestly are less likely to be attacked. 'Provocative' clothing on a woman can be exciting or unsettling (or both) for a heterosexual man, and may lead to various verbal and non-verbal reactions; but I'd have thought the motivation behind rape was quite different and just as likely (if not more so) to happen to a woman who's hurrying home in a hat and coat as one who's sashaying down the street in glittery hot pants. The sexual politics debate is an important one to have, but a bit of discussion of the evidence might be useful too. No?

What it's like in Tripoli

Message received this week from an Englishwoman who lived in Tripoli until very recently, now in Tunisia:

The vast majority of people in Tripoli have been besieged in their houses since the protests there began on 20th February. Every small street is guarded by armed people, so they can barely leave their houses, let alone protest, to let the world know how they feel. The pro-Gadaffi people on TV are often families of the massive secret police, who have been indoctrinated in cult-like ways their whole lives. There are others, not rocket scientists, who are waving green flags because they've been given huge sums of money and cars to do it! Gaddafi is throwing money and stuff at people (not that it's his to give away!); I have absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of Libyan people are very very happy that they're being helped by the coalition.

A lot of the people patrolling the streets are orphans, now teenage, who were brought up in govt institutions and brainwashed from childhood - a bit like child soldiers in some countries.

I do see a lot of TV channels from BBC world to Al Jazeera, and I see some politicians talking as if the coalitions forces are just to save the people in Benghazi and the east, but there are millions of people besieged and terrified in their homes in Tripoli, Miserata, the other towns in the west, including the Berber region in the western mountains, which are 100% anti-Gaddafi. They're waiting to stand up.

We manage to speak to friends in Tripoli most days. They confirm that the coalition attacks haven't hit civilians. They are terrified and dream of escaping. One told us that the families of murdered protesters are too afraid to go to the cemetary, so bury the bodies in the gardens, or, in apartments are keeping them in rooms with several air-conditioners on to preserve them. If the soldiers see there is a protester in the family, they'll take all the men.

Hope it'll be days rather than weeks before the regime falls.

Counting the days

A census for the 21st century? Consider this. We are a family of four, two of whom are students living away from home in termtime, one an academic living away from home in termtime (all three in different cities), and one person holding the fort at home. An initial reading of the questions suggested that we should all complete full details on the home questionnaire, and basic details on the other returns for those of us with second addresses. Seems logical, and the online process seemed to promise that we could each fill in our own bits. (Ten years ago it was easy, as we all sat round the kitchen table, but times, and lifestyles, have changed.)

However, closer examination of the guidance at the back of the form revealed that those employed away from home had to enter their personal details on the home form, but those who were studying away from home had to do so on the return for their secondary address. Apparently it is logically impossible for someone working away from home to 'usually reside' in two places (or, incidentally, for a child of separated parents to do so), but a student is expected to achieve this feat - perhaps they all should study quantum physics.

So that's clear(ish). Now to complete the form. I volunteer to make a start online, using the convenient 20-character access code. I list my partner as Person 1, since she is basically running the household in Wales while the rest of us swan around England. I immediately find that I'm not allowed to enter our sons' full surnames because they are too long, so enter as much as I can and make a note to invite them to go back and amend if they wish. I complete the household information and then move on to my personal questions; but I can't, because my partner's now have to be entered first. So I email the rest of the family to report progress, but first I think I'd better check that it will be possible for our sons to go back and amend their surnames. It won't. There's no going back. Nothing can be changed once it's entered – no errors corrected, no oversights rectified. What's done is done.

So much for the online form. We will now try, I guess, to complete the manual form by correspondence, in the few hours that remain to us; but there seems no way to prevent the online form being harvested next week, although it's only partially (and possibly wrongly) completed.

So, two questions. If a household bursting with academic qualifications is confused by these questions and instructions, how many others are going to get it wrong or give up? And if this is the best Lockheed Martin can do with an online questionnaire, why should anyone trust their planes?

Unwanted

Another step in the commercial colonisation of personal relationships.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/27/return-santa-amazon-unwanted-gift

Bloody bile

'Kinnock... tells a Channel 4 docudrama of his surprise at David Miliband's behaviour towards his younger brother, saying: "David's response to Ed running has, to my astonishment, been deeply resentful. David's people are spreading all kinds of bloody bile about Ed being in thrall to the left and he would be in the pocket of the unions and all kinds of crap like that".' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/17/bloody-bile-miliband-relationship-kinnock)

This illustrates why Kinnock was never fit to lead anything, and why Welsh Labour may eventually dissolve in a pit of its own spite. I'm no fan of David Miliband, but why on earth would he not put it out that Ed is too far to the left. Isn't that what the election is about? Isn't that politics? For fuck's sake, the only bloody bile I can see is what is oozing from Kinnock's disgusting rectum in place of his mouth.

What's in a name?

So the runners are out of the stalls – Abbott, Balls, Burnham, Miliband, Miliband – and all from the first half of the alphabet!

If you look back over the postwar years the pattern is the same: Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Foot, Kinnock, Smith, Blair, Brown. Add in the two temporary leaders after Smith and Brown (Beckett and Harman) – that’s 9 out of 11 with names starting in the first half.

It’s the same pattern with the Tories: Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home (whichever way you spell it), Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague, Duncan-Smith, Howard, Cameron – 10 out of 11.

Not so different for Liberal leaders too: Davies, Grimond, Thorpe, Steel, Ashdown, Kennedy, Campbell, Cable (temp), Clegg – 7 out of 9.

What is going on here? Could it be to do with position on the ballot paper? Possibly – if you take all 31 A-M names in the lists above, 16 of them are A-Ds (four letters) compared with 15 E-Ms (nine letters) – so the skewing to the front is even more marked.

Do we really elect our leaders on the basis of their position in the alphabet? Should we be worried?

Kiss and tell: or, hell hath no fury?

The question not yet raised in the Triesman affair is why did she turn him in? Why did she go to the date armed with a tape-recorder in the first place, and why did she think that it was right for her to sell a private conversation thing in this way? Without more information than that provided by the Daily Mail (wash my mouth out), it's hard to understand such extraordinary behaviour.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1278706/FA-chief-Lord-Triesman-Spain-bid-bribe-World-Cup-referees.html
Interestingly, if you Google 'Melissa Jacobs' you get a pornstar. If you add 'FA' you get this one.

Ashes to Ashes

For systematists, the world exists to put in order. For Harold Pinter it is for dissembling, through which the good and the humane find a way to seep out through the bureaucratic cage of ingrained reflexes. In a ruthless analysis of the totalitarian, he illuminates the pain of the individual. Throwaway lines sting, little words corrode, what is half-said crushes, what is tacit forebodes catastrophe. Pinter, the tailor's son, scissors language, allowing the action to originate from the voices and rhythms of the characters. Thus, there is no given plot. We do not ask: "What will happen next"? Rather, "What is happening"? The words are instruments of power. Words are repeated until they resemble truth. In a time of over-information, Pinter frees words from describing reality and makes them reality itself, at times poetic, more often oppressive. At the end, it is only through language that we can erase our destiny and recreate it. (Per Wästberg, presenting the Nobel Prize for Literature, December 2005)

Who's a wuss, then?

So General John Sheehan thinks that allowing gays in the army makes it soft (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/19/gay-dutch-soldiers-srebrenica).
I'd like to see him repeat that nose-to-nose with Gareth Thomas (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/welsh/8421956.stm).

Result!

It's lovely when you watch a columnist getting better and better, waiting for them to hit gold, and then they do. Marina Hyde, you have scored!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/06/ashcroft-mp-expenses-unelected-influence

Creaming off the profits

So Lord Ashcroft has managed to achieve what so many have campaigned for: a political party funded by the taxpayer. Nice one!

Orange and gold

I’ve found a lovely new trick. I take one (or more) of those oranges, tangerines, clementines etc that lurk in the bowl because you know that even if you go to the labour of peeling and pulling them apart the pleasure they give will be absolutely minimal – dried up, manky things. I stick my little magic stabbing juicer into them and squeeze whatever’s there into a bowl. Then I top it up with Havana Gold. Then I drink it, and smile.

The dregs and the cream

As I said, BBC Parliament is a gem. Yesterday I left it running with the sound off, so it was there again when I started Firefox again today. Glanced at it once or twice but it was tedious House of Lords stuff. Then later in the afternoon happened to catch the Welsh Affairs debate, with the nauseating David Davies going on and on and on and on, managing to be so insufferably dull that one longed for some of his nastiness. In the end I turned the sound off again and carried on working. When I switched back later I caught Adam Price making what may well be his final speech to the House of Commons (he described it as a valedictory). Utterly assured, full of apt quotations and historical references, vintage Price, but also incredibly gracious to his Labour opposites - Paul Murphy struggling not to be charmed, but Don Touhig simply rolling over to have his tummy scratched. And then the sting in the tail - let's make this a decade of investing in Welsh industry, enterprise and knowledge, and let's conclude it by bringing the World Fair to Britain for the first time in 150 years, and specifically to Wales - and a challenge to Labour, Conservative and Plaid to make it happen. Truly the man is brilliant. Let's hope he makes good use of his time in the US, and returns soon to the role of leadership he was born for.

Taking responsibility

BBC Parliament is a gem - why don't I watch it more often? Tuned in yesterday idly to catch PMQs, and found it was followed by Brown's statement on Britain’s treatment of child migrants. His apology was actually impressive and moving, and I say that as no fan of Brown. (To understand his approach to blame-taking you don’t need Andrew Rawnsley’s gossip, just remember his statement on the McBride affair – ‘I take full responsibility for this, and that’s why the person responsible has resigned’.)

However, what really made me sit up was Cameron’s response – very weak, and his main point was that the scandal happened under all parties. Not quite true, David. It happened almost entirely under one party on particular. Guess which?

The Children Act 1948 (passed under a Labour government) stopped local authorities from arranging for the emigration of children in care without the approval of the Secretary of State. It also enabled the Secretary of State to make regulations restricting the ability of voluntary organisations to arrange for such emigration. For the next nineteen years no such regulations were made, while the practice continued. Thirteen years of Conservative governments, and three of Labour governments with weak or no majorities.

Although the scandal of child migrants came to public attention in 1987 (thanks to Margaret Humphreys). For the next ten years, under two Conservative governments, nothing was done; only in 1998 did the Labour government take the matter seriously. In 1993 John Major had the nerve to tell Parliament that ‘any concern about the treatment of the children in another country is essentially a matter for the authorities in that country’.

The Conservative record on this matter is particularly shameful. It is also absolutely consistent with the instinct to punish and blame the families of children in need rather than support them, which still characterises Conservative social policy today.

Is this a good use of time and human resources?

I was thinking today about the time we spend cutting our fingernails. Assume for the sake of argument that we each do it roughly once a week and it takes about a minute. I reckon that means that worldwide there are on average something like half a million of us cutting our fingernails at any particular moment. Just think what half a million people could do if they weren't all cutting their fingernails....

Little England

Sorry for long gap - actually, for a few weeks I forgot that I had started a blog!
Prompted to return when listening to the Today programme this morning. Sarah Montague was interviewing the French finance minister Christine Lagarde on the story of Tory policy (if you can call it that) in relation to Lisbon and EU membership. At least three times Mme Lagarde referred not to the UK but to 'England', and on one occasion to 'the Kingdom of England'. Dozy Montague made no attempt to challenge or correct her. What in hell is going on here? Is this pure ignorance or incompetence, or is there a hidden plan to enthrone King David of England and let the rest of us find our own way in the world? There might be something to be said for that, says my Welsh side, but my English side quivers in terror....

Cynhadledd y Blaid

The Observer said on Sunday that this week's TUC conference marked the start of the political conference season. WRONG!! Having returned that day from the Plaid Cymru conference, which took place in Llandudno from Thursday to Saturday last week, I can assure both my readers that serious political debate was already well under way before Brendan Barber and company assembled in Liverpool.

Plaid's conference was vibrant and utterly contemporary, bringing together grassroots green-red activism with a stunning record in government. Leader Ieuan Wyn Jones (who this writer has not been reluctant to criticise in the past) is making a real impact as Deputy First Minister with responsibility for transport and the economy - Wales' response to the recession has been recognised as the most effective in the British and Irish Isles, and the new National Transport Plan offers a realistic vision based on sustainability and fairness; and Elin Jones has been making a similar impact in agriculture and rural affairs.

The guest speaker at the conference dinner was George Monbiot, who expressed his delight at moving to Wales and finding at last a serious political party whose entire programme he was happy to sign up to - poor England, was the message. Fringe events and stalls ran the gamut from the police, via the Humanists and the Autistic Society, to the campaign against bauxite mining in Orissa. Of course, the real highlights were the revues on the Thursday and Saturday evenings, where few trouser legs stayed dry.

Trouble is, now there's an expectation of more to come. Even if it's only in my head...

First (past the) post

So I now have a blog. No more need to write letters to the papers that usually get spiked, or fantasise about being a columnist. Now I can just write stuff and anyone who wants to read it can read it, and the rest of you can ignore it....