Home › Items tagged with education

• I posted to youtube.com

  Friendfeed 2 - Social Objects

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYit9nMl_GQ&feature=youtube_gdata

  • Tags:
  • Education
  • googlevideo

  May 15 2012, 3:22am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  TV review: Jamie’s Dream School

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/13/tv-review-jamies-dream-school-2

  Some sort of review of the final episode of jamies dream school which aired tonight.

  This article titled “TV review: Jamie’s Dream School” was written by Sam Wollaston, for The Guardian on Wednesday 13th April 2011 21.00 UTC Last week on Jamie’s Dream School, (Channel 4) Angelique said: “You’re a prick, mate” to Alastair Campbell. To be honest I was worried about Angelique at the start, so it’s nice to see her growing in confidence and getting the hang of things, as well as showing she’s a shrewd judge of character . . . Oh, you have got to be having a laugh – he’s only gone and banned her from the Downing Street trip. “I think calling a teacher a ‘fucking prick’ as you storm out of the class is not really an acceptable way to behave,” he says, sanctimoniously. Well, a couple of points there, Alastair. You’re not really a teacher – you’re a spin doctor. You’ve spent your life being rude to people, so maybe you should learn to take a bit too. Also, Angelique didn’t say “fucking prick”. You added the F-word, so go and wash your filthy mouth out. And one more thing: she did kind of have a point. But he’s not going to back down, because that would show weakness. It’s not all bad news, though, because Angelique’s going to get him. “Watch how I behave today in his lesson,” she says. “He thought last week was bad; he’s going to cry today.” Fight, fight, fight . . . Oh, the head intervenes, persuades Alastair to perform a spectacular U-turn and let Angelique go, but she does have to behave. So we don’t get to see her make Alastair Campbell cry. Boo! But then she is going to Downing street, so maybe she’ll make David Cameron cry. Or at least call him a prick. Yay! To be fair to Campbell (why are those words so hard?), he is one of Jamie’s better recruits. Not only are his classes good, but he also has a nice rapport with the kids, engages with them and clearly likes them too. Plus he realises that Jamie’s Dream School is much more dream than school and has little bearing on what does or can happen in a classroom. And that when it’s over it’ll be – to quote the great words of another member of the Dream School staffroom – back to life, back to reality. So off they all go to Downing Street and sit round the cabinet table. Oh, please let them run the country, just for one day – I like Henry’s idea of a skunk tax instead of the public sector cuts. He’s done the maths too – says it’ll bring in £1.6bn a year, and that’s just from him. In bounces the PM. “Hi, everyone, how you doing, hi Jourdelle, hi there,” he says. Not many people called Jourdelle at King Henry VI’s Dream School, his alma mater, I shouldn’t imagine. Jourdelle wants Cameron to guess how many GCSEs they’ve got between them. “I don’t know,” says Dave. “And I’m not going to guess, I don’t want to . . . er . . .” Oh, go on Dave, say something embarrassing, like “disrespect you”. But he saves himself just in time, gets Jourdelle to tell him. Damn. Harlem wants to ask something. “Harlem, take it away,” says Dave, relaxing into semi-youth-speak. Take it away, eurgh. But it’s just a bit cringey, rather than proper embarrassing. And they’re way too easy on him. Nothing about how can he possibly understand when he’s from where he is, or about whether he knows about skunk from back in the days with the Bullingham bredrin. Henry doesn’t even have a pop at Sam Cam (though to be fair to Henry, if she’d made an appearance he most probably would’ve done). The real disappointment is Angelique, who’s taking this good behaviour thing way too far. She doesn’t storm out, or make Dave cry, or even call him a prick. Angelique! What’s going on? You’ve let Jamie’s Dream School down, you’ve let your classmates down, you’ve definitely let yourself down, but most of all you’ve let the whole bloody country down. To be fair to Angelique (where’s all the magnanimity coming from today?) she does redeem herself outside No 10, showing that even if she’s not calling anyone a prick today, she can at least still recognise one. “Oh my God, it’s George Osborne,” she says. But then Henry goes and trumps her by getting the chancellor to unwittingly sign his legalise-skunk petition. Today – the last day – was Henry’s day; excellent work, well done.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogTV review: Jamie’s Dream School

  Related posts:TV review: Jamie’s Dream School Jamie’s Dream School – a youth club with David Starkey instead of a pool table School Of Everything

  

  • Tags:
  • UK
  • learning
  • school
  • politics
  • Education
  • show
  • David Cameron
  • television
  • review
  • Media
  • The Guardian
  • dream
  • Life and style
  • Article
  • Reviews
  • Channel 4
  • G2
  • chancellor
  • Public sector cuts
  • Television industry
  • george osborne
  • Jamie Oliver
  • reality
  • Last nights TV
  • Sam Wollaston
  • TV and radio in G2
  • Alastair Campbell
  • downing street
  • dream school
  • f word
  • having a laugh
  • Schools
  • shrewd judge
  • spin doctor

  April 13 2011, 4:22pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  March for the alternative – live updates

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/march-for-the-alternative-%E2%80%93%C2%A0live-updates

  More than 250,000 people are expected to march against the governing coalition’s cuts. Protesters gather in London in the biggest demo for eight years. Organisers warn against infiltration by police provacateurs.

  This article titled “March for the alternative – live updates” was written by David Batty and Rowenna Davis, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 26th March 2011 10.01 UTC

  1.15pm: Tom Wills, a student journalist based in Brighton, has posted a set of photos from the march on Flickr, which give a sense of the mass turnout.

  1.10pm: EastLondonLines, a news website run by the journalism department of Goldsmiths, has posted this Twitpic, which shows the protesters marching past police lines near Parliament.

  1.04pm: Paul Lewis has sent through an update, describing the wide range of groups who have joined today’s protest. “Standing here watching hundreds of thousands of people stream past, you get a real sense of the broad coalition against the government. I noted down every banner that past through over a couple of minutes. “Somerset Teachers Association, Vulnerable Chinese Migrants Association, Society of Radiographers, Prison Officers Association, Don’t Cut Out The Disabled, Southend On Sea Unison Branch, Ipswich Labour Party, Cut Trident, Nurses Uncut, Met Police Group PCS Union, Calderdale Division of the NUT, Chelsea Anti Cuts Alliance, Colchester NHS SOS, South Ribble Children, The Bohemian Storm is Rising, Parents Alliance of Community Schools, Isle of Wight Uncut.”

  1.02pm: Matthew Taylor says thousands of people are still joining the march, with the total number estimated at around 400,000. “I am now on a footbridge overlooking the Embankment and people have been streaming underneath us for about an hour. People are queuing as far back as I a can see and tens of thousands more are still arriving from side streets. Organisers are suggesting there could be as many as 400,000 here today. That is impossible to verify at this stage. But it is clear that this is a very big demo.”

  1.00pm: While this photo from Mary shows crowds gathering at Embankment.

  12.58pm: This photo by Mary Hamilton pokes fun at undercover police officers – whose activities have recently been investigated by the Guardian.

  12.45pm: Journalist Mary Hamilton – aka newsmary – has been posting photos of the march on Twitpic.

  12.35pm: The Public and Commercial Services Union has set up its own live blog of the march.

  12.30pm: Here’s a map of the march route

  12.20pm: PA news agency has been speaking to some of the protesters: Peter Keats, 54, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, who works for Jobcentre Plus, said: “We’re toasting the success as so many people have turned out. The press were saying 100,000 people but I think we have far exceeded that. I’m hoping for half a million. I’m hoping the government will start to listen with this many out. “Personally, I think it’s wrong the way we are hitting the poor. I’m not so much worried about myself but the customers I deal with are vulnerable and I’m worried about them and I’m worried about the kids of this country.” Alan Dowling, 40, who works for the UK Border Agency in Sheffield, said: “The other day the immigration minister was on TV saying we need to do more. How are we going to do more enforcement when we are cutting enforcement officers?”

  12.17pm: Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, estimates there are half a million people taking part in the protest. He told PA: “This is an absolutely incredible turnout and display of anger which the government will have to take notice of.” Hundreds of police officers lined up outside parliament behind metal barriers as the marchers passed by and moved down Whitehall.

  12.09pm: Matthew Taylor, who has been following the education feeder march, has now joined the main protest. In this audio report, he says the main march dwarfs the scale of the education protest: “The student block has suddenly become much quieter than it was now they see the scale of the TUC march.”

  11.58am: Paul Lewis is on the Golden Jubilee Bridge near the Embankment, overlooking the march. He says the turnout is huge, stretching from the Houses of Parliament to St Paul’s Cathedral. He says the atmosphere is good natured. The only scuffle he’s seen was a protester heckling the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls.

  10.49am: My colleague Matthew Taylor is with the education feeder march, which set off from the University of London in Mallet Street, Bloomsbury, around 20 minutes ago. Groups of Scottish students who set off at 11pm last night are leading the chanting. Student organisers had said ‘more than 10000′ people would meet here but so far there are probably month more than 2000 – although more are arriving all the time. Students and lecturers are being joined by various activist groups and so far the mood is vocal but pretty good natured. We’re at Russell Square now. There’s a small police presence. The police and the organisers don’t seem clear on the route but we’re on our way down to join the main march.

  10.34am: My colleague Paul Lewis has just sent in his thoughts about the potential for trouble between protesters and the police. “I don’t think anyone doubts that the main march will be in large part good natured and peaceful. Most protesters will spend several hours marching through London, seeing little more than the placards in front of them, and finish with sandwiches in Hyde Park. But that isn’t to say there won’t be pockets of trouble, and if past experiences are anything to go by they could flare into some quite nasty confrontations with police. “Flashpoints could come when a handful of unofficial feeder marches, coming from across the capital, plan to join the main march. Will police let them? Many of the seasoned activists – those police like to call ‘trouble-makers’ – are likely to be on these fringe processions (watch out for delegations gathering right now in Kennington Park, Camden and Mallet Street) and the instinct of police, who at times exhibit an almost medieval vision of crowd psychology, is often to prevent groups mixing. That would spell trouble. “The other likely hotspots will be Oxford Street at 2pm, where UK Uncuts plan to close down shops, and Trafalgar Square late in the afternoon, which there are plans to occupy. Both of these locations, and others we don’t yet know about, are likely to be magnets for those intending to peel off from the slow procession through London in search of “direct action”. Coping sensibly with all these splinters from the main march will be a policing nightmare for Scotland Yard. It all comes down to how much coercion police use. Stop people from walking where they want and sparks fly.”

  10.29am: Here’s some more comments from union leaders ahead of the march. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, will tell the demonstrators that every time the government votes through more cuts, they should hear the “angry voices” of public sector workers losing their jobs. He also warned it faced being wiped out in May’s elections. “Every day when they discuss squeezing NHS budgets I want them to remember the nurses here on the march, the paramedics – workers who keep our NHS going. Workers who see every day the effect of the cuts on patients who are having vital pain-relieving operations cut or delayed. “Workers who worry about patient care suffering, because job cuts mean there are not enough staff on the ward. NHS workers and the public fearful that the Health and Social Care Bill will mean the break-up of the NHS – the end of our much loved health service as we know it. A new dawn of privatisation for the Tories’ friends in big business. “Every month when a library closes, a care home shuts its doors, or services for struggling young people are withdrawn, I want them to feel the fear, and anger of the people who have come here today from every part of the UK to vent their frustration and to stand up for a fairer future.” Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said: “Cameron and Clegg have launched a war on working people and today’s demonstration is the start of the fightback. They expect us to suffer tax increases, pay cuts, unemployment and devastation of our pensions to pay for the crisis their friends in the City caused. They should expect the fight of their lives.” Len McCluskey, leader of Unite, said those taking part in the march were the “tip of the iceberg” because millions were opposed to the cuts. “There is growing anger, which will build and build as the impact of the cuts take effect.”

  10.13am: Labour politicians will join the march and party leader Ed Miliband will address the rally in Hyde Park. He will use the speech to set out Labour’s alternative to the cuts and to accuse the coalition of fomenting the “politics of division” not seen since the “rotten” Thatcher era. Labour is calling the demonstration the “march of the mainstream”. But Gove told the Today programme there were “really big dangers” for Miliband in addressing the rally at the end of the march. “One is that people will say ‘You are calling for a plan B from the government, you don’t even have a plan A. More than that, you are associating yourself with a march which could, I’m afraid, move from being family event into being something darker.”

  10.10am: Education secretary Michael Gove said today that he recognised the public concerns about the planned cuts. But he insisted that the government would not be deflected from its strategy. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Of course people will feel a sense of disquiet, in some cases anger, at what they see happening, but the difficulty we have as the government inheriting a terrible economic mess, is that we have to take steps to bring the public finances back into balance.”

  10.02am: Barber will tell today’s rally that there is an alternative to the “brutal” spending cuts. Ahead of the march, he accused the coalition government of threatening the NHS and destroying communities with the scale of the job cuts. “No part of our public realm is to be protected. And don’t believe it when ministers say that the NHS is safe in their hands. With over 50,000 job cuts already in the pipeline – nurses, doctors, physios, midwives – in the name of so-called efficiency savings of £20 billion, the NHS as we know it, is already in intensive care. “With David Cameron talking about selling it off to any willing provider out to make a profit, the NHS is facing the gravest threat in its history. “Today let us say to him: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build. Let’s be brutally clear about these brutal cuts. They’re going to cost jobs on a huge scale – adding to the misery of the 2.5 million people already on the dole. “They’re going to hammer crucial services that bind our communities together, and they’re going to hit the poorest and the most vulnerable hardest. Anyone who tells you different is a bare-faced liar. “The government claims there is no alternative, but there is. Let’s keep people in work and get our economy growing. Let’s get tax revenues flowing and tackle the tax cheats, and let’s have a Robin Hood Tax on the banks, so they pay us back for the mess they caused.”

  9.45am: A Guardian/ICM poll published today shows that the public are divided over the cuts, while two other polls last night put the balance more strongly against cuts. The Guardian/ICM poll of 1,014 found that 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% think they strike the right balance and 29% think they don’t go far enough; 8% don’t know. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagreed with that view. Speaking ahead of the march, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said of the Unison survey: “I’m sure that many of our critics will try to write us off today as a minority, vested interest. This poll nails that lie. “The thousands coming to London from across the country will be speaking for their communities when they call for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax.”

  9.15am: Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the mass protest in London against the coalition government’s public sector cuts. Around 300,000 people are expected to join the March for the Alternative organised by the TUC, the biggest union-organised event for over 20 years and the largest in the country since the protest against the Iraq war in 2003. More than 800 coaches and 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness. Union members are expected to be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters, to football supporters and anarchists. My colleague Matthew Taylor has written a guide to all the organisations – both official and unofficial – who will be taking part. The Metropolitan Police believe a small minority will try to hijack the anti-cuts march to stage violent attacks on property and the police. The TUC organisers of the event say they have organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But there are concerns that unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square could turn from peaceful civil disobedience into stand-offs with the police. The march assembles on the Embankment from 11am but it will still be leaving at 2pm and possibly even later. The TUC has drawn up a set of tips for those planning to join the march. The protest will culminate in a rally in Hyde Park. Guardian reporters Matthew Taylor and Paul Lewis will be out on the streets covering the protest as it happens. If you’re at the demo and want to send me any comments – or share any pictures, audio clips and videos – you can contact me either on david.batty@guardian.co.uk or on Twitter – @David_Batty

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogMarch for the alternative – live updates

  Related posts:Libya military action: live updates Libya no-fly zone – live updates Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

  

  • Tags:
  • London
  • economics
  • labour
  • politics
  • Education
  • hyde-park
  • trafalgar square
  • scotland
  • southend on sea
  • business
  • alternative
  • Government
  • city
  • UK news
  • Protest
  • Psychology
  • Society
  • Ed Balls
  • Public sector cuts
  • Thatcher
  • activist
  • parliament
  • demonstration
  • Cuts and closures
  • Camden
  • Privatisation
  • Oxford Street
  • Minute by minutes
  • News blog
  • Ed Miliband
  • protester
  • gathering
  • Matthew Taylor
  • Block
  • Clegg
  • coercion
  • Dave Prentis
  • David Batty
  • disquiet
  • Flashpoints
  • footbridge
  • isle of wight
  • Kennington Park
  • labour party
  • Len McCluskey
  • Mallet Street
  • Matt Wrack
  • Michael Gove
  • NHS
  • Paul Lewis
  • police lines
  • prison officers association
  • procession
  • Rowenna Davis
  • Russell Square
  • scuffle
  • side streets
  • speech
  • Student
  • Uncuts
  • unemployment
  • union
  • Unison

  March 26 2011, 8:38am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/anti-cuts-campaigners-plan-to-turn-trafalgar-square-into-tahrir-square

  Student activists draw inspiration from Egypt protests at Tahrir Square and call for 24-hour occupation of London‘s  Trafalgar Square

  This article titled “Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square” was written by Matthew Taylor, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 08.01 UTC Campaigners against public service cuts are calling for a 24-hour occupation of Trafalgar Square – drawing inspiration from revolts in the Middle East – to coincide with Saturday’s trade union protest in London. Student activists who organised last year’s demonstrations say there will be a rolling programme of sit-ins and protests on the day and have called on people to occupy the central London square turning “Trafalgar into Tahrir” – a reference to the gathering point in Cairo that was at the heart of the revolution in Egypt earlier this year. “We want Trafalgar Square to become a focal point for the ongoing occupations, marches and sit-ins that will carry on throughout the weekend,” said Michael Chessum from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. “There are a lot of smaller scale demonstrations and actions planned and, just as we have seen in recent protests in the Middle East and north Africa, we want to create an ongoing organising hub.” Saturday’s main demonstration has been organised by the TUC and is expected to see more than 200,000 people – including public sector workers, families and first-time protesters – take to the capital’s streets to oppose government cuts. This month the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, promised a barrage of protests against the cuts, ranging from industrial strikes and “peaceful civil disobedience” to petitions by Tory voters in the shires. The plan to occupy Trafalgar Square is the latest in a wave of proposed sit-ins, occupations and “people’s assemblies” that activists have branded a “carnival of civil disobedience”. “We have seen time and again that marches from A to B do not achieve their objectives,” said Chessum. “This is about creating an ongoing movement that will put pressure on the government. This is the start of what is going to be a hot summer of protest against the ideological nature of what this government is doing.” The call for an occupation of the London landmark is backed by student groups, activists and two Labour MPs – John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. In a joint statement they have called on people to “stay in Trafalgar Square for 24 hours to discuss how we can beat this government and to send a message across the globe that we stand with the people of Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin and with all those fighting for equality, freedom and justice. “We want to turn Trafalgar Square into a place of people’s power where we assert our alternative to cuts and austerity and make it a day that this government won’t forget.” Alongside the main march, which will set off from the Embankment before making its way to Hyde Park for a rally, anti-cuts campaigners say they plan to occupy some of the capital’s “great buildings”, close down scores of high street stores and occupy Hyde Park. UK Uncut, a peaceful direct action group set up five months ago to oppose government cuts and protest against corporate tax avoidance, is planning to occupy and force the temporary closure of scores of shops on Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, student groups will meet at the University of London student union building in Bloomsbury at 10am. Some are then expected to make their way to the main assembly point in a “feeder march”; others will peel off to take part in various “direct actions” . “Since Christmas the movement has become much more autonomous,” one veteran of last year’s protests told the Guardian last week. “There are smaller, semi-independent groups planning small-scale direct action against a range of targets. It will be a bit of a disappointment if we get to the end of the day and one of London’s great buildings is not occupied. We have to make an impact.” Online, other groups are calling for more widespread direct action on Saturday. An organisation calling itself Resist 26 claims it will stage a number of “people’s assemblies” along the route of the march. Under the banner “Battle of Britain” it is calling for a 24-hour occupation of Hyde Park and “after parties” at famous London landmarks including Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace. Scotland Yard says it has worked closely with the TUC to ensure the demonstration passes off peacefully and senior officers are due to give a detailed briefing on police plans on Tuesday morning.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAnti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

  Related posts:Artist Anish Kapoor warns arts cuts are ‘rolling us back to the Thatcher years’ Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts Leeds to Paris in four hours – but high-speed rail plan faces protests

  

  • Tags:
  • London
  • UK
  • politics
  • Education
  • hyde-park
  • trafalgar square
  • central london
  • scotland
  • John McDonnell
  • UK news
  • Middle East
  • News
  • Egypt
  • Article
  • Cairo
  • Protest
  • Tahrir Square
  • Higher education
  • Campaign
  • UK Uncut
  • Libya
  • World news
  • arab
  • capital
  • freedom
  • Olympic Park
  • demonstration
  • Cuts and closures
  • Students
  • university
  • Oxford Street
  • High Street
  • north Africa
  • egyptians
  • disappointment
  • gathering
  • general secretary
  • government cuts
  • industrial strikes
  • Jeremy Corbyn
  • Matthew Taylor
  • Michael Chessum
  • occupation
  • public sector workers
  • student activists

  March 23 2011, 3:56pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Why would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/11/why-would-councils-want-to-exclude-bloggers-and-tweeters

  Can you be a blogger and respectable at the same time? I hope not.

  This article titled “Why would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?” was written by Dave Hill, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 11th March 2011 15.00 UTC Local government minister Bob Neill MP (Con) recently wrote to local authorities as follows: “Bloggers, tweeters, residents with their own websites and users of Facebook and YouTube are increasingly a part of the modern world, blurring the lines between professional journalists and the public. There are recent stories about people being ejected from council meetings for blogging, tweeting or filming. This potentially is at odds with the fundamentals of democracy, and I want to encourage all councils to take a welcoming approach to those who want to bring local news stories to a wider audience.” Excellent advice. But some councils have been slow to get the message. These notably include the famous Tory “easyCouncil” of Barnet in north London, whose leader Lynne Hillan told the Barnet Times:   “The current advice according to the constitution does not allow filming in the council chamber … The only thing we will do is consider responsible media requests, and they are the only thing we would allow at this stage … I do not think we would consider a request from bloggers. Only respectable media would be considered.”  The statement raises an array of questions. What defines some parts of the media as “respectable” and “responsible” and others not? Who does the category “blogger” include? Can you be a blogger and respectable at the same time? I’ve a hunch that Councillor Hillan had a certain person in mind. His name is Roger Tichborne, publisher of a blog called Barnet Eye. The Eye campaigns tirelessly against her administration. Its author’s greatest triumph was successfully complaining that a Tory colleague – the quite astounding Brian Coleman – had breached the council’s code of conduct by sending him an abusive email. Tichborne networks with fellow local online citizen journalists – some of theme dissident Barnet Tories – in one of London’s best-blogged boroughs. Following Hillan’s remarks he attended a council committee meeting as a member of the public and filmed it until another Tory councillor ticked him off, unimpressed by the unrespectable blogger’s protesting that he had legal opinion on his side. But the law shouldn’t need to be dragged into this. Neither should those increasingly meaningless distinctions between citizen journalists and the professional media, not least because plenty of the latter are far less “respectable” or “responsible” than plenty of the former. Little love may be lost between Tichborne and the Tories responsible for emptying his bins, but Barnet town hall should still welcome him. It should welcome anyone prepared to sit through deliberations in its democratic chambers and convey these to a wider public either live or later and whether by blogging, tweeting, audio recording, filming or standing on a street corner waving semaphore flags. So should every town hall in the land. In recent weeks public galleries in London and elsewhere have been filled with hecklers ritually denouncing Labour councils in particular for passing on “Tory cuts” in their budgets. Many of the outraged were ignorant, boring and stuffed with cost-free piety, but at least they were there. Mostly, those galleries are close to empty. The same often goes for the press seats. Councils slammed for publishing their own freesheets often plead that their local papers take little notice of what they do. Often, they have a point. Citizen journalists can help to fill the void. Councils wary of licensing the amateur hordes should look to the top tier of local government in the capital. At London’s City Hall, the Thames-side glass bauble that contains London’s mayors, the main debating chamber enshrines in its very seating plan the non-recognition of any amateur-professional distinction. There is no special section for the press. Instead, anyone at all – the Guardian, Mayorwatch, Adam Beinkov, CyberBoris a school student on an educational trip – can liveblog or tweet, and lots of people do. Still photography is discouraged after the first 20 minutes of each session and the use of flash banned, but in both cases the restraints are simply to prevent noise and other distractions. All proceedings are webcast, but if I wanted to point my digicam at Boris Johnson or the assembly members I’d be as free to do so as BBC London’s camera crews so long as I created no disturbance. I’m told a simple principle applies: “It’s a public meeting. It should be public.” Town halls should take Bob Neill’s advice, and do the same. Who knows, the more open their policies, the more numerous, civil, varied and well-informed those in their public galleries might become, to the benefit of the voters they serve. How could they lose?

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWhy would councils want to exclude bloggers and tweeters?

  Related posts:London Bloggers Flu bloggers validated London Bloggers new venue, competition and pubs

  

  • Tags:
  • social media
  • blogs and community
  • London
  • UK
  • internet
  • bloggers
  • youtube
  • politics
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • blog
  • Education
  • Boris Johnson
  • Websites
  • blogging
  • blogger
  • Comment
  • UK news
  • Article
  • Society
  • democracy
  • Comment is free
  • Digital media
  • assembly
  • Publishing
  • brian coleman
  • code of conduct
  • council meetings
  • Dave Hill
  • local authorities
  • Local government
  • London politics
  • professional journalists
  • responsible media

  March 11 2011, 9:25am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  The future for UK wines looks rosé

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/28/the-future-for-uk-wines-looks-rose

  I think they mean English wine really, rather than UK wine, but surely the traditional English wine is made from apples and called cider?

  This article titled “The future for UK wines looks rosé” was written by Andrew Mourant, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 17.00 UTC At his vineyard near St Emilion, Martin Krajewski makes some of France’s best-known rosé wine. But, in an increasingly competitive market, he’s anxious to improve it. Yet while the University of Bordeaux, 20 miles or so down the road, is a leading centre for wine studies, it’s to Plumpton College, in the South Downs of Sussex, that Krajewski has turned for help. Moreover, he’s given the college £75,000 to help fund research programmes. And Krajewski, a lifelong wine enthusiast who made his first batch of elderberry aged 12, isn’t the only donor. Aspiring wine-maker Mark Driver, intent on becoming England’s leading producer of champagne-style fizz, has invested £100,000. The college now hopes to double its money through gift aid and the government’s matched funding scheme, which aims to increase voluntary contributions to higher education providers by matching donations, pound for pound. Both men prospered in the City of London before dedicating themselves to wine production. Krajewski had increased his investment at Château de Sours over several years before taking over entirely. Last October, Driver, a former hedge-fund manager, sank £3.5m into buying Rathfinny Farm, near Lewes, which he plans to cultivate with 400 acres of vines. Plumpton College was an unknown quantity to Krajewski until his daughter Charlotte, who inherited his passion for wine-making, chose to study there. At first he had doubts. “I said ‘Are you sure’? But I read up about it and thought it sounded interesting. I’m amazed by what it’s achieved in quite difficult circumstances. It compares well with any other college or university around the world.” What impressed Krajewski was that graduates of Plumpton’s wine-making degree course – unique in the country – hold senior positions in vineyards across the globe. “Plumpton is small; it’s really hands-on. If you go to university in Bordeaux, you stay there. You’re assigned to one particular chateau where all your practical experience is done.” About half of the Château de Sours production is rosé, described by the late Auberon Waugh as probably the best of its kind in the world. “We’ve invested in processes and equipment,” says Krajewski. “But although we do our own research, we’re a small business and don’t have a lot of time. “We believe Plumpton can improve our wine. They’ll be doing research on the terroir [land in which vines are planted] and taking samples for analysis. They’ll have different approaches. Hopefully, the benefits will be mutual. But the donation I’ve made isn’t just to research rosé. I believe what the college is doing is exciting for the next generation of student wine-makers.” Krajewski says the English wine industry is “very important, but not recognised”. Driver, who is enrolled as a student at Plumpton, agrees. He was impressed by seeing college alumni working around the world and at English sparkling producers Nyetimber and Ridgeview. “I think it [investing] is one of the best things we can do for the future of English wines,” he says. “Research is really important, but none has been done in the UK apart from bits and pieces. No one’s pulled it all together and written definitively – for instance, about successful clones that will produce the right results in the right environment. There are no journals to compare with those in America and Australia. “What we need in England to take wine on to the next level is a top-quality research institution that will provide information for wine-makers and vineyard owners. It will raise skill levels.” Driver finds himself in the odd position of being a first-year student making business decisions normally taken by an experienced graduate. He is employing consultants to help. Rathfinny’s first harvest is due in 2014, and his first sparkling wines, after maturing and secondary fermentation, should be ready by 2017. The donations have allowed Plumpton to retain Dr Belinda Kemp as wine lecturer and department research co-ordinator. Kemp graduated from Plumpton with a first-class degree in viticulture and oenology, then completed a PhD at Lincoln University, New Zealand, researching the effects of vine-leaf removal on fruit ripening. Climate change cuts across several of Plumpton’s research projects. But although warmer temperatures are welcomed by England’s vineyard owners, they come as a mixed blessing. “It isn’t as easy as just saying we can now grow grapes for champagne,” says Kemp. “Everything is complicated.” For instance, last year some English vineyards suffered their first infestations of light-brown apple moth, whose grubs damage leaves and fruit. “We’re looking at ways of combating it without using pesticides. It’s the sort of project we’ll see more of. We’re such a new industry – we have everything to learn. There’s a range of projects under the climate-change umbrella.” Plumpton is also studying the chemistry of wine and innovations that could be used in the UK. England is on the northern rim of wine production and one problem is excess acidity in the grapes. Meanwhile, the college will continue its existing research into three different ways of making rosé and work on refining the methods used by Krajewski at Château de Sours. There will be further studies into champagne-style wines, which look to offer the best chances of commercial success for the English industry. Plumpton can now afford a collaboration with Professor Richard Marchal from the University of Reims to investigate, among other things, how juice changes in quality immediately after grapes have been pressed. “Richard Marchal is an expert on production of champagne and sparkling wine, and his coming to Plumpton is recognition of the possibilities in the UK,” said Krajewski. Soon Plumpton will be home to Britain’s first purpose-built wine research centre, currently under construction, and costing about £500,000. Kemp will establish new research links with the University of Brighton, of which Plumpton is a part. Industry collaborations are planned with UK and international companies, and the college hopes further private funding will allow sponsorship of MSc and PhD research students. Wine studies at Plumpton have come a long way since Chris Foss, who heads the department, set up the first part-time course in 1988. There are now 500 students, including 140 undergraduates. The donations make a tremendous difference,” he says. “They allow us to go beyond teaching into proper research, which is fundamental for a university. “More important, the wine industry now has a dedicated problem-solving tool, which it can use to support its developments. It will be a case of ‘We have this problem … Plumpton can sort it out’.”

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThe future for UK wines looks rosé

  Related posts:Future VLE Future uncertain for Ultralab research centre Dear future self

  

  • Tags:
  • harvest
  • cider
  • ukcider
  • wine
  • Education
  • apple
  • Features
  • apples
  • france
  • England
  • The Guardian
  • Life and style
  • Article
  • Education news & features
  • EducationGuardian
  • Higher education
  • research
  • Research notes
  • New Zealand
  • Andrew Mourant
  • Auberon Waugh
  • Bordeaux
  • champagne
  • Charlotte
  • Dr Belinda Kemp
  • elderberry
  • fermentation
  • fizz
  • Mark Driver
  • Martin Krajewski
  • Plumpton
  • South Downs
  • Sussex
  • vineyard
  • viticulture

  February 28 2011, 1:07pm | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  FE colleges hit by more cuts

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/28/fe-colleges-hit-by-more-cuts

  The principal at Barking and Dagenham College and others speak out against the cuts.

  This article titled “FE colleges hit by more cuts” was written by Andrew Mourant, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 17.30 UTC College principals were still reeling from the news that the EMA was being scrapped when the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA) announced that so-called entitlement funding, which covers the cost of pastoral care, tutorials and extracurricular activities for 16- to 19-year-olds, was also to be cut. The news, which slipped out quietly just a few days before Christmas, came as a big blow for college leaders. Many were left wondering how they would fund the extras, such as work experience and volunteering programmes, that make all the difference in getting young people into work and higher education. Chopping back the annual provision from 114 to 30 funded hours will hit students hard at all levels, say principals. The most academically able students competing for Russell Group university places could struggle to access the kind of extracurricular activities that impress admissions tutors. Meanwhile, those getting a taste of real work at college – for example, those on enterprise programmes reliant on entitlement funding – may see such opportunities shrink. Asha Khemka, principal of West Nottinghamshire College, has described the move as “more serious than losing the EMA”. College leaders are still working out what may have to give. Nationally, £650m is being cut, although the government claims £150m will be redirected to benefit the poorest learners. Some principals are reluctant to talk about the impact: they are, after all, in the competitive business of trying to woo students. But from those who did speak to Education Guardian, snapshots emerge of rich provision at risk and difficult choices to be made.   Alton College Alton is determined its high-flying sixth-formers will continue to get coaching in subjects such as digital photography and Russian to help them get into the top universities, but the principal, Jane Machell, fears “this could be at the expense of other things”. The college may also have to consider ending funding for gifted English literature students keen to attend creative writing and poetry workshops. Alton will also consider whether it can afford to continue running the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme and the full scope of its music provision. “We had a student last year who went to Trinity College of Music and played in five different ensembles here,” says Machell. “He wouldn’t have got in without that. We wouldn’t axe all of them, but we have to look at the breadth and range of what we run.”   Barking and Dagenham College This college serves one of the country’s most deprived areas. The principal, Cathy Walsh, says entitlement funding cuts of about £1.7m will have “a devastating impact on our ability to deliver educational priorities”. For instance, Barking and Dagenham is one of only a few colleges investing heavily in “motivational dialogue” – coaching sessions where staff work to raise learners’ aspirations by getting them to reflect on the need to change and then helping them to take the necessary steps to do so. Success stories include one student with behavioural problems who changed his outlook on life and went on to lead a fundraising project for Children in Need. The college regards this as essential rather than optional work in a borough that has the country’s third-lowest literacy rate. “Many fall into the ‘at risk’ category and we find this improves their chances of success by up to 60%,” says Walsh. The college also has a strong focus on personal coaching, setting individual targets to improve academic performance. But all this draws on staff time and money, and the college faces hard choices about how far it can all keep running. Another distinctive programme is the Enterprise Academy, which secures “real work” from within the college and externally. “This helps to shape vocational and professional skills, all of which makes our learners much more attractive to employers,” says Walsh. The scheme currently has 70 projects on its books, from providing artwork and installations for a Metropolitan Police building, to catering and car-park marshalling. It has also won contracts to provide hospitality, and for landscaping and graphic design at Barking business centre. All this offers a taste of genuine work in an area that has the country’s second-highest level of neets (young people not in education, employment or training) and where youth unemployment stands at 18%. But such projects could suffer, says Walsh.   Greenhead Sixth-Form College, Huddersfield Greenhead has a strong academic tradition – last year 32 students received Oxbridge offers. The principal, Martin Rostron, says the college will do all it can to maintain the tutorials, coaching and work-shadowing opportunities it offers to help A-level candidates compete with pupils from independent schools. But, he adds, “the little things that make a difference [to education] will have to go, left, right and centre”. The college also has a strong tradition of sporting excellence.Recently, two students were picked for the British Colleges hockey squad, and its football team was crowned West Yorkshire college champions. “Every year we get requests from sports associations asking us to support our students who have made it into the national squads,” says Rostron. “But where I might budget £1,500 for that this year, it won’t be there in future.” Competing at the highest level means Greenhead sports teams have to travel for fixtures. But, with reduced funding, such opportunities will be fewer. Meanwhile, quirky but highly regarded projects such as circus skills, which the college has helped to subsidise, will also be cut back.   King George V Sixth-Form College, Southport The Duke of Edinburgh’s (DofE) award scheme, long at the heart of the college’s extracurricular activities, may be axed, a situation described by the principal, Adele Wills, as “very grim”. King George currently has more than 60 students taking part and could probably double that number, says Wills. Three members of staff are involved, along with an alumni association that regularly donates equipment. “Students go on great expeditions that teach leadership skills and endurance,” says Wills. “It’s part of the college’s ethos. It looks now as if the only viable option is to charge them. It’s a dilemma – if you can afford to buy it, you’ll always get it – but if you can’t, then you won’t.” The college faces a double squeeze because Sefton council is also withdrawing funding for DofE activities and Wills is concerned the scheme may disappear from the college altogether.   North Warwickshire and Hinckley College This college, which has many students from deprived areas, has a well-developed programme of personal tutorials to discuss sexual health, drug and alcohol misuse, and personal finance that are “all essential to helping young people remain in education”, says the principal, Marion Plant, who faces losing £1.3m in entitlement funding over the next year. She is anxious to protect pastoral care but is now considering running more group rather than one-to-one tutorials, and, on occasion, using volunteers rather than paid staff. Students, many of whom cannot afford it, could face contributing more towards trips. Meanwhile, the college will double its efforts to create extra income through commercial activities such as running a market stall.   Wigan and Leigh College Managing work experience for students to support their university applications may have to stop, says the principal, Cath Hurst. “We’ve placed students wanting to do medicine in hospitals, and those hoping for a career in law in the crown court. One who wanted to do a degree in forensic science went to a local undertaker to see if he could cope with dead bodies,” she says. Entitlement funding has given staff the time to arrange all this. They visit placements, check health and safety and hours of work, and, where necessary, carry out CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks, essential for working with children and vulnerable adults – all of it time-consuming. “The removal of funding means students will have to arrange these visits independently, and, for some, it will be hard,” says Hurst. “Sports, trips, music, drama, things that help people become a rounded individual, are also at risk.”   York College As York comes to terms with entitlement funding cuts of £1.8m this year, it has become increasingly difficult to offer students involvement in volunteering projects, according to the deputy principal, Graeme Murdoch. “As a result, they’re having to use their own time,” he says. “However, due to the rising costs of education, many are devoting their spare time to part-time jobs.” In the past, the college has been able to react to “things that look good on the CV” – for instance, helping to create a local playground, or giving time to a hospice. “We had the capacity within the timetable, but we know we won’t now be able to,” says Murdoch. Careers education and guidance has also been hit, along with work placements and trips to universities that offer a taste of what higher education is all about and the choices available. Cuts will also prevent some students from taking part in sport and music.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogFE colleges hit by more cuts

  Related posts:Students assessed with Wikipedia school websites Practical Suggestions

  

  • Tags:
  • UK
  • edublog
  • school
  • politics
  • photography
  • General
  • Education
  • Equipment
  • Features
  • business
  • hire
  • Edinburgh
  • writing
  • The Guardian
  • Article
  • Education news & features
  • EducationGuardian
  • Higher education
  • Mars
  • Russia
  • budget
  • Adele Wills
  • Barking
  • Cath Hurst
  • Cathy Walsh
  • Colleges
  • Cuts and closures
  • employment
  • Further education
  • Huddersfield
  • Jane Machell
  • literature
  • Martin Rostron
  • Oxbridge
  • Sefton
  • Southport
  • Students
  • subsidise
  • university
  • Warwickshire
  • West Yorkshire
  • youth

  February 28 2011, 11:45am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/26/april-will-indeed-be-cruel-but-we-dont-have-to-take-it

  Forthcoming cuts and pain which nobody is really prepared for. Will Wisconsin and Egypt come to Britain?

  This article titled “April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it” was written by Polly Toynbee, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th February 2011 07.30 UTC Forget snow – every part of the Office for National Statistics report on the economy was bad news: household spending, business investment, services, finance, construction, even previously hopeful manufacturing figures – all revised downwards – plus declining house prices and anything else you can measure. The one shard of hope is that the lunatic tendency on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (Andrew Sentance) may be silenced on raising interest rates. Rising inflation is almost entirely beyond British control – oil and commodity prices. While real pay falls for all but bankers and FTSE boardrooms (up 55%), there is no home-grown wage inflation. Imagine the mayhem in raising the cost of mortgages and business borrowing just as hundreds of thousands more lose their jobs. If things are this bad before the serious austerity has begun, what lies ahead? April will indeed be cruel – and frightening as the great £81bn axe falls. This is a real-life economic experiment, one last chance to prove that Herbert Hoover was right after all and Franklin Roosevelt and Keynes wrong. Or that Churchill was right about the gold standard – except these days its equivalent is the deficit. The Treasury’s breezy “don’t care” riposte to the new figures was alarming in tone and content: “It doesn’t change the need to deal with the nation’s credit card – the country is borrowing more this year than is spent on the entire NHS.” That is cheap propaganda, not economics – a sign that Treasury civil servants have become a missionary cadre. We can only hope this bravado disguises anxiety – and a readiness to U-turn if nothing improves. But the “no plan B” chancellor shows no sign of it. Only a month to go. The shock in April will be profound. Ben Page of Ipsos Mori says: “People have no idea how their pay packets will change. Three-quarters expect to be affected, but they don’t know how.” Cameron-supporting papers sound no alarm, and television doesn’t begin to convey the coming severity. People are still foxed by a government whose every word belies its actions – Cameron still pretends the NHS, education and Sure Start are protected, and only public sector fat is cut; private companies will pick up the unemployed, banks are being seriously taxed and a “big society” will burst forth. Add “not” to everything he says and then you see how the cuts fall everywhere while charitable giving drops: 30,000 give-as-you-earn payroll donors just dropped out. A survey this week shows most large companies and 70% of small ones won’t employ public sector staff, no doubt prejudiced by the daily Eric Pickles and Francis Maude anti-public servants hate campaign. It hasn’t begun yet. Library and Sure Start doors begin closing in April. Rising NHS waiting times are hidden by not letting GPs refer. From 31 March, 300,000 public-sector staff and more from the voluntary sector start to be fired. And most families earning over £18,000 will find pay packet cuts in tax credits and national insurance, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Child benefit is frozen for three years – a cut of 10% or more at current inflation. Public employees’ pay is frozen for two years. In April the lowered threshold for the 40% tax band brings another 750,000 earners into the higher rate; anyone on £50,000 loses £500 a year, just as wages fall further behind an inflation they see emblazoned outside every petrol station inflation. By 2015 25% of earners will be on the 40% rate, the IFS reckons, up from 11% (though no doubt pre-election tax giveaways will ease that). How explosive will all this be? Ed Balls recalls the disastrous abolition of the 10p tax rate: it passed parliament with hardly a murmur – but when implemented a year later it went nuclear. Mori’s Ben Page says this is unknown territory: the cuts are so deep that public rage may become burned into the national psyche, even if the economy picks up and even with pre-election tax bribes. “They are now 10 points behind. Thatcher, hated for her cuts, was only saved by war and a disastrous opposition.” However, Cameron is still popular and the Tory vote has not dropped: so far Labour scores only at Lib Dem expense. But Page points out that, for the first time, support for cutting the deficit has dipped below 50%: he expects it to fall fast after April. What would you do? That’s the challenge for all critics of the cuts. The most important answer is: not this. If this is the cure then the medicine is more lethal than the disease, economically and socially. Take soaring 16 to 24-year-old unemployment, nearly a million not learning or working. That’s 15% before either the future jobs fund or education maintenance allowance has been axed. Here is the great social deficit, a jobless depressed generation, phenomenally expensive and almost impossible to rescue later. Take away the wiped-out youth services offering help. Take away the Sure Starts, the breakfast and homework clubs, leaving children unhelped until too late. That is the permanent human deficit, more damaging and intractable than fiscal debt, a cost uncounted by blinkered economists. What would you do? Not sit by while Bob Diamond takes a £9m bonus and corporations avoid billions in tax. Make sure everyone really is in it together: sharing pain fairly matters even more than sharing good times well. Be open about who earns what: these cuts fall hardest on many of the poorest. Ed Balls rightly posits extending the 50p tax band down to £100,000, to people like me who will pay relatively little extra. Cuts, yes some, but fewer slower, letting growth over time take the strain. Invest in the infrastructure the CBI calls for and reassure markets by having business onside. Build superfast broadband, railways, green energy, housing, whatever kickstarts recovery. Above all, give back the abolished job guarantee to every young person. What can you do? Last Saturday, I was at UK Uncut’s sit-in at Barclays: many more should join this Saturday’s RBS events – see http://www.ukuncut.org.uk. Enjoy their witty symbolism: taxpayers rescued the banks with a trillion pounds, so until banks are fairly taxed turn them into the libraries, classrooms and swimming pools they caused to be shut down. The Robin Hood campaign shows how taxing 0.05% on every transaction yields £20bn, enough to stop all NHS cuts. A ComRes poll finds 75% of Tory voters want bank bonuses clawed back. The government should expect a turn in the tide after April brings the worst of what the banks have done to everyone.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogApril will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it

  Related posts:UK Uncut protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance Those Wisconsin unions Budget Deficit

  

  • Tags:
  • economics
  • labour
  • UK
  • politics
  • Education
  • House
  • England
  • television
  • business
  • Comment
  • Comment & debate
  • Economic policy
  • Tax
  • The Guardian
  • UK news
  • Egypt
  • Article
  • Main section
  • Barclays
  • Bob Diamond
  • Protesters
  • UK Uncut
  • Society
  • Wisconsin
  • Comment is free
  • austerity
  • Ben Page
  • Britain
  • Cameron
  • chancellor
  • Economic growth GDP
  • Ed Balls
  • Eric Pickles
  • Franklin Roosevelt
  • inflation
  • interest
  • Keynes
  • pain
  • Polly Toynbee
  • propaganda
  • Public finance
  • Public sector cuts
  • Public services policy
  • rage
  • tendency
  • Thatcher

  February 26 2011, 2:18am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Those Wisconsin Unions

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/22/those-wisconsin-unions

  Wisconsin Unions battle against the state by occupying the Capitol building in Wisconsin. Links via Mark Dilley:

  act.credoaction.com/campaign/we_support_wisconsin koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/18/koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions/ 70,000 protest in Madison, Wisconsin Mass protests and strikes in Wisconsin

  Wisconsin

  Pakistan supports wisconsin Egypt supports wisconsin This article titled “Those Wisconsin unions” was written by Michael Tomasky, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 21st February 2011 13.29 UTC Today is a holiday here in the states, Presidents’ Day, so I’m basically taking the day off and reading the diaries of the underappreciated Franklin Pierce. But I thought that I should check in quickly on the continuing Wisconsin situation. If you saw Krugman today, you saw the liberal case laid out: In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions. But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain. The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers — namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning — are exempted from the ban; it’s as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions. Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes. So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power. I always find it a little frustrating when someone writes a column like that and doesn’t include any numbers so the reader can varify, so I went looking for some. According to the economist Menzie David Chinn at the University of Wisconsin, yes, state and local employees in the state are somewhat undercompensated compared to their private-sector counterparts. First of all, here’s a chart, which reflects national averages not Wisconsin ones but is interesting anyway, comparing public- and private-sector workers’ wages (I assume whoever made this chart means wages specifically, which refers to money compensation only and not benefits). It shows that at every level of education except “less than high school,” private-sector employees out-earn public-sector ones. The difference gets more stark as you go up the education ladder, as you might expect. However, the “all” category on this chart shows that the sectors are almost exactly even on wages, which is explained I suppose by the large number of less-than-high-school educated people who are in public-sector unions. Another chart compares total compensation, including benefits, and the story is basically the same. Now to Wisconsin itself. Chinn does a regression analysis finding, he says, that public-sector workers are less-well compensated than private counterparts to the tune of 4.8%. Presumably, given the above, the workers with college degrees are in the 8 or even 10% range, higher in some cases. That’s not chopped liver. So they make less money. But the benefits issue is the public-sector unions’ Achilles heel. Politifact, which I trusted when it exposed Sarah Palin’s absurd lies (aha! So I worked in a mention) so I might as well also trust today, looked into Governor Scott Walker’s claim that “most state employees could pay twice as much toward their health care premiums and it would still be half the national average.” It found the claim to be true. You can read all the facts in the preceding link, but basically, private-sector employees pay 25-30% of the cost of their healthcare premiums in the US, and Wisconsin public employees generally pay just 6%. The understanding has long been that public-sector employees make less, so they should have better benefits. There’s some logic to that. But it seems that the wage differential against them isn’t as great as the benefits differential working for them. Krugman alludes to Wisconsin union leaders saying they were willing to make concessions. I know not what of he speaks, but it makes political and moral sense to me for the state’s union leaders to say okay, our people will contribute more to their healthcare packages and put a non-fake number on the table. That would give them the place of prominence on the moral high ground. And it would expose Walker’s one-sidedness for what it is. If he were trying to bargain an outcome in good faith, that would be one thing. But he’s not. He’s decreasing the state’s take from corporations by nearly 30% and not asking sacrifice of anyone at the top of the pyramid while bullying the people who mop the floors in the university’s buildings. Put me down on the side of the floor moppers. If public-sector unions are busted in the US, combined with the Citizens United decision, corporate influence on our politics would double, triple, who knows. But I have to say that I can see why a $38,000-a-year private-sector worker with two kids who’s paying 30% toward their healthcare coverage would be a upset at the deal the public-sector workers have. Democrats and liberals should fix this imbalance before those on the right “fix it” for them.

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThose Wisconsin Unions

  Related posts:Protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance Acas booklet on flexible working

  

  • Tags:
  • economics
  • Community
  • politics
  • Pakistan
  • Education
  • Pictures
  • building
  • The Guardian
  • United States
  • Guardian
  • Egypt
  • Article
  • Campaign
  • Blogposts
  • budget
  • compensation
  • David Chinn
  • deficit
  • Dilley
  • Franklin Pierce
  • Governor Scott Walker
  • Michael Tomasky
  • Michael Tomaskys blog
  • Mr Walker
  • Sarah Palin
  • Wisconsin

  February 22 2011, 10:25am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Half of living languages face extinction

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/21/half-of-living-languages-face-extinction

  As world communications improve, the number of local languages is bound to be reduced. But some of those about to be lost could be repositories for specialist knowledge and important cultural heritages, so should we care about the living languages facing extinction? This article titled “Half of living languages face extinction” was written by Lucy Tobin, for The Guardian on Monday 21st February 2011 17.00 UTC You’ll never again hear anyone speaking Laghu, and anyone yearning to communicate in Old Kentish Sign Language is out of luck: it, too, has gone the way of the dodo. But there’s still a chance to track down a conversation in Gamilaraay, or Southern Pomo – if you’re prepared to trek to visit to one the few native Americans still speaking it in California. Of the 6,500 living languages currently being used around the world, around half are expected to be extinct by the end of this century. It was concern about the cultural and historical losses that result from a language disappearing that inspired the World Oral Literature Project, an online collection of some of the 3,500-plus “endangered languages” struggling for survival in the world. The heart of the project, run by Cambridge University, is a large database listing thousands of languages alongside details such as where they are spoken and by whom, plus audio clips. On the site, surfers can discover that Laghu was a language spoken in the Solomon Islands until it disappeared in 1984, Old Kentish Sign Language was a precursor to the modern-day version, and Gamilaraay is still used by the Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales. The project is the brainchild of Mark Turin, 37, a research associate at Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He grew up in London speaking Dutch and English and had planned to study linguistics at university, but on a gap year in Nepal realised he was interested in “what language unlocked, not just the nuts and bolts of linguistics”, and switched to anthropology. “We know very little about most of the world’s languages, and an incredible amount about the histories and changes of a handful of western European languages,” Turin explains. And he has devoted his academic career to trying to open up little-known languages. “Most endangered languages are primarily oral, and are vehicles for the transmission of a great deal of oral culture,” he says. “That’s at risk of being lost when speakers abandon their languages in favour of regional, national or international tongues.” So the World Oral Literature Project aims to document vanishing languages – and everything about the culture and society they convey – before they disappear. Its database used three major sources to collate the information about the disappearing languages, including Unesco’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. About 150 of its listed languages are in an “extremely critical” condition, where the number of known living speakers has slipped to single figures, or even just one. “As soon as a scholar declares a language to be extinct, you get a phone call from someone furious who says ‘my mother still speaks it’,” Turin says. “But in a way, these corrections are all part of the process of drawing attention to the cause and the sense of urgency involved in careful documentation and description of endangered speech forms the world over.” The project also provides funds for local fieldworkers in countries including Malawi, India, Mongolia and Colombia to collect data and recordings about little-spoken languages. In the past, Turin says, major collections of recordings were lost because they weren’t deemed important. He sees the new site as a “safe haven” for fieldwork on languages that might otherwise be lost. “The vast majority of tapes are just kept in dusty boxes, but to put them on our database we digitise and hopefully future-proof them,” he adds. “All manner of people have been getting in touch to give us their collections, including missionaries, retired scholars and community activists.” One early donor was Reverend John Whitehorn, a former missionary and Cambridge linguist who lived with an indigenous community in Taiwan in the 1950s. “When he came back to England, he walked into Cambridge’s Museum of Anthropology and said, ‘I’ve got books, textiles and tape recordings, are you interested?’ The museum took it all apart from the recordings because they didn’t know what to do with them,” Turin explains. “He went home and stored his collection around the house in plastic carrier bags, where they stayed until he walked into my office with the bags under his arm, and asked, ‘do you want them now?’ The tapes are brilliant, with songs and interviews and linguistic information that might otherwise have disappeared.” The database is currently updated exclusively by academics (though users are encouraged to send in contributions), but Turin hopes that it will ultimately become a Wikipedia-style web 2.0 project “that people want to contribute to”, with user uploads, recordings and discussion to help keep languages alive. To that aim, Turin organises lectures and workshops for linguists, librarians, academics and members of the public to discuss the best strategies for collecting and protecting languages and their research. But he worries that, in academia, funding pressures mean the importance of languages is being overlooked. “These days, students are in a huge rush to finish their PhDs due to time and funding requirements,” he says. “They often don’t have the time to develop a linguistic awareness for the people they’re studying, and have to rely on interpreters and translators. But it’s just not the same.” Turin is used to hearing sceptics dismiss the research. “I get a lot of people saying that they think this work is pointless as all minority languages that have no utility are better off dying off anyway – a kind of social Darwinian position,” he says. “But I usually ask them whether they feel the same about all the old churches and buildings that Heritage Lottery money is helping to restore – or the plight of species around the world. Our work means we’re helping not only endangered languages to stay with us, but all the culture and history that they denote.” http://www.oralliterature.org/database

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogHalf of living languages face extinction

  Related posts:Online CoP meets face to face

  TEDxTuttle – Rachel Armstrong Living Architecture

  to Wikiversity or not to Wikiversity? Vote now.

  

  • Tags:
  • social media
  • London
  • wildlife
  • Long Tail
  • Community
  • World
  • Education
  • California
  • Features
  • communication
  • south wales
  • The Guardian
  • Higher education
  • Lucy Tobin
  • research
  • Research notes
  • Society
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Colombia
  • dodo
  • Education Guardian
  • Knowledge
  • Laghu
  • Languages
  • Mark Turin
  • Mongolia
  • Nepal
  • Reverend John Whitehorn
  • Solomon Islands
  • Southern Pomo
  • Taiwan
  • Unesco
  • University of Cambridge

  February 21 2011, 11:16am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  How to beat technology addiction

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/14/how-to-beat-technology-addiction

  I don’t suffer from technology addiction, I could give it up any time i – oh, hang on,  new facebook comments! This article titled “How to beat technology addiction” was written by Lucy Tobin, for The Guardian on Monday 14th February 2011 17.00 UTC You’re in the middle of reading a long, important document, but suddenly find you can’t concentrate. It’s not because the topic is snore-inducing or because it’s chocolate o’clock, but due to a tiny, red light, flashing insistently in the corner of your eye. A BlackBerry silently screaming for attention forces you to stop reading to see what the messagesays. Two minutes later, you do the same again. Whether it’s an iPhone or a trilling landline or a pinging email, the latest technology interrupts us all the time. But if you’ve ever wondered exactly what effect the myriad interruptions have on your working day, research by academics at the University of Kent is a worthy interruption. The faculty of psychology at Kent set up a “reading laboratory” with an eyeball-tracking camera to monitor eye movements. It then linked up just over 100 testers and asked them to read a passage of text on a computer screen, before interrupting the participants with one-minute messages – like phone calls. They were then told to return to the original reading, while the eye-tracking camera analysed how they did so. The researchers, led by Ulrich Weger, a senior lecturer in psychology at Kent, found that participants re-read a substantial portion of text before reaching the point where they left the original task – so much so, that each interruption caused an average 17% increase in the total time it took to read the whole passage. Weger was inspired to carry out the research by his own procrastination. “I noticed how easily I was distracted when working on my computer,” he explains. “I wasted time by reading emails whenever they came into my inbox. I noticed that once I had started reading the name of the sender, I read the first line of the text. Once I mastered that, I continued reading the entire message, and once I got to that point, I felt compelled to respond because there was no point in leaving an already half-finished task. Then sometimes I needed extra information to answer the message, so had to add other tasks.” Weger says his many disruptions meant he “often wasn’t making any progress with what I was originally working on – and in the end felt quite breathless and exhausted. I thought I couldn’t be the only person struggling with this.” Talking to colleagues confirmed the scale of the problem, and Weger secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council to start investigating. He believes the Kent research is important because our modern working environment is “full of tempting – and sometimes not so tempting – sources of interruptions”, but admits it’s tough to find ways to deal with them. “The best thing to do is to try and avoid interruptions in the first place – often people don’t really need to respond to an interruption, but do so because it’s tempting,” he says. Weger’s research showed that simply leaving a mark on the page before responding to an interruption can allow you to resume reading much more efficiently afterwards, cutting 10% from the time it takes to return to the same point in the text. The academics also looked at the impact of background speech and music, and found that when participants were exposed to simultaneous background speech while reading a text, it took them significantly longer to get through it. Some workers might seize upon those findings as a reason to kill off open-plan offices. But Weger says there will always be other distractions. He advises turning off attention-sappers such as automatic email notifications, and arranging desks so they don’t point towards anything interesting – like people walking around outside, but admits: “Sometimes these strategies come with their own costs – turning off your iPod or mobile, for example, can trigger a yearning or even pressure that can get quite distracting in itself. “The best way to overcome our addiction to new information is to learn to control yourself: you can do exercises to help … using thought-control exercises like concentrating on a simple imagined object for a few minutes every day,” he explains. Weger says a concentration exercise he found in a book written by Rudolf Steiner 100 years ago is still useful. “As soon as you notice that you have diverted to another thought, pull yourself away from the intrusive thought and turn back to the image straight away. After practice, you get more competent at shielding yourself against the countless tempting stimuli in our world of information overload.” It sounds very virtuous, but Weger admits he still gets lured into the trap of time-wasting procrastination – even while writing up his research into it. “I still struggle with distractions all the time,” he says. And as for BlackBerrys and their smartphone cousins, Weger says they’re not all bad, and have a “mixed effect”. He explains: “The upside of these devices is that you don’t have to go home to get the information you need. But the downside is that if you allow yourself to become dependent, they will haunt you. As with all things: if you can make use of something that makes your life easier while maintaining enough inner strength and freedom to avoid dependence, you are the master. If you do not cultivate this inner strength and freedom, you become the slave.”

  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

  Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogHow to beat technology addiction

  Related posts:Alliterative addiction The world wide web is shrinking Coffee shop bedouin

  

  • Tags:
  • social media
  • tools
  • Education
  • Features
  • Email
  • technology
  • The Guardian
  • Article
  • Education news & features
  • EducationGuardian
  • Higher education
  • Lucy Tobin
  • Psychology
  • research
  • Research notes
  • Science
  • University of Kent

  February 14 2011, 11:32am | Comments »

• I posted to youtube.com

  Songwriters Circle January Challenge DAY 6 - Scrambled Egg

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzOf-Pbe9M0&feature=youtube_gdata

  • Tags:
  • Andy Roberts
  • song
  • Education
  • Challenge
  • songwriter
  • Chords
  • Songwriters Circle
  • January Challenge
  • Scrambled Eggs
  • songwriting
  • write
  • writing
  • melody

  January 7 2011, 11:33am | Comments »

• I posted to youtube.com

  Loudon Wainwright "No" tutorial and chords cover by Andy Roberts

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A60GHiqdAGw&feature=youtube_gdata

  • Tags:
  • Music
  • Andy Roberts
  • loudon wainwright
  • lyrics
  • Education
  • tutorial
  • cover
  • Chords
  • No

  August 8 2010, 11:10am | Comments »

• I posted to youtube.com

  AM World - Loudon Wainwright Tutorial Chords Andy Roberts

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY7M3MY6g10&feature=youtube_gdata

  • Tags:
  • Andy Roberts
  • loudon wainwright
  • Education
  • tutorial
  • A M World
  • Chords

  August 6 2010, 12:26pm | Comments »

• I posted to youtube.com

  How To Pronounce Eyjafjallajökull - The Icelandic Volcano Glacier

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqXc8i8CvNs&feature=youtube_gdata

  • Tags:
  • The
  • Education
  • to
  • pronounce
  • volcano
  • How
  • Eyjafjallajökull
  • Icelandic
  • Glacier
  • #ashtag

  April 15 2010, 8:01am | Comments »

• I posted to hubpages.com

  50 Hip-Hop Samples in an Hour!

  http://hubpages.com/hub/50-Hip-Hop-Samples-in-an-Hour

  I have done quite a lot of samples since I last hubbed so let's play a little catch-up, shall we?  Submitted for your approval, my last five episodes of Top 10 Samples in History. I would like to invite...

  

  • Tags:
  • Music
  • video
  • Education
  • Entertainment
  • videos
  • hip-hop
  • samples
  • production
  • sample
  • sampling
  • dj funktual
  • edutainment

  March 6 2010, 3:23am | Comments »

• I posted to youtube.com

  Mac image editing - Seashore tutorial 5 - part 2

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i66WQU15v4Q&feature=youtube_gdata

  • Tags:
  • Education
  • Mac
  • seashore
  • image
  • Editing
  • tutorial
  • part

  December 27 2009, 10:53am | Comments »

1 2

Visit Andy Roberts Music sites

For Andy Roberts music online with free downloads, mp3player widgets and further jumping off points please visit the external links below:

• Weekly Podcast
• ReverbNation
• Last.fm
• Andy Roberts Podcast on iTunes

Get Andy Roberts Sampler CD

The Andy Roberts Sampler CD has four tracks including Gernika. Available from Havering Folk Club on Wednesdays or from Andy Roberts Sampler CD page.

Listen Right here Right Now:

Andy Roberts Photos

More than 3,000 pictures in sets imported from Flickr here on

• Andy Roberts Photo Blog

London Theatre Breaks

Andy Roberts is an editor writer at:

• London Theatre Breaks

Browse via Popular Tags here

• Music
• Andy Roberts
• London
• Article
• The Guardian
• Havering Folk Club
• News
• podcast
• spain
• UK
• status
• theatre
• Main section
• andyroberts
• General
• breaks
• politics
• World news
• gardens
• andy
• roberts
• folk
• song
• kew
• wanstead
• People
• UK news
• thames
• 2008
• video
• park
• ustream
• river
• Andy Roberts Music
• twitter
• business
• flats
• richmond
• culture
• guitar
• youtube
• cover
• original
• Environment
• economics
• 2010
• Blogposts
• The
• loudon wainwright

Search