Normal service will resume shortly!

Sorry for the lack of blogging, real life's getting in the way. Got a few articles lined up, but I need time to write and research them!

Next week should see some activity.

In Memoriam

“They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

A quickie

Today I had it suggested me that I apply for an internship with the Independent, on the basis that they're "starving and broke". I laughed, and then had a look at their website.

One particular article on higher education caught my eye. It was poorly written and seemingly finished halfway through, without concluding. The sole comment at the bottom (integrated via LiveJournal, rather than being a piece of built-in functionality - "broke" indeed) said, and I quote: "What a pointless article".

I then had a quick look at their list of columnists. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Johann Hari, Janet Street-Porter and John Rentoul all leapt out of the page, snarling through the plastic barrier of my screen. At least Rentoul's redeeming feature is that he's regularly cited by Howard Denton's pro-Labour blog, which is both insightful and free from the shameless attacks that feature heavily on other political blogs.

Oh well, beggars can't be choosers - anything's better than the Grauniad!

Lesson 1: Bad Admin, School of Arts style

Friends, students, graduates; lend me your ears. I have a tale to tell you, a tale of misery, woe and hardship.

Let’s say you’re paying £3,225 per year for a particular service. This service lasts for 8 months and takes up about 20 hours of your week during that period. As part of this service, you give the service provider documents which you expect to have returned. You also have regular daily meetings with your service provider, which, for mutual convenience, need to be scheduled in advance.

Now, what would your reaction be if your service provider only gave you the meeting schedule at 5pm on a Friday afternoon, with the first meeting to be held at 9am Monday morning? Or if they lost your documents and asked you to send them a fresh copy, which they then lose again? Or, even better, if they just lost your documents altogether, proceeded to deny any knowledge of posting them back to you and then claimed that it must be Royal Mail’s fault?

You’d cancel the contract and ask for your money back, that’s what. Unfortunately, when your ‘service’ is a degree course administered by the School of Arts, it isn’t that simple.

All of the things mentioned above are actual events that have happened to arts students in the last academic year alone. I have spoken to students who don’t know what marks they gained in last year’s modules, students whose courseworks have gone missing, students whose telephone calls have been ignored and students whose lectures have been moved or cancelled with zero notice; an unacceptable state of affairs.

The administrative branch of the School is doubtless under a lot of pressure. However, given that lectures finish in May and the new year starts in late September, it is totally unacceptable for the timetable to be issued the Friday before the start of term. I know full well that booking a room in the lecture centre takes just one email to Timetabling, with the allocation normally being confirmed within 48 hours – why should it take the admin office over four months to achieve the same result?

Module guides for the year have been issued. I am told by several people that they were issued a guide, and promptly issued no fewer than 3 pages of amendments to it. One of my own guides came with several repetitions of “details TBC” or “room to be advised”. A particular module guide came without the page which detailed coursework questions, which is one of the main points of having a module guide in the first place.

The rot runs deeper than this, however. Many people have had horrendous problems with enrolment. I spoke to a fellow student, who was unable to enrol for the whole of the summer. They emailed the School asking for help. They were sent automated replies, other replies promising help that never materialised and then asked the student to email them their module selections, so they could be manually put onto the system. None of these things were done. When this student phoned the office for some direct contact, their phonecalls went unanswered. As this student lives a fair distance away from Uxbridge, they were only able to get to the office in person on the first Monday of term. Clearly, had the School of Arts responded in a timely manner and sorted out this student’s problems, a face-to-face meeting to determine their academic future would not have been needed.

Sadly, it is not just people’s academic lives that are affected by the appalling administration of courses. One particular mature student commented to me that the late release of the online enrolment task – originally scheduled for early August, then deferred to late August, and finally deferred to September 1st – combined with the late release of the timetable (released late on Friday 25th September, lectures beginning on Monday 28th September) had interfered with her childcare arrangements. As those of you with young children of your own will know, your child’s welfare must take absolute priority; in this example, the School’s lack of organisation aggravates an already less-than-ideal situation.

I know other students who have commuted to campus from their homes, often an hour or two away, to discover their lecture has been cancelled or rescheduled with no notice. This travel costs people money, money which in the current economic climate they are ill-positioned to waste on needless journeys. It affects their work patterns, many of which have to be re-arranged to fit around the demands of a full-time degree course, and, on the whole, employers do not look kindly upon last-minute requests to swap shifts or not to work on a certain day. While students are paying upfront for degree courses, they deserve timely support from their University and academic School – not late release of essential information which people need in order to plan ahead.

Naturally, for those who are dependent upon the Student Loans Company in order to stay afloat during their studies, the difficulties with enrolment present a much deeper problem. As any fule no, receipt of your grant or loan depends on the university confirming that you are an enrolled student. Naturally, when your university then presents you with an assault course of obstacles to cross and hoops to jump through, with minimal or no support, people’s financial situations are put into jeopardy. A growing number of students have contacted me, bitterly complaining about their loans being delayed because of problems with enrolment; the blame for which can squarely be laid at the door of the School of Arts. They are looking at their bank balances and considering whether it is better to be a bankrupt graduate or a solvent non-grad. No student should ever be put into this position as a result of maladministration by their university.

To continue this litany of woe, there are further problems with module selection. Another student, who has requested anonymity, selected her modules on E-Vision, seemingly successfully. However, one of the modules failed to appear on U-Link. Upon questioning this, the student was told that she hadn’t selected the module and that it was now full so she couldn’t re-apply. In effect, the student was excluded from the module because of bad admin by the School, leaving them with the sole option of pursuing a module in practical work experience; something they had not planned for and had no previous intention of doing.

Hitherto, all the cases I have mentioned in this article have been examples of poor administrative practice, poor organisational skills and a clear disregard for the knock-on effects of decisions implemented weeks after the date they should have been. However, hard as it may be to believe, an even worse example of the School’s malpractice comes to light. Many returning students will be familiar with Professor Maureen Moran, who lectured for many years with the English department. She retired at the end of September, something that was known months in advance by staff and students alike. In fact, my sources tell me that the School is throwing a party to celebrate her distinguished career with Brunel University, and having been a student of hers I’d like to wish her the very best in her future endeavours.

Despite knowing the date of Prof Moran’s retirement, the School saw fit to allocate Prof Moran as a lecturer for modules commencing in 2010 and even to allocate her as supervisor to a group of final-year dissertation students! This beggars belief, that a staff member departing less than a week after the start of the academic year should have been allocated as a supervisor for a task that will last until May 2010. This malpractice is not fair on Prof Moran, and it is not fair to the students who have to continue their dissertations without support or guidance from their school. My source tells me that another lecturer has been appointed in Prof Moran’s place; the sum total of information he’s received about this is that the replacement’s first name is Jessica.

By exposing this litany of incompetence, I hope to shame the School into cleaning up its act. I did try to contact them, in the hope that they could show some evidence of mitigating circumstances. After being kept on hold for 20 minutes, I abandoned any hope of trying to phone them, and resorted to email. This went unanswered as well. For self-evident reasons, I’m not about to present myself at the admin office and announce that I am the one who’s displaying their dirty laundry to the University at large. Hence, unfortunately, there can be no reply to these situations from the School itself, because the School seemingly doesn’t want to hear from its students.

In closing, my impression is that morale amongst my fellow arts students is low. Dark jokes are made about coursework ‘only’ being returned after eight or nine weeks. The Gallic shrug is a common sight when one finds that a lecture has been unexpectedly rescheduled, or that vital information about the lecture was only released the night before via email. All of this leads up to School of Arts students castigating Brunel in public. This can only lead to bad results in the Student Satisfaction Survey, Brunel’s place in university league tables falling, and your degree – irrespective of subject – being valued less by employers. I have spoken to one student who plans to submit a formal complaint against the School and another who is writing an open letter to the Vice-Chancellor detailing his grievances. Let us hope that the School, or failing them, the University Senate, sorts this mess out before it comes back to bite us all.

The Death of European Democracy

It's happened.

The principle over which millions fought and died in the Second World War - that of resisting a European superstate presided over by an unaccountable dictatorship - has been betrayed. That which our fathers and grandfathers stood fast to defend during the Cold War - that of resisting a dictatorial superstate - has been betrayed.

The most shameful aspect of today's results are that this is the second time that the Irish electorate have been asked the same question. The first "no" result, in June 2008, should have been taken as an outright rejection of the EU Constitution. By rights, the EU's lawmakers should have gone scurrying back to their taxpayer-funded quangos to revise their iniquitous constitution and abandon the idea of one USA-style European superstate. Yet, like one of Torqemada's inqusitors, the EU continued to ask the question of Ireland, this time after bribing big business to keep EU-funded jobs in the country; and publically boasting about this despicable act.

So it comes to pass that the Irish, after this campaign of bullying and taxpayer-funded propaganda, have signed their national sovereignty over to the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats of Brussels. The only hope for the free peoples of Europe lies in Poland and the Czech republic, where ratification is yet to be carried out. Reports have it that Poland will ratify in days, leaving just the Czechs alone to derail the abrogation of sovereignty and self-determination that is the hallmark of the European Union.

The UK, under the unpopular Labour government, have already ratified the Lisbon Constitution, despite this breaking their manifesto pledge to hold a public referendum on the matter. The incoming Conservative government have already begun hinting that they will not hold a referendum on the Constitution as the anticipated ratification by Poland and the Czech Republic will effectively make it a "done deal".

All in all, a terrible day for European democracy and a betrayal of the values upon which British society was founded over a thousand years ago.

"Anti-Muslim" protest turns violent after right-wing extremists fail to show

Yesterday thousands of anti-fascist demonstrators gathered in front of the new Harrow Central Mosque to protest against a planned demonstration by the group Stop Islamification of Europe (SIOE). Amongst the groups present were United Against Fascism (UAF), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Unite the Union, alongside a sizeable majority of worshippers from the Harrow Mosque itself.



The estimated 2,000 protestors were outside the mosque to oppose the English Defence League (EDL) and SIOE's demonstration against the construction of a new 5-storey masjid (traditionally-built mosque with dome and spire) to replace the existing mosque, a converted house on the end of a terrace. However, reportedly fewer than 20 right-wing protestors made it to the area after police prevented them from gaining access to the area. A police source commented that, "If the SIOE demonstration started it would have resulted in serious disorder".

Once it was clear that the anti-Islam protestors were not going to attend, the mood turned ugly. The crowd, the vast portion of which was wearing Arabic headdress which conceals the face, began joining in with UAF agitators who encouraged the crowd to chant "Nazi scum - off our streets". Rival chants of "Allahu akhbar" began from the mosque, while Islamic leaders began herding people back onto the pavements.

An initial scuffle took place in the Civic Centre carpark. A young Somalian, Mohammed Hussein, 16, claimed to have "banged this white man" and further proclaimed he was "ready for war". A group of similar-aged Muslim youth around him readily agreed.

In stark contrast to this was Claire, a 33-year-old political history graduate who was attending with the Socialist Workers' Party. In response to Mohammed Hussein's aggression, she calmly stated "If someone's got a skinhead you can't just beat the crap out of them". Claire's measured reasoning was a stark contrast to the rest of the crowd, however, who were visibly becoming more and more agitated. In the words of one police sergeant, they were "chasing shadows".

Interestingly, in contrast to the usual press angle, the mosque elders were doing their level best to keep calm. A number of locals were mingling in the crowd, wearing hi-vis jackets, while calming the more inflammatory elements; this last including the UAF , who had brought a megaphone with them. It was a telling sight, seeing the imams directly telling the UAF to "shut up and go home" - the popular perception of Islam, as an organised front for violent extremism, bore no resemblance to these people who merely wanted to observe their religion in peace.

Violent confrontation was never far from the surface, however. Several hundred Muslims, believing they had seen a group of SIOE protestors (who, on the balance of probabilities, were actually the European reporters coming over the railway bridge), broke free of the thin police cordon outside the Star Club restaurant and charged over the bridge. There they met not far-right extremists, but a solid cordon of riot police. Stones, bottles and staves were quickly thrown and a full-scale riot came within seconds of starting as police deployed stun grenades to drive the Muslims back. One protestor next to this journalist claimed to have seen Nick Griffin standing behind the police, a palpably laughable claim when I identified a reporter from a well-known TV news channel. His only resemblance to the BNP leader was that he was white and wearing a suit.

Denied a confrontation with the police, who stood resolutely and shrugged off the incoming missiles, the youths turned on the press photographers in their midst, angrily screaming "No cameras!" Once again, violence was mere seconds away until the press relented and fell back to the relative safety of the police line. With all their targets now ignoring them or cowed into submission, the baying mob gradually fell back amidst shouts of "defend the masjid" [mosque]. Community leaders hastened the retreat, telling the more reluctant individuals "Fall back or they'll take our pictures and show how bad we are, we don't want that."

As the Muslim youths fell back - no sign of the trades union or UAF now - individuals started running at the civic centre. Spurred on by the thought of far-right blood to spill, the mob took to its heels once again. However, as in almost every other occurrence, there were no SIOE protestors - just shadows. The frustrated mob began slaking its thirst on the civic centre windows, with barriers being picked up and hurled. It took some minutes for more riot police to intervene and drive the mob back before the violence got out of hand.


The rest of the evening followed this pattern of the mainly Muslim mob chasing at shadows and the police wearily rushing after them to corrall them back in and prevent serious damage from occurring. As always, once the mob realised it didn't have a 'legitimate' target, it vented its anger on the police, who to their credit, stood fast and took the bricks and bottles. Community leaders did their best to stem the anger, but the mob was simply too large for them to effectively control.

All in all, yesterday's events showed the anti-fascists for what they were; a mob just as capricious and violent as the fascists they professed to oppose. The only creditable performances were from the police, who had clearly learned their lessons from the G20 demos, and the local Muslim religious leaders, who did their level best to stem the violence and calm the mob who rioted in their name.

See also: BBC, Sky, Times Online, Daily Telegraph


Postscript: On my way home I fell in with an Australian called Dav, who had attended as part of the UAF contingent. While we walked towards Harrow-on-the-Hill station together, we witnessed a large gang of masked and hooded Asians and Somalians throwing stones at a police van, shouting "white pig fascist scum". Some way further on, a gang of boys about 15 or 16 years of age followed us, shouting "BNP fascist" at Dav - who was as white as chalk and unfortunately suffered from baldness. To his credit, he stopped and clearly explained who he was and what he was doing there, which calmed the boys; yet had he been alone I would have feared for his safety.

Conservative Future - what is it good for?

Time for controversy, methinks.

Quite a few people around the blogosphere (what a naff phrase, but in the absence of anything better to describe it ...) have commented upon the youth wing of the Conservative Party: Conservative Future.

Like most political organisations, CF exists to promote the values of the party and ultimately ensure that the Party is elected. So goes the theory, anyway. Whilst I freely admit I'm stuck in a deadend backwater of this wondrous city, I hadn't even heard of CF until I began reading Tory Bear. Admittedly, I hadn't taken that much interest in the Tory party itself, rather its policy announcements as seen in the press.

It seems that my natural antipathy to organised politics actually served me well for once; This Observer's experience of CF in Jockistan frankly beggared belief:

while the Edinburgh South Conservatives have made sure that I know I'm a member and are continually asking me along to campaign days; the Edinburgh CF branch, which as I understand it actually does exist, might as well not.

Since I joined the party in February, I have had precisely nil contact from Conservative Future. Indeed, had I not been an avid reader of political blogs I would not even have known that the organisation exists.

Strangely similar to my own impression of CF, except confirmed by personal experience in this case. I would, at this stage, add how their London branch election was attended by 10 people, of whom 8 attended purely because they were due for re-election into post, but the Tory Bear article about that has vanished into his invisible (and unsearchable) archive.

Further, CF's leading lights don't seem to take much interest in anything except writing personal puff-pieces; have a look at this, which to me reads more like a personal statement of "look how great I am and all the things I make happen" than a genuine enquiry into creating enthusiasm for politics amongst students.

While we're on the CF site, take a look at this article on youth dropout from education, trg or employment. Damn lies and statistics, Labour wrecking the nation, harrumpf harrumpf, yes? Good. Now read it again, but swap the word "Labour" for "Conservative". Doesn't that read uncannily like a press release from Labour HQ?

The article does not attack Labour policy and offer a credible alternative, it attacks Labour purely because they're Labour. This is ad hominem politics of the sort that all Tory bloggers rip to shreds when it originates from the left; why have "we", the Conservative movement, knowingly descended to the level of schoolboy mud-slinging? Are we really that unoriginal that we can't think of a workable alternative by ourselves? Should we really be carrying dead wood that seeks to glorify itself rather than work for the good of the country?