The Ambridge Socialist: Eddie Grundy’s advice to the rural oppressed- ‘keep yer bikes out of sight’
21st August
The World Goes on Much the Same
The cost of living crisis has yet to make a significant impact in Ambridge so it being mid-August the world is going on much the same:
Vaping
George & Brad have been experimenting with vaping flavours. Its one of those Archers story lines like the recent day at the motor racing. Anyway it did not end well with George heading to hospital. It did however provoke Eddie Grundy’s timeless piece of proletarian advice on bikes
Joy, Mick & Toyah
Joy may have found a new special friend Mick. Meanwhile it appears Toyah may appear at Sunday’s Fete
Toby is leaving home
Toby if off to Stratford (Upon Avon not the London Stadium) to help with his father’s whine business. Pip is not sure. Should he stay or should he go
Stella and water
Stella doesn’t like getting covered in water but a trip to the pool has convinced her that she can stand in for the Vicar and have things thrown at her at the fete
Tracy meets an HR manager at the chicken factory
The Ambridge Socialist despairs of the anti-union bias of BBCTheArchers. It was reported that Tracy’s supervisor Gemma had accused her of bullying. Any competent HR manager would have filed that complaint in the bin. Either Gemma is not competent to do her supervisory job or she wants Tracy sacked in which case performance is the appropriate process. Tracy attended a meeting with the HR manager without a union rep or friend. Why??? Fortunately in this unlikely BBC scenario it was determined to move Gemma and Tracy to different shifts so they no longer worked together. Presumably the chicken factory has a labour shortage
Behind the current exam results debacle lies the wreckage of an education system crafted by the Tories since 2010. The original architect of this was Michael Gove and his advisor Dominic Cummings. Richard Evans has written on Gove and education in the London Review of Books:
Beard Liberation Front welcomes news that poll backs Sajid Javid’s new beard
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged ex-Chancellor Sajid Javid to back the principles of a Beard Friendly Britain, after a twitter poll that the former Chancellor ran showed majority backing for his new beard.
34, 612 people voted with 61.8% backing the beard
It comes after the MP’s new beard attracted abuse when he appeared on ITV on Wednesday morning. Follicly challenged Robbie Rinder claimed that Javid looked like Brutus.
The BLF has already contacted leadership contenders Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to see if they back a Beard Friendly Britain. Responses are awaited
The BLF has several areas where it would like to see more beard friendly policies:
A luxury shaving tax on all items such as razors, shaving cream, balms. Shaving is environmentally unfriendly
A crack down on the proliferation of barbers shops on High Streets
A specific Beard Friendly policy in the Civil Service
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we welcome Sajid Javid’s distinguished new beard and hope he will back our call for a Beard Friendly Britain. It would surely one policy he supported that would command popular support judging by his own poll
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers has warned Michael Gove and Boris Johnson against growing beards on their impending retirement from front line politics.
Politicians growing beards after leaving Office has been something of a trend since Al Gore failed to win the US Presidency in 2000 and appeared with a compensatory beard.
Johnson has not been known to wear a beard during his political career but the Daily Mirror has published a photo of him on his recent Greek jolly which indicates pre-beard stubble.
Michael Gove has on occasion been seen with a similar proto-beard look often during a recreational period.
The BLF says that Gove and Johnson growing retirement beards would bring the hirsute into disrepute.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, our message to Gove and Johnson is simple: don’t
The Times (20th August) reports that Michael Gove is to step down from ‘front line politics. We shall see but since 2010 Gove has held a variety of Government posts (like Johnson he is a journalist) including that of Education Secretary.
During his tenure Gove proposed what is now a Tory favourite- reforming the history curriculum. Needless to say his plans were a disaster.
Reviewing a biography of Gove in the London Review of Books the historian Richard J Evans recounted an occasion when Gove despatched his advisor Dominic Cummings to gather his views:
Gove sent his special political adviser to see me. A slim, balding, casually dressed, youngish man came into my Cambridge office and flopped into an armchair. ‘Well’, he said, ‘we’ve fucked up, haven’t we?’ It was Dominic Cummings.
I’m no fan of Cummings but that does rather seem to sum up Gove
Thomas Gradgrind, performance management & A Levels
Thomas Gradgrind was a fictional schoolmaster featured in Charles Dickens 1854 novel Hard Times. He saw no room for emotion in teaching. What was needed were facts that could be measured and lead to profitable endeavour.
Capital has worked out different ways to exploit workers and make profits since 1854 just as workers have found new ways to fight back. However as RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch has noted the Tories are engaged in class war and workers need to organise and engage.
To discover what the more naked enthusiasts for class war are saying a perusal of the Daily Telegraph is useful.
In this case to examine the view on the 2022 A level results. In particular why have grades declined and what adjustment was made to ensure this happened?
One might think that an A Level exam is or should be out whether a student has reached a certain agreed standard of understanding, knowledge etc. If they have they pass. Its not that simple. In fact there is a strong similarity with performance management systems used in the workplace. The worst of these use a bell curve where a certain number do less well or fail irrespective of whether they are good performers. More nuanced systems do the same. Comparisons are made across a cohort and marks are levelled- meaning some are reduced to fit an expectation of what the range of performance should be.
This of course is just a massive distraction from actually doing the job people are meant to be doing. Its purpose is usually to manage pay and bonus budgets.
With A Levels the purpose of grade management is to manage who goes to University and which one.
The Daily Telegraph Editorial (19.8)writes of the ‘race’ to get to University. Why is it a race? Shouldn’t those who reach an agreed A Level standard be able to go if they want? The Telegraph however thinks that A Level are about determining ‘comparative academic ability. Thomas Gradgrind is still with us.
Culture Wars in education. How I swerved the 11+ exam & secondary modern school in 1968
The current discussion on A level grades has underlined again that these are related not to the achievement of an agreed standard but by application of a sort of quota where so many get a certain grade or indeed fail, based not on how well they have done, but on how well the entire yearly cohort has done. It is a familiar method in performance management systems where grades are ‘levelled’ and that too gives rise to persistent and understandable complaints of unfairness. The post below originally appeared in the Morning Star.
Education has been a feature of the Tory leadership ‘race’. Given the age of the electorate both candidates are talking about the great grand-children of those voting.
Liz Truss has complained that the comprehensive school she went to in Leeds, Roundhay, did not provide a good education. However she ended up at Oxford. Rishi Sunak who went to Winchester College a rival to Eton has argued that Universities are about ‘earnings potential’ and the focus must be on subjects in that area.
This is existing Tory policy but it underlines a focus on the business university where learning and education in themselves are not the key point. So farewell then English literature, humanities, history and indeed Sunak’s own degree in PPE.
It begs the question of what the modern Tory Party is.
In 1961 a Tory Government commissioned the Robbins Report into higher education. It reported in 1963 and the proposals were accepted leading to a significant expansion in those going to University.
A key part of Robbins noted:
university places “should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment” (the so-called Robbins principle) and that such institutions should have four main “objectives essential to any properly balanced system: instruction in skills; the promotion of the general powers of the mind so as to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women; to maintain research in balance with teaching, since teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth; and to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship.”.
The emphasis on a common culture is a world away from the culture wars of the Tories in 2022. Yet Robbins was not accepted by the left and criticism appeared in New Left Review and the New Statesman. The view was that Robbins was about elite education, and while higher education might expand a little the majority would not obtain degree level education.
It didn’t turn out like that, a reminder that politics and the world can on occasion change quickly.
A week before Robbins, the Newsom Report appeared. It was largely ignored by the Tory Government because it focused on that section of the population Robbins was not interested in-the working class.
The 1944 Butler Education Act set up Grammar Schools for 25% of students who would get an academic education. The remaining 75% went to Secondary Modern schools designed to teach lower level skills and home management (teaching girls how to be housewives). Newsom’ report, Half Our Future argued that the system was under resourced and failing badly.
The Tories didn’t care then as now. However in October 1964 a Labour Government was elected.
There were already campaigners pushing for change in education, for example Caroline Benn and the communist historian of education, Prof Brian Simon. Labour introduced a new system of comprehensive education designed for all, sweeping away the Grammar/Secondary division. Labour also introduced a new category of Polytechnics which taught to degree level meaning far more students entering higher education than ever envisaged by Robbins
In 1963 British capitalism was expanding and looking for a broadly educated workforce. In 2022 the Tories with less than 200,000 members are no longer a national party but a clique focused on short term profit (often for themselves). Who needs rounded citizens with a liberal education in that context?
I have a personal interest in all this. I can still recall sitting in my North London Primary School class one day in early 1968 when the teacher announced we were the first year not to sit the 11+ and would all go to a new comprehensive school together that September
Are Brewdog barring trade unionists from their new flagship Waterloo bar?
Brewdog opened their new flagship bar at London’s Waterloo station today. I’m not part of their PR operation but if interested details are easily available on their social media.
It seemed like rather an odd day to launch a bar at a major rail station as thanks to a strike by RMT and TSSA members there were very few trains. On Friday there is a tube strike. Perhaps Brewdog just wanted a quiet opening or perhaps their anti-union reputation led them to choose the date on purpose.
Brewdog have a controversial reputation when it comes to employee culture and indeed corporate governance. Their view on this varies between rebuttal and agreement that there are issues that they are addressing. The issues continue as does one obvious way of grappling with them, recognising a union.
This post starts with a question mark because I’m posing a question to which I don’t know the answer. Two unions Unite and the Brewery Workers Union have members at Brewdog. The latter reportedly leafleted the new bar (outside) today. Its perfectly legal to make people aware of trade unions and ask them to consider joining. There were also social media reports that when a customer who had taken a leaflet entered the bar they were escorted out by security.
Pubs and bars can exclude who they like without reason (but within reason- the law still applies) but even given Brewdog’s reputation surely they haven’t banned trade unionists from their new bar. Aside from anything else that’s an awful lot of potential customers.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has sent hirsute solidarity to RMT members on strike over pay and conditions.
At the Enough is Enough rally in Clapham on Wednesday evening Beard of the Year Michael Rosen brought direct solidarity to RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch with a speech detailing what solidarity means from collecting for bus strikers as a teenager in the late1950s to the work of the NHS now
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, like many trade union leaders Mick Lynch stands in a clean shaven tradition but solidarity is universal.
Campaigners give qualified welcome to Amol Rajan as University Challenge quizmaster
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said following the news Jeremy Paxman is to stand down as presenter of University Challenge, it has given a qualified welcome to the appointment of Amol Rajan as the new quizmaster.
Rajan, who is currently the BBC’s media Editor, has a distinctive beard, but with an Oxbridge background might be seen as an Establishment choice
The programme has only ever had two presenters, the late Bamber Gascoigne and Jeremy Paxman. Neither has worn a beard on air.
The BLF ran a poll on some potential Paxman replacements and found several with popular backing
David Olusoga, academic, historian and broadcaster
Richard Osman, broadcaster and author
Michael Rosen, author, academic, broadcaster
Daniel Norcross- Test Match Special, quizmaster
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we’re pleased that someone with a beard will at last present University Challenge and we congratulate Amol Rajan. We do feel however that the net might have been cast wider not just to other beard wearers but to excellent female presenters such as Samira Ahmed.
