Goodbye Chunky Rice

Since the passing of legislation for universities fees to be raised to £9,000 it seems that those proposing the changes really don’t want universities to raise them to that amount. I cannot even begin to understand the minds of the likes of David Willets. The Russell Group openly campaigned for an uncapping of fees, it is no surprise that their members will want £9,000 for their courses (so far only Oxbridge and IC have announced they want them, but the rest will follow), world leading establishments are going to think they should charge the most, and as they are world leading, people will pay for it. Anyway, every time Willets speaks, I am confused as to why he is a) opposed to universities imposing £9k fees and b) surprised that establishments will do so. From today’s Guardian:

“Unless universities can prove that there will be a commensurate and very significant improvement in the education on offer, it is difficult to see how such an increase could ever be justified, let alone at a time of fiscal restraint. Institutions can clearly offer higher education at a price much less than £9,000,”

In this time of fiscal restraint which is effecting universities through funding cuts, it makes sense to recoup losses from students by charging more. Top UK institutions will argue (very eloquently) that the quality of their degrees is worth £9k and more, when they were lobbying they thought around £15k per year [citation needed] was an appropriate amount, so in many ways they probably think they are still being short changed.

There was talk of not allowing unis to charge large amounts unless they can prove they have a good bursary and access schemes, my deep suspicions is that many ‘red brick’ establishments will have such measures in place, and would swiftly put them in place if they thought they could offset the teaching budget cuts.

More to follow as Willetts makes more announcements.

May 5th is the day of the Alternative Vote referendum, game on. Having previously supporting calls for a referendum on proportional representation but the coalition agreement failed on that hurdle and so I support the Alternative Vote as a means of progressing to PR. I openly supported the Liberal Democrats at the last election and while I knew they would never win, my disappointment began with the coalition agreement: the abstention clauses and the lack of proportional representation featuring. 

In 2010 the Liberal Democrats obtained 23% of the votes, while this was an increase on 2005, they lost seats and this resulted in only 8% of the seats in the commons, they were always going to be the smaller party of any coalition, but this is obviously unfair. If their number of MPs was more closely aligned to their number of votes the coalition agreement wouldn’t have been so piss poor, and instead of a concession for AV referendum, we’d probably be looking at a referendum on PR (as well as other things). 

While AV is no PR, it is more representative than FPTP and for this reason I differ from those who want AV to fail so that the PR movement can come stronger, citing that if AV were to succeed PR further reform will be kicked into the long grass for a long time. I think that a no vote will prevent any electoral reform for a generation, at least, as the Conservatives (who are set to benefit from boundary changes) will say the people have spoken and they like FPTP, Lib Dems are going to be a joke if the coalition survives the full term of parliament and their manifesto will openly be mocked on all counts and I can’t see much to help recoup the haemorrhage support, this leaves Labour. It would be foolish to try and guess at what their policy will be, they are all over the place on AV, and didn’t do any reform in the last 14 years, I doubt they will force AV or anything else after a no vote (its clearly unpopular the benches would howl), so a no vote kills reform. However, a yes vote will bolster it! If AV wins, and polls show it will be close, the next election will be slightly more representative, I still suspect the Lib Dems will lose seats, the Greens might benefit (pro-PR), Cons wont be able to revert back to FPTP without another referendum (they protested the costs laughs the benches) so will be fine, Labour (who I suspect will do well after 5 years of cuts and unemployment increase) however will be best placed to further political reform as clearly it is on the public agenda and would be better placed for movements to wards PR. Should a coalition occur again, it would be probably easier for it to be openly favourable to change. Further, we might have a coalition where one party isn’t as laughably playing a minority role, allowing for a coalition agreement to be, well, more agreeable.

Big C made a speech against AV today, I’d like to address some things said in them: He disputes that AV will end safe seats as 1 in 3 seats are held with true majorities (greater than 50% vote), this shows that on both local and national level, the votes of the majority of people are disregarded for a minority. I have no issue with the 225 MPs in these ‘safe’ seats, they are clearly supported in those areas, its no surprise certain areas have certain political leanings, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that area being represented by someone who got over 50% of the vote. However in the other 2 thirds the MP doesn’t have the support of the majority of the constituency, their views are rarely represented properly, by ensuring a candidate requires broad support allows them to better represent their constituents and allow them to be more accessible.

Then there is the bullshit about electronic ballots, I don’t know where the No vote campaign got this, Australia does without so there is no reason why we should adopt them. There is also the argument on cost of the referendum in a time of austerity, the no vote figures are misleading as the cost of the referendum (ie will be incurred whether yes or no) has been lumped in with the subsequent changes required, so while yes it will cost money, not as much as they claim. And if we’re on about austerity, why are committees trailing the use of iPads when nurses/whatever are being made redundant.

“When it comes to our democracy, Britain shouldn’t have to settle for anyone’s second choice.” Says Cameron, my current MP would have been around 5th in this constituency, I’d have settled happily for the first 3, 4th was an oddball, then Greg Hands before the crazies.

“But the crazies will get seats!” Yes, they might, the BNP would benefit from PR, part of me sees this as both a terrible thing and as something that might actually work to the benefit of society. People in this country clearly think UKIP and BNP have a point, and while its very easy to dismiss them as the fringes and crazies, but their anti-EU and racist ideology shouldn’t be as ignored as it is currently, them winning a seat would show them as terrible politicians (BNP councillors are a joke) and prompt society to address a problem in certain areas.

I’ve previously mentioned that Mr Hands is one of the 225, he is also PPS so essentially Osborne’s whipping boy and forbidden from any independent thought, and he would be my MP under AV or FPTP. AV will not make my vote count as much as I want, but it has my support as a stepping stone to more proportionality, and giving me greater voting power to choose a party that will be able to forward the cause.

Apparently I have access to some journals which cover electoral stuff, and will look into it more to properly show that we should definitely embrace the reform and further that a yes vote will further the electoral reform movement more than a no vote. If you care about electoral reform, I suggest donating or becoming a member of the Electoral Reform Society, if some of you dislike AV and don’t want to contribute to its campaign, maybe wait until after the referendum, afterwards I can see it not being on the agenda of any of the big 3 parties. Also, remember to register to vote, it is very rare to be able to voice your opinion on something this specific which will effect our future politics.

Further reading:

Johann Hari on the Lords and the church today.

http://www.johannhari.com/2011/02/18/why-are-bishops-still-writing-our-laws-and-why-is-nick-clegg-about-to-make-it-worse

boomvagynamite:

I can’t reply in 140 characters so here’s my view. As I mentioned Rolling Stone wasn’t set up as a purely music magazine, and has recently gone back to being political in nature (and according to wiki its readership has gone up). So they cover politics and music and popculture, and therefore someone doing an interview with them should expect questions off-music. In Bieber’s case, his agents/mum/label should have thought about it, but with a movie to be promoted and more publicity and making him seem like his has adult appeal they presumably allowed it. As to whether they should ask a 16 year old those things, sure why not, its a 16 year old with a massive listenership and worth lots, why not find out more about him. Also the many Belibers seem to go bat-shit-crazy for him, and as his sexuality is about to explode and be exploited (front page image is weird and creepy) so it seems fair to ask him what he thinks about teensex, most teenagers around that age have already had lessons / discussions on it. He shows that he isn’t in the situation so not able to know for sure, so I while he might be ‘pro-life’ I think its wrong to say he is anti-choice, based on that sentence.

I think the questions are fair to ask, likewise his views on booze, but he definitely wouldn’t have done the interview unless the Bieber Co thought he should so really we should be asking why they think its appropriate to pitch a 16 year old boy against the adult media. It happened before when the Guardian followed him about and had some interviews and he seemed crazy and aggressive, and they asked awkward questions, what would you expect? I think that as so many people who are supposedly on his side are profitting so well, and encouraging/organising interviews such as this that its fine for a magazine to profit as well.

Finally, we’ve not seen the full article let alone transcript so we don’t know the whole context really: was it out of the blue, or was it talking about sex and other stuff.

Holy shit, this has just blown my mind. Listening to Radio 4’s new series called ‘On Your Bike’ was mentioned a rear steering tandem “so the woman wouldn’t have to look at the man’s back” and yet allowing the man to still have control of the steering, which is a fairly silly reason for inventing this. But look at it, it is beautiful, and both front and back handle bars are in control of steering, the above photo was made for a man and woman, the former of which was blind and at the back but still allowing for control. I would love to ride one of these.

doubleclue:

So I’ve managed to yet again stay up all night (fuck you wind, with your incessant nagging), and have been contemplating this for a while. It’s now 9am and instead of attempting to actually get some sleep, which I desperately need considering I’m starting to feel ill, I’m just gonna try and write some shit instead. So here we go:

I miss Myspace. Seriously. I absolutely loved it, and nothing online has really been the same, which I used to think was great becaue I went along with this whole “its just evolution, we adapt to new technologies”. And now I realise it’s just bullshit. Myspace was MY space, where I could come online, meet new people and have interesting conversations. And then facebook came along and ruined everything.

The great thing about Myspace was that in a way it was anonymous. Sure, you could put you’re name on it if you wanted, but you didnt have to. There was nothing stopping you calling yourself “Dickflaps McGee” and putting your profile picture as a horse getting sucked off by a turtle, but for me, that wasn’t what it was about. Sure, I created a projection for myself, and only uploaded photos in which I thought I looked best. I was a fat bastard back then, it was the done thing. But that was the thing, as someone who had a tough time socialising, myspace was somewhere I could reinvent myself, and find some new awesome people (some of whom I still talk to today).

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I liked this, and relate a lot to the etiquette of it all and the shame as I ignore friend requests. A part of what I dislike is that people are naturally different in different settings, Family Reuben is different to Medic Reuben is different to the Reuben I want friends to be, my house mate has 2 accounts, none of which are in his real name, and for separate groups of people he doesn’t want to cross over (he also masqueraded as someone entirely different for 3 months to highlight privacy issues) and he seems to have the right idea.