Alphabetical irony

Sue Watling / / equality and diversity, nothing to do with work

The Coalition Programme for Government is available.  Firstly I’m on my soapbox about it only being provided in pdf format. The support information is inadequate i.e.  three links away from a 30 page Adobe Document which guess what – is also a PDF – like I didn’t have a problem first time round!

But secondly, what did catch my eye was the structure of the contents. The first of 31 items is Banking (Das Kapital?)  Then I noticed that Social Care and Disability is at 28 while Universities comes in at number 31 and I was amused in an ironic ‘TFIF’ sort of way…

Not one leak but two?

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

oil on the shore in Louisiana

It’s been three weeks and six days and oil continues to gush out of the broken pipe. Only it’s not one but two broken pipes. While BP stick with their 5000 barrels a day estimate, a professor of mechanical engineering has studied the latest video and reported that the two wellhead leaks combined are gushing 95,000 barrels a day, with 70,000 barrels from the largest leak and 25,000 from the smaller. This is the first reference to two leaks. Previous video footage only appeared to show one. It shows how we have no idea of the truth of the situation.

The story is old now. You have to search to find coverage. But it’s still happening and the oil has reached the shoreline. The damage is unknowable. One of the dispersents being used is Corexit, a chemical banned in the UK because of its effects on limpets and other sea life. The word helplessness comes to mind. Helpless to stop it, helpless in the face of the potential environmental damage. Argument and debate in the US is focused on passing the blame, on the politics of deep water drilling and on attempts to limit political damage on the November mid-term elections. In the mean time the oil continues to leak unstoppably into the Gulf of Mexico.

Lest we forget…

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

seabird covered in oil

Estimates now range from 5,000 to 70,000 barrels a day, following analysis of video footage of the broken pipe. Now in week 4, it still gushes.  Tony Hayward, BP CEO, claims the oil spill is “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean. Coverage of the press conference  gives no answers only that BP are “learning as we go along”. For the waters and shorelines of the Gulf of Mexico the lesson may be too late.

tyres, golf balls and things like that…

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

In the 17 days since Deepwater Horizon exploded 1,135,600 litres of oil a day (19,305,200 litres or 1,748,824 gallons) has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico and continues to do so every minute of the day. BP have an environmental disaster on their hands. The BP PR campaign has gone into overdrive. It needs to do. So far they’ve tried fire, containment booms, underwater robots and a deep water containment cover all without success. The latest idea is a ‘junk shot’. Under high pressure, ‘tyres, golf balls and things like that’ are going to be fired at into the leaking pipe. I read that twice too. If you can’t sink a containment device because of the ice crystals then how much different is a high pressure debris firing gun going to make? The only hope is, for the sake of the environment, that it works – but it’ll be a long shot in every sense of the word.

muses on misleading titles

Sue Watling / / equality and diversity

The Centre for Social Justice  makes out it’s for the benefit of society but whose society is it benefiting?

On the title alone, it sounds like my kind of organisation. Focus on social exclusion and favouring collectivism over an ‘each to their own I’m all right’ politics.  But titles can be so misleading. There’s something not ‘I’m all right’ here. For starters, it was founded during the time of ‘Margaret – there is no such thing as society – Thatcher’. It alleges independence but what does that mean? Everything is political. We’re all political. It’s impossible not to be. Informed and framed by social location, we reflect past and present environments. I prefer to think I’m capable of independent and critical thought but I accept the influence of cultural expectation. It’s recognising it that counts.  For me social justice has two strands; identifying and changing the structures that lead to social exclusion and using education to promote acceptance of diversity.  

The Centre for Social Justice is a government ThinkTank so any talk of independence is an anomaly. Their position,  left or right of centre,  contains inherent political bias and they would do better just admitting it rather than disguising their intentions in false consciousness. The thinkers in the tank are products of their own environment so the chances are high that recommendations will have individualist or collectivist roots – never the twain shall meet. This bloggolage has come about through media coverage of Phillipa Stroud,  Executive Director of the Centre for Social Justice. Even allowing for media bias, there is something uncomfortable about social justice being headed up by anyone with extreme views. In this case homophobia to a degree that shouts Clause 28  all over again.

The Observer article  attracted a range of media responses; here’s a selection from the The Guardian,  The Telegraph and The New Statesman. Couldnt find anything from The Times.

Deepwater Horizon

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

The name Deepwater Horizon will go down in environment history. It’s been 8 days since an explosion sank the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. First estimates were 1,135,600 litres of crude oil released into the water – every day. That’s 79,492,00 litres a week so even more than that is now floating in the sea and starting to come ashore on the Louisiana coast.  There are two tragedies here, the loss of 11 lives and the environmental disaster when this amount of oil is leaking from 1,500m below the water’s surface, making it impossible to reach.  The effects on the environment  and on wildlife  can only be estimated, based on previous experiences, and this disaster looks likely to be even greater. How many wake-up calls do the multinational oil companies like BP need before accepting that the harm they are doing to the planet will always ultimately outweigh the benefits they provide.

Reality or Virtuality?

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

 A collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from the Parker Library at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, has been digitised and is now available on the internet. Take a look. They are a fabulous glimpse into history.  My first thought was how can digital data ever compare with these beautiful pages showing the lost art of illumination, from a time when few could read and even less had access to the expensive inks and vellum parchments. What will we leave behind other than mountains of obsolete system units and monitors and electronic content that’s inaccessible without the means to interpret and display it. But then you realise that without an internet collection we wouldn’t be seeing these manuscripts in the first place. The only ones I’ve seen have been in various museums around the country and the Henry VIII exhibition last year at the British Library (cost in the travel and entrance ticket). So maybe the virtual is better than not having the reality at all.  If you need convincing then the British Library’s Turning the Pages should do it. This digitisation of priceless manuscripts has been online for several years. As well as Leonardo, Blake and Austen, it includes treasures like the changing seasons of the Luttrell Psalter and the stunning anglo saxon Lindsifarne Gospels.  Virtual history doesn’t get much better than this!

pages from the Lindisfarne Gospels

Exams are unfair modes of assessment; discuss.

Sue Watling / / Uncategorized

Exams should no longer been seen as effective methods of assessment; at least not unseen papers consisting of three essay type questions to be answered in three hours that cover a three month intense theoretical based course. I took one of these ‘bad experiences’ this week; at an exam centre I’d never been to before; it had with no car parking facilities, and was in the centre of York, over 50 miles from my home, all factors that added to the stress. The subject of the course was psychoanalytical and sociological theories of identity construction. It was helpful that this covered materials from the subject of my first MA in Gender Studies. I felt I had knowledge and understanding of the subject matter but knew from the start that when it came to an exam, then recall was going to be a problem. I’m taking an MA in Open and Distance Education with the OU and their study materials are excellent. I read the preparation for exams booklet from front to back, followed a revision plan and drew the mind maps that suited my visual learning style. But an hour into the exam and I knew that I couldn’t ‘remember’ any more than I’d already made notes on. It was like my memory was saying enough is enough and had shut down. I could see my diagrams in my head, the shapes and the colours, but not the text. I don’t know if this is a learning disorder, early Alzheimer’s or a symptom of a heavy work load that regularly extends into evenings and weekends. What I do know is that it felt like an unfair assessment of my ability, and I felt discriminated against by a mode of assessment that for me just doesn’t reflect my knowledge and understanding or allow me to do myself justice. I would be very interested in other people’s response to this.

Gaia

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work

Beautiful Minds is a Channel 4 series about some of the greatest scientific discoveries of our age. I was pleased to see that the second episode was devoted to James Lovelock; it’s time he was credited with recognition for the all the right rather than the wrong reasons.

I always thought Lovelock was a sensible scientist. His idea that the earth was a self-regulating organism, made up of complex interrelationships that can be  detrimentally altered by human activity,  never felt odd or strange. When the Gaia hypothesis was first made public you could find me down in the country, on a bit of land and living the good life; chickens and all. I felt in tune with the seasons and growing cycles, and witnessed the mysterious power of nature on a daily basis. Lovelock’s  ideas made sense.  It was a shock to read about his subsequent denouncement by the scientific community who made out that this uniquely individual mind was maverick and almost insane.

The Gaia hypothesis was in the news again recently. Lovelock claims that climate change is irreversible. The damage has been done.  Just as he has been proved right before (the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere and the effect of the sun on micro organisms controlling the temperature of the oceans) so he may be right again. Something needs to change.

It’s  frustrating that change on an individual level – while commendable – we can all change our lifestyles, shop differently, recycle and grow more of our own food (whether we want to or not being a different issue) but when compared to the international scale of over fishing, deforestation and the burning of fossils fuels, can feel like a grain of sand in a desert. We would find it hard to live without balance; heat, light, water, food are all basic ingredients and we are dependent on nature for them all.  How can we not have respect? At the very least we should take time out to think about it. Do something for the planet and watch the programme here this weekend.