Modern Language is Rubbish

I read an article by Aditya Chakrabortty (Guardian, 31st August, 2010): “There’s a good reason why so many of us no longer like our jobs.  There’s not much call for thinking these days”.  In it, he set out a few sociologists’ insights: briefly, workers have come to exercise ever less control over their jobs.   Every aspect of work, for every employee, is set out, standardised and, occasionally, scripted by the experts at head office; technology allows this.  A labour market academic, Phil Brown, coined the term “Digital Taylorism” , named after the American time-and-motion  expert’s ideas, which themselves followed Fordism (I think that’s right).  These were ways to extract more production from employees through increased control of the process of manufacture.  This has been extended to the professional sphere;  the point is that you don’t write the script any more.

It is more than that.  The evidence?  Another journalist, Mary Dejevsky, writes on a coroner’s pronouncement on  police procedures before a fatal shooting (Independent, 12th October, 2010).  She praises him for demanding less long-winded jargon in police  training and (written) procedure.  “Of the few examples of these documents I managed to find in the public domain, the language and presentation veered from the puerile to the impenetrable”.  Now think about one of the standing criticisms of the Blair governments: that is, the one which railed against “micro-management” of the public services.  Add to that, say, the prescriptiveness of the curriculum and teaching styles imposed over the years, and then think about the style of language used in all these, from Government policy statements, to OFSTED reports, to the imposed scripts used by call centre workers.  It’s the original ban on thinking; it’s Linguistic Taylorism,  and the partner of the Digital kind. 

Language is the essential tool for thinking.  We have retreated from teaching it as a set of bright, sharp tools which should be given to all.  Perhaps prescriptive language teaching was too limiting; set it free a little, and we shall be less oppressed by class-bound English.   However, nature abhors a vacuum, or rather they won’t let us get away with  that.  Managerialists (I’ll call them that for the moment, but there are more than them) rushed in to fill the gap, seeing an opportunity; but you’ve lost the magic set of tools you need to stop them running everything: tight language, tight verbal logic.

George Orwell knew this.  Finely honed skills in English are the main weapon against management consultants, marketers, advertisers and duff politicians.  This bunch of apparatchiks cannot write and very likely cannot think either.  How could we tell?  Politicians, advisers, senior civil servants all frame policies and practices in Newspeak drivel.  I imagine that they mean well; again, how could we tell?

Incidentally, teaching language as a set of rules imposed on our spontaneous chatter did help the boys at school; they might well be good at science and “techie stuff”, but have trouble with the language-based subjects.  Teaching English as a rule-based set of skills (grammar, syntax, how to phrase an argument and so on) gave them language in a boy-friendly, absorbable form.  It is no wonder that they retreat into business studies and web-site design.  The rule-based method also made teaching foreign languages easier: boys!  This is a sentence; it must have subject and a verb  related to it; this is the direct object of the verb; it must go next to the verb, etc.,  etc.  Now go to German and see how it is done in that language.  Do it that way………..

Modern Life is rubbish, part 2

It is of course oppressive and stupid. Stupidity number one is because you have a load of half-cut idiots strolling around towns carrying an extremely important and sought-after document.  The alternative is to pay yet more money for other expensive ID documents.

Oppressiveness: the civil rights stuff. Establishments display material which states blithely that you will be checked if you look as if you are under 25.   At that age, I was a social worker with responsibility for children and families, mental health and adult welfare, and there are plenty more of that age now doing the same. Why should anyone aged 18-25 be subjected to this?  (n.b. we had two German exchange students here who were mildly horrified that the age was not sixteen, as in Germany.    Now, they know a bit about drinking in Germany..........)

Why pick this as an argument, rather than something more sober, such as ID cards in general, or “Mosquitoes”?   Because it is clear that someone simply does not like it. There is a suspicion that they simply do not like the inherent hedonism in drinking: I want fun, and I want it now.  I suppose that this is to be set against a vision of a risk-free society, where school students are enjoined to embrace the work ethic as soon as possible and behave like a bunch of responsible, goal-orientated merchant bankers. Pint of Lehman Brothers’ Special, anyone?

Concurrently, you have what appears to be a campaign against both drinking in general, and against young people (ghastly phrase; I would have ripped my own head off, rather than be called that), and specifically against young people drinking.

Stupidity number two is the perverse effect of the whole policy.   They have made it more difficult for people to get into the pub (or where ever) under age.   This has had a perverse effect. Not so long ago, you went to a suitable pub aged 16-17, and bought a few drinks.  Above all else, you tried not to draw attention to yourself; you were obliged to behave like one of the older drinkers.  In effect, you learned how to sit around drinking and talking without looking overtly wrecked. In short, you were socialised into behaving like a more grown-up drinker.   As long as you caused no trouble (and yes, there were some places where that happened, but it would have happened anyway) you were OK.

What of now?   They get hold of cheap alcohol and neck it as fast as possible, in order to get off on it, in the park or where they can; crude generalisation, but drinking to auto-destruct is learned early, rather than being socialised into pub-going.

The figures on binge-drinking are probably debatable.   There was a sheepish admission that the 21 unit per week (it was 28 at some stage, I thought) figure was really only a result of there being seven days in the week.   In 1995 or thereabouts, when this figure was produced, mate Rick, then a senior consultant at St Georges in Tooting, South London (and one partial to a few drinks) asked his colleagues from various departments where the hell had this come from, and what was the evidence............scratching of senior medical heads, and mumbling “dunno....there isn’t any”.   A little later, I went to look over a project promoting volunteering with the Scottish Council on Alcohol on behalf of the funder, the Home Office.  Waiting to interview various staff members, I read in their newsletter that they had asked the Scottish Medical Officer of Health the same question, and received the honest, and identical reply: there is no hard evidence for 21 or even 28 units. Yet this is now the benchmark by which excess is measured.

This does not mean that drinking a bottle of whisky a day would be fine (it never was), nor does it mean that alcohol-fuelled violence is fine; but there are laws against violence already, are there not?    Drunkenness in the streets on a Friday night has been around for a very long time. “Young people” did not invent it; to repeat, the campaign against them is oppressive and stupid.  There are more arguments and evidence (George Monbiot took this up in the Guardian) but let’s just stick to one for now:-

modern life is rubbish.........................

Mainly about alcohol (modern life is rubbish)

My next essay was going to be about Terry Parker, another one of the friends who is now, sadly, a stiff.  Having put together the first volume of photographs of my mate Slim Rhodes (stiff) complete with commentary, my younger daughter, Rosalind, read through it and found the bit about Terry Parker, who was a musician, layabout and bassist with a band called Stonehouse.  They hailed from Plymouth and had the briefest of brief  careers in about 1970-72 (one release, Stonehouse).  Rosalind is a fifteen year-old rock music devotee, and googled the record.  She found a small group of Stonehouse devotees, one of whom commented that there was a nearly-complete absence of biographical material for Pete Spearing (lead), Terry Parker (bass), Ian Snow (drums) and Jim Smith (vocals). 

Now, I was going to remedy this with a few notes about Terry and our existence in South London in the 70’s, plus the odd picture or two which one of us turned up.  This will have to wait.

First,  there will be an extended interruption while I set down a few things, the like of which most people believe to be the main purpose of blogging: that is, to set down a cogently argued case for the criticism of modern life, or as Socrates would have put it, a bloody good old rant. 

Elder daughter Alexandra came back from working as a housekeeper in a hotel in France for four months at the end of April.  After working abroad, she had to return to the regime of carrying her passport around with her, simply to be able to go to the pub and buy a drink. 

Now, to be obliged to do this is oppressive and stupid, as I shall argue………..later (time for me to go to the pub)

Slim’s People

Now the list for those browsing the web…..

Being on the list does not mean that there is a photo of you, or the person whom you might know, in the albums; these are simply all the names I could remember at first go.  There are probably a lot more names hiding away in various addled memories, so I am hoping people might add more in due course.   I have a couple already (Lisa Roe and Dick Hobday) to add in a later up-date; I am looking for lots more (e.g. Nick from Clapham, Richard and Liliana, American Maddy), plus names of people in the photo album whom I can caption only as “……erm….who the hell was that?” at the moment.  This could go on endlessly, as half of the people around UCL in the late sixties and the seventies knew, or knew of Slim and this lot, as did half the population of Clapham South.

When Slim and I met these people, I really did not expect that some of them would not reach their three-score-and-ten years or whatever.  Sadly, I realised when I started making the list that quite a few are, in fact, stiffs before their time.  Apart from noting the obvious fact of the Large Man’s demise, I have not marked them as “dec’d”; that would be a bit too much.

I have not included names of members of UCL staff, even though a few are mentioned in the photo album document in passing, because it is not about them primarily.  The women’s names are as I remember them or know them, so that the list includes a mixture of maiden and married names. 

Ackroyd, Briony	Lange, Peter
Allan, Keith	Larmour, Rhoda
Amberton, Susan	Larsen, Andy
Arthur, Jane	Le Tocq, Chris
Baillie, Ann	Lee, Lynda
Ballardie, Carole	Leferink, Anne
Beale, Sylvia	Linford, Mike
Beckett, Gayton (Gay)	Ludlam, Steve
Beckford, John	Macintyre, Iain
Black, Jude	Markee, Numa
Booth, Felicity (Fliss)	Marshall, Sheila
Bradley, Daxi	Martin, Tim
Brown, Bill (Angus, Billy Game O'Rods)	McCallum, Miles
Brown, Roger	McCarthy, John
Campbell, Bill	Millet, Celia
Capella, Chris	Mocroft, Ian
Capella, Paul	Morris, Urselle (Ush)
Chew, Petra	Morrison-Smith, Heather
Chrimes, Mick	Mumford, Mark
Clifford, Phil	Muntau, Fritz
Connell, John	Netherwood, Ned
Conway, Warwick	Owen, Jonny
Crook, Stan	Paice, Mick
Dan-Gur, Esti (AKA Brez Kraus)	Parker, Al
Danks, Phil	Parker, Nigel (Nige)
Davies, Gareth	Parker, Terry
Davies, Hywel	Parsons, Louise
Dearing, Frederica (Fred)	Philips, Simon
Dearing, John	Phillips, Les
Dearing, Paul	Pim, Mike
Dent, Jeff	Pope, Martin
Dent, Steve	Powell, Mick
Dexter, Felix	Quinn, Paul
Dynan, Roy	Rhodes, Blaise Alastair (Slim)
Edwards, Jeff (Stack)	Rhodes, Greville Orde (Greg)
Ennis, Madeleine (Maddy)	Rhodes, Jenny
Ferner, Robin	Rhodes, Sarah
Flanagan, Siobhan	Ridge, Pete
France, Dick	Riley, Jenny
French, Derek	Robertson, Stuart
Fuggles, Roger	Rowlands, Dave
Fuller, Rick	Sargent, Jim
Gamble, Pat	Scarborough, Dick
Gates, Len	Schramm, Chris
Glover, Steve	Sinclair, Morag
Goldsmith, Wendy	Slee, Mark
Grigg, Bill	Smith, Jim
Grigg, Janet	Smith, John
Grue, Mary (Mur)	Smith, Wayne
Hancock, Sheila	Snow, Ian
Hanmore, Jean	Spearing, Pete
Hayward, Jessica	Stell, Dick
Hayward, Jules	Stewart, Dave
Hayward, Mike	Strange, Simon
Hazlitt, Pat	Taylor, Mary
Heard, Sally	Thomas, Sophie
Hillock, Dave	Thorley, Alan (Al)
Jackson, Liz	Thorley, Barry (Baz)
Jaffrey-Sallis, Jon	Towl, Pete
Johnson, Bob	Trythall, James
Jones, Davy	Tuck, Mike
Jordan, Dave	Varley, Rob
Kerrigan, Chris	Vero, Andrew (Loop)
Kitchen, Dave	Webb, Sheila
Knopp, Juergen	Wenzel, Jon
Kraeber, Hans-Juergen	White, Graham
Kraus, Esther (Brez) (AKA Esti Dan-Gur)	Wood, Graham
Lang, Nick

Slim Rhodes and the Photographs

I decided to write this stream of consciousness/gravy because of an evening spent in various pubs in London in January, 2009, with about forty or so friends, most of whom I met between 1969 and 1975, and most of whom were connected in one way or another with University College London.  The occasion was the tenth anniversary of the death of Slim Rhodes (Blaise Alastair Rhodes 1950-1999).

In a fit of mis-placed nostalgia (“Waiter!  Have I left a fit of nostalgia here somewhere?”) I committed myself to compiling a collection of our photographs.  This was to be based on our combined set of albums and old shoe-boxes of photographs, with some added commentary on the huge number of people who knew or just met Slim between 1968 and 1999.  He was a sort of over-weight pole around which so many others found their orbit. 

The collection of photographs are on a private Yahoo site, called somewhat unsurprisingly, Slimslist.  Anyone who wants to see them will have to ask me, until the fifty or so current members of the Slimslist group decide that all the photos and tales of debauchery and lay-aboutness are fit to release on an unsuspecting public.  They are photos of us having  fun (well, most of the time); this is no  sombre memorial or obituary (in fact it is downright irreverent in all the right places) but simply an opportunity to put things down on record on the Internet. 

Though the photos and stories are not posted here at the moment, I am going to post a list of all the people  I can remember who met him or knew him.  That way, anyone not on the original Slimslist who is absent-mindedly Googling the night away might chance upon a name s/he recognises, and can make contact if interested; others could come up with yet more names of people who were around at the time.

Next: the great  list.

Introductions

Dave the Inebriated Puma’s alter ego is (of course) Ian Mocroft: born in August, 1951, in the West Midlands; went to Dudley Grammar School 1963-1969, then to University College London 1969-72, studying Economics and International Relations in the loosest sense of the word “studying”.  Worked as a social worker for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets 1972-75, then at the London School of Economics 1975-76.  Worked as a research assistant for the Wolfenden Committee on the Future of Voluntary Organisations 75-78, and as an academic researcher into voluntary and community organisations since then.  Lived in London until 1997, knowing the deep joys of such places as Stoke Newington, East Finchley, Balham and Streatham.  Moved to Faversham (Kent)  in 1997.  Other known pumas: wife, Daxi, two daughters, Alexandra and Rosalind.  Anyone who wants to find more detail can see more twaddle plus pictures on Friends Re-United.

 

Ancient photo from 1975, Cherry Tree Woods, Highgate, London. 

Next: why start writing this nonsense?

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One, two....one, two

Dave the Puma's alter ego is Ian Mocroft. He has tried to get rid of this affliction, but so far it has not worked. So Dave will try this out, and see how it goes......hence the test message...one, two, one, two. We shall try some more serious stuff in a day or two.