Schools ‘avoid Holocaust lessons’
BBC NEWS | Education | Schools ‘avoid Holocaust lessons’
Who do they think they’d offend? The local Nazi children?
Writing for profit?
Recent analyses of what writers earn confirm pretty much what we all knew anyway, which is that, unless you are JK, or Salman, don’t give up the day job. That is, unless you can live on four grand a year.
In that financial climate, the claims of the mail-order writing schools look a bit dubious. But they must do good business, or they wouldn’t be able to afford the extensive advertising that promotes their services. And, of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating isn’t it, so the successful authors they feature in their ads will prove how good they are, won’t they?
Well, up to a point. In the ad featured here, a prominent success story is Jon Eagle and his novel Red. Jon apparently received £25000 as an advance – pretty impressive for a first novel, eh? – and has sold the film rights. He tells us he’s working on the script. All very interesting, if true. I did a little research.
Jon Eagle did publish a book called Red– but he published it in 1996, which makes you wonder why The Writers Bureau is using it as an example. Surely, they have more recent success stories? What’s more, according to the details on Amazon, it was published by Minerva. This notorious company was a shady vanity publishing outfit, and thus far more likely to charge the author than to fork out 25 grand as an advance. The BBC investigated this company, and the consequent publicity led to their downfall. Two anonymous Amazon reviewers in 1998 said how great the novel was (that’s handy!), but it remains out of print, and only available second hand for a trifling £246.73 – but hurry, there’s only one. At least there’s the film, eh? Well, no, actually. The IMDB doesn’t list the author as a scriptwriter, and none of the various films called Red seem to relate to his book. One of those anonymous reviewers says it’s to be turned into a TV drama, but I can’t find any reference to it.
OK – but what about the others? Keith Gregson claims to have earned £10,000 for writing lots of articles in a year. This one seems pretty kosher. He has his own website, has published a lot of articles on local history themes, and has clearly got himself a nice little niche. He’s one of the Bureau’s Writers of the Year in fact. Ten grand will supplement his pension – he’s a retired teacher – but it’s hardly the “very good money” mentioned in the ad.
The third star pupil is Christina Jones who breathlessly announces that her first three novels are bestsellers. Hmmm… funny that her name doesn’t appear in any list of bestsellers I’ve seen. Anyway, she’s happy – writing has changed her life. Odd then, that on her website, she attributes her success to meeting an agent at a Romantic Novelists Association event. She says she did the Writers Bureau non-fiction course a year later – so here’s someone who was already a published writer of fiction before doing the course, which wasn’t about fiction anyway…She also reveals here that she’s still working as a barmaid at weekends. You’d think a bestseller would be beyond that, wouldn’t you?
In sum, then, the ad is at best disingenuous, and at worst downright misleading. If you are tempted to enrol, I’m sure you could do better.
Like, you know
More from Taylor Mali. Once again, he’s absolutely on the button with this demolition of vagueness in speech.
Hat tip: anonymous.
Taylor Mali on what teachers make
The perfect riposte to the old “those who can, do…” canard.
Jane Aus
Classic FM tell me that, to mark Mothering Sunday, they are podcasting Jane Austen novels, or, as they put it “complete abridged re-telling of these romantic classics”. That’s got to be better than the shortened abridged version, hasn’t it?
Radio Daze
Chez Topsyturvydom, we no longer have one of Mr Baird’s televisual apparatuses, so the wireless is our main mass medium. The DAB radio in the kitchen is habitually tuned to Radio 4, with Radio 2 providing the meal soundtrack, except on Tuesdays. At other times, we’ve recently tried theJazz. Although I can’t be doing with trendy interCapitals, I feel this station might prove a winner.
Basically, it’s jazz, mainly of the 50s and 60s, played without adverts, and without DJs. It’s owned by Classic FM, so presumably at some point it will become awash with commercials and presenters. At the moment, all you hear between tracks is someone who sounds very like John Thompson (probably because it is John Thompson) saying fatuous things like “Listen up to The Jazz…” He doesn’t say “Nice” in his Fast Show voice though.
What you get is oodles of Ella, lashings of Louis, bags of Billie, miles of Miles and other stars of the fifties and sixties. Which is nice. It’s as if someone has seen one of those lists of “the hundred best jazz albums ever” and has bought them all, and is obsessively playing the stand-out tracks. Programming seems entirely random, so you might hear “God Bless the Child” by Billie Holiday, and then again by some big band three songs later. And they don’t seem to have that many records…
There’s nothing experimental – I did hear a bit of Keith Jarrrett, but that’s as far as it goes, and the only modern stuff is by pseudo-jazzers such as Jamie Cullum and Madelaine Peyroux. No trad, either. So, although generally pleasant, not a patch on the sublime Humph, whose show is a must-hear in these parts.
I’ve not, however, heard on Humph or TheJazz anything by Georgie Fame, coolest man on the planet. I’ve been listening recently to his album Sound Venture, forty years old, and sounding as brilliant now as it did then. He is in great form, appearing as vocalist with the Harry South band, whose line-up is amazing: Stan Tracey, Tubby Hayes, Dick Morrisey, the absolute pick of British jazz of the day. George sings some of his own stuff, some Lambert and Hendricks, and even persuades Harry to blast out a great version of Papa’s Got a Brand New bag. It’s all marvellous stuff, and in these days of endless reissues it’s bizarre that you have to get it via Japan. That does mean that it comes in a very funky mini-LP format though, a CD sized replica of the original sleeve – and with 9 bonus tracks. Bliss!
Queen Coleen
I’ve read the Guardian, man and boy, for a very long time- but after reading today’s issue, I’m seriously considering a change. The front page – the front page! – of today’s issue is dominated by a photo of Coleen as Venus. The Weekend magazine’s main feature is a further portfolio of her in the guise of the woman in various famous paintings. Even if Ms McLoughlin had achieved anything in her life other than being the girlfriend of Mr Potato Head, this still would represent an extravagant waste of the paper’s resources, and constitute an insult to its readers, who buy the paper to be informed about national and world events, to read the reviews, to enjoy lively and well-written features by good writers. Instead, we get a huge publicity puff for a totally worthless book. She is, apparently, “an icon”. God help us.
We don’t ignore cheating
This annoyed me. I do wonder how you can possibly come up with a figure of 10% of all work being plagiarised if you then say that most of it is undetected. Of course, it’s just “estimated” – but on what basis, we aren’t told. What this means is – someone just made it up. Doubtless, though, since this is the BBC, the 10% figure will now get quoted as if it’s a verifiable fact.
Well, here are some facts: I have yet to meet a colleague in HE who doesn’t take the issue of plagiarism very seriously. I have never known of a colleague ignoring plagiarism. In every case of proven plagiarism I have come across, the student has been given an appropriate punishment, up to and including failure of the degree. Students are aware of plagiarism, and don’t just copy things from a screen, unless they are very stupid, or very desperate, or both- and when they do, they are usually found out.
Introducing the book
I loved this. I was reminded of an old cartoon, showing a monk slumped over a manuscript weeping. Two other monks are watching, and one says “I see the copier’s broken down again!”
Hat tip: Bibliobibuli
Result!
The poo woman has finally had to concede defeat. Hurrah! This is all down to the efforts of the excellent Ben Goldacre and his Bad Science column.