Jowellgate continued
BBC NEWS | UK | Tessa Jowell splits from husband
Interesting that this has happened now. Am I just terminally cynical, or is this a case of a marriage being sacrificed for a ministerial career?
It wasn’t me…
There’s an episode of The Simpsons, where Bart’s instant denial of wrong doing – “It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it” etc. leads to a brief spell of fame, as his catchphrase catches on. The standard Labour government minister’s catchphrase must be “I didn’t know”, with the occasional “I wasn’t aware”, “I don’t recall” and so on. Consider: Tessa Jowell “wasn’t aware” that her husband had paid off their mortgage with a £300,000 “gift”. Similarly, Mr Tony “didn’t know” that the fragrant Cherie had splashed out £250,000+ on a luxury flat for their son. Jack Straw “couldn’t recall” why he had written “Zola Budd” in the margin of some papers about the Hinduja brothers’ application for citizenship. Peter Mandelson “wasn’t aware” that he should have declared his loan from a fellow minister to buy a bijou London property. John Prescott’s failure to pay eight years’ worth of council tax on one of his many homes was “an oversight”. And so it goes. This government was elected on the promise of honesty, transparency, plain dealing. You’ll permit me a hollow laugh…
…and relax…
The scene – our local Thresher (tip: only go there if you are buying three bottles of wine, as their pricing structure is based on 3 for 2, which works out at about supermarket prices) Two women of about 20 are in front of me. They have clearly dashed out from their workplace, because they are both wearing some kind of uniform under their coats. I can make out the words spa and relaxation on, curiously, their trousers, so I’m guessing they work in some sort of beauty parlour.
Woman number 1 is on her mobile to a friend -“We’ve had to come out to the booze shop. There’s 50 clients in there, and we’ve run out of drink. So we’ve just dashed in here to get some, and then we’ll be back.” She pays for her purchases whilst still on the phone. What did she buy? One bottle of rose Lambrusco and two cartons of orange juice. I bet the 50 clients appreciated that…
Get your red pens out now…
Richard and Judy Summer reads – read extracts of all them Free: “False Impression is Jeffrey Archer’s latest pacy thriller that no fan should miss and you can win one of five uncorrected proofs.” Presumably there’s a prize of a book by a real author if you do all the corrections…
Health and Safety
BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | 21 rescued after floor collapses
They should have done a risk assessment first…
Ties that bind
BBC NEWS | Health | Doctor ties ‘to go in MRSA fight’
So all doctors are men, apparently?
Bloody Hell!
This is another of Owen Barder’s fantastic spoofs – trouble is, they are getting ever closer to reality. I think we are arriving at a point where the government will be beyond parody…
Trouble at t’Mill
BBC NEWS | Education | Academics vote for strike action
Well, it had to happen. Don’t you think Jocelyn Prudence is the perfect name for the employers’ negotiator?
Intute indeed…
Just had an email from the RDN – Resource Discovery Network – a name which means what it says. It’s a network by which you can discover resources. That isn’t good enough, though. Oh, no. They are going to change the name. So here’s the reasoning behind it:
The RDN has taken specialist advice and, with the approval of the JISC and the RDN Board of Management, has decided to relaunch the service with a new name. The RDN will become Intute and the Hubs will take the name of their new subject group. Whilst Intute is not an existing word or acronym we hope it will develop its own set of associations matching the service’s vision.
Humbul and Artifact will join together, led by Oxford in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan, to become Intute: Arts and Humanities.
As if the examples of Accenture, Consignia and the rest weren’t warning enough…
Cut ‘n’ paste
I’m currently dealing with a plagiarism case where a student has copied all of two pieces of work – and, rather cunningly, I thought, used books not easily available physically or as e-books, but ones which feature whole pages on Google book search and Amazon “Look inside”. The student can’t actually cut and paste, but has retyped the passages word for word. A couple of sections are cut and pasted from online articles. Not a word of the student’s assignments is original. Like every other institution, we have a policy on coursework that requires the student to sign a declaration that work submitted has not been plagiarised. So I’m not surprised by this item in today’s Nick Cohen column in the Observer:
How to succeed the cut and paste way
Each year, ever more illiterate and innumerate undergraduates go to university and demand to be spoon-fed answers, revealed the Times Higher Education Supplement last week.
The 250 admissions tutors, who confessed to their despair at standards in secondary schools, weren’t completely without hope. They thought their remedial courses might knock them into shape. I’m not so sure. According to the Plagiarism Advisory Service – and, yes, such an outlandishly named body exists – one quarter of students admit to cutting and pasting from the net. Universities have computer programmes to detect lifted work, but have to confront students who can’t see what’s wrong with plagiarism. Many got through school exams on the strength of course work parents and teachers ‘helped’ them complete. The concept of cheating is a novel one for them.
On top of that are the pressures on the university authorities to cheat themselves. Overseas students are a lucrative source of revenue and the manner in which universities guaranteed cash flow by giving dim foreigners degrees has been an open scandal for years. Lecturers are now facing similar pressure to reward British students unjustly because of New Labour’s demand for ‘inclusive’ higher education.
I asked Susan Bassnett, pro-vice-chancellor of Warwick University, if it was possible to go from nursery to university in this country without learning anything. She replied: ‘You can certainly get a 2:1 without demonstrating the capacity for independent thought and without acquiring basic skills.’ Foreign students are now abandoning Britain for countries with serious universities with worthwhile degrees. Perhaps, Bassnett added, the loss of their money will force our authorities to face the disaster they’ve created.
What’s really depressing is that a pro-VC of one of our most prestigious universities can admit that a 2:1 can be had without, essentially, doing anything like higher level study. I can confirm, though, that the concept of cheating does seem to be a novel one for many students. I’ve had to patiently explain in words of one syllable to several students this year that no, it is not OK to simply copy something and hand it in as your own work…