BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Fergie ‘too famous’ for bill ban
I’m with the judge here – the prospect of a Fergie doll is just too gruesome to contemplate. Presumably it would have auto red face function and special hairdryer effect…
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts | Diplomat ‘was real Shakespeare’…to which the most obvious reply is “yeah, right.” I wonder why there is such an industry trying to prove that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays. Jonson, who had an even less privileged background than Shakespeare, has never, to my knowledge, been doubted as the author of his plays, but most of the anti-Shakespeare brigade rest their case on some variation of the “he wasn’t bright enough to have written the works” argument. And whilst there is little we actually know for sure about Shakespeare, there is a historical record that documents his life, and various contemporaries said things in praise of him. I doubt whether the authors of this latest study have found any documents in which someone says definitively that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays. See also, the claims of the Marlowe Society that Marlowe wasn’t actually killed in a tavern brawl, but lived in exile – some believing that he wrote some “Shakespeare” too.
This book will join the rest of a surprisingly long list of books which reveal – absolutely definitely – that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Bacon, Queen Elizabeth, the Bishop of Llandaff, a committee, the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Rutland etc etc…
Of course, there is a radical alternative to these brilliant theses: maybe some bloke from Stratford was behind all those plays.
BBC NEWS | Education | Literary greats ‘key to English’
Well – who knew, eh?
Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | The price of unfairness
More on the Marlborough boy. Mark Lawson points out that the case is symptomatic of a society in which people think money entitles them to anything. I’m reminded of a student who didn’t attend, nor do any work, and didn’t respond to messages asking him to contact me. When I finally tracked him down, I told him I couldn’t see in what way he could be classified as a student. He was most put out – angry even – and insisted that he was a student. When I asked him on what basis he could claim that, against all the evidence, he said “I’ve paid my fees.” I hadn’t the heart to tell him his fees were no more than a contribution to the cost of his education, and that they would probably account for no more than a couple of months of his course. What concerned me more was his notion that simply by registering, and paying his tuition fee, he became a student – no study was involved, apparently.
Girl arrested over Bollocks to Blair shirt – Horse&Hound Online Here’s a first – a link to a story in Horse and Hound, not the urban vegetarian’s journal of choice. But this is ludicrous. No police were present at my workplace today when I was confronted by a trainee primary teacher wearing a tee-shirt with the marvellously witty slogan “Born to FCUK”.
BBC NEWS | England | Wiltshire | Schoolboy told Pc he was ‘scum’
More on this hilarious case, which I have mentioned before. I wonder if the father has ever stopped to think what he can possibly achieve? In the highly unlikely event of a successful prosecution, is he really going to send his son back to this apparently appalling school which has had the gall to expel his son? Apparently, he feels that raising the matter of his son’s public drunken and abusive behaviour aged 13 is fighting dirty – see here
As the secretary of the Independent Schools Council says: “”What you have is a boy who has 200 disciplinary offences in the last year. That’s one a day. So on a daily basis, to be blunt about it, he’s putting two fingers up to the school. And his father, instead of saying to his son, ‘Look, you’ve got to abide by school rules,’ is saying to the school, ‘You’ve got to put up with my son’s behaviour.” I’m sure many state schools are very jealous of the ability public schools such as Marlborough have to expel any pupil who doesn’t conform. The policy in state schools is to punish financially schools who expel disruptive pupils. Of course, if Mr Tony really was serious about education, education, education, he’d implement the long standing Labour pledge to abolish private schools, thus ensuring that the state system had an injection of well-motivated middle and upper class pupils. But don’t get me started on the school system. Instead, just check out this report on a school in Finland, and reflect that they have no national curriculum…
Update: the judge threw the case out today, Thursday, in a widely anticipated outcome. So sonny boy will have to be inflicted on another school. I’m sure the lawyers are watching with interest.
Chez Topsyturvydom, the evening meal normally takes place around 8. We tend to be accompanied by our newish digital radio (about three years’ worth of Nectar points since you ask) which is great unless it’s a Tuesday and Radio 2 has “The Organist Entertains”. If Radio 3 has what we musical boffins call “plinky plonky” music, then we turn to The Arrow. This is a digital station, and, at the times we listen anyway, sends you into a timewarp. There’s hardly any advertising, and hardly any dee-jay chattter, so I feel like I have walked into a teenage party circa 1972. Lots of Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Van Morrison, various hairy blues bands, some 60s stuff – Kinks, Beatles – a few obscurities – it’s the soundtrack to every party I attended between 1970 and 1974. Apart from a worrying predilection for Jeff Lynne era ELO, virtually every track will be very evocative for those of us just beginning to receive Saga brochures. The station announcements are always made in that portentous (and needlessly American) film trailer voice, which is somewhat incongruous for such a definitively British product, but I can put up with that, as I muse “Ou sont les neiges d’antan?” whilst trying to anticipate the lyrics to “Cindy Incidentally”…
Tagged by Kat – I’ll have to find a better hiding place. OK:
7 things I plan to do before I die:
1) Live a lot longer
2) Get fitter
3) Visit New Zealand
4) Experience Il Carnevale in Venice
5) Write a novel
6) Dance
7) Discover how to sleep comfortably with two cats on the bed
7 things I can do:
1) Cook a decent veggie meal (Current signature dish: tagliatelle in gorgonzola sauce – bit of a cholesterol bomb, actually)
2) Look over my glasses in a withering fashion
3) Form an opinion on a book without having read it (and, in the case of A level Literature circa 1981, teach a book without having read it…)
4) Throw sticks for dogs much further than you’d think
5) Remember obscure details of records from 1971.
6) Read newspapers for hours
7) Eat burnt toast
7 things I cannot do:
1) Text messages. Sorry, I meant txt msgs
2) Pass a cat without attempting to stroke it
3) Wait in stationary traffic
4) Allow meaningless mumbo-jumbo to pass unchallenged.
5) Play a musical instrument
6) Use the verb “deliver” to mean “teach”
7) Speak in tongues
7 things that attract me to another person:
I can’t actually think of seven things – how do you know what it is? That’s the mystery isn’t it?
7 things that I say most often:
1) Ludicrous!
2) Howzat? (at least, I’ve been saying that a lot during the Ashes)
3) onward and upward
4) Boris!
5) What’s for tea?
6) You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment
7) Yays (a la Ray McCooney in Little Britain)
7 celebrity crushes:
This touches a nerve. I’m not allowed to say any woman on TV/film is good looking, or ‘er indoors will thereafter refer to said woman as “your girlfriend”. Those who have filled this role range from Julie Andrews (I know…) to Courtney Cox to Cherie Lunghi…
I found this a rather unsettling exercise – and I don’t know why, it’s just a bit of fun, eh?- so I won’t tag anyone else.
Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | In memory of solipsismThis article by the combative Muriel Gray caused something of a backlash in the letters pages this week, but, aside from her somewhat gratuitously offensive conclusion, I’m with her. I live a fair distance from my place of work, about 30 miles, but, depending on my route, I will pass seven or eight makeshift memorials in that journey. If that is true throughout the country, then every five miles or so one is likely to encounter a windblown cellophane-wrapped bunch of faded flowers wrapped round a lampost. I know of one memorial which is actually on a motorway, so presumably the family of the dead person are driving there, stopping illegally and dangerously on the hard shoulder and tying their bunch of flowers to the base of a sign.
I suppose people will say it makes them feel better, and that it’s harmless. Actually, it could be harmful, if the related practice of building cairns is allowed to continue, as this letter by Ron Graves shows – and the previous letter gives the opposing view, but misses the point, I feel.
This all seems to have gathered speed following Diana’s death. The transformation in the British psyche now seems complete. We must emote, and we must do it publicly. There are times when the stiff upper lip would be welcome. Grieve, yes – but why make it a public spectacle? And aren’t graves rather than traffic lights at busy road junctions the best places for floral tributes?
Bee Docs’ Timeline – Featured Users I came across this interview via a link on John Naughton‘s blog. MB is one of the few reasons why a paid up liberal softie like moi would desert the Grauniad for the Indy, and this is a fascinating account of someone who straddles academia and journalism successfully. Not many do – John Sutherland is the only other in the field of Literature who springs to mind. Bywater makes a point that has occurred to me – that classicists have made much more of the web than modern literature folk. I’m not sure why that should be, but I do think there’s a lot of possibilities yet to be exploited by those of us in the field of modern and contemporary literature.