ITV News’s coverage of Trenton Oldfield’s interruption of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

Trenton Oldfield’s causing the cessation of the race today was justified (ante-hoc, it should be added) as a protest against elitism within the higher education sector and society more generally. This has, given his background as an LSE MSc graduate, provoked a backlash against his actions, with detractors accusing him of committing an act of hypocrisy: a beneficiary of such an ‘elite’ education cannot, coherently at least, protest against elitism within the higher education system, as was implied by his choice of venue for his protest.

It would not be sincere of me to defend Oldfield’s actions, but I cannot side with the groundswell of enmity being cast in his direction: the argument that is committing hypocrisy is a weak grounding for a condemnation of his actions, and invites, if not qualified, reductio ad absurdums such as appealing to the fact that, reasoning along the same lines, male feminists and white people against racism commit similar hypocrisy. Arguments along the lines of ‘these people trained six hours a day for six and a half months for the race’ shall not be made here, even though I do feel that they should carry some weight merely on considerations of respect for the rowers: it is sought that adequate qualification be given to the hypocrisy argument in order to make it appropriate.

The case of Oldfield is, for a start, qualitatively different to those of the male feminist: his lived experience is clearly such that he has benefited from ‘elitism’. were it not for the elite reputation of the LSE, he would have a £15,000 certificate with no reward for it, other than the pursuit of knowledge which, I will give him credit for noting, is becoming increasingly undervalued. Having had this ‘elite’ lived experience, it is unlikely that he will have experienced what it truly means to be a member of the ‘non-elite’. Such experience-by-proxy of is easier for male feminists to obtain: they interact with women (be they wives, mothers, daughters or friends) more regularly than, given the tradition of separation by class upheld in British society embodied throughout the public sphere (be this in education, through the private and state separation of schools, and then  of state schools into free schools, academies and bog-standard schools, or work, through tall hierarchical management structures), the ‘elites’ would with ‘non-elites.’ Being party to this experience through conversation or seeing first hand the treatment of people in the workplace is then much easier for the male feminist than the ‘elite’, and thus greater credibility is lent to the claims of the male feminist over those of the ‘elite’ against elitism.

Further to this, his protest against the boat race speaks to rallying against elitism no more than a knitting circle speaks to the subjection of women, given that the textiles industry is one traditionally dominated by a female workforce. We do not, however, see male feminists breaking up Women’s Institute meetings at which sewing takes place. This is indicative of the lack of understanding of the issues of ‘non-elites’ mentioned above.

The examples of race and gender have another key difference when compared to the matter of the ‘elitism’ to which Oldfield points: their characteristics of selection. The possession of an XX chromosome or an amount of melanin that differs from that of a Caucasian are far more arbitrary characteristics to select upon than those selected upon by Cambridge: the issues of colour and gender have no impact upon the ability of one to perform an intellectual task, the degree to which one can reason does have an impact. It seems as if he has protested against the wrong thing: rather than Oxford and Cambridge, his complaint appears to be a culture that values those of greater intellect, as that is defined, more than others. In order for him to be consistent, it appears that his problems are not with the institutions themselves but the context in which they are situated. Having attended and benefited from such an institution, it is certainly hypocrisy for him to strike out against them, rather than the context that provides them with such weight.

The shame is that Oldfield does have some good points to make: points that will, no doubt, be hidden behind the fact that he got in the way of an ‘elite’ boat. The remarks he has to make on the war on civil liberties currently taking place in the UK; the spending privileges afforded to the Olympics amid a supposedly austere spending culture in government; and the privatisation of public services will no doubt be drowned out by his choice of methods that had no bearing on what he was attempting to demonstrate.

I wrote four years ago about the then-Labour government’s plan to introduce a state-run database in which all telecommunication would be recorded. Perhaps with a great deal of naivety, I had thought that the ascension of the Liberal Democrats, a party much vaunted in the past for its campaigning record on civil liberties, to junior party status in a coalition government with the Conservatives, a party which has its own hard-core of civil libertarians, would mean the putting to bed of such plans. Especially in the light of their opposition to Labour’s plan four years ago, the fact that we are seeing potentially similar policy proposed by parties with such records is a matter of concern.

Among the largest problems with the policy is the fact that there has been no concrete policy announced yet: anything that is being said in the debate as to the particulars appears to be either arguments based upon the Labour proposals or arguments based on an overeager reading of Orwell’s 1984. The general message from the Home Office, however, appears to be that the intention is such that there be no centralised database of the content of communications, merely that these communications did happen. Even if we are to accept that this would be the case, and that no more data would be logged (which, given the ‘slippery slope’ that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 has descended from its original purpose, is something that should not be taken as a given), this argument of the non-monitoring of content ignores a simple technical corollary of the logging of all web pages visited: the logging of, for example, Google search pages visited implies the logging of the content also. If I search for ‘anarchist cookbook’, for an example of something that may prick up the ears of those monitoring, that exact search is reflected in the URL that will be logged. Indeed, the logging of any website visited implies that the content can be accessed, so long as that content does not require its viewer to log in. In the case of the web, at least, the logging of pages accessed is in no way different to the logging of the content accessed in most cases.

Further focussing on the proviso of the data to be held that it is to be only logs of the communications rather than the content, there are far more reasons why such policy would be impractical at best and impossible at worst. Given that Internet service providers do necessarily have access to both the content of the communications as well as simple logs of its existence, the provision of data, potentially in real-time, to GCHQ, it follows that a great exercise of further logging of communications (for example, of emails that are deleted) may have to be undertaken for companies to be in compliance with this legislation. Further to this, if it is only the data of the existence of communications that is to be provided, it will be necessary for Internet service providers to be able to filter communications in terms of the metadata associated with the senders and recipients of the communication and then the contents themselves. This would place an undue burden on providers that operate within the UK, and seems to be at odds with the Government’s stated commitment to providing a business environment within the UK conducive to growth in the technology sector.

The more fundamental issue at play is not this semantic issue in dealing with Government apologism for a clearly authoritarian policy: it is the invasion of the state into the realms of individual life that have least to do with it. Of course the issue of national security is an important one, and heed should be paid to it, but in paying such excessive heed to it as justification for the logging of the most tedious of exchanges via mobile telephone between mother and child; the nothings via Facebook chat of partners; the most inconsequential of email ‘banter’ between idiots: this is simply not what the state apparatus should be used for when the biggest threat to our society is the poorest among us feeling incredibly disenfranchised with the public sector’s service provisions and welfare safety net being pulled from under them. Especially in the light of the current Government’s excessive focus on deficit reduction, an expensive project to monitor the communications of individuals seems beyond reason. The Coalition Agreement’s commitment to “end the storage of internet and email records without good reason” appears to have come to nothing.

Video games have, for all of the attempts of journalists and those within the field to argue otherwise, have a reputation for being base, profane and lacking any real cultural import. I, for all of my sins, do put myself in the pretentious “video games as art” crowd, but admit that the medium does have a habit of not doing itself any favours when it comes to portrayal of sensitive issues such as race, violence, sex and, as shall be the focus here, gender. As in all cultural output, there are good and bad here, but there is unfortunately a great deal of bad.

The first example to be dealt with is that of the prevalence of the hostess club scenes and minigame in Yakuza 4. For the uninitiated (which included myself, prior to a little bit of Googling), hostess clubs are venues for salarymen to find company with a hostess, who will provide entertainment to the men including the pouring of drinks, flirtatious conversation and the singing of karaoke. Particularly common in East Asia, especially Japan, their inclusion in the first quarter of Yakuza 4, set in a fictionalised Kabukichō, Tokyo, makes both geographic and cultural sense. The way this in handled in the game, however, is beyond puerile and does simply objectify women. If one had the mind to, it is possible to spend hours preening over one’s hostess, ensuring that she is ‘just right’ for the batch of customers of that night. From dresses to makeup, it is all customisable to the nth degree. That is not even the worst part of the minigame’s depiction of women, however: all changes that are made to a hostess are measured upon a bizarre-yet-banal metric. A two-axis measurement delineates whether the hostess is currently tarted up in a ‘cute’, ‘gorgeous’, ‘flashy’ or ‘conservative’ way. The defence that will no doubt be proffered by those who would seek to defend the inclusion of such hideously obvious reduction of digitised women to their appearance on fairly base adjectives is that of culture: it’s a Japanese game, and Japanese cultural output tends to be quirky in such ways. This goes beyond quirk: it’s plain and simple reduction of women to appearance that should not be acceptable across any cultural boundaries. Everything else about how the story is told in this game is so right, but is marred by this little deviation into deviance.

Catherine is a puzzle game with a twist: a highly detailed story runs through the game that is incredibly sensitive to gamer choice. Though it does suffer from the ‘evil-or-angel’ dichotomy that moral choice in games tends to, it does do a good job of making decisions decisive in the story. The puzzle gameplay is also brilliant. Of course, its inclusion here would be redundant if that were all there were to say. The story of the game is premised upon some supernatural force turning cheating men’s dreams into life-or-death puzzle nightmares (this is an example of Japanese quirk), with other men in this puzzle-dream universe appearing to the player character as sheep. This holds for all of the sheep, with each only seeing themselves as human. This hits on two snags in its portrayal of gender: first of all, the supernatural being overseeing all of this horrible injury to men is female. This is typical of the sort of depiction of women as ‘man-eaters’ that is prevalent in any discourse describing strong women, and does a disservice to women who overcome whatever structural issues they face. Second, the men are white sheep: with white being a symbol of innocent and the sheep (in the Asian zodiac) represents something that is passionate about nature. This seems to propose a male essentialism and an implied sense of acceptability of adultery: this men are innocent as they are following their nature in cheating on their girlfriends. Again, it is an otherwise strong title being let down by how it portrays gender.

The third title to be dealt with here is faces somewhat of a different issue: its attitudes to gender are more compensatory than simply ignorant. The lead character is a Kill Bill’s Bride-esque female, who makes much of her femininity. As much as I approve of strong female characters in any medium, I also disapprove of the whoring of this strength-within-a-female trope until it becomes an issue of excessive ‘girl power’ as a selling point for the character. Tarantino’s Bride never gave me that sense of her gender really being an issue: yes, the storyline does play upon her being a jilted woman, but with good reason. In the case of Wet’s Rubi, her motivation is solely that of financial reward, playing into the more unfortunate women-as-money-hungry trope, something that cannot be abstracted from gender as the retribution of the Bride can.

The gold standard of treating gender in videogames has to be those of Hideo Kojima in the Metal Gear Solid series of games. To take examples from across the series, the first installment had Sniper Wolf: a character dealing with loss and the upbringing of a child soldier. Her gender is played upon, but only in so much as to soften the emotional exchanges between her and other characters. Yes, this does appeal to a feminine essentialism consisting in care and ‘softer’ emotions, but it is done with care not to make her a sufferer of 19th Century hysteria. Metal Gear Solid 2′s key protagonist, Raiden, is androgynous to the point of many characters in the game having to ‘check’ his gender by the rudimentary technique of grabbing: this fits in well with the overriding theme of the game being the manipulation of memetics in potential mechanisms of population control. Indeed, it is this trans-sensitive method in which this is treated that allows the game to make its point about all human expectations and goals being conditioned by the information available, much as the body dysmorphia felt by many transgendered people is told against the mores of the time.

Metal Gear Solid 3′s The Boss, however, is for the me the best example of Kojima’s brilliance in presenting women as good characters in videogames. Nothing at all is made of her gender until the end of the game, with the revelation that she gave birth to a child on the battlefield and has the makeshift cesarean scars to demonstrate this. Again, it is her gender making her vulnerable, but it adds to the depth of her character as being more than just a mercenary. Her gender is something that has led to defining experience for her: something that would be missing had she been treated in a gender-agnostic way. Storytellers in games would do well to follow the example of Kojima in his depiction of women especially.

Contemporary mainstream technology journalism, should it ever have drawn a single virgin breath since its being brought into the world, kicking and screaming, in the late 1980s. To assume even that, however, may be charitable: journalism in the field may well be better described as “stillborn.”

This may be seen to be strong rhetoric, and rhetoric that undermines the amount of man-hours and dedication put into the pursuit by writers and publications: this is not the intention. There are no doubts as to the commitment and passion for technology of those involved with technology journalism. The qualms to be presented here rest with the way in which technology is engaged with and presented by technology journalists, with a view to the steps necessary to bring much needed repute and respectability to the discipline.

Reporting of technology in the mainstream media is invariably tied up with the business applications of technology and technology business, rather than technology qua technology. Stories pertaining the slump or extortionate growth in sales of products dominate the headlines of technology articles in newspapers, and failing that articles about the ‘latest newest’ products from already well-established manufacturers: not a week will go by without speculation as to the release of the iProduct x, where x can be any combination of alphanumeric characters. Even here, the focus is on what this means for the bottom line of said well-established company: this should not be the focus of technology journalists, and should be left to be the preserve of the masochists writing about business. If these regurgitated press releases must be run as “technology news”, would it not be more sensible for the articles to focus on the technology of the products, rather than their financial ramifications?

A second perennial hurdle comes where articles are focussed on the technology itself: content is consistently dumbed down for mass consumption to the point of incoherence, inaccuracy or indeed both. This is also a problem faced by science reporting, but erroneous reporting on science at least has some prominent detractors such as the Guardian’s Ben Goldacre. There simply is, to my mind, no one of comparable prominence in the technology world being as vocal as Goldacre about standards of technology reporting. Admittedly, a lot of these errors may be fairly insignificant at a first glance. The BBC’s coverage of the Raspberry Pi (a single-board computer being designed in the UK to be available at low cost to schools in order that every child may have one) has stated that the device “is intended to run a version of the Linux open source operating system”: this statement is fundamentally true, but in accurate in its scope. Given the bevy of “open source” licenses available, all with different caveats and permissions for what one can do with the software (GPL, LGPL, BSD, Apache, etcetera, ad infinitum), it is somewhat misleading to imply that “open source” is a broad, all-encompassing church. Whilst less harmful, a parallel can be drawn here to the media’s coverage of the study published by Andrew Wakefield on a potential link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine: choosing one item within the church of this sort of research amidst hundreds of contradictory papers and representing this a truth led to a nationwide health scare. If we just take misrepresentation, be it through malice or laziness, as a bad thing, such omissions in technology journalism could be seen as blameworthy based upon the same moral principles evinced in the MMR case.

A more palpably ‘bad’ case of reporting being incomplete can be taken from the Guardian’s coverage of the proceeding of the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) through the US House of Representatives. Their coverage included the claims made by Google, Wikipedia and other prominent members of the Internet community that “the legislation would damage the Internet’s global structure.” Void of any further explanation as to why this would be the case, one would be forgiven for assuming that such a claim was nothing more than a histrionic fit on the part of those with a vested interest in the Internet as-is. The poignant part of this example is that it is not a particularly difficult claim to substantiate to even the most tech-illiterate individual: the argument would run that the Domain Name System (DNS) is what is responsible for translating user-friendly website addresses (such as google.com) into more computer-friendly IP addresses (such as 209.85.229.104); Sopa, as drafted, dictates that Internet service providers who provide a server that provides DNS functionality within the US block “questionable” websites by making users of that service’s request for that domain name point somewhere other than that site; many of the main servers that provide this functionality reside in the US; the Internet access of many in other nations is impeded by this blocking and thus the global structure of the Internet is damaged. This could lead to the perverse conclusion that Chinese users who use Google’s DNS servers to get around their country’s Internet censorship would be subject to a different sort of censorship in their so doing. Omission, here, serves to undermine the counterargument to the legislation proposed by those who know better on these matters, those who provide the service, to the point of it being made nonsensical. Context makes or breaks claims made by people on any side of an argument, and technical context is often missing from technology journalism.

The causes of these ailments seem to be simple both to identify and resolve: it seems to stem from a perception amongst writers and editors in the field that the layperson has either no need to or no interest in knowing details of technology news. Business-oriented technology news will always be sexier than technology or innovation-oriented technology news: it’s easier to sell number than detail. With the Sopa case, it is easier to sell generic claims rather than go into detail about them: talk of online piracy costing jobs and sales is easier to explain than why legislation of the Internet might break it. This thinking, however, does a disservice both to readers and the writers themselves:  people aren’t stupid, and many things aren’t too difficult to explain in terms of basic premises and conclusions. What the discipline needs is a realisation that people are ever increasingly tech-savvy, be it out of necessity or personal interest, and that this means that the technical aspects of technology articles are becoming increasingly intelligible and relevant. Given that media shapes the perceptions people have of their world, it would be responsible in a time when technology is becoming more and more relevant to the world economy to increase awareness of the field in a more complete manner.

Originally written for the Penguin, alternative newspaper of LSE students.

The conclusion of Lord Woolf’s Inquiry into the handling of Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi’s admission into the LSE and the subsequent management of his academic work both during the course of his Master’s in Philosophy, Policy and Social Value and in his PhD and the gift received by the School from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (GICDF) brings with it conclusions that have been dubbed “damning” in the national and international press. No doubt, the report of the Inquiry has cast aspersions as to the propriety of certain conduct of the School, but to take these elements of the Inquiry’s report at face value without considering the methodology of the report and normative claims made therein is to do a great disservice to both the School, the Inquiry and honest journalism. It is aimed that these elements be tackled here in order that a more rounded review of the report be given than seen in the press at large.

The crux of the criticisms made by Woolf pertaining to the admission of Gaddafi to the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method for his PhD study was based upon what Woolf terms the “idealism factor”: a factor explained by Luc Bovens, Head of the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, as being an “element of idealism present in providing an education to appropriately qualified students who also came with a promise that they might do some good for the world.” Nancy Cartwright, Professor of Philosophy in the Department and strong advocate of Gaddafi’s admission, further described the factor as  non-decisive in his acceptance to the Department, but as “an additional factor that [she had felt] important, that LSE is part of an international economic and political community and it hopes to train future national leaders.”

The factor, however, is not strictly applied to those “likely” to become national leaders and the promise of “changing the world” is not construed in a manner that excludes all but those who happen to the sons, relatives or followers of government heads: though Cartwright does explicitly mention “national leaders”, this may well be a slip into a verbal commitment to this given the context of the Inquiry. There are, arguably, a number of different ways that one can become a “leader” aside from the obvious leadership associated with governance: one could well make a case for one being a national cultural leader, a national leader in academia or a national religious leader just as easily as case for being a national government leader.

Woolf asserts that, given his rejection for a PhD from the Departments of Management and Government, Gaddafi’s application to the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method was aided by the Department’s policy on “idealism”. As a response to such a subjective influence making their way into admissions procedures, Woolf recommends that the “idealism factor” not come into decisions as to admissions of students as such criteria being used would lead to candidates incapable of reaching the necessary standard for PhD qualification. If this were to be the case, it would become more and more difficult to “cut the cord” on the research project when it was clear that it was going nowhere due. This would be the case because both the candidate and the academics involved in the supervision of the thesis would have invested too much time and effort to be willing to just sever ties with it. The response that Woolf appears to endorse, based upon a consultation with John Sutton, Professor of Economics at LSE, a system of sub-committees within each department to deal with admissions and thereby add a sense of rigid uniformity across applications within departments.

Such a policy, however, as both Woolf and Sutton concede, would lead to “[the loss] of the opportunity to educate great world leaders”: a concession that seems plausible. Their shared assertion that such a problem is a “small price to pay for maintaining academic standards, because that is our business,” however, is less convincing: it is, of course, very important, that the School’s integrity regarding academic matters be upheld, but this should not come at the expense of being able to educate future world leaders and being able to provide them with analytic tools that lead to better decision making. There is no point being a leading institute of the social sciences if the focus of the research is to be on merely the theoretical rather without any real scope for the application of theory developed. If such a system of unified application were to be imposed by the School upon the departments, this would infringe upon the autonomy traditionally enjoyed by departments within the School: Woolf dismisses any concern for this by stating that the imposition of order and uniformity does not infringe upon the autonomy of departments as they can still work within this framework of their own will. Whether this, however, would be sufficient as a matter for debate: within an institution such as LSE, even though all of the departments are those of social sciences (save for mathematics), there is a large range of approaches and subject material within them. Whether a top-down imposed system of admissions could be functional for all departments within the School remains an open empirical question, with huge risks involved in trying to close it by trial.

Aside from the issues raised by the discussion of the “idealism factor” in admissions procedures, the methodology of Woolf seems somewhat problematic. Much of the report is based upon interviews conducted with both internal LSE and external sources and, if only for the lack of a mention of anything otherwise, these interviews appear to be conducted and assessed on a basis of good faith rather than any legally binding agreement of honesty. This may well open the door to accusations of collusion between interviewees as to their stories and experiences of the Gaddafi affair in order that people’s backs be covered. Of course, one may argue that, under the rubric of Flood and Dresher’s Prisoner’s Dilemma, that the ultimate end of such a scheme of cooperation would be that all defect from any agreements in an attempt to maximise their respective payoffs. Such assumptions, however, may not apply here: the Dilemma is based upon the assumption that the solution of defect-cooperate leads to the greatest individual payoff for she who defects, and the lowest payoff to those who cooperate. In this instance, it may be that the stakes were sufficiently high for those who were potentially to defect from pre-arranged agreements of mutual dishonesty not to do so, due to the impact of the truth on themselves. The loss of a high-status post may be a greater utility loss than the loss of freedom of a criminal. In such an instance, these lies are made viable for collective action due to the total of potential losses of an individual involved.

The dependence upon documents released by the LSE to the Inquiry also casts doubt upon the veracity of the conclusions drawn by the Inquiry: if one is to be dependent upon information released from a body that may well have something to hide, it follows that one should be sceptical as to the completeness of the information given. While this may seem paranoid, the School had a lot to lose in terms of anything further than that which was already known coming to light over the course of the Inquiry.

The Gaddafi fiasco marks a historic moment in the heritage of LSE: with accusations of both financial and academic impropriety, it is important that the coverage of this in the media and within the School alike be shaped by a complete and fair-minded analysis both of events and of the conclusions drawn from the report of the Woolf Inquiry. The simple-minded reporting of the affair thus far has been to point fingers at those who are implicated within the report: this is simply not sufficient. The quality of evidence, analysis of this evidence and basis of the normative claims made within the report need to be taken into account just as much as any conclusions derived from these made by Woolf: just as anything follows from a contradiction, anything follows from false or incomplete evidence.

Taken from an article written between me and another writer (Nathan Briant) having spoken to Andy Burnham MP for the Beaver’s Features section. Good bloke. This is my section of the article.

Andy Burnham seems unable to come across as anything but a ‘good bloke’: as Nathan has already said, it would not be unfeasible for anyone to see themselves in a pub with him. Whether this boon in style is backed up by anything more substantive, however, may well be up for debate.

I must admit, before any real critique of Burnham’s talk to us is gotten into, that my experience of him was coloured by an answer to one of my questions: in a probably wine-induced lapse in judgement, I asked where Burnham thought I was from based upon my accent. Being a man born outside of the M25, I assumed that the would have been around a bit and heard my dreadful accent somewhere between WS1 and WS15, given his prior admission that he had been to Bescot Stadium to see the excellent display that is lower-league football. The Right Honourable Gentleman, however, completely missed the mark: I was told that I was from ‘the East.’ I’ve heard some odd things for where people think that I am from before, from Cambridge to North London, but I simply resent the implication that I sound like I could be from Norfolk or Suffolk. Credence must be given to him, however, for lamenting the necessity of taking an edge off one’s accent (if one is from certain parts of the country) to facilitate social mobility.

Nathan’s question about the implications of grammar schools on social mobility faced an incredible wall of reticence from Burnham; my question as to the tangible difference between the “streaming” of students in comprehensive schools by ability and the separation of students by ability practiced by grammar schools was met with the same reaction. He started by completely avoiding the question by stating that he felt that “school is about more than exam results.” Here, I cannot disagree with him: part of the role of school is that of socialising the next generation of people. Indeed, this is what he went on to say, with him saying that “[education] works better if you’re all taught together in the mix that you will find in the workplace and life in general.” This, as an argument for comprehensive education, seems a little flat to me: it appears to be premised on the assumption that grammar school students are a homogeneous grouping of factory-produced automatons: something that my own experience of going to a grammar school leads me to somewhat doubt. Indeed, the grammar school I attended was probably more ethnically diverse than the comprehensive I would have attended: if anything, it gave me a better impression of the ‘real world’ than I otherwise would have had. The socioeconomic diversity of the school was probably lesser, I will concede, but that is probably attributable to the catchment area of the school being eight miles around Sutton Coldfield, one of the most middle-class enclaves of Birmingham. Further to this, people in comprehensive schools that stream students aren’t all taught together: whether this is wilful ignorance or otherwise from Burnham, it’s a poor demonstration of his capacity to fulfil his job if the coalition were to dissolve tomorrow and Labour somehow end up in power.

Of course, personal experience clouds my judgement on this, but his musings on grammar schools and their relationship with social mobility also seemed to be a little incoherent. He acceded to the fact that grammar schools had a positive impact on social mobility, yet wanted to say that comprehensives have a greater effect. He did not, however, until Nathan presented him with an incredibly leading statement to the tune of “well, it’s a utilitarian argument, isn’t it? More people benefit under comprehensive education than under a stratified system.” It seemed to me that Burnham only managed to speak with real conviction when somebody around him was aping his views: perhaps typical politicking, or perhaps just more evidence for him being a really ‘nice guy.’

Perhaps due to his father’s fortunes, having failed his 11+, Burnham laboured the point of the unfairness of the selective school system: “I don’t think that you can tell kids at age eleven and fourteen that ‘you’re second class, you’re going to a second class institution’” being the most aggressive rhetoric employed by him throughout the entirety of his conversation with us. There is no way that I can disagree with him on this, and in the UK’s tripartite system there was no real way to shift between strata of schools. He seems, however, to implicitly deny the possibility of a system like that of Germany, whereby one can move from a Realschule to a Gymnasium, given high academic achievement. Such a process may serve to allay his fears of a lack of recognition of the fact that children develop intellectually at different rates and that thus the “separation [of children] before [full intellectual development] is completely arbitrary.” “Putting people on tramlines to a less advantageous place” may not occur through selective schooling if there is always scope for the movement of students from one strata of school to another based upon merit.

Another bone of contention to be had between myself and Burnham was to be found in his belief that education would be separate from religion “in an ideal world” but that this was not really feasible given “the social role played by the Church in the past”. Given the increasing irrelevance of the Church to the lives of most within the UK, why the Church should continue to play a role in education is unfathomable to me: I didn’t perceive this as diplomacy from him, either. This was genuine conviction. As he was himself educated in a Catholic school, maybe he is blind to the moral issues concerning the imbuing of traditional Christian values in education; or maybe he is just attempting to put across a  laissez-faire approach to government involvement so currently in vogue. Either way, this faith in religious education is unsatisfactory to me.

In what may have been yet another wine-centred decision, we asked after Burnham’s favourite Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Burnham cited Norman Lamb as this Liberal Democrat de jour, with their relationship being cemented by the work they did together on social care. With this friendship in mind, it’s interesting to watch the debate on the increase in numbers of managers within the NHS between Burnham, Lamb and Andrew Lansley: there is a certain look of intense animosity when Burnham glances over at Lamb, roughly parallel to that which a Westminster Councillor would give to a homeless person. For his Conservative pick, Burnham opted for Simon Burns: a man, apparently, ‘not without his imperfections and foibles.’ One can only project one’s own imperfections onto a stranger to try and work out what on Earth was being hinted at there.

To say that talking to Andy Burnham was not enjoyable would be to completely misrepresent the truth: he is a fine conversationalist and more than willing to take time with student journalists – something which definitely puts him in my favour. Whether he was telling the truth from the Party, from himself as a man, from himself as a politician or whether he was just talking and trying not to offend still remains up for debate: I can only hope that he begins to assert himself more in order to challenge the destructive education policies currently being followed by the Conservatives.

Written for the Beaver’s Features.

Given the context of his resignation, it is understandable that the achievements of Howard Davies during his two terms as Director of the School have been somewhat relegated to the recesses of most people’s–staff and students alike–subconsciouses. It is important, however, to realise that questionable funding is not all that he has brought to the School over the course of his eight-year tenure: while he may be receiving a drubbing in the national press, the Beaver recognises the worth of a more holistic view of his work.

During his first year, Howard Davies oversaw both the raising of fees to £3,000 and the introduction of the LSE’s bursary scheme, which was to become one of the most generous of all UK universities. Indeed, perfectly in keeping with his suggestions that the charging of £9,000 per year undergraduate fees was “not right”, he said at the time that it was necessary to “continue to recruit students from disadvantaged communities.” The purchase of the New Academic Building was also overseen by Davies: a building which was to expand the ability of the School to teach and house the Department of Management and Department of Law. In his 2004-5 Director’s Report, Davies stated that the teaching capacity of the School was to be increased from 7,500 to 9,000 by 2012; this was achieved by 2009. During this period, the School also gained powers to award its own degrees, rather than being a mere constituent college of the University of London. In the academic year 2005-6, Davies oversaw further acquisition of property by the School: the towers on Clements Inn, Lillian Knowles House and Northumberland House were acquired. Passfield Hall was also refurbished during that year: all of these acquisitions and changes served to improve quality of life and quality of teaching for students.

The decline in student satisfaction over the course of his tenure did concern Davies: in every Director’s Report, he referenced these declines. He commissioned a Teaching Task Force under Janet Hartley to attempt to ascertain the causes behind the decline, with the results showing that class sizes needed to be reduced and promotion opportunities be linked to teaching performance. In 2007-8, he aided the LSE in obtaining two grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), leading to the establishment of a research centre dedicated to spacial economics, led by the Geography Department, and a research centre dedicated to climate changed headed by Lord Stern – the Grantham Institute. The level of bursaries, awards and scholarships awarded have increased at a rate above student body growth over the years of Davies leadership.

Davies has suffered incredibly poor luck during his tenure: the School lost a large amount of research funding in 2008-9. Even during these difficult times, however, the School recruited more teaching staff in an effort to reduce class sizes. Though the level of surplus that the School maintains is often criticised, the careful management of the School’s finances has served to enable it to carry on somewhat unaffected by the government’s prioritisation of STEM subjects.

For some, it may well be that these achievements are far outweighed by the acceptance of suspect funding and the training of future Libyan leaders under the Executive Education programme. It must be borne in mind that Davies has stated in a BBC Radio 4 interview that he “jumped” and that he had the full support of the LSE Council in continuing with his role. This all points to him being willing to become a martyr over the situation, especially when combined with the “reputational” damage that the School has suffered being his core reason for resignation.

One must bear in mind that the Council operates on a basis of consensus and that the Director has no more say in matters than any other Council member. Fred Halliday, as the sole person giving any dissent on the issue, is the only person free from any blame in the situation. From the minutes of the LSE Council meetings where the issue was discussed, the then General Secretary of the LSE Students’ Union, Aled Dilwyn Fisher, is just as culpable: his remarks in both the June and October meetings seem to point only to his assent of the discussion of such matters, with no substantive comments made.

Peter Sutherland, Anne Lapping, Ros Altmann, Stephen Barclay, Chris Brown, Angela Camber, Alan Elias, Mario Francescotti, George Gaskell, James Goudie, Janet Hartley, Kate Jenkins, Paul Kelly, David Lane, David Marsden, Ashley Mitchell, Eileen Munro, George Philip, Brian Smith, Sarah Worthington, Anthony Battishill, Vivina Berla, Bronwyn Curtis, Alan Elias, Tim Frost, Robin Mansell, and even the unimpeachable Shami Chakrabarti, are just as open to blame as Davies. To heap blame at the door of Davies is to merely scapegoat with no reason.

Written for the Beaver’s Features.

For some people, professional misfortune is just something that follows them around: those involved with the disposal of sharps in flimsy gloves; those responsible for the cleaning up of fields after music festivals; and, of course, music industry executives, whose misfortunes seem to increase exponentially with each technological leap forward humanity makes. The media industries seem to be terrified of anything that would have a use in customers more fully using their purchases: whether it be the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) filing against Diamond Multimedia over the concept of space-shifting media from hard drive to MP3 player or the furore over time-shifting implicit in the Sony vs. Universal City Studios case over the ability of Betamax to record television shows, the logic apparent in their reasoning seems to be based upon an implicit assumption that single purchase is not enough for the media conglomerates to be satisfied with the custom of individuals if they expect to be able to use the purchased on all devices they may own.

The latest target of the wrath of media companies has been streaming media services such as Spotify, YouTube and Pandora: the analysis of the NPD Group, published this week, demonstrating that consumption of music has increased from 18.5 hours per week in 2009 to 19.7 hours per week in 2010, in combination with a decrease in music purchasing from 70% of people purchasing music in 2006 to only 50% in 2010, had led media executives to conclude that the new models of music distribution are cheating the industry. With the sales of digital music increasingly only from 14 per cent in 2006 to 23 per cent in 2010, the massive decrease in CD sales between 2000 and 2010 (from around $70 per capita in 2000 to around $15 per capita in 2010 in the US), it doesn’t seem to be that even their half-hearted secession to the inevitability of the Internet becoming a serious marketplace for media has had the desired effect.

While this is a change from the traditional rhetoric of blaming peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies such as BitTorrent for the woes of the industries, the coherence of their argument seems to be a bit lacking. These streaming services may be free at the point of access to the consumers, but it is certainly not the case that these services themselves do not pay for the rights to use the music: in the case of Spotify, based in the UK, licensing costs of 0.085 pence are charged by the Performing Rights Society (PRS) for each track listened to by any user. At a conservative estimate of one million listeners using the service per day with each listening to twenty-four tracks per day, this racks up around £600,000 for the PRS per month. Such a figure serves to undermine any of the traditional rhetoric espoused by the industry in its attempts to secure stricter legal rights over the content it produces, and any arguments thus to be made against the legality of the licensing-to-stream as the precedent currently permits it.

Such rhetoric usually takes the form of separate moral and economic rationales. The moral reasons take the form of four core arguments: creation, personhood, autonomy and desert. The creation arguments stem from a intuitively inherent right in the act of creation to have executive rights over the product of their labours, as long as this claim is not to hurt others. The arguments from autonomy is essentially an instance of the Lockean sentiment that one should be able to own what one mixes one’s labour with: to enable the respect of one’s autonomy, the products of one’s exercise of autonomy should have their ownership conferred unto them. Personhood arguments are similar to those of autonomy, with the labours of creation serving to embody the personality of the labourer in the product: for this reason, the personhood of the individual should be protected by the investment of rights in the creator. Desert-oriented arguments stem from a feeling that creators of works deserve to have rights over the dissemination of their work due to the effort expended in its creation or due to the cultural contribution made by the work. The moral elements of arguments against any streaming-based distribution seem vacuous: the rights of creators to maintain ownership of their goods are maintained under all of the four moral claims above due to the nature of the payment of royalties. Ownership rights are not at all infringed where the creators are paid in exchange for the their product: as this is the basis of all exchanges.

Economic rationales thus remain the sole justification that can be offered for the industry’s insistence upon streaming services being a cause of their falling revenues; such justifications, however, seem to be a little empty. The dictates of the market are such that companies should be expected to adapt and evolve in the face of new technologies, or else go to the wall. The preservation of old market models through legislation restrictive on the use of media by the individual seems nothing more than a cynical lack of desire to move with the times on the part of the big media companies.