Note to the BBC: Leave the Queen alone

I think the 24 hour news coverage of the election has finally broken me. The moment in which it happened was during the ten o'clock news last night, when Nicholas Witchell was standing outside the Palace, saying that the Monarchy had 'plans' in the event that a hung parliament came to pass (I'm paraphrasing slightly, though the full article can be viewed here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8667820.stm).

I was left wondering, really? What plans? Where does the Queen keep them? Under her bed? When she was told of the hung Parliament news, did she spit out her tea, pull a handle which opened a secret door to the "hung parliament" room and immediately order the plans be put into effect? Apparently, she's been consulting constitutional lawyers, so she can be prepared for "any eventuality". Again, you have to love reporters' rhetoric, because the word "eventuality" brings to mind a situation in which Brown, Cameron and Clegg would duel to the death outside Downing Street. Or the Queen, sensing there will be no overall winner, activates another lever which sinks the Houses of Parliament into the Thames, similar to Marineville in Stingray. Because that's what the Constitutional lawyers told her must happen. The use of constitutional lawyers makes you think that, as the BBC themselves write in the same article, the Queen hasn't experienced a Hung Parliament before. In fact, the last one was in the 17th century, and the only record is on a mysterious scroll at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

So then the Queen has to dispatch a secret team of archaelogists to get it back, whose leader looks a lot like Nicholas Cage.

Admittedly these are all my crazy flights of fancy. But seriously boys, you can stop speculating as to conversations in Buckhingham Palace you didn't see and probably didn't happen. But then ,where would the fun be if we didn't narrativise everything? I'll leave you with a few of these gems

'The Palace has also been consulting several leading academics who specialise in constitutional law. They have assisted the Palace in preparing for any eventuality, and they will be on hand over coming days to offer further advice if called upon.'

"The Queen will watch how things unfold"

It's all so brilliantly speculative. The advisors will be on hand if called upon. I bet they'll just be watching the snooker

Leave our icons alone Part 2

Following on from the media frenzy over whether Matt Smith could halve the budget deficit- duh, I mean replace David Tennant, another television icon of the Noughties who was shamelessly fought over this week (albeit in a more specifically political context) was Gene Hunt, of 'Life on Mars' and 'Ashes to Ashes' fame. Labour's decision to use David Cameron's face on Gene Hunt's body, with a slogan 'Don't Let David Cameron take us back to the Eighties',backfired spectacularly and led to a mirror Conservative campaign saying 'Fire Up the Quattro, it's time for change.'

Gene Hunt ranks amongst one of the greatest popular television characters of the last five years. In his original 'Life on Mars' appearances, he was a perfect foil for John Simm's thoughtful and ultra PC character, Sam Tyler. In his first episodes, he was simply an unaccommodating policeman of another age, who had some brilliant lines along the way. Unfortunately, the BBC asked that he be resurrected for another series, and thus 'Ashes to Ashes' was born. In its fascination with Hunt and the recent past, subsequent episodes of the sequel series have seen Glenister's character sometimes become a parody of himself.

If that isn't a thundering metaphor for the whole 2010 election, I don't know what is.

Leave our icons alone...

It seems that in the wake of 'The Eleventh Hour', the first episode in a new run of BBC One's flagship Doctor Who, one thing that has really got the online forums buzzing is the appearance of Karen Gillan, who plays new companion Amy Pond, in a miniskirt. For anyone who didn't see it, the character of Amy was a kissogram and a policewoman's outfit was merely one of her many guises. Golly, it was a very short miniskirt though wasn't it?

I'm sure Matt Smith and Karen Gillan have already become immune to such criticism, but you do get the feeling that sometimes they just can't win. This follows nearly a year of speculation that Smith was far too young to play a character who is, we are often told, 900 years old. When news of his casting was announced, everyone seemed to scratch their heads and complain that they had never heard of him. It's a strange celebrity world we live in now; after all, when you think about it, the only reason he was 'unknown' was because he was just acting to, you know, earn money and wasn't a celebrity. Look him up on IMDB or Wikipedia and you find the Eleventh Doctor popping up in all sorts of (often quite well-received) theatre productions. No, really.

The reviews I have read of Smith's first episode have been mostly positive; there's almost a sense of relief that he has worked out the choice for The Doctor and that he is proving a worthy successor to Tennant. This implies that David Tennant is in fact lying in state at Westminster Abbey and was up there with the Queen, or the Archbishop of Canterbury in terms of his national importance.
David Tennant was a good lead for the show. But since his departure was announced, there's been a tendency to remember him through rose-tinted glasses. For a show that, at its best, appeals to all age groups, some episodes were genuinely bad. The Kylie Minogue/Titanic effort sticks out in my mind, as well as one with Agatha Christie and a giant wasp. Tennant's Doctor was compared to the Messiah/Superman a number of times, characters such as Mickey and the often wooden Martha Jones were brought back again...and again...and again. Plus, when the time came for David Tennant to leave, we were treated to a lot of Russell T Davies's portentous dialogue about how he was going to 'die'. Unfortunately, the media squawking about Matt Smith meant we all knew that really, he was just going to increase in height and grow floppier hair. Many of the best David Tennant stories were written by new showrunner Steven Moffett anyway. In the rush to compare Smith to Tennant, it's also been omitted that Christopher Eccleston had a stab at the role. Remember him?
So, dare I say that this version of the BBC's national treasure might manage to be better than its predecessor? Saturday's episode was a brilliant little hour of television. The opening sequence where the Doctor sits in Amy's kitchen and eats fishfingers and custard was straight out of a storybook, the monsters were genuinely scary but perhaps most thrillingly of all, none of it took place in London or Cardiff.

Journalism is meant to be hard to get into...yet Jan Moir exists. This is something of an enigma

You may not have noticed, but I write a blog when I have time. I'm one of millions of people across the globe who use 'blogging' as a means of self-expression. I also do it under the (possibly mistaken) impression that people care what I write about. My blogging takes many forms, mainly items you'd expect to find in a newspaper's editorial and opinion section. I also review student plays I've seen. Again. it's because I believe people care about what I think. I could be wrong, but then there's probably no way of knowing, because the percentage of the population that reads what I write can probably be written out to twenty decimal places. I don't get paid for what I write, though I would quite like to write for a newspaper or magazine one day. Maybe. If I'm good enough. A nice man called Ian I met at the Independent once told me it would be a good way to let newspapers see what my writing was like.
The second point I should raise in this deeply self-expressive, self-reflective piece is that what I write is often unsubstantiated. It's opinion I gauge from other newspapers, Reuters that sort of thing. Must try harder. I could probably make outrageous claims, snug in the knowledge that no-one's going to notice.

So, I could say that Stephen Gately died as a result of excess fluid build-up on the lungs because he was swilling port whilst watching panda porn. I don't know if Stephen Gately liked port, or if he had a hankering for panda porn. Actually, I didn't know Stephen Gately. Aside from its alliterative value, my claim is based solely on my own conjecture and flies in the face of what a coroner and his own family have publicly stated was the cause of his death. Natural causes.

In making my outraaageous claims about Stephen's love of port and panda porn, I have now placed myself in the same league as the Queen of Tact, Jan Moir. The only difference is that she gets paid to write utter bollocks. I don't and this an imbalance I feel should be addressed immediately.

Her article has already proved to be polemic. The Internet backlash against it has been remarkable. A Facebook group has been set up asking that she retract her comments and Charlie Brooker has published his own counter-comment. Stephen Fry has Twittered about it and his army of Twitter followers are nodding their heads in agreement.

Much like the death of Michael Jackson, Gately's death has become part of public discourse in a way that is morbid and disturbing. Despite the attempts to treat his death with the privacy and professionalism that should be accorded the aftermath of any such tragic death, self-righteous shrews such as Jan Moir and her tabloid/gossip column peers have waded in with their own opinions. Much was made of Jackson's death, the life he led in the weeks leading up to it. It was somewhat gratifying when, a short while ago, an autopsy revealed he DID have the skin pigmentation condition he kept trying to tell people he suffered from.

They were ultimately proved wrong. This is why Jan Moir should not have to retract her claims.

I could name several other Daily Mail columnists whom I dislike. Melanie Philips, Richard Littlejohn, Amanda Platell. They can always be counted upon for their, at worst hateful, at best snide opinions. But this is the Daily Mail we're talking about. Look in the history books and you'll discover it's been spouting the same crap for most of its existence. Even when Britain had an Empire, you can bet it wasn't good enough, that too many Indians were mouthing off, that Germany's empire was better. It supported Oswald Moseley's party for a brief stint in the Thirties. It bemoans the falling education standards in this country, yet has some of the worst grammar and syntax in its editorials. It hates Tony Blair for being born, loves Margaret Thatcher to the point where you think it might just slip her a date-rape drug and book into a seedy B&B with her. It never claims to say immigrants should go home, but indirectly blames them for local councils cancelling Christmas lights. It things tax cuts are the answer to all of Britain's economic woes. Sometimes, it seems think there is a PC, homosexual consensus running the country.

In most cases, if you read around a bit more, you can find a lot of areas where it's wrong, rendering its opinions as just that - opinions. Fairly stupid opinions at that. Stephen Gately's death is a private matter and the Daily Mail should consider editorial standards when it harps on about the Andrew Sachs affair for nearly six months and then goes on to allow a different, albeit equally underhand personal attack on a young man when his family and loved ones are in the middle of grieving at his passing.

Moir's response would potentially be to say that's its political correctness gone mad. This is a tired refrain for the Daily Mail and other tabloid newspapers. There is a line between political correctness and tact. It is a line that tabloid columnists cross too often.

Edinburgh Festival: 2009 - 'Stitches' by Claire Urwin

Some reviews have called this piece of new writing, from the University of Manchester and 'Scratch That' theatre company, science fiction. I would like to go along with this, because ultimately most good science fiction has a compelling story, is often set in a fictional other time or place, and has an amazing capacity for imagination; these are all qualities that 'Stitches' possesses in abundance.

This is Claire Urwin's third play and her second in Edinburgh and I think the strength of her writing is in its willingness to experiment with poetic and novel forms too. The opening monologue from Elisabeth Hopper's Amy had me thinking of a number of novels - 'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells, or 'War of the Worlds' by the same author. I say this because this old fashioned science fiction, when it was just the writer's ability to imagine strange, impossible things that made it so fascinating. This tradition is mixed with Urwin's use of language and conjuring up of weird and wonderful images, to create a horrifying future in which the 'Firefloods' sweep across the surface of the Earth, decimating the population. Populations are then split up, as mankind divides into those on the Rafts and the Floats.

I'll say no more to avoid ruining it for those who have not seen it, but Urwin's language seems to have found a perfect niche here; she invents a new world after this horrible event in which new language and half-remembered slang combine and characterise a Cinder Age in which the rest of the play is set. Four women spend their days desperately trying to piece together life in the time that came before.

Their little group is more of a commune than a community and, under Rajiv Nathwani's direction, each character seems to represent a different reaction to the end of the world. Jess Cobham-Dineen's Webb is the de-facto leader, the tired face of the bureaucracy for which they work; Caitlin Albery Beavan as Libby is an infantile figure who seems to believe that if she simply does her job, all will be well. Vanessa Fogarty as Bel is a remnant from the upper class, who despite her haughtiness, demands not to be treated any differently because of her social station. The final of the main four is Claire Rugg's Nettie who, if the word still existed, I would describe as bourgeois, hating Bel for her class and genuinely saddened and twisted by what sounds like quite a loveless life (from her own little speech in the middle).

Again, I'll refrain from saying too much about their relationships except to say that you find yourself watching closely when Hopper's Amy joins the group. With her wild eyes and rubbing of her nose, she commands your attention even when she has no dialogue.

My only criticism of the play is minor and easily fixed, but it essentially boils down to length. The combination of Urwin's writing and the energetic direction of the play, means that it seems to end just as it begins to get interesting. All the dynamics and nuances are never given a chance to fully play themselves out. I believe this would go away if the play were lengthened; ultimately this is probably a pitfall of the Edinburgh festival, in which a culture of many plays means that the short running time is a necessary evil. I would recommend this play, however, because ultimately its combination of original writing and an excellent ensemble cast under some taut direction, means I would happily sit through another hour of this.

****

Oh, for 27 years ago, when A-levels were taken by genuinely clever people

The August debate about A-levels and university admissions is upon us again; it’s now as much an annual summer events as the hopes of Britain fielding a Wimbledon champion, or the empty speculation surrounding the beginning of a new football season. I use those two examples because they, like the A-level debate, annually contain arguments from both people who know what they are talking about, and those who are fond of coming up with empty, half-baked and ultimately unhelpful remarks. Much like anything, I suppose.

Will this little rant be the former or the latter? I suppose you’ll have to decide for yourself. I’ll try to make it more thought out than some of the commentary I heard when watching Wimbledon, some of which made you mouth silently at the television, as you wondered if what they were saying actually made sense.

Some of the things you read about A-levels every year makes your heart sink, if only because I can still strongly recall the year I got mine and you have to read the comments in the paper about grade inflation and how we’re now 27 years more spoon-fed than our predecessors.


The broad opponents in the Great A-level Debate are fairly well-established now. In one corner, we have the education traditionalists, the staunch defenders of A-levels as the ‘gold-plated’ qualification. They’re the ones who, at their most extreme, will recall an England where one is invited to imagine A-level maths students as human calculators, or English A-level pupils who could ream off an entire Shakespearean sonnet while paying for their groceries at the supermarket. No-one ever says that, but their tendency towards a romanticism of the educational past paints that sort of picture in my mind when I hear them compare Then to Now.
In the other corner, we have the temporary alliance of the teachers and the Government (who don’t seem to get on for the rest of the year) saying that the latest 0.3% rise in pass rates is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the students who sat the exams. Yet this group will often have to make concessions to the other, claiming standards are high whilst tinkering with the system to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that the traditionalists might just have a point. An example would be the introduction of the A* grade next year, which is designed to tackle the non-problem of grade inflation.

In the middle, we have the youth of today themselves who, bless their little cotton socks, tried their darn best, but are let down by ever devalued exams (or not, if you want to join the second camp).

Politically speaking, the former side in the debate are often embodied by the Conservatives. Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, has said that should the Tories win the next election, he will reward schools that enter students for ‘tougher’ A-levels like physics and chemistry. The point being that the latter side, mostly embodied by our current New Labour government, has presided over a system whereby schools enter students for ‘easier’ subjects like media studies to make their place in league tables look more favourable.


This then, would seem to be the problem with our annual debate and it is symptomatic of a much larger problem with education in this country: the education system has too long been a tool of politicians, pundits and journalists to make their points in various ideological battles.
Both sides in this debate have a point, but they are only capable of hurling two fairly accepted truths back at each other: firstly, that students work hard every year for exams, and secondly, that pass rates and A-grades continue to rise. Confusingly, these two facts seem to work for and against each other.


The fallacy lies in the fact that, for too long, governments and theorists have sought one sure-fire way of testing and measuring intelligence. A-levels are expected to do a lot- move people past GCSEs whilst effectively acting as entrance exams for universities. Once upon a time they could do this quite well, when less people took them. Where once 3As could get you into Oxford or Cambridge, now the increasing volume of people achieving that grade makes differentiation between the hard-working and the child prodigies that bit harder. This is surely to be expected when more people take the same test. If I were a French teacher doing a vocabulary test and marked everyone out of ten, it would that much easier to find the bilingual geniuses if I only had a class of 15. If, on the other hand, I had a class of 150, you then need to start marking people to four decimal places to truly wean out the clever clogs in your midst (if you cared that much about French vocabulary).


So, I seem to be agreeing with the traditionalists when I say that too many people are getting A-grades at A-level. Well, no I’m not. First of all, I don’t agree with the commentators who say that A-levels have become the exam ‘that no-one can fail’, mainly because it begs the question: why would you want an exam with a sure-fire margin of failure? If everyone can pass, it doesn’t really matter so long as you’re still finding the clever ones. At university, most people pass as well. That doesn’t stop a bare pass from being a sign that you probably should have worked harder and drunk less.
Secondly, where I and the traditionalists seem to disagree is that they often seem to take the stance ‘A-level rigour or broke’. Put simply, the A-level used to be the only academic qualification worth its salt around and if you didn’t do well, there was little point in you continuing in formal education. Now, you also have the International Baccalaureate (IB) which is emerging as a rival in some schools. The traditionalists jump on this as another way to return to the ‘golden age’ of A-levels. The IB itself encourages students to take a wider variety of subjects and involves the writing of an extended project, or essay. The implementation of the IB may be beneficial to the Oxbridge hopefuls, yet the two main sides in our debate seem to miss the point of it and any attempts to make the A-levels like the IB have been done half-heartedly and to accusations of ‘dumbing down’. Recent attempts to replace the A-levels with new ‘diplomas’ have been met with limited success, mainly because schools have been reluctant to implement and enforce them and because of fears they will lead to a ‘two tier’ system. The conservative element in this debate refuse to drastically change the A-level; hence Michael Gove’s plan to merely reverse the bias of an already stupid league-table obsessed system.


Both sides are guilty in this debate if only because, instead of bringing in genuine reform, both are responsible for sweeping changes that don’t seem particularly thought out. The introduction of the AS was designed to break up the A-level but merely made it a more exam-obsessed qualification; indeed the phrase Curriculum 2000 sounds like something that was thought up, like the Millennium Dome, by ministers because it was the year 2000 and it sounded cool. Similarly, I would like to meet the evil genius who invented General Studies, the magical qualification that NO UNIVERSITY ACCEPTS. The introduction of unlimited re-sits was also rather silly, as the goal posts were shifted so that the A-level became not so much the exam that no-one could fail, but the exam that no-one could fail five times. None of these changes really did anything except make an exam system which, like any other, already had its flaws, seem more convoluted and unnecessary. Instead, rather than tweaking the exams to make university entry that much more likely, the grown-ups could learn much from the universities and change the way their courses are designed.


The point of the IB is that it’s more than just an academic rigour-fest. There seems to be an interest in developing as an all-round person, there a service and community element. Yet the arch-traditionalists would look on any such deviation from academia as potentially troublesome; you could do it to be a better UK citizen, but should university entry be involved, that dicey phrase ‘vocational’ comes into use again.


A genuine re-think about what makes a qualification might expose that small group of the conservatives who don’t want A-levels getting easier because they want the stupid to stay stupid and wallow in their own ignorance. A qualification that deals with making you an all-round person, measuring your day-to-day intelligence, ability to lead and such other CV-friendly attributes AND challenges you academically, is quite an appealing notion. Incorporating different elements into A-levels such as community service and ending the stigma around drama, dance and media studies aren’t necessary the death knell of academic rigour. It would also be a welcome opportunity to get more people more well-rounded before university and break down the system where-by internships and extra-curricular activities are sadly picked up by families who have connections and extra cash to do so.


Finally, try and dispel the notion that there was ever an unbreakable ‘gold standard’. If university teaches you anything it’s that essay-based subjects alone are marked with a combination of the marker interpreting a marking scheme and using a bit of their subjectivity. Universities, the height of academic rigour, are the most wildly fluctuating places for marks across differing modules. Exams are about the people marking them as well as the people taking them. Science may be more about right and wrong, but if you want to argue that science is more rigorous than the arts, be my guest. That’s a can of worms for another time and place. It’s true that students today couldn’t do a paper from 1982. But then I would probably need some time to retake my 2005 American History A-level and you know why?...because I haven’t studied for it in about four years.

Michael Gove can posture all he wants about getting schools to take on more ‘rigorous’ A-levels. But what he and a lot of governments ministers forget is that they are not the ones who will help a student prepare for an exam in a subject that they enjoy, and which will affect their life….and it is very much their life.

P.S. I am aware I haven’t outlined my plans for changing A-levels very well. I suppose I’ve only thought about it for an hour or so. Cut me some slack though - if I’d thought about it for one more hour, I could be in Opposition. If I thought about it for two more hours, I’d probably have enough to be Education Secretary.

P.P.S. If A-levels were more rigorous 27 years ago, then some, SOME, of the maths and economics graduates must have gone on from their studies to become very successful bankers who, in 2008, did this really clever thing where they lost all of our....oh wait.

Michael Jackson will die as he lived....in the horrid glare of the media spotlight

Earlier this year, in an astute study of the media reaction to 'famous' deaths, Charlie Brooker called the U-turn surrounding the news of Jade Goody's imminent death 'so big you could see it from space'. I suspect a similar reaction will follow the news of the more famous and talented Michael Jackson dying from a heart attack.
Give it a few days and the death of Michael Jackson will be in the same league as JFK and Elvis Presley in terms of remembering 'where you were' when you heard the news. The difference that exists, perhaps, between the deaths of these earlier figures and Jackson is that while Kennedy and Presley died in the 1960s and 1970s, Michael Jackson has died in an era that he himself was one of the architects of. Already news websites are referring to Jackson as a figure of what is known as 'the MTV generation'. MJ revolutionised the music industry; the 'Thriller' album has influenced countless others and Jackson even demonstrated a business acumen that saw him become bigger than the Beatles when he bought their back catalogue.
These are all things that the media will tell you in the days to come, as the reasons for and circumstances surrounding his death will be analysed and over analysed. The 'controversy' surrounding the kind of man Jackson had become, will also no doubt be a massive topic for discussion. His affection for the children he invited to his Neverland ranch will be discussed, possibly even revised, as the public perception of this superstar alters to fit his death.
The saga of Michael Jackson's life in the public eye will never fully be analysed by the media because Jackson's childhood rather accurately anticipated the age of 'Britain's Got Talent', 'The X Factor' and arguably began the whole vicious cycle of it.
The rise of Michael Jackson was the rise of pop, the taking off of the mass-marketed record industry and the rise of the superstar living under the microscope. The only thing preventing a LivingTV or MTV docusoap on Jackson was his status as a recluse and the fortress-like nature of his ranch. Yet coverage of Jackson's increasingly puzzling behaviour was beginning of a long line of ugly, boring and paradoxical programmes on 'celebrity lives' which has culminated in Katie and Peter, Kerry Katona and the aforementioned Jade Goody. The tragedy is that Michael Jackson was more talented than all of them combined. Yet the manner in which that talent was fostered was so entrenched in the 'industry' of music, that his life became a freak show. The footage of him dangling a baby out of his hotel room in Germany was looped and looped until it culminated in an interview conducted by Martin Bashir (who to be fair, tried to give it some relevance and gravitas). The death of Michael Jackson may have helped his public image. Tonight the debate over his life will begin in earnest. It may be better than the dismissal of him as a simple 'paedo'. Rest assured that the dust will settle in time for The X Factor in August, when we can sit back and watch the latest spin-offs of the Jackson story - the story of a fragile, talented person given too much to do, too soon in life.