Livre d'Or

So everybody's been playing with this class calculator, because who doesn't love a find your personality type survey? And this one has the imprimatur of respectability that comes from being on the BBC site with professional graphic design and slick special effects. It tells me I'm "established middle class," which I probably could have told you without going through that rigmarole. Duh, I'm a university lecturer and the daughter of two lawyers, obviously I'm middle class.

It's provoked some surprisingly interesting conversation, though. Some people are saying it's a distraction from the real issues of the sweeping changes to the NHS and social security system brought in this week. Well, yes it is, but the fact that people fill in silly surveys doesn't mean they aren't also engaged in meaningful political activism. This article someone linked on Twitter argues that the whole BBC gimmick is a poor popularization of sociology.

The interesting theme that's emerging is that there is a deliberate misdirection of people's thinking about class identity, and that this prevents effective political solidarity. blue_mai linked to a rather angry old-Left article which points out that it doesn't really make sense to treat low-level clerical and IT people as middle class just because they work in offices. I often don't find overtly socialist rhetoric very palatable, but Thee Citizen's post made sense to me. I can believe that there is a denigration of genuine working class values going on, and telling people they're middle class when in fact they have no real control over their lives or financial security is plausibly an subtle undermining of their ability to act politically as a collective.

helenic has a magnificent rant about a problem in the opposite direction: middle-class people are being manipulated into underestimating [our] class and relative wealth. helenic's post very much resonated with me; there is a sort of weird reverse snobbery going on where middle class people claim humble origins and / or feel hard done by even though they're pretty much at the top of the social heap, and absurdly wealthy people think of themselves as middle class.

( It's my blog, so I'll talk about myself )

I hope this isn't completely incomprehensible to non-Brits!

I voted in the farce of a PCC election. I voted "properly" and did not spoil, though I had no enthusiasm for either of the two candidates standing in Staffordshire. One Conservative party apparatchik whose views about pretty much everything were random waffle with no substance, and one Labour party apparatchik whose views about pretty much everything were that the Tories are bad. There were no independents and nobody with meaningful police experience, but I suppose on the plus side there were no racists or hanging-and-flogging authoritarians.

I got the very strong impression that the election was deliberately set up to engineer a low turnout, which is just weird; I can not see whose interests are served by creating a new elected post which only a fifth of the non-London parts of the country bother voting for. ( detailed UK political stuff )

So I am definitely in sympathy with the ballot-spoiling crowd. The only crumb of comfort is that the turnout was so low that it is going to prompt an inquiry by the Electoral Commission. But however that turns out the whole business is still a waste of considerable amounts of public money, when desperately needed resources are facing cuts because of the recession. So I am not a happy voter right now.

As someone who teaches university undergrads, I've been asked for my opinion as part of Ofqual's consultation on A Level reform. And I figure this is a topic that exercises a lot of my friends, so have at it, express your opinions! (If you have some experience of English education this is probably going to be a lot more meaningful to you than otherwise, but hey, opinions are always good.)

( secondary education policy details )

So, what do you think? Is a linear course primarily assessed by final exam a good or a bad thing? Should AS qualifications be scrapped or demoted from their half A Level status? Which A Level subjects should be mercifully retired, and which new ones should replace them? This is probably less important than the marriage equality consultation, but it's somewhere where I have a tiny amount of influence, and you're very welcome to try to persuade me to your view.

It's a bank holiday which looks set to break with tradition and provide some actual sun. It's unpatriotic to talk about any serious topic on a day like this, but then again the US army inconsiderately chose a day when there's not supposed to be any news to accomplish its decade-old goal of killing Osama Bin Laden.

( may contain traces of politics )

Anyway. Enjoy the rest of the bank holiday. I am stuck inside with a pile of marking, but that's a very minor rant compared to the one I ended up composing.

I've been following the protests over the tuition fees issue, but not really participating. I'm not a protesting on the streets sort of person, and my institution seems to be relatively apolitical. Certainly the medical students can't really think of jeopardizing their careers through unauthorized absences and potentially getting into trouble with the police. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the students' cause, police behaviour has unquestionably been deplorable. I'd have thought that the one thing a Liberal-Conservative coalition could agree on was that people have the right to express their opinions through demonstrations and protests. Apparently, though, we're going to get all the disadvantages of a right-leaning government but none of the benefits.

( damned right I'm angry )

On a related matter, I'm a bit peeved at people uncritically repeating and re-tweeting that stupid article about Oxford's admissions policy. Some guy cherry-picked statistics to create some eye-catching headlines suggesting that Oxford is reluctant to accept Black candidates, and made a big fuss about how much effort it was to find out the detailed breakdown of the data via Freedom of Information requests, when in fact most of the ethnicity data is publicly available on university websites, and he just wanted something more fine-grained. Besides which, separating out different ethnic groups who all happen to have black skin is a valid exercise; clearly actual Africans, African-Americans, and people who live in Britain but ancestrally hail from Africa recently, or the Caribbean a generation ago, are different groups of people with different experiences. Conflating specific data about Black British people of Afro-Caribbean origin with data about Black applicants in general is bordering on deceitful.

I'm not at all claiming that Oxford totally doesn't have a problem with racism! There may well be racism. But making a big fuss about statistical noise fluctuations in tiny numbers of applicants isn't at all the way to address this. Part of the problem, of course, is the numbers of students from particular ethnic groups who get the kind of school education that makes applying to Oxbridge feasible. There is very likely racism involved in that situation, but it's not the fault of any university or college. But even if you're trying to deal with actual racism on the part of Oxbridge colleges, this approach is IMO counterproductive. Repeating alarmist articles all over the place simply discourages ethnically disadvantaged students from applying in the first place. It's like stereotype threat, only more extreme, and I think it's highly irresponsible to spread that kind of misinformation.

I'm reminded of a case when I was at college: there was a whole big fuss about some kid who was rejected from Magdalen college even though she had four As at A Level, and her headmaster went to the press claiming that she had been discriminated against because she attended a state school. He ignored the fact that all the candidates for medicine at Magdalen had straight As at A Level, not to mention that the girl hadn't made up her mind whether she wanted to read medicine or biochemistry. All this achieved was a marked dip in applications from state school pupils the following year; so much for all those righteous crusaders up in arms about Oxford's biased admissions policy! Innuendo sticks; people remember the shock horror story of bias, not the careful debunkings that follow. Simply repeating this kind of stuff for the pleasure of outrage does far more harm than good.

I've probably offended everyone by now. Oh well, that's my political rant for the week.

So, the election is tomorrow. I am still not one hundred percent decided, and anyway I do actually have a bit of a thing about ballot secrecy even though it's not very fashionable in the internet age. Many thanks to everyone who commented helpfully on my what's so bad about the Tories? post. I really enjoyed some intense political discussion that managed to stay friendly and intelligent and did not degenerate into name-calling.

Anyway, here's where I am: ( still swinging )

I can't vote independent cos lots of the independents here are BNP or similar racists in disguise and I'm not confident enough that I can pick out he good independents from the evil ones. I am leaning towards Lib Dem, but I am going to spend one more night sleeping on it and see how I feel in the morning. Feel free to argue with me if you think it would help to sway me; I genuinely am undecided, so it could be a good use of your time.

So, can anyone explain to me why people are acting as if a Conservative majority at the upcoming election would be tantamount to the apocalypse? Misogynist ravings about Thatcher don't count as an argument for me, especially given that she hasn't had significant political power for twenty years.

In my opinion, Labour have made a lot of things worse since 1997. Not least causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, which I really wish were a bigger issue in this election. And somehow, we have a discourse where any time someone criticizes Labour, they add the disclaimer "but of course, the Tories would have been far worse". To me this means that educated, engaged people who might otherwise be swing voters are essentially handing Labour a perpetual mandate, and that worries me.

I'm generally economically right wing and socially liberal, if that helps.

It's very interesting being a foreigner and watching the electoral campaigns. The thing is, I don't have any preconceived notions about what the various parties stand for, so I get the emotional impact of the advertising more or less undiluted. Pretty much every party has a poster campaign consisting of large images of their candidates with some kind of slogan, but they convey very different impressions.

( effects of advertising )

The thing is that we've been hearing reports that some of the Moderates' posters are getting defaced by people scrawling "JEW" across them. In Sweden the political left tends to be very anti-Israel, whereas the Moderates have a vocally pro-Israel wing and even their mainstream party line is at least vaguely sympathetic to the Israeli state. None of their candidates actually are Jewish, but apparently antisemitic slurs are a way of expressing frustration at the unpopular current government. It's happening in the parts of town with high immigrant populations, but I don't infer from this that (presumed Muslim) immigrants are responsible; areas with lots of immigrants tend to contain lots of poor and disaffected ethnic Swedes as well.

It's of course an unfortunate historical accident that the Swedish word for "Jew" happens to be identical to the German word. And I personally think it's most likely that these "attacks" are being perpetrated by kids who feel angry and want to get a reaction, rather than an organized anti-Jewish campaign. But there are an awful lot of people in the Jewish community who are very triggered by seeing JUDE ✡ all over the place.

Actually, I found the Moderates' posters disturbing already, even without the graffiti. They're over-photoshopped, in some attempt to make the candidates look flawless. But the effect is to create a wall of very blonde faces, with perfect smiles and unblemished skin, and a slightly robotic air. They're very blonde because, well, it's Sweden, the majority of people and the very great majority of the kind of people who are in a position to become major politicians are blonde. Just, on the irrational level where I'm receiving political messages this election, it's creepy.

So, there's a US election coming up. I have not said anything about it, because I generally believe that the citizens of a sovereign democracy have the right to choose their leaders without interference from ignorant foreigners. At this point, though, I've lost faith that the US is going to hold free and fair elections and abide by the result.

So, here's my political comment for my American friends: if the election doesn't work out, and if things get to the point where you don't feel safe in your country any more, I will help you get out as best as I can. I'm envisioning things like lending money, offering a temporary place to live, helping deal with the bureaucracy of immigration, standing as a sponsor if that looks like it might help... hell, if that's what it takes I'll marry you.

I very much hope it won't get that bad, and I don't think it's highly probable. Still. If my help can make the difference between getting out soon enough and leaving it too late, know that you have someone to turn to.

I have been going back and forth about whether I should say anything about the recent stuff about antisemitism in the LJ fandom community which turned into a huge sprawling kraken of nastiness. I kind of wasn't going to, because I'm not really in fandom, so why should I get involved and attract a portion of the horribleness to myself? Still, browsing stuff the other day I came across a really powerful essay on the topic by synecdochic. synecdochic is a Big Name Fan who is also a pro writer, and knows LJ better than pretty much anyone else on the planet. And she gets to the heart of this issue, expressing it in far better terms than I could ever manage.

( background on LJ fandom from an outsider's perspective )

There's the level of antisemitism which involves calling Jewish people nasty names. Yes, this did happen in the course of the controversy. And no, LJ is not the only place where that goes on. But there's also the level of antisemitism which is resentment that Jews get all these imagined advantages as a result of sympathy for what happened in the Holocaust. I only wish I could say that statement is an exaggeration or a caricature, but people seriously and literally complain about this. Some facts, then:

The Holocaust continues to affect people now. People who personally have to live with the traumas, people who lost their entire families, people who have been forced to spend their whole lives in countries where they don't feel at home, people who have been brought up by traumatized parents. I can't even begin to describe the cultural losses which make the whole Jewish world immeasurably poorer, even without the direct personal effects. It is by no means ancient history, and it's incredibly insulting to tell those affected to "move on" or "stop whining".

Antisemitism still exists today. Some of it comes from those who explicitly identify as neo-Nazis (yes, they're still around too!) but a lot doesn't. There are plenty of Jewish people who are not personally much affected by antisemitism, but that doesn't make it ok that many people are. And it's not just nasty words in LiveJournal kerfuffles; it's the whole sordid story of institutional and personal discrimination, vandalism of synagogues and cemeteries, and even personal violence all the way up to racist murder. Let me spell this out: someone I know personally was killed for antisemitic reasons in 2003. It happened in Germany under the auspices of an American organization, which is by way of saying that antisemitism isn't confined to far-off barbaric countries any more than it is confined to ancient history.

Antisemitism isn't wrong only because the poor Jews suffered in the Holocaust. Antisemitism is wrong because it's racist and cruel. When people protest about antisemitism, they're not asking for Jews to be given special consideration because of what happened in history, they're asking for Jews to have the basic right to go through their lives without fear and abuse.

Yes, there are some Jews who are unpleasant or evil people. That doesn't justify antisemitism. Fighting antisemitism doesn't mean nobody is ever allowed to criticize anyone Jewish, as racists often allege. Fighting antisemitism is purely and simply part of the fight for justice. It might not be your fight, and that's fine; there is so much suffering and injustice in the world that everybody has to pick which causes they are most dedicated to. But it's still wrong to obstruct those who do support Jewish causes by complaining that it's not fair that Jews get all these "special" protections.

I assume all these things are pretty obvious to anyone likely to read this. But since they are not as obvious as they should be in the general world, I think it's a good idea to reiterate them. Anyway, read synecdochic's piece (and if you have the stamina, the intelligent but long discussion of it). She also has some good stuff about the rhetorical uses and abuses of the concept of Nazism, the misapplication of Godwin's law and the like.