EcoLogics

The following extraordinarily disingenuous news from the Guardian:

Untrained officers must never again be put in the frontline of policing public protests, according to a highly critical MPs’ report on the G20 protests published today. [...] The conclusion from the Commons home affairs select committee inquiry into the G20 protests of April 1 follows admissions from senior Metropolitan police officers that some inexperienced officers, who were clearly quite scared, used “inappropriate force”. [...] The report by the cross-party group of MPs says they “cannot condone the use of untrained, inexperienced officers on the frontline of a public protest under any circumstances”.

EcoLogics will not waste time writing a detailed critique of the ludicrous implication: that police brutality is no more than a matter of inexperience and a lack of training. So we are to believe that the systematic suppression of badges on the part of the most brutal officers is also down to ‘inexperience’? And is the same true for commanding officers who looked on while men like the one that struck down Ian Tomlinson did their work? Are they also ‘inexperienced’?

No, instead of wasting time analysing the implications of the enquiry, it seems more appropriate to point out that while the Home Affairs Select Committee is made up of members of all three main parties, it is led by someone who was causing controversy about parliamentary expenses—and not just expenses—long before the current furore made headlines. Anyone who wants to know something about Keith Vaz MP’s politics only has to go to Wikipedia to begin to realise why he might not be exactly the best person to lead a parliamentary enquiry about police brutality. If the Filkin enquiry is anything to go by, then it’s a wonder that the Home Affairs Select Committee didn’t actually congratulate the Met for covering up the killing of Ian Tomlinson in the way that it clearly did.

To be sure, the problem is not just with Vaz; would MPs who risk being investigated by the police for fraud be likely to condemn police brutality?

“In the 21st Century, our natural resource is our people – and their potential is both untapped and vast. Skills are the key to unlocking that potential.”
Sandy Leitch, in press release about the publication of the Leitch Review of Skills, 2006

“As one commentator puts it graphically, universities are ‘the coalmines of the 21st century’”
Tony Blair, in speech on higher education, 2004

Anyone in Higher Education who assumed that New Labour’s skillification of higher education is for the newest universities only is in for a shock. Following New Labour’s disastrous results in local and European Parliamentary elections, Gordon Brown has eliminated the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills in its entirety. All of the defunct department’s functions have been delegated to a new department titled ‘Business, Innovation, and Skills’. The new ‘super-department’ is headed by none other than Peter Mandelson, aka ‘The Prince of Darkness’, Frequenter–of–Russian–Oligarchs (and not just Russian oligarchs), and the man who was so naughty even by New Labour’s high moral standards that he was forced to resign not once, but twice from Tony Blair’s cabinet.

This is the man who has now penned an article extolling the virtues of the Open University. On one level, staff and students at the OU have every reason to be proud. Mandelson is right to say that the OU is a remarkable institution. However, on another level—the level that New Labour actually conducts its politics—the OU, and indeed the directors, academics and students of other universities should be worried, very worried.

As always with New Labour, and with Mandelson in particular, one has to interpret what is said knowing that it matters far less than what is not said. For every phrase that appears extolling the virtue of one thing, the reader has to assume that what is really at stake is quite a different thing, an unacknowledged policy which will be put in place under the cover of that which is officially stated.

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In this case, praise for the OU will act as cover for two processes. Mandelson does acknowledge the first one en passant when he invokes the New Labour mantra: ‘The huge and growing global market for education’ (emphasis added). As EcoLogics has noted in several other posts (see for example, New Labour’s Assault on Higher Education), one of the main forces behind New Labour’s policy for higher education involves a back–door (and now not–so–back–door) dynamic of privatisation. One whose motivations are no less corrupt than the ones that have driven Mandelson’s efforts to hand over the Royal Mail, despite protestations to the contrary, to the Dutch giant TNT (and this, remarkably, via another Dutch company, the investment bank UBS).

What does this have to do with the OU and distance education? A clue may be found in the following passage in Mandelson’s article:

‘In recognition of the OU’s expertise in this area, the prime minister has confirmed a further £12m (£7.8m contributed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England) to continue to develop the OU as a national resource, so that other UK institutions can collaborate with it and benefit from its experience of providing distance learning in the UK, and increasingly, around the world.’

Read, the knowledge and expertise that the OU has acquired over the last 40 years will be made available to all those who are seeking, or will eventually seek, to transform their universities—and perhaps not just their universities—into businesses that  capitalise on distance education—i.e. new, distance versions of the failed Carter & Carter, the automotive repair company turned skills provider that was once the darling of New Labour’s Train to Gain project.

This proposal—and the broader idea of using the neoliberal wand to turn higher education into money—might sound like a good one until the reader asks just who is to gain, and indeed to gain the most, from the skills training (the word ‘education’, by the way, is out, and the term ’skills’ is in). One thing is pretty clear: it won’t be the students who will have to pay higher and higher fees, and who, if New Labour has its way, will have to take whatever courses their employers say they must take as part of the vocationalisation of higher education proposed by the Lambert and Leitch Reviews.

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The second process, the second motivation lies in the transformation of higher education into yet another instance of New Labour’s Amazonia. Of course, the internet, and indeed distance education can be a fantastically good things. The problem arises when both become another way in which New Labour effectively gives away public services to its friends in the private sector, and does so in a way that ends up exploiting people. The expression ‘New Labour’s Amazonia’ refers to New Labour’s efforts to model public sector institutions—including higher education, it now seems—on the business practices of Amazon. As EcoLogics noted in a post published late last year (New Labour’s Amazonia), New Labour ministers are planning to try to force surgeries to improve their performance by posting patients’ comments on an NHS website. Health Minister Ben Bradshaw told the Guardian that he wanted the site to do for healthcare what Amazon has done for the book trade. Like Amazon, GP’s should start posting ‘customer’ feedback, ‘warts ‘n all’.

That post argued that it was no coincidence that, less than two weeks before Bradshaw & Co leaked their proposals, the Times revealed that Amazon has a draconian policy when it comes to disciplining its workers—not least on matters relating to its workers’ health. According to the newspaper,

‘Amazon…employing thousands of casual workers in Britain to fetch and package items under arduous conditions. An investigation by The Sunday Times at Amazon’s enormous warehouse in Bedfordshire has found that workers were:

– Warned that the company refuses to allow sick leave, even if the worker has a legitimate doctor’s note. Taking a day off sick, even with a note, results in a penalty point. A worker with six points faces dismissal.
– Made to work a compulsory 10-hour overnight shift at the end of a five-day week. The overnight shit, which runs from Saturday evening to 5am on Sunday, means they have to work every day of the week.
– Set quotas for the number of items to be picked or packed in an hour that even a manager described as “ridiculous”. Those packing heavy Xbox games consoles had to pack 140 an hour to reach their target.
– Set against each other with a bonus scheme that penalises staff if any other member of their group fails to hit the quota.
– Made to walk up to 14 miles a shift to collect items for packing.
– Given only one break of 15 minutes and another of 20 minutes per eight-hour shift and told they had to notify staff when going to the toilet. Amazon said workers wanted the shorter breaks in exchange for shorter shifts’.

What, the reader may ask, does this have to do with higher education? EcoLogics suggests that what is really at stake in Mandelson’s hagiography of the OU is a proposal to transform higher education into an Amazon.com–like provider of skills. Even as students are increasingly forced to learn in the work place—the Train to Gain ethos, which is arguably designed to produce more malleable employees—lecturers will be forced to come up with so many ‘products’ that can be bought and sold on the internet, in much the way that their own books are via Amazon.

This too, might sound like quite a good idea until academics stop to think about the nature and volume of the work that will be required by distance education—distance education that will happen, in some cases, even as traditional classes and marking take place. As is already beginning to occur in many institutions, there will be no extra pay, no adjustment for the duplication of the workload. On the contrary, it will be disingenuous to expect anything other than the gradual institution of the work controls employed by Amazon, and with it, a further erosion of the relative autonomy of academic practice. Academics may not have to ask for permission to pee, but you can bet that there will be performance related pay that hinges on the number of distance education modules produced, student evaluations of these, etc. etc.

In the same way that the Tories tried to turn parents against teachers, EcoLogics can well imagine that New Labour will attempt to institute similar divisions in higher education. Already the NSU has a head who is proving to be quite effective in adopting positions that are convenient to New Labour. Why shouldn’t academics be treated like virtual pack mules in order to provide ‘customers’ with better goods and services?  In fact, New Labour’s (Higher) Amazonia may well mean that all but the wealthiest or most privileged of students will be forced to wave goodbye to what many describe as ‘the best years of our lives’: a time when they can learn face–to–face in the space apart that is, or was, higher education. A time when they can meet people from all walks of life (well, some walks of life) even as they reflect on what they want to do with the rest of their own life. Many have in the past, and will in future continue to elect to use that space as a way into Mandelson’s world. But in future, those who choose to question the economic fundamentalism of neoliberals like Mandelson may well have to do so via their isolated, yet less–than–private computer screens. Not during late night chats with fellow students about the meaning of life, let alone in debates with other real students in a real classroom. Whether by design or by ‘mission creep’ or both, it is this challenge, the real university challenge, the challenge to the status quo, which New Labour is strangling. Unsurprisingly given the Orwellian nature of its authoritarianism, the Party has decided to call this suffocation ‘The New University Challenge‘.

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The comments that follow Peter Mandelson’s article in the Guardian pretty much say it all. Deano30 says ‘Keep this man away from this revered institution. He will contaminate it as with other revered institutions that have come his way. The OU is no place for Toad of Toad Hall’, and ‘Please please go away – you will be out of office soon. Have you no conscience? We must have something of value that is unsullied at your hands.’

For her part, IndependentLady says

‘The best thing the Prince of Darkness could do for the OU would be to reverse the decision not to provide funding for equivalent or lower level qualifications. The OU (and other institutions like Birkbeck) is one of the few places that allow people to change careers and develop new skills without them having to leave work or put off their dreams of change. The ELQ funding change is a nonsense when this government keeps bleating on about making the UK workforce highly skilled. Every time one of them says lifelong learning, I want to throw up. […] Put the funding back and let people change direction when they want to, rather than when they are forced to, but can’t afford it. […] Then leave them alone.’

Unfortunately, for all its rhetoric of customer service, New Labour behaves in precisely the same way that its darling corporate donors do. There is lip service, and lip service only, to an ideal which is really no more than a clever strategy for closing down public services, and opening up new markets.

Update November 5, 2009: Mandelson is at it again: after you read this post, you may wish to see the more recent Putting a Price on Peter Mandelson

Originally posted 16 June 2009; updated 14 December 2009 (please scroll down to see update)

“I don’t know what other name I could give it. It’s a thing that looks dangerously like a human, a thing that throws parties, that organises orgies and rules a country called Italy. This thing, this illness, this virus threatens to become the cause of the moral death of Verdi’s country” (continues below)

Note: the following is EcoLogics’ translation of an article that appeared in El Pais (Spain), and that was penned by the Nobel prize-winning author, José Saramago. Saramago has written a series of scathingly critical articles about Berlusconi, and a Berlusconi-controlled publishing house has retaliated by stopping the publication in the Italian language of one of Saramago’s latest works. The following is not an official translation. It is included in this blog as part of an ongoing critique of the nocturnal connections between authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and corruption. As EcoLogics noted in a recent post, David Mills, the husband of Tessa Jowell, the New Labour minister for the Olympics, was recently found guilty by an Italian court of taking a massive bribe from Berlusconi. According to the Italian judges, Berlusconi paid Mills hundreds of thousands of dollars to lie in court about the Italian prime minister’s business dealings (for an account of the ruling, see for example ‘Silvio Berlusconi faces calls to resign over David Mills trial’, in the Daily Telegraph, May 19, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5350720/Silvio-Berlusconi-faces-calls-to-resign-over-David-Mills-trial.html, accessed May 19, 2009). As EcoLogics also noted, Tony Blair, who was fond of holidaying in the now infamous Berlusconi villa in Sardinia, accepted Tessa Jowell’s suggestion in March 2006 that she knew nothing about her partner’s financial dealings. This despite the fact that it was alleged at the time that Berlusconi’s bribe covered the repayment of a large mortgage which Jowell herself signed off.

EcoLogics leaves it to readers to decide whether Saramago’s assessment of Berlusconi is a valid one.

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The Berlusconi Thing by José Saramago

I don’t know what other name I could give it. It’s a thing that looks dangerously like a human, a thing that throws parties, that organises orgies and rules a country called Italy. This thing, this illness, this virus threatens to become the cause of the moral death of Verdi’s country. If a deep vomit doesn’t succeed in ejecting it from the consciousness of Italians, the poison will end up corroding the veins and destroying the heart of one of Europe’s richest cultures. The basic values of human coexistence are trampled daily by the viscous feet of the Berlusconi thing; amongst its many talents, it has a funambulesque ability to abuse words, perverting their intention and meaning, as in the case of the People of Freedom, the name given to the party with which the thing took power. I’ve called the thing delinquent and I don’t regret it. For semantic and social reasons that others will be able to explain better than I can, the term delinquent has in Italy a much stronger connotation than it has in any other language spoken in Europe. I use the meaning given to the term by Dante’s language in order to translate clearly and forthrightly what I think about the Berlusconi thing—though it is more than doubtful that Dante ever used the term. In my Portuguese, and according to the dictionaries and the current practice of communication, delinquency means ‘the act of committing crimes, disobeying laws or moral codes’. This definition fits the Berlusconi thing without a wrinkle, without any jarring, to the point that it seems more like a second skin than the clothes that the thing puts on itself. For years and years the Berlusconi thing has been committing crimes of a variable but always demonstrated seriousness. It’s outrageous that it not only disobeys laws, but worse, it invents them to safeguard its public and private interests as politician, businessman and the companion of minors. Where the moral codes are concerned, it’s not even worth talking about it, there is not a person in Italy or the rest of the world that doesn’t know that the Berlusconi thing fell into the most abject of states a long time ago. This is the Italian prime minister, this is the thing that the Italian people have elected twice to serve them as a role model, this is the path to ruin which is dragging along the values of liberty and dignity that suffused Verdi’s music and the political actions of Garibaldi—the ones that, during the struggle for unification in the 19th century, made of Italy a spiritual guide for Europe and for Europeans. This is what the Berlusconi thing wants to throw into the rubbish bin of History. Will the Italians end up allowing this to happen?

Update 14 December 2009

On 13 December, Berlusconi was struck in the face with what appears to have been a model of the Milan Cathedral. This attack is to be emphatically condemned for its violence; to attack an individual in this manner is to descend to the kind of practice that is more often associated with Fascist politicians, and with their methods of policing.

Having made this point, EcoLogics raises the question: what is the actual evidence, other than the information presumably provided by Berlusconi’s government, that the individual who performed the attack has mental health issues, or indeed, that he conducted the attack for this reason? It would not be the first time that an event of this kind is attributed wrongly, and in an ideologically interested manner, to issues involving mental health.