The story arc for season 3 has often been labelled the ‘Saxon Arc’ or something similar and keeps referring back to the appearances or presence of Mr Saxon in episodes such as ‘Smith and Jones’, ‘The Christmas Invasion’, ‘The Lazarus Experiment’ and refer to the introduction of Professor Yana in ‘Gridlock’ and the chameleon arch and fob watch in ‘Human Nature’ and the ‘Family of Blood’. Maybe it is just me, maybe I am looking for something more but do I detect another theme, another thread connecting the stories of series 3, one a little more depressing but that rings true with Russell T Davies’s atheist beliefs. If this sort of comment already exists on the Web then let me know as I would be intrigued to read it, if not then read on and I may have thought of something new!
The other theme of series 3 could be read as a cautionary tale (or a joke) about the quest for immortality and the drive for survival, and not just any sort of survival but the ultimate survival story – of a species outliving the universe. ‘Gridlock’ re-introduces us to the Face of Boe, survivor of who knows how long; millions of years are mentioned by this just seems like a guess. Yet the Face of Boe dies after delivering his important message to the Doctor. The first alien, the first individual in the series to be denied eternity or rather to give up the curse of immortality. The Dalek two-parter (‘Daleks in Manhattan’ and ‘Evolution of the Daleks’) the leader of the cult of Sakro eyes humans with envy from the top floor of the Empire State building as he begins to understand that despite their puny nature the humans have outlasted the ‘superior’ Dalek race. The irony of a Dalek having to evolve into a hybrid Dalek-human to have a chance to acquire this survival ability, this ‘immortality’ of a species, is the crux of the two-parter. Next is the ‘Lazarus Experiment’ – a whole morality tale about the dangers of any individual human striving for immortality. The species may have it but not anyone individual. The two-parter, ‘Human Nature’ and the ‘Family of Blood’, aliens chasing the doctor to steal his individual ability to regenerate so that they may become immortal – a curse he inflicts upon them in the end. Hidden away in the flash-forward or flash-possible sequences as Nurse Redfern’s husband the Doctor glimpses the human condition, the ability to reproduce, to achieve some genetic immortality, even if he as an individual human perishes. Even in ‘Blink’, the Weeping Angels are near immoralities. Finally, the three-parter culmination of the series, ‘Utopia’, ‘The Sound of Drums’ and ‘The Last of the Time Lords’ reek of the curse of immortality.
‘Utopia’ sees the end of the universe and there cowering in the near darkness is the last of humanity. In a touching nod to Tom Baker’s indomitable speech from the ‘Ark in Space’, Tennant’s Doctor extols the survival virtues of humanity, but survival for what? A question Baker’s Doctor never thought to ask. For the last species the end of the universe is not a nice place, a darkening purgatory, where devolution (if there be such a thing which evolutinoary theory forbids) has produced a strain of cannibalistic humans and where even the legend of the Doctor has vanished. The last species is even denied the honour of putting out the lights; that happens naturally. But still humanity dreams of salvation, of reaching Utopia, a fruitless quest to which the Doctor devotes his full energies. Hopelessly fighting against the dying of the universal light, the Doctor propels humanity towards its final disappointment – there is no utopia.
The ‘Sound of Drums’ and ‘The Last of the Time Lords’ continue the theme of the despair of humanity’s survival as the Master perverts humankind into six billion flying steel balls rampaging from the end of time to take over the younger universe. Humans and a Time Lord will reign for eternity, but then what? Both the Doctor and the Master have seen the end of the universe, both know that there is an end to everything with no hope of redemption. With the Master, humanity would rule the universe and survive to the end again but the same fate awaits it. The inevitability of the physical dissolution of the universe welcomes whatever species survives until its end. Out lasting eternity does not result in a reward; there is no prize for survival, the gift of immortality is only despair and bitterness. This is the other theme of series 3 – immortality – who wants that curse?! An old, recurring, theme in Doctor Who as watching the ‘Five Doctors’ special highlights.
Yet Russell T Davies is not a pessimistic atheist; he is in fact quite happy and content. The end of the universe is inevitable, the end of humanity is inevitable, the end of everything will happen. But in-between, before the stars burn out, before the last weary breath is drawn there is a lot of life to get through, a lot of dreams to explore and a lot of hope to extinguish. This is the optimistic bit; the happy atheist knows that the end is not as important as how you get there. Families, friends, lives and loves as the host at Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe, says it gives you hope for the future of the universe, except, as we know there isn’t one.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
SERIOUS DRAMA? Recent Criticisms of Doctor Who
The media has made much of recent reports of conflict over the dramatic credentials of Doctor Who. Stephen Fry (16th June 2010 www.bbc.co.uk/news/1032676) is reported as having described the British output of adult programmes as ‘infantilised’ when they should ‘surprise and astonish’.
In his Bafta Annual Television lecture he stated (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/16/stephen-fry-doctor-who):
‘But if you are an adult you want something surprising, savoury, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong.
"You want to try those things, because that's what being adult means."’
Doctor Who and Merlin are explicitly mentioned as being ‘wonderfully written but not for adults’ and Doctor Who even being compared to a chicken nugget – tasty but not satisfying (Stephen Moffat giving the fast food comparison a curt rebuff in his response to Fry’s comments). Whilst Terry Pratchett (3rd May 2010 www.sfx.co.uk/2010/05/03/guest-blog-terry-pratchett-on-doctor-who) Doctor Who as not science fiction. So what to make of these stories? Is Doctor Who bad drama? Is Doctor Who losing its touch? Both articles are, in my view, making headlines without any substance. In each case Doctor Who is the headline tag but the real stories and issues lie elsewhere.
Stephen Fry is attacking, as he sees it, the poor state of adult British drama. He makes an implicit distinction between dramas such as Doctor Who that are family orientated (as noted in the response by Stephen Moffat) and explicitly adult drama.
The ‘chicken nugget’ reference is a bit of a swipe but the real target is not Doctor Who but the policy of the BBC in wheeling it out as a successful example of their drama output. Fry’s comments may be well placed. Comparing the output of British television with that of the most watched series over the last couple of years, the US produced House, dominated by Fry’s old sparring partner Hugh Laurie, and the CSI franchise (http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/csi-catches-the-most-international-tvwatching-eyeballs--1319), it could be argued that claiming Doctor Who as the British alternative to these mega-shows is a little lame. Btu I don’t think this is Fry’s point. He is bemoaning the lack of any plan or ambition to compete, any desire to take a risk to commit to developing adult orientated drama by British television that matches the quality (writing, acting, etc.) not to mention funding of these US series.
It could be argued that good drama is good drama be it aimed at adults or children or the family, but the complexity and sophistication of plots and character that Fry appears to be yearning for is probably something beyond the scope of a family orientated programme. Doctor Who can address big themes; the end of the universe and humanity, noble sacrifice, the meaning of humanity, redemption have all been played out since the show returned in 2005, but, of necessity, these themes need to be presented in a certain way to appeal and not repel a family audience. An illustration of how these themes could be dealt with within a more ‘adult’ drama is the development of Being Human, a BBC 3 programme that migrated to BBC2 after a successful first series, involving a flat sharing ghost, werewolf and vampire – no-one said adult drama had to be realistic! So Fry is not necessarily arguing that Doctor Who is not good drama but that this form of drama can not address serious themes in an adult manner, a form of drama he wants and that he feels British television is no longer tkaing the risk to provide. Odd really given that the BBC took a huge risk back in 2005 re-commissioning the old, tired format of a strange man flying around in a blue box to fill a family audience slot that many media commentators stated no longer existed on a Saturday night.
Terry Pratchett’s article is not really a harsh criticism, it is more a whimsical remembrance of the old series coupled with an annoyance of the use of deus ex machina as the explanatory mode in the drama – a criticism that I feel may be a little harsh on some episodes under Russell T Davies’s tenure and certainly harsh on Stephen Moffat’s tenure as producer. Anyone who starts an article stating – ‘I wish I could hate Doctor Who.’, but can’t bring themselves to and then later states ‘It’s no good, I’ll go with the Doctor, even if those Ood look as if they should have been confronted by Tom Baker.’ You can pretty much assume he is a fan, albeit a reluctant one.
Pratchett is highly critical of classifying Doctor Who as science fiction. He has great trouble reconciling the plausibility of the science with the fast talking gobbledegok that explains fantastical acts such as transporting a hospital to the moon or human fat transmuting into cute little creature blobs. Although I could ask how close does fiction have to be to reality to count as science and how do we know if it is close to reality, this would be a pointless attempt at a debate as Doctor Who is science fantasy, or pure fantasy if you want, rather than science fiction. It is science only in the loosest sense that the laws of the physical realm are often called upon to do impossible things to provide an explanation; it is fantasy in the sense that we all know it is all impossible anyway. There is a veneer of physical explanation, the pixel thin science that Pratchett comments on, but it is almost irrelevant. Doctor Who is about story, it is about character, and it is about the suspension of belief, including a belief in science as we know it in this universe. If calling it science fiction immediately means it has to conform to a set of rules then the format will collapse, the enjoyment of the audience evaporates. Doctor Who is about the ride rather than the rules.
The criticism of the deus ex machina is succinctly put:
‘It’s a law – well at least a guideline – in writing plays that if somebody is going to be killed with an axe in the third act, then the axe should be visible hanging on the wall in the first act, and, for the hard of thinking, should be the subject of a line of dialogue that would go something like “you shouldn’t leave that around, it could do someone a mischief.”’
Couldn’t agree more and if Doctor Who was meant to be a long-running detective drama I would add my criticism. Yes, I did feel a little cheated at the end of Series 1 in 2005 when the whole thing was wrapped up by Rose metamorphosing into an all powerful being and the end of Series 3 with the deity-like form of David Tennant hovering over a cowering Master wasn’t much better if you were looking for meaningful and logically coherent narratives. Then again there was ‘Girl in the Fireplace’, The Empty Child’, scary enough even for Practhett and the already classic ‘Blink’. Aside from the commonality of being written by Stephen Moffat, they also stuck (more or less) to the narrative ‘laws’ mentioned by Practhett. But does this make them better than the two-part space opera that closed Series 1? On an emotional level, despite the ending, that two parter was an incredible television event, a real emotion ride, but that is what Russell T Davies intended the story to do. Sticking to guidelines wasn’t in the script, heightening emotions was. Different scripts, different writers, different intentions, the success of Doctor Who depends on varying the format, varying the type of narrative that will hold the attention of a varied audience, from the old timers steeped in Whovian lore to the wide-eyed youngsters who hide behind the sofa from the Weeping Angles but laugh at the Daleks. As Practhett notes:
‘After all, when you’ve had your moan you have to admit that it is very, very entertaining, with its heart in the right place, even if its head is often in orbit around Jupiter.’
‘And yet, I will watch again next week because it is pure professionally-written entertainment, even if it helps sometimes if you leave your brain on a hook by the door. It’s funny, light-hearted, knows when to use pathos and capable of wonderful moments:’
In the end Doctor Who is about well-crafted entertainment whatever the narrative, whatever rules it breaks and whatever impossible universe it inhabits. We are all just along for the fun of the ride.
In his Bafta Annual Television lecture he stated (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/16/stephen-fry-doctor-who):
‘But if you are an adult you want something surprising, savoury, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong.
"You want to try those things, because that's what being adult means."’
Doctor Who and Merlin are explicitly mentioned as being ‘wonderfully written but not for adults’ and Doctor Who even being compared to a chicken nugget – tasty but not satisfying (Stephen Moffat giving the fast food comparison a curt rebuff in his response to Fry’s comments). Whilst Terry Pratchett (3rd May 2010 www.sfx.co.uk/2010/05/03/guest-blog-terry-pratchett-on-doctor-who) Doctor Who as not science fiction. So what to make of these stories? Is Doctor Who bad drama? Is Doctor Who losing its touch? Both articles are, in my view, making headlines without any substance. In each case Doctor Who is the headline tag but the real stories and issues lie elsewhere.
Stephen Fry is attacking, as he sees it, the poor state of adult British drama. He makes an implicit distinction between dramas such as Doctor Who that are family orientated (as noted in the response by Stephen Moffat) and explicitly adult drama.
The ‘chicken nugget’ reference is a bit of a swipe but the real target is not Doctor Who but the policy of the BBC in wheeling it out as a successful example of their drama output. Fry’s comments may be well placed. Comparing the output of British television with that of the most watched series over the last couple of years, the US produced House, dominated by Fry’s old sparring partner Hugh Laurie, and the CSI franchise (http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/csi-catches-the-most-international-tvwatching-eyeballs--1319), it could be argued that claiming Doctor Who as the British alternative to these mega-shows is a little lame. Btu I don’t think this is Fry’s point. He is bemoaning the lack of any plan or ambition to compete, any desire to take a risk to commit to developing adult orientated drama by British television that matches the quality (writing, acting, etc.) not to mention funding of these US series.
It could be argued that good drama is good drama be it aimed at adults or children or the family, but the complexity and sophistication of plots and character that Fry appears to be yearning for is probably something beyond the scope of a family orientated programme. Doctor Who can address big themes; the end of the universe and humanity, noble sacrifice, the meaning of humanity, redemption have all been played out since the show returned in 2005, but, of necessity, these themes need to be presented in a certain way to appeal and not repel a family audience. An illustration of how these themes could be dealt with within a more ‘adult’ drama is the development of Being Human, a BBC 3 programme that migrated to BBC2 after a successful first series, involving a flat sharing ghost, werewolf and vampire – no-one said adult drama had to be realistic! So Fry is not necessarily arguing that Doctor Who is not good drama but that this form of drama can not address serious themes in an adult manner, a form of drama he wants and that he feels British television is no longer tkaing the risk to provide. Odd really given that the BBC took a huge risk back in 2005 re-commissioning the old, tired format of a strange man flying around in a blue box to fill a family audience slot that many media commentators stated no longer existed on a Saturday night.
Terry Pratchett’s article is not really a harsh criticism, it is more a whimsical remembrance of the old series coupled with an annoyance of the use of deus ex machina as the explanatory mode in the drama – a criticism that I feel may be a little harsh on some episodes under Russell T Davies’s tenure and certainly harsh on Stephen Moffat’s tenure as producer. Anyone who starts an article stating – ‘I wish I could hate Doctor Who.’, but can’t bring themselves to and then later states ‘It’s no good, I’ll go with the Doctor, even if those Ood look as if they should have been confronted by Tom Baker.’ You can pretty much assume he is a fan, albeit a reluctant one.
Pratchett is highly critical of classifying Doctor Who as science fiction. He has great trouble reconciling the plausibility of the science with the fast talking gobbledegok that explains fantastical acts such as transporting a hospital to the moon or human fat transmuting into cute little creature blobs. Although I could ask how close does fiction have to be to reality to count as science and how do we know if it is close to reality, this would be a pointless attempt at a debate as Doctor Who is science fantasy, or pure fantasy if you want, rather than science fiction. It is science only in the loosest sense that the laws of the physical realm are often called upon to do impossible things to provide an explanation; it is fantasy in the sense that we all know it is all impossible anyway. There is a veneer of physical explanation, the pixel thin science that Pratchett comments on, but it is almost irrelevant. Doctor Who is about story, it is about character, and it is about the suspension of belief, including a belief in science as we know it in this universe. If calling it science fiction immediately means it has to conform to a set of rules then the format will collapse, the enjoyment of the audience evaporates. Doctor Who is about the ride rather than the rules.
The criticism of the deus ex machina is succinctly put:
‘It’s a law – well at least a guideline – in writing plays that if somebody is going to be killed with an axe in the third act, then the axe should be visible hanging on the wall in the first act, and, for the hard of thinking, should be the subject of a line of dialogue that would go something like “you shouldn’t leave that around, it could do someone a mischief.”’
Couldn’t agree more and if Doctor Who was meant to be a long-running detective drama I would add my criticism. Yes, I did feel a little cheated at the end of Series 1 in 2005 when the whole thing was wrapped up by Rose metamorphosing into an all powerful being and the end of Series 3 with the deity-like form of David Tennant hovering over a cowering Master wasn’t much better if you were looking for meaningful and logically coherent narratives. Then again there was ‘Girl in the Fireplace’, The Empty Child’, scary enough even for Practhett and the already classic ‘Blink’. Aside from the commonality of being written by Stephen Moffat, they also stuck (more or less) to the narrative ‘laws’ mentioned by Practhett. But does this make them better than the two-part space opera that closed Series 1? On an emotional level, despite the ending, that two parter was an incredible television event, a real emotion ride, but that is what Russell T Davies intended the story to do. Sticking to guidelines wasn’t in the script, heightening emotions was. Different scripts, different writers, different intentions, the success of Doctor Who depends on varying the format, varying the type of narrative that will hold the attention of a varied audience, from the old timers steeped in Whovian lore to the wide-eyed youngsters who hide behind the sofa from the Weeping Angles but laugh at the Daleks. As Practhett notes:
‘After all, when you’ve had your moan you have to admit that it is very, very entertaining, with its heart in the right place, even if its head is often in orbit around Jupiter.’
‘And yet, I will watch again next week because it is pure professionally-written entertainment, even if it helps sometimes if you leave your brain on a hook by the door. It’s funny, light-hearted, knows when to use pathos and capable of wonderful moments:’
In the end Doctor Who is about well-crafted entertainment whatever the narrative, whatever rules it breaks and whatever impossible universe it inhabits. We are all just along for the fun of the ride.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Whose Responsible?
Crisis Creation and the Transfer of Responsibility
Disasters are often depicted as ‘natural’, something for which no-one is to blame. Economic crisis don’t afford governments that luxury. There must be something to blame for this mess? There are two tactics, it was the last lots fault or it is out of our hands. Incoming governments have a period of grace, a honeymoon, where they can get away with blaming the last lot. Depending on how likeable they are they can get away with this for six months at most. The other tactic is more long-term and has more diverse ploys. The recent election of a coalition government with a decidedly neo-liberal agenda, at least in the policies of one of the partners, provides an opportunity to see the ploys in action. The key policies already announced and the tone of the government entering into negotiation with the electorate on what to cut all point to a ploy of transferring responsibility for the functions of government as well as the blame.
Free schools, GPs running NHS and ‘The Big Society’ are all policies seemingly designed to deliver power to the people but a moments critical thought, or two or three, reveal a different possible interpretation. Each policy questions, in a fundamental way, exactly what it is people should expect from government. Each policy redefines the limits of government and, potentially, extends the reach of the commercial. At first glance it seems the policies empower the people. Local people take control of schools, displacing the faceless beauocrats of local government. Your friendly GP, who understands your real needs, listens to your woes, they know what the NHS really needs to do. Local people running local amenities for local people – despite the echoes of Royston Varsy – what could be more English; warm beer, afternoon tea, cricket on the village green. Except does this vision of tranquillity transfer to reality?
I may be wrong, I may be doing the coalition a great disservice. They may really believe that by providing these opportunities, local people will effectively and efficiently manage the vast resources that will be allocated to these tasks. I don’t mean just money, although I am sure that will be ploughed into the policies. I also mean the valuable time of individuals, physical and mental effort and their hopes. I am sure there will be some shining successes, but will these be the exceptions to the rule?
Take free schools. The idea of devolving and allowing parents to take control of local schools sounds like a wonderful idea. Parents believe they know that their children aren’t taught what they should be. They know they could run the school better than the local authorities. Is this going to happen? What is really being done with this policy? The policy begins the redefinition of the role of government that the Conservative party promised. In this context, the policy questions the role of local government in providing a local service. It implies that devolution of this service to interested individuals is more appropriate and will be more effective. Effective in what sense? In ensuring the interests of local people are put into practice? Will all individuals have the same view of what education their children should get, in the nature of the teaching, in the type of dinners they should have, ni the quality of the environment they are taught in? What happens when the teacher they hired tells them that their son or daughter isn’t performing well? Devolution of such power can never be to the individual; some form of representative organisation is required to implement policies. So what form of organisation is representative and who should be represented, who should participate? The most vocal, the most intelligent, the most worldly? Is that going to be a skill set characteristic of a particular class, a particular type of person? Who decides and how do they decide?
Even supposing this minor detail can be overcome; the next question is how do they (whoever they are) sort out running a school? What parents have the time and the skills to organise a vast and complex organisation that is a modern school? Hovering in the wings private companies are more than willing to aid in the complex logistics of running a school, for a price obviously. So a local service becomes a local service organised and run, on a day-to-day basis, by a private company or companies. The local authority is hollowed out; the function removed and out-sourced, but national government pays for it, the taxpayer subsidies private enterprise mediated through the empowering of the people.
Think on a few years. Examination time, written examinations of course as these are the only ones that the parents really believe are proper examinations, and their sons and daughters don’t do as well as the ‘other’ schools that have followed the ‘other’ curriculum and done module assessment. Is this likely to be allowed to happen? Will a private examination company emerge to assess these scripts in the proper manner, to give them the appropriate weight they should have as ‘harder’ forms of assessment for which the free schools will have to pay as it takes longer to assess such work? Will ‘proper’ universities recognise the value of these ‘proper’ examinations and privilege them over the inferior ‘other’ assessment thus allocating places preferentially to free school students? I don’t know, but what I can say is that if you think of the school as a single component of an educational ecosystem, you can’t change one component without that change reverberating through the rest of the ecosystem and, as ecosystem as large, complex webs of relations, such changes could be non-linear and highly unpredictable.
What if the experiment fails? What if a free school doesn’t live up to expectations? What if it goes bust? Who is to blame? The local authority is not responsible. The government is not responsible. Neither now have any input into the school other than the government providing the funds to run the school, which as a free market entity it can obviously be given less of each year as it increases its efficiency. Responsibility, and blame, is now firmly located at the feet of the parents, except I am sure it won’t rest there. The teachers they hired will be to blame. The firm they hired to run the school will be to blame. Problem is there is no one left to complain to as no one is listening. It is your problem.
Disasters are often depicted as ‘natural’, something for which no-one is to blame. Economic crisis don’t afford governments that luxury. There must be something to blame for this mess? There are two tactics, it was the last lots fault or it is out of our hands. Incoming governments have a period of grace, a honeymoon, where they can get away with blaming the last lot. Depending on how likeable they are they can get away with this for six months at most. The other tactic is more long-term and has more diverse ploys. The recent election of a coalition government with a decidedly neo-liberal agenda, at least in the policies of one of the partners, provides an opportunity to see the ploys in action. The key policies already announced and the tone of the government entering into negotiation with the electorate on what to cut all point to a ploy of transferring responsibility for the functions of government as well as the blame.
Free schools, GPs running NHS and ‘The Big Society’ are all policies seemingly designed to deliver power to the people but a moments critical thought, or two or three, reveal a different possible interpretation. Each policy questions, in a fundamental way, exactly what it is people should expect from government. Each policy redefines the limits of government and, potentially, extends the reach of the commercial. At first glance it seems the policies empower the people. Local people take control of schools, displacing the faceless beauocrats of local government. Your friendly GP, who understands your real needs, listens to your woes, they know what the NHS really needs to do. Local people running local amenities for local people – despite the echoes of Royston Varsy – what could be more English; warm beer, afternoon tea, cricket on the village green. Except does this vision of tranquillity transfer to reality?
I may be wrong, I may be doing the coalition a great disservice. They may really believe that by providing these opportunities, local people will effectively and efficiently manage the vast resources that will be allocated to these tasks. I don’t mean just money, although I am sure that will be ploughed into the policies. I also mean the valuable time of individuals, physical and mental effort and their hopes. I am sure there will be some shining successes, but will these be the exceptions to the rule?
Take free schools. The idea of devolving and allowing parents to take control of local schools sounds like a wonderful idea. Parents believe they know that their children aren’t taught what they should be. They know they could run the school better than the local authorities. Is this going to happen? What is really being done with this policy? The policy begins the redefinition of the role of government that the Conservative party promised. In this context, the policy questions the role of local government in providing a local service. It implies that devolution of this service to interested individuals is more appropriate and will be more effective. Effective in what sense? In ensuring the interests of local people are put into practice? Will all individuals have the same view of what education their children should get, in the nature of the teaching, in the type of dinners they should have, ni the quality of the environment they are taught in? What happens when the teacher they hired tells them that their son or daughter isn’t performing well? Devolution of such power can never be to the individual; some form of representative organisation is required to implement policies. So what form of organisation is representative and who should be represented, who should participate? The most vocal, the most intelligent, the most worldly? Is that going to be a skill set characteristic of a particular class, a particular type of person? Who decides and how do they decide?
Even supposing this minor detail can be overcome; the next question is how do they (whoever they are) sort out running a school? What parents have the time and the skills to organise a vast and complex organisation that is a modern school? Hovering in the wings private companies are more than willing to aid in the complex logistics of running a school, for a price obviously. So a local service becomes a local service organised and run, on a day-to-day basis, by a private company or companies. The local authority is hollowed out; the function removed and out-sourced, but national government pays for it, the taxpayer subsidies private enterprise mediated through the empowering of the people.
Think on a few years. Examination time, written examinations of course as these are the only ones that the parents really believe are proper examinations, and their sons and daughters don’t do as well as the ‘other’ schools that have followed the ‘other’ curriculum and done module assessment. Is this likely to be allowed to happen? Will a private examination company emerge to assess these scripts in the proper manner, to give them the appropriate weight they should have as ‘harder’ forms of assessment for which the free schools will have to pay as it takes longer to assess such work? Will ‘proper’ universities recognise the value of these ‘proper’ examinations and privilege them over the inferior ‘other’ assessment thus allocating places preferentially to free school students? I don’t know, but what I can say is that if you think of the school as a single component of an educational ecosystem, you can’t change one component without that change reverberating through the rest of the ecosystem and, as ecosystem as large, complex webs of relations, such changes could be non-linear and highly unpredictable.
What if the experiment fails? What if a free school doesn’t live up to expectations? What if it goes bust? Who is to blame? The local authority is not responsible. The government is not responsible. Neither now have any input into the school other than the government providing the funds to run the school, which as a free market entity it can obviously be given less of each year as it increases its efficiency. Responsibility, and blame, is now firmly located at the feet of the parents, except I am sure it won’t rest there. The teachers they hired will be to blame. The firm they hired to run the school will be to blame. Problem is there is no one left to complain to as no one is listening. It is your problem.
Creating A Crisis
It’s terrible. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disaster. It’s a catastrophe. Terms that immediately make you think something is seriously wrong and terms being regularly applied to the state of the British economy. Public spending is unsustainable, the deficit is frightening, the only solution is tough.
What do you think when these terms are used or, more importantly, what are you meant to think? How do you think you should respond to these multiple crisis? Carry on the same – surely that is what got us here in the first place. Take drastic and decisive action, mark this necessary action out as different, unusual, the inevitable response to a break with the past, a rupture with normality, the only solution to a crisis?
Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine outlined the need for a crisis to be recognised and diagnosised as new and different for radical solutions to be acceptable to the public. Create crisis and the public are softened up, ready to accept the harsh medicine. The current language being used by the British coalition government seems to fit within the framework outlined by Klein. So is Britain heading for an application of ‘shock’ therapy?
The signs are not good. The crisis narrative or story is focused on debt, specifically the debt created by public spending. The argument is that the previous government created such a massive difference between government income and expenditure that the resulting debt puts the country on a precipitate of finance disaster. Do nothing and the whole country goes over the edge, plummeting into a downward spiral of bad credit and bankruptcy and the risk of being shunned by overseas investment. Fortunately, for the country, the current government has recognised the scale of the problem just in time and has a solution and one that is approved by those that oversee international investment. Only trouble is the whole thing sounds very familiar.
The neoliberal solution is as it has always been, a variant of the Washington Consensus. Public is bad, private is good. The market is the saviour and governments should surrender to market forces. It is a strategy tried and tested in South America, Africa and most of the world. The state is hollowed out; services removed from the public sector and placed in the hands of, usually, a few trusted companies and individuals. The state pays them for their experience in reducing costs, in making the services more efficient. Complain and you clearly don’t understand the scale of the crisis this drastic action is having to deal with. Complain and you don’t understand the inevitable economics of the situation. We have to act, we don’t want to do it but we have to. The language, the narrative of a disaster doesn’t call for debate or discussion it calls for action. The narrative of crisis has its own logic, its own structure – you have all seen enough disaster movies to know how it should unfold. Heroes, villains, innocent victims scattered about the set, an inescapable and desperate plan that succeeds at the last moment. Some die, some live.
Personally, I am still unclear whether the mountain of debt includes the money used to bail out the banks? If it does then the crisis seems to be one made by the same institutions that insist we must reduce the debt, the same institutions that are now advocating giving all the services to them. Even if the massive injection of capital that ‘saved’ the banking system isn’t included in the debt, then serious questions need to be asked about the crisis that has been and is being created. What is the debt and how was it created? Not the rhetoric of politics but a sober account of what the debt consists of and how it emerged over time. What would happen to the debt if nothing was done? Not the gnashing and wailing of the self-appointed international credit bodies but the analysis of how the debt would reduce, increase or stabilize if no action was taken. Why is there only one solution? This is probably the most interesting and important question of all. The government is presenting the pain of service reduction, budgetary cuts and privatisation as the only solution. Why? This will be theme I will unravel in subsequent blogs as the details of the ‘only’ solution for each sector of the economy and public services are wheeled out to a public bombarded with the rhetoric of crisis.
What do you think when these terms are used or, more importantly, what are you meant to think? How do you think you should respond to these multiple crisis? Carry on the same – surely that is what got us here in the first place. Take drastic and decisive action, mark this necessary action out as different, unusual, the inevitable response to a break with the past, a rupture with normality, the only solution to a crisis?
Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine outlined the need for a crisis to be recognised and diagnosised as new and different for radical solutions to be acceptable to the public. Create crisis and the public are softened up, ready to accept the harsh medicine. The current language being used by the British coalition government seems to fit within the framework outlined by Klein. So is Britain heading for an application of ‘shock’ therapy?
The signs are not good. The crisis narrative or story is focused on debt, specifically the debt created by public spending. The argument is that the previous government created such a massive difference between government income and expenditure that the resulting debt puts the country on a precipitate of finance disaster. Do nothing and the whole country goes over the edge, plummeting into a downward spiral of bad credit and bankruptcy and the risk of being shunned by overseas investment. Fortunately, for the country, the current government has recognised the scale of the problem just in time and has a solution and one that is approved by those that oversee international investment. Only trouble is the whole thing sounds very familiar.
The neoliberal solution is as it has always been, a variant of the Washington Consensus. Public is bad, private is good. The market is the saviour and governments should surrender to market forces. It is a strategy tried and tested in South America, Africa and most of the world. The state is hollowed out; services removed from the public sector and placed in the hands of, usually, a few trusted companies and individuals. The state pays them for their experience in reducing costs, in making the services more efficient. Complain and you clearly don’t understand the scale of the crisis this drastic action is having to deal with. Complain and you don’t understand the inevitable economics of the situation. We have to act, we don’t want to do it but we have to. The language, the narrative of a disaster doesn’t call for debate or discussion it calls for action. The narrative of crisis has its own logic, its own structure – you have all seen enough disaster movies to know how it should unfold. Heroes, villains, innocent victims scattered about the set, an inescapable and desperate plan that succeeds at the last moment. Some die, some live.
Personally, I am still unclear whether the mountain of debt includes the money used to bail out the banks? If it does then the crisis seems to be one made by the same institutions that insist we must reduce the debt, the same institutions that are now advocating giving all the services to them. Even if the massive injection of capital that ‘saved’ the banking system isn’t included in the debt, then serious questions need to be asked about the crisis that has been and is being created. What is the debt and how was it created? Not the rhetoric of politics but a sober account of what the debt consists of and how it emerged over time. What would happen to the debt if nothing was done? Not the gnashing and wailing of the self-appointed international credit bodies but the analysis of how the debt would reduce, increase or stabilize if no action was taken. Why is there only one solution? This is probably the most interesting and important question of all. The government is presenting the pain of service reduction, budgetary cuts and privatisation as the only solution. Why? This will be theme I will unravel in subsequent blogs as the details of the ‘only’ solution for each sector of the economy and public services are wheeled out to a public bombarded with the rhetoric of crisis.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Blogging!
Hello there, my first blog and hopefully not my last. Well, what am I going to blog about, what pearls of wisdom do I think it is worth my effort writing and the effort of other bloggers to bother reading. Sorry about the photo by the way, my work Webpage photo, functional and unflattering but not sure if I can take a flattering one of me!
My list of links might provide a clue to my passions in life. My wife, my work, my science fiction and my sport; very probably in that order. I am one of those really annoying, lucky souls whose enjoys their work (well most of it anyway, obviously not the admin. stuff that if you left for a month or two no-one would ever notice it hadn't been done). No, it’s the research and teaching bits of my job as a lecturer in Geography that I love. I will be commenting on bits and pieces of that as I think of them as I really do believe geography gives you a particular, probably oddly skewed view of the world. For the really keen I have a separate blog on Environmental Geography that they can link to
(http://environmentalgeographyblog.blogspot.com/). On my personal site I will be more politically bias than on my environmental geography site as I do have some views on the way governments of all persuasions in the UK have and are creating a more unequal world.
Luckily, my work also means that I get to travel a fair bit as well and experience a lot of different cultures and climates and indulge a little in photographing of these landscapes and places. So not only a chance to wax lyrical about the wonders of travel, but also a chance to highlight and comment on some of the tragic inequalities of humanity.
My sport used to be hockey and cricket but I gracefully bowed out, albeit with a hope to return when I’m older to plague the young. Now I run occasionally and have completed the Reading half-marathon and Great south Run both at a sedate pace (it is always embarrassing to be beaten by the foam rhino!)
As for the science fiction – well everyone has a little guilty pleasure and that is one of mine. I have even tried my hand at writing something in the genre and continue to do so. Apart from escapism and enjoyment of a good story I think it is interesting to look at the context and development of the ideas as well as the production of the science fiction itself (oh dear, is that my geographic viewpoint coming through). So I’ll be blogging on what I think of certain pieces of science fiction but, I hope, with a slightly different critical slant from most.
Anyway it is for others to judge if what I say is interesting or not. I must think it is or I wouldn’t bother to write about it!
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