Breakfast seminar this morning for my Wolfson Press Fellows given by Bob Satchwell (centre right), Director of the Society of Editors.

We had a lively discussion about, among other things, super-injunctions, during which Bob reminded me of something that the eminent judge Lord Woolf once said (I think in a House of Lords debate). The context was an assertion (by me) that there was no ‘public interest’ defence for tabloid coverage of the sex lives of footballers, but Woolf said that there was also a wider public interest in having newspapers that were commercially successful. Given that the public apparently craves news of footballers’ sex lives, and that tabloids pander to that craving, perhaps the public interest issue is more complex than I had thought.

Discuss, as they say in philosophy exams.

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.

I know you don’t need these tips, but just in case…

Er, here it is:

My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of ageing and life as performance. With influences as diverse as Blake and Andy Warhol, new synergies are generated from both traditional and modern meanings. Ever since I was a teenager I have been fascinated by the traditional understanding of meaning. What starts out as hope soon becomes corroded into a dialectic of temptation, leaving only a sense of decadence and the possibility of a new beginning. As spatial phenomena become transformed through diligent and critical practice, the viewer is left with a statement of the possibilities of our world.

Impressive, isn’t it? Alas I didn’t compose it but simply clicked on the Arty Bollocks Generator.

It’s Bloomsday, a day which for some of us is far, far more important than Midsummer.

Meanwhile, for light relief (and for Beckett fans, who get a raw deal at this time of year), try this. (Warning: rude words ahead).

This is a passage from T.S. Eliot’s great modernist poem, The Waste Land.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,  
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,  
Endeavours to engage her in caresses  
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.  
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;  
Exploring hands encounter no defence;  
His vanity requires no response,  
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all  
Enacted on this same divan or bed;  
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows on final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…

Q: Why does this passage remind one of a famous international banker?

Nice LRB blog post by Glen Newey.

The New College for the Humanities must have looked like a winner on paper. A higher education Britain’s Got Talent fronted by celebrity academics not just on the payroll, but taking a dividend. Financiers on board. Mayor BoJo’s blessing. Saudi princes by the tanker-load offering their custom. And then the project has seemingly shrivelled faster than a LibDem campaign rosette. Birkbeck swiftly distances itself from the NCH and parts company with its founder. The college’s financial, fiscal and institutional status prove foggy. It turns out that the Cannadine-Colleys are only showing up for one lecture each a year. Poor A.C. Grayling gets ambushed in Foyle’s and smoke-bombed when all he wanted to do was puff his college and shift a few copies of his rewrite of the Bible. Is nothing sacred?

[…]

The problem with the NCH is not that it is ‘elite’, or that several of the big names are getting on. The problem is that it epitomises the worst features of the 2012-spec UK higher education system: it amplifies rather than damping down inequalities inherited from UK schools’ state/fee-paying apartheid, and makes ability to pay a further necessary condition beyond academic ability for admission. It also doubles students’ indebtedness and it’s not yet clear – as became plain in an interview Grayling gave this week – that NCH students will be eligible for a loan. The big-ticket professoriate will exemplify trends in the HE sector generally, where salaried faculty’s research time is bought out with low-cost teaching by casual staff.

Strange goings-on with Olympics tickets.

Probably the most complicated system for buying tickets ever thought up by man is in a new phase. The London Organising Committee (LOCOG) has run the initial ballot and assigned the first round of tickets. They've now taken money out of the accounts of those who were successful in the ballot and had a functioning visa account.

There could however be another chance for people who were unsuccessful as there are thousands of transactions that LOCOG have been unable to process because people's accounts have not had the money in or because the bank details have been incorrect for example. There are numerous reasons why a transaction could fail but if they try three times and it still fails, then the next person on the ballot waiting list gets the tickets.

I wonder if there might be another explanation. Could this be a reflection of a downturn in people’s economics circs? Maybe they’ve been forced to tear up their credit cards? Or have simple maxed out? Hmmm….

Doesn’t affect me. I propose to leave the country while the games are in progress.

From the University of London’s web site.

About the New College of the Humanities

The University is aware of the intention of the New College of the Humanities NCH to provide tuition to students of the University of London International Programmes. There is no formal agreement between the University of London and the NCH concerning academic matters. As with any other Independent Teaching Institution, a dialogue will be maintained about when to apply for recognition under the Institutions Policy Framework, but normally a track record is required. To avoid any confusion, it should be made clear that NCH is not, and will not be, a part of the University of London. Meanwhile it is legitimate for NCH, as an entirely independent institution, to provide tuition to students of University of London International Programmes as other institutions in London and around the world do. These students’ applications for registration for degrees would be made individually with the University of London International Programmes.

No agreement has been concluded as yet regarding access to the Senate House Libraries by NCH students, but financial terms exist for the payment of fees for access by any students of University of London International Programmes and this would, of course, apply to students of NCH. The position is similar for the University of London Union, and it should be noted that all students of the University of London International Programmes are eligible for associate membership for a payment of £20 per annum, but are not eligible to compete competitively in University sports teams.

Quite so. Just in case there might be any misunderstanding, m’lud.

Thanks to Doug Clow for spotting it.

Nice Salon.com piece by Michael Lind about Fergie, the Tories’ favourite historian. Sample:

What accounts for the attention lavished by the American media on a huckster as vulgar and shallow as Niall Ferguson? His accent surely is part of the explanation. Only a combined lack of personal and national self-confidence can explain the way that America’s publishers and producers — many of them insecure, upwardly mobile social climbers — will fawn over a mediocre British pundit or pop historian whom they would completely ignore if he were Tony Zacarelli from Long Island or Fred Huffernagel from Oregon. Little has changed since the Midwesterner Jay Gatz, to be taken seriously on the Anglophile East Coast, had to change his name to Gatsby before he could qualify as "dashing."

Ferguson is the most prominent of a number of British conservative intellectuals and journalists who have found more sympathetic audiences in the U.S. than in their own country, where their enthusiasm for Victorian imperialism and Victorian economics stigmatizes them as cranks.