29/02/2008 by admin.

Have you noticed that many companies and organisations are now introducing online voting for their AGM, special resolutions and so on. The MRS has just announced the results of the Council election for which they employed online voting. The only snag was that even with this facility , which one would think would be attractive to researchers, the number of members voting was a pretty small percentage of those eligible to vote. The Research Network could do the same but would it be worth it?

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28/02/2008 by admin.

The general principle of assisting people back to work is of course to be applauded but I can’t help feeling that the Government’s latest proposals have the touch of ambitious social engineering. If it works, well and good but I think we’ll need to be convinced by impartial evidence and an absence of spin in interpreting the results. I wonder who will carry out the research? It could be lucrative (not that I’m bidding for it).

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27/02/2008 by admin.

The news is full of stories of mankind’s inhumanity to its own species. This has led to calls for the restoration of capital punishment - quite understandable but also unthinkable in terms of its effect on the people who would have to carry it out and, we know now, the difficulty of finding adequate safeguards against more inhumanity or miscarriages of justice.

So many explanations of such behaviour but, especially reading the stories of murders and planned murders, no real explanation except the, maybe old-fashioned, concept of evil. Those who maintain evil does not exist might read the witness statements at the trials of those recently sentenced and, desperately sadly, those who up until now have been denied the trial of their tormentors and are only now able to tell us about their sufferings. Think of them and pray for them.

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26/02/2008 by admin.

The last time I was a member of a political party was in 1960. I drifted away, rather than resigned from, Labour Party membership. I had been active in University Labour politics when the CULC contained such luminaries as Jack Ashley, Kenneth (now Lord) Wedderburn and Greville Janner. I remember being warned off the CUSC as crypto- Communist for which  a rabid left-wing Union speaker in my college wanted me. He later became a very successful barrister on the Northern circuit and , so far as I know, was never heard of in national politics. I was pretty left then but never a member of the Communist Party of GB. This didn’t stop my first tutor’s solidly Tory wife introducing me at a drinks party as ‘our College Communist’ for which her husband later apologised!

Since the 1960s I have thought of myself as largely apolitical. I always vote and I have voted for all three major parties at either national or local level, including Labour in the 1997 General Election (but not in 2001 or 2005). As with many other people Iraq was the last straw although I had become a severe critic of Blair by the time of the 2001 election.

Since then I have watched the Conservative Party’s painful attempts at rebirth but, again like many other people, I am unconvinced that this process is either stable or complete. I do worry from time to time that my absence from active party politics for so long gives me no right to criticise from the sidelines and I also live in a solidly Conservative constituency. I rarely if ever talk politics with former colleagues and you’ll forgive me for doing so now but I thought it was time I nailed my absence of colours to the mast.

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25/02/2008 by admin.

First of all someone pointed out to me, in relation to an earlier post, that Vaughan Williams was not an Anglican but merely admired the C of E liturgy and approved of the national church as a cementing force. He certainly wrote/arranged many hymn tunes and a (Latin) Mass but he was  apparently not a believer. It has happened since; John Rutter has written many ostensibly religious works but is not religious. It doesn’t affect the ability of their work to move us and to add to the beauty of the liturgy.

On another matter Mr Speaker has probably broken no rules but, like very many other MPs, has stretched the coverage of his allowances to meet his wants rather than his needs. It is obvious that the whole system of expenses and allowances needs to be reformed and also demands impartial representation on any body set up to recommend reform Change, Mr Brown, change! We thought you approved of it. Now we taxpayers demand it.

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24/02/2008 by admin.

Thanks Jane for your contribution. I think all ‘ranking’ of composers is a bit misleading and it was with tongue in cheek that I said Elgar was the better composer. In fact I like both but Elgar had such a wide range. The Pomp and Circumstance Number 4 is , I think, wonderfully evocative of Edwardian England and a better piece than the March Number 1 though this too has had ‘words’ set to it which I remmber singing at school . It reminds me of the existing Edwardian buildings in London.It isn’t jingoistic in essence but does reflect the fact that it was written in Imperial times.

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23/02/2008 by admin.

 Ralph Vaughan Williams or Edward Elgar?

A lot of discussion lately about who is the more ‘English’ -  Elgar or Vaughan Williams, one a rather tortured Catholic, one a rather comfortable, Anglican (both of sorts). Vaughan Williams is certainly neglected compared with Elgar and he is probably more English in terms of his continuity and sensitivity to English folk song and traditional tunes. Elgar is only thought of as the epitome of Englishness because of the way his march is belted out at the Proms to words he never wanted. But if course he is the better composer. Discuss.  

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22/02/2008 by admin.

Well I appear to be on my own still. Either no-one has read this blog or not felt moved to comment. Just so you know how to comment, click No Comments and you will then be able to participate in the blog by replying to a particular “Post”. I cannot believe that no-one in the whole Research Network is familiar with blogs; according to the popular view everyone is blogging these days. Follow the instructions as they say.

Or maybe there has been nothing to comment about… A busy day so I will not write anything profound. Statistical co-incidences; yesterday I said that a member of the Tate Gallery staff told me there were now 80,000 members (what used to be called ‘Friends’) of the Tate. Yesterday the government announced that the number of prisoners in British gaols had just passed the 80,000 mark. Presumably few of the latter overlap with the former though one never knows. Sorry to be so whimsical.

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21/02/2008 by admin.

There seems to be a tendency lately for opinion pollsters to be asked to forecast opinion. Does anyone agree with me that this is a very risky business for us to get into, particularly since the one thing we do know is that so-called public opinion is very fickle. Incidentally since Obama seems now to be well in the lead we no longer hear a lot about the fallibilty of opinion polling in the USA. Maybe Hillary’s mistake  was firstly to trail Bill along at all and second to have no clear view of her main platform; she might have done better to emphasise experience and knowledge of how foreign affairs work right from the start; and held the tears.

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20/02/2008 by admin.

I like music and I like the visual arts. Yesterday I saw two of the current exhibitions at Tate Britain, Peter Doig was one and the Camden Group the other. On the whole I enjoyed Doig rather better since although certain aspects of the Camden Group are historically interesting I find the art somewhat unsettling - I think because it was created in a time of great social injustice and insufferable prudery. Doig is also disturbing but in altogether a different way in that he opens your eyes to aspects of landscape that are reminiscent of situations in which you might have found yourself, for instance in large open spaces or in other-worldly lighting on an apparently ordinary day. See them both if you like painting. I am a member of the Tate as I know many of you are. One of the staff told me there are 80,000 of us now.

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