Stressed out and indoctrinated

I was flicking through the The Times's Good University Guide supplement recently. Mild interest rather than applying all over again! This year the LSE topped their rankings and so I dipped in to what it said about that establishment and happened upon the most encouraging things I've read about a British university in a long time.

Freedom of speech is top of their relatively new vice chancellor's agenda. There will be no "safe spaces", no trigger warnings on lectures and no books banned. A working group will consider how issues such as Islamophobia, antisemitism and transgender issues should be dealt with. All first year undergrads will have to take a compulsory inter-disciplinary module teaching students how to debate controversial issues.

"I say if you come here, expect to encounter ideas you hate, that bite, that go to your identity" said Larry Kramer. "If we are not doing that we are failing to prepare you for what will happen out there when you leave. We will give you the tools to help you engage".

I've been concerned about the proliferation of cancel culture in our universities for some time, with no-platforming of many speakers who can't possibly be considered to be extreme. But I'd been further sensitised to these issues after reading a column by Matt Goodwin, following his resignation from the University of Kent where he had been professor of politics and international relations for 9 years. Goodwin is an occasional columnist in the Times group newspapers so I wondered why he quit.

Goodwin was very clear that he had taken the opportunity of redundancy as universities struggle to balance their books. This is due to the nonsensical position of the tuition fees, set at £9,000 in 2012, having only been raised to £9,250 since making them worth less than £6,500 in today's money, leaving a number of universities on the brink of collapse.

Goodwin said there were a number of factors behind his desire to leave academia: factors which have "collided to erode the quality of higher education, betray students and make universities an unpleasant place to work". These factors include the dumbing down of standards, rampant grade inflation (with 56% of students now getting a first class degree); the "disastrous rise of on-line, or remote, learning which ... has killed attendance and intellectual life, undermining students' interpersonal and learning skills" and how universities have "replaced the things they used to prioritise - intellectual rigour, hard work, exposing students to debates and ideas, even ones they find disagreeable - with an obsessive focus on 'student satisfaction' ".

Goodwin went on to say, however, that the real reason he and many others are leaving academia is not because of finances or teaching, it is because the universities have become "openly political...highly activist ... imposing a dogmatic view on their academics and students, enforcing a narrow groupthink, silencing dissenters and eroding the things higher education is meant to promote - truth, reason, evidence and exposing their students to a full range of ideas and beliefs."

Strong stuff. Goodwin says universities have always leaned left. It was certainly the case when I was at uni in the early 1970s. I didn't have a problem with it as I would have been somewhat on the left myself at the time. The folk interested in politics - student or mainstream - were certainly very to the left but the majority (myself included) were much more interested in studying, partying, music and football. The profs and lecturers didn't appear to espouse any particular political ideology and concentrated on teaching.

But Goodwin says the ratio of left wing to right wing academics has spiralled since the 1960s from three to one to more like ten to one, producing an ideological monculture in which only a narrow set of ideas are allowed to dominate. He says this has resulted in a total obsession with viewing racial, sexual and gender minorities as sacred, wanting to transfer power and resources away from the majority to minorities and sacrificing anything that gets in the way of this "social justice".

By the time students reached Goodwin's third year course some would complain about how, until that point, they felt they had been politically indoctrinated.

From Goodwin's perspective it meant being told to "de-colonise" reading lists, taking part in anti-racism training which has been shown to be flawed, displaying gender pronouns (which he sees as a symbol of a "highly contested belief system") and working in a monoculture which was intolerant to those who hold different views. 

Other academics have quit or been forced out, inlcuding Kathleen Stock, hounded out of her job as professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex by pro-trans activists. The group Academics for Academic Freedom lists nearly nearly 200 academics who have been sacked, harassed or disinvited from giving talks in recent years.

Goodwin's personal experience was that, having publicly suggested after the Brexit referendum that the democratic decision made by 52% of voters should be implemented, he was subjected to a sustained campaign of bullying, harrassment and intimidation with many left wing academics shutting him out.

As a result students "self censor" on campus, feeling unable to say what they think.

What I find scary is that this has happened while we had a Conservative government, albeit one that didn't know where the pitch was, let alone keep its eye on any balls.

Goodwin was part of a group of academics who helped design the Higher Education (Free Speech) Act, which creates a legal requirement for universities to promote and protect free speech and leaving them liable to fines if they are found to sack or harass academics because of their views. But Bridget Phillipson, Labour's Education Secretary, has said she will pause if not cancel this new law. Labour could do a lot of damage unpicking things like this and trade union legislation.

Goodwin is finished with universities but will continue to write books and his blog on Substack, a blogging platform that allows authors to charge subscriptions (no, I'm not planning to do that!)

I will try to keep an eye on what Goodwin is saying. I'm sure many of his students will miss his teaching and those who don't will miss the benefit of hearing their received wisdom challenged.

If they can be bothered to attend lectures at all. A column by an iconito lecturer revealed the problems universities face in getting students to turn up to be indoctrinated. If they aren't too stressed to attend they find work so stressful they say they can't cope, can't deal with more than one assignment at a time or avoid assignments that involve talking to people, preferring to email or text.

It seems there is an epidemic of students with self-diagnosed mental illnesses, mainly anxiety, which they blame for absences and needing extensions to deadlines. And it's not just university life: they have anxiety about being on time, booking doctor's appointments (ha, obviously deluded if they think they can get one of those!) and managing money.

A study of 11,000 students in six Russell Group unis since 2022 said 30% of students reported anxiety disorders. Many of these are not medically diagnosed. A King's College study found the number of students self-reporting mental health difficulties had nearly tripled between 2017 and 2023, from 6% to 16%. A 2022 survey by Student Minds, a mental health charity, said 57% of respondents reported a mental health issue, of which 24 per cent had a diagnosis. This would still mean a staggering 14% of their sample  had such a diagnosis, though I'd expect their sample was skewed by people who just get on with things not responding to the survey.

The problem for lecturers is the onus is on them to accommodate this epidemic of real and imagined illness and they have a responsibility for following up with absent students to check they are ok. The Secret Lecturer claimed this sometimes meant checking up on 20 out of 30 students, rearranging courses in ways the students feel meet their needs. This might include adapting lessons so students can participate, providing course materials they can read in their own time and recording lectures or finding other ways of students being able to attend remotely. 

Lecturers have to be careful what they say and wouldn't dare to challenge students or suggest work might be just the thing to distract them and provide a sense of purpose. Pushing students hard is risky -  lecturers risk being investigated and some are reported to have been fired for being "too forceful".

I don't want to appear unsympathetic. One of the problems with this tidal wave of self reported issues is that it may conceal the smaller number of cases of students who are genuinely in difficulty and really do need help. But turning the normal struggles of life into a pathological condition isn't healthy. Mentally fragile students shouldn't put themselves through an experience they are unsuited to. Not everyone needs a degree, together with a debt of, on average, £45k. 

That debt often proves to be a poor investment. The IFS has calculated a wide range of how the degree subject affects the discounted present value of lifetime earnings. Medicine, economics and maths were the most strongly positive. Many other subjects were marginal at best.

As for indoctrination, I would guess the issue arises more in arts and humanities faculties rather than in engineering courses like the one I did all those years ago, though the climate of wokery is no doubt present everywhere. To aid pain to suffering the creative arts subjects had a negative discounted present value in the IFS study. That means those students are expected to earn less over their lifetime - by up to £100,000 in present day money - than if they hadn't gone to uni. Go figure, as they say.

I guess my biggest concern is that many of our universities are still centres of world class excellence and are a huge asset to the country. But for how much longer, I wonder?

The Good University Guide was published by the Times on 22 September 2024.

Matt Goodwin's article Goupthink is strangling universities, count me out was in the Sunday Times on 15 September 2024

My students tell me they're too stressed to learn. I don't dare to challenge them, a column by 'The Secret Lecturer' was in the Sunday Times on 6 October 2024

The costs of studying for a degree and the IFS lifetime earnings data were reported in How much does uni cost and is it worth it? BBC website 17 September 2024

Probation report on Starmer's Labour

Labour has been in power since 5 July: only 80 days so far, not yet even at the first hundred days mentioned since at least Roosevelt in the 1930s. But it's not too early for a first report. 

In my last company we gave new starters a full report on how they were getting on within 6 weeks so we could make sure that any early signs of under performance were dealt with, preferably by improvement but if necessary by an early exit well before the clock was run down. I remember only too well when I was in the public sector hurried reports being done in the last month of the probation period when there was no realistic chance of exiting an under performer. On another occasion one of my team leaders was determined to engineer a transfer in of a chap who'd had a whole series of negative reports elsewhere in the business. Against my advice he was sure the guy would be an asset and we were short of resources so I allowed myself to be persuaded. Of course he wasn't an asset and I regretted not being firmer. A mistake early in my time in management that wasn't repeated. 

An early exit isn't on for Labour with their huge majority but still - what does my report say?

There have been a number of early controversies. For a former DPP the riots after the dreadful events in Southport were a bit of a political gift in terms of events that just happen, enabling the new government to look tough while the courts just did their job. They also quite reasonably blamed their predecessors for having to release prisoners early to make space because the Tories, weirdly, didn't build prisons which one would have thought would go down well with their base. That was a problem allowed to "build" for 3 decades but Johnson & Sunak will get the blame.

The most contentious issues have been the removal of the universal pensioner fuel allowance benefit, the failure to say they will restore child benefit for all children and now (yet again, already!) the farrago over gifts from donors: wardrobegate, the gifts of clothing and even spectacles to Starmer, Reeves and others. The prompt implementation of substantial public sector pay deals has also received some criticism.

The restriction of the old folks winter fuel allowance to those receiving pension credit was a bit of a surprise as pensioner benefits have been protected throughout the (so-called) era of austerity. From my point of view as a comfortably off pensioner the old - if healthy and affluent - have had a very good deal compared with every other sector of the population over the last decade. So I was fairly neutral about the move personally, though I wondered about it politically. The decision seemed hurried and can't have been properly assessed. It seemed almost opportunistic in implementation. When it was suggested Starmer was sitting on an assessment of the harm it would do he made light of it saying there wasn't one, which left me very uneasy. It seems intuitively likely that many pensioners who are around the pension credit limit will suffer excessively, especially as many eligible pensioners don't claim pension credit. 

I'm left in bit of a dilemma over this one as I've often debated with Democracy Man the pros and cons of universal against means tested benefits. I'm generally not a fan of paying these type of benefits to everyone and clawing some of it back through tax as it is inefficient and encourages a benefits dependent culture. The government has inherited a bit of a bind here as the state pension is now very close to the personal allowance, which is frozen until 2028 so there is already a coming storm on people on low incomes paying tax on their state pension. That might have steered them to removing the fuel benefit completely, as they've already committed to not increasing general rates of income tax.

I'm left feeling they should have done that assessment but just wanted to look tough and prepared to take unpopular decisions. Most pensioners will whinge about it but will be ok; some won't be.

The child benefit issue was a non-story for me. Labour hadn't said they would extend the benefit beyond the two child cap and it wasn't in their manifesto so it wasn't clear why some of their supporters and MPs felt it should be done immediately. Mischief making by anti-Labour progressives helped to stir the issue up. However, on the general point of principle, it seems strange to me that child benefit is capped in this way. Our birth rate is uncomfortably low for sustainability. There are many countries in which it is worse (in South Korea it has plummeted from 1 in 2018 to 0.7 in 2023 against 2.1 for sustainability - and we may be heading that way. 

Why should we support people who want large families you may say? As many couples decide not to have children at all, it seems foolish to me to limit the benefit to two in the families that do want to have children if we want a reasonable birth rate. I don't buy the "why should we subsidise large families" argument. It doesn't really matter to me whether the people going through school and then joining the work force to pay the taxes to fund our state pensions come from families with one, two or many children, all that matters is there's enough of them.

So I'm puzzled that Labour didn't defuse that argument by saying they planned to do it even if a date couldn't be set before a first Reeves budget.

For me the dodgy decision in these early steps (miss-steps I've seen them called) was the way that Reeves caved in on public sector pay. Oh, I don't think she had much choice over paying the pay review body recommendations, it was decoupling them from any semblance of reform or change in working practices in agreeing a raft of settlements costing over £9bn for the NHS, police, rail, civil service and teachers I have a problem with.

Subsequently Starmer has said there will be no more money for the NHS without reform. So he's going to hold management to ransom is he? Sorry, Keir you've sold the pass on that, mate, just as Gordon Brown did nearly 20 years ago. Don't they learn?

As ever though, it's often not things of great substance that cause governments problems, it's what things look like. It wasn't a good look to find that Labour donor Lord Alli had been given a Downing Street pass. It now turns out that Sue Gray personally authorised this access, which is very unusual for someone who doesn't work there. Labour is now scrabbling around, saying the pass was "temporary" and has been given back.

But on the back of that story came all the stuff about clothes, spectacles and Arsenal box freebies for the PM, clothes for the chancellor (who says she's "too busy to shop") and a holiday in New York for Angela Rayner. None of this bothers me too much as all or most of it has been declared, though I agree with Martin Samuel's argument that Starmer shouldn't accept hospitality from a major football club when he will, on current plans, be the boss of the people who appoint the Football Regulator. Starmer's argument on security seems reasonable and I don't doubt that he likes taking his son. But, as Samuel says, it's cough up £8k for your own box or watch on the telly. Or be compromised.

What doesn't seem right is that the same donor has given so much money (over £300k has been reported, though over many years) to so many of Labour's front bench in opposition and now in the cabinet in government. I don't see how anyone can ensure that hasn't bought excessive influence.

It seems strange that someone as po-faced as Starmer would accept more in gifts and freebies than any other recent leader of a major party (according to the Guardian) and more than any other MP since 2019 (according to Sky News).  And they were taking these donations while criticising Johnson and the Tories for grift.

Haven't Starmer and his team heard the classic advice that, if you are wondering whether something is a good idea or not, just think what it would look like if reported in the press?

However, the thing that is causing me the most concern about Labour's start is the £22bn current year black hole they say they found on taking power. One might argue that in the total of £1.2bn annual government spending, £22bn is in the noise. Moreover most commentators think the issue is not the current year but future years as both Labour and the Tories spending plans have been described as works of fiction, neither allowing enough for increasing demands.

Nevertheless, Reeves and Starmer have used this at least partly mythical black hole to justify the winter fuel allowance grab and set expectations for a tough budget, while agreeing to everything put in front of them on pay (including Sue Gray's*). David Smith in the Sunday Times is one of many economists to pooh-pooh the idea put forward by Reeves that her economic inheritance is the worst since, oh didn't she say the Reformation or something?  It is transparently not the case that the situation is worse than in 2010. Sure, debt has just hit 100% of GDP for the first time since the early 1960s, when it was on it's way down after world war 2. But what matters is the comparison with other countries. In 2010 the UK was uniquely exposed because of the size of its financial sector. Smith and most of his ilk do not see anything like the same level of economic danger for the UK at the moment.

Moreover, the economic climate is improving, albeit sluggishly. Inflation is falling and the tepid growth forecasts are warming up slightly.

So, Starmer and Reeves are talking bollocks. But they have a plan. Not an economic plan, like George Osborne kept saying he had, at least not one they plan to tell us about until the end of October. But they are copying from the Cameron/Osborne playbook. The Tories resolutely blamed their predecessors for the economic ills of the country all the way through the 2010-2015 parliament. It worked and probably guaranteed their win in 2015. Starmer and Reeves think they can do the same. We'll see, because it will probably be harder to make it stick. But they may feel that it's an each way bet: if the economy improves they claim the credit. If it doesn't - blame your predecessor.

Which reminds me of an old joke. A chap has taken over from a senior manager who has been fired. In the desk he finds three envelopes, with instrcutions on when to open them. When the first quarter's results are poor he opens the first envelope. "Blame your predecessor" it says. He does and is given time to get things right. When the next quarter's results are poor he opens the second envelope. "Blame the market and state of the world economy".  He does and is granted more time. When the next set of results are just as bad he opens the third envelope. "Write out three envelopes" it says.

So I don't know if this tactic will work for Starmer and Reeves, but it's going to get tiresome listening to it.

The real tests will be whether Labour can reform planning and get building and growth going while handling with competence the inevitable periodic outcries about things like immigrants in small boats.

There is a danger that the government's gloomy talk will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and squash any hope of growth. At the Labour party conference they adopted a more positive tone. So which is it? 

At the conference Reeves said "no more austerity". But she's already promised not to raise almost any tax that is guranteed to raise anything substantial. So what's it going to be at the end of October, Rachel? Are you a self-harming sadist or a pussy cat?

However, with anything like competence and a reasonable degree of consistency the economy should begin to improve. In the longer term our readiness to respond to the uncertain geopolitical times we live in may pose greater challenges, especially since I fear that Starmer is not comfortable about taking quick decisions - I suspect he isn't confident he'll get them right. Remember just how long it took Labour to decide to back down from its ridiculous £28bn a year green investment pledge. It wasn't a screeching u-turn was it? And his answers to the wardrobegate fuss have been slippery rather than firm.

Still, however quick or slow Starmer's decision making, the questions I pose above are very open indeed and it's not clear to me that any of our political parties are currently capable of rising to those challenges.

Oh the report card? Oftsed has moved away from single word assessments but I'll say: floundering.

* As I understand it from a Times reader critical of shabby journalism, Sue Gray is not paid more than the PM as that compares her new, post civil service pay rise salary with last year's published actual pay for the PM. And while lots of Downing Street special advisers seem thoroughly cheesed off about having had a pay cut, this is because they are now civil servants and have been put on the appropriate pay point which happens to be less than Labour was paying them as employees when the party was in opposition. Nevertheless I did smirk at the comment from one Tory MP: "crikey, it took us 12 months to get to this level of discord in Downing Street, even with Johnson and Cummings there".

I Got The Blues

It's as traumatic as ever being an Evertononian at the moment. I think they said on Match of the Day that their opening two defeats in the Premier League by 7 goals to nil in total is the worst start the club has ever made to a season, though I can't confirm if that's just for the Premier League era given football doesn't appear to have existed before 1992. It also opened us up to those James Bond jokes (0 points, 0 goals, 7 conceded). Still, plenty of time, no need to panic. Doncaster beaten in the Haribo Cup, 2-0 up against Bournemouth after 86 mins, the sun is shining. And then - WTF???

While feeling utterly despondent about that collapse - no team has previously lost a Premier League game from 2-0 up after 86 minutes - I'm trying to be encouraged by the fact that Everton had dominated the game, were by far the better team (said Bournemouth manager Iraola) and had shown some skill as well as looking lively. 

Meanwhile the new manager of another club that has appeared to be in chaos - Chelsea's Enzo Maresco - might just be wringing some order out of the madness. His team's day got off to a ropey start last weekend when winger Noni Madueke got his copy/paste/tab/send fingers all tangled. He posted a message, presumably meant to be sent privately to a friend, to the world on Instagram to the effect that "everything about this place" (i.e. Wolverhampton) "is shit". Oops.

He got roundly booed every time he touched the ball, though once he'd scored a hat trick in Chelsea's 6-2 away win it kind of lost any effect.

Wolves manager Gary O'Neill seemed to place the finger of blame rather directly when he said after the game "at no point in pre-season have we ever worked on not having a left back in place".  You could understand his frustration as Madueke's 14 minute hat trick took the score from 2-2 to 2-5, with all the goals coming from Madueke's station on the right.

The left back was indeed AWOL for the second and third of Madueke's trilogy after transitions (or turnovers in rugby and American Football parlance) and the opportunities were beautifully made by Cole Palmer. Palmer repeatedly created overloads by staying relatively wide to the right of midfield when the ball was on Chelsea's left, rather against the current trend to compress the play laterally as well as vertically, so even when the left back was on station for the first of the hat trick it didn't matter. Though said full back didn't help himself trying to make the block by running with his arms behind him in the artificial way that has always irritated me and has now been declared un-necessary by the PGMOL. The Wolves player obviously didn't get that message either.

I'd already spotted Palmer's positioning during the highlights but it was also pointed out by analysts Troy Deeney and Fara Williams. Palmer set up Madueke for all three of his goals with 2 on 1s timing his pass perfectly on each occasion. He also scored Chelsea's second with a beautiful finish after finding himelf in acres of space, as he did all game. So that's no coincidence, he's got that knack. Unless O'Neill's midfield were all deserting their stations.

Chelsea looked bright and their readiness to stand up for each other in a feisty game hinted that they may have found some togetherness, despite the ridiculously large squad the Chelsea buying spree has given manager Maresco. Chelsea have bought 39 players in the last five transfer windows since their change of ownership.  It has taken Man City 8 years and Liverpool 10 to buy as many players as Chelsea have in two. Maresco has exiled a significant number of the squad, including the first Chelsea signing during that amazing spree, Raheem Sterling, who has now gone on loan to Arsenal and could be a very useful asset for them. The manager said he didn't fancy Sterling's style of winger. I suspect it's more that his face doesn't fit as the stats bods say Mazueke and latest acquisition Felix are as close to identical in style to Sterling as you could get.

Except Madueke is that rare breed among highly paid footballers who spend their whole lives just playing football - he can actually use both feet quite well. "Inverted" wingers (left footers on the right and vice versa) seem to be thought of as something new but it's only the term that's relatively new.  In the early 1990s Howard Kendall frequently played his wingers on the "wrong side" as the crowd would have it. He often played the very left footed Preki on the right. I was at one game where Preki, always cutting inside as his right really was for standing on, drove the crowd crazy. Until he cut in and scored. 

Indeed, most inverted wingers remain very weak on the "wrong" foot. Which frustrates me as I made the most of being picked for my grammar school team on the left wing in the late 60s by working on using my left foot until it I was reasonably proficient with it. (The team captain was picked in my then preferred right wing position). So I was able to cut in and shoot with the right, but only when  it looked the better option, not because I had to. Then when I went off to university I played on the left by choice. Of course I was far from the first 'inverted winger', probably by many decades.

The benefit of being relatively two-footed was that Madueke had his man terrified because he could go past on both sides and shoot when he'd done so. Not so much an inverted winger, maybe just a very good player.

We'll see how Chelsea go against better teams - they only managed a 1-1 home draw with Palace today - and whether they really are just Cole Palmer plus 10 others.

Though I still think they've gamed the PSR system with their huge squad (albeit apparently at lower average wage according to Jonathan Northcroft), extremely long contracts and sale of the hotel owned by the football club to the owners, a ruse Derby County used in their eventually vain attempt to avoid EFL financial sanctions a few years ago.

Everton have some cause for optimism. At the moment it looks like they had a good summer transfer window, though time will tell.Tim Iroegbunam (I'll just call him Tim) has looked impressive in midfield despite his inexperience and the suspicion that he was "traded" for Lewis Dobbin mainly to avoid further PSR sanctions. (The deals between Villa and Everton were officially not linked, they just happened to be a day apart for almost the same value). Iliman Ndiaye (not terribly sure how to say that name either) looked lively and was man of the match against Bournemouth. Everton kept hold of both Jarrad Branthwaite and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. They also signed two more players right on the deadline, defensive midfielder Orel Mangala from Lyon and striker Armando Broja from Chelsea, both of whom have Premier League experience. Broja has a foot injury and may not be available before mid October, though Everton aren't paying his wages until he is fit. He also missed a lot of the 22/23 season with an ACL rupture. But he's only 22 and I guess the logic is to get him fit and firing, in which case Everton's gamble in keeping Calvert-Lewin into the last year of his contract would at least have his possible departure covered, with a fee fixed for Broja at £30M if Everton decided to make his loan permanent. Though the definitive player stats website transfermarkt.com only values him at €22m.

All of this leaves the squad looking a bit less thin than in recent seasons, apart from the full-back positions. There they have Vitalii Mykolenko (Mikey to me), Seamus Coleman, Ashley Young, Nathan Patterson and 19 year old Roman Dixon*, with one first team game under his belt. As Sean Dyche clearly doesn't trust Patterson, rarely selecting him if anyone else is available - and he is currently injured anyway - this leaves the team exposed to the vagaries of injury, red cards and loss of form - all already encountered this season in this group - and fatigue given Coleman and Young have a combined age of 74 and a lot of miles on their clocks. It would be a bonus if Dixon proves good enough as he is that increasingly rare sight, a player who has been at the club since the age of 12.

So there are some grounds for hope, but it's nervous times to be a blue if it's Everton, while the jury's out on Chelsea.

Jonathan Northcroft's column Fit for baseball - but is Chelsea's transfer policy fit for football? in the Sunday Times on 25 Aug 2024 examined Chelsea's buying policy and featured the remarkable statistics quoted above.

* at least I can pronounce Roman Dixon's name, even if it reminds me of the one-liner "who gives kids a bad name?" Answer - Posh and Becks

"I Got The Blues" is a track on the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers

General Election: Walls come tumbling down

I've been trying to find something humourous to say about the general election, on the lines of my blog about the 2019 version (see here) which, on re-reading was fairly funny, if I say so myself. But I'm not finding this one at all funny or even very entertaining, to be honest. While being beyond parody, this feels like the most predictable general election of my lifetime.

As I've said previously, this election feels very like 1997, with the electorate having decided a long time ago that the government had outstayed its welcome. Nothing shifted the dial then and nothing has much now.

The parties would have you think that the high proportion of those saying they are undecided means the electorate is 'volatile'. It's not. Some of them lie (the famous shy Tories of 1992) but many of them don't know because they don't care, can't be arsed or are effectively abstaining (eg previous Tory voters who've had enough but won't vote for anyone else). Most of the undecideds won't vote and the high number of them means there will be a low turnout.

The main interest is just how far the Tories will plunge, as per my question of a few months ago (Will the Tories implosion end in a black hole? 28 March) where I pondered a defeat heavier than 1997 and maybe even towards that of the near wipeout of the Progressive Conservatives (an oxymoron if ever I heard one) in Canada in 1993. (They collapsed from governing with 169 seats down to 2).

Things haven't got any better for the Tories since I wrote that, with the curious decision to go for an early election and Nigel Farage's direct participation in the campaign. They have run a totally hapless campaign, starting with Sunak's farcical announcement outside number ten in a downpour. 

It was clear within a day or so that it wasn't going to get better when the PM asked voters in a pub in Wales if they were looking forward to the Euros, eliciting the response "we're not in it". "But won't it be good for business?" "Not really".

Sunak's lack of feel for how people think then produced the early retreat from the D Day 80th Anniversary event. 

One couldn't make up anything quite as tragi-comic.

The veteran pollster Peter Kellner has written columns in the last two editions of the Sunday Times giving his predictions in terms of vote share and number of seats for each significant party and why and how he might have got it wrong. The joker is how large the Reform vote will be (as that piles up votes with few seats) but any which way Labour will win big.

Another element is tactical voting, not usually a factor in general elections, though it cost the Tories 30 seats in 1997. But the urge to get rid of the Tories may be stronger this time, especially where there is the opportunity to  unseat big names. On a night when the overall result is not in doubt the most interesting aspect is likely to be the number of 'Portillo moments'. Defeat for Jacob Rees Mogg  would probably bring widespread happiness (and no tears from me), but casualties could easily include Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Jeremy Hunt. 

The latter two would be a loss to the Tories and Parliament given the dearth of almost anyone resembling the big political beasts of the past.  Hunt in particular strikes me as a decent politician. He restored a semblance of order to health after the ill thought out Lansley reforms and clearly wanted to resolve the tainted blood scandal while health secretary but was told by the Treasury (i.e. Sunak presumably) compensation would have to come from existing budgets, prejudicing more patients. As chancellor he put this right, I guess using his unsackable status after the Kwarteng debacle to convince the PM. Whatever one thinks of Tories he's a decent chap who also restored order and calm to the Treasury albeit while still coming across as rather timid.

Nevertheless the Tories have forfeited the right to govern by making us share their lengthy and preposterous  psychodrama and are neither 'up to it or up for it' as last Sunday's Times editorial put it. 

So could there be a near wipeout and would it matter if there was?

I think it does, though not because of fears of a 'super majority', an American concept that doesn't apply here because a government with a 150 seat majority doesn't have any more power than one with 50. It potentially limits the effectiveness of the opposition, especially if the Tory wipeout reached the scale some were suggesting a couple of weeks ago which, if Labour does well in Scotland, could see Sir Ed Davey installed as leader of the opposition.

I've always thought Davey to also be a decent chap but his wriggling response to questions about his time in government as minister for postal affairs and his pusillanimous responses to questions about 'breaking promises' regarding tuition fees have tarnished him for me. That's even without him being, as Robert Colville put it, 'a Mr Tumble look alike who has spent the election campaign pratfalling around the nation's amusement parks'.

Colville argued that, with no clear manifesto, once in government Labour's instincts will push it to the left to keep its backbenchers and supporters happy just as the Tories instincts pushed them to the right when things weren't going well. He said Starmer's government needs to be held to account from the right rather than the left for spending too much of our money, intruding too much into our lives and failing to reform public services. I'd add that Labour may be vulnerable to pressure from a gamut of single interest groups and may get distracted from the main issues, even with Rachel Reeves reminding them 'it's the economy, stupid'. 

The other point is that, if the Tories crumble to a very low baseline, it becomes difficult if not impossible to launch a serious bid for government next time round, giving Labour a free ride. Starmer has done remarkably well to turn Labour round from a heavily defeated left wing rabble to a serious option for government in one parliament: it took Kinnock and Blair three general elections. I can't see the Tories managing that, especially if they turn to  Badenoch or Braverman.

There are differences from 1997 though. David Smith noted that inflation has fallen back to target levels, consumer confidence is improving and interest rates will soon start to fall (they maybe should have done already but the Bank didn't seem want to appear to be intervening in the election). So better times lie ahead for the economy but not, as he put it, in time to save this government. And this is far from 1997 when Ken Clarke handed the gift of a strong economy to Gordon Brown, one of the best situations an incoming chancellor has ever had.

That wasn't enough to save the Tories then and so just bottoming out was never going to save them this time.

The other difference is that Blair had a vision and Brown was ready to roll with good ideas such as Bank of England independence which he implemented only 5 days after the election. Other than promises of sound finances we don't really know what Labour intends to do.

A party that is likely to appoint a foreign secretary who says he is for nuclear weapons having said the very opposite less than 5 years ago may prove to be as erratic as the Tories.

The challenge will come for them if economic growth remains sluggish. The Tories implied cuts baked in to their forecasts will then collide with expectations of better services and benefits without further tax rises.

PS I posited the other day that the Tories real fall from popularity came long after they had stuck with Johnson over the partygate stuff only to ditch him over the rather daft Pincher affair. Would they be polling so low if he was still Tory leader, I wondered? Mrs H thought they probably would but I'm convinced they wouldn't be anything like as low as 20%. I'm not saying that I agree or support that, just that their base would have stayed much more loyal. Instead Labour could win a record majority with a vote share less than 40%. The Tories got 42% in 2017 but no clear majority, though Labour had a working majority in 2005 with 35% so not as freakish as it perhaps would seem. But Con + Reform are currently polling at 37% compared with Labour 39% according to BBC' poll of polls, which makes one wonder. Perhaps Tory supporters lost faith when the party lost belief in itself

PPS Paul Weller's Walls Come Tumbling Down came to mind because of the brief lived phenomenon of the 'blue wall'. But there's also The Clash lyric 'kick over the wall, cause governments to fall'

Macca messages me

Some of my firends do Facebook, some don't. For a few It's the only way I can raise them, they've given up on email. Oh I'm fairly paranoid too - I don't give Zuch my real date of birth and I don't post personal info or family photos and definitely not those things that some folk post - "here I am at the airport", "here I am on a cruise ship" or whatever, d'oh! Nor politics as a general rule. You'll find lots of snaps of places we've been, on holiday or walking but never till after we've got home. 

I do follow a few sites but I rarely comment (ok, Democracy Man, your page might be an exception to that, you probably feel my finger twitching as soon as you've posted something). And it's always better for one's mood not to get into an online spat.

One of the sites I follow is a Beatles site called Abbey Road Tribute. It's actually to promote a USA based tribute act but does much more than it says on the tin, ranging across all matters Beatles related. There's a chap called Boris, a Russian living in Russia, who has access - I don't know how - to an enormous archive of rarely seen photos. For example, recently there was a batch from Paul McCartney's 21st birthday party, held at his Auntie Gin's house. It must have been a fairly large house, though there was also some kind of large tent in the garden, as the Fourmost played and the Shadows and Billy J Kramer were there as well as all sorts of friends and relatives. Here's a photo of Macca with Jane Asher that day:

Another showed him blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.  I've learned a lot of stuff from the site; it's very well curated. 

Recently there was a tribute - well more of a critical review - of the Abbey Road album. It caught my attention partly because of its starting proposition - that the Beatles were hoping to bounce back after the "serious downer" of the Get Back sessions and wanted to make "one more like we used to" as Paul phrased it to George Martin. But also because it said, as commonly held, that the band still weren't getting along, their musical interests continued to diverge, John didn't really want to continue with the Beatles and while Paul did, only on his own terms which meant setting the pace and getting what he wanted. Which was all pretty much the received wisdom from the well known arguments between the band at the time.

The review went on to say, if this was really to be the end, "what a finish...a band still in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats other groups could only envy". Lauding many of the tracks, even the two "silly, childlike" songs Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Octopus's Garden the only track that didn't hit the spot for the reviewer was Lennon's I Want You (She's So Heavy), saying

"..if you've never seen the attraction of [John's song] and sometimes find yourself skipping ahead to George's... "Here Comes The Sun"...[it] is certainly a singular item in the Beatles discography with its extreme repetition, stark simplicity.... it requires a certain kind of mood to appreciate"

So what did I make of that? Having recently watched the full 468 minutes - just shy of eight hours - of Peter Jackson's Get Back it was clear that, while there were still tensions, the relationship between the Beatles at that time was much more complex than the daggers drawn story usually held to be the case and indeed shown that way in the original, heavily edited 80 minute long Let It Be film of the same sessions, leading up to the famous rooftop concert. So this time I did comment, on the following lines:

"Having watched all of Get Back it's not clear to me that John didn't want the Beatles to continue in some way. He was still firing ideas off Paul and was pleased to record Ballad of J & Y with him. George was also pondering how they could do solo and joint projects. After all, they were back in the studio recording Abbey Road within a month or so of the end of the Get Back sessions. Recruiting [Allen] Klein probably soured it permanently, though it's not clear that was John's intention. Be that as it may (or not) I'm grateful that they made Abbey Road, my favourite album of theirs (and probably of anybody's) even though I've never liked Maxwell's SH. It's in the tradition of Beatles songs though. I Want You isn't but I've always LOVED it."

Soon afterwards my phone pinged and there were several "likes" for my comment. Including a "heart" emoji from - er, Paul McCartney (see third on the list here):

Oh yeh, I thought, why do they let someone use that as a pseudonym? Except on checking it came from Macca's official Facebook page, which is definitely pukka and features well curated material on his current activities, solo career and the Beatles:

Now I'm not daft enough to think that Sir Paul McCartney, the first British musician to be a billionaire according to this year's Sunday Times Rich List, was reading my comment at 9am, wherever he was in the world that day, and messaging me. He no doubt has a large PR team who carefully monitor what's being said about him and are delegated to reply, perhaps to encourage any rewriting of history that suits their current message, maybe that he and John were aways really friends and quite possibly would have worked together again one day had John lived. 

But it was curious to see a response from "Paul McCartney" pop up on my phone. Especially as I don't like Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

P.S. I may get round to writing a review of the Get Back film to save any of you having to sit through all 8 hours of it though, for keen Beatles fans, it's a must; absolutely fascinating. The biggest surprise to me, given the received wisdom above about Lennon wanting to end the Beatles, was his attitude and demeanour. Oh there were tensions alright, mainly between Paul and George. But Lennon was generally Tiggerish in his enthusiasm, had boundless patience (well you obviously have to in a studio, especially one that hasn't been set up properly, while engineers fuss around you) and permanently constructive. There was little if any of the biting sarcasm and scepticism that I'd expected. And his face frequently lit up in delight when he liked something Paul came up with, sometimes bouncing off his seat (Yoko sitting silently next to him on his amp of course) to join in with a guitar riff, for example. Or fooling around filling in time (and having loads of fun) doing silly accents with Paul on endless runs through of the song Two Of Us. Indeed George's face lit up many times in similar fashion, especially once they got out of the ridiculous film hangar at Twickenham and repaired to the (part built) recording studio in the more familiar surroundings of the Apple Savile Row offices. But there was so much more to report on, so maybe I will get round to my write up. And my personal theory of why the Beatles break up became so acrimonious after Abbey Road was in the can.

The Abbey Road Tribute site is on Facebook here (https://www.facebook.com/AbbeyRoadTribute?locale=en_GB)

Paul McCartney's official Facebook site is here (https://www.facebook.com/PaulMcCartney/?locale=en_GB)

My "official" (haha) Facebook site is here (https://www.facebook.com/phil.holden.7758). It's great if you like photos of Anglesey in particular. You don't need to have a Facebook account to view it

There's something going wrong around here

When Mrs H and I walk (which we do a lot) we shoot the breeze. Well, as it's the north Wales coast it's usually more than a breeze. And we - OK, I mainly - don't so much shoot it as machine gun it. We cover a lot of ground...

Walking along a promenade a while ago, I interrupted the flow of conciousness to burst into song, or at least I started droning the start of a song lyric:

Pretty women out walking....

Mrs H immediately hissed "Stop it!" as she knows exactly how this one goes:

...with gorillas down my street...

The reason she told me to desist was that the words were clearly apposite and she often warns me my voice travels further than I think.

If you are wondering what this is all about, it's the superb 1979 song by Joe Jackson Is She Really Going Out With Him? which is one of my all time favourites and has a pithy lyric summing up part of the vulnerable male psyche. She can't really be with him, can she?

The song continues:

Look over there (where?)
There, there's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told...

..here comes Jeanie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don't count for much
If so, there goes your proof

The song has a staccato bass line and feels a bit stop/start like the Stones Honky Tonk Women, a comparison I've only just thought of after 4 decades, bursting into a very singable chorus:

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here

Released in the New Wave era, Jackson says the song was inspired by the spoken first line of the Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack, although in that case it's female gossip not male angst. It was a slow burn success, failing to chart on first release but later stumbling up to the top 20 in Britain and a few other countries and the top 10 in one or two others. It's one of those songs that has grown more popular, become better known and more widely played on the radio over the years. But the critics loved it straight away: I bought it on the back of one of the Sounds writers saying he'd bought about a dozen copies because he kept giving it away to people, saying he just had to make sure people heard it. (You couldn't just stream it on your phone in those days, youngsters. Sometimes it was easier just to take a punt and buy it). And in due course Jackson got the first of his six Grammy nominations for Best Rock Vocal Performance on the song.

It rapidly became one of my favourites. Indeed, for several decades it would have been my choice if asked for my all time favourite pop single*.

Why pretty women walkdown your street with gorillas was covered in a Roger McGough poem, called Fancy Goods, performed by The Scaffold in 1969. It refers to:

...young ladies...with an eye for the well padded wallet. Or fly...

Which surely must be the answer. Else there's something going wrong around here quite often. Do I hear you say personality, ladies? Do gorillas have personality? People say ugly dogs can have a lovely disposition... 

Nah, he's got to be loaded...

* I think I first asked myself what was my favourite all time single, rather than my current favourite, in 1967. It's a pretty meaningless question at the best of times, but becomes more so, or at least harder to answer, as you get older. Having considered Pink Floyd's See Emily Play and various other candidates from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, I decided the answer at that time was Traffic's Paper Sun, which in turn got displaced by Smokey Robinson's The Tracks of my Tears. Singles became less significant in the prog rock era before reasserting themselves with punk and new wave (and now streaming). For most of the time since 1979 I'd have gone with Jackson's song although sometimes it might have been Bob Marley's Could You Be Loved. 

The last time I gave this question much thought was in the context of @Mikey47 drawing my attention to the Guardian's list of the greatest ever UK number ones, published in 2020. Now everybody else's answer to this sort of question is, almost by definition, risible and that one was compiled by a committee, but the Grauniad flummoxed me by nominating The Pet Shop Boys song West End Girls. Eh?

Mrs H and I put our heads together and with not much anxious thought came up with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody as a more plausible suggestion, though we both went for The Stereophonics Dakota as our personal choice. That was a number one, Is She Really Going Out With Him wasn't so didn't come into consideration. But what's the answer I would give today if asked to name my favourite all time single (British or otherwise, number one or not)?  I think I need notice of that question.

You can hear Joe Jackson's Is She Really Going Out With Him here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kSlXAeDO08)

Rotting fish

Having called the general election at presumably what they think is the least worst time over the next few months, the Tories have set about bolstering their support with some remarkably retro policies. 

There is the promise of  reduced income tax for OAPs presumably because the benefit of maintaining the triple lock would be lost if people on the state pension have to pay income tax on it because of the frozen thresholds. The thresholds they recently froze of course. There is an obvious inequity from people on just as low an income (and who don't get winter fuel allowance) not getting this proposed tax break. Especially when some in receipt of the state pension have significant income from private pensions. I suppose you could try to limit the benefit to those who only get the state pension but that strikes me as fiendlishly complex, while also ignoring those with substantial savings or other wealth. There is also the oddity that OAPs used to get an age related income tax break but that was phased out by George Osborne only ten years ago. So this is another Tory U-turn. Indeed it's almost a U-turn within a U-turn.

The Tories also have plans for national service at 18. This shibboleth has been mooted on many occasions in my time on the electoral roll by back bench Tory MPs and maybe the odd (in both senses of the word) minister. National service was abolished in 1960, though the last service was rendered in 1963. I can recall the local Tory candidate in my first general election more than 5 decades ago advocating its return. You can imagine how impressed I was as an 18 year old about to be student. But I don't think it has ever got to a manifesto in all that time. Maybe it won't this time but I'm equally unimpressed.

This all smacks of desperation, doubling down on the grey vote and giving up entirely on winning any votes from young people. Or their parents. (I don't know if they've considered the impact on the grandparent vote!)

We know that the Tories like to throw some red meat to their right wing to keep them happy, especially when under threat from Nigel Farage in the form of UKIP/Brexit party/Reform.

But this isn't red meat, it's rotting fish.

The proposal for a triple ocked personal allowance is discussed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies at https://ifs.org.uk/articles/new-triple-locked-personal-allowance-pensioners