Thought I’d give it a couple of days to simmer up, but the Guardian on Tuesday was a groove sensation. The front page headline promised: “Britain faces summer of rage – police. Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets”. Nice! Although middle-class anger clearly lacks the staying power of working class resentment. Talking of which, the pull out quote from a Trevor Phillips interview in the second section read: “The task today is not to shout for black people or women, but to break the grip of white men who went to public school. And that’s why I’m here.” Fine as far as it goes, but typically liberal in not going nearly far enough.
We know that race isn’t real but is experienced as real because of racism, and that race and class are inseparable. That said, public schools and so called ‘top’ universities aim to spit out a certain kind of alumni: on the whole these institutions don’t seem too bothered about the colour of people’s skin, as long as they can brainwash those they process into adopting a white bourgeois consciousness. There is also a more easily identifiable and specific target than the generic public schools Phillips speaks out against, viz Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Thus Philips suggests placing a limit the number of times an individual can sit as an MP; fine, but until we get around to abolishing parliament, why not place an outright ban on anyone who went to Oxbridge standing as an MP?
I’d also suggest kicking all Oxbridge graduates out of public institutions such as the BBC, and at the same time enforcing a blanket ban throughout the Beeb on interviews with those who attended these ‘top’ universities. Similarly, publicly funded art galleries could get rid of directors and curators who attended Oxbridge, and all other universities should dispense with the teaching services of zombies brainwashed by these ‘top’ institutions. Oxford and Cambridge are the capstone of the formal system of inequality that blights the septic isle known as ‘Britain’, so isn’t it about time we abolished them? These are the kind of policies Trevor Phillips would be pursing if he was serious about his role as head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). But all he’s offering on this score is a sop.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by Wilhelm Reich on 2009-02-25 11:57:42 +0000
Good idea, but don’t forget my theory of the orgasms!
Comment by Mr C. Woods Esq. on 2009-02-25 12:06:34 +0000
It’s more of the same old smokescreen PR tactics; be seen to be implementing some form of “change”, however minimal or cosmetic, spew it out in a swell of stirring pro-equality rhetoric so that the ineffectuality is basically concealed in faux sentiment, then sit back and watch the lily-livers applaud this breakthrough for “progress”.
Sufrfice to say, I’m with you on this, Stewart. Just as importantly, in abolishing Oxbridge, it’s going to open up University Challenge to every also-ran establishment in the country. Great stuff, I say. I rather look forward to a suitably irked Paxman forced into a battle of banter with the students of my old stamping ground at Paisley uni. Bring it on!
Comment by Leutha on 2009-02-25 15:32:35 +0000
As all serious students of the Russian Revolution know, the Storming of the Winter Palace was more about proletarian desires to tickle their palates with the superlative wines stored in Tsar’s cellars than the myths served up by Lenin and his acolyte Eisenstein.
Drinking dry the college cellars will fulfill two roles:
- slaking proletarian thirst
- nullifying the organisational principle of the colleges
Most Oxbridge Dons’ lives revolve around impressing each other with their knowledge of wine – remove this keystone of their intellectual edifice and they will be revealed to be the gaggle of befuddled fools they really are
Comment by Díre McCain on 2009-02-25 18:19:55 +0000
Loot loot!
Comment by The Virtual Gail Trimble on 2009-02-25 18:32:31 +0000
Are you from Nuts Magazine or something?
Comment by The Trammps on 2009-02-25 18:41:30 +0000
Burn, baby, burn, disco inferno!
Comment by Cambridge Lettrist And Situationist Society on 2009-02-25 22:43:38 +0000
IT IS THE END OF THE AGE OF DIVINITY!
Comment by Fernando Di Leo on 2009-02-26 01:01:22 +0000
Many of my films were basically spaghetti westerns done as contemporary gangster movies, but this is the real English mafia, and perhaps not such a good subject for a flick but certainly something that must be destroyed…..
Comment by Corona Smith on 2009-02-26 01:10:08 +0000
Now you’re groovin’ with your space commander dad!
Comment by West Street Mob on 2009-02-26 01:54:58 +0000
Hey man, you should loot the Bank of England while you’re at it… but as you break dance electric boogie your way into the safes don’t forget to keep a smile on your face and a song in your heart….
Comment by jim seventies on 2009-02-26 02:04:38 +0000
right on. how is it that ruling class art galleries such as White Cube get to advertise their whores in spaces like the Serpentine Gallery? That’s our tax dollars being used to enrich the already very rich ‘aint it?
Comment by Mick Farren on 2009-02-26 10:33:53 +0000
Let’s Loot The Supermarket Again Like We Did Last Summer!
Comment by K Mail on 2009-02-26 10:48:50 +0000
Sorry, my wi fi is down so I’m not online at the moment and can’t comment on this until I’ve got my connection sorted.
Comment by The Uncrowned King Sporty on 2009-02-26 14:31:27 +0000
a little for me and a little for you, this world is so mixed up that’s all I know….
Comment by Moggy on 2009-02-26 14:35:25 +0000
“I’d also suggest kicking all Oxbridge graduates out of public institutions such as the BBC”
Full on!
I’d even stretch that to include such so-called ‘National treasures’ such as Stephen bloody Fry and his chums who I’m sick of the sight of these days.
Am I the only one who thinks he’s just a tad over-rated?
Oscar Wilde he bloody ain’t!
Comment by Mayor McCunt on 2009-02-26 17:06:51 +0000
I am a cunt. I wish they had hurled that watermelon at my head and put me out of my misery.
Comment by Msmarmitelover on 2009-02-26 17:51:11 +0000
I agree that Stephen Fry is overrated. Trouble is, I think even Stephen Fry thinks that too which is why he is manic depressive.
I loathe the oxbridge mafia in this country. I dated 2 Cambridge graduates in the last year and they were both arrogant as fuck and rather pedantic in their thinking.
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-02-28 04:52:01 +0000
Mr. Home wrote – “I’d also suggest kicking all Oxbridge graduates out of public institutions such as the BBC, and at the same time enforcing a blanket ban throughout the Beeb on interviews with those who attended these ‘top’ universities. Similarly, publicly funded art galleries could get rid of directors and curators who attended Oxbridge, and all other universities should dispense with the teaching services of zombies brainwashed by these ‘top’ institutions. Oxford and Cambridge are the capstone of the formal system of inequality that blights the septic isle known as ‘Britain’, so isn’t it about time we abolished them?”
howling wizard, shrieking toad are back, and we wish we’d written that. Excellent.
Oxbridge run the show on their terms. It should stop. John Dee said so too.
Comment by Irrelevance Detector on 2009-02-28 14:31:08 +0000
An excellent start but thn we must proceed to exterminate all those who draw public funding to waste on useless debates about the relative merits of art and philosophy factions, not to those who hoodwink the (non) working class into believing (although not really interested enough to be believing) that protest-movements can be publicly funded and networked via statutory bodies.
In short, all nerds, geeks, book-gooks and plebs must be assimilated within a revolutionary zealousness that springs eternal from the bottom of the wellspring of pseudonymous….erm…I’ve forgotten