The Nth Columnist

'Is it better to be dumb or clever?' There was laughter. Professor Noam Chomsky beamed back at us. As he climbed back to his feet and accepted the Visiting Professor Award from Reading University with obvious pleasure and humility, we applauded a lecture that was, as anyone who's seen or read Chomsky, illuminating, interesting and thought-provoking. I had the extraordinary privilege of seeing this remarkable man last night. Putting aside the content of his lecture for a moment, it's truly remarkable that a man of 88 can stand at a lectern for a hour and deliver a talk with the minimum of notes. I can only hope that I'd be able to do the same when I reach that age. The talk was titled 'Racing for the Precipice', and was concerned with the state of the world. I won't go into too many details, as it was filmed  but in essence it covered the litany of missed opportunities that those in power have had to avoid armed conflict, aggression and the potential...

No, it isn't. He's a berserk orange bollock having a temper tantrum. I win! Bigly! Fake Everything! Sad! So here's something completely different. Turn off your radio, turn off your TV, turn off Twitter, turn off Facebook, close your laptop. Breathe in, nice and deep. Hold it a while. Now exhale, letting all your anger, worries and fears go with your breath. Repeat. Now stand up, let your arms hang loose and relaxed, then bend down from the waist. Let your arms stay nice and floppy. Now slowly, gradually, one vertebra at a time, start rising up again. Feel your back stretch and fold and slide into place. When you're standing up straight, raise your chin and look upwards. Imagine you're stretching for the sky and raise your arms, reaching out to their fullest extent. Imagine yourself as a tree in new summer light, your feet reaching deep into the earth, your fingers brushing the air. Breathe again, and expand into the moment: Make yourself as ta...

So, farewell, Barack Obama: As many have already said, we're all going to miss your cool, unruffled presidency. Your farewell speech was gracious, calm and generous. It struck the tone that a President should: inclusive, hopeful, helpful and slightly detached. OK folks, I hope you've got your safety belts on now, as it looks as if we're in for one hell of a ride.... I watched Mr Trump's Press conference today. If I'm being generous, it is best described as being markedly different in tone from Mr Obama's valediction. If I'm being honest, it was the most jaw-dropping, godawful, car crash of a press briefing I have ever seen. You don't want to hear what my opinion would be if I were to be negative. I really don't know where to begin with it. You may have noticed that this post is beginning to read like a theatre review, and that is because it is, in a way. This was Trumpian Theatricality at its darkest and most brutal. It started with an ...

It has been, to put it mildly, one hell of a time in politics. As I write, Andrea Leadsom has withdrawn from the contest to be the next Prime Minister, leaving Theresa May unopposed; and David Cameron has announced that Ms. May will take over on Wednesday evening. He must have one hell of a good removals company - it usually takes months to move house, but he appears to be going with extraordinary expeditiousness. It's almost as if he'd been planning this months ago... Meanwhile, over on the other side of the chamber, Angela Eagle has announced she will challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour Party. Just when we needed a united main opposition party the most, we find that once again we're back to the bad old eighties, and the Tories' capacity for holding onto power no matter the cost comes into play. And while the chicanery and treachery continue in Westminster, all the rest of us are trying to get on with our lives, and I'm sure that I'm...

This has been quite possibly the five most depressing days in the life of the British body politic. Well, it seems the Prime Minister was right when he said 'We're all in it together'. It was just that he crucially omitted to mention what the 'it' was. It seems I may well have been right when I said that senior politicians were playing a game with the referendum, but it is now apparent that the Opposition also need to pile in and play Silly Buggers, too. There's an Ex-Prime Minister, presumably pining for the fjords of Chipping Norton or whatever, meekly bending over in Brussels to have his bum deservedly kicked by other European leaders; Labour's front bench resigning and Jeremy Corbyn so desperate for a cabinet that he's phoned IKEA; Boris Johnson and Michael Gove looking as abject and useless as a pair of opened condoms in a lesbian orgy; Farage shouting Ya Boo Sucks in the European parliament; and only Nicola Sturgeon seems to have any form o...

...or doing the EU Hokey-Cokey, part two. Right. I am now officially fed up of this bloody campaign. I am fed up of these stupid, overfed, overentitled, immature morons treating this referendum as if it were some silly little game played out on Eton's fields, a game that will end with a 'well played, old chap' and a handshake, and nothing more. I am fed up of the culpability, moral blindness, and sheer vanity of the politicians who have been most prominent in the media. I am fed up that you do not understand whatsoever that you are playing with the very real lives of very real people, and all you can do is muster up false outrage, false claims, and false rhetoric. You splutter at the claims of the other side: it is false spluttering. You rebut a lie with another lie, and it is nothing more than a game of Risk played on a very real field of conflict. You are a disgrace to us all. Instead, I have talked with people in all sorts of places, and had real conversation...

This is just a very short update post on a very big topic - the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, aka TTIP, aka the Huge Big Deal That You Haven't Heard Of Because It's All Being Conducted In Secret. Greenpeace Netherlands have just leaked a 248-page draft of the agreement - and this leak could spell doom for the whole deal. If you're interested in having a look at the whole thing, you can download it here . In summary though, as I know you're all busy people, just have a look at my previous post on the topic , which, even more compressed is:  - this soi-disant deal will create a net fiscal migration to the US, undermine democracy in the EU, permit currently banned GMO foodstuffs to be sold here, dismiss the ban on Neonicotinoids (the herbicide killing bees en masse), relax restrictions on the use of Glyphosates, and allow private companies to buy up whole swathes of public health and education - and, should you protest, allow companies to sue you ...

The principle of schools and colleges collaborating in a learning network is a good one - but forcing schools to become academies is not the way to do it. Today, Chancellor George Osborne is due to announce that all schools within England and Wales will become academies, whether they like it or not, by 2020. Quite why the Chancellor and not the Secretary of State for Education is announcing this seems a puzzle - until you realise that, once again, education is the thematic football of choice for those players vying to big up their political game. As an educator, I personally find it deeply frustrating when politicians with no knowledge of pedagogy or educational theory make broad announcements that will have a profound effect on the lives of everyone for years to come. the image the government projects.... The last truly effective changes were, in my opinion, the Education Reform Act of 1988 under Kenneth Clarke - this lead to, among other things, the expansion of Higher Educa...

It's the biggest set of trade negotiations you've never heard of - and it will cost us all dear While our own UK politicians are getting their respective knickers in a twist over whether to stay in or get out of Europe, and claim and counter claim are flung about with gay abandon, there's something going on behind the scenes they really would rather prefer for us not to know all that much about. It's the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. It's been the subject of intense negotiations between the EU and the US for over a year now. OK, so you're probably thinking 'So what? It's just another trade thingy' However, this trade thingy has been discussed rather secretively. Incredibly secretively, in fact: The only information in  the public domain is that which has been uncovered through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. This is odd, as these negotiations will have a profound effect on everythhing you do, say, eat, drink a...