Parts of Britain have enjoyed sunshine and scorching heat as temperatures were higher than in Sydney and Rio.It forgot to mention that in Sydney and Rio it is winter.
This would have been a stirring enough story if it had not been for a second redemption, this time it was because of adult education. This from Andy Wilson's obituary:He had launched a window-cleaning business in and around Workington, and also felt sufficiently confident with reading and writing – developed on coach trips to away games with Hunslet, when he would learn new words from the Reader's Digest – to make a tentative move into journalism. He joined music and operatic societies, and an art club, passed his English O-level after taking night classes in Workington while coaching Barrow, then enrolled at Huddersfield Technical College in 1962.He was then encouraged to apply for a place at Leeds University, and started a course in economics in 1965, at the age of 39.He ended up as a teacher.
Breivik is one of those semi-intelligent people who are actually more stupid than any genuinely stupid person. Vastly overestimating semi-intelligence is not only stupid but worse. It is blind, arrogant, and always malevolent in effect. There is deadly danger in being obsessed by one's own importance or the importance of one's ideas: the two are almost the same thing.Pathological ideas are dangerous, infecting the minds of pathological people they can be murderous, embedded in pathological regimes they can be genocidal. We are kept as safe as we can be by the humility of democracy with its agonised uncertainties. Of that, and that alone, we should be overwhelmingly certain.
“Aha”, I hear the other side saying, “but these are extraordinary times, that call for extraordinary leadership. By that standard, they have done a miserable job.” Well, it depends how much faith one has in benevolent dictators: is the power to commit great resources without negotiations a good thing? How confident can we be that a grand strategic plan decided in early 2010 would have worked well? For every proposal that was mooted, there were counter-arguments of substance, not just of process. Take for example, the idea of a big Marshall plan for Greece: what kind of governance would ensure that the funds would be well used to support sustainable growth, rather than being squandered to rent-seekers? Ditto for a massive recapitalization of all European banks – how would the terms of that distribute costs fairly and ensure competent management from then on (not, presumably by getting corrupt or clueless civil servants to be CEOs).Indeed. And if there are failures, then, as he puts it, in a functioning polity "there can always be a new round". Here he resists the siren song of demagogy in favour of the political process, something that seems to be forgotten in the USA. The EU have recognised the need to rescue the insolvent, unlike in America where a profoundly unserious opposition seems to be on the point of propelling the solvent into default. And for what? The very limited liberalism and dark skin of its properly elected president?
Further, extraordinary leadership is compatible with democracy only if the majority of the people are affected by extraordinary circumstances; and will therefore consent to extraordinary solutions. This is not the case in the Eurozone.
So one thing that gives me hope is the deep belief that this conflict is resolvable; every single issue, to the minutest detail, has solutions based on research, dialogue, precedents and “home-grown” Israeli-Palestinian ingenuity.Once again, the conclusions of the optimist can only be an expression of a faith in life.
What is lacking, and is absolutely essential, is any semblance of trust.
Israelis and Palestinians have definitely earned their mutual distrust.
The most crucial aspects of each of the five Israeli-Palestinian agreements have been breached systemically by both sides. There is no clear “good guy” and “bad guy” when it comes to implementation of signed agreements. And no artificial “confidence- building measures” can replace such earned lack of trust.
I am not so naïve as to believe I have no mortal enemies, but I don’t allow myself to be constrained by fear, or allow fear to sour into blind hatred.After the experience of seething, deranged hatred in Norway, the glorification of murder, the pitiless slaughter of ordinary people, here we have again a celebration of life against death.
I believe in the power of people to be good. I believe in the power of compassion, which is much stronger than hatred. And I will always be true to myself and to the belief that making peace is first and foremost a decision – one that we have apparently yet to make.
It is tempting to denounce Mao as a monster, and to dismiss the Maoists of today as no less criminally deluded than Peru's Shining Path guerillas, or the Khmer Rouge. Certainly, the scale of the violence Mao inflicted on China dwarfs all other crimes and disasters committed during the course of nation-building in the last two centuries. But political and economic modernisers elsewhere also exacted a terrible human cost from their allegedly backward peoples.This is even more irritating as the theme he hangs this on, the crisis of rural communities, is incredibly important. But there are much better guides to it, as there are to Mao.
The members of today's political class in Europe are Margaret Thatcher's heirs, not George Marshall's. They find it hard to understand that the markets need to be saved from themselves if Europe is to survive in anything resembling its present form. They forget that Germany itself was allowed to cancel its prewar debts in 1953, one of the preconditions for its subsequent boom, and that when others, such as Poland in 1991, were allowed to write down their debts in their turn, they too prospered.Anyone familiar with Mazower's general history of Europe, Dark Continent, will be aware of his contention that fascism was not an aberration in Europe. Authoritarian nationalism is always there to challenge democratic internationalism and the internationalist pulse is weakening. Mazower concludes:
Right now what is needed is long-term political vision and a new willingness to argue for the benefits of continent-wide redistribution.
The clock is ticking: in September the next package of aid for Greece will have to be announced. It will be a decisive moment and the outcome will be critical for Greece, and for the union too.UPDATE
Like Greece, Buenos Aires had swallowed the textbook analysis – backed by the IMF and the consensus of academic economists and domestic politicians – which said its problem was not an overvalued currency and unsustainable debts, but too much public spending.Heather Stewart draws out the comparisons between Argentina and Greece and argues for the default option.
As the economists Roberto Frenkel and Martin Rapetti put it in a study of the Argentine crisis for the CEPR, the theory was that "fiscal discipline would entail stronger confidence, and consequently the risk premium would fall and bring interest rates down. Therefore, domestic expenditure would recover and push the economy out of the recession. Lower interest rates and an increased GDP would, in turn, re-establish a balanced budget, and thus close a virtuous circle."
It didn't work. In fact, drastic public spending cuts made the downturn worse, while the dollar peg prevented the devaluation that eventually helped Argentina to get back its competitiveness.
Similarly, Athens – locked into the euro – is unable to devalue, or control its own interest rates, and the solution being pressed on Greece by its eurozone neighbours involves privatisation, liberalisation and drastic public spending cuts.
"We observe systematic patterns in the errors: a tendency to overstate the alcohol content for wine that has relatively low actual alcohol content and a tendency to understate the alcohol content for wine that has relatively high alcohol content."I don't have that problem with the batch of wine I bought yesterday, Château Yeorganopolou 2011. It's a cheeky little number, delicate with a hint of peach and a tendency to make one misjudge distances, whose delicate bouquet is prone to inducing big speeches. There is no problem with labelling, there isn't any. There is a bottle though - a glass one too, with a cork - posh you see. Well you would expect that for €3. Very drinkable. Cheers.
But it is only with MS in hand that the real meaning of the text becomes apparent: its rhythms and cadences, the relationship of image to word, the passion of the argument or cold logic of the case... There is nothing more thrilling than untying the frayed string, opening the envelope and leafing through a first edition in the expectation of unexpected discoveries. None of that is possible on an iPad.He is right about that thrill. I remember a sense of disappointment turning up at a library to discover that the original copies of the Herald of Anarchy that I had been reading only a few weeks previously had been replaced with a microfilm due to the fragility of the paper. But, funnily enough, none of the words had changed and they seemed to mean exactly the same as they did before.
Original documents are a pleasure, a privilege and treasure. They are also a fecking nuisance when you've traipsed all the way to Countytown and the very thing you wanted, had called up about and were told would be there is now being withheld because it is too fragile.Absolutely, and when you are trying to write something in rural Greece, being able to call up these wonderful sources at a click of a mouse is an even bigger pleasure, privilege and treasure.
Much of the debate around the economic, political and societal crisis gripping Greece has overlooked the role of the European Union in fuelling the crisis. Quite apart from the distortionary effects on the competitiveness of peripheral states precipitated by the introduction of the Euro and the subsequent lack of adequate oversight, it was misplaced EU subsidies that resulted in a lack of competitiveness in many sectors of the Greek economy, and misplaced EU subsidies that allowed the dramatic growth of the Greek public sector following the election of Andreas Papandreou as Prime Minister in 1981.He concludes:
The irony is that the Prime Minister, George Papandreou, whatever his other faults, has thus far stood out for his commitment to the environment... He is now being forced by the EU and the IMF to take responsibility for the worst man-made environmental destruction in the history of the Aegean.How reassuring then that those self same officials are coming over to take control on behalf of those simple Greeks who just aren't up to running an economy. Reuters reports Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker discussing how "the Greek crisis had been largely caused by itself" through paying too high wages (!) and saying,
"One cannot be allowed to insult the Greeks. But one has to help them. They have said they are ready to accept expertise from the euro zone"Wow! Insulting? Patronising? Or both? The failure of EU officials to acknowledge even the slightest responsibility for the crisis, all the while developing a new doctrine of bureaucratic infallibility, is profoundly depressing and gives little hope for the future. However, this is Greece we are dealing with and these people should remember that in these parts hubris is inevitably followed by nemesis.
With today's approval by the Greek Parliament of the revised economic programme, the country has taken an important step forward along the necessary path of fiscal consolidation and growth-enhancing structural reform. But it has also taken a vital step back – from the very grave scenario of default. This was a vote of national responsibility.Max Johnson of forex specialists, Currency Solutions (and just about everybody else):
And so another 10p looks set to be put into the meter of Greece's financial life support machine. With the Greek economy in intensive care, the Athens government finally has the mandate it needs to prescribe more bitter economic medicine. The Eurozone is now likely to approve a second bailout but there's every danger that the medicine will kill the patient.From here
Few Greeks look like they will take it lying down either. The popular anger convulsing the streets of Athens with strikes and protests will surely get worse.
There is every possibility that poorer Greeks, who will be hit hardest by the austerity measures, will simply refuse to pay their taxes. If that happens the prospects of a Greek default will go from highly likely to inevitable, plunging the country into the abyss and undermining any benefit the austerity measures may have had.
What Greece is being forced to do is threatening the legitimacy of a democratically elected government and putting at risk the legitimacy of the political system in general. And the question for the EU and IMF is simple: is it worth it?
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| OK - not quite at the front. I'll give you that. |
What's so odd about the current debate on inequality is that everyone deplores it and yet very few will come out and support the mechanisms to tackle it. Perhaps a CEO catching a thought-provoking discussion on Radio 4 will decide to shower his or her staff with payrises. And perhaps one day a plebiscite of turkeys will vote for Christmas.With the debate on public services being dominated by models of consumer choice, we are forgetting that the bigger choices facing us are about the type of societies we live in, of how we distribute wealth, and on this the political class seem curiously silent, even as crisis engulfs a small, beautiful European country with a rather wonderful climate and hard-working people who deserve better.
It is to the huge credit of the Greek government – George Papandreou, the prime minister, in particular – that it is doing what it can despite political resistance ...Though he also points out that what they are being told to do is the wrong thing.
... but the pained willingness of Athens to comply does not eliminate the European need to examine the wisdom of the requirements – and the timing – being imposed on Greece.In typically elegant style he writes,
The high morals of "sacrifice" do, of course, have an intoxicating effect. This is the philosophy of the "right" corset: "If madam is at all comfortable in it, then madam certainly needs a smaller size." However, if the demands of financial appropriateness are linked too mechanically to immediate cuts, the result could be the killing of the goose that lays the golden egg of economic growth.As I think back to the debate over European Monetary Union in the 1990s, I had little idea where I stood. This was partly because the anti-Euro campaign featured prominently some unpleasant and obsessive Tory right-wingers, who mixed up their opposition to the Euro with their general hatred of the European Union as a whole, whilst their Euro-scepticism was being disavowed by a newly enthused Labour Party. Yet those who who opposed the Euro were a mixed bunch indeed. It was a broad coalition that included social-democrats and libertarians as well as the Conservative nationalist right.
The European Central Bank will not countenance the idea of default. That just leaves deflation, and lots of it, as a way of putting the Greek economy back on track and ensuring the single currency remains intact.Larry Elliott arguing for the need of Greece to leave the Euro. The democracy point is well made here:
This is a crackpot idea for two reasons. First, it runs counter to the basic principles of democracy; the Greek people are clearly not in the mood to bear the spending cuts, the reductions in wages and the sweeping privatisation being demanded of them by the European Union and the IMF as the price of a fresh bailout.
Second, deflation has already made Greece's debt problem worse and more deflation will make it worse still.
After Lehman, there was initial shock and uncertainty – but the collapse of stock, commodity and currency markets did not happen for a few weeks. That was when elected politicians were forced to choose between the demands of voters and markets, and went with the voters.And there is a large measure of agreement from a Greek economic liberal:
Greece was bailed out to save European banks, not Greece itself, and that the bailout was only a temporary liquidity measure, when our problem is solvency. I explained back then that a massive recession was on its way and that there's no reason to expect anyone to lend to post-memorandum Greece who would not lend to pre-memorandum Greece, as the country will be more indebted and less capable of growth; hence the importance of reform. Finally, I pointed out in that interview that default has been historically proven to be a workable solution to a solvency problem and is an option for Greece. I still believe this, although people have to realise that timing the default is crucial and getting people to demand one right now is not going to help.Even the IMF is starting to panic.
The International Monetary Fund warned European leaders that their hesitant response to Greece's debt crisis risked triggering the world's second global financial meltdown in three years.So what is coming out of the EU?
Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister who chairs the meetings of the 17 eurozone finance ministers, said he felt for the Greeks: "This is something that affects me greatly. You look at the reaction of the people on the streets. You see they are rebelling. I understand that and I'm touched by that."When will they wake up?
But he also said that there was no option but to keep to the existing plan: "There is no other choice than fiscal consolidation in Greece and in other fiscally weakened countries."
Greece is another country that anarchists have a soft-spot for. But instead of loving Greece for the food and the island scenery like most normal North American and European tourists do, they like Greece for it’s anarchist activity...Hat tip to an antipodean
There’s also another aspect of Greece that’s very exciting to anarchists, the all important riot-porn. If anarchists catch wind of new austerity measures enacted by the government, they all eagerly await when Libcom.org will get a new gallery of exciting imagery of tear gas, broken windows, destroyed businesses, and things on fire. After they get this out of their system, they can all flock to message boards to talk in disgust about the capitalist folly that brought those austerity measures into place.
Thus, whatever the cost-benefit analysis says about default, the pressing issue for Greece and for the EU as a whole is political. People will not accept further cuts if they think this is simply to bail out Europe’s overpaid bankers, and they will not support a government they believe is devoid of any positive strategy for recovery. If that support vanishes, as it is on the verge of doing, the country may head for bankruptcy anyway. That might well be the worse option not only for Greece but for Europe too. The onus is now on Europe’s leaders to rise above the short-termism and the wishful thinking that characterises their responses so far – the latest EU-IMF agreement is more evidence of this – and to frame further assistance as part of a plausible plan for growth. Given their track record, we should not hold our breath.I think that the last word should be left to Loukanikos.
... Britain and its Nato allies no longer believe bombing alone will end the conflict in Libya, well-placed government officials have told the Guardian.What could be more self defeating, more likely to ensure that their desired end is not achieved? Could they have sent a clearer message to Gadaffi that holding on and waiting will give him the victory and the revenge he desires, condemning the Libyan people to yet more misery?
Instead, they are pinning their hopes on the defection of Muammar Gaddafi's closest aides, or the Libyan leader's agreement to flee the country.
"No one is envisaging a military victory," said one senior official who echoed Tuesday's warnings by Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, head of the navy, that the bombing cannot continue much beyond the summer.
"Most people want him out and more people can talk about this now than before because he is under pressure. But you still have to be careful. If you are caught, God knows what will happen to you."
"Nato good, good," is a common refrain to be heard from people talking to foreign reporters.
"Look there - plainclothes police," said a taxi driver, driving through an area called Fashloum. "And there, and there. The only people who like Gaddafi are the police and people working with him."
Without investment, or/and a dramatic structural change in the economy, to correct any trade imbalances everyone ends up working more for less. The promise is that this is for the short run. The reality is that, while the trade imbalance between the richer and poorer Euro members remain, it is for the very very long term. Under the austerity measures, the poorer states have even less resources to invest in structural changes to make their economies competitive. The ECB/IMF package is massive transfer of resources from the poor.
At least by arriving early this summer I got to taste the cherries. The crop is finished by this time of year but various neighbours had not been as ruthless in stripping the trees as previously and there were a few left.Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures to be lifted later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban.After all,
Qalamuddin, the former head of the religious police, said however the Taliban had "changed".Like this?
Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.As for the Afghan people? Well some have a more down-to-earth view:
The Taliban are not our brothers, they are our killers.
As more news seeps out about the crumbling of Gaddafi's army, it seems a good time to look back on some of the recent commentary on Libya from the usual suspects - a study in the pathology of pessimism, a peculiar trait of the Guardianista.In Libya, there is no end in sight to a campaign which is not succeeding in its UN-sanctioned aim to protect civilians.Hang on a second. "Not succeeding"? Have I missed something here? Did Gaddafi's tanks and mercenaries actually carry out their slaughter in Benghazi and then move on throughout the East or did the UN action end up preventing it? And even if the conflict is dragging on with its horrible human cost, doesn't stopping Gaddafi's advance and saving the East from his clutches, at the very least, amount to a success? Isn't it a little early to pronounce the whole affair a failure? The revolutionaries certainly do not agree.
Britain has done what it said it was going to do – it stopped Gaddafi visiting his wrath on Benghazi. It should then have left, returning only if he did.Did I read this right? The moment Gaddafi was forced back from Benghazi he should have been left to crush the revolution everywhere else, securing his power, reinforcing and re-equipping his army all the while? Is Jenkins really suggesting that British forces should have been withdrawn to let him get on with it as long as he didn't touch this one city? Extraordinary.
The best way to protect Libya's desperate civilians is for Nato to reverse its mistaken policy of taking sides.Leaving aside the obvious point that not taking sides is not an act of neutrality but is de facto support for the the side with the best military hardware - in this case Gaddafi - has his moral compass gone completely awry? Should we not choose sides between, on the one hand, a popular democratic revolution and, on the other, a kleptocratic, murderous, family tyranny whose leaders have been indicted for crimes against humanity? Are they moral equivalents to be treated as equals? It is absolutely clear that this is precisely the time to take sides. We should support the struggle for democratic change against the systematic violence of fascistic autocrats. Studious and oh so reasonable sounding neutralism is, in reality, the betrayal of the hopes of people risking everything for the sake of freedom.
Severed head of patron saint of genital disease on saleA snip at around £1,000.
“Of course there are interests at play,” explained the man in the graffiti-covered tunic, listing oil and winning broader support among Arabs following the debacle in Iraq as possible reasons behind the intervention. “We’re not stupid, we know Western countries have their own interests when they finally decided to help us.” A man from Sirte who identified as being from Gadhafi’s tribe interrupted him, expressing a widely held sentiment: “It doesn’t matter what the West’s interests are, because we too have our interests—we want to survive and get rid of this regime and ultimately live like the rest of the world, without fear.” The crowd erupted in applause.
So why doesn't Athens just give up? Surely not because its economy would do any worse, but because the banks, in Germany (which holds $26bn of Greek debt) and France (which owns $20bn) and in Greece, would then have another brush with insolvency. But the answer would be to deal with the banks – by giving them more money or just taking them over – rather than crucify an economy.I have a feeling that if the next tranche of austerity is enforced then both will be losers, though the ones that will feel the pain will, unsurprisingly, be the Greek people.
For Costas Lapavitsas, an economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies just back from Athens, the situation represents only one thing. "It's the triumph of the banks," he tells me. "The lenders in Greece and abroad are being given preferential treatment over the Greek people."
A retired merchant seaman who braved the fire of the Nazis in the Second World War says that was nothing compared to a noisy boiler causing him endless sleepless nights.
Milia stayed out all night protesting. That night, people were chanting in the new clock square, the one that protesters had dubbed “The liberation square of the governorate of Homs”. Milia’s house is on Hamidia Street, right behind the Khaled Ben Walid mosque. But this Christian neighborhood also harbours one of the oldest churches on earth, the Church of the Holy Girdle and Milia lives right next to this landmark, visiting it every Sunday to receive the archbishop’s blessings.Read it all here. The courage...
Atheists have 'better sex lives than followers of religion who are plagued with guilt"Did the earth end for you too darling?"
This narrative of Ireland’s recklessness has been seized upon by politicians, ex-bankers, journalists and visiting emissaries from solvent countries like a life-ring in a cess-pond. It has the feel of Greek tragedy about it - we made mistakes and must be punished.
In this tragic narrative the Furies are represented by the implacable markets, and our great mistake, our hamartia, which Aristotle defines as ‘an injury to others’ and which later commentators came to call the ‘fatal flaw’, is to have become greedy. It must be remembered, however, that the hamartia is usually committed in ignorance of its evil nature or the likely consequences. It may even be committed against the best advice. Think of Oedipus who, in desperately avoiding the terrible crime that has been foretold for him by the oracle at Delphi, commits that very crime in ignorance if not innocence. Oedipus was a good man, but he misunderstood the role of oracles. We too have failed to understand that oracles are agents in our tragedy rather than disinterested commentators. Oedipus was blinded for his hamartia. Rachel Peavoy was frozen to death for ours.And so we continue to offer human sacrifices to the gods of economic orthodoxy in the hope that their propitiation will return us to the good days of self-indulgence and rising property prices. Yet:
The end of tragedy, according to Aristotle, to whom we still turn in these matters, is catharsis. But our catharsis will be long in coming and our children’s children will share the punishment.And as another Irish writer put it:
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.And so his illness is a particular tragedy and of course I feel sympathy, but the main emotion his essay evoked was fear; a deep terror that I should lose my voice, my unique link with the world.
What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.
In a strict sense, the government's economic policies are not a gamble – a gamble has some probability of success ... it is now obvious that we are living through one of the great economic misjudgments of modern times; there were choices last May about how to handle the legacy of private debt, gross misallocation of productive capacity, financial fragility and the need to eliminate the structural public deficit. They were not made; If the Lib Dems had been true to the great social liberal thinkers ... they could never have signed the coalition agreement; The big story is of politics driven by ideas that are wrong.And, to my despair, there is, as Hutton notes, little sign of any mainstream political party even attempting to breach the consensus, let alone putting forward an alternative political economy drawn from different intellectual roots. And here lies the causes of the failure of the Liberal Democrats in the local elections, the lost referendum on AV and Labour's defeat in the Scottish Assembly. No amount of progressive schmoozing will restore the centre-left to power unless there is a coherent philosophy to unite behind and not the desperately unimaginative, modified conservatism that Jackie Ashley thinks will do the trick.
Labour's revival has to be based on a robust pro-business plan to revive a "making things" economy. It has to build a new relationship with genuine entrepreneurs and tomorrow's employers. Beyond that, Labour needs to be stronger on core issues such as discipline in schools, crime and low pay, which will help win voters back.And you can multiply this failure a hundredfold if you are to talk of Ireland or Greece. At least the Greeks have a new strategy, er, tourism. Oh well, this might not be that original, but at least I can say that I will do my selfless best to support the Greeks in their struggles. How about you?
"Whenever you feel that you need a second wind, let Greece charm you. Come out of your sloth and seek for the great passion that will upset your senses, will satisfy your devouring appetites and billow out your inner instincts. These passions are incurable!"A second wind can certainly upset the senses, or at least one of them, especially after satisfying a devouring appetite. But a passion for Greece is incurable, I will give the author that. And though I am about to set off back to England to face a pile of marking, my return flight is already booked and I am smiling even as I leave at the promise of a long Greek summer, with only a passing grimace at the thought of those exam papers.
The current model that sells higher education for its economic benefits will eventually run aground on the rocks of reality. My campaign would be for an inclusive system that sees education as of intrinsic worth, rather than simply a route to a bigger payslip, and central to that would be adult education as community engagement. Doing this would mean abandoning the patronising language of aspiration raising and, instead, getting down to the hard work of meeting the aspirations that already exist, changing the institution to fit the people, rather than people to fit the institution. To my mind, this would be a progressive agenda that should be a part of any contemporary, progressive political movement and a starting point for the renaissance of an adult education that this time round will not be lost because of the whims of politicians.From my contribution to Harry Barnes' May Day meeting on the future of adult education. I was invited to it, but Greece just won out over Chesterfield. Read the whole piece here.
