This is a very peculiar comment in the Guardian. John Sutherland recommends that Blair and Labour imitate the American way of getting more racial minorities into higher education: via athletics. Why? He never really says. He does say he thinks it’s a good idea and that it’s been a great success in the States, but he doesn’t say why he thinks it’s a good idea, or in what sense it’s been a success. He does say that the athletics programmes created open doors through which not only black athletes, but also non-athletic blacks, could enter, but then he fails to explain what he means. He says the figures speak for themselves, but they don’t, at least not clearly enough … Read the rest

We all know history is written by the victors. It’s also worth remembering that it’s written by a lot of other unreliable witnesses besides. By participants, loyalists, traitors, friends, enemies, people with various kinds of axe to grind, people who were paying only selective attention (and who ever pays anything else?). Which is not to say that it’s all a fairy tale, that no history is more accurate than any other so there’s no need to be careful with the evidence or the conclusions we draw from it. It’s only to point out how tricky it all is. This story in the Guardian is a good example. Tony Blair and the people around him are quite sure they have influenced … Read the rest

Speaking of Fresh Air…there was an interesting display of Pathetically Reduced Expectations on that show a few days ago. The political ‘commentator’ David Frum was on to talk about the year he spent as a speechwriter in the Bush White House. He has an unctuous, soft, childishly enthusiastic voice, and he kept getting in a flutter of excitment and admiration at things that were not worth getting in a flutter about. It was all too depressingly reminiscent of what we used to hear about the Reagan White House, when people would tell anecdotes that proved the President was actually conscious and awake as if they proved how brilliant and perspicacious he was. One example in particular struck me by its … Read the rest

I do like to see a good roundhouse attack like this one in The New Republic, on that contemporary American plague, the Sport Utility Vehicle. I only wish there were more of them (and that they did any good). There was an auto industry reporter on Fresh Air a few days ago, and it was a pathetic series of missed opportunities as Terri Gross let the guy rhapsodize about the wonders of the SUV without bothering to point out the obvious drawbacks. For instance he sang a little aria to the joy of being so high up off the road and able to look over the other traffic. Well yes, and SUV drivers are so high up that they … Read the rest