Skip to main content

Students still revolting

I've started teaching an evening class for Birkbeck College and the rooms we use are at the London School of Economics. It's a bit of trip down memory lane for me, as I was a student at the LSE back in the late 80s. The place is a hell of a lot smarter now - a great deal of money's been spent - but some things never change. I spotted this poster, for instance, advertising a meeting about an obscure nineteenth century German philosopher. The speaker, Alex Callinicos, is a Marxist academic and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party Central Committee. I'm pretty certain that you could have attended exactly the same meeting with the same speaker back in 1987. The only difference is that the collapse of capitalism is obviously much closer today.

Comments

  1. You are an English teacher?Oh my God.I'm a Chinese student,and I never get in touch with an American.I mean I'm a little exited.Hehe.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at

A good feed in Falmouth

As regular readers will know, I'm not in the habit of plugging businesses on Washed and Ready to Eat , but I'm happy to make an exception for Clarks Restaurant in Falmouth, Cornwall. The owners - Carolyn and Ian - made me very welcome on a recent business trip and served up a really great meal. If you drop in, tell 'em Phil sent you.