Cereal Doesn't Cause Inequality.

Yesterday a group of anti-gentrification protesters vandalised Cereal Killer cafe in Shoreditch.  Presumably because if you set up a small business in a trendy area you're furthering the worst elements of capitalism, or something like that.

Personally, I wouldn't pay £5 for a bowl of cereal.  Then again, there's lots of things I wouldn't pay £5 for, I resent paying £8.20 for prescription medicine, but I don't think that's a symptom of a bourgeois conspiracy.  There's one thing for certain, the people who run Cereal Killers cafe aren't responsible for capitalism, they aren't even responsible for the mechanisms that fuel capitalism (bankers, stock brokers etc,) they are just two people who realised they could make money by selling cereal to people who are willing to pay for it.  That's all, two people who run a small business, for me these are working class people who run a business in the community, today pointing out the added tourist benefits they have brought to the area.

Attacking something because it is expensive makes no sense.  Cereal Killer Cafe can't control or change house prices in Shoreditch, they can't transform the economy, they can't really even affect how much people are willing to pay for food in their cafe (to an extent), or else they could charge an unlimited amount of money.  The only think they can do is charge an amount of money people are willing to pay for a service,

There is just something so tiring about being lectured on the class struggle.  The people who vandalised Cereal Killer cafe are not part of a struggle I want to be involved in.  It's patronising and takes away from the real causes of inequalities.  Mismanaged housing policies, lack of support and available finance for small businesses (how ironic,) and an incredibly unbalanced economy across the country, are much bigger factors that are forcing people out of area like Shoreditch (and London for that matter,) not a bloody cafe that sells cereal.


So, in reality lets look at what the protest has achieved. The protest will do nothing to halt the rise of venues like Cereal Killer Cafe.  It caused them no loss of earnings as they were able to open first thing this morning.  If anything, all the protest has done is turn people who were previously apathetic to Cereal Killer cafe on their side, and best of all, provided free advertising for the cafe in media outlets up and down the country.  For Cereal Killer Cafe it will almost certainly be a really good day for business.

The class struggle is not about stunts that harm small businesses, posturing about the ills of capitalism, and feigning an interest in the lives of people you have no experience of.  For me, the class struggle will always be about working toward a society that is more equal, where your life chances are no different if your parents are bankers, stock brokers, factory workers, or cereal cafe owners.  Gentrification and creeping capitalism won't be overthrown by attacking the small business owners who want to make a better life for themselves.

The Teaching Excellence Framework must Challenge the Status Quo.

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)is a government initiative designed to “ensure all students receive an excellent teaching experience.”[1]  The crucial detail missing is how this will be achieved, with little detail coming from the government.  The only  detail being touted as a definite is that the TEF will be based on “outcome-focused criteria, and metrics.”[2]  Invariably this has led to speculation about what those metrics will be, with links to NSS, PTES, PRES, class sizes, grade progression, all possibilities.

So, there is little known about the TEF.  There is one likely outcome, that no matter what the metric is, or what the comparators look like on teaching standards, the league tables will invariably show “elite” universities as having the best teaching.  The people drawing up these proposals come from elite universities, they are unlikely to devise a system that does not enhance their reputation.

This is not to say that the Russell Group do not provide excellent teaching, as in places they do, but the government are unlikely develop a framework that does not allow them to continue to promote Russell Group universities as being excellent at teaching, as well as research.

A large portion of UK universities finance is dependent on their international reputation for excellence.  It is no secret that universities are increasingly reliant on the tuition fees from international students, and reliant on international research collaborations to support their research.  The government would be unlikely to develop a system that would potentially harm the international reputation of elite universities, given the benefits to the UK of taking part in globalised education.

Excellent teaching is frequently overlooked by universities, and there are arguably two main drivers behind this.  The first being that teaching is often viewed as a supplementary activity to research, and in some ways less important.  The second being that universities, and funding bodies, invariably reward excellent research, much more than they award excellent teaching.  This obviously isn’t the case across all universities, but these are two fundamental issues that need to be grappled with, in order to provide an excellent teaching experience for students.

If the TEF is a means of boosting the reputation of research intensive institutions then it misses an opportunity to improve teaching across the board.  The TEF could signal a change in the emphasis placed on teaching by universities, and could start to redress the balance between teaching and research.  If it is simply a means of enhancing the reputation of already well established universities, then the exercise will be a missed opportunity.  If the framework develops means of improving teaching across universities, raising the standards of all teaching, encouraging teaching collaborations, then it could do some good.

It is likely that there will invariably be a link between the Research Excellence Framework, and the TEF.  This will likely come in the form of rewarding the use of research led teaching, given that the older and more well financed universities already hugely invest in research, there teaching will inevitably be well scored as well.

This then of course raises the question of what is the government’s intention for the TEF.  The answer is again we don’t know yet.  There is a green paper going to Parliament soon, and a Higher Education bill due in the coming year.  Engagement with the TEF is necessary to ensure that teaching reforms in higher education are done to genuinely improve teaching, not to superficially improve the image of already successful universities.

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[1] https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/teaching-excellence-framework-tef-everything-you-need-to-know

[2] https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/teaching-excellence-framework-tef-how-might-it-be-built

"No matter how entertaining, how fulfilling, you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services or with their homes"

Andy Burnham would disagree but Jeremy Corbyn gives the impression of being the MP most outside of the ‘Westminster bubble.’  He is the candidate who seems least like a politician, and this has chimed with a lot of young people, and he deserves some praise for getting a large number of young people engaged in politics.  The issue is that with the release of his manifesto for young people he confirms a deeper truth, that it is much easier to play politics of perennial opposition, than it is to make the compromises to needed to win a general election.   Young people who are facing high levels of unemployment and even worse underemployment, cuts to maintenance grants, cuts to youth service, and a government with a rhetoric that devalues them at every turn deserve more than a list of demands that are uncosted, and unachievable.

It is difficult to disagree with what Corbyn sets out, but that is the whole point.  When you face little prospect of being Prime Minister, and when you offer no strategy of how your ideas will be implemented, or the cost of doing so, you can promise anything.  Here are just two examples.

The very first pledge of the manifesto is “Labour should introduce statutory living wage for all workers, including apprentices, and abolish age related tiers for minimum wage.”  As explained later in the manifesto this would mean moving from a current apprentice wage of £2.73 p/h, to £10 p/h for apprentices.  Apprentices are chronically underpaid for what they do, and it is through the fantastic work of the National Society of Apprentices that they will soon be getting a pay rise that qualifies them for statutory sick pay.  There are currently around 440,000 apprentices in the UK at the moment, and there is little explanation how such a pay rise would be funded.  In addition to this, why would a business of any description ever spend resource on training an apprentice, giving them the skills for later employment, when they could just hire an already qualified worker on the same wage? Low wages for apprentices is a scandal and one that needs to be addressed, it will not be addressed by promising impossible wage hikes, and through ensuring businesses will never hire apprentices in the first place.

Another pledge promises to “end the failed Academies and Free Schools project, and promote comprehensive education” again, it is difficult to disagree that there are problems with this project, and in its current form is a radical departure from the vision originally laid out.  We need to stop pretending that comprehensives were perfect before Academies came into existence.  Under Blair and Adonis Academies were a mechanism to improve failing schools, and that was there original purpose, and there is no doubt some Academies have achieved that.  Under this pledge, presumably successful Academies would be returned back to local authority control, where they had previously not been doing very well.  Children in education care much more about receiving a good quality education, rather than who runs it.  It is plainly ridiculous to interfere with the running of good schools for political gain.

In fairness, there are some points in the manifesto that are credible, but the vast majority of these points are simply opposing what are obviously terrible Tory policies.  Of course a Labour government should oppose cutting housing allowances to those under 21, of course a Labour government should oppose the removal of the post-study work visa for international students and of course a Labour government should reintroduce disabled students’ allowance.

There is a general sense of making easy promises without tackling the deep lying problems that affect so many young people, and that is what is so disappointing.  Introducing votes at 16, without addressing the wider issues of why young people in general don’t vote. Capping rents in the private sector, without committing to a way of doing it, or how to combat the concerns of subdividing apartments, forced sales of homes, or discrimination on characteristics as raised by Shelter[1].  Restoration of EMA is of course a wonderful idea, but EMA was in no way perfect. I want to see a Labour government that looks at the reasons people aren’t getting to college in the first place, and looks at the reasons why those who received EMA still were short of money at the end of the week, and some of those who didn’t get it were even worse off.

A manifesto for young people should go beyond the easy promises, the purely oppositional stance, and a set of unachievable dreams.  Young people deserve more than that.

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[1] http://blog.shelter.org.uk/2014/02/are-rent-caps-the-answer/