Guest post

Hey everyone,

I've written a guest post about tuition fees for my Dad's blog. You can read it here:

http://alan-beddow.blogspot.com/2010/12/guest-post-from-my-student-son-luke.html

Some things to worry about....

So, the new government has announced cuts in many areas. It's a recession; cuts are a necessary unpleasantness, and unsurprisingly nobody wants to be on the receiving end. The Socialist Worker Party has been putting up posters imploring people to protest against the cuts, but what's the alternative? Spending at the same rate in spite of our huge national debt?

So what am I worried about? At the moment, two things. The cuts to arts organizations, and the possibility of unlimited tuition fees at universities. If these changes come into place it will be too late to affect my degree, and despite the possibility that I might choose to return to university for a Masters, it's not for myself that I worry.

I have an uneasy feeling that, in a higher education culture which increasingly values business skills and employability over more traditional academic traits, it is the Arts and Humanities over which the sword of Damocles hangs poised, particularly the more purely academic subjects. Why study Literature when Media offers more employability options?

And combined with the cuts to funding for the arts, it offers the possibility of a particularly bleak future. A future where higher education costs at least twenty-one thousand pounds, and the more prestigious institutions cost much more. Where the already rich can afford the education it takes to make their way into politics and big business. In this distopia, no arts would ever be banned. They would merely die out with a whimper, financially unviable.

Obviously I don't believe things would really get this bad, but the arts which require a lot of funding, such as film, music, and most of the visual arts, could suffer badly. Obviously pop music (which I use in the broadest possible sense, to mean anything other than Classical and perhaps the more high-brow forms of jazz) will survive and probably even thrive. It is at once a multi million pound industry and a modern day equivelant to folk music, the music of the people. As ever, some of it will be very good, and some of it will be very bad. Street art could also do very well, and the often anti-authoritarian dialogue it presents will be particularly suited to the tough times ahead.

Where does literature fit into this? On the one hand the materials are relatively cheap, as are the books which must fuel the engine of any writer, and while publishing can still be relatively expensive, the advent of home printers and the internet make it easier than ever for your work to reach a wider audience. However, there is not much money in poetry, the short story or even the more literary novel, the changes in university funding mean that it will become increasingly difficult for people to study literature. The accessibility of electronic self publishing is also has its less attractive points. The internet is a big place, with no quality control, and obscurity is the curse of the blogger.

The arts have some difficult times ahead, and I think what literature needs is to learn from the unsigned band and the street artist. We need to develop a DIY culture which encourages good quality work, links to the great conversation of long dead poets, dramatist, authors, journalists and philosophers, but is also ready to experiment and carry that conversation forward into new directions. Of course, how we achieve this is another question...

This is the hour.

Greetings true believers (to quote Stan Lee).

It's been a while since my last post. I'd like to say that I've been too busy working on a secret project, but that would be untrue. The truth is that after moving house I was infected with a summer lethargy. But now I'm back, hopefully for more regular posts, and possibly one or two sister-blogs which I have in the mental pipeline.

For now though, gentle reader, let me take you back one week. After an evenings work I am in The Stile, my unbelievably local local, drinking a couple of beers and playing a bit of pool. Vicky is working behind the bar. In the other room aging musos bash out some covers on acoustic guitars. Sunday night is open mic night.

Fast forward to the end of the night, Faye, Tony and I are drinking in the front bar. Vicky is still working, and talking to one of the bearded muscians. I am beckoned. We discuss my being a bass player, and by the end of the conversation I have agreed to book the next sunday off work and come along to the open mic. The harmonica player stands in the doorway and has a nosebleed.

So, here I am. Due to arive at the pub in under an hour for half a pint of dutch courage. Unfortunately my summer lethargy extended into what I jokingly call my practice routine. I've been working to make up for it this week but for some reason I can only remember three songs well enough to feel nearly comfortable playing them in public. And one of those is seven minutes long and requires a saxophonist.

I thought it wise to prepare myself for public humiliation. Friday was Faye's Twenty-first. Sort of. It was also kareoke night at the style. If I can do that in front of people, I'm sure I can fumble my may through Eight Days a Week and Sweet Home Chicago.

Apologise for the weird typography. Blogger seems to have no problem switching to bold or italics, but doesn't appear to like changing back again.

Tea break over. Toodle pip.

Official Launch

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am glad to announce the official launch of the new BCU literary magazine, Paper Tiger. Thanks to everyone who submitted or was involved at the planning stages.

Read it, hot off the virtual presses at www.apapertiger.tk

Email any submissions for future issues to apapertiger@live.co.uk

Sweet Home Wolverhampton

For the past week and a half I've been settling into the new house and something almost resembling adulthood. I write this having just returned from Asda with freshly purchased draining board and cutlery draw trays.

Since my last post I've done a few things which I feel now qualify me to describe the local area: I've made several trips to Asda, seen the park on an event day, and, crucially, I've visited the pub. The area in question is, roughly speaking, Whitmore Reans (which even, sort of, has its own online newspaper). Our road, Fawdry Street, is one of several roads in the area which don't really lead anywhere, which is perhaps why the pub at the end of the road seems to be doing so well. It's the sort of pub which looks like it could be one of the main settings in a soap, and like almost all pubs in Wolverhampton it's linked to the Banks brewery. The conversation comes in a clattering of Polish and Yam Yam. The Banks and the curry are good, the current guest ale, Boondogle, tastes like vinegar. There is a bowling green at the back, half of the clientele look as if their preferred method of transport is a chopper or a truck, and Fridays and Saturdays are karaoke nights. Like a pub should be, it provides an interesting cross section of the community.

The nearest main road is the Stavely road, which has a few shops. This is our main conduit to Asda. In the other direction is a building with a sign painted on the side which reads 'Jazz's Barbers', in big, blue letters, accompanied a picture of a man who from a distance looks like Charlie Patton, but as you get closer, looks increasingly like a dodgy eighties hairdresser's model.

We visited the local park at the time of the Wolverhampton City Fair, which seemed to mainly involve people firing cannons, driving motorbikes or monster trucks, and setting themselves on fire.

Visit the Black Country, heart of the Wild West Midlands (or have I just been playing too much Red Dead Redemption)

Familiar Things in Unfamiliar Places.

I am no longer nearly homeless. As of yesterday I have been a resident of Fawdry Street, Wolverhampton. Vicky and I still have a little unpacking to do, but now my books are on a shelf (albeit a rather disorganized one, and having to compete for space with a myriad of DVDs and Xbox games) and I've had a cup of tea, it's starting to feel like home. And until the arrival of Faye (one of Vicky's forensics buddies) some time in August, and Hannah and Chris in early September, we have the house to ourselves.

So, here we sit awaiting the full time results of the Ghana vs Uruguay match. Vicky tests the internet with some heavy duty Call of Duty, and I contemplate a productive summer of writing and editing.

In the meantime though, we have more mundane things to worry about, like working out what's wrong with the washing machine door, the alarming rate of gas consumption, how to live on almost no money, and a living room carpet so filthy that it warrants foot washing of biblical proportions. Where's the messiah when you need him...

We've decided to wear slippers for the foreseeable future.

Homeless...

...Sort of. As of Monday evening, I will be crashing on my nan's sofa until I can move into me and Vicky's (and some others who will be joining later) student pad in Wolverhampton. Which is, I admit, quite a trek from Perry Barr, but it's far better if you want a decent ale. In the meantime my life is a flurry of books in boxes and mattresses on floors as I slowly dismantle the last ten years or so of my life.

Bring on the Black Country.