This will be the decade of the social network, and social networks have become a focus of security politics. It is not that social networks are a security threat – nothing so crude. And it is not as simple as governments wishing to spy on you. The security interest in social networks is subtler. It challenges how we think about security and privacy.
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British security politics last week descended into farce. The lawyers of radical cleric Abu Qatada lodged an appeal against his deportation to Jordan an hour before a deadline set by the European court of human rights. The Home Office had thought the deadline passed the day before. They now face having to release him on bail while his case goes back to Strasbourg.
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Independent Scotland at risk from terrorism, Theresa May claims | Politics | The Guardian.
At the Scottish Conservative conference in March, Theresa May, the home secretary, suggested that an independent Scotland would be more at risk from terrorism. She said that as an independent state Scotland would not benefit from the protection of the UK security and border agencies.
Is she right?
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Dr. Meryl Kenny (UNSW) and Dr. Fiona Mackay (University of Edinburgh)
Political parties have been quick to promise action after ‘sobering figures’ about the continued ‘male, pale and stale’ face of Scottish politics. Dr. Meryl Kenny and Dr. Fiona Mackay reported that less than 1:4 candidates in the forthcoming local government elections are women, 1:7 contests are male-only, and all the major political parties are fielding less than 30% female candidates.
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By Dr. Meryl Kenny (UNSW) and Dr. Fiona Mackay (Edinburgh)
Thirteen years after devolution heralded a ‘new dawn’ in women’s representation – with Nordic levels of women MSPs elected to the first Scottish Parliament – the story remains very different at local government level. Less than 1 in 4 candidates for next month’s local government elections are women, leaving the face of local politics looking decidedly ‘male, pale, and stale’
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By Mark Aspinwall
Well it was quite a summer. The US and Greece ran out of money, and some other places came close. Their credit ratings fell. A young man was shot dead by police and the response of some Londoners was that they needed new TVs and trainers. Their actions were compared to MPs who exaggerated expenses claims.
Meanwhile the protesters of Syria and Libya were pushed right out of the news, thereby suffering a second repression, this time at the hands of the riot squad in combination with the British media. That gave me an idea: give the London police to the Syrians and the Syrian police to the London rioters, and both sides will have the police they deserve.
The rioters reminded me of Juanita. As usual, I spent some time working in Mexico City this summer. Juanita sets up her taco stand outside my house there most days. She takes a bus from home, two hours in each direction, loaded with things she has cooked or prepared to be cooked, gets the brazier going, puts up the tarp, and feeds passers-by for 10 hours or so. Sometimes when it’s hot she has to lie down on the grass for a while to rest. At 8 or 9 pm, after she’s packed everything away, she scrubs the sidewalk with soapy water. It’s the cleanest pavement in Mexico.
Life is much tougher for women in countries such as Mexico – developing countries with macho cultures and few opportunities. Juanita looks after neighbours, grandchildren, and struggles to earn enough to support herself. She’s about 50 but looks older, a hardworking granny.
If Juanita lived in England she could be a rioter. She could be idle, and make someone pay. But in Mexico if you don’t work – hard and long – you get nothing from anyone. No income support, housing benefit, tax allowances, family credit. So Juanita developed a talent for cooking (instead of a talent for blaming others), and she cooks like an angel. Chocolate tamales, quesadillas with courgette flowers and cheese, buñuelos (my favourite). A buñuelo is basically a cinnamon doughnut one millimetre thick.
Mexico is the 13th richest country in the world according to the World Bank, a member of the OECD, the G20, and many other important international organisations. Mexico is closer in development terms to the US than it is to Honduras or Haiti. It is wealthier per capita than some EU member states. But it still has shocking poverty. From the Mexican perspective it’s easy to look at the London rioters and see a lot a spoiled whingers.
If the UK was closer to Mexico, Juanita could try to sneak in. As it is, a lot of Mexicans go to the US, where the money is better than in Mexico. Not many come to the UK, though they don’t need a visa to enter, unlike the US.
If she came now she’d find the atmosphere a lot more hostile toward immigrants than two years ago. Something happened. It’s called Gillian Duffy. Remember her? She’s the one who complained to Gordon Brown during the 2010 elections that there were too many east Europeans coming to Britain (now she knows how they feel in the Costa del Sol. Lots of Brits, barely a word of Spanish). In fact one of the rioters in Manchester told the BBC that he needed to riot because of Polish workers taking all the jobs.
Anyway, my wife, who’s Mexican, tried to get her visa changed this summer. She sent off her application and got it back two months later with a letter saying the credit card charge had been refused by the bank. Only thing is, the bank said that no charge was ever attempted by the Border Agency. Oops. I guess someone in the Border Agency just decided it was easier to send it back without processing it.
Foreign students are also beginning to feel the full force of Duffy-politics. Immigration is managed according to the pulse on ‘The Avenue’ – Middle England’s answer to the Arab ‘Street’. In March the Home Office announced its intention to cut the number of students from outside the UK by 25%. Reason: it’s worried about dodgy degree programmes in the UK accepting bogus students, whose real aim is simply to get past the Border Agency. A few could be terrorists, others looking to work illegally.
Educating a foreign student amounts to a British services export, just like tourism (imagine the outcry if ministers reduced the number of tourists by 25% – some could be terrorists). And there is a lot of demand from foreign students to study here – around 300,000 non-EU students per year. In 2008-9, fee income and other spending in the UK by these students amounted to about £5 billion, according to the Home Office.
Obviously, limiting the number could be very harmful, and the danger of an anti-foreign student policy is that it sends a chilling effect throughout the higher education world. Message from Britain: study in your own country! For those of us who rely on global sources of talent and global markets, reducing places in British universities for overseas students is as unwise as ‘British jobs for British workers’ (Gordon Brown’s 2007 policy).
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By Mark Aspinwall
23 February 2011
6.00. Out of bed. Have banana and a massive tea and start working. I’m rewriting an article on how Mexican politics has changed since NAFTA. It’s extracted from more than five years of research. An earlier version was rejected by the journal World Politics, and this new version is very different. I had some great help from colleagues in the department, who gave me ideas on how to reshape it. I’m optimistic, but standards to get into the top journals are very exacting.
8.00. Take a break and have breakfast with Leticia, who’s up now too. While she gets ready for the day I switch gears and grade applicants for PhD financial aid. I’m amazed at the range of interests among them and the variety of life experiences they’ve had. I also compose the ‘day-list’ – a post-it note with all the things I need to do that day. Together with my diary, it’s the daily bible. Old technology perhaps, but it works. If it’s not on that list, the chances of remembering it plummet. It all began five years ago when I forgot to deliver 200 exam scripts to Pleasance Sports Hall. Oops.
9.00. Drop Leticia at the Morningside Oxfam, where she volunteers on Wednesday mornings, and head for the office.
10.00. First of more than seven hours of almost back-to-back meetings. Professor Mick Moran is visiting for the day from the University of Manchester. Mick was on the 2008 RAE panel, which means that he was one of about 15 academics responsible for assessing the research of every politics department in the country. PIR made big improvements in 2008, which we want to continue in the next round (2013-14). The outcome will have reputational and financial repercussions and it’s really important for us (hence all my agonizing over the Mexico research). He gives me and two colleagues the benefit of his insights. There’s some great news for us – we’ve learned that Charlie Jeffery will be on the next panel (called the REF this time), and he’s with us in the meeting. Someone has brought biscuits and I eat too many of them.
11.45. I try to make a scheduled call to a student but am interrupted by a colleague who wants to talk about his role next year. This is a really important conversation, and very sensitive.
12.00. Next meeting. A part-time peripatetic lecturer is interested in becoming an Honorary Fellow in the department. I know him well. He’s very solid. He has a PhD and has taught in several UK universities – his speciality is the Middle East, and Egypt in particular. We’re expanding our Middle East offerings, with two new taught MSc degrees, and a new lecturer coming on board (Dr Ewan Stein). But there are College rules on what Honorary Fellows need to do – essentially to provide some kind of pro-bono service. So the Middle East specialist would do some voluntary dissertation supervision and possibly some teaching in an area of growing interest. No brainer for me.
12.30. I finally get through to the student, who’s doing joint honours with Modern Languages. She’s on a year abroad and working rather than studying, which means that she needs to write two essays of 4000 words each. She wants to do the first on women in politics. I think to myself, she started her first year in a lecture theatre of over 300 students. Now she’s talking to a lecturer one-on-one. Ratios change. If she becomes a PhD student she’ll have meetings with two lecturers sometimes.
We talk about how to frame a research question. I ask her to think of essay questions in earlier courses, and search for some kind of puzzle or unexpected outcome. For example, why do women not have more power (or why are social outcomes still unequal) despite legislation and other good-faith efforts to address the imbalance? We talk about independent research and the need to stay focussed. It’s a challenge for her because she works all day too, and needs to do her research and writing in the evenings and on weekends. I know how she feels. We decide to talk again in a few days.
12.50. I have a few minutes to eat lunch. Eating six biscuits in the morning has left me less hungry than usual at this time of day. Must exercise more self-restraint. I reflect that the phone call will be my only interaction with students during the entire day.
1.00. Department research seminar. Mick Moran gives a paper on business power post-2007. He contrasts the aftermath of the financial collapse to the 1979-2007 period, which he calls ‘the great complacency.’ Great title, I think to myself. He’s done exhaustive historical research on policy changes and decisions in the wake of the collapse. It’s a real case study in how to carry out research. But the bottom line is a little depressing – not much has changed. Business stills wields tremendous power.
2.00. Back to the office to prepare for a meeting at 2.15. I scan the papers, make a coffee and have a seventh biscuit. Lucky seven.
2.15. School Management Committee meeting. This threatens to stretch all afternoon, but the agenda is full of important things. Student satisfaction and a new website on best practice in feedback and assessment. Several people in the School (including my colleagues) have devoted a lot of time to working on this issue. Postgraduate programmes. Financial aid for PhD students. Administrative reform, including how to rethink the DoS system. Preparations for the REF, which is how I began this string of meetings. There are one or two moments of ill-humour, but by and large things go smoothly. Everyone wants the best for the School. Disagreements over how to get there are ironed out in a few minutes.
I have my (occasional) daydream in which we’ve made all the admin reforms we need to make, and we achieve a kind of utopian equilibrium where everything works perfectly, and we can return to teaching and research. It’s utopian because teaching and research are what we want to do, and what fulfils our mission. But the reality is different. There are constant re-evaluations of processes and procedures, new ideas about how to govern organizations, changing demands from those who regulate us, new generations of students with new interests. All of it must be accommodated. I estimate that managing the department I’ve headed for the past seven months takes at least two-thirds of my time. In the rest I teach, do research and run a European Commission project called MERCURY, along with several colleagues. I eye the biscuits provided for the meeting but decide I’ve had enough.
5.15. Meeting over. Head for the gym.
6.30. Back in the office. A day of meetings has left my email inbox in an alarming state. I start to chew through them, waiting for Leticia to pick me up.
8.00. Dinner over, I make a phone call to a colleague we’ve just hired from the University of Kansas named Julie Kaarbo. She’s going to be a great addition – she works on political psychology, foreign policy analysis, and how Cabinets make foreign policy decisions.
9.00. Transfixed by the news from Libya.
10.00. Watch a programme on the history of the Rolling Stones. The email inbox is gnawing away at me and I work it down to six or so as I watch. I thought I knew everything about them, since they were my favourite band until I was about 30, but I learn that Keith Richards was a choirboy who sang at Westminster Abbey in front of the Queen. How ironic. I wonder how the Stones would react if someone forced them to participate in a periodic ‘Music Excellence Framework’ similar to what we do on research, in which all British bands were assessed according to their output, impact, and environment.
Speaking of environment, it occurs to me that instead of ‘sex and drugs and rock-and-roll’, the best way to describe their lives would be ‘divorce and jail and rock-and-roll.’
Keith has aged incredibly. Incredibly badly, I mean. Wait a minute. I grab the remote and switch back to the news. Colonel Gaddafi is ranting away to his supporters. Back to the Stones. Keith is giving the finger to the paparazzi. Is it me, or have they been imitating each other?
11.30. Lights out but can’t sleep. I think to myself, maybe I should write a ‘day in the life’ blog.
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