I'm not usually a fan of the articles contributed by members of the academic community to the esteemed publication Nature, but this one really pissed me off.

"Design your own doctoral project" by Jesko Becker.

I warn you, take a deep breath and brace yourself for an onslaught of unabashed, tone-deaf horseshit if you decide to click that link. Reading it made me want to scream. A lot. Because so very few people in the world are in a position to spend months or years, as this author clearly did, doing a vast amount of unpaid labour in order to cook up a doctoral project and then chasing funding for it. You have to already be nicely sorted out for that. This aspirational bullshit is exactly the kind of thing that puts off less privileged members of the academic community (which, M. Becker, is 99.999999% of them) from pursuing doctoral work in the first place, or makes them feel like failures when they can't complete it. Doctoral work is already very badly paid, and even if you are lucky enough to land a funded position, the funding is almost always insufficient to cover the actual duration of projects. Nearly everyone with a PhD that I have ever met in the UK worked at least a couple of months on their doctoral theses without pay. It is an absolutely shite system and it is not to be encouraged. So don't go telling people, "You don't need funding, just follow your dreaaaaams!" People have to pay rent. They have to eat. Some of them have families to care for. They need money to do those things.

It doesn't just take "autonomy, determination and perseverance" to make an unfunded doctoral project happen. It takes MONEY, and not just money for the project. YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM, M. Becker. You are not the solution. Bugger Off.
🤮

More seriously, I am Not Happy about the probable damage that is going to be done to the disadvantaged, the vulnerable, the foreign (hi!), the fabric of the social safety net, to name but a few things, if this is correct.
This was the episode that forced me to face the fact that I am VERY JUDGY AND ANGRY about USELESS DADS. With CAPSLOCK.

Ep 3: The Mersier family

spoilers; content note for USELESS DAD RAGE )
[Warning: contains swearing]

For context: Today's news features a story about the UK's Home Office threatening to deport a generation of Commonwealth citizens who came to the UK decades ago and were never issued with what is now required paperwork. The UK government is now making out that it is all a terrible mistake, cannot possibly be their fault, rather than a direct result of the increasingly hostile immigration policies it has been introducing for the last eight years or so. I am particularly incensed by Theresa May's "apologies", because the rules being used for the deportation orders were implemented by her when she was Home Secretary. These policies are not just hostile toward illegal immigrants. They are hostile toward all immigrants.

I say this as someone with direct experience of those policies. I came to the UK in 2004 on a domestic partner visa which cost about £300. I became a citizen in 2013. Indefinite Leave to Remain, the immigration exam and the citizenship fee cost me £2200. But it was not just the financial cost of legal immigration that ballooned during those ten years. When I first arrived - in London, which admittedly gives one a warped perspective on how much of a melting pot the rest of the country is (top tip: most of it isn't) - I experienced a good deal of stress. Most of the stress was cultural. I learned to navigate social cues, try to make friends, figure out the bus routes, cook with different ingredients, speak in the correct vocabulary, smooth out my accent, apologise constantly, etc. The cultural stress diminished as time went on. However, there was an element of stress that got worse the longer I stayed, and that was a direct result of the increasingly bureacratic, rigid, and expensive visa renewal process.

It took four weeks to switch from the domestic partner visa to my first Tier 2 (employer-linked) visa. I swopped to an HSMP (the now-defunct Highly Skilled Migrant Programme) visa as soon as I could, and from there to a Tier 1 visa (now inaccessible unless you're a millionaire or City banker) because it gave the holder the flexibility to work for any employer.

By the time I applied for Indefinite Leave to Remain, the waiting time for a visa renewal or switch was a minimum of six months. Perhaps that doesn't sound too bad if you've never been through the process. Let me tell you why it is that bad.

You cannot apply for a visa renewal until you're within six months of the expiry date of your current visa. The chances are, therefore, that your visa will expire whilst you're waiting for the renewal. You are, magnanimously, allowed to continue working at your current job while you wait for your expired visa to be renewed, and you'd better pray you don't lose your job during that period because you can't apply for a new job until the renewal comes through. Even if you are not particularly at risk of losing your job, allow me to assure you, it is deeply fucking stressful to go to work every day knowing that you are entirely at the mercy of your employer in order to remain legally in the country.

The Home Office has your passport. For six months. Obviously you cannot leave the country during that period. You can't travel for work. (This was a pain in the butt for me more than once at my job). If, heaven forbid, one of your non-UK-based relatives has the audacity to become ill or die while you're waiting for your visa renewal, you cannot go to them. Or rather, you can, but you have to somehow get the Home Office to answer a plea to return your passport. When they do, this will invalidate your renewal application. You will have to start over. Now imagine a scenario in which you are five months into the six-month wait. Your visa is about to expire. You have to arrange and attend a funeral for one of your parents. Then you have to return to the UK, hope that you'll be allowed back in, return to work, and resubmit your 150-page visa renewal application. And wait another six months, five of which will be spent working on an expired visa. Oh, also, one of your parents has just died. That doesn't sound stressful at all, does it.

This is all deliberate. The visa application system has been crafted to be convoluted and unwelcoming. The Home Office has been under-resourced to deal with the volume of paperwork it requires immigrants to generate. If you do manage to navigate the bureaucracy, to fill out the right forms and afford the fees and complete the path to settlement or citizenship, the experience leaves you permanently scarred. The feeling that you are second-class, that because your citizenship was earned rather than inherited, it is somehow still precarious and worth less than a native-born person, will never leave you. Not even when your children are born UK citizens. I know because I live this daily.
Hello! It is, I dunno, midnight or something after solstice, and I have insomnia because despite trying to calm down with not-quite-paying-attention-to the Ab Fab and Father Ted Xmas specials afterward, I am still pissed off by the Masterchef: The Professionals Finale. Because there was rampant sexism, OK?

So, before you read any further, if you care at all about being spoiled about the winner of Masterchef: The Professionals, then read no further until you have watched it. If, like 99.99% of the Earth's population, you don't give a damn about that, then read on.

There were three finalists: Craig, Louisa and Steven. Craig was the youngest contestant (though he didn't look it) at 21, and had one of those faces my mind was constantly struggling to maintain a memory of. He was just...forgettable. Louisa, at 22, was second eldest. She was MAGICAL. And I don't just mean that because she was the only woman. Carry on reading and you will see. Steven was the only one on the whole programme with a sense of humour. A lovable teddy bear. Not the finest haute cuisine chef, which is why he didn't win the thing, but definitely the only one to whom my response was, "When he opens his restaurant, I want to eat there."

So anyway, the winner was Craig, because fucking Marcus Wareing (tosser) thought he was a "genius", and repeatedly said so. I don't deny that Craig's food looked and (from the sounds of it at least) tasted like something you'd get in a Michelin-starred restaurant of today. And that, to me, was the problem. He, with his granitas and his liquid nitrogen whatevers, was making exactly the sort of food you'd expect there, now. There was not much he served that I was surprised to see.

Louisa, on the other hand, was perhaps not doing all that which is of the zeitgeist, but she was doing things that Marcus Wareing "had never had before" although given that that was his favourite/most overused gushy anticipatory statement of the show, perhaps didn't mean much. ANYway, the point is, she used a lot of ingredients that were taken from non-European cuisines and blended them successfully with those that were, in unusual and apparently delicious ways. And her presentation was just as modern/de rigueur as Craig's. She is creative, dedicated, flexible, incredibly confident, commanding, attentive and prodigiously talented.

Steven was the only chef who actually looked as if he enjoyed eating as well as cooking food, which is always a bonus as far as I'm concerned. I don't think he was ever going to win the thing, being (a) far too chilled out and (b) actually in possession of a sense of detachment from the competition, like, "this is nice but it is not life-defining in any way". And his food reflected those qualities.

Anyway, the judging of the final was super annoying, because Marcus Wareing was just glaringly sexist throughout. He gushed over Craig as a "genius", and whilst I'm not denying the lad clearly has talent, at least from the appearance and alleged complexity of the dishes, Louisa was at least equally deserving of the moniker. But did she get it? Oh no. His praise for her was much more along the lines of, "Well done you clever little lady, isn't it wonderful that you're here."

Well.

Fuck you, Marcus Wareing. Those of us who have been around long enough to see that sort of bollocks from the people we work with recognise exactly how demeaning that kind of "praise" is.

So, I am hoping that in five years or less, the following events will occur.

1) Marcus Wareing will be removed from Masterchef: The Professionals for apparently never having actually enjoyed any foodstuff that is not a very small deviation from classical French cuisine.
2) Louisa, having opened her new restaurant which is receiving the same sort of accolades for innovation as Noma, receives a request for a booking from Marcus Wareing, which she politely declines.
3) Steven, having opened his wildly popular restaurant which serves whacky reconstructions of English pub favourites, gets a call from Louisa re: Item 2). He promptly adds to the menu a new recipe he has been saving for the occasion: Marcus Wareing's Sloppy Spotted Dick.

THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT.
I have been thinking, off an on, about a comment I heard Jacob Rees-Mogg (UK Conservative politician, pro-Brexit) make on Have I Got News For You (topical BBC “comedy” panel show) a few weeks ago.

He remarked, in an off-hand smiling way, “Nannies are indestructible.”

This provoked little from his fellow panelists other than some raised eyebrows and swiftly moving on to the next topic. I would dearly have loved to have seen someone call him out on it, however, because to me, it tidily encapsulates the kind of thinking that informs our more privileged elected officials.

“Nannies are indestructible.” Let’s pick that apart a little, shall we? You’re saying that people who choose a certain career are all of such physical and mental endurance that they are unbreakable. A career that is traditionally underpaid and underappreciated. A career that, in the past, many would not have chosen freely, but would have been forced into purely by necessity. A career that has traditionally - and still is - predominantly taken by women. A career that often required* one to endure physical and mental abuse not only from one’s charges, but from one’s employers.

So what you’re saying, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is that you think these people, these often young, habitually oppressed and usually female people, can endure anything. Any sort of mistreatment you throw at them, whether it be verbal insults or piss-poor pay, they can be assured of accepting and carrying on with their lives. Never mind that the only alternative, for them, is probably “starve to death on little or no income”.

This throwaway remark, by someone who thought he was paying a compliment, says a lot about the entitled thinking of imperialists. It is this kind of thinking that enables slavery.

* I really hope this can be entirely put in the past tense, but the cynical side of me is willing to bet otherwise.
Last week* on my London evening I went to BBC Broadcasting House with one of my work colleagues, because I had tickets to a recording of The Museum of Curiosity. The idea behind this radio show is that three eminent guests donate exhibits to the imaginary museum after being interviewed by host John Lloyd and the curator. The curator position rotates between comedians. At the time of this recording, it was Noel Fielding. Phil Jupitus and Sarah Millican have previously curated. The guests on this occasion were another comedian, a composer and an architect.

The show seems to make an effort to have at least one woman as an eminent guest, which is rather nice. Unfortunately, I found the one female guest - the architect - actively cringe-making.

She was the last one of the three guests to be interviewed. It turned out that she had originally trained as a medic and practised for a short while as a GP. Then she went to India to spend a month in a leper** colony on an island, and it was there that she determined that she needed to completely change her career and become an "experimental architect". So she could revolutionise the way Western people live, because all our buildings are "dead" and we're locked into worship of machines and we need to learn from people who can make amazing things out of sticks and shit because they've got nothing else, or something. I don't know. Anyway, she actually didn't say the words, "Desperately poor and ill brown people are, like, so inspiring." Make no mistake, though, that was exactly what she meant. I didn't stand up and scream your racism is unintentional but it is not benign, but believe me, it took every ounce of my strength not to. Instead, I withheld my applause when she concluded. I also left a sardonic review of the event in the survey I was e-mailed after the recording, mentioning that they might want to make an effort to vett their guests for offensively colonial 19th century views.

Sometimes I think I've assimilated into British culture a bit too well.

* I've been wanting to post about this since that evening but every time I sat down to do it, nothing but a stream of incoherent rage would come out. So please don't make the mistake of thinking that, because the tone in this is pretty level, that I'm not still very bloody angry about it.
** I did glean some small amusement when one of the other guests - the composer - gently rebuked her afterward for referring to it as leprosy instead of Hansen's disease.
I'm a migrant. I came to the UK in search of new opportunities, a new job and a better life. I came on an aeroplane. I had a visa. And I was lucky enough to find all of those things.

A refugee is not a migrant. A refugee is someone who is so desperate they'll pay their life savings to put their toddler on a leaky boat in the sea on the slim chance they'll find safety somewhere else. Even the thought of having to do that to my children makes me physically ill. No one does that who is not at the absolute end of hope. No one.

It makes me ill that the British government's position is that it has been doing enough to help these people. Yes. By doing such helpful things as cancelling funding for the boat rescue service that could have prevented them from drowning. Very helpful. Because you don't have to offer asylum to corpses.
nanila: (manning: uberbitch)
( Nov. 9th, 2014 08:06 pm)
A thing happened recently that I didn't feel comfortable addressing directly with the person involved, so it's turned into a journal post.

Someone felt the need to go on a diatribe to me about how it's a travesty that Americans continue to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday built on what can mildly be described as false premises.

Every year I post a picture to Facebook of Wednesday Addams holding a match and delivering the following speech about Thanksgiving.

You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides. You will play golf, and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."...And for all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.

Despite this, every year, I make an effort to celebrate Thanksgiving. Since I've had the space to do so, I've invited as many people as I can cater for to my home and fed them, at the very least, on pumpkin pie and wine. Because I also believe that despite its hugely problematic origins, the saccharine mythology of which continues to be propagated in American schools, it is possibly one of the nicest American traditions in the way it is actually practiced. I have on many occasions not been able to be with my own family on Thanksgiving, including the entirety of the last decade. Yet because of the generosity of friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances, I have never felt alone or unloved on this holiday. When most Americans hear that you haven't got anywhere to be on Thanksgiving, they will immediately invite you to their own celebration, even if they don't know you well, and the invitation will be sincere. You don't have to take it if you don't want to. But the option is always there - to be fed a nice meal, in company of people in good spirits, which in my world is one of the best things you can ever do for others.

I know the origin stories of America, especially as taught to young Americans, are full of inconsistencies and glaring omissions. I know that Americans have, to put it mildly, not always behaved well as colonists. If I were to get romantic about it, I could argue that I embody the conflict between colonial and colonised interests from the cultural right down to the genetic level, given my parents' national and racial origins.

I also know that in choosing to become British, I have taken on the mantle of possibly the most notorious of the modern colonialist oppressors. And I know that in choosing to emigrate permanently, I have given up on participation in a large portion of the culture I was brought up in. I spend 99% of my time immersed in British culture. My partner is British. My children will grow up predominantly British.

So. I get angry when someone feels the need to tell me that, of the 1% of my time that I choose deliberately to celebrate something that is American, I shouldn't be doing it. Perhaps, O White English Person, the next time you feel the need to dress someone down for clinging to a tiny portion of the culture in which they grew up, you should consider that you are possibly not the most appropriate mouthpiece of justice.
I was going to make a personal post this morning, but I'm so irritated by this that I'm not.

The Guardian apparently decided that one way to honour International Women's Day this weekend would be to publish a headline erasing a woman from history. I'm not going to do the article any favours by linking it here, but the headline was "First Brit in space Tim Peake: 'We phone people because it's just so cool'".

Helen Sharman became the first British person in space in 1991, when she was 27. Yes, she flew as a private individual on a commercial flight rather than as a UK government representative of a space agency. That doesn't make her not British. So I'm afraid that however much certain people seem to want Timothy Peake to be the first British person in space, he isn't. END OF.

The first British person in space was a woman. Her name is Helen Sharman. (I make a point of working this fact into every outreach talk I ever give.) Remember that. Tell everyone. Because this kind of bullshit needs stamping on by many, many feet.

ETA: I note with interest that this morning, the headline has been changed to "First British man in space". I believe this is also wrong. The first British man who went into space was naturalised as an American beforehand. However, I do not think that anyone would enjoy quibbling with me about whether or not dual nationals still count as citizens of their birth countries. >:E
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