marypcbuk

A friend managed to make my blood boil in seconds today by sending a link to a Labour MP (with an MA from the University of Leeds) spouting off the usual rubbish about how you can buy an Oxbridge MA for a tenner and it's Byzantine privilege.

The reason that you get an MA or Msc for your degree at Oxford or Cambridge is that you do the amount and depth of work required for both an MA and a BA as part of your course. Take classics: literae humaniores as Oxford Byzantinely still calls it (perhaps on the grounds that if you don't know what that means you shouldn't be studying the subject). When I took it it was a four year course, split into 5 terms followed by 13 exams in a week and 7 terms followed by about the same number of exams in about the same amount of time (plus exams at the beginning of every term for checking you had done your vacation reading, plus tutorials, essays, seminars, lectures and the rest) - I haven't kept up with whether the balance has shifted to continuous assessment but with two essays a week plus the seminar and group tutorial work on top of that I'd have been happy to get some course credit as I went along.

The teaching at Oxford is primarily one to one, in tutorials. You're expected to provide evidence of original thought and research and to discuss and defend that. As well as the main subject strands you take multiple special subjects in both halves of the course, producing the equivalent of a short dissertation for each. I know the level of work and the grade at which you're working is equivalent to a masters at another university - because I went on to do an Msc in Intelligent knowledge based systems at the University of Essex and I think a lot of the reason I got a distinction in a subject where I had no previous qualifications was that I was already used to functioning at post graduate level because I'd been doing it for over two years. I earned my masters - both of them.

And I know the scope of my degree was equivalent to a BA and MA elsewhere because of the conversation a friend on the same course had when she thought she was only going to get a pass degree and wanted to look into transferring to another university at the end of her first year (so 3 terms into the 5 term first half of the degree). She interviewed at a university with an excellent reputation for its classics department and they said to here 'it's not worth you coming here; you've already covered more than we do in our entire three year syllabus'.

My MA is worth a damn site more than the fiver I paid for it and fixating on the admin charge is rather missing the point (I paid admin charges higher than that at Essex). Oxford and Cambridge award masters degrees because their undergraduates earn them. Perhaps we should be asking other universities to raise their standards? If other universities want to match a historical accident it might be hard for them to do in the current climate but that's no reason to ask Oxbridge to dumb down. Or perhaps we could agree that a spectrum of further education from vocational to standard undergraduate to more demanding degrees is a good thing and that this attack is more about the chip on someone's shoulder than the actual merits of the Oxbridge system?

Already? As elinor just commented, this is so soon. Labour ran slick adverts on shopping benefit fraudsters, but there was something particularly distasteful about the Conservative politician on radio 4 a few minutes ago saying MPs know there are lots of people out there who don't deserve their benefits - because they found them at home while they were out campaigning. I mean I agree you can't possibly be a contributing member of society if you have the time to open the door and talk to candidates, but suppose it was a courier delivering your next piece of work - you'd have to answer the door bell and then you could hardly slam the door in their face... Are these people completely out of touch with modern working habits? Freelancers, contracters, the self-employed, remote workers, workers from home: if you're not in the office like a good little wage slave, you're obviously some kind of benefit fraud. What's next - cracking down on those who aren't visibly disabled? But we still have Chateau Lafitte aging in the cellar of the House for foreign dignitaries (and when I heard that one, I had to wonder why we don't serve them a good English wine like Nyetimber? Or would that be champagne socialism?)

In recent weeks, the sorry truth has been emerging: in Britain the New Labour government supports the Google Book Settlement, and has done from the start."

If you;re wondering about the point of view of the author - rather than whether it means you can get cheap ebooks - have a read of http://www.gillianspraggs.com/gbs/GBS_survival_aid.html

On 16 February 2009, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 (Commencement No.2) Order 2009 brought in to force section 58A of the Terrorism Act 2000 (inserted by section 76 of the CTA 2008), offences relating to information about members of the armed forces etc.

Section 58A makes it an offence to publish, communicate, elicit or attempt to elicit information about any of such persons which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.  Contrary to some media and public misconception, section 58A does not make it illegal to photograph a police officer, military personnel or member of the intelligence services.

On the 18 August 2009, the Home Office published the following information via its website to clarify photography in relation to section 58A.

Photography and Section 58A of the Terrorism Act 2000

The offence concerns information about persons who are or have been at the front line of counter-terrorism operations, namely the police, the armed forces and members of the security and intelligence agencies.

An officer making an arrest under section 58A must reasonably suspect that the information is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.  An example might be gathering information about the person’s house, car, routes to work and other movements.

Reasonable excuse under section 58A

It is a statutory defence for a person to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for eliciting, publishing or communicating the relevant information. Legitimate journalistic activity (such as covering a demonstration for a newspaper) is likely to constitute such an excuse. Similarly, an innocent tourist or other sight-seer taking a photograph of a police officer is likely to have a reasonable excuse."

I'm not sure I feel that's quite the 'innocent until proven guilty' tradition of UK law...

The Greens tabled an amendment requiring ISPs to ensure that subscribers can send and receive any form of content. We do recognise that in some extreme circumstances it might be necessary for ISPs to take action to preserve the integrity and security of the networks, but argue that this provision must relate only to network management, i.e. restrictions intended to avoid degradation or slowing of traffic in networks.

The compromise legislative text does state that ISPs do not have the right to monitor or block traffic on the internet. However, elsewhere it is made clear that the public should be informed about any activities that are unlawful. Jean has serious concerns about the way this aspect of the legislation could be interpreted. She does not believe that this dichotomy of lawful and unlawful activity fully takes account of issues such as purpose and proportionality. To elaborate, Jean does not agree with tarnishing all users with the same stroke, if some are sharing files with peers and whereas others are contributing to the production and distribution of pirated material for profit. Moreover, the proportionality issue here is similar, in that the volume of unlawful activity is not considered and all users accused of copyright infringement may be subject to penalties through the 'Three Strikes Out' system. Out of principle, Jean does not agree with this system, as it assigns fixed punishments to those accused on an automatic basis without considering individual aspects of each case. She strongly believes that this development can be dangerous and result in abuse of power by ISPs, as they would be able to deny internet access to users by means of monitoring their activities and thereby invading users' privacy. Thus, as you can see, Jean is concerned that the proposed text requires clarification through the removal of the vague and dangerous concept of "lawful", as it does not belong in the Telecoms package, and that ISPs are not allocated too much power in order to maintain real net neutrality.

Jean's Green colleague, Caroline Lucas, sits on the International Trade Committee, which has debated issues such as file sharing and the fact that stealing a television, for example, is very different to ‘stealing’ a film from the internet, because the latter does not deprive others in the same way. She believes that alternative ways to support artists, writers and so forth must be developed alongside a far more open policy of sharing music, film, software etc via the internet. This has relevance to the Telecom vote and the Green Group will be urgently discussing whether to support the Directive when it comes to plenary after the summer recess.

The Greens submitted successful amendments that require ISPs to provide annual information to subscribers about more competitive tariffs and that promote an overall maximum contract period of 24 months, with a 12 month maximum always offered. The main thrust of the Directive is to open the telecommunications market to competition and Greens have supported measures to separate the ownership of telecoms infrastructure and service provision, as we argue this is the only way to guarantee any benefit to customers.

Regarding due process, Jean is confident that this Directive has been, and will continue to be, subject to proper scrutiny. Green MEPs have been actively following its progress since the Commission’s proposals were first published in 2007 and the text has been the subject of focused work in committee since April of this year. It is now likely to come before plenary in September after the parliamentary recess.

Please be assured that when some members of the Culture and Education Committee sought to give ISPs a policing role in previous legislation, these efforts were rigorously and successfully resisted by Green MEPs. We were also at the forefront of the campaign to oppose software patenting and won support from the Parliament – see http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/topics/dokbin/102/102955.save_our_software@en.pdf

Green views on the Telecom Directive do vary but are in favour of the maximum free flow of information and ideas on the internet and against any indiscriminate restriction of the use of the web.

Once again, thank you for raising this issue with Jean and please rest assured that she will use every available opportunity to promote net neutrality and the protection of privacy and data.

Yours sincerely,