Sloan's
Square
G'day Oxford!
APPLICATIONS are now open for the Rupert Murdoch Chair in Language and Communications, following the Dirty Digger's £3m donation to Oxford University.
The handout brings this venerable dumping-ground for public school chinless wonders another step closer to the Thatcherite ideal of a university parodied in television's A Most Peculiar Practice. The new professorial chair will carry as much prestige as a Ron and Reg gie Kray Chair in Social Work, a Crippen Foundation of Women's Studies, or a Nicholas Ridley Institute of Ecology.
The day before the Wapping gift was announced, the Sun was stoutly defending itself in one of its exquisitely-written Editorials against censure from the Press Council for using the words "poof" and "poofters" to refer to gay men:
"The Council's chairman, Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, knows a lot about the law.
"But we know a great deal more about how ordinary people think, act and speak.
"Readers of The Sun KNOW and SPEAK and WRITE words like poof and poofter.
"What is good enough for them is good enough for us".
No doubt it will also be deemed good enough for students of the new Rupert Murdoch professor.
While we know the well-educated highly-paid and patronising journalists who produce The Sun speak and write such words, we surely need more evidence as to whether (and where) Sun readers write them.
No doubt Margaret Thatcher (who has herself given an undisclosed personal donation to Somerville, her old Oxford college) is delighted that these standards of literacy are to be
COMMENTARY part of a 'core curriculum' for the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie in generations to come. Last resort: equal rights Bloomsbury District Health Authority has been finding it hard to recruit and even harder to retain staff to work in its hospitals: some departments' staff tumover is at burger-bar levels.
After everything else has been tried and failed, Bloomsbury bosses have now resorted to promoting equal opportunities policies, producing a
MR. PRESIDENT,
WHAT HAPPENED I
LIED.
TO 'NO NEW
TAXES"?
WD WE LEARNED FROM FORD THAT LIARS GET PARDONED, special newspaper to show us how right-on they are.
Seeking to reach sections of society other employers have not reached, Bloomsbury invite people with mental health problems to come in and work for the usual abysmal NHS pay rates.
We understand managers are scurrying round departments telling them to take down all those silly office postcards that proclaim 'You don't have to be mad to work here - but it helps".
Standard reaction One employer which has recruited extensively among people apparently suffering from severe personality disorders is London's Evening Standard, part of the Daily Mail group of publications, printed with a new type of ink and now known as the papers you stick in the bin, not in your pocket.
Standard editorials are generally written by a team of maladjusted Rottweilers, and are only a fraction more sophisticated in tone or argument than their counterparts in The Sun Says.
So for these newshounds the announcement that West Lambeth District Health Authority had closed another 120 hospital beds was more mouthwatering than a postperson's leg. The
BUT WE LEARNED FROM NIXON THAT PRESIDENTS LIE. AND WE LEARNED THANK YOU FROM REAGAN THAT MR. PRESIDENT. THE PUBLIC ISN'T PAYING -AND THAT ATTENTION ANYWAY. THE PRESS HAS
BECOME A BUNCH OF LAP DOGS response to the word Lambeth was instinctive and instantaneous, and a diatribe was fired off, berating 'loony' Lambeth council and its poll tax bills.
This did not go down too well with junior health minister Virginia Bottomley: not only is West Lambeth DHA completely autonomous of Lambeth council, with its cash limits fixed by the government, but its govemmentappointed chair is none other than John Gamett - Virginia's dad!
Later issues of the Standard appeared without the offending editorial or any correction or apology. It in after all the paper that sticks to prejudice, not to the facts. Is it old bull? Amid all the furore over British beef came the distressing revels tion that barmy Bible bashing Agriculture Minister John Sel wyn Gummer got the way lie is by cating an entirely meat based diet.
For those susceptible to such arguments, Mr Gummerat tempted to show from Biblical references that fundamentalist Christians must also be fanatical camivores. Some fundamentalists disagree: well they would, wouldn't they? The doctrinal debate on this issue is only just getting under way, and could prove promising: apparently it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for it to escape Mr Gummer's carving knife after morning service.
All his religious outpourings have been insufficient to persuade the public of Mr Gummer's line that eating beef is safe: it can't be long before the postcard people have a sign for butcher's racks bearing the motto 'You don't have to be a mad cow to hang here, but it helps.
Meanwhile there has been too little attention to the worrying, if limited, epidemic of BSB - mad sattelite disease.
Symptoms include a compulsion to mount circular or square devices outside a sufferer's house, followed by bizarre ramblings by victims on such topics as American wrestling, Derek Jameson, the New Price is Right, or any number of long-ago deleted re-run shows from BBC or ITV.
The disease cripples intellect and kills motor neurones, leaving the victim increasingly confined to an armchair or settee, suffer ing agonies in attempting to tum off the television, and incapable of rational thought.
You don't have to be mad to watch it: but you soon will be if you do.
BY AN SONN
INTERNATIONAL YOUTH SUMMER CAMP
This year sees the seventh International Youth summer camp of the Fourth International. The camp is intended as a place where young people from all over the world can come and learn about trotskyist ideas as well as meeting and discussing with people from other countries. This year's camp is centering on the theme of Europe - East and West and will have a delegation from various countries in Eastern Europe for the first time. There will be a women only space
Speakers will include; Ernest Mandel, a Young Sandinista, and an Fl supporter from South
The cost for the whole week inclusive of food and travel will be approximately £120 and there is a possibility of the cost dropping even further! We are hoping to take around fifty people this year and also help the delegation from Eastern Europe. Obviously this will require money. So we are asking for donations. Every little helps so please send whatever you can. Thankyou.
I am interested in coming to this years International Youth Summer Camp O
I cannot come to the Summer Camp but would like to make a donation of f
Please return to : International Youth Summer Camp, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU
READ SOCIALIST OUTLOOK EVERY MONTH.
As regular readers will be aware, the price of individual copies of Socialist Outlook was raised to fl some months ago. Now we
1 years subscription (ten issues) for £10 inland, € 12.50 Europe, £17.50 outside Europe (surface), €20 outside Europe (airmail) Multiand a Lesbian and Gay only space.
Africa.
I would like to receive further information
Name..
Address.
regret to announce that we are having to raise subscription rates also.
reader institutions €20 inland, £35 overseas.
Name....
Subscription to start from Number...
(Return to Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU