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Magdalen College’s £185-a-ticket ball, inspired by F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, promises to take revellers ‘back to 1926’. It has been marketed using the quote: ‘Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!’

But Arushi Garg, a Magdalen law student, has criticised the ball, saying it would force people to remember ‘a college devoid of women and people of colour’.
She told the student newspaper Cherwell: ‘1926 at Magdalen was a time when people of colour and women were entirely absent from college spaces. I felt uncomfortable with the advertising.

‘Obviously my demographic (woman of colour from a former colony that remains a developing country) makes me less likely than others to uncritically long for a past that privileged some more than others.
‘But it would be nice if they cut down on the nostalgia a bit, because if we were re-living the past, the corridors of institutional spaces like Magdalen/Oxford is definitely not where you would find people of my gender, race and nationality.

‘I wrote to the Magdalen organisers and they engaged quite respectfully with me,

No respect should be shown for such idiocy. You’re an idiot dear and you should be told so.

Lincoln College’s New Orleans ball promises ‘amazing jazz ’, ‘spectacular Mardi Gras’ and ‘clandestine magic’.
But critics, including co-chairmen of the student union’s Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality, say it shows a ‘nostalgia for an era of history steeped in racism’.

You too. An idiot. Now fuck off.

115 thoughts on “Sirsly?”

  1. From the usual suspects’ point of view, has there ever been an era not steeped in racism?

    They certainly don’t think that now is one.

  2. So why haven’t the SJW called for Downton Abbey to be banned. Maybe its because they enjoy watching a TV series all about the past when there weren’t many people of colour and young women were forced into servitude.

  3. We’re going to have a great night. We have some terrific musicians lined up, everyone has put a lot of effort into their costumes and the venue is superb. Of course, if you would rather sit alone in your room reading the Communist Manifesto, by all means fuck off.

    SadButMadLad
    I ask the same thing about Game of Thrones. Patriarchy with knobs on, as it were.

  4. So why don’t they organise a counter event where alcohol, music, meat, sexy clothes are not a feature due to cultural sensitivities? An egalitarian lack-of-fun-for-all fest?

  5. JuliaM,

    According to Twitter: Reading M Phil in Law @UniofOxford criminal justice and sexual violence, human rights, gender, race, equality

    So, she’ll be just fine. She’ll end up working for someone like Michael Mansfield.

  6. So Much For Subtlety

    Hormuzd Rassam studied down in Cowley. He didn’t graduate I think. But as an Iraqi, albeit of the male persuasion, that would make him a person of colour.

    Yeah, I had never heard of him either.

  7. Funny why doesn’t she campaign for the rightful destruction of the university. It’s a hotbed of elitism and sexism and racism.

  8. So Much For Subtlety

    ‘1926 at Magdalen was a time when people of colour and women were entirely absent from college spaces.

    Intellectual standards were clearly higher then

  9. SE>

    “From the usual suspects’ point of view, has there ever been an era not steeped in racism?”

    Yes, of course. Racism wasn’t invented until after we stopped thinking of people from the next village along as furriners with strange exotic ways. After all, you have to have an ‘us’ before you can have an ‘us and them’.

  10. The Great Gatsby? A very neat, apparently lightweight but Marxist, analysis of American society.Yes they should close down Oxford if they haven’t read one of the great books of the twentieth century . Likewise Brideshead Revisited which gives a clear warning about the Bullingdon Club which outdoes any of the privileged shenanigans in Gatsby.
    (Do not bother with witless abuse : you haven’t read the books .)

  11. So Much For Subtlety

    DBC Reed – “Likewise Brideshead Revisited which gives a clear warning about the Bullingdon Club which outdoes any of the privileged shenanigans in Gatsby.”

    Warning? I don’t think so. On the other hand, Bertie Wooster went there. Which just proves it was much better in the old days. Hunting to hounds should be an entrance requirement.

  12. In 1926 there were four all-women colleges in Oxford: Lady Margaret Hall founded 1878, Somervile founded 1879, St Hugh’s founded 1886, St Hilda’s founded 1893.
    There were persons of colour in the 1920s – for instance the 8th Nawab of Pataudi came up in 1927 (he may be the only player to have played Test cricket both for *and* against England).
    She is just wrong, making up history as she goes along.

  13. Racism wasn’t invented until after we stopped thinking of people from the next village along as furriners with strange exotic ways.

    Parts of Yorkshire, Glasgow and London still manage this quite happily.

  14. So Much For Subtlety

    Dave – “Yes, of course. Racism wasn’t invented until after we stopped thinking of people from the next village along as furriners with strange exotic ways. After all, you have to have an ‘us’ before you can have an ‘us and them’.”

    So another reason to oppose all immigration – it causes racism

  15. to uncritically long for a past that privileged some more than others.

    She seems fairly comfortable, however, with a present that privileges her more than others.

    It’s not that long ago that the academic staff and students would have been in a rush to point this out rather than “engaging quite respectfully”.

  16. Movie idea: remake Back To The Future

    Marty, a blue-haired non-gender-binary transracial neuroatypical teenager, travels back to 1955 in a solar-powered Toyota Prius.

    There, xe finds xerself engaged in a race against time to stop the 50’s kids having fun at the Enchantment Under The Sea ball.

    “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it.” xe says, after a long lecture about gender pronouns is met with baffled silence.

  17. @SE

    “Racism wasn’t invented until after we stopped thinking of people from the next village along as furriners with strange exotic ways.
    Parts of Yorkshire, Glasgow and London still manage this quite happily.”

    Parts of all those places *are* filled with furriners with strange and exotic ways

  18. @DBC Reed ”
    Yes they should close down Oxford if they haven’t read one of the great books of the twentieth century”

    I’m baffled. Who is the ‘they’ that are required to close down Oxford based, it would seem, not on the merits of the university but on whether or not ‘they’ had read a book from a particular list.

    Seems an odd way developing policy.

    I mean, if I were to say “‘they’ should shut down out of hours doctors surgeries if they haven’t read a graphic novel featuring Judge Dredd” you’d rightly look at me as if I were mad.

  19. I gave that Great Book a try. Merit: it had a good line that my father used on me as a boy – so I suspect it was a commonplace rather than a Fitzgerald invention. Demerit: awfully dull.

  20. ‘1926 at Magdalen was a time when people of colour and women were entirely absent from college spaces’.

    Oxford’s colleges received their first Indian students in 1871.

    Christian Cole (Oxford’s first black student) graduated from University College in 1873.

    John77 has already mentioned female students.

    Arushi Garg is a fucking ignorant idiot, and should be told so.

  21. You’d have thought Arushi would quite like to hark back to a time when women of colour were thought of as exotic, rather than just underclass.

  22. John77>

    The Nawab of Pataudi was the most recent, but not the only example. It was relatively common in the early days of Test cricket, when a young chap posted to the colonies would represent them until he returned home, at which point he’d represent the MCC.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cricketers_who_have_played_for_two_international_teams

    If we include ODIs, Boyd Rankin has done it fairly recently, playing both for and against Ireland, and I’m pretty sure Eoin Morgan and Ed Joyce have done so as well.

  23. Past bad. Bad past! Present not so good either.

    <A Nietzsche Club was also recently banned at UCL over fears the students could be indoctrinated with 19th Century philosopher’s ‘dangerous’ views.

    Many books bad. Need approved book list for students. Not read other books unless approved. You hear! Not read them! Get approval or arrested if reading.

  24. Tel>

    I have no problem with the idea that schoolkids might have to be of a certain maturity before being allowed to read, say, Mein Kampf in school.

    Extending the principle, taking into account the above story, I’d say it’s pretty obvious that students are not intellectually mature enough to be trusted with Nietzsche. What was it the man said? People only think he’s a real philosopher because he had a German name.

  25. If she is so uncomfortable with its history, why is she there? She wants to share her psychosis with others.

    ‘former colony that remains a developing country’

    How long does a country get to develop? “Developing” means it ain’t going to develop.

  26. Noel

    Thanks for that Link – I again echo the comments I made on another thread – in the wake of the Paris bombings – SJWs on Social media have been ‘bravely’ mocking ISIS with crashingly unfunny gags and links of excerpts from people saying ‘they will never win’ – If I were on the forces and I saw this kind of fascistic rubbish – I might very well wonder if the society the SJWs want to create is even worth defending…

  27. Sackcloth –
    “Oxford’s colleges received their first Indian students in 1871.

    Christian Cole (Oxford’s first black student) graduated from University College in 1873.

    John77 has already mentioned female students.”

    Isn’t this just a Murph-a-like “I didn’t know about it therefore it mustn’t have existed” moments?

  28. Red Guards.

    Expel them from the Uni. Triple their student debt and subject them to a life of harassment including blackballing them from any job/profession where they might be able to advance the cause of leftism. Ruin their fucking lives from the off.

    Illiberal? The very tyranny I so often decry?

    Yes –but also essential self-defence. I would much prefer to live in a society where the state has lost most of its power. Then these TeenMao twerps would just be a joke. Under circumstances of real freedom they would just be seen by all as the dickless clowns they are..

    But in the society we have, where the state is pushing for every drop more power it can get, these young snots are danger on legs. If these cunts end up in positions of political power and influence in the future I think blood will be spilled–as in every other place where socialism takes power–the blood of ordinary people. These zealots must be destroyed while we still can.

  29. Now will anyone dare fail Ms Garb in her exams? If their exams are run along the same lines as Cambridge’s it would be very difficult to give her a special privilege. Or is there some “continuous assessment”/”project” /”submitted” work that can be fiddled in her favour?

  30. If I were on the forces and I saw this kind of fascistic rubbish – I might very well wonder if the society the SJWs want to create is even worth defending…

    If you go on arrse and other less politically correct places, you’ll find them more generally described as “manual minefield clearance battalions”.

  31. sackcloth and ashes

    ‘Isn’t this just a Murph-a-like “I didn’t know about it therefore it mustn’t have existed” moments?’

    I’d expect it from Murphy, but from a Masters student at Oxford?

    ‘Wasn’t Gandhi at Oxford round about 1926?’

    He read law in London at the turn of the century.

  32. If she’s going to complain in English, she could start by learning how to write, proofread and spell correct English.

  33. Talking of intellectual maturity, I though the very fact that you were at university proved that you had sufficient intellectual maturity to be at university – or at least enough to be able to successfully cheat. How did these people manage to be able to prove they were capable enough to be at university then immediately demonstrate that they were not capable of being at university?

  34. Roue le Jour said:
    “Game of Thrones. Patriarchy with knobs on”

    I haven’t seen it, but isn’t it more “patriarchy with its knobs out”?

  35. Thanks to John 77. I thought there must have been colonial princes at Oxford in the 1920s but couldn’t be bothered to look it up.

  36. Bif
    There was a General Strike in 1926: funny that the charmless students of Magdalen College haven’t included this in their thematic mix of attractions to this ghastly sounding and overpriced affair ,fit only for boorish snobs (though all snobs are boorish).
    Where does the year 1926 come from? The book is set in 1922 and was published in 1925. Oxford should be ” put in special measures” .Now!

  37. DBC Reed – “Likewise Brideshead Revisited which gives a clear warning about the Bullingdon Club which outdoes any of the privileged shenanigans in Gatsby.”

    You’ve clearly never read the book you fucking idiot. The book is about love, loyalty, loss and the search for God. The ‘Bullingdon’ bit of the book is the least interesting and most marginal. It’s the bit halfwits remember, mostly through seeing the John Mortimer version on telly.

  38. Yes we should certainly all forget that nasty history stuff. No consequences at all to be expected from forgetting history, it’s not like we’d ever repeat it after all.

  39. The best thing about seeing DBCR’s name in the comments is wondering what is he going to get wrong this time, or how wrong is he going to be. Once it is pointed out to him, he very quickly reveals a set of very nasty beliefs – eg his attack on Margaret Thatcher culminated in a tirade of misogynistic abuse, and every banking thread seems to end up in a thinly disguised version of the World Jewish conspiracy.

    His comment on “The Great Gatsby” is yet another instance where he demonstrates quite clearly that he goes through life with his eyes and mind mostly closed to reality. To read the book as a Marxist analysis really involves ignoring most of the words, as this account suggests.

    Similarly his view of “Brideshead Revisited” involves missing out on just about every word in the novel. He probably meant to refer to “Decline and Fall”.

  40. Intellectual standards were clearly higher then
    a notoriously dim commentator wrote higher up the thread.

    At Cambridge, undergraduate intellectual standards are higher than they’ve ever been. The pool of candidates is larger, admission is largely on merit rather than connexions, and the students expect to spend their time studying rather than experiencing the languor of youth.

  41. So Much For Subtlety

    Social Justice Warrior – “a notoriously dim commentator wrote higher up the thread.”

    And you know this how?

    “At Cambridge, undergraduate intellectual standards are higher than they’ve ever been. The pool of candidates is larger, admission is largely on merit rather than connexions, and the students expect to spend their time studying rather than experiencing the languor of youth.”

    And you know this how? The pool of candidates is larger. That doesn’t mean better. The students spend their time learning rubbish like this. They are not actually learning.

  42. @ SJW
    When I was young Cambridge admissions were on merit. Kids took an entrance exam with an examinee number.
    Try getting your information from people who know and tell the truth.

  43. John77>

    Bollocks to that. Sorry, but I know from close relatives how it worked back then. The exam was indeed anonymised, but entry to the exam was already a reasonably good tool for separating the ‘right sort’ from the ‘wrong’uns’. Then there were the interviews.

    No-one reasonable would suggest that it’s been an entirely closed shop, because clearly the brightest of the ‘wrong sort’ were always admitted, but there’s equally no doubt that only a few decades ago the bar for some people to get over was much lower than the bar for others.

  44. Philip Scott Thomas

    @DBC Reed
    Likewise Brideshead Revisited which gives a clear warning about the Bullingdon Club which outdoes any of the privileged shenanigans in Gatsby.

    Which bits of Brideshead are you referring to? Are you perhaps getting confused with Paul Pennyfeather’s fate in Decline and Fall?,

  45. @ DBC Reed
    Have you read “War and Peace” from cover to cover? If not, can we close you down?
    FYI Oxford University was founded before Leif Ericsson discovered North America, which was soon forgotten after climate change made Greenland almost uninhabitable for Danes and Norwegians. New College, think about it, pre-dates Christopher Columbus discovering some islands offshore Central America.
    And you want to judge Oxford on whether every single person in it has read a lightweight American novel? I don’t think I read a single novel while I was up – I read lots of maths books and some serious literature. Does this make me fall below *your* standards? In that case *you* are wrong in your puffed-up self-importance: “Undergraduates should not spend their time readfing maths books at the expense of their studying a lightweight American novel of my choosing”. NO.

  46. @D My thinly disguised version of the world Jewish conspiracy is in fact the now orthodox view that banks create money and not on-lend savings . I am known to be stubbornly pro-Jewish. Watch out for libel, matey!
    My abuse of Margaret “Thicky” Thatcher is entirely appropriate for somebody such as herself, only trained (not educated)across the narrowest part of the intellectual spectrum who was a dedicated enemy of the British State as constituted by the heroic survivors of WW2.
    The account of Great Gatsby you cite is a very rigid Marxist reading of the novel.Why are you trying to suggest otherwise?
    The Buller comes into Brideshead Revisited when they manhandle Antoine Blanche who rather indecently enjoys it.

    You come across as a twerp I’m afraid. I enjoy a frank difference of opinion but you are embarrassing .
    @Dr C. A bit more interesting but how do you expect to summarise the novel in four words ? The family at Brideshead is paralysed and about to die out because of undue piety, which combines with great riches, to squeeze the life out of everybody it affects. As a Catholic critique of society it is as mordant as Scott Fitzgerald’s view of the American beau monde which parties in a vast expanse of ashes (Symbol, get it?) Compare and contrast TS Eliot’s version of a Wasteland: Eliot loved “Great Gatsby” BTW .

  47. @ Dave
    Firstly Trinity Cambridge is famous for never interviewing candidates for scholarships in Maths. So nearly everyone wants to go to Trinity if they think they are good enough.
    Secondly, how old are you? How old are your “close relations”?
    In my day more than 50% of Oxford undergraduates came from Grammar schools and Manchester Grammar sent more boys to Oxford than Eton did. I was interviewed two months *after* I got my place (I did one really impressive answer in the Part I of the exam). [To clarify, I took the Cambridge scholarship exam after getting a place at Oxford and Cambridge didn’t offer me a scholarship]
    Entrance to the exam was not controlled by the colleges – anyone could enter. The controlling factor was whether your school taught you the syllabus (which my big sister’s school did not, so only the second-best mathematician in my generation got in). OTOH, most of the boys who got in from fee-paying schools were scholars – none of the guys who went up to Oxford in my year from my school paid full fees and legend had it that the mother of one of the boys a year ahead of me who went to Cambridge with a State Scholarship paid £4 per year, including full board, so parental income was*not*, I repeat not, a major factor. The “right sort” were those who wanted to learn and/or whose parents wanted them to learn.

  48. @ Dave
    The bar for rowing blues was lower (and for Rugby Blues at Teddy Hall, but that was more likely to benefit Welsh grammar school boys than public school boys), but that is less than 0.1%.

  49. “is in fact the now orthodox view that banks create money and not on-lend savings”

    DBCR, I was taught this early on during my Economics A-Level course (35 years ago), so I’m not sure what the controversy is here. Was it not orthodox previously?

    Of course, banks can’t just “create money”, there’s a framework. The result was that loans could be made available partially “out of thin air”. Substance would then be provided by good bank management and payments made by the debtor.

  50. As for Brideshead ….

    I made the mistake of avoiding the book (and the TV series), though read many of Waugh’s other books. I forget the reason, some spotty and misguided aversion to “commercialism” or something.

    Anyway, read it this year and don’t recognise the Buller characterisation. It’s about the workings of God’s grace, and is a good deal more serious than I expected. Waugh thought it his masterpiece, and he may well be right.

  51. Social Justice Warrior – “a notoriously dim commentator wrote higher up the thread.”

    Excellent though it is, this blog is a niche affair; the notoriety to which you refer must be debatable.

  52. @DBCR
    An interesting but reductionist interpretation. The book is incomprehensible in purely materialist terms. As Jack C points out the book is about the working of God’s grace, which is why ‘A Twitch Upon The Thread’ is the key chapter. The book is *not* a catholic critique of society – read Herbert McCabe or Aidan Nichols or Anthony Archer if you want those. It’s about a lost England and a fragile, regained faith. And other things.

    ‘The Wasteland’ has little bearing on ‘Brideshead’. You’re just signalling.

  53. @Jack C There are those on here who have not benefited from an education in how money is created. One of the most mouthy believes, apparently sincerely, that the orthodox view that banks create money via loans (as the BoE recently explained in their guide for dullards ” Money Creation in the Modern Economy” in 2014) is anti-Semitic propaganda .
    As for Brideshead, there is heavy criticism of the whole pietistic tradition of grace as exemplified by the fate of the younger family members who are so screwed up by their pious sinned- against mother that they seem incapable of sexual relationships that produce children , a major failing in the Catholic view of things.
    I find Waugh’s later ww2 series Sword of Honour more of a genuine masterpiece where Guy Crouchback finds grace by adopting his wife’s son by another man as his heir and after he is totally humiliated by a Jewish woman in the guerrilla war in Jugoslavia who effortlessly sees through his whole pose as a Christian warrior against the Modern Age. You get the feeling that the Marchmain children in Brideshead should have made the unconditional surrender of their piety that he makes.

  54. “My abuse of Margaret “Thicky” Thatcher is entirely appropriate for somebody such as herself, only trained (not educated)across the narrowest part of the intellectual spectrum who was a dedicated enemy of the British State as constituted by the heroic survivors of WW2.”

    Aah that must be the chemist come lawyer come politician who had the courage to defend the Falklands.

  55. When I was young Cambridge admissions were on merit. Kids took an entrance exam with an examinee number.

    What was Prince Charles’ examinee number when he applied to Trinity?

    When I was at Cambridge, perhaps a few years after you, there were plenty of plebs like me who got in by doing well in the entrance exam. But there was another world of the rich and well connected, who had had a successful conversation with the admissions tutor.

  56. I was reared on ‘comic cuts’, Beano and later the ‘Eagle’ when it first came out. (I actually won ten shillings in a competition in it) and never read Breadshead anything. Amazing I’m still alive really.
    Begining to think that the ‘Western education should be banned’ have a point.

  57. DBCR,
    I can’t pretend that Economics A-Level gave me the full lowdown on the financial system, and that was a while ago anyway.

    However, common sense says that even under fractional reserve banking, banks cannot and do not simply create money out of thin air. There has to be a foundation on which this created money is based. You may wish to ponder the difference between money and value.

    This seems an obvious question, but anyway:

    How does an entity that can “create money out of thin air” manage to run out of money? You’ll remember that this happened in 2007/2008.

  58. ‘There was a General Strike in 1926: funny that the charmless students of Magdalen College haven’t included this in their thematic mix of attractions to this ghastly sounding and overpriced affair ,fit only for boorish snobs (though all snobs are boorish)’.

    That might be because they’re organising a ball, not a re-enactment.

    You might as well complain that they’re not commemorating Pilsudski’s military coup in Poland, because that also happened in 1926.

    You thundering, pompous backside.

  59. SJW,
    “But there was another world of the rich and well connected”

    I suppose we’re all supposed to be horrified by this, but it happens all over the (real) world, including the Ivy League.

    So, an American plutocrat can get his less than gifted son into Harvard, but he’ll be paying the fees for a number of bright-but-penniless as well behind the scenes.

    Advantages come in all shapes and sizes, throughout society, and none of this is “fair”. In this situation, bribing the plutocrats seems a humane and sensible solution. It’s redistribution even.

  60. DBCReed: Whatever else you are, you’re neither a Catholic nor have you any appreciation of Waugh (or Graham Greene, Julien Green, François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos or the Catholic novel).

    On the other hand you are most certainly a bore dressed up as a prize bore with some additional trappings of boringness.

  61. Jack: “However, common sense says that even under fractional reserve banking, banks cannot and do not simply create money out of thin air. There has to be a foundation on which this created money is based. You may wish to ponder the difference between money and value.”

    The BoE piece to which DBC constantly refers states in the first paragraph that ‘Banks make money out of thin air’. It then goes on for 12 pages detailing how that works and, importantly, the restrictions on this magic money creation. I think DBC, Murphy et al read the first paragraph, thought their beliefs were vindicated and put it down or tried to read the rest and got completely lost.

  62. @ SJW
    In view of the ,mess made of Charles’ education – sending him off to Geelong Grammar in Australia in his mid-teens to study a completely different syllabus, his ‘A’ level results are quite impressive. How well would *you* have done in the same circumstances? Not that Gordonstoun was famous for achieving wonderful ‘A’ level results – can you show that on a like-for-like basis (i.e. adjusting the quality of the intake) it performed better than David Miliband’s school? Charles got better results than David, especially once you adjust for grade inflation in the interim. I noticed that Andrew didn’t get sent to *any* university, not even an ex-poly. In the event Charles got a 2nd so he *was* above the intellectual threshold required for entry to Cambridge.
    i have always been glad I didn’t go to Gordonstoun which was the sort of place to toughen you up before having your ship sunk under you two or three times, but whose academic performance lagged my middle-class school.

  63. as usual, DBCR uses words without seeming to know what they mean. So he is unable to see that it is not compatible to say that “The Great Gatsby” is a Marxist analysis of the USA while another Marxist analysis shows that it does not explain very much about the novel.

    Truly comical. and he is unable to defend his misogynistic abuse of Margaret Thatcher nor his his support for the World Jewish conspiracy theorising of his hero Joseph Stalin.

    And as for partying on a field of ashes….give me strength….can the guy even read?

  64. FWIW I am also bloody glad I’m not Charles. He may have dozens of £m but he is under constant scrutiny and has to behave according to protocols whereas at my age there are days when I don’t have to get up until I want to.

  65. DJ,
    But what beliefs are being vindicated? I’m assuming that DBCR understands that banks cannot create an infinite amount of money, even if he hasn’t confirmed this.

    Neither is fractional reserve banking a new concept.

    So, what is the accusation exactly?

  66. Jack. I think they simply read the words “Banks create money out the air” and that was that. They then shove that quote down everyones throat to prove banks are some evil money making cartel controlling the world or whatever today’s conspiracy theory is.

    They probably believe that banks can print as much as they like but went bust on purpose to bring in some new world order or some such nonsense. That’s oppossed to the even days of the week when banks are run entitely by privilaged idiots who couldn’t run a corner shop.

  67. DJ,
    I fear you’re right, though I’m sure DBCR will be back to explain further..

    Easy on the corner shops though, they’re not easy to run (successfully).

  68. @ SJW
    Er, is this supposed to be a debate about whether exam results are meaningless? Or whether *your* university is intrinsically corrupt? Or whether you are utterly bigoted?
    Quite frankly, I don’t want to know.

  69. DBC: ” There was a General Strike in 1926: funny that the charmless students of Magdalen College haven’t included this in their thematic mix of attractions to this ghastly sounding and overpriced affair ,fit only for boorish snobs (though all snobs are boorish).”

    You’re a miserable little cunt aren’t you. I bet you work for local government, nursing a hardon as you crush any little enjoyment people try to bring to their lives.

  70. DBC: ” There was a General Strike in 1926: funny that the charmless students of Magdalen College haven’t included this in their thematic mix of attractions to this ghastly sounding and overpriced affair ,fit only for boorish snobs (though all snobs are boorish).”

    You’re a miserable little cunt aren’t you? I bet you work for local government, nursing a hardon as you crush any little enjoyment people try to bring to their lives.

  71. Jack: ” Easy on the corner shops though, they’re not easy to run (successfully).”

    Yes apologies to any corner shop owners!

  72. SJW,
    I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Heir to the Throne was given special attention. Does it really matter? All things considered, I think I’d rather be a Jagger or a Beckham than a Windsor.

    A much bigger question is this: has removing grammar schools lowered or increased educational equality of opportunity?

  73. So Much For Subtlety

    Social Justice Warrior – “I know what degree he was awarded. Do you seriously believe that’s evidence of anything?”

    I am sorry but you are maintaining his A levels mean something but his final degree result does not? Doesn’t say much about the quality of Cambridge does it?

  74. So Much For Subtlety

    Jack C – “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Heir to the Throne was given special attention. Does it really matter? All things considered, I think I’d rather be a Jagger or a Beckham than a Windsor.”

    Wouldn’t we all. Unless we are talking about Barbara.

    The Heir to the Throne should have been given special attention. Rich people ought to be allowed to but their way into Oxbridge. If charging Rupert means you can admit Keith and Deirdre, on what possible ground would you *not* charge Rupert?

    But actually well bred people[1] should be allowed in as well. Oxford in particular has a spectacular and unique selling point – Brideshead Revisited. People want to see the future Duke of Whatever pouncing about Carfax. They want to bump into Sebstastian Fyfe-Mockery or whatever in a pub. That is why the tourists go there. I doubt the teaching is actually all that better. It has social capital on which it is living. It ought to do a hell of a lot more to maintain it. If it becomes just another dreary Poly, as its academics clearly wish it to be, then the tourists won’t come, the American students won’t come, the future King of Bhutan won’t come and so on.

    They should have a special affirmative action programme for anyone who can trace their ancestry back to the Norman conquest – provided they can hunt with hounds. Especially if an ancestor was killed by the French and/or Germans some time before the invention of the interrnal combustion engine.

  75. SJW may be a bit right about there being another world for the rich and well connected when it comes to Oxbridge admissions. The names Toynbee and Miliband come quickly to mind…

  76. “FYI Oxford University was founded before Leif Ericsson discovered North America”: oh come now; Leif Ericsson lived c. 970 – c. 1020. You’ve not swallowed the old Oxford guff about having been founded by King Alfred, have you?

  77. SJW: Don’t know why you are so down on Jug Ears. The two of your probably support many of the same leftist, eco-freak causes.

  78. @ dearieme
    There are actually historical references to a community of scholars in Oxford during the first millennium of the Christian era.
    Next you’ll be asking me whether I swallow the guff about the existence of King Alfred or Chartlemagne or Gaius Caesar.

  79. X: I’ve got nothing against CW in particular. He’s just an easy disproof of the proposition that admission to Cambridge back then was strictly on merit.

    However, J77 has now explained that Trinity admitted Charles in accordance with its celebrated affirmative action policy of helping candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. Everyone who’s convinced by that should disregard my previous analysis.

  80. “a community of scholars in Oxford during the first millennium of the Christian era”: that doesn’t make it a university – there may have been many such communities. For all I know you could argue that Jarrow and Iona had “a community of scholars”. When did it gets its charter, be it royal of papal? Come to that, why did Oxons invent the notion of founding by Alfred? Pah!

  81. “I find Waugh’s later ww2 series Sword of Honour more of a genuine masterpiece where Guy Crouchback finds grace by adopting his wife’s son by another man as his heir and after he is totally humiliated by a Jewish woman in the guerrilla war in Jugoslavia who effortlessly sees through his whole pose as a Christian warrior against the Modern Age”

    What a load of word salad posing as thought. That “effortlessly” is made to do a lot of work there. Does Guy find “grace”.

    And has DBCR actually read the whole workl rather than every 15th word…how does his account of Yugoslavia reconcile with the Wikipedia summary?

    ” Despite being incorrectly suspected of pro-Axis sympathies because of his time in pre-war Italy and of his Catholicism, Guy is posted to Yugoslavia where he is appalled by the Partisans, befriends a small group of Jews and finds out that his former friend de Souza’s loyalties are with the Communists rather than with Britain. While Guy is overseas, a German doodlebug hits Uncle Peregrine’s flat and kills him and Virginia, but not the infant son of Virginia and Trimmer, Gervase, who is in the country with Guy’s sister.

    On his late father’s advice, Guy attempts individual acts of salvation, however these ultimately make matters worse for the recipients. The Yugoslavian Jews receive gifts from Jewish organisations in the USA, infuriating non-Jewish locals, although the gifts consist largely of warm clothing and food. Upon returning to England, Guy is told that some of his friends in Yugoslavia were shot as spies, largely because they had become so friendly with him.

    After the end of the war Guy meets the daughter of another old Roman Catholic family, Domenica Plessington, and marries her. In Waugh’s first version of the novel’s conclusion, Guy and his second wife produce further children who are ironically to be disinherited by Trimmer’s son. Waugh altered this ending to an uncompromisingly childless marriage in the revised text, after realising that some readers interpreted such a conclusion as hopeful”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Honour

    As usual, words fail DBCR – they obstinately refuse to bear the meanings he assigns to them. And I don’t see any signs in those books that Guy changed his original view that the UK should have teamed up with Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia. In the final volume, he shuns the Sword of Stalingrad display.

  82. ‘As usual, words fail DBCR – they obstinately refuse to bear the meanings he assigns to them’.

    You appear to be making the assumption that he’s actually read the books he’s referred to, rather than read a precis of them in ‘Socialist Worker’.

  83. @ diogenes
    There were a number of Halls of Residence pre-dating the granting of the first charter (to Merton College) in 1264. University College is the continuation of a collegiate institution that functioned without a charter.
    A tiny tiny bit of thought would help you realise that if William of Durham left money for 9 or 10 Masters of Arts to study Divinity there must have been a functioning university where the individuals had gained degrees in 1249.
    The first charter was invented by Walter de Merton who, as well as being Bishop of Rochester was Chancellor (i.e. chief law officer) and decided to put his bequest in a watertyight legal form. Later charters wrere based on Merton’s. Before then nobody had thought of having a charter so asking about college charters before 1264 either demonstrates ignorance or being “too clever by half”.
    You have misquoted – *your* reference states there is evidence of teaching in 1096 but does NOT state that there was no teaching before then.
    Are you taking lessons from Murphy?
    FYI most of the mediaeval Halls of Residence were absorbed into the older colleges although some became colleges themselves – St Edmund Hall has retained “Hall” in its title after becoming a college – so when Balliol and Merton argue about which is oldest they are liable to bring in the age of the absorbed halls of residence, some of which date from a couple of centuries further back.

  84. John77 I was simply cautioning about making broad assumptions about the existence of a university when the concept of a university did not exist, as distinct from a monastic foundation. So the wiki source, which seemed to derive from the official Oxford University history seemed a reasonable source. If you look at Cambridge, the charter predated the first college. What constitutes a university? It is not helpful to take an adversarial stance when there are no clear definitions in place….colleges, charters, etc etc. But can we agree the Sorbonne came first, then came Oxford and then Cambridge. As long as we ignore the Islamic universities in Andalusia, who had the benefit of access to Aristotle and co, which were unknown to the Northern Europeans.

  85. I might also ask you, John77 whether there might have been a regime change in 1966. Not sure why you are so adversarial about a topic where so little factual evidence is left. Yes people might have been teaching on certin sites….prove it!

  86. @ diogenes
    dearieme and yourself started being adversarial, I was replying to your errors, such as suggesting Univ couldn’t exist before it had a charter. Until 1264 charters were granted to give privileges to bodies that already existed.
    I was told Bologna was older (wiki claims, to my slight surprise, that Paris is younger – I should not want to argue either way on that), but my original point was that judging Oxford by whether some student had read a lightweight novel about a country that did not even exist (as a country, not as a piece of land) for three-quarters of the university’s existence was ludicrous.

  87. Hello there ! Back again!
    Diogenes questions whether I have read the Crouchback trilogy while reluing on a Wikipedia crib himself! A new low.
    BTW Will he please prove his contention that Guy originally believed the UK should have teamed up with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union( since he enlisted after the outbreak of the war initiated by Germany).

  88. @ Social Justice Warrior
    You already know that if someone wants to irritate me, an easy way is to lie about what I said, but you aren’t usually the culprit. I did not say that Trinity was adopting the practice of Corpus Christi a generation before Corpus practiced it. I said that Trinity’s admission of Charles was justifiable on his academic performance when one takes into account the period when he wasn’t studying the UK syllabus, as was demonstrated by his getting a second.
    That Gordonstoun’s academic record was not impressive would not have been considered because, except for closed scholarships, the school that candidates attended was not taken into account in those days.

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