I watched both boat races yesterday. Why? Because I wanted Cambridge to won. They do, after all, train in my home city of Ely on a bit of river with which I am very familiar. There was some local interest for me.
I was, as a result, happy to note two Cambridge wins, both against the odds.
But there was another slight satisfaction in noting this. My disquiet about Oxford, its politics, philosophy and economics degree, and the pernicious impact that graduates from that degree seem to have had on British political life over the last forty years meant that I could not help but note that the failings of neoliberalism played a big part in the Cambridge wins.
Oxford could not get on the water to practice for weeks before the race because of flooding at their boat club. The regulated waters of the Ouse suffered no such fate. One for state backed controls in the face of global warming then.
And then there was e-coli, which the Oxford crew blamed for sickness amongst their crew. Privatisation, much beloved of the Oxford PPE crowd, appeared to bite back in that case.
There was, for me, an inevitable sense of schadenfreude about this that I could not suppress.
Will Oxford be campaigning for clean water now? I got that sense from Cambridge commentators, and less so from those from Oxford. Maybe they should wake up and smell the shit. It would be long overdue if they did.
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One of your best blog titles for a while Richard.
Most appropriate.
If only that reservoir west of Abingdon had been built.
We think of NIMBY as not wanting any building of houses in my back yard – now it means not building anything at all, reservoirs included.
Very good!
As an aside to this, I was on Twitter X yesterday and noted a post from someone re the New Road, Worcester cricket ground. One week to go before the cricket season starts and it is totally flooded out.
https://twitter.com/DaveThroup/status/1774004420570702267
Also, if anyone wants to know what things are like in your area re sewage in rivers, This from the Guardian will tell you.
England’s sewage crisis: how polluted is your local river and which regions are worst hit?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/mar/27/englands-sewage-crisis-how-polluted-is-your-local-river-and-which-regions-are-worst-hit
I just got my water bill, and it is an inflation + rise again (around 6%). The only good thing is that it is not Thames Water.
Talking of boat clubs flooded out, near where I live there is a local activities center that is close to the river. It offers river activties to the local community, the office and boat house is raised a couple of feet above the river bank. Many times the area has been flooded, but that extra couple of feet saved them. Not any more. The last flooding, flooded them out. It will be quite expensive for them to put it right, and I suspect that unless they find a few feet more, they are likely to get flooded again. I doubt it is a one off. Not that the politicians seem to be waking up to it.
Do ordinary people have the right to breathe unpolluted air?
I ask because an Exmouth swimmer is suing South West Water claiming that its frequent discharges into the sea have taken away her legal right to a public ‘amenity’. In its defence, the company claims that no one has a legal right to swim in the sea. https://inews.co.uk/news/devon-sea-swimmer-sewage-water-bosses-2896585?ico=most_popular
‘South West Water among worst in England for pollution’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-66190549 (BBC 13 July 2023)
I wish they did…..but they don’t
My triathlete and coach youngest brother (still competing at 62) used to train the swimming bit at Exmouth, where you swim against the tide for strength and go nowhere. They don’t use it any more. This last season brought a huge number of infected triathletes, and the sport is suffering from that (and inflationary costs).
Grim
Fellow – biased – East Anglian here, cheering on the East Anglians from Cambridge, but also noting that whenever the phrase “went to Oxford” is used in the media nowadays, I always tend to expect a political profile of a Tory or right wing Labour politician.
So yes, the damage that particular degree has done is extensive. (Oxford does however have the excellent Danny Dorling though!)
David Byrne thinks:
PPE degree. Mickey Mouse qualification. Designed for the chosen few cartoon characters destined to run the country on the presentation of the requisite number of cornflake packet tops.
Competence. Don’t make me laugh!
I think it fair to say that the Oxford University PPE is being taught by country bumpkins who can’t even understand the following most fundamental relationship:-
“… the total amount of tax collected in any given period is primarily determined by the spending and saving decisions of the non-government sector and not by government
policy. If the non-government sector decides to increase its net savings or import even more than it exports, only a portion of the money spent by the government will recirculate within the domestic economy. The tax collected will be less, and the budget deficit will increase. Net saving and net importing are typical behaviours of the UK domestic private sector, which is why the government has a deficit financial position in most years.”
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/128254/pdf
The Oxford University PPE professors are clearly dishing out the opposite understanding of this fundamental relationship and to call it “manure” is therefore most apt!