Recently, photographs of mine were used for ambiguous commercial purposes without permission. They were used for a university prospectus. With universities transforming more and more into Big corporations, I am on the one hand cynical about the indiscriminate use of pretty pictures to sell university degrees as commodities, especially when the images in question bear little direct relation to what is being offered. On the other hand, I live in hope that at some point soon universities with their student body will grow out of its contractor-client relationship and return to something that resembles the shared experiencial aquisition of wisdom from student and scholar alike, with the university authorities acting more like an alma mater than Chief Executive. And so images like mine, that were made for research – to understand more about the thing that was photographed – will become symbolic of the university’s desire to attract keen scholars to the institution. But I digress.
Archive for the ‘respect’ Category
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Wednesday, May 31st, 2006The Respect agenda
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006Today, the British government lauched its new (well it had to be ‘new’ didn’t it?) ‘Respect agenda’. I can here it now, “about time too,” “bloody yobs, something needs to be done” etc., etc. But what does it all mean? Many of us have suffered the stupid behaviour of other people, perhaps having to live near junkies or loud and self-absorbed students, or be verbally abused by gob-shite kids on our way home from work, or just having to walk down your own street or town centre seeing it strewn with rubbish, broken glass and over-flowing bins, for example. I can’t help thinking that this is yet another pathetic and shallow attempt by our government to tick another box on their contrite list of ‘things to do for Britain’.
Now they may go home happy that they’ve done something about it, none of them having to live around the few idiots that cause the many to have a more and more diminished quality of life. And there are many of the latter who just don’t care about these things and tend to retreat further and further in their own shells, living in bubbles where they don’t see the point of doing anything about our less than satisfactory social situation. They fratonise with their own, remain unobservant and uncaring of the community, environment or universe in which they live. They go from relationship to relationship, pay-rise to pay-rise, large house to larger house until one day, they decide they’re old and now the world owes them. So who’s being anti-social?