Tea or Porn?

I have the misfortune to spend a fair amount of time in hotels dotted around the country. They are the sort of places that sit nestled in woodland, just off our finest motorway junctions, and are located, with no other quality in mind than to make them easy to reach. With admirable efficiency they prey upon the tired, homesick and, usually bored delegate-guest with an endless choice of services and entertainments that make the time and effort searching for an alternative seem like utter madness.

Perhaps the Coalition will catch on if they are looking for further cuts because if these places were prisons there would be no need for any security. The easy self-indulgence, comfort and convenience would keep everyone in and at a far cheaper price than guards. Like The Eagles said, 'you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave'. If I manage to dodge the pool and sauna (easy for some of us) and scramble past the restaurants, I am confronted with a bar, probably showing the football and selling bar snacks, an obstacle that can feel as high as any prison wall to an average male. No wonder that, for every Steve McQueen, there are a hundred Dustin Hoffmans who have given in to their fate.

I've been told that the key to seduction is not making a big impression but staying in the game long enough until there are no other exit routes. The big hotel chains have taken this to heart with decor that is finished with the panache of a show house on a new-build estate. Our tastes have been analysed to a point where all personality has been removed. The result is so inoffensive to be rendered almost invisible until I find myself sat in one of the seemingly benign comfortable chairs that block my way to the exit and I realise I have said yes to my third pint of magnolia lager and am eating a fusion burger.

So why the puritanism? We have a choice, don't we? We hear tales of a curry in Hinckley or amateur Shakespeare in Stamford. If you don't want to relax and give in to the easy life, go and do something less boring instead. If all that was at stake was the wasted hours watching Top Gear repeats and the vague guilt of succumbing to a boiled in the bag existence of cultural banality then it wouldn't matter. But what starts off as a harmless evening of Top Gear, can all too easily descend to an hour of the Men and Motors channel and we can guess was that will lead to.

The fact is that the whole culture is exploitative. From the guests to the staff, from the plantation workers harvesting our 'free' cups of tea to the late night film 'stars'. We know the only trickle-down effect that hotels are interested in. (Sorry!) The hotels are remarkable organisms that have evolved with the sole aim of making us indulge ourselves and spend our money. Great minds and centuries of human endeavor have refined this process to give us the impression of choice while really we are being played like a cheap piano. As microcosms of modern society, hotels provide a compelling argument that the only real choice we have is to say 'NO'.

Now, what channel number is Fairtrade Men and Motors?

(I am currently stuck in a hotel just off the M62)

"I wanna get loaded and have a good time!"

“I wanna be free, to do what I wanna do, I wanna get loaded and have a good time!" 

 

According to Professor David Nutt, we should all be allowed to do exactly that. It's hard to believe that Professor Nutt and Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie could have anything in common, but a report by the ex-chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs, suggests that we should all be free to take as much LSD and Ecstasy as we like, well, that's Bobby's interpretation. According to the report they are seven times less dangerous than alcohol and should be re-categorised as Class D.

Professor Nutt founded the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs after being sacked by Labour’s Alan Johnson, the home secretary at the time. Johnson sacked Professor David Nutt as senior drugs adviser after the scientist criticised the government's decision to toughen the law on cannabis following a number of scare stories regarding the psychotic effects of the new stronger strains of the drug and dared to point out that three times more people die riding horses each year than due to the effects of ecstasy (an activity pursued by a far larger numbers).

Professor Nutt is not advocating that we swap the kids’ sweets for some LSD but he is trying to provoke a rational debate about the unnecessary criminalisation of drugs. Poly Toynbee argues in ‘The Verdict’ that Labour’s reclassification of cannabis was a success. “Instead of arresting 97,000 people a year for possession, police were now required to simply confiscate cannabis issue on- the-spot warnings.’ Between 2004 and 2008 cannabis use continued to fall, overall illicit drug use fell to its lowest level since the 1980s and 180,000 hours of police time were saved.

Despite this short period of success, Johnson caved in to the backlash by the moral minority and went against the recommendations of his scientific advisers by reclassifying cannabis back to Class B. The unfortunately named, Nutt, accused ministers of "devaluing and distorting" the scientific evidence over illicit drugs by their decision and was sacked for 'damaging efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs'.

What is the clear message? On one hand we have Professor Nutt and his learned colleagues, six of whom have resigned from the government’s committee, reaching well-researched conclusions while on the other hand we have politicians banning yet another drug, mephedrone, commonly known as meow meow, because of a press campaign in the ‘meow made me rip off my own scrotum’ school of journalism. The clear message is that the wisdom of the mob and not scientific evidence inform our public policy.

Drugs can be dangerous. Yes, but our drugs’ policy is a failure. We fill our jails with young people who learn to become hardened-criminals, drug use continues to grow while only 1% of total supply is intercepted by the police or customs. Drugs are a problem but not as big a problem as government policy continually being decided, not by the most informed, but by those who shout the loudest fuelled only by moral outrage… oh, and possibly a large dry sherry?

education, education, education

Graduate unemployment has risen by 25% to 8.9%, its highest level for 17 years according to the Higher Education Careers Services Unit. This follows research from the Higher Education Policy Institute which concluded that unemployment among graduates had reached 14 per cent in December 2009 which, if true would beat the 1983 all-time record. Whatever is true, these figures will make many question the wisdom of starting a degree when average graduate debt is projected to rise to £32,000.

Conservative, David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science said: "The job market does remain competitive for new graduates in these difficult economic times, as it does for everyone. However, a degree remains a good investment in the long term and prospects for graduates in the labour market remain good." It is a difficult case to make. In 2008, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, around 40% of graduate jobs were found in the public sector.  As recently as July HESCU were suggesting that graduate unemployment could rise as high as 20% and as many as 240,000 employed graduates could lose their jobs.

The expansion of higher education was possible because the government placed some of the burden upon graduates and justified it by arguing that they would reap the benefit of higher wages throughout their working lives. What this recession demonstrates is that a good degree is not enough. In 2008 and 2009, 50% of graduates were awarded a 2:1 yet 59% have been unable to find work in their chosen field. We are not talking about the much maligned Media Studies graduates. In 2009, 16% of computer studies graduates are unemployed. Carl Gilleard, the chief executive of the Graduate Recruiters Association has even recommended flipping burgers or stacking shelves for graduates wishing to build up their skill base.

What is most damaging is the continuing myth that all university degrees have an equivalent value. They don't. 60% of graduate employers now insist on a 2:1 and the larger firms, offering the best career prospects and earning potential, greatly favour the traditional universities. It can't be a surprise that the 2:1 from Cambridge might give you the edge over the 2:1 from Derby. For the first time ever graduate starting salaries have not increased for two years running and the number of applicants has leapt to 70 for each graduate vacancy. Yet, still the applications for universities increase. In 2010 there were over 640,000 applications for university places this autumn – an increase of nearly 14% on last year.

So why do politicians continue to fuel this higher education boom? Well the answer is probably down to universities proving to be very good at absorbing large amounts of young people for little cost. The Coalition's announcement that student fees will rise to £6,000 will make the whole process virtually cost neutral. With youth unemployment running at nearly 18%, you have to admire a government policy that gets young people off the unemployment statistics and at the same time gets them to foot the bill.