RobertSnozers wrote:TheGrimSqueaker wrote:tinyclanger2 wrote:Grim - is not you, clearly, that I find tedious. It is the fact that we (as a nation, not you and I personally) are complicit in perpetuating the elitist version of the country that is so failing it now. Journalism, education, broadcasting, politics, music, law, diplomacy - all dominated by Oxbridge. We seem to accept and agree that none of the rest of us can do this stuff. I tend to disagree.
I have to either find it tedious or else risk a Scanners (in the 80's sci fi horror sense of the word scanners) moment.
Got that, was just yanking your chain a little.
I suspect that some things, by their nature, will be dominated by academia for valid reasons; history programming, for example, needs people who know their stuff, who have the time to do the digging .... literally, in some cases. Discovery have dabbled with non-academic history presenters with varying degrees of success; Mark Williams' various programmes on the Industrial Revolution worked because of his engineering background and general enthusiasm, the (taxi driver and history guide) Harry Harris' series just made me cringe. and as for Channel 4 bringing a comedian for their Richard III dig programme, don't get me started .....
Since when did Academia have to = Oxbridge?
And don't give me that toss about Oxbridge automatically being the best. It's more than half full of public-school educated students who've had years of preparation for the application process and colleges so risk-averse that it's a major leap for them to take students from schools that haven't sent anyone to Oxbridge before. There are other universities than Oxbridge, and some of them are actually rather good.
Disclosure. I failed to get into Cambridge. I then got a 1st from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and won funding for a research Masters, which I was awarded after being examined by two of the country's most prominent scholars in that field. So it rather depends on whether you regard that as a legitimate argument or the rantings of someone with a chip on their shoulder.
I'm not going to say Oxbridge is automatically the best, surprised you thought I would. And, yes, there are other very good universities around the country; York, for example, where Janina Ramirez got her doctorate!
You're spot on in your suggestion that the BBC are over reliant on Oxbridge talent in this area, but that doesn't mean that they aren't any good; I never tire of Schama's History of Britain, Tom Holland's Untold Story wasn't afraid to rattle cages and (yes, I know I keep banging on about her) Ramirez is always illuminating. And they don't have a total monopoly, Cruickshank (for example) isn't Oxbridge afaik, but he is a specialist in his field; interestingly I think virtually none of the Time Teamers, bar Francis Pryor (who I have net a few times & always found him to be a pleasant bloke), were Oxbridge.
The reassuring trend is away from a totally male dominated field, with the influx of these very talented ladies; at the very least it is keeping Dame Starkey off the screen.
COWER BRIEF MORTALS. HO. HO. HO.
and give Mr Salmond a chance to resurrect his political career after his defeat in the independence referendum.
). He seems to have ignored Uncle Ruperts whinging about having 'extreme' Socialists and Greens in his 'Yes' camp, has indicated he would 'talk' to Labour (but not the real enemy) and, mostly, because of his passionate defence of the English NHS against the Ultra-Neo-Conmen on a QT panel. It seems he (and Mr Ed) are actual grown ups (I know Salmond is an ex-banker etc) and are prepared to do more than just snipe at each other.
The man who thinks he's right when the rest of the world tells him he's wrong? I would have thought that he's the last person to represent the UK anywhere. He appears to have a similar attitude to IDS - a belief in his own infallibility.
