Social Sciences - OU Community Online

In the first of three posts, Meg Barker examines how romance is explored in the movie Ruby Sparks.

Recently I got round to watching last year's movie Ruby Sparks on DVD. I'd been looking forward to watching this film for some time because it is a meditation on what would happen if we could create our perfect partner. The film was everything I'd hoped for. However, when I gushed about it on Facebook, several people said they had felt let down by the ending. Here I want to present my take on the film, and to explain why I think the ending needed to be the way it was.

In the film an isolated writer (Calvin Weir-Fields) has writer's block, having published one highly successful book when he was pretty young. His therapist encourages him to write a brief account of a positive encounter with another person. He invents a scenario where he meets his perfect girlfriend in the park. Soon he is writing more and more about her because he enjoys imagining her so much. He describes her to his therapist:

'Ruby's first crushes were Humphrey Bogart and John Lennon. She cried the day she found out they were already dead. Ruby got kicked out of high school for sleeping with her art teacher... or maybe her Spanish teacher. I haven't decided yet. Ruby can't drive. She doesn't own a computer. She hates her middle name, which is Tiffany. She always, always roots for the underdog. She's complicated. That's what I like best about her. Ruby's not so good at life sometimes. She forgets to open bills or cash checks and... Her last boyfriend was 49. The one before that was an alcoholic. She can feel a change coming. She's looking for it.'

Spoiler alert: Don't read on if you want to watch the movie without knowing what happens.

During the time that he is writing about Ruby, Calvin starts to find bits of women's clothing around his house and things in his bathroom cabinet that don't belong to him. Then one day he returns home to find that Ruby exists and is living with him. She believes that everything from their first encounter to her moving in with him has actually happened.

After initial confusion Calvin is delighted and throws himself into a real relationship with Ruby. The two enjoy a perfect honeymoon period captured in a movie montage of dancing, beaches and running around town. But things start to sour when Calvin introduces Ruby to his family whom she loves whilst he finds them problematic. He begins to become grumpy with the very things that he created Ruby to be.

Calvin's brother, Harry, has suggested that Calvin should continue writing about Ruby in order to make her into whatever he wants. However, even when she is getting on his nerves Calvin refuses to do this. Then Ruby begins to pull away for some independence: wanting to start a job, hanging out with her friends, and deciding to spend one night a week back at her own flat to give them some space. Calvin panics and returns to his typewriter. He writes that Ruby was sad whenever she wasn't with Calvin. Ruby then becomes needy and tearful, unable to be parted from Calvin for a moment. Calvin writes that Ruby was effervescently happy all of the time, in order to try to keep her with him but not so demanding. This also backfires because constant happiness is hard to take, and because it is clear that Ruby isn't choosing to be with Calvin at this point, so he writes her back to normal.

The couple return to bickering and fighting when Ruby doesn't do what Calvin wants her to do. There is also the sense that the constant changes have taken a toll on Ruby emotionally. At a party she is left alone and flirts with Calvin's agent. At this point Calvin explodes and tells her what she is, forcing her to do things by typing them out as she stands in front of him. Finally he stops and she runs to her room. He is struck by the horror of what he has become and leaves all of the pages that he has ever written about Ruby outside her room with a final line saying that Ruby is no longer bound by the past and that as she leaves the house she is set free.

The following morning Ruby has disappeared and Calvin is left alone to mourn. Eventually he pulls himself together and buys a computer instead of a typewriter. This was a relief to me because the main problem that I had with the film was understanding how somebody could write a perfect first draft into a typewriter! Calvin writes the story of his time with Ruby, anonymised, and it is a great success.

At the end of the film – which my Facebook friends found so problematic – Calvin bumps into Ruby in the park. She is reading his new book but clearly she has forgotten everything that happened due to being set free. They have some banter similar to the first time that they met and it seems that Calvin has been given a second chance at the relationship, but this time having learnt his lessons in love.

There are probably many different readings of this film, and perhaps the way in which you read it affects how you view the ending. Two readings particularly struck me: we could understand the film as an exploration of gender in relationships (and wider society), and/or we could understand it as an examination of how people relate to each other more broadly. We don't have to discard one reading in order to accept the other as both are possible through the same situations, and indeed the way we relate to each other is generally infused with gender. However, the latter reading perhaps invites a more sympathetic understanding of Calvin: and one in which we might be more likely to wish him the redemption he receives in the final scene.

To be continued...
Meg Barker 23 July 2013

Meg Barker is an Open University lecturer teaching mainly on counselling modules, and is also a therapist specialising in relationships. Find her other blogs here. 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

Get ready to quiz OU academics on the issues that matter to you.

This is your time to drive conversation with some of Britain’s leading academics. Simply vote on our Facebook Poll, let us know which of our inspiring academics you’d like Desk Time with, and log back in on Friday (12-2pm) to ask the questions that really matter to you.

Vote on the poll now: http://on.fb.me/15ZtpeR

The three academics are - in no particular order:

Katie Chicot - Infinity
Questions around infinity have helped mathematicians to solve some very practical problems. OU Mathematician Katie Chicot is ready to explore the mysteries and misconceptions of infinity with you, from ancient puzzles to the latest mathematical research.

Kristina Hultgren - Communication
The OU’s linguistics expert Kristina is looking at how communications have changed over the last few decades, and what different countries can tell us about socio-cultural, economic and political changes in the way we communicate.

Ellie Dommett - Cognitive Enhancement
Recent news reports estimate that 10% of university students take smart-drugs to improve brain performance. Dr Ellie Dommett is ready to discuss the impact these drugs have on the brain, and what questions we should be asking to inform the choice on smart drugs.

Posted on 22 July 2013.

The ghost of an Armenian captain threatens Turkey's attempt to subvert the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, writes journalist and honorary OU graduate Robert Fisk. 

Confronted by the chilling hundredth anniversary of the genocide of one and a half million Armenian men, women and children at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915, Turkey's Government is planning to swamp memories of the Armenian massacres with ceremonies commemorating the Turkish victory over the Allies at the battle of Gallipoli in the same year. Already, loyalist academics have done their best to ignore the presence of thousands of Arab troops among the 1915 Turkish armies at Gallipoli – and are now even branding an Armenian Turkish artillery officer who was decorated for his bravery at Gallipoli as a liar who fabricated his own biography. In fact, Captain Sarkis Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Enver Pasha, Turkey’s war minister and the most powerful man in the Ottoman hierarchy.  

The greatest hero of Gallipoli was Mustafa Kemal who, as Ataturk, founded the modern Turkish state. But in view of the desire of some of Turkey's most prominent historians to brand Torossian a fraud, the word ‘modern’ should perhaps be used in inverted commas.

Now these academics are even claiming that the Armenian army captain invented his two medals from the Enver.  Yet one of the most the outspoken Turkish historians to have fully acknowledged the 1915 genocide, Taner Akcam, has tracked down Torossian’s family in America, met his granddaughter, and inspected the two Ottoman medal records; one of them bears Enver Pasha’s original signature.

Turkey, as we all know, wants to join the European Union. I also, by chance, happen to think it should join the EU. How can we Europeans claim that the Muslim world wishes to stay ‘apart’ from our ‘values’ when an entire Muslim country wants to share our European society?  We are hypocrites indeed.  Yet how can Turkey still hope to join the EU when it still refuses to acknowledge the truth of the Armenian genocide – and symbolises this denial by a scandalous attack on a long dead Ottoman officer?  Does Dreyfus’ phantom hover over such a moment?  For however much the Turkish government bangs the drum at Gallipoli in 2015, Captain Torossian’s ghost is going to haunt those 1915 battlefields.

His memoirs, From ‘Dardanelles to Palestine’, were first published in Boston in 1947.  Ayhan Aktar, professor of social sciences at Istanbul Bilgi University, first came across a copy of the book 20 years ago and was amazed to learn – given Turkey’s attempt to annihilate its entire Armenian population in 1915 – that there were officers of Armenian descent fighting for the Ottomans.  The eight month battle for Gallipoli – an Allied landing on the Dardanelles straits dreamed up by Winston Churchill in the hope of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) and breaking the trench deadlock on the Western Front – was a disaster for the British and French, and the mass of Australian and New Zealand troops (the ANZAC forces) fighting with them.  They abandoned the beach-heads in January of 1916.

In his book, Torossian recounts the ferocious fighting at Gallipoli and other battles in which he participated – until, towards the end of the Great War, he found his sister among the Armenian refugees on the death convoys to Syria and Palestine.  He then turned himself over to the Allied forces, meeting but not liking T.E. Lawrence of Arabia – he called him a mere “paymaster” – and re-entered Turkey with French forces.  He eventually travelled to the US where he died.

The gutsy Professor Aktar, however – noticing his colleagues’ unwillingness to acknowledge that Arabs and Armenians fought in the Ottoman Army – decided to publish Terossian’s book in the Turkish language.  Initial reviews were favourable until two historians from Sabanci University took exception to Ayhan Aktar’s work.  Dr Halil Berktay, for example, wrote 13 newspaper columns in ‘Taraf’ to declare the entire book a fiction and Torossian a liar, a view that came close to what Aktar calls “character assassination”.  “It is a ‘trauma document’ of an integrationist Armenian officer who fought in the (first world) war,” Aktar says.  "But his family were deported to the Syrian deserts in spite of the fact that Enver Pasha (the Turkish war minister and the most powerful man in the Ottoman hierarchy) had clear orders to the local governors not to deport officers’ families.”

Lower-ranking Armenians in the Ottoman army were disarmed and later massacred amid the genocide, in which women were routinely raped by Turkish soldiers, gendarmerie and their Circassian and Kurdish militias.  Churchill referred to the massacres as a “holocaust”.  Taner Akcam, the Turkish historian who discovered Torossian’s granddaughter, was stunned by the reaction to the Turkish edition of the book;  one critic, he says, even claimed that the Armenian officer did not exist. “This book, along with Aktar’s introduction, pokes a hole in the dominant narrative in Turkey about the Gallipoli war being a war of the Turks.  As Aktar shows in his introduction, not only Torossian and other Christians played an important role in Gallipoli, but some of the military units were also composed of Arabs.”

Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke at Gallipoli two years ago and gave a perfectly frank account of how Turkey planned to define the Armenian genocide on its hundredth anniversary.  “We are going to make the year of 1915 known the whole world over,” he said, “not as an anniversary of a genocide as some people claimed and slandered (sic), but we shall make it known as a glorious resistance of a nation – in other words, a commemoration of our defence of Gallipoli.”

So Turkish nationalism is supposed to win out over history in a couple of years’ time.  Descendants of those who died among the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli, however, might ask their Turkish hosts in 2015 why they do not honour those brave Arabs and Armenians – including Captain Torossian – who fought alongside the Ottoman Empire.
Robert Fisk Posted 12 July 2013

Robert Fisk of the Independent was awarded an Honorary Degree by The Open University in 2004. This article originally appeared in the Independent on Sunday on 12 May and is reproduced here with kind permission of Robert and the Independent. 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

 

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

Cute and cuddly characters can't disguise outrageous loan repayment interest rates, says Pete Cashmore.

If you live in the UK and own a TV you are no doubt familiar with Betty, Joyce and Earl. You will know how they are all adorably dotty and work in the same office; that Betty and Joyce usually have something to say, most often making disparaging remarks about Earl's harebrained ideas; and that they like to watch films together, during which naughty Earl lets his wrinkly hand wander and gets his wrist slapped.

With the exception of Go Compare's moustachioed tenor, Betty, Joyce and Earl are probably the most recognisable current characters in TV advertising, cropping up with increasing frequency. They are the 'Wongies', the loveable face of payday loan firm Wonga, whose typical APR (Annual Percentage Rate of interest) is 4,214%.

You're probably less familiar with Speedy Roo, who is yet to make an impact on our TV screens, instead preferring to engage with the public on our streets. Speedy Roo is the cuddly marsupial face of Speedy Cash (APR 1,410%), and he has a blog where we can get to know him. It tells us that he bounces into the offices around 10 am, where he spends time catching up with employees and preparing for events – but only after he checks his Facebook profile. Speedy Cash currently have 25 high street branches in the UK, all festooned with bright balloons.

And it can't be too long before we get to know more about the Pounds To Pocket aliens. There are two of them at the moment, her a brassy no-nonsense Geordie, him a scatter-brained amiable Brummie.

Cuddly, friendly, adorable, eccentric – the Wongies, Speedy Roo and the P2P aliens share all these attributes. And they're not alone in the world of cuddly payday loan company mascots: Reel Big Cash (APR 1,737%) has a kindly old man on a fishing boat, reeling in that loan money; while Dosh Now (APR 4,559%) has a grinning man who doesn't have a nose or eyes – he's so happy with its service he seems to have grinned his own face off.

The payday lenders' approach is similar to that used by Britain's banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. As the word 'banker' increasingly came to be used pejoratively, so there was a sudden rash of cutesiness and adorable eccentrics: the Halifax (bailed out to the tune of £25bn) and their staff-run radio station; the Woolwich's amiable work-obsessed 'Steve' character; and perhaps most unctuously HSBC's nauseating little vignette in which a Malaysian family employed by the bank relocate to Vancouver, so the bank thoughtfully buys the mourning daughter a gecko to replace the pet snake she was forced to leave behind.Wonga, in addition to boasting its wrinkly triptych, regularly runs competitions to win cash and games consoles via Facebook – its Spot the Ball competition currently offers more than 400 prizes. A few months ago, perhaps inspired by the popularity of BuzzFeed's feline-related enterprises, it attempted to break into the cat market by inviting users to send in pictures of their feline friends, for no specific reason other than people think cats are cute, and that a payday loan company who shares your love of cats can't be all bad.

All this fluff seems somewhat at odds with a recent report released by Citizens Advice, describing payday loan companies as 'out of control'. The study of 780 cases revealed that companies were targeting the under-18s and – more disturbingly – people with mental health issues, and that some customers were even drunk at the time of being talked into taking out a loan.
Almost nine out of 10 borrowers were not asked to provide proof that they could afford to repay the loan, and 84% of those having repayment problems were not given the chance to have their interest and payments stalled. Faced with figures like that, one starts to understand the charm offensive and the need for comedy kangaroos.

Lenders occasionally do get their wrists slapped – witness Cash Lady's witless attempts to use Kerry Katona's well-publicised financial problems to attract customers to its 2,760% APR loans; or Peachy Loans' 'quirky' way of reading out its 1,918% interest rate ("nineteen eighteen").

However, the advertising watchdog admits its powers are limited, and there is currently no ban on 'cute'. Perhaps the government could throw that in to the mix when it overhauls the rules, before we witness the rather sickening spectacle of children begging their parents to buy them Betty, Joyce and Earl dolls.
Pete Cashmore
Posted 4 July 2013

This article first appeared in The Guardian and is reproduced here with kind permission.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

For the people who bring the news to our living rooms, 2012 was the most dangerous since 1995, writes Dick Skellington.

May 3 was World Press Freedom Day, a day that went largely unnoticed in Britain. The day was a conduit for raising public awareness of the risks journalists and photographers take every day to bring the news to our televisions and media outlets.

Since 1995, when Reporters Without Borders first began collecting casualty rates among media personnel in war and conflict zones, the rate has been increasing. Last year was the most dangerous yet as the civil war in Syria took its toll. 

In total 90 journalists were killed, 6 media assistants, and 48 citizen journalists lost their lives. The total of 90 dead journalists was the highest for any year since 2002*. This total included 18 killed in Syria, 18 in Somalia, 10 in Pakistan, and 6 in Mexico.

2013 shows continues of the bleak trend. By the end of May, 23 journalists had been killed and 9 citizen-web journalists have lost their lives. A further 175 journalists and 162 citizen web-journalists had been imprisoned. Most of the victims were in Syria and Pakistan. It included the legendary French journalist Maria Colvin who was killed in Homs.

Since 2002, over 700 journalists have died in world conflict zones, according to Reporters Without Borders. I believe it is important we reflect on these chilling statistics every day we read a newspaper or watch the news.
Dick Skellington 5 June 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

 

*Note: Journalists killed only includes cases where Reporters Without Borders has clearly established that the victim was killed because of his/ her activities as a journalist.
 

Cartoon by Gary Edwards

There are sound bites, and there are sound bites too far, writes Dick Skellington

The Protestant work ethic is always with us, and is rearing its ugly head again. I was listening to a recent radio interview with Theresa May, the Home Secretary.  In 90 seconds she used the phrase 'hard working families' no less than six times. I was in danger of throwing something at the radio. Since the Coalition came to power I have lost count of the number of Government ministers, from both sides of the Coalition, who have blurted out the phrase 'hard working families' at every media opportunity. They may be on message, but I believe this message is wrong. The phrase 'hard working families' – like the oft-spoken mantra about the legacy of debt inherited from the Labour period of hegemony – is at best misleading, and at worst dangerous. 

Not all families are hard working, not all families can be, and not all hard working people live in families. Ministers habitually pour out the phrase as if all they ever think about are families, rather than the various kinds of other households, who may work even harder. Also a lot of people who work hard are not wealthy, and a lot of people who are wealthy do not word hard. The more you think about the phrase the more the false notes really begin to grate. 

Persistent use of the phrase by Ministers plays a huge part in reinforcing the divide-and-rule tactic often employed by Governments in trouble. Governments love scapegoats, and one of the implications of 'hard working families' is that all those people who are not in hard working family environments are less deserving. 

The phrase has long been associated with the Conservatives, but more recently was taken up by Gordon Brown during his New Labour premiership. In 2005, when Brown was fighting the General Election, the BBC News website conducted an interesting analysis of the phrase 'hard working families', rooting its populist adoption in the widespread use of unforgiving political rhetoric about welfare 'handouts' to 'scroungers'. 

Back then commentators were pointing out that the effect of its use is to marginalise people living in single households, such as lone parents. There were those who questioned too the wisdom of using language which suggests that couples with children were more hard working than those without children. At the end of the election campaign, one lone parent reminded Brown to ensure he 'consider everybody, in every class and every financial situation'. 

Despite this, the Coalition has upped the ante on the adoption of the rhetoric of hard work. The result is often hysterical shifts in tone even in one speech. Theresa May is a habitual offender. In March she gave a keynote speech entitled We Will Win by Being the Party for All and used it to champion 'people who work hard and want to get on'. Those who were not so aspirational were condemned to the margins of her priorities.  It really is astonishingly dumb politics to use an inclusive sound bite and then rush headlong down an exclusive blind alley.

Wikipedia, not always the most reliable source on such issues, does contain some useful observations about the phrase 'hard working families'. The phrase is an example, it argues, of 'glittering generality' in contemporary political discourse. Its origins are found in tabloid newspaper discourses of the mid '90s, and, for those of you who can remember the drab 2005 general election campaign, it emerged with such regularity during that campaign that many people begged politicians to put it in the trash bin.

A key assumption behind the phrase is that working is good for us. To work is to get by, to pay your taxes, to keep your family afloat. Many people work hard but are paid so poorly that even a national wage can't stop an increase in poverty among working people in the United Kingdom. Indeed, there is recent evidence from the Resolution Foundation that hard working families are actually worse off since the Coalition came to power, so on one level, bleating on about appealing to their needs could be seen as hypocritical. This assumption also ignores the fact that parenting, or caring for relatives, are in themselves intensely hard working achievements. Mums and carers are not what Theresa May is thinking about when she uses the phrase. 

I might be running against the current mood in the nation – a nation whose shires just legitimised the United Kingdom Independence Party, who are also championing 'hard working families', in the May local elections. In the end though, whatever your political party of choice, the persistent use of the phrase 'hard working families' may rebound on its exponents. The next General Election might be won by the party which appeals to all the country, not just one section of it, and a focus on 'hard working families' may alienate those other groups pushed into the margin of political priorities. Its lazy use is bad politics, but I doubt if it will stop in the current climate of a blame culture in which some families seem more deserving than others.
Dick Skellington 28 May 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

An Open University Business School PhD student who graduated in May found that voluntary organisations face considerable barriers in securing European funding.

Rebecca Rumbul, who received her OU PhD in Business at the Cardiff graduation ceremony on 27 April, looked at how money filters down to grassroots voluntary organisations. She found that the way that government bodies administer European monies can dictate what kinds of organisations are able to access funding, often to the detriment of others.

Rebecca’s thesis examines the process of a European Union funding programme in Wales and its implementation within a network context, and asks how institutional and network factors influence which organisations acquire funding. It focuses on one European programme and one project partnership that was successful in gaining funds, and details the processes and influences that determined the way in which such programmes are developed and funds are distributed.

“I found that there are certain voluntary organisations that will get funding due to how they have orientated themselves”, said Rebecca. “My call to Government as a result of my research is that they need to take into account that not all organisations are geared up in a way that will secure funding, but that doesn't mean that they can't deliver high quality outcomes. There is a huge pool of talent that Governments can use to reduce economic disadvantage, but right now the process is so complex that many organisations cannot benefit.”

When Rebecca started her research, she had been working in grant-making for the Big Lottery Fund, and previously the Arts Council of Wales. She now manages the Wales Governance Centre in Cardiff University; a job she got just before she finished her PhD which she believes was a direct result of her studies.

• Find out more about Rebecca
   

The UK economy is suffering from subsidies that extend the problems they’re meant to resolve, writes Alan Shipman. 

Kissing babies at election-time is a practice politicians often regret but cannot seem to renounce. So, too, is commenting publicly on those that go on to become the victims of extreme parenting. By suggesting that the deaths of six children in Derby could have resulted from state welfare support for the father who killed them, Chancellor George Osborne risked accusations of trading on a tragedy. But in reality, he was only demonstrating a firm grasp of standard economic principles. 

Foremost among these: if you tax anything you get less of it, and if you subsidise anything you get more. Expanding something with a hand-out can be good, if it’s something the community hasn’t got enough of. For if there’s already too much, then subsidy just worsens the excess.  So while supporters of welfare benefits see them as tackling poverty and social exclusion, critics say they amplify these evils. If you subsidise the poor, you just get more of them. Any top-up allows people to get by on unproductive jobs, or none at all. So giving them less can make them (as well as their community) better off, by forcing them into new or better work.

Some evidence of success for a strategy based on these principles emerged from the UK unemployment data released on 16 April. Unemployment rose, in part, because more previously “inactive” adults had chosen to seek work. Many of these are women with children who are far from inactive in their homes, but described as such by economists until they find paid employment outside it. The government says that over 800,000 people have abandoned their claims to out-of-work benefits as a result of stricter eligibility tests, and benefit changes that ensure they’re better off in work.   

These changes would have been essential even without the recent financial crisis, according to Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, because of an inexorable rise in the number of claimants and average size of claims. The state benefits bill has risen from less than £90bn in 1990 to over £150bn in 2012 and this at that year’s prices. It’s jumped to more than 10% of national output in the current recession. (See this article in The Economist).

However, this growth doesn’t automatically confirm the existence of a ‘benefits culture' prompting people into premature retirement. Some of it has been caused by an unexpected rise in longevity, which leaves many claiming benefits to cover depleted pension pots or rising care costs, so that state pensions comprise almost half of state ‘benefit’ spending. Some is due to house price increases since the early 1990s, causing a rise in accommodation costs which governments dare not reverse because any further price fall would make Middle England’s mortgage unrepayable. The biggest growth has been in benefits and tax breaks given to people in work, which now vastly exceed the £5bn paid in jobseeker’s allowance in 2011/12. 

Corporate welfare
The awkwardness of these rising payments to the working poor (in means-tested benefits and tax credits) is that they can equally well be viewed as state aid for employers, enabling them to pay less than a living wage knowing that the state will make up the difference. This has not been prevented by the introduction of a minimum wage alongside tax credits, which governments dispense much more grudgingly than the numerous tax breaks allowing large employers to minimise their tax bills. The dramatic spread of low pay, while enabling employment to rise and jobseeker’s allowance costs to fall despite the absence of overall output growth, is also the reason that welfare costs will continue to rise after the Coalition’s reforms – as they did under previous governments, including Margaret Thatcher’s.

On the day that George Osborne’s assessed Mick Philpott’s child-killing exploits, a parliamentary committee accused three former HBOS executives of destroying the UK’s fourth-largest bank through avarice and incompetence. It was a reminder that when Britain subsidised incompetent bankers, it got more of them. In this case, government-backed deposit insurance and inevitability of state-financed bailout give large banks an implicit annual subsidy of £10bn, according to the Independent Commission on Banking.  And whereas any subsidy to ‘dole queens’ (and kings) is a richer-to-poorer redistribution that goes back into circulation when recipients spend it, the bankers’ subsidy is a poorer-to-richer allocation that disappeared into their punctured balance-sheets, along with £1,200bn of taxpayers’ money to prevent a systemic collapse.

This trio of errant bankers, and Royal Bank of Scotland’s Fred Goodwin, are often used to portray the whole financial sector as reckless and parasitic. Mr Osborne's resort to the same sort of wrecking synecdoche when using the Mick Philpott case to cast aspersions on all benefit recipients, has tended to expand on all political sides. It’s a tendency that has been spreading, from public-sector reformers who cite Jimmy Savile as a sign of endemic decay in the BBC and NHS, to internal combustion enthusiasts who use one flat battery to reject a whole fleet of electric cars. 

While policy changes may be aimed at stopping the irresponsible arrival of new children, they are also targeting a better deal for those already growing up. Mr Osborne’s 2013 Budget assigns £1bn to subsidise childcare for working families, and several billion to help the purchase of new or larger homes.  Amid a predominantly ‘supply side’ recovery strategy, these measures stand out as delivering a demand-side boost.  The first-quarter growth figures, showing the UK still on the brink of a triple-dip recession, highlight the importance of subsidising assets that the community wants more of. The Chancellor will now be hoping that spending more on nursery places and houses will encourage business to offer more of them, and not just inflate the price of those already there.
Alan Shipman 24 April 2013 

Alan Shipman is a lecturer in Economics at the Open University. He is responsible for the modules You and your money:personal finance in context and Personal investment in an uncertain world,  part of the foundation degree in Financial Services.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

 

 

Two OU students were successful in the inaugural Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) essay competition this year. Helen O’Shea, was the winner of the Undergraduate category whilst Kira Kazakova, also an undergraduate, received a commendation for her essay.

The winning entries were published in the Irish Psychologist magazine and the successful entrants will receive a significant contribution towards attending the Annual Congress of Psychology Students which is being held in Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) in April 2013.

Helen O’Shea, winner of the Undergraduate Category, and student of BSc (Honours) Psychology, feels hugely rewarded for the significant efforts she has made to date in her studies. She says of the prize: “It vindicates my choice of course and university... It allows me to move forward to my postgraduate studies with more confidence than I might have had.” Helen’s goal was always to pursue a career in clinical psychology.

“One of my biggest concerns about studying with the OU was that the study was independent rather than normal lectures. This made me wonder how I was going to cope with self-regulated study and would I have the discipline required to achieve a BSc in Psychology. My concerns were quickly allayed when I came to realise the level of support and resources that were available, and in particular the standard and timeliness of communication between the tutors and the students.”

Helen, a wife and mother who says “there was a lot of juggling and late nights” in order to complete her studies, is now a research assistant on the Waterford Mental Health Survey, which is a joint project between the Health Service Executive (South) and University College Dublin.

Kira Kazakova, also an OU undergraduate, received a commendation for her essay. Her aspirations are to complete her BSC (Hons) Psychology with the OU and a Social Care Work degree with Tallaght IT. Her ultimate goal is to become a forensic psychologist.

Kira started her studies when she was working as a Legal Executive, and the OU was the best option for her to combine work and study. One of her major concerns was undertaking a course in English which, at the time she began her studies, was her third language. In addition, when Kira went back to study, she was, and still is, a single mother. “Raising a young child by myself, as well as trying to educate myself, was very tough at times...for three years between 2006-9 I was also working full time as well as studying.”

“I am very pleased to be a runner-up in the Essay Competition and I am very proud to represent the OU in this endeavour.”

Dr Aileen O’Reilly, PSI Graduate Officer and Council Member said “It was wonderful to receive entries from Open University students, and I would encourage more students to enter the competition next year.”

Karen Hagan, Senior Lecturer in Psychology in Ireland says “The Open University is delighted that two students have received awards in the first PSI student essay competition. This shows the high calibre of our students and, indeed, their motivation to succeed.”

Find out more

• Study Psychology at the OU
• Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI)
   

Posted 8 April 2013