Browne Report - not all bleak

As a student who will graduate at 21 years old with a personal debt of over £30,000, I would fully encourage the abolition of tuition fees. Then again, I would also encourage philanthropists to offer me their fortunes and allow me to spend my life writing ranting blogs and baking misshapen brownies.

I was outraged when I heard that there was a chance tuition fees would be raised and I still fail to see a way in which this would benefit anyone other than the wealthy. But neither can I put my full weight behind a blanket criticism of all the recommendations set out in the Browne report.

The introduction of tuition fees in 1998 the was hailed as New Labour at its worst, favouring the middle and upper classes to the complete detriment of many underprivileged students who would not be able to front the costs, even with the help of low-interest student loans. The argument that it would discourage the less motivated was a direct contradiction of the 50 per cent target, which allowed university places to be filled by students with lower academic abilities.

An increase in fees would be bad enough, but uncapping them so that universities have carte blanche to charge whatever they want, for whatever they want leads to a de facto privatisation of the higher education sector (or industry, if you will).

Similarly, the idea of government funding for departments deemed by Whitehall bureaucrats to be the most worthy laughs in the face of vocational teaching, and courses in Arts and Humanities becoming more expensive than the sciences will cause creative industries to become even more elitist.

Yet in a slightly schizophrenic turn, there are elements of the Browne report which, if applied, would mean a more progressive system of university funding.

No up-front fees, and a repayment threshold of a £21,000 salary - compared to the current, unrealistic £15,000 - will be beneficial to less well-off students. And Vince Cable's suggestion of a tiered interest system will avoid those with the financial means (or the parents with financial means) to cover the costs from getting away with not contributing their share to the national money bank.

Part-time students would also benefit from the ideas set out in the report. It seems absurd that there is currently no help available to those having to undertake their studies whilst working, as they are often more in need of financial aid than eighteen-year-olds with parental support.

It is unfortunate that the more positive aspects of this reform have been overshadowed by the main issue of uncapping tuition fees. The Liberal Democrats have now set themselves up for a catastrophic loss of support amongst young people - a demographic often overlooked by the main parties whilst campaigning. More worryingly, passing legislation so detrimental to students will likely exacerbate the loss in confidence and trust in politics amongst my generation.

I have often made my position on higher education funding clear. Lowering university places to allow entry to only the exceptional would allow for full funding of those students who will bring something positive to our society and do not have the financial means to subsidise themselves for three years. This way, we would have dedicated, well-educated graduates without normalising debt for an entire generation of mediocre students who consider a university education to be a rite of passage, rather than a privilege you earn through years of hard work.

Internships from hell: My experience

I thought long and hard about this blog post, just as I tweeted not a word about my predicament and remained open-minded and optimistic to the point of dishonesty with most people who asked how my internship at the Independent on Sunday was going. And I do realise that throwing into the blogosphere my contempt for a national paper will not do much for my future job prospects.

I can envisage my more diplomatic lecturers reading this post and shaking their heads: “So much promise,” they might be thinking. But if I can warn future interns of what awaits them, or even give a little bit of insight to the people who caused my distress, then it's worth sacrificing the very slim chance that one day the IoS may have come knocking on my door, begging me to work for them.

I should mention to all those aspiring journalists who are gasping in envy at the fact that I got myself an internship at a national paper that the extent of the screening process was calling up the right person and saying: “Hi, I'm a journalism student, I was wondering if it would be possible to do work experience with you during the summer.” And without further ado I was offered a month's unpaid work placement, which I had to politely decline in favour of a more reasonable two weeks, although even this almost bankrupted me, my only salvation being that national papers don't expect anyone in before 10:30 am so I saved myself the peak-time train fares.

I must say that in my limited experience I have found an inverse correlation between how easy it is to get an internship and how much you enjoy it. My two weeks last summer at the Brighton Argus, which had a similar system of giving away free work to anyone who asked, was enough to put me off the local and regional news industry for life. At the more selective Press Gazette I felt I learnt more than in an entire year of university; the Guardian, which demands CVs, clippings, and application forms gained me two published articles and much-appreciated free coffee; and I have high hopes for the New Statesman, which brought me in for an interview for their coveted internship.

But back to the Sindy. Day after day, in my usual pushy way I would ask for research, transcriptions, stories, tea-making or any other task that the news desk might need fulfilling. I was met with disdain and complete disinterest.

Although at first I assumed that it was a personal, after the first few days it became apparent that of the vast number of interns the IoS takes on, the majority spend their time browsing the web for ideas to pitch and subsequently get rejected without so much as a reasonable explanation. I say the majority because there were exceptions. Namely the Cambridge student who was interning for three months and the Oxford student whose parents got her work experience at the IoS at every available university holiday. They seemed to get quite a few bylines.

Not that there wasn't a highlight to my ordeal: I was sent off to a Quaker house (at my own expense, of course) to do vox pops with very friendly phtographer. Also, the cafeteria soup is cheaper than the Guardian's and the bread is nicer. But I wouldn't want to be inaccurate and infer that we were never given any work; on a couple of occasions someone would come over at 6pm with some 'urgent' research, and when explained two hours later that the information was unobtainable, it turns out that they were pretty sure that was the case already.

This is just my story of two very unpleasant weeks, but every day hundreds of aspiring journalists are put through terrible hardship in order to acquire this kind of valuable “experience”. And for what? In the hope that in the future they will be able to break into the industry. Fingers crossed they don't end up entirely disenchanted before their big break. Fingers crossed they don't pick the Independent on Sunday.

Has someone missed the point of Facebook?

Government documents, political articles, final dissertations, legal arguments... even blog posts are sort of thing that I expect people to take seriously. But Facebook groups? You must be joking. Oh wait, you probably are!

Back in the days when I was still allowed to ‘become a fan’ of things (much more non-committal than ‘liking’ them, I find) I was a self-proclaimed fan of serial killers, eugenics, coco pops, Beverly Hills 90210 and ‘if the world ends in 2012 I won’t have to pay back my student loan’. Does this make me psychotic, schizophrenic or a cereal-eater? No. It means that I understand that sites such as Facebook are not to be taken seriously.

Those of you well versed in the art of social networking will also recognise the tongue-in-cheek aspect of Facebook compared to rivals such as Twitter, or even Myspace in its hayday. Facebook is private; members can handpick who they want as contacts and edit that list with a couple of clicks. In this familiar and enclosed environment, why shouldn’t we be allowed to make jokes with our ‘friends’, regardless of how distasteful others may find our sense of humour?

Cameron’s idea that he could scream out into Facebook oblivion about where spending cuts should lie is nothing short of hilarious, prompting the most popular response from this newly-engaged public to be along the lines of ‘if you can’t work it out yourself then get out of government’. I wonder if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg is a closet communist and it was all a set-up.

As if this hadn’t made me sceptical enough of Cameron’s so-called ‘down with the kids’ attitude to social networking, along came the whole ‘R.I.P. Raoul Moat You Legend’ Facebook group affair, which with a little help from his mates at the Daily Mail, our Prime Minister managed to blow so out of proportion to that the poor woman who set it up has had her face plastered all over the press for her ‘sick joke’. I suppose it doesn’t help that she’s a single mother, either.

I recognise the insensitivity the group displayed to the bereaved families of Moat’s victims. I also accept that this group was not only politically incorrect but also downright offensive. However, the idea that a government should be able to remove anything from the public domain based on that set of criteria is not only a travesty to the ideal of free speech but also a prelude to an era of censorship which will see many comedians, writers, musicians and journalists unemployed in the near future.

I rarely update my Facebook status with anything that is not drowned in layers of irony, sarcasm and obscure and useless references that few people pick up on. As far as I’m concerned this is all part of the point. If I were only allowed to write the sort of things that would be considered acceptable by politicians and right-wing media outlets I would delete my account in an instant. And surely that’s not what David Cameron wants.

Save your soul

I didn't have the privilege of walking past an O2 shop yesterday morning to see dozens of people queuing around the block, rubbing their clammy hands together in anticipation of the iPhone 4. I have been told, however, that it was not a pleasant sight.

Why was I happily surrounded by my Toshiba netbook and ancient Motorola flip-phone as opposed to standing in Oxford Street drooling over Apple's latest gift to humanity, Stephen Fry might ask.

First of all, I don't have a spare £299 lying around to spend on a handset. Neither am I about to take out a mortgage for the sake of owning a better phone, unlike all those extremely unlucky people who recently signed a 24 month contract for an iPhone 3G and are now waving useless Apps in front of fashionably bored iPhone 4 owners.

But to all those of you in the tech-savvy world, with a burning desperation to immediately purchase the latest smartphones, I would put to you that Apple is not the way forward. The knowledge and interest that I lack in the world of technology I make up for in the world of chocolate and I must say that no matter how good a Kit-Kat may taste, I have not bought one in years.

Apple are the Nestle of technology. They're everywhere and they taste good but what about the not-so-shiny shenanigans that go on behind the scenes to create your beloved machines?

Apple outsources the majority of the hardware production to Foxconn, whose factory in China has caused so many suicides that the company sent out a contract to all employees to end its liability should anyone die on site. The media outcry forced Foxconn to withdraw this idea, but the working environment is still a breeding ground for isolation and depression.

Employees told the BBC that the factory that is in charge of creating iPhones and iPads is run like an army training centre. Uniformed employees work at least two hours of overtime each day, and 100 hours of overtime a month are the norm. The pay is the equivalent to around £200 a month and the intensity and pressure put on meeting targets is so extreme that in the run-up to the iPad launch the factory lost 50,000 workers every month because they could not keep up with the expectations.

And if on balance you still feel that the need to buy into Apple's cult-like world, what will you get for your loyalty? Although the smug arrogance of Apple's attempts to ostracise its users from any other company may not seem like a problem at the moment, it will do soon.

Microsoft, Adobe, Google... where will it end? Well, it seems like it's only just begun. Steve Jobs has launched a war against all the big names in the industry. But why will people continue to buy in to a brand that is soon going to be ganged up on by all the other major players who have been shunned and disparaged? The answer is that they won't.

If there were no other alternative out there, I would understand consumers putting to one side their moral dilemmas and pragmatism of the future. But there are so many other smartphones that are just as functional, yet don't require sacrificing your soul.

I mean really, Google's latest operating system is called Android Cupcake. What could be better than that?

Is the end of true debate in sight?

I remember all the arguments against televised debates during the election. I also remember thinking that people who opposed them probably didn't have an understanding of what 'democracy' actually means.

The idea of giving everyone as much information as possible and allowing them to make up their own mind is what I believe makes a society truly democratic. Even if you don't agree with their decisions or their criteria they've used to take them.

Yesterday evening the Free Society hosted the penultimate in a series of four of debates on the theme of libertarianism and hyper-regulation.

Always a fan of a political event, I attended enthusiastically - as much for the hope of some engaging conversation as for the promise of free wine. I was not disappointed on either count. The speakers, who included Isabella Sankey, from Liberty, Philip Johnston, assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph and Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers Alliance, were articulate and impassioned. They even managed to momentarily sway me towards a more libertarian stance.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the evening as a political campaign meeting, I hesitate to call it a debate. There was no premise upon which the panel was set to build a case, no contrasting views and no opposing comments from the audience.

It seems somewhat ironic that a group which claims to promote civil rights would not attempt to make all possible arguments available, allowing the audience to arrive at its own conclusion. Instead, the organisers were guilty of the exact attitude they were recriminating the government for: a paternalistic "we know best" outlook on the rest of the population.

Hopefully it does not become the norm to put on debates for the sake of propaganda as opposed to democracy and people continue to be outraged at the thought that they are being told what to think.

We live in public

I really would love to begin this post with a Brave New World quote or some borrowed Orwellian imagery. But the concept of comparing technologically-ruled 21st century life to the police state described in dystopian literature has by now been cliched into oblivion.

However, last night's Channel 4 broadcast of We Live In Public, Ondi Timoner's Sundance-winning documentary about the internet pioneer Josh Harris, left me tweeting slightly more reticently than before.

The image painted of Harris is that of a man emerged in the world of technology. He talks about spending so long in front of the television as a child that he was brought up more by Sherwood Schwartz, creator of Gilligan's Island, than by his own parents.

As an adult, Harris developed an alter-ego to mask his social difficulties. This resulted in him attending business meetings and public appearances dressed and acting as a child-like clown named Luvvy.

In 1999, after various online ventures had made him a fortune in the dot.com boom, he embarked on a new project, this time tainted by his sadistic tendencies. More than 100 volunteers were locked into a bunker wearing matching uniforms, while they were filmed eating, sleeping, showering, having sex and using the toilet, as well as being subjected to emotionally tortuous interrogations.

These were deeply disturbing scenes to watch. The volunteers had been stripped of all dignity and individuality, monitored and experimented with like lab rats by a millionaire visionary with a God complex.

When this project came to an end (in January 2001 the NYPD raided the terrarium), Harris decided it was time to put himself under the same scrutiny and he and his girlfriend moved into an apartment rigged with motion-sensitive cameras and all-hearing microphones. Their life would be broadcast online and viewers would be able to chat to each other, as well as to the couple.

Watching their relationship deteriorate further and further before reaching intolerable levels of dysfunction is a harrowing experience. You feel the urge to shout at them to get out of the game and live real life, where they might have a chance at fixing what seemed like a loving relationship at the beginning. But they don't, as ultimately the experiment was more important and Tania walks out.

I am aware that many celebrity couples have since decided to document their lives for the benefit or E4 and MTV viewers. But I always assumed that this was for the purpose of furthering their careers, or at the very least for the cash. Then again, what about those millions of people whose Facebook relationship status goes from 'in a relationship' to 'single' to 'it's complicated' every few weeks? What are they getting out of making their relationship a public affair?

What about tweeting that you've just had a fight with your girlfriend or blogging about your husband's affair? I wonder how many relationships around the world are being put under unnecessary pressure by our obsession with making our lives a free-for-all.

These matters have, of course, been pondered upon by much more authoritative voices than my own, and I doubt I would have anything new to add to the debate. I would encourage a bit of self-reflection, though. Watching the documentary made me realise how disturbing I find situations which I purposely put myself in on a daily basis.

I'm not suggesting that anyone quits their social networks, blogs, photo albums, youtube videos, podcasts or chatrooms. But perhaps we would al benefit from distancing our online actions to those of real life. Otherwise we may make the step from living in public to barely living at all.

The reason behind my blogging hiatus

I find it difficult to describe myself in tech-terms. I am neither a geek, nor a denier, nor an enthusiast, nor a target consumer. I am not ignorant yet I am not particularly knowledgeable either.

In fact, tech-wise, I am probably the equivalent of those kids in school that would hang out with the cool girls one day, have lunch with the nerds the next, then sway indifferently to the goth section only to turn up the next day in preppy chic.

The upshot of such an insipid – sorry, I mean versatile – attitude is that you have a lot of people to invite to a birthday party but no one's shoulder to cry on.

This is what I have been made startlingly aware of in the last few months, as my happily functional little world of tech-indecisiveness began to unravel.

I was emerged in journalism research essay-writing when the first in a string of disasters took place. My main laptop became spyware-infested and therefore, pretty much useless. It is now sulking in the corner of my bedroom waiting to be reformatted by someone who knows what reformatting means.

But not to worry, there's always Kafka, my pretentiously-named, somewhat incompetent but nonetheless trustworthy little netbook.

Oh wait. Now the wireless connection in my house has stopped working .

Phew, I really need a brake from all these technology failures, I think I'll go for a walk. Halfway down the street it turns out my iPod has run out of battery, and stubbornly refuses to charge back up.

And, to ice that lovely batch of cyanide-infused cupcakes that are overtaking my tech-world, my blog was hacked, making me reticent to hand over business cards recently. All I could picture was Alan Rusbridger deciding to give me a chance to impress him and being met with a blog full of links to “Buy Viagra! Buy Rolex! CHEAP!”.

So, dedicated reader, I do appreciate your patience and beg for your understanding. My four-week disappearance was not due to neglect, but to matters out of my control. Today Though My Eyes is now back to its traditional weekly post and Kafka seems to be holding on to the internet for dear life. Still no word on reformatting the naughty one, but seriously, how many computers do I really need?

I'm thinking maybe a Gok Wan-type attitude towards technology might increase my chances of having one trustworthy piece of hardware that will do it all. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I became Steve Jobs's dream come true.