Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Friday, March 14, 2008
Cheap at half the price
Good news, UK taxpayers! You've just bought twenty grand's worth of analysis of antisemitic discourse from Stephen Pollard!
Thoughts:
a) I am not going to make the cheap jibe about this being a waste of money. At the end of the day, the government needs research in order to make policy, research is commissioned from research institutes in the same way in which buns are bought from bakers, and although I regard the purchase of twenty grand's worth of analysis from Pollard[1] as highly unlikely to result in a wortwhile deliverable, I am not going to get into the game of second-guessing the overall process, and "the prevalance of antisemitic stereotypes in the media" does seem to me to be the sort of thing that it's legitimate for the DCLG to be looking into. It would be rather sweet, though, if any readers could dig up examples of Pollard doing his normal chucklehead act at government-funded media studies when it was someone else's nose in the trough (Update: here's what two minutes google turned up, not great but a start)[2]. I will particularly be looking out for any instances of Pollard having a go at any of the other workstreams within the wider government initiative that's putting bread on his table[3].
b) Fair do's to the EISCA, I had marked it down as a brass-plate thinktank but if it is actually producing a measurable quantity of think then that was unfair of me and to that extent I apologise.
c) David Hirsh ought to be fucking fuming, because this would have been £20k that any sane man would have said was a racing certainty for his sky rocket[5] until the well-connected Pollard showed up with his johnny-come-lately Institute. Hirsh is on the EISCA advisory board though, so maybe he will see a few crumbs.
[1] As a taxpayer I am obviously hoping that the actual work gets done by Abe Sweiry, the "Research Fellow", who at least appears to be someone doing genuine research in the field.
[2] Pollard has something of a track record in finding anti-Semitic implications in utterly pedestrian and commonplace metaphors, but I think that one is so hackneyed that it's unlikely.
[3] A small book token prize[4] for any reader who can find an anti-Semitic implication, trope, topos or connotation in the metaphor "putting bread on his table". Go on, I'm sure it can be done.
[4] Employees and directors of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism, their spouses and families, are not eligible.
[5] Or possibly the institutional sky rocket of Goldsmiths College; I am not particularly familiar with how these funding arrangements work.Labels: continuing saga
this item posted by the management 3/14/2008 04:34:00 AM
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