Easy on my soul

According to the BBC, “Work-averse students, corner-cutting journalists and people who simply enjoy wasting time online are in for a testing day.”

I’m sure that there have been times in the past when someone could have argued that I fitted all three categories, but let’s gloss over that.  I’ve not blogged in a while and you’re bored because Wikipedia is on strike, so let’s just try and make the best of a bad situation.

I should probably comment on said strike, just because it would be rude not to.  If I’ve had the pleasure of your company in this corner of the Blogosphere before, you may well think that I have an aversion to going on strike, as if saying the word to me is like waving a red rag to a bull – and it is fair to say that I’ve not had much time for some of the recent strikes.*

Perhaps surprisingly, however, I’m in favour of the stance Wikipedia is taking, despite the irony that I had intended to spend some time on it this morning brushing up on some basic concepts from a report I read yesterday.  I am, after all, very much in favour of free speech and thought it bad enough when the BBC censored a whole show just because Jeremy Clarkson had announced that those who went on strike “should be taken out and shot.”**

Anyway, let’s move on before you think that all I ever do is whinge about strikers.  I should probably pass comment on the new High Speed Rail Line (HS2) given that my research is concerned with it, but I’ll come back to that later, as it sometimes seems that if I’m not talking about strikes I’m blogging about trains.

Instead, I’m going to refer you to this BBC Article about a student who “rejected Oxford.”  After all, it was reading it which was the trigger point for opening Windows Live Writer just now, so I may as well continue to say something about it.  However, I’m going to cut corners in my journalism at this point and tell you to read the article for yourself, rather than regurgitating some choice quotes here.

My first comment is that Ms Nowell would have had much more weight to her argument if she’d been accepted to study there in the first place.  Any fool can put on a brave face and say “oh well, I didn’t want to get the place anyway” if we feel the interview has gone badly.  I also find it fairly ironic that she complains about it being “elitist” but was too narrow-minded to actually experience it for herself.

Having been an Oxford student myself, I can’t deny that I encountered a few people with an elitist attitude. But I actually enjoyed four years amongst some down-to-earth, broad-minded people and made some great friends.  On the other hand, from my experience of other universities, it would seem that not going to Oxbridge isn’t going to stop daddy from buying you a pony and paying for your crashed car.

And on that note, I’ve been work averse and wasted too much time this morning.  So I’ll love you and leave you – if you’re still missing Wikipedia I’m sure you can occupy yourself with the archived posts on the right.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the title of this post, I don’t have time to procrastinate any longer so I just nabbed the title of the song I was listening to.  Have a bonus point if you can name the artist.

*Does anyone actually have any time for them when they demand triple pay and the Union bosses have massive salaries anyway?

**Interestingly, they didn’t censor the union woman who in all seriousness compared Clarkson to Col. Gadaffi.