Matt Bellingham, Lecturer in Music Technology

Way to Blue: Happy Birthday Nick

June 19th 2013 would have been Nick Drake’s 65th birthday.

Nick Drake was one of several wonderful musicians to emerge from the fertile folk and folk-rock scenes of the 1960s and early 1970s. While always a solo artist he worked with some of the great musicians of the time; Richard Thompson played on his first album, and John Martyn’s Solid Air was written for and about Drake. Nick Drake’s work is intimate, intricate and highly personal; the themes are universal and the performances captivating.

Drake was not, however, a good ‘fit’ with the folk scene of the late 1960s. Although folk music was enjoying a revival he was not singing traditional songs. His performances were of original material which was quite dissimilar to traditional folk music. Drake’s music did not make use of catchy sing-along choruses and he was cripplingly shy, making live performance difficult. Neither did his recordings find a ready audience. A review in Melody Maker described his first album, rather dismissively, as ‘an awkward mix of folk and cocktail jazz’. His records, now considered classics, sold poorly; his last album, Pink Moon, sold fewer than 5,000 copies in his lifetime.

The dominant narrative around Nick Drake casts him as a tragic, doomed figure; he is frequently portrayed as the ‘Romantic poet’ of the scene. Drake suffered with depression, and it is assumed that the overdose that killed him was deliberate. It is easy to look at the subsequent fame that he achieved and add him to the list of artists for whom contemporaneous respect, fame and fortune was denied. Robert Johnson was another musician whose records sold poorly in his lifetime; his posthumous success started in the early 1960s, at which time Nick Drake became a fan of his work. The story arc of the ‘tragic genius’, however, often overshadows the sheer quality of Drake’s recorded output.

There is a long list of creative people who have suffered with depression, from Beethoven to Cobain. The subject has both mainstream and academic representation; Stephen Fry has written and spoken widely and with candour about his life with bipolar disorder and there is a significant body of research looking at the links between creativity and mental health. There remains, however, a stigma surrounding mental health which is the focus of the Time To Change campaign.

There is also strong evidence that many creatives who develop drug or alcohol dependencies are self-medicating due to depression and/or anxiety. Some genres of music became intrinsically linked with substance abuse; for example, Charlie Parker’s genius was incorrectly assumed by many aspiring musicians to be the result of his heroin addiction, leading to a jazz scene seriously blighted by drug use.

Thankfully, organisations such as Mind offer significant support and advice. Understanding of mental health issues is increasing in the creative sector as well as in the wider community.

Nick Drake’s birthday is an opportunity to be thankful for the music that he created. It is also as good a chance as any to make sure that we, and those around us, are safe, supported and respected.

Matt Bellingham

Dr Mahmoud Emira, Centre for Developmental and Applied Research in Education (CeDARE)

To ban or not to ban 'faith based' school selection?

Before I attempt to answer this controversial question, I’d like to re-phrase it into this instead: “Why do parents want to send their children to a ‘faith-based’ school?”

On the one hand, parents might think, among other reasons, that faith schools are outstanding or they might just like their children to know about a specific religion, even though they might/might not be practicing. If this is their choice, then it might not be fair to deprive them/their children of their right. We live in a free democratic multicultural society, where we tolerate and respect members of different backgrounds. This is one of the key principles of living in Britain today.

However, this ‘faith-based’ selection is likely to be unfair and might lead in the future to ‘ethnicity-based school selection’, which could be the worst form of discrimination. Instead of promoting inclusivity and equality, such selection strategy is likely to cause segregation among different groups in society.

On the other hand, teaching tolerance and respect to our children is a collective responsibility where the family, school and the wider society (e.g. the media) are involved in the process. To have schools where all pupils follow a particular religion might not necessarily instil racism and bigotry in these pupils. Therefore, parents’ concerns in this regard might be unfounded.

My conclusion: Going back to the original question, people have different preferences and lifestyles but there may be a need to ensure schools are inclusive and can accommodate the needs of all parents regardless of their religious background. Therefore, my answer would be to ban this admission strategy.

However, the fact that ‘faith-based’ schools are often over-subscribed is an indication of the popularity of these schools among parents, and that’s why there should be an unbiased admission criterion in place to ensure equal opportunities, e.g. oversubscribed schools ‘must allocate at least half of places to children without reference to faith’, as indicated by the government spokesman in this article.

Failing that, there might be other fairer selection strategies such as ‘lottery-based’ or ‘quota-based’.

In the ‘lottery-based’ strategy, which might be straightforward, parents and their children will be randomly selected before a place can be allocated in their preferred faith school regardless of the population within their local community.

The ‘quota-based’ selection is likely to take this into account (i.e. the religious and non-religious population in the community) and allocate places accordingly in a proportionate manner, but this might be more complicated!

Dr Mahmoud Emira

Paul Brighton, Head of Department of Media and Film

The Queen's Coronation

I was born in 1959, and, like most people of my age group, can remember watching the big Royal media events of the 1960s and 70s: the “Royal Family” documentary of 1969, followed by the Investiture of Prince Charles (clustered round the school TV set at St Michael’s Primary in Tettenhall). Then came the wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips in 1973, and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. But I was always conscious of having missed The Big One: the Queen’s Coronation of 1953.

I remember the family stories of Mum and Dad claiming their places on my grandparents’ settee in Wolverhampton to watch this strangely shaped box on the other side of the front room flickering uncertainly on a June morning in 1953. Great Auntie Violet came from a few doors down, and Uncle Joe and Auntie Vera popped round from the neighbouring street to join in. While others made do with the radio, my family were among the new media elite: watching this thing called television.

And now, at last, I’ve been able to join them – albeit sixty years late. The entire service and both processions – to and from the Abbey – were relayed on BBC Parliament on June 2, the sixtieth anniversary. And what a revelation it was!

There were no reporters in the crowd, asking vacuous questions. No panel of studio guests and “experts”. No so-called celebrities telling us what the Queen said when they picked up their gongs. No crossing over to assorted locations during the “boring” bits to “break it up” for the viewer. No endless repetitions of “Over to you, Sophie!” None of that. Just straight, well-informed, authoritative commentary on what we were seeing, from intelligent men and women, who never talked down to us. Yes, perhaps Richard Dimbleby was a bit reverential by 2013 standards. But Brian Johnston was there to redress the balance, sounding jovial even then, but never crossing the line into irreverence.

None of them appeared on screen. There was no presenter. This wasn’t about “TV personalities”. They knew they were only there at all on sufferance. Churchill, as Prime Minister, had been in favour of keeping to the pattern of George VI’s coronation: a purely radio event. That didn’t stop him milking the cameras during the procession: upstaged only by the two Queens: Salote of Tonga, and, of course, Elizabeth herself.

Having watched the full seven hours, I then tried out the radio output. BBC Radio 4 Extra rebroadcast the evening round-up from June 2, 1953. Here was a different world. Still reverential and respectful, but with lots of regional accents from all around Britain, plus link-ups around the world; complete with songs, impromptu good wishes, and an excitable reporter shouting that, yes, the Queen had now signalled that the beacons should be lit!

Radio was the mature, confident, accomplished medium. Television was the hesitant, polite, nervous guest, standing awkwardly at the Abbey door, clutching its hat, hating to intrude. But, oh, what a refreshing change! Over to you, Richard.

Paul Brighton

Andrew Lane, Professor of Sports and Exercise Psychology

What makes a winning team?

Around this time of the sporting calendar, talk invariably comes round to the issue of what makes a winning team. Pundits start picking their dream teams. Various combinations of players are suggested but being individually brilliant is only part of what matters. “We all dream of a team of Carraghers” is a song lovingly sang by the Liverpool fans; a song that pays testament to the fighting spirit of Jamie Carragher. Would this team be successful?

Yes, they would work hard, but they might not score many goals (Jamie scored 4 goals in 508 appearances). A successful team needs people to work hard and to share the common goal of being prepared to put the team goal ahead of their personal goal. In terms of who to select, this then depends on what you want the team to do and how they want to play. It's about each player knowing her or his role and how that fits into the team's goal. A team is as strong as its weakest part. A soccer player who harasses the opposition into mistakes can often go unnoticed but without such a contribution, the brilliant centre forward will never get the ball. 

The above does not only apply to soccer. I build research teams and try to place people into positions in a similar way to a soccer manager. We can’t all be centre forwards that wait for passes to get the glory goals. I start by looking for “midfielders” – someone who will do a lot of the running, being tenacious in their effort; they cover a lot of ground and are not picked for their creative thinking skills.

I pick someone with an eye for detail, to follow the logic of arguments, to work out the relative contribution of the work. This is similar to a central defender who reads the game, intercepts the ball via cunning and skill rather than toil. He/she scores goals from corners by finding the gaps and reading the game. I want strikers who want to score goals – in research terms this is the person who will be able to articulate why this work is needed, how it will contribute and ultimately, why it should be publishable. PhD students often begin their careers as midfielders, doing the work, learning about attack and defence; or in academic terms, learning about all the jobs that need to be done.

PhD students become strikers as they seek to publish their work, get their names on papers, or make the headlines by their proposing and testing brilliant ideas. Academics get to work with such people, and if you put them in a winning team, they will flourish. Let's face it, Ronaldo, currently of Real Madrid, brilliant as he is, is unlikely to hear fans sing a similar song to him as they do to Carragher.

Andy Lane

Dr Chris Young is a senior lecturer within the Department of Biology and the Environment within the School of Applied Sciences and is also the award leader for BSc Animal Behaviour and Wildlife Conservation.

Summer badger cull

In the next few weeks trials will be taking place with trained contractors attempting to cull badgers (largely by shooting) to wipe out TB in parts of Somerset and Gloucestershire. TB is endemic in some local populations of badgers and is also present in some cattle and it is thought (though the link is as yet wholly unproven) that TB is transmitted from wild badgers to individual cattle resulting in the need to destroy entire herds. Cattle farmers are trying to make a living and TB has undoubtedly a big impact on individual farms and where it is present it can devastate individual farmer’s livelihoods.

If we bear this in mind, and despite widespread publicity by the Government, it is difficult to see what the medium to long-term benefits could be, as an attempted total cull would be extremely difficult to implement. The best estimates put the success rate at ~ 70% - achieved by getting rid of entire setts. This assumes, therefore, that the 30% remaining won’t be infected with TB. Badgers have large territories and males in particular can be wide-ranging and therefore missing one infected animal would seem to render the effort somewhat redundant.

All the evidence for successful species (and that is certainly that is what badgers are) suggests that by getting rid of a population in an area merely opens up opportunities for new individuals to colonize an area. The cull therefore would seem to be counter-intuitive in that it is providing new territories for badgers to exploit and potentially bringing in TB from outside the cull area in any case.  Badgers occupying a territory keep others out, removing them encourages greater movement of other badgers around the countryside.

Throughout the UK we are implementing conservation efforts to protect, preserve and actively encourage our native flora and fauna, yet in this instance one of our most widely-loved and charismatic species is being unfairly targeted when other options are available.

For example in Wales the Government is implementing vaccinations in TB areas to encourage a longer-term benefit. 

It would seem to be that the current badger culling proposals are at best a stop-gap measure for a long-term issue and at worst are an ill-thought through exercise in ecological vandalism…I fear it is the latter.

For the differing perspectives see:

The Badger Trust: http://www.badger.org.uk/Content/Home.asp

NFU: http://www.nfuonline.com/science-environment/bovine-tb/

Dr Chris Young

Jim Bethel, Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Wellbeing, and the Chair of the Royal College of Nursing Emergency Care Association

By Accident or design?

There has been much press coverage recently concerning the apparent crisis in emergency services, and in particular the provision of care within hospital emergency departments.

In remaining clinically active I am able to appreciate first hand some of the problems associated with continuing to provide high quality and effective emergency care which has been the hallmark of UK systems. Many other countries envy the way in which, since mandated by the Government in 2001, we have managed to see, treat, discharge or admit 98% of patients in the emergency department (ED). Many envy the way in which this service driven target has empowered and enabled nurses and other non-medical staff to take on a more independent role in providing care; in the department where I am employed I work alongside paramedics, physiotherapists and physician assistants in providing care to patients without the requirement for them to wait and be seen by medical staff.

Disadvantages of this target driven culture were amply highlighted in the Francis Report into the crisis at Mid-Staffordshire hospital; the consequences of failure were seen as so great that any means were employed to achieve them. The pressure to ‘process’ patients to discharge or admission is great and I have had to move some patients that I have seen simply to meet the 4 hour standard – whether this was in the patients best interests or not. The problem as I see it is two-fold.

Firstly, the 4 hour standard has always been seen as an emergency care target rather than a target for the whole health set up – thus many patients may be moved inappropriately to meet the standard simply because bed occupancy in hospitals is so high – the Department of Health recommends occupancy levels of around 85%, whereas many are at least 10% higher than this. One of the principle underlying reasons for this is a continued lack of seven day working in the NHS – problems are invariably more acute at the beginning of the week when patients who could have been discharged over the weekend have to wait until Monday or Tuesday for someone in a senior enough position to make this decision.

Secondly, GP and primary care services are limited and patients have a very poor perception of them; since 2004 GPs have been able to opt out of the provision of ‘out of hours’ care and many indeed have. Private providers have taken their place and this has often been to the detriment of patient trust and even patient welfare, such as in the well publicised case of the German locum GP flown in for a weekend’s work who overdosed a patient with morphine - the patient subsequently died. The public appear to have little faith in primary care services – I will often hear people say things like ‘they would have sent me here anyway’, ‘I couldn’t get an appointment for 10 days’ when attending the ED. The new 111 telephone system appears to have exacerbated this, with some reporting a 25% increase in workload.

In short, hospital emergency departments are struggling because they are not supported by other areas within the hospital, or by services provided to patients in the community.

Jim Bethel

Professor Stephen Badsey, Professor of Conflict Studies

Better This Time? Afghanistan as the 'Graveyard of Empires' 1979-2014

The 25th anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal announcement by the Soviet Union

In February 2013, President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of major United States combat units from Afghanistan by the end of next year. It is impossible not to hear the historical echoes.

Just 25 years ago, in May 1988, the Soviet Union announced the withdrawal of its main combat forces from the war in Afghanistan that it had begun in 1979, leaving behind a client regime with highly unreliable armed forces to face an uncertain future. The withdrawal was completed by 1989, and by 1992 Afghanistan had collapsed into civil war. Already at the end of 1991 the Soviet Union had itself fragmented into its present-day states.

The Soviet-Afghan War did not cause this collapse, nor were the Soviet Union’s soldiers forcibly expelled. Rather, Soviet generals had exhausted their political capital by failing to provide an “exit strategy” or stable conclusion to an unpopular and bloody war. Once more the boast was heard that in military terms Afghanistan has for centuries been the “graveyard of empires”, the limit of what military force can do.

The five years after the coming to power of the victorious Taliban regime in Kabul in 1996, hardly an era of stability or peace, was nevertheless with hindsight the only brief period since 1979 that foreign armies have not been sent to fight in Afghanistan. This has been a generation that has known only war against invaders, with profound effects on the country and the region, merging international conflict with Afghanistan’s eternal internecine rivalries and blood feuds. The movement of Afghan guerrillas and refugees move back and forth across the highly porous Afghan-Pakistan border has been a major factor in the complex and destabilising politics of the region.

The Afghan opium crop has increased substantially, turned into heroin for international distribution, with impact felt on the streets of Britain and other western countries. The chance to fight the Soviets after 1979 also made Afghanistan a training ground for the radicalisation of foreign extreme jihadists, including Osama Bin Laden, with continuing and far-reaching consequences.

With its victory in 1996, the Taliban offered sanctuary to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and refused to hand him over following the “9/11” terrorist attacks, prompting the United States’ military intervention to successfully remove the Taliban from power in 2001, prompting another war. In 2006 the war expanded with a substantial NATO commitment in support of the United States that has become a critical and controversial test of NATO solidarity and effectiveness. This has included British forces, whose failure to achieve the success expected from their previous high reputation has also generated controversy.

Long before this year’s announcement, the United States had given up any hope of leaving Afghanistan a better and more prosperous country than in 2001, and has settled for going home. NATO countries including Britain will also withdraw their combat troops by next year. Staying behind will be training and support units for President Hamid Karzai’s rebuilt Afghan Army, to face whatever the future has in store. With warnings of the Soviet Union’s experience constantly in mind, the United States will have to do very well in the next year or so to be able to count the Afghan War of 2001-2014 as any kind of a victory.

Stephen Badsey

Dr William Pawlett, Senior Lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies. William's teaching areas include a module, based on his research, entitled Body, Sexuality and Identity, as well as final year modules on Global Media/Global Culture and Media, Consumerism and the Body.

FHM’s Top 100 Sexiest Women 2013

FHM’s top 100 sexiest women – decided by popular vote and featuring the likes of Mila Kunis and Kelly Brook  – is undoubtedly commercially successful, but how might we think critically about this publication and its success? There is a now standard critique of such publications running along the lines that such sexualised images of women are demeaning and exploitative – primarily of the women photographed but also of the men who buy such magazines. Yet, critiques of this sort have lost ground in recent years as both male and female pundits (some claiming to be feminist) have argued that the women featured are displaying a new assertiveness, a liberation, that they are exercising power over men and are fashioning careers for themselves on terms, more or less, of their own choosing. There is something of a deadlock between these two views, so how might we re-think these issues beyond this impasse?

Firstly, if we place the FHM 100 sexiest women in a much broader historical context it becomes clear that there is a very long tradition of concern over images and their power to mislead or corrupt. For example, the Old Testament issues a clear prohibition on images, images of male and female bodies as well as of the “graven images” of false idols. By the 19^th century erotic art, including studies of the nude, were being distinguished from pornography on the basis that art enables a detached aesthetic reflection that appealed to the intellect, while pornography seeks to enflame the senses provoking an immediate reaction which overwhelms the intellect. More recently it has become fashionable to claim that the only real difference between erotica and pornography is the social class of the consumer.

If we examine FHM’s 100 sexiest women we find that the images are surprisingly tame, or rather that they are both prim and prurient. There is no nudity and actually not that much flesh is on display; if underwear is revealed it is pinned or taped into position to prevent any unseemly revelations. Does this suggest that the magazine is erotic rather than pornographic? – Not at all. The images on display are so carefully constructed, so stage-managed in that they play to the recognised ‘strengths’ of each model, so stereotypical that they do not encourage or invite the reflection, imagination or seduction associated with erotica. Instead, the images seem only to seek to verify or justify the inclusion of the various candidates within the ‘Top 100’; that Mila really deserved to be voted eighteen places ahead of Beyoncé etc. There is something of the marketing brochure or the curriculum vitae about this publication with Kunis et al struggling hard, with their photographers, make-up crews and publicists, to convince us that they are among the ‘100 sexiest women in the world’.

Neither erotic nor pornographic and beyond any easy distinction between the liberatory and the exploitative, the publication is nevertheless a reflection of current times: the choking atmosphere of competitiveness, the meaningless abstraction of rankings and league tables, the parodies of democracy, the desperate uncertainties of status, identity and sexuality and, finally, the reduction of all values to that of commercial success.

William Pawlett

Lucy Pursehouse, Senior Lecturer in the University's School of Health and Wellbeing. Lucy's main areas of teaching include Innovations in Mental Health and Exploring Contemporary Issues in Mental Health.

Last week was National Mental Health Awareness Week in the United Kingdom.

Now let’s talk about Mental Health!

In an era of economic uncertainty with rising unemployment, never has there been a more important time to consider the topic of mental health.

Current Department of Health (DoH, 2012) statistics would indicate that mental health conditions are common and also on the increase, with 1 in 4 people being affected in any given year. These statistics are based on those who have received a clinical diagnosis, either from their General Practitioner or Specialist Mental Health Services. However, it may be fair to say many more people go undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or suffer in silence. Why may this be, when there have been so many advances in health and social care?

Firstly, consideration has to be given to the huge amount of stigma that is attached to having ‘a mental health problem’; the term itself derives from Greek meaning symbol/mark of disgrace. Historical writings would indicate that issues of stigma have been tightly woven into the fabric of mental health, and that it continues to be deeply entrenched in our individual and collective psyche.  Much of this has been and continues to be fuelled in part by powerful literary, artistic as well as media representations, that very subtly shape our perceptions of mental health.

Clearly stigma is a factor that holds people back from seeking help. Furthermore, many who have received a diagnosis cite that issues relating to stigma then follows them, hindering career progress, fuelling discrimination and acting as a block to gaining employment or staying supported in a job whilst in recovery. Therefore, one of the first aims of any serious policy directive has to be centred on addressing and tackling this issue, and without this commitment, Mental Health will continue to be viewed with fear, misunderstanding and something not to be talked about.

‘No health without mental health – implementation framework’ (2012) places the issue of stigma reduction as one of its six key objectives, along with providing more positive experiences of care and support. Both objectives, if fully realised, may lead to the fulfilment of a further objective, that of more people having better mental health which again is ever more salient in the existing difficult economic climate. Similarly, a recent initiative led by two leading charities, ‘Mind’ and ‘Rethink for Mental Illness, funded by the DoH, is taking steps to tackle the above issues, with talk and action. The following link takes you to the webpage for this campaign 'Time to Change'.

This exciting programme is the largest in England to date, and hopefully will prove to be an important catalyst to facilitate meaningful and permanent change. To not only put an end to some of the negative associations we may consciously or subconsciously hold, but also provide opportunity to reframe these in a more positive light.

Finally, and most importantly, for this to become firmly embedded, it needs to continue to draw on the voices of those with lived experience of mental health to provide the synergy to deliver creative and responsive ways to raise awareness of Mental Health and eradicate stigma and discrimination.

Lucy Pursehouse

Pliny Soocoormanee, Administrative Assistant and an active member of the University of Wolverhampton’s LGBT Staff Network

IDAHO Celebrations

So, what’s IDAHO?

A day to celebrate the seventh least densely populated state of the USA? Sadly, no. In fact, IDAHO is that odd acronym which stands for the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, and it took place this past Friday, May 17.

But is there not already a Gay pride or ‘Pride’; is that not all the same thing?  The reasons are different. ‘Pride’ started initially as a protest movement, a protest against a repressive society. Over the years however ‘Pride’ has evolved to become more of celebration.

IDAHO is important for another reason. Twenty three years ago, homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness from the World Health Organisation. Distant are those days when electric shock therapy was advocated to “cure” homosexuality. Distant indeed are the days of Section 28, especially when this year a resounding majority of MPs voted in favour of same-sex marriage in the House of Commons. Yet while massive progress has been achieved, there is still much work to be done.

Homophobia is still present, bullying in schools is a major concern and Transphobia is sadly alive. The old clichés are still present and scapegoating LGBT people for all sorts of ills is not uncommon - it has even claimed that the recent volatility in North Korea was somehow linked to same sex marriage! 

Certainly, changing attitudes is a slow and on-going process and increasing visibility of the LGBT community helps this process. Therefore it is a symbolic gesture on IDAHO to fly a rainbow flag. Such symbols are important as they can send a strong signal that we would like our environment to be inclusive of everyone and welcoming to LGBT persons.

But it is sad to note that in more than 75 countries, among them several commonwealth countries, homosexuality is still criminalised – often a relic of colonisation. It has been argued that in some cultures homosexuality is not accepted and we cannot “force” them to accept the LGBT community. But it would appear that this argument is unsound. Culture is not immutable. Indeed many countries today that are open and accepting were in another time very repressive. It seems that some people play with the vernacular of cultural defence to veneer their homophobia. We need to recognise that people have different sexual orientation and gender identity. Equally, it is important to recognise that we all have the same capacity for love and compassion – the capacity to be simply human.

Pliny Soocoormanee