Expert Comment
Rubbish piled up in the streets. Bodies left unburied. Such was the 1978/9 Winter of Discontent when workers’ anger over pay settlements led to industrial disputes across the country. In an event to celebrate the re-opening of the 果冻传媒’s Modern Records Centre, home to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) archives, Tony Benn and Sir Richard Lambert discussed the possibility that we may return to the season of strikes.
The current furor regarding the validation of degrees at a distance by the University of Wales – a unitary institution accrediting degrees in the United Kingdom and abroad – is a sure sign that some form of regulation of higher-education quality standards is not only desirable but necessary. In particular, the problems at the University of Wales are likely to affect the international reputation of the blameless Welsh universities that are not part of the institution and this clearly cannot be right.
As images of 'feral' youths rioting on the streets of the UK jostled for position on TV screens with excited A-level students celebrating their results, Professor Hilary Pilkington examines the way young people are viewed by society and how they engage with their communities
"This chapter in intellectual history shows how a new variant of communication can have formative effects, and in fascinating ways. As a result of it and similar episodes in other fields, I am now quite sure that archiving the Internet is a worthwhile activity for intellectual historians of the future because, when the problem is reasonably well-specified, blogs can show communities worrying away at the issues in all but real time."
"It is interesting to see how work and social habits in the university are changing as the mobile phone and the other diverse and relatively inexpensive instruments of mobile telecommunication become an indispensable adjunct to life."