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There's been much talk, most of it at least tacitly approving, of the restrictions or bans imposed in the past few days on so called "short selling" company shares. Most of you probably don't know that my first career, straight out of school., was as a trader on the stock exchange, followed by stints in several stock-broker firms mostly in private client advice and fund management, before I got into IT - which was as a result of my city experience. That's all a bit apropos of nothing really. After all, you'd be right in thinking that if I had been successful in this first career I might now be funding a think tank or something. But it gives a little background to my knowledge of this issue.

Short sellers, per se, are not the problem here it seems to me. Indeed the stock exchange relies on players prepared to go short - that's what market makers are effectively obliged to be prepared to do when they make a price.

Short selling is also an important way of the market getting the information it needs to make accurate value assessments. Longer term shareholders may have more emotional reasons than pure profit to resist pressure. Even perhaps just inertia. Sometimes even tax considerations. Short selling is also a way in which holders of stock can increase their returns on the stock by renting it to the short sellers. Little risk to them.

In my day, you could short sell, effectively, for fourteen working days. The London Stock Exchange used to work on a fortnightly settlement cycle. So for example a deal you do tomorrow, if tomorrow was a new cycle, would not need to be settled until the Monday in the middle of the next fortnightly cycle. If you went short tomorrow, you could, potentially, buy back for cash settlement (a special, premium service for urgent trades that was settled the next trading day) as late as the Thursday night before settlement day - so giving you fourteen trading days to see the stock fall and buy it back.

Nowadays everything is more or less "cash settlement" with positions settled the next working day - hence the self limiting requirement to borrow stock to deliver on short positions.

No, there's nothing wrong with short selling. Once you realize that the secondary market is stocks and shares is a big gambling den in any case, how can you outlaw one type of gambler and not another.

The real problem, it seems to me, with the run on HBOS shares for example, blamed on "short sellers", is the idea that some market players, hedge funds were cited, were "hunting in packs". Now, it is conceivable that even if there's nothing wrong with the fundamental financial health of a company, such a "pack" could be strong enough to provoke a run on a stock simply by weight of numbers. This, however, would be market manipulation. It would be legal, ethical, and even just plain sensible, to suspend trading in a particular share, or even in the whole market, if there was such illegal manipulation going on, or suspected. If a suspension was unwarranted, there should still be the equivalent of a "stewards inquiry" to determine if there was manipulation, a cartel operating, and if so how to punish them.

If the fundamentals were bad for HBOS, and actually I suspect that they were worse than the financial watchdogs have been saying - otherwise opening their books would have been enough to disprove the rumours - then the short sellers simply administered the coup de grace a bit more humanely perhaps than dragging it out for weeks more uncertainty.

I very much suspect that some hedge funds and private equity fund managers do aggressively hunt in packs occasionally. The fact that the secondary market is a gambling den makes it likely. That needs investigating. Market procedures for suspending trading in a market in which the true value of a company has become impossible to assess immediately need looking at. But having a go at the short sellers, who could, after all, just be the people maintaining liquidity in a particular market, is simply creating a scape-goat. The authorities should be ashamed.

...for members of the Oxford Union to vote tonight in favour of upholding the invitation to neo-nazis David Irving and Nick Griffin to speak next week comes with the news that Des Browne, Dennis McShane and Chris Bryant have said they will boycott future events at the Union if Monday's debate goes ahead with those two participating.

Me, I'm not a member so it's not my decision, and I am in two minds, having caught the bug and objected strongly when Irving was last invited in 2001 and I was on the City Council. On that occasion it was cancelled the night before when it became clear that events outside the union might make the city centre unsafe for ordinary folk going about their lawful business and leisure as Irving's supporters and Anti-Nazi League demonstrators promised to fight it out in the street outside and the police decided that it would be a public order problem.

My preference is for open and free debate - though I suspect that the two main protagonists on Monday do not really share that preference, and in a private member's club it should not be for anyone else to dictate who they have to speak to them. In a private member's club moreover made up of some of the most intelligent people in the land one would expect those members to be as well qualified as anyone to make up their own minds about the views of two of the country's most obnoxious people.

But if it's going to prove again, as I suspect, to be a threat to public order outside the Union, out of earshot from the privileged membership supping with the devils in their hallowed debating chamber and bars, they need to be told and not go ahead.

As a hall warden, I usually only get to know students during their first year when they are residents in my hall. Not being teaching staff there isn't a lot of scope for following people right through their courses here. But having a bar on site means that sometimes a few stay around the place as student staff at the bar. Last night the bar manager threw a party to celebrate his big three-oh and invited as many of the students that have worked for him in his eight years here as he could contact.

Many old faces, much excited squealing as people met those they hadn't seen for years, sharing fond or not so fond memories of Saturday nights crammed in behind a sweltering bar together pandering to the seemingly unquenchable alcohol dependency of their fellow students. But one in particular was an inspiring story of dedication and vocation. I like to think I got on well with this chap - he was quite a "lad" throughout the four (or maybe five) years he studied and worked here. An all round good egg.

He's now teaching in a large Oxford secondary school of which I was once a governor. He'd spent some time at another, in a more prosperous area of town and didn't really like it by the sound of it - the challenge of nurturing, shall we say, less disadvantaged kids had not been there. He had tried a spell at a Buckinghamshire grammar school and had hated the pushiness of kids of pushy ambitious parents.

So he had jumped at the chance of a permanent job at a school that has many more challenges - the highest ethnic mix in Oxfordshire, most kids from parts of Oxford that score highly (if that's the right word) in Indices of Multiple Deprivation, a school with a challenging, almost schizophrenic history of its own as a grant aided former boys school (T E Lawrence's Alma Mater) suddenly pushed into threefold expansion when the county changed from a two tier to three tier system a few years back.

And, by the sounds of it, he's absolutely loving it. Maybe it's just youth in the first flush of career satisfaction as yet untainted with cynicism, but he doesn't want to be a manager. He doesn't want to be head of a subject area, just in order to be able to progress onto a decent living wage. He wants to nurture kids. He's absolutely dedicated to bringing out the potential of pupils whose backgrounds make it all the harder for them to break out. He relishes the pastoral side and drawing out young successes. You wouldn't have him down as one of these fabled "right on" hippy dude educationalists on a mission to indoctrinate.

He'd love to stay there. He, and I, think that his particular school has massive potential to improve thee lives of those who pass through its doors and a positive contribution to a slightly down at heel part of this world-class educational city. But he can't. He can't afford to. After four years of scrimping his way through university and a couple of years now, I think, of starting salary, he's got little or no hope of being able to afford to make a real home for himself in Oxford. He's still flitting between shorthold tenancies like so many young professional people here. Even the government welched on its deal to pay off the student loans they imposed on him for agreeing to teach maths.

If he ends up having to take time out to earn some decent money elsewhere I hope he'll come back - it'll certainly be a big loss to those kids he's made it his entire ambition to serve if he doesn't. What I really hope actually is that I can get Oxfordshire Community Land Trusts off the ground quickly enough to keep him here and give people like him some real security if they choose to enhance this city with their skills and dedication.

What happened to the era (maybe it's only a nostalgic fiction) where school teachers were amongst the most valued members of the community, not perhaps big earners, but looked after by the communities that hired them to give their young a good chance in life? Those figures like Jude Fawley's Mr Phillotson. It reminded me of some words of Michael Moore:

Teachers, thank you so much for devoting your life to my child. Is there ANYTHING I can do to help you? Is there ANYTHING you need? I am here for you. Why? Because you are helping my child - MY BABY - learn and grow. Not only will you be largely responsible for her ability to make a living, but your influence will greatly affect how she views the world, what she knows about other people in this world, and how she will feel about herself. I want her to believe she can attempt anything - that no doors are closed and no dreams are too distant. I am entrusting the most valuable person in my life to you for seven hours each day. You are, thus, one of the most important people in my life! Thank you. ("Stupid White Men", Regan Books, HarperCollins New York, 2001)

And it made me want to take an interest again as a governor...and maybe do a bit better at it this time round.

And it was probably the first time in ten years I've managed to stagger out of a bar into the six am blinding daylight - I hope the Hinksey Park campaigners will forgive my self-indulgence!

Technorati Tags: affordable housing, education, oxford, Oxford Brookes University

Rush Limbaugh really ought to stay away from stories about other peoples' legitimate drug consumption.

I had an early meeting yesterday of a governors' committee where someone mentioned this Guardian article from Monday about how Oxford and Cambridge Universities have proven lukewarm or downright icy towards the idea that they should sponsor New Labour academies.

Oxbridge snub to government on academies

Polly Curtis and Patrick Wintour
Monday December 3, 2007
The Guardian

Oxford and Cambridge universities have turned down ministerial attempts to persuade them to adopt a city academy, the Guardian has learned. Their decisions deliver a fresh blow to the government, which is trying to raise the academic profile of the schools by wooing top universities to sponsor one. Confidential documents, seen by the Guardian, reveal that Cambridge has vetoed the idea to avoid any negative fallout should the school fail or receive bad press. Sponsoring a school could also present a "conflict of interest" over admissions for pupils at the school, it says.

Which is interesting, and something itself of a turn-around on several hundred years' history. Some of the existing "Oxbridge Academies" may only take pupils to 13 years old - St John's or King's in Cambridge, New College or Christ Church in Oxford. Another, Magdalen in Oxford, is a leading feeder school to the universities' colleges. Others not necessarily located in the same place have direct, often founding, links with colleges - such as Winchester and New College or Eton and King's College. Then there are innumerable local schools the colleges of the two universities have effectively founded through their ecclesiastical benefices.

The formal recruiting links may have been broken with the demise of closed scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge but there can be no doubting that "conflicts of interest" were built into the Oxbridge system from the start. Now, that's not to say that it would be a good move to set up a new possible conflict of interest. As noted in that article the decision of my own university, Oxford Brookes University, to participate in the new Oxford academy that will replace The Peers School next year, was not without controversy. And some of my own qualms were similar to those of the head of the PGCE course at Oxford - that our school of education has links with many local schools, that our widening participation and outreach programs work with all local schools, and how would all this be affected if we had a founding stake in just one local school.

Another issue I'd have with the country's two leading universities starting academies is precisely that academies cannot select on ability. It seems to me that this is one case where selection could be justified, and probably boarding too - two national schools run by the two leading universities, able to pull in the brightest and the best who would benefit most from being taken up a level in their studies to equip them for the academic rigours of the world's best universities. And why not? Public money funds things like national sporting academies which are selective on a different sort of ability.

Neither of us are large cities where our universities' local connections could provide a base for such an academy - unlike perhaps Imperial or UCL who have the huge and still growing "market" of London schools to mix in. Though I suppose there is an argument that more people in our respective counties should be helped to get into Oxbridge because we should benefit more from the presence of those universities in our midst. Could you ever find a fair way of sticking a pin in the map somewhere and saying that only kids in this catchment area/city/county have the chance of an Oxbridge partnered school?

But how about another idea altogether - that they set up a virtual academy. Just as Oxford and Cambridge are, along with Imperial, in a different league of universities worldwide, so their prospective students need to be brought into that different league as early as possible. I know that in my case, my hopes of an Oxbridge education were probably dashed by the time I was about thirteen or fourteen, when my interest at school "peaked", for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I was not driven or permitted to go as fast as I could go academically and as a result became the disinterested teenager in many lessons - coasting on previously acquired knowledge and skills.

One of the great advantages of private school was that I had lots of teachers who were academics and not just educationalists. This made it easier to place me with a mentor for S level subjects for example which were much less related to the curriculum of the day and more to "added-value" academic skills and disciplines like historiography instead of just history, the study of literary criticism instead of just literature and so on. I just don't think that state sector teachers have the time, after all the paperwork and so on, to indulge their academic fancies in the same way somehow - it's not to do with their skills and abilities but the sausage machine system of state schools. So an Oxford University "Virtual Academy" could work like the Open University for bright kids, to add value to the knowledge and skills they gain from their existing state school. To run summer camps and crammer camps for the brightest and the best to keep them that little bit more stimulated and their learning skills on top form.

Every state school has to have a program now for dealing with "gifted children" in their Special Educational Needs strategy. Many I know from school governors discussions struggled to define "gifted" fairly to all sorts of gifts. But here would be one way of targeting a particular sort of academic giftedness - you could tie up an academically bright child whose talents were not being fully realized because of being thrown in with the mix of average pupils with a real life academic, or even an undergraduate student who could mentor them through extra tuition. They could create online courses, like the Open University, that schools around the country could be encouraged to send their brightest pupils on to add to their in house education.

And in return, those schools that use the services of the Oxbridge Virtual Academy would have the benefit of retaining their brightest and best locally, keeping them as an example to younger kids and perhaps even filtering down their enthusiasm and additional skills to others in their "home" school. It seems like a win-win idea to me. No doubt both universities would say that their existing widening participation activities already do much of this. But I think actually harnessing it as an identifiable "virtual institution", part of the Oxford or Cambridge "brand", would take it that one step further, make it, and them, more visible and perhaps even widen the opportunities beyond the schools they already choose to co-operate with in their W-P programs.