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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

A: Before the government bans their legal substance of choice...

It was probably too good to be true, a "legal high" giving similar effects to ecstasy. And so it proves to be. The government, following orders from the bansturbators at Euro High Command (who says we still have control of our own domestic laws any longer?) is to move to ban BZP, Benzylpiperazine. According to the Guardian it is likely to become a class C substance by the end of the year:

Move to ban stimulant BZP | Science | The Guardian:

Owen Bowcott

The Guardian, Tuesday March 4 2008 Article history

BZP, a psychoactive stimulant promoted as a legal alternative to ecstasy and amphetamines, is to be banned in Britain. The government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs will today begin the process of making it a controlled substance, following a recommendation from the European Union. It is likely to become a class C drug before the end of the year. BZP was once almost marketed as an antidepressant until its similarity to amphetamines was noted. It has been associated with vomiting, anxiety, insomnia, mood swings and seizures. It is already a controlled drug in eight EU countries. The EU action is binding and requires all EU member states to take legal action within a year. There has been no direct evidence of BZP causing death, although it has been linked to several fatalities in the UK.

I haven't tried it yet. I was going to a few weeks ago when I felt a bit down and thought it might be safer than trying to get a black market ecstasy tablet or some MDMA - it's really good for social situations that make me nervous and where I would not want to get drunk just to be able to strike up a conversation with strangers.

The whole sorry saga highlights just how idiotic the drugs laws are, and in particular the British classification system that Jacqui Smith has recently re-inforced with her deadly new death strategy. If BZP becomes a class C drug, while those it seeks to emulate are class B, amphetamines, and class A the even less harmful MDMA/ecstasy, where is the science behind that? Yup, you're right, there isn't any.

They may as well make sugar and chocolate class Bs on a whim if you ask me. Both are "linked" to several thousand fatalities each year in the UK. There's better science there it seems to me to justify that. But more than this, no doubt the search will go on for another substance, as yet uncontrolled, that will give similar effects, and the drugs laws will play catch up once again after legal businesses have built up a good trade in unadulterated doses because they can operate in country in clean, clinical lab factories and not kitchen top clandestine chemistry sets.

Alexis Rowell, of the Belsize Lib Dems blog, gets a fabulous write-up from Peter Stothard of the TLS:

A worm's eye for politics

After decades of living in North London, meeting politicians (too many) and writing about politics (too much), I'm beginning to feel for the first time that I'm genuinely represented by one.

No, not Glenda Jackson, the movie-star-turned-axe-face-of-the-old Left and my veteran Member of Parliament here in the Hampstead part of Camden. There is still some way to go before the House of Commons itself has anything for me.

No, not Lord Adonis of Camden Town, the former Andrew Adonis, the closest thing to a natural TLS-reader in the Blair and Brown governments. His choice of title for his appointed place in the Upper House of our legislature, while pleasing, does not make him strictly any representative of mine.

I do, however, have a local Councillor. He is called Alexis Rowell, a Liberal Democrat, an environmental campaigner, a blogger, a man with a wormery in his garden and good advice on electricity suppliers - and, mirabile dictu, he deals with his constituents about what is happening in the streets around us.

He genuinely represents.

Read the rest at The Times - nice one Alexis!