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The Oxford Mail/Times reports today that the New Westgate [shopping centre is..] Vital For City

Confidential documents have revealed that Oxford would suffer serious economic damage if a hash is made of the Westgate redevelopment.

Plans for the £300m scheme to transform the shopping centre are due to be considered by a specially-convened planning committee later this month.

But papers leaked to the Oxford Mail show real concern at the consequences of the project failing.

When I was on the council I was wary of confidential documents that only councillors were supposed to see. If one were leaked there was always an outrage and often a bit of a witch hunt to try to find out who did it if it weren't already obvious. But most of the time, they did not relate to the specific wellbeing of an officer, as perhaps would details of a pay or disciplinary issue, but that much wider catch-all of "protecting commercial confidentiality" for the council's business affairs.

Well bugger that. It sounds to me from what little is in the Oxford Mail report that this is exactly the sort of information that is needed to help inform the public debate about what will be a massive disruption to our city for many years and which we are now led to believe could have more devastating long term efects on not just the city council's finances, in which we all have an over-riding interest since it is our money they are looking after but the general economic wellbeing and vitality of Oxford's city centre.

So. What precisely was confidential about these reports that the Oxford Mail got hold of? Perhaps the cabinet member for a better value Oxford could shed some light?

This project is already contentious. Has been in the air for, what, six years now already and has yet even to get planning permission. Frankly, I'm sceptical about the whole thing still and I hope they don't roll over and accept an application just because it might prove least worst for the city council, but local people have got to have a fully informed debate, which now cannot happen before the planning hearing happens if there really are such far reaching potential consequences for the city.

Yes, it's not a planning matter. they can still give planning consent and then pull out of the contract as landowner, but that is the bit we, the people, need to give a steer to our servants in government on.

In all the talk about cannabis and the oft repeated but rarely quantified assertions that today's drug is a different thing to that which our national leaders will have encountered in their heady youthful days when they clearly had a disregard for the law ill-befitting people who now want to tell us how to live our lives Matthew Norman in the Independent today relates his experience of having hallucinations on modern "skunk". Well don't believe it, or at least don't take it as definitive proof of the aforementioned unquantified assertion.

In the general spirit of confession that seems to be pervading this issue at the moment, I just want to say that the one and only time I have experienced any kind of hallucinogenic effect off cannabis was 22 years ago when I first tried the drug. After my first joint a friend came to take us to the pub. He was of a pale complexion and very white-blond hair. And in the car, in the dark, with street lights flashing overhead and listening to mid-eighties electro-dance music I became convinced that I was being kidnapped by a silvery skinned robotic alien! I didn't particularly enjoy that night, even once we got to the pub, but like any eighteen year old getting blind drunk I worked my way through it and tried again!

I've only really got back into the occasional spliff over the past couple of years - sometimes, for periods taking it quite a lot (though not, thanks to Thames Valley Police's zealous enforcement actions against local suppliers, at all this year). Yes, some of it feels stronger than others, but what it amounts to is similar to the difference between small beer and spirits in alcohol terms. You "feel" the "buzz" sooner. But I also find that the body has a self-regulating mechanism with cannabis. When the THC receptors are sated, or some such scientific explanation, you literally cannot smoke any more and I have had occasions when I have put out a half smoked reefer when that happens.

It seems to me a false differentiation to make, as Matthew Norman suggests, to attempt to categorize different strains as virtually different drugs. It would be far safer, and far better, to know the strength of what you are buying or taking before you do so, for sure. But just as with alcohol, there are times when you would like to have a quick snifter to take the edge off the stresses of the day, and other times when you would like to share a few lighter spliffs in company as with a few pints in the pub.

But in my experience, the most psycho-active cannabis I ever tried was twenty two years ago. Yes, as David Cameron related his experiences the other day, today's stuff sometimes smells stronger. But I have also noticed that that appears to be when the weed is fresh and slightly damp and as it dries properly that seems to diminish. Of far greater importance in terms of the harm it can do to you is the fact that more recently unscrupulous growers and dealers have been treating their cannabis with other substances, including, most dangerously, some kind of silicon spray to make it heavier and make more money out of a smaller quantity. This is an inevitable function of prohibition, and reclassification can only make this worse, and the effects on everyone involved more unpredictable and dangerous.

Transform has shown that despite reclassification to class C, use of the drug has continued a long term pattern of decline, not the unfettered growth the moral panic brigade would have you believe. Do not fall for it all. This is a politically motivated panic and one that does great discredit to the supposed intelligence of our "leaders".

Technorati Tags: cannabis, drugs laws, liberty

The new man at the helm of Universities UK, the "trade body" for university vice-chancellors, is saying that universities ought to be teaching remedial English lessons to students who arrive at university not being able to communicate very well in written English:

Universities 'must offer basic grammar classes' - Telegraph:
By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Last Updated: 1:48am BST 14/09/2007

Rick Trainor, the president of Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said that universities should do more to ensure graduates are properly prepared for the world of work.

Employers have already criticised the standards of basic skills among teenagers, saying too many are leaving school with a poor grasp of the three Rs.

Wlk b4 u rn plz!!!
Originally uploaded by Ryan Pierini

Now, he would apparently label me "nostalgic" for hankering after the days when pupils were able to string a sentence together by the time they left school. Apparently they more than make up for this basic inability in "new capabilities" in "IT, in group and independent working, in spoken presentations and in creativity well beyond those of their predecessors." After all, he says, every generation whines that the next is not "up to scratch".

I'm sorry, in the words of former Glasgow University Rector Richard Wilson, I don't believe it! This is in a country where we now spend nearly £80,000,000,000 a year on education. Prof Trainor can call me old fashioned all he likes, but I don't believe that it is acceptable to be spending that sort of money for people hoping to go on to higher education to be leaving school with only SMS level English. We are failing them not least if they enter work or higher education without the ability to communicate complex ideas in a way that everyone ought to be able to understand.

It's not that new a problem either. I remember as a new Hall Warden ten or so years ago being asked to "proof read" someone's essay which turned out to have the feel of a Joycean stream of consciousness with little structure, and even worse grammar. But I suppose the modern way of looking at this is that if we universities can take someone barely able to write on the basis that they can "Powerpoint" (which I am assured is now a verb in its own right) well and turn them into a world class graduate, our "value added" is significantly greater than if that person had arrived with a full set of basic academic skills after fourteen years of schooling.

And yes, I suppose if we're going to graduate them at all we're going to have to engage in this remedial work. But it should be with much protest not resignation. First and foremost we should be screaming out that this level of entry to higher education is just not good enough and that schools, not universities, ought to be addressing it.