I blame the scapegoats (12 page)

This
week the National Audit Office has revealed that many youngsters from poorer
backgrounds are not going to university because of money worries. The
government will miss its target of getting 50 per cent of under-30s into
university by 2010 without more help for lower-income students, they warn.

Perhaps this problem is being approached the
wrong way round. If not enough young people are going on to further education,
then the solution is to reclassify as universities the places where school
leavers can currently be found. A few years back the government patted itself
on the back for creating lots of universities at minimal expense by taking down
all the signs that said 'Polytechnic' and renaming the buildings 'University of
Olde Towne Nearby'. This process should now be extended so that young people
find themselves at college wherever they are. So the bus shelter by the chip
shop where teenagers gather to smoke and give each other love bites will become
the University of Bus Shelter.

'There's nothing to do in this crappy
town,' says the first teenager, unaware that she is now in a philosophy
tutorial. The man with the beard and leather patches on his elbows, who they
thought was just waiting for a 137, will suddenly reply, 'But what is
"nothing" - indeed is "nothingness" possible? If we can be
conscious of such a concept we must therefore exist and in doing so thereby
negate the existence of the very concept we have just imagined.' And then the
kids stare at each other nervously and slink off to try to nick some cider
bottles from the crates behind the University of the Red Lion Car Park.

Another
way of getting more working-class graduates is a project which has been going
for some time now. Under this scheme students arrive on campus as angelic
middle-class eighteen-year-olds, and then rapidly metamorphose into snarling
working-class street urchins. The first Christmas holidays back from college
can be very distressing for their parents.

'Jocasta, darling, I thought we might go to
the gymkhana in the village after church. I thought you'd love to see
Drusilla's new pony . . .'

'Shove it, bitch! I is gettin' my eyelids
pierced and my tongue tattooed innit?'

'Oh. That's nice,
dear . . .'

Some of the most privileged kids entering
this scheme struggle to disguise how posh they really are. They have stickers
in the back of their Porsche saying 'My other car's a white van'. Their accents
veer wildly between upper-class toff and cockney wide boy, leaving them useless
for anything other than a career as a stand-up comic.

Many
working-class parents worry that their children will go off to university and
will be led astray by bad influences, especially if they end up at the same
college as Prince Harry* But, of course, the biggest worry is debt. Since the
abolition of student grants, students from poorer backgrounds have been put off
from going on to further education because they are anxious about the sum of
money they will owe after three years. This is really about confidence. To a
middle-class graduate, £3000 a year may not seem such a worrying sum to owe,
especially when they have seen their parents regularly spend that much on a few
tins of organic cat food from Waitrose. But many working-class kids would be
terrified by the prospect of leaving university owing thousands. That's nearly as
much as their dad spends on chunky gold jewellery.

Our students have to be adequately funded;
those
Lord of the Rings
posters
are not cheap, you know. The review of student funding should bring back
student grants so that all social classes can enjoy the three-year cushy
holiday at the taxpayers' expense that we had. It's great that more people are
going to university, but it must go further. People moan about dumbing down,
but more British people are well educated today than ever before. We're not dumbing
down, we're um . . . doing the opposite thing, up. Damn, I might know what the
phrase was if I was better educated.

*
There had recently been some negative press coverage about
Prince Harry's getting drunk at school one afternoon. Journalists were appalled
that anyone should start drinking so late in the day.

26
January 2002

Mike
Tyson said in his defence this week that he is not Mr Politically Correct.
Self-knowledge is a wonderful thing. I'd say the convicted rapist, who once
assaulted elderly car drivers in a road-rage incident, attacked journalists and
photographers, spends much of his time in hostess bars making obscene
crotch-grabbing gestures and is wanted on further sexual charges, is indeed
probably a bit of a longshot for the post of Head of Gender Awareness at the
Hackney Women's Unit.

Yet
Mike Tyson remains a role model for thousands. Where I live in South London far
more young working-class men have named their pet Rottweilers 'Tyson' than,
say, 'Melvyn Bragg', for example. You never see these blokes standing on the
common shouting, 'Yoko, come here!' or 'Germaine! Get down!'

But
this week their hero sank to another new low. In a staged press conference with
Lennox Lewis, he proved unable to wait until the fight proper and attacked
Lewis after just ten seconds, even biting his intended opponent in the foot.
The event was intended to generate publicity but it was far too successful. It
was the ugliest melee since that drinks party at Downing Street when Noel
Gallagher bumped into John Prescott.

Mike
Tyson is supposed to be on medication to control his temper.

They said to him, 'Mike, you know you're a
professional boxer - well, we're giving you these drugs to stop you being so
aggressive.' No wonder he's so cross. The visits to the doctor were always a
tense affair; last time his physician gave him a gentle tap on the knee with a
little rubber hammer. That doctor gets out of hospital next month some time.

Tyson
became world heavyweight champion at the age of twenty-back in 1986. But things
started to go wrong fairly quickly. Soon after, he was knocked unconscious when
he crashed his car into a tree, with the result that for a brief period the WBO
heavyweight title was held by a large horse chestnut. The tree then had lots of
gold teeth fitted and was photographed dating Miss Wyoming and pretty soon,
well, he just went to seed. Tyson regained the world title, but has since been
to prison, been fined for punching a referee and been banned for biting off an
opponent's ear. Still, it's better than bottling it all up. Onlookers were
particularly shocked when they saw him spit out Evander Holyfield's ear. He could
at least have popped it discreetly into a little napkin.

Maybe
Tyson should redirect his energies towards a sport less likely to bring out his
violent side. Figure skating, for example, or synchronized swimming. Because
this week's ugly scenes probably won't be the last, and every time the moral
commentators become even more outraged: why, these boxers - they are behaving
in a violent and aggressive manner! In fact, Tyson's notoriety only helps
generate more interest and put up his price. I don't know, maybe I'm being a
bit cynical here, but it's almost as if somebody somewhere is more interested
in the money than the sport. No, that's probably unfair, I take that back. If
the boxing authorities had the long-term interests of boxing at heart, they would
have nothing more to do with Mike Tyson. It would mean resisting the immediate
prize of a huge multi-million-dollar fight, of course, so that's obviously
going to happen.

But
his continued presence only gives ammunition to those who would have the sport
of boxing banned altogether. I can understand why some consider the sport to be
barbaric, but these are often people who have had more career choices than
those upon whom they would sit in judgement. When I was a young boy growing up
in Maidenhead, boxing was the only way out of the Home Counties ghetto. It was either
boxing or accountancy. Boxing, accountancy, law, medicine, the City,
journalism, business consultancy or becoming a database developer for one of
the emerging software companies springing up all along the M4 corridor. So for
us, sportsmen like Frank Bruno were real heroes. We saved up to get a ticket to
see him and those who were lucky enough to be there that night still talk about
that incredible performance he gave as Widow Twankey at the Theatre Royal,
Windsor.

Perhaps a career in pantomime could be the
way forward for Mike Tyson; though it might be hard sticking to the original
script with the former world champion on stage.

'Oh Buttons, my ugly sisters won't let me go
to the ball.' Buttons spots the ugly sisters downstage, grabs Christopher
Biggins and bites his ear off before punching Timmy Mallet into the orchestra
pit.

'Okay, now you can go
to the ball.'

'Oh,
um, but you're not supposed to knock them unconscious . . .' 'Oh yes I am!' 'Oh
no you're not!' 'Oh yes I fucking am!'

And the audience would shout back as one:
'All right, yes, you are! Whatever you say, Mike!'

It would be no more of a pantomime than what
we have at the moment.

2
February 2002

On
Wednesday the Queen will have been on the throne for exactly fifty years, but
tragically this joyous anniversary seems to be regarded with widespread
cynicism and apathy. Unemployed single parents lie around the house saying,
'Why should I care about some old woman who happens to be Queen?' 'Because I'm
your mother!' she says to them. 'Now get off the couch and go and tour Canada
or something.'

Social commentators are left wondering what
has happened to this unpatriotic society when so little respect is shown to our
head of state. How different from the happy innocence of Her Majesty's Silver
Jubilee back in 1977, they say. Back then, in village greens across Merrie
England, rosy-cheeked teenagers wearing black binliners and safety pins through
their noses spat and pogo-ed to the sound of the Sex Pistols and the Clash.
Yes, the whole nation came together in the unifying spirit of hate and anarchy,
the poet laureate Sir John Rotten penned his jubilee poem 'God Save the Queen,
the fascist regime that made you a moron', and thousands of young citizens with
mohicans had 'No Future' tattooed across their foreheads. Ah, happy days.

In fact, the idea that Britain was always a
nation of monarch-loving loyalists who spontaneously celebrated every
anniversary is about as believable as today's royal wedding vows. Henry III,
for example, ruled for fifty-six years but his Golden Jubilee was a complete
flop.

'Henry the Third?' they said. 'Erm, now which
one's that then? 'Cos Henry the Fifth is Agincourt, isn't he, and Henry the
Eighth is six wives and all that, so Henry the Third - is he the one with the
hump who killed the princes in the tower? No, that can't be right. . .' Charles
I was just approaching his Silver Jubilee when the committee arranging the
festivities decided it might be more fun to chop his head off. And then all the
jubilee mugs had to be repainted with just the stump of his neck showing. Other
royal celebrations were an even bigger washout: 'King Ethelred, have you made
all the preparations for the street party?' 'Oh my god, is that today? I
haven't even thought about it yet. . .'

And
now, in the twenty-first century, we are all supposed to dash out into the
street, introduce ourselves to the neighbours we've never met before and
organize a spontaneous community knees-up. Street parties are a strange
concept. You spend years telling your kids not to step out onto the road,
nearly yanking their arms off if they so much as put one foot off the pavement.
And then you plonk the kitchen table in the middle of the street and tell them
to eat their lunch there.

'What are you crying
for, darling?'

'I'm scared! It feels
wrong!' stammers the terrified child.

'Don't be silly. Now come on, eat up before
the table gets clamped!' (And then the following week her big brother wanders out
of Burger King chomping on a Whopper and the parents say, 'How revolting!
Eating your lunch in the middle of the street! Honestly, dear, can't you eat
that
indoors)

Street parties, like the royal family, are
just a bit out of fashion. Of course it is not so long since 'Palace' was the
soap opera of the moment. In the 1980s we had royal weddings, even more royal
babies and Diana and Fergie perfectly reflected the good taste and intellectual
rigour of the age. But suddenly the fairy tale went into reverse and the
princes turned into toads. Windsor Castle burned down after granny left her
vests drying on the paraffin heater and Princess Anne got divorced, prompting a
bitter court battle over custody of the horses.