Dengl 11 A Statue of Mary Kingsley for Trafalgar Square

A Statue on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth The Case for Mary Kingsley

What Trafalgar Square Monuments Mean
Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Aboukir Bay at the very start of the century, prompted a French force under Napoleon to leave Egypt. British influence now more easily brought India under British (rather than French) control. Nelson’s later victory at Trafalgar gave the square his Column and its name.
King George IV was the King at the time when Trafalgar Square was established. He represents the ‘ups and downs’ of the monarchy which, like it or not, was a medium for the tangled web of British identity, evolving over the century.
Two generals, Napier and Havelock won successes which did much to establish British rule in India. Like it or not, this was a major element in creating Britain’s relationship with the Indian subcontinent – and this is why so many of our citizens hail from there, and why the Mayor has felt it useful to establish offices there.
Britain’s relationship with Africa is represented in the square by South Africa House. Lord Malloch Brown stated, in a speech at the Royal Africa Society that there are now approximately a million people of African origin in Britain. English is now the world language which helps these diverse peoples to communicate.
The end of the century is not symbolised with any major figure – but we can redeem this;
we can have a statue of a woman, Mary Kingsley; and her achievements complete the 19th century in a way which relates it to the United Kingdom in which we now live.

Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley was a Londoner. In 1892, shortly after her parents died, Kingsley had not travelled abroad. She set out to … explore … the lesser known reaches of Africa. She wanted to continue her father’s “study of early religion and law”. Mary Kingsley's two journeys … were remarkable for being undertaken, alone, by a sheltered, middle-class, Victorian spinster in her thirties without any knowledge of African languages or French, or much money. On her first trip … she was referred to a new "French book of phrases in common use in Dahomey". The opening sentence of the book was "Help, I am drowning" followed by "Get up, you lazy scamps!". This was shortly followed by the question "Why has not this man been buried?" and its expected answer "It is fetish that has killed him, and he must lie here exposed with nothing on him until only the bones remain". On her second trip Kingsley explored up river from Lambaréné by canoe, reaching parts of the "Great Forest" not yet seen by a European. She collected insect, shell, plant, reptile, and fish specimens for the British Museum, as well as studying the culture and religion of the resident Fans.
…. On return to England in 1895, Mary Kingsley …. began work on writing her book Travels in West Africa. She also began a series of lectures based on her explorations and discoveries - she had returned with over a hundred species of fauna, including three previously unknown fish that were subsequently named after her. Her first lecture to the students and staff of a London medical school was entitled "African Therapeutics from a Witch Doctor's Point of View." Although she had planned to return to West Africa soon, she became so popular as a guest lecturer that she had to postpone her next trip.
Kingsley's first book, Travels in West Africa is a masterpiece of understatement - she … had travelled in West Africa wearing the same clothes that she habitually wore in England: long, black, trailing skirts, tight waists, high collars, and a small fur cap. These same clothes saved her life when she fell into a game pit, the many petticoats protecting her from being impaled on the stakes below. Later that same day, returning to her moored canoe, she found a hippopotamus standing over it and "scratched him behind the ear with my umbrella [until] we parted on good terms".
The first book was a best seller, and she immediately set about writing a second …. West African Studies was published, again by Macmillan, in 1899. At the same time, Kingsley became more active in various campaigns against colonial intervention in Africa. As a result of her extensive travels she had concluded that West Africa was much better served by the various traders … than the various groups of missionaries and settlers who typically had the ear of European governments. ….. Kingsley was quite influential, with direct access to the Colonial Office, and British colonial policy after 1890 showed a greater concern for retaining African social institutions. …
In 1899 … she was plunged into the thick of the recently declared Anglo-Boer War. She immediately went to the Army's Principal Medical Officer and offered her services … he suggested she try nursing Boer prisoners at a nearby camp in Simon's Town. Undeterred by an outbreak of typhoid and dysentery, Kingsley took up the post. She … drank wine instead of water, in an attempt to avoid the contagion. But she failed, and on 3 June 1900 at the age of 37 she died of enteric fever. At her request, she was buried at sea.

Mary Kingsley’s achievements included that she:
- influenced people in Britain to know more about and to respect African cultures
influenced other campaigners (such as E.D.Morel whose efforts were crucial in
bringing down King Leopold’s terrible oppression of the Congo.
see:

http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa011002a.htm

and

http://www.aboutbritain.com/TrafalgarSquare.htm

and

http://www.royalafricansociety.org/

Dengl 10 A Day With the Voice of the Listener & Viewer

I went to the Annual Conference (2007) which was very informative.
I'm sure everyone else there has enough in their heads and needs not have any more from me - but I have put down a few reflections - largely so I do not forget the session myself .... and maybe someone will find something intriguing if you stumble across these remarks here ….
(I tried to put these thoughts into questions, but was unable to catch the right eyes, to b e called upon to do so).

Sir Michael Lyons Chairman of the BBC Trust
I thought he came over very well - working his way admirably into his role;
however
- Despite much talk about quality and about value - for money, or as Prof
Sylvia Harvey put it so well* - value for the audience - there was no sign
of a set of measures which might help describe let alone define quality.
- He said the Trust will answer anyone who approaches it - and has done
so to a personal letter I sent him before he entered his job; fine. But
a package of research materials on attempts to ‘quantify quality’, that I also delivered for the Trust's research staff has not been acknowledged to me, let alone any comment offered which might indicate that such materials are of any value or not ...
* http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/media/staff/1357.asp

The research that they do that is NOT SYSTEMATICALLY REPRESENTATIVE may be useful, but unless it is reflected quite closely in systematically representative studies, can be quite misleading;
the research that they do that IS systematically representative may also be misleading - if it takes the form of asking people what they would like to see or not see ... (I take an elitist view – people do not fully ‘know our own minds’)
The Trust should be more open with the public and drive for a discourse based on what people think of programmes and services (publishing the BBC's measurements of Appreciation), rather than on one of supposed measurement of (viewing) behaviour, which animates the commercial discourse.

- I disagreed with his analysis that the Trust is not a regulator - as he sets out its goals, it very much resembles the IBA of old; if the Trust is not a regulator (and the board of management is not that either - that leaves Ofcom as a (potential) regulator - and that has been notoriously negligent of such a role - and erratic in applying its punishment(s);
- I doubt very much if the public realise or would agree that Ofcom is the regulator for the BBC; if it is, someone had better start telling the public sooner rather than later - and maybe also be telling Ofcom ....
- The Trust should acknowledge that it is the regulator, that its Chairman is the Chairman of the Trust and not of the BBC (which doesn’t need a Chairman - it has enough internal executive top-weight - and one might dowell to read the remarks of Professor Roy Greenslade in the Standard the day before this session: *
- The Trust should sooner rather than later (as Ofcom did when it wanted a structural amendment to its Act) ask for the Charter to be amended so that the Trust is financed from a first slice off the licence revenue and not from any procedure which lets it be paid for via or by the BBC. This will enhance the Trust's line of direct accountability to the licence payers.
*http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23423465-details/So+what+is+the+point+of+these+five+non-execs+sitting+on+BBC+board/article.do

Nathalie Schwarz (C4 Radio project)
She spoke enthusiastically about all the projects she wants to lead into a brave new future. I would have liked to have asked her if C4 has any Revenue Targets, and Revenue Forecasts for these new enterprises. There will no doubt be some good things which emerge - but whether it will be worth the effort of over-stocking the (radio) shelves already loaded with unheard wares, with a destabilising effect on existing services, remains to be seen.

The Digital Future - the Option Out
Good luck to Whitehaven - it is not necessarily a pointer to what may happen in different localities. A few people, he said, "did not convert" (yet?) - but another view (their view?) may be that they DID convert - to Life Without Television. I suspect that slightly more than handfuls will be joining LWT, elsewhere. I may indeed be one of them. I will then do without paying the licence fee - and the government may then want to retrieve the title of the Broadcasting Licence (or re-deploy a subsidiary Radio licence) as I will most likely want to be listening to "radio" direct, or via the computer.
The technical people in the audience did much to undermine the speakers - implying that it is by no means to be taken as read that DAB radio, or television will guarantee better technical quality everywhere - rather the opposite; it may be more expensive to make television for digital transmission - which cost will detract from money to spend on better efforts (Michael Darlow).

Quality in the Middle Ground
Michael Goldfarb* from America made a very interesting point - that it would be
good to have the quality of the mainstream centre conserved (or enhanced); his remark implied that there are rarer excellent materials (and who knows how much dross) neither of which should mainly pre-occupy policy wonks and structural designers.
* http://www.vet.co.uk/en/beyond/more_case_studies/michael_goldfarb

Dengl 9 Blurring Time

I can't remember with whom (or several people) I talked about the wretched historic present in which tv presenters (yes, it is often they who are at the fore of some gadarene gaggle ...) blur the thinking and experience of their viewers (and listeners).
It's not just the notion that one might transport people of today into an imagined past, by using the present tense to describe events that took place long ago, but the possibility that as people are not taught 'grammar' (nasty oppressive stuff) in schools, those without should not be put at a disadvantage in comparison with those who flaunt their superior knowledge and abilities ...OR, it may be that television commentary 'leads' the way towards a much less inflected language (when, one day, nouns, verbs and adjectives, will all merge into each other, tenses will be abolished - and maybe the tediously complex vocabulary exploited by some, such as the show-off Shakespeare, who used many scores of thousands of different words, could be replaced by the terse lexicon with which great writers like Racine (who is said to have made do with a vocabulary of well under ten thousand words) succeeded ...

I had not thought I would very soon be reminded that it is not just the present being enfolded into the past, but the future being enfolded into the present that I might choose to worry about. A recent job advertisement I saw - quoted below - reminds me that it is very common in 'human resources' prose to confuse skills that people do actually possess here and now, with ones they might one day acquire ... I could imagine an interview at which, without any evidence of having the required skills referred to, now, I resorted to charging the employer (to be) that it would be their responsibility to train me to acquire such skills, as implied in the terms of their advertisement ....

here is the example ... (I am sure you will come across many others)

_____________________________

Director of XX

XX is a member-led grassroots organisation aiming to ...... promote community cohesion and to act as a model of best practice.

The organisation is looking for its first Director to drive forward a programme of meetings, events, and publications, building partnerships and establishing XX as an independent and sustainable organisation.

You will be (sic) a good communicator, have an understanding of inter faith work, a strong track record of working at senior levels with public and voluntary sectors, and attracting support for funders and government in politically sensitive environments. The Director will need to be able to work under pressure, combining imagination with good management practice.
.....
Closing date for applications is 5pm on Wednesday 5th December 2007.
We intend to hold interviews in London Sunday 6th January 2008.
|_______________________

A more complex time-blur is found in a letter to The Psychologist (vol.20 No 11, p 664) in which the writer reports "In 1897 W.H.R.Rivers would be appointed Lecturer in ...Cambridge" - while there is no doubt that he WAS appointed.

I wonder how widespread time-blurring now is; whether it is becoming more common; whether we will ever (in English) return to a time when a 'time-line' from the past through to the future will be described with precision - and I wonder whether a 'post-modern' type of justification is now taking over, implying that "old linear time" is an illusion of the modernist phase in science and philosophy and can be dispensed with. Maybe in certain realms of poetry, drama and fiction time-blurring is a welcome device - but perhaps not in non-fiction?

Dengl 8 Hem Ing Way beats Roth?

I think the following came from one of the many places in which psychology writer Christian Jarrett tells members of the British Psychological Society about recent studies ... I have a point to add ...

he begins:

The write advice, put simply

EVIDENCE adduced by psychological researcher Daniel M. Oppenheimer of Princeton University in New Jersey suggests that utilisation of unnecessarily elongated verbal expressions could have the consequence of their writer being perceived as less intelligent by readers.
Oppenheimer asked undergraduates to look at university application letters, half of which he had manipulated by replacing every noun, verb and adjective with its longest synonym from the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus (retaining linguistic sense and grammatical structure). Students who saw the modified letters were less likely to say that they would have admitted the author to university than were the students who saw an unaltered application letter.
Oppenheimer also presented a second set of undergraduate volunteers with student dissertation abstracts, half of which he had altered by replacing every word of nine or more letters with its second shortest synonym from the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus. Here, students judged the authors of the simplified passages to be more clever than the authors of the unaltered passages.
These effects also extended to an author’s font selection. For example, participants viewed the authors of text written in italicised Juice font to be of lower intelligence than did participants who saw identical wording written in Times New Roman.
Oppenheimer commented: ‘The continuing popularity amongst students of using big words and attractive font styles may be due* to the fact that they may not realise these techniques could backfire.’ He suggested: ‘One thing seems certain: write as simply as possible and it’s more likely you’ll be thought of as intelligent.’
The findings will be published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology**.

______________________________

one of the very first articles I ever had published (in the Architects' Journal, back in the '60s!) suggested that the American Forces (according to what we were invited to believe, in the war movies of the time) were making a mistake in having their servicemen (yes, I can say that, there seemed to have ben no active servicewomen then - and if they had been there they may not have been so silly) used to shout out "neg ative; neg ative" - or "affirm ative"
what, I asked, if commotion or interference lost the first syllable or two?
all that the receiver would hear would be - ative'

why not have their service people repeat the essential syllable - if they have the luxury of three to go over the air and say
NO NO NO or YES YES YES ?

I think the answer is that this makes the speaker sound like a person; the aggravated latin makes the speaker sound more like a (non-killing) robot
however, for accurate comprehension the personal seems likely to be better

so, not only would one be judged more clever for speaking simply - one WOULD BE more clever for doing so!

*"Students still like using long words and fancy fonts, though these may not be the best ways" ....
** er - would "Useful Psychology" do? Isn't "cognitive" woven into the meaning of the "psych -" syllable? (an argument I urged on the B PS - as we see, unsuccessfully, when they institutionalised the term "cognitive psychology"

Dengl 7 Fly The Standard in London

I have found at least three truly sterling articles in the Standard of 31 Oct (and haven't finished reading the issue yet) –
First, Dovkants, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Keith+Dovkants+on+Steve+Moxon&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
tells the story of one Steve Moxon who publicised inadequacies in government agencies’ counting methods and found it difficult to get a higher profile for his material ….

Next, Valentine Low writes: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23418882-details/The+people+who+rebuilt+St+Pancras/article.do
which is about the laborious and artistic reconstruction of St Pancras Station

and
Lebrecht - http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/071031-NL-angel.html
this is about “Songs for my Father” and I will say no more about this here – you need to read the piece – and probably buy the record ….

and for such as these I will continue to buy the paper. I urge that those who merely pick up a freesheet and let that suffice are doing our city a disfavour - such people should realise that each such acceptance of an ostensibly "free" gift is really to connive in an attempt to kill what is in very many ways a paper of great quality and utility to the capital. Free gives an impression of adding to things - picking up a 'minus'sheet is really a subtraction from the future wellbeing of the capital. Thank you Standard and keep going!