The game's up

Dear Diary,

So the old ball and chain finally realised that I am to have nothing to do with this group of so-called scholars. She had a rant, and we got over it. She believes (mistakenly) that I am motivated by pure avarice. Nothing, could be further from the truth. It is the ability to give, to be kind, to make sure each member of staff receives his or her due, that motivates me. As John Braine wrote, it is most often those that profess to be anti-materialistic that are the most materialistic of all. This is all borne out by the evidence. 90%, a not inconsiderable sum, of all the royalties of all the authors go directly to her. Now, most likely a similar "share" (slither) of the profits, taken by the old ball and chain, from those base and servile slaves that pray at her altar will also go straight into her pocket. There is also the master architect of this grand design: he who offers "30%" but ends up fobbing you off with a tenner. These are the people pulling the strings (in the short term, at least). Nothing lasts. It is all ephemeral. Take recently, for example, even at a proper bona fides university like Cambridge or the Open University, there is industrial action, with lecturers having to go on strike because the big wigs that hold the purse strings have cut their pensions though they have done many years good service to the university.

So, what's the answer?

Do as Dr. May did: start your own school. I have read enough (and when I say 'I have read enough' I mean, I have read more than most people are ever likely to read in one single decade of their lives, never mind a lifetime). There are also other options too. Self-publishing, for a start, and a passive income via that.

I remember studying literature as an undergraduate, and for all the faults of the late great author Charles Dickens (and he had many faults, especially in his treatment of the gentler sex) he made sure to acquire a printing press first before embarking on a career as an author. That is what I should do: go into business for myself. Never mind all the nonsense by these people, jumping at shadows and casting wild conjectures where there are none.

In terms of my education (of which I hold the highest importance), I have been reading Cicero's On Laws and also a little of Aristotle's Ethics, and indeed should bear in mind good old fashioned Plato, and his Republic and Laws. The new fangled texts, yes yes yes, all this new business, of course, there is much to be had, in terms of statutes, torts and amendments, and indeed interpretation, philosophically, inter-disciplinary, but much more than that: there is my classical education. Whereas the new stuff is all the nuts and bolts of the business (and in truth, more important than the old), the classical roots provide a framework or platform of ethics from which to undertake any investigation of the facts. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero are not names unknown to the world. No less are Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lysias, Isocrates or Ariston et cetera.

The law, is my future. Here's raising a glass to twelve years of university education down the drain, only to start again from scratch. God bless the university system in Great Britain (for this is not fifteenth century Florence or ninth century Baghdad, evidently - it's Dark Age Britain).

Max.