Jason Arday #3

[xvictoriax]

Now if he mentioned he'd enjoyed weekends perusing Greatie market, or mooching round Crocky, or strolling the charming streets of Norris Green, I'd have been far more inclined to believe him
Seriously though, I'm amazed he didn't at least mention Lark Lane, beloved of all middle class, displaced southerners and also local coke heads (no offence to anyone who enjoys Lark Lane of course ).

I did teacher training in Liverpool after living in York and I swear one of bus routes to a school I was allocated was on Ross Kemps gangs it took in the lovely sights and sounds of Norris green and croxteth. Also got placements in Dingle and Litherland. Eye opening for a York girl. Best moment was a year 2 kid asking if Yorkshire was all country and farms like Emmerdale!

 

[InkHeart]

Adrian Mole would never.

I so wish Sue Townsend was alive so we could hear her political satire on present day madness delivered via Mole pomposity.

He naively thinks Farage is a return to the good old days of a happy harmonious post-war Britain, until he hears Farage's views on the Norwegian leather industry, and realises the true cost of Brexit

 

[Wu Tien]

I think the incomparable Ian Drury had the measure of Jason Arday long before his time in the former's song Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll:

"Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, grey is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he's called Simon, I know it's going to fit."

 

[InkHeart]

Reflecting on the terrible memoir - considering he had chosen an academic career, it’s remarkable how he doesn’t really share any deep thoughts or any sense of purpose in choosing this career. Has he ever thought deeply about education, or sociology, or racism for that matter? Did he feel fired up by the subject matter at all? If so, you’d never guess. It reads that the only reason he wanted a PhD and then to be a Professor was because it would be an “achievement” for himself.

He also decided he had to be a Professor by 35. Why? That's ludicrously early. Is it somehow less good to be a Professor at 40, or is it just that he thinks things are only worth doing if you do them more extraordinarily than everyone else?

 

[Catsexyfeline]

I’ve flicked through the book, and its content seems completely incongruous with someone who is supposedly the holder of multiple degrees. If anything, the writing makes him come across as someone of rather low intelligence. I just don’t understand it.

 

[Valiofthedolls]

He also decided he had to be a Professor by 35. Why? That's ludicrously early. Is it somehow less good to be a Professor at 40, or is it just that he thinks things are only worth doing if you do them more extraordinarily than everyone else?

Ummm…something to do with…fighting Ivan Drago?

 

[drmortimer]

What the duck was he ever on about?

 

[SwiftieNewRomantics]

I bet the actual story would barely fill the back of a postcard, so they decided to fill a book with a combination of lies and babbling to stretch it out.

 

[Jusa]

Honestly, his entire book reads like it was written by and about an adolescent boy. There’s nothing ‘adult’ in there beyond adult rites of passage like weddings, jobs, children (all of which are alluded to in passing only), to suggest any sort of functional or mature adult.

The entire book is all about fantasizing he’s in Rocky or playing in major some sporting event that happened a decade before, the tv he likes, the music he likes, the junk food he eats, the clothes he wears, the buses he gets in and off, how great he is at everything, all the people who’ve told him how wonderful he is/will be, all the people who’ve tried to take him down a peg or two (in Jack Monroe speak), all the words of wisdom of great sages Sandro, Giff etc.

I think the former (about his mentor) is a function of that. He writes about himself as if he’s a kid who (back then as a kid/teen) needed his Mum, his brothers, and his teenage peers like his two school mates and Debs to do everything for him/protect him from the real world and since then (and still at the time of writing) needs all these other adults around him to protect him from the real world.

None of these people have any agency or any existence outside of what sets they’re in at school, what they do for him and what they look like. His ‘half-Mauritian’ and ‘strawberry blonde’ besties from secondary school just exist to stop him and his Hendrix Afro getting on the wrong bus when his brother is busy. (They’re never mentioned again).
View attachment 4094912
Also, I haven’t screenshot these parts because they’re in a load of other effing tedium, but at his Sports World job after he left school, Deb (who he met there) helped him conceal the fact he couldn’t read and write while allegedly teaching him to do so, because (he’d decided) if they knew he’d get fired. During his degree, for several years he and everyone around him hid from the Uni the fact he’d become a father because (he’d decided) if they knew, the mean white lady tutor would kick him off the course. His entire adult life he’s had people around him complicit in protecting him, parenting him, and lying for him because of consequences imaginary or real.

He’s the main character, but only if the main character is stuck in arrested development on the cusp of a not particularly precocious or interesting 13, with pedestrian tastes in...everything, but finds himself endlessly bleeping fascinating and unique. Honestly, it’s like finding some kid’s Bebo or MySpace page. And nothing in any vid of him anywhere, or hearing him speak about anything, even after his appointment to Cambridge, disabuses me of that notion.

When he got his job at Sports World, surely he would have had to complete some type of application form at the shop whilst waiting for his interview to commence; in those days it wasn't just a case of filling out a form online and uploading a CV, and it doesn't seem like he had a friend already working there who'd recommended him so he'd popped in for a casual interview.

 

[Valiofthedolls]

I’ve flicked through the book, and its content seems completely incongruous with someone who is supposedly the holder of multiple degrees. If anything, the writing makes him come across as someone of rather low intelligence. I just don’t understand it.

It’s incredible that (he claims) this naif Twickenham High Street NatWest bank encounter happened when he was a 25 year old parent who’d recently graduated with a 2.1 Bachelors degree, within five years of this had already been assessed as fully capable, experienced and knowledgeable enough to have both Masters and PhD degrees in-hand, and within a mere ten years of this event, it was determined he was fully qualified, experienced, knowledgeable and capable of being awarded a full professorship by Glasgow, after spending over two years employed at Durham.

 

[Valiofthedolls]

When he got his job at Sports World, surely he would have had to complete some type of application form at the shop whilst waiting for his interview to commence; in those days it wasn't just a case of filling out a form online and uploading a CV, and it doesn't seem like he had a friend already working there who'd recommended him so he'd popped in for a casual interview.

His Ma did it all for him. She’d gone to the job center (in Clapham Old Town) and him and Giff ‘agreed’ he’d be AMAZING at it as long as he only had to do some parts of the job but not others, and only the days and hours that suited him and his full-time studies for the BTEC with Sandro he’d just started.

(The part-time job itself was in a shopping center a short tube ride away in Colliers Wood and sold the biggest sports brands ‘such as’ Nike, Reebok and Adidas.)

 

[HotesTilaire]

You know what, you're absolutely bloody right! In all those excerpts that a previous poster kindly shared with us, there's no sense that he had any sort of burning passion about inequality in education, or sociological theory etc...
It seems as though he was just racking these qualifications and jobs up as a tick box exercise, a giant duck you to anyone who ever doubted him.
Surely if you devote yourself to PhD level study, you have to really deeply care about the subject? It's hardly a stroll in the park is it, we're talking years and years of research.

The think which struck me was when he was waxing lyrical that he was a teacher. Nothing at all about when we’ve heard(or read in his book) is giving “I love to educate and coach and train and inspire the next generation“ I know he was a professor but if you feel yourself to be a teacher, an educator don't you talk about who you’re educating, their achievements, etc?
I’ve never known a teacher (aside from obvious just became one coz it seemed like a good idea) a committed to the job teacher not once mention their class/sucess stories/kid who couldn‘t focus but just passed all exams etc
@Valiofthedolls as keeper of the big book of WTF,can you confirm or deny the existence of any undergrads/pupils/mentee?

 

[Valiofthedolls]

He had to get a reference to the exact tube station in there as well. It definitely matters which precise tube station it was. It adds so much to the narrative.

He completely ignored Angela (who carried him through his degree) on the way to the 15.08 to Clapham Junction at which time Angela left to get a different irrelevant train to somewhere irrelevant and he got on a tube to Morden, because he was newly fixated on a SPITE PhD even tho he didn’t know what one was.

Spoiler: Angela

In ‘the world according to Jase’, it’s clear (justifiably) everyone else thought she was a right insufferable bleep, so you can’t feel too badly for her that she got saddled with him.

 

[Daisy Uncle]

His Ma did it all for him. She’d gone to the job center (in Clapham Old Town) and him and Giff ‘agreed’ he’d be AMAZING at it as long as he only had to do some parts of the job but not others, and only the days and hours that suited him and his full-time studies for the BTEC with Sandro he’d just started.

(The part-time job itself was in a shopping center a short tube ride away in Colliers Wood and sold the biggest sports brands ‘such as’ Nike, Reebok and Adidas.)View attachment 4095088 View attachment 4095089

Could he have done this job without at least some reading and numeracy skills? I'm wondering because I've been helping a friend try to find work, she doesn't read English, isn't familiar with our numbers. So we've been looking at various low level jobs, she can't even become a cleaner, they all require some health and safety type stuff that you need to read yourself,nobody allowed to help. Shops are out, can't read labels sizes prices. J wouldn't even have been able to stack the shelves.
All this to say that if the job was real the illiteracy at this point wasn't.

 

[Mogmog]

His Ma did it all for him. She’d gone to the job center (in Clapham Old Town) and him and Giff ‘agreed’ he’d be AMAZING at it as long as he only had to do some parts of the job but not others, and only the days and hours that suited him and his full-time studies for the BTEC with Sandro he’d just started.

(The part-time job itself was in a shopping center a short tube ride away in Colliers Wood and sold the biggest sports brands ‘such as’ Nike, Reebok and Adidas.)View attachment 4095088 View attachment 4095089

I was shopping earlier and was wondering how anyone could manage in retail without being able to read. If someone asked for a pair of shoes in size 8 then even if he recognised the style, how could he make sure they're the right size? Beyond keeping the shop floor tidy and chatting to customers, what could he offer? I know someone who is illiterate as an adult and by her own admission, its made life hard for her. She can't even read a menu in a restaurant and relies on whoever she's with to tell her what's available.

I don't know how to describe it eloquently but he comes across very naive in the book, like he just gets helped through life while he puts little effort in. The people around him do applications for him, entertainer him around and then act like it's his own greatness that got him there. That page about him being late to meet his mentor and realising for the first time that smiling and lying his way out of things doesn't always work is very telling.

 

[HotesTilaire]

Could he have done this job without at least some reading and numeracy skills? I'm wondering because I've been helping a friend try to find work, she doesn't read English, isn't familiar with our numbers. So we've been looking at various low level jobs, she can't even become a cleaner, they all require some health and safety type stuff that you need to read yourself,nobody allowed to help. Shops are out, can't read labels sizes prices. J wouldn't even have been able to stack the shelves.
All this to say that if the job was real the illiteracy at this point wasn't.

It’s very hard to get a job if you can’t read English. Cleaners need to understand the instructions and warnings on bottles of potentially hazardous cleaning solutions. Yes if you can’t speak English too well, you can find a job, but being unable to read it is the real enemy, she will struggle unless she’s working in a place where she speaks the language.

He was at connexions! The service we used to have for the NEET types of young people, and couldn’t read the signs at the tube but managed to pass 1.5 GCSE’s!!!

 

[Boxatrix]

From: https://www.archive.is/oldest/https...-witch-hunt-jason-arday-legitimate-journalism

@Boxatrix thank you for sharing. I'm half Irish and am slowly learning the language with the hope of staying for a bit in a Gaeltacht, when comfortable enough, for an immersive episode.

Duolingo is actually great, myself and some friends are using that to actually learn the rules properly. In our day *leans forward in rocking chair* it was a basic grounding in vocabulary, then taught through literature. Not a good way to learn!
You will have a blast at a Gaeltacht! You're there to learn, so don't be shy about not being too comfortable with the language.

 

[SunsetSmile]

He first met Debs at the Sports World job. So how were his wages at Sports World being paid if he didn't have a bank account before she helped him set one up? In the 2000s it seems unlikely that businesses employing a number of staff would be paying cash in hand.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

I was shopping earlier and was wondering how anyone could manage in retail without being able to read. If someone asked for a pair of shoes in size 8 then even if he recognised the style, how could he make sure they're the right size? Beyond keeping the shop floor tidy and chatting to customers, what could he offer? I know someone who is illiterate as an adult and by her own admission, its made life hard for her. She can't even read a menu in a restaurant and relies on whoever she's with to tell her what's available.

I don't know how to describe it eloquently but he comes across very naive in the book, like he just gets helped through life while he puts little effort in. The people around him do applications for him, entertainer him around and then act like it's his own greatness that got him there. That page about him being late to meet his mentor and realising for the first time that smiling and lying his way out of things doesn't always work is very telling.

How could you do that job if you were illiterate? You couldn’t. you need to read shoe boxes and process receipts. It’s all balls

 

[Daisy Uncle]

It’s very hard to get a job if you can’t read English. Cleaners need to understand the instructions and warnings on bottles of potentially hazardous cleaning solutions. Yes if you can’t speak English too well, you can find a job, but being unable to read it is the real enemy, she will struggle unless she’s working in a place where she speaks the language.

He was at connexions! The service we used to have for the NEET types of young people, and couldn’t read the signs at the tube but managed to pass 1.5 GCSE’s!!!

Yeah, we are looking within her community and I have hope. I just can't see how he could've worked there, it's not like the 1950s where maybe he could've swept the floor, made tea, humped boxes around.