Port Meadow has always been as close to my heart as to my muddy running shoes. The pleasure to be derived from escaping from the buzzing student swarm to burst onto a wide-open expanse of water and sky is unparalleled, and it’s there for free. Port Meadow has been ours since the 10th century, when it was bestowed upon the “Freemen of Oxford” as a gift, in return for their valiant help in battle against some invading Danes. Not many cities can boast a royal gift from King Alfred the Great that has endured to this day to be enjoyed by man and beast alike. Every citizen of Oxford has the right to graze his livestock on the grassy field, hence the high population of resident ponies, cows and other unidentifiable creatures, whose right to be there is sanctified in the Domesday book of 1086.

So imagine my shock when, trudging out to the wild space for a daily nature fix, I found five illegible pieces of paper pinned to the gate. Actually I was not so much shocked as confused and intimidated. What were these official-looking, legal-smelling and doom-tasting forms doing on the gateway to my sanctuary?

I was soon enlightened by a rugged passerby and his dog: it is a proposal order from Chiltern Railways to expand the railway line between Oxford and Bicester. This expansion would cut off a crucial patch of the territory, meaning that walkers and lovers of the field would no longer be able to pass through it to the nature reserve, and that the vegetable allotments would also become inaccessible from the meadow. The proposal order barks out the aggressive and heart-wrenching phrase, “Drain and bed thereof trees shrubbery, thickets and land”. It will also “Drain and bed” the allotments and the pathway. It sounds like rape. It makes me want to cry.

Before I could express my sorrow the lone gentleman excused himself to go and use the meadow to use in his own unique way – to practice his bagpipes. Having come to terms with the sadness (and surreality), of the situation, I note that Port Meadow can still be rescued and would encourage you to help, by writing to the council.

Above my own passion for the place, and away from the tight grappling fury of the city, this space is a haven and a refuge for peace, love(making) and dubious mayday rituals. It is speckled with pleasant pubs – I especially recommend The Perch and The Trout, if you hadn’t yet sampled them – and It provides nourishment for ponies, poets and people in the form of grass, sublimity and vegetables. There is plenty of water (and beer) to drink and mud to roll around in, and the occasional haunting melodies of a bagpipe-practising gentleman to delight your ears.

As I stand taking in the spiritual sustenance of the open water and rough country wind, I am reminded of how, a millennium ago, some plucky Anglo-Saxons took arms against a sea of Danes. And entreat in a similar fashion, the students of Oxford to save us from the trains.

Last week Amelia Gentleman wrote in The Guardian about ‘the great nursery debate’, assessing the evidence that being left in group care can have a damaging effect on young children. As soon as I saw the headline I could predict at least one name that would turn up: Oliver James, prominent psychologist and writer.

Meeting James over coffee, it did not surprise me that his was the most ardent voice in Gentleman’s article. He is nothing if not confident in his opinions.

Best known for his pre-crunch anti-consumerist diatribe ‘Affluenza’, his latest book, ‘How Not to F*** Them Up’, dives into the knee-high world of toddlers and their upbringing. In it he argues that meeting the needs of under-threes, best accomplished by full-time individual care, is a crucial point in reducing emotional distress in the Western world.

Much of the problem in modern childcare issues results from the way feminism developed in the UK, James adds. “Nobody asked the question: what the hell are we going to do with the babies?”

He argues that the media gives an unrealistic picture to would-be career mothers of the situation: “The prevailing idea that women of a certain level of education will be a miserable minority if they give up work to have children is simply not true.” He admits, though, that one should not simply encourage all mothers to stay at home. In fact, from his observations and interviews with women he identifies three attitudes to motherhood, which he labels ‘huggers’, ‘fleximums’ and ‘organizers’. I remind myself that he is a psychologist, and labelling is what they do.

He continues, “around a quarter of women are ‘organizers’, whose lives are not designed to have a baby in them. They may well be better off staying in their careers and having a full time career for their child – or better yet – having their husband stay at home.”

James acknowledges that this is simply not possible for those on a certain income, which is why he has repeatedly set out in his books that the best use of government money would be to pay everyone with children the equivalent of the average wage so that one partner – or a single mother – can stay at home full-time. On top of this, the greatest social change we could achieve, he states, would be for fathers to begin taking on toddler childcare in equal proportion to mothers. But he is skeptical about this change occurring: “An awful lot of men go coochy-coo, but they still have a desire to go and be breadwinners.”

He talks about the example of Scandinavian countries where the men – because of various factors including much stricter political correctness laws – are far more ‘feminine’ than in the UK.

Beyond this, James’ overriding point is that “we need a society that puts emotional wellbeing ahead of the profits of a tiny minority.” But he is quick to isolate the difficulty in this aim: how does one achieve emotional well-being? Of all the mothers he met for his latest book, he found only one who seemed to have managed it; the description is not promising for the average female university goer. All this woman had ever wanted was to get married and have children, and she had achieved it. She was also very attractive, though James insists he thinks this had little to do with her contentment.

While not completely agreeing with me on this, James does emphasise the importance of being able to live in the moment. “The problem with this is that for both of us – and probably most people reading this – is that [higher] education in modern life encourages the very opposite: dissociation, and a tendency towards hyper-critical responses. Most high achievers are basically personality disordered people whose achievement is countering feelings of personal lack of worth…pretty much everyone in Oxford is using cleverness as a defence.” No wonder we like a drink.

What’s more, James apoints out that the current system is not only cruel but ineffectual: “It doesn’t work at all – with grade inflation Oxbridge finds it ever harder to select pupils, and once you get your first how is the man at Morgan Stanley to decide which of the Oxbridge wankers to give a job to to rip off the next
generation?” His eloquent argument points to the need for not only a more nuanced testing system, but the encouragement of more varied life goals.

James believes greater wellbeing comes from stepping back a little from the competition; though, he concedes that this is more difficult when the financial future looks bleak. But there is hope. James thinks that, “just as now neo-liberalism is the total orthodoxy, in 50 years times zero growth will be seen as a good thing.”

So we return to the importance of caring for the under-threes: if we are going to raise a generation of non-materialists, we must give them comfort and satiety in their early years. To do this, James says we need fundamental change in how women – and potentially men – approach having a family. In preparing for that we can learn to readdress some other values, like planning to earn what we need rather than what we want. We also need to work out what are going to be the things that give intrinsic value to life rather than those signifiers of status – whether it be money, power or even the ostentations of intelligence – that we could do without.

Why did the Labour Party choose Ed?

It’s puzzling, perhaps, because as a Brownite and author of the party’s 2010 manifesto, Ed was associated with Labour’s poor election performance. The selection of David Miliband would have signalled a move back to previously safe electoral ground New Labour occupied. The genesis of Ed’s success can be found in Andrew Rawnsley’s report that the Blair Camp “regarded him as the most reasonable member of Brown’s court” and called Ed “the emissary from Planet Fuck”. Combine this with Ed’s youth and low public profile and you have a Brownite who has the potential for a fresh start, and therefore had a broad enough appeal to other factions of the party.

How on earth did he beat his brother David?

In the election David received more first preferences than Ed. In the two-way runoff Ed still lost to David amongst two of three groups – party members and MPs and MEPs (Ed also lost amongst those now vying for shadow cabinet positions). The deciding factor was that Ed secured the backing of the major unions who then campaigned for their member’s votes. Ed won handily at every stage in this third category of voters, amongst whom turnout was only 9%. There have been questions raised about the tactics used in support of Ed after some unions sent out endorsements for him on the cover of their ballot papers. Finally, remember also that Ed had the nous of Magdalen Politics Tutor Stuart Wood behind his campaign.

How red is Ed?

He lives in Primrose Hill in an expensive house, but that is not necessarily a barrier to being a comrade – see Engels. Ed’s father Ralph was of course an unabashed Marxist. When asked whether his father’s socialism could be achieved by the parliamentary path (instead of revolution) Ed replied “Yes, but it is not his form of socialism. It is my form of socialism which is a more just, more equal society”. He did use the word socialism (something that Blair and Brown shied away from), but he is well within the mainstream of ‘what works is what’s best’ politics. He believes in social democracy, a mixed but essentially capitalist economy, and a welfare state with building blocks similar to the ones bequeathed by Blair and Brown. If you were looking for redder hues than Blair, then Ed leans more towards equalising resources rather than just opportunity, and he has been mildly critical of New Labour’s heavy emphasis on meritocracy alone. He has written that “There is an important progressive instinct that in rich society, nobody should fall below a certain level of income, defined in relative terms”. In practice he has said that he doesn’t want the situation to prevail in which a banker can earn more in a day that a care worker can in a year.

How is he going to change the Labour Party?

In his first speech to conference as leader he distanced himself from the party’s record in government on Iraq, civil liberties, the banks (not the bailout), and the position taken on the alternative vote. It will require some imagination to answer the question of where the party is going next, because the obvious routes, and the ones down which there is no doubt the unions would like to push the party, are lined with pitfalls. It is going to be hard to carve out a distinctive, but at the same time popular brand for the party. The choice of direction is made nightmarishly complicated by the immediacy of the fiscal (tax and spending) options Ed is faced with. The temptation to oppose cuts is substantial, but in the absence of a double dip recession it is hard to see that simple or even just selective opposition will bring his party back to popularity by the time of the next election.

If you’re reading this with a hangover, you’re probably a fresher. If you have a hangover and you’re not a fresher, you’re probably a second year trying to get to know the freshers. (Freshers, if you don’t know what ‘sharking’ is yet, you almost certainly will soon – most likely at about the same time you learn what ‘sconcing’ and ‘pennying’ are). If, though, you are a third or fourth year with a hangover, I am afraid there is something terribly wrong with you.

What’s the excuse for it? Have you recently turned 18? Are you celebrating your first intoxicating taste of true independence by, well, intoxicating? Of course not. The fact is, there are many very good reasons for getting completely smashed when you’re a fresher, but in your final year, those reasons are irrelevant.

For a fresher, particularly in the two weeks leading up to matriculation (or matriculash), drinking, and indeed drunkenness, are the norm – necessary even – and will never again in one’s university career be quite so respectable or encouraged. Second years can just about get away with it, although their motives for drinking with the freshers are perhaps rather less than noble.

All this is well known and perfectly well established as an integral part of the Oxford curriculum. I don’t think anyone has a problem with it, except maybe the junior deans, whose job it is to see that binge drinking happens at an acceptable volume. No, it is not freshers and second years for whom I counsel temperance. It is rather the finalists who should think again about that second pango tonight. They should be embarrassed to be seen in such low venues as ‘The Bridge’. Does the Bodleian have a toilet attendant who advises “no spray, no lay”? For finalists, drinking is merely habitual: they should immerse themselves in actual culture, not merely drinking culture.

What could be more shagadelic than the constitution of New Hampshire? It guarantees the people’s right to overthrow the government in revolution. Now the Tea Party Movement doesn’t know very much, but it knows its rights – and on the matter of revolution it agrees with New Hampshire. Of course, when the government blows the jiminy jilickers out those diaper-hatted A-rabs in Eye-raq, we should celebrate it. But when it provides subsidised healthcare to the working, starving poor, then holy smokes! Get the placards down to Washington, chant some slogans and prepare to get mediaeval on Barry Soetoro’s drab half-white ass.

Not that the Tea Party is anywhere near sanity: most of them join the 18% of Americans who think Obama’s a Muslim. Who cares about what that lot think? Obama’s done a good job. He continues to. The mistakes he’s made pale into short-term prudishness when confronted with the strength of his achievements.

Alright, he’s failed in Afghanistan. Alright, he’s cocked up his bureaucracy. Alright, the economy is perilous. And yes, there’s no denying he’s made the deficit very very very big ($1.3 trillion; enough to buy seven NHS’s and still have change for a Royal Navy). America can basically get as much debt as it likes, but it still has to pay the interest. That bill will be paid in Democrat Congressmen in November.
That’s all very well, but in the long run Obama’s been the most revolutionary Democrat president since the icy ’60s do-badder Lyndon Johnson. (Johnson wasn’t a man to cross. He justified his own Civil Rights bill as follows: ‘this’ll keep the niggers voting Democrat for two hundred years’. Boom boom.) Obama’s healthcare bill, passed this March, changes the system entirely. In America private health insurers are the main way to get money for treatment. And these insurers have a right to refuse to give you healthcare on the grounds that you are ill – and I’m not even making this up. Insurers lose money on unhealthy people because they have to pay out to them, and make money on healthy people who don’t need to claim. No prizes for guessing who goes uninsured. Obama’s act will get rid of this horseshit and forces insurers to shell out for the uninsurable. Of course people still have to pay for their healthcare, but this is a big step into the twentieth century.

Obama wanted the bill to be a lot more radical, introducing proto-NHS state-funded health insurance. But he was defeated by the odious American system of government which basically stops anyone doing anything. All the same the reforms to health are pivotal. Combined with tax reform and environmentalism, they are a decisive departure from the days of Bush.

In Britain, the post-war Labour government introduced the NHS and the welfare state. The economy was disastrous at the time and Britain was haemorrhaging influence and wealth. These problems were short-term. The country recovered, and the long-term benefits of free health and social services are available for all to see today. That will be the effect of Obama; it will be what people remember him for. I hope.

But Republican victory in the Presidential election could turn the clock back. And that’s something that could easily happen. Sadly, although they’re desperately amusing, there isn’t much genuine mileage in making out the uber-right to be the rootin’, tootin’ gun-toters we all wish they were. The main problem for Bazzy O isn’t actually the bad, vocal minority of Tea Partiers. It’s the great, silent majority of Americans who’ll vote for the other guy, just so long as the other guy isn’t too mad. A moderate Republican, in other words. If moderates win the Republican nomination for 2012, Obama is pretty darn screwed as of now. So if you’ve got a vote in the Republican primaries- and why not?- vote for Basil Marceaux. Or indeed Palin. Just anyone who isn’t Mitt Romney.

Sod the pessimists. Obama’s done us proud. In any case he’s less than halfway through his term. If he loses the Congressional elections in November, then he can just veto everything the Republicans introduce. He’s achieved what he wanted: make America a more equal society.

Christine O’Donnell, the uber-rightwing Tea Party candidate in Delaware, remarked some years ago on how masturbation was morally wrong. Hypocritical, given that her policies are a pile of wank. But charitably cuckoo, and against these people Obama will romp home. Then he can set about his secret life-long aim: converting America to Islam.