3rd December 2005, 11:44 AM
Quote:quote:where are [...] the tea hut discussions of the hot political issue of the day - more likely is the animated discussion about the latest sci-fi programme or who is featured in Hello or OK!
I guess I have just found out why people might be too intimidated to discuss politics with Beer Beast in the tea hut.
Moving on (no offence taken of course Merc), Beer's original post was about'removing' the editor of the digger and that has been answered. The rather different point that he/she has made about disclosure of political affiliation is interesting and is more reasonable. I'm not sure that I agree, but if I did i would be directing my demands for disclosure towards those individuals who are 'in charge' of the various institutions in British archaeology rather than the author of a news sheet that seems to be on the side of diggers.
The various individuals who have influence in archaeology all seem to be agreed that the current 'free-market' set up of the profession is a desirable situation, needing at best a bit of tinkering with. By contrast, I think many diggers see the market in archaeology as being the scource of low wages, short contracts, shoddy archaeology and all the other ills that get discussed on this forum. So perhaps we should be asking whether the senior individuals within the profession have a political affiliation to Thatcherism/Blairism, and whether this blinds them to some of the problems we face.
That said, I am not sure how much wiser we would be if, for example, the editor of a popular magazine declared himself to adhere to a pro-market political philosophy. Would we have achieved anything that we could not have worked out for ourselves? I respectfully suggest that it is better to judge people on what they do or say, not on their political affiliations.