Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
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Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
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Mustang

We went on Saturday to the Turkish film Mustang , which tracks the passage from childhood of five girls.  The girls live with their uncle and grandmother (the parents have disappeared, perhaps dead) in quite a rural area, 1000 km from Istanbul.  In the first phase of the film they are carefree and vivacious, larking around with boys at the end of school term and chattering non-stop with each other. Gradually the tenor of the film changes, as the older people assert traditional cultural mores.  Two of the girls are married off to boys they only meet on the day of the betrothal.  The others resist in various ways, but the house…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More