Tom Roper's Weblog

Undocumented successes

Good stuff on Tuesday. Poor racing, I thought at first, but looked at the Stratford card and made selections for each race: again I made a 50% strike rate, and at workingmens' prices too: Knightsbridge
King in the 210 at 5/1, Monte Cristo in the 240 at 4/1 and The Grey Butler in the last at 5/1 again.
But no selections at Cheltenham today (visit to aged parent in Cambridge coupled with child care duties made serious study of form impossible). Have had an e-mail saying that the UK fantasy horseracing site is being relaunched. A good thing, but in its heyday (when i won the December 1997 title) it was free, whereas now they want £3 a month membership.
New Year's Eve stretches ahead: possible evening with neighbours off, which is perhaps a good thing, wife retired to bed unwell, children watching awful rubbish on television. What else to do but blog, unless I go out for a run?

Jennifer Ross 1916-2003

"Cultured chocolate heiress" (The Times).

The obituaries have been a little thin recently, but this morning's Times more than made up for it. Apart from a long piece on Alan Bates, there was a fascinating one of Jennifer Ross, splendidly subtitled "Cultured chocolate heiress who dallied for a year with the novelist Henry Green and later supported the London magazine". She was the niece of Evelyn Waugh's first wife Evelyn (She-Evelyn). Her first husband was the bisexual companion of Lord Berners, Robert Heber-Percy. Heber-Percy dispatched her back to her father after a year of marriage and the birth of a daughter. After the affair with Henry Green she married Alan Ross, editor of the London Magazine. I must seek out my copies of Ross's autobiographies, which languish in the attic. There are two volumes: Ross, Alan Blindfold games London: Collins Harvill, 1986 0002727730 and Coastwise lights London: Collins Harvill, 1988 0002717670

Observer cartoon

Today's Observer runs a cartoon (Roasted) in which two employees of a Starbucks-like coffee house discuss rugby. " Karl, is rugby unfashionable again?. asks one, "any day now" replies the other, "thank God" says the first.
I agree: the consequences of winning the World Cup have been unfortunate and unsportsmanlike. The post office sells stamps emblazoned with the 20-17 final score. When the Webb Ellis trophy was paraded at the Varsity match last month, many of the crowd were more interested and excited by this pointless half-time ballyhoo than by the game itself. Let the game return to decent obscurity.
The other problem with contemporary rugby is that the fans are so ghastly. More of this anon. I have promised my son that I will take him to a Saracens game.

Kempton non-runner

Un Jour a Vassy doesn't go at Kempton, so I've gone for Mighty Strong instead. But it's not very promising so far; a 40-1 shot, Sunray, won the first Chepstow race I had an interest in.

Old Persean Boxing Day match

Welsh National

Not a bad day at Kempton yesterday: 50% strike rate, though a nerve-wracking win by Strong Flow; he made two bad blunders which would have had a lesser horse beaten. Fondmort fourth in the King George and Lustral de Seuil pulled up.
So to today; dodging around the country, I take Willie Mullin's Hedgehunter for the Welsh National (215 Chepstow over 3m 5f 110yd, good, good to soft ) and in the 110 Juvenile Handicap Hurdle Adopted Hero. At Wetherby in the 300 Handicap Chase i go for Artic Jack and at Kempton in the 205 Chase Un Jour a Vassy.
The Times racing correspondent has been drinking something unusual over Christmas, as he tips Wonder Weasel for the Welsh National, a 33-1 outsider. True, if the ground were bottomless he'd be in his element, but it's hard to see him having any real chance in this field. But "anything can happen at backgammon" (and racing).

Kempton tomorrow

My selections

CILIP qualifications framework consultation

CILIP launches consultation on new framework

I'm preparing a response to CILIP's consultation on a proposed new framework for qualifications for the library and information profession. It proposes:
1. a new qualification of ACLIP for affiliated (ie non-professional members)
2. voluntary revalidation for chartered members

The document also say that our "Current Body of Professional Knowledge" (the capitalisation is the document's not mine) needs to be "reviewed and updated". Having worked for another regulatory body as the RCVS struggled to codify the knowledge expected from a new (veterinary) graduate I'm not sure I envy whoever is doing this their task. The document also doesn't say how members can contribute to this review, but perhaps we're not supposed to.

As a veteran of changes in our professional education and qualifications structure (I gained my postgraduate library and information qualification in 1983 and was a part of the short-lived Licentiateship experiment of the Library Association as was) I sometimes cast a jaded and cynical eye over such exercises. There's no doubt that our qualifications structure badly needs looking at, not least in the light of the creation of a professional organisation "of a new type", as V.I.Lenin might have described it.

First reactions: voluntary CPD, and some sort of structure for recording it, is something we should have been doing a long time ago. But I'm not sure how far we've learnt from those who have been quicker than us in taking this up. I'm going to have something to say about the types of CPD activity we might consider acceptable for recognition.
On the new routes to professional qualification, I suspect many who came into library and information work at the time I did will worry about dilution of the profession. With the massification (horrid word) of UK higher education, it's hard to see that there is any need to revise the graduate nature of the profession.

What better thing to do on a Christmas evening than post a blog on one's professional association's new professional framework?

Selections for the Saturday before Christmas

A less successful Saturday at least on the horse racing front. Exhaustive study of the Racing Post on the train from Brighton up to London on Saturday morning gave me four selections in the top races of the day at Ascot. I did a pretend yankee:  in the 115 Upgrade, one of Pipe’s which always wins when I don’t back it and loses when I do. Ran true to form and came second. In the 145 I went for Nicholls' Ad Hoc, who "gave encouragement up to a point....went well until three out" as the RP's race reader put it; then in the 220 the joint favourite, Mary Reveley’s Overstrand. Gossip claims that Mrs Reveley’s stable is a gambling stable and that there’s no point in backing any of hers when they’re favourite, but I still think Overstrand was the form horse for the race, in spite of the evidence of the result.  "... a long way below form, but a blunder at the last down the far side was probably a factor"  And to finish off, I had the odds-on favourite, Lillium de Cotte, who was pulled up. " Lilium de Cotte was a major disappointment, however, as he was the first in trouble and was pulled up on the turn after weakening very quickly. Nicky Henderson reported that he had been unsuited by the soft ground, but he has handled worse and it would be no surprise if the explanation lay elsewhere"

Odd publishing thing

Revising my medical education current awareness service which is the other side of this blogging coin, I encounter an odd problem. I publish my pages to a local location on my hard disk (because of the apparent absence of ftp support, though the help files suggest the iBlog should support ftp) and then use Dreamweaver to upload them, along with the rest of my site. But for some reason, it resists putting the very latest versions up. Went into Dreamweaver, deleted everything and republished...didn't fix it though. Have checked all my publish settings, which seem fine.