Sam was Secretary of OULD in Michaelmas 1990, the term after I served as Secretary. I don't think I really knew him as well as I should have done. He was a gentle, urbane, witty person, with the ease and assurance of his aristocratic background but not an speck of the arrogance that could have brought with it. After Oxford, Sam travelled to the Czech republic, to Finland and elsewhere. He met and married Lena, and they had Adam and Rebecca. He loved them, cricket, birdwatching, and beer, not necessarily in that order.
Sam qualified as a financial advisor, but he always wanted to teach maths, his beloved subject (his 'sums', as we always teased him). Barely weeks after he started teaching at a girls' secondary school in Maidenhead, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Shamefully, after having only met him a handful of times since Oxford days and occasionally remembering to write, it was only really after he was ill that I made the effort to visit him and his family.
Sam lost his fight against cancer in August. I had the sad privilege of offering his funeral service and sharing duty at his memorial service a few weeks later with the local vicar. God receive you, Sam.
Until Ms Traves pointed it out, I had no idea that the infamous Policy Exchange report Cities Unlimited, which the BBC and other media outfalls helpfully summarised as advocating the wholesale abandonment of northern England, had anything to do with our own Dr Tim Leunig. But him it is, together with one of the Exchange's own boffins, what wrote it, and thus he maintains his reputation as the most right-wing Liberal in Britain. Ever. Knowing nothing about economics - Tim once tried to explain the futures markets to me, and I still don't understand the concept - it does strike me there are certain flaws in the argument, most notably that the sort of information-based jobs that provide the most scope for employment growth in modern Britain shouldn't need to be located in any particular place, so there is no more reason why the people doing them should live in Watford than in Wigan. But to call Dr L a neo-Marxist or simply heartless - still less 'insane', which was David Cameron's considered judgement - is daft. There are two clear motivations behind the report. The first is the ideological position that things are better left to sort themselves out, and Government's best choice is not to stand in the way of economic forces. And it's 'best' because it does people most good: the second motivation is the equally ideological position that it's bad if people suffer. People in some parts of the country clearly are suffering, if only comparatively, and Tim has always hated injustice. He just sees the remedy for injustice as less intervention rather than more.
I know nothing about economics, but I know Tim. He won't be deflected an inch by the storm surrounding the report. I'm reminded of that other great liberal, Keith Joseph, arguing furiously with dockers in the '70s in an attempt to persuade them that free-market economics was really in their best interest. Nevertheless, it might have been wiser to seek another outlet for his talents, after Policy Exchange's involvement in that unfortunate Islamic extremism affair ...
I never discovered much about the late Benazir Bhutto's time as a member of OSLS back in the mid-1970s. As an ambitious Union hack, as she was then - a fact all her obituaries have mentioned - she may have joined all the political societies in Oxford, and wouldn't have been the first or last to do so. Or Liberalism may have been her ideological home. I simply don't know. Whatever the truth of that, and whatever the failings and limitations of her government in Pakistan were, she stood for the unity of that troubled country on the
Roger Giess (Keble, OULD President Michaelmas 1990 & Hilary 1991 - right) is more my vintage. This means he has no business looking as though he is still in his mid-teens. Why has the life of a busy solicitor and Lambeth councillor not reduced him to the shambling ruin of a man he deserves to be?
PS. James has, it turns out, been at Balliol since 1997. Oh dear.
Send me a few details and a piccie should you choose, and I'll insert you below.
This splendid piccie dates from Christmas 2006. The child has expanded since then.
