One Foot in the grave

I'm in Swansea today, and tomorrow I will be an external examiner for a PhD viva on e-learning at the university here. I'm looking forward to it, as I always do when I meet and talk to people who are as passionate as I am about learning technology.

But some quite co-incidental things have just happened. I travelled up from Plymouth to South Wales this morning, and arrived to hear the sad news that former leader of the Labour Party Michael Foot had just died at the age of 96. Now the co-incidence is not that I joined the University of Plymouth in '96, nor is it that 96 happened to be my average speed on the M4 today (look, I'm only kidding, OK?). No, the strange co-incidences are that firstly, Michael Foot was MP for Plymouth before losing his seat and then coming to South Wales to become MP for Ebbw Vale (the exact same journey I just made on the morning his death is announced - spooky or what?). Secondly, I sat and had coffee this morning with a colleague in the Isaac Foot restaurant (named by the University of Plymouth in honour of Michael Foot's father, Isaac Foot, who was a prominent politician and reformer, and champion of the poor in the first part of the last century. And lastly, Isaac Foot is remembered for rebuilding the Elim Chapel in Notte Street near the Barbican - where I was dedicated when I was a few weeks old.

I admired Michael Foot's subversive, radical approach to life. It's one I adopt myself in my own life, particularly in my research - take nothing for granted, question everything, don't accept that the status quo is the only way it should be done. Foot went out on a limb (excuse the pun) several times to stand up for his beliefs, and was ridiculed and praised in equal measure. He was even criticised for wearing a donkey jacket on one formal occasion. He was a champion of among other things, the campaign for nuclear disarmament (for which he arguably lost 1983 general election in a heavy defeat, receiving a mauling from the Iron Lady), the Miners, and the National Health Service. I like a man who sticks to his guns.

Just one more 'footnote' if I may - Foot was also a passionate supporter of Plymouth Argyle Football Club (Going down, going down...), and many a time I would see him and say hello to him at the matches, home and away. He was hailed as the Green's number 1 supporter but that couldn't have been true. There is only one number 1 supporter of course, and that's me.

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