Archive for the Politics Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Can a University be Democratic?

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , on July 6, 2013 by telescoper

Today I thought I’d pick up on a topic I mentioned in last week’s post about Simon Fanshawe, about University governance.

The Royal Charter which formed the University of Sussex way back in 1961 includes the following clauses:

1.         By this Charter there shall be constituted and founded a University by the name of ‘The University of Sussex’ (‘the University’).

2.         In this Charter: ‘Council’ means the Council of the University; ‘Regulations’ except when otherwise required by the context, means Regulations made pursuant to this Charter or the Statutes. ‘Statutes’ means the Statutes of the University set out in the Schedule.

3.         The objects of the University shall be to advance learning and knowledge by teaching and research to the benefit of the wider community.

…

7.         There shall be a Council of the University which shall be the governing body of the University and shall have the custody and use of the Common Seal and shall be responsible for the revenue and property of the University, its conduct and activities, and shall exercise all the University’s powers.

8          There shall be a Senate of the University which shall, subject to the general control and approval of the Council, be responsible for academic standards and the direction and regulation of academic matters.

9.         There shall be a Students’ Union of the University.

This makes it quite clear that  the Senate (on which I happen to sit) is specifically meant to focus on academic matters; see below for a comment on this.  The role of the Student’s Union is not specified at all in this document, although it should be said that there are student members of Senate and Council too.

The reason for including this in a blog post is that it demonstrates an organization formed in this way has to strike a difficult balance between, on the one hand, listening to staff and students when it comes to forming policy and, on the other, having an efficient and effective executive that can implement those policies. There are about 16,000 people working and studying at the University of Sussex (c. 13,000 students and c. 3,000 staff), most of whom are highly intelligent and independent-minded so there’s bound to be a divergence of opinion on almost any topic under discussion. Even if it were possible for everyone to get involved in the University’s governance, it’s inevitable that decisions will be made that run counter to some of the input.

Difficult balances that have to be struck in the governance of any organization, whether religious, administrative, commercial or educational. The Council of the University of Sussex is its supreme governing body and everyone who works here is in some way accountable to it. In turn, Council is accountable to its “stakeholders”, not just funding authorities and students, but the wider world; its Charter states that

The objects of the University shall be to advance learning and knowledge by teaching and research to the benefit of the wider community.

In a nutshell, a University is not a democracy. It can’t be, not unless “democracy” is defined in a very limited way. A university can employ some democratic structures, and may (for many reasons) desire to include as many people as possible in its governance, but in the end this is limited by the need for effective and efficient management. We can – and do – debate where this balance should lie, but anyone who has ever worked in a University will agree that if it were allowed to be run “democratically” by some of academic collective then the result would be a complete shambles. Democracy has to be balanced by the rule of law.

Similar issues apply further down the pecking order. Since I took over as Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences here earlier this year, I have had a wide range of responsibilities for the School, including its finances, academic matters, and even health and safety. I’m not an autocrat, so I try to do things as democratically as possible within the constraints I have to work, but this democracy is necessarily limited. I like to keep staff informed about and involved in decisions, but I sometimes have to make decisions without any consultation at all. This can be because such a quick decision is required that there is no time to consult widely, or because there is some issue to do with confidentiality which means that it can’t be discussed in an open forum (including, e.g., email). More often, though, it is just because they pay me to be Head of School and its my job to take responsibility so staff working in the School can get on with what they are supposed to do without being inundated with requests for input from me on trivial things.

On the other hand there are things in  MPS that are extremely  democratic compared with other places I’ve worked. We have a  Joint Committee which gives students direct input into various aspects of School life. In particular, the School has ceded part of its building to form Student Spaces and given students a budget to manage them (i.e. choose furniture, equipment, etc). These are extremely popular and no doubt contribute a great deal to our healthy position in the National Student Satisfaction (NSS) Survey. I think it’s great to have students involved in this way, but we have to remember that students are not the only stakeholders in a University; we also have obligations to other bodies whose requirements may run counter to the wishes of the student body.

Anyway, these ramblings are given a bit of topicality by an item in the Times Higher recently about two student representatives on the University of Sussex Senate who resigned in protest against alleged lack of consultation by the University management. I was at the Senate meeting when they resigned, as well as the previous one where there was a lengthy discussion at which they and others were given an extremely good hearing despite the fact that the matter concerned was not to do with academic so wasn’t strictly speaking in the remit of Senate anyway.

Eventually Senate voted and the two students concerned were on the losing side. I’m sad that they subsequently decided to resign from Senate, although to be absolutely factual both were due to be replaced next academic year anyway so it was a pretty empty gesture.

The point is that democracy isn’t just about being given the chance to express your own views. It’s also about acknowledging that others might feel very differently and accepting the decision when it turns out that you lost the argument.

3 Comments »

A Bit of Simon Fanshawe

Posted in Biographical, Brighton, Politics with tags , , , , on June 30, 2013 by telescoper

27On Friday I attended a very interesting event on the University of Sussex campus. This was arranged to mark the forthcoming end of the term of office of the current Chair of Council of the University of Sussex, Simon Fanshawe (left). Simon Fanshawe OBE is, of course,  a well-known radio and TV broadcaster, award-winning comedian and co-founder of the campaigning organization Stonewall. He also has an interesting taste in suits, and provided evidence of that in his outfit on Friday. But enough of matters sartorial. Simon has been Chair of Council for six years, and served as a member of Council for as many years before that, so really has contributed a huge amount to the University over that period. I think it’s safe to say that he has had a much higher profile in his role as Chair than most of his counterparts in other UK universities, so the idea of having a special event in his honour was thoroughly well justified.

First we had a series of three short lectures by Sussex on various issues relating to equality and diversity and how their relate to power and governance. More specifically these were talks about female islamic religious leaders, the nature of political corruption and attitudes to it in different countries, and a particularly fascinating talk by Robert Livingston that touched on many things, including how facial features seem to correlate with success in leadership positions.

After that there was a wine reception and a nice dinner with lots of stimulating conversation. For some reason a major topic on my table was bell-ringing, and why English church bells sound so different from those in continental Europe. I wrote some stuff about that years ago, while I was teaching probability, and may blog about it in future. Everyone else seemed to head home via taxi after dinner, but I wobbled off to the bus stop and got the trusty No. 23 back to Kemptown.

Anyway, I may post later on about some things that popped into my mind as a result of the talks and the subsequent discussion and conversation but for the time being I’ll just mention a very tenuous link with Simon Fanshawe that involves taking a little trip down memory lane. The picture below was taken in either 1988 or 1989 (I’m not very good at dates). It shows me and my partner at the time, Roger, preparing to act as volunteer waiters at a fund-raising dinner (somewhere in Lewes if I remember correctly) organized by the Communist Party of Great Britain:

Marxism_today

I wasn’t involved very much in campus politics when I was a graduate student at Sussex (from 1985 to 1988) or a postdoctoral researcher (1988-90) because I found most of it depressingly puerile and short-sighted, that being especially true of the sizable lunatic fringe which also had a disagreeable taste for mindless vandalism. Sadly, times haven’t changed in that respect. I did, however, during that time become an avid reader of magazine called Marxism Today which I thought contained the most incisive political writing of the time and which therefore prompted me to join the CPGB, and eventually became Branch Secretary until I left for London in 1990. Incidentally the Cee-Pee-Gee-Bee decided to dissolve itself as a political party in 1991 and became a sort of leftist think-tank called Democratic Left.

Anyway, the point about that photograph is that the after-dinner speaker on that occasion was none other than Simon Fanshawe, although I doubt if he remembers!

2 Comments »

Farewell, then, Leighton Andrews…

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags , , , , , , , on June 27, 2013 by telescoper

Although I no longer live in Wales I couldn’t resist commenting on the resignation, announced on Tuesday, of the Welsh Education Minister, Leighton Andrews. It seems that Mr Andrews was spotted holding a placard protesting against the planned closure of a school, a closure that results from his own policies. Personally, I think that it’s quite an imaginative move for a Minister to campaign against his own policies. It shows an open-mindedness absent in most politicians.

Leighton Andrews will probably be best remembered as the architect of the policy that students domiciled in Wales would be protected from having to pay large tuition fee rise by a system of grants, meaning that the Welsh Assembly will pick up the tab for Welsh students. They will still have to pay the “old”  fee level of £3290 per annum, but the WAG will pay the extra approx £6K charged by most Universities since the fee cap was raised. This is good news for the students of course, but the grants will be available to Welsh students not just for study in Welsh universities but wherever they choose to go. Since about 16,000 Welsh students are currently at university in England, this means that the WAG is handing over a great big chunk (up to 16,000 × £6000 = £96 million) of its hard-earned budget straight back to England. This has always seemed to me a very strange thing to do when the Welsh Government is constantly complaining that the Barnett formula doesn’t give them enough money in the first place.

What’s more, the Welsh Assembly grants for Welsh students are paid for by top-slicing the grants that HECFW makes to Welsh universities. So funding cuts for universities in Wales have been  imposed in order to subsidize English universities. This is hardly in the spirit of devolution either!

English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay full whack, but will be paying to attend universities whose overall level of state funding is even lower than in England (at least for STEM subjects whose subsidy is protected in England). Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales, compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England, but I wonder how many of them realize that if they study England their £9K fee attracts an additional investment of £1.5K from HEFCE whereas there is no equivalent central resource supplied by HEFCW if they study in Wales? To put it another way, each £1 of tuition fee paid by a STEM student is worth £1.16 in England, but just £1 in Wales.

The other drastic implication of this policy is that HEFCW will have no money left to fund research via the QR mechanism that pertains in England (at least for the time being). I blogged about this a couple of days ago so won’t say any more today.

I don’t think any of my former colleagues in Cardiff are terribly upset to see Leighton Andrews go, but there is some nervousness about whether the replacement might be even worse. The new Education Minister is Huw Lewis. I wish him well in his new post, and hope he has the courage to question some of the decisions made by his predecessor that have had such a negative effect on education in Wales.

Anyway, in bidding farewell to Leighton Andrews I thought I’d show him all due respect, and do him the honour of presenting a look-alike. All reference to Muppets purely coincidental…

Slide1

2 Comments »

University Research Funding: Will the Axe Fall on QR?

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags , , , on June 25, 2013 by telescoper

As we tremble in anticipation of this week’s Spending Review, which will determine the budgets for Science and Higher Education in 2015/16, there’s fairly strong evidence that Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is looking to save about £11.5 billion of public spending. Given that funding for some Whitehall departments is ring-fenced there is considerable speculation that the axe will fall heavily on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which seems likely to have to make over £1 billion of savings.

But where will these savings in the BIS budget be made? The government has made noises that it will protect science funding (at least in cash terms) so big cuts in the larger research council budgets appear unlikely. However, Treasury officials have been rumoured as thinking that the Universities are now “awash with money” and should therefore be cut. On the other hand, incoming for University teaching now largely comes from fees so there’s very little of the HEFCE teaching budget to cut further.

Now here’s the rub. The part of HEFCE’s budget that deals with research amounts to about £1.6 billion per year. This, the so-called `QR’ funding, is currently being distributed to Higher Education Institutions according to the outcome of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This year we
are preparing submissions to a new system called the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which was always intended to be used to distribute QR funding from 2015/16 onwards. But what if the government decides that the only way to balance the books is to remove the QR funding stream entirely?

The 2012 funding letter from HEFCE states explains that it is distributing

£1,558 million for research. The ring-fenced settlement for science and research means that we will be able to maintain overall funding, in cash terms, until 2014-15.

But this does not include the period covered by the spending review, so it’s perfectly possible that the “ring fence” could be removed, or at least re-interpreted as a result of this spending review.

The government could argue that QR and Research Council grant income correlate so well that there’s no need to continue with the current dual funding system, by which the Research Councils provide grants for specific projects and programmes and the higher education funding bodies provide block grant funding to universities via the QR line. It could also argue that the high fees being charged mean that Universities will be able to cope with these cuts without undue hardship. There is a precedent in Wales, where HEFCW will not be awarding any QR funding after the 2013 REF, so why shouldn’t England do the same? They could also get away with the argument that this money isn’t part of the ring fence mentioned above.

The only problem is that so many institutions have spent so much time on preparations for the REF that cancelling the funding associated with it will mean all that effort is wasted. Indeed, the only remaining justification (if it can be called that) for Universities participating in the REF is for position in various league tables, which is rather a lot of expense for something of extremely debatable value.

Anyway, if I were a gambling man (which I am, actually) I don’t think I’d be betting against this outcome. Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future, but this one is mine. And I hope it’s proved wrong…

12 Comments »

Strike Suspended

Posted in Brighton, Politics with tags , , on June 21, 2013 by telescoper

I worked quite late last night. When I finally got the bus home I checked up on Twitter, and found that CityClean workers who had been on strike had decided to suspend their strike action and return to work. It seems that Brighton and Hove Council made an offer which the GMB Union reps decided was worth putting to their membership. The strike is therefore suspended while a ballot takes place. There’s no guarantee that the offer will be accepted, of course, and the refuse collectors and the rest will presumably go back in strike if it isn’t, but in the meantime the CityClean staff will at least be working properly. This morning I saw signs of the cleanup starting. They seem to be concentrating on the main roads, so the residential streets are still an absolute nightmare, but at least it’s a start. It will probably take weeks to return to normal and “normal” for Brighton is in any case fairly grubby…

Relieved at the news I stopped off for a pint at my local in Kemptown. Most properties in this area are divided into flats (like mine) and there is therefore a very high density of occupation. Kemptown has consequently been hit particularly badly by the strike. Anyway, the offer made to CityClean operatives is covered by a confidentiality agreement so at this point the general public aren’t being told the terms. In the pub a rumour was going around that the offer that is now being put to a ballot has actually been on the table for some time, and that the Union is balloting on it now because public support for the strike has evaporated. I took that all with a pinch of salted peanuts, actually, but when there’s confidentiality it’s human nature that there should be rumour…

Anyway, at least there’s a light at the end of this very long and unpleasant tunnel. If the union does accept the offer made by the Council then hopefully the two sides can start to build a proper working relationship for the future without recrimination or triumphalism on either side.

To paraphrase the Book of Ecclesiastes: better is the end of a strike than the beginning thereof.

Anyway, before yesterday evening’s news I’d already decided to head out of Brighton for the weekend. Hopefully, the place will just a bit more inhabitable when I return to work on Monday.

1 Comment »

When is a strike not a strike? When it’s a scam…

Posted in Brighton, Politics with tags , , on June 20, 2013 by telescoper

Well, as the Brighton Bin Strike rumbles on it is rapidly become clear that a public health disaster is imminent. Here are three examples I snapped on the way into work this morning:

IMG-20130620-00134 IMG-20130620-00135 IMG-20130620-00136

Officially the 5-day strike comes to an end today and the City clean workers are supposed to return to work tomorrow morning, but on a “work to rule” which means the backlog will not be cleared over the weekend.

For next week the strikers have made plans for what they call “strategic action”. There are basically three groups of workers involved in the dispute: (i) refuse truck drivers; (ii) refuse collectors; and (iii) street cleaners. The plan is that groups (ii) and (iii) will go back to work, but (i) will remain on strike. This means that groups (ii) & (iii) will turn up for work, and receive full pay, but will be unable to carry out any of their duties because of the absence of drivers to drive the trucks essential for their operation. In effect, the Council Tax payers of Brighton & Hove will be paying for two out of the three groups but not getting any work in return. Presumably future action will rotate these groups, with a similar result.

People can make up their own mind about this tactic, which is intended to ensure that CityClean workers do not lose their entire income while on strike. My view, for what it’s worth, is that it is both cynical and immoral. Effectively, the CityClean operatives are planning to help themselves to Council Tax payers’ money in order to fund the strike, while still expecting the general public to endure the stench and filth generated by their decision to withdraw their labour. I began with some sympathy for the strikers, but I’m afraid if they persist in this action that sympathy will disappear entirely.

A strike is a strike, but the plan for next week is not a strike. It’s a scam.

Meanwhile, the other party to the dispute, Brighton & Hove City Council, is doing exactly nothing to resolve it. The strikers action, however, is not hurting them, it’s hurting the ordinary people of the city. It’s just a question of time before someone is injured (e.g. by broken glass) or contracts a disease from the rotting garbage littering the streets. Hundreds of small businesses, already struggling with the recession, many of which are dependent on the tourist trade for their income, will be forced under. The selfishness and intransigence of both sides is unconscionable. Moreover, the Council has a statutory responsibility to provide a refuse collection service, which is is clearly unable and/or unwilling to do.

We’ve reached the point where the national Government should intervene. And quickly.

18 Comments »

My Old Man’s A Dustman

Posted in Music, Politics on June 17, 2013 by telescoper

Apologies for the frivolity during the strike, but what are we ordinary Council Tax payers to do when their City turns into an enormous rubbish dump? You have to laugh sometimes, otherwise you’ll die of cholera.

But seriously, I know the refuse collectors are having a raw deal but the strike is affecting the people of Brighton, not the managers at the Council who are responsible for the problem (and are still collecting their salaries just as we are still paying our Council Tax). A serious public health issue is developing as a result of the strike and, well, two wrongs don’t make a right…

IMG-20130616-00129

5 Comments »

A Time for Honours

Posted in Education, Politics, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 15, 2013 by telescoper

The word “honour” provides a (tenuous) link between yesterday’s post and this one. After our recent preoccupation with the classification of honours for graduating students (i.e. first class, second class, and so on), today’s news included the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2013, which you can download in full here. To make up for the lack of recycling going on in Brighton these days because of the strike that started yesterday, I thought I’d recycle my thoughts from previous years.

The honours system must appear extremely curious to people from outside the United Kingdom. It certainly seems so to me. On the one hand, I am glad that the government has a mechanism for recognising the exceptional contributions made to society by certain individuals. Musicians, writers, sportsmen, entertainers and the like generally receive handsome financial rewards, of course, but that’s no reason to begrudge a medal or two in recognition of the special place they occupy in our cultural life.  It’s  good to see scientists recognized too, although they tend not to get noticed so much by the press.

The name that stood out for me in this year’s list is Professor Jim Hough, who gets an OBE. Jim is Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Glasgow, and his speciality is in the detection of gravitational waves.  Gravitational waves haven’t actually been detected yet, of course, but the experimental techniques designed to find them have increased their sensitivity by many orders of magnitude in recent years, Jim having played a large part in those improvements. I imagine he will be absolutely thrilled in February 2016, when gravitational waves are finally detected. Jim is also Chief Executive of the Scottish University Physics Alliance, which does so much to nurture Physics and Astronomy North of the Border.

Although I’m of course more than happy to see recognition given to such people, as I did  a couple of years ago I can’t resist stating my objections to the honours system again. One is that the list of recipients  of certain categories of award is overwhelmingly dominated by career civil servants, for whom an “honour”  goes automatically with a given rank. If an honour is considered an entitlement in this way then it is no honour at all, and in fact devalues those awards that are  given on merit to people outside the Civil Service. Civil servants get paid for doing their job, so they should have no more expectation of an additional reward than anyone else. There’s much more honour in a  student who earns a First Class degree than for a career civil servant who gets a knighthood.

Honours have relatively little monetary value on their own, of course so this is not question of financial corruption. An honour does, however, confer status and prestige on the recipient so what we have is a much more subtle form of sleaze. One wonders how many names listed in the current roll of honours are there because of political donations, for example.

I wouldn’t accept an honour myself, but that’s easy to say because I’m sure I’ll never be nominated for one; hopefully this post will dissuade anyone from even thinking of nominating me for a gong. However, I imagine that even people like me who are against the whole system are probably still tempted to accept such awards when offered, as they generate good publicity for one’s field, institution and colleagues.It’s a very personal decision and I have no criticism to make of people who think differently from me about whether to accept an honour.

1 Comment »

Brighton Council pay dispute

Posted in Politics with tags , , , on June 10, 2013 by telescoper

Here’s another blog about the Brighton refuse collection dispute (by an author whose twitter handle is @socialistgreen), also asking for explanations of the mysterious “allowances”…

socialistgreen's avatarsocialistgreen

The current pay dispute at Brighton & Hove Council highlights all that is wrong about so many trade unions, who instead of looking at the bigger picture, concentrate on the needs of a small number of people, usually men.

As I understand it, the Council’s current plans to equalise pay will see many women earning more, but a small number of workers, mainly men, will be worse off. Why aren’t the unions scandalised that all those women have been underpaid for so many years, (and at least 4 years since most other councils sorted out ‘single status’), and why aren’t they seeking  compensation for all that pay that those women missed out on? Now that would be a good campaign!

Brighton Council are offering compensation to workers who will lose out, and maybe that could be raised or paid over a couple of years while they adjust to the change…

View original post 93 more words

Leave a comment »

Brighton’s Rubbish Collections

Posted in Politics with tags , , , on June 8, 2013 by telescoper

Time for a quick post about a local difficulty in Brighton. A dispute over allowances that has been rumbling on for weeks has resulted in a vote for a strike by the city’s refuse collectors and street cleaners, due to start next Friday (14th June). Unless a deal is reached there will be no refuse or recycling collections or any street cleaning for a week. If the warm weather continues, a serious environmental hazard could ensue, as uncollected food waste will no doubt lead to a proliferation of vermin.

I’m not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of the dispute, and facts about what precisely is going on are difficult to come by. A webcast by the Council explaining the background can be found here. The issue is not about basic hourly pay, which isn’t changing under the Council’s proposals, but Cityclean workers are claiming that changes to the Council’s system of allowances will lead to some of them losing as much as £4000 per year in take home pay. I don’t however understand what these mysterious “allowances” are. If anyone can enlighten me through the comments box then I’d be very happy. Other than that all I’ll say is that I hope a settlement is reached before things get even more unbearable, but the atmosphere between workers and Council seems already to be so acrimonious that it is hard to see either backing down. I hope they don’t but things could get very nasty.

I will, however, comment on the state of the rubbish collection in Brighton even before the strike starts next week. A two-day wildcat strike in May led to a pile-up of rubbish beside the communal bins. In the weeks since then “targetted disruption” (the Council’s phrase) has meant that this backlog has never been cleared, despite the Council effectively cancelling recycling collections to concentrate on ordinary refuse.

In fact I haven’t had any paper or glass collected for recycling for a month, so I have given up and now take it on foot to one of the few recycling centres dotted around the place. That’s a bit inconvenient, but not too much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. In fact, it has surprised me a lot since moving to Brighton from Cardiff a few months ago, just how poor the recycling service in Brighton is. Home to the UK’s only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, and with a (minority) Green party controlling the Council I would have expected a much more comprehensive approach to recycling than is actually the case. As it is,  compared to Cardiff (which isn’t brilliant), Brighton’s recycling service is really hopeless. The Greens will probably argue that they inherited the system in a time of austerity and have been unable to improve it, but if they can’t improve something which represents one of their core values why bother having Green councillors? Brighton’s Green Party shows signs of going into meltdown over this issue anyway, with the resignation of a Councillor in Hanover ward triggering a by-election so their prospects in the next Council elections look pretty grim.

Anyway, the immediate problem is not the poor provision for recycling, but the regular refuse collection. Here’s a typical picture of St James Street (Kemptown):

IMG-20130510-00111

It’s extremely unpleasant to have to walk through or around piles of stinking garbage, but remember that this picture was taken before the official strike has even started! It seems to me that Cityclean workers, who are currently getting paid for not collecting garbage, will, when the strike begins, simply no longer get paid for not collecting the garbage. What this means about the likely duration of strike action remains to be seen.

I continue to hope that a settlement can be reached that averts industrial action, but that hope is fading fast, and so, unfortunately, is the prospect of Brighton having a decent refuse and recycling service in the foreseeable future.

And there’s another point. Councils have a statutory obligation to collect and dispose of domestic refuse. There’s no doubt in my mind that Brighton and Hove County Council is failing to meet that obligation, but what action can an ordinary person take? Answers on a postcard, or through the comments box….

UPDATE: I have invited @gmbcityclean to comment here on the nature of the allowances, but they have declined to do so.

11 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »