I came across this interesting polemic about climate change denialism and because I’m going to be too busy today to post anything original I thought I’d reblog it here.
Someone told me off last week for my “Academic Journal Racket” post, arguing that polemics never advance an argument. I disagree, actually. Polemics are good, as long as they’re good polemics.
via Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Follow @telescoperYesterday’s attempt by the so-called English Defence League (a group of violent Neo-Nazi thugs) to stir up trouble in the East End of London was the cue for thousands of anti-fascists to stage a counter-demonstration. Many were worried that this would lead to a repeat of the Battle of Cable Street, but thankfully that didn’t happen. While it’s reassuring that the number of of EDL supporters amounted to just a few hundred – many fewer than those who protested against them – it still fills me with sadness that there are even that many people who are prepared to follow such an organization. The lessons of history make it clear that the journey they want to take will lead to an England that isn’t worth defending, so they must be stopped at the outset with every peaceful means possible.
I wasn’t able to get to London for the demonstration, but if I had it would no doubt filled me with nostalgia because the anti-EDL protestors were chanting “¡No pasarán!” (“They Shall Not Pass“), a slogan redolent with nostalgia for me, from my time as a student leftie, and which dates from the heroic defence of Madrid against Franco’s fascists during the Spanish Civil War. In those days (when I was student, I mean, not during the Spanish Civil War!) I was a member of the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and remember hearing the band, Zinica, singing a song with that title (which I’ve put below). I even bought their album, Bluefields Express, which I still have.
The members of Zinica hailed from the caribbean cost of Nicaragua which was extensively settled by English people, so a number of the towns in that area have English names, such as Bluefields. Many of their songs were based on traditional English folk songs, especially sea shanties, but with a definite flavour of calypso and reggae.
Anyway, now in my complacent middle age, I thank the EDL for one thing only – reminding me of the sad fact that fascism remains a threat to which we all must be alert. Next time the EDL try to incite violence again, I’ll definitely be among those protesting against them.
No pasarán.
Follow @telescoperNow that I’m back from my trip to Copenhagen, it’s going to be back to work with a vengeance. To those of you who think academics have massively long summer breaks, I can tell you that mine ends on Monday when I will be doing a stint as Acting Head of School. That’s not usually a particularly onerous task during the summer months, but next week happens to be the week that A-level results come out and it promises to be a hectic and critical period. It’s obviously a sheer coincidence that all the other senior professors have decided to take their leave at this time…
There are several reasons for this being a particularly stressful time. First the number of potential students applying to study Physics (and related subjects) this forthcoming academic year (2011/12) in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University was up by a whopping 53% on last year. I blogged about this a few months ago when it became obvious that we were having a bumper year.
The second reason is that Cardiff’s School of Physics & Astronomy has been given a big increase in funded student numbers from HEFCW. In fact we’ve been given an extra 60 funded places (over two years), which is a significant uplift in our quota and a much-needed financial boost for the School. This has happened basically because of HECFW‘s desire to bolster STEM subjects as part of a range of measures related to the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for the regions. Preparations have been made to accommodate the extra students in tutorial groups and we’re even modifying one of our larger lecture rooms to increase capacity.
Unfortunately the extra places were announced after the normal applications cycle was more-or-less completed, so the admissions team had been proceeding on the basis that demand would exceed supply for this year so has set our undergraduate offers rather high. In order to fill the extra places that have been given to us late in the day, even with our vastly increased application numbers, we will almost certainly have to go into the clearing system to recruit some of the extra students.
In case you didn’t realise, universities actually get a sneak preview of the A-level results a couple of days before the applicants receive them. This helps us plan our strategy, whether to accept “near-misses”, whether to go into clearing, etc.
On top of these local factors there is the sweeping change in tuition fees coming in next year (2012-13). Anxious to avoid the vastly increased cost of future university education many fewer students will be opting to defer entry than in previous years. Moreover, some English universities have had cuts in funded student places making entry highly competitive. As an article in today’s Observer makes clear, this all means that clearing is likely to be extremely frantic this year.
And once that’s out of the way I’ll be working more-or-less full time until late September on business connected with the STFC Astronomy Grants Panel, a task likely to be just as stressful as UCAS admissions for both panel members and applicants.
Ho hum.
Follow @telescoperLooking at the news feeds during my last evening in rainy Copenhagen, I see that the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Milliband, has weighed in with an armful of brand new platitudes he obviously acquired during the riots, including a dig at so-called “academic” studies into the causes of violent disorder.
I think this is a big mistake. A serious academic study would undoubtedly reveal a deep sociological connection between mob violence of the type recently experienced in England and the soccer hooliganism of the 70s and 80s. The pioneering research discussed in the following news clip offers a radical suggestion for solving the problem of youth violence.
Follow @telescoperI’m in Copenhagen, yet again, for the third time in as many months, this time for a workshop arranged by the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute. It’s my talk this morning, in fact, so although I’m up early I haven’t got much time to post. I have to work on my talk to see if there’s a way I can make it all fit in 30 minutes!
Copenhagen is a pretty familiar place to me, but this has to be the most unsettling trip I’ve ever made here. I’m not talking about the long delay at Heathrow airport before we took off; I’ve come to expect that. The airport clearly can’t cope with the level of traffic it is supposed to handle during the summer months, so you have to reckon on at least an hour delay inbound and outbound. Sitting on the tarmac for an hour while being told over and over again that it will be “just a few minutes” really does bring out the grumpy old man in me. Still, at least I didn’t lose any luggage.
No, the reason this is such an unsettling trip is that back home in Blighty all hell seems to have broken lose, with riots in the streets of, first, London and now apparently Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. I was also on the march in 1990 that turned into the Poll Tax riot. I was appalled by the violence that day and got myself and my friends away from trouble as soon as it flared, but it has to be said that it did lead to a change in the law, something Parliament had failed to achieve.
Back to the present, I note that the Tesco at Bethnal Green, where I used to live, has apparently been looted. I hope all my friends in London are keeping themselves safe.
I don’t think there’s anything I can say about these riots that wouldn’t be ill-informed, unhelpful, or even downright stupid. I am however old enough to remember that such things have happened before, in deprived inner-city areas, including Liverpool and Bristol. The circumstances were similar too. Given the public spending cuts that have hit community programmes extremely hard, it doesn’t surprise me that some have decided to lash out, especially at the Police, whose criminal collusion with the media over phone-tapping and draconian tactics in dealing with lawful protests has turned many others against them .
I find it hard to separate these signs of social disintegration from the large-scale economic landscape. The huge level of debt accumulated by banks during the Credit Crunch of 2008 has now been absorbed by governments across the globe, who are attempting to deal with it by cutting public spending rather than raising taxes. Meanwhile the bankers have accepted their bailouts with glee, paying themselves bonuses by the bucketful and no doubt squirreling away the dosh in the Cayman Islands. If the state sanctions greed on that scale, is it surprising that people at the bottom of the heap decide to join in by looting the local supermarket?
The young have the right to feel particularly disillusioned. The current generation has lived beyond its means for too long and, realising it too late, is trying to pay for it by mortgaging the future. The opportunities our young people, especially those from less affluent backgrounds, can look forward to, in terms of education and jobs, will be much poorer than my generation.
I’m not usually one to endorse the view of the Daily Telegraph, but I think this piece hits the nail pretty much on the head. As Karl Marx would have said, it’s all about alienation, and I can tell you it’s not just the “underclass” that’s feeling it at the moment.
None of which is to condone the violence: you can be angry with the looters and the arsonists and those engaged in wanton destruction, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to understand why it’s happening.
But I’m very afraid that there’s going to be a lot more of this. The sovereign debt crisis is far from over. In many ways it has only just begun. There will be deeper cuts in public spending, greater inequality, greater social divisions and more upheavals like this. I think we’re in for a rough ride. I’m just glad I’m no longer young.
Follow @telescoperIt’s been a while since I’ve blogged about local affairs, but the emergence of three items of news in the past few days has given me an opportunity to remedy that.
First, and hot off the press this morning, is the news that Cardiff University has at last decided who its next Vice-Chancellor will be after the incumbent, David Grant, retires next year. The lucky winner is Professor Colin Riordan, who is currently Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex (which apparently exists). His background is in the humanities, and his speciality post-war German literature. Since his previous institution doesn’t have a Physics Department, we’re probably safe for a few years until he finds out Cardiff has one and decides to close it.
Anyway, Professor Riordan became a Vice Chancellor for the first time at the age of 48, which is the same age I am now. Maybe I should be climbing aboard the gravy train? I hear there’s a vacancy as Vice Chancellor at the University of Essex. I would apply, but I fear I have all the wrong vices…
That brings me to yesterday’s news that Cardiff University, along with all the proper most other universities in Wales, is to charge annual tuition fees of, you guessed it, £9K. This is despite recent reports that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) was set to refuse permission to set such high fees. I always thought it was inevitable that Welsh universities would want to charge as much as possible to bring funding levels closer to those in England, but it remains to be seen what effect the new regime will have on student recruitment. The £9K level is substantially higher than the Welsh Assembly Government’s initial estimate of £7K so it also remains to be seen what the implications are for the WAG budget. We live in interesting times…
However, not wishing to end on a down note, I’ll finish by passing on a bit of up-beat news. Apparently – according to the esteemed National Geographic Magazine – Cardiff is one of the top ten places in the world to visit in 2011, coming in at Number 6 in this rigorously compiled and totally objective league table. I’m usually a bit skeptical about such things, but who could possibly disagree with the ranking?
1. Muskoka Orange County, Ontario, Canada
2. Patagonia, Argentina
3. San Juan Islands, Washington
4. Minneapolis, Minnesota
5. Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
6. Cardiff, Wales
7. Stockholm Archipelago Sweden
8. Azores, Portugal
9. Roatan, Honduras
10. Istria, Croatia
Hang on a minute. Minneapolis? At Number 4?
Follow @telescoperI had just finished the exciting job of marking my examinations and collating all the results with coursework when I noticed a rumour circulating on twitter about the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) having rejected plans by all Welsh universities to charge higher fees than the basic £4K laid down by the Welsh Assembly Government. The rumour later developed into a story on the NUS website and then on the local BBC News, Wales Online and the Times Higher.
In case you’re not up with the intricacies of Welsh Higher Education policy, universities here in the Principality will, from 2012, be allowed to charge fees of up to £9K per annum (as in England) if and only if they have approval from HEFCW for plans relating “to widening access and to improving the student experience.” Note there’s apparently no requirement of providing a better education in that. As a mere university teacher I have no idea at all what has gone into Cardiff University’s plan nor do I know why it is deemed satisfactory. Such things are done by our lords and masters in the University administration.
It does seem strange, though, that the process works this way, i.e. that HEIs have to produce plans that they hope will be accepted by HEFCW. Why doesn’t HEFCW simply tell the HEIs what they have to do to be able to charge the fees? I wonder how the clear the guidance from HEFCW was. It might be a case of “Read my mind to see what I want, and if you don’t give it to me I’ll shoot you”.
Universities wishing to charge £9K (which is, predictably, nearly all of them) had to submit their plans to HEFCW by the end of May. Several universities did so, including Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Bangor, and even Glamorgan, who all want to charge the maximum £9K. HEFCW has now announced that none of them meet the standard needed to charge more than £4k. There’s still quite a bit of time for universities to amend their plans before the deadline of 11th July, so this is by no means the end of the story, but it has certainly set alarm bells ringing where I work!
The point is that the Welsh Assembly Government is heavily cutting the funds it allocates to Welsh Universities from 2012, so if institutions are not allowed to charge sufficiently high fees to recoup that loss then many departments are going to be in really big trouble, especially those teaching expensive subjects.
Education Minister Leighton Andrews is quoted as saying
I asked for Hefcw to be thorough and robust when scrutinising the fee plans submitted by our higher education and further education institutions. It is clear that they have been and I heartily endorse this.
There are a number of ways of reading the lie of the land here. One is that it’s actually a sensible process of consultation between individual institutions and HEFCW. Since this is uncharted territory for both there may well be things that need to be clarified on both sides, and HEFCW may therefore be engaging in a sensible process of consultation and iteration in order to help institutions produce acceptable plans. It could also represent an element brinkmanship, so the Minister and HEFCW can be seen to be flexing a bit of muscle, in contrast to the situation in England, where it appears the government has no power to prevent institutions charging higher fees. I always felt it was inevitable that Cardiff, as a Russell Group University, would want to charge £9K, but I can imagine Leighton Andrews being irritated by places like Glamorgan wanting to charge the same.
Whatever game is being played, it’s a very dangerous one and the stakes are very high. The Welsh Assembly Government has already indicated it will pay the fees of any Welsh domiciled students wherever they study in the UK. For the most part that will mean £9K per student per year for Welsh students wanting to study in England. If Welsh universities can only charge £4K per year for students coming from England to Wales then there will be a huge imbalance in funds flowing in and out of the higher education sector. In effect, the Welsh Assembly Government will be subsidising English universities at the expense of Welsh ones.
Currently the number of English students coming to Wales exceeds the number of Welsh students studying in England. The WAG’s plan relies on a net influx of funds to offset the cuts in central funding needed to pay student bursaries. However, English students do not come in equal numbers to all Welsh institutions. More come to Cardiff University than, say, Bangor. So how will this extra income from England benefit the Welsh HE sector generally? Is the proposal to cut HEFCW funds to Universities who succeed in attracting English cash cows students and redistribute the dosh among those institutions that don’t? That hardly seems equitable to me.
I’m certainly not in a panic about this news, although I may be on July 11th when we find out the final outcome. In the meantime, as a humble academic at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to such matters, I’ll get on with my teaching and research and pray that those in charge actually know what they’re doing…
Follow @telescoperBig news this morning was the release of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2011 which, if you’re interested, you can download in full here. The awards that made the headlines were a knighthood for Bruce Forsyth and gongs for England cricket stars Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook. A smattering of academics (including an astrophysicist and a particle physicist) were also among those to get invitations to Buckingham Palace in order to receive honours of various sorts from Her Majesty.
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.
On the other hand, there are several things about the system that make me extremely uncomfortable. 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.
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 perversion.
Worse still is the dishing out of gongs to political cronies, washed-up ministers, and various sorts of government hangers-on. An example of the latter is the knighthood awarded to Steve Smith, Chair of Universities UK, who stated, apparently without humorous intent,
Normally the UUK president gets a knighthood in the summer after they finish, so I was expecting it – in the sense that you ever expect these things – in July next year.
I read this as meaning
Usually the UUK president is rewarded for being a spineless government lackey after they’ve finished, but I’ve been such a brilliant spineless government lackey I’m getting my reward early.
Although the honours system has opened up a little bit over the last decade or so, to me it remains a sinister institution that attempts to legitimise the self-serving nature of its patronage by throwing the odd bone to individuals outside the establishment. I don’t intend any disrespect to the individuals who have earned their knighthoods, MBEs, OBEs, CBEs or whatnot. I just think they’re being rewarded with tainted currency.
And that’s even before you take into account the award of a knighthood to the loathsome homophobic spiv Brian Souter. Well, I mean. Does anyone really think it’s an honour to be in the same club as him? I find it deeply offensive that he could have been considered an appropriate person to be on the list. If you feel the way I do, please sign the petition here.
There. I’ve said it. Bang goes my knighthood.
Follow @telescoperI know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for news of the outcome of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee‘s report into Astronomy and Particle Physics in the UK.
Well, it’s out now. You can find the web version of the report here and it’s also available as a PDF file there. There’s also a press release with the headline
MPs warn astronomy and particle physics budgets cuts will hit UK science hard
Journalists have obviously been busy overnight – the report was released at midnight, I believe – and there are stories all over the press this morning, including The Guardian, and the journal Science as well as the BBC. The Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics have also been quick to respond.
Apart from the savage cuts themselves – which the committee correctly suggest will reduce astronomy and particle physics spending by 2014/15 to about 50% of the level it was at in 2005 – the great tragedy of this story is that it has taken so long to recognize the scale of the disaster. Most of the damage was done way back in 2007 when the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) was first set up. I’d suggest there is an error in the tense of the verb “to hit” in the headline above. It would be more accurate as
MPs warn astronomy and particle physics budgets cuts HAVE ALREADY hit UK science hard, and are getting worse all the time..
Last year’s Comprehensive Spending Review had relatively good news for STFC, with a settlement corresponding to level funding in cash terms. However, the Bank of England has recently stated that it expects inflation to reach 5% this year, which means that science will actually be getting 5% year-on-year real terms cuts on top of what it received in 2007. It’s a pretty dire situation.
The report also raises a doubt over whether the current Chief Executive, Keith Mason, has the “ability to command the confidence of the scientific community”. No shit.
I don’t have time to write much more on this right now as I have lectures to do, but perhaps others out there might feel the urge to start a discussion through the comments box…
I think I’ve caught up with most of the signficant things that happened during my travels, so I thought I’d end this series of updates with some local news from Cardiff (and Wales generally).
First, I can pass on some information relating to the number of potential students applying to study Physics (and related subjects) this forthcoming academic year (2011/12) in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University. I blogged about this a few months ago when it became obvious that we were having a bumper year. As it turns out, we finished with applications up by a whopping 53% on last year.
Second, and related to the first item, the detailed allocations of university funding in Wales have finally filtered down all the way from HEFCW, through the Cardiff University management, and onto individual schools. As it happens, this has also turned out not too badly for us here in Physics & Astronomy. For various reasons we’ve finally been given the increase in student numbers that we have been requesting for some time without success. In fact we’ve been given an extra 60 funded places, which is a significant uplift in our quota and a much-needed financial boost for the School. This has happened basically because of HECFW‘s desire to bolster STEM subjects as part of a range of measures related to the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for the regions.
Unfortunately the admissions team have so far been proceeding on the basis that demand would exceed supply for this year so has set our undergraduate offers rather high. In order to fill the extra places that have been given to us late in the day, even with our vastly increased application numbers we may have to go into the clearing system to recruit some of the extra bodies. We’ll have to wait until the A-level results come out in August, however, before we know what the situation really is.
It would have been a lot easier if we’d known the rules at the start of the game, rather than near the end, but that’s the way it goes when politicians start tinkering with things…
We will have to lay on extra tutorials and laboratory sessions to cope with the anticipated increase in student numbers, which will be a bit of a struggle, but the extra money they bring in should keep the wolf from the door for a while.
Another thing worth mentioning concerns research in Wales. In the run-up to the Welsh Assembly elections, the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CASE) produced a couple of interesting documents. One was about science policy in the devolved nations and the other was a comparison of STEM subjects across the UK.
These documents make it clear that Wales lags far beyond England and (particularly) Scotland in terms of investment in, and productivity of, its scientific research. In its recommendations for Wales, CASE included
- The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales must increase its investment in research – as well as improving the research base directly, this investment should bring more success in winning competitive, UK-wide funding. The indirect costs of charitably funded research should continue to be covered.
- Policies should continue to build up the critical mass of research through collaboration, including with overseas researchers or businesses.
As I reported recently, we (Cardiff, Swansea and Aberystwyth) have tried to persuade HECFW to fund a Welsh physics initiative, intended to achieve precisely what CASE suggests. Unfortunately HECFW turned our bid down. At least for the short term, additional investment in physics research is clearly not on the agenda for HEFCW. There’s not much sign of it happening in the future either, but we will have to wait and see…
In the Dark 