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Returning

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags d'Hondt formula, Elections, Neil McEvoy, Senedd, Welsh Assembly on May 7, 2011 by telescoper

Well chaps and chapesses, I’m back to base after a very enjoyable break in foreign climes. I won’t bore you with interminable holiday snaps and the like, however. Suffice to say that, although it was good to get away from it all for a bit, it’s also nice to be back to Blighty. I’ve got quite a few things to catch up with on at home, at work, and on the blog, and I’ll try to return to fairly frequent postings now that I’m home.

I thought I’d start with one of the big events that happened while I was away. Not the Royal Wedding, which I successfully avoided completely although I only narrowly escaped seeing some of it on an outdoor big screen (which I had assumed would be showing some form of sporting contest). Not the killing of Osama Bin Laden, either. Nor even the AV referendum, which went the way I expected. No, I think the first thing I should comment on is the result of the elections to the National Assembly for Wales which I followed, as best I could, by Twitter and on the net via my Blackberry while I was away. I wasn’t helped by the fact that North Wales decided not even to start counting votes until the morning after Polling Day, thus holding up the final results by half a day. Perhaps that’s because the count was done in Llandudnno, where people generally go to bed about 10pm?

This was the first Senedd election I have had the opportunity to vote in, even though I had to do it postally. For the Welsh Assembly elections, each voter gets two votes. One is cast just as in a General Election, i.e. by picking one candidate for one’s own consituency – in my case Cardiff West. This is a safe Labour seat, previously held by former First Minister Rhodri Morgan, and it was no surprise to see the Labour candidate romp home with an increased majority. Of the 60 members of the Welsh Assembly, 40 are elected directly through constituency votes like this.

Incidentally, one of the other candidates in this constituency was Neil McEvoy, standing for Plaid Cymru. McEvoy is currently deputy leader of Cardiff City Council (which is run by a coalition of LibDems and Plaid Cymru councillors) and is an enthusiastic champion of the building of a major road into Bute Park for use by heavy lorries. It might have been better for the people of Cardiff – especially those who appreciate its wonderful green spaces – had Councillor McEvoy been elevated to the Senedd, because that would prevent him doing further damage on behalf of the Council. In the end, though, he trailed in third place in the Welsh Assembly poll so will presumably remain on the Council.

Meanwhile, back at the polls. Voters in the Welsh Assembly elections get another regional vote in addition to their constituency vote, which they can cast for a closed party list. There are 5 regions in Wales, each of which elects 4 members to the Assembly taking its full complement to 60. The so-called Additional Member system uses the d’Hondt divisor formula to allocate regional AMs in accordance with the following algorithm:

Party list votes are totalled from each of the constituencies making up the region.
These totals are then divided by the number of constituency seats each party has won – plus one.
The party with the highest resulting total elects one Additional Member.
That party’s divisor is then increased by one (because of its victory)
Step 2 is repeated with the updated number of seats.; again, the highest resulting total wins a seat.
The process is then repeated until all Additional Members are elected.

The aim of the system is to compensate parties which pile up lots votes in constituencies but fail to win many seats there. Under the d’Hondt system, they are much more likely to gain additional regional members. Conversely, parties which do well in constituency elections will do less well in the top-up seats. The idea is that the final outcome is much more proportional than it would be based on constituency votes alone. It’s not perfect, of course. Welsh Labour won precisely 50% of the seats in the Senedd, but with considerably less than 50% of the popular vote.

This system probably sounds quite complicated – especially considering the difficulty many people seem to have had understanding the Alternative Vote, which is much simpler! – but it is actually fairly straightforward to operate. It does, however produce a few unexpected consequences.

In the 2011 Welsh Assembly elections the constituency vote held up very well for the Conservative Party. This was probably helped by a relatively low turnout of just over 40%, because ensuring the core Tory voters turned out for the poll was probably all the campaign strategists needed to do. However, the unexpected success of the Conservatives in the constituency vote led to one notable casualty when the additional members were calculated. The Conservative leader in the Welsh Assembly, a regional member, Nick Bourne, found himself a victim of the party’s own success: he lost his seat, and the Tories now need a new leader.

In summary, Welsh Labour did pretty well, returning 30 out of the total of 60 Assembly Members, up 4 on the last election. The Conservatives, somewhat surprisingly, were up 2 on 14. It was a bad night for Plaid Cymru, who lost four members to end on 11. The Liberal Democrats did poorly in the constituency vote, losing all but one of their seats, but picked up 4 regional members courtesy of d’Hondt. No other parties won any seats.

What happens next? Labour could try to form a minority administration on their own, but it seems more likely that they will try to find a coalition partner. The previous administration involved a combination of Labour and Plaid Cymru, but the latter did so badly in these elections that they may decide that they don’t want to play anymore. That would make the LibDems favourites, although they might be considered a bit toxic after their poor showing elsewhere in the UK. We’ll just have to wait and see what emerges from the discussions (which have presumably already started). I’ll be following it all with particular interest because, amongst other things, there might be important implications for Higher Education in Wales if Labour go it alone or the LibDems replace Plaid in the governing coalition.

There were, of course, elections going on last week throughout the United Kingdom. I haven’t got time to comment on all the results, but fortunately I found this interesting and informative summary of the situation Nationwide…

19 Comments »

Is AV better than FPTP? (via Gowers’s Weblog)

Posted in Politics on April 23, 2011 by telescoper

Here’s an interesting discussion of the Alternative Vote versus First Past The Post voting systems. This is the issue to be decided at the Referendum on 5th May in case you didn’t know…

On May 5th the UK will vote in a referendum for only the second time ever. (The first time was in 1975, when we voted on whether to remain in the EU, or the Common Market as it was then called.) Now we have a chance to decide whether to retain our current voting system, misleadingly known as First Past The Post, or whether to switch to the Alternative Vote. Let me come clean straight away. Although in this post I shall try to write dispassionatel … Read More

via Gowers's Weblog

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Raising the Veil

Posted in Biographical, Politics with tags BNP, Britiish National Party, France, Muslims, religious freedom, Sion Owens, veil on April 11, 2011 by telescoper

We’re now into the last week of teaching term here in Cardiff, and I’m feeling like I’m running the final stages of a marathon. I like the idea of fitting all the second semester’s teaching in before the Easter break but I have to admit I’m struggling to make the distance, especially because so many things have to be done this week before we finish. Next week I’m off to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno too. For all these reasons (and a few others) I won’t have much blogging time for a bit, so my posts may be a bit thin on the ground (or whatever it is that the blogosphere rests on).

However, I couldn’t resist using this blog to express my opinion about one of the big news items of the day, the introduction, today, in France, of a ban on women wearing of the veil in public. I think it’s particularly interesting timing after the discussion of religion and science that arose after I reblogged a post by Andy Lawrence about the Templeton Prize.

Frankly, I think the new French law is monstrous. I’m not a Muslim, but it is abhorrent to me that the state should seek to prevent individuals expressing their religious beliefs. I obviously don’t think anyone should be forced to wear the veil against their will, but in an open society those who choose to wear it should be allowed to do so. And I don’t buy the argument that it’s some sort of identification issue, either. What’s next, a ban on sunglasses and balaclavas? No. In any case there are only about 2,000 women in France who regularly wear the veil. Let’s make no bones about it, this law is specifically intended to pander to anti-Muslim sentiments. It stinks. I like to think we’d never allow such a thing in this country.

But here’s the flip side. I read at the weekend of the case of a candidate for the forthcoming Welsh Assembly Elections. Sion Owens is on the South Wales West Regional List for the British National Party (BNP). At the weekend he was arrested under the Public Order Act after a video emerged in which he was seen to be burning a copy of the Qur’an. Apparently the original charge was dropped today when Mr Owens appeared before the Magistrates Court in Swansea, but investigations are still continuing.

I haven’t seen the video so can’t comment further on what precisely Mr Owens is alleged to have done. I’m not an expert on the Public Order Act(s) either- or at least not the parts that deal with religiously motivated offences – but some sections are open to extremely broad interpretations, and that’s really what the problem is.

I would say though that I’m the last person to want to support the BNP, which as far as I’m concerned is an extremist organisation run by right-wing thugs for the benefit of other right-wing thugs. It seems possible, therefore, and perhaps even likely, that this person did set alight to the Qur’an with the specific intention of provoking religious tension. If that were the case then it would clearly fall within the law as defined by the Public Order Act.

However, even if that were the case I have to say I do not think that what he did should be a criminal offence. It might be abusive, uncivilised, and reprehensible – words not infrequently applied to the BNP, I might add – but I don’t think it should be illegal. If we’re going to have a truly free society we have to get used to the idea that people have the right to do and say things we wouldn’t do or say ourselves. And if people even want to vote for creatures like Mr Owens, they should be allowed to do so….

..although I’ll be hoping he loses his deposit.

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The Dissolution of the Assembly

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags Higher Education, Leighton Andrews, Universities, Welsh Assembly Government on March 27, 2011 by telescoper

Yesterday’s mail included a polling card for the forthcoming elections to the Welsh Assembly. Coincidentally, I found out this morning that the Welsh Assembly will be dissolved on 31st March, to be re-convened on or after 5th May when the elections are finished.

Until Thursday the Welsh Assembly Government comprises a coalition of New Labour and Plaid Cymru and, although I don’t know enough about Welsh politics to predict what’s going to happen with any real confidence, it seems reasonably likely that not much will change. I can’t see the Tories or LibDems making any gains, at any rate.

I’m not sure of the extent to which Higher Education will be important in the forthcoming election campaign. It sure be, of course, as the relevant issues are those over which the Assembly has direct responsibility, education being one. The WAG’s hands are tied to a large extent by the funding it receives from Westminster, and it also has many other calls on its purse, but I do hope the new WAG, whatever its complexion is, will do the right thing by Welsh universities when it re-forms in May.

I have to admit, though, that I’m very worried for the future. As I predicted when the new funding arrangements for English universities were announced, the vast majority – and certainly all the research intensive ones – will be charging the full £9K fee level from 2012. That means the current WAG’s commitment to pay fees for Welsh-domiciled students wanting to study in England will be much more expensive than the WAG’s estimates, which were based on an average fee level of £7.5K. English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay whatever fee Welsh universities charge, which isn’t known yet.

Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales, compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England. If numbers remain the same, in order for the funds coming in from England to exceed the money going to England, the fee level charged in Wales must be at least 64% of that charged in England, i.e. £5760 if all English universities charge £9K. That’s way above the putative mininum fee level of £4K announced by the WAG; if Welsh universities charge fees at that level then the WAG will be providing a large net subsidy to English universities.

And breaking even isn’t anywhere near enough. The WAG has signalled an intention to top-slice teaching budgets by about 40%. We don’t yet know how that will be implemented, university-by-university and department-by-department, but unless there are to be wholesale closures of “expensive” subjects (i.e. science and engineering) fee levels will have to rise substantially above the level calculated above. My own employer, Cardiff University, a member of the Russell Group of research-led universities, will probably want to brand itself alongside the English universities belonging to this club by charging a high fee. I hope it doesn’t do this, but the WAG’s policies are pushing it in that direction. As one of Wales’ biggest recruiters of English students, Cardiff will have to charge high fees in order to be seen as being of the same quality as leading English universities as well as to make up for funding lost in the latest round of deep cuts to recurrent grants.

The recent rhetoric of the WAG is all about achieving greater control of the HE sector in Wales to align it with strategic priorities within the Principality. This is certainly justifiable in principle as Wales has a university system which is far too fragmented and chaotic. Paradoxically, however, the WAG’s own policies seem to be forcing Welsh universities to look to England for income to make up for the big cuts recently announced.

So what’s the alternative?

I think it would be much more rational to ditch the commitment to fund Welsh-domiciled students for studying in England. If a student wants to go to England then they should experience the same fee regime as students domiciled there. After all, you wouldn’t expect the WAG to pay fees for a Welsh student to go to America, would you? The cash thus saved should be reinvested in Welsh Higher Education, in accordance with the WAG’s strategic priorities, and in keeping tuition fee levels as low as possible within the Principality. The best way to avoid tuition fee levels of £9K is to maintain core grants at a level that makes it unnecessary to charge so much.

It seems to me that this plan is a better deal for Welsh students, for English students wanting to study in Wales, for Welsh universities, and for the Welsh Assembly Government, but then I’m used to being in a minority of one.

Let’s just say I’ll be reading the party manifesto statements with great interest over the next few weeks…

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Local News

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags Cardiff University, HEFCW, Higher Education, Physics, Universities Wales, University of Aberystwyth, University of Swansea, Welsh Assembly Government on March 25, 2011 by telescoper

I’m looking forward to tonight’s Annual Chaos Society Physics Ball, in advance of which I’ll have to go home to get my glad rags sorted out.

This posh night out should provide some welcome fun at the end of a week in which various items of news concerning Welsh universities have generated considerable anxiety around these parts.

For a start the Welsh Assembly Government has announced funding levels for HEFCW, the body that distributes funding to Welsh universities. According to a newspaper article

The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (Hefcw) has seen its core budget slashed by 8.5% from £453m in 2010-11 to £388m in 2011-12.

Well, pardon my numeracy but a cut from £453m to £388m is actually a drop of 14.3% not 8.5%. This is much worse than the cuts already announced by HEFCE for English universities, although it remains to be seen how HEFCW will pass on this cut to the institutions it funds. Whatever it does will cause considerable pain, as this cut is being imposed a full year before universities will be allowed to recoup any losses by charging increased tuition fees.

There was also some even more local and even more disappointing news this week concerning HEFCW. Over the past year or so, the three remaining physics departments in Wales (at Cardiff, Swansea and Aberystwyth) have developed a proposal to form a strategic alliance along the lines of similar initiatives in Scotland, the Midlands, and South-East of England which resulted in the injection of large amounts of cash into physics research in those areas. The bid went into HEFCW in January and this week we received the decision. No.

I suppose the decision wasn’t surprising given the current funding climate, but it’s nevertheless extremely disappointing to realise we’ve missed a very important boat. If Welsh physics had gone down this road a decade ago – which I believe it should – then we would be in much better shape to face the very uncertain future that hangs over us. Still, I suppose it spares us the effort of trying to think up an acronym.

What’s especially worrying about this is that it seems to me that it makes it inevitable that Welsh physics will do as poorly in the forthcoming Research Excercise Framework as it did in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
I think it’s worth quoting the observations made by Sub-panel 19 (physics) after the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise:

Sub-panel 19 regards the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance collaboration between Scottish departments as a highly positive development enhancing the quality of research in Scotland. South of the border other collaborations have also been formed with similar objectives. On the other hand we note with concern the performance of three Welsh departments where strategic management did not seem to have been as effective as elsewhere.

Ouch! The final sentence is completely out of order, of course, as it exceeds the remit of HEFCE (which administered the RAE) to try to dictate how Higher Education is run in Wales, as this responsibility is devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government. It is, however, to some extent a valid criticism. England and Scotland have pumped money into physics in order the develop strategic alliances. Wales hasn’t. And it isn’t going to either.

Given Wales’ relative autonomy when it comes to Higher Education I still don’t understand why its universities forced to participate in the REF anyway, but since it looks like we are stuck with it, I worry what the outcome will be, especially since Welsh physicists have been systematically excluded from the physics panel.

The last item of news concerns HEFCW itself. A report produced by John McCormick has recommended that it be scrapped and replaced with a new body called Universities Wales.

There are many reasons why scrapping HEFCW could turn out to be a good thing. For one thing, a new body might realise that continuing involvement in the REF is wasting a huge amount of time and money in the Welsh HE sector on an exercise that takes no account of Welsh strategic objectives. Nevertheless, I’m a bit worried by some of the rhetoric coming out of the Welsh Assembly about this issue.

Universities are not the property of the Welsh Assembly (which in fact only funds part of their activity). Universities are independent charitable institutions. Their autonomy is essential in allowing them to do what they do best, free from the short-term expediency that dominates the thinking of the political establishment.

But that’s not to say that the Welsh Assembly is wrong to expect universities to respond to the changing socio-economic landscape. It’s all a matter of balance. If Universities Wales is sufficiently “hands-off” to allow universities to do what they do best – teaching and research – but sufficiently “hands-on” that it can help the HE sector to reorganize in the ways it clearly must, then this could be a very good move.

And if HEFCW does die, I’m afraid there will be few around these parts that mourn its passing.

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Sine Nomine

Posted in Politics with tags Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sine Nomine, UCU Strike on March 24, 2011 by telescoper

This morning’s hymn is No. 641 from the English Hymnal, and is chosen in honour of all those participating in today’s strike by the University and College Union.

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Lawful Assembly

Posted in Bute Park, Politics with tags Riverside by-election, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Assembly Referendum on March 4, 2011 by telescoper

So there we have it. Yesterday’s votes are all counted and we have the results. Here’s a quick Friday afternoon round-up before I go to the Pub.

The biggest issue of the day involved Referendum on extending the law-making powers of the Welsh Assembly, in which the “yes” vote won by 517,132 votes to 297,380. This means that the Welsh Assembly will henceforth be able to make laws directly concerning those matters already devolved to it (including Health and Education). Contrary to popular myth, it does not broaden the Assembly’s power to cover new policy areas neither does it allow the Assembly to raise taxes. What it does is eliminate a bureaucratic bottleneck that previously required the Welsh Assembly to ask Parliament in Westminster every time it wanted to enact a law.

I think the “Yes” vote is a good thing, and the majority (63.5%) is healthy enough that there should be no griping about the outcome. In fact all but one region – Monmouthshire – voted in favour of the new powers, and Monmouthshire voted “no” by a mere 320 votes…

The only really disappointing thing was that the turnout was dismally low – only about 35%. Those that didn’t vote, however, have even less justification for complaining about the outcome.

On a smaller scale, the by-election for my local Council ward resulted in a gain for Labour from Plaid Cymru:

Steve Garrett (Plaid Cymru): 1,099
Iona Gordon (Labour): 1,700
Gwilym Owen (Liberal Democrat): 187
James Roach (Conservative) 369
Yvan Maurel (Green party): 277

Turnout was about 40%.

Pontcanna has been a Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalist party) stronghold for quite a while, so I was moderately surprised at the result. I was personally quite pleased that Plaid Cymru lost this seat because of their support for the over-development of Bute Park, but I’ve no idea whether that issue contributed significantly to the result. I voted for the Green Party, incidentally, and was glad at least to see them beat the Liberal Democrats into 5th place. The new Labour councillor Iona Gordon is however a prominent campaigner on environmental issues and I wish her well.

The other major electoral result in the UK was a Parliamentary by-election in Barnsley, which saw the Liberal Democrats ending in a humiliating sixth place and losing their deposit. The only real question in my mind is why anyone would find that surprising given their track-record as part of the coalition government?

In a couple of months we’ll be voting again, this time for the Welsh Assembly. A great deal will depend on the eventual composition of the Senedd, especially for Welsh universities…

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Yes for Wales!

Posted in Bute Park, Politics with tags Bute Park, Green Party, Law-making powers, Referendum, Thursday 3rd March, voting, Welsh Assembly on March 2, 2011 by telescoper

Still suffused with a peculiar form of vicarious national pride after last night’s rousing St David’s Day concert in Cardiff – of which I hope to do a review later today – I thought I’d put up a gratuitous picture of the daffodils in Bute Park because they’re one of the two official emblems of Wales.

The other national emblem of Wales is the leek, but I couldn’t find any of them growing in Bute Park. It’s the wrong time of year anyway.

More importantly, tomorrow (Thursday 3rd March) is the date of the Referendum on Welsh Assembly powers. The question is a fairly uninteresting one, actually, and is simply about whether the Welsh Assembly should be allowed to make laws itself – concerning those matters over which it has devolved responsibility – rather than the current system which requires oversight by the House of Commons.

As a matter of fact I’ve got another vote to cast tomorrow, in a Council by-election. My ward is currently controlled by Plaid Cymru, but I will be voting for the Green Party in protest against the over-development of Bute Park.

In the Referendum I’ve decided to vote Yes for Wales, a stance which all the major parties agree on in fact. I’m pretty confident the Yes vote will win, but am concerned by a sense of apathy over this, and the Welsh Assembly elections coming up in May.

I think it’s very sad to compare the courage and determination shown by people across North Africa and in the Middle East protesting for democracy, with the attitude of so many here in a mature democracy who just can’t be bothered to exercise the rights that others struggled so hard to establish for us. If it matters so much to people in Egypt, Algeria and Libya to have the right to vote then it matters here too! Call me old-fashioned, but I think the right to vote is not only a privilege but also a duty.

So whichever side of whatever argument you’re on, and wherever it is you’re voting, please get down to the polling station and put your cross where it counts!

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Disturbing Admissions

Posted in Education, Politics with tags A-level, admissions, UCAS, Universities on January 18, 2011 by telescoper

In a rare moment of wakefulness during yesterday’s Board of Studies, I listened to a report from our departmental admissions tutor about the state of play with applications for entry onto our physics courses next year. It was good news – applications are up more than 50% on last year – but this was tempered by the fact that our quota has gone down slightly, owing to the presence of a cap on student numbers. I’m not sure whether the increase, perhaps caused by students trying to get into university before the fee goes up to £9K, is echoed around the country, but it seems likely that competition for places will be intense this year, with the almost certain result that many students will be disappointed at being unable to get into their first choice university.

Coincidentally, I noticed a story on the BBC at the weekend suggesting that the whole timetable of university admissions might change. What the government is planning remains to be seen, but there’s no doubting the system is far from perfect and if we had the opportunity to design a process for university admissions from scratch, there is no way on Earth we would end up with a system like the current one.

As things stand, students apply for university places through UCAS before they have their final A-level results (which don’t come out until July). Most applications are in by January of the year of intended admission, in fact. The business of selecting candidates and making offers therefore makes use of “predicted grades” as supplied by teachers of the applicant.

According to the BBC news

..under the current system those from poorer backgrounds typically have their grades under-predicted.

I simply don’t know whether there is any information to back this up – in my (limited) experience most teachers systematically overestimate the grades of their pupils – but if it is the case then it would be a good reason for changing the timetable so that potential students could apply once they have their results in the bag. They can do that now, of course, but only if they take a gap-year, applying for admission the year after they have their A-levels.

But the inaccuracy of predicted A-level grades is not the only absurdity in the current system. Universities such as Cardiff, where I work, have to engage in enormous amounts of guesswork during the admissions process. Suppose a department has a quota of 100, defining the target number students to take in. They might reasonably get a minimum of 500 applications for these 100 places, depending on the popularity of university and course.

Each student is allowed to apply to 5 different institutions. If a decision is made to make an offer of a place, it would normally be conditional on particular A-level grades (e.g. AAB). At the end of the process the student is expected to pick a first choice (CF) and an insurance choice (CI) out of the offers they receive. They will be expected to go to their first choice if they get the required grades, to the insurance choice if they don’t make it into the first choice but get grades sufficient for the reserve. If they don’t make either grade they have to go into the clearing system and take pot luck among those universities that have places free after all the CFs and CIs have been settled.

Each university department has to decide how many offers to make. This will always be larger than the number of places, because not all applicants will make an offer their CF. We have to honour all offers made, but there are severe penalties if we under or over recruit. How many offers to make then? What fraction of students with an offer will put us first? What fraction of them will actually get the required grade?

The answers to these questions are not at all obvious, so the whole system runs on huge levels of uncertainty. I’m amazed that each year we manage to get anywhere close to the correct number, and we usually get very close indeed by the end.

It’s a very skilled job, being an admissions tutor, but there’s no question it would all be fairer on both applicants and departments to remove most of the guesswork.

But there is the rub. There are only two ways I can see of changing the timetable to allow what the government seems to want to do:

Have the final A-level examinations earlier
Start the university academic year later

The unavoidable consequence of the first option would be the removal of large quantities of material from the A-level syllabus so the exams could be held several months earlier, which would be a disaster in terms of preparing students for university.

The second option would mean starting the academic year in, say, January instead of October. This would in my opinion be preferable to 1, but would still be difficult because it would interfere with all the other things a university does as well as teaching, especially research. The summer recess (July-September), wherein much research is currently done, could be changed to an autumn one (October-December) but there would be a great deal of resistance, especially from the older establishments; I can’t see Oxbridge being willing to abandon its definitions of teaching term! And what would the students do between July and January?

The apply-after-A-level idea has been floated before, about a decade ago, but it sank without trace. I wonder if it will do any better this time around?

26 Comments »

Blydhen Nowydh Da!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Music, Politics, Science Politics, Sport with tags astronomy, Cardiff University, Planck on January 1, 2011 by telescoper

I hope the blogosphere hasn’t got too bad a hangover this morning. I don’t, although I did have a nice lie in until about 11am when the lure of the Guardian prize crossword drew me out of bed and down to the newsagents. Luckily, I remembered to get dressed first. The crossword turned out to be quite a nice one to start the year with, by the perennial Araucaria, but it didn’t take all that long to do so I’ve got time to do a bit of shopping and a go on my exercise bike. Yes, that’s my New Year’s resolution. More shopping.

I know 2010 was a tough year for many people for many different reasons. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly been brilliant for me either, but I am looking forward to 2011 whatever it might bring. The first results from Planck will be released very soon (on 11th January, in fact), which will give me something exciting to blog about. More generally, the recent financial settlement for STFC was not as poor as many of us expected so the future doesn’t look quite as grim for UK astronomy as we feared.

There are exciting developments in store for the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University, where I work, with (hopefully) a number of new staff members joining us soon. Later on in the year we’ll be rolling out a completely redsigned set of physics courses which we’ve been working on for over a year. In addition we’ll be starting to work more closely with Swansea University in order to provide a broader range of advanced options for physics students at both institutions.

Of course behind all this there’s still considerable uncertainty about the funding situation for universities which are facing big cuts in government grants and having to increase tuition fees charged to students. Whether and to what extent this will deter students from going to university remains to be seen. The financial pressure will certainly lead to mergers and possibly to closures across the UK over the next few years, although only time will tell how many.

On the cultural side there’s a large number of concerts at St David’s Hall and a full season of Opera at WNO to look forward to, including a performance of Cosi fan Tutte on my birthday. Cardiff plays host to the First Test match between England and Sri Lanka at the end of May, and a one-day international against India in September. I might even get myself a membership of Glamorgan Cricket Club, something I’ve toyed with doing for a couple of years now. There’s also a good chance that Cardiff City F.C. might get themselves promoted to the Premiership, something that would be great for the city of Cardiff. It wouldn’t be beyond them to fall at the last fence, as they have a habit of doing..

May 2011 will also see the Welsh Assembly elections, and there will be a referendum on further law-making powers for the WAG on 3rd March.

On the wider political scene the question is whether the governing coalition’s cuts will force the economy back into recession or not. I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that many ordinary working people are going to lose their jobs and many less advantaged members of society will have their benefits cut. Meanwhile the people who took us to the brink of economic ruin will no doubt carry on getting their bonuses.

In spite of all that, let me end by wishing you peace and prosperity for the New Year and beyond. And if that’s not possible, just remember Nil Illegitimi Carborundum.

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In the Dark