UCU: going for the easy option again

Plus ça change… Members of the University and College Union are soon to vote on industrial action over threats to job security and pensions. What action is being planned? Surprise, surprise: assessment boycotting and strikes — both of which are likely to affect students more than anyone else. Funny how lecturers always choose these kinds of actions. They never suggest systematically withholding publications, although research is constantly declared to be more valuable to universities than teaching and is the source of external funding and kudos… But then, that option would mean lecturers making professional sacrifices, wouldn't it?

What use is training in humanities? (1)

What use is training in humanities? Someone has to teach academic writing to scientists… Final-year science students who don't know, for instance, that bacteria, data and criteria are plural nouns, still less what the singular forms are, have clearly not been properly trained by teachers in their own disciplines.

How-to-spell Rap

Talking of spelling, here's a clever spelling rap. Not suitable for use in schools though…

Spelling and grammar? What next?!

Apparently examiners are to begin (again!) penalizing pupils for bad spelling and grammar - and about time too, though one can't help but wonder, after a generation or so in which many seem never to have been taught any grammar at all, who is going to teach it to them and how competent the examiners will be to assess it…

What does Ofgem do?

Surprise, surprise, gas prices are being hiked again. Funny how the energy companies can respond so quickly to rising wholesale prices when it's apparently so difficult to pass on savings to their customers when prices fall. 

Adam Scorer, of Consumer Focus, points out that "wholesale prices are around half of their peak in 2008, and yet in the same period customers' prices were cut by less than 10%".

Ofgem, supposedly the regulator, says nothing on the matter, and seems likely to do even less. npower's recent refunds to customers who overpaid for gas in 2007 seems to be largely due to the efforts of the self-styled "statutory consumer champion" Consumer Focus, which continued to work with the company when the Ofgem investigation resulted in an average repayment of only £6 to 200,000 customers.

Ofgem's website says that "Protecting consumers is our first priority", and it boasts, in its latest Consumer Bulletin, that it is presently (and ungrammatically) "propos[ing] making energy suppliers give 30 days [sic] notice of price rises". Customers everywhere will feel relieved about that, and doubtless very proud of Ofgem for taking such a stand on their behalf.

It's always good to know these regulators have their priorities sorted — especially since the utilities' retail customers fund them. As Ofgem says, "We recover our costs from the licensed companies we regulate. Licensees are obliged to pay an annual licence fee which is set to cover our costs". Presumably that fee is ultimately added into the utility bills…

Health and Safety - even madder than you imagined

Council workers employed by Tower Hamlets Homes apparently thought they were following heath and safety advice issued by the Fire Brigade when they went on a spree removing washing lines, hanging baskets, doormats, bicycles and security gates. They were halted by a nun, Sister Christine Frost, who pointed out that local yobs were far more pressing a problem.

The council must have realized in advance that its actions would not be popular, as it arranged for police officers to accompany its workforce. Residents understandably considered this a "heavy-handed" approach (and, to add insult to injury, presumably had to pay for the officers out of their Council Tax). 

Housing CEO Jonathan Gregory promised that commonsense would be applied in the future. Why not apply it in the first place?

Amazing that any borough council in these penny-pinching days has the time and money to waste in this way.

Below the belt?

The BBC News website supplied a strangely ambiguous breadcrumb the other day:
The link led to a report under the headline:
This still doesn't entirely clarify the situation. Someone at the Beeb obviously realized that the headline was not entirely clear. By the next day, it had been changed to:
which is an improvement, though it's still not beyond doubt whose offensive weapon he was using…

For the curious, it turns out that
But why did she wait so long?

Doubletake

Hard to believe that anyone could create this headline by accident:

From peterboroughtoday.com, 17 December 2009

The gravy is just as thick 35 years on

While Ed O'Brien of Radiohead is undoubtedly right in his assessment that the money-driven music industry is stifling artists' creativity and the fun that so often adds an edge to it, it's hardly news, is it? Pink Floyd highlighted the same issue 35 years ago in their seminal Wish You Were Here (1975), notably on the track Have A Cigar:

   Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar.
   You're gonna go far, fly high,
   You're never gonna die, you're gonna make it if you try
   They're gonna love you.
   Well I've always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
   The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think.
   Oh by the way, which one's Pink?
   And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
   We call it Riding the Gravy Train.
   We're just knocked out.
   We heard about the sell out.
   You gotta get an album out,
   You owe it to the people. We're so happy we can hardly count.
   Everybody else is just green, have you seen the chart?
   It's a helluva start, it could be made into a monster
   If we all pull together as a team.
   And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
   We call it Riding the Gravy Train.

The particularly relevant extract is, of course, "We're so happy we can hardly count", the theme song of bloodless, souless, money-grubbing accountants everywhere… The sad, if utterly unsurprising, thing is that the music industry took no notice of Pink Floyd. Accountants have a really boring job: they certainly aren't interested in anyone else enjoying theirs — quite the opposite, in fact: to them it's frivolous and time-equals-money-wasting — but they do have an enormous interest in filling the corporation's coffers. (Though to be fair, it's not often you hear rock 'n' pop stars complaining that their earnings are too high, either.)

So good luck to Ed O'Brien's campaign, but don't hold out for any changes. The love of gravy still rules the entertainment world.

The ultimate inclusivity

Warwick University's Arts Centre takes inclusivity very seriously:

Kamikaze cyclists

Why do so many cyclists think that wearing florescent jackets means they don't need to show front or back lights on their bikes, even on completely unlit country roads well before daylight?

It's a good thing that more people are taking up this climate-friendly form of transport, but cutting out the lights is a carbon-neutral step too far, and one which may well end up in a sudden and messy death.

Goodbye, Cadbury

Cadbury's board of directors has now advised shareholders to accept Kraft's offer for the company.

The offer wasn't solicited, wasn't wanted, is likely to lead to redundancies and the transfer abroad of production — and more than that, Kraft doesn't actually have the money to pay for it: the corporation will have to borrow £7bn ($11.5bn) to finance the deal.

Irene Rosenfeld, chairman and CEO of Kraft Foods, announced: "We have great respect for Cadbury's brands, heritage and people. We believe they will thrive as part of Kraft Foods."

This implies that Cadbury wasn't already thriving (and that Kraft is, which its inability to pay for what it's putting on the sweetshop counter underlines). But Cadbury was doing fine: despite the recession, the company reported a very respectable increase in profits in 2008 and a promising outlook, although there were already plans to close its Keynsham factory as part of a cost-cutting exercise. (Kraft has apparently promised to save the factory, but not in writing; it is notable that Kraft is presently closing some of its own factories.)

Why are corporations — and particularly those that don't actually have the available funds — allowed to make hostile takeover bids? Can no-one control these corporate pit-bulls?

Isn't it about time western governments, particularly those in the UK and USA, did something about corporate greed and obesity? About showing some consideration for employees whose labour goes a long way towards bringing in the profits? Directors of bloated corporations care only about profits and units, whether products, machinery or employees: they're all numbers.

The Cadbury brothers were famous for the treatment of their employees. Right now, they must be spinning in their graves.


UPDATE, 9 February