So, is Vince out of a job?

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Stephen

<Looks ruefully at "in" tray, nods>

 

To answer this and your reply to Champ below:

Did you read the paragraph of LN's post I quoted, which referred to HE
moving to a market economy?

My point is that that market economy is already here. Academia has
always been a cut-throat environment, with peer recognition and a
departmental chair as the objectives. This is changing to "how many
dollars, euros & pounds of research money do you bring in". The funding
then supports cheap PhD students to do the research rather than
expensive old pros like Ivan.

In response to your reply to Champ about PhD funding. There is a
potential conflict of interest. As you say, often a PhD student has a
fixed bursary to complete their degree in a fixed timescale. Teaching
has always been part of the role as it allows the student to develop
their skills but more importantly, their research needs to be
disseminated to undergraduates so that current research material is
integrated into the curriculum. The conflict comes when cash strapped
universities ask PhD students to deliver entire modules, preparing and
delivering 12 lectures, setting and marking coursework & exams. This
will dilute the time available to work on the PhD project itself.
Intermediate papers may not get published, conferences may be skipped
and ultimately the overall quality of the research could be diminished.
That's when the funding bodies, especially private enterprise, will say,
"**** this for a game of soldiers, why should we be subsidising teaching
departments?"

 

We're not surprised, they're not just finding their way in.

This goes further. Everything the tories are doing now is an
ideological purge.

You (and far too many others) have sucked up the propaganda, rolled
over and are happy to be fucked over by big business profits coming
before those little things that people fought and died for and are now
being eroded - job security, decent working conditions, holidays, sick
pay, reasonable working hours.

I am going to support my colleagues, my students, my friends, my union
in fighting what is happening now.

This is about the sort of society I want my children to live in. It's
not the one we've got now. It's broken.

And yes, I'm still time stretched so you get links...

If you only watch one video then make it this one, 2 minutes of your
time.

"Why cuts are the wrong cure"



An article before the recent Ukuncut protests talking about why
'ethics and ideology are once more at the forefront of political
contest in Britain.'

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson/philosophical-significance-of-uk-uncut

The need to cut the debt argument in pictures

http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/video-a-brilliant-demolition-of-osbornes-austerity-economics/1

and words

http://falseeconomy.org.uk/cure/what-do-the-experts-say

 

US, Europe or ME, maybe. Ever been to Shenzhen in China? Much as I
like China, with the above exception, all that I enjoy doing is here
in the UK and I hate being sent abroad.

 

I think this has a lot to do with it: it might be worthwhile for large
companies but small-to-intermediate companies don't get the benefits.

The company I work for has the SW department in the UK, but shipped
hardware development abroad. Unfortunately this means that SW/hardware
integration and IT (there's no IT department on the overseas office;
it's too small to have one) are split across time zones, which has
caused much hand-wringing from the HW people.

Language is a slight issue: email is fine but phone conversations can
be hard work sometimes.

 

The novelty of working all over the World wore off about 20 years ago
for me and I've now got it written into my contract that I only have
to do a maximum of three weeks before I can come home.

 

Yes, spent a couple of weeks in Shenzhen and I wouldn't want to spend
more time there but would if asked. Fortunately it's not where my
crowd locate people, our office in that area's in HongKong.

Personally I don't want to be sent abroad but many of my team have
pushed for it.

 

And everything you're doing is driven by hatred of the Tories, &
nothing to do with any sort of social ideology. Which is presumably why
you singled out the Tories rather than saying the coalition (remind me
which party Vince belongs to?).

Alternative (& equally as valid) opinion - you (and far too many
others) have sucked up the (opposing) propaganda.

I'm sure they'll be delighted when they retire & discover their
pensions are worthless as you've wiped out 'big business profits'.

How about educating your students instead? If I see one more
complaining about the cuts because "everyone should be entitled to a
free education" I'm going to scream. They lost any sympathy I may have
had when it became clear they're mostly just regurgitating the bullshit
no doubt fed to them by the unions rather than bothering to find out
the facts for themselves.

If that's true (which I doubt), how much campaigning/protesting did you
do when Labour introduced university fees? Or when they doubled them a
couple of years later, using a very dodgy bit of vote hoarding from
Scottish MPs to counter the fact that all the Tory & LibDem MPs were
voting against it?

How much protesting did you do about Labour introducing the 18% flat
rate CGT, which of course was a lovely benefit to the rich?

And the biggie, how much protesting did you do about Labour's continued
ethnic cleansing of the Chagossians? You know, those black Brits that
Labour kept out of their homeland by using Orders in Council to
overturn a High Court decision, & did so on the day of local elections
to ensure the news got buried. And then, in the run up to the general
election last year, they announce out of nowhere that they've turned
the Chagos Islands into a huge nature reserve, which thanks to
Wikileaks we know was done to ensure the Chagossians would never be
able to return. You want your children to live in a society governed by
people who can do that?

A load of emotive rubbish, with yet another "I can't afford to go to
university".

Funny, I don't remember the news being full of protests about tax
loopholes during the 13 years Labour were in a position to do something
about them. Why is that I wonder? I also wonder how many of those
protestors have the faintest idea how much tax is paid by 'Philip
Green's empire'. I wouldn't give a stuff if he didn't pay a single
penny in personal tax. Think of it as a bonus for giving all those
thousands of employees a job, & the tax generated as a direct result of
his success.

It's hard to know where to start with that. Some of it's obviously
bollocks. E.g. I didn't realise the top 60% never need the Police or
hospitals, & I didn't realise only the bottom 40% provided all the
money to bail out the banks (implied), & that the top 60% won't be
contributing to the bailout. So given the fact that all those
statements are obviously bollocks, & easily proven as such, why should
we believe his opinion on the stuff that can't be proven?

Then there's the underlying current in all those links (especially the
first) that the financial crisis is the fault of the banks. It isn't.
Sure they were complicit, but they didn't cause it, the US Federal
Reserve did by keeping interest rates artifically low, coupled with the
US banks being forced to lend to people who couldn't afford it by the
community housing act. Then of course there was the lack of regulation
- the fault of the governments not the banks. But blaming the big evil
coporations is far more fun isn't it.

<vent over>

Back to work now, cos I'm one of those people doing lots of extra
unpaid work to ensure my company keeps its head above water & myself &
my colleagues don't end up jobless.

 

If the want rid of you that badly.........

 

Pensions have already been wiped out by the practices of businesses
trying to make large profits.

 

Whereas I've done (& am doing) much of the above working for my current
small company, but never did when I worked for a large multi-national.
Go figure!

 

I have several databases in front of me with thousands of real people's
pension details which says you're wrong. Some of course have been
massively reduced by businesses /failing/ to make big profits.

 

Snouts in troughs. A good reminder why self regulation isn't a terribly
good idea when loadsa money is involved.

--
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Ah, but their failure may surely in turn be blamed on _other_
businesses succeeding in making large profits, so it's still all the
fault of the dreaded capitalists.

 

Heh. Possibly true, except any decent fund manager will invest in
market sectors rather than sticking to specific companies, & move the
funds around within those sectors as necessary. Which funnily enough is
exactly the process I'm working on at the moment.

 

Do you *really* believe that?

Even in my maddest hour I wouldn't claim the pensions have been wiped
out by businesses when there's been a lot more to blame than just
them.

 

Utter and complete bullshit.

 

Or, alternatively, Gordon Brown's raid on pension funds via the
dividend tax and also the changes made to the funding levels companies
need to maintain in their pension funds; all of which pushed a lot of
companies to limit their liabilities by closing final salary schemes.

Nice work New Labour.

 

<SNIP>

Thank **** for that. You saved me writing something.

I'm getting increasingly irritated by the amount of rubbish and mis-
information being vented all over the place.

About four weeks ago I was berating my Children for NOT
demonstrating. Looking at how things are developing I'm completely
switched off. The behaviour of outfits like UKUncut etc. etc. are
such that I've been pushed away from supporting the student situation.

The current loan situation allows the poorest children to graduate
with a max. tuition debt of less than 10k. Seems reasonable to me.
Around what paid for my part time study if you include inflation. In
reality the change is a reaction to Labour's expansion of the
education system to an unsustainable target.

Sick and tired of the hysteria.

 

I don't think that's correct. I believe society also benefits from
education.

However I also think the UK finances are in a shitty state- we were
close to having our sovereign debt down-graded with the risk of
increases in interest rates that follow. If we look at when the UK
left the ERM it's painful when the markets turn on a country and maybe
the attempt to remove the structural deficit from the balance sheet in
four years is what stopped the markets pushing hard on the UK- unlike
Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland.

I don't agree with tuition fees. However when you look at the level
of the fees for the poorest students (who get grants) they are
significantly lower than those paid by the rest of the students.
And... since they only need to be repaid once the students reach a
certain income level I don't *logically* see any reason why poor
students should be subsidised (effectively) by middle-income
students.

In reality the tuition fees are not an attack on the poor, they are
another tax on the middle income/middle classes.