The funniest Star Wars movie you'll ever see...

What happened after the Death Star blew up!

Happy New Year :)

My new year's resolution? To blog more :)

Spot the difference??

So a new week, a new pay offer for UK lecturers! But hang on, this one looks familiar! Let's see now, the new pay offer says this (from the UCU website):

August 2006: greater of 3% or £515
February 2007: 1%
August 2007: 3%
May 2008: greater of 3% or £420
October 2008: 2.5% or RPI (as at September 2008) whichever is the greater*

while the "old" pay offer said this (from the NATFHE website):

Aug 06: greater of 3% or £515
Feb 07: 1%
Aug 07: 3%
May 08: greater of 3% or £400
Oct 08: 2.5%


Am I missing something? The "old" offer gets rejected, while the "new" offer gets put to the ballot? Personally speaking, this stinks. I was at the UCU march to the employers' association offices in London on June 1st, where the sturdy rhetoric of the speakers led us all to believe that the union was standing firm against a crap offer. And now this!

I wonder, though, if the union interests have suddenly diverged from those of its members. Read here a story about University of Ulster lecturers accepting a LOCAL pay deal of nearly 16% over three years. Local bargaining destroys union power, and if Ulster set a precedent, then the new UCU is finished before it really gets started. So instead, to preserve national bargaining, it accepts the crap deal (with a couple of meaningless concessions from employers to save face) - which, ironically, is probably worth less than the Ulster deal!

To see some interesting comment and quotes on this story, go to the Socialist Worker website here. Not a big fan of Socialist Worker, personally, but for once, they have something interesting to say.

Shame on you, UCU. I will vote against this deal.

New talks planned in lecturers strike

Discovered here - news that new talks are scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday 6th June) at TUC headquarters.

Also, the Times Higher reports that UCU union officials believe UCEA (the employers' association) is out to smash the newly-formed union (an amalgamation of the two existing academic unions, NATFHE and AUT). See the story here. The key quote from the THES article is this:

"Senior union figures said that during 23 hours of informal negotiations last week, employers made a two-year offer in double figures, which could have enticed unions to put the offer to a ballot of members. But they said that this offer was torn up at the eleventh hour and replaced this week with a formal offer that the employers knew would not be acceptable to the unions."

Tut tut, UCEA!

UK Higher Education Employers association - economical with the truth AGAIN!

See the Personnel Times for a quote from Jocelyn Prudence, chief executive of the employers' association UCEA.

She says: "There have been endless meetings since the beginning of the year, there have been all sorts of Acas discussions. There really isn't anything more that is achievable at national level."

This is another example of UCEA's cavalier attitude to the truth! The unions submitted their pay claim late last year, and started the industrial action in the first place in March this year because the employers' association had made no response to it.

Should we ask for a grovelling apology like the one they made to the Parliamentary Select Committee?

UK Lecturers Strike

I'm one of the lecturers in the UK taking industrial action to improve our pay. Although the action has been taking place since March, it's really only in the last few weeks that it has become difficult. Personally I hoped that last Friday and (again) this Tuesday would see the end of the dispute. Sadly, that's not the case.

I'm angry, though, not with the union for rejecting the latest pay offere, but with the employers association UCEA for underhand tactics. Firstly, I was puzzled by the lack of an offer on Friday (as was the union). Secondly, the offer, when it was made on Tuesday hardly seemed any improvement on the last one (half a percent better over three years!). My suspicion was that this offer was not genuine, but simply to force a ballot of members by the union and a suspension of industrial action - if this did happen, then even a suspension of two/three weeks while the ballot was being held would see all the outstanding assignments/exams held and marked. And then no-one would bother about us until next summer!

What kind of confirms my suspicion is that over the weekend, the union held its conference, at which the government minister for higher education spoke. If UCEA had made their offer on Friday (which had been VERY widely expected, based on the UCEA's own comments), the offer would have been rejected at the conference, in front of the minister and with maximum publicity. UCEA (according to this theory, anyway) knew their offer would be rejected, and so delayed making it until AFTER the conference. And because they knew it would be rejected, made it probably just to force a ballot and hence a suspension of industrial action.

It's this kind of underhand dealing that is poisoning relations in higher education and making it hard to trust employers - oh yeah, that and the 25% plus in salary increases that VCs enjoy awarding themselves through their remuneration committees that they appoint, while telling us that we are going beyond the limits of affordability. Tellingly, a recent newspaper article pointed out that those VCs that want to dock lecturers pay for taking part in industrial action are the very same VCs that have seen their pay rise the most. C'est la vie :)

Hell hath no comeback like an ebayer scammed!!

You must visit http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/. It's a blog created by someone who was scammed on ebay by someone who sold a broken laptop that was advertised as working. A truely awesome piece of revenge! Even better, read the comments because the scammer realises what has happened and tries to threaten the victim through a series of nasty comments posted using aliases!

Help the poor guy who got scammed and post/send a link to his blog around the world!

Bird flu in Britain

On the news tonight: Britain's first confirmed case of H5N1 bird flu. Of course, this means that we'll see a lot more of a story that has died down a lot over recent weeks. While bird flu has been continuing to circulate in Africa and Asia (Egypt confirmed another human death today), the UK media has been quiet on the whole subject.

The British discovery was in a mute swam in Cellardyke, Fife, in Scotland. The area is home to at least 176 poultry centres, with around 260,ooo free range birds. The dead bird was found in a decomposed state, which meant that the tests for bird flu had to be repeated twice. On Channel 4 news this evening, a spokesman for the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) stated that the bird had probably been died "a good time ago". Given that the bird was discovered on 30th March, that places the infection in the UK at 2/3 weeks ago.

Something else to consider is that the dead bird was a mute swan, which are usually non-migratory but which live in the area all year long. The conclusion, therefore, is that bird flu arrived in Britain at least 3 weeks ago from another source and is currently loose among British wild birds in the Fife area. Despite the precautions currently being taken, the time lapse between bird flu arriving here and its confirmation today probably mean that we will hear of more infections among British birds (including poultry) in the weeks to come.