Day out: Sunday 4th October at Twyford

Twyford© OpenStreetMap contributors

Twyford Waterworks is having it’s end-of-season  open day and steam rally on 4th October 2015. They’re even offering free buses to and from Winchester. You can get there in lots of ways: train to Shawford (with the riverside  Bridge Inn), ride up National Cycle Route 23, walk up the River Itchen, or drive.

While in Twyford, you can shop at the impressive village store or visit the café below. There’s also a tea shop at the waterworks.

Half way between Twyford and the waterworks, Watley Lane heads south up the hill. Keep straight on for 1km up to the top and you’ll reach a strange structure on the right. It was originally built as a water reservoir, then converted into a nuclear bunker for Southern Water. When the cold war ended, it was bought by the internet security firm Symantec who used it as a network operations centre. They outgrew it, and now it’s the home of the Natural Death Centre. Quite a turn-around from nuclear armageddon. If you carry straight on, the track eventually emerges near Marwell.

See you there.

Denis Nicole

 

Love your library

Southampton is holding a Festival of Words from 23rd October to 1st November. Sponsors include City College and Arts Council England, but neither of the city’s universities. The Phoenix Film Theatre does, however, get a credit as a “delivery partner”. Many of the events are paid access, at £5 to £10 a head. Of course, if you need free access to a festival-full of words, you go to a public library. The city council is also a delivery partner in the festival but, surprise surprise, none of the events are hosted in the libraries it is trying to close. Of these, the council owns two, including the locally-listed Cobbett Road library, which may thus be available for disposal.

For many of us academics, there is something sacred about a library; it plays the same role in a university as the cloisters of an abbey. We perform in a lecture theatre but we study, contemplate and grow in the library. The loss of one is a mark of a retreating civilisation.

Inside our university, there is also a library restructuring under way. Our restructuring is not a cut, but a change in the focus of roles, such as from subject liaison to research, or student, engagement. Such times are always worrying for colleagues. Throughout the development of these changes, our UCU library representative has been fully engaged; we have also supported individual library staff with specific issues. We think, by quietly working alongside university management, we have been able to improve the outcome for both colleagues and the institution. To make sure, we joined Unison (thank you Unison, for both the invitation and the food) in a lunchtime library meeting last week, met several existing members, and recruited another.

Denis Nicole

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† or community asset transfer.
‡ i.e. selling the family silver.

Volkswagen: Taking the p***

Volkswagen have been caught in the United States cheating on diesel emissions tests. They have been using a “defeat device”; the car’s software is programmed to reduce emission of oxides of nitrogen to lawful levels only when it detects the car is actually undergoing emission testing. Most of the rest of the time, it just goes ahead and pollutes.

The US work was conducted by West Virginia University’s non-profit Center for Alternative Fuels Engines and Emissions. The work was paid for by the International Council on Clean Transportation, which is itself a non-profit organization funded by the ClimateWorks Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Energy Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation: yes, the charitable foundations of both the founders of the famous HP electronic test equipment company.

Real-world NOx emissions were found to exceed the US-EPA…standard by a factor of 15 to 35 for the LNT-equipped vehicle, by a factor of 5 to 20 for one…urea-SCR fitted vehicle.

So why did they do this? Is seems that they were worried that the inconvenience of topping up a small tank of exhaust additive might upset drivers. So, most of the time, they disable the additive injection to stop the reservoir emptying. What is this magic AdBlue solution? It’s a urea and water-based liquid additive; beer drinkers (well all of us, really) will know it by a more common name, and there’s certainly no shortage.

And what are the lessons for us?

  1. Corporations cheat. Even trusted high-end companies like VW (they own Porche and Bentley) cheat. And they do so for apparently trivial reasons. Our only protection against corporate cheating is independent, open, research. And government cannot be trusted to hold them to account. Regulatory capture is too easy.
  2. The corporate cheats won’t be caught without ready access to skilled, independent, technical analysis; analysis that will only be affordable from independent university researchers. The ability, under tightening budgets and the impact agenda, of university researchers to work independent of wider corporate partnerships is under threat; without it, there will be nobody to catch the next Volkswagen.

Update: It seems Volkswagen were not just economising on AdBlue. Apparently, fully enabling the NOx controls will prevent the cars achieving their claimed performance.

And a professional note: This is almost certainly a company conspiracy, not a rogue employee. The engine-control software is safety-critical. It must have been subjected to extensive internal review. Sampling the steering to decide how to dose the exhaust should raise an immediately obvious issue.

Denis Nicole

Pub: The Butcher’s Hook

ButchersHook© OpenStreetMap contributors

The Butcher’s Hook is a tiny new pub in the Bitterne Triangle, opposite the clock tower. Just go on down St Denys Road from Portswood, cross the river, and it’s directly ahead. The building was originally a butchers, and most recently a flower shop. The beer is varied and good, served straight from the barrel. It attracts a younger clientèle than the Guide Dog, and is always full.

If you actually want a butchers, the posh one around is Uptons of Bassett,  in the opposite direction from the university.

The pub was opened by a young team who we watched spend several months renovating and converting the old shop themselves. At one stage, I was even asked about doing some electrical work; I couldn’t, as I don’t carry the right insurance. There is a University (ECS) connection as they are old friends of Rob Spanton, of Student Robotics fame.

To make a day of it, you can come in for a couple of pints after a walk along the River Itchen (from Winchester if you are fit); just continue on south from Woodmill through Riverside Park until you reach the bridge.

Denis Nicole

 

Change

Ucomprse

The web carries a remarkable amount of nuclear weapon design information, of varying accuracy and provenance. Carey Sublette (I think this is he) has written a popular FAQ; it includes the graph above. What has this to do with change? Well, according to his explanation, if you have to explode a ball of Uranium, you need to squash it smaller. If you squash it enough, it becomes critical and (usually with a little help) starts a chain reaction, leading to an explosion. When you squash anything, it gets hot and tries to expand. Ideally, you would compress it so slowly that the excess heat leaks away as you press. That’s always far too slow for a bomb. The best you might hope to manage is to press steadily, so that all of your effort goes into shrinking the bulk.  You’ll know you are being steady enough because, if you steadily release the pressure, the ball will return to its original size and temperature; the compression is reversible or adiabatic. To get enough compression to detonate the bomb, however, you need to use a shell of explosives. Typically, that will not achieve a steady compression; it will create sonic booms or shock waves: enormously powerful sounds that will bounce around the ball, heating it up and making it expand. The ball gets far hotter than you would wish and you need to use too much explosive energy. Brute force generates a great deal more heat than light. In consequence, expert bomb designers use tricks to make the compression as reversible as possible.

There is a universality (the second law of thermodynamics) about the efficiency of steady, reversible, change. I think it applies also in the management of human endeavours. Steady change gets us where we need to be with the minimum of wasted heat and energy. Shock change generates more heat than light, and is inefficient.

INEX REVIEW
The InEx Review is a University-wide review of income and expenditure. As the Vice-Chancellor explained in his letter to staff, (4 April 2008) this is a necessary and unavoidable response to the challenge posed by operating in an increasingly competitive environment at a time when the University’s income is not keeping pace with expenditure.
InEx Review

Shock change has happened to us before; I hope it doesn’t happen again with the PwC review, and the arrival of a new VC, DVC and COO. Whatever happens, UCU will be here to try to keep things as cool as possible.

Join here.

Denis Nicole

Being at the table

NickChanter

I went to a great lecture by Nick Chater of Warwick Business School this morning. I have found most of his slides online, and thought I might share one with you. His thesis was that Nash (A Beautiful Mind) Equilibrium is insufficient to describe real human behaviour. He developed a broader concept which he called Virtual Bargaining. Much of the talk was taken up by examples in which the Nash equilibrium behaviours are either obviously ridiculous, or just not what people do. For trade unionists, the most interesting example was an experiment from 1998. There are three players: A, B and C. Player A has £100 to distribute among the three of them. He selects a distribution and then B either vetoes it or agrees to it; if she exercises the veto, nobody gets anything. Nash tells us that A should keep £99 for himself, offer a £1 sop to B, and give nothing at all to C. B should accept her £1, as it’s better than nothing.

Let’s make it more fun by renaming the players. A becomes bosses, B becomes trade unionists, and C becomes non-unionised workers. As in the real world, the bosses make an offer, we in the union accept or reject it, and those without a union have to take what they are given. So what actually happened in the experiment? After a little practice, the bosses settled down to offer roughly £60 to themselves, £30 to the unions, and £10 to the others. Nick’s message was that Nash equilibrium often does not correspond to real human behaviour. We trade unionists can draw another lesson. If you’re not in the union, you’re not in the decision, and you will be ripped off. You’ll see about a third of what you might reasonably expect. In the union, we get what looks like an almost fair offer. But that hides the fact that the bosses, by depriving others, are taking twice what they give us.

As I have written before—you need to join UCU. Now. Join here.

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† Example two, the boobytrap game, applies naturally to the purchase of the proposed replacement Trident nuclear missile submarines. Nash wouldn’t do it, because it could never offer an advantage, so why are nukes so popular?
‡ Werner Güth & Eric van Damme, Information, Strategic Behavior, and Fairness in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study, Journal of Mathematical Psychology 42 pp 227–247 (1998).

Denis Nicole

Pub: The Guide Dog

GuideDogMap© OpenStreetMap contributors

I’m going to lighten up the blog with a few postings about local pubs, trips and hangouts. And the first entry has to go to the Guide Dog free house in Bevois Valley. You won’t notice it as you walk past Aldi and the fast-food outlets, but this outstanding real ale pub is only a hundred yards up Ancasta road (opposite Maplin) to its junction with Earls Road.

The Guide Dog is not a food pub, but there is always a good and varying range of well-kept ales, stouts and ciders. The pub changed hands a couple of weeks ago; the new landlords are as welcoming as their predecessors. Changes are small; it is now easier to read the beer list from across the bar.

This pub gets first place on the blog as it is the unofficial haunt of the branch executive; you can usually find at least three of us there after six on a Friday evening.

Denis Nicole

 

The Higher Education profession

Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities and Science, gave an interesting speech last Wednesday  to Vice Chancellors gathered at the University of Sussex. It makes challenging reading for the Russell Group.

Because many universities see their reputation, their standing in prestigious international league tables and their marginal funding as being principally determined by scholarly output, teaching has regrettably been allowed to become something of a poor cousin to research in parts of our system.

I hear this when I talk to worried parents, such as the physics teacher whose son dropped out at the start of year two of a humanities programme at a prestigious London university, having barely set eyes on his tutor. Her other son, by contrast, studying engineering at Bristol, saw the system at its best: he was worked off his feet, with plenty of support and mostly excellent teaching.

He also quoted Palfreyman & Tapper, based on US work by Armstrong & Hamilton:

…the faculty cultures and orientations of the college professoriate have much to answer for, since they have struck a disengagement contract with their students, along the lines of I don’t want to have to set and mark much by way of essays and assignments which would be a distraction from my research, and you don’t want to do coursework that would distract you from partying: so we’ll award you the degree as the hoped-for job ticket in return for compliance with minimal academic requirements and payment of high fees.

Depressingly, there is a lot of truth in these remarks. There is an assumption, in our and other universities, that teaching should be loaded onto those who cannot raise research funds or REF stars. Teaching is culturally associated with lack of success; every young academic knows that their promotion, or next job, will depend only on their grants and publications. So, the ambitious ones waste as little time as possible on teaching: just enough to stay out of trouble. Anything better is a result of personal vocation. Favoured sons and daughters are further rewarded with light teaching loads or with leeway about completing their duties.

National structures to enhance and recognise university teaching are not much better. The Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, inspired by the Dearing Report,  lasted from 2000 to 2004. We now have the Higher Education Academy, but it is to lose all its central funding by 2017. Within my own department, several colleagues achieved Senior or Principal Fellow status in the HEA; all have since been removed from teaching management responsibility.

Neither will you find either of the books cited below in our library; we’re not expected to read that sort of thing. There are, however, some works by Tara Brabazon; you might try The University of Google or Digital Hemlock.

Update: The library will be getting both. Thank you, Fiona.

There must be room here for the UCU to become a proper professional body. We already have our own Journal of Further and Higher Education. Have any of you read it? But UCU Congress shows far more interest in arguing over regional committee structures and splitting of branches than it does in the credibility of our profession. Can we inspire UCU to step into the void to be left by the HEA and become the BMA of higher education?

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Reshaping the University: The Rise of the Regulated Market in Higher Education, David Palfreyman & Ted Tapper.
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, Elizabeth A. Armstrong & Laura T. Hamilton.

Denis Nicole

That Monday feeling

Annual_Pay_Settlement

Click to enlarge

We all find Mondays difficult. But I couldn’t resist drawing attention to the university’s Monday posting about the ongoing pay dispute. It didn’t go well.

  1. The current pay round is 2015/16; the 2014/15 round was settled quite a while ago.
  2. Unison is not in dispute; Unite is.
  3. I don’t think we are opening a Shetland Campus. So the University is not in dispute with the Educational Institute of Scotland either.

A small prize to members who spot any more errors.

Meanwhile, back at 47 University Road, iSolutions had disabled printing for all the unions. Thank you, Lindsay for fixing it within a day or so. It has been a difficult week.

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† The home of the union offices. You can find Amanda Bitouche there on Mondays to Thursdays.
‡ Lindsay Allen, the university’s head of employee relations.

Denis Nicole

Summer casework: why we all need to be in UCU

Over the summer, we have been approached by several university employees who have needed independent support and advice. The University regulations allow union caseworkers to support employees in a variety of situations, and generally the independent support provided by union is very well received. In some cases, they were long-standing employees who had just joined the union because of their problem. In others, they were non-members who approached us asking “if I join, what can you do for me?” Yet other non-members asked if they should hire a lawyer.

These approaches all suffer from a lack of understanding of the university’s (and most other employers’) processes. Let’s deal with them one by one.

Can I join if I have a problem?
Yes, you are very welcome to join at any time. The union would, however, be completely unable to balance its books, or supply volunteer caseworkers, if large numbers of staff were allowed to join, and pay membership, only while they have an employment issue. The union’s legal service imposes a strict, but short, waiting period on new members before offering support. Similarly, within the branch, we are unlikely to be able to offer support for pre-existing issues with new members.

If I join, what can you do for me?
As I say above, we can support you with your next problem. We may be able to offer informal local assistance with your current difficulties. All the while, you will be helping to improve pay and conditions for all of us.

Should I get a lawyer?
This is the big misconception. A lawyer will be of almost no use to you until it is too late. You can take your problem to him or her, and they can offer you advice. But they cannot accompany you either to an investigation or to a disciplinary hearing. You will be on your own. And they probably will not know much about local conditions at the university. Your lawyer can come to an employment tribunal, but by then, after you have been sacked, it is almost certainly too late. Even if you win, you will almost certainly not be reinstated. The chances of winning are about fifty-fifty; if you win, you can expect a cash settlement of perhaps several thousand pounds, but no job to go back to.

Almost all of the good outcomes we achieve for members are the result of dedicated work by our trained team of volunteer caseworkers. They meet with members and come to investigation and disciplinary meetings. Their accreditation training is supplemented by wide experience of what actually happens at Southampton. And, within the limits of confidentiality, they share experiences at regular meetings. In most cases, we are able to prevent problems escalating. For the more intractable cases we can call on paid union professionals, who (unlike lawyers) are also entitled to come with you to meetings. Finally, if all else fails, we are able to offer support at a tribunal. But, as I said, by then it is probably too late to keep your job. Here is what the university writes:

The member of staff has the right, if they wish, to be accompanied by a workplace colleague or a trade union representative.

The representative/companion is permitted to address the hearing in order to put forward the member of staff’s case; they can sum up the case and respond on their behalf to any view expressed at the hearing.

The representative/companion is also permitted to confer with the member of staff during the hearing.

It should be noted that the representative/companion has no right to answer questions on behalf of the member of staff, to address the hearing if the member of staff does not wish him or her to do so, or to prevent the employer explaining its case.

Representatives/companions have an important role to play in supporting a member of staff and are allowed to participate as fully as possible.

There are other important reasons for you to be in the union. If, say, a student complains about you, you will be judged according to the university’s policies. University HR won’t be much help; their role is to protect the institution, not the individual. If the policies are unfair, you don’t have much hope. We are a recognised trade union, and the university has to negotiate these policies with us before adopting them. We are able to use our experience of casework to develop policies which work for both university and staff. Our effectiveness depends on how seriously we are taken by the university; we have far more influence when we have a high membership. Indeed, for matters affecting only level seven staff (Professors, etc.), we are not yet recognised and the university declines formal negotiation. So, if you join as soon as you arrive here, you are helping to protect yourself from policies that might later be used against you.

Finally, we negotiate, and occasionally go into national dispute, over pay and pensions. We improved the employers offers on each in the last round of changes. The current round of pay negotiations is under way and pensions are again under threat. We need your support now.

Join here.
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† See Struck Out, by David Renton.

Denis Nicole