UCU Strikes and 26 March !

 

University and College Union members have been on strike at various days in this month so far. University of Leicester has had members strike on 22nd and 24th of March 2011.

The dispute centres around attempts to raise the retirement age, increase contributions for members and bring an end to the final salary element of the scheme. UCU members in Scotland and Wales went on strike on Thursday 17 March and Friday 18 March, respectively, and their colleagues in Northern Ireland are taking strike action today (Monday). There will be UK-wide action on Thursday 24 March.The union said today that it shared students’ frustrations that the employers were refusing to come back to the negotiating table and that the strike action now looked inevitable. The National Union of Students has written to the employers urging them to join UCU for talks and to try and avoid strike action. Read more information here.

Now, I haven’t found the time to go through the justifications and points of debates in detail. And to be honest, I only decided to write this blog after becoming aware of the amount of traffic with regards to the strike on twitter. I have collated some of them, but you can find them on twitter with the hashtag ucustrike.

One of the top tweets for the day was by a certain Aaron Peters (not Porter chap!) and I quote “Inflation 5.5%. Pay rise 0.3%. Pension cuts >20%. Student fees, up 200%. University economics – Priceless.” 

If those numbers baffle you then it’s about time you looked into what’s going on where! As a wise professor once commented – If higher education has to pay for mistakes of the bankers, something has definitely gone wrong in this world !

Related articles

• College staff strike in pension row (mirror.co.uk)
• Lecturers staging UK-wide strike (bbc.co.uk)
• UCU Members Vote For Industrial Action (ucuatbsu.wordpress.com)
• Lecturers plan first UK-wide strike in five years (liberalconspiracy.org)

Meet with a Nazi Holocaust survivor.

The Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies at University of Leicester was a proud host to Dr. Martin Stern, who is a Nazi Holocaust survivor. The public lecture was titled ‘A Survivor’s Angle on Holocaust and Genocide Studies’.

It was a free public lecture in a medium sized lecture theatre, and believe me it was packed full-house, a couple of students were sitting on the floor listening quietly to a man who spoke of his experience and surroundings as a child in the calmest manner I have ever seen. Well, to be honest there was a point where I could sense his eyes twitching and his cheeks turning slightly red, but it is just human. And being a keen observer I expected that and concentrated on spotting it.

Anyway’s the lecture itself was well delivered, I won’t dwell into what he said and his story, as I won’t do justice to the quality and feeling of his talk. What I can say is the fact, how ‘Never Again’ term is nothing but just a term ! There have been 50 Genocides since the Nazi Holocaust and the world has been a spectator to it.

He picked on interesting topics whilst answering questions, with how some countries need not look at the Nazi Holocaust to learn lesson or have morale insight, for e.g. China has such atrocities, that they should look in their own country to see how many people have died in suppression. He even picked the point about how in the case of Rwanda civilians were being massacred and the UN general pleading for help from the world, but nobody budged and failed humanity, but today the world is fighting Libya’s (bastard) dictator (sorry, I had to write that word, it’s my inclusion not Dr. Stern’s) to avoid another Genocide and massacre. Very good lecture all-in-all.

At the end, I was lucky enough to buy a copy of The Kaiser’s Holocaust by David Olusoga & Casper W. Erichsen and got it signed by Dr. M. Stern, I am proud to own the book with his signature, as, for a lad like me, coming from a third world country and privileged enough to attend a prestigious university in the UK and listen to a Holocaust survivor, is just priceless. I am moved in some way.

Live in peace friends, please do. Goodluck.

University of Leicester Student Union Elections

UOL Student Union Election votes were counted and results announced at The Big Shabang night in the Student Union and available to the ‘home sit-in’ student on the Union’s facebook and twitter channels.

Academic Officer – Alex Nutt (Re-elect)

Campaigns Officer – Thomas French

Welfare – Suzi Burtenshaw

Activities – Fenian O’Dughaen

Strategy and Communications – Lily Davies

A hearty congratulations to the new team and hope they work to their best potential in improving the student experience at UOL.

A few days ago on facebook I announced that girls were running the elections better than guys and no surprise that for fresh elects, the two categories that girls were contendors for, they won the respective seats. Apart from Academic, where Alex won over Jen, that was the toughest post to vote for as both were extremely good candidates but only one had to win. A couple of surprise wins in there, but am glad that a friend and fellow engineer Lily has been elected.

I haven’t come across the statistics or gossip yet, but if I do, it will be laid bare here. There are a couple of stories I am pursuing, but no word on it yet.