piss bug

goodbye

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@Johnmacadam7474 @lottelydia At the end of the day, most of the value of a university education is in the fact that it is designed by experts at the cutting edge of research in their field. If universities want that, they have to give their staff the time and resources to develop and maintain that expertise.

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@Johnmacadam7474 @lottelydia Besides: seminars are the tip of the iceberg. Most of a professor's work isn't teaching (e.g. huge chunks of admin & the research that actually informs the teaching), and most of that teaching work isn't spent in classrooms (e.g. preparing seminars and marking work).

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner I agree that Twitter is a terrible platform for this kind of discussion, and I hate being here, but for the same reasons I gave earlier, I'm going to choose to retain my anonymity. Thanks though.

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner I'm sure you'll remember, but we were consulted on literally the same offer twice. Members said no, and UCU national said "oh. But UCEA really don't want to give us any more, so are you sure?".

I don't know what more to say, really. You couldn't script a better parody. 4/4

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner Again, I don't pretend I know what the best way forward is. But we said "UCEA have cut our pay and laughed at our strikes for decades, so we're going to shut unis down until we get what we want!", and UCEA offered nothing, and we consulted anyway. 3/

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner You just said "the disputes ran the full mandate", and I am still asking what you mean by that. Because, as I just said, they didn't. At most universities they were over a month before the mandate ended, *before* the crucial resit marking period.

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner I'm sure you could argue a lot of things changed over those 6 months. But it seems very clear to me that we suddenly went from an HEC that was keen on the MAB to one that wasn't, and I don't believe for a second that that didn't have an effect.

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner On paper, the disputes might have been "on". In reality, most members were confused and/or furious about the chaotic messaging from national, and most branches felt abandoned, and didn't manage to muster support to boycott the resits *or* secure a new mandate.

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner (Unless your politics is one of never being able to trust any vote for any sustained action, of course. And I'm sure those people exist, but I'm pretty sure all major factions and political leanings within UCU agree that we sometimes need to be able to make plans we can rely on.)

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner That is surely a terrible situation to be in *whatever* your politics is, because it gives an easy route for anyone - in good faith or not - to completely undermine any action, no matter how procedurally legitimately it came about.

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner Or many other things, off the top of my head. All of which I'm sure have their own problems! But, again, I would prefer *any* reasonable system over the absolute chaos of "anyone can do anything, and then we fight about who we think should have authority in spirit on Twitter".

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@bparsia @JamesBSumner How about: terms of HECs overlap by a couple of months, and the outgoing HEC only has the mandate to finish what it started?

How about: the chair gets to judge whether or not information has meaningfully changed before allowing a second vote on the same action during a mandate?