Gabrielquotes

“Sussex tumbles down,” reports The Guardian, as we plummeted 24 places in their latest set of university rankings. Allow me to illustrate our fate in the league tables with this simple graph:

Not brilliant, is it?

Early evening update: Pro-Vice-Chancellor Claire Mackie has issued a press-statement in which she says, “It’s lots of people’s fault but not mine at all in any way.”

Since I’m well known as an impartial analyst in these matters, I was invited by the BBC to offer my opinion, which I gladly did: you can hear my radio interview below. Be sure to listen to it before the injunction!

Sadly they played The Song, and I will now be sued for thousands of pounds for music copyright infringement, not to mention being hunted down by Michael Farthing and John Duffy.

#seeyouinstrasbourg

Summertime

Meanwhile, because I have a punishing schedule of exams followed by summer-long youth-leading, this will probably be my last blog post this academic year (this was my penultimate one, by the way – guest-writing for Changing the Board). It’s been a pleasure; I wish all my readers an enjoyable summer break, and I’ll be back in the autumn!

Remember, if you want to be sure not to miss that dramatic return, you can subscribe for Gabrielquotes email-updates using the box at the top-right-hand-corner of this page.

Tags: gabriel webber

In-person assessment: Bean there, done that

In the traditional Sussex spirit of re-defining ordinary words, I can proudly announce that I had my first in-person assessment on Friday morning – a day earlier than m’colleagues because the university grudgingly agreed not to force Jewish students to sit exams on Shabbat, now there’s diversity for you – and I’ve given myself a couple of days’ respite to put together a bit of an update.

Study skills at Sussex

The School of Global Studies has helpfully produced some ‘exam preparation tips’ which they put online. These include:

Easier but harder. Yes. Well, I suppose it’s a balancing act.

Another piece of advice appears to misunderstand that crucial line that divides an exam from a cocktail party:

…while another really leaves me wondering whether the academic genius of my tutors is worth £3,000 per year. I mean, did I really need reminding:

Well, actually, perhaps I did need explicitly reminding not to write fluff. After reading these exam tips, I may have formed the impression that writing fluff was encouraged.

And what are these study skills for?

Essay length last year: 2,000 words
Essay length this year: 1,500 words
Exam length last year: 2 hours
Exam length this year: 1 hour 30 minutes
(‘In-person assessment’, shurely? -Ed.)

A new pay-per-word system is being rolled in

Both of my International Relations modules have had their assessments reduced by a quarter. The word on the street is that this is due to University funding cuts – an inevitable consequence of tuition fees tripling, right? – which mean that the department can no longer afford to mark the previous volume of essays and in-person assessment scripts, associate tutors being paid by the hour “based on the University’s single pay spine.”

But I’m sure that cost-cutting can’t be the reason the University is reducing the quality of our education.

Pushing the brown envelope

One of the courses that I’m most looking forward to next year is Political Corruption. The convenor is an expert in the field, who last year organised a talk by the Director of Transparency International (“I’m not an academic of corruption. I’m a practitioner”).

My housemate is also keen to get a place on the course but is unfortunately on a waiting list. So what are we going to do?

Well to be honest, if he hasn’t got the guile to… ‘negotiate’… his way to the top of a corruption course waiting list, perhaps he shouldn’t be doing it at all.

Carbon copy paper ɹǝdɐd ʎdoɔ uoqɹɐɔ

©2013 – no unauthorised copies

Last week, the BBC ran a feature called, “Inside the UK’s last carbon paper factory.”

Its synopsis said: “A succession of inventions has rendered carbon paper all but obsolete. BBC News went to meet production director Mervyn Jones to find out how the company has remained in business.”

Well, I know how it’s remained in business. Sussex University – at the paper-cutting edge of higher education – must surely be one of the largest consumers of carbon paper in Britain, with every student using dozens of sheets a year for no obvious reason other than to provide business for the Brighton City Council Refuse Department.

Not that the Refuse Department is doing very well; they’ve not collected any recycling from my street for over four weeks, and their website helpfully says:

“We are unable to deal with individual reports of missed collections, either online or by telephone.”

How ridiculous: I don’t pay my council tax…
but if I did, that’s exactly the sort of thing that would make me severely unimpressed.

Though admittedly, the Council may be frying bigger fish such as the “wormhole or vortex to another dimension that has opened on Montreal Road.”

What a breakthrough

Relatively frequently, IT Services proudly post some news story about how they’ve made a microscopic improvement to their nevertheless dreadful network. But if they’re going to do propaganda, they should at least do it right…

The uni’s not for turning

In the traditional Sussex spirit of re-defining ordinary words, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Claire Mackie, the person responsible for renaming ‘Monday’ as ‘Thursday’, has reached another momentous decision.

The  2011-12 Assessment Handbook required that academic departments return marked essays to students “within 15 working days (3 weeks).”

The world being created in seven term-time working days

However, in the draft handbook for 2012-13 – conveniently released six months into the academic year it was supposed to cover – Mackie has replaced this provision with “15 term time working days,” which given the random nature of Sussex’s dates, with Easter holidays in May and odd weeks off in April, now means something quite different and charmingly allows the university to be really, painfully slow at providing services to students. Brill!

Pasties cause Tories trouble again

Remember the Great Pastyshambles of 2012? Well, the trouble’s not over yet.

Conservative Sussex PCC Katy Bourne, no doubt acutely embarassed after being criticsed by MPs last week for failing to comply with legal transparency requirements, and – worse – being criticised by this blog for being useless and appointing her mates to high-paid jobs, has got her own back by taking the momentous decision… to ban police detainees from being served pasties at mealtimes.

Prisoners living a life of luxury, says Roedean graduate Katy Bourne

According to the West Sussex County Times (readership: -4), “After watching first-hand a detainee screaming and shouting because he had not been given a pasty, Ms Bourne stopped the ‘luxury’ item because ‘that’s not the right of a detainee’.” A spokesperson for the West Cornwall Pasty Company said, “This paper is a disgrace to the word ‘west’.”

The precise question of detainees’ human right to a crisp, golden pastry crust is yet to be determined conclusively, when a test case reaches Strasbourg judges next year.

Meanwhile, Katy Bourne – who bought her elected position with £20,000 of her own money and is presumably  now living on Ginsters pasties in abject poverty – can add the Pastyban™ to her list of the 12 decisions she has taken in the last six months. Unlucky for some!

Who wrote today’s fluff?

In tonight’s episode, Professor Claire Mackie reinvented the English language to suit her own deficiences. Corners were cut by the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive Group. Professor Dan Hough is open to ex-gratia payments in exchange for places on his course. The Department of International Relations confused an exam hall with a tea-shop in the Cotswolds; and IT Services revolutionised computing. This was an Gabrielquotes production.

Tags: gabriel webber

If you want to catch my forthcoming post, PCCs: the first century, be sure to subscribe to this blog by typing your email address into the box on the right.

Well, it’s been six months. The new tranche of Police & Crime Commissioners have so far worked their way through £1.5m of salaries, not counting those of their deputies, staff and offices.

For those readers who live in sensible countries, I should explain that last year, our beloved Coalition government abandoned the traditional system of having police forces supervised by elected local councillors – that was an affront to British democracy – and replaced them with 41, erm, elected officials, all highly-paid and mainly clueless, all in the interests of high standards, value-for-money and good governance, of course.

This week, Gabrielquotes asks: has the new system been a success or has everything fallen to PCCs? Let’s see what they’ve been getting up to…

Democracy

The first ever set of elections for PCCs resulted in the lowest ever peacetime turnout. Several polling stations remained open all day without being visited by a single voter. All in all, 8.4m people voted across the country – so the elections had lower ‘viewing figures’ than the Doctor Who Christmas special. And they were also less well-organised and less realistic and worse value-for-money.

Value for money

Thames Valley PCC Anthony Stansfeld (Conservative) has defended himself against claims of “fiddling expenses” by releasing the following modest statement:

The scandal from which he was trying to extricate himself involved his employing a “support worker and chauffeur” on a £20k salary.

The other big PCC-chauffeur-related scandal has been that of Cumbria’s new policemeister, Richard Rhodes (Conservative – spotted the trend yet?). Questioned by his local Police & Crime Panel about why he only agreed to repay his £700 expense claim for a chauffeur-driven Mercedes after it became public knowledge, he said:

I had been uncomfortable about the cost that had been incurred from the moment I became aware about it. I had been considering repaying the cost, but there had been no imperative to make the decision quickly.

What a brilliant excuse. Definitely going to remember that one.

“Yes, officer; I’ve been deeply uncomfortable about that spree of jewel thefts but until my guilt was made public, there had been no imperative to make the decision quickly.”

Eradicating cronyism

Katy Bourne’s new appointment to increase the diversity of her office

Sussex’s Katy Bourne (Conservative) has made a fellow local Tory to be her Deputy PCC, rejecting outright a recommendation from the local Police & Crime Panel – which held the confirmation hearing – that Steve Waight should not be appointed. According to a ‘not for publication’ minute of the meeting acquired by this blog, the Panel was concerned that there was “no information to explain the nature of the [£45,000 p.a.] role,” and that the nominee did not have “the requisite level of personal independence.”

Katy ignored these findings, refused to publish them and went ahead with the appointment. Three cheers for democratic reforms to policing!

Meanwhile, West Yorkshire’s PCC Mark Burns-Williamson openly refused to consider non-Labour Party members for appointment as his £53k Deputy. I’d always thought that restricting public appointments to those within The Party was more of a Soviet tradition than a Yorkshire one, but who knew.

Engaging with the youf

Paris Brown: “tough on tweets, tough on the causes of tweets.”

Kent’s Ann Barnes (independent) showed that she could connect with law-abiding young people by employing a racist, homophobic drug-user as the country’s first and, please God, only Youth Police & Crime Commissioner.

Paris Brooks, 17, was to have been paid a £15k salary, her job description consisting largely of ‘being young’, until it was observed that her Twitter account contained such pro-establishment gems as, “I want to f***ing cut everyone around me.”

Threats of violence made in jest are forgivable, but to split an infinitive and still expect to hold public office?

In a press statement, Ann Barnes said, “I had literally no idea that I was supposed to check people out before employing them. I’ll bear that in mind for next time,” shortly before she appointed Lord Archer as her Best Practice Officer and Dr Crippen as ‘Crimes Within the Medical Sector Tsar’.

Formulating policy

Out of 41 PCCs, only eight consider it a priority to “protect the public from serious harm.” That’s the conclusion of a statistical analysis of the 41 new Police and Crime Plans. It also found that only four PCCs will be aiming to “deliver quality policing services,” while a mere two have made it a top priority to “reduce repeat domestic abuse.”

The others, it appears, are indifferent to domestic abuse, quality policing and ‘serious harm’. Especially the serious harm caused by young girls f***ing cutting everyone around them.

Though to be fair, even those who have decided to go with these really obvious priorities – such as the eight PCCs, that’s just one-fifth, who are hoping to “reduce burglaries,” have no clear strategy, and appear just to be spouting insipid rhetoric, carefully tailored to be populist in their individual constituency.

Getting involved in the judicial system

Obviously courts are an important part of the criminal justice system, and Lincolnshire’s PCC Alan Hardwick (independent) hasn’t been neglecting this fact.

After suspending his Chief Constable without telling him why, Hardwick’s actions were ruled “irrational and perverse” by the High Court and the suspension was overturned.

Defending himself, Mr Rationality told the media, “My fear is that in future any PCC who makes any decision which is [...] controversial is going to be looking over his or her shoulder.”

Mmm. I hate it when that happens in a democracy.

Conclusion

So, what a success this has been. Low turnout and lawsuits; cronyism and corruption. The British people (or at least one in seven of us) have handed control of our police forces to dance teachers and bakers, irational perverts and even those who don’t consider ‘preventing serious harm’ to be a priority.

I don’t like to say, “I told you so,” but… well…

Let’s see what happens over the next six months. Surely we’ll get the first resignation by then?

Tags: gabriel webber