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March 2018

My last trip outdoors was 2005 to Bowles with the QM climbing club. Said shoes showcased in attached picture. Shortly after that much went wrong!

I stopped bouldering - with which I was obsessed - in 2006 when my rheumatoid arthritis made it impossible (couldn't walk, let alone climb). Won't get back to old form but on current medication and with a wall just around the corner from the new house, I've dug out my old shoes.

Hospital yesterday got a bit further with my hearing problems. One to one apparently my hearing is ok. With any background noise or multiple parties, seems I have 40-60% hearing loss. Inner ear signal to noise is terrible and they also suspect a brain/CNS problem.

If I've got it right with the bank holiday weekend, today is the last day of HEFCE. From Tuesday Research England (RE) absorbs its research functions and the dreaded/dreadful OfS the rest.

It's been a fair long time since a book gave me nightmares, but Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad managed that this week.

"To be blunt, the furore around free speech [in universities] has been confected by ministers as a distraction from their own failings around higher education policy, throwing red meat to a certain part of the Conservative Party" - @mgmcquillan this morning

Very glad to hear this. I recently refused to perform an external service to Surrey on the basis of their previous HR policy.

Strike thoughts: It is interesting to me that so much action seems to have been mobilised through technocratic discussion (particularly around whether the deficit exists or otherwise). #USSstrikes

However, this seems also to have somewhat snared the union into a debate over technocratic, actuarial matters. #USSstrikes 2/X

To say that we want a clause inserted that says "if there is a deficit... etc." when the whole argument to date has been built on "there isn't a deficit" (through technocratic analysis) would appear hypocritical and unreasonable. #USSstrikes 3/X

This Wednesday at 1pm I'm returning to old haunts. Speaking at @unilincoln on academic publishing and open access. Looking forward to it!

What I understand to be major concession is that evaluation will now be a jointly conducted enterprise by UCU-UUK, admitting that there is no faith in it at present. The "keep things as they are for now" not a huge concession b/c that's how it would have been anyway #USSstrikes

Thanks all for the #empowoa chat, all, but especially @ernestopriego! I have to dash. It was actually really great (even better than I'd thought it would be) to have a topic around which to coalesce and talk!

Advice from academic colleagues please: institution on the boycott list for treating staff badly has asked me to do an external promotion appraisal. Should I do this or say no? It seems to me that it would only hurt the applicant if I don't...

Looking forward to a twitter chat with @ernestopriego in 45 mins on labour in academic publishing! #empowoa #openaccess (might interest @claudiakincaid)

The smart home stuff induces new levels of anxiety. As both the heating system and pigcam (our guinea pig monitor) went down while I was away in London overnight, I became convinced that the house had burned down. It was alright in the end though.

Who would've thought that allowing people to embed arbitrary binary objects in an immutable distributed ledger could be problematic? #bitcoin

The best part of that experience was that my co-author and myself have never met in person. We were introduced by a mutual friend/colleague and collaborated entirely digitally.

Is there anything more casually hoping-for-mobility (and/or locked-in-precarity) than the academic biography that begins "X is currently an assistant Prof at Y"

Basically, UUK, which wants and engineered a risk-free approach for itself to pensions for its own staff (by making staff bear all the risk), took a high-risk negotiating strategy by holding out on a poor offer and insulting staff at the midnight hour. #ussstrike

But regardless of whether UCU was at fault in not pushing harder, it is now UUK's problem. Exam strikes will hit so hard. And UUK could have avoided this but it chose to play games and insult staff.

Thinking more about the "deal" this week. UUK clearly do not understand the anger of striking university staff. (UCU negotiators seemed not to, either.) They could have offered more and the "reschedule teaching for which you've had pay docked" was like sticking two fingers up.

The reply from UUK reads: "without changes to staff pensions, universities could have to divert funding from teaching budgets towards pensions". Teaching. Budgets. Need. To. Include. Pensions. #USSstrike

I heard today that the automatic response on the UUK email address threatens students that more of their tuition fees will have to be spent on pensions. Who would've thought it? Spending tuition fees on teaching staff! Shock. #USSstrike

JNC meeting is off today. July deadline for pension regulator remains in force. Unsure what can actually now be done in time for the legal requirements and worried that a DC scheme will be imposed. #USSstrike

An anniversary of mixed feelings. Two years ago I had the first of a series of strokes that landed me in hospital for a month. Very glad still to be here and alive. I am still much weaker than I ever used to be.

I think I would have been in favour of the deal if: 1. it hadn't included the strike-breaking rescheduling clause; 2. it hadn't had the "kick the can down the road" 3-year part; 3. accrual had remained the same, even with threshold drop. #USSstrike

(Lots of blame on UCU on Twitter. But this could well be part of the team's negotiating strategy. Not necessary to blame the union for coming away with a deal for voting. Just get branches to vote it down.) #USSstrike

A good part of the deal, to be fair, is this: "agreement has been reached between UCU and UUK to convene an independent expert valuation group". Seems to avoid the lack of transparency (or, it felt to me, deception) we had beore in the future. #USSstrike

Can't see the UCU-UUK deal being accepted. Contributions up, benefits down, rescheduling work for which we're not paid. Union feels strong and believes it is winning. #USSstrike

If @UniversitiesUK wants teaching rescheduled, it should instruct its member institutions not to dock pay for recent industrial action. @ucu @BirkbeckUCU #USSstrike

"@UCU undertakes to encourage its members to prioritise the rescheduling of teaching in order to minimise the disruption to students" - isn't this the work we would have done but for which we had pay docked? #USSstrike

Twitter suggests that I "follow Alistair Jarvis". UUK tried that so far and it hasn't been going so well, I've heard.

For some reason, my bank thinks that I am a US citizen or US entity in some way and wants me to sign a FACTA form (IRS W-9). The problem is, that form requires you to actually be a US citizen/entity. Cue hellish administrative Catch-22.

Excited to be presenting my historico-mimetic computational close reading of Cloud Atlas paper at the @BACLS_official conference in July: a continuation of What Happens Now!

If my other half asks, I'm eating really healthily when she's away in the week and my Sainsbury's receipts prove it from the quantity of veg. The real destination though...

Despite losing the confidence of the sector's leadership, UUK seems intent on prolonging the strikes. Infuriating.

"As things stand there is no agreement at Acas. Because of this our negotiators today sought and received the support of HEC for a further fourteen days of further strikes if no acceptable agreement is reached." #USStrikes

Is it against some kind of ethical publication practice to desk reject an author, providing no feedback on why, at all, after 3 months? Asking for me.

The daily UCU update was very subdued today. I hope this means that there has been negotiations in good faith today but we'll see. #USSstrike

Book review submitted in 2013 just sent me the proofs, asking for the turnaround in 5 days. (On strike so good luck with that.)

"We don't keep records of whether a response is authorised or unauthorised" -- then why did the form ask whether the response was authorised?

(Just for the record: my life expectancy is below pensionable age, what with vasculitis, strokes, immunosuppression etc. But the current proposals represent a gross unfairness across generations and must be countered.)

Perhaps @univofstandrews isn't a viable enterprise if it really thinks it has to make a choice between diversity initiatives and pensions. Appalling. Throwing minority groups under the bus.

Very good of @univofstandrews to affirm that its staff can either have a pension in retirement or diversity now.

I must confess not to being a great film lover. This afternoon, though, I'm rewatching Pan's Labyrinth. Spectacular.

The best conversation I've had from my book about open access (which is itself open access) was when I was invited to talk to some European policymakers. They'd found me by spotting a paperback copy of the book in a bookshop.