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J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

But maybe the good fight is losing its gleam.
So what? Many university employees might now be cynical about their unions but apparently the unions still have the power to compel people to participate in strikes or face consequences.
We constantly read on Unherd, and elsewhere, that far-left policies have lost their gleam (or never had any gleam) among the majority of the population, but still the far-lefties drive the public debate, drive cancel culture and other forms of wokeism.
The silent majority remain silent and disgruntled and nothing will change until we all take a stand locally and nationally against the type of left-wing-overreach described in the article. I feel for the university employees described in the article. Their workplace is now so politicized they’ll pay a heavy price if they stand up and say no to the latest diktats.
On the off-chance that the author reads this comment, I wonder if she knows of any examples where university employees (or employees in the public sector more generally) are successfully standing up to the ultra-lefties in any way? Would she consider writing an article about how to resist these activists? So many articles describe the problem without even attempting to present a way forward. If the author is willing to write such an article I wonder if she can find a publisher? Even Unherd seems problem-focused and not solution-focused.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

It’s about time we asked ourselves whether we really need all these universities now we have the Internet. If they didn’t exist we wouldn’t invent them.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

It’s about time we asked ourselves whether we really need all these universities now we have the Internet. If they didn’t exist we wouldn’t invent them.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

But maybe the good fight is losing its gleam.
So what? Many university employees might now be cynical about their unions but apparently the unions still have the power to compel people to participate in strikes or face consequences.
We constantly read on Unherd, and elsewhere, that far-left policies have lost their gleam (or never had any gleam) among the majority of the population, but still the far-lefties drive the public debate, drive cancel culture and other forms of wokeism.
The silent majority remain silent and disgruntled and nothing will change until we all take a stand locally and nationally against the type of left-wing-overreach described in the article. I feel for the university employees described in the article. Their workplace is now so politicized they’ll pay a heavy price if they stand up and say no to the latest diktats.
On the off-chance that the author reads this comment, I wonder if she knows of any examples where university employees (or employees in the public sector more generally) are successfully standing up to the ultra-lefties in any way? Would she consider writing an article about how to resist these activists? So many articles describe the problem without even attempting to present a way forward. If the author is willing to write such an article I wonder if she can find a publisher? Even Unherd seems problem-focused and not solution-focused.

Clara B
Clara B
1 year ago

UCU is a clownish organisation run by ridiculous, militant goons who enjoy political posturing in preference to actually supporting members (when I needed help from them, my rep was hopeless) – and they get a pretty penny for it from members. I left the union after 20+ years’ membership because of their failure to support Kathleen Stock. In my current place of work, the UCU chair is at loggerheads with members of the committee over some perceived slight and the emails flying back and forth (I still get them even though I left over a year ago) are simply barking – paranoid and hysterical. Really quite unseemly. I’ll never rejoin.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clara B
Ruth Sharratt
Ruth Sharratt
1 year ago
Reply to  Clara B

I

Last edited 1 year ago by Ruth Sharratt
Julian Pellatt
Julian Pellatt
1 year ago
Reply to  Clara B

I had a second career as a senior lecturer in a university for nearly a decade. When I started I joined the UCU; but very soon resigned and walked through picket lines when they called a national strike. The leaders of the union were left-wing activists who merely used the weight of membership in their marxist revolutionary struggle to defeat oppression. I never regretted my decision, which was later reinforced by the UCU’s abysmal (but entirely predictable) failure to support Kathleen Stock in her hour of need. I resigned from my position in 2017 when I saw the Woke madness coming down the tracks; since when the university sector has been even further corrupted cultural marxism than it was in my day. And it was bad enough then!
Universities have become places that tell students WHAT to think rather than developing them HOW to think. That is why we have the cancel culture and how the Woking Class has been born, nurtured and propagated in our world at large.

Last edited 1 year ago by Julian Pellatt
Ruth Sharratt
Ruth Sharratt
1 year ago
Reply to  Clara B

I

Last edited 1 year ago by Ruth Sharratt
Julian Pellatt
Julian Pellatt
1 year ago
Reply to  Clara B

I had a second career as a senior lecturer in a university for nearly a decade. When I started I joined the UCU; but very soon resigned and walked through picket lines when they called a national strike. The leaders of the union were left-wing activists who merely used the weight of membership in their marxist revolutionary struggle to defeat oppression. I never regretted my decision, which was later reinforced by the UCU’s abysmal (but entirely predictable) failure to support Kathleen Stock in her hour of need. I resigned from my position in 2017 when I saw the Woke madness coming down the tracks; since when the university sector has been even further corrupted cultural marxism than it was in my day. And it was bad enough then!
Universities have become places that tell students WHAT to think rather than developing them HOW to think. That is why we have the cancel culture and how the Woking Class has been born, nurtured and propagated in our world at large.

Last edited 1 year ago by Julian Pellatt
Clara B
Clara B
1 year ago

UCU is a clownish organisation run by ridiculous, militant goons who enjoy political posturing in preference to actually supporting members (when I needed help from them, my rep was hopeless) – and they get a pretty penny for it from members. I left the union after 20+ years’ membership because of their failure to support Kathleen Stock. In my current place of work, the UCU chair is at loggerheads with members of the committee over some perceived slight and the emails flying back and forth (I still get them even though I left over a year ago) are simply barking – paranoid and hysterical. Really quite unseemly. I’ll never rejoin.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clara B
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

So, the far left, embedded in our academic institutions and elsewhere, are revealed as being anti-liberal control freaks.

Quelle surprise.

Does each new generation really have to discover this for itself?

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

So, the far left, embedded in our academic institutions and elsewhere, are revealed as being anti-liberal control freaks.

Quelle surprise.

Does each new generation really have to discover this for itself?

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago

I love it – Insane, Western Hating, Modernist-Liberal-Left wreckers wrecking their own house.

Good – when they finally kill of the twisted institution called ‘Higher Education’ as exemplified by Universities today – maybe actual knowledge and thinking can be rediscovered.

Actually I doubt it though. Really it is just the death of education probably – I do not see hope for the future in real education returning, the cell phone managed what Plato said books would, by a power of 1000X.

”And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.

Now all the books are instantly available on your clutched phone, and everything they contain is there (although the algorithms just show that which make you believe the agenda) means people become much stupider – – AND now the writing just writes its self…- ChatGPT – and with its built in Liberal/Left Agenda will just take over.

You miserable phone clutching Sheep! I think education is dead no matter what the useless University staff do…no matter what the evil administrators do, and no matter what the silly, ignorant of life, students do. You all are obsolete now….go back to your pods and eat your bugs…….

Elliott Bjorn
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago

I love it – Insane, Western Hating, Modernist-Liberal-Left wreckers wrecking their own house.

Good – when they finally kill of the twisted institution called ‘Higher Education’ as exemplified by Universities today – maybe actual knowledge and thinking can be rediscovered.

Actually I doubt it though. Really it is just the death of education probably – I do not see hope for the future in real education returning, the cell phone managed what Plato said books would, by a power of 1000X.

”And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.

Now all the books are instantly available on your clutched phone, and everything they contain is there (although the algorithms just show that which make you believe the agenda) means people become much stupider – – AND now the writing just writes its self…- ChatGPT – and with its built in Liberal/Left Agenda will just take over.

You miserable phone clutching Sheep! I think education is dead no matter what the useless University staff do…no matter what the evil administrators do, and no matter what the silly, ignorant of life, students do. You all are obsolete now….go back to your pods and eat your bugs…….

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago

Zoe, you should tell your friend, ironically, to complain to his or her union. This is very likely an “unlawful deduction from earnings”, Employment Rights Act 1996, S13.
If the union won’t act, your friend should notify ACAS, which should intervene.
If Goldsmiths go ahead, initiate a claim through the Employment Tribunal – it’s free – but act promptly as there is a time limit of 3 months minus 1 day for making a claim.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago

Zoe, you should tell your friend, ironically, to complain to his or her union. This is very likely an “unlawful deduction from earnings”, Employment Rights Act 1996, S13.
If the union won’t act, your friend should notify ACAS, which should intervene.
If Goldsmiths go ahead, initiate a claim through the Employment Tribunal – it’s free – but act promptly as there is a time limit of 3 months minus 1 day for making a claim.

Douglas H
Douglas H
1 year ago

Surely it’s illegal to assume that an employee is on strike? Nice way to save money, though.

Douglas H
Douglas H
1 year ago

Surely it’s illegal to assume that an employee is on strike? Nice way to save money, though.

j watson
j watson
1 year ago

Did all the student/Univ politics back our days generate as much interest? I suspect not. Was it less heated/ideological? I very much doubt it.
Are alot of more extreme view holders back in the day somewhat less radical now? Yep.
Moral of the story – the western world didn’t come to an end before and won’t now. Passion when you are that stage of life is to be welcomed. Spare us banal conformity. Go to a Uni run by the CCP if you want that.

Last edited 1 year ago by j watson
j watson
j watson
1 year ago

Did all the student/Univ politics back our days generate as much interest? I suspect not. Was it less heated/ideological? I very much doubt it.
Are alot of more extreme view holders back in the day somewhat less radical now? Yep.
Moral of the story – the western world didn’t come to an end before and won’t now. Passion when you are that stage of life is to be welcomed. Spare us banal conformity. Go to a Uni run by the CCP if you want that.

Last edited 1 year ago by j watson
Will Ross
Will Ross
1 year ago

Did the majority of members not vote to strike?

Michael Davis
Michael Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Will Ross

Baaaaaaaa

Michael Davis
Michael Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Will Ross

Baaaaaaaa

Will Ross
Will Ross
1 year ago

Did the majority of members not vote to strike?