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THE BEST OF INKYTEXT: 1
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This is the first of a two-part Loyalty Bonus for subscribers faithful to
the last. A number of requests for the third and fourth movements of the
symphonic prose 'The Hanham Years' have also been received and noted.
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Inkytext was launched via a few upbeat speculative flyers sent out in
May and June 1993 to parties thought likely to be sympathetic. These
promised "ALL THE NEWS THAT NEWSVIEW DOESN'T PRINT" and one screamed:
"FIND OUT THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE SUDDEN RETIREMENTS IN UNIVERSITY
HOUSE... FIND OUT WHY A QUARTER OF A MILLION HAS BEEN SET ASIDE FROM
NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET TO FUND EARLY RETIREMENTS...
LEARN THE REAL IMPLICATIONS OF PAYING CASH UP FRONT FOR THE GEORGE FOX
BUILDING...LEARN THE QUESTIONS THEY'D RATHER YOU DIDN'T ASK... THEN ASK
THEM..." [Unnumbered flyer, May 1993]
It happily adopted as its own the bit in the university's charter
about advancing knowledge and wisdom by the example of our corporate
life. It also indulged in extensive self-hype. Billing itself as "the
e-zine with ozone in its enzymes" it reminded readers of Beaumarchais'
remark that "without freedom to criticize there can be no flattering
praise" and of Lord Rothermere's comment that "journalism is what
someone somewhere doesn't want you to know - all the rest is
publicity".
The popularity of key buzzwords in uniadminspeak was parodied with
effect, as was the language of advertising. Quite upbeat really. A
follow up flyer to non-repliers read:
"Oh dear, Madam, oh dear, Sir, it's almost too late now for you to
accept the invitation to become one of the lifetime subscribers to
INKYTEXT the world's NEWEST electronic newsletter. INKYTEXT sets new
STANDARDS in ENTERPRISING and INNOVATIVE newsgathering, spelling and
distribution.
Do you really have nothing to rely on but NEWSVIEW?? Are you
condemning yourself forever to the tame and emasculated University
House view of the universe. Why not choose to LIVE and start TODAY?
Don't all you wonderful people tied to the end of your Ethernet cable
in darkest Cartmel or Fylde not want to know what's happening in
University House? Do you really believe that your HoD tells you all
s/he heard at the dubious HoD lunches?
Don't you poor benighted denizens of the corridors of
self-acknowledged impotence want to know what the average man on the
Spine or woman in Grizedale Bar is saying about you?"
Alas the only way to do so is to subscribe to I N K Y T E X T. But
remember.... if you don't want to end up as out of touch as the England
football team... send it in N O W !"
[Issues soon began with our _mea culpa_ and corrections. Some
apologies for error gave scope for whimsy despite being entirely true.]
THE LATE HONOURABLE AUGUSTA ADA, COUNTESS OF LOVELACE (NEE BYRON)
1815 - 1852
Sincere apologies to the memory of the above lady and her family for
any distress caused by the suggestion in our last issue that she was
her father's mistress (early editions) or the daughter of her father's
mistress (later editions). This comes from rashly believing what
academics tell you. She was in fact the legitimate child of Lord
and Lady Byron.
It is actually true that her mother later accused her appalling
ex-husband of incest, but then she also accused him of every other
conceivable crime and sin known to God, human, beast or Dave Ingles.
Probably correctly. (How Lord Byron must regret having died 150 years
too early to use the Internet.)
The short, sad life of this brilliant woman [see READERS' LETTERS] was
miserable enough without us disturbing her peace as well. Although only
the (living) plaintiff in person can seek redress for defamation, a
*quality* journal like ours is dedicated to raising standards in public
life in line with government policy. We would never dream of letting a
trivial material detail like death override our moral obligations.
We owe it to her to have the Computer Building named the Ada Lovelace
Centre (or ALC) in her memory. Consider it done.
[From Issue 5, July 1993]
---------------------
[Satirical prayer has a long history and is often more devout than
blasphemous We had a few of these, though some of the more pointed
topical references to individuals and events may now be lost on newer
readers.]
LET US PRAY:
From oleaginous sycophants and mendacious supplicants,
from vexatious litigants and disputatious postulants,
from curvaceous termagants and pusillanimous miscreants,
Good Lord deliver us.
We thank Thee, O Lord, for all thy Bounty,
as for Thy Mars Bars and Thy Kit-Kat.
Grant, we pray, that we may be worthy of Thy commandments
and of our Charter and Statutes.
Bless our Computer Centre,
even Dave Ingles;
Thy condom come, in County as in Grizedale,
Thy will be done, in ES as in Admin;
Give us this day our Ethernet,
And forgive us our illegal parking,
As we forgive them that audit against us;
Lead us not into Management,
But deliver us from e-mail.
[From Issue 4, July 1993]
----------
[As the crisis deepened we turned again to prayer in December 1994.]
Advent Grace
Again, Lord, as we await Thy coming
And our 35 million pounds,
We thank thee for all thy Bounty
As for Thy Kit-Kat and Thy Snickers.
Our Graduate Management School thou hast furnished,
Albeit with inferior veneer tables,
And our flat roofs Thou dost with bitumen anoint
That we be spared from even bigger drips
Than those we see around us.
Forgive us our debts, Lord,
As we forgive those that got us into them,
And deliver us from higher interest rates
Except on our investments.
Bless our Debenture, Lord,
And as soon as possible please,
And help Thy good Shepherd make it bear fruit,
Preferably by enriching minds
Rather than lawyers, bankers and accountants.
We ask these things in the name of our ex-patrons,
St Emilion, St Estephe and Saint-Amour,
Now grievously neglected by order of Thy administrators
And Thy Finance Office.
AMEN.
[Issue 46 December 1994]
------------------------
[Sometimes it despaired of official information....]
NEWSVIEW: A review of the issue dated 10 June 1993.
-------------------------------------------------------
What's the difference between SCAN and NewsView? Judging from last
week's issues, SCAN recognised what was newsworthy and devoted the
entire front page to it, even digging out a harrowing piccie of a
careworn Cockburn. Unfortunately its conjectural explanation of current
events was totally fanciful and utterly wrong. At least it tried.
NewsView reduced the most earth-shatteringly sobering events of recent
Bailrigg years to three lines on Page 3, tucked away in Joyce's account
of Senate. George, we were told, was "gaily slinging his hook" in the
far north. The phrase was curiously reminiscent of what was said
elsewhere to Jim Cansfield when he enquired about how to use his time
on being evicted from his office, namely that he should "[CENSORED.(ED.)]".
Meanwhile NewsView's vision of life in this great university of ours
continued to be reassuringly normal for the benefit of outside readers:
the Pilkington Awards for teaching and Jon Sparks' photos monopolized
Page 1. Nothing wrong with that, and maybe that *is* what should
interest outsiders - but it rather underlined the need for a
*different* community forum for the rest of us.
Better that such a forum should be 'official' of course: the notion of
'loyal (and financed) opposition' still commends itself to some of us,
though no doubt it is a quaintly outmoded, 'academic' concept,
ill-suited to life in the market-place. Failing that, opposition
inevitably just goes underground. All a bit reminiscent of the press in
Ceaucescu's Romania.
[From Issue 2 1993]
---------
[Blunt reviews of Senate meeting were always popular - especially
because of their contrast with the edulcorated official reports and the
later doctored Minutes.]
Nothing significant thereafter ensued. The next hour and a half again
saw Senate as usual allow itself to be led through the first page and a
half of the agenda, mainly late items for report from the top table
without much (or sometimes anything) by way of supporting documents,
and usually accompanied by explanations that this intelligence could
not yet be fully explained.
There was some discussion of the admirably cogent and lucid assessment
of the way we handle overseas students that had been produced (at our
request) by a distinguished outsider. Although highly approving in the
main, especially of the international office, he stuck yet another
knife into residential services.
This left a couple of hours to listen to croquet-player Michael
Wheeler's plea for a quarter of a million pound contribution to his
Ruskin Centre, and then tackle the remaining 285 pages of the agenda.
[Issue 1]
[It was very blunt in its criticism of some managerial machinations.]
The UNRESTRICTED document entitled 'VICE-CHANCELLOR'S PROPOSALS FOR
UNIVERSITY RESTRUCTURING: A PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTATION' is signed Janet
Finch and dated 1 June 1993. The copy circulated to the management
group on 7 June has a covering note from Professor Finch saying "This
is to be discussed at PARC on 14 June and in advance of that I am
having a meeting with the Faculty Deans on the 11th to illicit (SIC)
their views."
The Freudian slip says enough. This remarkable document derives from
two previous papers by the VC containing proposals which, the document
claims (para 2) have been "widely" (SIC) debated. This is the first of
many redefinitions of common words to be found in subsequent pages. It
is unsurprising that the word "democratic" is consistently and somewhat
disparagingly put in inverted commas whenever it appears (in connection
with time-wasting consultation.)
The contents need not detain us. Happily even our wimpish PARC managed
to tone them down a little and who knows, *maybe* Council can do a
little more. It is concerned with corporate management, devolving
chores to Faculties, and making the exercise of power at what it calls
the "Centre" more efficient.
This is naive and static geometry: what is central and what you see as
peripheral depends on where you stand.
* Administrators need to be constantly reminded that the centre of a
* university is the laboratory, the teaching room, the library and
* nowadays the computer network. Administrators, like plumbers,
* electricians and secretaries are essential but peripheral figures we
* employ to service those central functions, flummery that Plato lived
* without. To pretend the opposite is to be unworthy of university office.
[From Issue 3]
------------------------
[Popularising computers and introducing neophytes to new delights was
a constant part of our mission.]
"IRC, however, the INTERNET RELAY CHAT system, is more the Casbah or
the Souk, packed with chattering strangers, mainly foreign. IRC is the
new frontier, the wild and lawless wilderness of the world network,
where you are sharing the satellite channels with airline bookings,
cashcard withdrawals, currency dealing, telephone tapping and
eavesdropping governments.
Not that you can actually come across any of these yourself. IRC is
the underworld. What IRC does is allow you to share cyberspace, at any
hour of the day or night, with hundreds, often thousands, of your
babbling fellow Earthlings, in the majority American. In merciful
silence - a welcome change from County Bar.
IRC is largely inhabited by fanatics, neurotics, social misfits,
inveterate loners, authoritarian thugs, the mentally subnormal,
paranoids, egomaniacs, addictive personalities, half-wits, deviants of
every description and the terminally insane.
In other words it brings together an entirely normal cross-section of
any university population and is pretty similar to your department and
mine really. Except that you do occasionally fall in with some cool and
froodie dude who knows where her/his towel is.
At any time you can join any of hundreds of channels, each identified
by a name, ideally self-explanatory, and sometimes a brief description
of the topic being "debated". And just as easily you can set up your
own channel on, say "#Wittgenstein" or "#Pigeon-fancying", and sit on
it alone until like-minded enthusiasts from Taiwan and Tokyo, Vancouver
and Venice, Los Angeles and Watford rush in to join you.
This may take some time. (And, by the way (as the VC says), do not be
surprised if some prospective visitors have odd ideas about what you
might be planning to do to (or with) your pigeons.)
IRC users are identified by nicknames, and I'm told the best way of
ensuring that conversational company arrives promptly is probably to
call yourself Samantha or Carol.
Occasionally unusual items are offered for sale, though IRC is
strictly non-commercial. I was struck by the ad. for a pair of nipple
clips marked "Colour" and "Volume". (Perhaps one makes you blush and
the other makes you scream.)
The identity of these users is hard to establish. Quite a few of them
are robots programs which perform every bit as predictably as so many
colleagues and, in conversational mode, are almost indistinguishable
from living beings. Many more are computer operators or programmers.
The age of computer freaks is bi-modally distributed, with peaks at 18
and 50. Curiously enough, most of those with the chronological age of
the one have the mental and emotional responses of the other.
In the US the cost of local phone calls is included in line-rental
charges. This enables American students to login from their home or
campus room to their university account, and thereafter freely roam the
netwaves. Since their course assignments are usually on-line, they can
thus work, play, socialize and order pizza (see INKYTEXT 2) without
ever leaving their bed, and thereby realise the prophetic ambition of
Oblomov, the eponymous hero of Goncharov's novel. Some may already have
the toast-making robot arm and coke dispenser attached to an available
output port on their terminal.
Hence the comment of one French wit: "Heureux qui comme le fleuve peut
suivre son cours sans quitter son lit". Happy indeed is he who, like
the river, can follow his course without leaving his bed. (This is a
parody of the line from the Renaissance sonnet "Heureux qui comme
Ulysse a fait un beau voyage", so often quoted on seaside souvenir
ashtrays.) He or, of course, she."
[FROM Inkytext 4]
------------------
[I was very fond of the 9 episodes of our Introduction to Management,
the early ones written before I had even heard of Dilbert.]
"Introduction to Management LESSON ONE: There are no human resources
Personally I am am not a resource and do not intend ever to become
one. Resources are inert and available for use. People are either
assets or liabilities, and most of us oscillate between the two. Nor
would we agree very readily on who falls into which category.
I consider people as persons. I despise and reject all theories,
courses and institutions based on that kind of fatuous taxonomy.
Accountants may need to separate wages from capital costs and recurrent
expenditure on consumables. But flow charts and sentences that yoke the
two into equipotent categories are dangerously dehumanising and
managerially disastrous.
The words we use help shape the way we see the world around us, often
subconsciously. To think of employees in the mass as anonymous
resources brutalizes the thinker. Placing them on the same line in a
chart as fuel costs, buildings, materials and loan interest, then
reducing all to a common monetary denominator, that is the road to the
corporate world of The Prisoner, where the manipulated playthings of
forces whose purpose they ignore can do little else but rebel if they
are to retain their dignity.
To treat us as resources is to patronize, to treat us as children.
Patronized children's behaviour is familiar to all: sullenness,
indolence, rebellion, delinquency. Parents and politicians know that.
So do good managers. Here endeth Lesson One."
[From Issue 4]
----------------
[Broader moral reflections sometimes arose as in this piece re our
policy on consensual relations.]
"Ordering people not to fall in love is a fairly Canute-like activity.
Despite administrators' longings some things are just not amenable to
legislation.
Equally though, staff-student relations in general are likely to be
happier if they don't become relationships (in the extraordinary modern
sense of the word). Especially for colleagues and students who're not
involved! Doctors, counsellors, lawyers and dentists are aware it
clouds the judgement and their code precludes involvement with patients
or clients.
Those of us married to ex-students ought to declare an interest here.
Happily we seem to have intuitively applied the code that has now
appeared, which might suggest there is at least something sensible
about it. It's certainly a lot less hairy than the earliest proposals.
The code now includes the related area of family members joining a
department, which can cause just as much grumbling, however
unjustified, and potentially raises identical problems (even if the
power relationship isn't quite the same... *sigh*).
It would also help if people who pronounce on the subject could stop
mixing it up with sexual harassment."
[From Issue 8]
------------
[We also kept an eye on national issues in the HE industry"
"Some queries about the promised reference to Coopers & Lybrand.
Forgot to mention that the said firm is employed frequently at vast
expense as consultants by numerous government departments, especially
education. For years they were recommended even to us and others as
management and efficiency consultants.
Last Autumn they took out an ad to remind us that they had also acted
as "brokers" in setting up scores of different BES RES schemes for
universities. They even have an interest in building, as testified by
their own awesome po-mo (=post-modern) construction in Villiers St off
the Embankment (Charing Cross, opposite Gordon's Wine Bar where
residents of the Northern Line meet their District Line friends). Their
chairman, Brandon Gough, is currently chair of the HEFCE (Higher
Education Funding Council for England). Am I alone in finding all this
a bit dodgy?"
[From Issue 10]
--------------
[When things got personal we were usually flattering but blunt.]
"Who's this JANET you keep on about?" asked a reader last year, "Do
you mean Professor Finch?" No, but the comparison is illuminating.
Professor Finch, like the splendid Presiley Baxendale QC, Crown Counsel
at the Arms to Irak enquiry, is the _fine fleur_ of a dying era: the
age of the printed page.
Both are magnificently in command of their papers and marshal
documents with Napoleonic maestria. Both are assiduous homeworkers.
They know their facts by heart. At meetings they can tell you to turn
to page 235 and minute SACL/993/gkl while male professors present are
still picking their noses, fantasizing about unrecognized comely
females opposite, wishing they hadn't had a second pint at lunchtime
and wondering how soon they can decently slip away.
Sadly, talents such as theirs will soon belong with the watchmaker's
skills: in the age of the digital chip they become antiquarian crafts,
an object of beauty and luxury for the few, but for the masses an
irrelevance.
In the age of the Internet even live meetings are obsolescent. Why on
earth inflict on yourself, at totally inconvenient times (usually
during opening hours), and indoors even on the sunniest days, the sight
and sound of people you can't stand, not to mention the smell of
their feet?
Why burden your mind with drab, trivial and transient documents,
factually flawed and feebly reasoned, when instead you could be reading
Proust or discussing phylloxera with a physicist in Santa Barbara
(despite interruptions from students in Taiwan, secretaries in Zuid
Afrika and systems programmers EVERYWHERE?)
Then, at your leisure (and preferably after nightfall), you can verify
the drift of those tedious circulars by scrutinizing them on
conferencing systems, throw in at leisure your helpful opinions, and go
to bed with a smug smile, knowing how irritated their perpetrators will
be in the morning."
[From Inkytext 12, May 1994.]
----------------
[We first hit the national press after a year.]
From The Times Higher Education Supplement (July 22, 1994)
p4:INK STAINS.
"The University of Lancaster has fund a speedy and effective way of
getting its staff to tap into Internet. Inkytext, a highly entertaining
news update on the university, that tells staff all the things they
should not know, has been put out by one "Inky fingers". [NOTE:
Rubbish! Never heard of any such person. (Ed.)] The result has been
like dynamite and now the staff are on line in more ways than one."
[From Issue 17, August 1994]
-------------------------------
[Some fatal moments can be identified]
"A revised agenda for this afternoon's (on-going) APB meeting was
circulated by hand this morning to the 35 members of that body (or at
least those who are not absent from campus).
In it, the proposal to approve the financial appraisal and recommend
proceeding with the project has been removed. It is now recommended
that building work and contractual arrangements be suspended pending
further clarification of the costs of the project and potential income.
The proposal is linked to increasing worries about the viability of
our proposed cheap-money 'Big Bang Bond' debenture launch by merchant
bankers BZW.
Numerous doubts have been expressed about the costings of this highly
commercial project from the start. The more alert of our 703
subscribers will recall being informed of this some months ago."
[INKYTEXT 16 - 12 July 1994]
------------
[As the crisis drew closer the tone grew more scathing.]
"Everyone competent knows that the costings used [...] are all to
cock, but no one seems to care much. The Tower Avenue business plan
includes, as new income, rent from departments and the Students Union
which is simply recycling of existing university funds already
accounted for elsewhere.
The way we work simply allows these private dreams to be developed to
such an extent that they develop unstoppable momentum despite all the
while appearing hairier and scarier. The decision makers won't of
course be around to pay the bills."
The full report of Arthur Davies investigation into the causes of last
year's trouble with the new Pendle College and George Fox Building was
never published. It does not appear to have been debated by members of
the Estates Committee, whose chair is also the chair of the Budget and
Monitoring Committee and of various building project working parties.
Earnest hopes that similar problems can be avoided this time round...."
[Inkytext 18 September 1994]
--------------------
[Financial news was always culled lawfully from its hiding place in our
annual accounts.]
"The ratio of our long-term liabilities to our Total General Funds rose
from 114.7% to 156.4%. (At the same time the ratio of our total General
Funds to our total expenditure, excluding depreciation, appears to have
risen by 1100%....)
Our Liquid Assets now represent 0.24 of our Current Liabilities,
downfrom 0.49.
Our Net Liquid Assets now represent 7.1 days of expenditure (down from
18.6 days.)
Our Current Assets are now 0.84 of our Current Liabilities (down
from 1.4).
The movement of Net Liquid Assets during the year showed a 56.8%
decline as opposed to a 20.7% rise the previous year."
[Issue 48 December 1994]
-------------------------------
[It was early in 1995 that our money problems became public when we
stopped paying bills as assiduously as we used to.]
"Overdrafts are like adultery: after you once succumb it's hard ever to
get out and it's easier to fall next time. (Or so one is told!)
The University Treasurer and the Director of Finance most probably
have no personal experience of overdrafts or of escape from their
quicksands - but one presumes they are now learning fast.
Continuing horror stories about unpaid bills and some payments being
deliberately withheld until solicitors' letters arrive. All at a time
when the Finance Office and its salary bill are larger than everbefore.
The delays result in part from a comment by our auditors, who felt we
were paying bills too promptly. We now seem to have lurched to the
other extreme. Whether this is a "policy" or an "operational" matter
(as the Home Secretary might say) remains to be seen: is the Finance
Committee or the Finance Office responsible?
One department tried to send a letter by Federal Express just before
Christmas but was told our account had been suspended pending payment.
Various catering delivery problems for the same reason. Maintenance
activities in the Buildings Office are impeded by local suppliers'
insistence on cash payments and refusal to deliver on account. Similar
stories vis-a-vis computing kit from various departments.
Struggling local firms were once happy to supply us, often at minimal
profit, simply because they knew we would pay on demand. This helped
their monthly turnover figures and placated their bankers. Times have
changed. Our new policy probably encourages them to drive up prices.
Some of us cringe at the thought of the embarrassment this must cause
to the relatively low-level staff who directly bear the opprobrium
resulting from this policy. How our former Payments Department must
feel about it one hates to imagine. Worse still - unknowing outsiders
may imagine that the heroic Hazel Becket (nee Cumpsty) - who handled it
flawlessly over so many year - is still involved."
[Issue 53 January 1995]
----------------------
[Every January we celebrated the bard.]
***********************************************************************
* "If there's another world he lives in bliss, *
* If there be nane, he made the best o' this." *
* *
*Robert Burns was a notoriously sexist adulterer, probably guilty of *
*sexual harassment and indisputably part of the 'Beer Culture'. In his*
*day, as in ours, the right-thinking and self-righteous deprecated his*
*life-style. However these traits are merely the obverse of a talent *
*distinguished in song by love of humanity, freedom, nationhood and *
*women (the latter both in the abstract and in numerous particulars). *
*Even the fruit of the barley has redeeming and humanising qualities. *
*Romantic excess may consume its victims but at least their pyre *
*burns brighter than your average set of committee minutes. *
* *
* So scorn fell Fortune's twists and turns *
* And drink a toast to ROBERT BURNS. *
***********************************************************************
[Editorial diaries appeared to recount the editor's travels, as in this
trip to visit students in France.]
"The receptionist was matronly and had Black & Decker eyes.
"Monsieur", she said drily, "several young persons have already phoned
for you. All of them demoiselles". I shrugged. "Madame", I sighed,
"Depardieu, Robert Redford, moi... vous savez comment c'est. Nous avons
tous ces memes problemes". She melted and laughed loudly. No idea why.
The man in Marseilles some years ago had been blunter. "Didn't know
there was any money in the white slave trade these days", he remarked,
"the immoralite des jeunes has knocked the bottom out of the market".
"Tout-a-fait", I nodded, "that's why the mafia have turned to running
pop concerts and universities instead".
He had agreed vehemently, offered me a pastis, and asked what I
thought of the Nantes-Bastia result. Keeping track of students abroad
has odd compensations." [Issue 55 February 1995]
[Some bits will still horrify those of us who lived through them.]
"TOWER AVENUE BEGINS: but ever so slowly
------------------------------------------
This ill-judged and over-priced project is now under way. Even some of
its most senior promoters are prolly honest enough to admit that had it
not acquired so much momentum in supposedly sunnier times we wouldn't
be loony enough to proceed with it now.
The thing is now estimated to cost around 3 million, and is within 25K
of the figure at which the funding council wouldn't allow us to build
it on economic grounds. We are now having to put in about half a
million from current revenue to get it and no one even pretends it is
financially viable.
One hopes that those few of our leaders who kept pretending it was,
despite ample evidence to the contrary, will have the good grace to
recognise this and draw some apt conclusions about the reliability of
their own judgment. It leaves them very isolated indeed.
ALL of the tenders were above our original estimates. Pochin's were
awarded the contract and claim the student residences will be ready for
January. Buildings Surveyor Alan Ellis has been made project manager so
we know whose head will fall if the thing costs a penny over 3 million.
[Issue 58 February 1995]
----------------------
CONCERNED COUNCIL MEMBERS are getting a bit edgy at still being kept
in the dark about the Bond (and having no official news of the Tower
Avenue and Library problems). It is easy to forget how little the
non-INYTEXT subscribers among them actually know.
[Issue 61 - Feb 1995]
---------------------------
[Our use of consultants appalled, especially when their reports didn't
seem ot give value for money or reflected Dickensian management habits.]
"MANAGING SICKNESS ABSENCE
KPMG have done us yet another report and this one's a corker. Truly
symptomatic of the British disease (accountancy-led managerialism). The
29 pages include a summary of their 26 recommendations, complete with
little boxes for management responses. Neat. Pity about the spelling
and the illiteracies, but by abolishing use of the apostrophe they are
already demonstrating the kind of money-saving attitude the government
is anxious to encourage.
Unfortunately the authors don't carry the logic of their own approach
far enough. The most obviously wasteful sickness occurs with old age.
Asking employers to fund it by contributing to *pensions* is a highly
inefficient use of resources, as is retirement itself. An early demise
is far more economic, and a report on managing sudden death would be
even more valuable than this one.
These recommendations merely promote the usual system of monitoring,
counting, recording, publicising and harassing that management
consultants always recommend and that we already employ in appraising
our performance.
This may well be effective. Several of us who would make a greater
contribution to university productivity if we were sent off for six
months to have a lobotomy, and there are others whose presence is
manifestly damaging to their colleagues' blood pressure. In such cases
sickness absence may bring clear productivity gains elsewhere.
By and large people who enjoy their work are rarely off ill. Illness
is job-related, class-related and linked to sex and age.
Vice-chancellors are usually less prone to chest infections than
cleaners. The report steers well clear of all that and prolly wasn't
written by sociologists.
Personality is also involved and the remarkable thing about
universities, including ours, is how many people persistently struggle
to work, back pain, syphilis, haemorrhoids, shingles, yellow fever,
ear-ache and asthma notwithstanding, simply to keep the show on the
road and not to let down their colleagues or students.
Or at least how many used to. That kind of collective responsibility
and loyalty is destroyed by consultancy-inspired managerialism, which
prolly sees it as inefficient anyhow.
For 30 years the former University Engineer put his seafaring habits
to good use, often with language that would shock the personnel
department. He squeezed remarkable productivity from his crew of
joiners, electricians, plumbers, sewermen, cleaners, porters and
boilermen, vilifying them and sacking them where necessary, supporting
them through personal and family crises.
Most of them loved him, and still do. How many of our current
'managers' feel that they are 'loved' by their inferiors, or perhaps
would even wish to be...? It is not a condition that consultants
aspire to value. Or indeed recognise. One can see why.
Mental illness of course is even harder to identify and not
specifically raised by the report. Universities in particular often
house some very valuable people who are really being cared for in the
community and would be locked up if we still had long-stay mental
institutions. The hard bit is knowing which of us they are.
Views differ.
[...]
Have a nice day, and if you *must* die please try to do it suddenly.
[From Issue 64, March 1995]
[Council reports had to be composed from several accounts of meetings
and a sight of the agenda.]
"Even politically naive Council members were irritated to see
themselves described as a 'rubber-stamp' on the front page of Friday's
Lancaster Guardian. The story of our South Campus student village was
blazoned across the paper, though Council was to discuss that and other
options seriously for the first time only later that afternoon.
Worse still of course, that option was already assumed in our draft
Estates Strategy which Council also had yet to discuss and approve. The
irony of all this, when a document praising our open and accountable
decision-making was also on the agenda, has at last begun to strike
even the dimmer members.
Don't ask what happened. You know the proposals on the agenda, don't
you? That's roughly what happened. Quite hard to find out, actually,
for by the end of the meeting (5.30) few remained other than officers
and the top table.
Much discussion of Tower Ave and the Bond (hereinafter 'Godot'). In
both cases it's now too expensive to withdraw, we were told. What with
fees and the like, restoring the Tower avenue site *without*
rebuilding the rooms demolished would have cost about 300K. Up front
costs for Godot are going to be about 800K, but maybe only 500K if we
abandoned it.
In answer to a question it was stated that only 1% rather than the
more usual 2 - 3% had been included in Tower Avenue estimates for
unforeseen crises. (It is rumoured that the much heralded ramp for
wheel chairs is not yet included in costings. Surely it is? This is one
of the most trumpeted advantages of the whole scheme.)
Even ultra-loyalist David Martin, deputy Pro-Chancellor, chair of
Blackwell's, MD of EUP, famous Lune Valley Green, was unhappy. He
pointed out that in the private sector, the authorization group could
never have been allowed to exceed its brief in the way that had
happened. The cost limit laid down by Council had been exceeded,
water-tight letters of intent from the commercial lessees had not been
obtainable in advance, the specifications were still being reduced
(carpets, window-frames, bathrooms)."
[From Issue 66, March 1995]
[It was even rumoured that the budget for Slaidburn House wouldn't
allow a lift to be bought for the liftshaft. This prompted our highly
successful 'Uses for an empty liftshaft' competition. Announcement of
the results came accompanied by this tour de force.]
"PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE EMPTY LIFTSHAFT
A post-modern appraisal
-----------------------
The essence of liftshaft-ness is protected verticality. The liftshaft
is at once womb/tomb and corridor, but always *vertical* corridor and
windowless womb.
The Latin 'altus' means both 'high' and 'deep' and gives us the French
'haut'. Hence the phrase 'les hautes mers', source of the odd-sounding
English 'high seas'. A salutary reminder that verticality is
bi-directional. The 'ascenseur' is thus also a *descenseur* and, like
interest rates, belief in the coming of Godot or shares in merchant
banks, goes down as well as up. So too its shaft.
The liftshaft is also a defining feature of modernity and dictates the
face of our cities. Without Otis B Elevator's invention no skyscrapers,
no Centre Point, no Bowland Tower. When did you last see a lift in a
Gothic cathedral?
The *empty* liftshaft however is also unfulfilment, longing,
frustrated desire. Indeed the absence of lift makes its very
liftshaft-ness ambiguous. Some might read it as a fireless chimney. For
others it will always be uncabled trunking, waterless drain, stairless
well, a potential waiting to be realised but condemned to wail in
ullulating threnody the eternal 'might-have-been'.
It is this Hamlet-like quality that makes of empty liftshafts so
fitting a symbol for our era. They are defined by an absence. Like the
verbal conceits of Renaissance literati each is a knife without a
handle whose blade is missing. Buses that never come, loans that fail
to arrive, committees that exist in name only, government 'policy',
these too are empty shafts, 'toom tabards' like John Baliol's trousers.
They enjoy a mythic existence in words alone.
This ghostly status is not without beauty, the Mallarmean perfection
to be found only in aesthetic ideal and never in the realm of space,
time and number, 'l'absente de tous bouquets'.
However it can never be a stairway to heaven. It lies at the heart of
its edifice, but remains cold, draughty, dead, infertile, impotent,
vacuous: like Senate or Council a true symbol of the void that is the
soul of modern humanity, the unacceptable liftshaft of Capitalism.
Salvation demands that we eschew the passive state of liftshaft-ness
and focus instead on 'liftshafticity', a dynamic self-willing upwards
that unleashes the potential lying dormant in each of us by expoiting
the environmentally-friendly energy of braces and bootstraps."
[Issue 67 March 1995]
[Then came Professor Ritchie and a new sobriety. We offered him
encouragement and suggestions.]
"EDITORIAL: CALVIN AND HOBBES
-------------------------------
The great Calvinist virtues are admirably exemplified in the character
of Scottishness: fear of the Lord, hatred of debt, honesty, obedience,
thrift, industriousness, respect for authority, independence of mind,
belittlement of self, love of neighbour, stoic acceptance of austerity.
These are priceless qualities, and we now have a VC who displays them
all. How one wishes he had come sooner. These are the qualities that
helped build the world's universities and banks, build, crew and power
its steamships, invent telephones, tarmacadam and television,
anaesthesia, penicillin and Sherlock Holmes.
They are ideal qualities to be sought when recruiting soldiers,
especially for infantry regiments that can be relied upon to march
fearlessly to defeat.
Victory however requires an extra leavening of Celtic vision, of
Viking adventurousness or of Gaulois rebellion - and preferably all
three.
These are urgently needed if our SLURP doesn't turn out to be the
unimaginative, conventional and conservative compromise its old-style
non-computerate begetters seem doomed to devise.
They still have time to rebel, though few are of that stamp. Why not
remind the HEFC(E) that their own hands are far from clean, that their
former chief executive and their current chair (Brandon Gough of
Coopers and Lybrand) personally approved our costly debenture despite
the misgivings of their staff?
Natwest currently holds our account again largely because it was the
only way to get their permission to demolish part of their branch, and
to ensure that they would rent premises in Tower Avenue. There are
other banks who would welcome our custom. A concerted transfer of staff
accounts and a student boycott always help focus a bank's views quite
quickly.
As for consultants... few, apart from other consultants and supporters
of the present discredited government, ever consider their advice worth
the price paid for it. The kind of people who become consultants either
want to get very rich or weren't good enough to pursue their own
discipline.
Our own should be ashamed that despite being Lancaster graduates and
claiming to be specialists in higher education finance they still seem
incapable of understanding why we cannot operate like a company.
If SLURP cravenly tries to make us do just that our future will indeed
be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' (Hobbes). Some of us
already are all of these.
[Issue 175 Part I - october 1966]
[The abuse of modish buzzwords and concepts was - IS - our _bete noire_.
Especially 'standards'.]
Light-bulb fittings, diskettes, coffee filters, CDs, tapes and other
recording media, camera film, razor-blades, paper sizes, computer
operating systems, clothes sizes, wine-bottle sizes, credit card shapes
and sizes, maybe even, indeed, sealing wax, shoes and, if not ships, at
least classes of small racing dinghy.
Some standards, examples above, be they national or aspiring to
universality, are undisputedly functional and beneficent. We bless the
fact that they have been agreed - especially those of us old enough to
remember the days when they had not. Where standards do still vary -
e.g. voltages and electric plugs - travellers soon spot the
disadvantages, however ingenious may be the conversion devices they've
bought from Boots.
However. Even slower readers have spotted that these inanimate objects
are fairly mono-functional and mostly belong to the category known in
Biz-speak as FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods).
Here indeed there is value in standardisation, for the 'worth' of the
objects lies in their function, which is fairly constant and narrowly
definable. Where value is purpose it even reinforces the perception
that true competition between different manufacturers, including price
competition, can both exist and be perceived by the end-user. This
perception is almost always false, but it brings us the consoling
delusion that we can make rational and cost-effective choices.
Students, however, are neither light-bulbs to be switched on nor wine
bottles to be filled. However inert some may sometimes seem, they are,
without exception, sentient individuals with a will of their own. Like
all other humans their 'worth' is intrinsic. To see and treat them as
merely job-market fodder or an economic resource is arrogant and
grotesquely dehumanising. Also educationally counter-productive.
The more varied and multi-functional the nature of their educational
experiences, the more polyvalent and unforeseeable the purposes it
serves become, the less sense it makes to try to impose upon them
uniformity of experience or attainment."
[The editor's private life sometimes showed through.]
"*** DAY 3 *** Described by younger daughter as a 'pathetic scruff-bag',
then asked for a loan. Invited by older daughter to shut up, grow up
and get out of her life. This must be what's meant by 'child abuse'.
Assured by wife should be glad they are so perceptive. Normal sort
of day really.
*** DAY 4 *** Only Anna Ford doing the Today programme. Contemplate
suicide. London by train (it took all of Buxtehude, 2 sides of Colette
Renard, The Independent and a hot bacon and tomato roll). Poussin
Exhibition and lecture at the Royal Academy. Sublime. Makes you wish
you lived there and had a season ticket. Still wonder about that piece
in Blackburn, even if Anthony Blunt was dismissive of it. Wonder what
he thought of Blackburn. Excellent lunch in St James's with Anthony
Murphy (French/ Marketing, 1990), now Wine Marketing Manager with
SOPEXA (Food & Wine from France) in Piccadilly. Spoilt: he paid.
[Inkytext 80, May 1995]
[Inkytext 100 (August 1995) contained one example of the professions
of faith that marked our history: an editorial on the much devalued
term 'Excellence']
"Some readers have asked to which religious, political and pedagogic
tendencies this journal belongs. The answer to all three questions is
'Rabelaisian'.
Francois Rabelais, or Alcofribas Nasier as he preferred to be known,
in his anagrammatic way, really really was a Renaissance man. He set
out to graduate in ALL of the degree schemes then on offer, and
actually did so - travelling to attend the best university in the world
for each of them.
His study of Law, Theology and Medicine filled him with a terrible
scorn and mistrust for doctors, lawyers and priests, as well as those
who claimed to teach them. A great pity that he came 400 years too
early to study Accountancy, Marketing or Business Administration.
Rabelais was in sequence a Franciscan, a Benedictine, father of two
children by an unknown widow, Greek translator, educational theorist,
secular medical lecturer and priest of two parishes, but preferred to
devote himself to constructive scatological satire, or dirty jokes as
they are sometimes known. He had lots of friends and lacked only
car-parking skills. (These were in any case fairly superflous at
thetime.)
Alcofribas believed that it is invariably better to make people laugh
than to make them cry, and that doing so may even have some educational
effect. He also believed in honesty, for which reason he was
permanently in trouble with authority.
Above all he was quintessentially French. Some wrongly imagine that
this implies single-minded devotion to food, sex and fashion. In fact
it implies passionate commitment to wit, courtesy and defecation.
Especially the last of these: no nation is more obsessed with its
bowels.
There is something refreshingly positive and life-affirming about
Rabelais' interest in excrement. Not for him a world where, in defiance
both of reason and of arithmetic, everyone and everything is above
average. He knows that the excremental is more real than the
incremental; he accepts and exploits the pungent potency of dung and
offal. Manure lies at the root of all creation. Without it no desert
can blossom as a rose. As for tripe, far better to eat it than to
talk it.
When people are tempted to use the concept of 'excellence' loosely, or
to apply it to themselves, his life and work is a salutary reminder of
what the word really means."
[From Inkytext 100, August 1995]
[Occasionally we had reviews, normally of art exhibitions or books but
once of an ex-student's band]
"The Escape Committee is a 5-man Blackburn combo: lead and bass
guitars, fiddler, percussion and a tambourine shaking vocalist from
Glasgow called Davie. I knew he was a singer because his lips moved and
I could see intense laryngal activity being deployed as his neck and
facial muscles writhed in time to the beat. No other explanation seemed
to fit the facts.
Their music in such a venue is ideal for the profoundly deaf. (NB:
Special Needs please note.) You hear it with your buttocks via the
benches and chairs, which send its insistent throb pulsing through your
skeletal structure. Same wavelength as my sternum and lower rib-cage
which seemed to be vibrating harmonically.
I stayed for a 'set' (series of songs). They played some 'covers'
(songs by other artists) and some 'numbers' of their own. 'Soul Man'
and 'Long Distance Bomber' stuck in my mind because I could almost hear
the titles being repeated every now and again if I watched the singer's
lips at the same time. I think the lead guitar was maybe too loud.
[Inkytext 81, May 1995]
[TO BE CONCLUDED]