Reporter 403, 2 June 1997
Professor Alan Watson
Pro-Vice-Chancellor
I think I have achieved a few things during my period of Pro-Vice-Chancellor but I have failed to convert many to the correct use of M and k (rather than m and K) when describing matters of finance or distance. The Vice-Chancellor has been won over, the Finance Director is nearly converted – but not the Reporter. Page three (19 May) indicates that our new Learning Centre cost only £3m (0.003 pence) and our financial deficit is similarly negligible! There are well-recognised international standards in these matters: please note M=106 and k=103 while m=10-3 and K is a unit of temperature. These matters are important. Proper use would show a small degree of scientific literacy and understanding: just because the Financial Times is similarly muddled is no excuse.
Professor Alison Ravetz
For the Nth year running, as a local resident and member of the University, I pass by the Parkinson steps the day after Bank Holiday to find them littered with cans, fag-ends, greasy papers and burger boxes, and also dozens of young, able-bodied people who are supposedly the cream of their generation. Inside the campus things are, if anything, more disgusting.
Is this likely to change under New Labour?
The rubbish on the Parkinson steps is removed between 7 and 8 am, Monday – Friday. Regrettably the Cleaning budget is reducing in real terms and higher staff costs are not an option. More wastebins are being provided on campus. Cleaning Services would be grateful to everyone for using the bins or disposing of their take-away rubbish at the food outlet it was purchased from!
Vicky Statler
Head of Corporate Services
Dr Colin Hendrie
Department of Psychology
If someone who ran a frozen chicken factory came to me and asked for advice concerning quality assessment based on the lines of TQA (for which many of us have been madly collecting student feedback forms for our courses), I should say “At the end of each stage, ask the chickens how they feel about the quality of the being-turned-into-a-frozen-chicken process.” Have I got this right, or am I getting confused with something from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’?
Dr Alan Bullock
Department of Italian
Mrs Tebb’s letter in Reporter 402 misrepresents my views. Nowhere do I suggest that the University disclose the “considerable personal data” it has on any member of staff, merely that departmental secretaries provide callers with the number of those individuals who do not object to being contacted at home. Those who are not listed in their area directory and who see such calls as “disrupting their private time” are obviously at liberty to remain incommunicado; those of us who feel differently and who are in any case accessible via BT should not have incommunicability thrust upon us. In this context I see Mrs Tebb’s reluctance to distinguish between double-glazing salesmen and colleagues or students as somewhat eccentric in an environment supposedly dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and communication.