pamela wrote:
On 19:04 22 Feb 2018, Roger Hayter wrote:
Roger Hayter wrote:
pamela wrote:
On 12:54 22 Feb 2018, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Andrew
wrote:
On 19/02/2018 18:09, Roger Hayter wrote:
Perhaps they're just worth more in pension than you are?
Or, more likely, you are just cowed by the bosses into
accepting considerably less than you deserve in pension.
Why should others copy you because you don't insist on what
you are worth?
-- Roger Hayter
Nobody 'deserves' anything that they have not made any effort
towards.
Public service pensions and closed-shop jobs-for-the-boys are
classic examples.
For years the unions bullied BSC into pay rises that just
exponentially increased the pension black hole. No-one
considered this back in the black years of the 1970's when
12 million person-days were lost to strikes. The actuaries
still thought that men would retire at 65 and be mostly dead
by 73 when now the figure is far higher. Someone has to pay
for all those extra years. Free lunches don't exist.
And everything I hear about pensions (such as this bull****
strike by academics over pensions) further confirms my view
that *all* pensions should be *personal* and that only
pension companies should legally be able to manage them.
If the academics want index-linked pensions (worth £10,000 a
year) and there's no more money then let's end security of
tenure and sack as many as needed to provide pensions for those
who remain.
Of course, harder work and longer hours will be required from
the rmeaining staff to provide the same level of service.
Those were the days: https://imgur.com/a/NgHeA
The idea of security of tenure for academics was to ensure that
people capable of thinking were in a position to develop new
ideas, about society, literature, science and politics. This is
essential to prevent totalitarianism, but also to prevent the
ossification of society and to allow science to develop without
stultification (or more likely the rapid overtaking of our
science by universities in the far east). You may be jealous
that academics are clever than you, but we do need them. And we
need them to be able to express new ideas without being sacked by
jealous middle managers, or hounded out by Mary Whitehouse type
ladies with hats on management committees.
P.S. a beautiful case in point occurred recently. Some years ago
the University of Exeter appointed (using a grant from Prince
Charles' foundation) a professor of alternative medicine. There
was really only one credible candidate, a European (possibly
Austrian) who had done considerable postgraduate research
assessing and tabulating the scientific evidence for alternative
medicine. He started his career with a strong desire to refine
and promote effective alternative medicine. He moved to the West
Country and has since devoted his life to his career and become a
valued member of the local population. However, once he used the
opportunity to develop valid research into alternative medicine he
found that every single study he did, and every single
meta-analysis using other scientifically valid studies (of the few
that have been done in the world) demonstrated that alternative
medicines generally, or at least the various ones he has studied,
simply did not work. Not more than placebo, anyway. The result
recently was that Prince Charles got him sacked, by threatening
the University with loss of patronage if it failed to do this.
Not for being a poor academic (he is probably still the
acknowledged world expert on the *science* of alternative
medicine), but for reaching the "wrong" conclusions as far as the
Prince is concerned.
Prof Ernst didn't lose his tenure but lost funding after falling out
with his patron, Prince Charles. He was not sacked.
If Ernst had found other sources of funds to pay for his department
then they would still be working.
There's nothing remarkable in this.
Firstly, the University should never have accepted funding for a chair
on the basis that the lay donor could interfere in the academic
programme. This is *not* the same as funding a particular research
study, and once anti-scientiific cranks can choose medical academics at
respectable universities we are long way down the banana republic road.
Secondly, the good professor says it was made plain that his life would
be made a misery and, topically, his pension impaired if he insisted on
staying. And that this behaviour had been forced on the University by a
"major donor".
This sort of thing, on a more minor scale, will happen everywhere
there is no security of tenure for people with original ideas, or
who support unpopular causes.
--
Roger Hayter