Should lecturers be forced to ‘bin dive’ for food?

The Guardian reports on zero-hours contracts make for compelling and disturbing reading. These contracts are an abuse of working people leaving them with highly fluctuating and uncertain income and passing all risk of low income to the employee instead of it being borne by the employer.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jul/30/buckingham-palace-zero-hours-contracts

However, the Guardian has missed one area where such contracts are becoming ever more common, higher education. UCU, the lecturers’ union, estimates that over 49.5% of higher education lecturers are on fixed term contracts. No figures are available as to which of these are hourly paid and which are fractional, but all of these lecturers face uncertainty of employment.

http://www.ucu.org.uk/3539

Admittedly, not all hourly paid contracts are quite as bad as the zero-hours contracts cited by the Guardian. Some universities actually include holiday pay. However sickness pay does not exist. If you are sick you are expected to make up the session. if you don’t then you don’t get paid. The problem of casualisation of HE staff is so great the UCU is running a campaign to ‘Stamp Out’ casual contracts in the sector.

http://www.ucu.org.uk/stampout

Lecturers may know what their hours are from week to week, but they do not know what hours of teaching they will be offered from one academic year to the next or, in some cases, from one semester to the next, i.e. in January their teaching could disappear until the following October, or they could have no work until the following January. In addition there is generally no teaching, and therefore no pay, over the summer. Depending on the university in question, this can vary from two months without pay to five months without pay. Add to that no pay over the Christmas and Easter breaks in many cases and many part time lecturers are struggling to make ends meet. Times Higher Education found part time lecturers ‘bin diving’ for food.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/academics-bin-diving-caused-by-zero-hours-contracts/2004381.article

Is this the way we should be treating highly qualified, highly skilled people?

Is this the farm of the future?

A project in Salford is leading the way forward in growing organic food in what was a derelict warehouse and adjacent waste land. The Biospheric Project describes itself as ‘part farm, part laboratory and part research centre’ and is run by a PhD student.

http://www.mif.co.uk/event/the-biospheric-project

Interestingly, the Biosphere project is part of Manchester International Festival; an arts festival. The biosphere includes a forest garden, vermiponics system (lots of worms to help the plants grow) , mushroom systems, hydroponic system, aquaponics systems (using fish waste as plant nutrients) and the roof garden containing intense polytunnel growing system within outdoor garden and 3 store indoor farm. - See more at: http://biosphericproject.com/content/first-weekend-biospheric-project

All the systems are integrated as far as possible, for example the aquaponics provides nitrogen to fertilise the roof garden.  And the community has been involved in creating and running the project. A shop has been opened to sell their fresh produce to locals in what is a deprived area.

NB Aquaponics – system where fish waste is used to fertilise plants

Vermiponics - cross between hydroponics and aquaponics but with lots of worms

See http://www.redwormcomposting.com/gardening/vermiponics/

Are we making too much fuss about data intrusion by the Government?

‘The innocent have nothing to fear’. How often have I heard that response at public meetings when the state is criticised for over-comprehensive surveillance? A journalist has now described that as ‘the police state defence’.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/uk-response-to-nsa-story-back-off-shut-up

Just imagine the following scenarios:

Your cousin is a member of an extremist nationalist group. Because of your relationship with him, the security services put you under total surveillance as a suspected sympathiser.

You go on a blind date arranged via an internet dating site. The person you meet is a spy for an unfriendly country. You are now suspected of being a spy.

You download a copy an Al Qaeda training manual  for a friend who is a post graduate student studying the literature of terrorist groups. You lose your job and cannot find work in any other university

You are employed by a university and were charged with terrorism in the past but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. This is leaked by the security services and becomes public knowledge. You are sacked from your job

Some of these examples are real. The innocent do have reason to fear if the state is prepared to misuse this information. 

Nobody in Germany thought too much of having their religion identified on their identity card - until the state started rounding up Jews. Nobody worried too much at being identified as a member of the Communist Party – until the state started rounding up Communists, gays and gipsies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/18/nsa-surveillance-germany-could-teach-us?INTCMP=SRCH

See also

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8601069-First_They_Came_For_The_Communists-by-Martin_Niemoller

So please don’t claim that it doesn’t matter that we have the highest density of CCTV cameras in Europe, that we are using meta data from intrusive US surveillance, that our own security services can bug and film at will because ministers won’t stand up to them. It did matter in Germany in the 1930s, it matters in the UK now.

Should the Green Party bank with Co-op Bank?

Various component parts of the Green Party, and individual members, have tended to gravitate towards Triodos Bank or the Co-op Bank as THE ethical alternatives. But are they right?

A recent report by Ethical Consumer does not give the Co-op bank a good review on ethical issues. Their table of ethical current accounts puts Coventry, Cumberland and Leeds Building Societies joint top for ethical current accounts. The Coop Bank only comes 12^th in that list easily overtaken by Nationwide, the last national High Street mutual, at 6^th place.

Ethical Consumer still rates Co-op Bank as a ‘best buy’ on the grounds that is policy statement on ethics is far and away the best in the sector for clarity and ambition. Its low overall score is explained by its ‘being part of the Co-operative Group which – as a supermarket – is involved in animal farming and other activities which its banking competitors are not.’

However, if the supermarket aspect were removed, Ethical Consumer admits that the Co-op Bank’s score would still be only 13: below the top three and only just above Nationwide’s 12.5 score.

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/money/bankingcurrentaccounts.aspx

Moving to savings accounts Tonbridge based Charity Bank and the Ecology Building Society are joint first with Triodos close behind them. The Co-op Bank in a very poor 28^th place whilst Nationwide is in joint 16^th place in the rankings.

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/money/banksavingsaccounts.aspx

Perhaps Greens need to ask themselves if the Coop Bank still deserves their support.

Can we afford energy efficeincy and renewable energy?

How much does increasing renewable energy cost on our household energy bills? A government report in March of this year has analysed how much we pay for what in our energy bills. Guess what, wholesale energy costs vastly outweigh the costs of energy and climate change policies. 55% of your gas bill covers wholesale gas costs and only 5% is allocated to energy and climate change policies.

When it comes to electricity 37% of your bill covers the price of wholesale electricity and 14% covers energy and climate change policies.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/172923/130326_-_Price_and_Bill_Impacts_Report_Final.pdf

Energy and climate change polices includes a raft of measures ECO – energy company obligation e.g. a requirement on energy companies to ‘support households in improving the energy efficiency of their homes’ mainly concentrating on helping the vulnerable and those on lower incomes to heat their homes affordably and helping households living in harder and more expensive to improve homes e.g. those with hard to treat cavity wall insulation and solid wall insulation.

In addition, the polices will reduce energy prices in the future. The average gas bill will be cut by 13% by 2030. The average electricity bill will initially reduce by 11% by 2020 but is then predicted to rise by 10% up to 2030. Overall the impact of these polices on average energy bills overall is a 3% reduction by 2030.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/172923/130326_-_Price_and_Bill_Impacts_Report_Final.pdf

To put this in context, we currently have the lowest gas prices in the EU 15 (this excludes Central and Eastern Europe.) We also have the 3^rd or 4^th lowest electricity prices. And we spend less on energy and climate change polices than almost any other EU15 country, 3^rd lowest. http://www.energypriceindex.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HEPI_Press_Release_January20131.pd

So don’t let the climate change deniers win – energy efficiency and renewable energy are worth the price – and the price is not as high as they would have you believe.