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ExamplesLeading article: Our problem is not too many rights, but too few Published: 19 May 2006 If we are to believe our most senior politicians, ours is a country shackled by its international commitments on human rights, a nation now incapable of conducting the daily fight against terrorism and organised crime. Afghan hijackers, released foreign offenders, illegal migrants have all fuelled high-level calls for the amendment of the Human Rights Act, or even its repeal. Yet, as a report from the European Parliament shows, the Government is far from being a stickler for international conventions. Three important international agreements guaranteeing basic human rights still have to be implemented by the UK. Worse, the Government's cowardly and short-sighted refusal to take a stand on basic rights is undermining both its position abroad and the fight against organised crime at home.
Leader Friday May 19, 2006 As spring turns to summer generations of students have had to fight their way through heavy revision schedules, hay fever and exam room nerves but this year a new and unfair uncertainty is doubling the tension. A standoff over pay between university lecturers and employers has led to strike action that is bringing the process of setting and marking university exams to a halt. The result is that up to 300,000 final-year students will get their degrees late this year, or in some cases not at all, throwing their lives into confusion at a time already packed with anxieties and challenges. Students are the unhappy victims of a dispute that is not of their making and which they can do nothing to resolve. Their needs are being ignored by academic unions and university employers in an incompetent struggle which should have been brought to a halt months ago. The case for a big increase in academic salaries is unanswerable, accepted by everyone involved from the National Union of Students to vice-chancellors and the new education secretary, Alan Johnson. In an earlier role, as higher education minister, he used the need to fund salary increases as a leading justification for the introduction of student fees. So did the prime minister, who twisted the arms of doubting Labour MPs in 2004 with a plea for better academic pay, warning that British education and research would suffer without extra money. But now the fees are about to come into effect, lecturers are being offered a national pay deal which only just outstrips inflation. The government's promise to use the new income to increase salaries turns out to have been nothing more than a persuasive line to win a tricky vote in the Commons. Unloved and overlooked by all governments, academics have seen their pay slide in comparison with other professions. Between 1981 and 2001, non-manual average earnings rose by 57.6% above inflation. Over the same period, lecturers' pay increased by at most by 7.1%, and in some cases less than that. University vice-chancellors have had fat increases in recent years; their staff have not. The current pay offer, of 12.6% over three years, only just begins to make up the difference. It is not hard to see why lecturers are unhappy. But it is very hard indeed to accept the consequences of their action, which has seen members of the AUT (in older universities) and the Natfhe (in others) refuse to mark exams and in the AUT's case set them, while continuing (unlike most other strikers) to draw their full salaries. Yet this action is only a response to the dismissive attitude of university employers. The dispute began eight months ago, but employers have done little to settle it. They gambled on lecturers giving in before the exam season began and having lost that gamble, appear adrift and confused. At a select committee this week employers were still describing the strike as "patchy" and hoping it would fold when in fact it is paralysing campuses all over the country. Not all lecturers are union members, but enough are to disrupt exams, set by committee and marked across departments. Only at universities with low union memberships, such as Oxford, are things fairly normal. Today vice-chancellors meet in a belated attempt to find a solution, which can only involve more money, although not as much as the unions would like. They must demand that top-up fees are used for salaries as promised. In return, the unions involved must agree to allow exams to take place and prepare to mark them quickly. Lecturers have lost out in an age which still sees them as under-worked, scatty dons indulged with long holidays, when modern university life is nothing like that and other public sector workers such as teachers and doctors have done well. They deserve to be properly paid. But in return they must help bring to an end a wilful strike which threatens the futures of the people they are being paid to teach.
CommentsThese notes are aimed at AQA A Level English Language students for Units 5 and 6. Originally written by Chan89 on TSR Forums. |
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