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subtext issue 124 13 November 2014 ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** Every fortnight during term time. All editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk Back issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext The editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. subtext does not publish material that is submitted anonymously, but is willing to consider without obligation requests for publication with the name withheld. For tips to prevent subtext from getting swept up into your 'junk email folder', see: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/dejunk/. CONTENTS: editorials - pensions dispute; assembly for change; the marking boycott; last QAA institutional audit?; philosophy corner; brief contribution from a reader; senate report; buses; not until we are lost - ockham’s razor; virtuoso piano concert; subtext web site; competition corner; letters ***************************************************** EDITORIAL: PENSIONS DISPUTE A disturbing feature of the current dispute is the confrontational language used by both sides in their communications with university staff. It may be said in UCU's favour that they are only responding to the tone set by management. That may be so but 'they-started-it-first' justifications hardly constitute reasoned argument. However, it has to be recognised that the tone and language of recent messages from the HR Director, presumably approved by the VC, have caused widespread alarm, even among those who do not support the assessment boycott. When you are regularly working 60 and 70 hour weeks, giving up your weekends, never taking your full holiday entitlement, and then being told - in that pompous and menacing phrase - that "the university will not tolerate partial performance" you might be forgiven for feeling a lessening of enthusiasm for the job. You may even think that this time you will respond to that staff survey that has just popped into your inbox. The feeling on this issue was palpable at last week's Senate meeting (see Senate Report below). We hope that the Vice-Chancellor has taken on board the comments made by HoDs and others. This university - as do others - depends on the dedication, hard work and, above all, the goodwill of the people who work here. That is what will 'deliver' on the University Strategy, the People Strategy and all the other strategies. That is what enables a team of people to work together for 25 years to put a tiny probe on body travelling at over 18 kilometres per second and over 500 million kilometres from Earth. This is what sustains the academy. ***************************************************** ASSEMBLY FOR CHANGE Those who bemoan the fact that students are not as politically engaged as they used to be should take note of a recent event which proves the contrary. Last weekend saw the inaugural `Assembly for Change' conference, the first of its kind here at Lancaster and organised entirely by Joe O'Neill of the SU. The George Fox complex was fortunate enough to welcome such eminent figures as Owen Jones, Peter Tatchell, and Natalie Bennett, who delivered keynote speeches to a packed out lecture theatre. In between, sessions from organisations such as UpRising, Alt Gen, Unison and the Participatory Budgeting Network took place. The event was universally praised as being Exactly The Sort Of Thing We Should Be Doing, and for stepping above standard student conferences in the sheer diversity of concepts, skills and speakers being brought forward. It also proved to be a healthy antitode to the usual crowd we get peddling their wares at our careers fairs and other similar events. The University ought to capitalise on the success of this event, and see the reputational potential that such an event could have for the institution. Bravo - let's have some more of this. ********************************* THE MARKING BOYCOTT The university management's response to the UCU marking boycott has been, to put it mildly, somewhat confused. Having stated on the eve of the action that they would first assess its impact on the students before deciding how to respond, they then decided, after one day of the action, that the appropriate response would be to dock 100% of the pay of those engaged in the boycott, but to immediately give back 75% of this as an ex-gratia payment. No doubt the impact assessment was thorough and methodologically sound, the figure of a 25% 'real' deduction based on a rigorous analysis of the work patterns of all academic staff likely to be involved in the dispute, and that the non-superannuability of the returned 75% is part of a carefully-laid plan to put pressure on USS. Or it might have been because other institutions have done this and Lancaster's management couldn't think of anything else. At least they held back from imposing the full 100% deduction, as other universities (13, it was reported at the Lancaster UCU branch meeting yesterday) have done. One of these was our former suitor Liverpool. The action of Liverpool's UCU branch was to invoke the union's national policy of strike action in response to 'punitive' deductions. This, we understand, was voted for unanimously by the biggest branch meeting that Liverpool UCU has had in years. That same national policy also envisages national strike action to support branches in this position and a motion passed unanimously at Lancaster UCU's meeting states the branch's readiness to support such a call. One can imagine the gratitude of Vice-Chancellors up and down the country for this farewell gift from departing Liverpool VC Howard Newby, especially those who have taken the wise decision not to rush into wage deductions. What is particularly perplexing in Lancaster's case is that it has long been rumoured that our own VC actually has some sympathy with UCU's case on the pensions issue, a rumour given some substance by his statement to Senate last week. It is now being said that he and some other like-minded VCs are seeking to put together an alternative to UUK's pension proposals that is more likely to gain UCU's support. Why, then, antagonise staff (see Editorial above) by going ahead with arbitrary wage deductions and allowing such inflammatory messages to be sent out on his behalf? It doesn't do his or the university's reputation any good to be categorised as a 'Taff Vale employer' by threatening individuals with legal action if the university suffers financial loss resulting from the boycott. ************************************************* LAST QAA INSTITUTIONAL AUDIT? This week staff received with a sigh of resignation the news that our institutional audit visit by QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) will take place a year from now in the first week in November 2015. Such visits no longer generate the levels of anxiety that they might once have done. We're old hands at this game, but Lancaster never leaves anything to chance and we have a new post - Director of Quality Assurance and Enhancement - whose purpose is to steer the university successfully through the forthcoming ordeal. Like Monty Python's Yorkshiremen, grizzled veterans of the early QAA subject reviews will say that we've got it easy these days. They will have in mind the huge amount of staff time and acres of paperwork required in order to be told that yes, you are teaching what you say you're teaching, and, actually, doing it quite well. Audits now are much more sophisticated affairs (or so they say). It would therefore be perfectly understandable if staff were to give three hearty cheers on hearing the recent announcement that HEFCE was "to explore fresh approaches to quality assessment in a fast-evolving and increasingly diverse higher education environment" and that it would be "listening carefully to the sector, National Union of Students, Government and other stakeholders" on what should replace QAA. No one would deny that the HE sector is indeed increasingly diverse as a result of the Coalition policy of 'freeing up' the market to allow just about anyone to offer degrees. No doubt this will bring on board some excellent new providers but, as experiences with academies and free schools show, some very dodgy outfits as well. So the "new approaches" will need to be able to cover everything from Oxbridge to Carphone Warehouse. Following consultation, the resulting new specification will be put out to tender with the new quality regime to become fully operational by 2017 (by coincidence, the year when HEFCE funding for the Higher Education Academy ceases). The last year of the old-style institutional audits will be 2015/2016 and Lancaster's will be in that final batch. So what can we look forward to in the future? The response of the Russell Group to the HEFCE announcement was to say, in effect, that as its members were by definition already quality institutions they didn't need any further regulation. So that's them sorted. For Lancaster, with our collective nose pressed against the Russell Group plate glass, things may not be so clear cut. The HEFCE statement and the follow-up letter to VCs refers to "quality assessment", not "quality assurance". So let's not cheer too loudly when we finally see the back of QAA. The next visit might be from OFSTED. ************************************************* PHILOSOPHY CORNER We don’t have the document in front of us (following the example of MPs’ expenses claims, we destroy anything that isn’t absolutely up to date. After all, what possible reason would one have for comparing what people said a while ago and what they say now?) but we’re pretty sure that in one of the VC’s very early round-robin letters he talked about an imminent strike, and, while he wasn’t exactly happy about the idea, he went to some lengths to emphasise that staff were within the law and their rights when taking strike action. Which is, of course, true, but it was encouraging that he went to the trouble of saying it, and it was a highly encouraging and refreshing change of approach after the blunt instrument approach that characterised the later Wellings years. Reading the University’s latest communication about possible strike action, one might have wondered if someone had changed the rules since then without telling the rest of us. The University has clearly moved from a conciliatory position to one of playing hardball. In fairness to the VC, the hardball letters aren’t coming from him personally, but the new Director of HR is presumably fronting an approach sanctioned by the Powers That Be. Depressing. At least the VC can’t be accused of being Machiavellian – Machiavelli suggested that the ruler should ‘determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.’ In other words, come in all guns blazing on day one and then, once you’ve done the unpopular stuff, you slacken off and rely on people’s ability to forget the pain over time. What you shouldn’t do is come in and portray yourself as a nice guy, then turn nasty (or be forced to appear nasty by circumstances). We’re sure it’s all much more complicated than such a simple analysis, but it’s always a shame when good intentions get flattened by what is perceived as necessity. ************************************ BRIEF CONTRIBUTION FROM A READER ‘Well, the new logo is out there now, and has been proudly appended to all sorts of buildings. However, just one place seems to have gone completely off message and has retained the old swoosh (large, red, stuck to a wall). “Which part of the University could be so radically out of kilter with our carefully tended corporate image?” I hear you cry. Well, funnily enough, it’s the VC’s meeting room, D floor, University House…..’ ************************************ SENATE REPORT And so began the first Senate of the 14/15 academic year, and the body was greeted with a set of shiny new faces. From the Colleges: former Lonsdale Principal Keith Davidson was replaced by Lonsdale Vice-Principal Keith Davidson, who is acting in an interim arrangement while Lonsdale finds a new Principal. Former Bowland Principal Joe Thornberry was replaced by Bowland Vice-Principal Simon Corless, who is acting in an interim arrangement while Bowland finds a new Principal. Meanwhile, on the student delegation: Ronnie Rowlands has been replaced by Joe Thornberry; former LUSU Vice-President (Campaigns & Communications) Rachel Harvey has been replaced by the new holder of that post, Ronnie Rowlands; and LUSU Vice-President (Education) Joe O'Neill has been replaced by the person elected to succeed him, Joe O'Neill. Elsewhere, PVC (Colleges & Student Experience) Mandy Chetwynd has been replaced by the Provost for Colleges, Student Experience & Library Mandy Chetwynd. Former head of Law Professor Skolgy has been replaced by Professor Gillespie, and in the future we will see Professor Rose step down as FASS Associate Dean, to be replaced by her incoming successor, Professor Skolgy. Other than that, everything felt familiar. As ever, the meeting began with the Vice-Chancellor's update - we've won an award for our wind turbine project, won two awards for research into dementia, been recognised as having produced the best engineering paper of the year, 50th anniversary celebrations are going well, we've gone up a couple of places in some league table or another, unemployment down, tractor production up, etc etc etc. On, then, to an update on our international affairs from PVC Bradley. It's been almost three years since our former Vice Chancellor was photographed beaming and shaking hands with a Chinese Professor, and we still are yet to finalise any arrangements with our much anticipated China campus. Professor Bradley explained the history of negotiations thus far; we found a financial partner in a company called Hongfa Investments. We were later knocked back and a new partner was sought. Somewhere along the line, Lancaster re-opened negotiations with Hongfa Investments and both parties seemed eager to progress, until fairly recently when Hongfa knocked us back for a second time. Over the course of the past three years, we also appear to have found the time to have our proposed financial models knocked back twice. When quizzed as to why by Mr. Thornberry (LUSU), Professor Bradley explained; changes in economic fortunes in the Guangdong province, the impression that the rate of return on the project was too low, and Hongfa deciding that such an initiative was not 'core business.' It was certainly pleasing to know that the setbacks were financial rather than ethical; protests over corporate development in the area and a government publicly being exposed as being committed to academic censorship seems to have been swatted away like the nuisances they are. Mr Thornberry pressed further, asking if the University was actively seeking a new partner in China. Professor Bradley's response was simply that we were 'considering what our options are', and putting thought into 'who we work with, where we work and what we're doing', as well as indicating that it was time to start thinking about strategy. Better late than never. As for our other international frolics; we've negotiated a one year contract extension with GD Goenka, Comsats is 'uncertain' but up for renewal in 2015, Ghana has welcomed its first cohort of undergraduate students and opened new premises, and at Sunway we will be increasing the portfolio of programmes and opening a new building to accommodate 8000 students. Professor Lewis (Psychology) recounted his puzzlement upon discovering that students in Ghana were apparently enrolling to study psychology - something he was unaware of. 'Better communications' were promised. All in all, a thoroughly sketchy report which accentuated the positives, while more pressing questions were obfuscated with promises of 'working it out' and making sure we 'know what we're doing' - all very reassuring. Two weeks ago, subtext mused over rumours that the Vice-Chancellor was sympathetic to the current pensions plight of the UCU. The discussion that ensued on Senate proved to be most enlightening. The Vice-Chancellor began, in an effort to cut through all of the 'numbers we've seen floating around', by offering a slow, deliberate and precise explanation of the situation as it currently stands - the USS pension scheme is currently in a deficit of £10.6 billion (he later stated that the deficit stood at £10.7 billion. Honest mistake, or is the situation really that severe?). He would like to see an outcome from the industrial action that allows the University to function and offers an attractive pension scheme for staff at Lancaster, in order to ensure that the best possible people are welcomed through our doors. It didn't take long, however, for Professor Smith to begin doling out denunciations of the UCU. Firstly, he asked affected parties to consider who their fight is with - according to him, it certainly isn't with students; he decried the decision to put students 'in the firing line' by undertaking a marking boycott, and also questioned the value in 'ramping up the rhetoric' when negotiations are still open. The target of anger, according to the VC, should surely be towards the USS trustee board and the chair of the negotiating panel. The accusations of a 'rash response' didn't go unnoticed for hypocrisy by other members of the Senate. Dr. Ashwin (Educational Research) entered into the discussion to point out that, while the senior management of the university doesn't control pension proposals, it does control communications with striking staff members. Namely, it was the choice of senior management to send out emails threatening to dock pay and persecute boycotting staff; a choice described by Dr. Ashwin as 'incredibly polarising' and responsible for a loss of good will towards management. He added that the poor pension deal being offered has led academics nearing the end of the career to contemplate early retirement - essentially, to desert the sinking ship to protect their financial future; a worrying prospect. Professor Bushell (English Lit) supported these sentiments, and added quite rightly that despite the VC's desire for affected staff to pick the right targets, the actions of University House painted management as the target of ire for docking pay in spite of the continued teaching undertaken by staff. Interestingly, however, Professor Smith didn't make any effort to defend the tone of the communications; rather, he shifted the blame onto UCU, whose rash rhetoric apparently 'forced' the University into some rash rhetoric of their own. What a way to lead by example. This particular senate proved the folly in putting the main event at the very bottom of the bill - the rest of the meeting was a largely comatose affair, with many attendees (including your reporter) drifting in and out of consciousness and trying to work out if anything important was happening. Perhaps the only other discussion of note was conspicuous by its absence - the Senate was invited to note the ongoing College Review, and it was disappointing to find that nobody had the energy to take a final stand in constructing a review panel consisting of more College representation. Oh, and one more thing - there was a restricted item regarding honorary degrees that subtext is not allowed to report on; your reporter shall simply leave you with the possibility that the University may or may not be awarding an honorary degree in a subject that we soon will no longer be teaching to undergraduates... ************************************ BUSES Your travel correspondent continues to be entertained and gently fascinated by his daily trip to and from the campus. Members of the Collective are being indulgent but subtext subscribers might have a different view and would rather watch rain drops race down a bus window instead of reading this particular commentary – please let us know. Back in the day buses carried people to work between 6 and 9 and brought folk home between 4 and 6, the school run was a busy affair and revellers would use the bus in the early evening and late at night. Very few people used the bus during the day. Passengers rarely brought anything with them – there was little space on the bus to put stuff anyway. No earphones, laptops, tablets or mobiles (they had not been invented) but curiously people rarely read a book on the bus. Occasionally someone would have a newspaper, and buses (other than school buses and the last bus at night) were very quiet places. Contrast that with the hubbub witnessed on the bus going home from the University around 5/6 o’clock in the evening. People chatting in a multitude of languages, accents and dialects – it can get quite squashed and time does tend to stand still as you go past Booths and hit the traffic, but it does feel quite life-affirming to be in such an international little box trundling along the A6. What has not really changed is the etiquette of where to sit. No one sits next to another person if a seat is available on another double seat. People head upstairs, find that it is full and come back down again with the most perplexed look – ‘you would not believe what I have just seen’ etched across their faces. No one ever says to those venturing upstairs ‘it’s full up there’. Eventually a number of passengers do not come back down – one assumes they are practising the art of standing up on a surfboard after fourteen pints of stout – apologies to Christy Moore. ******************************************** NOT UNTIL WE ARE LOST: OCKHAM’S RAZOR Ockham’s Razor is both a philosophical concept and a stunning aerial theatre group – and the two are linked by more than just a name. William of Ockham, a 14th-century logician, postulated that if there are two solutions to a problem, the simpler one is likely to be the better. Unnecessary accretions are shaved away. The group Ockham’s Razor works on the same simple approach. On both visits, the performance by Ockham’s Razor has been accompanied by a choral work with harp written for them by Graham Fitkin – ‘Not Until We Are Lost...’, with words in both English and Latin. The English text comes from Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, which charts Thoreau’s two years spent living the simple life in New England woods on Walden Pond. The group visited Lancaster two years ago, when they gave a performance in the Nuffield Theatre, which was arresting in that darkened performance space. Their performances this month were given first on 5 November in the tall foyer of the LICA Building, and then on 7 November in the open courtyard of Lancaster Castle, which allowed the sound of the accompanying choir to drift upwards into the sky. Ockham’s Razor recruits its choirs from local groups wherever it presents a performance, and provides intensive training and rehearsals for these enterprising volunteers. The principle of cutting away unnecessary detail came into play from the beginning of the performance on Wednesday evening, when the audience gathering outside the entrance to the LICA Building, waiting for admission, didn’t realise that the choir was mingled among them until the singing started and accompanied them all into the building’s foyer. Inside, the only prop was the tall metal framework where the performance was to take place, with a lone woman sitting hunched on a horizontal bar perhaps three metres above the floor, looking rather forlorn - lost? The choir moved out of the audience to stand behind the structure and the audience disposed themselves, sitting or standing, wherever they felt they could best see what was happening. So far, so simple. Two men then swung themselves onto the framework, the atmosphere began to seem threatening, and the woman’s expression and taut body language showed that she was alarmed, anxious, nervous. The men didn’t act threateningly, but as they moved towards the woman, apprehensions of the potential for violence were raised in the audience’s minds – and undoubtedly in the mind of the woman’s character as she shifted uncomfortably away. These assumptions were increasingly challenged as the piece developed. It became clear that the men were inviting the woman to relax and take pleasure in the body’s ability to play, joining in with them in the freedom of the space around. Ultimately the woman was smiling with delight, as, no longer hunched over herself, she swung together with the men across the heights of the framework into the conclusion of the performance, fulfilling in action the words the choir were singing – ‘Not until we are lost, do we start to find ourselves’. The skill and dexterity of the performers are masked by the simplicity of the action and the music and the naturalistic nature of the performance, but are nonetheless highly impressive. Such is the unfettered nature of the work that it can be played out in many guises and venues, allowing for numerous interpretations of the title words. This became apparent on Friday evening when, as one of the Light up Lancaster events, Ockham’s Razor took another part of its performance to the courtyard of Lancaster Castle. Here one of the performers (the man) was confined throughout in a tall transparent box, whilst the other (the woman) was outside and very skilfully able to climb a tall vertical pole - thus the two of them could remain on a par, but without being able to communicate, until the very end of the piece when they reached the top together and touched. In the sombre Castle setting, with its grim history, their performance might almost have been seen as levitation depending on magic and witchcraft. This was an unusual and fascinating event. The group was due to give two performances in the Castle courtyard, but unfortunately the weather intervened, making it unsafe for the performers. Not to be thwarted, the choir gave a flash-mob version in the Castle cafe. Ockham’s Razor performs throughout the country and promises to come again to Lancaster – don’t miss them when next you have the chance to see them. ************************************* THE BANDS THAT PLAYED LANCASTER – A CALL TO ARMS In doing his usual nightly tour of the College bars just the other night, a member of our collective chanced to run into Paul Tomlinson. subtext readers may know him from Folio, the printing house. They may not know that he is currently undertaking research on a book detailing the entire history of the bands that played the Great Hall. He has in his possession quite an extensive list of performers and supporting bands, but he's looking to fill in some of the remaining gaps. If any long-standing members of the campus community have recollections of who played and when (particularly supporting bands), then do not hesitate to get in touch at p.tomlinson@lancaster.ac.uk ************************************* VIRTUOSO PIANO CONCERT The concert in the Great Hall on Thursday 6 November was billed as a piano duet, but one of the two pianists injured his hand shortly before the day and was unable to perform. Fortunately, his partner, the young Korean Victor Lim, was able to play solo pieces in one half of the concert, and another young pianist, the Russian Alexander Panfilov, took over as soloist for the second half. The revised programme for the concert was almost entirely of twentieth-century piano masterpieces, beginning with the B minor piano sonata by Alban Berg. Composed while Berg was studying with Schönberg, this sonata was intended to be a three-movement work, but having written the first movement, Berg found that for a long time no ideas came to him. Schönberg advised him ‘in that case, you have said everything there is to be said’, and the sonata has remained a single movement. Published in 1908, it came at the point where tonal composition was being pushed to its absolute chromatic limits - Schönberg’s remarkable Verklärte Nacht, also a single continuous piece, had been composed only nine years earlier - and yet, although it is so chromatic, Berg’s sonata is clearly centred on the key of B minor. The first half ended with the piano sonata by Bartok, composed in 1926 in Bartok’s ‘barbaric’ period. For this piece Lim’s percussive style of playing was exactly right, and this was a fine performance. The second half of the concert was entirely of French music, by Debussy and Ravel. Alexander Panfilov began with Debussy’s Estampes(Prints), which is in three movements: Pagodes, La Soirée dans Grenade, and Jardins sous la Pluie. Despite the implication of these titles, Debussy was emphatic that his music should not be regarded as impressionistic. Nonetheless, in composing this suite he had been influenced by the music of Asia and its gamelan bands, by the guitars and habaneras of Spain, and by the sound of a heavy rainstorm in Normandy, and he conveys the feelings of these places very effectively. If Estampes is a virtuoso piece, Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit is even more so, being regarded as one of the most technically-difficult works in the piano repertoire. Again it is in three movements, each of them inspired by a prose poem by Aloysius Bertrand. The first portrays Ondine, a water-nymph who skims over the water singing seductively in an attempt to attract mortal men to her magical kingdom. The second section, Le Gibet, eerily depicts a corpse hanging from a gibbet, swinging in the wind as a bell tolls in the distance. Scarbo, the subject of the final movement, is a malevolent dwarf who appears in the middle of the night to spread fear and disorder. Alexander Panfilov has evidently mastered the technical demands of all of these works, so that he was able to bring out the wildness of the scenes depicted by Ravel’s music very effectively, without apparent exertion and with remarkable delicacy. ***************************** subtext WEB SITE Our mast-head states that ‘back issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext’, but this is only partly true. Recent back issues have not yet been uploaded to the web site, and the site is not up to date. The editorial collective is uncomfortably aware of this and plans to fix it - when one of us has time to do it. If any of our readers would like to spend an hour doing this for us, please do let us know via the editorial-correspondence email address at the top. It would be very much appreciated. ***************************** COMPETITION CORNER Last week's Senate saw the presentation of a well-argued and thought-provoking paper on University research centres by our recent guest from Boston, Professor Andrei Ruckstein. One feature of the paper which caught subtext's eye was his frequent use of the term ‘Actionable Suggestions’ as a sub-heading where you or I would use the more pedestrian ‘options’ or ‘proposals’. subtext believes that Professor Ruckstein's idiom deserves wider currency. However, we have been informed by colleagues in the Law School that these words, in this juxtaposition, have an entirely different meaning in the UK, but for the life of us we cannot work out what this might be. Clearly, this is one of those arcane questions so beloved by m'learned friends. So, subtext is proud to announce a new competition for our many readers across the globe: Actionable Suggestion of the Week. The format is simple. The subtext supercomputer will randomly generate a topic and all you, the reader, have to do is to give us your Actionable Suggestion related to that topic. The reader with the best entry, as judged by our panel of university celebrities, will be awarded a two-week unpaid internship in the subtext warehouse, an experience that will certainly make your CV stand out from the crowd. All you have to do now is fill in the attached proforma. This week's topic: "The Staff Survey" My Actionable Suggestion is: ................................ subtext's policy is not to tolerate partial performance from any reader. Please note that if you do not complete this in full then 100% of your next edition of subtext will be withheld. However, as a mark of our goodwill, 75% will be immediately restored. ************************************* LETTERS Dear subtext, Here is a handy summary guide to the pensions dispute, including myth busting and advice for how students and staff can work in solidarity. Thought it may be of use sharing around (assuming dispute had not been resolved by time next subtext appears.) Toby Atkinson ************************************ With further apologies...
Bob Sapey ************************************ Dear Subtext, Yes, indeed, as you report, Birmingham has a wondrous new public library, secret garden and all, rightly winning accolades for its inventive architecture. Just a pity that public funding doesn't leave a lot for, well, new books. Michael Heale Emeritus Professor of American History ************************************* The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical order) of: George Green, James Groves, Ian Paylor, Ronnie Rowlands, Joe Thornberry, Johnny Unger and Martin Widden.
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