Yes, we again need parliamentary reform. We need legal reform. Too much is rigged to maintain the status of the super elites. Perhaps not a surprise that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and we seem to be in an era where Victor Frankenstein’s descendants are at work on world changing projects whose outcomes we do not know and may be unable to control.
I quite like the system we have when compared to the US , I have just watched Adam Schiff Democrat Senator with his 'Top 10 Trump money making deals ' https://youtu.be/000yxkGXSVM?si=oBNaiLWTrkLxYs5k . Jaw dropping and eye opening
Hope that you find it useful. and it provides context
I have made a similar comment elsewhere to this one that follows - it is human nature that needs overhauling, reforming. All changes to parliament, the legal system etc are useless without fundamental changes in human nature. And that is not going to happen.
In the UK we have a corrupt political system masquerading as a democracy, can anyone tell the difference between the political parties? It just seems to me to be a race to see which one will bring us to our knees the quickest.
Amat, the UK's political system does not stand out, it may even be better than some others worldwide. Nor do political systems themselves stand out, we live in a corrupt world with corrupt people populating it. Once again, human nature is the problem.
A combination of things that many people out there who lack empathy will just think are 'first world issues' - several known but some unknown that I have kept to myself simply because other people I care about around me are going through things of their own that I didn't want to intrude upon.
First: The university have changed the way some of us are 'accounted for' for KPI for academic probation such that *most* of what I have done for the last three years simply doesn't count. All they are taking account of is how many hours did you do F2F teaching and how many of your hours were 'bought out' by external funding/funders. All the hours of research trying to build a relevant base to encourage funders to take a bet on me, the papers I have written, the fifteen (yes 15!) funding applications I have made (and don't get me started on how ridiculously overcomplicated the application process for research grants is now, and the endless self-flagellation BS you have to do to amplify your woke credit to people who are middle aged white people who don't actually read or respond to your application... the most response I have gotten to any in the last three years is something like "We are sorry, your pre-application for EPSRC blah blah funding has not been successful at reaching the first round of consideration. No further information will be provided"... in other words, they looked at my name and rejected me on that basis before even sending my application out for peer review). So... the fact that the university cocked up my class and it didn't get properly advertised in Semester 1 this academic year (Sept 2024-Dec-2024) means that instead of my teaching hours being 44% (I need at least 40% teaching hours) - my teaching hours this academic year are only 22% through no fault of my own. The fact that none of my 15 external funding applications even got to first round peer review, even when they all had the assistance of well experienced profs to make sure they were good to go (both my current prof who has had over £15mil in funding in recent years, and Prof Fenton who amassed close to £10mil during his time at QMUL), means that NONE of the 60% of my time that is allocated for research counts - not even the impact and public engagement I have had IRT Letby or ethics and explainability for AI (I regularly sit on panels about AI in healthcare, the legal industry and public ethics - none of these things are 'paid' as such, I do them in order to increase my academic profile and to get myself out there). So, my academic probation is a big washout and I am being rejected for a permanent position - what our American cousins call tenure.
Second: My contract with the university is up when my academic probation runs out early next month, and while there have been mummblings that I generally aren't too aware of, this means I am very likely out of a job. And nothing else work-wise has been forthcoming. I get turned down for anything - even when I tried applying for IT jobs that were the type of jobs I spent 16 years doing before coming to academia! Most people won't remember but the house I bought on a huge mortgage in order to be nearer to work was heavily damaged by the tenants who the previous landlord had to kick out before they could sell the house to me. While I did a lot of the work to fix it when moving in, I have been spending long hours on my nights and weekends over the last 6 weeks trying largely on my own and without assistance to finish everything that remained because if my temporary contract is not renewed - I will have to sell the house in very short order. If I lose both my employment and house I am very likely going to have to pack up and take my son to the other side of the world and live with my younger brother and his family. That is going to be pretty cramped and humbling for everyone.
Third: While I had thought I'd defeated the majority of my health issues (and the ones I have mentioned before, I had), the stress of the current situation has seen a return in the pre-ventricular contractions (PVCs) or ectopic heart beats I was having 8-10 years ago before I moved back to the UK. I have software I developed on my watch that monitors for the delay in the RST complex that is followed by a very quick and ineffective 'catch-up' beat and it is counting several hundred per day. Given that modern medicine has never actually found a treatable clinical cause (i.e. an electrical issue, electrical block, blocked artery, BP issue or similar) it is purely down to stress acting presumably on the vagal nerve system... except now I have something new
Fourth: I have had constant 24/7 tinnitus in my ears since I was 21. Tinnitus that was so bad it audiology tests found it affected 20% of the upper register in omy L ear, and 30% in my R. However, over the last year it has become increasingly more difficult to hear voices, especially if those voices are either talking softly or if I am in a loud or crowded environment. New tests show I have lost between 30-40% of the lower register hearing in the R ear, meaning sometimes at best it is only hearing the 30-40% 'in the middle' bands. It has become so bad that even to hear my son talk or hear the radio when we are in the car, I had to spend a weekend last month removing all the interior door panels and trims and the carpet in the footwells and installing that sound-deadening sticky bitumen paper insulation stuff to all the metal parts. I spend most of my time at home or in the office with Bose QuietComfort headphones on with them programmed alike hearing aids to hear and amplify the room around me and direct it into my ears (sadly, as my twitter followers will have seen the main pair of my Bose QC headphones died last month and I still haven't been able to replace them. I have had to resport to using an almost ten year old 'halo' pair - the Bose QC 30 - that I have had since new, and that don't have the extra software abilities that help amplify voices that the newer ear buds had. It is ironic that I use noise cancelling headphones to actually amplify the noise they are meant to cancel. Life is grand eh?).
In any event - as I said. My own first world problems that pale in significance to my friend who this week was in a Spanish A&E while on vacation with his wife with a sudden and extremely elevated blood pressure that would potentially have killed some people... and that pale in significance to my other friend who is caring for his formerly lovely, inviting and very artisitc wife who had early onset but now well-advanced frontotemporal lobe dementia exacerbated by the covid shots... or my other <60kg friend who has had some recent flares to her T1DM (the diabeetus, Mr Brimley) and SLE (yes Dr House, it's Lupus). I simply battle on because everywhere I look there are people around me who are doing it much tougher.
Scott, I am not on your level, you are way above me intellectually. I respect your intellect but you have qualities more important than intellect - empathy, compassion, and a fierce hatred of injustice (Lucy Letby). It would appear that your face doesn't fit in academia, is it any wonder? It is my impression that you find it impossible to conform with stupidity and are now suffering the consequences. May good fortune just be around the corner, here is hoping anyway.
As well as being born with cataracts, I developed hearing loss in my childhood (both ears). School was difficult and my working life (clerical) was extremely difficult. In my early forties the sight issue was remedied with implants, around my late fifties the wonders of digital hearing aids resolved to a large extent my hearing problems. I know only too well how difficult it is to function with auditory and visual issues. Tinnitus, I understand is a nightmare. You have achieved a lot despite everything.
Yes, we again need parliamentary reform. We need legal reform. Too much is rigged to maintain the status of the super elites. Perhaps not a surprise that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and we seem to be in an era where Victor Frankenstein’s descendants are at work on world changing projects whose outcomes we do not know and may be unable to control.
I quite like the system we have when compared to the US , I have just watched Adam Schiff Democrat Senator with his 'Top 10 Trump money making deals ' https://youtu.be/000yxkGXSVM?si=oBNaiLWTrkLxYs5k . Jaw dropping and eye opening
Hope that you find it useful. and it provides context
Disclosure is an effective sanitiser.
I have made a similar comment elsewhere to this one that follows - it is human nature that needs overhauling, reforming. All changes to parliament, the legal system etc are useless without fundamental changes in human nature. And that is not going to happen.
In the UK we have a corrupt political system masquerading as a democracy, can anyone tell the difference between the political parties? It just seems to me to be a race to see which one will bring us to our knees the quickest.
Amat, the UK's political system does not stand out, it may even be better than some others worldwide. Nor do political systems themselves stand out, we live in a corrupt world with corrupt people populating it. Once again, human nature is the problem.
I'll commit it to memory! Learning by rote's my hobby.
Being a huge Shelley fan I can happily say one can never have too much of this sort of thing.
Scott, what is this, "and my own rapidly deteriorating circumstances". If I am not prying, can you expand?
A combination of things that many people out there who lack empathy will just think are 'first world issues' - several known but some unknown that I have kept to myself simply because other people I care about around me are going through things of their own that I didn't want to intrude upon.
First: The university have changed the way some of us are 'accounted for' for KPI for academic probation such that *most* of what I have done for the last three years simply doesn't count. All they are taking account of is how many hours did you do F2F teaching and how many of your hours were 'bought out' by external funding/funders. All the hours of research trying to build a relevant base to encourage funders to take a bet on me, the papers I have written, the fifteen (yes 15!) funding applications I have made (and don't get me started on how ridiculously overcomplicated the application process for research grants is now, and the endless self-flagellation BS you have to do to amplify your woke credit to people who are middle aged white people who don't actually read or respond to your application... the most response I have gotten to any in the last three years is something like "We are sorry, your pre-application for EPSRC blah blah funding has not been successful at reaching the first round of consideration. No further information will be provided"... in other words, they looked at my name and rejected me on that basis before even sending my application out for peer review). So... the fact that the university cocked up my class and it didn't get properly advertised in Semester 1 this academic year (Sept 2024-Dec-2024) means that instead of my teaching hours being 44% (I need at least 40% teaching hours) - my teaching hours this academic year are only 22% through no fault of my own. The fact that none of my 15 external funding applications even got to first round peer review, even when they all had the assistance of well experienced profs to make sure they were good to go (both my current prof who has had over £15mil in funding in recent years, and Prof Fenton who amassed close to £10mil during his time at QMUL), means that NONE of the 60% of my time that is allocated for research counts - not even the impact and public engagement I have had IRT Letby or ethics and explainability for AI (I regularly sit on panels about AI in healthcare, the legal industry and public ethics - none of these things are 'paid' as such, I do them in order to increase my academic profile and to get myself out there). So, my academic probation is a big washout and I am being rejected for a permanent position - what our American cousins call tenure.
Second: My contract with the university is up when my academic probation runs out early next month, and while there have been mummblings that I generally aren't too aware of, this means I am very likely out of a job. And nothing else work-wise has been forthcoming. I get turned down for anything - even when I tried applying for IT jobs that were the type of jobs I spent 16 years doing before coming to academia! Most people won't remember but the house I bought on a huge mortgage in order to be nearer to work was heavily damaged by the tenants who the previous landlord had to kick out before they could sell the house to me. While I did a lot of the work to fix it when moving in, I have been spending long hours on my nights and weekends over the last 6 weeks trying largely on my own and without assistance to finish everything that remained because if my temporary contract is not renewed - I will have to sell the house in very short order. If I lose both my employment and house I am very likely going to have to pack up and take my son to the other side of the world and live with my younger brother and his family. That is going to be pretty cramped and humbling for everyone.
Third: While I had thought I'd defeated the majority of my health issues (and the ones I have mentioned before, I had), the stress of the current situation has seen a return in the pre-ventricular contractions (PVCs) or ectopic heart beats I was having 8-10 years ago before I moved back to the UK. I have software I developed on my watch that monitors for the delay in the RST complex that is followed by a very quick and ineffective 'catch-up' beat and it is counting several hundred per day. Given that modern medicine has never actually found a treatable clinical cause (i.e. an electrical issue, electrical block, blocked artery, BP issue or similar) it is purely down to stress acting presumably on the vagal nerve system... except now I have something new
Fourth: I have had constant 24/7 tinnitus in my ears since I was 21. Tinnitus that was so bad it audiology tests found it affected 20% of the upper register in omy L ear, and 30% in my R. However, over the last year it has become increasingly more difficult to hear voices, especially if those voices are either talking softly or if I am in a loud or crowded environment. New tests show I have lost between 30-40% of the lower register hearing in the R ear, meaning sometimes at best it is only hearing the 30-40% 'in the middle' bands. It has become so bad that even to hear my son talk or hear the radio when we are in the car, I had to spend a weekend last month removing all the interior door panels and trims and the carpet in the footwells and installing that sound-deadening sticky bitumen paper insulation stuff to all the metal parts. I spend most of my time at home or in the office with Bose QuietComfort headphones on with them programmed alike hearing aids to hear and amplify the room around me and direct it into my ears (sadly, as my twitter followers will have seen the main pair of my Bose QC headphones died last month and I still haven't been able to replace them. I have had to resport to using an almost ten year old 'halo' pair - the Bose QC 30 - that I have had since new, and that don't have the extra software abilities that help amplify voices that the newer ear buds had. It is ironic that I use noise cancelling headphones to actually amplify the noise they are meant to cancel. Life is grand eh?).
In any event - as I said. My own first world problems that pale in significance to my friend who this week was in a Spanish A&E while on vacation with his wife with a sudden and extremely elevated blood pressure that would potentially have killed some people... and that pale in significance to my other friend who is caring for his formerly lovely, inviting and very artisitc wife who had early onset but now well-advanced frontotemporal lobe dementia exacerbated by the covid shots... or my other <60kg friend who has had some recent flares to her T1DM (the diabeetus, Mr Brimley) and SLE (yes Dr House, it's Lupus). I simply battle on because everywhere I look there are people around me who are doing it much tougher.
Scott, I am not on your level, you are way above me intellectually. I respect your intellect but you have qualities more important than intellect - empathy, compassion, and a fierce hatred of injustice (Lucy Letby). It would appear that your face doesn't fit in academia, is it any wonder? It is my impression that you find it impossible to conform with stupidity and are now suffering the consequences. May good fortune just be around the corner, here is hoping anyway.
As well as being born with cataracts, I developed hearing loss in my childhood (both ears). School was difficult and my working life (clerical) was extremely difficult. In my early forties the sight issue was remedied with implants, around my late fifties the wonders of digital hearing aids resolved to a large extent my hearing problems. I know only too well how difficult it is to function with auditory and visual issues. Tinnitus, I understand is a nightmare. You have achieved a lot despite everything.