Adonis, A Donkey and A Donut

For reasons I can't even being to grasp, this summer has seen UK Higher Education under attack from all directions, and particularly from the Narcissus-like “Architect of Fees”, Labour Peer Andrew Adonis.

He's criticised fees without seemingly knowing very much about them other than headline costs, vice chancellor and senior staff pay (he does have a point - some of them receive ridiculous levels of remuneration), and most irksome of all, academics and their so-called “three-month summer holidays”

Marking? Feedback? Boards? Research? Admin? Preparing? Obviously, these things are all done on a beach over cocktails, or in some Iberian café while the kids argue over which straw donkey grandma would prefer as a present, but at least we in the sector do tend to spend at least a little time trying not to look like, well, donkeys.....

He's followed up his ridiculous accusations of our idleness and privilege for 25% of the year (or more? who knows?) with an attempt to report the Committee of University Chairs to the Metropolitan Police for alleged crimes of conspiracy and cover-up in dealing with Freedom of Information requests after it advised members on how they should respond to Adonis’s enquiries.

It wouldn't have taken much research - maybe he could have asked one of us academics to do it in between rubbing tanning lotion on one another - to find out that most English universities are regulated as exempt charities and that even a cursory look at the law will show that the charge of criminality is utterly baseless.

Joining him now in an ill-judged campaign to undermine the finest higher education system on the planet (not just my opinion - I go all over the world, and academics in foreign institutions are consistent in their praise of it, and puzzlement at what a succession of recent governments have been doing) is something called UK 2020.

This is apparently a "think-tank" run/administered/convened by the Conservative MP Owen Paterson based on “concerns expressed by numerous friends who are parents of university students” which has announced that UK HE operates a “cartel” conspiring to rig fees and ensure that students get poor value for money.

Now if only this set of ignorant buffoons had waited until all we idle academics had come back from our incredibly long holidays, then their report might have got an interested and concerned audience?

We might then have put some effort into preparing for the coming year to assuage our guilt at doing so little, for so much, to the benefit of so few...

Eva had the feeling that ....

The best that can be said of the Football Association's handling of Jose Mourinho's row with his medical staff, is that they did not take sides. They were not on his side, nor were they on the side of the former Chelsea club doctor, Eva Carneiro, a stance which sets them apart from the pressure group Women In Football who submitted a complaint to the FA and were subsequently "appalled" at the governing body's decision not to pursue the matter, adding that it was "A damning example of the FA failing to tackle discrimination".

The implication of this is clear: WIF are convinced that Mourinho was guilty of discrimination but has gotten away with it. True, the FA's process — failing to interview either Dr Carneiro or Mourinho — was hardly stringent, but as an independent translator attested that the manager had not used the feminine version of his Portuguese expletive, and that he hadn't directed anything at anyone in particular, there really wasn't anywhere for the case to go.

Now Women In Football also used the services of a translator, who claimed Mourinho did direct his comments at Carneiro but this is hardly independent is it? I don't doubt that WIF were sincere, but if the FA's translator had backed WIF's allegation, then surely Mourinho would have been charged?

Carneiro certainly has a right to feel aggrieved about sexist crowd abuse — she cites instances at West Ham, in particular — but Mourinho's crime here seems to be what Greg Dyke called "a failure of personal judgment and public behaviour" for which he should have apologised.

And now onto Dr Carneiro's probable wrongful dismissal case because Mourinho's behaviour as good as made her position untenable, although if the evidence is going to include the inference that Mourinho referred to her as a secretary, it is hard to see how that will stand up either.

Only a few days ago, Mary O'Rourke QC spoke about the issue, focussing specifically on Mourinho's assertion that, "Even if you are a kit man, a doctor or a secretary on the bench, you have to understand the game."

"Ninety-five per cent of secretaries are women", O'Rourke said, "Everyone listening to that would have taken it as a comment that women don't know anything about football. If you put that statement to 100 people, 99 of them would interpret it that way." All very true, but those 99 could be wrong. Mourinho specifically mentioned doctors and Eva Carneiro as is a doctor, so why would she then automatically become the secretary in his rant? Equally, what kind of secretary is meant or inferred by the use of the term? Someone who provides administrative support in an office or for example the second most powerful employee at FIFA, UEFA or the FA who all hold the title of general secretary.

Mourinho was wrong and my sympathies are with Dr Carneiro, but with any allegation that she was personally abused dismissed, adding that he derided her with the blanket term "secretary" is equally flawed.

Surely it should be enough that the manager of Chelsea FC completely undermined Dr Carneiro's ability to execute her duties as a medical professional and go from there?