Mark Pendleton

@NagingtonUoM According to the joint statement and what negotiators are saying, aim is to do both, but first priority is restoring benefits.

@HayesChrisJ It’s the athletes parade now, so tuning out for the next 536 hours

Trying to watch the #Tokyo2020 #OpeningCeremony but iPlayer is having none of it. Guess I will be relying on @mark_pendleton's commentary for now until I can watch it back!

@DJLdistraction You forgot the most appropriate emoji…

“Iku!!!” 😅🤦‍♂️

@DJLdistraction @ucu Welcome to the branch secretary club!

So, in other news, I seem to have become Secretary of our @ucu branch. Honestly not entirely sure how that happened... 😳😏😅

@imogenaevans1 @RoyalHistSoc Thanks for all your work Imogen, and best of luck for what’s next!

After a wonderful 2 years, I am leaving my role @RoyalHistSoc, and there's a vacancy open! Happy to answer any questions about the role and the team. A wonderful chance to get to know some incredible #ECRs

@mswrighthist Glad to hear those Sheffield classes are coming in for some good use!

@carolinepennock @catterall_pp @RoyalHistSoc Great to see you there Caroline, and full agreement on that from me!

Fantastic to hear @catterall_pp @mark_pendleton & other colleagues speak at the Sheffield panel on the @RoyalHistSoc LGBT+ report. So many things to think about, & so important that we are proactive, especially as the public climate in the UK fosters transphobia on a daily basis.

@gbuttars Lol. They didn’t even bother to send it to me this time.

@CerasellaChis Not that I’m aware of yet but I’m very interested in this. My current focus is on the data bros driving student number forecasting but I’m aware of similar orgs operating in lots of other areas too. Happy to chat to anyone about how we advance this work.

Various companies are doing the rounds across the #HigherEducation sector: building portfolios and having parts of university services outsourced to them (in some cases slowly, but steadily). Is there a group within #UCU that's monitoring this trend? Pls let me know if so.

@OdulBozkurt @sussexucu I think Sussex has to deal with the grotesquely named The Knowledge Partnership - different badge but the same approach from what I can tell

@hagenilda This was her first attempt at distracting me from the laptop this evening

@AdamOzanne Thanks Adam. I’ve at no stage vilified anyone, but simply asked a question about how members’ subs are being spent, in this case £400k worth. This may well be a justified payment, but from the response today members will never know. That is disappointing to say the least.

@mark_pendleton UCU always seeks the best possible settlements for members forced by illness to stop working, and those payments are confidential. UCU is an employer as well as a trade union. Why do you not want UCU to treat its employees in the way we demand members be treated?

@DrMatthewMesley @sheffielducu Absolutely! It’s very frustrating. The language used today sounded very much like an NDA is in play, but I really have no idea.

@willpooley @Pseudo_Isidore @Brodie_Waddell @carolinepennock @USSbriefs @ucu Accept that UCU comms is a mixed bag (and the website is a mess), but five tests for FE came out in early June, and HE shortly thereafter, so I think people were doing stuff. Could have been better communicated to members though for sure: ucu.org.uk/article/10781/…

Interesting piece by @USSbriefs. Still deathly silence on the subject of staff safety from our national union I see. Is it too much to hope that we might hear anything from @UCU before a mass movement of students across and into the country begins?

@acupunctureUSS Or that over the year before, between 350k and 900k civilians were killed in “conventional” bombings of 26 major cities with about 13 million made homeless. In just one night in March more people in Tokyo died than in Hiroshima, and double the number killed in the Blitz

@rm_ucu I’m not sure it is always constructive to flood people’s inboxes. Vicky has made a public commitment - it’s important to hold her to that, but let’s give her a little time to get things moving.

@rm_ucu The President has said she is calling an NEC. That seems the quickest way to get one happening, rather than going through a formal requisition process. If needed, I would sign onto such a request though.

@SolGamsu @EricRoyalLybeck I have no evidence to dispute Jo’s account, but do find it hard to get to a 2/3 majority of the old NEC without at least some UCULeft votes... unfortunately votes aren’t recorded, so we’re back to a need for greater transparency!

@mark_pendleton @EricRoyalLybeck Different account of what happened here from Jo M, this does fit with what appeared to be happening at ucu Congress just before Xmas twitter.com/JomcneillUCU/s…

A flat rate levy!?!? @ucu are you actually serious? If you want to kick out casualised staff then you couldn't have come up with a better approach. You have members earning over 100k and members on casual contracts earning less than 10k and they should all pay the same - WHY?

@carolinepennock @cath_fletcher I wasn’t on the NEC when the decision was made, so I can’t really comment on that NEC’s decision. But calls to contribute to the fighting fund have been in every UCU correspondence since last year, and members haven’t been, at least not in any real numbers

@mark_pendleton How can you say it’s the only tool when colleagues haven’t even been asked to contribute voluntarily (as @cath_fletcher was saying)? And why was the decision made in Feb & this is the first we’re hearing of it? Plenty of time to ask senior colleagues to contribute to avoid levy.

@Mulboyne Nice thread - thanks! Tomoko Seto at Yonsei university has also been doing some academic research on this “scandal” and I’ve heard her give a couple of talks - will be interesting to see what she publishes about it.

Two years ago,I went through the story of Naomi Sagara and Cathy, and how the revelation of a lesbian relationship effectively ended the showbusiness careers of both. The thread started here: