Just before I parted company permanently with the British university system, in fact my retirement was less than a week away at the time, I was invited to act as independent chair of a student disciplinary case. I was independent in the sense that none of the students involved was in my faculty. It was with a heavy heart that I agreed but, as it turns out, it was probably a good thing that I did.
The case involved a final year student accused of using a racial epithet and the person to whom the alleged epithet was aimed made a complaint. This was not the use of the dreaded ‘N-word’, this was the ‘P-word’ that is sometimes used in a derogatory fashion towards people from South Asia.
After watching a Premiership football match in the student union there had been some football banter between opposing supporters and quite an aggressive approach made — and not denied — by a Pakistani student to the student against whom the complaint was made. It is then alleged by the Pakistani student that the other white male student called him a ‘Paki’. The student vehemently denied this as did his friends and an independent witness who saw the incident and was concerned that it might turn violent heard nothing to that effect.
It was one person’s word against another yet somewhere along the convoluted process of the student disciplinary procedure someone decided that there was a prima facie case, and the disciplinary tribunal was formed. The members were presented with copious paperwork and CCTV video footage. The paperwork repeated the details above and the CCTV footage showed the Pakistani student and a friend walking off in one direction and several minutes later the accused student and his friends following. They all lived in the same Halls of Residence and that is where they were heading. The Pakistani student reported seeing the other group of students in the car park but reported nothing more. We were called on the basis of the CCTV footage to judge the motives of the accused student and his friends. It is telling that the Pakistani student did not attend the tribunal and did not respond to any further communications about the incident.
Essentially, we were being asked to evaluate an incident and to pass judgement on a student, possibly to the detriment of his university record or even his graduation, on the basis of an unsubstantiated word-of-mouth accusation and to judge whether he and his friends were walking with intent to confront the Pakistani student. Case closed, you may think, and I made every effort as chair to do so from the outset and to bring matters to a close in favour of the accused student. But matters in the woke hatcheries that now constitute British universities are never that simple.
One of my members voiced that the accused student “may have used the P-word” and I had to agree. Indeed he “may” have but as we had absolutely no evidence to that effect, no accuser present and the student in question had at least bothered to turn up at considerable inconvenience after his degree programme was finished, I considered the matter over. She came back, repeatedly, with her view and finally with the view that the Pakistani student must have “perceived” that the epithet had been used and that we ought to take that seriously. Again, I had to agree that he may well have “perceived” the insult but that his perceptions were insufficient to take matters further.
Eventually, after a long afternoon, the day ended, and we all went home. I considered that a good job had been done until the scribe sent me the notes from the meeting to approve in which was contained the view that the Pakistani student had perceived the insult and that action was recommended against the accused student. I strenuously intervened, the accusation was wiped from the record and the student heard no more from us other than that we had not found against him. However, on another day, with a different panel the outcome could have been very different.
The problem in the above case is obvious and it has permeated the university system. In common with other walks of life, feeling offended, or assuming that someone may have felt offended, is the same as being offended and is sufficient grounds to make an accusation, have it taken seriously and to expect an outcome in your favour regardless of the guilt or innocence of the person accused. Thus, it is a field day for people to make complaints and mainly against young men. Take the football banter in the example above. We can imagine many an alcohol-fuelled exchange of words between people of opposing views, opposing teams or even from different cultures. No violence occurs, no blood is shed, no physical damage is done, everyone feels a bit stupid afterwards and that is an end to it.
But extrapolate that to the young female student who willingly slips between the sheets with a male student, who then perceives that she has been sexually assaulted and makes an accusation. It does happen and the men in question are assumed guilty before trial, usually immediately excluded from study and their lives are probably ruined, even if the young lady later recants and admits she fabricated the accusation.
False accusations are not new, and I am not saying that the Pakistani student in the above case made a false accusation. But evidence remains crucial, even in the legal storms in the educational teacups of British higher education. If we head down the road of condemning people on the basis of allegedly offended parties’ imputed perceptions (and in absentia) that they have been offended then what we will see being done is judgement, but not justice.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry.
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This article appeared last week then was deleted. Is this the final draft then?
But, as many articles have pointed out, if we have nuclear power as a ‘constant backup’ we will not need ‘to rely on renewable sources’ (if by that we mean wind and solar). So we can save money and the environment by scrapping the wind and solar farms and just building nuclear capacity.
Let’s get on with it if we’re going to.
The problem with this ample logic is that it reduces this government’s ability to fleece us via our energy bills. Some work arounds will be needed in order to continue our impoverishment which is the sole purpose of “green energy.”
I wonder if the requirements for electricity on tap 24 / 7 in their coming wholly digital world are starting to percolate through the mini brains of the executive?
Imagine the outrage if DWP were unable to make the millions of pounds of weekly benefit payments to those of the claimant community retired to such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and the rest. The fall out would be enough to bring down a government.
Might cause massive economic hardship in Pakistan.
Pass me the world’s smallest violin.
I thought that in the late 1960s!
While we have Arts and Humanities graduates in charge, especially PPE and History graduates, there’s little hope. They don’t know how to use a Project Plan.
”AI and nuclear energy are a marriage made in heaven it seems.” or possibly a Faustian pact of darkness?
Perhaps we could have the AI run the nuclear power plant to supply its own power? Then of course it would not be possible for puny humans to interfere or turn it off… I feel a SciFi film plot coming on.
Catastrophic climate change… very visible climate crisis… Turn your lights off for an hour every night to save power… Everyone’s got to be forced to have heat pumps and electric cars and power outages when the wind isn’t blowing…
But we need AI so much, it’s so essential to human life, that we can move heaven and earth to supply the power in any way possible and it’s not contributing to environmental issues AT ALL.
Now go away and turn your heating down or all your grandchildren will die.
This is absolutely right and I’m amazed it isn’t talked about more by people who oppose climate policies.
If climate change is such a threat to humanity and high energy consumption is the main driver of climate change (it’s not but just for the sake of argument) then why is every last little thing in our lives being electronified?
Here are a few petty but irritating (to me) examples:
Take any appliance. Where before you turned a knob, now you have to scroll through a menus on a screen and digitally give the command.
Where before you raised an lowered the car boot by yourself, why do new supposedly more environmentally friendly cars do it for you electrically at the push of a button?
Where before you switched lights on and off in your house physically with the push of a button, why are they pushing on us techy stuff that allows you to do it from your phone or from a control panel somewhere?
And on and on. It’s like every little nook and cranny of our lives is going to involve some sort of digital screen from which we issue commands and which consumes more electricity. Instead of, you know, pressing buttons which use muscle energy.
Good points. Maybe some of the elites like AI because they think it will help them control the world, or they like it because they think it’s cool and don’t care whether it’s “eco friendly” or not because it won’t be available to the masses. I also get the impression that eco loons think the internet is powered by unicorn farts or that electricity is somehow “clean” – and of course we’re told that electricity generated by certain means is much better for the planet than others. But it’s not consistent with “consume less”.
I do think lots of people think electricity must be clean and good because of the push for electric cars to “save the environment”.
It just comes out of the wall! 15 minute cities but then you get everything delivered from Amazon, whose servers require immense power, and you get all your entertainment from the Internet (powered by unicorn farts).
Absolutely agree, I say this to people ALL THE TIME and they largely look at me like I’m mad. We recently had to buy a new washing machine and it was impossible to get one without a stupid big screen that lights up with your options every time you try to use it. Why? A bog standard knob works totally fine. Toothbrushes are another example. Manual works fine if you’re thorough. Zoom meetings for everything. And as for the constant push from mobile companies to sign up to their plans to get the latest and greatest new mobile phone every single year…!! Don’t get me started.
I am hanging on to my 16 year old car as long as possible because almost any upgrade will involve a great big screen through which I will now have to do almost everything I want to do, including turning the radio on… sigh.
To be fair, this is private money selecting (and investing) in a solution to suit their demand. It’s not a state energy choice. The fact they have chosen an established and proven energy source is the interesting bit, not some intermittent ‘unreliables’, speaks volumes in itself…
A fair point, but why is no one else complaining about it if we’re in such dire straits?
The BBC haven’t told them.
No money in telling the truth perhaps? Peopl want to ‘believe’ and ‘hope’ it’ll all be fine? Engineering and physics based facts are out of fashion at present…
Nuclear is the answer then, maybe until the next one goes pop.
I mean nuclear power station accidents are of course quite rare –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents
For the life of me I cannot understand why Thorium isn’t used for fuel. Far less nasty by products – for example plutonium isn’t one.
Maybe that’s why.
It’s because it takes a long time to develop a new nuclear design, and build it. And lots of of money to finance it. Then there’s the skilling up the workforce, enhancing their Engineering skills, building up the Supply Chain for the materials, and the support of the politicians and the public who vote them in.
And when the BBC and other Environmental Pressure Groups continually campaign against it, any farsighted project eventually get canned, and sold off to competitors.
And, you don’t really want it, do you?
You just like the idea of cheap power.
Well you’ve got it: solar, and windfarms.
Didn’t you know, it’s so cheap, it’s almost free.
The only reason we had the first wave of nuclear stations was literally to make plutonium… the commercial power was a nice side effect!
Got to hand it to the French, they put their money where their mouth was investing properly in nuclear long term, and now they reap the long-term rewards
Food for thought about AI –
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/04/20/our-entire-ai-revolution-is-built-on-a-correlation-house-of-cards/
So, AI is no different to Arts and Humanities graduates: it appears to act intelligently, but has no understanding, and cannot explain its decision in simple terms.
I was thinking about the NET Zero policies in particular.
To think we had places like Winfrith opened in the 60’s to research reactor design…
Could have been world leaders in clean, safe, cheap exportable energy. Thousands of jobs, energy security for our homes and industries, AI giants flocking to the UK for their power needs…
Ah well at least we’ve got our windmills in the sea and a place for Chris Packham to do Springwatch from.
Well, he isn’t going to be doing much Spring Watch when his ilk have stamped Bomb Farms all over the countryside he so claims to revere.
Always makes me smile when he broadcasts from Arne bird reserve as literally in the background is the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe. Think the irony is lost on him
Miliband and the Net Zero zealots spurn nuclear power precisely because it works well and would make their cult of so-called renewables redundant.
It should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that net zero fossil fuels by 2050 coupled with antipathy to nuclear power and “reliance” on short-lifespan, toxically non-recyclable, expensive to construct and integrate, heavily resource-depleting, inefficient, unreliable, weather-dependent renewables will lead to economic collapse and mass privation.
And there’s no money in nuclear for a person with the suspiciously same surname as millipede, whereas a load of the cash he plans to spaff on batteries in a Field will be going straight into the pocket of a certain resident of New York.
You are taking the proverbial surely?
A f*cking nuclear power plant just to power computerised call centers? And generate illiterate nonsense on fb and linked in?
It’ll make money!
So what’s your problem?
It is all doomed to fail because it is predicated on many false premises and it won’t take long to wither but they will make our lives hell in the meantime. On the bright side it has been 12960 years since the last time things got this messed up and so very soon we should reach rock bottom and then the slow climb out of the kali yuga but at least it will be in the right direction and it might start as early as next March. All of this agenda is being massively disinvested by the people in the know.
And here we have the problem to the solution. If all the tech companies are protecting their supply, when the power goes, their outputs continue but we will not be able to access the output because we won’t have the power to operate our computers and WiFi.
Interesting that they want to close couple this much though – almost like they expect the grid to become less reliable in the future…
Animal farm anyone
Labour and the Left say Nuclear power is bad, until they say its good.
Had we commissioned something like 20 nuclear power plants at the turn of the century, they would all be online now producing reliable “clean” energy, and we could maybe justify the shutting down of coal power stations, and the older gas power stations.
But the other “renewable” sources – No!
Not at scale. Not now, not ever!