Letters
Criteria
for money impossible to meet
Nick
Allen
Central student administration
By
what stretch of the imagination can this method of distributing
money donated to the University be deemed to be showing
'fairness and equity' to all members of staff (Giving
rewards for exceptional work, Reporter 479)?
The
criteria by which we are all invited to apply are either:
simply impossible for many staff to meet Š how do cleaning
staff, works and service staff, lower grade clerical staff
demonstrate that they have recorded 'a significant achievement'
(point A) at work or that their efforts have affected
a 'key recruitment or retention issue' (point D); or they
are asking people to work beyond their contracts (point
B); or they are looking to reward staff for attendance
at 'conference/training course ........ study leave'
– all of which are covered in payment of expenses
and unsocial hours pay.
This
only leaves 'point C' which is aimed at 'Lecturer A or
Research 1A' scales, which I think gives a real indication
of who the University intends should receive this money.
The
only fair and equitable solution is to take the amount
of money, divide it by the number of staff employed and
put the amount you arrive at in everyone's pay packet.
We need our
own mini bus station
David
Pilbeam
School of Biology
It
is obvious from the correspondence on car parking that
there is considerable resistance from many staff to the
idea of using public transport.
As
a practical idea for improving the attractiveness of buses,
why does the University not convert the area round the
main entrance into a mini bus station with a waiting room?
The prospect of waiting in the warm, with access to a
coffee machine and with computer screens to see where
the bus has got to, would at least make the journey home
more pleasant. I would be sorry to see the attractive
flower border go, but it would give public transport a
small boost.
Why reserve
places if they're not filled?
Frances
Ledgard
Skills & Employability Unit
Please
could someone explain to me why ten places are permanently
reserved in the visitors' car park for 'Council members',
when Council meetings now start at 5.15 pm, a time when
all the car parks are starting to empty anyway? When on-campus
parking is so tight, this seems singularly wasteful.
I
realise that some Council members may visit the University
at other times, but surely not ten of them at once. Why
not reserve just, say, three places?
If you can't
get to work – then move!
Tony
Fox
School of chemistry
I
must take issue with Allison Iredale (Letters,
Reporter 479) that parking preference be
given to long distance commuters. Of course it is in the
interest of the community of Leeds that as many as possible
use public transport.
I
moved away from Headingley with my family some ten years
ago for many reasons, one being danger to children caused
by the routine dangerous driving of commuters rat running
the street where we lived. (handbrake turns at backed-up
traffic queues). Sadly quite a few of these cars carried
University permits. The neighbours used to wind me up
about it.
We
moved ten miles out of the city to a location with a good
bus and train service.
It
is all very well to live esoterically at a safe distance
from the pollution and danger one causes by the choice
of one's transport mode, it is quite another to insist
that the people within this affected community should
also have the privilege of paying high council taxes to
maintain excessive infrastructure to support those wealthy
enough to live at a distance, quite possibly in an area
where their council tax makes no contribution to such
infrastructure.
If
people have difficulty in getting to work they should
do what people have done for centuries. MOVE!
Provide more
cr¸che places – not parking
Dr
Nicola Shelton
Mother & Infant Research Unit
I
remain fascinated by the ongoing debate about car parking
at the University. In my previous post in London parking
was available outside the building at a mere £4 per hour
for a maximum of two hours. The longest distance commuter
I knew came in every day from Grantham by public transport,
that at £5,000 per annum was a lot more expensive than
to commute from even the remotest part of Yorkshire to
the University of Leeds.
My
husband and I, both university employees and despite car
sharing and having a one-year-old at nursery, do not have
a parking permit. We do, however, drive and park near
the park and then walk in, because, after we have dropped
our daughter off at a private nursery in Headingley, it
would seem mad to then drive back home to Kirkstall and
leave the car there and then get a bus.
We
applied for a University nursery place seven months before
the baby was due and yet were only 32nd on the nursery
waiting list when she was born, so are not using University
facilities.
I
would much rather the University concentrated on providing
more cr¸che places than parking ones! Because of the relative
cheapness of University parking permits (compared to the
£4 per day to park in the Faversham) it seems to me that
the University is subsidising its parking permitted staff
to the tune of several hundred pounds a year of tax-free
perks and that anyone who chooses to use public transport,
walk, cycle etc. ought to get that too! Either that or
all University parking should be £4 per day and the University
could then raise some revenue to support a bigger and
better cr¸che.
