I mean, thank you, it’s taking a while to adjust.

I have no particular grievance with the Conservatives, other than disagreeing on a political standpoint, and I’ve no particular affiliation with any one party, candidate or anything. The Lib Dems are just as bad around here - their literature is always particularly negative.

As for, “.. don’t imagine that Conservatives have much of a foothold in N17..”, I think you will find that we’re in a solid second position in ALL N17 wards, with the Lib Dems trailing a very poor third. Indeed, across Tottenham, Conservatives were second in all three votes in the London elections. For the List vote, the Libs were actually fourth behind the Greens!

You can see from our website, http://www.tottenhamconservatives.com, that we are a local campaigning party. David Schmitz’ website, websitehttp://davidschmitz.org.uk/index.html, is blank.

We are glad you enjoyed the Tottenham Carnival - perhaps you could start one up in Wood Green?

Thanks for your reply. I work at a university (which shall remain nameless due to previous form vs. staff members’ blogs) which prides itself on its outstanding academic reputation, its quality of research, its political influence. And yet today I’ve been dealing with respected academics threatening to pull a course over timetabling issues, and in general, expecting the moon on a stick to be delivered to them, at their preferred time, with silver bells on.

What it seems that academics don’t understand about administrative staff is that we have to be hard-headed and inflexible for things to run properly. Every so often I have to get jobsworth, and depending on who I’m dealing with, sometimes I enjoy it, often I don’t. If I were to be as flexible as the academics would like me to be, it would not be an overstatement to say that the summer would be complete chaos, and extremely damaging.

You mentioned audits - these are not fun, I admit this. But much as I’d like it otherwise, I work for an organisation which is essentially a commercial business - students pay good money for their education, and if they fail, maybe it’s our fault for not delivering the package better. It’s the same as the disco/lecture dilemma you mention. Admin are there (in theory at least, and at least the ones who do their job well!) to tie up loose ends and stop these things happening, and if you see little of the students’ complaints and problems, then that’s a testament to a good admin staff.

I’ve waffled - in closing I say:
a) I realise that I make generalisations (where’s the fun of blogging without that!), and I know there are exceptions on both sides.
b) I also don’t understand the middle-management lark, and want out of it pronto.
c) I’d actually much rather [i]be[/i] an academic.
d) I loathe long comments. BlogFail for Simon…

I am very depressed about the future of the University, I have to say. I think admin and academics, as well as government policy and businesses will all be to blame in the end. I would be curious to know more (in general!) about what kinds of lawsuits the audits protect us from and what admin don’t understand about academics and vice versa. Oh and small thing - IT is a she!