Sam Marsh The day it comes to light will be quite the day.

From today, you can now travel for free around Sheffield city centre on the new Sheffield Connect bus service.

Look out for the green buses. They are free to use. There's two city centre routes and they're served by 4 brand new zero-emission electric buses.

Absolutely loving the intensity & breadth of the Archaeology at Sheffield, #zooarchaeology II course. They've brought in a great team of alumni to join staff to help teach & it's all backed up with a stellar reference collection. CRAZY that The University of Sheffield is closing this amazing department!!

Imagine you’re an undergraduate first year student that chose the university you’ve enrolled at on the basis of a set of pathways characterised by a large range of optional modules.

From April 8th the Sheffield Connect bus service will be served by brand new zero-emission electric buses.

There will now be two city centre routes and the service will be completely free to use.

Here’s the new route maps. The timetable is below.

After yet another round of uni redundancies, if any lecturers who happen to follow me have perspectives they'd like to share about what's going on in HE am very happy to hear from you by DM...

Half my work email:
'Great news, we've partnered with Proprietron, the exciting tool that puts the 'party' into 'dependent on third-party systems'!'

The other half:
'Reminder to users reliant on SomeoneElseotrax integrations: SomeoneElseotrax will cease to exist at midnight.'

Teemu Taira Oh god this is horrific. Did you know at Goldsmiths our management gave us documents for our redundancy process that had left in “University of Kent” by accident??? 🤦🏾‍♀️ Cut & paste job being done to follow your suit. Solidarity ❤️✊🏿🔥

The staff union Unite UCU contacted NEC members to request that they vote against the draft budget. “Draft” is the key word here. So there are two issues at stake. 1. Full scrutiny & the possibility of amending a draft budget seems important from a democratic perspective 🧵

Here's Jo Grady just after accepting a 16% pay rise saying she 'donated just shy of ten thousand pounds' in 22/23. UCU now say that in 22/23 she took 'the full pay she was entitled to, instead of donating a planned portion to the union’s fighting fund'.

youtube.com/live/NfPXghsUd…

UCU members whose subs enable this 18k salary increase to pay damages in a libel case have a right to know how this pay award was decided & to have clarity about exactly how the donation to the FF is made. We just need & are owed transparency & accountability

Now that the UCU NEC elections are over, Jackie and I, as two of the elected UCU negotiators on USS, want to return to a matter of misrepresentation of the UCU USS negotiations, published last October on the UCU Left website.

We express our deepest solidarity with UCUHallam as they rise to the challenge of these threats to employment and education!

Please take the time to read the motion we passed yesterday at our General Meeting.

(See thread for the image text) (1/6)

The following motion was passed by large majority at Sheffield UCU yesterday calling for an investigation into Jo Grady's record 16% pay rise, which seems to have broken a key manifesto pledge, the week after the close of the GS elections:

docs.google.com/document/d/1XZ…

'The University of Zurich has decided to withdraw from the Times Higher Education World University Ranking. The ranking is not able to reflect the wide range of activities in teaching and research undertaken by universities.'

This year’s national UCU Congress will take place in Bournemouth at the end of May. As a branch, we are able to send 5 delegates. We will be taking expressions of interest until this Friday the 15th March, please do get in touch (expenses are paid!)

'What is new, and troubling, is the raw power that money directly exerts over so many aspects of higher education. ... Each department is a revenue center, each student a customer, each prof. an entrepreneur, each party a stakeholder, and each institution a seeker after profit'.

The effect of the change in discount rates was £44.5 BILLION!!!

Here is the chart from the Actuarial Valuation showing how unstable it is.

At the Trades Union Congress conference in London on #pensions . The theme of the day is what to expect from pensions under a Labour government. #pensions