subtext | Truth: lies open to all

Issue 163 - ‘Half-baked and uncosted’

25 May 2017

*****************************************************

Fortnightly during term time.

Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk

Back issues & subscription details: www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext

In this issue: editorial, something cooking, architecture, poster vacuum, UA92, parking change, private recruitment, HE promises, more architecture, local politicking, benchmarking, hustings, hustings, and more hustings, letters

*****************************************************

EDITORIAL

Since Monday evening, we have all been rocked by the terrorist bombing that took place in the Manchester Arena. But even in the wake of this horrific incident, we have been buoyed by the strength of our communities, the courage of Manchester’s local heroes, and the kindness of its citizens. Extraordinary times will always bring out the worst in those who will exploit events with barely disguised glee to justify their prejudices, but this is often outweighed by the overwhelming solidarity of the majority, who reject division, anger and scapegoats, and instead focus on remembering the people that have been lost and rejoicing in the people whose company we are lucky to still enjoy.

It is not just the city of Manchester that has been reminded, all too harshly, of the value of community. Reporting in the student newspaper, SCAN (https://tinyurl.com/nyqa6sy), brought this home to the subtext collective. We learn from it that staff and students from our own community were caught up in the events in Manchester, thankfully escaping shaken but mostly unharmed. But there are those of us who knew others who weren’t so fortunate.

The subtext collective will of course continue to be a bit flippant about all the strange stuff that happens atop this hilltop hodge-podge of concrete, brick and glass, with its strange little coteries of scholars, striplings, and suits. But events like this do rather put things in perspective.

*****************************************************

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

And so, to business...

*****************************************************

RECIPE: DEPARTMENTAL OFFICER SOUFFLÉ (WARNING: MAY COLLAPSE WHEN HALF-BAKED)

Serves: 1 small-ish university

Ingredients:

– A few dozen staff who generally work hard to support their departments, where they have developed excellent links with academic colleagues and know what’s happening on the ground

– A series of reviews with increasingly abstract acronyms

– A bunch of reports, at least some of which must be restricted so that they can’t be seen by the people they’re on about

– Some private educational consultants

– Some vague but positive-sounding guff about staff development and progression

– A few buzzwords that make it sound like you must be doing something worthwhile, like ‘principles’, ‘positive communication’, ‘benchmarking’, ‘comparator institutions’, ‘operational excellence’, ‘best practice examples’, ‘building blocks of support’ and so on.

Method:

1. If this is the first time you’re trying something like this, don’t tell the staff anything! If they’ve already been through one aborted restructuring, have lots of consultations with them so you can say afterwards you were keeping them informed. But don’t *actually* tell them anything.

2. Get a private educational consultancy to demonstrate how you’re doing things much worse and much more expensively than another university. But don’t actually share their report with anyone. And if anyone asks you, whatever you do, make sure you tell them this isn’t about cost-cutting!

3. Create doubt about who the staff actually report to by giving them not one but two line managers. Dotted lines are visually stunning *and* very tasty!

4. Stir everything thoroughly by keeping individual departments guessing about what is happening elsewhere in the university - that extra uncertainty gives the whole thing a wonderful aroma.

5. Season liberally with buzzwords.

6. Bake the whole thing in a working group for a few months. It doesn’t really matter what people on the working group say, as you’ve already decided what your soufflé will look like. And we all know that soufflés always turn out just perfect! Make sure you sprinkle with positive-sounding guff to make it extra-crunchy!

If you’ve enjoyed baking the Departmental Officer soufflé, why not try making your research group leads the line managers for academic staff in your Faculty of Science & Technology? We’re sure everyone would love that!

*****************************************************

SPINAL INJURIES

Nothing lasts forever, least of all flagstones that have JCBs and loaded-up dump trucks rolling over them all day every day for several months. It’s starting to look as though this apparent carelessness was actually part of the plan – why get builders with mallets in to smash the flagstones, when you can do it as a side-effect of what you’re doing anyway? Older subscribers will remember that, back in the day, the Spine flagstones were unusually large and mostly uniform and rather striking. During the last decade that Estates has been running the University, the various renovations have resulted in there being at least six different types of flagstone in a 200-yard stretch of the north Spine. Some sort of standardisation is presumably on the cards, which will be nice. We wait with bated breath and a pile of snarky comments to see what the result turns out to be. While talking of snark, we note the smart sign that says that the new Spine will not just be a way for people to walk from one part of the University to another (nnnyeeeeeesss...), but will be 'much more'. One wonders what that 'much more' might be. If 'much more' means 'some nice plants beside some of it', that’ll of course be nice, but one would have hoped that a bit of sympathetic landscaping and even a few free herbs would be a given rather than something to be surprised at. If, on the other hand, 'much more' means, say, mobile massage chairs cruising the Spine, a Brexit-themed son et lumiere every hour on the hour, a free-range petting zoo, five-minute caricaturists, or even an unbroken line of vegan pie-stalls, that would at least be interesting and sustaining. As long as it is absolutely not those stupid silver-sprayed look-how-long-I-can-stand-really-still-for timewasters.

*****************************************************

WE'LL HAVE NONE OF THAT CAMPAIGNING HERE

In subtext 162 we reported on the perplexing decision to remove all campaign posters for the county council elections on the eve of polling day. Reportedly LUSU had acted following a complaint, and we wondered who might have submitted that complaint.

On an unrelated note, the Chief Administrative Officer has recently written to the four general election candidates for Lancaster and Fleetwood, informing them of her proposed 'arrangements for national election campaigning on the University's estate'. While most of these arrangements are just common sense security measures, the proposals on public campaigning are a little more difficult to square with Lancaster's commitment to freedom of speech.

As usual, student political societies are permitted to poster across campus, provided that they adhere to the poster code by-law. But what if candidates want to display their own promotional materials to students? Well, they haven't been denied this opportunity. They'll be allowed to use a single dedicated poster board.

What if candidates want to come onto campus and meet their student voters? Well, that's fine, as long as they restrict themselves to 'a small number of outdoor locations defined as public places for this purpose', namely Alexandra Square, Lancaster Square and Alexandra Park Boulevard. Oh, and if they do plan on coming to campus to speak with students, they need to notify Security at least two days in advance.

The candidates' responses have not been publicly disclosed.

*****************************************************

FOOTBALL GATE (EVENTUALLY)

It was standing room only at the Lancaster UCU general meeting in the Marcus Merriman Lecture Theatre on Wednesday 17th May. At the meeting the 2016 financial year end was finally agreed upon plus an increase in local subscription rates was proposed and unanimously passed. This was followed by an ultimately aimless discussion about the national pay award. Things warmed up when members turned their attention to the REF and how the University was dealing with the various audits that have been introduced – the most vehement comments were about the role of certain HoDs and Deans in pushing forward a particular line on this issue. The meeting culminated in a jolly pooling of thoughts surrounding the UA92 Football University. This was the first time that the branch had had an opportunity to collectively express an opinion on this subject, given the forced silence inflicted on people by restrictions to Senate and Council discussions. It was noted that this is a growing trend (as reported in the last edition of subtext) amongst senior management regarding a host of topics. After a brief discussion a motion was proposed: 'This idea is shit!' This was slightly amended and the GM unanimously passed the following motion: 'We call for an open campus-wide discussion of the proposal for a strategic partnership with UA92 Football University. In the absence of transparent and meaningful dialogue concerning the issues previously raised, we state our opposition'.

*****************************************************

DISPATCHES FROM THE SPORTS FIELD CAR PARK

Lancaster, England – Drivers have recently found their attempts at honest payment for use of the car park down by the sports fields thwarted, discovering that the sole ticket machine does not accept the new pound coins. Desperate parkers have been reduced to pulling apart back car seats in a frantic attempt find spare change. Those who have not been lucky have resorted to writing signs pleading ‘machine does not accept new £ coins’. Readers may remember similar scenes when the campus launderettes would not accept the new five-pound notes, and may well question when the currency chaos will end!

*****************************************************

RECRUIT CONDITION

The private recruitment industry is worth some £23 billion in the UK and there are thought to be more than 6,000 recruitment agencies and more than 8,000 recruitment consultants in existence. The recruitment industry, which employs 1.2 million people, is barely regulated. The conduct of this massive industry is regulated by the Employment Agencies Act 1973; while the detailed regulatory framework is created by regulations made under the Act that mostly date from 1976. At the top of the private recruitment industry pyramid are the international executive search firms. Lancaster University utilises the international firm Perret Laver to work on the appointment of senior Professors. Perret Laver claim to have ‘developed a rigorous and robust methodology based on [their] proprietary analytics for identifying, engaging and securing exceptional research talent’.

Whilst most attention is primarily focussed on the exploitation of agency workers and the scale of corrupt practices in the recruitment industry, little attention is paid to those high end companies. However, according to a recent research report published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, and the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS), there are perils and problems in using such companies - as some of our colleagues in the University are finding out.

Lancaster has in the past made use of recruitment agencies in appointing senior managerial staff. Who can forget the charismatic Marketing Director Anthony Marsella, who lied about having a PhD (see subtext 65), or the succession of inspiring HR Directors? Then there was the non-starter that was the appointment of Nancy Wright as Dean of FASS, who was rumbled as having been dismissed from her previous employment (see subtext 91). Now this tried and trusted approach to recruitment has been extended to professorships. There is currently being advertised three chairs respectively in Organisational Health and Well Being, Public Health, and Sociology. Potential candidates are invited to have informal conversations with Perret Laver about the posts. Applications are being directly handled by Perret Laver. Staff are being sidelined in such important appointments. More evidence, as if we needed it, of the general shift towards centralisation within the University.

*****************************************************

HE MAN(IFESTOS)

Political party manifestos have come through in drips, drabs and drastic rewrites since the last subtext came out. Being a specialist publication (well, a hacky newsletter with pretensions of one) the subtext policy elves have dived straight in to see what the future holds for higher education in a post June 8 world. At least no one can complain that ‘they’re all the same’.

Labour offers the most ambitious plan for HE, and education in general. Taking the cradle-to-grave ethos of Beveridge’s Welfare State and applying it to education, they offer up a National Education Service, free at the point of use to all ages and levels.

For HE this means a move back to free tuition for all students, and the reintroduction of maintenance grants. Fees would be entirely scrapped from 2018: students starting in September would also get a waiver. For students part way from their course, they would only have to ‘pay’ for what they’ve studied so far. Graduates would not find their debt written off, but would be protected from ‘inflation busting’ interest rates. The policy, Labour say, can be funded by an increase in corporation tax and additional income tax.

There have been some concerns that such a policy would benefit those graduates who go to high earning jobs, though seen in the context of the wider manifesto, they would also be subject to higher income tax rates, so perhaps that balances out in the end.

It is certainly an intriguing idea: even those who aren’t on the same page as Labour on other issues could, with a bit of thought, see the merit. If we are to have a ‘knowledge/skills-based economy’, surely the State has a role to play in enabling that workforce to continuously learn and become economically competitive, and corporations in funding the means through which they get a highly educated workforce. It’s the logic that underpins the move back to free tuition in Northern Europe - though it is not publically acknowledged as such.

In some ways it is perhaps not radical enough: to really foster continuous goodwill, Labour could have considered something along the lines of an NEC (national education contribution) – something that gives everyone a sense of ownership. Such a move could dispel that popular myth of ‘why should those who have not gone to university pay for those who have’, if people able to say ‘well, actually, now you could go – maybe not as a full student, but to open public lecturers or attend free evening courses’.

The Labour manifesto is otherwise quite light on HE policy. We can infer from the general ethos that TEF would be off the cards. The move back to State funded higher education may also see a return of the student numbers cap – something not acknowledged in the Labour manifesto but a lesson from history, though quite how that would square with the National Education Service is hard to tell. We know from Labour’s other pledges that International students would be lifted out of immigration figures, and there is talk of trying to negotiate free tuition for EU students, in return for British students being able to access free tuition in Europe - a post-Brexit consolation prize for the continental generation.

The Tory manifesto is even lighter, but there are some new and interesting nuggets. There is mention of looking to model university investment funding on the American system, so that universities can enjoy the commercial fruits of their research (their words, not ours). This may be the attempt to plug the financial hole universities are expecting in their research grants following Brexit, though anything that apes the American model of HE funding should be approached with no small amount of trepidation.

There is also mention of a new condition being set on universities looking to charge the higher rate of fees: they must be involved in academy sponsorship or founding a free school – which we could infer is where the commercial fruits from investing funding will end up going. International students will remain in immigration statistics.

And that is about it, explicitly, for HE policy from the Tories. Anyone with a passing knowledge of education – or indeed life – will probably cringe at the general promise to turn Britain into the ‘Great Meritocracy’. We will only remind readers that Michael Young’s 'The Rise of the Meritocracy' was intended as a satire (and may it rest in peace).

As for the Lib Dems’ HE promises, we will give them all the consideration they deserve...

 

 

... And should probably also mention that the Greens still plan to scrap tuition fees, fund student grants, and increase public investment in further and higher education – basically, not much different to Labour but without the snappy name.

Manifestos are available online from all good search engines.

*****************************************************

NORTH SPINE BLUES

And here’s a question that we’ve asked often and still haven’t had an answer to: What oh what have those who live in the County College, and particularly the disabled folk, done to merit the covered way ending at the back door of the Nuffield? On the general point, if by providing a covered way around most of the University we accept the principle that it’s a good idea, where possible, to make it possible for people to get about their business without them, their clothes, their equipment and their books getting drenched regularly, then why not County? And specifically, one does wonder if one day it might occur to a sodden disabled person pushing their rusting wheelchair around the side of County through puddles in a gale to question whether the University’s much-vaunted reputation for being disability-friendly is wholly warranted?

If the University won’t do it because it’s a good idea, perhaps they’ll do it because it might affect the NSS scores? And who knows how muddy things will get if the planned campus extension ever gets built?

*****************************************************

THE PROGRESSIVE NON-ALLIANCE

subtext readers of a left-leaning bent will be aware of the 'Progressive Alliance'. Founded by the group Compass, it's the latest tactical voting initiative for leftists and liberals irritated by first-past-the-post. According to its website, http://www.progressivealliance.org.uk/, 'Progressive parties shouldn't stand candidates if it ensures the regressive right win.'

Well, Lancaster and Fleetwood is certainly a seat which ticks all the boxes for 'progressives' - Cat Smith, the incumbent Labour candidate, was elected last time with a majority smaller than the UKIP vote, and the Kippers aren't even putting up this time. Urban Lancaster is dominated by two parties of the left - the Greens and Labour - but the Greens barely saved their deposit in 2015. Would they endorse the Progressive Alliance and stand down in favour of Labour? On 9th May the North Lancashire Green Party held a members-only meeting to make its decision, and subtext's reporter was there.

The meeting was hot and crowded as fifty people tried to sit in a circle. A number of members argued that the Greens should stand down because it wasn't your usual election. With Theresa May calling a snap election at a point when the Conservatives are handily high in the polls, there's a real fear of a Conservative landslide, and Lancaster and Fleetwood is high on the list of marginal seats. No one at the meeting wanted Eric Ollerenshaw as their MP. Members felt they could support Cat Smith since she had campaigned against fracking, and as shadow minister for elections, had just backed proportional representation.

On the other hand, some argued, Cat had offered nothing in return. She could not guarantee that PR would be in Labour's manifesto. Standing down wouldn't necessarily mean Green votes would translate into Labour votes, and one councillor noted that a number of older Green voters in his ward could quite possibly vote Tory if there was no Green option. In addition, it was said, the problem being placed at the Greens' door was actually out of their hands. With Fleetwood swinging towards the Conservatives in the recent county council elections, and the lack of a UKIP candidate, any swing to the Tories in the general election would be due to those factors, rather than the Green vote.

Some members thought that the Greens needed to maintain a presence in the next parliament, and that not standing would let Green members and voters down. There was a strong feeling that a progressive alliance isn't possible if you're just having an alliance with yourself. Why, it was said, should the Greens stand down if Labour will do nothing in return? Labour's decision that day to expel several members who'd tried to establish an alliance in Surrey to unseat Jeremy Hunt was evidence that it was impossible to have a true progressive alliance with Labour, and a reason to stand Rebecca Joy Novell as the Greens' candidate.

The members eventually decided by 32 votes to 19, with 3 abstentions, in favour of standing Rebecca as the Green candidate, but also voted not to campaign or leaflet in Lancaster and Fleetwood, as a concession to Labour.

Since then, PR hasn't appeared in the Labour manifesto - instead there is a pledge to set up a Constitutional Convention to 'examine and advise on reforming of the way Britain works at a fundamental level'. It seems the Progressive Alliance may still be a long way from achieving its objectives.

*****************************************************

THE WAR(WICK) ON STATUTES

With all of the benchmarking against comparator institutions that goes into seemingly every policy that senior management develops, the subtext collective has sometimes wondered if our own quaint university has been held up as a glimmering example of how to run a railway.

In subtext 138 (and for a good few issues after that), we reported on the worrying deliberations on Senate and Council that eventually led to the constitutional enshrinement of our faculties and departments being moved out of statutes (which require Privy Council approval to alter / obliterate entirely), and into ordinances (which can be obliterated in-house without government interference.)

Now, two years later, one of subtext's 'comparator publications', Warwick4FreeEducation, is attempting to whip up support to protect Statute 24 of the University of Warwick's constitution. Statute 24 is Warwick's own statute for protecting academic freedom, as well as setting out how and when staff can be fired, clear guidance on appeals, and the right to legal representation during any disciplinary process. The top table of Warwick is currently trying to, yup, you guessed it, move all of these things out of statutory protection and into ordinary policy, where they can be decimated at will with very little prospect for appeal or prevention.

Sadly, subtext's warnings against such constitutional skullduggery went unheeded. Lancaster has yet to suffer the fate of institutions such as Salford, which moved employment protections into policy and subsequently doled out 13 rounds of job cuts, but it's hard to see why the senators and councilors keep waving major changes through like the proverbial turkeys in Yuletide season..

Still, if the efforts to halt such things happening at Warwick are successful, we might at least have one comparator institution to look to if our own top table gets any grand ideas.

*****************************************************

THE LITTLE HUSTINGS THAT COULD...

Thursday last saw the first public hustings of the general election to feature all four local candidates. Organised by LUSU, it took place on a balmy evening in the grand Edwardian splendour of the Town Hall. Chaired by Dr Mark Garnett from our own Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, the panel comprised former MP Eric Ollerenshaw for the Conservatives, Robin Long for the Liberal Democrats, Rebecca Joy Novell for the Greens, and the sitting Labour MP and Lancaster University alumna, Cat Smith.

Each candidate was given two minutes to state their case, and first up was Eric Ollerenshaw. He got just one perfunctory ‘strong and stable leadership’ reference into his first couple of sentences and then focused on the importance of effective management of the economy which, of course, could only be provided by the Conservatives. Robin Long followed with a solid and confident anti-Brexit speech, then came Rebecca Novell for the Greens. At first it looked like she would fill her allotted two minutes with a recitation of her CV, but once into her stride she ticked off the main Green policies on power, poverty and the environment. Finally, Cat Smith for Labour drew heavily on her own Lancaster student background and the importance of offering the electorate ‘better choices’ about their future. She did not mention Jeremy Corbyn, Ollerenshaw hardly mentioned Theresa May. Had they agreed this beforehand?

Questions came thick and fast - on education, the NHS, employment and the economy. On the whole, the candidates did try to respond to the actual question, although inevitably there was some evasion, particularly from Cat Smith (would she continue to support Jeremy Corbyn if Labour lost badly?). Overall, the tone of the discussion was polite, although Eric Ollerenshaw did try to start a row by harrumphing ‘Corporation Tax!’ whenever any of the other candidates made a spending pledge. They also had to cope with a dodgy sound system that every now and again made... well... farting noises. Green candidate Rebecca Novell came across as the most left-wing, revealing that the reason she was splitting the anti-Tory vote was that Labour was still too tainted with neoliberalism for her tastes. Robin Long managed some effective digs at the Conservative, his only wobble coming when Dr Garnett outed him as a Gooner. Cat Smith was quietly effective, clearly knew her audience well, and looked throughout like a winner. Perhaps the most intriguing performance came from Eric Ollerenshaw. He tried his best to be combative but one suspects his heart wasn’t in it. Looking fit and suntanned, he had the irritated air of someone who had just been called off the golf course to deal with a minor domestic emergency. Clearly, not being the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood has agreed with him.

Participation from the largely-student audience was thoughtful and largely constructive. There was none of the manufactured indignation that seems to have become a feature of the BBC’s Question Time but a little bit more passion would not have come amiss. Finally, thanks must go to LUSU for the organisation of this important event which, flatulent PA system aside, went very smoothly indeed.

*****************************************************

THE LITTLE HUSTINGS THAT COULDN’T

Meanwhile in Morecambe, Labour supporters and constituents of Conservative David Morris had turned up the day before for what they thought would be a hustings where their MP had agreed to answer questions. A chance to see their famously-elusive MP! An opportunity to ask him about the pressing issues of the day. Much to the disappointment of the Labour contingent, it turned out not to be a hustings but a Radio Lancashire live outside broadcast with all the candidates being asked questions which the crew had elicited from local people earlier in the day. Each candidate was politely asked each question in turn. No audience response or engagement was allowed. Children had been encouraged to present questions about issues they thought important. So we had a question on litter. Between each question was a music slot. The event was uninspiring and uninformative. At the end David Morris left quickly to avoid meeting or talking to any of his constituents, with one of them loudly declaiming: ‘So that’s what he looks like!’ To compensate for the misunderstanding, the Radio Lancashire staff allowed some of the audience to voice their concerns, which they would have raised with David Morris if given the chance, on their Facebook page. Perhaps some of them might have complained that David Morris doesn’t seem to know how to spell his own constituency, given a flyer about 'Funding for Morecame and Lunesdale' was delivered to the people in those parts this week.

*****************************************************

AND THE LITTLE HUSTINGS THAT WEREN’T AND THAT WILL BE

Hustings seem to be coming thick and fast - although the planned event at the Priory last night was cancelled, and replaced instead with a vigil for the victims of the recent bombing in Manchester, after both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn agreed to suspend general election campaigning for a few days, and the other parties agreed. The ‘Question Time at the Brit’ (that’s the Britannia pub on Ullswater Road for anyone who’s interested) event scheduled for June 1st seems to be going ahead though, for anyone who isn’t satisfied with the many column inches subtext has already devoted to the subject.

*****************************************************

LETTERS

Dear subtext,

Your latest issue's (deliberately) cryptic tag-line or title 'assume the risk of emptiness' was far too pessimistic for such a (at times) jolly organ. My understanding is that it forms part of a much wider concept, that of Dégagisme. Dégagisme is an example of how French ­politics often highlights interesting ideas; they have found an -ism, dégagisme, which roughly translated means 'clear-out-ism'.

The term originated during the Tunisian revolution in 2011 and a Belgian collective later issued a manifesto echoing those sentiments. This year, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing candidate in the French presidential election, revived the term.

Dégagisme means telling established politicians to leave without saying who or what should take their place. 'It is not a question of taking power but of dislodging the person who holds it, of emptying the place it occupies,' explains the Belgian manifesto. We should 'assume the risk of emptiness... see what happens with this void'. Whilst it is, as the Belgian manifesto puts it, 'a time of high but rich uncertainty' subtext has always seemed to me very positive about the direction of travel it wishes in the University. Or have you succumbed to the prevailing sense of being buggered by Brexit?

Yours,

Cheryl Simmill-Binning

********

Dear subtext,

Regarding the scheduled cleanup of campus last week ahead of the University Community Day I heard they tidied the book man from the bottom of the steps near Costa for the same reason... day before community day ... remarkable coincidence. But you didn’t hear that from me.

[Name supplied]

********

Dear subtext,

I was interested to read in subtext 162 that students are now able to 'report noisy neighbours using either the iLancaster app or the library website'. I am curious to know who picks up such reports and what mechanism is in place to feed them into the current disciplinary system.

Unless, as the library website was strangely mentioned, 'neighbours' actually refers to someone sitting next to you in the library and not a residential neighbour. If so, the article is rather vague in this regard.

Clarification kindly requested,

Andy Smith

[subtext’s drone surveillance programme has revealed that this policy did seem to refer to library ‘neighbours’, rather than the more conventional sort. But these days, who knows!]

********

Dear subtext,

Only just seen this, but I wanted to email to say this issue almost succeeded in cheering me up, which in these benighted times takes some doing. I particularly enjoyed the Ry Cooder/John Mayall piece, and also realise I missed a good night out at Bridget Christie’s stand-up performance, although the review was good compensation.

Keep up the good work.

Martin

********

Dear subtext,

Did your reviewer not notice the uncanny similarity between Bridget Christie’s style of delivery and her partner Stewart Lee? She was like a speedier version of him or he is a very slowed down version of her.

Heather

*****************************************************

The editorial collective of subtext currently consists of (in alphabetical order): James Groves, Lizzie Houghton, Ian Paylor, Ronnie Rowlands, Joe Thornberry, and Johnny Unger.