Latest news with #EdinburghUniversity
Scotsman
4 hours ago
- Business
- Scotsman
Edinburgh University staff on strike over threatened £140 million cuts which could mean 1,800 job losses
Edinburgh University staff are on strike today in the first of a series of walk-outs over plans for £140 million of cuts and a refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Members of the University and College Union (UCU) were mounting picket lines across the university and holding a rally in George Square. The union estimates that £140m cuts could see 1,800 staff lose their jobs. It said the cuts would be the biggest ever made by a university in Scotland, and claimed the university had not made the case for why they were pursuing such massive cuts while, at the same time, planning record capital expenditure. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A UCU Scotland rally at the Scottish Parliament earlier this year against threatened job cuts | Lisa Ferguson The union argued there were other areas where the university could make savings that did not involve cutting staff numbers and damaging the teaching and research which are central to the university's mission. For example, the union said senior management recently announced plans to spend £400,000 on public relations and media consultants, and the university regularly appeared near the top of rankings on principals' and senior staff pay. Today's stoppage, timed to coincide with a university open day, follows a ballot where 84 per cent of UCU members at the university voted for strike action and 93 per cent to back action short of strike. The turnout was 60 per cent. UCU members overwhelmingly rejected a last-minute management offer to avert the strike as too little, too late with 92 per cent voting to reject. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Further strike action is planned for the start of the new academic year in September. And UCU members will also take part in action short of strike, including working to contract and boycotting administrative work relating to implementing the cuts. The union is also considering a marking and assessment boycott as well as telling members not to use their personal devices for work. But it said it was holding off escalation of the dispute to give senior managers the opportunity to end the dispute by ruling out compulsory redundancies. Sophia Woodman, president of the Edinburgh University UCU branch, said: 'Taking strike action is the very last thing UCU members at Edinburgh want to do but the decision of the principal to press ahead with huge cuts and the refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies has simply left us no choice. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'University staff are worried about the future and whether they'll have a job this time next year. We are striking on Open Day to sound the alarm about the future of research and teaching at the university, because we care deeply about the quality of education we provide to our students. 'Staff are stunned to see university senior management pressing ahead with plans to spend vast sums on public relations consultants and increase spending on buildings while cutting the staff who teach students and carry out world leading research. Even at this late stage it's not too late for the university to rule out the use of compulsory redundancies and end this dispute.' A university spokesperson said: 'Open Day is a hugely important event in our calendar, and we are delighted to be welcoming thousands of potential students to our campus. While we respect colleagues' right to take part in industrial action, we are doing our utmost to keep any disruption to a minimum.'
Scotsman
5 hours ago
- Business
- Scotsman
AI spending vows should be good for business
The government knows AI can have a positive effect on public services and the economy, says Mark Ferguson Mark Ferguson looks at the impact of Chancellor Rachel Reeves' recent handouts on innovative tech companies Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The importance being placed on AI and other technologies as drivers of UK economic growth is evident from funding commitments outlined in the Government's annual Spending Review. The pledges made by Chancellor Rachel Reeves will have implications for organisations that both develop and deploy AI solutions, for how UK-based technology companies and universities might innovate, and for the way public sector bodies will operate in future. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The review envisages more than £2 billion of public funds being used to implement the AI opportunities action plan that the government endorsed earlier this year. This, it said, will mean 'a twentyfold expansion' of the capacity of the UK's AI Research Resource, which was established under the previous government to provide so-called 'super-computer' support for AI research. The housing area for Edinburgh University's planned Exascale supercomputer Up to £500 million will also be used on the creation of a new UK Sovereign AI Unit to help 'support the emergence of national AI champions' in tandem with the British Business Bank, which itself is to get almost £3 billion in increased funding 'to support companies to start, scale and grow in the UK'. Another major technology-related funding commitment set out in the spending review is the up to £750 million pledged for a new supercomputer at Edinburgh University - described by the government as an asset that 'will give scientists in all UK universities access to computational power that can be found in only a handful of other nations'. In her announcement, Reeves further pledged £240 million for the AI Security Institute and at least £1 billion to support the scaling up of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency - which provides R&D funding for technological and scientific breakthroughs - as part of a wider £22 billion R&D funding commitment. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Another £1.9 billion was pledged for digital infrastructure, to ensure wider access to and speedier broadband connectivity, as part of wider infrastructure investment commitments. Further funding has also been pledged to support the use of AI in government as part of a broad efficiency drive. The UK's ability to produce its own AI infrastructure, data, and skilled workforce is important for the public sector for enabling focused research on the UK's most critical priorities like healthcare and defence, and for supporting academics and start-ups with affordable resources to train AI models. It should also allow access to AI compute at times of disruption. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is arguably the biggest winner among government departments from the chancellor's spending review, with an average annual growth of 7.4% in day-to-day spending over the next five years, which outstrips every other departmental rise comfortably. The government has spoken favourably since Day One about the positive impact that AI can have on public services and the economy, and based on the Spending Review pledges, it is putting its money where its mouth is. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Many of the details announced make good on the commitments made as part of the government's response to the AI opportunities action plan in January, when it committed to accepting all 50 recommendations in the plan. For businesses attention will now turn to the publication of the government's industrial strategy, which is expected to be published shortly, for further details on how digital and technologies can contribute as one of the eight growth-driving sectors.
Scotsman
7 hours ago
- Health
- Scotsman
Child neglect in Scotland is an epidemic and we need to talk about it
PA If there's a case for another national inquiry, it is this Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Demi-Leigh had 14 teeth removed, some still her baby milk teeth, under general anaesthetic. Her mum had mental health problems and addiction issues and her stepdad was in prison. There was no one to ensure she had a clean toothbrush and toothpaste, much less a bedtime routine, and this was the inevitable consequence. She was eight. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Taylor's mum and dad kept a Rottweiler in a cage in the living room. There was a crossbow in the bedroom, ostensibly by way of protection, because his home was the local drug den. The dog was regularly fed; Taylor was not. Drugs were within his reach in the fridge, food was not. At the age of 10 he was barely attending school, instead spending most of his time in unimaginably filthy conditions in the family flat. Richie, five, was so obese he was unable to toilet on his own and none of his primary one peers would spend time with him. His isolation manifested itself in a violent, biting temper. The violent, biting temper made him more isolated in turn. I have, of course, changed names to protect their identities but Demi-Leigh and Taylor and Richie's stories will be achingly familiar to anyone who sits on the children's panel or works in a school or in a social work department or a hospital or anywhere else young people are. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad These children and thousands like them are victims of a great many things, the chief of which is neglect. Child neglect in Scotland is an epidemic. It ruins childhoods and has serious knock-on effects on wider society and future generations. Yet we don't really talk about child neglect in any coordinated way, despite the efforts of social work experts and academics like, say, Edinburgh University's Brigid Daniel who has been talking about the effect of chronic neglect for decades. And we should talk about it. You might think this would be obvious in and of itself, but if you want to reduce such a thing as childhood to the practicalities of pounds and pence then it makes eminent good sense to tackle neglect at root. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Young people who are well supported flourish. They make a meaningful contribution to society and they fail to trouble the justice system. They are not a burden on the taxpayer but become a fiscal benefit to the state. This week there has been politicking about the will we/won't we matter of holding a public inquiry into child grooming gangs. Keir Starmer sent Baroness Louise Casey to carry out a review into abuse perpetrated by grooming gangs in England and Wales. Starmer has previously said he does not believe a public inquiry into the issue would be worthwhile but has now altered that position in light of Casey's findings. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad His change of heart has caused him problems. He has been accused of u-turning, which is never politically expedient. The opposition is having a field day, saying Labour is failing to tackle the gangs of men who are ruining the lives of girls and young women. Starmer has been accused - again - of merely following where Nigel Farage's Reform UK has first led. And another issue has arisen - should Scotland be included in any grooming gangs inquiry or, if not, should it hold its own? There has been an unedifying spat over the issue between the Labour MP Joani Reid and the SNP's Pete Wishart. Reid, MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, said it was vital there is a grooming gangs enquiry in Scotland, despite having voted against an inquiry being set up just five months ago. In response to Wishart's allegations of hypocrisy, Reid said her decision to vote against the founding of an inquiry was in response to a Tory amendment to Labour's Children and Wellbeing Bill. Reid was one of 350 Labour MPs who voted down that amendment on January 8 this year. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This kind of tit-for-tat helps no one and distracts from the fact the situation in Scotland differs from that of England. In England, eyes were averted from the abuse of young girls by Asian grooming gangs because of both a squeamishness in institutions afraid to be accused of racism and because of institutional misogyny that blamed victims for their own abuse. Girls in Scotland are being exploited, just as they are in England, but there is no real suggestion that organised rape circles are being ignored by officials. We have a judicial system that deals with grooming gangs and child rapists. We also already have an abuse inquiry ongoing now. The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry was set up 10 years ago, has cost millions of pounds and will cost millions more. Reid criticised the Scottish inquiry as being too limited in scope as it only considers children in care. She is only partially right - the definition of 'care' here is extremely wide-ranging. It includes children in, say, hospital or children in fee-paying boarding schools. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It would be possible to expand the inquiry to look for evidence of mass child grooming of the type in England, rather than setting up a new system. The problem with such a long-running and costly inquiry is that the can is kicked down the road, any recommendations are a long time coming and when they do come they are not implemented. Organised child abuse is abhorrent but we should trust the justice system to deal with it. During the Covid-19 lockdown children were returned from foster placements to known situations of family neglect because there was nowhere else to put them, for example. Social workers were unable to enter homes to carry out welfare checks. There are all sorts of knock-on effects from these elements of covid that are being quietly overlooked. What we don't know is the full scale of the devastating impact of child neglect, particularly post-pandemic.
Times
11 hours ago
- Health
- Times
Simple blood test could provide first reliable diagnosis for ME
Scientists have found biological signatures in the blood of people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), a breakthrough that could lead to the first reliable test for the debilitating condition. ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), affects an estimated 400,000 people in the UK. Symptoms can include pain, brain fog and extremely low energy levels that do not improve with rest. These often become dramatically worse after even minor physical effort, a phenomenon known as post-exertional malaise. There is no cure and the cause is unknown. A diagnosis is typically made by ruling out other illnesses, a process that can take years. The new study, led by researchers from Edinburgh University, may mark a turning point. Using data from the UK Biobank, they compared blood samples from 1,455 ME patients with those of more than 131,000 healthy people and identified dozens of molecules that differed in concentrations between the two, as well as different cell counts. The changes in the ME patients, who all had mild to moderate forms of the disease, were largely related to chronic inflammation, insulin resistance and liver dysfunction. The findings were replicated in a group of American patients and healthy controls. Professor Chris Ponting, of the university's Institute of Genetics and Cancer, said: 'For so long people with ME/CFS have been told it's all in their head. It's not. We see [it] in their blood. 'Evidence of a large number of replicated and diverse blood biomarkers that differentiate between ME/CFS cases and controls should dispel any lingering perception it is caused by deconditioning and exercise intolerance.' The study found 116 'biomarkers' for ME in the blood of men and women with the condition — a key finding, because ME can affect the sexes differently. These markers did not change according to how active the patients were, consistent with the view that graded exercise therapy, which aims to gradually increase activity levels, is unlikely to be helpful. The strongest differences were found in people who reported post-exertional malaise, which may underscore its central role in the illness. Dr Sjoerd Beentjes, of the university's School of Mathematics, said: 'Blood differences are sometimes attributed to reduced activity levels rather than ME/CFS directly. Our study provides strong evidence ME/CFS affects blood traits through paths other than activity.' The authors stressed that the research was at an early stage with no guarantees a test would be possible. The government pledged last year to improve ME research and the NHS agreed to assess services for patients across England after an inquest into the death at 27 of Maeve Boothby O'Neill in 2021. She had suffered from ME since she was a teenager. The daughter of Sarah Boothby and Sean O'Neill, a senior journalist at The Times, she was left bedbound, unable to speak and malnourished. The coroner issued a prevention of future deaths report in October, the first of its kind for ME, and urged Wes Streeting, the health secretary, NHS officials and health bodies to take action to address the 'non-existent' care and lack of funding for research.
The Herald Scotland
13 hours ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Edinburgh academics strike over £140m funding cuts
Academics will take to picket lines surrounding the university this morning, and a rally will be held in the city's George Square at 11AM. The strikes are intended to disrupt the university's annual Open Day, where prospective students and their families will visit the Old College campus. Additional pickets are set to be carried out between 8-12 September as students return from the summer holidays. Bosses at the university aim to reduce spending by £140m. (Image: Newsquest) Sophia Woodman, president of the Edinburgh University UCU branch, said: 'Taking strike action is the very last thing UCU members at Edinburgh want to do but the decision of the principal to press ahead with huge cuts and the refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies has simply left us no choice. 'University staff are worried about the future and whether they'll have a job this time next year. We are striking on Open Day to sound the alarm about the future of research and teaching at the university, because we care deeply about the quality of education we provide to our students. Woodman added: 'Staff are stunned to see university senior management pressing ahead with plans to spend vast sums on public relations consultants and increase spending on buildings while cutting the staff who teach students and carry out world leading research. Even at this late stage it's not too late for the university to rule out the use of compulsory redundancies and end this dispute.' Read more: 'It was clunky at best': Edinburgh University pulls 'don't be snobs' guidance Edinburgh University could cut 1750 staff jobs, claims union Edinburgh University at risk of lawsuit over policy to make all toilets mixed-sex University principal Peter Mathieson, who recently told MSPs he was not sure how much money he made, has also come under fire. Asked by Education Committee convenor Douglas Ross to confirm his salary, Mathieson was unable to do so, quipping: 'I don't carry that figure round in my head. I recognise that I'm very well paid. 'You could pay the senior team of the University of Edinburgh nothing and that would make largely no difference to the size of the expenditure challenge we face.' UCU General Secretary Jo Grady UCU General Secretary Jo Grady has also hit out at the chief executive, who makes around £418,000 a year. She said: 'Peter Mathieson has been warned often enough about the impact his cuts will have on staff, students and the university's reputation but the refusal not to rule out compulsory redundancies means that the fault for this strike going ahead lies firmly at his door.' A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: 'Open Day is a hugely important event in our calendar, and we are delighted to be welcoming thousands of potential students to our campus. Visitors will get a taste of what classes might be like, see accommodation options as well as experiencing the city itself. "While we respect colleagues' right to take part in industrial action, we are doing our utmost to keep any disruption to a minimum and have endeavoured to keep those planning to attend well informed.'
