What I wrote at Lib Dem Voice

November 28, 2006

Oxford clutches to the past

For those who’ve been following the ‘Oxford governance reforms’ story, today was the day of the crunch vote.

I trooped along to the Sheldonian Theatre this afternoon late enough to avoid much of the debate - which fell a long way short of any Socratic ideals - to mark my ‘X’ backing the Vice-Chancellor’s attempts to drag my alma mater and employer-at-one-remove kicking and screaming into the modern world. (About which I posted in more detail here.)

He, we, lost. Which is the problem with democracy, really - it throws up some bloody silly decisions. Not sure what happens next…

But if the Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, is considering his options (and I wouldn’t blame him for a moment) he should remember there’s now a vacancy at the BBC.

Here’s some footage of the moment the vote was announced. Unfortunately I got the zoom and on/off buttons confused when the result was read out. Still, it gives a flavour of proceedings.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Alright Stephen

Just staggered onto your website following a link from the Guardian and looked through a few posts. Noticed a mention to David Milliband's website. I particularly liked his description of the South Shields constituency: "The record books show it is the only constituency in existence since the Great Reform Act of 1832 never to have elected a Conservative MP. ". Pace Mrs Merton, so David, what first attracted you to a constituency that hasn't returned a Concervative MP since 1832?

Anonymous said...

PS - it's Ben Roughead by the way - forgot to sign my last post, doh.

Anonymous said...

Golly. Turkeys really DO vote for Christmas...

Anonymous said...

Be interesting to see what Alan Bennett has to say on the issue. I tend to go with his view that Universities should be centres of academic excellence and not executive training centres for big business.

Stephen Tall said...

Good to hear from you, Ben. Who needs FriendsReunited?

Ian - I'm not sure anyone would disagree with that view! How you attain academic excellence is where the debate gets interesting.