Universally of Salford: June 2011

Sunday 19 June 2011

Ian't Getting Away With It!

Looks like out old friend Ian Austin is finally feeling the heat under the collar for his folly as Managing Partner at Halliwells LLP (in administration).

The Lawyer are now reporting that the joint administrators, Dermot Power and Shay Bannon, have instructed the 32 former Equity Partners who divvied up a £20.4m property windfall and put it straight into their own pockets to repay the money, plus costs and interest.

We at Universally of Salford have been highlighting Austin's hubris on this issue for almost a year now.

It will be interesting to see just how much Austin pocketed and how much he is ultimately expected to pay back. One hopes that the University of Salford have been paying him handsomely as their instructed solicitor in their libel case against Dr Gary Duke!

What is 'Universally of Salford'?

The openness of any social structure can be validated by how it treats criticism. A democracy would never be described as open or liberal if it failed to encourage a climate in which criticism and opposition to the ideas of an executive body can flourish. A University is no different.

During our experiences with the University of Salford, there has never been an effective outlet for the sort of objections to executive policies and decisions raised in this blog. Almost every attempt we have ever made to investigate any controversial decisions, activities, spending or events has been met with threats, derision and concealment.

The Students' Union – the obvious forum in which to raise these issues – remains silent owing to virtually the entirety of its funding being conditional upon donations from the University.

It is our opinion that the University of Salford can never improve if it, as an institution, cannot distinguish between good and bad decision making. Achieving this is conditional upon both the student and staff bodies being kept informed about both the good and bad within the University.

Since the University have a monopoly over their internal publications (including, we would argue, the Student Newspaper), and since this 'monopolised' publicity is almost without exception propagandist, it is our opinion that a purely critical alternative ought be available to staff and students to balance out this inequity and assist in keeping both parties informed.