Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from Ulick (see all)

Ulick has commented 199 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on No boys and girls you are not still MPs…
   on 20 April 2010 at 2:36 pm

   Mick,

   thanks for that link. That’s very impressive use of the new media she has going there.

   I can’t really speak for any of the other Parties, but what is encouraging about the SF use of Facebook and Twitter is that the impetus seems to be coming from the ground up as opposed to leadership directive. The only gripe I would have so far is that most of the cumainn are using it to make connections with each other rather than with their constituents. Hopefully this will change as they realise the potential.

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2. Comment on “Until a new Parliament is elected, MPs do not exist.”
   on 20 April 2010 at 4:42 am

   Does anybody care?

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3. Comment on No boys and girls you are not still MPs…
   on 20 April 2010 at 4:40 am

   The thing that annoys me more about all three twitter accounts and numerous others and FB profiles is their creation dates – those three 14 Jan, 2 March, 30 March. They’ll all become inactive once the election is over too. An electoral tool not a genuine engagement with social media.

   That remains to be seen Mark. I’ve noticed the flurry of SF activity on FB and I’ve encouraged those behind it. At the moment it seems to be a genuine to make connections and “grow networks” as Mick might say – well apart from the usual juvenile shite from Ógra who seem to have no understanding netiquette and are treating it like an extension of BeBo.

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4. Comment on Team Martin McAuley for North Belfast…
   on 19 April 2010 at 4:42 pm

   What about the small matter of this Columbian arrest warrant?

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5. Comment on Margaret’s watch not chiming with backbenchers?
   on 19 April 2010 at 3:56 pm

   After the slaughter of Margaret’s golden boy on the Politics Show yesterday, I doubt she is going to be around for very long.

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6. Comment on Unionist politics vanishing at Queens…
   on 18 April 2010 at 11:57 pm

   Fitz like any other large institution it has it good parts and bad parts.

   Slug, all academics are used to getting assessed in the RAE but the problem is QUB is using the money from student fees and grants to fund building programs, overseas outreach programmes and academic research with little or no investment in providing for teaching. This is illustrated perfectly with the redundancies last year when almost all of those targeted were those with a primary responsibility for teaching or teaching support.

   On the one hand QUB is getting money to provide quality teaching and they pay off their best teachers. On the other, the teaching slack has to be taken up by the remaing academics, so it’s not unusual for a Prof to be walking around a lab taking attendance roles or spending hours replying to basic student inquiries. A crazy situation given the money they are on and certainly not the best use of an academics time especially if you want them to concentrate on research.

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7. Comment on Unionist politics vanishing at Queens…
   on 18 April 2010 at 10:15 pm

   Fitz, we all know that A-Level results are no measure of quality but may be an indicator of how successful a student may be, but that’s all besides the point. I don’t think it’s fair to compare a student of today with one from 20 or 30 years ago especially based on anecdotal evidence from tutorials/essays.

   Higher educational has changed massively in even the past ten years partly due to the effects of globalisation and associated technologies like the Internet. Students now come with different skills and different ways of accessing and processing information – the challenge for university lecturers is to recognise this and design their courses and teaching approaches accordingly. So just as A-Level results are not a measure of quality neither is anecdotal evidence from tutorials/essays, though admittedly they may be indicators of performance in particular subjects.

   The predicament QUB academics find themselves in now is that research is prioritised over teaching so that the VC can get himself up that league table he keeps spouting about, and so their is no incentive for a lecturer to put any effort into teaching. The VC thinks that getting up that table will attract better academics and better students to follow, but that still doesn’t get around the fact that QUB always has drawn it’s students from the local community and for simple geographical reasons almost certainly always will. Just to throw another spanner in the VCs works I believe that league table is about to change drastically as eastern European and Asian universities are about to be accommodated within it.

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8. Comment on Unionist politics vanishing at Queens…
   on 18 April 2010 at 9:20 pm

   In what way Fitz? You say that “The University has gone to the dogs… But talk to any veteran academic and they will tell you that the quality of student is at an all time low”

   I’m not sure how you are measuring ‘quality’ but we’ll let that slide – the plain fact is, and this is something the VC can’t get his head around, that the vast majority of QUB students come from Ulster (9 counties), always have and always will. When university access was opened up, that allowed more people from the Ulster to gain entry, with less points than before. Now if you are saying that QUB has become a BAD university because they’ve taken in more students, then are you saying to become a GOOD university they should shut those students out? That would have all sorts of legal and funding implications.

   Queen’s is not a bad university, it is a pretty good regional university and most academics do a good job under extremely difficult circumstances.

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9. Comment on Unionist politics vanishing at Queens…
   on 18 April 2010 at 8:51 pm

   No harm to you Cynic2, but I think you are spoofing or someone is spoofing to you. What are these tutorial discussions on that so many extremist republican students would feel the need to gang up on poor defenceless unionist students? Outside of Irish History & Politics modules I can’t think of any which would give rise to such a discussion. What is the tutor doing while all this is going on?

   On the poll itself, the NL is trying to portray this as evidence of the Protestant brain drain. That is a myth and there is no evidence to suggest that proportionally more Protestant than Catholic students choose to study elsewhere.

   On Queen’s, the student body is fairly representative of the religious divide in the community at that age group. As for it going to the dogs, QUB has never been more representative off or accessible to the community as a whole and has never had as many students. It has also gained membership of the prestigious Russell Group – all of this against a backdrop of funding cuts and staff redundancies as we saw last summer.

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10. Comment on ‘Merger with Fianna Fail – Not on my watch’
    on 18 April 2010 at 5:23 am

    Good (principled) move by Ritchie but it’ll do nothing for her up here except piss people off within her own Party.

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