On 9 Oct 2006 16:07:48 -0700, "Mizter T" wrote:

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
Incidentally are there any student
unions in London unaffiliated to the NUS?

Yes - Imperial has a long history of being out (they were a founder member
in 1922, left in 1923 and only came back for brief periods in the 1930s and
1970s - the last was when their President was Trevor Philips). Currently
with the college pulling out of the University of London, some in the SU are
looking towards NUS affiliation as a replacement for the loss of ULU. Were I
a betting man I would not bet on them succeeding.

I didn't know about either Imperial's non-affiliation to the NUS, nor
it's imminent departure from the UoL. That seems like a big step, but
of course I know nothing of the background - apart from quickly reading
just now that it has gained degree awarding powers. One of my
neighbours is a Prof at Imperial, he's a quiet guy but I'll accost him
some day and ask him about it.

I understand it's a done deal as of last week.

My ill-informed logic suggests that a London SU would do well to have
an affiliation with some umbrella entity. I guess the choice isn't that
great - ULU or NUS (or both). That said AFAICS it's even less of a
choice outside London - NUS or not NUS. Despite all it's faults I can't
help but feel that the benefits of affiliating with the NUS outweigh
the cons - esp. if the SU is out of London, as there's nowhere else to
turn. But I confess I know little about all these machinations.

There have been movements to create an alternative to NUS. NUS tends
to be unpopular because of a perceived closeness to the Labour Party
(backing tuition fees in 1997 really damaged its reputation) and that
it seems to care more about furthering the individual political
careers than about helping the students it is supposed to represent.

The fact that it employs a significant number of staff who can go on
to a university campus during a referendum campaign and spread
barefaced lies to further the cause of affiliation to NUS also doesn't
help.

By the by I've just been most amused by reading the Wikipedia page on
ULU [1] - in particular the semi-coherent section on the handover
party, and what appears to be an arcane yet absurd dispute on when
exactly this should occur. Some of the stereotypes about student
politics are not that far off the mark!

It generally results from which sabbs get their parties organised
first...

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:01:44 +0100, Barry Salter wrote:

Au contraire. It's entirely possible for an NR Ticket Office to issue a
Travelcard including A-D [1] by doing it as if you'd bought it *from*
Amersham. [2]

[2] In other words, by issuing an Amersham to Zone R1256 Travelcard

Would such a ticket be valid to Chesham?

Mizter T wrote:

Incidentally are there any student
unions in London unaffiliated to the NUS?

Yes - Imperial has a long history of being out (they were a founder
member
in 1922, left in 1923 and only came back for brief periods in the 1930s
and
1970s - the last was when their President was Trevor Philips). Currently
with the college pulling out of the University of London, some in the SU
are
looking towards NUS affiliation as a replacement for the loss of ULU.
Were I
a betting man I would not bet on them succeeding.

I didn't know about either Imperial's non-affiliation to the NUS, nor
it's imminent departure from the UoL. That seems like a big step, but
of course I know nothing of the background - apart from quickly reading
just now that it has gained degree awarding powers. One of my
neighbours is a Prof at Imperial, he's a quiet guy but I'll accost him
some day and ask him about it.

It's long and complicated but basically the current Imperial Rector has long
had a vision of Imperial as an independent entity, preferably charging huge
tuition fees, and being the London equivalent of MIT.

My ill-informed logic suggests that a London SU would do well to have
an affiliation with some umbrella entity. I guess the choice isn't that
great - ULU or NUS (or both). That said AFAICS it's even less of a
choice outside London - NUS or not NUS. Despite all it's faults I can't
help but feel that the benefits of affiliating with the NUS outweigh
the cons - esp. if the SU is out of London, as there's nowhere else to
turn. But I confess I know little about all these machinations.

Not totally. There's also the Aldwych Group, which is a collection of the
students' unions in the Russell Group. But there seems to be a running
debate within it about its purpose - some, mainly non NUS affiliates,
(Glasgow, Southampton, Imperial) seem to want it to do more and provide a
national voice as do some where the officers would like to leave NUS (e.g.
Bristol), whereas others seem to just want it as a body to lobby the Russell
Group.

The HE non affiliates are, off the top of my head, Glasgow, St. Andrew's,
Dundee (all of which are in the Coalition for Higher Education Students in
Scotland), Imperial, London Business School, possibly some other small UofL
specialist institutes, Open, Stranmillis, Buckingham, Sunderland and
Northampton. Of these at least two currently have ULU, three have CHESS and
two (Open, Buckingham) have a very specialised student base.

But say at SOAS whilst the SOAS SU isn't NUS affiliated it is
affiliated to ULU?

Erm sort of, although the exact nature of the relationship between College
SU and ULU is rather more complicated.

By the by I've just been most amused by reading the Wikipedia page on
ULU [1] - in particular the semi-coherent section on the handover
party, and what appears to be an arcane yet absurd dispute on when
exactly this should occur. Some of the stereotypes about student
politics are not that far off the mark!

Erm yes... But from my recollection it's usually Queen Mary (my own college)
which has the handover day. That entry looks like a typical product of the
ongoing debate between ULU and UCL.

James Farrar wrote:

There have been movements to create an alternative to NUS. NUS tends
to be unpopular because of a perceived closeness to the Labour Party
(backing tuition fees in 1997 really damaged its reputation) and that
it seems to care more about furthering the individual political
careers than about helping the students it is supposed to represent.

That's a part of it, but I think a bigger gripe stems from the high fees and
a strong sense that it isn't good value for money or terribly responsive to
what SUs want. For example the last NUS Conference in March did not even
debate the university lecturers' marking boycott, with the result that the
NUS position was decided by the National Executive and many SUs went public
in their opposition.

asdf wrote:
On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:01:44 +0100, Barry Salter wrote:

Au contraire. It's entirely possible for an NR Ticket Office to issue a
Travelcard including A-D [1] by doing it as if you'd bought it *from*
Amersham. [2]

[2] In other words, by issuing an Amersham to Zone R1256 Travelcard

Would such a ticket be valid to Chesham?

Yes, Chesham is in Zone D

Barry Salter wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

I also guess NR don't issue such YPR-discounted Travelcards as zones
A-D is LU territory, which is a shame. It's also possible to buy from
NR ticket offices a _non-discounted_ Day Travelcard that covers zones
A-D - see section L of the NR National Fares Manual (page L1 [2]) - but
seemingly you can only do this for the off-peak Fay Travelcard, not the
peak version.


Au contraire. It's entirely possible for an NR Ticket Office to issue a
Travelcard including A-D [1] by doing it as if you'd bought it *from*
Amersham. [2]

It was covered in an issue of Newsrail Express, but said issue appears
to be no longer on the ATOC website.

HTH,

Barry


You've missed my point! You have however raised some other issues I'd
like to comment on. I'll start by clarifying things.

[Pages numbers quoted refer to Section L or F of the NFM].

(1) What I was trying to get across is this - when you buy a railcard
discounted Day Travelcard (YPR or any of the other railcards) what you
get depends on where you bought it:

* Buy at an NR ticket office and you'll get a plain-vanilla zones 1-6
off-peak Day Travelcard.

* Buy at an Underground ticket office and you'll get a zones 1-D
off-peak Day Travelcard - i.e. LU chucks in zones A-D for _free_.

Contributors to utl and uk.railway have stated many times that this is
LU's modus operandi - for example see this 2006 thread [1].

Bizarrely ATOC's publicity for some railcards wrongly denies it's even
possible to buy a railcard-discounted Day Travelcard from an LU ticket
office - see the FAQ answers on the YPR, Family Railcard and Senior
Railcard websites [2] - similar text is included in the T&Cs in the
leaflets for those railcards.


(2) Page L1 details "Through Fares to LU Met Line Stations Outside the
London Fare Zones Area".

The add-on to the off-peak Day Travelcard price of £1.10 makes sense -
it's the difference between the price of a Z1-6 Travelcard (£ 6.30)
and a Z1-D Travelcard (£7.40).

_But_ tickets are issued as point-to-point CDRs - so someone who wanted
to visit several stations in Zones A-D (for example go for a walk
between Amersham and Chesham, or visit both Amersham and Watford)
couldn't do this with an NR point-to-point ticket. Thus they;d get a
less flexible ticket than if they'd purchased a Zones A-D Day
Travelcard from an LU ticket office.

Also it's unclear to me whether a railcard holder could get any
discount on an NR-issued Day Travelcard with an add-on CDR to Chesham.
_If_ it was possible would it be a discounted £4.80 Day Travelcard
plus a discounted CDR at 75p (i.e. third off £1.10) equalling £5.55?
Or would it just be a third off £7.40, so £4.95. (I'm not sure how
rail fares are rounded up or down so apols for any minor errors there).

Given that page K1.8 states "Railcard discounts do not apply to these
LU only tickets" so it appears the above scenarios are not possible.

Even if either was possible, it would still be more expensive than the
railcard reduced Zones 1-D Day Travelcard issued by LU, price £4.80 -
where Zones A-D are thrown in for free.


(3) Ignoring the issue of railcard reductions it would be much easier
if NR ticket offices were just able to issue straightforward Zones 1-D
Day Travelcards. Page K1.7, which is concerned with how to issue zonal
extensions to Travelcard holders, bizarrely re-categorises Zones A-D as
Zones 7-10! It really doesn't have to be this complicated!


(4) The language used on pages K1.3 and K1.4, section K of the NFM is,
I think, a little unclear. Under the "Out-Boundary" heading of the peak
and off-peak Day Travelcard sections it states "Tickets are also
available from the following LU stations on the Met Line at the
following prices: [...]".

To the uninitiated this almost suggests that a passenger can only buy
these tickets from the listed Met Line stations. Of course this is
wrong as any NR ticket office can issue a ticket from any other station
on the network - nonetheless I wouldn't necessarily see the harm in
including a sentence making this explicit. That said, the NFM is an
internal document and I suppose it's written on the presumption that
staff who consult it shouldn't need to be reminded of such things.


[1] Unless you want one with a Y-P or Forces Discount, it's a weekday,
and they're using FasTIS, as it erroneously applies the £8 Minimum Fare


Something that should IMO be corrected ASAP.

On 10 Oct 2006 04:48:26 -0700, wrote:

Au contraire. It's entirely possible for an NR Ticket Office to issue a
Travelcard including A-D [1] by doing it as if you'd bought it *from*
Amersham. [2]

[2] In other words, by issuing an Amersham to Zone R1256 Travelcard

Would such a ticket be valid to Chesham?

Yes, Chesham is in Zone D

And would the ticket be valid throughout Zone D? ISTM it would just be
valid to Amersham (and even then, for just one return journey from
Amersham to Moor Park, plus unlimited travel in Z1-6).

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

Incidentally are there any student
unions in London unaffiliated to the NUS?

Yes - Imperial has a long history of being out (they were a founder
member in 1922, left in 1923 and only came back for brief periods in
the 1930s and 1970s - the last was when their President was Trevor
Philips). Currently with the college pulling out of the University of
London, some in the SU are looking towards NUS affiliation as a
replacement for the loss of ULU.

I didn't know about either Imperial's non-affiliation to the NUS, nor
it's imminent departure from the UoL. That seems like a big step, but
of course I know nothing of the background - apart from quickly reading
just now that it has gained degree awarding powers.

It's long and complicated but basically the current Imperial Rector has long
had a vision of Imperial as an independent entity, preferably charging huge
tuition fees, and being the London equivalent of MIT.

Hmm. Let's see:

Not a proper university ... check
Largely overshadowed by the older real university is the same town ... check
Famously full of nerds ... check



I have to say, the whole University of London business is rather silly.
What on earth is the point of it? It does make sense for the institutions
which are less than full universities (SOAS, LSE, LSHTM, IC, etc) to club
together so that they have a semblance of a multi-faculty organisation,
and in particular to look after the smaller ones, but there's no reason
for UCL, King's, Queen Mary and the like to be roped in.

Of these at least two currently have ULU, three have CHESS

What's CHESS?

tom

--
Who would you help in a fight, Peter van der Linden or Bill Gates?

Tom Anderson wrote:

Of these at least two currently have ULU, three have CHESS

What's CHESS?

The Coalition of Higher Education Students in Scotland. It's made up of
several Scottish university SUs with an eye to lobbying Holyrood and other
devolved Scottish bodies. http://www.chessonline.org.uk/

asdf wrote:
On 10 Oct 2006 04:48:26 -0700, wrote:

Au contraire. It's entirely possible for an NR Ticket Office to issue a
Travelcard including A-D [1] by doing it as if you'd bought it *from*
Amersham. [2]

[2] In other words, by issuing an Amersham to Zone R1256 Travelcard

Would such a ticket be valid to Chesham?

Yes, Chesham is in Zone D

And would the ticket be valid throughout Zone D? ISTM it would just be
valid to Amersham (and even then, for just one return journey from
Amersham to Moor Park, plus unlimited travel in Z1-6).

Well strictly speaking its valid for unlimited journeys between
Amersham and zones 1-6 (so you could go to Amersham, pop to
Rickmansworth, then back to Amersham before going home - if you really
want to) but you'd have no trouble getting to Chesham also. This issue
with NR tickets is well known to staff.