Tag: vote

visitors and residents

Unique creation by Sophie of Kellogg. Commercial use by negotiation.
Unique creation by Sophie of Kellogg. Commercial use by negotiation.

Last night I dined at Kellogg again. Now that I am a visiting fellow rather than a resident one I was pleased to be invited to be guest Chamberlaine for the evening.

It was Scholars evening, so we celebrated the many generous gifts of donors to the College, some of whom are alumni, and others who just believe that the work of the College and the work of these individual students is worth supporting. I had lovely company at dinner sitting with social policy champion Amanda and Heather, Desmond Tutu Scholar and Wikipedia researcher.

I chose the importance of voting as the theme for my after dinner speech. We had a number of guests from Somerville College so I was able to make reference to Mary Somerville’s campaigns for women’s suffrage as well as the recent MCR elections, the Scottish independence referendum and the imminent general election.

I was also able to remind the current University of Oxford students that until 1950 as a graduate of that ( and this) university you would actually have had 2 votes in a UK general election. One for the area of the country where you reside, one for the university constituency.

The university constituencies, Oxford, Cambridge, University of London, the ancient Scottish universities and Queens Belfast all sent elected MPs to Westminster.

This was a wheeze started by the Scots and imported to England following the union of the crowns. It went on for a very long time. Several Cromwells, Pitt the Younger, Lord Palmerston, Francis Bacon, Issac Newton, Robert Peel and Ramsay MacDonald benefitted from the arrangement. Needless to say, it did nothing for the town and gown relations in any of the cities and was all ended by the Representation of the Peoples Act in 1948.

In preparing the speech I made use of a very handy OER from University of Cambridge: ‘Dons in the House’.

 

stand up and be counted

University of Edinburgh Digital Image Collections CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
The Student newspaper. University of Edinburgh Digital Image Collections CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

It is no secret that I was born and raised in Scotland* and that my return home to work here co-incides conveniently with the opportunity to vote.

Our ‘Towards Scottish Independence? Understanding the Referendum‘ MOOC is well underway and on Wednesday evening this week I’ve been invited by Elize to chair our  #ISdecides event. The assembled staff of University of Edinburgh Information Services  will hear the options weighed in the balance and decide which side is wanting.

We’ll be bringing MOOC-style voting and polling  into the debate chamber. It’ll be a lively evening and no mistake.

 

* you can tell by my accent