Just be honest

Let me level with you. Since becoming Editor I have very often worn glasses. I consider myself a contact wearer. However, I ran out of contacts and I just haven’t had the time to go to get more. Okay, I’ll be more honest, Ihave had the time to get more contacts; I just personally preferred to spend that time relaxing. So, in the spirit of honesty, I have changed the picture in the paper. That’s a more accurate representation of what I usually look like when I walk about campus (except in real life I’m much more handsome, and taller, just). I’m sorry for duping you all for so long, but I decided to fess up. I hope you appreciate me telling you the truth and not sugar coating it.

The reason I say this is because of some of the articles in the News section. Relax, I haven’t made a bunch of stuff up. Matt Proctor’s article comparing Oxbridge to Imperial is an interesting read and shows that some people have it just as tough, if not tougher, than us. Truth is: I wish we could have managed to compare the full timetable and also a mean “time working” statistic between all equivalent (and roughly equivalent) courses at Imperial and Oxbridge.

Unfortunately, as you can I’m sure understand, that would take an insane amount of time, effort and research. It would be a really great way of seeing how “hard” the degrees are and a great way of ranking universities. However, endless time and resources, and the ability to get every student to honestly say the exact amount of time they are working each week, is pretty much impossible. It would be a great article, but isn’t possible, so we had to do what we could with our limited resources. I think it still has its merits. In fact, I think the pure contact hour approach is a good indicator for science subjects about how much work you are expected to do. More lectures and labs = more work at home, as more revision, because you have more content to learn.

Why not engineering subjects? To be honest: it’s because it was difficult to compare Cambridge and Imperial as they do General Engineering and also couldn’t find the information. So, instead of only some information, I thought it’s best to focus on the science and medicine and leave the engineering to a possible later date. Also, if you keep holding features like this back until they are perfect then you will never run them.

The reason I thought of honesty was because of the front page about the hospitals closing the A&E Departments. Shaping a Healthier Future... by closing A&E Departments and making a hub in one hospital that will make travel times very long. I’ve been in an ambulance with someone and can tell you, the quicker it gets to the hospital the better for both patient and those with them anxiously waiting. If they said “we have to close A&E Departments as we need to reduce our deficit and we think this is a good way of doing it as with no money we can’t run any hospitals” and say “in my position what would you do? No hospitals, or some with reduced service” then at least they would be being honest. If money were not an issue here would you still close them? That’s my key question to them. You can all guess the answer to that one. (Note that I’m deliberately ignoring the possibility that it’s all just about making the Trust into a Primary Health Care Trust.)

Of course, they could be being completely honest and have no worries about the deficit at all. The trouble is that everyone is so full of spin, sugar coating, and gentle positive highlighting that people assume someone is attempting to pull the wool over your eyes. It’s problematic to say the least.

So, tell the truth, then maybe everyone can just be honest and we’ll be able to have constructive, serious, real world discussions.

Oh, and that drop cap (the big “L”) atthe start was supposed to always be in editorials, but I kept forgetting to do it.