Letters to the Editor

With regard to your editorial on 7th February. It is damaging to both parties when such poorly researched rubbish is published in your pages. After years of effort, progress is being made in relations between IC and ICSM at St Mary’s. Calling us "those students", "pesky medics" and suggesting that something which would be of benefit to us would be "at the expense of IC students" is unpatriotic and confrontational.

The Student Union of the new Medical School will have to run that union on 5 separate sites. It will have to have a sabbatical president. It will have to have separate sports teams if it is to continue the tradition of competing in Medical School competitions (the UH cup). All these things will cost money, and are a cost unique to ICSM. The other CCUs have nothing similar.

Regardless of the rights or wrongs of closer social integration, these necessities mean that the level of funding will have to be different. Our fellow students currently based on the South Kensington campus will not notice the difference in their funding, because it will not decrease. Nor will our funding increase. We will have more students to cater for than ever before, and more sites than ever before on which to do it.

Please don’t suggest that the submissions of SMHMSSU to the IC hierarchy were hasty or ill thought-out. They weren’t. Prof Swanson didn’t give in to "a room of baying medics", he saw the sense of our proposals. They are the best thing for IC.

With the merger approaching now in its physical sense, harmony and closer links are more important than ever. Reactionary reflex criticism of anything seen to be "good for Mary’s" must stop. Medics are going to be a significant part of life at IC from 1998, making up 24% of the students. This is something we are all going to have to get used to. We should all be looking for what we have to gain from these closer links, not what we stand to lose. With Charing Cross about to join IC, what sort of impression does this in-fighting give to them?

For our part, we are committed to closer and more friendly links. Would that that were reciprocated by the rest of the students of IC.

Yours faithfully,

Nick Jenkins, 1st year rep

Your letter contains a lot of sense, something that is often missing in this debate. However, it also contains a lot of the usual St Mary’s propaganda, which leads me to suggest that it wasn’t penned by yourself. For a fuller reply see the editorial.

Dear Mr Feakes,

The person who wrote against protest in Felix 1079 has got their facts very wrong. Changes in Law brought in by Conservative governments over the last 17 years have eroded the rights of the people in this country to such an extent that they are forced to break laws that did not exist before. Protest, often violent, has always been the driving force behind changes in legislation in this country since the Breach of the Peace Act of 1324. The authorities ignore reasoned argument and would never bow without pressure, this country has riots whereas others have revolutions, I know which I prefer. The Bill of Rights of 1689, though Statute Law over Britain and the European Community, has been ignored even otherwise the incumbents of the House of Commons would have all been hung for treason along with the lovers of Princess Di; so even politicians ignore the Law.

The two people killed at veal export protests were both protesters (one died of natural causes anyway) and by the thinking of the author appeared to deserve the consequences. Is this what he/she really intended to convey? With regard to trespass, it is not a criminal offence to trespass anywhere in this land although you could face civil litigation for damages caused by that trespass.

Finally, the largest number of deaths worldwide from E-coli were the result of eating McDonalds burgers (17 in the US, 2 in Sunderland) so is telling the truth really a thing that should be stifled by the improper use of libel law?

Yours Sincerely,

Nicholas Royall

I am glad that you identified the ‘pro’ article as provocative. I would add that the CJA 1994 to makes trespass an offence.

Dear Alex,

Re: Names of Union nights

Out of interest, how long do you think it will be before the Union call their Friday night "Naked girls getting off with each other"/"Four naked girls and one bloke"/"Cum-sucking lesbians"?

Yours sincerely,

Sacha Manson-Smith