Hello,

Phew, I'm glad someone else started the ball rolling, because I 
wasn't really sure how this worked.  For some reason I was 
convinced this was like a bulletin board and I was just too dumb to 
figure out how to post onto it.  Aside from that there was the first 
email sent out after the conference which said that " the relevant 
people would be contacted", and since no-one did contact I 
assumed I was irrelevant. (to misquote Groucho I certainly didn't 
want to belong to any club that didn't want me as a member..)

From my point of view I thought this list might be useful as a way of 
trading information about how people do things.  After the 
conference I was able to come back here and say that pretty much 
everyone was either already doing or planning to implement the 
same kind of working practices and approach I've been setting up 
here.  The thing is I had a lot of the "but other universities don't do 
it that way" kind of approach (to me a curious and irrelevant kind of 
remark akin to saying we shouldn't row down a river because at 
Cambridge they punt) and to be able to come back and report that 
the other Universities did do the same was very helpful.

I completely agree that the discussion should include everyone 
involved.  I'd also, like I say, appreciate the chance to get ideas on 
how others do things, and to share the ways I do things here to find 
out what I can do better and what I've missed.

Cheers then,
Rob

> Dear Miriam
> 
> Although I signed on for the 'discussion group' I am a little
> concerned that Health and Safety has been sidelined. I understood that
> the purpose of the Palatine event 'An Inspector Falls' was to broaden
> the debate within the academic as well as the technical community.
> What appears to have happened is, that with the advent of 'our'
> discussion group, we are yet again wrestling with the thorny issue of
> Health and Safety without the main protagonists, the people who drive
> the research, the staff who direct students, the academics who
> notionally give students free rein and leave 'somebody else' to play
> the bad guy, the one who stops things happening. This last point, as
> we discovered, is far from the truth. Those who currently supervise
> H&S are pro active facilitators, not the brown coated harbingers of
> doom and preachers of restrictive practice that some colleagues fear.
> Within Palatine, the whole community has to take responsibility for
> its own health and safety. Any debate should be broadened out to our
> whole community, not restricted to the converted. You ask whether we
> are shy or too busy, I am just disappointed that Health and Safety,
> something that we all have a legal responsibility for, should be
> delegated or is that relegated?
> 
> 
> Duncan Woodward-Hay
> Performance Production Tutor
> Theatre and Performance Studies
> University of Hull @ Scarborough
> 
> Tel. 01723 357210
> 


Rob Hemus
Theatre Workshop - English Literature
tel: 0114 22 28455
e-mail: [log in to unmask]