If any of you listened to the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning 
you would have heard Selbourne versus Hanbury-Tenison. Unfortunately 
Selbourne did not do the greatest job of defending the RGS so your vote 
is now even more important....

Steve



Dr Sarah Holloway wrote:
> Dear All,
>  
> I've just been through my post and found another set of voting papers 
> from the RGS.  This time we have the opportunity to vote for the 
> Honorary Secretary and an Ordinary Councillor for the Expeditions and 
> Fieldwork Division.  I admit that this doesn't sound exciting but it is 
> on this occasion very important. The candidates pretty much fall into 
> two camps - academics who might see themselves as field scientists and 
> lay men (a term I am using specifically) who like to lead pioneering 
> expeditions.
>  
> Please can I urge you all to vote for the former group of academics, and 
> against the reactionary politics of the latter group. 
>  
> Pasted below is piece from the Spectator supporting those who are trying 
> to force the RGS into funding expensive expeditions with limited 
> scientific value.  The piece is only a paragraph long, but this gives 
> plenty of time to expose their anti-leftist, sexist and homophobic 
> attitudes, and still leave time to be personally offensive to Dr Rita 
> Gardner and Sir Gordon Conway.
>  
> Can you also consider asking colleagues in your Department to do the 
> same, or if you are Chair or Secretary to an RGS Research Group please 
> can you ask your members to vote in these elections. My understanding is 
> that academic geographers are not in the majority of RGS members, and we 
> therefore need to ensure a good turnout.  These challenges to the RGS 
> are organised, and we need to be the same in our response if the 
> positive changes which have taken place at the RGS are not to be lost.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Sarah
>  
>  
> 
> <http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/the-week/3592006/part_2/the-spectators-notes.thtml>http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/the-week/3592006/part_2/the-spectators-notes.thtml
> 
>  
> 
> *Thirty years, almost to the day, after we greeted our first woman Prime 
> Minister, we greet our first woman Poet Laureate.*
> 
> Such subversion of the purpose of an old institution to suit the current 
> office-holder is a feature of our culture. It seems to be happening at 
> the Royal Geographical Society, which once sent Darwin to the Galapagos 
> and Shackleton to the Antarctic. The RGS has not mounted its own 
> expedition since 1998. A group of young rebels is forcing a special 
> general meeting on 18 May and a ballot to try to make the society adhere 
> to its original purpose, as expressed in its charter, and send proper 
> expeditions once more. They argue that these enterprises produce a mass 
> of scientific material, and engage directly, as geographers should, with 
> actual places, people and nature. But the bosses of the RGS are people 
> of committee meetings, not wide open spaces. The president, Sir Gordon 
> Conway, is chief scientific adviser to the Department of International 
> Development, and has a record as long as your arm in the world of 
> quangos and busybody groups (he was on the committee which first 
> launched the idea of Islamophobia in the 1990s). The director, Dr Rita 
> Gardner, is also an adviser to the government, and is said to believe 
> that the Fellows of the RGS should not be so named because this is 
> offensive to women. During Dr Gardner’s time, the society has become 
> more a trade union for academic geographers and less a body doing its 
> own intellectual and practical work. It has set up a Space, Sexualities 
> and Queer Working Group to promote interest in ‘geographies [that 
> unnecessary plural is always a bad sign] on issues related to 
> sexualities [ditto] and queer studies’. The RGS expedition advisory 
> centre has been renamed ‘Geography Outdoors’. The bosses are trying to 
> secure the vote, forbidding the rebels to circulate material putting 
> their case to the Fellows, while printing their own argument against the 
> motion on the back of the ballot paper. In normal times, one would 
> calculate that these Blair/Brown-era operators would prevail, but, 
> luckily, these are not normal times; and now Joanna Lumley, fresh from 
> her triumph over the Gurkhas, has given her support to the rebels. So 
> perhaps Sir Gordon and Dr Gardner can be thrown into the dustbin of 
> histories.
> 
>  
> ______________________________________________________
>  
> Dr Sarah Holloway
> Reader in Human Geography &
> Co-Director, Centre for Research in Identity, Community, Society,
> Department of Geography,
> Loughborough University,
> Loughborough, LE11 3TU
> Messages: 01509 222794
>  
> CRICS: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy/crics/ 
> ______________________________________________________
>  
> Loughborough University - 100 years of education and innovation. 
> University of the Year 2008/09
>  

-- 
Steven Cummins MSc PhD
Senior Lecturer & NIHR Fellow
Department of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS

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