Students are protesting against the high food prices in their cafeteria which they say are adding to student poverty.I thought they just lived on Pot Noodle, baked beans and beer? And pot?
The students' union handed out free sandwiches at lunchtime today, and yesterday, to encourage students not to use the canteen.If people are still paying it in sufficient numbers, it’s unlikely.
They hope that this boycott will force the caterers to think again about the prices they charge.
The students' union president, Manoj Iyer, 30, claims that the external company which provides their catering compares its prices to those at Marks and Spencer, not to other student outlets.So buy your coke elsewhere and take sandwiches. Job done!
He says that the canteen charges 99p for a can of coke while many shops charge as little as 60p.
Mr Iyer, who is in his second year as students' union president, also argues that the canteen charges up to £7 for a meal of chicken and chips with salad and a drink.
Oh, wait. I see someone’s already ahead of me there:
Mahdi Abuka, 20, a television production student, said: “The prices are really high in the canteen. We are students so we don’t have that much money to spend.There you go! You didn’t need the Student Union to help you in that decision, clearly!
“I go and buy food elsewhere because it is too expensive on campus.
“I only buy food here when I have to.”
Pro Vice-Chancellor Warren Forsyth, from Middlesex's Estates and Facilities Management Service, said: "We meet with the Students' Union regularly and acted on recent feedback by introducing a greater choice of offers and a new lower price range of sandwiches starting at £1.It doesn’t seem to have satisfied them much. I guess there’s just no appeasing some people?
“This was implemented immediately after calls for cheaper options.”
"Student satisfaction is a core priority and we continue to keep the dialogue open with our students, including acting on feedback from a University wide survey into our catering which launched in March and comes to a close at the end of April."So the SU is organising a protest, you’re running surveys, the canteen is getting on with running a canteen, and the students are happily making their own decision on whether to eat in the expensive canteen or bring sandwiches.
Is anyone doing any, well, teaching or learning..?
I've been around a few campuses (campii?) recently and there has been some sharp practice going on, comparable to the old motorway service station standards where they used location as an excuse not just to bung up the prices (as you'd expect to cover the cost of washrooms) but to offer things of such poor quality that they deserve to have them chucked back.
ReplyDeleteBasically, the world where mater and pater would countenance Costa charging £2 for a latte and £3.50 for a cheese roll has just crashed in to the barriers. Universities who thought it was a jolly wheeze to get paid for the concessions and for 'delivering the consooomer' have just stepped on the rake of reality hidden in the greed-green grass.
Save your sympathy; students don't deserve very much but university facilities management deserve even less.
Pro Vice-Chancellor Warren Forsyth, from Middlesex's Estates and Facilities Management Service, said:.........
ReplyDelete..................much the same as any other management knob-head, incomprehensible management babble. I'm only surprised 'engagement' wasn't in that load of shite somewhere.
Is Middx University in the UK? just saw the pic attached to the original article and was momentarily confused.
Why don't these little whingers make their own packed lunches or use a local greasy spoon. Surely theirs a veggie/organic outlet they can go to?
"Why don't these little whingers make their own packed lunches or use a local greasy spoon" ..
ReplyDeleteI can only assume its because they're all far too busy studying really, really hard to get a 1st in self-pity ..
How do they imagine pensioners manage ?
Students ? .. I've shit 'em !
Note to Julia:
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you've mixed up the photo with voter-fraud story up the page.
Either that or the 'yoonie' is full of pakis.
Wee Willie Winky.
Oh dear...young adults with a toddler attitude of "I want I want I have to have". Must be an awful shock having to grow up.
ReplyDeleteIdiots. They don't deserve a degree if they can't work out how to fill a roll.
ReplyDeleteI bought 8 eight sub rolls at M&S (M&S, mind) for £2 this morning. Eight slices of Wiltshire ham for just over £2. Lunch for a week for about 50p a day.
What do they want? A Michelin-starred lunch and a blow job from the waitress subsidised by the Ministry of Higher Education for a pound?
BTW, re Wee Willie Winky.
Either that or the 'yoonie' is full of pakis.
Anyone else worried about large numbers of men of the RoP (TM) in their early twenties learning electronic engineering (circuitry and the like) and chemistry (TNT and the like)?
Allahu akBOOOOOOM!
Dr C,
ReplyDeleteYour fears are well-founded.
To paraphrase a much better man than I:
'We must be mad, literally mad... it is like watching a nation, busily engaged in heaping up the timbers of its own funeral pyre...'
Wee Willy Winky
"...students don't deserve very much but university facilities management deserve even less."
ReplyDeleteQuite so!
"I can only assume its because they're all far too busy studying really, really hard to get a 1st in self-pity .."
:D
"Idiots. They don't deserve a degree if they can't work out how to fill a roll. "
It's the instant gratification society again. 'What, me plan lunch?'
"To paraphrase a much better man than I..."
He really knew what he was talking about, didn't he?
"The students' union president, Manoj Iyer, 30"
ReplyDeleteEr, you should have had a job for nine years by now Manoj and should also be able to afford sandwich