'The Exchange' and to Rosanne

To the Queen and Glorious Scourge of the wide open door brigade fanatics with their enormous energy bills and no care for the future!

Do go down on the 9 bus, Rosanne and have a coffee and a bite to eat at this lovely, grand coffee house in the old Banking Hall of, first, the Municipal Bank and, later, the TSB.  You'll like it, I think.

NOT YET SENT TO BRUM UNIVERSITY - what do you think?

Sir Crispin Tickell must be turning in his grave at this carry on​ (the Vice Chancellor is a nephew)

I am so sorry that, after two years and this third winter, I am still having to highlight the oddity, the eccentricity of an always wide open front door policy at 'The Exchange'.  It is similar to the eccentric practice of putting Metro trams on two of our region's important, former, mainline railways and, at the most enormous, totally unnecessary expense, too!  This is why it is so serious in your case:

• This is public money that is literally going out of the wide open front door into the cold air of Centenary Sq throughout the opening hours - to be lost for ever.
• This is carbon dioxide being emitted.  CO2 has been known to be an atmospheric warming gas for over 170 years.  It comes primarily from burning finite fossil fuels, for example to heat the cold air outside 'The Exchange'.
• "Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the planet, causing climate change. Human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50% in less than 200 years."  (Global Climate Change website)
  
• It is the most common greenhouse gas that Sir Crispin Tickell alerted Margaret Thatcher to in 1988.
• Following that, she gave two speeches, first to the Royal Society in 1988 and another to the UN General Assembly in 1989.
• However, nothing was done, nothing changed, even after our national, regional and local governments all declared climate emergencies from 2019 onwards.
• The always wide open front door policy started, I believe in, possibly September 2021 from the opening date.  But, certainly from November 2021 when the mechanism failed I was told on Monday.
• I was told by one of the backroom staff at 'The Exchange' in early 2023 that the doors would be repaired by the summer of 2023.  They were not repaired.
• Months later, I enquired what had gone wrong.  I was not told.  Instead, the staff reported to Monica that I was being intimidating.
• My attempt to explain why I was concerned to young staff and for that to be called intimidating is surprising when I thought I was patient and brief.
• However, it does point up the importance of carbon literacy training.  It must be given to all university staff, in my opinion.
• In the summer, there was the wonderful welcoming woman staff member on the ever wide open doors who mentioned to me how cold she was going to get when the winter came!  What is so surprising that it was only this member of staff who understood the good sense of keeping the cold out and the warmth in!  No-one else was at all sympathetic or cared or even understood!
  
• Therefore, it seems that training is also required in public relation skills for your frontline staff.  Just listen, make a note and pass the matter on for the matter to be de​alt with, instead of showing no sympathy!
• I met two of your senior staff in a most useful meeting on the 18 December.  However, Monica gave me the impression that she did not understand that saving energy was the top priority, rather than wasting it in the most prodigious quantities as we continue to see at 'The Exchange'.
• I felt she played down my concern as being, not exactly frivolous but, certainly, of low priority when she had many more serious matters to deal with in the grander scheme of things.  The cost in energy from open doors was minor when compared with the total university energy bill.  Perhaps so but, such is the urgency, we have to do everything we can.
• ​Certainly, never any shame at being found out!
  
• In fact, has a university staff member or student worked out the savings in weight of greenhouse gas emissions from the presentable doorman/woman opening and closing the front door to welcome visitors, instead of your present practice?
• Monica told me that she drove an electric car, as if this proved how green she was and there was ​absolutely nothing more she needed to do.  (I​ hope she doesn't believe that, really!)
• Yet, it is taking well over two years to repair doors that could reduce the university's massive energy bill and help slow the accelerating rate of climate disaster for all of us.
• There are nine tipping points and future prospects do not look good to stop the eventual and complete collapse of both the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets but, our city's top university is very laid back about it all.  Just those two tipping points are enough to finish off humanity and much terrestrial life, I would have thought.

If we cannot even get ​a​ welcoming door steward to see to the doors, after two years, there really is no hope for humanity!  But superman Steve is onto it, next month​, to save the world!!

Best wishes and season's greetings