start of term

Time to commemorate my first lecture with a blog entry. (year 2 module: "decision, computational and language"). My Monday at 9am slot makes it the "welcome back" lecture, likely to be better-attended than most of its successors...

From meeting my tutees last week, and a few others at a reception for new students, I got the idea that our students are coming for farther afield than last year. This year we have the first cohort of XJTLU students, but I'm actually making that observation about UK/EU students. I may be wrong; my sample is admittedly too small to be statistically significant.

If it's true however, that is an important asset for Liverpool generally. In order to prosper, a city the size of Liverpool has to provide goods and services that go beyond its immediate region, and preferably beyond the UK. My impression is that Liverpool still does not have enough employers that achieve that objective.

(Unrelated: Here is a sensible take on the forthcoming vice-presidential debate.)