The Head of Newcastle University’s Mechanical Engineering Department has published a scathing tirade online slamming the University’s new policy on heavy machinery. The policy, written by the Executive Board and released by jazz-artist-cum-Vice-Chancellor Chris Day this week, states that all equipment used by staff and students must have modern safety features in order to avoid causing “any harm, serious injury, or death to the operator and/or bystanders”.
In a long, rambling blog post, Professor D. Glover stated, “The university mandating the use of machinery with modern safety features belittles the faculty and students, denying us the freedom to choose to chop various appendages off or have our skin flayed from our bodies.”
He added, “The University’s Executive Board are a bunch of fearmongers; less than 1% of people were fatally injured by the machines before this forceful and probably illegal interference between man and his appliances.”