Them v-cs and us

Sir Richard Sykes, rector of Imperial College London, receives an index-linked pension of £700,000 from GlaxoSmithKline and £46,000 from his part-time job as a non-executive director of Rio Tinto, not to mention any performance-related remuneration he might receive from Imperial (News, THES , January 31). Not bad given vice-chancellors' warnings about the paucity of money for staff pay rises and this week's industrial action by academic unions in pursuit of their London-weighting claim.

Jeff Duckett
Queen Mary, University of London