'Did you just call me a snake?'

During this weekend's Natfhe annual conference, the union's general secretary Paul Mackney finally gave his official backing to colleague Roger Kline in the long-haul race to lead the merged University and College Union. In his conference speech, he said it was time to come off the fence and he endorsed Mr Kline, who runs Natfhe's universities department, ahead of the rival candidate, AUT general secretary Sally Hunt. But delegates were left wondering who Mr Mackney was referring to in his comment on the Natfhe-AUT merger: "They all said it couldn't happen, that it was like trying to reverse evolution with a merger of birds and reptiles, but it has."