So there's no hope for us non-coffee drinkers.... Noooooo

Yes I think we understand. I think we were all in agreement that supervisors aren't always the best people to advice on ethics procedures (even though you'd expect they would) they probably didn't know themselves! Did you say you also dance? Think around the problem, how else can you create the material - could you have someone film you or scour the web/YouTube for examples already in the public domain? Ethics is terribly difficult... I'm using performance also and will have a nightmare with ethics :'(

I agree with pp's and Tree. Your supervisors won't know every permutation of ethical issues as each PhD is different and yes they will hold things up, s is the way of phD. I am using a method uncommon in my area and my supervisors haven't used it and told me (rightly) to go and find out about it myself. Now another note of caution, just because you can find ethical arguments for using a particular technique or method also doesn't count for anything if it doesn't meet your own University Ethics board advice for the discipline you are submitting your PhD. For example, I am borrowing a method from a different discipline and whilst there would be very few ethical implications if I was using and submitting ethics in that discipline it would be classed low risk. For the department I'm actually submitting with it's high risk and I have to complete the forms accordingly. The best advice you have been given on here is to get your departmental handbook for completing your ethics forms and follow it to the letter, use the research you have done on using that technique and explicitly state ho it meets the requirements of their ethics forms. And if it doesn't, you will have to think a way around it. Good luck.

Yeah I get tha but there needs to be a sensible balance. The policy itself is not about education and improving attendance because all that happens is you still take the time off but just pay £60 per parent per child for the privilege and the money doesn't even go back into education! It's just a stealth tax. If it was about education it would also apply to private education (who incidentaly get longer holidays). I think if both parents work/study and your children get less than the 12 Weeks's because of it you should be able to claim up to 10 days back outside of exam tim if they have good attendance overall. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Dr Jeckyll to have those memories of those long summer with your mother must be lovely :D I seriously worry about what I have subjected my children to having to put them in childcare from 8 months old :( just to have a basic standard of living. It would be our first foreign holiday in 4 years so it;s not he price, I don't mind saving to go away it's the principle! I want and need to spend quality time with my children away from the house where I'd inevitably check emails, work on the PhD and clean, oh and go on social media lol. I actually have more free time on my PhD than when I was a teacher (I say teacher I was a vocational trainer - 9-5 hours 4 weeks holiday) in some respects as that was really all work work work!!!

In the UK we used to get up to 10 discretionary days a year to take your children out of school, often used for holidays. Now it's at the Heads discretion and really only for things like funerals because apparently 'schoolkids get 12 weeks they can choose from' and more time off affects their education.
WRONG! children of dual working families get the same 4 weeks off you get, the rest is extortionate childcare (which is educational based btw). 2 weeks are allocated to Christmas (Where I work after children are in bed - NO BREAK). That leaves 2 weeks, most of which you use for when you're children are ill from school because you don't get paid for that!. When one of you is a PhD (GTRA) even worse, you're lucky to get any real break at all. I have a small slot next year where I could fit in 10 days holiday; away away from the desk, emails, the housework etc but it overlaps school term by 3 days. The headteacher of the school is querying why as a PhD I can't take all my holidays over the summer (my data analysis time before write up that's why!) because she's doing an MSc and they are off the whole summer. Well whoop de do for you. It's not so much the fine that bothers me (£240! no small amount when most of my stipend goes on after-school childcare) but it being issued under the 'anti-social behaviour act' law. I'm anti-social and a law breaker to want a well deserved break. Surely my children should be allowed to claim back the 8 weeks holiday and 3 hours per evening care they are in because we've done what the gov said was right and got jobs (well GTRA but same thing) and are now being punished. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I've worked lots of jobs. It's much of a muchness. Change the title for almost any other job atm!

It's a departmental scholarship direct through the uni that was advertised on their website:)

Agree with Hazy. Just see publication as a hoop to jump through to get the Jobs you want. You don't have to be in love with your subject to write for publication- means to an end! Congrats on your PhD Dr :)

I don't have a first for my Bachelors, but I did get distinction MA. I also have QTLS like you and years of teaching experience. I got a Scholarship at a Russell group. A fellow scholarship got theirs with a Merit at MA. Your experience might count for something if it is related to your PhD and you may have an excellent proposal in mind so don't write yourself off as not good enough for scholarship ;-p It may be you need to look outside of your uni though for one. Self funded yeah you'll probably get a place I'd say. Good luck.

I'm a teacher who left to do a PhD. I think children get like that as many can't see a point in education when they are told it will lead to a job and they know it won't. If someone said to you, "come to me for 5 years, do everything I tell you, don't step out of line, take work home with you and at the end you'll be lucky to get any job".....would you do it? (Oh yeah we are we're doing the PhD ha ha see even we've bought in! lol.) To change attitudes towards education the goals of education should be more hollistic - to be happy, be enlightened, better mental wellbeing, socialisation. IF you knew it was about those things and not just about jobs maybe there'd be a better 'buy in'. There's more to learning than earning! I value my education more than what job I'll get at the end and that's why I chose a PhD, it's probably/certainly not going to make me rich ha ha.
Education for social mobility through employment is also an unobtainable farce. I mean if everyone social climbs who's going to do the jobs at the bottom, and what's wrong with the jobs at the bottom!!! you're condemning those to being thought of as failures :( You can see from this that we are still stuck in education for employment mode and the types of mathematics and science they are talking about are heavily tied into capitalism and economic production. Who's to say that music and art aren't as important! What makes us human is our imagination after all. It makes me sad. I'd also be right peeved at a PhD swanning in and earning twice as much!

Undemanding that was supposed to say.

Congratulations on the PhD and baby. All children at any stage baby-teenager has its own issues. Lots depends on your child's temprement. If you have a 'good' sleepy undanding baby (this happens I'm told lol) this can be the easiest age before the teething and terrible twos, threes, fours.... You get my drift. It'll be no harder than holding down a full time job with a baby. You need to find what works for you. Good luck x

I understand where Apollo is coming from but I would be careful about calling the tax office. Their phone lines are not exactly staffed by experts and I know many a person given wrong advice. The advice on their own website is that PhD bursary is not taxable income, you only declare what is taxable earnings. However, a person on the phone lines often don't understand about bursaries and there have been other threads where the person on the phone has incorrectly entered it as income, once they've done that it's pretty difficult to get them to change the decision! The university should process the part of your stipend that is taxable pay on PAYE, this will do the tax for you (you won't pay any but it will generate a P60 at the end of the tax year and they should give you a pay slip for as proof of income - UNLESS they put you down as self employed, in which case you would inform the tax office of your taxable earnings, which atm is below the tax threshold.

I really don't get this situation. I think maybe you need some more expert advice? I've never heard of a re-submission verdict for a sound thesis without major corrections. If they say your thesis stands up and you answered the questions on your thesis well and it doesn't require corrections but they suspect you didn't write it (hence trying to see if you knew the background knowledge) you should be referred for academic malpractice not re-submission, which they clearly haven't. Because lets face it, if you hadn't written it another Viva would not prove this but give you time to learn the background to defend if properly next time which seems a bonkers way to prove you didn't write it! If the thesis is sound and your defense of the actual thesis was sound it seems very odd to give re-submission verdict, especially coming from the internal.