This morning staff at the University of St Andrews received a letter indicating that they would no longer be subject to 100% pay deductions for Action Short of a Strike. This is good news and gratefully welcomed. In the same letter was the following statement about equality and diversity: 'a statement made in my message of 20 February to the community has been presented as having an unfair or even sinister meaning. I have spent my entire career working for diversity, equality, and access. I would never set up a ‘trade’ between employer pensions contributions and employees’ workplace rights. What I wanted to do was be honest and open with you. If a solution is reached in this new phase of negotiations that requires the University to make a larger contribution to pensions, of course we shall find a way to do so. As a community, we would have to determine our priorities in those circumstances. This university has never been opposed to the principle of paying more to safeguard our staff’s futures and I will always be guided by my precepts of fairness, excellence and inclusivity.' This is not the retraction that was hoped for. There is no admission that a mistake was made in the wording of the first email. Indeed, the fault is placed with those who have 'presented' those words, rather than with the words themselves. To quote from Professor Mapstone's first email to staff: 'Were the UCU proposal to have been adopted, few of these kinds of proposals [see the details of the petition for the list of schemes, all relating to equality and diversity] would go on being practicable’. Instead of apologizing or admitting a mistake, there is still an assumption here that equality and diversity are costs, rather than benefits. There is still an assumption that in a post-USS-strike world, in which UCU proposals are adopted, that schemes to support women and others at work will be competing with other priorities for investment. Professor Mapstone defends her record on equality and diversity in her new letter, which no one disputes. It is precisely because of that record, as well as because of the high salaries paid to Vice Chancellors like Professor Mapstone, that we might expect better.