Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

The list of proposed motions for the upcoming referendum are up. And most of them are a joke. So I have decided to go through them in term and moan about what is wrong them with them.

Activities Groups’ Access to the Refectory
I support this, the union has awful communication with things like the university for the Refec and you know, their own venues department.

Affiliation to Stop the War
This union believes “to date no evidence of WMD has been found thus the reason for the initial invasion has proven to be unfounded.” No, a reason has proven to be unfounded. Anti-war campaigning does not represent the opinion of all our members, because, well, many of them don’t care. Have we not learned by now that we’re not going to do anything anyway? Millions of people have marched, but the fact is - it’s too late. The war is over, it ended years ago. Now we’re cleaning up and leaving. So what war are you going to stop?

Should this Union support a re-evaluation of the decision to close Bodington Hall?
I agree with this, Bodington was ace and I don’t know who the university were talking to when people were complaining about it. The only person I’ve found that lived there and didn’t like it was Jewish Dan. Everyone else loved it.

End the Siege in Gaza
Hmm, this is a tricky issue. It will be interesting to see what J-Soc say about this.

Do you want greater Freedom of Speech on campus?
See my previous blog post. I fully support this motion.

Should home fees apply to refugees?
A degree hardly would seem to be a little more than the basic right to education as the motion seems to suggest. There are lots of barriers for even British citiziens to go to uni so I don’t think this is an especially big problem.

I.D Cards
Well, for a start it should be I.D. not I.D but that is a minor point. The more important point is that the I.D. card has already passed through parlament, it’s over, the anti I.D. card crowd lost. See my blog post about I.D. cards for my full thoughts on the subject.

Lads’ Mags
FHM isn’t porn. It’s not. Have some common sense. The photos in there are less revealing than you can buy in The Sun. Should we classify tabloid newspapers as porn too?

Mature Students Room
Because it worked so well with Mine.

No Platform Policy
Should we deny BNP members to speak on campus? Of course not. University is somewhere where you can have unpresedented freedom of speech. While I will conced you need to be careful when implementing it in wider society, we’re all educated individuals that can see a racist idea when we see it. Seriously, are you scared you will loose a debate to these guys?

Interestingly enough the motion resolves “to condemn homophobia, racism, sexism and religious prejudice from the University Union. To permanently exclude anyone found to be promoting such prejudice from the University Union.” I’m guessing that this condemnation and exclusion will not apply to the opinions expressed within the Muslim community to which proposer Hind is a part of.

A university campus should be a bastion for freedom of expression, censorship here is a very dark route to go down.

NUS Governance Review
I can’t really comment as I haven’t read the whitepaper. According to the motion it seems something we do indeed want to reject but obviously this will contain some bias.

Stop the Royal Bank of Scotland/Natwest funding climate change
Societies struggle enough to find sponsorship let alone if we add even more companies to the list of companies banned. And yet again I am going to bring up the point that even if this motion goes through, we will still be selling Coca Cola products in the union. It’s pick and choose which companies you can bother to make a moral stance against.

Should our university accept from military companies and carry out their research?
The University of Leeds is research led. A large proportion of research money comes from military purposes. I notice the motion fails to provide an alternative as to where we can get research money from. Which we want to increase if we want to increase the reputation of our university.

Should the Union Support the respect for the basic liberties of its members?
No. Seriously, what a stupid motion title. This in no way describes what the motion is about and is simply aiming at getting people to say “yes” before they even know what they are voting for.

The motion resolves “to give an allowance as regards to space and facilities for peaceful demonstration that would raise awareness of and stress these basic fundamental liberties.” Which you already have. Book space outside the union like everyone else does. The union is here to support student activities in their campaigns not to run them for you.

Should Landlords Be Held To Account?
This I do very much agree with. Although house hunting happening in January is a country wide problem so the NUS as a whole really needs to get involved. That is not to say we can’t make a difference here in Leeds none the less though.

Should LUU revive The Old Bar?
What a fantastic motion, this would should be passed :D.

Stopping the sale of cigarettes
If people want to kill themselves we might as well take the money for it. Smokers are addicted - they will go somewhere else for their cigarettes.

Working whilst Learning
This I do agree with. If a lecture got moved to Monday morning now I would be screwed. I just couldn’t do it.

The first referendum of last academic year resolved to give us freedom of speech on campus.

The second referendum banned it.

That amused me. Basically we had one motion protecting freedom of speech after the trouble betwen J-Soc and the PSG. Then we had another motion in the referedum after about descrimination but it also covered religion and suggested that if anyone felt offended, there was a problem.

Now in the first referendum of this year there is a proposed motion “Do you want greater Freedom of Speech on campus?” Anyone else ever feel like we’re going round in circles?

Despite how jaded I have become by the democratic processes of the union I have actually ended up engaging with one of them.

With the referendum coming up today was the deadline for submitting motions and so I have proposed one, seconded by Kieran in an attempt to solve the problems with The Old Bar.

We have another week to submit amendments before things start moving forward. After that it goes to Union Council, who will probably reject it, then we can attempt to force it through with a petition if we wish.

Revive The Old Bar

This Union notes…

• LUU has over 30,000 members
• LUU’s membership is wide and diverse
• LUU provides a number of bars in order to cater for the social needs of it’s members

This Union believes…

• LUU should provide for the social needs of all it’s members
• Many of LUU’s members enjoy a quiet drink in a relaxed atmosphere
• The Old Bar has now become synonymous with The Terrace in providing a noisier atmosphere

This Union resolves…

• To reduce noise levels from music and plasma screens in The Old Bar
• To encourage sound from the plasma screens in The Old Bar to be turned off whenever possible

Now I just need to figure out how this works into my overall plan for world domination.

Ok, don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the introduction of ID cards. I know the reasons against ID cards, I agree with them and I don’t need you to list them for me. But all this overkill paranoia about them is forcing me to play devil’s advocate. Consider this…

• We already have an identity document system, it’s called a passport. Like an ID card it costs you to get one, like an ID card you need one to open a bank account and like an ID card you are in trouble if it falls into the hands of a criminal.
• ID cards aren’t some crazy system the government has dreamed up to invade our privacy, lots of countries including many European nations already have them - Spain, Belgium, France and Italy.
• It’s not even the first time they have been introduced in the UK, we have had them twice before.
• The act of parliament to introduce ID cards has already been passed so it’s too late to stop them there.
• Who cares if someone gets their hands on your personal details - they’ve already got them off that missing CD anyway

Is holding “ladies’ nights” at nightclubs descrimation? Apparently so. There is a lawsuit going on in the United States (ha, like I even needed to specify that) where someone has suited several New York nightclubs because he feels descriminated against by the discount entry and drinks offered to women.

It’s an interesting situation as when you look at it, it is descrimination. It’s hard to defend against that. But are their practical real-world limits to removing descrimination?

On Tuesday we went down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire’s meeting as they were holding a talk entitled “first offender to old lag - inevitable?” It was delivered by Angie Petit who is head of performance at the HM prison in Leeds.

It turned out to be a really interesting talk. A lot of it centred around what is being done to reform people in prison, what the prison has to deal with and what they actually do in prison though it covered a very broad spectrum. What was really interesting though was the statistics and results.

For example, 60% of people that come into prison have a hard drug problem. 80% have mental health problems. What passes for a mental health problem these days I don’t know (and I suspect that a lot of things do) but it’s still quite a shocking statistic. It was also suprising that short spells in prison, a throw back to the Conservates “short sharp shocks” don’t work and that movement of prisoners from prison to court is now done by a private company who can send a prisoner back to whichever prison they happen to be driving past. Crazy.

Earlier today A-Soc held a support rally for the British teacher Gillian Gibbons. We had quite a decent turn out in that people actually turned up which is always a victory :D. While we were only around for an hour we got quite a bit of interest and got someone new interested in the society so all in all it was a rather successful event. Go A-Soc!

An important aspect of democracy and voting is that my vote is private. Anyway, here is how I voted…

• Motion 1 - plastic bags. I voted no. Paper bags are rubbish. We already pay for our plastic bags so people use them responsibly anyway. Plastic bags can be made bio-degradable. From what I have heard from union insiders, the union simply don’t want to foot that bill.
• Motion 2 - Jack Straw. I voted yes. His honorary life membership was removed because of a personal disagreement with his politics. Personal disagreement? We’re a union of 30,000 students, how can we have a personal disagreement? Stop being so petite and give him is life membership back.
• Motion 3 - 99p sandwiches. I voted no. Face facts, a 99p sandwich isn’t going to be a very good sandwich.
• Motion 4 - Nestle boycott. I voted no. For many, many reasons. Read them on Facebook. As a quick summary, we’re old enough to make our own decisions we don’t need the union dictating to us. It’s hypocritical as we sell Coca-Cola products and we’re not even preventing Nestle products from being sold on campus so it’s pointless as well.

It’s referendum time again. Last year was great. The first round of referendum’s gave us freedom of speech. The second round banned it. So what’s on the plate this year…

• Should the union stock more 99p sandwiches? Exciting!
• Increasing representation - basically, they want more people to vote. What happens if this gets rejected? Will only certain people be allowed to cast their ballot?
• Should Jack Straw’s life membership be reinstated? Who cares? How is it life membership if it only lasted so long?
• Plastic bags, not paper bags - I’ll give them this one, this is actually a useful motion.

Exciting so far huh? But this time we actually have one interesting motion. Hard to believe I know, but true (depending on your outlook).

The item of interest is motion 4 “Nestle Boycott.” Basically, the Nestle Boycott needs to be renewed or the union will once again begin stocking Nestle products. Huzzah! It’s important we stop boycotting Nestle. Why? Because we’re not children. I’m a third year undergraduate at a Russell group university. I am quite capable of making up my own mind as to whether I would like to boycott Nestle or whether I would in fact like to buy their products.

We don’t even stock Nestle baby milk! It’s not even like we are boycotting the product that is (claimed to be) causing problems in the third world, they are completely different arms of the company we are dealing with here. At the moment it’s not even explained why we are boycotting Nestle. Granted the motion resolves to put up posters telling students why there is a boycott but I’m sure the last motion to boycott Nestle did too and where are those posters? Why not put the posters up and still stock Nestle products? We’re all educated adults, we can make up our own minds.