I’m Chris Jenkinson, the Academic Affairs Officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union.
I don’t think politics is or should be a dirty word. This category contains my thoughts on political issues affecting modern society.
Posted in Education, National politics on Jul 31st, 2008
The recent proposal from the government that all schools should have their own dedicated police officer is unfortunately necessary - and while it will have the benefit of improving the relationship between young people and the police, it is fundamentally an admission of failure by the government to tackle both anti-social behaviour and carrying weapons [...]
Posted in Student politics on Jul 2nd, 2008
JR Hartley has written some interesting aims for the new executive at the Students’ Union for Manchester Metropolitan University which are quite transferable to other unions across the country. A session or interview with the various officers on Fuse FM every so often (which could be recorded and put on the website) is a potentially [...]
Posted in National politics on Jun 26th, 2008
Harriet Harperson’s proposals to prevent frivolous lawsuits from people passed over for jobs because they (wrongly) perceive there is some form of gender or race discrimination are sensible. A firm should be able to, for example, pick a woman from an set of equally qualified people to counter an uneven gender ratio. Positive discrimination is [...]
Posted in Education, National politics, Student politics on May 28th, 2008
Before 1997 universities were funded through government taxation, largely because the universities claimed (rightly or wrongly) that they provided a useful public benefit and were spending taxpayers’ money wisely. Successive governments trusted them, and let them get on with the business of providing higher education. The general consensus has been that universities were underfunded, particularly [...]
Posted in Education, National politics on May 27th, 2008
Another review of the Liberal Democrats’ policy on higher education funding has come up and it’s vital that we maintain our commitment to higher education being accessible to all regardless of background. With an increasingly debt-averse society, it’s clear that the only way to do that is with access to education funded through general taxation.
There’s [...]
Posted in Education, Student politics on May 7th, 2008
I’ve written a guest article for the University of Manchester Politics Society titled “Winning a free education” - here’s a snippet:
We need a policy which enables campaigners and activists to reach out to less politicised students and allows them to take ownership of the campaign, engaging them and ensuring that even small actions taken are [...]
Posted in National politics on May 4th, 2008
Apparently, to quote Dave Sewell on his blog Complex System of Pipes:
I think the message to take home is this: in Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield, where we could effectively canvass and reach out to people, Left List did very well. In London, no-one had heard of the new name, and still looked for Respect; where [...]
Posted in National politics on Apr 30th, 2008
I thought I’d put up a photo of the house of the election agent in Withington (south Manchester) for the Labour candidate (I live in the same house). Liberal Democrats winning here!
Posted in Books, Economics, International politics on Apr 12th, 2008
I’ve just finished reading the book “The Undercover Economist”, by Tim Harford. Definitely an informative book and well worth reading carefully and critically. It rightly makes the point that those of us who are “capitalists” do not defend “big business” (which want limits on competition) but instead defend open and free markets (which ensure competition). [...]
Posted in National politics on Mar 24th, 2008
Backing a plan to bring in supplementary vote (having a first and second preference in an election) is hardly radical, as Jack Straw and the government seem to think. Supplementary vote suffers from many of the problems moving away from first-past-the-post should intend to avoid - many ballots will not be counted (in FPTP, any [...]
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