I’m Chris Jenkinson, the Academic Affairs Officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union.
I’m a member of the Liberal Democrats, the third-largest party in British politics. This category is for posts related to political events occurring in the United Kingdom which are outside the student union bubble.
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 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 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 [...]
Posted in National politics on Feb 3rd, 2008
The public transport company Stagecoach, including one of its brandnames Magic Bus, dominate the student-heavy Oxford Road bus route in Manchester. Unfortunately Stagecoach isn’t a nice friendly company providing low-cost, environmentally-friendly public transport that students might assume, as it is owned by a man named Brian Souter. Brian Souter is well-known for donating between £500,000 [...]
Posted in National politics on May 27th, 2007
More authoritarian nonsense, this time giving the police the power to harass anyone they don’t like the look of, whether or not the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed! If the person objects to being harassed, it’s a £5000 fine due to “obstructing” the police!
Has the government got any [...]
Posted in National politics on May 22nd, 2007
As it turns out there will be a Labour executive propped up by the Tories in Bristol - one of the suggestions I made previously. Labour and the Tories previously combined to oppose a minority Lib Dem administration continuing in office after we lost two seats. It’s interesting that this new coalition is entirely Labour [...]
Posted in National politics on May 17th, 2007
Brown’s the next Prime Minister then. Congratulations I suppose. What’s the point of Tony Blair hanging on for another 6 weeks then? Say what you like about there not being a general election when Thatcher was booted out, but at least the Tories had a contested leadership election back in 1990, albeit one by MPs [...]
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