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 Student politics on Nov 11th, 2007
The University of Manchester Student Union’s Council is an interesting contraption; it’s frequently criticised as being rather pointless. The obvious question is why is it pointless? I am going to attempt to answer that question, and propose some solutions. That question can be broken down.
Is Council pointless:
- because of its structure?
- because of its [...]
Posted in Student politics on Nov 3rd, 2007
This post is a little on the late side, but must be said anyway.
At last academic year’s National Union of Students conference in April, a motion was passed calling for a review of the governance of NUS. The proposed changes are now available. To actually implement the changes, two conferences need to be held, and [...]
Posted in Student politics on Jun 17th, 2007
One of my main desires for my year on the executive of the University of Manchester Students’ Union is to motivate life sciences students to participate in everything ranging from societies through the student newspaper to academic course representation. While life sciences is the smallest faculty (around 1 700 undergraduates, compared to the 15 000 [...]
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 Student politics on May 20th, 2007
I fail to see why LDYS needs a policy committee. Its members are volunteers doing the job in their spare time, and they don’t receive any special training - in other words they are just regular party members with a fancy title.
When committees are created they disenfranchise normal members. They take the power of things [...]
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 [...]
Posted in National politics on May 13th, 2007
Thankfully John Reid’s going soon. He recently gave a keynote speech in Venice attempting to convince his equivalent colleagues across Europe to change individual human rights law into some kind of system where only the State has the right to exist, to protect itself against oppression, to a fair trial (or even a trial). Is [...]
Posted in National politics on May 6th, 2007
Despite some rather optimistic press releases from the Bristol Lib Dems recently about our chances of taking control of the city, we lost two seats including the executive member for social services, and already the other Lib Dem councillors have forced out the council leader, Barbara Janke. Now we’re down to 31 seats out of [...]
Posted in National politics on May 4th, 2007
This year’s been a much better year for the Lib Dems in Manchester than 2006, with us holding all the seats where our councillors were up for re-election, and gaining one seat in Chorlton - congratulations Paul Ankers! Lev unfortunately did not get elected in Northenden despite being a wonderful person (with the best campaign [...]
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