My tale of me

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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I just thought I’d mention that I’ve been elected as the new Academic Affairs Officer for the University of Manchester Students’ Union for the 2008/9 academic year. The post is to represent students, individually and collectively, within the University, to advise students on education/academic issues, and to inform students about education issues.
It’s a full-time position, [...]

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Not able to gracefully admit defeat, learn the lessons and move on, several members of the Socialist Workers’ Party at the University of Manchester have started attacking students for democratically booting them out. Dave Sewell, one of the few SWP members who will be on Union council next year has written a rather bitter message [...]

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If you don’t want a motion to be debated or passed at a meeting, is it right to walk out of a meeting so that it no longer has quorum? I would generally say no, but on the other hand, is it right that turning up to vote “no” may actually lead to the motion [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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