MMUnion Website Relaunched

You may remember that over on the MMU Radio blog in July, I wrote about MMU Radio's website relaunching at the same time as the MMUnion website.

The union's site was to go live in time for the release of the A-Level results so that potential students could enjoy the new look, and the new functionality the site offers. That deadline came and went. Perhaps there was a few technical hitches.

Then when the club and society officers attended their training on the Wednesday before term, they were told that the website would be up in time for the freshers' fair and they were to use it to sign up members. It became apparent very soon afterwards that it would not be ready and the clubs had to revert to the traditional pencil and paper method.

A notice was put on the front page of the union's current website stating that the new website would arrive "next week". That message was up for three weeks from late September to early October, and still no sign of the promised newness.

In the last week of January, I went in to see my VP General Secretary one afternoon and was presented with the exclamation that, "the website is going online in the next couple of weeks, do you want to have a look?" Obviously I did, and I have to say it was great. But when exactly would it launch? Content had to be filled, but I was assured it would be given the green light by the end of the first week in February.

I wasn't surprised to find that the date was moved back a further. I was last told it would be up this last Friday. True to form, it wasn't.

However, on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 February 2009; Manchester Metropolitan Students' Union finally had a new website! Take a look now (before it's too late).

JR

My Deepest Sympathies go out to David and his Family

In case you haven't heard the news, David Cameron's oldest son, Ivan, has died in hospital this morning.

David, Samantha and the whole Cameron family have my greatest condolences and my deepest sympathies.

The Conservative Party have released this statement;

It is with great sadness that David and Samantha Cameron must confirm the death of their six-year old son Ivan. Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy, was taken ill overnight and died at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, early this morning. David and Samantha would ask that their privacy is respected at this terribly difficult time.

Prime Minister's Questions have been cancelled for today and will be replaced by short statements from representatives of the major parties. This is not a day for party politics.

JR

Are We Not in Recession?

One thing that has struck me over the last couple of months is the unwillingness by all sides to use the word recession.

Now I might be the kind of person that calls a spade, a spade; but I think we'll come out of the current economic situation earlier if we admit where were are now.

The technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of "negative growth", or reduction in the country's output, also known as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GNP, as it says in the picture, is the Gross National Product which includes net foreign income in the figure, but is not used for measuring recession.

Economic lessons aside, we've been in recession since the summer (although we only officially knew that we were in early January), so why do politicians insist in calling it anything other than recession? The Prime Minister even went as far as calling the global situation a depression (10% drop in GDP); albeit because he was trying his damnedest to avoid using the R word and was obviously a slip of the tongue!

Even David Cameron has fallen into the trap. He continues to describe the situation as the downturn, as has the BBC in the past. Thank goodness the BBC have now seen sense and given their website and news reports the strand UK in recession.

What ever you want to call it, I'm calling it a recession.

JR

Running Blog #2: A Progress Report

Last month I entered the Great Manchester Run, a 10km run from the city centre to Salford Quays, and back again. I've neglected to update you on how the training is going.

Unfortunately it isn't going too well ...

It's not that I'm having a hard time running for the 15 or 20 minutes I should be each session. It's being bothered to do the run in the first place.

So to increase my motivation I've decided (with a little help from Luke on my radio show last week) to run for Christie's Cancer Hospital in Withington, Manchester. I've set myself a target of £1000 to raise. You can donate at http://www.justgiving.com/jrgreatmancrun

You could donate £1 per kilometre (that's £10 for those who can't work it out) or how ever much you can afford, and don't forget to gift aid your donation if you pay income tax.

You can also join my facebook group and show your support by writing a message on the wall.

More updates soon.

JR

iPlayer: It's All Going Wrong

As you can see on my twitter feed, the BBC's iPlayer has (temporarily) broken.

Most iPlayer audio programmes are asking for a password, and all video programmes are showing last night's Ten O'Clock News! The audio programmes that aren't asking for a password are playing a Radio 2 traffic report from yesterday. Very random!

Hopefully the BBC can get this fixed ASAP.

JR

My Daily Tweets

• 18:35 Off for a curry tonight. Need to buy the cheapest thing on the menu! #
• 19:28 Eng 566 for 9 dec. WI 251 for 5. Day 3, evening session. The Windies can't win the test, but a draw is very likely! Hang on, Sarwan's out! #
• 19:29 WI now 251 for 6! Looking up for England. #
• 19:31 Ramdin caught and bowled now. Graeme Swann on a hat trick! West Indies 251 for 7. #
• 19:33 No hat trick for Swann, but England now looking good for enforcing the follow on. #
• 19:37 Tune into Five Live Sport Extra or Radio 4 (198 LW) for commentary, or bit.ly/EsF8O for text updates. I'm going for a curry now! #
• 01:15 What? They didn't follow on? Draw is odds on now! Oh well, watching Emily Mortimer on Jonathan Ross (iPlayer). Very sexy! #

If you want to follow me on Twitter then go to my Twitter feed and then click follow. Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

My Daily Tweets

• 17:34 Why is publishing to Twitter by text not working? Gurr! #
• 18:26 MMUnion Higher Education Funding Debate. 3 March, 6pm, Conference Suite. tinyurl.com/byfxd4 #
• 23:05 Strong possibility of me being almost invisible until Thursday. Too much uni work to do between now and then! :-( #
• 23:47 Blog post: Higher Education Funding Debate tinyurl.com/b9oaly #
• 03:17 Can anyone recommend a way of getting to sleep (and therefore waking up) earlier? Stop using twitter perhaps. #
• 06:27 Sleep is overrated. At least that's what my brain is telling me at the moment! #

If you want to follow me on Twitter then go to my Twitter feed and then click follow. Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Higher Education Funding Debate

There is a Higher Education Funding Debate taking place at MMUnion on Tuesday 3 March in the Conference Suite.

With the forthcoming government review of HE funding, there has never been a more vital time for the student movement to debate this issue and this will be your chance to put your questions to some of the people at the forefront of the debate.

The panel will include:

Aaron Porter, NUS VP Higher Education
David Saxton, MMUnion VP Education & Welfare
Lucy Powell, Project manager for NESTA in Manchester & Labour PPC for Manchester Withington
Professor John Brookes, MMU Vice-Chancellor

This event is open to all and you do not have to be an MMU student to attend.

JR

My Daily Tweets

• 20:03 Just got back from Edgbaston. Mixed results mean we didn't get through. Bad times. But England are doing well in the Caribbean. Good times. #
• 21:37 Very tired. Think I'm going to go out as soon as my head touches the pillow tonight. At least my sleeping pattern has been rectified. #
• 23:21 Really don't know how I'm still awake. Maybe that sleeping pattern hasn't been put right after all. #
• 23:25 Don't forget my new radio show at www.mmuradio.soright.co.uk/jrsradioshow The newest one is show 8. #
• 00:01 BUCS Cricket fixtures out for the summer season. Second team's got at least 8 games! (7 league + cup) #
• 00:41 Don't let them tell you porkie pies about your food - watch the new campaign video at tinyurl.com/honestfoodcampaign (pls RT) #
• 01:05 I think Lisa Backwell (Pandora off of Skins) is my new favourite girl! #
• 03:31 Trying out TweetDeck. Looks cool, and I love the TwitScoop feature! #
• 03:44 RT @Conservatives: Don't let them tell you porkie pies about your food. Watch our new campaign video @ tinyurl.com/honestfoodcampaign #

If you want to follow me on Twitter then go to my Twitter feed and then click follow. Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

My Daily Tweets

• 20:45 @unciedave Could've been a lot different though. Great game of rugby. #
• 23:42 Radio show edited. Edgebaston tomorrow for Indoor Cricket. Sleep required. #
• 01:11 Had to un-follow BBC News. Nothing wrong with the content, just fills up the page with tweets when I'm looking for other people's comments! #
• 01:19 Radio show uploaded and ready to listen to! mmuradio.soright.co.uk/jrsradioshow #
• 20:03 Just got back from Edgbaston. Mixed results mean we didn't get through. Bad times. But England are doing well in the Caribbean. Good times. #

If you want to follow me on Twitter then go to my Twitter feed and then click follow. Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Twittering

Whilst I was watching the football game (England v Spain) on Wednesday night, I was pretty board with what was happening on the pitch so I decided to open a twitter account.

Twitter is often described as micro-blogging as you only have 140 characters to answer the question, "What are you doing?"

As you can see on the right, I've added the feed to this blog (for those reading this on facebook, click here) so you can catch up with my twittering as I tweet. By the way, tweeting is what you do when you update your twitter status.

If you have a twitter account then you can follow my tweets by going to my feed and clicking follow. Alternatively my tweets from the last 24 hours will be automatically posted to my blog each morning.

If you haven't got a twitter account then why not sign up. You'll become addicted very quickly.

JR

My (Current) Preference List for NUS Block of 15

As I am one of the more independent people that is likely to attend the NUS Annual Conference (assuming that I'm elected as a delegate in a few weeks time), I have decided to release my current preferences for the block of 15 executive members' elections.

The first thing to point out is I'm not ranking the Further Eductation candidates here. They're all going to beat RON to fill three of the five reserved FE places; as such nominations will have to open at conference for the remaining two places. I'm sure they won't require my vote.

I'm also not ranking all of the remaining candidates, at least not yet. There's no requirement to do so in the real vote, and I won't waste time doing so. The likelihood of the vote transferring past the top five or six is very low anyway.

So to be clear, the reserved FE places mean that the rest are fighting over ten places. Even more excitement and rivalry.

Right, on to the subject of the post ...

1. Benjamin Gray - Well I did nominate him! Independent candidate from KCL. Take a look at his blog.
   
2. Alice Bouquet - Apparently she was the RAG Officer and then VP Welfare and Acting President when I was at college in Exeter. She's also friends with two of my friends from home. Hard Worker. UWE.
   
3. Ed Marsh - Suprub block member this year. Won't need my vote.
4. Liz Williams - Excellent officer from Liverpool Guild. Also won't need my vote
5. from here on down I'll just rank the candidates ... Tom Wood
6. Tobin Webb
7. Jak Codd
8. Dom Passfield
9. Re-Open Nominations
   

This is not set in stone. I'll be looking at the manifestos, and listening to the speeches from the candidates from now until the vote at conference.

Who will you be voting for, and why? Tell me by commenting on this post.

JR

The BNP are Left Wing ... kind of!

Wading into the debate's started by Conservative Future chairman Michael Rock, and Tory blogger Iain Dale; I am in agreement that the British National Party are more left wing than right wing ... kind of!

Basically, the argument centres around the hideously limiting notion of the left-right political spectrum. It works well for the vast majority of political parties in any particular country (though not so well internationally) for the purposes of comparison of political ideology; however there are times where a party doesn't have a place in the spectrum because of an overarching policy that is in potential conflict with almost all other political positions.

The BNP have been placed at the far right of British politics by many of the other parties, notably the hard left groups of the Socialist Worker's Party and Respect. This is because they want to distance themselves as far as possible from the BNP, not least because many of their members are Muslims or otherwise ethnic minorities. The problem is although the BNP's major policy (white nationalism) is as far right as it gets, most of their other ideals (quoting from Michael Rock);

predominantly believe in nationalisation, collectivism and forbid free expression, which makes fascism the very antipathy of right-of-centre politics.

As I hinted to above, though, the BNP simply don't fit into the left-right spectrum.

Just my tuppence worth.

JR

PS: For more information on other political spectra, take a look at this Wikipedia article.

It's Super Bowl Sunday

It's Super Bowl Sunday! An unofficial public holiday in the United States.

Super Bowl XLIII will be contested between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Latest odds:
Steelers - 4/9
Cardinals - 11/5

You might have noticed that the date on the right reads 02.01.09, but don't be confused. If you hadn't already realised, those Americans write dates stupidly and put the month first, followed by the day and then the year; so it is today (1st February 2009) and not the second day of last month.

JR