Local politics boring? Not here it’s not!

Out of all the national ‘neo-sleaze’ stories recently, such as Peter Hain’s ‘oversight’ (it really does come to something when a Minister of State’s best defence is that he’s incompetent – “the defendant’s pleading is that he is simply an idiot m’lud”) and, lets be balanced here, Mr. Conway’s ‘irregularities’(at least he had the decency to apologies to the House immediately), none is quite as down right and dirty as the Labour and Lib Dem smear campaign/fraud trial going on right here in our City.

It is alleged that Muhammad Afzal won the Aston seat for Labour in 2007 after publishing leaflets and using loud-speaker messages stating that Liberal Democrat candidate Saeed Aehmed was guilty of fraudulently obtaining disability grants and had been arrested for postal vote fraud. In a detail to warm the cockles of any committed multiculturalists the ‘loud-speaker messages’ yelled outside the polling station were made largely in Bengali.

As unedifying as that spectacle may have been, the real devil is in the detail of this one and the true level of grubbiness and sleaze only came out under good old cross examination in court.

One witness for example told the court that ‘it was common practice for Councillor Afzal and other Labour councillors to offer to pay the annual subscription fees for Labour members in return for their votes at selection meetings for council candidates’.

Another witness, Iqbal Khan, told the court he had signed a witness statement ‘which had been written for him while sitting in Saeed Aehmed’s car in the dark. He could not see the statement or read it since he does not speak English’.

Some witnesses that have been compelled to give evidence have refused to attend such is the fear for their own safety.

The Claimant in all this, Mr. Aehmed, has claimed disability benefit for 25 years and admitted to the court that ‘he wanted to become a city councillor because he thought it would be an easy life’. Where do the Lib Dem’s get these people from? All allegations are denied by the senior Labour Councillor Afzal.

On top of all this the man who will decide if the Director of Public Prosecutions will take criminal action against the Labour defendant is a man who is married to a Labour councillor. I’m sure this man is wholly independent and beyond impeachment, but if we’re aiming for complete trust and transparency in the political process then surely it’s not beyond the realms of mankind to appoint a barrister that has no familial connections to the Labour party?

In another case this week police have tried to charge a certain Mohammed Khan with 11 accounts of electoral and postal ballot fraud. Unfortunately he has absconded to Pakistan. The offences relate to a 2006 campaign for the inner city Nechalls ward, scene of a bitter battle between Labour and the Lib Dems at the time.

The potential fraud cases don’t even stop there with the Birmingham Post reporting that ‘Several other police probes into suspected electoral fraud in the region are currently being conducted by the police force’s Economic Crime Team’.

At the top of this blog I made a jokey reference to what Mr. Hain’s defence in a court could be – ‘I’m an idiot m’lud’. Obviously a poor attempt at irreverent humour your thinking. Well in the first case Mr. Aehmed actually said the following to the court as part of his defence; ‘I am unfit to work. I have asthma, I have back pain and I suffer from depression’. Just the kind of go getter we need in public office then eh! At one point Mr. Aehmed was said to be so ill that ‘he was drifting in and out of consciousnesses’. Yet this is a man, the defendant said, that had ‘spent much of the 1990’s clambering up ladders to attach posters to lampposts’.

I make no judgement on Mr. Aehmed’s ethics, but if this is the candidate that the Lib Dems have picked, on more than one occasion, to fight a council ward then what on earth was up with the others? And how can anybody ever have respect for the political process when things like this are going on and candidates like that are being selected? When the sleazy side of politics, both nationally and locally, are the most prominent and most talked about stories democracy could be said to be in real trouble.

I don’t think we should underplay the significance of these trials. The highest standards are expected in public office. These standards are largely driven by the holders of that office.

When I first came across this story I though it was no bad thing that these men were willing to fight tooth and nail for public office because it shows that to hold office is still respected. That it still means something. It seemed a good antidote to the apathy most people display toward local politics. But actually it’s not at all. The common denominator of both parties here seems to be shady business deals and favouritism.

But the debacle is slightly heartening for one reason; these people have been hauled in front of the courts to face this country’s honest kernel, one Britain’s greatest ever exports, the rule of law.

Contrast Kenya’s reaction to election rigging and ours; brutal murder and anarchy there, a few chippy comments on a blog here. So in the end it doesn’t really matter if Politicians are sleazy or have there snouts in the trough. It only matters if they don’t get caught. And they do.

The trial continues….

‘Absolute Balls’ London Diary Part Two – PMQs

Going to PMQs was a real treat yesterday, it is completely different being in the chamber to watching it on Television the volume is so much louder, and it seems far more intense, you get a greater sense of the ‘bearpit’ atmosphere that the politicians talk about.

 Cameron versus Brown from a spectating point of view is becoming a bit boring. Cameron gets up asks several questions, Brown just doesn’t answer them, the dithering line really seems to be working on him though.

 However, the most amazing point was the performance of Boris Johnson straight after PMQs during an answer by Brown, he had said that Boris wanted to cut spending on police, which would lead to greater crime. Being so close to Boris at the time, you could see his typical reaction, ‘absolute balls!’. He then left the chamber presumably to make a phone call to campaign staff, he then went round the back to the Speaker’s Chair perhaps to confirm what he was to do after.

 He came back to his original position at the back right hand corner of the Chamber as Brown faces it. He then gave one of the most passionate speeches I have ever heard. I was very close to him at this point and could barely hear him. Most of the MPs were on the way out of the chamber, literally they all stopped though, including a lot of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet. As Boris said ‘I am sure the Hon Gentlemen has misled the House’, you could see Brown scurrying away, it really did look like an animal retreating from the fight. It was the most passionate speech ever delivered by a politician.

 Apparently some said last year Boris didn’t want to be Mayor of London, ‘absolute balls!’

update: PLAY POLITICAL HAVE GOT THE VIDEO VIEW IT HERE

London Diary Part one

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going down to London to attend several events including PMQs and a YBF public affairs event, whcih I shall write up later this afternoon.

 As I was on the train down early in the morning, we were discussing what Cameron would go at with at PMQs it seemed pretty obvious, as he had done a two page interview with The Sun, on stop and searching more people that he would lead with this. It has been a consistent policy of the Conservatives to cut the bureacracy, and get rid of the foot long form, which takes an officer Seven minutes to fill out! A ridiclous nanny state idea, where we cannot trust our police officers!!

 As we made our way from Euston to Westminster, I noticed at the other end of the carriage was a certain Nick Robinson, it took me a while to distinguish whether this was just another man, with dark rimmed glasses and a bald head. But in the end it did transpire it was him, my friend that was travelling with me was extremely impressed that he was indeed listening to an Ipod, well so it would seem at first. As we were standing next to him it was possible to see that he was indeed watching the US primaries, its nice to know you can be Chief Political Correspondent for the BBC and still be as geeky as all of us bloggers!!

 In the afternoon, we went to watch a Transport Select Committee meeting, Gwyneth Dunwoody, a Labour MP really gave Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, an extremly hard time. She definetely reminded of an old Head Mistress of mine, where almost any answer you gave was not going to be the right one. Miss Dunwoody treated her as a naught school child, who was tralling out excuse after excuse it was fun too watch it must be said!

 I will give a PMQs and YBF update this afternoon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. CHAIRMAN

  

 I have been trying to edit a speech bubble in this photo for about an hour now and nothing seems to work!!

 I will buy a drink at Mechu this evening for someone who comes up with the best caption for this photo!

 Have a great day Mr. Administrator ;-)

US election update

John Edwards has pulled out of the running for the Democrat nomination.  As of yet he has not endorsed Obama or Clinton, but it is thought that Clinton has been courting Edwards for some time. Full story can be found here - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/politics/30cnd-edwards.html?hp  

JokeBlog 3

Another from across the pond:

One day George Bush is going to give a speech at an Elementary School. He asks the teacher what the children are studying and she replies that they are learning about Greek Tragedies. So the President decides to talk about Tragedies. He asks a student, “What would you consider to be a tragedy?”

The kid thinks for awhile and then says, ” If a boy is running after a ball into a street and gets run over by a car and dies.”

Bush responds, “No, I don’t think that’s a tragedy… that’s an accident.” Then Bush asks another kid to give an example of a tragedy.

The kid says, “If a bus full of kids drives over a cliff and they all die.”

This time Bush says, “I don’t think that’s a tragedy… I think that’s a great loss.” So again Bush asks another kid to give an example of a tragedy.

The kid responds, “If you and Dick Chenney are on Air Force One and it crashes.”

“Right!” says Bush to the kid. “That would be a tragedy… how did you ever know that?”

Quickly, the kid replies, ” Because I know it’s not an accident and I know it’s not a great loss.”

Bulgarian Babies- Economic Immigration

The NHS spends a massive 350 million pounds according to the BBC on providing maternity care to those children born with foreign mothers. This is a 200 million pound increase with just over 20% of all births now being attributed to babies with foreign mothers.

Now before any labour readers throw their toys out of the pram, I am no advocating that migrants do not receive treatment or they should pay or something; that is not the point of the NHS, free at the point of use is a principle I really admire. However this does represent this government’s woeful planning for huge demographic change after we opened our boarders to the new EU states.

Some maternity units have had to close so that midwives could be focused in acute need areas, often our major cities. This is just unacceptable. The government should not have allowed such huge immigration without sufficient planning. Only now the NHS is trying to catch up with one senior consultant calling the care provided unacceptable.

This story comes just days after the chief constable of Kent said his force is being put under immense strain dealing with crimes committee by immigrants including violent street crime, child sex slavery, drugs and people trafficking. WHY should we the native population be subjected to higher crime, and poorer health standards because this government has not done anything to control economic migration?

If we combine these problems with the huge increase in translation cost, increasing difficulty for teachers to teach so many foreign students and the inevitable wage deflation for native workers what benefits have British people gained from our new polish friends coming over in such high numbers? While they flourish we suffer.

CONTROLLED immigration for economic reasons is essential, uncontrolled free for all, costs us a lot, and who pays, middle England of course.

NOW is the time that immigration was properly controlled with a Australian style points system, which is rigorously controlled. Oh and perhaps the government could actually figure out how many people are here too so public services could have some facts to base their plans on.

Foreigners are NOT to blame it is the LABOUR GOVERNMENT’S BAD IMMIGRATION POLICY. We need an effective immigration system and we needed it a few years ago.

A mid afternoon moan…

Right, im afraid im going to have a little rant here folks just incase any of you are enjoying the lovely process of trying to sort out council tax exemption and would like some courage in your hour of need.

 Last week, my housemate and I both received a Court summons from Birmingham City Council due to the fact that we had not paid our council tax, thus we also received a rather large cheque much to our shock and horror.  This was because we had not sent off our council tax certificates (as most of you will know, students are exempt from paying council tax)

 The very fact that the council had taken it as far as setting a court date for two weeks time causes me some a great deal of distress.  For several reasons…

 Not only do they know that Selly Oak is absolutely full of students and so it was most likely that in our case, we just had not sent the correct forms off, not infact as they assumed, ignoring the bills, but we weren’t even receiving any council tax bills in the first place! 

Furthermore, in letting it appear that Birmingham city council knew we were students by not sending us any bills or reminders to pay, my housemates and I had miraculously ran up over £100 in ‘charges’.  Is this my friends, due to the amount of paper and ink that the council waste in sending out Court summons to students?

The saga continues… when I rang them this morning to explain the situation, it seemed they were already prepared for my problem as I had a special number to press that dealt with council tax summons.  This tells me I am not the only one in this situation, infact i have gathered that it happens all the time.

And just one last little moan – when i got through to the council, I was also told by an automated voice that my call was placed in a queue and that I would have to wait. My caller number? TWELVE. As you may have gathered, I had to wait a long time, surprise surprise…

JokeBlog 2

Hope you enjoyed yesterdays snippet, some days we will just use a quote instead. A very appropriate one for all of users of blogs:

 ”The Internet is a gateway to get on the net.”

Former Republican candidate Bob Dole

Jokeblog 1

This is one of the new features that we are starting from today each day at 3 o clock on a week day, we will put up a joke, not necessarily political. Thought we would begin with one of the most likeable politicians

 Mr. William Clinton: President Clinton looks up from his desk in the Oval Office to see one of his aides nervously approach him. “What is it?” exclaims the President.

“It’s the Abortion Bill, Mr. President – what do you want to do about it?”

“Just go ahead and pay it.”

Guild referendum, whats it all about really?

WARNING: STUDENT POLITICS POST:

if you don’t like it don’t read it!

 There has been a lot of information flying around on facebook this week, about a so called referendum that the Guild is holding in a couple of weeks. It’s tagline is ‘SAVE THE GUILD’.

 I have read a lot of the information on the various groups and have found it all rather confusing. Apparently Guild members want to change the constitution to apply with more regulations under the government and help us become a charity.

However, I think it is really poorly explained, partly due to the fact it seems to be rushed through so quickly, which I believe leads to many questions about what Guild members are trying to do. They have set the deadline, and only given themselves two weeks for a debate to be held. This strikes me as rather worrying and leads to more questions being asked than it does answered.

Furthermore, I think the Guild have got to be careful with how they conduct this vote, the second tagline on the flyers is ‘What would your university life be like without the Guild’?

Having to spoke to numerous people outside of the sphere of student politics, they seem very unaware of what the Guild does for them, however, they have been invited to these facebook groups. They seem to have subconsciously turned it into a referendum of, ‘Does the make my life at University any different?’ The resounding answer to this from them is, it doesn’t do anything, and is full of wannabe politicos.

Let me make it clear now, I believe the majority of people in the Guild are in it for the right reasons, just like the majority of politicians. I have on occasions had difficulties with the Guild, they seem to put more obstacles in the way. A simple event that you want to organise turns out to be a incredibly tiring affair. However, a Guild run by the students I believe is by far and away is the best thing.

A simple yesvote I believe is the correct thing to allow our Guild to function at its best. However, I think they have to be clear about what this referendum is about, many students seem to count the Guild as an irrelevance, with I think less than a 15% turnout in the annual elections. This in turn could result this becoming a referendum on the nature and purpose of the Guild rather than on what apparently is a relatively simple vote.

The Guild are in massive danger of ‘hyperboling’ this, probably because they require 10% of the students to vote for it to count.

 I am sure Guild members will be keen to explain in the comments what it is really about, and will say I am not helping at all! However, I would regard myself as being too involved with students politics, I would say I have a passing interest and these are just my observations which I have discussions with friends of mine, who have no interest but seem to hold similar views.

In Iain Dale’s words: *Battens down hatches!!*

The US, a week in review.

This is hopefully the beginning of a weekly blog containing a couple of the highlights and roundups of the past week in the US presidential election.

South Carolina

As I’m sure most of you are aware, the main highlight of the past week was Obama’s landslide win in South Carolina, sweeping 55% of the vote compared to Clinton’s 27%. This has largely been played down in the Clinton Camp, who have cited the 80% support within the black communities as the determining factor, with Bill Clinton going as far as comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson’s previous successes in the state. These claims do hold some water though, race in politics is a far more contentious issue than in the UK and if you look at the polling data on who white voters supported they predominately voted for Obama’s rivals (only 25% voting for Obama). Be that as it may personally I don’t think South Carolina has made the end result any clearer, one thing I am quite confident on though is despite the negative affects to Clinton and Obama’s bickering it hasn’t been enough to save Edwards who only took 18% and this being his native state. It will be interesting to see whether Edwards can hold on at least long enough to influence future debate..

Giuliani trailing..

Meanwhile on the republican front Giuliani is not doing at all well, being pushed into fourth place (13%) in recent polls for the upcoming Florida Primary while Romney and McCain are neck and neck. This is not good news at all for Giuliani who although being one of the most high profile candidates only has 2 declared delegates compared to Romney’s 73. Especially if you take into consideration that Giuliani’s game plan has been to ignore smaller less significant states (trailing sixth at some points) and focus campaigning and financing on Florida’s 57 delegates. I think even Giuliani himself is fully aware it’s going to take a miracle to change him from the candidate that never was…

And Finally

A little quiz for those of you yet to make up their minds.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/page?id=3623346

Independence Independence Independence.

No, no do not worry this is not a blog about Scotland, but one about something far more important. Public Services. New Labour have done a few good things for the country, one good example is the releasing of the Bank of England from Politicians. We now have an independent committee, which decides which interest rates would best suit the economy for economic reasons, not what interest rates would suit the government politically.

This system works quite well and I like it. Why do we not then remove politicians from other spheres of influence? i think our public services should be run and managed at the top not by a government department but by an independent committee of professionals, and public users. This would work most effectively in healthcare provision. The NHS is used as a political tool too often, something I blogged about in my entry called Crisis Creationism and following Daniel’s damming condemnation of politicians it makes sense to remove them.

Under this system healthcare goals could be set which are in the interests of healthcare provision, politics and the headline culture would be removed from the functioning of the NHS. Targets could be set where needed and if done so by doctors and professionals they wouldn’t feel draconian by the near 1 million staff. It would allow for greater dynamism in management and innovation in delivery because public opinion obsessed politicians would not tie them down.

Now MPs should not worry they still have an important role in this system as our elected representatives and this would be one of holding the committees to account. MPs could ensure that they are providing excellent management of the service and discipline them if they are not. The committees would remain independent and there would be checks on MPs power. MPs would also put forward the views of the public to the committee.

Politics has no place in the NHS let’s remove it and watch it flourish.

Impotence, and why Gordon Brown is enough to put anyone off…

     

Thursday night was Tom Whittaker’s last major debate before stepping down as Chairman of the Debating Society. He’s shown great commitment and enthusiasm this year and it’s paid off. Unfortunately, Lembit Opik, who had been booked to speak, couldn’t make it (again), no doubt being plopped on by a cheeky girl. Don’t ask.

Facing hostile liberals, I stood-up to defend the motion that ’government should never rescue failing private industry’. Embarrassingly, I forgot my first point. Not a sub-point to a more important point, but my first point. There was a long silence while I searched my notes for a lifeline. I have never been so impotent, with the exception of one night in second year I’d rather forget.

Partly because of my performance, I have decided not be a politician. Though, there is another reason. Politicians, I’m sure, are lovely people. In fact I know some, and they are lovely. But they are also self-interested, career driven, back-stabbing, manipulative, attention seeking, egotistical individuals. Take Gordon Brown.

Why did our Prime Minister jet off to India last week? While there he announced an £800 million aid package to help develop education in India. He also lent his support to India’s aim of a seat on the UN security council. We heard how Ghandi had inspired him on his path to Number Ten. In fact, this is the second time the PM has visited India during his tenure.

So any ideas? Maybe to foster diplomatic relations? Or to pave the way for British investors? Perhaps. But no. The main reason is that he wants Indian (and Chinese) companies to buy-out British companies. And he wants them to do so as quickly as possible, pumping new money into the British economy. It’s a short-termist approach, but Gordon Brown is facing a recession and a general election, and he’s desperate. So never mind the long-term health of the economy.

Introducing LOTFW

 

Who cares about the little election across the pond? Introducing the real Leader of the Free World. He writes satirical comments on the world, well literally anything! I am sure you will find his posts riveting, you can read some of his travel writings here.

It has to be said, that by no stretch of the imagination am I a political or current affairs mastermind. However, I am of voting age, I am socially aware, and I have many opinions on a lot of things. Therefore I believe the murmurings of people such as myself can provide a sound insight into the thinking of the general public on such matters of grave importance, thusly I would like to share a few thoughts of mine on current issues if you fine people will be good enough to indulge me. To keep myself in the loop with all things current (as opposed to raisins, they’re not as juicy you see) I regularly peruse the wealth of knowledge and information available via the glorious British Broadcasting Corporation website. And, I won’t deny, I have a tendency to gravitate towards the “Most Read” section of the site, simply to see what our grand, and highly intellectually developed nation deem to be of the greatest merit for my valuable time. Today I was not disappointed, top article: 

“Morning coffee is ‘meal in a cup’” 

Excellent I think, an ironic title using satire to draw in an audience then hit them later on with a really heavy, deep and meaningful piece on war, death, taxation, or law and order … but alas, the subject matter is as the title suggests, how a morning coffee contains practically a fifth of a persons required daily calories. Upset I was about this misunderstanding, but not dissuade from my thirst for knowledge, I read on to the next article: 

“Scorpion found in store bananas” 

Now here we have something I can really get my teeth into. I won’t however be getting my teeth into any Morrison’s bananas for a while, for fear I may receive more than I bargain for in the form of a well travelled eight-legged arthropod. Fortunately for this little South American customs dodger, the government’s immigration policy will see him put up in a nice cosy new Sky TV enabled flat, provided with free health assistance (incase he is suffering from Scurvy following his lengthy transit), and will re-write the local signage to include Spanish so our newest addition doesn’t get lost while driving his Nissan Micra down to Aldi. 

At this point I lost interest in the exploits of the day’s big news, and set about reading extracts relating to how an unfortunate gentleman has resigned from his job after failing to properly report a donation someone gave him of £103,000. Just clumsy if you ask me, I personally would make pretty damn sure that if someone is kind enough to give me over one hundred thousand pounds, I make sure it is all sign sealed and delivered without so much of a “t” not being crossed. But it’s not important though, apparently this chap was just only someone else’s secretary, ironically he dealt with work and pensions… neither of which he personally needs to worry about for a while, funny how things work out isn’t it.

Hain finally resigns

He has apparently resigned in order to clear his name, as there will be a police investigation!

If he had gone all those weeks again, it would have given restbite to Labour in so many news cycles, it really does beggar belief, in some ways that it has taken this long.

Will we now see the Domino effect? Alexander – Harman . . .

Democracy stifles true freedom of thought

   

      

Democracy is heralded as the foremost structure for politics to operate in, it promoted around the world by the likes of America and the UK as the model for engaging vivid and innovative political discussion, debate that drives pioneering policies that will pay dividends now and well into the future. But have you ever stopped to think that maybe the very structures that were set up to seek out new ideas that would encourage debate and inevitably change the world are in fact strangling any voice that appears radical because the system causes people to care more about getting in power then maintaining it than realising ideal objectives for the greater good.

We have career politicians that need to keep themselves in a job and thus need to be continually voted into office. In this way they must tailor their manifesto to be popular to the demographic in the area they are running for to win the election. Once in power they are expected to follow the objectives they laid out in their campaign, but as time goes on and they realise the systems of power and how to play them they increasingly realise that to gain promotion and therefore influence, responsibility and power they must “tow the party line”, rocking the boat is not an option.

Free thinkers are considered to be on the fringes of politics and are tolerated as eccentrics or radicals but that are disruptive and often derisive. However, to agree with this point of view is to hold a contradictory opinion of democracy, it says ‘you can think and say what you wish, but you must tow the party line’. How does this stimulate free thinking, the ability to imagine a world outside the current frameworks and restrictions to invent a new or original way to tackle a traditional issue like poverty. This free thinking created the NHS, the police force and women being educated; we need people willing to explore unknown territory, to be prepared to state a revolutionary solution to drive change, without them democracy is nothing.

 Lydia is a new member of the BUCF committee taking control of events officer. The committee has gone under a slight restructure, which will be explained later.

Comittee re structing

It is not only the blog which is undergoing a revamp to try and make the committee more efficient and better at running a society, we have decided to re define some of the committee positions, editing some titles and some people moving places. In the aims of transparency I believed that it was best to make it public.

  CHAIRMAN – THEO LOMAS – is to take a leading role in ensuring the smooth running of Birmingham Uni CF, will delegate roles of responsibility to other members of the committee and assist when necessary.  It is important that the chair networks and gains contacts as much as possible and this person is ultimately responsible for dealing with visits from cabinet ministers, MPs etc. 

VICE CHAIR – EXTERNAL – ANDY DUNBARis to deal with all issues outside of the uni, to attend one city branch meeting and one Edgbaston committee per term and has a responsibility to promote the CF outside of the university environment with local dignitaries.

 

VICE CHAIR – INTERNAL – RYAN CASTLE must attend at least half of the guild meetings per term, promote membership as much as possible, be a point of call for the guild and ensure that the secretary and treasurer are both carrying out their respective roles.

 

SECRETARY – LAURA MARKHAM – must hold the list of members, carry out risk assessments for each event, be in charge of all general administration and take the minutes at each meeting.

 

TREASURER – LAURA BLYTH- to take charge of the finance, come up with new fund-raising ideas as often as possible and to provide a finance report regularly as a formality.

EVENTS COORDINATOR – LYDIA THORNTON - is to be in charge of all events that take place for CF, create them and come up with new ideas on a regular basis for social and political events and be aware of Birmingham city branch events etc.  Also the events officer must be sort out guests and know who is attending i.e. politicians.

BLOG EDITOR – JIMMY MCLOUGHLIN- as a new role the blog editor is to basically to take charge of the blog.  He/she must write at least one blog per week, check the blog daily to ensure that everything on it is appropriate and good and provide a blog report at each meeting.  If there are any problems with the blog, these will fall to the blog editor to resolve and the editor is also responsible for promoting the blog.

R.I.P Heath Ledger 1979-2008

This story from Fox News about people planning to picket memorial services to him, sounds horrendous though.

Event Tomorrow night (24th January)

Join the BUCF committee tomorrow night for pre drinks before we go and join the Debating Society for the debate on

‘This House believes that Government should never rescue failing private industries’

It promises to be an enthralling debate, Alex Ward is proposing the motion, Alex is an enourmously experienced debater, having even gone to the European Championships for debating in previous years. Although he is going to need it when you consider that he is up against . . . 

The one and only . . . (although there are two of his girlfriend) LEMBIT OPIK.

That’s correct the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for business is coming to Birmingham. Lembit is well known for dating one of the Cheeky Girls, but also for his appearences on, ‘Have I got News For You’ and for once claiming that an asteroid was going to hit earth.

It should be a great debate, please join the BUCF committee for pre drinks around the back of Joe’s Bar in the Guild (to the left of the picture as you look at it) and then we will go to the debate 6:30, which should be concluded by 8:30.

Crisis Creationism

      

 

Clegg recently announced that we have one of the most unequal healthcare systems in the modern world. A quick glance over the pond and he would realise that to be a falsehood. Why would he say it?

Well I don’t mean to pick on the Liberal Democrat leader, all politicians are culpable, but it was just his comments on the NHS that prompted this blog. It is in the interest of new leaders who wish to increase their public profiles to fabricate crises so that they can be the enlightened ones who come up with the solutions. This does work, Clegg’s new policy ideas have been all the rage in the press this week and increasingly because of this approach he is better known amongst the general voting masses.

I disagree with this approach to politics and one I am glad David Cameron did not take. When Cameron became leader of the party he told the public it would have to wait for policy, wait for the party to think in depth and come up with real alternative policies. We accepted that labour had done a lot of good but identified huge room for improvement. We did not announce that the NHS was in crisis (which it isn’t). I hope the public respect him more for this approach than the crisis creationism of Clegg.

:-)

Housing in Birmingham

I currently live in Sellyoak, like the majority of second and third year students at the University of Birmingham. There have been numerous problems with our house, letters come through every day marked from the council ‘urgent’ addressed to our landlord. I do not want to get into specific issues.

 However, it has transpired today that Birmingham City Council, which looks after a population of almost one million people has just six members of a team to take care of housing irregularities. I doubt that would even be able to police Sellyoak properly let alone the rest of the second biggest city in the United Kingdom.

 This I believe is quite a staggering state of affairs.

Quiz Time

Which member of BUCF commented this afternoon?

 ’I potentially support the death penalty in extreme circumstances . . . for example in the case of suicide bombers!’

 Answers on a postcard!

Service Announcement

 

Admittedly, the blog recently has not been updated by the committee as much as we would have liked. At the end of last year, University work became a priority and seemed to overtake the lives of many in the committee! We have lots more events for this term, which will be announced shortly when we have finalised some dates.

 We will also be making a strenuous attempt to update the blog more regularly. The most crucial aspect of this blog is you, the reader and particularly those of you that take the time and effort to comment.

 Therefore I would like to ask you what you would like to see more of on the blog, and whether you have any bright ideas that you could think of.

 For example, we are looking at doing a weekly guestblog from other bloggers, students and even Members of Parliament on a variety of issues. If you could think of anymore iniatives please let us know!