Lost in 24: the end of an era

Two seminal TV shows come to an end this year: they are Lost and 24. I’ve personally invested a lot of time in both of these (in the case of the latter, almost a decade of my life) so I’m not ashamed to say that I (along with millions of others) will miss them when they are gone. Alas, as they both come to a natural conclusion, we ask what was the key to their success? Read more

Cuts to USSU’s block grant sets dangerous precedent

The reduction in USSU’s block grant from the university is a bitter pill to swallow. It should not be taken lightly and it matters to anyone who uses the bars and shops, all that rely on the advice and representation it provides and anyone who make use of the many clubs and societies on offer.

Of course also at risk are the Union staff, who ensure the smooth running of the Union as successive cohorts come and go and the many casual staff who gain employment during their studies.

We are informed by the university press office that since USSU last year failed to make any money (or as much as it should) pretty drastic budget cuts are in order.

Still this is not the ‘cause’ of our ‘very precarious financial position’ but instead apparently the effect of our own supposed financial ineptitude. Read more

The crisis at Middlesex University

Last Friday I went to London to help defend a Westminster University student who was summoned to a disciplinary panel over his alleged role in a March occupation. It’s a familiar situation for Sussex students, although apparently Westminster is a little more incompetent in their handling of troublemakers. Whereas Sussex students got riot police and suspensions, Westminster apparently couldn’t muster more than a bumbling couple of administrators who didn’t seem to have any real idea of what they were doing. Good news for Simon Hardy, but yet another embarrassment for university managements. Violence doesn’t work, repressive punishment doesn’t work, bull-headed managerialism doesn’t work. Those pesky workers and students keep fighting anyway. It’s like they’re committed to a cause or something. Read more

Staff and students strike accord

It shouldn’t surprise me that students can be selfish people, and yet, on Wednesday, I was amazed at how many students strolled right past the picket lines. Some of them even refused to acknowledge the staff members trying to hand them leaflets about the strike. I hate being handed literature too, but for god’s sake, these are your lecturers! These are the people who run the university every day – not Michael Farthing and his coven of mercenary business puppets – and yet, they’re treated as if they aren’t even human. Because they have the nerve to inconvenience a bunch of selfish, middle-class young people. Read more

Farthing gets it wrong on tuition fees

As the Badger reports this week, Vice-Chancellor Michael Farthing has argued that in order for universities to maintain high standards of education, the tuition fee cap- which currently stands at £3,240 a year- must increase to a staggering £7,500.  This announcement came as staff and students maintained picket lines at the entrance to campus, where staff are striking over the threat of compulsory redundancies.

The Independent newspaper refers to Farthing as “a leading university vice-chancellor” despite him presiding over swingeing cuts to departments and university services, sacking academics and support staff alike, and enthusiastically deploying riot police to subdue student protests. Similarly a huge turnout at USSU’s last EGM, the largest ever meeting held on campus, saw upwards of 850 students record an overwhelming verdict of no confidence in the vice-chancellor as he attempted to alter the very nature of the University of Sussex. So, not so much a leading figure as much as a widely discredited, out of touch, campus-wide hate figure, perhaps? Read more

Will Green euphoria dissipate as Brighton awakens to the economic uncertainty ahead?

It’s 7:12am on the day after the most exciting general election in a generation. I borrowed that “most exciting general election in a generation” line from some old chap who used it the other day – this is, after all, the first general election I have ever voted in.

However, it is true, and for the millions of young people who have exercised their democratic right to vote, the political landscape is as exciting as it will ever be.

In Brighton Pavilion, the election of Caroline Lucas has foisted the city into the media spotlight: it has been mentioned three times in an hour on Radio Four, and Twitter has gone viral (sort of) with the news of Lucas’ victory.

Her campaign was, in all fairness, the most slick – or at least the most visible. This is my gripe, though. How many leaflets did the Greens want to push through my door? Over the past few months, I have had at least 30 – one for each of the five people who I live with. Is this not a slight contradiction, given that the Greens are the party of the environment? As I perch comfortably up here on the moral high ground (it’s lovely and green), I wonder how many trees have been cut down to print the inordinate and gross amount of literature dished out by the Greens. Read more

Blame games and volcanic ash: who’s fault?

As the ash cloud billowed from the spewing volcano in Iceland the accusations and recriminations over who was to blame were sure to follow, but nobody’s to blame for this act of God.

Or are they? Complaining is one of our favourite pastimes, and finding others to blame has recently become a treasured national sport. Before the dust had settled over the continent, Brits began to find fault. While nobody could be blamed for this freak of nature, we were quick to turn on those who were left to handle the fallout. Airlines, insurance companies, the government and the air traffic controllers all came under fire. The scientists were over-cautious in their judgement of the danger; the air traffic authorities were wrong to ban planes from the skies/ground us for so long; the insurance companies fell short when it came to stumping up sufficient compensation; the government’s response was too slow, too inefficient…

And yet had a flight been allowed to take to the sky and suffered damage, there would have been extensive recriminations against the air control authorities. The government was attempting to deal with an unprecedented, widespread crisis and people omitted to take into account that plans were quickly implemented to ship people back to British shores, while Embassy officials were promptly dispatched to ferry ports and airports to support the stranded hordes. Read more

“Misleading, Incomplete and Regressive”: the televised election debates

At the time of writing, the final televised election debate has just ended. The previous two debates were watched by 9.4 million and just over 4 million respectively, and we can be certain that similar figures tuned in to watch this last bout.

What much of the media coverage has served to demonstrate however is the sheer political bias that perennially permeates every aspect of this election campaign. Gordon Brown’s misjudged comments regarding a Labour supporting pensioner were latched onto by Sky news and others as if this was the defining moment of the election. Watching the interview with Gillian Duffy, after being called “bigoted” by Gordon Brown, the desperate, gleeful attempt by Sky news to milk every last ounce from what was effectively a non-story, was frankly nauseating. What can be pretty much guaranteed is that the Murdoch press in particular will ram home their own take on the debates and do their utmost to skew public perception to suit their own cause. Read more

Is this England? What March for England forgot to mention

‘All you need is the evidence. Look at all the Muslims slitting people’s throats. Get them out – This is England’

When the members of the English Defence League indicated that they would be joining the yearly March for England demonstration in Brighton on Saint George’s day, I wish I could say that the majority of the citizens of Brighton were in uproar. But why would they be? Most people I spoke to in the week leading up to the march had no conception of who the EDL were. They had no idea that the English Defence League, an organisation with close ties to the BNP and supposedly targeting ‘militant Islam,’ are a deeply racist and islamophobic organisation rapidly gaining strength and confidence throughout Britain. They hadn’t heard about the gangs of EDL members who targeted a mosque in Harrow. Or the shops run by Asians in Dudley that pulled their shutters down on the day of the EDL demonstration. Or the slogans they shouted through the streets of Bolton –  ‘If you build your fucking mosque, we’ll burn it down.’ ‘Pakis out.’ Yes they said ‘fucking mosques.’ Yes they said ‘Pakis.’ Let’s not censor it in the same way that national media consistently tones down messages of racism and replaces it with words that are somehow less of an affront to our sensibilities. We are witnessing a resurgence of racism throughout England that has manifested itself in the form of a street-fighting, violent and aggressive group of people who claim to be fighting against the terrible threat that Islam poses to our great Western civilisation. Let’s start talking about it with the brutal honesty and urgency that the situation commands and deserves. Read more

Want a fairer education system?

The most hotly contested election of the millennium is now only a couple of policy-scrutinising weeks away. Gord, Dave and Nick are primed, scrubbed and ready to bombard us with the best punchlines, soundbites and promises their speech writers can muster. ‘The Recovery’ from the recession and the need for ‘Change’ have quickly entered every day language. ‘Making Britain fairer’ is an aim all the parties claim to have. Despite the many strategies designed to help ensure this increase in ‘fairness’ none of the Big Three have broached what surely must be the single biggest obstacle preventing equality – the ancient British public school system. Read more