Videoblog 10 – Balloon Popping

Gareth Barry

I am a Liverpool fan.

I think its only fair to get that out in the open before I write the following blog because I know that any comments that I have here could be immediately dismissed as “well, you would say that, wouldn’t you”. But I do want to comment on the Gareth Barry situation and particularly the response he got from the Villa fans last night.

I don’t think its at all surprising that you’re going to get booed when you publicly announce that you intend to leave your club for a rival. I can’t agree with those people who use the line of reasoning that, “well, its their career. You wouldn’t expect to be told to stay in your job if you had a better opportunity elsewhere”, because, whilst that is logical, logic plays very little role in football generally and even less of a role when it comes to supporting a team.

But what I can’t agree with on this is some of the shouts he received. In particular, “You’re not fit to wear the shirt”.

Let’s look at Gareth Barry’s career shall we? Since moving from Brighton as a trainee in 1997, he has made over 330 starting appearances for Villa scoring a total of 35 goals. In April of this year he became the longest serving player at the club as well as the youngest player ever to reach 300 premier league games. He has been voted Fans’ Player and Players’ Player of the year. He has also been Villa’s captain.

If there’s any player fit to wear that shirt then surely it is him. But because he has decided that he needs to move on, he’s now a disgrace. I’m sorry but its not right. Feel upset about him wanting to leave and by all means boo if you want. But give the man some respect for the decade of loyal service he has given your club. There are many total mercenaries in football (we can all name them), but he clearly isn’t one of them.

I’m not happy about the way the deal has been conducted. We’ve certainly not covered ourselves in glory by allowing it to be dragged out in the press for so long. But don’t blame Gareth Barry for that either. The fault here lies with Rafa Benitez and Martin O’Neill. Equally.

It may be that he doesn’t move. I doubt it but it may be. And if he doesn’t and he has to stay I’m sure he will give his all for yet another year. But if he does move, feel hurt. And then thank him for what he has given to your club.

Sepp Blatter is a total imbecile

People who know me will know that I’m no fan of Manchester United. Frankly, I find the whole Ronaldo to Real Madrid story pretty funny – its nice when they are in the position that many other clubs find themselves in once they express an interest in one of their players. That said, the comments of Fifa president Sepp Blatter this week did make me feel a pang of sympathy. A pang that was quickly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of anger. I was going to write a long rant about it, but I found this blog from the Guardian’s Paul Doyle and thought, “Well he’s said it much better than I ever could.” I urge you to read it.

This is What a Student Looks Like

Whilst I said a while ago I wasn’t going to ever write anything work related on here, I’ve decided to change that rule. I won’t write about any that is a current ongoing issue or detail current successes, but ideas related to SU’s and management will appear here. At least until we get the AMSU ideas blog sorted.

So, onto business. Whilst I was at AMSU conference this week I went to a great session by NUS’ Sarah Wayman about Students in the Community and one of the issues that came up was about the image of “students”. I’ve put it that way because I think (and it was backed up by other people in the session) that when concerned members of the community talk about students, they mean the stereotypical, 18-22 year old, white, middle class student.

Over the past ten, fifteen years there has been an explosion in student numbers and along with that has come an explosion in the diversity of students. I think the time has come for someone (maybe NUS, maybe individual unions) to run a campaign aimed at those local communities that surround university areas, that explains in simple terms with clear statistics that there is this diversity of students. It can be as simple as postcards that we post through doors - the front of which is a picture of one of the many types of students that now populate that our institutions. There could be different cards with different pictures on the front and on the back, all of the individual student models together as a group with links to further information.

People might think “Well, what’s the point in doing this? It won’t stop the problems some students cause in the community”, and that is of course slightly true. However, what I’ve come to know is that in order to build a productive relationship with concerned residents and local people, you need to start from an honest position and make available as much information as you can. It doesn’t cloud the issue, it clarifies it.

There’s a further reason though. The stereotypical image of what a student looks like is something which is reinforced through the cultural cues we receive - through TV shows, through newspapers, etc. It is our job as people who work with students on a regular basis to challenge this stereotype - accepting that, yes some of our members are 18-22, white, and middle class. But not all of them. And more and more, its actually less of them.

Unless you work at Leeds obviously….

Here endth today’s sermon.

Photos from Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art

As promised in the previous post. Not the same as being there so get yourself along!

Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art

Had a free hour so I thought I’d leave the conference for a bit and pop over to the Gallery of Modern Art. And very glad am I that I did so.

Jim Lambie had an exhibition of new work in the main gallery called “Forever Changes”. It was eight new sculptures on a floor installation – a load of curved lines called “The Strokes”. Keeping up the music theme, my favourite work was a sculture called “Sonic Reduced” – eight concrete squares with records embedded into them so you could see the edge of the sleeves. Not only were they visually impressive in the way that they have been placed so as to look embedded into the gallery floor, it was pretty good fun looking at the sleeves to spot which records my parents had when I was growing up. It was also quite a shock to find out that Lambie has used collaged eyes in his work for years. Although, its always nice when I can set an element of my work into some kind of real art world setting.

What else was good? Well, I really liked Chad McCails paintings that were designed to look like illustrations from children’s books – although i thought they looked more like those 80’s posters you’d get in school telling you to use the Green Cross Code. I was also surprised to find that I liked Martin Boyce’s “Our Love is Like the Earth, the Sun, the Trees and the Birth”. I say surprised because its got a number of things I’m normally unmoved by in artistic work – sculptures using light bars, installation placement, etc – but I found it to actually be quite moving. Good god, I’m a ponce.

Anyway, there was some other stuff in there but it didn’t appeal to me in the same way. Jo Spence’s photographs are probably worth seeing, although there was only a couple that I found either emotionally moving or ironically funny (although that said I did laugh out loud at one of them).

I took some photos so I’ll post them on the blog when I get home from the conference. Anyway, better get back to it. Got to write up some stuff from an earlier session and then help prep a presentation for the AGM on Wednesday. No rest for the wicked.

Mr Kettle meet Mr Pot

I’m packing for AMSU conference and so will be away from the computer for a few days. But I thought I would take a quick break to check out the news. And I chanced upon this gem

Government accused over bonuses

Now I’m sure that the sentiment is entirely right and that if there is inefficiency in the civil service then we should be looking at that to make savings. But, hang on, are these the same politicians who this week almost voted through a pay increase that was completely disproportionate to what other public sector workers were getting? And who when this fell, instead voted against reforming an expenses system that allows for MPs to claim up to £24,000 a year – more than the salary of many, many voters in Britain? 

To be fair to the Conservatives, they were in the minority in terms of the number voting to keep the current system, but they also have less MPs so there you are.

If you would like to know who can claim more for equipping their second homes than you might earn in a year, check out:

Expenses Voting List

If your MP is on there and if you’re still annoyed check out:

They Work For You

Pop in your postcode and you can then send your MP a message explaining how unhappy you are they didn’t vote to change this and ask them for a written response. I’m going to write to Hilary Benn (my Leeds MP) as it appears he didn’t turn up for the vote. So he better have a good reason.

Apologies

Yo

Sorry there has been a lack of blog action. Been pretty knackered since I came back from Glastonbury but i’ve been putting together some videos outlining what I did. Not sure they’re very interesting though (like that’s stopped me before….), so I wanted to take some time to make them better.

In the meantime, and I know this is a bit old, but has anyone else noticed how much of a cunt Ashton Kutcher looks on the poster for What Happens in Vegas? I’ve heard the movie’s pretty bad anyway but even if I didn’t know that, his fucking smug stupid face and pointing hand that says “Tsk! Cameron eh? What a gal!” would make me run screaming from the box office. Twat.

Normal service will be resumed soon. Mucho promises.