I still feel slightly bad to be resurrecting my blog just because of this post (seems much to stereotypical, 'I don't like that... to the Internet to complaint!') but it's happening anyway as it seems a fairly drastic event on campus and I suspect will have a long series of after affects (never know, might keep me blogging this time).

To start with I'll try and set the scene. At the last student elections on campus a group called 'viva essex' (basically a bunch of commies in my opinion but I only gave a quick glance over the elections before making my decisions) achieved a clean victory with all 5 of their members winning their positions. I voted against them all the way but fair do's to them they gained the popular support and won. They started the job some time over the summer 2008 but for me weren't noticed until the start of this academic year which is when things started going wrong. The current sabbs seem highly politically motivated (but not overly politically savvy as it's been put) which you might argue is good but they're following their own personal interests seemingly exclusively.

Before I go further I'm going to draw attention to 'seemingly'. Given that very few people will read this and I know them I won't waste their time with a definition of the word. I say seemingly as for the most part I have no interest in what they're up to unless it effects me, unfortunately I feel this year most things they seem to have done have effected me in some way or another. Possibly I'm just growing up and generally showing an interest or they are interacting (interfering, whichever you prefer) with the average student life. Equally, to my opinion they seem to be wasting a lot of time on international issues of little or no concern to the majority of the student body which is what current events are concerning.

I could go on and go but 3 months is a bit of a pain to cover and detracts from current events. I didn't witness these events myself so advise these notes by Mat specifically for a view of what happened and a good read (The SU: How did it come to this? and Kavakeb: What he said vs What he meant). In short they've brought the university to the brink of a civil war (for lack of a better term) and I still haven't worked out the most defensible position on campus once the fighting breaks out.

Now the protesters are perfectly free to have their opinions and protest though I really would prefer it if they didn't or at least thought through what they were doing and picked a better strategy rather interfere with lessons and piss off a lot of people (though it gives me hope that we're finally going to witness the counter-attack against the commies/socialists which seem to have taken over the majority of campus' across the country). However, just because they have a right to do this doesn't mean I'm going to happily stand aside and let them (despite how apathetic I generally am to causes on campus). I half hope they try something stupid like putting up a picket line in front of the lecture theatre building (which they're currently 'occupying'/'squatting' in over the weekend though never word really describes what they're doing as they booked it out) which I can then run and I have no problems with forcibly barging my way past these people even though I know it'll just make matters worse.

All this is once again encouraging me to consider running in the up coming elections. However, I fear that despite the best efforts of the SU they still haven't raised my selling point sufficiently high to have a chance of winning (equally there's still the risk of some of them winning and I might find myself winning and being required to work with 4 people I don't agree with).

As a parting question (for now) I'm still wondering whether those who are arguing against the SU and these recent protests count as revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries due to the SU's own stance. The leaning seems to be towards the former in which case the SU should be dropping to their knees and worshiping us as we are what they appear to idealise most.

QOTD:

'I do the jokes,'  snapped Varl.

'Yeah, why is that?' asked Laydlly.

'Because... I'll shoot you,' said Varl.