All Students Want For Christmas is a No Vote.

I have just received the attached from the University Students' Union, of its campaign before Parliamentary vote where the Conservative and Lib Dem coalition will move their bill to increase student fees from £3000 to £9000 per year. This being despite the Lib Dems stating before the election that they would remove student fees:

Reading University Students’ Union encourages all Reading Students to unite with the people of Reading on the ‘Local Day of Action’ Wednesday 8th December, one day before the fees vote in parliament.

Once again, we would like to show our opposition to the cuts to Higher Education and the plans to triple fees to £9,000.

We will be congregating at 2pm outside the RUSU building and then walking into town to meet others outside Reading Town Hall at 3pm. On arrival we will be ‘Dumping our Debt’ in the metaphorical sense in the form of filled bin bags. So bring along your filled bin liner and write your campaign message on it.

We encourage you to dress up in an attempt to draw as much attention to ourselves as possible. E.g. zombies, Santas, angels, clowns, graduation gowns etc. Bring along your banners and posters and have your chants ready!

We want to send a strong message to our 2 local MPs, Rob Wilson and Alok Sharma that…


All we want for Christmas is a NO vote!

Karaoke with the President

Managed with usual Richard McKenzie skill only to catch the end of the Student Finances debate at Reading University.

It was interesting to see how the politico's interacted with the Students and how the Students reacted to the politico's. It seemed that the feedback at the end of the meeting was that Anneleise Dodds and Gareth Epps were well in the lead in their performances and that Rob's Wilson and White, Conservative MP and Green PPC respectively came across very badly. This sparked off a lot of conversations about different ways to run deabtes. There was a suggestion made that the 2 Rob's should fight for last place by wrestling in custard. This has sparked an idea for an article in Spark, the Union newspaper so watch this space.

It was a shame really that both the Rob's came aross so badly. Rob Wilson is an ex RUSU President, albeit in those days for the Social Democratic Party I seem to remember. Rob one is usually quite witting and engaging in those situations but somehow didn't seem to be able to rise to the occassion. Not sure what was going on.

The debate was especially important, given the levels of debt, talking to some of the other students some had debts, at the age of 22, of over £25,000. Where does that leave my children?

Once the post debate debates finished we repaired to the Union where the Karaoke was in full swing, I was pleased to say that I improved my lamentable score of 6 from my last session, see University does have its uses. I was however beaten by the unstoppable combo of Sinaead and Wes, Presidents of RUSU and the NUS respectively. Infact they were so good a number of use joinewd them on stage to bask in their victory.

The end of an interesting night