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Day: 14 February 2013

Time to give homophobia the boot

The modern sporting world is at a crossroads. Every endeavour is being made to make sport more tolerant; in aspects such as gender, disability and race. Recently we have seen the foundation of the Women’s Super League and unprecedented coverage of competitions such as the Women’s Cricket World Cup. Last summer, London hosted what IPC chair Sir Phillip Craven branded ‘the greatest Paralympic games ever’. Racism appears to be being attacked from every angle, with mass support coming for AC Milan’s Kevin Prince Boateng for walking off the pitch amidst racist chants, and the FA’s Respect campaign gathering momentum. But homosexuality is still a hurdle that needs to be overcome for sporting authorities; particularly in football.

It speaks volumes that footballers can cheat on their wives and partners, crash cars and face jail time, yet being gay is still taboo. Despite his well-documented exploits, Ashley Cole tops shirt sales, and was described as a ‘legend’ when receiving his 100th cap. Alan Smith, ex-manager of Crystal Palace, commented that ‘you can get drunk and beat up your wife, but if someone were to say ‘I’m gay’, it’s considered awful. It’s ridiculous.’

The Western world has been long accepting of homosexuality, so one could be forgiven for thinking that the footballing authorities should have done more to protect homosexual sportsmen and women. Take FIFA president Sepp Blatter, for example. In another remarkable feat of incompetency, when asked about any cultural problems with hosting the 2022 World Cup in a conservative Arabic nation, Blatter declared that ‘they [gay fans] should refrain from any sexual activity.’ Such ludicrous comments received international backlash from many equality groups. Notable among these was former NBA star John Amaechi, perhaps the most high-profile gay athlete, who branded Blatter’s comments as ‘absurd’. Amaechi retorted that Blatter’s comments effect not only those who are gay, but show that in ‘the seat of power, straight white men normally, are very, very clearly uncomfortable’ with homosexuality.

English football does not have a proud tradition when it comes to gay players either. A particular case of homophobia was shown towards Graham Le Saux. Despite now being married with two children, his playing days were hounded with accusations of homosexuality. This reached its peak with Robbie Fowler making homophobic gestures towards Le Saux during a Premier League match. Le Saux, perhaps understandably, hit Fowler when the referee’s back was turned. Both players were punished with FA fines, and the chance to make an example of Fowler was missed. Le Saux accredits the abuse he received to his university background, and the fact he did not live the ‘footballer lifestyle’. This highlights a key reason why the modern athlete may struggle to come out – acceptance. In a sport where your career is short, and you have to make as much as quickly as you can, being different does not help, and unfortunately for Le Saux, keeping his nose clean made him a target for abuse.

The FA is finally looking to address the issue. They launched a scheme in 2012, called ‘Opening Doors and Joining In’, which aims to include and involve openly LGBT athletes in football between 2012 and 2016. The plan centres very much on the ideas of acceptance, safety and inclusion in all levels of the sport; admirable goals that FA Chariman David Bernstein regards as ‘moral obligations.’ The creation of ‘gay-friendly’ teams is important as it creates a safe environment. But the plans still appear to emphasise a difference, a segregation of ‘us’ and ‘them’, that in the long run may result in bigotry.

Although not as systematic a plan as the English FA’s, the Dutch FA recently implemented their own method of combating homophobia. A humorous, yet touching, advert was broadcast, depicting a footballer training, playing and socialising in a closet costume, only to remove  the costume to pose for a team photo. Perhaps an approach like the FA’s is not needed; all that is needed is acceptance, in a similar form to the advert’s slogan; ‘being gay, there’s nothing queer about it.’

It will take time to see whether the FA’s ambitious plan will work to accept and promote the presence of the LGBT community in English football. Although prejudice and bigotry will never be fully eradicated, the recent Parliamentary moves to legalise gay marriage shows that Britain, although it is bound to tradition, can adapt to social change. If this can be the case with marriage, why not sport?

Manchester outclass hapless Liverpool

The awful weather couldn’t stop Manchester Women’s 1st from putting on an impressive home attacking display in which they ran out 4-0 winners over Liverpool at the Armitage centre. Despite a handful of speculative shots from range, Liverpool never really threatened Manchester’s goal, indeed they did not win a corner all game.

On the few occasions they did threaten, Manchester’s defence held firm, which must be pleasing for the coach. In contrast Liverpool were terrorised throughout by Manchester who dominated possession and ruthlessly exploited their opponents frailties, in particular Liverpool could simply not live Mapp, my player of the match, and the industrious winger Thomas, who operated on the left wing impressively all game. However credit must also be given to Liverpool’s keeper whose remarkable saves kept the score down, unfortunately she sustained an injury which forced the game to be stopped 15 minutes before time.

Oddly enough, Liverpool threatened first in this game, with a shot from distance that forced Manchester’s keeper into a smart stop with only 2 minutes gone. However a mere 8 minutes later Manchester celebrated their first goal after winning a series of corners. A neat one-two between the impressive Thomas and Manchester’s lone striker Wan on the edge of the box put the former through on goal and she coolly slotted the ball home.

Manchester continued to dominate possession and on 15 minutes Liverpool’s keeper kept her team in the game, producing a flying save to push out Mapp’s effort from the edge of the box. The keeper then made a heroic double save on 20 minutes, after saving a powerful effort from Williams she made herself big to deny Mapp once more on the follow up. Thus despite winning a number of corners, dominating possession and peppering Liverpool’s goal Manchester somehow left the field at half time only 1-0 up.

The second half started much like the first, with an effort from range by Liverpool that must have made the players believe they could threaten. However it did not take long for Manchester to reassert their dominance and on 55 minutes Liverpool’s keeper came to the rescue again, although in less convincing fashion, as she fumbled another Mapp shot onto the post.

Only 5 minutes later Manchester finally made their dominance count as they scored their second goal. The impressive Mapp was given the time and space to deliver a fine through ball which put Williams through on the right and she gleefully smashed the ball high into the net. It didn’t take long for Mapp to finally get on the score sheet herself with a fine individual effort, after drifting past two players she struck a powerful shot from range high into the net that the keeper couldn’t, for once, handle.

The onslaught was completed by the talented Mapp who didn’t have to wait long for her second on 67 minutes; she placed a shot into the bottom corner after being played in by a wayward Liverpool header. Unfortunately the game had to be abandoned on 75 minutes, Liverpool’s keeper could no longer continue due to a shoulder injury picked up after a clash on the goal line.

This performance and of course the result must give Manchester a real lift, providing key players remain fit there is no reason why the team cannot continue to churn out these results week in week out.

Nobody expects the Papal Resignation

You may not care enough about the affairs of Vatican City to endure the brief history lesson that I have in store for you, but I promise you that it eventually gets round to one of our favourite pastimes – as progressive, liberal students – of shining a spotlight upon the imperfections of the Catholic Church. So bear with me.

In 2009 an earthquake devastated central Italy. Three-hundred people died, but one lucky survivor was Pope Celestine V. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s probably because his papacy ended in the late thirteenth century. Celestine had lain in L’Aquila for over seven-hundred years, and after the quake his remains were retrieved miraculously intact from beneath the badly-damaged Basilica Santa Maria di Collemaggio. During his tour of the most badly-damaged areas, Pope Benedict XVI visited the Basilica and prayed at Celestine’s open tomb. He even left his own inaugural pallium (Holy Pope Scarf) with Celestine as a gift.

Given his recent shock resignation from the papacy, Benedict’s actions in L’Aquila take on a certain feeling of hidden significance. Celestine himself resigned from the office in 1294 after bearing the weighty responsibilities of the Pretiosa (Pretty Pointy Pope Hat) for a mere five months. Elected in a fit of desperation, Celestine was an incredibly weak political operator, allowing himself to be constantly browbeaten. Upon realising his own ineptitude, he fled from office. Perhaps Benedict’s generous gift to the pitiable pontiff was an expression of sympathy. Was the strain of office already leading Benedict to contemplate a similar exit strategy?

This is, of course, retrospective conjecture. Nor am I any expert on the affairs of the papacy. But a comparison of Benedict’s resignation with that of previous Bishops of Rome is not only of interest to mournfully tedious history students such as myself. This line of analysis may well shed light upon the popularity of Benedict (or lack thereof) within the higher echelons of the Church.

Benedict and Celestine mark the only two pontiffs to have resigned entirely of their own accord, other than Benedict IX, who sold the papacy to his scheming godfather for a tidy sum. Other resignations are just as much in line with what we’d expect from such a hallowed office. Various Popes were ‘encouraged’ to end their reign by conniving cardinals and rebellious Anti-Popes, of which there have historically been as many as four at once. The most illuminating resignations are those that never quite got around to happening. In both the Napoleonic and Second World Wars, the sitting pontiffs signed resignation papers that would have taken effect if they were taken prisoner by the French or Nazis. But by far the most interesting almost-resignation was that of Benedict’s predecessor.

When John Paul II first donned the Sub-Cinctorium (apparently it hangs from the left arm?) he was known as the ‘keep-fit pope’, but towards the end of his papacy, after two grievous assassination attempts, he was getting rather less spry. In 2005, shortly before the Pope’s death, Telegraph reported that John Paul was also considering resignation as a result of his injuries, recent illnesses, and his ‘debilitating Parkinson’s disease and arthritis’. His Last Will and Testament reveals that this prospect had occurred to him as early as the year 2000. But John Paul remained the pontiff until his death. Either his devotion to the almighty outweighed his own concerns about his health, or those concerns were overridden by the Roman Curia. In canon law, incapacitation and poor health are not grounds for electing a new Pope, and it seems that the highest echelons of the Church wanted to keep John Paul in place.

Does it not then seem strange that the keepers of canon law have been so quick to allow this most recent resignation? Why exactly would the powers-that-be (no, not the Illuminati) sanction Benedict’s retirement on grounds of poor health, when John Paul had to stick-it-out in arguably worse condition?

The Vatican has historically had no shortage of shrewd political operators, so perhaps we should consider the political advantages of showing Benedict the door. John Paul II was himself a figure of controversy, but Benedict seemed to take over the helm of Christendom at a particularly bad time to be a lynchpin of extreme social conservatism. The first rumblings of the Catholic sex abuse scandal occurred during John Paul’s papacy, but the brunt of the debacle has been on Benedict’s watch. And as western gender politics steamroll further and further from the dictations of the Church, Benedict must issue denunciations and veiled attacks that are more and more poorly received by the majority of the general public. It is difficult for the average, casually-atheist supporter of not-stoning-the-LGBTQ-community-to-death to watch footage of Benedict without seeing a figure steeped in fairly unfashionable social attitudes. Perhaps, when he resumes his former identity as the mild-mannered Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican can appoint someone else to wear the Papal Slippers (no really) who meets with something more than disinterested disapproval from those outside his flock.

Light up the city – Reclaim the Night!

I was woken by my little sister at 2.30am last Saturday. She’d finished her shift at the pub she works at to find herself confronted with eight men shouting lewd sexual comments at her as she waited for her bus. She phoned me in fear; a fear that the majority of women can relate to. A fear that this time, the sexual harassment that is a day to day reality for so many women would turn into an attack. “I know it’s just a matter of time before it’s me”, she said. “It’s like a ticking timebomb”. My sister isn’t alone. The 2010 NUS Hidden Marks study showed that 68% of respondents had been a victim of one or more kinds of sexual harassment during their time as a student, with 1 in 7 a victim of a serious sexual assault.

As Women’s Officer, I hear from women students all the time telling me about how unsafe they feel at night. How they don’t want to stop in the library past dusk, how they won’t even go to the shops without enough money for a taxi there and back. I’ve even heard stories of women running from the bus stop to their front door in case they’re attacked. A recent survey by More found that 95% of women don’t feel safe on the streets at night. 73% worry about being raped, and almost half sometimes don’t want to go out because they fear for their safety. We know that the vast majority of sexual violence against women does not occur at the hands of strangers in the street. According to Home Office statistics, nearly half of rapes are committed by partners, and ‘only’ 8% by complete strangers. Yet with as many as 80,000 women raped annually in the UK, according to the British Crime Survey, this accounts for 6,400 women. No rape is just a statistic. Women shouldn’t have to live in fear.

Meanwhile, pervasive messages from the mainstream media, police and politicians place the blame on women for men’s violence. When Australian Jill Meagher went missing and was subsequently found raped and murdered after walking home from after-work drinks in October, the media reported that she was “obviously drunk” and that “the consequences followed her.”

No-one could have missed the high profile case of ‘Damini’, the Indian woman brutally gang-raped and murdered in Delhi and the national outrage that followed this. Among the outpourings of anger and grief, Indian politicians blamed the victim herself, referring to her “adventurous spirit” and holding her “equally responsible” because she did not stop her attackers. In a 2005 Amnesty International survey, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, while 1 in 20 believed a woman was totally responsible for being raped if she walked home alone at night. Either directly or indirectly, women are conditioned to believe that public space is a male domain – even more so after dark. The question is, what can we do about it?

Every year, women students propose new ways to make each other feel safer. As a community, we can take action. On Thursday, 21st February, I invite you all to come together for Reclaim the Night, a march to demonstrate women’s right to walk the streets at night free from sexual violence, street harassment and assault. From humble beginnings back in the mid-1970s, Reclaim the Night has become an international phenomenon, with events happening all over the world. The Manchester march starts at Owens’ Park, Fallowfield at 7pm, and a neon parade full of colour, light and sound will head to the Students’ Union. The evening continues with the Reclaim the Night After Party, a festival of the finest women talent, including X Factor finalist Misha B, SheChoir, comedian Kate Smurthwaite and a host of women performers.

This is just the beginning. One march is not going to end sexual violence. Reclaim the Night will no doubt raise awareness and educate people, but we need to mobilise and take action. After Reclaim the Night, I will be supporting women students to set up a society to campaign against sexual harassment. Together, we can not only continue to raise awareness of this problem, but make real changes to women’s lives, be it on campus, in Manchester or in wider society. If you’re a man reading this, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you! Men have a role to play too. Any man who cares about equality should care about violence against women, and it would be great to see men campaigning too.

Ultimately, my sister shouldn’t have to put up with this, and neither should you. We shouldn’t have to live our lives hyperaware of the possibilities of sexual assault and sexual violence. Let’s light up the city, take to the streets, and on the 21st February, let’s Reclaim the Night.

*Reclaim the Night is a free event; tickets for the After Party are £3 in advance and are available from the Students’ Union website at http://www.manchesterstudentsunion.com/reclaimthenight

Why I don’t want a PhD

Forbes magazine has voted being a University Professor as the least stressful job of 2013. After reading this last week, I was surprised to then read a Guardian article telling me that a third of academics are on temporary contracts – often paid by the hour. The majority of these are young academics, primarily under forty. After reading these somewhat conflicting messages, I decided to look into what were the real benefits of pursuing a PhD or a career in academia.

A quick Google of ‘is a PhD worth it’ did not look promising. The top three results gave me ‘12 reasons not to get a PhD’, ‘Is getting a PhD the stupidest decision of all time?’ and ‘Do not get a PhD!’. Yet, in most countries today getting a PhD is a requirement for a research career; a career in academia. A recent Economist study has shown that while this is certainly true, especially in the West, the number of academic openings correspond to only a fifth of all the PhD opportunities available globally each year. In other words, for every hundred people gaining a PhD each year, there will only be twenty jobs in academia available. The only areas where this is not true are booming economies such as China and Brazil, where there is a shortage of PhD students.

There does not seem to be any huge financial benefit for those with PhDs who do gain jobs. A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management by Bernard Casey showed that the lifetime earnings premium for a Brit with a PhD over someone who never went to university is 26%. Those with a Master’s degree had a premium of 23%. Of course, these are simply averages. A further look into the study showed me that only PhDs in medicine, other sciences, and business and financial studies commanded significantly higher earnings than those with just a Master’s. PhDs in maths, computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees. Even more surprisingly, PhDs in engineering, technology, architecture and education commanded a lower premium than those with Master’s degrees.

Of course, many students begin a PhD out of love for their subject, not a small percentage change in their lifetime earnings. While this is undoubtedly true, the reality of being a PhD student is far from any such romanticised vision. Speaking to a PhD student at the University of Manchester, I was told that the her average week consisted of ‘seven day weeks, ten hour days, low pay, and uncertain prospects’. And a recent study of British PhD graduates showed that many did not have passion for their subject as a primary motive for beginning their PhD. About a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering students admitted to this.

Being a PhD student does not seem to be a very appealing or sustainable way of life. Many PhD students are not funded, especially in the humanities and social sciences. As a result, many students are forced to take on many hours of undergraduate supervision work or jobs marking exam papers. These in themselves are not particularly well paid, and take away valuable time from their doctoral research. Sadly, universities are exploiting this source of cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. Hence, the students who see their PhD through to the end are remarkably few. In the UK, only 50% of humanities students will have their PhD ten years after starting it. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money were named as the top reasons for students not completing their PhD.

As the Guardian outlines, the future for those who do complete their PhD is neither secure nor stable. Average starting salaries are comparatively low, and finding a permanent contract is extremely difficult. One OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic, were still on temporary contracts. About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In the Netherlands, 21% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In Germany the proportion is 13%. Across the pond in Canada the average starting salary for a PhD graduate is $38000, the same as an average salary of a construction worker.

Having a PhD today can mean bad employment prospects and no financial benefit over a Master’s degree.  Studying for a PhD seems to be an unappealing (and often unsustainable) lifestyle. Highest educational award this country can offer? Not for me, thanks.

Debate: Should Manchester vote for the inanimate carbon rod as NUS president?

Against – Nick Pringle, Manchester Student Union’s General Secretary 

In a few months time I’ll be going to NUS National Conference along with 10 others to represent students from The University of Manchester, and I’ll not be voting for any joke candidates. Next year’s president is likely to be a woman for the first time in a long time (and she may also be from further education) yet all anybody is talking about is some guy who is making Simpsons jokes.

You might not think it, but the NUS is actually quite important. Before Christmas when a student submitted an idea to an assembly to get Manchester SU to disaffiliate, students at the assembly voted overwhelmingly to remain in the national union. NUS’s impact affects not only students here in Manchester but nationally as our elected officers work for students in government meetings every day.  Cameron and his mates are pretty hard to work with as it is; I doubt some guy with a carbon rod is going to be any use in fighting to put money back into students pockets, or for fair access to education, for affordable housing or rigorous measures of quality in our universities. This candidate is a joke and anybody voting for the rod is too.

This year’s National President commissioned the largest ever piece of research into student finance in the UK – Pound in Your Pocket. With this information student officers like myself and the rest of the Manchester Exec Team up and down the country are now convincing their colleges and universities that students need more generous bursaries, cheaper courses and that institutions need to be paying far greater attention to student finances. Could an inanimate carbon rod commission such an important piece of research which would have a genuine impact on the lives of millions of students? I think not.

Postgraduate fees are steadily climbing at universities across the UK. There are no loans, not enough bursaries and a national crisis is looming. What NUS needs now is a President to take on the government over this issue before it’s too late. Do you want to do a masters when you graduate? Have you started looking at graduate schemes yet and realised how advantageous it would be if you had an MA after your name instead of a BA? Change doesn’t come from inanimate objects; it comes from passionate and pragmatic individuals with values and skills to create real change for students.

Anybody campaigning for “the rod” at NUS is undermining the work that NUS does, saying it could be done by an object from a cartoon. What we should really be talking about in this debate is what we want from our NUS, what sort of a future do we want our national union to be fighting for? There are some amazingly talented and passionate people running for the full time positions of NUS and to support an inanimate object is an insult to their hard work and delegitimizes the organisation as a whole. You may not think it, but people do pay attention to the NUS.

But the NUS isn’t perfect, and anybody who says so is deluded. There are a lot of ways the NUS can improve and become more relevant to students and less inward facing, and it’s getting better every year. I’ve been to more NUS events than  I care to remember, and I’ve seen the change as the organisation has stopped talking about itself and started talking about students. About real issues, and about things that affect all of us up and down the country.

NUS elections aren’t perfect either, and there are a few small things which could be done to improve them, but I’m yet to hear a better overall option for electing our national representatives. Delegates elected from every SU who go to conference get to see, hear and meet all the candidates and grill them on the issues that are relevant to students before voting on for them. Candidates have to work hard for their votes, to get their message out and work for weeks in advance of conference itself to be successful. It’s a rightfully rigorous process which gives the necessary scrutiny to ensure the highest calibre of candidates.

Should more students get involved in delegate elections on campus? Yes. Should more students get involved in the motions which are discussed at conference and the decisions that NUS makes? Yes. Should candidates for election have to reach out to more students and students unions? Yes.

Some people believe that every one of the 7 million student members of the NUS should get a vote in electing the national President and Vice Presidents. Do I think that? No. It’s already expensive enough for candidates without having to travel up and down the UK to meet 7 million voters, to build a campaign team on every campus and to get their message across. I know I’d rather see NUS spending money on lobbying, campaigning and empowering students to create real change.

To put the “One Member One Vote” idea into context, the total pool of voters would be larger than all of the people who can vote for the Mayor of London, or the total number of people who voted in the last Belgian Parliamentary elections.

So will I be voting for the carbon rod? No, of course not!

 

For – Arun Mehta, Computer Science postgraduate student 

ManchesterSU should back the inanimate carbon rod for the presidency of the NUS.  How many of the NUS presidential candidates do you know that won a worker’s safety ward at Springfield nuclear plant, flew into space with the legendary Buzz Aldrin and returned an American hero after jamming itself into the broken door lock of the space shuttle? But seriously, let’s face it, over recent years, the NUS has been largely irrelevant and unhelpful to students like you and me.

When I first started university in 2008, the hottest topic in the student community was anti-war, Israel/Palestine and various other important issues facing the world that the student body were passionate to talk about. I agreed with some, I disagreed with others but the national student discussion then was exciting. Sadly nowadays, these issues are confined and narrowed down only to the societies, the passive public forums and the occasional bake sale I see while I’m strolling down Oxford Road. Please don’t tell me about the constantly failing anti-tuition fee campaigns if you’re an undergraduate. You’re still paying £9k a year! Since then, rightly or wrongly, a sort of university nationalism has gripped the NUS over recent years. This has pushed these major issues aside, favouring the rhetoric of tinkering with the university clockwork rather than being the voice of change. However, this conversion of student political trends has left many students, like myself, disillusioned from student politics and has pushed them out of the big NUS discussion

Sen Ganesh was President of Imperial College Union in 2002, back then he said, “The NUS’s claim to be representative of students is not borne out by their work. The NUS is dominated by Labour students and this diminishes the ability to address student issues in an impartial fashion.” Those words still speak volumes when discussing the nature of the NUS today, with its political relationship with Mr Ed Milliband’s team. The NUS currently holds a reputation by some as being the springboard to a job within the Labour Party ranks. Such as the Labour MP Jack Straw, or former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

Some will say this is now all in the past, that the NUS has moved on, but what about the fairly recent NUS president Aaron Porter? Wasn’t he a delightful character?  After his time as president, Mr Porter ended up as a contributor for Labour’s education policy. Though to be fair, Porter is now an Education Consultant for Aaron Ross Porter Consultancy Ltd. He charges universities £125 an hour, and administers 10 day courses costing around £8500.

During the dying days of my studentship here in Manchester, the NUS had become an afterthought. Its relevancy shot and its existence largely forgotten. I urge Manchester SU’s delegates to back the inanimate carbon rod for president, because this inanimate object is probably a more suitable candidate then the humans running for this worn out, rusty Labour trampoline.

For – Becky Montacute, Mancunion Comment and Politics co-editor

Student politics today doesn’t talk about what students care about most. The NUS campaign for undergraduate fees but practically ignore the postgraduate fees and loans system, which is in much greater need for reform. It also pushes unpopular policies such as no platform for fascists’, which closes down debate within universities, and has been disobeyed up and down the country by SUs wanting to encourage free speech (for instance, Leeds student paper not backing down on its decision to publish an interview with Nick Griffin).

The way that NUS president is elected currently doesn’t engage students in the election process. NUS delegates are elected at each institution, these delegates then go on to represent our SU and vote for president. Students are not engaged in these elections, and they typically have a very low turnout. Many students simply don’t understand this overly complicated system to elect the president, and so don’t vote. It also makes NUS president seem like a distant, far removed institution that they themselves have no hope of changing.

This leads to the same clique getting elected, the kind of  people typically seen in student politics. Mostly left wing, mostly in support of policies such as ‘no platform for fascists’, but not the same as the average student. They are the people who stand as NUS delegates, who vote for one another. The average student then doesn’t vote, thinking all the candidates are the same, and the cycle continues. This doesn’t engage students. If each presidential candidate had to have a national campaign to win votes, they would have to actually talk to students about their policies. If they support unpopular policies, they won’t get elected. To say the cost of this is too great, the scale of the election too large, implies that the work the NUS does is not important enough to be worth doing properly. Voting for the rod is a protest against this system, against all the candidates having the same policies. Because right now, they just don’t face the pressure needed for change from their student electorate.

 

 

Last orders for the Nanny State – the problem with minimum alcohol pricing

Minimum Unit Pricing is probably the most regressive, illiberal, and outright snobbish policy being debated by parliament today, yet it enjoys near universal political support from the NUS and the Labour party on the left, to the Tories on the right. The problem is, the support is based on junk science, state-funded lobbying and outright prejudice against the poorest. The policy of imposing a minimum price of 45p per unit of alcohol will nearly double the cost of a bottle of Sainsbury’s Basics Cider, put an extra 2 quid on a 70cl bottle of Vodka and will raise the price of a bottle of wine to around £4.20.

The policy claims to target heavy drinkers who binge on supermarket booze, although not heavy drinkers who binge on fine wine or whisky. Advocates claim evidence such as that from the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model, which claims it will reduce alcohol related deaths by over 1000 per year.

This speculative model assumes that a minimum price of 50p will lead to a reduction in alcohol consumption of 6.7 percent, causing 3,060 fewer deaths per year. Yet between 2005 and 2010 weekly alcohol consumption declined by 20%, while alcohol related deaths were unchanged. Others might like to point to evidence from British Columbia, yet hospital admissions for alcohol overdoses since the policy’s introduction have increased by 18%.

The policy is also highly regressive, squeezing the pay packets of the poorest in our society and increasing inequality. As the wealthy and middle classes tend to buy alcohol that is already above the minimum price, this policy won’t affect them. The poorest however will be forced to either cutback on the drink or on spending elsewhere.

Economic analysis suggests that alcohol consumption is unresponsive to price changes; a 50% increase in the cost of cider won’t lead to a 50% fall in consumption. This means less money for keeping the heating on, cooking healthy food, and buying schoolbooks. The regressive nature of the policy could have the unintended consequence of harming public health.

The policy will hurt students, making the NUS’ support of it even more ponderous. With clubbing and drinking such an important part of student culture, an increase in the price of drinking will either lead to one of two things happening: students avoiding safer drinking environments like pubs and instead pre-drinking at home, or students purchasing black market booze. Gaff’s may have gone dry, but where there’s demand there’s supply. Again, this could make public health outcomes worse, the Government’s failure to investigate either of these possibilities is damning.

Advocates claim that this policy will shift drinking from supermarket booze to the safer drinking environment of the pub, where drunks are refused service. But a recent YouGov poll suggested the opposite will be true. Four out of ten respondents said it’ll lead them to drink less at the pub, while just 0.36% said they would drink more at the pub. The logic behind this is obvious: when a heavy drinker sees the cost of a can of Special Brew increase from £1 to £1.35, he isn’t going to rush down to the local and spend £3.50 on a pint of weaker beer.

Even if this policy could achieve its goals of reducing alcohol consumption through higher prices it would be wrong to do so. Drinkers already pay for the social cost of drinking through heavy taxes on alcohol (£1 on a £2.50 pint). The costs to the NHS and the police are more than met by the heavy taxes. The other costs associated with drinking, such as lower productivity and worse health outcomes are borne by the individual not society. Drinkers choose to drink in spite of the large costs because they consider the benefits to outweigh the costs.

Adults should be free to pursue their own happiness in whatever way they choose provided they do not burden others unfairly. Minimum Unit Pricing restricts your ability to do that, because the modern-day temperance lobby believes you’re making the wrong choice. The idea that the poor can’t decide what is best for themselves is a Victorian attitude that’s sadly back in fashion. We have councils forcing benefit claimants to go to the gym, the DWP investigating stopping jobseekers from spending their benefits on booze and fags and we have Minimum Unit Pricing, which attempts to price the poorest out of drinking.

To impose legislation that restricts choice like this represents a fundamental failure to treat people as equals. Suggesting that some people have less of a right to consume what they want should offend our liberal values, doubly so because of its basis in class. Minimum Unit Pricing won’t make the public healthier; it won’t help pubs and it won’t save the public money. It will make the poorest poorer and boost the illegal trade. It should be last orders for the nanny state.