This esteemed newspaper has had dealings with __________ before. He threatened us with _______________ for stealing his milk – in all seriousness – and promised to ___ if we ever mentioned him again, in any context, founded or unfounded, on the grounds of harassment. This was especially ironic as we were at the time working on a story about him ________ his __________.

It is troubling that he is in charge of _______ at this event, because he hates students. He hates us. He once shouted at me for driving the wrong way around the Vanbrugh pick-up centre, and his motorcycle helmet framed his head so neatly and so ridiculously that I bit all the way through my ___ in order to stop myself from _________ ___________ ________ _____ _______. I was going clockwise, for God’s sake. The world will not fucking end.

But I digress. ___ is going to be awesome, there’s no doubt. But with this guy wandering around with his _____ _________ ______ and his _____ taking _____ ______ at students and arresting anyone who does anything clockwise – what does he have against clocks? – there could be trouble.

Let’s be clear. This is a guy with the ____________ __________ ______ _________ to kill us all. And he might. This is something for us all to take seriously. What if, at the wrong moment, tragically, unforgivably as far as Mr. _______ is concerned, a first-year, exhausted by their year of _______ and diligent ______, dances innocently in the brightly lit centre of _______ Bar. She spins to her left, no problem. She spins to her right – clockwise – and ____! A massive ordinance shell lands in the middle of the dancefloor, blowing her and everyone around her to smithereens.

That’s just the beginning. __________ is also, as this newspaper is extremely well-aware, trying to get all the ________ fired as well. Why? They’re so important, rescuing ________ _________ naked _____ ________ __________ or even inside them, _______ ___________ _____ ______ ________ _________ ______ _________ _____ ______ ___ ________ at home. Why would __________ want them all to be eaten by bears? Nobody knows. Perhaps, as a young child, he was bullied by another child who eventually became a _______.

But surely, even if this was the case, there is no need for this ___’s level of brutality. He once took a __________ ___________, opened it up, took out the _____ _____ ______ __________ which the delicate dish originally contained, and replaced it with ____ _____ ____ _______ ______ ______ ______, which ____ ______ had hunted down on all fours and brutally slain with his teeth.

Henry James Foy, Dan Taylor, Gruffudd Jones, Alex Fink and some random others are to lock horns in a series of challenges, judged by Diminutive Parliamentary Hopeful Claire Hazelgrove, TV Supremo Anna Bucks and Amusingly Named Dancer Harriet Waghorn.

At the starting whistle Gruffudd Jones immediately starts doing press-ups. Henry James Foy, the editor of this esteemed publication, is eliminated after lamentably failing in the fiendish challenge of imbibing a quantity of liquid.

Anna Bucks strikes Taylor smartly on the back of the head, causing a hollow boom to echo around the bar. For a second, silence reigns. Then, with a resounding crash, the Hoff-alike, YUSU’s single and all-pervasive fetishistic obsession, crashes through the wall from the ornamental pond beyond. Water floods the room, ruiningseveral hundred pairs of Ugg boots.

The broken remains of a mallard hang limply from the Hoff-alike’s bloodstained jaws. Dropping it into the lake-water sluicing around Derwent Dining Hall with a sad, gooey splash, he lets out a single, mournful roar.

The assembled audience, judges and man-petitors freeze in terror.

The Hoff-alike is hungry.

Only one figure is not rooted to the spot by sheer terror. It is Gruffudd Jones, sports-dwarf extraordinaire and Welsh national leek-tossing champion 2004, 2005 and 2006 – though the last competition was tragically called-off after 238 people were gored to death when an unmanacled leek ran amok among spectators.

Gruffudd does not freeze.

Gruffudd is not afraid of the Hoff-alike.

Gruffudd has not even noticed the Hoff-alike.

Gruffudd is still doing press-ups.

Wisps of steam are starting to emanate from his ears.

Then the Hoff-alike strikes. He snatches a second-year computer science student up by the laptop strap and consumes him whole.

Pandemonium erupts. Screaming, the assembled crowd runs, pushing and shoving to escape. Only one man-petitor is brave enough to stand and face the terrifying monster.

Resolute, only his eyes betraying the fear in his heart, Alex Fink faces the Hoff-alike across the devastated dining hall, twirling Claire Hazelgrove about his head like David’s sling. As the Goliath charges, his trademark red life-float stained a darker red with nerd-blood, Fink loses Hazelgrove, who flies true through the air, catching the Hoff-alike smartly between the eyes and spraying it with radioactive goo.
What happens next has been immortalised in song.

Blinded, the monstrous creature stumbles across the hall towards Gruffudd, who is by now glowing white-hot, too bright to look directly at, and is doing one press-up every ten-millionth of a second. The Hoff-alike stumbles towards him, trips over a broken table, topples towards Gruffudd, and…

A man doing press-ups at that sort of velocity is highly unstable at a molecular level.

There is a loud bang, a terrible ghastly sucking sound, and then nothing remains of either Hoff-alike or Gruffudd except a mess of molten rock.

Gruffudd is awarded the Mr. York title posthumously, and Alex Fink is now the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The use of Claire Hazelgrove is now banned in British military operations.

Adam Shergold was at the Croquet match with the Chancellors, Vice-Chancellors and Sports Union Presidents. “Brian Cantor was a liability,” he tells me, and “Lancaster’s Chan cellor was about a hundred and sixty and had probably learned to play with Napoleon.” And our beloved Greg Dyke? “Lovely cockney geezer. He’s pretty good actually. Well practiced. Obviously they play it in the East End a lot.” “Generally,” he says, “no-one had a bloody clue.”

The Wonderful World of Alex Lacy

At approximately fifteen minutes past three on the night of Sunday May 11, the Sunday of York’s Roses Victory, YorkSport President Alex Lacy and YUSU Welfare Officer Charlie Leyland found themselves in the unenviable position of being refused re-entry to their chosen drinking establishment. In the hazy hope of finding a safe harbour in which to shelter for a while, they found their way to the offices of this esteemed newspaper.

This is a direct compilation of some of the things that they said. In Vino, Veritas.

On the Roses Trophy:

Lacy: You laugh, but I don’t actually know where the trophy is.
Leyland: What?
Lacy: No. Wait. We do know where it is. It’s at Stash’s mates’.
Leyland: It’s not made of acid. It’s made of pewter, ‘cos I drank coke out of it earlier and if it was made of acid it would have dissolved. [we’re not sure what she means either]

On the Cheerleaders’ display:

Lacy: There was a lot of vagina on display. Amazing vagina. I was blinded…
Pause
[to Leyland] Is that bad welfare?

On killing a daddy-long-legs:

Lacy: [kills a daddy-long-legs by trapping it in unnamed Nouse Comment Editor’s bag and flailing wildly at the outside of the bag]
Leyland: Why did you do that? He was looking for a home.
Lacy: He was not looking for a home. [He rifles through the bag] He was looking for sunglasses and tampons.
Pause
That is bad welfare, isnt it?
Leyland: That is bad welfare.
Lacy: Sometimes bad welfare is fun.

On Nouse Editor Henry James Foy’s nipples:

[Foy, allegedly, twiddles his nipples]
Lacy: Oh my god. When you twiddled your nipples just then, it made my phone lose signal. I heard a radio over there lose signal and go fuzzy. Then you stopped twiddling your nipples and it was like ‘welcome back to radio classical’.

On considering Socs’n’Coms Officer Rory Shanks’ likely reaction to the evening’s revelations:

Lacy: Rory is going to shit a brick when he reads this.

On Leyland’s interrupting his musical experience:

Lacy: Charlie sucks. I was happy sitting there listening to jazz.
Leyland: We were not listening to jazz, we were listening to Enya.
Lacy: Enya was good.
L’land: Enya was not jazz.
Lacy: Enya was good.
L’land: Enya was not jazz.
[this argument continues for some considerable time]

On his picture taken at the Chancellor’s croquet game:

Lacy: I look like the ringmaster of the paedophile circus.

I say this partly because someone just told me and I thought it was interesting, partly because this week is YUSU elections week, and anything that isn’t about the august and stately progress of the democratic process is in some sense refreshing, and partly because something about Student Union elections, like the reproductive cycle of Turritopsis Nutricula, regresses everyone back to their larval stage. See what I did there?

It is half past nine in the YUSU creche. Mummy and Daddy have just dropped the infant Charles Bushby off, and he’s been put in the Presidential pen with Tom, Tim and little baby Grant. Today they are to be babysat by the beautiful Nurse Tomina Scott, in her fetching Pirate-themed dress.
Young Bushby first throws up on her, then attempts to take by force the little plastic budget that Langrish is playing with. Langrish bites him hard on the finger. Bushby howls.

Nurse Tomina Scott, wiping her skirt with a resigned sigh, picks up Bushby and comforts him by rocking him gently back and forth. Bushby energetically soils himself.
Baby Bradley, meanwhile, is trying to take his first steps. He almost makes a totter across the pen, but can’t quite manage, and eventually contents himself with lying on his back waving his legs in the air and sucking on his dummy.

Returning from changing Bushby’s nappy, Nurse Tomina Scott is suddenly filled with panic. There is a baby missing, and of course it’s that little scamp Ngwena, who once again has escaped to an adjoining pen, where he is attempting to choreograph a New Orleans themed dance among a group of enthusiastic but confused three-year-olds.

Langrish has finished with the budget, and has given it to baby Bradley, who is holding it upside-down. Bushby has cleverly drafted his own on an etch-a-sketch, but Langrish has found the Lego and is building a model Hes East student venue to throw at Bushby. Bradley is sleeping soundly.

This is how elections would work if we were Turritopsis Nutricula. Much more democratic, as long as Bushby’s nappy is changed regularly.

Tom Scott’s Blackberry

As seen by Henry James Foy
04.03.09 20:12
To: president@yusu.org
From: lesteroh!@hotmail.com
Subject: Funnyman

Minister of Fun,

No open glasses on the seats! No open glasses on the seats! Speak slower Foy – can’t quite write down every word you’re saying! Hold it! Hold it! No open glasses on the seats! Back in 15 minutes! Back in 10! Oh sod it, come back whenever you like. But no open glasses on the seats! Gottit? Good. Funtimes. Derwent. Elections. Malarkey. In Langwith? How odd. Glasses… seats… slow… down… Must be more witty. Must…be…

POST-ITS! Oh where have you been all my life!
—————————————————
04.03.09 22:47
To: president@yusu.org
From: news@theyorker.co.uk
Subject: Priviledges
Glorious leader,

What are you playing at? First they get to lavishly slap their logo all over your publicity (you know full well that’s our game), and then you let them put a sodding great banner in the background of all our pictures! And to think of all we do for campus! How else are students supposed to know that a member of the House of Lords gets to speak there, and that annual outdoor music-focused events actually take place every year?

Not happy. I hope our monopoly on grainy campus photos still stands,

The Yorker
—————————————————
05.03.09 10:59
To: president@yusu.org
From: tflynn@yahoo.com
Subject: Unasked Questions

Scott,
Just wondering why my question “How do the candidates think they can win if they don’t eat 5 pieces of fruit a day that they have bought from a fruit stall on campus that sells fresh fruit to students?” wasn’t asked?

Not enough time or something? Hope you and Foy weren’t being biased.

Flynn
—————————————–
08.01.09 12:01
To: president@yusu.org
From: bushby@lycos.co.uk
Subject: Tips

So I’m sorry about what I said at hustings. It was just for show. You see, I’m pretty screwed with this alternative-to-YUSU thing. Fancy giving me some tips? You’re a dab hand at this ‘elect the rank outsider’ thing, and I’m struggling a bit. I’m willing to try anything. Cheers. C x

Conclusions of the Presidential race? It’s hard to say. Tim and Langrish have the most experience, and that will serve both them well. Bradley’s outsider status could go either way. Bushby’s policy of calling Bradley “Graham” might serve him well at the polls, or it might not. Now all that remains is an election…

Goodnight and happy voting, everybody!

P.S. if anyone has lost a set of earphones at this event, they can pick them up from the YUSU office.

22.34

And with those slightly disturbing revalations, the evening comes cataclysmically to a close.

Word in from pundit and Bushby campaign leader Dan Taylor:

“Bushby’s Ethical Investment policy will be basd upon realistic financial and research considerations, working for the benefit of the whole University.”

22.33

Nouse or Vision:

They all go for Nouse except Bushby, who has decided that his policies now include the massacre of small children, incidentally.

VBAR or Courtyard:

Only Bushby goes for Vbar.

Tru or Gallery?

Tom and Charles go for Tru, the others Gallery.

Busby and Bradley also highlight themselves as Tories, choosing Cameron over Brown. Also, Tom and Bushby prefer to be underneath during a sexual encounter. or something. It’s all getting a little chaotic.

22.30

Quick-fire round.

Worst thing you’ve ever done:

Tim: Let Dan cut his hair
Bradley: Something funny about easyjet.
Bushby: Got drunk at university.
Langrish: Walked into a trombone exam with flies undone and trombone on show.

Bradley: Eat the badger, they’re
SOME MORE FUNNIES ABOUT BADGERS. IT’S ALL GOING VERY QUICKLY.
Langrish: eat the badger

If you weren’t running which of the others:

Bushby: Graham
Grant Bradley: That’s why I need more promotion!
Langrish: Tim. Very impressed.
Ngwena: Tom.
Bradley: Tom. Passionate.

22.26

Last round of questions before the quick-fire round.

Why don’t students care about student politics?
What is your unique selling point?
What is the most important YUSU campaign?

Langrish thinks that the problem is that students don’t really understand how important student politics is. He says that his unique selling points are his passion and experience, and thinks that the 24 hour library campaign, that he kicked off, is his fave.

Ngwena doesn’t think students know what the union does. They need to know more about it before they will care. His multi-perspective status is his uniqueness – he’s seen every part of student life from sports to media. 24-hour library too.

Bradley thinks that there is a feeling that student politics doesn’t apply to students’ lives, and he thinks that needs to change. He thinks his outsider-ness is a unique point. Also, 24-hour library.

Bushby thinks people don’t know “who YUSU is” and thinks he’s the man to change that. He cites his personality as his unique selling point, and thinks that the 24-hour library is the best idea.

22.21

Langrish thinks that if the Ethical Investment motion passes Union council, that’s half the work done already. He thinks that if he wins the election then that’s a comment on his figureheadedness.

Ngwena thinks that the student voice has spoken, and that this mandates him to push Ethical Investment as far as he can. He says that he has plenty of leadership experience that means he’d make an awesome figurehead.

Bradley thinks that ethical policies are paramount, but is worried about cutting into how the University funds itself. He hopes that he’ll get a public persona while serving as President.

22.18

Last long question round. Ethical investment strategy assuming the policy passes? Do you have the right public image to be a good figurehead?

Bushby likes ethical investment. He thinks the President should find a way to promote ethical investment, as long as it’s realistic, and we should definitely follow it. He thinks his public image has been misunderstood, and wants people to “get to know the real Charles Bushby.”

22.15

High-brow questions now, says Foy. “broken” higher education funding, trade union involvement, and what can the NUS do for York and its students?

Bradley first. He thinks we’re paying a lot of money for what we’re getting here, and wants to make sure we’re getting value for money. YUSU is a union, he says, and has an affinity to other unions. He runs out of time before the NUS.

Can Bushby cover all 3 topics? He thinks HE funding needs to be looked at. Radical changes with fees have been implemented, and he wants to look at where the money’s going. He’s against trade unions. Not the NUS, though – he thinks that’s good, but wants to get a better deal.

Langrish wants to make sure York’s views are heard at NUS forums about HE funding. He likes trade unions, because lots of students have jobs, and thinks the NUS’s lobbying functions are priceless to us, as are our YourShop and bar deals.

Ngwena thinks that we have to look at HE funding from a national perspective, talk to other student unions around the country, and it’s a long-term process, and he loves the NUS as a support system.

22.10

Which is your most important policy? Given the credit crunch, are you planning a two-year term? And how do you think you can bring your creativity to the role?

Tim’s up first. He doesn’t want to choose one particular policy – they’re all important to him – but thinks that communications and the website are the areas he’d want to improve most. It’s a 1-year goal for Tim, and his creativity will, he says, come through in… Ding! Time’s up.

Bradley’s most important policy is getting people involved. He wants to integrate us all. If he feels he can help for 2 years, he will – and he has already started being creative. He’s on flipper. No, he says, he means twitter.

Bushby wants everyone to leave York a fully rounded person. He likes it here, so would be happy to stay for two years, and his creativity in his extensive – he stressed that – media background, he could help a lot with YUSU’s marketing.

Langrish has never used the word promise before, but he’s using it now. He has 5 Presidential Policies – check his facebook for them – and certainly isn’t leaving till they’re all achieved. He means business. He wants all the student creativity to be involved with the Union.

22.05

More questions. Support for the GSA following elections problems, relations with the ISA, and should the ISA have a sabbatical president?

Langrish wants to carry on with the status quo, meeting with the GSA president at least once a fortnight and giving it full support. He also wants to talk to the ISA, and if they want a sabbatical officer he’s all in favour.

Ngwena thinks that all three organisations, YUSU, ISA and GSA have the same aim: improving the student experience. With that in mind, he’s sure he can find solutions, and if that means that ISA having a sabb president then all to the good.

Bradley thinks it’s all a matter of getting people involved, promoting the issues. He proposes shared events to improve interaction between YUSU and the GSA.

Bushby thinks there have to be meetings set up, communications channels opened. The same with the ISA. There has been a breakdown in the communications channel. “Let’s get them back involved.” He wants to compromise on the ISA president.

21.59

A whirlwind of information to digest here. From the Nouse bench it feels like Tom and Tim are out in front, but it’s all much closer than anyone thought. The two newcomers are both very impressive, though I don’t think Bushbey’s jabs at the current YUSU team have gone down as well as he might have hoped.

21.56

Breaking news about Bradley: it appears that rules were breached… Nouse’s own Jim Bulley has the scoop. Check it out here.

21.53

Ngwena thinks that if not Prez he’d be running for Student Activities, something he nearly ran for. He thinks its a shame that noone’s run for Racial Eq, and thinks that procedure should be followed in the slacker’s case.

Bradley’s alternative would be Welfare, he thinks that we should look into the reasons why noone’s run for RE, and thinks that sabbatical officer is a job like any other, and should be dealt with as such.

21.51

Another round: What other position would you be running for if not President? How do you feel about noone running for Racial Equality? And what would you do if one of your sabbs was slacking?

Bushby up first. “If I wasn’t running for president I think I’d do a good job at the Democracy and Services position”. I understand society’s needs, he says. He’s disappointed that noone’s running for racial equality officer, and would be just as disappointed with a slacking officer.

Langrish thinks that if he wasn’t running for Prez, he’d want to be Academic Officer. He wants to promote a by-election for Racial Equality as soon as the new year begins, and he pledges to deal with slacking officers internally, no going to the press…

21.48

More questions, on the Media Charter and on The Yorker.

Bradley thinks the Yorker is a fantastic example of the outside looking in, and thinks a new perspective is good, and thinks the media charter might be slightly unfair.

Bushby thinks the media charter should be just for welfare of students and against libel, and thinks that its place is not just for imposition of taste on publications. He thinks the way YUSU thinks about the Yorker also needs to be looked at.

Langrish thinks the media charter is essential, and wants to clarify and update it. “A process of renewal”. The Yorker, he thinks, is independent of YUSU so he wants to treat them as another independent news source.

Ngwena now: The media charter needs looking at and analysis, but we need to make sure studnts still know what’s going on. The Yorker is good entrepreneurship, he thinks, and is “brilliant.”

21.44

More questions. Hes East Goodrice, social and entertainment on campus, and Hes East student centre?

Ngwena: There’s so many things that need to be catered for in the new Goodricke. The Uni, he warns, will try to cut corners, and we have to avoid it being turned into just another travelodge off the A64, referring to the accommodation crisis at the beginning of this term.

Bradley: Student services for Goodricke need to be evaluated. We need to take a survey to see what students expect. Get societies more involved in bars and open nights, he continues.

Charles: “Hes East offers a fantastic opportunity”, but he warns that a “two-tier” campus is avoided. YUSU must ensure students needs are met.” He thinks that YUSU entertainment should not be in competition with college events, or everybody loses. YUSU need to be central, he adds.

Langrish: We need to ask the current Goodricke JCRC what they need. Courtyard needs to be promoted, but we need to carry on the fight for a full student venue on Hes East. We’re facing a split campuis

21.38

Some interesting questions. Is YUSU cliquey? What do you think of the fact that there are no women running for President? And what to do about students who don’t know much about how YUSU works?

Langrish points to the wide range of candidates running as an example of how it isn’t, and feels that it isn’t a problem for men to represent women, and vice versa.

“That’s no problem – I can communicate with any women here…” Audience mirth. But Ngwena also points out that greater student awareness needs to be pursued on YUSU’s workings.

Quite reasonably, Bradley points out that as an absolute newcomer to the YUSU scene, he would prove cliqueyness wrong himself…

Bushby thinks the YUSU clique “has been around far too long”. “It’s lost it’s focus, it isn’t working for student any more.” He feels it’s a shame in the 21st century that women aren’t running, and thinks that more effective communication methods need to be employed.

21.33

Tim wants to speak for students. He wants to represent them. He wants Fusion and RAG to one day merge to form one big society- a controversion opinion indeed.

Bradley wants to call the position of President “Student Representative”. He feels he’s gone against public opinion by simply running for President as an underdog…

21.31

Questions. “What is the role of the President”? Bushby sees the role as that of a leader. “When have you gone against popular opinion?” “I like to think that I’m always working for the people,” he says.

Langrish up next. “President is your primary representative, your chief campaigner.” “I voted against the Fletcher-Hackwood vote of no confidence”, is his against popular opinion moment.

21.28

Tim Ngwena, relative to Langrish, is also a relative YUSU outsider, though he has more union experience than Bushby or Bradley. “I have come here,” he says “not to tell you my policies. You can read them on my facebook group. I’m here to tell you who I am.” He’s got an impressive array of experience, with sports, with societies, with student media, and as Fusion President. “Anyone you talk to about me will tell you that I do anything 100%”. He wants to improve communication with the University. More rapt applause for another very strong speech.

21.24

Langrish is known already as “mr. YUSU”, and has a large bank of experience to draw on, and he’s not holding back, listing an impressive array of achievements. “I know how to get things done,” he says, “but more importantly, I know what needs to be changed.” He makes a sly dig at Bushby’s controversial promise not to draw his salary, saying “any President worth his 15k, which I shall take, because I have to.” His policies include a YUSU podcast, a YUSU survey, a restructuring of the Media Charter, and he pledges to double turnout at AGMs. The best speaker so far, he leaves the stage to rapt applause. The one to beat, so far…

21.21

Charles Bushby’s got the gloves off, calling Tom Scott’s leadership “ineffectual” from the stop. He gets Grant’s name wrong, calling him Graham, but implies that only he is capable of running the Union successfully. There’s a lot wrong that he has to put right, he continues. “I want to encourage cooperation between YUSU and JCRCs to ensure that students get the greatest variety of events and… maximum support.” “I am a team player with strong beliefs and values,” he continues, “…I will support you. Vote common sense.”

A highly contentious speech there. Tom next.

21.18

Grant Bradley’s up first.

He admits that he lacks political experience or well-known campus status: but feels that this is a strength, not a weakness. He wants to really engage with the student body. He’s really selling himself as the everyman, Joe Derwent. He wants to review accommodations services, categorise all the accommodation problems and “sort it out.” He also wants to take the Courtyard’s successes to the other college bars, and ensure integration between the student body and the student Union, and “make sure every one of your voices are heard.” An impressive speech from YUSU outsider Bradley.

21.14

The Presidential candidates have mounted the stage, now. The atmosphere is electric.

21.13

A clarification from Matt Pallas:

“No no no no no!!!

It was not a snub aimed at Charlie. My point was that the period when the union was without an AcWelf Officer, and Anne-Marie was filling in, many of Grace’s newer initiatives ended up falling by the wayside, which is entirely understandable. I think that Charlie has done a fantastic job on the welfare front, and this was only a minor criticism. Now that we’re going to have a full time welfare officer, hopefully some of these things can be revived.”

21.11

The hall is really filling up now. There are some slight delays as the candidates prepare themselves for this titanic clash. Henry and Tom’s desk is overflowing with post-it notes. They’re getting their questions in order now…

21.03

Just to remind you, the candidates for President are:

Tim Ngwena
Tom Langrish
Charles Bushby
and
Grant Bradley

Expect fireworks, ladies and gentlemen…

20.57

All of yesterday’s campaign videos for sabbatical positions are now available on the candidates page right here…

20.54

Humphrys also keen to praise Leyland’s academic but avoid her welfare achievements. He points to a recent Derwent sexual-health themed quiz as a good example of how to raise awareness, and wants to work with academic officer and the careers service to help prepare students for unemployment. Ten minutes of break now, and then it’s President-time…

20.52

Pallas up first. He praises her academic work, but snubs the welfare side of her position- a veiled insult, perhaps? He misses the days of Fletcher-Hackwood, and thinks some of her policies need to be revisited, including “test-your-team”.

Coyle’s very into Leyland’s library opening hours policies, implying that they’d make a good team on the issue. She thinks that sexual health drop-in sessions would help with awareness, and thinks that student short-term internships could be negotiated to help them deal with unemployment…

20.50

Last questions. Charlie Leyland’s best move, sex issue awareness, and preparing students for unemployment.

20.49

Pallas points out that the nursery is “ridiculous… that there are so few spaces. It’s just absurd.” This will surely prove to be a votewinner among student parents.

Coyle wants everyone to work together, GSA, mature students and all. She thinks that mature students are a forgotten group at the moment, and wants to have meetings with them to work out ways they can benefit. Last round of questions next.

20.47

A set of questions on GSA and mature students, and sports club welfare.

Humphrys, with his LGBT experience, has worked with the GSA before, and wants to take this experience into the Welfare role. He thinks sports welfare’s “very important,” too.

20.44

“I’ve had people approach me in a number of positions,” says Pallas to much amusement. I don’t get it. He wants to review the counselling services though.

20.43

Humphrys highlights his approachability first and foremost, but criticises the health centre in its mental health provision. “Everyone’s going through stress… we need more help in coping with stress,” he says. Pallas next.

20.42

More questions.

Coyle thinks that Mental Health assistance provision needs a lot of attention, due to stigmas that people attach. More help and more information is her prescription, to show people that it’s alright to come forward and ask for help.

20.39

Humphrys has the bus figures. Impressive. He wants to advertise it more, and has a plan. He wants to make sure the uni provides enough freshers’ accommodation, too, but he stays on the fence binge-drinking wise.

20.38

Is the magic bus financially viable? Pallas doesn’t have access to the figures, but thinks it’s a problem due to awareness. He also believes that the Langwith bar’s pound-a-pint night encourages binge drinking- potentially a sticking point for many.

Coyle believes in the magic bus. What a lovely sentence to be able to write. -ahem-. She doesn’t agree with Pallas on the pound-a-pint issue, though.

20.35

Pallas next, and he also thinks the Union position is crucial. He wants to hold “refresher sessions” for college reps to keep them together and working smoothly. He again has to be warned to cease…

Coyle now, and she wants all welfare reps to be under the umbrella-protection of welfare committee, and is in favour of the split: it’ll “give students more attention.”

YUSU magic bus questions now. Could be contentious…

20.33

Questions now about college welfare reps, and about negative side effects of the Ac/welf split. Humphrys up first.

He wants to coordinate both college and union welfare campaigns, and wants to support college welfare reps more: “I think sometimes they’re left to themselves”. He thinks Ac and Welf need to work very closely together.

20.31

Pallas is the most ebullient speaker yet. “I am the most experience candidate here,” he begins. He wants an on-campus GUM clinic, to crack down on STI’s, and wants to keep the Courtyard bar responsible as an alcohol provider with accreditation. He also wants to establish a clear complaints procedure for students to complain about their landlords. He wants to review the careers service, too, to bring it up to date with the Credit Crunch… He has to be ordered twice to desist. Questions next.

20.28

Accountability is Ben Humphrys’ main bugbear. He wants to take the University to task on the state of campus kitchens and bedrooms – potentially also a very popular policy. He’s got a lot of campaigns planned, too, and wants to create a website to help students club together against bodies that might want to oppress them – landlords and the University governance, centrally. Another confident speech. I predict a close-fought campaign, here. The audience love him, too. Almost a standing ovation.

20.24

Welfare is a hotly contested seat. Jenny Coyle, Matt Pallas and Ben Humphrys go head-to-head. Coyle’s up first.

Dedication and alternative perspectives are her central ideas. She wants to help students control their finances, with form-filling assistance and other nifty little ideas. This may well prove a big votewinner. Safety’s another solid policy area, with better-lit walkways, condom provision and rape alarms forming the core of a four-pronged attack, the fourth prong being lubrication. She is against drink-spiking, too, which is very admirable. A confident opening speech from Coyle…

20.17

A sentimental question last: will Leyland miss her officers? She almost seems to tear up a little. “I’ll give you six guesses at who asked that,” quips Scott. “She really only needs 5,” corrects Foy, pointing out correctly that Scott’s joke rested on the fact that there are 6 sabbatical officers who might want to know if Leyland was going to miss her, and Foy observed astutely that, in fact, Leyland was the 6th sabbatical officer and only 5 would therefore be either able or willing to enquire as to whether she would miss them. Much mirth from the audience.

You probably had to be there, though.

A short break before Welfare.

20.13

Library opening hours- Charlie’s very strong on these. She’s pledged to make steps towards 24-hour opening. Ambitious, perhaps, but a very popular policy. She also wants to clarify the roles of supervisors, and has enough time left in this round to say only that late essays scoring zero is “ridiculous”.

20.12

The practice of some departments “shocked” miss Leyland “to the core,” though management wins her accolade as the most improved. She runs out of time before answering a question on the National Student Survey. Some more policy questions to come.

20.10

Question time. Leyland loved both aspects of her role but picked Academic over Welfare as she thinks it’s the area that needs most work. Very admirable… She doesn’t agree that there will be negative effects of splitting the position, and thinks there’s no reason for any to arise.

20.08

Charlie Leyland running unopposed for Academic officer. She wants to be clear that she’s ready for any challenge that will be thrown at her, including Heslington East. Support for international students is one of her targets, and she wants to continue improving course representation and put YUSU best practice guides in place in a variety of places. A very policy-heavy speech, this one. Online key reading, more departmental responsibilities, fair penalties for late submissions – these are just a selection.

19.54

Some silly questions now.

Zoe and Helen can’t choose between raising and giving, but definitely like “recieving”. General approval from the room.

Chew wants to be an Aero if she was any chocolate bar, but misses out on the innuendo points. Interesting stuff! Academic affairs up next…

19.52

Favourite RAG experience so far?
How much have you raised for RAG so far?
And: Should Alcuin win RAG parade another year in a row?

Chew reckons’s she’s given about £100 to RAG personally, but has a bone to pick with RAG parade – Derwent got robbed, she thinks.

Zoe and Helen want to raise squillions, they say. Very admirable, but they’re sitting on the fence parade-wise.

19.50

“Who should choose the RAG beneficiaries?”
“Should other campus groups raise money for charity if it affects the RAG total?”
And, “If you could only support one beneficiary, what would it be?”

Helen and Zoe up first. They want each beneficiary to have a rep to campaign and represent them, but say that as long as money’s going to a good cause that’s ok.

Chew agrees. “At the end of the day, it’s all about raising money for good causes”. She chooses the NSPCC as her fave beneficiary, as she’s “quite against child abuse.” Strong words.

19.47

Questions: How will rag cope with the loss of the SDC position? How will RAG activities be improved, and will Student Action get more or less money than other beneficiaries?

Helen and Zoe have got serious. “Student action we really value,” they say. No laughs now.

Chew pledges to give the position her all.

A Joe Clarke question: “RAG is a comittee of 30 girls – is there a lack of male participants?”
What do other uni RAGS do well that we ought to do?
And, What is more important, money for charity or a low price event?

Chew thinks more men are getting involved already, and wants to work with societies to make it more. She points to Nottingham’s raids as an example of how it should be done, too.

The terrible twosome think we’ve got a lot to learn, RAG-wise. We’ve got to make RAG more of an institution, they say, make more people feel involved who aren’t necessarily on the committee. Interesting.

19.41

Helen Fry & Zoe Stones: A strong rapport between these two- lots of puns (“I don’t like to brag, but I do like to rag.”) I think we’re watching performance art, here. The audience is loving them. (“I’ve got a bit of a vice – Goodricke vice-chair to be exact.”) I like them.

Policies blend in with more performance. “Policies?” cries one. “Fun,” begins the other, “-draising,” finishes the other triumphantly. What fun! Questions up next.

19.38

Iszi Chew’s speech builds more on passion than policies, but she’s got a lot of it. She wants to raise rag’s profile with mega-raids, and wants to continue the hitches, as well as more hybrid events like Fusion. “Choose Chew”, she says. How will the others follow?

19.36

And they’re off. Breaking news: Sarah Goss and Will Scobie have dropped out of the race last-minute… Iszi up first.

19.35

Langwith Bar supremo Matt Burton’s having food delivered to him in the hall again. Is he misusing his powers? News Editor Jim Bulley hints that Burton might be developing some kind of god complex. We’ll have a full psychological analysis within the hour.

19.32

Everyone’s back in the hall now, and there’s an expectant buzz among the throng. Matt Burton appears to have been told to sit further back as his day-glo boots were blinding the candidates. He looks chastened.

The candidates for RAG officer will be:

Iszi Chew
Helen Fry & Zoe Stones
Sarah Goss & Will Scobie

Scott’s just called two minutes ’till start. A hush falls across the room until he tells everyone to start talking again. That’s how he rolls.

19.24

People are filing back into the hall in dribs and drabs now. The next section will be RAG, and is scheduled to start at half past 7.

We’ve got word of a schism forming between the two chairmen of tonight’s event- Henry James Foy has complained that YUSU Prez Tom Scott’s humour isn’t up to it’s Noel Coward-esque norm. He charitably admits, however, that Scott has had a molar removed this afternoon, and if he isn’t high on painkillers he’s a better man than any of us.

19.13

By the way, just because Jim’s the only one with a cut-out there on the right, doesn’t mean Sian and I are etherial beings, existing purely in blog form.

Nicky: 1
Good chat: 0

19.11

Remember folks, you can check out the candidates here, and see all their policies condensed into wordles: it’s all very clever.

19.07

Nicky Woolf here, blogging you through up as the pressure mounts towards the one everyone’s been waiting for- President of YUSU. It’s going to be a good one, folks. S-action, LGBT, Disability and Womens’ Officer have been dispatched in record time, allowing everyone a half-hour break to gather themselves and prepare their speeches, and Matt Burton time to polish his neon yellow Doc Martens. Stay with us.

19.02

A question from ‘the gentleman in yellow boots in the front row.’ NOTE: Services and Finance Officer Matt Burton.

“How much action should students get?” Well now.

“It depends on their personality. Everyone should get involved and get lots of action.” Wow, fiesty words from Miss Hesselwood there. I might even get involved in Student Action if she gets elected…

19.00

1. SA and RAG often get lumped together – how do you feel about this?
2. How will you increase prograd involvement and enthusiasm?

Hesselwood hopes to liase better with th GA and improve postering in Wentworth. And as for RAG? It’s different, but it shouldn’t affect SA and their reputation for quality of volunteering.

18.59

And some questions for Miss Hesselwood –

1. What has been your best experience with SA so far?
2. What are your views on Kids Camp.

She’ll answer these two as one. In short: Kids Camp is great, it has to keep going.

18.57

Student Action Officer is up next. Rachel Hesselwood steps up to the mic.

The former Vanbrugh SA rep hopes to raise awareness of projects, especially in Wentworth and the postgrad community. Getting students national recognition for their volunteering work is also on the cards – some Nobel Prizes for York undergrads perchance?

And she’s a fully qualified girl guide leader. Awesome stuff. And facepainting. We love it.

18.55

A question: “Which college needs the most effort to improve disability support?”

Ans: “I’m not too sure.”

She hopes to improve awareness of ‘unseen disabilities’ too, and provide better transport facilities too.

18.53
Just the one set of questions for our candidates there. Wow, that’s must be almost a first.

Uncontested Claire Cornock steps up to deliver her speech for the position of Disability Officer. You might recognise her name, she was a key player in the organisation of York Come Dancing. Will she be tango-ing her way to (and through) YUSU towers?

She feels her position is very relevant to students. And that she wold like to improve disability awareness courses for students and staff. “I’m very committed to helping students,” she says. Good stuff if you’re planning to be a Union officer.

18.48

Madavo and Ball now…

They’re both all for the faith, and the inclusion of all sexualities too. Ahhh Madavo, your voice could sing me to sleep…

18.31

Our first questions for the LGBT candidates.

1. LGBT have been holding events discussing faith – what are the benefits of these events and how will you continue them?
2. Will you include welfare provision for asexual individuals?
3. How do you intend to build on the work done last year by your predecessors?

Vince and Medley set up, answers clutched eagerly in hand. They’re all for asexuality and for faith. “We can’t do a better job than Ben and Sarah last year.” Hmmm…a good way to start?

18.44
Elanin Vince and Peter Medley up next.

Inclusion, accessibility and experience, that their slogan. They hope to create an LGBT safe space to hold meetings, drop-in sessions and reach out to a greater number of students across campus.

“We want to put the T back into LGBT.” Apparently the ‘trans’ part of the society is lacking behind, and these are your people to put them back on the map. And in the acronym, quite literally.

18.41

Next up we’ve got LGBT hopefuls, and this one’s contested. First to the mic are Mandi Madavo and James Ball.

“We have the drive and commitment to make solid policies.” A forceful start from Ball there. There’s keen to emphasise co-operation with other societies, including the CU and the ISA, and hope to create a STI-gma week. STI-gma. As in STI-GMA. See what he did there? That was good.

“Now a contraversial policy.” Ooohh. “Power in LGBT is held too close to the top. This is ridiculous.” The pair hope to bring greater equality throughout the society.

Good speech by the pair. Especialy Madavo. What a beautiful voice.

18.38

And one more – who’s your favourite feminist? Or chemist, as Ali thought.

The best thing they’ve done this year with women’s committee? The love your body campaign. Dove would be proud.

18.36

First set of questions for our ladies –

1. Do you agree with the policy of letting blokes onto the committee?
2. How much do you value male input into the role?
3. To what extent should women’s officer talk about male-based sexual equality issues?

“We only tend to get one man coming to Women’s Committee, and that’s Jason Rose.” Wow. Dating advise for all men out there from Mr Rose.

18.34

Up first we’ve got Women’s Officer hopeful Ellie Kuper-Thomas and Amal Ali. Both have a strong history of involvement in the Women’s Committee already, and they hope to make Heslington East “aware of female safety issues” and make an “anti-unwanted attention issue.” Now that’s a mouthful.

“Why is feminism a dirty word?” A question indeed, and one our candidates would like to answer.

18.31

And we’re off. Tom Scott opens the night with a reminder that open drinks containers must not be taken into the area. Mr Foy, what’s that by your right hand I see? A pint? Never.

18.30

Welcome back to the second night of Hustings, with your dream team of Woolf, Turner and Bulley taking you through the night. And trust me, it’s going to be a big one. Tonight we’ve got speeches from RAG president hopefuls, Welfare wonders and even our Presidential powers…

L/0/28 is gradually filling up with excited chatter, and the YSTV magicians are setting up their very expensive cameras. Very exciting stuff. Stay tuned for the electric-hot action.

Just got word from our man at YSTV, sleep’s a foreign concept to them, they’re going to get videos up of each candidate tonight, so check our candidate profiles soon for videos from hustings.

22.48

And so, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the end of our night in L/O/28. Thank you to everyone who followed the blog and for all your comments and questions. As the assembled file back to The Courtyard to lay siege to the bar, and Tom Scott’s slightly strained voice calls out across the rabble as he tries to get all candidate to clear up the debris of glasses left amongst the seats, it’s goodnight from me, goodnight from Woolf and goodnight from Bulley.

Join us tomorrow night at the same time for the final night of Hustings, where we’ll see the remaining candidates, including those for President, battling it out over the mic.
See you then.

22.45

Not quite the last set of questions, we have them here instead. The very last people.

1. If you would have to recommend one of your opponent’s policies, which would it be?
2. Who would be your first choice act for Fresh and the Summer Ball?
3. What size are your boots?

An interesting last question there..

Some questionable answers here, especially with regards to music taste. Sharp fancies a bit of Dizzie Rascal, Bretts like Aqua, and Durkin is partial to some Daft Punk. Whilst George P doesn’t know his English boot size, Bretts is toting himself as “the only man to metaphorically and physically fill Matt Burton’s boots…”

22.42

Final questions from the floor.

1. As officer, how would you envisage engaging with course reps?
2. It has been suggested that an ethical food policy for The Courtyard could be financially damaging. Is it worth the effort to resolve this lack of ethical policy?
3. If you had to stop a current YUSU service and replace it with a new one, what would it be?

George P is our man to start with. He skips quickly to question too – following the old gastronomic theme perhaps? – giving it his support but refusing to actively support it. He would remove computer recycling to replace it with a student workers’ network. How would that go down in the Grimston House recycling officer I wonder?

Sharp also skips questions one, sending the ethical food motion to a UGM. He’s remove Your:Print and bring in a termly book fair.

Lewis Bretts finally tackles question one, offering course reps a free, home-made sandwich in his office if they come to see him. He’d like to get rid of Ents Tech too – “it’s too expensive.”

Durkin comes up last of all, offering himself as approachable to course reps, keen to explore the options of ethical food and would also remove computer recycling. Seems these guys are pretty unpopular tonight…

22.35

1. How will you continue to improve on the growing relationship between YUSU and Commercial Services?
2. Do you think the university is more interested in making money out of students than serving them?
3. How important will Hes. East be in your services package, and how will this affect Hes. West?

Durkin strides to the mic, he’s concerned that we need to watch out for Hes East and make sure decisions made by the university do not adversely affect those on Hes West.

Sharp hopes to implement monthly meetings between YUSU and Commercial Services to continue developing the relationship between the two bodies.

Lewis Bretts wants to continue working with Commercial Services too, and is keen to emphasize that part of YUSU’s role is to keep an eye on the university to prevent student exploitation.

And George P, he hopes to make Commercial Services more competitive and keep the University’s Hes. East ambition in check.

22.27

And again…

1. Why do you think you’ll be a good democracy and services officer rather than just a services and finance officer?
2. Doing the right thing isn’t always popular, how will you ovecome this?
3. What is your policy on Sinclair advertising on campus and through YUSU?

Up comes Mr Bretts. With his blogs and website, he’s keen to show he’s all about openness and accountability. “I’m a no-nonsense kind of guys,” he says, “I’ll do right by people.”

Durkin is keen to emphasize that sometimes a thick skin in necessary to go ahead with what you believe is right. And as for Sinclair’s, he’ll leave that to the UGM.

George P is cut short once more, but wants to take a firm stand against Sinclairs. And he’s greeting with a strong applause.

Shape is up last, declaring his passion for YUSU and how believes he can run it well.

Strong words from all there.

22.22

Another set –

1. How will you work to increase turnout for elections and UGMs?
2. Too many people don’t know who their officers are, what will you do?
3. What can YUSU do to encourage healthy eating? That’s one off the blog chaps…

Sharp..wants a “BBC iplayer-thing” on the YUSU website to help students be more aware of their YUSU officers. Interesting…

Bretts wants to make elections and UGMs “more fun. Let’s have more banners, more fun,” he says. Both candidates have endorsed keeping up to date officer blogs too. And a fruit and veg stall, what more could you say for a candidate endorsing healthy eating?

Durkin keeps it short and sharp: elections in more visible places, officer blogs, an endorsement of healthy eating.

George P: “I’m sorry, but the way we encourage healthy eating is not to bring a Subway to campus.” Touche.

22.17

And some more…

1. What is more important, YUSU acting commercially sensibly or running services?
2. What are the most important YUSU services in place at the moment?
3. How do you think YUSU could expand non-commercial services?

George P – commercial activities and services are non divisable, he believes. And Welfare is the most important service too.

Lewis Bretts: “YUSU enterprises exist to provide services,” he says. He’s a big fan of the Magic Bus too, and expanding non-commercial services such as the bus.

Durkin is another Welfare fan, but also wants to help out the JCRCs as much as possible.

Another hotly contested one here, some fast-talking, smooth-talking movers on this one…

22.12

Time for the first set of questions from the bar

1. Do you think the collegiate system benefits students?
2. How would you strengthen the college system? Is centralisation the answer?
3 How would you counter the myth that the courtyard damages college events?

Durkin’s up first. He’s a strong college supporter, and wants to move away from Quid’s Inn on Friday to help out colleges on Friday nights.

George P now…he talked fast, but he didn’t quite get it all in. He likes the collegiate system though.

Dave Sharp believes colleges offer the best provision for sport and welfare for students. That the Courtyard detracts from social events: “that’s not a myth, that’s a fact.” It’s answered by a call of “Fix Up, Vote Sharp” from the audience. Tom Scott is not too pleased.

Up steps Mr Bretts. The collegiate system strengthens college autonomy, but his disagrees with Sharp as regards college bars. “They’re not good enough,” he says, “just look at the Charles, look at town.”

Some divided ideas there.

22.07

Sharpy’s up now…he’s strongly critical of some of YUSU’s recent developments, dismissing it as running too much like a business of late. He hopes to keep nights at the Courtyard popular, improving Saturday nights and Quid’s Inn on Friday night in an attempt to keep students on campus rather than in town.

Moving away from the bar now…a Your:Shop on Hes.East, along with an ATM, newspaper subscriptions from Your:Shop and cheaper FTR prices for students.

22.03

George P up now. He’s speaks fast, very fast.

“I’m running because there is an elephant in this room, and we can’t ignore it any more,” he says. With a strong background in Welfare and the ISA, George hopes to improve representation, participation in UGMs and create more competition campus services.

I hope we got it all. I don’t think he breathed one in 3 minutes.

22.00

Ed Durkin steps up to the mic. The current YUSU Ents rep wants to create a campus takeaway for all students. There appears to be a gastronomic theme here?

Subway to Market Square, a DVD rental service on campus, a bike-lending scheme for students, bringing live music to York and to the Courtyard, large-scale events in the RKC, a bakery in York:Shop…all potentially very popular policies with students.

“I want free FTR,” he declares as he closes. Some strong words from Durkin there, very impassioned.

21:57

Here we go everyone, the final round of speeches for the night.

Lewis Bretts up first. Begins with an introductions about himself; he’s got a strong history in events entertainment, working on Woodstock, RAG parade, and various professional events such as Latitude festival. Free tickets for York students perchance…?

“YUSU should spent less time talking and more time doing,” he says. Here we go – the fresh fruit and veg stall on campus. And temporary cash machines during Freshers week, that should be popular. And a minibus to Morrisons. Students should be eating well with Bretts.

He’s keen to get involved at campus level with students too, making B Henry’s a centre for comedy and developing the new Goodricke on Hes. East.

A big cheer for Bretts. He seems a popular choice so far…

21:53

Mr Bretts has placed a promotional placard infront of the mike. Now that’s not fair play I’m sure…Tom Scott doesn’t seem to have noticed.

Oh…it’s gone now. Sorry Lewis. Wear it around Vanbrugh instead?

21:50

A brief break now whilst the assembled file out like well-behaved school children after assembly. That was a hotly contested one, all spoke well and there were no clear leaders. We’ll just have to see.

The final position up for grabs tonight next…Democracy and Services. Lewis Bretts want to bring a fruit and veg stall to campus, David Sharp hopes to re-create York:Book on Hes East. And then there’s Durkin wanting to improve campus events and George Papadofragakis wants to improve communication between YUSU and the ISA. Who will deliver the best speech and win over the assembled? And all those reading the blog, of course.

*point of information. Henceforth, George Papadofragakis will be referred to as George P. Because otherwise he’ll have a different name every time. We’ve checked with the man. He’s down with it.

21:38

A question from the floor (the last one apparently)

1. What other things do you consider adding to RAG week after the success of York Come Dancing? (a small smile from Mr Foy there…)
and…
2. How should RAG and Student Action work with colleges to provide alcohol-free event?
3. What is your opinion on the £3000 fixed for RAG?

Kinchin suggests a “massive joint event” between RAG and YorkSport to get “students running all over the place…” Sounds great. Kirton fancies an X-factor event…maybe Mr Shanks could get out his guitar? She wants to keep the current funding for RAG, whilst providing enough support to Student Action too.
Shanks is back onto getting another world record for RAG week. Still hasn’t disclaimed exactly what this will involved yet though…

As for the non-alcoholic events, all are in favour. York Come Dancing in Welcome Week anyone?

21:33

Here come the next 3 questions. Hold on tight.

1. Volunteering has suffered underfunding, how will you deal with this?
2. What are your views on societies other than RAG raising money for charity?
3. What is your favourite Student Action Project.

Shanks loves MEG because he plays guitar. Wow, there’s something new we didn’t know before.

Kinchin echoes Shanks’ words regarding the raising of money by societies other than RAG. It’s important and they should get to chose their own beneficiaries. And she loves Tea and Coffee Club as she loves the look on the old people’s faces. Awww.

Kirton is a big fan of SWAP, where students help out prisoners. Good stuff guys.

21:29

Wow, this is a hotly contested one. Questions here about the role of The Yorker, their stance on Kids Camp, and the fact that Kids Camp is only 1 project out of 13 – will the other recieve sufficient support.

Kirton: “The Yorker is valuable, you need someone from the outside looking in.”

Now Mr Shanks…’The Yorker isn’t ratified,” he says, “we shouldn’t shut them out, but treat them like an external press organisation.” He loves Kids Camp too: “it must continue,” he says.

Kinchin: “we have to continue Kids Camps, it would be a massive loss if we lost it.”

Looks like Kids Camp holds a special place in our hearts, and with these guys it looks like it’ll be well-protected for the coming year too.

21:25

Big love for Student Action here. Kinchin and Kirton both want to provide more support for the projects and raise awareness. Shanks suggests getting a stall for each Student Action project at Freshers’ Fair.

21:24

Some more questions from the floor.

1. Will you be bigging-up the profile of Student Action this year?
2. Student Action has grown massively this year – does volunteering have enough support?
3. Do you see a value in Student Action week?

21:04

Mr Shanks, he’s like the Media Charter he does, and hopes to get more postgrads involved in societies.

Kinchin would like the Charter updated and clarified, but doesn’t want to detriment other societies for the sake of the media. Go postgrad involvement.

Kirton: Go postgrad involement once more. Approach the GSA and help them to get involved.

A touch of similarity. “Please listen to eachother’s speeches,” from Mr Foy. Ooohhh.

21:19

1. What are your views on the media charter?
2. Media issue take up a lot of time – how will you balance this with the needs of other societies?
3. No one has mentioned Graduate or GSa issues. How will you cater for theses?

Now there’s some juicy ones…

21:04

Shanks says there’s no such thing as equal time to all societies, but it’s different at different times of the year.
Apparently Nouse isn’t his favourite society though…sob sob!

Kinchin now…she loves York Carnival herself….

21:15

Questions now:

1. How will you give equal time to everyone in the new, expanded position?
2. What is your favourite society?
3. Should the £4 minimum charge be lowered in the current financial crisis?

21:14

It’s Mr Shanks up now. Can the YUSU veteran return for another sucessful year. He’s starting strong. “Why should I run again for another year in the YUSU dungeon?” Why indeed…?

Shanks is keen to make sure that the amalgamation of new roles will not be to a detrement of student societies, and he believes he’s got the drive and the experience to make it so. College life is changing, he says, Kids Camp is under threat…could Shanks be our hero?

21:11

Kirton’s up next, and opens by declaring herself no a ‘traditional candidate’….hmmmm. She hopes to bring a “fresh perspective’ and bring “concrete and achieveable things.” Societies are key too, hoping to improve communication with societies, offering support rather than waiting for it to be asked for by holding at least 2 society meetings per week.

Good stuff.

21:07

Kinchin up first, bearing a box of Special K…hmmm. She’s passionate for sure, with a strong base in YUSU in RAG, JCRCs, Sport, and holding the position of Training Officer for the last year. “I listen to students,” she says. Keen to emphasize interaction between YUSU departments such as RAG and Yorksport, Kinchin also wants to create an award system to recognise the achievements of students throughout the university.

“You can get involved,” she says. “YUSU is you and you are YUSU.” Wow, strong words.

A forceful ending with an emphasis on the future of Kids Camp. Vote Rhianna Kinchin, vote Special K.
Well, we’ll just have to see.

21:04

Another comment: Chris Etheridge follows-up on his speech:

“I must point out that my point about efes went slightly wrong. I intended to say that it is difficult enough as it is staggering home eating efes after drinking, without having to contend with poorly lit and surfaced walkways.

In no way did I intend to criticise students for eating efes or drinking:).”

Student activities up next. Ella-Grace Kirton and Rhianna Kinchin are up against the incumbent Rory Shanks.

21:00

Some comments from below.

Jason Rose answers Dan Taylor’s comments:

“Those weren’t our campaign proposals. They were the CURRENT policies that were passed by UGM. My point about us having a lot on our plate already is that we are mandated to, and will, campaign for these policies.

And I feel that Dan Taylor’s views aren’t spectacularly neutral on this particular election.

RE: Taylor’s last comment. Of course I won’t campaign for it. But I’ll campaign for the right to wear that combination if it ever comes down to it. I find the gear comfortable and not exceptionally scruffy and it’s my right to wear what I want.

Which will we priorities? Several. Sorry it’s a rubbish answer but we’ll focus on Tuition Fees nationally, better cycle lanes and more street lighting for the council and various things to different section of our university. All policies I read out are not our own and, even though I don’t think we should graduate in the Minster, I will still campaign with Chris for it. Don’t worry about how much I can get done – I’ve shown that I can multitask pretty effectively in the last year!”

20:56

A correction: Michael Sneddon’s plans for college rugby involve tournaments in which not all 8 teams are playing, as a several-tiered system, rather than a “half-measure”, as I took it. I apologise.

Also, Alex Lacy’s surname has no E in it. He thinks all the candidates were strong, but disagrees with some of Mildon’s policies. He predicts a close race.

20:50

Scott is a hard one to follow for Sneddon, who wants to “just continue what I’m doing, really”. He dodges the Lacey question, and wants to add sausages to the wednesday experience. He leaves the floor to cheers and whoops from his somewhat annoying fan club.

A lot of information to digest, there. We’ll be bringing you Alex Lacey’s post-game analysis momentarily.

20:47

The last set of questions: Media relations, What would you have done different if you were Alex Lacey (current yorksport prez) and how to enhance “the wednesday experience”.

Media relations “fantastic”, says Johnson, and wants to continue the relationship. If she were Lacey, she’d have consulted more clubs, and thinks the new colours would have been better done her way… Wednesdays she thinks salvation was a mistake.

Shock horror! Leahy thinks salvation was a good idea! But he explains- Lacey was just looking out for his members. He wants to negotiate deals with Ziggys.

Mildon wants to get college sport players reporting for the media, and thinks Lacey’s website hasn’t been up to scratch. Wednesdays are about a fruit cafe in the sports centre, she says. There is uncertainty in the audience, who perhaps are bigger fans of Ziggys than of fruit.

Scott wants a media relations officer on the yorksport comittee, which I think is a good idea.

20:43

3 more questions: The possibility of a sports department, how to raise participation, and would a decrease in the yorksport fee mean less money for clubs.

Sneddon plans an indoor cricket league and other cheap sports as a solution, and plans to have “a good old look at the budget”. Hmm.

Johnson thinks a sports dept is a fantastic idea. As for encouragement, she is planning charity tournaments to raise inclusion, and membership fees gives her another chance to propose her clever 3-tier membership fee system. Impressive.

Leahy also thinks a department would be fantastic, which is original. And charity tournaments. Have we heard this before? And yes, he does think dropping the fees would mean less money. That strikes me as a no-brainer, but then Sneddon’ll take a “good old look” at the budget. Hmm again.

Mildon thinks we should encourage people to join yorksport, and thinks that reviewing the structure might help free up some more money. She’s now proposing a several-tiered system. Is everyone copying Johnson?

Scott is on the ball, though. She points out that college sport is a good way to get people involved, but thinks that a decrease in fee would mean less money.

20:36

Johnson wants to raise inclusion, wants to organise charity matches, and is against paying for college sport.

Leahy is back on the idea of professional coaching. Where does he think the money’s going to come from? “There is going to be a problem with paying for facilities” he says in reference to college sports, hinting that a £5 charge might be a possibility.

Mildon, still wearing a viking helmet, wants to work with YUSU to get people involved, and the careers centre. “And starting up something for people who are not so good at sports”. “On a casual basis,” she adds. She doesn’t think the £5 charge is so bad, either.

20:33

3 more questions: The future of volunteering in sport, the possibility of a £5 college sport membership, and LGBT representation in sport.

Scott is against £5 membership, and thinks sport should be “for everyone”. Good point.

Sneddon seems nervous. Perhaps his support is putting him off? He’s against the £5 thing, but doesn’t think there’s an issue with LGBT sports inclusion.

20:31

The vocally-supported Sneddon next. “Oi Oi Sneddon”, they chant. He is a fan of college rugby, but thinks it’s unrealistic. Instead he proposes a half-measure for training purposes.

Johnson thinks participation is crucial, and wants more people to get involved. Insurance is an issue, too, with college rugby, but says Johnson, it’s eminently possible under her leadership.

Leahy, in his yellow lycra, thinks with some encouragement York could take the fight to much bigger rivals, BUCS-wise. Interesting.

20:27

A question from the floor about the rejuvenation of College rugby. Kath Mildon is caught unawares by it, but as we’ve come to expect, Scott is ready. “I don’t think you get success without participation, so you want to be encouraging people from the very bottom level.”

20:25

Sneddon has friends in leeds who like their matching kits. His friends in the audience cheer. “It’s good to win everything,” he says.

Johnson is realistic on university kits, but cautiously pro-it if the money’s available. “People like the diversity of sport at york, and I’m more than willing to give people sports they want to play”. Calm and collected, and well-informed. Scott and Johnson are well out in front.

20:23

Leahy and Mildon are both pro-college, and both want to develop non-bucs sports. Nothing dramatic here.

Scott is more collected: she is pro- the matching kits idea, and wants to balance college and university sports. “All sports are important, but BUCS sports are the ones that build up our reputation.

20:21

Questions now. Matching uniforms, University v College sport and Bucs v Non-Bucs are the questions of the day.

20:20

Sneddon’s up next, and his friends in the audience voice their approval. He has campus media experience, but admits he’s “not very good at sport”. He plays rugby, cricket and pool, though. He wants BUCS success for york, and wants to get coaches for teams to do that, though doesn’t specify from where, and how it will be afforded in a yorksport that’s already taking flak for being too expensive. He’s big on “fairness”.

“If you think yorksport is rosy, vote for people with experience in it. But in my campus media experience, from the outside looking in, vote for me…” His time runs out, and he is cut off, and his audience buddies boo. Not sure I approve.

20:16

Emily Scott makes a big thing of her experience at college sport level “I’ve played every college sport” is a good sound-bite, and she’s served on several club committees. “Practical and realistic” are her buzzwords, which is a good sign. She has no outlandish policies like Milden and Leahy, but sounds more than both of them like she knows how campus works. She’s very pro-college sport, and wants to promote it, and is cross about Varsity’s cancellation this year.

I think Scott and Johnson are the front-runners so far.

20:13

Kathy “viking kath” Milden briefly forgets her own name, but is wearing a viking helmet and wants Yorksport to be more “fun”. “Bicycles for hire” is an interesting policy, as is a park games scheme, and she wants sport to be “cheaper for everyone”. A fruit cafe in the sports centre, and watersports on hes east lake are all attention-grabbing policies, but we’ve seen candidates in funny hats before – will she lose points for a lack of seriousness?

It’s a serious speech, though. We’ll see how she deals with the questions.

20:10

Michael Leahy next. Plays “tons of college sport”, and has “tons” of experience. He’s wearing lots of extremely brightly-coloured sports equipment. Some of it might even be lycra. Ho-hum. Policies: Value for money for yorksport members. He proposes hiring a physio-therapist for members, which might be overly ambitious, especially as he’s advocating financial independence for sports clubs.

20:07

First up is Gemma Johnson. Experience with YUSNOW and Roses, she’s been in loads of clubs. She’s well-qualified, and is coming across like she really knows her stuff. She’s proposing a multi-layered system to solve the expensive yorksport membership costs, which seems like a good idea. She wants to work with York St. Johns for RAG charity matches, too. She’s going to be a hard candidate to follow.

20:04

And they’re off. Expect sports metaphors galore. Oh my, they’re chanting for Sneddon. There’s only one of him, apparently. He’s walking along, and doing something, they’re singing. Details later.

20:02

Now, AU President (which is what I have decided the post is called). This is a very contested position: no less than 5 people running. Gemma Johnson, Michael Leahy, Kath Mildon, Emily Scott and Michael Sneddon. Each get 3 minutes for their speech.

You can read all about them in detail here.

19:57

Still to come tonight after Sports-AU-YorkSport President:
Student Activities, which should be at about 9PM
Democracy and Services, which is scheduled to be at 10PM
Will everything stay on schedule? Probably not. But stay tuned, and we’ll keep you posted.

19:55

Nicky here, back from the bar and re-fortified. People are filing back into the room in dribs and drabs. AU President – or rather, YorkSport President, or as the board that the President himself has drafted has it, Sports President – whatever you want to call it, it’s the first of the sabbatical positions tonight, it involves sport in some way, and it’s up next.

19:44

Turner here, holding the fort whilst our Nicky temporarily flees to the bar to restore his faculties for further satire…

The room is empty but for an eagerly conversing Jason Rose and a few by-standers with pints. Next up we’ll be having the hopefuls for YorkSport president. A hotly contested position with four candidates going head to head, we’ll have to see if their speeches can match Rose’s eloquence or Levene’s enthusiasm. One’s running as a Viking though…could be the next Tom Scott?

19:35

“It’s unrealistic at the very least” says professional York political pundit and celebrity come dancer Dan Taylor, with characteristic understatement, of Jason Rose and Chris Etheridge’s gargantuan list of campaign targets.

We’re in the middle of a brief break, is why updates aren’t coming as thick and fast as before.

19:30

“At the very least,” apparently, “The council should build us a swimming pool.” I dread to think what the council would have to say about that.

19:29

“There are a lot of issues” admits Jason Rose apologetically. There are indeed, I may venture, too many issues that they’ve taken on. Will this affect them at the polls? They’re running unopposed, so it seems likely that it won’t, but then there’s always RON…

19:28

“Which of those policies is the most important?” is the slightly bemused question. Dojos, swimming pools, bridges, sports centre prices and world peace appear to be the most important ones.

19:27

Chris Etheridge is big on the Langwith bridge. He’s really angry about it. And the cost of YorkSport. He certainly sounds like a campaigner. Oh, and he’s against “staggering home, eating efes, and drinking”. In that order, apparently. Slightly surrealist. Ziggys is too dark for him. Cashpoint logistics, now. He’s really rocketing through his bugbears.

Jason Rose, running with him, wants improvements in campus kitchens, portering, ethical merchandise, childcare, tuitin fee cap, minster graduation – Minster graduation! I thought we’d heard the last of that one – Something about the Royal Bank of Scotland, ethical investment, ethical everything, my goodness. “There’s a lot on our plate already”. You are not kidding, mr. Rose.

19:24

Questions for the E&E pair: What do they prefer, ducks or geese?

David prefers ducks, because the geese keep him up at night. Is he planning a cull? It would be somewhat outside his remit.

Campaigns next.

19:20

David Clarke & Jade Flahive-Gilbert, running for environment and ethics, have already said the words “actively” and “committed” upwards of eight times. They want to sort out the problems in Gaza, too. Ambitious, perhaps. Ah! They just said “actively committed” again.

19:18

Two more questions: One about late-night courtyard disruption, the other the traditional “entertain us” question for ents. The first is answered convincingly, and Suzi Ellis gives us a brief but energetic dance. They’re running unopposed anyway, so Sam Daniels doesn’t appear to feel like he has to dance. Not impressive. Environment and Ethics next.

19:16

“Making colleges work together brings enthusiasm together.” Snappy answer, but is it true?

19:15

First questions are about the focus on alcohol, and whether college spirits will be damaged by joint events?

19:14

Entertainments officers up now. Sam Daniels and Suzi Ellis running together. They want to balance college competitiveness with central organisation, via YUSU. Competition is healthy, they say, but intercollege relationships will help. They want to put on more free events, and alternative and LGBT ones too. “Any event which brings students to campus is a good event,” says Suzi.

19:12

A solid speech by Levene. The position has “great potential” and affords the opportunity to be “innovative, dynamic and creative”.

First question: What’s the most important part of the job? Is it the lack of “bras”? Oops. That’ll be bias, questionmaster Henry. Nobody thinks Levene should be without brasserie. Well, that’s not true. But it wasn’t the question, was it?

19:08

That’s the questions for NUS delegate all done with. We think Rhianna Kinchin and David Levene came off best, followed by Carr and Bretts. Chair of Union Council up next, and David Levene is running unopposed. He now has three minutes for a speech. Remember you can post your questions on the blog to be transmitted to him…

19:06

Daniel Carr highlights the threat of infighting, something Oli Lester has already pointed out as a worry. Lewis Bretts, meanwhile, is more careful, but comes down with Lester and Carr.

19:04

Delegates should definitely not be whipped, says Rhianna Kinchin, agreeing with Tom Langrish. Very certain of their positions, those two. Convinced, and convincing.

19:03

First question, by email from Tom Flynn was “Should york candidates be ‘whipped’?” meaning should they keep to Union policy or take their own views to conference. Best answers so far David Levene and Jamie Tyler, we think. Very slick, the both of them.

Readers can post their questions on the blog to the candidates, and we’ll transmit them to the candidates via the wonder of technology.

18:59

David Levene comes off as a strong candidate, while Oli Lester takes the opportunity to plug Derwent’s Flying DCUK newspaper. Charlie Leyland pledges to “bring education” to the NUS. Not sure what that means, but it sounds impressively aggressive, we at Nouse think. Meanwhile, Jamie Tyler’s phone causes chaos with the microphone.

18:54

Strong speeches from Tom Langrish and Rhianna Kinchin, who both have bigger targets in mind: Student Activities for Kinchin and of course President for Langrish. This shone through in both their speeches, which had the bigger issues at heart. Kinchin said she was “in touch with stidents”, while Langrish pledged to cut through “Beaurocratic BS”.

18:51

In alphabetical order, the candidates for NUS delegates are:

* Ali Allana
* Michael Batula
* Lewis Bretts
* Daniel G. Carr
* Rhianna Kinchin
* Tom D. Langrish
* Oliver Lester
* David Levene
* Charlie Leyland
* Kath Mildon
* Jamie Tyler

Batula and Bretts make solid speeches, but the most impassioned so far was Daniel Carr, who made a big deal of his GSA President status. Rhianna Kinchin next.

18:48

First up to the plate to bat will be the NUS delegate candidates. There are a lot of them, so they get a minute each in alphabetical order. First up: Ali Allana. But she’s a no-show, so Michael Batula takes the stage.

18:44

A hush falls across the hall. The tech teams are all ready. And… yes! Tom Scott has opened the ceremonies. First up: Health and safety briefings. Stay awake, please.

18:42

The first piece of political intrigue: Matt Burton, Langwith Bar supremo, has a burger delivered directly to his vantage point in the front row of the hall. Is this an intimidation tactic? Only time will tell.

18:34

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the live Nouse blog of the 2009 YUSU hustings night 1. I’m here with the lovely Sian Turner and the ever-so-slightly-less lovely but still fairly lovely Jim Bulley. He’s maybe 40% of Sian’s lovely.

The atmosphere here in L/0/28 is tense tonight. The candidates are putting the final touches to their speeches. This is the evening that can make or break a campaign, so the pressure is on all those running to make it a good one.

Bear with us as we bring you live updates of every twist and political swerve this evening. We’ll have speech highlights, pundit opinions and exclusive interviews with the candidates themselves. Watch this space!

A ripple of consternation runs through those assembled in the great hall. The tension has reached the YSTV control room. The scuttling of the sunlight-starved television techies has changed in pace. There is panic in the air.

There is talk of betrayal in the green room. Who had endangered the lives of all? Who stole Dan Taylor’s shirt?

His dancing partner was in tears. “We’ve lost,” she sobbed. “His nipples… they’ll scare the audience.” This was a real danger. Eyewitness reports put Taylors nipples at erect to a length of at least twenty-seven metres, with tips as sharp as needles and as hard as diamonds. York Minster Hospital for Children, Puppies and Iraq War Veterans was in danger of losing the money it so badly needed for a new air-hockey table. Indeed, from outside the Courtyard bar three veterans of the surge, one of them just eight years old, another a labrador pup, peered anxiously through the steamed-up windows.

“Who will save us from his nipples?” cried a distraught Charlie Leyland, her instinct to Cha Cha and her instinct to protect the welfare of her charges in desparate conflict. “Oh no!” cried a dancer. “He’s coming!”

An atonal bellow echoed around the hall. Three sushi-shaped lanterns fell from their mounts, crushing six plates of tapas and trapping Rory Shanks.

From backstage, the terrible footfalls of the beast echoed. Then, with a thunder of tortured masonry, Dan Taylor crashed through the door, ripping it from its hinges. Terrified TV techs scuttled to avoid his gaze, and battlescarred chihuahuas fled from his deadly roar.

Rescue came in the unlikely form of prince Alexander Pushkin Vladivostok Geraldine Fink. With no regard for his own safety, Fink abandoned his waltz mid-pirouette and, throwing his partner to the ground, he bravely advanced on the charging, baying, topless Taylor.

What ensued was not entirely clear. The bards like to sing that Fink, in one swift move, transferred his jacket onto the enraged Taylor, like the world’s greatest matador. Whatever transpired, when the smoke cleared, a docile Taylor was wearing it.

It didn’t stop three dancers being tragically impaled on Dan’s nipples, though.

Tom Scott’s Blackberry

(as seen by Henry James Foy

05.02.09 13:06
To: president@yusu.org
From: jb629@york.ac.uk
Subject: Nouse Survey

Dear Matt,

I was asked by Nouse today who you were, and felt proud to tell them (rather matter-of-factly, I should add) that you were our brilliant President. Mr Burton, you are an inspiration to us all.

And great job on the bar – you should stand for another term!

John

——————————————–
08.02.09 23:49
To: president@yusu.org
From: acwelf@yusu.org
Subject: PWNED!

CHA! CHA! CHA!
CHArlie x

—————————————————
09.02.09 09:47
To: president@yusu.org; acwelf@yusu.org
From: dsfkjhsd56@hotmail.com
Subject: Tips

Hi guys,

I’m thinking about running for YUSU next year, and I’m interested in your positions. Could you give me a quick list of what’s expected of you, and what I need to know to do your jobs?
Thanks,
Dave

—————————————————
09.02.09 14:20
To: president@yusu.org
From: strictly@bbc.co.uk
Subject: RE: Next Series

Dear Mr Scott,
Thank you for your email. As I’m sure you’d appreciate, we are inundated with videos of untalented ‘dancers’ hoping for us to drop our standards low enough for them to take part. You’re not a famous cricketer, disgraced TV presenter or washout former pop star. Actually, you’re even a pretty rubbish pirate.

Regards,

Bruce Forsyth

—————————————–
10.02.09 11:03
To: president@yusu.org; acwelf@yusu.org
From: dsfkjhsd56@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Tips

All right clever-clogs, you got me. You can’t blame a guy for trying (for everything).

Rory

An aging management student dozes in the sunshine, his ten-gallon hat pulled down low over his snoring face. A shadow falls over him. He awakes, and looks up – and a look of terror covers his face. Scrabbling, he runs for his life.

Meanwhile, town Sheriff Tom Scott and postmaster Rory Shanks are helping get the Courtyard Saloon ready for opening night. A long time in the making, this is the first saloon opening here that’s not run by the big bad cattle-rustlin’ gangsters up on Hes Hill. It’s a big night. The proprietor, old father Burton, has been in town for longer than anyone still alive can remember. This is his dream.

None of them realise then that some dreams… can be nightmares.

The party is going well. The liquor was flowing. Abba was playing, but despite that everyone was having a good time.

But then they arrived.

They had been respectable townsfolk, once. YUSU Presidents and sabs. But power had changed them. Twisted them. Made them… evil.

Mickey Armstrong, small-time gangster, oozed evil from every sweaty pore. James ‘The Badger’ Alexander had gone mad with power and drink. He just oozed. Nat Thwaites-McGowan would only speak through an agent. But evil by proxy is still evil.

“This here bar,” drawled Armstrong in a voice that sent a chill through Burton’s heart, “was my idea. It’s my bar.” His eyes flashed with devilish light.

“I have been authorised to say,” McGowan’s agent told me in as evil a voice as she could muster, having only been Alcuin chair, “That this bar was Nat’s idea. Anyone who says different…” She drew her hand across her throat.

James Alexander spat a mouthful of half-chewed salmon canape into Jane Grenville’s drink. “This bar,” he growled “is mine.”

It was Armstrong who went for his gun first. His bullet struck James Alexander square between the eyes, but it only angered him, like a bb-pellet hitting a 40-stone Kodiak bear. He roared, and beat his chest, then picked up new Alcuin chair Oliver Hutchings and hurled him at McGowan, who decapitated him with his hunting-knife, spewing grisly gobbets of alternative music everywhere.

When the dust settled, four doorsafe officers lay dead. James Alexander was writhing in a pool of blood and VK green. Grenville was duelling Armstrong with battleaxes.

Apart from that, the launch went well.

YUSU Bar Special

It was high noon. The town of Langwith, Texas sweltered in the January sun. Only the clutch of saddled geese outside the Courtyard Saloon were moving in the destructive heat. They shifted restlessly. Perhaps they could sense what was coming.

An aging management student dozes in the sunshine, his ten-gallon hat pulled down low over his snoring face. A shadow falls over him. He awakes, and looks up – and a look of terror covers his face. Scrabbling, he runs for his life.

Meanwhile, town Sheriff Tom Scott and postmaster Rory Shanks are helping get the Courtyard Saloon ready for opening night. A long time in the making, this is the first saloon opening here that’s not run by the big bad cattle-rustlin’ gangsters up on Hes Hill. It’s a big night. The proprietor, old father Burton, has been in town for longer than anyone still alive can remember. This is his dream.

None of them realise then that some dreams… can be nightmares.

The party is going well. The liquor was flowing. Abba was playing, but despite that everyone was having a good time.

But then they arrived.

They had been respectable townsfolk, once. YUSU Presidents and sabs. But power had changed them. Twisted them. Made them… evil.

Mickey Armstrong, small-time gangster, oozed evil from every sweaty pore. James ‘The Badger’ Alexander had gone mad with power and drink. He just oozed. Nat Thwaites-McGowan would only speak through an agent. But evil by proxy is still evil.

“This here bar,” drawled Armstrong in a voice that sent a chill through Burton’s heart, “was my idea. It’s my bar.” His eyes flashed with devilish light.

“I have been authorised to say,” McGowan’s agent told me in as evil a voice as she could muster, having only been Alcuin chair, “That this bar was Nat’s idea. Anyone who says different…” She drew her hand across her throat.

James Alexander spat a mouthful of half-chewed salmon canape into Jane Grenville’s drink. “This bar,” he growled “is mine.”

It was Armstrong who went for his gun first. His bullet struck James Alexander square between the eyes, but it only angered him, like a bb-pellet hitting a 40-stone Kodiak bear. He roared, and beat his chest, then picked up new Alcuin chair Oliver Hutchings and hurled him at McGowan, who decapitated him with his hunting-knife, spewing grisly gobbets of alternative music everywhere.

When the dust settled, four doorsafe officers lay dead. James Alexander was writhing in a pool of blood and VK green. Grenville was duelling Armstrong with battleaxes.

Apart from that, the launch went well.

Tom Scott’s Blackberry

(as seen by Henry James Foy)

15.01.09 14:12
To: president@yusu.org
From: communications@yusu.org
Subject: Courtyard Opening

Listen up President-boy. Matt and I have had a little chat, and we’ve decided you can do the opening speech for the new bar. It’s the boring thank you crap, and Randall’s going to steal the show with yarns about meeting The Who, but we thought, as you’re technically the Union’s figurehead and all that, you should probably do it. Just don’t forget the sodding great eulogy to me and Corporal Burton. Everyone knows we did all the work anyway.

Sounds good? Thought so.

Shanks

P.S No pirate hat. It might have got you elected, but it makes us look like a bunch of tards. And Jane Grenville will be there.
—————————————————
16.01.09 02:47
To: president@yusu.org
From: r.croker@lidl.com
Subject: HEY!!!!!!!!

TOM!!

how are you doing??!?!? just a quick message to say jolly good on the bar (though i did give you the idea ) and could you stick me on the guest list? old skool YUSU and that?

Rich xoxoxo
—————————————————
16.01.09 09:31
To: president@yusu.org
From: ellisj52@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: HEY!!!!!!!!

Not so much. J x
—————————————————
16.01.09 15:01
To: president@yusu.org
From: news@theyorker.co.uk
Subject: Scoop
Hi Anne-Marie,

I’m trying to put together our news section – I know I don’t email in very often, but we’ve gotten wind of a fantastic story – apparently something about a bar that’s going to be opening? I was wondering if you could confirm or deny these rumours, and also maybe lend us some money too?

Yours in utter desperation,

The Yorker
——————————————–
16.01.09 10:38
To: president@yusu.org
From: communications@yusu.org
Subject: RE: Scoop

Yeah – I get them occasionally,.
Turn on the spam filter: my one stops this kind of stuff coming through pretty well.

Rory

It explains why the ducks and geese, who instead of living calm, wildfowl lives around their idyllic little pond, like nothing more than jumping on my table where I am sifting through my Vanbrugh food looking for a sausage I’m sure I had, and harassing me until I am forced to retreat, leaving my chewy almost-but-not-quite-a-Yorkshire pudding behind as a tactical sacrifice.

It explains the energy with which we return, week in, week out to clubs which are barely more than poorly-ventilated rooms with stereos in that still manage to charge more for a double vodka and coke than the market price of a three-bedroom semi on the outskirts of Leeds with off-street parking and a small but neatly-maintained south-facing garden. Yes, I’m looking at you, Gallery.

It explains why every year people manage to swim, to actually swim, in a lake with a level of water purity you would expect to have found in the Thames Estuary circa 1908, despite knowing that they risk serious bowel disfunction by doing so.

It explains Oliver Lester, though not entirely.

It explains why the Library is so busy, even though we are at an educational establishment where a humanities degree means two hours a month and two essays a year.

It explains Octopush.

It explains why every night just after midnight, several mysterious trucks arrive outside James College JCR, driven by armed Colombians.

It explains why campus is frequented by the same slightly twitchy children cycling slightly too quickly up and down Vanbrugh bowl and stealing everyone’s frisbees.

It explains how Heslington East is being funded.

It explains the inexplicable success of York’s actors and journalists.

It explains Central Hall’s architecture.

It explains how people occasionally go to 9:15 seminars.

It explains what library cards are really for.

It explains how in a pond composed entirely of bacteria, excrement and hubris how there is one catfish that has grown to the size of a small family hatchback from living only off what drips from the chemistry department.

Most of all, it explains what this crazy cesspool-surrounding university runs on. And it’s crack.

Moazzam Begg spent two years of his life imprisoned without charge by the US military. He speaks to Nicky Woolf about life as a detainee of the war on terror

“I opened the door to several people. None of them were identified. None of them asked who I was. They put a gun to my head, pushed me to the forecourt of my house, tied my hands behind my back, tied my legs, put a hood over my head and carried me to their car.”

There is a pause, and Moazzam Begg’s face darkens as he recalls the night in January 2002 when he was “picked up” from his home in Pakistan by the US military and taken to a military holding site. He was then moved to a former Soviet base at Bagram used to house terror suspects designated “Enemy Combatants” in the War on Terror.

After a year at Bagram, he was transported to the high-security facility at Guantanamo Bay, where he spent two more years. He was released and returned to Britain in January 2005. No charges were ever brought against him, and he never faced trial.

I ask him what first went through his head when he opened the door to the soldiers. “Surprise. Shock,” he tells me. “Everything happened so fast. I didn’t say a word, I didn’t actually say one word.” He blinks slowly, then corrects himself: “I saw them going towards the room where my wife and kids were, and I said ‘don’t go in there.’ That’s when they put the hood over my head. I was completely stunned. I didn’t know what to say at all. They didn’t say anything to me either. They just came in, pushed me to the forecourt, put a gun to my head. I saw tasers crackling in the background. I didn’t know who they were… It is extremely frightening when you’re on your knees, hands behind your back, hood over your head. The first thought that comes into your mind is, someone’s going to blow me away.”

Moazzam Begg, who grew up in the Sparkhill suburb of Birmingham, has every right to be angry. But he is strangely calm when retelling the story of his capture. “I was in the car. Somebody lifted my hood and took a photograph, and I could see it was a Caucasian person dressed in a Pakistani style with an Afghani cap, in a way that no Pakistanis, no Afghanis would wear it. He looked funny.”

He laughs, without a trace of bitterness. “I laughed to myself. It was like, ‘look at this guy; he looks like an idiot. He’s not fooling anybody.’ When he spoke, it was evident that he was American. He produced a pair of handcuffs, put them over my – already-handcuffed – hands, and said ‘I was given these by the wife of one of the September 11th victims to catch who did it.’” Begg smiles. “Then, I knew who they were.”

I ask why he was picked up. “The reason I was detained is two-fold,” he tells me. “Firstly, during the 1990s I had made several trips to Bosnia and Herzegovina and openly supported the Muslims there… I believe my MI5 file was built from that point, and was handed over later to the Americans. The second part is much more blatant. The US government dropped leaflets all over southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan offering bounties for people that were handed over. They said that you could earn yourself a complete new life; all you need to do is turn over people that you suspect.”

“Americans don’t know Afghanistan,” he continues. “They don’t know the villages. They don’t know the tribal customs and the rivalries that exist within that feudal society… So when they would do these ‘swoops’ on people, it would be based on local intelligence. This doesn’t take into account that these people sometimes hated one another, there were tribal feuds going on for decades. People would often say ‘this guy is anti-American, give me the reward,’ and hand him over. The overwhelming majority, me included, were handed over extra-judicially like that for a fee, for a bounty.” Begg smiles. “I still don’t know how much they paid for me, but I like to think it was a substantial amount.”

A lot of the time, Begg uses humour as a way of defusing the bleakness of the stories he has to tell. I ask him if this was something he developed as a way of dealing with his incarceration. “There were several situations that were extremely humorous,” he replies, “that sometimes the Americans wouldn’t recognise. They think: ‘These people are detainees; why would they want to laugh? What’s there to laugh about?’”

I ask for an example. “The only noise you hear at Bagram,” he replies, “other than the screams, was when they [the American soldiers] used to put on their own music. When they put on their own music, it was often country and western, because these units were from the southern parts of America.” He grins. “I can’t stand country and western. So, I’d shout out ‘please turn that crap off. We’ll talk, I swear.’” He spreads his arms in an expressive shrug. “And they wouldn’t laugh!”

I ask what the day-to-day routine would be during his incarceration, and his face darkens. “It’s hard to actually think of the daily monotony, because it gets me extremely depressed.”

He continues: “Guantanamo is different to Bagram. In Guantanamo, the cells measure 8 foot by 6 foot. That means that you take one, two, three steps and there’s a wall. And you turn around, one, two and three and there’s a wall again. So if you imagine doing that pacing for a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years…” He pauses. “The thing that used to recur in my mind was the word animal. Continually, I used to say animal, animal, animal, animal, animal, because it reminded me of when I used to go to the zoos. You come to a point after you’ve had all those difficult periods where you bang your head against a wall, punch, kick, scream, shout, tell people that you’re innocent – nobody cares – and then you resign yourself to your fate. You become that thing that you said you never would.”

“But for me,” he continues, “it was almost an empowering process. I said, how can I possibly benefit from this situation? I’m in a room, in a cell. I can’t see light, I’ve got nobody to speak to other than American guards. I’ve got no communication with the outside world. I’ve got very little to read other than the Qur’an and few books. I made lists of everything I ever wanted to do or have done in my life,” he continues. “Lists of every country in the world, lists of every capital city in the world, the periodic table of the elements… and I wrote lots and lots of poetry, all with the tiny pen that they gave me, which had to be no more than 2 inches long, as anything longer could be used as a weapon. A lot of the detainees didn’t have pens like I did. Some of these detainees scratched out their poems in polystyrene cups with their fingernails.”

To my surprise, rather than hatred, Begg seems to harbour a kind of fondness for some of his captors. “They did make a difference,” he tells me, “because some of them were decent ordinary people. National Guardsmen, reservists, people who didn’t really want to be soldiers, but they’ve been activated into full-time duty… A lot of those guys were students who had joined the army so that their college fees would get paid. In a sense I became the confidant of these guys, and vice versa. I remember on one occasion an American soldier, only a young guy, broke down in tears because his wife had left him. Those sort of things, those sort of communications took place quite regularly. It’s bizarre to think of it, because one’s a jailed Enemy Combatant, the other’s his jailor. One’s in orange, and one’s in khaki.”
“The guards in Bagram,” he says when I ask how this compared to where he had been before, “consisted of full-time active units. The difference was the marines, the badass hardcore tough marines. Their attitudes were completely different.”

“You weren’t allowed to walk or talk or to get up or to do anything without permission,” he continues. “If you did, if you refused to follow orders, you were taken to an isolation part at the front of the cell, and your hands were tied above your head with a chain, like so,” Begg spreads his arms above his head, “and they were tied so tight that you’d have to be on your tiptoes, so if you relaxed a little bit then all the weight would make the chains cut into your wrists.”

I ask him what it was like when he finally got to go home, and am taken by surprise when he laughs. “That was so funny. We were put on this coach with blackened-out windows, we were shackled, just in case we escaped on the way to freedom, and there were about 40 American military policemen on the coach with us, for security. When we arrived the British had come to recieve us, but the padlock key had been forgotten by the American soldiers. Which was so funny, because then they started swearing at each other, it was brilliant. So then one of the soldiers came along with this huge pair of wire-cutters, and snapped off every padlock. That was it. When I was handed over to British custody there were no handcuffs, no attitude, there was nothing at all. They brought me newspapers, magazines and crisps and chocolates and things I hadn’t seen for ages.” He pauses. “It was all very British.”

A tremor in Begg’s voice betrays his emotion. “The next morning I went to my lawyer’s house, and that’s where my father and my lawyer and my wife and my kids were waiting for me.” Begg pauses, seeming lost in reverie for so long I think he’s finished. Just before I ask another question he speaks again, and his tone is subdued, saddened, almost apologetic. “Um. It wasn’t that emotional for me.”
“It is now, when I’m talking about it,” he hastily adds, “but it wasn’t at the time. I had steeled myself during those years, to keep sane. My tears had dried up. I think that the hardest thing for me was the children. The eldest daughter, she was 6 at the time, now she was close to 10. I had been able to pick her up in the air and throw her and catch her when I saw her last, and I couldn’t do that any more. She was too big.”

Begg thinks the mindset, and the actions, of the War on Terror have done much more harm than good. “The argument [that the US use] is that because this is an amorphous enemy, the rules have to change.” he says. “Imagine this Afghani guy, this villager. He has this beard, and this long hair and so forth, because that’s part of his tradition and his religion. When a person is brought into detention, the process they have to go through is that you are taken and dragged through the mud with your hands tied behind your back. Your clothes are ripped off with a knife, there is a whole circle of soldiers around you taking photographs, kicking, spitting, screaming, shouting, swearing, dogs… it’s known as the ‘shock of capture’.”

“So then he eventually gets released,” he continues. “He goes back to the extended family, and the extended family is what makes up a clan, and the clan makes up a tribe and the tribe makes up the nation. That’s Afghanistan. So when he goes back he tells not just his extended family but the whole nation. Six years after victory was declared in Afghanistan they’re telling us that that the Taliban is on the rise. Simple answer is: It’s not just the Taliban any more.”

Begg’s logic is chilling. I ask him what he thinks should happen next. “A lot of it is about exerting pressure. It’s about attrition, it’s about working at the seams and dragging it down.”

Since his incarceration, Begg has committed his life to campaigning to end the practice of detention without trial that took so much from him. “The existence of Guantanamo today is untenable. I do think that they will close it. But the problem will still remain about the ghost detention sites and the secret detention sites.” He looks at me plaintively. “How do you get to uncover that sort of stuff?”

So you’ve got your tunes. You’ve got a product. You are a group of talented musicians. What do you do next? How do you take your product to the market? If you want to make it big in the music business, it’s no longer good enough just having talent, you have to have in roads, you have to have a foot in the door.

Mike Fenna, a DJ and producer who left York last year, has set up The True Ingredients, a 33-piece hip-hop and jazz group made up of musicians and artists from around the world. He hopes that by sticking together, doing collaborative tracks and helping each other out on solo projects, they will have a better chance of success in a musical world increasingly dominated by the giants of record production. This tactic has already been fairly successful. Performing at a special Oxjam gig in 93 Feet East in Brick Lane, with friends Asian Dub Foundation, Lisa Mafia, Kele Le Roc, and a whole host of London Hip-Hop royalty, Fenna tells me about where the project will go next.

“The first single, ‘Space and Time’, is out at the end of this month, and the next album, Prepare and Assemble, is out later this Summer,” he tells me in a break between his own DJ set and the next act. “We’ve also got a track featured in Skins season two, and in Gumball3000, and lots of other stuff, and BBC 1Xtra are interested in an exclusive on the single.”

The set at the concert goes down a storm. The crowd love the True Ingredients sound. But Fenna’s plan is much more ambitious than just writing and performing the music. He wants the True Ingredients group to support each other in every aspect of music production, from writing, through to recording, producing, mixing, and promoting everything that anyone in the group produces.

“The new single will be released entirely online, but sold as other objects with stickers on. These stickers will link straight to a track download” Josh Wah, guitarist and a founder member of the True Ingredients told me. “So you’ll get a lighter with a sticker on, or… a vegetable maybe, and download the track with the code on the sticker.”

Of course, there is an awful lot of practicing, and writing music involved in the production of a new album, as I?see when I go to a rehearsal before the 93 Feet East gig at a flat near St. Pauls in London.

However, most surprising is how much of bringing out a new record depends on finding a foothold in the industry, whether it be a slot on BBC 1Xtra or a play in a major TV?show.

You can check out the True Ingredients at www.trueingredients.com, or keep an ear open for the new single.

“We have one very serious rule in here,” I am warned as I settle myself down. “We don’t talk about what people are in for. Whatever they’ve done…” She puts heavy emphasis on ‘whatever’, then pauses, to stress to me the importance of this point, “…whatever they’ve done is not relevant in this room.”

The room is pleasantly furnished, arranged in a rectangle and filled with the lightly-padded chairs and the generic rectangular tables you find in classrooms and seminar rooms everywhere. In fact, the only sign that this is not just any classroom anywhere is the big, ominous bars on the windows.

I thought I had come to HM Prison Hull to meet Fi, one of the tutors here, and to sit in on one of her humanities classes. It turns out that this is not to be entirely the case. “What’s your lesson plan then?” Fi asks me at the door with the faint suggestion of a grin, adding that I “shouldn’t be nervous.” Do I look nervous? “They want to know about you, too,” she tells me. “They’re curious.”

I am fairly apprehensive as the students file in, but they put me instantly at my ease. I introduce myself, and explain what I’m doing, and they are almost overwhelmingly eager to respond, to interact, to have their voices heard. Jim*, an intelligent and energetic Londoner with dreadlocks, tells me that Hull Prison is one of the best places to be in offender learning. “You’re seeing the real cream of the crop”, another student cuts in, and there is a general murmur of agreement. I ask why.

Firstly, I am told, this class is what are called ‘VP’s’; “Vulnerable Prisoners”. This means that those I am sitting in the classroom with today are those who are separated from the “mains”, the mainstream prisoners, for various reasons. “They could be paedophiles or sex offenders, or high-profile grasses or informers”, Daniel Vulliamy, from Hull University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning, who helped set up the education system at the prison, told me. “Any people who need protecting”.

Marcus, a man in his early fifties sitting opposite me, leans forward on heavily tattooed arms. “VP’s tend to move around less than Mains, which allows us to concentrate much better on our studies,” he tells me.

“There’s no consistency between prisons,” agrees Bob, the skinny guy to my left. “There’s not even any consistency between wings, in some places.” Jim, the Londoner, started the seminar sitting apart from the class but, interested in the direction the conversation is taking, is now leaning against the window near where Fi is sitting.

“I used to be in Dartmoor,” he says “and it was a lot worse than here. I used to order books, right…” Here Marcus interrupts, waving at massive Sociology textbook. “See this book?” Jim shoots him an annoyed glance, and Marcus backs down with exaggerated rolling of his eyes. There are grins all round the classroom. “Settle down,” says Fi, almost fondly.

Jim continues his story. “I ordered the textbook. And it’s expensive. When your week’s wage is a tenner, you have to save up a long time. But they wouldn’t give it to me. Claimed security reasons. That’s what they can just do, any time. If they say ‘security’, there’s nothing you can do.”

“If there’s a security alert,” Fi adds, “then the whole teaching block gets shut down. Nothing happens for the rest of the day. Rest of the week sometimes, until they give the ok.”

Hull’s education system, I’m told, is unusually strong. Driven by a series of fairly progressive governors, as well as a partnership with Hull University, Hull Prison has been the recipient of several pilot schemes for offender learning. As well as allowing inmates to do Open University degrees, it also teaches the UFA, a modular foundation course that Hull University offers.

Most VP’s are doing longer sentences, often for ‘crimes of passion’, or very serious, one-off offenses, are less likely to be ‘career’ criminals, and are more likely to have prior education. Due to their protected status, they tend to spend longer in one prison, as their isolation is expensive to maintain in transit. Mains prisoners are a very different story. Back in the class, I hear about students who find themselves with a one year sentence, or less, who spend less than a month in any one prison before they are moved on.

Jim has a theory. “Each prison is run separately,” he tells me. “There is no real unified system. There isn’t even and similarities in security levels. This is a C-cat prison, but it’s got higher security than some B-cat’s I’ve been in, and even some A-cats. It’s a fucking joke… In Dartmoor, they said I couldn’t have a PS2, because they said I could connect it to wireless networks. I said, ‘listen mate. I am a network systems engineer. I am telling you, a PS2 cannot connect to a wireless network even if there was one, which there wasn’t. And in my last prison, it was allowed, so it’s not like it’s illegal.’ It’s a fucking joke.”

Marcus leans forward again. “I’ve seen prison officers who can’t even add up,” he says, with an air of superiority. There is general assent at this. “And then we’re here, doing degree-level stuff. I think they resent it. Not all of them, by any means, lots of them are very supportive; but certainly a few.”

Later that week, I get a call from John Hirst, who taught himself law during his 25 years in prison, and has won several high-profile cases on prisoner rights, including winning the vote for inmates in the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourgin the case of Hirst vs United Kingdom, 2005.

Hirst, a grizzled 57-year-old with a mischievous grin, is a man who used his time in prison to take education by the scruff of the neck and then use his new-found knowledge to fight the system. When I arrive at his house in a grey suburb of Hull, I am first welcomed by the attention of his friendly but irrepressible Black Labrador, Rocky, with whom I am to share chocolate biscuits with. The ceremonial splitting of the biscuits complete, I ask Hirst for his story.

“I started a life sentence 1980 in Winchester, though I was convicted in Reading,” he begins. “They asked me, ‘which route do you want to take through your life sentence?’ and I said ‘education’. But they then denied me education for 10 years.” On what grounds, I ask. Hirst laughs. “On security grounds. They said that they believed that I would use education for subversive purposes.”

As it turned out, that is exactly what he used his education for. “You can’t beat the prison system with violence, because they just use more force against you. I’d already had that experience; that had been my way. But if you can beat the prison system by using the law then obviously you know it’s a powerful weapon… If they recognise that you’ve got intelligence then they actually fear you. It turned out that the prison system feared me more for my lawful pursuits than they ever did for my unlawful pursuits.”

“Certainly the education, prison education helped me,” he tells me, pausing to help me defend my second biscuit against Rocky’s enthusiastic attentions. “Hull prison had an education-based special unit, which was ideal for me, ‘cos I did want to do education. So I studied there. Ron Cooper, who was the education officer, was good as gold. He’s not your run of the mill prison education officer. Most of them just go through the motions, whereas Ron really believed in educating prisoners. So that’s basically where I got my education… My whole period at Hull special unit was a turning point in my career.”

That weekend, I met Graham. A mild man in his late thirties, Graham served nine and a half years for attempted murder and fraud, and during his sentence he took courses in Technology, Environmental Studies and Business Studies from the Open University. He then took a teacher-training course at his local college while living in an open, or Category D, prison, and now teaches Business Studies.

I ask him what it’s like teaching after having learned in a prison environment. “At the early stage it was really nervewracking,” he tells me. “Suddenly here am I, going back every night to a prison, and yet all day every day I was teaching these kids. It was really quite surreal. If they knew what it was all about…” He pauses. “You know. Obviously I wasn’t teaching in a class on my own, I was a trainee teacher, but it was quite surreal, and very challenging as well… I love it now, I really do,” he smiles. “It’s better than a life of crime, that’s for sure…”

Like Jim, Graham had also spent some time in Dartmoor, though he actually found the strictness of the regime helpful. “That was the best grades I ever achieved. Dartmoor has a very rigid routine, a very structured regime, and there’s a lot of lock-up. Consequently, all you could do was study. Some days it was 23 hours a day. You’re entitled to one hour of exercise a day, and that’s it. And you think, ‘I’d go stir-crazy if I didn’t have my studies.’”

I am getting the impression that education in prison might be more than just some way to pass the time. Is there something addictive about it? Graham believes there is. “You send off a tutor-marked assignment and it comes back and you’ve got a good mark and you can’t wait to send the next one off… You look forward to it coming back, you want to know how you’ve done. And off you go and you do the next one. It’s that continual ongoing addiction. You do become addicted to study, I think.”

John Hirst, and Graham, have found their niche since leaving prison. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. “There’s an awful lot of guys and women who do very well in education but they can’t get a job on release,” Graham, who is an active supporter of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, which helps prisoners fund higher education, tells me. “A lot of it is to do with the introduction of the disclosure act, meaning that you have to declare that you’ve been in prison. There’s an awful lot who drift into casual labour, rather than do anything more education-based.”

One of these is George. An amiable 39-year-old with a thick Hull accent, he served two and a half years of a five year sentence for the possession and supply of ecstasy, speed and cannabis, and the possession of cocaine. While in Hull prison, he began a Sociology course, and subsequently was accepted to Hull University to finish his course when he was released.

“I never really had any self-belief at school’n’that,” he tells me over coffee. “The lecturer that was there, Ron Cooper, and another guy called Bill gave me the belief, and a lot of the other lads as well, that we could study at this level and achieve at this level… Obviously, when I got out, I’d changed, which I put down to the education. It changed my outlook on life.”

Daniel Vulliamy helped George to find his place at Hull University. When I meet Daniel in his office in the Centre for Lifelong Learning, he tells me about George’s experience. “The nice thing was the feedback from the other students. They said that as an ex-con, he had a range of experiences which might have seemed quite limited to him, because he was stuck inside these walls all the time, but to them, to the students, it was outside their world. It gave him some perspectives and angles that he was able to share with them in class that they found useful, and appreciated.” He pauses. “And he was a supplyer, and an addict, and he’s neither now. But he can’t get a proper job either.”

George is certain that he is being discriminated against. “I had tried for two or three jobs and been knocked back, and so I saw a job going in a local call centre and I went for it… I was hoping, you know, that I wouldn’t be there for very long, neither. I just looked at it as a bit of a stopgap, really. And yeah, I got the job. Three years on, I’m still there. And it isn’t for the want of trying for other jobs… They just come out with one excuse after another.”

He has no shortage of evidence. “I’ve had other people denying that they’ve actually spoke to me before. I’ve been told ‘just give it another year, you know, another year you’ve been out of prison, and then apply again,’ and I’ve rung back and talked to the same person a year later and he denied having any conversation with me. I had someone say to me that a lot of their clients have or have had substance abuse problems, and I’d have a ready-made clientele if I wanted to start dealing again. Which is just absolutely mad,” he splutters, obviously outraged, “because to put myself through all that and this that and the other, and… y’know…” He spreads his arms desperately; “if I was going to start dealing again I’d… I’d have done it by now; I wouldn’t have done it through like looking for a job, know what I mean. It’s just absolute madness. You get all these places saying ‘we’re equal opportunity employers’, but when it comes down to that, they’re not. They’re clearly not.”

At several points during our meeting, George is almost overwhelmed by emotion. “I’ve been out of jail five years now, and I thought somebody might have given me a chance by now, but they haven’t. I just don’t want it to have been all for nothing, because I feel like I’ve got so much to offer, you know?”

“There’s others at the call centre that are at university, or just using it as a stopgap, and they get their degree and within a few weeks they’ve gone off to a better job. I get continually questioned, ‘why are you here’, ‘why are you still here’, and I have to make excuses up. I feel that I shouldn’t have to, but at work nobody knows my past, apart from a couple of people that I’ve come to know really well. I don’t like lying to people, I don’t like hiding things from people, but there’s a lot of people at work who just wouldn’t understand. ‘Once a prisoner, once a con, always a con,’ that sort of thing… I just feel gutted. Really gutted that I’ve got so much to offer and nobody’ll give me the chance to offer it. And if nobody gives me that chance, it’ll have all been for nothing.”

His eyes brim with something approaching tears. “I did me time. I’ve obviously worked hard to reform meself and to come out to be a valuable member of society and to put something back rather than just taking all the time. But I’ve been out five years and I feel like I’m still being persecuted in society for a mistake I made all them years ago. That’s all people want to look at, ‘oh you did something wrong’. They don’t want to see ‘oh wait a minute, he’s done something to try and put it right’. So yeah, I don’t know where I go from here now. I really don’t. I try so hard.”

The media image of the convict has changed fairly little in the last few decades. They still seem to be pariahs, even after they have served their sentence. A quick trawl of recent tabloid headlines confirms this. On the introduction of a 2007 prison scheme to allow prisoners to lock their own cells – not from the prison officers, but from each other – the Daily Mail hysterically commented: “Thousands of prisoners are being given keys to their cells in the latest farce to hit the criminal justice system.” With an unpleasant sneer in its tone, it continued: “They can roam in and out virtually at will under a scheme designed to give them more ‘respect and decency’.”

Despite this, the class when I see them are all confident that their education will still not only give them a better chance at a new start when they get out, but make their time inside bearable as well. I ask them how the system could be better, and have to scribble to keep up with the response. A national curriculum for prisons is generally accepted to be the most important thing; almost all of them have had their education inconvenienced or interrupted in some way be being moved about from prison to prison with vastly differing regimes.

Then they begin to talk about the lengths of people’s sentences. All of them are in for a fairly long time, but they have all seen the negative effects that a shorter sentence can have. They are convinced that short custodial sentences, two years or less, are damaging.

Graham sums up the problem. “Somebody who’s been sentenced for two years for example, he will serve a year, so if he spent a little bit of time on remand, he arrives in prison, he’s assessed, and they say ‘we’ll put him on a basic skills course’. So then there’s a waiting list of maybe three or four months… by the time he does anything at all he’s a good halfway, three quarters of the way through his sentence. The course might be 6 months long, and he can’t fit that in. The guy’s doing a year in prison, and yet he cannot get on the ladder to do any form of education… You get people saying ‘he should be locked up, he shouldn’t be studying, how come youngsters outside can’t get college places and yet these guys who’ve done these horrendous crimes are getting the best of education?’ But nine times out of ten, the guys who keep on coming back to prison all their life are the guys who can’t read or write.”

The class have another theory. “They’ve got to tick their boxes, yeah?” says Mike, a tall, thin man with jet-black hair in a bowl cut, in a slow, considered voice. “So when you go to a new prison, which is pretty often in some cases, it might not matter where you’d reached in your course before, they’ll make you do the basics again. So you’ve ticked the boxes, yeah?” Marcus cuts in. “There’s no continuity. None of the prison departments talk to each other.”

Hirst is much more candid. “It is a business. Prisoners come in, and it’s like a revolving door, they’re coming back out. Prison officers living off prisoners, you get psychologists, doctors, people like that living off them. The builders that build the jails, shops that surround the jails. The whole thing is actually a business, and it has to keep going on. Justice doesn’t come into it, and trying to reform people doesn’t come into it. There’s too many people living off the system.”

I ask him for an example. “Some places, when you come out, they give you two weeks money when they know you’re not getting any dole for three weeks,” he tells me. “So what are you going to do for that last week? Most fall down, go out screwing again, say ‘well, I can’t afford to do anything else’, so they fall back into that trap… It’s easier to end up back inside than stay out.”

The class tell me that there are places where the guards have bad attitudes when it comes to education. “They want to see us banging out number-plates. They think education is a privilege,” says `Mike.

I ask them if there is a self-esteem issue at the root of why education is so important for them, and there is overwhelming agreement. “When I come here, I don’t feel like a prisoner,” sums up a quiet, fairly young student with short blonde hair, who hasn’t spoken much so far. Everyone nods.

Daniel Vulliamy has more. “I can think of a student who gave a particularly fine account. He was a Barnardos boy, an orphan. He was in trouble and in an approved school, and a borstal, and in the borstal he worked with animals, found he had a real knack with working with them, and he liked it a lot. So then in prison some ill-humoured placement officer said, ‘we’ve found the ideal job for you. You’re good with animals, Johnson, we’re putting you in the abbatoirs.’” He laughs bitterly. “So his job was to kill the animals. And he spent probably the next 25 years of his life as a criminal, mostly dealing in drugs, and more than half of that time in being prison for it.”

He continues: “He’s now up to his fifth or sixth year of a part time degree in Social and Behavioural Studies, having started inside Hull prison. Education has completely changed his life. He’s involved in various projects to help ex-offenders when they come out and try to make sure they don’t reoffend, just by giving them support… I think he’s a magnificent tribute to the power of learning to change people’s lives.”

I called Ann Creighton, Director of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, whose remit is to promote offender learning throughout the criminal justice system, to ask her how the system works. “For education above A-levels, since the Learning and Skills Councils took over operational responsibility in 2005 there has still been no decision as to where higher education sits. At the moment those operational and policy matters lie with the Learning and Skills Unit. My trust holds a contract with them to provide 800 open learning courses, OU courses, in prisons in England and Wales… Everything else that is provided in prisons has to be provided either through the vagaries of charitable funding or prisoners have to pay for it themselves.”

Creighton is infectiously passionate about education. “Our prisons are full of people with loads of potential. People come into prisons thinking they’re stupid, thinking they lack self-confidence, and something clicks sometimes and they begin to grow, and they begin to find all sorts of interesting things to do…”

“There is evidence that the higher the level of education people get, the less likely they are to reoffend,” she continues. “A piece of non-scientific research we did showed a very interesting result. We took 437 people that we had funded to do a course, and who had completed it, and we asked the Home Office to keep their names. That was about December 2003. Early in 2006 they looked to see how many people had reoffended. They only found 377, but of those people only 25% had been reconvicted compared with the current level of about 57%. That is a huge indication of what education can do. Of course people who do distance-learning are self-selecting, they are often people doing longer sentences, and are less likely to offend again. All I can say is that this is a very clear and powerful indication, and there should be more research done.”

It’s clear that offender education is important, but it seems there is a problem with the national mindset when it comes to convicts, both institutionally and generally. Hirst is certain that this is the case. “They just turn round and say, ‘our children can’t get this kind of free education, so why should prisoners get it?’ It’s a very outdated attitude, and a very wrong one. The thing with education: If you sunk more into it, you’d get a lot less reoffending.”

I ask Creighton what improvements she’d make to the prison system. “I would like to see a period of stability… I reckon I could run this entire trust on what’s been spent on changing the headed notepaper in the last ten years, the number of changes there’ve been… I’d like to see government policy based on proper, long term research. I’d like to see fewer people sent to prison, and much less of the revolving door process, and I would like to see that prisoners, like in all societies everywhere, are treated as whole people, and not each bit.”

She pauses, then chuckles. “If that doesn’t sound too horrendously idealistic. And, I think it’s a complete waste of time sending anybody to prison for less than 2 years.”

One thing is certain: A lot more attention needs to be given, and a lot more money spent, before the system works. Before that can happen, there needs to be a sea-change in the attitudes people have towards prisoners.

As the lights went up on a madly staring William Seaward in full bishop’s regalia, it seemed that pantomime had succeeded in penetrating the usually more sober Drama Barn. However, it soon became apparent that Jean Genet’s play had rather more substance.

The work is nothing if not complex. Throughout, the nature of illusion and reality is explored. Set in Madame Irma’s brothel, or as she inconsistently prefers, “House of Illusions”, the central idea of image is considered through the bizarre fantasies of the clients, and later the fallout of revolution in the city outside.

A play of this scope, so explicitly designed was an ambitious project indeed, and occasionally the deeply complicated dialogue suffered from being cut. The strongest elements of the play were the more fluid scenes in the second act, when full use was made of the impressively painted stage. The comic trio of Seaward, James Duckworth and Matthew Lacey were outstanding, as was Sarah Barker’s Madame Irma, though at times she lacked the regal presence the part demanded.

In a play so fundamentally concerned with creating illusion, it is ironic perhaps that the production failed to fully draw the audience into its reality; but in reducing the audience to voyeurs, peeping into Drama Barn as Irma peeps into her studios, the audience were just another level of unreality.

This year’s Fusion: In Motion takes the world of cinema as its starting-point. Split loosely into sections such as Horror, Romance and Sci-Fi, the show combines modelling and choreographed posing with a wide variety of dancing, from tap and ballroom to breakdancing, robots and Soulja-boy’s.

The show lives up to its ‘In Motion’ moniker. It is full of movement, from neatly choreographed and energetically executed set-pieces by dancers from Dance-Soc or Afro-Caribbean Soc to a powerful and exquisite performance dance by Japanese Soc. In fact, Fusion this year involves more societies than ever before. Whether it be Film Soc making the introductory montages to each scene, Dance Soc and all the others that perform or Photo Soc documenting the event, the team involved is an exceedingly large one.

There is a wide range of music on offer as well, though the show leans towards a funky hip-hop style for most of the scenes, which lends itself well to the choreography, though some scenes pour classical, techno, jazz, and other styles into the mix. The student-designed clothes, if anything, outshine the store-bought ones for imagination and sheer visual interest; the producers have found lots of ways to hold your interest throughout the show’s two and a half hour runtime, and the most enjoyable scenes to watch are the wackiest; the ones that use masks, robots, dust-suits, and all kinds of other devices. The bizarreness culminates in one of the best scenes in the performance; the Ghostbusters scene is funny and entertaining, as well as musically excellent.

The dancing is the heart of the show, and that alone would be worth paying to see. The modelling, the acrobatics, the clothes, add to the dancing to create a constantly enjoyable spectacle. Definitely worth a look this Friday or Saturday night.

Through the drunken haze, one important point is missed. This University may be run by a bunch of berks who couldn’t run a hot-dog stand at a hot-dog-lovers convention, but if there’s one thing those bods up at Hes Hall know, it’s when something’s going down the pan. God knows, they should by now.
Langwith bar is under threat of closure because nobody goes to drink there. Nobody goes to drink there because there are better places to go drink than bloody Langwith bar. As people who don’t know what gits they really are say: you do the math. If Langwith bar goes down the pan when the University are running it, we lose Langwith bar, and both its patrons have to make the extra three-minute walk to Derwent bar, or the Charles. If Langwith bar goes down and us students are running it, we have to foot the bill; and it will come out of something we actually want, like the societies. The newspapers will have to provide their own paper. The radio will have to stand in the middle of campus and shout through a loudspeaker made from toilet-roll tubes and tin foil. The rugby team will have to provide their own balls, gumshields and ball-gags, and the underwater hockey team (?) will have to practice doing whatever it does in the lake instead of a pool. The proceeds of RAG will all be purloined from the needy and poured into YUSU’s ailing coffers- oh, shit. Too late.

After the applause died down for Michael Slater’s production of Sweet Charity, I could hear people asking: “Why have I not heard of this musical before?”
It was easy to see why. This production of a relatively unknown musical about a dancehall-girl’s search for love was bursting at the seams with an infectious energy.

Gavin Whitworth’s expert musical direction delivered all that it promised. Under his direction, the band delivered a dark but jazzy soundtrack that amply filled the massive hall. Their music merged seamlessly with the complex and ambitious choreography of Sarah Betteridge to create a show that both sounded and looked extremely professional. Slater’s direction managed to take the idiosyncrasies of the script on board – including the bizarre silent-movie style announcement projections – and add enough polish and ad-lib flourishes of his own to make the production unique without transgressing against its spirit.

This is a musical with a deeply sexual core. Charity’s squeaky-clean cutesy demeanour is set almost ridiculously against the gritty reality of her profession. The hyper-competitive, hyper-sexual ‘Big Spender’ girls, the cynical dancehall host Herman, excellently played by Sean Chapman, and the uncomfortably perverted ‘regulars’ all prophesy the failure of Charity’s naïve dreams of happiness.

Charlotte Ward-Caddle and Victoria Jones were excellent as Charity’s two sassy best friends. Jones’s impressive vocal prowess is well known from her starring role in last year’s West Side Story, and Ward-Caddle holds her own very well beside her.

The leads Alice Boagey and Jethro Compton had great chemistry both in song and in dialogue. They played hilariously off each other, and the scene in which they are trapped in a lift had the audience in stiches. Boagey was perfect for Charity, saccharine-sweet and possessed of a captivating naiveté, and Compton’s nervous, neurotic but good-hearted Oscar was a refreshing counterpoint in a musical full of very empowered, sassy characters.

However competent the two leads, the show was stolen comprehensively by the two supporting male parts. Tom Rogers was perfect as a silent-films era Italian movie star, achieving heights of physical comedy with little touches like his complicated signature set-piece. His accent was excellent, and he gave the character a depth of emotion that went far beyond what the script proscribes.

But best of all was Ian McCluskey as the para-religious ‘preacher’ Daddy Brubeck. He infused an already spectacular ensemble performance of ‘The Rhythm of Life’ with a quasi-messianic energy that was all his own. It was very clear that everyone in that scene was enjoying themselves immensely, and the audience found it impossible to resist responding in kind. Ben Rackstraw and Michael Hailes deserve special mention for their comic timing and backing vocals as his assistants.

The abruptness of the ending was deeply shocking to an audience expecting happy-ever-afters all round. That we felt Charity’s disappointment so keenly was a testament to how invested we all were in the story. A stunning success for Slater and the whole of the ?Central Hall Musical Society.

A mysterious online collective known only as ‘Anonymous’ has declared war on the Church of Scientology. Nicky Woolf tracks them down to find out why, and how.

On January 14 of this year, the Church of Scientology – allegedly – applied pressure to the video hosting website YouTube.com to remove the video of a speech by high-profile Scientologist Tom Cruise. According to The Economist: “The star appears to discuss his beliefs with a degree of incoherence and exaggeration that might lead some to question Scientology’s effects on its adherents’ sanity.”

The Church of Scientology said that the tape was “the stolen video of an internal church event,” and yelled copyright. YouTube quickly – some have said suspiciously quickly – removed the video.

On January 21, a mysterious group calling itself “Anonymous” posted a video to YouTube which constituted a declaration of war. Spoken in an artificial, computer-simulated voice, it begins: “Hello, leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous. Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye.”

It continues “Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.”
It ends: “Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

At around the same time, The Church of Scientology’s home page was attacked by hackers, quickly succumbed to the onslaught, and went offline. After one week, Anonymous’ YouTube declaration had racked up more than a million hits, and has since more than doubled that. The war had begun.

On February 10, Anonymous stepped its game up a notch and emerged from the internet realm. A massive international protest was held outside every single Scientology church and centre in the world, including the ‘dianetics centre’ on Hull Road in York, 5 minutes walk from the University.
The largest protests, in London and Los Angeles, boasted more than 500 protesters. York’s was a little more modest, at around 20, but nonetheless the speed with which Anonymous has mobilised the grassroots against Scientology, and gone from a niche collective of web-users to a powerful global movement is cause for thought.

The anonymity aspect is not just for show. Nobody on the forums where Anonymous hangs out goes by their real names, and everyone is careful to protect personal details. Speaking to members of the group, the first thing that strikes me is how seriously everyone takes this. There is real fear of retaliation from Scientology. Anonymity is the first line of defence.

If Anonymous is an army, the message-boards at Enturbulation.org are its unofficial headquarters. I log on, and post a message on the York section. Fairly soon, I receive a call on my mobile, number withheld. Half-expecting a computer-modulated voice, I am caught short by a sensible, slightly nervous north-midlands accent.

As a matter of course, he tells me, he will not give me his name. His ‘Anonymous’ name, his online alias, is ‘AnotherYorkAnon’, and he is a final-year student at the University of York. He has been a member of Anonymous for “probably a couple of years now”; a lot longer than most. I ask him why such secrecy is needed; “In the case of people criticising the Church of Scientology, they have what’s called the fair game policy,” he tells me. “I believe they are alleged to have revoked it for over 30 years now, but there are very, very firmly documented cases.”

“The fair game If you are a vocal critic of Scientology,” he continues, “they are allowed within their organisation to harm you in any way they see fit. Sometimes physically, or sometimes they try and do it through court cases and having you arrested.”

I am as familiar as anyone else with the Church of Scientology’s litigious reputation; it’s been well represented in the media. I had not, however, heard of this more sinister aspect to the Church. I ask AnotherYorkAnon how much is known about the darker side of Scientology. “There have been some very high-profile cases of deaths and suicides,” he informs me. “If you get into the cult even without knowing what’s going on then you can be in very real danger. They tend to avoid contact in any way with people outside the cult. There’s generally their aim; to try and isolate the members of their organisation so they don’t have contact with the outside world.”

After our conversation, I did some did some digging online. It seems that Anonymous’ fears are not without base. There are an awful lot of horror-stories associated with both membership of and opposition to the Church of Scientology. Some of them had impressive evidence backing them up; U.S. Coroner’s reports, court transcripts, photographic evidence and several corroborating eyewitness reports.

Perhaps the best-documented case, and that most often cited by Anonymous’ campaigners, is that of the death of a young Scientologist, Lisa McPherson, in apparent captivity at a Scientology facility, in 1998. The Church of Scientology in Clearwater was charged with practicing medicine without a licence and criminal neglect, but these charges were dropped in 2000 on a legal technicality.

Later, I speak to another member of Anonymous. ‘Nick’, in his early twenties, from Leeds, was a new addition to the ranks. “I’ve known about Scientology and their crimes for a long time,” he tells me. “But it’s been there’s never been anything big organised before, especially in the UK. When it became apparent that this was going to be a worldwide thing and that it is going to make a difference, I decided “I’ve got to get in on this, I’ve got to help out.”

‘Nick’ is also very careful about his identity. He, too, is scared of retaliation from the Church. “I don’t know any Anonymous in real life. I think that’s a good thing; we are starting to get reports of people getting fair-gamed because of Sunday’s protest and I certainly wouldn’t want to be targeted,” he says. “They have started to dismantle the lives of some people they have identified. There’s one guy’s lost his job over it; Scientology wrote to his workplace telling them that he’d been inciting hate-riots. There’s another guy who’s now got a van parked outside his house with people coming to and from it, taking pictures of his house.”

The Church of Scientology have attempted to hit back at Anonymous in the media as well as in person. In a statement to Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times on February 8, the Church accused Anonymous of “perpetrating religious hate crimes against churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry.”

The statement accuses Anonymous of “harassment, including threats of violence in phone calls,” and compares them to a “terrorist or hate group”. It says that Anonymous has “publicly proclaimed its guiding materials to be the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.

Anonymous, by its very nature, is a leaderless, anarchistic collective; AnotherYorkAnon describes it succinctly as “a herd of cats.” There is no command structure, formal or informal. This in mind, the Church of Scientology’s accusations are difficult to credit. That Anonymous could ‘publicly proclaim’ its guiding materials to be anything at all, let alone Mein Kampf, is cast aside by any members I ask with offended derision.

Anonymous’ answer to Scientology’s accusations is agreed by consensus, rather than issued by authority, and then sent to me. “The Church of Scientology refuses to acknowledge that we are uninterested in physical violence against their members,” it says, and continues: “Anonymous strongly condemns any illegal action against the Church of Scientology or other religious organizations.”

“Not only do we address these concerns in a number of statements, but our actions speak for themselves, as has been made clear during the global wave of demonstrations… The Church of Scientology will find that the only thing their parishioners need protection from is the Church of Scientology itself.”

It is irrefutable that the protests on the tenth were, without exception, executed entirely peacefully. “Everyone considers it amazing how successful it was,” ‘AnotherYorkAnon’ tells me. “There was not a single arrest, police caution or any negative publicity. It all went perfectly to plan.”

I speak to ‘Jambob’, a 15-year-old Anonymous who organised the York protest. “I made sure that the police knew that we were coming,” he said. “I made sure that no-one was going to mess about and do something illegal, generally just saw that things ran smoothly.”

This is what seems to be unique about Anonymous. While the Church of Scientology has branded them “terrorists”, they have in fact been extremely careful to maintain a strict non-violence policy. Their protest instructions say: “Don’t be confrontational towards existing members of the CoS,” and “Stay cool, especially when harassed. You are an ambassador of Anonymous. Although individuals trying to disrupt your demonstration will get on your nerves, you must not lose your temper.”

‘Nick’ describes himself as a part of “sort of the ranks” of the group, as distinct from “the group that set up the denial-of-service attacks”, the hackers who took down the Scientology website.

‘AnotherYorkAnon’ also distances himself from them. “There actually seems quite a divide amongst Anonymous as to whether that was the right thing to do or not,” he tells me.

‘TheQueue’, one of the staff on the Enturbulation.org forums, sums up the quandary for me.

“Anyone could be part of Anonymous, including somebody who overtly disagrees with us. How can we be sure any action attributed to Anonymous isn’t the work of the Church of Scientology or, perhaps more likely, just some kid that wants to get a laugh?”

“As a result Anonymous doesn’t take credit for anything,” he continues. “The very concept of our group means that individual actions are outside of the group and consequences – good or bad – happen only to that individual. The protests this weekend were due to the individuals involved, not some pseudo-identity of Anonymous.”

‘TheQueue’ is keen to downplay the hacker attacks. “There’s no organisation or “leaders” that would coordinate these actions. In addition the original attacks didn’t require much skill – a DDoS attack is the online equivalent of too many phones calling a 1-800 number and overloading its capacity.”
That doesn’t mean that Anonymous doesn’t have that sting in its tail. “there certainly are some technically-minded individuals who are capable of attacking websites like that,” ‘AnotherYorkAnon’ says carefully.

It might not even be needed. ‘Nick’ tells me that the February 10 protests had more than just an external effect on the Church of Scientology. “We’re already getting word from people inside Scientology that it is causing a lot of dissent; which is our aim.”

Intrigued, I ask him what he means, and his voice takes on an excited, almost proud edge. “Well, there’s certain people within Scientology who can’t get out of it for certain reasons, but they do keep contact with critics of Scientology. There’s someone – I can’t say her name – who’s been a long-time critic, and has been posting some letters and emails that she’s been receiving from Scientologists still within the cult. They’re discussing things like what exactly it is that Anonymous were protesting. They’ve been told various things, and they know that they’re not getting the full story. They’re trying to get some information but they’re being blocked by the higher-ups.”

Where does Anonymous go from here? There are already more protests planned for March 15, which are speculated to at least double the participation of the February 10 protest. I ask ‘AnotherYorkAnon’ what he predicts for the future of Anonymous, and he pauses. “It depends on the results of the 15th what happens next, really. It is very difficult to predict what’s going to happen in a month’s time.” ‘Nick’ is more upbeat: “From what we’re hearing, this has dealt a huge blow to Scientology already, but it’s going to take years to get down to the nitty-gritty; the people who really need help, the people whose lives have been completely destroyed by Scientology. There are people so deep within the cult that they cannot get out at all.” He pauses briefly for breath. “They’re the people that we really need to get to.”

Buying a car doesn’t have to be expensive or even much hard work. Venetia Rainey and Nicky Woolf drive you down the road of chassis numbers, engines and MOTs.

Cars are useful things. They get you places fast and give you the power of flexibility. Of course the slight glitch in all of this is that you need a driving licence, but that aside, having a car can be a real advantage. The obstacle for most is price, but with this guide, you should be able to get a car for anything from £1000 upwards (insurance included), depending on how picky you’re feeling…

Step 1 – Which car?

This is a very personal decision. First think about what you’re going to use the car for. If you’re going to be ferrying friends around, you probably want something small with five doors (one of which is the boot), like a hatchback, and something with an economic engine, like a diesel. Or something more flash, like a saloon. Do you want air conditioning? Electric windows? Rather than bury yourself in a million choices, rule out the things you don’t need before you start.

The best way to do this is to write out all the things you definitely want in a car. Forget about the engine for now, but think about the number of doors, the number of seats, the colour, the style, the boot size, even the stereo. When you have all this organised in your head, you can start thinking about stage two; the engine. First choice to make is petrol or diesel. Petrol is faster, much nicer to drive and sounds a lot better. Diesel, however, is much, much easier on the wallet. Next, decide how fast you want it to go; a 1.1 litre engine will struggle on hills, and a 2.0 will be much faster but you’ll pay through the nose for insurance. Go to an insurance broker like www.directline.com where you can get a free quote, and check how much you’ll be paying for the larger engines. It’ll make you think. Finally choose whether you want an automatic or a manual.

Step 2 – Where to look

There are several places to look for used car listings. Often local newspapers will have a page with advertisements on them, so these are worth looking out for. The internet, however, is easily the best forum for such a search:
- www.yorkpress.co.uk/cars
- york.gumtree.com
- www.ebay.co.uk
- www.autotrader.co.uk

All of these sites provide an easy to use search engine where you can type in exactly what you want in terms of car, budget and vendor location. Ignore any results without a picture, and check the accompanying blurb for mention of scratches, dents, engine problems, etc. A contact number should be provided, and when you find a few that tickle your fancy, the best thing to do is to give them a call. Ask any questions that may not already have been answered on their listing (for example, airbags, engine size and anything else you consider important) and trust your instinct about what they sound like. You want to deal with someone friendly, open and genuine, not pushy, dodgy and untrustworthy. If you’re happy with what you hear, then you can arrange a viewing and a test drive.

Step 3 – The test drive

Remember that if you don’t have specific other-cars insurance, you can’t drive it yourself, in which case bring a friend who can, or else ask the seller to drive you. Try to take in some motorway and some smaller, bumpier roads. Press every button and test every gadget. Make sure the steering wheel feels firm and doesn’t wobble or shake, as this can mean expensive suspension or steering rack problems. Make sure all the gears work smoothly, including reverse. Listen out for unusual noises or rattles, and sniff; the smell of a smoker is difficult to get rid of. If the car is still OK, then you’re ready to seal the deal.

Step 4 – Official stuff

There are three main things you will have to deal with when buying a used car: MOT, V5 and insurance.

The legally compulsory MOT form proves that the car is roadworthy, and should have raised lettering where it has been stamped by the servicer. Check that the written total mileage tallies with that on the dashboard of the car, and that everything else looks in order. MOT’s last a year and cost quite a bit, so any extra MOT months on the car are a massive bonus.

The V5 form confirms ownership, and the details should be identical to those of the current owner’s and the car in question. Use their driving licence to check personal information, and check for matching chassis and engine number (ask the owner to show you where this is, it should be under the bonnet). If anything looks at all suspicious, walk away. If they don’t own the car, they can’t sell it to you. When you are satisfied, ownership can be officially transferred by filling out the relevant section of the form. The seller will have to post their part off to the DVLA, and within weeks you should receive your own V5 form confirming ownership.

Insurance is another headache, so research deals before you go to look at a car. Everyone will have different advice for this; Tesco is apparently very good, as is Direct Line. Quotes will vary depending on how long you have had your licence, no claims bonuses, and living area. Search engines like confused.com can also be useful. If you choose to buy the car, you will have to ring up there and then to arrange insurance, so its helpful to have a quote set up beforehand which you can then simply activate over the phone.

Finally the payment. Cash is usually preferred, but offers little insurance if something goes wrong. Cheques have to be backed up by a cheque guarantee card, and some sellers may be hestitant about accepting them. The best method is a mixture of cash and cheque. Whichever method you choose, take their address and contact details, and get them to sign a statement laying out the agreed sale price and car details. Try to negotiate the final price, and don’t feel scared to ask for some time to think about it rather than buying that day, although do be aware that good deals get snapped up very quickly.