Last Friday, April 30th, The Linc interviewed Gillian Merron, the Labour candidate (and incumbent MP) for Lincoln. One of the questions asked was about Merron’s support for the Iraq war. Her response displayed such ignorance, such naivety, and such disregard for human life and the consequences of her actions that I was compelled to transcribe that section of the interview. Here’s a link to the original interview video, and you can see Merron talk about Iraq between 22.35 and 27.15.
Our broken electoral system
For obvious reasons, I’ve been thinking about the General Election quite a bit over the last couple of days. For a while I’ve been saying that I won’t vote, but I just had a look what the options are in my constituency: Harborough.
As always it’s a two-horse race between the Conservatives, who hold the seat, and the Liberal Democrats, who have been the main challengers for at least the past decade.
Why the Students’ Union?
Too often when The Linc covers the University of Lincoln Students’ Union they get wrapped up into the whole charade. I know; having just officially stepped down as news editor, I was there for pretty much all the SU coverage for the past year.
There are too few occasions where journalists stop and ask themselves why. Not just “why” as one of the five “w”s, but more broadly.
Why am I writing this story? Why is it important? Why is this whole area important? Why are things as they are?
I’m guilty of not asking “why” enough. Most journalists are, too.
It’s time to ask myself: “Why the Students’ Union?”
Why is it important? Why does it exist? Why do the people involve get so worked up, one way or the other?
Justified apathy in student politics
A couple of weeks ago Josh Halliday linked to a piece from The Linc, entitled “The Students’ Union — who needs it“, commenting: “One of best student-run mags in UK and still apathy reigns”.
And my reply on Twitter:
Appreciate the compliment. We’re pretty dedicated to pointing out that they can’t change things — I’m writing it up in detail.
I’m still writing up my explanation of the position that I and The Linc have taken towards the University of Lincoln Students’ Union, which will go into some depth. (I’ve actually taken a break from writing it in order to get this out of the way.)
But I want to deal with Josh’s reference to apathy here (which is also something I’ll explore in my post on the SU).
Why I cancelled my Economist subscription
(Aside from not getting the time to read it.)
Every Thursday night The Economist sends out email summaries of articles in the print issue, political news, and business news. Even though I cancelled my subscription some time ago, I still get the emails.
I noticed that in this week’s they referred to the ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, as a “leftist”. Which he wasn’t, really. (He’d introduced some very mild worker-friendly measures, along with resisting the privatisation of the country’s telecommunications.)
You’d expect that an organisation as “serious” as The Economist would have done enough research to realise this. This made me wonder about the quality of their reporting on Honduras more widely.
Let’s take a quick look at “Honduras’s new president: Lobo alone“, where they mention the November elections:
It’s quite clear that was not the case. (Definitely. Not. The. Case. At all.)
It’s a poor showing, to say the least. But then again, when the following introduces the editor’s highlights email newsletter, can anyone be surprised?