The Union diaries

As yet another set of front bench and 'brand named' MP's are forced to quit or fight for their jobs we all grow tired of hearing who bought what at how much. The question is no longer why are they spending taxpayers money on porn or ducks. The question now being raised is over the role of our democratically elected representatives.
These representatives are elected to power by us and paid for by us, they are in essence servants of the people, too often the arrogant see themselves as being the people and being allowed to make decisions without even a nod of public consultation.

This again isn't the main cause of damage to a strong institution, the damage comes from the perception of cover up, the belief that something untoward is going on.
The simple prevention to the current outcry is Transparency! Rather than allowing such a build up of information and then failing to discuss the issue upon it's release has caused the damage.
Slow release first removes the anger at perceived cover up, secondly it allows a period of ongoing consultation that allows those in power to see how close or far from public opinion their decisions are.
The response to this is simple, information should never, in a democratic organization be allowed to reach such a locked down state.
The fault does not lie with the current media and communications types, it instead lies with those above who decide the amount to be released, communications seem to be constantly fighting the status quo of their institution who are obsessed with keeping things quiet.

Representation requires some form of constant openness alongside interaction otherwise an elected dictatorship develops.

Many have criticized The Telegraph and others seen to guide or offer advice to the public. The paper and it's editor has guided the public to understand a complex political system and attempted to give the public the option to vent their disapproval, this needs to be seen as an act that would have had to have seen personal relationships take a second seat to a feeling of moral obligation. The action that was taken has interested more people in politics than any marketing however well orchestrated. It is now the duty of those in power, to keep those interested.

No more deals or agreements can be made behind closed doors. The public needs to allow, and MP’s need to publicly and honestly apologize for a misjudgment of public opinion and declare openly all the agreements made to date and allow the public to be consulted as much as possible so in moving forward there is a greater understanding and the relationships are rebuilt

It's not often that I feel 'compelled' to blog, yet alone blog on here! However about 1 minute ago I saw something that I just had to share. 

Have you seen the new BBC Music pages? http://www.bbc.co.uk/music

Is yet another new beta release all part of BBC's Web 2.0 Development.

Each artist that gets played has an artist profile, and the program can also tell who which DJs play this artist most often, and even which BBC Radio Station (the national ones), play it the most!

Make sure you go check it out... http://www.bbc.co.uk/music

Here is the artist page for a particular favourite band of mine http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/c50001aa-4bf2-45f5-bef5-47d064dfed7c

And I did just think that it would be nice if they had SEF pages... so I tried it and they do... :D 

Go check our your favourite artist http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/<artistname>

Let me know how you get on!

I recently made a little video.

I am constantly impressed by the wide variety of activities the Union are involved in and was rummaging through my hard drive and looking at footage I've filmed or been sent this year so decided to condense it all down into 1 minute 40 seconds, I know this only shows a wee bit of what the Union does but I hope it brings back some fond memories.

If you want to have a look go to crackers4comms.com and let me know what you think.

J 

Last night was the Q&A session for VP Comms and VP Societies, I think the event went really well.

My campaign team turned up on mass and there presence was incredible, a huge amount of the audience were there in the Orange of Crackers. In fact there was more orange in that lecture theatre than any other colour. It was beautiful sight to see.

The debate stepped up a gear from the previous ones and there was some  moments where I really had to stop and think about the questions being asked. There were some really interesting questions which proved the knowledge and experience the candidates had, and it proves to me that the time I put into doing research was well worth it. It was obvious from the answers given by the other candidates that the depth of knowledge and facts to support their manifesto promises is fundamentally flawed. Looking at the comments on other candidates websites and blogs it is obvious that I am not the only person concerned with the single media platform approach and the complete lack of financial understanding offered by the other candidates.

It is worrying to think that either these candidates are that naive they feel they are able to keep to their promises or are they simply losing their head under the pressure of close scrutiny.

The hours following the hustings I was really impressed with the number of people that congratulated me on my performance and the number of people that I have never spoken to who were interested in what I had had to say and wanted to hear more. I was really glad that people were actively trying to find out how as their VP Comms I was going to help them.

For those that want to ask me more questions I will be at the Hustings for President as well as VP for Welfare and Volunteering from 6-8 and will be around afterwards if you have any questions you would like to ask.

If you can’t make that email me at jacob@crackers4comms.comm and I will answer any of your questions that you have for me.

I was intending on writing about radio some while back, but as usual, I got distracted!

What we can we do to make radio, and in particular student radio, appeal to the masses? Most radio enthusiasts have a particular favourite radio station that they always tune into, or a select few, but WHAT is it that makes these stations appear to be good?

In no particular order, I enjoy listening to: 

• Pure FM
• BBC Radio 1
• BBC Radio 5Live/Sports Xtra
• Highveld Stereo (South Africa)
  
• Radio 2000 (South Africa)
• Radio Sport NZ

You'll notice that the last three stations in the list are foreign radio, and two of them are based in South Africa. I came across these 3 stations last summer when I was following the cricket between England, New Zealand and South Africa, and there were various representatives of the Black Caps and Proteas cricketers on the BBC's Test Match Special. 

 So yeah-back to the point of this post-what do we need to do make our radio station (Pure FM) appeal to the student masses and possibly the world? The fact that we are an online outfit means that in theory, we could be heard from anywhere in the world (via internet of course)-so what do we do?

Answers on the back of a postcard...or even as a comment on this blog post?