Interesting Links for 07-06-2013

[andrewducker]

• What would Westminster look like under PR?
  (tags: politics uk )
• Letter to Times calls for an end to the war on drugs
  (tags: uk drugs )
• Why princesses need to understand maths
  (tags: princess funny maths )
• Glasgow University holds secret inquiry into sexist heckling, finds everyone innocent
  (tags: sexism glasgow debate )
• China is changing

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

The Glasgow University Union article made me really, really cross.

It feels like really close to home. Probably because it is really close to home. I nearly went to Glasgow Uni and I’m exactly the sort of person who would have been active in the debating scene.

Furious that I’m at risk of being associated with this sort of behaviour.

[a_pawson]

Me too. I was a member of the GUU for the 4 years I was at Glasgow, but had nothing to do with union politics or debating. I only really joined the GUU because it had a decent snooker hall. If those involved in the running of the union are anything like those depicted in the arcicle, I suspect I would have transferred my membership over to the QMU.

[philmophlegm]

The worst thing to me about that story was this:

In an unnecessarily sexist and clearly misogynistic atmosphere, it was left to women to complain. None of the men present stood up and called other men out for referring to a young lady as a "frigid bitch". That's unchivalrous and cowardly. It's the equivalent of weedy little boys backing up the school bully.

If that's what young Glaswegian men are like nowadays, it explains a lot about the decline of Scottish football, among other things.

[a_pawson]

Unless things have changed since I was at Glasgow (I graduated in 1996), I don't think it say much about your average Glaswegian man. The reputation of both the GUU board and the debating society was that they was very much the domain of public schoolboys.

[philmophlegm]

Ah. I'll revise my statement: If that's what young public schoolboys are like nowadays, it explains a lot about the decline of the ruling classes.

(Me, I went to a Welsh comprehensive.)

[skington]

As I recall from being friends of a bunch of people who were debators (although I never went myself), the debating society at the GUU had two stand-out features: (1) comedy/offensive nicknames for everyone as their "parliamentary constituency" (a ginger mate of mine was promptly dubbed the Honourable Member for Nae Pubes), and (2) a free bar.

Oh, and the Debating Society was untouchable.

That was in the mid-1990s, but the GUU always prided itself on not changing, so I doubt it's any different these days.

[skington]

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. The GUU was always the place people went if they were Tories, or closet Tories who claimed they were independents. The Rugby club hung out there as well, as did all the engineers. The QM was where the nice people went (and, to be fair, where you had a chance of being harangued by the Socialist Workers on the steps every lunchtime).