Sortroom.net

NUS Conference Speeches

Patrick — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:34:29 +0000

A certain popular road-warrior, Wes Streeting, on the way to being elected NUS National President. I wish I’d had a chance to meet him. Perhaps in the future. This speech doesn’t seem as impressive as it was at the time. In the hall as he was speaking there was a buzz of energy and of possibility. It’s very easy to sound angry on the podium, but to be angry with a passion and with direction is what’s powerful. Wes, for one, certainly has that power. I couldn’t be more pleased that he was elected.

Absolute comedy pisstake joy at the NUS conference. Ross Stanley is someone to watch out for, he made a number of coherent contributions during the course of the three days and came across well in all of them. Then he came out with this at the end of day two, showing one CAN do politics with a sense of humour.

NUS LGBT Conference Manifesto

Patrick — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:34:25 +0000

I am a fourth year Politics student, and I’ve just returned from the NUS Annual Conference. I’ve been involved behind the scenes in LUU LGBT events since my first year, helping plan events and considering strategy. This past term I ran for election to the Union Exec because I want to promote OUR issues and highlight that we are still not truly liberated.

We have too many friends who are silent about the discrimination we face daily, and we have too many friends for whom ‘gay’ is a term for ‘weird’. We must campaign for our rights and ensure that our visibility on campuses across the country is a force for improvement. We must continually compel Student Union Officers to represent STUDENT ISSUES BEFORE ALL ELSE, not political concerns thousands of miles away.

It is easy to be distracted by irrelevant agendas. We weaken our cause by directionless rants about issues not within our mandate. The NUS system takes some work to understand but can be made to work in our favour. I will aid our delegates in casting INFORMED votes and help them understand how to make the system support our positions.

* I strongly oppose and am continually offended by the ban on gay male blood donors.
* I prefer ‘marriage’ to ‘civil partnership’. How can it be acceptable that LGBT citizens are denied the same institutional unions as everybody else?
* FIGHT to encourage the acknowledgement of LGBT issues by the student body. We can and must be more ambitious than we are. When LGBT allies and non-activist friends show their support we CAN BE A FORCE OF STRENGTH AND PROGRESS.

VOTE Patrick for LGBT Conference!

Margaret Cho on Logo

Patrick — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:51:49 +0000

I think Margaret Cho’s piece during her hosting of Outfest (a show) on Wisecrack (a standup comedy series) on LOGO (a tv network) was hilarious. She manages to describe and define the issues about which she’s joking in a way that no other contemporary comedians around seem capable. The video is definitely worth watching, unless you are a huge fan of the Pope’s dresses. In that case you might find this a little bit on the offensive side. I don’t think Cho’s a huge fan of the Pope’s input on social matters. In case you’re in that offended camp, you may want some boules Quiès.

Margaret Cho on LOGO

Getting there early to be on time: Meeting insurance

Patrick — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:30:31 +0000

One of the things I notice working to find out the views of others, working to publicise their work, is that you end up hanging around a lot.

This is even more prevalent when those I’m trying to interview are not quite keen on being the subject, on having a microphone under their nose, on me recording their words. There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs when you’re talking to someone in a journalistic capacity which I see this all the time; you’re having a marvelous and stimulating conversation with a subject, getting lots of really useful information from them. Normally this takes place in the couple of minutes before you decide to start recording. It’s part of the warm-up process so that you can build a form of rapport with the interviewee. They say something very concisely or something a bit unexpected and you say to them ‘Hey, that was really interesting, can I just get you to say that again on tape?’ I ask them the question once more, we kind of run through our conversation again, but the second time it’s boring. People HATE being interviewed and I think often just the concept of having a mic in their face is incredibly off-putting.

I often try and really go past that level of discomfort with subjects and put the microphone so close in that they can’t really get away from it. If it’s too close to really be able to perceive it properly, as in if it’s so close to them that it’s out of their line of sight, people relax a little bit. It’s like a journalist’s blind spot. People end up not noticing the mic, or at least they end up feeling less uncomfortable with it.

But that doesn’t change anything for the subjects who rearrange, who move the location around, or who suddenly discover they’re pulled away. It wastes my time so much. That said, it’s often worth waiting around because those people who squirm are those who give depth of sound. They often have the most raw and real contributions. Waiting around gets good results. When people approach you, I’ve always found, the results are often near useless. Someone spotting you on the street asking about topic X, realises they have something to say about it too, often has a whole lot of five minutes to tell you nothing you want to use.

Rearranged appointments is never ideal, not only because you’ve spent that time to get ready and prepped for the initial occasion but because it no doubt screws up the rest of your timetable. Bang goes your study hour. On the other hand, the one way I’ve found to almost guarantee that your interview won’t be delayed or postponed is to turn up long before the arranged time. If you’re there before they even go into their preceding meeting there is little chance they’ll forget: you’re already waiting in the foyer. So when I have a 09:00 appointment, getting there at 08:30 might sounds like being desperately keen but, bring a book, and you have a much higher chance of keeping the date. On the plus side, planning arriving early allows you to sort out problems like the interview subject being at a different location, forgetting the date or such like. Those minutes are your insurance that you’ll keep to your plans, and it works.

Miss Teen Pregnancy USA

Patrick — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:37:24 +0000

Right now the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed nation. Although this teen pregnancy rate has decreased dramatically since the 1970s, recent years have seen that rate become stagnant.

Indeed, as of 2004, 13 states experienced either an increase in teen birth rates or stagnant teen birth rates, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data also showed that one in seven girls who are 14 and younger will experience an unintended pregnancy, and one in three women will have an unintended pregnancy by age 20.

Dr Laura Berman in the Chicago Sun-Times.

HRC Poll shows gays/lesbians don’t think lack of trans protection should halt ENDA support.

Patrick — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:43:13 +0000

Of those surveyed, 67.7% agreed with the statement about the recent Employment Non-Discrimination Act:

National gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organizations should support this proposal because it helps gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers and is a step toward transgender employment rights.

(as opposed to, for example, opposing it because it doesn’t specifically protect transgender rights.)

On Towleroad these results produced much debate because the issue of trans rights is often, by some, viewed in partnership with that of gay rights. I say gay rights because I think gay rights should be and can be used as an umbrella term for gay male, lesbian and bisexuals. It’s a term for ‘alternative’ sexual orientations. Trans is an issue that is similar, but not the same:

I support individual freedoms short of cause pain, suffering, and damage to others. I support whole heartedly bisexuals and transgendered people - but I’m sick and tired of gay and lesbian issues being diluted, blurred, and marginalized because they’re intertwined with issues of gender identity and… whatever.

Not only is this song killer, but the dancing is amazing. You can just make out the roots of Dee-Lite’s classic ’Groove is in The Heart’ underneath the new melody they’ve got going on here. It’s a perfect post-summer, winter warmer type of song that you need when you get to a club and want something to come on that isn’t a Britney Spears remix or some hard-house vibe that actually rumbles your whole body. It’s also not trying to be some sort of Eric Prydz rip-off with lots of girls in short bikinis wearing skirts, but truely has an interesting range of characters doing some great moves. Plus, fantastic video editing. Inexpensively, but well done.

From the Get Weird Turn Pro blog:

This track by Hamburg’s Se:Sa (aka Skye ’n’ Sugastarr), in collaboration with Mousse T, is going to be huge and features an excellent vocal contribution from Sharon Phillips, who you might have last heard on the Trentemoller track ‘Want 2 Need 2′.

Youth Obsessed?

Patrick — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:41:29 +0000

It’s funny how you read, so often, about the gay culture of youth. We’re, apparently, consumed with the concept of staying young forever with cremes and pills and gyms and every single type of tonic you could ever hope for. The image, I presume, comes from all those pumped up bodies you see in gay magazines. I bought one today, they’re there. There is a culture of youth. Some people clearly believe it. But it’s ironic for me to point to that link because it’s a gay guy saying how gays are youth obsessed.

I come to this topic through a rather roundabout route. Gayclic, a wonderful french gay-themed ‘news’ video blog linked to GLAAD’s media campaign titled ‘Be an Ally & a Friend‘. It was promoting the idea of being an ally to people coming out on National Coming Out Day (October 11th). Be supportive by being respectful. That’s all. On their website there are a couple other video links which I decided to check out, one of which led to David Mixner, an LGBT activist, speaking at the Empire State Pride Agenda 2007 annual dinner. It’s a New York gay-rights charity.

He recounts, tragically, how as a result of the AIDS epidemic sweeping through his community, killing all his friends, he gave 90 eulogies

“We thought that freedom was very close at hand… and then came AIDS… But you gotta remember what it was like. I lost 296 friends. I gave 90 eulogies in two years. And I lost the man that I loved most in my life, for 12 years. We were not treated by dentists, nurses wouldn’t touch us, homecare workers wouldn’t come to our homes, doctors wouldn’t treat us, insurance companies told us we had brought this upon ourselves.”

It makes me stop and think. Perhaps, yes, gay culture is youth-obsessed. But perhaps that’s really only because almost all of the older generation were killed off by AIDS. Those who are still alive, those who lived through 1982 and onwards as out gay men and women are the lucky ones. The fact that they survived is enormously lucky, and in the same breath perhaps terrifying in how many of their nearest friends and loved ones died around them. So we are like a culture culled of all its patrimoine. How can you ever have an awareness of heritage without any elders. What other society has ever so publicly lost so much of a generation? Wars kill men but often leave their wives and lovers back home. This destruction, the destruction of an gay AIDS pandemic took homes and ruined neighbourhoods just like a war. It’s a certain way to create a ghost town, to tell people that by behaving as they had been behaving will lead to almost certain death. Nobody’s going to go to that bar. It takes homes because, as David Mixner says, sufferers had to sell them for their health care treatments, because it was fundamentally their own fault. But then also, there are no lovers or wives left behind because those lovers were the victims buried in the last funeral you attended or the last hospital visit you went on.

But today, this is interesting because Mixner spoke at a dinner that made me think that perhaps as a culture we’re not so gratuitous in our obsession with youth. We know nothing better. It’s those in their early 40s now who might be the first not to know the AIDS epidemic. They are the bearer of a culture’s heritage because there is nobody else to do it.

Part one of his speech is above. Youtube has the rest.

Anita Roddick Passes Away

Patrick — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:59:11 +0000

I’ve been reading quite a few pieces and obituaries about Anita Roddick, the maverick founder of retail chain The Body Shop. She died this week aged 64 of a brain haemorrhage. It seems to me that many people were surprised by her death. I’ve been struck by, and deeply moved by the outpourings of admiration from some of the most impressive people one could hope to know, all of whom are writing of their profound respect for a woman who, at the most basic level, sold soaps, moisturisers and shampoos. She hadn’t been in the news quite as much of late as she once was, but her presence in the UK and world retail conscience was undiminished because the activities of The Body Shop continued to push the ideals that she had always espoused. She was a colourful figure through her determination that one doesn’t have to sacrifice moral standpoints to be a successful businessperson. Her campaigning and her use of The Body Shop as a campaign tool has meant we as a society have recognised and adopted causes never before addressed.

When she began her store the western world was largely indifferent to or unaware of the causes of rainforest destruction, cosmetics animal testing, third-world exploitation, fairtrade and the homeless. Besides making money, her business served as one of the greatest political billboards the world has ever known, broadcasting its views based on our collective moral responsibility. Who, at the time, would have thought that a shop window could be so much more effective and persuasive than the pulpit or the stage? What religious leaders and green-politicians have been so long been trying to emphasize, The Body Shop’s marketing gurus were able to push home through the small-print of millions upon millions of product labels. The value of her campaigning, and the degree to which the Body Shop ethos has been adopted by popular culture is shown by the chain’s 2006 sale to L’Oreal. Being an ethical consumer is now equated with being a good consumer and citizen rather than being equated with being a radical lefty. Now, everyone understands the necessity of fair trade and care for the environment. As Alice Miles put it in The Times yesterday, ‘She was using moisturiser to talk about human rights, and animal testing, and the environment. Moisturiser wasn’t just a cream, it was politics… and it was big business.’.

May we only hope we can live up to her achievements and, in our lifetimes, work for similarly virtuous goals.

Dame Anita Roddick, entrepreneur and activist, born October 23 1942; died September 10 2007. RIP

Independent: Obituary: Dame Anita Roddick
Independent: Anita Roddick, capitalist with a conscience, dies at 64
NYT: Anita Roddick, Body Shop Founder, Dies at 64
GU: Roddick’s legacy: idealism and the smell of dewberries
GU: Anita Roddick, pioneer whose dreams turned the high street green, dies at 64
GU: Obituary: Dame Anita Roddick
GU Comment is Free: Adieu, Dame Anita
GU Comment is Free: One of Anita Roddick’s greatest achievements was recognising that beauty is an ugly business
Times Online: Anita Roddick’s ruse: it wasn’t the moisturiser after all

Unexpected Acts Of Kindness

Patrick — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:15:19 +0000

I’ve been working for a great little Architecture firm in Birmingham called Turner Woolford Sharp Architects and have really enjoyed my time working for them. They’re a relatively small practice but highly creative and the collective office temperament is one of teamwork and quality work. They specialize in restoration or conversion projects, so we have many buildings being worked on that were formerly, for example, a council building or industrial mill and are being reported to apartments or such like.
My role for them is small; while their practice secretary is on leave I run the office. It’s not a flashy job but I feel it’s important and if done well can make everything the practice does run more effectively.

My unexpected act of kindness came yesterday when I talked to my agency, informing them of my returning to University for the year. On my starting with the company in the middle of the summer I’d been informed several times of how they weren’t looking to take on students. I had been bracing myself for an angry discussion with the representative I work with. I’d missed her on numerous calls to their office and therefore emailed with my update, wanting to get her the information as early as possible. I didn’t want her to set up more interviews that I wouldn’t be able to attend. Two days later I finally got through and, to my great surprise, she was as kind and complimentary as could be. It made me think of how effective she was as an employee for the firm for, had she been disappointed and factious I would likely have not returned to them. However, with such an irenic and conciliatory response, I’m happy to return to them when I’m next free. Plus, her compliments really made my day.