Thursday 22 November 2012

Even the BNP have learned to be classier than this

Sometimes it's hard not to look at the national student movement and despair.


The National Union of Students' vice president has called for Conservatives and Lib Dems to be burnt to death. That would of course include thousands and thousands - at least - of her own union's members.

In an email Vicki Baars encouraged students to shout "Build a bonfire, put the Tories on the top, put the Lib Dems in the middle and burn the f***ng lot!", at a nationally-organised day of protest against the new student finance settlements - which have improved the financial support for mature students and charge poor students less and wealthy students more.


While she has been pressed to issue a public apology, the neo-fascist ideological values of the clique at the top of NUS means that calling for the killing of thousands of its members will probably not lead to anything as dramatic as being expected to no longer be national vice president. A quick "sorry for mentioning that I wish thousands of my members would die in a terrifying and brutal fashion" tweet will probably be deemed enough.

To put it as mildly and calmly as I can: what an embarassment.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Brighton's Bi Celebrations on film

Back in September I was along (and a fleetingly brief speaker) at Brighton Bothways' event to mark Bi Visibility Day. This was a lavish affair at the city's main library, with lots of food and speakers.

They also showed a fistful of short films from YouTube about bisexuality, which were (I think) all from the USA due to the lack of good bi short films from the UK suitable for such an event. Partly to help start changing that, and partly to document the Brighton event itself, I filmed several of the speakers on the night and have since had to learn a few tricks to get the best out of the footage.

Four of those people have now given their permission for us to use the videos I made so here are four short clips of people talking about being bi in Brighton and the UK. I do hope you enjoy them.

Klara talks about growing up bisexual:


Arwen reads a poem she wrote about being bi:


Andi from the local council's LGBT workers forum:


Jak talks about growing up bi: