Here's another slide...

So R&R renewed today. That's Reporters and the Reported for those who don't know. And we were graced with Ian Hargreaves.

I'm afraid to say it was a fairly ominous start to the latest series of lectures. It basically consisted of: "Here is another slide showing information which is irrelevant, not left up long enough for you to read and impossible to decypher. And here is another one..." - This was made doubly painful by the fact that the first half consisted of findings from a survey in 2002...

It's nothing personal. It is clear from his C.V. that he is a 'proper' journalist; The FT, The Independant, The New Statesman. And he was a former member of staff here at our beloved JOMEC. But as a talk it was, frankly, boring.

If the only worthwhile tangent I can take from it was that young people are fairly uninterested in politics you can appreciate the struggle....

I suppose the only thing I thought was this - we are well aware of the disengagment of today's youths and politics. But if, say, 65% are uninterested, then 35% must be interested. Maybe we should find out why they are interested and work on that. People will only come to politics if they deem it be to 'cool'.

You can't make people realise something is 'cool' by saying: "Honestly kids! Politics is so hip! Don't be a square...VoTe!"[Sic.] They will just roll their eyes and flick over to MTV.