Just sayin'

I suppose this is technically my first blog post as an elected official. I got elected to Union Parliament which is obviously marvellous but I did find out today the turnout was just under 1200 from a student body of around 20,000 and I managed to get elected with only 24 first choice votes! That's made it clear the increasing awareness of the parliament's activities and encouraging more general student involvement are things I absolutely have to do. The chair of the uni's Labour Society got elected too but the two mates who were running with us didn't, hopefully we can get them in through the re-open nominations next week. I have the training session tomorrow afternoon so hopefully it's not as dull as it sounds though I fear it may be lol.

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The reason I'm writing this post now and not last night is that after Russian my housemates and I decided we wanted to go watch The Lion King 3D at the cinema. Somehow I'd managed to convince myself that watching the film as an adult and knowing the traumas that were about to come would mean I wouldn't cry at them, this was an utter falsehood! I didn't cry quite as much as some I could mention but there were definitely tears in my eyes! For some reason we decided to walk home in the minus twenty weather but we had a laugh by getting tangled up - quite literally - in the rock climbing society's social which seems to involve groups of ten people tied together, wandering drunkenly round town and trying to avoid getting tied around lamp-posts.

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I wrote all that ^ over an hour ago but then got distracted by Question Time. It's not bad this week, I've seen better but it's not a passionate as usual, I've only shouted madly at the TV twice which for an hour long political programme is unusual.

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Having seen tomorrows front pages for The Sun and the Daily Mail I am disgusted. I was always disgusted by those two particular newspapers anyway given their tendencies towards homophobia, bigotry, racism, sexism and so on but the way they have glorified Col. Gaddafi's death is horrendous. No man, no matter what war crimes he may have committed, deserves to die. He should have been put on trial by the International Criminal Court and sentenced for what he could be held accountable for not killed. A trial would have allowed Libyans to put the past behind them whilst showing the world that they were prepared to embrace the norms of modern liberal democracies and yet all they have done is reinforced my belief that Western governments will live to regret the recognition of the NTC.

I would walk 500 miles...

Okay so maybe not 500 miles but it does seem like I've done a lot of walking in the last 24 hours. After protesting all day that I didn't want to go to a house party I eventually gave in (damn persistent housemates) and so we walked the 25 minutes to their house. I had realised even before the end of my street that sandals were not the best option but it was that or heels so I went with what I perceived to be the better option. 4 hours of drinking later someone decided we should walk to ASDA; a good half hour (uphill) walk seems a lot less after a bottle of peach schnapps :/ Then we had to walk the hour back to our house by which time the housemate and I collapsed in a pile and didn't consider moving for a good while.

The same housemate and I thought it would be a good idea to trek into town (uphill) this afternoon in jumpers because although we may be heading for one of the warmest Octobers on record we were a bit hung over and therefore weren't thinking properly. So we walked another hour+ round trip, this time in the boiling sun, to get a parcel from the Post Office depot and set up our TV/Internet/phone with Virgin.

I feel like we deserve some kind of alcohol for our walking efforts, unfortunately we drank it all last night :|

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One housemate has to be designated the main tenant for the property we're living in, unfortunately the one who volunteered is an utter failure when it comes to organisation of any kind. She is incapable of being firm with a landlady and given that we've lived here one month and we've only had a dozen hot showers between us because we only had hot water for a 6 day period it is fundamentally necessary to be firm with her! The landlady insists on getting people she knows to come fix things so so far two plumber mates have come to look at the boiler only to tell us we need a gas-electrician and they aren't qualified to do anything. Her excuse is that we didn't tell her these things (even though we have) and I'm getting very close to the point where I just start shouting at people. We're written an official letter to her and given a copy to the lettings agency so they can keep one but if it doesn't get sorted soon I may well just move into a hotel. Luckily I got a job this summer so I can afford to do that even if I'd rather not, this is unlike the lead tenant who pisses money she doesn't have up the wall like it's going out of fashion and who had to extend her overdraft and borrow from her parents to pay the rent and then went out and spend half the weeks rent on a build-a-bear and a jumper.

So if you hear of a student going on an angry rampage in Leicester from a lack of hot water and unpaid bills that's probably me...