The good, the bad, and the shitty slogan

Catchy, witty slogans have always been an apparently crucial part of any budding sabbatical officer’s election campaign. However, concerted efforts to scale new heights of wit from some of Exeter’s finest would-be politicos have often fallen disastrously short. In the name of rigorous investigative journalism, I trawled the archives for the most misplaced slogans in recent years, in an attempt to provide this year’s candidates with some entirely serious advice about how not to make me cringe.

As they near the end of their terms in office, last year’s Sabbs can rest easy in the knowledge that, on the whole, the slogans they thrust upon an unwitting student population were not that bad. VP Participation and Campuses Jak Curtis-Rendall kept things simple, urging students to vote “Jak 4 Pac”, while Chris Rootkin implored us all to “Root for Rootkin”, while dressed up as a potato, a foodstuff infamous for not actually being a root vegetable.

Despite these minor potato-based inaccuracies, 2013’s cohort faded in comparison to the montage-worthy brilliance of the cringeworthiness offered by the election hopefuls from the 2012/13 academic year. Ben Jones, who eventually lost the Guild President race to Nicholas ‘Welshy’ Davies (who dressed as a sheep all week to win, obvs), harrowingly implored voters to “Give the Guild a BJ”. Quite how this slogan would have played out during the post-SSB fallout remains thankfully unknown. Meanwhile, Jenny Mayhew invoked the might of the “J Team” in her election campaign, with the less said about this method of campaigning the better.

However, the best (and by best I obviously mean worst) of that year’s horrible, horrible slogans came in the race for VP Welfare. Ian “Flash” Gordon enticed voters with “Fancy a flash?”, but voting statistics from that year indicate that while many voters were irrevocably scarred by Ian’s insinuation, few actually listed him as their preferred candidate.

While the flaws in Gordon’s mildly unsettling strategy were laid bare (sorry) for all to see, the other Welfare candidates were obviously unwilling to give creepy Ian centre stage in the inevitable denouement of this paragraph. Sam Hollis-Pack ran with HP Sauce, evoking the well-known Welfare device of brown savoury syrup, while Samuel Longden went all Michael Bay montage scene with “Together we can, we will”. Unfortunately for Samuel, we couldn’t, and we didn’t.

Eventual election winner Imogen Sanders won with “Imagine Imogen”, as well as, one would imagine, some insightful and intelligent policies. Not that your policies would matter when you’re running against a flasher, a sauce obsessive, and a wannabe Jed Bartlet tragically mired in the backwaters of the West Country.

These diabolical attempts were topped only by Josh Cleall, who contrived to not become 2012 Guild President with the slogan “Cleall or No Cleall”. Despite invoking the laboured stereotype that students just watch daytime TV, as well as unnecessarily reminding everyone of Noel Edmonds (who has always personally made me think of a really sad lion), Cleall was unable to open the red box marked “President”. Devastation.

Good slogans are simple, right?

Another personal favourite came in the 2011 race for Guild President, where seemingly atemporal leaflet-freak Damien Jeffries (he also ran in 2012) ran on a policy of “Compensation, Crackdown, and No Nonsense”. To contextualise this, Jeffries’ manifesto included a ban on suggesting that he looked like England footballer James Milner, and plans for a ski-lift up Stocker Road. Weird.

To end this article on the bleak note it’s all been building to, I’d like to quote the manifesto of Giovanni Sforza, an unsuccessful candidate for VP Participation and Campuses in 2011. Sforza told students to “make the best of it”, and this, readers, is my advice to you, too. If you’re running, then please, please, PLEASE think about how cynical, jaded, and potentially hungover students like me are going to receive your slogan. If you’re not running, then move beyond this article’s questionable sass (after sharing it with all your friends, obviously), and engage with the manifestos offered by your candidates. They will shape your university experience in any number of ways, and they deserve your attention, despite the terrible slogans. Make the best of a chaotic week, and make your mark on student democracy.

Owen Keating, News Editor

Do you have a favourite so-bad-it’s-good election slogan? Do the awful puns actually brighten your day? Or are they just a nuisance and a distraction from the real issues at stake? Leave a comment below or write to the Comment team at the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group or on Twitter @CommentExepose.

Do policies actually matter more than personalities in student elections?

Liam Trim, Online Editor, urges you to consider the importance of manifestos before voting in the upcoming Sabb Elections…

Image Credit: BloomingBath.com

Us students are an educated bunch, that’s why we’re here at the University of Exeter. When we graduate we get to wear the badge of education proudly for the rest of our lives, regardless of whether or not we actually spent more time memorising the exact taste and texture of curly fries than reading, or writing essays.

When elections dominate the news educated people (that’s us remember) often like to make a fuss about voting for a party and the policies that party is advocating, rather than voting for a person  because their smile seems genuine.

We, the educated, make a number of convincing arguments. Firstly, many people don’t understand the system. They think the wannabe Prime Ministers are like X-Factor contestants. They forget about the parties and the MPs and the complications.

Crucially, they forget about the policies, the promises and ideas that actually matter. Shame on the voters who ignore a candidate because he or she was a bit too shy. They may have had the ideas to make our lives better, in a significant and tangible way.

We know better, don’t we, us educated people?

I’ve certainly found the tendency of my parents to vote for the party that their parents voted for depressing. Surely they should think for themselves? Perhaps we’re too young, optimistic and snobby due to our wonderful education, though. Maybe they think we’re naive for casting our votes based on false promises in a manifesto.

The candidates in the imminent Sabb Elections will have manifestos. But, as a final year student, I’ve already been through two student elections and I’ve learnt that it’s hard to find the time to read them all. It’s hard to escape the everyday concerns of your own life, for something that doesn’t seem that important, pressing or relevant. We forget our principles about educated people taking the time to vote for policies, not personalities. In fact, us students are social beings as well as educated ones, so we’re likely to vote for our friends or acquaintances.

So maybe we really are too quick to judge our parents and those disillusioned with voting throughout society, or even those who do so in a hurry or out of habit. And maybe we’re wrong to place such an importance on policy in student elections anyway.

Devonshire House, home of the Guild and its Sabbatical Officers, is not the Houses of Parliament. The policies are not important on a national scale. Many ideas in the manifestos of candidates will be based on genuine student concerns, but others will be crowd-pleasers. Not all of the policies will be feasible, even if they mean well, and we can’t blame candidates entirely for that. They do not have the resources of political parties to check facts and gauge opinion.

But 2014’s new Sabbs will be in a position to make a difference. Devonshire House isn’t Parliament, but it does provide an outlet for democracy and student opinion. Sometimes the views of students will bring about genuine change. This year’s Sabbs have increased society funding, helped keep street lights on and assisted students with their search for accommodation. If they do their job correctly they will pass on the concerns of students to the Guild, and make sure the Guild act on those concerns.

So how do we choose between the candidates in February? Is a trustworthy, approachable personality more important than a manifesto? If the Sabbs are just our representatives to the Guild, shouldn’t the student body be choosing the policies, and our Sabbs simply passing them on?

Well, yes. And this is why the manifestos and policies do matter. It needs to be more than a handful of random ideas, discussed with a couple of mates. If a candidate is going to be a good Sabb, they need to be able to be able to find out what students want, need and can achieve. If they cannot find out those things now, and put them in their manifesto, then they’re unlikely to be much better at representing us after they’ve been elected.

Liam Trim, Online Editor

Will you be voting in the Sabb Elections? Will you read the manifestos, or just vote for someone you know and trust? Leave a comment below or write to the Comment team at the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group or on Twitter @CommentExepose.

5 Policies To Ensure You Become Guild President

Online Comment Editors James Bennett and Dave Reynolds provide five policy proposals to guarantee your success in the upcoming Guild elections.

The position of Guild President is always hotly contested at our university. Forget about promising a cash machine in the Lemmy and abolishing library fines, your manifesto is going to need to stand out from the crowd. As any Tottenham Hotspur fan will tell you,  “To dare is to do”. (“Audere est Facere” for the Latin fanatics.) Here are our five suggestions for policies to ensure that you win the Guild presidency.

1) A waterslide from the top of Amory

Inspired by the Barclaycard advert from 2008, we believe that a waterslide from the top of Amory is sure to be a vote winner. Admittedly there are some initial start-up costs, but once it’s built, students will be able to spend a larger amount of their time studying rather than risking injury and getting lost walking back down the stairs.

2) Guaranteed Firsts

For too long, students have had to put in far too much work for their degrees. With copious amounts of reading, essay writing and revising, we need more acknowledgement for our efforts.

Photo Credit: LSBF Photos via Compfight cc

Guaranteed first class degrees will take the pressure off students while their studying. Another positive is that Exeter students will be much better placed when it comes to applying for graduate schemes. With their top notch degrees in the bag, Exeter students will reign supreme over those foolish people who worked hard for their 2.1 at Durham or Bristol.

3) Free Tuition

This one’s deadly serious. It got the Liberal Democrats into a coalition! Just make sure not to have a photo taken of you signing a pledge to carry it out when elected…and definitely don’t agree to treble them!

Photo Credit: Antony Bennison via Compfight cc

4) Abolish 9am lectures

If this doesn’t get you elected then you have to start looking at yourself. There is even research to back up this proposal. Students work a lot better in the afternoon. This makes 9 am lectures utterly pointless. You wouldn’t have to worry about waking up in the morning after a heavy night out at Cheesy Tuesdays. Time could be spent doing what all students do best…sleeping!

Photo Credit: techne via Compfight cc

5) Free Printing

Often promised yet never successfully implemented, free printing costs would solve a lot of student problems. Given the extortionate amount that we are paying to study here and the muli-million pound investments made on campus in recent years there really is no excuse as to why we are paying to print out our essays. The Guild President that is first to successfully implement this policy will go down in Exeter history.

Photo Credit: Aaron Landry via Compfight cc

Dave Reynolds and James Bennett

What policy would guarantee your vote for this year’s Guild president? Leave a comment below or write to the Comment team at the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group or on Twitter @CommentExepose.

Where next for British politics?

Image credits: tolomea

Head, as ever, up in the political clouds, Online Features Editor Imogen Watson anticipates the General Election 2015.

It has been a funny old these last three-and-a-bit years since the current coalition government was elected to power back in May 2010.

We have seen the rapid decrease in the Liberal Democrats already-muted popularity, a sad surge in support for the United Kingdom Independence Party, ministers hurried in to and shepherded out from the Cabinet and more politicians making stupid comments, and some of them intentionally. Sadly the latter is not something that can only be attributed to Britain, but neither are our elected representatives succeeding in blazoning a path towards common sense.

The Conservative-led government has become quite the talented driver, performing incredible numbers of U-turns at rapid speeds. It has become quite the disappointment, too, that is if anyone was expecting anything impressive from them by now.

Granted, regardless of political affiliation, the situation
the government inherited was not far short of terrible; economies beginning to collapse worldwide and ordinary people worrying about what future was to come, at a loss to explain quite how this had happened. Since hitting recession under the last Labour government in 2008, only a few will have been lucky to have avoided the effects. I, for one, have only really had any money of my own since the recession began, and so having got used to the current situation hope that there will be a day in the future where my money stretches a lot further than it does now. One can dream.

 

Image credits: The Prime Minister’s Office

But there is a window for improvement, and the government has missed it. The UK, not having been as badly affected as certain other European economies, is one of the last to pull itself towards the vague light of recovery, after more than three years of a new government. “Pull” is, perhaps, the wrong verb here. Let us go instead for “drag”. The latest news of hope that the economy is heading in the right direction is pretty pathetic. We ought to have been receiving this news along with the United States, instead of watching our credit rating being downgraded and hearing warnings of a triple-dip recession. How embarrassing, somebody get a grip.

As I pointed out, however, life should be looking up, after all four thousand fewer people were unemployed last month than in June, and David Cameron says that this is “encouraging”.

What he neglected to comment on is that actually youth unemployment is up, again, and the number of people undergoing long-term unemployment is up too – again. Unemployment in the West Midlands? That’s up too, to just a smidgen under one in ten people, a region which once employed so many in manufacturing and industry and is now in danger of serious neglect. I wish one could even say this particular region’s figures were the worst of the bunch, but one cannot. Encouraging? David Cameron, I am afraid, is simply out of touch.

The Coalition has been prone, as most governments are, to hurl the blame backwards in time to the Labour Party – in politics, where the diciest of relationships occur, it most certainly is always a case of “it’s not me, it’s you”. This attitude sticks for a while, but nearly three and a half years down the line, is it not time a government started taking responsibility for its actions, when numerous experts have openly criticised spending plans because they do not look to have the right, or indeed any, effect?

The problems are not only economic. Recently certain boroughs of London were treated to the sight of vans scaremongering both legal British citizens and illegal immigrants alike: go home or face arrest. It was Vince Cable – a Liberal Democrat partner in the Coalition – to stand out from the government and point out that actually, “We have a problem but it’s not a vast one. It’s got to be dealt with in a measured way dealing with the underlying causes.” According to the New Statesman, David Cameron may not have even been aware of the campaign before it happened.

Numerous issues are damaging this government – I could continue for hours. Not through misfortune, but through poor decisions, and a great (meaning large, not fantastic) game of blame and pass-the-buck. The problem is that viable alternatives are not currently waiting in the wings.

We need a good, honest (I cannot stress that enough), thorough debate on the issues. We do not need more coalitions, failed promises and people wondering what they are paying politicians for. It is fair to say that the Liberal Democrats, like beforehand, are in no likely position to be forming a stable government any time soon, nor even the largest party. The UKIP fun and laughter is dying down or at least beginning to flatline, and heaven forbid it should increase again as more and more of their candidates out themselves as bigoted and xenophobic ignoramuses. Even if they were to surprise me in 2015, their support will be the Lib Dems’ old problem – spread too thinly across the nation to gain any great number of seats.

Labour really needs to pull its act together. Although lots of people continue to struggle through benefit changes,

“Fresh ideas”? Where are they?
Image credits: EdMiliband

lack of jobs to go around, increased student fees, rising debt, payday loans and more, there is an indication that life is looking up and it is an indication to which public feeling has latched on at least a little. Labour policies are lacking in response, and even my mother is considering not voting in 2015 (trust me, that means something). The Party shed its bigwigs and party elders – perhaps they should bring them back again. There is a mini squabble going on at the top of the Labour Party which is helping nobody’s public image, and instead of coming out fighting, united, there is a whole lot of nothing coupled with one or two mishaps to fill the gap and get everybody talking – about the wrong thing.

Something tells me that since Andy Burnham (Shadow Secretary of State for Health) piped up in the not too distant past, Labour policy may be just around the corner. I hope so, and I hope the wait has made it good, or it might be too little, too late.

Imogen Watson, Online Features Editor