Last night’s Question Time held at BCU, Perry Barr April 28, 2010

Perry Barr candidates for MP plus SU president and debate Chair 'Tom Tom'

Once again, apologies to those looking forward to my live streaming of the Question Time debate with Perry Barr candidates last night.

Even though I came with a fully-charged phone battery, it was too much for my poor Nokia 5800 to take and it died without properly configuring the footage- hence lost audio.

If it makes you feel any better, the mobile footage I took was on higher ed fees and not about environmental issues so not all that relevant to what I’m trying to do!

However, well prepared(ish) me also took a digital camera and managed to capture some extra video footage on the very brief mention of climate change at the hustings.

So, as an apology for the failure of my live streaming from the debate, I’ve put together a short video with this footage and uploaded it to YouTube for your viewing pleasure! Enjoy!

Look out for a Birmingham Recycled article summing up last night’s happenings.

We’ve also now got our podcast about which political party would get our ‘green vote’ up on the site so have a listen to that as well!

Tune in to Perry Barr hustings! April 27, 2010

Due to the wonderment of technology, I hope to be able to stream tonight’s Perry Barr constituency hustings from 5pm this evening.

The hustings, open to all members of the community, is being hosted at Birmingham City University in Attwood Building, room 040:

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Student Union president, Tom Thompson (affectionately named ‘Tom Tom’ by students), will Chair the  ‘Question Time’-style debate  from 5 of the constituency’s candidates for election:

• Khalid Mahmood MP (Labour - the current MP for Perry Barr)
• Councillor William Norton (Conservatives)
• Councillor Karen Hamilton (Liberal Democrats)
• Melvin Ward (UK Independence Party)
• John Tyrrell (Socialist Labour Party)

If the promise of free reign to ask the Perry Barr PPC’s anything you want and refreshments isn’t enough to get you down to Birmingham City University, Attwood Building, 040 tonight, then tune in here (this blog post) at 5pm and hopefully some footage of the hustings will be beamed right onto your computer screen!

In the meantime, ignore my previous (experimental) videos from my Qik channel!

Hoorah for Fairtrade! February 25, 2010

In light of Fairtrade fortnight, my university has decided to do its bit by encouraging students to buy Fairtrade products in its canteens rather than the alternatives. This is being done through a bit of shameless bribary with the hope of winning a competition, but its a start nonetheless!

A sucker for a competition myself (what can I say? I like the chance of getting something for nothing!) I purchased a Fairtrade coffee this morning rather than the usual ‘Costa’ brand ones.

I found the Fairtrade coffee machine tucked away round the back of the sandwich counter and also further down the queue than the Costa machine- meaning most people opt for the chain’s coffees first.

Quel surprise! My Fairtrade coffee was a good deal cheaper and just as satisfying!

It’s a shame that it takes shameless promotion to get Fairtrade products flying off the shelves but maybe the cafe could do more to make this stuff more prominent.

I mean, there’s a Costa coffee literally feet away, why even host the machine at all? I say replace it with another Fairtrade machine! If customers want a Costa coffee then they can go there to get one!