Roma I

I recently went on a trip to Rome with Photosoc. It turns out a sunny January is an amazing time to go, the weather's lovely - not too hot or too cold, and there aren't the usual hoards of tourists. There were still plenty, but distinctly manageable amounts.
We spent our first whole day there taking a planned wander through the old streets, seeing various sights, and generally enjoying the atmosphere. Some of the best photo opportunities (and the best priced espressos) were on back streets.

The light was just lovely! Click through to my Flickr for a deluge of photos.


We had an excellent group, there were twenty-one of us but we split into smaller groups most of the time (try getting a table for 21 in a restaurant) and everyone got on well and enjoyed themselves. This is just a selection of photos from one day, there'll be more posts (and film photos eventually). The last one here is the view from the Boboli Gardens across to St Peters in the early evening, it was just lovely.

Cameron's a c***

I like this photo aesthetically but it can't really be looked at without politics coming to mind.

Union elections are on at the moment and they seem to have been swamped with national politics. It's obvious that anyone who doesn't oppose HE cuts won't get voted for, so it's a shame that they're all banging on about "fighting" them. I don't personally see what difference it'll make, whoever gets in will support any further protests and our NUS delegates will be anti-cuts.
We need to vote for people who will look after the issues of students close to home as well; societies are how most students come into contact with the union, they need to be looked after and supported.
The union needs to engage more with students in general, but blaming the past sabbatical teams (as happened at the AGM) is a bit much, the union is too restricted in its relationship with the university. In my opinion the union need to lobby the University to allow them to e-mail students more than five times a year (it's ridiculous that they can't), or make the union mailing list opt-out rather than opt-in. It's not surprising that subject societies use department mailing lists and Facebook to get their message across when the union ones can reach so few students. Allowing the union to e-mail us more would probably mean a smaller volume of e-mail as currently I'm forwarded any such messages by both the departments in my joint honours, plus the subject societies and sometimes even my faculty on top of that.
Me writing this isn't going to make a difference but I have at least expressed my frustration!