Gibbet Hill Road Closure Map

Just a handy Google map I produced highlighting the 12 diversion during the first phase of the closure of Gibbet Hill Road (for 5 weeks from 11th Feb 2008):

Enjoy!

: 08 Feb 2008 22:54 |  Tags: Closure Gibbet Hill Map Road |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Election Continuation

I apologise. I was all wrong on my opinions of Mo Surve. I apologise for possibly misleading you into believing that he did have some form of personal integrity. Why? Well, it’s just that I’ve since discovered that he is using the obvious pun of his name on his publicity:

Damn. I knew it was too good to be true.
Anyway – I now present today’s poster-al discoveries:
Firstly, these signs from ‘Tommo’, running for president, that have sprung up all round campus:

My personal favourite is the one that he’s tied to the Belisha Beacon on the zebra crossing next to Humanities. Perfect for confusing motorists and causing accidents. However, there’s one massive flaw that he seems to have overlooked – when I last read the Highway Code, it said that triangular-shaped road signs are ones that are giving warnings of potential hazards. Not thought that one through properly, have you now? However, he does raise a good point with the issue of the unnecessary printer credit pages that print off every time you print something. He’s even gone to the trouble of going round the computer rooms collecting a load and sticking them up:

I actually went at looked at the names on each page to see if one of mine was on there, and if so, I could take legal action against him suggesting that I support his campaign, but it wasn’t to be. But I advise everyone reading this to do the same, you never know!
Ty Hayes seems to have a theme running through his posters:

Yes, well done you, that’s very good.
My favourite slogan of the day (well, I did see it on Friday, but forgot about it), and the most nonsensical one so far is:

This is mainly because I can’t fathom what the frig the slogan is supposed to even mean, so, Lucy, if you’re reading – try harder next time! Obviously the she found the ‘socs’ pun so amazing, she rushed into producing the posters without stopping to consider whether she was talking bollocks.
The most indegistible poster so far comes from one Chris Baker:

Can I be bothered to stand and read this? Umm, no! The only thing that I could be bothered to look at were the balls he’s used as bullet points. Well, at least I should be thankful he’s not followed the trend and used a dirty slogan.
However, his poster isn’t as off-putting as James Marvin’s – he’s depicted himself wielding a megaphone, so he’s bottom of my list.

Now, if a candidate were to suggest banning the use of all megaphones in a 5-mile radius of Campus, they’d get a sure-fire vote from me. When a girl from Warwick Snow started yelling though one in Cholo last week, it only went to reinforce my view that anyone who uses one should have it shoved up their arse at the earliest possible opportunity for the sake of mankind (and some peace and quiet too). Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant there. Also we have a very arty and trendy (i.e. on cardboard) portrait of welfare candidate Matt. And I love the terrible formatting by Nut Boy on his (surprise, surprise) cardboard poster:

I think he wrote ‘ISTACHIO’ and ‘RESIDENT’, and forgot to put the ‘4’ (shudder) in until it was too late. Anyway, at lunchtime today, I ended up being present at the candidates Q&A session in the marketplace. I wasn’t there intentionally. Honest! I was going to South Central, so ended up observing proceedings from the balcony. I caught the end of the Presidential debate (ooh, sounds really American!), which featured Pistachio, James the Conservative, Road Sign Tommo, and, surely the best candidate of all, Philip T. Woolley, dressed as Caesar. Seriously, anyone that couldn’t really give much of a crap how the Union is run next year should vote for him. Why? Let’s see some of his suggestions (from both his manifesto, and the Q&A):

• Replace One World Week with a Blood Sports Week

• Convert Union North into a Casino (on the grounds that there’s no alcohol there), and use the profits to buy the University, and give everyone 2:1s, so we can just have a 3-year piss-up

• Take a ‘Yeah, Whatever’ stance on everything

• Tackle environmental concerns by releasing statistics that the Union has 0% emissions

• Tackle bureacracy by eliminating paper from the Union

Plleeeeaaaseeee vote for him – it’ll be bloody funny if he wins!
I also caught the Education debate – launched by Mo Surve, who walked on stage to a cheer when shouting his ‘Here to Surve’ tagline. The thing is, I’m worried people were actually falling for it… Then came Mr Zaw, who had a well-prepared speech, but was blown apart by actual questions. It turns out he’s anti-9am lectures, which, as I discussed last year, makes him an idealistic pillock. Speaking of Zaw, he’s also got a tagline in his manifesto: I Came, I Zaw, I Conquered. That’ll seem silly if you don’t get elected…
And finally, we had Peter the Conservative (we have a trio of them, by the way – who, confusingly, say they’ll bring us an ‘Independent’ Union). He definitely had the mannerisms of someone wishing to exact revenge on someone/something – so there may be violent consequences if he wins – so vote for him!

: 04 Feb 2008 23:25 |  Tags: Election News Opinion OWW Union |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Election Resurrection

Bloomin’ heck – kind of couldn’t be arsed with the whole blog thing for, well, about 9 months or so. The fact that this is equal to the gestation period of a human child is purely coincidental…

Important things to know since my lost blog:

• I got a 2:1 last year

• Went to Leeds festival last year, and it was awesome

• Went to Bruges on Eurostar, also awesome

• I’m now totally obsessed with Muse

• I was miserable and semi-depressed last term, but I’m fine (well, actually pretty awesome) now

• The train obsession continues unabated

So now we’re caught up.

Anyway, due to the fact that a few people (including randoms who came up to me) gave me poisitive feedback on my election coverage last year, I’m back to provide my observations again this year. Also, I really like the title of my entry that I thought up, so I had to use it.

And lo, I present the First Day of Campaigning Awards:

The ‘Do They Ever Learn?’ award
Readers of my entries last year may well recall (apart from the fact they were utter claptrap) that I waged war against candidates who write ‘4’ in place of ‘for’. The worst culprite so far this year is welfare candidate Steph Somethingorother:

To these people: Please stop doing this! It’s not clever, it’s not original – stop trying to be cool by saving the typing of two whole characters! Grrrr! This year seems to be a particularly bad one for people who find some word find a word in the dictionary that vaguely sounds like their forename/surname, and then (usually very poorly) try and hammer some sort of slogan or illiterative statement out of it. This gives rise to my next award:
The ‘My Name Sounds A Little Bit Like Something’ award
First up we have Nut Man, Peter ‘Pistachio’ Ptashko back once again this, still obviously not having decided what he wants to do with his life:

Note: Those allergic to Nuts (well, allergic to words that either contain ‘nut’ in them, or can be amended to contain it – e.g. Nut-hing) should avoid reading his manifesto like the plague – he’s gone (sorry, can’t resist the pun) nuts with them in it, cramming them in pretty much everywhere even remotely possible. A link would be provided, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to find the manifestos on the Union website.
Another nominee in this category is Matt Polson, with his ‘On the Pulse’ slogan:

Not a bad attempt, but he’s clearly spent a bit too long making that poster. But I think the winner of this award has to be this contender:

For me, she wins it not for the half-decent attempt at illiteration, but for the wonderful (well, pretty pointless) feminist remarks at the bottom. Bless your little heart. What are the odds she’s a member of W.A.S.S? However, if a bloke wrote a similar thing, it’d probably be deemed sexist. So why is the reverse not true?
There are two contenders for my next award, the:
‘Most Innuend-onic slogan’ award
Incidentally, both contenders are running for Sports Officer, which, to be honest, I don’t think is that much of a co-incidence. Firstly, we have:

Wow, he said balls. Hee hee.
But the winner has to be the pure sexual predatorishness that apparently comes with having Phil Ward as sports officer:

‘Let’s play with each other’ eh? Wow, i am soooo going to vote for you with that intelligent piece of pervishness. Next.
The ‘Candidate Most Likely To Be Making Himself Sound Much Better Than He Actually Is’ award
Following James ‘The Great’ Gadsby last year is a guy presenting himself as Superman:

‘Nuff said.
The ‘Most Likely To Be Infringing Someone’s Copyright’ award goes to:

It’s some guy called Zaw (which, if you ask me, sounds like something from Robot Wars) with movie-themed posters depicting 300 (definitely infringing copyright) and Zaw 4 (slightly less illegal possibly, but then he went and used ‘4’ in place of ‘for’, which, as we’ve discussed, makes him an imbecile.
The last award, is the snappily titled ‘Most Liberal Erection Of Posters With Flagrant Disregard For What Your Covering Up’ award, which goes to Sam Lee. My agument is shown in my picture:

His tactic seems to be to make up for the lack of content on his posters (apart from showing us all what a pretty face he has) by plastering shedloads of them up, over more interesting (i.e. Non-election) posters. Outside Café Library, he’s even arranged a load to spell out the word ‘SAM’. I’m so tempted to go down at the dead of night and re-arrange them into the word ‘TIT’. On a final note, you may recall from last year that I wrote about someone who pinned a piece of cardboard with their name on it as a rudimentary campaign poster. Well, ad-hoc cardboard posters seem to be all the rage this year (probably people jumping on the environmental bandwagon, now that it’s fashionable and all), as this view outside L3 depicts:

On a related matter, I’m so tempted to replace ‘for’ with ‘needs’ on Mo Surve’s posters. However, I can’t, as I think he needs to be congratulated for not using the really obvious pun of his name on his posters. At least one of the candidates is saving my sanity…

: 02 Feb 2008 22:53 |  Tags: Comeback Elections Union |  Comments (23) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Look how bored I was! I did a map of the 12 diversion!

Seeing as I’ve been looking for a decent excuse to use the new My Maps feature on Google, and the announced-at-quite-short-notice diversion of the 12 through Earlsdon due to the closure of Earlsdon Avenue North for gas main works provided a prime opportunity. My clearly very professionally produced map has got everything – colour coded lines, key points marked out and some babble too. Enjoy! Hope it’s vaguely helpful to at least one person :) You can even save it, print it off and keep it as a handy pocket guide if you so desire…

: 17 May 2007 21:28 |  Tags: 12 Bus Coventry Diversion Earlsdon Travel |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Thomas the Tank Engine In Da Club

Watch – it’s flipping funny!

: 30 Apr 2007 17:20 |  Tags: Funny Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

It's officially summer

I have come to the above conclusion for three reasons:

1. It was still light at 8pm last night
2. My Dad has started sitting in a deckchair in front of our garage
3. A Chavling was in Tesco the other day walking round topless in the way that only Chavs do (i.e with their stripey jumpers folded incredibly neatly over their left shoulders).

Oh, and sleeveless tops are out as well too. The thing is, it’s not even warm yet!

: 06 Apr 2007 11:12 |  Tags: News |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Calm down dear, it's a blog entry!

Wow. For about the first time since January I have both a) The time to write a proper blog entry, and b) The energy to write a proper blog entry. So here we go!

Firstly, I just cannot believe how fast this term has gone. One minute it was January, then I recall blinking, and now its almost the middle of March! Maths has been getting steadily more and more depressing all term, and I’ve had an ever increasing backlog of non-assessed assignment sheets to be getting on with (which over the last few weeks I’ve simply not had the time or energy to actually do), and the assessed ones haven’t exactly been fantasic fun either, cough*algebra*cough, excuse me. I survived (just) my essay presentation two weeks back, although I’m fairly sure that I was pretty much completely incomprehensible to everyone else in the room. But I survived, that’s all that matters, and my essay is very close to completion too (just a few tweaks to go then done!). I’m pleasantly surprised how easily the essay flowed out in the end, seeing I was dreading even choosing a topic and fearful of not having the foggiest where to start!

Over the easter ‘holiday’ I’ve got plenty to do, including finish my essay (although I aim to have this done by Friday), do my MNN assignment and revise for 3 exams the first week back. Lovely. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s back to the wonderful world of Tesco too!

Away from Maths, I’m starting to have a pretty good time at Uni. I’ve just had a very fun weekend, with two pub trips, going to Metropolis and the Reckless Moment last night. And I now actually have some decent photos of myself on Facebook!

I’m looking forward to going home now though, if only for a rest, as I REALLY need a change of scenery for a while to get away from Uni and all the stress associated with it, although I think I’ll miss my friends more this holiday than ever before. This is simply because it feels like over the last term, I’ve developed my friendships substantially more than in the past, particularly with my housemates and a few other close friends, and I feel that I’ve come out of my shell a little and become a more outgoing and interesting (to others) person, and I hope people have maybe discovered more about me too.

Anyway, I’m just enjoying a bit of a wind-down at the moment and not going too overboard with work for a while (although I want to get as much MNN and essay done before the holidays as possible), so hopefully I’ll be refreshed slightly once the holidays start and I can get some good revision done for my April exams.

That’s the plan at least! And hopefully I’ll be back soon with another entry. The key word being ‘hopefully’!

: 13 Mar 2007 21:52 |  Tags: News |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

God bless ignorance!

A quote that I heard from a guy I passed outside Coventry station earlier today:

“Virgin Trains are shit, they crash all the time”

Now let us recall the history of accidents involving Virgin Trains:

• Winsford, 23rd June 1999 – Driver of First North Western Class 142 passes signal at danger, coming to a stop in the path of a Virgin Class 87 heading from London to Glasgow. Accident caused by SPAD by 142 and lack of catch points that would have prevented it running into the path of the 87, not by any fault of Virgin’s.
• Copmanthorpe, 25th September 2006 – Class 221 collides with car on level crossing, killing the car driver. Caused by driver of car obstructing path of train, not by any fault of Virgin’s.

(and the one the guy was without doubt actually referring to)

• Grayrigg, 23rd February 2007 – Class 390 derails due to components missing from set of points, no fault of Virgin.

Yep, not one actually caused through any fault of Virgin. Why do people say such ridiculous statements based on incomplete facts? Is it just because they can’t be bothered to be fully informed, so it’s just easier to attach blame to the most prominent individual/company involved (i.e. the company whose train derailed two weeks ago)?

Aaaaarrrrggghhh!

: 10 Mar 2007 19:08 |  Tags: Opinion Transport |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The results are in!

Yes, the time has come to reveal the results of my Facebook experiment thingy!

Basically, I’ve recorded the number of friends each of the candidates for the ‘main’ posts (as I couldn’t be arsed to do them all) on Facebook at the start of the campaign (02/02/07) and at the end (08/02/07), and the numerical and percentage changes of their friendship numbers between these two. Below are screenshots of the Excel Spreadsheet with all the really exciting figures on. First up, the potential Presidents:

Right, here we can see the most popular before and after the campaign in Joe Kirby, the biggest numerical and percentage increase in popularity is that of Joe Kirby, and the winner is (you guessed it) Joe Kirby! What a surprise! Note: James Clarke’s number of friends was not viewable.

Now, Education Officer:

OK, there’s only two people in this category: Pistachio and Pam ‘Let’s ban 9am lectures ‘cos I once had one and didn’t really like it that much’ Stallard. Anyway, as above, we have the most popular before and after being Pistachio, the biggest increase in Popularity going to Pistachio and, funnily enough, the winner being Pistachio. Is there a pattern emerging I wonder?

FDSO:

Matt Chapman has the largest popularity increase, Andy McEwan has the biggest percentage popularity increase, but the (vastly) more popular before and after the campaign is Tom Callow, and the winner is Tom Callow. Did I hear someone say popularity contest? The results so far are seeming to be screaming it at me!

CDCO. Note: due to a cock up by me, I failed to find ‘Mitz Mistry’ on Facebook the first time I looked (if she’s only use her actual name in her campaign, it would’ve been helpful!), so there are no figures for her for the first time:

Hmm, maybe I’m wrong. James ‘The Great’ Gadsby Peet wins, which completely doesn’t correlate with my predictions at all. My results suggest Tom Precious would come out on top, or Kate Hitchcock. But then again, I never even noticed their campaigns, so it just goes to show what a high profile campaign can do, despite some dubious policies. (I for one would love to know how much subsidy Stagecoach/Travel Coventry would want for free post-event buses to cover driver wages and the lost night fares!).

Next up, Wefare and Equal Opps:

Nope, back to the expected again, a landslide in all categories by Ed Callow. Just a couple of two-candidates-standing posts left:

In the Sports Officer category, we have all signs pointing to Ali Moore, but then Kate ‘Cardboard Poster’ Bennet makes a comeback in the final moments and wins. And SSDO-wise, it doesn’t go the expected way entirely, with signs pointing to both of the candidates (it actually going to Tom Lindsay).

So, to answer the question: Is the Students Union Elections basically a popularity contest?

Answer: Sort of.

: 11 Feb 2007 23:26 |  Tags: Election Union |  Comments (12) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Election Fever Hits Campus! Part 4!

Firstly I’ve got to start off with an apology. Due to me not feeling very well this afternoon, I went home early, so didn’t manage to find much of interest. Also, this entry will be quite brief for the same reason.

Anyway, stepping off the 12 at the Arts Centre bus stop put me fact to face with these two:

First we have Peter ‘Pistachio’ Ptashko (who I’ve meant to write about before but keep forgetting), whose main campaign ploy seems to be highlighting the fact that his surname sounds a little bit like a variety of nut. Cue lots of puns along the lines of ‘You’ll go nuts for his policies’.

And underneath we have what is probably the crudest campaign slogan of the year – “If you don’t have a pecker, vote for Becca!” i.e. the condition of not having a cock is a good enough reason to vote for her apparently. Does this include men who’ve had unfortunate accidents, I wonder?

And finally, the award for most amazing lack of modesty goes to the self-titled “Great Gadsby”. Well done for completely not making yourself look like a dickhead. It’s also interesting to note the bizarre rememblace between his campaign logo and the shed plates steam locomotives used to have on them.

Anyway, that’s as far as its going to go campaign analysis-wise. Stay tuned for the results of the facebook experiment!

p.s. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading all this rubbish…

: 08 Feb 2007 19:28 |  Tags: Election Opinion Union |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem