Editor's Message Spring 2010

Welcome to the first online issue of Student ID!

We've decided to go electronic for this issue and hope to set up a brand new web-site after Easter... so keep an eye out for us from the College's front-page.

Many thanks to all the contributors in this issue, you know who you are... Dan, Immy, Ollie, Katy U, Rhi and Rob.

and vicki who lurks around in the background (apparently) ...

Happy Easter ! & Happy reading!

Traffic Sign Story

To Swede or not to Swede...

To swede or not to swede, that is the question. For those of you unfamiliar with the word, to swede is to make a low (or no) budget version of a popular film. A sweded film is a lot shorter than the original and due to the zero budget it can a lot more imaginative, for example: Terminator 2: Judgement Day swede set fire to amushroom to represent the mushroom cloud explosion of the apocalyptic vision depicted in Sarah Conner’s dream sequence. That’s just one piece of fried gold I have stumbled upon.
The term comes from the 2008 film “Be Kind Rewind” in which Jack Black’s brain gets magnetised and as a result he wipes all of the videotapes in his friend’s, played by Mos Def, video store. Due to a lack of funds they cannot buy new stock, instead they recreate the films on a zero budget and this happens to be very popular. They create the term “sweding” to describe their endeavours and since it has taken the internet by storm.
There are as many bad swedes as there are good, and some of the good ones are brilliant. And the beauty of sweding is anyone can do it, as long as you have a camera and the innovation to turn a roll of tinfoil into a badass Robocop costume! Also the ability to completely disregard how stupid you will look in said roll of tinfoil. Acting talent not necessary.

Here are some good swedes to be found on YouTube;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FeDpy3IUHA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5smBcpS9kc&feature=related

Air Cadets

Fiction Feast

Musical Munchies

Reviews of Gigs and Film

The Boy Friend

Focus on Chlamydia & Sports Relief

OSCARS & RAZZIES

London trip, (click to enlarge) and zoom

Ludlow College HUSTINGS

On 17th December 2009, around 150 students had a taste of what is to come of the upcoming election early this year by taking part in our very own Hustings event. If, like me, you did not know what on earth a Hustings was, it is a gathering of representatives (well, they are MPs, so that’s debateable) on a platform to present their views prior to an election. This gave politicians the chance to get some [much-needed] practice in before the election in either March or May. The drama studio took the form of a Question Time styled platform with a panel of seven people, me included, nervously sitting next to Emma Reynolds.

Each parliamentary candidate pitched their “vote for me” speech for a couple minutes each, before Roy (as people who know Dr Perry call him) took charge and moved everyone on to the main bulk of the Hustings. There were pre-agreed questions, suggested to Roy by everyone who wished to do so via Moodle (mostly sociology students!) which covered the Economy, Tuition fees, transport, government cuts and other subjects that our students were concerned with. Roy exerted his power over the parliamentary candidates and soon stopped them in their tracks if they went off topic (which they did a lot).

There were some amusing and incompetent answers to some questions during the two hours of discussion: Jacqui Morrish thought it was perfectly reasonable to solve Britain’s debt crisis by not building any more roads, which got a laugh from both me and people within the crowd. At this point I turned to Emma, who was next to me, and quietly said “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll help”. Generally, a lot of Morrish’s answers were put down by the other candidates as they already held the same policies and effectively rendered the Green Party useless.

Christopher Gill got a lot of cheers and applause from the crowd for some controversial views on immigration. I clapped too, but I got some odd frowns from Emma and Heather on my side of the table so I slowly stopped and pretended to be professional.

In general, all the participants seemed to make deliberate plays for votes to the audience with a slightly patronising tone which didn’t really work on any of us. As politicians often do, they spoke at length using as much complicated language as possible to baffle us – my response, when asked to pitch my views, was to say exactly what I meant without the confusing political frills. If I wanted something cut, I was straight to the point. However, the others, Phillip Dunne in particular seemed to dance around the issues of cuts and attempted to change the topic to his rehearsed spiel.

At one point, Emma Reynolds, who came on behalf of Labour as we did not have a parliamentary candidate for them at the time, was challenged. Some brave girl from the audience stood up and challenged her presence there as she was not local and therefore could not answer a question on local transport. This resulted in a slightly fiery response, but reliable Roy came through and stopped it to continue with the event.

I have to say, it was one of the most nerve racking things I have ever done and wouldn’t recommend doing it unless you would like shaky hands for a couple of hours. If you were there and saw me constantly drinking water, that was because it steadied my hands!

All in all, the Hustings was a success, being extremely lively at times and having regular audience questions fired at us. I was asked whether I would drop EMA for tuition fees – which I would do, considering tuition fees are worth much more. I hope everyone who was there enjoyed themselves and thanks for taking part.