That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
The union suprised me this week, as it should anybody who has an interest in progressive and modernising issues on campus.
The green reforms are hard-line left wing tactics - they make every student responsible for their own environmental waste and force them to do something about it. There is no friendly union running around after them - doing conscience-construction for three thousand undergraduates.
The reform goes something like this. You get recycling bins. You recycle. If you don't you get in trouble.
This is fantastic news! I'm no eco-preacher - my carbon footprint swells like a dirty tumor over whatever cheap flight Sir Stelios can get me. I don't care though. That's the point isn't it? It's simple game theory - people act in their own rational and convenient self-interest. For them to become green, the disadvantages of not acting green must stop them from doing so.
So I hope the union has the balls to put the reforms through with hard-line punishments: fines, heavy fines, for those that don't recycle.
It's certainly a tough policy to put through. Who is going to rat out the non-green students? Cleaners could be a good bet, especially if you have some disenfranchised student-hating yorkshire woman. But they're few and far between, most cleaners can be won over and kept quiet by being offered a coffee on the job.
Provosts are too busy. Porters are too overworked. My prognosis is two inspections a term by a member of staff whose job for that morning, in that college, is to do only that. And by god, they'll have to be really carbon-hating as the first time they go around they'll dish out several Ryan-air holidays in fines.
But that is what must happen if we are to change our own psychology, we must make it incovenient not to be green - that is the inconvenient truth. The union has taken brave steps in that direction, but it must be followed with strong, uncomprimising policy.
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