So he has the time for a victimising campaign mainly motivated by personal issues, but not one in the name of democracy?

I heard that he thought RON was going to be too much competition for him

Andy - surely you can grasp that when Mr Taylor's politics are so extreme that even the campus Conservative Party won't let him speak for them in any official capacity, he doesn't have a chance of political success once he's out in the real world - no party would have him, because he'd simply be too damaging. His university years are his only chance of being noticed, before he has to slink away into the anonymity of the army and put up with anti-war protesters without being able to speak against them. Let's just be kind, and allow Mr Taylor to stamp his feet and get himself noticed - once he's out of here, he'll never be noticed again, and that will be devastating to a person suffering from Taylor's degree of ego- and mono-mania.

There is a God(dess)!

(No offence intended).

Is it any surprise that people want to remain anonymous? They probably just don't want to incite Dan Taylor to another hate campaign; against them this time.

This article just serves to highlight again how Taylor's approach to politics is utterly irrational and impractical.

Plus, suggesting that the comments of others are 'inept' and merely highlight an 'entire lack of intelligence' isn't exactly helping to establish fertile ground for a 'constructive debate'.

• Sun, 24th Feb 2008 7:07am - Edited by the author

I personally dislike Dan's politics, and I think that his tactics are often in very poor taste, but I actually think that he had the right Idea here

Matt has done a good job, and I think he deserves a second term, but equally if he had run uncontested then we would have missed an important opportunity to debate past policies, and to think about new ones.

Dan is undoubtedly controversial, but no-one has ever said he is afraid to say what he thinks particularly when it comes to YUSU politics.

To my mind, that means that he would have provided the perfect opposition to an incumbent. As I say I wouldn't vote for him, but had he been the only other candidate then I would have applauded him for standing, and giving us an opportunity to criticize and improve on YUSU policy within a rational and sensible framework.

To those above who have been making petty insults, I say two things:

Firstly, doesn't the fact that he has withdrawn his application since it has become clear Matt is not uncontested suggest that he's not entirely publicity seeking, and that maybe his decision to stand was in keeping with his stated aims?

And secondly, how do you see Dan's candidacy as the problem in this race?

Surely Tom Scott is the one whose motives need more scrutiny, perhaps he's the one who is really "holding a big finger up to the student population of the university and their needs" (*6).

In standing as a 'pirate' I think he devalues the role of YUSU president and the work that others over time have put into it in the past, and I think its appalling that he's prepared to try and turn the election of the leader of an organization responsible for the welfare and wellbeing of over 10,000 people into a joke.

That, I would suggest is far more of a problem, and if you really need to complain and insult someone without engaging in the issues, then I would suggest that the candidate who doesn't care about any issues might be a better target.

1. 11, I see what you're saying, but I can't say I agree with you. Democracy is not strengthened when a candidate has no interest in doing the job, no commitment to doing it, and is running purely because he has decided that the other candidate should not be allowed to run unopposed. In fact, democracy is weakened - the electorate, we are meant to believe, cannot choose to make up their own minds about how they want to vote, and need to be 'encouraged' by Dan Taylor. Indeed, had Burton alone been running, he could have been RON-ed, whereas in a Taylor-vs-Burton match, that option simply wouldn't have been open - people would have been too scared of Dan getting in. People should not run in an election unless they seriously want to do the job - what if he had won?! We'd have elected an (inexperienced) official who by his own admission didn't want the job, and was only running in the election to prevent another (experienced, proved competent and semi-reliable) candidate getting the job! What a fine day for democracy THAT would be - would that get students more interested in campus politics?

Which brings us to the Mad Cap'n, who (we are led to believe) is the product of student apathy. Again, I see what you are saying: it is not good news when one of three presidential candidates is doing it for a joke. And many of the same issues apply - one can assume that the Captain is either lying in his policy layout, or not taking the issue terribly seriously; it will be terribly bleak if he does win, and his presence will mess up the voting, since people's choice of votes will be constrained by considerations of how likely he is to win.

However, the difference between the two lies in the nature of the candidates. It is not terribly difficult to see that Tom Scott is running as a joke, albeit one with a potentially destructive punchline. Dan Taylor, unfortunately, was all too serious. Scott is in fact with the students, in that his candidacy arises out of the serious degree of student apathy - students, we are told, do not care about student politics (even in the recent controversy regarding Grace Fletcher-Hackwood and the Womens' Committee, many people left the UGM in question when those issues were finished with), and his emergence can thus be seen as a response - a joke to have WITH the students, to be played on the po-faced SU and those of us who take the minor points of campus politics all too seriously. Dan Taylor, of course, is also a joke, but of the unwitting variety - is candidature, so we are meant to believe, was deadly serious, and if the election and his campaign against Grace Fletcher-Hackwood had coincided, he tells us, he probably wouldn't have backed down - reasons he does not explain, but which I for one would be very interested to hear elaborated upon.

Both people should give adequate cause for concern, but in different forms. Tom Scott is in effect a spontaneous warning to YUSU - they need to re-engage with students, because the relationship between the campus population and the body representing it is now so fractured that the former will now only raise their heads either at the scent of blood or to laugh at the joke pirate candidate. Dan Taylor, however, is purely a problem of himself. We have our real second candidate now, who, we presume, is actually willing to do his job should he get it. We don't have to fear the prospect of Dan Taylor being swept to an easy victory because an apathetic student mass views the elections as boring, and we don't have to fear the election of a candidate whose incapability and lack of interest would be devastating, but whose judgmental attitude that he had stood despite those reasons 'for the good of students and democracy' truly WOULD be a middle finger up to the university, and a further devaluation of YUSU. Hopefully, we don't even have to pay attention to him - he's stepped out of the contest before it has even begun (an action which would perhaps indicate that the otherwise self-satisfying Mr Taylor actually has some commitment to higher principles, were it not for his cryptic comments regarding his campaign against now departed Academic and Welfare Officer), and we can concentrate on the REAL candidates. We can, without needing to regard Dan Taylor, throw ourselves into the elections, allowing ourselves to be diverted by the amusing caperings of a clown candidate from what would otherwise promise to be as gloomy and uninspiring a contest as any student politics in recent years.