The Yorker investigates what goes on behind the scenes of the York Carnival.
With over 100,000 CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) members nationally and an average attendance of 3,500 over the past ten years, the 2010 Leeds CAMRA Beer, Cider and Perry Festival was bound to be a triumph. An evening of merriment was guaranteed with over 150 real ales from Yorkshire and beyond plus an assortment of traditional cider and perry, as well as hot snacks to soak up the alcohol (who needs Viking Kitchen?) and live music from local musicians.
The Yorker has learned that a revolution is brewing in the city. Students from the University of York are in the process of organising a protest on electoral reform. Still in the works, the rally is expected to occur at 14.00 hours on May 15, next Saturday at King's Square (near The Shambles). Don purple if you are attending.
Facebook is dominating our lives: there are some who revel in the cyber-society, updating, adding, joining, and liking indiscriminately. Yet impossible as it may seem there are some who still haven’t joined. With such varying attitudes out there, we ask the question: what sort of a Facebooker are you?
Last year James received poor publicity after Nouse reported that much of their budget had remained unspent with welfare and sports receiving little to no funding. We kick off with what the JCRC are going to do with their cash this year. Green responds saying “we’re looking at what we’ve got first before we spend it”, explaining that with finance training next week with Lewis Bretts, they are waiting until after that to finalise anything.
As a former sports rep, he is keen to make sure that last year’s situation isn’t repeated, telling me “we’ve emailed all the sports captains asking them where they’re spending their money and seeing what we can do to help them with training and kit.”
We move onto discussing the bad taste event that never was. He seems keen to make sure that all the facts go on record telling me they decided on the theme before Christmas, and it wasn’t until they got back that concerns started to be raised. At that point he tells me they decided to vote on it, with the outcome being to go ahead but with restrictions.
Rather than ending the problem though, it seems that just complicated even more. “Where do you draw the line on bad taste?” he asks. He tells me that his meeting with Jane Grenville simply confirmed that they couldn’t put any such taste restrictions on the event. In the end, as the Yorker reported they decided to change the theme to ‘good taste’. “Rather than doing an event which will cause offense, do something that everyone can enjoy” he argues. Should we care so much about events? “Yeah, they’re the public face of the college, they’re important for college spirit”.
When asked were to go from here, his response is instant “cheap, good events. If we can get freshers going, second and third years will follow”. It appears that he aims to emulate Derwent’s success saying “Club D has a good brand; people go to it just because it’s Club D”.
That said however he doesn’t intend to copy their events, instead planning to make use of James’ layout, “We’re planning a termly punch party in the quads, and of course watch this space for the Quad Dash and Bash!”
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