April 1, 2008

The fact that only 8% of students pay for student services shows that Student Unions are not offering services that students want.

Put simply, if unions offered services they would receive the money from the students, and this legislation has been in WA for many years now, and unions over there are becoming more and more accountable, and membership is now up to 30% and rising, due to unions being accountable now for more than a decade.

And if those services were used by students, and were such great value in the first place, students wouldn’t need to be coerced into paying them, they would pay because they gain something that the student themselves decide is value for money.

But students have decided that student unions as they exist are useless, they’ve voted with their dollars, and a smart move. No longer are they being coerced into paying money that goes to unions that are then represented at NUS, which then debate the 9 different ways to spell woman (which was a serious motion last year at Monash University).

Compulsory student unionism is a clear violation of a fundamental human right, the freedom of association. This is a listed right under the UN’s declaration on human rights.

Why should any student pay for services they don’t use? Why is having a choice on campus such an outrage in the first place?

I’ve been to paintball once and let me tell you, it was one of the best experiences I had in 2007. It was so much fun! And you just don’t care about the pain, just gotta kill the other people. Loved it.

This baby is sure to punch a few holes in some egos : the tippmann 98 custom is an entry level marker but that’s all you need in the small arena of paintball.

Pntball.com specialise in selling cheap paintball guns for prices sometimes below even $100, which is incredible. Man just looking at this website is making my juices flow again! The heart pumping adrenaline action is fantastic. I love the competition to achieve objectives only limited by your team-work and imagination.

The website is decent but in my opinion could do more to capture the fun that is paintball. However, this is a very minor complaint and I think these guys have got the right idea! At least they’re doing something original rather than targeting a niche with 20 billion results like so many other webmasters.

NB. They also offer free shipping. Sweet! Maybe I’ll be visiting back there in the future..

I’ve been seeing a couple of babies around the place lately as a few people older than me having been popping sprogs.

I’m very much looking forward to becoming a father some day but not for a few years yet. I have to get some things out of the way before I bring a bundle of joy into the world.

I’m thinking about this because I stumbled on a document sitting in my folder on the computer with some of my favourite baby names.

I’m not sure why I kept or made it but here they are:

Girls:

Aria, adrienne

Boys:

Xavier, Alec – Amos, Sebastian /Sebastien

I read an interesting article recently which suggested that boys with names starting with A statistically perform better at school than kids with other names. And also, kids with names starting with B are more likely to get Bs in school, and so on and so forth.

It’s some sort of subtle psychology. The kid likes their own name and likes the letter B so isn’t so averse to getting B’s as another child.

So yeh, might be sticking with Aria and Alec at the moment. Although obviously the woman will have a big say in it.