Hearty Squirrel from Joel Sharples on Vimeo.

This is a wee film I made with Emma Saunders about Edinburgh's student-run food cooperative. First film I've made so it's a bit rough around the edges but hope you enjoy it.

Apologies for the lack of recent writing, I've been hard at work on my degree and editorial duties at The Student.

I did a quick guest blog for Fair Corp recently on a football tournament I organised for Fairtrade fortnight last month, using their Fairtrade footballs. You can read all about it here

We're hoping to organise another bigger and better tournament for World Fairtrade day on May 12th. Get in touch if you want to get involved.

Getting Figgy With It

Here's my latest satirical column for The Student. Bit silly but, as they say, the pun is mightier than the sword:

War by other means

Sanctions are often presented in the media as a peaceful alternative to war - using economic levers to pressurise countries into compliance.

John Pilger's documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq demonstrates how the structural violence of sanctions can be just as harmful, if not worse, than the actual violence of warfare.

Paying the Price Killing the Children of Iraq from John Pilger on Vimeo.

Death in Custody: Police Shame or 'Excited Delirium'?

Imagine the following scenario: a police officer’s home is broken into by a gang of eleven youths, who chase him into the street and beat him to death while his watching family beg them to stop. There would be national outrage, the perpetrators would face lengthy jail sentences and the Prime Minister would be on television talking about Britain’s broken society and feral gang culture.

catch-up

Bit late, but here's a couple of bits of writing that have been published in The Student recently. I'm now co-editor of the comment section so will be doing a satirical column every couple of weeks, here's the first one about the royal yacht.

Also a piece on Iran that was published back in November. Since it was written things have escalated a fair bit with the EU oil embargo and more assassinations of Iranian scientists. I'll hopefully do another piece on the topic when I get a chance but there are some relevant points here.

Now that I'm editing the comment section I won't be writing as much in The Student but I'm hoping to carry on writing short opinion pieces here as well as reports and photos from protests, meetings, events etc. I realised at the end of last semester I did a huge amount but had little record of anything apart from a few photos so hopefully I can rectify that by keeping this regularly updated.

Edinburgh University collaborating with Bahraini government

It was announced this week that the University of Edinburgh has signed a cooperation agreement with Bahrain's repressive authoritarian regime, which is seeking to create a "network of scientific research" that will link academic institutions to business and industry.

UPDATE - Edinburgh University Investments

Following my piece on Edinburgh University's investment in the arms trade and in oil companies such as Shell two motions were proposed at the EUSA AGM on Nov 23rd, calling on the University to divest from Shell and Cobham Plc. Both passed unanimously, however as the turnout was less than the required 300 the meeting was not quorate and therefore the decisions were not binding. Nonetheless the support for the motions was so strong that the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Mike Williamson, pledged to follow up the issue with the University. Since then it has been revealed that the university has sold its shares in Cobham Plc as a result of student pressure. The next step will be to try and bring about a change in the University's Socially Responsible Investment policy to prevent arms manufacturers from returning to the investment portfolio.