Nocton sure on where to stand

I’ve never been to Nocton though I do have rough idea of where it is. The reason I’m talking about Nocton is the hugely controversial plans that have been presented to create a ‘super dairy’, which in entails what’s been described as ‘factory farming’ and using a more industrialised American inspired method of milking.

The pros are actually quite sparse to what I’ve found after observing the best publication with knowledge on the subject, which was the Farmers Guardian. I’ve found the owners of the potential site believe the construction of the site would help in ‘reversing the decline in UK milk production.’ I can see where their coming from but celebrity chef Raymond Blanc believes ‘The quality of milk produced so intensively is not as good as milk from grass-fed cows.’ Which makes think twice about the idea that were taking cows out their natural environment and also the welfare implications, it’s being described as if they cows are packed together and took out of the fresh air and slapped into some grey gritty factory.

Also as lecturer and passionate campaigner Debbie Wilson pointed out the company behind the proposed site could be accused of using darker underhanded methods to win public opinion. An example would be how at guest lecture at Lincoln university Debbie pointed out the fact the head of P/R for the company wrote an article for a local magazine stating why the dairy was such a great idea. Seems like you usual slab of P/R biased towards the clients needs. However the twist comes from how the article was credited. Instead of making it clear how the writer was in charged of P/R it failed to mention it and made it seem as if a normal journalist had written it.

The conclusion I think both sides have strong points but if you balance visual pollution against a country in difficult financial times you’ll never get a right answer. Maybe if the plans were reviewed in a manner with suited environmentalists and cause minimum damage to the landscape and ensure the welfare of the cows and produce a strong British product.

Team workingness

Teamwork its essential vital, from comic book superhero teams to super groups. It’s key in everyone’s life and most people have once had to placed in team work situation. It’s all well and good but the question is what you do when conflict and trouble appears?

The question to this seemingly rhetorical question is structure and organisation. Well this is what came across during our lecture today. Well more specifically organising the specific points:

• Contact- From the moment you say hi it’s key to create a strong contact system with your team from giving out contact details in case of emergency or organising meeting for guess what? contact or a better word communication.
• Assigning roles and a purpose- This is about ensuring that this most potential is dripped out the team by assigning roles their comfortable with and basically trying to sum the actual goal your team is trying to achieve. Like for example the production of a high quality magazine.
• Conflict and penalties- It’s natural that conflict will arise in some groups and some cases it could be just or create a better end result if that passion is re-directed re-productively. To help do this it could be key to set rules which could help direct conflict to more a productive conclusion. To do this it would be an idea to set up rules or a forum for people to express their thoughts with the group and let it be expressed in a more productive manner.
• The ‘passenger’ member – It’s a cruel term but I think it may be fair comment to say that in some teams you get one or two members which don’t particularly pull their weight in their time. To combat this the ideas we produced were to offer incentives for participation, i.e. a good reference after the exercise is completed or using contact details to try and find out why their not pulling their weight.

Ok now here’s a little back story about when I was in a tough team work situation and how I solved it and ideas on what I could have done better. Back in college our course group was assigned the task to re-brand the colleges hair and beauty saloon, were given the chance to put our names forward for our preferred positions and work in small groups on different areas of the task, I assigned to design which was pretty awesome, however what the rest of my class didn’t think was awesome was the fact that our project leader was not everyone’s first choice and most thought it was a terrible mistake.

Not before long the project leader was clearly not suited to the task due to her unorganised treatment of our tasks and everyone back to rebel and unproductively complain. Being the quiet kid of the group no one really listened to me so I went someone they would, the most intellectual and liked member of the group and persuaded him to create a structure where each part of the group had an organised plan which worked around each other, in conclusion turned out quite well and everyone got a pat on the back.

So now I’m going to quote Michael Preston-shoot’s ‘towards an anti value frame’ (Houdmill,2007) and how I could have applied to my situation.

1. Respect- If I had tried to promote respect for my team leader maybe people would have a better relationship with each other and things could have turned out even more amazing.
2. Self determination- If I had been more vocal and determined about trying to promote a stronger relationship with our team leader communication would have better and the future of everyone relationship with the project leader would have been stronger.
3. Individualisation- If I shown the group that since we were a team and everybody important in the college was watching that maybe if we put petty complaints aside and work for the greater good.
4. Maximising use of supports in the community- If I had looked outside our group and tried to someone who was used to deal with conflicts in the team somehow it would have salvaged the groups relationship with the project leader.

                       

So I guess everyones know what's been going on in the last fews days

Ok we all know sadly the planned rises in Tution fees has gone through but y'know what ? am I the only one who's see a little more silver lining to this  ?

First of the Goverment are changing the raised the income for which they'll wanting me to pay it back and take it in so such small amounts i'll probaly barely notice it, also in such a leaniant plan I may never pay it back and this debt literally affects nothing like getting a mortage etc..so I see it like the appendix served it's purpose but now deadweight.

Of course the cuts worry me alot because I think education certainly for schools and EMA getters. EMA was a life saver during college. It gave me the chance to study and not stress out so much about finding work and actually concentrate on my studies and argue with the people on my course who didn't get it about how unfair it was for getting money for 'breathing' whilst most of them had achieved jobs through connections, but of course they were some who got a job through going through the interviewees and being well suited. Also schools are quite famous for being victims of cut, in any logical plan shouldn't the Goverment be trying to create a better educated tommorw to deal with the uneducated mitakes of today ?

What's worries me is no media outlet has attacked how the matience system will work, what's happening to maitence loans and grants ? anyone who can answer that will have a niche story. In all the artilces i've read everyone seems to have totally forgotten about it.

On our attack for the whole education doom and gloom subject anyone feel this generation of student protesters could write a book called 'How not to protest', we have the extreme violence we've seen which achiveves nothing but a negative image of violence and being thugs, but at least it's a change from students being drunk layabouts. We just have the people who think shoving thier views down peoples throad and not waiting for a reponse will help their cause (which I experienced first hand when checking out a sit in, in which getting a word in for your views was about as possible as piece of gum not loosing flavour after 15 seconds of chewing), so baiscally that's it it's either extreme tatics and or poorly thought out theatricaility.

Let's just say we need a Skywalker for this ailing rebel cause.

Follow up post- But this time...it's Guardian

Ok before we start to flog my tired of catchphrase..what up my blog reading enthusiasts ?

So if you read my earlier post you’ll see it’s another news report on the effects snow have had on various public services around the good old city of Lincoln. This difference is from the one I did last week that this one I’ve done in the style of the national newspaper The Guardian. To adhere to this I’ve followed done the following things:

1. For my quotes I’ve imbedded them into the copy. An example would as follows- Solicitor Kelly Taylor said "There is no such thing as a free day off to frolic in the snow".
2. The normal wiritng age for a paper is 12, however since The Guardian as is slightly upper end I was able to use slightly more complex vocabulary like ‘procedures’ since the paper’s target audience could be considered slightly more intellectual since their in the ABC1 catergory.
3. In terms of structure the Guardian seems a little more comfortbale with using small paragraphs ranging from two long setences to bigger paragraphs from three to four sentences.
4. I also used digits instead of writing numbers which is consitent with a normal Guardian artilce.
5. However I did think the subject like covering the ST John Ambulance service fit into the niche angle The Guardian tends to look for.

Now for the things which I know aren’t consitent with a run of the mill Guardian artilce.

1. I realise the subject of the artilce is way to local or even for a national paper the term ‘mirco local’ may apply.
2. The length itself my be inconsistent with your standard Guardian artilce as mine only measures upto about 300 words (but I found this was limit before it became a tad overstrecthed) while most Guardian artilces are least 500 words or more.

Snow news- Guardian style- so pun free

Snow reeks havoc with key city services

A local medical charity and other city outlets have been struggling with their work due to the freak weather over the weekend.

The ST John Ambulance charity which provides a medical service alongside the NHShave received over a 100 call outs over this weekend all related to the snow.

The charity has found a sharp increase of call outs especially since the bad weather has hit.

Commissioner Peter Howie said “Were now equipped with snow shovels and spades to get through the snow”

Mr Howie also went to talk about his co-operation with the East Midlands ambulance services. “Were trying to support them in anyway we can but since the snows hit we’ve seen quite an increase in call outs”

Bus service Stagecoach suspended all operations from Wednesday due to sever weather conditions. One bus in bound for Mablethorpe overturned and ended up in a ditch.

Despite difficulties in transport local law firm Langleys have made it clear that workers don’t have the legal right to take a day off if their unable to get in due to the snow. Solicitor Kelly Taylor said "There is no such thing as a free day off to frolic in the snow".

This came about after Lincoln and and Lincolnshire councils reported widepsread absences despite their employees knowing the procedures in place for the event of heavy snow.

Travel has effected the citys education centre. The University of Lincoln was forced to close for five days starting on Wednesday due to harsh weather conditions making travel for staff and students extemely difficult.

All campuses were closed including the on site library and various deadlines was postponed until a later date. However many irate students complain their lack of acess to the library had seriously hampered their studies.

The follow up post

So if you stay tuned for the follow up this’ll explain my earlier post. For those of you who collect Blog-tastic Josh (the comic and blog, joking about the comic thing) we’ve been doing a lot about community media, specifically the local paper the Horncaslte target, due to some insensitive person shaking their dandruff outside our lecture got cancelled so we had to write a news report on Lincoln MP Karl McCartney’s surgery..which was cancelled.

So here’s the breakdown of how I think my report fits in with the Horncastle’s writing style:

1. I’ve used language which is suitable for 12 years and above (a common convention in papers)
2. I’ve copied the quoting style by leading it in by using ‘said:’, this can be seen for the quote from the student president.
3. In terms of length I’ve tried to roughly replicate the length of a common piece in the paper and keeping it between the word length of 150 to 200 words.
4. Despite me not being able to obtain any information from Mr McCartney’s P/R outlets at the time of writing I’ve tried to keep it the language unbiased, especially when I quoted the student president and tried to present a fair report of the event despite a difficult change with it being cancelled.
5. Also to keep to the piece Horncastle conventional I’ve tried to use short paragraphs keep one subject per paragraph and a maximum length of three sentences.

My attempt of writing- Horncastle target style

Students from University of Lincoln planned to bring their concerns about university cuts to MP Karl McCartney’s surgery at City hall this Friday.

The Universities students union organised the march starting on the campus at 4:30pm ending at Karl McCartney’s surgery forum.

The event which was dubbed ‘the tragic death of higher education’ was organised by the Student union to rally Karl McCartney to their cause in preventing proposed cuts the government intend to introduce.

However last minute Mr Mcarntey was forced to cancel his planned surgery.

Chris Charnley president of Lincoln student union said: ‘It’s an attempt avoid his constituents expressing their concern at his support for tripling tuition fees.’

The session has been re-scheduled for Wednesday 8^th December where students plan to peacefully protest at 1pm.

Stayed tuned for the next episode (or being picky the next blog)