1. The Old Firestation is unceremonious with it’s cut-off points.
2. Lecturers are people too.
3. Rayman doesn’t get any easier to play when you’re older.
4. There are no unfunny memes.
5. A dog’s business can earn you money.

Rhett and Link’s recent foray into videos have come from YouTube’s Auto Caption service.

It’s not unlike that video I did a couple of years back, but they do take it that one step further. Well, several. But whatever.

And this place needed Christmasifying up, so why not do it in a funny way?

A story in the Bournemouth Echo has rattled a few cages within the Bournemouth Uni student community thanks to the abhorrent one-sided view of the whole ordeal.

To sum up the story – Winton is going to the dogs or, more accurately, the students. Long-term residents of the suburb just outside the Bournemouth University Talbot Campus have been complaining about all the students making Winton an unpleasant place to live.

Conor Burns (the MP for Bournemouth West) held a meeting for residents to discuss the problem of students in the area, which is great. But it was a closed one, consisting of 15 residents. None of those were students, and BU’s Student’s Union were also denied entrance.

Right. Okay then. I’m not going to get all student rally up in here (we all know how that ended) but it’s time to get the other side of the story seeing as other residents and our MP seem reluctant to.

I live in Winton. I have done for a couple of years now. I’ve got friends who have lived in Winton and Bournemouth in general most of, if not all of, their lives. It is, at it’s furthest point, about a half hour walk to the campus. There’s little wonder, therefore, why students choose to live here. It’s close, it’s cheap and it doesn’t look half bad neither.

My room has a window facing the road, where it’s pretty hard not to see or hear what’s happening on the street. The loudest thing I hear is cars going down the road. The last anti-social thing I saw was the bloke who lives opposite us put the litter from his car in our bin.

Right now we’ve got a dog turd on the pavement just outside of our house. Clearly that’s down to drunken, anti-social dogs coming along and shitting all over the pavement at 3am while your kids are trying to sleep.

Obviously, that’s codswallop, but it’s about as logical. Take Lisa Simpson’s tiger-repelling rock idea. Students (or, as we’re commonly referred to as, youths) are referred to as loud, partying, obnoxious members of society. There’s a problem with anti-social behaviour. So it must be students, and we must clear them away.

I think it’s griped me more simply because our MP didn’t allow any student or anyone related to the Student’s Union in on their meeting. Conor Burns who, when the elections were running, appeared on BU’s beloved Nerve Radio with their Party Political Playlist said himself that “[students] are full citizens of our country” and “are concerned as much as anybody else about crime and anti-social behaviour”. The reasoning behind doing as he did was to avoid “retaliation” which, forgive me if I’m wrong, is just a loaded word for “another opinion”.

Although that gripe is burdened further by the realisation of that it wasn’t just our MP, but the other residents of Winton saying this. The website for Winton – wintonforum.co.uk – couples every mention of the word ‘student’ with words like ‘issues’, ‘problems’ and of all things ‘ghetto’. The comments on the Bournemouth Echo article are worse still. It’s kind of like when old people are casually racist, but not all of them as labelling them all as one thing you saw one time would be wrong, wouldn’t it.

In short, I guess I’m disappointed. Winton’s awesome. We plough a shed-load of money into Bournemouth University who, in turn, use it to improve it’s surrounding areas. Seeing as it’s virtually in Winton, it’s certainly seeing the benefits of students being around it. You might just want to think about that next time some drunken idiot wanders down the high street. If we were all like that, you would have 17,000 people shouting obscenities at your wheelie bin.

1. Nobody can really listen to our radio show when nothing works.
2. Relentless house viewings are annoying.
3. Freelance work sucks.
4. I’m addicted to bargain hunting.
5. Bank robbers are stupid.