Every Day is Election Day

With a blog title like that you’d think that I might be a defeatist Birmingham City or Reading fan, but I don’t mean that Championship at all. I should explain.

This morning in the hotel (we’re still in Slovakia, slowly getting to grips with the needless pedantry of our fellow students’ unions) we noticed a group of youngish men wearing matching red Nike tracksuits. Having had a quick glance at the crest adorning them we learned that the lads were from FK Dukla Banska Bystrica, a club based not too far from here. They have a home game today at 5pm and were here for a team-bonding breakfast before the match. We also learned that the team are currently 8th in the Slovakian Corgon Liga (the local version of the Premier League).

What I found most unusual - almost unnerving - about seeing the team was the fact that they were literally sitting amongst us, without any airs or graces and simply just being. They weren’t being surrounded with dozens of nutritionists, or assistants, or logistics officers; they were standing in the breakfast queue amongst us, queueing up for the same muesli and scrambled eggs as I.

During some of the more tedious seminar sessions earlier in the week I’d been doodling on a pad and paper trying to formulate the starting eleven I’d pick for Manchester United’s UEFA Champions League final against Chelsea in a couple of weeks (I’m still wondering about the merit of Wes Brown at right back). A more obvious juxtaposition you couldn’t get - the United lads will likely be spending the days before the trip to Moscow holed up in the Lowry in Manchester, getting on the most luxury of coaches back and forth to Carrington for training, and having their five-star breakfasts sent to a private refectory. And there won’t be muesli or scrambled egg for them either - the whole breakfast menu will undoubtedly have been carefully cheoreographed by an army of fitness nutritionists days beforehand.

For a minute I really struggled to get my head around the idea of a team in the premier competition of a country’s national sport, aimlessly wandering around a hotel lobby and sipping espressos at a hotel bar. I doubted even the Drogheda United or Cork City squads would be sitting around liable to a torrent of verbal abuse (or worse) if they had to stay somewhere for a few hours pre-match.

Then I had a slight epiphany - of course they would. I had been somewhat hypocritical - before I’d realised that I was going to miss any TV coverage of United (hopefully) winning the league this time tomorrow, I had realised I was going to miss Longford play Westmeath in the first game of the 2008 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.

Perhaps that’s a special touch that the English league is lacking - although the self-styled Greatest Show On Earth™ reaches out to billions worldwide and unifies people across all kinds of devides in ways that only sport can, the amateur locality and everyday integration of gaelic games helps so much to make Ireland so special - and when the weather gets better we get two gripping, emotional championships that shape the Irish summer like no other.

I think that if Longford or Westmeath weren’t sitting out in full open public view in their hotel the morning of the match, we’d all regret it. Maybe that’s something worth bearing in mind while I sit, clad in red and white with worry, watching United climb off their team coach in Russia on Wednesday week.

Love is… lying in a bed in a hotel on top of a mountain (this is very tree-in-the-hole-and-the-hole-in-the-bog-esque, non?!) in Slovakia, watching BBC World News (and more specificially, the Russian Inauguration - Dmitry Medvedev ftw apparently), happy out, clad in our faculty day t-shirts. CommDay for the Y-chromosomed one, Law for das model, and whatever you’re having yourself!

It’s an odd, semi-executive lifestyle we lead sometimes. We’re here in Slovakia, somewhere called Brusno, at the 54^th Board Meeting of the European Students’ Union, and currently – more specifically – at the preliminary Seminar on ‘Equity in Higher Education’ (for ‘equity’ read ‘Soviet-era bitching from suspiciously butch types about how society “just doesn’t want me to succeed”’). Two weeks ago it was Slovenia for a conference on implementing a European Qualifications Framework. I won’t go on – if you’re bored reading this paragraph, you can imagine how bored we are attending the bloody things – but in between we had a UCD Ball, a few bouts of food poisoning, and a couple of other mentionable bits ‘n’ bobs. That said, not to be arrogant, but the movement in Ireland is streets ahead of a lot of the Unions present here, albeit resignation happy in the year that’s been!

Student conferences are odd creatures, particularly international ones. The number of attendees at the last ESU meeting who were actually in classes was one – and she was a secondary school pupil, not a student at all. This time I’d be shocked if there was even ONE person still in classes. Hypocrisy central, this lot. We’re Stakeholders apparently, we of hack student living, out of the classroom/lecture theatre to represent our peers.

Regardless, we’re enjoying ourselves, and the opportunity to see some beautiful parts of Eastern Europe. We drove 5 hours from the airport in Bratislava to get here, and although tedious, we met up with many of our fellow delegates en route and killed the journey with West Wing episodes, laughing at Lynam’s mp3 collection and stopping for ice cream at 1am. One of the lovely folks from Norway bears an uncanny resemblance to our mate Stephen, who Lynam quickly named ‘Fitzy’. Fitzy and Lynam joined us in our room last night for some Primary Lovin’, and Ciara was happy with the Obama result, with Gav and Lynam, the Clintonites, left to ponder the prospects of Obama v. McCain…Brennan reassured them at this point with a rant which probably included something about a fat lady…

“There is an interesting rhetorics between equality and equity…” Really, now? Back to this then. Basically the last day and a half has been spent in this place trying to define ‘equity’ first, and the horrific muddles between ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ that naturally become of a conference where 5 of the 80 people are native Anglophones and even they ­­(we) don’t really understand the difference. And this is while USI, along with maybe NUS-UK and nobody else, are net donors to the European student process. Not to be arrogant, but slow to change and all as we are back home, we are ridiculously progressive in our ideals and practice in comparison to our counterparts here. In Slovenia two weeks ago the other ‘stakeholders’ (why Slovenian teachers’ unions are stakeholders in a National Qualifications Framework For Lifelong Learning we weren’t sure, and still aren’t, a junket and a half on…) sat around in awe at the idea that Ireland, never mind having an NQF of its own, actually has a Minister for Education. Slovenia, it appears, has no Minister for Education but rather a minister for another brief who happens to own three private universities. Our Norweigan friends’ younger brethren from their secondary students’ union, meanwhile, couldn’t get their heads around the idea that someone might not go directly into a bachelors programme once they left high school. Hardly any wonder they left the EEC over some fish and their forests (Reilly is voting No, and Brennan Yes, but more about that later!).

We’re gagging for scandal and news from home about the Cabinet reshuffle, and gasping for gossip via text from home in the form of politics.ie texts, Nickey’s musings from a hotel room in Croker or an idle speculative text from a friend. News about the resignation of Seamus Brennan (no relation!) spread like wild fire last night, and since then we haven’t stopped playing around with cabinet formations in our heads… much like Reilly’s 4-3-1-2 game plan for United in the Champions League Final (Rooney playing in ‘the hole’ with Ronaldo pushing forward alongside Tevez… let me hear an ‘on your own… on your own… on your own…!’). One thing is for sure, Mary Coughlan will get a top ministerial job (our money is on Enterprise, Trade & Employment…) if not Tánaiste, and has Martin and Lenihan hot on her Bundoran-bought heels. Obviously we’re laying serious bets on Education, and Brennan sees Pat Carey figuring somewhere, with Reilly taking a log shot with Willie O’Dea (“he’s an academic”). Reilly also figures Micheal Martin’s time in Enterprise makes him a sure thing for Finance… time will tell!

Anyway. Back to life, back to reality. A speaker from the European secondary schools’ union here just claimed that the reason only 10% of PhD applicants are female, although they make up 70%+ of the undergraduate roll calls, is because there are no female academic role models for them. Ciara is launching into a “do you need to be shown how to do everything?” tirade. Gav’s blunt opinion is that pretty much all positive discrimination is merely an “oxymoronic crock of shit” anyway. Brennan threw her cat amongst the pigeons in an Ainsley Hayes tirade. Fun und games.

Lunch now, more on the cabinet later!

Gav and Ciara