Christine Alsford, Social Affairs Correspondent for ITV Meridian, joined BU’s AimHigher team at a Bournemouth primary school to discuss an increase in the number of people applying to the university.

Her report, which was broadcast on both the lunchtime and evening news bulletins, featured BU ambassadors at Elm Academy, and showed the work the AimHigher programme does with young children to raise aspirations and encourage them to think about going to university.

It came as UCAS figures showed a three per cent rise in the number of people applying for degree courses at Bournemouth University.

Karen Pichlmann, Head of Admissions at BU, told Christine: “It is encouraging for us.

“It is a healthy swing back into the positive area.”

Watch the ITV Meridian report

Professor Keith Brown, director of the National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work at BU, has commented on what compassionate leadership means for health-related care.

In an opinion piece in the Health Service Journal, Professor Brown argues that, with the backdrop of health-related care scandals, “self-leadership holds the key to fostering compassionate organisations.”

He says: “The vast majority come into the professions to make a difference, not to beat people up, to be cruel, or to deprive people of their dignity.”

But he added: “With increasing demands and pressure placed on professionals, staff can easily feel stressed, demoralised and trapped – unable to see the wood for the trees and unable to make the best decisions under pressure.”

Professor Brown suggests that high quality leadership is important to ensure that professionals are able to exercise better professional judgement, and lead in such a way that creates an environment where abuse of any kind is not tolerated.

He says: “It might seem obvious now, but leadership development really does need to occur in the context of health and social care. We are not making or selling widgets but caring for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

“Therefore it is vital to make sure leadership development is relevant and delivered by professionals with sector experience.”

Professor Brown says that the answer is not the development of new strategies and theories, but with ‘self-leadership.’

He states: “Self-leadership focuses on an “inside out” solution involving everyone, not simply the leader by title.

“Self-leadership is about tapping into an innate wisdom, an internal resilience of human potential of knowing; creating perspective when it counts, and reducing the impact of being overwhelmed. It is about professionals with the ability to react with flexibility at those crunch moments, able to judge with wisdom rooted in real-world evidence based practice.”

He concludes by saying that, while there may have been well reported cases of unacceptable care recently, “the vast majority of professionals have a deep desire to make a difference and to care.

“What they need is support and development to help them cope more effectively with the ever-increasing pressures on them.

“Self-leadership that is assessed has been shown to be a real and valuable way to support these staff.”

Find out more about the National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work

Dr Richard Berger, Associate Professor of Media and Education, was on BBC Radio Solent talking about censorship in the media.

Richard gave his reaction to the idea that the media could ‘airbrush’ history, after the BBC cut out scenes in a re-run of an episode of Fawlty Towers.

He told presenter Alex Dyke: “It happens all the time. It’s nothing new. It’s a shame it has happened, but I can understand why it has in this instance.”

He said that there have been some strange reasons why films and TV programmes have been censored – including a 1903 film called Cheese Mites, which showed cheese going mouldy, which was banned following complaints from the cheese industry.

He added that in the 1940s, rules meant that films were not allowed to show two people kissing unless they had at least one foot on the floor or women on a double bed.

He said: “Censorship is always a product of its time. If you look at things which have been censored, it tells you very much about the time in which it was made – which is why we are getting into all this trouble with Fawlty Towers now.”

He said that the scenes which have been cut – which involved Basil Fawlty talking with an army Major – was actually mocking the views that he holds, rather than being offensive.

“[John Cleese and Connie Booth] were young then and intelligent writers and they were mocking their parents’ generation with the character of the Major, so you’re meant to laugh at him.”

He added, however, that he understood why the scene had been cut.

“I don’t think [it should be airbrushed out] but I understand why it has been, in the particular climate which we are now in at the moment – particularly the situation which the BBC has found itself in. I can understand why people are very jittery.

“It doesn’t mean to say that it won’t be shown again in its entirety at a later date.”

You can listen to Richard’s comments on BBC Solent in full here.

An article in The Telegraph said students at Bournemouth University are among the most likely to start searching for graduate jobs before their final year.

The article, by the newspaper’s Digital Education Editor Andrew Marszal, looked at research which found that more than one-in-five students at British universities now look for graduate jobs before their final year of university, compared to just one in 20 students in 2002.

Bournemouth University was placed sixth in the top 10 list of universities where students start searching for jobs before their final year.

The survey, carried out by website graduatejobs.com, found that 47 per cent of students at BU were starting their career search before their final year of university.

Gerry Wyatt, Operations Director at graduate-jobs.com, is quoted in the article as saying: “This new research illustrates that students are becoming more career-minded much earlier in their time at university.”

You can read The Telegraph article here.

Online journalism lecturer at BU Liisa Rohumaa talked to BBC Radio Solent’s Alex Dyke about whether musicals appeal to men.

Liisa, who used to work for industry magazine The Stage, said that there were lots of musicals that appealed to men.

“You can go to Rock of Ages and rock out, or you can go and listen to the great music of Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain – he is the epitome of the cool man.”

She added: “This isn’t high-brow, this is high-drama – just go with the flow.”

Liisa also talked about the success of the current film version of Les Miserables.

“Look out of the window right now – it is dark, it is miserable and [Les Miserables] is talking about how when you’re kicked down, you are going to get up again and you are going to fight, and there are a lot of people in this country at the moment who are feeling downtrodden, are looking forward to their pay packet – some people who don’t even have a pay packet to look forward to – so why not lose yourself in a musical?”

She added: “Musicals are ridiculous, and that’s just what you have to say to yourself – this is ridiculous, I’m going to have a sense of humour, I’m going to find my inner musical and I’m going to absolutely love this.

Alex told Liisa that men are often dragged along to musicals and don’t get them, but Liisa disagreed.

“I think they secretly, secretly do because men love a good melody, they like action, they like drama, they like music and humour as well.”

You can listen to Liisa on BBC Solent in full here.

Dr David McQueen, a politics lecturer at BU, has given his opinion on David Cameron’s speech regarding Britain’s place in the European Union.

The Prime Minister pledged that there would be a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in the next few years, and David McQueen said he dealt well with digs from the opposition in the Prime Minister’s Questions which followed.

Dr McQueen said: “David Cameron’s long awaited and long delayed speech on Europe finally arrived and many have described it as a ‘pivotal’, ‘epoch-defining’ speech.

“It may or may not be that – we will have to wait a few years to know for sure. But I sense it will be.

“It appears to have achieved two things immediately. The text of the speech seems to appeal to both the pro-European and anti-European factions within his party by calling for an in-out referendum whilst signalling a strong desire to stay within a ‘reformed European Union’.

“In fact the message will make the pro-European conservatives very nervous about a ‘gamble’ that the electorate will want to stay in under any circumstances when opinion polls suggest a majority want out.

“But they are likely to be a lot quieter than the rowdy Euro-sceptics have been in recent months. The Lib Dems are clearly unhappy about Cameron’s speech and you only have to watch Nick Clegg’s face in the House of Commons to see that.

“The wild cheering by the bank-bench Tories in Prime Minister’s Questions shows that you underestimate Cameron at your cost.

“He has, in a matter of hours, re-energised his party, put off the many thorny issues of Europe to a date after the next election, shown Labour and the Lib Dems to be out of touch with the UK voting public and made UKIP look faintly irrelevant.

“It’s an astonishing move – a high wire balancing act that may come unstuck, but after yesterday’s PMQs – it looks as if he has pulled it off.

“Ed Miliband put on a brave face and landed a few well aimed digs: ‘He’s been driven to it not by the national interest, but been dragged to it by his party’. However, you sense Cameron’s confidence rising as fires back: ‘We want to reset that relationship. Hasn’t got a clue what he’d do.’

“Worst of all, Milband seemed skewered by the simple choice Cameron gave him: ‘The most basic question of all is do you want a referendum? Yes or no? I do, does he?’ To which Miliband replied: ‘My position is no, we don’t want a referendum’.

“If George Osborne is competent enough to put a little life (and investment) back in the economy before 2015 the Tories could be riding high on Cameron’s promise of ‘a renegotiation and then a referendum’.

While the exact details of that renegotiation are only hinted at it’s clear that Cameron favours a more ‘market-friendly’ Europe. In PMQs he shouted above the yells of approval from his party: ‘We’ve been very clear about what we want to see – change. In a whole series of areas social legislation, employment legislation, environmental legislation where Europe has gone far too far.’

“So the negotiation would seek an end to 48 hour maximum working week, an end to talk of a Financial Transaction Tax (something that could reduce speculation and raise much needed revenues), an end to some of the basic environmental protections that have been passed in Brussels.

He is also holding out the promise of an end to ‘meddling’ by the European Court of Human Rights. All red meat to conservative Daily Mail reading voters. Not so great for those looking for a more progressive European Union.

“There’s a long way to go yet – the German-French axis may upset Cameron’s plans where Labour and the Lib Dems cannot. Voters may decide that Europe is a distraction from the real issues. There are many ifs and buts and winning the 2015 election (the condition for any changes to existing European treaties) is the biggest ‘if’ of all.

“But I suspect Clegg knows that the Lib Dem’s are a busted flush now. Cameron has used them to prop up an unpopular round of savage austerity cuts and to triple the cost of university fees (against Clegg’s signed pledge not to increase them).

“This may seem like yesterday’s news now but wait for the election when voters are reminded constantly of it. The I’m sorry spoof video viewed by over 2 million people will almost certainly be playing on Nick Clegg’s political gravestone in 2015.

“But it may just be that in an adjoining plot Cameron’s speech on Europe will be playing on another headstone – that of Ed Miliband.

“Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg – your move.”

Dr David McQueen is course leader of BA (Hons) Politics and Media at Bournemouth University. You can find out more about the course here