Looking to the future: Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg pictured by the River Tyne in Newcastle last month as part of his campaign. Photograph: Copyright acknowledged.

Nick Clegg said his breakfast this morning had consisted of just a banana, a yogurt and a cup of coffee, surely not enough to keep him battling through yet another day of the election campaign...

“My ambition is to lead the next government, so we can have a truly fair system.”...

“For the first time in a generation we’re in an election where it’s really clear that people don’t want to settle for the two old parties: they want something different.”

Clegg prides himself on leading a party that will deliver to the public. He said: “I want policies that people can believe in.”...

Standing up for justice and fairness in Britain isn’t all Clegg’s party is about as he extends these commitments to the wider world. In a bid to bring peace and prosperity to others, Clegg looks to take direct action to prevent human rights abuse in the Middle East...

“There will always be people who want to stop change, but you can be part of something different, something better”... Full interview.

(This story was first published on 4 May 2010 in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper.)

Stripped down: one Newcastle student earned £1,200 in a night at a gentleman’s club. Photograph: Copyright acknowledged.

Two in ten female students in Newcastle would strip to fund their studies. The poll of over 100 people also showed that five in ten would pose in their underwear for money.

The poll also showed that Newcastle students can earn more than £1,000 a night in strip clubs across the city...

“Although I see this job as a stop-gap, I do enjoy it. I like the power trip of taking a guy’s hard earned cash for not much effort.

“My father doesn’t know know what I get up to; he would be disappointed to say the least: to him I will always be his little princess. I don’t intend to carry on once I have found a decent graduate job.”

Another Newcastle student studying business, said: “I learnt to pole dance for a year and met lots of girls who were strippers. I thought it seemed like a good idea...

The students’ union Student Advice Centre (SAC) said they had never been approached by a student who has stripped to fund their university studies but in the eventuality, said they would look into the reasons behind their activity.

A spokesperson for the SAC said: “We would treat every case differently as some people work in gentleman’s clubs because they enjoy it and some because they are desperate... Read more.

(This story was first published in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper, on 4 May 2010.)

... Third world debt can be attributed to various factors, such as colonial exploitation, bad governance, lack of development, adverse terms of trade and growing dependence on assistance and loans.

Photograph: Jim Loring, Tearfund.

Poverty drives indebtedness as an initially weak state lacks the capacity to improve social and economic services in order to drive the economy, and a heavily indebted country is unable to divert much needed resources to key sectors of society...

By reducing the debt burden on struggling African nations, those countries are then better able to provide for their nation’s citizens, with the hope that Africa will become less poor and more developed...

Rather than blaming ‘aid’ for sustaining the underdevelopment of nations in the third world, one should rather look at the unfair international trade rules; enforced repayment of illegitimate, inherited debts; and tax fiddles by multinationals, each taking from third world countries far more than the amount they are receiving in aid... Read more.

(This feature was first published in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper, on 4 May 2010.)

Newcastle University played a key role in getting a third world debt bill passed through Parliament earlier this month.

By approving the so called ‘Vultures Law’, a landmark bill which will protect the poorest countries in the world, the UK has become the first country to ban ‘Third World Debt’ profiteering...

The Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, led by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, is the world’s first law to restrict the ability of ‘Vulture funds’ to sue some of the world’s poorest countries for full repayment of debts that they have bought up cheaply... Read more.

(This story was first published on 26 April 2010 in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper.)

Brazilian criminals abducting victims for short periods of time in order to receive a quick pay off at an ATM machine, also known as “quicknapping”, was our first early warning sign of the danger of being a tourist in Brazil...

Brazil 2009: Sao Paulo street scene. Photograph: Larisa Brown.

... Many of the people I met whilst travelling in places outside of the main cities, untouched by the commercial, capitalist aspects of the first world, were, whilst living extremely primitively, not necessarily poor.

Of course, the term ‘poor’ used here is subjective as it depends upon a personal interpretation of what it actually means to be poor...

However, I had also never experienced such kindness before... Read more.

(This feature was first published as a double-page spread in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper, on 1 February 2010.)

Considering the plethora of well-educated and informed students at Newcastle University, it seems surprising that some of us are apparently ignorant to the plight of sellers of the Big Issue magazine and the impact this magazine has on the lives of those much less fortunate than ourselves.

Photograph: Copyright acknowledged.

... What the Big Issue magazine does is give those people who haven’t had a fair chance at life - whose upbringings have not even come close to anything we have ever imagined - a chance to reinvent themselves. By giving homeless people a job that requires resolve, social skills, and elements of marketing and salesmanship, the magazine offers a skills and job experience platform from which the sellers can hope to progress.

Buying the Big Issue is not the same as giving to charity; in fact it is quite the opposite. You are preventing the need for charity by investing in a business, a business that changes the lives of the people that it employs. Without the magazine, and without its buyers, the future prospects of those living on the streets would be significantly reduced...

Ever walked past a Big Issue seller and thought what is their story? Every person has a different story... Read more.

(This feature was first published in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper, on 7 December 2009.)