4-5 - The Cambridge Student

Transcription

THURSDAY

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Plenty of book reviews for exam term
The art of cocktails
Wonderful English cooking
CambridgeStudent
The welfare crunch
The
Easter 2008 Issue 1
Counselling Service overloaded
‘More pressure’ on college welfare
Tutors ‘spend less time in the job’
Jonathan Laurence
Assistant Editor
A TCS investigation has found
that student welfare services
in Cambridge are under more
strain than ever before.
Speaking exclusively to The
Cambridge Student, the head
of the University Counselling
Service (UCS) said that record
numbers of students are seeking professional help from the
central body, and told how college based academics responsible for welfare are also facing
massively increased workloads.
If the system
is undermined,
the cost to
students
will be
considerable
“More students than ever are
coming to us for counselling”,
revealed Dr Mark Phippen, who
has run the award winning University service since 1996.
“Our numbers are up by at least
one hundred compared with last
year, which is a very significant
Student welfare services are under
increased pressure, says the head of
the University Counselling Service in
a TCS exclusive
Photograph: James Appleton
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difference.”
1100 students visited the service in 2006-7, along with 230
more staff. The vast majority of
these were self-referrals.
However, the UCS head also
claimed that college system –
where students are allocated to a
‘tutor’ who looks after their welfare – is also struggling to cope
with increased demands.
“Over the years there’s also
been more and more pressure
on college staff”, he said, “and
there’s increasing turnover
among pastoral tutors.
“Ten or twenty years ago it
used to be a respected role that
senior academics would hold.
“Now because of time constraints it tends to be a position
which younger academics will do
for a relatively short while, and
not necessarily be a core part of
their job. I think it’s a shame.”
Summing up the difficulties
facing college based welfare, Dr
Phippen issued a stark warning
for the future.
“If the trend continues, and
the tutorial system is undermined, it will be at considerable
cost to students and the whole
pastoral system in Cambridge.
He added: “It plays a massive role in student welfare, so
I would be very worried if there
are serious problems with it.”
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02|News
News in Brief
RIVER CAM
Motorised Punt Scheme
Sinks
The plans to introduce motorised punts to the River Cam
(See The Cambridge Student
Lent Term Issue 5) have been
scrapped after the application
was withdrawn.
Entrepreneurs Matt Garlick and
Alex Ramsey had initially proposed to ferry tourists in 12seater motorised punts on 30
minute trips from the Mill Pond
to Grantchester.
Cam Conservators, the statutory
navigation authority for the Cam
river, have since introduced a
policy banning motorised boats
from the ‘Upper Cam’.
The plans had caused uproar
amongst local residents concerned about both the noise pollution and the effect on wildlife
and over 1000 people signed a
petition to ban the punts.
RUSSIAN ACADEMY
Professor wins medal
A Cambridge University Professor has won a ‘Grand Gold Medal’
from the Russian Academy of Science.
Professor Simon Franklin, who is
the head of the Department of
Slavonic Studies, has been awarded the ‘Lomonosov Medal’, which
is the Academy’s highest award
for scholarly achievement.
Professor Franklin’s award recognises his “outstanding work on
the ethno-political and cultural
history of Russia and the significant contribution to the study of
early Russian written culture and
early Russian literature has been
recognised for his expertise in
Slavonic Studies.”
The medal is named after Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov,
and has been granted every year
since 1959, for achievements in
the natural sciences and the humanities the Russian Academy of
Sciences.
UNION SOCIETY
Online voting for Union
The Cambridge Union Society is
expecting to move to online voting for its termly elections.
Adam Bott, President Elect, hopes
to “drag the society kicking and
screaming into the 21st century”.
The plans come as part of a raft
of electoral reforms affecting
hustings and campaigning, and
are to be discussed at a Members
Business Meeting next week.
If the proposed changes are successfully established, it is expected that they will come into force
in time for this term’s elections.
The Cambridge Student | 24/04/08
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Union rocked by wave of thefts
Lent Standing Committee criticised for slow response
Matt Horrocks
Deputy News Editor
A series of thefts at the Cambridge
Union Society has prompted concerns over continuing poor security
at its building. Thousands of pounds
worth of electrical equipment have
been stolen, both from Union members and from the Society itself.
Over the past few months at least
two projectors and four laptops are
believed to have been taken, while
a computer in the Union library was
vandalised for parts.
Former Entertainments Officer,
Edit Sipos, had her laptop stolen
at the end of March, having left it
unattended in the library for only a
few minutes, and losing in the process months of dissertation work.
“I would like
to see greater
security”
Edit Sipos
The Union Society
The Union’s ‘open door’ policy
has caused problems
Former Union Ents Officer
Sipos told The Cambridge Student,
“I appreciate that it’s hard for the
Union to secure the building but I
would like to see greater security.”
The Standing Committee, the
Union’s governing body and led by
then-President Lu Wei, responded
to the incidents last term, with a
resolution insisting that all members show their membership card
upon entry. Yet it has been readily
acknowledged that this would be
unenforceable.
Former treasurer Bezhan Salehy
ran for the Presidency, reacting to
the spate of thefts and promising to
drastically improve security. He was
Photograph: Rob Palmer
defeated, but was one of many at
the time who were concerned about
the problems and the apparent lack
of action from the Standing Committee.
There has been a mixed response
from the membership, with some
attacking the slow response of last
term’s administration, while others
have sympathised with the difficulty of securing a building as busy as
the Union’s site on Bridge Street.
It has been suggested that the
committee has been either unwilling, or too short of funds to ade-
quately address the problem. Said
one regular Union attendee, “They
barely have enough money to repaint the walls, let alone pay for a
decent security system.”
Reports that a set of keys went
missing in February have exacerbated the feelings that the Union
was failing to address the concerns
due to the apathy of its elected officials.
But the Union replied this week
that it has installed new locks,
changed the codes on the doors and
is arranging for other unspecified
“access and supervisory security
systems to be put in place”.
The long interval between the alleged loss of the keys and the locks
being changed has led to further
criticism of the Standing Committee
for being too slow in responding to
the thefts.
The Union has rejected the suggestion that the “security overhaul”
was due to any keys being taken
and has repeated its advice to all
members using the building not to
leave their valuables unattended at
any time.
Jack Gillett cleared of sexual assault charges
Owen Kennedy
Subeditor
A Trinity student has been cleared
of sexual assault in a trial that lasted just three days.
It was alleged that Jack Gillett,
a 22-year-old graduate student in
Physics, invited a fellow student to
his room on June 4 last year, and
drank two shots of absinthe before
attempting to remove her T-shirt,
pinning her to the floor and simulating sexual intercourse.
Mr. Gillett admitted that he had
drunk four pints of beer as well as
the absinthe on the night of the
incident, but maintained that he
would never have done anything the
woman was uncomfortable with.
He told the court that while he
had taken off his accuser’s top, she
had not attempted to stop him,
and that she only objected when
he tried to remove her trousers, at
which point he stopped straight
away.
“To me, it seemed like there was
a line she was not willing to cross
and that was fine by me,” he was
quoted in the Telegraph as saying.
The court heard that Mr Gillett
first met his accuser at a function
organised by the university in De-
cember 2006, and that she later
text messaged and telephoned him
to discuss going out for a drink. He
told police that he thought then
“It seemed like
there was a line
she was not
willing to cross
and that was
fine by me “
that she had a crush on him.
The woman did not make any
allegations until five months after
the event, and Gillett was arrested
in November 2007, as reported in
The Cambridge Student (TCS) at the
time.
“I felt very guilty about going
to police. I didn’t want Jack to get
into trouble but I needed to do
something to help me get over it
and pursuing it helped,” the Telegraph reported her as saying.
She was not in court to hear the
verdict. She left when the jury retired, after having spent much of
the morning in tears.
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News|03
Caius DoS on child porn charges
Languages fellow faces court over paedophilic image allegations
Alex Coke-Woods
Deputy News Editor
A director of studies from Gonville
and Caius has been charged with 18
counts of possessing, making and
distributing child pornography.
Dr Nicholas Hammond is accused of two counts of distributing
indecent photographs of children
and a further 15 counts of making
indecent images. He has also been
charged with possessing more than
1,600 photographs and 22 pornographic videos.
The defendant, who teaches in
the department of Medieval and
Modern Languages (MML), entered
no plea at his hearing at Cambridge
Magistrates’ Court on April 3rd.
18
Image: BillT
The number
of charges
against Dr
Hammond
The cost for the replacement of the stolen grave plaques is estimated at £10,000
If Dr Hammond is found guilty at Cambridge Crown Court he could face up to three years is jail
In a further hearing on May 15th,
he will be committed to the Crown
Court, where, if found guilty, he
could be sentenced to up to three
years in prison.
Among the charges facing Dr
Hammond are two counts of making images that have been ranked
as ‘level five’ on the Copine Scale
used to judge the severity of such
offences. ‘Level five’ images constitute the most extreme form of
child pornography on the scale and
may depict either bestiality or chil-
dren subject to pain and torture.
Delia Matthews of the Crown
Prosecution Service told the court
that some of the images Dr Hammond is charged with distributing
depicted children across a wide
age-range. Some of the children
involved were as old as 16, while
others were as young as babies, she
said.
“These are specimen charges to
cover the range and include a number of charges of distribution,” Ms
Matthews said.
Dr Hammond, 44, was first arrested at his home address on
June 14th 2007 and was charged
on March 18th of this year. The offences in question are alleged to
have taken place between December 2006 and June 2007.
A spokesperson for the university confirmed that Gonville and
Caius College “was notified” when
Dr Hammond was first arrested almost a year ago, adding that it was
“at the college’s discretion” what
action to take when fellows or staff
are charged with such serious offences.
Sir Christopher Hum, Master of
Gonville and Caius, said that the
college has “nothing to say on the
matter,” but did confirm that Dr
Hammond was currently taking
a “leave of absence from the college.”
Dr Hammond is a popular figure
with undergraduates, and his ap-
pearance in court has left many
shocked and upset. One Gonville
and Caius linguist, who preferred
to remain anonymous, said that
Dr Hammond had not been abandoned by his students.
“He was and remains a very wellliked supervisor,” he said.
Dr Hammond is a specialist
in seventeenth-century French
thought and theatre, and is the
editor of the Cambridge Companion to Pascal.
Quiz launched to dispel uni money myths
Catherine Watts
News Editor
Cambridge University has introduced an interactive ‘Cambridge
Admissions Test’ on its Undergraduate Admissions homepage.
Designed to dispel commonlybelieved myths that Cambridge is
a more expensive place to attend
than other UK universities, the
online quiz invites prospective
students to test their knowledge
of the finanical cost of studying
and living here.
Questions include basics such
as the cost of the yearly tuition
fees, which, it is emphasised, are
are the same as the majority of
other universities in the country.
They then cover the extent to
which Cambridge can offer financial support to its students and
the job prospects of graduates,
both of which are better than is
widely supposed.
If a wrong answer is chosen,
prospective students are prompted to find the right one with
comments such as “We’re more
generous than that…” , and every correct answer receives an
explanatory note as to how much
Cambridge can benefit its students
Director of Undergraduate Ad-
missions, Dr Geoff Parks told The
Cambridge Student:
“This quiz is in some respects
an experiment, an attempt to get
across some important information in a different and, we hope,
fun way.
“Obviously we hope it will increase awareness of the real costs
of being a student at Cambridge
and the financial support available, and thus combat the myth
that Cambridge is more expensive
than other universities.
And, he added, ‘We have also
found that the quiz is quite a useful training aid for our own staff
and student ambassadors!”
Ryan Day, who graduated from King’s College in 2007, talked to
The Cambridge Student
about the support he
received during his time
at Cambridge, both
from his college and
the university:
“In practical terms there isn’t
anything that I have needed that
the college hasn’t offered to provide in some way.
“Financially I have tuition paid
by the government, and a student
loan to cover basic expenses. My
accommodation costs of £1000 a
term are covered by non repay-
able
bursaries granted
discretionally by the college and
the university more generally.
Ultimately this means a student from a relatively poor background such as mine ends up
paying nothing for a world class
education”, he said.
The Cambridge Student |24/04/08
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04|News
‘Some of them barely kno
Whilst numbers of students visiting
the counselling service are at record
levels, pressure on the tutorial system
is also mounting. Jonathan Laurence
looks into whether colleges are
managing to keep up.
A
lthough the pastoral care available
is widely held to
be more extensive
than that of any
other institution
in the country excluding Oxford,
The Cambridge Student (TCS) has
learnt that there is still widespread
concern about the state of college
welfare.
The tutorial system, under which
dons help students in their colleges
with financial and administrative
problems, and provide “advice and
support” in times of personal difficulty, has come in for some criticism.
As part of our investigation,
we made freedom of information
requests to all 31 colleges asking
them to hand over any internal reviews of their welfare provision. TCS
can exclusively reveal that only one
college has conducted a full review
of the system in the past five years.
The college’s report, which says
there are “several important deficiencies in the existing system”,
claims that:
‘high maintenance’ needs are common.”
Dr Mark Wormald, chair of the
senior tutors committee, pointed
out that the report’s findings would
not necessarily be applicable to
other colleges, whilst the Head of
Counselling said that “generally we
find that undergraduates do know
who their tutors are, even if graduates don’t”.
TCS has decided not to name the
college in question, since it was the
only one to disclose a report; it has
since introduced measures to improve record keeping and tutorial
contact.
However, Andrea Walko, CUSU
Welfare Officer, said that there was
still a real problem with students
not knowing enough about how the
tutorial system works. “When you
get told about the tutors in freshers’ week”, she said, “you barely remember it because there’s so much
other stuff going on – and by the
time you actually have a problem,
you’ve forgotten all about who tutors are.
•“The responsibilities of tutors do
‘Some
students don’t
know what the
system is for ‘
not seem to be clear, or to have
been formalised.”
•“Many
students have reported
that they have never seen
their tutors, and others claim
to have been unaware of their
tutors’ identity/existence (the
latter claims are borne out by
evidence from other sources,
including the Counselling Service).”
•“Paper trails throughout the sys-
tem are inadequate and often
non existent...much critical information about individual students can only be derived from
a rich oral tradition within the
College.”
The section of the review concludes by saying: “We have a ‘low
maintenance’ model of tutorial provision for a student body in which
Andrea Walko
CUSU Welfare
Officer
“Because they sometimes don’t
know what the system is for, students can’t give feedback on it either,” she commented.
Walko told TCS that she thought
that the system was good “in principle”, but that “it definitely has
its problems”. One of the biggest
flaws, she said, was a lack of standardisation across colleges.
“The system is so college spe-
Sources of support
Cambridge students have lots
of options available to them if
they fall into difficulties. If you
find that things are getting on
top of you, you can:
•
Go to the University Counselling Service. Although
students currently seeking
professional help will probably face a wait, the UCS
always takes individual circumstances into account.
• Visit a CUSU caseworker. An-
drea Walko, Welfare Officer,
and Peter Coulthard, responsible for Academic Affairs,
are available to see students
one-to-one.
• See your college chaplain or
dean. They are always happy
to see students of any faith,
or none.
•
Phone Linkline, who can
be contacted between the
hours of 7pm and 7am in
confidence on:
01223 367575
•
Visit your college nurse, or
counsellor, if there is one.
They can help with anxiety,
sleeplessness, or any stress
related ailment.
cific and individual dependent,” she
said. “Some tutors are amazing, and
go way beyond the call of duty, but
others barely know who their students are.
“One of the things that CUSU has
been campaigning for is more guidance for new tutors, just as on the
academic side we’ve been asking for
more to prepare new supervisors.”
But TCS has found that new tutors are allowed to work with minimal training, despite pressure from
the students’ union.
Documents released under the
Freedom of Information Act show
that one college’s training programme consists of giving new pastoral staff a “web based document”
and “an oral discussion with the senior tutor”; others send academics
on a University course which lasts
just two and a half hours before giving them responsibility for student
welfare.
No college provided evidence
of a more substantial training
scheme than this, although Dr Mark
Wormald, Senior Tutor at Pembroke,
said that staff at his college generally felt “well briefed”, whilst other
welfare heads pointed out that
other University courses are available. “I haven’t done the research
that you’ve done”, admitted the senior welfare officer, “though I don’t
recognise the view that we don’t
prepare them”.
But Peter Coulthard, student
union Academic Affairs officer, said
that tutors had contacted him “on a
couple of occasions” to check basic
pieces of information.
“One tutor was giving students
wrong information on how many
times they could degrade”, he
claimed, “and another phoned me to
ask about exam appeals and the correct process to follow.”
He told TCS: “we need to make
tutors fully aware of welfare and academic procedures so that they can
advise students accordingly.”
Dr Mark Phippen, head of the
counselling service, said that colleges’ measures are “simply not
enough” for academics responsible
for giving students advice and support, blaming time constraints for
the lack of structured guidance.
“Tutors are busy people under a
lot of pressure, and there are logistical problems with getting them all
in one place to do the training. Still,
even if they’re experienced academics with guidance from a senior tutor, a two and a half hour course really doesn’t sound like a great deal,”
Dr Phippen said.
“I know tutors aren’t counsellors,
and they’re in a different position,
but even so, the amount of training
is still not enough,” he added.
Aside from issues with tutor
training, several JCR officers raised
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News|05
ow who their students are’
News comment
‘They don’t get CUSU says...
approachable
Fletcher
people to work Mark
CUSU President
as tutors in my So many aspects of the student
experience in Cambridge are world
college’
Ex-JCR President
Students in Cambridge have a variety
of sources of advice and support.
Picture posed by model.
Photograph: Sven Palys
concern about the selection procedure for new tutors. “They don’t
make any effort to get approachable people to work as tutors”, alleged a former JCR president, who
asked not to be named because his
relationship with his college is ongoing. Criticizing the tutors at his
college for being “completely out
of touch with students”, he asked
“Who would go to them with a
problem?”
A current JCR vice-President,
who also asked to remain anonymous to protect relations with his
When can i go and see my tutor?
Tutors should be the first port of call for students facing difficulties. They are responsible for helping new
arrivals to their college settle in, and provide ongoing support to those assigned to them.
You can go and see your tutor if you have a problem with:
•
Your accommodation – tutors are the people best equipped to sort out any difficulties with where
you’re living, whether it’s inside college or out.
•
Your finances – they can advise you on money matters, and often obtain assistance for you from
the college or the University in the case of genuine hardship. If you’re eligible, they can get you a
bursary, from the Newton Trust or other relevant schemes.
•
Your academic work – Directors of Studies are normally the first point of contact, but if you do fall
in to problems, they can help to manage things for you. In more serious cases, they can help with
complaints, exams, and degrading. Whether things are going well or badly, though, tutors will always
keep an eye on how things are going with your work. They can also give career advice.
•
Your health – they’re the basic contact for advice on all matters relating to this. They can liaise with
hospitals and GPs on your behalf. If you have special needs, or a disability, then they can provide
practical guidance and support.
•
Your general well-being – whatever happens, they will be there to provide advice and support.
And remember, if, for whatever reason, you don’t get on with your tutor, you can always see another one,
or the senior tutor. Colleges are there to help you get the best out of the system.
college’s governing body, echoed
these complaints.
He said, “the fellows at my college are very well meaning, and
want the best for students – to the
extent of seeming over-protective. I
have to admit they’re sometimes out
of step with students’ concerns.”
“I wouldn’t say that no-one
would go to their tutors, though,”
he added.
Despite issues with the way the
current system is enforced, no-one
contacted by TCS thought that it
should be scrapped. “It has the potential to be the best in Britain”,
said Welfare Officer Andrea Walko.
“In fact, most of the time it is the
best system, and there are so many
good tutors out there. Colleges just
need to publicise it as much as they
can to ensure it always reaches the
people who need it,” she said.
Stronger still was the support
from Dr Wormald, who has updated
the college’s guide for new tutors
and introduced new checks to make
sure that pastoral staff keep regular
contact with students.
“Not all students will find their
tutors a bosom pal, but we’ve never had any difficulty whatsoever
finding sensitive and approachable
people”, he said, in an exclusive interview.
“I can’t speak for other colleges,
but at Pembroke we have a good mix
of people working as tutors, young
and old. And if students don’t get on
with their tutor, they can go and see
another one.”
Dr Wormald confirmed to TCS that
the tutorial system is here to stay.
“As academic and financial pressures continue to challenge students
within an environment as intense
as Cambridge, we’re going to need
to provide the same level of support
that we do.
“It’s going to need to be a team
effort, and we’ll need everyone –
college nurses, counsellors, the UCS
- working together.
“Tutors have a hugely important
role, and we will make sure they
continue to do the best for students
in the future.”
class, and the vast majority of
students don’t have a significant
problem during their time here.
However, there are students who
have a difficult time, and for those
students the support system that
we have in place needs to be robust. Yet the tutorial system that
is in place is often much stronger
in theory than it is in practice,
with individuals rather than institutions bearing responsibility.
Theoretically, a major benefit
of the collegiate system in which
we live is that it helps create
academic and welfare-based communities centred on the Colleges.
Students live and work in close
proximity to those principally
responsible for their welfare: their
tutors.
Many tutors work hard for their
students, but too many prioritise
other aspects of their lives in
Cambridge over their welfare responsibilities. Too few are assisted
and monitored by their respective
colleges.
Like many aspects of the Cambridge system, it is based around
the motivation and abilities of
individuals rather than strength
of institutions. It makes the welfare support students receive an
unfortunate lottery.
Colleges have a responsibility to provide adequate welfare
support for their members, but
students often end up requiring
the assistance of CUSU Caseworkers to solve their problems.
More effort needs to be made
to ensure that every student receives the support that they need
at every level of the University.
There have been more students in recent years seeking
help and assistance, but this is
not necessarily surprising.
Across society awareness of
mental illnesses has become
a lot more prevalent in recent
years, which, while not being
specific to Cambridge, does
place an additional strain on
the tutorial system.
We shouldn’t conclude
that Cambridge students have
more problems than those at
any other university, but the
collegiate system is far from
perfect.
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06|News
MML students to pay more
Linguists to pay three times more for year abroad study
CUSU will oppose the university proposals
Owen Kennedy
Subeditor
A motion condemning the University’s decision to charge MML
students £1500 on their year
abroad is to be proposed at the
next CUSU Council meeting.
Under the old tuition fees system, students paid half the standard yearly fee – approximately
£500. With the introduction of
the £3000-a-year top-up fees,
this has increased to just over
£1500, and many students have
questioned where the extra money is going.
The motion is being seconded
by two CUSU sabbatical officers:
Pete Coulthard (Academic Affairs) and Charlotte Richer (Access). It notes that since students
receive only four hours of supervisions during this period, they
are effectively paying £383.75
per hour of teaching.
Richer told TCS: “Students
don’t feel like they’re getting a
satisfactory return on the money
that they’re paying. There needs
to be much greater clarity across
the board: in where tuition fees
and university resources more
generally are being spent.
The Cambridge Student (TCS)
has also obtained letters under
the Freedom of Information Act
between Vice-Chancellor Alison
Richard and Siân Cooke, a King’s
linguist and the proposer of the
motion.
Cooke questioned whether or
not the threefold increase was
necessary given that the only
money the University only needs
the money for “the running of
the Year Abroad Office and longdistance supervision on the Year
Abroad project”. She asked for
“clarification as to why fees must
necessarily be so high”, since
it was not clear what the extra
money was needed for.
Another issue, Cooke pointed out, was that it was unclear
whether students were still
counted as members of the faculty while they were abroad. They
are not eligible for Vacation Study
Grants, which Cooke argued was
unfair given that they were paying fees.
In her reply, Ms Richard emphasised that the higher fees
were required to plug a persistent
funding gap, which she said “was
causing all universities to slide
deeper into deficit as they tried
to maintain the standard of education and student numbers.”
She argued that the higher
year abroad fees were needed as
part of this.
“The half fee for one year
should be seen in the context of
the total fee paid over the whole
length of the course,” the ViceChancellor said.
She continued: “The short answer to the question about where
the money will go is that it is already committed against expenditure that we have always faced,
but without a full measure of in-
come to cover it.”
However, this argument seems
to have met with little sympathy
from the students affected by the
fee increase.
On hearing the Vice-Chancellor’s response, Tom Gillie, reading
French and Italian at Churchill,
said: “It might be that they need
the money, but I don’t think that
the money they get from us is going to be enough to meet any significant shortfall.
“We’re just paying £1500 to
take the Cambridge name abroad.
That’s not justified.”
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have you got a story? email [email protected]
Obituary
Dr. Jonathan Spencer
1960-2008
Members of Cambridge University
have paid tribute to leading Cambridge scientist who was killed in
a car crash.
Dr Jonathan Spencer, a Chemistry Director of Studies and tutor at St John’s College, died
when his car spun into a field
after a collision involving three
other cars.
The accident happened on
Sunday April 6th on Cambridge
Road, near the junction with the
A1303, at about 4pm.
None of the other drivers were
hurt.
Dr Spencer, a 47-year-old father from Lowfields, Little Eversden, was an academic in the University Chemistry Department,
conducting research into antibiotics to be used in treatments
for fatal diseases including MRSA
and Tuberculosis.
Professor Steven Ley, BP Professor of Chemistry and Head of
Organic Chemistry, said:
“Joe was a much respected colleague who was making pioneering advances in our understanding of how antibiotic molecules
are created naturally in biologi-
cal systems.
“His work was aimed at producing a new range of antibiotic
molecules, including those with
the potential to combat MRSA
and other superbugs. In the
last few years he had truly established a reputation as a world
leader in his field.
“He will be greatly missed by
all who knew him.”
Dr Spencer graduated with a
BSc from the University of Southampton in 1984, moving to London as a Research Fellow in 1990
after completing his PhD.
In 1992 he was awarded a
prestigious NATO Research Fellowship, and became a Cambridge
University Lecturer in 1999, promoted to Reader in 2004.
A Chemistry Fellow at St John’s
College since 1995, he became a
Director of Studies in Chemistry
in 2000.
St John’s College President Dr
Mark Nicholls said:
“Joe was very much a college man. As a tutor he was very
much involved in the educational
and pastoral role of the college.
We will miss him greatly.”
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
News|07
Anglia Ruskin student suspended
for speaking out on YouTube
Matt Horrocks
Deputy News Editor
A student from ARU was suspended after she posted a video on
YouTube criticising the university.
Naomi Sugai received national
press attention after the minuteand-a-half long clip on the popular video-sharing website angered
Anglia Ruskin’s officials.
Miss Sugai, who is studying for
an MA in management, attacked
the university for falsely advertising its courses in her video entitled ‘Problems at ARU?’.
She claimed that the university
promised flexible module choices,
which proved to be unavailable.
She has instead found that her
modules have been compulsory.
Miss Sugai finishes the video
with an appeal to fellow ARU students who have been similarly affected to respond with their own
video comments.
Following her suspension, the
Oxford Brookes graduate spoke
out against the university’s “attempt to limit freedom of speech”,
and defended her previous comments, saying, “I’ve paid good
money for this course and I’m not
getting what was promised in the
prospectus.”
In the video, which has since
been viewed more than five thousand times, she also criticised them
for publishing lecture timetables
that were both late and incorrect.
There were apparently problems
with the timings, professors and
locations listed
The university denied that it
had suspended the 24 year-old
graduate student because of the
video itself.
Instead it said its response was
due to “defamatory” comments
that she and others had added below the video.
She was also advised not to enter the campus grounds. Steven
Bennett, the university’s secretary, told her:
“Should you attend the campus during your suspension, security staff have been instructed to
remove you and, if necessary, to
seek assistance from the police”.
She was further warned that the
university was taking legal advice
and was subsequently contacted
by their solicitors.
Although the university had
initially asked for the video to be
removed entirely, it remains on
the site.
Pro vice chancellor of the business school, Professor Martin
Reynolds, requested that she remove the video, arguing that “its
contents are potentially distressing for other Anglia Ruskin students”.
Miss Sugai has since removed
the defamatory comments after a
lengthy and detailed conversation
with ARU’s solicitors and, having
sent a letter of apology to the university, has been readmitted.
Steven Bennett was quoted in
The Cambridge News saying “we
suspended Miss Sugai following the
publication of defamatory statements about the vice chancellor
and Anglia Ruskin University more
generally on a website.
“As the statements have now
been removed, the suspension
has been lifted with immediate
effect.”
ARU advised her in future to
make complaints through the official channels or the Student
Union.
However, Miss Sugai only posted
the video out of frustration after
failing to achieve anything through
making formal complaints.
Miss Sugai has since set up a
Facebrook group to provide a forum for similarly agreived ARU
students to voice their concerns.
She now intends to finish her
course, but has emphasised that
she hopes the university will take
note of her comments and act
upon them.
Will the new Cam-bridge wobble?
Engineers search for people to
bounce on their bridge
Jennifer Shaw
Deputy News Editor
Image: Cambridge Newspapers
Engineers are looking for 50 budding volunteers who don’t mind
getting their feet wet. Their task:
testing Cambridge’s newest bridge.
Riverside bridge, which has
cost £3 million to build and has
been under construction since last
April, will be open to pedestrians
and bikes from June of this year.
The steel bridge, which is the
first to be opened in Cambridge
since the Elizabeth Way Bridge in
1971, will link the St Andrew’s
Road with Riverside, next to the
Museum of Technology.
But engineers need to test the
structure in advance of its opening to avoid the “wobbly bridge”
phenomenon which famously affected the Millennium Bridge over
the Thames.
Project manager Mike Davies
said: “This is an exclusive chance
to be among the first members of
the public to use the new bridge.
“Before opening the bridge to
the public it is necessary to undertake specialist vibration testing.
The culmination of the testing
involves 50 people walking across
the bridge for a two to three hour
period while the mass dampers on
the bridge are ‘tuned’. Specialist
engineers are coming over from
Germany to do the tests - and
we’re confident that no one will
fall in the water.”
Davies also added that free refreshments and a souvenir would
be given to volunteers as an incentive.
“Volunteers should be reasonably fit and active and be available
during the working day - retired
people, students, home-makers,
unemployed, or interested people
who can take time off work”.
But a 4th Year Engineer at Magdalene confirmed there was very
little chance of falling in the river
during the testing day: “Although
the tests may dampen their footsteps, the chance of getting wet
feet is very slim. If it weren’t for
my exams, I’d be on that bridge
jumping around!” he added.
The testing date has yet to be
confirmed but is likely to take
place on either Wednesday 30th
April or Thursday 8th May.
Anyone who would like to take
part in the testing should contact
Mr Davies at [email protected].
The Riverside Bridge needs testing before it can be put to use
CambridgeStudent
Applications to [email protected]
Feel like editing?
Deadline extrended until 4th May.
Visit www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/apply to find out more
MICHAELMAS
The
Your year in Cambridge
The Cambridge Student is running
a photography competition!
The winner will receive two gold wristbands into
the Wyvern’s garden party + a queue jump and
free entry for the CUSU Oasis night at Fez with DJ
Sammy on Suicide Sunday, where you’ll get a free
bottle of champagne.
Curious?
Send us a photo that best sums up yout year in
Cambridge - and the best ones will get printed in
the newspaper. Please include a brief note along
with your photo saying who you are, what the picture is of, and why it sums up your year.
The deadline is 1st June
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
News|09
Lib Dem leader former CUCA member
N. Clegg found on old records
Current CUCA President invites the
MP to rejoin the Tory society
Jennifer Shaw
Deputy News Editor
Nick Clegg’s student life came back
to haunt him yet again last week
when it was revealed that during
his time at Cambridge he was a
member of the Tory society.
The Lib Dem party leader’s former loyalties were outed by fellow
Robinson Alumnus and Conservative MP Greg Hands who made the
discovery whilst sifting through
past membership details of the
Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA).
Hands’ suspicions were raised
when he found an “N Clegg” on
the 1986-87 membership list.
Having checked the college records, Hands could confirm that
no other students at the college
had shared the Lib Dem leader’s
name.
Incoming CUCA chairman Mike
Morley has since written to Clegg,
inviting him to renew his membership, reminding him of the
perks of such a position:
“As a member you would benefit from reduced-price tickets to
our social events and would once
again be part of the most active
political society in Cambridge”.
But Clegg has refuted claims
that he was ever a member of the
society. His spokeswoman said:
“As far as he’s concerned he never
signed up. I don’t know if someone else signed him up.”
Chairman of the Cambridge
Students Liberal Democrats (CSLD)
Duncan Crowe told The Cambridge
Student (TCS) the news would
have little effect on their society:
“I cannot say what changes,
if any, his political views went
through between being a member
of CUCA in the 80s and turning
down the Tories in the 90s but the
change, if there was one, seems to
have stuck.”
“If I doubted at all his liberal
credentials today I would never
have voted for him to be the
leader of the UK’s liberal party”,
Crowe added.
The discovery comes at a time
when other aspects of Clegg’s student life have recently hit the
headlines, having admitted in an
interview with GQ magazine last
month that he had slept with
“no more than 30” women before
meeting his wife, Miriam.
Ex-CUSU President takes over NUS
Jennifer Shaw
Deputy News Editor
Former CUSU president Wes Streeting has won a sweeping victory to
become the new president of the
National Union of Students.
Streeting, who was CUSU
president from 2004-5, won the
NUS presidency by a comfortable
margin, bagging 496 of the 962
votes.
The election came the day after the shock result of the NUS
annual conference in Blackpool
where plans for major internal reforms of the Union were rejected.
The changes, which were strongly
backed by Streeting, missed ratification by 25 votes.
In a historic decision, the NUS
also voted to refocus their efforts
from campaigning for a ban on
tuition fees to ensuring the tuition fee cap is not lifted when it
is reviewed in 2009.
Daniel Randall, a far-left candidate who also stood for presi-
dency criticized the decision:
“It’s a sell-out position.
“Forty years after the student
movement changed the world, it’s
like the NUS leadership has given
up”.
‘This has been
about changing
students’
lives and
reaching out to
students’
But Streeting has confirmed
he plans to push forward the internal structure reforms, which
would require calling two extraordinary conferences. He claims
the reforms would put NUS in a
better position to campaign for
student’s rights over the tuition
fee row:
“If we leave it any longer we
will find ourselves in the middle
of the 2009 fees review talking
about ourselves rather than the
students we are here to represent, and I will not let that happen,” he said.
“The key thing that should
have come out of this conference
is policies and issues and campaigns that will change students’
lives,” he added.
“This has all been about changing students’ lives and reaching
out to students who are disaffected and detached from their
NUS.”
Streeting, a Labour student,
also issued a challenge to his
hard-left opposition during the
conference:
“Every single year you boo
me”, he said. “I couldn’t care
less. Bring it on!”
Streeting will replace current
president Gemma Tumelty in July
of this year.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
10|Bursting The Bubble
Thursday 17th
Six men are found guilty of raising
money for terrorism in the UK and
inciting terrorism overseas. The
convictions are based upon speeches the men made at a mosque at
Regent’s Park, London during the
November of 2004. The men, who
had denied the charges, received
prison sentences of between two
and four and a half years.
Friday 18th
Pope Benedict XVI addresses the UN
in New York at the end of his weeklong tour of the USA. The leader
of the worldwide Catholic Church
called on the member states of the
global assembly to work together
to tackle global crises and human
rights abuses around the world.
Saturday 19th
Zimbabwean electoral officials begin the process of recounting votes
cast in 23 constituencies in the
Presidential elections held three
weeks ago, on March 29th. Fears
of vote-rigging are rife, as current
President Robert Mugabe continues
to delay announcing the results of
the poll, which many believe he
has lost.
Sunday 20th
More than 80 men die in violent
clashes between Islamist insurgents and government troops in
the Somalian capital, Mogadishu.
The Somalian government is fighting alongside Ethiopian troops
in an attempt to expel the remnants of a sharia courts movement
banned in the capital in 2006.
Monday 21st
Spain dispatches a frigate to the
Gulf in a bid to tackle Somalian
pirates, who have seized a Spanish tuna-fishing vessel. Pirates
are demanding a ransom for the
26 Spanish crewmen of the fishing boat. Piracy is rife off the
Somalian coast, despite the presence of large numbers of western
naval vessels in the Gulf.
Tuesday 22nd
Iraq’s Muslims are urged to support
al-Qaeda in an audio message posted by the terrorist organisation’s
second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri. The message was posted on
an Islamist website in response to
questions compiled by a number of
such sites across the Internet.
Wednesday 23rd
Denmark has evacuated staff
from its embassies in Afghanistan and Algeria after a terror
threat. Denmark’s foreign minister, Per Stig Moeller, said Danish
embassies in other cities could
also be evacuated. “I can certainly not say that they are the
last two embassies [to be evacuated],” he said.
Nepal Maoists claiming victory
Photo: AristeInconnu-Back
World News
Monarchy to be abolished
Calls for party to renounce violence
Jennifer Shaw
Deputy News Editor
The Communist Party of Nepal are
headed for a sure-fire election victory in the country after latest poll
results show they have already won
a majority of seats in parliament.
The Maoist group of former rebels have surprised opponents by
winning at least 120 of 240 seats
distributed in the first- past- thepost system after the election held
on the 10th April, results showed
on Tuesday.
The party’s leader Pushpa Kamal
Dahal, who prefers to be known
by his war title, Prachanda, has
already declared his intention to
carry through with the abolition of
the 240-year long monarchy.
But Nepal’s current monarch,
King Gyanendra has denied rumours
that he will be forced into exile in
India following the victory.
In a statement released on Monday he declared the reports to be
“totally unfabricated and unfounded” but did not state whether he
intended to step down voluntarily.
There are hopes the election will
reinforce a peace deal established
in 2006, which ended ten years of
violent civil war between the former rebels and their political opponents. The US amongst other
countries officially regard the Maoist party as a terrorist organization
and two years ago Prachanda was
still wanted by Interpol for his violent activities.
Although the Maoist party, now
known as the Communist Party
of Nepal, is sure to be the single
largest party, they are unlikely to
win an overall majority and it is
still unclear which parties will be
willing to join them in a coalition.
A spokesman for a leading opposition party, The Nepali Congress,
has called for the Maoists to abandon the violent tactics they had
used in the past:
“The Maoists will have to make
the government and they will lead
it. We will accept their government
whether we join their coalition or
not,” said senior Nepali Congress
leader Shekhar Koirala .
“They must renounce the politics of violence and intimidation,”
he added.
“The land they had seized must
be returned and their Young Communist League must be controlled,”
he said.
The support of the Nepali Congress is far from certain, however,
with new accusations emerging
that the Maoists had threatened
voters and forced 22 opposition
supporters out of their homes.
The result of the 335 seats
elected through proportional representation are still expected but
unofficial result s show the Maoists
have a 30% lead.
Anti-Western protests across China
Chinese angry at perceived media bias against their country
Imogen Hagarty
Outraged Chinese protesters have
been taking to the streets in anger
at perceived negative Western attitudes to the 2008 Bejing Olympics.
The protests are a reaction to numerous demonstrations in favour of
Tibetan independence, particularly
those in London and Paris, as the
Olympic relay makes its way across
the globe. The Chinese government
has appealed for calm.
Many Chinese people feel their
pride has been wounded by allegedly biased anti-Chinese coverage
of the events in the Western media,
particularly by CNN and the BBC.
Protests have not just been confined to Chinese cities, although
Beijing, Hefei, Kunming, Wuhan
and Qingdao have all been scenes
of angry demonstrations. Paris,
Los Angeles, Washington DC, London and Manchester have also witnessed protests involving hundreds
or even thousands of people at a
time.
They come in the wake of statements from UN Secretary General,
Ban Ki-moon and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy that they will not
attend the Olympic opening ceremony in Bejing. Chinese-French
relations have continued to deteriorate since Paris city hall gave honorary citizenship to the Dalai Lama
on Monday. Many of the protests
were conducted outside branches of
the French supermarker, Carrefour.
Qin Chen, student at Gonville
and Caius College, was involved in
organising a rally on 19th April in
London against what she and other
peaceful demonstrators see as media bias against China.
“The Olympics is about bridging
differences with a shared passion
for sport. People should not just
use and abuse it for convenient political purposes,” she commented.
“I would not blame anyone
for expressing their own political
views, but grabbing the torch or
attacking a girl in a wheelchair, as
seen in Paris, is not the right way
to do it.
“When a mainstream media
agency actively promotes it or even
fails to condemn such behaviour, it
should really consider what sort of
message it is sending to the British
general public.”
Beibei Du, student at St. Catharine’s College, explains her view on
the reason for these counter-protests. “Chinese people see violence
against the torchbearers as an attempt by pro-Tibet bandwagonjumpers to humiliate China,” she
said.
According to Ms Du, few Chinese
people feel that demonstrations
and boycotting of the Olympics
are an effective way to bring about
change in their country.
“China’s main concern is economic growth- the most effective
method to make the Chinese Communist Party do anything about its
human rights would be trade sanctions.
“Unfortunately, most countries
are only willing to give lip service
to the human rights issue; most
would not sacrifice having China as
a trade partner,” she concluded.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Bursting The Bubble|11
Cargo of death set for Zimbabwe
Controversial vessel with a hold full of weapons told ‘stay away’ by African ports
gowouldnotbecome“politicised.”
“Thisisnormaltradeinmilitary
productsbetweenthetwocountries.
Therelevantcontractwassignedlast
yearandhasnothingtodowiththe
situationinZimbabwe,”shesaidin
Beijing,onTuesday.
But many consider the Chinese
arms shipment to be the potential
sparkthatcouldsetthetinderboxof
Zimbabweanpoliticsalight.
The leader of Zimbabwe’s MovementforDemocraticChange(MDC),
MorganTsvangirai,hasalsosaidthat
hebelievesthat,byprovidingarms
to Robert Mugabe, the Chinese regime is prolonging the three-week
electoraldeadlockinwhichtheMDC
saystenofitsmembershavediedas
aresultofpoliticalviolence.
“I have nothing against the
Chinese, but I do have something
againstthewaytheyarearmingthe
regimeinZimbabwewithwarweapons with which our people will be
repressed,” Mr Tsvangirai told Germany’sDeutschlandfunkradio.
The MDC, which claims to have
beaten current President Robert
Mugabe in the disputed presidentialelectionsofMarch29th,added
inastatementonTuesday:“Those
weaponswerenotgoingtobeused
on mosquitoes, but clearly meant
tobutcherinnocentcivilianswhose
only crime is rejecting dictatorship
andvotingchange.”
On Sunday, MDC general secretary,TendaiBiti,declaredthethings
werenowsobadinZimbabwethatit
thesituationcouldbedescribedas
oneof“war.”Butifso,itisa“war”
thattheweaponsonboardtheChinesevessel,theAnYueJiang,may
yetbekeptfrom.
Originallyintendingtounloadits
deadly cargo in the South African
port of Durban, the An Yue Jiang,
was forced to move on elsewhere
on Friday, after the South African
TransportandAlliedWorkersUnion
refusedtotakesomuchasasingle
crateofarmsfromshiptoshore.
SailingaroundtheAfricancoast
inanincreasingly desperate bid to
findaportpreparedtooffloadthe
weapons,theshipwasthenrefused
entry into the territorial waters of
MozambiqueonSaturday.
On Monday, Angola also warned
the Chinese ship not to approach
its coastline. Zambia, Zimbabwe’s
neighbor to the north, has been
urgingotherstatesintheregionnot
toaccepttheshiporitscargointo
theirports.
The ship may now be forced to
returntoChina,theChineseforeign
ministryhassaid.
“As Zimbabwe could not receive
thecargoasscheduled,ChinaOcean
Shipping Corp had to give up the
Durbanportandisnowconsidering
carryingbackthiscargo,”aministry
spokeswomansaidonTuesday.
OnWednesday,theBritishPrime
Minister, Gordon Brown, said that,
he would be responding to the attempted arms deal between China
and Zimbabwe by pressing for a
widerarmsembargotobeenforced
againsttheAfricancountry.
“Because of what has happened
in South Africa... we will promote
proposalsforanembargoonallarms
toZimbabwe,”hesaid.
Austria
Thief through the mail box
Europe / UK
English suffer ‘Euro-Whiff’
Russia
Stabbed drunk sleeps it off
England
Man hypnotises self for surgery
Wales
Darth Vader attacks Welsh Jedis
TheheadquartersofAustria’srulingpartyhasbeenburgledbya
man who must have crawled in
through the letter-box, a party
officialhassaid.
The thief, who stole laptops,
cash and mobile phones, could
have only gained entry through
a35x35cmpostflapinthefront
dooraccordingtoaspokeswomanfortheSocialDemocrats.
“Itissuchatinydoorforpost
and newspapers, he must have
obviouslybeenextremelysmall,”
shetoldReuters.
Thetinythiefisstillatlarge.
Terriblesmellsafflictinghundreds
ofnosesinEnglandandWaleslast
weekhavebeenblamedonindustrial and agricultural stink waftingacrosstheChannel.
TheMetOffice,whichreceived
hundredsofcallsaboutthepong,
has dubbed the smell ‘EuroWhiff.’
Officials say that the stink
probablyoriginatedfromagriculturalorindustrialworksinparts
ofBelgium,HollandorGermany.
The not-so-sweet smell of Europe has been variously likened
tosulphourandmanure.
ARussianmanwassooutofitafteranightofheavydrinkingthat
hefailedtonoticeasix-inchknife
bladestuckinhisback-untilhis
wife and pointed it out the next
morning.
YuriLyalin,53,hadtakenabus
home,hadagoodnight’ssleepand
hadeatenhisbreakfast,beforehis
wifenoticedtheknifehandlestickingoutofhisback.
He was rushed to hospital, but
doctorscouldfindnoseriousvital
organ damage. The drinking partnerwhostabbedMrLyalinwillnow
facetrial.
A Sussex hypnotist was so confidentofhisownmesmerisingabilitiesthathechosetoundergosurgerywithoutananaesthetic.
Alex Lenkei, 61, who has been
a registered hypnotist for over 40
years,hypnotisedhimselftowithstandthepainofan83-minuteoperationonhisrighthand.
Hesaidthathewasawareofeverythingthatwasgoingonaround
him,butthathefeltnopainatall.
“Atonestageahammerandchisel
wasusedaswellasasurgicalsaw,
but I felt no pain,” he told the
BBC.
A man who dressed himself as
DarthVaderhasbeenchargedwith
attackingaStarWarsfan,whohad
foundedaJedichapelinnorthwest
Wales.
ArwelHughesdressedhimselfin
ablackbinbagandattackedBarneyJonesofAngelseywithametal
crutch,shouting:“DarthVader!”Mr
Hugheshaddrunka10litreboxof
winebeforemakingtheattack.
Initiallylateforhiscourthearing,awarrantforMrHughes’sarrest was issued by District Judge
AndrewShaw,whoquipped:“Ihope
theforcewillsoonbewithhim.”
Alex Coke-Woods
International News Editor
A Chinese ship carrying a cargo of
weapons bound for Zimbabwe has
spentthepastweekbeingbattered
byastormofinternationalcriticism
directedagainstChinaanditslinks
withrepressiveAfricanregimes.
Theship’scargoofthreemillion
roundsofammunitionforassaultrifles,3,000mortarroundsand1,500
rocket-propelled grenades was first
dispatchedtoHararebytheBeijing
ministry of defence on April 1st,
threedaysafterthedisputedZimbabweanelection.
‘These
weapons
weren’t going
to be used on
mosquitos’
The shipment has added to the
international debate surrounding
China’s growing economic and diplomaticpresenceinAfrica,ormore
particularlyitslinkswithrepressive
regimes.Beijinghasalreadycomein
for heavy criticism over its role in
furthering human rights abuses in
Sudan,whereChinaisbothamajor
supplier of arms and an important
buyerofoil.
TheChinesegovernmenthasdefendedthearmsshipmenttoZimbabwe,claimingthatthecargo,carried
by the state-owned China Ocean
Shipping Corp, was nothing other
thannormaltradingactivity.China’s
foreignministryspokeswomanJiang
Yusaidthatshehopedthearmscar-
Chinese Weapons Ship
A Chinese Ocean Shipping Corp (Cosco)
vessel like this one may have to return
home without delivering its cargo
Photograph: darinmarshall
Mad World
Fez on a Sunday
come to the
Oasis
In proud association with
£3 Entry in advance
9pm till 3am
Cambridge University
Students’ Union
Ents
www.cusuents.com
Cambridge’s newest night out is now
running every Sunday at The Fez Club.
Playing the best Indie and Electro
Anthems coupled with the cheapest
drinks makes it the only place to be on
a Sunday Night.
For more information please contact
Si Burdus, the CUSU Ents manager
on [email protected] or
simply
visit www.cusuents.com for
more details.
Pre-Tickets are available from College
REps for only £3 and this gives you
queue jump and guarantees entry!!!
The Wyverns
Drinks Menu
Special Events
Include
Shots £1
27/04/08 - The Wyverns
Garden Party Launch
Bottle Beer £1.50
VS Flavours £1.50
Vodka mixer £2
Double Vodka
Shark £3
04/05/08 - Caesarian
Sunday;
the official after
party
15/06/08 - Suicide
Sunday
featuring ‘DJ Sammy’
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Comment|13
Three cheers for Two Jags
You have more to thank former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott for than you think
Daniel
Heap
Fitzwilliam
‘W
He was willing
to venture
onto ground
where other
politicians
would never
have dared to
tread
he provides a human, if ever so
slightly alarming, face to British
politics.
And at least John Prescott is
interesting. In a political world
filled with personality-less Ed
Millibands and Jaqui Smiths, he is
refreshingly off-message and uncompromising. An ardent trade
unionist, he’s a relic from a prior
political age, when politics was
an exciting battle of opposing
ideas.
The sad death of backbench
battleaxe Gwyneth Dunwoody,
and the imminent retirement of
Anne Widdecombe and the “Beast
of Bolsover” Dennis Skinner signals the death of that kind of politics. He was more competent in
government than his critics make
Image: Dan Strange
henever I go
to Mr Chu’s
in Hull, my
favourite
Chinese
restaurant
in the whole world . . . I could eat
my way through the entire menu”,
“I could sup a whole tin of Carnation condensed milk, just for the
taste”.
Yes, we all had a bit of a laugh
at the quotes filling the Sunday
pages when John Prescott went
public with his long-running fight
with, amongst other things, bulimia. Throughout his 40-year career in politics he has been the
butt of jokes about his weight and
aggressive political style, providing an endless stream of material
for satirical programmes like Have
I Got News For You? and Bremner,
Bird and Fortune.
He’s been pilloried in the press
for the scuffle with a protester at
the 2001 election, an affair with
his secretary, the infamous croquet match and his long residence
(at the taxpayer’s expense) at the
plush Dorneywood estate. And
who could forget his shaky com-
mand of the English language, including such gems as “The green
belt is a Labour achievement, and
we mean to build on it,” and “It’s
great to be back on terra cotta”?
Admittedly, not exactly a
blemish free political career, but
in more ways than you think, he
has contributed a great deal to
the country in his time in office.
The decision to reveal his bulimia should be applauded. Its obviously something he has struggled with for many years, and it
must have taken some guts, even
for the usually forthright former
Deputy PM to tell the world about
it. Most people consider it to
be a problems which just afflicts
young women, and his decision
will encourage other men who
would otherwise have been too
embarassed to talk about it to
seek help.
His willingness to venture onto
ground other politicians would
never dare to tread, admitting
to having a problem like bulimia
and hitting back when he was attacked, helped show us that politicians are real people, and, as the
Tories’ Iain Dale has said, helped
dispel the notion that politicians
are “supremely confident and
outgoing people who wouldn’t
recognise shyness and self doubt
if they hit them in the face”. In
being flawed, and admitting it,
out: In his early appointment in
charge of transport, he concluded
some difficult and complicated
negotiations over the railways
and the Channel Tunnel
During his ten years as number two to Tony Blair, he helped
mediate the long-running dispute between the former and current Prime Ministers, and acted
as a bridge between the socialist
grassroots of the party, and its
New Labour leadership.
He was chosen as Deputy PM
for a reason; to bridge the two
parts of the party and to give the
government a common touch. He’s
done all that, and given us a few
laughs along the way. What else
could we have asked for?
Daniel Heap is TCS Comment
Editor and Fitzwilliam JCR VP.
Our hereditary mockery
If the Diana inquiry has taught us anything, it’s that the Royals are all as bad as each other
Robert
Stagg
Emmanuel
W
e (or should
that be “us”?)
republicans
stick together.
I’m one, and I
suspect Justice
Scott Baker is too. Try this wonderfully pithy excerpt from his appeal to the inquest’s jury:
No-one except you and I and, I
think, the gentleman in the public gallery with ‘Diana’ and ‘Dodi’
painted on his forehead has sat
through every word of evidence.
He wasn’t alluding to Mohammed Al-Fayed, and it was gallant
of him not to.
Journalists have weathered
away enough keys on the typewriter telling we the herd, the
taxpayer, that the whole charade
is costing us £3 million, or more,
and lamenting that it could all be
spent on schools and hospitals.
I confess to being rather impressed by the lengths our judicial system will go to in order to
prove a serial conspiracy theorist
and fantasist wrong.
Before the Taxpayer’s Alliance
got their underwear coiled, it was
said that one couldn’t put a price
on justice.
One probably could attach a
figure to the Diana memorabilia
industry, and such an investigation might be worth pursuit. It
certainly would be if it helped to
strangle the absurd and latently
dangerous ‘affection’ people are
assumed to have for Diana Spencer.
It does seem likely, though,
that any public affection for her
supposed “rock”, Paul Burrell,
will probably evaporate, which is
some compensation.
A morally disgusting individual for whom the phrase ‘“ash-
in” is a vocation, who advertises
cheap wine under the tagline “I
wouldn’t give my princess just
anything, and I won’t give American ladies just anything either”,
and who is currently featuring in
that apogee of enlightened television ‘Trust Me…I’m A Holiday
Rep’, it transpires that he has lied
again.
This time the falsehood was
exposed and censured by a senior
judge. The first two words of his
latest televisual venture don’t
ring all that true.
The perceptible hardening of
public opinion toward the whole
ghastly fairytale might soon settle on the ‘Princess’ herself.
Her purportedly luminous presence now looks rather 1980s and
manipulative, which, of course, it
always was.
Those
doe-trapped-in-thewoods eyes look a sliver more
predatorial and needy these days,
though they always were too.
Glen Newey, erstwhile scourge
of the Althorp Madonna, put it
rather well when sniping at the
“breathless sophomorist columnists” who “continue to pant over
her ability to walk and talk at the
same time”.
Those doetrapped-inthe -woods
eyes look a
sliver more
predatorial
I am glad to say that this
soufflé won’t rise twice. From
the dwindling of Earl Spencer’s
theme park to the over-flogged
‘celebration’ of his sister’s life
at Wembley Stadium last year,
such servile admiration is on the
wane.
Meanwhile, “those poor boys”,
Harry and William, are being
used as a bloodbank for the
decoratedly anaemic Windsor
bloodline. The child sacrifice and
caged existence of this fawning
and fawned-over family continues unabated, free from all but
the most timid of criticism.
The looming prospect of a
bat-eared mammal who talks to
plants becoming the hereditary
leader of our country has not
been questioned nearly enough.
You can take the Diana from
the royals, it seems, but her influence will persist as long as
it is permitted to. Republicans
of the world unite – you have
nothing to lose but your peerages.
Robert Stagg is a 1st year English student and blogs at www.
robertstag.blogspot.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
14|Comment
Food for thought
As the west focuses on climate change, a more pressing crisis has emerged in the third world
Ting
Lau
Fitzwilliam
T
Assuming consumer countries
can afford to buy, will the consumers in producer countries be spared
the effect of increasing prices? One
can safely expect shortages in producer countries too, as exports accelerate to take advantage of higher prices and eventually outpace
production. Producing countries
will need to enact rules to reserve
supplies for the local population to
I think this is a valuable lesson
that we can extrapolate to the current problems. Therefore because
one side is skewed to seeing climate change as the most important
problem to solve, it is easy to forget
the bigger socio-political context.
The food crisis illustrates this very
clearly as a direct example of misunderstanding the framework of
development and lack of foresight.
On the other hand, unintended
consequences go both ways. There
is a silver lining to the food crisis. It
has now focused the world’s attention on a very real age-old problem
plaguing less developed nations,
hopefully forcing higher level discussions and more rigorous appraisal of industrial and economic development models which necessitate
trade-offs against the environment
or socio-cultural fabric of nations.
It is likely also to lead to scientific
advances in food production.
As the resources of nations are
diverted to enhance food security, there is likely to be delayed
implementation of infrastructure
and industrial development but
we should view this as a valuable
restructuring and rebalancing of
development priorities. After all,
which nation can progress on an
empty stomach?
CambridgeStudent
MAYW
The
We have a
perfect storm
with both
sides pulling
in the wrong
direction
curb their own national inflation
and preserve social stability. There
is also the risk of black markets and
hoarding.
The food crisis is an example of
the law of unintended consequences as the world pursues globalisation and economic development
through rapid industrialisation.
The resulting increase in consumption of almost all types of resources
with attendant climatic changes
are directly contributory to the imbalance of food supplies.
Is this the end of cheap food?
Can we afford to wait for free market economics to move the situation towards equilibrium? If one
takes the contrarian view that in
fact markets have a tendency to
move towards disequilibrium, and
this is the natural order of things,
the scenario today is worrying in
the extreme.
Some would argue that there is
a need for intervention to balance
production and consumption by
the UN. At the U8 summit in March
last year, Paul Collier made his argument to the group of student activists and researchers over how the
whole framework of development
has been viewed wrongly and that
the way we view the problem is crucial to the way we solve it.
Photo: spisharam
raditionally, the problem of food was never
about scarcity. It was
always about distribution. First-world countries such as the USA,
Canada and Australia were almost
always way ahead in production
whereas geopolitical flash points like
Darfur, or natural disaster crossroads
like Bangladesh, somehow kept finding themselves at the edge, teetering
near the abyss of mass starvation.
Those were the traditional problems.
Now it is the other way.
There is a real problem of looming food shortages around the
world. Simple economic theory says
price changes go hand in hand with
changes in demand and supply; increased demand leads to increased
production and supply which eventually moderates prices. Excellent.
Except that this time the food crisis may be a bit more complicated.
We have, for once, a perfect storm,
with both sides of the equation
synergistically pulling in the same
and wrong direction.
The people who will be most
badly affected are those in poor
and developing countries. Already,
food riots from Haiti to Indonesia to
the Philippines are causing increasing political instability. Producing
countries may at first glance appear to be the main beneficiaries,
being able to sell their harvests at
ever higher prices.
Send us an email with your name, college and phone number, indicating
what section you’re interested in writing for, to [email protected]
EK
Contribut E
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Comment|15
Revolution from below
African workers hold the key to lifting the continent out of poverty and corruption
Ed Maltby
T
St John’s
wo days after the polls
closed in the recent
Zimbabwean elections,
a Chinese ship, set sail
for South Africa, carrying 77 tonnes of weapons bound for Robert Mugabe’s
Zanu-PF party. When the ship
reached the port of Durban, however, dockworkers led by the South
African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) took action and
refused to unload the ship.
Sprite, a member of SATAWU in
Durban, spoke to UK- based socialists Workers’ Liberty: “We realised
that this ship was full of weapons
– it was in the newspapers and on
television. We knew that the Zimbabweans had just had their elections... It was clear to us that these
weapons would be used to put down
the democratic opposition.
Following rumours that the ship
may be bound for another port
elsewhere on the continent, worker
activists are preparing to organise
union opposition to the ship’s arrival in docks across Africa.
This event is of dual significance. Firstly, it is a crucial battle
in the fight for a democratic Zimbabwe, and we should extend our support to the workers who are putting
themselves on the line.
Secondly, it should serve to illu-
minate a loophole in the approach
of campaigns on African issues in
Britain. Liberal campaigners in the
West systematically ignore the organised working class as the principle motor of social change in Africa.
The Make Poverty History campaign
and the related debates, for example, focussed on lobbying the governments of the G8 for change. As
has been amply demonstrated, this
merely resulted in a shower of greenwash from Brown.
As Zimbabwean socialist Briggs
Bomba remarked at the time in an
interview with Workers’ Liberty,
“Blair’s plan covers only a very few
countries. It will not deal with the
factors that prevent Africa from developing... And the condition for
even limited debt cancellation is
more structural adjustment, more
privatisation, more sweating the
workers and peasants”.
The agency of African workers was overlooked in the Western
liberal mainstream even when the
question of corrupt African regimes
arose – the debate was couched in
terms of whether rich countries
should punish corrupt African governments with economic sanctions.
The notion that perhaps the social
justice movement should help Africans organise to overthrow their
corrupt elites, the notion of unions
as a force for change – these were
absent from the debate.
The African trade union movement is massive – the international
trade union federation ICFTU estimates 25 million unionised workers
in 45 African countries. They have
a long history of fighting for political freedoms as well as on economic
demands. In South Africa the
union federation COSATU – whose
massive strength was the deciding
factor in the fight against apartheid
called a two million-strong general
strike against the ANC’s privatisation agenda in 2001 and against job
losses in 2005. This in the face of
shocking police violence – in June
2007, striking hospital staff were
attacked in Durban with plastic
bullets and stun grenades.
The West
ignores the
working class
as the principle
motor of social
change
Here is the force that will fight
government corruption, war, poverty and IMF-enforced ‘restructuring’ in Africa. The working class,
organised and militant, is the
only force in African society that
can consistently be relied upon to
fight for democracy and justice. It
is politically independent of corrupt elites. It is a thousand times
stronger than Eurocentric boycott
campaigns or the woefully inad-
equate Fairtrade foundation. And
yet the social justice movement,
not least in Cambridge, appears to
be wilfully ignorant of the African
workers’ movement, its strength, its
progressive character. They seem to
be rather more comfortable putting
their faith in Bono, or in striking
radical postures whilst delivering
petitions to a government that simply is not listening and is plainly
fundamentally opposed to justice
for Africa.
This is madness, but it’s not
hard to see why both African and
Western governments, along with
certain NGOs like Oxfam who are
visibly in New Labour’s political
pocket, encourage this perverse
misapprehension.
Social justice campaigners must
work towards practical solidarity work with African workers and
recognise them as the only agency
with both the power and inclination to fight injustice in Africa.
Ed Maltby is a third year MML
student.
A happy fight to the death
The battle for the Democratic nomination may be bloody, but it has its advantages
Pete
Jefferys
Pembroke
A lot of ink has been spilt in
recent weeks on how the titanic,
screeching bloodbath between
Clinton and Obama will blight all
chances of putting a Democrat in
the White House. The mudslinging
and bitching, or so the argument
goes, will turn off voters and give
John McCain a clear shot at bribing the electorate with his “I was in
‘nam” appeal.
What these arguments fail to
recognise, of course, is that this
particular cockfight has persuaded
thousands of activists onto the
streets, given huge publicity and
name recognition to the democrat
candidates and brought left-wing
politics into the homes of millions
of Americans. No bad thing.
The pure spite flying across
the two camps can however seem
hugely surprising to us in a country where the political divides are
often blurred and where we rarely
see two candidates from the same
party locked in a fight to the political death.
Indeed, the fact that Obama and
Clinton are from the same party is
something that often beggars belief. If we are to believe the character portraits of Obama provided
by his rival camp and vice versa,
then we must accept that one is
an incapable junior with no clear
policy messages – all style and no
substance - and that the other is
a systematically lying, power hun-
gry school mistress warped by the
Washington machine.
On this front, both sides of the
debate are as bad as each other.
Some “Obamatites” (though not
the candidate himself) are culpable
of using language that is as close to
sexist as is possible without actually ordering Hillary into the kitchen.
They say that the New York senator
reminds them of the bossy, selfimportant headmistress from their
schooldays, criticise her dress sense
as “drab” and describe her tears of
frustration and fatigue as nothing
but the Machiavellian schemes of
an old war horse.
Clinton’s camp are hardly blameless on this front either. Geraldine
Ferraro, who attributed Obama’s
success to his ethnicity, was forced
to resign but similar comments
made by the nominee’s husband,
ex-President Bill, are unlikely to result in his ejection from the Clinton
campaign.
These joustings are provocative
and often unnecessarily cruel but
this does not entail that they are
damaging to the democrats’ overall
chances. Each primary, especially
those in key states such as Florida
and Pennsylvania, has given huge
amounts of publicity to Obama and
Clinton with televised debates, million dollar ad campaigns and the
generation of grass roots support
systems.
Whoever emerges as the democrat nominee will do so with a
bloodied nose, but this is valuable
campaign experience. John McCain
emerged as the republican candidate after a rather muted struggle,
he may not be prepared for the
firestorm that will surely come his
way once the real drama plays out
in the autumn.
Some polls have suggested that
the contest has split the party - for
instance a percentage of Clinton
supporters claim they will not vote
Obama should he win the nomination. This extreme partisanship is
likely to dissipate however once the
full threat of a third term for the
republicans becomes apparent and
the eventual nominee receives the
endorsement of their rival.
The Democrats are blessed to
have two candidates of such merit, tenacity and with widespread
appeal. The American people are
equally blessed in having front
row seats to this enthralling battle
of political wills; I think it may be
time to emigrate.
Pete Jefferys is a first year Philosopher
Big Picture
The Cam on a summer’s Night
To kick off this term, we at TCS bring
you something new: the ‘Big Picture’.
Photograph: James Appleton
|16-17
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18|Editorial
The
CambridgeStudent
Your Letters
Volume 10 Issue 18
Old Examination Hall, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF
Tel: 01223 761685
Take
care of
yourselves
Exam term is now upon us, bringing
with it the hermit-style existence embodied by long hours in the library.
While cramming the past year’s notes,
it is possible for any student to get
caught up in exam fever, forgetting
their own personal welfare in the process.
It is disheartening, therefore, that
an investigation by The Cambridge
Student this week has highlighted
several inadequacies in the tutorial
system. It is an undeniable fact that
students studying for any Cambridge
Tripos need a source of structured welfare support, regardless of the nature
of their course, and the obvious solution to this is the provision of pastoral
assistance by academic staff.
Sadly, some tutors are just not sufficiently prepared for the task of addressing students’ welfare problems.
A review conducted at one college
described how the responsibilities of
tutors are often unclear, leading to
confusion among students. This is no
surprise.
Some individual cases are more worrying, however, with several students
reporting that they know nothing
about their tutor. Others may simply
feel uncomfortable discussing welfare
matters with their tutor. In some isolated cases, students may think that
their tutor will not understand their
concerns, or treat the matter insensitively. The obvious solution in these
cases is the University Counselling Service, which is already overstretched.
Seeking welfare help is ultimately a
matter of individual choice. There are
undoubtedly a significant proportion
of students who are very comfortable
addressing their problems with tutors,
and feel that this totally fulfils their
welfare needs.
However, it is essential that the minority as well as the majority are catered
for, whether this is achieved through increased training for tutors or extra provision of professional welfare staff.
As Cambridge’s students knuckle
down to revision, we can only hope is
that those who need welfare help find
that which will fit their needs.
This is our last edition as TCS editors. We’ve had a fantastic term and
worked with some awesome people.
We’d like to thank everyone who has
read and contirbuted to TCS this term,
and wish our successors the best of
luck.
Puzzles
Across
1) Obscure clique are becoming more
and more esoteric. (11)
7) Have a dram of this on Scottish island. (3)
9) Does this royal gives elaborately
styled house as bounty? (5,4)
10) Collar somewhere to display badges
on a coat. (5)
11) Waspish cult member? (6)
12) Reinfect mad and delirious person.
(8)
14) What English hope to do to Middle
East region by force? (6)
16) Smoked beef and pasta stirred
around edge of bowl. (8)
19) Sounds like jobs on the council for
senior gentlemen. (8)
20) Uses energy looking for Hungarian
in the wrong states. (6)
22) Overfill to almost planetary proportions. (8)
24) Hatch a muddled and incomplete
plan to steal blueprint. (6)
27) Steals from prisons. (5)
29) Break and then mend crude article
of faith. (9)
30/28D) Repetitive about ability to
dance (3,3)
31) Novel way to get a lot more than
forty winks? (3,3,5)
Down
1) Need about twenty five sheets of paper. (7)
2) Studies part of woodwind instrument
among the grass. (5)
3) Enjoyment I get from two trains that
don’t quite go round, but up and down.
Different types of ‘state’
Dear Sir and Madam,
The findings of last term’s TCS
(Access Investigation, Vol 10 Issue
17) really do not come of a surprise. I am of course, referring to
the proportionately large discrepancy between the academic performance of those students from
private, comprehensive and grammar schools and those students
from Further Education Colleges. A
point that has been so neglected in
considering this discrepancy is the
significant difference between the
institutions that are so frequently
pushed under the umbrella term of
‘state’ schools.
FE colleges function upon the
basis of independent study. They
are often quite relaxed with regards to monitoring the progress
of students and their academic
performances.
This is not to insinuate that
there is no overarching care within
FE colleges, but it becomes the
responsibility of the student, and
not the teaching staff to achieve
their grades. This may be a positive thing, encouraging independent study often heavily facilitates the type of studying that is
required in university education.
However, it often has an adverse
effect. If there is no motivation to
capitalise upon to begin with, how
1
do students prompt themselves to
achieve alone?
In terms of academic achievement in Oxbridge there still remain many flaws within the system. Cambridge would like to
admit ‘bright students, regardless
of their background’. Yet, the type
of background and the education a
student has been exposed to pre18 plays such a fundamental role
in further academic development.
I am not suggesting special treatment of students from FE colleges,
but rather a consideration of their
pre-18 education.
Emma Harrison
Emmanuel College
Corrections
tions
&
Clarifica-
The pull-quote attributed to Richard Braude on page 3 for Vol 10
Issue 19 (“I’d like to congratulate
Fletcher”) should have been attributed to Basit Kirmani.
The Cambridge Student endeavours to be as accurate as possible in its reporting. It is possible
for inadvertent errors to creep
in and we are very happy to issue corrections. Please e-mail
us at [email protected].
The Team
Editors Amy Blackburn and Sven Palys [email protected] (9)
4) Company in New England have circular pyramid as logo. (4)
5) Mixing mace and rice probably won’t
produce a pleasant type of this food
which you can find in
4 down.
(3,5)
6) What the New York to London line is
made from. (5)
7) Can ruined harp with a broken string
produce this music? (3)
8) Book a calm but troubled man before
greeting. (7)
13) Girl who sounds like she copies other’s drawings. (5)
15) Literary character who leaves others
hanging? (5)
17) Did they do the roof at number 10?
(9)
18) Small tooth which is almost exactly
the same as another one. (8)
19) Use this in old lacing trick to produce poison. (7)
21) Peace atlas? (4,3)
23) Tries differently in this exam. (5)
25) Invest in finished and backward political union. (5)
26) Even without the heat, Indian capital still produces fine food. (4)
28) See 30 across
Thursday Editor Ryan Roark [email protected] Assistant
Editor Jonathan Laurence [email protected] Subeditor
Owen Kennedy [email protected] News Editor Catherine
Watts [email protected] Deputy News Editors Carly Hilts, Matt
Horrocks, Jennifer Shaw and Katie Spenceley International News
Editor Alex Coke-Woods [email protected] Design Editor
Marsha Vinogradova [email protected] Deputy Design Editor Dmitriy Myelnikov Comment Editors Daniel Heap, Pete Jefferys and
Anthea Thompson [email protected] Investigations Editor
Sarah Smith [email protected] Deputy Investigations
Editor Hayley Edwards Interviews Editors Caroline Organ and Anna
Machin [email protected] Features Editor Jess Banham
[email protected] Deputy Features Editor Olivia Wilkinson
Fashion Editors Erika Blomerus, Amy Mulvenna and Lili Sarnyai
[email protected] Science Editor Mico Tatalovic science@
tcs.cam.ac.uk Arts & Literature Editor Harriet Wragg arts@
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ac.uk Theatre Editor Hannah Fair [email protected] Deputy
Theatre Editor Jessi Savage-Hanford [email protected] Film
Editors Nick Day and Emma Dibdin [email protected] Music
Editors Elizabeth Dodd and Saul Glasman [email protected] Sport
Editors Ali Jaffer, Faisal Nasim and Tom Woolford [email protected].
ac.uk Puzzles Editor Danny McMillan [email protected] Photo
Editor James Appleton [email protected] Board of directors
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(Services), Amy Blackburn, Sven Palys, Catherine Watts and Matt
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THEATRE
Theatrical Thoughts
A very
very nice
man called
Hugh
Photos: Geraint Lewis
David Ralfe, eagerly anticpates the arrival of Hoi Polloi’s groundbreaking Story of a Rabbit in Cambridge at The Junction this May
W
hen did the
monologue
get
hijacked
by
egotists?
Picture
the
scene: a stage,
a spotlight and an actor performing a tremblingly heartfelt,
grotesquely boring, swansong
speech. His eyes are glazed over
(he confuses vacuousness with
profundity), his voice is wobbly
(oh, what range!) and he’s lost
in something vaguely called “the
moment”. The audience think
perhaps they’re lost too. They
thought they were coming to the
theatre but they’ve ended up at a
vanity show.
Hugh Hughes
makes
experimental
theatre of the
best kind
There’s something simpler to
be found in a monologue. The
verb “to soliloquize” might mean
“to talk to oneself”, but in the
theatre you’re never talking to
yourself, but to an audience,
and a monologue is the moment
when you come closest to talking to them directly. It’s when
you share something with them,
and you can’t do that whilst remaining aloof or pretending they
aren’t there. If you want to see
the monologue restored to its
true glory, go and see Story of
a Rabbit: 7-10 May at The Junction. Allow Hugh Hughes, “an
emerging performance artist
from Wales”, to talk to you for an
hour. He won’t ignore you. In
fact, he might even expect you
to talk back.
Hugh Hughes makes experimental theatre of the best kind.
His first show, Floating, was the
deserved winner of a Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival in 2006 and when
it came to Cambridge in November, TCS gave it five stars. His
second show, Story of a Rabbit, is
to my mind even better.
When I saw Floating, Hugh
told the audience he’d met a man
who’d seen one of his shows and
described it as “multimedia” theatre. But Hugh said he didn’t really care what it was called, he
just wanted to tell a story. And
tell it he does, in the good old
oral tradition, using slides, film
and physical theatre to help him.
It’s a theatrical experience you
won’t encounter anywhere else,
a joyously unpretentious blend
of different forms of theatre,
bound together by the boundless energy and charm of Hugh
Hughes. The house lights are left
up and when I’ve seen him in the
past he’s greeted the audience as
they’ve come in, and shaken each
of their hands as they’ve left.
Fourth wall? What fourth wall?
This is more like open mic night.
Hugh never lets us forget and,
most touchingly, never forgets
himself that as an audience we
are all sharing a space, all gathered together to hear a story,
|19
T
he ADC is dead. Well, at least temporarily but
in that time there are a host of brilliant shows
and highly exciting theatre-related goingson. And all this before the ice cream, pimms
and Shakespeare bonanza that is May Week.
In Cambridge alone, we have the eagerly anticipated Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys (Corpus Playroom,
9.30pm, 29th April- 3 May) written by none other than
Stephen Fry especially for our beloved little Playroom. It
even went on to win a prize at Edinburgh. Or, if you’re in
the mood for something a little more bayonets and cenotaphs then head on down to see Journey’s End. I am not
ashamed to say that I have seen this play three times
and absolutely love it. Definitely a play which tugs at the
heart strings every time. Or if you fancy a bit more of a
laugh, then there’s still the chance to catch a Footlight’s
Smoker or two in the Fitzpatrick Theatre, Queen’s College
at 11:00 pm on the 29th of April and the 13th of May
(tickets £4/£5, in association with BATS).
London’s also calling for those of you who need to escape, with an exciting Stanislavski on Stage exhibition
and The History Boys making a return to the National Theatre (for clips of the cast in action go to www.nationaltheatre.org.uk). But, if you feel like going further down
South (…London) then the Kingston Rose Theatre is definitely worth a visit. It’s now swiftly rolling into a successful second season (after a impressive start with critically
acclaimed plays such as Blackbird) and highlights include
Romeo & Juliet (22nd-26th April) as well as the Time to
Talk series, (a bargain at £5 / £3) featuring speakers such
as Sir Peter Hall himself about the nature and role of language in theatre. Easter term is definitely about more
than revision stress and misery.
- A THEATRE EDITOR
which if it’s told well, will entertain us and make us think. He
chats to the audience throughout.
“Making connections” is the slogan which underpins his work.
Hugh’s new show Story of a
Rabbit takes all that was innovative and effective about Floating
and applies to a more challenging
topic which is at once personal
and universal: the death of Hugh’s
father. When I saw it in Edinburgh last summer, I cried like
a baby. I told Hugh this after
I saw Floating again in
Cambridge in November.
He said lots of people
who’d seen Story of
a Rabbit had said,
like me, that they
had never cried at the
theatre before. They’d
sometimes
wanted
to but hadn’t
felt
comfo r t a b le,
yet
with
Hugh’s show
it was different. This
is testament
to the way
Hugh operates, to the
atmosphere and
the space he can
create for theatre.
If
revision’s
getting too much
and you need
some catharsis,
head to The
Junction and
experience
it for yourImaginative, emotive and unique: Hugh Hughes
self.
ON THE WEB
Enjoyed TCS Theatre last
term? Think it could be
done better? Got ideas
you want to put into action? Then apply online
at www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/apply if you’re interested in
becoming the Michealmas
2008 editor. Application
deadline May 6th. Questions? Email theatre@tcs.
cam.ac.uk
COMING THIS TERM
Need a bit of a revision
break? Now’s the time to
go further a-field than
the ADC, with four weeks
of shows at the Corpus
Playroom, with highlights
including Journey’s End
and The Union Flag, written by Adam Holligworth.
And don’t forget Hugh
Hughes at the Junction of
course...
Photo: Laura Bates
THEATRE
Not so distant
Above: The cast of this term’s production of Journey’s End. Below: Seven WWI
soldiers (image provided by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council)
S
Laura Bates
o many films, plays
and great works
of literature set
during the First
World War provoke
emotions of overwhelming admiration and awe,
but also a great impression of
distance and detachment. They
are stories of heroic men to be
worshipped from afar, men who
fought and lost their lives in
another place, at another time,
during another war. We think
of them as beings who somehow
coped with a situation we cannot begin to fathom; and the
concept of the daily threat of
death they faced is so alien to
us that it almost moves into the
realm of fiction. Certainly we do
not imagine ourselves in their
place.
Yet re-reading Journey’s End this
year I was struck by the youth, and
the fallibility of its characters. R.C.
Sherriff served in the East Surrey
Regiment during the First World
War, and the men he describes in his
play are no golden, godlike heroes.
They are men drawn from his own
experience, terrified of the situation they have been forced into and
prepared to turn to any available
form of escapism in an attempt to
EXAMS?
elude it. And most strikingly, they
are young, some only just turned
18, the Commanding Officer himself
only 21. These men were not any
better prepared or qualified to cope
with the situation in which they
found themselves than any undergraduate of this University.
13,878 members of Cambridge
University served in the First World
War, and 2,470 were killed. Looking down the list of names many
are followed by the letters DNM. It
is not until you reach the bottom of
the list that you realise these letters
stand for Did Not Matriculate. They
were the student soldiers who never returned to finish their degrees.
During the war, undergraduates
completed their first year of study,
and were called into the armed forces before their second year unless
studying medicine or engineering.
It is difficult to imagine putting the
same amount of anxious stress into
your weekly essay, or revising so
hard before exams if you knew that
you would not be continuing into
the second year and might never
return to sit your finals. And harder
still to realise that so many of those
‘brave and distant’ soldiers left behind the very colleges and lecture
halls we pass through every day to
go to the front line, with no better
mental preparation for that situation than we would have were we
faced with it today. You only need
to glance between the photograph
of the World War One Company and
that of the cast of this term’s production of Journey’s End to see the
similarities. Two groups of young
men, on the brink of adulthood and
independence, one group facing
the likelihood of their imminent
death, the other group putting on
a University play. Their ages are the
same. Their experience and maturity is the same. Only the time in
which they happened to grow up
has cast them in radically different
roles.
Journey’s End is not a poignant
testament to a distant group of heroes. It is a painfully real portrayal
of a group of people, many no more
mature or experienced than ourselves, who found themselves in
a situation almost too horrific to
imagine. They react to the stress
in ways as diverse as our mechanisms for coping with our finals.
They laugh and distract themselves
and make light of the situation as
we do. They get drunk and shout
at one another and fight as we do.
And as we do, they support each
other through the darkest hour before dawn.
Journey’s End is at the Corpus
Playroom 6th-10th May at 7pm.
www.deloitte.co.uk/graduates
Visit
WWW.CAMEXAMS.COM
For exam tips and welfare advice
Cambridge University
Students’ Union
FILM
|20-21
Lars
and the
Real Girl
Dino
Sossi
Photo: slowlygoingbald.com
Delusion affects us despite our
rationality; it’s really just a matter of degree. Whether it involves
perceptions of self, the empathetic understanding of people with
whom we associate, or the essential
nature of the myriad situations we
encounter on a daily basis, delusion
can be a welcome option when confronted with a reality we find inconvenient, unfortunate or simply
undesirable.
Lars and the Real Girl’s deft handling of a potentially farcical situation creates a surprisingly realistic
portrait of the delusive relationship
between a man and, well, a blowup doll.
Ryan Gosling (The Notebook)
plays the titular Lars, a reclusive
soul damaged by a difficult familial past made worse by his brother
Gus (Paul Schneider). Lars’ winsome sister-in-law Karin (Emily
Mortimer) attempts to rescue him
from his self-imposed exile in the
family garage. Meanwhile, Patricia
Clarkson portrays Dagmar, the nurturing psychologist who advocates
acceptance of Bianca, Lars’ plastic
fantastic delusion.
The emotional realism of writer
Nancy Oliver, director Craig Gillespie
and cast are essential ballast to the
instability caused by the introduction of a deux ex machina as atypical as a synthetic paramour.
Aside from minor irritants, such
as the lack of a deeper exploration
of the instigating incident that
pushes the withdrawn Lars towards
Bianca, or her too-neat, too-ready
adoption by the town, the moviex-
emplifies the cinematically plausible response of a small community’s
concern for a native son who has
lost his way: go along with the benign delusion until he recovers.
At the centre of the film’s narrative universe, Gosling’s earnest
adoption of Bianca as a subconscious means to reintegrate with
society creates a focal point around
which the rest of the cast responds
in kind, pushing him towards the
redemption required. The fanciful
conceit engendered by focusing on
an intense affection towards an inanimate object is overcome by the
collectively grounded emotional responses to it.
Reclaim Da Streetz
Are you getting
blanked for your
bad bling?
Is your crap gear
freakin’ out the
Cambridge ghetto?
Do you wanna be
down with yo’
homeys for life?
As it happens, we are currently in possession of some genuine top
couture merchandise from the urban sensation, Street Kings, and we’re
giving them away for free! All you need to do is to answer the straightforward question below:
Which celebrated Cambridge student appears in Street Kings?
a) Hugh Grant
b) Hugh Laurie
c ) Hugo Hadlow
Send your answer to [email protected]. The first five correct entrants will receive a slammin’ T-shirt and cap combo. Innit.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN KEY EXAM
STRATEGIES FOR SUPERB RESULTS?
READTHE ESSENTIAL STEPS FOR SUCCESSFUL REVISION, PLUS EXCELLENT
EXAMINATION TECHNIQUES FROM A CAMBRIDGE LECTURER.
DOWNLOAD ‘THE SECRETS OF EXAM SUCCESS’ – TWO
EBOOKS IN ONE FOR JUST $4.95 (£2.50)!!
GO TO http://www.cambridgewritingacademy.com AND CLICK
ON ‘STUDY GUIDES’.
Ideal for Arts and Humanities students – GOOD LUCK!!
FILM
5
Film
Double
Acts
Because good
things come in
twos
Deadlock Holiday
Disenfranchised hitmen find time for sightseeing in between the
slaughter in this blackly comic character drama
Thelma & Louise (1991)
A cultural touchstone, Thelma
& Louise persuasively made the
case that vigilantism and self-empowerment were the most exhilarating of bedfellows. Holidaying
without their apathetic menfolk,
naïve Thelma (Geena Davis) has a
dangerous encounter with a predatory stranger. Savvy Louise (Susan
Sarandon) offs said predator and
the two women go on the lam. An
unexpectedly moving film which
transcends its sticky politics.
Sam
Law
In Bruges
(18, 107 mins)
★★★★☆
‘I
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Capable hitmen and glittering
conversationalists, Vince (John
Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L.
Jackson) are a cut above the average mob enforcer. The film is
a garish hodgepodge of jumbled
chronology and brazen self-awareness but the febrile exchanges between these two characters – allusive, cutting, usually hilarious
– exemplify Tarantino’s writing at
its best.
Se7en (1995)
Set against the moody backdrop
of a rain-sodden cityscape, David
Fincher’s taut, viscerally disturbing
thriller follows the pursuit of a
meticulous and twisted serial
killer. Morgan Freeman and Brad
Pitt’s at-odds detectives are what
pulls the film back from the brink
of sheer, unrelenting nihilism,
their prickly antagonism giving
way to barbed banter and a mutual
respect that never strays too far
into buddy-cop cliché.
Donnie Brasco (1997)
Mike Newell’s intelligent, nuanced gangster film tells the true
story of undercover FBI agent Joe
Pistone (Johnny Depp) and the
ill-fated friendship he forms with
aging mob boss Lefty (Al Pacino).
The prospect of Depp and Pacino’s
combined screen presence is a
tantalising one and the chemistry doesn’t disappoint, the loyalty
between the two deepening and
building as the story pushes towards its inevitable, tragic climax.
Photo: image.net
Hot Fuzz (1997)
Following their breakthrough
success with 2004’s zom-rom-com
Shaun Of The Dead, Simon Pegg
and Nick Frost team up again to
lead this witty buddy-cop takeoff.
The antithesis of his listless Shaun
persona, Pegg’s tight-wound
London cop plays brilliantly off
Frost’s wide-eyed bumpkin, their
punchy dynamic fast becoming
the comedic core of a modern
classic.
Dirty work: hitmen Gleeson and Farrell bond in Bruges
f I’d grown up on a
farm and was retarded,
Bruges might impress
me, but I didn’t, so it
doesn’t.” Colin Farrell’s shitcanned hitman Ray spits out his dialogue with
all the bitter petulance of a fifteenyear-old whose parents have confiscated his mobile phone. Facing him,
Brendan Gleeson’s father figure, all
world-weary slumped shoulders and
furrowed brow (and also a hitman)
simply shrugs off the comment and
decides to go it alone… Sightseeing,
that is.
So goes the tone of Martin McDonagh’s directorial feature debut,
an off kilter black comedy thriller
packed with acerbic dialogue, sporadic brutality and medieval architecture. Looking like a film heavily
in debt to the mob, but not really
following any crime caper conventions (drugs, violence and swearing
aside), McDonagh’s first effort impresses by relying on a sharp script
and the charm of its leads rather
than simply on contrived plot intricacies.
Where, in recent years, the traditional British gangster film has
less faded in popularity and more
crawled into a bloody corner and
died, In Bruges trump cards are its
particularly Irish protagonists. Two
almost-everymen who manage to
be intelligently thuggish without
being unlikeably streetwise, their
unfortunate pratfalls seeming like
just that rather than the well deserved come-downs of their “Lahndahn” counterparts in other recent
examples of the genre.
“I only managed to get one
little finger in her…” laments Farrell after a local thug breaks up
his romantic rendezvous with the
neighbourhood crack dealer (the
delectable Clémence Poésy) in one
scene. “Look! They’re filming midgets!” he squeals in another, all his
hard-man bravado melting away to
reveal a childlike and fantastically
un-PC core.
Careful not to let his picture slip
too far towards the land of overwhelming juvenility and midget
abuse, the director punctuates affairs with several scenes of bracingly realistic brutality; one flashback
to Ray’s dark past simultaneously
bathes affairs in an altogether different light and reveals previously
unnoticed layers of vulnerability in
Farrell’s revelatory performance.
There has been much discussion of Farrell’s viability as a leading man of late, too many critics
writing off his acting ability after a
string of unsuccessful projects, but
here his foolhardy enthusiasm to
work with talented filmmakers has
paid off with a role tailor-made for
his particular (vulgar) talents. In
retrospect, a Dublin boy with a propensity for profanity and promiscuity was never really cut out to play
Alexander the Great, but in the
shoes of an insecure ruffian in over
his head with the wrong people, his
star shines.
Still, this is far from a one man
show, with Brendan Gleeson’s earnest foil to Farrell’s loudmouth an
effectively sensitive and eventually
touching turn, and Ralf Fiennes’
oily crime boss Harry (think morally dedicated family man via the
borderline psychosis of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast) is a violent delight.
Even Jordan Prentice, the vertically challenged star of a film within
the film (most commonly seen cultivating laughs in the straight-tovideo American Pie sequels) brings
both humanity and repugnance to
what could otherwise have been a
2D slapstick role.
Very much a film of two halves,
the contemplative first segment of
the movie which sees discussions
(albeit gracelessly frank ones) of
culture, travel, history, religion,
morality, prejudice and family
somehow fits well with the chaotic
latter scenes as Harry tears into
town with murder in mind.
Without tmaking use of attention grabbing “big issues” and never afraid to remind us that all of the
main characters are very bad people indeed, In Bruges manages to
work its way under your skin with
a pleasant humanity that somehow
has you caring for its amoral protagonists by the time the sticky
ending is finally reached.
Several critics have condemned
the final act for being either tacked
on or just a bit too ludicrous for
its own good, but looking past the
bare faced snobbery worked up by
McDonagh’s unwillingness to purvey any responsible message the
climax fits just right with what
goes before it.
At times funny, shocking and
surreal, In Bruges may not be the
film to take your kid brother or
great aunt to see, but for witty
banter, jet black humour and a genuinely adult approach to on-theedge filmmaking this is one trip
that shouldn’t be missed.
|22-23
Photo: picselect
Hugh Laurie gets up close and personal with Forest Whitaker in this unengaging cop drama
Lost in the urban jungle
Emma
Dibdin
Street Kings
(15, 109 mins)
★★☆☆☆
O
interesting scene (for the record,
it occurs just under thirty minutes in.)
Character is far from the only
aspect that’s lacking, however;
both the score and shooting belie the utter lack of inspiration at
the film’s core. The music sounds
more than anything like a collection of unfinished demo tracks
from somebody’s “gritty urban
thriller” playlist, while Ayer’s direction is largely a series of two
shots and over-the-shoulder coverage that would look bland on
primetime television, let alone on
the big screen.
The script, meanwhile, is a
bizarre hotchpotch of pseudohardboiled dialogue and tired
platitudes (“Good can come from
bad,” Reeves’ token love interest tells us seriously), and while
there is some
fun to be had
in watching
the actors
exchanging prickly, stylised
barbs the problem
boils down to the
classic “show, don’t
tell” screenwriting rule of
thumb. We’re told Ludlow
is a great cop, one of the city’s
best, but we see no evidence of
this whatsoever. Rather, we see a
violent, out-of-control man who’s
clearly in need of some advanced
form of psychological counselling before he’s allowed anywhere
near the precinct again, let alone
a firearm, and while we’re clearly
supposed to root for his vigilante
amorality there’s nothing in the
script or in Reeves’ performance
to compel us to do so.
Anti-heroes tend to be the
most interesting of protagonists,
the Han Solos and Jack Sparrows
proving more memorable than
their white-bread counterparts
in their crafty refusal to play by
the rules.
But when a character strays
as far into the moral grey area as
Ludlow repeatedly does, he needs
to be either so interesting we
can accept his less-than-savoury
behaviour, or so charismatic
that we don’t care. Reeves
is neither, and this really
is the heart of the film’s
problems. A better actor
could have hinted more
profoundly at hidden
depths, at the supposed
torment that drives Ludlow
to behave the way he does,
but as it is there’s nothing redemptive in the
character
at all.
With no humour to
temper the bleakness and no
character compelling enough to
make the bleakness worthwhile,
the relentless cynicism becomes
tedious. You begin to lose track of
the convoluted plot threads long
after you stop caring. Sadly, Street
Kings isn’t quite anything – it tries
to be a fast-paced crime thriller
but it isn’t nearly pacy or thrilling
enough to succeed. It tries to be a
talky, hardboiled neo-noir, but isn’t
nearly as intelligent as it thinks it
is. It tries to be a straight-up boys’
own action flick, but it takes itself
so seriously that any popcorn entertainment value is drained. Ultimately, all it adds up to is a collection of largely unpleasant people
doing largely unpleasant things in
a way that is neither interesting
nor particularly entertaining.
Photo: picselect
n paper, David Ayer’s newest LAbased testosterone
fest (former writing credits include
Training Day and
S.W.A.T.) has all the ingredients to
be a very decent, if not great thriller.
Keanu’s leading man credentials are
questionable at best but the cast is
otherwise strong, with award winners Forest Whitaker and our very
own Hugh Laurie stepping into supporting roles, and the promise of a
screenplay penned in part by original novelist James Ellroy bodes
equally well. It’s all the more disappointing then that this bleak drama
turns out to be much less than the
sum of its parts.
Set in the mean streets of
downtown L.A., a bulked up Keanu Reeves puts on his gruffest
voice to play Ludlow, a veteran
cop haunted by the recent loss
of his wife. The character plays
like a checklist of gritty loner detective attributes: after hacking
up a few lumps of early morning
bile he spends his dreary days
very much on the edge, chugging
miniature bottles of Smirnoff and
throwing out racial slurs like cigarette butts.
But his problems are only just
beginning; as the plot begins to
unravel and the death of a fellow
officer puts him under suspicion,
Ludlow becomes increasingly disillusioned as, in traditional noir
fashion, it becomes clear he may
have been trusting the wrong
people all along.
It all feels terribly by-thenumbers, with new characters
introduced left and right - the
hard-nosed father figure, the
curmudgeonly captain, the naïve
protégé – most of whom are too
poorly conceived even for the considerable talents of the supporting
cast to salvage. Whitaker is a fine
actor but he’s miscast here, looking downright uncomfortable in
the insipid role of Ludlow’s faithful superior, while Chris Evans
does nothing to make his thankless role any more interesting.
Laurie fares better; amidst a
sea of po-faced heavies he alone
seems to be having any fun with
the material. His performance
as the corrupt Captain Biggs will
cover no new ground for anyone
who’s seen him in television’s
House, although the script offers
none of the sharp dialogue and
layers of nuance that make that
character great. Nonetheless he
is consistently the most interesting thing on screen, stealing his
every scene in a film that leaves
them very much for the taking.
Ultimately however, none of
the supporting roles make much
of an impact, thanks in large part
to the blankly unreflecting surface of Reeves’ presence. In a film
where your leading man is in every scene, problems are bound to
arise when said leading man conjures no chemistry with his fellow performers. Every character
interaction here is terminally flat:
the closest sparks ever come to
flying is during the brief face-off
between Whitaker and Laurie in
what is probably the film’s most
MUSIC
Photo:James Appleton
Lamebridge...
David
Grundy
W
hat is it that
makes
the
Cambridge
music scene
so crushingly
conservative?
What with Corn Exchange tickets pricing most students out (£28
for Jethro Tull, and who knows
how much to see Public Enemy? No
thanks!), it’s left to smaller venues, and, particularly, to student
ventures, to step into the breach.
For the most part, they have not.
In their hustings speeches, two of
the prospective candidates for the
CUSU presidency highlighted the
inadequacy of official university
ents. The recent disaster relating
to the Life nights is a sure sign
that something has gone wrong.
But I see few signs that anyone’s
very interested. Either the majority of people are satisfied with the
sub-standard stuff we’re served
up with, or else they just can’t be
bothered to speak up and voice
their frustration.
Let’s talk about my particular
area of interest: jazz. At events
like Jazz at Johns, I hear very little
to inspire me, apart from de-rigeur
cocktail jazz and standard post-bop
or funk outfits. I don’t think this
means that there aren’t jazz musi-
cians among the student population who are highly talented - but
I doubt there’s much of a platform
for their talents, and I don’t think
that they’re encouraged to do
anything different. People expect
them to provide some light sounds
to provide a nice background.
What about avant-garde music?
Well, that’s a no-go area, studentwise! The Portland Arms puts on
some excellent gigs: I saw the free
jazz saxophonist Sonny Simmons
there, and they’ve also put on Sunburned Hand of the Man. Yet there
were very few people there, and
only about 5% of them were students... Considering that concert
featured a man who has played
with some of the greats of jazz
music, in a career that began in
the creative hotbed of the 1960s,
that’s truly a crying shame. For all
Cambridge students’ pretentions to
highly-developed taste (especially
those studying the arts subjects),
it seems that most are comfortable
to sit and take the rubbish given
to them.
Maybe I’ll just have to face up
to the fact that not everyone likes
‘left-field’ music. Cheese is apparently where it’s at. And most
people’s idea of left-field probably
verges only a little to the left of
cheese... Cindies a glorified school
disco? What’s “glorified” about it?
Fans of classical music are well
served, however. There’s music
from all periods, for all tastes,
from Bach to Bartok, as well as
new avant-garde works by student
composers. Look at the concert
last term which paired a piece by
Robinson College alum Ed Nesbitt
with Olivier Messiaen’s weirdly superb Turangalila Symphony (from
1949), both wonderfully performed
by the orchestra. That’s what the
other music scenes have to learn
from the classical bunch: how to
maintain a balance between established bets and riskier new propositions, without going overboard
on either.
Maybe I’m expecting too much
in thinking that Cambridge would
have a better scene. Maybe I’m just
being unrealistic. But the problem
is, I think, that there ARE events
that are more off-the-wall: they’re
just not well-publicised or well-attended. Towards the end of last
term, I attended a ‘Voodoo Rave’ at
the Kambar: hours of dance music,
including a set by the superb Bulgarian DJ/producer Microwave. Yet
Kambar - which isn’t exactly the
biggest space - was hardly bursting at the seams with ravers. This
term, I see a promising looking
one-off night at Soul Tree (‘Synthesize’), and the ‘Psycam’ psytrance nights organised by Josh
Abramson at Kings are always well
worth it. But I suspect that, once
again, if I want to see something a
bit different (or a bit interesting),
I’m going to have to dig around in
little corners to find it - or trek out
to Cellar Bar 8.
Perhaps, with London only an
hour away by train, people think
there’s no need to do anything. I’d
like to challenge that. Let’s have a
bit less “lamebridge.”
OUT OVER THE VACATION
TCS surveys the albums that hit the shelves over Easter...
THE KOOKS
Konk
The Kooks’ latest offering is
everything you’ve come to expect:
pallid, bland, derivative, vulgar
and much, much less. This piece
of inoffensive fluff is very much a
continuation of their debut, Inside
In/Inside Out. Fans will only be
disappointed if they expect surprises. (Yes, we absolutely do have
it in for the Kooks. Sorry.)
REM
Accelerate
Accelerate proves what those
teary-eyed old timers were muttering about when they first
heard Once Around the Sun. Who
knew Stipe could still pen brash,
unapologetic rock that pitches
giddily from railing against George
Dubya to the shambolic handing
of Hurricane Katrina? A staggering
return to form.
THE COURTEENERS
St. Jude
The Courteeners are nowhere
near the new Smiths. By-rote
Libertine-style strained delivery and entirely unremarkable
appropriation of Oasis’ chords.
A word of advice, lads. Just
because you’re from Manchester
doesn’t mean you can’t write
something other than a carboncopy of Morrissey. Try again.
THE RACONTEURS
Consolers of the Lonely
BLOOD RED SHOES
Box of Secrets
PANIC AT THE DISCO
Pretty. Odd.
Denser stuff than The White
Stripes’ stripped back rock’n’roll,
Consolers is a swagger forward
for The Raconteurs. Jack and
Brendan Benson wrestle over
the myths of bluesy-Americana
amidst some toe-tappin’, footstompin’ backbeat while shrieking guitar lines snap, crackle and
pop free from overwhelmingly
scratchy distortion. More of the same, but with added mojo.
Another hotly anticipated album
See album title. Another curve
for 2008: Blood Red Shoes are just
ball from one of those bands
edgy enough to avoid being forwe all love to hate: PATD have
ever tainted by the brush strokes
turned their backs on Fallout
of the NME. On Box of Secrets
Boy and MCR (although perhaps
atmospheric dissonant pop punk
not the eyeliner) and gone all
pulls the same tricks as peers
Sgt. Pepper on us. Occasionally
Ting Tings and Los Campesinos!,
it works - on single Nine In The
pitting choppy female vocals over
Afternoon, for example. Occasiongrimy chord changes. Furious
ally it crashes and burns about as
lyrics, dance-tastic drum lines and some excellent riffs make obnoxiously as you’d expect Panic At The Disco’s take on the
this a box you’re going to want to open again and again.
golden age of psychedelia would do.
|24-25
REVIEWS
Haunted in Hoxton
Choral
DUNEDIN CONSORT AND PLAYERS
Bach: St Matthew Passion (Warner)
Out Mar 10
Carl Fulbrook
Saul Glasman checks out a brace of hot new bands
I
’d never seen a newly signed
band attract such a crowd - the
smallish room in the sleek, upmarket Hoxton Square Bar and
Kitchen was chock full of at
least a hundred and fifty people. These bands have generated ample
fandom in their short time together,
and they seem to inspire immediate
loyalty.
The music of Haunts is a heady
cocktail, made with a measure of math
rock, a dribble of grunge, a lick of
black paint and a large splash of distilled je ne sais crois. It’s grade A angular dance-punk, all floor toms and
sinewy guitar leads. The band’s frontman, who will here remain anonymous
because nobody on the internet appears to know what his name is, has a
honeyed, soulful voice, and his smooth
intonations are sterling examples of
audience abuse at its best: “Let’s get
some fucking dancing going on, you
twats.”
Set standout Live Fast Die Young
(“Live fast, die young / The best days
are already gone...”) is intense, abrasive and lyrically rich. Also of poetic
note is the lean, melodic cut near the
beginning of the set that is introduced
elegantly with the comment “This is
a song about fucking dead girls” and
ends unbeatably with the line “I want
Indie
THE BREEDERS
Mountain Battles (4AD)
Out April 8
tween a DJ set by Enter Shikari and the
funkier side of, say, the Libertines.
Before the show starts, I can hear a
large arsenal of acidic techno samples
and vocoders being lined up, as the
keyboardist sips a glass of red wine.
With a thundering drumroll or so,
their silhouetterific live production
begins, and it’s fuelled by a no-holdsbarred primary-coloured frontal lighting assault. The music is aggressive,
unrelenting and technical, and a few
times I suspect the drummer, who I
can only see in outline, is actually a
monkey wearing a balaclava.
In conclusion, this was stunning
stuff. Take a look into these two bands
and you won’t regret it - they’re so hot
right now that they’re at risk of spontaneous combustion.
Photo: juicystyle
Saul
Glasman
to jump your bones”. Haunts aren’t just
filth peddlers, though; they put their
music where their mouth is and the result is raw and insistent but fine, the
aural equivalent of steak tartare. As a
fan puts it in the men’s room after the
show: “It was awesome. It was fucking
dissonant. It was fucked.” I couldn’t
agree more.
Inner Party System, the equally
eccentric support act, could be more
different from Haunts, but they’d
probably have to be a ukulele-led altcountry outfit from Vermont. They
stand for combining angry, shouty indie rock with trance and other such
dancefloor-dwelling creatures; there
are few breaks between the songs, just
abrupt segues, and what comes out is
a bit like an apocalyptic collision be-
Trip-hop
PORTISHEAD
Third (Island)
Jason Cleeton Out April 28
Fresh from a successful tour with the
reunited Pixies, Kim Deal continues
the sporadic Breeders release schedule:
Mountain Battles is only the band’s
fourth LP in their 18 year history. The
confident and rocking opener Overglazed suggests a band revitalised, but
first impressions can be deceptive: much of what follows is
understated and intimate.
With Steve Albini back at the productive helm, Mountain
Battles is characteristically rugged and minimal in sound. In
comparison to Overglaze, the rudimentary thuds of the subsequent Bang On sound positively primitive. That’s followed by
the haunting shimmer of highlight Song Of Joy, a song which
would have sat neatly on one of Pixies’ later releases. Thankfully, the girlish charm of Kim Deal’s voice remains largely untarnished, with only the tiniest hint of raspiness setting in.
The Breeders haven’t completely forgone their playful side:
the dual vocals of German Studies (sung, yes, in German) interlock magnificently over clunking guitars. There are more
multi-lingual delights too on the enjoyable Spanish swoon of
Regalame Esta Noche.
There are some throwaways, such as the dreary Spark, the
hum-drum folk of Here No More and the tuneless closing title
track. Those expecting an album consisting of thirteen Cannonball retreads are going to come away sorely disappointed,
although the band do try and reconcile with such expectations with the chugging No Way and the bubble-gum pop of
It’s The Love. Those looking for something altogether more
prickly to get under their skin, however, will find much here
to enjoy in this patchy but worthy release.
Tom Hamilton
It has been ten years since their last
studio album, but Portishead’s sound
has not changed dramatically with
Third. The haunting and minimal arrangements - based around drum loops,
electronic samples and piercing guitar
lines - remain. Beth Gibbons still delivers her lines with a hushed intensity, and bleakness still pervades the album. But notable changes are afoot. Whereas the
rhythms of Dummy and their eponymous second album relied
on grainy, reverb laden, tinny drums, this album is layered
with scratching, heavier beats. Opener Silence begins with a
bass so heavy it might have found a home at a Joy Division
gig, while a series of near-tribal drum samples propel it.
Perhaps, the biggest change from their previous sound is
the greater use of analogue synthesisers and the phasing out
of scratching. The old Portishead dinner party demographic
might just be a little bit scared by the aggressive sounds the
band are now incorporating. The highlight of the album is
the single, Machine Gun. It combines a ratatat drum machine
loop with clever sampling, a deliberate homage to electro pioneers Kraftwerk. But the main concern of the song, as ever, is
Gibbons’ melancholy – she confesses nothing less than “the
poison in my heart” – and superimposes a moving fragility on
all the artillery.
So this is Portishead back with a more prickly, aggressive
and electronic edge. If the overall misery which they can’t
help but project might seem irritating and even childish at
times, it is mixed with perfectly crafted electronic soundscapes which can only make this album a worthy contribution to their deservedly renowned catalogue.
This is almost an excellent recording of
the St. Matthew Passion – the sound is
stunning, the pacing is generally just
right, and the singing and playing are
both of a consistently high standard;
such are the perks that come with
well-engineered studio recordings of
good ensembles. Unfortunately, this release also suffers from
the disadvantages of the recording studio: there’s little in the
way of spontaneity, and although this performance has its
achingly beautiful moments, the sense of drama can get lost
in the search for perfect sonority.
Perhaps the chief interest here is the one-voice-per-part
choir, which – according to the informative and elegantly
written liner notes – is how Bach probably performed his choral works (though whether he would have preferred to use
larger forces, had they been available, is a very different matter). Questions of authenticity aside, this practice is a mixed
blessing. What’s gained in clarity doesn’t always compensate
for the inability to blend well in the larger choruses, and the
sense of contrast between soloists and choir is compromised.
It also makes for some comparatively underpowered choral
interjections in “So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen”. But the
preternaturally beautiful singing of the Dunedin Consort does
much to ease these worries, complemented by the unusually
alert playing of the Dunedin Players, even though it’s sometimes beauty at the expense of grandeur.
There is also some world-class singing among the soloists,
particularly Nicholas Mulroy (Evangelist) and Matthew Brook
(bass) – the latter’s “Mache dich, mein Herze, rein” is a deeply poignant, believable plea for atonement. Elsewhere there’s
less to write home about. Clare Wilkinson, despite having the
ideal voice for Bach, seems rather unmoved by the music, resulting in an austere “Erbarme dich”. This isn’t the first choice
St. Matthew Passion – that place belongs to Philippe Herreweghe and his otherworldly Collegium Vocale Gent – but though
it may not make an entirely convincing case for one-voiceper-part, it’s still a formidably sung performance.
Indie
THE LONG BLONDES
Couples (Rough Trade)
Out Mar 24
James Hope
The Long Blondes’ debut album, Someone To Drive You Home, stands out as
a favourite of mine, so as I excitedly
shoved the CD in my stereo I hoped
for one of the best albums of the past
few months. Their first single since the
album, Once And Never Again, peaked
at a humble number 30 in the UK singles chart despite being
an incitement to lesbian experimentation.
The album opens with their recent single, Century. It
starts with a very airy electric organ overlaid with Kate Jackson’s high, wispy vocals, but soon the strong bassline kicks
in, bringing life into the song and conjuring up images of an
old school disco with John Travolta strutting his stuff in his
white flares. Guilt continues this 70s disco theme with hefty
bass and offbeat, tinny guitar, and standout I Liked The Boys
has a really fantastic raw feel to it.
The middle point of the album brings the announcement
“OK, enough of this normality,” and Round The Hairpin kicks
off with an electro-mosh drum beat and static hum. My ears
prick waiting for a decent dance tune... It never comes. The
vocals are whispered and the aural explosion I hope for never
appears.
This is where the album starts to get a bit messy. The flow
is hindered by irregularities in the mood of the songs. If the
penultimate track, Nostalgia, were left off altogether, I feel
the album would have benefited. As it is, the second half is
a little difficult to listen to. Despite this, the record manages to close strongly with I’m Going to Hell, the thundering,
apocalyptic drums and bass generating a genuinely effective
finish.
MUSIC
Björk a stunner
The Icelandic songstress appears at the Hammersmith Apollo
A
s someone who
missed the joys
of festival muds
last summer, I was
not surprised to
find myself bouncing with joy in the queue outside
London Hammersmith Apollo last
Thursday, expecting to see Björk
live again, touring in support of her
latest album, Volta. And my excitement was justified - in the course
of the evening, this Icelandic star
whose music style defies definition
gave an explosive performance that
would be hard to forget.
Never thinking much of mainstream fashion’s expectations,
Björk remained true to her idiosyncratic style, running out on stage in
a colourful dress-cloak hybrid and
a bizzare pigtails-meet-bird-wings
wig, which thankfully disappeared
after the traditional opener of this
tour, Earth Intruders. From the very
start, she was bursting with energy,
and her voice sounded particularly
strong, almost too powerful for her
restless and delicate frame.
Björk is not someone who chats
a lot between songs, restricting
herself to introducing musicians
and polite “thank you”s. Her concerts are all about bringing the
music to the fore, and in this way
she achieves an instant and sincere
connection with the crowd.
The audience is carried through
an insane range of emotions, from
the haunting, primordial sounds of
Vertebrae by Vertebrae, through the
boreal vulnerability of Pagan Poetry
to the joyfulness of Hyperballad
that mutates into the mad beats of
Pluto.
Her backing band was great at
bringing the global spirit of Volta to
life, and the brass arrangements of
older songs sounded unexpectedly
fresh. Electronic innovators Mark
Bell and Damian Taylor deserve
a special mention - playing with
the fancy reacTable and other odd
gadgets, they gave the beats a real
edge, layering them well beyond
the album versions. The audience
was also treated to two special
guests: the ingenious West African
kora player Toumani Diabaté, and
Antony Hegarty of Antony and the
Johnsons, who was there to sing
his part in the touching duet Dull
Flame of Desire.
Despite this array of surprises,
the crowd was a bit reserved at first,
perhaps annoyed by bouncers constantly pointing flashlights at people with cameras. However, towards
the end everyone loosened up, and
there was no shortage of jumping
and dancing in the front rows.
The traditional encore - Declare
Independence, a song that earned
Björk some notoriety after she dedicated it to Tibet at her Shanghai
gig - was the glorious conclusion
of a mind-blowing night. In green
laser lights, behind a wall of falling confetti, she sang at the top
of her voice to the crazy, screaming beat textures, and even when
everything was over, and everyone
made for the cloakrooms, getting
bits of confetti from behind of their
collars, I still had that line stuck in
my head: “RAISE YOUR FLAG!”
Danny Asks:
a couple of things.
Danny
McMillan
I
t seems the Easter holidays
have left me with a bit of
writer’s block. I had a few
ideas for this final column
but couldn’t really stretch
any of them out to a length
that wouldn’t send my editors into
meltdown. Maybe all the chocolate
eggs have clouded my brain, or the
pain of picking up my guitar for the
first time in about 18 months, realising that I couldn’t even remember
one chord and having to start back
at the beginning with Horse With
No Name was all too much (Lesson:
never leave an instrument in a relative’s house in a different country).
Actually I think I will blame exams,
if they’re good for anything they ‘re
good for excuses. So instead of the
usual full length rant you can have
some mini ones instead.
Photo: thetripwirenyc
Why... control your
own radio station?
First impressions are important in
life, as we are often told, usually as
a coded way of saying that you look
like a right state just before a job
interview. The same thing goes for
music. Let’s give it a go.
Consider Portishead’s latest single
Machine Gun. It starts with brutal
electronic and drum beats which recall the minimalism of some of their
earlier work before Beth Gibbon’s
eerie and ethereal voice floats over
the dissonance and its like they’ve
never been away. First impression:
I’ll definitely buy the new album.
Contrast this with the latest effort
from the Kooks. They’re all winter
coats, hats and scarves in some vain
attempt to look grown up and very
non-stage school, but then all we
are presented with are the same banal lyrics delivered in a style that
suggests they are embarrassed by
them and filled out by some “do do
do” stuff which guarantees lots of
radio play. First impression: They
are even worse than I thought they
were.
This is the main reason why I
never really got into internet radio station Pandora which hasn’t
been available here for a while. It
Photo: Joshua Rappeneker
Dmitriy
Myelnikov
allowed you to put in the name of
your favourite bands and would
throw up similar records based on
musical “attributes” – examples include “danceable grooves”, “minor
key tonality”, “great trumpet solo”
and “mallet percussion” – determined by the rather scary sounding
Music Genome Project.
All very cool, but if something
came on that I didn’t instantly
like I found the allure of the skip
button too hard to overcome and
probably missed out on some good
stuff. I tend to have more success
with leaving the real radio on and
being too lazy to walk across the
room to switch it off.
When... will the
Mercury judges be
brave?
I know there is still a few months
before the shortlist for the best album prize everyone loves to hate,
but I do think they need to change
the rules a bit. Every year a jazz
or folk or classical artist is wheeled
out for industry bigwigs to sneer
at and to make the whole thing
look diverse. Last year it was jazz
quintet Basquiat Strings, the year
before that it was pianist Zoe Rahman. Neither won, of course.
But then this is always the way.
I don’t understand why the Mercury Prize isn’t restricted solely to
rock and pop music and a separate
prize established for other genres.
Either that or they should actually throw caution to the wind and
pick the token act as the winner.
So my hope is that Julie Fowlis, a
Scottish folk singer from the Outer
Hebredies who sings primarily in
Scots Gaelic, wins the Mercury for
her wonderful album Cuilidh. But
it will probably be won by some indie band, won’t it?
Local Bands
Are you in a band?
TCS Music want to help out local talent, so whether you’re in a
band or you foster a secret desire
to be the next Lily Allen, let us
know.
If you send us an EP, let us
know when you’re rehearsing or
email a link to your MySpace,
we’ll do our best to get you in an
edition of TCS next Michaelmas.
LISTINGS
FILM
Colin Farrell is a sightseeing hitman
in In Bruges
24
Thu
25
Fri
26
Sat
27
Sun
28
Mon
29
Tue
30
Wed
Street Kings (15) ★★★★★
Vue Cinema, 1.30, 4.00, 6.30, 9.10
£5.30
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.40, 4.20, 6.50, 9.30
£5.30 ★★★★☆
The Orphanage (15)
Arts Picturehouse, 2.45
21 (12A)
Vue Cinema, 2.20, 5.20, 8.15 £5.30
★★★★★
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.20, 4.00, 6.50, 9.20
£5.30 ★★★★☆
The Last Mistress (15)
Arts Picturehouse, 4.00, 8.45, £5
★★★★★
Street Kings (15)
Vue Cinema, 11.20pm £5.30
★★★★★
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.20, 4.00, 6.50, 9.20
£5.30 ★★★★☆
Arts Picturehouse, 3.30, £5
★★★★★
THEATRE
MUSIC
OTHER
Experience a tale of teenage love
and illness with ‘When You Cure Me’
Acclaimed tribute band action with
Boot Led Zeppelin
Rid yourself of revision stress: chill
out with art and yoga meditation
Cambridge Band Competition Heat
3 @ The Barfly
TIMEOUT Art Group
Kettle’s Yard, 13:30
The annual Cambridge Band Competition which has run in the city
for over two decades is re-launched
for 2008. Tonight’s bill features The
Cougars, Keltrix, J-Treole and The
Winter Kings.
CU Raja Yoga Meditation Society
- beating exam stress
Inner Space Meditation Centre, 19:00
When You Cure Me
Homerton College Small Studio,
19:30
L’amfiparnaso
Round Church, 20:00, £4/ £8
When You Cure Me
Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, 19:30
L’amfiparnaso
When You Cure Me
Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, 19:30
L’amfiparnaso
Following the Top 10 success of his
debut solo album the former Wet Wet
Wet frontman has since released two
further solo albums and is now set to
release a new album Sentimental Me.
Boot Led Zeppelin @ The Corn
Exchange
Big amps, big hair and even bigger
flairs! Yes, tribute band Boot Led
Zeppelin are back with a very special
show celebrating 40 years since Led
Zeppelin’s conception in 1968.
The Beatsteaks @ The Barfly
21 (12A)
Vue Cinema, 2.00, £5.30
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.20, 4.00, 6.50, 9.20
£5.30 ★★★★☆
★★★★★
Elle Milano + Untitled Musical Project + Fuck Dress @ The Barfly
Fool’s Gold (12A)
Vue Cinema, 1.10, 3.40, 6.10, 8.30,
£5.30
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.20, 4.00, 6.50, 9.20
£5.30 ★★★★☆
★★★★★
The Beatsteaks are a punk rock band
from Berlin, Germany, formed in
1995. With the release of their album
Launched in 1999, they became
the first German band ever to get a
release on Epitaph Records.
Elle Milano make noisy, witty, danceto-able pop music and play it like
they’re about to die. It’s not every
day you find a band this confident
with the sound AND the tunes to
back it up.
Cruel and Tender
Corpus Playroom, 19:00, £4/ £5.50
Latin! or Tobacco and Boys
Smoker in association with BATS
Fitzpatrick Hall, Queen’s College,
23:00, £4/ £5
Cruel and Tender
Latin! or Tobacco and Boys
Cafe Easter Opening
Cafe Project, 22 Jesus Lane, 19:30
Marti Pellow @ The Corn Exchange
21 (12A)
Vue Cinema, 12.00, 6.30 £5.30
★★★★★
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.20, 4.00, 6.50, 9.20
£5.30 ★★★★☆
Son of Rambow (12A)
Arts Picturehouse, 12.00, 6.30 £5
★★★★★
21 (12A)
Vue Cinema, 12.00, 6.30 £5.30
In Bruges (18)
Vue Cinema, 1.20, 4.00, 6.50, 9.20
£5.30 ★★★★☆
Son of Rambow (12A)
Arts Picturehouse, 6.30 £5
★★★★★
|26-27
Miss Dee @ The Barfly
Taking influence from Bowie and Led
Zeppelin as well as soul legends such
as Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald and
the like, Miss Dee is one of the new
contenders of contemporary British
soul...
Lethal Bizzle @ The Junction
Lethal Bizzle first blasted onto the
scene with East London collective
The More Fire Crew and their club
banger ‘Oi’ in 2001. He soon went
solo creating more chart success
with ‘Pow’ in 2004.
Sunday Coffee Concert
Kettle’s Yard, Castle Street,
12:00,
Mexican Cinema: Pepe el Toro
Graduate Union, 20:00
Norman Myers - “Climate
Refugees: Destabilising an Unstable World”
Seminar Room at CRASSH, 17 Mill
Lane, 17:00
Interdisciplinarity in Science
Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture
Theatre, Department of Chemistry,
17:30
Quentin Blake
Union Chamber, 19:30
28|Sport
Sports Therapy
THE EDITORIAL: Relieve exam stress this term - the summer ahead offers some absolutely scintillating sport
Ali Jaffer
Sports Editor
Photo: pj_in_oz
A
s a fresher, I have
been warned. This
is “exam term”.
Cambridge turns a
little bit “strange”.
The mere fact that
you won’t see TCS again until May
Week is one of a number of reasons
that suggest I should heed such
warnings. But TCS’ focus this week
is welfare. And Welfare Officers up
and down the colleges insist, and
they’re right to, that you need to
escape from work for a few hours a
day. Watching sport is escapism at
its finest. This is the greatest time
(May-July) in the sporting calendar
– don’t let it pass you by.
As I write, a certain John Arne
Riise has just handed Chelsea the
initiative meaning a clean sheet
next Wednesday will be enough to
send Chelsea to Moscow dreaming
of a European Coronation in Mr.
Abramovich’s home country. Barcelona and Man United have fought
each other to a standstill at the
Nou Camp, but the decisive game
will be played next Tuesday at Old
Trafford.
The Premiership, while exciting
at the top, is tantalisingly close at
the bottom. Fulham will join Derby.
Bolton however, written off a week
or two back, now have the initiative and, crucially, momentum. Birmingham and Reading are sweating. And beyond the Premiership,
feel the tension coming out of your
radios as the promotion and relegation battles are fought in the lower
leagues.
And then come the playoffs. For
the fan, the tension is unbearable,
the atmosphere inimitable, the agony unbelievable and the joy unsurpassable. For the neutral, watch the
anxiety etched on the fans faces as
their team desperately holds on to a
lead, watch unbridled joy as random
strangers hug each other when that
day at Wembley is sealed and watch
the tears as their opponents lament
the efforts of forty-six games and
nine months of toil disappear just
like that. It’s clichéd but it’s true,
the playoffs sum up what sport is
all about and why we love it so.
Arguably the greatest sound on a
summer’s afternoon is that thwack
of willow on leather and this summer you’re spoilt for choice. The
purist has the County Championship and South Africa’s visit to look
forward to, and the twenty20 fans
among us can follow domestic and
international competitions without
of course forgetting the dramatic
development of the IPL and the fortunes of the Kolkata Knight Riders,
owners of possibly the best name in
the history of cricket.
As for golf, two weeks ago, amid
the Georgian azaleas, Trevor Immelman held his nerve to make history
in successfully fighting off the challenges of Woods and Furyk to win
his maiden Green Jacket months
after overcoming cancer. Only in
golf can such a unique intensity of
drama unfold in such uniquely picturesque settings – with the Players
Championship at Sawgrass to come
followed by the US Open and the
Open at Birkdale in July, the golfing calendar is simply irresistible.
In the tennis, we’re hyping up
Andy Murray again. His incoming
clay court coach is giving him new
found stability. He’ll have to shake
off injury and attitude issues to
give us something to cheer at Roland-Garros, or even, and let’s not
tempt fate, Wimbledon.
I could go on. But I’d run out of
space. Will Lewis Hamilton, favourite for Sports Personality of the
Year, improve on his stunning debut year?
Will the Martin Johnson gamble
pay off? And given the ludicrous
misfortunes of the Olympic torch,
will Beijing 2008 live up to the
hype?
There’s so much to watch, so
much to hear and so much to enjoy in the next 8 weeks and beyond
that as a sports fan you not only
have a right to enjoy it but a duty
to live vicariously through it all.
Just don’t bother with Euro 2008.
John’s Secure League & Cup Double
Chris Lillycrop
Continued from Page 31
Cuppers title. The runners-up will
now turn their attention to next
season and another shot at promotion, but the winners’ squad-captain had this to say: “Having broken
my cheekbone in the quarterfinals
A
The difference
in fitness
began to tell
Photo: James Appleton
s the teams came
out for the second
half, many expected that they
might now see the
rout that they had
expected from the beginning. And
indeed John’s did make a strong
start.
Beginning to find gaps in midfield, the holders’ backs enjoyed the
chance to run and soon went over
for a fourth try. Once again it was
Maclennan; he successfully converted his own score.
But the underdogs were determined to enjoy their day in the
limelight and they did well to reassert themselves. With Blues centres
Andy Stevenson and Chris Lewis
still running strongly, alongside
a spirited performance from wing
Dave Walby, Catz continued to apply themselves in attack. They
could not quite break down the
Redboys’ defence for another try,
but they did much to justify their
place in the final and reward their
loyal fans.
As the match entered its final
phase, the difference in fitness fi-
nally began to tell and a slightly
frustrated St Catharine’s gave up
another two tries. Scott Maclennan grabbed his fourth to round
off an excellent individual display
and Tom Stanton got the last after
a stylish attack that saw the ball go
through the hands of almost all the
John’s players.
The final score of 36-5 was perhaps unfair on Catz, but there can
be no doubt that John’s are still the
team to beat and they undoubtedly
deserved their fourth consecutive
against Homerton, I was given
a sideline view of the final. I
thought our backs and forwards
interlinked tremendously well
to pull out one of the best performances of our season. We
gave away an early try but once
we adapted to their Blues players, the overall strength of our
side triumphed.”
Sport|29
Cambridge outrowed Christ’s
154th University Boat Race
Sud Murugesu
S
Photo: hkfuey97
they began to slice through the
light blues, eroding their lead
within 20 strokes. ¾ of a length
up and smelling blood, Oxford cut
in aggressively to shut the door. A
risky move, but it worked. Another 20 strokes on and Oxford had a
length of clear water.
With this massive psychological advantage, the dark blues began to race away. Heads started
to turn in the Cambridge boat
and it was clear that it would
take something huge to erase
the margin. Moving to the inside
of the bend, Cambridge tried to
come back using the calmer water here, but Oxford were equal to
it. Through Barnes Bridge Oxford
looked powerful and coordinated,
knowing that the finish line was
only three minutes away. Cambridge ploughed on in their wake,
chasing the dream of the last 6
months of training. It was to no
avail and Oxford crossed the line
in emphatic style, six lengths
ahead of Cambridge.
This year’s race was a tough
one to predict and tougher than
usual to compete in. The finishing
time was the slowest for over half
a century. With it being Olympic
year, international talent was
much less apparent. Despite this,
once again two impeccably tuned
crews turned out to race. The race
was won at a single point with a
beautifully executed strategical
blow. Disappointment was painfully evident on the faces of the
Cambridge oarsmen, whilst simultaneously the ecstasy of success
served to lift the Oxford rowers.
Nowhere else is the distinction
between victory and defeat quite
so clear.
give Girton
six of the
best
Football Cuppers Final
Christ’s too strong for Girton
inking was the talk
on the towpath as the
Oxford and Cambridge
Blue boats lined up for
the start of the 154th
boat race. Forecasts of
22mph gusts fuelled speculation
that the more technical Cambridge
crew that would prosper, dealing
better with the choppy conditions.
Despite this, the bookies predictably went with the heavier crew,
and the light blues were starting as
underdogs with a week left until the
race. The unfortunate withdrawal
of Cambridge stroke Shane O’Mara
only four days before the race further cemented this position. The
subsequent re-jigging of personnel
inevitably had a major impact.
And so boat race day came,
with Goldie oarsman Ryan
Monaghan slipping into the Cambridge stroke seat at the final
hour. Over 250,000 people lined
the river, determined to be part
of this unique sporting occasion.
As usual, the boat race did not
disappoint. The atmosphere was
electric; the troublesome weather
only seeming to add to the excitement. Cambridge won the toss
and chose to row on Surrey station, which would serve to give
them the advantage through the
4 minute Hammersmith bend.
Both crews sat poised on the water, oblivious to the chaos on the
banks, fully focussed on the task
ahead.
As the umpire’s flag came
down, all that calm shattered into
frenetic commotion. The fight
for the fast stream started off in
Oxford’s favour, as they capital-
ised on a Cambridge oar getting
caught slightly under the water
in the first few strokes. Striking
an impressive 40 strokes per minute, both crews pushed each other
round this first bend. Oxford cox
Nick Brodie was already warned
for his steering by the umpire as
the blades drifted ever closer in
this initial phase. As the crews
settled after two minutes, Oxford managed to pull ahead to a
¾ length advantage, desperately
trying to capitalise on their bend
before it ran out.
Coming past Harrods’ Depository with just over six minutes of
the race gone, Cambridge made a
monumental move. Having settled
into a long and strong rhythm the
light blues were looking calm and
relaxed. With the inside of the
Surrey bend in their favour, cox
Rebecca Dowbiggin ordered a big
push. The Oxford stroke momentarily caught his blade under the
water which unsettled his crew,
an opportunity which Cambridge
jumped on. Inching past, the light
blues took the lead for the first
time in the race and came under
Hammersmith Bridge in front.
Cambridge were then unfairly
warned for steering, as the dark
blues were clearly pinching the
bend and coming into Cambridge’s
water. Nevertheless, at the halfway point, Cambridge were ¾
length up and looking solid. At
this point the bend in the river
meant that the crews started to
turn south west as opposed to
north west so relative wind and
water conditions began to alter.
Oxford then chose to make the
decisive killer blow. Raising their
rate to 36 strokes per minute,
CHRIST’S
6
GIRTON
2
Tom Wainwright
T
he stage was set for
a fierce contest under the Grange Road
floodlights. Both sides
had put in strong performances at each and
every stage of the competition.
Both had made Facebook groups.
One had had to disable the wall of
said group.
In the face of powerful winds,
sizeable crowds from both colleges
turned up to contribute to an imposing atmosphere. Girton’s flags,
trumpets and jester competed
against the Christ’s drummer and
megaphone, and the lone steward
looked to have his work cut out.
The differences between the
teams quickly became apparent.
Christ’s played two up front and
their pace meant any Girton mistakes could prove fatal. Girton
fielded a Wenger-esque 4-5-1 formation, preferring to pass the
ball around with King as the sole
striker. Christ’s tactics would prove
better suited to the conditions and
they made the breakthrough when
Consoli lofted a well-disguised
overhead kick over the advancing
keeper Blake.
Girtonian heads didn’t drop,
though, and their midfield fought
hard to win possession, but the
lack of options up front meant attacks were too easily closed down.
Better chances came out wide,
from wingers Vincent and Cook,
yet the ball somehow contrived to
avoid the green shirts in the box.
A strong tackle by Girton midfielder Hylands unluckily caused
the ball to find its way to the
grateful Christ’s forward Harrison,
who outpaced the defence, took a
good touch and finished smartly.
But Cook quickly pulled one back
by lashing in a shot across the six
yard box and, despite the one goal
deficit, Girton finished the half
stronger, although their momentum was impugned by poor officials’ decisions.
A cagey start to the second
half saw opportunities for Girton
but the Christ’s defence held firm.
Then, Christ’s keeper Murray scored
from a freak goal kick that caught
the wind, with one bounce taking
it over Blake. The Girton crowd
saw it was going to happen but
could only watch on helpless. The
decisive fourth goal came shortly
after when Harrison bundled it in
after a goal-mouth scramble and
the match looked over.
Yet, good Girton play up the
middle was rewarded when King
latched onto a chip over the top
and took his chance coolly to
make it 4-2, but again Christ’s
nullified the score, this time
with a superb 30-yard free-kick
from Turnbull. There was time
for more drama, as Christ’s midfielder St George completed the
scoring with a curling shot from
outside the box to polish off an
entertaining 6-2 victory.
The jubilant Christ’s fans
staged a pitch invasion at the final whistle and watched the cup
be presented to captain Bartle,
while Girton were left to sing
‘Que sera sera, whatever will
be will be, we’re going to Cindies..!’
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
30|Sport
CUWBC Blues defeated at Henley
F
ollowing an intense
week of practice and
preparation at Henley (not to mention
the six months of
practice and preparation in Cambridge) the 23rd of
March finally dawned.
Race day began with torrential
snow (a first for the Easter-time
Henley Boat races perhaps), yet
much less wind than the day before. With concern that the wind
might whip up in the afternoon,
the coaches agreed to swap the
times for the Blues race and the
heavyweight reserves.
At the 2pm start, warmed up
and attached to the stake boats,
there was very little time for the
crew to consider that the next six
minutes were the reason they’d
trained for as many months.
Both crews got off to a good
start, despite extremely choppy
water in the first 500-meters of
the course. After having pulled
out to a slight lead in the first 250
metres, Oxford knew they had to
and looked to be gaining on Oxford. As the finish line beckoned
the Dark Blues responded, scenting victory.
Cambridge charged for the final time, but Oxford forced their
were defeated by two and a
half lengths, while the women’s
lightweights edged out their opponents by a third of a length
in another thrillingly tight encounter.
at such a tight contest and gave
credit for such a well--fought
fight.
By the 1500 mark every sinew
was being stretched - in both boats
- and Cambridge upped the rating
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boat through the wind and the
pain and held on. Cambridge, an
agonising half a length behind
were beaten.
Henley also played host to
the The Men’s lightweights who
By the
1500 mark
every sinew
was being
stretched
fo
Need
step up a gear.
Coming into the 500 it was the
Dark Blues who coped with the
conditions better, pulling out to
around a third of a length. Cambridge attacked as per the race
plan and continued to push their
opponents, never letting them
get to beyond three-quarters of a
length.
Many, including the commentator for the race, were surprised
16/4/08 09:53:22
send your comments to [email protected]
Samantha Bennett
Nailed at the death
Golfers lose Varsity match at Hoylake
Ali Jaffer
Sports Ediitor
T
he 119th Varsity Golf
Match was hosted at
the infamous Royal
Liverpool Golf Club
from the 27th-29th
March. The main
Blues fixture saw Oxford beat
Cambridge by a single point eight points to seven.
Despite Cambridge losing the
day by 3 points to 2, the foursomes match was notable for
the 10 & 9 demolition Robinson
& Hickmore inflicted upon their
Oxford counterparts. Normoyle
& Whittington also recorded an
impressive 5 & 4 triumph.
Woolsey and Chapman, who
had lost as a team in the foursomes, rectified the situation
when Saturday’s singles dawned
and provided two of Cambridge’s
three early points.
A solid performance from
Habibi ensured the third (7 &
6) and a miserable outing for
Oxford Blue Chambers who had
lost on consecutive days.
These early Cambridge wins
on Saturday revived Cambridge
hopes for a Varsity triumph.
Sadly,
however,
Oxford’s
strength in depth meant the
light blue late starters struggled and Oxford did enough to
level the Saturday at 5 points
each.
Coupled with their foursomes
success, the 8 points were
enough for Oxford to snatch the
trophy which Cambridge had
won back the previous year.
The 8 points
were enough
for Oxford to
snatch the
trophy
The Stymies, the University’s
2nd team were defeated in their
Varsity match by a 2 point margin (8.5 - 6.5) at Fornby Golf
Club on the 26th of March.
Meanwhile the In-Laws, the
University Society for Social
Golfers, plays its annual medal
championship this Friday 25th
April at the Gog Magog Golf
Club just south of Cambridge.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Sport|31
Cambridge challenge thrown down John’s
complete
rugby
double
ST. JOHN’S
36
ST. CATHARINE’S
5
Chris Lillycrop
Varsity Judo
Tom Deacon
C
ambridge Judo were
disappointed to be left
empty-handed after an
exciting Varsity Match
against a strong Oxford
team.
The event was packed with massive throws and punishing groundfighting with 28 fights featuring
Men’s and Women’s blues teams, a
Men’s B Team and a ‘City’ team of
non-students crammed into a single
afternoon. Cambridge can be proud
of a truly great effort and many
close and exciting contests despite
the end result.
Cambridge City got off to a great
start, with two crushing wins whipping the travelling Cambridge supporters into a frenzy, but despite a
great effort, it was all downhill from
there as Cambridge City were outweighed and outclassed by a great
display of fighting from the strong
Oxford team. Despite conceding
two matches through absence and
injury, Oxford took the City Team
match for the first time in the history of this friendly addition to the
University Varsity Match, 5-2.
The Cambridge Men’s B Team
were next on the mat, carrying the
weight of expectation after four successive victories. However a couple
of absences meant this year’s team
was relatively inexperienced. They
also happened to face an exceptionally skilled Oxford B side. Balan
Anthonysamy (King’s), Giovanni da
Col (Queen’s) and Gabriel Mecklenburg (Girton) put great efforts into
their fights, but were beaten by
powerful opponents, and B Team
Captain Andrew Campell (Robinson)
was unlucky to lose a great contest
– despite appearing to twist out of
the winning throw in mid-air.
ARU Frenchman Gregory Schmitt
reminded Oxford that the match
wasn’t over, slamming his opponent onto the mat with a massive
counter after a nail-biting match.
Wilfred Hughes (Churchill) and
Emmanuel duo Rob Blackburn and
Simon Calcutt fought bravely in
their first Varsity Match, but could
not reverse the deficit, and Oxford
claimed the B Team shield they
had hardly seen this decade. The
7-1 scoreline was a harsh result after the courage and determination
shown by the Cambridge fighters.
Oxford have dominated the
women’s competition in recent
times, but despite losing four of
last year’s team of five, Cambridge’s
strong new team promised that this
year’s Women’s Varsity would be
just as close as the two agonising
3-2 losses in the past two years.
Megan Jones (Newnham) was
caught by a powerful shoulderthrow for ippon, but Alexie FrizeWilliams (last year’s Women’s Captain from St John’s) fought through
the pain barrier to pin her opponent down, with everyone in light
blue screaming the trademark Cambridge cry of ‘SQUUEEEEZE’ as the
seconds ticked away.
Next up was a titanic clash between the Oxford Captain (a BUSA
medallist) and Cambridge Women’s
Captain Catharina Casper (Corpus
Christi).
Catharina was eventually defeated after a tight and very highstandard match, but former GB
International Sinead Rothwell (St
Catharine’s) quickly pulled the
match back to two apiece, totally
dominating her opponent.
This left the intense pressure of
a deciding fight on Lisa Kleiminger
(Churchill), with the crowd on the
edge of their seats. Lisa gave the
fight everything, but late into the
fight the Oxford judoka produced
the seoinage throw of a lifetime
to cruelly dash the dreams of Cambridge’s Women and leave them just
3-2 down again. With four of this
team here next year, however, Oxford had better not get attached to
the women’s Varsity trophy…
Oxford had
better not get
attached to
the women’s
trophy
Finally, Cambridge’s Men’s Blues
stepped up to try and reclaim the
trophy they lost last year. This,
however, was no easy task, with a
new era of Cambridge judoka facing
a much heavier Oxford team of veteran black belts. Yueyang Li (Trinity) and Robinson freshers Scott
Bolingbroke and Ed Marffy all faced
huge and powerful (and BUSA medal-winning) Dan-grade opponents
that beat them with ippon scores,
leaving former Men’s Captain and
President Gary Chandler (Emmanuel) with a crucial match against an
old adversary. The two had fought
many times before and knew each
other’s judo too well, and the match
ended in a frustrating stalemate.
Men’s Captain Janek Kolodynski (St John’s) was then floored
by a powerful throw from an experienced Oxford fighter, effectively winning Oxford the match.
Cambridge finished very strongly
indeed, with Austrian sensation
Philipp Oberhumer (Queen’s) finishing a high-quality match with a delightful uchi-mata throw for ippon,
Seb Nadal (Trinity) pulverizing the
Oxford President on the ground and
Oxford-raised Cambridge President
Tom Deacon (King’s) forcing his opponent to submit with a quick and
brutal armlock.
But these victories were too late,
the Cambridge Men were left the
wrong side of an incredibly tight
4.5/3.5 scoreline. That the score
was so close is a credit to the hard
work of a relatively new team facing an incredibly strong Oxford
line-up, but this was little consolation to Cambridge as Oxford lifted
the Matsudaira cup.
Despite a conspicuous lack of
trophies to bring back to Cambridge,
every fighter did Cambridge proud
by giving their very best on the day
and forcing a close fight against a
very strong Oxford squad. All bodes
well for Oxford’s visit next year.
The last day of Lent term saw a typically powerful St John’s side overcome a plucky St Catharine’s team
and claim their fourth consecutive
league-cup double by 36 to 5.
Large crowds descended on
Grange Road for the blue-riband
event as league champions St
John’s went up against the Division
Two side and they were rewarded
with a dramatic start as St Catharine’s took a surprise lead. Within
the first few minutes of the game,
Blues centre Chris Lewis showed his
class to score the first try of the
game. Although Catz fly-half Alex
Calvey failed to make the conversion, the 5-0 scoreline silenced the
expectant John’s fans and buoyed
the underdogs further. Although
on paper the match had threatened to be a one-sided affair, it was
St. Catharine’s who looked strong
throughout the opening quarter:
continuing to play aggressively,
running hard at Johns in the threequarters, it was only through the
effective defence so typical of the
Redboys that they were denied another try.
The huge Catz supporting contingent grew ever more ebullient,
but as Johns soaked up the pressure without too much difficulty,
one sensed that the tide was about
to turn; and it was St. Catharine’s’
attacking spirit that cost them.
A monster tackle in the centres
led to a turnover, and slick passing quickly delivered the ball to
winger Efe Efeotur. The Catz backs
were overcommitted and the John’s
speedster sprinted half the length
of the pitch for a classy score. Scott
Maclennan converted and the lead
changed hands. The setback did not
put an end to St. Catharine’s’ brave
effort, but they did fade as the
half wore on. Increasingly making
their power felt around the fringes,
John’s got themselves across the
gain line more and more often,
and it was the fly-half who got the
breakthrough. Running in two tries
in quick succession, the Redboys
assumed a 19-5 lead and seemed
to have all but won the game by
the time the referee sounded halftime.
>>28
Sport
INSIDE
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
BOAT RACE•JUDO•CUPPERS
Inset: Cambridge embrace
following their marvellous
5-3 victory at Craven
Cottage, Fulham.
Lob, Stock, and two
smoking minutes
CAMBRIDGE
5
OXFORD
3
Ali Jaffer
Sports Editor
T
orrential rain and
bitingly cold wind
greeted 2,000 fans at
Fulham’s Craven Cottage when the longanticipated
124th
Varsity Football Match kicked off
on the afternoon of the 29th of
March.
The opening exchanges, hindered by the weather, were scrappy to say the least and it was 4
goal hero Matt Stock who found
himself in the right place at the
right time to turn home a cross
scrambled across the box and
give Cambridge the early advantage a quarter of an hour in. But,
as would eventually transpire to
be the frustrating pattern of the
game, Oxford quickly pulled a
goal back. A hopeful forward punt
found the pacey Sullivan who
lashed a powerful drive past James
Dean’s despairing dive. Buoyed by
the goal Oxford continued to employ the “hoof-ball” tactic which
culminated in another fine effort
from Sullivan – but this time Dean
was equal to it.
Given the conditions, it wasn’t
long before the Light Blues resorted to the same. Inspired by
Oxford’s long, optimistic and agricultural style, Stock, like Sullivan latched onto a ball pounded
up from the defence and lobbed
the goalkeeper with a degree of
finesse rarely seen at Craven Cottage this season.
The goal was enough to send
the Cambridge fans to their halftime pies happy. But as they filtered back after the break they
probably choked on them in disbelief. It took less than a minute for the Oxford right-sided
midfielder to cut the ball inside
the box for the much hyped Alex
Toogood to slice his shot straight
into the path of the sliding James
Kelly who turned it home at the
back post.
Oxford
manager
Martin Keown
was visibly
fuming
Less than 5 minutes later and
Oxford manager Martin Keown
was visibly fuming. Our no. 4 Ali
Hakimi played it forward to Stock
and the Oxford defence trembled.
Beating two men he turned inside
and dropped the right shoulder to
leave the right-back in his wake,
consummately sliding the ball under the goalkeeper Robinson for a
formidable Varsity hat-rick.
The onus was on Oxford and
Keown and he made a double substitution on the hour mark in the
hope of containing the potency of
the Cambridge front line and prising open the light blue rearguard
a third time. 10 minutes later
they came tantalisingly close,
only to be thwarted by a scintillating save from the increasingly
assured Dean.
Sadly, we didn’t heed the warning signs and a combination of
sloppy marking, indecisiveness
and fortunate deflections allowed Toogood to chip Dean for
the equaliser with 17 minutes remaining.
And then it really could have
gone either way. Homerton man
Pendlebury and substitute Amos
both went close for Cambridge but
the former was foiled by theatrical goalkeeping, the latter foiled
by his angles.
And then came the moment
we’d all been waiting for. Mark
Baxter, TCS’ very own football
correspondent was thrust into
the Varsity fray. Within moments
of coming on no doubt imagining
his name in TCS lights he latched
onto Stock’s cross only for his
shot to sail so far over the top
that the poor Fulham steward had
to traipse up the empty stand behind the goal to retrieve the ball.
The last two minutes of play
were electric and decided the tie.
First, goalkeeper Dean clambered
across his goal line to claw away
an Oxford strike which seemed
destined to win it. If Oxford were
frustrated by that, they were infuriated immediately afterwards.
Stock again picked up the ball in
the middle of the Oxford half and
again beat his marker and then
rounded the keeper to slot it into
an empty net to send the Cambridge crowd into raptures.
As the fourth official’s board
went up next to Martin Keown’s
disgusted
expression,
Stock
turned provider. Getting to the
by-line he played a ball weighted
to perfection and Amos powered
home the header to seal a famous
win for Cambridge.

4-5 - The Cambridge Student

Transcription

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