Union shafted over condoms

Transcription

THURSDAY
The
CambridgeStudent
Lent 2008 Issue 2
Union shafted over condoms
Debating society forced to prove condoms do not pose a threat to student health
Alexander Glasner
Deputy News Editor
The Cambridge Union Society has
come under fire for its distribution
of condoms to students at the freshers’ fair – condoms which the Cambridge University Students’ Union
(CUSU) have claimed to be unsafe
and unprotective.
CUSU sent an emergency email
through all the College JCRs telling
students explicitly not to use the
free condoms the Union had been
given out on Tuesday.
CUSU’s Welfare Officer, Andrea
Walko, told The Cambridge Student
(TCS) that although the condoms
have a CE mark, they lacked a Kitemark symbol – a sign that certifies
the products have been safety tested.
The Kitemark symbol means that
a product has met rigorous standards from frequent testing. The
tests involve the strength, durability and size and must be carried out
by independent assessors - unlike
the CE certification. Both certifications symbols are legal to be sold in
the UK.
In spite of this, Welfare Officer
Andrea Walko has said that she
would “only sell condoms with a
Kitemark.” She has also said that
CUSU were offering everyone with
a Union condom a replacement condom for free with lubrication and a
safer sex guide.
The Union had produced the
condoms, which have the Union’s
insignia as well as the phrase, “for
a more perfect union” emblazoned
upon it, in order to increase interest
in the society.
But despite the Union’s desire
for greater student interest in the
News
society, one source suggests that
the Union’s reponse to student welfare was less than interested.
The source, who wished to remain anonymous, told TCS that
when confronted at the Fresher’s
Fair the Union said they did not expect anyone to use them – and that
if they did, they should use it on top
of another condom.
CUSU has strongly criticised this
advice, saying that wearing two
‘Anyone who
took that
as serious
health advice
shouldn’t
be looking
after student
welfare’
condoms is extremely dangerous.
They have said it “is a hundred times
more unsafe” than just using one as
it often results in the condom splitting.
The story has attracted so much
attention that The Sun newspaper
will be running a story on the subject.
The Union has been quick to
defend its position. In a statement
to TCS, the President of the Union,
Adam Bott, said: “Anyone who said
that was not speaking in an official capacity. And anyone who took
that as serious sexual health advice
>>03 interview
>>14
CUSU has warned
students not to use the
Union condoms
Image: rubberpaw
should not be looking after the welfare of the students,” he added.
The Union has further stated
that the condoms are completely
safe, sending TCS a copy of the
safety certificate which they were
given when they bought the batch.
President Adam Bott was also critical of CUSU’s handling of the situation saying that CUSU sent out the
emails to JCRs before contacting the
Union about the alleged problems.
Bott told TCS: “The condoms are
perfectly safe. Although they do
not have the BSI Kitemark, they do
carry the CE mark, so they are safe
– and, in fact, they are a brand used
by the NHS. We deeply regret that
CUSU published scare stories before
checking with us. CUSU’s claim that
condoms without the kitemark are
dangerous is completely false.
“The Union takes the health of
its members seriously – and their
sexual satisfaction.”
However, Richard Barnes, University HIV and Sexual Health Committee Chair said: “I think the use of
the Union condoms would indeed be
unwise.”
theatre
Sport
This week’s
supplement:
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>> 32
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02|News
News in Brief
Research
Nobel Prize for Caian
Professor Roger Tsien, a former Caius fellow, has won this
year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry.s
Tsien is being recognised for his
“discovery and development of
the green fluorescent protein,
GFP”, a substance found chiefly in jellyfish. The $1.4 million
prize will be shared with two
other scientists.
GFP has transformed biological
research by allowing scientists
to monitor the activity of cell
molecules that would otherwise be too small to observe. It
is particularly valuable in the
field of disease research.
Celebrity Gossip
Lily Cole papparazzied
The Lily Cole Circus rumbles on
with numerous publications attempting to obtain pictures of
the model in and around Cambridge. Cole, who embarks on a
History of Art course at King’s
this year, was most recently
snapped stocking up on toiletries in Boots with her mum.
She has not yet been seen in
Marks & Spencer’s, but given
her reputed £11 million contract with the chain, they
might hope that she’ll send
some of it back their way via
the food department.
Celebrity Gossip
A study conducted by the Cambridge Autism Research Centre
has found that the same genes
thought to be responsible for
the condition can also lead
to an increased aptitude for
mathematics, music and other
intellectual disciplines in people who do not demonstrably
suffer from the disability.
A group of 378 Cambridge
maths students contained seven times as many autistic cases
as the control group, prompting Dr Simon Baron-Cohen, the
director of the study, to conclude that “it seems clear that
genes play a significant role in
the causes of autism and that
those genes are also linked to
certain intellectual skills”
THURSDAY
Image courtesy of Michael Winner
Michael Winner Cambridge’s second most recognisable alum chats us up
Alex O’Connell Is a third-year classicist and Olympic fencer
Porters’ stories Porters share their memories of Cambridge over the years
The Alhambra A monument to collaboration between Islam and the Western world
sponsored
by:
Thursday 9th October, Issue 2, Michaelmas 2008
Hob fire at King’s
Traffic cone prank put the university’s most famous college at risk
Caroline Organ
Deputy News Editor
King’s College students have been
shocked by a fire that broke out in a
kitchen on Sunday morning.
The fire broke out at 4am in
King’s New Garden Hostel after two
students reportedly placed a traffic cone on a hot hob after a night
out.
The blaze was only discovered
when two other student noticed
an “orange glow” coming from one
of the kitchens. When he went to
investigate it became immediately
obvious that one of the hobs had
caught fire. As the flames rose to
the height of the cupboards, the
kitchen filled up with thick black
smoke.
The two male students who discovered the fire characterised it as
a “small blaze”, and said that they
quickly went to work to put it out.
They grabbed a fire extinguisher to
keep the flames at bay and finally
used a fire blanket to put it out
completely.
The students, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “The smoke
detector didn’t work so we broke the
alarm and began the evacuation.”
In spite of this some students still
slept, telling The Cambridge Student
(TCS) that they did not hear the
alarm.
Another eyewitness, who also
wished to remain anonymous,
commented that the students who
caused the fire to break out were:
“wasted – they should be sent down
for starting the fire.” The College
Dean, the Revd Ian Thompson, sent
out an email to all King’s undergraduates the following day reminding
students of the fire safety procedures and expressing his relief that
the fire was dealt with “speedily and
without anyone being hurt”.
The flames
rose to the
height of the
cupboards
In his email he stated: “I will be
investigating the cause of the fire
but the fact that this happened on
the first night many of you were
back in College leads me to reiterate
again the need for each of us to take
extreme care as far as fire and potential causes of fire are concerned.
“We are each reponsible for the
safety of those with whom we live
and work and so each of us must ensure that we do nothing that might
put others, or the fabric of the College at risk.”
The fire at King’s College comes
only months after the hobs were restored to College kitchens following
a massive student campaign – the
hobs were initially removed following college officials’ fears that they
would prove a fire risk.
Photo: Monkey leader
Mathmo Autism link
The Cambridge Student | 09/10/08
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Cambridge celebrates 800 years in style
Pete Jefferys
Comment Editor
New York’s Empire State Building
will turn blue for 48 hours in December 2009 as part of the 800th
Anniversary celebrations for Cambridge University.
In a recent announcement on
the University website the event,
which will see the landmark coloured ‘Cambridge Blue’, was described as “great news” by organisers of the celebrations.
The 77 year old Empire State
Building, which held the record
as tallest building in the world for
over 40 years, is one of the most
recognisable modern structures. Its
temporary transformation will take
place between the 4th and 6th of
December 2009, towards the end of
the anniversary celebrations
The University has recently announced a series of other spectacles, to mark Cambridge’s 800th an-
niversary year, beginning later this
month with the Festival of Ideas.
The Festival, which will run from
October 22nd until November 2nd,
will take place at venues across the
city and features more than 200
events.
Organisers believe it is the first
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Festival of its kind to be held
in the UK. The programme, which
will include lectures from Evan
Davies and David Reynolds, and a
language-oriented talent contest,
based on the TV series ‘Britain’s Got
Talent’.
The lecture series is described
as “striking a balance between academic achievement and celebration,
respecting the past, celebrating the
present and leaving a legacy for the
future”.
Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats and former Conservative leader Michael Howard will be adding
some political interest, speaking
at an event entitled “What are the
limits of European integration?” on
October 27th.
Organisers have also stressed the
diversity of the Festival, which will
include a family day for children,
Chinese Calligraphy and a debate
on the social and economic implications of Facebook. Many of the
events will be held in colleges and
University lecture halls, including
facilities at Anglia Ruskin University.
Additional highlights will include performances from the Endellion String Quartet and the Cambridge University Musical Society
late this month.
On a very different note, the CU
Spaceflight Organisation, a student- run group, have announced
a competition for 14-18 year-olds
to design a scientific experiment
for the anniversary, which they will
launch to the edge of space as a
payload on one of their rockets.
The team of undergraduates has
made headlines in the national
press with their rockets launched
from high altitude balloon platforms and are the current holders
of the UK balloon altitude record,
now standing at over 100,000 feet.
The team hope that the competition will be “a fun and inexpensive
way of expanding science education and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers”.
This proposal fits in very well
with the anniversary event organiser’s aims to provide “a springboard
for the future” in the University’s
800th year.
The celebrations are being supported by the presence of the unofficial mascot “Octo”, a white 800
which has been photographed in
locations across Cambridge.
The organisers have invited the
public to suggest other potential
Octo” images, to be used throughout its publicity material.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
News|03
Library shake-up causes concern
Fears that smaller subjects might suffer under the new proposals
Centralisation could save money
Alex Coke-Woods
Associate Editor
‘This proposal
needs to be
thought about
very carefully’
“Budget concerns mean that libraries are evaluating what services
they can provide and Arts and Humanities in particular are feeling the
squeeze, which might be contributing to their anxiety,” Bagshaw continued.
Indeed, other faculty librarians,
such as David Wills of the Squire Law
Library, have welcomed the proposals. “This review was an extremely
positive exercise in my opinion and
will help to ensure that the University continues to focus and deliver
information, materials and library
services in the most appropriate
form for the 21st century Cambridge
scholar,” he told TCS.
English Faculty Librarian, Elizabeth Tilley, agreed that “to get the
best value that we can for that we
can for journal licenses, we have to
purchase those on an institutional
basis, rather than on an independent faculty basis”
But, she added, centralisation
isn’t necessarily the best course of
action.
“It can increase committees and
increase hierarchy; management can
tend to lose track of what’s going on
at the issue desk,” she explained.
“You risk losing local support and
subject specialists, particularly if
you start to amalgamate libraries,
which may be on the cards in the
future,” she added.
“These proposals have to be
thought through very carefully.”
At present, the plans are still at
the drawing board, and some are
uncertain as to the full extent of
their implications. The proposals as
they stand recommend the creation
a new ‘Director of Library Services,’
who would “oversee the broader
support of all the University libraries in pedagogic support.” A similar
system has already been introduced
at Oxford and Edinburgh universities.
“The Board have emphasised electronic resources, such as journals, as
the key rationale for centralisation.
But it’s completely unclear as to
what would happen with anything
else, like fines for example,” the
English Faculty Librarian told TCS.
But, she continued: “I welcome
the initiative and think that there is
room for a unique model of balance
that need not repeat the mistakes of
Oxford and Edinburgh.”
A spokesman for the General
Board emphasised that, while it was
true that libraries had not been consulted prior to the publication of the
review’s recommendations, “consultation is ongoing.”
Each School will now submit a response to the proposals by November 7th, although the final decision
will rest with the Board.
Photo: Nick in exsilio
New plans to give control of departmental and faculty libraries to Cambridge University Library (UL) have
raised concerns among some faculty
librarians, anxious for the future of
their institutions.
A review of University teaching
and learning support, undertaken
by the General Board, has recommended that steps be taken to centralise the administration of faculty
libraries, which are currently independent.
The Board, which advises the
university on educational policy,
recommends that, “the UL should be
given a more pro-active role in the
organisation of faculty and departmental libraries… with the aim of
providing cost-effective, high-quality delivery of library and e-information services.”
While some librarians have welcomed the proposals, others are worried that the loss of faculty library
independence could be bad news for
their students.
“Smaller subjects could suffer in
a centralised budget, because they
don’t have the student numbers,”
said Faculty Librarian of Classics Lyn
Bailey.
Despite the far-reaching implications of the proposed reforms, Bailey complains that “no department
or faculty librarians were involved or
even consulted,” during the review
process.
“It’s a bit of a shock when you
come back from your holidays and
find this document potentially
threatening your whole library,”
Bailey said. “Presumably it’s a costcutting exercise, but we’re not sure
where the benefits are coming from
- unless they’re going to shut the libraries,” she added.
But these worries are completely
unfounded according to CUSU Education officer Ant Bagshaw, who sits
on the General Board as one of its
student members.
“Nothing in the review suggests
that library closures are even on the
cards,” he told The Cambridge Student (TCS). He added that although
cost-cutting was one of the Board’s
goals, a large part of these savings
would be made through the centralisation of journal licenses.
“The General Board will be looking to make savings that aren’t at
the cost of provision,” he said.
Now there are no more excuses for missing lectures
Katie Spenceley
News Editor
Lectures given by Cambridge University experts can now be downloaded onto computers and iPods in
the form of a podcast.
Now available on iTunes U, which
is a section of the iTunes Store dedicated to offering free educational
content, Cambridge University will
provide users with free access to
material from some of the University’s leading academics as well as
other world experts on demand.
Over 300 lectures, including
talks by historian David Starkey,
along with interviews with some
of Cambridge University’s Nobel
Prize winners, will be available to
both students and the general public as a result of the university-run
scheme.
Cambridge on iTunes will also
feature the opportunity to download an analysis of the Enron scandal, a guided tour of the exhibitions
at the Fitzwilliam Museum by leading experts, and Dr Chris Smith’s
popular show ‘The Naked Scientist’.
Their popular podcast currently
occupies the number one spot on
the science download charts in the
US, as well as hovering in the top
20 science downloads in the iTunes
Store for most of the rest of the
world.
‘Cambridge
ideas - now
they’re on your
desktop!’
Wolfson College Fellow and Observer columnist, John Naughton said in a statement about the
launch: “The old adage that ‘Cambridge ideas change the world’
has just received a new twist: now
they’re on your desktop.”
Students hoping to apply to Cambridge will also be able to download
videos to aide them through the
application and interview process.
All the content will be available
to users of Macs and PCs and can
also be downloaded to an iPod or
iPhone.
The new online archive allows
visitors to the iTunes Store a chance
to view all of Cambridge’s stock of
recorded material for the first time
in one accessible place.
To find out more, log on to http://
www.cam.ac.uk/itunesu
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
04|News
ADC reopens after
£2.2m revamp
New dressing rooms, soundproofed rehearsal spaces
and seating installed during six month closure
Anna Croall
Deputy News Editor
The ADC reopened its doors this
Tuesday after a six-month closure, marking the end of 5 years
of redevelopment.
The project, intended to update the theatre’s aging facilities,
has needed £2.2million in funding since beginning in 2003, and
is hoped to transform the theatre
for both audiences and performers. The funding came from a combination of donations from the
university, charitable funds, and
several notable alumni. £1million
of this went into the most recent
stage of the uplift, which has seen
the improvement of seating, and
the creation of an entirely new
space, the Larkum Studio.
Renovation has been on the
cards at the theatre since the early nineties, when many involved
with the theatre began to suggest
an update of the facilities. It is
hoped that the completion of renovations will make the theatre,
whose boards have been trodden
by such notable figures as Stephen
Fry, Emma Thompson and comedy
duo Mitchell and Webb, more effective as a performance and re-
hearsal space for all involved.
The theatre, which was established in Park Street as the centre
of University drama in Cambridge
in 1855, has been through many
changes since first being created
in a rented room at the Hoop Inn.
It was in 1882 that the Amateur
Dramatics Club actually bought
the space, and it remained under
student control until it ran into
financial difficulties in 1973.
Since then the theatre has
been run by the University as a
department, with a staff of four,
attracting audiences from across
Cambridge, including significant
support from outside the student
population. The theatre retains,
though, a very close association
with both CUADC and Footlights,
and remains, in term time, primarily a centre of student drama
and comedy.
Despite changes in its administration, the theatre retained
many of its traditions, including
a ban on female performers until
1995.
The recent redevelopment has
begun to update some of the
theatre’s less appealing features.
In particular, the theatre’s new
seating has been welcomed by
audiences, whose experience of
the uncomfortable seating in the
past was a common criticism. The
new seating has also been created
to maximise the audience’s view
of the stage itself, aiming to be
pleasing on an artistic level as
well.
The theatre has also improved
its performance and rehearsal
spaces with the creation of the
Larkum Studio. The sound-insulated space is intended to provide
a much-needed rehearsal and audition area for the theatre’s many
productions.
Theatre manager James Baggeley expressed hope that audiences would appreciate the improvements, and added, “What
they won’t see is just as remarkable - refurbished dressing rooms
with showers, greatly expanded
wing-space and new production
and workshop facilities.
“We hope our audiences love
the changes as much as we do.”
The new season kicks off with
a Cambridge American Stage Tour
production of Henry V as a main
show at 7.30pm and the Footlights
Edinburgh show ‘Devils’ on as the
late show at 11pm. Both shows
will be running until Saturday.
Police whistles
make a comeback
Initiative aims to clamp down on
behaviour of “anti-social” cyclists
Alex Glasner
Deputy News Editor
Whistles have come back into fashion with police on Cambridge’s
streets. In an attempt to clamp
down on illegal cycling, police officers have taken to using whistles to
deter anyone they see committing
traffic offences.
University students had already
been aware of a heightened police
presence on Trinity Street, amongst
others, but now the police will no
longer have to lose their voices, instead they can rely on whistles to
stop cyclists.
The police have said that they
are trying to make the centre of
Cambridge “a better place for all
concerned.” The aim, they say, is
to stop cyclists from cycling where
“they shouldn’t be... such as pavements.”
Foreign
students ‘are
not aware of
the traffic laws
here’
The move has come just in time
for the start of term, and many residents “have applauded its use,” PC
Steve Hinks told Cambridge News.
Such “anti-social” cyclists are a
“huge problem” and take up much
police time. PC Hinks said that some
of the problem was due to the foreign students, who “are not aware
of traffic laws here.”
This is the first time that whistles will have been used by police
on Cambridge streets for 30 years,
despite having graced the roads for
200 years before.
It seems that prior to this, there
were many who flouted these laws.
Classicist Rosie Coombs has told
TCS, “I don’t want to be late for
lectures, so I have to cut corners. I
don’t know what I’ll do now.”
Constance Daggett, a second
year Girtonian, told TCS, “I was
fined thirty pounds in my first
week for going down a wrong way
street, but I didn’t even know it was
wrong at the time.” But she added
that it might “bring discipline to
our roads.”
One student, who wanted to remain anonymous, claimed he would
be prepared if police tried to fine
him. “If they catch me,” he said,
“I’ll just claim stupidity.”
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
News|05
Downing staircase sealed in asbestos scare
Owen Kennedy
Deputy News Editor
Charles Brown’s helicopter
descends on Downing
Photograph: Richard Taplin
The staircase is to be sealed
for three weeks
Photograph: Dina
Verkhratratska
Asbestos has been discovered at
Downing College, forcing the closure of a staircase used to store the
belongings of international students. In an email to the student
body, Downing Senior Tutor Dr. Graham Virgo announced that “a small
amount” of the toxic substance had
been found in the basement of a
staircase on the main college site.
The basement will now be closed for
at least three weeks until it is safe
to use again.
The staircase in question was a
fellows’ staircase, so no students
have been forced to move out. But
the basement where the asbestos
was found was also home to the JCR
office and a luggage storage room,
both of which will be inaccessible
while the staircase is out of use.
The luggage room, which currently remains off limits, is used
by international students to store
possessions over the summer, many
of whom are unable to take them
home. The discovery of asbestos has
therefore seriously inconvenienced
them as they return after the summer vacation. Dr. Virgo advised
those affected that they “may wish
to bring additional clothing etc to
cover this period”, but promised
that the college would be able to
provide bedding for any student
that needed it.
The Bursar of Downing, Dr. Susan
Lintott, told The Cambridge Student
(TCS): “A piece of asbestos boarding
was discovered in debris in a service
void, accessed through a door adjacent to the International Students’
Luggage Store.
“The College decided to evacuate
the entire staircase until documentary proof was obtained that the
residential area was safe. To satisfy
the College’s concerns, on Saturday
morning further air testing was
carried out in the main staircase,
which gave the College the ‘all
clear’ for the residents to move back
in. The basement, however, remains
sealed off prior to the removal of
any contaminated material...It is
anticipated that the decontamination process will take 5 days under
controlled conditions.”
“At present, no asbestos has been
found in the International Students’
Luggage Store nor in the adjacent
rooms. However, because of the
theoretical risk of cross contamination, the entire basement is sealed
off and regrettably students will be
unable to access their belongings
for at least three weeks.”
Downing JCR President Daniel Chapman said that he did not
expect students to be too inconvenienced by the staircase being
quarantined: “In total about 20-30
students keep their belongings in
storage over the vacation, and most
of what they store are non-essential items.
For those who are missing the essentials, such as duvets and linen,
the College have provided a linen
pack, containing bedding and towels etc. We’re keeping students updated on developments, and hopefully the problem will be resolved
before too long.”
This is not the first time that
asbestos has caused problems in
the university. In March of this
year King’s was fined £16,000 by
Cambridge Magistrates’ Court for
breaching safety regulations after
it emerged that painters working at
the college in November 2006 had
been exposed to the substance.
Asbestos, once prized for being
extremely heat resistant, has been
used in the past for everything
from brake pads to fireproofing in
buildings. But its use is now strictly
controlled, after it was discovered
that exposure to asbestos fibres
can cause lung cancer, plaques
(scarring) and asbestosis, a chronic
breathing disorder.
There are estimated to be anywhere between 3500 and 5000 asbestos-related deaths per year in
the UK.
Cambridge in new admissions shake-up
Shane Murray
Interviews Editor
The University Admissions office
has unveiled a raft of new initiatives to increase the rate of successful applicants from state schools to
the university and to encourage
more students from non-traditional
backgrounds to apply in the first
place.
Chief amongst the reforms was
the appointment of the university’s
first director of undergraduate re-
cruitment, Jon Beard, who is himself a former state school pupil.
Having previously worked as the
Head of the Admissions and Outreach Office at the University of
East Anglia, Mr Beard has been
charged with further increasingdiversity after this year’s rise in successful state school applications
from 55 per cent to 59 per cent.
One part of the plan to increase
state school applicants is through
the use of new media, including social networking sites like Facebook,
SMS messages, podcasts and viral
marketing campaigns.
In addition to this, Cambridge has
also introduced a plan to offer one
year foundation courses for pupils
who fail to get their place because
they did not get the required ALevel grades. The courses are designed to help give a second chance
to those pupils who the university
thinks have potential, but have
missed out on their grades for some
reason. The courses are designed to
give educational and financial sup-
port, if necessary, to the pupils for
their re-takes. The courses are said
to be aimed at state school students who are unable to fulfil their
promise because of adverse circumstances at their school, but there is
not currently a set of qualifications
for the courses.
The university also plans to
expand its Area Links scheme,
through which every Cambridge
college is linked to a local authority and works with them to provide
students with the chance to visit
Cambridge, as well as providing
mentoring to particularly bright
pupils. In addition the university’s
summer school programmes are
to be expanded. The schools work
with pupils from years 7-10 to identify intelligent students early on
through a pilot programme.
Finally, the University will be
holding a conference in April with
teachers from the state sector to
discuss how changes to the education system should affect the Cambridge admissions process.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
News|07
Wine ban protests continue
Carly Hilts
Deputy News Editor
A campaign to reinstate the right
of Johnians to bring wine into formal hall is ongoing.
Last week returning members
of St John’s received a letter informing them that they would no
longer be allowed to provide their
own alcohol.
Instead, junior members will be
served two glasses of college wine
with their dinner if they buy a new,
more expensive drinking ticket.
Non-drinking tickets will cost
£4.36. Drinking tickets are £6.97.
This means that students will
be charged £2.67 for two glasses of
College wine.
A Facebook group, ‘St John’s
Has Banned Us Taking Wine To
Hall!’ has been set up to protest
these changes.
The group argues that the new
ticket prices are unfair, saying that
this is ‘cheap by pub standards but
much more expensive per glass
than being able to buy a £4 bottle
from Sainsbury’s.’
Many students have voiced their
dismay at the new rules.
Fourth year Mathematician Jonathan Nelson told The Cambridge
Student (TCS):
“This is another example of St
Johns failing to understand its students. The vast majority are adults
who drink responsibly and will
only find their freedoms restricted
by this new measure, and will justifiably backlash against it.”
Fourth year Engineer Jack Yelland added:
“I find it odd that at one end
of the scale college are encouraging us to think independently and
innovatively in our learning whilst
in hall they treat us like children
who are not responsible enough
to decide what or how much we
drink.”
It has been suggested that
these new measures are because of
St John’s consistently low position
in the Tompkins Table (currently
20th).
However, Selwyn, currently top
of the table, has no restrictions on
how much wine students can bring
to hall.
A meeting to discuss the issue
was held last Monday in St John’s
JCR, where the JCR Committee
agreed to call an open meeting at
a later date.
In the meantime, many students are debating the best course
of action.
The College has tried to entice
Johnians to continue coming to
hall by offering all junior members
two free tickets.
Many have called for students
to return them with a letter to the
Master, and to boycott formal hall
altogether in protest.
Others argue it would be better
to use the free tickets and then
not go to hall again.
In a bulletin for Johnian grads
sent out last week, SBR President
Eva-Marie Hempe said:
“I encourage everyone to voice
their reservations about those new
rules…directly to the people in
charge (the Master, Senior Tutor
and Tutor for Graduate Affairs). I
tried hard. It’s now up to you to
show you care.”
St John’s College Bar
Students at St John’s are campaigning
for the right to bring their own wine
into hall to be reinstated
Photograph: Sven Palys
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Grow some balls, Tories
Comment|09
Seeking to appear statesmanlike, the Tories are too quick to support untested government policies
Dan Heap &
Matt Horrocks
TCS
T
what is known now. However,
this attempt to gain political traction with the benefit of hindsight
speaks more to their attempts to
curry favour with a jaded electorate than to their concern for the
national interst.
Only the Liberal Democrats had
the balls to stand up to the government and expose the war for
the disaster that it was always going to be, and was.
Both parties never shut up about
how much they want to have ‘a national debate’ over key issues, but
HM Opposition frequently shirks
its duty to scrutinise government
policy in order to win a few extra
Brownie points for appearing to be
the nice guys.
At the time of the vote on the
Iraq war, the Conservatives were
languishing in the polls and were
convinced by a misleading dossier
that support for military action
was merited. Their mistake is justifiable.
When they agreed, without
significant debate, to allow the
nationalisation of Nortern Rock,
they were again down in the public’s estimation. This is no longer
the case.
Cameron has recently pledged
to support the Government’s proposed rescue of the national banking system.
We do not seek to oppose the
rescue here, as it appears to be a
neceassary step to save our small
corner of the financial world. What
one must take issue with though,
Photo: Blue Cross
he past 15 years of British politics have been
marked by a political
consensus that echoes
that much debated
‘post-war consensus’
of over half a century ago. Both
parties generally agree on almost
all the fundamentals. The Conservatives now agree with New Labour
on most social issues, and have
committed themselves to spending similar amounts on public services. Issues such as abortion law
and homosexual rights are decided
more by the ethical convictions of
individual MPs than the party line.
Politicians may strut around with
different coloured rosettes, but any
semblance of genuine political conflict has long since been lost.
Time after time, Cameron has
saved Blair and Brown when Labour backbenchers might otherwise have caused a government
defeat. There are, however, two
ways in which they go about affecting this consensus. In the first
instance, agreement on matters of
social and economic policy comes
about due to the convergence of
both parties on the centre.
Labour has occupied this ground
since 1994. For many members
of the Conservative Party elected
since 1997, New Labour’s policies
are acceptable positions and the
ones that their constituents would
want them to pursue. We are a
centrist nation and one cannot
fault the Tory MPs for voting with
the Government when they agree.
This has been evident in the
debate over top-up fees. It is an
entirely respectable right-wing position to support students paying
for their unbiversity education out
of their future wages. That they
voted with the Government and
therefore saved it from defeat at
the hands of Labour rebels is not
their fault.
So far, so commendable. Howev,
it is over more important matters
that the Conservative party reveals
its cowardice. In times of national
urgency, the Tories have too often
elected to trust in the Government
rather than challenge it. Their
leaders have fallen over themselves
in their desire to look bipartisan
and statesmanlike.
The Tories do this to foster the
impression that they have the national interest at heart, but more
often than not they end up doing themselves more harm than
good. In the aftermath of 9/11,
they took the Labour government
at its word and happily supported
the decision to go to war in Iraq.
The Tories were quite content to
criticise it after the event, but
wouldn’t stand up to the Government when it mattered, when it
would have made a difference.
Iain Duncan Smith has since
said that his party would not have
supported the war had it known
is the Tories’ easy acquiesence.
The public cannot tell whether
or not the Government’s proposal
is sound until it has received a
thorough going over in the highest deliberative body in the land.
Far from being in the national interest, it is frankly irresponsible
of the oposition not to question,
probe and tweak the proposed legislation.
The stakes could not have been
higher when Republicans and
some Democrats voted down the
first Baill-out package last week.
The world was watching, but they
didn’t allow themselves to be pressured into making a snap decision.
They knew that debate is essential
and good. They forced it back to
the drawing-board and the bill,
now passed, seems to be a better
one for the American people.
The Conservatives must do the
same. Their party has sufficient
strength; it is their leader that
lacks confidence.
Dan Heap is a 3rd year SPSer
at Fitzwilliam and TCS Comment
Editor. Matt Horrocks is a 3rd Year
Historian at Jesus and Editor of
TCS.
made some fair points, and gave
out free food, so I too am now a
(nominal) Sparrowist.
Whether you’re a thespian,
Pastafarian or egalitarian the
Societies fair is where the Cambridge experience truly begins.
University is a place in which
you can define yourself, reinvent yourself or just be yourself
and how better to do this than
by joining or founding a society
which celebrates the things you
most enjoy?
On the Labour stall I encountered those who were angry with
my party or worse, apathetic to
it all, but this was easily reconciled by the many people who
took a genuine interest in what
we were about and how they
could get involved. Equally the
TCS stall had a constant flow of
those willing to put themselves
forward as writers, journalists
and photographers.
The societies fair may be an
odd introduction to (at least)
three years of University life,
but it is certainly an enjoyable
one.
It is a necessary means of engaging students with prospective
groups and organisations; even
the crowded hall and stuffy atmosphere can be tolerated when
at every corner you meet interesting and diverse societies.
Around the Labour stall there
were drama groups, activist organisations and those advertising transcendental meditation.
A testiment to the varied and
(mostly) worthwhile pursuits of
Cambridge students.
When the emails start to flood
ceaselessly into your inboxes,
don’t “expunge” too hastily. Be
sure to consider the opportunities presented by the societies
you spoke to, Sparrowist and Labour alike.
Pete Jefferys is TCS Comment
Editor.
Ahoy ye Freshers!
Pete
Jefferys
Pembroke
W
herever I look
the words ‘I
Love Vodka’
scream up at
me. Everyone
at the Freshers’
Fair is, it seems, enamoured of watered down ethanol. At least this
is the message that I am gleaning from the plastic carrier bags,
handily provided by those connoisseurs of fine drinking and socialising, ‘Vodka Revs’. I somehow
doubt that the Freshers’ taste for
Russia’s favourite beverage will
last past the weekend, however,
when many of them will be curled
over, spewing their love onto the
cobbles of St Andrews Street. But
it’s nice for them to gain social
kudos; for now at least.
The Societies Fair is often
the first flirtation Freshers have
with Cambridge as an institution, rather than just their own
college. It is also the best opportunity for many returning
students to sample the wares of
some of our strangest, and best
loved, societies. It seems all you
need to do to get sheet after
sheet of email sign-ups is hand
out free pizza, offer juggling tuition or dress up as a pirate.
The latter is, of course, a reference to perhaps the weirdest
named of all Cambridge societies
– the ‘Pastafarian Sparrowists’
(they give out pasta and dress
as Captain Jack Sparrow).
I was actually quite pleased
when I found out that the stall I
would be manning, that of CULC
(Cambridge Universities Labour
Club), was opposite that of the
Pastafarians. I assumed that a
man waving a Jolly Roger and
bearing a passing resemblance
to Johnny Depp would draw
a crowd from which we could
entice at least a few budding
socialists. This backfired spectacularly, however, when Jack
Sparrow himself started heckling
us about climate change. To be
To be lectured
on global
warming by a
pasta eating
pirate was a
real low
lectured on global warming by a
man whose club runs with the
aim of ‘making the world more
piratey’ was a real low. But he
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
10|Comment
Keynes: the comeback kid?
We need to look backwards to the era of Social Democracy to escape the Credit Crunch crisis
George
Owers
Jesus
G
eorge Santayana’s
oft-quoted remark
that “those who cannot remember the
past are condemned
to repeat it” has
never seemed so relevant. As the
extent of the world financial crisis has become ever more apparent,
lazy journalists and politicians have
attributed its origins to the incompetency and greed of the self-styled
We allowed
the neoliberal
nutters to
prepare the
ground for a
fall from grace
‘masters of the universe’ who have
been running our financial system.
This analysis ascribes the economic
situation to the failings of flawed
individuals within the context of
basically sound system. In contrast,
the truth is that history shows that
the sort of unregulated, laissezfaire turbo-capitalism that has prevailed since the intellectual terrain
shifted in favour of the neoliberal
right in the 1970s is doomed to instability, slump, and disaster.
The basic problem of laissezfaire capitalism is that what is
rational for the individual corporation is collectively irrational. For
example, capitalists need to drive
down wages from the perspective
of their individual self-interest, because this increases profit margins,
but they simultaneously want every other firm to actually increase
wages. For unless working people
have a reasonable level of purchasing power, the level of demand
in the economy will depress each
firm’s output and profits. Obviously, however, it is impossible for
every firm to simultaneously pay
the low wages needed for profitability and the high wages needed
to maintain a decent level of real
demand in the economy.
Laissez-faire capitalism thus depresses demand by the inequality
of wealth it creates, which makes
it spectacularly self-defeating.
Unless the state intervenes to
regulate markets and re-distribute
wealth downwards, then capitalism cannot but succumb to a cycle
of eye-watering booms and slumps.
This was the fundamental lesson of
the 1930s.
The pioneering work of J.M
Keynes showed how governments,
by the skilful manipulation of fiscal policy, intervention to stimulate demand, and regulation to
prevent the excesses of market
fundamentalism becoming self-defeating, can reform and humanise
capitalism.
For the past thirty years, economic policy-makers have been in
thrall to a brand of Neanderthal
capitalism which has completely
disregarded the intellectual legacy
of Keynes. We merrily forgot his
lessons and allowed the neoliberal
nutters to prepare the ground for
a spectacular fall from economic
grace.
In order to plug the gap between the demand needed to fuel
economic growth and the level of
wages and benefits most conducive
to profitability, a huge system of
debt and credit, both in personal
and institutional terms, was created, without any consideration
being given to the potential for
disaster when credit dries up.
Now this system’s instabilities
and internal contradictions are
manifesting themselves in financial bedlam, where do the previously super-liberal ideologues of
laissez-faire turn?
But we must not allow the
state to merely bail out the current managers of this unsustainable system and then allow it to
go back to business as normal. A
re-assertion of the potential of the
state to intervene to ensure that
economic processes work sustainably for the majority rather than
the tiny economic elite who have
benefited disproportionately from
the salad days of capitalist aban-
John Maynard Keynes
Image: businessweek.com
don is badly needed.
In short, we need a resurrection of the intellectual legacy of
Keynesian social-democracy.
However, in the short-term any
such intellectual vindication will
not help the millions of ordinary
people who stand to lose most
spectacularly. As always, the biggest victims will be the working
and lower-middle class. The economic decline of these classes can
have potentially disastrous political consequences. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a crisis
that only the Left had any real solutions to, but it was a situation
exploited, more often than not, by
radicals of the Right rather than
of the Left. The desperate and the
dispossessed are vulnerable to the
demagoguery of the racist, irrational politics of the far-right to a
worryingly high degree—one only
has to witness the triumph of the
right-wing in the recent Austrian
elections to see the truth of this
assertion.
Only by articulating and enacting a realistic politics of socialdemocratic reform can we avoid
this and correct the practical and
moral failings of the world order.
In short, as in the aftermath of the
Great Depression, we need the Left
to intervene to help save capitalism from itself.
So, what practical steps can be
taken in this direction? What are
the 21st century social-democratic solutions? The problem is not
one that can be dealt with on a
national level alone, although national action is very much part of
the solution.
New international institutions
of economic governance need to
be set up and enforced with a
mandate of co-ordinating regulatory efforts, in order to enforce an
ethic of responsibility in financial
markets – in short, a new BrettonWoods system, closer to Keynes’s
original vision, is needed.
The whole market for credit has
to be reformed and re-regulated at
both a national and international
level to ensure responsible lending. Governments need to recognise that the levels of personal and
institutional debt that have been
amassed in order to maintain the
levels of demand required for economic growth are not sustainable.
Instead of maintaining demand
by the reckless policy of encouraging irresponsible lending, governments need to do so by a greater
level of state intervention; that is,
by sensitive demand management
via fiscal policy, and more emphasis on using monetary policy to
stimulate growth, rather than the
unhealthy obsession with controlling inflation engendered by neoliberalism.
Furthermore, and possibly most
importantly, the incredible levels
of economic inequality created by
unrestrained capitalism need to
be tackled by a greater political
willingness to re-distribute wealth
downwards. Not only is this a moral imperative, it will also increase
the sustainability of the economic
system by boosting the purchasing
power of ordinary people. However,
this can only happen in a context
of much stricter global economic
regulation that ensures that national policy cannot be dictated
by flights of capital and attacks
We need
the left to
intervene to
save capitalism
from itself
by speculators. Such reforms can
roll back the moral and economic
chaos of the past thirty years, because they can humanise capitalism, making it more moral and less
dangerously volatile.
Capitalism is extraordinarily
good at using the political system
to further its interests, and countless times the people’s representatives side with the bosses and
not those who they are chosen
to represent. The big question is
whether the political will exists to
do what the people need, and not
continue with the wishes of the
interests that have got us into the
hole we’re in at the moment.
George Owers is a second year
studying SPS and is the editor of
CU Labour Club’s ‘Red Letter’.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
Comment|11
What’s wrong with winning?
New Labour has fostered an unhealthy and potentially disastrous anti-competitive culture in our schools
Victoria
Watson
A
Jesus
got an opinion? email [email protected]
disturbing trend is
threatening our society. That trend is
the increasing propensity of the education system to create
a false sense of equality amongst
young people. Nobody is allowed to
fail; an illusionary culture and one
which is unhelpful as preparation
for entry into the competitive labour
market.
The most recent example of this
is the impending abolition of oral
examinations for GCSE languages
since, according to Lord Dearing,
many people remembered their orals
as a “stressful experience.” It is not
so much the fact that an oral aspect
appears essential to any meaningful
language examination, but rather
the principle behind its abolition
which is problematic.
Examinations are, by their very
nature, stressful, and overcoming
stress is an ability in itself which
should be rewarded. The idea that
the stress factor unjustly divides pupils according to ability has also led
to the excessive use of coursework
assessment for GCSEs and A-Levels;
a development which has made it
increasingly difficult to separate the
men from the boys.
New Labour seems to think it is
unfair to select for academic ability, which means that pupils are
artifically levelled round an average,
which means that the brightest are
not stretched. So keen is the Government that no pupil should leave
school a dissatisfied customer, that
they even allow exams to be retaken
an infinite number of times in order
that pupils might eventually gain
the grade they desire.
This system is grossly unfair
to both the apparent winners and
the losers. The obvious losers are
the best pupils whose superiority
is not reflected in examination results when the same grade can be
achieved by pupils of considerably
weaker intellect.
Furthermore, the UCAS form does
not require overall UMS scores to be
stated, and so pupils bordering 100%
are grouped in the same category
as those who scored 80%, meaning
that the greater achievement goes
completely unnoticed, thereby corrupting the university admissions
process.
While sporting and musical
achievement is celebrated, rosettes
distributed and applause given,
those with academic talents are
frequently denied recognition and
their achievements confined to an
examination certificate. An additional problem is that there is little
incentive for such pupils to develop
those talents for they are aware that
they can achieve the required grades
without stretching themselves and
without truly engaging with their
subjects. Enterprise is suppressed,
ambition quelled and potential unrealised.
The obvious winners at first
glance are the average pupils who
can lead a comfortable, stress-free
school existence and emerge with a
string of good grades. But the unnatural elevation of pupils and their
protection from failure is unhealthy
and will cause problems when they
enter the the cut-throat workplace.
Competition is a natural part of
life and to try and manufacture uniformity is unwarranted and unhelpful for pupils in the long term. Gone
are the days when exam results were
posted on the wall and the knowledge
that your grades would be visible to
others a motivator to work hard.
Academic achievement must remain
shrouded in secrecy, as though guilt
should be a natural reaction to demonstration of talent in this field. The
theorist Thomas Hobbes postulated
that “if all things were equal in all
men, nothing would be prized”, the
point being that things are unequal
and therefore that excellence should
be prized in all fields, including academia.
The 11+ exam still stirs up controversy more than 60 years after its
inception. One of the main arguments against it is the fear that the
psychological effect of failing them
might permanently scar the developing young mind. This seems to be
an unjustifiable conclusion to reach
since, by this age, children should be
able to cope with such disappointments and there is the facility for
the most able children to move to
such schools later if they prove worthy of a place.
Competition is natural, it means
winning and losing and it means
learning to accept either outcome,
treating the imposters of triumph
and disaster just the same, to quote
Kipling. It is ironic to hear Gordon
Brown proclaiming in his Spring
Conference Speech that we live in
“an age of ambition” since, within
the system of ‘school socialism’ de-
Many children
are unprepared
for the harsh
realities of life
outside school
veloped and nurtured under New Labour, it is exactly ambition which is
being lost and a tendency to simply
do the minimum encouraged.
Already leading universities
are complaining about the quality
of modern undergraduates whose
school careers have insufficiently
prepared them for study at the higher level.
With one in four A Level entries
being awarded an A in 2007, it is
clear that the examinations are no
longer capable of adequately separating pupils according to ability
and that grades are falsely inflated.
The naive view would be to attribute
these results solely to the apparent
success of educational establishments and to the children themselves, as well as seeing the state’s
creation of generation after generation of happy school children as benevolent engineering.
Many children are left unprepared
for the harsh realities of competitive
life outside school while others are
not rewarded for their talents and
not motivated to pursue excellence.
Civilisation will pay.
Victoria Watson is a 2nd year
SPSer.
The Cambridge Student |09/10/08
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
12|Bursting The Bubble
Afghanistan
‘Afghanistan’s bravest woman’ has
won an award for her tireless campaign for women’s rights.
Malalai Joya, 30, who has faced
multiple death threats and assassination attempts, became the
second winner of the annual Anna
Politkovskaya Award last Tuesday.
The award, named after the Russian journalist and campaigner
who was murdered two years ago,
was presented by RAW in War, a
human rights group focussed on
preventing violence against women
in conflict situations.
India
Fighting in the North-East Indian
province of Assam.has left 47 dead
and tens of thousands homeless.
Over 85,000 are now living in government camps, having lost their
homes in clashes between Hindu
tribesmen and Muslim Bangladeshi
settlers.
500 federal police and hundreds of
security forces have been deployed
in the region, with helicopters patrolling remote areas to track mob
movements.
Kenya
A US author was arrested and
deported from Kenya before the
launch of his controversial book
about Barack Obama.
Jerome Corsi, arriving to promote
The Obama Nation, was intercepted
by immigration officials and taken
to the airport by police.
Local organisers of the book launch
said Corsi had broken no immigration rules but was considered an
embarrassment.
His book implies that Obama uses
drugs and is a Muslim.
A recent poll found that 89% of
Kenyans want Obama, who has
ancestral roots there and is seen
to represent Africa on the global
stage, to win the US elections.
Japan
A UK-Japan team of scientists have
discovered the “deepest ever” living fish.
Remote-controlled landers designed to withstand immense pressures filmed a shoal of 17 pseudoliparis amblystomopsis at 7.7km
(4.8miles) in the Japan Trench in
the Pacific.
The previous record for any fish
found alive was 7km (4miles).
Monty Priede of the University of
Aberdeen called the 30cm fish ‘surprisingly cute’.
Thailand
Troops have deployed in Bankok
after police failed to disperse antigovernment protesters.
The protesters are besieging the
parliament building in the capital.
Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat
fled by helicopter after climbing
over a fence to escape.
Russia begins Georgia withdrawal
Photo: onewmphoto
World News
Alex Glasner
Deputy News Editor
Russia will withdraw its troops from
buffer zones outside breakaway regions of Georgia by this Friday, a
senior Russian military official has
said.
As part of a ceasefire agreement
brokered by France, on behalf of
the EU, Russia has until tomorrow
to complete the process, begun
last Wednesday, of pulling troops
out of the ‘security zones’ it set up
around the controversial territories
of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in the
Georgian-South Ossetian conflict
zone, said last Tuesday:
“Tomorrow, in the first half of
the day, the pullout will occur of
all six Russian peacekeeping checkpoints from the south of the security zone.”
Russian forces were originally
stationed in the breakaway regions
last August after the Georgian government moved to retake the territory from pro-Moscow separatists
who had controlled the area for
over 10 years.
Russia responded by sending
troops into Georgia, claiming that
they were necessary to prevent further attacks.
Europe and the US have condemned Russia’s ‘disproportionate
response’, stressing the need for
‘Georgia’s territorial integrity’.
Until now, though, Russian
President Dimitri Medvedev and
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have
opposed Western pressure to withdraw.
Even so, the current fledgling peace process has not been
straightforward.
Hopes for a ceasefire seemed
doomed when a blast killed Russian
peacekeepers in South Ossetia last
week.
Eight Russian soldiers, including a senior peacekeeper, and three
civilians died when a car exploded
close to a military base in the capital, Tskhinvali.
Both sides blamed the other for
the explosion; Georgia said that it
was organised by the Russians who
wanted to delay their withdrawal
from the region, while Russia accused Georgians wishing to disrupt
the ceasefire.
Russia plans to maintain 7600
troops inside the rebel regions,
which it considers to be independent states, to prevent further hostilities.
At an international security conference in France, President Medvedev said that Russia also wanted
200 EU observers to be stationed in
the area ‘to act as guarantors’.
He said:
“This is a European Union matter. We trust them..”
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at
a news conference in Moscow that
the EU monitors would not be allowed inside the two breakaway
regions.
Georgian Minister for Re-integration Temar Iakobashvili said that
Georgia would not consider the
pullout complete ‘as long as there
are remnants of Russian forces’.
Analysis: Russia- the new
colonial power?
iWitness:
Russia
Caroline Organ
Deputy News Editor
Anna Grigorieva
Moscow
Russia is the country that the British press love to hate.
The conflict with Georgia was
portrayed as a flagrant attempt
by Moscow to extend its borders,
targeting small defenceless former
satellite states in its quest for European (and if you are to believe
some of the scare-mongering,
world) domination.
Is this a plot from a generic spy
novel or a genuine depiction of
the situation?
In the West, Russia’s invasion
of Georgia was condemned as aresponse to Georgia’s attempt to secure its borders; in Russia it was
hailed as a victory for the principal of self-determination over imperialism.
The breakaway regions of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia are arguably
Russian.
The majority of their 70,000
residents are ethnically distinct
from Georgians and speak their
own language related to Farsi.
The region had broken away
from Georgian control long before
the recent clashes, in a war between 1991 and 1992.
A peace-keeping force com-
prised of 500 members each from
Russia, Georgia and North Ossetia,
kept relative stability, though
sporadic bloody skirmishes continued.
Georgia contains the only two
pipelines for oil and gas that can
carry it from the Caspian Sea to
the West that do not go through
Russian territory.
Thus it is a country that Europe
needs to keep on side in order to
minimise dependency on wavering
Russian cooperation.
Is Moscow attacking a small nation that could undermine their
attempts to exert the international power that they have gained
through prolific energy production?
Foreign policy under Putin and
Medvedev has been characterised
by an almost primal aggression,
notably Moscow’s stark warning
to the Ukraine that its economy
could come grinding to a halt with
a flick of a Russian switch.
Then again, could this have
been an example of an aggressive
Georgia attempting a quick territorial gain, hoping that Russia
would be unable to intervene? This
theory seems equally plausible.
Is it fair to assume that alleged
Russian support for the separatists
is entirely self-serving?
It seems not.
The population have on the
whole chosen Russian passports,
affiliating themselves directly
with Russia and not Georgia.
Further, in the current peace
deal, Russia vowed to withdraw its
troops from the centre of Georgia,
a promise it is honouring, in direct
contrast to the Cold War experience of satellite states when Russia would “send in the tanks” and
they would stay there for good.
It is impossible to know the
true motives behind this conflict,
but why do we still immediately
jump to point the finger at Russia?
Rather than a situation where
blame should be placed on one
nation, it seems simply that once
again politicians drawing national
borders on a map cannot allow
for the essential principal of selfdetermination.
The Georgia crisis mirrors the
turmoil post-WW1; bloodshed was
curbed temporarily, but ultimately discontent grew as people were
artificially crammed into national
borders with which they did not
identify.
This, not Russia, it seems is the
problem.
When a ‘Southern’-looking old
woman and a boy got on a bus in
Moscow, a Russian 9-year-old asked
his own granny:
“They’re Georgians, right? Enemies? There’s a war on, right?”
She answered:
“Yes, maybe... but not so loud.”
The closest I came to witnessing
the war is watching emergency rescue planes take off near Moscow.
Otherwise there were no solid
facts; Russian TV churned out hours
of propaganda, the radio was full
of confused and conflicting information, and BBC online was being
disappointingly one-sided.
‘What should we do about Russia?’ (Have Your Say topic of the
day) isn’t an invalid question, but
it precludes the possibility of ‘doing
something about’ Georgia, Ossetia,
and Abkhazia too.
For the media here, taking a
stance against Russia’s scary imperialism is easier than getting lost in
a mess of ethnic relations and the
history of a conflict hundreds of
years long.
I’ve never seen the phrase ‘the
first casualty of war is the truth’ illustrated so clearly.
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Bursting The Bubble|13
New nuclear treaty Escalating
crisis in Turkey
Anna Croall
Deputy News Editor
The US Senate has ratified an historic nuclear treaty with India,
more than 3 years since President
Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first agreed on the principles of the deal.
The agreement, which passed by
86 votes to 13, marks a reversal in
previous US policy towards India’s
nuclear development, after 34 years
of consistent opposition to cooperation with the country.
India’s refusal to sign the 1968
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
and its position as a nuclear state
testing new weapons in 1974 and
1998, have long deterred any consensus over cooperation over or
supply of nuclear materials to the
country.
Since its inception, the deal between India and the USA has had
to clear passage by the US Congress
and Senate, agreement from the International Atomic Energy Agency
and the approval of the Nuclear
Suppliers Group, an assembly of nations exporting nuclear materials.
India will now be open to contract bids from American and European nuclear corporations to build
$27 million-worth of nuclear reactors, between 18 and 20 plants.
Currently nuclear energy provides
no more than 7% of India’s power,
but is hoped now to help plug the
energy deficit in India’s fast-growing economy.
According to the Uranium Information Centre, nuclear power
is expected to provide 25% of the
country’s electricity by 2050, fuelled largely by their high stocks of
Thorium, 25% of the world’s supply
of which being located in India.
This deal not only opens the way
to greater use of nuclear resources
in energy-production, but will also
Frances Winfield
TCS Reporter
the Kurdish language were allowed,
although these remain limited.
Nonetheless, despite making up
an estimated 20% of Turkey’s population of 70 million, many Kurds
feel that they are being oppressed.
The largely Kurdish south-eastern regions of Turkey are impoverished, increasing recourse to violent
organisations like the PKK.
The Turkish government has recently promised to increase spending in infrastructure and irrigation
in the region in an attempt to lessen extremist support, but this may
take years to achieve results.
Ankara is under increasing international pressure regarding its response towards the PKK, which has
been linked to civilian casualties,
including a series of blasts last July
in residential areas of the country’s
largest city Istanbul.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan has promised to increase
Turkish retaliation against the rebels.
Last Tuesday Turkish warplanes
bombed 23 suspected rebel bases
both inside the country and over
the border in northern Iraq.
This was the fourth such strike
against the PKK in retaliation for
the attack last Friday, but such a
response risks alienating members
of the international community.
In line with US and EU thinking,
Ankara regards the PKK as a terrorist organisation, but there are fears
in Washington that any escalation
of the conflict will provoke further
instability in the Middle East.
Many suspected rebels are based
in Iraq, and should the Turkish
military decide to invade, the consequences could resonate throughout the wider area, prolonging the
decades-long conflict further.
These concerns were sparked
by George Bush’s latest comments
about the deal, in which he implied
that his government had made a
‘political’ but not ‘legally-binding’
commitment.
As a political move, the deal has
several important implications. In
particular, it has severed the often
automatic association of India and
Pakistan as nuclear states.
wBoth Indian and U.S officials
have been keen to point out the
merits of the agreement as a recognition of the distinctions between
the two states.
The treaty has also re-sparked
comparisons between India and China as centres of economic growth.
Many pushing for the deal on
the Indian side suggested it could
go some way to rectifying limits on
imports imposed on India, where
none existed in China, such as uranium and other sensitive materials
and technology.
From the USA, the message has
been that this deal will signal America’s support for India to China,
making clear that they have other
options for investment in Asia.
Wherever the compromise may
be, this deal is widely acknowledged to be a landmark in US relations with India.
KENYA
Goat contraceptives
Germany
Dead poet fined
Japan
Skinny-dipping
Israel
Skunk bomb
Netherlands
Jet-set cat
Maasai herders have introduced contraceptives to their goats to protect
them from an ongoing drought.
The ‘olor’, made from cowhide or
plastic, is tied around the belly of
a male goat like an apron to prevent them from mating with female
goats.
The device is intended to prevent
goat populations from growing too
big while the land they graze on is
too barren to support them.
Bucks without an olor who impregnate another herder’s doe could
earn their owners a hefty fine.
Germany’s favourite poet has been
sent reminders to pay his TV license
fee, despite being dead for over 200
years.
Friedrich Schiller, author of ‘Ode
to Joy’, was mistakenly registered
as a houseowner with the German
fee collection agency GEZ, and
letters addressed to ‘Mr Friedrich
Schiller’ were sent to a primary
school named after him in the eastern town of Weigsdorf-Koeblitz.
With the annual 200-euro (£157)
fee unpaid since 1805, Schiller
would now owe over 40,000 euros.
GEZ have since apologised.
A Spanish tourist has been arrested
after swimming naked in the moat
of the Tokyo Imperial Palace, one of
Japan’s most sacrosanct sites.
The middle-aged man dived into
the water and swam across the
moat, before climbing the palace
wall and splashing water at Japanese police trying to catch him
from a rowing boat.
In front of a gathering crowd, he
then charged at the police armed
with a pole and a rock.
He was finally detained after a
chase lasting over two hours.
Israeli police have deployed a new
crowd-control method, called a
‘skunk bomb’, for the first time.
The device sprayed a foul-smelling liquid at Palestinian protesters
at a security barrier in Naalin, dispersing the crowd.
The spray’s smell has been compared to that of sewage, and is hard
to get rid of, even after showering.
It was developed by Israeli defence scientists analysing the liquid
squirted by frightened skunks.
Israeli officials say medical and
legal authorities have approved the
weapon.
A three-month-old kitten travelled
unseen to Amsterdam after stowing
away in a suitcase.
Owner Helen Wilmore, saw Beauty sleeping on her bed while she
was packing for a weekend break,
but could not find the cat upon
leaving her house in Bradford.
She discovered the kitten, alive
and well, 21 hours later.
However, Beauty may not be able
to return home due to the cost of
required injections, rabies checks,
passport and airfare.
Mrs Wilmore has bought a new
kitten called Cuddles.
Photo: Flokru
allow India to participate in international nuclear commerce and research.
It has also been suggested that
the deal automatically wins acceptance for India’s nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, India remains
bound by several conditions, including a commitment against proliferation and the testing of any
new nuclear weapons, and agreement to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections on civilian
nuclear reactors.
On first signing the legislation in
December 2006, US President Bush
said:
“The bill will help keep America
safe by pacing the way for India
to join the global effort to stop
the spread of nuclear weapons…
India will now operate its civilian
nuclear energy programme under
internationally-accepted guidelines
and the world is going to be safer
as a result.”
But many of those opposed to
nuclear proliferation, especially in
the USA, worry that the treaty will
not sufficiently deter India from
testing nuclear weapons.
On the Indian side, there is anxiety that the Bush administration’s
commitment to the new arrangement might not be sincere.
Seventeen Turkish soldiers and
23 rebel fighters were killed in an
ambush last Friday, increasing the
death toll of a 24-year struggle.
The attack, which is one of the
deadliest attributed to the separatist movement Partiya Karkarên
Kurdistan (Kurdish Workers’ Party,
PKK) so far this year, occurred in
the area of Semdinli on the Turkish
borders with Iraq and Iran.
Rebels blew up a bridge near the
Iraqi border as a military convoy
crossed.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said:
“We are determined to respond
to these events in a level-headed
manner. What must be done will
be done… We are very angry at the
moment.”
Turkey has experienced internal
conflict since the beginning of the
PKK’s armed campaign for greater
Kurdish autonomy in 1984.
Much of the fighting, which has
caused over 40,000 deaths, has
been in the southern and eastern
regions of the country which are
largely Kurdish-inhabited.
The Kurds have been a displaced
people for years, suffering systematic persecution by Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq, which some
claim amounted to attempts at
genocide. There were concerns that
Kurdish human rights were ignored
by the Turkish military in the 1980s
and 1990s.
However, June 2004 saw the
Turkish authorities beginning to
relax certain cultural and linguistic restrictions: the very first state
television and radio broadcasts in
Mad World
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Bursting The Bubble|15
Iceland faces economic meltdown
15% respectively.
This crisis has come as a shock to
Icelanders, who have enjoyed over a
decade of exceptional prosperity.
Although at £7.53billion its economy is relatively small, Iceland has
seen rapid generation of wealth since
the 1990s.
Once reliant on fishing, the economy expanded following radical deregulation of the domestic financial
market which fuelled a stock market
boom and encouraged large-scale
investment in foreign companies by
Icelandic entrepreneurs.
The Icelandic Stock Exchange
(ICEX) was Europe’s top-performing
exchange in 1994, and 2003 saw a
boom in foreign investment in aluminium production.
The Icelandic banking sector subsequently expanded, dwarfing the rest
of the economy with assets totalling
over nine times the annual GDP.
The average Icelandic family’s
wealth increased 45% in five years,
and in 2007 Iceland topped the UN’s
seen outside banks as Icelanders
rushed to move their savings.
There have also been reports of
shoppers panic-buying food following an announcement from a supermarket spokesman last Friday that
his company could no longer pay the
foreign currency advances needed to
import commodities such as pasta
and olive oil.
Analysts have suggested that Iceland should join the euro currency,
but Prime Minister Haarde is resistant
to this idea.
Instead, Iceland is seeking a 4billion euro (£3.23billion) loan from
Russia.
Russian Finance Minister Alexei
Kudrin said that Russia viewed Iceland’s request ‘positively’.
In the long term, Iceland hopes
that its growing hydropower and geothermal energy industries will carry
them back to economic stability.
However, it is feared that if Iceland’s banks collapse, the shockwaves
will resonate worldwide.
Over 150,000 Britons bank with
Landsbanki’s UK subsidiary Icesave,
while Iceland’s biggest bank, Kaupthing, has spent over £3billion financing deals in Britain.
It holds investments in businesses
including Costcutter, Somerfield and
the Laurel Pub Company, which manages the Slug and Lettuce chain.
Any collapse could take down many
British high street chains, in which
Icelanders invested huge amounts of
money in the 1990s.
Baugur, an Icelandic investment
company, is Britain’s largest private
company.
Founder Jon Asgeir Johannesson’s
£1.5billion portfolio includes Karen
Millen, Coast, Oasis, Hamleys and the
House of Fraser, among others.
Companies in which Baugur has a
stake, such as the Iceland supermarket chain and Debenhams, employ
55,000 people in Britain.
Euler Hermes, one of the UK’s biggest credit insurers, recently withdrew cover for suppliers to several of
the retailers run by Baugur.
Nevertheless, Baugur’s CEO, Gunnar
Sigurdsson, denied that the company
was in real danger, saying:
“Baugur would like to state for
clarity that its assets are based in
the United Kingdom, Scandinavia
and the United States, and as such
have no exposure to the Icelandic
economy.”
The wider consequences of Iceland’s economic problems remain to
be seen.
the question. Biden was judged by
most to have won the debate easily, though Palin did succeed in
surpassing the chronically low expectations that the media had for
her before the debate.
The second of three Presidential
debates was held on Tuesday night
in a townhall format. Obama and
McCain took questions from the
audience and were allowed to roam
around the stage answering them.
Obama was judged by most pundits
to have narrowly won the debate.
Instant polls from two major news
networks showed a plurality of
viewers to be impressed with him
over McCain. Voters continue to
be more comfortable with Obama,
previously a somewhat unknown
quantity, the more they see of him.
The two debates thus far have been
effective in reassuring the public
that Obama can be trusted to lead
the nation.
Obama continues to lead the
polls in several key swing states. At
the time of going to print, the RealClearPolitics.com average of trusted
polls had the following net leads:
Ohio: Obama +4.0%
Florida: Obama +3.0%
Colorado: Obama +4.0%
Virginia: Obama +4.8%
Indiana: McCain +2.5%
Missouri: Obama +0.3%
The same website calculated that
were the election decided according
to these poll averages, Obama would
win by 364 electoral votes to 174.
The three debates so far have
failed to change the state of the
race for McCain. The continuing bad
news regarding the economy prevents him from getting an effective
message out. It focuses the public’s
attention onto economic concerns,
where Obama has a significant lead
in trustworthiness. The financial
problems and rising unemployment
have created new battleground
states for the Democrats such as
Virginia and even North Carolina.
McCain needs to hold both of these,
along with Florida and Ohio to have
a chance of winning. Currently, it
looks doubtful.
Iceland’s economic crisis has worsened as another of its major banks
has been taken over by the government.
The small country, with a population totalling around 320,000, has
been hit harder than most by the international credit crisis.
Last Friday the Icelandic government bought a 75% stake in Glitnir, Iceland’s third-biggest bank, for
600million euros (£478million), following rescue talks.
Central Bank governor David Oddsson told a news conference:
“Without this intervention, Glitnir
would have ceased to exist within
the next few weeks.”
Following this nationalisation,
foreign credit agencies downgraded
Iceland’s financial institutions, rating them as the least credit-worthy
in Europe.
Now Iceland’s second largest bank,
Landsbanki, has gone into receivership after the government used
emergency powers hurried through
parliament last Monday to dismiss the
board of directors and replace them
with members of Iceland’s Financial
Supervising Authority (IFSA).
IFSA released a statement announcing ‘business as usual’.
The emergency bill was passed by a
unity government of the ruling alliance and opposition parties.
It allows the state to dictate banking operations, including forcing
mergers or requiring a bank to declare bankruptcy.
Iceland’s Prime Minister Geir
Haarde said in a national address last
Monday:
“We were faced with the real possibility that the national economy
would be sucked into the global
banking swell and end in national
bankruptcy.”
Iceland’s economic woes are compounded by the fact that the króna is
in freefall, at its lowest level against
Photo: 1541
Carly Hilts
International News Editor
the US dollar since 1992.
Having lost more than half its
value since last summer, the beleaguered currency is now rated just
‘A real
possibility
of national
bankruptcy’
above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan.
The downturn was partly triggered
by speculation that the central bank,
with only 4billion euros (£3.09billion)
in liquid foreign assets, will be unable
to bail out any more failing commercial banks.
Collectively the country’s three
main state-owned banks have a debt
of £120billion, and inflation and interest rates are soaring at 14% and
US Election Digest
Matt Horrocks
Given the risk of drowning our readership in coverage of the American
Presidential election in 2008, TCS
has elected to condense its coverage into this weekly section, for
your convenience. We’ll be doing
the same until the issue before the
election in a few weeks time.
We had two debates this week.
The first, the only Vice-Presidential
debate to be held this cycle, was
one of the most highly anticipated
in history.
The enthusiasm can be put down
to interest in John McCain’s running
mate, Sarah Palin. The Republican
governor attracted right-leaning
viewers, keen to see more of their
new darling, and liberals, looking
for a train wreck.
In the end it was somewhat of a
let down. Palin didn’t trip over herself on the way to the podium, and
save a few factual slip-ups she acquitted herself quite well. Her failing was in the lack of detail to her
answers, an area in which her opponent, Senator Joe Biden utterly
outclassed her. On many occasions
she also entirely failed to answer
‘best country to live in’ poll, but this
growth left Iceland vulnerable to
global credit problems.
Last week long queues could be
‘Glitnir would
have ceased
to exist within
weeks’
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16| Interview
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Interview|17
The Power and the Fury Who wants more money?
‘In the end,
I do what I
believe to be
right. I might
be wrong, but
I follow what I
believe in’
as varied as beauty contests, Australia’s treatment of Aboriginals and
the Iraq War. In both defying and attempting to direct public opinion he
has frequently been criticised - even
by his ideological counterparts - for
expressing extreme, and non-mainstream views. I began by asking him
about his forthcoming talk at the
Cambridge Union, a talk in which
Tatchell hopes to convince the student body that there is an desperate
need for a new ‘sexual revolution’.
“I know we live in a period when
the right wing keeps on saying that
the sexual revolution has gone too
far, but what I’m trying to say is that
I don’t think it’s gone far enough,”
he tells me.
“Since the 1960s, there’s been
great progress in terms of extending sexual freedom. There was the
liberalisation of the laws on divorce,
abortion and homosexuality. In the
last decades, there have been some
Peter Tatchell talks to Katie
Spenceley
Photo courtesy of Peter Tatchell
improvements in sex education at
schools - although the education
given to young people is still pretty
poor. And this is what I think needs
to change. The information pupils
receive is still about biology and reproduction - not about actual sex or
relationships.”
Tatchell can surely hope to provoke more traditionalist wrath with
his argument that the age of consent should be lowered to 14 years.
Is the lowering of the age really necessary, I ask him?
“The age of consent of 16 is completely unrealistic; it’s out of touch
with young people’s sexual experience. Whether we like it or not the
average age of first sexual contact is
around 14.”
“Most of that contact is between
young people of similar ages where
no one is a victim and no one is
abused, yet in the eyes of the law
they are criminals.”
But is it the job of the law simply to fit in line with people’s behaviour? Tatchell claims that his
views are neither about approving
nor disapproving of people’s sexual
behaviour, merely about protecting
young children against harsh legal
punishments:
“In the Sexual Offences Act of
2003 - and for the first time in British law - consenting relations between young people under the age of
16 was explicitly criminalised. And
consenting relations can mean any
form of sexual contact - even mere
kissing and cuddling. The maximum
penalty is five years’ imprisonment.
That’s not protecting young people:
that’s child abuse.”
Peter Tatchell is similarly opposed the government’s proposed
Extreme Porn Bill, a bill that he says
will restrict the rights of individuals
and criminalise the innocent:
“Still, nowadays, consenting
sado-masochistic relations between
adults is criminalised in certain
circumstances - even if no-one
complains and no-one is harmed.
Parliament’s new bill will criminalise
images of sexual acts which are in
themselves perfectly lawful. It’s
complete madness.”
At this point, I ask him what effect he thinks the trial of Formula 1
boss, Max Moseley has had on this
area of his campaigning - has the
trial made people more sympathetic
to Tatchell’s views?
“People might have become
more sympathetic, but the coverage
tended to be quite lurid and sensationalist. I think the effect on many
people was to turn them off.
“On the other hand one gets the
feeling that quite a sizeable proportion of the population did concur
with his view that what consenting
adults do in private is no business of
the state. I think the tabloids will be
a lot more circumspect about their
intrusions into people’s private lives
in future. That at least is a good and
positive thing.”
But of course, it is not just private lives that are scrutinised by
the media. One of the most striking
things about Tatchell as a political
and public figure is that he seems to
be a magnet for criticism from the
media from both ends of the political spectrum. He tells me with a wry
smile that this is something that
can get a little tiring:
“Yes, I seem to get it in the neck
all the time. Some on the left say I
am a racist, neo-con apologist, while
the neo-cons, the racists, the rightwing say I’m a left-wing patsy.
“In the end, I do what I believe
to be right. I might be wrong, but I
follow what I believe in. That’s all
anyone can do. I do take comfort
from the fact that over the years
the issues that I’ve been criticised
the most in have ultimately become
mainstream majority issues - like
lesbian and gay human rights, like
Zimbabwe, and like the lies over the
war in Iraq.”
So, I ask him, is it better to be
outside the mainstream political
system? Not necessarily, he tells
me:
“It’s always preferable to be able
to sit down with someone over a cup
of tea and agree a resolution to an
injustice. You know, for instance, it
wasn’t my first option to interrupt
the Archbishop of Canterbury in his
Cathedral. I only did that with my
Outrage colleagues because he refused to have any kind of dialogue
with the LGBT community over his
support for homophobic discrimination. He wanted the law to discriminate against citizens of this country
who happen to be gay. That’s wrong.
I wanted to have a discussion with
him. It would have been nice to have
gone to Lambeth Palace and have
tea and cakes with Dr Carey but he
didn’t entertain that. Direct action
is always a last resort but it’s often
a necessary resort. Those in power
are so often resistant to change and
ignore pleas for compassionate justice. The suffragettes found that, so
did the black Civil Rights marches in
the United States, so did the millions of people who refused to pay
the Poll Tax.”
And what about this word that
seems to circle Peter Tatchell like a
tabloid reporter - “controversial”?
‘The age of
consent of 16
is completely
unrealistic; its
out of touch
with young
peoples’ sexual
experience’
“I neither like it nor dislike it
being called “controversial”. Just because you are controversial doesn’t
mean you are right. It’s always very
gratifying when, occasionally, even
some of the right-wing press express grudging admiration and endorse some of things I’ve said - their
motives may be suspect - but it’s a
sort of endorsement which is pleasing after all the stick I’ve taken from
the tabloids.
“I think what I’ve managed to
achieve is that, because of my sheer
bloody-mindedness and consistency,
even my critics have come round to
a kind of grudging respect. They’ve
often ended up endorsing my views,
or if not have eventually acknowledged that I’ve got a respectable
viewpoint.
“It would have been very easy for
me to cosy up to the establishment. I
could have got a high-paid and wellrespected job - but I’m doing what I
believe to be right, and some times
that puts me in the mainstream, but
at other times that takes me away
from the heart of power and I’m on
the fringes. The response I get is always very mixed. Some people love
me, others hate me.”
Peter Tatchell will be appearing with
Abby Lee at the Cambridge Union to
debate the motion “This House Calls
For a Sexual Revolution” today at
7.30pm.
T
he Taxpayers‘ Alliance
is a think-tank and
grass roots campaign
group that was set up in
2004 by a group of libertarian Conservatives.
Having become disillusioned with
the Conservative Party because it
abandoned the tax-cutting agenda,
they have since sought to influence
opinion through the media to create
public demand for lower taxes.
With what’s come out of the
Lib Dem conference about cutting
taxes and the Conservatives talking about a spending freeze, do
you think the tax-cutting agenda’s time has come or this just
a blip while we’re going through
hard times?
I think people are definitely more
receptive than they were. What
we’ve seen in the credit crunch is
a major shift in the polls. Tax has
gone as high as number two in people’s priorities; it used to be education or health. It just shows how
perceptions have changed and focus
groups are saying we’re having to
tighten our belts; so should the government. I think our time has come.
‘We’re having
to tighten
our belts; so
should the
government’
Even if the economy recovers in a
year, and that’s optimistic, we’ve
got a three year opportunity to
make real advances. Maybe after we
recover we’ll see a return to people
being willing to put an extra penny
in for education, but not yet.
People don’t like their post
offices or GP’s surgeries being
closed, services which aren’t necessarily profitable but are popular. What do you make of Post Offices in Essex being re-opened by
the council?
I think that’s very good populist
politics and not very good economics. I don’t think the government
should prop up Post Offices. I’ve
been doing a lot of travelling in the
Middle East recently and, in Libya,
they don’t have letterboxes in their
homes, they all have PO boxes.
They’ve almost fast-forwarded to a
place where the state’s said, “No,
we’re not going to subsidise a whole
postal network”. It’s similar with the
cell phone networks, in that they
skipped the landline stage. Gaddafi’s
bringing in WiMax in Tripoli as well,
we haven’t even got that in London.
Going back to Post Offices, in
the sort of village I’m from, it’s
the heart of the community...
In that case, people should use
it more often. People just don’t use
them, in the same way they drive
to Sainsbury’s instead of using local shops. I think there was a time
when people got their pensions and
benefits from the Post Office, but
that’s long gone. Benefits and pensions are paid by direct debit now, so
I take quite a hard-nosed view. I just
see the head of Post Office being the
highest-paid person in the public
sector. I find it astounding that he
can be paid so much and do such a
bad job. We publish the Public Sector Rich List and Local Government
Rich List every year and the point
we always make is that we don’t
mind people being paid highly for
doing a good job. Top of the Local
Government Rich List is the Chief
Executive of Wandsworth Council and he’s doing a very good job:
low council taxes, 5* rating for the
Council. In Tower Hamlets, which
has a 1* rating, they have six people on six figure salaries, the most
in the country. I quite liked Vince
Cable’s idea of getting all public sector workers with six figure salaries
to reapply for their jobs.
Do you think the profit motive
should be in the NHS?
I have some quite radical ideas
and the NHS is as close a thing we
have to a national religion. I think
that’s changing now and people are
waking up to the fact that actually it’s not so great. People don’t
want the US system, with Ken Livingstone’s image of you needing to
get your credit card out before the
ambulance takes you away. I think
people are much more open to social
insurance, as they have on the continent, which would also be about
the same cost to the taxpayer.
The NHS and resource management is a very emotive issue and
I wondered if you had a position
on cancer drugs, for example?
That’s interesting because we get
a lot of calls from people representing drugs companies and they want
us to say, “Isn’t it disgraceful that
drug X isn’t available on the NHS”
and we turn them all down. I think if
you have a state healthcare system,
you can’t have a situation where patients can get any drug or the bill
will be endless. Putting it crudely,
Shane Murray talks to Matthew Elliott,
the head of the Taxpayers’ Alliance
the NHS has a metric of how much a
life is worth and if the cost of drugs
goes over that, they won’t pay. I
think there is room for changing
priorities however. If you ask the
man on the street, would you rather
have cancer drugs for wife or that
your sister got a boob job, I know
what people would want. I think
this is one of the problems of a state
run health care system. If you had
an insurance system, where the government said you had to be insured
for a certain minimum amount, but
if you want to pay for better treatments, you can pay more. Give us
twenty years and I think people will
be more open to having their own
pot of money from the government,
rather than a centralised system
open to abuse.
How much of your ideology do
you think gets across, as your taxcutting message is in the media
but you also have a libertarian
agenda that isn’t discussed.
I wanted to set up a classical liberal group, as a grass roots group
that could produce change, but I
knew we’d get zero press coverage.
Using the taxpayer platform, it gives
us an opportunity to talk about libertarian ideas and I certainly think
our supporters know that we’re
radical, but it’s harder to get this
across to the media. I don’t think
the public are just being greedy, because I think for too long politicians
and civil servants have been greedy
and they haven’t delivered. It’s not
greedy for taxpayers to want their
money back.
Photo: Taxpayers Alliance
P
eter Tatchell is no
stranger to controversy. The former Labour, gay-rights,
human rights and
green party activist
is used to provoking strong, and
very often divided, opinions. In
the past, he has attracted attention by attempting to perform a citizens arrest on Robert Mugabe and
by threatening to out several Anglican bishops and MPs during the 90s.
He was one of the founders of the
gay rights pressure group Outrage!
and has campaigned against issues
Surely a problem is that it
comes across as a cynical view not
only of politics, but of government as well, with the image of
greedy, wasteful civil servants?
I think they lay themselves open
to that charge. For example, Dfid
is the only department in which
civil servants automatically fly first
class, which is because the UN does
the same and they supposedly have
to attract the best and brightest. I
think ten years ago public servants
got a worse deal than private sector workers, but it’s gone too far
now. Public sector workers now get
paid more, get more holidays and
get a final salary pension, which is
unheard of in the private sector. I
wouldn’t call them greedy, they’re
just being rational.
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
18-19|Editorial and Letters
The
CambridgeStudent
Stop
worrying
about us
Volume 11 Issue 2
Old Examination Hall, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF
Tel: 01223 761685
This seems to be a week for worrying
about student well-being. The Union is giving away allegedly suspect condoms, Downing is insulated in part with asbestos, and
King’s College is burning down. Not bad for
Freshers’ Week.
Of all of these, there is not much cause
for concern. For all of the uproar generated
around Cambridge on the Welfare emailing lists, and in the national tabloids, there
seems little to worry about. The Union were
foolish undoubtedly in distributing condoms that CUSU and a wide variety of sexual
health organisations have advised and continue advise against using. They have embarrassed themselves as a result. TCS joins
CUSU in urging you not to use them. But the
condoms appear to have been deemed safe
by EU standards and it would be hysterical to
reprimand the Union too strongly.
The same can be said of the asbestos at
Downing and the fire at King’s. The problems
were in both cases very contained and do
not seem to have harmed anyone’s health.
One can find something to be cheerful about,
since these incidents ought to pre-empt a
more serious incident in future.
If you want something to get worked up
about, take the examples of certain authorities worrying too much about our well-being. The wine ban at John’s formal is at once
both outrageous and ridiculous. The college
will not markedly improve its academic performance by limiting students only to wine
administered by the serving staff. They will
only succeed in alienating their students by
appearing to limit their enjoyment while at
the same time making a profit out of it. TCS
intends to continue following the progress of
the campaign at the college to have the previous wine rules reinstated.
Outrage at the decision of John’s college
is one thing. It is quite another matter that
policemen are being deployed on the streets
of Cambridge with whistles to halt cyclists
infringing the traffic laws. This editor has
always defended his penchant of cycling
the wrong way down one-way streets and
through red lights. While not encouraging
others to do the same, he will continue to
do so to ensure he gets to the office on time
to produce the newspaper. Until a policeman
whistles at him.
Your Letters
Crossword
Send your letters to [email protected]
Palin problems
Dear Sir,
By Cherbury
Answers in next
week’s edition
Across
8. He lusted after 11 (8)
9. Troupe has chlorine in its possession (6)
10. Need a drink? Starting to shake? Apply to
Alcoholics Anonymous for information (4)
11. Apostle solves crime using his head (4, 6)
12. Little whale beached on Mediterranean island (7)
13. Sounds like a requirement for making bread (5)
16. Paint for perspex (7)
17. Queen in a pickle: cavorting, she solves the
problem (7)
20. Buttresses supporting Brideshead and other
stately homes (5)
22. Acoustics on recent release of ‘Handbags and
Gladrags’ are strange: perhaps it was only recorded in
mono? (7)
25. Means of transport for a theatre director (10)
26. Anastasia uses stun-gun, not drug, to find her
father (4)
27. One of the benefits of a haircut? (6)
28. Display location of Janet Leigh’s murder, without
hesitating (8)
Down
1. Lisa has a new name (5)
2. Daring place to listen to music, perhaps (8)
3. Euphoric, after poetry recital in Bohemia (9)
4. Adjective describing cut: new addition (7)
5. Endearing accent that’s not at all serious (5)
6. Musicians performing The Archers’ theme tune? (6)
7. Closing the book on online sale: vendor may have
made other arrangements, or not (9)
14. Dead saint offers remedy: it’s all about the Good
Book (9)
15. Monk’s cowl (9)
18. Endlessly create tea, and all the rest (2, 6)
19. We hear Chinese poodle can give a Japanese
massage! (7)
21. Gordon’s heading E/NE with Thomas (6)
23. Chamber group performs this month and next (5)
24. Rooster wearing headgear? (5)
Last week’s solutions: Across - 5. Batman, 6. Ascend, 9. Chilli, 10. Eardrums, 11. Gnat, 12. Harassment, 13.
Touchstones, 18. Astronomer, 21. Prop, 22. Vacation, 23. Footsy, 24. Seesaw, 25. Tsetse.
Down - 1. Stiletto, 2. Vanish, 3. Espresso, 4. Redrum, 5. Behind, 7. Domino, 8. Refreshment, 14. Cannibal, 15.
Exploits, 16. Essays, 17. Mousse, 19. Reaper, 20. Refuse.
Pete Jefferys goes wildly over the
top in describing Sarah Palin as
a “not qualified amateur” with
an “unsubstantiated CV” because
she is only “governor of a state”.
Has Mr Jefferys seen the CVs
of George W Bush, Bill Clinton,
George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan
or Jimmy Carter before they took
the presidency? A governorship is
good preparation. Or do you have
to be a male governor to count?
He then tells us Michelle
Obama is the one “shattering the
glass ceiling”. Quite right -- it’s
about time we had a woman as
the president’s wife.
Corrections & Clarifications
Page 8 of last week’s issue (Vol.
11, Issue 1), advertising CUSU
Ents nights was printed in error. The correct CUSU promotion
nights are advertised on page 14
of this issue. We apologise for the
error and any confusion caused.
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].
Jonathan Birch
(Clare)
The Team
Editor Matt Horrocks [email protected] Thursday Editor Ryan Roark thursday@
tcs.cam.ac.uk Associate Editor Alex Coke-Woods [email protected].
ac.uk Subeditors Jess Touschek and Leah Holroyd [email protected] News
Editor Katie Spenceley [email protected] Deputy News Editors Alexander Glasner,
Caroline Organ , Owen Kennedy and Anna Croall International News Editor Carly
Hilts [email protected] Design Editor Dan Strange [email protected].
ac.uk Design Dmitriy Myelnikov [email protected] Comment Editors Daniel
Heap and Peter Jefferys [email protected] Investigations investigations@
tcs.cam.ac.uk Interviews Editor Shane Murray [email protected] Theatre
Editor Dan Grabiner [email protected] Film Editors Nicholas Day and Emma
Dibdin [email protected] Music Editors Kristina Ooi and Saul Glasman music@tcs.
cam.ac.uk Sport [email protected] Puzzles Simon Jackson [email protected].
ac.uk Photo Editor Dina Verkhratska Features Editors Ploy Radford and Korlin
Bruhn [email protected] Fashion Editor Amy Mulvenna [email protected].
ac.uk Fashion Charlotte Bearn and Max Lozinski [email protected] Science
Editors Philip Ashworth and Kate Crowe [email protected] Arts & Literature
Editors Harriet Wragg and Tom Lyttelton [email protected] Food & Drink Editor
Hannah Thompson [email protected] Board of Directors Amy Blackburn (Chair),
Mark Curtis (Business), Adam Colligan (CUSU Coordinator), Matt Horrocks, Sven Palys and
Catherine Watts [email protected]
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Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
My Most Curious
Cambridge Interview
A poem by Jenny Stark
F
ools are my theme; let satire be my song,
To whip the gowns off measly Cambridge
dons
And pounce on clever wits who, insincere,
Without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.
Beware! Young reader, this fiery unloved
column
Concocting crude delight through red poison
That seeping through the page with tongues like swords,
Will, with mere raspberries, enemies floor.
I’ll pull the confines of convention, with merry laugh upon
the lip,
I’ll wither upstarts with a whim, then set them quailing
with a quip
I’ll profess amour; then call them whore:
I’ll ridicule them evermore.
From great heights great men tumble and fall,
That heed the satirist’s bittersweet call.
I sing of Quayside and of the river Styx,
On which with turbulent mind I stare transfixed,
It glitters gold, as Orion fierce and bold,
Doth sink into His wintry underworld.
I pray that riddling Sybil in her sadness
Indulges safety in this labour of madness.
And so I go, a fluttering, quivering shade
To have my future made.
Charon, selfless guide, once paid ten pounds
Doth punt me across the Cam to college grounds.
Now crowds on crowds of tourists around me lie
And swarm the Bubble like a plague of flies.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglob’d are seen
The buzzing bees around their dusky Queen.
Like buoys that never sink into the flood,
On England’s surface they but lie and nod.
There moves Monsieur with a superior air,
His stretch’d-out arm displays a guidebook fair;
He points with upturned nose unto the right
Whilst left, his wallet walks off with a sprite.
Regard: there Lady Greer struts in sexless dress
A ballsy lass, so manly till undressed.
There’s Einstein on a bench with a squabbling pair
E turns and says to M.C. “be not a square!”
Lo! Crick and Watson prance like stately queens
They flex their legs to reveal designer genes.
There! The poet Ovid! Wigged and draped,
In silky garters fatly sits and apes,
Once lean and tall, a scintillating god,
Now metamorphosed into a fat sod;
So, sulking to his Dry Den, he cowers away
Too nobly changed by light of this new day.
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred heads of Satire’s old friends.
But now, my task doth call from yonder plain
And I must venture on in good or vain.
So with bold step I cross the darkened veil
That draws with beckoning finger into this tale
That skims the edge of credibility’s cup
From purpose to despair it doth gallop.
And now I swap embracing light for gloom
In Imagination’s sweaty laundry room.
Before me, sunlight’s gilded rays decay,
And nightly pipistrelles flitter far away.
Courage shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
Thrice I rat-tat-tat the oaken door
Three mighty echoes that through Benson roar.
A clichéd pause ensues; then iron bolts
Are thunderously drawn like frisky colts
And stood before me, framed in melting mist
A tow’ring servant glares with eyes like fists;
A head of greying locks doth shield his face,
“’Tis Pepys”, he grunts, with neither charm nor grace.
Of all the hideous spectacles I have seen,
Those perched on this man’s nose were most obscene
My eyes, ravished, smouldered in their sockets;
I fumbled for a ’chief within my pockets.
Then, limping loudly through Cimmerian gloom
Pepys echoed my way towards the Interview Room.
Now, I must explain that malice is not my aim:
For only a Fool would sharply smart with
pain
When hairs and pores are examined bit by bit
Under the critic’s microscopic wit.
Bound in chagrin, the Target groans in chains,
Their Wit dreads exile, penalties and pains.
But, like a razor licking a lady’s thighs
Satire exposes less than it implies.
Often tickling; occasionally cutting deep,
These bleeding wounds heal quickly after sleep;
Thus – Barber Satire, cutting his layer of hair
Exposes fair Nymphs from Insecurity’s lair.
So in the Room I stumble, weak and weary
My mind a-whirling and my eyesight bleary
The musky night is dark; the half-moon grins
“Sit”, a voice chimes, wispy as the wind.
Red eyes gaze in concentrated spasm
Pallid fingers reach from nightly chasm,
Clasp my hands in a watery handshake
Then swiftly shoot back into the opaque.
“What is satire?” Asks my adversarius.
Poised on a couch in a manner precarious,
I say: “It is a glass, wherein is shown,
The face of every creature but thy own;
It mirrors all – the poor fool and the great,
For knaves are silly knaves in every state.
“And why should you come here?” asks fair signor
In dulcet tones like one famous Dumbledore.
“I…because I am a worldly soul
A witty, curious lass of good parole
Who wryly smiles at man’s Achilles heel
And to corrective senses thus appeals.”
With that, I raised my weary head and peered
At my interviewer, but he had disappeared!
And in his place, Apollo’s rays shone bright
Upon some fangs that twinkled in delight
Then, suddenly, heard I a cackle by the
door;
I ran with all my might across the floor;
But saw him nevermore.
THEATRE
Opening night: An ADC marathon
As the ADC reopens its doors following an extensive redevelopment project,
TCS Theatre checks out the first offerings of the year and finds out what’s changed.
The ADC
Andy Ryan & Yamez Collopy
A
century and a half after
the lifting of the university ban on student theatre and the consequent
founding of the ADC, the
theatre company has completed the final phase of its redevelopment program.
Over the past few years, renovations
of the bar and the foyer have been completed, as well as considerable unseen
structural work. This summer’s developments have arguably been the most significant.
Stuart Cuthbertson, marketing manager of the ADC, is sure that the audience
will benefit from changes to the auditorium. “The majo-r thing is that there’s
now a constant slope from the front to
the back, whereas previously it was flat
at the front and then just sloped at the
back. Now everybody, no matter where
you’re sitting, gets a much better view.”
Much of the work has taken place backstage. “The bulk of the work has been
a new block on the side of the building
which comprises a new rehearsal room
called the Larkham Studio, new dressing
A
Devils
Yamez Collopy
ADC Theatre
7th Oct - 11th Oct
Footlights
£4 - £6
fter an ambitious summer tour through a host
of venues along America’s
East Coast, CAST’s Henry
V arrived at the ADC this
week. An actor playing
Henry V is destined to be judged on the
play’s trademark rallying speeches. Rob
Carter was strong on these, delivering
a fiery St Crispin’s day address, and his
Henry succeeded in being more than
a rhetorically-gifted general. Henry
is growing up and Carter captured his
struggle to manhood. Whether wracked
by responsibility on the night before
battle or clumsily courting Katherine,
this other side of Henry was a joy.
Some small characters made big impressions. Patrick Walshe McBride gave
an enjoyable turn as Canterbury. The
explanation of Henry’s claim to France
has the potential to be extremely tedious but it became an amusing lesson by
an eccentric history teacher.
Lucy Evans and Greer Dale-Foulkes
rooms, a green room, showers, toilets,
and generally better facilities for everybody backstage.” The ADC has ambitious
plans for the Larkham Studio.
“We’re trialling different things. We’ve
got a couple of studio smokers in there
which are following the exact same format as our normal smokers but they obviously seat forty people. It’s great for
more intimate stuff.” He is content with
the theatre’s capacity. “It’s always going
to be a trade-off because we run some
shows that could quite easily squeeze in
twice the capacity, but then as a student
complemented each other superbly as
Katherine and Alice. Peter Piercy merits praise for the way he eased from
Bardolph to Cambridge to the King of
France in successive scenes. While picking up plenty of laughs, the portrayal of
the French was a weakness. The script
does demand a clear contrast between
English seriousness and French arrogance and frivolity, but by pushing it
too far, the English got an enemy of
caricatures instead of characters.
The two major directorial gambles
were the dance before the English invasion and the pole-wielding display of
the battle. Both were brave and innovative and effective. The dance simmered
with the energy of an army on the march
while the battle scene’s choreography
had the thrill of combat while being
an aesthetic triumph. In her director’s
notes, Marieke Audsley bemoans the
neglect of Shakespeare’s history plays.
This production displays much of what
is best about them.
theatre it’s also very important for us
to cater for really interesting stuff that
might not sell as well to the public but
that is artistically really interesting. It’s
just about the perfect size because even
when you don’t turn a full audience it
doesn’t feel empty in the same way a
much bigger auditorium would”.
As the theatre reopens, the ADC is
confident that it is equipped for a successful future. “This is the final phase.
The original plans ran up to this point.
This is a finish as far as we’re concerned
for the 21st Century.”
Henry V
Andy Ryan
ADC Theatre
7th Oct - 11th Oct
Cambridge American Stage Tour
£6 - £9
T
his year, their 125th anniversary, Footlights return to Cambridge with the final run of
their 2008 national tour show.
Performed by a select few of the
group, Devils represents not
only the climax of the Footlights year, but
also raises the bar for all shows to come.
The show contained a distinct lack of
dud sketches which are so often accepted
as an inevitable part of any sketch show,
be it Flying Circus or That Mitchell and
Webb Look. There was also a welcome
shift away from those deliberately unfunny jokes that have tainted footlights
over the last few years; sketches thankfully now end with a laugh, rather than a
groan, from the audience.
The small cast is also pleasantly familiar
with instantly recognisable faces such as
Alastair Roberts, who many will remember
as Romeo from last year’s ADC production
of Romeo and Juliet, and Jack GordonBrown who appeared in the last Footlights
pantomime, Once Upon a Time.
The group’s performance was impeccable, but the individual talent of each
member of the cast was equally apparent,
most notably Alastair Roberts who seemingly managed to conjure up as many
laughs from his perfectly timed pauses as
from his expertly delivered words.
In a way that few can, Devils hilarious-
ly mocks not only those absurd characters
we all seem to encounter every day, but
also those small parts of ourselves that
we shamefully see presented before us on
stage. Seeing bits of my own character
portrayed to me by the cast of Devils, I
am sure I have never before been quite
so funny.
|20-21
Branagh excels as Ivanov
Grandage’s delicately balanced production is an all-round hit
Joe Bannister
I
t is interesting to note
how varied people’s reactions are when the
name Kenneth Branagh
is mentioned. Some see
Branagh as one of the
finest actors of his generation,
responsible for almost singlehandedly introducing Shakespeare, through the medium of
film, to a much wider and less
elite audience. Others, however,
see him as an overrated, arrogant, and self-indulgent actor
who uses his unwarranted fame
to cast himself as whichever
great classical role he fancies
playing.
Whatever your opinion of
Branagh, it cannot be denied
that he has accomplished a great
deal in his career. At the age of
twenty-seven he had completed
three years at RADA (winning the
Bancroft Gold medal for acting in
his final year), won the Olivier
best newcomer award for his performance of Judd in a West End
production of “Another Country”,
become the youngest ever Henry
V with the RSC, started his own
theatre company (“Renaissance
Theatre Company”), and directed
himself in the title role of Henry
V, for which he was to be Academy
Award nominated in both acting
and directing categories. It was at
the same age, twenty-seven, that
Chekhov wrote “Ivanov”, Branagh
starring in a new version of the
play by Tom Stoppard which opens
I
the Donmar’s season at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
When first performed in 1887, its
unusual nature earned it a mixed
reception. Chekhov, in a letter to
his brother, wrote of the play “I
wanted to be original ... I did not
portray a single villain or a single
angel ... did not blame nor exculpate anyone.” Audiences found
the play hard to deal with as the
protagonist was not wholly sympathetic and the seeming villain
of the piece, Lvov, argues for what
seem like positive virtues. It is this
uncertainty in the characters, this
ambiguity that Michael Grandage’s
production portrays so successfully, hitting notes of comedy and
tragedy simultaneously.
As we see the story of Nikolai
Ivanov unfold, a thirty-five year
old (played as a forty-something
in this production) landowner who
loses his way, Grandage is exploring this boundary between almost
farcical comedy and tragedy found
within Chekhov’s first full-length
play. Indeed, there are moments
when one is derived from the other.
In the final act for example, what
could be described as the tragic climax sees Ivanov pour out all of his
confusion and concerns about his
miserable life. He no longer loves
Grab On!
Dan Grabiner
Theatre Editor
his wife who is dying of tuberculosis, and cannot bear to be with her,
preferring instead to spend nights
at the house of his friends the Lebedevs. His land is badly kept and
he has fallen deeply into debt. At
the same time however, the audience is encouraged to laugh at the
reaction of Lebedev (Kevin R McNally) who hovers awkwardly, unsure of how to deal with this obviously broken man. At one point he
even goes so far as to exit, returning to find to his great annoyance
that Ivanov is still pouring out his
soul. Poking fun at the literary cliché, or as Ivanov puts it, the “hand
me down Hamlet”, brings the play
down to earth and is exactly what
Chekhov intended.
This production understands
Chekhov’s intentions, and skilfully deals with the blend of comedy and tragedy. Performed by a
flawless and superb ensemble cast
which doesn’t put a foot wrong,
“Ivanov” is one of the best things I
have seen in a long time and would
recommend that anyone who can
get a ticket should do so.
Dir: Michael Grandage
Wyndham’s Theatre (Donmar)
Until November 29th
www.wyndhams-theatre.com
A
s two of our most
resilient and robust
reporters make it
through a marathon
evening at the ADC
and the public get
their first glimpse of the new and
improved facilities, we have much
to look forward to, the new Larkham
Studio especially providing an intimate, versatile addition to the list
of spaces in Cambridge.
In London, Branagh woos audiences and critics alike with his latest performance, setting the bar
exceedingly high for Twelfth Night,
Madame de Sade and Hamlet, pro-
Week One
’m slouched, feeling rough
as a badger, on the front
steps off the Esteemed
Dramatic Institution polishing off a medicinal
Gauloises at 9.28am before
the first three-hour movement class
… and I don’t feel like moving.
Watching my fellow classmates
bound up the stairs as if they were
auditioning for the Wizard of Oz
is slightly less mortifying than
the appearance of my new best
friend: Miss Keen Bean. Oh, and
today (bless her) she’s wearing the
EDI stash - hoodie and t-shirt (the
latter exposed when the former
removed). Who could find time to
buy the college ‘sweats’ before week
two? I want to trip her up.
I realize that I’m late and dribble
in after her. My head aches. God.
Stairs. I wheeze up, jeans straining
against my aching knees, Miss K.B
bounding ahead: all black pumps
and ‘sweat pants’. I hate that expression. What’s wrong with good,
old-fashioned tracksuit bottoms?
That’s what they were called at my
school anyway. That and pleated
gym skirts and green flash. Sweat
pants? That’s both too coy and too
graphic.
The day was saved by the teacher.
The most extraordinary, exquisitely
unexpected man with something
of a gut - a man of the trade who
also likes a pie! A fellow soldier on
this battlefield of the wan, the thin
and the healthy! Hurrah! He told
us about a technique Grotowski
submitted his students to which allowed them to discover the power
of their own bodies. He would deposit them in an isolated forest,
forcing them to fend for themselves
for weeks on end, one of these experiments resulting in a student’s
death. I try to blot out the image of
a bloodied and mangled K.B. as we
begin to dance.
Well, some people danced. They
did. I shuffled and stumbled and
breathed heavily down people’s
necks – a heady mix of espresso,
fags, last night’s Rioja and Listerine. Mmm.
It was a kind of early morning
madness that seemed suddenly
absolutely right and exactly what
everybody should be doing at 9.45
in the morning: throwing themselves around a studio to Bach and
Beyonce, whirling dervishes, waltzing and jiving and swirling, curling,
curving, the room, me, the others,
life! Carpe Diem! I wanted to bellow
out the windows: “what the fuck,
you pedestrians, you land lubbers,
you CIVILIANS, you slugs of the
pavement! Look at us; we are the
SOLDIERS OF THEATRE.”
At this point I had to face the
fact that I was still drunk from
the night before and my whirling
dervishness came to an abrupt halt
as I bolted for the bathroom and
vomited furiously. Feeling much
refreshed I returned, realizing
with some triumph and not a little
amusement, that I am turning into
Peter O’Toole in the latter stages of
his career at the very beginning of
mine. Chin chin!
ductions still to come as part of the
Donmar’s year at the Wyndham’s
Theatre, and our resident cynical
thesp sees the light in a movement
class. Or is it just a hangover?
This week there’s plenty to keep
you from falling into the routine of
typing “Palin blunder” into YouTube
(just in case she has indeed spoken
again), my top pick being the last
performance of “Stoning Mary”, the
critically acclaimed, fresh from the
Fringe production which tackles
the issue of development head-on
(New Cambridge Theatre Company,
7.30, Friday 10th October, Judith E.
Wilson Drama Studio, English Fac-
ulty).
Or if you fancy something less
studenty, why not try Hoipolloi’s
production of “The Doubtful Guest”
at the Cambridge Art’s Theatre
(Wednesday 15th – Saturday 18th
October).
Coming up next week, reviews galore, including a preview of “Hero”,
the CUADC musical at the ADC’s
gala opening.
If you are interested in joining
the TCS theatre team, send an email
to [email protected].
|22-23
Cinema’s summer of love
Looking back on a surprisingly rewarding blockbuster season
Emma
Dibdin
After 2007’s vaguely soul-destroying summer of bloated threequels
and ill advised television spin-offs,
any discerning filmgoer could be
forgiven for feeling a sense of trepidation upon entering this year’s
popcorn-scented fray.
Between Edward Norton’s disappointing reincarnation of the terminally unsuccessful Incredible Hulk
franchise, and M Night Shymalan’s
environmentally aware sci-fi The
Happening which combined the
traits of being unintentionally hilarious and genuinely painful to
watch, it looked as though our worst
fears would indeed be realised. The
cinematic summer would pass in a
haze of overzealous CGI and doggedly uninspired scripting; the sole
discernable pleasure to be had from
new releases would be listening to
Mark Kermode affably tear them to
pieces a few days later.
The first hint of greater things on
the horizon came with hardboiled
action thriller Wanted, featuring an
unexpectedly buff James McAvoy
and this summer’s hardest working actor, Morgan Freeman. It was
loud, crude, brainless and largely
heartless fun, but fun nonetheless,
and a brand of gory, 18-certificated
fun that at least stood it apart from
its watered-down genre contemporaries. Then again, it was heavily
ripped off from The Matrix and any
film that pivots on a concept as
hokey as the “Loom of Fate” is difficult to fully get behind.
With Will Smith’s alcoholic liability of a superhero in Hancock failing
to live up to what seemed a potentially brilliant satirical premise (just
who does pay for all the real estate
routinely destroyed by superheroes
and their nemeses?), things were
looking up only very marginally. It
was, if you like, a cinematic credit
crunch rather than the full-blown
recession witnessed last year; bleak,
but not as bleak as it could be.
Then came the strange phenomenon of Mamma Mia! The characters
are one-dimensional, the dialogue
makes Shymalan look like Shake-
speare, and there’s a special circle
of hell reserved for whoever’s idea it
was to let Pierce Brosnan sing. And
yet, there was something about it.
People’s response went beyond a
tongue-in-cheek “so bad it’s good”
appreciation; it was as if they’d put
something in the popcorn. From all
across the nation came reports of
audiences standing up and joining
in, aisles filled with jubilant, starryeyed viewers singing along to Abba’s
endless back catalogue. A bizarrely
compelling guilty pleasure, then,
but not enough to save summer.
True salvation came towards the
end of July, in the critical doublewhammy of WALL-E and The Dark
Knight. With a first hour that contains almost no dialogue and a
bleak, post-apocalyptic premise, it
was all the more remarkable that
the former emerged as a moving,
visually astonishing instant classic.
Its robotic love story, moreover, is
without doubt the most emotionallly resonant romance of the season.
Scaling up from its character-focused predecessor, The Dark Knight
encompasses the entirety of Go-
tham city, its police force, its politicians, its lawyers and television
anchors and, in the now-infamous
“two ships” set piece, its citizens
– not to mention Heath Ledger’s
incandescent Joker, Christian Bale,
Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and a
host of other compelling secondary
players.
This was the
year of the
thinking man’s
popcorn flick
Where Batman Begins was a
character study, this is an ensemble
piece, and while that intimacy and
focus is missed here (Bale is all but
entirely lost), human struggle is still
very much at the forefront of Nolan
and co’s vision. This is a genuinely
intelligent blockbuster, whose philosophical musings on justice, chance,
duality and the human condition
never get in the way of the pure,
adrenaline-pumping thrills of moments like the truck-flip, the opening heist, or the Joker’s creatively
violent use of a pencil. It is, quite
simply, a flawed masterpiece.
As August drew to a close with
Hellboy II, it became clear that this
was the year of the thinking man’s
popcorn flick. Mexican visionary
Guillermo del Toro combines unbridled imagination with vivid characterisation and, here, sly humour to
create his eclectic, fairy tale world,
and while there’s a danger during
the more creature-heavy moments
of it all turning into the Star Wars
cantina, it’s a breathtaking world to
spend a couple of hours in.
The latter part of summer wasn’t
without its low points – Adam
Sandler’s latest creepfest You Don’t
Mess With The Zohan and another
of those ill advised TV spinoffs, Get
Smart, to name a couple. But going into autumn, as the pre-Oscar
releases begin to emerge in all their
thought-provoking, thematically
sophisticated glory, there is a sense
that for once, they have something
to live up to.
FILM
A Streetcar Named
Desire
beginning with an odd phone call,
continuing with a topless woman
whom he follows into the woods,
and climaxing with an attack from
a mysterious man swathed in bandages. Escaping to a scientific
facility, Hector inadvertently travels back in time and finds himself
caught up in a strange and increasingly disturbing journey of (literal)
self-discovery.
The script is the film’s greatest asset: sharp, economical, constructed with a razor-edged precision that allows for admirable
clarity throughout, in spite of the
potentially convoluted plot.
The small cast is used effectively and Elejalde is superb in his
lead role, developing from a largely
comedic simpleton into a much
darker, more desperate presence.
Shrewd, well-constructed cinema, a
reminder that more often than not
science-fiction films are all the better for a small budget.
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Presented here in a brand new
print, this beloved adaptation of
Tennessee Williams’ classic play
has lost none of its visceral impact.
The conflict between the visiting
Blanche and Marlon Brando’s iconic
Stanley Kowalski is as compelling
as ever, a symbolic clash of ideals
intensified by oppressive camerawork and a set that offers curtains
in place of walls, allowing for nothing but the illusion of privacy.
The setting of New Orleans is
lent a new poignancy from a contemporary perspective, given the
thematic focus on the breakdown
of refinement and old values (symbolised by Blanche) in the face of a
brutal and chaotic force (Stanley).
While Blanche’s sister Stella has
adapted to the new order and even
finds herself thrilled by it, Blanche
clings to pretences of virtue and superiority in a desperate bid to deny
her own tainted past.
It seems impossible to discuss
Streetcar without mentioning Brando’s career-making performance in
the same breath, and with good
reason. He is a magnetic, mercurial force of nature, a continual
reminder that Blanche is far from
the only character walking a fine
psychological line. But there is an
unfortunate tendency to focus exclusively on him at the expense of
Vivien Leigh’s brittle, brilliantly nuanced turn. She is at once fragile
and cutting, abstracted and acutely
self-aware, naive and depraved, unravelling hypnotically before our
eyes, as the schism between her
imagined and actual realities widens beyond the point of return.
A timeless, mesmerising study of
loss, disillusion and psychological
warfare.
Director: Elia Kazan
Summer
Photo: image.net
Fermat’s Room
What do you get if you lock five
mathematical geniuses in a room
together? Not the latest ill-advised
incarnation of Big Brother but a
taut, supremely tense psychological
thriller with an impressive faculty
of character and an unexpected
lightness of comedic touch.
Said geniuses are brought together by the mysterious “Fermat”
in order to solve what he claims to
be the greatest enigma known to
man, only to discover that their
designated location is a trap designed to slowly shrink and crush
them. With the walls literally closing in, the fiercely competitive
masterminds must work together
to solve a series of mathematical
puzzles in order to buy themselves
time, whilst attempting to uncover
Fermat’s identity and motivation.
While its 88-minute running
time leaves little room for exposition, each character is sufficiently
well drawn to ground the film’s
Elena Ballesteros depicts an improbably glamorous mathmetician in Fermat’s Room
Le Festival de Cam
Emma Dibdin takes a look back at a few highlights
from the 28th Cambridge Film Festival
dark, theatrical premise in some
approximation of reality.
There isn’t so much a twist ending as a third act comprised entirely
of twists; deceptions are exposed,
connections revealed, and as the
plot begins to unravel, the deadly
room becomes a metaphor for the
claustrophobic psychological spaces inhabited by the highly gifted
characters. Everybody has a secret
and, while some revelations ring
truer than others, there’s a layered
intricacy to the plot that demands
a second viewing.
Directors: Luis Piedrahita,
Rodrigo Sopena
Time Crimes
Time travel is a well-trodden and
frequently treacherous cinematic
path. Faced with such conceptually bewildering ideas as paradoxes
and time loops, film-makers (without naming any names) more often
than not resort to lazy, one-dimen-
sional scripting to tell their story,
with as much CGI as they can afford
to distract from the gaping holes in
the plot. It’s all the more impressive then that for his feature debut, writer-director Vigalondo has
not only tackled the genre, but has
done so with a rare intelligence and
flair for psychological detail.
Our time-bending hero is Hector, a hapless everyman who’s just
moved house with his wife in hopes
of a fresh start. What he gets instead is a series of peculiar events,
Unfolding in a deftly composed
series of static, lingering shots,
Summer tells the tender story of
two middle-aged childhood friends
compelled by current circumstances
to reflect on their last days of heady
innocence. Chief among these circumstances is the fact that Daz,
now in a wheelchair with Shaun as
his carer, has been given just eight
weeks to live.
One of Glenaan and writer Hugh
Ellis’ concerns here is the past’s relation to the present and, by extension, the question of whether our
actions in the present can redeem
or influence those in our past,
a juxtaposition emphasised by a
breathtaking and frequently seamless visual blending of the two.
Shots begin in the present and
end in a memory, events in flashback translate directly to the here
and now, and in one particularly
potent scene the sight of a character’s prone, injured young form is
used to embody his death twenty
years later.
The performances are uniformly
excellent, from Rachael Blake’s radiant Katy to Steve Evets’ endearing
gallows humour. But none surpass
Robert Carlyle’s beaten-down protagonist, whose subtle transitions
between grim-faced humour, toothless anger and wistful reminiscence
make for a devastatingly convincing emotional reality.
The entire process of death as
observed here - the final hospital visit and the surreal numbness
thereafter - rings painfully true,
yet the climax maintains a sense of
hope. Plumbing the depths of life’s
absurdity and transience without
wallowing in its own tragedy, Summer is an agonising, beautifully
rendered and ultimately uplifting
exploration of friendship and the
endurance of the human spirit.
Director: Kenneth Glenaan
|24-25
5
Career suicide
How to mistreat audiences and abuse critics...
Satires
They made us
laugh, but it’s
laughter in the
dark...
If... (1968)
A film that anyone who attended public school can cherish. Its
conclusion of anti-authoritarian
violence is sure to remain etched
on the memory. If... vividly portrays a deeply reactionary institution: the system of ‘fagging’, the
tyranny of the prefects and the
dangers of non-conformity. Alternating between colour and monochrome, the film is a helter-skelter
indictment of tradition.
Photo: image.net
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
(1979)
They’ve topped any number of
‘Best of’ polls, most contemporary
male comedians cite the troupe
as being amongst their biggest
influences and, crucially, the
Monty Python films are still
laugh-til-you-vomit experiences.
Any review of their films generally
devolves into a recollection of
highlights, so I’ll cut to the chase:
rent it.
A crestfallen Simon Pegg and Jeff Bridges belatedly realise it’s better to read the script before signing on to a project.
Robert
Stagg
How To Lose Friends
And Alienate People
(15, 110 mins)
★☆☆☆☆
‘T
o describe this
film as a piece
of crap would
be to run the
risk of a discourse that
would never again rise above the
excremental.”
So began a particularly withering review of Michael Moore’s
Fahrenheit 9/11; happily it provides me with an apt summary of
this film too. For there is scarcely
more to say about a movie that
so flagrantly talks out of more
than one orifice, before suddenly making a pretence
of playing (and telling it)
straight.
Culled
from
Toby
Young’s memoir of the
same title, the movie resembles the book only in
its dislocated fabula of a
plot. One could add Graydon Carter’s puckering
dismissal of Young: “Those
who can’t teach, write.
Those who can’t write, write
about themselves – in Toby’s
case, endlessly”. This narcissistic
logorrhea leaves its pungent trace
throughout the celluloid.
For Toby Young is, famously,
a one-syllable word that begins
with ‘c’ and ends in ‘t’. But lottery funding has its own sense of
decorum and doesn’t stretch to
financing such outright vulgarity; there’s nothing truly coruscating to be found beneath the
film’s polished sheen. So, instead,
we have the gormless sight of Simon Pegg stumbling from one car
crash scenario to another; a series
of tiresome vignettes that have
clearly been abbreviated to keep
the running time on spec (and,
inevitably, are chock full of the
most inexpensive variety of humour).
The resulting messiness is em-
Toby Young is,
famously, a
word that begins
with ‘c’ and ends
in ‘t’
barrassingly obvious. Pegg is left
to play that most awkward of contradictions: a careworn naïf. The
film spasms between the softcore whimsy of a pig running
loose in a Hollywood party,
to gloomy ruminations on
the nature of fame.
It rocks queasily on
its own axis. In a pandering attempt to
keep the audience
in
stitches,
Robert Weide’s
film commits
a sin Sir Philip
Sidney identified five hundred
years ago in his Defence of Poesie
– that “our comedians think there
is no delight without laughter”,
whereas laughter itself has “only
a scornful tickling”.
There is something altogether
scornful about the dunghill of a
script on which the movie pivots.
Halfway through the film, Pegg’s
character is described (to peals of
laughter in cinemas countrywide)
as “our very own idiot savant…
without the savant”. There’s
something axiomatic in saying
that any joke that requires such
clarification is either pitched to
the wrong demographic or just
not very good.
Furthermore, the film’s disillusion with its own business is utterly lightweight. The tawdriness
it attempts to depict is undercut
by the film’s unoriginally pristine
aesthetic.
And speaking as someone
who, after a certain amount of
discreet self-prostitution, enjoyed a brief dalliance with the
slightly rich and slightly famous
this summer, I can tell you that
the movie goes no distance towards capturing the dusky glitz
and dignified inertia that waft
through the glittering halls of
the (slightly) famous. Instead,
it provides a satisfied poke at itself. This isn’t sharp, and it isn’t
satire. It’s the self-indulgence of
the unredeemed.
Max, Mon Amour (1986)
Billed as “the greatest ape
romance since King Kong”, this
satirical drama concerns the love
affair between a British diplomat’s
wife (played by Charlotte
Rampling) and a chimpanzee.
Though probably not an ideal date
movie – unless you’re zoologicallyinclined – there’s no denying that
its unsensational treatment of the
outrageous has real power.
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife
and her Lover (1989)
A wordy title for an articulate
film. Impeccably acted by theatre
greats such as Helen Mirren and
Michael Gambon, the film is a luridly violent and visually gorgeous
reimagining of Jacobean drama.
Lots of brutality, wit and haute
cuisine, the film slyly embodies
the excess it inveighs against.
It’s saved from brute grotesquery,
however, by a startlingly poignant
Mirren.
Series 7: The Contenders
(2001)
Released seven years ago, Series
7 has only grown more relevant
since. The premise alone suggests
this pitch black comedy isn’t for
the faint of heart: six people,
selected at random by lottery, are
forced to fight for survival on a
reality TV show. Exploitative TV
networks and their voyeuristic
audiences have rarely been sent
up so chillingly.
MUSIC
REVIEWS
Alternative rock
KINGS OF LEON
Only By The Night (RCA)
Out Sep 22
Experimental rock
DEERHOOF
Offend Maggie (ATP)
Will Stockdale Out Oct 13
Over the past few years the brothers
Followhill and cousin Matthews have
gone from the parched throats and
the smashed whiskey bottles of late
nights in Molly’s Chambers, Nashville,
Tennessee, to headlining the greatest
music festival on the planet. (That’s
Glastonbury - no arguments please.)
And having trod those boards without a top 10 hit to their
name to rapturous reception, superstardom beckoned. If
that performance could just be followed by a huge new album, success would be piled on success, and in an unprecedented move by the Kings, we have before us Only By The
Night after just a year’s wait.
The opener, Closer, is a tantalising slow-burner with Caleb’s voice ripping through into the foreground and driving
the song to its monumental conclusion. Without a pause
for breath, Crawl brawls forth; a towering track destined
to dominate entire arenas with its bruising, distorted bass
line. The real revelation is Caleb’s vocals; from the intoxicated mumblings of early Kings, one of rock’s most distinctive
voices now comes with a new confidence. It adds rawness to
the louder moments, while his rasp makes his humble claim
that he could ‘use someone like you’ on Use Somebody almost catch in his throat; it’s brutal but magnificent.
I Want You can be pinpointed as the exact moment the
album fails to fulfil its promise. After previous glories, it
seems lyrically and musically lazy, and so laid back that
the record loses all its drive. Even the soaring chorus of Be
Somebody seems like it’s flailing at recapturing the essence
of the beginning of the record, not finding its own way. The
end, when it comes, seems more of a resigned petering out
than the triumphant finale this record deserves.
In their stab for fame and fortune Kings of Leon have
written only half of the album of the year. Hopefully next
year, backed by the adoration of tens of thousands of new
fans, they will be given all the time they need to go and
write the classic they clearly can.
Alternative rock
ANBERLIN
New Surrender (Universal Republic)
Thom Andrewes Out Oct 13
Saul Glasman
As any initiate to the music of Deerhoof will know, saying that Offend
Maggie sits at the more conventional
end of their oeuvre isn’t saying much.
All the unmistakeable elements of
their multi-coloured style are still
very much present, effervescing violently from the core reaction between
chaotic, skewed riffs and radiant, candy-coated vocals. It is
a testament to the sheer originality of the Deerhoof formula
that, after eight full-length albums, they still sound not only
utterly unique but also far more modern than anything else
around.
Offend Maggie picks up where 2007’s fantastic Friend Opportunity left off, the band embracing a more pop-oriented,
danceable style whilst easily assimilating these influences
into their eccentric aesthetic. Deerhoof have long since eschewed the golden proportions of popular music and yet,
here more than ever before, the hoary-headed prog dragon
is kept at a very safe distance. Although not as hyperactive as last year’s album, many of these songs place an even
greater emphasis on Satomi Matsuzaki’s extraordinary vocal
melodies, ducking and winding through deceptive harmonic
progressions. Her lyrical weirdness has lost none of its charm
either, pitched somewhere between surrealist poetry and
playground chants against which the odd line in her native
Japanese seems utterly appropriate.
The recent addition of second guitarist Ed Rodriguez to
the line-up has contributed a richness to the sound which
makes many of the most forward-looking tracks stand out
against the lo-fi buzz of the band’s older material. Yet the
additive rhythms of first single Fresh Born are pure Deerhoof,
so effortlessly idiomatic in fact that when the band posted
the sheet music for the song on their website and invited
fans to submit their own versions, most of the endearingly
amateurish recordings captured the spirit of the as-yet-unheard final product exactly. Such an experiment proves the
enduring strength of the band’s musical personality.
OUT THIS WEEK
TCS surveys the albums and singles currently hitting the shelves
KEANE
Perfect Symmetry
MGMT
Kids
Keane’s latest piece of whatever it is
they call what they do raises searching
questions, such as ‘Why don’t Keane
just fuck off?’ I could record a better
album underwater with only a toaster
and a pair of elastic bands.
GOJIRA
The Way Of All Flesh
Gojira are one of the most highly-respected death metal bands of today,
and The Way Of All Flesh is their best
work yet. Themes of mortality and
the environment tie together Gojira’s
blocks of infernal sound.
NITIN SAWHNEY
London Undersound
The award-winning producer’s eighth
studio album will be, we predict,
impossible to dislike. Sawhney masterfully elicits a nostalgic glow from his
well-pitched ambiences.
The third single from the New York
duo of synth-pop magicians is a pretty,
calliope chunk of danceable candyfloss.
Caused a minor controversy in Norway,
where it got to the top of the singles
chart without ever actually being
played on the radio.
LUNATIC SOUL
Lunatic Soul
Lunatic Soul is the acoustic solo project
of Mariusz Duda, vocalist with Polish
prog-metalheads Riverside. Tastes like
an ambient folk metal lollipop with a
nice glossy coat of black paint.
SNOW PATROL
Take Back The City
Irrelevant post-Britpop: how much
is too much? Mercifully, it only took
thirty seconds for my brain to realise
this single was less interesting than
the hum of my hard drive and tune it
out as background noise.
Using ‘inoffensive’ to describe a work is
a very bad critical habit. At the hands
of journalists, the word has inflated
into a culturally high-handed way of
saying ‘this doesn’t push my buttons’.
It’s simultaneously a lazy man’s shortcut to damning with faint praise and a
veiled boast of how jaded the writer is,
and its entire use as a condemnation seems to be a vehicle for
the dubious proposition that nothing is worth doing unless it
offends someone.
The real reason, however, I’m not going to describe Anberlin’s New Surrender as inoffensive is because if I did, this review
might as well be only one word long. Although I’m also going
to tell you quite openly and cheerfully how jaded I am: very. In
fact, the lapping waves of mediocre music have over the years
hollowed out my auditory nerves, through which concentrated
bile now flows, and eroded my soul into a black diamond of
meanness and antipathy. So there.
New Surrender is nothing more than a collage of secondhand sounds. Lyrically, it turns out, the album is uniformly
abysmal: Miserabile Visu’s awful account of the biblical book
of Revelation is little more embarrassing than Retrace’s silly,
bawling lost-love lament. Musically, things are shapelier. Anberlin do know how to play their instruments, and they play
them with enthusiasm and vitality. More frustrating, there are
occasional peephole glimpses of competence and even creativity. On lead single Feel Good Drag, a promising opening riff is
cleft by a monotone chug, never to be seen again, and Disappear actually hits home. On the other hand, some tracks fail
so hard that it’s a dire wonder the band even attempted them.
Younglife is a clap-happy singalong and a case in point.
Anberlin badly want to seduce you with their energy, but
it never catches. This album is like a badly produced popcorn
blockbuster: you keep hoping to be swept off your seat by
swashbuckling, thought-free action, but the acting is too thin
and the plot too salted with letdowns, and you can’t keep your
disbelief suspended.
Punk
RISE AGAINST
Appeal To Reason (Geffen)
Out Oct 6
Kristina Ooi
I approached this album expecting not
to like it. I don’t harbour prejudices
about certain genres of music, but
‘punk’ bands who seem to base their
identity around slating Bush and opposing the war annoy me. These are
entirely valid ideas; it’s just been done
so many times before.
The band are all vegetarian and active members of the
organisation PETA (People for The Ethical Treatment Of Animals) and as such the packaging of their latest album, Appeal
To Reason, is entirely vegan, right down to the vegetarian ink
used to print the sleeve notes. OK, maybe these guys aren’t so
bad. We could all do with being a bit more green.
On an initial listen, it’s pretty standard, formulaic punk
rock. The lead single off the album, Re-Education (Through
Labor) doesn’t stray from its archetype, but there is no doubt
that this band know how to write tunes - I even caught myself humming the chorus. Hero Of War is a simple, honest
acoustic track about the war from the viewpoint of one soldier, based on events detailed by a documentary called ‘The
Ground Truth’. It’s a refreshing take on the otherwise generic
war-bashing, and showcases McIlrath’s beautifully raw vocals
to full effect.
But I’m not entirely convinced by Rise Against’s latest offering. Perhaps it makes more sense in the context of the
band’s ventures outside of their musical efforts, such as the
creation of a vegan Vans shoe. There is no doubt the band
have a strong message which is clearly conveyed, albeit in a
fairly predictable and boring fashion, but this reviewer won’t
be burning any flags in the immediate future.
|26-27
All at sea with British Sea Power
B
ritish Sea Power
have never been a
normal band. They
have written songs
about the assassination of Reinhard
Heydrich, appeared on Countryfile,
curated their very own festival
and fought a bear (though only as
part of their stage act). However,
it would be fair to say that they’ve
never quite broken through into
the first tier of British rock bands.
They have, nevertheless, built a
reputation as a first class live band
and it was no surprise to find that
they had attracted a sizeable crowd
to their gig at the Junction on Saturday.
I was at the scene in time to
take in the set, decorated with a
variety of International Maritime
Signal flags and the obligatory
owls, and the second support
act, Film School. Film School’s
instrumentation was competent
and their drummer was particularly
good.
Nevertheless,
anybody
listening to their first two songs
without context would assume
that they were in fact a My Bloody
Valentine tribute band trying out
some of their own material. They
were almost entirely upstaged
by the fifteen minute short on
seahorses, their environment and
their life cycle, which promised
much, and when the band walked
onstage a few minutes later the
audience was ready for a gig to
write home about.
Halfway
through I
forgot the band
were actually
playing a song
The headlining four-piece, now
swelled to six by the inclusion of
a viola player and a keyboardist/
corneteer, began the night with
Something Wicked from their debut
album, before seguing into Atom,
a song about the splitting of said
particle. But although the lyrics
are exquisite, there seemed to be a
certain listlessness about the band,
especially lead singer Yan. Larsen
B, their attempt to proposition
a collapsing Antarctic ice shelf,
marked a slight improvement
in their excitement levels and
featured a very nice video on the
screens, yet the act seemed static
and unimpressive.
Finally, the band began to light
things up. Remember Me, the
standout song of the first album,
and Waving Flags, their celebration
of Eastern European immigration on
the grounds of our shared partiality
for getting shit-faced on a budget,
were played with confident aplomb
in a frenzy of strobe lighting. This
felt like British Sea Power. This felt
like a band mixing a Betjemanesque appreciation of nature with
pure musical thuggery.
And so, of course, it was
followed by The Great Skua. This
instrumental is not a bad song and
in some ways could even be said
to be uplifting. But it is far from
energetic and, horror of horrors, it
was accompanied by another video.
Whilst this kind of multimedia
experience might be appropriate
in a larger venue, here it felt like
an excuse to avoid interacting with
the crowd and it certainly led to
a distinct dip in the atmosphere.
The theory that the videos were
a substitute for a compelling
performance
was
confirmed
by their performance of True
Adventures two songs later. This
was entirely outdone by its video,
which depicted a rowing boat in
trouble in stormy water, watched
by the families of the occupants on
the shoreline. The fact that it was
thoroughly gripping is no excuse
for the fact that halfway through
I forgot the band were actually
playing a song.
A somewhat subdued version of
Spirit of St Louis was the last of
the main programme and the band
left the stage. A few minutes later
they returned, and guitarist Nolan
jumped on me. In his defence, I
was standing right in front of the
centre of the stage, and it was hard
to begrudge him his leap. At least
it betokened a little more activity.
Finally came British Sea Power’s
usual closer, Lately - usually three
minutes of song followed by around
twenty minutes of climbing the
set, throwing owls and playing
random stretches of other songs
- instead became five minutes of
irritatingly slow song and fifteen
minutes of random jamming, whilst
Nolan alone of the band performed
to type. Although Ursine Ultra the
bear did make a brief appearance
five minutes from the end, he
appeared particularly tattered,
covered in grey masking tape and
seemed content mostly to lumber
around, perhaps not wishing to
destroy the costume.
It would be inaccurate to
say that British Sea Power left the
audience disappointed, yet they
could have given so much more.
They remain, in the opinion of this
humble fanboy, one of Britain’s
best rock bands, yet little except
for Waving Flags in this gig merited
superlatives. Songs alone are not
enough to make a live performance
great. A little mayhem is also
needed and there was none of that
here.
Photo: Christoph!
Edward
Carlsson-Browne
Antics: British Sea Power onstage
Album of the week
Britpop
OASIS
Dig Up Your Soul (Domino)
Out Oct 6
Julia
Willis
W
hen I heard
that
Oasis
were going
to
record
their eighth
album in Abbey Road Studios, my heart sank.
No one in their right mind has any
need for another band pretending
to be the new Beatles. Thankfully
I was pleasantly surprised by this
latest recording. It is immediately
obvious from the Sgt. Pepper-esque
collage cover art that The Beatles’
fingerprints would be all over it,
but by some miracle Oasis were
able to pay homage without sounding like some terrible tribute band,
with a dash of maturity thrown in
just to surprise us all.
This album certainly finds the
band reconnecting with their old
penchant for big sounds to be
played live in huge spaces. Small
venues may have been suitable for
Don’t Believe The Truth, but this
album is going to demand concert
halls, perhaps arenas. The Turning is
so lifted by its backing choir that it
feels almost apocalyptic, displaying
all of Noel Gallagher’s strengths
and influences, particularly the
fade into acoustic bliss at the
very end. Equally, Waiting For The
Rapture brings us right back down
to earth with the force of John
Lennon twinned with the lyricism
of Dylan. George Harrison’s ghost
apparently possessed the band for
To Be Where There’s Life, a sensual
assault comparable to being hit
over the head with a sitar, and
for The Nature of Reality, which
manages to create an atmosphere
of controlled Orientalism despite
its transcendental theme. If I didn’t
know better, I’d say that Oasis
had gone on some sort of spiritual
retreat in India before making this
album. The sound won’t just fill
arenas, it will fill your brain.
While many songs on the album
are evocative of earlier Oasis
recordings (especially the rather
underwhelming single The Shock
Of The Lightning, which sounds
just like Don’t Believe The Truth’s
Lyla but, as it says, struck by
lightning), you can truly feel that
the band has developed musically
between albums. I think the
honour for this can be laid partially
at the feet of Liam Gallagher, the
surprising author of I’m Outta
Time, which is a shockingly wistful
and sensitive ballad about age and
disappointment; not something
you’d expect from a singer who
slouches on stage in a parka,
sings bent at right angles to the
microphone and then slouches off
again when he’s not needed to halfheartedly wiggle a tambourine.
At last, Oasis no longer have
anything to prove. The boys have
come a long way, as patronising
music journalists have been
remarking since the release of the
album. Perhaps Oasis are finally
over their “us v. Art School estuary
accents” of the ‘90s.
Dig Out Your Soul was a loveable
headache, maintaining a delicate
balance between old and new
influences and huge-scale sounds.
True, the album is certainly not all
roses, and there are some tracks
which will disappoint, particularly
the rather humdrum (Get Off Your)
High Horse Lady, but I can still see
this album becoming perceived
as of a similar calibre to Morning
Glory. Not a patch on Definitely
Maybe, but you can only expect
so much - they’re not really The
Beatles, after all.
LISTINGS
09
Thu
10
Fri
11
Sat
12
Sun
13
Mon
14
Tue
15
Wed
|28-29
FILM
THEATRE
MUSIC
OTHER
How To Lose Friends And Alienate
People. (And audiences.)
Henry V - on at the newly opened
ADC
Dirty Pretty Things are now on their
final tour. Photo: iam_photography
Tobey Maguire has nothing on this
lot! See them dance on Saturday.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate
People (15) Arts Picturehouse,
13:30, 16:00, 18.30, 21:00 £5
Brideshead Revisited (12A)
Arts Picturehouse, 15:15, 18.00,
20.45, £5
I’ve Loved You So Long (12A)
Arts Picturehouse, 12:00, 18.45, £5
Henry V
ADC Theatre, 19:45, £6/£8
Devils
Original Comic Play
Marquee Christ’s College, 21:00
Kano @ The Junction
Part of the Furniture
Kambar
Arts Picturehouse, 12:30, 15:15,
18.00, 20.45, £5
13:30, 21:00 £5
Henry V
Devils
Stoning Mary
Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio,
19:30, £5/£6
Vessels / Victoria & Jacob / The
Last Dinosaur @ The Portland
Arms
18.00, 20.45, £5
13:30, 21:00 £5
Henry V
Devils
A Bit Of Virtually Everything @
Ballare
From the same East London ‘grime’
scene that spawned Wiley, Durrty
Goodz and Shystie among others,
Kano has the star quality to take
his witty, insightful street polemics
overground.
Vessels are one of the most promising post-rock bands of recent times.
All the best hits for everyone with
DJ Gary Sulter. Smart casual, no
trainers.
18.00, 20.45, £5
13:30, 21:00 £5
Dirty Pretty Things @ The Junction
18.00, 20.45, £5
13:30, 21:00 £5
David Gest... My Life @ Corn
Exchange
18.00, 20.45, £5
13:30, 21:00 £5
18.00, 20.45, £5
13:30, 21:45 £5
Formed in 2005 by Carl Barat of
Libertines fame, their debut album
was a massive success. This is their
farewell tour, so catch them while
they’re still around.
A musical concert extravaganza starring one of the most talked about
stars of TV, Davd Gest and starring
an incredible line up of legendary
artists together on stage for the first
time performing their greatest hits.
Hero (CUADC musical)
Smoker
Hero (CUADC musical)
Never Mind the Alcock
Fusion @ The Place
Presenting the biggest Cambridge
LBGT night. Various drinks discounts
available all night including Stella,
VK Flavours, Corky’s & Vodka Mixers.
Admission just £3 before 11pm.
Zebrahead @ The Junction
Punk / pop from Orange County.
Alternative club night featuring
rock ‘n roll, reggae, electro,
grime, pop, house and drum ‘n bass
Friday Lunchtime Concert
Kettle Yard 13:10
A free concert by the rising classical
music stars of the University
Phoenix Dance Theatre
Cambridge Arts Theatre
19:45
Classic modern dance
£10-£22.50
‘Taking Liberties’
Cafe Project, Jesus Lane
20:00
Free showing of the acclaimed documentary
Acoustic Night
The Bun Shop
21:00
Featuring local singer-songwriters
and guests from further afield
Rock’n’Roll dance Classes
Parkside Community College Hall
18:45-9:45
Authentic, modern and acrobatic
available
Dances of Universal Peace
Friends Meeting House
20:00
Holding Hands - touching hearts soulful chanting - dancing towards
the One
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
30|Sport
Contrasting fortunes of the North
While Man City revel in their newfound petro-wealth, Newcastle’s future looks increasingly insecure
Comment
Stephen Harrison
W
Robinho has lit up the City
of Manchester Stadium
Photograph: zawtowers
Geordies can and at times do
give their team the support they
need, but increasingly they merely
berate. Players visibly shrink in
stature as the crowd get on their
back, and on bad days playing at
home can have a negative impact
on Newcastle.
Fans now clamour for Keegan to
return, but why? In his last spell he
did nothing more than OK. The excuse that he cares about the club,
bandied about Tyneside in recent
weeks, is not enough.
Newcastle need a manger who
can get the players passing the ball
and organise a team with a seemingly inbuilt tendency to self-destruct defensively irrespective of
any links he may or may not have
with the club.
Most importantly, however, the
club needs stability. That won’t
happen now until Mike Ashley finds
a buyer, but it requires a change
in expectations. Newcastle are a
decade away from challenging for
honours, and a serious period of rebuilding is required. A club is only
as big as its results, and it is time
Geordies realised this and stopped
demanding an instant fix.
Clubs like Aston Villa and Everton
have demonstrated that progress
takes time. Only by a reduction in
expectations and a certain amount
of patience can the fans allow the
stability which in the long run will
foster success.
Sporting introductions
Our weekly foray into obscure
Cambridge sports turns to Kendo
The Cambridge Kendo society is
keeping the martial art of Japanese swordsmanship alive Kendo
(literally: the ‘way of the sword’)
is practised by millions of people
around the world.
“Mortal combat?” Of course!
The ultimate goal in the sword
duel is to deliver a single cut that
would finish off your opponent: a
cut down the centre of their head;
across their torso; or chopping off
their sword hand.
Kendo practitioners use a sword
made of flexible bamboo and protective armor (both of which were
originally developed almost 300
years ago). The bamboo sword
and armour allow for full force
cuts to be made without risking
injuring the opponent.
Kendo is a very physical activity and a two hour session is a
real workout, and the sword and
footwork really build up a sweat.
Less obvious is the mental discipline kendo develops.
A kendo match is equal parts
of mind, body, and spirit. As Min
Lin (a kendo “black belt”) put it,
“I enjoy the mind contact with another player. When you are fighting with someone you are talking;
not talking with your voices, but
with your swords and actions.”
Check out http://www.srcf.ucam.
org/kendo or come visit the Kendo Open Day on Monday 13 October at 7:00pm in the Homerton
College auditorium.
Photo: ErikDesimone
hen events take
place
which
shake the foundations of our
civilisation we
can invariably remember where
we were. On 31st August 1997 I was
trying with increasing frustration to
watch early morning cartoons before gradually realising that newsflashes on every channel meant
something important; Princess Diana had died. On September 11th
2001 I had nipped out of an RE lesson for a toilet break and bumped
into an aghast teacher rushing to
spread the news that terrorists had
attacked the World Trade Centre. On
September 1st 2008 I was about to
answer a question about Marco Polo
on an Itbox in the Firestation Pub
in Whitley Bay when I found out
that Robinho had signed for Man
City. This was staggering.
Perhaps it does not warrant comparison with the two seismic events
above, yet in footballing terms, the
the Abu Dhabi takeover of Manchester City and the Robinho transfer were truly staggering. In strictly
financial terms, Manchester City’s
new owners make Chelsea’s Roman
Abramovich look like a pauper;
one suspects that Robinho is only
the tip of a very expensive iceberg.
Indeed, the manner of Robinho’s
transfer, as City made an eleventhhour swoop to take the Brazilian
from under Chelsea’s noses, hinted
at a change in the power balance of
English football.
Chelsea were clearly expecting
Real Madrid to reduce their asking price to get rid of the wayward
star before the transfer window
shut, but they didn’t and Chelsea
found themselves gazumped. Robinho may not even want to be in
Manchester; a slip of the tongue in
his first interview suggested that
Chelsea were supposed to be the
beneficiaries of his toys-out-of-thepram tantrum in Madrid. The fact
remains, though, that he is a City
player, and we can expect others to
join him in January.
But amidst the joy of City fans,
whose celebrations can hardly be
begrudged given the turbulence
they have endured over the last ten
years, there are nagging doubts.
From a national perspective this
new investment is worrying. Since
Abramovich bought Chelsea they
have failed to produce a genuine
first-team player of any nationality,
let alone an Englishman; the production line at Old Trafford seems
to have dried up after a golden generation, as United invest in young
foreign talent like Ronaldo, Nani,
and Anderson; and at Arsenal holding a British passport seems reason
alone for rejection.
Yet whilst the top clubs have
failed to produce talented Brits, City
have to some extent filled the gap:
Joe Hart, Micah Richards, Stephen
Ireland and Daniel Sturridge are but
a few of their hot prospects. If City
go the way of Chelsea, one wonders
what will become of these youngsters and those coming up through
the ranks, and whether another
club will be able to fill the void left.
The new owners have promised to
maintain the club’s faith in youth;
only time will tell.
More seriously for City fans, one
cannot help wondering whether
Manchester City’s new owners are
serious about the football club or
whether it is simply a new toy for
rich boys. There is a lingering suspicion that in five years time the
investors will find something new
and walk away from the club, leaving only memories and mountains
of debt.
On the subject of irresponsible
owners I cannot go any further
without mentioning Mike Ashley.
I am a Newcastle fan, something
I admit with less and less pride as
the club lurches from crisis to crisis.
Yet I am a Newcastle fan in a minority for - and I must whisper this for
fear of being ostracised from Tyneside society - I have some sympathy
for our beleaguered owner.
Certainly he has made mistakes:
his handling of the crisis has been
abysmal, and his apparent desire to
sell the club has only created yet
more unnecessary instability; yet
it seems to me that his biggest error was the appointment of Kevin
Keegan, a panicked move designed
to ingratiate the new management
with the supporters.
Keegan has always been prone to
emotional departures, and he was
clearly unhappy with the management structure. This time King Kev
cited a lack of control of player purchases as the reason for his departure, but in Gutierrez and Coloccini
Newcastle have bought two players
of genuine quality for the first time,
(an injury-free Michael Owen aside)
for nigh on a decade; the board deserve congratulations rather than
castigation for their policy.
It pains me to say it, but in reality the problems with the club
are much deeper than the owner.
Newcastle fans pride themselves on
their passion, but unfortunately
passion alone won’t win anything
in the modern game.
Sport
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 761 685
SPORTS COMMENT: FOOTBALL OF THE NORTH >> 30
Cambridge soar to new heights
Cambridge gliders victorious in delayed Varsity clash
Peter Gibson
T
he Cambridge University
Gliding Club took to the
skies last month and successfully defended their
Varsity title. The match
had originally been scheduled for
June earlier this summer, but had
been delayed by poor weather.
When the teams reconvened on the
20th September, the Cambridge fliers triumphed with a score of 558
to 396, retaining the title following
their hard-fought victory in 2007.
Having been held at RAF Bicester, the home of the Oxford University Gliding Club, last year, the
2008 tie was hosted at Gransden
Lodge, about twelve miles west of
the Cambridge.
Gliding is the sport of unpowered flight. Once towed into the air
by a conventional powered aeroplane, the glider stays aloft like a
bird of prey, riding currents of rising air caused by local terrain or
solar thermals.
Soaring in this way, gliders can
fly hundreds of miles and climb
A sunny
Saturday in
September
thousands of metres into the air.
Given the importance of the sun
in heating the ground and creating
the rising currents of hot air needed
for a good flight, the weather plays
a hugely influential role. However,
the weather is sufficiently complex
that it is impossible to say that a
clear sky equates to good flying
conditions, since clouds also play
a vital role in creating and shaping
the thermals.
The match had been scheduled
for June, but when the teams assembled, they were met by low
clouds and persistent rain. No flying was possible all day, and the
fliers were forced to wile away the
hours in the clubhouse, waiting for
a break in the weather.
A few members of each team were
able to stay on for an extra day and
so a couple of scoring flights were
made on the Monday. The tie was
postponed with Cambridge on 261,
Oxford close behind on 213.
Gliding scoring is somewhat
esoteric to the sport, but is easy
enough to explain. Each team has
five fliers and a pair of reserves.
They take turns to go up singly
in their clubs’ glider, hauled into
the air by the tow plane. Once released, they score one point for every minute they stay aloft, and two
points for every 100 feet of altitude
gained. There is a time limit of 50
minutes for each flight to ensure
that there is a fair rotation of all of
the team members.
Following a series of abortive attempts to reschedule the match over
the summer, the teams reconvened
on a sunny Saturday in September.
The conditions weren’t ideal during
the morning, and with Oxford making their check flights, no one was
able to stay up for very long.
However, as the weather improved throughout the day, so did
the length of the flights. Cambridge
opened with solid scores from
Adam Spikings and Rebecca Ward,
who both managed to find a patch
of reasonable lift and made the
most of it.
They were followed by Seb Cassel and Philippa Roberts of Oxford.
Cassel, the Oxford captain was particularly impressive, rising to over
3000ft and attaining the highest
score of the day to that point.
The match remained close until
a pair of flights from Cambridge’s
Graham Bell and Peter Buchlovsky,
the club president, put the light
blues into an unassailable lead.
Buchlovsky’s flight near the end of
the day topped all of the others as
he reached an overall height of almost 6000ft.
The Cambridge University Gliding Club has existed in various
forms and flown from a series of
bases since its foundation in 1935
as the Cambridge Gliding Club. It
currently has roughly 40 members
and for the past two years has competed in the UK Junior National
Gliding Championships.
A Cambridge glider, heads off into the sunset at the end
of a successful day for the light blue team
Photograph: Rebecca Ward
Mixed success for Cambridge teams in defunct last BUSA league
Carly Hilts
Cambridge finished first in eight
events in the BUCS Total Points
league table for 2007/8.Competing against 142 other universities,
Cambridge teams took the top position in almost a third of all the
events they entered.
The winning teams were Women’s UCCE Cricket, the Men’s Fencing first team, the Women’s Football first team, the Women’s Hockey
first team, the Women’s Lacrosse
first team, the Men’s Table Tennis
first team, the Men’s Volleyball first
team, and the Men’s Volleyball first
team.
The tournament was organised
by British Universities and Colleges
Sport (BUCS), a governing body for
university-level sports in the UK.
BUCS was formed last June after
the British Universities Sports As-
sociation (BUSA) and University
College Sport (UCS) were merged to
form one organisation.
Cambridge scored particularly
highly in events for the Men’s first
teams for fencing and table tennis,
each of which gained 50 points.
Lacrosse, in which the University
also did well last year, was similarly
a successful event. The Women’s
first team won first place with
another 50 points, while the second team also achieved 24 points.
Captained by goalie Alex CarnegieBrown, the Blues team gained the
distinction of being Cambridge’s
most successful team this year.
They were unbeaten throughout
the season and won their Varsity
match with Oxford.
Cambridge’s Men’s Football second team gained the University
the lowest score, coming fourth
with no points. The lowest plac-
ings belonged to the Men’s Cricket
teams, with UCCE cricket finishing
fifth and the first team taking sixth
place. Cambridge teams scored 777
knockout points and 708.5 league
points. An overall total of 1485.5
points placed the University 14th
in the Overall Championship Points
league table.
This is two places lower than
their 2006/7 position, when Cambridge teams collectively scored
1488 points. The table was topped
by Loughborough for the third year
in a row. Oxford finished ninth,
down one place from last year.
BUCS manages about 1.2 million
students which compete in 3200
teams and 503 leagues across the
UK. The organisation is responsible for inter-university sports and
representative teams for the World
UIniversity Championships and the
World University Games.
Cambridge fencers celebrate
their successful season
Photograph: CUFC

Union shafted over condoms

Transcription

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