Vice Chancellor “concerned” for future of bursaries

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CambridgeStudent
The
Thursday, 20th January 2011
Lent Issue One
James Burton
News Editor
Image: Cambridge University
Vice Chancellor “concerned”
for future of bursaries
Pole-dancing
comes to
Murray Edwards
any changes in welfare provision.
A spokesman from the Clinical Medical School told TCS that: “Pastoral
provision has been under review for
some time now and new initiatives
have been implemented. The School
has introduced a new scheme, The
Pastoral Advisor Scheme, in which
senior clinical staff (NHS consultants
and GPs) are available to small groups
of students to offer help, support and
guidance where needed.
“Clinical Students in Cambridge
have a high level of pastoral support
available to them because there is
support available both through the
College and the Faculty,” he said.
Murray Edwards undergraduates
yesterday received an email looking
to “gauge any interest” into holding weekly pole dancing sessions in
college.
Women’s Officer Jess Burrows told
The Cambridge Student: “While
most members of the JCR, including myself, were not made aware
in advance of the email regarding
pole dancing, any member of Murray Edwards is of course entitled to
gauge interest in any activity she
may feel is worth introducing to
the college.”
Burrows is “sure it is a prospect
that will prompt plenty of debate
both within the JCR and entire college community”.
However, Clare Mohan, President
of the Cambridge Feminist Society,
deemed it a “very odd decision for
Murray Edwards to have made, especially considering the way that
women’s colleges in Cambridge are
looked up to as patrons and promoters of gender equality in the
world.”
She argued: “pole dancing cannot
be separated from its social context
as a form of entertainment synonymous with the sex trade”, which
“perpetuates the idea that women’s
sexuality is best expressed through
the visual titillation of women and
therefore contributes to a culture of
objection which in many ways can
be seen to keep the gender barrier
to gender equality closed.
“You would think that JCRs (particularly of women’s colleges)
would have learned lessons from
the response to the Union’s offer of
pole ‘fitness’ classes.”
The Cambridge Union caused a
furore last year after introducing
‘pole fitness’ classes to its Easter
Termcard to help members combat
exam stress. The classes proved so
popular they were brought back for
Michaelmas, and continue to take
place.
Should they go ahead, the proposed sessions would be taught by
the same trainer as the pole fitness
classes at the Union.
Cambridge’s most senior figure is
“very concerned” that the University
might not be able to find money to
offset the “financial disincentive” of a
rise in tuition fees, he admitted yesterday.
In his first interview with a student
newspaper since being appointed
Vice Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek
Borysiewicz told The Cambridge
Student that the University Council
“will be looking to seek to certainly
exceed” £6000 tuition fees, “because
we know that wouldn’t even make up
for the situation we currently are in.”
He added, “I would suspect [Cambridge’s fees] would be towards the
University Council
will be “looking to
certainly exceed”
£6,000 tution fees
upper end, but that’s a personal view,
but against that we also have to decide what best we would do to ameliorate this.”
Borysiewicz acknowledged that fees
of £9,000 – the upper limit set by the
At the scene of the crime
Borysiewicz also maintained that
the occupation was “illegal“
continued page 10
Medics condemn “inadequate” welfare support
Eleanor Dickinson
Deputy News Editor
Cambridge medical students this
week criticised the University for its
inadequate provision of welfare support. This is despite coroner David
Morris’ call last month at the inquest
into the suicide of Ronjoy Sanyal last
year for “lessons to be learned”. Sanyal had failed crucial exams for a third
time, and was told he would not be
able to continue his studies.
A second year medical student at
Murray Edwards said “I don’t think
there is enough welfare support directed purely at medics... I am aware
that there have been cases of attempted suicide (amongst medics at least)
that seem not to have been appropriately dealt with”.
Another third year medical student
reiterated these concerns: “I think
that there should be more done by
the faculty across the university so
all have access to welfare and also the
university MedSoc should run welfare
events and raise awareness of what
help is available.” Both students said
they were not aware of any changes
to the faculty welfare system.
MedSoc President, Maral Rouhani,
emphasised that Medicine is a particularly stressful subject. “Everyone
across the university feels a bit jittery
about exam term but there is extra
pressure on medics since we have the
Second MB exams which we must
pass, with only two attempts allowed,”
she told The Cambridge Student.
She said welfare provision was “a
tricky situation since students will
inevitably feel the pressure of passing
exams and the faculty has a responsibility to emphasise that it is a fundamental requirement. They do help
by offering revision sessions in Easter
term and by arranging talks on exam
preparation and tips but perhaps
more could be done.” Rouhani added
it was too soon to see the effects of
Judith Welikala
Deputy News Editor
IN THE NEWS
Leaked University report reveals
cuts blueprint
Academic outcry over Huckleberry Finn censorship
Cambridge staff silenced over
cuts
Changes to visa system place international students in jeopardy
Chinese millionaire donates
generously to museum
30,000 supervision hours could
be cut in proposed austerity measures following the Comprehensive
Spending Review.
Page 2
Cambridge dons condemn new edition of Mark Twain’s classic, which
sanitises the original work by replacing the word ‘nigger’ with ‘slave’.
Page 3
300 gather on King’s Parade in a silent protest against the government’s
planned cuts to higher education.
New restrictions and added bureaucracy threaten to discourage
students from applying to Cambridge from abroad.
Page 5
The Museum of Archeology and
Anthropology is set to undergo a
major refurbishment after receiving a £1 million donation.
Page 6
Page 4
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, January 20th, 2010
02| Editorial
THE CAMBRIDGE STUDENT
THE TEAM
Editors in Chief: Phil Brook & Zoah Hedges-Stocks - [email protected]; Design Editor: Rhys Cater- [email protected]; Magazine Editor: Julia Rampen - [email protected];
Photography Editor: Marta Gruszczynska - [email protected]; News Editor: James Burton - [email protected]; Deputy News Editors: Elspeth Carruthers, Elle Dickinson, Judith
Welikala & Michael Yoganayagam; Investigations Editor: Nat Rudarachankana; International Editors: Anna Carden & Helen Ronald - [email protected]; Interviews Editors: Tom Belger
& Bryony Clarke - [email protected]; Deputy Interviews Editor: Catherine Barker; Comment Editors: Mike Alhadeff & Saranyah Sukumaran - [email protected]; Deputy Comment Editor: Ella Fung; Features Editor: Graeme Cummings; Deputy Features Editor: Abi See; Fashion Features: Lizzy Burden, Alex Davies & Katya Kazakevich; Film & TV Editors: Daniel Janes
& Dominic Preston; Food Features: Izzy Pritchard; Food Review Editor: Matthew Topham; Literature Features: Vaishnavi Girish & Tanjil Rashid; Music Editor: Rosie Howard-Williams; Deputy
Music Editor: Mark Seow; Theatre Editor: Hattie Peachey - [email protected]; Sports Editor: Tom Smith - [email protected]; Chief Sub-Editor: Ben Richardson; Sub-Editors: Alice Gormley,
Rebecca Phillips, Abbie Saunders, James-Henry Metter, Alice Gormley, Emily Loud; Illustrator: Clémentine Beauvais; Web Editor: Mark Curtis; Board of Directors: Jen Mills and Jess Touschek
(Co-Chairs), Mark Curtis (Business), Rahul Mansigani, Dan Green, Faye Rolfe, Alex Wood, Phil Brook & Zoah Hedges-Stocks [email protected]
The University must be very cautious
when it comes to cuts. Recent years
have seen enormous progress in
terms of widening access and it cannot be allowed to slip back into bad
habits. An excellent system of loans,
grants and bursaries exists which,
despite the apocalyptic predictions
of student leaders at the time, successfully mitigated the impact of the
first major increase in tuition fees in
2003. Students can only bear £9,000
if support is not merely maintained
but extended. Now is not the time to
damage welfare. The Vice Chancellor
is rightly “very concerned” for these
funds. He must use his position to
help those who need it most.
EDITORIAL
The greatest tragedy that could arise
from the cuts would be damage to
Cambridge’s academic excellence,
and the key to our world-leading status is the supervision system. With a
leaked report suggesting the end of
one-on-one supervisions, our quality
of learning could be about to take a
massive hit. It is true that Medicine
and the sciences have a more tangible benefit to society, but it would be
disproportionate for subjects such as
History and English to lose personal
supervisions. Many arts students
have only a single supervision each
week. With so few contact hours, it
would be the height of injustice to
dilute this time. Science naturally
absorbs a greater proportion of the
university’s budget and it is broadly
accepted on the grounds that their
research is more costly. However,
given that the arts receive less funding in times of largesse, in times of
austerity they perhaps ought to be
targets for a lesser proportion of the
cuts. Their benefits to society may
be less tangible, but the arts are beneficial nonetheless and this ought to
be borne in mind by those wielding
the axe. The one to one supervision
makes Cambridge unique in the UK.
Even the Other Place can no longer
compete in this respect. We must
not sacrifice a facet of the University
that makes us competitive not just
nationally but internationally in the
name of short term savings.
Whilst Leszek Borysiewicz lost face
in his handling of, or his failure to
handle, the occupation, we welcome
his tardy attempt to engage with students through the press. Let us hope
that this is the beginning of a wider
effort to engage students and their
representatives in meaningful dialogue regarding the most significant
period of austerity for many years.
We are concerned about the cuts. So
is the most senior person in Cambridge. The greatest thing that both
students and Boris have to lose is the
quality of our education. Don’t let
him forget it.
Leaked internal report reveals huge proposed cuts
Elspeth Carruthers
Deputy News Editor
A leaked report from the University’s
Planning and Resources Committee
has revealed huge proposed cutbacks
to University staff and infrastructure
following the 2010 Comprehensive
Spending Review.
The report, apparently presented to
the Committee at a meeting on the
24th November by working groups
tasked with examining ways of saving money, outlines projected cuts
which would have a profound effect
on the life of the University.
30,000 supervision hours could
be cut and the size of supervision
groups increased – yet payment for
supervisions is the responsibility of
the Colleges.
Professor Gillian Evans told The
Cambridge Student that “it is not
for the University to suggest how to
fund [supervisions]”. Rich colleges
would be able to make up the cuts,
but poorer colleges would not; the
result would be a “different student
experience”.
30,000 supervision
hours could be cut
and the size of supervision groups
increased
Professor Evans predicted “immense resistance” from academics
to this proposal in particular, saying
that Oxbridge dons are “passionate”
about the supervision/tutorial system.
Further proposals suggest cutting
numbers of lectures, abolishing pa-
pers with small numbers of candidates, and closing MPhil courses
which attract small numbers of students. Senior University politicians,
however, privately commented that
such proposals would be very difficult to put into practice.
Another controversial proposal suggests a voluntary severance scheme
which would make it easier to sack
University staff, a process which is
currently extremely difficult.
Yet the ‘sufficient incentives’ needed
to encourage staff to seek voluntary
severance would be drawn from central funds. This is “expending money
to get rid of them”, according to Professor Evans.
More employment cuts could come
from the administrative and IT departments of the University.
The cuts to staff would, according
to Professor Evans, lead to a ‘loss of
the range of special expertise’ of the
University.
The report also suggests merging
the University’s two IT services, stating that computing support ‘appears
to be balkanized’.
The report is not currently publicly
available, but a Freedom of Information request has been submitted by
University Computing Staff member
Bruce Beckles.
Professor Evans told TCS that in
principle she was in favour of “cutting fat rather than making cuts”, but
the danger was that “one slides into
the other...and you make someone
anorexic.”
When asked about the report in an
interview with TCS, the Vice Chancellor said that ‘we have to make the
money work even harder for the
education and research of the University’.
NEWS BULLETIN News in Brief
25% of Open University’s new students aged between 17 and 25
Mother attacks pensioner for
disciplining her son
£350,000 dip in Corn Exchange
Funding
PHD student Ehsan Abdoh-Tabrizi
was sentenced for seven years for
taking part in protests, “insulting the
leader” and “having links with foreign elements”.
He was initially jailed in January
last year, after attending demonstrations in Tehran while visiting family
in the area, and is thought to have
spent over 50 days in solitary confinement.
Ehsan’s father continues to protest
his innocence, telling BBC’s Persian
Service that he is “not a political person”.
The Open University has seen a huge
rise in the number of young applicants choosing it over traditional
campus universities.
One reason is the expected rise in
tuition fees; OU fees are less than
campus universities’, and students
are more likely to combine study
with a part-time job.
Part-time learners are at a disadvantage under the current system, paying upfront and ineligible for support. The OU offers more support
to part-time students, making it an
attractive option.
After telling a young boy to stop
playing with the barriers at the
Codham Lane Sainsburys, an 86
year old woman was left with a broken wrist and bruises after being
punched and kicked by the child’s
mother, Danielle Wilks.
Wilks was spared a jail sentence after
the victim pleaded with judges that
she “would be very much against”
her going to prison.
The defendant’s lawyers argued that
her behaviour had been seriously affected by the stabbing of her close
friend two days previously.
Cambridge City Council have drastically cut the funding for the entertainment venue following the launch
of an action plan to change performance times and the introduction of
operational improvements.
Executive Councillor for Arts and
Recreation Rod Cantrill reasoned:
“We are making this saving in an
attempt to improve the financial
performance of the Corn Exchange
while at the same time working to
make it more appealing.”
Funding was previously £500,000 a
year.
NEWSPAPERS
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INTERNATIONAL
Mexico, North Korea, and
the ethics of Wikileaks
p.08
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Your guide to Lent Term
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What you want to watch
this year
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SPORT
Iranian jail sentence for Durham
student
Recycled paper made up
80.6% of the raw material for
UK newspapers in 2006
THIS WEEK
The Cambridge Student is published by Cambridge University Students’ Union. All copyright is the exclusive property of the Cambridge University Students’ Union. The Cambridge Student also publishes the magazine ZINE. Although The Cambridge
Student is affiliated to the University Students’ Union we are editorially independent and financially self-sufficient. No part of this publication is to be reproduced, stored on a retrieval system or submitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the publisher.
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The Cambridge Student?
Email [email protected]
The
CambridgeStudent
Dons condemn Twain censorship
Kate Abnett
TCS Reporter
Cambridge academics have spoken
out against a new edition of the
19th Century novel The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, in which the
word ‘nigger’ has been censored. In
America, many schools have stopped
teaching the work, due to pressure
from teachers and parents
The alteration was made by Alan
Gribben, a professor of English at
Auburn University, who said that
reading the book’s ‘coarse language’
to a class is often an unpleasant
experience.
The story follows the misadventures
of a boy and a runaway slave as they
journey down the Mississippi river. It
was one of the first major American
novels to be written in a local
vernacular.
The new edition’s publisher,
NewSouth Books of Montgomery,
has received hundreds of complaints
about the censorship.
Cambridge University academics
appear united in condemning the
censorship. Dr Anne Fernihough, a
specialist in 19th Century American
literature,
told The Cambridge
Student “We should see prejudice at
work, otherwise we won’t be able to
counter it.”
Classics Professor Mary Beard said,
“I am in principle utterly opposed to
this. I had a wobble about this when I
heard that it would enable Huck to be
taught for the first time in Alabama
schools. But it was only a wobble.
This can’t be the right way to go.”
The censored word appears in
the novel 219 times and has been
replaced with the word ‘slave’.
However, Philosophy Professor
Derek Matravers defended the
editing: “We can see Twain’s use of
words acceptable in the 19th Century
as getting in the way of manifesting
his ‘vision’ for the book in the 21st
Century. And hence all we are doing
is removing an obstacle to what he
was trying to achieve.”
The book will be published in a joint
edition with The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer in mid-February.
university website, the UKCA chair
Melanie Johnson wrote to Cambridge authorities demanding that
it be removed from public access in
the interests of confidence in the chip
and PIN system – only to be met with
a firm refusal.
Choudary’s research outlines a loophole in the chip and PIN system that
allows fraudsters to make transactions on a stolen card using any PIN
number they choose.
He developed a hand-held device
that intercepts communications between the card and the terminal –
and even tested it out successfully in
some shops in Cambridge.
Following the UKCA’s attempt to
censor the research, it has been published as a Computer Laboratory
Technical Report, making it easy for
anyone to find and cite Choudary’s
findings.
Ross Anderson, the professor of security engineering at the Computer
Lab who originally discovered the
flaw, responded to the UKCA’s attempt at a cover-up with a scathing
letter.
He accused them of ‘a deep misconception of what universities are and
how we work ...censoring writings
that offend the powerful is offensive
to our deepest values. ‘
Pointing out that the flaw had already been made clear to financial
News |03
Drive time with
Alex Driver
University fights bankers’ attempt to stifle research
Elspeth Carruthers
Deputy News Editor
One of the most powerful financial
associations in the United Kingdom
has been thwarted in its attempt to
stifle academic research at Cambridge University.
The UK Cards Association last
month tried to censor a thesis by
Omar Choudary, a doctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Computer
Laboratory.
The research detailed crucial flaws
in the chip and PIN system, relied on
across the UK to protect card transactions.
After Choudary put his thesis on a
authorities when he and his colleagues first discovered it in 2009, he
charged the UKCA’s members with
doing ‘their lamentable best to deprecate the work of those outside their
cosy club, and indeed to censor it.’
Anderson told TCS: ‘The modern
world started once the invention of
printing made it impossible for princes and bishops to censor something
that had already been published.
The Choudary case reminds us that
technology has made us vulnerable
once more.
It’s time to think through all the implications, for both technology and
policy. How can we make electronic
publication persistent?’
The UKCA defended its actions in
a comment to TCS: ‘The UK Cards
Association wrote to Cambridge
University not to challenge the work
of the university’s security academics, but only to challenge whether
publishing details (electronically or
otherwise) of how to attempt a fraud
- specifically one which there is no
evidence of a fraudster yet undertaking – is necessary and serving the
public’s best interest.
We remain hopeful that the academics concerned will work with us rather than against us to help defeat the
fraudsters - as unfortunately it is only
the fraudsters who stand to gain from
any lack of cooperation between us.’
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The
CambridgeStudent
04| News
Hundreds take part in silent
NEWS
BULLETIN protest outside Senate House
Student who stroked police horse
arrested
Paul Saville, a 25 year old student at
the University of the West of England, was arrested on 18th December
for stroking a police horse shortly before a firework was set off. Saville was
held in a police cell for 12 hours and
had his flat and property searched
after he was identified in BBC footage three weeks after the event.
Saville has previously been arrested
three times for his involvement in
protests. He maintains that he had
nothing to do with the firework and
that he was mistreated by Avon and
Somerset police.
Bristol student fined for picking up
prostitute
Azam Shinwari, a 19 year old student at the City of Bristol College,
has been fined £350 for picking up a
prostitute in his car for sexual purposes.
Shinwari told police he would not
have picked the woman up if he had
realised that she was a prostitute.
He admitted he was ’30 to 50 per
cent’ sure the woman was a prostitute, and that when he saw police he
told her to get out of the car. He is
said to be embarrassed and ashamed
by the incident, and extremely concerned by its implications..
Bible Discovery
Research into ancient biblical manuscripts at the University of Cambridge, led by Professor Nicholas de
Lange, has revealed that Jewish use
of Greek bibles existed for centuries
longer than previously thought.
The original translations of the Bible
from Hebrew to Greek are considered a najor achievement of Jewish
civilisation and are said to be responsible for the spread of Christianity.
This new research indicates a crossculture between medieval Judaism
and Christianity. It also gives a new
insight into Jewish culture in the
Byzantine Empire.
Porn dissertation leads to sackings
Three Turkish academics have been
sacked from Bilgi University in Istanbul after a student submitted a
pornographic film as his dissertation
project.
Despite student Deniz Ozgun’s argument that he wanted to explore
the synthetic quality of pornography, revelations to a news magazine
that he had made the film on campus
caused an uproar.
The three academics were fired, the
university’s department of film shut
down, and Ozgun and the star of his
project have gone into hiding. Police
are looking into criminal charges.
Michael Yoganayagam
Deputy News Editor
Around 300 members of the
University, including more than
100 academics, gathered outside
Senate House on Tuesday for 3
minutes of silent protest to “register
their opposition to the Coalition
Government’s higher education
policies”.
Protesters, many dressed in their
academic gowns, stood in front of a
large banner, which read, “We are the
many; they are the few”.
Their protest came ahead of a meeting
of the Regent House on Wednesday,
where 169 members supported a
request to discuss “the University’s
response to the proposed changes in
higher education funding”.
One professor
disapproved of the
university’s “slight
consultation on this
matter so far”
The protest was organised by the
Cambridge Academic Campaign
for Higher Education (CACHE), a
campaigning group of academics
and members of the Regent House,
the University governing body.
They oppose the Coalition
government cuts to university
funding and the rise in tuition fees
and also seek “to safeguard the role of
academics in university governance”.
Dr. Ian Patterson, a Fellow of English
at Queens’ College, who was present
at the protest on the rainy Tuesday
in Cambridge, told The Cambridge
Student that he was “satisfied with the
turnout, given the bad weather”.
He went on to say: “We are especially
worried about the potential decline
of arts and humanities faculties, as a
Placards read: “We are
the many; they are the
few”
result of the government’s policy.”
Another protester, Dr. Jason Scott-
The founder of the English Defence
League (EDL) has hit out at student
protesters, calling them “communist scum” at a rally in Peterborough
town centre on 11 December.
Stephen Lennon, 27, who uses the
alias “Tommy Robinson”, was speaking two days after students and police clashed in Westminster as MPs
voted in the House of Commons to
raise tuition fees. He said, “We never
want to see British police attacked by
people of this country”. He went on to
say, “The next time the students want
to protest in our capital, the English
Defence League will be there”.
“communist scum”
Image: Devon Buchanan
News in Brief
Michael Yoganayagam
Deputy News Editor
Warren, a Fellow of English at
Gonville and Caius, told TCS: “We
disapprove of the University’s slight
consultation on this matter so far.”
At the Regent House discussion
in Senate House on Wednesday,
Dr. Priyamvada Gopal, Dean of
Churchill College, speaking by
proxy, praised “remarkably clearsighted” Cambridge students for
their “principled stand” against
government policy last term. She
called on academics to join them.
Bruce Beckles, of the University
Computing Service, criticised the
University’s lack of transparency,
saying that both the Council and the
Regent House “never had the chance
to correct the [University’s internal]
submission” to the Browne Review in
May last year.
Gowned and defiant
Protesters outside Senate House
However, not all speakers spoke in
support of CACHE’s agenda. The
Revd. Jeremy Caddick, Dean of
Emmanuel College, spoke in support
of privatisation of Cambridge
University, to avoid “interference
from a short-sighted and penny-
“We are especially
worried about the
potential decline of
arts and humanities”
pinching government”.
The silent protest follows the
signature by over 300 Cambridge
academics of a statement of support
for the 11-day student occupation of
Old Schools last term.
Labour’s love lost at the occupation?
Judith Welikala
Deputy News Editor
The Cambridge Universities Labour
Club (CULC) has been criticised for
failing to fully support last term’s Old
Schools occupation - an accusation it
roundly denies.
CULC Chair Ashley Walsh expressed his “grave concerns” about
the coalition’s “disastrous and unfair” higher education policy. While
he thought “the best way to stop
the government is to vote it out”, he
acknowledged the “vital role” that
“peaceful and legal demonstrations”
play in showing “both voters and politicians that the government’s policies
lack public support and should be
reversed”. Walsh said he felt “proud”
that so many Cambridge students
EDL blasts
student
protesters
were involved in both the occupation
and the national protests.
To those closely involved in the occupation, however, these actions fell
short. Jacob Wills, a prominent figure
in Cambridge Defend Education, argued that “solidarity is more effective
when it is public” and that therefore,
CULC should have to take an official
line. He wanted the club to “engage
to the fullest” by putting resources to
campaigns and mobilising its large
membership.
By contrast, CULC member Duncan Evans considered the occupation
to be “strictly apolitical”. “The consensus seemed to be that the support
should come in a personal, not official, capacity”. While Evans took part
in the occupation, he was “put off ”
attending the national protests due
to “seemingly unprovoked attacks by
the police” and their “hijacking” by
an “unwanted violent minority”. He
echoed Walsh’s emphasis on “peaceful” and “legal” protest.
Meanwhile, the Cambridge Labour
Party were “slightly surprised” at the
suggestion that they had not been
supporting students. They pointed
out that a number of councillors, including Cambridge student George
Owers, attended the occupation, but
according to Owers, they “didn’t bang
on about it”.
He claimed that Labour was in “an
impossible situation”. Had they been
more “gung ho”, they would have
been “accused of opportunistic posturing”. Thus, they “attempted to
support it responsibly, without being
excessively cynical about it and the
The Cambridge Student contacted
Tom MacArnold, head of the Cambridge EDL, asking if Lennon’s comments were an incitement of violence
against the student community in
general. His reply read, “dont know
but the protests got you no where
!!!!Only loads of arrests! [sic]”
Lennon also declared, “You had students living off their dads’ fucking
bank cards who have never lived a
normal way in their life. They do not
understand what it is to be a working
class member of this community.”
In a wide-ranging address, the former BNP member went on to praise
Winston Churchill as “a fucking
prophet of this country” and referred
to Islam as “an evil religion”.
Formed in March 2009 in Luton, the
EDL claim a membership of 66,000
and have a reputation for violent,
anti-Muslim demonstrations. They
came to the attention of national media most recently last month, when
they were forced to cancel a controversial invitation to US pastor, Terry
Jones, who threatened to burn copies
of the Koran in September 2010. The
home secretary yesterday banned Mr
Jones from entering the United Kingdom.
result was we did not get the credit
for backing it”.
Owers instead accused “anarchists,
Trotskyists and other assorted Marxists, who are very hostile to the reformist tendencies of the Labour
Party” of a lack of co-operation. He
suspects that “there are individuals
within Cambridge Defend Education who will sabotage any attempt
to involve Labour activists for fear it
might loosen their grip on the leadership of the campaigns”.
“I’m genuinely sorry that was his
impression”, responded Wills, but he
argued that had the councillor spent
more time at the occupation , he
would have seen the democratic way
in which it was organised. “We hold
out our hand to everyone who is willing to work with us against the cuts”.
The
CambridgeStudent
New visas threaten internationals
International students have voiced
concerns over the governments proposed changes to the student visa
system, claiming it will discourage
students from coming from abroad
and making it more difficult for current students to continue on to further study.
One international student suggested
the new proposals amounted to a
“distance tax,” but Immigration Minister Damian Green insisted changes
were necessary because “too many
people coming to the UK on student
visas to study at below degree level
have been travelling here to live and
work, rather than study.”
The reaction comes after the government announced a major overhaul in
an attempt to reduce net migration
to the UK to “tens of thousands.” The
new proposals will force international undergraduates, hoping to apply
for further study to return home in
order to apply for a new visa, while
also limiting future job prospects.
The proposals received an angry
response from Cambridge’s international student community. Marion
Gale, an international 2nd year Natural Scientist at Newnham called the
governments agenda “ridiculous”,
adding, “It’s going to make it completely unaffordable and impractical
to complete two degrees in the UK.
The visas are already really expensive
(and are currently cheaper in your
home country than applying from
the UK) but the cost of flights is huge
and rising.”
Plans to restrict post-graduate work
are also under fire. Yuan Zhang, an
Mphil student at Jesus, said “Removing the post-study work visa would
pretty much nullify any chances of
finding meaningful work in the UK,
as restrictions on the Tier 1 Highly
Skilled Migrant visa mean that no
graduate can hope to meet it and
most large companies are unwilling
to sponsor applicants for visas, even
Cambridge graduates”.
“Being a student here
isn’t like being allowed
to live here”
He went on “The provision to ‘go
home’ to apply for a visa particularly
irks me. I’m actually Australian, but
I come from an expatriate family so
‘home’ for me is currently in Shanghai. Ironically, precisely because I’ve
been in the UK for so long, I’m no
longer a Shanghai resident and do
not have the right to apply for a visa
there. It seems nonsensical to force
me to take a flight halfway across the
world in order to apply for a visa renewal, when I’m already in the country.”
Responding to these concerns, Damian Green told The Cambridge Student that: “We must be more selective
about who can come here and how
long they can stay. Being a student
here is not the same as being allowed
to live here indefinitely and it is not
fair if people here on student visas
are able to apply for extension after
extension just to prolong their stay in
the UK.
“People imagine students to be those
who come here for a few years to
study at university and then go home,
but that is not always the case.”
In Brief: What do the changes mean for Students?
International Undergraduates will be required to reapply from their Home
Country in order to pursue Post-Graduate study
The post-study work route will close. Students not qualified for Tier 2
“skilled with an offer of employment” visas must leave the UK after graduating.
For those studying here for a twelve month period or less, dependents will
not be granted a visa and not allowed to come to the country with the student.
Students will only be allowed to work for their institution during the week
and only allowed to work for external employers during weekends and
holidays
Lab ram raiders jailed
Image: Sebastian Ballard
Eleanor Dickinson
Deputy News Editor
News |05
Raided: Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory
Mitch Bibby
Two brothers were each sentenced to
24 months in prison last week, following a burglary on the University’s
Cavendish Laboratory.
Thomas and Albert Smith, both of
Willingham, north of Cambridge,
reversed their four-wheel drive car
through doors to the Cavendish metal stores at high speed, and stole £550
of valuable metals on the evening of
October 27.
The night’s action did not end there
however, as the brothers were subsequently pursued by police down
Madingley Road before abandoning
their car.
They were later arrested.
Both pleaded guilty to charges of
burglary. Judge Gareth Hawkesworth
recognised ‘it required police to pursue you and bring you to justice’.
David Noble, mitigating, noted both
had “very little education and stability.”
However, the two had not helped
their own situation: with eleven children between them, it is little wonder
that finances were strained.
The robbery, it was hoped, would
go some way to funding the family
Christmas. The sentences are unlikely to help those they leave behind in
the long term though.
A spokesperson for the Cavendish
said, “They were caught, they were
sentenced, that’s it.”
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The
06| News
New Year’s Honours for
Cambridge dons
Felix Styles
New Year’s Honour List 2011
Knighthoods
Prof. Michael Gregory
Churchill - Engineering
Prof. Caroline Humphrey
King’s - Anthropology
CBEs
Prof. Barry Kemp
Wolfson - Archaeology
Prof. Ron Laskey
Darwin - Zoology
OBEs
Prof. Sheila Bird
Institute of Public Health Medicine
Prof. Christopher Lowe
Trinity - Biotechnology
Cambridge town centre hit by power cut
Eleanor Dickinson
Michael Yoganayagam
Deputy News Editors
Life in Cambridge town centre was
disrupted yesterday as a power cut,
said to have been caused by a fault
with an underground high-voltage
cable, occurred at 11.26am and lasted
almost one and a half hours.
The city centre shut down, as shops
from St Andrews Street up to Bridge
Street all temporarily experienced
a lack of power. Several banks were
forced to close. Traffic lights were
down all along St. Andrew’s Street,
extending up to the junction between
Chesterton Lane and Bridge Street, as
well as along Jesus Lane.
Miriam Fines, a 2nd year Historian
at Magdalene, told The Cambridge
Student, “We had no power for about
an hour this morning”, adding that
it was “really frustrating as I had to
sit and wait so I could straighten my
hair”.
Sidney Sussex College also suffered a
power outage for forty-five minutes.
Phil Franklin, a 1st year Veterinarian
at Sidney Sussex, described how the
“power went out during an exam”. He
added that the library was too dark to
work in, that the internet was down
and that there was no hot food in the
canteen.
The EAT store on Petty Cury also
suffered a power cut but continued to
serve sandwiches, although unable to
serve hot drinks.
By 12.56pm, power was fully restored
to the affected area. A spokesman
for UK Power Networks issued the
following statement: “UK Power
Networks would like to apologise
to customers in Cambridge city
centre for the interruption to their
power supplies”. In all, it said, 2,480
customers had suffered disruption to
their electricity supply.
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
benefits from social media mogul
Image: Magnus Manske (Wikimedia Commons)
Several Cambridge dons received
a late Christmas present on the last
day of 2010 in the form of inclusion
in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours
list. An impressive six Cantabrigian
professors were recognised in the
2011 edition of the annual honours.
Professor Michael Gregory, an
engineer and fellow of Churchill
College, was rewarded with a
knighthood for his work as head of
the Institute of Manufacturing at
Cambridge University. Meanwhile,
newly-honoured Dame Caroline
Humphrey, who specialises in Asian
Anthropology, was also among those
listed for her services to scholarship.
This follows on from the prestigious
Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes
Académiques award she received in
2005.
Egyptologist Professor Barry Kemp
received a CBE for contributions to
archaeological research, particularly
in the ancient city of Tell el-Armana.
Professor Kemp paid tribute to the
work of archaeologists abroad and
described the honour as “a significant
recognition of this side to archaeology
as well as a mark of personal esteem”.
Also honoured with a CBE was
Professor Ron Laskey, a former
Professor of Embryology and now
director of the Cancer Cell Unit at the
Medical Research Centre.
Receiving an OBE were Professor
Christopher Lowe of Trinity
College for his work in the area of
biotechnology and Professor Sheila
Bird, who received recognition for
her contributions to Social Science.
Based at the Institute of Public
Health, Professor Bird’s work has
included research into prisoner
health and prevention of heroinrelated deaths. However, she also
harbours an interest in the role of
statistics in the media and hopes
2011 will see the completion of what
she terms the “7 deadly statistical
sins [in] reporting matters statistical”.
CambridgeStudent
Police release mugging
suspects’ photos
Sarah Weidenmuller
Local detectives recently released a
set of CCTV images in an attempt
to identify four men thought to have
been implicated in three muggings
on 18 November.
The robberies, which occurred in
the city centre and took place within
forty minutes of each other, have
been linked by detectives.
The first occurred at around 2am
in Market Hill. Ten minutes later,
another victim was attacked near the
bridge at Garret Hostel Lane, while
the third occurred on Parker’s Piece.
Two of the attacks involved physical
violence. The first victim, a 21-yearold male, was punched before having
his wallet and jewellery stolen, and
the third was assaulted before thieves
made off with his wallet. The second
had his bike taken by a gang.
Quoted in the Cambridge News,
Detective Constable Peter Rivers
issued an appeal to anyone able to
identify the men from the CCTV
images.
Statistics on the Cambridge
University Students’ Union website
claim that 70% of crimes against
students are theft, criminal damage
and burglary, and that the risk of men
being mugged or assaulted is three
times that of women.
Students are advised that it is “well
worth taking some time to think
about personal safety”.
Jani Tampi
The Li Ka Shing (Canada) foundation
has donated £1 million to the
University of Cambridge.
The benefaction will be used to
cover some of the cost of refurbishing
the Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology. The refurbishment
will see the creation of a new groundfloor exhibitions gallery as well as a
new entrance to the museum. The
Faculty Board of Archaeology and
Anthropology has agreed to name
the gallery “The Li Ka Shing Gallery”
in recognition of the benefaction.
Sir Li Ka Shing is a Chinese- born
businessman, whose investments
range
from
electricity
to
telecommunications and container
port facilities. Li is a well-regarded
philanthropist who established the
Li Ka Shing Foundation, which holds
a 0.8% stake in social networking
website Facebook and has invested in
the music streaming service Spotify.
In 2006, Li pledged that he would
donate one-third of his wealth to
charitable causes and philanthropic
organisations. A number of
universities have benefited from
Sir Li’s philanthropy, including the
University of Hong Kong, University
of California, Berkeley and the
National University of Singapore.
The University of Cambridge said
it was “deeply grateful to the Li Ka
Shing foundation for its support over
the years of which this benefaction is
the latest example”.
Research casts light on early universe
Image: Jess Touschek
Nicole Berry
Researchers from the University
of Cambridge and the California
Institute of Technology have made
new discoveries moving us one step
closer to understanding the evolution
of the universe.
By proposing “the most attractive and
competitive scientific programmes”,
the University of Cambridge was able
to use the world’s largest telescopes in
Chile and Hawaii.
They managed to light up rare
gases released from early stars. The
transition from only hydrogen and
helium gases to a “wondrous mix
of galaxies, stars and planets we live
in today” can be traced back to the
nature of these stars, said Professor
Max Pettini at Cambridge’s Institute
of Astronomy.
Pettini, who led the research, along
with PhD student Ryan Cook, told
The Cambridge Student that they have
been able to “look back in time over
most of the 13.7 billion year history
of our universe.”
Whereas astronomical study is often
reliant on theoretical predictions
from computer models, Pettini told
TCS that this study “adds a tiny bit of
concrete data to this largely theoretical
picture”. But more research needs to
be done to fill the black hole in their
research that still lies in the “Dark
Ages”.
Professor Pettini worries that
cuts in university spending could
affect research; he described it as
“all the more frustrating given the
tremendous advances that have been
made, in all scientific fields, during
the first century of the new decade”.
Yet Pettini is optimistic that the
effect of cuts will be “less gloomy
than we fear at present” and that by
continuing in “pooling intellectual,
as well as physical, resources [with
other institutions]... we can make
major advances in science”.
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19/1/11 16:07:35
The
08| International
Analysis:
CambridgeStudent
Mexico under siege: Examining the drugs war
“Help the cartels. Fight the cartels.
Or give up the fight and legalise
drugs,” says Dr David Shirk
Helen Ronald
International Editor
Opinion:
Will Davis
Kim Jong-il has been at it again.
In November, North Korea
bombarded the South Korean island
of Yeonpyeong. In response, South
Korea decided to stand up to their
northern cousins by holding further
military exercises in the area. North
Korea threatened that such a reaction
could prompt a “sacred war”. Since
the failure of these threats, they’ve
called for full peace talks.
The central factor explaining the
recent crisis is the succession. Kim
Jong-il is now ill. His 27-year old son
Kim Jong-un thus became, absurdly,
a four-star general and the vicechairman of the Central Military
Commission, indicating that he will
be the next leader.
Yet leaders need legitimacy. In
North Korea, where the government
brutally oppresses and cannot feed its
citizens this is problematic. They have,
however, found a solution: portray
the leader as a national saviour.
The recent crisis represented
an attempt to associate Kim Jongun with national salvation and
reunification. The attack on the
South was portrayed in the North as
a defensive response to aggression
and as an attempt to subvert
America’s “puppet” and aid the cause
With a market of this
size and profitability,
demand will always win
and corruption in its ranks.
It has been suggested by the left
that the de facto state of siege in
Ciudad Juárez was not aimed at
combating the cartels, but aiding
them, with the police supporting
one cartel and the army another.
Was this the case?
I don’t think that there is any question as to whether there is corruption
in Mexican security institutions or
even at high levels of government.
In surveys we recently conducted
Image: Sarunas Burdulis
President Calderón declared open
war on the cartels in 2006 and immediately deployed the military to
fight the drug lords. This strategy
has arguably increased violence.
What can the government do now?
I think that the Mexican government has every incentive to make
major gains in taking out the cartels
that appear to be the most violent: the
Zetas and La Familia Michoacana.
This year, they succeeded in taking
out the Beltran Leyva Organization as
well as Teodoro “El Teo” García, the
defector who broke from the Tijuana
cartel back in 2008. They basically
have three choices. Help the cartels.
Fight the cartels. Or give up the fight
and legalise drugs. Siding with the
most powerful cartel - the Sinaloans could be an effective interim strategy
for getting rid of other organisations,
but doing so would also be a cynical
admission of failure on the measures
that matter most. Sincerely fighting
the cartels means taking Mexico to
war against itself, with certain death
for tens of thousands more Mexican
citizens. Legalising drugs in Mexico
would be both politically infeasible
and futile, so long as the U.S. opposes
this option, and would most likely
lead to other diversified, but weaker
forms of organised crime.
Do you think Mexico is becoming a militarised state?
The militarisation of Mexico’s antidrug initiatives has been a “permanent campaign” stretching back to
the deployment of troops in counterdrug initiatives as early as the 1930s.
By the mid-1990s, for example, more
than half of Mexico’s 32 states had
military officers assigned to police
command positions, and hundreds
of military personnel were incorporated into rank and file positions in
other civilian police agencies. That
said, this phenomenon has accelerated greatly in recent decades. This
increased reliance on the military
represents a significant hazard, since
it lacks the proper legal mandate and
training for law enforcement and
criminal investigations, and due to
concerns about human rights abuses
of local police in Guadalajara and
Ciudad Juárez, law enforcement officers themselves readily indicated
that there was corruption at even the
highest levels in their department.
With regard to the particular case of
Ciudad Juárez, the two rival criminal organizations certainly appear
to have greater influence in different
institutions. The local police department has been long associated with
the so-called Juárez Cartel operated
by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.
What is less clear is the exact associations of their rivals, the Sinaloa
Cartel, with the military and federal
police. There certainly appears to
be more animosity between the locals and the federal police (who are
heading counter-drug operations in
the city) than there was between the
local police and the military.
Do you consider the Zetas’ expansion to Central America as a
sign that security is improving in
Mexico, or that the cartels are gaining power and expanding their territory, or both?
It’s not necessarily a sign of improvement for Mexico, and certainly
not something that Central Americans are very happy about. I think that
it is a sign that the Zetas are no longer welcome and have been unable to
successfully assert themselves in the
Gulf Cartel’s territory. It is a sign that
violent criminal organisations are experiencing greater competitive pressures, which could be seen as a sign
of success in attacking suppliers. But,
at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter
who or where the suppliers are - with
a market of this size and profitability,
demand will always win.
If the government were to change
next year, do you think they would
continue with the war?
It is difficult to speculate, and really
depends on who wins. If the president’s party, the conservative PAN,
wins, the war would probably continue along the same lines. If one of several possible leftist parties’ candidates
win, they may try to refocus counter-drug efforts on prevention and
treatment. If the old ruling party, the
PRI, returns to power, their strategy
will probably be to do what is most
pragmatic: continue to fight the war
on certain fronts, accept U.S. support,
and accommodate drug traffickers
where it is most advantageous.
David Shirk is Associate Professor at
the Univerity of San Diego and Director of the Trans-Border Institute
Cult of the Kim Jongs
of reunification. By following up
this legitimate response to Southern
aggression with a call for full talks, the
North’s leaders have appeared to their
people as magnanimous and morally
superior: they want to reunify the
country without killing millions of
their Southern brethren.
Nevertheless, the attempt to
legitimise Kim Jong-un will fail.
Kim Jong-il’s personality cult was
constructed over three decades, but
Kim Jong-un’s is being fast-tracked
due to his father’s illness. Trying to do
this while people starve may prove
difficult.
Kim Jong-un will only rule at the
behest of North Korea’s banker: China.
Prior to being publicly announced as
successor, Kim Jong-un was taken
by his father to visit their patron Hu
The attempt to legitimise
Kim Jong-un will fail
Jintao, the Chinese President, whose
approval was of course required.
Increasingly, North Korea is a de
facto Chinese protectorate. This will
especially be the case with a leader
who commands minimal loyalty
from his citizens. Kim Jong-il is semidependent on China, but his son
will be fully dependent. The future
of North Korea holds no big-bang
collapses or wars, but instead a slow,
Chinese-style process of opening up
and normalisation.
The issue is how to deal with North
Korea in the meantime. South Korea
cannot be expected to wait while
its citizens are attacked. Up to now,
there’s been a tendency to tread on
eggshells: negotiate carefully, appease,
purchase concessions through aid.
This strategy is overly cautious. The
Kims are rational actors. Metaphors
of the Korean Peninsula as a “powder
keg” in which one wrong move by the
South will lead to the whole situation
blowing up are inappropriate. For
internal political reasons, they
behave provocatively. This needs to
be limited to empty rhetoric. The way
to do this is to approach the country
with caution but confidence. North
Korea must not think that they can
get away with flouting the rules of
the international community simply
because the world fears what this
“irrational” nation will do next.
Any aggression must be met with
carefully calibrated, but confident,
proportionate responses, along the
lines of the South Korean response
to the Yeonpyeong bombardment.
North Korea will not launch a Second
Korean War. The world must stop
fearing this.
“Cutting the Cables” by Dan Strange
Online: Felix Danczak responds to the dangers of internet protest.
“Hacktivism is an illegitimate form of dissent because
those who take part are not ready to be identified, nor
are they willing to take their argument to court”
Read this and more online at tcs.cam.ac.uk
Travel Money
from The People’s
Post Office
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postoffice.co.uk
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Cambridge CB2 3BZ
The
CambridgeStudent
10| Interviews
INTERVIEWS
Between a rock and a hard NUS President Aaron Porter talks to Bryony
place: VC justifies his
Clarke about placards, protest and candlelit
response to Occupation
vigils.
the government – will “affect people
across a far wider range of family income than hitherto the £3,000 would
have done,” but insisted: “I want to
end up in a position that it is no more
expensive to come to Cambridge
than it is to go to other major universities.”
In a wide-ranging discussion, the
Vice Chancellor also said he was
caught in the middle of disagreements over how to react to last
month’s Old Schools Occupation:
“There was pressure to do more and
pressure to do less.”
“I happen to believe
that the way that
the issues were
resolved was entirely
appropriate”
He maintained that the decision to take the occupiers to court
was ultimately his, although other
sources have claimed it was actually
Dr Jonathan Nicholls, the University Registrary, who first suggested
a Possession Order and Injunctions
be sought to remove protesters from
the Senior Common Room. Borysiewicz told TCS he “believed the way
[the Occupation] eventually came to
its conclusion was appropriate,” but
pleaded for students to “understand
that these circumstances may be different” in future cases.
Throughout the sit-in, protesters
were constantly concerned the University would exercise its power to
send in bailiffs, who would have licence to use appropriate force to evict
them; this fear was heightened when
the University was granted a Possession Order in Court, reasserting their
right to own the Old Schools and to
lawfully evict trespassers.
However, the Vice Chancellor insisted that although he was “sure that
within the university consideration
was being given” to sending in bailiffs, it was never his intention to do
so.
Borysiewicz cited a concern for the
occupiers as one reason for his reluctance, saying “in a situation where
there is an enforcement order that has
been issued, once the bailiffs are sent
in people are in contempt of court
and that means that criminal action
can then be taken against them.
“I happen to believe that the way
that the issues were resolved was entirely appropriate in the circumstances that we faced.”
The University has claimed that
total costs incurred during the Occu-
pation will reach more than £50,000,
including over £34,500 spent on security staff, legal fees yet to be exactly
calculated, and nearly £10,000 billed
as “maintenance.”
When TCS put forward the view
of our own reporter, that there was
“no noticeable damage done” to the
Senior Common Room when the occupiers left, Borysiewicz replied “that
is probably in the eye of the beholder,”
adding that “staff were being intimidated by noise, attempts to get into
the HR department – remember that
we had staff actually working there,
who were stressed as a consequence –
on Friday they were prevented access
to the building by groups blockading
the entrances.” He did, however, admit: “I’m not going to pretend that I
actually know what every £9,000 is
actually spent on, but I’m sure that it
was actually required for cleaning the
building.”
The Vice Chancellor was never
fearful for his own safety, despite being pursued back to the Old Schools
by protesters after leaving the University Council meeting in which
Cambridge decided an official stance
on the Coalition’s education plans.
“There was pressure to
do more and pressure
to do less”
“I have a belief that actually students here are peaceful students,” he
said. “So no, I did not feel unsafe at
any point.” When asked why he felt
it necessary to leave the meeting accompanied by several police officers,
he replied “others were concerned for
my safety on my behalf – I can’t make
that judgement.”
Borysiewicz also fully defended his
decision to allow police onto Univerwsity property on Wednesday, 24th
November, when students clashed
with officers in front of the doors to
Senate House in scuffles that saw at
least two protesters hit by policemen.
“The police have to speak for themselves for the actions that they have
actually taken,” he said, but claimed
he had received information “ that an
imminent occupation and disruption
of the university was a likelihood...
I’m sorry, but it is my responsibility
to ensure that the university continues to function, and on that day the
evidence was so high that in discussion with the police they felt that this
was an appropriate action.
“I abhor violence in any form... I
was not there and therefore I cannot
conceivably comment on whether
one side provoked the other or
whether the action was proportionate or disproportionate.”
Photo: Jess Touschek
...continued from front page
In a grim, insignificant tower block in
Camden, a small, rather bare office,
just larger than an average stationery
cupboard, provides a humble setting
for a man who has been at the centre of one of the most raging political
controversies the new coalition government has encountered so far. It
has been a tumultuous year for NUS
President Aaron Porter, one that has
seen a dramatic regime change, colossal cuts in the higher education
sector and a trebling of university
tuition fees.
Demonized by some of his own
members for what has been perceived as a weak and lacklustre stance
to the public spending cuts in higher
education, whilst simultaneously
lambasted by others for registering
such an opposition at all, it has been a
tough middle ground Porter has been
forced to negotiate. His most virulent
dissenters are the more radical of the
NUS members - those who believe
that the official NUS response to the
proposals were woefully insufficient
and altogether too compromising,
and that Porter himself betrayed
his own members’ best interests in
favour of a more collaborative approach. Porter’s swift condemnation
of any violence in the student protests, his tepid support for student
occupations across the country, and
the apparent failure of the NUS to
wield any substantial leverage have
led many to call for his resignation.
Two student unions, Birkbeck and
SOAS, passed votes of no confidence
in Aaron Porter, and there’s even a
facebook campaign demanding his
removal as President.
In the wake of the motion passed
last December to see a potential trebling of university tuition fees, the
question that many are asking is, what
did the official campaign launched by
the NUS actually achieve? “It is right
to say we didn’t defeat the government on their proposals to change
tuition fees”, Porter concedes, “but
the NUS significantly shaped the debate. It brought the issue of tuition
fees to the fore in a way the government neither wanted nor anticipated.
We inflicted the biggest rebellion the
government have faced to date - one
of the successes of the campaign is
that never again will a government
jump to make decisions about students lightly.” For the person who
supposedly instigated the biggest rebellion the government have faced to
date, Porter is polite, personable and
articulate. His suit-and-tie appearance and mannerisms are more those
of a company director than student
revolutionary.
Indeed, his whole approach to the
issue of tuition fees can be characterised as one of reason, compromise
and negotiation rather than militant opposition and radical protest.
“There has been a lot of attention on
the street protests, but our campaign
started two years ago when we produced a fully-costed alternative to
raising tuition fees.” Porter has earned
a reputation for elevating more moderate and gradualist forms of protest
over active campaigning, preferring
formal lobbying and petitioning to
taking to the streets. “There’s a limit
to what waving placards can achieve,”
Porter agrees. “A successful campaign
must employ a number of tactics; it
has to apply pressure both inside and
outside the room. And my experience is that having the ear of those
who make the decisions, and their
respect, is the best way of ensuring
results.”
By negotiation and compromise,
by being prepared to create a middle
ground, Porter has arguably made
far more of an impact than a single
minded, unbending opposition
would have achieved. “I am convinced we are in a much stronger
position with the coalition in terms
of ensuring fairer access to higher
education,” he argues. Since 2008 the
NUS has proposed a graduate tax as a
preferable model to an increased tuition fee. “Whilst a graduate tax was
not the model that was implemented,
it is fair to say the new system will
have some features of a graduate tax,
in that the repayment will not exclusively be based on what university you
went to, it will be more based on what
you are earning.” It is clear that Porter feels this small concession made
by the government can be mostly attributed to the NUS negotiations. He
believes the lobbying and petitioning
of the NUS has yielded far more sympathy from within the government
than the street demonstrations could
have done alone. “If all we had done
was a series of protests, there is abso
lutely no chance we would have got
anywhere near delivering the biggest
backbench rebellion ever seen in the
Liberal Democrat Party.”
The
CambridgeStudent
Interviews |11
However, this will do little to appease his more radical opponents,
who argue he has reduced student
politics to horsetrading, pragmatism
and backroom deals, and has quite
simply not made a strong enough
opposition. A dichotomy has since
emerged between the official campaign of the NUS, and the unofficial
demonstrations and occupations
organised by other groups such as
‘Defend Education’ and the ‘National
Campaign Against Fees and Cuts’.
As a member of ‘Defend Education’
remarked, “Porter looks upon the
student movement as no more than a
CV opportunity, to be abandoned as
soon as the scrawl of graffiti dares to
interrupt his perfect form. The genuine student body is on the streets to
which we been thrust by decades of
counter-productive NUS bureaucracy.”
This growing divergence of the
unofficial student mobilisation from
the official one was most apparent on
December 9th. The 300 students participating in a ‘candlelit vigil’ on the
Embankment, organised by the NUS
on the day of the vote, were vastly
overshadowed by a crowd numbering over 20,000 demonstrating in
Parliament Square.
Many hailed this bizarre decision as
symptomatic of just how out of touch
the NUS was with its own members.
This growing resentment was exacerbated by the decision made by the
NUS Executive Committee not to
back two further student demonstrations in January - a “Save EMA” day
on the 26th January and a “Defend
Education” demonstration in Lon-
don on the 29th. So why have the
NUS withheld their endorsement of
these student actions? “Well, we’ve
already called an action on the 29th
in Manchester,” Porter responds dismissively. “If students want to go to
the one in London, they can go, but
I’ll be encouraging the one in Manchester. There have already been lots
of demonstrations in London.” Why
Porter is unwilling to support both
protests when the trade unions he is
demonstrating with in Manchester
were happy to do so, remains mystifying.
On the EMA demonstration he
is slightly more forthcoming; “I will
support any action if it has clear goals
and is safe for students. I will not
support campaign actions that are
likely to descend into violence. [The
action on the 26th January] is being
organised by the same people who
turned up in Parliament Square of the
9th December; the same people who
“There’s a limit to
what waving placards
can achieve”
refused to condemn the violence at
Millbank. I can’t be sure it’s going to
turn violent but I don’t believe these
people are taking sufficient steps to
ensure students will be safe. I don’t
believe these people care whether
we gain public support or lose public support - I do, and that’s why I’m
not coming out and supporting that
event.” However, doesn’t this emerging factionalism within the student
movement imperil any chance of political influence? Surely to exert any
pressure at all, we must oppose these
higher education cuts from an internally unified position?
“The student movement is bigger
than the NUS and that is a positive
thing,” Porter replies. “We [the NUS]
cannot organise every protest and
nor should we.” A peculiar remark
for someone who believes “the NUS
provides the means by which the one
national voice of students is represented”.
While Porter was swift to disassociate the NUS from the more violent or rowdy element of the student
campaign against cuts and fees, he
has attracted further criticism for so
publicly condemning the activities of
his own members, but not responding to the brutality of the police, so
obvious and manifest on December
9th in Parliament Square, with equal
severity.
Many feel that the effective imprisonment of many hundreds of
students for eight hours in a police
kettle merited far more outrage than
a few broken windows at Millbank.
However, Porter strongly disagrees
that his response to the police brutality was lacklustre. “There are three
statements I put out condemning
police tactics - I went in front of a Select Committee which was enquiring
into this matter just before Christmas
in which I publicly condemned the
kettling, the horse charging, and the
poor facilities within the kettle. So
actually I’ve done a range of things
to criticise the police actions in the
student demonstrations - but obvi-
ously there is a lot more interest in an
NUS President critcising participants
in the student protest rather than the
police. There has been a lot of misreporting on this case.” So would he like
to see in ban on the use of kettling?
“Yes, I believe it’s an inhumane
tactic. I thought the police actions in
Parliament Square outrageous and
clearly despicable.”
“The student
movement is bigger
than the NUS”
It is clear that Porter has no tolerance for any violence or criminality
in the student protests, and advocates
only legitimate, peaceful demonstrations. However, there can be no dispute that these ‘unofficial’ student actions have certainly rivalled the NUS
campaign in terms of media coverage
and public attention, and have indeed better conveyed the anger and
desperation of students than the candlelit vigils and NUS lobbying. Their
mass mobilisation of disgruntled
and disillusioned students has made
fertile ground for an major political
upheaval against this coalition and its
cuts, inspiring a large following with
the mantra ‘this is just the beginning’.
This element of the student campaign made headline news of student
demonstrations that may otherwise
have been mere footnotes at the end
of media reports. In the wake of this
ever- expanding movement, what is
the relevance of the NUS, saddled as
it is with bureaucracy, more moderate
than militant, and too compromising
to really represent student interests?
“Well firstly the suggestion that the
NUS has been an irrelevance in this
campaign is absolute pie in the sky,”
he responds. “It was the NUS who
put out a fully costed alternative to
fees, the NUS who issued the most
talked about political initiative, the
NUS who organised the public demonstration in November that amassed
50,000 participants - the biggest demonstration in this country since Iraq.
We have led a responsible, proactive
and innovative campaign, which has
held the government to account in a
fearsome way, but one which I think
has been responsible.”
Yes, a fearsome, but responsible
campaign - this phrase perhaps best
encapsulates Porter’s whole approach.
Whether you see him as a wily expedient politician in the making, or the
voice of reason and common sense
in a debate where students could
only ever hope for token concessions
rather than the complete abolition of
fees, he has a led an impressive opposition, one that has tempered radicalism with reason and compromise,
militant activism with more formal
and legitimate campaigning.
However, diplomatic political protest is all well and good when one
wields great electoral and political
influence - arguably, our generation
does not. A mass uprising against
the government spending cuts could
quite conceivably bring this government to its knees - how can the small
changes and compromises, wrought
be parliamentary lobbying and candlelit vigils, really hope to compete?
The
12| Comment
Thursday, January 20, 2011
CambridgeStudent
Comment | Is Cambridge too stressful?
If society was attempting to induce high stress levels, this university would be an excellent model,
says Chris McKeon
S
tress is a common feature of all
our lives and certainly of all students’ lives. Most of us are living
away from home for the first time,
with people we, initially, don’t know.
There is the work, the deadlines, the
extra-curricular commitments and,
of course, the often terrifying, yawning mouth of employment and the
Real World.
Then, there are the Cambridge
stresses. The work is that much harder and, crammed into eight weeks,
that much more intense. As highachievers we are frequently competitive, and thrown together with other
similarly high-achieving people, the
competition is that much harder and
that much keener. Especially given
our very public indicators of success,
be they the publicised class lists or the
Blues blazer.
This is stress. During term, and
Certainly, a little stress is
good for you, but that is
only acute stress.
sometimes out of term, we encounter it on a daily if not hourly basis.
Many will wonder whether it is really a problem, given its prevalence
in our community, but just because
1362
Students used the
UCS in 2009-2010,
compared to:
1202 - 2008-2009
1168 - 2007-2008
1119 - 2006-2007
One quarter of
students present
at the USC due to
stress, anxiety, or
panic.
C
ing through the night if need be. Fabulous salaries, of course, but incredibly stressful. All on 25 days holiday
max. They can’t ‘have a bad week’ and
miss a deadline. That deadline is a client; that client isn’t happy and neither
is your boss. A Cambridge term is
only fifty six days in total. Fifty six
days of working, making deadlines
and making time for everything else
you want to do in your life before
you get forty two days off. We’re on
holiday for one third of the academic
year (October to June - check for
Image: Ed Brambley
ambridge is just another
university. Thousands of students part with their money
to attend these places every year,
but down here we seem to find the
whole thing just a bit too stressful. It’s
too easy to blame the university. Too
much work; not enough time to read
everything; I didn’t like it when he
said my essay was bad. Much harder
to swallow, is the suggestion that
maybe the problem lies with us.
Think about city workers. 6am
starts, working 14 hour days. Work-
Letters
F
Want
irst of all I would like to say
that I have never been, nor will
I ever be a student so you will
probably ignore this letter as a rant
from a uninformed citizen, and will
probably correct my spelling and
grammar mistakes.
Well that your choice as this is my
choice to write this email to you.
Your paper is biased and unappealing, your views and what you write
have directly increased the violence
it is common does not mean that it
is benign. Certainly, a little stress is
good for you. It engages the ‘fight
or flight’ reflex, heightening physical and mental functions – useful
for a fight or, say, an exam. But, this
is only acute stress. Chronic stress, of
the kind experienced by many Cambridge students, is very much a problem. Indeed, chronic stress has been
linked to an increased risk of various
medical conditions including, crucially, clinical depression.
The University Counselling Service
(UCS) says that one of the major factors contributing to suicide or suicidal
feelings among students is “inappropriately high levels of stress”, which
is especially prevalent in “those who
have been high achievers” – sound
like anyone you know? And suicide
is not the only risk – 1,300 students
use the UCS annually, but even this
isn’t the full picture. A recent survey
by The Cambridge Student found that
only two-thirds of students thought
that they would contact the UCS if
they needed help, so the figure may
be closer to 2,000, or one in every ten
students.
If stress and anxiety
are common then, the
thinking goes, they
should just be endured.
The difficulties of identifying and
dealing with such problems are increased by the prevalence of stress
amongst students here. If stress and
anxiety are common then, the thinking goes that they cannot be a serious
problem and should just be endured.
The UCS is a great service and receives what is a comparatively large
amount of financial support, but it is
too reactive – a cure rather than a prevention. And given the large number
of students that could benefit from its
help but don’t make use of it because
they are too unhappy to seek help, or
because they think that they simply
have to put up with excessive stress, it
is an imperfect cure at that.
It is not the case, as CUSU Student Support Officer Morgan Wild
suggested, that there is “no evidence
that a failure of the welfare system”
contributed to a student’s suicide last
term. Any suicide is a failure of the
welfare system and, given that the
stress of Cambridge culture raises
the risk of mental health problems
and, perhaps, makes them seem unproblematic, the University ought to
do more to counter-act this, perhaps
with a longer term and a break halfway through as CUSU proposed a
few years ago.
As it stands, is Cambridge too
stressful? There were at least three
suicides in the eight weeks of last
term, possibly four. These events are
tragedies, and speak for themselves.
“You can see that stress is a very common reason for people to
2009-2010 Drop-out rates:
come [to the UCS]. However, the question of ‘Is Cambridge too
UHI Millennium Institute – 25.4%
stressful?’ needs careful handling, as a certain degree of stress,
University of the West of Scotland – 21.4%
pressure or challenge will motivate us and be helpful.”
University of Cambridge – 1.2%
Oxford University – 1.1%
- Mark Phippen, Head of Counselling,
Cambridge University Counselling Service
yourself). If they can manage it for
years then we should be able to manage eight weeks. The counter argument is that Cambridge is definitely
infinitely more stressful than a job at
a top banking firm. This is so clearly
ridiculous that there is no need to argue against it.
The thing we seem to forget is that
everyone wants us to do well here.
When you mess up, your DoS doesn’t
shout, he asks what went wrong.
They already know you’re capable
of doing this. That’s why they let
you in. So if you’re struggling, then
something is going wrong. It’s understandable. Cambridge is a bubble and
when you’re in that bubble for a significant period of time - when you’re
meeting one deadline only be granted with three more, when everyone
is so clever and so talented - it’s easy
to lose perspective. To think you can’t
do it. That it’s too hard. This is when
things get stressful.
The fact is, you can do it. You just
need to remember that. People manage. Every year since 1209, people
Cambridge is always going to be
tough but you applied because
you wanted to be pushed,
argues Leonie James
have managed to graduate from this
place with sanity intact. We’re monitored a lot more closely than you realise. The bedders notice changes in
behaviour. The porters see you every
day . Your supervisors report to your
DoS, who in turn talks to your tutor.
People are watching out for you. If
you need help, there’s a plethora of it
available. Tutor, DoS, College Nurse,
Welfare Officer - and this is assuming you don’t have friends to talk to.
There’s the counselling service and
Linkline. Aside from all these university provided services, there are the
NHS ones. GPs still exist when you
need them!
If you need help, it’s there in abundance. But you shouldn’t need it. You
were good enough to get in here and
you knew what you signed up for.
Cambridge was always going to be
tough, but you applied because that’s
what you wanted.
You wanted to be pushed. Now you
are, and it’s hard. It’s a shock because
it’s the first time you’ve really had to
work at academic work. You’re out of
your comfort zone and it’s scary.
When it comes down to it, managing a term here without stress would
be difficult. The stress is a part of the
experience, and perhaps a necessary
one. In an exam you need adrenaline
to get you through. When you’ve got
a deadline, the stress kicking in motivates you. We’re all junkies. We need
the stress to get us through the term.
As I said, it’s part of the experience.
to get involved? For letters, articles and comment, email [email protected]
that happened in London, the assault
of a member of the royal family, the
destruction of public property, and
the disgraceful behaviour of ONE of
your students at a HERO’s memorial.
You argue your case with conviction and I dare say a few of you have
good intentions behind your protests,
but if your validation of rioting is because the students (protesters) were
kettled then your are as bad as when
a politician lies about the truth. Is
there any justification for assaulting
some one who has done more for the
student than Prince Charles????
Yes it was only a few but how many
walked by and laughed or did nothing. What about the student from
your University that decided it would
be FUN to swing on the Cenotaph?
You have shown the world that when
English students protest they riot
and enjoy the act. But I doubt very
much that you will report any of this
as your readers will not like to hear
this, so much for the student to have
an open mind.
Now you may ask what right have
I to judge on the actions of students
and their supports since I have never
been one, but unlike your readers
I can see more than one side to an
argument, and I have been to places
where people are not allowed to protest for fear of being shot or killed. Yes
education in an ideal world should
be free for everyone...but we know
it’s not ideal, I personally believe it is
wrong for students to pay more but I
have no love for your cause now and
in fact would gladly see the students
pay for their actions. So use this as
toilet paper or whatever I don’t really
care now I expressed opinion, I don’t
care what you do with it.
Luke Myers
The
CambridgeStudent
Comment |13
Notes from the
Overground
Jamie Mathieson
“There’s not a liberal
America and a
conservative America;
there’s the United States
of America.”
James Fearnley
Were we naïve to believe in change?
Daniel
Razaz
Who can forget the 2008 presidential
campaign? All the glitz, the Luther
King-style speeches, the excessive
news coverage. Even the most
rational of people must have found it
hard to believe there wasn’t anything
Obama couldn’t do.
Then the day came, November
4 2008. This was what they were all
waiting for. Now there really was
hope, something to look forward
to. So much so that you could even
sense an air of anticipation here in
the UK.
People seemed to forget about
the problems of the world for that
‘holiday period’. When Obama was
sworn in on January 20 the following
year there was work to do. A few
banners and carefully crafted words
weren’t going to put an end to wars
or a recession.
These issues were staring Obama
in the face right from the start. He
wasted no time in announcing the
planned withdrawal of troops from
Iraq, as well as suspending operations
at Guantanamo Bay detention camp,
pledging its closure within the year.
However, whilst he has stuck to
his word on Iraq, two years later
Guantanamo Bay still remains open.
It seems Obama has gone back
on his word; since his initial
announcement, the Supplemental
Appropriations Act and Defense
Authorization Bill have served to
keep Guantanamo Bay open.
Why did he make a promise
he couldn’t keep? Perhaps all the
fanfare of the election had made him
get ahead of himself, clouding his
judgment of the situation and the
limits of his power.
To combat the recession, on
17 February 2009 the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act
was passed. This aimed to lessen the
effects of the recession and boost
the economy, by way of investing,
providing benefits and reducing
unemployment.
Whilst the $787bn package leaves
Now there really was
hope, something to
look forward to.
a void in government finances, the
increased income and consumption
by households is likely to have a
multiplying effect on GDP, helping
restore the economy to pre-recession
levels.
Whether the act has been effective
or not is debatable - since February
2009, unemployment has changed
little, increasing slightly from 8.9% to
9.1%, whereas GDP has experienced
a sustained increase.
Given the high levels of investment
spending, this suggests that the
outcomes of the package may only
become apparent in the long run,
by which time any ambiguities may
have resolved themselves.
Whether this is the case remains to
be seen, and by then Obama may not
even be in office to take the credit.
Perhaps Obama’s greatest moment
to date, at least from a Democrat
perspective, has been the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act.
This shake-up of the healthcare
system is something no other
president has managed to do
successfully, mainly because of the
powerful healthcare lobby in the
States.
The act reduces the power of
insurers and encourages greater
transparency
of
information.
Although many remain uninsured,
those most vulnerable or on the
lowest incomes now have the
opportunity to protect themselves
against illness or injury.
Obama is doing a pretty good job
so far. He has arguably accomplished
more than any other president during
the first half of his presidency, and
he’s not finished yet.
Perhaps him winning the Nobel
Peace Prize after just nine months as
President was somewhat premature,
as it seemed to reward his intentions
rather than his achievements.
Nonetheless, if this inspires Obama
to continue to improve international
diplomacy, it can’t be a bad thing.
What next? The planned
withdrawals from Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as the continued
recovery of the economy will serve
to affect his approval rating, which is
currently at its lowest point since he
took office.
Perhaps his low rating is not so
much because he is doing the job
badly, rather that expectations were
set so high when he first
came into office.
The current Republican
majority in the House
of Representatives poses
a threat to Democrat
legislation,
and
Obama’s
best
course of action
now
should
be to better
his approval
rating.
After
this he should focus
on the next presidential
election, seeing as he has
already completed half his
term.
The outcomes of many of
Obama’s policies won’t be
evident until the long term,
and there’s still a lot to do.
Give the man a chance, I say.
Dear Diary,
Woke up this morning feeling
thoroughly modern. Put on my
modern shoes, ate my modern
breakfast, and reformed the NHS.
Isn’t this fun?
Some
people
say
that
modernisation is just one of
those meaningless words people
use because you can’t disagree
with them. What a horribly oldfashioned thing to say. I hate
things that are old, don’t you? Like
democracy. I mean, that’s literally
ancient. Needing a mandate to
introduce sweeping reforms is so
1997. It’s horribly old-fashioned
to suggest that by controlling the
language used, you control the
debate. Orwell said that in 1984,
and although it’s called 1984 he
actually wrote 1984 a long time
before 1984, when 1984 seemed
modern, but now 1984 seems
horribly old-fashioned. When I
talk about cutting waste or saving
money, I’m not just using these
terms because they sound like
things everyone wants and thus
obscure their ideological bases.
What a philistine you would have
to be to say a thing like that.
But what does this really mean,
being modern? Modern is good.
Modern is what people want. Let’s
give GP surgeries some thoughtprovoking furniture. Let’s ditch the
finger-painting and get kids sawing
sheep in half. Why even teach
kids to read? Haven’t you read
your Derrida, Barthes, Sartre? Not
much point reading Topsy and Tim
once you see that the relationship
between signifier and signified is
unfixed, language is unstable, and
Tim is one seriously old-fashioned
name.
What’s not modern? Naysaying, that’s what. Criticism,
opposition, stubbornness. How
horribly unmodern. Those people
who suggest that talking about
modernisation while offering tax
incentives for marriage would be
like Ed Miliband telling Cain he
went a bit far. Those people who
say the Tories are a bunch of out of
touch snobs and toffs. Ok, so most
Tory MPs do prefer Beethoven to
bingo, Schubert to Strongbow, and
rugby to football. But they’re not
totally upper class and out of touch.
They’re not the Occupation.
Talking about class is the
most old-fashioned thing
of them all. It’s not about
who your parents
were. It’s about choice.
And if I choose to send
my son to Eton, that’s
my choice. If I choose to
accept a lifetime of debt
in return for a degree,
that’s my choice. If I choose to
privatise everything in sight,
that’s up to me. Except it isn’t.
It’s up to the government. Who
I didn’t vote for. Who nobody
voted for. Wait a minute. This
isn’t very modern at all. The
government doing whatever
the hell they like and the people
paying the price – that’s rather
old-fashioned. How lovely!
This is like the good old days.
The
14| Comment
Spoiling Internationals Visas Rethink Required
the Ballot Morgan
Wild
with James Burton
A sideways look at the upcoming CUSU elections
Wandering past Prêt a Manger,
or Café Nero, you may happen to
glimpse furtive groups seated around
a small table in some neglected corner, absorbed in the kind of quiet
conversation that suggests plotting is
afoot.
Look closer, and you will notice
the speakers share a conspiratorial,
slightly obsessive look. These are student politicians, and at the start of
Lent term, they begin to get restless.
It’s CUSU election season, you see.
Although weeks remain before candidates have to declare their intentions, whispered discussions are already taking place across Cambridge
as hopefuls gently solicit the support
of JCR Presidents over a skinny latte
and bowl of organic soup. If talks
go well, the petitioner will emerge
triumphant, and make it generally known they emphatically do not
want to stand for CUSU President.
Of course, this only serves to remind
everyone that they just might change
their mind.
At The Cambridge Student, we do
not like this sort of thing. So, we are
offering a sideways look at the elections, relying on the good humour of
bureaucrats and candidates to tolerate the scurrilous gossip you will find
in these column inches. Over the
coming weeks, I hope to give you a
glimpse into the mysterious world
of our Students’ Union, from bizarre
election rules to the angry squabbles
of candidates, and the hidden agendas behind their manifestos. Henry
Kissinger once said university politics “are so vicious because the stakes
are so low.” We shall see.
All that is still to come, however.
This week, as plotting continues,
Spoiling the Ballot takes a look at
the dramatis personae. The loudest
denials are coming from Rahul Mansigani, current CUSU President, who
is telling all and sundry he has absolutely no intention of standing for a
second term.
His protestations are echoed by
those of Juan de Francisco, bumbling
former President of King’s College
Students’ Union and self-appointed
‘man of the people’, whose publicityseeking support for the student occupation didn’t make him very many
friends on either side of the political
divide.
Sam Wakeford, Education Officer last year, is so widely expected
to run he is not even bothering to
deny it. Currently Chair of CUSU
Council – the Students’ Union’s ‘decision-making’ body – Wakeford is
arguably the most experienced of the
potential candidates. His knowledge
of the obscure bureaucratic processes
on which CUSU runs, coupled with
what some might call an unhealthy
delight in the finer points of University policy, will make him a formidable opponent.
Although none of the above are exactly on the Right politically, they are
CambridgeStudent
all very much part of the Establishment – and in Cambridge, the Establishment stands for caution, speaks
with a moderate voice, and rarely
challenges the University in public.
But what of the Left?
Historically, the Marxists, radicals
and activists have had a pretty rough
ride in elections. Just three years ago,
students elected as President Mark
Fletcher, a self-avowed and outspoken Tory who now works for the
Conservative party; last year, Beccy
Talmy ran on a campaigning, antifees manifesto, and was comprehensively beaten by Mansigani’s more
measured approach.
Whispered talks are
already taking place
across Cambridge
over a skinny latte
And in Michaelmas term, Luke
Hawksbee was unceremoniously
booted into the long grass by the
electorate, discovering to his chagrin
that most students would rather ReOpen Nominations than have a lefty
as Co-ordinator.
However, now might be the time
for a rethink. The protesters who occupied Old Schools at the end of last
term enjoyed a degree of student support that has not been seen for decades, and as endless New Statesman
articles tell us, the youth are finally
waking up.
Times they are a-changing, and
maybe, just maybe, CUSU is ready
for a President who believes in public
challenge rather than lobbying behind closed doors.
One person who might be capable
of harnessing the new appetite for
protest is King’s undergraduate Jacob
Wills. Although Old Schools occupiers will be quick to tell you they were
a leaderless democracy, Wills’ enthusiasm and experience made him a
key figure throughout the eleven day
sit in.
As always, an activist candidate
would be deeply divisive, and whether
Wills could win over moderate voters
remains to be seen, but he could well
be the Left’s best hope.
The views expressed in this column are
not necessarily the opinions of Cambridge University Students’ Union or
The Cambridge Student Newspaper.
Comments expressed are the opinions of individuals and not necessarily
the opinions of Cambridge University
Students’ Union or The Cambridge
Student Newspaper.
Any views of potential candidates
expressed in this column are not necessarily the views they would hold if
elected. In all cases, elected candidates
would respect due process in the totality of their interactions with staff.
The government’s proposed reforms
of the student visa system read like a
shopping list of bad policy decisions.
The reforms will do little to advance
the government’s unrealistic and undesirable goal of reducing net migration “from hundreds of thousands, to
tens of thousands”, but will do much
to undermine the experience of international students and will go far in
creating a perception of the UK as a
country hostile to other nationalities,
even to those coming here for the
most studious of reasons.
There will be yet further restrictions
on the amount of time international
students can work and who they
can work for; stopping the students’
families and dependents from working, or refusing them permission to
enter the country altogether; making
students return to their home country and reapply for another visa when
they want to start a Master’s or a PhD;
increasing the English language requirements for students, even when
these students are applying to study
an English language course.
These reforms will not help the
government achieve their goals - all
they achieve are increasingly arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions
on legitimate students, with no per-
ceivable benefit, creating financial
hardship and unhappiness for thousands of international students.
These policies should be opposed,
and will upset and disrupt the students that they affect, but they are
not the real danger. Currently, upon
completing their degree, international students are allowed to stay in
this country for up to two years afterwards, to try and find highly skilled
work.
The government’s most sweeping
proposal, to which they are pinning
their hopes for net migration reduction, is to eliminate this route for international students. It is this that will
cause real and lasting harm, both to
international students and to society
as a whole.
Thousands of people from other
countries choose to remain here after they have completed their course,
and we should welcome this. In
Cambridge (and across all research
intensive universities), many of them
go on to be valuable junior academics doing research that only they are
qualified to do. Many go on to contribute through working (35% of
highly skilled work visas are granted
this way). And many go on to contribute to our society in other, less
quantifiable ways.
Yet the government’s proposal is
clear in its insistence: international
students are here only for study.
When they have finished studying,
they must go home.
This proposal is mindboggling in
its tabloid pleasing dimness. Even
when considered through the government’s narrow ideological lens, there
is no sense in bringing such a wealth
of talent into the country, having our
universities and colleges invest the
time and effort in teaching them, and
then enforcing an iron rule that they
are not to be afforded any opportunity to continue working here.
It should be a source of pride that
so many international students, after they have finished their course of
study, want to continue to contribute
their talents and skills, want to continue the rich and diverse lives that
they have found here and want to
continue contributing to our communities and our society.
Instantly evicting students from
the life that many of them wish to
pursue here, and ignoring the enormous benefit that these students can
bring, is as stupid as it is wrong.
It should be the belief that all students have a right to pursue whatever
they are passionate about after their
degree, free from unnecessary restrictions on where they can pursue
it, regardless of their nationality. The
government’s current proposals on
student immigration should be opposed, particularly the elimination of
the post study work route.
The government’s proposals are
a disaster by any definition. It is up
to the universities to make a stand
against the plans If we want international students to continue to live and
thrive here, both in our educational
institutions and beyond, these plans
must be opposed.
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magazine
The
CambridgeStudent
22-23
19
Contents
24-25
26-27
Hidden treasures of Cambridge
How to cope with essay crises
Retail therapy
A different way to
five a day
Matthew Topham on hating fun
TCS checks out the Brit nominees
Sex @ Oxbridge bares all
The return of Insantibridgians
Jenny Grene on how the recession has hit Hogwarts
Lent term
in...1808
Lord Byron studied at Trinity from 1805. Legend
has it that during his time there, he received a
puppy for Christmas. When he returned in Lent,
he was told that the college rules forbade him from
keeping a dog or a cat in his room. In retaliation at
being separated from his beloved dog, he kept a pet
bear instead. It seems he was still unimpressed with
Cambridge two years later....
Puzzles
Byron to Robert Charles Dallas,
January 21st 1808
You are so far correct in your conjecture, that I am a
member of the University of Cambridge, where I shall
take my degree of A.M. this term; but were reasoning,
eloquence, or virtue, the objects of my search, Granta
is not their metropolis, not is the place of her situation an “El Dorado,” far less an Utopia. The intellects
of her children are stagnant as her Cam, and their
pursuits limited to the church – not of Christ, but of
the nearest benefice.
Pic of the week
Set by Cadabra
Crossword
by Alexander Johnson
ACROSS
1. After 60% of enema, state what
comes out. (9)
8. Handle your manhood! (4)
9. Returned to study it inside?
Dickhead! (9)
10. Cold Midge Preserve? (4)
13. “Yes, Badgers!” so they say at
Scottish stadium. (5)
15. Actual thievery – extremely
like estate agent’s business! (6)
16. Separate errant beginner from
honest worker for skiving. (6)
17. Father Fitzgerald made
Spanish food. (6)
19. I am Cadabra’s little pixie. (6)
20. Dopehead leaves unusually
16| Contents
sturdy tents. (5)
21. Make a mess as regularly as all
OAPs. (4)
24. Possibly Margaret Thatcher’s
war left out 23? (6-3)
25. No ice in champagne – a
travesty? (4)
26. Deviously start game using
scheme. (9)
DOWN
2. Become acquaintances “of the
flesh”, so to speak. (4)
3. Secure bust? (4)
4. Try consuming the Italian beer’s
head from a hat. (6)
5. Wild cat keels over in Bristol
Ecosystem. (6)
6. Nude adult shook and rippled.
(9)
7. Complain whenever there’s a
happy ending – do not do this to
women. (9)
11. Suggesting asking for a hand
(9)
12. Give in on top of Lady
Neanderthal. (9)
13. Country Latin came from and
returned within? (5)
14. Mutant superheroes: Winston,
Parker Jr. and Charles can see
through your skin? (1-4)
18. Versed in the German of a
current time. (2,4)
19. Large feature of 13 – erupting
meant to start inside. (2,4)
22. Party abandons Edam starter
in favour of a Greek cheese. (4)
23. Shaft acquires sack containing
laptop. (4)
Answers to Christmas Special:
ACROSS: 1. The Iceman Cometh 9. Kojak
12. Mubarak 13. Plasterer 14. Nun 15.
Hullaballoo 16. See 35 Down 17(,34). White
Christmas 18. Mystery 19. Sick bag 22.
Hanukkah 24. Animalia 27. Oedipus Rex 30.
Bipartisan 31. See 41 Across 32. Pedantic
37(,11). We Three Kings 38. Blow-dry 40.
Eerie 41(,31,6,26). Chestnuts Roasting
on an Open Fire 44. Demoralised 46. Ski
47. Euclidian 48. Minimum 49. Yield 50.
Religious person
Big Brother’s Big Hole
A number of ex-Big Brother
contestants attempted to win back
column inches this week by digging
a relatively large pit and trapping
themselves inside, writes our satire
correspondent, Matt Lim.
The media coverage was not as
extensive as they had hoped: just a
bored journalist from the free local
newspaper and a 13-year-old child
who was experimenting with his
new digital camera.
The idea first came to them after
they noted what they regarded as
the disproportionately extensive
coverage of the trapped Chilean
miners last year.
The sit-in lasted a little under 5
hours, before one of them needed
the toilet (they had not thought
through the logistics of this
situation), another one got hungry
and a further woman was racist.
In an ill-disguised and ill-conceived
publicity stunt, as many as 10 exhousemates, whose identities have
been obscured for legal reasons and
by virtue of them being talentless
non-entities, endeavoured to dig a
6-foot-deep hole in a nearby park.
They were aided by a number of
enthusiastic locals, who were under
the impression that they were
burying the Z-listers for good and
were disappointed when they reemerged later that day.
One ex-housemate, who didn’t
wish to remain anonymous but will
inevitably always do so, commented
that the scheme had been borne out
of frustration and boredom, but that
he now planned to return home for
a wank.
It is unclear whether, on digging,
the group unearthed their longsince-buried careers, credibility or
dignity. But probably not.
Think you’re funny?
If you want to write satire,
contact [email protected]
The
CambridgeStudent
Feature
Hidden Treasures of
Cambridge
A Roman ‘Swiss Army Knife’ from as early as
201AD, on display at our very own Fitzwilliam
Museum in Cambridge. Image courtesy of The
Fitzwilliam Museum.
Photograph: Anders B
Image: Lucinda Douglas-Menzies, copyright Girton College
Heidi Egginton
investigates
o you’ve already heard the
one about the bridge with
no bolts, been up to the balcony at the Fitzwilliam, and
convinced someone that
the so-called ‘Bridge of Sighs’ is much
prettier than its Venetian equivalent?
Some of the more interesting treasures and curiosities in Cambridge
are harder to find. Here are some of
the best…
S
solution of the USSR that the Soviet
military had undertaken what is now
considered the most comprehensive
global survey in history.
It is believed that 50,000 cartographers were employed in Moscow
during the course of the Cold War
to interpret satellite imaging, as well
as reconnaissance from spies on the
ground. Open Mon - Fri and until
12.45 pm on Sat.
Hermione the Girton Mummy
The Roman ‘Swiss Army Knife’
Discovered in 1910-11 by Egyptologist W.M.F. Petrie, ‘Hermione’ is
something of an icon at Girton, and
also has the honour of having one of
the most widely-produced faces of
any portrait mummy.
Her fame is owed partly to the inscription beneath her picture, which
has been translated roughly as ‘literary lady’, or ‘reader in the Classics’ –
making the mummy one of the only
known images of a learned woman
from the ancient world.
Hermione joined other literary
ladies at the then all-female Girton
College, and is now kept in the Lawrence Room, along with an important
collection of other Egyptian, Roman,
and Anglo-Saxon objects.
The museum is open every Thursday between 2pm and 4pm.
One of the most striking objects in
the Fitzwilliam Museum’s newly
renovated Greek and Roman galleries is the so-called ‘Swiss army knife’,
which dates back to between 201 and
300AD.
The implement, thought to have
been custom made for a wealthy
Roman traveller, contains a spoon,
a three-pronged fork, and what is
presumed to have been a tooth pick.
The spatula-like blade was probably
designed for removing meat from
snails.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is open
Tuesday-Saturday from 10am to 5pm,
and Sunday from 12am to 5pm.
Cold War Map of Cambridge
Other objects in Cambridge collections do not co-exist quite as happily
with their surroundings.
The University Library Map Room
holds a number of survey maps of
Cambridge and East Anglia produced by the Soviet Union.
These include a detailed reproduction of the town centre, with colleges
and the UL marked in Cyrillic script
and a detailed colour coding system.
Such documents were classified as
secret; it emerged only after the dis-
Adoration of the Magi by Rubens
While perhaps not a ‘curiosity’, taking up much of the east wall of King’s
College Chapel and providing a backdrop for the beloved annual ‘Carols
From Kings’ service at Christmas,
Rubens’ 1634 painting The Adoration
of the Magi is not without controversy. The 8ft by 11ft work was bought
at Sothebys by property millionaire
and collector Major A.E. Allnatt, who
then donated it to the suitably vertiginous chapel.
Reframed and made into an altarpiece, the painting was eventually installed in its current position in 1968
as part of a ‘restoration’ – though
subsequently it has been suggested
that the transformations made to accommodate it were nothing short of
revolutionary.
Architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner wrote in 1970 that 'if
any building in the whole country
was not made for [the Rubens] it was
King's College Chapel', while author
and King’s historian Graham Chainey alleged in 1992 that the rare Tudor
brick arches cleared from the foundations to make way for the installation
were ‘carted off by various fellows to
make patios and the like’.
ed not by the ethereal face of an 18th
century French philosopher, but by
a solitary (dismantled) WWII rifle.
The library at Christ’s, meanwhile, in
addition to significant collections of
Darwin and Milton manuscripts, apparently still houses a box of rats.
Found embedded in a section of
late medieval plaster behind 18th
century panelling in the Master’s
Lodge, librarians told the Cambridge
Library Bulletin that the mummified creatures would occasionally be
shown to ‘small children’ on request.
Manuscripts
More edifying treasures lurk in the
library and archives of the FitzwilliamMuseum, which preserves collections from some of Britain’s best-
known artists, writers, and scientists.
Along with original autographed
manuscript drafts of Woolf ’s A Room
of One’s Own, Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale, and Hardy’s Jude the Obscure are
the diaries of Edward Burne-Jones
and Sir Isaac Newton, as well as letters by Charlotte Bronte, Horatio
Nelson, and Queen Victoria.
Other significant Cambridgemanuscripts collections can be found
online.
The recently digitized Parker Library at Corpus Christi holds a
world-renowned collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, including the
earliest history book written in English, the oldest illustrated Latin gospel in existence, and an ninth century
English dictionary. Also online are
handwritten letters by Anne Boleyn
High Maintenance Life
A familiar yet bemusing part of King’s
Parade is the single flagstone inscribed simply with the words ‘High
Maintenance Life’ (at the Senate
House end). Cambridgeshire County
Council were mystified by the sudden appearance of the work, insisting
that ‘the words have no meaning as
far as the highway is concerned’.
Later it emerged the professional
sculptor Ekkehard Altenburger had
altered the pavestone himself, without comment from passers-by. ‘They
thought I was a council official’, he
explained, ‘and my slab has been
there ever since. I just wanted to
question how things progress, to take
a step back and look at the system as
a whole.’
Pascal’s death mask and other
library ‘treasures’
While the head of Oliver Cromwell
supposedly lurks somewhere in Sidney Sussex grounds, a rare plaster
cast of the face of Blaise Pascal (of triangle and religious philosophy fame)
is kept in a special display cabinet in
the library at Newnham, sandwiched
between books on German and Italian literature.
Pembroke College library is guard-
10% discount with your CUSU card
Hidden Treasures |17
The
CambridgeStudent
Did you leave
your books to
moulder over the
Christmas ho lidays?
Hattie Induni has
some tips for how
to catch up....
T
he new term is a time for
solemn, work-related
resolutions.
PostChristmas guilt may by
now be setting in, and I
myself - facing up to the realisation
that I’ve spent more time reading
Harry Potter than Renaissance
literature this holiday – took a vow
of studiousness: in the following
eight weeks my organisation would
improve, there would be no essay
crises and I could sail toward that
first degree. After a few days I
reviewed this, and decided to alter
the oath and just deal with the crises
as they came along. Somehow.
It’s never an easy task: a seemingly
endless list of distractions faces
any
well-intentioned
student
sitting down at the keyboard.
There is surely therefore no
worthier task than to consider all
those various techniques, habits
and even rituals any student
might put to good use during the
inevitable academic panics ahead.
There are ways to get through.
The first thing you should aim for,
impossible as it seems, is to actually
make your work an enjoyable
experience – filling it with things to
look forward to. These are of course
unlikely to arise from anything
study-related, so approach this
with smaller goals, and mark
progress with a reward for each task
completed or goal achieved. Let
your progress be littered with prizehobnobs and well-earned breaks.
Alternatively, you may see more
improvement with a more negative
experience instead. Depriving
yourself a little until success will
really prove you have the steely
self-discipline it takes to be a
true Cambridge scholar. Denying
coffee, lunch, toilet breaks, or
any other basic human right of
your choice until the paragraph
gets done can be highly effective.
Alongside this, many people put
background music on while they
study as a strategy in itself. This
can often be a great help – but any
track should be chosen with care,
otherwise it might just become
another annoying distraction. A fast
Spotify playlist raises adrenalin and
no doubt also a sense of excitement
about the work in hand (if you can
believe that). Note that the more
dreadful your choice of track, the
more comparatively beautiful your
work will become. Decrease the
18| Working Habits
Cartoon by Pierre Novelli
Features
Working
Habits
Your last-minute crisis guide
quality further as desperation rises –
you will want to get it done quicker.
I recall a feeling of pride when I
heard my next door neighbour
involuntarily humming the Lindsay
Lohan track I had treated him to
during regular all night sessions.
No term at Cambridge would be
complete without the obligatory allnighter. It’s a common experience,
but strategies vary. One of the
things I’ve discovered – it did come
as something of a shock – is the
of your own disorganisation – it
could be a chance to improve it,
making a carefully structured
approach on the tottering stack of
worksheets due at 9am at a college
on the other side of town. What
you include in this plan is up to
you but a probably useful thing
to include might be something
like ‘write essay’ somewhere on it.
It’s a good technique here to take
into account practical situations –
particularly your location. College
inadvisable. An incomprehensible,
random stream of keys continued
for 6 pages does not add to the
force of your argument, and may
raise suspicions of plagiarism from
other works on your reading list.
Thus, avoid warmth and pillows,
and head to somewhere more
cold and draughty. This could be
anything from opening a window,
to trying a trip into Siberia, but
that inviting 24 hour library
will probably do. The devout
Denying coffee, lunch, toilet breaks, or any
other basic human right of your choice until the
paragraph gets done can be highly effective
notion of constructing a battle-plan
to achieve a really organised session.
It seems that staying up in a panicinduced stint until dawn need not
be a constant, humiliating reminder
rooms can be warm and comfortable,
but this makes it increasingly hard
to resist the temptation of the pillow
your keyboard is increasingly
becoming. Falling asleep like this is
atmosphere of silent learning will
subtly inspire your work ethic
(this is unfortunately not always
successful; after an all-too easy hour
of Facebook conversation with the
friend beside you results in several
thousand words of meaningless
electronic communication, and
about two worthy academic points).
Fortunately, a new website has
come to the essay-writer’s aid.
Write or Die, which ‘puts the
prod into productivity’, is just
as ominous as it sounds. You
can download the program for
$10. It works by measuring your
seconds of typing inactivity and
produces various ‘encouragements’
to make you recommence. In the
third and most dangerous mode,
Kamikaze, this involves your screen
gradually colouring to an alarming,
devilish red – and then your work
begins to be deleted, one word
at a time. It sounds dangerously
effective. My DoS would love it.
A less suicidal innovation I’ve
come across is the ‘Pomodoro
Technique’, now with something
of a cult online status. It’s a more
controlled way of dictating how
long you spend on work – each
‘pomodoro’ of working time (so
called because the founder uses
a tomato-shaped kitchen timer)
lasts 25 minutes; when this is
finished a five minute break
follows, and you begin again.
I give it a day-long trial,
downloading the App onto my
iPod and picking up a book I ought
to have read for good measure.
Within minutes scepticism begins
to get the better of me, and I find
my cursor poised over Youtube, but
I remember my vow and manage to
get back to work, checking how much
longer I have to go with regularity.
25 minutes is distinctly more taxing
than stopping for a Haribo break
at the end of every paragraph, but
considering my usual working
pace, this can only be a good thing.
It gets easier to obey the timer as
the day goes on. My iPod produces
a healthy ticking noise, rather
like the metronome, and it feels
as though I now have my own
personal drill-sergeant on hand,
shouting at me to task every time
I get distracted. At the end of my
attempts I’m pleasantly surprised:
I’ve actually completed something
worth speaking of: a substantial
chunk of essay. I am forced to
recognise, slightly grudgingly, that
this is something I may use in future.
If all else fails and the prospect
seems wholly black, never forget
to put apathetic tendencies to
good use. Make it your strategy, for
example, to only read the blurbs.
‘Research’ and ‘borrowing’ are
really signs of respect and modesty;
it is simply admitting that others
are older and wiser, and much
can be learnt from their thinking
without doing any of your own.
Widening the margins, enlarging
the font, and hiding any low
word counts with long, irrelevant
bibliographies are techniques
even the best of us may need to
revert to. But above all, remember
to embrace as much as possible
of that that highly-motivating
Cambridge pressure, think of the
Fellowship waiting for you, and
it’ll be done in no time. Good luck.
The
CambridgeStudent
O
Baking your way to five-a-day...
Why have chocolate brownie when you can have courgette?
Ingredients
Preheat the oven to 180˚C.
120g low-fat margarine
125 ml sunflower oil
300g caster sugar
3 eggs
130 ml milk
350g self-raising flour
3 large courgettes, peeled and
grated
70g cocoa
70g dark chocolate, finely
chopped or grated
Mix the oil, margarine, and sugar. Add the eggs and milk, beat
well. Fold in the dry ingredients. Finally stir in the courgette and
chocolate.
Pour into a large rectangular tin and bake for 25 – 30 mins until
springy in the middle and starting to crack on the outside.
Be sure not to leave it in too long; it should still be gooey. Leave
it to cool and harden slightly in the tin before slicing. Enjoy with
a dollop of natural yoghurt.
All recipes by Isobel Pritchard
Who needs flapjack with a butternut squashjack?
Ingredients
Half a medium sized squash,
peeled, grated or finely chopped
100g butter
150g dark brown or demerara
sugar
2 tbsp honey
200g porridge oats
100g dried fruit of your choice
50g chopped nuts of your choice
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 180 ˚C.
Melt the butter on a low heat, add the squash and allow to cook for 10 minutes,
stirring regularly.
Add the sugar and honey and heat slowly until it has melted. It should turn the
squash a darker brown and start to smell really good. Add the oats, the dried
fruit, the nuts and the spices, stir and heat for 10 minutes.
Images: Isobel Pritchard
h dear, you’ve really let yourself go this Christmas haven’t
you? You see the judgement
in the eyes of your friends as you are
reunited for the first time in a month.
The seemingly banal question ‘have
you had a good Christmas?’ has a
darker, more menacing undertone.
What they’re really saying is ‘Bet you
indulged yourself. Bet you stuffed
down that turkey fast. Bet you demolished that entire family box of
Roses, and were even greedy enough
to eat the Strawberry Dreams,
weren’t you?And you gorged yourself on the last mince pie.’
We all do it; Christmas is a time
of legitimate indulgence, of excess
and extravagance. And who really
wants to go for a run in the cold
when Love Actually is on and the fire
is blazing? Then New Year hits. We
must face the reality of our slightly
larger-than-life selves. It is no longer
cool to resemble Father Christmas.
We must return to university, mount
our bicycles, write our essays, go to
supervisions; we must resume a life
of self constraint, denial and routine.
New Years resolutions are depressing aren’t they?
But they need not be so. We do not
have to forego all our earthly pleasures in the bleak month of January. Here I show you how to convert
that full-fat recipe into something
packed with nutrition, bursting with
goodness, and low in fat. Bake your
way to your five-a-day.
Food
Features
Press the mixture into a rectangular greased and lined tin, with a knife or spatula, until it is firmly packed.
Bake for 20 minutes. Cut the flapjack in the tin to the desired size but leave to
cool and harden before removing from the tin.
Fashion
Each and every time we return to Cambridge, we are surprised by a collection of new additions to the city. No, we’re not
referring to the rather uninspiring extension of the UL, but to the new brands that appear on the Cambridge shopping
circuit. So what’s on offer in terms of retail therapy this Lent Term?
Cath Kidston
31 Market Hill
01223 351810
Cath Kidston’s
ditzy prints have
long outgrown
their cult status,
and are now to
be spotted on
every second
woman from
Land’s End to
John O’Groats.
Those of you
wishing to lay
your hands
on all things
fabulously floral can now indulge
yourself every time you venture into
town, as Cath Kidston’s new store
is open on Market Square, looking
far more attractive than last term’s
ramshackle scaffolding. If you don’t
have time to stop by, you can still
make the most
of the January
reductions by
looking on
the website
of the same
name.
Bunch Flowers Tote
£45.00 £25.00
Cath Kidston
Hollister
Grand Arcade
01223 300050
Russell & Bromley
Grand Arcade
Luxury brand Russell &
Avalon Place
Riding the wave
Bromley will be opening its
£34.00
of Abercrombie
new store in the Grand Arcade
Hollister
& Fitch’s meteoric
this month - fantastic news for
success, subsidiary
fans, as the historic business
brand Hollister Co.
has yet to branch out into
has amassed quite
online retail. The store
a following over
will be situated bang in the
the past few years.
middle of the shopping
The majority of us
centre and, although the
associate Hollister’s
exact date of the grand
name with
opening has yet to be
emblazoned hoodies
confirmed, we can expect to
and tracksuit bottoms (which are
walk through the doors before the
indeed the ultimate in super-comfy
end of January.
hangover wear) but the brand’s
Of course, Russell & Bromley’s
arrival in the Grand Arcade affords
price range is not always studentthe opportunity to see some of their
friendly. However, I know of few
more individual offerings.
girls who can walk past a pair of
Guys who missed out on last
killer heels without stopping to
season’s chunky knitwear can still
stare and, indeed, I know a fair
buy into the trend,
few men who have succumbed
providing their
to the charms of that perfect
pockets are well-lined!
pair of brogues (no names
Girls wishing to
mentioned).
inject a bit
If you’ve Christmas
of colour can grab a
donations burning a hole
floral mini to
in your pocket, you may
brighten up the
be able to accommodate
long winter days.
the full prices - good
for you! Otherwise sit
tight for the sales, and
indulge in plenty of
window shopping in the
Pier View Beach (Navy)
meantime.
£74.00
Hollister
Your Swish Is Our Command!
Bored of your clothes? Made
some rash purchases in the
January sales? Fear not... your
swish is our command! Murray
Edwards College brings you the
global clothes-swapping craze
that is swishing: the unloved
clothes lurking at the back of your
wardrobe find a new home, and vice
versa.
The Rules of the Rail:
1) Bring at least one item of quality
clothing that you want to swap.
These may include shoes and
accessories.
2) You’ll have half an hour to
browse before the swish opens.
Make sure you leave yourself time to
scout out the most covetable items.
3) No item is to be claimed before
the swish opens at 7:30pm.
As my mother never fails to
remind me, ‘One man’s junk is
another man’s treasure.’ We’re sure
that this applies to the fairer sex
as well and, with potential fashion
victories to be won and unfortunate
purchases to be ethically disposed
of, Your Swish Is Our Command is
definitely worth a look.
Best of all, absolutely all proceeds
go to CAMPUS CHILDREN’S
HOLIDAYS. This charity, which
is run entirely by students of the
University of Cambridge, provides
aid to children referred by Liverpool
Social Services who receive a
much-needed break they would not
otherwise get.
See www.campusholidays.org.uk for
more details.
Where:
The Long Room
Murray Edwards College
When:
Saturday 5th February
7:30pm-11:00pm
Tickets:
£5.00 - available in advance. Email
[email protected],
or visit the Facebook event page to
message one of the admins.
Tickets are limited so get in touch
now to avoid missing out!
Price includes:
* Free glass of wine
* Free cupcake
* Licensed bar
* Live music from the Funk Nuggets
Alex Davies & Katya Kazakevich
Food & Fashion |19
The
CambridgeStudent
Opinion
“The world is full of fools, and he
who would not see it should live
alone and smash his mirror.”
- Nicolas Boileau
W
ell, really. I mean,
look at you. You
do it: I’d rather
not. No thank
you. I bet you’re
even wearing a hoodie. Yes? And
those jeans – the ones you’ve
trodden apart at the back but insist
on wearing? Ugh. Happy New Year,
I suppose. ‘Welcome’ back. When
are you leaving?
From the relentlessly pointless
to the stultifyingly dull, my what
a collection of boring people there
are out there. ‘Unsightly’ would
be a compliment. ‘Tragically misconstructed’ might be better. You
look around and, greeted by a tide
of unwashed earnest people dressed
in sacks, it is all you can do not to
scream. This is why God invented
gin, and shows that Hogarth so
tragically misunderstood the
Æsthetes of Gin Lane. But then
what does one expect from an overearnest Freemason? From a man
who found the moronic heartiness
of their beer-swilling louts
attractive. He’d have loved college
bars, full of desperately tasteless
stella-swigging idiots. Bah.
As you may have guessed (astute
person that you are), I tend to
dislike people; L’Enfer c’est les
autres and all that. Live with
it. Normally I wouldn’t bother
to explain why, because it’s so
distastefully obvious, but for once
I’ll condescend (I say for once: I
actually do it quite a lot). It’s quite
simply for reasons of efficiency. For
those (five) of you who have read
me before, and who have either
been nodding along sagely or
spitting feathers according to taste,
this will come as a shock, given the
gentleman’s third and so on, but
it is quite true. Disliking people, I
find, simply saves time. Time for
gin. For instance.
Because if you dislike people
by default, then it will come as
no shock to your sense of taste
when they inevitably turn out to
be the sort of distilled, purified
dullard who enjoys drinking Jack
Daniels and Coca Cola, listening
to miscellaneous pop bands, and
wearing anoraks. They always
do. By disliking them, you neatly
sidestep the trouble of dropping
them. Which is such a bore.
Be honest. Not advice I normally
give, but it’s the New Year and
hopefully nobody will notice.
There are people you’d rather
never see again. For whom a tragic
vegetable-based demise would be
too good. The sort of people you
walk around the block to avoid
after parties. Whom you spend
dinners fervently ignoring. Go on,
let it out. It might be good for you,
and it’s a lot of fun for the rest of
us. One of the greatest pleasures
of disliking people (or even just
pretending to) is that you get to
be snide and vicious behind their
backs.
Even Byron, that inveterate bore,
understood that “hatred is by far
the longest pleasure; Men love in
haste, but they detest at leisure”;
and it will be found that people
are far more inclined to listen to a
man complaining about someone
than praising him. Praise is a slight
to those not praised, whilst spite
is a game for the whole family. I
cherish the hope that it stops one
murdering the tedious in their
beds. The tedious probably do too.
It doesn’t make you an awful
person, a misanthropist, or a
psychopath. That’s my job. It
just means you have a lively
appreciation of people, a healthy
scepticism and, really (probably,
maybe) a life. Which conflicts with
the person who rambles on about
their dull and frightfully earnest
opinions over dinner. Pretending
otherwise is just lying with a smile
on your face. We prefer to lie
honestly, thank you very much.
Of course, there is what some
relentlessly chipper people would
call an ‘up-side’ to being quite
so revoltingly misanthropic. Or
would, if I spoke to relentlessly
chipper people. When you do find
someone who sails serenely above
the general tide, your discovery
of their wonderfulness, their
suitability, will come as a pleasant
and shiny and new experience, and
you will be gratified to have been
proved wrong, rather than forlorn
and sad and with your inexplicable
and frankly silly faith in human
nature lying shattered at your feet.
Which is nice.
The brilliance of this little
scheme is that the incidence of
pleasant surprise is actually quite
high. One feels rather jolly about
it all eventually, especially when
these surprisingly nice people
bring along other surprisingly nice
people for you to hate and then
adore. And the odd thing is that
there are very few people in my
experience who are not inclined to
laugh at being told that you used to
hate them. Rather good for the old
self-image, I suppose.
Racine had his Hermione say in
Andromaque “je l’ai trop aimé pour
ne le point haïr.” Which is silly. Why
hate those you love when there is
an almost infinite supply of readymade objects for your contempt
just outside? See: I do like people
after all.
Matthew
Topham
Just not you.
Listings
Thursday 20 Jan
Friday 21 Jan
Academic
Professor Lord Robert
May, ‘Beauty & Truth’.
Professor Lord May
holds a Professorship
jointly at Oxford
University and Imperial
College. He was formerly
President of The Royal
Culture
Society and Chief
This House Believes
Scientific Adviser to the
the BBC is Failing the
UK Government and
Country.
The first Union debate of Head of the UK Office of
the term features visiting Science and Technology.
His talk is part of the
speakers Roger Alton
(executive editor of The Darwin College Lecture
Times), Peter Bazalgette Series. Lady Mitchell
Hall, Sidgwick Site.
(former Chairman of
Endemol UK) and BBC
Music
presenter Jon Sopel in
Spectacular Ceilidh.
what is bound to be a
highlight of the Union’s A lively evening of
dance and song. Tickets
termcard.
£10 including supper.
Under 16s free with
accompanying adult. Bar
available. All profits to
the Whitworth House
Extension Appeal.The
Guildhall, Cambridge.
1930.
Nightlife
Basement Tracks: Launch
Party. Showcasing some
of the best underground
Cambridge DJ talent. £3.
Hidden Rooms, 7a Jesus
Lane. 2000.
20|
Saturday 22 Jan
Sunday 23 Jan
Monday 24 Jan
Tuesday 25 Jan
Music
Gerontius. Elgar’s classic
performed by the top
University ensembles,
choirs and soloists.
Conducted by the
acclaimed Sir Richard
Armstrong. King’s
College Chapel. 2000.
Culture
Chinese New Year Gala
2011. Presented by
Cambridge University
Chinese Students and
Scholars’ Association.
£6/£15/£17. The Corn
Exchange, 3 Parson’s
Court. 1430 & 1930.
Music
Academy of Ancient
Music, ‘The Bach
Dynasty: JS Bach’s sons’.
Steven Isserlis (‘cello)
and Richard Egarr
(director & harpsichord)
play music by Johann
Christian Bach, Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach,
Johann Christoph
Friedrich Bach, and
Wilhelm Friedemann
Bach. Tickets
£27/£20/£14. West Road
Concert Hall. 1930.
Theatre
The Study of Young
Men. Laugh-out-loud
funny and wrenchingly
tragic, The Study of
Young Men is a new
play by Adam McNally.
£6/£5. Corpus Christi
College Playroom. 2130.
Until 29 Jan.
Nightlife
Rendezvous. Organised
by CUSU LGBT. Now at
the newly refurbished
Cow, Rendezvous
will continue to lead
the LGBT scene as
Cambridge’s weekly
night. Beers for £1.50
and cocktails for £3.
£3. The Cow, Corn
Exchange Street. 2100.
Music
Truly Medley Deeply.
After sell-out
performances at the
Edinburgh Fringe,
Cambridge’s finest
bongo/mandolin/guitar/
synthesiser pop medley
trio performs live in
concert. All profits to
Parkinson’s UK. £6/£5.
ADC Theatre, Park
Street. 2300. Also at
1630 on 29 Jan.
Music
Occupoets Strike Back!
Performances from the
poets and musicians
who read and played
at the old schools
occupation to raise
funds for the defend
The Cult. The 1980s
education campaign
post-punk band comes
and to kick off a new
to Cambridge. With
fortnightly poetry/music
support from Masters of open mic night. The
Reality and Romance.
Cafe Project, 22 Jesus
£28. The Corn Exchange, lane. 1930.
3 Parson’s Court. 1930.
I Am Kloot. The
Mercury Music Prize
nominees return to
Cambridge. £15. The
Junction, Clifton Way.
1900.
Wednesday 26 Jan
Academic
George Steiner, ‘Is
Death Changing?’ A
rare opportunity to go
to a lecture by one of
the world’s finest minds.
Hosted by Clare Politics.
Riley Auditorium, Clare
Memorial Court. 2030.
Sir Richard Dearlove,
‘The Impact of
Terrorism on National
Security’. Sir Richard
is former Head of MI6.
Hosted by Peterhouse
Politics. Peterhouse
Parlour. 2045.
The
CambridgeStudent
Opinion
the
Sex@Oxbridge
GRENE
ROOM
Jenny Grene has been given access to new
material written by a famous children’s
author. The hero of the story is returning
to finish his studies.
Chapter One: The New Ministers
Harry Potter packed his trunk for
school slowly, deciding to read some
old newspaper articles before he threw
them away. Luckily for narrative purposes, these all involved the exposition
of events that had occurred in between
the last book and this one. He looked at
a moving wizard picture of two similar
looking men, smiling with their arms
around each other. The headline read,
“New Wizarding Coalition Government Formed”. Harry sat down on his
bed with a sigh, and read the caption
beneath the picture.
“Seen here: Nickity Clegg and David
Cameronius, two pure-blood wizards
who have formed a new coalition Ministry of Magic. Put together they
represent the most number of
wizard votes, more than any
other single wizard party.”
As Harry looked at the paper there was a knock on
his door. Hurriedly, he
threw all of his things into
his trunk and ran downstairs. Hermione was there
waiting for him. As they
loaded his trunk into the
wizard taxi she had arrived
in, Harry looked around.
“Where’s Ron?” he asked.
“Is he meeting us at the wizard
station?”
“Haven’t you heard?” said
Hermione in surprise. “Ron isn’t
coming back to Hogwarts. His family can’t afford the new tuition fees.
They decided that Ginny should
go back to Hogwarts because Ron
is frankly average and she shows
more promise.”
“Blimey,” said Harry. “I never
even thought that Ron wouldn’t come
Named one of the “40 bloggers who really count”
by the Sunday Times Magazine...
back to Hogwarts. Makes sense I suppose. And they lost all their savings in
the crash at Gringotts Wizarding Bank,
didn’t they?”
“Yes they did,” said Hermione seriously. “Although I can’t help thinking
that the crash was partly our fault, after
we destroyed the bank with a dragon
and exposed it to wizard fraud.”
“Honestly Hermione,” said Harry
angrily. “You’re as bad as those people
who say Hogwarts should pay for the
wizard recession because teachers, students and governors were responsible
for most of the damage.”
They spent the rest of the journey in
the silence of two people with differing
political outlooks. Finally they arrived
at Kings Cross Station and walked
through a wall without anyone noticing. Standing around on the platform
were all their school friends.
“Hello Harry, Hermione,” said Luna
Lovegood. “Have you heard? Mr Clegg
and Mr Cameronius have privatised the
Hogwarts Express because they say the
wizarding deficit needs to be slashed.
Anyway, it’s forty-seven minutes late
and they’re charging us for it now. Apparently it’s not cost-effective to run a
wizard train for free.”
“I don’t understand”, said Neville
Longbottom stupidly. “We’re wizards
after all. Why didn’t they just magic
more money into the air instead of taxing us all?”
“They tried that, Neville”, said Hermione, looking up over the top of one of
her many academic books that she read
for pleasure. “It’s called wanditative easing, because it’s done with wands.
“I don’t know what this year will
bring,” said Harry. “But I know one
thing we’ve got that no wizard taxes can
take away from us. We’ve got friends.”
“Oh shut up Harry,” said Hermione,
slamming her book shut as the train
drew slowly up to the platform. “We’re
all sick of that nauseating rubbish. Either stop going on about friendships or
sit on your own.”
n o w i n g
whether or not
someone wants
to sleep with
you. Sometimes
ambiguous,
o f t e n
circumstantial.
I just assume
everybody wants to sleep with
me as it’s so much easier. Of
course not everybody actually
wants to sleep with me, I mean
I haven’t found one of these
people yet, but I’m sure they
exist. Anyhow, Happy New
Year readers.
k
I’m often asked for advice
on anything from sex and
relationship problems and
I’ve agreed to give advice on
the former in my column this
term. Am I the most qualified
and socially apt person to do
this? Probably not, but I say
everything with conviction
so at least I sound like I know
what I’m talking about.
Dear Sex@Oxbridge,
My college has rather thin
walls, and I have several
times been serenaded by the
noise of my neighbours going
at it. This has made me a bit
paranoid. How can I get them
to keep the noise down a bit,
and stop my girlfriend and I
from being overheard too?
My latest blog post is
about the horrifying reality of
someone you know hearing
you have sex. Loudly. The walls
are thin, the beds in college are
creaky, I get it. It’s all terribly
inconvenient for letting loose.
The creaking bed is the easiest
to remedy. My ex and I use to
put all the bedding on the floor
and do it there.
It isn’t the most comfortable
option, and if you’re not careful
you can get rug burns so make
sure to turn that duvet into a
makeshift mattress. Noises
that emit from you and your
partner in the throws of passion
are sometimes inevitable, but
there’s no need to indulge in
Sharapova-like decibel levels.
Turn some music on, as that
should mask most sounds.
In terms of approaching a
noisy neighbour, the only thing
that sounds more mortifying
than someone telling you they
heard you have sex is having
to tell someone else you heard
them having sex.
I doubt this friend of yours
is oblivious to the thinness
of the walls, and he probably
wants everyone to hear what a
stud he thinks he is. In passing,
perhaps just say, ‘Listen,
minute man – keep it down at
night, yeah?’
Dear Sex@Oxbridge,
Life as an Oxbridge student
is a bit different from the
regular student lifestyle. We
live in ancient buildings,
work with ancient, worldclass academics, and get to
indulge in May balls and
black tie dinners. I’d really
like to make the most of all
the unique opportunities that
Cambridge offers, so I was
wondering if you could tell me
what the ultimate Cambridge
sex experience would be?
In a punt. Just kidding. That
would be tricky, though I’m
now intrigued by the idea,
actually. Obviously that’s an
unrealistic goal for January
with it being so cold and all,
but the rivers of Oxbridge are
probably less crowded at the
moment so I suppose now
would be a good time to find
an inlet on the river and have
a go. At least most punts have
those soft pads. This has gone
way too far. Forget the punt –
*I’ll* try the punt and get back
to you.
The ultimate Cambridge
sex experience is one that will
have significance for you. You
wouldn’t ask what the ultimate
sex fantasy is, because that’s
particular to an individual, so
I can only urge you to think
about which dark corner of the
ancient buildings tickles your
fancy. Having sex in public
is exciting. Having sex in an
alleyway is disgusting – don’t
do that. I would say that’s the
opposite of the ultimate sex
experience.
The one place that always
makes me want to have sex
is the library. Maybe because
I’m always stressed and bored
in there, but it’s one of few
sanctuaries in life that doesn’t
have a CCTV camera around
every corner, and something
about the smell of ancient
pages and the tension in the
air really gets me going.
For now, I’ve thought of a
fourth resolution – go to the
library more. If this stack’s
rockin, don’t come knockin.*
Problems? Curiosity?
Send them to
a g o ny a u n t @ t c s . c a m .
ac.uk and I’ll get back
to you at my earliest
convenience.
|21
The
Music
Beth Ditto and Simian
Mobile Disco release digital
EP
What we think: Yeah they do, and
from the 30 second previews we’ve
heard, it’s AMAZING.
Katy B announces album
release date (14/3/11)
and probable title (‘On a
Mission’)
What we think: Wikipedia says
that Einstein was born on March
14th so it’s a good date by us.
WIRE
RED BARKED TREE
CambridgeStudent
New Britney single ‘Hold it
against me’ released online
Bellamy Brothers accuse
Britney of ‘unoriginality’ and
lifting lyrics
Perez Hilton says Bellamy
Brothers in turn stole said
lyric from Groucho Marx
What we think: It’s got dubstep in
it?!
What we think: Well, yeah.
What we think: Is this even news?
(Pink Flag, 2011)
(Rough Trade, 2011)
★★☆
★★
Download:
Smash
Download:
Mongk II
Download:
Breaking Point
I’m gonna say this right now. I don’t know much about BSP. I
know that peopleI know who I know like music that I know that
I like like them. So I should like them. Do I? Well, who knows?
They’re clearly a band who know how to play their
instruments. They’re very competent and their lyrics are all
educated and meaningful but that seems to have created the
biggest problem with this album; honestly, it’s all a little too
polite. Maybe I’ve missed the point here because plenty of music
does work with this kind of self-restraint. BSP’s lush sound,
however, instead of working on anticipation, is held back by
its own eloquence and subtlety. There are no risks here and
as a result, the suppression of the music is ultimately goalless.
That said, there are areas where this self-restraint really does
work. ‘Mongk II’ is a driving tumble of a song, with wailing
guitars and distortion and brilliantly simple drumming
underlining the whole thing. ‘Stunde Null’ is a brainless
rock song – un-fucked-about-with-music, un-pennedby-a-wannabe-academic-who-missed-his-vocation.
This can’t be the BSP that I’ve heard so much about, can it?
This can’t be the BSP that I was sure I would love and cherish
and want to marry? For the uninitiated, listening to this album
is like being invited to a cocktail party where guests exchange
witticisms about summering in American prepdom. It’s nice
to feel part of the club and everything, but in your heart
of hearts, you’d rather be drinking White Lightning and
Lambrini in a trolley outside Tesco. Rosie Howard-Williams
wenty eleven is the year that
the Brits hope to make themselves credible again, and
under the direction of new
chairman David Joseph, they might
just stand a chance. For the first time,
last year’s nominees joined the voting panel, leading to more nominations for the kind of artists that the
Brits usually award. Perhaps the best
evidence of this is the fact that indie
rockers The xx managed to secure
an impressive three nominations, included the highly coveted British Album of the Year. That isn’t to say that
the Brits have abandoned the mainstream – far from it. The xx were
trumped by Tinie Tempah, whose
four nominations ensure that it isn’t
going to get any easier to avoid hearing ‘Pass Out’ this year. Mark Ronson
secured a disappointing single nomi-
Keri Hilson is a woman utterly enamoured with herself,
and we’re clearly expected to feel the same way. In current
single ‘Pretty Girl Rock’, she sings, seemingly sincerely,
“don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful.” Clearly, she’s too
attractive for her own good. Though at least we can rest
assured that she’ll have no such problems with modesty.
For her second album, Hilson is supported by the usual
army of producers and guest vocalists. By my count, there
are 13 producers across 11 songs, which goes some way to
explaining why No Boys Allowed sounds less like an album,
and more like a load of random songs thrown together in
the hope that they’d somehow form a coherent whole. As
you might have guessed, it doesn’t really work. This sort of
approach can succeed – Robyn’s Body Talk series being a
recent example of it done well – but it’s difficult to pull off.
Hilson isn’t helped by the fact that not only do the
songs not mesh well, but most of them just aren’t really
very good. The aforementioned ‘Pretty Girl Rock’ is
overproduced saccharine pop at its worst, while the
upbeat ‘Lose Control/Let Me Down’ shows promise until
a misjudged Nelly rap is followed by a dull and lengthy
outro. The album is at its best during the slower numbers,
particularly those produced by Timbaland, but even these
can’t save the album from mediocrity. Skip this, and go
buy Rihanna’s latest album instead. Dominic Preston
Brit Young Things
Photo: Spencer Hickman
22| Music
(Mosley Music, 2011)
★★☆
I think it was Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols that displayed
such sentiments many years before him, but lead singer Colin
Newman once said of Wire that their aim was “to destroy
rock & roll, by removing the roll from it”. Now, over thirty
years on from their landmark first three records, where once
they eschewed their mainstream contemporaries, Wire stand
hand in hand with them. Most of these tracks don’t fall too far
from FM radio fodder, though in itself that’s not necessarily
a bad thing. Where this album does fail is in producing
anything more than merely average. It was probably asking
too much to expect a classic record from Wire at this point
(for that see 1977’s Pink Flag or 1978’s Chairs Missing), but it
would have been nice to get something that wasn’t quite so
forgettable, or even something without such bloody awful
lyrics (sample: “A dirty cartoon duck covers the village in
shit, possibly signalling the end of western civilisation”).
Of the eleven tracks on Wire’s twelfth studio album,
‘Two Minutes’ comes closest to emulating their formative
sound, but it is on the chiming sheen of the title track and
the spiralling, punky ‘A Flat Tent’ and ‘Smash’ that Wire
sound their closest to interesting. This is surprising, as
their best work of late came on the far more abrasive Read
and Burn series of EPs from a few years ago. Perhaps Wire
are finding that there comes a point when angry young
men can’t be angry or young any more. George Bate
T
KERI HILSON
NO BOYS ALLOWED
BRITISH SEA POWER
VALHALLA DANCEHALL
nation, for British Male Solo Artist,
but he stands a decent chance of securing the prize, especially since his
competition is weak enough to include Robert Plant, of all people. The
female equivalent nominees aren’t
as you might expect: Eminem, Kings
of Leon, Arcade Fire, etc. Pleasingly, though, both Robyn and Cee
Lo Green stand to win prizes, even
if their odds are slim. Though I’ll
say it now: if Katy Perry beats Kylie,
der to make that the last of the night.
The xx are probably the critical darling of the group, which is otherwise
made up by Mumford and Sons, Plan
B, Take That, and Tinie Tempah. Obviously, we’re all in agreement that it
would be a fucking tragedy if Mumford and
Sons won it, and the
critics all want The xx to
succeed, but can anyone
really imagine Take That
not winning? The album
sold approximately 1.3 gazillion copies in a month and a half, and is probably the only one on the list to be both
a commercial success and a favourite
of most critics. I’ll even go so far as
to abandon any credibility I have as
a heterosexual male and admit that
I actually quite like the album, and
will personally be rooting for Robbie
I’ll say it now: if Katy Perry beats
Robyn to win International Female,
I’m swearing off the Brits for good.
much better, including Cheryl Cole’s
inexplicable nomination. She crops
up again in the stunningly dire list
of British single nominees. Scouting
For Girls? Really? The Wanted? Alexandra Burke? I like to think we’ve
had some better songs than that lot
this year. The nominees for the assorted international categories are
Robyn, & Rihanna to win the International Female prize, I’m swearing
off the Brits for good. I think even
Katy Perry herself knows she doesn’t
deserve that one. Inevitably, the category everyone really cares about is
the British album of the year, to the
point that they’ve even scrapped the
Lifetime Achievement Award in or-
et al, much to the chagrin of my xx
loving girlfriend. If you’re still here,
and haven’t stopped reading in disgust, there is of course one category
that we already know the winner of.
Jessie J has been awarded the Critics’
Choice award, which has previously
gone to Ellie Goulding, Florence and
the Machine, and Adele; proving that
the way to the critics’ heart is to be a
female solo artist with a slightly odd
vocal style. I’m not much of a fan of
Jessie J, to be honest – her first single,
‘Do It Like A Dude’ just seems pretty
abrasive to me. But then, she’s probably going to make filthy quantities of
money over the next 12 months, so
what do I know? The awards themselves will be taking place live on February 15th, and are being hosted by
James Corden, for which I can only
apologise. Dominic Preston
The
CambridgeStudent
CD? Isn’t that some kind of disease?
Music
As HMV announce that they plan to close forty of their stores around Britain, Barnaby Howes
takes a terrifying glimpse into the apocalyptic future of the record store...
Indeed in 2010, shortly before the
Kate Middleton Satanism scandal
brought down the Royal Family, sales
of albums digitally still only made up
18% of total album sales.
People it would seem still occasionally felt the need to breakaway
from their laptops to head into the
town centre and buy the latest release
from their favourite Nu-post-punkfolk band.
However whilst the demise had
been long coming, it was the news
at the end of 2010 that HMV (once
Britain’s largest chain of record shops)
Record shops it would seem,
once a mainstay of every High
Street, have been replaced by
Hybro cafes and Road-ski stores.
‘It has been announced via Twitterbook that Fopp 7.0, Britain’s last
remaining record shop, is to close
within weeks.
Only a decade ago the majority of
albums were bought in record shops.
would be closing forty of its stores
which meant that shops selling music on CDs and vinyl were doomed to
the history books.
Fopp 7.0 of Cambridge, Greater
London has miraculously survived
where other chains have fallen by
the wayside, or in the case of Rough
Trade, switched to becoming a procession of upmarket bistros with their
patented Morrissey Mocha.
Fopp 7.0’s longevity is down partially to several bewildering rebrands,
including its short lived ‘Zero Gravity’ 4.0 incarnation, which infamously
resulted in fourteen deaths.
A greater reason however lies in a
curious by-law of the University of
Cambridge.
This states the land Fopp 7.0 is situated upon is ‘To be used for the musical enjoyment of scholars, unless
decreed otherwise by the Council
Chamberlain of the City,’ a position
destroyed in 1623.
Now however following successful
legal action from creditors Fopp 7.0
is set to close its doors.
With the last ever CD album release having been David Guetta’s disastrous ‘Music so supreme it’ll make
you dream...4Real’ (which rightly
earned him a two year prison sentence) in 2018, Fopp has soldiered on
against the odds.
Mostly this has been by selling
Photo: Rob Brewer
O
h, hello casual reader.
Welcome to 2021. The
headline of The Murdoch Daily (‘News
so good we have no
rivals left!’) pronounces one million
are to die in the upcoming Vulpine
Flu pandemic.
In showbiz, Kerry Katona’s comeback album ‘4Real-Like, Really Real?!’
has entered the charts at #71, agreed
by all to be an unexpected success.
Then, buried away on page 38, is a
small article highlighting the plight
of Fopp 7.0...
second-hand CDs to nervous students trying to look retro by avoiding
downloading albums like 99.99% of
the country.
‘Fopp 7.0’s closure is tragic’ said
one particularly hopeless looking
student. ‘I mean, clearly the government should step in.’
Fopp 7.0 has had its application for
protected status turned down. “No
castle no charity” said an English
Heritage spokesman.
Record shops it would seem, once
a mainstay of every High Street, have
been replaced by Hybro cafes and
Road-ski stores.
For more information you can preorder Dame Jo Whiley’s new book
‘Record stores were always a bit tawdry’ at The Murdoch Daily website.
The
CambridgeStudent
Film
Biopic tendencies
Trailer Watch
James Gray assesses a ubiquitous Hollywood trend
French town, village and hamlet.
Perhaps, however, the answer lies
in something more sinister. Both of
these films focus on specific taboo
themes - namely Gainsbourg’’s
notorious
womanizing
and
Piaf ’’s drinking, gambling and
drug addictions - that strive to
satisfy our voyeuristic curiosities.
If this is the case, and the
biopic is used as a way of
grounding
the
otherwise
unbelievable in reality, then the
thorny issue of veracity versus
commercial appeal strikes hard.
The biopic can be a
way of grounding
the otherwise
unbelievable in
reality
Moving closer to home, the 2003
biographical drama Sylvia follows
the blossoming romance between
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes,
beginning with their meeting at
Cambridge in 1956 and ending
with Sylvia’s suicide in 1963.
It sounds simple enough, but the
film provoked anger with claims
from the couple’s daughter that
producers were profiting from her
mother’s tragic death and casting
not-so-subtle doubts over Ted’s
role as husband and father. It
does not take long to realise that
the appeal of the biopic genre lies
not in banal truths, but rather in
a potted biography that has been
carefully spliced together with a
purpose and thematic bias that
guarantee commercial success.
With virtually every biopic
playing with the truth at some
point, much like literary fiction
and film, these films allow us to
explore the uncharted territories
of imagination whilst offering a
more or less tenuous link with
reality that makes this genre ever
so slightly more spine-tingling.
Any history lesson offered by The
King’s Speech should be taken with
a pinch of salt since, in the end, it is
essentially, as the New York Post called
it, “an immense crowd-pleaser”.
Paul is, for many, a comedic dream,
putting Simon Pegg and Nick Frost
together with a CGI alien voiced by
Seth Rogen, and pitting them all
against Jason Bateman. Cue dick
jokes, an alien dressed as a cowboy,
and a Predator impersonation.
YouTube: ‘Paul Official Trailer’
Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose
Photo: Icon Home Entertainment
H
aving already been
tipped for Oscar glory,
The King’s Speech marks
the continuation of a
recent trend of biopic
success at box offices worldwide.
The list of cinematic biographies
from the last few years is long.
There have been interpretations
of musical legend Ray Charles,
French singers Edith Piaf and
Serge Gainsbourg, former US
president Nixon, and adding to
this growing myriad, rumours
that Meryl Streep will incarnate
the ever-divisive Margret Thatcher.
Whether portraying the lives
of ancient heroes or the gods of
popular culture, the popularity of
this genre is undeniable. But why?
What is it that puts biographical
narratives ahead in the Oscars race?
The recent French productions
Gainsbourg and La Vie En Rose
might be seen as cementing
national identity and reinvigorating
a wobbly national pride. After all,
this is a tradition that inflicts a
‘Rue Victor Hugo’ on almost every
Battle: Los Angeles sees Aaron
Eckhart vs. aliens, in what’s being
billed as a sci-fi Black Hawk Down.
The trailer shows some clear
similarities to the excellent District
9, so let’s hope the film is more
like that than 2010’s disappointing
alien invasion flick, Skyline.
YouTube: ‘Battle Los Angeles Trailer 3’
Momentum
12A
118 mins
The King’s Speech is the perfect example
of what we might call ‘the Vampire
Weekend effect’: when something
perfectly decent and serviceable is hyped
★★★
up to a degree disproportionate to its
quality. It would make a brilliant Christmas-period drama on
BBC1, but its position as a ‘Best Picture’ contender, especially
against the terrific The Social Network, is simply perplexing.
The word that comes to mind in describing this film is
‘solid’. The main performances are laudable: Colin Firth
endows the emotionally constipated Duke of York with
dignity and sympathy, Geoffrey Rush the flamboyant
therapist Lionel Logue with a robust irreverence. The film
is well served by a stellar supporting cast, David Seidler’s
lively dialogue and the masterful direction of Tom Hooper,
who deftly builds tension before the public speaking scenes
with tracking shots and close-ups of the microphone.
Additionally, the production values are superb, with even
the most regal settings tinged by scruffy 1930s brownness.
However, the film has some serious problems with
pacing, with the central speech-therapy narrative arc
disappearing almost entirely from view in the middle of
the film and the sense of urgency at the end seeming forced
and sudden. Its worst flaw, however, can be summed up in
one word: Churchill. Timothy Spall’s toxic portrayal of a
toxic man not only jars with one’s historical sensibilities,
but single-handedly turns the film into a cartoon at the
very moments when dramatic tension is most needed.
As Margaret Atwood said, ‘context is all’, and the
bizarre elevation of The King’s Speech to something
above a very efficient historical crowd-pleaser affects
one’s disposition towards the film. It is well-done,
purposeful entertainment. However, aptly for a film about
aristocracy, it has ideas above its station. Daniel Janes
24| Film
Fox Searchlight
15
94 mins
Seeing 127 Hours might just be
the most difficult film watching
experience I’ve had since Requiem
for a Dream. On the other hand, it
★★★★★
was also undoubtedly one of the best.
As the latest release from director Danny Boyle
(Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire), the film has
unsurprisingly been on the receiving end of a lot of the recent
awards buzz, and fortunately it really does live up to the hype.
Based on the book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, it
follows the true story of Aron Ralston, a mountain climber
whose arm was trapped by a boulder while hiking on his own.
Unable to free himself, he survived for the
titular 127 hours before eventually amputating
said arm and hiking back down the mountain.
It’s pretty grim stuff then, but Boyle manages to
insert some levity into the proceedings, mainly thanks
to James Franco’s stellar performance as Ralston.
Given the film’s complete focus on a single character, Franco’s
performance was always going to make or break the film and the
actor shows a depth of emotion that I honestly didn’t know he
had. He manages to sell both the cocky, charming Ralston of the
beginning of the film, and the increasingly desperate man that
he becomes, perfectly charting his diminishing grip on reality.
Credit must also go to A.R. Rahman, whose use of both
his own score and contemporary music is absolutely
flawless, particularly the incorporation of Bill Withers’
‘Lovely Day’ for a day that is anything but lovely.
No review of 127 Hours would be complete without some
mention of the amputation scene. Yes, it’s difficult to watch.
Yes, it’s pretty damn unpleasant. However, it’s both tasteful and
realistic, and is never played for the sake of gore or controversy.
Don’t let squeamishness put you off seeing a film that I’m sure will
be looked back on as one of the year’s finest. Dominic Preston
Photo: Courtesy of BFI
127 HOURS
Photo: Chuck Zlotnik
THE KING’S SPEECH
Photo: Courtesy of BFI
Reviews
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
Paramount
Some things - Harold Macmillan,
PG
say, or doilies - were quite popular
115 mins
in 1961, but now, thankfully, belong
squarely in the past. Blake Edwards’
★★
supposedly
‘classic’
adaptation
(some would say bowdlerisation) of the Truman Capote
novella, re-released this week, is one such cultural fad.
It is difficult to decide what grates most as Audrey Hepburn
and George Peppard smoke and litter their way through
Manhattan’s classy East Side. The latter’s performance as the
leading man is wooden, though occasionally rises above his
character’s incoherency as a struggling writer who, actually,
doesn’t seem to struggle much. Most memorably, Audrey
Hepburn kookily portrays Holly Golightly, a vacuous
and morally dubious call girl-cum-socialite, to whose
misadventures she tries her best to add charm, but fails to
overcome her character’s inherent dislikability. True, thousands
of female viewers have for decades begged to differ on this
point. This says more about their character than the film.
Certainly, she looks as stylish as ever in her Givenchy dresses,
and Peppard is similarly good-looking, as are the implausibly
clean streets of New York, but whatever Hollywood execs may
have thought back then, style is no substitute for substance.
Viewers may warm nostalgically to Henry Mancini’s
iconic, if dated, score (including the Oscar-winning first-ever
rendition of ‘Moon River’), but one cannot expect the same
of Mickey Rooney’s all-but-chalked-up, absurdly-accented
and buck-toothed ‘comedy Jap’, a painfully racist stereotype
that recalls the kind of Hollywood orientalism one would
rather not revisit (“Me so sorry! Me love you long time!”).
A classic, we are told, stands the test of time. Breakfast
at Tiffany’s effortlessly flunks it. Never has there been a
film more undeserving of its place in cinematic history,
but it does deserve to be consigned to it. Tanjil Rashid
The
CambridgeStudent
TV HOPES
Has the panel show had its day? Does Masterchef
need more techno? TCS asks its readers what
they’re looking forward to on the box in 2011...
Television
‘I can’t wait to see if they commission Upstairs Downstairs for a whole series’
I can’t wait to see if they commission Upstairs royal abdication - featured recently in Any
Downstairs for a whole series, as the pilot showed Human Heart and The King’s Speech, and also
great promise. Far from being a lacklustre the subject of Madonna’s upcoming directorial
remake or modern version of the original, the effort W.E. - the programme was given a new
scriptwriters chose to continue the series time-frame, new directions and a new cast,
where it finished all those years ago. By while simultaneously balancing poignantly the
choosing the volatile era of the late 1930s, old era and the old way of life at Eaton Place.
the programme not only focused on the lives As the country also seems captivated by ITV’s
of those in the house, but also on the world Downton Abbey, it will no doubt be interesting
situation (complemented of course by the head (if you’re as sad as me) to see a bit of harmless
of the house, Sir Hallam Holland, a diplomat inter-channel costume drama rivalry, especially
in the Foreign Office). Coinciding nicely with from two such auspicious dramas as these.
Hattie Peachey
what seems to be a revived interest in the 1936
‘If Young Fishmonger of the Year fails to win a BAFTA, BBC3 will have been robbed’
‘Seeking out the winners from the also-rans’, year will be better versed in fish lore. There is
BBC Three’s Young Fishmonger of the Year was nothing worse than forgetting oyster fishing
2010 televisual masterpiece. Let’s hope that the seasons or getting in a pickle over sea bass rules,
BBC uses our licence fee wisely and secures and that’s without mentioning the cardinal sin:
another hour of gripping, nail-biting drama for confusing red mullet and mackerel. What are
2011. Battling to out-gut, -slice, -arrange and Britain’s fishmongers coming to? I pray for
-identify their opponents, four titans of fishy the sake of fish and chip lovers everywhere
fisticuffs proved beyond doubt that they were that they buck up their ideas, avoid the red
‘unsung heroes of the sea-world’. Yet not all of herrings and brush up on the finer points of
it went so swimmingly. For ‘fish identification’ ...er... fishmonging! And if they miss a BAFTA
- easily my favourite round - poor knowledge for last year’s effort, they’ve been robbed.
cost candidates dearly. I pray that young
Philip Brook
’mongers angling for the prestigious title this
‘Masterchef needs overwrought shouting and plenty of techno’
As an almost obsessive follower of Masterchef, and the chefs - it’s for their own good. Those
I’m hoping for a return to form this year. chefs should be kept sweating in line for the
Recent series sapped the show of its real joy: decision. Or, at the very least, the film needs
not enough pounding techno and suspense; too to be edited so that it looks that way. Gregg
much mush about how far everyone had come. Wallace’s ecstatic gurning every time he sights
When did the judges become so concerned pudding will always make the show worth a
with welfare? Every time Lisa broke down they watch but please stop the self-congratulatory
calmed her down. And then they gave her the backslapping everytime someone makes an
prize. What? The presenters should be stalking omelette. Masterchef needs overwrought
about the kitchen, waiting for that perfectly shouting and plenty of techno. Bring that back
inconvenient moment to ask just what you in 2011 and I’ll be as happy as Gregg Wallace just
really intend to do with that artichoke, as of after he’s been presented with a great big brûlée.
old. They should be howling at each other
Doug Johnson
Upstairs Downstairs: Back for more?
Photo: BBC
‘Luther returns later this year and promises to be a TV highlight’
Luther, the BBC series which launched from the typical detective format with the
in May 2010, was probably the most introduction of Alice (Ruth Wilson), the
underrated crime drama of last year. murderess in the first episode, as Luther’s
Starring Idris Elba (of The Wire fame) as confidante (a gender reversal of the key
tortured London detective John Luther, a relationship in Silence of the Lambs),
man with a brilliant mind but a destructive thereby providing some great on-screen
personality, it was a pure joy.
chemistry.
Gritty, tense, truly edge-of-the-seat stuff
This is the antithesis of an Agatha Christie
from start to finish - and what a finish! whodunit, and Luther, a man fuelled by his
With one of the most gripping finales in emotions rather than reason, is no Poirot.
television history, Elba’s performance was Luther returns for a second series of two
truly superb, more than worthy of the two-hour long specials later this year and,
nomination he received for Best Actor if the previous run is anything to go by,
in a Mini-Series or Television Movie at promises to be a TV highlight.
the Golden Globes. The show deviates
Francis Dearnley
‘The long-running panel shows are flagging and need re-imagining.’
Britain has an extraordinary need to place its and programming does not lend itself to top
comedians and entertainers behind a desk. quality entertainment. The Adrian ChilesWithout point scoring or quiz questions it led That Sunday Night Show is symbolic of a
seems that we Brits can’t cope with humour. dying entertainment form. All you need to
The horror if Dara O’Briain refused to name do is look into Chiles’ eyes, deadened with
a winner at the end of Mock the Week. The the horror of leaving the BBC. Hopelessly
country would descend into anarchy. More dopey Apprentice hopefuls have been replaced
than ever, the TV panel show has taken over with humourless TV ‘stars’. Match of the Day
our screens. Whether it be endless QI, a waning 2 wasn’t always the best company for Chiles,
Never Mind the Buzzcocks desperately missing but he was at least still entertaining. Have I
Simon Amstell or ITV4’s seminal Richard Got News For You aside, the BBC is struggling
Bacon’s Beer and Pizza Club (my sources tell me too. Long-running shows need re-imagining
that this is, in fact, real), the format desperately or the format will eventually grow tired and
needs va-va-voom. The clearest sign that the the only place to see comedians will be Live
panel show is becoming exhausted is that at the Apollo, The Graham Norton Show or
ITV have latched onto the format. Something getting heckled in your local comedy club.
about having a 50:50 balance of ad breaks
David Moulder
‘You can’t go wrong with Matt Smith sporting a Stetson’
The BBC family drama juggernaut returns
be that good ratings in the US have seduced
this year with a promising new format.
the BBC into appealing more to our friends
Writer Steven Moffat has revealed that this
across the pond? In any case, Amy, her
time around we will be treated not to one but
husband Rory and even the enigmatic River
two Doctor Who series, intersected by a midSong are all back to appease the fans. Plus, at
season cliffhanger. The finales in Doctor Who
the end of the series teaser, the Doctor warns
are usually the most compelling episodes,
that ‘monsters are real’. This nightmarish
and, with talk of a ‘game-changing’ climax,
statement is a welcome reminder that the
there’s plenty to look forward to. Not least of
show is a children’s programme, albeit a
the adventures hinted at in the 2011 trailer
sophisticated and internationally renowned
is a two-part series opener set in America.
children’s programme that everyone from
It looks like there will be some impressive
your great aunt to your pet Jack Russell
scenes in the Utah desert, but the fact that
can enjoy. In any case, you can’t go wrong
these episodes were co-produced with BBC
with Matt Smith sporting a Stetson.
America makes me slightly uneasy. Could it
Florence Smith Nicholls
Television |25
The
CambridgeStudent
Theatre
O
ne would be forgiven
for assuming that,
when it comes to
Shakespeare,
we’ve
seen it all. Every
student theatre company in the
land seems to take on the challenge
at some point or another, often
pulling it off relatively well yet with
relatively little imagination. The
temptation seems to be to play it
safe and, as the lights dimmed over
the ADC, I couldn’t help but wonder
whether this production would
be yet another safe but standard
rendition of a Shakespeare classic
that I could happily live without. I
needn’t have worried; this is EGT.
Having spent two weeks of
December touring through Europe,
one might expect the Cambridge
University
European
Theatre
Group’s production, now on its
home run, to be tired and somewhat
lack lustre. However, it is entirely
the opposite and this is evident
from the opening twenty seconds:
bright lights ignite the stage, which
resembles a 1950s travelling funfair
(helter skelter included), and the
Theatre Review:
The Taming of the Shrew
26| Theatre
the play into a desperately dark
comedy within which a woman’s
soul seems to have been lost.
The skill with Taming of the Shrew
comes in allowing a balance to be
achieved: fundamentally a comedy,
the comic relief is imperative;
however it must not overshadow
the dark elements of power and
misogyny. This is where Joey Batey’s
Petruchio steals the show. Batey has
the audience in the palm of his hand
as the controlling and dominating
suitor (and ‘tamer’) of Katharina.
However, the comedy of the part is
not compromised: Batey frequently
has the audience laughing out loud,
particularly on the wedding day of
Petruchio and Katharina, flouncing
round the stage in stockings and
what appears to be a woman’s
negligee. Batey’s skill, however, is
his ability to switch from comic
genius one moment to dark and
controlling husband the next.
Often seen to be physically rough
with Katharina one minute, then
shortly after delivering lines with
flippant comic timing and a casual
grin, Batey’s faultless performance
Every student theatre
company in the world seems
to take on the challenge
cast spring into a lively 1950s-esque
dance with an indisputable energy.
Crucial contrasts between the
characters are made clear from
the off: Rozzi Nicholson- Lailey
is warm, dainty and perfectly
feminine as Bianca. Her skills as
a dancer are evident in how she
gracefully commands the stage,
and the warmth with which her
lover, Lucentio, played by Will
Attenborough, responds to her
allows the couple to serve as
ideal contrasts to Petruchio and
Katharina. Emma Makinson’s
direction of the pair is subtle,
allowing Attenborough and Lailey’s
warm onstage chemistry to speak
for itself, therefore making their
characters’ attraction to one another
appear romantically inevitable,
rather than sickeningly forced.
The typically feminine and
romantic Bianca is heavily
contrasted with Sophie Crawford’s
intense and sullen Katharina
(the ‘shrew’). Crawford’s initial
discretion is notable: the temptation
to turn Katharina into a shouting
and screaming nightmare is one
that often seems too much to resist
for actresses, but Crawford manages
it, choosing instead to portray the
eldest sister as a headstrong, rough
and spirited tomboy. This serves to
accentuate Petruchio’s treatment of
her, for as he ‘tames’ her unwomanly
ways, an audience don’t only witness
her loss of power, but also her loss of
the spirit which she demonstrated
in her opening scenes. By the end
of the play, Crawford’s Katharina
is utterly subdued, devoid of any
sense of the temperament or
personality that characterised her
at the start. Crawford is almost
like an empty shell as she utters
her last monologue, turning
allowed Petruchio’s disingenuous
and untrusting character to
become clear, allowing Makinson’s
production to be one of the darker
interpretations of the play I have seen.
It is difficult to find fault with
such a production. The supporting
cast were all equally as convincing
as the four principles, particularly
Harry Carr as the wide eyed Grumio
and Tom Pye as the hilarious
Widow. I did, however, overhear
one audience member say they
‘didn’t really get the whole circus
thing’, and I suppose this is a valid
point. As a reviewer, I had read the
director’s notes on the piece and
was therefore able to identify that
the setting did indeed echo the
main themes of the play: that of a
bright, lively outward impression
covering up an often unjust and
unsavoury internal reality. However,
this depth of meaning is not really
explored within the production and
therefore could easily be missed.
That small point aside, The
Taming of the Shrew allows EGT’s
reputation for producing innovative
and exciting interpretations of
Shakespeare’s classic texts to remain
firmly intact. Executed with utter
professionalism, directed with
subtlety and supported by a faultless
technical team, the Cambridge
University
European
Theatre
Group proves itself as a lively,
fresh and imaginative shrew which
certainly does not need to be tamed.
★★★★☆
Rosie Keep
ADC Mainshow 7.45pm
Until Saturday 22nd January
The
CambridgeStudent
Theatre
ADC Footlights Pantomime 2010
Harriet Peachey talks
to Dannish Babar about
playing an alcoholic
cat...
T
his
year’s
eagerly
anticipated
yuletide
offering from the
Footlights was ‘The
Pied Piper’. A quick
synopsis for those not familiar
with the story, the Pied Piper is
a mysterious figure who arrives
in a town struggling to solve its
unfortunate rat infestation, but
while his pipe music attracts the
attention of the rats, so too does it
attract the attentions of the town’s
children. I caught up with Dannish
Babar, one of the stars from this
year’s show
Could you tell me a bit about your
character in this year’s production?
I played the humble village cat
Katzenjammer, erstwhile town
rat catcher. Old Katz was once a
celebrated rodent exterminator, but
the years have taken their toll and
he is now a washed up old drunk,
stumbling over his own tail and
confronting anyone within earshot
with his life story. However, when
he accidentally joins the quest to
thwart the evil Pied Piper, he finds
his pride and self-respect along
the way – all through the power of
friendship.
Always a sell-out show, the Footlights
Panto is one of the most popular
productions of the year. How did
you deal with first night nerves and
expectations?
By the time of the first night we all
knew the show like the back of our
hands, so I think we all felt fairly
well prepared. The audience on the
first night was extremely responsive
and generous, which put everyone
at ease.
For those who didn’t have the chance
to see the show could you tell us your
favourite line or part of the show?
Playing a drunkard necessitated a
lot of slapstick, which I loved. There
Living Language Theatre
S’il vous plaît
A
t the beginning of
last term I eagerly
booked tickets for the
Cambridge Greek Play.
Having studied Ancient
Greek at A-Level, the prospect of
going to see a production of an
Aeschylean tragedy performed in
the original was immensely exciting.
However the actual experience of
sitting in an auditorium, watching
people speaking in Ancient (I feel
its important to add this epithet
so as not to belittle the language
spoken in modern-day Greece)
Greek was quite underwhelming.
Understanding an isolated word
every few minutes lulled me into
a very false sense of security; I
thought that I could ditch the
surtitles and simply try and work out
what was going on by occasionally
recognising the words ‘pity’ and
‘miserable’. Unfortunately this was
not possible. Therefore my eyes
were unable to appreciate the full
visual spectacle of the production
as they were glued to the surtitle
screen at the side of the stage.
After about an hour of reading
pixelated orange letters, my lids
could not hold out any longer
and so were forced to shut. After
the show, I was told that I should
have informed myself of the plot
before seeing the play so that I
didn’t need to understand what was
being said. To me this idea seemed
to undermine the whole point of
are few purer pleasures in life than
falling over while dressed as a cat.
Was this your first big Footlights how?
How did it feel to be part of such an
important Cambridge tradition?
I’d done Smokers before, but never
something as big as this. I felt very
lucky to be working with such a
talented group of people.
And did you feel the show was wellreceived by the audience?
Apart from a small child who I
inadvertently made cry one night,
yes.
What can we expect from the
Footlghts this year and from you?
The Spring Revue, ‘Odds’, is shaping
up to be excellent this year, do go
along to that. Also get along to
‘Dannish Babar Knows What
You’re Thinking’, Pembroke New
Cellars, 15-19 Feb for an evening of
exciting new stand-up comedy and
mentalism.
afforded to the Cambridge
Greek Play would be entirely
understandable. But nowadays,
the CGP just functions as a sort
of gimmicky bastion, supposedly
demonstrating the continued
vitality of the classical languages.
However, what I do like about the
CGP is that it entertains the idea of
performing theatre in its original
language. Whilst I think it chooses
the wrong language, I do feel that
the opportunity to see great works
of theatre, written in languages
that are still spoken today, must
be seized. With multitudes of
modern linguists, international
students and international fellows
floating around, Cambridge seems
like the perfect place to stage
productions of Racine, Lorca,
Lessing, Pirandello and/or Chekov.
Of course, these foreign language
productions are not going to be
The opportunity to see great
works of theatre must be
seized.
going to the theatre. When we go to
the theatre, we are there to discover
and experience a narrative through
shared linguistic understanding
not simply relying on background
reading. The joy of theatre lies in
uncovering a whole host of emotions
by understanding the text alongside
the performers’ gestures and facial
expressions. Unlike film subtitles,
the surtitles in a play always detract
from the ability of the spectator
to appreciate words and action
simultaneously. If Classicists had
a strong enough grasp of Ancient
Greek to be able to comprehend the
Agamemnon (which they probably
did back in 1882 when the CGP
was founded), then the reverence
attracting vast audiences but they
will be able to provide very valuable
cultural experiences to those who
can understand the given language.
Therefore I am excited to report
that this term Dominic Horsfall
and Nadia Bonifacic are directing
a production of Brecht’s early
comedy Die Kleinbürgerhochzeit
(A Respectable Wedding) taking
place at the end of February in
Pembroke Players’ Theatre. For
all German students and speakers
this should be an unforgettably
funny evening and hopefully the
beginning of new era in Cambridge’s
foreign language theatre scene.
Dan Eisenberg
Matthew Topham reviews
The Varsity Restaurant
Last term, Matthew Topham prowled Cambridge’s
culinary scene like a particularly erudite and
sharply-dressed puma. This week, he sharpens his
claws on The Varsity Restaurant.
★★★★☆
Food:
★★★☆☆
Service:
Atmosphere: ★★★☆☆
£50 for two, three courses and wine.
Well, Varsity. Much smaller
than you’d expect, certainly. A
little rough at the edges. Quite
cheap. Convenient, the way one
description can be made to work for
two things. Anyway, baiting aside,
that is the first impression one gets
at the rather grandiosely styled
The Varsity Restaurant. Which is
something of a shame. From the
plastic table-covers (an unfortunate
addition, since the tablecloths were
at least real) and the paper napkins
to the laminated menu in fauxleather (mine with an attractive
melted candle-mark for added
authenticity), one is not exactly set
up for a good dining experience.
salad suspiciously identical to
mine, but were without defect.
But the main courses. Well I say.
My companion, being more than
usually contrary, had determined
on Chicken Diane, about as
authentic as a plastic David, but
apparently very nice, and served
with potato croquettes, for which he
has the sort of inexplicable mania
denied to all but the most troubled
of minds. On the other hand, my
Bydakia – lamb cutlets seasoned
beautifully and served with salad
(and, wait for it, chips) – was a
transport of delight. I have found
that rarest of entities: a chef who
knows how to cook lamb rare. And
Not Haute Cuisine, but solidly authentic
The second shock is discovering
that The Varsity Restaurant is
actually a Cypriot establishment,
serving Greek and Cypriot food with
the curious addition of a number of
out-of-place ‘80s diner classics. I
genuinely had no idea. Not exactly
the sort of thing one expects. And,
since I have a rather marvellous
Greek friend whose hospitality is
legendary and with good reason, I
had high expectations. The menu
aroused sneaking suspicions of the
Eraina, that Sin-blasted Hellhole of
a place where everything is served
with chips and rice and vegetables
and the essence of failure.
But it is not so. Because the food
here is actually rather marvellous.
True, the starters lacked a certain
panache, my Kalamaraki falling
prey to the usual problem of all
squid: rubberiness. The batter was
delightfully light and unintrusive,
however, and the salad which
accompanied was actually dressed
(which is sadly neglected by
most places) and managed to
be interesting and edible. My
companion’s Loucanicos (a type
of Greek sausage) again lacked
drama, and were served with a
my, the taste was exquisite, supple
and vigorous, warm and cheering.
It had by this point turned into a
rather nice evening indeed, despite
the exigencies of the wine list (I
am always in two minds about
whether to be annoyed or thankful
that so few Greek restaurants serve
Greek wine), and it was with high
hopes that we ordered Baklava for
pudding – that quintessential pastry
and honey concoction – eschewing
other equally delightful sounding
things. And they were brilliant. Soft,
unsickly, light of pastry, and served
with rather nice ice-cream (even if
I would have preferred yoghurt).
It is not Haute Cuisine, but it is
solidly authentic (if we avoid the
Chicken Diane) and very good
value. Service throughout was
low-key but professional, and
impressive given that our waitress
was apparently the only one. And,
having been so caressed by the
hand of a more than competent
chef, I think I can say without fear
that I shall be returning, a most
unusual thing for me, I must say.
Theatre |27
The
CambridgeStudent
28| Sport Comment
Ashes: England Pom-inate down under
Ollie Guest
It was at one o’ clock on a morning
in early January that Chris Tremlett
steamed in to take the final Australian wicket of the fifth Ashes test in
Sydney but, for many a bleary-eyed
England cricket fan, it felt like Christmas all over again. England had not
only retained the Ashes, but won the
series in some style, gloriously vanquishing their Baggy Green-capped
rivals in their own back yard.
Time after time over the course of
five tests, English fans were left exhilarated by late night sessions reiterating their team’s absolute dominance.
A 3-1 series defeat arguably flattered
the hosts in what appeared a mismatched contest. But for an uneasy
few days in the first test and Mitchell
Johnson’s devastating spell with the
ball during the third in Perth, which
brought about England’s only loss,
victory was almost unnervingly easy.
Where was the famous Australian
aggression and tenacity? Where were
England’s infamous batting collapses? Where was the cocky and colourful Aussie support? In almost every
aspect, England were outstanding,
while their nemesis looked distinctly
and uncharacteristically average.
At times, the Australians were so
evidently demoralised that an unusual feeling seemed to be stoked among
the English supporters: pity, even
for a foe that had so long tormented
Image: Dom McKenzie
them. Nevertheless, it was a delicious
feeling, born of a knowledge that
sympathy would only intensify Australian self-loathing.
Ricky Ponting epitomised the
below-par nature of the Australian
performance; by his standards, he
was quite simply abysmal. For such a
player to be tarnished with three Ashes defeats is little short of catastrophic in terms of his legacy. The blame
should not be laid solely at the feet of
the captain, however; his teammates
did little to soften the blows. Even the
batting of the seemingly indomitable
Mike Hussey appeared to falter as the
series drew to a close.
The Australian bowlers also offered little. Peter Siddle was perhaps
the only pace-man to emerge with
his reputation intact and, as for the
spinners, suffice to say that an aging
and overweight Shane Warne would
have walked back into the side.
But let us delight in the English success story. Few would dispute Alistair
Cook’s man of the series award; his
impervious batting allowed the visitors to stamp their authority on more
than one occasion. The quality of the
opening that he offered, alongside
captain Andrew Strauss, was such
that England won three times by a
margin of more than an innings.
Strauss himself deserves praise, not
only for his displays with the bat, but
also for his calm, dignified presence
which has instilled belief and stability
in the England team following Kevin
Pietersen’s unsettling and controversial regime as captain. Strauss was
heavily criticised by former captains
when he chose to sit out last year’s
tests against Bangladesh, but his decision has been thoroughly vindicated;
in an age of relentless cricket, he has
shown the value of taking time out.
England’s bowlers also excelled
themselves. Jimmy Anderson in
particular was world class; the Lancastrian bamboozled the Australian
batsmen with his swing bowling and,
through his leadership, ensured the
success of a four-man bowling strategy. All played their part, however;
Chris Tremlett and Tim Bresnan
bounced and spat, Graeme Swann
demonstrated why he is regarded as
the world’s best spin bowler, Steven
Finn showed his promise, and Stuart
Broad endeavoured hard before injury cut short his tour.
Last but certainly not least, Andy
Flower must be acknowledged. His
training camp in Germany proved an
excellent exercise in team bonding,
and contributed to the creation of the
close-knit squad we saw in Australia.
He forged an effective partnership
with Strauss which provided the solid
foundations for a successful tour.
All in all, we witnessed a brilliant
display from England down under.
The only question that remains now
is as to whether such form can be carried into the shorter game.
The
CambridgeStudent
Sport Comment|29
A culture of cheating: where does it end?
How should officials deal with rule-breaking in professional rugby? Sarah Binning asks.
It is increasingly easy
for rule-breakers to
escape undisciplined.
McCaw will know how often cheating is praised as ‘great back row play’.
The culture is one in which any action, legal or illegal, that gains a team
an advantage sees players showered
with praise. In the professional era,
where results make or break careers,
this is hardly surprising. When winning is everything, it’s understand-
able that players and coaches are
prepared to do whatever it takes to
secure victory.
However, if all the infringements
mentioned above are now ubiquitous in the professional game, and
every team cheats to a roughly equal
degree, then surely the impact of
cheating is nullified. If this is the case,
where does it leave referees? What
can they do to combat a culture that
shrugs its shoulders and accepts
cheating as an inevitability?
Perhaps it’s time for a healthy dose
of pragmatism. When everybody’s
breaking the same rules the same
amount, maybe it’s time to accept
that attempts to enforce those rules
no longer serve any useful purpose.
Surely consistent non-enforcement
would be both fairer than the situation we have now, and more realistic
than expecting referees to spot every
infraction.
More than this, clamping down on
infringements that players are used
to getting away with will make the
game even more disjointed than it already is. With scrums already eating
up endless valuable time and leading
to countless free kicks and penalties,
surely stricter law enforcement and
further punishments would not be
desirable for players or spectators.
We’ve reached the stage where
cheating seems to be accepted, and
Image: Arun Marsh
Since time immemorial, rugby players have tried to get away with as
many misdemeanours as possible.
That’s part of how the game works –
players attempt to bend the rules, and
the referee must keep them in line.
Recently, however, it seems players have been getting away with more
and more. Scrum halves feed the ball
into the second row, hookers throw
crookedly at the line-out, and half the
team seems to be offside from kickoff, yet with no punishment; it seems
increasingly easy for rule-breakers to
escape undisciplined.
And that’s without even mentioning infringements at the breakdown.
Here, rule-breaking seems not only
to be accepted, but to be positively
encouraged. Anyone who’s ever
watched the exploits of a certain Mr
expected, by all involved in professional rugby. Perhaps it’s time we
stopped complaining, gave outdated
rules up for lost, and moved on. It’s
worth turning a blind eye rather than
compromising the quality of rugby
Turning a blind eye is
a way to further
destroy the game.
we watch each week, isn’t it?
No, it isn’t. Turning a blind eye is a
way to further destroy the game, not
to save it. Simple psychology suggests
that the more you let people get away
with, the more they’ll try to get away
with – take the example of spoilt children (or, indeed, footballers).
Once you start disregarding transgressions, it’s a slippery slope. Of
course, clamping down may cause
problems in the short term – players,
and most likely fans, will complain –
and referees are still going to miss the
odd offence, but officials nonetheless
can, and should, do more to stamp
out the complacency that is currently
endemic in the professional game.
It is the responsibility of officials to
make it clear where the boundaries
are, and to punish players who overstep them. That is the only way they
can effectively protect the integrity of
the sport.
Sport as revolution: Vichy France in focus
Cameron Johnston
In twenty-first century Britain, mention of a sports stadium conjures certain images in the mind: Old Trafford
or Anfield on a Saturday afternoon;
men clutching beer in plastic cups
and curried chips on polystyrene
trays; abuse being hurled at highlypaid athletes on the pitch below; and
a crowd in ecstasy as the net ripples.
Contrast that image with one of
serried ranks of girls keeping step
as they parade alongside a running
track, their right arms raised in salute
to the onlooking government minister. The year is 1941; war rages on,
and for these girls in defeated France,
there is only life under authoritarian
Vichy rule.
At first glance, it seems there could
be no greater contrast. In the former
image, men attend the game of their
own volition, for the spectacle and to
watch their team win. In the latter, individual choice plays no part, as the
girls are subsumed within a group
and subjected to the will of a government representative. Seventy years
may separate the two scenes, but are
they really so different?
For Norbert Elias and Eric Denning, the tennis court and football
The tennis court and
football pitch have
been significant
ideological
battlegrounds
throughout history.
pitch have been significant ideological battlegrounds throughout history.
In 18th century Britain, gentlemen
fostered an ethos of reservation and
self control. To cry, kick one’s legs, or
bite was to be childish and devoid of
reason. But as industrialisation took
hold, and great soulless cities were
born, an outlet was needed. People
turned to sport in order to give free
rein to their emotions – to revel in
them, and to purge them. Sport began to perform the same function as
Dionysian tragedy in ancient Greece,
acting as a safety valve on the pressure cooker of human emotion. The
extremes of emotion experienced
during a game allow one to tolerate
the uniformity and anonymity of the
modern world.
The potential for governments to
harness such feelings, however, became clear in Vichy France. Sport
came to be seen as a means to inculcate in the young values of discipline,
sacrifice, hierarchy, male virility, female subjection, a rejection of the
city, and an embrace of nature. It was
believed that, in the words of Ernest
Loisel, “sport, well directed, is morality in action.”
To this end, Jean Borotra was appointed Commissioner for Sport and
Physical Education. He was the ideal
man for the job – not only had he led
his country to six successive Davis
Cup titles between 1927 and 1932,
but he was also the last great exemplar of the aristocratic spirit, believing that sport had to be ‘désintéressé’
to be truly elevating. Through the
Sports Charter of 1940, he sounded
the death knell of professional sport
and subjected sporting associations
to the will of state. Thereafter, the
state was free to judge athletes on its
own terms, and did so – French Jewish swimmer Alfred Nakache, having
defeated the German champion en
route to a breaststroke world record
in 1941, was banned from his sport
and sent to Auschwitz.
Despite struggling to feed or clothe
the French people, the Vichy government increased the budget for physical education from 50 million to 2
billion francs, and heavily subsidised
the construction of sports fields.
These fields were soon teeming with
children marching in unison, performing strictly prescribed exercises,
and singing, under a regime seeking
to resurrect the ‘true France’. By distancing children from corrupt cities,
returning them to the soil, and encouraging them to replicate ‘all the
movements that primitive man performed to survive’, officials hoped to
mould children in line with the Vichy
ideals of hierarchy and order, rejecting the individualism of the 1930s.
It is likely that through undernourishment, tiredness, or apathy, most
French children failed to imbibe the
ideological content of sport, but the
case of Vichy France reminds us how
governments can and do use sport
for their own ends.
For an example closer to home,
note the money and energy Tony Blair
and Gordon Brown invested in sport,
and in particular the 2012 Olympics,
as industry began to wane and the
nation headed towards a financial
crisis. We can similarly consider how
football matches have been used for
recruitment to the English Defence
League, or look at the Serbian fascists
who meet at football games to riot, to
see how political ideology and sport
remain intertwined.
We may casually refer to football
as ‘the beautiful game’, and golf as
‘a good walk spoiled’, but we should
never underestimate their political
potential.
The
CambridgeStudent
30| Sport
Blues footballers ease past poor Worcester
4
Worcester
0
Ryan McCrickerd
The first Blues football game of 2011
saw CUAFC host Worcester University in the 3rd round of the BUCS
Cup on Sunday. Having fallen at the
last hurdle of the same competition
in 2010, but also after hitting seven in
the previous round, the Blues jogged
onto a heavy Grange Road pitch eager
to dispatch a coach-lagged Worcester
side.
The game started slowly as the
teams, and referee, adjusted to awkward conditions underfoot. Shins
and knee-caps were battered in the
midfield, although Kerrigan managed to create a few chances down the
right, linking neatly with Broadway,
Hakimi, and Sherif. Such promising plays, however, were consistently
broken down by a dogged Worcester
defence.
Frustration built for Cambridge,
who were returning from a week in
La Manga, and found they couldn’t
zip the ball around as sharply as
they had been able to on the flawless
Spanish turf. Day and Revell kept a
high and tight defence, however, and
accordingly Worcester were restrict-
The Blues peppered
the opposition box
from out wide.
nice inter-changes between the midfield and strike force, Sherif, who had
somehow managed to attract three
defenders and the goalkeeper, only
had to find McCrickerd inside him
for the second of the game. In an apparent moment of madness, however,
he instead found touch. The first half
ended quietly, and Cambridge went
in at the break with a narrow lead.
Image: James Pearson
Cambridge
ed to long shots which Boyde, fresh
from his ritualistic gym session, excitedly gobbled up.
A breakthrough came after 20 minutes when Sherif, perhaps in frustration with the deadlock, seemed to
simply decide that he was going to
score. Picking the ball up on the left
just inside the opposition half, he
glided smoothly past Worcester’s
defence, who could only watch in admiration as he waltzed into the box,
and calmly curled the ball into the far
right of the goal for the opener.
Worcester continued to take optimistic pot-shots and on one occasion, after some confusion down the
Cambridge right, Boyde was forced
to make a splendid save, tipping a
powerful shot over the bar.
Shell-shocked, the Blues attacked
more aggressively and, after some
After the interval, despite facing
the wind and an injury worry over
midfielder Broadway, Cambridge’s
play picked up. Peacock began to link
well with Kerrigan, Hakimi started
to dominate the midfield, and Baxter and Griffiths found some space
down the left. Worcester, meanwhile,
were clearly tiring, and began to give
away sloppy free-kicks, from which
both Day and Griffiths came close
with their heads.
Baxter was marauding forward
skilfully, but was clearly frustrated,
perhaps by Griffiths’s lack of cover;
during one Worcester attack, he
cleared the ball high into the air and
caught it in his arms, shouting aggressively at the referee.
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As the pace of the game slowed,
Cambridge’s midfield and forwards
drifted apart and Worcester found
space. It was not long, however, before the Blues were able to add a second. Peacock, staying cool, played a
clever ball to McCrickerd, as both
Sherif and Griffiths ran on in channels. McCrickerd bent the ball into
Sherif ’s path, putting him through on
goal. His first strike hit the post, but
fortunately returned into the path of
Griffiths, who volleyed clinically past
the on-looking goalkeeper.
Worcester heads began to drop,
and as Anderson, Rouse and Totten
came on, Cambridge only looked
sharper. Rouse and Totten continued
to torment the opposing left-back,
and consistently whipped effective
balls across the face of goal. Anderson comfortably filled the gap behind
the strikers and more chances came.
The Blues peppered the opposition
box from out wide, and from the
third corner of the half McCrickerd
found captain Day, who headed it
back across goal and past the stationary goalkeeper to make it three.
A couple of errors followed as the
condition of the pitch worsened, but
Cambridge continued to press. Day
rounded a handful of midfielders,
and found Sherif ’s feet before McCrickerd, bouncing the ball off Totten who had tucked in nicely from
the right, gained possession. Turning
the last defender, he was tripped from
behind and awarded a penalty.
Worcester’s goalkeeper employed
the rather dubious tactic of standing
only a foot or so away from his left
post whilst reassuring the university’s
best penalty taker, Mark Baxter, that
he should shoot into the other corner.
Unflustered, Baxter tucked the ball
into the left of the goal, as the keeper had suggested, for Cambridge’s
fourth.
The last 10 minutes were quiet but
saw Revell and Day remain strong at
the back, Hakimi continue to dictate
the midfield, and Anderson create
more chances; Sherif shot over the
bar from a late corner. CUAFC will
now look forward to the next round
with some optimism.
Light Blues step up Boat Race
preparations
Tom Smith
Sports Editor
Cambridge University Boat Club
has appointed 29-year-old Australian Mark Beer as Assistant Coach to
Steve Trapmore ahead of the 157th
Boat Race, which takes place on 26
March. He leaves his position as Head
Coach at Jesus College, which he has
occupied for the past three years.
Chief Coach Trapmore was full
of praise for his new counterpart:
“Mark is a great addition to the team
at CUBC. He combines a superb
technical eye with deep understanding of sports science. Mark is clearly
passionate about developing elite student athletes at CUBC. I very much
look forward to working with him.”
To further aid preparations for his
first Boat Race, Trapmore also enlisted the help of Rowley Douglas, his
cox in the gold medal-winning GB
eight at the 2000 Olympic Games, to
coach at a winter training camp on
Lake Banyoles.
Just prior to this, ‘Shake’ beat ‘Bake’
by four lengths on the Thames in the
trial eights race. Shake took an early
one-seat lead along the Putney Embankment, driven by a solid rhythm
from last year’s Goldie stroke Joel
Jennings. Bake, stroked by Jennings’s
fellow 2010 Goldie man Mike Thorp,
reached a marginally higher rate, but
could not produce quite the same effectiveness in the water.
Bake cox Liz Box was cautioned by
the umpire as the crews nearly moved
together early on, but the flag was out
to warn Shake steersman Tom Field-
man on the Fulham corner. Fieldman
responded, moving out on his station,
but Box could not get her stern round
in time to avoid a clash of oars. The
contact clearly disrupted Bake, who
lost their rhythm and slipped back
such that by the Milepost, Shake had a
half-length advantage, which they extended through difficult water along
the Harrods wall. Shake further tightened their grip on the race through
Hammersmith Bridge and took full
control for the remainder. The rates
came up as the crews reached calmer
water around St Paul’s School and,
though both began to row better, the
margin lengthened and Shake completed a convincing victory.
“It was great to see them perform
under the pressure of racing, and we
got a lot out of it”, said Trapmore afterwards. “It was nice to watch Shake,
and they will have gained a lot of confidence from it, but hats off to Bake
who, although a lighter crew, kept
pushing and coming back and showing a real fighting spirit.”
Meanwhile, in Oxford’s trial eights,
held an hour later, ‘Nurture’ beat ‘Nature’ in a close race which almost saw
a dramatic fightback; Nature ultimately lost by less than a length. Oxford have a distinct disadvantage in
terms of choice and experience coming into this year’s Boat Race, but the
Cambridge crew will be well aware
that this means little, having won
from a similar position in 2010.
The races will no doubt have provided food for thought for both crews
as they continue their preparations
for the big day.
The
CambridgeStudent
Sport|31
Stoic defence secures Dark Blue victory
21
Cambridge
10
Tom Wright
A near faultless defensive display
from the Dark Blues saw them reclaim bragging rights from Cambridge. They ran out comfortable
winners at Twickenham, despite
coming into the game having previously achieved only two wins this
season, in comparison to the Light
Blues’ nine.
Both teams set out their attacking
stalls from the off. Oxford favoured
a powerful, direct approach, sending runner after runner pounding up
the short channels, while Cambridge
flashed the ball left and right, looking to skip round the Dark Blues with
the expansive backline play that has
become their trademark.
It was, however, at first a cagey
affair in which neither team could
establish their authority. Both sides
managed the occasional half-break
but, each time, solid defences snuffed
out any attacking spark; a solitary
Oxford three-pointer was all that
troubled the scorers for the first quarter of the game.
Soon after, however, the Dark Blues
came to life. Their powerful game
A victory based on
superb defence from
start to finish.
However, it proved their undoing as Fred Burdon rushed up and
missed his tackle in the centres, allowing the Oxford backs to waltz in
for another score.
Cambridge ramped up the pressure after this ten minute purple
patch for Oxford, demolishing their
opponents in the scrum and gaining real impetus going forward. They
camped themselves in the Oxford
half, but were unable to capitalise.
Hockey double-header brings
disappointment for Blues
Felix Styles
A flurry of weather-related cancellations left the Blues hockey team
sitting fourth in the East Premier
League with two games in hand going into the winter break. They thus
entered their first game of 2011 aiming to make up an 11-point deficit
separating them from leaders Peterborough, knowing that they face the
challenge of several double-header
weekends this term, the first of which
began on Saturday away to Crostyx.
The London-based strugglers had
already gone down twice to the men
in light blue this season, in league
and cup, and the trend looked set
to continue when German import
Constantin Boye slotted home just
five minutes in. Cambridge then enjoyed the lion’s share of possession,
and continued to surge forward with
confidence. Dan Balding tapped in
a loose ball to double the Blues’ lead
on twenty minutes, before veteran
defender David Madden made it 3-0
with a low drive from a short corner.
The Blues looked comfortable;
Balding and Madden were an assured presence at the back, while
left-back Will “George” Harrison
continued to feed frequent attacks.
Disorganised Crostyx found themselves penned back in their own half,
and Cambridge should have gone
further ahead when a defense-splitting through-ball narrowly escaped
forward Stuart Jackson. A solid first
period was then, however, marred by
an uncharacteristic defensive lapse on
the stroke of half-time; an unmarked
Crostyx forward was allowed to find
the bottom right corner of Morrison’s
net to pull one back.
The second half saw a composed
display from Cambridge but, while
dominant in a midfield led by an
impressive Rupert Allison, they were
unable to make the difference in skill
count in the final third. Coach James
Waters could only look on in frustration as his side spurned numerous
opportunities to extend their lead.
Cambridge were made to pay for
their profligacy ten minutes from
time, when a rare purple-shirted
counter-attack produced a goal from
a short corner to bring the score back
to 3-2. A nervy finish was then enveloped in controversy, as Crostyx were
awarded a heavily disputed last-minute short corner. The ensuing drag
flick hit Madden’s body and, although
time had already been called, the umpire gave a penalty flick. The incensed
Cambridge players surrounded the
official, but the Crostyx striker was
able to bring the two sides level with
a low flick that evaded Morrison.
Despite a promising team performance for long periods, it was overall a disappointing afternoon for the
Blues, who will be wondering how a
3-0 lead was so easily thrown away.
Sunday then saw them go down
5-4 to bottom side Blueherts, despite
dominating possession. Goals came
from Sam Grimshaw, Rupert Allison,
and a brace from man-of-the-match
Nick Parkes.
Cambridge play host to undefeated
Peterborough next week, now with a
10-point deficit to make up.
Cambridge couldn’t convert
pressure into points
Image: Dominique Iste
Oxford
plan paid off as their attackers began
to make hard yards in the tackle, and
the resulting holes in the Light Blue
defence allowed them their first try
of the afternoon.
A quick break down the right was
dragged down by Cambridge near
their twenty-two, but a clever ball
slipped inside to Oxford wing Lu ke
Jones left the defence hopelessly
stretched. Jones couldn’t reach the
line himself, but centre Alex Cheesman was able to dot down with relative ease after 24 minutes.
The Light Blues’ work with Wales
and British Lions defensive guru
Shaun Edwards prior to the game
was much publicised, as was their
adoption of his much-vaunted “blitz”
defence.
Jimmy Richards missed one penalty,
before scoring another on the stroke
of halftime to take Cambridge in
15-3 down.
The second half began in much
the same vein as the first, with both
teams settling into a defensive stalemate. Promising moves by both sides
were killed by handling errors at
crucial moments; in particular, Cambridge blew a golden opportunity for
a score thanks to a forward pass.
The Light Blues continued to dominate the scrum, however, and were
rewarded with their first and only try
of the match; referee Andrew Small
finally lost patience with a flood of
Oxford infringements in the scrum,
Dejected: Blues
after the match
and called for a Cambridge penalty try. Richards converted to bring
Cambridge to within five points of
the lead.
That, however, was as close as they
would get. The rest of the game saw
prolonged Cambridge dominance in
terms of possession and territory, but
failure to convert this pressure into
points.
Oxford claimed the last two scores
of the game – two penalties – to bring
the final score to 21-10. This was a
Dark Blue victory built on superb
defence from start to finish, which
left the usually sparkling Cambridge
backs, in particular mercurial fly-half
Greg Cushing, thoroughly shack-
led and chasing the game as temperatures plummeted. There were
no complaints from the Light Blue
camp following the defeat, only stoic
praise from Richards: “The boys never stopped giving, right to the end,
which is great to see.”
Earlier in the day at Twickenham,
Cambridge had secured a convincing
victory in the Under-21s Varsity clash.
They won by 20 points to 5, with two
tries from winger Will Smith and a
drop-goal by Steve Townsend on the
scoreboard.
There are, then, clearly plenty of
reasons to be optimistic about future
Varsity matches despite this season’s
disappointment.
The
CambridgeStudent
SPORT
Thursday, 20th January 2011
Image: James Pearson
Fairbairns in Lent? Surely not...
Victory for
women’s rugby
Blues
Cambridge
25
Moseley
17
Skylar Neil
Selwyn men’s VIII push on in the foreground while, behind, First and Third M2’s unsuccessful attempt to overtake Churchill costs them well over a minute.
Fran O’Brien
Deputy Sports Editor
There was an unfamiliar addition to
the Lent Term rowing calendar as the
Fairbairn Cup, traditionally the closing race of Michaelmas, took place
yesterday. The 4.3km downstream
slog had been postponed in December due to freezing conditions.
Thankfully, much improved
weather and a fast stream contributed to some good times, with both
the men’s and women’s winning college VIIIs completing the course
quicker than last year’s victors. Notably, however, the rescheduling of the
event meant that this year’s crews had
to cope with severe interruptions to
pre-race training.
The only university boat to enter,
the men’s Lightweight VIII, was predictably fastest and improved upon
2010’s result by 14 seconds. Caius
won the men’s college VIII event
in 13 minutes and 36 seconds, and
Newnham put in a dominant performance to take the women’s title
in 15:48; one bankside observer at
Chesterton commented “they look
exhausted!”, which was clearly a positive sign. Queens’ continued their
Much improved
weather and a fast
stream contributed to
some good times.
Michaelmas Term form to win both
the men’s 1st and 2nd IVs, admittedly
against a small field of competitors.
Meanwhile, First and Third were the
fastest women’s college IV, beaten
only by an invitational 1927 crew, the
alumni club for Oxford and Cambridge University women.
There was some dissatisfaction
with Jesus’s organisation of the
event, with complaints made on the
university-wide rowing forum about
the way they handled the change of
date. Many chose to withdraw from
the event after its initial cancellation,
and some felt that JCBC made the
matter of refunds unnecessarily complicated. On the day, there were minimal delays, but with 64 crews across
the three divisions, compared with
145 last year, there would have been
little excuse for hold-ups. Robinson
did not enter either a women’s or a
men’s VIII. Girton and Queen’s M1
and Clare and Caius W1 also withdrew. Crews with a strong Natural
Sciences contingent may have fought
to scratch a crew but been missing
anyone at their ‘Physics of the Earth
as a planet’ exam taking place simultaneously.
The novice racing did go ahead last
December over a shortened course,
although not without controversy as
the victory for the men’s 1st novice
VIII category was awarded not just to
the fastest crew from Jesus, but also
to Downing. The latter had technically finished 8th, over 30 seconds
behind Jesus, but were judged to have
been “severely impeded”. Meanwhile,
Jesus took undisputed victory with
their women’s 1st novices as well as
their men’s 2nd novice crew. Only
Emmanuel prevented a Jesus clean
sweep by winning the women’s 2nd
novice VIII category.
Attention now turns to the remaining events of Lent Term, with the
Head-to-Head next weekend, and
Newnham Short Course, Robinson
Head, and Pembroke Regatta comprising the three warm-up events on
the Cam before Lent Bumps commence on 1 March. Some of the top
crews will wish to improve their Fairbairns performance; in particular,
First and Third M1 will be looking
to retain the headship by holding off
There was some
dissatisfaction with
Jesus’s organisation.
a Downing crew who did not enter
Fairbairns. Newnham’s Fairbairns
win might be the sign of a strong term
ahead, but some of the top women’s
clubs will be hoping to step up their
game before the bumping begins.
After a month’s winter break, Cambridge began preparations for their
forthcoming Varsity match positively
with a decisive win over Moseley last
Sunday. Despite wet and cold conditions, the ladies in light blue held their
own against a much larger and more
experienced Moseley side.
Although Cambridge maintained
possession for most of the first half,
Moseley were able to take advantage
of a rusty defence to put down two
early tries in the corner. The Light
Blues were not willing to stand down,
however, and winger Kat Emerson
had soon scored two tries of her own
to level things up.
By the second half, Cambridge’s superior fitness began to pay off against
a flagging Moseley side, and Emerson took another one over the line
from a breakaway to put Cambridge
15-10 ahead. Two more breakaway
tries were scored by number 10 Anne
Venner as holes in the Moseley defence started to become more apparent. Moseley never relented in their
aggression, however, and their efforts
were rewarded with a try in the final
minute, which was then converted.
Although there was much for
Cambridge to take away from this
game, they will be pleased that they
were able to keep up their winning
streak, following on from the end of
Michaelmas term, despite weather
postponements and the winter break.
Moreover, their struggles at the beginning of the season with putting
points on the board seem to have
been resolved, with an average of four
tries per game being scored over the
last four matches. Number four Rici
Marshall was nominated Cambridge
‘Forward of the Match’, while Venner
was elected both Cambridge ‘Back of
the Match’ and Moseley’s ‘Opposing
Player of the Match’.
The Light Blue ladies continue to
look forward to their Varsity match,
which takes place in Cambridge on
March 5. Their preparations will be
rigorous, with a busy fixture list ahead
as they seek to avoid the same fate as
their male counterparts.
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S ISSUE:
CRICKET:
RUGBY UNION:
HISTORY:
FOOTBALL:
VARSITY RUGBY:
Reflecting on England’s Ashes
victory
Page 28
What can be done about a culture
of cheating?
Page 29
The significance of sport in Vichy
France
Page 29
Comprehensive victory for the
men’s Blues
Page 30
Dogged Oxford defeat brave
Light Blues
Page 31

Vice Chancellor “concerned” for future of bursaries

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