Bath Impact Volume 11 Issue 10 by bathimpact

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Mme Souffle Features, Page 11

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Lady Gaga

Professor Science

Ents, Page 24

Science, Page 15

bathimpact The University of Bath Students’ Union newspaper

Volume 11 Issue 10

Monday 22nd February 2010

www.bathimpact.com

Student awareness weeks begin Fairtrade Fortnight, Living on a Budget Week, and Student Volunteering Week all begin today. The events, all of which are organised by the Students’ Union, are intended to raise awareness of various issues the Union wishes to highlight. See page 2 for more details.

Somerset man arrested on fraud charges

A woman dangles on a wire during the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Vancouver. For full report, see centre pages.

NUS President to challenge VC Glynis vs. Wes Streeting scheduled for March 9th

n the 9th of March the President of the National Union of Students (NUS), Wes Streeting, is coming to Bath to take part in a panel debate with our Vice Chancellor on funding for higher education. Professor Breakwell is chair of the Funding and Management policy committee for Universities UK (UUK), an organisation representing universities to government and in the media. She is also a member of the Higher Education taskforce for the Confederation of British Industry, which has also advocated a rise in tuition fees, as has UUK. The NUS has published a series of reports into funding for higher education and is opposed to increases in tuition fees in the interests of both its members and its prospective members. Representatives of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have also been invited to participate in the debate. Student attendance and in-

volvement is encouraged. In 1997 the Government accepted the recommendation of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education that students should have to bear some of the cost of higher education. A fee of £1,000 was introduced with a promise that financial support would “ensure free higher education for the least well off”. Opposition to this change was fierce both in Parliament and in universities, with protests occurring at 150 institutions across the country. In 2003, despite a manifesto commitment that no top-up fees would be introduced, the Government introduced a bill to raise tuition fees to £3,000, which again passed by only five votes, the largest backbench rebellion of Blair’s premiership. At the time the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats pledged to scrap tuition fees, a commitment which both parties have now dropped. Later this

year an independent review into tuition fees will conclude; for this reason it is unlikely that any political party will make tuition fees an issue at the upcoming election. Research evidence suggests that students from lower income backgrounds are put off university by

£7000

suggested fee for a year’s tuition

the high level of expected debt. The people most likely to be deterred by the prospect of graduating with substantial debts - and not having fulltime earnings while they are at university - are those the Government most wants to attract into higher education. At present, a salary of £25,500 is necessary to offset the interest costs of current average debt levels. Students must earn more than

this to make any dent in their student loans. The median starting salary for graduate positions is £24,500. Very few graduates are able to reduce the balance of their loan in the first years after graduation under the current conditions. A student without financial support will leave university with £25,000 of debt. For certain subjects this is only £10,000 less than the lifetime graduate premium. If tuition fees rise to £7,000 then the total debt level for a graduating student could be as high as £37,000. In a general election year and with the report into university funding upcoming, tuition fees are an important issue for current and prospective students. Bath University Students’ Union is supporting a student-led campaign against increases in tuition fees. Anyone interested in finding out more or getting involved in this campaign should contact feescampaign@ bath.ac.uk.

Jim McCormick, a Somerset businessman, has been arrested on fraud charges for exporting millions of dollars worth of devices which he claimed could detect bombs from up to a kilometre away, though expert investigation has determined that there is nothing inside them which could conceivably do so, and scientific tests show them to perform no better than chance. The ADE-651, as it is known, has been described as a “glorified dowsing rod”. The Iraqi Government has spent $85 million on the devices, and many other governments have been using them to detect bombs and weapons. See page 4 for more world news.

Students barred from management unit Students from departments other than Management or Economics are to be barred from the unit MN30209 - Investment Banking, under new rules announced by Dr Andreas Krause in an email to students. The message also laid down a number of other rules on student conduct in lectures which were seen by some as overzealous. See page 8 for an anonymous contributor’s analysis of the situation.

impact redesigned This issue, impact relaunches its new design, following several weeks of planning. See page 21 for more details.

News bathimpact Editor Tim Leigh editor@bathimpact.com

Deputy Editor Josie Cox deputy@bathimpact.com News Steve Ramsey Debora Sönksen news@bathimpact.com Opinion Emma Simmons opinion@bathimpact.com Features Siân Lewis features@bathimpact.com Science Professor Science science@bathimpact.com

Monday 22nd February 2010

bathimpact www.bathimpact.com

Student Centre environ- RAG Week 2010 kicks off • Organisers hope to raise more than last year mental plan outlined • Building designed to maximise energy efficiency

tubbs Rich, the Student Centre’s architects, have unveiled their environmental strategy for the building. This is a result of the mutual environmental concern of Stubbs Rich and the Students’ Union, which prioritised the issue in their meetings with the Bathbased contractors, who have “have developed an Environmental Strategy to make sure this building is as environmentally sustainable as possible”, as SU President Daniel O’Toole told impact. It is hoped the building can achieve a ‘Band B’ classification within the Energy Performance Certificate system, which ranks buildings in terms of environmental efficiency, and runs on a scale from

A to G, with A being the most efficient, and G the least. The document details how this is to be achieved with initiatives such as glass windows (which will provide “natural day lighting and passive solar gain”) and using concrete as a building material (to allow “the building to store heat which it absorbs during the day, to be released at night”). Since last year’s Student Opinion Survey, in which students voted the environment as one of their main concerns, the SU has been promoting environmental issues across campus, and are pressurising the university to improve their currently poor environmental and recycling record.

Entertainments Phil Bloomfield Alex Drake ents@bathimpact.com

• Begins on Saturday

Silent Disco, a Bierkeller night, an Auction of Promises as well as an array of other events and performances will form the backbone of this year’s RAG Week which kicks off on Saturday 27th February. The week will aim to raise as much money as possible for local charities and causes, in a bid to surpass last year’s total of £1,031.79 raised by students and staff on the Claverton Down campus, or even the £3,559.75 and £3,212 cashed in 2008 and 2007 respectively. As well as fundraising, the RAG committee, which has put hours of preparation into the annual event, hopes that the attractive line-up of events will raise awareness of issues and problems in the local community and further afield. “It’s great to see so many keen volunteers pitch in and organise events, mount a publicity campaign,

and raise valuable funds for charity all at once. I hope to see many old and new faces coming together to support RAG continue its muchappreciated fundraising activities.” Tom Davidson, a volunteer support worker, said. RAG Day is Wednesday of that week, on which there will be an arts performance at 8pm in the ALT and games on Parade throughout the afternoon. In addition to this, Bath’s Mayor, Colin Barrett, will be visiting the campus to admire the work RAG and the student body do. Students Hanna Wade and David Whiting are coordinating this year’s RAG Week, which promises to be an exciting couple of days, no matter how much change you can spare. For general enquiries about the event, contact Tom Davidson on 01225 38 5052 or the RAG Week Committee at ragweek@bathrag. com.

Sport Sean Lightbown Sam Foxman sport@bathimpact.com IT Officer/Treasurer David Kennaway online@bathimpact.com Chief Sub-Editor Katie Rocker subeditor@bathimpact.com Advertising Enquires Helen Freeman H.Freeman@bath.ac.uk 01225 386806 VP Communications Ben Cole SUcommunications@bath.ac.uk 01225 386679

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The opinions expressed in impact are not necessarily those of the bathimpact editors nor of the University of Bath Students’ Union. Whilst every effort student is made to ensure that the information STUDENT contained in this publication is correct m edia and accurate at the time of going to print, the publisher cannot accept any liability for information which is later altered or incorrect. bathimpact as a publication adheres to the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Conduct. Please contact them for any information.

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Three weeks begin at the same time SOS Prize• Fairtrade Fortnight • Living on a budget • Student Volunteering winners Week week announced Fairtrade fortnight begins today. A Mad Hatter’s Tea Party will be held on the parade this week during lunchtime. Throughout the week the price of all Fairtrade items in the SU shop will be reduced by 20 percent. Students wishing to get involved in the fortnight should contact Scarlett Seager at sudiversity@bath.ac.uk.

Today is the first day of Living on a Budget Week, which will feature a series of events including a ‘Shopping Basket Challenge’ on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Moneysaving advice is available at http:// twurl.cc/27ei, along with further information about the week’s events. VP Diversity Scarlett Seager said “I remember very easily how difficult it is living on a student budget. It’s important to ask for help as soon as you realise that you have a problem with your finances, the Student Information and Funding team... can really help you”.

Student Volunteering Week will begins on February 22nd. The event, held on campus for the tenth time this year, aims to inform people about volunteering opportunities, and includes talks by Susan Johnson and Severine Deneulin specifically for people interested in working in the developing world http:// www.bathstudent.com/sorted/.

The annual survey of students’ views on the University, Union, and student life, has finished. The results will be revealed soon; the winners of the accompanying prize draw are detailed below: £200 Summer Ball tickets £20 £20 £20 £10 £10 £10 £10 2 Flirt tickets 2 Flirt tickets 2 Flirt tickets 2 Flirt tickets 2 Flirt tickets

Wenjing Wang Sian James Richard Philpott Luke Sanderson Natalie Retallick Ciaran Crean Oliver Hebden Victoria Wright Suthirat Owlarn Anthony De Laiglesia Samuel Jimenez Indra Niedre Fiona Ang Samuel Spence

bathimpact

Monday 22nd February 2010

News

www.bathimpact.com

News in brief The AWARE centre has teamed up with BANES’ ‘stop smoking’ service to offer students the opportunity to have personal sessions with a trained ‘stop smoking’ advisor. During sessions the latest medication options are discussed and the advisor helps students identify suitable medical treatments, for example Nicotine Replacement Therapy or Champix. Individuals will be issued with relevant prescriptions that can be collected directly from the pharmacy or their GP. The sessions also help individuals to understand why they smoked, and learn relevant coping strategies that can help them to quit. The sessions can be arranged at a convenient time and location for you. For further information contact F.E.Beck@bath.ac.uk, or go to http://smokefree.nhs.uk. In memory of former Finance Office employee Joyce Friend, Dorothy House held a clothes exchange on campus on February 16th, in which members of staff donated clothes and bought those donated by their colleagues. The event aimed to raise money and awareness for the hospice. During the first two hours of the event, staff were invited to exchange good quality clothes with other staff members; for the rest of the event, the remaining items were put on sale. Those not sold were donated to Dorothy House. The novel approach was the result of the event’s organisers’ desire to change the way people donate to charity. The event was a pilot scheme solely for staff, though as its organisers considered it fairly successful, another Donate With Love event may take place in the future, incorporating students as well as staff, though there are no concrete plans yet.

Pharmacy Department welcomes Simon the sick robot • Robot programmed to mimic human illness • Responds to medication in lifelike way

harmacy students at the University of Bath this week welcomed a new colleague to their faculty, who will hopefully stick around longer than the customary four years it takes to earn a degree. The SimMan 3G, or simply “Simon” as he affectionately dubbed by the department, is a life-sized model that talks, breathes and reacts to medicines in the same way as a real

human, giving students a chance to practice their diagnostic skills and put theory into practice. “He’s amazingly life-like. He has a pulse, his pupils constrict when you shine a light in them and he also reacts to drugs in a similar way to a real person. If he has a reaction to a medicine, he might have a seizure, sweat or vomit,” Dr Denise Taylor, Senior Teaching Fellow in Clinical Pharmacy

told the University Press Office, adding that he provided students with a chance to practice examination skills in a safe environment. Simon’s arrival is part of a greater development program and comes soon after Vice-Chancellor Professor Glynis Breakwell opened a new state-of-the-art teaching suite which

£21,132

Cost of the dummy

simulates a real pharmacy. Students are now able to put textbook theories into practice by being assigned a set of fictitious patients to diagnose, treat and nurse back to health in their very own “pharmacy”. The new laboratory, which was financed by the ‘Wolfson Foundation’ and the University’s Alumni Fund, also includes six pharmacy consultation rooms, where students are filmed whilst role-playing encounters with patients. This gives students valuable feedback as to how well they communicate with patients. According to the department, the SimMan 3G is widely used for training doctors in medical school, but the University of Bath is one of the first pharmacy departments to own one.

Bath student to compete in Miss University

aths student and Bath Jets cheerleader Kate Rodger has reached the final of Miss University, a nationwide beauty pageant which aims to raise money for the Joshua Foundation, a charity which provides holidays and event tickets for children with terminal cancer. Ms Rodger will be one of nineteen students from British universities taking part in the event, which will take place in Oceana nightclub in Cardiff on March 1st, and will feature three rounds in which competitors pose on a catwalk in various outfits. The winner will receive a cash prize, trips to Australia and Finland and a chance to compete in the ‘Miss UniverseGB’ [sic] pageant in May this year. Ms Rodger told us “I’m really nervous about the final event, when I have time to think about it, as the fundraising is consuming most of my time. It’s quite

Sabb elections coming up • Nominations now open

ominations for Sabb positions are open from now until Tuesday March 9th. A weekend of campaigning will begin three days later, and voting will open on Monday 15th. There are six positions, each of which has different responsibilities within the Union. Any registered student can stand as a Sabb by registering themselves at http://www. bathstudent.com/elections.

• Any student can stand

Sabbs are responsible for representing the views and interests of students at the University, and are responsible for the day to day running of the Union. Current VP Communications Ben Cole told impact: “Being a Sabb at Bath has been the most worthwhile experience of my life so far.” Describing the role of Sabbs, Cole told us that “we work on all kinds of issues that affect students,

from timetabling arrangements to the availability of food on campus. It doesn’t matter how big or small the issue, Sabbs are always willing to help in any way they can.” Following a week of voting, the winners will be announced during Flirt! on March 19th. Students can question candidates in Elements on Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th at 1.15 pm.

Bath Upchuck is being held this Saturday on campus. The event, which is being run by Gravity Vomit, is based around circus skills, particularly juggling. Most of the day will consist of workshops and games in the Founders’ Hall, with a professional show in University Hall during the evening. For more information, see www.bathupchuck.co.uk. RAG’s annual ‘Fashion at Bath’ event will take place this year in the Assembly Rooms on March 17th. Tickets are now on sale for £20 (£12 for students), and can be bought from the event’s models, who will be intermittently on parade this week. The event is held in aid of Sue Ryder Care, and last year raised almost £2,500. RAG are seeking people to volunteer for wardrobe managing and compering. Anyone interested in these roles should email fashion@bathrag.com.

exhilarating having to do it all in just twenty eight days, and as the final date gets closer I’m getting more excited about it, and more worried that I won’t raise enough!” She is hoping to raise £1,000 through a sponsored 24 hour silence and cake sale, which will be held on campus. Those wishing to vote for Miss Rodger should text ‘catriona rodger’ to 81118 or call 09012 937950 on March 1st.

Festival on the Hill From March 10th to 19th, campus will host the Festival on the Hill. The annual event will feature students displaying various talents. It aims to “be a celebration of the global mix of students present at the University of Bath and will bring together students from all cultures to celebrate the diversity of the student population at the University.” More information is available at bathstudent.com. See page 27 for more details

The current Sabbatical team: for their reflections on the best thing about being a Sabb, see page 19.

Monday 22nd February 2010

News

www.bathimpact.com

Sri Lanka’s political crisis deepens • Opposition leader arrested

ollowing a Presidential election marred by violence and accusations that incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa used state resources to aid his campaign, a political crisis has broken out in Sri Lanka, triggered by the arrest of the defeated candidate, former army General Sarath Fonseka, on February 8th. The previous week his office had been raided, and fifteen of his staff arrested. Fonseka stands accused of conspiring to overthrow the government, and of releasing state secrets. He denies all accusations, and opposition groups claim he

• Parliament dissolved

has been mistreated in custody. The detention sparked protests outside the Supreme Court building in Colombo which left eight people injured. The court received a petition against his arrest on the 9th, arguing that a number

“

This is not an arrest. It is an abduction... [He was] dragged out and treated like an animal

”

Fonseka’s wife Anoma

of his human rights had been breached, including the right to equal protection of the law, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. The petition also claimed that Fonseka’s continued detention posed a threat to his life, because of the strong military presence in the hotel in which he was being held. In response to the crisis, President Rajapaksa dissolved parliament, and began preparations for a snap election. In the midst of the events, Gordon Weiss, the former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, claimed that up to forty thousand Tamil civilians had

been killed by government forces in the last stages of the civil war against the Tamil Tigers. General Fonseka was head of the army at the time, and Rajapaksa was President.

Estimate of civilian deaths during the civil war

Shortly before his arrest Fonseka promised to testify in front of a war crimes tribunal, saying “I am not going to save anyone who has committed war crimes..I am definitely going to reveal what I know, what I was told and what I heard.” Some suggest this may be the real reason he was arrested.

North Korea 200,000 Israel 1,000 Cuba

Iran 150

205

China 920 Myanmar

Ethiopia

2,100

150 Colombia 7,500

World news in brief amoussoukro, Ivory Coast: President Laurent Gbagbo has sacked the government and electoral commission ahead of elections which were originally scheduled for 2005, when Gbagbo’s term expired, but have since been scheduled and postponed six times. The commission stands accused of adding 429,000 people to the voting

roll before their identity had been checked. Opposition leaders have described the move as a ‘coup’, and stated that they no longer accept Gbagbo as the country’s leader. Ivory Coast’s last elections were held in 2000; in the intervening time, the country experienced a five-year civil war. San Jose, Costa Rica: Laura Chinchilla has been elected President of Costa Rica, the first woman to hold the position. In elections seen as free and fair, Ms Chinchilla won 46.7 percent of the votes. She campaigned on a platform of free-market policies and social conservatism, and has been outspoken in her opposition to gay marriage, abortion and separation of church and state. Abuja, Nigeria: Following the continued absence of President

Yar’Adua, his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, has become acting president. Immediately after assuming command, he removed the Justice Minister and ordered the prosecution of people involved in ‘election offenses’ in the recent elections in the south of the country. This was seen as an attempt to reassert political authority; the President’s absence has left the country in a ‘power vacuum’, according to commentators. Tehran, Iran: President Ahmadinejad’s government have announced plans to enrich uranium up to 20 percent purity, the maximum allowed under international law. Uranium is considered ‘weapons grade’ at levels at or above 90 percent purity, but the move has still sparked unrest among Western governments, which fear Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Celebrations held on February 11th to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution were marred by

Briefing - Sri Lankan history

40,000

Political prisoners by country

bathimpact

street protests against the regime, which were broken up by security forces. Kiev, Ukraine: Former President Viktor Yanukovych has been elected president of Ukraine, in elections widely seen as free and fair. Losing incumbent Yulia Tymoshenko has refused to concede defeat, and contested the result on grounds of fraud, but these claims, and her appeal, were rejected by the Central Election Commission. She has now begun a legal challenge

543BC: Vijaya becomes the first king of Sri Lanka, beginning a series of independent kingdoms which last 2,000 years 1505: Portuguese sailors arrive, and build a colony, but don’t seize power until 1591. 1658: Dutch settlers take control over the island, following a brief war with the Portuguese rulers 1796: The British seize power from the Dutch. 1942: Due to its status as a strategically important British territory, the island is bombed by Japanese planes. 1948: Ceylon granted independence from the British, following a largely peaceful protest movement. Stephen Senanayake becomes the country’s first prime minister, and, on his death, is succeeded by his son. 1971: the Marxist People’s Liberation Front stage an uprising which claims 10,000 lives and leads to six years of emergency rule. 1983: Ethnic divisions between the two main groups, Sinhalese and Tamils, develop into a civil war as separatist group the Tamil Tigers begin a violent uprising which lasts 26 years. 2009: a seven year peace process ends on May 17th, as the Tamil Tigers admit defeat. In the aftermath of the war, human rights groups claimed war crimes had been committed by both sides, and accused the military of extrajudicial killings.

to the decision. Tymoshenko came to power following Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, in which President Yanukovych was removed from power following an election which was allegedly rigged, and in which the losing candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, appeared to have been poisoned. Athens, Greece: the Greek government has revealed it is suffering from severe financial problems, with a budget deficit of 12.7 percent, four times the maximum allowed under EU rules, and a national debt greater than the size of their economy. News of the crisis raised fears over the future of the Euro, provoking the EU to promise financial support to Greece, the details of which have not, at the time of writing, been made public. In the midst of the crisis, the country faced a general strike in response to government reduction of spending and public sector salaries.

22 February- 7 MarCh www.BathStudent.com/entertainments

Mon. 22nd February Downtown @ Po Na Na 10pm - 2am Wed. 24th February Score 9:30pm - 2am Thu. 25th February Better Bus To Bristol 7pm - 3am Fri. 26th February Glow in the Snow @ flirt! 9:30pm - 3am Sat. 27th February Comeplay 10pm - 2am Mon. 1st March Bierkeller (Rag Week) 7.30pm (3 sittings) in Elements Downtown @ Po Na Na 10pm - 2am

Club N ights

Tues. 2nd March Silent Disco (Rag Week) 10pm-2am Wed. 3rd March Score 9:30pm - 2am Thu. 4th March Speed Dating (Rag Week) 8pm in Elements UV Party (Rag Week) 10pm - 2am in Elements Better Bus To Bristol 7pm - 3am Fri. 5th March Auction of Promises (Rag Week) 4pm in Elements Foam Party @ flirt! (Rag Week) 9:30pm - 3am Sat. 6th March Comeplay 10pm - 2am

live sports Wed. 24th February Inter Milan Vs Chelsea 7:45pm (Champions’ League) Fri. 26th February Wales Vs France 8pm (Six Nations) Sat. 27th February Italy Vs Scotland 1:30pm (Six Nations) Chelsea Vs Manchester City 1:30pm (Premier League) Wed. 3rd March England Vs Egypt (International Football) 7:30pm Sat. 6th March Man. City Vs Tottenham 12:30pm

University of Bath Students’ Union

Monday 22nd February 2010

Opinion

bathimpact www.bathimpact.com

Reflections on the modern male student

Lewis Brimblecombe argues that it’s about time women stopped lusting after laddish louts and gave the good guys a chance for a change

“

Even though I know they're no good for me, it's the risk I take for the chemistry, with the bad boys always catching my eye”, as Alexandra Burke sang. The age-old cliché that women love the guy who treats them like crap is one I find distasteful but pertinent for the purposes of this article. We have an intelligentsia of journalists, social critics and academics who argued that in the Noughties, man progressed; he shrugged off unsightly backhair and chauvinism in favour of modernity. Neologisms like guy-liner, metro-sexual and househusband were indicative of a Britain in which we had been forced to grow up. Yet here at the University Of Bath and on campuses across the country this is not what I see. The lad culture is all pervasive. We drink excessively, we mess women around, we laugh about it and then

we do it again. Of course, one would assume this would leave us out in the cold. That the confident, beautiful, educated women in every uni in the land would not stand for this. Men would be eternally frustrated

“How many of you

have slept with a guy who inevitabaly turns out to be a douche-bag?

”

by women who at every moment were challenging the ladocracy of drink-funnelling and oppressive sexualisation. Yet it is clear that this is not the case; we are in fact encouraged

in our actions by the very people who suffer the most from them. Women come to uni and they play men’s games. They let us spend hours playing Call of Duty mindlessly killing each other in online gaming rooms filled with angry prepubescents, then once “guy time” is over you happily ape our drinking habits till you find yourselves brought down to our idiotic levels. How many women have suffered from “lad banter”? How many of you have slept with a guy who inevitably turns out to be an utter douche-bag the next day; completely devoid of any semblance of a three-dimensional personality, let alone any notion of romance? Why is it these men continue to attract gorgeous women? I am left with the conclusion that there is pretty much no rational reason to follow any path other than one of cynical self absorption and indifference.

“Men are simple

creatures, based around reaction and impulse

”

For your own sakes, I would ask women of the world to unite, because at the moment the misogynists have you by the metaphorical cojones. Machismo never left and right now it’s looking oiled up and without a hint of postmodern irony. Men are simple creatures, based around reaction and impulse; unless we are discouraged, we will only continue to see singlehood not as voyage of individual personal discovery, but as a license for selfish debauchery. This is not a cry for prudishness

Alexandra Burke: this article could teach her a thing or two or even for restraint, I would simply hope to challenge the women of the University Of Bath to be more than accessories to our narcissism; demand more, because you deserve more.

Wake up to rape

Tim Leigh asks whether attitudes to rape have changed in modern society does this mean it is rape? Most likely not, provided the drink is not spiked. Does this mean that if you have to carry the girl back to your bed there is no problem? I would argue, and I am sure I am not alone in my thinking, that this could potentially be rape. If the girl is not in control of her faculties, how can she consent? Therefore, the question seems to be one of degrees. This takes us to the idea of reasonable belief in consent. According to the Sexual Offences Bill, a rape has been committed if the victim is asleep or otherwise unconscious at the time of the act, among other reasons. Based on a recent survey commissioned by Haven, a charity offering support for victims of rape, one third of women believe

“

That’s rapey... (name removed), he tried to rape me

”

unnamed fresher the victim of rape should assume some responsibility if they dressed provocatively or accepted the offer of a nightcap. While in this day and age, to the dismay of some, it is not

uncommon to see women inebriated in public, or wearing short skirts, the idea that this lessens their right not to be forced to have sex seems to be deeply flawed. To be raped, it is

Percentage of rape allegations made against someone known to the victim

commonly accepted, is one of the most horrific experiences a person can be subjected to. The fact that, according to Home Office statistics from 2001, only six percent of rape allegations result in a conviction is a sincerely horrifying statistic. Contrary to popular belief, the idea of the stranger in the dark alley is not how people get raped. Statistics from the charity Rape Crisis state that 80 percent of people who make an allegation of rape make it against a person known to them. Often, this is more than a person they met in a bar, it is somebody they have had a relationship with. Perhaps the most shocking statistic of all is that spousal rape, whereby a married person is forced to have sex against their will, only became a criminal offence in England and Wales in 1991. That means, for the generation before ours, being married

meant waiving your right to refuse sex with your partner. This is absolutely abhorrent, and the fact that it is no longer the case correct in every way. The ambiguity towards rape that seems to be increasing in society seems to represent the opposite of the progress that was made. The attitude of society as a whole must be reflected in the criminal justice system. A 2007 report into the way rape allegations are handled was intensely critical of the attitude of police officers. This

insensitivity makes it less likely that allegations even make it to court. If it does make it to court, given people are convicted by a jury of their peers, societal attitudes to rape must have an impact. All I ask is that you at least consider these points if you ever see a hammered girl being shepherded out of the door of a party or if an acquaintance regales you with an “amusing” anecdote; this couldn’t be further from a laughing matter.

Flickr

his article first took shape in my mind when I was regaled with a fairly baffling anecdote regarding a couple of University of Bath students. A female fresher, who shall remain nameless, was sitting outside Parade with an acquaintance of mine, when a male walked past. After waving to the random male, she turned and uttered the immortal line “That’s rapey... (name removed), he tried to rape me”, then calmly returned to her drink. This anecdote led to a discussion between my acquaintance and I as to how common an occurrence rape might be in campus life, and how people react to it. This was not about a little bit of inappropriate grinding on the dance floor; the guy in the anecdote was apparently quite determined to take the girl back to his house, and only the actions of a concerned friend prevented this from happening. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that many males at university know of somebody who has taken a girl home from a party who may have not been in full control of their faculties. The moot point here is whether this counts as rape. If you are taking any girl home after a university party, there is a fair chance that she will have imbibed some alcohol at some point in the evening. If she has had one drink,

How drunk is too drunk?

bathimpact

Monday 22nd February 2010

Opinion

www.bathimpact.com

So, Barclays, what are you giving up for lent? David James Opinion Contributor

hoosing what to give up for Lent this week has proven a challenge to say the least. For girls the answer is simple. You can go with one of the run-of-the-mill regulars like chocolate, dairy and the classic ‘I promise to give up shopping’. Smart alecs will always say they are ‘giving up giving up stuff’ and to those freshers aiming to give up late night drinking, who are you kidding? Even the Church of England has voiced their opinion and come up with a ‘technology fast’, urging us to give up our iPods in order to save the planet as well as our souls. However, this may prove tricky, as I have sat through many a sermon and believe me, an iPod is a necessity. So the problem still stands and, as ever, the government has provided a solution. Last week Barclays Bank announced profits of £11.2 billion and said it would dish out a generous £2.7 billion as a reward to its hard-working employees. But what exactly is this a reward for?

Inflation has had the highest monthly increase on record. The national debt is now so great that the Government is putting the squeeze on funding to universities - which means higher fees for students. Even the Dow Jones share index is looking so ugly and battered they are considering changing its first name to Vinnie. Following the Barclays press release, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, said that these profits demonstrated that there was ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for UK economy. However it seems this was just a candle, as major banks such as Lloyds are still suffering, with losses to the tune of £10.8 billion. Yet Barclays borrowed its billions from the Middle East and rejected taxpayers’ money, so who are we to criticise its bonus structure when, unlike RBS or HBOS, we don’t own it? Well Barclays, as well as other major banks, contributed significantly to the financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn. It reduced lending to companies and small businesses, leaving them starved of

cash and forcing them to make their own workers redundant - which in turn has left many students unable to find jobs after their graduation. It also stopped selling secured mortgages in the wake of the crisis, causing house prices to tumble and leaving home-owners who already had mortgages in huge debt. So for students in particular, the actions of banks like Barclays has left us with the prospect of £5000 tuition fees and an 8 percent loss in the number of job opportunities when we graduate. So weighing up the arguments, should the public rightly receive this £2.7bn bonus, or should the Barclays bankers get it in return for whatever it is that they do - which it seems is just guessing whether the graphs on their many computer screens will go up or down. However, since I can’t give up bankers’ bonuses for lent this year, I think I’ll give up the people who allowed them. The government. So for the next 40 days and 40 nights, I might just give up voting and hope Mr Brown calls an election next week.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Opinion

bathimpact www.bathimpact.com

The importance of being sporty Nick Carraway Opinion Contributor

ngagement in and esteem for sports, whether on a competitive level or as a recreational pastime, are things that often seem to be heavily lacking, both in individuals and society as a whole. Many people fail to get as much exercise as they should. An increasing number of schools are refusing to recognise ‘winners’ or achievement in sports - some even take the extreme step of ceasing to hold events such as Sports Day altogether. Attitudes like this are baffling considering the enormous benefits that societies and individual lifestyles rich in physical activity can enjoy, and the

highly negative impact that stifling sports has. To get it out of the way early, perhaps the most obvious benefit sport brings is that it improves the health of those who play regularly. With 2/3 of adults and 1/3 of children in the UK classed as overweight or obese, there is clearly a greater need now more than ever for people to reflect on their lifestyle, and wonder whether they could stand to add some sort of activity to it. Apart from anything else, the physical and mental effects of obesity can have a vast, negative impact upon someone’s life, in stark contrast to the positive effects that physical activity brings.

Whilst poor diet is a factor, simply following the standard guidelines and engaging in 30 minutes of activity a day can have a dramatic effect on a previously sedentary individual - apart from anything else, it gives all those calories you’re taking in somewhere to

2/3

Proportion of UK adults classed as overweight or obese

make themselves useful. There are other more serious problems that disengagement from sport can result in as well, particularly amongst age groups still in education (including you, good reader). A strong sporting culture in any place of education is a great thing for the school/ university community as a whole, as it gives a it a source of pride and an area in which it can excel, as well as somewhere that the community can come together and unite in support of their team. On an individual level, there is also the issue that to rob some people of sporting success leaves them little else to cherish and little reason to feel good about themselves (see Matza’s study on delinquency, in which he cites crime as a replacement for the thrills and status that would otherwise be gained on a sports pitch). My old school is one of the many that unfortunately falls into the cat-

egory of ‘apathetic’ when it comes to sports: I saw many home matches played in front of crowds smaller than 20, and sports results were treated as a mild curiosity by teachers, being given barely more significance than an A4 piece of paper on the Sports department’s notice board. This can destroy the sense of achievement that those engaged in sports can feel following a success (imagine if your family shrugged and returned to whatever they were doing after you announced that you had gained a First), and devalues participation in sport to the extent that even playing casually can feel pointless. This then destroys motivation to participate (after all, who wants

to put that much effort into something worthless?) and sport can soon become a sideline activity, granted little importance as a part of people’s lives. Whilst the physical benefits of encouraging people to engage in sport are undeniably enormous, the very culture surrounding sport is something which is itself to be highly prized. This is why sports cannot be allowed to be marginalised and devalued throughout educational establishments, as bringing people up with no regard for sport will ultimately uproot sport from its place in society as a whole, damaging not only national health but also national culture, esteem and community.

Have some manners!

An anonymous student speaks out about a particularly rude lecturer

hen going about my day at University I always try to be polite to my fellow students, to staff in the shops and to lecturers. I mean, let’s face it, most people at the University have enough to be worrying about without having to deal with rudeness as well. Hence I was rather shocked to receive a very aggressive email from a lecturer last week. It was sent to all the students enrolled on one of his modules (as well as all Politics with Economics students) as something of a warning. Whilst most lecturers are keen to make their subject appealing and actually want to have some students in their class, it seems that this email was sent with the intention of ‘scaring off’ many of the students considering taking his unit. Firstly, he draws attention to the lecture’s 8:15 start time and states that ‘No latecomers will be tolerated, if you are not in the lecture room at 8:15 am you will not be allowed in the room and anyone attempting to enter will be asked to leave. This will be rigorously enforced to prevent continuous disturbance of the lecture by students arriving late for no reason other than

their inability and/or unwillingness to make an effort to attend on time’. He goes on to state that he knows that the buses ‘are late more often than not and unreliable (after all this is England)’. Is this angry tone really necessary? Personally, I hate lateness and I think that it is incredibly rude when the same students stroll in at half past the hour every week and disrupt the lecture. However, sometimes lateness is unavoidable, and it is incredibly unfair to say that every student arriving at 8:20 rather than 8:15 has to miss the entire lecture. Buses break down, traffic jams occur

and roads get closed; essentially there are things beyond the control of the student that can make them late for a lecture. This is especially true for 8:15 lectures when, unless you leave home at 6am every morning on the off chance that something will slow your journey down, then there is the possibility that you will be held up and arrive late. Similarly I find his snide ‘this is England after all’ comment incredibly offensive; by the sounds of his email he doesn’t much like England and doesn’t much like students, therefore I find it quite odd that he has chosen to be a lecturer at an English

university… As his obnoxious email continues he informs his students that the average mark has, in the past, often been below 60 percent and that ‘students mainly concerned about their marks should reconsider whether they want to take this unit’. ‘Students mainly concerned about their marks’?? Is it a bad thing to be concerned about your marks? I think that every hardworking student at this University is probably ‘mainly concerned about their marks’, and I for one would be loath to take this module knowing that the lecturer did not expect the average mark of his class to be above 60 percent and who nonchalantly states that there also tends to be a ‘significant number of fails’. I think that perhaps he should consider the quality of his teaching if he is not expecting to be able to get all the students to pass and for the average to be above 60 percent. He launches into another rant about students from different degree programmes, forbidding Politics with Economics students and ‘with management’/‘with business’ degree students from taking the course ‘under any circumstances’ and promis-

ing to ignore any emails from them. He then jollily rounds off his email by stating that ‘any student objecting to any of the above should change their choice of unit and take a unit that is more suitable to their degree of work

“

Students mainly concerned about their marks should reconsider whether they want to take this unit

”

commitment’. Personally, I am a very committed student and am determined to do well in my degree and that would be exactly why I would not take this unit or any other unit taught by this lecturer. However I can happily say that given the aggressiveness of this email I would think that this lecturer should have no problem with students turning up late to his class, I think that instead he should be concerned about them not turning up at all.

bathimpact

Monday 22nd February 2010

Opinion

www.bathimpact.com

Write for bathimpact... Now! Emma Simmons Opinion Editor opinion@bathimpact.com

o, how many students at this University enjoy writing? How many have considered a career in journalism? And, how many are members of impact? Well, I only know the answer to the final question; impact has 63 members. That is 63 out of a University population of about 13,000. During my time at university I have always been surprised at how little interest students seem to take in contributing to their newspaper. There are so many reasons to write for your student newspaper and yet every week the small team

of editors has to work increasingly hard to get enough content to fill their sections. However, I do not want this article to turn into a rant about how bad it is that people do not contribute to impact. Doing that would probably be somewhat self-defeating since very few of you would bother to continue reading this and those of you who did would probably read it and think ‘there’s no chance that I’m going to write for that miserable cow’. What I actually want to do is share with you why I think contributing to impact is a great thing to do. Firstly I think that a lot of students don’t realise how easy it is to contribute to impact. You can simply write an article and email it in (see the email addresses inside the front page). That’s how effortless it is. You can email in one article and then never have anything to do with impact again, or you can come to meetings every week, help with proof-reading and laying up and contribute articles to every issue (or, of course, you can have any level of involvement in between). So, reason number one to write for impact: it’s easy!

Secondly, the newspaper is at its best when its content is varied. You can write about science, travel, politics, your club or society, fashion, sport or anything else. If there’s something you’re interested in, whether it is related to your degree or not, then impact offers a great platform for sharing your view. Why not express your opinion on the great/terrible food available on campus? Or write an article telling the rest of the University why you think BBAs don’t deserve the stick? How about telling people about the great things that your club or society has achieved (perhaps you have had a fundraising event or maybe you could write a match report about your team’s latest victory)? Reason number two to write for impact: you can get your view/story heard. Thirdly, believe it or not, writing for impact can actually be fun. We all have lots of work to do that isn’t necessarily that enjoyable; impact, on the other hand, offers you a chance to write about something that you actually want to write about. And, when you see your article in print it can actually be quite a nice moment. Reason number

three to write for impact: it’s fun! Finally, writing for your student newspaper looks good on your CV. This is not just the case for budding journalists either (although budding journalists should definitely get involved!). There are a variety of careers that require you to be able to communicate your point coherently and to construct arguments, and contributing to impact will illustrate that you have these skills. Reason four to write for im-

pact: your CV will benefit! I strongly believe that having a newspaper is an important part of university life, and since there are loads of reasons to write for impact (only a few of which I have included in this article), I really think more people should do it. It is one of the most worthwhile things that you can do whilst at university, so I really do urge you to get involved and write something. You’ll be helping the newspaper and helping yourself.

FOR JUST ONE ARTICLE YOU CAN SAVE A JOURNALIST

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Monday 22nd February 2010

Features

www.bathimpact.com

The secret diary of a

“

SEXAHOLIC

Sploshing is the act of getting smothered in foods of various textures and temperatures for sexual pleasure.

Via Donna Jenkins and Anni Kasari’s naughty minds.

Splish splash splosh...

lowly ease your fingers into the trifle. Feel the softly whipped cream caress your skin and the tantalising change of the solid jelly and the moist sponge. Your body is trembling with excitement and desire as you lift the bowl brimmed with pleasure and thrust it against your body. Welcome to the wonderfully naughty world of Sploshing. Sploshing is the latest bedroom

Horoscopes Madame Soufflé mme.souffle@bathimpact.com

craze, brought to the mainstream by ITV’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl (the Sexperts just cannot get enough of that particular episode...). According to The Sexperts’ Dating Dictionary, Sploshing is the act of getting smothered in foods of various textures and temperatures for sexual pleasure. Anything goes; rice pudding, apple crumble or even baked beans. If you’re a dab hand in the kitchen, why not whip out your apron and prepare the delicacies yourself? It doesn’t all have to be edible, though - when the Sploshing has reached its climax, move onto the bathroom to make the most of those saucy shower gels and the leftover conditioner! The Sexperts recommend The Extra Strong Original Source Mint Shower Gel, which according to our guinea pigs ”really makes your balls tingle”! If you’re keen to introduce new ingredients to



reetings from the heavens my star children. I am Madame Soufflé and I will traverse the astral planes in or-

der to guide you through the year. Fear not; for Madame Souffle will shepherd you through the darkest patches. Remember, these predictions do not apply if you have recently suffered a haemorrhage.

Capricorn (22 December-20 January): Don’t be afraid to show your true feelings, unless they involve ritualistic debasement of strangers.

down a little too well; you’ll be stamped to death. The same thing will happen with your Jim Davidson impression.

Aquarius (21 January-19 February): Your friends must be punished for being involved in corruption: a little light spanking should do the trick.

Leo (23 July-22 August): This week you’ll be lucky in love wherever you go, so avoid farms.

Pisces (20 February-20 March): If you’re holding a party, either invite Karl Woodgett or Rodney King, but definitely not both. Aries (21 March-20 April): In the wise words of Nietzsche, “distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is strong...” Taurus (21 April-21 May): This week’s theme: Beat It. Next Week’s: Baby Got Back. The week after: Community Service Order. Gemini (22 May-21 June): This week’s new moon brings passion into your life, and takes your stereo in exchange. Cancer (22 June-22 July): This week, your insect impression will go

Virgo (23 August-21 September): “The early bird catches the worm” is not a suitable excuse for premature ejaculation, as in that context it makes literally no sense. Libra (22 September-22 October): Are you having money troubles? How could I possibly have known unless I am a genuine psychic? Has anyone reading recently lost someone called Dave, Tom, Joe or Dan? He says hi. Scorpio (23 October-21 November): Don’t let the little things in life bother you: remember, the Sex Offenders’ Register is only a piece of paper. Sagittarius (22 November21 December): You know that chocolate bar you ate yesterday? You don’t want to know where it had been.

your sex life but haven’t got enough plastic sheets to protect your kitchen, there’s nothing stopping you from testing the waters step by step. Just imagine what you could do with the contents of your veg box: cucumbers, avocadoes, butternut squash - who said that the 5-a-day had to be orally consumed? We’ve discovered that some of

It quickly became clear that sex with Mr. Blobby was a bad idea

”

you are already ahead of the game and have discovered the world of bedroom gastronomy. However, just like in a restaurant your order can go wrong, this bedroom art also has its setbacks as a fiery fourth-year-student recently discovered: “One Sunday afternoon my boyfriend and I lay down to rest after preparing a hot Thai curry with all the trimmings. It wasn’t long before we started getting it on, and soon I could feel his hands finding their way to my puckered back door. After the initial pleasure, I felt a strange burning sensation inside me and suddenly it dawned on me that he hadn’t washed his hands after chopping the chili! I spent the rest of the evening sat in a bowl of Greek yoghurt to soothe the pain.” Sex doesn’t have to be serious and Sploshing is a great way of boosting the fun factor in your bedroom. Next time you pop into Sainsbury’s, don’t be afraid to let the Splosher inside you sneak a few luxuries into the trolley!

THE SPLOSHER’S SHOPPING LIST

- Petits Filous - Gü Hot Choc Melting Middle Puds (even their slogan is ”Chocolate Extremists With a Dollop of Fun”) - Black forest gateau - Ice lollies - Spaghetti hoops (Ed: Nice) - Guacamole - Olive oil

And what to leave out of the basket: -

Fish fingers Frankfurters Stilton Branston Pickle Marmite Gherkins

The Chronicles of Siânia

Episode 10: In which I consider the merits of a nervous breakdown

Siân Anna Lewis Features Editor features@bathimpact.com

am a stressed out impact bunny, my darling readers. People who think students have it easy (“Butlins with books” my father kindly calls my efforts at academia) are WRONG wrong wrong wrong about the worry and activity levels involved in this further education malarkey. The public seems to think that students live a life of vaguely disgusting lackadaisicalness, sleeping until noon, maybe watching a bit of Dave Ja Vu over a Sainsburys Basics medley of cheap nosh, possibly wandering up to campus twice a week to sleep in the back of a lecture room and then miraculously perking up (via an intravenous drip of Red Bull) and going down the local for a pint. While this sounds to me like a bit of a heavenly mecca, it ain’t

necessarily so. In fact it’s just not the way it works. I don’t know anyone both vaguely sociable and also keen to at least get a result somewhere around a 2:1 who doesnt have a pretty manic workload anyway, and as most of us sorry excuses for final years are experiencing the joys of trying to not fail ridiculously badly, manage to see our friends every now and again (passing like ships in the night on the way to the bathroom does not count), possibly hold down a functional amorous relationship with a consenting adult and maybe, just maybe being an active part of a society, we know this difficult balance well. You can forget having a part-time job. After about one week of my last annum as an undergraduate, I quit the absurdly perfumed tat emporium that is Lush Fresh Cosmetics (don’t give them your money, children, they may not test on animals but they worked me and lots of poor, sweet and insufferably thick Bath Spa girls to death, it’s practically child labour). I just didn’t have time to sell soap when there were Italian translations to do and, um, surf clubs to get drunk with. And of course I haven’t even started on the fact that if it’s second semester and you haven’t got a job offer yet (which most of us don’t. If you do, stop telling me all about

your fabulous future and ruining my sad employment-barren life, thanks muchly), you need to spend pretty much every spare afternoon getting rejected by graduate employers and wallowing in self-pity while contemplating the years to come in which you will be working for Aldi (my advice, don’t. Go and live in a shack). I look back at my first year, in which every night meant going out (except Drunk Tuesdays which meant getting merry at home) and every day was populated by a few lectures and then a solid four hours trying to beat my mate Matt’s scores at Minesweeper. I had no responsibility. I didn’t have to do more than barely pass exams. First year is a beautiful, beautiful joke three years later when it’s four in the morning and you want to cry because 1. you’re so high on caffeine your brain is shaking and 2. you have written five of the 4000 words on Mussolini due in at 9am. You’ve just got to work through it and reassure yourself that soon you’ll be an adult with a proper job and this will all be a lovely memory. Final year is a bit of a crap deal, but that’s the way that, as impact’s grandiose and ever-entertaining Editor in Chief would put it, the metaphorically-shit cookie crumbles.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Features

www.bathimpact.com

Food For Thought

Back with a bang in the second semester, our lovely resident foodies Ellie and Charlotte continue to delight: by dishing up classic Italian cannelloni and visiting the mouth-watering Martini for a taste of la bella vita. Buon appetito, ragazzi!

The Italian Issue By Elinor Huggett and Charlotte McCulloch

Martini Ristorante - Review

henever I have walked past this restaurant (located on George street, opposite Moles) I have been sorely tempted to cancel all my plans and pop in, due to the delicious smells that are wafted out onto the street. Needless to say, I was looking forward to my visit and thanks to Adam’s time keeping skills, was suitably ravenous. Conversely, my review is actually rather mixed. I had phoned up prior to arriving (a rare attempt at organisation on my part) to ensure that no reservation was required, and was promptly assured that it was done on a first come, first serve basis. This was not quite true and 50 minutes later, after being jostled and herded around like cattle along with others waiting for tables, we were finally shown to a table by a rather stressed Italian manager. So my first piece of advice is; reserve a table, or bring a fold up chair. The rest of the waiting staff, who didn’t have small person syndrome, were helpful and smiling and as usual, I judged them by whether our water was kept topped up. (A total of four refills) Once we were actually inside,

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the atmosphere was relaxed and despite most people dressing up, there was a lot of screaming, laughing and chatting, along with a ridiculous number of renditions of “Happy Birthday” courtesy of the waiters. To my disappointment, they did not continue on to other stereotypical Italian classics such

Those expecting luxury beware: this is a pleasant but distinctly average Italian as: “the Cornetto advert”, “Shaddup You Face” or “Amore”. My second piece of advice is therefore; go on any night other than a Saturday. The menu was relatively varied and contained a plethora of typical Italian staples, but there was also a smattering of slightly more original recipes; a refreshing change from the normal multitude of pasta and pizza dishes; no bolognaise or pepperoni pizza in sight! There was also a fairly extensive specials menu, all of which sounded fantastic. My co-diner and I decided to go for the same starter, “Martini prawns”, with a Marie Rose sauce,

avocado, mixed leaf salad and although un-announced on the menu, Luigi (the chef), decided to add peppers. My absolute loathing for peppers transcends normality and even thinking about them makes me queasy. Therefore that was my starter ruined. Having said that, the prawns were excellent. Adam assured me it was all very nice, but neither of us could detect the martini in the dressing as described on the menu. For a main course Adam chose the pesto linguine with chicken and I decided to go for one of the specials, which was prawn and courgette risotto. Both were nicely presented and rather tasty, and did the trick of filling us up, but we both concurred that the meals weren’t quite worth the 50 minute wait! Also I got little prawns in my risotto, not king prawns. For dessert, Adam chose sorbets and I decided to have a banana split, which brought back some childhood memories. These were both very nice and flavoursome and mine balanced out the pepperfull starter. Overall, I enjoyed the experience, but was a little disappointed that the restaurant did not live up to the hype and felt that 50 minutes to an hour is a bit of an exaggerated waiting time. The prices were typical of Bath and what we expected, not quite aimed at students though. I must admit I had prepared myself for a gastronomic extravaganza, ‘Lady and the Tramp’ style, but alas, the restaurant appeared, as Adam put it, “pleasant but distinctly average for an Italian”. Nevertheless, it is worth a visit even just for the exciting cocktails (very colourful!), which I couldn’t quite stomach due to two glasses of rosé before leaving.

Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni

o, Italian. A nice easy theme this time, due to a failure of imagination induced by a severe lack of sleep in combination with far too much mathematics. I considered giving you a nice basic lasagne recipe, but they sell lasagne in Parade Bar, and I for one have sampled their menu (at least) one too many times over the past few weeks. So, instead I have chosen a similar, but (ever so) slightly less standard recipe: spinach and ricotta cannelloni. Of course, the ‘real men’ among you may prefer a meatier version, in which case you could replace the spinach and ricotta with a bolognese. For once the meaty version may not actually be much dearer: ricotta and fresh spinach don’t come cheap! However this recipe is worth it - the ratio of effort put in to impressiveness of output is very favourable. First of all, prepare the filling by mashing up the spinach with the ricotta cheese and nutmeg in a big bowl. This is quite satisfying, in a messy kind of way, so maybe not quite so enjoyable for the clean freaks among you. Next, soften the onion for 15 minutes or so in a large frying pan, and then add the tomatoes and basil to make a very basic tomato sauce (this is also a classic when served with some spaghetti and grated parmesan). Now for the trickiest bit (I did

warn you it was simple). Spoon some of the filling onto each of the lasagne sheets and roll up. Each sheet should end up being about the size of your average sausage (I appreciate that sausages come in all shapes and sizes, but no rude jokes, please). Obviously this is much easier with fresh pasta, so I really would recommend the extra expenditure: ignore my advice and you will just end up wasting a lot of time and effort! Finally, place all the stuffed pasta into a baking dish, and pour the tomato sauce over the top (it should have simmered for a while as you were stuffing the pasta). Grate some parmesan (or basics cheddar) over the top, and stick in a hot oven (about 200 degrees) for 20 minutes or so, until the top is nice and browned. Serve with a green salad and a well deserved glass of red wine. Yum.

Ingredients: 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 tin of chopped tomatoes Pinch of basil Bag of fresh spinach or about half a bag frozen (needs to be defrosted before use, though) Tub of ricotta cheese Fresh lasagne sheets Grated parmesan Fresh nutmeg

Looking for a placement? Don’t go East, go Middle East David James Features Contributor ubai. Whilst many think this Middle Eastern emirate is now flat-out-broke, I can tell you from a recent trip over there that it is anything but, and could potentially be the perfect location for a work placement. But why work in the Gulf? Well there are the bog-standard ‘experience a foreign culture’ and ‘better weather’ arguments, but another advantage is that because UAE (United Arab Emirates) traditions dictate it, there is no income tax at all. Furthermore the recent woes and continual construction of houses and high-rise apartments have meant property prices have fallen

by over 40 percent and become more than affordable. Yet the signs of recession stop there and Dubai residents enjoy a very affluent style of living. The Burj Al Arab, the infamous sailshaped hotel, employs eight (yes

It couldn’t be a better time to be a graduate working in Dubai that’s eight) staff for every one room. The Dubai Mall, attached to the world’s tallest tower - the Burj Khalifa, manages to make London’s Bond St. look like Moorland Rd, and islands on the ‘The World’, the archipelago of 300

man-made islands built off the coast, have recently sold for over $250 million USD (£159 million) each. It couldn’t be a better time to be a graduate working in Dubai but don’t think it just offers work in finance. Vast construction projects, such as Dubai land - a theme park that promises to be twice the size of Disney’s resort in Florida, call for engineers and architects, oil projects call for chemical specialists and the booming tourist industry is in constant need of linguists. But what about the strict laws they impose? Well it may be illegal to have sex on a beach but I’m sure if you were caught in the middle of Blackpool Sands with your trou-

sers down you’d be locked up too. In fact the laws are not too strict at all; the only slightly worrying one is that bankruptcy in Dubai is illegal and punishable by years in jail, so those with shopaholic tendencies and an over-inflated overdraft

may want to steer clear. So that’s why I am going to be looking for placements in Dubai next year, to enjoy some sun, experience cosmopolitan city living... Oh, and make a fast (taxfree) buck.

bathimpact www.bathimpact.com

Turning on a technology idiot Josie Cox Deputy Editor deputy@bathimpact.com

hese days it’s hard to determine what changes faster: trends or technology. I suppose it’s a bit of a chicken and egg question, but either way I’m sure that by the time most of us have figured out how to turn on our new iPhones, the superfluous gadget is all but a remnant of the past for small minority of the population that are “technology geeks”. I, for one, am a slow starter. As long as it does what I want it to do, doesn’t cost or hurt me or anyone around me, I’m happy to use it. My phone sends texts and allows me to call people, the camera works adequately and caters to my desires to perform impromptu paparazzi action, but I don’t even dare to explore any of the more trivial functions. For all I know WAP could stand for “What a Pain”. One new gadget (which some of you would probably not even describe as “new” anymore) is the ebook. Granted, I was one of those who swooned about the “smell of old books” when I first heard about it, but I’ve gradually taken a liking to what the Oxford English

Dictionary (pagey version) describes as “an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a personal computer or handheld device designed specifically for this purpose.” E-books and their readers have

£80 million

UK ebook market, 2008

a number of advantages, ranging from mobility, to ecological sustainability, availability and storage, but my biggest personal plus is that reading an e-book makes it very hard for anyone to know what you’re reading. In future, you will not be judged by the cute guy sitting next to you on the bus, who previously took one look at your autobiography of Jordan before crossing your name of his list. Your boss won’t reconsider his appraisal if he finds a copy of “Working life for dummies” lying on your desk, and your mum won’t ask you who Belle de Jour is if you happen to leave your source of saucy entertainment next to the bog. For

1,500 Number of books Amazon’s Kindle reader can hold

all they know you could be reading the complete works of Victor Hugo in Latin. The e-book reader is sleek, suave and practical, and with an increasing number of paper and hardbacks now available in electronic format, there seems no reason not to start porking up the piggy bank to scratch together the few hundred quid necessary to invest. Just make sure you ask the sales rep where the ‘on’ button is. It could make life easier.

Opinion - five books not to be seen with Hitler: Mein Kampf – Filled with his optimistic musings on life, including a heartfelt plea for peace and love: “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” Piers ‘Morgan’ Moron: Don’t you know who I am? – We know who he is; the man who was cruelly fired from the Mirror for printing massive lies on the front page, and once sent some journalists to dig dirt on Ian Hislop, one of whom asked Hislop’s vicar whether he’d “said anything good in confession”. Katie Price: Crystal – A novel not written by someone famous for undergoing major surgery despite being perfectly healthy – should be great.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Anything by David Icke - A lone voice of reason in our increasingly paranoid society, Icke reassures those prone to nervousness with the news that there’s no need to panic, as lizards from another dimension control the world, most of whom are satanic paedophiles.

Jacques Derrida: The Ends of Man – The ever-comprehensible philosopher describes some of his least tautological theories for a lay audience: “The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.”

Features

The interesting Mr Berlusconi Georgina Cotton Features Contributor

he year 2010. For British politics this means a whole lot of media hype in the run up to the long-awaited general election: a chance for the nation to decide whether or not Gordon Brown succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of his people after his all-revealing, population-appealing interview on Sunday evening with Piers Morgan (for your information, the PM himself has to share a toilet with over 200 people…). Across the Channel and a few

tention of distracting the population from the numerous charges of corruption (which are all too often dropped), and accusations of Mafia association. On becoming Prime Minister back in 1992 he immediately – and dubiously – changed the law to ensure that he, along with his friends, would be untouchable to magistrates and any investigations surrounding them. Since his rise to political power, Berlusconi’s politics have tended to sit on the backburner. Previous to his career as a politician he was famous for being the richest man in Italy, owning

of his dazzlingly white teeth and broke his nose, his leadership was further put into question. Nonetheless, true to form he got back up and on with the job (albeit after a quick fix of plastic surgery). For many others, especially foreigners, he takes some getting used to. The Queen expressed her distaste at the volume at which he speaks and Obama was declared a friend of Italy because he is, as Berlusconi tactfully put it, ‘very tanned’. On the other hand, for those of us back in prim, proper and very pc Middle England, however ‘undemocratic’ his ways and however much you disagree with previous comments and actions, there is no denying that a bit of character makes politics a whole lot more interesting. Maybe Cameron and Brown could learn a thing or two…

Analysis - seven of the worst gaffes 1995, Prince Philip: asked a Scottish driving instructor: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?” sunny shores further south however, the world waits in anticipation to see just what moves Silvio Berlusconi, Italian PM, pulls this year to get into the headlines. And we can be almost certain that it will have nothing to do with the state of the economy. What you have to understand about Italian politics is that, often, it’s not actually about politics. Instead we hear about Berlusconi’s frequent attempts to publicise the beautiful women Italy produces, exemplified by the recent European elections. Berlusconi was heavily criticised for his choice of candidates to represent his Freedom Party; not only were they young and attractive, but they had very little political experience. Barbara Matera, whose CV includes: actress, TV announcer and former Miss Italy contestant, was the only one of the candidates to make the final list. Very relevant, I think you’d agree. To understand Mr Berlusconi’s ‘appreciation’ of such female specimens, one need only switch on the

£4.3 billion

Berlusconi’s estimated wealth

television. RAI, the Italian Statecontrolled channels and Mediaset (of which Berlusconi owns 54 percent) between them comprise 90 percent of Italian television channels. Hardly notorious for their tall stature, male presenters are dwarfed by leggy, 6ft blondes wearing little more than this month’s FHM cover girl at all times of day. For the media-mogul turned Prime Minister perhaps this ploy to show off the beautiful women of a country, renowned for its climate, cuisine and Catholicism, is with the in-

huge stakes in Italian media and buying the Serie A football team, A.C. Milan. Unsurprisingly then, he has well and truly perfected his gift of the gab.

“

I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I sacrifice myself for everyone.

”

Berlusconi

Last year, The Daily Telegraph released an amusing recollection of his best ten gaffes of the year. To the long list of inappropriate comments we can add his advice to New York investors keen on doing business in Italy: “Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries... superb girls.” Very professional, Mr.B. Recent allegations have resulted in slightly more serious personal consequences. Having been photographed at his Sardinian villa during the summer surrounded by topless teenagers, the 72- year- old lothario’s wife publicly announced that she would be filing for divorce after he attended the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model with whom his relations were unclear. Ironically, he was unable to attend the 18th birthday party of his own daughter. It would seem that, for Ms Lario, this was the final straw. For many Italians, the permatanned, gleaming-toothed, hairtransplanted granddad risks negating the reputation of their country in the international arena. After recently being attacked with a porcelain figure of Milan Cathedral in which he lost two

2004, Mel Lastman: Talking about an upcoming diplomatic visit, Toronto’s Mayor said “What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa [for]?... I’m sort of scared about going…I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.” 2004, Ron Atkinson: The football commentator, believing his microphone had been switched off, described Marcel Desailly as a “lazy fucking thick ******”. 2005, Ken Livingstone: London’s Mayor asked Jewish journalist Oliver Finegold if he was a “German war criminal”, adding that Finegold reminded him of a “concentration camp guard”. 2008, Hilary Clinton: Describing a wartime trip to Bosnia, she recalled “landing under sniper fire…There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” Footage later emerged of the incident, in which she left the plane calmly and greeted people waiting on the runway. She claimed to have ‘misspoke[n]’. 2008, Joe Biden: Asked paraplegic Senator Chuck Graham to stand up to receive applause during a rally. 2009, Silvio Berlusconi: Said that the 17,000 people made homeless by the L’Aquila earthquake should “see it like a weekend of camping.”

Puzzle Corner

Monday 22nd February 2010

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Across

Our guest this issue is logic theorist Vincent Danos

7. 8.

“

The main concern of this paper is the design of a noetherian and confluent normalization for LK2 (that is, classical second order predicate logic presented as a sequent calculus). The method we present is powerful: since it allows us to recover as fragments formalisms as seemingly different as Girard’s LC and Parigot’s A.u, FD ([10, 12, 32, 36]), delineates other viable systems as well, and gives means to extend the Krivine/Leivant paradigm of ‘programming-with-proofs’ ([26, 27]) to classical logic; it is painless: since we reduce strong normalization and confluence to the same properties for linear logic (for non-additive proof nets, to be precise) using appropriate embeddings (so-called decorations); it is unifying: it organizes known solutions in a simple pattern that makes apparent the how and why of their making. A comparison of our method to that of embedding LK into LJ (intuitionistic sequent calculus) brings to the fore the latter’s defects for these ‘deconstructive purposes’.”

10. 11. 14. 16. 19. 20. 22. 23.

Happiness, joy (4) Electron, proton or similar (8) Twig; adhere (5) End of the day (6) Not heavy; bright (5) Silent artist (4) Pigs (5) Always outwitting Tom! (5) Mythical bird (7) French, German, Italian (8)

Down 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 9. 12. 13. 15. 17.

This is from the gripping paper “A new deconstructive logic: linear logic”, which hasn’t received the attention it probably expected in the thirteen years since it was first published in the Journal of Symbolic Logic. Produced by Katie Rocker

18. 21.

Faster than a walking pace (7) Procession, march (6) What’s in a name?; Flower (4) Ignorance is... (5) Spaceman (9) Unwilling to make concessions (14) Lack of energy and enthusiasm (8) Without restriction (9) Choose; elite (6) Cold tomato soup (8) Juggler’s one-wheeled transport (8) Young person (5) Long poem about heroic deeds (4)

Last week’s winner: congratulations to Ytterbium Pancake, who interpreted Mr Kolb’s writings for us: “there are two different types of time: linear time and cyclical time. We’re all familiar with linear time, which is commonly abbreviated as ‘time’. However, the less recognised type of time, cyclical time, is just as important. The best way to visualise it is as a cow falling from a unicycle face-first into a collection of mid-range vacuum cleaners. The vacuum cleaners represent the Bee Gees in chronological order of birth, and the cow represents a teapot the exact size and shape of Ukraine’s Saint Sophia Cathedral.”

Sudoku

ach Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing. Enter digits from one to nine into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, and every 3x3 square. Make the most of this one, the one next issue is going to be evil. It’ll probably make you cry. In advance, I’m really sorry about that.

Monday 22nd February 2010

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Science

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Time marches on

Edward Johnson on the search for immortality

h yes, ageing. It’s a natural obstacle that we all face – and it’s all downhill from here, according to our mardy bum elders. Good news everyone: wrinkles, creaking joints and drooping (yes, you heard me) are features of ageing that we can all look forward to. Hooray! If only we could avoid this metamorphosis and live forever as spritely twenty-somethings. Which leads me to ask: is there a secret to living forever, be it an instant Dungeons & Dragons-esque remedy or simply a wise choice of lifestyle? Even then, is eternal life physically possible?

“

Eternity is a long time, especially near the end

”

Woody Allen History is littered with tales of people finding the secret to an everlasting existence - and then often losing said secret. The ancient Epic of Gilgamesh claims that the king of Sumeria actually found an underwater plant that would supposedly make him immortal, which he then lost to a kleptomaniac snake, of course. The modern day surroundings of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone feature our spectacled hero and his strangely popular ginger best friend seeking to prevent a turbandwelling necromancer from obtaining the Elixir of Life. Oscar Wilde’s hedonistic anti-hero Dorian Gray is a classic example of an individual thriving on perpetuity. Early

figures in the Bible are described as living to immense ages, such as the 969 year old Methuselah. Yet the phenomenon of athanasia (fancy talk for immortality) is not just limited to fiction, oh no. Many have claimed to discover ‘the Secret’ either through intentional research or simply by way of enlightenment. Although actual immortality has never been achieved, there are known individuals who have given the idea of death a miss and have marched on through the years. These are known as supercentenarians - a term that sounds far more exciting than it actually is. Li Ching-Yuen, a herbalist and tactical advisor to the Chinese military, was believed to be either 199 or 256 years old when he eventually passed away in 1933. His claim to such a lengthy existence was taken so seriously that even Time magazine felt the need to write a feature on him. When asked on his secret of living to such a biblically epic age, he would often reply: “Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog” - a bamboozling mixture of instructions fittingly uttered from the mouth of someone who claims to have lived throughout the Salem witch trials, the French Revolution and the First World War. Of course this claim to arthritic fame has not been confirmed by the relevant bodies, which instead acknowledge French death-defying (not in the Evil Knievel sense) supergranny Jeanne Calment as the longest living individual, at an impressive 122 years 164 days. She admitted that she was not a fitness fanatic, smoked daily, ate enough chocolate to keep Cadbury’s independent of Kraft, and adored olive oil, to the extent that she

poured it on all her food and rubbed it into her skin. Finger lickin’ good! But there any real evidence confirming the self-preserving properties of herbs, chocolate and oil? Cocoa and some dark chocolates are thought to contain a bitter tasting compound called epicatechin that is alleged to have roles in lowering the risks of stroke, heart disease, diabetes and even the C word (cancer, you fools). Then again, it won’t be long before the Daily Mail decides to unofficially debunk this claim by adding this chemical to the seemingly infinite list of “Things that give you cancer” - currently including bubble baths, candle-lit dinners and shaving. Some foods are a source of antioxidants: molecules that are able to prevent the production of harmful oxidative stress in cells, which may

“

Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do

”

Groucho Marx be the source of ageing. Consumables companies are always screaming about how their cranberry juice is crammed full of antioxidants, but the benefits of consuming antioxidants are still largely unverified. As for herbs - it may be best to stay off the jazz Woodbines. Perhaps ageing is completely out of our control, and that no amount of herbal tea or not shaving will halt the sands of time. The answer may lie in our genes. Reader: do not despair, I’m not going to leap into a hideously drawn out lecture about DNA, splicing and all things Frankenstein. I am going to briefly mention one scientific phenomenon however: telomere shortening. Our cells need to divide in order to ensure survival and growth, and each time this occurs our telomeres (segments of DNA

that bookend our chromosomes) gradually become shorter. Imagine an eraser in a first year architecture lecture. The shortening of telomeres limits the number of times a cell can divide, and determines at what point in time a cell will stop dividing.

“

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying

”

Woody Allen Moving on from the intimidating world of genetics... maybe the key to living a longer life is simply just to forget about it. Don’t think that you are going to perish at an early age. Do as you don’t, effectively. Apparently this mantra is the main comment that super-centenarians have to say about reaching such a ripe age, as they have often shown by doing everyday things that we would usually consider impossible when above a certain age such as riding a bike or skydiving (as 101 year old Australian Frank Moody did in 2004). Live life to the most, as it seems. Despite various explorers’ claims to have found the Fountain of Youth (that intermittent water feature in Laura Place, I last heard) and alchemists striving to synthesise the Philosopher’s Stone, genuine human perpetuity is still a figment of our imagination. For now, it seems that the only way of achieving immortality is not the direct route of becoming immortal yourself, but instead allowing your life’s actions to keep your memory preserved in the minds of others and the annals of time - the idea of everlasting fame. Walking on Mars or leading a nation through troubled times are possibilities, but Britain’s Got Talent may be your best shot.

In other news... Tarantino thriller award: The Mail, for the scoop “Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz (Ed: who?) share a lollipop as they watch basketball game”. Apparently “They laughed and joked, with Fall Out Boy star Wentz sticking his tongue out at his 25-year-old wife. The couple even found time to share a tray of nachos, with Wentz wiping the sauce from Ashlee’s face.” Runner up: “Stacey Solomon’s (Ed: who?) gleaming smile is even brighter after a trip to the dentist”. Even more interestingly, as the Mail breathlessly tells us, she was seen eating a packet of crisps (cheese and onion) on the way. Appropriate metaphor award: The Metro, describing a radio interview in which Katie Price spoke of her fear of dying thus “Sometimes I think it might be a Diana moment because the way the press chase me outside my house and try and run me off the road... It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a car crash and I always say that.” The next sentence began “The model was on a break-neck tour...” David Irving research excellence award: The Independent, for asserting that “more than four decades have passed since a lean and mean Robert De Niro” played Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver… in 1976. Quote of the week: Tim Relf, of Farmers Weekly: ‘’Forget the old, stereotypical image of farmers as straw-chewing and scruffily dressed. That’s history. They’re seriously sexy.”

Professor Science How was the universe created without defying the third law of thermodynamics? No-one’s entirely sure. One possible explanation is that the Big Bang was the moment of creation of the universe, and as the laws of thermodynamics only apply to the universe, they were not violated by its creation. Another explanation is that the net amount of energy (matter is a form of energy) in the universe is zero, because of all the negative energy. This fortunately has nothing to do with holistic nostril-enema therapy; the ‘negative energy’ is gravity. As one has to do work to move two attracted bodies apart (stop snickering), the further apart bodies are, the more ‘gravitational potential energy’ they have. Apparently, all the negative potential energy is enough to account for all the positive energy in the universe.

What’s the best way to get from Naples to Napoli by car? Probably via Italy. What’s the best unfinished symphony? Schubert’s 8th was good, but not quite as impressive as Mahler’s 11th, which was finished but not written down, or Mussorgsky’s 107th, which was composed on several lean pieces of bacon, and subsequently eaten. Please ask me a science question next time.

Hagiography of the week: Liz Jones of the Mail, talking about Alexander McQueen:” A genius... I never bought anything he made”. Cutting edge journalism award: Liz Jones, for 400 words of speculation as to the meaning of Toni Terry’s T-shirt, which read ‘I Love the Chaos’.

What’s the nutritional value of a placenta? Ok, let’s go back to classical music.

Headline of the week: the Express, for “VICAR: WOMEN SHOULD SHUT UP”.

When N-Dubz released... I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for. Bertrand Russell: was old, now dead.

Roman Polanski Child Protection Award: The Mail, for publishing online twelve long-lens photos of three year old girl Suri Cruise.

Photos of the Fortnight

Think you can do better? Send your best snapshots to deputy@bathimpact.com

Bath presence strong in Team GB as Vancouver 2010 begins Debora Sönksen Deputy News Editor

he XXI Olympic Winter Games are already well on their way; they started on the 12th of February and are scheduled to finish on the 28th. They are being held in Vancouver, Canada, where eighty two National Olympic Committees have entered teams for sports such as alpine skiing, bobsleigh, ice hockey and snowboarding. Hours before the Opening Ceremony, Vancouver witnessed the shocking death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the twenty one year-old Georgian athlete who crashed his luge during a training run and was thrown against a protective wall on the track. Despite training being cancelled, the Opening Ceremony ran as normal. University of Bath alumna Shelley Rudman, currently one of the most well-known female bob skeleton athletes, carried Great Britain’s flag at the Opening Ceremony. Rudman entered the sport when, as a student at the University, she befriended a member of Britain’s team, who encouraged her to have a go on the push-start facility at the University. She and two other University of Bathbased athletes, Adam Pengilly and Amy Williams, were also

selected to represent GB at the Olympic Winter Games. Pengilly is currently number eighteen in the world, while Williams, fifth in the rankings, makes her Olympic debut in Vancouver after winning the silver medal at last year’s World Championship. Rudman, also known as ‘the queen of the ice’, hopes to bring home a medal, and prays that her 2004 accident in Salt Lake City; which had her “scared stiff” as she entered a bend too early and crashed into the ice, her vision darkened by the blood inside her helmet, remains a thing of the past. The USA is ahead in the medal count, at the time of writing, with Germany just behind, and Great Britain still medal-less. Team GB, nonetheless, expect to have a successful year, with their figure skating and short track speed skating athletes in particular. Dismay not, Brits, for there is still a lot of ice to be covered and, hopefully, a few gold medals on their way.

IFYOU WERE

SABB WHAT WOULD A

YOU

DO REPRESENT STUDENTS

FIGHT FOR CHANGE

ANYONE

CAN RUN

NOMINATIONS DEADLINE

09/03/10

RUN CAMPAIGNS DEVELOP SERVICES

SABBATICAL

Electio ns 2010

www.BathStudent.com/sabbelections

University of Bath Students’ Union

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Monday 22nd February 2010

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Why I ran for VP Welfare and Diversity Scarlett Seager VP Welfare and Diversity SUDiversity@bath.ac.uk

round a year in advance I knew that I wanted to become a Sabb. I became involved in a lot of student events and activities during my year abroad in Canada and had so much fun that I knew I wanted to find out more about my own Students’ Union back home. I was also friends with previous Bath Sabbs in my first and second year and they had always raved about how great their jobs were - another incentive for me to run! Overall, running in the Sabbatical elections wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew it would take up a lot of my time in preparation and campaigning, and be one of them most exhausting and challenging weeks of my life so far (I never did a gap year in the Rainforest like some)! I did fear losing but then I have always lived by the saying that ‘more often than not you regret the things you didn’t do far more than the things that you did do’. And in all honesty, you only have one life so I didn’t really feel that I had much to lose! In fact, I made a lot of friends by becoming more involved in the SU, I gained a lot more experience of public speaking, became more confident, and I also had a lot of fun along the way! Even if I didn’t win, I knew that I would’ve made the most of my final year and would’ve met a lot of awesome people! As I start thinking about different career paths for the years ahead, I also know that the skills and the experience of running such a large campaign will be very beneficial to my employability when I start attending interviews - the amount of responsibility you have in my position is immense and very rewarding! The fear that lots of people are going to run for the same position as you is always a tad daunting.

Ideally, you would have as little competition as possible. Luckily for me, I wasn’t running for the most competitive position, although I would say that the candidate I was up against was still regarded as a big threat from my perspective (in a friendly sort of way). What I will say is that you shouldn’t run for a position simply because you

I gained experience of public speaking, became more confident, and had a lot of fun! think you wouldn’t be good enough to run for a different one, such as President. I ran for VP Welfare & Diversity because I knew I would enjoy it and had the most relevant experience for the position. You should always aim high and run for the position that most appeals to you. I honestly feel that if you enjoy something you will always do well in it... and you receive excellent training and staff support for any of the roles. Going to back to why I ran for W&D, I had a lot of fun being an AWARE volunteer and had learnt a lot about the role, it helped getting to know the staff who each Sabb works with. I took part in several campaigns throughout the year, and really enjoyed talking with students and making a difference. Running for SU President did cross my mind (as I’m sure it crosses the mind of most potential candidates at some point) but, for me, I wanted to be able to work on improving and implementing change within a specific area of the Students’ Union. I knew that a position in which I could get really stuck in would suit me best. I also had a strong belief in ethical and environmental initiatives. For anyone that is thinking of running, I would suggest you speak with the current team members to really get a feel for what the job is

about. Looking back on when I was considering running, I made sure that I took advantage of any upcoming SU events where I could learn more about how the SU was managed, and also about the kind of issues that students were passionate about. The more effort you make and the more events you attend, the greater the number of people you meet, in my opinion, the better your chances are of winning an election. My top tip is to be as organised as possible! If you know you want to run, think about the sorts of people you would like to be in your campaign team! Think of the different skills each of your friends have as well - I know that my artistic skills were a bit lacking, and so had quite a few people helping me paint tshirts, banners, and create posters.

own deadlines coming up. It’s often a good idea to have a ‘Campaign Team evening event’ a few nights before you campaigning begins, perhaps with some pizza! This way you can motivate your supporters, thank then in advance and also reiterate the candidate rules! Finally, choose your manifesto ideas wisely. Don’t just reflect on your own views, but also think about the issues your friends have raised. Also consider the points of view of students you’ve never met before - particularly students you’re less likely to have contact with, such as postgraduates, international students, mature students etc. You want to reach out to as diverse a range of students as possible, and also be ready to have your manifesto points criticised. I am loving my year as a Sab-

Dot - SU President The best thing about being a Sabb for me has to be the opportunities you get to; 1. meet so many interesting and diverse people; 2. develop yourself as a person, naturally picking up invaluable skills that will help you through life; 3. to make a real change to the system! When you can celebrate a change you have made to improve students’ lives, you really find it difficult not to smile! There is nothing quite like it! Ben - VP Communications The depth and breadth of the experience that is attainable at such an early age. We are all trustees of a multimillion pound organisation with the ability to benefit over 13,000 students on a daily basis! Being able to provide information and support to such a variety of student groups makes the job really worthwhile; I wish it were a permanent job.

You get the opportunity to represent over 13000 students to the University and bring about the change that students want. There are also many chances to get involved on a national scale. No two days are exactly the same, and you have the opportunity to focus on all kinds of issues. It has probably been one of the best years of my life so far, if not indeed THE best! Captain Scarlett out in force: she never did defeat the Mysterons Very importantly, also remember not to take advantage of the time and energy your friends are putting into your campaign. Being quite stressed and anxious for most of the week, it’s very easy to forget to say thank you or not to sound demanding. Choose your campaign team wisely and remember that they too have a life and will also have their

Richard Butterfield VP Activities and Development SUActivities@bath.ac.uk

n Sunday 7th March, a battle will be fought. A battle that may disrupt the future of the Students’ Union. Dot, the SU President, and Rich, VP A&D, will be going head to head in the Bath Half Marathon. Both

The Village People auditions were highly competitive... longer legs will definitely give me some kind of advantage. My training has been on course, and hopefully will pay off on the day”. “It’s not all about leg length. Mo-

The best thing about being a Sabb

George - VP Education

batical Officer and I would try to persuade anyone who is thinking of running to consider taking the elections very seriously. You may end up representing the entire student body , so you need to be passionate and interested in improving student life! Good luck to everyone thinking of running!

Rich and Dot take part in running battle

are running for Julian House (a local charity for the homeless in Bath). Both aim to complete the course in a respectable time. But most importantly, each wishes to absolutely annihilate the other in the race. Rich said in a manly manner, “My

Sabbs

tivation, determination, and pure drive will decide the victor”, said a defiant Dot. So who will win? Who will earn your support? Dot or Rich?

An onlooker described the encounter as “bigger than the moon, even when it looks bigger than it really is”, while another simply keeled over from the tension between them during the face-off photo session. Either way there will be one winner… Justice… oh, and Julian House. Do keep a lookout for your two Sabbs during the race, both wearing tremendously bright yellow tops. Support and cheer them both on… push them to the end of the gruelling 13.1 mile course. And most of all, support Julian House. To support Rich, go to www.justgiving.com/richiebathhalf To support Dot, go to www.justgiving.com/dotsupresident Alternatively you could go visit either of them in their offices.

Scarlett - VP W&D The responsibility you have as soon as you start the job. You’re treated with a lot of respect and have the opportunity to get involved in so many different areas. Personally, my favourite aspect of my job is the amount of student contact I have. I really enjoy attending student hearings and appeals, as I receive instant personal gratification when I manage to help a student who’s struggling to achieve the marks they worked hard for. Santa - VP Sport Being able to help students out on a daily basis and actually see the difference that you make. Being able to make changes for the benefit of students is hugely rewarding and motivating. Rich - VP A&D Meeting lots of new people, and assisting all the students here at the University. It’s also good to see the students and groups you work with develop. I enjoy seeing events put on, whether it be performances or socials in town. I am part of making it all happen, and ensuring that everyone benefits from their time here.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Arts

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Ann’s Column

Profile: Alex Crossley

ope you all enjoyed the combined Arts Societies social to the Cider Festival. I trust you had lots of fun sampling the various ciders and meeting lots of great artistic people. Look out for information about future socials... possibly some ice-skating and a trip to the theatre. Those that didn’t make it, shame on you, because the Chaos Recital was awesome! Some great solo playing from horns to saxophones, piano and voice really showing what awesome classical music talent we have here at Bath. Well done everyone that performed in University Hall on Saturday. Thank you to Wine Soc for some lovely wine and cheese! Gravity Vomit are currently working extremely hard on making this year’s Upchuck incredible. On Saturday 27th February between 11am and 7.30pm they are hosting a one day Juggling and Circus Skills Convention in the Founders Sports Hall. Throughout the day there will be workshops and opportunities to have a go at a wide variety of circus skills from unicycling to juggling, poi to diabolo, an event not to be missed. 7.30pm in University Hall sees the start of the fantastic evening performance featuring eight professionals including juggling, poi and ‘gentleman juggling’ (this includes juggling with gentlemanly items such as hats, canes and cigars). Tickets for the day are £4 for the evening performance £4 and for both £7 available on the door. For more information see www.bathupchuck.co.uk or email convention@ bathupchuck.co.uk. As part of the successful and fun charity event that is RAG week we are putting together an awesome “Arts Variety Show” 8.30pm Wednesday 3rd March in the Arts Lecture Theatre! The line up is still to be confirmed but will feature instrumentalists, singing, dancing and lots of

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smiles! If you want to get involved (the more the merrier) contact me (ah335@bath.ac.uk) or Dave Whiting from RAG (daw21@bath.ac.uk), will be great to have you on board. If not, I hope to see you there to enjoy the show! BUST will be performing their next play “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie at the Mission Theatre (opposite the old bus station in town) at 7.30pm between the 4th and 6th of March. The story follows ten people who have previously been complicit in the deaths of others but have escaped notice and/ or punishment, and are then tricked into coming onto an island...and one by one they disappear!!!!!!! In Arts Exec News, we have created a Facebook group “Arts Societies @ Bath University” - the new and best place to let people know and find out about Arts Events and Activities. Make sure you sign you and your friends up so you don’t miss out. The Arts Exec Tips and publicity information will be available ASAP on the societies area of www.bathstudent.com. This includes advice on choosing your event/theme, suggestions for publicising your events and a list of places to put up posters in town and Oldfield Park. Make sure you check it out when organising an event! There is so much to get involved with and support this semester, so make sure you do!

Arts Societies Calendar 27th February – Gravity Vomit: Upchuck Day Event Venue: Founders Sports Hall Time: 11:00am Tickets: £4 Gravity Vomit: Upchuck Evening Performance Venue: ALT Time: 7:30pm Tickets: £4 A combined ticket for both of the above events can be bought for £7. 5th–7th March – BUST: And Then There Were None Venue: Mission Theatre Time: 7:30pm Tickets: £7, £5 Student/Conc.

ear: Second year

Course: French and Spanish with European studies Hometown: York, Yorkshire! Previous musicals/performances: At my school there weren’t many opportunities to perform musicals, but the first time I ever sang was when playing Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors when I was 13. Ever since, I have done a lot of performances at school concerts, singing competitions; mainly ‘big band’ stuff! Debut at Bath University: Ermmm, Encore? I sang Shadow-

land from the Lion King. As soon as I saw that song was going to be done I was desperate to sing it because I always wanted to perform it, and I got that part so was very happy. And got to wear an incredible costume too! Next role: I am playing the part of Ariel in Footloose. The show is about a guy from Chicago, Ren, who moves to the small town of Bomont, where dancing is forbidden. He fights against the town council to put on a school dance, so it involves lots of dancing and lots of people, a very exciting show to be part of. Ariel is the preacher’s daughter who is in fact very wild and she ends up falling for Ren, despite her ex-boyfriend and father being against it. Typical love story. What happened during the

audition process?: I sang the main song I have to sing in the show, Holding out for a Hero, and also did a small piece of script. I had a really bad cold at the time and I didn’t think the audition went as well as it could... but I ended up getting the part and was very happy! What is the most exciting aspect of playing Ariel in Footloose?: Well I love singing so I love singing the songs, particularly holding out for a hero. Also, I haven’t had much dancing experience, so it’s been really fun doing the dancing part, especially being lifted and spun around by Ren! Haha! That’s fun! It’s such a big cast so it’s been really fun doing the chorus numbers and getting to know lots of new people! Footloose is being performed on 17th - 20th March in the ALT. Tickets will be on sale soon.

Societies crossword ACROSS: We share our name with the French. We give you the limelight but we’re never in it 4. Despite the name we are not just for girls 5. Yes! We can dance, but we’re clumsy 10. Gravity makes us sick 11. If you bang your head you get… 12. Strings, Voices, Brass and Woodwind form a completely calm combination or do they? 14. “Help me make the [what] of the night?” 15. We join with BUSMS to form TITS. 16. We are a small group but have big voices 1. 3.

1. 2. 6. 7. 8. 9. 13.

DOWN: Their name is a weapon “Say Cheese!” We like to what around the clock? We go well with Fajitas You can see us but you can’t hear us We can keep your feet warm We have our big outing after Easter every year

BATH UNIVERSITY STUDENT THEATRE

And Then There Were None By Agatha Christie Fri 5 - Sun 7 March, 7.30pm The Mission Theatre, Bath Ten strangers are brought together to Indian Island by letter of invitation from an unknown party. By the end of the first evening, a voice has accused them of murder and one of them is dead. Is the killer one of the group, or an outside force? Will they work it out before the killer reaches the last line in the fatal poem… ‘and then there were none’? Tickets £7 Concs £5

STUDENT

m edia

BLURB

FEATURED SHOW The Nick and Parry Show Wednesdays 5-7pm Join Nick and Parry for two hours of awesome tunes and some peculiar banter. Don’t miss this early evening show because it’ll ‘probably [be] the greatest hour of your life’!

SINGLE OF THE FORTNIGHT Rihanna – Rude Boy

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Media

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Monday 22nd February 2010

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We’ve all had ‘umbrella-ella-ella’ stuck in our head at some point, ‘Russian Roulette’ proved itself to be just as infectious and now Rihanna’s latest single ‘Rude Boy’ looks set to follow suit. Not set for release till the 22nd, this track has

DENT

already highjacked the airwaves, taking up a slot on URB’s A list for several weeks already, but, love her or hate her, you can’t deny that ‘Rude Boy’ is one hell of a catchy track, even if annoyingly so!

SRA chat show Last weekend URB hosted the Student Radio Association’s Chart Show. Every SRA station gets the opportunity to host it once a year, and if done well enough, could result in an award at the SRA Awards ceremony held in November. The entire URB team pulled together to knock up a fantastic show which was hosted by the infamous Liam and Iain from the (you guessed it) Liam and Iain Show! If you’re interested in getting involved with URB and didn’t manage to catch us in Refresh week, then it’s never too late. Check out www.1449urb.co.uk to see the many ways that you can get stuck in with student radio.

edia Diary - Professor Science Day 94: impact redesign meetings

evoted readers may have noticed that impact looks a little different this week. This is not the result of a maverick sub-editor’s deranged vengeance, but rather the outcome of a long planning process involving many meetings as brief and riveting as the interpretive dance version of Hobbes’ Leviathan. Over a period of about four weeks, the cogs of impact’s bureaucratic machine were slowly engaged, a process which culminated in the radical decision to change our name from ‘student impact’ (intentionally not capitalised) to bathimpact (intentionally not capitalised and lacking the archaic ‘space

between words’ which is so popular among the bourgeois elite). In a six hour meeting regrettably cut short by most participants’ selfimmolation, we agreed a number of other design changes, including altering the ‘drop quotes’ style (enlarged quotes separated from the main text) and our policy on malicious libel (we’re no longer to print doctored photos of Greta Garbo eating chauffeur gloves). We hope you like the design changes: they form part of the impact Supreme Soviet’s first Five Year Plan, and if you don’t like it, let us know so we can have you exiled to Siberia (Romford).

CTV ZAP There has been a recent resurgence in the level of interest in CTV, as a result of better promotion, including the workshop we ran at the well-attended Media Day. There people were able to see what we do, largely sit around

burning our retinas on a computer screen while desperately resisting the urge to look at porn in case someone important comes along. We all enjoyed the media social, and below is a photo depicting our highlight of the evening: impact’s esteemed editor looking painfully cheerful. Don’t worry, us media types aren’t this sinister all the time: we’re usually exuber-

ant and frivolously cheerful. CTV are always on the lookout for new members; if you’d like to join us, or have suggestions for the kind of thing we should be doing, let us know at ctv@bath. ac.uk. Additionally, if you have any suggestions on how we could make this column less excrutiatingly boring, we’d really appreciate them.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Entertainments The Good

ood news everybody! Robert Pattinson has inadvertently revealed that he’s ‘allergic to vaginas’. The floppy-haired, pastyfaced and mono-browed Twilight star revealed to Showbiz Spy that during a recent photoshoot with a glut of ladies in states of undress he felt particularly uncomfortable: “I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina.” Naturally, this is brilliant news, as it means a) girls will stop wasting their time on this moron and return our calls and b) that we get to laugh at R-Patz for making such a ridiculous statement.

early show, ahead of the release of Cosmogramma on the 4th April, which will feature vocals from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Both of these events have our Ents Editor positively giddy with delight. On a subnote: Ellison is also the nephew of legendary jazz pianist Alice Coltrane. There must be something in the water out in California.

www.bathimpact.com rative effort between folk revivalist Sam Amidon, New York modernist composer Nico Muhly and Iceland’s own purveyor of ‘organic electronica’ Valgeir Sigurrosson.

The Bad

R-PATZ: Spent two hours dry heaving after this photo was taken LA’s instrumental hip hop merchant Flying Lotus has announced details of his new album and a UK tour. The laptop DJ known to his mother as Steven Ellison will bring his heathazed compositions to Bristol’s Thekla on the 11th March for an

A MONKEY: Shocked

FLYING LOTUS: Covered Face On similarly excitable Ents Editor related news, we found Phil jumping around the room with glee when it was announced that the curiously titled Whale Watching Tour, composed of Icelandic Bedroom Community Artists, will be calling at Bristol’s Arnolfini on the 24th April. Most of his excitement doubtless stems from the fact that avant garde composer and noise producer Ben Frost will be on this tour, which are his first UK live appearances since the release of the terrifyingly glacial By The Throat. The tour will be a collabo-

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oogle has started cracking down on music bloggers, to the ire of the online community. The web giant has started banning users of its blog services Blogger and Blogspot who upload music files to their blogs. The move has seen widespread criticism of the corporation from bloggers and industry insiders: in one case, an official band blog received a notice ordering them to remove one of their own songs which had been put up for free download. Noel Edmonds is rumoured to be developing a series of dubiously titled new TV programmes, including Beat The Monkey, a quizshow which sadly won’t have the RSPCA locking the man up for

extreme cruelty to all life on earth, but which instead tests contestants’ ability to ‘beat the monkey’ by answering questions selected by an actual monkey who acts as the show’s host. Besides this being borderline insane, it also shows that there is a programme worse than Noel’s HQ, the frankly terrifying Sky1 Saturday night mainstay which appeared to have been designed specifically for Daily Express readers and actual morons. Wait, those two are the same thing. Also: ‘beat the monkey’ sounds pretty rude. The White Stripes are very angry indeed, as the US Air Force Reserve apparently stole their track ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’ for an advert that aired during the Superbowl two weeks ago. We know that the Air Force has bombs and stuff, but let’s not forget that back in 2006 Jack White punched a guy and broke his own finger. Don’t mess with him.

...The Ugly

n other, frankly mental news, Courtney Love’s reformed Hole cancelled their secret reformation gig in London, at Camden’s very own Proud Galleries, due to an ‘unrelated riot’. Whilst we’d encourage anyone to riot to prevent the clearly damaged starlet ever taking the stage again, it seems this wasn’t the case, and that in fact the ‘riot’ was the result of an art student party getting out of hand.

MAYER: Let’s be honest, the signs were all there From ugly riots to bumping uglies: wholesome acoustic crooner John Mayer has claimed that Jessica Simpson was like ‘crack cocaine’ in the sack. Apparently, she made Mayer “just wanna quit my life and f***king snort [her]”. All this was revealed in a Playboy interview which he also described the ‘singer’ as ‘sexual napalm’. Quite what that means we’re not sure, but we definitely love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory.

The Hippies are back and they’re Punks

Something weird is going down in the USA: the freak flag is flying once more. Philip Bloomfield buys the records and takes the ride Artist: Wooden Shjips Album: Vol. 2

Gary War’s acid damaged echo is the sound of the Beach Boys being fed head first into a blender

Artist: Gary War Album: New Raytheonport

e live in marvellous times, musically speaking. Never before has the music of our era or those which predated it been so readily accessible and available for all to hear. The internet has enabled not only the free sharing of rarities and oddities, but it has also created a marketplace for small distributors and labels, an organising tool for DIY promoters and a valuable outlet for aspiring bands. Essentially, the internet has done what both the hippies and the punks dreamed of: it has provided an online global community, capable of disseminating information and providing reference in a virtual instant. Thus, there should be little surprise that the past decade has been characterised by the wish to look backwards; to summarise what came before. Rarely has the notion of influence been so prominent in our conception of musical progression than it has been now. And it’s through these glasses that we see two very different, but markedly similar, examples of pyschedelic crate digging: Wooden Shjips Vol. 2 and Gary War’s New Raytheonport. Vol. 2 is the ‘Shjips fourth release proper, and their second compilation

Wooden Shjips, electric guitars, nice facial hair of rarities. To say that they represent the cutting-edge of retro rock music wouldn’t be the contradiction it appears to be: neither expressively forward-looking nor out-and-out rip-off merchants, they’re planted firmly in the centre. Yet despite their status as the latest glut of San Francisco freaks, it’s not a case of flower power and

Vol. 2 solidifies Wooden Shjip’s position at the cutting edge of retro rock breathy harmonies; they’re looking to the dark side of the moon, preferring heavy, driving motorik beats to fuel their blend of minimalism and extended jams. As such, it’s strange to think that Vol. 2, an odds and sods collection if there ever was one, sounds a lot

like their most realised piece of work: from the bent out of shape guitar jam of ‘Start To Dreaming’, to the breathy dub wobble of ‘Contact’, there’s a swagger and a notably sustained quality to this collection which is somehow missing from their regular releases. Gary War is an altogether more unique prospect than the San Franciscans, more representative of recent progressive psychedelic Californian tendencies. Which is why it’s all the more surprising he calls Brooklyn his home, rather than some debris-strewn surfer beach on the West Coast. War takes the shiny surfpop of the Beach Boys and shoves it head first into a blender strewn with intergalactic litter, via way of the hum and hiss of lo-fi. His songs are generally sparse, echoey affairs, mixing synth washes with dead eyed vocals and drooping comedown

basslines. There’s few better examples on latest LP New Raytheonport than the spaced out melancholia of ‘Please Don’t Die’, which sees War intone “Please don’t die / because I’ll die” in his best impression of an acid-damaged Brian Wilson over what sounds like a broken drum machine. Listening to War, it’s hard not to feel that he’s obsessed with the nature of the future as it once was, his ghostly synths pointing to some imagined utopia that never was to be. Naturally, the Shjips are no strangers to revivalism either, yet like War, their secret is in making the past sound fresh. Even their cover of Neil Young’s ‘Vampire Blues’ has a prescient nature to it: Ole Shakey’s classic attack on the oil men (“I’m a vampire baby, sell you twenty barrels worth”) having lost none of its resonance over the past few years. And perhaps that’s the best summary of Wooden Shjips: their aim is to exhume the past and prove its relevance in the modern age, dragging the dated kicking and screaming into the new era. A similar theory can be applied to War: New

Raytheonport can’t be written off as another jaded expedition back into the vaults of Eighties kitsch: it’s far too smart for that, as tracks like the gibbering garage rock of ‘Healthy Living’ prove. Listening to Gary War is like imagining the future, only from the perspective of an inhabitant of the Eighties: a clankingly hyperreal and dystopian experience. In some senses War’s sophomore LP represents the reverse of Vol. 2: instead of dragging influences forward, it almost seems to suck the future back into the past. And on that note, it’s hard to feel that War was really content with what the future turned out to be like, just as the Shjips have set sail toward their idealised utopia of easy riders, space cadets and beatniks. The crux of both these albums is a sense of marked disappointment at how things actually turned out: each is tinged with hints of that cruel comedown. These pair of hippies have more in common with the punks: whether in their DIY ethos, or in the disaffected tones of their own take on shattered and fragmented pyschedelia, they’re merging two apparently disparate traditions. New Raytheonport is available now on SHDWPLY Records Voi. 2 is released on March 26th on Sick Thirst/Forte

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Monday 22nd February 2010

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Prison Rules, Algerian Style

A little restraint is the key to riveting and tense prison drama, according to our favourite francophile Jen Wallace

Entertainments

Something Awful

Resident chair filler Steve Ramsey seems to have left “The Black Gestapo” off Part 1 of his list of awful films.

Film: Un Prophète Director: Jacques Audiard Starring: Tahar Rahim

The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961) A highly plausible film in which a man survives a nuclear missile blast, with only the minor side effects of becoming uglier, losing around 100 IQ points, and developing an inexplicable desire to go on a murderous rampage, which is a reasonable description of the effect watching this film will have on you. As well as the pioneering technique of not showing the characters’ faces as they are talking, the film is notable for the least convincing strangulation ever captured on film, and the most gratuitous inclusion of a shower scene with no relevance to the plot.

n Prophète marks yet another cinematic hit for director Jacques Audiard, who has previously had international success with films such as The Beat That My Heart Skipped and Read My Lips. The film tells the story of Malik, a young French man of Arabic origins who is sentenced to six years in prison for violence against the police. As the narrative unfolds we watch Malik go from a naïve new inmate who is ample prey for any gang leader, to a savvy inbetweener who befriends both the Corsican and Arab prisoners to further his drug dealing escapades outside the prison walls. The film deals with many current French hot topics of debate such as immigration, xenophobia, the justice system and corruption, but you don’t need an insider’s knowledge of French politics to appreciate the many failings of the legal system exemplified in this film. In cinematic terms the film is a delight. The camera weaves its way around the burrow-like prison until we ourselves feel the claustropho-

bia of this separated world of mafia gangs and life or death negotiations. The sombre grey and white tones of the inside setting are contrasted with the brightness of the world outside the walls, and the red blood of not-so innocent victims. The film is violent, but not in a gratuitous way: brutal scenes are executed with expert direction that leaves you thinking you saw more than you did. Audiard’s manner of handling violence is reminiscent of Michael Haneke in Caché; blood is far more shocking

Audiard’s handling of violence shows blood is far more shocking when used sparingly

when used sparingly compared with simply spraying it all over the camera every five minutes. In France, Tahar Rahim is getting well-deserved recognition for his portrayal of the protagonist Malik; the actor conveys his transition from wild eyed innocent to clued-up player with maturity and style, not unlike Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed. Sadly the Oscars have ignored his stellar performance, although Un Prophète is nominated in the ‘Best Foreign Film’ category (but will probably lose to Haneke’s The White Ribbon). If you like dark, tense tales of underworld gangs, corrupt societies and dirty dealings behind closed doors, current cinematic releases prove you can’t do much better than Un Prophète.

Generally speaking, the better the poster, the worse the film Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) Perhaps the worst B-Movie ever made. Legendarily bad filmmaker Ed Wood’s masterpiece, featuring aliens who bring the dead back to life in order to wipe out the human race, this film is like three science fiction films all rolled into one, presuming that the rolling process was very damaging to the plot, acting, directing, script, editing, and cinematography.

Manos: Hands of Fate (1966) Fertilizer salesman Hal Warren made this film for a bet, and unsurprisingly, didn’t make enough money from it to retire. In fact it made him so poor that The Master’s Doberman was one of the only actors to get paid (in dog food), which accurately reflects the quality of the others. The dog later said, while casually licking his privates, that being in the film was one of the most embarrassing things he’d ever done.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Entertainments

A Bum Deal

The first biography of Lady Gaga is yet another addition to the growing pile of pulp non-fiction, says Josie Cox aptly - an exclusive copy of the woman wearing the most strikingly bizarre costume since Bjork sported her infamous swan. Written by a certain Welshborn Helia Phoenix (whoever that may be) Lady Gaga - Just

Wait for Gaga’s own book. It’s scheduled just after the release of Eau De Gaga

Book: Lady Gaga - Just Dance Author: Helia Phoenix

s Lady Gaga sashays onto the stage at the Brit Awards to collect her third trophy of the night, I’m sitting comfortably at home in front of the TV, a book resting on my lap. My Tuesday evening read is no Grisham-esque thriller easy to get my teeth into, but - ever so

Dance tells the tale of young innocent Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on her quest for fame and fortune. In doing so, the reader is given an insight into her relationship with her array of famous buddies and musical and iconic role models. Phoenix illustrates the anecdotes with a number of full colour pictures but the overabundance of secondary sourced quotes give the impression that the arisen-from-theashes author may not have had too much contact with LG while writing her opus, but maybe a bit of a literary paparazzi instead. Pun intended.

Nonetheless, there’s nothing wrong with the story told. An angelic blonde-haired girl from a good Italian New York family turns into a fantastic exhibitionist performer whose obsession with having a penis is almost as well-known as her penchant for shocking people. On the way she wins a few competitions, awards, scholarships and prizes and also attends the same school as the Hilton sisters. Like any run-of-the mill biography it begins by painting a heart-warming scene of an uncorrupted infant playing with her parents. The text is full of clichés, stereotypes and word redundancy, and the style of writing is all but imaginative, but it does end on a happy note and is certainly not a read that will give you brain ache. Marks out of ten? I’d probably say a weak four. My advice: wait until Gaga writes her own book. It will happen just after she begins selling Eau de Gaga and launches her own fashion label. Lady Gaga - Just Dance is available now in hardback, published by Orion

In one Door and out the other?

Alex Drake takes his seat for the latest showing from French electro label Kitsuné Artist: Two Door Cinema Club Album: Tourist History

here’s no doubting that the music scene is becoming oversaturated and you would be forgiven for thinking the last thing it needs is another electronic based pop/rock. Except that Two Door Cinema Club are a much better prospect than their generic description gives them credit and intend on proving this with their infectious debut album. Hailing from Bangor, Northern Ireland these three lads all dropped out of university together after their MySpace started blowing up and soon after got signed by the very fashionable Parisian label, Kitsuné. Two Door Cinema Club’s brand of music takes up-tempo electronic beats underpinned by jaunty guitars and layers tasty vocals on top. The end result is music that is instantly accessible and freshly familiar. It plays like a soundtrack to good times with friends where there are uncountable memories of frivolous joy. The British press has tried to compare their sound to Bloc Party and Death Cab for Cutie at their less depressive moments but I personally feel they perfectly

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Fringe Concern

Number one or not, Owl City are never anything more than pleasantly safe, writes Hazell Moore Artist: Owl CIty Album: Ocean Eyes

wl City have ballooned out of nowhere with a huge surge towards their new single ‘Fireflies’. You’ll be hearing it on the radio, in shops and some modest remixes in the clubs. If you like the simple electronic beat and the heavy American accent of this single, then I would suggest you look to the album for similar tunes. Ocean Eyes offers a less melancholic variation of indie bleepers The Postal Service, or a more upbeat, lighter version of Death Cab for Cutie. ‘Hello Seattle,’ is almost a mirror of Death Cab’s ‘Marching Bands of Manhattan’ with its mellow and catchy lyrics. Some people hate the imitation, but I welcome something new to this genre. Owl City fill their album with summery soundtracks to lift the rainy blues of February. It’s a possible soundtrack to some people’s Valentine’s Day, and you can see this especially through the track ‘The Bird and the Worm.’ It’s the sort of album that would happily accompany the opening of the O.C. or some other American teen drama. Although it has to be said, ‘Umbrella Beach’ is a little too summery and with the 90s Eurovision-type intro and

combine elements of both Phoenix and Vampire Weekend. Totalling at just over half and hour, Tourist History is a quick listen, chock-a-block full of energy. It’s a shame the boys couldn’t add a couple more songs but the tracks they have on offer all maintain a high level of quality. First single, ‘Something Good Can Work’, has been the soundtrack to Skins and many other TV shows with its instant catchiness, whereas ‘I Can Talk’ thumps in with an instantly likeable dance beat that’ll have kids raving deep into the night. Personal favourite, ‘Eat That Up, It’s Good For You’ is a gooey electro-pop song with an intoxicating tune and allencompassing lovability. On the whole, they’re explosively energetic enough to please crowded

A soundtrack to good times where there are uncountable memories of frivolous joy dance floors and radio DJs alike which should do their popularity a lot of favours. They certainly won’t win any awards for musical genius or originality but that isn’t what they’re going for. Tourist History is a very enjoyable feel-good listen that will stick in your head for days upon end. It doesn’t revolutionize music but it’s harmless fun and will act as a great pickme-up to get through the chilly winter doldrums. Tourist History is released March 1st on Kitsuné

chorus, it could easily be mixed to be a party anthem. Ocean Eyes is easy listening. I’ve noticed I play it most when working, as it rarely distracts, or just as background music whilst chatting to people. But don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a criticism. I can imagine some would find the American twang mildly irritating, especially the way they manage to rhyme mirror with ear in the song

Ocean Eyes is easy listening: it rarely distracts ‘Dental Care’, but it’s easy to look beyond this. ‘Saltwater Room’ offers a sweet throwback of a female vocalist; it compliments the song and the album well. This album is pretty safe; none of the songs are too daring. Don’t expect any ground breaking songs of a lifetime, but it works nicely for a lazy Sunday. Ocean Eyes is released on March 1st on Universal

I’m on a Boat

Ever felt like casting away? Alex Drake (with a little help from Rowan Emslie) looks at the stellar lineup of Bristol’s most nautical venue over the next month...

Two Door Cinema Club: name too complicated for a pun

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f you’re a fan of music gigs and your schedule happens to look relatively free over the next two weeks then there’s only one hangout you should be considering, and that’s Thekla Social. Not only does it selfdescribe itself as “possibly the best venue in Bristol” but it’s on a boat! Many of you will already be familiar with the location that multi-tasks as a café, bar, stage and club. Over the next couple weeks a whole string of talented acts will be rocking out for the Bristolian crowd at the popular nightspot. First up on Thursday the 24th of February are the Local Natives who reign from the sunny state of California, USA. They are touring our grey country in promotion of their debut LP titled Gorilla Manor. The album is a classic slice of indie pop-rock that combines melodic harmonies with sweeping vocals and all around awesome-ness. They have been getting excellent reviews and have ridden a wave of hype up to this point but their album sure as hell backs it all up. ‘World News’ and ‘Airplanes’ are spectacular but I let you decipher the rest at their upcoming gig. For those of you who like their rock/pop a little dreamy and very

T-Pain is yet to schedule an appearance at the Thekla danceable go down to see Brooklyn based three piece Yeasayer when they call in at the boat. Their new album, Odd Blood, has seen the folkier elements of their first outing - 2007’s All Hour Cymbals - exchanged for a more snyth-led feel and is set to be one of the indie staples of the year. If you’ve got to like a buzzband, let it be this one instead of Vampire Weekend. Soon after on Saturday the 27th of February, the local Welsh favorites by the name of Los Campesinos! make their return. The seven-piece indie band have been very busy putting together three albums over the last two years and the latest one is optimistically called ‘Romance is Boring’. In promotion of this effort they have hit the road to show off their boundless energy and joi-de-vivre. Los Campesinos! put together a truly eclectic live show with all sorts of instrumentation that’s a lot of fun and can only be fully appreciated live. To check the full listings be sure to head over to their website (www. theklabristol.co.uk) where you’ll find a whole lot of other great shows along with prices and opening times.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Entertainments

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Shooting Star

’ve always been attracted to the weird and unconventional. Call it perversity, call it a warped sense of my own individualism, call it whatever you like, but I can’t ignore that which is challenging, eye-catching and reaction-inducing. That’s why, when I was sent the photographs shortlisted for the Photosoc and the ICIA’s annual student and staff photography competition, one immediately stood out. Jens Roesner’s image of a menacing, begoggled man in a lab coat, wielding a plunger in front of a raft of quasiscientific equipment was striking, odd and above all, mildly threatening. This is my interpretation of work, it says: is your day job this interesting? So when I met Jens at the winner’s presentation, where he claimed the staff prize, I immediately wanted to talk to him about what on earth it was that inspired him to create such a downright bizarre and arresting piece of visual art. And thus, I’m sitting at a table, with Jens (a mild mannered and talkative lector if there ever was one) in front of a laptop, looking through his work and talking. There’s something intensely personal about being able to absorb the entirety of one person’s photography in one gulp: which is why it’s all the more incredible that Jens shares all his pictures freely via Flickr, the website with which he credits much of his inspiration. His winning shot was taken from a series entitled ‘365 Days’ which stemmed from a Flickr group that challenged members to take a self portrait once every day for an entire

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Philip Bloomfield meets Jens Roesner, Mech Eng Lector and winner of the ICIA and Photosoc’s Staff Photograph of the Year Competition

his images so eyecatching. “I found a catalogue from the sixties the other day… and it was full of processed, airbrushed people… which puts the whole PhotoShop and Lightroom thing into perspective”. So, whilst he is cagey about the legitimacy of manipulation in every case, he recognises that in some senses it makes ‘deceptive’ darkroom tricks easier and more accessible for photographers. But really his maxim can be summed up in terms of what the audience expects: “No viewer seeing my clone shots expects that there were really 6 versions of Jens fighting in a parking garage… but editing out rubbish or telephone wires in a landscape shot… I don’t know...” View Jens’ Flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22070130@N07/

year. “It was a challenge”, Jens readily admits, but “one variable already being removed helps you know what do do”. Yet with Jens, it seems like there are plenty of sub-variables to play

“

This is my interpretation of work, it says: is your day job this interesting?

”

around with: his portraits are a long way away from typical, they feature reflections, silhouettes and multiple images of the subject (clones). But above all else, they tend to be interesting and generally humorous. “I didn’t want to take self-obsessed model shots in great light… I was always looking for something which would interest me, and hopefully interest my friends”. It’s this which maxim has led him to shoot a ’copycat’ image of himself in socks, modesty concealed by his laptop (“After all, why should girls have all the fun?” he asks, jokingly), and the series from which his winner was taken, a bizarrist cartoon strip featuring the adventures of a clumsy superhero whose mission it is to prevent the plunger-armed villain from waking him up in the morning. “Doing all these self portraits can get tedious, if you can’t fit it into your work schedule… I was up late one night and thinking of how I had to do shoot, but equally how tired I was, and suddenly it hit me and I knew what to do”. Sleep deprivation, then, inspiring surrealism since time began. But that’s just once facet of his portfolio: there are also landscape shots, a passion of Jens since a trip to New Zealand when he first “got serious” about digital photography, alongside an older passion more related to the mechanical subjects he lectures on; classic cars and automotive machinery. “I started taking pictures

around 1994, just going to car shows and photographing Audis”. One shot he shows me, of a ‘big rig’ truck, is another favourite of his, despite its simplicity when compared to his other compositions. Naturally, I couldn’t leave Jens without questioning him on image manipulation: looking at his pictures it would seem that ‘cloning’ and stitching is a key component to making

“

After all, why should girls have all the fun?

”

Jens Roesner

If you know of any part-time artists of any sort at the University, and would like to see them featured in impact, please email ents@bathimpact.com. We’re always looking for some of the hidden talent of the University!

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Monday 22nd February 2010

International

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Wafi Albedewi ISA Publicity Officer

ave you heard about the festival? It will be held from the 9th of March through to the 19th of March. For a week and a half the university will hold special festive-like activities including the following: a mini fair, Asian night, Global evening, a launch event on the parade, a cooking out event, a volleyball tournament, and film nights throughout. Not excited yet? Most of these events are free of charge to participate in. The various activities and events are run by the different societies that are a large part of the Students’ Union. The Festival on the Hill will not only showcase the societies that are present within our lovely campus, but also we will have a few participants from the different university departments. The festival will celebrate the international students and life here on campus, but that does not mean

that the event is exclusively for the international students. In fact, the festival is targeted towards all staff and students at the university. It presents great opportunities for just about everyone. If you want to learn a new instrument, why not join Chartwell Dutiro, who is coming all the way from Zimbabwe, for a workshop? If you just want to enjoy music and arts, then there is a Ceilidh night coming and the Chartwell Dutiro performance. For those who want to see something a bit local, there is a British Day. Want something to compete about and have a bit of sports? No problem: we have a volleyball competition. The festival is a celebration of culture and globalization in the University of Bath. The University has over 3,000 students who come from countries other than the UK, including China, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, and many others. It will be a celebration of all the cultures and traditions that the

university holds. The Festival on the Hill is sponsored jointly by the International Students’ Office at the university, the Aware Office, which is a part of the Students’ Union, and the International Student Association (ISA) where I hold the role of Event manager. Festival on the Hill is a studentrun global event, which is hosted by the University of Bath Students’ Union. The Festival aims to be a celebration of the global mix of students present at the University of Bath and will bring together students from all cultures to celebrate diversity at the University, and will stimulate personal development, and inspire a view based on acceptance and appreciation of the world’s mosaic of cultures. The Festival will also try to raise awareness of global issues. For more info check out bathstudent.com, plasma screens throughout the Union, or URB.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Sport

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Refs are human. They err. So shut the hell up and do your job instead.

Why do managers blame everyone apart from themselves? Sean Lightbown ponders, and gets a splitting headache. Not through his own fault though, obviously.

“

I’ve been told that if Mr Massey got it wrong, he’ll be suspended. I hope he is and I hope it’s for a long time.” Reading the above, you could be forgiven for thinking that the aforementioned Trevor Massey, linesman for the Crystal Palace v Aston Villa FA Cup 5th Round tie, had done something truly abhorrent during the game, leading Neil Warnock, the Palace manager, to say this. Did he officiate whilst drunk? Shout racist abuse at Gabby Agbonlahor? Or maybe, in a fit of rage, he turned around and beat a disabled child with his yellow and red flag? In fact, he gave a corner when it should have been a goal kick. The corner ultimately led to Villa’s equaliser. Warnock is no rookie when it comes to such barbarous and contemptuous attacks on officials. He referred to David Elleray as “some bald headed bloke standing 50 yards away”, hurled repeated verbal onslaughts towards a linesman in a game between his then team Sheffield United and Ipswich Town (see the video at: http://tinyurl.com/yjxr84a), accused

“

There is a line between constructive criticism and outright abuse. This is where managers fail.

”

David Beeby of celebrating an opposition goal and most recently, lamented over Rob Shuebridge’s disallowing of a Palace shot which hit the stanchion,

Andy Robinson’s (centre) honesty contrasts the relentless blaming of officials by Alex Ferguson (left) and Neil Warnock (right). and should have therefore been a goal. I sympathise with his latter complaint; it was a shocking decision and I could forgive anyone for being angry about it in the aftermath. But the continued over the top reactions and borderline childish insults on pretty much anyone who crosses his path is embarrassing. The Palace/Villa game was the tipping point. Ok, the decision was wrong. But singling out that as the reason the goal was conceded? Give me a break. Instead of looking for excuses beyond his control, maybe Warnock should consider questioning how his defenders allowed Stilian Petrov a free header on the edge of the six yard box. I heard that managers coached that kind of stuff once, instead of blaming everyone else. This can be found at the highest

level, too; since 2003, Sir Alex Ferguson has received £45,000 worth of fines and has served ten games in touchline bans (two suspended), all down to abuse of officials. Most notably and most recently, his comments about the fitness of Alan Wiley left him £20,000 poorer and with a four-game ban. I’m not saying refs shouldn’t be criticised – in fact, they should, as a means of check and balance. But there is a line between constructive criticism and outright abuse. This is where many managers fail, and is to the detriment of the game as a whole. You may think refereeing looks easy. I certainly did. Then I reffed a few IDFC games last semester. It isn’t, at all. Trying to keep a clear and objective mind when you are the recipient of continued inquisition by people,

who quite fairly just want to play a decent game of football without you spoiling everything, is a bit of a pain. Now, translate that to top-flight football. There, match officials are regularly subjected to questions about their parentage by tens of thousands of drunken fans, red-in-the-face abuse from players and coaching staff alike, and for the lucky few, have their every decision pored over by the ‘experts’ on whatever TV channel’s panel. One of those football know-it-alls, Jamie Redknapp, offered the enlightening insight recently that the reason Chelsea lost to Barcelona in last year’s Champions’ League semi-final was because the referee was Norwegian. Anyway, let’s get to the point. Referees, subjected to the human form as the rest of us, are fallible. The pressure of top-flight football, the economic

consequences, and the repeated persecution and micro-analysis of their decisions makes it an impossible job to perfect; no matter what you do right, you’ll always do something which upsets somebody. That’s why football fans, pundits and managers should lay off personally insulting referees and let them get on with it. It’s a hard enough job as it is. Andy Robinson, the Scotland Rugby Union coach, kind of epitomised what I want to get at. After seeing his side lose a man through the controversial sin-binning of Phil Godman, he chose not to blame the ref, but the opposing player Lee Byrne for “taking a dive”, before admitting his team had “committed suicide” in the latter part of the game by letting Wales score ten points in the last minute. Neil Warnock, take note.

Hockey boys beat Leeds to set up ‘real’ varsity semi. MEN’S 1STS HOCKEY BATH UNIVERSITY

LEEDS UNIVERSITY

Will Mumma Sport Contributor

“

For me, winning isn’t something that happens suddenly on the field when the whistle blows and the crowds roar. Winning is something that builds physically and mentally every day that you train and every night that you dream.” (Emmitt Smith, American Football player) The Men’s Hockey First Team

have been religiously training over the past few weeks in preparation to take on the Northern Force of Leeds University. It was through this training that Bath took to the field with an air of confidence that has been characteristic of this team this year. However this confidence appeared to have got the best of the team with Leeds taking an early lead through some sloppy defending. It was left up to the Fresher of the Year 2010, Tom ‘Eyebrows’ Wood, to slide the ball past the helpless Leeds goalkeeper leaving the female (and some male) supporters begging for more. They weren’t to be disappointed with yet

more freshers itching to get on the score sheet. The newly streamlined Jonny Kinder popped up in the opposing D only to rifle the ball past the helpless defense, unfortunately in the process he was hit on the hand and has subsequently had to have the thumb on his left hand amputated. Luke Carless, who has just been relegated to team physio, was to prove to have a busy day, even having to treat his brother who had a nose bleed following a rare moment in the opposition’s half, and subsequently nearly bled to death. While the rest of the back line were busy worrying whether Mandy Machin would be able to hold

his bladder for the entire game, the Leeds forward line were able to sneak the ball past an otherwise flawless Chris Day. With the end of the game looming it was up to Pete ‘John Terry’ Miller to regain the lead, further

Matches won by the Men’s 1sts this year. Two more will see them win the BUCS national championship.

impressing the female members of the crowd, some more than others.

With the game still in the balance it was up to Jonny Haynes to put the game beyond doubt following a pass from Pete Hill who had managed to sit on the ball, shielding it from the defense, and then fire it sideways to the Sesame Street star to seal the tie. The team celebrated into the night and now move on to the semi-finals where they will face Loughborough, who have managed to luck there way to this stage. The tie will take place at a neutral venue, the University of West England (UWE), on Wednesday February 24th. Any support would be hugely appreciated.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Sport

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Volleyball girls secure Sheffield berth Sean Lightbown Sport Editor sport@bathimpact.com

ath’s women’s volleyball 1sts moved a step closer to defending their title after overcoming their Cambridge counterparts to advance to the quarter finals. The last eight game will be held at the BUCS Championships in Sheffield on the 12th March, with a potential semi-final the same day. The final will take place two days later, also in Sheffield. Yet all this talk of Yorkshire would have been irrelevant if Bath hadn’t won, and that outcome certainly didn’t look likely early on as Cambridge took the first set 28-26. “We got off to a slow start,” admitted Rachel Turner, who was relentless throughout the latter stages of the game with her encouragement of team mates, and led by example with some good defensive work. Early on though, her team mixed excellent spells of play with some basic errors, which a grateful Cambridge capitalised on. The visitors were clearly buoyed, and came out with intent and enthusiasm as the second set got underway. Slowly but surely however, Bath began to creep their way back in, no doubt looking to make amends for dropping a set they should have won. Cleverly placed shots extracted errors from the Cambridge team, and although Bath were still well away from their best - Lizzie Smith’s continued tactic for using dips wasn’t particularly successful, for example - good digging work and continued pressure extracted the vital points for them to take the second set 25-19. At the inter-set break, you could sense the tide was turning in Bath’s favour. Whilst Cambridge’s coach dictated instructions and tactics in an overly critical, lecture-like fashion, Turner rallied her troops to con-

Bath’s Jess Grimson, whose performance was exemplary in the fourth set, gets ready as team mate Katie Self prepares to serve. tinue where they left off. The results of these contrasting talks were soon evident. Evenly contested for the opening exchanges, Bath soon gained the upper hand through great teamwork and encouragement, as Cambridge began to wilt under the pressure created. As the set wore on, the infectious enthusiasm of Cambridge in the first set began to disappear, replaced instead by defeatist groans and the barking of orders from the touchline. Bath kept cool heads to see out the third set 25-15, and take a 2-1 lead in this best-of-three contest. Bath were clearly enjoying themselves now, and with this their play

ventured toward the sublime. Smith’s dips, which were nullified earlier, began to send Cambridge players the wrong way, and in some cases sprawling across the Founders’ Hall floor as they desperately tried to keep up to speed. When they did repel these deft attacks, Turner was often on hand to send over punishing, acutely angled and powerful spikes to end the points. Yet it was Jess Grimson who had the biggest say in the set. Her relentlessly efficient serving, sometimes clipping the line and often difficult to deal with, saw Bath open up a 16-8 lead to firmly take a grip of the match. It was from this platform that Bath began to play a more expansive game, sending Cambridge players all over

the court seemingly at whim. Indeed, the clear enthusiasm and enjoyment of the Bath players seemed to get to Cambridge, who were now

The number of consecutive points Jess Grimson won on her serve in the fourth set.

a team riddled with unforced errors and glum faces. As such, it was probably fitting that the final point would see some excellent defensive work from Bath’s Josephine Andersson, Marina Krawer and Haddie Reinhert,

keeping the ball alive and eventually letting Cambridge be their own worst enemies; a mis-hit out of play was the final nail in the coffin as the fourth set ended 25-15, and with it the match. Afterwards, Turner was understandably pleased with the team after their rocky start. “From the second set onwards, we started to show how well we can play. Hopefully now we can build on this and retain the championship.” Leeds Canergie, one of the strongest teams at BUCS level, also qualified for the BUCS Championships weekend. On the basis of this performance however, and in particular the final two sets, Bath should hold no fears about who they will face.

Bath bagel seasiders

he men’s tennis second string advanced to the quarter-finals of the BUCS Trophy with a devestating 10-0 victory over the visiting Bournemouth University men’s second team. Their reward for this victory is a home tie against University of Wales Institute, Cardiff 1sts, who defeated London Met 2nds 7-3 on February 24. Bath will be hoping they can keep the winning habit, having lost their two previous league matches prior to this cup fixture.

Rich Tuck takes his serve as Ben Holmes stands by. Bath won the tie overall 10-0.

And they should not have much to fear, having beaten UWIC twice in the league already this season; 7-3 on the home courts of the Sports Training Village, and most recently 6-4 in the away league fixture last December. Team member Alex Robinson made clear that Bath must use this as a stepping stone to progress further. “We’ve gotten to this stage before, we just need to take that extra step forward,” he said.

Rich and Ben discuss tactics against Bournemouth.

Monday 22nd February 2010

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Sport

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Netballers face tense final games Continued from back page. effective. This proved the difference. An exceptional achievement for GK Leanne Studley and GA/GS Sam Rightman was their selection for the English Universities squad, they attended their first training camp for the squad at the weekend. Bath 2nds progressed into the quarter finals, courtesy of a 50-

31 victory over Brunel 2nds in the STV on February 17th. They now face Chichester away on February 24th. The 2nd team have made steady progressive through out the season. After two losses from two games at the start of the season, with a heavy 40 goal defeat away at Exeter, the team has lost only one game since. A defining

d o o

O u r first 2good feature this week couldn’t seem more quaint and/or patronising if it tried, but for once in this newspaper, we mean it. So congratulations to Elena Baltacha (pictured, rbotton right, who won the Corning Classic in Michigan , beating top seed Lucie Hradecka in the final. It’s been a great start to 2010 for Baltacha, reaching the third round of the Australian Open, and her success in the US has seen her rise to a ca-

reerh i g h ranking of 70. At the time of writing, she is in the x round of the Cellular South Cup in Memphis, and not looking back. After her well documented illnesses and injury problems, it’s great to see one of Britain’s best female tennis players start to show her full potential. Now, to something not quite so inspirational, but very amusing instead. We mentioned on the website how great the fake twitter of Dimitar Berbatov is, but it only seems fair to mention him in print this time as the Bulgarian’s e-imposter goes from strength to strength. “I download jamie oliver app for iphone, disappointed, doesnt tell me what to do with this foie gras in the pantry”. Find other such gems at www.twitter.com/ dimi_ ber-

Nodar Kumaritashvili: 19882010.

the 4th team who have won all but one league game this season. They currently sit second in the league on goal difference behind Exeter 3rds. A close encounter between the top two saw a Bath 34-32 victory on the 10th February. Bath 4ths showed their ability to perform under pressure, which may prove decisive for the end of the season, losing throughout the game until the last five minutes, when they emerged two-goal winners. Other victories saw Bath piling the goals on the scoreboard 77-13 and 7130 wins over Marjons and UWE. Whilst the 4ths are aiming to be promoted from this league the 5ths are fighting to stay up. Last season’s champions of Western conference 5A, saw the 5th team promoted into Western Conference 4A: the same league as the 4ths. So there’s been some interesting all Bath matches, both times 4ths coming out on top.

This season has been a challenge for the 5th team, who currently sit in 5th position in the

as last season’s champions of Western conference 5A, the 5th team were promoted into the same league as the 4ths. league. This may require a relegation playoff at the end of the season. It’s likely to come down to the wire; in the relegation dog fight on 17th February the team travelled away to Exeter’s 4ths losing by a mere 4 goals. Exeter now sit one position above them, out of the relegation zone. Like the 5ths, its going to be a nail-biter for all teams here until the end of the season.

2b ad

Bath’s 2nd team talk after the first quarter against Brunel.

game came when playing away against Gloucester 1sts amongst a hostile crowd who cheered every Bath mistake and booed every goal. Having lost to Gloucester at home on the opening game of the season it was going to be a testing encounter. The team were trailing by a few goals at half time, drawing at three quarter time. There was much tension entering the final quarter, with a reluctant home crowd, but Bath emerged five goals winners on the final whistle. The 3rd team were unlucky to exit the BUCS cup by a 35-29 defeat away at Marjons. Another demonstration that home draws can be so crucial to progression in the cup competitions. They currently sit 4th in their league, which they aim to consolidate to avoid relegation play offs. They’re training hard for their next encounter away at table toppers Bournemouth 1sts. It’s been a flourishing season for

Elena Baltacha is back to winning ways.

When Wayne Gretzky lit the torch to officially open the Vancouver Winter Games, flames engulfed a sadness which had hung in the air all day. Earlier, Nodar Kumaritashvili (pictured, top), a Georgian athlete competing in the luge, went on his sixth training run on Whistler’s luge track. Near the end he crashed, sending his body hurtling out of the track and into a steel pole. He was pronounced dead at the scene. He was 21. Thankfully the resulting luge contests passed without incident. Yet a shadow still hangs over the Vancouver Games; a young man, representing his nation, died participating in the sport he loved. Whether you think it was his risk to take or not, nothing can take away that fact. Rest in peace, Nodar. From grieving tragedy to bloodcurdling idiocy now, as Welsh flanker Andy Powell was arrested in the ear-

hours of Sunday morning, driving a golf buggy under the influence on the M4. As a consequence, he has been thrown out of the Welsh team, possibly for good, faces severe repercussions by his club as well as any potential police prosecution he may yet face. Bloody hell, that’s enough to drive a man to drink. On a more serious note though, the man’s a complete barmpot who’s lucky to be alive.

impactsport Ref justice: should managers berate officials so much? Page 28

Bath engineer victory against Brunel

Charlotte Towerton prepares to shoot for Bath Netball 2nds, despite the attentions of Brunel University’s Goal Keeper. Bath won the contest 50-31.

2NDS NETBALL BATH UNIVERSITY

BRUNEL UNIVERSITY 31 Sam Foxman Deputy Sport Editor

ath University Netball 2nds took on Brunel University 2nds in the last sixteen of the BUCS Cup. This is a knockout competition and the importance of the result was evident in the match. This game was well contested from the start and in the first quarter Bath had serious concerns for their Goal Shooter, Gemma BarclaySole, who was knocked down in the Brunel area and feared injured. Fortunately for Bath, who did not have an attacking player on their bench, she was able to continue but this in-

cident and the intensity of Brunel’s play in the first quarter saw Bath trailing 11-9 at the start of the second. In the second and third quarters of the match, Bath showed their superiority with an accomplished team performance and some quick movement to turn a 22-16 half-time lead into 38-23 at the end of the third. Bath produced a lot of turno-

The number of games that stand between the Netball 2nds and the BUCS trophy.

vers and despite missing opportunities by not taking advantage of the breaks as rapidly as they might have, solid constructed plays and

good finishing not only from Barclay-Sole but also from Goal Attack, Charlotte Towerton, put Bath in the lead. The Brunel coach pointed out the performance of Deborah Flemming, Bath’s Goalkeeper, as particularly influential in creating these turnover opportunities. For this and many other reasons, Bath went into the final quarter with a strong lead. For a few minutes in this quarter it looked as though a Brunel comeback might be on the cards as exceptional finishing from their Goal Shooter narrowed the lead. Bath recovered from this lapse to end the match on a high with the final scoreline, 50-31 reflecting a passionate and committed team performance from Bath. The team now progresses to the quarter finals of the cup.

Netball season review Charlotte Towerton Sport Contributor

t’s been an exciting and celebratory season so far for Bath University Netball Club. Many teams are enjoying decent cup runs and attractive league positions. Last week saw the 1st team knocked out at the quarter final stage of the BUCS cup away to Loughborough, a close encounter and enjoyable game for the team, that could have easily had a different outcome. The top two squads have enjoyed an influx of Freshers after many players graduating or leaving for placement at the end of last season. Both squads have made significant strides in a largely new outfit, one reason being the exceptional coach-

ing of Jess Garland and Emily Flavell, the Bath super league and Junior super league coach and deputy coach respectively. In the last 16 the 1st team triumphed over Nottingham 1sts 71-21, but came unstuck away at Loughborough in the quarter finals. Loughborough’s sporting credentials are well known, with a Netball centre of excellence, like Bath, an away draw was going to be a tough challenge to conquer. The third quarter was the most successful for Bath with some impressive shooting stats. Throughout most the game Loughborough’s circle defence were disruptive and effective. Story continued on page 31.