Bristol University’s Independent Student Newspaper Issue 249
•
Monday 19th March 2012
• www.epigram.org.uk
Charlton elected UBU President
Fashion The secret agents of style
Jenny Awford Deputy News Editor
Tristan Martin
After a highly competitive fortnight of campaigning and controversies, Paul Charlton has emerged victorious in the battle for UBU President. The eagerly anticipated student election results were announced on Friday 16 March to the captivated crowds in Bar 100. Charlton’s effective ‘Why Gamble?’ campaign made him a visible presence on campus. His election manifesto also stressed his desire that, ‘The Union should be there to help you, not something to battle against’. The new President-Elect emphasised the importance of clarity between University of Bristol students and their Union, saying that ‘everyone deserves to know what is happening at their Union’. In what was seemed to be a surprising turn of events, Presidential candidate Josephine Suherman, was the first to exit the race. Suherman was removed from the running in the second round after only scoring 784 votes. Charlton eventually won with 1,736 votes, compared to Georgina Bavetta’s 1,333 when second and third preferences were also included. Charlton expressed surprise at his victory, saying that he had ‘entertained no expectations’. Immediately after winning, Charlton thanked his fellow Presidential candidates and his dedicated campaign team. The new six member full-time sabbatical team includes four female Vice-Presidents, reversing the usual trend of a male-dominated group. There was as least one female candidate for every full-time UBU position. The new VP for Welfare and Equality, Alessandra Berti, commented that she
would have liked to have an all female team. Berti continued saying, ‘I hope this year’s example will encourage more females to follow suit next year’. The most hotly contested fulltime position was Vice-President for Activities, as five candidates battled it out for the coveted role. Voting went all the way to the fifth round with no one candidate gaining the majority. Martha West eventually emerged victorious in this tense race, receiving 1,036 votes in the last round. West commented that she was ‘gobsmacked to be in charge of 200 societies’. Her main aim as the VP Activities for the forthcoming academic year is ‘fairer access to all societies’ and the dissemination of a ‘weekly newsletter’ detailing all the
The pains of campaigns Behind the scenes of student politics Features 10
relevant news from the Union. Hannah Pollak was elected as the new VP Sport gaining 1,761 votes in the most conclusive contest of the night. Pollak expressed her relief that ‘all the hard work paid off’. She maintained
3298
Votes cast in the Presidential election alone
that her manifesto, which included ‘free gym classes’ and a ‘sauna in the gym’, were realistic. Pollak’s main aim for her forthcoming year at VP Sport was to get ‘more women involved in sport’. The fourth female candidate to
be successfully elected into the new Union sabbatical team was Alice Peck who ran unchallenged for VP Community. She was visibly upset at the Presidential result but later commented that she was ‘keen to work with anyone who the students of Bristol have elected’. Tom Flynn was elected as the new VP Education in an incredibly close two-candidate race. Flynn commented that he was ‘excited to make a genuine difference whilst representing Bristol students’. He expressed his surprise at the result, and stated that he ‘could not have run against a nicer person’. This year saw all Senate Representative positions filled, a vast improvement on last year, as only three of the part time positions were
Battle of the botox Which reality soap makes the grade? Film & TV 29
contested. Sheherazade El-Sukhun was also elected to be the new Chair of the Student Council. One of the most fiercely competitive battles of the evening was between 16 candidates for only five national representative positions. Two members of the current sabbatical team, Chris Ruff and Dom Oliver, were amongst those elected to be delegates for the NUS Conference on 24 - 26 April. The two unsuccessful Presidential candidates, Josephine Suherman and Georgina Bavetta were also elected. Bavetta scored a higher percentage of the vote, pointing towards the eventual outcome of the Presidential election. Thomas Phipps was elected as the final University of Bristol national representative.
Epigram
19.03.2012
News
Editor: Alice Young
Deputy Editor: Jenny Awford
Deputy Editor: Abigail Van-West
news@epigram.org.uk
jawford@epigram.org.uk
avanwest@epigram.org.uk
@epigramnews
Inside Epigram Features 11 A patriotic piss-up? Michael Walsh reminds us that his country’s celebrations are about more than just booze
Comment 15 First degree concerns Sam Fishwick and Patrick Baker ask whether a university education is truly value for money
Letters and Editorial It’s always a key election promise, but is it really possible to engage the student body?
Tristan Martin
16 Apathetic excuse
Paul Charlton thanks his campaign team for their hard work over the past fortnight
11 Culture 20 Ruff and ready
Music
Tristan Martin
Exploring the awkward gap between art and pornography with the work of Thomas Ruff The three presidential candidates as results were announced
26 A win for The Shins Going it alone has not prevented James Mercer from making a fantastic new album
26 Sport 32 The real sporting rebels With Balotelli’s bravado making the front and back pages, should there be more like him?
Online
Editorial team Acting Editor Editor Tom Flynn Hannah Stubbs editor@epigram.org.uk editor@epigram.org.uk Deputy Editors Deputy Editor Jon Bauckham jon@epigram.org.uk Jon Bauckham Hannah Stubbs jon@epigram.org.uk hannah@epigram.org.uk e2 Editor e2 EditorMcCrory Matthew Matthew McCrory e2@epigram.org.uk e2@epigram.org.uk News Editor Alice Young news@epigram.org.uk News Editor Alice Young Deputy News Editors news@epigram.org.uk
Deputy Sport Editor Deputy Music Editor Features Editor Science Editor Paddy Von Behr Tristan Martin Comment Editor Pippa Shawley Patrick Baker deputymusic@epigram.org.uk features@epigram.org.uk Nick Cork pvonbehr@epigram.org.uk
comment@epigram.org.uk
science@epigram.org.uk
letters@epigram.org.uk
deputyscience@epigram.org
Deputy Features Editor Andrew White Letters Editor Emma Corfield deputyfeatures@epigram.org.uk
Sport Online Editor Music Online Editor Deputy Science Editor Tom Mordey David Biddle tmordey@epigram.org.uk musiconline@epigram.org.uk Emma Sackville
Puzzles Editor Film & TV Editor Comment Editor Sport Editor Lily Buckmaster Will Ellis Patrick Baker Culture Editor Calum Sherwood filmandtv@epigram.org.uk comment@epigram.org.uk Tom Burrows Head Sub Editor culture@epigram.org.uk sport@epigram.org.uk Emma Corfield Deputy Film & TV Editor Deputy Comment Editor Deputy Sport Editor Anthony Adeane Hugh Davies Deputy Culture Editor Zoe Hutton Sub Editors deputyfilmandtv@epigram.org.uk deputycomment@epigram.org.uk David Stone Ross Benson deputyculture@epigram.org.uk deputysport@epigram.org.uk Katie Bitten Science Editor Letters Editor Rachel Hosie Nick Cork Emma CorfieldMusic Editor Puzzles Editor Nathan Comer Rosemary Wagg science@epigram.org.uk Lily Buckmaster letters@epigram.org.uk
music@epigram.org.uk Abigail Van-West Editor Editor Deputy Science Editor Head Sub Photography Culture Editor avanwest@epigram.org.uk Marek Allen Emma Sackville Zoe Hutton Deputy Music Editor Deputy News Editors Emma Corfield Pippa Shawley photography@epigram.org.uk deputyscience@epigram.org.uk culture@epigram.org.uk Jenny JennyAwford Awford Sub Editors jawford@epigram.org.uk deputymusic@epigram.org.uk jawford@epigram.org.uk Illustrator Science Online Editor Harriet Layhe, Deputy Culture Editor FIlm & TV Editor Sophie Sladen Edith Penty Geraets Hannah Mae Collins Abigail Van-West Kate Moreton, Rosemary Wagg Features Editor Will Ellis scienceonline@epigram.org.uk deputyculture@epigram.org.uk avanwest@epigram.org.uk Tristan Martin Illustrator Web Designer filmandtv@epigram.org.uk features@epigram.org.uk Sophie Sladen Maciej Kumorek Sport Editor Music Editor News Online Editor Editor Stone Amina Makele Deputy Features Editor Nathan ComerDeputy Film & TVDavid Web Designer Anthony Adeane deputysport@epigram.org.uk music@epigram.org.uk newsonline@epigram.org.uk Andrew White Rob Mackenzie deputyfilmandtv@epigram.org.uk deputyfeatures@epigram.org.uk
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19.03.2012
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Number of voters drops from 2011 elections Jay Crush News Reporter
Tristan Martin
Turnout in this year’s UBU elections was down on last year, with 3997 students voting for their new representatives, which is 110 fewer than in 2011. This translates to 20.8% of the student population participating in the election. However, this reduction in the number of voters can be put down to the four referenda which were included in last year’s voting, which vastly increased the interest and participation of the student body. This is reflected in the number of actual votes. Discounting votes for the referenda in the 2011 election shows that 6282 more individual votes were cast this year for candidates alone. The demographics of voters show a distinct lack of interest from postgraduate students, comprising a mere 6.26% of voters. First years accounted for 34.79% of the votes, second years 27.85%, third years 29.92% and the rest coming from fourth years and above. The greater first year involvement in these elections
is most likely due to candidates actively campaigning at halls, as well as the Union setting up three dedicated polling stations there to encourage voting. Nevertheless, the turnout is disappointing in comparison to other Students’ Union elections held recently. The record amount of votes in a student union election is held by Leeds University Union, with 9753 students voting in their elections last week. However, as impressive as this figure is, with over 10,000 more students than Bristol such a large turnout is to be expected. Other student unions holding elections this month include Warwick, who were celebrating an increased turnout of around 27% this week, and York, which recorded a very impressive turnout of 36.8%. The trend that can be seen from elections at other universities is an increase of over 1000 voters compared to the previous year, which Bristol failed to replicate. On the other hand, UCL’s Union election last month recorded a very disappointing turnout of 15.4%, so it could be worse. There was a visible effort to increase awareness about the election. The Union’s
The crowd eagerly await the results of the UBU elections in Bar 100
main strategy was revolving polling stations all over the University throughout the day, from Coombe Dingle to the Wills Memorial Building. This is a huge improvement from
voting in last year’s election, which was mostly online with only couple of static polling stations. Having polling stations in a wide range of locations makes the election
campaign far more visible and gives students another easy way to vote, in addition to online voting. This election also saw a greater online presence; with
interviews and analysis on Epigram’s new website and an increased use of Twitter by students, student media and candidates, all using the #ubuelections hashtag.
Accusations of lack of clarity over election rules Jessica Wingrad Senior News Reporter
Alex Sheppard
Following the recent Students’ Union elections, issues have arisen concerning the clarity of the rules and regulations laid down in the 2012 Code of Practice and Elections Agreement. The Union has revealed that there are plans to revise and re-write a new set of rules for next year’s elections which may include more specific details about what is and is not permitted. A number of complaints were made about the actions of a variety of candidates over the two weeks of campaiging and voting which many thought stemmed from a lack of clarity in the election rules as set out by the Union. The Union told Epigram that although they provide extensive guidance for candidates and inform them that they must not break the law, the University’s rules which they agree to when they become a student, or the Union’s own regulations which apply to the whole student body, there is not a definitive list of campaigning ‘do’s & don’ts’ which students and candidates can refer to. This is in order to ensure that creative
Democracy intern, Ed Gavaghan, addresses the candidates
campaiging is not curtailed. To make sure that elections are carried out fairly and that every candidate abides by the correct code of conduct, a Returning Officer is appointed by the Union. This year the Returning Officer was Dave Gilmore of NUS and the
Deputy Returning Officer was Scott Farmer, Director of Membership and Democratic Engagement at UBU. According to the Union their responsibility is to, ‘attempt to control behaviour and use of resources without stifling creativity’.
The Returning Officer reserves the right to define the rules as he sees fit at any point during the election proceedings. By appointing only one Returning Officer the Union hope to alleviate confusion or conflicting opinions. According to the
UBU website the Returning Officer, ‘will be responsible for all major decisions at the close of the election race’. Despite the mediating presence of the Returning Officer and the rules laid down on the Union website there are still perceived discrepancies which caused concern among candidates. There were six full-time officer positions open; five NUS delegate positions, and eight senate representative positions. All successful candidates are expected to play an active role in representing students and as such they are democratically elected by the student body. Voting takes place online or at polling stations across campus. Candidates form their own campaign teams, members of which are not given an individual and distinct set of rules to follow. However the Union website does state to candidates that, ‘You will be held responsible for the actions of any member of your team’. When it comes to the conduct and behaviour of campaign teams they too are expected to abide by the rules of the Union and the University although there are no specified rules laid down explicitly for them. Speaking to Epigram, Scott
Farmer said that, ‘The changing nature of social media and the uses of the internet has affected how candidates view campaigning,’ and that this is something they would be considering in the election rules review. To further ensure that all students running for Union positions understand and obey the rules there are nomination packs distributed which contain information about the election process as well as help and guidance with electioneering, promotion and campaign materials. The rules concerning the content of such material is regulated in clause (m) of the guidelines and says, ‘Material that breaches the Union constitution, election rules and equal opportunity policy will be removed’. However as with many of the rules, specific behaviour is not clarified but is left for candidates to try and determine what does and does not break the Union constitution. There is a list of ‘no-no’s’ which give a very rough outline of what the Union discourages candidates from doing, although a comprehensive list of do’s and don’ts is likely to be released for next year’s union elections.
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19.03.2012
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Compromise reached over Union name Katy Barney Senior News Reporter
for Activities, led the campaign against the Queen’s Road Building or QRB, setting up an online petition and a Facebook group to show the University that students were strongly opposed to losing ‘Students’ Union’ entirely from the name of the building. Ruff called the name change ‘small but symbolic’ as it could represent a ‘loss of identity’. ‘A name change gives the impression that this place’s primary purpose is no longer to serve the needs of students.’ He added that with the coming increase in the size of the student body, it was more important than ever that the Union has a strong voice, and ‘is valued by its institution.’ It is hoped that the compromise on the name will ensure this. However Will Wilkin, Station Manager of Burst Radio whose office is in the Union pointed out that most students would continue to refer to the building as the Union.
Alice Young
The University of Bristol Students’Union is to be renamed ‘The Richmond Building: Home of the Students’ Union’, upon completion of the multimillion pound refurbishment. The change in name has been a matter of controversy within the university for many months and this change is seen as a compromise between the originally proposed name, ‘The Queens Road Building’ and the current ‘Students’ Union.’ The refurbishment is set to cost approximately £26m and has now entered into ‘phase two.’ It is expected that the extensive works will be completed in 2015. The ‘Richmond Building: Home of the Student’s Union’ takes its name from the roads which surround it, Richmond Terrace and Richmond Hill, and also from the
Chancellor of the University, Baroness Hale of Richmond. University of Bristol administrative departments are set to move into the building, along with the International Foundation Programme, a new course for international students. The possibility of housing certain academic departments on the top two floors has also been discussed. According to Patrick Finch, University Bursar and Head of Estates, a name change was considered a necessity in order to ‘better reflect the multiple uses.’ The reallocation of the rooms will inevitably lead to a reduction in space available for clubs and societies, which has only furthered student frustration about changes to the Union. It is thought that the available space will be reduced by about 14%, however the architects are keen to emphasise that the efficiency of the spaces will be enhanced. Chris Ruff, Vice President
The Students’ Union will become ‘The Richmond Building - Home of the Students’ Union’
Three Hampton Road break-ins on one night Lucy Woods Senior News Reporter The number of burglaries affecting students from the University of Bristol continues to rise, with three buildings on Hampton Road getting broken into on the same evening. Two flats, one above the other were targeted on Hampton Road while the residents were out on the evening of Saturday 3rd March. The burglars kicked in the door of the top flat, which was already in a dilapidated condition, and proceeded to take four laptops, including a brand
new MacBook still in its box. They were able to fix the door back onto the latch so that the residents were unaware of the burglary until they let themselves in. The students returned home to find all the lights on and their laptops missing. Students in the lower flat had also returned home to the same fate, although one laptop was left untouched. One student in the lower flat also lost his kindle, iPod and lecture audio recordings which were in his bag along with his laptop. A non-student living a few doors down was also burgled in the same night.
The police were called immediately and arrived within the hour, and CSI came the following day in order to do fingerprinting. Unfortunately, no incriminating evidence was discovered and as yet, no items have been returned. Despite it being a Saturday night, no one heard or saw anything suspicious relating to the burglaries, although, with hindsight, several of the housemates reported noticing a man acting strangely as they arrived at their flat. Despite the loss of her laptop, one student, Laura Webster felt very fortunate that nobody was in either of the
flats at the time of the robbery. ‘I guess every cloud has a silver lining,’ she told Epigram.
University students are
three times
more likely to be the victims of burglary than anyone else in Bristol
Webster’s housemate, Hannah Bransden said, ‘It is pretty scary to think someone
has been in our rooms, looking at our things’. She added that unfortunately, three of them had lost a lot of academic work that had not been backed up. A total of seven laptops were taken, including two MacBooks, a Toshiba and an HP. According to the Bristol Neighbours website, Redland is part of ‘the zone’ regularly affected by burglaries. Other high-risk areas include Cotham, Bishopston, Ashley Down and Montpelier owing to the large student population in these neighbourhoods. The website also advises students that tracking software is a useful way to protect valuables, particularly
laptops and smartphones. One student, Alex Mobbs, told Epigram that he was able to track his iPhone to St Pauls after losing it on a night out. Believing it to be stolen, he contacted the police after locating his phone to the exact house using the software findmyiphone. A policeman was sent to the location in St Pauls and successfully retrieved his phone, which turned out to have been dropped in a taxi and recovered by the driver. These burglaries are the most recent in a spate on Hampton Road and local residents are urged to keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour.
Students sleep rough to raise money for the homeless Jessica Wingrad Senior News Reporter
Zaki Dogliani
Labour students slept rough in aid of charity St Mungo’s
Bristol Labour students slept rough in Bristol city centre between the 1st and 7th of March to raise money and awareness for St Mungo’s charity. The charity was set up to prevent homelessness and social exclusion. Students were given an information pack after signing up for the fundraiser. The pack highlighted their aims for the sleepout, ‘We want to dispel the common perception that homeless people somehow
deserve to be where they are. ‘Shelter is a basic human right and in a country where we pride ourselves on our National Health Service and welfare state it is totally unacceptable that so many people are slipping through the net in this way.’ Organisers highlighted, ‘What we are not doing is attempting to “live the life of a homeless person” for a week. ‘We all know we have warm beds to go back to at the end of the week and aren’t going to experience any of the feelings of hopelessness that are associated with rough-sleeping.’ They added that the fundraiser was simply a ‘gimmick’ to raise awareness.
At least six students had to be present on each night of the sleep-out for health and safety reasons and everyone had a sleeping-bag for the night. In order to ensure the safety of every person present, at least two people were expected to be awake at every point of the night. The website dedicated to raising money for the cause describes the reasons for the Labour society choosing to support St Mungo’s charity. ‘The recession and recent spending cuts have caused a spike in homelessness, particularly amongst young people. ‘A report published by Homeless Link warns
that imminent welfare reforms could trigger an explosion in rough-sleeping.’ Last month the Student Action for Refugees and Bristol University Amnesty International Society also took part in a sleep-out as a movement to aid asylum seekers, as part of the Still Human, Still Here campaign. The locations for the Bristol Labour students sleep-out campaign changed every night, beginning at the top of Park Street. The target was set at £5000 and so far funds have reached £3803.50 from donations given by 161 people.
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19.03.2012
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CLICendales pull off charity strip show Josephine McConville Head News Reporter
Emilie Baekgaard
BBC’s Rowell is jailed
A former BBC Radio Bristol presenter has been convicted and jailed for carrying out a number of sexual assaults on schoolgirls between 1989 and the early 1990s. Peter Rowell, 53, from Wickwar, south Gloucestershire, was accused of luring impressionable young teenagers using his ‘minor celebrity’ status as a presenter on local radio. The abuse took place at the studio, in his car, or even in the victims’ own homes. Five women provided statements, which saw the father-of-one convicted of
on day.’ Tim Robinson, Publicity Rep of the CLICendale committee, told Epigram, ‘The show went really well and reflected all the hard work and effort put in by all the organisers and dancers throughout the last few months. ‘With so little time to practice it was amazing to see how everything came together on the night with some excellent choreography giving us a great show to watch.’ He also commented on the amount of money raised for CLIC Sargent by the event. ‘With £10,000 already raised and money still pouring in it should not be difficult to surpass the £11,400 raised in 2011,’ he said. CLIC Sargent helps anyone affected by children’s cancer. The charity provides support throughout and after treatment, helping survivors and families come to terms with their ordeal. The money raised through CLICendales will go to CLIC Sargent ‘Homes from Home’ in Bristol, which offers families free self-catering accommodation close to the Regional Children’s Cancer Centres.
RAG Jailbreak winners reach Ancona, Italy
Marek Allen
BBC Bristol, Rowell’s former employer
Harrison Carter News Reporter
Newspapers, hats, tinsel and tassels were just some of the props used in the medical students charity dance and strip show, CLICendales. CLICendales is organised every year by Bristol Medical School’s student society Galenicals and raises money for CLIC Sargent, the leading children’s cancer charity in the UK. Over the last six years, Bristol Medical School has raised £58,196 for the charity. Auditions began last November and the only performance of the show - at the O2 Academy on the 10th March - sold out. Over 1700 tickets were sold in just three days. The show was hosted by Josh Lewkowicz and Matt Coates who promised the audience ‘top-quality stripping’. Bands Flu Fighters and Scarlet Fever opened the evening before this promise was fulfilled by male, female and mixed semi and full-strips, but the production also featured non-strip acts where no nudity was involved. The CLICendale ‘around the
world’ theme encompassed a broad range of acts including Bollywood, Brazilian, London Flash Mob and Cowboys and Aliens. There were a number of different dance styles from ballet to hip-hop. The first performance was a Japanese-themed nonstrip dance, which set the bar high for the rest of the performances. The racier acts came later in the evening, including a cross-dressing strip show. Rhys Williams, one of the medic strippers, said he found the ‘transsexual’ performance ‘liberating’ and ‘sexy’. Hosts Lewkowicz and Coates encouraged the crowd to buy raffle tickets and wristbands to raise money for CLIC Sargent before introducing the evening’s finale; the boys’ fullstrip which was performed to ‘Sexy and I Know It’ by LMFAO. Second year English student Jess Bancroft went to see CLICendales for the first time this year. She told Epigram, ‘All the performers had obviously put loads of time into it and the choreography was really impressive, but I’ve never seen so much fake tan in one go! ‘It’s just weird to think that they are all going to be doctors
twelve counts of indecent assault. The court heard that Rowell’s crimes were not limited to indecent acts with young teenagers below the age of 16. He was also found to have 400 indecent images of youngsters and found guilty of six counts of taking indecent images himself. Jailing him, Judge David Ticehurst told Rowell, ‘You had a life and lifestyle that would have been the envy of many an apparently successful career in a glamorous and glittering world. ‘Behind that public image you were a man that hid a dark secret. You were attracted to young girls, sexually abusing
and exploiting for your own gratification. ‘You were someone prepared to use the world of showbiz to attract young girls to you to abuse them.’ The offences Rowell committed occurred before he started presenting on BBC Radio Bristol. Prosecutor Ian Fenny told the court, ‘To the outside world he appeared a responsible family man. What in fact the public didn’t know is that he exploited his position to sexually abuse young girls.’ Detective Inspector Jill Kells from Avon and Somerset Police, said the crimes clearly demonstrated predatory and grooming behaviour.
Bristol RAG’s bi-annual ‘Jailbreak’ competition took place over the weekend of the 10th and 11th March, with the winners ending up in Ancona, Italy. Teams are given 36 hours to get as far away from Bristol as possible without spending any money, all in the name of charity. The record was set in 2011 when one team made it to Perth, Australia, for free.
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230 arrested in ‘Operation Relentless’ Jenny Awford Deputy News Editor
and seizures in the Bristol area. This operation is also about reassuring the public that we remain as determined as ever to crack down on crime.’ By the evening of 7 March, 188 people had been arrested for offences such as drug possession, robbery, assault, burglary and theft. Of those people, 17 were already wanted and taken straight to court. A further 46 were arrested during a month of intelligence gathering and the build-up to the day; meaning 234 people were arrested overall. Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Bangham said, ‘The fact that we have arrested this number of people sends out a strong message that crime does not pay in Avon and Somerset.’ He continued saying, ‘In what has been the force’s largest operation, not only have we been involved in robust enforcement action today but there has been public reassurance work by police community support officers, providing guidance and advice.’
Flickr: Joe D Bailes
Police have arrested over 230 people across Bristol in the largest day-long operation ever launched by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. The ‘Operation Relentless’ day of action took place on 7 March across parts of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. Operation Relentless is a yearround policing initiative that aims to protect the communities of Avon and Somerset. During the past seven years, Operation Relentless has led to more than 2,250 arrests during focused ‘days of action’ and long-term ‘keeping you safe’ operations. 7 March has been the most successful to date with over 1,000 police officers and special constables enforcing the largescale crackdown on criminals. A fifth of the force’s officers and other agencies were dispatched to ‘disrupt,
dismantle and destroy’ those damaging local communities. In some targeted areas, the streets were teeming with riot vans, patrol cans and officers on foot, as police acted on 69 search warrants. At an 8am raid on a house in Ravenglass Crescent, Southmead, police discovered thousands of pounds worth of suspected stolen goods, including 20 satellite navigation systems and nine laptop computers. A police search of a house in Greystoke Avenue, Southmead, led to the seizure of 100 cannabis plants and the arrest of a man on suspicion of cultivating the drug. In Stokes Croft, officers ran an Automatic Number Plate Recognition operation to track vehicles potentially linked to crimes Superintendent Keith McCoubrey, who led the raid, said, ‘It has largely been community information that has led to this raid and it is information like this that helps us carry out these investigations
During the past seven years, Operation Relentless has led to more than 2,250 arrests
Students protest against intake increase Alex Bradbrook News Reporter Controversy surrounding the increase in the number of students at the University of Bristol has reached a new level in recent weeks. English students have been the latest group to protest against the proposed enlargement of their department. At present, there are 62 English students per year. From this September onwards,
the department is set to grow by 150% to an intake of 150 students. The increased intake has prompted fears that that the quality of teaching will be impacted and that resources available to students of the subject will be in short supply. In an online survey, 93% of English students were concerned with the expansion plans. They have mobilised a campaign to express their grievances and set up a 150-strong Facebook group called ‘English Students In Action’. This serves as an
online meeting place to air their worries. The English students have also written an open letter to the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Eric Thomas. English student, Zoe Hutton, revealed, ‘Staff were not consulted about the decision to double the department’s intake’. She added that there was a feeling that the decision was made for financial rather than educative reasons and that English was being targeted for the rise in students because it is ‘cheaper to run’. Many other departments
across the university are also expanding their intake significantly. Geography will be recruiting 50% more students next year, raising numbers up to 135. A major worry amongst Arts students is the lack of library space and absence of books available to students. These problems are likely to worsen if departments start to double in size. English students have also raised concerns about how the student to staff ratio will be maintained and where the actual teaching will occur.
The increase in students is a result of the higher education reforms implemented by the coalition government at the end of 2010. The number of places universities can offer to students achieving ‘AAB’ grades or above at A-Level is now unlimited. The Vice-Chancellor has predicted that this would add an extra 600 UK students per year to courses at the University of Bristol, calling the rise ‘sustainable and achievable’. He has pledged that the University will maintain ‘the important
infrastructure that supports the student experience.’ The disquiet amongst English students comes as the National Union of Students (NUS), reports that students are demanding more contact time with lecturers. Following the survey of 5,000 students nationwide, the NUS Vice-President, Usman Ali, stated, that, ‘Universities should listen to what students are calling for and build their courses appropriately. Students…should play a key part in [their courses] production.’
Debt labelled ‘too damn high’ by UBU Abigail Van-West Deputy News Editor Armed with self-illustrated ‘debt placards’, students from the University of Bristol gathered on Tyndall Park Avenue on Wednesday 14th March to protest that ‘the student debt is too damn high.’ Organised by the students’ union, the banner-yielding crowd hoped to draw attention to the general cost of student living and highlight that something needs to be done to reduce the heavy student price tag. Although actual protestors were low in numbers, many
students showed their support through filling out posters and posing for photographs. The posters read ‘The cost of... is too damn high’ and passers-by were encouraged to share their view of what aspects of university life at Bristol are unduly expensive. Answers included ‘the gym’, ‘field trips’, ‘books’ and ‘course-packs.’ Based on a study of 2,800 students, the Push University Guide estimates that students joining in 2012 could expect debts of up to £53,000, which is double the estimated figure for 2011. Student protesters hoped to draw attention to some of the expenses that could be reduced
for students, if funded by the university. President of the Students’ Union and organiser of the protest Gus Baker, told Epigram, ‘Too many students have to take out loans additional to their tuition fees to afford to study in Bristol.’ ‘We’re working to reduce course costs, the amount that the gym costs and really looking at the unnecessary things that students have to pay for, that really the university should be paying for instead.’ In an email advertising the protest, Baker highlighted his concerns with the effects of course costs, claiming, ‘The cost of study is forcing many
to work long hours in part time work, with some being forced to resort to extreme measures to pay the bills.’ The biennial Sodexo University Lifestyle Survey revealed earlier in March that 25% of UK students currently juggle a part-time job along with their studies, whilst 49% of the 2,000 students asked, claimed they would devote more time to paid-work if they were paying £9,000 in fees. The union is dedicating a month to focusing on the cost of university and making sure students ‘don’t get ripped off.’ This coincides with their Spring of Activism project, coorganised by UWE and NUS.
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Student cheating continues to rise Izzy Obeng-Dokyi News Reporter
worrying considering concerns of slipping academic standards in UK universities as they face increased competition from their international counterparts. UBU Vice-President for Education, Josh Alford, commented that ‘It may well be the case that universities are getting better at detecting plagiarism, rather than it actually being on the rise, with an increase in the use of software such as Turnitin’. Alford further expressed concerns about the failure of the university to adequately educate students as to what constitutes plagiarism. He stated that: ‘We do feel the University needs to do more to raise students’ knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism. We have been working with them to improve the induction students get into study at Bristol, making sure they are well trained in referencing and other relevant skills. Alford continued saying: ‘We support the University in doing more to ensure that students are not able to “cheat”, whether they do so intentionally or through a lack of understanding of what constitutes plagiarism.’
Bob Pitchford
Incidents of plagiarism at some of the UK’s leading academic institutions have increased in the last few years as data reveals that more and more students turn to Internet essay providers. 1,700 students at 20 of the UK’s most prestigious universities, including the University of Bristol, were found guilty of plagiarism in 2010-11. The figure stood marginally higher at 1,849 in 2009-10. But incidents have increased at several universities. These numbers were accumulated from the freedom of information requests that were sent to a number of UK institutions. The consequences of these misdemeanours have included fines, docked marks, expulsions and even a PhD graduate at Cambridge being stripped of his degree. Of the 20 universities, Bristol had the lowest number of cases with a single student being charged with misconduct in the last academic year. The highest number of misconduct cases
was found at the University of Lancaster with 194 cases, up from 175 in 2009-10. The rise may be attributed to the increasing pressures of a worsening economic environment in which new graduates face increases in the cost of university education, an increasingly competitive labour market and a proliferation of Internet sites offering free or cheap essays. Academic Registrar at the University of Bristol, Robert Partridge, told Epigram that the TurnitinUK plagiarism detection system was only ‘one way’ of monitoring plagiarism. ‘There is no hard evidence to suggest that there are more cases of plagiarism but we are probably more attuned to it. We have a clearer definition as to what it is.’ Professor of Political Science, Mark Wickham-Jones, states that it is ‘Important for the university to be as rigorous as possible,’ as cases of plagiarism ‘devalue degrees’. The relatively low number of cases at Bristol may be attributed to the success of the current system used to detect plagiarism. The findings are particularly
Visitors flock to compare the meerkats at Bristol Zoo
Meerkat triplets born in Bristol Zoo Gardens have been named Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki. The babies weighed just 30g at birth and are being well looked after by the adult meerkats, which take turns minding them. The tiny newcomers have already been spotted exploring their enclosure and soon they will be learning how to dig and forage in the sand. Keepers have named the trio after the characters in the popular film, the Lion King, the musical adaptation of which comes to the Bristol Hippodrome this September.
Cabbies in uproar over permit scheme Lucy Woods Senior News Reporter
Marek Allem
Bristol taxi drivers are against First Great Western plans to introduce permits at Bristol Temple Meads.
The taxi drivers of Bristol are in uproar following the announcement that taxi permits are to be introduced at Bristol Temple Meads railway station. The controversial permits proposed by the train operator First Great Western will cost cabbies £375 a year to use the rank outside the station entrance. First Great Western (FGW) claims that the permit will improve the quality of services outside the station, ease congestion and bring Temple Meads in line with its other railway stations and cut down on congestion. The company also plans improvements to Station Approach Road A spokesman for the company said that of the 40 stations it operates that have taxi ranks, only four do not have the permit system, and Bristol Temple Meads has never had one since the taxi rank opened in 1974. Bristol cab drivers have
proposed the permit to be unacceptable as the rank is not property of First Great Western, but rather part of the public highway. Pat Jones of the Bristol Taxi Association said: ‘We’re not too happy about it – we think it’s just about the money.’ The secretary of the National Taxi Association (NTA) in Bristol, Morad Tighilt, stressed, ‘We’re challenging the legality of this permit scheme.’ Tighilt has publicised fears that if introduced, the permit would soon increase significantly, as First Great Western use a formula based on the annual number of passengers at each station. At Bristol, this amounts to approximately 9 million passengers, generating an annual permit charge of £2,500. According to Tighilt, ‘Cabbies take about three or four months to earn that kind of money and they need it to pay for running their vehicles and all their overheads as well as looking after their families.’ First Great Western spokesperson, Dan Panes, maintains that the standards of the taxi rank at Bristol
Temple Meads are in need of improvement. Panes commented that: ‘I know the forecourt gets congested, there’s beeping and there can be shouting. We’re hoping this will address that.’ First Great Western has also argued that they own the land at the front of the station, and that thirty-six of the forty stations it operates with taxi ranks have permit systems, including at Bristol Parkway. Some of the money raised from the permit scheme, First Great Western claims, will go towards improving the access and exit points on the A4 leading towards and away from the station. The National Taxi Association (NTA) has filed a court order opposing the permit. A case management hearing has been scheduled for the beginning of April at Cardiff High Court pending the outcome of any legal action taken by the NTA. Another First Great Western spokesperson commented: ‘We’re quite clear that the permit scheme in Bristol will continue and we’ll await any legal challenge that comes up.’
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Realpolitik wins the day in Union elections Henry Reese-Sheridan examines the disengagement of student voters from political ideologies in the UBU elections
Tristan Martin
Paul Charlton, Henry Reese-Sheridan, Georgina Bavetta and Josephine Suherman
Henry Reese-Sheridan Features Reporter Last week, the editor of this section and I made a podcast about the union elections, which will have concluded by the time this goes to print. The aim of the podcast was twofold: first and foremost to entertain, but also to provide a sociological insight into the kind of people who run for union office, and how they go about it. One of the highlights of the podcast, for me at least, was the interview with Welfare and Equality candidate Calum Sherwood. Ideology, where art thou? Ideology (noun) … 3. A system of ideas or way of thinking pertaining to a class or individual, esp. as a basis of some economic or political theory or system, regarded as justifying actions and esp. to be maintained irrespective of events. (Shorter OED). Calum felt that he was one of the only explicitly ideological candidates running for office. (He’s an out-of-the-closet Marxist, who ran on a ‘liberation focused’ platform). I had to agree with him. During the campaign period, I didn’t see or hear about one other policy platform that publicly and explicitly referenced any of the classical political ideologies (e.g.Marxism, Liberalism, Conservatism etc.),
nor any newer ones (e.g. ‘green’ politics). This is strange for two reasons. Firstly, the offices that were being contested were political; the people filling them would play an important part in determining, in the words of Harold Lasswell, ‘who gets what, when and how’ within the university. You might then expect from the nature of the prize that at least some of the candidates would express themselves in politicalideological terms. Secondly, I saw several policy platforms which, if you were to connect the dots of the specific policies and views that comprised them, formed the outline of a classical ideology, but for some reason weren’t expressed in ideological language.
potential voters. This was really important,because the vast majority of Bristol students don’t vote in the union elections. This bloc comprise a massive opportunity for candidates. If one could mobilise even a fraction of them, he or she could clean up the contest. There was a notion amongst the union candidates that this bloc of students would be
on making students even minimally aware of the role that the union plays in their lives, so that they would see a reason to vote at all. Appealing to this group on an explicitly ideological platform, the argument went, would be like trying to introduce the concept of Western pop music to a member of an Amazonian tribe
Why wasn’t anyone speaking ideology? Vox populi, vox dei In a word, democracy. From what I gathered, the candidates perceived two good reasons to eschew ideological language. On the one hand, candidates didn’t want to risk alienating students attached to an ideology different to their own. One candidate told me that, in her own mind, she conceived of her policies as fitting into a democraticsocialist ideological framework. However, to express her platform as such would be to alienate, for example, conservative voters. On the other hand, candidates were wary of turning off politically apathetic
Tamara-Jade Kaz
straightforwardly turned off by ideological language. One candidate told me that many of the students she approached on the campaign trail told her they ‘didn’t do politics’. A lot of her campaign, including the way in which she framed her policy platform, was focused
whom, up to the point of your intrusion, had lived in total isolation from the rest of mankind, by playing them, in its entirety, My Bloody Valentine’s seminal 1991 shoegaze studio masterpiece Loveless. What might engage them was a policy platform which made obvious the concrete benefits it
would have on people’s lives if implemented. In the eyes of the candidates, the bottom line was that ideology doesn’t get votes. Blair’s Babes The candidates, then, perceived Bristol students as disengaged from ideological language. In this respect, they viewed students in the same way the national political class views the British electorate. Ideological language has been largely absent from UK politics since about 1995, the year that saw the Labour Party, under the leadership of Tony Blair, abolish Clause IV - i.e. the most expressly ideological clause - of its constitution, whence came New Labour. David Cameron fits comfortably into this antiideological climate, reassuring us that the current government is one ‘led by people with a practical desire to sort out this country’s problems, not by ideology’. I don’t think this movement away from ideological language was a mistake, nor do I think it’s in the interests of society. I think ideological terminology was purged from politics because it was inconvenient for a particular type of democratic political actor: the professional politician. This type of politician seeks office as an end unto itself, as opposed to a means for realizing a deeply held political vision. Renouncing ideological language means such people can do whatever it takes to please the electorate without
being accountable to a higher set of political ideals. If you set out your ideas systematically as an ideology, then you’re constrained in what policies you can propose without being flagrantly inconsistent; a Marxist can deviate only so far from socialist tenets before he becomes a joke. But if you claim to have no ideology, you’re free to do whatever most appeals to the majority of voters and justify it as stemming only from a ‘practical desire to sort out this country’s problems’. You excuse yourself from the political debate, and in doing so immunize yourself from criticism. Blair abolished Clause IV because he realised that the ideology that most effectively enabled him to pander to the electorate and avoid critical debate is that of purporting to have no ideology at all. This is anathema to critical political discussion, and only reinforces the voter apathy that supposedly brought about the eschewal of ideology in the first place. Too rigid an ideology is surely harmful. But a politician who thinks and speaks ideologically whilst maintaining flexibility is more likely to demonstrate intellectual integrity in the public sphere, to enhance critical debate by providing robust arguments, and to have a political imagination that extends beyond the horizon of the next election. To the extent to which we pander to professional politicians by marginalizing those who articulate themselves in ideological terms, we’re all Blair’s babes.
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St. Patrick’s Day is more than a piss-up
After a weekend of green-tinted revelry, Epigram looks at the history of Anglo-Irish relations and what the day really represents Michael Walsh Features Reporter
Eoin O’Mahony
There is more to St. Patrick’s Day than just getting drunk. I fully understand that statement is probably hard to believe right now with that hangover you are nursing, but beyond the Guinness, green clothes, shamrocks and terrible ‘Oirish’ accents that I know you’ve all put on there is a huge point to the day that Britain is completely missing. Although starting out religious, St. Patrick’s is now a day for all immigrants, Irish or not, to celebrate the culture of the nation that they left behind whilst recognising the struggle it takes to gain acceptance in their new homeland. Growing up over here can be a tough experience for an ethnic minority. The school playground can be an unforgiving environment for those deemed ‘foreign outsiders’. I was quick to learn that the Irish were a figure of fun to the British. It seemed that every day I took a relentless stream of jokes. There were the common stereotypical ones claiming we were stupid, violent and constantly drunk. Then there were the more ‘touchy’ ones about events such as the potato famine, a tragedy that for some reason seemed to be ‘fair game’ as far as jokes were concerned. There were constant terrorist references, at one point I’d been given the nickname ‘IRA’ until some bright spark came up with ‘Walsh-Qaeda’. I’ll also never forget the day when
St Patick’s Day has become a celebration for more than just the Irish
a boy found out our official language was called Gaelic. “Haha, Michael licks gays” he declared to the class. Even the teacher laughed at that one. Of course you just had to put up with it; they didn’t really understand, to them my white skin meant that it couldn’t possibly be construed as being racist. Still, I took it all in good
grace; there was little malice behind most of it. In truth there has never been a better time to be growing up Irish in Britain. Yet until recently this was never the case at all. Upon arrival in Britain in the 1960s signs of “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” were hung up outside various hostels, pubs and shops. By the time
my dad arrived in the 1970s anti-Irish prejudice was increasing as a result of the IRA bombing campaign. The Irish immediately became a suspect community; every one of them was a potential terrorist or an IRA sympathiser, an image not helped by the negative media frenzy accompanying each attack. The Irish soon became
shunned in society; they were verbally insulted, physically attacked, closely monitored by their own neighbours and discriminated against in the workplace (my dad still recalls how he and my uncles used to put on fake English accents and change their names just to get labouring work on construction sites). There were certainly no St. Patrick’s Day celebrations on the scale we see today. The introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1974, in the aftermath of IRA bombings in Birmingham, once again highlighted the Irish community becoming scapegoats. Even though it was never officially declared to be aimed at the Irish community, a study completed in 1996 showed that 97% of those arrested and detained under the Act were in fact Irish. In their haste to be seen to be taking action against terrorism the British authorities convicted Irish people that later had their imprisonments overturned for being unsafe and unsatisfactory, such high-profile cases being The Birmingham Six, The Guildford Four and The Maguire Seven. Therefore just being Irish in the wrong place at the wrong time was dangerous. The declaration of ceasefire and The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 have been significant events in transforming the experiences of the Irish community in Britain. It has contributed to a cultural revival that led to the return of St. Patrick’s Day parades and an increased sense of pride. We
were finally given recognition for our contribution to British society in the 2001 census with the inclusion of our own category. The saddest thing is that the majority of British are painfully unaware of the struggles that the Irish community have had to endure in order to be able to openly celebrate their culture without fear of reprisal. It is clear these lessons have not been learnt. In a way the Muslim community have now been made the ‘new Irish’, a minority group baited in the media, alienated through fear, a culture suspected of breeding terrorism. The aftermath of the 2005 London bombings saw the Terrorism Act of 2006 being passed, no doubt increasing discrimination towards Muslims. By blaming these communities for being the source of the problem they will not defeat terrorism; it will only harden pinions and bring misery. Hopefully one day in the future the British will celebrate Muslim culture in the same way that they now do for the Irish. The Irish still remain one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Britain. Today we can openly and proudly celebrate our Irish culture in a way that our parents, grandparents and ancestors never could, and what makes it even more special is that our British neighbours, and former oppressors, have now embraced it too. We have finally been accepted. Now that is the real meaning of St. Patrick’s Day.
Can’t get a paid internship? Get the university to pay for it Tristan Martin Features Editor
an agreement has been made with an employer (which may well be easier given the incentive that you will be paid, but not by them) the university hands over a cheque for £1000 to the employer, who is then responsible for paying your wages. The scheme will cover four weeks of work at any Small to Medium Enterprise (250 employees or less) or Not-ForProfit organisation. The kind of work that has been taken up so far has often been arts based, presumably as these are exactly the kind of desirable internships that due to financial constraints are rarely paid. Placements have so far been arranged at the Bristol Natural History Consortium, the Bristol Old Vic, and a local start-up company in the media sector. The scheme covers eligible work experience anywhere in the UK, and is currently looking to extend to internships overseas as well. We spoke to Harry, a third
Alex Proimosl
As was demonstrated in the last issue of Epigram, work experience and internships are increasingly seen as a fundamental part of the university experience. The frequently raised problem with them is that unless you want to go into law, finance or engineering, you are almost certainly not going to get paid. Many of the best opportunities are to be found in smaller companies, where genuine hands on experience is available, but most of these companies just don’t have the funds to pay for you to be there. Well we have some good news. It turns out that the University Careers Service has been running a scheme where they will pay for you to do a month of work experience so that you’re employer doesn’t
have to. The scheme has been running since February, but it hasn’t got that much attention, probably because those who do know about it don’t want anyone else to get their hands on this the precious pile of cash. To find out more about how it works we spoke to Caroline Higgins from the Careers Service. ‘The process of getting funding is very easy. To ensure each internship is a genuine opportunity to develop skills and add value to the intern’s CV, we ask the employer to send us a job description. The funding is then paid to the employer once they have agreed to take part in the scheme and signed the agreement.’ Students can either find their own internship, or have a look at the Careers Service website and find one there. The Careers Service also offer CV clinics, practice interviews and a range of sessions tailored specifically to getting an internship. Once
Find yourself some interesting work, and get paid for it
year student who has recently been accepted on to the scheme. ‘Despite having a fairly impenetrable website, the internship scheme was very easy to get involved with. I spoke directly to the owner of a small documentary production company based in Bristol and explained how the scheme
worked. He liked the idea of getting a paid intern without having to actually take the wages out of his limited budget. I will be helping to research their next set of films on precolonial African civilizations, and may get involved with a film festival they organize.’ There is currently funding
for 100 internships per year for the next four years. If you would like to find out more, or apply for funding, have a look at the Careers Service website or get in touch via email. www.bris.ac.uk/careers careers-uobinterns@bristol.ac.uk
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Bristol International Development Conference Lucy King Features Reporter
Steve Cadman
On Saturday 10 March, Bristol University played host to experts from a variety of fields who all came to participate in the Bristol International Development Conference, organised by the Bristol Hub. With three streams running throughout the day, covering health, social and environmental issues, it was a good opportunity to speak to people directly involved in the process of development around the world. For those carnivores amongst you, who shudder at even the thought of meat less than once a day, you can breathe a sigh of relief. I have it on good authority – from Adrian Gault, Chief Economist of the Committee on Climate Change – that they will not be advocating a mass transition to vegetarianism any time soon. In fact, they believe that we can achieve 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, without substantial lifestyle changes. However, there is an increasing demand for meat as well as other consumer goods throughout the developing world and there is a limit to the amount we can produce, if we are truly committed to ending world hunger and ensuring environmental sustainability, as set out by the Millenium Development Goals. So how do we resolve this conflict? A compromise will need to be reached somewhere; should those from the Western
The conference made clear that genuine development requires a lot more than mere aid
world be forced into reluctant vegetarianism, for instance? It seems fair, since the West has held a monopoly on consumption of meat and other luxuries for the previous decades, and been the major offender in terms of climate impact, that it should be paying a higher price than developing countries who are only now beginning to catch up. Gault also told me that the recommended 80% reduction is really the minimum the UK will have to make. However, despite this apparent thoughtfulness for developing countries, the committee is also advocating sourcing potentially 22% of energy demand from bio-energy crops, which can be grown on
‘abandoned land’ (probably in Africa). These crops, despite being touted as the solution to all our green problems, are the source of much controversy. Oxfam claims that ‘about 30 per cent of food price increases are due to the demand for biofuels’ and that ‘biofuels may already be responsible for dragging 30 million people into poverty and costing poor countries nearly $100 billion in increased food bills.’ At the root of these problems is the fact that International Development, as a concept, sits uncomfortably with the global capitalist model the world’s economy follows. Thinking along these lines, some cynics
have suggested that the whole enterprise is nothing more than a tactic of the Western world to turn developing countries into consumers. This fits with a modernisation theory (that the path of development for all countries is the same) and so we should be encouraging developing countries along the same path as the West. It is recognised that within this model, Western countries are in a privileged position from which to benefit disproportionately from the development of other countries, Given this situation, some suggest that it could be in the interest of developing countries to actually reduce their connection to the world
market. John Hilary, director of War on Want, argued that ‘capitalism is designed to accumulate capital in small pockets and lead to the enrichment of the elite. This is its mandate; this is how it has always worked. It is no longer sustainable.’ He said that as a system, Capitalism is simply not compatible with the aims of International Development. For true International Development to occur, developed countries should be demonstrating a healthy mixture of sovereignty, sustainability and equity. Hilary suggested that what will be required is a focus on countries as individual and distinctive
entities and how they can come to be independently successful. This kind of approach has been popular in Latin America, where the home grown monetary fund Banco Del Sur has been created as a reaction against the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary fund. In the words of Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, ‘One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it would reflect the perspectives of those in the south.’ Ultimately, the whole debate rests on a question of perspective, and on the thought that it can’t always be that of developing countries looking to the West for the way forward.
The Only House Left Standing In 2003 Tom Hurndall travelled to Baghdad. An aspiring photojournalist, Tom intended to report and protest about the injustice of war. On April 11th of the same year he was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in Gaza. He was 22. The Only House Left Standing, published last month, documents the last weeks of Hurndall’s life leading up to the shooting. His photography, poetry and diary accounts together create what is an intense yet beautifully simple collection. As you progress through the book the photos and comments build in intensity, reflecting his increasing attachment to the people and the country. The sense created by the end is one of both a brave man, and a region torn apart by war. Out now from Trolley Books www.trolleynet.com
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The arrival of Viral: Kony causes chaos online
The global phenomenon of social media has an intimidating power as the charity appeal masters the web
Lydia Greenway
dinner warm in our bellies. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but perhaps the sooner we admit to it, the better. If getting something done means it needs to become a trend, so be it. So long as the information being circulated is correct
and beneficial, utilizing the Internet for compassionate ends is a real possibility. Imagine if donating £1 became the latest craze? If everyone on Facebook caught on, we’d have more than £483 million to put to good use.
Hopeful fancies aside, Facebook might look to some like a worryingly lazy approach to change. Critics of the Kony 2012 fans made the point that simply spreading the word is a lazy way of dealing with the world’s problems, compared to
Flickr: Jtick1
The Kony 2012 video that sprung to overwhelming internet fame on 6 and 7 March revealed an interesting divide in public opinion. Through a series of explanations, the 30 minute video asks viewers to make Joseph Kony famous, the terrorist leader of the LRA, and to convince the US government to continue in their pursuit of him. Many were shocked by its message, compelled to spread the word and eagerly became part of the seemingly noble movement. Nevertheless, the backlash against it was circulated with equal enthusiasm, warning supporters that the video was teeming with inaccuracies and impracticalities. Worrying facts revealed about the charity, Invisible Children, and the Ugandan army that it supports, sparked heated debate about the video’s legitimacy. Whether or not you think the Kony 2012 video was a piece of remarkable internet altruism or a dangerous and misleading marketing ploy, it may be paving the way for change. By using social media networks, a company makes gaining the attention of the whole world a real possibility. With a recorded 483m active daily users on Facebook and a staggering 4bn
videos viewed every day on YouTube, this really is the place to get a response. But what kind of response? And who are these millions of people? The riots of London 2011 spread appallingly quickly across the UK’s big cities, including Bristol. Facebook and Twitter took much of the blame for the destruction that occurred. Status updates, shared events and tweets got the word out and the people came running, in aid of an inexcusable event that shook the country. Such cases demonstrate the dangers of social networks and the ease in which they can be abused. It has a tendency to persuade people to follow blindly, a jump-on–the-bandwagon method of advertising; no one wants to get left behind. Let’s be honest, ‘ideas’ gone viral on YouTube are about trend, about what is being talked about after lectures, more than they are about our philanthropic approach to life. The Kony 2012 video may have fished deep into our benevolent intuitions, but would we have so eagerly re-blogged it if it wasn’t what was on everybody else’s lips? We regularly see very similar clips on our television screens, charities such as Save the Children and Oxfam asking us to donate a small amount of money to the plethora of Third World problems. We watch it uncomfortably, without picking up the phone, without re-blogging and the TV soon moves on to easier subjects. This we can watch much more comfortably, sat on our sofas,
putting in the hard work or the money. Although a valid point, spreading the word could in fact be a highly beneficial method of development. Piling money into aid may help counter poverty in an immediate way, but if we want to see long term, sustainable improvement in the developing world, we need to address the foundations of the problems. By spreading the word a campaign can gain the backing of the world, displaying images and making a point that a government will find difficult to ignore. So perhaps encouraging the US government to plug more military intervention into the dangerous pursuit of one man is not quite the right kind of persuasion we need to see. In order to really get to the heart of Third World corruption, we do need governments to accept the immoralities occurring in their own country and begin by putting those right. One of the main aims of campaigning is getting enough people to demonstrate that they are aware and concerned about an issue, by signing petitions and sending letters to relevant policymakers. If the whole world is shouting about it, it makes it difficult for politicians not to recognize the clear injustices that are being overlooked. So don’t be too quick to dismiss a viral video campaign as futile. Go ahead and use social network trends for all they’re worth; just make sure you’re doing it realistically, for the right reasons and with the right information. You just might start a revolution.
Healthcare, health cares and health scares
Jevon Whitby You could be forgiven for losing track of the NHS debate. Intensely technical, dealing with inconceivable sums of public money and viciously partisan, the issue of reforming the NHS will understandably bore even the most avid political junkie. How could Britain get to the stage when the ancient political truism that ‘no government could ever abolish the NHS’ is apparently at risk, to the
outright condemnation of Left, Right and Centre? In the first instance, the complexity of the issue is staggering. Current public outrage surrounds the innocent sounding ‘Health and Social Care Bill,’ the largest reorganisation of the NHS ever, which is currently vying with the Leveson Enquiry for the title of most mind-numbingly complicated political controversy of 2012. If you enjoy a little light reading, the bill, currently passing its report stage in the House of Lords, lays out the replacements of certain funding bodies with commissioning groups that include general practitioners, all detailed over a snappy 447 pages. The problem is self-evident.
Firstly, are you aware of the intricate differences between a Primary Care Trust and a Strategic Health Authority? Does anyone outside the Department of Health know what the euphemistic ‘empowerment’ of GPs means, or the precise powers of the new NHS Commissioning Board? No, nor do we. Secondly, this is not aided by the rhetoric of each party, which in recent weeks has elevated the level of general scaremongering to the noisy political equivalent of an ambulance siren. Labour’s campaign to stop the ‘privatisation’ of the NHS insists it will prevent the ‘unnecessary, unwanted, wasteful and damaging’ plan which would ‘end the
NHS as we know it.’ The Conservatives on the other hand have plastered over their defence of the bill with an announcement that the reform will invest a mysterious £330 million into healthcare. Quite where such funds will come from or what is traded off to obtain them is unclear. Nevertheless, one cannot help but question whether each side of the debate is equally abstract and uninformative, even by reading both vacuous accounts most of us remain none the wiser as to the future of our local hospital. Lastly of course, the ‘privatisation’ of healthcare will never engage student interest - or anger - in quite the same way as other controversies. The healthy will probably only
become aware of any changes if they urgently need medical attention in the future. In much the same way that carowners mentally sideline public transport requirements, or older people marginalise education agendas, students often feel comfortable to ignore the NHS and enjoy their relative abundance of youth and good health. Voter confusion is the burden, these reforms are far too complicated for any ordinary - or even remarkable - person to grasp without uncomprehending fear. Imagine for a moment the peril of the elderly who rely on the NHS, the fear of a long term cancer patient or a seriously ill young person, who might well suspect that their
healthcare lifeline is being obliterated by an unstoppable storm of incomprehensible bureaucracy, and the problem comes into sharper focus. Those patients need one very clear assertion for the chaos to settle: a straightforward, unambiguous, uncomplicated letter in the post, guaranteeing to them that the specific medical care they rely on will not vanish. Should the coalition fail to give each concerned patient that reassurance, then clarity is clearly not their objective. If so, then for the sake of a great many very frightened people, the government deserves every incomprehensible smear to its reputation that the opposition can bandage together.
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19.03.2012
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The truth about the traveller community
Jessica Wingrad questions public attitudes towards travellers and assesses whether they deserve more rights
Jessica Wingrad
Flickr: DFphotos Flickr: Flickr: Gag
Irish travellers and Roma gypsies have traditionally received very bad press. As minority groups the travelling and gypsy communities have been stereotyped as violent criminals who marginalise women and appropriate land illegally. According to Trevor Phillips, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the situation of the Gypsy and Travelling people living in the UK is comparable to that of black people living in the American Deep South of the 1950s. The marginalisation of these people is not a modern day phenomenon; it has been going on for as long as they have been roaming our streets in search of a place to park up. We live in a world where the latest fashions take over our lives. If you had said the letter ‘I’ to someone fifty years ago they would have assumed you were Scottish, nowadays putting the letter ‘I’ in front of an object normally means its an apple gadget. In this technological era, the gypsy
and traveller way of life is desperately backward. Their way of life has advanced enough so that they no longer travel in the traditional horsedrawn wagon but inhabit flashy white caravans. This stark difference between the settled community and their travelling counterparts brings with it a conflict of interests. Yet, it would seem that the transition into the 21stCentury has brought a new wave of support for these people of the roads as well as the usual onslaught of hatred. Anyone who recently attended the Bristol Radical Film Festival on the 29 February will have heard
from a small group of people from the Traveller Solidarity Network who lived with the gypsies of Dale Farm for a month in a show of empathy for their struggle. Not only did they consider the inhabitants of Dale Farm to be misunderstood and victimised, they also considered them to be interesting and compassionate people. A representation of gypsies and travellers which will perhaps be most familiar to people is that of the Channel 4 series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which followed the lives of individual gypsies, giving a snapshot of their daily workings. As well as
being entertaining, this show exposes an essence of the true identity of these people, who have long been shrouded in mystery. Although there were criticisms for the show, it seemed to open up public opinion about these nomads, and some could even be heard to utter words of sympathy. Does this ground-breaking show help to buck the old trends of hatred? The Traveller Solidarity Network aims to raise awareness about the struggle of gypsies and have speakers at events which explain their lives. They label their events as helping to combat ‘Harassment and repression
across the UK’ that travelling communities constantly face. Gypsy communities receive support from other networks as well including the Friends, Families and Traveller’s group who claim they ‘Seek to end racism and discrimination against gypsies and travellers, whatever their ethnicity, culture or background, whether settled or mobile, and to protect their right to pursue a nomadic way of life’. These organisations appear to be pursuing an extremely valiant cause, trying to combat the ‘evil’ the settled communities seem to be inflicting on them, which they seem to believe is tantamount to Nazism. With all this propaganda in support of the gypsy and travelling communities, it may be hard to remember why they became marginalised in the first place. In Eaves Green, Meriden, an anti-traveller group has set up a camp in protest of eight caravans parked in green belt land; the group found support in a local planning inspector who argued the caravan site ‘Would cause significant harm to the character and appearance of the area’. So, in this case it seems that hatred stems from a fear that they do not fit with the quaint picture of the English countryside, families will be uprooted because they tarnish the pretty landscape. But what of the life of the individual gypsy? How, for
example, do gypsy women fare? From a young age, they are taught values of obedience and ‘modesty’, yet they are flaunted round in tiny skirts with make-up and fake tans. One young girl on My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding exclaims, in answer to the question about how old is old enough to start getting spray tans, ‘six years’. Another young gypsy girl explains while lying on a sun bed - one of three she gets a week - ‘If I get cancer I get cancer… at least I still look good’. It would seem that the role of the traveller girl involves being the property of your husband, ensuring that the caravan is clean and meals are cooked, and that the children are looked after and tidy. Men can ogle at any girl they chose. Old-fashioned courting between males and females has been reduced to ‘grabbing,’ whereby a man essentially rapes a girl. The cause of these gypsy and traveller support groups seems on the surface to be noble. They suffer ridicule and oppression on a daily basis. Yet protecting their ‘ancient’ culture seems to entail casting outdated and sexist dogma in stone. Gypsies may face racism, harassment, oppression and hatred from the settled community but gypsy girls face oppression from their own people, and this fact is rather difficult to swallow.
Russia Putin its place as Vlad is re-elected
Russia’s warped approach to electing their leaders should prompt us to re-evaluate the democratic system
Helen Corbett The international media frenzy sparked by December’s Moscow protests has increasingly lost impetus as Vladmir Putin managed to maintain his lead last week to secure victory and re-election. When considering Vladimir Putin, the attitude of the British press and public tends to oscillate between outrage at the persistent allegations of corruption and bemusement towards his macho public image. Nowhere is this more evident than in one of the campaign’s promotional videos where a young Russian girl goes to a fortune teller to discuss her ‘first time,’ and is told that it will be for love, ‘free from cheating.’
The cards reveal that Putin is her destiny, and off the girl goes happily to the polling station to lose her election virginity. Many of us remember our ‘first time’ with Putin. That is, the first time we saw a photo of the Russian shirtless on a horse or swimming with dolphins. In what way, we ask ourselves, do these shamelessly staged acts of manliness prove him as a worthy leader of a nation? Would I like to see Ed Miliband riding a horse on the cover of the Daily Mail? As amusing as this would be, it would be unlikely to change our political preference. This leads us to the question of democracy. For all the trendy, young Muscovites who take a stand against Putin’s United Russia partly in the name of democracy, there are just as many Russians who regard democracy as a flippant western delusion, something which we in Europe and America worship as infallible
but cannot possibly work, due to the innate inability of human beings to make the right choice when it comes to choosing a leader. Scientific research by Cornell University supports this evaluation, indicating that incompetent people, as the majority of us apparently are, cannot accurately judge the competence of others. Putin himself quoted Churchill last year when he announced that ‘Democracy is the worst form of government except for everything else that has as yet been tried,’ in a seemingly reluctant acceptance of the system. This statement seems to echo the form which democracy takes in Russia. It is a reluctant and selective format, implementing as much of the system as necessary to allow for pseudo-friendly relations with the USA and Europe while simultaneously maintaining the power structures which allow for a degree of control over
the media and business, and therefore, the election result. The official result of a 64% victory for Putin has been challenged by independent figures of 50% for United Russia. Falsification aside, the system of registration for presidential candidates has been criticised for excluding potential candidates to leave only those who Putin would be sure to beat in the running, with the disqualified liberal candidate Grigory Yavlinsky being an obvious example. In the wake of the president’s victory, the reaction of many Russians to the disputed result is that Putin won either way. Supporters of Putin have recently compared his rule to that of Brezhnev, a time when many felt that daily life in the Soviet Union was at its most stable. Despite the almost audible booing during Putin’s teary eyed acceptance speech and the continuing, albeit dwindling, protest movements,
he has returned to office. While young Russians call for change, much of the older generation simply yearn for consistency, something which the other candidates cannot provide. Although the recent protest movements appear to have in some way broken down the barrier of political apathy, there was barely any doubt in the runup to the elections that Putin would regain his role as president. So, despite t h e rise o f
the ‘anti-Putinists,’ they still remain in a minority, and until the majority start taking Russian politics seriously, with fair elections and viable contenders, it appears that Putin will remain with us for a long time yet.
Epigram
19.03.2012
15
Are students getting value for money? Yes
No
Sam Fishwick
Patrick Baker advantage of the degree itself; according to the Independent 89.9% of graduates either go on to employment or further study. The effects of the recession have rumbled on. Government cost cutting, and the rising university fees that followed, were one unpleasant outcome of the economic climate and an increasingly competitive job market was another. Unemployment reached 2.67 million at the end of 2011 and it wouldn’t be an overreaction to suggest that those entering the big wide world after education need all the help they can get. There are an impressive number of high profile examples of individuals who have gone on to make millions without a degree, Richard Branson and Alan Sugar have certainly done pretty well for themselves. But the odds of following in their footsteps are not pretty. The cost of a university degree course may seem a stretch in the short term, but that’s what Student Finance is for. And the long term rewards are stacked heavily in the student’s favour. The stats stand up for themselves. University could be the time of your life. At the very worst, you can bank on at least a couple of stories to tell the grandkids. Maybe three. And with a degree up your sleeve, you’ll probably have the job to pay for whatever it is grandchildren want in 2057. A motorised unicorn. Or a yo-yo.
Flickr:teenager-s.com JustinThomas
Popular opinion seems to have made up its mind up on this one. An exhaustive and entirely representative survey of the three people sitting in my living room returned a unanimously negative verdict on the question-in-question. The general consensus was this: too much money, too little in return. But from where I’m sitting, the general consensus has got it wrong. The real problem seems to be a matter of perspective - and speaking as a current student, there’s an obvious hypocrisy here before I’ve even begun the point. Bear with it. It’s difficult to gather a real sense of a degree’s worth when you’re still in the middle of it. That is not to say your average student is not perfectly entitled to complain about any aspect of their undergraduate programme. In fact, the money they’re pouring into an education earns them that right. Humanities students raise a valid point regarding limited contact hours, and the rising fees and stagnant standards concern holds some water. But - there’s a cheap pun warning here - many of the lessons learnt from further education are only fully realised after graduation. Networking and social skills may be a perfectly natural practice for Bristol University students but are one of the assets most valued by employers after graduation. Then there is the obvious
At university we could do in two years what we do in three. The outcome wouldn’t just be cheaper; it would be more academically beneficial too. With the highly controversial increase in university fees from around £3,000 to a staggering £9,000 per year, it is terrifying to consider what this cash buys – or rather doesn’t. Last year, three weeks into my summer term, I found myself back home without a single academic obligation to Bristol for almost five months, until early October 2011. How on earth can these faculties be claiming such massive sums of money for next to no teaching? So far in my second year, I have had two seminars and three lectures a week. This has of course drawn widespread derision from my peers in other disciplines. The medics, who exist largely as hermetic slaves, are among the few flying the flag for British universities’ wavering integrity. The other day, I calculated that if I worked with the intensity that my secondary school had required, I could have completed my first year of university in about six weeks. And, of course, in first year, nothing counts towards your final degree mark anyway. All this does not exactly inspire an attitude of diligence or ambition amongst us.
If the first year counts for nothing, our final term is almost non-existent, and the teaching is limited to a maximum of around six hours a week, how on earth can the price of £3,000 a year be justified? This is not just a problem for Bristol. Students from Manchester, Exeter, Nottingham, UWE all say the same. Given its current state, university in Britain should be condensed into two years. The first year is nothing but sleeping and going out. As fun as this may be, I have found that the times at which people enjoy themselves most is often when they have a sense of purpose and the desire to excel. My first year at Bristol provided none of these. Of course I am not exempt from blame. As a naturally idle individual, I failed to push myself during my first year, to work over and above the call of duty. However, what is also certain is that many of our institutions are doing nowhere near enough to provide value for money. The tiny modicum of education that is imparted by our faculties engenders an attitude of apathy amongst great swathes of uninspired students. We want stimulation, encouragement: we want teaching. So what’s the verdict on university education so far? Must try harder.
Hamza Kashgari leads the way for freedom of speech
Gjeta Gjyshinca Hamza Kashgari, a young journalist and blogger in Saudi Arabia, faces the death penalty. He has not committed murder, or rape or armed robbery. The crime he has committed is to express himself as he chooses. On February 4th, the occasion of Mawlid, celebrating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, Kashgari posted three poetic tweets of an imagined conversation with the Prophet. In just 24 hours, over 30,000 comments, many of them death threats, had been posted in
response. Despite deleting the tweets after only six hours and apologizing for his comments, Kashgari was forced to flee to safety in Malaysia, but was later deported and then arrested in Saudi Arabia on the 12th. Kashgari provoked the attack by addressing the Prophet of Islam as a human equal, writing ‘On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do’ and admitting that ‘I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more’. Perhaps what sparked the most fury was the comment ‘I shall not pray for you’. By February 17th, 7,894 people had signed a petition for charges of blasphemy against Kashgari. This figure was dwarfed by the 26,632 members of a Facebook page
entitled: ‘The Saudi people want the execution of Hamza Kashgari’. While it is easy to throw around arguments about freedom of speech and basic human rights, it is not so easy to understand the context in which Kashgari made his comments. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy; it is a despotic regime – a form of government where a single entity rules with absolute power. Its laws are based almost entirely on the teachings of the Qur’an. Levels of censorship are dangerously high – internet sites deemed to be ‘immoral’, including Google and Wikipedia, are blocked. Freedom of speech is not respected – anything considered to be critical of the government or of Islam is punishable by imprisonment or even execution.
Though these laws may seem unjust to a society like ours, it must be remembered that our culture is vastly different from that of Saudi Arabia. The 26,632 people in favour of the execution may value the respect of religion over freedom of speech – this perhaps explains the anger provoked by Kashgari’s comments, particularly in a country home to Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. It would also be hypocritical to argue that religion and the state should be kept separate – not even our laws are completely separate from religion as even the Church of England plays a legislative role, with 26 bishops sitting in the House of Lords. The fact still remains that Kashgari was aware of the law in Saudi Arabia – both the charges of ‘disrespecting God’ and ‘insulting the Prophet’
carry the death penalty. In making the choice to post his comments on Twitter, Kashgari was also choosing to face the consequences of his actions, and, judging by his major in Islamic Studies, there is no doubt he was fully aware of the reaction his comments would provoke. However, before his arrest, Kashgari said: ‘I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom. I was demanding my right to practise the most basic human rights — freedom of expression and thought – so nothing was done in vain’. From a legal perspective, someone who breaks the law deserves to be punished. We are bound by a social contract – simply by living in a society, we implicitly agree to sacrifice some of our personal freedom and agree to certain laws and
punishments in exchange for a functioning state and the benefits this brings to society. However, it can be very difficult to see the case in question in such a way. Hamza Kashgari, a young man who once stated that Saudi women ‘won’t go to hell because it’s impossible to go there twice’, a man who believes he is ‘just a scapegoat for a larger conflict’, who says he is one of many people ‘fighting for their rights’, has done nothing for which he should be punished, let alone executed. The people threatening Kashgari should reconsider the fundamental beliefs of Islam. Compassion is the core of Islam, not punishment – and it is Kashigari’s compassion which leads him to compare women’s persecution to ‘hell’ and to risk punishment to fight for the human right to speak freely.
Epigram
19.03.2012
Letters & Editorial
Editor: Emma Corfield letters@epigram.org.uk
A letter to Vice-Chancellor Eric Thomas
Election reflections
Given that the English department will now be bringing in extra revenue, it seems only appropriate that this should be poured back into the department rather than being siphoned off to other areas. As it stands currently, library space and books are woefully lacking, and minimal contact hours create a culture of anonymity, and a lack of support which means that arts students are in danger of getting lost in a system without any safety net to ensure that they are keeping their heads above water. Can the University commit to the necessary enhancement of the
In his piece, ‘A Case of Drunken Identity’, featured in issue 243 and online (http://www.epigram. org.uk /2011/11/a-case-ofdrunken-identity/), Alex Benedyk shows little but contempt for the large numbers of students who indulge in frequent binge drinking. It is unfortunate that he does not genuinely attempt to empathise with such people or understand what makes their behaviour so tempting. Student and youth binge drinking is a well documented phenomenon. The 2001 Chief Medical Officer’s Report found that more than a million young people between 18 and 24 regularly drink just to get drunk, many of whom will be students. 11 years on that number is sure to have grown at least in proportion to population, more so if trends have continued, and there is no reason to suggest
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otherwise. Benedyk asserts that ‘People drink to achieve a more “sociable” existence,’ and because they find their personalities so unappealing that they wish to transform themselves into someone else, in which they betray ‘a complete lack of self-confidence’. Such reasoning sounds to my ear both naive and crude. Excessive drinking, like most excessive behaviour, can best be understood in terms of compensation. There must be some excitement in life. Those who are not habituated to the excitement of intellectual or artistic stimulation, competitive activity, ambition, meaningful, intimate relationships, or the rewards of fruitful employment will look elsewhere. The contemporary popularity of excess is the symptom of a society that offers all too few
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of the former excitements, and all too readily sanctions the hedonistic alternatives (for educational and economic reasons, I believe, but that is a topic for another day). The tree shall be known by its fruits. One might suppose that university life would not suffer the same poverty of fulfilment that characterises society at large. Certainly, there are many opportunities for socialising with like-minded peers that do not involve surrendering either your dignity or the contents of your stomach, but these are, unsurprisingly, unattractive to those whose tastes crave the instant gratification of large
Letters may be edited for clarity or length
ACROSS 7. Currency for 17 nations (4) 8. Agitated (8) 9. Type of red wine (8) 10. Weather resistant wood (4) 11. Disconnected (4) 14. Fermented honey (4) 15. 2nd letter of Greek alphabet (4) 16. Item of make-up (8) 17. Immeasurably long period of time (4) 19. Galenite27(anag) (8) 21. Imaginary childhood monster (8) 22. Charity to save lives at sea (4) 25
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quantities of alcohol and the feveredexcitementofadanceclub. I do not wish to excuse the behaviour induced by binge drinking, which can be disruptive, destructive and downright dangerous, but it would be well for supposedly superior students to curb their snobbish, holier-than-thou attitudes toward others who merely go elsewhere for their kicks. Students who drink are not ‘rejecting themselves’, nor do they ‘lack confidence’. They are not ‘numpties’, either, for that matter. Have a conversation with one and you may just find out. Christopher Ivins
To get in touch, send an email to letters@epigram.org.uk
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department by way of resources, including extra staff, and through this, more contact hours? The decision to expand the English department at such a colossalratethreatenstojeopardise its world-class reputation and the high quality education it offers if these issues are not addressed. We ask you to guarantee that the University will provide more resources - more space, books, teaching staff and administrative staff - in order to minimise the negative impact on both students and staff that September’s influx of students may otherwise bring. Concerned English Students
Binge drinking should be understood, not criticised
Crossword
Bristol undergraduates appear to be afflicted by apathy. Neither car park campus nor dreaming spires, our decentralised university is left floundering somewhere in the middle with little space for Union politics. With most of us confined to the suburban sprawl of Redland by day and lured to Lounge at night, the Union building itself is hardly considered a hive of activity. Even if its brutalist brickwork caved in tomorrow, spewing concrete dust and asbestos down Queens Road, surely it would be several days until anybody noticed? Friday’s election results night painted a very different picture. It was a nervous evening for all those involved, and tensions were certainly running high here at Epigram where the primary concern was getting this edition to print. Earlier in the week, our Features team joined the presidential candidates out on the campaign trail and in their bedrooms, but it wasn’t long before the News editors had set up camp in a dark corner of Bar 100 to live-blog and tweet the results as they came in. Pacing up and down the sticky floors to soak up some of the atmosphere (and alcohol), for once, it felt like we were running a ‘proper’ newspaper. Judging by how full the room was for each announcement, it would seem that Union politics this year has really captured the attention of students. The increased turnout for the Presidential election, whilst still a disappointingly low percentage of the university population, did suggest that there is hope for a Union that is constantly criticised for being out of the way and out of touch with actual student concerns. If this is to be maintained, the new sabbatical team must keep their promises and remain as visible around the University during their time in office as they have been in the past two weeks. But wholeheartedly pursuing these aims and then communicating their achievements won’t be enough to improve Union democracy next year. As pointed out by Jessica Wingrad on page 3 of this edition, the elections have been so high profile partly because of the sheer number of controversies regarding the rules and regulations set down by the Union. For many people, it wasn’t clear whether complaints had been made, rules had actually been broken or what rules there were to break. If we want to fight student apathy, the sabbatical officers also have to ensure that the Union has an effective democracy structure that they, and other students in the future, can work within. It needs to keep up with creative candidates as well as the changing nature of political campaigning brought about every time Apple launches a new gadget or Twitter gains a new function. It is should not be a case of simply running a campaign and successfully getting elected; the work starts now to make sure that there is a Union set-up to ensure all the candidates’ efforts are worthwhile. With the elections now over, Epigram is glad to see that students this year were more motivated to vote for student officers. Credit is due to all the candidates who ran extravagant campaigns, not only because they managed to get people to vote for them, but also because they managed to get people to vote at all. It must sometimes feel that all the poster printing, cupcake baking and flash mobbing isn’t worth it (especially if you aren’t elected), but Epigram would like to congratulate all of those candidates running for making union democracy at least somewhat possible. However, we should now really get some sleep. Because that’s all we students do, apparently.
capacity of the ASS library? How does the University management intend to maintain the staff-student ratio, as well as the student-resource ratio, particularly if the expansion is rolled out across the entire three year undergraduate intake? Where will new staff members’ offices be, given that 3-5 Woodland Road is already full? And where will teaching take place given that the lecture theatres in the Arts complex are already booked more or less to capacity? Furthermore, how will this impact on students’ sense of community, belonging and importance within the department? What will be done to combat the anonymity and isolation already prevalent in an English degree in a year group twice the size? The speed and scale of the expansion indicates that it must be incentivised by profit.
Flickr:Horia Varlan
On 9th February, 32 English students attended the StaffStudent Forum held by the department to discuss the upcoming expansion plans. The comparatively full meeting was testament to the fact that English students have a lot invested in their subject and care very deeply about the future of their department. This is particularly clear when you consider that many of those present are in their third year. Though they will graduate before the new students arrive and so will not be directly affected by the stretched resources and limited library space, they nevertheless came to express their concerns in the hopes of helping safeguard the quality and future reputation of the course. We want to know: where will students be expected to study given the already overstretched
DOWN 1. Ethnic group of Southern Africa (4) 2. Land-locked Asian country (8) 3. Hair type (4) 4. Catch sight of (4) 5. Thin strip (4) 6. Adventure (8) 12. Winter sliding sport (8) 13. A place to live (8) 14. Misroute (anag) (8) 18. Want (4) 19. Precious stones (4) 20. Not legally binding (4)
Epigram
19.03.2012
17 Scribble by Tamara-Jade Kaz
Sole sister
‘The iPad 3 for university work: is it worth it?’ Epigram In his article on Epigram’s website, Alex Denne considers if it is worth investing in an iPad. He believes that their hefty price tag, Apple are currently selling the iPad 2 from £329 and the iPad 3 from £399, can be well justified. As Denne points out, this price is nothing compared to the £53,400 the average student will pay for a degree starting this year, and since the iPad can help with university work, purchasing one could enable students to achieve a higher degree qualification. One of the ways Denne believes the iPad can help with work is through better note-taking. He recommends the application Notability, which enables you to record audio: ‘Come exam time you’ll have the exact words of your lecturer alongside the notes and equations that you took’. He also recommends Evernote, which ‘can attempt to recognise and index your handwriting so it becomes searchable’: ‘With the ability to directly search within every note you’ve ever written, every lecture you’ve ever sat in and every topic you’ve ever studied, you can and will save hours of precious time searching for that exact piece of information you want’. To be in with the chance of winning an iPad 2, simply like Epigram’s Facebook fan page before April 16th. http://www.epigram.org.uk
Best of the web
Tweets of the fortnight @chloe_milloy Pretending to be a 1st year instead of admitting to the shame of being a 2nd year and still getting lost going to lectures. Chloe Milloy, Bristol University student
@GreatGeorgeWMB A point of clarification. I am not up for election in #ubuelections. Who’d vote for me? I have only basic functional and motor skills. Great George, Wills Memorial Building’s bell
@thisisbristol Bristol Bid to make #Bristol one of world’s most attractive cities http://bit. ly/wHmtxs This is Bristol, local news, sport and entertainment provider
Follow us: @EpigramPaper
On the agenda of issues that need immediate action from world leaders, I know that the woes of only children should not be that high up. I realise that there are problems affecting the world today that could genuinely mean the end of human life as we know it, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t get to moan about something that mildly irritates me. Someone needs to draw attention to the treatment of only children, for their own sake if no one else’s, and that burden has fallen upon me. I should point out that I am an only child. Not only am I an only child, I’m a typical only child. My lack of social awareness is sometimes astounding, I struggle to share food, and I hold some slightly odd views because I had no cruel older brother or sister to ridicule me into conforming to social conventions. My only child status explains why I thought it was normal not to be able to wink and why no one challenged my belief that it’s acceptable for women to wear ties as casual attire. Who said they can’t? Certainly not my non-existent siblings. Sometimes the bad press that only children get is completely justified. Aside from being accused of selfishness and not being able to handle it if they don’t get everything they want, everybody thinks that they have an inability to play team games. And it’s completely true. People without siblings are useless at working in groups. They haven’t had the opportunity to learn because, let’s face it, it’s difficult to play tag on your own. It’s why my family will no longer play Risk with me. But even worse than only children who aren’t able to function in any sort of team, are only children who constantly insist that it’s great to be an only child. I don’t want to hear that being lonely in your youth and going on holiday with only your parents for company wasn’t that bad. I couldn’t care less about how sophisticated your vocabulary is because of all the evenings in your childhood when you were forced to spend hours amusing yourself at parties where there were no other children. And I definitely don’t want to hear that your ability to spend loads of time by yourself has been sooo useful for those long nights in the library, which are necessary to achieve the high standards that have always been expected of you. Because frankly, I’ve never been good at sitting in silence by myself and doing the reading for my degree but I still have all of my parents’ hopes and dreams for their children projected onto me and me alone. However, what’s worse than only children who constantly get their own way or who gloat about their idyllic childhood is those people that seek to change my only child ways. Instead of adjusting their expectations for those of us from single offspring families, my housemates want to ‘train’ me to not be such a typical only child. But I don’t want to be changed - Mum and Dad always tell me that I’m perfect just the way I am. I especially don’t want to undergo ‘sibling training’ which essentially consists of recreating the childhood my friends think I never had: making dens that block the entrance to my room, stealing one from every pair of my shoes, and worst of all, never failing to interject conversations with endless games of ‘would you rather...?’ I wouldn’t rather choose between drinking vomit or drinking my own urine, I don’t have to make that decision, and I don’t know why it’s funny to make me. This training is not only futile – I’ve learnt to never to give in – but it’s also bullying. And as a responsible child in the playground who wasn’t forced to fight back to siblings before I even got to school, I know the response to bullying. I obviously just ignore them and tell an authority figure. Hence part of the purpose of this column. I’m telling you now students of Bristol: I’m being bullied and my housemates need some time on the naughty step. I am aware that this Epigrump is self-obsessed, takes itself too seriously and will probably do more damage to the reputation of only children than a hundred failed games of ‘stuck in the mud’ ever could, but I’m ok with that. Everyone has their one gripe and apart from this, I don’t have a lot to moan about. Who would, when they’re still the apple of their parent’s eye like I am? Hannah Stubbs
Epigram
19.03.2012
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19.03.2012
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Epigram
19.03.2012
Culture
Editor: Zoe Hutton
Deputy Editor: Hannah Mae Collins
culture@epigram.org.uk
deputyculture@epigram.org.uk
From top shelf to Tate: art meets pornography Ruff’s exhibit distorts explicit images, while American Apparel ads prove that sex sells. Rosemary Wagg asks why we’re so offended This month, London’s Gagosian Gallery is hosting two exhibitions of the work of German photographer Thomas Ruff. One, at their Britannia Street venue, is a collection of images of Mars which have been altered by the photographer. The second, held at their Davies Street premises, contains Ruff’s Nudes. This series is created from stills of internet porn, which Ruff has distorted through enlargement. The result is that the pictures, many of which fulfil familiar clichés of internet porn in their un-doctored state, become coated in a painterly haze which makes the pictures more accessible, or even acceptable, to viewers who would normally profess to be repelled by the genre. This area of Ruff’s work easily engages with the murky discourse debating the difference between art and pornography. An exhibition of it is likely to trigger further discussion relevant to this. Equally, his working practice is frequently critiqued by commentators debating whether harvesting images from the net and altering them can even be considered ‘art’. Both of these questions are ultimately unanswerable, although the second has more of an aura of irrelevance about it that the first. Perhaps, instead of focusing on the core acceptability of Ruff’s working practice or the categorisation of the finished product, it would be interesting to consider the affect of the finished works on the viewer and how the act of distortion contributes to this. Foremost, the distortion process creates a misty screen
Ruff’s Nudes make use of blurred pornographic images, while American Apparel’s highly sexualised advertising campaigns have long been the subject of controversy
across the surface of each picture and this, aside from marginally hiding from the viewer what is actually taking place, completely removes all sense of flesh – real sticky, clammy, hairy flesh. It has been argued that the porn in any state is devoid of this quality due to all its waxed artifice. However, apart from body hair removal and other cosmetic practices like breast enlargement, the idea of bodies and skin –soft, hard, sticky – has to be present, otherwise it would not be arousing. This is emphasised by stark lighting and direct camera angles which never, as is the case with Ruff’s images, attempt to hide anything from the viewer. Indeed, they do
exactly the opposite. Ruff’s distortion techniques veil the pornographic images, removing the visceral element from them and - though some say less is more - the result is rather banal. The images are still internet porn, which some viewer may find shocking in itself but many will surely not given its massive availability and the amount of highly sexualised images used throughout advertising and art. In fact, Ruff has removed the one quality which could have provoked a real reaction in the viewer: flesh. In a culture in which a version of sex is ubiquitous, it could be said that what we are really afraid
of is no longer the concept of sex but bodies themselves. Consider the advertising of clothing company American Apparel. In a description, the adverts could be described as similar to a wealth of others: attractive, youthful model - usually female - modelling semirevealing clothes in ‘provocative’ poses. If we subscribe to the idea that advertising is over-sexualised, then that description should be counted as rather mundane. However, the American Apparel adverts have surpassed other far more overtly sexualised adverts, such as those by lingerie company Agent Provocateur, in eliciting forceful responses. This could, in part, be linked
to the circulation of sleazy stories regarding the CEO of the company, Dov Charney, who designs much of the advertising himself. However, most viewers are probably unaware of subplots of the tale when they view the adverts and therefore are reacting purely to what they see. Whilst not endorsing the American Apparel adverts on either aesthetic or philosophical grounds, I would suggest that what many people find distasteful to the point of revulsion is not the inclusion of sex in advertising a product, but the absence of air brushing and inclusion of bright lighting and a direct camera approach - similar to that used in porn
- which reveals the models to be real, mole-covered, freckly, gangly humans. It is the sweaty suggestion of armpit stubble and the feeling that these Fresherlooking creatures probably whiff of last night’s vodka, badly covered over with Palmolive deodorant, that makes the images far coarser and rawer than most other advertisements. Whilst we claim to be okay with sex - despite being English - and even profess to be tired of it due to media oversaturation, we are au fait only with a confined version of it. Harriet Walker hit on this in an Elle April 2012 article evaluating last season’s seemingly sex-obsessed catwalk collections, which included bondagereferences, corsetry and lots of skin tight leather. ‘When Fashion does Sex!...it’s an intellectual game, playing with aesthetics and references’, says Walker. ‘It’s never really about the old fashioned business of getting laid.’ This is similar to what Ruff’s images do. In their distortion, they intellectualise and play around with images of sex. In doing so, they remove it even further from actual sex and actual bodies. In this respect they represent how this society often views sex: through a veil of frosted glass. Those people who wish to continue this practice should head to the Gagosian; anyone with a genuine interest in sex, flesh and the flabby or bony body, meanwhile, should queue up for Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, or stick to the works of photographers such as Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ellen Von Unwerth and Akari.
‘The prince of darkness is a gentleman’: Shrapnel wows as Lear
tobaccofactoryteatre.com
Last Saturday I had the pleasure of my mother coming to visit me in Bristol, to take me to see King Lear at The Tobacco Factory. My mother likes to call Bristol a small provincial town - sometimes I wonder how it is that she ever left London - so I wanted to show her what theatrical feasts Bristol has to offer. Shakespeare at The Tobacco Factory (SATTF) gave me more than I could possibly have asked for. John Shrapnel was brilliant not only because of the gravitas of his voice, but also because of his astute characterisation. Although it has received mostly rave reviews, A Younger Theatre critic, Edward Franklin, said the play was without a singularly magnetic king. I have absolutely no idea where he was coming from - Shrapnel stunned with his movement from apathy into
an almost knowing madness. His well-worn phrases came out fresh, as if he had just thought of them. The soundscape was used magnificently .The thunderstorm reverberated around the space, embracing the action and acting as a divider in time, between Lear and his fall to madness, which came later than how it is habitually staged. His normally distracted questioning of Poor Tom about whether his condition was the result of giving all to his daughters was spoken coolly and rationally. His insistence on talking to the philosopher and learned Theban sounded knowingly sarcastic rather than delirious. He reappeared after the storm with flowers in his hair, raving about mice and cheese, appearing truly mad only when he stuck his hand down his
trousers, indicating the location of the ‘Sulphurous pit.’ The grotesquely behaved sisters, Goneril (Julia Hills) and Regan (Dorothea MyerBennett), were acted with great skill, injecting comedy as well as venom into the haul of ghastly characters, and making Lear seem incredibly human and admirable in comparison. Interestingly, his retinue is hugely diminished as soon as he puts himself at the mercy of his daughters. The role of Cordelia is a slightly thankless one, in that she disappears for most of the play, but Eleanor Yates was delicate to the point that I shed a tear at her tragic reunion with Lear. Christopher Staines has to act various different roles in one, since he moves in and out of disguise. I found it a little odd
how disparate his commanding performance as Tom O’Bedlam was, in comparison to that of his original role as Edgar, where he seemed a little stilted, even uncomfortable. Edmund, played by Jack Whitam, who looks strangely like my image of Shakespeare - look him up, it’s uncanny - was wonderfully devious and lacking any moral compass at all. Sitting next to my mother throughout all of this, some of the lines – ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child’ - pierced my conscience with pain, although perhaps this was just my mother’s pointed elbowjabbing, accompanied by her mouthing of all lines concerning filial ingratitude. Based on a myth, but contextualised in England, the blind Earl of Gloucester thinks
he has jumped off the cliffs of Dover but is in fact prostrate on the same ground from which he leapt, this is not a history play, and so becomes much more universal. It has contemporary relevance to autocratic regimes; the programme compares the quest for self-empowerment manifested in the Arab spring as a reaction to being, as it were, the President’s children. This was a straightforward production, holding up almost only the text for all its wonders, although it would be foolish not to credit its realisation to the incredibly strong performances by a world-class theatre company, and the subtle, intelligent directing. I came away stunned and delighted to have a lifetime of King Lear productions ahead of me. Helena Blackstone
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To the original script be true? We just can’t leave the Bard alone. Annie Bell assesses the pitfalls of adaptation
The cast of the RSC’s Such Tweet Sorrow - a 2010 interactive adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that took place over Twitter
on me because I am too distracted by how ridiculously nineties the whole thing looks. Nonetheless, so many Shakespeare plays have been done to death, to the extent that it could be argued that if you’re not going to do something new with it, you might as well not do it at all. The balance to be struck when adapting Shakespeare is finding a setting that suits the piece. There is a certain art to taking a play which is centuries old, and well known by a large chunk of your audience, pulling out particular ideas in it and placing these in a new context, without it jarring. This year’s student production of Lear, for example, focusses on the dissolution of
hierarchies, a theme in much of Shakespeare’s work which is particularly prevalent in King Lear, and places this in the context of nineteenth century Catholicism. An interesting choice and smart because not only does the focus on religious hierarchies allow the directors to play with certain ideas surrounding religion, but also because the aesthetic very much works with the oppressive nature of the play. The production actually takes place in a church, and the second the audience enter and move through the air, thick with incense, to their seats, they are faced with Lear serving communion. One would imagine, also, that the acoustics of the church will serve to make lines such as ‘Howl, howl, howl, howl!’ even more chillingly impressive. Talk about atmosphere. King Lear is not alone in its interesting use of setting. Macbeth will be set in the second war, a clever idea as the strong position of women on the home front during that period allows the production to explore in depth the female characters, namely the three witches and the fascinating Lady Macbeth. Intriguingly, Lady Macbeth is, in fact, going to be one of the three witches. Courageous. Both productions certainly look interesting. Would they be enough to make the Swan of Avon proud? Only time will tell.
Brits take Manhattan in comedy stand-off It’s a classic scenario. Comedy icon grows up in the UK, works hard to become hugely successful on this side of the Atlantic, then jets off to America to hobnob with the Hollywood elite, leaving England’s green and pleasant lands far behind. As much as I could be describing goofball-turned- grizzled doctor Hugh Laurie, this could well be a prophesy of the future for The Secret Policeman’s Ball, which this month made its first tentative steps across the Pond. To celebrate Amnesty International’s 50th birthday, a selection of British stand-ups,
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including Noel Fielding, Micky Flanagan and Jimmy Carr, were exported to New York to join forces with US comedians, like Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman and the cast of Saturday Night Live, to hold the first ever Secret Policeman’s Ball outside of the UK, at the legendary Radio City Music Hall. By all accounts, the show was a great success. Although moving an inherently British event overseas might seem a little strange, the transatlantic mix worked really well, adding a surreal sense of glamour to certain elements of the gig. There’s definitely something odd but exciting about seeing David Walliams doing a skit on the differences between America and Britain with a proper, bigtime star like Ben Stiller. The best US/UK observations, though, came from Russell Brand, back on form after a few years of disappointing fame-hunting. His familiarity with American media really shone through in a comparison between the bigoted fear-mongering of Fox News and his own personal nemesis, The Daily Mail. Indeed, if you did only read
British tabloids, as well as being terrified of immigrants, gays and paedophiles’, you’d most likely be under the impression that comedians are overpaid, over-sexed liars who have no qualms in insulting disabled people, women or beloved sitcom actors. Of course, most of these accusations are rooted in truth, but comedy plays a far more benevolent role in society than the likes of the Daily Mail might like to acknowledge. The Secret Policeman’s Ball is the perfect example. Every event raises money and awareness of Amnesty’s work, but the very first Ball in 1979, which featured Peter Cook, Billy Connolly and a young Rowan Atkinson, as well as half of the Monty Python team, caused Sting, Bob Geldof and Bono to get involved with human rights activism– without The Secret Policeman’s Ball we probably never would have had Band Aid, Live Aid or Live 8. Plus, it was Amnesty’s partnership with comedy, through a benefit gig at the Edinburgh Fringe, that raised the funds to free the Burmese comic Zarganar, who made an appearance at the 2012 Ball, though unfortunately this
didn’t feature in the cut-down version broadcast on Channel 4. Whilst I hope that The Secret Policeman’s Ball remains a semiregular fixture in the British comedy calendar, now does seem the ideal time for it to make an appearance stateside. An event as star-studded as the Ball will help raise awareness - and funds - for Amnesty on a far bigger stage than Britain can offer. Plus, Brand’s impassioned shouts that ‘We have to wheedle out bigotry real quick’ seem all the more relevant in America. In the same week as the Ball, right-wing loon and massive racist Rush Limbaugh called a woman a ‘Slut’ and a ‘Prostitute’ for testifying in support of Obama’s plans for state-funded birth control. Though many of his sponsors immediately pulled their funding, the fact that Limbaugh is one of America’s most popular talk radio host shows that there’s still a lot of bigotry to be wheedled out. If the Ball, and comedy in general, can help even a little bit, then America has as much right to hold The Secret Policeman’s Ball as we do. Holly Close
Where can you find Britney Spears, public schoolboys, and Michael Portillo’s lips? Room 101, that’s where. Rachel Schraer argues why Supersize vs. Superskinny should join them... I have a confession. I love - I mean unhealthily, obsessively love - Supersize vs Superskinny. It’s so wrong and yet it feels so right: the diet porn freakshow format, the garish shirts, the unfathomable food tube, the prosthetic limb-beige underwear. It gets me going. But despite, no, because, of the Tuesday night thrill I get from watching cosmetically challenged people prodding each other in unflattering light, I’m going to have to consign it to my personal Room 101. It’s this morbid car-crash fascination that is, perhaps, the crux of the problem. In Victorian society, taboo and repression surrounding sex and the human form led to an underground outpouring of deviance. Now we’re inundated with images of flesh
humiliation? Like a puppy having its nose rubbed in its own mess, this poor woman trudged daily to the cupboard to waft the faecal fumes of decaying curry as she dutifully vox pop-ed, ‘It’s really made me think about what I eat’. Has it, though? I don’t think it’s out of line to venture that I can’t think of a single meal, however healthy, balanced or vegan, that wouldn’t become a little off putting after a while, when stuck in a blender and then left to rot. What are we actually learning from this pseudoscientific BS? That when one person lives off 10, 000 calories of deep-fried animal product a day, and another 3 smarties, 40 fags and a litre of tea, the healthy and sensible solution as prescribed by Dr. Floppy Hair is to swap their diets until
selling us breakfast cereal and satisfaction, we run from any body that deviates from shop mannequin uniformity. Food has become our sex. Whilst TV guides brim with programmes about cooking and eating, we’re shouted at from every side about the dangers of doing it wrong. We’re fed the cautionary tale of Super Slim Me; told with a stern headshake the Truth About Size Zero; we tuck Generation XXL into bed at night with a televisual snack of Half-Ton Man, whisper bedtime stories of Fat Families and redemptive sagas of Biggest Losers. Because, as the wisdom of ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith - trained within the hallowed walls of the non-accredited online distance-learning College of Holistic Nutrition of America tells us, food is not just what’s on your plate. You are what you eat. And what you’re eating is rubbish. I saw one diet programme in which the unfortunate fatty had her favourite takeaway blended into smoothie form. She was then instructed to keep the glass in a cupboard to, and I quote, ‘smell it every day as it went off’. Is it just me or is there something a bit S&M about this kind of ritualised
they both learn the error of their ways? I’m no scientist but I think I’m missing the moral here. In this climate of relentless, pornographic scrutiny of body and diet, Supersize seems to both contribute to our neurotic over-analysing - eating disorder charity Beat has lampooned the programme for being ‘triggering’ to eating disorder sufferers, which I can well imagine - and at the same time act as a reassurance that we’re alright really, ‘cos we’re neither 25 st, nor five. But whether it’s an actively harmful symptom of our collective body image meltdown, or a vapid and meaningless filler show, my love for the show has become as bittersweet as 23 stone Sandra’s nineteenth doughnut. I’ve begun to resent its pious missionary standpoint, its pretence at do-gooding. As a deluge of diet programmes play Samaritan, holding the hand of the dietary lost sheep as they guide them back to ‘healthy’, maybe what we really need is a healthy detox from thinking, talking, obsessing, fixating upon our bodies, and other people’s. And if we do, maybe the realisation that a Big Mac is not a mid-morning snack will come with it.
National Theatre
uniquely Shakespeare. Wanky as that sounds, I think most people would agree. Thank god, then, that both Macbeth and Lear are using the original text. When it comes to the setting, on the other hand, experimentation can be a beautiful thing. There’s no need to immediately reach for your tights and codpiece just because the play was written 400 years ago. Of course, there is nothing wrong with cod pieces. Indeed, sometimes attempts to modernise Shakespeare simply lead to the ‘modern’ version appearing hopelessly dated in a few short years. Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet, made in 2000, for example, unfortunately has very little emotional impact
rsc.org.uk
The end of this term will see Bristol students taking on two of Shakespeare’s bleaker plays, Macbeth and King Lear. These are also two of the most respected plays of all time. Serious pressure not to ruin them, then. The tricky question is this: how, in the name of the bard himself, does one go about making a good adaptation of Shakespeare? General consensus tends to be that the text is the sacred part of Shakespeare. Change settings, races and genders, but for God’s sake don’t change the words - when the play is being done in English, that is. Obviously no one could justifiably recommend the plays stop being translated for foreign audiences, we don’t want to hog Shakespeare. This is a view with which I would tend to agree. Adaptations which do away with the original script so often seem to lose a lot more than words. A particularly cringe worthy example would be Andy Fickman’s 2006 film She’s the Man, based on Twelfth Night. Apart from Channing Tatum’s torso, and a running joke about cheese, there is very little right with the film. The fact is that without the original script much of the wit is lost, the characters appear flat and the plot seems bizarre. Shakespeare’s language is what enchants us, enables us to so absolutely suspend disbelief, and what makes Shakespeare so
Culture’s Room 101
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19.03.2012
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Books
Culture Clash
WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT DELICACIES Sarah Winman Simian Mobile Disco Headline Review November 29 2010 Published: 3 March 2011 Delicatessen
When God was a Rabbit is a novel which questions why things are the way they are and alters our perception of the world. It is narrated by a girl named Elly in two parts, travelling from her early 60’s childhood up until her adulthood. This childhood perspective allows for a skewed narration of events, leaving the reader to question whether aspects such as a talking rabbit - named God - is down to a childhood imagination, or whether the world really is magical. The author, Sarah Winman, describes the book as ‘Homage to family’, as it focuses on the relationships between the characters in the book, particularly of Elly and her older brother Joe. Winman’s message seems to be that family isn’t a straightforward concept referring to those who we have an immediate blood-relation to, but is inclusive of everyone prominent in our lives, friends, such as the curious, sprite-like figure of Jenny Penny, extended family such as beautiful, gay actress Nancy, or even those that enter our lives by chance, like loveable, eccentric Arthur. All of Winman’s quirky characters come alive on the page, so that by the end of the novel even the
secondary characters, such as Arthur, are amongst our most loved. Nevertheless, the book is certainly not without its dark moments. Perhaps the most shockingly dark event is revealed at the beginning of the story, kept as a secret between Elly and her brother. This darkness is the reason behind Elly’s acquisition of ‘God’, her pet rabbit bought by Joe, in order to protect her. Throughout the novel, God acts as a saviour for Elly, as she struggles to understand the changing world around her. Winman reveals how there should be no more explanation as to why a rabbit can speak, for example, than why a man abuses his wife. Life is full of illogical, strange occurrences that seem to defy human nature, so a rabbit speaking should require no more of an explanation. The novel soars through events in history that affect the characters, right up until the final event of 9/11 which, unbeknown to Elly, will have the greatest impact on her life of them all. Witty, shocking, deep and satisfying, this novel will keep the reader engrossed until the end, as we discover that love and relationships ultimately triumph over life’s darkness. Louise Chapman
Lounge-loving fresher Eleanor Wilson is pitted against worldweary MA student Rosemary Wagg. Is age all that divides them? MUSIC
ART & LITERATURE
FILM & TV
Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
The O.C
I remember listening to various Fugees records on local radio stations when I was younger, but it wasn’t until I first heard Lauryn Hill’s mesmerising voice in Sister Act 2 that I felt compelled to Google her - which subsequently led me to discover The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on YouTube. I asked for the album in hardcopy for one of my birthdays and from the moment I received it, it became an instant favourite of mine - and it remains so to this day. I recall listening to it on constant repeat on one camping holiday in France, and being absorbed with To Zion, Nothing Even Matters, and Doo Wop (That Thing) to name but a few standout songs from the fourteen-track album. This is the album I’ll always credit as having revolutionised my musical tastes, setting me off on the path towards the true meaning of good music.
I stumbled upon Norwegian Wood - a homage to The Beatles song - a few years ago , having read about it in the Staff Recommendations section of a popular literary chain. Being a fan of the 60s setting but knowing little about Japanese culture beyond sushi, Norwegian Wood
MUSIC The Stroke – Is This It
BIRDSONG DELICACIES Sebastian Faulks Simian Mobile Disco Vintage 29 2010 November Published: 7 July 1994 Delicatessen
This may not be a recent release, but since the recent BBC dramatisation of Faulks’ ground breaking novel Birdsong, I felt compelled to follow up with a book review. For those of you, who have not read Birdsong, please do. In 2003 Birdsong was voted the 13th best ever read in Britain and indeed this tale of love and war is one of the most haunting I have ever read. Spanning across three generations, the novel follows the life of the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford, both before and during the First World War. The novel itself is one of the most believable pieces of fiction I have ever read. Partly due to the saddening and drastic change in Wraysford’s character due to his heartache and the effects of trench life, Birdsong is certainly not for the faint of heart. You grow a bond with all of the characters involved and are left shocked when the events and the effects of the Great War take their toll upon them. The battlefield scenes are agonisingly descriptive, making harrowing reading at times, as Faulks engulfs the reader into the trench itself, as if witnessing the vivid descriptions of carnage and the brutalities of War first hand.
Faulks’ sharp shifts from the desperately romantic scenes of Stephen Wraysford’s love affair with Isabelle, the wife of his violent French co-worker, to the horrific scenes of the blood-filled trenches where he later finds himself, emotively juxtapose the optimism of passion with the despair of war. Indeed, one of the many poignant factors of Birdsong is how it displays how the peaceful French splendour of 1910 Amiens quickly turns into a war zone. The city is transformed from a picturesque place of livelihood and beauty to one consumed and devastated by shelling and the soldiers search for alcohol and prostitutes. Birdsong is literature at its very best, a novel in which you not only hear the characters voices, but see their faces as well. ‘This book is about the most extreme things you can experience in life,’ comments the director of the dramatization, Philip Martin. ‘Either in love or war, everything is 10 out of 10.’ I couldn’t agree more. It is rare that you can find a book which compels you to turn back to the beginning once you’ve reached the last page. Birdsong does exactly this. Katie Bend
gripped me from the outset. Beautifully written and full of enchanting characters, it is a distinctly Japanese comingof-age story in which its lost and heartbroken protagonist, Toru, reminds me of Holden Caulfield.
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In my younger and more vulnerable days - for I am now a rotten post graduate - I became besotted with Is This It and listened to it every single day for three years. How I do not resort to hyberbole! Every morning without fail from GCSE to A Level, I woke up, pressed play on the CD player and granted myself exactly 30 minutes to get ready to be educated/smoke. If I was not
pretty much together by the time New York City Cops came on I was on track to be late. Now that I am old and wake up to the sound of Radio 4, I am unaware of what the kids are listening to, but I sure as hell know it isn’t a patch on this.
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ART & LITERATURE
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited If all my daydreams were given a name it would be: Sebastian Flyte. A beautiful interwar dandy in cricket whites illuminated by limestone, his alcoholic downfall is painful enough to confine all my frequent re-readings to book one of three. All that follows is too much like heartbreak. And yet it also has the power to heal that condition too. Whether read in hospital with the soothing accompaniment of morphine or whilst hiding from the bank balance amidst dreams of quail eggs in Oxford, Brideshead is both the perennial backdrop to my nostalgic existence and literary comfort blanket. The Granada Television production featuring the cherubic Anthony Andrews alongside Diana Quick is faithful to the text and sartorially inspirational.
I can’t remember how I became obsessed with The OC. I think it started with my older brother and I, as pre-teens, becoming fixated over a world so different to the Home Counties reality we were used to. I spent a large chunk of my teenage years gripped with the Orange County lifestyle and its dramatic occurrences. I guess, naively, I also learnt a lot from the show about what to expect as a teenager: drug addiction, suicide, lesbianism, and how Tijuana is the only place to go for ‘Spring Break’ (note: my teenage years were, and are, no where nearly as traumatic as anticipated). It was the last two seasons, though, that really captured my heart. Post Marissa’s thankful demise, with the birth of the memorable Taylor Townsend, and the consummation of Seth and Summer’s turbulent relationship. FILM & TV Black Swan When I came across Black Swan I saw that someone – Darren Aronofsky- had made the film I was always meant to, and that therefore I should give up on life and become a banker. I probably would have, had it not been so sublime. A story about ballet - and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake nonetheless! – with a lovely dollop of Freud; Soviet Constructionist style artwork for the posters and costumes by Rodarte. Here, like floral paper lining a wooden draw, is the inside of my brain. Additionally, spending a few minutes pondering over the lifestyle of a ballerina is always a wonderful kick up the ass. No matter how hard you think you work typing essays all night and panting up Park St, it all pales into nonexistence when put next to the inimitable dedication of a prima ballerina. Put down the whiskeyflavoured fudge Rosemary and work harder, harder, harder!
Music
Epigram
Editor: Nathan Comer
Deputy Editor: Pippa Shawley
music@epigram.org.uk
deputymusic@epigram.org.uk
19.03.2012
@epigrammusic
The problem with being the next big thing Nathan Comer speaks to Niki & The Dove ahead of the release of their debut album and upcoming US tour As any fans of The Bravery will know, getting a place on the BBC Sound of… poll does not guarantee commercial or critical acclaim. It’s a competition where acts are judged more on the more superficial aspects of pop – their image and hypothetical commercial appeal – than the actual quality of their music. Moreover, the esteemed judges on the BBC panel often get things wrong. It is certainly a flawed contest, but one that excites us disproportionately nevertheless (we get just as silly about the Mercury Prize and the BRITS – what is wrong with us?). With this in mind, it would be easy to write off Niki & The Dove, who came fifth in the BBC Sound of 2012, as just another sparkling hope destined to disappear in the immediate future. ‘It was amazing. We were so happy’, beams keyboardist Gustaf Karlöf, speaking about their nomination for the troublesome poll. ‘We couldn’t believe it, actually!’ And as he says it, it becomes evident that Niki & The Dove are much
more than just another Sound of… band. Not that they ever should have been considered that way. Their twisted, gothictinged take on straight-up pop music is too odd for them ever to be lumped in with such musical castaways (seriously, The Bravery? What were the judges thinking?). Fascinated by the craft and power of pop, their skewed pop arrangements have the ability to capture the imagination of even the most esoterically tasted cynics. Speaking of this evocative power of music, Karlöf reflects, ‘We have been listening to music all our lives, and pop music especially has a mysterious power to it. It’s definitely something you should respect and that you should be open to.’ Lead singer Malin Dahlström is more abstract about this strange effect that music has. ‘It has a very immediate communication with a sort of ruthless energy to it - that is what fascinates me about pure pop. It has a raw value to it – it has a stone before it gets to that diamond, you know?’
Their comprehensive knowledge of the workings of pop, combined with their passion for it, very much comes across in the works they produce. Moreover, it is through the way they stringently adhere to their own musical code that has allowed them to fulfil and truly reflect their passions. ‘When we made the music, it was very important that we did not compromise. We told the record label that we could not negotiate’, says Karlöf, quietly confident that this attitude has been a key ingredient to their success. ‘If
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Pop music has a mysterious power. It’s something you should respect
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you do something in a very honest way, I think people feel that and see it as a positive thing.’ Of course, he’s right; over the course of their short career Niki & The Dove have only gone from strength to
strength, achieving the nearimpossible alchemy of music that has been appreciated by Radio 1 listeners and Pitchfork writers alike. Darkness has always been a major motif in Scandinavian music. While Sweden’s best known musical export, ABBA, are all sunshine and roses, their compatriot musical successors often display the opposite, from The Knife’s dark ambience to Jens Lekman’s moody melancholy for example, not to mention the prevalence of Scandinavian death metal. Many pseudomusicologists (this writer included) would hypothesize that this predilection comes down to the near total darkness that makes up a typical Swedish winter. Moreover, the foreboding and dramatic landscape that makes up much of the country is surely an influential factor on much of the music that comes out of the country. Karlöf agrees, ‘I believe that landscape has quite a lot to do with how music sounds. The kind of environment you are in can really effect the arrangements
you create.’ To be the next in line in this tradition of Swedish dark pop experimentalism is a great honour, especially when the relative brevity of their career is considered. Formed merely two years ago on the back of Karlöf ’s and Dahlström’s mutual work writing music for theatre, the band have made remarkable strides. Yet the rapid rate at which their profile was increasing wasn’t immediately evident to them. ‘We have found out along the way that we are quite new’, reveals Dahlström. Last year they found themselves on the NME Radar Tour, supporting Wolf Gang and S.C.U.M., a tour that they describe as a ‘chaotic’ experience (something that anyone who attended the tour should be able to confirm), although they were taken aback by the welcoming nature of British audiences. The NME Radar Tour has always been problematic, and it is of a similar phenomenon to the Sound of… poll, reflecting our unrelenting obsession with finding the next cool name to drop. Karlöf admits that he
feels music at the moment is something of a ‘mess’, with no one really knowing what is going define the upcoming years musically. However, Niki & The Dove might be a safe bet for the time being. Their debut album is slated for release on 14 May, and they are embarking on their first American tour, where positive reactions to their music have recently started, though Karlöf says they are ‘just hoping for the best’. So next time the Radar Tour rolls around, don’t be surprised to see Niki & The Dove at the top of the bill – or, indeed, for them to have outgrown the whole tired charade.
‘Instinct’ will be released on 14 May on Mercury
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‘Harry Styles dumped Caroline Flack for me’ Lucy Fowler grills London five-piece Spector on meeting their musical heroes and embarking on their first headline tour he’s got a lovely smile. He actually broke up with Caroline Flack because he preferred me.’ In a rare moment of sincerity, MacPherson explains reveals one of the band’s key lyrical motifs: teenage nostalgia and a yearning for yesterday. ‘It’s about coming to terms with change as your life unfolds in front of you in a way which you never thought it would. You’ve kind of got to look back on your life, to help you deal with the present, and the inevitable future.’ He hopes his lyrics (such as: “Happy memories, cast shadows on today… getting older, every night and each day” from the synth-soaked ‘Grey Shirt & Tie’), will resonate with those caught in-limbo, between youth and adulthood. On the subject of their album, Burnham informs me that they’re at the mixing stage, and hoping to release it in the early summer. MacPherson, not one to stay serious for long, likens the 12-song LP to the twelve steps of an addiction programme. ‘Track six is basically two different tracks played at the same time; a kind of last-hurrah before the comedown towards the end of the album. It’s going to be mental, an absolute fucking mess. I can’t wait.’
‘I kept on coughing up blood in a Travelodge in Leeds. I swear I saw something move in it and crawl down the plughole. It was like a David Cronenberg film.’ All in a day’s work for the enigmatic Fred MacPherson, frontman of the London-based five-piece, who I meet towards the end of their UK tour. It’s a strange meeting; one which involves about ten minutes of actual musical discussion, and then around twenty of them talking about conception, bestiality and Jim Davidson.
“
You’ve got to look back on your life to help you deal with your present, and the inevitable future
”
Weary from the tour, and clearly bored of being asked the questions all new bands are asked - about the origins of the band and of their name - they jokingly tell me that ‘the five of us shared a urinal at a Regina Spektor gig. It was an intense half hour, and actually the real reason they had to close the Astoria.’ Guitarist and synthplayer Jed Cullen continues, saying that he’s not sure whether the band is actually real, or a figment of his imagination. Although obviously jocular, it’s also easy to see why Cullen and the rest of his band-mates could feel rather dazed by the past six months. In November, they had the rite of passage every new band hopes to experience; a performance on Later… with Jools Holland. However, theirs
was perhaps extra special, considering the musical behemoths with which they shared a stage that night: Björk, Noel Gallagher, and – though their influence is not apparent from Spector’s 80s synth sound - their idols, Red Hot Chili Peppers. ‘Every time I looked up, Björk was dancing, and Flea was standing there, nodding his head along to our songs,’
Macpherson explains. ‘They’ve been my favourite band since I was a kid. We actually take two copies of [Anthony Kiedis’ autobiography] Scar Tissue on tour with us. That night was just insane.’ Following that, Spector were named as one of the BBC’s Sound of 2012, before embarking on this, their first headline tour, and going straight onto supporting
Florence + the Machine, along with their friends The Horrors. Having only formed little more than 12 months ago, to be playing to thousands in arenas is a big leap for the band, and one that hasn’t gone unnoticed. ‘I’m really nervous about it actually. Excited, but nervous,’ MacPherson admits, before teasing that Chris (Burnham, their guitarist) ‘has never even
been in an arena.’ Along with Florence, Flea and Faris Badwin, the band has gained a rather unexpected fan in the shape of One Direction’s Harry Styles, who, through tweets with MacPherson, was persuaded to introduce the first play of Spector’s ‘Chevy Thunder’ on Radio 1. ‘I met him at a party at my house,’ explains Burnham. ‘He’s my favourite;
‘Chevy Thunder’ is available on Polydor now
PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy shake up the screen LET ENGLAND SHAKE: 12 SHORT FILMS BY SEAMUS MURPHY PJ Harvey + Seamus Murphy
For over 100 years, even before the time of recorded sound in motion pictures, a special relationship has existed between film and its accompanying music, with in-house pianists employed before ‘talkies’ came about and heralded the commercial decline of the silent film era. But – seldom does the converse occur: that is, music appear first, followed by film. This – and not simply directing a musical or a biopic based on a musician, containing mere elements of the original music – was what British war photographer
Seamus Murphy set out to do, employed by PJ Harvey, for the latter’s ode to her home country, what has since been stamped as the definitive ‘war album’, last year’s Let England Shake. Murphy travelled across England to record material, both still and video images, combining this with his work from foreign war zones to create
a powerful, raw interpretation of PJ Harvey’s poignant picture of the role military conflict has had in England’s past, present and future. The lights die, and the screen ignites: “The west’s asleep, let England shake / Weighed down with silent dead.” Rather than by setting a scene of war through fleeting bursts of dense images
depicting the reality of war itself, the pictures of the eponymously titled opener paint a picture of real England, allowing the mentally intrusive lyrics delivered through Harvey’s piercing vocals to penetrate deep, instead. Murphy succeeds in creating a naturalistic representation of the album, effectively employing imagery such as deserted fair grounds and fighting jester and maid puppets to subtly imply much of what the music already says, instead of reiterating or spelling it out. The only worry carried early on – that each film would seem disconnected from the next – completely vanishes shortly before a third of the way through, despite there being no recurrent characters or clearly identifiable story; with instead, a mood based on recurrent themes being the carrying force up battleship hill. PJ
Harvey’s change in vocal style on this album places her in the role of story teller, conveying bleak imaginary imagery through such “cruel nature has won again” and “I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat”, whilst the almost static actual images from Murphy provide juxtapositions sometimes with – dead roses battered by brutal drops of rain – and sometimes against – carefree ballroom dancers – the narrator’s powerful words. It’s during ‘In The Dark Places’ that an increasing number of pictures of soldiers in Afghanistan surface, progressively becoming smaller, and smaller and smaller, finally only visible through a magnifying glass: a beautifully simple but sure as hell inventive and emotionally effective means of portraying their camouflage against battleship hill, once
pure green, now stained red, as they are either forgotten by the casual watchers of the news, are dead, or both. However, it is told how this forgetting is not as easy for some. The final film is the story of Louis: “Louis was my dearest friend / Fighting in the ANZAC trench”, beginning with PJ Harvey and three longtime collaborators in a cappella, singing, clapping and stomping in a progressive manner, epitomising the naturalist feel of the collective films perfectly; before re-starting and continuing with full instrumentation, as a dear, old man lovingly smiles, nervously, at the camera. The story of many others, and of this particular man – “Louis ran forward from the line, I never saw him again” – continues until the screen dies, and the lights (well, for us at least) re-ignite. Luke Swann
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25 25 Why grunge still matters A lot has changed since ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ first burst out of the tape deck in September 1991. But still lying dormant in the hearts and minds of the population is an unwavering love for grunge. They may not know it, but it is there. Have we simply grown out of it? Music is an art form that changes so quickly that we grow up with it. It is constantly being reborn, and there is still a place for grunge in the music of the future.
There are probably many of you whose knowledge of grunge extends only so far as to include Nirvana, and maybe only their second album’s opening track. But Nirvana were just a small and successful part of the vibrant and productive Seattle Grunge scene that sprung up in Washington State in the late 80s. Its most notable products are Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and the Melvins, but these talented and differing bands often take a back seat behind the mainstream success of Nirvana. We live in a day and age where the DJ has replaced the four piece band on the stage, and where CD decks have replaced the guitar and drums. But all is not lost! Hopefully one day the intricacy and creativity of live instrumental music will again become fashionable, and when it does be sure to look out for Kurt Cobain tshirts and Fender Jaguars all over town.
I was lucky, during the early 90s, my mum would tuck me in at night whilst ‘Them Bones’ by Alice in Chains was shaking the floorboards from my adolescent brother’s bedroom upstairs. He had naively been bought a brand new hi-fi for Christmas. Whether it
was from inherent love, or sleep deprived psychosis, I developed a passion for grunge from an early age. After successfully completing my first few major tantrums of childhood, I discovered that music and mood swings tessellated perfectly. But had I entered the revolution too late? Unfortunately, it was the same flagship band that brought grunge to the public’s attention that with a single shot committed grunge to the history books. Kurt Cobain’s suicide on April 8th, 1994 not only ended Nirvana’s ephemeral success in the mainstream, it also effected the development of grunge music as a whole. The other big names of grunge suffered from their own arguments, addictions and overdoses until the genre became almost completely extinct. But they are coming back! Although reduced to penultimate festival slots and O2 Academy bookings, grunge simply hasn’t had enough: Soundgarden reunited in 2010; Alice in Chains have commandeered the fresh vocals of William DuVall; and Eddie Vedder has complimented his enormous backlog of work as lead singer of Pearl Jam with his soundtrack to the movie Into The Wild (2007).
Grunge originated as a reaction to the superficial and stagnated status of popular music. In a world where shows like The XFactor have so much command over what we listen to, another reaction is needed. Grunge is about twisted love affairs, teenage tantrums and giving the middle finger to no one in particular. Grunge is not a particular sound. Grunge is about an idea: the idea that any group can band together in a garage and infuriate the neighbours; the idea that music can be made with your dad’s broken six string; the idea that torn jeans are preferable to those that are intact; the idea that emotion and expression are more important in music than commercial appeal. Abraham Whitworth
In a field of their own
Gareth Davies speaks to Field Music after the release of their acclaimed Plumb Peter Brewis left his position as drummer for The Futureheads in 2004 to start Field Music with his brother David, and eight years on after a fourth album and a sold-out show at The Fleece, the siblings from Sunderland will feel they have come a long way. Their first two studio albums gained strong reviews yet did not find the commercial success of some of their contemporaries, and after a brief hiatus in which the brothers each released their own solo albums, Field Music returned to release Measure, a double album that consolidated their position as one of the few survivors of the early 21st century Brit-rock revolution (remember The Rakes?). Fourth studio album Plumb was released last month to further critical acclaim, and despite only running for 35 minutes it is a welcome addition to a strong discography. The brothers make lots of jokes and talk about the music business with refreshing modesty and honesty, and while their music may deserve more attention than it has received, it will not leave them disheartened. After initial success with their cover of ‘Hounds of Love’ by Kate Bush and a strong self-titled debut record, The Futureheads struggled to maintain momentum and in April they will release Rant, an
entirely a capella album, in an attempt to recapture some of that early success. The Brewis brothers joined forces with friend Andrew Moore to take their own path, and in the early days Maximo Park drummer Tom English joined the project. They agree their upbringing had a big impact on their music, saying ‘we grew up in both Sunderland and South Shields, I think where we’re from has shaped our music. We’re influenced by what we see everyday, the people we share our lives with, the work we do, everything.’ The brothers cite ‘Mam and Dad’s record collection’ as a huge influence on their music, however nowadays they have less of a focal point to draw inspiration from; ‘I don’t think there is one particular location that the [new] record is linked to. There are a few references to different places in the North-East but I’d like to think the general themes are not place-specific.’ Many famous musical siblings are more famous for their squabbles but the brothers Brewis insist that they feed off each other well; ‘I think we work together very well. We don’t really disagree that much or rather, we agree to disagree whenever we want, and one of us always holds the veto. I think we generally work towards helping realise each other’s music. If we
do have a real disagreement it’s usually sorted out with a game of rock/paper/scissors!’ The brothers obviously enjoy working on new material; ‘the studio is a part of our compositional process. It’s a creative part of making music and doesn’t really have a to follow a set process. We can follow our whims and try things and either keep them or chuck them. It’s us, on our own making music for ourselves.’ On the other hand, they feel that playing live is ‘a conversation between the band and the audience. We present the music and then the audience reacts.’
“
We agree to disagree whenever we want, and one of us always holds the veto
”
Like many bands who have experienced critical success without making any considerable commercial breakthrough (Plumb spent one week at 49 in the UK album chart), the brothers are left frustrated by journalists’ attempts to classify their music into a genre (‘angular-anthemic pop’ say the Guardian), admitting that ‘the only thing that annoys is me is people making poorly based assumptions about our
intentions for the music. Like most things, music is hard to classify. I think it’s better heard than talked about, but that doesn’t mean we should talk about it. It should be fun and hypothetical rather than aspiring to facts or classification. If we are compared to a wide range of things then that’s fine.’ They do have some sympathy for the press, saying ‘I do, however, think people often only hear the surface things, which is understandable. After all we play music with guitars, and drums and sing songs.’ Field Music are one of many artists releasing new material for Record Store Day (21st April), and they are playing a homecoming gig in Sunderland to raise funds for The Bunker, an arts organisation that has developed from a musical youth group for the city’s underprivileged teenagers.
‘Plumb’ is available now on Memphis Industries
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Reviews PORT OF MORROW DELICACIES The Shins Simian Mobile Disco Columbia 29 2010 November 19 March 2012 Delicatessen
Although four years have passed since The Shins last released a record, the stark directional change on Port of Morrow may have come too soon for many fans. James Mercer is the sole remaining member of the original line-up and re-assumes the role of sole creative force, using this as a basis for greater experimentation. The injection of background layers of distortion initially distract from the timeless Pet Sounds-inf luenced pop vibes which previous Shins outings exude. However taking on a fuller form hasn’t made Port of Morrow any less enjoyable than previous records; the characteristic essence of The Shins remains intact, and hasn’t splintered during this Mercer-driven metamorphosis. Enlisting producer Greg Kurstin to create a more refined sound has paid dividends for The Shins. Amplifying the self-confident poetic poignancy of Mercer’s lyrical wit above powerful warm soundscapes lends his voice unprecedented directness, no longer being obscured behind more rustic textures. This power is ref lected in the self-confident delivery of the first single ‘Simple Song’, as
WORLD YOU NEED A CHANGE OF MIND Kindness Polydor 19 Mar 2012 In 2009, music blogs went crazy for Kindness, an outfit shrouded in mystery,who released one double single Swinging Party/Gee Up before disappearing back into the ether. Three years on, Kindness is back. Like many other MySpace maestros, Kindness is in fact a one-man project. Adam Bainbridge originally hails from Peterborough but has since escaped his webbed-feet Fenland friends and now splits his time between Berlin and London. Although Bainbridge managed to avoid having to turn out a slapdashed album of electropop to please bespectacled bloggers, by taking his time with the record, there is a feeling that the ship may have sailed on Kindness’ brand of laid-back left-field disco. Despite songs such as ‘House (All That You Need)’ and ‘Gee Up’ featuring some of the best elements of Prince-style pop grooves, there just isn’t anything groundbreaking about what Bainbridge is doing. Although many artists feature a cover on their debut album, Bainbridge’s decision to cover Anita Dobson’s ‘Anyone Can Fall In Love’ (sung to the tune of the Eastenders theme tune) is simply bizarre, but does at least, cement Kindness in the retro-indie realm he clearly desires to dwell in. Pippa Shawley
SWEET HEART SWEET LIGHT Spiritualized Fat Possum 17 April 2012
warmth gradually envelops the listener as Mercer compares being overwhelmed by love to feeling ‘like an ocean being warmed by the sun’. Perfectly paced, the peaks and troughs of Mercer’s emotional path are laid out in a fashion that prevents this record being merely confined to a ‘sunny day’. The retention of the intimacy synonymous with The Shins despite bolder sounds is what makes this record stand out; balancing eeriness and contemporary production with lyrical simplicity and emotional depth allows them to achieve this distinction with f lying colours. Despite Port of Morrow being a change for The Shins’ sound, all that is achieved is marrying archetypal Shins with contemporary musicianship and greater expansiveness. Which is no mean feat, perhaps this record may not ‘change your life’ (in the words of Natalie Portman in Garden State), but this cannot detract from the fact that Port of Morrow is exceptionally well-crafted and an early contender for record of the year. Rishi Modha
A CHURCH THAT FITS OUR NEEDS Lost in the Trees Epitaph 19 Mar 2012 An album that totally sweeps you in is an impressive achievement. To enjoy 50 minutes of music straight is difficult, but Lost in the Trees’s A Church That Fits Our Needs is, however, a special collection of beautifully bittersweet orchestration. The album is dedicated to the deeply moving life of composer Ari Picker’s mother - a woman who lost her twin daughters at birth, developed cancer and committed suicide. Picker has called the album a space for his mother’s soul. The lyrics are accordingly personal and affecting: “I put her body in the furnace so all that is left is her glory/ Don’t you ever dare think that she was faint hearted”, and the more acoustic sections, such as the beginning of ‘This Dead Bird is Beautiful’ highlighting them. Just as with more traditional classical orchestrated pieces you are sonically transported, Picker takes us to the space he created for his mother’s soul: ‘Garden’ explains this place of peace full of emotion that Lost in Trees have created. The album isn’t so much a narrative of her life; the songs explore the emotions and responses to the life-altering events from a number of perspectives, all held together as a form of very personal concept album in the support of coming to terms with grief. Imogen Ivors
After approximately two years of recording and around a year of mixing, it’s understandable that Jason Pierce, frontman and sole permanent member of Spiritualized, wanted a release that reflected his considerable efforts. In late January, Spin magazine revealed that the album that had been sent to reviewers was in fact an unfinished version and that he had intended to continue working on mixing after his first deadline, and if that wasn’t enough to thoroughly annoy music hacks everywhere, he went on to say that ‘sometimes it’s like they’ve got a different album anyway.’ Consequently, no-one dared review what Spin delightfully called the ‘quasi-completed’ version of Sweet Heart Sweet Light and Pierce had cleverly managed to satisfy his label’s deadlines and create even more publicity for the longawaited album. Fortunately for Pierce and his crew of musicians, Sweet Heart is a welcome addition to a strong back catalogue. While everything Spiritualized do will always be compared to Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, their seminal 1997 album that was named Album of the Year by NME ahead of Radiohead’s OK Computer, Sweet Heart
SONGS Rusko Mad Decent 26 Mar 2012 Rusko’s egotistical second outing is the only dance album that you actually don’t want to drop, given that the melodic dub build-ups are by far the highlight of this mediocre, cringecausing album. Despite recently collaborating with Britney Spears on her first foray into dupstep, Songs feels like Rusko is trying to give us an education in what we should all be listening to if we want to be cool and ‘old skool’. This is unsurprising really given the repeated narcissistic lyric of “I’m a pimp/ I’m a pimp” on ‘Dirty Sexy’ - let’s just say he might be a bit wide of the mark. Written in eight weeks in his studio in L.A. (he would have wanted it to be mentioned that it was recorded there), Rusko clearly ran out of time, given the lazy track names, including ‘Asda Car Park’ and ‘Skanker’. The signature wobbly drops are there in force, and atrocious as ever, broken up by corny trance and cliché dub sound effects. The climax on track ‘Opium’ is so bad it actually feels like assault. The only stand-out track ‘Mek More Green’ is a solely dub affair with a catchy chorus, it’s just a shame the rest does not follow this successful blueprint. Tom Hart
rediscovers the ‘big moments’ and ambitious crescendos - hallmarks that made their magnum opus so great. Second track ‘Hey Jane’ is a twopart rollercoaster of a song that sets the tone, opening with a driving guitar riff that would sound more at home in 1967 than 2012, and a three-minute pop song about Jane, who “broke my heart then ran away”, building to a huge drum solo. The fade out suggests closure for our protagonist but as the musical pieces come back together to form a monumental wall of sound, the vocals return with a touch of fear and finally, confidently, “Sweet Heart, Sweet Light,/ Sweet Heart, Love of my Life” is repeatedly belted out by the choir. This is the peak of the album, until ‘So Long You Pretty Things’ provides the climax, as the ambitious project is wrapped up by the choir, many layers of guitar and countless hours of production and mixing. As a whole the album does feel like the homage to rock ‘n’ roll that Pierce promised, and influences from every decade are evident, in particular the classical, jazz and choral components that make Spiritualized records special. Gareth Davies
SONIK KICKS Paul Weller Island 19 Mar 2012 When the Modfather referred to his new record as ‘modern psychedelic music’, you could not be blamed for feeling alarmed, especially when he used the phrase ‘musical journey’, but Sonic Kicks depicts Paul Weller’s exploration into psychedelia executed tactfully and stylishly. Preceding single ‘The Dangerous Age’ is a lovely place to begin and wise selection of release. Weller offers a flavour of the electronic expression that is later developed in tracks such as ‘Dragonfly’, but employs familiar techniques to his classic style, particularly with the energetic responses of his backing vocalists. However, tracks like ‘Green’ indulge in psychedelic fusion, appearing mismatched, feeling like a familiar song frame simply adorned with a collection of wah-wah guitars, vocal echoes and most irritatingly a habit of excessive panning from earphone to earphone. Nonetheless, the record does brag a number of gems. ‘By The Waters’ favours the use of strings rather than synths and is benefited for it, and ‘Paperchase’ combines experimental elements of psychedelia with a classic mod influence flawlessly. Overall, Sonik Kicks is adventurous, without losing its roots. Rajiv Karia
Film & TV
Epigram
Editor: William Ellis
Deputy Editor: Ant Adeane
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19.03.2012
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Bristol antidote to awards season ennui Jessica Wingrad visited Bristol’s first Radical Film Festival for a weekend of anti-establishment films, documentaries and talks When UWE student Steve Presence stumbled upon an advertisement for a Bristol Film Festival he was dismayed to notice that the headline film was to be The Iron Lady. Although a celebrated representation of Margaret Thatcher this film did not strike Presence as a groundbreaking work of cinematic accomplishment. So with a group of three others he set about organising its subversive counterpart, The Bristol Radical Film Festival. The clear political agenda of the festival made for a controversial but thoughtprovoking choice of films. From anti-road protests of the 1990s to Mexican immigrants of today, the festival explored a wide and varied range of issues through films which are not easily accessible or even known to exist by the general public. The Monday night event did in no way ease the audience into the theme of anarchist cinema but launched into the subject of protests from 1996 against the M11 Link Road in Leyton and Leytonstone, East London. Filmmaker Neil Goodwin painted a gritty picture of the 15-month struggle by locals to save Wanstead’s George Green from the malevolent yellow claws of demolition vehicles. The film has something of a ‘goodies vs. baddies’ feel to it whereby the uniformed policemen and demolition men assault the long haired, tshirt clad hippies. Classic songs from The Clash, The Levellers and Zion Train coupled with harrowing footage of desperate protesters made for a heavy but interesting first evening.
Police brutality was an underlying theme throughout the week and the film Operation Solstice shown on the Wednesday is probably the best example of this. Another work by Neil Goodwin, a 47 minute production, documented the ambush of Wiltshire Police on a convoy of new age travellers heading for the 11th Stonehenge Free Festival. The events took place in 1985 and as such the cinematography is fairly dated although this does add something to a film which is concerned with hippies from a different generation. The chilling footage of peaceful people being dragged bloodied from their vehicles makes for shocking viewing. It is made worse by the fact that the crimes of the police on that day against the travellers, on the whole, went unpunished. The motif of uniformed police
against unarmed peacelovers is central to the film and heavily influences the sense of propaganda against ‘conventional’ society. Although violence against gentle people was a running theme, the Tuesday night selection about women and resistance followed a more peaceful story of protest with the film Greenham the Making of a Monument. Through a mixture of interviews, photos and film clips, filmmaker Hamish Campbell told the story of women from the group Women For Life on Earth forming a camp on Greenham Common to protest against nuclear weapons being set up there. What was most striking in this film was how normal the women involved seemed to be, many were mothers with young children who did not seem to fit the edgy, inflamed persona
of a stereotypical activist. The narrator was fairly irritating at times with her Welsh monotone, as were the random segments of loud singing, although Campbell was present at the screening and stressed that he would have altered the musical numbers slightly were he to edit the film. A personal highlight was the film screened on the Friday, Paths Through Utopias which is a documentary made by John Jordan and Isa Freemeaux. The pair set off on a journey around Europe to discover communities which stray from the capitalist system and live their own alternative lifestyles. They encountered the Camp for Climate Action group living at Heathrow illegally, as well as punks living in a French hamlet, agricultural communities, a factory in Serbia which was selfrun, and even a slightly wacky
free love community. The film was 109 minutes long and could certainly have been cut down to about an hour if the long, slow shots of clouds and trees were removed. The artsy moments added hugely to the overall feel of alternativeness but it would be a lie not to admit that they got mildly tedious at times. The weekend session boasted a range of events including debates, discussions and talks. The first feature length film was a 70s piece entitled The Cheviot, The Stag and The Black, Black Oil. Prior to the screening the audience were informed that the quality was far from good since the whole film had been shot on a 16 mm. This terminology did not elicit much of a response from the audience but as soon as the film began it was clear how it affects filmmaking. The picture was slightly grainy and the sound
gave every character a lisp but it made for a fairly charming work. Through dramatic reconstructions as well as theatrical performances and actual documentary footage, filmmaker John McKenzie told the story of the struggle of the people of the Scottish Highlands. At times it proved to be witty despite the very dated style of humour; however, the message to be taken from the film is one of disgust at the greed of the ruling class. The end of the week was rounded off in the same vein as it had been started, with a sombre and cutting-edge film by Mexican filmmaker Tin Dirdamal. From the onset this film was sickening. The raw emotion and distress of those interviewed comes across with incredible power. The footage is not clean-cut or glossy but shows the reality of the horrors of a violent gang called La Mara Salvatrucha who attack immigrants travelling through Mexico in search of better lives in the USA. Of all the films throughout the week, this was not only the most shocking, but also the most gripping. After a week of contemplation and intrigue most of the festivalgoers would perhaps be left with a sour taste in the mouth at the corruption and evil which not only goes unpunished but also unreported. This provocative week of radical films forced people to think about the integrity of our society, and poses the question: are we going to sit on our comfy sofas and let these injustices happen?
Tired Oscars ceremony labours to predictable conclusion Ben Willey ponders the successes and failures of this year’s Academy Awards which saw the ceremony play it safe once again Given that the Oscars are televised in the middle of the night on British TV, the fact that the ceremony was once again a snoozefest wasn’t too much of an issue for the few that unwisely stayed up to watch it. More of a concern, however, was that it seemed to be a shameless rehash of bits from previous Academy Awards. A compilation album. With all the worst songs. Traditionally, the Oscar ceremonies that have been most entertaining have always been those where there is some competition for the main awards. The usual way of distracting oneself from the sheer cringeworthiness of the proceedings is to first guess who
will win those awards, realise you’ve failed miserably, and then get too drunk to be bothered by those-awards-at-the-endwith-overly-long-names. Other highlights tend to include: laughing at George Clooney pretending to gracefully lose and sneering at Meryl Streep gracefully winning. Unfortunately, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars all went to exactly the same people as in this year’s Baftas. This predictability was even reflected in the presenter; Eddie Murphy was meant to host the awards this year for the first time, but because of the resignation of the producer
that championed him, Billy Crystal was enlisted for his 9th appearance. He began the 84th ceremony, agonisingly, with a song and dance, and then continued with his familiar wisecracks - ‘Nothing takes the sting out of these tough economic times like watching a bunch of millionaires giving golden statues to each other’. That one was probably recycled from when he presented during the Wall Street Crash. Then there was the emergence of The Artist as the most decorated film of the year. Media coverage of this film after its success at the Baftas seemed to suggest that ‘the silent movie era is back’ - this was the first
silent film to win Best Picture since Wings won in 1929. The reason this film did so well, however, is in fact much more likely to be down to the average age of the voting members of The Academy. These voters dictate what becomes popular, because we tend to feel we have an obligation to have seen the Oscars favourite. Even the film itself harks back to Singin’ In The Rain, its near identical plots both marking the transition from the silent era to ‘talkies’. Octavia Spencer’s award for The Help was a particular lowlight. The trauma started with a great illustration of the dated traditions of the ceremony - she received a patronising standing ovation after she was escorted
to the stage. Clearly it is now procedure to do this for any black actress winning an award - 11 years after Halle Berry won Best Actress for Monster’s Ball (an apt subtitle for the ceremony itself). She then only managed about 7 words before crying. In her short speech, she thanked, among other things: the state of Alabama, the world, and her ‘Help family’. One redeeming feature was Sacha Baron Cohen’s stunt of pouring the supposed ashes (which was actually leftover pancake mix) of Kim Jong Il over E! presenter Ryan Seacrest during the red carpet procession. This served to effectively break up the monotony of watching the parade of hopefuls tell us
‘who’ they were wearing, and listen to them desperately try to be diplomatic about the other nominees in their category. However, even this pleasure was softened by the revelation that the Academy had allowed him to attend in order to boost the show’s ratings. It’s a shame that award ceremonies have relaxed into this pattern. Occasionally we get a year of great films that are also big enough at the box office to be taken notice of when the Oscar nominations are announced. Seeing The Artist scoop the awards was akin to someone choosing ‘She Loves You’ as their favourite Beatles song. Perfectly adequate, but not very innovative.
Epigram
19.03.2012
28
Chilling account of the banality of evil MICHAEL Director: Markus Schleinzer Starring: Michael Fuith, David Rauchenberger
Marcus Schleinzer’s debut film, Michael, is a subtle but unnerving view into the banality of evil and an insight into the horrors of what can occur behind closed doors and beyond the mundane. The film follows the routine of a paedophile, whose seemingly ordinary lifestyle is contradicted by his acts of molestation. Creating a stir in Cannes where the film premiered in 2011, Schleinzer dares to deal with the issue of child captivation and paedophilia, only too familiar to modern audiences through such horrific cases as Josef Fritzel. Michael (Michael Fuith) is a restrained and unremarkable 35 year-old insurance executive, who is keeping the 10 year-old Wolfgang (David Rauchenberger) in his soundproofed basement. Initially we witness the ordinary Michael going through the motions of a regimented and single lifestyle. He arrives in his
impeccably clean house, cooks his meal and sets the table in preparation for dinner. However, Michael unlocks the door to the basement and walks down to a baby blue bolted door, which he unfastens and from the dense darkness appears a young child, who reluctantly walks out. They eat their dinner together, and the boy requests if he can watch television, a request to which Michael agrees. When it reaches the boy’s bedtime, he is sent back down to the basement. Michael proceeds with his regular routine, watching television and brushing his teeth. He then returns to the basement. The molestation of the boy is never explicitly revealed, but rather implied throughout the film. We see Michael dispassionately cleaning himself after the inferred act, forcing the audience to imagine for themselves the horrifying deed. The juxtaposition of the ordinary with this revolting action is what makes this film so complex. The controversy of paedophilia is never directly confronted and Schleinzer does not make an explicit judgement of Michael, adding to our discomfort. This minimalistic film delves into the depths of
wickedness, shrouding it with an impassiveness which transforms the malevolent act into something ordinary. In stark contrast to the situation in which the pair are living, they behave like father and son. Michael has the characteristics of an impatient parent, whilst Wolfgang depicts traits of a child slowly rebelling against the constraints placed upon him by his father. The man and young boy take trips out together, as if in a conventional
father and son relationship. Yet there are elements of unnatural dominance that Michael inflicts on the boy, such as placing his hand threateningly behind the boy’s neck whilst walking. Despite this implicit act of authority, in other scenes they are seen holding hands. What makes the film so controversial and peculiar is the character of Michael. Despite our obvious abhorrence, we are made to feel sympathy towards this pathetic and feeble man. His
empty life is filled only by the child who openly hates and resents him, understandably so. Michael lacks social graces, unable to maintain eye contact with anyone, and avoiding time with his family. However, he also rejects intimacy, physically throwing out a female colleague who kindly comes to his house. Scenes of him crying on his sofa alone provoke sympathy for the man whose inability to obey social conventions has led him to be in such a
miserable state. The depiction of Wolfgang is also strangely compelling. On the surface, the child appears to submit to the lifestyle that has been forced upon him, begrudgingly following his own routine. But as the film progresses, it is clear that he loathes it, and sometimes violently tries to overcome his custodian. The film is full of tension, which is only released through intermissions of humour and surprising incidents, which leave a resounding effect on the audience. Thrilling and complex, this film has the ability to shock the audience whilst also retaining sympathy for Michael and the child. The ambiguous genre of the film is only resolved at the very end, when it is clear that the film should best be considered as a thriller. The denouement will have the audiences squirming in their seats. Schleinzer deals with paedophilia in a simplistic style, however this paradoxically creates an intricate film for the audience to comprehend. He raises issues throughout the film which will remain with the audience for a long time after the final credits. Harriet Walker
Irate Woody on the rampage X-cruciating teen com flop PROJECT X
RAMPART Director: Oren Moverman Starring: Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Sigourney Weaver
Director: Nima Nourizadeh Starring: Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown
Rampart is the story of Dave Brown, a Vietnam veteran and police officer for the LAPD. The film takes place in 1999 centring on the Rampart Scandal that threw discredit on the police force of the Rampart district in LA. In this adaptation it is Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) that finally and brutally upsets the delicate balance of tensions in the district. Brown is a pitiless throwback to a police force that viewed violence and racism with an equal degree of indifference. He womanises and drinks; exhibiting a detachment and conversely a compulsive addiction to both of these aspects of his life. This is a character that pushes the ‘antihero’ to its extremes. Rampart is a film that unwaveringly charts the meltdown of a character that is verging on the psychotic, but who is also our guide through the fearful and sprawling streets of downtown LA. He is exposed to us entirely, the frequent use of
Project X is a complete mess of a film, containing little in terms of storyline and three of the most annoying central characters I have seen for quite some time. The gags are predictable and the use of the home video style is pointless. In addition, I wasn’t sure about its moral message (repeatedly emphasised by the scriptwriters), which is that it’s perfectly acceptable to sacrifice everything in order to gain a bit of respect from your classmates. The plot is a simplistic one. Thomas (Thomas Mann) decides to throw an enormous 17th birthday party at his house whilst his parents are away celebrating their anniversary, encouraged by his best friends, Costa (Oliver Cooper) and J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown). It’s all part of a plan to impress the girls in his year group, particularly Kirby (Kirby Bliss Blanton) and Alexis (Alexis Knapp). The main characters in Project
hand held cameras as precarious and unsteady as his reason. We witness every pore, and hair on Brown’s balding scalp. We see every blemish both physically and mentally. It is a film that assaults the senses most prominently in the oppressive sense of heat; everything is sweating and sunburnt, crude and uncomfortable. Considering this is only Oren Moverman’s second film as director, it is an incredible feat. The script was co-written by crime-fiction heavyweight James Ellroy, the man behind LA Confidential, and he brings to Rampart a deep understanding of the troubles and internal conflict within the police force. Full tribute must be paid to Woody Harrelson, whose performance is truly
astounding. It’s a far cry from his break-out role as the affable buffoon, Woody Boyd, in the American sit-com, Cheers. The rest of the cast too boasts some extremely impressive names, including the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi and Robin Wright. Even Ice Cube gives a good performance, which is testament to Oren Moverman’s achievement with Rampart. Rampart presents us with the story of a monster, but a monster that is wholly realistic and deeply intriguing. We recognise the horror of his actions and, to our extreme discomfort, are forced into watching every crevice of his life. The amorality we find is both appalling and absorbing. Polly Brock
X are intensely dislikeable. Costa, in particular, comes across as an arrogant bully. The result was that I didn’t particularly care whether they were able to keep the party under control and prevent the destruction of Thomas’ house. I hated the cinematography, which involved the audience seeing events through the camera of one of Thomas’ friends. The style has worked in a number of horror movies, but in this one it is excruciatingly ineffective. The director, Nima Nourizadeh, claimed that the reason for using this technique was to make the film ‘seem real’. The trouble is that almost everybody at the party looks like they’re in Hollyoaks and the events are not remotely realistic, even for a movie
purporting to be a comedy. However, credit must be given to Thomas’ dog. I only laughed twice during this film and, both times, he was involved. In fact, he acts better than several of the cast members, the worst of whom are the parents, who display absolutely no emotion whatsoever and behave very bizarrely in their scenes (and it’s certainly not intentional). For a moment I thought I was watching My Parents Are Aliens. The film begins with an apology from Warner Brothers to the ‘citizens of North Pasadena’. Frankly, they should consider apologising to the citizens of the world for producing this utterly abysmal comedy. It’s the worst I’ve seen in a long time. Michael Hindmarsh
Epigram
19.03.2012
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North v South, Gaz v Arg, Toon v TOWIE Liz Blaubleth dips into Geordie Shore
Amy Donnelly sings TOWIE’s praises
It is easy to criticize Geordie Shore for its lack of intellectual content and indulgent characters; however, it has managed to capture audiences across the UK, providing a Geordie alternative to the successful American show, Jersey Shore. Nine people with questionable moral standards are gathered to live and work in a house specifically designed to encourage sex; with a heated hot tub, a shag hut, and ‘girls as game as badgers’. At first the main reason for watching the show is to laugh at the expense of the extreme caricatures of Geordie ‘lads’ and ‘lasses’ MTV has managed to scrape together. With the girls sporting six or more pairs of fake eyelashes, as well as copious amounts of fake tan, and the boys with six packs and plucked eyebrows, it is indeed an amusing sight. Primarily, the love for the characters is based purely on a guilty interest in their extreme sexual behaviour, with the second series showing more graphic sex scenes and extreme drunkenness than the previous series of Geordie and Jersey Shore’s combined. As the series continues however, shocked
The Only Way is Essex is so ridiculous that it is good; from the exaggerated story lines to the awkward pauses when a character is trying to remember what it was they were talking about. Although the programme is easy to watch and the lack of consonants is easy to laugh at, it does have a relatable side to it. As I grew up in the area where TOWIE – as the fans call it - is filmed I can honestly say that it is not representative of the general population. I can name very few people that have the courage to negotiate their way through the streets in high heels, mahogany skin, and extremely tight trousers. However, after this false glamour, there is still a relatable element that you cannot ignore. We all know that guy who thinks he is God’s gift to women, that girl who is stuck in a deadend relationship but does not realise it, or that friend who gets very emotional about their ex-boyfriend after a few glasses of wine. Granted, the story lines are embellished and stretched out, but there is still that ounce of reality in it that we can all recognise. Other ‘reality’ programmes
give their characters the chance to share their thoughts in retrospect but the cast of TOWIE forego this, causing numerous confrontations and producing a show similar to a car crash; you cannot stop watching it. Yet, above all, I love TOWIE because it is relatively clean; the characters don’t talk about drugs and sex. Nor do they swear in every sentence, and
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embarrassment gives way to feelings of true sympathy as the characters stumble into increasingly outrageous predicaments. Charlotte, the most lovable character, is besotted with Gary, a good looking lad who manages to sleep with an improbable amount of girls, helped undoubtedly by Charlotte’s claim that his ‘willy is the size of her forearm’. Vicky provides increasing entertainment due to her highly vocal outrage at the behaviour of all the housemates whilst sleeping with Ricci behind her boyfriend’s back, cleverly hidden on national television. James has the drive, determination and banter of his housemates, but is embarrassingly unsuccessful and invents new excuses every week for why he can’t ‘tash on’. Geordie Shore has become a guilty pleasure for many, causing even the most upstanding of people to indulge for one hour a week as they wish they were getting mortal and tashing on. It may often be crass, crude, and unstimulating, but I challenge you to watch one episode without succumbing to the charms of the lads and lasses of Geordie Shore.
[Some are] genuinely good natured, and that is refreshing to see
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they rarely fight, whereas other reality programmes seem to show half the cast drunk every episode. They might not know where South London is, but some of them seem to be genuinely good natured and that’s refreshing to see after the horrors reality shows have produced over the last few years. On the other hand, my love for the show might just be because I like bragging about my membership card to the cast’s regular haunt.
South Park: the best sitcom of all time? Jasper Jolly extolls the virtues of animated sitcoms, like South Park, for the satirical edge they hold over their live action counterparts Cartoons have a right to be called the best sitcoms around; they are less formulaic, often cleverer, and quite simply funnier. Take the example of Friends, and more specifically Joey, the loveable, roguish, if slightly stupid, member of the community. By the end of the run he had become a shadow of his former self; any complexity was ruined as he became a pale imitation of his crudest characteristics. This could stand for the show as a whole – there is only so much scope for comedy from six or so people in a room. Cartoons have far broader possibilities. Of course, three programmes bestride the world of cartoon comedy: The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. The former is the subtlest, and made the others possible, and Family Guy is extremely funny, but ultimately empty. South Park, however, is witty, satirical, and hilarious, and shows most strongly how cartoons are the best thing in the monotonous sitcom world. Animated characters really have an unfair advantage over actors. The room for digression and variety is limited only by the imaginations of the creators,
and so they can be ridiculous without seeming weak. For real actors, on the other hand, any attempt at something vaguely bizarre is not really possible, and it is criticised when it does. The most famous example of this is Happy Days, which ran out of ideas, and had its cult star, The Fonz, water-ski over a shark. The phrase ‘jumping the shark’ has become, because of this moment, TV slang for the point when a show runs out of ideas, to which sitcoms with actors are far more susceptible. South Park, despite doing a lot worse than jumping sharks,
never seems stale – Mr Hankey, the Christmas poo, would probably look out of place in Friends. Another example, which handily continues the aquatic theme, is ‘Cartoon Wars Part II’, in which it is discovered that the writers of Family Guy are actually manatees who pick out random topics for their staple cutaway gags. This is a really incisive criticism, and also points to why South Park, by contrast, is so great. South Park is ridiculous, but not random. It is the product of two bewildered guys (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) looking
at a country which sometimes approaches the condition selfparody. That same episode was really a high point in the show’s history. It was the height of the furore over the publishing in Denmark of an image of Mohammed. Ever tactful, Parker and Stone waded into the debate and decided to do their own version. Predictably, Comedy Central blacked out the moment, and so ‘Cartoon Wars Part II’ became a fantastically ironic criticism of censorship and hypocrisy (especially as it had already broadcast a representation five
years earlier). This was enabled, in part, by the incredibly short turnaround of one week which allows South Park to respond to news in a way that no other sitcom can or will. Topicality can sometimes be a weakness, especially when its subject matter is obscure or unfamiliar, but Parker and Stone do not tie themselves to recent events restrictively – it is just even funnier if you know what they are satirising specifically. The link to real-life. contemporary events is really at the core of South Park – it is truly topical satire, and
indiscriminate too. The creators truly hate hypocrisy, wherever it occurs. South Park has in the past been seen as Republican, because of its incessant parody of liberal America. It is a good sign that their satire reaches both ways. They are no liberal elite – Parker calls himself libertarian – and they hate any kind of orthodoxy, so infuriate pretty much everybody. This is particularly refreshing considering the polarity of the American political press, which so often falls into the categories of smug and superior on one side, and just plain stupid on the other. Nothing – emphatically nothing – about South Park is sincere, but this is where it is so effective. It actively opposes the moribund thinking of hypocrisy which they see in so much of modern life, and there is no Scrubs-style potted meaning at the end. Parker and Stone do not want South Park itself to be taken seriously; they want to show that everything is ridiculous if it is taken too far. This is why South Park is, in my opinion, perhaps the best sitcom ever made: it is daring and meaningful. It is also wickedly funny.
Epigram
19.03.2012
Science
Editor: Nick Cork
Deputy Editor: Emma Sackville
science@epigram.org.uk
deputyscience@epigram.org.uk
@epigramscience
Bristol Professor invents magnetic soap Struggling to think of the practical applications? Ben Mills speaks to Professor Julian Eastoe and his co-author, PhD student Paul Brown Ben Mills Science Reporter
Ben Mills
007. Nuclear reactors. A slick office. Jetting around the world. Millions of dollars. You might be thinking of Ian Fleming’s fictional spy, James Bond, but this is real life for Julian Eastoe, Professor of Chemistry here at Bristol. Professor Eastoe’s office is room number S007. Inside is a fascinating array of gadgets, a fine selection of leather furniture and a small fridge - no doubt to keep the champagne chilled. In an operation as enterprising as Fleming’s spy hero and as ingenious as his gadgetmaster, Q, Eastoe leads a research group that recently invented the world’s first magnetic soap. You won’t find magnetic soap in your bathroom anytime soon, but it’s not a million miles away from the washing-up liquid in your kitchen. Soaps and detergents are part of a family of molecules called surfactants. We use them all the time to dissolve fat, oil, and grease, but this great Bristol invention is the world’s first surfactant that is attracted to magnets. This means you could capture oily substances with magnetic soap and then collect them with a magnet. Professor Eastoe says that the magnetic soap has generated huge interest, both in the media and in industry. ‘We entered into discussions with a number of companies ranging from, believe it or not, the cement industry, through the obvious applications in oil recovery and oil cleanup, through to personal care products.’ He points out that it’s impossible to know for sure what magnetic soap will eventually be used for. ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I would have sold the idea to some very rich people who’d have given me and Paul an awful lot of money and we would be on a yacht somewhere.’
PhD student Paul Brown, co-author of the magnetic soap discovery
Paul Brown is one of Eastoe’s PhD students, and explains some of the conceivable applications of the invention. ‘We’ve been talking about cleaning oil off seabirds, where hands and scrubbing can’t reach. Those kinds of applications are realistic, they’re not pipe dreams. It’s hard to ever tell at the beginning. It might be possible, but there
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If you want to change the world, be a scientist, forget being a politician.
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are so many other possibilities where it could be used.’ It’s not the prospect of becoming millionaires that motivates them though. ‘Tony Blair said if you want to change the world, be a scientist, forget being a politician. We never went into this business with the view of making money. I’m purely
Systematic Error An error has been brought to the attention of the Editors, which appeared in print alongside an article of Issue 248 entitled, Rev7: Bristol’s chewing gum revolution. Rev7 was referred to as a ‘biodegradable gum’, whereas it should more accurately be described as ‘degradable’ since its breakdown in the environment is a physical process and not as a result of microbial activity. This was subsequently corrected in the article as it appears online.
received a £150 million upgrade from the UK Government. ‘You walk past magnets the size of a car that switch on and off every picosecond [0.000 000 000 001 seconds], non-stop, twenty in a row and they time each other. It’s incomprehensible.’ ‘It’s like being in a James Bond movie,’ agrees the Professor. ‘When they go into the tunnel under the mountain and there’s some meglomaniac with a laser tractor beam, it’s just like being in that. It’s an amazing experience.’ Magnetic soap is only the tip of the iceberg as far as pioneering research at Bristol’s School of Chemistry is concerned. Eastoe’s general area of research is known as colloid and interface science. It’s
Demonstration of a droplet of magnetic soap next to a magnet
a subject that, he reflects, has a long and proud tradition in Bristol, as old as the University itself. ‘I would claim that Bristol is one of the cradles of colloidal civilisation, the founding centres of colloid science as we know it. Since the start, we have enjoyed a permanent stream of funding from industry because of our history and the economic importance of our work.’ Colloid and interface science touches on many aspects of life, from the thin film of tear fluid protecting your eyes, to engine oil additives that prevent your car exploding too often. ‘How you coat a liquid on a surface and maintain that coating, that’s the science that we’re interested in,’ explains Eastoe. ‘In breathing, what
Ben Mills
Epigram Science would like to apologise to all affected by the mistake.
interested in the opportunities that are available when you have a periodic table to play with.’ It rarely takes less than ten years to turn a discovery in the lab to a product on a supermarket shelf, a fact that Brown is all too aware of. ‘It’s the best part of a decade to produce a product, and I think that’s underappreciated in this instant-hit Google, Facebook world. Just because you come up with a proof of principle, does not mean to say that tomorrow it’ll be on the market. The consumer world is a different place. There’s a lot that goes into making a product like the Amazon Kindle, for example.’ He knows it won’t be cheap, either. ‘Conservatively, it will take something like one to two million US dollars to commercialise magnetic surfactants.. The University of Bristol is looking for the external investment to put up that money.’ During their investigation of magnetic soap, Professor Eastoe’s team used beams of neutrons from nuclear reactors to find out how the soap molecules cluster together and what shapes those clusters adopt. ‘It’s an amazing experiment,’ he says. ‘You need big equipment, but what you’re fundamentally doing is using the building blocks of nature - neutrons, subatomic particles - as a means to study other aspects of nature itself. It seems like a clever trick to me.’ Brown was clearly overawed by the neutron scattering facilities, which recently
you’ve done is you’ve reduced the surface tension between a watery substance, your blood, and an external phase, the air, so that you can facilitate the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide as dissolved gases into the external gaseous phase. So every person at every minute of the day relies on the principles of colloid and interface science.’ Colloid scientists develop substances that help insoluble pharmaceuticals dissolve in the bloodstream and get insoluble pesticides to dissolve in water so they can be sprayed on fields to help feed the world. Even the Amazon Kindle relies on colloids for its revolutionary low-power electrophoretic display (EPD). ‘So far it only works with black and white, but there are companies interested in advancing the technology to make colour displays,’ says Professor Eastoe. ‘Their vision is to have huge EPDs that stretch across buildings: think of the film “Minority report” and you get the idea.. It’s extremely difficult to achieve. But we are working on that problem in collaboration with industrial partners, here in the department.’ It can be a challenge to get an invention onto the market, no matter how brilliant it is. ‘We need the financial, infrastructural muscle of big business,’ Eastoe notes, ‘and we need the know-how about how to take a new piece of chemical technology and make it marketready and market-worthy. I don’t claim to be a businessman, I’m not Alan Sugar - I’m a scientist. I think universities are hothouses for ideas but they’re not necessarily the best at commercialising them’
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19.03.2012
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MedFest 2012: Public health and the media MedFest is the UK’s foremost medical film festival. Harrison Carter attends and interviews Professor David Nutt, panellist and prominent psychiatrist Harrison Carter Science Reporter On 2nd March 2012, the University of Bristol Psychiatry Society hosted MedFest 2012 - an event that has been taking place at Universities across the country. MedFest was first held in 2010. It has now become an annual event, and is currently the only UK film festival that aims to explore the relationship between Medicine and the Media. The organisers seek to stimulate debate on the social, political and ethical implications of how health and illness is depicted for the public, by screening a number of film clips. These are followed by a panel discussion, which attracts esteemed specialists in the fields of journalism, television and psychiatry. On the panel was David Nutt - formerly Professor of Psychopharmacology at Bristol and now a Professor at Imperial College, London, Michael Arribas-Allyon, lecturer in cognitive and social psychology at the University of Cardiff, and John Bradburn, a lecturer, film-maker and journalist based in Birmingham.
Why are events like MedFest important? One of the great challenges in health and psychiatry is communication, there’s so much mis-understanding about psychiatric problems and so we need a sensible dialogue about it to try and bring a sense of rationality to it, and how it is portrayed. It is also a great opportunity to have a dialogue with the public and answer questions. Anything that gets illness recognised in the public domain has to be worthwhile Could it be argued that any attempts to rationalise people’s perception of mental health are futile? And do you think people’s pre-conceptions stay with them regardless of what we all try to do? People learn. That’s what the brain’s about, learning. The thing is, that people may have pre-conceptions, but they seek out evidence to support their pre-conceptions and are confronted with other views. These challenge and even make their prejudices less stable. I wouldn’t be in this business if I didn’t think I could change something. At the moment there’s lots of social media. Everyone has got a lot more access to information. How has this affected the role of doctors and the NHS? It’s an interesting question,
and one I’ve thought about a lot. One thing’s for sure, patients can be a lot more informed if they so wish to be. You get a much wider perspective. Some patients are well informed and others are more passive. I think the access is a good thing; it keeps us on our toes. If someone comes to me and tells me something I don’t know, I’ll say give me the reference and I’ll look it up. And in the end it’s the right way, what with the enormous pressure on health care provision in this country and others. It’s right that we have patients empowered. Whilst empowering a patient is obviously the right thing to do, how would we prevent the seeking of internet diagnoses? It’s a big challenge as people seek out their fears or misconceptions. I think you have to have some sort of regulation. People cannot make outrageous claims about therapies on the internet, particularly in the United Kingdom, and get away with it. It is a big challenge, and I am slightly surprised that we haven’t seen more problems. How important is the media for swaying public opinion on health, and is there any way to regulate that? The media used to be about selling newspapers, now it’s about getting hits. We see those wonderful cartoons in the private eye. One day the Daily
Professor David Nutt
Mail says drinking milk causes cancer, the next day it says something completely different. I think, by and large, the media is not good because the media wants to sell the news, and health isn’t really news. I think it’s quite de-stabilising so I’m not very comfortable with most of the media’s attitude. Rely on your GP!
On a wider issue, in terms of what the media have been saying about the NHS reforms, is there not a danger that what that’s doing is making the public oppose something that in its raw form is not something to be opposed? The question is not about reforming the NHS, but the way
they are doing it. The conduct of the Health Secretary has been appalling, and I don’t think he’s trustworthy. There are many examples of what he’s been doing, where you can see through them, where he’s shifting responsibility from the Department of Health and uncoupling freedom of health care. I think it’s been driven by ideological reasons, and not by any desire to improve healthcare. I don’t think the newspapers have a position. I think they’ve been representing the views of the professional bodies. Given that politicians have very little scientific knowledge, how qualified do you think they are to make decisions about the NHS or drug classification, and over-riding the decisions of independent scientific bodies? Politicians have no scientific knowledge. Politics is not about improving science, or justice, but about getting elected. I think it’s very sad. It lowers itself to the lowest common denominator. It is worth challenging. Social media is very important for people to challenge these arbitrary decisions and hold politicians to account. See the Epigram website for intervews with the other MedFest panellists.
How detrimental is sleep deprivation? Mary Melville Science Reporter
Flickr : indi.ca
Sleep. Some love it, some students just can’t seem to get enough, and others say it’s a waste of time. The truth is we all need it. Sleep is essential for maintaining cognitive ability and brain development. At night our bodies behave differently; our blood pressure and heart rate drop whilst our level of energy consumption remains broadly similar. Sleeping for 8 hours requires only 50kcal less than the same period spent awake - a very minimal difference. How detrimental then is sleep deprivation? At the age of 17, Randy Gardner went without sleep for 264 hours. During this record breaking run he experienced hallucinations, paranoia and short-term memory loss. At the end of these 11 sleep-free days, however, he quickly recovered - after a mere 14 hour nap. The effects of sleep deprivation can’t be ignored though. After 17 hours spent without sleep, cognitive function is equal to
someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.05% - that’s about two glasses of wine. So for those inclined to pull an all-nighter in the attempt to finish an essay, bear in mind that your proof-reading skills might not be up to scratch. Figures often suggest an ‘optimum’ or ‘ideal’ amount of sleep for our bodies, but in reality this varies between individuals. One proposed surrogate for sleep requirements is the length of time it takes you to fall asleep: between 10 and 15 minutes is ideal. Less than five
minutes and you’re probably sleep deprived, over fifteen and you might consider waking up more regularly for 9am lectures. We all have that friend or sibling who sleeps a lot. If you don’t, it’s probably you. But you can cut yourself some slack. Research shows that while humans are still developing they not only need more sleep but also prefer to sleep and wake later. The hormone melatonin is key in helping our bodies to fall asleep - research suggests that teenagers and young adults
produce the hormone up to 3 hours later in the day than fullygrown adults. Teenagers could just be misunderstood, not lazy. Unfortunately for the latenight essay writer, the typical undergraduate student age group - 18-24 - is thought to be more susceptible to decreased function as a result of sleep loss. It’s also possible to get enough sleep but not in the right pattern. A recent sleep study suggests that a solid eight hours isn’t beneficial or natural – instead,
we should have two four- hour bursts. The researchers claimed that we have been socially programmed to sleep eight hours a night, but that historical records indicate we are naturally more inclined to two distinct shorter naps. The historian Roger Ekrich of Virginia Tech has published a paper of 500 historical references pointing to segmental sleeping. In addition, prayer manuals from the 15th century often included prayers specifically for in-between sleep. Thomas Wehr, scientist emeritus
at the US National Institute of Mental Health, found further support for segmental sleeping he plunged his test subjects into darkness for 14 hours a day for a month. By the end everyone was sleeping for four hours, waking for a couple, before returning to sleep. So next time you’re wide-awake in the middle of the night, don’t worry its nothing to lose sleep over.
• The discovery of REM Rapid Eye Movement - sleep was delayed. Researchers hadn’t wanted to waste the paper on comprehensive overnight recordings. • One in every six car accidents are estimated to be caused by fatigue • You burn more calories in sleep than you do when watching television. • ¼ of the UK population suffers from a sleep problem • A proven link has been established between insomnia and your bedroom environment: turn your phone and laptop off!
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Why we need more mavericks in sport Tom Mordey Online Editor
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Balotelli has, in the space of six or seven months, made himself one of football’s most popular figures
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night before their biggest game of the season would be branded an immature fool. In football? Nahh, Mario became a cult hero, with everyone dying to hear the latest adventures of the bonkers Italian. ‘Why always me’, and all that. Balotelli apparently understands the values of his eccentric behaviour. Rumours suggest he employs a PR agent to help spread falsities, ensuring his name is never out of the column inches. Hear the story about him paying for 100 tramps to sleep in the Hilton over Christmas? Not true. The one about him dressed as Santa handing out
presents? Not true. The one about him visiting a women’s prison in Brescia because he was ‘curious’? Ah ok, that one is true. You get the picture though. Being a maverick definitely has its benefits in sport, it does wonders for your public image and, in football, that public image is all-important. Football isn’t the only sport where a maverick shines through. Take cricket. Two of the game’s most popular figures in recent years had personalities even bigger than their waistlines. You could watch Shane Warne and Freddie Flintoff battle it out at the crease for days, given the entertainment they provided. Warney’s sledging was legendary; take note of his on-field slanging matches with Daryll Cullinan of South Africa for evidence of that. He smoked, he drank and controversy followed him wherever he went and Australia loved him for it. As for Flintoff, this was a man so amusing even the Aussies took a liking to him. The rugby players at this year’s World Cup got hammered in the press for their drunken antics, yet Captain Flintoff almost drowned on a pedalo in Antigua and the whole situation was essentially laughed off. Top cricketers, top blokes, top sporting mavericks. Does being a maverick help your game? Well Muhammad Ali was known as the ‘Louisville Lip’;
q8imew.wordpress.com
The term ‘maverick’ is defined thus: A person pursuing rebellious, even potentially disruptive, policies or ideas. That description would hardly endear you to a politician, a coworker or especially a random stranger you’ve never met. So why, in sport, are the mavericks so popular? Let’s face the facts: everyone in sport loves someone with a bit of personality. Anything a little bit crazy, or just something to move away from the robotic nature of the so-called public ‘role models’. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t need our sports stars behaving like John Terry or Joey Barton, but those two aren’t mavericks, they’re just idiots. The ones the public take a shining to are those with the larger-thanlife personalities, the ones with the daft anecdotes, the ones who capture our imaginations. Take Mario Balotelli. His petulant behaviour during his first season with Manchester City didn’t exactly go down well. There was the arrogant backheel, the stroppy demeanour and the Rooney-esque red card, lashing out in frustration. Yet all that has changed. Balotelli has, in the space of six or seven months, made himself one of
football’s most popular figures. The winds of discontent have swept through the sport again, it’s reputation tarnished once more in the murky atmosphere of racism, fan violence and Carlos Tevez. Yet Balotelli has kept a smile on supporters’ faces. You can barely go a day without hearing a story about Mad Mario and his crazy antics. Any normal person letting off a load of fireworks in their bathroom a
Balotelli’s antics have provided plenty of entertainment this season
he did things differently and tore up the boxing world. Others, like Prince Naseem Hamed took their showboating a little too far, remember the flying carpet into the ring? Many critics felt his arrogant approach took control of his fighting ability and restricted the Prince’s achievements. Paul Gascoigne is another. Mad as a box of frogs, the England midfielder rose to the big occasion, his cheekychappy public image helped the whole country fall in love with
Gazza after Italia 90. Then, at Euro 96, following the infamous ‘dentist’s chair’ night out, he scored England’s greatest ever goal against Scotland. His lifestyle did eventually wear him down though, and his eccentric off the field behaviour essentially ruined his career. Even people like John McEnroe (Super Brat) or Brian Clough (Old Big ‘Ed) played on their rebellious nature to help them through tough times and, although they were never too popular, it certainly
helped their careers. The flamboyant personalities are all but gone from sport these days and you have to search long and hard to find a great entertainer. The role of the sportsman in the public eye is far too important now and it has sucked the creativity out of players’ personalities. Mavericks can turn a game, inspire the crowd or spur their teammates on to greater things, just be careful when it all goes wrong. Over to you, Mr Balotelli.
Great Britain’s canoeing performance director, John Anderson, will be hoping that the test event held at Lee Valley in July 2011 was not an accurate indication of what will happen in the Olympics, as TeamGB failed to reach the podium in all the canoe slalom events. The C-1 event is arguably the most open of all events in terms of likely medallists in London, as double-Olympicgold-medallist Michal Martikan of Slovakia, who won the test event, failed to reach the podium at the World Championships in Slovakia in September 2011. Even more surprisingly was that it was in the same event that Frenchman Denis Gargaud Chanut won his first ever world title. These shocking results demonstrate the breadth of talent across the top C-1 athletes and this will undoubtedly make for an exciting atmosphere in London. In the C-2, the double canoe event in which David Florence competes with Richard Hounslow, the Hochschorner brothers from Slovakia are a force to be reckoned with, and the British pair finished almost four seconds adrift of the Slovakians’ winning time
in September. In addition to the Olympic events themselves, the TeamGB Canoe Slalom Selection Event in April is when Britain’s forty best athletes will fiercely compete at Lee Valley for a chance to compete in London, with only one spot available per class. Canoe slalom is a test of agility, speed and power, and these two events that will make or break Olympic aspirations are therefore definitely worth following.
Obscure Olympics: the Canoe Slalom Laura Lambert Sports Reporter
A.E.photos.co.uk
There are few Summer Olympic sports that have close ties with Winter Olympic events, the only obvious one being hockey and ice hockey, but this sport is definitely one of them; it is canoe slalom, which was modelled on its alpine cousin. Having originally competed canoe slalom on flat water, athletes must now tackle an extremely steep, 300 metre long course of white water rapids. Of the Olympic sports involving boats, canoe slalom is often outshone by rowing and sailing in terms of publicity, which seems unfair considering the exhilarating nature of the sport and Team GB’s medal hopefuls for London 2012. On 29th July 2012, the newly built £31 million Lee Valley White Water Centre in Hertfordshire will begin its moment in the Olympic spotlight, and canoe slalom events will be held there for the following five days. Olympic Canoe Slalom consists of four events: men’s single canoe (C-1), men’s double canoe (C2), women’s single kayak and
men’s single kayak (both K-1). The difference between the canoe events and the kayak events are that the paddles used in canoeing are singlebladed, whereas in kayaking the slightly longer paddle is held horizontally with blades at either end. Put simply, the aim of each event is to reach the bottom of the course in the shortest time possible, whilst
avoiding touching a gate (2 second penalty) or missing a gate (50 second penalty). Britain has claimed five medals for canoe slalom since its official introduction into the Olympic programme in 1992. David Florence, silver medallist in the C-1 event in Beijing and World Cup winner in 2011, has stated that the Lee Valley course is one of
the hardest in the world, but has incredible facilities to enable TeamGB to prepare as much as possible for the competition in London 2012. However, any hope of true home advantage for British athletes was eradicated when the owners of the Lee Valley centre decided to open the course to the public from April 2012 onwards, meaning international athletes can also train there. The extremely challenging course consists of up to 25 gates, including downstream gates (green) and upstream gates (red) combined with obstacles such as rocks and big drops. Water travels downstream at speeds of up to 15 cubic metres per second, which explains why the sport is so challenging, particularly paddling against the current! In Beijing, complaints were made that the canoe slalom course was inconsistent, with two strong, intermittent surges of water veering athletes off course often through no fault of their own. The Lee Valley course is believed to have no such problems and it is hoped that the venue will provide an exciting yet fair contest this summer.
An Apology Elements of an article published on this page in Epigram #247 should have been attributed to Adam Hurrey of angleofpostandbar. blogspot.com. Epigram would like to apologise to Adam and our readers for this oversight.
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2012 Formula One season preview hat trick of consecutive championships? You’d have to back Vettel, even though I’ve gone with Button, but I think he’ll have a much tougher run than he did last time
Paddy von Behr Deputy Sport Editor With the arrival of the new Formula One season, Epigram interviewed F1 addict and encyclopaedia, Sam Warley, on the 2012 season:
Every year begins with each of the teams revealing their cars for the new season. Which is your best and worst looking? Best looking has to be McLaren, just by default because it doesn’t have an ugly step-nose. Worst is probably either Ferrari or the Sauber. They genuinely look like a “racing car” that I would have made out of Lego when I was about five. Terrible. When this is printed and distributed the Melbourne Grand Prix will have already occurred, so here’s a chance to put your predicting skills
Wikicommons: Chubbennaitor
So the new F1 season is just around the corner; which Grand Prix are you most and least looking forward to? I’m most looking forward to Australia because it’s the first, plus it’s always a fantastic Grand Prix. Canada I’m looking forward to. Last year I was jumping up and down at 10 o’clock and woke the whole house up so hopefully this year it will be just as exciting. I’m probably least looking forward to Spain; nothing good ever happens there, literally nothing.
to the test: Who will have qualified in pole position and who will have won the GP? Sebastian Vettel will have qualified on pole, which is kind of a safe bet there, really. For the race, I’m going to go for Jenson Button, coming from about third or fourth on the grid. I feel like your heart has swayed that prediction? Definitely using my heart rather than my head there, yeah. In reverse order, who are your top three in the 2012 Constructor’s Championship? I’ll stick my neck out and say Mercedes third, then Red Bull
second and McLaren to win. No Ferrari in the top three? Well, they haven’t been quick so far, so I’ll go with that And the same question, but for the Driver’s Championship? Fernando Alonso third. I’ve said McLaren will win the constructors so I’ve got to put one of them in! Vettel second, Button first. I just really back Button this year, he’s only going to get better and if McLaren are closer he can actually race the Red Bull. That pretty much answers my next set of head-to-head questions! Jenson Button or Lewis Hamilton? Button, yeah
Sebastian Vettel or Mark Webber? Obviously Vettel Fernando Alonso or Felipe Massa? Quite easily Alonso How about at Mercedes? Nico Rosberg or Michael Schumacher? Rosberg sounds very confident, Schumacher has sounded a bit more circumspect, but I think it’s all just chat. I will go for Schumacher because I think the closer to the front the car is the better Schumacher will get. So Vettel
you don’t back to complete his
How competitive will this season be? It should be closer; I expect a lot of the teams to have closed up. We could have four teams, possibly five if Lotus sort themselves out, competing for wins. It’s going to be one of the closest seasons in a long time Dark horse in the field? A team and a driver please I think Lotus, they’re looking quite quick and, as a result of that, I’ll say Romain Grosjean. I think he could out-perform his teammate Kimi Raikkonen this year. I also think Force India will be regular point scorers. It will be a bad season for… It’s tempting to say Virgin and HRT, no money and no testing often means it’s going to be a bad season! I’ll be a bit more exciting than that and say Massa. He’ll be replaced next year and he’s just going to be even worse than ever You’ve already mentioned Raikkonen, but his return after two years away from the sport completes the line-up of six former world champions on the grid. How will he do among such esteemed company? It depends on the car. If the car is quick enough, Raikkonen
Review: Queen’s Park Rangers - The Four Year Plan Michael Hindmarsh Online Editor ‘Put Cook on the left. Taarabt and Di Carmine can play one behind the other. We’re laughable when we play like this’. I know what you’re thinking: it’s a manager passionately addressing his footballers in the dressing room after a lacklustre firsthalf performance. In fact, this is QPR’s former sporting director and board member, Gianni Paladini, demanding tactical changes from one of his coaches during a Championship match. This is just one of a number of extraordinary conversations featured in BBC 2’s ‘QPR: The Four Year Plan’, a groundbreaking football documentary tracking Queens Park Rangers’ progress under the ownership of Formula One magnates, Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone, and one of the
world’s richest men, Lakshmi Mittal. When Briatore and his associates buy the club in 2007, it is on the verge of administration and a ten-point deduction. Understandably, there is a real sense of excitement around Loftus Road – Briatore outlines his
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These people, they pay ten pounds and they criticise… yet I invest millions!
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four-year plan for success, promising a Champions League place at the end of it, and negotiates a multi-million pound deal with Gulf Air. The club’s previous sponsors had been Cargiant and Sellotape. But the mood rapidly sours. Briatore begins to cut a Henry VIII-style figure, firing manager after manager
because they cannot deliver what he desires: instant success and flowing, passing football. The excuses become more and more bizarre: Paulo Sousa is dismissed for ‘divulging confidential information on the Internet’, whilst Jim Magilton is sacked for allegedly head butting one of the players. Unsurprisingly, QPR becomes nicknamed ‘The Circus’. One of the documentary’s most striking scenes takes place outside the stadium after a disastrous 1-0 defeat to relegation candidates, Scunthorpe United. Briatore, fed up with chants of ‘it’s all your fault that we’re going down’ and ‘we want our Rangers back’, threatens to sell the club and ‘put QPR back in League One’. ‘These people, they pay ten pounds and they criticise…yet I invest millions!’ is the Italian’s complaint. What isn’t mentioned in the film is the fact that
supporters were paying far more than ‘ten pounds’ to see the Super Hoops. Some match day tickets were priced at 40 pounds – an absurd amount for Championship football. Some Premiership clubs were charging less, a point frequently found on QPR’s numerous internet message boards. The film depicts the disillusionment of the fans with the club and its ‘project’, with attempts to remarket Queens Park Rangers as a ‘boutique’ club proving particularly irksome. Although the film touches upon a number of issues, such as meddling Chairmen and the creation of a brand against the will of the supporters, there is a clear underlying theme: distance. Distance between ordinary fans and the billionaire board members. Even at the end of the documentary when QPR achieve promotion, this does not disappear (the
popular new Chairman, Tony Fernandes, does not feature). It is an issue that has never been more relevant in the world of football, with SPL champions, Glasgow Rangers, and recent FA Cup winners, Portsmouth, on the brink of liquidation. Sadly, supporters are unable to do anything, the fate of the clubs they love resting in the hands of a few businessmen. It’s even a problem at Manchester United and Liverpool, who, without taking into account fans’ concerns, have accumulated enormous debt. In short, there seems to be a lack of transparency across football, contributing to the sense that the game has abandoned the working class. There is no doubt that huge investment from overseas has improved standards, but there have also been negative effects and it is these which are explored in ‘The Four Year Plan’.
2012 Drivers Championship Odds: Sebastian Vettel: 10/11 Lewis Hamilton: 9/2 Fernando Alonso: 13/2 Jenson Button: 7/1 Mark Webber: 14/1 Kimi Raikkonen: 20/1 Nico Rosberg: 25/1 Michael Schumacher: 33/1 Romain Grosjean: 66/1 Felipe Massa: 80/1 Nico Hulkenburg: 150/1 Paul Di Resta: 150/1 2012 Constructors Championship Odds: Red Bull: 10/11 McLaren: 13/8 Ferrari: 9/1 Mercedes: 12/1 Lotus Renault: 25/1 Force India: 66/1
can win, he’s quick and you don’t forget how to be quick. If they are where I think they are, he’ll get a few podiums but that’s probably about it. Finally, given his reputation as a bit of a reckless driver, how many races will Hamilton fail to finish? Probably about six Which explains why he’ll finish the season behind Button? Yeah exactly, that’s the problem; he’s trying to get his points from 14 races as opposed to 20!
QPR’s managerial merry-go-round Iain Dowie 05/2008 - 10/08 Gareth Ainsworth Caretaker 10/08 - 11/08 Paulo Sousa 10/08 - 04/09 Gareth Ainsworth Caretaker 04/09 - 06/09 Jim Magilton 06/09 - 12/09 Steve Gallen and Marc Bircham Caretakers 12/09 Paul Hart 12/09 - 01/10 Mick Hartford 01/10 - 03/10 Neil Warnock 03/10 - 01/2012
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A close encounter at the Memorial Ground results in Varsity football win Michael Hodge Sports Reporter Bristol UWE
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Varsity night at the Memorial Stadium has provided heartbreak for UBAFC in previous years. Last year Bristol let the trophy slip when a missed penalty taken by former captain Oz Osbaldeston saw the team eventually succumb to defeat in penalties following normal time. The penalty, which Oz admits ‘haunts him everyday’, was awarded whilst the game was tied at 3-3, with Bristol leading 3-1 at one stage. But that is enough about last year, let the past be the past. Leading up to Monday’s big showdown, UBAFC had already booked their place in the BUCS South West Cup Final, after victory over Gloucester Firsts. With this momentum UBAFC manager Alan Tyers and players alike looked for their first Varsity win in six years. As tradition dictates, the match followed the Bristol and UWE Women’s match, in which Bristol won comfortably 3-0 on penalties. One down, one to go. The match kicked off with the Bristol faithful exercising their vocal muscles with a six-minute rendition of a chant towards Jonny ‘Big John’ Howell. UWE supporters had another tactic,
Bristol ended six years of hurt with the 3-2 win over UWE in the Varsity Series
and throughout the first half latched onto Bristol left back of the evening, Jack Carter, pressuring the player’s every involvement. The match was dominated initially by UBAFC, with winger Sean Price crashing a ferocious volley against the bar. The effort was agonisingly close to putting the maroon reds in front. UBAFC set out of the blocks much quicker, and sustained possession in UWE’s half paid off when Captain Ben Precious got a foot on to a cross by James Chiang, diverting the ball past the UWE goalkeeper. This was an outstanding touch of class from the Bristol captain, who was looking to sign off his UBAFC career with a Varsity win. Needless to say, pure
elation from the stands greeted the goal. Sustained pressure including long throws from Bristol right back Dan Brown caused havoc in the UWE penalty area, and midfielder Harry Hatchwell was instrumental in the middle of the park. However, the first half did not go all to plan and UWE neatly slotted home an equalising goal. At 1-1 the UBAFC defence was kept busy, with goalkeeper Smyth pulling off a fantastic save to deny an excellent effort from the UWE front-line. Defensive duo Ben Cole and Alastair Gourlay readily scuppered any hope of a UWE lead. Ultimately, it was Bristol who applied the greater pressure and when a
shot bounced wildly off a UWE defender, striker Jack Day was at hand to volley superbly into the far corner. Scenes echoed Precious’ goal, as Day again celebrated with the away fans. Before half-time, UWE had the chance to level the scores as their left-winger cut inside and onto a bouncing through-ball, only to see his deft lob clear the other side of the post by a matter of inches. The half drew to a close with a blow of the referee’s whistle and both teams made their way back to their respective changing rooms. During half-time, the crowd were entertained by a performance from the UWE cheerleaders. Dressed in camouflage trousers and black
tank tops, their appearance sparked bemusement from the fans, especially the women of Bristol. Both teams started the second half with a much slower tempo than the first half began with, with few clear-cut chances falling to either side. Midway through the second half, UBAFC made their first substitution, with winger Pete Bray replacing Max Western, who had put in an excellent shift. Bray worked the channels well, and UBAFC claimed a third goal when Sean Price displayed some technical brilliance to guide a clinical volley into the far corner from the edge of the box. Two goals to the good, Bristol had one hand on the trophy. Substitutes Russell Kroll and Leo Sharer were introduced for Dan Brown and James Chiang to see out the lead and claim Varsity glory. However, the game wasn’t over yet, and UWE were to provide a tense finish. A ball over the top of the Bristol defence was met by a UWE winger, who lifted the ball gracefully over Smyth to make it 3-2 with ten minutes left on the clock. It couldn’t happen again, ‘it can’t surely’ said those in the stands. Yet the character of the Bristol team ensured it didn’t. Referee Rich Martin blew the final whistle, which led the Bristol fans to invade the pitch, jubilant in victory. Handshakes between the players were carried out in-
between a sea of Bristol fans mobbing the UBAFC players. Manager Alan Tyers looked on triumphantly smiling. After the fans were escorted from the pitch, trophies were presented to the successful Men’s and Women’s teams of Bristol, photographs were taken, and players greeted proud family members for personal reflection on a brilliant victory. The victorious Bristol boys had made their way to the changing rooms and the stewards shepherded the fans out of the ground. ’Bed time’ they mocked, ‘Bed’ time it was, as a packed free bus made its way to Bunker for a special Monday night UBAFC won’t forget in a long, long time. A very special Varsity performance. The trophy returns, and ‘the city is ours…’ Bristol (UBAFC) Starting XI: Toby Smyth, Jack Carter, Ben Cole, Alastair Gourlay, Dan Brown, Max Western, Ben Precious ©, James Chiang, Harry Hatchwell, Sean Price, Jack Day. Substitutes: Fraser McGuinness, Russell Kroll, Matthew Exton, Jayesh Mistry, Jonny Howell, Leo Sharer, Pete Bray. Manager: Alan Tyres Further photos of both the Men’s and Women’s matches are available on the Epigram website: http://www.epigram.org.uk/ category/sport/
‘To some, athletics is pointless, faith inspires me to do it’ Matthew Dathan Sports Reporter
John Brierly
Andrew Woods, a member of the High Performance squad, provides an alternative and thought provoking view on what motivates him to be an athlete. He recently finished fifth in the BUCS indoor 1500m race, he is the current Midlands and South West 800m indoor champion and will be competing in the Olympic stadium at BUCS outdoor championships in May. Having achieved so much whilst in his final year studying maths and biology as well as being President of the University’s Christian Union, what is the driving force behind his success? Andrew says it is his faith in God which keeps him going. ‘I can see from the surface of it, athletics is pointless. You run round in circles. The reason I do it is because of my faith.
Having a reason is crucial when things get hard or things don’t work out. This has happened on many races after which I felt like giving up. And for me my faith is the reason I keep going.’ So whilst most successful athletes are driven by competitiveness, defined by their resolve to do anything to win, for Andrew competitiveness is all about comparison and he doesn’t find pleasure in beating other people for the sake of it. Of course he runs to win; it is a race after all. But winning is not the reason why he runs. ‘When we compare how we are doing against others we set ourselves up to fail as it’s dependent on others. Instead, I do what we all try to do, and that’s give it my best shot. But sometimes that means I don’t win. But that does not mean I’ve failed, because I try not to make it what defines me’ What does define Andrew is Christianity and it is one particular bible verse that
influences his running most of all: ‘One of my favourite bible verses is ‘Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.’ My prize is that I have
a friendship with God. From knowing that my relationship depends on Jesus, who claimed to be God himself, means it doesn’t matter if I lose, gain weight and don’t feel good about myself. It’s because I discovered that God’s opinion
matters more than others. His opinion, because I have faith in Jesus, is that I’m righteous. Not because I try and do good but because he has given it to me as a gift. So my running is my worship to God. What I mean by worship is I give my time and energy to something which is deserving of it. And because I’ve decided that God is worth it I give it to him.’ Running a race, win or lose, is therefore not an end in itself for Andrew, as running has a deeper reward to him than simply winning the race. By no means, however, does this mean he is not striving to win in the Olympic Stadium in May. He is currently training very hard to beat his personal best of 1.52 minutes for 800m and 3.53 minutes for 1500m and if he can beat this time in such a famous venue, it will feel like winning an Olympic gold for Andrew. Finally, I asked Andrew what he would say to encourage someone new to running:
‘I started running when I was 13 and over the years I’ve learnt running can be a humbling experience and you can learn so much from each run. Something I would encourage anyone to do is a ‘thank you run’. Go for a run and list what you’re thankful for, it is a great exercise and you feel so great afterwards. Running will build you up and knock you down but that produces endurance in character. I love running because is it’s not just a physical thing but engages your mind as well.’ A competition has been launched giving students the chance to become a commentator for the day at the BUCS Athletics Championships, which take place at the Olympic Stadium. This is being run by Universities Week 2012. To enter, visit their website: www.universitiesweek.org.uk
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Students plan to swim the 21 miles of the English Channel for local charity and Subway, so it’s not all brainfreeze and seaweed.
David Stone Sport Editor
How far and what stroke? The Channel is 21 miles as the crow flies, but we’ll end up zig-zagging over 30 miles against the tides. We’re training for front crawl all the way.
In September two Bristol students, Rachel Duncan and Alex Joss, will attempt a relay swim across the English Channel. In a publicity and fundraising effort last Saturday, Bristol students help raise over £5,500. Epigram Sport caught up with for a quick interview.
Does this mean you cover yourself in goose fat? About 70% of people (and all drunk people) will immediately ask you this question if they hear you’re attempting the Channel. Luckily for us and the goose, we use Vaseline. And it’s mainly for the chafing anyway. Sexy stuff.
months now. Who are you swimming for? An entirely voluntary charity called ‘Bosom Buddies’ that supports breast cancer patients at the BRI. It’s chaired and ran by ex-patients, who offer counselling and guidance through traumatic times and also fundraise for equipment for use in the Oncology Unit. In the past they’ve bought machines that diagnose cancerous cells in minutes instead of weeks, reducing the risk of unnecessary surgery and prolonged anxiety for patients. The money we hope to raise will start a foundation, to help care for patients in the future. How much are you trying to raise?
£16,000. We bear all the costs of the swim, so every penny raised goes to charity. It’s not cheap due to pilot fees, insurance, medicals, training etc., so to a certain extent the target reflects that aspect of our commitment. What happened on Saturday the 10th March with this pool relay? A team of 21 students and ex-patients swam a Channellength relay (21 miles) in the Union pool, fundraising and generating publicity for the attempt. Its 64 lengths to a mile, they managed to complete it in a little over 15 hours. There were freshers jumping in after 45-year-old cancer survivors: it was great to be a part of that. The team had a target of £2000,
which they completely smashed, raising well over £5,500. We’re completely indebted to them and anyone that sponsored them.
What actually happens on the day of the Swim? We’ve got a week’s window in early September, you can plan for the tides, but swimmers spend days in Dover waiting for the right conditions. We’ll start in the dark, sometime after midnight,
All in all, it’s the classic case of prepare for the worst, hope for the best and try not to swallow anything too unpleasant! You can follow and support the team’s attempt by visiting their website, facebook and twitter pages. See 21miles.org for more information.
What’s your training routine like? As non-swimmers, we comprehensively underestimated the scale of the challenge at first. It’s been a steep learning curve, with a lot of work to do over the next six months. Long stints in the pool are important, but cold, outdoor swimming is the key. There’s a limited open water season, so we’ll be jumping back into single figure temperatures off the Devonshire coast again soon. Apart from the actual swimming, there’s body fatenhancing trips to YoYo Burger
Verity Kay
When did you decide to do it? We were pipe-dreaming after one too many hours cooped up in the library, the kind of stuff you only come up with during exam season. That was in first year. Somehow it stuck; we began planning our attempt at the start of third year and have been training for over 18
Verity Kay
Why are you attempting to swim the Channel? We wanted to raise funds for a local charity whilst doing something beyond our comfort zone. Neither of us were swimmers before, so this seemed to fit the bill.
What are you most scared of? Jellyfish or getting seasick. And sewage.
and hope to make France in less than 20 hours. It’s no glamorous game to play. There’s no wetsuits, 15 degree water, ferries and freighters that won’t and can’t stop, a 30ft fishing trawler to guide us and here’s the rub: in the unlikely event of success, the final destination is the wonderful French industrial town of Calais!
Bristol Shooting Club on target in BUCS Nationals 2012 Lucy de Greef Sports Reporter
not yet been published; however, it can be reported that there were some especially strong performances. First year Laura Macfarlane built upon her reputation from the Christmas Cup by topping the Bristol Ladies scoreboard, and also ranking highly in comparison to the other competitors from the morning slot. She was hotly followed by Gabrielle Ind, whose consistent aim contributed nicely to her team’s overall score. This year’s nationals also witnessed the returning talents of ex-Captain Alex Allen who led the Bristol men’s individual scoring; only slightly improving on Macfarlane’s score. Rising talent Ed Jarvis also built on his performance from the Christmas Cup, a team member whose improvements have created promising expectations for future competitions. After a challenging morning’s shooting, the team
travelled to Harper Adams University College in the evening for their annual postshooting party, which featured Radio 1’s Scott Mills this year. A special mention has to go to Jed Peacock who succeeded in staying at Harper Adams that evening, and was found the following morning wandering around the College’s Dairy Unit. A quick cultural excursion to Ironbridge concluded the weekend on the Sunday, where Shooting Club dressing gowns were shown off to unsuspecting members of the public. Overall, a good weekend was had by all, despite some difficult shooting conditions and unfamiliar targets. Bristol’s Shooting Club is decisively increasing its reputation and involvement in National competitions, and with increasing membership, is looking forward to the next opportunity to turn some more clays into powder.
Lucy de Greef
Four teams from the University of Bristol Clay Shooting Club travelled up to the West Midlands Shooting Ground for the weekend in anticipation of BUCS Nationals 2012. Following on from their solid performance in December at the Christmas Cup in Monmouth, the Club were keen to build on previous successes; with a combination of previous committee members and new shooters contributing to two female and two men’s squads, expectations of a successful weekend were high. After an early morning start and quick tour through the industrial estates of Telford, the teams set off in order to reach the Shooting Ground and get ready for the morning’s shooting. With guns unpacked and pockets filled with cartridges, each squad
made their way to an allocated stand and shot in both woodland and open ground conditions, unaware of how the other Bristol teams were progressing and also unaware of the incoming heavy rain shower due half way through the morning. The competition consisted of a one hundred birds over fourteen stands, whereby each team member was tasked to shoot clays of varying difficulties throughout the locations. These ranged from basic clays with which all team members had perfected at the beginning of their shooting careers to more challenging and higher birds, which required more precise judgment and consideration. Despite heavy rain, lacking waterproofs and decreased visibility at times during the morning spirits remained high. Official results, for both individuals and teams , have
Epigram
19.03.2012
Sport
Editor: David Stone
Deputy Editor: Paddy von Behr
sport@epigram.org.uk
deputysport@epigram.org.uk
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Bristol Boxing bash both Bath and UWE in Varsity Fight Night David Stone Sport Editor
Chris Jacobs Online
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Chris Jacobs Online
The University of Bristol Boxing Club punched Bath and UWE out the ring in the Varsity ‘Fight Night’ which took place last Friday. In front of a sold out Anson Rooms egged on by a loud and large home crowd, Bristol continuously racked up the points victories to claim a solid victory in the Varsity Series. Benjamin Amanna, Boxing Club Captain and organiser of the Varsity Fight Night, was on hand to through the night’s proceedings. Brisol fought in five fights throughout the night, with each one lasting for three rounds, consisting of two minutes a round. In the fight descriptions below, the Bristol boxers are named first, their opponent and who they’re representing next, then finally their weight class. Kate Teiman Vs Shannon Gee (British army) 64kg ‘This was Kate’s first fight! Shannon was having her 6th fight and yet only won by 2 points, so it’s an amazing outcome for her.’ Liam O’Shea v Ryan Lewis (UWE). 67 kg. ‘We won by 2 points, this was again only Liam’s first fight, and Ryan’s second so another great result’ Patrick Heaton-Armstrong v Kieran Donovan (Bath) 73 kg. ‘Won by 3 points. This was both their first fight so a tough bout for them both. We came through as the victors again’
Inside Sport
Luke Monafred v Dyon Whitley (Bath) 69kg. ‘Good win by 2 points. Both on their first fight again’ Josh Simmonds v Khaled Sakshuki (UWE). ‘The main event of the night, both these guys were on their second fight. Josh had a great start and we won by first round stoppage. Their coach through in the towel’ Speaking after the event, Ben said ‘It’s an amazing outcome for the club. We had 4 out of 4 wins for the Varsity bouts, making us officially the best club. Considering that Uob is one of the only boxing clubs in the UK who has a student run club, I coach half the classes, we were always the underdogs. I got a little bit of stick from the UWE coach saying how I couldn’t coach and that we need to have a coach employed, but we proved him wrong! The fitness of our boxers became very evident toward the second and third rounds, this is because we have a very intense fitness class which I coach on a Sunday evening which all the boxers attended in the two months running up to the fight. They all hated them at the time as I made it compulsory, but tonight it’s certainly paid off. Overall, for me it was a brilliant way to end my three years of running the club’ Bristol will hope that the event next year proves to be equally as entertaining and successful. More photos of the event are avaliable on the Fight Night album on facebook.com/ chris.jacobs.online.
Two Bristol students, Rachel Duncan and Alex Joss, are going to attempt a relay swim across the English Channel in September. They’re doing it to raise money for a local Bristol breast cancer charity ‘Bosom Buddies’. We interview the pair to discuss all things Vaseline, sewage and tide related. The Bristol Shooting Club participated in the BUCS Nationals 2012 and were hoping for a strong performance.
Page 35 A close encounter at the Memorial Ground saw Bristol Men’s Football Club beat UWE 3-2 in a thoroughly enteraining Varsity match. The Women’s team also won on penalties after a 1-1 draw. Andrew Woods, an athlete and member of the High Performance Squad provides a thought provoking and alternative view on the mentality behind running.
Page 34 With the Formula 1 season starting this weekend, we provide a preview in the form of an interview with a self-confessed motorsports addict. QPR: The Four Year Plan was recently aired on BBC Two, delivering a behind-thescenes look at the running of a football club. We review this thoroughly intriging film.
Page 33
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