University of Bristol Independent Student Newspaper
www.epigram.org.uk
Monday 19th October 2015
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Campaigners welcome the scheme, but claim the University must go further
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Bristol STAR demands universities stop charging asylum seekers international fees Emily Faint and Ben Parr Online News Editor and Investigations Editor
investigates Prevent: what does it mean for us?
Page 7
Arts
An interview with the Australian poet
Epigram/ Becki Murray
Group and two speakers, Mohammad, an Egyptian currently seeking asylum, and Issa, a Syrian who now has refugee status. Bristol Student Action For Refugees (STAR), a refugee charity, have teamed up with Fixers to create a film featuring the stories of several young people who have been forced to flee their homes in countries such as Syria, Sudan and Pakistan, but still harbour aspirations to attend university. The film was screened at the campaign’s launch, which took place at the University of Bristol. With no access to financial support due to their status as asylum seekers, the cost of international student fees far exceeds the means of the incoming majority. According to the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA), the fees charged to ‘overseas’ students ‘can range from £3,500 to about £18,000 per year depending on the institution, the level of course and the type of course.’ continued on page 3
Epigram/ Marissa Mir
The University of Bristol is introducing five fully funded scholarships for Syrian refugees. However, campaigners are putting pressure on the university to go further in their support for asylum seekers. The new initiative is part of their commitment to working with the city and Bristol SU to welcome refugees into the community. The university has also emphasised its support for academics who are caught up in the conflict by providing space and sanctuary to those who need it. ‘The University of Bristol is committed to working with the city, our Students’ Union and other partners to welcome refugees into our community,’ Dr. Maggie Leggett, Interim Director of Communications and Marketing told
Epigram. ‘Bristol is a City of Sanctuary and we look forward to the University playing its part.’ Further pressure has been put on the universities by campaigner and third year medical student, Anna Lewis, and the charity, Fixers. They are campaigning to change the policy of UK universities, which charges asylum seekers international student fees to enrol in university, unless they have acquired full refugee status. This process can take many years. ‘The problem is asylum seekers are classified as international students, which means they have to pay for international fees,’ Lewis told Epigram. ‘Each university has the discretion to classify individuals as home students or international students. ‘[Some] universities have agreed to...classify all asylum seekers as home students and set up appropriate bursaries and grants,’ she claimed. The campaign was launched on October 7th with an event involving the Migration Research
Becky Morton
eming
The University of Bristol confirm they are introducing a scholarship scheme for refugees
Mick Fl
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Features Flickr:
Asylum seekers are welcome at the University of Bristol
Issue 291
Les Murray, by Becki Murray (no relation) Page 36
Music Caitlin Butler realises her
Fire at 33 Colston Street
fourteen-year interviewing
Flickr: Ben Houdijk
old dream by Scouting for Girls Page 44
Style
Introducing new Style James Higgins...
@double_denim_addiction
Epigram/ Ciara Lally
On Monday 12th October a devastating fire broke out at 33 Colston Street, home to over 120 University of Bristol students. The University has been supporting students impacted. For the full story and up to date details, go to our website: www.epigram.org.uk
columnist
Epigram
19.10.2015
News Editorial
2 Editor: Sarah Newey
Deputy Editor Adam Becket
Deputy Editor: Becki Murray
editor@epigram.org.uk
abecket@epigram.org.uk
becki.murray@epigram.org.uk
A note from the editor
Inside Epigram Comment 13 It’s unfair for arts students Hidden course costs, few contact hours and lack of books; Lucy Thompson suggests arts students are treated poorly
Flickr: UoB
Film and TV 41 British TV vs US TV Film and TV take a look at which side of the pond produces better quality television
Travel 45 Journey from hell
Will Sansom relives his nightmarish bus journey through South America
increasingly advanced, and clicks are no longer what advertisers are looking for, or what media outlets are basing their success upon. Instead, dwell time and unique users are becoming more important, and these can only be gained and maintained via high quality journalism. But perhaps more surprisingly, Steve also thought there would always be a place for print journalism. Okay, so this week has demonstrated to our team the potential limitations to print, but I think that people will always want something to hold, and print does offer a unique way to present different stories. Private Eye, for example, has currently got their highest print circulation since the 1980s. Print is not dead, but changing. It is an exciting time to be involved in journalism, as the potential is endless. One event coming up in which we hope to explore new ways of presenting stories, especially online, is the Vice Chancellor Question Time on October 27th. I will actually be chairing the event, which, I will admit, is a little nerve-racking. But it’s also very exciting, and a fantastic opportunity to ask the questions we, as a student body, feel have not been addressed. As such it is an important aspect of the Strategy Consultation the University is launching this month. If you have any questions you want to ask, email me at editor@epigram.org.uk. Although there will be a chance to ask questions from the floor during the evening, the majority will be pre-submitted. So, if you have a burning issue you think needs to be addressed, email me sooner rather than later!
The fire at 33 Colston Street is probably the biggest story of the week, yet we have chosen not to cover it extensively in the paper, beyond the front page image. Some stories are better online, and this week has been a clear demonstration of this. Media is changing; not only in the way we consume it, but also in how constant we expect it to be. Twitter, in particular, allows us to keep updated about what is going on in the world around us, and in many ways a fortnightly newspaper cannot keep up with this constant cycle. The fire broke out on Monday 12th October, and over 120 University of Bristol students have been impacted. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for those students; not only have they lost all of their personal possessions, but just three weeks into starting University they have got to start all over again, with different people, in different halls. But the situation is fluid and rapidly changing. We chose not to put an article about the fire in the paper, as we were concerned that the story would be outdated by the time the print edition of Epigram hit the stands. During Epigram training week, we had several conversations about the future of print journalism. In fact, one of our guest speakers has recently written a lot on the subject. Steve Bird has worked at the Financial Times for 20 years, and has therefore seen, and been impacted by, the ‘digital revolution’ which has dramatically changed the face of journalism. Today, over 90 per cent of Brits have access to the internet, and by 2020 80 per cent of the global population is expected to own a smartphone. Clearly, this has a huge impact on our daily lives, particularly how we interact with news, and it was interesting to get Steve’s thoughts on the topic. He stressed that ‘churnalism’ and click bait articles have no real future. Measuring online engagement is becoming
Sarah Newey
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Editorial team Will Sansom
Editor Sarah Newey editor@epigram.org.uk Deputy Editors Adam Becket abecket@epigram.org.uk
Online Food Editors Becky Scott and Issy Montgomery
Deputy Features Editor Becky Morton bmorton.epigram@gmail.com
Travel Editor Camilla Gash cgash.epigram@gmail.com
Features Online Editor Richard Assheton rassheton.epigram@gmail.com
Deputy Travel Editor Ella Ennos-Dann
Becki Murray becki.murray@epigram.org.uk Comment Editor
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Online Editor Ciara Lally ciara.lally@epigram.org.uk
eennosdann.epigram@gmail.com
jkellylinden.epigram@gmail.com
Travel Online Editor Annabel Lindsay alindsay.epigram@gmail.com
Deputy Comment Editor Stefan Rollnick srollnick.epigram@gmail.com
Style Editor Hattie Bottom hattie@epigram.org.uk
Jordan Kelly-Linden
Sport
Online
Features Editor Alex Green agreen.epigram@gmail.com
Deputy Online Editors Deputy Style Editor Comment Online Editor Hannah Price Plum Ayloff Liam Marchant hannah.price@epigram.org.uk lmarchant.epigram@gmail.com payloff.epigram@gmail.com
Are managers too pressured?
Russell Evans and Nicky Withers debate whether managers in sport are put under too much pressure
Sam Mason-Jones smasonjones.epigram@gmail.com
Film & TV Editor Ella Kemp ekemp.epigram@gmail.com Deputy Film & TV Editor Georgia O’Brien gobrien.epigram@gmail.com Film & TV Online Editor Kate Wyver kwyver.epigram@gmail.com Sport Editor Marcus Price mprice.epigram@gmail.com Deputy Sport Editor James O’Hara johara2.epigram@gmail.com
Online Editor Editor Editor Style Online Editor ScienceSport Editor Science & Comment Technology Editor Ed Henderson-Howat Malik Ouzia Tom Flynn Phoebe Jordan Alfie Smith Patrick Baker Nick Cork mouzia.epigram@gmail.com e.hendersonhowat@epigram.org.uk asmith.epigram@gmail.com editor@epigram.org.uk styleonline@epigram.org.uk comment@epigram.org.uk science@epigram.org.uk
Flickr: Geoffrey Hammersley
Deputy Editors Managing Director Jon Bauckham Rebecca Butler jon@epigram.org.uk rebecca.butler@epigram.org.uk Hannah Stubbs hannah@epigram.org.uk Director of Operations Ryan Furniss e2 Editor r.furniss@epigram.org.uk Matthew McCrory e2@epigram.org.uk News Editor
Editors Letters Editor What’s On Editor Deputy Puzzles Science Editor Deputy Science & Tech Suzie Brown Ben Duncan-Duggal Editor Emma Corfield Emma Sackville Andrea Philippou bduncanduggal.epigram@gmail.com Matt Davis letters@epigram.org.uk deputyscience@epigram.org mdavis.epigram@gmail.com Webmaster Culture Editor Arts Editor Sport Editor Mihai-Alexandru Cristache Science & Calum Tech Online Sherwood Mattie Brignal Tom Burrows mbrignal.epigram@gmail.com Amy Finch culture@epigram.org.uk sport@epigram.org.uk Chief Proofreaders Barlow Deputy Culture Editor Deputy Arts Editor Deputy Guy Sport Editor Letters Editor Lucy Stewart Ed Grimble Sophie Hunter Zoe Hutton David Stone Sorcha Bradley News Editor egrimble.epigram@gmail.com shunter.epigram@gmail.com deputyculture@epigram.org.uk sm.bradley.epigram@gmail.com deputysport@epigram.org.uk Sub-editors Alice Young Margot Tudor Music Editor Arts Online Editor Living Editor news@epigram.org.uk PuzzlesSaskia Editor Hume Deputy News Editor Amy Stewart Rashina Gajjar Maria Murariu Nathan Comer Abbie Scott Lily Buckmaster Deputy News Editors Esme Webb astewart.epigram@gmail.com rgajjar@epigram.org.uk music@epigram.org.uk ascott.epigram@gmail.com Kate Dickinson Abigail Van-West Head Sub Editor Sophie Milner Deputy Music Editor Deputy Living EditorMusic Editor avanwest@epigram.org.uk Emma Corfield Dalia Abuyasian Ella Wills Gunseli Yalcinkaya Maya Colwell Pippa Shawley Jenny Awford Sub Editors gyalcinkaya@epigram.org.uk Business Team deputymusic@epigram.org.uk News Online Editors jawford@epigram.org.uk Harriet Layhe, Living Online Editor Hannah Lewis George Clarke Vlad Djuric Will Soer FIlm & TV Editor Deputy Music Editors Kate Moreton, Rosemary Wagg Features Editor gclarke.epigram@gmail.com Johnny Battle Caitlin Butler wilso.epigram@gmail.com Will Ellis Tristan Martin Mike Christensen Illustrator cbutler.epigram@gmail.com filmandtv@epigram.org.uk Emily Faint Sophie Van Berchem features@epigram.org.uk Sophie Sladen Food Editor Katie Llewellyn efaint.epigram@gmail.com Deputy Film & TVAlex Editor Schulte Izzie Fernandes Alice Best Deputy Features Editor Web Designer Rachel Prince Anthony Adeane aschulte.epigram@gmail.com Investigations Andrew WhiteEditor Olivia Mason Rob Mackenzie Deputy Food Editor deputyfilmandtv@epigram.org.uk Ben Parr Ellie Sherrard deputyfeatures@epigram.org.uk Music Online Editor Tom Horton bparr.epigram@gmail.com Alfie Smith
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News
Epigram
19.10.2015
3
@epigramnews Editor: Sorcha Bradley
Deputy Editors: Abbie Scott; Dalia Abu-Yassien
Online Editors: Emily Faint; George Clarke
sm.bradley@epigram.org.uk
ascott@epigram.org.uk
efaint@epigram.org.uk; gclarke@epigram.org.uk
STAR: more needs to be done to ensure university access university, commented. ‘We have agreed funding for five scholarships, and are currently working through the details. The scholarship scheme is open to all refugees irrespective of their country of origin.’
‘I think as far as our response to the refugee crisis goes, it is completely insufficient of our capabilities as a country’
Student campaigner Anna Lewis
Anna Lewis
‘We will be participating in a meeting led by Bristol City Council in mid-November to discuss what needs to be put in place to support refugees settling in Bristol. We will be
taking advice at this meeting about our planned scholarships, as well as discussing how else the University can be involved. As our plans develop we will continue to liaise with the Students’ Union.’ Despite the progress being made in Bristol, Anna Lewis believes that a great deal more needs to be done across the UK. She told Epigram: ‘Our national policy is towards people seeking asylum. There are very, very harsh conditions and the government has the right to detain people at any stage of their process, which I think is massively evil.’ ‘I think as far as our response to the refugee crisis goes, it is completely insufficient of our capabilities as a country. 20,000 people over five years is not very much.’ Anna concluded: ‘I think it’s obviously good that we do something, but I think there is room for much, much more.’
Epigram/Sorcha Bradley
continued from front page ‘Asylum seekers have no right to work, and are expected to live off £36 a week which is given by the government. That’s £5 a day. So asking them to pay such high fees makes it pretty much unattainable for them,’ Lewis said. Ms Lewis did praise the university for taking the steps to offer the scholarships, but claims that far more needs to be done. She also told Epigram that she believes the Vice Chancellor will positively engage with students and campaigners on these issues. ‘The scholarship scheme for refugees is expected to admit students in the 2016/17 academic year,’ Lynn Robinson, Deputy Registrar at the
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Emily Faint and Ben Parr Online News Editor and Investigations Editor
Dismantled Dismaland donated to refugee camp George Clarke Online Editor
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Imogen McIntosh
A convoy of volunteers from Bristol are taking over 300 aid boxes to a refugee camp in France, including the remnants from Banksy’s Dismaland. The trip that set off on Friday 9th October is primarily concerned with providing humanitarian aid to the refugees who are in desperate need.
Imogen McIntosh
Timber from Dismaland is being sent to help build shelters in refugee camps. being sent to the “jungle” refugee camp near Calais to build shelters.’ However, the artist changed his mind and donated the materials to the Aid Box Convoy after one of his team visited the other less heard of camps in France. The smaller camps are thought to suffer even worse conditions than the ‘jungle’ camp in Calais. The materials used to construct Dismaland will be used to build communal shelters and basic cooking stations for the refugees. The artist is also sending a team
of carpenters and builders to help build the structures at the camps. ‘It’s not going to end here. The problem is not going to go away quickly. We’ve raised more than £5,000 and we will be spending that on future trips,’ added Ms McIntosh. The trip is being coordinated by an online organisation called People to People Solidarity and in partnership with volunteers on the ground associated with Salam Aid. Donations can be made directly through the group’s Just Giving page.
Living conditions for refugees
Imogen McIntosh
Eight vehicles and 20 volunteers took part in the convoy, which is heading to one of the lesser known camps in Northern France and is home to more than 1,000 refugees, with numbers growing by the day. The organisation is not able to name the camp for fear of it becoming inundated with more refugees. The group of volunteers’ cofounder, Imogen McIntosh, said: that ‘once Arcadia said they would help it took off really.’ Arcadia, most famous for their 50,000 capacity fire-breathing Spider stage, donated a 26 tonne lorry with driver and fuel. Banksy, the artist behind the Dismaland Bemusement park in Weston-super-Mare, uploaded a post entitled ‘Coming soon… Dismaland Calais’ to his website on the 27th September. He went on to say that: ‘The timber and fixtures from Dismaland are
Flickr / Ben K Adams
The materials used to construct Dismaland will be used to build communal shelters and basic cooking stations for the refugees
Epigram 19.10.2015
4
TreeSong brings the Downs to life was a continual movement of sound, mirroring the movement of the tree. The result was not always entirely pleasant but intriguing nonetheless. A small wooden shed, acting as a control studio, housed sound artists Jony Easterby and Matthew Olden, creating a live mix of the sound. Jony explained to us that they never get tired of the textures. ‘Each day is different; the recording is never the same twice,’ he said. Sunday was a particularly interesting day as there was a stronger breeze causing a more noticeable reaction. ‘Many people pointed to this as their favourite tree on the Downs,’ Jony stated when asked why this particular tree was chosen for their installation.
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relationship with nature and combining technology with ecology, hence his involvement in this project. His excitement about the results was contagious, as was his enthusiasm to be working the The Bristol Ensemble, the city’s only professional orchestra. The orchestra holds a central position in South West music, often performing at major venues across the region.
Easterby is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, sculptor and producer
‘Each day is different; the recording is never the same twice.’
Matthew Olden is a Bristol-based composer and programmer, while Easterby is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, sculptor and producer. Easterby is particularly interested in examining our
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Abbie Scott
As unsuspecting lacrosse players tried to practice this weekend on the Durdham Downs, they were interrupted by an eerie call, apparently emanating from a nearby beech tree. On closer inspection, the tree was found to have over 200 strings and 32 piezos attached to its branches and a wooden collar around the trunk. Unsurprisingly, it was causing quite a stir amongst the dog walkers and other sports teams. The TreeSong installation, a Bristol Ensemble Production, was set up as part of Bristol’s year as European Green Capital, to bring the sound and movement of the 100-year-old tree to life. From Thursday 1st October to Sunday 4th October, passers-by could hear the vibrations caused by the wind blowing through the tree, amplified by the strings hanging from the branches. Forty violin, cello and viola bows were hung and were reacting to the movement of the branches. Depending on the strength of the wind and the way it affected the swaying of the tree, the sound that was produced varied from a quiet whine to a screech that reached far across the Downs. Sixteen small bird boxes with speakers and recordings of British birds were also triggered by this. The tree controlled the pitch, timbre and resonance of the strings so that there
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Abbie Scott Deputy News Editor
The 100-year old beech tree chosen as part of the TreeSong Installation
The audio data recorded from the TreeSong will be used by Bristol composer William Goodchild for a composition which will be premiered at St. George’s, Bristol, on Sunday 29th November. Goodchild is a Bristol-based composer, orchestrator and conductor specialising in wildlife documentary. His work has been featured in BBC programmes, National Geographic International and Animal Planet.
Bristol rallies for junior doctor protest Emily Faint Online News Editor Organisers of the #SaveOurNHS protest march in Bristol were ‘absolutely astounded’ at the overwhelming participation from Bristol students and residents alike on Saturday October 10th. Dr. Charlotte Seneschall, one of the organisers of the event, told Epigram: ‘I think it goes without saying that we are really, really gratified by theturnout, particularly from the University.’ The march was organised in response to the recent controversy surrounding the new proposed junior doctors contract by health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, which seeks to ‘increase [...] plain time working for doctors’ and, according to those protesting, will force them to work for longer with less pay. ‘I am here today because I’m very concerned about the direction in which Jeremy Hunt is taking the NHS,’ Liam Marchant, a student from the University of Bristol told Epigram. ‘I am very worried that we are moving towards a US private healthcare system, as opposed to one based on universal access.’
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and by taking away the safeguards, that puts patients at risk.’
‘I want us to have regular monitoring to make sure that we’re not tired and that we don’t make mistakes for patients.’ The organisers of the march estimated a turnout of approximately 1,500 people, however the crowd continued to grow as passersby joined the protest, with nearby vehicles sounding their horns in support. A significant demographic of participants was composed of University of Bristol students. ‘‘The reason the students have to play such a big part in this is because doctors don’t want to strike,’ James Steeds said.
Students protest outside Bristol cathedral
‘I’m very concerned about the direction in which Jeremy Hunt is taking the NHS’
Protesters brandish slogans
Epigram / Adam Becket
However, the risk to patient safety was claimed to be the greatest impetus of the protest, with participants brandishing a string of balloons with the names of individual doctors written on them. ‘Those are all names of doctors who can’t make it here today because they are too busy saving lives,’ James Steeds, a medical student from the University of Bristol, told Epigram. ‘Taking away the safeguards on our hours is the main thing for me,’ Chris Grieco, another medical student from the University of Bristol, told Epigram. ‘Doctors will work more hours than they are contracted to, just out of their nature,
‘The main thing for doctors is keeping their patients safe, and that’s why the medical school has encouraged us as students to come and protest on behalf of the doctors who can’t be here today.’ One of the participants included Intensive Care Clinical Fellow at Southmead Hospital, Dr. Hannah Dahwa. ‘In the last two weeks, I had two days off and worked nearly 90 hours,’ she commented. ‘And the new contract will mean that the government is removing the safeguards on our safe working, and we will be working possibly even more hours, risking patient safety.’ ‘I’m worried for medical students starting in hospitals. I want us to have regular monitoring to make sure that we’re not tired and that we don’t make mistakes for patients.’ The city of Bristol now joins London and Manchester in the list of major cities protesting the new proposed junior doctors contract.
Epigram 19.10.2015
5
Bike Scheme Rolls Out James Foster News Reporter Winners of this year’s SU Make A Change Award have seen their proposal turned into a reality this term, with the launch of the Balloon Bikes program. The principle of the scheme is to provide students with 50 bicycles for rent, complete with lights, locks and helmets for £50, for the academic year. Initially it will run as a trial, with the potential for expansion in future years. The scheme launched on Monday 28th September, with most of the rental bicycles now sold out.
many feel excited to see the university let the students play a role in deciding how and where these funds are allocated. The response which the project has generated is also in part due to how well Balloon Bikes compliments Bristol’s cycling heritage. Awarded the title of the UK’s first Cycling City in 2008, the local council has since invested around £50 million in cycling infrastructure, flooding the city with extensive cycle lanes and over 8,000 cycle parking spaces. The scheme builds on the Student Union’s past effort to engage with cycling in the city through cycling surveys, and should prove to be popular with environmentally conscious students. To any students hoping to rent out the last few bikes, go to the following link: https://www.bristolsu.org.uk/activities/ getgreen/balloon-bikes-faqs/
The principle of the scheme is to provide students with 50 bicycles for rent, complete with lights, locks and helmets for £50
Max Mhitaria
This initiative marks the third year the Make A Change award has been running, a competition where students propose schemes which would benefit other Bristol students. The winners are granted a pot of £20,000 of alumni donations to carry out their suggestion. Previous winners include efforts to increase accessibility in sport through UBU Active and the Fit & Fab program, and this year’s winner looks set to be similarly effective. Balloon Bikes fought off competition from other innovative ideas such as a student ‘bio-bus’ and napping pods in the Arts & Social Sciences Library. However, it won the vote with a 45 per cent majority in the final vote held last February. Second year student Max was an early adopter of the scheme. ‘I live quite far away from the university campus and this seemed a cheap and easy way to get around,’ he explained. ‘I couldn’t see any real downside to it.’ Bristol graduates donate over £1.2 million per annum, and
James Foster trying out a balloon bike
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Popular student venue and home of JazzFunkSoul closes JFS to continue at site, now renamed The Small Horse Inn Oluwaseun Matiluko News Reporter
The Big Chill Bar, 15 Small Street, has closed down. ‘After six great years in Bristol The Big Chill have decided to move on. Thank you for all the good times!’ they explained on their official Facebook page. Although two Big Chill venues do exist in London, the Bristol venue was popular with indigenous Bristolians and students alike, with many being disheartened to hear the news. It offered a liberal mix of food, cocktails and music, and was home of the popular Bristol performance night, JazzFunkSoul. The Bar has now been replaced by The Small Horse Inn, opened by Team Love, the team behind club events such as IN: Motion (an event currently advertised around Bristol). JazzFunkSoul is continuing its residence at the site, stating on their Facebook page that their first event of the year, played by the Bristol European Jazz Ensemble, was the ‘perfect
welcome back’ to the venue. The Small Horse Inn, which advertises itself as a ‘brand new venue for drinking, dancing & good times,’ launched on 2nd October 2015.
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The launch of the new venue was a roaring success Max Mhitarian
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Bye-bye to Big Chill
The Inn is also home to The Gourmet Dessert Club which produces rich and unique treats such as red velvet pancakes and raspberry blondies. Although some on social media have complained about its price point, the launch of the venue was a roaring success, with many students from both universities in Bristol giving positive reviews.
Martin Miencazowski poses with his space hopper
Flickr: Julian Mason
The space hopper attempt is the latest in a series of challenges that Martin has set himself since suffering the stroke in 2009. Having been told to expect a huge decrease in his quality of life, he was determined to prove that there is life after a stroke and give hope to other survivors. To do this, Martin took a year out of work and dedicated the time to various challenges, which have included completing the 90 mile stretch of Hadrian’s Cycleway from Carlisle to Newcastle. The space hopper challenge will not be the last on his list either: he hopes to travel to Australia in the near future. The Stroke Association is the leading charity in the UK which supports people affected by stroke. Their research has improved treatments and their support services have helped people like Martin move on from their experience of stroke. They also campaign to raise awareness of how to recognise the signs of a stroke and take emergency action. Martin personally identifies
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Epigram / Angus Walker Martin Miencazowski
Martin has successfully bounced his way around 10 kilometres in four hours
Epigram / Oli Broadmead Nick Riddle
A runner for the Stroke Association at the London Marathon
Nick Riddle
‘I’ve always wanted to achieve a world record,’ Martin explained when asked about why he chose this particular challenge. ‘I chose to use a space hopper after a few glasses of wine at a friend’s house: she had just taken up pilates and had a space hopper to practice with.’ This was all the inspiration Martin needed, and after some research, he decided it was doable and sent off his application to the Guinness World Book of Records. Twelve weeks later, he received the confirmation that his application had been accepted and began his training.
Epigram / Angus Walker
Martin Miencazowski, a research assistant for the University, is currently training to beat the world record for the furthest distance on a space hopper in 24 hours. He is raising money for the Stroke Association, a charity close to his heart since he experienced a stroke himself at the age of 25. Martin’s attempt to beat the current record of eight kilometres is scheduled for the 31st October. Since beginning training five weeks ago, Martin has successfully bounced his way around 10 kilometres in four hours, so he is feeling hopeful. The Kip Keino stadium has been offered to Martin free of charge on the day, so that all the money he raises can go directly to The Stroke Association.
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Abbie Scott Deputy News Editor
Epigram / Angus Walker
Researcher to Bounce to World Record
with the importance of the work this charity does, and wants to raise awareness of the impact that brain injuries can have through his own fundraising.
He was determined to prove that there is life after a stroke and give hope to other survivors
Martin is appealing for volunteers to take part in this event. The regulations for a world record attempt require independent witnesses to record and take note of Martin’s progress on the day. Volunteers would be needed for four hours. If there are any students interested in supporting Martin, please get in touch with him via his website www.didiver.co.uk.
Epigram 19 .10.2015
Features
@epigramfeatures
Editor: Alex Green
Deputy Editor: Becky Morton
Online Editor: Richard Assheton
features@epigram.org.uk
bmorton@epigram.org.uk
rassheton@epigram.org.uk
Does Prevent have a place at our universities? Becky Morton Deputy Features Editor
“ At least 70 events featuring hate speakers were held on university campuses last year
the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill labels Muslims as suspects. Arguably these matters should be dealt with by the Student Counselling Service rather than security services. The updated Prevent duty guidelines build on previous legislation, requiring establishments to ensure they have assessment procedures for speakers and that those expressing extreme views do not go unchallenged. Universities are also required to have appropriate IT policies, staff training and student welfare programmes in place to recognise and respond to signs of radicalisation. The government’s Extremism Analysis Union claimed at least 70 events featuring hate speakers were held on university campuses last year.
Flikr: Peter
Activist Maryam Namazie was recently banned from speaking at Warwick University
Flickr/Mike Fleming
In light of the worrying trend of radicalised young people travelling to Syria to fight for ISIS, the government is beginning to target universities as one of the key public bodies for tackling extremism. But can and should universities be expected to root out radicalised young people and take steps to counter extremist views? From September 21st, universities are legally required to enact ‘specific policies to stop extremists radicalising students on campuses, tackle gender segregation at events and support students at risk of radicalisation.’ University unions, including Bristol Students’ Union, have expressed concerns that government counterterrorism guidelines, known as Prevent, require universities to tackle not only potentially violent extremism but also non-violent extremist groups who may be perfectly legal. Bristol Students’ Union has also expressed concerns that
‘All public institutions have a role to play in rooting out and challenging extremism,’ David Cameron announced in a speech on 17th September. ‘It is not about oppressing free speech or stifling academic freedom, it is about making sure that radical views and ideas are not given the oxygen they need to flourish.’ He identified universities as being under a particular obligation to ‘protect impressionable young minds.’ Alongside this announcement, he publically named a number of universities who he believes are the worst offenders for giving a platform to extremists, including the University of London’s Queen Mary, King’s College and School of Oriental African Studies. The National Union of Students (NUS) has opposed the government’s anti-radicalisation strategy on the grounds that it restricts free speech. ‘Criticism and debate is at the heart of the policy-making process, and so we would encourage government to listen and reflect on the legitimate concerns that exist to their agenda, rather than attacking organisations for simply not agreeing with their approach,’ a spokesperson for the NUS said. As students’ unions are not public bodies, they are not subject to Prevent, therefore the NUS has been able to take an approach of non-compliance. This approach has attracted criticism from Universities Minister Jo Johnson, who has written to the NUS arguing that ‘Universities represent an important arena for challenging extremist views.’ ‘It is important there can be active challenge and debate on issues relating to counter terrorism,’ Johnson explained, ‘and provisions for academic freedom are part of the Prevent guidance for universities and colleges […] It is therefore disappointing to see overt opposition to the Prevent programme.’ So what is the University of Bristol’s stance on this issue? Bristol Students’ Union has taken the NUS’ lead in condemning the Prevent strategy. In a motion ‘Students not Suspects,’ passed at the Annual Members’ Meeting last February, the Union argued that the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill would ‘criminalise ideas and create a culture where students are unwilling to speak out,’ developing ‘a culture of
The NUS has taken an approach of non-compliance towards the government Prevent strategy
suspicion and surveillance on campuses, whilst also potentially conflicting with institutions’ duties to promote freedom of speech, by making them overly riskaverse and unwilling to engage in important topics of discussion.’ Jamie Cross, Equality Liberation and Access Officer at the University of Bristol, stated that the Students’ Union has an ‘active policy’ on the Prevent strategy and the passage of the ‘Students not Suspects’ motion ‘mandated us to not engage with Prevent.’ Similar motions against the Prevent strategy have been passed in students’ unions across the country, including Kings College London, University College London and the University of Cardiff. The university, as a public body, is required to comply with the Prevent strategy in a way that the Students’ Union is not. Deputy Registrar for the University of Bristol, Lynn Robinson, stressed that whilst the University would follow government guidelines, Bristol’s code of practice on Freedom of Speech ‘strongly supports freedom of speech except for circumstances that are unlawful or we might reasonably believe could cause breaches of the peace.’ This would include providing a platform for the encouragement of terrorism, as this is a criminal offence. Since the code has been in place, no speakers have been banned from the University. The University has also recently established a Prevent Compliance Group, chaired by the director of Student Services and with members from relevant professional services and academic staff with connected responsibilities or research expertise. The group will develop an action plan and consider staff training, welfare and pastoral support. Although Bristol Students’ Union has refused to comply with Prevent, it has agreed to be represented on the group and are, Robinson claims, ‘supportive’ of their approach.
‘Clearly the university must comply with the law but our aim in relation to the act and Prevent is to support freedom of speech as strongly as we can and to provide a supportive and non-discriminatory environment for our students,’ she told Epigram. But is it realistic or fair to expect universities to root out radicalised students and counter extremist ideologies? The NUS and students’ unions across the country have raised valid concerns over the Prevent strategy. They argue that the expectations create an atmosphere of suspicion between staff and students, where there should be mutual trust. This could potentially alienate young people from institutions which could otherwise provide them with a sense of belonging. The censorship encouraged by Prevent could also stifle freedom of speech in an environment where open debate should flourish. In order to tackle extremist ideologies, it is argued, they must be exposed to reasoned debate. There is a risk that the guidelines may make institutions overly cautious, causing perfectly legitimate speakers to be banned. For example, the University of Warwick’s Union recently blocked anti-sharia activist, Maryam Namazie, from speaking to the Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists society, on the grounds that she was ‘highly inflammatory and could incite hatred,’ despite Namazie being an active campaigner against violence and extremism. ‘Extremism’ is a vague concept which is difficult to determine. The government has defined extremism as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for different faiths and beliefs.’ The Prevent strategy identifies potential indicators of ‘radicalism’ or ‘extremism’ as ‘a need for identity, meaning and
belonging,’ ‘a desire for political or moral change’, or ‘relevant mental health issues.’ Clearly these are feelings held by many students, unconnected to extremism. Opponents argue it is unreasonable for academics, untrained in such issues, to identify students at risk of radicalisation, especially given such vague indicators. Furthermore, evidence suggests that many young people become radicalised outside the control of the university environment, for example via the internet.
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‘Our aim in relation to the act and Prevent is to support freedom of speech’
On the other hand, young people make up a worryingly high proportion of those involved in terrorist activities. There are several examples of students committing terrorist-related offences whilst at university and foreign fighters becoming radicalised during studies in the UK. For example, one student at Glasgow Caledonian University dropped out of her course to travel to Syria in late 2013. Some would argue that the university was in a prime position to pre-empt this by recognising signs of radicalisation. Universities already have student support networks in place which could be utilised to identify vulnerable students. It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of the Prevent strategy and the program is likely to continue to attract controversy, particularly if it remains focused on Islamist extremism. Opponents argue implicating universities in the strategy might further alienate young Muslims from institutions that should give them a sense of belonging, which is crucial to countering extremism.
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19.10.2015
79
The Dark Web: a provider of first class substances Alex Green Features Editor
“ In the UK, the Dark Web’s use is essentially recreational: to provide often-illegal goods and services whilst guaranteeing anonymity.
the commercial void. ‘I first heard of the Dark Web when I arrived at University,’ Patrick, a student who regularly purchases illegal substances from Dark Web sites, told Epigram. ‘Other students were using it to buy drugs for nights out. It seemed as if those drugs, which can be expensive and sometimes cut with dangerous, unknown substances,
Student dealers like Reynolds are likely to use the Dark Web would be cheaper and safer off the Internet.’ Whilst the case of Liam Reynolds and his group of industrious friends may be the only one of its kind to have made the national news, it is apparent that use of the Dark Web in procuring illegal substances is common among students. ‘I think a lot of students do use it or they know someone who does.
It’s safer than interacting with drug dealers who are likely to rip you off or just harm you.’ It is clear that students are keen to make a distinction between ‘street’ drug dealers and student drug dealers. Yet in the eyes of the law the distinction is non-existent. The Dark Web does have a more benign side. Pharmaceutical drugs can
Dulue Mbachu
Liam Reynolds modeled himself on Breaking Bad character Walter White
West Yorkshire Police
In August this year, a group of students in Leeds were discovered to have been running a drug ring of unprecedented size. Liam Reynolds, 21, has since been described in the press as a ‘drug lord’ and ‘gang leader.’ What is clear after subsequent investigations by the press is that the group consisted of economically savvy students working independently of any prior crime structure. Most revelatory, though, was the ease with which they were able to access drugs. They sold LSD, cannabis and MDMA to other students. These were bought, mail order, from international suppliers and were delivered directly to the student drug dealer’s door. The method of purchase was Silk Road, the now defunct online market renowned for providing punters with illegally acquired credit card details, prostitution services, drugs, weapons and other dubious goods. Reynolds has now begun a four-year prison sentence. This sort of service is widely available to the public and has been for over 15 years. March 2000 saw Ian Clarke, a student of computer science at Edinburgh University, release an initial version of the Tor browser, which would allow members of the public to browse dubious areas of the web without the risk of being identified. The Tor browser gives its users access to the Dark Web, or the Deep Web. Clarke described his creation as ‘a Distributed, Decentralised Information Storage
and Retrieval System.’ Essentially, it was ‘a revolutionary new way for people to use the Internet without detection.’ In countries with less democratic freedom and more totalitarian control, the Tor browser has been and will continue to be a tool to enable freedom of speech. In the UK, its primary use is essentially recreational: to provide often-illegal goods and services whilst guaranteeing anonymity. Outside of our normal understanding of the Internet, the Dark Web operates as a large portion of unregulated web space that is poorly understood by both the media and computer scientists After the demise of Silk Road, other providers like Agora sprang up to fill
be bought without prescription and in some cases this can be of practical aid to students. Nick, a student of Chemistry at Bristol, treats his epilepsy using Zopaclone – a sedative and sleeping aid – purchased off the Dark Web. ‘I think it is a good thing that I can access medicine to treat my illness without going through the usual channels’ he told Epigram. ‘Luckily, my experience has been positive so far. The Zopaclone I have used to treat my epilepsy has been difficult and expensive to procure from the NHS.’ However, Nick recognizes that his case is unusual: ‘Obviously it’s only going to be a very small percentage of people using it for medical reasons’. Dark Web sites are unlikely to stock pharmaceutical drugs devoid of any recreational value; the main premise of the site is to provide addictive, recreational substances directly to its users. When questioned about the alleged quality of the product he buys Nick told Epigram: ‘I trust the quality of the products, as they are chemically identical to those pills distributed by the NHS.’ Whilst Nick’s case may not be entirely convincing, what is clear is that the press have treated the case of Liam Reynolds as if it were a singular incident. Student users of the Dark Web most likely exist in far greater numbers than were previously thought by the police. This new ease of accessibility may have arguably decreased the level of risk in taking illegal substances, through increased levels of purity and a chance to avoid direct interactions with drug dealers. However, the system is a new and difficult challenge to the police and could encourage more students to use drugs.
Epigram
19.10.2015
8
A celebration of colour: Black History Month Richard Assheton Online Features Editor On Saturday, the Seven Saints of St Pauls stood still and silent in the foyer of the Students’ Union. Around them small pockets of people gathered, reading that the Saints had been black Bristol heroes, of whom some had led the Bristol bus boycott in 1963, some had founded the St Pauls carnival five years later and all would appear as murals in the area in time for the carnival’s 50th anniversary in 2018. Michelle Curtis’ sketches of the Saints — Owen Henry, Carmen Beckford, Roy Hackett, Barbara Dettering, Clifford Drummond, Delores Campbell and Audley Evans — will stand in the lobby of the Richmond Building throughout October, Black History Month.
‘[If] we start from universities we can expand to wider society’
‘I think the universities very much lead the way towards this change of perception and challenging the limitations of our curricula, the limitations of the people for which we seek information, academic or otherwise. ‘So if we begin, we start from universities we can expand to wider society. And you’ll find that as a student or as a member of university in any way you have so many avenues to connect with people from schools, to community, from everywhere really, so it’s a really good place to start.’
Black History Month events are being held across the city throughout October. A full programme is available from Bristol City Council at http://www. bristol.gov.uk/page/community-andsafety/black-history-month Further events can be found on Facebook and Twitter - search Black History Month.
Epigram/ Richard Assheton
The SU wants to bring the month, which started in the United States, back to grassroots, to Britain’s and Bristol’s black social history. ‘Often Black History Month tends to have a US focus, I mean it’s very much about Civil Rights movements in the US, but there’s loads of black history to be celebrated in the UK,’ Noha Abu El Bagd, Bristol SU’s Black and Minority Ethnic Student’s Officer, tells Epigram. At 4:40pm on Saturday, someone plugged in some speakers and classic reggae and ska filled the room. People milled around and three ladies with six foot tall green and yellow feathered frames atop them danced and waved their hands; it felt like the month of celebrating Bristol’s local past had truly begun. The event was‘Our Heroes: Celebrating Black History Month,’ and an eclectic list of speakers and performers lent their voices to an afternoon and evening of discussion and performance. Chair of the St Paul’s Carnival board Cleo Lake told us about the carnival’s history and showed us the video for its Bristol-made anthem, ‘Carnival Time Again / We Deh Ya’. Asha Craig, whose photographs took us into the world of Fairfield House, Bath, where Ethiopian Emperor and Rastafarians’ God Incarnate Haile Selassie spent five years in exile in the lead up to the Second World War. Tommy, a young Bristol City Councillor, told us what it was like to grow up in his predominantly black Bristol community. Perhaps most exciting to speak with was Ms Curtis, a Bristol-born, Bristolbred and Bristol-based artist who, having been made redundant from her job as a mental health counsellor in 2012, pursued her dream of becoming an artist. Having studied graphic design in the city, she put on a ‘ram-packed’ first exhibition in 2014 and is now in charge of a project to vitalise the landscape of St Pauls. Why? To make black history permanent, to make black history for ever, not just October. ‘It’s kind of one month just dedicated
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and obviously the things that are formed in university are then taught in schools, published in the media—it’s not in a bubble, it very much leaks into everything else.’
Epigram/ Richard Assheton
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‘Why can’t we just celebrate black history all year round?’
to celebrating black heroes in history in a way, but at the same time I don’t know if it bothers me or it annoys me that it’s only rooted to one month, so why can’t we just celebrate black history all year round? ‘They’ve done some amazing stuff in the past [...] why must I wait all the way until October to hear about it?’ Noha says this is one thing she wants to rectify as BME Officer this year. ‘We’re trying to really make sure that we don’t limit black history to just a month,’ Noha explained. ‘Because, although it’s a good thing to raise awareness, we don’t want to portray the image that black history can be limited to just one month. ‘So that’s why, at least in my role, in my capacity, we’re trying to hold one event every month to celebrate black history. So that’s the two things we want to focus on this year: focusing on celebrating Black British history as well as making sure that it is celebrated as more than just a month.’ Noha is part of the NUS’ national Black Students’ campaign. Why is it important for universities to celebrate black history? ‘I think it is very important, because a university is an institution that establishes what we, throughout society, learn, educate, work on,’ she said. ‘It’s an excellent framework to use to then decide what is important to people in society. ‘So if you’re a student or an academic or a staff member or anything like that, the university is an incredible platform to recognise the contribution of people to history that haven’t been recognised. ‘Especially when we have such limited diversity in our curriculums,
Comment
Epigram 19.10.2015
@epigramcomment Editor: Jordan Kelly-Linden Deputy Editor: Stefan Rollnick Online Editor: Liam Marchant jkellylinden@epigram.org.uk
lmarchant@epigram.org.uk
srollnick@epigram.org.uk
How not to teach sex ed
Twitter reacts
Holly shows us how repression of our self-’sexpression’ has lead to harmful attitudes surrounding sex
Holly Harper Comment Writer
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Britain’s attitude towards the teaching of proper sexual conduct in schools remains problematic, awkward and confused. An awkward attitude that is awkwardly confirmed every time a Tory backbencher attempts to discuss the issue of teaching sex education to children. A comment made by Philip Davies MP last year, which seemed to blame higher levels of pregnancy on the more accessible nature of sex education, was an eery mixture of ignorance, scaremongering, and plain backwardness. It seems that when it comes to issues of contraception and consent, we are better off not knowing at all.
The problem of when and what children should be told about sex has existed for as long as we have, but it’s a discussion that has become ever necessary in the constantly changing world of the 21st century. If we do not teach children about sex, the internet will. A scary prospect indeed. Our attitudes towards sex are decidedly generational: adults who grew up in a world where sex was an embarrassing and shameful topic are now the ones in charge of educating children who are growing up in a radically different world. Sex education is not just a necessity, it is a human right and the damaging effects of its inadequacy is played out time and time again in communities and campuses across the country. Attitudes of shame and embarrassment when it comes to talking to children about sex are not unique to Britain. Indeed, a survey on the provision of sex education in Texas highlighted the harmful effect of conservative attitudes towards sex and
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virginity, especially on those who were victims of sexual abuse. In order for society to develop a healthy relationship with the idea of sex, education
Sex education is not just a necessity, it is a human right
should not only be compulsory but wide ranging in scope, addressing issues of consent, protection and giving equal standing to non-heteronormative sex (sex that is not between a man and a woman). The most telling proof of the inadequacy of sex education is seen in the many independent organisations and movements that exist to fill the
Flickr / Kris Krug
It seems that when it comes to issues of contraception and consent, we are better off not knowing at all
gaps, which attempt to pick up where school left off. One of these groups, called Sexpression, is a studentrun intervention that holds workshops in schools in an attempt to equip students with more than just the basics, working to cover issues of consent. It is only conversations like this that can properly prepare students for the world of university and campus life. The University of Bristol’s Students’ Union is already doing much in the way of providing information that the school system did not. Consent workshops are now available to every first year on their arrival to the university. These gapfilling initiatives are vital, but realistically should not have to exist. More must be done to expand and enforce sex education, to make it a priority on the Government’s agenda. A life lesson is not necessarily a basic lesson: sex is confusing, complicated, and most importantly, must always be understood as consensual.
Epigram Comment’s caption competition This week, the Epigram editorial team try to tackle the new plastic bag charge. But hopefully without recycling...
Flickr / Darren Johnson
Flickr / jovike
@AdamBecket
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Think you can do better? You probably can. Send your best captions to @EpigramComment and make sure you follow us to take part in next issue’s competition!
Epigram
19.10.2015
12 10
History and heritage: is Bristol in debt to slavery?
The city of Bristol and, in part, our University, was funded off the back of the slave trade. With this in mind, Lia questions whether or not Britain must face up to historical reparations
Lia Shoaib Comment Writer
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slightly tenuous considering the study only looked at direct offspring, it implies that racial inequalities fostered by slavery work on both a social level, as well as potentially genetic level.
Jamaican officials insist that they are primarily concerned with opening up a dialogue about slavery and an acknowledgement of injustice on the part of European governments. David Cameron has remained staunch in dismissing reparations, asking Jamaica to ‘move on from this painful legacy and continue to build
Flickr / Flying Fin
was a known slaver - the reason why Bristol band Massive Attack boycott the venue. Beyond economic disparity, the legacy of slavery is complex: causing psychological trauma in those directly affected by slavery as well as embedding racial inequality in modern psyche. This is evident in racial inequalities that still persist in Britain today. A recent study from New York hospital Mount Sinai complicates the issue of psychological trauma in demonstrating that trauma can be passed on genetically. The study shows that epigenetic changes in stress hormones of Holocaust survivors were also found in their children, showing that environmental changes in a person’s genetic makeup can be inherited by their children. This can be extrapolated to slaves’ descendants who may similarly be genetically affected. While this link is
Stewart Black
Jamaica is asking the UK for billions of pounds in reparations for slavery, arguing that the country never recovered from Britain’s exploitation of its people and resources. Jamaican officials, including Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller argue that it is Britain’s responsibility to aid the country to prosper economically and to publicly apologise for slavery. The reparations lobby has raised serious questions about national and personal responsibility for the centuries old slave trade. However, Britain contends that the issue should be left in the past as no one alive today had any involvement in the trade. So the question is, should people be held responsible for their ancestors’ actions? At first glance, no - the same way that you should not be held responsible for murdering prostitutes if you were descended from Jack the Ripper. This is not a theoretical debate, as chairman of the Caricom Reparations Commission Sir Hilary Beckles cites David Cameron’s personal ancestral affiliation with slavery. In an open letter Beckles tells Cameron: ‘You are a grandson of the Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears’ sins of the enslavement of our ancestors.’ Sir James Duff was a known slave-owner in the 1700s and also David Cameron’s cousin six times removed. Personal culpability aside, England undoubtedly reaped the benefits of slave labour while Jamaica is ridden with economic inequalities and issues such as low literacy rates, which are at least partly enmeshed in its legacy of slavery and exploitation. Bristol’s connection with slavery is more pertinent than David Cameron’s, considering it was the UK’s major port for transporting slaves. Bristol is also still intertwined in the legacy of slavery as the grand Georgian houses built by slave-owners are still inhabited today, and Colston Hall’s namesake Edward Colston
for the future’. Britain is planning to spend £25 million on building new prisons in Jamaica, which could be seen as a form of reparations. However, the motivation behind this aid is not particularly benevolent - the aim is to return hundreds of Jamaican prisoners who are currently in UK prisons but cannot be sent back due to substandard Jamaican prison conditions. While British media has framed the reparations lobby as being a solely monetarily motivated movement, Jamaican officials insist that they are primarily concerned with opening up a dialogue about slavery and an acknowledgement of injustice on the part of European governments. While billions of pounds may be an excessive request, opening up an honest dialogue about slavery’s legacy of inequality could be the best way to move forward.
Toying with the definition of beauty Oluwaseun talks Barbie dolls, diversitfication and empowering women of colour Oluwaseun Matiluko Comment Writer Fashion trends tend to change as time moves on. It is interesting that in the past, it was considered beautiful to have pale white skin but now one can’t avoid the orange shimmer of fake tan in a nightclub. Gone is the image of the perfect woman who is skinny and white. Now girls want big lips, boobs and bums - things typical of a black woman’s physique. It seems that in our posttwerking society, black people are in. Now of course we could get into a whole debate about people appropriating cultures and ask questions like: ‘Why is the same thing pretty on a white woman but ugly on a black woman?’; but I don’t want to focus on that. I don’t want to focus on that because now it finally seems as though black features on black women are being celebrated. I say this a few days after the launch of Zendaya Coleman’s Barbie doll, styled the same way she was at the 2015 Oscar Awards. Several of us will remember Giuliana Rancic’s comments on E!’s Fashion Police, where she associated Zendaya’s dreadlocks with ‘patchouli oil’ and ‘weed,’ which
some considered racist. So now it is truly amazing that the globally recognised Barbie brand has included this Zendaya doll among its many others. For over 50 years Barbie has been a symbol of beauty and so now it is probable that many young girls around the world will think of beauty when they look at dreadlocks and women of colour, instead of dirtiness or ‘weed.’ Of course, Barbie has made other dolls of colour for the western market
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Our definitions of beauty are slowly but surely changing, and those once made to feel like second class citizens are finally being accepted into the fold. before: Black Christie in 1968, Hispanic Teresa in 1988 and Asian Raquelle in 2007. However, one could say that this doll, coming at a time where race relations are very strained, marks another trailblazing step for Barbie. Zendaya herself said that when she was little she couldn’t find a doll that looked like her and thanked Barbie for allowing her to be a part of their ‘diversification and expansion of the definition of beauty.’ Popular black artist Nicki Minaj also commented that she loves ‘what it means for other little girls (sic) who
will identify with it & be empowered.’ Now, as we move towards 2016, it seems that more and more women of colour are being supported and praised. Jennifer Yuh Nelson is the first Asian woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, for her work on Kung Fu Panda 2. Additionally, Viola Davis is the first African-American woman to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Even in the UK, there are differences being made. Bristol has
had the launch of Gal-dem.com, a new online magazine written solely by women of colour. Even in London, where race relations have been historically uneasy, there comes the news that celebrities and locals alike are boycotting the night club DSTRKT, a club that has been accused of being racist towards black women. Our definitions of beauty are slowly but surely changing and those once made to feel like second class citizens are finally being accepted into the fold.
Epigram
19.10.2015
11
Calm down Dahling: It’s Orwell-and-good being a scientist
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Lucy Thompson speaks up for her fellow Arts students, whose hidden degree costs are driving them Wilde
Lucy Thompson Comment Writer The fact that Arts students subsidise science degrees is no secret. Last year Epigram uncovered shocking statistics that arts students contribute an annual net profit of over £10 million for departments such as Dentistry, Veterinary Science, Chemistry and Physics. Arts degrees such as English contribute £5,652.80 of the £9,000 annual tuition fee towards other departments and the money is not invested in the degree programme itself. The question still remains and is a frequent grumble among Arts students - should we pay less?
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dentists, doctors and engineers with higher fees as the country would become over run by arts students. However, it does seem unfair that on top of a £27,000 degree with low contact hours we have the hidden costs of books. As an English student I have just paid £60 for the crucial Norton Anthologies and my friend who is a first law student bought second hand books, which still amounted to £100 before the course even began. There is a limit to what the library can provide for the hundreds of people who need the same books, so the reading lists that are issued to Arts students for different modules can become a heavy financial burden. Although science degrees also require textbooks, they have far more contact hours than subjects such as History, Philosophy and English, which average 8 hours. Perhaps Arts students could have a few more contact hours to balance the disparity between art and science degrees.
It is imperative that we have more transparencey in regard to where our tuition fees are being invested
Paying for at least a portion of the vast amount Would it not be also be fair to divert at least some of the funding towards the essential books for the of books needed for the three years would be a course? This would be particularly beneficial for start, but simply more money needs to go towards increased contact hours if we are to truly value Arts degrees.
Reading lists that are issused to Arts students for different modules can become a heavy financial burden
students from low income backgrounds. Science dominates the highest paid graduate jobs and while it would be wrong to create an inequality at university where some students were paying more for their degrees, we need more transparency and more money paid towards the improvement of the arts.
Do you agree? Tweet us @EpigramComment to give us your opinion. Or get in touch with our editors @JdotLdotKelly, @StefanRollnick and @LiamMarchant95.
Flickr: UoB
In July this year George Osbourne announced major changes to higher education, with maintenance grants to be replaced with loans from 2016 and high preforming universities being allowed to increase their tuition fees in line with inflation from 2017-18. This will affect every single student but what seems slightly unfair is that this added funding will most probably be funding science labs rather than improving the arts. It is imperative that we have more transparency in regards to where our tuition fees are being invested. I showed the stats that Epigram collated last year to the arts students on my floor and they were shocked by the information that had not been made clear to them by the university. Most Arts students would concede that Science needs more funding for labs and equipment and that we should not hinder people from becoming
Speaker’s Corner: Friend or faux? Ed Fernyhough Comment Writer
Clayton O’Neill
The benefits of a diplomatically arranged social network for later life are indisputably clear – employment opportunity, enterprise, healthcare and legal assistance are a select few of many possible areas in which social selectivity and shrewd planning would yield substantial ‘reward’. Having said this, it is important to differentiate between friendliness & diplomacy, and definitive friendship when establishing who your mates are at University. Friendship can be defined as a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association, usually built upon mutual interests &/or shared experiences, rather than pre-planned convenience or apparent ‘value’ in terms of personal gain. It’s inevitable that friendships are made within academic spheres, pertaining to indispensable connections in later career life. However, it seems strange, unlikely, even sociopathic at a stretch, that this is the premise upon which proper friendship is built. The distinction between friendliness and friendship proves useful here. General friendliness and diplomacy are certainly helpful when it comes
to reaping long-term rewards, but there should be no delusions insofar that these are ‘faux’ connections built upon little more than selfishness. This selfishness is perhaps quietly acknowledged by each individual – hence why a more fruitful friendship fails to blossom. These faux connections, whilst probably more manifest as we get older, have been present to a certain degree throughout our lives. We have all come across people with whom we share no animosity yet little compatibility at the same time. On occasion, personality clashes are mutually but quietly respected between individuals who are both members of extensive social groups. Whilst diplomatic ties are obvious between nations, businesses and political parties, there can be no doubt that they exist – consciously or subconsciously – between individuals too, displacing or preceding the possibility for proper friendship. To make it an ambition to be ‘friends with everyone’ may strike as optimistic, unrealistic or conceited depending on how full your glass is – not only this, but evidence suggests it actually impossible. You may recognise the significance of the number 150 in this context – the grapevine has often revealed this figure as the alleged maximum meaningful social connections a human can hope to have. The number has arisen following research from Robin Dunbar in the fields of Anthropology and Psychology, but has been expanded to 230-290 connections by fellow Anthropologists Peter Killworth & Dr. H. Russell Bernard. According to this research then, it is statistically impossible to befriend everyone. Whilst
a selective approach may be useful in pursuit of acquaintances for your later career, the forging of positive friendships usually occurs naturally. If ever the name of a fresher’s compatriot slips your mind following the inevitable haze of the first month at University, dismiss any latent feeling of social awkwardness and acknowledge that this is a biological normality. Faux friends are usually associated with the first few weeks of the first year of University, but
the reality is that they permeate most of our working lives. It is important to recognise the difference between a materially, socially or otherwise mutually beneficial associate and the proper mates that you will make through shared general interests and a good night out. Conceding that pleasing and befriending everyone on an intimate level simply isn’t feasible will be more valuable than you may now think.
Epigram
19.10.2015
Science & Tech
Editor: Alfie Smith
@EpigramSciTech Deputy Editor: Matt Davis
asmith.epigram@gmail.com
mdavis.epigram@gmail.com
Quantum computing threatens online security Suzie Brown Science Writer
“ The only way to
Flickr: -Jeroen Bennink
Cryptography may have started as a tool for spies and warfare, but it has become integral to modern life. Any website starting with ‘https’ is encrypting the data sent and received from it. Encryption facilitates the security of online banking, password protection, transmission of emails and storage of confidential documents. Besides its many applications, it has provided avenues of research into number theory and group theory; two abstract areas of pure mathematics originally expected to have no practical use. In most research areas, new discoveries are written up and exposed to the scrutiny of the scientific community almost immediately. But cryptography is the business of secrets. A lot of breakthroughs in the field,made by the likes of GCHQ (the government communication headquarters) and the NSA (US national security agency), aren’t made public until they become redundant. This means that to secure communications, it is not enough to protect them against all known crypto-analytical techniques: they must be impenetrable to all theoretical methods of attack. If any attack is possible, there will be people at GCHQ working on it. Mathematics and its rigorous proofs are uniquely important in the field of cryptography. Just because no one has discovered a way to break an encryption, that doesn’t mean a wellmotivated opponent won’t be able to. The only way to guarantee security is to
prove there’s no feasible way to break it. To prove this in full mathematical rigour is very difficult; for practical purposes it is considered good enough to show that any attempt to break the code requires enough steps to take, several times the age of the universe to run. For instance, the security of the RSA algorithm, which is used for encrypting sensitive data transmitted over the internet, rests on the difficulty of factorising extremely large numbers into their smaller components. Prime factorisation is widely believed to be ‘difficult’ in the sense that as the size of a given number increases, the number of steps required to factorise it increases exponentially. There is no simple formula to find the prime constituents
guarantee security is to proves there’s no
feasible way to break it
of a number and so a computer would have to try numbers one by one to see if they work. This is called a ‘Brute force’ computer method. RSA is safe from a ‘Brute force’ computer attack. However, RSA and several other widely-used encryption schemes may soon become vulnerable. Quantum computing is no longer the remote possibility it was when it was first conceived in the 1970s, as basic quantum computers have been built. Whereas in classical computing, the computing power increases in direct proportion with the amount of
information that can be processed, in quantum computing it increases exponentially. For instance, in a normal computer, eight bits (a bit is a unit of information) represent a number between 0 and 255. While in a quantum computer eight ‘qubits’ represent every number between 0 and 255 simultaneously, because instead of representing a single number they can theoretically represent several at the same time. Thus a programme which would take billions of years on a classical computer could run in a manageable amount of time on a
quantum computer. Practical quantum computing has got off to a rocky start. It is notoriously hard to even tell whether a quantum computer is performing properly because it is impossible to observe the theoretical representation of more than one piece of information at a single moment in time. Nonetheless, it is becoming a practical possibility. Consequently, cryptographers are no longer satisfied with codes that can’t be broken by a classical computer, they must now reach for ‘quantumproof’ encryption. Several presumed
quantum-proof methods have been proposed, but they are generally extremely inefficient, meaning the encryption and decryption processes require an impractical amount of computing power. For decades, cryptographers (code makers) have had the upper hand over their adversaries the cryptanalysts (code breakers), thanks to encryption systems like RSA. But with the advent of quantum computing, cryptanalysts have the cryptographers on their toes once again, racing to come up with new quantum-proof methods.
Animal in trials suffer less due to UoB research introducing them into humans. In 2006, the phase one human clinical trial for the drug TGN 1412 went hideously wrong with six of the previously healthy male patients hospitalised with multiple organ failure. The trial was nicknamed ‘The elephant man trial,’ due to the physical effects that this drug had on the participants, the worst affected had their fingers amputated, and all were told that they were likely to suffer from Flickr: : mycroyance-mice
Matt Davis Deputy Science & Tech Editor Although many wish it were not the case, animal trials play a vital role in drug development. Therapeutics, vaccines and some medical procedures are first trialled on animals as one of the first steps in the sometimes 20year-long series of tests before NICE (the national institute of clinical excellence) approves a treatment as safe for humans in the UK. For many trials, the animals have to be restrained so that they can be injected, this increases the stress levels of
the animals and the resultant stress hormones that are released can affect the results of the trial. Instead of this traumatic procedure, scientists from the University of Bristol have discovered a new handling procedure which allows injections to be administered without actual physical restraints. Rodents are widely used in clinical trials and Bristol researchers found by measuring their stress levels during test procedures that the main cause of anxiety was the physical restraints that they had to wear while being injected. The team formulated a new handling
method that made physical restraints redundant allowing the rodents to be injected without them. This caused a fall in the stress levels of the rodents by almost 50 per cent. ‘Further improvements in animal welfare can be made through refining existing procedures,’ the leader of the study, Dr Emma Robinson, said, suggesting that some of the current techniques used may have complications. Animal clinical trials split the room so to speak, drug companies are required by law to trial compounds on animals and use computer modelling before
“ This caused a fall in
the stress levels of the rodents by almost 50 per cent
cancer or autoimmune diseases later on in life as a direct result of the trial. However, the TGN 1412 drug passed all animal trial tests. This brings into contention the usefulness of animals for these tests, particularly if such a toxic compound was allowed to slip through the net. The Food and Drug Administration (the American equivalent to NICE) found that 92 per cent of drugs pass animal clinical trials but then go on to fail human trials. Phase one human clinical trials
are heavily regulated and always use young healthy males. This is because an unknown compound may disrupt your hormones and therefore cause infertility in women, despite having no such effect in animals. The charity PETA (people for ethical treatment of animals) has reported some of the tests that animals go through. Acute toxicity is a test that calculates safe dosages and measures side effects of a proposed drug. For this it requires 20 rats, plus dogs and primates, to be injected with extremely high levels of the compound. All of the animals will die. Anaesthetics cannot be used as they will corrupt the findings of the trial. Another test required is the neurovirulence test for new vaccines, where the compound is injected into the spine of monkeys, the monkeys are then culled and the bodies examined for signs of paralysis caused by the drug. Although it may seem cruel, developing new drugs without animal trials would be irresponsible and dangerous. Improving handling techniques to facilitate a better environment for the animals is vital, but even more important is improving the accuracy of the trials results, because without accurate results, these animals will have died needlessly.
Epigram 19.10.2015
13
Does anyone fancy a drink on Mars? Years ago, NASA launched its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft to orbit the Red Planet and use its arsenal of cameras and spectrometers to collect data from the surface. Last month, the data collected from the MRO brought about a breakthrough in the search for extraterrestrial life. The MRO took images of the surface that showed dark streaks known as ‘recurring slope lineae.’ These streaks appear on steep slopes during the Martian summer and disappear during its winter. Spectroscopic data collected by the MRO has recently shown that within these streaks are
chemical signatures characteristic of solvated perchlorate salts. Due to experiments conducted on Earth, we know that perchlorate salts have a particularly strong ability to depress the melting point of water, hence the compound has found use in things like antifreeze, to melt snow and ice in cold conditions. Spectroscopic data taken from Martian soil by the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2007 showed that the formation of calcium perchlorate salt is prominent all over the surface of Mars, particularly in areas rich in chloride minerals. The evidence for the existence of these salts is supported by the fact that they are known to readily form high concentrations of chloride upon
exposure to the Sun’s ultraviolet light. During Martian summer, surface temperatures can reach the dizzying heights of -20 °C. Now, everyone with even a faint memory of secondary school science knows that water melts at 0 °C. However, the surface of Mars is covered by areas rich in calcium perchlorate that depress the melting point to the point that the ice melts and flows down the steep slopes, leaving the streaks behind in their wake. Therefore, NASA now believes that in high-perchlorate areas flowing water can exist for as much as a few hours a day under Martian summer conditions. News of this breakthrough has proven to be a tremendous step
towards the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Atmospheric studies of Mars have shown that its atmosphere comprises of mostly carbon dioxide and small amounts of other compounds, including water and trace amounts of oxygen. This lack of oxygen heavily restricts the Red Planet’s capacity to support life. However, NASA-funded research conducted by biologist, Dr John Stolz, at the University of Duquesne has shown that oxygen may not be necessary for life to exist. ‘Microbes can survive without oxygen as long as they are provided an alternative, but nothing can survive without water.’ Stolz work, in collaboration with geomicrobiologist, Dr Ronald
Oremland, at the US Geological Survey, California, has involved investigating how microbes can flourish by ingestion and metabolism of arsenic, selenium and perchlorate-based compounds instead of oxygen. The group discovered such microbes underneath Mono Lake in California feeding on the dissolved arsenic compounds. The research into these microbes has been very promising and drawing the conclusion that certain bacteria could survive the extreme conditions of Mars’ surface without oxygen, as long there is a prevalence of essential compounds. The essential compounds being the aforementioned perchlorate salts and flowing water.
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David Morris Science Writer
Microbes can survive without oxygen as long as they are provided an alternative, but nothing can survive without water.’
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.
Due to the discovery of flowing water on Mars, the likelihood that there is or was life on the planet’s surface has raised significantly. However, there is still the problem of cosmic radiation. Mars lacks the magnetosphere that protects its nearest neighbour, Earth, from a constant barrage of high frequency radiation. This radiation has the potential to strip a surface bare of life. A fate that would befall earth if we lost our protection. However, with contemporary research at the University of Duquesne and the discovery of nascent flowing water at Mars’ surface, scientists in the field are speculating that the rocks at the surface level of the Red Planet could offer some form of protection. This hypothesis is heavily supported by the concept of liquid water flowing perchlorate salts and other essential nutrients under the planetary surface, as their existence would be a lot less likely under extreme levels of radiation. It is clear that over the coming years’ research by NASA and its affiliated institutions will show whether our
App of the week: Seashine Alfie Smith Science Editor
Conclusion – 8/10 A visually stimulating journey through the depths of the ocean. Those wanting to play something once and be done with it will enjoy this short experience. However, a larger phone screen may be required to solve some of the gameplay issues.
Press Image 2
This week’s app is a game by Pated SARL. To call it a game seems to put it into the same category as the five minutes on the bus time wasters that most of us have taking up prescious memory on our phones. Seashine is a ‘Poetic journey’ first and a game second. The emphasis is on the visual over the interactive and where game play exists, it is simple. The game starts with you, a lonely squid of some sort, stuck at the bottom of a deep abyss with only one direction to head in. As you travel upwards, forks in the path offer both rewards and startling monsters. This is where Seashine excels, by offering the player the chance to explore the depths through several paths. The challenge comes in finding lost artefacts and avoiding the jaws of predators. Visually, Seashine is stunning, with the jellyfish avatar illuminating the surrounding sea as it passes.
For all the visual joys, there are some gameplay issues. The game, perhaps to its credit, leaves the player with little instruction. This can be quite frustrating. The directional movement is vague and I found that my avatar often moved in a direction that was some way off what I intended. This often led to my avatar dying needlessly and, as is often the case, caused me to rage quit when a highscore was lost at no fault of my own. Perhaps, a larger screen, say a phablet or tablet, with a stylus, would solve these issues. The game is also very short and I found most of material on the first play through.
Epigram
19.10.2015
Letters
@EpigramLetters
Editor: Sophie Hunter shunter.epigram@gmail.com
Is stricter gun legislation really the key to reducing gun crime and mass shootings in the USA? gun laws wouldn’t help reduce the rates of gun crime in the US, seeing as Australia still experiences mass shootings despite its especially strict gun laws. Getting hold of firearms in the US isn’t too difficult, especially when you have a plan to kill. Anyone willing to break one law surely can’t be too concerned about breaking another? As a result, this gun crime taking place in the US, or indeed anywhere else in the world, is going to happen regardless of gun regulations.
I believe gun-owning citizens make the federal government feel insecure
Umpqua Community College’s gun regulations are vague and students hold differing understandings of the student handbook’s gun principles, alongside the state of Oregon’s own gun laws. This ambiguity has raised debate ‘Over the extent of control colleges have in setting their own policies,’ according to Reuters. Assumptions can be made on Chris Harper Mercer’s motivations; he was unemployed and living with a ‘Hyper-protective’ mother at the age of 26 and had a ‘Lack of fulfillment in his isolated life.’ He also posted a comment online saying he had noticed that it was only after spilling ‘A little blood’ does an unknown person step into the ‘Limelight.’ His
An ode to the Great British Bake Off... Erin Beesely Letters Writer Dear Great British Bake Off,
I can be making a cake and it can be a meat pie by the time I’ve finished’. The suggestion that if Flora had made a chocolate mosque ‘She’d have stood a better chance’ is a bitter dig that distracts from the fact that is it a baking contest. The diverse backgrounds of the contestants reveal the show’s attempt to be inclusive and representative of a modern day multicultural British society. Luckily, another bin-gate did not occur, but there was a risqué moment with an exposed sunbather. The final had my flatmates in tears, after falling in love with Nadiya’s facial expressions and wedding cake. Bake Off’s somewhat sugar-coated appearance with pastels, buntings and tea for the judges may be too much for some. But, Bake Off, you cheer up my evenings and I can’t wait for you to be back next year. Yours sincerely, Erin Beesley
mental health was clearly in a poor state and the financial difficulties he and his mother experienced may have prevented him from receiving the relevant treatment, since health insurance carriers often won’t pay for the most expensive but effective treatments in America. In this case and many others, I believe it can be determined that the main problem was the society he was excluded from. So why not cross out the shortcut of tightening gun laws and concentrate on making the society more inclusive? Ignorance creates false perceptions, which leads to unwarranted fear. The ignorant consider guns to have an unlimited capacity for murder. If people knew more about firearms,
what they’re for and how to use them, they would be less afraid. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, ‘If a state expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was and never will be.’ Fundamentally, firearms are for safety. In the US, they are used over 80 times more often to protect a life than to take one. So, if they’re used for safety, why is the government pulling back the reigns on the second amendment? In a way, ‘The government are afraid to trust the people with arms’ as stated by James Madison. I believe gun-owning citizens make the federal government feel insecure, as they are essentially not holding all of the power. The government wants
to control every aspect of citizen’s lives, to them guns are an obstacle to this. So the only thing they can do is implement more gun laws to limit gun ownership. This, in turn, restricts the handing down of control to ordinary US citizens. A common theme of tyrannical regimes is to disarm the populous before engaging in mass murder. If Obama and his contemporaries are able to implement the full gun control programme that they have envisioned, then they too can join the austere political ranks of Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong. Kind regards, Sasha Noble
Tweets of the fortnight: @Amy_Stewart92-
‘You know you’re a Bristol student when you’re genuinely annoyed there’s no quinoa left in Sainsbury’s’
@OliviaMarcus -
‘Already heard during Freshers’ Week: “So what A levels did you do?” It begins. #hownottomakefriends’
@ella_kemp -
‘What possessed me to pay £15 to go to an abandoned courtroom and pretend to dance to trance music with girls with scrunchies #bristol’
Anything in this issue catch your eye? Disagree with an article? Want to respond to our writers? Flickr / Nocolas Connault
Thank you for making the start of second year bearable; you got me through hangovers, inspired communal scone baking and continued to educate me on baking innuendos. Although the majority of the series was screened over summer, the final in-tents weeks (pun-intended) resulted in flat nights in with cups of tea. This is why I love Bake Off. It may just be a baking show but there’s a reason it has now been exported to 20 other countries. The broad appeal is proven by the 352k strong twitter page. Although the food innuendos weren’t as regular this year, you still came up with some fabulous one liners: ‘Why have they given you paperclips, for filing you soufflé?’ and perhaps the best opening line to a baking show, ‘I’m quite random.
Flickr / Peretz Partensky
Yet again, America has had another mass shooting. This time at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, carried out by 26-yearold Chris Harper Mercer. Quoting President Obama, mass shootings are becoming ‘routine’ in the US. Everyone is blaming its second amendment – but are guns really the problem? The US has on average 88 guns for every 100 citizens, with a murder rate of 4.7 per 100,000. Russia on the other hand has 8.9 guns per 100 citizens with a murder rate of 9.2 (nearly double that of the US). Interestingly, the murder rate of the UK is only one per 100,000. But these numbers are misrepresentative as a murder only counts if there is a conviction, thus, they don’t include unsolved cases. And finally, Switzerland has around 45 guns for every 100 citizens and only a 0.6 murder rate. So, how do we explain Russia’s high murder rate if gun ownership is so low? When looking at gun fatality by state, Alabama has a gun ownership of 53 per cent and a 4.5 murder rate (slightly above the national average), whilst Washington DC has a 3.6 per cent gun ownership rate, and a 21.8 murder rate. As for Oregon, the state has a gun ownership of 39.8 per cent and a murder rate of 2.0. So far, we can assume that gun ownership does not necessarily correlate to murder rate. This suggests gun laws aren’t solely responsible for America’s infamously high murder rate. Likewise, in my opinion, tougher
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Sasha Noble Letters Writer
Join the writer’s Facebook page: Epigram Letters 2015/16 and write in!
Epigram
Puzzles Crossword
1513
Editors: Suzie Brown and Andrea Phillipou getinvolved@epigram.org.uk
How much local knowledge have you gained in your first month here? Test your knowledge with this week’s crossword. 1
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Wanted: Comic artists
ACROSS 1. Bristol football club in League 2 (6) 4. Nightclub situated off Stokes Croft (6) 6. Bristol’s nightclub on a boat (6) 9. Mayor of Bristol, famous for wearing red trousers (6,8) 10. Building on Brandon Hill offering a view of the city (5,5) 12. Museum on Princes Wharf (1,4) 14. Bristol suburb where several halls of residence are situated (5,6) 15. Home of Bristol SU (8,8) 16. Wills Memorial Building’s bell (5,6) 17. Bristol SU’s café/bar (3,7)
DRAW YOUR COMIC
EMAIL TO editor@epigram.org.uk
DOWN 2. Green space behind Physics building (5,4,7) 3. Viaduct over Avon gorge designed by Brunel (7,10,6) 5. Bristol West MP elected in May (7,10) 7. Plasticine man and dog created by Nick Park (7,3,6) 8. Location of this year’s freshers fair (11) 10. Steep historic street connecting Colston Avenue to Colston Street (9,5) 11. Hall of residence located at centre of university precinct (3,9) 13. Bristol museum ship, originally launched in 1843 (1,1,5,7)
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FIND IT IN OUR NEXT ISSUE
Word grid How many words can you find including the middle letter, with at least four letters per word? 12 = Average 16 = Good 20 = Excellent
19.10.2015
C A R E B R Y N R
Numerator
Decode the clues to work out what the numbers represent. (E.g. 7 D in a W = 7 days in a week)
GRADUATE OPEN EVENING 4 NOVEMBER 2015
LSE offers taught and research graduate degrees across the social sciences. Come to our Open Evening to meet our eminent faculty, explore our central London campus and discover where an LSE degree could take you. Book online now at lse.ac.uk/ OpenEveningEpigram
54 B in a J S 29 D in F on a L Y 6 W of H the E 13 is a B D 40 A is D in T
Answers will be revealed online at epigram.org.uk
Epigram 19.10.2015
University Sponsored Content 4
Your vision for the University of Bristol Over the next few months we will be developing a new University vision and strategy, with students, staff and the Bristol community right at the heart of the process. We want to develop the new strategy collaboratively, and to involve you in the discussions and the decisions that will shape both your own student experience and the future of our University. ‘Students are the beating heart of any university; you are our ambassadors, our legacy and our reason for being here.’ Professor Hugh Brady, University ViceChancellor and President. The consultation process to develop the new strategy begins this month; the website (bristol.ac.uk/strategy-consultation) has all the details. There will be numerous opportunities for you to get involved, including roundtable discussions, a Question Time-style debate, and other face-to-face events, as well as via email and online discussion.
Get involved bristol.ac.uk/strategy-consultation Sign up for events, or join the discussion on Facebook and Yammer
Bristol has a new Vice-Chancellor for the first time in 14 years, and this alone would have brought about some changes. In addition, the University is due to renew its vision and strategy for the next five to ten years. This adds up to a huge opportunity for you to make your voice and your opinions heard and acted upon. One of the Vice-Chancellor’s first priorities is to look at what we offer you, both inside and outside the classroom. He wants to set a course to improve our provision for students, and to offer you the support that you need to achieve your ambitions. As part of this, he is encouraging you to contribute to the strategy consultation process, and in doing so, to join him, and the greater University community, in paving the way forward. ‘In my first few months I want to work with the Bristol community to develop a new vision and strategy for the University. I want our vision to be exciting and ambitious, and to capture the enthusiasm that I have already sensed to take a step forward. You, as students, are absolutely key to this process. I would urge you to take part, and share with me your hopes and dreams for your time here at Bristol.’ Professor Brady stated in his welcome talk to students.
University of Bristol
‘The more students get involved, the more meaningful it is going to be and the better the outcome.’ said Professor Brady. The Vice-Chancellor will be attending all of the consultation events, so you can speak with him directly and let him know your hopes both for your time here and your views on the best way forward for the University.
Why all the fuss?
Why should I get involved?
University of Bristol
Improvements to the Sports Pass system This system has been developed jointly by the University’s Sport, Exercise and Health (SEH) and Bristol Students’ Union, with student feedback central to its development. Here’s a summary of the biggest changes
Swim-only pass
In response to one of the most frequently made comments about the previous system, there is now a swimonly pass. The Active Swim pass costs from £185/year, which works out at under £4/week.
Cheaper access to Sports Club training sessions Under the previous system, members of clubs and societies required the relevant sports pass to access their club training sessions, which could cost as much as £260 per year if club sessions fell within peak usage times.
The newly-created Get Active pass allows for entry into club training sessions and only costs £50, making the cost of participation for many much cheaper.
One payment for everything
In the past, a separate Sport and Health fee was payable to Bristol SU by sports club members when signing up to their club, while other activities delivered by the SU such as Fit & Fab or Get Active sessions also had a separate cost. These separate payments are now all included in the Get Active sports pass.
This is your home for the next year or more. By helping to shape the longer-term plans for the University and its future direction, not only will you enhance your own student experience, you will also play an important role in changing the University landscape. Much has changed over the past decade: from the increase in tuition fees, and the removal of the limit on the number of undergraduate students we can take who achieve particular grades, to the recession and subsequent, rather fragile, economic recovery. But what changes will the next five years bring? What do you think a university of the future should look like? Included in the University’s current vision is the desire to be ‘a centre for intellectually demanding, research-informed education that nurtures independence of mind and helps students achieve their personal goals and serve society’s needs, both during and after their time here’. Is it? How could the University do this better?
This is your chance to bring your vision to the fore and make your views heard. The student voice is powerful – use it! The Vice-Chancellor wants to hear your views – both blue-skies thinking about what the University should look like several years down the line, and more immediate concerns such as your studies, your extra-curricular opportunities, or your prospects after graduation. The University will do its absolute best to act on your suggestions. We’ve introduced Mediasite, a new lecture recording system that captures audio and slide content of formal lectures. The aim is to help you engage more fully during lectures, and to allow review of your lectures for better comprehension and revision. This was introduced directly as a result of your feedback. Are there other technology innovations you think would help?
The Big Ideas in Science course allowed students to be taught collaboratively across disciplines and explore ideas beyond those taught on their course. Topics included Knowledge and Reality, Symmetry, and Science & Society with questions raised such as ‘how quantum mechanics can change the future of technology’ and ‘how our brain helps us navigate the world’. Would you like to see more inter-disciplinary opportunities like this to study topics outside of your course? Or opportunities to study in other universities, abroad or in different types of organisations? Given our location in the heart of the city, what changes might we make to achieve a more student-friendly campus? On a sunny day Royal Fort Gardens and the outdoor spaces around the Life Sciences and Physics buildings are alive with students. What other changes could be made to make our public spaces more welcoming? Do you feel you know about all the spaces open to you? If not, how could we improve the navigation of these? The Wessex 16 bus service was introduced last year, which provides a transport link between the Stoke Bishop halls of residences and the central campus. What else could be done to connect our campus across the city? Better transportation? More bicycle lanes and pedestrian areas? More bike schemes? Once refurbished, Beacon House will provide a central meeting and information point for students. Would other recognisable help/ information points be a welcome addition? What would they need to provide to be useful? Past feedback from students has led to improvements in many areas, including a new sports pass system to help make sport and physical activity more accessible to students, better IT services and facilities, more transparent explanation of fees, and increased investment in library resources for Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, as well as in new study and teaching spaces. This is your chance to bring your vision to the fore and make your views heard. The student voice is powerful – use it!
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Ways to get involved Student soundings
Throughout November there will be four informal discussion sessions, which are open to all students. The Vice-Chancellor will attend all of them, first outlining the aim of the strategy and then joining in conversation around tables. Please do come along to one of them.
A Facebook page for the University vision and strategy consultation has been set up – ‘like’ it and post your views. www.facebook.com/groups/uobstrategy/
Focus groups Smaller,more directed discussions on particular topics will also be running from October to December. You will need to register for these in advance and places, limited to 20, will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. These groups are open to students and staff.
Yammer discussion forum
Surgery sessions
Yammer is the University’s social media platform. It’s similar to Facebook but only those with University of Bristol email addresses are able to join our Yammer groups. The ViceChancellor is on it already, as are a number of senior staff members and academics. Set up an account (details below), search for the Vision and Strategy Consultation Forum, and join the discussion.
You can opt for a one-to-one with Professor Nick Lieven, one of the University’s Pro ViceChancellors, which will provide you with an uninterrupted 10 minutes to share your views. These need to be booked in advance.
You can find details about how to set up a Yammer account by searching for ‘Yammer’ on the website or using this URL: bristol.ac.uk/it-services/applications/office/ yammer.html.
Question Time event Don’t miss the Vice-Chancellor’s Question Time on Tuesday, 27 October, from 6pm to 8pm in the Anson Rooms. Submit a question, or just come along to hear the debate.
Submit comments online You can submit comments via email to: uobvisionandstrategy-consultation@bristol.ac.uk or anonymously via a form on the website: bristol. ac.uk/strategy-consultation.
Building a campus to benefit students Many of the new projects in the University’s capital investment programme stem from student feedback and the desire to improve the student experience, with investment in everything from sports facilities to new books and journals. Professor Guy Orpen, Deputy ViceChancellor: ‘The refurbishment of libraries, creation of new study spaces and teaching facilities, and improvement to accommodation are all key priorities to ensure all our students have the best possible learning environment and experience while studying here.’
Some Current Projects Grace Reeves Study Centre on University Road will provide a new learning hub for 120 students.
Beacon House, formerly Habitat on the Triangle, will be a flagship new facility containing 350 additional study spaces, a café and a large reception space for students and visitors. The £12 million refurbishment is due to be completed in Spring 2016. Coombe Dingle Sports Centre is receiving a £3.5 million investment in additional student sports facilities, synthetic sports pitches, changing facilities and tennis courts. Design work is under way and current plans are to complete work by the end of 2016.
Vision and Strategy Consultation Forum on Yammer A forum to share ideas, leave comments and discuss questions and issues that will help shape our new vision and strategy. The forum will also host a YamJam on 4 December: this will be a one-day event that will see staff and students discussing various questions at different times of the day on yammer.
Your questions answered On Tuesday 27 October from 6pm to 8pm, the University and Bristol SU will host a Question Time-style debate with the University’s ViceChancellor, other key staff members, and student representatives. It will be chaired by the editor of Epigram. The event will take place in the Anson Rooms, in the Students’ Union (Richmond Building), and will be open to everyone, although places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. University of Bristol
Not sure what some of the terms mean? Here’s a key word glossary: Consultation The action or process of formally discussing and taking into account different issues or ideas. (The University plans to talk to lots of different people in the University community – staff, students, alumni and others with a connection to the University – as part of the strategy consultation.) Inter-disciplinary Relating to more than one branch of knowledge. Jam An online brainstorming event in which participants can have a conversation or share ideas on a range of issues in real time, from anywhere. Question Time Question Time is a BBC television programme in which political and media figures answer questions
This is a fantastic opportunity to pose your questions to a panel, including the Vice-Chancellor, and hear their responses, and to spark a wider discussion among your peers. The issues raised – whether they focus on accommodation, value for money, student-staff ratios, or other matters affecting your student experience – will be fed into the consultation process, and will help shape the future direction for the University.
from the public. At Bristol, the University and the Students’ Union plan to host an event in a similar format, where students will be able to ask the Vice-Chancellor and other key staff members questions.) Sounding Something that is done to find out what people think about something. Vice-Chancellor (VC) Chief executive of a university; the person who runs the university. (At the University of Bristol the official title is Vice-Chancellor and President, and Professor Hugh Brady has taken up this role as of September this year. He is the academic and administrative head, of the University and is publicly accountable for the University’s finances.)
Got a question? You’ll need to submit your question in advance, by Thursday 22 October, via email to: editor@epigram.org.uk.
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Epigram Living Section 2015/16
Goodbye Auntie Amber
Cranes Take Over Bristol Bristol is under attack from enourmous metal monsters. Only a couple of months ago, a giant spider set itself down in Queen’s Square and proceeded to blast flame and Massive Attack tunes into the air. Just last weekend I watched three cranes hypnotise thousands of Bristolians with a majestic slow dance, set in time to eerie, echoing Bhangra music. Jokes aside, these ridiculous and bizarre events are symptoms of the reason you made the right choice in attending Bristol; despite being relatively small, the city is absolutely packed with artists, organisers, and general people-who-make-cool-stuff-happen. During my time here I’ve seen the city host everything from a 90m water slide on Park street, to an enormous firework display in the gorge, and even auditions for the new Star Wars film. So next time you’re facing a third-consecutive-day of tv binges, I’d recommend taking a break, and going for a walk down to Harbourside, Clifton or Stokes Croft, you never know what you’ll come across.
Will Soer
Open Clipart Vectors
This Halloween, it is with regret that we must inform you that our beloved Auntie Amber fell victim to a crowd of bloodthirsty mutant zombies. Although she was extremely brave and, initially, attempted to forge weapons from household items including a questionnably large wooden baton, a blindingly diamantéd rave outfit and a fresh pair of doc martins, she has now left the Living section for good. RIP. If anyone is interested, however, there will be an ‘Ode to the avocado’ themed funeral held in her name in the Student’s Union this coming weekend. Bring avocados, your tears, and a couple of good movies. Goodbye Auntie Amber, you will be sorely missed. Fortunately last year’s Agony Aunt and Uncle James and Rachel have graciously offered to take over, whilst vehemently denying having anything to do with her murder.
19.10.2015
Dear James and Rachael, It seems that I am destined to be single. I have been at university for three years, and although there have been some boys with promise, I seem to have failed to keep a boy keen. What’s worse, all of these boys seem to move on to relationships with girls I know. They don’t dislike me, all of them are now good friends, but I feel like I am the kind of girl who’s every guys’ best mate. I manage to pull guys and go on dates, but something just stops things from going any further. James says: Is it me or Sam Smith you want? Because to me, this sounds a lot like a ‘pity party’ record. I have these moments standing next to couples’ cute arguing about what dinners to cook each other in the aisles of Sainsbury’s. I want to stuff, bake, and eat them they make me so hungry to not be alone. But then I walk on, and that’s got to be your focus. It may be that you’re too confident and independent for a lot of people. I feel like you’ve approached your past with rose-tinted spectacles. After all, you didn’t spend enough time with these guys to get to know them. Chances are they wouldn’t have stacked up to much as boyfriends. But perhaps you could ask some of these guys for some advice on what to do differently? Rachael says: Try and see this issue with some clarity – you’ve been friendzoned, not blacklisted – so there’s no need to consider it a personal attack. Your first and only issue here is the negative image you hold of yourself. It is easy to fall into the feeling that there are the ‘successful’ girls and then there is you, and this is a slippery slope towards spinsterhood. Always remember, boys at our age are bound to be least twice as fickle, immature, and – let’s face it – randy, as you. Not being able to bag one for the long term doesn’t classify you an alien, it makes you very, very normal. Instead of treating university as a three-year race towards a relationship, use it for doing what you like to do – the right person will be attracted to that drive. Rachel and James
Pranks to Last a Lifetime Trick or treat-ing is undoutbedly every child’s favourite thing about Halloween and as I am in possession of the sweetest tooth around, mine too. As a keen prankster, however, I can’t help but be disappointed by the preference towards treats that seem to display themselves. But just because people are forthcoming with their sweeties, it definitely doesn’t mean that you can’t have your cake and prank them too! Here’s a round up of my 5 best pranks (so far), from smiling dogs to mistaken identity: 1. Kirby the Dog Oh, Kirby - a poor little dog with the ugliest smile you’ve ever seen. For a school leavers prank, a few friends and I printed out hundreds of copies of the photograph and pinned it in all of the most odd and unexpected places we could think of - under toilet seats, piano lids and inside cupboards - as well as the obvious doors and whiteboards. The cherry on top of the cake has got to be how clueless everyone was as to whom the culprits were. It was almost impossible to escape from Kirby that day. 2. German Doppelganger Granted, I haven’t played this one myself, but I almost wet myself laughing when I read about it, so I thought I’d share. A legendary American guy decided to find some random German on Facebook and recreate his entire online persona as a Halloween costume. After walking around as him for the night, and posing in identical situations, our US friend proceeded to send him a stream of these photographs. Some say creepy, I say downright ingenious!
3.Toothpaste Oreos You could argue that this next one is a waste of Oreos, but maybe it’s worth the money to get back at that flatmate who always eats your biscuits. Without breaking the biscuits, scrape the filling out of however many Oreos you’re willing to use, refill with toothpaste, and set in the fridge. The next day, offer them around, and enjoy the show! 4.Toasty warm Make as many slices of toast as possible. Then fill your flatmate’s shower with them- stick them anywhere and everywhere, and enjoy the effect. This may seem odd, but bear with. The randomness of opening your shower door to see toast EVERYWHERE is something no one will ever forget. It’s a simple, yet pantwettingly funny, and a great way to get rid of stale bread! (Don’t do this if they’re gluten intolerant though, that’s just cruel.) 5.Mistaken Identity For a friend’s 16th birthday, I decided that it would be a good idea to pretend to have changed her name by deed poll. Given that this was one of the things she could now legally do, I could see her falling for it quite easily, and she sure did. I superimposed official letterheads onto some fancy paper, chose the name Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock, and the job was done! For added effect, I had the school we were at ring her to apologise for the short delay in processing her new details, which really sealed the deal! Her attempts to be grateful for the ‘present’ were admirable, given that she later admitted to having been seething with rage. The success of this prank made me worry that I’d peaked, but never fear, there are plenty more around the corner. Maya Colwell
19.10.2015
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RidiculousCostumes: Halloween Haunts The Joys and Horrors Brandi Korte
October has crept up on us. Sadly, so has the rain and the university workload. After three years of study at Bristol, I still can’t hack working within the silent walls of the libraries; doesn’t anyone else get that caged animal feeling? Instead, I take studying opportunities to seek out wonderful cafes, comforting myself over deadlines and hangovers with a slice of cake and a coffee. With 31st October just around the corner, I’m sharing my top Bristol café haunts and spooky events. The below are perfect if you fancy embracing Halloween and trying out some delicious food and drink treats or experiencing some cultural spooks! Bristol Zombie Walk
Will Soer
I have a part-time job, aside from my student life, and most of the people I work with are quiet, middleaged Bristolians, none of whom I would really peg as hard partiers. One day towards the end of last year, I was talking to one of the quieter, more shy women at work about my recent frivolities at Love Saves The Day and she responded by showing me a photo of a woman wearing a ridiculous full-body green lizard onesie. To my surprise, she revealed that this was her, ‘you may as well just go all out for these things.’
Sounds bizarre but it’s a good laugh and a pretty good way to get in the Halloween mood. Meet on College Green at 12pm 31st October, kitted out to the nines in zombie gear – be inventive (google the event for costume inspiration – there are some pretty creative and gross ideas, you’ve been warned)! Join the zombie rabble march, or rather limp, around Bristol, for an imaginative way to explore the city and embrace Halloween – or, if you don’t want to get involved directly, make sure you get a good view of the action by checking out the route online!
Cisc 1970
However, there are risks worth considering. Last year I decided to go to Lakota as ‘the cloud’, carrying a file marked ‘Jennifer Laurence nudes’ and wearing a white t-shirt, with all of my visible skin painted white, right down to the eyelids. This was monumentally stupid for two reasons. Firstly, it was an irritatingly specific and not-very-funny joke, the explanation of which became really bloody tiring.
A stark change from school trips, family outings or cute dates would be this chance to watch either Paranormal Activity or The Conjuring, before trying a ‘blood-curdling after dark experience around the Zoo.’ Don’t be fooled by the usual child friendly venue, this is 18+ and is guaranteed to provoke some chills. Check out www.bristolzoo.org.uk for the details. Wide Eyes: A Nightmare On Moon Street
She was right. This Halloween I heartily recommend that - regardless of how outgoing you are in everyday life - you get dressed up like an absolute maniac, and head down to one of Bristol’s clubs (except Pryzm, #neverforget). There’s a tacit understanding in these places on Halloween that you can do and be whatever you want for the night, without judgement, so relax and let go!
There’s a tacit understanding in these places that you can do whatever you want for the night, without judgement
Bristol Zoo: Fright Night!
Wide Eyes’ Halloween event on the 30th is always a smasher, combining three clubs (Lakota, Blue Mountain and Coroner’s Court), copious decor and a massive musical lineup, headlined this year by Bondax and DJ Hype. If you want to spend halloween shaking your skeleton, this is your best bet. Jess Alcock
The Shazam Diaries
Secondly - and far more significantly - at 1am I realised that due to the heat and humidity of the club, all of the dried paint on my body had reverted to its previous liquid state, encasing me in a sticky white tomb of discomfort. In short, I had managed to make a costume that was trying to be clever, instead achieving functional stupidity. Will Soer
Flickr: Eva 313
Maya Colwell
Robert Karkowski
Oh Tamal, let me count the ways in which I crush on thee... You had me from cake week, you crusty temptress. The way you kneaded that bread sent a shiver down my spine. Your game pie would have earned you more than a handshake from me, that I can guarantee. A baker, a healer and a jokerthere’s no end to to the marvels of this spicemaster. You may not have the bake off trophy but you’re a winner in my eyes.
Will Soer
Crush of the week: Tamal Ray
One day you’re going to be sitting in your driverless Google car on the way to work, flipping through emails on your 16-inch iPhone 12S with the radio on in the background, and suddenly you’ll find yourself transported back to your time in Bristol. An intense wave of memories will hit you; gurning in Motion, grinding in Bunker, gravy chips-ing outside Bunker (it’s ok if you don’t recognise the last verb there, I’m guessing you’re a fresher?). This probably won’t be because of some new psycho-invasive advertising technique, but rather because of a song on the radio. More than any other artform, music is capable of soaking up your emotions, beliefs and sensations, so that when you revisit it you can find yourself drenched in memory. With The Shazam Diaries, Epigram Living and Music’s new online crosssection feature, our aim is to document Bristol student life through the sounds that accompany it; not just the songs on constant Capital FM rotation, but all of the music that soundtracked the awesome or tender moments of your University years. Check out the first instalment online, featuring music from Foals, Drake and Four Tet, and if you have any tracks that bring you back to specific Bristol moments, please send a short paragraph about them to will.soer@gmail.com. Will Soer
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Editor Izzie Fernades
Deputy Editor Tom Horton
Online Editors Issy Montgomery; Becky Scott
19.10.2015
getinvolved@epigram.org.uk
Join us at: Epigram Food Section 2015/16
Follow us at: epigram_eats_out
Food for Thought: Photos Worth Drooling Over Instagram has over 100 million monthly users, many of whom are taking snaps of food - whether it’s dishes they’ve made or meals they’ve had out and about. But if drooling over food on your Instagram feed isn’t enough, Zack Rose has some snaps from foodie hotspots right on your doorstep. Share your foodie with us on Instagram posts using the hashtag #epilife Trade Wind Café, Whiteladies Rd. Bread with espresso butter for if you’re feeling adventerous!
Rosemarino, Clifton, great options for all at all times of day
The Mint Room, Clifton. Pricier option- take the parents!
The Burger Joint, Whiteladies Rd.
Trade Wind Café, Whiteladies Rd - an eggcelent brunch!
5 best places to eat salad in Bristol Trying to be healthy? Ellie Jacobs shares her favourite salad destinations around University
QED
THE HUB
This little find on Cotham Hill offers exciting energising eats. From kale and beetroot salads to acai bowls, you’ll leave feeling the glow despite the amount of jaegerbombs you consumed last night. Students can get a fresh juice and salad for just £6.50.
Perfectly located at a stone’s throw from the ASS library on St Michael Hill’s, this quaint little café run by a welcoming South African leaves you spoilt for choice with the salad selection. For under a fiver, you’ll be given a huge plate full of goodies such as falafel, humous, avocado, cheeses and a side of bread!! It really does make going back to the library all the more bearable.
SANDWICH SANDWICH
SCHNAFEL
CAFÉ GUSTO
Aside from the classic wraps and burgers, this little gem next to Clifton Downs Station offers great salad boxes and an endless supply of humous. Both the halloumi and schnitzel go perfectly with the roasted veg, chickpeas and quinoa on offer. Another perk: if you come here after 5:30pm you get 30 per cent off your bill!
Popular with students and locals alike, this tiny café has a huge range of salady goodies to choose from. From sweet potato to falafel, you grab a box and fill it yourself with as many green goodies as you can fit inside. Be sure to miss the lunchtime queues however, as Sandwich Sandwich can be very busy.
My personal favourite salad in Bristol. Similarly to QED, the concept is one of ‘create your own’. Main toppings range from 5 kinds of chicken to cheeses to smoked salmon and grilled aubergines. With a takeaway box priced at only £4.25, on a sunny day it’s the perfect picnic to sit on the green. The smoothies and ice coffees are also winners.
19.10.2015
Halloween Inspiration:
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Fruit and Veg: Think Local
Isabelle Fernandes explores the independent fruit and veg stores on Gloucester Road, and explains why she will never go back to Sainsbury’s for fresh produce This is the kind of recipe that the chances are, you may not even have to leave the house to put together, and comes in two varieties- one a little more dark and bitter, the other, lighter (in colour) and more delicate. The choice depends on what you have at hand! (recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson)
INGREDIENTS: 125g unsalted butter 150g caster sugar pinch of salt Two eggs, beaten (with a fork will do) 150g self-raising flour EITHER: 100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces 300g marmalade (30p from Sainsbury’s) OR: 120g white chocolate 300g lemon curd
RECIPE: Preheat the oven to 180°C. Melt the butter in a saucepan on a low heat, and when it’s completely melted, stir in the chocolate. Take off the heat as soon as it has slightly softened, or the chocolate will burn. Now mix until they have melded together. Add the marmalade or curd, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir until well amalgamated (if using marmalade, don’t worry if it’s lumpy). Beat in the flour little by little- five portions should be amply gradual. Pop in the oven for 50 minutes or until a piece of dry spaghetti speared in comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes and either top with icing sugar, or if you’re feeling fancy, some grated zest of orange or lemon. Now, gorge yourself or use on unsuspecting peers.
Recipe and Images: Maya Colwell
The transition from first year to second year brings with it all sorts of changes. For those of us who were sufficiently isolated in Stoke Bishop, access to a supermarket meant a trek across the downs; no mean feat when all you want are some groceries. I spent the first weeks of term popping in and out of the Clifton Down Sainsbury’s. The novelty of this nearby supermarket experience, especially thanks to the Number 16 bus, meant that spending almost £10 on just fruit and vegetables for the week seemed entirely reasonable.
Once you’ve experienced this magical land of fruit and vegetables, you’ll never look back Alas, in the space of a few short weeks, I will never walk down Sainsbury’s fruit and vegetable aisle with the same satisfaction as I did in those first weeks of term. All it took was a friend of mine, a recent convert to local produce, to show me just how much the privately run fruit shops on Gloucester road had to offer. Once you’ve experienced this magical land of fruit and vegetables, you’ll never look back - particularly for the vegetarians and health fanatics amongst you. It is easy to leave a grocery shop on Gloucester Road having ticked off nearly your entire shopping list. That said, whether a vegan or carnivore, this is no ordinary shopping experience. If five nectarines for 99p, blueberries for £1 or three avocados for 99p doesn’t sell it, then the authentic weighing and wrapping of every item should do it.There are a few of these wonderful shops on Gloucester road and each really is an oasis of color and
freshness. Admittedly, my personal favorite is the smaller of the storesm, and having befriended its owner Abdil with our regular visits, a further ten per cent discount has more than halved the cost of my original Sainsbury’s shop. Supermarkets are of course undeniably convenient and as well stocked as his shop is, you probably won’t find your wine or washing powder with Abdil. But if you’re in Redland, Gloucester Road is not as out of the way as you might think. This road is an oasis of cheap goodness and will undoubtedly revolutionize your shopping experience.
Club Haus goes ‘BUST’?
Bristol University Sustainability Team hosted one of their first events of the year Club Haus. Liam Robinson popped down to harbourside to find out a bit more Luckily, not in the bankrupt sense! On Monday 5th October, Club Haus played host to Bristol University Sustainability Team (BUST) and their Engage Café. A modern café with a riverside location, Club Haus managed to fit 60+ attendees for the event as well as supplying a delicious vegetarian curry and a free drink for 50 of those in conjunction with the Wriggle app. Wriggle is a business that allows users to purchase food at cheaper prices at many local independent cafés and restaurants around the city and kindly offered the free deal (usually worth £5) for the BUST members who attended. Featuring guest speakers from Bristol Fairtrade, The Bristol Fish Project and FoodCycle, as well as short speeches from Wriggle and VegSoc, the event was promoting and encouraging sustainable behaviour with regards to food. Alice-Marie Archer-Forster from Bristol Fish Project gripped the audience with passionate and inspiring ideas about various projects she was working on, including ‘O My Goodness’, an app designed to promote healthy eating options to children. By scanning barcodes on food products through a smartphone, a virtual ‘monster’ on the app will take on attributes according to the food item that was scanned, with healthier foods having better characteristics and more advantages. Talking about how we interact with food from a different angle was Elaine Ashley, who was representing Bristol Fairtrade. She argued that for a truly sustainable food system, you need to give workers respect and insure that everyone has enough to live by. Sustainability not only encompasses the source and transit of the food but includes the workers and their families, too. Bristol Foodcycle discussed how they do their work in the
community, being the only FoodCycle hub that solely rely on cyclists to transport the food on trailers rather than using cars and vans. They talked about how imperative it is that supermarkets should be donating their waste food to the vulnerable and those at risk of food poverty; ‘Food Poverty and Food Waste shouldn’t co-exist.’ For anyone interested in attending BUST’s next Engage Café, they are hosted on the first Monday of every month and the next theme is Sustainable Economics. BUST run a variety of events throughout the year to raise awareness about sustainability and the local environment. In order to find out more about the society, have a look at the facebook group:www.facebook.com/groups/BristolUniST.
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Editor Camilla Gash
Deputy Editor Ella Ennos-Dann
Online Editor Annabel Lindsay
cgash@epigram.org.uk
eennosdann@epigram.org.uk
alindsay@epigram.org.uk
@e2travel
@epigram_travel
19.10.2015
Epigram Travel Section 2015/16
Close encounters of the creepy kind Charlotte Wass tells us about a hair-raising night spent in the company of crocodiles and creepy crawlies.
Deep in the Australian wilderness, in the Kimberley region to be precise, I found myself sat on a river bank watching the water flow gently by. The ferocious heat of that day was beginning to cool off as the sun sank slowly in the horizon. The perfect depiction of serenity, you might think... All except for the bask of crocodiles that were lazing on the river bank just across the water from where I was sat, some of them eight feet long.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through a German airport, chaos was ensuing. Picture: grounded flights, screaming children worried Santa wouldn’t find them at an airport and frazzled parents shouting in various languages trying to get home.
We eventually arrived at the airport at 5am and had to wait until our check-in desk opened. Restless and unable to sleep sitting upright, I took a little walk and made an awful discovery. London Luton – ANULLIERT (cancelled). Scheiße. We had three options: stay put and be on standby for the 6pm Manchester flight; get ourselves to Berlin for a flight at 11pm; or head to Cologne for a 4pm flight. Eventually we decided we were better off heading to Cologne as it was closest, would in theory get us home the soonest and at least we were heading towards England, not away from it. We made our way, bleary-eyed to the train station and used the downtime on the train journey to fill our parents in on our misfortunate. But the worst was yet to come.
Easier said than done. Not only were we fast running out of cash — my credit card having already taken quite a hit paying for alternative Christmas Eve flights — but Christmas Eve in Germany is the main day to celebrate Christmas. That meant public transport was running on reduced schedules and there were minimal staff attempting to deal with the snow induced chaos. Eventually we (illegally) boarded a train to Brussels and hoped this might be the means of transport that would finally take us home. After an hour or so the train stopped and we were told to disembark. By this point we were somewhere in the Belgian countryside and the snow was piled up next to the tracks to waist height. I was not hopeful of us getting much further. After much confusion, we were herded on to a rickety train that I wasn’t convinced could plough through the still-falling snow. But plough through it did and after a few tense but surprisingly jolly and festive hours with our fellow unlucky international travellers, we arrived in Brussels to be met by my Dad who had blagged his way onto the last tunnel crossing. A dash to catch the last returning channel crossing and a speeding ticket later we arrived back on English soil around 2am having been awake around forty hours. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! Amber Bartlett
- Travelgram Japanese jellyfish, photo by Ella Ennos-Dann
These series of unfortunate events started at about 3am on Christmas eve in 2010 when, after a few lovely, snowy days near Düsseldorf brushing up our German skills, two friends and I started trying to make our way to the airport to return home. We hadn’t been to sleep, instead preferring to prop up our favourite bar for a few more hours, so by the time we got in the taxi for the ninety-minute ride to the airport, we all began to nod off. Our slumber was rudely awakened as our taxi skidded violently across the motorway, only for the driver to regain control just before we hit the barrier.
Eight hours later, just fifteen minutes before boarding, the cancellation of our second flight of the day was announced. This time when we rang our parents it was to inform them we weren’t sure if we’d be coming home for Christmas. Christmas is a big deal at our house and as the only child my presence is mandatory. My Dad took charge and told us to get ourselves as close to Calais as possible.
manner I’m ashamed to admit that, faced with this spider, I was not so Bear Grylls about the situation; I screamed, ran away and had a little cry before I tentatively made my way back over to my tent to assess the situation. The spider was not to be seen so I hastily gathered up my belongings, threw them into the canoe and pushed myself out into the river. As I passed them, I gave the crocodiles a grateful smile, letting them know I was eternally thankful that they chose not to eat me. I made my way on down the river, contemplating what would be waiting for me at my next stop, and praying that whatever it was didn’t have eight legs.
Michael Summers
The nightmare before Christmas
Charlotte Wass
Charlotte Charlotte Wass Wass
I had heard that they were nothing to fear, for they were kept well fed by the nearby cattle farm that allegedly lost at least a cow a week to these crocs. I had little choice but to trust these tales as my only other option would be to canoe further downstream to set up camp for the night and, as the light was fading fast, I figured that here was as safe a place as any. I leant back, enjoying my surroundings, only to find a decaying corpse of both a snake and a lizard inches from my arm. On closer inspection it became apparent that the snake had quite literally bitten off more than it could chew. Having attempted to feast on a lizard that was too big, the snake had then died from a severe case of indigestion. It was grossly intriguing and I found myself wondering if I did end up being eaten by a crocodile whether I too would be substantial enough to then kill the crocodile and perhaps wiggle my way back out. I decided that it was highly unlikely and figured I’d be safest in my little tent. I clambered in and secured the zips the best I could in an attempt to fool myself that the thin sheet of nylon would be enough to keep me safe from more than five hundred kilograms of crocodile. I slept with one eye open and was thankful when dawn broke and I was able to pack up my tent in order to continue my way along the river. I was just rolling up my sleeping mat, feeling relieved and bizarrely proud of the fact I had slept alongside crocodiles when a huge and incredibly angry spider ran out from beneath the mat. You may wonder how you can tell when a spider is angry, but when it charges at you with its mouth open and fangs bared you can tell he’s not a happy chappy. I’d seen some hefty spiders during my time in Australia but this one was by far the worst. Having faced off the crocodiles in such a cool and collected
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Harrowing Hiroshima fingernails that were on display. Visitors read about how the skin of victims’ fingers literally peeled away due to the radiation exposure and long black nails grew in their place. Those lucky enough to survive the first day and longer found that these new black nails contained blood vessels that bled when they broke. It sounds like something from a horror film. The most distressing part for me was reading the memoirs of some of the victims. Horrific imagery is fed to you through their words, leaving you feeling distraught for these people, whilst at the same time physically sick. One story that stands out for me in particular was about a pregnant lady found dead with her baby partially born and dead between her legs. Other stories included people who lost their whole families and stories of false hope when a family member survived the initial blast but died slowly and painfully in the weeks following from radiation poisoning. It breaks my heart that, despite all of this, nuclear weapons still exist in our world today. In the Peace Park they have a ‘peace flame.’ It is stated that the flame will never go out until nuclear weapons no longer exist in the world. Such gestures really demonstrate the intense pain still felt in Japan. I hope for the sake of the victims, their families, and everyone else in this world, that nothing so atrocious ever happens again. The lessons of Japan are still vital for our modern world and whilst Hiroshima is a now beautiful, welldeveloped and modern city, its harrowing history should be remembered and stand as a cautionary tale of the collaboration of arms and modern technology. Ella Ennos-Dann
Whilst Hiroshima was one of my favourite and, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful prefectures in Japan, its horrific and heartbreaking history cannot be forgotten. Hiroshima tends to be on most tourists’ itineraries when they come to Japan; people visit the deer and floating shrine on Miyajima Island, eat the famous, fresh and plump oysters and, of course, visit the memorial park. On August 6th 1945, the first of two atomic bombs was dropped on Japan, causing widespread destruction and devastation as it exploded over Hiroshima. It is estimated that over 100,000 people were killed in Hiroshima alone, with over half of these deaths occurring the day the bomb was dropped. The rest suffered awful radiation poisoning which led to their deaths weeks, months and even years later. High levels of cancer are still being detected in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the other city to be hit with an atomic bomb) in the children, grand children and even great grandchildren of the primary victims. This is attributed to the nuclear blast. Today, in Hiroshima Peace Park, stands the Atomic Bomb Dome, marking the exact spot the bomb was dropped. The building’s structure remained pretty much in tact as the bomb exploded directly overhead. You’d be forgiven for thinking, upon seeing this, that the damage sustained wasn’t so bad after all. However, the museum just behind tells a very different story. The artifacts on display demonstrate the destruction caused by the a-bomb. From incinerated bikes to shreds of school uniforms and other clothing to pieces of rubble from the blown up buildings, everything was so burned, bent and disfigured that items were difficult to identify. The worst ‘artifacts’ of all however, were the human teeth and
Ella Ennos-Dann
Revisiting places of horror the walls of the main rooms. Efficient documenters, the Khmer Rouge photographed each inmate before, and sometimes after, they were tortured. Hundreds of faces, some beaten and bleeding, now stare back at you, imploringly, as you shuffle from room to room. The idea that suffering cannot be comprehended through statistics - that we can have no genuine emotional connection with ‘the 2 million dead’ - but must be given ‘a human face’ to be understood, is a well-known one. This is certainly true in S21: the battered, despondent eyes that met mine as I looked at each photograph in turn made me cry, feel sick, and gave me goosebumps. * * *
Ella Ennos-Dann
There is a natural aversion in many people, including myself, to visiting places of death and suffering: a feeling of gawping at the misfortune of others in a helpless way that has no positive impact. Yet this feeling is mistaken. In history lessons throughout school and college I was repeatedly told that the reason why we were studying the Nazis again was so we could learn from the lessons of the past, so we could empathise with those who suffered so that, hopefully, nothing similar would happen again. It is for reasons like these that we need to keep going back to places of horror and tragedy. Not going does not make the suffering of all those involved disappear; it simply blocks it from our consciousness. Such visits are, and will always be, difficult, but that does not mean we should stop making them. Holly Rooke
Will Sansom
Visiting a place of trauma, a particular corner of the world that has witnessed human tragedy on an immense scale, is never easy. What is the appropriate emotional reaction to walking through the gates of a Nazi concentration camp? To standing on the site of the World Trade Center, placing your feet on a patch of earth that has witnessed horror on a near incomprehensible scale? Visiting Tuol Sleng and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields, notorious sites of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime which killed nearly two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, I felt acutely the uneasiness that accompanies being a ‘tourist,’ an emotional outsider, at a place of real and deep human suffering. In just four years, the Khmer Rouge, under the dictatorial rule of leader Pol Pot, enacted one of the worst mass killings of the twentieth century, wiping out nearly one quarter of the entire Cambodian population. Starvation, torture and murder became a part of daily life. In Cambodia today it is nearly impossible to find someone who did not lose a member of their family to the brutality. Tuol Sleng - or S-21- was the most active of the Khmer Rouge’s many jails and torture centres. Around 17,000 people passed through its iron gates in the four years that the regime held power. Today, the jail remains largely unchanged from the state in which the Vietnamese army found it. A plaque stating demands on prisoners (‘While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all’) keeps its place at the entrance; the accompanying signs requesting visitors not to smile, laugh, or speak loudly, however, are new. Much of the torture equipment is still in place, as are the tiny cells where the prisoners were confined. These sights cannot be anything but distressing, yet, for me, the real power and sadness of Tuol Sleng lies in the endless photographs of inmates that line
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19.10.2015
The journey from hell Liverpool Football Club had just won their first trophy in just under six years. I was ecstatic. Nothing could bring me down. The prospect of a twenty-four hour bus journey couldn’t be that bad. I mean, it was penalties, and it was against Cardiff, but still, Kenny’s back and we’ve won the cup. I was in Paraguay and had just finished watching the League Cup final. The game went to extra time, so my friend Henry and I had to rush on the final whistle in order to make the bus to Santa Cruz. We were travelling to Bolivia and the journey was expected to take twenty hours, before we had to change bus and travel for an additional seven hours towards Cochabamba. Then another change was required in order to arrive in La Paz. Being tall, the prospect of being tied to a seat with limited legroom was pretty grim, but the warm tingly feeling the football had given me made the idea somewhat bearable. The journey felt like the start of an adventure; we were delving into the unknown. We bought our tickets for what seemed like a fair price. Buses we had previously caught had been fine; all with air conditioning and reclining seats, which meant it was possible to sleep for a couple of hours at least. We made our way to the terminal, having stocked up on Pringles and Doritos. Food was supposedly provided on the bus, so we bought snacks to fill the hours in between. A bus turned the corner; it looked brand new. I could relax, we would be fine. The bus approached without slowing down. Confused, I checked my ticket to see if I had misread the details. Just then, another bus pulled into the platform in front of us. This was not a new bus. It looked as if it would break down before it even left the station. The paintwork was faded, the driver was dressed in jeans and the seats looked as if they were designed for hobbits. I tentatively asked if this was the bus for Santa Cruz. The driver nodded. We nervously put our big bags into the hold and stepped on. Our seats were at the back of the bus - just in front of the toilets. The smell of sewage wafted into our nostrils while I tried to wrestle my way into the seat. If my legs were perched at a forty five-degree angle, I could just about fit. I reassured myself with the thought that I would lose most feeling in my lower body within fifteen minutes. The bus took off. It started to whir and crack. The driver was sporadically manoeuvring left then right very rapidly, like a Formula 1 driver does at the beginning of the race. Suddenly the bus pulled over and the driver turned the engine off. People started to stream off the bus. We followed, partly to escape the smell of the toilet and partly to not be the two gringos awkwardly lurking on the coach. In my limited Spanish I discovered that there was a problem with the break fluids and we were waiting for a mechanic to arrive. A European couple, the only other gringos who had dared to attempt this voyage, started to get their bags. They hailed a taxi and departed back to Asuncion. This was probably a wise move. While we were waiting, a rotund Bolivian man of about forty years old ordered a six-pack of beer, drinking two in quick succession. He smelt of cheap alcohol and aftershave and was sporting baggy workman jeans and shiny white Nike trainers. In fractured English he asked where we were from before offering us a can. My friend was starting to feel ill so he refused. The Bolivian man opened up his third can, asking us what we did for a living. We replied that we were students. We asked him what he did for a living. His reply: he was a drug smuggler who had just completed a successful operation to Paraguay and was now heading home, hence the celebratory beers. Buoyed by the alcohol, our new friend decided to grandstand a little. He told us he was a powerful man back home, a BNOC if you will. He then asked whether Henry and I would like to be drug smugglers, which naturally made us feel very uncomfortable. Our laughs became hollow as mirth gave way to genuine fear. There
Henry Brereton
Background image: Marcelo Duarte
was a lull in conversation which seemed to go on an age. The man then told us if he wanted, he could have us killed. A silence followed before he turned to tell me that although I spoke alright Spanish, I was stupid. He repeated the word stupid three or four times. I was too nervous and frightened to reply. Whether this man was genuine or just wanting to mess with two lanky gringos I still don’t know. Luckily, a man from Panama was listening in to the conversation.
found themselves covered in a fine spray of orange mud. We all gave up and instead waited for two hours for a local farmer to arrive and save the day. He towed the bus out with his tractor before pulling us another fifty kilometres to the point where the road once again became asphalt. The next few hours of the journey were surprisingly peaceful. Having arrived in Santa Cruz, we changed buses hassle free. We were now in the heart of Bolivia heading towards Cochabamba.
At this juncture, he stepped in to introduce himself, granting us an opportunity to escape. The mechanic was finished a few moments later and we made our way back to our seats. The night before our voyage, we had eaten a barbeque with some other travellers in the hostel. A Swiss man put himself in charge of the grill and was adamant that the meat should not be overcooked. In retrospect, buying such cheap beef from the supermarket was not the wisest move. I spent the next morning hunched over a toilet bowl. Henry, however, did not appear to be affected by the previous night’s meal. A few hours after our pit stop, Henry started to complain of the same stomach cramps. What had started as mild nausea now required him to make the short journey to the toilet located behind our seats. The smell was horrendous. A little while later Henry reappeared sheepishly. He indicated to me he had no toilet paper. He grabbed his thick paperback, somewhat appropriately a biography of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. He returned to the cubicle. When he emerged he looked older. This operation was repeated a few times over the next few hours before he started to feel better and, as night descended, we managed to get a few hours sleep. We passed through immigration easily. It was good to be on Bolivian soil; we felt we had overcome the worst of it. Dawn was now with us and we were making steady progress. Suddenly the driver lost control of the bus. The back two wheels slid into a ditch and despite the driver frantically revving the engine, we were stuck. One more time, every passenger left their seat to stand idly round the vehicle. The driver instructed all the males to try and find tree branches and large stones in order to try and give the back tyres some grip. Mosquitoes were feasting on my ankles as I tried to make sense of the scenery. It was intolerably humid, even at 6.30am, and the straight road in both directions spread as far as the horizon. There was nothing in sight, no landmarks, no agriculture. We all got ready at the back of the bus. The wheels started to spin; it was immediately obvious that this was a waste of time. The bus remained stationary. The only change that had occurred was every male passenger now
The new bus was a luxury. Two floors, a toilet at least 15 metres away and seats designed for real grown up humans - I could actually move my legs! Tired from the previous ordeal, I started to fall asleep. I felt safe and could start to relax a little. Night descended and I was curled up on my seat with my head resting against the window. The bus horn suddenly rang out. I was lurched forward as the driver slammed the breaks. There was a crash, the bus entered a ditch. I was confused, completely unaware of what had happened. I heard the word ‘vaca,’ (cow). I then heard ‘muerto,’ (dead). Looking out of the window, I saw a beast lying motionless in the road. My eyes adjusting to the darkness, I could just make out a cow surrounded by a pool of blood. We clambered over the seats and made our way off the bus once more, this time through the emergency exit. The windscreen was destroyed; it had smashed into little pieces. Amazingly no one was hurt - apart from the cow, obviously. A farmer came in his pick-up truck and took away the animal. The pool of blood still glistened on the road. Everyone sat on the bank of the ditch while waiting for a replacement bus to arrive. After a further two hours, a single storeyed, legroom free, replacement bus arrived. We sat down and once again found ourselves on the back row, next to the toilet. We eventually made it to Cochabamba and travelled incident free for the final six hour stretch. The descent into the compelling madness that is La Paz was incredible. The city lit up in front of us. It was a bowl of light and we were headed into the epicentre. I’m not sure if my lack of sleep had made me slightly delirious, but looking down at the city was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed. When we got to the bus station, we collected our bags and got into a taxi. At the hostel I had a long, long shower. We went to the first restaurant we could find before falling into a deep sleep. Will Sansom
27
Editor Hattie Bottom
Deputy Editor Plum Ayloff
Online Editor Phoebe Jordan
hattie@epigram.org.uk
payloff@epigram.org.uk
pjordan@epigram.org.uk
19.10.2015
@epigramstyle
@e2style
Tantalising Jewels Tiffany
Elsa Peretti black jade bracelet, £165; Topshop semi precious bar choker, £14; Catbird hand chain, £55; Spider brooch, Ebay; Lanvin faux pearl necklace, £455; V Jewellery Apollo earrings, £105; Ca&Lou Swarovski silver-plated cuff, £425; Tiffany Elsa Peretti diamond and pearl necklaces, £3000
Hattie Bottom & Plum Ayloff Style Editors
19.10.2015
28
How do you take your Shrimps? With a side of faux fur, please Phoebe Jordan interviews the Bristol alumni and mastermind designer Hannah Weiland about art, fashion and a major love of fluff. Altuzarra paraded real fur collars and muffs down the AW’15 catwalks, yet for many the trend for Vegan materials is much more prevalent. Shrimps is now a favourite with much of the celebrity fashion crowd - Laura Bailey has been spotted multiple times and Alexa Chung is practically an ambassador for the brand. Although the collections are designed around the taste of their designer, Weiland describes her own style as ‘always having a touch of colour and it’s normally a Shrimps coat’. Her favourite pieces from the collection are the blue and green Bobbin Coat and the glittery Dorothy coat.
University is a place meant to inspire your wildest career dreams.The University of Bristol was no exemption for Hannah Weiland. Now head designer and founder of internationally successful label Shrimps, Weiland graduated in History of Art from Bristol just a year before she herself dreamed up the illustrious faux fur brand. Hannah had always known that design was where her heart was but whilst studying for her BA was ‘lucky enough to do modules in the History of Fashion’ although she had no idea about Shrimps at the time. The notion of art and fashion is one well practised, Weiland’s own designs have a brilliant Pop Art feel to them, the bright colour planes coherent with much of modern British artist, David Hockney and Grayson Perry. The link between art and fashion was not just a recent passion for Hannah, she wrote her dissertation on Perry and ‘spent a lot of time studying his dresses’. Later mentioning how her inspiration always comes from ‘art books and exhibitions’, evident in her SS’15 ‘Grayson’ clutch bagso named for the aforementioned artist. Following her degree she went on to study Surface Textile design at the London College of Fashion, an essential part of her journey to design mogul. Although much of the fashion industry is based on experience as opposed to qualification, Weiland emphasises how important it is for design. ‘I always wanted an academic background and I really enjoyed studying History of Art. It definitely helps with the research for my collections. I don’t think you always have to go down the standard route there are lots of ways - you can study through the History of it, or through the textiles. But learning some form of design is important.’ Shrimps itself was launched in 2013 and has since done four collections. The brand is always full of colour and texture, but it’s the exclusive material make up of 80 per cent modacrylic, 11 per cent polyester and nine per cent nylon that has given faux fur a fun, yet completely luxurious make over. A need for a stripy faux fur coat was all it took to envision Shrimps, and of course the fact that Weiland ‘loves the texture, how soft and luxurious fake fur can be’. Real fur is still dividing opinions in the extremes. Big players Celine and
Ollie Hadlee Pearch
I love texture it’s so soft and luxurious Shrimps jumped into the real-to-feel fakes market in the height of the craze and has reaped the benefits ever since. Net-a-porter snapped up the opportunity to sell Weilands designs throughout the year, promoting faux fur to an audience of new supporters. Despite the ever growing success of the brand, Weiland tells of how they still face struggles,‘cash flow is probably the hardest part’. As the company expands it is easy to assume that it may lose its quintessential Britishness. Yet Hannah is adamant that their British identity ‘is very important, I’m very British and love everything about being British, so I hope my brand reflects that too’. Safe to say it’ll be remaining a British brand. From History of Art undergraduate who ‘loves the Primrose café in Clifton’ to clothing the glitterati, Hannah Weiland’s story is one of incredible determination and an amazing dream, one that we could all learn from. Ki Price
Ollie Hadlee Pearch
Phoebe Jordan Online Style Editor
Ollie Hadlee Pearch
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19.10.2015
We all have our personal aesthetic - sometimes it’s one your mother approves of and sometimes it’s not, but we’ve all inspired envy and despair at one point or another. Some of us feel comfortable in daisy-dukes and a tank top - some of us feel comfortable in neck to wrist to ankle coverage. I delight in the coming of winter and the need to wrap myself up like a sneaky take-away (welcome to my gym free life). But this column isn’t about that. What this column is about is screaming from the roof tops about the wardrobe bae’s and the looks that mum was right to say you couldn’t play with. Take them as ground rules. If you don’t agree – prove me wrong. Photos are welcome. Starting with bad news: double denim. I appreciate double denim is practically a staple of anyone with a bindi and day-glow face paint at Bristol Uni, but allow me to elaborate. Double denims of blue,black or white denim – lovely,welcome to an Urban Outfitters billboard.Matching blue or black denim – perfect, welcome to a Levi full-page spread. Non-matching blue denim – hold it, can we talk? Just like a suit where the jacket doesn’t match the trousers, this really isn’t
@tarakeeney
wolfcubclothing
Etsy.com/ Boodwah
@double_denim_addiction
@double_denim_addiction
@double_denim_addiction
From the look that made you green to the look that made you blue Introducing our own Epigram style trend reporter, James Higgins online columnist
something I believe anyone can work. Denim is a staple and everyone needs more, but please don’t take this friend for granted. They’re about as fitting as Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Now the good news: flares. I’d so like to say trouser flares are akin to the ones in a survival kit – a sign of distress. But, I won’t. I was a sceptic I’ll admit. But like Lindsay Lohan’s turn at serious films, I feel like I’m ready to admit I was wrong. I feared a lot of people would lose inches on their legs, would trip, would look like many of our generation – poor reproductions of more exciting and boundary pushing times. Perhaps omit that last point. But whoever the blonde rocking flares in the library at 9 on Monday morning was, I’m so glad you walked into my life and straight into the automatic doors which, in a strange moment of anthropomorphism, also weren’t keeping up with you. But in a week, I’ve caught up and I’m loving flares. But please – chunky shoes, high waists, and if you can grab some in velvet the world will smile more. Any suggestions of fash-evils or fash-angels gladly accepted, send them in.
Where to go for the best virtual shopping experience
This year as Style.com was closed, many of us mourned the loss of an online fashion mecca. However, thanks to Anna Wintour, it was replaced with an even chicer and shinier site that has been condensed into a nifty little app called Vogue Runway. Here, looks from every fashion show are uploaded throughout Fashion weeks. Not only does it cover the mainstream shows in LFW and NYFW but also shows’ unique designs from Beijing Fashion Week to Kiev Fashion Week and everything in between. It is neatly sorted into various seasons and designers, so you can peruse endless collections with just a few simple taps.
Described to me as ‘Tinder but for clothes’ this has fast become one of my new essentials. The concept is pretty basic: swipe left to ditch and right to keep. For any items that make the cut, they’re then stored in your virtual wardrobe. You will be notified by the app when they go on sale and you can buy the item straight from the app. Perfect for when you want to fill up your wardrobe but don’t want to face the hassle of Cabot Circus.
Instagram/ @chungalexa
Vogue Runway
Grabble
The Net Set Similar to Grabble in that you can create your dream virtual wardrobe but Net Set, brought to you buy the woman behind Net-a-Porter, provides endless inspiration for each season. Registering takes five minutes and you can browse looks from various ‘style tribes’, as well as following wish lists from figures such as Poppy Delevingne and Laura Bailey.
Instagram/ @kate.winslet.official
These days pretty much anything you need from life can be learnt, bought or supplied from an app and the fashion world is no exception. Here are my favourites to get your fashion fix even faster.
Cute This is a definite must have for any beauty lovers, or rather anyone who loves a bargain. Introduced to me by my mother, in an attempt to get “down with kids” as she likes to say, Cute is a one stop destination for beauty bargains. From Mascaras to miracle creams and brushes to bronzer, Cute has the best deals available on a never ending supply of products. The price of beauty is now on par with the student budget. The Edit Another wonderful creation from the lovely people at net-a-porter, this app is a condensed online version of their magazine, which complements their online shop. The Edit allows you to download the weekly magazine and whilst you peruse through the pages, click on the clothes to purchase them there and then.
Villoid Created by the fairy godmother of fashion herself, Villoid is a cross between Pinterest and Instagram. Once you’ve created an account you can upload photos of styles, icons, trends and products you like. This creates a personalised fashion mood board, which you can then share with others. As well as creating your own inspirations you can also ‘follow’ and ‘like’ other creations from your friends or fashion bloggers such as Alexa Chung herself. Inspiration for that new wardrobe you’re longing for, never has to end! Chung describes the app as a way to “celebrate dressing up and sharing it with your friends”, I can’t think of anything better for an app!
Alexandra Keates Style Writer
Editor Ben Duncan-Duggal whatson@epigram.org.uk
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19.10.2015
Flikr/:nirudh Koul
HALLOWEEN Do you have friends? Even if not, you’ll still probably be out somewhere on Halloween. Either that, or you’re part of the savvy crew who cut down on cost, crowds and bad fancy dress by venturing out on the 30th instead. Bristol’s clubs are providing the entertainment on both days, and doing it well.
30th October:
Bristol’s glut of gigs over the next couple of weeks is impressive in terms of breadth and depth. Whilst some will be better attended than others (is anyone really going to see Ella Henderson at Colston Hall (27th Oct)?), there should be something for everyone.
Simple Things Festival
Swim Deep on the 20th October
The biggest event in terms of presence in the city is easily going to be Simple Things Festival (various venues, 23rd – 24th Oct). It’s promoted by several influential bodies on the city’s music scene such as Crack and Rise Records, and the line up is suitably one for music lovers. Buzz band Battles and Savages will satisfy musos (whilst Mike Skinner DJ will probably be one to miss), but it’s JME & Skepta who will provide the biggest draw as the summer of Grime draws to a close.
Swim Deep returning to Bristol after their recent Friska instore show, will be particularly interesting. They will be playing at the Trinity Centre on the 20th October.
Wide Eyes at Lakota over Shy FX at Motion On the 30th, Shy FX grace Motion. But despite the big name the highlights lie elsewhere on that night. Wide Eyes are putting on a big party which looks set to be housed at Lakota and Blue Mountain, judging by the two club’s schedules. Whatever they’re planning, it’ll be a steal at just £12 from the trusty promoters. Meanwhile at Thekla there’s a night of disco debauchery entitled Detroit Dischotheque. Say no more.
30th October:
Tribe of the Frog your best bet On the big day itself, Thekla’s where you want to go if you don’t like your ears – there’s something called ‘Pop Confessional.’ Meanwhile Motion have got Just Jack for predictably stupid prices on resale, so your best bet might be Tribe Of Frog’s Day Of The Dead celebrations. The psy-trance rave is probably the most Bristol night there is (it even got a mention in Skins). Probably not one to be sober at, though.
Stormzy at Motion 26th October Speaking of Grime, Stormzy is playing Motion on the 26th of October. With the imminent MOBOs, including the mouthwatering Grime category in which all three of these acts are nominated, it might be a good chance to weigh them up against each other.
Big Names at O2 Academy The Cribs (25th October, O2 Academy) are in town to remind everyone they’re still going, and Years and Years (O2 Academy, 20th October) are here to remind goldfish like teenagers that they’re still going. Both will be entirely predictable affairs, but that’s just what you need sometimes. Their fans will agree.
Kwabs on the 19th October One of the most excting gigs in the next two weeks will probably be Kwabs (Anson Rooms, 19th Oct). Their soaring soul debut, Love + War, is the culmination of a whirlwind couple of years and three EPs. Zak Abel and Dornik will be the supporting acts on an evening not to be missed.
Almost exactly like Primal Scream (which they’ve openly acknowledged), they’re an indie band who made an indie first record, went away, did something, came back and have now produced an album trippier than a trip. Not to be missed.
EXHIBITION: Bristol Museum, 24th October – 13th March Death is a bad thing. Beyond that, we don’t tend to discuss it much. A recent Department of Health report found that discussion death had become so low that many did not know what their relatives wanted to do with regards to end of life plans. It’s a marked change from Victorian times, when birth and death took place in the home and was confronted together and by all in a family. This exhibition (Bristol Museum, 24th October – 13th March) hopes to change that. Promising to contain far more actual ‘stuff’ about the meaning of life, death and everything else than 10 pillheads’ brains put together, it is enticingly sold as concerning ‘the one true universal experience’. It’s impossible to disagree with that, and on that basis you probably won’t find a more interesting thing to do in Bristol.
Got suggestions? Email whatson@epigram.org.uk with your ideas or to be featured in the paper
Could you be a part of this year’s University Challenge team? University Challenge trials are coming. There are a few rounds, the first being an informal online test. Have a look at the questions below and if you think you can answer them then take the test online at bristolsu.org.uk. This could be your chance at getting those five minutes of fame! (plus hanging out with
3. What word can mean, in mathematics, an arrangement of elements into rows and columns; in biology, substance between cells; and, in geology, the material in which, for example, gemstones are embedded? A: Matrix B: Membrane C: Forge D: Mode 4. Professor Arpad Elo gave his name to the Elo scale. What is measured on the Elo scale?
7. Which building, destroyed by fire in AD 64 during the reign of Nero, was rebuilt by the Emperor Vespasian and completed by his son Titus? A: Colosseum B: Pantheon C: Basilica Julia D: Temple of Concord 8. Which 19th Century bacteriologist identified and isolated the bacteria responsible for Anthrax and Cholera? A: Robert Koch B: Francis Krick C: Louis Pasteur D: Frank Macfarlane Burnet
A: The lateral movement of cricket spin bowling B: The tensile strength of fabrics C: The potency of performance-enhancing drugs D: The strength or ability of chess players
Paxman) 1. What single word might be defined as energy that is transferred from body to another a result of a temperature difference between the bodies? A: Diffusion B: Heat C: Induction D: Catalyst 2. Which author who was a schoolmaster in Dublin wrote the Barrytown trilogy ‘The Commitments’, ‘The Snapper’ and ‘The Van’? A: James Joyce B: Oscar Wilde C: Samuel Beckett D: Roddy Doyle
5. In which port did the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin take place, during the Russian Revolution of 1905? A: Copenhagen B: Odessa C: Tallinn D: Gelendzhik 6. Which early 20th Century artistic movement acquired its name because the work of its founders was likened to wild beasts? A: Cubism B: Suprematism C: Fauvism D: Art Brut
2015 University of Bristol team
Take the test online to find out how you did, and if you could be part of this year's team.
7
acts you didn't know performed at the anson rooms
Student council: pizza & policy Student Council gives you an opportunity to discuss issues affecting your experience at Bristol and directs your elected officers to focus on particular issues and campaigns.
Ed Sheeran
Everyone can attend the meeting and bring forward ideas, then student reps will vote on whether or not your ideas become policy.
‘Why do we pay £9,000 per year but still have to pay for our printing?’
We will have various stalls to look at before the meeting starts and that all important Pizza to nibble on! Amy Winehouse
The Streets
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Newton Falkner
Mindless Self Indulgence
Trevor Nelson
Laura Ho tells us why she’s excited to sit on the panel at Vice Chancellors Question time, and some of the questions she thinks might be asked! On 27th of October I will be appearing on a panel at an event called 'ViceChancellors's Question Time'. It's hard to explain why this event is a big deal. But I'll try! I'm not sure a lot of people know who a Vice-Chancellor is or what they do. The Vice-Chancellor is the boss of the university (they are called vice because, in theory they are inferior to the Chancellor but the Chancellor is largely a ceremonial post - a bit like the monarch to the prime minister). This is essentially a Question Time with the Prime Minister of Bristol Uni. This is a really exciting time for the University (although it sounds boring.) We have just appointed a new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Hugh Brady, and he is currently designing a new strategy. The Vice-Chancellor's strategy will decide what The University of Bristol is going to focus on changing over the next five years, whether it be improving teaching and assessment, improving sport, recruiting international students, investing in mental health services, making Bristol accessible to students from disadvantaged background, etc. etc. The VC is consulting with staff and students across the university to shape this. I have no doubt that questions raised at this event will be taken into consideration very highly when it comes to putting pen to paper with the new strategy. It's the first time this has happened. During my five years at Bristol, the Vice-Chancellor was always a behind the scenes figure who lived somewhere in an office high up in Senate House. This event is the first of its kind and is an opportunity to ask the real gritty questions that you want answers to. Why do we pay £9,000 per year but still have to pay for our printing? Why does Bristol still have one of the highest proportions of privately educated students in the country? Why are black students four times more likely to get a third class degree at Bristol? Some food for thought... I hope to see you there.
WHAT'S ON FEATURED EVENT Halloween in the Balloon Bar Saturday 31 October Same great drinks deals, but a little spookier than usual. Expect interactive fun and frights.
October
Featuring: • FREE professional face-painting • Frighteningly big tunes from some of our favourite Burst DJs • Halloween themed treasure hunt • Cheap drinks • Spooky atmosphere!
Tuesday 20. How to be a journalist in 60 words: Tim de Lisle gives a talk on how to be a journalist in just 60 words.
Wednesday 21. Optimum vegan nutrition on a budget: Vegan nutrition with a student friendly budget. Get your tickets now to avoid disappointment.
Saturday 24. Student Leader Conference: All your essential training if you identify as a student leader. Free morning snack and lunch provided!
Sunday 25. Divorce Papers: Following his huge success of Dolly House in 2014 Jamaica's King of Comedy Oliver Samuels is back with another blockbuster for Black History Month 2015.
Monday 26. Zumba: for all Fit and Fabulous members (membership open to everyone who identifies as a woman).
Thursday 29. Get Active Badminton: come along to our Badminton session, every Thursday 3:30-5pm - open to all & Postgraduates and Internationals
Thursday 22. Get Active beginners running: come along to our Beginner Running sessions every Wednesday 2:15-3:30pm - perfect for making your lunchtime an active one!
For more information on all upcoming events see bristolsu.org.uk/events
C U LT U R E
Epigram/ Becki Murray
Epigram
19.10.2015
Arts
Editor: Mattie Brignal
Deputy Editor: Ed Grimble
Online Editor: Amy Stewart
arts@epigram.org.uk
egrimble@epigram.org.uk
astewart@epigram.org.uk
@EpigramArts
Les Murray: ‘Australian Living Treasure’ The Bristol Poetry Institute welcomed Les Murray, Australia’s most prolific poet, for their annual poetry reading. We sent Becki Murray along for an exclusive interview with one of the best contemporary poetry writers in the English language Why did you begin to write poetry? Why is a mysteriously deep question. I suppose there were some deep-lying troubles in me, like my mother had died when I was twelve. Poets often have a dead parent somewhere in their biography- and various family quarrels and stuff that I’d heard of, that were floating under the surface. My upbringing gave me a whole range of things to be interested in and think about. It teaches you moral lessons and sets exam questions like how are you going to solve this. But I don’t really know why I started, ultimately I don’t know. The world was mysterious and not entirely a vale of peace and content, so I wanted to explore that.
It was a mixture of paradise and the ordinary. Paradise because the University of Sydney had a wonderful library. There were also lots of friendly people who’d talk to you, and unspeakable amounts of coffee which you could drink whilst talking. I was doing German, English and Psychology but I didn’t do much of the course. I was mainly just reading in the library, talking, going to the movies and learning to live in a modern civilisation. I mean I was four months into university before I heard that you were supposed to wear underpants. A mate of mine told me. He said, ‘Don’t you wear underpants’. ‘Huh? Why would I do that?’, I replied. ‘Ah, you’d better. You’ll smell bad without them. The girls will never come near you because they’ve got a sense of smell.’ I actually wrote about the female sense of smell many, many years later because
Is there anything in particular you think is unique to Australian poetry? Well, it’s got a quite big audience. They don’t come out on the streets and shout about it much but they are there and you get quite big audiences at readings. There is a certain sense that you are being encouraged. They’ll talk about Bob Dylan and equally they’ll come to a reading, but they just don’t talk about the latter as much. They’re scared that they’ll get punished by being forced into university and made to get a degree!
Epigram/ Georgia O’Brien
What were your own experiences of university like?
I didn’t have it at all. I thought I’d see if I could imagine it and the court is out on whether I succeeded. My wife has an excellent sense of smell. She’d pick up the absence of underpants in a foreign city!
Did you always want to become a poet? I had no idea. I thought at one stage about going into the army. Every boy thinks of that one but I got over that fairly quickly. One thing I was sure about was that I wasn’t going to be a farmer. I lived on a farm but I didn’t want to do that as an occupation. It’s too bloody hard! Who has an idea when he’s twelve about being a poet? I had considered something fairly near it. I thought about being a painter. There was only one thing against that… I couldn’t bloody paint. I was a shocker. We had one kid in the high school who really could paint and it showed me quite clearly that I had no more chance than a sausage in hell of being a painter. He’s still at it now. I’m opening an exhibition for him in April next year. That’s 65 years since I left school and he’s still painting and he’s still good. He was a very calm soul. He never got into fights with other kids at all. He just sort of looked over their heads because he was taller than they were and that would be the end of it. If I’d have been like that, I wouldn’t have been a poet.
How financially viable is it to be a poet nowadays? Epigram/ Becki Murray
It takes a lot of shuffling things together. You rely on readings, royalties, prizes and just incidental little earnings that add up to an income. There was a time when Australian poets flogged themselves and each other a good deal because they felt neglected and left out on a limb, ignored by America and Britain. That’s faded now. They now feel somehow more accepted than they did. The Americans are quite capable, reluctantly, of noticing us sometimes. Not the top
Americans but anybody from the second rank are really quite friendly.
that one. So, I guess I’m interested in the situation of being a human I suppose.
Do you have any advice for students?
Finally, what is your latest collection of work?
Cultivate your obsessions! If you’re ever going to have the kind of obsession that a crazy like me had, you’ll probably have the beginnings of that obsession now. When I was 18 I didn’t have the obsession yet but it came and there was no longer any question…I would be a poet and everything else would be secondary.
It’s called Waiting for the Past. It’s quite a varied collection of mid-length and short poems. A lot of it is to do with past incidences and so on. It was me trying to find my way out of the last book, which was a bit more unified. This time I was trying to see if I could get beyond that and find new stuff to write about. So, particularly in the second half of the book, it’s all over the place; just me observing this, that and the other and finding significance in it. I had been coming out of a long period of quite severe depression too. I don’t think it affected the poetry that much. I went on writing anyway! But, it made the living a bit hard. I don’t think depression has to do with anything that happens in your life, I just think it’s if you are built that way. Now I’m out of it and it feels good. It’s as if I’ve been given back a deposit. The money has been held in the bank for a long time and the bank was shut. They’ve now only just opened the door a bit so I can get some of the money before I get too old to enjoy it.
What are your main inspirations for your writing? Oh, all sorts of odd subjects that come up and questions that pose themselves. You know, why does such and such happen etc. I’m just reading Bob Dylan and he’s writing very much about people’s agonies and sufferings. I’m not in that field so much as in the field of why does it all happen, where does it all fit together and how is it linked? I think that’s because where I come from wasn’t really too agonised, although people do have dreadful misfortunes. I didn’t know for a long time, for example, that my father was in a dreadful feud with his father, because when they fought with each other it was very loud but you weren’t sure what they were fighting about. It took me a long time to solve
The full interview is available on the Epigram website.
Becki Murray
WHAT WHO
Wendy Cope: Poet Born 1945 Flickr/ Isabelle
A fabulously funny contemporary English poet. No subject is too great or grave for Cope, a woman with an extraordinary sense of humanity, love and most importantly, humour. Cope was born in Erith in Kent and went up to study at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. It was there that she developed depression. She began to write poetry as an outlet for her depression - “creating a space where [she] was free.”
Although she hasn’t realised a lot of her poetry, the collections that have been published, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Serious Concerns, If I Don’t Know, Family Values, have been well received critically, and have gained a wide following for the unpretentious tone she uses to convey her simple verse.
Epigram
19.10.2015
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Physics and fur coats turn heads in Glasgow Myla Lloyd examines the latest offerings from the controversial and world-renowned Turner Prize
Flickr/ SUARTS
Arguably the UK’s most prestigious art accolade, the Turner Prize, travels to Scotland this autumn for the first time in its 32 year history. Awarded by the Tate to a British artist under the age of 50 for an outstanding exhibition in the preceding year, previous winners have included names such as Grayson Perry, Mark Wallinger, and Bristol’s very own Richard Long. Selected by an independent jury of art professionals, the nominees hoping to get their hands on a share of the £40,000 prize this year are Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel, Nicole Wermers and Assemble. If these names mean nothing to you then don’t worry - you are not alone. Whether you’re planning a visit to Tramway in Glasgow, or just want to head down to the bookies and put a bet on your favourite, here’s what you need to know about this year’s shortlist. Bonnie Camplin, a London-based artist whose work spans the disciplines of drawing, film, performance and situational research was nominated for her recent work The Military Industrial Complex in South London Gallery. A confusing and self-indulgent installation piece, Camplin’s work takes the form of a study room exploring what ‘consensus reality’ is and how it is formed, drawing on subjects from physics to philosophy, psychology, witchcraft, quantum theory and warfare. Next up is Janice Kerbel, a Canadian artist nominated for DOUG, a performative work which takes the form of nine songs for six voices. A kind of avant-garde opera, the 24-minute performance is about a series of disasters which befall a fictional character. Whilst DOUG is arguably not to everyone’s taste, Kerbel’s previous work includes the more accessible Bank Job (1999), a detailed master plan to rob Coutts Bank in London. Exploring the appropriation of art and design within consumer culture, the third female artist in the running for this year’s prize
Clockwise from top left: works by Nicole Wermers, Janice Kerbel, Assemble, and Bonnie Camplin
is Nicole Wermers. Nominated for her exhibition Infrastruktur at Herald Street Gallery, London, Wermers’s is by far the most aesthetically-pleasing work on show. Her installation combines
sumptuous fur coats draped over minimally designed chairs, alluding to themes of lifestyle, class, consumption and control. This work speaks loudly to those of us familiar with the seatsaving drama of the ASS library during exams… Last but by no means least on this year’s list of nominees are Assemble. An 18-person strong London-based collective who work across the fields of art, design and architecture, the group first got together as recent graduates to build a temporary cinema in an abandoned petrol station. They had little idea that five years on they would be shortlisted for the Turner prize for their ongoing collaboration with local residents in the Granby Four Streets, Liverpool. Although many have applauded the Tate for its democratic choice of making Glasgow the host of this year’s Prize, all of the shortlisted artists are noticeably London-based. Whilst the representation of women in the art world is often neglected, the absence of a single male nominee has raised some eyebrows, with some citing perhaps a step too far in the opposite direction. Those hoping to see some painting will be bitterly disappointed, as the jury consciously try to broaden the prize’s scope, resulting in a plethora of disciplines challenging enough for the art critic to navigate- let alone the general public. It would be improper to discuss the Turner Prize without putting my neck out and predicting a winner. Although the end results are decided by a panel of judges, it is tricky to resist the fun of backing your favourite. For me, it has to be Assemble. Many critics have expressed their contempt at the absurdity of a street being nominated for an art award, yet I am a staunch believer that the best place for creativity is in the community, and not in the hands of a jury.
Myla Lloyd
PEN: Defending Writers’ Freedoms Hania Al-Shawi Simons reveals the work of the Bristol wing of charity PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) International people to participate in the vigil were those along the lines of ‘But isn’t what you’re doing a bit pointless? Do you really think you’ll be able to make a difference?’. An obvious answer to these sorts of questions is that someone has to start working on the ground level, or none of us can ever hope to achieve anything that has an effect beyond the limited sphere of our own lives. Whether or not we can hope to have any significant impact, we have a responsibility, symbolic or otherwise, to demonstrate that we are not passively indifferent to circumstances beyond our own control. However, I feel it’s also worth considering that, on a human level, the people and the families of those we are campaigning to protect do appreciate the acts of support the international community are able to provide, no matter how small they may appear. They are not just images to be proudly displayed at the front of marches, emblems representative of the wider issues to which they have fallen victim. They are individuals to whom gestures of solidarity and friendship may profoundly affect their ability to persevere, which has its own value irrespective of further impact. Over 120 people took part in our photograph petition during our campaign for Raif, with a large proportion also signing petitions lobbying both the Saudi government and our own to take action against his mistreatment. Raif received his first fifty lashes in January, but since then has had each of his scheduled weekly floggings postponed, something many believe to be a consequence of international pressure. Simultaneously, the British government was recently revealed to have made a deal
with Saudi Arabia to ensure their mutual election to the United Nations Human Rights Council. We are under no false pretence that our campaigns will be able to make significant progress in isolation. However, it is important to recognise that this does not mean whatever contribution we can make to such causes will not be helpful. Progress on some fronts is being made, whilst on others there are issues arising that are far more within our immediate power to combat. In either case, these problems will do nothing but grow if we allow their scale to intimidate us into automatic resignation.
WHEN
WHERE
Flickr/ Freddie Phillips
An outsider, Cope has never been a specialist in public relations or getting the press on her side. She places herself on the fringes of contemporary writing circles and media attention, with one of her best poems being titled ‘How To Deal With The Press’. However, despite this very pointed attempt to keep out of the limelight, in 2011 Cope donated her archive of correspondence and diaries to the British Library, with the reasoning that at least there it could not be misconstrued or altered by a journalist.
Niamh Costello
Halfway through last year, frustrated by the lack of diverse material on our course and feeling slightly without direction, a fellow English coursemate and I founded Bristol Student PEN, a student centre for English PEN and PEN International. PEN is a worldwide literary human rights charity, and the oldest human rights organisation in the world. It campaigns to protect the rights to freedom of expression, academic freedom, education, and to defend writers who are persecuted for their work. PEN also promotes literature in translation in order to combat the disproportionate dominance of English language writers and Western literature on the world stage. The first campaign on which we focussed last year concerned Raif Badawi, a Saudi writer whose blog posts supporting secularism within Saudi Arabia resulted in his being sentenced to ten years in prison, a cripplingly large fine, and one thousand lashes. In spring, we organised a vigil and photograph campaign in solidarity with Raif, something we promoted on social media. About a week before the event took place we received a message via Facebook from Ensaf Haidar, the wife of Raif, thanking us for what we were doing and encouraging us to rally as much support for her husband as we could. It was a strange moment for all of us that had so far been involved in the management of Bristol Student PEN: though we were all elated, we also experienced an abrupt change of perspective. We suddenly had a tangible connection with Raif as a person, rather than simply as a hashtag or headline for a campaign. Amongst the most common responses we received when asking
Cope’s poetry has been hugely affected by her family life. The death of her father in 1971 was one of the main reasons she began to write poetry. It was the death of her mother in 2004 that symbolised a courageous shift in her writing; it allowed her to speak candidly about an unhappy childhood that was never resolved.
Hania Al-Shawi Simons
WHY She can help any woman. In fact, anyone who needs mend to a broken heart. When you read Cope everything else stops mattering. Her poems are unashamedly about the brilliance of women and the ignorance of a lot of men. If this doesn’t make you feel better, then nothing will. She famously said, ‘Men are like buses’ - a mysterious comparison which I will take to the grave. Holly Harper
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Epigram 19.10.2015
Film & TV
@epigramfilm Editor: Ella Kemp
Deputy Editor: Kate Wyver
Online Editor: Georgia O’Brien
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Something wicked this way comes - Macbeth, a review
Francesca Newton Film & TV Writer If I had to choose one word to describe Australian Director Justin Kurzel’s new adaptation of Macbeth, it would be ‘brooding.’ The characters brood; the music broods; the moody Scottish landscape broods; when you leave the cinema and go to the pub, you brood over your pint. It is heavy with psychological insight and thick with presence; a mastery that makes it hard to believe Kurzel has only ever directed one other film, Snowtown - though it is not hard to believe that it was a serial killer flick. Shakespeare’s classic has been set alight with the electric apprehension of a modern psychological thriller. There is a huge sense of naturalism: clichéd moments such as ‘double, double’ have been cut – in fact, at no point do the witches perform any outright magic. It is evident that time has been taken to make each character human, giving the story a new spine-tingling relatability.
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Macbeth is heavy with psychological insight and thick with presence - hard to believe Kurzel has only ever directed one other film
Kurzel opens with a knowing nod to the Bard and a hazard warning for anyone expecting anything less than bleakness: a child’s corpse - the son of Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) performing a balancing act of menace and vulnerability and his wife, Marion Cotillard, radiant and heart-breaking. The death is referenced, but never explicitly spoken of in the text. But instead of playing down its relevance, childhood is invoked
Is there anything this man can’t do?
as a running theme throughout the film, making the cause of the couple’s downward spiral unusually tangible. We hear the background laughter of children playing as Macduff (a flickering, flame-like Sean Harris) discovers Duncan (David Thewlis); Banquo (Paddy Considine) kissing Fleance on return from war contrasts with Macbeth’s lonely arrival; Cotillard even speaks Lady Macbeth’s most iconic speech to a vision of her dead child. One grand shot from above of Fassbender, alone and broken in his throneroom, gives even the hero a childish vulnerability. As a final link, the closing image of the young Fleance leaves the audience with a desolate reminder of the self-perpetuating nature of violence through generations. It is almost as if Kurzel is inviting us to wonder what a Macbeth: The Sequel would look like. The piece seems to have the viscosity of a moving picture, rather than a film. Hauntingly long shots, like that of Cotillard during the sleepwalking speech, and the mind-bending slow motion in the battle scenes – all this gives the film a mesmerising pregnancy which, disconcertingly, never quite seems to come to fruition. Kurzel pulls just the right strings to produce a constant and oppressive tension that plays on every sense. Fassbender and Cotillard are both, mostly, the stuff of dreams. Their intimacy as they plot the first murder is entirely believable, and they play off each other with the unpredictability of two plastic bags dancing in the wind. Matching like a mirror at the beginning, they create the beautiful sense of two satellites moving out of orbit with one another as the film progresses, climaxing at his bizarre and painful reaction to her death. Adding to the naturalism, the actors adopt tortured whispers instead of the fiery passion of staged Shakespeare. But Cotillard and Fassbender both occasionally push this too far, the poetry sometimes borders on monotonous muttering. It’s a faux-pas that’s common to Shakespearean adaptations: the same occurs in Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus. Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking speech is normally a moment of indescribable emotion, where the unhinged flickerings of her
Flickr/Gage Skidmore
Flickr/freeparking
Not a lot of smiles in this neck of the woods...
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flickr/ Ibsan73
flickr/ Ibsan73
Film & TV Writer Francesca Newton responds to Michael Fassbender’s haunting portrayal of Macbeth
mind are revealed, but Cotillard felt a bit like a marble statue. Undeniably, the uncredited star is the Scottish landscape, which could tell a story in itself. The cinematography is breathtaking, and the land rugged and uninhabited to the point that each shot is a reminder of the brutality of the world these characters inhabit. It also provides a delicious contrast to the relatively claustrophobic scenes inside tents and the palace; they feel artificial, almost stolen, in comparison. The opening scenes are tinted blue; the colours parallel Fassbender’s decent into madness until, at the end, the cinema is awash with red.
The film’s brilliance is the fact that it is the pure dramatic tragedy, blood-spattered and dirty, the Scottish Play; just shot through with a million volts
All the aspects of Macbeth work in a glimmering symphonic harmony. In the wake of the 20th century’s stream of modernised Shakespeare, from Forbidden Planet to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, followed by 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man, Macbeth’s brilliance is the fact that it is the pure dramatic tragedy, blood-spattered and dirty, the Scottish Play; just shot through with a million volts. And now, after seeing this adaptation, and feeling the goosebumps on my skin, I understand why actors won’t speak its name. Do you agree with Francesca? Join the discussion and tweet us @ EpigramFilm with your thoughts.
Epigram 19.10.2015
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The Walk and Man on Wire: Documentation or Dramatisation? Film & TV Writer Anna Wyn Davies reflects on Zemeckis’ The Walk in comparison to the 2008 documentary, Man on Wire.
Flickr/Bernhard Benke
Two iconic towers featuring in two exhilirating films...
The image of Philippe Petit’s historic walk between the Twin Towers is one ingrained in history. Magnificent occurrences in history inspire and resonate with people to such an extent that film has become a medium to reiterate their importance in human history. The high-wire artist’s story has already been told in James Marsh’s Academy Awardwinning documentary Man on Wire, but Robert Zemeckis’ latest venture, The Walk, has now dramatised the tightrope walker’s famous 1974 coup. Though The Walk has been lauded by critics, Man on Wire has subsequently been deemed its superior predecessor. But why? Form is a major issue. Man on Wire is undoubtedly a superb documentary - it is a perfectly curated film collating testimonials, still images and short dramatised vignettes encapsulating the journey to Petit’s monumental walk through the clouds. However, many critics have turned their noses up at Zemeckis’ glossy film, branding it unnecessary and simply another cog in the clockwork of Hollywood’s need to tell the same story over and over again. Remakes and reboots happen for because the industry is quite formulaic. Studio bosses and
producers take existing properties, from toys to superheroes, and turn them into franchises so that people come flocking to the cinema to see another caped crusader zooming about the place. It’s tried and tested. Though based on a well-known story, The Walk is not part of an existing property. This awe-inspiring film is being turned away for being made by a well-respected director of movies such as Forrest Gump and Back to the Future. Is it being dismissed simply because it is not a documentary? The form of auteurs and artists? Yet this doesn’t feel like another Hollywoodploy. In his film, Zemeckis manages to capture the visceral feeling of being on top of the World Trade Center and the majesty of Philipe Petit’s titular walk, which only the artist himself experienced. From over 100 stories high, down to the streets of New York, it is the breathtaking feeling of being on top of the wire that the 2008 documentary cannot give you. This single sequence in The Walk is a nailbiting, entertaining and emotionally glorious thrill-ride and makes this whole film worth the watch. Yet what makes Man on Wire compelling is
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that, although we only get a glimpse of the event itself through still photography, the documentary nature of it all makes the film incredibly engaging. The magnificence of The Walk comes from it being a sheer spectacle, through the seamless CGI and perfect cinematography; the unnecessary accents and a somewhat choppy script are tiny flaws in an overall fantastic film and no one will be storming out of the cinema ranting about poor dialogue. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s performance as the eccentric tightrope walker is fantastic, and allows the actor, who hasn’t necessarily posed himself as an incredibly versatile actor yet, to stretch his chops. However, having said that, you might as well skip the first half of The Walk. Its sheer dullness shows how Man on Wire’s focus on the coup itself makes it a concise piece of film and highlights why so many critics consider it a more engaging watch. Both films latch onto the heist-like narrative of Petit’s story, but not until the second half does The Walk begin its ascent into spectacle. Its need to fill screen time but also to guarantee the audience’s emotional
investment is arguably a part of the original story narrative that studios seem to want to churn out relentlessly. Petit is an acrobat who has the odd but irrevocable need to walk the void between the Twin Towers: he’s not Superman. Therefore, do we really need 45 minutes of Joseph Gordon Levitt prancing about the streets of Paris? And Ben Kingsley’s (apparently) Czech accent as well as Petit’s narration? This combination makes for a conceit which becomes tired and annoying over time. Petit’s story is a truly magnificent one, therefore does it even matter in which way or form the story is told? Slight niggles will not take away the visceral feeling you will get when you finally see the man walk across the gulf between the Twin Towers. Man on Wire is the documentation of the event, whereas The Walk represents the dramatisation of said event. To say which one is better is a task because it could be a case of personal preference. But The Walk is a spectacle to behold - an unmissable experience, even if you’ve watched the celebrated and criticaldarling of a documentary beforehand.
The Intern: not just a romcom Strictly strikes back - Series 13 Film & TV Writer Dulcie Jones is disappointed by Nancy Meyer’s new comedy The Intern, despite Anne Hathaway’s past and De Niro’s presence. The film tries too hard and its efforts are so forced that the message of the movie is somewhat confusing complains about being fat, whilst the other older female intern is so incompetent at driving that she crashes a car. The contradictions in the feminist message are laughable. To make matters worse, stressed and dissatisfied with the chaos of her personal life, as presumably all successful women are, Jules has to rely on Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) for confidence and his grandfatherly pearls of wisdom. Sadly, such wisdoms are hardly inspiring. At one point, he explains that men should always carry a handkerchief because women cry and you need to be prepared. The only romance within the movie, which after all is what we expect from Meyers, is Ben’s fling with the in-house company masseuse - only in Hollywood. The moment she first gives Ben a massage and he proves he can still get aroused is one of the most excruciating scenes of the whole film. It almost begs the question of why De Niro agreed to play this part. Fortunately, the chemistry between De Niro and Hathaway is palpable, although it never becomes clear whether Hathaway realises she plays the same character as in The Devil Wears Prada, with just a few more responsibilities.
Flickr/Disney ABC Television
The Intern is a movie that really tries. Directed by Nancy Meyers, the film touches on wide-ranging themes such as grief, infidelity, feminism, ageism and sexist stereotyping. It’s a storyline that has the potential to be interesting; a 70 year old male widow struggling with retirement decides to re-enter the working world and become an intern for a much younger female CEO of an e-commerce company. The groundwork is laid for an intriguing discourse on the antagonisms of a man at the end of his life, facing the sad loneliness of ageing and a women in the prime of her life having it all and struggling with the consequences. Yet the film tries too hard; its efforts are so forced that the message of the movie is somewhat confusing. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Nancy Meyers fan. Usually when Meyers releases a movie, you can hear the seasoned professionals sharpening their often-cynical knives, whilst I proudly cheer for the female director. The Parent Trap is a family classic, The Holiday a much loved Christmas romcom and, more recently, It’s Complicated was a witty, fun, brilliantly acted screwball comedy. Unfortunately, however, The Intern misses the mark. The idea that Jules Ostin, played by Anne Hathaway, is the CEO and Big Boss of the company and female protagonist within the movie is refreshing. Yet that is where the feminist influence on the film ends. The other female characters, namely the employees of the company, are feeble and whinging stereotypes of the worst representation. An assistant constantly
Film & TV Writer Isabel Kilborn discusses the return of the nation’s twinkletoed sweetheart as Strictly Come Dancing comes back to screens this autumn.
This year’s contestants can only dream of these scores
Strictly Come Dancing is back! You probably don’t care. Your mum might care, especially if the male contestants are rugby players. Definitely your grandma. Unlike the Great British Bake Off, which has managed to transcend age and gender - despite being a show about baking in a field - Strictly still has a limited audience. Not numbers wise, of course; over 10 million people watched the final last year, in comparison to the 9 million who watched The X Factor, and the 13 million who tuned into this year’s Bake Off final. Just like Bake Off, Strictly is comfortingly predictable, with the crucial difference being that the celebrities are mostly clueless and relying on their personalities. Despite the fact that they are a bizarre bunch, picked to appeal to particular demographics, the celebrities categorise themselves almost immediately – Those Who Will Improve to Average But Aren’t Good Enough To Continue, Natural Performers Who Will Take To It Very Well, Trained Dancers Whose Ability Will Make Them Hated By The Audience, Athletes Whose Physical Strength Temporarily Trumps Their
Lack of Rhythm, and the best one of all - The One Who Has Absolutely No Hope At All But Will Stay in Because Their Humiliation is Entertaining. So far, Iwan Thomas has been rather unfairly sent home, probably because the more obvious weaker candidates, like Jeremy Vine and Carol Kirkwood, are well-known and loved enough that affection has surpassed their average ability. At this point it comes down to weeding out the chaff before those who are charismatic enough to continue remain. Anita Rani, Peter Andre and Jay McGuinness – who transformed completely within the space of a week both in terms of his hair and his confidence – are all looking especially promising, and Jeremy Vine’s earnest daddancing should keep him in for a while. Helen George is the only obvious choice for audience disdain based on previous experience, but her childhood dance training isn’t as impressive as Pixie Lott’s years of stage school were last year. Ainsley Harriot’s performance in the first week was hilarious and he has a good sense of rhythm, which unfortunately will probably mean a few more weeks of listening to Tess’ excruciating cooking-based jokes before each recap. However, Brucie was in another league of intermittent torture and Claudia saved the show with her wicked and subversive jokes. However inevitable the soundbites, the audience’s vote always swings Strictly unpredictably; popularity always trumps talent, and charisma always trumps technical skill. So to a certain degree it’s really anyone’s game. Unless you’re Iwan Thomas.
Epigram 19.10.2015
41 Team GB or Team USA? Battle of the reigning transatlantic television empires Film & TV Writers Elle Hughes, Ben Kew and Helen Uren question the relationship between the two pillars of modern day television. appealing, broadcasting to more viewers and thrilling them into anticipation for more. However, a comparison of both US and UK television that is more relatable to the everyday viewer is the influence we play upon each other. The US seem to have picked on a very British style of humour, clocking on to the success of our satirical programmes. They’ve latched on to satire of politics like Veep, which is directly translated from our mouthy satire The Thick Of It, and also with programmes like The Office, which was promptly taken for an American re-vamp.
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It seems it is this patriotism which drives the success of British television - this very value that promotes and devalues them at the same time This leads on to our fascination with the gritty, mundane and somewhat morbid everyday, with our enormous focus on hospital and police dramas, such as E.R. and The Bill; the themes of which are somewhat glamorised by the US, in programmes such as Grey’s Anatomy. But although we are preoccupied with the everyday, we also juxtapose this with a focus on the surreal inner workings of the minds of those normal-seeming individuals we portray in television. We are fascinated with the power of imagination, with the weird and the wonderful, focusing on how individuals, although seeming to be ‘normal’ are really unique. Perhaps this is a craving in our rat race of
Flickr/Herman Yung
Across the pond, the US may certainly dominate the internet, regurgitating 20 odd episodes of a series in an instant for the obsessed Netflix following. Yet UK television seems to focus much more on the traditional ritual of sitting down to watch the set in the corner of our rooms. Eventually this routine may disappear as technology evolves, but for now, not just because UK Netflix perhaps isn’t as sophisticated as the US version, families and friends around Britain are treated to a wide range of much loved shows from the homely to the obscure. A ‘treat’ of a show which has ‘risen’ amongst its competitors is the quintessential Great British Bake Off, leaving viewers on the edge of their seats when ‘caketastrophe’ strikes and the bakers rely on Mel and Sue’s reassuring help and jokes to get them through the ordeal. However, as well as the classics of Strictly Come Dancing, Bake Off and Doctor Who to name but a few, we are also celebrated for our British dramas. UK television places emphasis on recognising original British writers with BBC, ITV and Channel 4 helping to produce and support new talent. BAFTA winning writer Sally Wainwright sets nearly all of her dramas in Yorkshire, from Last Tango in Halifax to the gritty thriller Happy Valley, showcasing the British countryside whilst radiating a pride of her heritage. It seems it is this patriotism which drives the success of British television, even though this very value that promotes them also devalues them on a global scale. Breaking Bad and Modern Family are representative examples of the US-style of television, which is generically and universally
The Office asks the fatal question - who did it better?
a modern society. The singular and unique imagination of individuals can be seen in programmes such as Peep Show and Green Wing and this specific type of humour is something I think only British TV endeavours to do properly, with characters unashamed to bear the most alien and dislikeable aspects of their personality. This is encompassed in Green Wing’s Sue White, as she relentlessly berates other people’s weaknesses. But it is her unapologetic lack of shame, her honesty of feeling - although always offensive - that makes her likeable, she is strangely relatable to any one of us that has ever wanted to say exactly how we feel, an action which as
Brits perhaps we find particularly challenging. So perhaps there will forever be some sort of divide between North American and British television purely due to our own cultural character and different styles of humour. But as the idea of television grows away from the physical set, UK and US TV is reaching out to audiences on a global scale. It could be said then that the debate of which nation is better can never be answered, as we seem to continuously influence each other in creating the shows, more than ever before, uniting on some level in possibly being the greatest nations for home grown television.
What’s On? What can I do in Bristol this week? Love Is Like... Late Nights at The Watershed is almost reaching its end, but not before wooing the city with Her, Spike Jonze’s heartbreakingly moving love story between a man and his computer. Catch it at 11PM on October 23rd - it’s set to be a stunning evening.
Editors’ Picks
Kate Deputy Editor
Georgia Online Editor
Steve Jobs
Life
Suffragette
In cinemas October 9th
Watershed until October 15th
In cinemas October 23rd
I’ve been in awe of Michael Fassbender since I can remember, and Danny Boyle can seem to do no wrong - so the biopic about one of the most influential men of our era featuring this dream team has been at the top of my list for long enough now. Keep your eyes peeled for a very excited Editor’s Review soon...
This stylish drama chronicles a few weeks in the life of James Dean and Life photographer Dennis Stock. Following Dean’s rise in fame, the film explores the relationship between celebrities and the media - a topic that feels just as vital 50 years on. Beautifully gloomy with a stellar soundtrack, a must see for any James Dean fans.
With an all-star cast featuring some of my favourite actresses, I’ve been looking forward to this for some time. The film focuses on the early women’s suffrage movement, and the members who began to rebel when their protests were ignored. Powerful women kicking some ass - what’s not to love?
The Apprentice
Seven Songs For A Long Life
American Horror Story
BBC 1, every Wednesday
BBC 2, October 16th
Out now
As obvious as it may seem, I cannot contain my excitement for this to return. As Bake Off bade its farewell not long ago, thank god The Apprentice is back to satisfy my BBC weekday cravings. Always nice to see Lord Sugar again.
Filmed over three years, this documentary provides an insight into the end of the lives of six patients in a hospice. Looking at how singing can unlock memories and the gentlest ways to die, this is bound to be a tear-jerker.
The hit series has returned for its fifth season, Hotel. The first episode was a little slow, but the concept looks promising so I’m willing to stick with it. Starring the usual faces, this season’s cast welcomes Lady Gaga as The Countess.
Epigram/Ella Kemp
Flickr/TeLevIsione Streaming
Flickr/Insomnia cured here
Flickr/Ben Stanfleld
Ella Editor
Films to Faces
Jack Official Big Issue Vendor
1. Aliens I’ve been a fan of sci-fi ever since I can remember, and I really got into these when I was a teenager. I loved the philosophy behind it - very good, I just love that movie. 2. Silence of the Lambs Purely for Anthony Hopkins - his performance was off the charts. He had clearly read the book and completely absorbed the character. Mind-blowing perfomance. 3. Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal I never thought they’d be able to televise something like Pratchett, but they did it and did it very well, I was really impressed.
Who would you like to see interviewed next for Films to Faces? Tweet us @EpigramFilm with your suggestions!
Epigram
19.10.2015
Music
@epigrammusic Editor: Gunseli Yalcinkaya gyalcinkaya@epigram.org.uk
Deputy Editors: Alex Schulte; Caitlin Butler aschulte@epigram.org.uk; cbutler@epigram.org.uk
Online Editor: Sam Mason-Jones s.masonjones@epigram.org.uk
Syria’s Lost Song They may try to silence our voices but they will never erase the power of our words. Hama, Syria. 2011. More than 1,000 miles away from the West, where all of whom who we often consider to be the most important names in music reside. A fireman has just said goodbye to his wife and children – three young boys – and is on his way to work on what appears to be a normal morning. What happened next is unclear. According to eyewitnesses, a white vehicle stopped beside him and several men got out and forced him into the car. Ibrahim Qashoush was in trouble.
Illustration by Mike Sharp for Al Jadid Magazine
What was Qashoush’s crime? It was writing a song, and nothing more than that. However, it was a protest song and it was picked up by thousands - his lyric ‘Come on, Bashar (Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad), Time to leave!’ had been sung by huge crowds at the huge antiBashar Assad rallies, which had dominated Hama over the past months. Contrast this situation with that of Britain or, for that matter, the West. There has not been a hugely successful political artist in the West for some time, maybe not since Billy Bragg. Yes, grime and hip hop does address politics, but often only in oblique or humorous references which are all too fleeting. Kanye West and Bugzy Malone, amongst others, may talk about the experience of growing up in poor neighbourhoods (something which, you might say, is inherently political due to the economic system, which creates this poverty) but these are not designed to be protest songs. They are not designed to unite people under one cause. Considering how powerful music can be, this is a collective failure. Is this really representative of the experiences of people in Syria – are people really willing to fight through music? Or is their real situation closer to ours? Is a veneer of prominent protest music hiding a lack of appetite for political campaign and debate through music? You might be led to think the latter, on examining the evidence. There are antiprotest moves by artists looking to protect their business and make a quick regimesupported buck such as the successful Syrian artist Eslam Jawaad who raps things like ‘The true men of the [anti-Israeli] resistance remain in the lion’s (a translation of Assad’s name) den’). Yet there is a notable lack of political lyrics in the work of uber-successful Syrian artists such as Omar Souleyman. He has received mainstream attention in the West, which has led to collaborations with the likes of Four Tet, but despite this success he has not used it to direct attention towards the plight of his country. Is this such a bad thing? It would be unfair to criticise one particular artist for not being political in the West, since there is so much more in life to be sung about. Of course, you might say that not singing about politics
in Syria in 2015 is like not writing about war in the trenches of the First World War, such is its impact on life - 11 million people have been made refugees as a result of the war, out of a population of around 23 million. Yet it might be that Souleyman is engaging in a different kind of protest - a protest against the domination of war and politics in daily Syrian life. A protest against both people being unable to function in Syria and against the wider world seeing Syria as anything else. Or maybe we are reading too much into Souleyman’s lyrics and music. Either way, a lack of outright political discourse in places does not mean that Syrian music is ignoring Syria. You just have to look in the right places. Take Zinc, for example. They are a Syrian hardcore punk band who rock hard with lyrics like ‘The wounds that tear our flesh remove, the scars within our souls, it’s time that tyranny had left and let the people take control.’ Zinc are currently anonymous for their own safety. Take Yahya Hawwa, who continues to make protest music despite it resulting in the recent arrest of 17 members of his own family who he hasn’t heard from since. Or Khan El Rouh, who used his time in hiding from the Assad regime to create electronic music from anti-Assad samples. These are the protest acts recieving the most attention in the West, and that’s for one reason. They are using Western genres. They are using them in a way we have largely forgotten to do, partly due to consumerist apathy. They are using them to protest in a very direct, unapologetic way. They are using them to try and create change. The facts of what happened to Ibrahim Qashoush, meanwhile, remain unclear. What we know for certain, though, is that two days later Qashoush’s body was found in the Orontes River by local residents, with his throat cut out. YouTube footage of the body appeared online. He was 40. Protest acts in Syria were once inspired by Western acts, but now music acts here should be inspired by them. They make music in the face of death, and they make music which actively goads those who have ruined their country and their lives. Good on them, and if Western political music had one inch of their passion it would be a far better place. Ben Duncan-Duggal
Epigram 19.10.2015
4325
BESTIVAL 2015 In:Motion introduces... To be completely honest, when I first heard of Motion’s new night Nightcall, I was sceptical. ‘Does Motion really need another house night?’ was my first response. Yet, after a brief scroll through the line-up, it was shortly followed by a warranted ‘oh faaair.’ Nightcall is curated by Pardon my French’s Luke Sutton and the inhouse team at Bristol’s notorious underground club Motion. Created with the intention of showcasing the best of what house and techno has to offer, Nightcall is an attempt to assemble the most cutting edge acts from across the UK to an – albeit sweaty venue that is accessible to both students and underground music lovers alike. ‘Nightcall will fall between other house nights such as Just Jack and Apex, but will offer music for the more discerning electronic music fan,’ said one of the night’s founders, Luke Sutton, in a recent interview with Epigram. From the night’s most recent headliner and Domino Records producer George Fitzgerald to Hessle Audio heavyweights Pearson Sound and Pangaea and Bristol’s The Kelly Twins, Nightcall shows no attempt on skimping out on good quality acts.
Following their first official night last week, Nightcall returns to Motion on New Years Day for a mouth-watering lineup, featuring Âme (live), Sasha, Joy Orbison B2B Job Jobse, Leon Vynehall and Pardon My French. ‘Expect the best music, a great crowd and a top level of production and lighting, which will all contribute to a great night out at Motion and the Marble Factory.’ Well, we’re convinced. In:Motion will be featuring a vast array of nights for every kind of music reveller, whether it be Manchester’s grime collective Levelz or a smooth showcase by Black Butter records. Epigram Team
“Nightcall will fall between other house nights such as Just Jack and Apex, but will offer music for the more discerning electronic music fan.”
Epigram 19.10.2015
44
Epigram interviews Scouting for Girls... flickr: Ben Houdijk
It was terrific. Deputy music editor Caitlin Butler speaks to the lead singer of the pop trio, Roy Stride
Let us take a moment to imagine that today is once again what was, for many of us, our halycon days: the year 2008. Barack Obama is sworn in, the global financial market is crippled by the economic crisis, Heath Ledger dies and China hosts the Summer Olympics. Yet, as admittedly important as these events are on the world stage, each is overshadowed by one singular, ground-breaking phenomenon; the release of the eponymous debut album from Scouting for Girls. ‘Scouting for Girls’ in its entirety is nothing short of a masterpiece. Each song is a carefully crafted piece of pop magic. If there were to be some sort of award for catchiest song ever, I think we can all agree ‘She’s So Lovely’ would meet with little contest. For yours truly, that album ruled the summer of 2008. I thought long and hard about how Elvis wasn’t dead, and I really did wish I could be James Bond, even if just for a day. And please, don’t get me started on how lovely she was. The album was, and remains, a classic. Scouting for Girls was for my 14-year-old self what One Direction is now for many other teenage girls of such an age. In short, and this I freely admit, I was a fangirl. They were the first live band I ever saw, and I shall not in this lifetime forget the moment when the band appeared on stage, and I consequently had heart palpitations. That show was some of
the best 15 Great British pounds I have ever spent. As such, it was with great excitement, and minor trepidation, that I responded to the Scouting for Girls press lady, who had requested an interview. Did I want to speak to potentially one of the biggest crushes I’ve ever had? Of course I did. It was to be a strict 10 minutes on the phone and the topic of conversation was to be purely on the new tour and album. But this did not deter me; I had the chance to actually have a chat with Roy Stride. My 14-year-old self would possibly have burst into tears or similar, had she known such a turn of events would have come to pass. So it was with a hammering heart and sweating palms that I waited for the voice of Stride. Kara, the press lady, put me on hold for a few long minutes, and eventually, I hear him. Two words: Star Struck. I begin by asking him a question that is so blindingly obvious it makes me cringe: how has their new album evolved from the last? ‘Still Thinking About You’ is released on the 16th October, three years after their last full-length album, ‘The Light Between Us.’ According to Stride, the most significant change is simply logistics. ‘We changed our record label, from Sony to Out Of Time Records. We had released a greatest hits album with Sony, but wanted to unleash some new material. Out Of Time agreed to release this album, so we went with it; but it is essentially still the same Scouting for Girls pop.’ I then mildly gush for a bit and tell Stride that his band’s show was my first live music experience. How do Scouting for Girls experience performing live? ‘We absolutely love it. Our image as a band is mostly that we have fun; we try as best we can to channel that sense of fun into our gigs.’ He asks me where I saw them; I tell him Cardiff Motorpoint Arena, in 2008. ‘It’s special, isn’t it, being someone’s first gig?’ Yes. Yes, Roy, it really is. ‘That year was a mad one for us. We had our debut album, and all our various songs and basically all we did was perform gigs and party. It was madness; I can hardly remember 2008.’
Shinedown Threat to Survival Atlantic September 18th, 2015
Swim Deep Mothers Sony October 2nd, 2015
7/10
8/10 Mothers, Swim Deep’s sophomore effort, is an exciting progression from their debut album ‘Where The Heaven Are We’ of 2013. With the addition of James Balmont, a multi-instrumentalist, comes a new psychedelic, synth pop sound, a refreshing development from the indie rock style of their debut. The album is gripping in that it has the listener in suspense throughout; there is the definite feeling that anything could happen at any time. From the fast, athletic opening tracks comes the slower yet powerful ‘Green Conduit’ in which the listener is swept up in a storm of distortion, only to be broken by Austin Williams’ ethereal vocals that open ‘Heavenly Moment’, a change of direction typical of the album, the sound of a teenage change of mood. The single ‘Namaste’ is a clear highlight; its energetic drum beat, punchy synths and Williams’ thrilling voice create a track urging you to get off your feet. With so many twists and turns, experimentations that threaten to fall in on themselves but never do and songs with depth enough to engulf the listener, Swim Deep have created a work to be truly proud of. To pass off this effort and these musicians as just another indie band, of which there are so many sprouting up at the moment, would greatly sell short the ambition and talent of the group.
Since their last studio album, ‘Amaryllis,’ in 2012, the rock scene has inevitably missed Shinedown. With their latest release, ‘Threat To Survival,’ this gap has once again been so fittingly filled with Brent Smith’s deep, gritty vocals against a shamelessly rock backing. Fortunately, the band seem to have encompassed the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ mantra, for this record is as good as their others. Opening track ‘Asking For It’ encompasses this signature sound, and the album seamlessly evolves from ten tonne heavy riffs to beautiful and melodic pieces of work, ‘Misfits’ is a prime example. Their recently released single ‘Cut The Cord’ is a brilliant portrayal of the way this album is such a diamond amongst other album releases nowadays. With a unique sounding melodic hook that features throughout, the listener is repeatedly reminded of the way in which Shinedown have mastered a new sound in their 14 years together. This is met with heavy drum fills and an impenetrable sounding bass, proving that the band still know how to pack a punch. With inspirational lyrics littered through the song, this single is an accurate representation of the rest of the album. ‘Threat To Survival’ is even more heavy, thrilling and cathartic than the band’s previous releases, and is an album to be played at eleven.
Annie Slinn, Music Writer Michael Holdoyd, Music Writer
Scouting for Girls are famous, or perhaps infamous, for incredibly catchy, yet pretty simple, lyrics. How does Stride achieve inspiration for penning these pieces of pop? It is a process that has developed while they were on the road over the past three years. ‘We’ve been gigging everywhere; literally, anywhere that would have us, we played. And while we were moving about the country, we’ve been jamming together and writing songs. So I guess it isn’t one particular thing.’ Their next touring expedition will take them to our very own O2 Academy, on the 5th December. I wonder if Stride has any particular attachment or thoughts on the city of Bristol. He ponders, before observing the fact they have played there a few times over their musical career, and very much enjoyed it. ‘The venue is really welcoming; it isn’t enormous, and as such, lends itself to an air of intimacy and a generally nice atmosphere.’ He notes the difference between a show at a festival versus a show on tour. ‘Everyone who is there wants to be there. Sometimes people may stray from other stages who don’t really care and don’t necessarily want to be there, like in Glastonbury. It can be a bit daunting.’ And crazy fans? The One Direction fandom are notorious for showering their idols with, perhaps excessive, adoration. Do Scouting for Girls get such fans, who can be a bit much? ‘Not really,’ says Stride. ‘We’re so on the edge of fame; people know of us and probably know ‘She’s So Lovely,’ but won’t recognise us on the street. So, the fans are generally pretty friendly. No one goes too mad. We’ve had people spending thousands of pounds on seeing all our live shows, but it’s on good terms. There isn’t anything too extreme.’ At this point, press lady Kara cuts in to remind me I have only a 10-minute interview and to ask one final question. I panic, and ask Stride how he would describe his band in three words. Stride’s eventual response is concise; ‘pop for adults.’ If you are one inclined towards that genre, such as myself, perhaps one could disagree; pop for everyone is the Scotuing for Girls way.
Epigram
Sport
19.10.2015
45
Bristol readies itself for BUCS kick-off
Matt Nahajski
James O’Hara Deputy Sport Editor
With the start of the new BUCS season upon us, Epigram Sport caught up with some of the captains of the university’s sports clubs. Here’s a sample of what they had to say about the upcoming season….
a pertinent one, with the Blues translating poor pre-season form into relegation form in their eight games so far. For many of the university’s sports clubs, however, the signs are good. Netball had a ‘fantastic pre-season,’ according to Cub Captain Livi Ellis, while in a recent game against Nailsea, the Table Tennis first team won by a remarkable 10-0. If one thing is for certain, this season will yet again be an interesting one for the sports clubs of Bristol. Here’s hoping it will be successful.
Flickr: Bob Flickr: Bob
Charlie Warren Flickr: Ciclismo Italia
Flickr: Moral definition
Similarly ambitious targets have been set by Futsal and Ultimate Frisbee. The pressure is on for both clubs, with Futsal aiming to emulate Arsenal of 2003-04 and go the entire season unbeaten, while Ultimate Frisbee’s ‘huge team is expected to shine in the inaugural BUCS Wednesday league,’ in the words of club captain Matt Nahajski. ‘We aim to be top of the league with both teams, and go one step further in the cup,’ said Futsal Club Captain Ed Bonneville. ‘With
Flickr: Tim REckmann
“
‘I’m going to put my neck on the line and say that I think we can get five promotions and win the cup’
membership required, and fear not, we’ll start you off very, very gently!’ Women’s rugby are looking to become more involved in competitions, however. ‘We are looking forward to getting more people involved with competitive rugby, whether through university matches, touch tournaments, or rugby festivals,’ said Publicity Secretary Sue Neumann. Much is often made of the importance of pre-season in gathering momentum for the upcoming campaign. Certainly, the example of Chelsea in the Premier League is
Flickr: Football wallpapers
Competitive sport at the University of Bristol seems to be going from strength to strength. Perhaps the most optimistic, brazen outlook for the new season came from Men’s Football aptain James Motley. ‘I’m going to put my neck on the line and say that I think we can get five promotions and win the cup,’ he said. ‘The quality and fitness in the club is as good as I’ve seen it in four years and we’ve got leaders all over the place who I think can bring us a huge amount of success.’
the experience from last season, and new incoming talent into the squad, we firmly believe both aims are achievable.’ Many of the university’s sports clubs have also recorded a much larger intake than expected this year. ‘This year we have had over 60 students join our club, which is far more than we have achieved in previous years,’ said women’s Cricket Club Captain Shivani Shah. Meanwhile, the women’s Rugby team have had such a surge in interest that they have been able to enter a new team this year. ‘This year will be bigger and better with two leagues to win, varsity to dominate, and maybe every aspiring to become a premiership club,’ said Publicity Secretary Sue Neumann. Indeed, the lure of the Premier League is strong for many of Bristol’s sports clubs. ‘Although the first team have a tough league ahead of them, they are hoping to get promoted into the Premier League,’ said Netball Club Captain Livi Ellis. Meanwhile, for men’s cricket, it is the preservation of Premier League status that is the paramount objective. ‘We hope to establish ourselves as an elite cricketing university by maintaining our position in BUCS Premier A,’ said Charlie Warren. ‘This would secure our position in Premier A and allow us a period of squad consolidation and growth over the coming years.’ But for many of Bristol’s sports clubs, onpitch success is not enough. Both the Athletics & Cross Country Club and women’s rugby are eager to get more people active and involved in their sports, regardless of ability. ‘Even if you just fancy a weekly Docks Run on a Monday afternoon, we’re happy to have you on board,’ said Club Captain Jonny Monk. ‘We’ve even introduced a Beginner Running Course to get sedentary students more active more easily. It’s free - no gym pass or club
Epigram
19.10.2015
46
Are managers under too much pressure? Following the sacking of Brendan Rodgers and Stuart Lancaster’s failure to get England past the Rugby World Cup group stages, Epigram Sport questions whether sporting managers are under too much pressure.
NO - ‘Too much money is at stake to accept poor performance.’ Russell Evans Sports Reporter
Flickr: Geoffrey Hammersley
In the wake of England’s disastrous Rugby World Cup performance, commentators, sports writers and newcomers to the game alike have been asking how one of the most well-funded rugby nations can go out in the pool stages on home turf. Yet even before England had left the World Cup, influential voices such as that of Will Carling were taking unconstructive swipes at the regime, saying the players were treated like ‘schoolchildren’ by their management. Equally Brendan Rodgers, who led Liverpool to 2nd in the Premier League in the 2013/14 season, has been sacked. Despite only being hired in 2012, Rodgers had been the league’s second longest-serving manager, a stat which tells its own story. Commentators have spoken out, with Ian Wright saying he is ‘shocked’ at the sacking, and Swansea manager Gary Monk saying he ‘couldn’t believe it.’ Some may argue that both management and media should take a more lenient approach because there
is currently far too much pressure on managers to perform. But take a closer look. You can see that these two managers’ problems run far deeper than just poor decisions at crunch time. Ever since 2012, people have questioned Lancaster’s selection of Chris Robshaw firstly as England open side and secondly as captain. Both of these questions were answered: as he was outclassed by Australia’s David Pocock and Michael Hooper at the breakdown and as he choked by opting for a lineout when a penalty to claim a draw against Wales would have sufficed. Yet when he made the decision, after a poor 2011 World Cup, there was hardly a great deal of pressure on any decision that might improve performance. With Brendan Rodgers it was less his decision-making, but more his inability to retain key players. Rodgers had little say in the departures of Luis Suarez, Steven Gerrard and Raheem Sterling to Barcelona, LA Galaxy and Manchester City respectively. Yet suddenly the class that brought the team within touching distance of the Premier League title all but disappeared. And whilst it was
Liverpool’s transfer committee who failed to recruit finished talent, with ‘taking alright it was Rodgers who failed to get the best out of the players who were brought in with great potential. This failure cannot be placed on his shoulders alone
but equally he cannot be absolved of blame. At the professional level, the cold fact is too much money is at stake to accept poor performance. Criticism from the media and management are necessary to ensure that managers
don’t lose sight of where they need to improve. To allow coaches to continue unquestioned would cause the team to spiral downwards without hope of returning to former glory. In these cases it was not the pressure that caused their failures but a lack of ability, which lowers the quality of the sports we love.
having lost four out of six league fixtures, he said the performances had ‘shown signs’ of getting results. Yet since the emergence of social media, a minority of fans have the potential to be more influential in the fate of a club’s manager. When this newfound power is coupled with arguably unrealistic expectations, passionate fans can exert a greater amount of pressure
on managers. In February 2014 Alan Pardew criticised the media for aiming to put him under pressure. ‘‘There is pressure enough in this job without having a couple of stories which were untrue, he said.’ Anything published by the media quickly generates a public reaction, which is viewed by millions of people - a real problem for managers. Making the headlines with potentially untrue stories cannot be easy to deal with. In English football, the increase in international owners also puts pressure on management teams. Twenty-eight English clubs are now, at least partially, under foreign ownership. These new owners have less affinity to the club and are more concerned with short term goals than the bigger picture. For example, Vincent Tan, owner of Cardiff City FC showed complete disregard for the club’s history when declaring that the traditional bluebird would be replaced with a red dragon and simultaneously announced a £100 million investment plan. After pressure from supporters he scrapped the plans and, unsurprisingly, also changed his mind on the investment. Since Tan’s takeover, Cardiff have seen seven managers (including three caretaker managers) and this is indicative of an impatience and short-term vision often associated with international owners and their huge investments. As a consequence, managers are often pressured by chairmen who have in mind only finances and results. Of course, the players are not to be forgotten in this issue, as when
they perform well and win, pressure on the manager is dramatically reduced. Or is it? Often, the players receive all the plaudits for good results, yet the tactical input of the manager is forgotten. When things turn sour though, the first criticisms are directed towards management, whether that be in selection, tactics or training. Football fans are fickle creatures and when a winning streak forms, our expectations inevitably start to rise.
YES - ‘The players receive all the plaudits for good results, yet the tactical input of the manager is forgotten.’
Nicky Withers Sports Reporter
Social media continues to rise in power and it gives a much stronger and more public voice to pundits and fans alike. A recent case saw the sacking of former Peterborough FC manager Dave Robertson, who implied that ‘a group of fans on Twitter’ contributed to his dismissal. Whilst
Flickr: Jon Candy
“ 28 English clubs are now, at least partially, under foreign ownership
To use a cliché, managers particularly of teams in mid-table - end up suffering because of the standard they themselves have set. See the latter stages of Tony Pulis’s reign at Stoke City, for example. So whether winning or losing, a manager is under a continuing, albeit fluctuating, amount of pressure. For Rodgers, even his successes are now being attributed to Luis Suarez, so it is not surprising that nearly half of England’s managers have ‘serious heart conditions.’ If that is not high pressure, I am not sure what is.
Epigram
19.10.2015
47
British Sport: Variety or victory?
Epigram Versus
Dan Reuben Sports Reporter
Flickr: Jimmy Baikovicius
Dan Reuben Sports Reporter
Bernard Foley’s conversion of Matt Giteau’s try on the evening of Saturday 3rd October sealed an Australian victory over England, confirming England’s fate as the first Rugby World Cup hosts in history who have failed to reach the knockout stages on home soil. It also meant that a startling statistic now rings true; three England teams have now been knocked out in the group stages of three different World Cups in the last 16 months. Whether the fault lies with the team preparation, the management or with the players involved in the failures in Brazil, New Zealand, Australia and in West London, it is certain that this is a problem that cannot be left unsolved for much longer. One solution which seems to have gathered weight in recent weeks is to concentrate more
Continued from back page...
on one or two sports and so reduce the focus on a variety of sport in our country. In 2014, the Sports Personality of the Year award nominees came from ten different sports, ranging from football to dressage to alpine skiing. This was an attempt to increase the public awareness of different sports and to increase participation in sport among younger generations. However, having a variety of sports in the country also has the detrimental effect of reducing the chances of finding the great talents within a specific sport. If, for example, a talented footballer slips under the radar at a professional academy, the footballer may instead try their hand at another sport. This would cause the pool of footballers being brought up through the academies to be diminished. However, if more funding was given to the most played spectator sports in England, namely football, rugby and cricket,
then fewer players of these sports would slip through the net. These players would also receive a higher level of coaching, meaning that not only would the amount of players to choose from increase but there would be a higher quality of talent in England. This would allow England to be more competitive and to challenge more readily for world titles. Countries in the southern hemisphere such as New Zealand, South Africa and Australia are key examples in this debate as, consciously or subconsciously, they have long been advocates of concentrating more closely on two sports. The South African rugby team have played a starring role in the World Cup, winning it twice and always making it out of the group stages since their first appearance in 1995. Their cricket team have likewise been very successful - a constant thorn in England’s side during test series, and the first team to top the world
rankings in all three formats of the game simultaneously. The New Zealand and Australian rugby teams have also enjoyed success in World Cups, with both teams winning it twice and reaching three finals each. The fact that their only other main sport played on an international stage, like South Africa, is cricket, means that their strengths are focused on flourishing in these two sports. Therefore the school curriculum can be geared towards just rugby and cricket, rather than trying to be successful in many different sports. For decades, many different English sports teams and individuals have flirted with world greatness. However the world titles seemed to have, particularly in recent years, overlooked England. By concentrating purely on rugby and football, England would have a better chance at filling up their trophy cabinet which, at present, is merely gathering dust.
between fixtures – the players were forced to buckle. Nowhere were the
nerves more evident than that first kickoff from Fiji which was allowed to
bounce like it might be at schoolboy level. Then again, maybe we should blame those who took to the media to try and encourage England. Danny Cipriani’s absurd comments before the game that ‘not one Australian would get into that England team,’ can surely only have insulted an Australian team now ranked second in the world. Ben Youngs said England would set out to ‘blow them away’ – this was not a mustwin game for Australia, but maybe we aggravated a team of winners to the point where they began to see it as such. If England had played as well as they talked, the result may well have been very different. Whatever the reasons for England’s sad and premature exit,the tournament goes on, and maybe we have to pick a new team for support to go all the way. Of course, I’ve been supporting Ireland this whole time...
Flickr: Marc
don’t allow EPCR European Player of the Year 2015, Nick Abendanon, simply because he plays in France? Or, for the same reason, winner of the same award in 2014, Steffon Armitage - a back row conceivably dynamic enough to compete with Pocock or Hooper? Wales allow themselves to pick players who ply their trade abroad – most notably, British and Irish Lion Leigh Halfpenny – and the Australians shrewdly waived their selection rules with ‘the Giteau Rule,’ allowing Toulonbased Matt Giteau to line up against England on Saturday. Might it not have been wise for the RFU to introduce a similar rule? Maybe we should blame ourselves. Maybe we put so much pressure on England that even with the advantage of playing at Twickenham in the big group games - with a week’s rest
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Epigram
19.10.2015
Sport
@epigramsport
Editor: Marcus Price
Deputy Editor: James O’Hara
sport@epigram.org.uk @marcusprice106
deputysport@epigram.org.uk @JamesOHara14
Online Editor: Malik Ouzia sportonline@epigram.org.uk
The Blame Game - England’s Exit have been interested to see how the quick hands of Henry Slade would have fared at this year’s World Cup – of course, it is easy now with the gift of hindsight to think to yourself, ‘if we were going to go out, why couldn’t we have gone out whilst scoring tries..?’ Looking at the structure of English rugby from a grassroots perspective, it is hard to understand this failure to progress from the group.
Kieran O’Malley Sports Reporter
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It is hard to understand this failure to progress from the group Flickr: Marc
The dust has just started to settle after Australia’s 33-13 win against England, which dumped the hosts out of the Rugby World Cup. Former international players and rugby novices alike have been pointing the finger at various figures within the England camp, but who - or rather, what - was really to blame for the exit of the world’s wealthiest rugby nation from a home World Cup? It can only really be fair to begin with the players. All over the pitch on Saturday, English players were shown up by their Australian counterparts and nowhere was this more clear than at the breakdown. No-one can fault the work rate and dedication of captain Chris Robshaw (and it is unfortunate that Ben Morgan had to be rushed back into the squad after injury), but frankly the English backrow was made to look ordinary in comparison to the masterful Michael Hooper and David Pocock. Their turnovers killed England’s attacking momentum, and via their securing of quick ball, Will Genia was able to put in the faultless Bernard Foley for Australia’s second try. England’s lack of discipline shone through too. Maybe this is
to be expected of a team with an average of only 25 caps (pre-World Cup), in comparison to Australia’s 40. Time and time again against Wales, England were penalised for not rolling away at the ruck. Again, on Saturday, England contrived to give four penalty kicks away to the marksman-like Foley. Joe Marler in particular was guilty of repeatedly
ignoring the referee’s warnings at the scrum. Inevitably, England’s management will be denounced. Ex-international Kyran Bracken has now referred to Stuart Lancaster’s tenure as ‘four and a half years of failure’, and many will be inclined to agree. It has never been particularly clear what Lancaster’s first XV is; against Wales, he fielded
the 14th centre combination of his regime, which has at times resulted in a clear lack of team chemistry. Others may even argue the selections were not adventurous enough. It appeared a conservative choice to select Farrell over Ford, who excelled in particular against France in the final game of this year’s Six Nations. Many would also
With a revenue of £153.5 million in 2011/12 - in comparison to New Zealand’s £54 million – and with over 2 million rugby players in England – compared to under 1.5 million in the rest of the four big southern hemisphere teams combined – it is hard to justify England’s failings as having a lack of resources. However, it is possible to point out the RFU’s overseas player selection policy as a factor in English shortcomings. Is it right that we Continued on page 47
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265mm x 164mm landscape Freshers JW.indd 1
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