gair rhydd - Issue 896

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CARDIFF'S STUDENT WEEKLY

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ISSUE 896 MAY 11 2009

‘NO FINAL DECISIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN’ Vice-chancellor responds to proposed LEARN centre closures Letters, page 16

STRIKE FEAR

National strikes over pay for lecturers possible as University and Colleges Union ballots members for action Emma Jones News Editor The University and Colleges Union (UCU) have been condemned by students for threatening strike action this summer.

The UCU have asked for an 8% pay rise this year, which has been denounced by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA).

The UCU have now warned that it will ballot its members for industrial action over threatened job losses.

Ballot papers were issued on May 1, and the ballot will finish on May 22.

A similar situation arose in Cardiff three years ago when a nationwide strike took place.

In 2006, gair rhydd reported that students were left with unmarked coursework, cancelled lectures and seminars, and disrupted exam timetables when lecturers boycotted mark-

ing and assessment, causing massive disruption.

The 2006 strike ended in June when lecturers were given a 13.1% pay rise over three years.

If strikes take place this summer, they may affect graduation ceremonies.

When lecturers went on strike in Cardiff in 2006, graduation ceremonies did go ahead as planned, but the University admitted there was a chance that not all students would receive their degree classification before the event due to the massive marking backlog created by the boycott.

This meant that some students only received an interim degree at graduation.

The UCEA has said that it is “bewildered” by the decisions taken by the UCU, and the NUS, who traditionally side with UCU, have also denounced their actions.

Wes Streeting. NUS President, said: “Given the effects of the current economic climate on the graduate

jobs market, students need industrial action by university staff like a hole in the head.

“The NUS has repeatedly called for all parties to handle the financial crisis in a way that minimises the negative impact on teaching and learning. It is vital that all parties get around the table to end the threat of strike action.”

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said: “UCEA has indicated that up to 100 universities, around two-thirds of participating institutions, are looking to lose people and our own research indicates that the scale of job cuts is substantial.

“Every UCU member, whatever type of institution they work in, is potentially vulnerable as current proposals for cuts at institutions as varied as the universities of Liverpool, Reading, Hertfordshire, and London Metropolitan show.”

This could mean that Cardiff is at risk, as many of the University’s lecturers are UCU members.

Ms Hunt added: “The key thing

THERE’S MONEY IN THE KITT Y!

Students dress as Fat Cats for Topshop protest >> page 3 is to ensure that we have a situation where all acknowledge that redundancies are a final resort, not the first option as seems to be the case at some institutions at the moment.

“It is the failure of employers to react to the growing crisis that has forced our hand. We need to get an agreement sorted now to stop a wideranging cull of academic jobs without proper alternatives being considered.

Given the urgency of the situation, the union’s officers have agreed to ballot for industrial action.”

In response, UCEA’s chief executive, Jocelyn Prudence, said: “When the sector has been asked by the Treasury to make additional significant savings, the UCU decision to instigate a strike ballot is truly baffling.

“We are at the beginning of the pay negotiation process.

“HE institutions’ sustainability must be the key priority for staff, students and employers; it would be unwise to negotiate without full knowledge of the sector’s financial position.

Moreover, the unions have yet to indicate the priorities of the 13 different elements of their pay claim, which include the UCU claim for 8%.”

A Cardiff University spokesperson said: “This issue is being handled at a national level by the Universities and Colleges Employers Assocation (UCEA) on behalf of all UK universities, including Cardiff.

“The University supports the statements already made by the Association on the issue. We would particularly endorse its wish that the matter can be resolved by unions and employers working together through the previously agreed national negotiation framework.”

PET HATE: THE GRADUATES WHO ABANDON ANIMALS >> page 21

02 NEWS

gr

MAY.11.2009 NEWS@gairrhydd.COM

Media awards honours future moguls

NEWS.................1 EDITORIAL & OPINION.............9 COLUMNIST......13 POLITICS..........14 LETTERS...........16 FEATURES........20 SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT..23 TAF-OD..............24

Huw Stephens hits the Hilton for annual ceremony

JOBS & MONEY.............25

Sarah Powell News Editor

categories for gair rhydd, Quench, CUTV, Xpress, Film Society and the Film Society.

In a greatly anticipated ceremony, glass plaques were awarded to contributors with categories ranging from best photographer for gair rhydd to best interview for Xpress Radio. gair rhydd winners included Editor-elect Emma Jones, who was awarded with Best News Writer, whilst Sports Editor Richard Williams scooped Best Sports Writer.

As part of the prize Richard also won a week of work experience with

the Guardian. The Politics section of gair rhydd also saw success after winning best section. Gareth Ludkin, Politics Editor, collected the award and was clearly elated with his prize.

Quench saw Film collect the award for best section, with Film Editor Francesca Jarvis also collecting an award for best designer for the second year running.

The most dedicated member of Quench went to Guy Ferneyhough, whilst the most dedicated Xpress Radio member was awarded to Lee

Macaulay.

Xpress winners also included Brittany Maher-Kirk and Lisa Evans, with Sam and Greg winning best mainstream show and the Filibusters picking up an award for best specialist show.

Head of Cardiff Student Media Ben Bryant said: "It was a fantastic event. Everything went exactly according to plan and Huw Stephens was a brilliant host. Overall, it was the perfect way to celebrate a really exceptional year for Cardiff Student Media!"

SPORT..............31

The 12th Annual Cardiff Student Media awards took place last week, with a high-profile event held at Cardiff's Hilton Hotel.

Celebrity Radio One DJ and local legend Huw Stephens hosted the event and presented all of the awards.

The evening celebrated the talent and dedication of all of the contributors to student media, with award

gair rhydd has been Cardiff University's independent student newspaper since 1972.

Universities 'ignore' contact time

FIVE MINUTE FUN..................27 LISTINGS..........28

Emma Barlow News Editor Russell group Universities, including Cardiff University have come under criticism from The Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) for “ignoring” the issue of contact time.

The Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) quizzed 2,000 undergraduates on their degree workload, the size of their classes and their contact time with lecturers.

The new study has shown that although students study for up to two hours and twelve minutes more a week than two years ago, there had been virtually no change in the amount of contact time students receive with lecturers, just 14.5 hours compared with 14.3 hours two years ago.

Hepi’s director, Bahram Bekhradnia, said: “Students appear to be working longer, despite receiving no more by way of hours of formal teaching.”

Bekhradnia, added that the extra income from students’ fees had gone

to academics’ salaries rather than on contact time with lecturers. This had been necessary, he said, as lecturers’ wages had been too low.

But he said that lobbying groups such as the Russell Group were “ignoring” the issue of contact time and workload.

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, responded to the claim saying: “Measuring the number of hours studied is not a particularly effective indicator of the health of the UK higher education system.”

Piatt explained that students at the

oldest universities were encouraged to take more responsibility for their own learning and were supported as they studied.

“The notion of ‘contact’ or ‘study hours’ does not fully capture these additional opportunities to seek guidance from tutors, nor the fact that different disciplines evolve in different ways.” She said.

Bekhradnia said these results raise very serious issues about the possible variation in standards between subjects and universities and question "what it means to have a degree from an English university".

Away on a placement? Heading abroad? In bed with a hangover?

www.gairrhydd.com ...NEWS, LIVE DEBATE, FEATURES, SPORT, QUENCH, EXCLUSIVE CONTENT & MORE

NEWS 03 Students condemn Topshop 'slave labour' MAY.11.2009 NEWS@gairrhydd.COM

Cardiff University students protest against the high street fashion giant's refusal to join the Ethical Trading Initiative Sarah Powell News Editor Students from Cardiff University took part in the labour movements on Queen Street on Friday 1 May to protest against reports of Topshop's slave labour conditions.

People & Planet, the University's student campaigning group, joined the anti-globalisation protest for International Labour Day to take action against branches of Topshop all over the UK. Colourful demonstrations were held outside Topshop stores across the UK, including Edinburgh, Oxford, London, Manchester, Birmingham.

This was the largest student movement in the UK to have condemned Topshop's recent announcement that they will be including a new range of ethical Fairtrade clothing. The movement objected because Topshop have refused to take serious action on the 'slave labour conditions', which a report from the Sunday Times has discovered in the rest of their supply chain.

The campaign group dressed as ‘fat cats’ to symbolise Topshop owner

People and Planet student campaigners protest outside the Topshop store on Cardiff's highstreet Philip Green's lack of accountability and concern for workers.

Another aspect of the protest in-

cluded urging people across Britain to phone Topshop's customer services and ask them why they refuse to join

Universe-ity satellite launch Eleanor Joslin News Editor

A satellite that contains vital hardware designed by Cardiff University Professors will be launching into space on Thursday 14 May. The European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory and Planck Surveyor satellites contains the SPIRE instrument that Professor Matt Griffin developed as well as other key instruments provided by Professor Peter Ade, both from the School of Physics and Astronomy.

The instruments, developed by teams led by Cardiff University Professors Griffin and Ade, includes a camera, which is able to take extremely detailed images in three sub millimetre ‘colours’.

Professor Griffin commented: “It will offer astronomers a very powerful tool for many astrophysical studies from our own solar system to the most distant galaxies.

"The results will reveal how stars like the Sun are forming in our own galaxy today, how the galaxies grew and evolved over cosmic time, and how planetary systems can develop from the dust and gas around young stars.”

The satellites will use this camera to collect images of the universe at far infrared wavelengths, which will provide detailed information about how

the universe began.

Professor Ade, also the UK Instrument Scientist for Planck satellites, said: “The Planck satellite will revolutionise our understanding of how the Universe we live in began in the

first split second of the Big Bang, and it will use the early universe as a laboratory for fundamental physics, revealing new insight into the forces of nature.”

the Ethical Trading Initiative.

The Sunday Times report in August 2007 revealed human rights abuses

in the factories supplying Topshop, owned by Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, which questions Topshop’s commitment to ethical fashion.

Mr. Green has previously claimed that the company has changed its practises, but refuses to join the Ethical Trading Initiative in order to publicly verify these claims.

Jim Cranshaw, Trade Campaigner at People & Planet, said: "Philip Green's deafening silence on the issue of the Ethical Trading Initiative suggests the company’s indifference to the labour rights abuses that are taking place throughout their supply chain.

Introducing a few Fairtrade clothing lines is commendable, but what about their otherwise awful record of engaging with supply chain ethics?"

Alice Hemming, Trade Justice Coordinator for Cardiff People & Planet, said: "It seems like this is an opportunistic attempt to hijack the lucrative ethics-conscious market and just ends up looking like a token gesture. By drawing the focus onto the new Fairtrade range, Topshop is further marginalising the exploited workers that produce the rest of their lines. We need to ensure consumers see through this kind of hypocritical ethics fraud."

BNP campaign headquarters found in Wales Emma Barlow News Editor It has been revealed that the British National Party are using a warehouse in Wales as their campaign headquarters during the run up to next month’s European Parliament election.

Plaid Cymru AM Nerys Evans said: “It is vitally important that everyone who opposes their offensive politics turns out and votes, to send a clear message that the BNP are not welcome here in Wales.”

The warehouse in Welshpool is being used to organise 29 million leaflets before they are distributed across Britain by post.

Under new electoral law, the BNP is entitled to have leaflets delivered free to every home in the UK. BNP deputy leader and spokesman Simon Darby said: “We are perfectly entitled to have the Royal Mail deliver leaflets for us.”

The anti-fascist organisation Searchlight obtained photographs

from inside the warehouse which feature the notorious BNP activist Arthur Kemp, author of the Nazi sympathising book March of the Titans: A History of the White Race.

Emails sent from BNP senior figures to members were also passed onto a local newspaper last week, which included a request for 50 volunteers a day to prepare the leaflets for distribution.

The Welsh Conservatives’ Shadow Social Justice Minister Mark Isherwood said: “I am deeply concerned that Wales is being used as the administrative centre of the BNP’s campaign. While the BNP has been rejected by the electorate at every level of government in Wales, that is no cause for complacency.”

Simon Darby is not surprised at the outcry and is confident the BNP will be successful in the upcoming elections, “As a lawful party which is going to have MEPs elected, it is not surprising that other parties are against us – we are going to be taking jobs off them.”

04 NEWS News in brief: Eleanor Joslin News Editor

St David's 2 will open in October After £675 million, St David's 2 will finally open in just five months time.

Norman White, Project Director for St David's 2, said: “St David’s is really taking shape now – the development is changing daily.”

He continued: "It won’t be long before construction is finished and the retailers begin to fit out their new stores.”

A John Lewis department store will be one of the main attractions, as well as other well-known national and international retailers.

It will also feature a grand arcade running throughout the centre and will connect shoppers to public areas of tree lined boulevards as well as improving pedestrian walkways to the other shopping areas, the Old Brewery Quarter and Callaghan Square.

In October the new mall will coexist with the current St David's Centre and the Hayes to make Cardiff one of Europe's top shopping destinations.

Highest paid PhD comes to Wales One of the world's highest paying PhD schemes will be introduced by the University of Wales to encourage research in Welsh universities and colleges.

Students could receive as much as £25, 000 on the Prince of Wales Innovation Scholarships programme, which will also pay for tuition fees.

It is hoped that such incentives will improve the recruitment of more overseas undergraduates, research students and international research academics, with the aim being to recruit 100 of the world's best graduates.

Professor Marc Clement, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, said: "This is about recruiting extraordinary people to make sure Wales is at the frontier of research and industrial excellence and we anticipate that we will have the best graduates globally competing to get on the scheme."

Professor Clement continued: "We hope that many firms will partner with us on this project to ensure that innovation and enterprise become a by-word for the Welsh business sector and to show that a small economy can punch above its weight and compete successfully with the best in the world."

MAY.11.2009 NEWS@gairrhydd.COM

MA courses need more public funding

Postgraduate international students paying higher fees are 'propping up' UK universities Christofer Lloyd Investigations More public funding should be made available to students on taught postgraduate courses or their numbers may decrease, a report warns.

Almost one in five UK students is a postgraduate on a taught Masters course and numbers have risen by 70% in 11 years, the Universities UK report says.

Universities UK recently warned that institutions are dependent on the higher fees of foreign postgraduates.

The report, which focuses exclusively on taught postgraduate study and its sustainability, throws up concerns that universities may lose valuable income if student numbers decline.

Students from the UK, EU and elsewhere in the world are likely to be affected by economic difficulties, and

this could have a negative effect on future enrolments, the report says.

UK president, Professor Rick Trainor, said: "The report finds that individual student contributions and employer support may not be sufficient to sustain this market over the next few years

without increased public support.

"However, the recent announced cuts in the higher education budget mean that further public support is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future."

In the year 2006 07, 41% of enrolments on fulltime

postgraduate courses in the UK were non-EU students, of which 50% came from Asia, the report notes.

Universities UK has previously warned that the higher fees for postgraduate courses paid by overseas students were "propping up" UK universities.

Higher education minister David Lammy said: "The expansion of postgraduate provision for both home and overseas students has been one of the great recent success stories in higher education.

"This year we will publish a framework on how the sector will remain world class over the next 10 to 15 years and for the first time this will set out the path for developing a clear strategy on postgraduate research.

"Therefore we are increasing the financial support available by offering an additional 30,000 professional career development loans by 2010 - 11."

The end of LEARN as we know it?

Jamie Thunder Sub Editor The consultation document for the proposed reduction of activities at Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning was finally released last week, 11 days after the cuts were originally announced to staff.

As gair rhydd issue 895 reported, the document's recommended option would axe all humanities and Welsh provision from LEARN’s programme, leading to more than 250 courses being stopped.

The document, seen by gair rhydd, projects an overall loss for the Centre of over £1million by academic year 2012-13 if full operations continue. In contrast, the projections based on the proposed reduced operations see the Centre’s deficits peaking at £418,000 in 2009-10 before decreasing. However, the projections have been criticised by staff members at LEARN, who say that there has never been any belief in the Centre that current levels could be maintained.

“We realise there needs to be some rationalisation, but the figures haven’t taken into account that we are willing to rationalise our provision,” said Dr. David Wyatt, a co-ordinating lecturer at the Centre, at a meeting for supporters of the campaign to save humanities and Welsh. “I can’t see how you can make a projection on that when nobody expects that we can carry on at that level.”

A spokesperson for the University said that "[t]he business case takes into account all the pressures and opportu-

nities facing the Centre for Lifelong Learning," and that the two options were "a high increase in tuition fees across all courses ... or a reduction in the range of courses provided by the Centre and a lower increases across the remaining courses". The business case does not mention any reasons for rejecting rationalisation of humanities provision as an option.

The University has repeatedly stated that no decision has yet been made on the proposals, and that “a final decision on the proposals ... will, as always, be made by the University Council.” gair rhydd understands that the final meeting of the year of the Council is on July 6th, nearly two weeks before the end of the consultation period.

The document estimates that a 20% increase per annum in student fees for two years would be needed to cover the increased payroll costs caused by moving hourly-paid teaching staff to the National Framework Agreement.

This would increase the cost of a standard 10-credit module from £68.50 to £98.64, and the document states that “it must be doubted whether the current student-body ... can be maintained at or near the same level if an increase of 20% in at least two years is put in place.”

A University spokesperson confirmed that no study of students' reactions to increased fees has been undertaken, but insisted that "a possible increase in tuition fees is fully discussed as an option in the business case document circulated to staff and the trades unions [which] considers student recruitment patterns in the light of past, smaller fees increases and the

SAVE HUMANITIES AT LIFELONG LEARNING

Cardiff University’s Centr e for Lifelong Learning may have all humanities and Welsh teaching axed from the programme •Email the VC: v-c@cf.ac

.uk

•Email Education and Welfare Officer Nick Yates: yatesn@ca rdiff.ac.uk •Sign the online petiti on •Next Meeting: Tuesday 5th May 7pm at the Lifelong Learning Centre, Senghenydd Road

w w w. i p e t i t i o n s . c om/petition/save lifelonglearning savehumanitiesca rdif flifelonglearn ing.blogspot.com

present economic downturn". No figures are provided in the business case regarding possible numbers of students who would not enrol in the future on the basis of increased fees. gair rhydd has also learnt that the University spent only 24% of its Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) Additional Support for Part-time Students funding for 2008/09. A memo circulated to Heads of Schools and Directors of Directorates revealed that £530,000 – out of a total of £706,000 – of the funding allocated to Cardiff University has not yet been distributed. However, a University spokesperson told gair rhydd that this money is not eligible for salary costs of existing University staff.

Jenny Randerson, AM for Cardiff Central and Shadow Education Minister in the WAG, last week endorsed the campaign to save humanities provision at LEARN, pledging her “full support”.

“What the University is doing is flying in the face of the WAG’s policy,” she said. “The WAG is desperately try-

ing to encourage teaching of Welsh in higher education and it also has a policy of lifelong learning, and spreading learning out.”

Over 400 people have signed the online petition in support of humanities and Welsh at the Centre, and the Facebook group has over 350 members. Staff at the Centre are examining the projections and intend to propose a different model that would rationalise the provisions at the Centre without completely cutting humanities and Welsh from the programme. The University has indicated that it would be "keen to hear ideas from Centre staff members".

The next meeting for supporters of the campaign to save humanities and Welsh at the Centre for Lifelong Learning is at 7pm on Thursday May 14th in the Centre. The room will be signposted.

Vice-Chancellor responds to gair rhydd: Letters, page 16

NEWS 05

MAY.11.2009 NEWS@gairrhydd.COM

Low expectations Christofer Lloyd Investigations Only 36% of 2009’s graduates expect to get a job for which they are qualified this year, graduate recruitment agency High Flyers has discovered.

Their research involved 16,357 students from 30 UK universities, including Cardiff University. Over half of those questioned felt that prospects for new graduates were “very lim-

ited”, while 48% feared that they may be made redundant within a year of starting work, with 42% believing that if they did receive a job offer, it would be withdrawn before they started.

The poll also revealed that a quarter of final year students planned to pursue further study after graduating, as a result of the current economic situation.

Teaching was found as the most popular career choice in 2009, being pursued by 13.7% of those interviewed, moving up from third place last year.

Other destinations included media jobs (13.6%), marketing (12.6%) and charity/voluntary work (10.4%) while last year’s second most popular choice, investment banking tumbled to ninth place in the survey, only being considered by 9% of those surveyed.

This year’s cohort of graduates was the first year to have had top up fees and will leave university with debts averaging £15,700, up £4,100, 35% more than last year’s average.

The mean graduate salary, however, has decreased for the first time in more than 15 years, going down to £22,300, £400 less than last year.

However, despite this, 97% of final year students said they had enjoyed their time at university and would recommend it to others, while over 90% felt that their university would put them in good standing with employers.

Additionally, fewer than 14% said they would not have come to university if they’d known the state of the employment market they would be grad-

uating into.

Martin Birchall, Managing Director of High Flyers said that the survey found finalists as “gloomy and frustrated” about employment prospects.

“Although many students began their job search earlier than usual and made an increased number of applications to employers, noticeably fewer have been successful in securing a graduate position than last year,” he said.

Birchall added: “Having invested an average of £15,000 on their degrees, tens of thousands of finalists are now set to leave university without a job offer and feel they have little prospect of finding work in the immediate future.”

This survey comes at the same time as the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) starts a “new graduate pool” in its internship programme. This online pool of talent aims to bring together employers and graduates to promote work experience.

Higher Education Minister David Lammy pointed out that graduates are still less likely to be unemployed than other groups: “While this report is based mainly on perceptions of what might happen, we are committed to providing graduates with practical support to help them get a job or further their education,” he said.

“That is exactly why we have launched the next stage of our graduate internship initiative which will sit alongside other internship schemes and additional graduate opportunities such as postgraduate study and volunteering.”

Initiatives announced to 'strengthen ties' between UK and Iraq Steve Wright Reporter

A series of initiatives have been announced with the aim of strengthening ties between higher education institutions in the UK and Iraq.

In a meeting last week at the British Council, of which ex-Labour leader and Cardiff aluminus Neil Kinnock is chairman, on Thursday April 30th, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki discussed various proposals including a new scholarship scheme that will see 300 Iraqi students attend UK universities in 2009, with the aim of increasing the total number of students studying overseas to 10,000.

Additionally, the UK Government have announced plans to ease visa restrictions on Iraqi students, along with a £3 million grant from the Department for International Development to fund the various ventures.

The Iraqi PM said of the plans: “Education and knowledge are the tools that build bridges between nations: it is on this that the true value of nations is built.

“British institutions were always highly regarded and present in Iraq, and it’s something all Iraqis are proud of when they get British degrees.”

The scholarship programmes will send Iraqi students not only to the UK, but also to other countries like the US, Canada and Australia.

Up to 70% of European students evade loan repayment Sarah Powell News Editor It has emerged that up to 70% of students from other European Union countries are failing to repay their student loans after studying at UK universities.

Figures released by the Student Loans Company (SLC) reveal that out of the 2, 240 students who should have begun repayments, 1,580 are unaccounted for.

Students from EU countries have been eligible for low interest loans to cover their tuition fees since 2006 and with take-up of this financial aid growing fast, the amount borrowed now totals around £130m.

SLC figures show that in 2007 and 2008 roughly 2, 240 students were due to begin their loan repayment.

However, 59% of those due to pay back their loans in 2007 did not, and this figure rose to 70% last year.

This has led to experts questioning

whether this is a warning sign of larger repayment problems when greater numbers of EU students graduate.

The government has said that SLC is working hard to track down missing repayments, but a spokesman for SLC said that it does not routinely write to the parents of students in case it breaches data protection rules.

David Willetts MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills believes the SLC is not doing enough to track students down once they leave the country.

"It's very important that the Student Loans Company is as energetic in collecting debt built up by students across the continent of Europe as they must be in collecting debts from students in Britain," he said.

"The evidence that we're getting already shows that the Student Loans Company is being shockingly ineffective in collecting money that's owed."

The news has resulted in various cases of unaccounted loans appearing.

EUROPEAN STUDENTS: Sailing off into the sunset?

One Spanish former student graduated from a UK University five years ago but has still not repaid her loan.

After moving back to her home country, she said that the Student Loan

Company had not communicated with her regarding repayment of her loan which caused her to forget about it.

"If you don't have anyone reminding you that you owe them money,

and that you have to pay, you can forget about it," she said.

She now owes £10, 000 and decided to contact the SLC herself after fearing a further increase due to interest.

She has just begun repaying the loan voluntarily, but said that she knew of several other students who were not intending to pay back their loans until they heard from the SLC. In the UK, loans are automatically recovered through the tax system as soon as a former student is earning more than £15,000.

Outside the country, however, there is no repayment mechanism.

This means that the SLC has to rely on students informing it of their earnings and making their own payment arrangements.

The SLC has not taken legal action against any EU students for nonrepayment of loans, although it says it is considering taking nine former students to court

06 NEWS

MAY.11.2009 NEWS@gairrhydd.COM

UNION WATCH

Virtually cured IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON FELIX Third year medical students are taking part in a pilot program which allows them to diagnose and treat patients – in a virtual world.

Internet phenomenon Second Life is the platform in which future doctors are treating these virtual patients, with students creating their own online alter egos known as ‘avatars’.

A virtual hospital has been set up to look like Imperial College’s own facilities, and students can practice their medical skills where everything is made to mimic the real-life situations

Robin Morgan rounds up the week in student media

Professor of poetry faces sexual harrassment charges

and experiences of a hospital ward.

Members of staff have even been created with uncanny resemblances to their online counterparts.

Medical knowledge is crucial for the exercise, which takes students through day-to-day activities and situations.

It has been criticised for not giving soon-to-be practitioners the ‘real deal’, lacking the experience of patient’s emotions, or the ability to cope with death.

The aim is not to replace this kind of learning, however, but simply to create a “more engaging learning environment”, according to Maria ToroTroconis, a senior learning technologist.

OXFORD CHERWELL

The nomination of a candidate for Oxford University’s Professor of Poetry has been tainted by the news that he has been accused of sexual harassment twice at previous universities.

Derek Walcott was accused of sexually harassing two female students whilst at Professorial positions at Harvard and Boston universities, in 1992 and 1995 respectively.

An anonymous student claimed that during a creative writing class in 1982, Walcott had propositioned her during

an evaluation of her work, and after she rebuffed his advances, gave her a ‘C’ grade, which was later appealed to be given a pass grade by the student.

The student wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson, the university newspaper, with accounts of what allegedly happened.

It recounts that Walcott asked the student to “Imagine me making love to you”, then asking, “Would you make love with me if I asked you?”

Harvard University officially reprimanded Walcott after the events, which seemed to be repeated three years later, whilst at Boston University.

Another female student, Nicole Niemi, claimed that Walcott had propositioned her, then threatening to fail her

after hearing of her rejection.

Niemi claimed for $500,000 in compensation after the allegations were made.

A campaigner for Walcott, Professor Hermione Lee, claimed these allegations should not interfere with his candidacy for the post, suggesting that he would only be “giving public lectures to students [and not] someone who will be in pastoral relations to students.”

She defended the Nobel Prize winner (for Literature in 1992) by adding, “You might ask yourself as a student body whether you wanted Byron or Shelley as a professor of poetry neither of whom personal lives were free of criticism.”

Unequal pay for Cambridge academics CAMBRIDGE VARSITY Pay discrepancies between Cambridge academics have highlighted a gender pay gap which means that male staff earn almost £10,000 more on average than their female counterparts.

Cambridge University commis-

sioned a study into equal pay, which considered the salaries of over 1,500 University academics.

The study revealed that the average pay for male academics is £58,141, compared to £47,353 for their female equivalents – a 21.2 per cent difference.

The report attributes the difference to the fact that more men are employed at higher pay grades.

A spokesperson from the University said that issues of gender imbalance in the top pay grades would be “proactively addressed.”

CUSU’s Women’s Officer described the findings as “shocking and disappointing”.

She noted that, despite government legislation promoting equal pay and gender equality in the workplace, the University still needed to significantly

improve.

Cambridge must “move with the times”, she said, warning that CUSU would continue to pressure the University to reduce gender inequality, though she acknowledged that “a lot of progress” has been made in recent decades.

The average salary for women across all job categories was £28,247, compared to £37,157 – a 31 per cent

difference. The group’s report ascribes this difference to the different numbers of men and women employed in higher pay grades.

A statement from the University said: “The University is committed to equal pay for equal-valued work, and in 2006 introduced a single pay spine to progress this.”

WORLD NEWS 07

MAY.11.2009 NEWS@gairrhydd.COM

Gambler bombs out in casino Emma McFarnon Reporter

Deep impact

Emma McFarnon Reporter A secretary in China accidently bit off her boss’ penis last week while orally pleasuring him in his car.

According to reports, the 30-yearold woman was performing oral sex on her boss whilst stationary in a car park, when the car was struck by a reversing van.

The impact caused her to bite down so hard that she completely severed the man’s reproductive organ.

In a bizarre twist to the tale, the entire scene was being witnessed by a private investigator who had been hired to spy on the women after her husband suspected that she was being unfaithful.

The investigator had telephoned the secretary’s husband to tell him his wife was with another man when he arrived at the Singapore car park.

He described how the car started to “shake violently” after parking, but was then hit by the van.

“There was a loud scream from the woman, whose mouth was covered with blood,” he said.

The investigator called an ambulance to take the man to hospital, while the woman followed with part of the sexual organ.

The report did not say whether doctors managed to reattach the severed penis.

The secretary’s husband has since filed for divorce.

A woman in Washington has been charged after she called in a fake bomb threat to a casino to stop her husband from gambling.

43-year-old Tamara Gillespie was furious at her husband who had taken their savings to gamble at a local casino.

Reports say she made an anonymous phone call to the Muckleshoot Casino at 1am last Friday, and said her husband was on his way with an ammonia and fertilizer bomb.

She claimed Mr Gillespie wanted to take revenge against the casino because he had lost money.

The casino notified Washington police, but neither bomb nor bomber materialized.

Questioned by officers, Gillespie denied making the call. She told the Seattle Times, "that's just ludicrous... that whole thing is just ridiculous."

She insisted that she had lost her mobile phone at the casino, and that someone there had found it and used it to make the hoax warning.

However, a witness claiming to have overheard Gillespie making the threat contacted the Auburn Police Department to report the incident.

According to the witness, Gillespie was angry that her husband had taken a large sum of money that the couple had been saving to buy a new car.

Prosecutors say Gillespie has previously been arrested at the casino for trespassing, assault and resisting arrest.

She has also been convicted for drugs, drunk driving and defrauding a public utility

Watch the birdy

Emma McFarnon Reporter An Australian traveller has been charged for smuggling songbirds into the United States after he was caught with 13 live birds strapped to his legs.

46-year-old Sony Dong was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after an inspector spotted bird feathers and droppings on his socks.

U.S customs agents discovered 13 live birds hidden underneath Dong’s trousers in a custom-tailored pair of leggings.

Lawyer Thom Mrozek said, "he had fashioned these special cloth devices to hold the birds. They were secured by cloth wrappings and attached to his calves with buttons."

Authorities later linked Dong's scheme to Duc Le, 34, who was arrested after investigators searched his Orange County home and found 51 songbirds in an outdoor aviary.

Both are charged with conspiracy in an eight-count federal indictment.

The birds, which are all listed as injurious species, included three redwhiskered bul-buls, four magpie robins and six shama thrush.

Dong told investigators that he purchased the birds for $50 each (£33) and would have re-sold them for around $300-$400 each (£199-265).

"They're rare and there are collectors who are willing to pay top dollar for these things," he said.

The birds are now in quarantine and may be donated to a zoo if they are healthy.

Also in the news...

Emma McFarnon Reporter

Plane potty!

A pilot from Washington survived a plane crash unharmed after his aeroplane landed on a group of portable lavatories.

The small plane suffered engine failure after taking off from Washington last week.

The pilot, who was the only person on board, was unable to turn the aeroplane around to land.

As the plane fell it hit a fence, and flipped on top of the portable lavatories stored near the runway.

The 67-year-old pilot emerged from the aeroplane completely unharmed.

A company employee said the toilets had "kind of cushioned things."

I'm lovin' it

Swiss police say they are investigating a 7-year-old girl’s discovery of a condom in her McDonalds Happy Meal.

Fribourg state police say the mother called them after the girl discovered the condom among her French fries.

Police are investigating where the condom came from and how it got into the Happy Meal.

They said an analysis was being done to determine if the condom posed a health risk.

Boozed-up bronco A man in Denver has been fined for riding a horse while under the influence.

Police say Brian Drone was given a $25 traffic violation ticket in a shopping mall car park last week.

Drone told KUSA-TV that he was out for a “joyride” with his horse, Cricket, in the city of Arvada in Denver.

Onlooker Amie Bergondo said, “it was the absolute funniest thing I’ve ever seen. There was a horse pulled over in the parking lot.”

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OPINION 09

MAY.11.2009 OPINION@gairrhydd.COM

freewords Est. 1972

Lecturers strike While the threat of a strike by some lecturers at Cardiff University should not be overstated, the news that UCU are balloting their members to gauge their support of action is worrying.

Such strikes would come at a bad time for students, potentially disrupting the examination and essay marking period.

In 2006 a national lecturers' strike following a pay dispute caused considerable disruption and stress for students At the time, students were fairly sympathetic to their lecturers' demands. However, times have changed. Given the current economic climate and depending upon the extent of the pay rise lecturers are demanding, they may find that students are not quite so supportive. gair rhydd urges Cardiff University's staff to consider the repercussions that their actions may have on students before they decide on their course of action.

Media awards success gair rhydd would like to congratulate all of those involved in the 2009 Cardiff Student Media Awards.

The event was a great success, demonstrating the strong competitive spirit and thirst for media possessed by members of Cardiff Student Media.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of the staff and volunteers for their input into making this ceremony so special for all involved.

Corrections and Clarifications In the story 'No Faith In Humanities' on page four of gair rhydd 895 (May 4 2009) the petition web address under ‘What can I do?’ should have read http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ savelifelonglearning/ In the comment piece 'Police Violence At Protests' on page 17 of gair rhydd 895 (May 4 2009) the article is inaccurately attributed to Jonny Jones. It was actually written by Dan Drummond.

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Withdrawal symptoms

After six years in Iraq, Oliver Franklin asks whether the operation was worth the losses

L

ast week, the names of 179 British servicemen and women were read out to a piper’s lament in the city of Basra in Southern Iraq. These 179 were the British soldiers killed in an operation that ended last week, after over six years. The small service was held to hand over responsibility over the region to US forces.

It was a low-key service, attended not by Gordon Brown but by Defence Secretary John Hutton, and paid tribute to the bravery of the soldiers who have died for the military operation in Iraq.

Not read out were the names of the innocent Iraqi civilians killed during the occupation – estimated at over 3,300. And despite the relative calmness of the situation in Basra now, the 5,000-strong U.S. force now occupying the territory will remain in combat operations until President Obama calls for their withdrawal – something which could yet take some time.

For many, particularly the families of those servicemen lost or injured in the fighting, the hand-over has been a long time coming, and for many the questions that dominated the Iraq war are still yet to be answered. Gordon Brown, in a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, claimed that "Britain can be proud of our legacy that we leave [in Basra]."

proving, but the cost of the war, and the questions surrounding its cause in the first place, cannot be ignored.

David Cameron was not the first this week to call for an immediate investigation into the cause and conduct of the operations in Iraq: "After years of foot-dragging, I believe it is the time for the government to announce a proper inquiry."

The British public will be wary to trust the word of this government Gordon Brown’s absence at such an important event seems conspicuous given the controversy surrounding the war – it was hard not to pick up on John Hutton’s comments about the British forces achieving their aim of "enabling the Iraqis to establish democracy".

The invisible spectre of Weapons

of Mass Destruction remained unmentioned by the government once again, but it is something that cannot be ignored when the necessary inquiry eventually gets under way.

As Saddam Hussein fades into distant memory, it is easy for the government to make statements about the British public being proud of their armed forces. Make no mistake about it - we are. However, perhaps more attention should be paid to these fallen men and women, to ask what they truly died for – why they were really there.

Until a comprehensive enquiry is held, going back all those years to Blair’s claims of WMDs, and Iraq’s threat to the outside world, the government must be held accountable and the truth ascertained once and for all.

What is certain is that after a campaign longer than either World War, the British public will be wary in future. They will be wise and hesitant to trust in the word of a government who took us into a war under false pretences and stuck with it for six long

years. One thing is certain – as the combat operation ends, the rebuilding of Basra by the US and British forces will continue.

It is easy to make statements about the public's pride

As Nigel Haywood, the British consul-general, said: "We have made a lot of investment in this place and certainly intend to have an effective presence here. Iraq has a vibrant economic future and we are helping to put it together. "With Basra holding 70% of Iraq’s oil reserves, that economic future does indeed seem ‘vibrant’.

And of course, it just wouldn’t be polite not to get involved.

As the British combat troops fly home, all eyes now return to home and rest squarely on an already embattled Labour. The job is done, the war is over. Now it is time for the questions to begin.

It is estimated that 3,300 Iraqi civilians have been killed This is a statement that many will question – particularly the families of the over 3,000 civilian fatalities, and the rest of the inhabitants of Basra whose lives have been so decimated beyond recognition over the last six years. The UK Stop The War coalition said: "British soldiers will leave Basra in a much worse condition than they found it, its population depleted and demoralised, its infrastructure devastated."

In recent months it cannot be contested that the situation in Iraq is im-

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10 OPINION

MAY.11.2009 OPINION@gairrhydd.COM

Look Mummy! One is on the in

Chris Lloyd thinks Prince Charles's recent video was a load of hot a

P

rince Charles: Duke of Normandy, Lord of Mann, Paramount Chief of Fiji to be and, sadly for the Welsh, Prince of Wales – is on a mission. God help us all. For this waste of flesh and bones has now turned his short-sighted geriatric gaze to the rainforests. As if he really gives a

shit.

Sat in his oak-panelled parlour gazing out at the world, life must be tough for him, with nothing to do apart from wait for mummy to die. And so the heir apparent has been using his inexplicable influence to bludgeon ecomumbo-jumbo into mummy’s unsuspecting minions.

This time it’s all with the help of Mr MySpace. As if Charles has any idea who or what MySpace is. He’s even dragged his litter onscreen, though they look particularly sullen, sat arms folded, hunched over a table.

In the same week, mummy too has been learning about new-fangled technology, by sending her first official

PRINCE CHARLES: An environmental hypocrite

electronic-mail to celebrate 60 years of the Commonwealth. You know, with such a speedy adoption rate, just think if the royals had to deal with swine flu. It’d be 2053 by the time they did anything.

How ridiculous and hypocritical Sycophantically described as a “passionate plea” by The Telegraph, Charles’s incessant whining and headshaking in his MySpace missive (as if even he disagrees with what he’s saying) revolves around the plight of the poor, poor trees, conveniently glossing over the fact that most of them have been sliced up to line the walls of his numerous poorly-insulated, huge carbon-footprinted residences or slowly been suffocated by his private jets.

Furthermore, a 2009 investigation has discovered that Buckingham Palace is the least energy efficient building in London, consisting of 600 single-glazed rooms. You’d have thought that Charles and daddy together would produce more than enough hot air to heat the damn place.

Considering the amount of propaganda fired at every Brit to use energy-efficient light bulbs, lag their lofts and to turn their cars into free-range,

organic chicken coops, how can the royal rabble have the gall to lecture us about how to live, when they are so obviously to blame for, well, everything?

You would have thought that Charles could have at least got the ladder out and thrown a bit of insulation into the loft, or given Safestyle UK a call. I mean, it’s not like he doesn’t have the spare time on his hands (or enough state cash) to pop down to B&Q for mummy and daddy, is it? And so every year £2.2 million is burnt in the boilers at Buckingham Palace and then fired through the roof a few seconds later. You know global warming? That’s just all the excess heat searing out through the superheated roof of Buckingham Palace.

He should take a look at his own carbon footprint Eco-pretender Charlie in his online communiqué spouts primary school geography, presumably to appease whatever types of e-creatures he sees inhabiting MySpace, dithering on that “we must act now”. Yet as far as I can tell, he is the one causing global warming. Single-handedly.

In March 2007 he chartered a jet to fly 500 miles across Britain, blast-

The future's bright...

Jenny Sleeman asks why everybody is obsessed with being orange

W

ith summer just round the corner, the pressure to look tanned and flawless is coming from almost everywhere, regardless of whether you’re going abroad or staying at home.

There are countless magazines showing pictures of celebrities looking perfectly bronzed, and more and more women are turning to tanning salons to achieve perfect summer skin.

There have been calls for a legal age to be put on sunbed usage

The popularity of sunbeds has risen dramatically in recent years. It is all too easy to attempt to fake tan yourself and end up with uneven stripy legs, or fluorescent orange ankles and

white feet that seem to resist and remain mysteriously un-tanned. So the relatively even, all-round tan a sun bed can offer is understandably tempting.

But the facts are that sun beds can pose serious health risks, and cases of skin cancer among women under 30 have soared recently, overtaking breast and cervical cancer.

The news came last week that a 10-year-old girl used an unsupervised sunbed in Port Talbot for 16 minutes, and had to be rushed to hospital with burns over 70% of her body.

It is shocking: if not for the fact that she wanted to use the bed in the first place, but because of the devastating consequences of extended skin exposure to UV rays - medics at the Welsh Centre for Plastic Surgery and Burns have advised that she should stay out of direct sunlight for at least 10 years.

This is surely an indicator of how body conscious and obsessed with obtaining perfection we are as a society,

and how it has gone far too far, even affecting children.

The internet certainly has some interesting ‘facts’ about the necessity of being tanned, with one website stating that “attractively tanned skin improves the personality - irrespective of whether at work or in your free time, you are received better”.

One website claimed a tan improves your personality Although this is clearly a load of commercial drivel, this is the kind of message that gets filtered through to us, and the boundaries of how far we take it are constantly being pushed.

There has been much publicity, especially in recent years, surrounding the established link between some

lifestyle choices and cancer - from smoking and drinking to eating too much red meat.

Cigarette packets now controversially come with graphic images of the effects smoking can have (at least no one can say they haven’t been warned) yet there is much more widespread skin damage every summer, and with the help of sun beds, all year round.

In fact, the risks posed by using the concentrated UV rays sun beds emit are potentially much more dangerous than other more well-publicised health risks. The risks aren’t hidden, but they do seem to be taken less seriously, which is a serious problem.

In a professional tanning salon, a regulated time slot for minimum skin damage under the rays is suggested, which does make sunbeds less harmful. But there is still a very real risk, and cases such as the one last week only serve to highlight the potentially

disastrous effects sun beds can cause.

It’s just not worth it.

There have been calls for unsupervised tanning salons to be shut down, and for a legal age limit to be put on sun bed usage. Although both restrictions could help stop unsafe bingetanning, the more pressing issue is why we feel the need to risk our health to tan up, and why this obsession is affecting girls as young as 10.

Rising cases of skin cancer suggests these beds aren't safe Even though tanning salons maintain that, used properly, sunbeds are relatively safe, rising cases of skin cancer suggest otherwise. If the future is orange, surely faking it is way better.

OPINION 11

MAY.11.2009 OPINION@gairrhydd.COM

nternet!

air ing 15,000kg of CO2 per passenger into the troposphere – over 34 times more than a scheduled flight and 250 times more than a train would have contributed. How ridiculously, spinelessly, unimaginably hypocritical is that? Does this creature have no sense of reality, or is his mental capacity just too miniscule to register that he doesn’t have some get-out-of-jail-carbon-free card?

On another occasion, at Camel Parker Bowles’s request, a pair of (undoubtedly foul) stilettos were flown from Highgrove to Kuwait, after she arrived without her beloved footwear.

She didn’t even wear the bloody shoes in the end! What kind of immoral universe do this pair inhabit?

More recently, in April 2009, Charlie, Camel, and 10 ‘staff’ chartered a luxury jet across Europe for a 5-day trip promoting environmental issues.

Oh, the irony. This one airborne journey threw 53 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to five people’s yearly carbon footprint.

Charlie makes an abysmally pathetic attempt at justifying this in his propaganda film by claiming that deforestation emits more CO2 than cars, boats and planes together, as though we can all suddenly ignore his wanton aviation habit. If we listen to him there may still be thousands of trees.

But they’ll all be dead.

This man has no understanding of

wider global, ecological issues and nor do the ‘celebrities’ who rushed to jump on the eco-bandwagon by appearing in his promotion to get some tabloid kudos.

Charles is a tree hugger for about one day a year

Gordy and the Gurkhas

Richard Wood looks at the latest mess Gordon Brown has got in

The only logical conclusion that I can come to is that poor ol’ Charlie is schizophrenic with one tree-hugging hippy persona for one (vocal) day of the year and another forest-burning pyromaniac side for the other 364 days. Nothing else makes sense.

Worst of all, however, is that Charles himself is contributing unjustifiable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through respiration, considering how little use he is to anyone. I suggest that he is put down.

It’s for the environment, you know.

Now, the only issue is finding a suitably green eco-cution technique.

Gunpowder emits CO2; the electric chair uses too much power; lethal injection requires sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, which sound suitably complicated to require energy intensive extraction methods. Hmm. I suggest hanging. With organic, fair-trade, sustainable cotton rope.

I

shot myself in the foot last week. It was not an idly made decision. I carefully weighed up the alternatives, looked at the pros and cons and considered the consequences of my actions.

My conclusions led me to believe that shooting myself in the foot would not hurt and would be the best course of action for my body as a whole. It turns out I was wrong! Shooting yourself in the foot turns out to hurt quite a lot. Who knew?

However, I am comforted by the fact that I am in illustrious company.

Gordon Brown, for example, made a carefully considered decision to shoot himself in the foot last week. He decided that the best way of dealing with those troublesome Gurkhas, who risked their lives in service of a country not even their own, was to tell them that they weren’t dedicated enough to Britain to come and live here.

Every single person in Britain was against Brown on this topic

AU NATURELLE: I wonder if the other one looks like a tangerine

Unlike, for example, a Swedish architect, who is A-OK for a house in Hampstead, a 3.6-litre Porsche and a t-shirt that says: “I went to Britain and all I got was the unremitting support of

WAR HERO: Deserves the right to stay in the country he fought for the state.”

After a tidal wave of criticism from every single person in the country and quite a few animals - the squirrels were particularly upset - Mr Brown realised that in fact shooting himself in the foot was not perhaps the best course of action and promised to review the decision. A classic beginner’s mistake, Mr. Brown! You failed to realise that when blood is gushing from an open wound, it might be best to see to it sooner rather than later.

The wound lead to a near-deadly infection of the rare disease ‘ integritatem politicus hypocritem’, colloquially known as ‘integrity disorder’ in the Labour ranks, and Mr Brown suffered a devastating haemorrhage as a result.

His condition would probably be listed as ‘ critical’ but the NHS lost the list he was on, so we don’t actually know how he’s doing and will have to wait until the next election to find out.

I think that’s about as far as I can push that metaphor, but I find it hard to take stupidity of this magnitude seriously. Who in their right mind would try to renege on a gentleman’s agreement with dedicated military veterans and believe it would be a good PR move? Just from a purely manipulative perspective, it was a ridiculously dumb move. That is to say nothing of the giant failure of human decency and morality involved, which I’m now going to say something about.

It’s a non-issue, isn’t it? Okay, the Gurkhas were not allowed to settle in Britain before 2004, and their lot has gotten better since then. But that was in itself a ridiculous injustice, essentially allowing the British government to continue its colonial activities in Nepal without having any responsibility to the exploited.

There have been calls for a legal age to be put on sunbed usage That it took so many years for the decision to be made speaks volumes about our nation’s moral integrity. Even when the decision was finally made, it limited settling to those Gurkhas who retired after 1997.

Nick Clegg points out that “if someone is prepared to die for this country, then surely they deserve to live here”.

It is very difficult to argue with this logic and to do so would only expose yourself as a person of questionable morality and basic courtesy, the principle of give and take, of fairness, lost somewhere in the quest for ‘realism’.

While Mr Brown’s decision was undoubtedly prompted by the costs involved in homing a potential 36,000 Gurkhas, he forgot that being unfair costs a lot more.

COLUMNIST 13

MAY.11.2009 OPINION@gairrhydd.COM

It's cool, we can still be friends W

hat came first: the music or the misery? I like that question, much as I like High Fidelity (shame on you if you’ve only seen the film; double shame on you if you’re familiar with neither book nor film). I like how it puts forward a whole new spin on the classical psychological debate of nature vs. nurture.

So which is it? Do we listen to miserable music because we’re feeling maudlin, or are we sorrowful as a result of too many sad songs? Have a think about it; I challenge you to come up with the definitive answer.

Not so easy, is it? Even the academics are on the case – Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University carried out a study last year into whether our music tastes can be seen to reflect our personalities. Apparently the biggest similarities in personalities are between classical music fans and metal fans, both of which were found to be creative but introverted. Take it one step further, though, and it’s interesting to weigh up if it’s our characters which are influencing or being influenced by our musical persuasions.

The music we listen to is bound up in our personalities to an almost inextricable degree. To be honest, I’m not sure that it is even possible to separate the two. Then again, that could just be the music fan in me talking.

I will openly admit that I do judge people by their taste in music. I am one of those terrible, terrible people.

Consider this, though – what are the questions you ask when you’re first getting to know someone? You exhaust names, places of origin and whichever mutual acquaintance or activity that’s brought you together: what do you do then? You try to find

some common ground. An easy way to do that? Music.

I’m not an obscenely shallow person; I’m just being realistic. I won’t turn around and say to someone “You don’t adore Nick Cave?! Get out!” We could easily still be friends. Maybe.

Everyone has ways of making quick inferences about people However, if I can forge a musical link with someone, be it through shared loves or shared hates, conversation is far more likely to naturally continue itself. Everyone has their ways and of making quick inferences about people: music obviously just happens to be one of mine.

I know that it’s impossible to tell what a person will be like just through knowing a few of the bands that they do like, but I’m sure that overall trends to occur. It makes sense, much in the same way that dress sense can reveal a lot about a person. You could, if you so wished, also note that there can often be a clear link seen between music and fashion: Goths dress like Goths; punks dress like punks. As for chavs...

Without wishing to sound stereotypical (although the raison d’être for many stereotypes lies in the reallife existence of many such people), you’re just not often going to get a twenty-five-year-old political activist popping into HMV for the latest Girls Aloud album, much in the same way that you’re very rarely going to get a nine year-old princess-wannabe

DEFENCE: Alan Johnson has come out in defence of Gordon Brown asking her mummy to buy her Rage Against the Machine’s greatest hits volume. It just doesn’t add up.

Personality and music taste are inextricably interlinked Then again, what happens if you rewind a decade or so? Maybe, at fifteen, said political activist was happily middle-of-the-road. Then, one day, a RATM song reached his ears, and he was inspired.

He listened to more of their songs, looked deeper into the lyrics, devel-

Heroes A

fortnight ago, gair rhydd ran a story about a lecturer who was, apparently, "simply not very good at teaching" - a lecturer who is, frankly, a disgrace to the Computer Science department.

I can accept that different lecturers have different teaching styles, different ways of distributing their knowledge to students, but to just, as was alleged by students, to deliver Blackboatd lecture notes with no explanation is sim-

ply not good emough.

There will always, with every module, be a few students who fail. This is to be expected; a module of 80 students will, thanks to the law of averages, feature the odd student who can't be bothered. It is most definitely an anomaly, however, for just one in eight students just to pass.

If a module is assessed fairly, it must be assessed on taught material, with a fair range of topics covered - not just a few lec-

and

oped an interest in politics. In short, his personality was shaped by the music he liked. Did every hippy who dropped acid in the sixties while listening to The Beatles have an interest in drug culture before hearing just how, like, psychedelic The White Album was, man? I’m willing to bet not.

The key to musical preference is undoubtedly how you feel you can relate to a song, the emotional connection you can make, even if it’s entirely tangential. The memories we associate with music can be instrumental (if you’ll excuse the genuinely unintended pun) in how these songs shape our moods, yet can it not also be said that, when these memories were first made, we were listening to the songs because they seemed particularly apt

to our moods at the time?

It’s the modern-day chicken-andegg question – that perennial favourite in circular debating. You’ll never know for sure which is the cause and which is the effect and, frankly, the answer is probably insignificant unless you’re a concerned middle-American parent looking for something other than puberty to blame for the fact that your child’s starting dressing in black and acting sulky.

Still, it makes for fantastic pub talk, doesn’t it? Next time you’re sat in the Woodville, try duking it out: you can wager that everyone present will have their own opinion on it. In the meantime, if you don’t like Nick Cave you can get out. You insensitive, uncultured philistine.

Villains tures.

What is most shocking is the University's reaction to this. If the issue of this lecturer's performance has indeed been raised in multiple student-staff meetings, something should have been done to improve the situation.

When it comes down to it, students are paying thousands of pounds per year in order to learn from professionals at the forefront of their field. The key word in that sentence is 'learn'.

Staffing departments with research professionals is all well and good; research is a vital element in keeping any academic institution at the cuttingedge of a subject. But students are here to learn, and we need the assurance of being able to do this without the impediment of ineffectual lecturers.

This anonymous villain needs naming and shaming - to allow students forewarning, if nothing else.

14 POLITICS

MAY.11.2009 POLITICS@gairrhydd.COM

Why should we care?

Damian Fantato considers the pros and cons of a united European Union as June 4th's important elections rapidly approach

hat does Thursday 4th of June mean to you? You might have an exam on that day; you might have finished your exams the day before and will be spending the whole day in a paralytic state. But despite what you might think, June 4th will be a very important day. It will be the day of the European elections.

The European Union tends to divide people. Some people hate it while others vehemently support it.

Finding people who care passionately about the EU, however, can often be quite difficult. As a result the turnout in the European elections tends to be embarrassingly low.

The turnout at the last European elections in 2004 was 45.6% across the EU, but this belies the fact that the turnout in the UK was 37%, which is high if you consider that at the previous elections in 1999 only 23% of the British public turned out to vote. This seems bizarre in the extreme given how much we, as a country, enjoy complaining about the EU. We get one opportunity to influence the way in which the EU is run and we consis-

W

tently refuse to take it.

I’m going to make a bold statement: I broadly think that the EU is a good thing. For the past 50 years the member states have been working closer and closer together towards making Europe a better place. When speaking of the EU, too many people think of bureaucrats and red tape. While this has been a side effect of the European Union, it was not and is not the main objective.

Even if you don't support the EU then at least vote It is important to bear in mind when speaking of the EU that most of our grandparents will have fought in a war that engulfed the whole continent, which ended barely 64 years ago. That we have been able to pick ourselves up as a continent and engage in peaceful diplomacy for the betterment of our continent is something I find truly astounding. But maybe I’m too idealistic.

It is true that there are many areas in which the EU could improve. For a start, it would help if it were actually accountable to those who lived under it. The structures of the EU were created in a different time and need to be brought up to date urgently.

Chief amongst these issues is the so-called democratic deficit. The EU is often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as an elitist bureaucratic machine over which mere mortals have no say.

Commissioners are appointed by the governments of their respective countries and are barely accountable, while unknown diplomats make many important decisions behind closed doors.

This makes it all the more important to vote on the one occasion we actually have.

It’s wrong to assume that the EU is irrelevant, since it plays an increasingly large role in the world we live in. The EU issues regulation on all aspects of our lives and is increasingly important in questions of global governance.

Think of the Common Agricultural Policy that subsidises European farmers giving them an unfair advantage

over farmers from the Third World; or the single currency which ties countries in the Eurozone together economically. Just look at the reaction that European leaders have had to the Credit Crunch: working together to solve global crises now seems almost instinctive. It is the only way in which global warming can be properly confronted.

Apathy seems beyond the pale.

Some people seem to think that European elections are only for those who support the EU and this is the wrong attitude to take. Even if you don’t support the European Union then at least vote. A vote for UKIP is better than not voting. After all, the only way to change the EU is to let our leaders know what we want.

Running out of time A fair trial seems almost impossible for Samantha Orobator, who's been stranded in Thailand since August. Jennie Summers reports

D

ue process is an underrated privilege. While Britons take their right to a fair trial in the UK for granted, in Laos, 20year-old Briton Samantha Orobator, has been in prison for almost nine months and in that time has had no opportunity of legal representation. Accused of trying to smuggle 1.5 pounds of heroin out of Thailand, she faces the possibility of death by firing squad. And to top it off she is pregnant by an unknown man.

Samantha is confined in Phonthong prison, a Laotian prison that, according to a US Department of State inspection, is notorious for apportioning minimal food rations, leading to severe malnutrition as well as for brutality and beatings of its detainees; some prisoners have even died because of this treatment.

Foreign prisoners, particularly ethnic minorities, are said to be treated especially appallingly; no less disquieting, but perhaps less surprising, that Miss Orobator, as a British resident of Nigerian origin, is alleged to have

been raped by a guard leading to her pregnancy.

The suggestion that Samantha might have conceived before arrest put by the Laotian official spokesperson, Khenthong Nuanthasing, provoked a scathing comment from the Director of Reprieve, the charity that is fighting to secure legal representation for Samantha: “Samantha is due on September 6th 2009, when she will have been in prison for thirteen months.

Perhaps the Laotians are under the misapprehension that she is a blue whale, that has a 13 month gestation period, but she is not, she is a human being.” Mr. Nuanthasing later backed down on this point, bizarrely suggesting that this was a second pregnancy after an earlier miscarriage. A further miscarriage is more than possible considering Samantha’s suspected maltreatment in combination with the facilities of the clinic in the prison,

PONTHONG PRISION: Samantha Orobator's hell since August

which are said to be negligible. It has no provision for ante-natal care or vitamins to maintain Samantha’s health; there is of course the prospect that, even if Miss Orobator were not put to death for her ‘crime’, her chances of survival in childbirth could be significantly reduced by having the baby in the prison.

The trial is likely to be a formality Samantha’s trial has been bought forward by a year unexpectedly, despite a complete absence of legal representation so far. International pressure from diplomats, media organisations (such as the BBC), and of course the efforts of Reprieve, have given rays of hope to Samantha’s cause. Anna Morris, a British barrister sent by Reprieve to secure legal representation, has not been permitted to visit Miss Orobator on the first of her allotted visits, however.Mr. Nuanthasing has agreed to appoint a Laotian lawyer to provide

representation in court and has put the trial back a week for that purpose.

The other positive development is that the Laotians have now made clear that due to Samantha’s pregnancy, she will not face death by firing squad due to a provision to that effect in their legal code. In addition, there have been reports of the possibility of a prison transfer scheme to bring Miss Orobator back to Britain.

The aforementioned report on the justice system in Laos suggests that, unfortunately, regardless of any representation secured, the trial is likely to be a foregone conclusion because judges are members of the governing party in Laos. Guilt and innocence is usually decided before the trial even begins on the basis of police and prosecution reports. Clare Algar, Executive Director of Reprieve, made a frank admission: “In terms of a trial next week, that is extremely worrying, because we will be going in to bat for Samantha’s life without having spoken to her at all.” The lesson here: never take your freedom and rights for granted.

POLITICS 15

MAY.11.2009 POLITICS@gairrhydd.COM

Labour's rapid demise

Chris Tarquini examines Labour's disastrous 2009 so far. Is there any way out for them after 12 years at the top??

T

his year has been a year of economic collapse, but it’s not only the stock market that has crashed. The Labour party of 2009 is suffering record low approval ratings and looks almost certain to lose power at the next election, which is likely to occur mid-2010. Infighting, scandal and spin have left the government in a situation that mirrors the Conservative party of 1997, and the parallels present the question: are Labour the new Tories?

Certainly Gordon Brown’s leadership is not the shining light Labour requires in its time of need, but it’s the rotten core of the Labour party that is leading to its demise. When President Obama swept to power, Gordon Brown described it as a victory for "centreleft, progressive politics", but in reality it was the message of ‘change’ and ‘hope’ that won Obama the election, not his particular strand of politics.

If the ‘change’ slogan prevails in Britain it will not be progressive politics that emerges victorious. Part of Labour’s problem is that it has strayed too far from its base and in doing so has alienated much of its financial support and key activists. While distancing itself from the trade unions that helped create it, in tandem with the long-term implications of the cash for peerages scandal, the party has slowly but surely dried up. The well of financial support that had previously allowed them to contest general elections relatively equally with the Conservatives has rapidly diminished.

In 2001, the Tories had a little under four million pounds more than Labour in political donations. The difference has now swelled to well over seven million, quite a difference in the murky world of British political finance. Not only has Labour ignored its base, but they have also betrayed their principles. Scrapping the 10p tax bracket, rampant corruption - reminiscent of the Tories at their worst - and a controversial war has meant that although Labour won the 2005 election, it has lost over one hundred seats in the process.

The Iraq war now defines the Tony Blair premiership for many and has cast a long shadow over the Labour party ever since. It’s difficult for any party to stay in power for 12 years without sacrificing some principles, but the 10p tax rate in particular was an example of where Labour chose pragmatic ideas to stay in power over an ideological belief which the party was founded on.

While Labour had been previously protected somewhat by the charismatic Blair, the ‘prudent’ Brown has proven that he is not a master of the spin machine like his predecessor. After being the fiscal brain of a Government for a decade he cannot play the same ‘change’ card that Obama does when

presenting the financial crisis. In contrast, the fresh-faced David Cameron looks set to run a campaign that looks like it could have been created in the Obama war room, portraying Labour as out of touch with ordinary people.

The ‘smear-mails’ that have

emerged in the past weeks have only further damaged Labour’s now tarnished whiter than white image that they used to put at the centrepiece of their campaigns. The Conservatives have presented Labour as the political dinosaurs the Tories once were.

In truth, the economy is merely the last part of the jigsaw in Labour’s undoing, which leaves them with a serious question after the next election should they lose power; will they have a knee-jerk reaction to the left to shore up their base, or will they continue the

‘New Labour’ strategy which previously proved to be so successful?

Labour are certainly in trouble, but they do still have a faint chance of winning at the next general election.

How they will prevent this demise, however, remains to be seen.

16 LETTERS

OCTOBER.22.2007 MAY.11.2009 LETTERS@gairrhydd.COM

letters@gairrhydd.com

LEARN: Dr David Grant responds

Dear gair rhydd,

I write in response to your article (4th May) regarding the University’s consultation on proposed changes at the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning.

It is important to set this in the context of a vibrant and successful University making excellent progress despite a challenging economic climate for the higher education sector.

Our humanities Schools, for example, have been independently assessed as undertaking world-leading or internationally excellent research. More than 6,600 students study in the humanities at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Furthermore the University has established the Cardiff Humanities Research Institute to encourage research collaborations, knowledgesharing, intellectual debate and exchange across all areas of research in the humanities schools.

It is against this background that the proposals for the Centre for Lifelong Learning should be considered. On 20 April, the University commenced a consultation with staff involved and with the recognised trade unions which will conclude on 18 July.

The University has introduced a consultation on new pay and grading arrangements for all of its hourly paid staff in the light of the National Framework Agreement. The Agreement aims to apply the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. The proposed changes will lead to greater clarification of roles, employment status and associated terms and conditions for all staff.

Since a high proportion of

the

teaching at the Centre for Lifelong Learning is undertaken by hourlypaid teaching staff, the agreement affects it to a far greater extent than other Schools within the University.

In order to secure its long-term future, the Centre has undertaken a detailed assessment of the implications of a 40% increase in salary costs on its current activity and payment of back pay to 1 August 2006. Without any further changes, the effect of such an increase would be to wipe out the Centre’s reserves within one year. Deficits would then increase year on year - an unsustainable position for the Centre.

As a result, options for a way forward are now being developed. It is important to emphasise that it is not intended for the Centre for Lifelong Learning to close. The University is working with the Director of the Centre to identify a reduced portfolio of courses that can be offered that will ensure the Centre’s long term sustainability and continue to offer interesting and exciting courses to the public.

Consultations with staff and their trade unions on possible ways forward are underway. Any final decisions on the proposals from the consultation process will be made by the University's Council, in accordance with the Charter and Statutes of the University.

The University will continue to adhere to its policies and employment legislation whilst offering appropriate support to those individuals affected by these proposals. The University will seek to avoid redundancies wherever possible through the use of various arrangements, the detail of which will be determined in consultation with the recognised Trade Unions. Redeployment opportunities for staff whose posts are potentially at risk are being sought actively.

I should stress again that no final

decisions have been taken. The consultation process aims to determine the best way forward to secure the future of the Centre.

It should also be highlighted that this in no way impacts on the University’s thriving School of Welsh and its Welsh for Adults teaching provision. The University is firmly committed to the School of Welsh's mission to deliver teaching and research of international distinction so as to play a key role in the development of Welsh in the 21st century.

Across the humanities Cardiff scholars ask questions about all aspects of the human experience. It is important to emphasise the University's strong commitment to our outstanding humanities provision.

This important work is a key part of the University’s mission to pursue research, learning and teaching of international distinction and impact.

Yours sincerely, Dr David Grant Vice-Chancellor

The Pepper Plot Dear gair rhydd, I know this isn't a question that may seem as important or as controversial as many of the issues covered in this fine publication, but it is important to me.

In Cathays, why are there always little yellow peppers scattered across the road? Where do they come from, why are they there? This has been bothering me for weeks now. Could someone put me out of my misery and tell me why?

Eric Brunsdon

Simply Not Good At Learning Dear gair rhydd,

In reference to the article 'Simply Not Very Good At Teaching' (gair rhydd 894), I would just like to point out to the Computer Science students that every subject has a lecturer who isn't very good at teaching. Who just stands at the front of the class and either bores the class to death, or just writes up the notes everyone already has, or who repeats themselves week after week. There's one in every single subject. The Computer Scientists aren't so special.

And, yeah, so maybe only a tiny minority of that particular class actually managed to pass. But these were probably the people who left the class with their lecture notes and thought, 'these aren't complete. I shall go and do some of my own background reading'. We're at university now, we can't expect the lecturers to tell us everything we need to know.

We have to go out and do our own background reading. Often, I find I can't understand my own notes, or there's a concept I don't understand - I look it up. I don't blame the lecturer for not telling me everything I need to know in a tiny amount of time.

The exam was set about the content of the last two lectures? Oh, boohoo. Lecturers are well within their rights to set exams based on any of the course content, and it's the students who have to actually turn up.

We're supposed to attend all lectures, not just get bored and stop attending halfway through the semester. Yeah, I've missed lectures and then had stuff come up in an exam. And do you know whose fault that is? Mine.

All mine. Not the lecturer.

To sum up, don't blame the fact

Comments from the week’s news, opinion, features and sport at www.gairrhydd.com

The Gay Marriage Debate

chairsd -------

Why do gay people believe that everyone should support their point of view? They should be tolerant and respect the views of other people who do not agree with homosexual relationships.

People should be free to disagree and not be harangued and maligned because of their views.

Gays should not try to foist their aberrant lifestyles on other people.

Keep their sex lives in their bedroom and stop parading it front of other people.

Adam Troth ------Chairsd, I think you’ve missed the point here. I don’t think gay people are asking anyone to be behind them 100% (pardon the pun). All they’re asking is to be treated in exactly the same way as everyone else.

The idea that gay people want “special treatment” is a complete fallacy. Most of them simply want to be

treated exactly the same as everyone else and not to be discriminated against as a result of what is widely believed to be a genetic predisposition over which the individual has little or no control.

In terms of gay people “parading it (their sexuality) in front of other people”, is it only gay people whom you object to parading their sexuality? Or are you opposed to the general culture of sex in the public domain?

If the latter, then at least you’re consistent. Furthermore, I don’t really see what’s so “aberrant” (were you trying to spell “abhorrent”?)

you didn't do enough work and therefore failed your exam on the lecturer. Maybe he is partly to blame.

But so are you. Take responsibility.

Thom Edwards

Thank You Dear gair rhydd, I just want to say thank you for the article 'The Great Depression' (gair rhydd 894). Last year, in my first year at university, I spent most of my time in my room convinced that I was worthless, and that the only reason people spoke to me was out of pity. I had panic attacks about producing a radio show, something I loved doing. I stayed away from lectures, knowing that none of that mattered when I was such a worthless person.

I spent more time crying in pub toilets last year than I will ever be comfortable with.

Your article really spoke to me. It was honest, and truthful, and reminded me of my own experiences.

So this is also a thank you to the people at the Student Support Centre.

They helped me cope, and get through the times when I wanted to scratch away at my arms. I still have occasional bad days when there's nothing I want to do more than curl up underneath my bed and never come out, and when I fly into a panic because - oh, I wasn't invited out, they obviously hate me and I'm an awful person. But those days are so much further apart now.

I can finally look at myself in the mirror and tell myself I'm an awesome person.

Anon

forum

about homosexuality. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but what two consenting adults do in private is their business and no-one else's. Even the likes of Cardiff’s Mardi Gras are not about gay people “parading” their sexuality. Little over 40 years ago, homosexuality was outlawed in Britain. Surely it is only right to be able to publicly demonstrate just how far society has come?

Jamie ------I pretty much agree with you Adam, but ‘aberrant’ is a word!

1. Deviating from the proper or expected course.

2. Deviating from what is normal; untrue to type.

I don’t agree with gay marriage simply because marriage is a religious institution and it’s up to the religions to decide whether they are comfortable with celebrating homosexual partnerships or are stuck in the Dark Ages. Gay civil partnerships with the same benefits as marriage, on the other hand, well, I’ve yet to hear a decent argument against them.

LETTERS 17

MAY.11.2009 LETTERS@gairrhydd.COM

letters@gairrhydd.com

Dear gair rhydd, I am thankful to the editor for allowing me to give an account of my thoughts regarding the elections.

Due to the volume of hype that surrounded the election, it would have been wrong of gair rhydd not to cover it. It does, however, occur to me that, having read ‘I couldn’t have won it without Rough Hill’ and seen no response from me, you may, rightly, feel concerned at who has become President-elect of your Union. I hope to address the two leading arguments made

by Boy Thunder last week that my future colleagues and I have, firstly, caused and benefited from an unfair election, and, secondly, that we subsequently lack objectivity as officers due to our actions.

I will begin by defining my relationship with the promotions company Rough Hill; I have none. I seldom attend their nights, when I do I pay for entry and I know, personally, only one individual who works for them. That person was also the man who seconded my nomination and was a key player, individually, on my campaign team. I won’t deny that the individual and the company are in many ways connected but I would like to stress the significance that I, at no point, approached the company, or they me, with a view to assistance in the election. This is significant because it is the difference between having paid staff work on your campaign and having a volunteer, and between promising future contracts and not.

I’m not going to lie; this friend was incredibly helpful but is it any different, in principle, to having other friends on a campaign team? Some friends, of course, are more influential than others. I draw example and comparison to the decision of some of the current sabbatical officers to endorse candidates this year. These are individuals who, even if not campaigning during office hours, are still influential as a direct consequence of their position. The same is true of a single staff member of Rough Hill. While the gair rhydd and I respectfully dispute the accuracy of how I have been quoted (above); instead of seeking to change this, I merely have to state that it is categorically not what I think. Even if it is not an illegitimate quote, it is hollow and shouldn’t be used in a manner that presents it as my actual opinion.

In terms of a fair election; I believe it was. There was nothing underhanded or sleazy about what I (or any other candidate – to my knowledge) have done. If the actions that we are talking about are to get noticed and seen, then, logically, it cannot be simultaneously underhanded – can it? I think it is also important to remind people that none of the successful candidates who have been criticised were in collaboration with each other or acted remotely similarly.

The new Welfare, Campaigns and Communication officer, Ed Dolding, for example, only gave free Oceania tickets to his campaign team, yet he has been included in this mass attack of winning candidates with dubious methods. I’m not entirely sure what Boy Thunder is picturing in his utopian election but if it is one where candidates are restricted to flyering passersby in the street and giving prelecture speeches then there is absolutely no hope of reaching the entire electorate with your message and, also, an extremely limited capacity for innovation and initiative. It is important to escape this illusion that every candidate and his campaign team are equal and the same.

Candidates begin with varying degrees of support and influence, whether it is down to the size of the sports club or society they are from, or whether they simply are more gregarious. It is essential to remember that when we talk of fairness, this is fairness in process and not in anything else. This principle of fairness remained throughout the election and was applied in tandem with sufficient scope for creativity. If people wanted any form of publicity in the nightclubs that I was in; the rule was that they asked for it. Is innovation and initiative a weak defence? Of course not.

The election, for most people, is the only opportunity to gauge whether a particular candidate has the right character and attributes to do a good job.

The spirit of this election was

gair rhydd

also not as sour as has been portrayed. There were sev- FREE eral occasions when competCOLUMNIS T 15 ing candidates came together WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A SALARY OF and enjoyed a terrific election spirit: the Candidates’ Karaoke, Spoiling the KETS A 12% PAY RISE ballot Tom Wright’s charity chest wax VICE-CHANCELLOR POC “I and numerous house parties for candidates and campaign teams ELECTIONS only. More importantly, the campaign period was a great opportunity to meet and get to know other people involved; and I feel NEWS that everybody made friends and not enemies in that time. These most controversial est ever turnout in idates are all cases that suggest that the Bigg promoters back cand election to date, as election was anything but lacking SPORT in a good spirit.

Lastly, it has been argued that because of the nature of the elecCAMPAIGN CONTROVERSY: gair rhydd's coverage of elections tion, some of the new team may lack objectivity when it comes to certain decisions. I will now declare two decide on a set of rules that people are interests: I want the Union to host the ful.

On the elections, I think that con- happier with. best Wednesday nights, and I want I'd like to end by thanking everythe people participating and voting fusion over the Facebook rules was a in the next election to have full faith major contributor to the disorder and one who supported and voted for me, in the process. In talking to the new complaints that surrounded the begin- I couldn’t have done it without you. team, our priority is that the Union, ning of campaigning. Eventually, it I feel honoured and incredibly priviitself, should host Wednesday nights was decided that only groups set-up leged to be working in the Union next – something I’m extremely excited for the purpose of the election could be year and I am determined to repay the about. But, on the point of external used – a good rule and one that I imag- faith placed in me by those who voted, promoters, is anyone (including the ine will be applied in the by-elections. and to demonstrate my unflinching promoters themselves) really naive There are other concerns such as the commitment and diligence to those enough to think that, especially after level and nature of involvement from who I have yet to convince. I wish you a very public association, they are a the nightclub industry as well whether all a very enjoyable summer. shoo-in for a contract? To think that the incumbent sabbatical team should is to lack any understanding of how endorse candidates. These are issues Eddy Carey decisions are made within the Union; on which, without any hint of person- Students' Union President-Elect sadly, the President isn’t that power- al bias, we will consult and eventually CARDIFF'S STUDENT

WEEKLY

freeword - EST. 1972

ISSUE 893 MARCH 23

£235,000?

PROMOTED TO POWER

MAY.04.20 09 OPINION@gair rhyd

d.COM

2009

News, page 3

PHOTO: NATALIA POPOVA

The President's Redress

couldn’t have out Rough done it withwords? MichaHill.” Whose el Jackson’s upon the annou ncement of idency at his resthe O2 Arena?

Fritzl’s after Joseph he life imprisonmenwas sentenced to on being diagno t? A third-year’s sed with cirrhos of the liver? is No. They’re dents’ Union the words of our StuPresident-elec ey. After an election that t, Ed Carwas decided by under 150 round of votingvotes (and in the first only 11 votes rated him and eventual runner- sepayour Wright running up Tom ), he admitte Who's d that the he received from the events support Union next year? tion company that runs nights promoTiger (Vodka in Tiger Island) and >>pages 4-6 Vodka (Chic Revolu Beat) was vital tion clinching of in his victory all sorts of palaver , and it’s caused It’s not just Ed . either. Emma Carey who had help, James McLar Jones, Rich Pearce, dy-Smith, and ing also receive Ed Doldassistance from d varying degrees of nightclubs in various promoters and Cardiff. All of James McLar dy-Smith werethem bar (he came fi elected fth vote), and they in the Presidential comprise half will, along with Carey, of our sabbati next year, includi cal team Media, Financ ng Head of Student ficer, and, of e and Commercial Ofcourse, Studen President. ts’ Union

candidates who even the ones stood this year, not disagree stronglI’ve singled out. I just their campai y with this aspect of gns. chester I spoke A student in Manshocked that to about all this was it had happen constitution forces candid ed; their ates account books of their expensto keep forbids any es and outside assistan the votes can ce. Before expenses have even be counted the to be announ dorsements ced. Enfrom current Union officers (anothe r contentious issue of our election) are also banned.

Compare Manch ester’s for elections guidelines and a marked differen ours and you’ll see ce in conside Manchester’s ration. are thorough many of the and cover issues grey area, wherea that for us exist in a s the lack of tions in ours regulameant this year’s compla that decisions on areas were made ints and contentious on the fly. We have lot of rules a on fairness, and procedure but little on that needs to it is, James Wood change. As and Rhys given a free choice betwee Dart were n validating the elections and them, and they of having to re-run avoid the hassleclearly decided to just and embarrassmen t.

Naked student invades lecture Our guidelines elections are for theatre for charity thorough eno not >>page 3

The use of outside companies significant was a factor

or ways round CAMPAIGN to ensure fairnesthe barriers designed CONTROVERS tainly weren’ s. No, I don’t Y: Free and emphasis on fair electio costumes and like the and at worst t. It’s at best underhand, It should be This year’s electio ns? (althou downright sleazy. gimmicks said here that Wednesday these candid ns – and the nights there’ll all of from gh this year was relative Then there doning of the ates were cleared concions of sleaze, are be suspimethods – breach of the of any struck.them), but there’s a balancely free the independence the concerns over rules by this process actuall no matter how fair the precedent. For both the have set a to be and objectivity Elections should dents’ Union year’s StuHead dent Media and y was. Maybe of Hill would n’t be about sabbatical officers. Probab who’s Vice-Presiden Union Preside of StuRough Wood and NUS-a t James they the wackiest, but nt posinor should controversial aspect is ly the most who asked, have supported anyone tions, the candidate who ppointed Return become a powerOfficer Rhys Carey’s involvement with but came second ing grab.

Dart, and that To try to stop really imagin the cynic in me can’t didn’t use such dubiou Rough Hill, grudge against I hold no he s tactics, given it e has in both becoming a them declared an that suppor power- an t student democjust doing it to Emma cases the vote was very and show my own any of them. I’ll also grab, each candidate is outside promot interest in installing allocat tight: Jones eventu Similarly, Emma racy. er to run Wedne of the candid hand and say that none which they can then claim ed £40, nights at ally won 65 votes, Ed Carey sday on Glam by just Jones’s relianc ates who receive expenses after back on current Solus (much like sorship and the elections. ly is on a Saturda Come Play is probab nightclub for her campai e outside companies by 149. The use of other help were d spon- supposed This is to cover any was choices. But gn ly going to y). costs this is no disgrun my first in their campai make her think the only factor in either certainly not twice about about how gn. It makes incurred running any my votes didn’t tled rant evens up negative sto- to claim they made no election, but ries about it things betwee it fair, and the results in differen (although to diculous, and n favour of my change money to never heard be fair, I’d in such a close ce is rispare and thosethose with candidates; this preferred of vote any It’s just that is about too likely to it, so that’s perhaps not difference is a significant process and this year some without. happen). one.

With a Union candidates newits flaws. the campaign decided they’d But despite President elected We talk to the Although the rather like in this way, these concer advantage. five in questio a sneaky impartiality it’s unlikely ns over be break n and didn’t that the any motion campai t there’ll And let’s be to strict legitim fairness (as opposed AU Presiden to preven tions were not gning rules, their acclear about the tactics were acy) of campaigning, pening again. This’ll meant this haptions; indeed in the spirit of the elec- sneaky. If it were entirely this – it is more candid more and within the >>page 32offi , Ed Carey the elections ates trying received an your campaign t-shirts fair to have cial warnin to were valid. rules and by external paid That means that the sabbati help, whethe get ahead of his campai g on the behalf of one nightclub, for your campai for by a r financial or It’s naive promotional. cal team that gn team to to be imprin have been But there This, to me, that effect. ted on everyo gn stamp with saying not to anticipate an issue elected will be the sabbatical team nightclubs and promot aren’t enough is dent elections very important. Stu- as they enter Vodka Revs, ne’s hands promotions you would like an outside next year, and rightly ers in Cardiff sponsor so. It absolut to doesn’t, howev ely down all candidates, so it’ll They’re not are all about the spirit. to distribute Oceana guest or for you day nights company to run Wedne er, exonerate s- ning candid about finding as, basically, and then accepti list tickets the win- who’s to who’s got the best come loopholes, bribes, then from ates ng from an outside promot help criticis patter, all dates would m; just becaus any scrutiny or cut the got the best contacts, who be doing it. Andthe candi- ny, but Carey ions compa best e something can they ceris can offer deals, and, inevitably, that if Rough isn’t stupid. He knows technically allowed does who their sponso Hill is given sarily make not necesrs the best incenit fair. control of tives.

I have nothing And against any of the team that’s not the sort of sabbati this Union needs. cal

ugh

candidate Eddy Carey, the student presidential Cardiff promotions to squeeze votes from help of whose links with Hill drew criticism body, as they enlisted the media, company Rough from candipromoters, clubs, student and several complaints cers. in the elections. and even Sabbatical Offi previous dates running the asIn a marked contrast to stuEddy Carey had acquired Cardiff’s most successful by years, this year’s election saw five through his sistance of Rough Hill marred dent election ever was enlisting the help of clubs Jefferys. The Daniel candidates candihousemate, as with a in a bid to give their controversy last week, outlined and promoters company provided Eddy dates tested the rules displaying boost. Four of these five a campaign advantages, of breaking to next number by the constitution to nights Vodcandidates have been elected his publicity at student team. using his point.

Beat, Sabbatical Chic year’s and record Island a ka This year’s election saw The majority of the controversy, campaign logo to stamp guests on with candiaround winning turnout of 4,918 voters, d lengths however, centered dates going to unprecedente

Ben Bryant gair rhydd Editor

creating a arrival into the clubs, and included the Facebook presence that to mail out use of Rough Hill groups them to vote to students encouraging

for Eddy. rhydd, In an interview with gair 149 votes Eddy Carey, who won by preferential in the final round of the have voting system, said: “I couldn’t won without Rough Hill”. continued on page 6

Elections sho uldn't be about fi ndin ways around g barriers des the igned to ensure fair ness

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20 FEATURES

MAY.11.2009 FEATURES@gairrhydd.COM

Dangerous

Figures revealed in recent weeks reflect that there has been an ast With Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust showing a particularly poor perfo

I

f someone goes into hospital they usually expect to come out better. They do not expect to find themselves fighting for their life as a result of medical errors by hospital staff.

However, this is becoming a shocking reality for many patients across the nation today, with official figures from the National Patient Safety Agency revealing that almost one million patients a year are put at risk by blunders and near misses. While 65% of errors leave no lasting effect on patients, one out of every 100 of these mistakes causes severe harm or death.

Nearly half of all serious mistakes in Wales were in the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust

439,612 ‘patient safety incidents’ were reported between April and September 2008 in England and Wales.

In England, 1,856 incidents caused death and 3,643 caused severe harm, compared to 59 incidents causing death and 229 causing severe harm in Wales.

94, or 41%, of the incidents of severe harm in Wales and eight of the recorded deaths occurred within the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust. On top of this, the Healthcare Commission argues that as there is no mandatory reporting system in place, the true level of errors and accidents could be much higher.

Looking beyond the statistics, the details of some of the errors taking place are horrifying. An investigation by the Daily Mirror revealed a wide range of errors, including doctors giving out dangerous doses of medication and an incident at Aintree University Hospital, Merseyside where a chest drain (inserted to relieve pressure on the lungs) pierced the patient’s heart.

Also uncovered by the investigation were incidences of surgeons operating on the wrong person or the wrong body parts. The Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson, has already highlighted the need for greater efforts to prevent such surgical errors in his annual report last year.

His report detailed 14 incidents where neurosurgeons mistakenly drilled holes to release pressure in the skulls on the wrong side of the

patient’s skull. In the previous year more than one operation per month was performed on the wrong body part, including knee replacements being conducted on healthy knees, a bone being removed from the wrong foot, and incorrect incisions made to access abdominal organs.

While it is usually only horror stories like these which make the headlines, the consequences of medical errors go much further. The financial implications of serious errors are hugely damaging to the NHS. The figures for the NHS Litigation Authority reveal that in one year 5,426 claims of clinical negligence and 3,293 claims of non-clinical negligence against the NHS were made.

Between 2006 and 2007, £613.2 million was paid out in connection with clinical and non-clinical negligence claims, compared to £591.6 million the previous year.

This figure includes both damages paid to patients and the legal costs incurred by the NHS. The NHSLA estimates that the theoretical cost of paying all outstanding claims immediately would be £9.09 billion for clinical claims and £0.13 billion for non-clinical claims.

With medical errors causing such a massive drain on the NHS budget, there is less money than ever available for other areas of the NHS such as staff provision. The Royal College of Nursing general secretary Dr Peter Carter argues that sufficient staffing is fundamental to the issue of preventing errors, saying: "It’s very simple - if you don’t recruit enough nurses, patients will be at risk."

Many critics think NHS cost-cutting leads to errors Many critics have speculated that it is NHS cost-cutting which is to blame for the number of errors, with doctors and nurses being forced to take on too much in order to save money. This conclusion might seem illogical when considered against recent figures which reveal that the number of NHS workers is at an all-time high.

But when analysing these figures more closely it is apparent that the majority of those employed are not frontline medical staff. While staffing levels have risen by 2.8% in a year, the number of nurses has only increased by 2.1%. In contrast, management

roles have increased by 9.4%. Of the 1.37 million NHS workers, 39,900 are administrators.

Critics argue that the NHS investment in administrative roles is causing patient care to suffer, with Patients' Association spokesman Katherine Murphy saying: "When there is an obvious shortage of nurses and midwives across the system, why is it that

the NHS is employing so many more of those who are furthest away from the care of patients?"

While hiring higher numbers of frontline staff could partly prevent medical errors, the mistakes are often made due to the simple fact that the doctors are after all human. Obviously there is no excuse for gross negligence, but the pressure on doctors to

A SAFE PA make life-or-death decisions in a very short time frame means that mistakes cannot be completely avoided.

However, the NHS’s failure to address mistakes and attempts at covering them up only make further errors more likely. The Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust has a reporting rate of 8.70 per 100 admissions, compared to 4.98 for similar trusts, which according to

FEATURES 21

MAY.11.2009 FEATURES@gairrhydd.COM

doctoring

tounding rise in NHS blunder which lead to severe harm or death. ormance, Daniella Graham asks why.

AIR OF HANDS?: Statistics show you might not be as safe as you'd expect The National Patient Safety Agency and high safety standards."

With this in mind, it seems quite suggests a stronger culture of safety.

Chief Executive of the NPSA, shocking that out of 422 NHS orMartin Fletcher, said in response to ganisations, 52 either declined to the reporting figures: "If we don’t take part in the reporting system or know where the problems are, then reported fewer than 11 incidents. we can’t fix them. We believe that an With a culture of denial still in exisorganisation with a high reporting tence within some areas of the NHS, rate is much more likely to have a unnecessary blunders look set to strong commitment to patient safety continue putting lives at risk.

Some of the worst blunders In 2006 a patient died after air was allowed to enter a vein through a drip

A pair of dissecting forceps were sewn into a patient after a nurse was too busy to notice they were missing.

A patient received the wrong set of lungs during a transplant

A man had the wrong testicle removed

A baby needing to be sedated was given 10 times the correct dose of morphine

One woman was incorrectly given a hysterectomy, leaving her unable to have children.

A consultant radiologist wrongly gave the all-clear of cancer to 18 women. One of these women later died of cancer, while another had to have a breast removed as the cancer was so advanced by the time it was discovered.

In 2001 a teenager died after an anti-cancer drug was injected into his spine instead of a vein.

In 2000 a man died a month after he had the wrong kidney removed at Prince Philip Hospital, Llanelli.

One woman died during childbirth at the hospital where she worked due to an error by a colleague

Cardiff student hospitalised for a year following NHS blunders Features tells the story of second-year student Laura Smith, whose botched surgery left her in need of six more ops Misdiagnosis? Check. Lung damage? Check. Foreign object left inside body? Check. Nerve endings stitched up incorrectly? Check.

Sounds gruesome doesn't it? But this is what happened to Laura Smith when she was admitted to hospital for a routine operation.

Laura was studying towards her GSCEs when she began experiencing severe abdominal pains.

She was admitted to hospital, where the staff struggled to diagnose the problem. By the time the hospital confirmed that she had appendicitis, Laura’s appendix had ruptured, leaving her in tremendous pain.

Her nerve endings were stitched up incorrectly The complications caused by the delay in diagnosis left Laura requiring two emergency operations. The second of these commenced too close to the first, when her lungs had not fully recovered from the anaesthetic administered during the first operation.

Her weak lungs could not cope with the second operation, so the operation was abandoned, with Laura left needing breathing support for several months. She also developed asthma as a direct result of the blunder - which she still suffers from today.

When her lungs were finally strong enough and the operation was attempted for the second time, the surgeons left a ‘foreign object’ in her body. The hospital initially refused to acknowledge that they had done anything wrong. However, after several

weeks of debate, they finally agreed to re-operate on Laura to remove the object, more than likely a chip from a surgeon’s tool.

This operation ran far from smoothly. Laura’s nerve endings were stitched up incorrectly, leaving her in even more pain. This final blunder left her in need of 3 further operations.

Instead of a routine appendix removal, Laura ended up enduring 6 operations, and spending a year in hospital. She missed a whole year of school, meaning that she had to home-school herself for her GSCEs. This unsurprisingly compromised her eventual grades.

The NHS have never offered Laura any compensation, despite the extensive inconvenience caused.

22 FEATURES

MAY.11.2009 FEATURES@gairrhydd.COM

Left out in the cold Lots of students acquire a pet during university, but what happens when they graduate? Emma McFarnon investigates

P

ets: they’ll love you through thick and thin, and when everything else fails, they’ll be there for you. You hope that somebody who decides to take in an animal will give it the love and care it deserves, until the end of its natural life.

But last week the RSPCA announced a staggering 57% increase in the number of pets being abandoned.

Many of them are being dumped in animal shelters, but some are simply being deserted and left to die. Most worrying of all is that after speaking with a number of local animal shelters, it became clear that we students are increasingly the source of this problem.

Many animal refuges have expressed concerns that a number of students are buying pets such as cats or hamsters, but then having to abandon them when they finish university.

Sue from Bright Eyes rabbit sanctuary said: “We deal with a lot of students who take on a pet but then graduate, and realise they can no longer look after them. Some leave them to die or to fend for themselves.”

An increasing number of students are taking on pets for company whilst at university without giving consideration to how they will care for the animal a few years on. The majority of us will have to move house at least once during our time at university, and those with pets will struggle to find a landlord that will tolerate animals.

"A pet is a life at the end of the day.

You should care."

With our busy schedules and frequent late nights, charities stress the need for students to think carefully before getting a pet, even just a small bird or a fish. All animals require time, money, and attention; things that students do not always have a lot of.

Beverley from Dogs' Trust Rehoming Centre emphasised: “Student life isn’t stable, it can change at any minute.

You can’t have a dog or any pet living like this.”

While most students hand over their pets to rescue centres if they can no longer care for them, a growing number are simply leaving them out on the streets. The situation has worsened considerably due to the recession, with animal shelters running out of space to house the increasing number of animals being handed over.

Beverly said: “More and more people are explaining how they’ve got to work more hours and have not got the time to look after pets.” This means that when students enquire about giving up their animal, they are

either put on a waiting list of around 6-18 weeks, or being turned away completely. While this undoubtedly leaves students in an impossible situation, Sue points out: “Why did you get a pet in the first place?

Growing numbers are leaving pets out on the street “If you take on a pet, it is meant to be for the whole of that animal’s natural life. They are not a commodity.”

Likewise, Susie from Safe Home

for Unwanted Animals (SHUA) reminded me: “It’s a thousand times easier to acquire a pet than it is to take care of one, or to unload it onto a rescue centre.”

However, most shelters do recognise that people are often reluctant to hand over their pets to them because of fear of being judged. The Blue Cross conducted a survey which revealed that 77% of people would feel guilty and 23% embarrassed if they could no longer care for their pet, and almost a third felt that they would be judged.

The Blue Cross fears that this could be the cause of more animals being abandoned, and seeks to reassure pet

LADY AND THE TRAMP: More and more people are abandoning their pets owners that they will be welcomed by tions. Susie from Tiny Paws animal staff if they take the responsible deci- sanctuary told me: “A number of sion of handing their pet to an animal students take in guinea pigs because they have had them before they came shelter.

But none of this distracts from the to university. In those circumstances, fact that more and more people, par- they usually look after them very ticularly students, are taking on pets well.”

Susie encourages students who without thinking through the ramifications. Many aren't considering the want to take in a pet to be proactive in level of commitment pets require, and other ways: “You can do dog-walking, forgetting that they are living, breath- fundraising, volunteer at an animal ing creatures incapable of fending for shelter, or maybe join the Cat Protecthemselves. Sue highlighted: “Pets are tion Group.” But each charity wanted a life at the end of the day. You should to send out the same important mescare for them in the same way you sage: if you cannot care for an animal for the duration of its natural life, would your niece or nephew.”

Of course, there are some excep- don’t take in a pet at all.

MAY.11.2009 INTERVIEWS@gairrhydd.COM

SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT 23

Swine Flu: when pigs fly?

Swine flu has dominated the headlines for the past few weeks, but how dangerous is it? Priya Raj separates fact from fiction Cases of swine flu, which has killed people in Mexico, have been confirmed around the world. With experts scrambling to develop a vaccine, there is concern at the potential for a pandemic affecting millions of people.

What exactly is swine flu? Swine flu is a respiratory disease, caused by influenza type A which infects pigs.

There are many types, and the infection is constantly changing.

Until now it has not normally infected humans, but the latest form clearly does, and can be spread from person to person - probably through coughing and sneezing.

The World Health Organization has confirmed that at least some of the human cases are a never-before-seen version of the H1N1 strain of influenza type A. H1N1 is the same strain which causes seasonal outbreaks of flu in humans on a regular basis.

However, this latest version of H1N1 is different: it contains genetic material that is typically found in strains of the virus that affect humans, birds and swine.

Swine flu is probably spread from person to person, through coughing and sneezing Flu viruses have the ability to swap genetic components with each other, and it seems likely that the new version of H1N1 resulted from a mixing of different versions of the virus, which may usually affect different species, in the same animal host. Pigs provide an excellent 'melting pot' for these viruses to mix and match with each other.

Flu viruses mutate over time causing small changes to proteins on their surface called antigens. If the immune system has met a particular strain of the virus before, it is likely to have some immunity; but if the antigens are new to the immune system, it will be weakened. The influenza A virus can mutate in two different ways; antigenic drift, in which existing antigens are subtly altered, and antigenic shift, in which two or more strains combine.

Antigenic drift causes slight flu mutations year on year, from which humans have partial, but not complete, immunity. By contrast, the new strain of H1N1 appears to have originated via antigenic shift in Mexican pigs.

The new virus has made the jump from pigs to humans and has demonstrated it can also pass from human to human.

This is why it is demanding so much attention from health authorities.

Symptoms of swine flu in humans appear to be similar to those produced

tissue when possible and disposing of it promptly.

It is also important to wash your hands frequently with soap and water to reduce the spread of the virus from your hands to face or to other people and cleaning hard surfaces like door handles frequently using a normal cleaning product.

If caring for someone with a flu-like illness, it is possible to wear a mask to cover the nose and mouth in an attempt to reduce the risk of transmission. The UK is looking at increasing its stockpile of masks for healthcare workers for this reason.

In Mexico masks have been handed out to the general public, but experts are sceptical about how useful this is.

Patients are also being asked not to go into GP surgeries in order to minimise the risk of spreading the disease to others. Instead, they should stay at home and call their healthcare provider for advice.

It is unclear how effective current vaccines would be against swine flu SWINE FLU: As dangerous as it looks...? by standard, seasonal flu. These include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, chills and fatigue.

It is worth remembering that seasonal flu often poses a serious threat to public health: each year it kills 250,000 - 500,000 around the world.

So far, most cases of swine flu around the world appear to be mild, albeit with diarrhoea more common than it is with seasonal flu. Unfortunately however, lives have been lost in Mexico, and a single death - of a Mexican child - has been confirmed in the US. When any new strain of flu emerges that acquires the ability to pass from person to person, it is monitored very closely in case it has the potential to spark a global epidemic, or pandemic.

The World Health Organization has warned that swine flu could potentially trigger a global pandemic, and stresses that the situation is serious.

However, experts say it is still too early to accurately assess the situation fully.

The world is closer to a flu pandemic than at any point since 1968 upgrading the threat from four to five on a six-point scale following a meeting on Wednesday.

This means all governments have to mobilise their pandemic flu plans.

However, eight days after the first reports of swine flu cases in Mexico

emerged, a World Health Organization official said there was as yet no evidence of the virus spreading in a sustained way outside North America.

In Mexico masks have been handed out to the general public There is hope that, as humans are often exposed to forms of H1N1 through seasonal flu, our immune systems may have something of a head start in fighting infection.

However, the fact that many of the victims are young does point to something unusual. Normal, seasonal flu tends to affect the elderly disproportionately.

The US authorities say that two drugs commonly used to treat flu, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem to be effective at treating cases that have occurred there so far. However, the drugs must be administered at an early stage to be effective.

Use of these drugs may also make it less likely that infected people will pass the virus on to others.

The UK government already has a stockpile of Tamiflu, ordered as a precaution against a pandemic. How-

ever, there is concern that if too many people start taking anti-virals as a precaution, it could raise the risk of the virus developing resistance, reducing the drugs' effectiveness.

It is unclear how effective currently available flu vaccines would be at offering protection against the new strain, as it is genetically distinct from other flu strains.

A new bespoke vaccine is being created by scientists in the UK and the US, but it may take months to perfect it, and manufacture enough supplies to meet what could be huge demand.

A vaccine was used to protect humans from a version of swine flu in the US in 1976. However, it caused serious side effects, including an estimated 500 cases of Guillain-BarrĂŠ syndrome.

There were more deaths from the vaccine than the outbreak.

For the time being anyone with flu-like symptoms who might have been in contact with the swine virus - such as those living or travelling in the areas of Mexico that have been affected - should seek medical advice.

Avoid close contact with people who appear unwell and who have fever and cough.

General infection control practices and good hygiene can help to reduce transmission of all viruses, including the human swine influenza. This includes covering your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, using a

Countries around the world have taken varying measures but are mostly stepping up monitoring and issuing advice about travel to Mexico. In the UK, the Foreign Office is advising against all but essential travel to Mexico.

With regards to consumption of pig meat, there is no evidence that swine flu can be transmitted through eating meat from infected animals.

However, it is essential to cook meat properly. A temperature of 70C (158F) would be sure to kill the virus.

Experts are also stressing that this is now a disease which is being passed between people.

The World Organisation for Animal Health said culling pigs, as Egypt has proposed, was therefore "inappropriate" as a measure to stop swine flu spreading. It added there was no evidence of infection in pigs, nor of humans acquiring infection directly from pigs.

Further information and advice on swine flu can be found at websites of leading health and research organisations around the world. The World Health Organisation gives background information on the virus.

The UK's government services website is carrying regularly updated health and travel information. The Health Protection Agency advises the public about what to do if returning from an affected area. NHS Choices outlines how swine flu is different from other flu.

24 TAF-OD

MAY.11.2009 TAF-OD@gairrhydd.COM

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JOBS & MONEY 25

MAY.11.2009 JOBS@gairrhydd.COM

Fighting for their rights There are few signs of things getting better for Setanta, whose decision to charge its viewers has angered fans, writes Tom Victor

A

nd there were you thinking Jobs and Money was all 'credit crunch' this and 'recession' that. You were thinking of deserting me because I wasn’t tackling the hard-hitting financial stories, and that I was pawning all the good stuff off to Politics.

Well, fear not. This week I’m bringing you some real financial news.

What could it be? I hear you ask with baited breath. The housing market?

An exclusive story on a takeover? A scoop about…erm…banks or something? Close, but no. This week, loyal readers, I’m going to talk to you about football.

Well, not football itself, but the rights to football. Many of you will remember the furore over pay-per-view broadcaster Setanta fairly buying the rights to England’s away World Cup qualifiers and then having the audacity to charge for them.

They were lambasted for denying us the right to see Theo Walcott’s hattrick against Croatia when – let’s face it – if the game had finished goalless no one would have really cared.

Now the pantomime villains are getting the punishment they don’t really deserve, as attempts to renegotiate their contract to show football has put the ball back in the FA’s court, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor.

Setanta has already been forced to halve its intake of live Premier League football next season, from 46 games down to 23, and this alone is likely to reduce the number of people paying for monthly subscriptions. It seems that the exclusive coverage of the Blue Square Premier League, as well

as miscellaneous 'sports' (I’m looking at you, Poker and UFC), are not enough to retain a fanbase which was never committed at the best of times.

When you add to this the teething problems with Setanta’s Premier League coverage, the future looks bleak. In one of their first live Premier League games, between Derby County and Newcastle United, Setanta’s cameras missed a goal by Kenny Miller because they were showing a replay of an earlier incident. Not only was Miller’s goal the only one of the game, but it was the only winning

LITTLE TO CELEBRATE: And it doesn't look like improving for Setanta goal of Derby’s season. Setanta’s year on Setanta Sports 1, turned out to be damp squibs. didn’t go a whole lot better.

Ask your average football fan Aside from the furore over the Croatia-England game, there sim- what they considered the best match ply weren’t that many decent games shown on Setanta last season and they shown on the channel. This was al- would have probably been clutching ways likely to be the case when the at straws. Maybe Newcastle against broadcaster got ‘last pick’ of the Manchester United, when the visitors games, the Premier League equivalent won 5-1. But even that was largely a of the fat asthmatic kid who no one procession, a ‘big team’ crushing mewants on their side in a school play- diocre opposition without a fight.

The equivalent, you might say, of ground kickabout.

But even the potential coups, those the battle between Setanta and Sky, rare occasions when one of the ‘big the Newcastle and Man United of four’ got their 90 minutes of fame football broadcasting respectively.

Setanta’s director of sport, Trevor East, has claimed that "We're still talking about what can be achieved, but there is no question of us defaulting on any payments." Despite this, the credit crunch is still lurking in the background of this saga, threatening to rear its ugly head once more.

In the current financial climate, it is understandable that people are looking to cut down on unnecessary expenses like jetpacks, hover-bikes and pay-per-view television. Some people are – shock horror – reducing their intake to one sport subscription.

Paul Stollery, a second-year student at Cardiff University, is among those wary of splashing out on Setanta: "The only reason I watched Setanta was because it was free with Virgin TV. Now we have Sky it’s not worth paying extra for it. What they offer isn’t really worth the extra money."

Indeed, with the number of games on Setanta going down, it’s not inconceivable that more viewers will follow Paul’s example and desert the Irish broadcasters. If the trend continues, English fans may no longer find themselves in the disgraceful situation, faced by their Welsh counterparts for years, of having to pay to watch their national team on TV. So, might we have a positive story to report from the credit crunch? A victory for the common man over the corporate bad guys? Well, if we ignore the imminent victory seemingly awaiting Rupert Murdoch, the fattest of the fat cats, then maybe we will have something positive to report for once. Only time will tell.

This week's jobs: 035 Barista £5.73 per hour

037 Workshop Assembly Technician £5.73 per hour

039 Admin Support £5.80 per hour

Children's café requires people to serve customers, make drinks and simple food, general cleaning, tidying toys and assisting with parties. You must be flexible, hard working and energetic with excellent spoken English and excellent customer service skills!

Manufacturer of electronic adaptations for disabled drivers requires an assembly technician for flexible 2 or more days/week within 9am-5pm Mon-Fri with possibility of additional days during holidays. No specific skills required, just a conscientious, common sense attitude. Start ASAP.

Company providing letting software to letting agents around the UK requires admin support for approx 35 hours/ week (to be split between 2 people). You should have a good telephone manner, organisational skills and the ability to multi-task.

Further opportunities are available in the Jobshop, Cardiff University Students' Union

FIVE MINUTE FUN 27

MAY.11.2009 FMF@gairrhydd.COM

found on facebook Housemate done something stupid?

sudoku.

1. Log on to the book of face 2. Join the group ‘Found on Facebook’ 3. Upload embarrassing photos 4. Pick up gair rhydd on Monday and laugh

EASY

MEDIUM

Quick Crossword Across 6. Intention (7) 7. Runs in neutral (5) 9. Expectorate (4) 10. Greeting (10) 11. The sound made by beating a drum (8) 13. Take one's time (6) 15. Adjoin (4) 17. Short and plump (5) 18. Parental sister (4) 19. Feisty (6) 20. A type of locking pin (8) 23. Compose (10) 26. Top of a house (4) 27. Muddle (5) 28. Cradlesong (7)

In the librar y?

Add Photos!

Down 1. Mathematics (10) 2. Dishevel (6) 3. Scream (4) 4. The date on which a person was born (8) 5. A secret scheme (4) 6. What we write on (5) 8. Distended (7) 12. Like some currents (5) 14. Meteorologist (10) 16. Surges (7) 17. The body of a human being (8) 21. Pin (6) 22. Sarcasm (5) 24. Shut a door forcefully (4) 25. Website addresses (4)

HARD

28 LISTINGS The Listings Top Five...

Monday 11th May

MAY.11.2009 LISTINGS@gairrhydd.COM

Tuesday 12th May

QUENCH: CASIO KIDS + SILVER GOSPEL RUNNERS + HYENA+ SAD SONGS FOR DIRTY LOVERS @ BUFFALO A quadruple offering of live music to quench your musical thirst tonight... my oh my, aren’t we just a tad spoilt!

8pm, free

ROYAL VARIETY CLUB @ 10 FEET TALL Gawp at the array of outstanding talent gracing the stage at 10 Feet Tall tonight.

From burlesque to belly dancing, there will undoubtedly be something to satisfy even the most miserable of sods.

10pm – 3am, contact venue for prices

Time to tackle globalisation and multinational corporations. Put your eco-cap on and beat the supermarkets - you might even save a bit of money!

10 FEET TALL LIVE @ 10 FEET TALL The best in local bands and promoters are awaiting you on Church Street.

8pm – 11pm

1. St. Mary's market

SURFACE UNSIGNED FESTIVAL 2009 @ BARFLY Unsigned acts showcase their material at Barfly in front of a panel of industry experts. Go along to jeer and cheer!

7.30pm, £6

JUST DANCE @ CLWB IFOR BACH A night of serious boogying is set to take off at Clwb Ifor, delivering you with some of the top tunes to send your rhythmical juices into a bit of a frenzy.

10.30pm – 2am, £3/£2 nus

...ways to beat the supermarkets!

The market in town will satisfy your every whim, with fresh fruit and veg, meat and fish, sweet, nuts and condiments... even clothes. Chances are, the food is locally sourced as well.

2. Greengrocers - Albany/Crwys Road Definitely fresher and tastier than the well-travelled, packaged veg in the supermarkets. Not only is it not packed to the brim with additives, but you'll probably end up eating seasonal produce too.

3. Zem Zem - Wyverne Road It's easy not to notice this little gem, but its stocked full of an array of nuts, spices and herbs, as well as selling fresh olives and dips. Whether you're cooking Indian, Lebanese, Chinese of Mediterranean, chances are you'll find all your needs in here.

CARVIN JONES @ THE GLOBE Drawing inspiration from guitarist daddies Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Carvin Jones shows just how he compares, with dazzling licks and impressive melodies.

7.30pm, £5 FUN FACTORY @ SOLUS, SU For a night of fun-filled alcoholic antics and unadultered drinking games, Solus is the place for you. Escape the worrying prospects of revision and coursework deadlines for the evening and wallow in your few hours of freedom.

9pm – 2am, free

HOCKEY + FLASHGUNS @ CLWB IFOR BACH Disco/funk act Hockey and London quartet Flashguns, prepare to blow you away at Welsh Club. Another two up and coming acts who want to get their sound recognised: show your support for them tonight!

7.30pm, £7 THE MACCABEES @ GREAT HALL, SU New wave band The Maccabees descend on Cardiff this evening to entertain you no end with their original lyrics and fresh tunes.

7.30pm, £10 ZACH HILL + MIKE BONES @ BUFFALO BAR NYC session musician and solo artist, Mike Bones, showcases his music talent tonight, alongside Californian performer Zach Hill.

9.30pm – 3am, £7.50

Wednesday 13th May

POP TART @ 10 FEET TALL A free club night, full to the brim with live acts, ridiculously cheap drinks and some banging tunes. Miss it and miss out!

10pm – 3am, Free entry LISTEN UP @ CLWB IFOR BACH Listen up and get your ba-donka-donk down to Welsh club tonight, where an array of euphoric tunes are awaiting your arrival.

From indie to Motown, there’s something for everyone dispersed over all three floors.

9.30pm – 2am, £3/£2 nus NO WAVE WEDNESDAYS @ BUFFALO BAR Get psyched for the ultimate Wednesday night on the student weekly planner – no bars held on No Wave Wednesdays! Let loose and go currrrazy with £2 pints.

8pm – 3am, free PO’ GIRL + SARAH MCDONALD + SARAH MACDOUGALL @ THE GLOBE A trio of talented female acts show you what they’ve got this evening – from haunting pop-troubadour Sarah MacDougall to Candadian folk and roots group Po’ Girls, you will fail to get bored.

8pm, £12 JUMP ON THE BANDWAGON @ OCEANA Nothing screams student night better than Oceana! If you want a bit of relief from the onslaught of exam revision, make this night out your priority! A few VK Pears will work wonders on your tired and distressed mind.

9pm - 3am, £3/£4

4. Wholefoods and Spices - off Albany Road This one may be a little pricey, but for those on a health kick, it sells a mindboggling array of dried fruits, nuts and wholegrain goodness - as well as the best cereal in town.

5. Your Local Not ideal, but if you are whole-heartedly anti-Tesco Express, you can usually get what's normally bought in Tesco in the local newsagents - T&As, K&C, Salisbury Stores etc, and you'd be helping local businesses.

Students’ Union, Park Place, 02920 387421 www.cardiffstudents.com ◆ Med Club, Neuadd Meirionydd, Heath Park 02920 744948 ◆ Clwb Ifor Bach ros, Bakers Row 02920 399939 www.clubmetropolitan.com ◆ Dempseys, Castle Street 02920 252024 ◆ Move, 7 Mill Lane 02920 225592 ◆ Jazz, 21 St. Mary Street 02920 387026 www.cafejazzcardiff.com ◆ The Riverbank Hotel, Despenser Street www.riverbankjazz.co.uk ◆ St. David’s Hall, Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay 0870 0402000 www.wmc.org.uk ◆ The New Theatre, Park Place 02920 878889 www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk ◆ The Cardiff International Arena, Mary Ann Street 02920 224488 ◆ The Millennium Stadium Can’t miss it. www.millenniumstadium.com ◆ Tiger Tiger

LISTINGS 29

MAY.11.2009 LISTINGS@gairrhydd.COM

Thursday 14th May

BETHAN ELFYN’S D.I.S.C.O BISCUITS @ BUFFALO BAR A new Thursday club night to work your salivary glands into overdrive. Ms Elfyn of BBC Radio 1 hits the charity shops the week before to find the best records to keep you going all night long.

8pm – 3am, free ROSS NOBLE - THINGS @ ST. DAVID'S HALL Join the multi-award winning Ross Noble tonight and surf the wave of the here and now in a free-form, free wheeling ride into the way things are. With a truck load of awards and nominations, his brilliant standup is not to be missed!

8pm, £20 IN CASE OF FIRE @ BARFLY A hard-rocking Irish trio who are near-definite candidates for the future of British metal. Think Queens of the Stone Age crossed with The Mars Volta.

7pm, contact venue for prices TAINT + ZONDERHOOF + ATOMOK @ THE GLOBE A night of stoner rock for the dischordant at heart, headed by Welsh band Taint.

Contact venue for details DISCHORD: RESIDENT DJS @ BARFLY If the cheesy pop at Walkabout doesn't float your boat, wiggle your way down to Barfly for a night of alternative rock and punk.

10.30pm, £2 - 4

Friday

15th May

Saturday 16th May

Sunday 17th May

THAT'LL BE THE DAY @ ST. DAVID'S HALL A whistlestop tour of the 50s, 60s, 70s the spandle-studded era of glam rock, - in a rollercoaster comedy bursting with suprises.

7.30pm, £19.50

COUNTING CROWS + THE HOLD STEADY @ C.I.A Recheduled from December, fans have been waiting a long time for tonights gig of American folk-rock and blues-laden geekrock.

7.30pm, £38 - 28.50

CARDIFF SHAKESPEARE READERS : THE SONNETS @ CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE If you're a closet aficionado of classic literature, satiate your Shakespeare cravings with tonight's poetry and play-reading session.

6.30pm, £3

APERTURE: LONDON ELEKTRICITY @ GLO BAR A full on live experience tonight. No playback. No click track. No computers, just top quality musicians and vocalists rolling out the best soulful drum 'n' bass you've ever heard.

10.30pm, £6 - 8

THE PHANTOM BAND @ CLWB IFOR BACH Scottish art-rockers entertain with Westcoast guitar twangs and gorgeous contorted rhythms.

8pm, £7

BLACK LIPS @ THE GLOBE A frenzied, exciting, electrifying night from the genre-twisting Black Lips, one of Atlanta's most talked about undergound bands.

8.30pm, contact venue for prices.

MARMALADE: 10 FEET ALL STAR DJS @ TEN FEET TALL A full fat mashup. Resident DJs blend classic funk, soul, future jazz, roots, motown, disco and new releases. Plus, you have access to the mezzanine and undertone basement/bar.

8pm - 4am, £5 - 4 MEGASTAR WORLD TOUR: BLUEMAN GROUP @ C.I.A Music, comedy, and multimedia theatrics combine tonight in a totally unique stage show. The latex-clad Bluemen use the stage as a playground for art and music, dabbling with bizare percussion, obscure ensembles and a maze of pipe and tubes.

7.30pm, £39.50 MAD 4 IT: RESIDENT DJS @ BARFLY The greatest indie and alternative hits with everything from the Stones to Gwen Stefani. If that doesn't persuade you, maybe the freebies will, with ticket giveaways and low flying T-shirts and CDs! 11pm, £5 - 4

CARVIN JONES @ THE GLOBE A Hendrix-inspired rock blues hurricane, with dazzling guitar and blues licks. Championed as the next up-and-coming blues rock player, he's as close as you'll get to experiencing Hendrix in the flesh.

7.30pm, £5 BOOMSHAKABOOMTANG: VINYL VENDETTAS + RESIDENT DJS + GARETH POTTER @ CLWB IFOR BACH The name itself make you want to check tonight out. Indie, retro and contemporary Welsh on all three floors, featuring an allgirl Welsh DJ collective.

10pm - 3am, £5 - 4 COME PLAY @ SOLUS, SU A night of drunken debauchery and dangerous dancing awaits as hordes of Cardiffian students let of exam stress and make the most of their Saturday night.

9pm - 2am, £3.50

THE BLACKOUT + SILVERSTEIN + WE ARE THE OCEAN + THE URGENCY @ THE GREAT HALL Emo-rockers will be gathering in force outside the Great Hall tonight, in eager anticipation of the passionate and furious show of The Blackout, who are joined by Silverstein, who are experts in synthesising punk, hardcore and emo.

7pm, £12.50 FORECAST PRESENTS: CRYSTAL ANTLERS AND TRUCKERS OF HUSK @ TOMMY'S BAR, UWIC Venture over to UWIC if you're up for a manic night of music from some hotwired and fried psychedelic punks.

7.30pm - 10pm, £8 - 6

(The Welsh Club), 11 Womanby Street 02920 232199 www.clwb.net ◆ Barfly, Kingsway, Tickets: 08709070999 www.barflyclub.com/cardiff ◆ MetIncognito, Park Place 02920 412190 ◆ Liquid, St. Mary Street 02920645464 ◆ The Philharmonic, 76-77 St. Mary Street 02920 230678 ◆ Café The Hayes 02920 878444 www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk ◆ Chapter Arts Centre, Market Road, Canton 02920 304400 www.chapter.org ◆ Wales Sherman Theatre, Senghennydd Road 02920 646900 www.shermantheatre.co.uk ◆ The Glee Club, Mermaid Quay 0870 2415093 www.glee.co.uk ◆ Greyfriar's Road 02920 391944 www.tigertiger.co.uk ◆ Tommy’s Bar, Howard Gardens (off Newport Road) 02920 416192 ◆

SPORT 31

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THE WORD ON... ...how Ricky Hatton's career was shattered inside two rounds Scott D'Arcy Sports Editor Chilling at the side of a pool. Not the way you would expect a beaten fighter to wind down after a landmark defeat. But, the day after his second round flooring by Manny Pacquiao, which left him needing a precautionary brain scan, ‘The Hitman’ looked relatively relaxed for a boxer whose career appears to have fizzled out.

In the pre-match build-up Hatton claimed that his defence, hand speed and head movement had improved.

Often talking in the third person, a personal favourite of which was “Ricky Hatton is a handful, he’s all over you”, the 30-year-old Mancunian promised to “shock the world.”

That he did. Not even the experts thought he’d go down that quickly.

But such bravado is typical of all boxing matches and no doubt the fighters have to believe it just to be able to step into the ring. Whether Hatton can still believe he has the ability to box with the best of them remains to be seen after this latest set-back.

Not even the experts thought he'd go down that quickly The statistical breakdown is telling, as Pacquiao landed 73 punches to Hatton’s 18. So much for his improved defence. The little Filipino was simply too quick and too powerful but his

DOWN AND OUT: Hatton lays stunned after Paquiao's killer punch

trainer, Freddy Roach, revealed that the trap had been laid even before the opening bell, stating: “every time he [Hatton] throws a punch he cocks his hands first and makes the opening for the inside hook.”

“I told Manny... he will cock his hands and you will hit him with the inside hook. It just worked perfectly.”

Hatton played the unsuspecting bull to Pacquiao’s patient matador, poised to strike when the opportunity presented itself. Sadly for Hatton, he gave his opponent more opportunities than a graduate careers fair.

The big question is how did the Hitman’s trainer, the “electrified, bona fide, qualified” Floyd Mayweather Snr, not spot this potential undoing?

This lack of oversight ultimately cost Hatton dear.

Unfortunately, Mayweather Snr doesn’t seem like the type to do refunds. In fact, the irony is that just days before the fight the self-confessed “creator of boxing” slammed Roach’s credentials as a coach, claiming: “he should be in the hall of shame.”

The fact that Mayweather Snr only briefly attended the post-match press conference and did not stay to answer any questions is telling.

Even if Mayweather Snr was just a “consultant”, as Hatton Promotions chief executive Gareth Williams put it, he was still out-thought by his opposite number and should take a sizeable portion of responsibility for the manner of the defeat.

A coach as good as Mayweather Snr claims to be should have been more tactically aware. Boxing is a tactical sport. It’s how Ali beat Foreman, Eubank beat Benn and Lewis demolished Tyson. Hatton was never going to win by coming straight at Pacquiao.

But that is Hatton’s style and perhaps he is too set in his ways. In both Mayweather Jnr and Pacquiao he met the only two opponents in his career who weren’t frightened of his power.

HATTON: Retirement on the cards following Vegas knockout?

What was clear last Sunday morning is that the Hitman has little else in his arsenal.

So what now for the Hitman? Of course, there have been calls for him to retire, as with all boxers with blemished records, and certainly a secondround knockout won’t have won him any favour with the television executives at HBO.

What was clear is that the Hitman has little else in his arsenal Hopes of a rematch with Mayweather Jnr appear to be dashed and he is unlikely to walk straight into a world title challenge.

A few fights against the right opponents could see him challenge again in a few years time, but up-and-coming fighters may well see him as a stepping stone to their own glory.

One boxer who would fancy his

chances against Hatton is Australian lightweight Michael Katsidis, who recently stopped former world champion Jesus Chavez in eight rounds.

The two camps were talking before the Pacquiao bout and Katsidis would push for a fight later this year.

At 30, the Hitman still has a few years ahead of him and, although the evidence suggests that it may be too late to adapt his style, there is no reason he could not go on for several more years.

A return to light-welterweight could be a likely option although it may be a while before he gets to see the bright lights of Las Vegas again.

But while he may not be too badly bruised on the outside, his pride most certainly will be and for a boxer that is intolerable. For that reason alone, it would be surprising if he did actually announce his retirement this week at the opening of his new gym.

Characteristically, boxers rarely know when they are beaten and Hatton will almost certainly not want to go out on such a low. And the glory of the past will provide little solace because as they say, you are only as good as your last performance.

32 SPORT

MAY.11.2009 SPORT@gairrhydd.COM

SPORT COMMENT

Shootout draws blank Josh Pettitt Sports Editor

TO ALL intents and purposes Cardiff’s defeat at the hands of the bruising Leicester Tigers on Sunday will be remembered as a game of “epic” proportions.

However, Sunday’s Heineken Cup semi-final clash fell short of joining the exclusive club of “epic” encounters. It came so close, but to no fault of the players, the drama of the twisting and turning story, or the fantastic atmosphere, the game failed at the final hurdle.

Every story needs a satisfactory ending and unfortunately for the game of rugby it had to learn this the hard way, as the first ever professional rugby shootout unfolded into a spectacular farce.

Rugby is not football. Football’s one singular aim is simple- to score goals, of which all players are capable. Rugby teams are lucky if they have more than one kicker in their ranks. Imagine how much more this potentially “epic” contest would have suffered if it had come down to one wobbly twenty-stone prop against another.

Surely then it would be more fitting if each team went one on one in a ten

metre channel ice hockey-style?

Ridiculous! As is would be.

Perhaps it would have been more fitting to allow the game to continue in a titanic struggle of wills long into the evening. Would this dramatic finish have helped this game achieve the much-deserved “epic” ending?

Although this might satisfy the desires of rugby puritans, it would inevitably have had its problems- the game to petering out as one weary team eventually flopped over the finish line.

Mark Williams. World Champion in 2005, Mark Williams's career has been in decline ever since and hinted at retiring if he couldn’t stop the rot.

2.

MISS KICK: Williams hooks his shot wide of the post adulation that are so familiar at the conclusion of football penalty shootouts.

However many problems the rugby shootout has, it is probably the best of a bad bunch. Rugby prides itself on the principles of modesty and reserve and because of this the end of

the game the scene resembled more of a wake than a celebration.

Rugby must surrender some of its principles to the shootout and embrace its potential drama if the similar games are ever to achieve a truly “epic” ending.

Bluebirds' wings clipped Paul Stollery Opinion Editor FOUR WEEKS ago Cardiff City were on the way to the Premiership. Only several points off an automatic spot, with the goals flying in and one of the strongest defences in the Championship, many felt that they were the team

to snatch second.

And even if they didn't, worst case scenario they'd have to do it the hard way, through the playoffs. But then came Preston.

Sitting just outside the top six, this was far from an easy match, and the result far from a forgone conclusion.

But I, like every other Cardiff City fan, had faith that their in-form team

could roll over the Lancashire club and take home three points. Oh how wrong we were. A 6-0 loss was a result no one saw coming.

Fast-forward to the end of the season, and yes, the unthinkable had happened; they had failed to collect the required two points from the last four games in order to secure that priceless playoff position.

Everyone is to blame. It hurts; get over it.

PROMOTIONS BLUES: Dave Jones shows disappointment

Faded Snooker Stars

1.

Rugby must surrender some of its principles to the shootout Ultimately the problem boils down to an identity crisis. The ultimate drama in football is the penalty shootout. Rugby’s equivalent does not showcase the same skill or drama of its round ball rival and perhaps this is what proved to be the most dissatisfying feature of Sunday’s game for rugby fans.

Jordan Crane, who kicked Leicester into the final, celebrated almost apologetically, and there were no scenes of

TOP FIVE...

In the wake of what can arguably be described as one of the worst runins in the club's history, fans have been left confused and understandably angry. What exactly happened?

The inevitable knee-jerk reaction followed as a number of supporters, fuelled by the media, started calling for a mass clear-out starting with manger Dave Jones.

Yes, let's sack the manager, or, to use a metaphor, aim a gun at each foot and pull both triggers.

Just what exactly is it we stand to

gain by getting rid of the a man that, despite being asked repeatedly to balance the books in a way that any accountant would be proud of, has still been able to take the club forward.

Since arriving, way back when a debt-ridden Cardiff City were on the verge on dropping into the third tier of English football, Jones has had to constantly sell his best assets in order to simply keep the club afloat. Yet time and time again he has been able to reach into his magic hat and pull out top quality replacements improving the club each season.

Perhaps the inexperience of young captain Joe Ledley was the reason we couldn't pull ourselves out of our end of season rut, perhaps we should sharpen our pitchforks and hunt down Ross McCormack for missing a penalty against Preston, or perhaps we should agree that the entire squad messed up. Everyone is to blame. It hurts; get over it.

After our highest league finish in 38 years, our first FA Cup final in 81 years and four hugely successful seasons (let's ignore the last four games), Dave Jones is still the manager to take us forward.

Ken Doherty the crafty tactician slipped out of the top 16 for the first time since 91 this season and failed to even qualify for the World Championship.

3.

Peter Ebdon has been accused of cheating and match fixing on his fall from grace.

4.

Stephen Hendry is, on, paper the best player to ever grace the green baize, so his failure to finish on the podium comes as a great disappointment.

5.

Steve Davis, the grand old man of snooker, has probably overstayed his welcome, but with nothing to lose he’s in no hurry to leave us yet.

SPORT 33

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IMG ROUNDUP

Carbs treat Pharmacy to a beating Oliver Bazin Sports Writer

Carbs 64-17 Sawsa ON A fine Sunday morning, finalists CARBS took to the rugby pitches at Llanrumney to face Pharmacy; a match billed to be a battle of the titans after Pharmacy beat ENGIN 27 - 0 to reach the final and CARBS finished top of the league.

Unfortunately for ENGIN a mere 3rd place was all that they could muster up, despite their weekly training regime, leaving them envious of CARBS’ superior performances.

The supposed contest did not last long as CARBS began to show their superior skill and dominance, scoring within the opening two minutes.

The first try was accredited to Ben Spencer, after a set-move from the CARBS backline saw him over the line in the corner. This was swiftly followed up by a trademark Dafydd Franklin try. Franklin continued his

onslaught; scoring a further two tries and completing his hat-trick, the last set up by a fantastic line cut by Captain Dave Chapman, sending him flying up the middle of the park, before drawing the last man to put Franklin over for a walk-in.

CARBS were helped throughout the match by their number 10, Will Lemay, whose kicking in the final was outstanding as he converted tries from all over the field. CARBS locks Ollie Bazin and Richard Clarke put in fine performances, especially in the indomitable CARBS lineout. As the match went on and the scores racked up Pharmacy still remained defiant and continued to put in a resilient effort, scoring 3 tries during the game.

However, this was in vain as CARBS ran in a further 6 tries, taking the total to 10 (Dafydd Franklin (3), Daniel Sendell (2), James Spencer (2), Ben Laurence (1) and Alistair McAloon (1), Ben Spencer (1)). As a result the game was called off with 10 minutes still to go with CARBS amassing over 60 points.

ON THE CHARGE: Dave Chapman leading from the front

Team Talk: Intermenan FC and without everyone, no-one would function at their best. To pick a couple of names though, Mr. Reliable is always awesome and Si Rawlatov has grabbed a record-breaking number of goals.

Is their any funny team banter?

The initiation was, as always, an amusing social. We had a couple of runners when the chillies came outin more ways than one…

What is your best achievement/ moment to date?

Coming from behind to beat Law B and witnessing Inter MeNan’s first hat-trick from our Mr. Reliable rightback, Fraser Ruthven. One cross, one penalty, one beauty.

Who is your best player and why?

Inter MeNan are a Bolton-esque team

If your team was an animal what would it be?

A fire ant, because we work hard, fight hard, we’re a proper team, and we’re cool.

What song best describes your team?

Rugby Roundup

Rehab Any team Prima – donnas?

Jonnie Bradbury can’t avoid a mention for his ridiculous Facebook behaviour. Si Rawlatov is, as the name suggests, lazy as they come and complains about it too.

This year who are your biggest rivals?

We have a score to settle against J-Unit. Defeat with some of our best players out against them cost us what would’ve been 2nd or 3rd place in the league stage. As it happened we finished 5th and missed out on playing the big boys.

If you would like to see your team in the gair rhydd, please email us ay sport@gairrhydd.com

Alasdair Robertson Sports Editor ELSEWHERE IN the IMG Rugby tournament Engin battled to a well-earned win over Law in the third/fourth place playoff whilst Bio Science grounded out a ferocious win in a close fought encounter with SAWSA. The league has been a huge success at the end of a year when almost everyone involved in the tournament was resigned to there being yet another year without any formal competition.

Although the tournament had its flaws, namely the involvement of BUCS players for certain sides, James Lambden, Scott Pigott and Martin Fowler must take great credit for the completion of the shortened competition.

The final could perhaps have been a less one sided affair if one of the

sides placed third or fourth had been competing against CARBS instead of a Pharmacy side that had sprung some surprising results in the group stage after recruiting several university 1st team players for two of their fixtures they were favourites to lose.

However, that fact should not detract from CARBS' performance.

Throughout the tournament they looked the form team, brushing aside all but ENGIN after some questionable substitutions at half time proved costly for the eventual winners.

Now the challenge for next year’s organisers will be to create a championship that runs throughout the year, not merely after the BUCS season has finished. This will be difficult with the WRU’s unwillingness to designate referees to the tournament but all involved this season will hope that the issue can be resolved and that the tournament will continue to flourish.

34 SPORT

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PHOTO: NATALIA POPOVA

A run in the sun

Richard Williams Sports Editor THE 2009 Invest In Sport Fun Run took place in a sun-drenched Bute Park with the aim of raising awareness of the Athletic Union’s campaign for investment in sports facilities.

A slightly disappointing turnout of 54 people took part in a 5km run beginning at Coopers Field and weaving through Sophia Gardens, Pontcanna Field

and the Blackweir.

The winning male was Mikey Bryant, who finished in a time of 14 minutes and 44 seconds, with the winning female, Heather Bryant, finishing in 18 minutes and 22 seconds.

Both received a prize of a Summer Ball ticket.

The Fun Run is now an integral part of the AU’s year, having been introduced in 2007 following the foundation of Invest In Sport, which was set up to protest against 10 years of inactivity in the development of sporting facilities at Cardiff University.

FUN RUN: Students hit Bute Park for Invest In Sport

PIYUSH GOYAL was crowned Cardiff University Snooker Club Masters Champion on Sunday after a battling 4-3 victory over Layton Brooks.

The tournament started the previous weekend with a qualifying event for players ranked outside of the top 16 of the clubs’ rankings. Kieran Baxter and Matt Cheng were the two players to come through the qualifying event.

The pair carried their momentum through to the rounds as they both won their preliminary round matches.

Baxter defeated Darren Jones 2-0 with a 31 break whilst Cheng defeated Richard Jones 2-1 in three tight black ball frames.

More was to come from the two qualifiers as Cheng defeated 2nd seed Rupert Taylor 2-1 in the first round proper and Baxter easily disposed of 1st seed and pre-tournament favourite David Blake 2-0.

Blake had been looking to secure his place at the top of the twoyear rankings, which would see him crowned Club Champion but he was now set for a nervous wait.

In the other first round matches Huw Davies shocked 5th seed Neil Fairbrother 2-0, whilst 4th seed Ben Chung, who was the losing finalist last

year, defeated veteran Paul Roberts 2-0. 3rd seed Huw Carpenter won 2-0 over Stephen Hughes with a 37 break and Dan Peacey recorded a 2-0 victory over Jon Hillard.

Brooks came through a tight first round match winning 2-1 against no.7 seed Dom Osborne while Goyal, the 8th seed, won 2-0 over Mike Evans, who came into the main draw as a lucky loser following the withdrawal of Rachit Jain.

In the quarter-finals Goyal halted the run of Baxter with a comfortable 2-0 win, the only 2-0 of the quarter

finals.

Chung, now needing to win the tournament to overhaul Blake at the top of the rankings, lost the first frame to Davies before breaks of 28 and 29 secured a 2-1 win and a semi final against Goyal.

Carpenter, who was now the favourite following Blake’s defeat, dominated the opening frame of his quarter final against Peacey by recording a break of 58. Peacey bounced back to level but Carpenter came through a scrappy decider.

In the final quarter-final Brooks

won the first frame against Cheng with a 36 break but Cheng looked like continuing his run in the tournament as he leveled the match.

Cheng’s dreams were dashed though when Brooks knocked in a fine 56 break, missing a tricky pink when on for the 69 clearance, to set up a mouth watering semi final with Carpenter. Both were key players along with Goyal in Cardiff’s run to the final of the BUCS Championships earlier in the year.

In the semi-finals Chung and Goyal shared the opening two frames before

Baize-ing squad PHOTO: NEIL FAIRBROTHER

Jon Hillard Snooker Reporter

SNOOKER: All about the pot

Chung took control with a break of 53 in frame three. Chung then looked set to take the match in frame four but twice missed frame ball using the rest, which he is usually considered to be strong with.

Goyal stole the frame and then won an equally tight deciding frame to secure a 3-2 victory and a place in the final, meaning that Blake was crowned Club Champion.

In the other semi final, Carpenter gifted Brooks the opening frame with a missed pink but hit back in the next with a stunning 51 clearance as the match looked set to really take off.

However, some solid snooker from Brooks saw him take the next two frames to win 3-1.

Brooks won the opening frame of the final, but it would be the only time he led as Goyal won the second, a frame which saw a 29 by Brooks followed by a 26 from Goyal as the quality threatened to increase.

Goyal dominated the third to lead 2-1 as things became tense and scrappy. Brooks then leveled at 2-2 before Goyal won an epic fifth frame to lead once again.

Brooks went 42-0 up in the sixth as he looked to force a deciding frame and Goyal was powerless to resist meaning the players were now locked at 3-3. However, it was Goyal who took the final frame by the scruff of the neck and triumphed, to be crowned Masters Champion 2009.

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MAY.11.2009 SPORT@gairrhydd.COM

Riding a wave of success NATIONAL WINDSURFING week finished Cardiff University’s triumphant season in the BUCS and SWA nationals.

The club sent 20 of its strongest competitors in all three divisions to compete over three days of competition in Calshot, Southampton.

Cardiff were confident in their results in the SWA series, recording wins in all competitions, most notably in the SWA west core and wave series held by Cardiff University earlier in the year.

Competition, however, looked strong for BUCS; among the students were those from Southampton and Bristol, who compete professionally in the PWA circuit, and had come to win on home ground.

Saturday morning broke to warm

Not so Bright Dominic Reed Cricket Reporter OVERNIGHT RAIN put the first BUCS game in doubt for Cardiff University CC 1st XI, but after some much-needed persuasion from both captains, common sense prevailed and the umpires declared a 20/20 match.

As is becoming expected of Cardiff, they again started strongly having been stuck in to bat, with Josh Bess (6) hitting a huge six in the first over but then falling in the next.

Yet the scoring continued first with Yau (20), who stepped in with three

CRICKET: Swing low

aggressive looking shots for four, some quick running and was helped by a beautiful cover drive first ball by Mills (4).

However both fell in quick succession off the bowling of Trevathan (4-17), bringing captain Bekker and Elgan Williams to the crease.

It’s not the first time these two have knuckled down in damp conditions, while still keeping the runs ticking.

Built on the basis of quick running and pressuring the fielders, their partnership of 73 was much needed.

Turning twos into threes and the occasional boundary helped Williams to thirty-seven from thirty-five balls, before the pair's eagerness let Brigh-

ton in and Elgan was run out.

With five overs remaining, Reed (13) looked to up the run rate with a six and a four down the ground, but he and Bennett (2) fell quickly, followed shortly by Bekker (44) who played magnificently to set up a big last over where Davies (8*) and Exley (2*) finished off the Cardiff innings at 159-7.

In reply Brighton looked depleted to say the least. Though a fantastic opening spell from Davies yielded three wickets from four overs costing fifteen runs. All were caught, two by Bennett and one from D.Reed in the deep.

Supported by Bess (1-12) both bowlers stuck to a plan, which limited runs while taking wickets too. The addition of Exley (0-28) to the attack promised much, but proved to be expensive although there was no fear of a Brighton revival.

At the other end Edmed (1-10) earned his bacon, restricting the Brighton pair of Salisbury (35) and Bevan (38*) to block or big shot.

Frequent lusty blows off the bowling of Exley and then Bennett (1-35) improved Brighton’s scorecard, yet never materialised into a match-winning partnership.

So as Bekker stepped up to bowl the final over it had been known for some time that only a comfortable Cardiff win would be the outcome.

He even picked up a cheeky wicket, Brighton finishing on 114-7, which meant Cardiff left the field having produced some excellent bowling which followed a well-constructed batting innings.

Played one, won one, with a trip to Bristol in the week and a successful pre-season behind them, Cardiff 1st XI look set to have a rewarding season.

sunshine with a steady wind that tempted some die-hard windsurfers onto the water as early as 7am.

The advanced windsurfers, including Cardiff’s Rob Richardson, Gemma Lewis and Nick Smallman, were able to use the wind to their full advantage in getting warmed up for the strong competition they would face.

The majority of the racing took place on the Saturday, with the wind remaining strong. Cardiff windsurfers owe a major part of their success to Gemma Lewis, who racked up another spectacular win, gaining a gold medal in the advanced women’s racing from Saturday and also taking the bronze medal for the Student Windsurfing Association (SWA) women’s series.

James Brammer, having spent a week in Egypt with Cardiff advanced windsurfers, took the gold medal in division three racing.

Training with the advanced squad helped Brammer take full advantage

TRAMPOLINING: Flipping brilliant

of a beach start, missing the hectic start of the racers.

Careful selection of the Cardiff Team race squad of Gemma Lewis, Nick Smallman and Rob Richardson gained the team a well-earned second place.

However, Cambridge pulled out all the stops and brought an elite team, including professional windsurfers, allowing them to win all three medals in the men’s advanced racing.

Willis’s experience, skill and consistently high level of windsurfing won him the silver medal in the SWA wave series for the year, as well as a silver medal for the men’s racing series.

Goody took the silver medal for free-style, having wowed the crowd throughout the year with some incredible manoeuvres.

Cardiff windsurfers were hugely satisfied with an extremely successful weekend, bringing home a total of seven medals.

PHOTO: LIZZIE MANSELL

WINDSURFING: Making a splash

PHOTO: JAVIER CHOI

Delyth Marshall & Peter PrzyleckiBruce Windsurfing Reporters

On the bounce Lizzie Mansell Trampolining Reporter

The Cardiff Trampoline Squad took to the beds for the final time this year at the Southampton Open.

The squad scooped several individual medals with the novice and intermediate team finishing third overall out of seventeen universities from across England and Wales.

As the competition got underway, the morning saw successes in the intermediate ladies category with Laura Price and Jenny Novy winning the same spots on the podium as they did at ISTO last month.

Laura claimed second place with her extremely accurate and polished routine, while Jenny also performed excellently, following close behind in third place.

Kim Atkins bounced into seventh place in the competitive advanced ladies category.

Kay Reynolds and Beth Stevenson, who had both recently won medals at BUCS, put in a good performance

along with Steph Lipsey, competing their routines for the first time at Advanced Level. Naomi Ellis, competing at elite level, landed fifth place in the category.

Competing for the final time, as she graduates this summer, Jess Phipps scored a proud second place in the intervanced ladies category.

The afternoon also saw coach and captain Craiger Solomons finish first in the Advanced Men’s category.

Competition was tough, especially from Warwick, Portsmouth, Southampton and Loughborough, who had many trampolinists competing to a high standard.

Despite the opposition, the Cardiff teams still performed well above average. The Cardiff novice and intermediate team finished third, while the advanced and elite team finished fifth overall.

Despite of missing several of their regular competitors, who had taken time off due to illness or revision, the Southampton Open was a success for the squad in many ways.

INSIDE: BUCS success, IMG tournament roundup, Cardiff City's missed opportunity and the Word On Ricky Hatton

PHOTO: PENNY CHALLANS

Sport gairrhydd

OAR INSPIRING Penny Challans Rowing Reporter

AFTER BUCS Head Race was cancelled due to flooding, Cardiff University Rowing Club trained extra hard for the three-day BUCS Regatta as it was the only BUCS event to be held this year.

Last weekend, 38 CURC rowers and coxes descended on the National Watersports Centre, Nottingham for the eagerly awaited three-day BUCS Championship Regatta. After four

wins at Nottingham City Regatta the week before, Cardiff were favourites in several events.

Having won gold in Women’s Intermediate Pairs on the Saturday, Emily Parry and Catriona Kay teamed up with Emma Cockcroft and Bethan Smith (6th in the Women’s Championship Pairs) for Women’s Championship Coxless Four on the Monday.

Halfway through the day, an incredibly strong headwind, which left Cardiff novice sculler Imogen Evans needing a tow-in as her boat filled

with water, saw racing suspended for a few hours.

Racing resumed later in the afternoon with the six fastest boats in each category invited to the finals. After a tough race in their heat, which left the girls' four in 3rd place behind Durham and London, whose crews both contained GB rowers, they took to the water again to continue the battle in the difficult conditions for a medal.

The crew rowed a fantastic rac, beating Durham by a massive 20 seconds to win the Silver medal, only

three-quarters of a length behind University of London. This is the best result CURC has ever achieved in a women’s event at BUCS Regatta.

Due to the excellent result, these four Welsh Squad Rowers have now been selected as part of the Great Britain Universities Squad to compete at the European Universities Rowing Championships in Poland later this year.

Other results from an impressive three days for CURC include silver in Women’s Beginner Eights, Bronze in

Women’s Intermediate Coxed Fours, Gold and 4th in Women’s Intermediate Pairs and 5th for the Men’s Beginner Eights.

Despite being one of the smaller University clubs at the event, Cardiff continued its strong reputation for medalling in the Beginner events.

With a persistent headwind, which steadily increased throughout the weekend, all crews did incredibly well ,battling with the tough conditions to achieve some of Cardiff’s best results at the event.

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