Issue14

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85% of Manchester medics may leave UK The government’s plans to impose the new junior doctor contracts has lead to many Manchester medics making plans to move abroad. Devolution campaigners have also questioned whether Manchester’s devolved NHS will have to impose the contract

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Jenny Sterne Head News Editor On Wednesday, students, NHS workers and supporters took to the streets and marched around the Manchester Royal Infirmary in protest at the government’s proposal to introduce new contracts for junior doctors.

It has since been announced that the government will force through the new contract in England despite the industrial action. Jeremy Hunt told MPs that the BMA had rejected the “best and final” offer to settle the dispute.

The latest contract offered by the government includes offering extra pay after 5pm, and offering to top up the pay by 30 per cent for those who work Saturdays.

The threat of imposing the contracts has been long-standing and the failure to reach a settlement has resulted in him finally acting on it. Hunt accused the BMA of being inflexible and claimed to have the support of NHS chief executives.

However this claim of backing from 20 NHS bosses for the decision to impose the contracts on the junior doctors was revealed to be false, when

14 of them publicly said they’d never agreed to support this move. Many of the bosses had no idea that they had even been associated with the decision.

Max Thoburn, a junior doctor and spokesperson for the campaign, reacted to the announcement made

by Jeremy Hunt that he would “end the uncertainty to the [NHS] by proceeding with the introduction of a new contract that [is] both safer for patients and fair and reasonable for junior doctors.”

Thoburn told The Mancunion he was not surprised by such a decision, stating: “We’ve been here before—last September he declared precisely the same thing. One of the things that has seen doctors so enraged since that time is the entirely undemocratic nature of such an imposition. It is incredibly demoralising to be a part of the front line staff and understand the practical implications of the contract, only to have your concerns fall on deaf ears and get steam rolled for political gain.”

Reacting to the Health Secretary’s revelation that junior doctors’ morale is at an all-time low and, as such, he would be spending tax payer’s money

on an inquiry into why this should be the case, Thoburn declared that Hunt was the “reason for low morale” due to his “unending series of attacks on the professionalism, standards and conditions of healthcare workers, [which] has led to mass dissatisfaction and will see highly skilled but undervalued staff leaving in their droves.”

This prediction appears to ring true, as a recent survey of Manchester medical students proved. A survey was carried out of 2,000 Manchester medical students to gather their reactions to the proposed junior doctors contract.

It was revealed that while 88.5 per cent of students at Manchester were planning to eventually work within England when they started medical school, after the proposed contract changes 85.37 per cent are now more likely to leave the NHS to either practice medicine abroad or work in a different field. Almost 59 per cent of those who answered yes have also already taken action towards making this move.

Despite these statistics and the threat they pose, some Manchester medics have expressed why they believe people need to remain and stand

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Government to crack down on loan repayments New measures will be introduced to target debtors who have left the UK William Brown News Editor The Minister for Universities, Jo Johnson, has announced that the government will be cracking down heavily on student loan repayment evaders.

While more help will be given to those struggling with their loans, stronger measures are being introduced to pursue those who go abroad and fail to meet their repayment deadlines.

Mr. Johnson said in a written statement to the Commons: “As more loans are issued to new students each year, it is vital the repayment process is robust, convenient for borrowers, and working efficiently to ensure the sustainability of the student finance system, and value for money, for the

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The University of Manchester Students’ Union will debate whether Donald J. Trump should be blocked from entry to the Students’ Union building.

The proposal, “Block Donald J Trump from UMSU Building entry”, has been passed through the elected Steering Committee with a view to banning the current Republican frontrunner from entry to the Steve Biko Building.

The proposal comes following a string of statements made by Trump regarded as offensive. During his campaign he has made derogatory statements including stating that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”

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@TheMancunion Editor-in-chief: Charlie Spargo editor@mancunion.com Deputy Editor-in-chief: Marcus Johns deputyed@mancunion.com Postal address: University of Manchester Students’ Union, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PR Phone: 0161 275 2989 Subeditors: Gemma Sowerby, Shaun Carter, Nadia Cheung, Lauren Nolan, Karenza Cutting, Jack Howell, Emily Piper

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He also imitated a disabled reporter and has made comments towards Senator John McCain, female journalists, Hilary Clinton, and Muslims.

One of his most circulated statements regards his plans to instigate a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Other proposals for the Senate include “The Students’ Union should actively support the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at Oriel college Oxford.”, “This Union should stop selling beef”, “Should there be Amazon Lockers in the Students’ Union Building?”, and “The SU should sell the morning star [sic]”.

The proposal to ban Donald Trump will be on the agenda, alongside the other proposals, for the third Senate meeting taking place on the 18th February.

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(SLC).

Those students who took out loans after 2012 start repaying their loan when their post-university salary reaches £21,000. While this level was originally set to increase with average earnings, the government has held the point at which graduates start repaying at £21,000.

As of now, if former students live and work in the UK, money for the student loan is automatically deducted from a debtor’s pay slip. However, when working abroad, payments must be made voluntarily. It is estimated that around £75 million of unpaid loans have accumulated over the last two decades from UK students going abroad.

Government officials, desperate to make savings and to balance their books, are trialling new methods of

co-operation with foreign governments, similar to the piloted information sharing project between Sweden and the Netherlands.

According to The Daily Mail, the two countries share the information of over two hundred ‘missing’ debtors believed to be in eachother’s countries for more effective loan repayment policing.

To increase the SLC’s ability to track down and discipline non-compliant debtors, a range of new financial penalties for those who breach the terms of their loan repayments have been proposed. One method put forward is the referral of those abusing loan repayments to credit rating agencies. Legal action will also be taken if deemed appropriate.

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taxpayer.

“We will act to recover loan repayments where it is clear borrowers are seeking to avoid repayment, consider the use of sanctions against borrowers who breach loan repayment terms and, if necessary, prosecute.

“This approach is fair for borrowers and good for the effective management of public money, providing value for the taxpayer and helping to ensure that the student finance system remains on a sustainable footing.”

Currently, for tuition, universities in England and Wales are allowed to charge up to £9,000 a year. While some students choose to privately fund their studies, the vast majority of students take out a standard tuition loan and varying maintenance loans from the Students Loans Company

Head News Editor: Jenny Sterne News Editor: William Brown Science Editor: Andy van den Bent-Kelly news@mancunion.com science@mancunion.com Features Editor: Liam Kelly features@mancunion.com Opinion Editor: Isaac Atwal opinion@mancunion.com Head Fashion Editor: Kassi Allcock Deputy Fashion Editor: Kathryn Murray Deputy Fashion Editor (Beauty): Millie Kershaw fashion@mancunion.com Head Food & Drink Editor: Ellie Gibbs Deputy Food & Drink Editor: Helena Maxwell-Jackson foodanddrink@mancunion.com Head Film Editor: James Moules Deputy Film Editor: Nicole Tamer film@mancunion.com

Photo: Gage Skidmore @Flickr

Head Lifestyle Editor: Eva Katz Deputy Lifestyle Editor: Alice Williams mancunion.life@gmail.com Head Music Editor: Henry Scanlan Deputy Music Editors: Matthew Staite, Rob Paterson music@mancunion.com Head Sport Editor: Will Kelly Deputy Sport Editor: Harry Newton sport@mancunion.com Books Editor: Yasmin Mannan books@mancunion.com Games Editor: Josh Goldie games@mancunion.com Theatre Editor: Elise Gallagher theatre@mancunion.com Arts Editor: Ashley McGovern arts@mancunion.com Head of Photography: Hannah Brierley Photographers: Ege Okyar, Przemek Piwek, Thomas Chan, Avinash Kumar, Daniel Saville, Kayleigh Brook mancunion.photography@gmail.com

The Mancunion is the official student newspaper of the University of Manchester., established in 1969 with a readership of around 20,000. It is printed weekly for 20 editions and is distributed across campus and the city.

All writers are volunteers and new contributors are always welcome. You can get involved by turning up to a meeting, the times of which are listed on the Mancunion website’s Join page.

We gladly accept contributors from outside the University of Manchester.

The Mancunion is part of the Manchester Media Group, along with Fuse FM and Fuse TV. This body encompasses all of the Union’s official media outlets, and organises training, outside speakers, and social events for Manchester students interested in student media.

If you have any comments, questions, or complaints, or would like to contribute, please e-mail the Editor-in-chief or Deputy Editor-in-chief.

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LSE Free Speech Society could face ban Merle Streck Senior Reporter A third year law student at the London School of Economics (LSE), Maurice Banjeree Palmer, has filed a motion against the newly established LSE Free Speech SocietySpeakeasy, claiming that its members are “ill-informed” and “self-important”.

This news follows the recent controversy surrounding the Free Speech University Rankings conducted by Spiked magazine, in which the LSE Students’ Union falls under red in the traffic light ranking system—meaning that the university “has banned and actively censored ideas on campus.” The article further reads that LSE’s Students’ Union “collectively create a hostile environment for free speech.”

The ranking draws on past examples of the Students’ Union censoring freedom of expression. Most recently, The Beaver , LSE’s Student newspaper, has had an edition of the paper banned by its Students’ Union. Furthermore, the Union have prohibited atheist students from wearing t-shirts depicting the prophet Muhammad, suspended the men’s rugby team over sexist and homophobic flyers, and banned The Sun and The Daily Star from its shops.

In a profile of the Free Speech Society, Speakeasy published in The London Evening Standard, an introduction to some of its members behind the establishment of the society. “Our society is emerging from this growing sense of censorship that seems to be a problem on loads of campuses in universities across the country,” says Charlie Parker, President of the newly founded society. In the article, the founders described their mission to create a space for students outside of the “safe bubble at LSE,” and criticised the safe space policy for being “counter-productive.” As a closing statement, Parker adds that: “We are opposed to any form of restriction that treats students as not capable of making up their own minds.”

Criticisms raised against Speakeasy were first outlined by Palm-

er in an article in LSE’s student newspaper, outlining his reasons for filing a motion against the society. In the article, he uses the example of the recently published piece in The London Evening Standard about the Free Speech Society – Speakeasy to argue that the founders are only looking for more publicity rather than opening up new channels of debate at the university.

He claims that there is a clear logic behind the safe space policy in Students’ Unions and that the society Speakeasy not only disrespects this policy, but also endorses “hate speech” on campus.

Palmer states that “it would be hilarious if the anti-ban society was actually banned” adding that “instead of actually doing any debating, our three musketeers have decided to set up a society in the name of debate and get their faces in the papers.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

He has received harsh critique after the release of his article, with comments referring to him as “childish,” “illiberal,” and “ignorant.” Further comments claim that he holds a “personal resentment” against the newly created Speakeasy, adding that he is simply jealous of the publicity the founders of the society have received in the press.

Murder investigation after Salford student found dead in halls

Investigation opened by police after body of student was found in university halls at The University of Salford Photo: salford_ian @Flickr

Gemma Sowerby Chief Subeditor The body of 30-year-old William Lound was found at around 1pm on Monday 8th of February at Bramall Court in the University of Salford (UoS) Student Village, after a man alerted city centre police to the address.

The man stopped a Community Support Officer from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to alert them of the location, and following enquiries, GMP arrested a 36-year-old man, now identified as Lee Arnold, on suspicion of murder, and he was taken into questioning by police.

The victim suffered multiple stab wounds, and a Home Office postmortem investigation has confirmed that the cause of death was stab wounds to the back and neck.

Arnold is not a student. He will appear at Manchester Magistrates Court on Wednesday 10th of STU003 2015 .indd 1

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Superintendent Mark Kenny said: “Our thoughts are with the family of William at this extremely difficult time.

“Specialist support officers are with William’s family and we are working closely with Salford University to offer support to anyone affected.

“We believe this an isolated incident and we don’t believe there is any risk to the wider community.”

Students at the university were dumbstruck by the events at Bramall Court, which is less than a mile from the main campus. All students received an email detailing how to access support in the wake of the events.

The Vice Chancellor of The University of Salford, Professor Helen Marshall, added: “This has come as a huge shock to us all, and our thoughts primarily are with the family and friends of the student at this difficult time.”

In his statement to The Mancunion, Connor Naylor, one of the founders of the society, responds to the recent controversy triggered by Palmer’s article: “We have issues a statement and written numerous articles in the LSE student newspaper, The Beaver, explaining our position, our aims and intentions, which are to challenge a climate of self-censorship on campus, to respectfully oppose policies both in LSE and in the UK generally that we feel encroach on our fundamental right to express all opinions openly.”

Students at LSE have also expressed their concern about the banning of the Free Speech Society. Saloni Malhotra, a postgraduate at LSE studying International Relations, told The Mancunion: “Although I was surprised that the LSE ranked so badly in the free speech rankings, there is a clear trend of banning societies or criticising them when they express somewhat controversial opinions. A university should be a place where students can discuss controversial issues as well as non controversial ones. Banning the free speech society would be ridiculous.”

Naylor is confident in the future of his society and tells The Mancunion about upcoming plans. “At the moment we obviously have to fight the motion proposed to the Students’ Union to have us banned, but we also have our first official event entitled ‘Should Universities Be Safe Spaces’, a panel debate co-hosted with the Politics and Forum Society on the issue of universal safe-spacing.” Furthermore, Naylor is critical of the university’s response to the recent controversies stating that “official response has been scant, with the occasional tweet or comment being all that can be accounted for. The School, [LSE] as usual, has failed to comment on the issue.”

The motion against the society is set to be debated in an LSE Students’ Union general meeting in a few weeks time. Parker and Naylor have said that they will work hard to oppose the ban at the meeting, stating that: “Speakeasy is not just a bunch of White, privileged males out to cause offence for no reason.”

Corbyn: England should be “utterly ashamed” of £9k fees Georgie Hines Senior Reporter Speaking on education for the first time since his election as Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn has spoken out against the government’s policies, arguing that England now has the highest fees for public universities in the world—beating the US. In his speech, at a University and College Union event, Education From Cradle to Grave,” Corbyn highlighted the dramatic decline in part-time students since the increase in fees. Numbers are down from 824,000 in 2011 to 570,000 today.

He said: “A quarter of a million people a year have been put off [by] part-time education by the hikes in fees—a loss to the institutions, a loss to the education of the whole country and obviously catastrophic for those quarter of a million individuals who wanted to develop themselves… [who] cannot now do it because of these costs.”

They are “now being betrayed by a government which changes the terms of the loans after they have been taken out. How can any prospective student trust an education system which treats them like this?”

In his campaign for the Labour party leadership, Jeremy Corbyn was highly vocal of his opposition to the £9,000 a year tuition fee system.

During his campaign, Corbyn proposed a new scheme which involved scrapping fees and reintroducing maintenance grants—a move thought to cost £10 billion a year.

Gordon Marsden, Shadow Higher Education, Further Education and Skills Minister, has said that the Labour policy on education has not been decided on just yet, noting that it is still a “subject for discussion”.

Speaking on the matter, Marsden stressed that rather than entering “hypothetical, theological discussions” about education, the party are not rushing. He said: “The priorities that we set must reflect the needs of the 21st century and the breadth of the subjects we need to address.”

Whilst still relatively unknown, the policy is thought to be centred on the re-establishment of maintenance grants. Marsden has said the recent scrapping of grants was “rushed, untested and potentially very socially damaging.”

During his talk, Corbyn also stressed how £9,000 fees has meant that there is a greater divide in the classes—“education is of such huge economic and social importance it must be open to all regardless of background or wealth.”

He argued that “the cost of higher education is extortionate and prohibitive”, leading to many economically disadvantaged students taking up part-time work while studying—something which

could affect the quality of their education.

“Having to juggle two or three jobs and studying in order to make something of their lives—from which we all benefit. Surely we can do better than that and we must change to do better than that.”

He added: “The government claimed that students from disadvantaged backgrounds would not be put off by the fees of 2012 because of maintenance grants.

“The government has now scrapped those much needed maintenance grants, which means that thousands of students every year will be worse off.”

He added: “David Cameron has called on universities to take more black and minority ethnic students. I welcome that and I agree with that”, and now “we call on the government to recognise that, however, that these students are being put off disproportionately by the cuts to funding and abolition of maintenance grants.”

More controversy surrounding the topic of education occurred when the current Conservative government unveiled their plan to freeze the repayment threshold, set at £21,000, for the next five years. According to some estimates, this means that graduates will pay an extra £2,800 over 30 years.

Previously, the government had said they “will increase the repayment threshold to £21,000, and will thereafter increase it periodically to reflect earnings.”

GuildHE has said that the change “will undermine the trust and confidence in the stability of the loan system for future students… and it will be more difficult to make an informed decision to go to university.”

“Students will end up repaying more and it will negatively impact the income of the lowest and middle earner graduates, women” as well as groups such as black and minority ethnic students—”who tend to have lower rates of professional employment six months after graduation.”

More unsettling for students, the Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, has refused to rule out any further changes to student loan repayment terms.

Corbyn stated that these cuts to education could be “doing permanent damage to the whole of our society and to the ability to develop a much stronger manufacturing-based innovative economy in the future.”

He said that education is, “yes, about training, and yes, about the ability to work, but it’s also about the value of having an educated society where everybody’s imagination is opened up,” “We have the highest tuition fees in the industrialised world—it’s not something we should be proud of, it’s something we should be utterly ashamed of as a country.”

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University College Dublin uncovers revenge porn Facebook group A student newspaper has exposed a ring that consists of 200 Agricultural Science students who swap nude photos of girls and stories of their one night stands Lucy Menage Reporter Students of University College Dublin (UCD) were outraged after the student newspaper, The College Tribune, alleged that over 200 Agricultural Science students were involved in a ‘revenge porn’ Facebook group.

In the group, members discussed girls they had had sexual relations with, posted any nude photos of the girls they had, and then encouraged each other to rate the girls using their Facebook profiles.

The allegations have led to a furious backlash from the Agricultural Science students themselves with one posting online that “as an Ag[ricultural Science] lad who’s in most of the groups, I have to say we’re not all the same… Most of the guys in the group don’t even partake in what’s happening!” Ironically, the individual then went on to claim in his defence that he had “personally only sent three pho-

tos and a story or two.”

Sending nude or revealing photos of other people without their permission has been considered a crime in the United Kingdom since 2015, and the university has stated that they will be handed over to the relevant authorities, and the students will face “sanctions up to, and including, expulsion from the university.”

After the criticism came flooding in on Twitter using the hashtag #UCD200, members of the group responded to the accusations with comments such as “you can go fuck yourself you presumptuous bitch.”

The Facebook group is now being subjected to an investigation by the university, who “completely condemn this behaviour and anyone who engages in it—it is sexual violence.” President of UCD, Professor Mark Rogers, has insisted that the “primary concern is to support any vulnerable student victimised by this alleged activity.”

This is not the first time UCD agricultural scientists have been involved with a misogynistic Facebook group. Last March a group

Continued from page one... up for the NHS. Emma Runswick, Chair of Save Our NHS said: “We understand that the attacks on staff are part of the agenda to set the NHS up to fail, leaving privatisation as the only solution.

“Patients, the public and healthcare professionals and students want an NHS that is publicly funded, publicly provided, publicly accountable and free at the point of use. Doctors and the BMA have the opportunity to fight for their working conditions (our healthcare conditions), and in doing so provide a major stumbling block to those who would see our service die. They should have our absolute support in any action they take to defend themselves, their patients and our NHS.” Thoburn, despite the news that many medics plans to move abroad, told The Mancunion that he still sees “a glimmer of hope. If the government have succeeded in doing one thing through this dispute, then it has been to politicise swathes of doctors, who have perhaps traditionally remained apathetic.

“The showings of solidarity amongst all health workers and stretching out into the public sector as a whole, has seen many groups starting to work together as they see that this is the only way to combat the policy makers. At lunchtime on Wednesday 10th February, in Manchester, we held a rally that was attended by 200 – 300 people and saw doctors, nurses, students, disabled people, firemen and politicians standing side by side and declaring with one voice that we will not accept these attacks on the NHS, on the public sector as a whole and, more widely, on a society that values all members as equal.”

Hannah McCarthy, Campaigns officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union, told The Mancunion that she stood on Wednesday with other students on the picket lines to “[extend] our solidarity to the striking Junior Doctors [and] nursing, Midwifery and Allied Healthcare students [who] joined them in walking out over the scrapping of the NHS Bursary.”

McCarthy added that she stands “with the Junior Doctors as they strike not just over the attacks on their working conditions, but as they strike to save the NHS”. She declared that they are “demanding a health service which is publicly funded, publicly provided and free at the point of use for all”.

After the news broke that the government will

impose the new contract on the profession, McCarthy again stressed that the Students’ Union continues to “stand in solidarity with Junior Doctors”.

She called the government’s plans to impose the contracts “horrendous” and argued it showed that the “government had revealed their contempt for workers who have shown strength, courage, and inspiration to fight Hunt’s attacks on their terms and conditions.”

Greater Manchester Referendum Campaign/ Campaign for Democratic Devolution (GMRC/CDD) have approached Mayor of Greater Manchester, Tony Lloyd and asked whether devolution would mean that Greater Manchester’s NHS would have to unite with the imposing of the contract.

The NHS in Scotland and Wales will be sticking to the existing contracts while also making moves to improve access to care at weekends, but not on the same scale as England.

GMPDC have said Lloyd “should support the Junior Doctors in their fight, to express the support of the majority of the Greater Manchester public for the action they are taking”.

Speaking on behalf of the GMRC/CDD, President of the Greater Manchester Association of Trades Union Councils Stephen Hall said: “Greater Manchester’s new ‘devolved’ NHS Chiefs, [should be] using their newly devolved powers to follow NHS Scotland and NHS Wales, rather than NHS England in imposing Jeremy Hunt’s contract on junior doctors.”

Hall continued by saying it was “an important test of the extent of Greater Manchester’s alleged new powers. Such a step would, we believe, also give expression to the people of Greater Manchester’s overwhelming support for the Junior Doctors in their fight, which has immense ramifications for all of us, and the future of the NHS.” In a statement released by BMA they declare that “the Government’s shambolic handling of this process from start to finish has totally alienated a generation of junior doctors—the hospital doctors and GPs of the future, and there is a real risk that some will vote with their feet.

“Our message to the government is clear: junior doctors cannot and will not accept a contract that is bad for the future of patient care, the profession, and the NHS as a whole, and we will consider all options open to us.”

named “girls I’d shift if I was tipsy” was uncovered and the current student president, Marcus O’Halloran, was found to be an active member. Surprisingly, O’Halloran’s election campaign was centred on the promise to reduce ‘lad culture’ at UCD. The news has come as a particularly poignant blow to author, Louise O’Neill, who has been campaigning against ‘lad culture’ at UCD. “When I first read about it, I sat in stunned silence for about ten minutes.”

O’Neill started a campaign in October that focused on consent, which obviously fell upon deaf ears in regards to the agricultural students.

After receiving Facebook messages that the group was “only a bit of banter”, O’Neill has responded that “It’s never just banter. It’s never just words. These comments and these Facebook groups are the building blocks to a culture where so many women feel belittled, humiliated, sexualised without their consent, and, ultimately, unsafe.”

International students asked to leave London business college

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Merle Streck Senior Reporter The Home Office has confirmed that over 350 foreign students at the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) will be asked to leave the UK, after the private college had its Tier 4 sponsorship revoked. The sponsorship is a license that universities and colleges must apply for in order to enrol full-time students from outside of the European Economic Area in the UK. The college, which is part of the for-profit education group, Global University Systems has several branches in the UK, Asia and North America. It has been said that the group have breached the terms of its responsibilities in sponsoring non-EU students.

LSBF later cited a “technical discussion” as the origin of the issue, revealing that the Home Office was concerned about the proportion of foreign students recruited at the college whose visa applications were later refused. According to some of the students, the Home Office have been sending out a “notice of curtailment”.

The government informed students that their documents have been revised and state that the students’ records provide no evidence of what their intentions are in the UK, whether they “have made a fresh application for entry clearance, leave to enter, or leave to remain in the United Kingdom.” The notice concludes that “the Secretary of State has therefore decided to curtail your leave to enter or remain.”

In a statement released by the rector of LSBF, Professor Mauritus van Rooijen, the next course of action for the students affected is outlined. Rooijen was “surprised and shocked” by the Home Office’s

decision. He states that most of the students affected by the government’s decision are in their final year of their undergraduate degree or are enrolled in a one-year postgraduate course.

Remaining hopeful, Rooijen believes that since the students have almost come to the end of their studies, the college will be able to accelerate their teaching in order to ensure students receive their degree qualifications by the end of March. Those few students that are not in their final year of study will most likely be transferred to one of LSBF’s partner schools in Italy or France.

A statement published by the National Union of Students (NUS) revealed that the issue raised about the college having its Tier 4 sponsorship license revoked was first raised last year. Subsequently, when the NUS asked for a meeting with LSBF to discuss the future of international students at the college, there was no response. On the whole, the NUS is worried that the “options given to students at LSBF, to squash their course into a shorter time frame or to move their studies to Italy or France, are not good enough.”

Mostafa Rajaai, NUS International Students’ Officer, is heavily critical of the government’s role in the recent events, particularly with regard to its stance on immigration: “NUS is calling on the government to stop the unfair and unjust treatment of international students. Our research has already shown more than half of non-EU students think the government is unwelcoming towards international students.

“We believe the repeated attacks on international students are part of the government’s wider stance against immigration. NUS will continue to fight for the rights of the students who come to the UK hoping to brighten their futures and are instead met with hostility.”

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Zika virus: What is it and will it affect me?

The Zika virus has recently been declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organisation, Rebecca Thorpe explains what Zika is and what it mean for us?

The University of Manchester has recently published advice for students—particularly to those who are planning to travel in the near future.

The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne disease that has been around since the 1950’s. It is known to cause mild symptoms such as headaches, conjunctivitis, and an unsightly (but usually self-clearing) rash.

This month there has been a notable increase in publicity about Zika, as some researchers have now claimed that the virus may be responsible for the growing numbers of newborns diagnosed with microcephaly; a neurological defect that results in an under-developed brain.

The virus is primarily Photos: Wikimedia Commons affecting South America with over 4,000 cases of microcephaly reported in Brazil since October 2015.

Last week it was announced that Manchester City Council granted planning permission for the new Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC).

The GEIC will be the University of Manchester’s second centre dedicated to the research and application of Graphene—the thinnest material on earth.

The new building will be located on the North Campus, next to Mancunian Way and Sackville Street.

The planning permission is exciting news for those involved in the University of Manchester’s ambitious vision to develop a thriving knowledge-based economy around the revolutionary 2D material in a new ‘Graphene City’.

Since its isolation by two Manchester scientists, who received the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their groundbreaking work, graphene has captured the attention of researchers worldwide thanks to its incredible properties. Graphene is ultra light and flexible, only one atom thick, yet is 200 times stronger than steel.

Complimented by the Nationa l Graphene I nstitute ( NGI ), the world’s lead in g academ ic facility for g raphene re sea rch , a nd the proposed £23 5 m illion Sir Hen r y Royce I nstitute for Adva nce d Mate r ia l Re sea rch , the GE IC w ill focus on industr y-le d development a nd ap plication of g raphene products . Po sitione d in the hea r t of the city, a ll t h ree centre s w ill together facilitate g raphene application f rom basic re sea rch to f in ishe d product, tr u ly e stablish in g Ma nche ster as a globa lly lead in g hub for g raphene re sea rch a nd com mercia lisation .

The three centres will aid the use of graphene as a disruptive technology—to improve existing materials, and open up new markets. Current applications of graphene include membranes for water filtration, producing light but strong spor tin g

Earlier this month, it was announced that the Zika virus was present in two patients from Dublin who had previously travelled to the infected area.

On the 8th February 2016, a case in New Zealand was reported. The World Health Organization (WHO) has now declared Zika virus a public health emergency, meaning that research is now being fasttracked in order combat infection.

Microcephalycomparison500px The neurological defect, microcephaly, is thought to be a symptom of the Zika virus in newborns.

However, it must be noted that the reported links between Zika and cases of microcephaly are under much scrutiny by the scientific community, meaning that WHO could retract their announcement if there is no causal relationship found between the two.

There is much debate questioning why Zika has been categorised similarly to Ebola—with many arguing that WHO have published this declaration following previous criticism for taking too long in

announcing that Ebola was a global health crisis.

The University of Manchester has issued a notice to students advising them to check the status of the disease in particular areas before planning to travel. The university has also invited students who have recently travelled to Central or South America to express their concerns to their Occupational Health Service.

It can therefore be deducted that for now, pregnant women—particularly those in Latin America or those that have recently travelled to the area—are at the highest risk. For others, the seriousness of the virus is still thought to be mild.

Second year medicine student Lizzie Rawlins has commented on Zika and health crises in general: “I think it’s good to stay informed about emerging health issues, Zika hasn’t been as publicised as Ebola, but that doesn’t mean we should play it down. I think it’s good the WHO has stated that it’s an emergency. It may not be affecting us currently as students in the UK, but with major research now taking place it means that there will be more preventative measures in place for the future.”

Second year Microbiologist Paolo Arru has also commented: “I think it’s important to note that Zika is currently only problematic for pregnant women. I think there should be more emphasis on diseases such as HIV because it’s problematic on a larger scale and clearly has a larger impact on public health worldwide.”

Manchester’s second graphene centre gets go ahead Tori Blakeman Senior Reporter equipment, drug delivery systems, and ultra sensitive biosensors. However with such a breadth of properties hailed by this revolutionary material, graphene has huge potential for countless applications that have yet to be explored.

development f rom re sea rch to ma rket.

Martin Schröder, Vice President and Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: “This is a wonderful facility that will develop our world-leading research to new products and markets in collaboration with key industrial partners. The GEIC will be a catalyst for industry-university partnerships that will drive innovation and invention of new applications for graphene.”

When asked to comment on the impact of the GEIC on student life, Daniel Cochlin, Graphene Communications and Marketing Manager, said: “The GEIC will be a scale-up facility, looking at production of graphene to accelerate taking graphene products to market. The impact on students will be limited, if any, apart from having another impressive building on campus!”

Funding for the GEIC has largely been provided by Masdar, the Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy company owned by Mubadala, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF). The centre is set to be completed by the end of 2017.

For more information on Manchester’s revolutionary 2D-material and Graphene City visit: w w w. g r ap h e n e . m a n c h e s te r. ac.uk.

De si g ne d by world-renow ne d a rch itect Ra fael Vi ñoly, t he 8 ,400 squa re met re mu lt i-m illion pou nd re sea rch a nd tech nolog y facility w ill have top of the ra n ge equ ipment, a nd u n r iva lle d levels of g raphene exper tise — ensu r in g the qu icke st possible route of

Global 7

ISSUE 13 / 8th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

In the news this week...

The important and interesting stories from the wider world this week.

Stories by: Rebecca Noel, Emily Hulme, Yasmin Mannan, Georgie Hines, Alexandra Bicknell, Marcus Johns, Joe Evans, and Liam Kelly

A very fishy excuse

USA A drunk driver has this week come up with perhaps the worst excuse on record John Pryzbyla, 76, was stopped in Wisconsin by police for driving while drunk, but attempted to defend himself by claiming that it was the beerbettered fish he had eaten for lunch.

He was reported to have bloodshot eyes and an open beer in the vehicle, whilst police stated that the smell of “an intoxicating beverage was emitting from his mouth.”

Pryzbyla was not over the legal limit of 0.08%, but he was over his assigned limit – he was ordered not to exceed 0.02% by a previous court order. This was Pryzbyla’s tenth arrest for drunk driving and could result in a jail sentence of up to twelve years.

Huge rabbit seeks new home UK Described as both ‘mischievous’ and ‘the size of a dog’, a seventh-month old giant rabbit, appropriately named Atlas, is searching for a new home.

He is currently being looked after by staff at the Scottish SPCA centre in Glasgow because his owner can no longer care for him.

The charity is now trying to find new owners for the young rabbit, praising him as ‘an inquisitive and friendly boy’ who makes everyone at the centre laugh. Due to his rare breed and size, they are appealing for owners who have plenty of space for Atlas. Ideally the new owners will have experience in caring for giant continental rabbits. Atlas remains optimistic.

Who’s cooking Switzerland’s pets?

Switzerland

Peta and the Vegan Society of Switzerland have expressed outrage at a restaurant, La Table Suisse, for its supposed use of cat and dog meat on the menu.

A change.org petition has been made which currently has 1,569 supporters, 0.019 per cent of Switzerland’s population. “Stop this barbarity and keep our beloved fury friends as pets and not a meal,” demands the petition however the restaurant in question may not actually exist.

Absent from Google Maps, Yelp, with 13 followers on Twitter and a few hundred Facebook likes, many have wondered how the one-menu-one-table restaurant caused such controversy. La Table Suisse by Moritz Brunner has no address, telephone number, or email and booking a reservation requires the filling out of a request form.

The Mancunion has yet to have our group reservation for the weekend confirmed.

Cannibal sautés lover Germany Armin Meiwes, a cannibal from Germany, has released a documentary about how he ‘fried a piece of rump steak’ from his lovers back and sautéed it with sprouts.

The cannibal met his lover Bernd Brandes online after offering himself with the advertisement this is ‘the chance to eat me alive’. Brandes took sleeping tablets and drank schnapps before Meiwes cut off his penis, which they then proceeded to eat together.

Following this, Meiwes stabbed his lover in the neck and kept his chopped up body parts in his fridge, which he then indulged on for the next 10 months.

Alligatorage USA Joshua James will face a jawdropping charge after he allegedly threw a three-foot alligator through a Wendy’s drive thru window in Florida. The incident transpired after he paid and snapped up his drink— which sources say was possibly a Gatorade—from an employee.

A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Incident report confirmed the alligator had been released into a nearby canal. Mr Johnson has been charged with aggravated assault and unlawful possession and transportation of an alligator. He admitted to police he found the animal by the side of the road. Looks like he’ll need a litigator to get out of this one.

In Science this week...

Science Editor Andy van den Bent-Kelly

Einstein further vindicated after gravitational waves discovered In one of the most important discoveries in astronomical history, scientists have claimed the detection of gravitational waves originating from a pair of black holes.

This observation of the warping of spacetime ends almost a century of conjecture, sparked by Einstein’s prediction of the phenomenon in his 1916 theory of general relativity.

The discovery, which was made by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration in September 2015, will open up a new way of understanding and exploring the Universe and will almost certainly lead to the award of a Nobel Prize.

Of the four forces that control the Universe, gravity is both the weakest and the most poorly understood.

Trying to understand its nature has long proved difficult, although it had been acknowledged that the detection of gravitational waves from hugely violent events would be a huge step towards enhancing our knowledge of how the cosmos works.

The equipment used to detect the waves was simple in its design yet extraordinary in its precision. A laser beam was split and sent down two perpendicular tubes, both 4km long. Mirrors at the end of the tubes reflected them back to a detector, where they should arrive perfectly aligned.

However, the gravitational waves from the black hole merger distorted the lengths of the tubes, meaning that the signal produced was not that of two perfectly-aligned beams.

Eternal Happy Meal

USA A Happy Meal left inside an office cupboard for six years has this week caused a stir online. Jennifer Lovdahl, a mother from Alaska, decided to perform the experiment in order to “to show our patients how unhealthy this “food” is.” While it is unclear what her job is the findings of her experiment have now been shared over 300,000 times on Facebook.

Despite retaining an edible pretense the food showed no discernible signs of natural decay and had not “rotted, molded or decomposed at all”. Instead the food retained its form and smelt “only of cardboard” despite being bought six years prior to the photograph being shared.

In her post Jennifer said, “There are so many chemicals in this food! Choose real food! Apples, bananas, carrots, celery....those are real fast food.” Specifically she stated how the chemical make-up of the food was not good for “growing children”.

Accidental photobomber launches modelling career Nigeria A Nigerian bread seller’s life has been irreversibly changed after she inadvertently photobombed a Tinie Tempah fashion shoot. Olajumoke Orisaguna was passing the musician when photographer Ty Bello snapped the pair.

This coincidental moment prompted a hunt for the unknown woman. Eventually she was tracked down and has now signed a contract with fewmodels. Bello and Orisaguna have already collaborated in her first cover shoot for Nigerian magazine This Day Style.

Beer fountain erected in Slovenia Slovenia Europe’s first dedicated beer fountain is to be built in Zalec, Slovenia. After a €350,000 construction, punters will be charged €6 for three 30cl sips—collected from the fountain in commemorative mugs.

It is not Europe’s only beer dispensing fountain however. The Manneker Pis (Pissing Statue) in Brussels is often filled with beer during festivities and drunk by Belgian crowds.

Zalec is already well known for growing hops for beer and it hopes to further this to become a beer-lover’s magnet. Though it hopes to do so with one single beer-related attraction, the beer fountain.

No “P” sound undermines Palestinian state

Israel Anat Berko, a conservative Israeli lawmaker, has this week said that there can be no Palestinian state due to the fact that there is no “P” sound in the Arabic language. She said “There is no puh sound” in Arabic making Palestine a “borrowed term that is worth analysing”.

Fellow lawmakers booed the statement with several Arab members storming out of the session. One, as of yet unidentified, lawmaker ventured to ask “Don’t you have a brain” in response to the statement.

Berko is a part of the rightleaning Likud party whose members lean towards opposing the creation of a Palestinian state and advocate for Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank.

News reports, including reports by The Times of Israel, have noted that while Berko’s is not a new statement. They have however also noted that “it is not generally considered a serious political argument” against

Has anyone seen Joaquin from accounts?

Spain A Spanish civil servant who did not report for work for “at least” six years only had his truancy discovered when he became eligible for an award for his length of service.

69-year-old Joaquin Garcia was fined €27,000 (£21,000) by his local authority employers in the south-western city of Cadiz Mr Garcia denies that allegations made against him, claiming that as a result of “bullying” in the workplace, he moved to a different position where there was no work to do.

Meanwhile his lawyer has said his client has been forced into hiding after a “media lynching”.

Mr Garcia was paid €37,000 per year before tax by a water company run by the local authority.

Friends of Mr Garcia told El Mundo that he did go to the office, though not for full business hours, and that he had decided to read philosophy as he had no work to do.

He has since retired.

European Space Agency ends contact with comet lander The European Space Agency has given up hope of ever contacting its Philae comet lander again, following months of radio silence from the probe.

The lander, which was successfully dropped onto Comet 67P in November 2014 as part of the Rosetta Mission, bounced multiple times before settling in an undesirably shady location, meaning that power was lost very quickly.

Although important data was transmitted in the probe’s early days, its parent spacecraft lost contact with it in July 2015. Mission control has now concluded that the extremely low temperatures faced by Philae mean that it will have lost the ability to function and will make no further attempts to contact it.

Bionic spine could help paralysed patients walk again Scientists in Australia have produced a bionic spine that could enable paraplegic patients to walk again.

The device, which will be tested in three patients next year, will be implanted next to the motor cortex, the part of the brain responsible for movement. It will receive electrical signals from the cortex and forward them onto another device, located in the shoulder. The signals will then be turned into commands that can be understood by bionic limbs.

An advantage of the implantation technique is its minimal invasiveness – the device is inserted into a vein in the neck and pushed up to the cortex, rather than being implanted through risky brain surgery.

It is hoped that the device will be commercially available within a decade.

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Feature

ISSUE 14/ 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Photos: The Mancunion

Prison food: More than just gruel

Isaac Atwal paid a visit to a restaurant run by prisoners within the grounds of HMP Styal, and saw the roots of a new form of rehabilitation

As I walked through the immense heavy oak doors and into the refurbished Victorian chapel with its stone and stained glass splendour, I could tell that it was going to be an enjoyable lunch. I was, after all, sitting down to eat at TripAdvisor’s number one restaurant in Cheshire, in the village of Styal just outside of Manchester.

There is, however, something about this restaurant that sets it apart from most others: It is a restaurant at HMP Styal, staffed mostly by prisoners and run by the Clink charity—and there are only three more of its kind in Britain.

The Clink charity aims to change the face of rehabilitation in our prison system through initiatives such as gardens and event catering centres at other prisons. They build environments where prisoners who have between six and 18 months of their sentence remaining can gain experience of working in the outside world, providing them with qualifications—and hopefully a job—when they are released.

Since the first restaurant opened in 2009, the Clink has trained 500 prisoners, won more than 30 industry awards and now serves over 4,000 diners each month.

Chris Moore has been the charity’s chief executive for six years, and has extensive experience in the restaurant industry, including time at Harrods and the Hilton Hotel group. Moore tells me the Clink is different because, unlike many other charities, they involve the public in their work, helping to break the stigma that exists in society around prison and those who have been.

“We’re educating the public, changing their perception”, says Moore as he joins me after my exceptional lunch of leek and potato soup followed by roast beef. I mention how tasty the bread was that came with the soup, and he instinctively tells me that all of the kitchen staff are classically trained and make everything from scratch.

Moore exudes real pleasure and pride in the restaurant’s staff that is heart-warming to see, and knows the staff by name. Looking around at the restaurant, customers, and smartly dressed staff, it really is an inspiring example of how rehabilitation should be done. The whole purpose, Moore says, is to engage with an industry that is suffering a skills shortage, with an expected 11,000 vacant jobs by 2020. The results speak for themselves: Just 12.5 per

cent of Clink graduates re-offend, compared with 47 per cent of prisoners who are released with no postprison employment.

Working in partnership with the prison service, Clink provides prisoners with the skills, experience, continued support and, crucially, the qualifications, to move into gainful employment after they leave the prison system. The charity has partnerships with over 200 employers who will all take Clink graduates subject to a satisfactory interview.

The experience offered at the Clink means that an eight hour working day is normal, whereas inside prison the working day is only four hours—two in the morning and two in the afternoon—which, as Moore points out, “hardly prepares you for life on the outside.”

Clink graduates leave with either a City and Guilds NVQ Level Two in food service and food preparation, or both, and are assigned a dedicated support worker who gets to know them three months before their release, and who will meet them at the gates. They help the inmates write CVs, and remain in regular contact when they are in the workplace for the next six to twelve months.

This, Moore says, is the “absolute key element, because if you come out of prison and you haven’t got friends, a family, or a job, you have got nothing,” and that can contribute to high re-offending rates.

But it is not just academic skills that the Clink can offer, it’s also what Moore calls the “soft skills”—the

communication, confidence and self-esteem, that make a difference on the outside. This continued support is the jewel in the crown for an organisation that is not interested in quick fixes, and cares immensely about the work that it does. The combined effect is easy to see in the restaurant staff, and

“We’re educating the public, changing their perception.”

— Chris Moore, Clink CEO I understand completely what Moore means when he tells me that in other places a prisoner’s identity would be their sentence or crime, but “when they walk out of the Clink they’re a chef or a waitress”.

As I make my way through the cheese board the conversation turns to the difficulties faced by exprisoners trying to find a job in a society where many applications require applicants to tick a box to indicate whether they have a criminal conviction. Moore admits that he had never employed an ex-offender before he moved into his current job, and agrees that there is an unfortunate public perception around those who have been through the prison system.

The maître d’ echoes this sentiment in a conversation we have outside. Full of nothing but praise for the Clink we talked shop about our home towns, families, the public’s attitude to ex-prisoners—largely one without empathy and a lack of understanding—and second chances. Just days away from the end of a six month sentence, and soon to be in a job, I found myself both sad and angry that despite serving her sentence, this lady may suffer prejudice or stigma.

I ask Moore how that can be changed, and he replies that “we” need to educate the public, and there is more that can be done to make life post-prison easier for ex-offenders. Explaining his support for removing the criminal convictions tick box on applications, he explains that ex-offenders are some of his most loyal employees and they have far more to lose than the two of us, a point with which I wholeheartedly agree.

He continues by highlighting how an employer can ask the prison for a full transcript on what an exoffender has done inside and, with a good write up from the Clink, they will actually know more about an ex-offender than any other employee. Moore says he would like to see criminal record disclosure coming at a second interview, so everyone is “employed on their own merit.” I cannot help but feel that these hurdles are the largest barriers to having a prison system that can consistently and successfully ensure wholesale low re-offending rates, and stop a time inside being a life sentence.

The amazing work of the Clink does not come cheap. The charity manages to break even through a combination of revenue streams but is always looking for more funding, and aims to have ten Clink training schemes by 2017.

The setting up of the restaurants—including the cost of refurbishing buildings and equipment—is met by private money, and restaurants lose around £150,000 before they start up. Income from the restaurants, the Skills Funding Agency, and payment from the prison service contribute to the operating income.

Without a wine list on which to make significant margins, the Clink’s food costs are about 50 per cent compared to most other restaurants’ 25 per cent, but Moore is keen to tell me that despite the harsh realities of economics, people are the Clink’s currency.

“It’s a full time job and it’s getting harder, but people get it,” says Moore, which reaffirms the mission of the Clink and, I feel, of all of those who contribute to its success. Educating the public, helping offenders upon their release from prison, making our society a nicer and more prosperous place to live; these values are reflected in the Clink’s ‘five step’ program—Recruit, Train, Support, Employ, Mentor— and in Moore, who leaves me after our chat to meet with another colleague.

He is optimistic about the future, and rightly so: The Clink is doing invaluable work in the prison system for a group of people who are often overlooked and tarred with the same brush. As I leave the restaurant I am reminded of something Moore said to me when he first sat down: “The prison population is a cross section of society, they could be just like you or I.”

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ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

This week there are 85,679 people in prisons and young offenders institutions in England and Wales Which is 45 more people in prison than last week, and 226 more people compared to this time last year.

The Clink have won over

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industry awards Just 12.5 per cent of Clink graduates reoffend, compared with 47 per cent of the general prison population All statistics accurate as of 12/02/2016 Source: The Howard Legaue for Penal Reform

Got an idea for a feature? Come to the Features section meeting on Mondays at 5:30pm in the Students’ Union Activities Space, or email features@mancunion.com and get involved.

Photos: The Mancunion

Opinion

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Assange’s ‘arbitrary detention’ and human rights Harry Bithell Normally, I am a great advocate not only for the United Nations (UN), but also for human rights. Human rights are not designed to be popular, they’re designed to be the basic rights and freedoms we should all expect.

The sad thing is, they end up with a bad rap and are brought into disrepute when instances like this happen: Julian Assange—a name we all know—has been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012 at a cost to the UK taxpayer of over £10 million.

Following the decisions of the Supreme Court exhausting any blockage to extradition in 2012, Assange entered the embassy and was granted political asylum (a form of asylum not recognised by the UK). This whole situation comes from the fact that Assange is wanted on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Sweden for several charges including rape. Assange fears that if the warrant is executed, he will be extradited by the Swedish authorities to face trial in the US for his involvement with WikiLeaks after standing trial in Sweden. On 5th February 2016, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) handed down its decision that Assange has been arbitrarily detained. This decision has been the target for a barrage of derision. The national press and legal Twitterati have lampooned it. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, has called it “ridiculous” and political satire website The Daily Mash ran the headline: “Man is being arbitrarily detained at Argos, UN rules”.

It is worthwhile to define arbitrary detention in order to assess the validity of this decision, and to see whether the derision is founded on good grounds.

Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”. Paragraph’s 3a to 3e of the decision of WGAD provide us with five categories for determining what amounts to arbitrary detention. The group decided (on a majority of 3 - 1, with one member abstaining) that category III—the detention is arbitrary due to a nonobservance of the right to a fair trial—is the most applicable in this situation.

This is an excerpt from Harry’s article, the rest of which can be found online at www.mancunion. com

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Can Cameron truly scale the wall of prison reform? Ed John discusses the limitations of Cameron’s proposed prison reform With close to 85,000 people currently incarcerated in the UK and a further 85,641 awaiting deportation in Immigration Removal Centres across the country, Cameron’s recent proposals to reform the prison system may come as a welcome, if surprising, relief from a so far brutal and relentless governance over our institutions.

However, with the current crisis of overcrowding, numerous reports of abuse and misconduct by correctional staff as well as a vast over-representation of minorities within the system, are Cameron’s proposals really enough to save us from the Dickensian—indeed American—system we seem so inevitably destined to revert to?

In his address to London-based think tank Policy Exchange, the Prime Minister outlined a number of plans intending to do just that. Perhaps as a surprise to many— given our current government’s already large number of austerity measures—one of the proposals was of a promise to protect the budget dedicated to the creation of various educational programs designed to aid in the rehabilitation of those serving sentences.

Such a budget is ostensibly necessary. As Cameron himself notes, “we need prisons”, and indeed we need the aspects of such prisons that allow for offenders to use their time productively in the hopes of leading a normal life after being released. However, with cuts to the budget already reaching £900 million in the past 5 years, is such a promise of protection going to be enough?

According to inmate charity The Clink— an organisation dedicated to offering various forms of training, support and eventual employment to offenders during and after their time in prison—the short answer is no. With the charity reporting a rate of repeat offences amongst those who do not have access to training at 45.2 per cent—along with the need for

A recent YouGov poll found that 59 per cent of British people felt a sense of ‘pride’ in our colonial past. Of course, we should be willing to give those respondents who were ‘proud’ the benefit of the doubt, and assume ignorance rather than malice.

If they knew more about the various crimes against humanity committed by our forefathers, we should assume they would think differently of it. However, the unsung heroes of this poll are not those who were apparently “ashamed” of the empire, but those admirable fence-sitters who answered “don’t know” in lieu of “neither”—this was the most sensible of the 3 answers provided.

Let us not forget that the imperial venture was not undertaken by most Britons. Even during the height of the empire in 1922, the great majority of the Isles residents did not feel the benefit of being citizens of the state, which subjected more foreign territory and peoples to its rule than any other state had before. Britain had some of the worst slums in Europe, and the actual cost of the empire in terms of the national budget shafted the average tax payer. At the height of the British Raj, there were never any more than 1,000 imperial administrators, overseen by a Cabinet minister who was always a man of either the old aristocracy or the new bourgeoisie. These well-to-do males did not represent anything approaching the general populace. Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), did not play an active role in the lives of most of its working class population, who were the majority.

On the subject of Cecil Rhodes, I largely sympathise with the failed effort to remove his statue from Oriel College.

Those who have claimed that this was an attempt to purge our history should calm down. The book burnings are not here yet, nor are they inevitable. We can learn the history in an objective non-judgmental sense, or even acknowledges Rhodes’

non-governmental involvement in such training—it becomes evident that there is nowhere near a sufficient amount being spent on rehabilitation. Protection of this already poor budget is going to do little to improve such statistics.

Beyond the budgetary concerns of prison programmes, what Cameron and his appointed “man for the job” Michael Gove are undeniably overlooking is the fact that the cycle of offending and reoffending do not start within the prison walls themselves. Never a fan of true social reform, Cameron has again ignored the underlying reasons behind this problem— focusing solely on reforming the prison system. This is a needed reform yes, but also an undeniably small drop in the ocean that is our country’s criminality.

With, for example, The Guardian reporting that cuts to benefits and tax credits will have adversely affected over 330,000 children in the UK throughout last

year, we have to wonder whether reforms to the prison system are even worth considering. This perpetuation of poverty and low social mobility that has led many to commit certain criminal offences is so often overlooked and maybe even encouraged by governmental budgetary changes.

Of course, this isn’t the case for all offenders. Again, echoing Cameron’s address, it’s indisputable that the likes of murderers, rapists and child abusers deserve the punishment that serving time in prison brings, and I am fully aware of the indispensable role prisons play in punishing those types of crimes.

However, with the second largest offence represented in our prison system being related to the use and supply of drugs, we must surely consider the underlying societal issues that create an atmosphere in which many see the only option as crime.

Nevertheless, we must also not forget that it is a Conservative government proposing such reforms. Perhaps with this in mind, it is too much to ask to take preventative measures; after all, why prevent a problem where—once existent—a select few can financially benefit? Amidst an already rampant, yet unnervingly quiet, privatisation of our prison system, another one of Cameron’s plans involve the handing over of more budgetary power to governors and managerial staff.

With a sharp increase in misconduct since the employment of companies such as G4S, we must again wonder how such decentralisation is really beneficial, and what these reforms truly aim to achieve.

Prisons are undoubtedly essential, it is their role to punish those who have deviated from what society deems acceptable. What is also essential, however, is a system that works. Currently, we cannot deny that such a system does not exist within the UK. Reoffending statistics prove this, as do the multiple and everincreasing number of suicides committed in the confines of our 150 institutions.

Reform is needed, and it is needed before we create an insurmountable crisis of incarceration similar to that seen in the US. Such reform unfortunately does not come in the form of Cameron’s suggestions. Yes, a protection of the budget seems to only be a positive thing. However, if this budget is already failing in its abilities to deliver what it is intended, then what is there to protect?

This is a system that cannot be fixed with mere financial promises and further privatisation, it is a system that needs to be fixed through the reduction of the factors that lead people to be a part of it. Until Cameron can deliver truly progressive changes outside of the tall walls of the UK’s prisons, we will see little change to what occurs within them.

Photo: Mikey @ Flickr

Whose empire is it anyway?

Joel Kelly Opinion Writer

other achievements, while still accepting that it is not exactly accommodating to have a statue that celebrates a racist visible in a prominent position of a major university. Those students who campaigned for its removal were not trying to purge history, they were merely responding in an understandable way to what they know of history. Furthermore, decisions on what objects should be allowed in the space of a university should be somewhat in the hands of the student body. This, of course, extends to the alumni.

In reviewing his place in our national past, we should not forget that his ideology—and his activities—belonged to a radically different time. Maybe not so long ago in terms of time, but in terms of difference, it really was another age.

Although many Britons, maybe even the majority, were racists during Rhodes’ lifetime. The beliefs and practices of Social

Darwinism—which justified the empire— were held by a pseudo-intellectual clique who, in general, had as much disdain for their own domestic social underlings as they did for members of other races. The power system of the imperial age was also capable of violently and—by our standards—immorally subjecting these domestic inferiors. Take, for example, the St. Peter’s Square Massacre (1819), the violent suppression of aspirant members of the lower orders, which occurred just down the road from this university.

Churchill’s political career is also pertinent. Certainly, he is a man who should be recognised for his achievements and is rightly memorialised in stone.

However, he championed the subjection of India long after it had become in any sense worthwhile. As Home Secretary, he oversaw the brutal military campaign against Irish nationalists. As late as 1930, Churchill was advocating a return

Photo: Vadac @ Wikimedia Commons

to the property franchise. A property franchise and gender-based franchise kept large swathes of the population unable to participate in the election of the government which oversaw the empire. This paled in comparison to the severity of imperial subjection, but stemmed from the same elitism, and was perpetrated by an interconnected system of suppression.

The empire’s legacy in the modern world is a difficult one to evaluate.

It is hard to argue that the export of Parliamentary democracy and formal education was a bad thing. It is equally difficult to argue that such benefits outweighed the myriad evils, such as slavery, oppression, and racial segregation. The point here is not that those who are directly descended from active imperial participants should feel regretful for the Empire. The point is that such practices belong to a past that had a radically different approach to race and geopolitics, as alien from our own time as was the life of a 1930s Indian Prince to that of a Jarrow dockworker. As such, it is nonsensical to express ‘pride,’ as the only way you can rightly be proud of something is if you participated in the achievement. Many cannot even conceive it, let alone bring themselves to undertake such a thing. The same is true of ‘shame.’ The sins of our fathers are not genetically present in ourselves. Such a belief belongs to people who believe that the original sin counts as actual historical fact. Britain should actively try to right the lingering wrongs of imperialism, but it is better that we do this out of pure human decency. It would be awfully selfserving to do it out of guilt, with penance at the front of our minds. Those who wish to be objective, honest, and sensible when asked such a question as ‘Is the British Empire something to be proud or ashamed of?’ have only have one logical answer. ‘Neither.’

Opinion11

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Not since the Ministry of Lord North in 1770-82 and the Whigs traitorous support for rebellious American colonists has Her Majesty’s most loyal opposition been such a nest of treasonous vipers.

As I look down the Labour front bench, one can’t help but despair at the complete lack of patriotism that now characterises Corbyn’s Labour party.

The party has become a shadow of its former self. In my grandfather’s day it was a great political party with great aspirations. It represented many people from all walks of life. They filled its ranks with a message of social justice and love for their country. This was everything Labour used to be.

We will begin with Comrade Corbyn’s closest confidant and right-hand man, John McDonnell.

McDonnell was once a backbench loony of the Labour party—now he’s Shadow Chancellor. This is a man who, along with many others in the Labour front bench, feel that it is now appropriate to quote Mao Zedong in Parliament; Mao being the man who had killed tens of millions of his countrymen and was up there with the likes of Stalin and Hitler in terms of cruelty. How long will it be until he pulls out a copy of Mein Kampf and justifies it by saying “Hitler’s road building policies did wonders for German unemployment and infrastructure”?

Not to mention he would royally screw up our economy. But economics can be dealt with at another time.

As we work our way down the green benches, we come across another dubious individual— Emily Thornberry. This is a woman who is now the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, yet she doesn’t believe this country is worth defending.

She is opposed to the renewal of Trident, voted against bombing the Islamic State and accepted tens of thousands pounds of donations from a law firm who have hounded veterans of the Iraq War over spurious legal claims; one claimant had tried to sue a British soldier because he was taken prisoner instead of being shot.

Thornberry continues to accept donations and lied about the military service in an attempt to bolster her appalling credentials. And yes, this is the same Emily Thornberry who mocked a house because it was flying the English flag on a white van parked in their driveway—a testament to the snob-

Traitors in our midst

onded the Commonwealth of Britain bill brought in by Tony Benn that would have seen the monarchy removed, and Northern Ireland ceded to the Republic of Ireland; looking to override the wishes of the people of Ulster and make his IRA friends happy. It was thankfully defeated because mercifully, he is in the tiny minority. Her Majesty is the nation. She embodies it. She represents it. She defines it. She reigns over it. To be against the Queen is to be against Britain and all its wonderful traditions. It’s something I’m sure Comrade Corbyn is quite at home with.

“ He has said that there is ‘parity’ between the British army and the IRA” Photo: Donkey Hotey @ Flickr

Colm Lock Opinion Writer bery of the London-centric Labour party.

I will now place my sights squarely in the direction of the generalissimo himself. Yes, that’s right, Jeremy-I-love-manhole-covers-Corbyn. A man who shows just how much he dislikes Britain more and more with each passing day. He has said that there is “parity” between the British army and the IRA—an Irish terrorist organisation that bombed and killed thousands of innocent people. He has shown support for other terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah by calling them “our friends”. Hezbollah are currently helping to prop up Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Then of course there is his absolute and unequivocal betrayal of the people of the Falkland Islands; British citizens who voted overwhelmingly to remain British. Yet Corbyn has said that he wants to find an “accommodation” with Argentina over

the Falklands. He believes, that no matter what the Falkland Islands’ wishes are, a deal should be struck. Let us not forget how the Islanders suffered the last time Argentina imposed its sovereignty on British citizens. We struck a deal when we accepted the Argentine surrender in 1982.

He is of course opposed to trident and apparently any sort of defence of the realm. He famously said: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every politician around the world, instead of taking pride in the size of their armed forces, did what the people of Costa Rica have done and abolished the army”. In essence, he doesn’t want us to defend ourselves or our allies whatever the cost is, to Britain. I doubt he would even object if a Russian T-90 were to roll into Warsaw.

Now we come to the greatest example of his traitorous nature, his republicanism. In 1991 he sec-

Have we reached peak stuff?

Now I could go ahead and criticise Dianne Abbot about her racism or her outrageous claims like “Mao did a lot of good for China”, pr the Venezuelaloving Richard Burgon—maybe even Ken Livingstone; who is heading up Labour’s defence review and yet is opposed to the Trident and NATO. He has also hurled insults at a colleague in reference to the gentleman’s struggle with mental illness.

Nothing is too low for these people. But of course I have a word limit so I must press on.

This behaviour is not characteristic of all Labour members. The likes of Dan Jarvis, Chuka Umunna, Liz Kendal, and many others, are most certainly on the side of Britain. Yet, one fears that they are going to become increasingly marginalised by Corbyn’s “new politics”.

But fear not comrades, the end is very far from nigh. Thankfully, the British people understand that there is now an enemy within. The latest polling on the top teams of Labour and the Conservatives shows just 16 per cent side with Corbyn’s front bench while 43 per cent put their trust in Conservative party leadership. The future is bright my friends. The land of hope is Tory.

Tristan Parsons Opinion Writer

Materialism’s decline means we are focusing our spending on other things that make us happy

Whilst the global consumption of resources continues to increase, we in the UK have reached ‘peak stuff’, say Ikea. The businesses of the world have milked our desire for the material dry. The immunity to advertisement continues too. Modern-late capitalism has been fantastic at providing the developed world with disposable items of instant gratification or utility. But now, some are suggesting that one of its many limitations is its failure to move on from that material gold rush.

The expanded version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a good place to start. The bottom two rungs have been fulfilled by our economic system to varying degrees. The first, ‘physiological’, includes breathing, water, food, sex, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion. All of those have been incorporated into the economic system of demand and supply, to varying extents. Some, such as sleep, are subtler or—the ‘bed industry’ and sleeping pills might be examples of profitmaking for sleep. Once a society has created adequate conditions for survival for the majority, it moves on to the second rung: security of body, morality, employment, resources, health, property, and the family. Property, employment, and family are perhaps the strongest driving forces for individuals and couples in developed economies.

Up until the third rung of the pyramid, there is a consistent capitalisation of human needs by businesses. What some are now suggesting is that the economy as a whole needs to move further in this direction. These services might include mental healthcare, counselling, or education about how to care for one’s mind in an increasingly hectic and urban modern human condition in much of the developing world. At this point I would like to recognise that this issue is one almost entirely focused on the developed world. Some may interpret this, too, as an issue of the urban middle classes of these societies.

With regards to why business has not already done this on a large scale, it may be stigmas around issues such as emotion and mental health. Long-

“Can we provide services that will make us happier without the assistance of material goods?”

However, there are some gaps when we come to the third rung. Friendships do not come with success. One may not aspire to anything out of the ordinary but yet still have a large network of friends to share good times with. In contrast, success may drive away true friendships and instead create a network of colleagues—people like oneself. Family and sexual intimacy, too, show the same patterns.

But how many businesses offer services that benefit a society or an individual in these parameters?

As it turns out, counselling and ‘talking therapies’ are on the rise: 1 in 5 Britons has utilised these services for a variety of reasons.

Photo: Southwell pics @Flickr

standing notions of masculinity, or the new ‘masculine’ femininity that is the result of the progress of females into the previously male-dominated workplace contribute to this. It may be the lack of incentive to join the market. Many see the NHS and the state as the rightful provider of these services, and indeed it does saturate the lower and middle end of the market somewhat. It might be the alleged ‘British’ stiff upper lip and the widespread resistance to vile, ‘American-style’ self-improvement.

The state provision of these services has helped accessibility for those without higher levels of disposable income, and should be extended if possible to prevent this issue becoming locked up in the previously mentioned urban middle classes. However, whilst it may be to the detriment of social equal-

ity, there is money to be made in the private sector here. One of the assumptions is that people won’t be able to afford these services if they were to be provided by business. However, what some suggest is that at out stage of ‘peak stuff’, we in the developed world will reduce the volume of our material consumption, and further shift spending towards these new kinds of services.

“Capitalism has provided the world with disposable items of instant gratification or utility” In Paris in 2006, academics came together to form around an idea that had been itching to burst into popular discussion: degrowth. The case made was that planned and steady reductions in GDP might be useful for ecological and climatic sustainability, and that the new economics would have to exist along side greater socio-political engagement.

There is a mass of opinion that denounces the idea as a destruction of the privileges of our modern society for the goal of a Marxist utopia. But factor in the steep rise in the environmental movement in recent years, the new increasing focus on grassroots and local politics, and now the expected decline in material consumption, and perhaps the idea starts to seem feasible for some point in the future.

So here is a new challenge for our capitalist system: Not just in reform for the ideals of equality, financial sensibility, and environmental sustainability, but to provide the services that will make us happier without the assistance of the material. If we look towards the possibility of a future that begins to incorporate the ideas of degrowth, it may be that these services have a crucial role to play in the reaching out for improved happiness and socio-political engagement. Government, businesses, and individuals need to learn (and slowly they are) to be happy without the head-spinning consumerism of what is but a blip in human history. This is not ‘going back in time’ to some kind of dark age—if anything, this is learning to be more sophisticated humans.

Music

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ISSUE 15 / 22nd FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Live

Manchester’s own Floating Points opens portals into other dimensions

Floating Points 12th February @ The Ritz Spencer Soley Music Critic

8.5/10

Transfixed on a mesmerising light painting from the get-go (straight out of the Silhouettes music video), it finally clicked that I was in for a sensory onslaught. I should have seen this one coming. Elaenia, Floating Point’s 2015 debut album, offers an immaculate, unique and rewarding ambient listening experience. In moments of clarity it is gentle, but in moments of pure energy it soars euphorically. I was tentatively curious to see how this would manifest in the context of a live performance. Tentative despite knowing that when equipped with fifteen fellow musicians, Floating Points managed to win Best BBC Radio 1 Maida Vale Session. I should definitely have seen this one coming.

Sitting silently in the shadows at his electronic workstation, you could almost see the brain of qualified neuroscientist Sam Shepherd, a.k.a. Floating Points, precisely map out a variety of intricate details. Accompanied by clearly skilled but appropriately sparsely utilised guitarist, bassist and drummer, Shepherd’s melodies elegantly took centre stage. He toyed with his equipment; constantly experiment and testing, probing the machine for Photo: Rene Passet @ Flickr

sounds unheard by human ears, like the crazy scientist I really want to believe that he is (but know that he probably isn’t).

To the uninitiated, the opening may have felt like a clichéd build up, but those of us familiar with Elaenia knew we were in for a treat. Within ten minutes the arrival of the first all-out energetic passage, ‘Silhouettes I’, had gripped the entire audience, rendering us incapable of anything but motion. The previously mentioned euphoric soaring parts of the album had translated perfectly into pure sonic bliss that, when paired with a near seizure inducing display of flashing light, created a weirdly evocative experience. Masterfully executed yet subtly complex jazz rhythms seamlessly flowed into each other keeping us on the very edge, before we’re repeatedly pushed over that edge, by the sheer awe of numerous climactic moments. Full appreciation of this layered depth really requires listening to Elaenia. A large amount of the crowd appeared to have failed to do so, and instead unappreciatively decided to talk over more minimalistic (but still tense) parts of the performance.

The wonderfully coherent visual and auditory aesthetic continued for less than an hour, regularly swaying from blasting us with an unstoppable four-to-the-floor atmospheric thrash of energy, to relentlessly gripping our attention with an intense display of meticulously designed geometric patterns floating against the back wall of the stage, seemingly opening portals into other dimensions.

The experience was an amplified version of listening to the album.

A perfect transition from listening in full, eyes closed, whilst lying down, to soaking in a flawless incarnation of modern electronic music in its most authentic form.

Floating Points clearly gives it his all at every opportunity, and will be rewarded for as long as he continues to do so.

Animal Collective: Painting With Released 5th February via Captured Records Elizabeth Slawther Contributor

6/10

Painting With is Animal Collective’s latest studio album, and it certainly has retained the unmistakable tone of their previous albums. It’s classic Animal Collective through and through, with all the zeal and madness that is to be expected of them. However, as a whole the album is too similar to all their previous work and, whilst it is a pleasure to listen to, for the most part it lacks any unique or distinct sound of its own with many of the songs sounding more like they should be B-sides or rejected ideas from their previous projects.

‘Painting With’ is energetic and light hearted, but unfortunately it somehow manages to be as forgettable as it is fun. Most songs on the album follow a simple, almost clumsy pattern of production, with a complete overuse of the same catchy beat and alternating layered vocals, but no really interesting instrumental or lyrical elements. In this way much of the album feels formulated and unnatural when listened to closely, and the majority of the songs are limited to simply being good rather than excellent.

Tracks of the

Week Cassie Hyde Contributor

Tame Impala

Thursday 11th February @ Manchester Arena

This is how you make the leap to the bigtime: Tame Impala know how to fill an arena, and Kevin Parker knows how to wear the emperor’s clothes Henry Scanlan Music Editor

8.5/10

It’s taken 6 years for Kevin Parker to amass enough disciples to fill out arenas, but that time has come, and it feels right. It may have been unimaginable back in the early days of scruffy, Cream-influenced Tame Impala, but as it turns out, Parker wears the emperor’s clothes well. He’s not the only one wearing them - the number of Kevin Parker lookalikes packed into the Manchester Arena made me feel like I was tripping out before the band had even played ‘Apocalypse Dreams’. Then the real Kevin Parker stood up and kicked into ‘Let It Happen’, and reminded us that while many of his fans may resemble him, no one quite possesses his strange presence. Like a feline creature, Parker meekly tip toes around barefoot, vacuum-packed into his jeans, staring at the floor like a psychiatric patient unwittingly gifted with musical genius.

But despite the shy mannerisms, Parker has clearly grown into his massive success, handling the enormous crowd with some admirably professional “You want one more? I can’t hear you!”-type stage banter. It’s symbolic that despite having expressed discomfort about their biggest hit, ‘Elephant’, the band seem to have reworked it into their set as a Sabbathesque chugger. Admittedly, the band’s unease about ‘Elephant’ is understandable when you see the reaction it gets: the sight of 5000 people sloshing pints about in one hand and yelling “FEELS LIKE AN ELEPHANT SHAKING ITS BIG

GREY TRUNK FOR THE HELL OF IT” is about as psychedelic as The Ten O’Clock News.

Still, I’m not sure Tame Impala are really trying to open the doors of perception so much as ring the doorbell repeatedly. There isn’t a lot of food for thought in the long term, but in the short term a Tame Impala show is a totally dazzling experience, with the band building you up to humungous climaxes, and you surrendering your erogenous zones to melody.

The last two albums are definitely more suited to the mega crescendos and steep drops that Tame Impala enjoy pulling off live, but the highlight of the set was an Innerspeaker moment.

Specifically, it was the long, meandering intro to ‘Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?’, which started off as Parker fiddling on his guitar, the reverberations of which were translated into vibrating lines on the projector, and built up a tonne of momentum until the crispest of drum intros.

Finally, for those concerned about Tame Impala’s transformation into something less mind-expanding and more wad-expanding: yes, they’re playing huge arena gigs now, and yes, the crowd looked like ant people from where I sat, but even from way up in the highest tier, I could see that those ant people were dutifully lighting ceremonious joints. Either that or they were holding their lighters in the air. I really hope they were lighting joints.

Photo: Nicole Kilbert @ Flickr

Animal Collective’s latest output aims to be their most accessible yet. Unfortunately, a lack of colouring in leaves broad strokes looking dull.

However, there are a few stand-out songs, with the best being ‘FloriDada’, ‘Golden Gal’ and ‘Recycling’. The song placement is also problematic, as ‘FloriDada’ is the first on the album and ‘Golden Gal’/ ‘Recycling’ the final two. The rest of the album pales in comparison, with the likes of ‘Hocus Pocus’ and ‘Vertical’ serving as weak and unmemorable introductory songs.

This isn’t to say that the album is terrible or not worth listening to, but overall the lack of subtleties leads to the album as a whole sounding messy and rushed. ‘Golden Gal’ provides some muchneeded variety, but it isn’t quite enough to excuse the general lack of diversity throughout the majority of the rest of the album. The problem lies in comparison, as compared to the average indie album it still holds its own and is bouncy and fun, but it simply lacks musical complexity in comparison to Animal Collective’s usual work. It feels as though with a little more time and care, Painting With had the potential to be a great album, but it just falls short of the mark.

5/10

Photo: Album Artwork

Kanye West: ‘Ultralight Beam’ From The Life of Pablo, released 14th February

Animal Collective: ‘Golden gal’ From Painting With, released 19th February.

Mavis Staples: ‘Action’ From Livin’ on a High Note, released 19th February

Whatever you think about The Life of Pablo, `Ultralight Beam` is pretty much one of best tracks Kanye has ever put out. Essentially, this is an amalgamation of the best aspects of his career. The gospel from Late Registration, the rich autotune from 808s and Heartbreaks and the creepy abrasiveness of Yeezus all come together beautifully. Moving between references to the Paris Attacks, to Sia (you can’t see ‘er!), to Arthur (the anteater/aardvark), at no point does this feel crass or stupid. In fact, the track is deeply moving. A true career highlight!

With their 10th outing, Painting With, Animal Collective seem to have firmly moved away from their avant-garde work on Merriweather Post Pavillion. Yet, the song `Golden Gal` shows that their take on psychedelic pop is not an entirely bad thing. Full of standard AnCo flourishes, with vocal harmonies and squelchy synth, the heart of this song feels like a Beach Boys song. Although it isn’t a deep song, it still is lyrically engaging. Combining this with the band’s standard warm sound, `Golden Gal` is an overall great experience!

Taken from her new album, Livin’ On A High Note, `Action` is a perfect example of Staples combining the old and the new.

Written by afrobeat weirdo tUnE-yArDs, the song very much has her stamp on it, with prominent use of backing singers and a tight bassline. Yet, Staples tones down this weirdness, blending these elements together to make this a soulful gospel song. However, this choice never feels forced or downplaying more interesting parts of the songs. Instead, it feels almost a natural choice to make this a soul song. Gorgeous!

Music 13

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

the

Is Parklife Opinion the good life?

the

Feature

Will Manchester’s premier music festival give you an “enormous sense of well being” or “a rude awakening”? Hannah Brierley gives her two Hated by some, a guilty pleasure for many and an excuse to get really fucked for all. After my first experience of Parklife, I could try and tell you why Parklife isn’t my first choice of festival, but the bucket hats, sweaty old men and day-long queues tell this story much better.

Parklife is an independent Mancunian annual festival attended by 70,000 punters on each of its days. The event has been running for the past 6 years, and has seen huge names perform on it’s stages, including Snoop Dog, Rudimental, Dizzee Rascal, as well as giving the chance for smaller upcoming and established bands, DJ’s and producers to perform as well.

This year however Parklife has taken a mainstream direction, with the new lineup announcing the likes of: Major Lazer, Annie Mac, Jack Garrett and Katy B. But at the same time it covers a range of genres and really does have something for everyone, with one girl who I overheard on the bus describing it as “a garage dream”.

Up until 2012, the festival was situated in Platt Fields Park, which I can only imagine would have been a luxury for students with its proximity to Fallowfield. There is no way I can prepare you for the carnage that is travelling to and from Heaton Park, which is on the other side of Manchester. Taxis are extortionate, and that tram service that they’ve placed specifically for the festival? I wouldn’t bet on it… unless you fancy getting up several hours before you actually plan to leave! Once spending what feels like a lifetime to get there, you then have to wait another eternity just to get into the place with wristband queues snaking through the park.

So after hours of pre-drinking (because god forbid that you go sober) the alcohol has started to wear off and it’s only mid-day. You’ve got the rest of the day to fill the time whilst you wait for the acts you actually wanted to see. The event wouldn’t be as draining if there were the op-

Janis: Little Girl Blue

Amy Berg’s new documentary remembers Janis Jopllin in all her glory. Henry Scanlan explores the life and times of ‘The Queen of Psychedelic Soul’

Photo: YouTube user ‘Parklife Festival’

portunity to camp, when if there wasn’t anything to watch you could sit and drink and relax. Combined with the inability to leave the site and come back, everyone is forced to move around slowly. It’s a bit like herding cattle, with the crowds trudging around and aimlessly waiting.

Aside from the mooching around and the questionable outfit choices that some people have made (because lets just remind ourselves that a Manchester summer is like everyone else’s dreary autumn at best), the tents and stages themselves actually do have a good vibe.

Now the difficulty is trying to arrange who to go and see, with the complication timings. Please, please, PLEASE if you take just one piece of information away with you from this it is that THERE IS NO SIGNAL AT HEATON PARK. Your phones will not work, and if you get lost or separated, I’m sorry to say that you will probably not find them. Lastly, we can’t ignore the amount of people who are arrested and stabbed at the festival. In 2014 there were two teenagers who were attacked and one man who actually died from a punch to the head.

Parklife must be doing something right if they are growing year upon year; the festival is perfectly timed with the end of exams and is a great way to finish the year on a huge high. I cannot deny that with the right people you will have an incredible time, regardless of weather, the acts and the extravagant amount of money they’ll try to charge you for a drink, but go at your own risk.

Photo: Patrick Pearse@Flickr

the

Soup Kitchen is cooking up Venue Review something good...

Despite not having a rich history akin to that of Manchester’s other venues, Soup Kitchen has made a name as one of the most eclectic places in town, says Adam Rogers Tucked down the side streets and alleyways, to one side of Manchester’s city centre, breathes a young and intimate venue that has come to be a pivotal part of Mancunian culture. Just off Stevenson Square in the Northern Quarter, Soup Kitchen operates as a trio of bar, canteen and club, and in just six years of its existence, has attained two awards and had some of the finest names in music walk through its doors.

By day, Soup Kitchen operates as a watering hole and eatery, offering up an ever-rotating choice of soup and mains, and for those planning to dine in the area, the jerk chicken is a must. As for drinks, the venue offers a wide range of cask ales and draught beers served alongside a healthy dose of atmosphere.

There are few other places in Manchester that offer the same rush at the beginning of a night as walking down the dank staircase to the club in the basement. The room itself is nothing more than a concrete cuboid with chipped walls, a bar at the back and a pair of speaker stacks at the front. Fans of live music in intimate spaces will be pleased to find that even in the toilets, you’re never more than ten metres away from your favourite artists.

However, the enclosed, subterranean space and humble size of Soup Kitchen seems only to work to its advantage. Huge names in electronic music have stepped up to the decks, including members from Hessle Audio, Project Mooncircle and Apollo Records, and due to the limited size of the venue, every show is packed with a great atmosphere. As any fan of bass-orientated music will tell you, there’s something to be said for low ceilings and high decibel levels.

Soup Kitchen are no strangers to a diverse range of music either. The venue hosts the monthly club night You Dig?, which has fast become known as Manchester’s premium funk and soul night, as well as previously hosting shows such as the recent metallic hardcore gig with northerners Employed To Serve and Rolo Tomassi. The venue also frequently hosts popular indie club night Remake Remodel.

Despite not having a rich history akin to that of Manchester’s other

Top 5...

Anti-Valentine songs

Alone this February 14th? Cheer yourself up (or down) with these anti-Valentine anthems...

Jay Plent Contributor

popular venues, Soup Kitchen has made a name for itself as one of the most eclectic places to spend an evening, proving that sticking to the basics and breaking down the walls between artist and fan is a sure way to make a name for yourself in a crowded market.

It’s a sad reality that Janis Joplin is perhaps more renowned for her death than for her life. In 1970, she was taken by heroin, that ghoulish talent thief of the seventies, and now she crops up every time an important young musician dies before a potential is reached. Her tale seems largely to be treated as more cautionary than legendary.

That could be partly down to the fact that, shockingly, Joplin hadn’t had the full biopic treatment until last Friday, when Amy Berg’s new documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue hit cinemas and brought Joplin’s tempestuous energy back into focus.

Still, Joplin’s music hardly saturates today’s airwaves. Some would say that she had to be experienced live, that her voice was too spontaneous to be bottled up and fossilised in studio recordings. Her 1967 performance at Monterey Pop Festival attests to that.

Either way, the music demands to be heard. The Joplin-fronted Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills is a great acid rock album, and her own posthumously released Pearl is stunning from start to finish. She burned a hole right through the psychedelic sixties, too, totally embodying the zeitgeist, whether she was having ear-splitting sex at the Grateful Dead house or blown out of her mind on stage at Woodstock in 1969.

The one characteristic that shone through everything Joplin did was a fierce, anguished honesty. Her brother, one of many close relatives and friends on board as the film’s consultants, says something interesting about how Janis not only felt pain, but idolized it: from Odetta to Billie Holiday, Joplin’s heroes all sang the blues, and she needed some blues to sing too. She was in no short supply - her formative Texan teenage years as a bullied reject saw to that.

Beneath Joplin’s San Franciscan persona, all Californian jive talk and theatrical sixties dress, was a pensive, articulate and deeply wounded Texan entering adulthood. It might be fitting, then, that the startlingly raw ‘Mercedes Benz’, Joplin’s most enduring musical moment, is a proudly Southern romp, stripped of all pseudopsychedelic affectations. It’s in those a capella moments (the kind which were a precursor to Robert Plant) when Joplin’s unmatchable emotional intensity hits you, when it feels like all of her turmoil is tumbling out in indefinable syllables.

We can grieve over Joplin’s death, and this film may bring you (like it did me) to tears in doing so, but the plain truth is that the music wouldn’t have been the same without the misery. Whether it was worth it is another matter.

Janis: Little Girl Blue is currently showing at HOME

Photo: Frankie Roberto@Flickr

Happyness – ‘It’s On You’ (Happyness EP, 2013)

Foo Fighters - ‘Cheer Up, Boys’ (Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, 2007)

Yuksek - ‘Always On The Run’ (Living on The Edge Of Time, 2011)

Regina Spektor - ‘No Surprises’ (No Surprises single, 2010)

Josh Rouse - ‘1972’ (1972, 2003)

As joyous a song as the band’s name suggests, Happyness’ debut EP is a fantastic collection of shoegaze anthems. To hell with the blues, you don’t need anyone else to enjoy this gem.

Thematically appropriate title?

Check. Bouncy energetic rock and roll? Check. Dave Grohl howling encouraging lyrics? Triple Check.

Crank up this under-appreciated belter.

For those longing for a little electro flavor, try Yuksek; the charming plinky piano part atop this powerful pumping beat is a recipe for instant smiley faces.

Of course a Radiohead song was gonna make this list, however, in a slight twist, we’re prescribing this incredibly beautiful cover by the one and only Regina Spektor.

Tissues ready?

Alright look, if you REALLY have to cry your eyes out this February 14th, at least do it with the most soothing voice of the last few decades singing to you. Good ol’ Rouse.

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Music

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Online Preview

Fat White Family: Songs For Our Mothers Released 22nd January via Fat Possum Records

Semtex: Third Eye Record Reappraisal Foundation Released 2010 via Basis Records

There’s more to see online! Here’s a snippet of Rory Calland’s thoughts on Fat White Family’s recently released, repulsive and raucous sophomore effort

Jacob Nicholas revisits this strange 90s gem which fuses two of the most iconic and yet radically different underground genres of the time: shoegaze and drum and bass

Rory Calland Contributor

From the mid-nineties to the start of the century, there was a scene in Bristol, dominated by their love of cassettes and strange, spectral sounds. Chief amongst these bands/projects was Flying Saucer Attack, or David Pearce, who made vast, sweeping shoegaze tracks. Pearce’s various collaborators all had their own projects, such as Rachel Brook’s Movietone, and most importantly Matt Elliot’s Third Eye Foundation. Elliot, when using the Third Eye Foundation name, made music that defied genre, best described as a weird hybrid of drum and bass and shoegaze. His debut, Semtex, originally released on his own Linda’s Strange Vacation label, has since been seen as seminal by those who listened to it, and now on its 20th anniversary it has been re-released by Elliot’s long time label Ici, d’ailleurs, with a ridiculous amount of bonus tracks and remastered demos. There are 29 songs on the reissue, with a total running time of well over four hours, a quarter of which comes from just two tracks. Typically, the track ‘Semtex’ itself is not included.

Semtex, as with the rest of the scene Elliot was part of, have no real comparisons. There are clear points of reference, from dance music to post rock to shoegaze, but the overall sound is completely different to anything else out there, sounding genuinely otherworldly, as wanky as that statement is. A large part of this comes from the production – the scene exclusively used cassettes (Pearce even declared CDs responsible for the death of the music industry in the liner notes for their first album). For Flying Saucer Attack this meant the music sounded

9/10

Songs For Our Mothers. Now here is an album to get excited about, and in no small amount unsettled by. This is, as followers of the Fat White Family will know, quite par for the course for this particular band of self professed “cripples and social retards”. The title alone with any prior knowledge of the Fat Whites is enough to make you squirm, and it doesn’t disappoint. It drones, wails, and croons through 10 debauched tracks that will make your skin crawl. Lias Saoudi, the waifish, grey-skinned frontman, sings about Hitler and Goebbels, Ike and Tina Turner, his own destructive relationship with guitarist Saul Adamczewski, and paints pictures of some of the most sordid recesses of human desire and depravity.

It is probably important to add at this point that Songs For Our Mothers, the follow up to their bitterly brilliant 2013 debut Champagne Holocaust, is an exceptional album and a clear sign of progression. The last two years by all accounts have been a tumultuous time for the group and there are plenty of gaps in the narrative that led them from the Queens Head pub in south London (where they recorded their first album) through numerous line-up changes, to Sean Lennon’s New York apartment, all via their customary brinkmanship with self-destruction.

It’s likely then that this album was borne out of a great deal of anger and misery, as well as rare artistic ability. Singles ‘Touch the Leather’ and ‘I Am Mark E Smith’ have teased the near boundless potential the Fat Whites possess over the last two years, and this potential is realised over the course of this album.

The strangled vitriol that embodied Champagne Holocaust isn’t left behind, though it is refined into a more measured menace. The sinister chanting on ‘Duce’ is quite unintelligible for the most part, but judging by the crashing drums, the rumbling bass and the demonic harmonies, you can bet it’s probably something nasty. Adamczewski’s creaking guitar and nightmarish arrangement make ‘Duce’ a mammoth track that will make you feel as though you’ve just been subject to some ancient ritual, probably involving a haunted mausoleum, the blood of a few virgins and a full moon. ..

This kind of overwhelming onslaught of sound is combined with the somewhat perverted Hawaiian feel of songs such as ‘Lebensraum’ or ‘When Shipman Decides’, which put a fairly sedate spin on characters more commonly associated with war crimes and/or murder. Listening to ‘Lebensraum’ was almost certainly the first time I’ve ever been led to imagine Adolf Hitler stretching out in a deck chair...

Continue reading along with many others features, reviews and interviews at www.mancunion.com/music/

like it was a strange relic from another planet, the layers of feedback and delay mixing with hiss and clipping from the cassettes. For The Third Eye Foundation the effect is even more important – Elliot’s mixture of drums machines, guitars and samples are all so shattered and mutilated by the production it becomes impossible to tell what’s a sample and what’s being played. The cumulative effect is proper mindfuckery of the highest order, music free from expectations and normal assumptions about how it was being made, combined to create a wall of sound through the recording format reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine at their best, but in feel rather than sound itself.

Opener ‘Sleep’ is the closest the album gets to the direct shoegaze-drum and bass crossover, a massive, mutilated swirling guitar distorted just shy of becoming actual white noise over a frantic breakbeat. It decays into oscillations and echoes, and sounds like it’s tearing itself apart as you listen to it. Halfway through the drums drop out and the guitars layer and layer for the remaining three and a half minutes, spiralling into oblivion. It is by far the most frantic track on the album, and so makes sense as an opener. The following track, ‘Still Life’ is similar, but much slower, dragging itself out and revealing itself over its 11 and a half minute runtime, mixed in with distant female vocals and only disappearing into nothingness in the last couple of minutes. ‘Dreams on His Fingers’ is the real winner though, dub inflected, white noise covered beauty, the vocals this time at the fore, but still incomprehensible over a steady, simple

Someone give these students a record deal, stat! The Mancunion will be taking at least a 10% cut when it happens. This week, Hannah Brierley chats to The Kingdom

Where did your name come from?

Honestly? We were asked to play a gig for a friend and it was all very last minute, we went with The Kingdom because it was the first name we all liked and agreed on. That gig was really successful and from then on the name just stuck.

How and when did the band come together?

The bassist and I were originally in a band in 2014 but our drummer bailed out, but luckily my other best friend was coincidently a drummer, and since forth the band was born.

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bassline. It’s an exceptional track, along with ‘Sleep’ the best on the album, and possibly one of the best Elliot’s ever made. The remaining three songs on the album are all brilliant too, from ‘Next of Kin’s’ frantic, wordless charge to ‘Once When I Was An Indian’s’ genuinely unsettling drift, using every one of its near 13 minutes to reinforce the mood and strangeness. Closer ‘Rain’ is a relative relief, repeated synth echoes over gradually increasing samples of something indefinable, before finally closing the album in the white noise it’s long threatened.

By comparison, the bonus tracks are a relative mixed bag, being taken from Elliot’s demos from 1991 to 1997. The ones on the second disc are all brilliant, especially ‘Shard,’ ‘Alarm Song’ and ‘Get to Fuck,’ but the downloadable ones suffer from either too clean a remaster or being left too murky. There are still great tracks – ‘Hymn to Odin’ and ‘Making Waves’ being notable standouts, but for the most part they veer closer to noise and ambient music, not bad in itself, but less immediately appealing than the rest. Semtex itself remains exceptional two decades on, time only thickening its weirdness. Elliot has recently been hinting at a return to the Third Eye Foundation moniker, and Pearce released his first album in a decade and a half last year, so hopefully the scene will return, and get the recognition it deserves.

campus confidential

Genre: Hard Rock/ Dirty Blues /Alternative Rock Members: Taylor Fisher- Vocals/Lead Guitar Kenny Chiu- Bass James ‘Jimmy’ Day- Drums HQ: Boom Shack Studio

Photo: Album Artwork

Photo: Album Artwork

How often do you practice and play gigs?

We try to rehearse as much as we can, tends to be a couple times a week.

We try to play as often as we can too. We’ve got a gig lined up on the 27th February at the Tiger Lounge, which should be fun. We’re doing something a bit different and instead of selling tickets we’re having an ‘honesty box’ where you come and enjoy the night and then pay as much (or as little) as you like! Fingers crossed it all goes well.

Where are your favourite places to play in Manchester?

From experience; The Castle Hotel, Rebellion and The Tiger Lounge are the best places to perform. They have a great atmosphere and the Tiger Lounge lets you take your own booze (sometimes) so that’s great too.

What’s influenced your song writing and performance over your time together?

Performance wise…being a three piece can be quite challenging because there’s nothing to hide behind, but we’ve grown to love being exposed.

And because we’re such an energetic band this really works for us. Song writing and musically we have a variety of influences because we all have different tastes. I don’t like to pigeon hole and say we sound like

Photo: The Mancunion

other bands because we don’t, but if I had to say it would be somewhere between the Artic Monkeys and Wolfmother.

What do you think is your greatest strength as a band?

It’s a blessing and curse but we’re all really good friends and have been for the past few years now. This is helpful because we can all be honest with each other as well knowing that it’s nothing personal. Another good thing about being mates is that when we finish a gig together we get to sit back and enjoy the buzz together.

What’s been our greatest achievement as a band so far?

The last EP Launch. I remember this one time we were told the capacity was around 80 people, and we managed to get about 120 instead.

The other bands that were playing with us were amazing and also close friends. The whole night had such a good vibe and everyone had a great time together.

What advice would you give other students trying to start bands?

If you’re deadly serious about it, and you really believe in it, you need to make it priority number one. Don’t take no for answer and don’t take rejection personally. You’ve got to persistent to get where you want to be.

If you could be stuck in a lift with one person dead or alive, who would it be and why?

I’d probably go for Jimi Hendrix, because I want to ask him how...just how.

If you could be any household object what would you be?

I’d definitely be a pillow; nothing sounds better than spending all your time in bed.

Couldn’t agree more. Thanks guys!

Find The Kingdom on Facebook.

Games 15

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Feature

Feature

Is PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live a rip-off?

Robert Parris Contributor If you own a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One, chances are that you have an online subscription service in order to play with— and against, friends or even take on the world if you wanted to (or more realistically, defend your mother’s honour against obscene pre-pubescents).

Jokes aside, some of my fondest memories just would not have been made possible without online multiplayer—like a time when me and my friend managed to defuse a bomb in Call of Duty 4 with only 0.2 seconds remaining; or that other time I when blue-shelled four people simultaneously in Mario Kart Wii and stole the win.

Unfortunately, for many of these kinds of services, there is a paywall to climb over—a £40 per year subscription to either Xbox Live Gold (XBL) or PlayStation Plus (PS Plus), which many argue is overpriced; considering that both the PC and the Nintendo Wii U versions both offer similar services free of charge.

So what do you get for these subscriptions then? The answer is largely the same for both platforms: to name the most prominent of these, you get access to online multiplayer portions of games, access to four games each month, exclusive discounts, and cloud storage. Whilst you can still use most of the consoles features without a subscription, one of the key draws of the next generation of consoles for many is the ability to play with friends online. So why are Microsoft and Sony charging money for these services when others can supply them for free? I believe that the answer lies in the fact that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are in effect, a closed market.

No manufacturer can claim to own the PC market, which is not true of these consoles. It’s genius when you think about it, Sony and Microsoft can continue to make money off of its consumers for years after buying the console.

Considering that the Wii U launched with no subscription fee for online services, and the costs of maintaining an online infrastructure have fallen over the years, I actually expected the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One to release with a radically different approach to the subscription fee. Perhaps the costs could have been paid for through adverts on the consoles dashboard (which ended up happening on the Xbox 360 even though Microsoft were still charging for Xbox Live), or

Is Hype Everything?

Stephen Lewis Contributor

Photo: Microsoft Studios

maybe the costs of XBL and PS Plus were reduced—say to at least £10 per year, minus the ‘free’ games. Instead, the polar opposite has happened.

My grand ideas did not bear fruit, and the basic infrastructure remains largely the same as it did in the previous generation. Furthermore, the costs of maintaining the servers themselves have been, and still largely continue to be fronted by game developers—not Sony and Microsoft alone.

This is more of an issue for the PlayStation 4 when compared to the Xbox One, as despite the costs and features of both services remaining largely the same, the jump to the next generation has not—for most people—improved the online experience when compared to over four years ago. There is frequent and unexplained downtime on the PlayStation Network when compared to Xbox Live, and the matchmaking (in terms of speed and connection quality) also pales in comparison.

Whilst I have hardly ever experienced a network outage myself, I can understand how frustrating it can be if you have set aside an evening for the occasion.

Rapper Snoop Dogg recently vented his frustrations at Microsoft for the recent Xbox Live outage. In the words of the one and only: “A message to Xbox One, or Microsoft, whoever the f***—y’all f****** server is f****** wack man, y’all are gonna make me switch to PlayStation if y’all don’t get this s*** fixed, it’s that difficult to play someone online.”

Hacking groups have expressed their frustration interestingly enough with the security or lack thereof with the services. Back in 2014, hacking group Lizard Squad launched a cyber attack on these services on Christmas Day, and it took around 10 days for the services to be brought back up to speed. If these services were free, I doubt that these attacks would have gained as much notoriety as they eventually did. Furthermore, the ‘free’ games

offered come with an asterisk next to them which slices like a shuriken to the chest on both services. You do not actually own the free games, but you only have access to them for the duration of your subscription. If your membership ends, you cannot play these games in your library unless you subscribe again.

Ultimately the key issue with these services is that the features offered, I believe, do not adequately match the consumer demand. In terms of the content that the consumer is provided with for the £40 payment, the value of free games alone is far in excess of the subscription fee, and I wouldn’t label either option as a ‘rip-off’. I’m sure that for some hardcore gamers, the Xbox Live and PS Plus’ online services represent great value for money as they are used on a regular basis and they have time to play all the free games.

However, these hardcore gamers are in the minority when compared to the total number of users on both services.

The only reason why most of my friends are subscribed is because it is the only way to play online.

Whilst the free games are a nice bonus, you have no choice in what you get, and more times than not people do not even bother to install them. Dedicated servers and the other bells and whistles are nice additions, but I am willing to bet that the majority of games console owners are not particularly fussed about these features. And, if given the choice, gamers would much rather pay less and receive the bare-boned features. Whilst the subscriptions are a large moneymaking incentive for Microsoft and Sony, I believe that this business model is unsustainable in the long run. With more people than ever switching to PC as their primary platform, the subscription fee in its current form is going to come under far greater scrutiny in the future. But in my opinion, more pricing options could help alleviate this.

Last November was a busy month for the gaming industry, with numerous big releases coming to all platforms. Fallout 4 was perhaps the most hyped of all of these releases and I, like many others, was caught up in it. I wasn’t a big fan of Oblivion and even though I liked Fallout 3, I just never got hooked—however Skyrim was a different story. The atmosphere was much more inviting with the mountainous visuals and masterful soundtrack keeping me occupied for many hours, and I even bought the expansions. It was perhaps a bit of an issue for Bethesda that this was their first big release since Skyrim—not including Elder Scrolls online. Skyrim had made quite an impact on the games that have come out since. Metal Gear Solid V and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were two of the best games to come out last year and they were the first in their respective franchises to go fully open world.

I bought Fallout 4 within a week of its release hoping that the change from Oblivion to Skyrim would be recreated in the jump from Fallout 3 to to Fallout 4, going so far as to even buy the season pass as—from what I had seen of the game—it would take up a lot of time and be a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

But this hasn’t turned out as I expected, not through lack of enjoyment, but perhaps it was due to an exhaustion of open world games for the time being.

A week or two later, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition was on sale on Xbox Live for £4 and I knew the sequel had come out, but it had gotten lost in the

pile of November games. As a much more linear, story-driven game with one primary goal, I spent more time on this and once I got to the end of the story I stopped playing, but I did not go back to Fallout… I decided to finally finish off Witcher and Metal Gear first, and once that was done, and I wanted another break from open world games. Rise of the Tomb Raider was offered at half price over Christmas, so I picked that up and got back into a more plot-driven game, already equaling my playtime with Fallout.

I still haven’t gone back to Bethesda’s newest creation but I’m sure that I will at some point, hopefully before the DLC comes out. But this raises the question, can hype sometimes be bad, even if the game itself is good? Hype is obviously bad if a game doesn’t reach the expectations that have been built around it, but perhaps it shifts the spotlight away from more deserving games, and not just indie games compared to AAA releases. I have seen Rise of the Tomb Raider on more ‘Best Games of 2015’ lists than Fallout 4, and when they are both in the running, Tomb Raider usually seems to be higher.

I’m not saying Fallout 4 is a bad game when compared to Tomb Raider as they are very different games, but surely they are both deserving of high praise.

This has not been reflected in the sales numbers, but Rise of the Tomb Raider was initially available on Xbox One and 360 only—with a PC release that happened in the January just gone, and the PS4 version is due to a release for next Christmas. If you haven’t tried it already, I recommend this series, and if you can’t currently play it as you only have a PS4, then it should be worth the wait.

Photo: Square Enix Holdiengs Co., Ltd., Crystal Dynamics

Want to meet fellow gamers in Manchester?

King of the North 2016 Photo: UoM eSports Society

King of the North is happening once again and this time it is bigger and better than ever. We have moved from Academy 2 to Academy 1 so that is double the space and you bet we are taking full advantage.

This year at King of The North there will be League of Legends, DOTA 2 and CS:GO UK university finals which you can watch live. There will also be two tournaments based on the Super Smash Bros series: a Melee tournament and a Smash for Wii U tournament. For fans of rocket league there will also be a 1v1 Rocket League tournament.

If all of this excites you then buy a ticket now! It is really cheap and can be bought over at: www.uomesports.com. If you purchase a ticket now it will cost you £2 rather than the £3 on the door. To enter either of the Smash Tournaments it will cost you £5 but that is nothing compared to the £100 cash prize. As for Rocket League, entrance is free! So you have no excuse to not enter.

Check out the King of the North facebook page or the UoM eSports website for more information. The festival will be held on March 2nd 2016 and we hope to see you there.

This week is a time to sit back and relax with a nice drink, and so that is what the Universty of Manchester’s Gaming Society is going to do. Join us this Friday at the Oxford Pub for a few drinks. We can sit and talk games, maybe play some pool and just have a nice, casual time.

It is going to be hectic in the next few weeks with Manchester’s biggest student Gaming Festival: King of the North (more details on the left) where we will have a booth with all sorts of games from Xbox 360 to Dreamcast. So we hope you come and visit us there.

We have a lot of exiting events coming up. Some for charity and some to celebrate Pokémon’s 20th Anniversary so stay up-to-date by joining our Facebook page and coming to our events. /GamingSociety

Fashion & Beauty

16

Fashion & Beauty 17

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Skincare

Feature

Staple

Demystifying skincare: The cleansing balm The little black dress Manchester Shopping

Various problematic episodes with my exceptionally dry skin means I have had to adapt my skincare regime as my face becomes gradually less tolerant to the stuff I put on it. If you too are unfortunate enough to have itchy eczema around your eyes, you will understand the plight of finding makeup remover and cleansing products that don’t make you grit your teeth as your skin screams in protest.

A bit of trawling through beauty blogs and a considerable amount of trial and error led me to a product that works: The indisputable

Craving: Emma Hardie Moringa Cleansing Balm £38 for 100ml from Space NK

Saving: No7 Beautiful Skin Melting Gel Cleanser £9.50 for 100ml from Boots (only £4.50 if you get one of those handy £5-off vouchers)

Sophie Soar discusses the overwhelming power of fashion’s timeless classic, the little black dress It seems closer to the untouchable Instagram socialites than your outfit choice from Saturday night, understood as the child of Coco Chanel and Jean Patou, it boasts a century-long career and even its own Wikipedia page. Reliable, revered, revolutionised, reworked, remodelled, renewed, and re-loved time and time again; its status is undeniably and irreplaceably supreme. But what is it that makes the little black dress or LBD, so rigidly solid in fashion hierarchy?

Whilst the most fabulously fun garments overflow from cupboards and wardrobes (or in my case, an expansive floordrobe), the LBD sits smugly on its hanger, oozing its powerful self-awareness. Reverted back to time and time again, whether it is laundry day, a panic outfit choice for a third date, or simply an ego boost—the LBD is a safety net in every girl’s wardrobe.

With the hopes of gaining a gender-neutral opinion base for the cultural significance of the LBD, I sought male feedback. A constant advocate of a raised hemline and arse-enhancing materials, I asked my boyfriend what the LBD meant to him.

He simply asked ‘well how little is this dress?’ at which point I simply gave up.

Alternatively, my housemate proudly stated “’cause it makes chicks look good on average”.

Somewhat reminiscent of a three-year-old toddler’s brutal honesty, his comment was blunt but remarkably accurate. The LBD is flattering and timeless, never out of style, and never a traitor to its wearer. It does miracles for one’s self esteem, and not to mention its versatility.

From day to night, a shopping trip in town or dinner with the parents—any accessory goes; it’s monochromatic mastery. As Édith Piaf’s uniform of choice on stage and Hepburn’s iconic look as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, paired with sultry shades, pearls and pouts—there is a multitude of examples of its timeless history.

Essentially, the LBD is the silent best friend who will listen to your mood and respond accordingly. It is a malleable item: grunge at times, smart at others, fun, dark, vibrant, gothic… whatever mood the day takes you.

To quote Wallis Simpson, “When a little black dress is right, there is nothing else to wear in its place”. Now and forever, LBD, we applaud you.

Long may you reign supreme.

Photo: Boots

What’s in my makeup bag?

Laura Mills Contributor

Lusting after high-end makeup that you can’t afford? Me too. However, drugstore brands are getting better and better at ripping off our favourite brands at just a fraction of the price; bad news for the brands, but great news for us. Here are a couple of matches I have recently found that are a little more purse-friendly than the highend brands.

Eyes: I like to keep my eyes nice and simple by only using one product, and it’s a game changer: mascara. Like contour, I’ve never been one for eyeshadow or eyeliner, but a good mascara can change your entire look. My holy grail mascara, without a shadow of a doubt, would have to be Maybelline’s Lash Sensational Last Multiplying Mascara. It magically transforms my lashes from being unseen to can’t be missed, and gives me all the volume that I need.

Lips: Before applying any lipstick, I always make sure to use Burt’s Bees Honey Lip Balm. It takes my dry, winter lips and breathes new life into them. Some days, this is enough to complete my look, but more often than not, you can see me reaching for at least one of two lipsticks. On a nude day, I will apply MAC’s lipstick in ‘Syrup’; the perfect ‘my lips but better’ shade. It has a fairly good lasting power and complements any outfit. If I’m feeling a bit more sassy, however, a red lip is an absolute must. My favourite red in my collection is definitely Maybelline’s Colour Sensational Creamy Matte Lipstick in the shade ‘Siren in Scarlet’. With a matte finish, it simply does not budge! It doesn’t matter how much food and drink passes my lips, that lipstick ain’t going nowhere, sistah. It’s definitely a must-have for anyone who loves to rock a classic red lip.

NARS Orgasm Blusher vs. Sleek Rose Gold Blush

Craving

Photos (L-R) : Boots and Wilkinsons

This one is no secret. Sleek do some amazing dupes for NARS blushers, the best one being their Rose Gold blush as a dupe for NARS’ coveted blush in Orgasm. Orgasm was one of the first ever shades I purchased when venturing into high-end blushers and it’s been a firm favourite ever since. However, Sleek is offering exactly the same. Both have a lovely peachy-pink shimmery shade that gives your cheeks a beautiful glow, and they’re also both incredibly pigmented so a little goes a long way. Even the matte black packaging is identical. Not only is it a fraction of the price, you also get nearly double the product. For £23 you get just 4.8g of blush with NARS—Sleek give you a cool 8g for just £4.49. It’s a no-brainer, really.

You save: £18.51

Benefit Gimme Brow vs. Essence Make Me Brow

Saving

Photo: Dancer Dallagio @Flickr

good which means you can quite easily do your brows in 30 seconds whilst running out of the door. The best part is that Essence’s Make Me Brow costs just £2.50 compared to Benefit’s £18.50. You can also get Essence in Wilkinsons, so it’s super easy to get hold of.

You save: £16

Saving

Craving & Saving: Cult Classics

Highlighter in the shade ‘Piccadilly Glow’. It is a liquid highlighter and so a little goes a long way. Added to the top of my cheekbones, it adds that extra bit of shine to my face.

Craving

The ten minutes that it takes me to apply my makeup in the morning is often my favourite ten minutes of the day. I love to experiment with new products and new techniques, and create a masterpiece worth screaming about (if I do say so myself). I’ve switched up my makeup bag over the last two months, indulging in a few new products as well as rediscovering some old favourites. Here is a whilstle-stop of my beauty regime:

Photos (L-R) : NARS and Sleek

Photo: The Mancunion

Colour: It’s all well and good having even and matte effect skin, but I still look fatigued without a bit of colour to my face. My blusher of choice at the moment is Max Factor’s Creme Puff Blush in the shade ‘Nude Mauve’. For anybody lusting after Hourglass’s range of magnificent blushers, Max Factor’s Creme Puff Blushers are the perfect dupe. The Hourglass shade ‘Mood Exposure’ in specific is fairly representative of the blush that I sweep across my face every day. It gives an uplifted look to my cheeks, without adding too much shimmer that I turn into a walking and talking disco ball. Contouring is not really my thing, and so this is a step that I leave out of my makeup routine. A good highlighter, however, is a necessity, and I have been recently reaching for Rimmel London’s Good To Glow

Kassi Allcock Head Fashion Editor

Benefit’s Gimme Brow is a product that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. It looks like the ideal ‘do your brows in 30 seconds whilst running out the door’ kind of deal. However, at £18.50 for what is essentially a mascara for your brows, I’ve skipped buying it in favour of cheaper alternatives. My favourite find so far has been Essence’s Make Me Brow. Not only does it have a really small brush—just like the Benefit one—it also has very similar packaging.

The tiny brush makes it ideal for getting a precise look, whereas bigger brushes can sometimes leave your brows looking messier than before you had even started. The colour pay off is also pretty

Craving Saving

Photos (L-R) : Chanel and Boots

Base: The first thing that I reach for in my makeup bag is my foundation. This product is a newbie to my collection, but it is an instant winner. I buff L’Oréal Paris’ True Match foundation in the shade ‘Creamy Beige’ into my face with a Real Techniques face brush.

I spend a good minute or two doing this as I always find that the longer I spend on my foundation, the better my makeup looks as a whole. I then apply my Maybelline Age Rewind Eraser Eye Concealer in the shade ‘Nude’ under my eyes and around my T-zone. With a bare face, the corners of my nose always light up like a beacon, so I take special care to conceal, conceal, and conceal. I then finish off my base with a dab of L’Oréal Paris Infallible Powder across my face, setting my base for the rest of the day.

Sarah Kilcourse takes us through time to explore the evolution of Manchester as a shopping destination In recent years. Manchester city centre has undergone a number of changes, all of which stem from a bombing in 1996. For those who don’t know what happened, in 1996 the IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) planted a bomb in a van on Corporation Street, damaging the heart of the city including shopping centre Manchester Arndale. As a result of this catastrophe, a series of investments were made in order to reconstruct and better Manchester as a shopping destination.

Fortunately, the council and government quickly set about making some adjustments to the city centre. Preventing the unpleasant attack from leaving a visible scar on Manchester’s infrastructure—hence the rebuilding of Marks and Spencer’s, the development of New Cathedral Street and the new Selfridges. All was well in Manchester throughout the boom years leading up to the recession but in the years since, it has been not as great. I am no economist, so I am not going to venture into discussions on the causes and after-effects of the 2008 recession, but I will say that it has had an impact on shops in Manchester.

All through the 90’s and early 2000’s, King Street was the self-proclaimed ‘Regent Street of the North’—home to designer names like Pied a Terre, Armani, Diesel, DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger as well as a few others. But when Selfridges emerged in 2002 and Harvey Nichols was finally built, there was a shift in the kind of location for more expensive brands to set up shop.

Post-recession, there was not enough cash to support so many luxury shops, which led to King Street becoming ever more overrun with

Beauty

Review

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Whilst the names aren’t quite as exotic as the ones from Chanel, and the packaging isn’t half as pretty, some of the colours are a pretty good match. Maybelline’s Pomegranate Punk holds a striking resemblance to Chanel’s Ebloui, a beautiful shimmery cranberry shade. Illusoire from Chanel also looks like it is a great match for Maybelline’s On and On Bronze—a lovely shimmery golden bronze colour. Chanel’s Illusion D’ombre is a jaw-dropping £25 and the Maybelline Colour Tattoos are more purse-friendly at only £4.99.

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Craving Saving

Photos (top-bottom) : MAC Cosmetics and The Beauty Store

Beauty Editor Millie Kershaw explains why it’s time to ditch the makeup wipes and embrace oils in your skincare regime

only encourage more oil to be produced to compensate. All in all, quite counter-productive.

Leave the squeaky-clean lathers to your shower gels and washing-up liquids and try one of these cleansing balms instead:

Photo: Space NK

Photo: Hotelcostacolero @Flickr

holy grail of anyone’s bathroom cabine, the cleansing balm. I will recommend cleansing balms to anyone who will listen, or indeed to anyone who whips out a satanic, alcohol-ridden makeup wipe in my vicinity.

Cleansing balms may seem a bit alien at first. It feels so thick, so oily… Is it a moisturiser? Will this wash off properly? In response, cleansing balms cleanse you skin very effectively, all the while being nourishing instead of stripping. Apply a cleansing balm onto dry skin and it will dissolve all the makeup and the remains of the day’s residue. Next step: Flannel. Buy them in bulk from your nearest Primark or budget-friendly equivalent so you’ve got enough for a week of face washing (no one wants a dirty flannel) and run one under hand-hot water before applying it to your oily face. First of all, you’ll feel like you’re in a spa (or on a long haul flight when they give you those teeny tiny hot towels) and moreover, a few gentle swipes will get rid of that facial muck in a trice.

Not totally convinced? If you, unlike me, have no qualms about an insufficiency of moisture or are of the oilier persuasion, this is not a satisfactory excuse to steer clear of oily skincare. Oily skin plus oily product may seem like the recipe for a spotty explosion, but fresher products like wipes or cleansers that produce a lather are not the magic ingredient for oily skin types (contrary to the opinions of many brands in the industry).

The reason for this is quite logical when you give it some thought.

In basic, humanities student language, foaming cleansers inevitably include surfactant, alkaline chemicals in their ingredients list.

These chemicals, such as Sodium lauryl sulphate are pretty corrosive (you’ll also find them present in household detergents and engine degreasers) and, at the cost of making your skin feel clean and grease-free, they strip your skin of its natural oils, which will in turn

Chanel Illusion D’ombre vs. Maybelline Colour Tattoo Cream eyeshadows are the go-to for a quick eye look that appears like you’ve spent a lot more time on your makeup than you actually have. A quick sweep and blend with your finger, and you’re done.

The holy grail of the cream eyeshadow world has to be the Chanel Illusion D’ombre. They’re all absolutely stunning. Nevertheless, Maybelline put up a rather good fight with their Colour Tattoos.

MAC Lip Liner in Whirl vs. NYX Slim Lip Liner in Mauve Ahh, the lusted after shade from MAC that’s often sold out at every counter. This shade was thrusted into the limelight after Kylie Jenner brought back the 90’s nude lip and made us all crave those pinky-brown shades we once loved. Whilst the colours aren’t for everyone (it looks

restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some of the older stores and restaurants aimed at a high-end clientele, but with the redevelopment of the Corn Exchange into The Triangle, it seems like customers are being dragged further away from King Street.

Restaurants are seemingly becoming a bigger and bigger business venture in Manchester. Whenever an empty space opens up, there seems to be a Pizza Express, Zizzi’s or Nando’s replacing it. Manchester has the highest restaurant-inhabitant density for Nando’s in the UK! Surely they won’t find room for anymore.

We are so fortunate here in Manchester with the diverse array of restaurants and shops available, but it is sad to watch the high street falling. No longer is it just the luxury brands suffering in Manchester, Market Street has had a succession of closures recently: Miss Selfridge, Nike, American Apparel, and as of January— French Connection, too. These are all some of the fairly big name brands that should exist in any major city, so why are they not surviving in Manchester?

It’s easy to theorise why shops are struggling (high rent, the internet, etcetera) but that doesn’t help to improve the shopping experience in Manchester. I for one have always loved the shopping in Manchester; I’m fairly local, so I would be devastated to witness the high street here suffer. All we can do is remain ever faithful that more fantastic shops will come along and breathe new life into the city—especially now that there is a giant space where French Connection was; I’m excited to see what will fill it!

horrendous on me), it is still a really pretty colour. NYX have an almost identical shade in the form of their Slim Lip Liner in Mauve; it even offers the sleek, black packaging that MAC has. Whilst the pictures below aren’t the same colour, a quick Google of some swatches will show you just how similar they really are. Boots have recently started stocking NYX in store and the one on Market Street has a huge counter—but sadly this lip liner is a little harder to find, as they don’t seem to sell it. However, it is available online on sites like Amazon and The Beauty Store, and is well worth an order if you’re after saving a little cash on a really popular colour! MAC’s lip liner retails at £12.50 whereas the NYX one can be found on The Beauty Store for £4.

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Film

18

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Film News from Nicole Tamer (Film Editor)

Review

Break is just another pointless, soulless and inferior Point Break Point Hollywood remake of a great classic movie Tristan Goldsmid Contributor

Photo:Warner Bros. Pictures

Out of the recent spate of unnecessary remakes comes Point Break, based on the successful 1991 classic starring Keanu Reeves. Whilst there were certainly very few people desperate for a remake, the fundamental issue with this version was that it abandons all that was great about the original and remodelled the story into a glossy spectacle with no compelling substance behind it.

Cocky protagonist Jonny Utah, played by Luke Bracey, is an ex-motorcross legend, turned FBI agent. Through an investigation into bank robberies, Utah teams up with eco-warrior Bohdi (Edgar Ramirez) who together, jet set across the globe on a spiritual journey. This represented the most elaborate and dangerous undercover mission ever attempted by an FBI agent as each stop involved increasingly perilous stunts—which included base jumping, snow-boarding and vertiginous rock climb-

ing. Bohdi and his team claim that, by undertaking this spiritual journey, they will be at one with the planet—which came across as utterly ridiculous due to the hugely unconvincing performances across the board, and that will leave you praying it’s all one big wind up.

The film’s opening explains how Utah ended up in the FBI due to his tragic past, and his extreme sports knowledge and abilities allow him to uncover a possible link between recent crimes, leading him to pass off as a fellow extreme sports enthusiast once undercover. Whilst this opening section was entertaining, the entire film was derailed because of the following irrelevant and self-indulgent sequences that destroyed any kind of attachment to the unfolding events about to happen. For example, an investigation into a surfing phenomenon turned into a lavish boat party that was wildly insulting to any viewer who were not here to watch deleted scenes of Entourage; and it was clearly a cheap gimmick aimed at impressionable teenagers.

Not long after, Utah is involved in an underground scrap that seemed massively out of place and resulted in the film to completely lose its focus.

After this early muddle, the story progressed through a number of spectacular set pieces, which were suitably exciting and realistic due to the use of practical effects, and included one vertigo inducing showdown that was surprisingly tense. But these set pieces were undermined by the absence of any real characterisation to lead

up to any sense of consequence or tension.

This issue could not be overstated. Utah and Bohdi showed no emotion throughout and barely gave scraps of compelling dialogue necessary to humanise them. As a result it was impossible to know which side Utah was on while he strayed between FBI agent and spiritual adrenaline junkie; as he permanently resembled a difficult teenager other than reflecting any complicated emotions. The supporting cast were equally uninteresting: Ray Winston was given little to do as European field agent Pappas, and Delroy Lindo’s Instructor Hall was embarrassingly clichéd as Utah’s gruff FBI commanding officer.

Despite the issues of originality, it had Keanu Reeves’ spirited Utah, and it was full of emotion and excitement. Here, there is little to get invested into as the characters were simply dull. Bohdi and his tree-hugging gang’s behaviour were so strange and hard to believe that it wouldn’t have been a surprising development to discover that they weren’t human at all.

Point Break should serve as a warning that remodelling an action film with a shiny new cover and more extravagant action means nothing; if by doing so, the soul of the original is removed. Charmless at best and deeply insulting at worst, Point Break was a predictably troubling development at a time when classic films were being remade at an increasing rate.

Finally an Oscar for Leo! - Homemade in Russia Leonardo DiCaprio seems to be receiving at least one Oscar this year after avid fans decided to create one themselves. The Oscar for Leo campaign was started up in Siberia, with his fans planning to melt down gold and silver valuables to transform them into an Oscar statue. 100 people have donated so far—hopefully it will not be the only Oscar for him this year, although many are looking forward to the ensuing viral jokes after another loss.

Photo: Paramount Pictures/Growld

Star Wars’ Force stronger than expected Star Wars: Episode 7 – The Force Awakens has now officially crossed the $2 billion mark, joining the elusive club of Avatar and Titanic. After buying Lucasfilms for $4 billion, Disney was hoping to have a return of at least $1.5 billion globally—which seemed like a very ambitious number at first but the huge marketing campaign (which involved the transformation of the Nelson Column into a lightsaber costing £24,000) paid off in the end.

Full Review at Mancunion.com/film

TV Binge

Deutschland ‘83

Deutschland ‘83 stands out from the crowd of Cold War spy dramas with its killer soundtrack, performances and storytelling Photo: Twitter/@LucasPaternott

Spider-Man Rejected Again

(This Time not by the Justice League) A Cambridge study has concluded that Spider-man cannot exist in the real world. Adhesive pads would be needed for humans which would have to cover at least 40% of the body surface so that they would be able to walk on a smooth vertical surface similarly to a spider. Gekko-man would be a better name for a super-hero since they are the largest animals to be able to accomplish that feat.

Photo: UFA Fiction

Jane Simmons Film Critic Channel 4’s new Walter Presents season has brought many gems from around the globe to our TV screens, but it’s most entertaining new programme Deutschland ‘83, is an absolute must-see. It follows up-andcoming German actor Jonas Nay as Martin, a Stasi officer from Soviet East Germany who is forced to go undercover as a spy in liberal West Germany to obtain secret Cold War information for his East German colleagues. Although it may sound like an average spy drama, Deutschland ‘83 is tense, humorous, and endlessly entertaining.

The first striking quality of this programme is the soundtrack. When asked by NME why she chose the year 1983, creator Anna Winger commented, “because it’s the only year I remember listening to any German music”. It’s true that the music is a very big part of Deutschland ‘83—the soundtrack features a brilliantly eclectic mix of well-known classics that really

builds the essence of (West) Germany in the 1980s—from New Order to Tears for Fears. As for German music, the opening theme sports a dreamy, synth-laden tune by artist Peter Schilling (the title of the track interestingly named ‘Major Tom’).

What is more, the acting in this series is fantastic—Jonas Nay as the protagonist, Martin. gives an incredibly versatile performance; his talents ranging from absolute terror at some of the situations that he is forced into, to humorous bemusement.

There is a particularly witty scene in one of the episodes where he, as a resident of East Germany, is flummoxed at the idea of the new technological invention, the Walkman. The cast are unknown to UK viewers, but each of them work wonderfully well together and as a result should be earning more recognition further afoot from Germany. Maria Schrader is menacing and sinister as Martin’s stylish but overbearing aunt, Lenora, and co-star Ludwig Trepte is equally as praise-worthy for his performance as the General’s rebellious and con-

fused son Alex.

Another quality of Deutschland ‘83 is that it shows a side of the Cold War that is often overlooked—the extent to which normal people were mercilessly used like pawns in the game of the Cold War. Like most creative programmes, there is no black and white predictability of binary oppositions.

Instead, there are only characters whom each have different motives—each one is a different cog turning in the political machine, and it is totally possible to empathise with each of them. And it is not only the Cold War as the catalyst to these problems, as another impending issue of the 1980s raises its head in later episodes.

All in all, Deutschland ‘83 makes for a fantastic Sunday night watch. Far from a dry Cold War drama, its apt soundtrack, stylish structure and outstanding acting makes for a hugely entertaining programme to get into. Nearing the end of its series as it comes to a close in next week’s finale, catch this spark of a show while you can.

Photo: 20th Century Fox

Super Bowl Trailers Disappoint The Super Bowl spots were a big topic last week with many new trailers welcomed to a large audience. Blockbusters like Jason Bourne, Captain America: Civil War, X-Men Apocalypse, and Independence Day: Resurgence were aired for the first time. Other films to look forward to this year are The Jungle Book, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Eddie the Eagle, Gods of Egypt, and The Secret Life of Pets. Unfortunately, most of the trailers are of films that are sequels or adaptations, meaning that the trailers promise yet another year of super-hero and war films.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Film 19

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Review

Dad’s Army Sarah Jane Thoms Contributor The art of being able to maintain a good thing is only achievable if you know when to call it a day, when to let the curtain fall, and when to pull the plug.

It seems that whoever came up with the idea of bringing the popular British television sitcom Dad’s Army to the big screen was unaware of this. When viewing the film at a large multiplex cinema in one of England’s biggest cities on its opening night, I expected to be greeted by a hustle and bustle around the film.

But the empty 398 seats in an auditorium

The feeling of nostalgia is not enough to override the feeling of pointlessness in Oliver Parker’s Dad’s Army

built to seat 400 seemed to foreshadow the film’s triviality.

Set in Walmington-on-Sea in 1944, the film shows the war effort of Britain’s Home Guard towards the end of World War II and how the news of a Nazi spy living in the town gives the men a chance to play their highly-anticipated part in the war. The news of a film release of Dad’s Army was an exciting form of nostalgia for older generations that had worshipped the BBC sitcom back in the late sixties. For a lot of the younger generations, they probably associate the programme as something that would be on the television screen when they visited their old Grandpa Bob or Great Uncle Jim.

Photo:Universal Pictures

Whichever kind of audience group the film intended to target, it did not meet the standard of comedy and entertainment originally produced by Jimmy Perry and David Croft.

Dad’s Army was never a show based on the spectacle of action, but as a film adaptation, one would expect a little bit more than what appeared to be an extended version of a bog standard TV episode.

Just when you think the plot is about to pipe up, you are sent back to listening to painful attempts of comedic dialogue and watching the characters in their aimless endeavours. I found myself laughing at the absence of funniness rather than the gags themselves as wit and comedy appeared to have taken a long-haul holiday together when this screenplay was written. I sometimes worry about accidently or subconsciously revealing plot spoilers when writing film reviews, but in this case, there aren’t any to reveal. The small climaxes in the plot that do exist: predictable. The so called “big” action: miniscule. The stab at bringing the background female characters to the spotlight is an admirable one, but it is fails on intent and creates no noticeable effect on the film’s plot.

Despite the lack of wit and action on behalf of the screenplay, the shrewdlycomposed cast were able to deliver some impressive performances. Catherine Ze-

ta-Jones elegantly plays the charismatic heartthrob for the male characters and adds a glamorous, yet dominant female to the screen. It is Toby Jones that brings the much needed sparkle to the film. His take on the original portrayal of Captain Mainwaring by Arthur Lowe is a one of great homage, and his physical clumsiness creates a nostalgic nod towards the slapstick comedy that is famously attributed to Dad’s Army. A contemporary comedic figure in the form of Blake Harrison—famously known for his role of Neil in The Inbetweeners—he enabled the character of Private Pike as a humorous form of dopiness as much as the screenplay allows. From a cinematic and artistic point of view, the film is a visual treat for the eye. The costumes are on point, with a poignant use of red, white and blue. Yet it is the use of the famous song “Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Hitler?” that gives that one last blow of nostalgia and creates a feeling of community amongst the platoon.

The film lacks substance and most of all, comedy. But the performances of the cast are able to bring some dignity back to this adaptation. All in all, some things should be left as they are, the proof being in Dad’s Army.

“All warehouse scenes were extremely difficult to film. It was freezing, chaotic, and we were juggling a massive camera whilst trying to choreograph a semi-realistic fight sequence.”

She does not think that it is always possible for everything to run smoothly on set, but they were all working really well together as a crew, “They even put up with me during my mad moments!” She added.

She has had a few director jobs before, but this was the largest. Being slightly overwhelmed by the amount of responsibility she had on set, she found the whole process pretty daunting. “Honestly though, waking up at 5am to stand

in a freezing cold warehouse all day was really worth it and I had such a great time on set.”

She really hopes to do more directing in the future and would like to enrol into a film school after university to see where it takes her. The Filmmaking Society is planning on entering the film into a short film competition and two new scripts have been selected for the new semester.

Top 5 Music Documentaries of the 2010s 5) Cobain: Montage of Heck Everyone knows ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Everyone knows the story of Nirvana. But before watching Montage of Heck, you don’t really know the real story of Kurt Cobain. Through open access to diaries and notebooks from throughout his life, there is an intimate insight into one of the most gifted—but ultimately tortured—individuals rock music has ever seen.

4) There Are No Innocent Bystanders Nowadays, you can see The Libertines performing at your local arena, but rewind to the years before 2010 happened and the prospect of the Cockney troubadours performing together was completely inconceivable. Director and longtime band photographer Roger Sargent builds up to their big reunion show at Reading Festival. He provides an insiders account of past chaotic escapades about a band who could have been a major indie force, yet they imploded under internal conflicts and drug problems.

Interview

Georgia Adams: One to Ten Nicole Tamer Film Editor Georgia Adams enjoyed directing short film One to Ten, produced by the University of Manchester’s Filmmaking Society; as well as another film called Hostage.

One to Ten is a superhero film where everyone has a power. Reuben and his friends—along with their unique abilities—embark on a quest for vengeance against a rival gang.

Georgia Adams completely fell in love with the story and immediately knew

that she had to work on it. “Plus, Taiyo [Yoshida, the writer] had created some strong female characters which I thought was great too.” She initially applied for assistant director but because she was so keen, the role of the director was given to her.

It was, at times, difficult for Georgia to bring her vision across since there were a few contradictory ideas flying about when it came to the production of the film, so compromises had to be made.

There are always tricky parts and challenges on a film set, Georgia agreed that it was not always easy, expressing that:

Photo:Mimi Koku

Photo: Film 4

3) Amy Despite Amy Winehouse’s meteoric rise around 2006, fame and the endless media scrutiny from tabloid was certainly not for her. Amy highlights the charismatic charm and undeniable creative talent of Winehouse, making her downfall—through the toxic influences surrounding her—a deeply devastating watch.

HOME Pick of the Week

Trumbo

Bryan Cranston’s performance anchors this period movie about Dalton Trumbo’s life and battle with McCarthyism

Photo: Bleecker Street

Nadia Cheung Subeditor In this biopic, we get taken back in time to 1947—where a rich and successful Hollywood screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) faces scrutiny for his involvement with the Communist Party of the USA before the 1940s as The Red Scare in the United States had began

to work its way up into a what could be compared to as a sort of witch hunt hysteria. During this height of fear in America, there was a fear of communist influence over Hollywood pictures infiltrating its American audience. Dalton Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of high profile Hollywood screenwriters and directors who were accused and later received prison sentences and had been banned from working in Holly-

wood up until the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1975.

The film centres on Trumbo—his fight, his downfall, and his rise again as the successful Academy Award-winning screenwriter he was (Roman Holiday, The Brave One). Bryan Cranston portrays Trumbo with great presence, embodying a booze and Benzedrine-induced workaholic who sticks to his guns and writes obsessively as a way of fighting and overthrowing the power of the blacklist. The film focuses on about two main things throughout the film—Trumbo’s life, his relationships with his work, family and friends, and the devastation of The Red Scare and the blacklist that ruined reputations which lead Trumbo to continue work as a screenwriter under multiple pseudonyms and names of other people. Aside from all of this, Dalton Trumbo becomes a sort of rebellious figure for Hollywood’s famous employees and perhaps even a martyr for screenwriters overthrowing a government committee.

I’m not sure how accurate this film is of Dalton Trumbo’s real life, but it sure is a well-plotted out fantasy for the Hollywood Golden Age daydreamers.

Costume design and cinematography in this film was especially great for the

portrayed time period, this gave a postwar film noir feel that was not convoluted or dry, but actually quite believable and mesmerising. Keeping in the biographical film direction, Trumbo features a several characters based on real people at the time. Diane Lane plays Trumbo’s wife Cleo who keeps the family together and Elle Fanning draws in unlikely attention playing Nikola, the eldest Trumbo who has the spirit for social justice and activism, involving herself with the Civil Rights Movement. Helen Mirren plays Hedda Hopper, a pesky gossip-columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and Louis C.K. also stars as composite character, Arlen Hird, portraying Trumbo’s trustworthy friend and ally.

Even though this film does touch on the devastating aftermaths of being blacklisted in a McCarthy era of fear and paranoia, I think in several ways this film can be looked at as not just a hyped up biopic about a famous screenwriter, but also as a film with a message about truth, perseverance and fight. There’s still an element of fear and paranoia in society that is not so different to how it was back then.

2) George Harrison: Living in the Material World Take one look at the films of Martin Scorsese and it’s clear he resonates with a passion for music. The legendary director documents the life of arguably the most under-appreciated Beatle in George Harrison—putting his work in the band on a pedestal. More importantly, however, are the scenes devoted to his life outside of the Fab Four with his spirituality and good nature being focused upon. Three-and-a-half hours isn’t long enough.

1) Searching for Sugar Man This is one of those films where the story will repeat over in your mind.

Rodríguez was unknown in the US and UK, whilst in South Africa, he was as big as Dylan or Elvis. Living under the apartheid-era regime, the emotive, anti-establishment songs by Rodríguez offered hope to many. But still nobody knew anything about him other than the myths—until some fans search for answers. One of the greatest ever music documentaries.

Jack Lunn Film Critic

Books

20

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Upcoming

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script to be published Yasmin Mannan Books Editor J.K Rowling has just announced that she will be publishing the script of the upcoming stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This is unbelievably exciting news for anyone who has been longing to return to the Wizarding World.

However, J.K. Rowling has made it clear on Twitter that the new publication is not a novel, and definitely not a prequel, since it is set 19 years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Both parts of the script will be published by Little Brown in the UK—the release date is currently set for 31 July. In addition, The Bookseller has confirmed that an e-book edition will be published by the infamous Harry Potter fan-site Pottermore.

Apparently the script is being published due to the ‘massive fan demand’ from overseas readers who will not be able to travel to the Palace Theatre in London’s West End to see the play. The publication of the script will also bring joy to those Upfans in the UK, including myself, who were not able to get tickets because of the obvious high demand. I know many fans will be thoroughly looking forward to reading the Cursed Child script, although not yet giving up hope of finding a ticket to the live play.

Poetry

Photo: capitrueno @Flickr

Upcoming

Upcoming: an evening with Gloria Steinem Photo: jef_safi @Flickr

My postmodern friend

by Joely Thomas

You’re always there but never quite here.

Letters flow through your veins as you breath rhetoric; your heart an amalgam of emojis I sit... waiting... watching... ... anticipating the response...

My solitude satiated with interaction, I’m no longer sure if I am ever alone.

And I wonder... what makes you different from the other skeletons of syntax what separates you from the screen at which I stare in a parallel reality, what significance can conversation ever bear Perhaps all either of us desire is words to fill the silence.

Gloria Steinem, hailed as one of the leaders and major spokeswomen of the 1960s and 1970s Second Wave feminist movement— an acclaimed writer, editor, journalist, and activist—is coming to Manchester for her first visit to the UK in 20 years.

On the evening of Tuesday 23 February, Gloria Steinem will be in conversation with The Observer critic and author Rachel Cooke, hosted by Manchester Literature Festival in Waterstones Manchester. Steinem is the co-founder of the American ‘liberal feminist’ magazines and has devoted her life to discussing, writing, and campaigning for women’s rights and equality. She has also organised social movements across the United States and campaigned with Hillary Clinton and Bobby Kennedy. Some of her best-selling books include Revolution From Within, Moving Beyond Words, and Everyday Rebellions.

A representative from Manchester Literature Festival stated glowingly that Steinem’s new memoir, My Life on the Road, “beautifully documents her childhood, her relationship with her nomadic father, her own wanderlust, and her travels across the United States and India.” It also “crucially focuses on the individuals and communities she encountered on her travels and the profound impact they have had on her life and work.” bell hooks praises the book My Life on the Road as “as an inspiring work, a call for action” as well as an essential reading for anyone interested in feminism and social change.

Tuesday 23 February 7:00pm Waterstones Deansgate 91 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 2BW Tickets £10 / £8 concessions & Waterstones card holders Book on 0843 208 0500

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Food & Drink

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Feature

Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen When you peer into the window of Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen you may not be compelled to enter; its décor seems somewhat lacklustre with its pale yellow walls and non-atmospheric bright lights. But do not be fooled by looks, otherwise more fool you! For inside its four walls lies that which all Mancunian vegetarians and vegans seek: genuinely delicious food that don’t need no meat to make you feel alive.

We opted for a starter of Grilled Veggie Dumplings, which were frankly the most delicious dumplings to ever meet Gina’s tongue. A decision not to be regretted, we were served with four parcels of veg heaven. Despite being fried, a departure from the normal choice of the steamed variant, the thick crisp exterior and crunchy texture was perfection (sorry steamy, you’ve definitely been replaced, no longer filling the dumpling void in Gina’s heart). One bite into these babies and the folded blankets reveal an array of fresh veg that spring out to say hello, bursting with full flavours that will delight the senses.

The slightly tangy vinegar dip adds to this eclectic tongue-party of tastes and textures, resulting in a dish to be savoured.

Alongside the dumplings was a dish we’d never come across before, Spicy Tofu with Caramel. Recommended as the Chef’s special, this starter was different enough to make us think we’d temporarily been transported to China. The chewy cubes of tofu were bathed in a salty-sweet

caramel sauce that made it almost a pudding, but not quite. The verdict is out on this one; we felt it perhaps missed the mark in taste, but then again this is coming from two ladies whose palettes are not accustomed to the wonders of genuine Chinese cuisine.

The (very healthy) main of Fresh Ginger with Broccoli was served up in plentiful supply, on a plate that appeared to be a microcosm of the South American rainforest. Despite a good hefty portion of miniature trees, this dish was never going to be the most stimulating. However, what the broc lost in excitement, it definitely gained in refreshing and palatecleansing points. The dish was a step up from the average steamed kind, as the greens were smoother and slightly ‘oiled up’. The sliced ginger complimented the subtle green flavours with a much-welcomed zesty kick.

The Salt and Pepper Crispy Chilli Tofu was also a great success. Delicate cubes of tofu, bristling with taste and spongy bite, mingled with spicy slices of red chilli and green pepper.

This dry dish complimented the broccoli well, providing that umami flavour expected of a great Chinese restaurant as well as the fullness of a meat dish.

The pièce de résistance in Kate’s opinion was the Stir Fried Mixed Rice with Ginger. Though just a side dish, it had the most wonderful flavour and could have been enjoyed as a meal in itself if the portion was larger. The rice was fragrant, delicate and moist

Join Kate Savin and Gina Castellheim on another whirlwind adventure as they turn to the veg side and head to the specialists on Wilmslow Road: Lotus Kitchen.

Photo: Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen

with a subtle kick provided by the ginger. Rice is easy to do well but it’s rarely memorable. Nom. A pleasant surprise to the meal was the unsuspecting Honey Chrysanthemum Tea. It was a beautiful brew presented with mini flowers bobbing atop a sea of smooth, honey waves nothing less than a beverage work of art. The taste was thick, musky and a silky slide to the soul. Warming and nourishing, this is definitely the herbal brew to be cradled on a windy Manchester night. It should be noted that there’s no Asahi to be seen; it’s BYOB with a small fee for bottle opening.

All in all, Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen is a delight and should be high on the list of all food lovers in Manchester, not just those who avoid meat.

Watch this space for more vegetarian/vegan reviews from Gina and Kate, who are attempting to eat their way through all the meat-free restaurants Manchester has to offer before they graduate.

Competition time: A 224-page colour book filled with stunning photos and over 55 beautiful recipes and anecdotes from Manchester’s finest independent restaurants, cafés, delicatessens, pubs, farm shops and producers. This book is all about championing local suppliers and making the most of the food and drink on offer by making innovative delicious dishes that all home cooks can try.

We’re running a recipe competition to see who can come up with the best dish using only six ingredients!

The rules: Everyone starts with a tin of tomatoes Pantry staples: oil, salt, spices, etc. don’t count.

Recipes will be judged by the editors and frequent contributors on three criteria: taste, presentation and creativity.

Anyone can enter regardless of having been involved in the Mancunion food or not.

Competition closes: 01/03/16 For your chance to win an exclusive copy, please send your answers to: food@mancunion.com.

Good luck!

Pictured: Infamous Blueberry Pancakes, Victoria Sponge at Dish and Spoon, Cocktails by Harvey Nichols.

Photos:The M anchester Cook Book

The Coffee Column:

Established in 1996, Java claims to be Manchester’s oldest independent, though this does seem a dubious claim as its independent status is questionable; with four branches dotted around Greater Manchester.

There are two small branches at Victoria Station and Rochdale Interchange, one on Station Approach just off of Oxford Road (opposite the rail station) and, contrasting to the polluted station environment, a larger branch in the quaint rural village of Uppermill, Saddleworth (a 30 minute train ride to Greenfield and a 10 minute walk). I realised that purists may not consider this an independent—but the fact that it is local and it is not a multi-national corporation is good enough for me.

Whilst the situation of three of their premises is hardly prepossessing, the interior is inviting and a welcome break from the commuter rat race. The owner spent years travelling around Europe, sampling the finest coffees that the continent had to offer.

Photo: waferboard@Flickr

But upon his return to the UK, he could not find anywhere that rivalled the taste of the freshly ground coffee of France, Italy and even the former Soviet states.

This inspired him to create a coffee shop to echo the ambience and quality of coffee found around Europe.

The cafés branches are furnished with granite tables, comfortable sofas and walls plastered with mirrors, vintage Italian posters and chalkboards presenting the day’s specials.

The coffee offered was a rich blend of beans that provided the classic coffee aroma but with a fuller flavour and a smoky twist. For those of you who aren’t morning people, the caffeine hit from their coffee is the perfect pick-me-up before any snooze-inducing lecture.

This is probably the reason why Java provide one of my favourite coffees in Manchester. The downside is, if you’re looking for a unique coffee with a bit of character, then you probably would be better off looking elsewhere (Takk and Idle Hands come in mind). Essentially, Java does the classic strong coffee to nearperfection.

Alongside the cakes, scones and waffles found in any café at home or on the continent, Java offer a fine range of artisan pies and sandwiches beautifully presented with fresh salad. It’s a great place for lunch or a light bite. Their very own deli counter means that pies can also be taken home if you like the look of what's on offer but haven't got the space in your stomach.

The price for food and coffee is not going to break the bank either, and what’s better is that the food is locally sourced from bakers, butchers, delicatessens and farmers in Greater Manchester.

Perhaps if you wanted something stronger, or to wash down the pâté and toast with something different, Java have a comprehensive list of good wines— from the ones I’ve tried at least. The better known brands of continental beers—Peroni, Birra Moretti and Stella Artois—are also available.

A while ago, I read an article in The Guardian on the dismal state of catering at train stations. Java break this trend with high standards and a broad range to cater for any traveller’s foodie desires. When you’re making the journey back home, I can only recommend picking up your travel snack or coffee from Java one of their branches in Manchester rather than the usual corporate chain. It’s reasonably priced, great quality and convenient.

Price £ 1-3 Station Approach / 4 Cigar Alley, Todd St

Food & Drink 23

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM Review

Chinese New Year

Chowing down on Chinese New Big Trouble in Little China Year Town

Felix Sanders heads to his frequent haunt of China town, to find a not-so-expected turn of events

Stanley Johnson checks out the city centre’s Street Food Village set up in celebration of Chinese New Year

To honour the dawning of the Year of the Monkey, a load of food stalls popped up around the city centre last week. Braving the rain, I sauntered over to check out the Asianinspired grub on offer.

A few well-known chains such as Yo! Sushi and Tampopo were there, there was also a Tsing Tao pop-up bar with some kind of robotic ping pong dragon, plus a stall selling bubble tea. This was all fine, but what really interested me was the excellent selection of independent eateries and street food vendors from Manchester and beyond.

First off, I joined the long queue at Mei Mei’s Street Cart thinking that if everyone else was queuing, then there must be something good on offer. The twins behind this London-based street food business specialise in a type of Chinese comfort food that we don’t often see everyday. Initially, I was tempted by the Bao (a kind of Chinese steamed bun), but it looked pretty full on so instead, I opted for a Jian Bing. Normally eaten for breakfast or as a late night snack, a Jian Bing is a soy milk crepe smeared with egg, drizzled with hoisin sauce, sprinkled with coriander and spring onions before being folded around a crispy wonton cracker. I went for the ‘original’, which turned out to be pretty good—but not quite as tasty as I had hoped. Mei Mei’s Street Cart did some more packed out versions of the Jian Bing stuffed with garlic-fried chicken, barbecued pork or five-spiced aubergine. I’ll probably choose one of those next time, they looked and sounded like they would have a bit more going on.

Firecracker rice with Char Sui vegan-friendly pork.

Photo:The Mancunion

Next, I headed to New Cathedral Street and checked out The Hungry Gecko’s shiny trailer, where Manchester chef and Masterchef

Photos:The Mancunion

finalist Jackie Kearney was serving up some East Asian flavours. I went for the Firecracker Rice with Char Sui vegan-friendly pork, as well as Tibetan Momo dumplings. The vegan pork was actually made of seitan (a wheat protein and gluten), and it was deliciously meaty and chewy with a sweet glaze that balanced nicely with the fresh and spicy bed of rice, coriander, and chilli beneath it. The dish was completed with a generous squeeze of the lime wedge made it all.

The dumplings were also good: sticky, with a savoury mushroom filling. The maple chilli jam that it came with was really great. Jackie my server was clearly proud of it (quite rightly, too). She told us about the great sadness that overcomes her every time she sees a punter drenching their dumplings in sriracha hot sauce before tasting the delicious condiment she has laboured over.

Somehow I was still peckish after all of that, and I wandered back down to St. Anne’s Square and paid a visit to the delegation sent

by Manchester’s dim sum masters, Yang Sing.

They had such a wide range of tasty dumplings that it was difficult to make a decision. In the end, I went for the yam croquettes. They were crunchy and filled with a grey, lava-hot filling with a lingering spiciness. I had no idea what was in them or how they were made (something to do with yams, I’m guessing).

But they were pretty good!

Feeling satisfied, I went to take a look at the 50 foot golden dragon which was meant to be in Exchange Square. Alas, the dragon was nowhere to be seen.

Apparently he had been scared away by the February drizzle.

Healthy Vegan Fruit Cake Helena Maxwell-Jackson offers a vegan, sugar free and oil free substitute for indulgence If, like me, your New Year’s resolutions fell flat by day six, you might be thinking about giving the whole “new year new me” commotion another go this February. After all, with the exam stress, cold wintery mornings, and your brain still feeling just a little fuzzy from the New Year, January is clearly not the time of the year give up the things that make you smile.

Now in all reality, February is hardly a warmer month—or a less depressing one, and whilst I’m hardly going to be giving up wine for green juice, I might just be able to indulge a little in this fruit cake.

Vegan, sugar free, and oil free—it sounds like enough to send you running back into late 2015, when a girl could eat a cake during the festive season without checking to see if was part of the elimination diet. But believe it or not, this cake is actually really good, especially when served with lashings of butter and cream—be-

cause the ‘new you’ can wait until March.

Ingredients: 125g dates 100g prunes 150g raisins 100g sultanas 100g currants 50g blueberries or cranberries 25g ground almonds 175g wholewheat spelt flour 3 teaspoons of baking powder 1 tablespoon cocoa powder 1 teaspoon of mixed spice A grated rind and the juice of half an orange.

3 tablespoons of water

The Year Of The Monkey at Happy Seasons.

I go to Chinatown quite a lot. It’s on my preferred route to the city centre from Oxford Road, and the supermarkets, like Wing Fat, are the only places in Manchester where one can buy a pork stock cube.

‘Why don’t they sell pork stock cubes in Sainsburys,’ I hear the masses cry, but I have no answer. The British are no less fans of the pig, to me it makes no sense.

I digress. So, I am often in Chinatown but have never eaten there for the feeble excuse that I could never make my mind up about where to go. I knew Yang Sing has a great, reputation but sadly a little out of budget.

Last weekend’s Chinese New Year provided a great opportunity to throw caution to the wind and just pick somewhere. I went on two criteria, the name and the shop front. There is a window at the front of the poetically named ‘Happy Seasons,’ where a man hangs roast ducks and marinated pork belly over his large wooden chopping block and butchers knife. It was not a hard sell.

Having taken in the sights and synchronised dancing grannies outside the town hall, my companion, a wood turner and microbrewer from the Bristol, and I made our way to Chinatown. Even though the lunchtime crowd hadn’t fully descended, there was still a queue outside the restaurant, I’m always happy to wait, it builds suspense.

We got our table, ordered a couple of Tsing Tao’s and rang in the New Year. The Chinese way of doing things certainly made a nice change from the British equivalent, pickling your liver and wistfully hoping for a kiss at midnight.

Mr Radford and I began with the most generous serving of prawn toast I’ve ever seen, alongside char siu pork buns, which demand a twenty minute patient wait in order to steam properly. The dough

was insane, like an edible pillow, and the filling equally as good.

By this point the street outside was filling up and a line, twice the size the one we stood in was beginning to form. Very satisfying.

We ordered a pretty generous selection of mains, some more successful than others. The lemon and honey chicken was a little unsettling and rather artificial, reminiscent of a lemon curd, or maybe the air freshener in a hotel bathroom. The deep fried scallops left much to be desired, but when dredged in a sweet and sour sauce it was hard to notice.

However, the bbq mix was serious, it demanded authority and was essentially what we came for.

The pork belly was undeniably the star of the show but the duck, on the bone, took names as well. The crackling on the bbq char siu pork provided a pleasant Anglican point of reference. All of that for £7.50 is an outstanding deal. Vegetables were essential in establishing some kind of balance in our New Year’s feast. A large plate of pak choi in oyster sauce served that purpose with extreme vengeance.

About halfway through the meal a commotion broke out outside, as the elderly man at the table next to us would later explain, the fireworks were to ward of evil spirits. We looked on as the owner of the restaurant walked out the front door and lit a huge length of firecrackers. Two-man dragon puppets, embodying the evil spirits, danced around the explosions. But alas, the fireworks were not enough to deter the dragon spirits, they followed the owner back into the restaurant as cymbals crashed and iPhones were launched by small women in a fierce attempt to capture the mayhem.

I can safely say this was the most surreal dining experience of my life. Come next year there is only place to be for Chinese New Year, Happy Seasons.

Price £££ • Food 4/5 • Drinks 3/5 • Service 3/5 • Atmosphere 3/5 • Value 4/5

Mei Mei’s Street Cart’s Jian Bing. Photo: The Mancunion

Instructions: 1. Heat the oven at 160°C 2. Grease the sides of a 2lb loaf tin, and line the bottom of the tin with greased parchment paper.

3. Cut a piece of foil large enough to fold over the top of the tin.

4. Put the prunes and dates in a small saucepan with 300ml of water and simmer with saucepan lid on for 10 minutes. Leave to completely soften whilst you measure out and mix together your dried fruits.

5. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.

6. Mix in the dried fruits and ground almonds.

7. Pour the prune and dates and their liquid with the juice, orange rind and the 3 tablespoons of water into a blender and blend to a puree.

8. Make a well in your dry ingredients and pour in the wet ones, then fold everything together thoroughly so that it is moist. Place into the loaf tin and level the top.

9. Cover the loaf tin with the foil and place into the oven for one hour.

10. After cooking, leave the loaf tin to cool down.

Then run a knife around the sides, and turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Photos:The Mancunion

Arts

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ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Feature Feature

The Factory and the Ghost Ranch Arts Editor Ashley McGovern explores our fascination with artists’ studios Designing the Walking Liberty Half Dollar, valorizing Union soldiers in bronze and chiselling Abraham Lincoln’s beard, brow and crotch; in other words, minting the US economy and styling Presidential power, were just some of the workaday duties of Adolph A. Weinman’s studio on West 21st Street, New York. A minor architectural sculptor, Weinman’s papers, including a photograph of him halfway up a wooden ladder, measuring a polished version of one of his enthroned Lincolns destined for a public square in Kentucky ca.

1906, are held in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American art. Their yellowing trove of commission receipts, private letters, sketchbooks and photographs of bygone American artists was published in book form in 2006, Artists in Their Studios. Full of the forgotten items of practising artists, mostly of jobbing society portraitists, it gives a glimpse of the sacred workspaces that we will never see again. Like the teeth of unrecognisable bodies, we need the exact addresses on New York’s grid to identify them.

Other studios resist the condition of being mere property, and are anything but lost in the depths of art history. Some studios achieve such renown that they can erase the formality of the generic studious term and create their own identity. Think of Warhol’s Silver Factory, O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch, Pollock’s Long Island barn, Raphael’s synagogue (a name given to his crowded workshop by rival Sebastiano del Piombo) – the aura of creative space continues to the present day, seen most recently by the resurrection of Joan Miro’s Mallorca studio in Duke Street London. You can’t transplant the Mediterranean light, or the mummified cat he hung on his wall, but our fascination is still peaked and we want to see the copied set-up of unfinished works and pots of dry brushes.

Although creatively dormant, the re-made studios give a chance to judge the temperament, or at least the tidiness, of the artist. Francis Bacon’s Rees Mews studio, bought and recreated by Dublin City Gallery in 1998, is a squalid hovel and unmistakeably the room of a messy masochist; someone who wallows in the chaos of slashed canvases and sallow walls and

tries to put this atmosphere into his work. Between 1921 and 1936, 26 Rue du Depart was Piet Mondrian’s geometric chamber and its clean freak arrangement of furniture and rigid paintings, life and art, is an anathema to Bacon’s den. The ultimate De Stijl living room was treated like an archaeological dig by Tate Liverpool last year when they rebuilt the entire room based on black and white photographs. His canvases appear above the door frame, act as a partition wall, they are pinned where a mirror should be; they are the foundation stones of the room.

Mondrian’s chapel to Neo-Plasticism is like the stage set of a surreal play. Similarly, the photograph of Weinman’s factory of Americana on 21st West Street is inherently theatrical, edging towards the surreal. Three Abe Lincolns sit frozen in the one room. In fact, when museums recreate the workstations of the dead they are following a dramatic tradition. After Magritte by Tom Stoppard is an absurdist pastiche of a made-up Magritte painting (if anything, it’s close in style to The Menaced Assassin (1927)) where the characters try to piece together the crime scene of a non-existent crime. The short play finishes and ends with the characters posed like a tableaux.

Charles L. Mee’s play bobrauschenbergamerica (2001) is a one-act ‘combine’ of vignettes inspired by the subject matter of Robert Rauschenberg’s works.

It’s a medley of kitschy scenarios. We listen to the sex fantasies of a trucker and Rauschenberg’s mother discoursing sentimentally about her boy’s childhood. At one point, the characters group together to act out a conspiracy movie about blowing up a train, reading the plot and dialogue from their unique screenplay – two license plates. Mee’s collection of scenes is supposed to a Pygmalion-like animation of Rauschenberg’s paintings and its a more daring experiment that any museum can afford to offer. The plays reinforce the chaos of artistic creation and reminds us why we love to see inside the great studios. Even in the placid, cleaner versions offered to us by galleries, the studio offers the biography of both artist and creation.

Exhibition

Review: Cabinets of Curiosity

Michael Mayhew exhibits his collection of ‘wonder art’ for the punters of Sandbar Neil Greenhalgh Contributor How do we look at art in pubs? The pub is a great place to talk freely, to tell stories and to have arguments, but does art have any place within this dialogue, or is it just seen as the stuff on the walls for us to ignore? Does it join in on the conversation or is it purely decorative?

Some pubs have a couple of pictures dotted about, perhaps brass things hanging off the ceiling, and maybe a few framed photographs, but they almost always have significance to the geography and history of the building and its surroundings. Other pubs choose to have changing exhibitions from local artists, and Sandbar, just off Oxford Road on Grosvenor Street, does a bit of both.

Mayhew’s exhibition, at first glance, fits right in to the decor of the pub; there are odd curios all over the place in Sandbar, from reclaimed wood for benches to old letterpress stamps installed in the tables; there’s certainly a generous amount of visual stimuli.

On closer inspection, there are some very odd and very extraordinary objects to be seen within these glass cabinets either side of the fireplace. Everything from Michael Jackson’s sperm to a cast of Einstein’s brain is on show, and you can even buy a cast of Marilyn Monroe’s vagina for only £450. What a bargain.

One of the more visually striking pieces, a cast of a face, is an item that Mayhew claims, in a fascinating story, to have been found in the caves of Afghanistan: Saved from destruction during the Russian invasion

of 1979, it was bought in a flea market in Siberia before being brought to England in 20 In his opening essay, Mayhew discusses the role of storytelling in his work and the confusing ambiguity that can be found within our differentiation of fact and fiction.

Photo: Lyndon Mayhew-Dodd

The idea that art or museum artefacts, whether genuine or not, can inspire myths and stories simply emphasises what is special about the specific type of conversations that can be found in the pub. Go to Sandbar and look at Michael Mayhew’s stories for yourself, and decide which are fact and which are fantasy.

Best done with a pint of ale.

Visit Sandbar, 120 Grosvenor Street, Manchester or see online at sandbarmanchester.co.uk

GRAB YOUR FIRST BURGER AND GAME CARD FROM SATURDAY 6TH FEBRUARY. ONLY IN THE UNION BAR.

Theatre 25

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Preview

UoM Drama Society’s 2016 MIFTA Season It’s MIFTAs season once again and 2016 is set to be our most explosive yet! Every year, the Drama Society runs a series of plays in second semester which we lovingly dub The Manchester In-House Fringe Theatre Awards. It comes complete with a swanky award ceremony at the end, but ditches the competitiveness and vitriol of the real deal. This year showcases 8 plays; the most we’ve ever had, with 6 pieces of new writing. We’re also truly living up to being a ‘fringe’ festival, by branching out to some of Manchester’s best small venues like Aatma and Antwerp Mansion.

Novel Experiments In Living

21st to the 23rd of February Aatma Tickets from £4 and are available at: http://bit.ly/1PRpc6J Preview by Rob Paterson Writing is difficult. Well it isn’t, battling diseases is difficult. Living in poverty is difficult. Considering issues of international diplomacy and conflict is difficult. But writing?

Well it’s certainly up there. I’d give it… a 5, a solid 5. So as I sat there, pulling out hair and ceaselessly staring at a blank page, it struck me; I can use my writers block to my advantage. I can write a play about the profound irony that while I despair at the blank page I’ve been graced with, the rest of the world struggles to escape the lines that are thrust upon them.

Novel Experiments In Living is a comedy about choice; as a virtue, as a vice, as an illusion, as a terrifying reality. It follows some characters in a script who discover, to various extents, that they’re characters in a script.

With a fast pace and no blackout scene changes, the most challenging aspect of directing it has been arranging the intricate movement and mask sequences which stitch the dialogue together. I hope it’s paid off though, complementing the hilarious performances with a strong visual aesthetic.

Directing the actors has been easy, as I’ve been blessed with a talented cast who effortlessly bring a huge range of absurd characters to life. The plot will keep you guessing right until the end and has proved incredibly difficult to explain, so come and experience our bizarre world for yourself.

If you too are hurtling towards the terrifying blank page of post-graduation life, you might find something to relate to.

Even if you’re not, you’ll certainly find something to laugh at.

Breathing Corpses

An Evening With the Voices in Annie’s Head

24th to the 26th of February Antwerp Mansion Tickets from £4 and are available at: http://bit.ly/1PRpc6J Preview by Nadia Whiston

1st to the 3rd of March Students’ Union Council Chambers Tickets from £4 and are available at: http://bit.ly/1Tgp0QG Preview by Sarah Teale

Vaguely dystopian, bleak, Beckettian; Laura Wade’s Breathing Corpses (2005) is being brought to the dirge and decadence of Antwerp Mansion.

This irregular, achronological play flits between three seemingly disconnected story lines. Students of the University of Manchester are fostering these tragic vignettes through their gestation period, under direction from Lauren Savage, whose approach addresses the strange lack of control which the characters experience as they stare oblivion in the face.

Seven individuals, each one someone we have met, someone you have walked past in the street, or sat next to on a bus—all unhappy, all apparently cursed. The set will be constructed and deconstructed again before our eyes, in a story spanning about 80 minutes.

It is both tragedy and thriller, a drama drenched with a heavy sense of the inevitable which commands its audience to reflect back in order to make sense of the present. Wade has admitted to being fascinated with the inability to forget what you have seen; this unnerving and physical production promises to haunt, challenge and yet inexplicably, inspire.

‘An Evening With the Voices in Annie’s Head’?

That doesn’t even sound like a play.

It sounds like a TV show!

Maybe it’s about a TV show?

Maybe the voices in Annie’s head have taken the form of TV presenters?

Well that sounds stupid.

Probably stupid.

Do you think they’re nice to her?

To Annie?

God I hope not, Annie sounds dull.

Maybe it works because of how talented the actors are?

I’ve heard they are really, really talented actors.

What is this play even about?

Is this supposed to be the synopsis for the play?

Have they actually just written this list of questions instead of bothering to write an actual synopsis?

Is that really pretentious or really lazy?

Really both?

There’s definitely no reason to go and watch this play.

I mean, it’s on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd of March You are free at least one of those days.

And it’s at the Council Chambers, that is very close.

And you could take in a pint!

I think you should go!

The first starts on the 17th of February and the last ends on the 6th of March.

Full calender and tickets from just £4 are available at http://bit.ly/1PRpc6J

Review

Editor’s Picks

What’s on this week?

Monday QC16: The Library – For the Love of Drag – Contact Theatre, 8PM Two 2 – Octagon Theatre, 5PM When Ghandhi Came to Lancashire – Octagon Theatre, 7:30PM Tuesday Mary Poppins – Palace Theatre, 7:30PM Two 2 – Octagon Theatre, 7:30PM Wednesday Mary Poppins – Palace Theatre, 2:30 & 7:30PM Two 2 – Octagon Theatre, 2 & 7:30PM The House in Sofia with a Map of its Surroundings – Octagon Theatre, 7:30PM Thursday Mary Poppins – Palace Theatre, 7:30PM Two 2 – Octagon Theatre, 7:30PM Haddock and Chips Twice – Octagon Theatre, 7:30PM

Photo: garryknight @Flickr

Friday Husbands & Sons – Royal Exchange Theatre, 7PM Mary Poppins – Palace Theatre, 7:30PM Young Identity: One Mic Stand – Contact Theatre, 7PM Two 2 – Octagon Theatre, 7:30PM Saturday Husbands & Sons – Royal Exchange Theatre, 7PM Mary Poppins – Palace Theatre, 2:30 & 7:30PM Vampires Rock: The Ghost Train – Manchester Opera House, 7:30PM Two 2 – Octagon Theatre, 2 & 7:30PM Sunday Mary Poppins – Palace Theatre, 2PM Alexander Armstrong: A Year of Songs Live – Manchester Opera House, 7:30PM Novel Experiments In Living – Aatma, 7PM

A few picks throughout the week in Manchester Fancy getting involved?

We’re always looking for new contributors who have a passion for all things theatre.

Whether it be reviewing a show straight off the West End or an article discussing the ins and outs of theatre.

No experience is requried. Simply email us at: theatre@mancunion.com Or join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/ groups/388450984644679/ to find out more about joining The Mancunion team.

Review: Cats!

Harriett Gaynor Reviewer The magic of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is bought to life by David Ian Productions in this modern interpretation of the classic musical. The show saw its opening night of the UK and European tour at the Manchester Opera House.

The story begins in an old junkyard for the reunion of the jellicle cats before a vibrant explosion of dazzling feline choreography and harmonious song captivates the hearts of the Opera House audience. The challenging vocal arrangements paired with the intricate set design and elaborate costumes, enhanced this timeless classic.

For the most part, the musical was recreated in a format that mirrored the 1998 film production.

However, the redesign of Rum Tum Tugger’s role left some audience members questioning whether such a change was at all necessary. Those that are familiar with the original production will recall how Rum Tum Tugger was portrayed as a young, stylish and almost sensual cat, with an Elvis style quiff, thick mane of fur and a slender black body. In this version of the musical, these characteristics had been altered

in an attempt to reinvent Rum Tum Tugger with an almost ‘gangster’ persona.

Both the song and dance involved in the solo piece mirrored a modern day hip hop video. Although this appeared to be an attempt to modernise the traditional character, it in fact appeared to do the opposite and instead made the character seem old fashioned.

The combination of costume, song and dance was at times verging on the point of comical, something that as an avid Cats fan, I found exceptionally disappointing. Although this reinvention was not to one’s taste, Marcquelle Ward who was cast for the role successfully embraced all aspects of this reinvention and continued to entertain the audience both within this solo piece and for the duration of the performance.

Magical Mr. Mistoffelees was bought to life by Shiv Rabheru, who played an outstanding role. The choreography in the solo piece was intricate, well executed and a captivating display of exceptional talent, which was enhanced by the well synchronised pyrotechnics.

Anita Louise Combe took on the

Photo: The Mancunion.

role of Grizabella, the cat the had been banished from the rest of the clowder. Her emotion-filled rendition of Memory radiated through auditorium, resulting in a standing ovation from many audience members. Additional cast members who excelled in their role included Joe Henry and Emily Langham as Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Sophia McAvoy as Victoria and Kevin Stephen-Jones as Old Deuteronomy.

This stage production captivated the essence of the original Cats musical and provided audience members with a magical arrangement of song and dance. Despite the unnecessary modernisation of Rum Tum Tugger, the overall production was a well put together rendition of a timeless musical.

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Lifestyle

ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

What’s it all about, Chinese astrology?

Nadia Cheung looks deep into her crystal ball and pulls out 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac one by one February 8th 2016 was the end of the Sheep’s cycle and marked the start of the Year of the Fire Monkey, which, for some, will prove to be faster paced and more dramatic than the slow and emotional Year of the Sheep. Here’s a brief summary of the Chinese zodiac:

Rat Jan. 28, 1960 – Feb. 14, 1961 Feb. 15, 1972 – Feb. 2, 1973 Feb. 2, 1984 – Feb. 19, 1985 Feb. 19, 1996 – Feb. 6, 1997 Feb. 6, 2008 – Jan. 25, 2009 Jan. 25, 2020 – Feb. 11, 2021 Cunning creatures. Rat people are adaptable, smart and outgoing. Rats don’t like confrontation however, and are known to be quite timid and picky so they are quite hard to get to know. Rats are best drawn to people born year of the Dragon and Monkey as well as the Rabbit. Rats are not so great with Horse and Rooster.

Famous people born Year of the Rat: Grace Jones, Marlon Brando, Antonio Banderas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Eminem, Busta Rhymes.

Ox Feb. 15, 1961 – Feb. 4, 1962 Feb. 3, 1973 – Jan. 22, 1974 Feb. 20, 1985 – Feb. 8, 1986 Feb. 7, 1997 – Jan. 27, 1998 Jan. 26, 2009 – Feb. 13, 2010 Feb. 11, 2021 – Jan.31, 2022 Ox people are hardworking, patient, and determined people. They are quiet workaholics with a talent for leadership. Because of their tendency for thinking before doing, they can be stubborn, silent and distant. It’s a good idea to keep an Ox around for advice during the Year of the Fire Monkey as they are dependable and provide great insight. Most compatible with Snake, Rooster and Monkey, and least compatible are Goat, Dragon, and Horse.

Famous people born Year of the Ox: Lana Del Rey, Kristen Wiig, Barack Obama, Charlie Chaplin, Meryl Streep, Paul Newman.

Tiger

They do have a tendency to daydream and get lost in reality because of their amorous nature, and this can make them quite distant with others when this is pointed out. Best friends are Sheep, Pig and Dog. Best to avoid Snake and Rooster.

Feb. 5, 1962 – Jan. 24, 1963 Jan. 23, 1974 – Feb. 10, 1975 Feb. 9, 1986 – Jan. 28, 1987 Jan. 28, 1998 – Feb. 15, 1999 Feb. 14, 2010 – Feb. 2, 2011 Feb. 1, 2022 – Jan. 21, 2023

Famous people born Year of the Rabbit: M.I.A, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Whitney Houston, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino.

Bold, brave and energetic, Tigers love a challenge and a fight. They are independent, open and confident people who like adventure. They can be stubborn, irritable and impetuous—especially when people stand in their way. Though they are likeable to most others, they are best with Horse, Dog and Pig. Monkey, Snake, Ox and other Tiger people are least compatible with this sign.

Famous people born Year of the Tiger: Marilyn Monroe, Lady Gaga, Eartha Kitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Hefner, Drake.

Rabbit Jan. 25, 1963 – Feb. 12, 1964 Feb. 11, 1975 – Jan. 30, 1976 Jan. 29, 1987 – Feb. 16, 1988 Feb. 16, 1999 – Feb. 4, 2000 Feb. 3, 2011 – Jan. 22, 2012 Jan. 22, 2023 – Feb. 9, 2024

Dragon Feb. 13, 1964 – Feb. 1, 1965 Jan. 31, 1976 – Feb. 17, 1977 Feb. 17, 1988 – Feb. 5, 1989 Feb. 5, 2000 – Jan. 23, 2001 Jan. 23, 2012 – Feb. 9, 2013 Feb. 10, 2024 – Jan. 25, 2025 Dragons know how to make a decision and stick with it. They’re ambitious and inspiring to others but like Rabbit, there is a tendency of being unrealistic which results in fiery and intolerant behaviour.

There is also tendency of being stingy, Dragon people do not like to spend money. They do not get a long with Dog, Sheep and Ox but are great with Rat, Monkey and Snake.

Famous people born Year of the Dragon: Grimes, Bruce Lee, Andy Warhol, Rihanna, Russell Crowe, Reese Witherspoon.

Sensitive and modest. Those born in Rabbit are kind people who are quiet, elegant and gentle.

Snake Feb. 2, 1965 – Jan. 20, 1966 Feb. 18, 1977 – Feb. 6, 1978 Feb. 6, 1989 – Jan. 26, 1990 Jan. 24, 2001 – Feb. 11, 2002 Feb. 10, 2013 – Jan. 30, 2014 Jan. 29, 2025 – Feb. 16, 2026 Charming, sensitive and intuitive. Snake people are intelligent and have a knack for wisdom. They don’t have a lot of friends and it may be hard to get to know them because they are secretive and often keep their feelings locked up inside. Best friends for Snake are fellow Ox and Rooster. Avoid Pig. Famous people born Year of the Snake: Grace Kelly, Mohammed Ali, Courtney Love, Jeremy Kyle, Audrey Hepburn, Bob Dylan.

Horse Jan. 21, 1966 – Feb. 8, 1967 Feb. 7, 1978 – Jan. 27, 1979 Jan. 27, 1990 – Feb. 14, 1991 Feb. 12, 2002 – Jan. 31, 2003 Jan. 31, 2014 – Feb. 18, 2015 Feb. 17, 2026 – Feb. 5, 2027 Friendly and popular, Horse people have the gift of the gab. They are active people with high energy and a unique sense of humour. They do however, have the tendency to be self-centred and quite insecure, and often seek reassurance from others.

Best friends are Tiger, Dog and Sheep. Avoid Rat at all costs.

Famous people born Year of the Horse: Jimi Hendrix, Jennifer Lawrence, Mike Tyson, Salma Hayek, John Legend, James Franco.

Sheep Feb. 9, 1967 – Jan. 29, 1968 Jan. 28, 1979 – Feb. 15, 1980 Feb. 15, 1991 – Feb. 3, 1992 Feb. 1, 2003 – Jan. 21, 2004 Feb. 19, 2015 – Feb. 7, 2016 Feb. 6, 2027 – Jan. 25, 2028 Calm, thoughtful and romantic. Sheep people are often lone and creative thinkers. Sheep people are the best to ask for when it comes to emotional advice because of their frankness and honesty. They get along best with Rabbit, Pig, Horse and Monkey. Avoid Ox, Dragon, Snake and Dog.

Illustrations by Lily Cheung

Famous people born Year of the Sheep: Kurt Cobain, Azealia Banks, Tyler the Creator, Mick Jagger, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman.

Monkey Jan. 30, 1968 – Feb. 16, 1969 Feb. 16, 1980 – Feb. 4, 1981 Feb. 4, 1992 – Jan. 22, 1993 Jan. 22, 2004 – Feb. 8, 2005 Feb. 8,2016 – Jan. 27, 2017 Jan. 26, 2028 – Feb. 12, 2029 Monkey people like to entertain, socialise and have great wit, but they also have a tendency to get bored easily. When the year is of your correlating zodiac, it is found that luck won’t be as great as other years, so it is common to wear red for good luck. Best friends include Rat and Dragon. Conflicts with Dog and Rooster, but avoid Tiger.

Famous people born Year of the Monkey: Drew Barrymore, Miley Cyrus, Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Macaulay Culkin.

Rooster Feb. 17, 1969 – Feb.5, 1970 Feb. 5, 1981 – Jan.24, 1982 Jan. 23, 1993 – Feb.9, 1994 Feb. 9, 2005 – Jan. 28, 2006 Jan. 28, 2017 – Feb. 15, 2018 Feb. 13, 2029 – Feb. 2, 2030 Perfectionists at heart, Roosters are critical and can be considered nit-picky because they are so observant. Quite vain, they like to brag and love attention.

Talkative, outspoken and quite humorous, Roosters are capable people who are warm-hearted and just want to be loved. Best friends are Ox and Snake.

Avoid Rabbit.

Famous people born Year of the Rooster: Justin Timberlake, Debbie Harry, Alan Rickman, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, David Lynch.

Dog Feb. 6, 1970 – Jan. 26, 1971 Jan. 25, 1982 – Feb. 12, 1983 Feb. 10, 1994 – Jan. 30, 1995 Jan. 29, 2006 – Feb. 17, 2007 Feb. 16 ,2018 – Feb. 4, 2019 Feb. 3, 2030 – Jan. 22, 2031 Loyal, sincere and responsible. Dog individuals are sensitive and emotional, with the tendency to pessimism because they worry a lot. They are however, good friends to have because they are so loyal and loving to the ones they care about. Good allies for Dog are Tiger, Horse and Rabbit. Bad ones: Dragon.

Famous people born Year of the Dog: Madonna, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Cher, Prince, Nicki Minaj.

Pig Feb. 8, 1959 – Jan. 27, 1960 Jan. 27, 1971 – Feb. 24, 1972 Feb. 13, 1983 – Feb. 1, 1984 Jan. 31, 1995 – Feb. 18, 1996 Feb. 18, 2007 – Feb. 6, 2008 Feb. 5, 2019 – Jan. 24, 2020 Jan. 23, 2031 – Feb. 10, 2032 Honest, reliable and trustworthy. Pigs also have a tendency to be naïve and too trusting to a fault. Pigs know how to have a good time and enjoy the good things in life and that often makes them appear selfindulgent and lazy. But they’re not! Best with Sheep, Rabbit and Tiger. Not great at all with Snake.

Famous people born Year of the Pig: Snoop Dogg, Rick James, Winona Ryder, Elton John, Amy Winehouse, Jean Harlow.

Like Western astrology, not all signs will cater to you precisely. Other aspects to look at are the element of the year you were born, the hour (your ascendant), day and month (generally found to be your Western astrology counterpart).

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ISSUE 15 / 22nd FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Overheard University of Manchester “Is anyone allergic to daffodils because they’re so cheap in M&S at the minute and I want to fill the house with them.”

– Overheard in Didsbury

“What happened when the first naked man met the first naked woman?”

– Overheard in Withington

“I’d have to be hospitalised if I killed a load of kittens in my sleep. I’ve got to stop thinking about it.”

– Overheard in Main Library

“It’s like a record player on the wrong speed… or like Bob Dylan?”

– Overheard in the SU

It’s getting hot in here, so bring two towels Liam Kelly turns up the heat with Bikram Yoga In a bid to further my quest to become a total parody of myself, and to add a semblance of productivity to my crippling, chronic procrastination, I decided to spend £30 and sign up for a 30-day trial period at Bikram Yoga in the Northern Quarter.

For the uninitiated, Bikram Yoga is a yoga class done in a studio heated up to 40°c, and with 40 per cent humidity—which, for 90 minutes, sees its practitioners do 26 postures of various difficulty, as well as two breathing exercises.

The proprietors of Bikram Yoga promise a lot, claiming that regular practice improves mindfulness, flexibility, strength, muscle tone, and general fitness. As none of those have ever applied to me, I was intrigued to see what effect regular yoga classes would have.

Now, while I was not a total novice to yoga practice (I started following an online video in my Oak House bedroom, which was not great for achieving proper form), the first session of Bikram was a real shock to the system.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most shocking aspect was the combination of the heat and humidity, along with their inevitable partner: sweat. Before going to the studio, you are asked to bring two towels with you, as well as plenty of water. If anything, that is not enough.

By the end of the 90 minutes, after the final breathing exercise, every member of that class came out drenched in their own fluid and car-

ried out their a totally saturated towel, as well as a sense of having accomplished something.

As I went to more and more classes, the routine became more manageable; however, as each class is choreographed in exactly the same way, there is a danger of it becoming dull.

Each class proved more than capable of totally tiring me out, making the rest of day a recuperative affair, with an average session burning roughly 400 calories. Inexplicably, there are sadists who exist in the Manchester area that take on the 30 Day Challenge—taking part in Bikram classes for 30 consecutive days, or more.

Even more inexplicably (and unacceptably), the attire of one older gentleman who was a regular at the class consisted solely of a canary yellow pair of Speedo-style swimsuit. It is an image I will try to shake, but I fear it may live with me for the rest of my days.

“Inner peace” is an inherently difficult state of mind to achieve, and I’m not sure if I have ever, or ever will, achieve it. However, all of these sessions of Bikram that I attended were so taxing mentally and physically that it was almost impossible to think about anything that was happening outside that room. Never before have I felt so “in the moment”, which was a hugely welcomed change from exam and essay stress.

Plus, I never knew that I was capable of standing on one leg whilst pulling the other towards the top of my head. Or, as Bikram instructors call

Photo: alli_cat@Flickr

Breaking Out of the Bad Habit Cycle Because getting back on that healthy living wagon is not always as simple as it seems

“My slight webbing holds me back.”

– Overheard in Fallowfield

“Does looking at clickbait of 19th century freaks make you feel better about yourself?”

– Overheard on a 111

“He had the face of Mr. Bean and the body of Thor, I was so conflicted.”

– Overheard on a 143

it, the standing bow pose.

On balance, whilst I enjoyed my month of Bikram, it is not for the faint of heart (or body).

And with its cheapest subscription being £65 per month for 12 months (10 per cent less with a student card) I do not anticipate returning to the Bikram studio any time soon.

Photo: Shalom @Flickr

We all know how it starts. For a good few weeks after returning to uni you kept up your good habits. Exercise was done, vegetables were eaten and smugness runneth over. You are never going to eat badly again. This is your new way of life. You feel so much better, look how great you look.

Your friends hate you as you wax lyrical about spirulina while they’re just trying to eat their oven pizza in peace.

Then suddenly, disaster strikes in the

form of a good weekend. Going out for drinks on a Friday night swiftly turned into a full-on session of hardcore drinking. Talk of lemon water and a healthy gut are obliterated in the face of that lukewarm can of Stella that the equally inebriated guy in the club queue gave you. Before you know it, you’re sitting in McDonalds at 4 in the morning, covered in glitter and inhaling a McChicken sandwich that you don’t even remember order-

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I’ve recently started dating someone who lives really far down South. We agreed to try and both equally visit each other, but I’m beginning to feel like I’m spending all my time on a Megabus and it’s both costing me lots of money and starting to affect my work. I don’t want my boyfriend to think that I don’t want to make an effort to see him but I’m not sure I can carry on travelling down South all the time.

ing. It’s fine, you comfort yourself, a balanced diet clearly can’t always be good. You’ll make up for it tomorrow.

But of course that doesn’t happen.

Waking up with a mouth like Ghandi’s flipflop and still wearing your clothes from the night before, anything that involves the most carbs with the least effort is on your mind.

Self-denial creeps in as you find yourself in Wetherspoons with your friends, ordering a massive breakfast and then trying not to freak out when your hungover brain has to deal with the billions of mirrors in the toilets.

Having written off Saturday, you promise yourself that you will go for a run on Sunday when you’ve finally recovered.

Waking up at 1 o’clock on a Sunday, the realisation that you were supposed to have read 3 books, prepared a presentation and at least made some progress on your dissertation dawns on you and all else falls by the wayside as the cold dread spreads across your entire body. You hole up in the library and become singleminded in your panicked work. Nothing else can matter, and as a result you end up eating a questionable meal deal and some squashed Mr. Kipling bakewells, panic-bought from the re-

?! ?!

duced section. You remind yourself of those memes on Instagram that inform you that you can only pick two out of health, social life and work and laugh bitterly to yourself in the selfcheckout queue. The girl behind you buying avocados looks mildly concerned. You try to convince yourself that her work is probably going terribly, because of course it’s impossible to concentrate both on looking after yourself and doing uni work...

One of the best options you have to break out of this cycle is sleep. It may seem obvious, but going out for the majority of the weekend causes such a sleep deprivation that it can make you ravenously hungry as your body tries to find extra energy to keep it awake. Try and get to bed early on Sunday night, drink plenty of water and, if you have time, do some exercise when you wake up on a Monday morning. The most important thing is to get back on the healthy-eating wagon and not to convince yourself that you’re so far gone that it’s not worth it.

It’s a point said time and time again, but no-one is perfect all the time and everyone has spent a whole weekend eating solely McDonalds at least once. Maybe.

Perhaps this is the best time to start using Skype more. Have a conversation with your boyfriend about how it’s affecting your work and I’m sure he’ll understand. You didn’t go to university to spend all your time travelling down South, potentially affecting your degree. If your boyfriend has less work then perhaps it is better for him to come and visit you for a while. Then when you have less work you can travel down South a bit more.

“Here at the Students’ Union, everything we do is for students, by students. Sounds like a cliché, right? Think about it.

Until the 19th Feb

Ever been to Pangaea? Joined a society? Needed advice on an academic, financial or wellbeing issue? Or simply eaten a delicious burger down in our bar?

All of these amazing facilities and events are provided with the direction of our elected Exec Team, who work full-time to implement your ideas, run campaigns, support student-led activities and ensure your voice is heard by the University.”

manchesterstudentsunion.com/elections

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Ticket Price Battle Won by Supporters but War Must Rage On Daniel Austin Sport Reporter

Following a mass protest by supporters of Liverpool Football Club during a Premier League match, the club’s owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) have issued a sensational apology and withdrawn plans to greatly increase the cost of general admission tickets to Anfield, in a move that represents a victory for supporter power everywhere.

The American investment group had planned to usher in tickets topping £77 from the beginning of the 2016/17 season, causing anger among the supporter base. Fan groups subsequently organised a walkout in the 77th minute of the game against Sunderland, which saw roughly 15,000 fans leave the ground early. Banners were held aloft depicting the Merseyside club’s iconic Liverbird lifting a fan upside down and emptying his pockets, while repeated cries of “enough is enough” were loud and clear as hordes of people exited the stadium.

The price rise was due to take place in spite of a heavily increased television rights’

dea that saw Sky Sports and BT Sports spend a combined £5.1bn to air the Premier League in the UK, from which all 20 clubs will benefit greatly starting this summer. Fans took exception to the fact that the club was seeking even more money from loyal supporters in spite of such a windfall.

In contrast to previous attempts to justify the hefty increase, FSG released a statement reading “message received,” explaining that the incensed reaction of supporters had led them to reverse their pricing proposals and instead announce a freeze on costs for the next two seasons.

The most expensive general admission ticket to Anfield will now remain at £59 for the foreseeable future.

FSG’s exceptionally quick turnaround on the price issue demonstrates two things: that fan power remains an extraordinarily powerful tool, and that the increases were so inconsequential to the club’s overall earnings that they could be easily removed in one-fell-swoop.

In fact, the amount of money all Premier League clubs will earn on the back of the bumper TV deal means that they could allow every single fan free entry

The Mancunion Sport are delighted to announce that we have been given the opportunity to report on Manchester City games, and been given access to the press areas at the club. Sport Editor Harry Newton has been appointed Student Reporter by the club, and his reports will be going up on our website each week. Below is an extract from the recent game between Manchestre City and Leicester City by Harry.

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and still make more money than in the past few years.

It is certainly not just supporters of Liverpool that face frankly ludicrous admission charges.

This season, fans of Arsenal must pay a minimum of £1,014 for a regular season ticket, and even West Ham United charge up to an obscene £95 to see a single game at Upton Park. Whilst clubs seek to squeeze every last penny from increasingly disenfranchised supporters, the BBC found the average price of the cheapest tickets in the Premier League had doubled in comparison to the cost of cost of living since 2011. Ticket prices have risen at a rate of roughly 1000% since 1989, just prior to the Premier League’s inception in 1992.

The fight to lower ticket prices has now reached a pivotal point; with the debate having dominated the back pages for the past week, a recent segment of analysis on Match of the Day was devoted to an uncharacteristically passionate declaration from Alan Shearer, who said: “I don’t think any fan in the country, at all, should be asked to pay more for tickets next season. If anything fans should be rewarded for their loyalty. Give them [tickets] for £10, £20.”

Bad day at the office?

Everyone’s had them. We’ve all accidentally stapled our tie to a piece of paper, or spilt a coffee on the photocopier; and today City had theirs. City didn’t particularly play badly, there were plenty chances to score and they saw a lot of the ball.

Two set pieces and a great Mahrez goal were the deciders, despite a late surge from Sergio and the gang. Agüero scored arguably the best goal of the match with a great header, but it was not enough to see the blues overturn the table-toppers.

Demonstrably, fans currently have the ascendency; clubs are either already backing down slightly, or are being questioned about their pricing regimes by supporters and assorted media.

With the standard now having been set at Anfield, demonstrations from fans nationwide could see clubs everywhere put under real, meaningful pressure to lower prices, as it remains clear that they will receive little help from the Premier League itself or elsewhere.

In a recent meeting of all 20 Premier League clubs, only Everton FC were willing to “loudly” discuss measures to reduce the cost of tickets for away supporters, according to the Daily Mail.

The issue has also been raised in the House of Commons by Labour MP Clive Efford. Prime Minister David Cameron (a selfdeclared supporter of both West Ham and Aston Villa, and any other team that plays in claret and blue if his speech writers’ happen to drop the ball again) declared football ticket prices “a problem” in parliament last week and stated he would consider “looking into” a meeting with the Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) and proposals by the Labour Party to place an elected

supporter representative on the board of all football clubs.

Supporters up and down the land probably shouldn’t hold their collective breath, though.

The Conservatives are not exactly known for championing the underdog in the fight against corporations, and may not wish to risk upsetting an industry that contributes £684m to the UK economy annually from tourism alone. Mr. Cameron and his Chancellor George Osbourne’s affiliation and regular meetings with media mogul Rupert Murdoch may well play a factor, too.

The Australian’s BSkyB holds the rights to broadcast the majority of Premier League games, for which it shelled out £4.2bn to cover the years 2016-2019.

Cheaper ticket prices would enable more supporters to regularly attend games, in lieu of rarer visits from foreign tourists, potentially reducing the viewership for Sky Sports’ football offering in the UK. The demonstration of a united front from all supporters (possibly under the FSF banner), therefore, remains the best way for football fans to seek genuine positive change on the ticket price issue. But supporters often use issues of money and class as a means of division and an extension of rivalry, as opposed to a basis for unification.

Take, for example, regular terrace chants such as “We pay your benefits,” and “You’ll never get a job.” The reality is that those on benefits and without jobs have long been unable to afford to attend a Premier League game. Job Seekers Allowance stands at roughly £50-£75 per week, barely enough to live off, never mind enough to buy a match ticket with. Whether a fan is unemployed, a student, in a low paid job or has a family to provide for, attending football matches is either already an impossibility or fast becoming one.

Mocking those struggling in such a difficult socio-economic environment as there is at present seriously undermines the clear fact that all football fans, regardless of perceived wealth, should be able to watch their team play football every once in a while.

Supporters are certainly not a financially homogenous group, as demonstrated by YouGov’s Profile LITE aggregator. According to the software, fans of Arsenal are, on average, likely to have up to £499 spare each month, and be able to afford far more expensive tickets, than supporters of Everton, for example, who

Another header from Agüero? Is he Edin Džeko in disguise?

Leicester City 5000/1 at the start of the season to win the league, and now the favourites; Leicester City have surprised everyone this season. Leicester’s team performance and energy against City was commendable and a rare sight at the Etihad Stadium, as many teams turned up to sit eleven players in their own half awaiting the City attacking masterclass. The Leicester back four were strong

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have less than £125 to spare. Both can agree on one thing, though; according to YouGov’s “favourite celebrities” section, they bloody love Kay Burley.

Those differences between clubs, however, do not alter the fact that all fans are being routinely ripped off.

“It’s very dangerous to have high prices. It’s an important thing for clubs to have a normal price so fans keep coming.” Manuel Pellegrini For clarity, the inference should not be that rival supporters join arms forever and no longer take pleasure in intense, tribal rivalry.

Nobody wants to watch West Ham United and Milwall fans skipping round the East End hand-in-hand throwing flowers to passers-by. Sheer, unbridled, and often baseless hatred is one of the integral bedrocks on which the game is built and one which much never be eschewed.

But scandalous ticket prices are a major problem facing every single supporter in the country, and only unity can help to combat it.

Supporters of Liverpool Football Club came together to fight for fairer prices and managed a significant victory on the basis of one mass walk-out. If the whole nation of football supporters can work together, and take the necessary measures to protest, they can ensure the fight is taken further in order to win the war as well as the battle.

throughout the game, and the pace of Vardy and technique of Mahrez highlight that this team are worthy of their place at the top of the league.

Claudio Ranieri stated after the game that the team play as an eleven on the pitch, and this was evident from their performance.

Can Leicester win the league? Ranieri said that the fans “must continue to dream” but would not comment on anything that reaches beyond the next seven days. Personally, I’ve seen stranger things happen – Pitbull is still making music afterall!

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The English ODI Revolution Alex Whitcomb Sport Reporter

It is coming up to a year since the 2015 Cricket World Cup. Anyone familiar with cricket will remember it as one of the darkest days of English cricket— comparable even with the 5-0 drubbing the Test team took a year before in the Ashes. Played in Australia and New Zealand last spring, the 2015 WC was a disastrous affair for England. It was the first time they had failed to qualify to

the knockout stages in the history of the tournament. After being demolished

by Pakistan, Australia and Sri Lanka, England needed to beat Bangladesh to qualify. On paper, this should not have been a difficult task. Yet again England were embarrassed, succumbing to a 4th defeat that ultimately summed up their tournament.

Yet, over the course of just under a year, the fortunes of the ODI team have changed massively. At the time of writing, England are embroiled in a One Day series in South Africa. They led the series 2-1 with two matches left, playing

cricket of an unparalleled quality when compared to the World Cup. So, what has changed in the space of 11 months?

As expected, following the calamitous WC alterations made in the coaching department, Trevor Bayliss replaced Peter Moores as head coach, while Paul Farbrace was retained as assistant coach. Bayliss and Farbrace had previously worked as a coaching team with Sri Lanka; this familiarity, as well as a similarity in ideals, has reflected in the improved performance of the team.

Bayliss and Farbrace offered a different outlook to the old regime. Where previ-

Photo: Ben Sutherland@Flickr

ously the emphasis had been on statistics and stringent analysis, they put forward a more relaxed, and uncluttered strategy. Each player is given licence to play their own game, whether that is fast and dynamic or more methodical. In the context of the ODI team, the emphasis is on dynamism and high-scoring; giving the players greater freedom to play how they want has been hugely beneficial to team performance.

A new team ethos required an overhaul of personnel. This was initially implemented by Farbrace, acting as interim coach during the ODI series with New Zealand last June. Three big names of English cricket—Bell, Broad and Anderson—were relieved of One Day duties, and were replaced with younger, and more exciting players such as Jason Roy and Ben Stokes. The batting lineup was revamped. Explosive openers Roy and Alex Hales were chosen for their attacking mindset; their ability to immediately put England on the front foot in an innings. A middle order boasting Joe Root, Eoin Morgan, Stokes and Jos Buttler was intended to complement the openers with similarly explosive players. The template set by Farbrace for the ODI batting lineup has been maintained

by Bayliss as head coach: it is the modern day formula. New Zealand were pioneers of this formula during the fateful 2015 World Cup; they finished 2nd in the tournament. Headed by players such as Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson, the New Zealand team discarded all notions of conservative, accumulative play, asserting a new brand of high-octane, big-hitting cricket. While it sounds relatively simple, the way in which they executed this style within the tournament situation was remark-

able. And England were right to attempt to emulate it.

Since Farbrace and Bayliss took over, England’s ODI performances have markedly improved. In June 2015, they secured a 3-2 series win over New Zealand, posting 3 scores of over 350+ in the process. England had scored 350+ only twice ever before this. The trend continued into the ODI series with Australia (the reigning WC champions) at the end of the summer. Despite losing the series 3-2, England continued to play their new brand of cricket, contesting a series they would previously have been steamrolled in. Following this, in November 2015 they played an ODI series with Pakistan in the UAE, recording a 3-1 victory overall, thus continuing on the team improvement. Finally, again at the time of writing, England are playing a series in South Africa, 2-1 up with 2 matches to play. An ODI series win would cap off a memorable tour (England have already secured a Test series victory there).

However, even if they lose the series, the ODI team have continued their upward trajectory which is most pleasing.

Following the embarrassing defeats at the 2015 WC, the England ODI team is finally now something to be proud of.

They are an exciting team that people should look forward to watching. While the players should be credited, it is the coaches that deserve the highest praise.

They have revolutionised the English cricketing philosophy, while at the same time achieving results. The future is undoubtedly bright.

Manchester United’s “killers”, Wolfsburg.

The grandest stage, however, will be on Tuesday 23rd, when 3 out of the 4 semi-finalists of last year’s edition are going to be in action. The Emirates will be the set of “Mission Impossible 1”, where Arsenal have the almost unachievable task of stopping Barcelona from the first back-to-back of the history of the competition. Luis Enrique’s side looks unstoppable, especially at home, so Arsenal’s hopes of getting to the quarter-finals depend almost exclusively on the way Wenger’s defence will be able to

block the MSN (Messi-Suarez-Neymar) in London. The other big game of the night is in Turin, where last year’s runners-up Juventus will face Bayern Munich. After a shaky start to the year, the “bianconeri” have been on fire in the last few months, collecting 17 consecutive wins. However, Bayern are one of the favourites to get into the final in Milan, and Pep Guardiola aims to put his hands on the trophy before leaving Germany for Manchester.

Guardiola’s next team, Manchester City, will close the first leg on Wednesday 24th. The Citizens have, for the first time, a realistic chance of getting to the quarter finals, having been drawn with Dinamo Kiev (in the two previous occasions they had to face Barcelona). On paper, the game with Serhiy Rebrov’s team looks easier than it might actually be, since the Ukrainians proved to be a complicated opponent for both Chelsea and Porto during the group stage, especially when it came to playing at home. The other clash of the night will see Chelsea’s target Diego Simeone and his Atletico Madrid face PSV Eindhoven, who are currently sitting at the top of the Dutch league.

The menu is rich and it could be full of surprises. Now, the time has finally come for the beloved Champions League anthem to be played loudly again. “The Championssssss!”

The Return of the Champions League Davide Cappelli Sport Reporter It’s been more than two months since the last time the Champions League anthem echoed in the ears of football lovers around the world. Fortunately, the wait is finally over, as the road to Milano—San Siro, the home of AC and Inter Milan, which will be the theatre of the 2016 final—is about to continue. In order to get to the fashion capital on the 28th May, the 16 teams that have made it through the group stage must wear their best outfits, as a series of complicated matches awaits them. While the European Clubs Association is discussing possible changes to make the competition “more attractive”, as proposed

by ECA boss Karl-Heinz Rumenigge, on Tuesday night the Champions League will re-start with the first act of its traditional knockout stage.

The round of 16 will be opened by a “clash of blues”: Paris Saint-Germain against Chelsea. The game is a remake of last edition’s dramatic round of 16 where the Frenchmen knocked Mourinho’s army with a David Luiz’s goal and an extra-time Thiago Silva header, after Chelsea had taken the lead twice.

PSG have already near enough secured their title hopes in their domestic league (24 points ahead of Monaco,only 39 more to play for) and are only focused to improve their poor results in Europe

despite the big investments made in the last years by chairman Nasser AlKhelaifi. However, Chelsea’s good form under Guus Hiddink could be tricky for Zlatan and his teammates. On the same day, Benfica will host Zenit, with Andre Vilas-Boas aiming to get the Russians to the quarter finals for the first time in their history.

On the following night, in Rome, it will be Zinedine Zidane’s Champions League debut as a coach. Zizou, who lifted the trophy wearing “la camiseta blanca” in 2002, is hoping to join the elite

club of people who have won the CL both as a player and as a coach and, to do so, he will rely on CL top scorer Cristiano Ronaldo (11 goals so far). It could be another dramatic night for Roma, after a humiliating 6-1 defeat to Barcelona in the group stage, but the “giallorossi” seem to have changed gear with the return of Luciano Spalletti on the Stadio Olimpico’s bench. Meanwhile Gent, who unexpectedly condemned Valencia to the Europa League and knocked Lyon out of the competition, will try to surprise everyone again in a tie against

Photo: SmithGreg @Flickr

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ISSUE 14 / 15th FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

UoM’s Ultimate Frisbee Club Oliver Gray Sport Contributor

Photo: Oliver Gray

The performance of Halcyon over the weekend of the 6/7th February lived up to the successful history of the University of Manchester Ultimate Frisbee club. The University Indoor National Championship is an elite tournament between the top 20 most athletic and skilful university teams in the country. After an impressive win at university north-west regionals in November, Halcyon were expected to finish in a strong position at nationals.

After making a very strong start to the game and moving to 5-1, a small amount of complacency allowed Bath to win the next 6 points. At 6-5, with Bath needing only 1 more point to win, Halcyon displayed commendable grit to level the game 6-6 and produce universe point (next point wins). Bath had the first opportunity to score and Halcyon had to force a turnover of possession before having a chance on offence. A well-timed, layout block from Oliver Gray did just enough to produce a turnover of possession and gift Halcyon a chance to top the pool. After some incredibly nervous offence, Halcyon scored to win the game 7-6.

Pool Stage Comfortable wins over lower seeded teams, Staffordshire University (10-6) and the University of York (10-4) gave the team the opportunity to gain confidence and to settle nerves for those at nationals for the first time. The University of Dundee proved a greater challenge for the team; equal scoring was maintained for the majority of the game.

Importantly, Dundee were unable to produce many turnovers on the Halcyon offence. Eventually, the dogged defence of the entire squad contributed to turnovers that were converted by efficient offence.

Halcyon eventually won the game 7-5 with composed attacking.

The University of Bath was the final group game and proved to be a turning point for the weekend.

Quarter-final After a wakeup call by the University of Bath, the team produced a dominant performance to beat University College London and progress, with 3rd seed intact, into the quarterfinals. After rest and recuperation of Saturday night, the Sunday morning quarterfinal versus the University of Strathclyde was a test of who could start the better team.

Halcyon offence stuttered into life and despite the impressive layout block of Evan Smith, Strathclyde took a lead that was maintained for the majority of the game. With the prospect of being knocked out of medal contention at 6-4 down very much eminent, Halcyon held their nerve to attain 6-5. In front of a loud, patriotic Scottish crowd, Strathclyde only had to convert one of their final next two chances

to win the game. Nerves and some great pressure defence from both teams produced multiple turnovers and after a display of true grit and skill, Naoki Gotoh displayed a cool head under pressure to convert and produce the second universe point of the tournament at 6-6. For the second time, a block was required and another layout block from Oliver Gray allowed for a short pass to Pepe Espinosa to win and progress to the semi-final. The Scottish crowd became noticeably quieter while Manchester celebrated.

Semi-final Halcyon’s path to the national final was yet again challenged by Scottish dreams in the semi-final.

The University of St Andrews had put together a strong display throughout the tournament. Halcyon, fresh from the tumultuous experience of their quarter-final, produced an outstanding display of shutdown defence and ruthlessly efficient offence from the entire squad to move into an early lead that was maintained until the end of the game. The dominance of the performance was exemplified by a huge reception in double coverage by Pepe Espinosa to win the game 7-5.

Final After a long break, the team prepared well for the final. The University of Birmingham had experienced a far less dramatic route to the final and, be-

ing the only team to have beaten Halcyon indoors in three years, were the favourites. High class, clinical offence epitomised the entirety of the game and both defences struggled to produce turnovers. In particular, Steve Dixon dominated the statistics and united the offence. Unfortunately, on the occasions where Halcyon could produce a turnover, offensive inexperience of the defensive players in high pressure situations meant the team couldn’t convert the turnovers into points. Eventually, Birmingham’s defensive pressure told and a break in the offensive exchange meant that they took a one point lead to 7-6. Halcyon were able to maintain composure on offence and a huge layout score by Bart Garcia took the game to 7-7; however, Birmingham’s offense scored the subsequent third universe point of the tournament, despite enormous defensive pressure from Manchester’s Khoo Soo Thong, to win the game and the national title 8-7.

After a successful campaign, Mancunian heads now turn to the outdoor season, with the fantastic support of new sponsor, Wesser. After winning a silver medal indoors and bronze medal at last year’s outdoor national tournament, Halcyon will once again be one of the favourites to become national champions. The question remains as to whether ornot the dominance of the University of Birmingham can be broken. Again, watch this space, Halcyon will be back in April!

Varsity Success! UoM trounce MMU in American Football Alex Whitcomb Sport Reporter Super Bowl Sunday saw the University of Manchester’s own American Football team record a resounding victory in their BUCS match against Manchester Metropolitan University. Going into the game, UoM were the firm favourites, having a perfect league championship so far with five wins from five. By contrast MMU were at the bottom of the league with only one win all season.

Manchester Tyants dominated in defence, and made sure from

the start that the MMU eagles couldn’t get a foothold in the game.

The first quarter started poorly for MMU, with a botched kickoff giving Manchester a good position from which to attack. Tyrants capitalised on this with a textbook touchdown, after a series of effectively played downs.

This was shortly followed by Manchester’s number 23 Lawrence Sarpong scoring an excellently executed 50-yard touchdown. Manchester almost made it three from the quarter, but the direct pass to the endzone was dropped by the attacking player.

Photo: Mark Ferriss

The second quarter went much the same as the first, with the Tyrants scoring two more converted touchdowns. The dropped catch in the first quarter was expertly made up by a clean catch in the endzone by Manchester. This meant that Tyrants went into the dressing room with a 28-0 lead at half time.

The resumption of the match saw MMU have the lion’s share of possession but mostly within their own half, and failed to make any inroads into the strong UoM defence. The quarter ended without either side scoring any points, but the retention of their 28-point lead. UoM went back on the offensive in the final quarter and were rewarded with another touchdown, taking the lead, and the final score, to 35 – 0.

Manchester will be able to take a lot of confidence from this game, especially from the perspective of the defence. MMU managed to have possession of the ball in Manchester’s half for a grand total of one solitary down during the entire match, not even coming close to getting a touchdown. Luke Hart – one of Manchester’s four captains – said after the game that the quality has been evident this year, saying that “we’re lucky to have rich experience at defensive line and in the defensive backs”.

Photo: Mark Ferriss

Hart was also keen to stress how well the squad are working together and that offence and defence are part of a wider planned programme. “The patience of the coaches teamed with some intense hard work from the committee has ensured that the Tyrants is about a franchise rather than individuals.” Adding that “It’s a fantastic team feeling and that stems from an ethos that the

coaches have created”.

The Tyrants will be looking towards promotion now, with a healthy four-point buffer over nearest placed team York with two matches left in the regular season. Their remaining fixtures are away to Leeds and York and will hope to go into the promotion playoffs as their league’s invincibles.

BUCS Northern 2A (as of 12/02/2016) Manchester 12pts York 8pts Bradford 4pts Leeds 2pts MMU 2pts

15th FEBRUARY 2016/ ISSUE 14 FREE

SPORT @Mancunion_Sport

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The Great Call of China

Photo: foomtsuruhashi @Flickr

Adam Selby Sport Reporter

Although the January transfer window often fails to live up to the expectations set by its older brother during the summer, only time will tell whether or not the winter window of 2016 is looked upon as a game changer in World Football. As beneath the surface, through the deadline day mist of breaking news banners focusing on Pep Guardiola and the counting down of the hours until Jim White’s iconic gold tie made its first appearance, something both unique and significant was beginning to pick up pace in Chinese domestic football. A country and football league often considered in the same breath as the MLS or Indian Super League perhaps as an ideal destination for players to end their footballing career, was now gradually beginning to assert their authority and financial muscle in World Football.

And all of a sudden, the Chinese Super League has the potential to become a real force to be reckoned in World Football.

To the everyday football fan, it was perhaps Jiangsu Suning’s recent acquisition of former Chelsea midfielder and Brazilian international Ramires which made fans across the continent take note of the increasing role China is beginning to play in modern day football. In a deal reported to eventually total £25M with an initial fee of £20M, a player clearly capable of playing for a number of sides competing at the highest level in the Premier League and major European competitions swapped the blue o f

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South West London for the blue of Jiangsu Suning, managed also by former blue and Chelsea icon Dan Petrescu.

So as the dust settled and the new Chinese Super League record signing joined up with his new teammates and an ever-increasing number of stars now based in China, I struggle to think whether Mystic Meg would have even been able to predict the Chinese Super League’s next move. After being linked with a move to the Premier League during the latter stages of the 2014/15 season, the prolific Colombian and FC Porto forward Jackson Martinez reportedly turned down a whole host of offers throughout Europe to join 2013/14 La Liga winners Atlético Madrid, helping fill the attacking void left by the outgoing Arda Turan and Mario Mandžukić to FC Barcelona and Juventus respectively. And with an impressive goal-scoring record at both FC Porto and for his native Colombia, the €35M release clause paid by Diego Simeone’s Atlético looked like a shrewd business and money well spent.

“The 2014 World Cup Final attracted 87 million Chinese television viewers.”

His transition however from the Portuguese Primeira Liga to the Spanish La Liga certainly did not go to plan and after only netting twice in fifteen games (largely down to the impressive goalscoring record of the prolific Frenchman Antoine Griezmann) it looked as if Atlético were prepared to cut their losses on Martinez, reportedly offering him in a swap deal with Chelsea for former forward Diego Costa on deadline day. Yet somewhat out of the blue as the European transfer deadline had passed, the Chinese Super League with a keen eye on improving the wealth of quality running throughout the competition made their next move.

This time however it was to be 2015 Super League winners Guangzhou Evergrande managed by 2002 FIFA World Cup winner Luiz Felipe Scolari who capitalised on the players unrest and clubs willingness to recuperate the money spent on the forward. A matter of days later, it was confirmed that Jackson Martinez had joined the recent FIFA Club World Cup runners up to FC Barcelona Guangzhou Evergrande, in a record-breaking deal for the

Chinese Super League valued at €42M. And just as you thought lavish investment from sides in China would stop there, to the surprise of football fans across Europe especially those of Liverpool, Chelsea and Shakthar Donetsk, Jiangsu Suning flexed their financial prowess once again.

After a protracted transfer saga dating back to the early stages of the 2015/16 season, the highly rated Brazilian playmaker Alex Teixeira looked set to join Liverpool in the winter transfer window only for the deal to breakdown in the final week of January.

Prior to that earlier on in the season, Alex Teixeira had spoken publically of his desire to move away from the Ukraine to apply his trade elsewhere with Chelsea repeatedly signalled as the most likely destination. Although his previous employers Shakthar Donetsk suggested it was highly unlikely for the Brazilian to be sold this transfer window, it does seem once again that money does talk and quickly Ramires’ transfer record was exceeded by Jackson Martinez. Alex Teixeira’s €50M move now tops the Chinese Super League transfer charts.

These three transfers in particular perhaps stand out poignantly as a true indication of the direction that Chinese Football is heading towards but it would be unfair to dismiss the current wealth of talent across the board in the top tier of Chinese Football. At present former Premier League stars Gervinho, Demba Ba, Tim Cahill and Manchester City’s £19M club record signing back in 2007 Jô, are all competing in the Chinese Super League and given the recent wholesale investment on players based largely in Europe, South America and Africa, I would expect to see far more players not just simply at the end of their career but also at the peak of their powers heading to China to apply their trade.

And although the influx of household footballing names is widely recognised as a recent trend in the spending of Chinese clubs, it must not be forgotten that the likes of Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka moved directly from Chelsea to Shanghai Shenhua in 2012. Therefore although the Chinese Super League is now publically and forcefully beginning to a statement to its competitors in World Football, it does seem to have been the long-term aim of league to recruit the biggest names in the sport. And with recent rumours linking the likes of Dmitri Payet, Dani Alves and Yaya Touré with mega money summer moves to China with David Moyes even stating that he himself rejected a managerial offer from China recently, we could perhaps be already looking at the next big football powerhouse for many years to come.

But should leagues like the Indian Super League and the MLS begin to worry, given they are known universally for attracting marquee signings often at the end of their career? Furthermore is this way forward sustainable and consequently, what does the future hold for Chinese Football? Only time

will tell how the league continues to evolve but as a sport itself, football appears to never have been more popular. The 2014 World Cup Final attracted 87 million Chinese television viewers and the average viewing figure of the 64 tournament matches broadcast live on television was an impressive 21.57 million. Additionally a Forbes report in November 2014 also stated that China Media Capital (CMC), a state-backed investment firm chaired by media mogul Li Ruigang, had purchased the rights for the

Photo: Sergio Aguero

broadcast of the Chinese Super League for the next five years in a deal valued at around $1.3 billion.

And of course not to forget the state visit of Chinese president Xi Jinping and ‘that selfie’ with David Cameron and Sergio Aguero during a tour around the City Football Academy in October 2015, a visit which soon led to the $400m (£265m) investment from Chinese consortium CMC, securing a 13% stake of the City Football Group associated with Manchester City FC, valuing it at $3bn.

All things considered, the future clearly looks promising for Chinese football. Despite the many raised eyebrows from pundits across World Football and widespread questioning over whether recent acquisitions are in fact lured by the excessive sums of money spent instead of a genuine interest to develop as a player, the arrival of the likes of Jackson Martinez and Alex Teixeira can only be a good thing for both Chinese and World football as a whole. What these moves will mean for the international careers of players choosing to play in China will only become clear in time but as we clamour over the latest news in European Football, China has clearly done its homework and I really don’t think it will be long until it eventually reaches the top of the class.