Issue14

9th FEB 2015/ ISSUE 14 FREE

MANCHESTER’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER

Interview: T. F. Birch

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Homophobia, Church and Mosque

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Register to Vote

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The Deepwater Horizon crisis that occured in 2010. Photo: ideum @Flickr

University invests almost £40 million in fossil fuels - Research by the Manchester Fossil Free Campaign has found that the university’s shares in oil companies like Shell and BP are worth £9.5 million - A further £29.5 million is invested in fossil fuels through pension funds - In 2010, the University lost £2.28 million in endowment value, as a result of the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil spill Aidan Gregory Editor-in-chief Despite intense criticism from politicians and campaign groups, the University of Manchester still retains an enormous investment portfolio in the oil industry.

A series of freedom of information (FOI) requests made by Activities Officer Joel Smith have revealed that as of April 2014, the University of Manchester still had 846337 shares in fossil fuel companies, worth a total of £9529172. This total is £544805 more than last year, due to the university’s new investment of over £800000 in Glencore Xstrata.

In addition, the university has 117612 shares in Shell, which are worth £2963822. A further £29.5

million is invested in the 7 FTSE 100 fossil fuel companies via the University’s pension fund in the form of equity and corporate bonds.

The FOIs also found that during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in April 2010, which killed 12 people and caused huge amounts of environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico, the University’s 646466 shares in BP in April 2010 cost them £2.28 million in losses by the end of June the same year. This, according to the Fossil Free Campaign, “highlights the massive volatility in share price, making the case for divestment economic, scientific and moral.”

The issue of the university’s involvement with the oil industry has attracted serious controversy in the past. An expose in 2012 by The Mancunion found that by having 1.7 million shares in oil

companies, the university is contradicting its own ‘Policy for Responsible Investment’.

The policy says that with its investment managers, “the university will use its influence in an effort to reduce and, ideally, eliminate, irresponsible corporate behaviour leading to… environmental degradation and Human rights violations.”

Yet since the exposé, the university has continued to invest in the industry, and until now the true scale of investment was unknown.

The oil industry in return has invested vast amounts of money in the university. Currently, the university gets £16.37 million of inward investment from BP, with the company also helping to fund the International Centre for Advanced Materials. Shell also invests a further £4.74 million.

In a statement to the The Mancunion, Joel Smith, Activities and Development Officer and member of the Fossil Free campaign, said: “Despite the University’s focus on social responsibility, it’s disappointing to see that there has been little internal debate over the impact of supporting companies such as BP & Shell,” and urged the university to “continue meeting with us and to seriously assess the implications of continued investment in this industry.”

Smith added further that students can “join us at 12pm outside University Place on Friday the 13th of February to demonstrate for divestment from fossil fuels and join 1500 other students in signing the petition at bit.ly/fossilfreemcr” The University of Manchester has been approached for comment.

02 : NEWS

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Highlights P12 P13

Music: Music: Interview: Motor City Drum Ensemble

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Games: E-Sports and the King of the North

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Fashion: Smug married couples

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Picture of the week - “Standing up to violence against women” Members of the Students’ Union Executive promote the Reclaim the Night March, to be held on the 26th February. Photo: Jess Lishak

UEA Com-poo-ter Sciences student launches toilet app Kathryn Murray News Reporter

Jack Rustin, a student from the University of East Anglia, has launched a new free app that helps to guide users to the closest public toilet. The Flush Toilet Finder app works worldwide and has an existing database of 100000 public toilets.

Not only does it let users find toilets, you can also add locations of toilets that may not already be listed. The app is hoped to be of particular use to tourists and those with conditions such as Crohn’s and IBS. The inventor of the app, Jake Ruston, studies in UEA’s School of Computing Sciences. Talking about his creation he said: “The app accesses your GPS location to locate all the public conveniences in your area.

“There are already 100000 toilets listed in its database, however we are also crowd-sourcing information to add additional facilities.

“The app also provides information about whether toilets have disabled access, whether people need to obtain a key for access, and whether the facilities are free or not.

“I got the idea after making an app for the London underground. A lot of people were asking me to include details of toilet facilities for London, but I decided to go bigger and design something for the whole world.

“I asked my family and friends about whether

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Editor-in-chief : Aidan Gregory editor@mancunion.com Deputy Editor-in-chief : Charlie Spargo deputyeditor.mancunion@gmail.com Postal address: Univerity of Manchester Students’ Union, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PR Phone (0161) 275 2933

they thought it would be useful and they all thought it was a great idea. I think it will be really useful for almost everyone—but especially for people who are new to an area, visitors and tourists, and particularly for people with conditions such as

Crohn’s or IBS.” Norwich is reputed to be home to Britain’s oldest public toilet, so it is apt that the Flush Toilet Finder has been developed there.

Photo: Dirty Box Face @ Flickr.

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opinion@mancunion.com Fashion Editors: Aimée Grant Cumberbatch & Gráinne Morrison fashion@mancunion.com

Games Editors: James Thursfield & Matt Cole games@mancunion.com Lifestyle Editors: Robert Firth lifestyle@mancunion.com

Music Editors: Patrick Hinton, Samuel Ward, Lowell Clarke, and Daniel Whiteley music@mancunion.com Sport Editors: Andrew Georgeson & Will Kelly Sports Reporter: Liam Kelly sport@mancunion.com Theatre Editor: Nicole Tamer theatre@mancunion.com Arts Editor: Holly Smith arts@mancunion.com Interested in photo journalism, with an eye for colour and detail? The Mancunion are looking for photographers ! If you would like to get involved, contact Aidan Gregory at editor@mancunion.com

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NEWS : 03

Manchester Student Homes video targets Fallowfield house party ‘chaos’ Charlie Spargo Deputy Editor-in-Chief Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester Student Homes have produced a joint film pressuring students to cut down on loud house parties in Fallowfield, after complaints from residents in the student hub.

The video, titled ‘Student House Parties: The Impact’, was produced by members of the Manchester Metropolitan Students’ Union, in association with the Alcohol Impact project by the NUS and the Home Office. It was written and performed by students and residents of the area.

It follows a student house party that gets out of control, keeping older neighbours awake and ending in the police being called after a reveller gets bottled. It also shows an opportunist thief explaining how easy it is to rob houses during parties.

The host decides to allow anyone to come in the house, and a group of girls discuss how they have a few drinks before setting out. The implication is that these are the main reasons for the resulting disaster.

A police officer, speaking in the video, explains that “one in three victims of crime, theft, and burglary will be students.”

The video aims to get students to care for themselves and the community, by highlighting what can go wrong at a house party.

In November, headlines were made after south Manchester residents described the area as “chaos”, according to the Manchester Evening News, with residents of Amherst Road filming a particularly busy party on Halloween that lasted until 6am.

Residents also claimed to be disrupted by the

comings and goings of students to Fallowfield’s bars, “shouting and screaming in the street and even going to the toilet in people’s gardens.”

Police then requested extra funding from the University of Manchester and city council for extra patrols to crack down on this sort of behaviour in Fallowfield.

The University of Manchester has cracked down on the alleged anti-social conduct of its students, introducing powers to carry out off-campus discipline in September. Students seen to be ‘damaging the university’s reputation’ may now have action carried out against them.

Students have recalled stories of university staff visiting their homes and explaining the consequences of any behaviour deemed antisocial.

In response to the proposal in June, the Students’ Union Executive Team started a petition against this decision, which gained almost 2000 signatures.

They described the policy as “based on the premise that students are separate from the ‘community’, a divisive narrative that does not recognise students as residents of… their local community.”

Liberal Democrat MP for Withington, John Leech, raised the issue of rowdy parties in the House of Commons, advocating a 24-hour hotline to swiftly deal with complaints against students who cause disruption in the local area.

Leech blames the worsening problem on cheap supermarket alcohol and 24-hour licencing regulations, and recommends the council funnel more resources to dealing with the behaviour of students.

He has praised the video as “a really good way of getting the message through that there are student

safety, crime and anti-social behaviour issues connected with student parties.

Charlie Cook, General Secretary of the University of Manchester Students’ Union, said the video “adopts the same narrative as the new off-campus discipline policy introduced, distinguishing students as separate to the wider community, as well as conflating the issues of their victimisation with their own culpability.

“We call for a more positive and reflective narrative of students’ contribution to their neighbourhoods.

At this Union we facilitate a wide range of studentled initiatives around community involvement, and think a proactive approach to encouraging this kind of engagement would be a more sustainable solution.

“In relation to the risks of crime, it is unreasonable to expect an abstention from drinking or to stop having parties.

“Reminding students to lock their doors when they go out and know whose invited to their home is a more reasonable approach to raising awareness, although it is equally important to highlight [that] the vast majority of students already do this.

“The Students’ Union also run a number of initiatives through the Union such as the Safe Taxi Scheme and the Safe Zones along Oxford Road to support students who may feel vulnerable.”

In the video, a friend of the host gets badly injured by another partygoer. Photo: Screenshot

Three quarters of students Muslim students campaign against use porn for sex education Theresa May’s counter terrorism bill

The NUS has found that young people are inadequately informed about sex and calls for a government commitment to SRE lessons Anna Phillips News Editor A study has revealed that the majority of students view porn to fill the gaps in their knowledge about sex, and do not rate highly the sex education they receive in schools.

According to the research by the NUS, which spoke to more than 2500 students in the UK, 60 per cent of respondents admitted they watch porn to get their information about sex.

Despite the fact that almost 75 per cent of students agreed that porn creates unrealistic expectations of sex, 40 per cent cited porn as helping their understanding of sex.

The survey also found that two thirds of students failed to receive information about consent in their sex and relationship (SRE) lessons.

Listed as the top three sources relied on for sex information, students listed friends, school and sexual partners. Whereas in sex education lessons, topics covered were puberty, contraception, sexual health, and anatomy.

NUS Vice President Colum McGuire said: ‘’We now urge all political parties to commit to statutory SRE in their general election manifestos, and accept that simply biology

just won’t cut it. Sex is not a science lesson.

People are being left with gaps in their education. ‘’Inadequate SRE puts young people at risk.

I find it alarming that sexual partners are listed as top SRE source by our respondents.

Consider this in light of the fact that consent was never even raised for two thirds of respondents. The current system almost ignores LGBT relationships.’’

Jane Lees, Chair of Sex Education Forum, said: “Consent and relationship safety are real issues affecting students and sadly they are leaving school with little or no discussion on these topics. These survey findings hand young people the loudspeaker in calling for statutory sex and relationship education.’’

The NUS and Sex Education Forum have called for sex and relationship education to be compulsory in schools, and for the government to make efforts to recognise the importance of youth issues.

In this instance, statutory status for sex education would mean the subject was treated in the same way as other compulsory subjects, training teachers to address real-life issues including respectful relationships, LGBT issues and consent.

Anna Phillips News Editor Numerous Muslim student societies across the country are campaigning against the Home Secretary’s proposed counter terrorism and security bill.

The bill outlines new anti-terrorism measures to confront what it described as the greatest threat ‘’before or since’’ the 9/11 attacks, and is said to be seriously restricting free speech.

Part five of the proposed bill includes plans to place a legal duty on educational institutions including universities, schools, NHS Trusts and even nurseries, to implement measures in order to monitor rising radicalism.

Mrs May has criticised the ‘’complacency’’ of universities, stating that they were not taking the issue of radicalisation seriously enough.

Home Secretary, Theresa May, said: ‘’They need to be prepared to stand up and say that organisations that are extreme or support extremism or should not be part of their grouping.’’

She said that the policy is aimed at helping ‘’prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’’ and, ‘’where

organisations consistently fail, ministers will be able to issue directions to them- which will be enforceable by court order.’’

The strategy also believed to have named 25 boroughs most at risk from Islamic extremism, including Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, areas of London and Bradford.

The bill, has been met with various challenges.

MPs and peers have warned that universities should be exempt from this bill, at the risk of restricting academic freedom of speech.

Parliament’s joint human rights committee, which came before the second reading of the bill in January, expressed concern about the implications for freedom of expression.

They said that the legal uncertainty around the term ‘’extremism’’ will have ‘’seriously inhibiting effect on bona fide academic debate’’ in universities.

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies , (FOSIS), has also suggested that ‘’the proposed legislation is both unnecessary and ill-conceived’’ and calls on the government to ‘’take appropriate steps to ensure that academic freedom remains uncompromised by an efforts to tackle ex-

tremism in the UK.’’ This bill has increased significance since the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, and in speaking to Huffington Post UK, Vice President of FOSIS Ibrahim Ali, said: ‘’I worry that, in light of recent events in Paris, politicians who would previously have made major amendments to the bill, are now being too hesitant to do so’’.

He added: ‘’In an environment where Muslim students already feel like they are under increased surveillance, the measures outlined in this bill will only serve to reinforce those concerns.’’

Students across the country are also acting to raise awareness of these restrictions, and FOSIS have taken to twitter with the #studentnnotsuspect campaign.

Societies at LSE, UCL, SOAS, Queen Mary’s, Cardiff and Kingston University last month submitted emergency motions to their student unions urging them to make a stand against the bill.

LSE’s student Islamic Society has been urging supporters to visit www. stopthebill.co.uk to sign a petition which has already gathered over 9,000 signatures.

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

NEWS : 04

Students! Register to vote Last year, the Government introduced a new registration system of which many students are unaware. If you don’t register to vote, you could face an £80 fine Marcus Johns News Editor Thursday the 5th of February is the annual Voter Registration Day. This year, with changes to the registration system, the council have increased their campaign to get students to vote.

The Mancunion spoke to former University of Manchester student Elizabeth Mitchell about the system.

“The way you register to vote changed in July 2014 from a household registration system to an individual electoral registration system so the onus is now on the individual to go out there and register themselves,” she said.

“In some parts of the country this has been super successful but in somewhere like Manchester where we have a very large student population, this has been a big issue for us.”

Indeed, Manchester City Council’s electoral roll has shrunk dramatically by 52472 people due to the changes in the system; it is estimated that a large proportion of this number is students at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University.

John Leech MP, the current Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Manchester Withington (the constituency that contains Fallowfield)

only has a majority of 1894, largely as a result of student support in the 2010 General Election.

There are approximately 15761 students living in his constituency and he could face considerable backlash, if students register to vote.

She added, “you can now register online at www. gov.uk/vote , you can Google it, you can go to the Manchester Council website, or give the council a call. You must have your National Insurance number to register.

“If you move house, you are then taken off the electoral register, and a lot of people haven’t realised this. Students tend to move house each academic year and they will have to re-register.”

Many students are not aware that they are legally required to register to vote. She explained, “it is a legal requirement to be on the electoral register. This is not because you’re required to vote: You are not required to vote. You can choose to vote.

“The electoral register is used for things like selection of jurors for jury duty, which is a civic duty for everyone. It’s also used for credit checks, so you might not be able to get a mobile phone, for example, if you’re not registered.

“Because jury duty is a civic duty, there is an £80 fine if you are not on the electoral register. It takes a couple of minutes out of your time; why not?”

The University of Manchester no longer

automatically registers students who live in university halls en masse.

Because of this, Manchester City Council has increased its campaign to get students to register to vote: “The City Council has got teams of canvassers out; we did one in November and we have one coming up in February.

“We will put up registration desks in halls of residence in the hope of getting students’ attention and getting them on the electoral register.”

Part of the campaign to get students on the electoral roll is being run by final year University of Manchester business students who have set up the student society Register On Campus. Mitchell said, “they are doing a consultancy project and the Election Services Unit at the City Council are working as their clients.

“Register on Campus is around campus every Monday with various stalls set up. They will be registering people to vote, and if you register you get a freebie and are entered into a free prize draw.”

A University of Manchester spokesperson said: “Working with the Students’ Union since September last year, the university has embarked on an innovative multi-channel campaign to encourage students to register to vote. This includes a personal video message from Nancy Rothwell stating how important it is for students to have their say at

the ballot box. To date this campaign has resulted in 12500 clickthroughs directly from University channels to the official electoral registration site. We expect this number to rise further over the coming months as the campaign gathers pace up to the general election.

“The university will continue to look into the idea of giving students the option to enrol on the electoral register during the university registration process.”

Students are permitted to register on both at university and at home. Mitchell continued, “as students you are eligible to vote in two places. If you have two addresses, as a student your term-time address and home address, you can register at both of those places.

“You can vote twice in local elections, once in each area, but you can only vote in one location in a General Election. Students can register for postal ballot papers for either—or both—locations, which makes it easier to vote when away from home.

If you haven’t registered to vote you can do so at: www.gov.uk/vote Or you can phone Manchester City Council on: 0161 234 5000

Fifty per cent of trans students Preventing FGM in Manchester In light of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital consider dropping out of university -Mutilation, Greater Manchester Police raise awareness of their work Charlie Spargo Deputy Editor-in-Chief Half of all transgender students at UK universities consider dropping out, according to a study released last year.

The estimated number of trans students in the UK is 28000, according to the NUS. The report ‘Education Beyond the Straight and Narrow’, released in May 2014, also found that a third of trans students have experienced bullying or harassment at some point in their university career. This figure stands at one in five for LGBT students as a whole.

The NUS’s campaigns committee trans representative, Reubs Walsh, told The Guardian last week, “there are surprisingly few universities that have strict anti-LGBT-phobia policies in place.

“Very few reissue degree certificates to trans students once they’ve changed their names, or have made an effort to make gender neutral toilets and changing facilities available.”

Many trans students are left isolated financially after coming out and feel strongly the threat of violence and harassment.

The University of Manchester de-gendered its toilets in the Students’ Union in 2008, and some other universities such as Bradford, Bath and Staffordshire have also done this.

The Union building’s ground floor toilets simply have toilet cubicles, allowing individuals of any gender to use them without fear of discrimination or judgement.

Stonewall’s University Guide 2015, however, only awarded the University of Manchester 8 out of a possible 10 points, due to a lack of explicit welfare support for lesbian, gay and bisexual students, and no monitoring of students’ sexual orientation.

Matty Donaldson, one of the Union’s LGBTQIA+ Liberation reps, told The Mancunion, “[the findings that half of trans students consider leaving] are not surprising and they are not acceptable.

“These figures need to show universities all over the country that they need to do more to recognise the ways that the university is actively creating an oppressive environment, and more to support trans students with the challenges they face. The university needs to talk to its trans students to work together on making these changes.

“Examples of improvements include more gender neutral toilets, zero-tolerance policies against transphobia, more education for staff and students about trans people and support services that are trans friendly.

“It is important that students recognise ways that they can help to make the university a more transfriendly environment, for example by supporting trans campaigns or by attending workshops run by the Trans Rep about how to be a better ally—coming up on the 25th of February, 7pm, in the Student Union Activities Space.”

The University of Manchester is yet to comment on the findings of the report.

Recent polling by the Students’ Union Exec Team on harassment and bullying at the university found

that 17 per cent of students have experienced bullying but chose not to report it. A further 53 per cent did not know how to report it, and 5 per cent reported it with negative consequences.

Any student who identifies as trans or who falls under the trans umbrella is welcome to get in touch with Matty if they have any issues they would like to discuss or if they would like to find out more about the campaigns. Additionally, any students or staff who would like more information about how to be a better ally or on upcoming workshops should get in touch as well.

“People know me as Matty but my e-mail address is martha.donaldson@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk.”

He is currently running a series of events for LGBT History Month, and campaigning for more genderneutral toilets and better media representation of transgender individuals.

within the community to put an end to the practice Lauren Gorton News Editor Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have taken opportunity of the UN-sponsored International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), held on February 6th, to raise awareness of work being carried out to prevent the practice within the Greater Manchester community.

FGM involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia or injury to the female genital organs, whether for cultural or any other nontherapeutic reasons, and is prevalent in countries in central and northern Africa and parts of Asia.

It is allegedly carried out to safeguard a young woman’s virginity and her family’s honour, and can involve a festival or celebration as part of the ceremony.

GMP have been working over the last 12 months to create greater cooperation between all the agencies involved in dealing with the aftermath of FGM, including Manchester Airport. Further to this, they have been working alongside Manchester schools and members of local health and social care, resulting in a significant increase in the number of cases being referred to GMP over the last year.

Detective Chief Superintendent Vanessa Jardine said: “FGM is child abuse. We have to be clear with those that practice FGM that it is an offence and will not be tolerated.

“Whilst we wish to educate communities to understand the practice and the horrific nature of carrying out the procedure, we also need to stress that abuse of this nature is a very serious offence and will be investigated fully. The position could not be clearer under the UK law.

“As a force we have taken part in a number of awareness raising activities to increase understanding and to support those ‘at risk communi-

ties’. It reinforces the position that FGM is illegal and is considered as physical child abuse. This has included work with the airport and UK Border Agency to look for suspicious activity and support potential victims of FGM. By educating passengers there have been a number of referrals across the north of England regarding the practice.

“We are committed to continue our proactive operations at Manchester Airport. Intelligence from affected communities tells us that in the past children have been taken abroad for the purpose of FGM over the summer holidays. Our communities have to understand that the law prevents such practices when done in the UK or equally abroad.

Anyone found committing FGM will be held to account.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Jardine added: “There has been a lot of work take place between organisations such as the Greater Manchester FGM Forum to increase awareness and cooperation between agencies. We are continuing to look into reported cases of FGM and the increase in these is encouraging.”

In the UK, there is a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison for anyone found guilty of the offence. Taking someone overseas is still a crime in the UK if the mutilation is done by a UK national or permanent UK resident. It is also a crime if a UK national or permanent resident assists or gets a non-UK national or permanent resident to carry out the acts overseas on a UK national or permanent resident.

For full guidelines on FGM and the law, visit the Home Office website.

Anyone with concerns is asked to contact a teacher or doctor, and police on: 101 Crimestoppers anonymously on: 0800 555 111

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

NEWS : 05

‘Robot scientist’ could speed up the search for new drugs– the sky is not the limit!

Andy van den Bent-Kelly Science and Technology Editor

An artificially-intelligent ‘robot scientist’ called Eve could pave the way in the bid to make drug discovery faster and cheaper, according to the researchers who developed her.

Eve, who is based at the University of Manchester, can test thousands of compounds every day and uses machine learning to continually fine-tune her approach. She recently discovered that a compound known to have anti-cancer properties could potentially be used to combat malaria.

There has been a significant increase in the use of automated machinery in science over the past few years and robot scientists represent the latest development in workplace artificial intelligence.

They are able to develop and test hypotheses to explain any observations that they make, perform experiments and then interpret the results to amend their hypotheses accordingly. This cycle is then repeated. The experiments are designed and performed automatically by computer, without the need for human input, meaning that robot scientists are ideal for recording scientific knowledge.

Eve is the younger sister of Adam, a robot scientist prototype who was developed at the University of Cambridge in 2009 with the help of researchers from the University of Aberystwyth.

He became the first machine to independently discover new scientific knowledge when he autonomously investigated the genomics of the baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The same team developed Eve and based on

her recent endeavours, she promises to be even better. She has been focusing on identifying drug candidates for malaria, as well as other tropical diseases such as African sleeping sickness and Chagas’ disease.

Professor Ross King of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology said, “Neglected tropical diseases are a scourge of humanity, infecting hundreds of millions of people, and killing millions of people every year.

“We know what causes these diseases and that we can, in theory, attack the parasites that cause them using small molecule drugs. But the cost and speed of drug discovery and the economic return make them unattractive to the pharmaceutical industry.”

That’s what makes Eve so useful. She is much more efficient when it comes to multitasking, saving valuable time and money. Professor Steve Oliver of the University of Cambridge explained, “In the case of drug screening, she can search her library and select compounds that have a high probability of being active against the chosen drug target and she will prioritise screening them.”

Eve works by screening a large set of compounds against assays (tests), which are designed to be automatically engineered. This means that more types of assay can be applied and improves the efficiency of process. The probability of making an important discovery is subsequently increased.

Eve is capable of screening more than 10,000 compounds a day. Despite the simplicity of this process, it is still relatively slow and wasteful. The system is also unintelligent, since it makes no use of

what is learnt during the procedure To improve this, a random subset of the library is selected and tested against the first assay. By taking note of which compounds pass, Eve uses statistics and machine learning to predict new structures that might perform even better against the assays.

It is hoped that future robot scientists could even synthesise these compounds.

The researchers tested this approach by developing assays targeting key molecules from the parasites responsible for various tropical diseases.

These assays were tested against roughly 1,500 clinically approved compounds.

Eve discovered that an anti-cancer drug also

inhibits DHFR, a key molecule in the malaria parasite. Given the fact that many strains of parasite are developing immunity to existing drugs, this discovery could prove to be extremely important.

“Despite extensive efforts, no one has been able to find a new antimalarial that targets DHFR and is able to pass clinical trials,” concluded Professor Oliver.

“Eve’s discovery could be even more significant than just demonstrating a new approach to drug discovery.”

The use of artificial intelligence in science is already yielding promising results.

Photo: University of Manchester

Goldsmiths University cancel #ShapeYourFuture comedian’s free speech show - Students help to create Labour’s youth manifesto Jenny Sterne NewsEditor Comedian Kate Smurthwaite’s show at Goldsmiths University was cancelled last Sunday evening.

The universities comedy society, the organisers of the event, had received complaints about Smurthwaite’s personal opinions.

They posted a cancellation notice on the Facebook event that only 35 people had said they were attending.

The gig, ironically which was to focus on freedom of speech, had been reportedly under threat of picketing by the feminist society, who opposed Smurthwaite’s views on prostitution.

The event was the last event of Smurthwaite’s tour ‘Leftie Cock Womble’ and according to Smurthwaite the show was pulled ‘because security say they cannot guarantee the safety of students’ due to the threats of picketing.

Smurthwaite supports the Nordic model of sex work, in which paying for sex is criminalised but decriminalises those in prostitution and provides them with support, including helping them in leaving the industry.

It has since been noted that no mention of prostitution was to be made within the show.

The universities feminist society has also tweeted since denying that they intended to ‘no platform Kate Smurth-

waite and had nothing to do with the decision to cancel the show’.

The head of the comedy society released a statement saying ‘we were planning to go ahead with the gig until Kate told me 24 hours before that there was likely to be a picket with lots of students and non-students outside the venue.

I couldn’t verify this. Up to this point we had only sold 8 tickets so I decided to pull the plug.’

Despite this suggestion that the lack of ticket sales contributed largely to the decision to cancel the show; the news created a twitter storm, as many saw it as yet another example of censored free speech on campus.

According to research by the online magazine Spiked 80 percent of universities have restrictions on free speech.

Tom Slater, assistant editor at Spiked a co-ordinator of the project said “What’s worrying is we seem to have moved away from a clear ideological divide to an apolitical calculation as to who should be censored, because of a wider judgment based purely on the potential to upset and offend.”

However many of the universities who received a red ranking in Spiked research questioned the criteria used.

In an interview with The Guardian Bruce Galliver, president of Bath Spa students’ union “I don’t think any ideas are beyond criticism. But it’s offensive

language directed at individuals that I’d have a problem with, and that’s what our policies are trying to protect.”

One of the key criteria for a red ranking was the notion of ‘safe space’ policies. Tom Slater writing for Time Higher Education said of ‘Safe Space policies’ as being ‘a blank cheque to ban anything students’ unions deem too offensive, or too hot to handle’.

In

the

cancellation

notice

for

Smurthwaite’s gig the comedy society suggested that due to Smurthwaite’s views and the threat of a picket line, “there is likeliness that the Safe Space policy we abide by could be breached”.

Richard Dawkins, recently a very vocal advocator of free speech at universities, tweeted saying ‘Dear students, you do NOT go to university in order to hear only opinions you already agree with’.

However a spokesperson for Goldsmiths’ student union said: “The Goldsmiths comedy society is a small volunteer-led group. They made this decision independently from the union and we support their right to decide who plays their gigs.”

as part of the #Shapeyourfuture campaign Jenny Sterne News Editor To mark National Voter Registration Day Manchester Labour Students hosted a Q&A as part of the #ShapeYourFuture consultation.

The Labour Party is reaching out to 1635 year olds to help shape Labour’s Young Britain manifesto which is due to be published prior to the General Election.

Lisa Nandy MP and Councillor Jeff Smith spoke with students on issues such as Mansion tax, the minimum wage, zero hour contracts, unpaid internships, Higher education funding and graduate tax.

Lisa Nandy has been the MP for Wigan since 2010. In October 2013 Lisa was appointed Shadow Minister for Civil Society, and her parliamentary career has seen her serve as the Shadow Children’s Minister, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Tessa Jowell MP (Shadow Olympics Minister) and as a member of the Education Select Committee.

Jeff Smith is the Labour Party candidate for Manchester Withington in the upcoming General Election. He has been a councillor in Old Moat since 1997 and has been the Executive Member on Finance, Housing and Children’s Services. He was also a student here at Manchester and events officer of the Students’ union.

The event gave students the chance in two round table discussions to give their views as to what direction they think the

youth manifesto, and Labour’s general policies should take.

Lisa Nandy led a discussion on the issue of zero hour and short hour contracts.

Nandy highlighted that zero hour contracts are sometimes preferable, particularly for students; however they plan to bring in new laws giving workers a regular contract if they are working regular hours.

Students also argued that a legal definition of internships should be a part of the youth manifesto to prevent companies abusing the system and making students work for long periods without pay.

One of the biggest discussions centred on unsurprisingly university fees, with ideas such as a reduction to £6000 or a graduate tax being introduced to cover the costs.

The round table discussion with Jeff Smith turned to the issue of house parties and student safety in Fallowfield. Smith suggested that voting is key to resolving this issue; ‘if more young people have the vote, then politicians will have to listen to them’.

There is still the opportunity to have your say in Labour’s youth manifesto by completing their online youth consultation. http://www.labour.org.uk/w/shapeyour-future-today

06 : News

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Manchester students travel to Brussels to protest controversial TTIP proposal University of Manchester students and Young Green members travelled to Brussels as part of a 100-person delegation to protest the controversial, proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Lauren Gorton News Editor On Tuesday 3rd February, University of Manchester students and Green Party members Hannah McCarthy, Khinezar Tint and Natasha Brooks, travelled to Brussels to demonstrate against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). They travelled as part of a 100-person delegation for the latest round of negotiations over the controversial free trade deal between the EU and the USA. The TTIP is one of the European Commission’s proposed free trade agreements between the EU and the USA and is designed to result in multilateral economic growth. However the treaty would also allow governments to be sued by corporations if their laws or policies damaged the company’s profits.

Opponents to the proposed legislation have argued it to be one of the most controversial pieces that the Commission has attempted to implement. Stating that alongside the unprecedented powers the TTIP could

give to international corporations, it could also damage the NHS and put other public services at risk of privatisation.

John Hilary, executive director of War on Want and author of TTIP: A Charter for Deregulation, an Attack on Jobs, an End to Democracy said: “Our politicians need to wake up and recognise the levels of anger coming from ordinary people on TTIP. The public is outraged when they learn the level of threat this agreement poses to our common futures. MPs and MEPs alike must reflect public opposition to TTIP, not simply pander to the big business lobby.”

Amongst the 100 participants various other concerns have been raised over what might also be adversely impacted if the trade deal goes ahead, including fracking, data rights, the availability of HIV medication and regulatory standards on food and agriculture.

Demonstrators took the Eurostar to Brussels last Tuesday morning to demonstrate at the European Commission, meeting other activists and civil society groups from across Eu-

rope, as well as meeting local MEP Afzal Khan to voice their concerns about the trade deal.

The demonstration and trip to Brussels was organised by Global Justice Now, a campaigning organisation based in London that is part of a Europe-wide coalition of NGOs, trade unions and activist groups who are opposing the trade deal. The campaign was also supported by and includes members of War on Want, 38 Degrees and Unison.

Guy Taylor, the trade justice campaigner for Global Justice Now and the organiser of the #NoTTIP train said: “It’s unheard of to see so many people travelling to Brussels to lobby their MEPs like this, and that’s testament to just how hugely controversial and unpopular TTIP has become.

“David Cameron waxes lyrical about national sovereignty, but in pushing for this deal he is wilfully handing sovereignty to big business. The deal is not really about trade, it’s about entrenching the position of the one percent. It should be abandoned.”

Manchester student Natasha Brooks,

Co-Chair of Manchester Young Greens and member of Stop TTIP MCR said: “TTIP is a trade deal that’s been negotiated behind closed doors between the EU and the USA. If it’s passed it would have enormous consequences on so many aspects of our lives, from the food we eat to our public health services.

“Ordinary people from across the UK

A Trojan TTIP horse was also part of the demonstrations outside of the European Commission. Photo: Natasha Maria @ Facebook.

WNW11.MANC.QUART.pdf

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are travelling to Brussels to make their voices heard. Democracy is about what’s best for everyone, not what’s best for the world’s richest and most powerful corporations.

“The TTIP deal is a hijack of democracy, and we need to stop it.”

A TTIP event will be held as part of Earth Week on Tuesday 10th.

1

04/02/2015

15:07

HOW WILL WE USE THEM?

YOU DECIDE...

On May 07 2015, the country will turn out to decide who governs for the next five years.

With around 100,000 students in Manchester, we could finally make our concerns heard over poor housing, high crime, extortionate tuition fees and more.

Even if you were registered last time, you must register to vote for these elections.

Register at: www.votebooster.org/register/umsu

20 014 4

08 : Features

Photo Credit: Name of photographer

ISSUE 14 / 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Photo Caption: Blah blah blah

Interview: T. F. Birch Photo: Meesha Chauhan

Roberta Rofman talks to upcoming author and alumni of University of Manchester Tim (T. F.) Birch, about his time at university, his career and his new book ‘Monkey Steals Plum’.

Roberta Rofman Features editor

D

escribing himself as an outlier, Tim didn’t take the conventional and simple road in his life, becoming a mature student at the University of Manchester after living in America.

After a few years of journalism, he decided he wanted to write a book about something that greatly interested him, that being Comet 67P landing.

On his time at university I lived in America for nearly three years and thought, what courses do I qualify for? It was only really going to be something to do with reading and writing given my grades, although I didn’t want to just do a literature degree. Doing American History and Society seemed most plausible given my time in America; it was a top department in the mid90s with strong professors. I had a friend in Oxford who said that it was a brilliant classic postmodern course and just went with what my most influential friend said.

He knew how to do life properly, wasn’t an outlier like myself. Little did I know that it was a completely useless degree.

On his degree The American history professor said that I was an interesting writer, the usual task of reading and

regurgitating lectures was different from my work. I tended to go off on tangents within what I was roughly meant to do. Although the writing was academic, the practice of writing and editing and rewriting set me up for journalism. I think that all things add up, reading helps with research and investigations that you have to do in journalism.

It gives you that grounding and hitting a deadline. However, it was a waste of a degree. Those who have a career in mind are the ones who really need a degree, e.g. physics.

My wife did marketing and stayed in that which proved to be useful.

If I think of it in that analogy then I haven’t really done much with my degree. But you take what you can from life and build on that.

On regrets Being an outlier, I did do things differently. I was never that bookish but I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut in my teens and gained loads of golden rules from that that I adopt and carry forward. But degree or no degree is a toss-up. I know plenty of people who don’t have a degree. A friend from middle school who I’ve just gotten in contact with didn’t go to university has had similar experiences and ups and downs.

But I’m not convinced about just going one way or another, it’s about your journey and what you get from it. I fob my degree off as useless but not absolutely, I loved

Manchester so I stayed. There will always be new-found interests that make you think about other degrees. For example, my interest

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. of space exploration made me think, what if I only listened in that physics class. I would have loved to do things differently but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I’d say it was utterly pointless yet worthwhile.

On his career I did some acting in America, things such as stage stuff and

TV commercials. It was a fun few years. But after, I got into the University of Manchester, did my degree then got into journalism straight after. I pitched a story for Loaded , back when it wasn’t just about boobs. It was about a porn star who I was best man for. She married for a green card and it was an interesting experience but I couldn’t tell the story because of the green card situation. After that, I wrote about what was happening in Manchester e.g. art shows and it kind of spiralled after that.

On his influences I had a friend who was a proper outlier and was really interesting.

He moved out when he was 14 or 15 to his own flat. He has all these books, and encouraged me to read Vonnegut, after that I was addicted.

Vonnegut is someone who is frank and doesn’t really do suspense.

Also, a friend described my book as a Wong Kar Wai film in book form and I thought it was a really nice summary of what I was trying to do. It is unashamedly visual and the characters are similar to that of Wong Kar Wai characters.

On why he chose to write about Comet 67P I followed the story for a while when I got into space exploration.

I thought many things such as its amazing that it is out there happening and that female

astrophysicists don’t get enough credit. I would check the websites for developments and was really inspired when it became a really massive media moment when it got really close. Some say you shouldn’t touch big events but I wanted to acknowledge it. I thought that if I got hit by a bus, don’t want to miss the chance to write about it.

On the storyline of Monkey Steals Plum The story involves a Chinese billionaire called Feng, it just happened that the character wanted to go in that direction. I had to get a lot of knowledge in a short amount of time so the journalism skills I gained turned out to be a good skill. It is a book about a man who wants to nail asteroid mining, partly to honour family, to help him get over life and to get the monkey off his back. My brother said Feng is like a James Bond baddie, an interesting character who looks at what is possible, who isn’t just a money-grabbing billionaire.

On the parallels between the book and his life Well people said write about the things you know so I set it in the places I was familiar with, that being Manchester and China. I made a character a Salford guy who gives a footing in Manchester.

I also set it in Manchester because of the excitement around graphene

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lines, versions. Editing, when effective, eradicates ‘the agony of what might have been’. To be frank, I had a full length version in which ‘Feng’ was a minor character—he ended up shining through the editing as a significant, leading character.

With journalism what I would have done differently is to reskill during the moments when the industry transitioned—a bit like shifting your sail to catch the new wind. Looking back around the millennium I had a few great opportunities to learn how to code but never did as I was busy writing, taking photographs and working with audio. In the past few years I have taught myself some advanced data journalism—a good example of the kind of re-training I should have been doing all along.

On his thoughts on Comet 67P In a few years, we will be in trouble due to the planet heating up, and a reduction in resources. If the book became what the future will be, that would be great. I hope to preserve what we have left on Earth so I would like the comet to give us a way to save the Earth basically, such as finding resources up there in a way that doesn’t cause wars.

On the Charlie Hebdo shooting If I had a gun to my head, or it was an either/or question, I believe in complete freedom of speech, but just like many of my answers, it’s more complex than that. How can you have freedom of speech everywhere when it is a Western value? You want people to be mature and to laugh things off but you can’t anticipate that. If I believe in a certain God and that you shouldn’t insult it, then you should take it on board. It is worth thinking of bigger questions such as whether there is a God. I also believe that unless I talk to you, then things will never be sorted, people don’t really communicate and spend time with each other to sort problems out.

Book illustration: James Bloomfield

in Manchester. I thought, why doesn’t Feng come to Manchester?

The concept of graphene is very real but seems like it could be sci-fi so I also wanted to include that, in that Feng wants to use it, although this book is not sci-fi.

Will you always stick to the same style of writing?

No. This style was the natural fit for this specific book. It is frankly

‘non-genre’ but there are thriller and mystery elements that suit both of its intertwining storylines: ‘an intrepid quest in space’ and ‘abject characters with disturbing back stories’.

My intention was to have this as the first of a trilogy—it makes sense to have the next two books somewhat echo the style. But my fourth book, currently just an outline, will be differently styled.

It’s a book driven by the speech, and minds, of the characters.

It’s really about journeys—about moments, moods, and memories.

Would you have done anything different with your writing?

Not with the book. The lengthy editing process means that I tried out different approaches, plot

Want to write for us?

On censorship Self-censorship plays a big part in my life. For example, when I was going to do that story about the pornstar who I was best man for, it was my first big story and I burnt a bridge by not doing. The thing is, I made a bigger promise to her to not tell people. To get to the truth, you sometimes reveal bigger truths and in cases, it is right to just not go along with the story. Some may say you are too principled but you respect people. But, in the sense of major censorship, I don’t think my work has really

been censored, I haven’t written stuff that really needed it. Unless you get to a really busy and high profile stance, I doubt censorship needs to be a big worry.

His advice to students looking to pursue journalism or start a book For writing books, I’ll echo Kurt Vonnegut’s legacy: “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. Start as close to the end as possible.”

Journalism is ‘an umbrella term’ covering print (papers, mags), broadcast (TV/radio/web), and data journalism. So I would suggest that what underpins all of these potential futures are transferable skills like research/investigation (find out how to dig in to diverse subjects, sources and data); Interpersonal communications (getting access to people; liaison with all sorts of people; negotiation skills); Equipment (microphones, recorders, cameras, mobile phones); Writing (whether that’s ‘features’ or short scripts for TV/radio reports)… also the more subtle or ‘soft’ skills of curiosity, scepticism (not taking things at face value), and honesty.

‘Data Journalism’ has been the booming trend over the past few years. Look into learning basic coding and get familiar with infographics and data visualisation. All of this can be self-taught, so if you can make time and stay committed, get online and start.

On why people should read his book The first thing that pops into my head is that it is brilliantly exciting and contemporary. It could actually happen and the excitement and drive I have for it is the surrealness of the concept of Rosetta and Comet 67P but it is very real. Also, there is a resonance for Mancunians as a lot of it is set in Manchester. For the literary fans, it is thriller-ish with twists and surprises and the characters have a good quality about them. Also for the science fans, it’s a good read and if there are any inaccuracies in the book, get in touch. But in short, give a guy a chance, it’s my first book.

Money Steals Plum is available on Amazon as an eBook for £2.26.

Contact us: editor@mancunion.com features@mancunion.com Meetings on Mondays 5pm, 1st floor of Students’ Union

10

Opinion

Editors’ Foreword Marcus Johns Morris Seifert

This week at Opinion we have a very interesting quadroon of articles. Ranging from condemnation of our beloved Students’ Union to the prevalence of class warfare in the arts; there is something here to suit everyone from textiles design to astrophysics.

We are always looking for new contributors with fresh ideas and interesting perspectives, so feel free to come and join us and share your opinions. Only be prepared to defend them if we, as is most likely, don’t agree.

Tweet us with you, thoughts and comments: @MancunionOp. If you would like to contribute tweet us or like our page on Facebook at facebook.com/MancunionOp

Our not-so-right human rights Marina Iskander Contributor If there is one human feature that governments, media outlets and news agencies have not failed to use to their advantage, it is how easily human beings are swayed by words. Given the right scenario, even the simplest words can carry a strong emotional connotation, capable of swaying anyone. The words ‘human rights’ seem indubitable at first glance—the phrase has been thrown around enough times to become the holy grail of a typical democracy. Yet ironically, in one of the world’s most renowned democracies, the United Kingdom, the Human Rights Act has diverted from a set of liberties into a weapon that could easily be used maliciously.

In order to understand the issue as a whole, one must first remember that the United Kingdom does not have a codified constitution—meaning that there is no hierarchy of laws, and no law could overrule another.

Being one of very few countries that do not have a constitution, the question of reform is always in the air. This reform, in turn, would entail two major changes: more difficulty in amending said constitution (as opposed to the ease of amending or repealing mere acts) and a supremacy of certain laws. In regard to the HRA specifically, the latter product would mean that human rights would override any other laws, meaning that they must all be read and applied in light of the HRA. Currently, however, a human right, such as freedom of speech, is of as much weight and importance as, for example, the law dictating that it is legal to watch TV without a license.

It is clear, therefore, that this act does not serve the exact same purpose as the Bill of Rights in the United States, since legally it is not of special importance. Politically, however, it is a reminder of the importance of the safekeeping of the liberties that must come to citizens of a democratic country. Liberties, as opposed to rights, are much more passive.

They are actions one can commit because they are not specifically prohibited by any law. This main problem with a system of liberties rather than a system of rights is that liberties are simply residue of quickly evolving law, meaning that they can be very easily eroded. Therefore, a document that merely serves as a reminder of aspects as weak as liberties can never suffice in an allegedly democratic country.

This is an extract from Marina’s article. The full piece can be found at: www.mancunion.com/opinion

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

@MancunionOp

The University of Manchescare

As the University run in the fear at the possibility of offending anyone, they fail to see the far reaching negative implications of their rash timidity Edgar and John Beswick Contributors At the Refreshers Fair last week, the Free Speech and Secular Society (FSS) was restricted by the Students’ Union from showing the Charlie Hebdo magazine.

The reasons for this centred around the importance of maintaining a non-threatening environment for returning and new students. The intellectual dishonesty and moral vacuousness of this response offended me.

However it did not make me feel threatened. Why would it? Just because I didn’t like what was happening it didn’t mean I was threatened.

A further reason was given regarding the need to ensure all students felt welcome. However it could not be the case that the SU acted so as to maintain a welcoming environment. If it was, then why was Domino’s Pizza allowed to park front and centre handing out free slices of pepperoni pizza? Surely by Students’ Union logic such an act would encroach upon the sensitivities of the vegetarian student?

Not a valid comparison, you may say. But think about it for a second. On the one hand, you have the satirical portrayal of a historical figure worshipped

by many as God’s last messenger. On the other, you have the slaughter of innocent animals in order to hand out freebies to students. Is one really objectively worse than the other? Both vegetarianism and religious belief are life choices that are of varying degrees of importance to their adherents. Why should the sensitivities of the latter be prioritised over those of the former?

Suppose the prioritisation of a welcoming atmosphere really was the salient issue. It is worth while taking a minute to consider the implications of this precedent. Think of the possible effect it would have on the Marxist society. Some Eastern European students might have lost family

members to Marxism-motivated brutality.

Are they not just as entitled to feel uncomfortable when they walk past a stall with Lenin’s face on show? Cries from the Palestinian society of “free Palestine” would have to be restricted.

So too would the Israeli flag in the Jewish Society stall. Both constitute an unwelcoming atmosphere for certain students and thus via this newly adopted method would be rendered viable for censorship. The UKIP society would certainly be banned outright.

The most bitingly ironic thing of them all, though, is the effect that such a policy would have on religious societies, many of

Photo: Isaac Mao @Flickr

which treat the very nature of homosexuals as sinful, or at least condemn the form of love that they practise as being an affront to God. No amount of cognitive gymnastics can posit the discomfort of homosexual students here as being any less valid than the discomfort felt by other groups— at least not without making some morally repugnant value judgement regarding homosexuality.

Here we see how the comical fruition of the precedent set comes full circle. A decision taken to maintain the welcoming atmosphere on behalf of a religious minority will almost certainly lead to censorship of them.

Doesn’t sound very welcoming, does it?

One can forgive the SU for covering its back like this. But did they really have to? What has been so insulting (not threatening) about the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is the notion that it offended 1.2 billion Muslims. There is something rather insidious about this. “You have offended 1.2 billion people.”

Every single one? One wonders what extensive polling was conducted to come up with such a conclusion. It is no coincidence that the number is so often stressed. It is the implicit suggestion that some people are not capable of having their beliefs challenged.

I reject this notion outright. It is intellectually absurd, not to mention offensive, to project such an excessively homogenised image onto such a diverse group of people. That is exactly what the Students’ Union is doing by taking pre-emptive and collective offence. The fact that some members of the Islamic society approached us and expressed their displeasure at our censorship serves to highlight the insulting narrative that is so unfairly perpetuated by actions such as this.

For the sake of a thought experiment, let us go along with the absurdity that all 1.2 billion of the world’s Muslims act as a homogeneous group. That they share some sort of telepathic connection that binds them together in reflexive rage (if this isn’t offensive, I don’t know what is).

Should this matter? If the issue at hand is one of principle then obviously not. The number of people offended could be one, or a million, or even a billion. The principle is the principle, and not contingent upon numerical circumstances. The Students’ Union should bear this in mind the next time they wish to take pre-emptive offence.

Innocent until labelled extremist The Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill threatens the sanctity of free speech in UK universities

Isaac Atwal Contributor The government’s new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill currently making its way through the House of Lords has worrying implications for free speech within universities should it become law.

It seeks to change universities from bastions of freedom of expression and incisive debate into corridors of censorship.

Forcefully placing the government’s fear of a Britain rampant with extremist ideology firmly upon the shoulders of the very people who understand these ideologies and research and question them is hugely misguided.

By extending the existing antiextremist ‘Prevent’ program into statutory law and putting a legal obligation on public bodies to stop terrorism, the government is placing a potential cloud of suspicion on all who might involve themselves with anything that could be considered ‘extremist’.

University staff would be obliged to monitor students to check they aren’t being drawn into terrorism, and all speakers would have to be announced two weeks in advance to be vetted in case they held extremist views.

The vagueness of this will create an uneasy climate in academic institutions; who decides what is extremist and what is not? What does extremist actually mean? Is it a speech calling for the beheading of the Prime Minister or is it a robust and forceful criticism of British foreign policy? The government

has offered no clarification and this is precisely why this legislation is so dangerous.

Herein lies the problem with forcing universities, by law, to report any potential extremist activity. Firstly, there is no coherent idea of what to look for, so anything could potentially be considered extremist and be reported.

Secondly, an expectation that university staff monitor their

“We must wake up, as before long, the mere questioning of the status quo will be labelled extremist.” students would have a devastating effect on the academic freedom that university provides.

Students should not be worried that their academic work and interests could be considered extremist and of interest to the security services and they should be able to attend talks and hear speakers of all views and be given the respect to form their own opinions on what they hear.

Thirdly, the government of the day could change the goalposts regarding what is considered extremist, forcing universities to then monitor and report on, say, green activists, left-wing student organisations or any other such group.

Whole groups of students will fall under suspicion depending on what this season’s extremism is, purely for holding different or radical views. Will Abdul be suspected more than Sarah for raising the same point about the sickening effect of Western for-

eign policy? Will the radical socialist embarking upon a march be suspected more than the young neo-liberal advocating a lower tax rate?

This has already happened in the past under existing rules and guidelines that universities have to abide by.

In 2008 Dr. Rizwaan Sabir was studying terrorist tactics for his Masters at the University of Nottingham when he was arrested on terrorism charges for downloading an Al-Qaeda training manual.

He had downloaded this manual from a US government website, and it was also available in his university’s own shop. Held for one week without charge and then released, it later transpired that police had fabricated evidence against him. Dr. Sabir was eventually awarded £20000 in compensation for his

ordeal.

Increasingly in our society we are told that the threat of terrorism is so severe that we must, yet again, surrender more of our civil liberties to the government.

That this usually comes immediately after a terrorist attack or news of a plot foiled by the security services will be of no surprise to many. The UK has had seven major pieces of counterterror legislation, including this latest bill, since 2000.

We have had only two terrorist attacks on our soil since then, and the perpetrators were all known and under surveillance to the security services. Clearly then, the security services and police already have enough powers of surveillance without needing to monitor universities.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris it seemed that the entire world’s leaders joined

together in a harmonious declaration to the commitment to, and protection of, free speech.

The need for this protection of free speech was highlighted in bloody fashion over three days.

It is then no surprise that only several weeks later new draconian counter-terror legislation is announced to help secure our way of life against the threat of terror.

Indeed it will secure our way of life, as we seem to have sleepwalked into a new way of life; one where we are constantly worried by overblown threats, encouraged to be suspicious of difference and comfortingly stripped of our civil liberties so ‘they’ can be watched. We must wake up, because before long, the mere questioning of the status quo will be labelled extremist.

Photo: Ell-r-brown @ Flickr

Does everyone roll their eyes at your outspoken self-righteous ranting?

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11

Homophobia, the church, and the mosque

It’s not too late for religions to shed their homophobic and socially irrelevant image— they just need to take a more positive, metaphorical, and liberal approach

Lauren Wills Contributor One of the biggest obstacles to the reestablishment of religion as an integral part of society and our lives is its homophobic characteristics.

There has been a dramatic shift in society’s perception of homosexuality since the 1960s. I think there is a strong case for suggesting that law evolves and is shaped by social changes rather than culture being shaped by the law in subjects like this. Homosexuality was illegal until 1967 in England and Wales, which is perhaps unthinkable to us in a liberal Western society today.

Further advancements in LGBT rights have materalised since the 2000s. The right for a person to change legal gender was established in 2005, for example, and full protection against discrimination has been made statutory since 2010.

Of course there are problems and disagreements amongst minorities and right-wing fundamentalist groups, but generally it should be celebrated that society has finally accepted homosexuality is a real, natural, and important part of people’s lives.

Somewhere along the line, the perception of religion as truth, positivity, and something that adds value to people’s lives has been tarnished by its reputation as a group which revels in homophobia. Indeed, it’s obvious that the Church previously has been an advocate for homophobia, yet I personally believe it’s possible to believe in God and also support gay rights, gay marriage, and stand against homophobia.

Russell Brand’s comments in reply to Stephen Fry on religion really interested me. Although he didn’t

specifically talk about homosexuality in detail, Brand talked about the metaphor of religion being true instead of its literal meaning. He also said that you cannot judge religion by the bad bits, just like you wouldn’t judge something like football by negative events that have happened throughout its history.

However, the big question that remains is whether the Church’s reputation for being homophobic has stained its reputation for good.

Firstly, I think it’s important for the secular world to understand that the views of particular denominations or high-profile religious figures aren’t always the views of all people associated with that religion.

Religious texts such as the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Torah are integral to their adherents’ lives and become part of their identity because of their individual interpretation of it and how it applies to them personally.

A non-literal interpretation allows for more liberal views on contemporary issues. Many religious people’s argument is that they do not want to change the core values of their faith just because society dictates that they should. After all, faith is meant to be something eternal, not shaped by changing whimsical thought and social values.

However, the said perspective is narrow. Most religious texts were written thousands of years ago in completely different cultures to the one we live in today—not to mention that human beings wrote them; whose minds were shaped by their own particular surroundings.

It has been widely accepted in other areas that the Bible is contextual, for example when it comes

Manchester’s Canal Street during last year’s Pride event. Photo: Fearlessian @Flickr

Homophobic protesters during last year’s Manchester Pride event.

Photo: g.mcgarraghy @Flickr

to the prominence of women. I’m sure 50 years ago no one would have envisaged women bishops or women who are world-famous evangelists and teachers, but culture allows such a change to occur which richly benefits religion in general.

Thus in the same way, I wouldn’t be surprised if in 50 years’ time homophobia is something of the distant past in mainstream Churches. A recent survey showed that ‘homophobic’ was in the top four words that sprung to mind when asked to describe Christianity—alongside irrelevant, judgmental and boring. As a Christian, I am extremely embarrassed by this, as I believe all of these words are enemies of true religion.

All in all, it would be ridiculous to interpret religious texts literally. For one, the Bible was written in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and other languages,

thus many of its translations are questionable and imprecise. And for some of the provisions that may seem irrelevant in today’s culture, it is important to remember the context in which scriptures were written and to give a margin of appreciation when it comes to condemning people’s belief systems.

Religion should be opposed to arrogance and judgment. Rather, it should send a positive and encouraging message to the secular world. It will surely take time to repair the reputation the Church has gained, but I believe it can do so through a more liberal, metaphoric approach to interpreting scripture.

Class warfare pervades the arts The opportunity to succeed in the arts for lower class aspiring artists is being

dramatically reduced and the backlash from upper class artists is diluting the debate Joe Evans Contributor It is a fairly rare occurrence for the word gimp to be so heavily prominent in a news story; it is even rarer for a celebrity to rise to criticism as dramatically as James Blunt has done this month.

When Shadow Culture Minister Chris Bryant stated in an interview that the arts world had a duty to preserve meritocracy, he made a somewhat uncontroversial statement. Most would agree with Bryant, who, while mining for support, simply made an unrevolutionary and somewhat throwaway comment. “This can’t possibly go wrong,” he must have thought.

It did, however, go catastrophically wrong, as he named James Blunt as one artist who he felt was profiting from a privileged upbringing.

Blunt’s response, branding Bryant a “classist gimp”, has certainly reignited the issue, prompting further comment from both celebrities and MPs. Blunt argued that class warfare propaganda, in his eyes perpetuated by the Shadow Culture Minister, “makes our country crap, far more than me and my shit songs, and my plummy accent.”

The language of the open letter, deemed a suitable response to Bryant’s mild and fair critique, reads as if I had decided to drink a few glasses of wine and then review a James Blunt album.

This is a contentious issue, both because Blunt’s songs really are shit and because it is not right that a politician should be forced to answer to a pop star.

Bryant shouldn’t have to face all ten of Blunt’s fans due to his comments. This is especially true when the pop star is profiteering from an unfair system that Bryant is attempting to highlight.

Julie Walters’ arrival into the debate has served to further evidence Bryant’s claim. In The Guardian this week, Walters highlighted the very real damage caused by cuts to arts funding—reducing the number of grants available to working class people. Here she has raised exactly the same issue as Bryant. Whilst I am much awaiting a letter from Blunt telling the multi-BAFTA-award-winning actress not to be such a “classist gimp”, I fear that it

will never come. For all his gusto and famed online wit—you only need to glance at Blunt’s Twitter to find evidence of this–it would appear that he is actually as limp and juvenile as his songs.

The issue is undeniably real, having been highlighted over and over by artists from Noel Gallagher to Michael Caine. All that Blunt’s petulance serves to do is to reduce a serious issue of meritocracy to a slanging match.

While it may not affect him, which is wonderful and I’m very happy for him and his riches, it does affect many and can serve to make aspiration impossible.

The issue is more widespread, though, than a simple influx of well-to-do actors and musicians dominating the marketplace. British writing and drama is increasingly shifting towards presenting

upper-class, period drama, rather than evoking the British Realism movements of the late 1950s and 60s.

Invariably, this is supporting the careers of a certain type of performer; one that can believably portray the aristocrat, rather than presenting the diversity of British society. It would appear that actors like the young Julie Walters are being ignored because the audiences want it to be so.

Sophie Okonedo this week voiced that she was forced to travel abroad in order to gain the prominence that has brought her a Tony Award for performing opposite Denzel Washington. Now the star of Oscar-nominated film Selma, she recalled being told by a commissioning executive: “If it’s not Jane Austen or Dickens, the audience don’t understand.” Thus, Bryant’s comments seem to

James Blunt’s comments have illuminated an ignorance that will perpetuate the issues raised. Photo: elhormiguerotv @Flickr

Come to our meetings: Mondays, 5pm, on the first floor of the Students’ Union

have uncovered a great issue; that an exclusive elite is selecting not only who represents us, but also who is represented.

I feel that the flippancy of Blunt’s comments seems rather ignorant now, given the widespread support of many whom Blunt would not be brave enough to provoke so strongly. Whether Bryant was hunting for support or not is inconsequential.

He has brought to fruition an issue that does need to be solved when many would have believed that is has been solved already.

The diversity of representation in the United Kingdom is undeniably narrow. Take a look at the actors who represent us at the Oscars or even the sportsmen who deliver medals at the Olympics; a vein of wealth runs throughout. It’s not a personal attack on the individuals who profit from the system: Eddie Redmayne is undeniably a great actor, and Benedict Cumberbatch likewise, but I would be surprised if even they could fail to acknowledge the problem.

Music is perhaps the only field in which progress has been made. Working class roots became a badge of honour for a period of time, with musicians like Joe Strummer playing down their middle class roots rather than showcasing them.

Even in the seemingly progressive field of music, however, this has been diluted with time.

Famously, and horrifically, David Cameron proclaimed himself to be a fan of The Smiths.

Morrissey famously spent years on the dole whilst finding his voice, so I sincerely doubt that Cameron would be quite so enthusiastic about an artist maturing in this style—unless of course the namedrop could help him appear hip and current.

There is a defined tendency in the arts to overrepresent the upper classes. It is increasingly evident to both the performers and the people behind the scenes that there has been a shift towards a class of people who can afford to fund their attempts to gain access to this cultural elitism.

The only aspiring artists who can afford this are a very specific type of societal elite who, unless changes are made, will come to obtain total cultural monopoly.

12

Music

ISSUE 17

Editors: Patrick Hinton, Lowell Clarke

Samuel Ward, Dan Whiteley Interview

Opinion

the

OPINION

Under the Radar: Blur, Bowie Publicity Cordelia Milward 12 years since the release of Think Tank, the britpop champions Blur have sprung an announcement out of nowhere, for the release of their seventh studio album The Magic Whip, out on 27th April.

Set to a similarly enigmatic video (a Chinese cooking guide to vanilla ice cream), the first single ‘Go Out’ was unveiled on 19th to us unsuspecting fans.

A stunt that shocked us all, if not only because of the sheer wonderment at where Damon Albarn finds the time to have his finger in pretty much every pie in the musical sphere. The best news of all being Graham Coxon’s return to the band, making it the first album all four of them have been present on since 1999’s 13.

When in a similar vein back in 2013, David Bowie announced his resurrection with ‘Where Are We Now?’, what was most commendable was how the hell everyone had managed to keep it so quiet. Before they had even listened to the track, people were going wild at the sheer wondrous feat of its non-marketing. How one of the most widely admired mega stars could rise out of the depths of darkness, not just to prove he was still alive, but having written and recorded an entire new album, was an astonishing accomplishment.

I wonder how much of all this is merely a publicity stunt?

Take, for example, Marika Hackman. Her debut album We Slept At Last was released on Monday, but on the run up to its release she had been day by day streaming each track from her Soundcloud. For an up and coming artist, this technique is understandable; tantalizing people’s taste buds, to excite and hopefully inspire them to buy the record. But what naturally occurs is there is so much hype about an artist that by its release date, people have already tasted it, swallowed

and

Anti-

it and spat it back out again.

But Public Enemy told us not to believe the hype, didn’t they? Well, what better a way to counteract false hype than ensuring there simply isn’t any.

In a press conference with Zane Lowe where Blur made the big announcement, they admitted they had written this album over a year ago, and kept it silent till now to ensure the ultimate reveal. Don’t get me wrong, I am as excited by the return as any other mad fanatic, but even I can’t shake off this ounce of scepticism.

Was this a stunt merely an attempt to create a quiet before the storm - almost like faking a death to see how many people rejoice at the resurrection?

Yet, publicity stunt or not, there’s got to be something magical about being able to slip under the radar in 2015.

Where rumours spread like wildfire, songs are leaked, phones are hacked; the list of constant surveillance goes on.

Blur managed to prove there is still hope for self-preservation, perhaps carrying on the theme of Damon Albarn’s recent solo record Everyday Robots, on which he woes our complete consumption by modern technology as we turn into walking robots. Here, Blur have managed to beat the system.

We didn’t see it coming, and yes, it may be all in the name of publicity, but this is a band who’ve never exactly been praised for their modesty - and if they can tell Noel Gallagher to fuck off, they can also flick two fingers at the watchful eye of the 21st century.

Photo: Press shot

the MUSIC INTERVIEW The Cribs The Cribs’ own Gary Jarman 14 years on, 2001 - it’s long gone! How time has flown for the Cribs, it seems like it was only yesterday they were accepting NME’s “outstanding contribution to music” award during their 10 year anniversary. Since then, and the release of 2012’s epic In the Belly of theBrazenBull,theband’sconstituentbrothers have been up to their own devices: Front Ryan Jarman has been hard at work with Here We Go Magic’s Jen Turner on their side project, Exclamation Pony, whilst Gary has been dabbling in production and engineering.

“At first it feels weird being back but then it’s like nothing ever changes really, it’s not quite Ground Hog day I just mean when you first come back it’s such an unusual thing. When I’m at home I can’t imagine it; I’m so introverted when I’m back in Portland then as soon as I get into it it’s back to normal. In fact I look back at who I was when I started touring and I was really so maladjusted, I was just weird and unprepared.”

To me it seems a miracle that, over the past 10years,theCribshavemaintainedtheir“come on and be a no one” ethics and jumped all the hurdles which would usually bring a band crashing back down to Earth. “Yeah when you get to a certain point the parameters and goalposts change. You get told you only have that period of being the zeitgeist for a very short time, so everyone around you starts to say that you should capitalise on it. I’ve seen it happen with a million bands. When we were offered it in 2007 we were just too prickly of a proposition – there’s time when you can see us on e4 and we look so uncomfortable.”

Indeed the present is most certainly a time of artistic freedom, where, at the advent of the internet and self-promotion, musicians have more control of their own paths than ever before – but that doesn’t seem to help when the pool of available artists is so large and staying power is dwindling “It worked for us but not everyone, because we’re such a tight unit, we all grew up together and we have

the same core principles and there’s very little disagreement.”

“Yeah we even got asked to do a song with OneDirection;it’saprettyweirdwaytoinfiltrate that kind of thing. It wasn’t even Sony who asked us, 1D are actually fans of us – it could have been an interesting thing. If anything it all shows what a difference production makes, if you consider most songs their cores are really

We even got asked to do a song with One Direction basic things. Looking at ‘You Really Got Me’ by the Kinks, it’s a raw garage rock song and it’s really rad but I’ve heard some monstrosity versions. It’s all about production.”

“I am really into the tech side as well; I probably prefer to be in the studio now compared to playing live because I just love writing songs and messing about with gear- it’s a different reality. I enjoy that logical thinking and problem solving [when producing].

Recently I’ve been really intrigued with lots of 80’s production techniques, that era when I was growing up as a kid seemed full of otherworldly super high-end techniques so I’ve become fascinated in achieving that. Actually one of the Crib’s big secrets is that we use a lot of synth bass which no one really knows about because I just hide it, usually a moog Taurus or something - it makes it sound huge. Plus with the Cribs it’s important since the guitars are so

loud; most of the time we’re trying to generate power.”

So far that much seems obvious, that is, before Gary goes on to say: “It’s hiding is what it is! The volume, the aggression, I have my eyes closed when I’m on stage. When we play the more gentle songs I find it really hard since I feel so exposed but, when we’ve got the distortion on and I’m shouting, I don’t feel that at all. Back home my friends don’t really know that about me,I’veplayedinPortlandlikefourorfivetimes and they just don’t know that piece of me - It really does shock them. It was always my first lovepunkrockbutInevertrulywantedtobeon stage, I wasn’t one of those people. That’s why we’ve got that reputation of drinking a lot back in the early days, we had to be drunk to play a show and it became a kind of obsession thing, playingeveryshowabitbuzzed.Thenwhenwe tried not doing it at all and we were dead self conscious and it was just really difficult and it became a kind of crutch.”

It’s true that the Cribs were known for playing toilet venues in return for crates of beer, but is that still the dynamic? “It’s pretty much exactly the same. That’s how we retain that same enthusiasm we always had. We still feel like we’re on some sort of mission. The funny thing is even though we’ve been perpetually viewed that way [as underdogs] we’ve had two longstanding top 10 records. Now we’re somewhat contentwithhowwe’reperceived,whereasfor the time we had the spotlight on us we were malcontent. We know who we are a lot more now and I think other people know who we are a lot more now. I think we make a bit more sense to people now, it was an overlooked element beforeandpeoplejustlikedtherecklessnessof the live show. But that’s the hope; we still have an axe to grind.”

Mother’s Day Special

TOP 5

Songs

Your mum probably loves Dan Whiteley Music Editor

1. Say What You Want Texas Texas’ slick radio-ready tunes seem purpose built for humming along to on the school run; mums were basically issued with a copy of White on Blonde back in 1997— check the glove compartment, it’s probably still there.

2. Stars - Simply Red With its soppy lyrics, soaring chorus and silky smooth bassline, this eighties classic helped turn Mick Hucknall into Manchester’s jazziest ginger lothario. All together now, “And aaaaaaaaaiiiiii wanna fall from the stars…”

3. Handbags and Gladrags - Rod Stewart

4. Man! I Feel Like a Woman! - Shania Twain

5. Dancing in the Moonlight - Toploader

Before he settled into the groove of churning out endless beige covers albums, his raspy howl and shaggy lid won the hearts of housewives everywhere, thanks in part to this timeless tearjerker.

This entry-level feminist anthem was the eighth (eighth!) single from Shania’s eyewateringly successful Come on Over album, and remains the mum’s karaoke song of choice.

Sneak along to her next work do to see for yourself.

Also known as “the one from that Sainsburys advert with Jamie Oliver”, for whom she most likely also shares a similar fondness. Play that keyboard intro and just watch a beaming smile appear, as if by magic.

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

@ MancunionMusic / TheMancunionMusicSection

the

Opinion

Henry Scanlan Last summer, I worked for a few days as a bartender at a series of One Direction gigs at the Manchester City stadium.

Wading through thousands of feverish fans to get to my work station, I’d been observing them with an anthropological mind set, studying their behaviour as man studies monkey. The screams, the panic, the occasional bouts of violent shoving – it all seemed strangely inhuman. I now realise this was grossly unfair: after 3 days of basking in reflected euphoria, I picked up my payslip with nothing but respect and admiration for these people, who I now fully recognize as fellow humans. More than this, I think most people could learn a thing or two from the star struck social group that has reincarnated in various forms (East 17-ites, Bieberites etc) ever since Beatlemania.

The energy, dedication

Music

13

Fandom (or, The Unexpected Virtue of 1D Fans)

Henry Scanlan peers into the world of a One Direction show and learns some valuable lessons and stamina of these fans is astonishing. These people will wait in the rain for 7 hours in a fenced-off pen like battery chickens without food or drink.

They’ll spend hours creating colourful plaques from papiermâché. Their spirits can’t be crushed, and when the show starts, they don’t miss a beat.

Sure, there are plenty of cameras held aloft, but only in moments of respite from shrieking and jiggling and basically having a great time.

Meanwhile, peer into a gig in one of the dimly lit venues of Manchester. The music will probably be good, and the band might receive a good deal of support too, but more often than not there’ll be something stopping the crowd from really letting go. Some near-palpable force is shackling the crowd from unleashing their inner spirit with reckless abandon like those hormonal young things at One

Direction shows. Sure, there’ll be a few mavericks actually enjoying themselves regardless of their surroundings, but most

Tame Impala’s ejection from the cultural elite is imminent, mark my words of us will cautiously gauge the ambience before we get carried away by, say, taking our hands out of our pockets. Now, I’m not saying this is a bad or unnatural thing. People are insecure, and obviously there isn’t quite the religious, outer-body-experience, “look I brought you some of my toe-nail clippings” kind of vibe present during Beatlemania

and the like. Some might say that the terrifying outbursts of emotion hurled by young girls at boybands like East 17, 1D and Westlife might reflect a sense of desperation at the emptiness or disappointment in these teenagers’ own lives. There may be some sad truth to this, and I’m sure the poor, outnumbered security guards charged with barricading 5000 rabid youths with one meaty forearm might agree. But at least these fans aren’t embarrassed. Everything comes out – tears, joy, perhaps yesterday’s lunch – in one huge, purging sweep of unashamed, untainted emotion. Moreover, this is without the use of drugs and alcohol. I’m not sure if there have been any sociological studies linking pre-pubescent boyband fans with straight-edge hardcore punks, but there should be – they’re practically the same thing.

As for the rest of us - at least those of us who would consider ourselves to be ‘avant-garde’ in some way – well, we may not have the same level of restless anticipation and unrequited love for the bands we go to see in the Northern Quarter. But is our restraint at gigs, our often snide rejection of broad-appeal music, and hence our desire to exhibit understated ‘coolness’, really a desire to remove ourselves from what we harshly perceive to be the unwashed, crude masses of society symbolized by a One Direction crowd? Is it really a need to separate ourselves from those tasteless, faceless mobs who queue for 17 hours to see their idols just that once before resuming their unanimously pedestrian lives? Is our knee-jerk dismissal of mainstream culture – for instance the scepticism attached to a once-loved band as soon as they gain a suspiciously vanilla fan base (Tame Impala’s

ejection from the cultural elite is imminent, mark my words) – is this really just our fear of losing our grip on exclusionary coolness? Without that – without our claims to uniqueness and preferences that nobody else has - we’re relegated to ordinary cogs in the daily struggle. But to see the shared, drug-free ecstasy of a One Direction show is to appreciate the communal power of the oft-dreaded mainstream.

It’s enough to eradicate any snobbishness you might be harbouring. (Hey, here’s a thought: Coldplay were actually pretty great!)

The last grand, sweeping and handily vague rhetorical question I will pose is this: are the hordes of unruly fanatics at One Direction gigs - so often unfairly frowned upon – in actual fact the most dedicated, passionate, pure, unironic and (whisper it) even punk music fans of our generation?

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Pangaea

BC Camplight

UoMSU – 24th January 2015 Aidan Gregory

Find yourself partying with Ziggy Stardust, Princess Leia, a Brian Cox flash mob and the all the guardians of the galaxy?

That’s right, you can only be at Pangaea Festival. As far as the costumes go, Pangaea 2015 was one of the best I have seen. You only really need to go through The Mancunion photo album to witness the lengths to which students go to, which is part of what always makes Pangaea so bizarre and eclectic. There were stormtroopers knocking around, one smashed, the other sober. Pangaea is also probably the only place you’ll see Darth Maul throw up on the Silver Surfer with a scuffle then ensuing.

The consensus amongst those who went seems to be that Activities Officer Joel Smith delivered one of the best lineups yet, with Totally Enormous Distinct Dinosaurs, XXXY, The Reflex, and Congo Natty all making stellar appearances.

Rae Morris kicked off the night with a great set in Academy 1.

‘Do You Even Know?’ sounded sublime—a moment of still peace before the inevitable mania of the rest of the night. For a singer at the very outset of her

career, Morris has an extremely commanding stage presence and seemed to really enjoy playing to a student audience definitely one to watch over the next few years.

It can be said that one of the best things about Pangaea is the number of student DJs involved from all corners of the University of Manchester universe. Always worth a special mention is the silent disco, curated by Fuse FM with the help of the LGBT society. The pairing of the different DJs proved hilarious to watch, as half the room lost their shit to ‘MMMBop’ and the other to ‘Slam’ by Pendulum. Given the theme, the selection of the latter by the Caped Crusaders of Fuse FM was rather amusing as it begins with the line “somewhere out there, in the vast nothingness of space.”

Having sold out, it was always going to be busy, but by about 3am this gave rise to the serious and incredibly frustrating problem of the crowded stairwell.

There were just too many people trying to go up and down, particularly when certain set times crossed over.

Although

8/10

security handled it as best they could this seriously needs to be sorted out for future Pangaea events as it is just not fun for anyone. The night should be all about the music, not slowly edging down a crowded staircase trying to find your mates. The music of the last half hour in Academy 1 also left a lot to be desired. Admittedly this happens in almost every club licensed to have a 5 – 6 graveyard shift, but the DJ dropped the same deep house beats over and over, which are only ever possible to enjoy unless you’re really really fucked.

Despite these small hang ups, Pangaea Space Odyssey was out of this world. I stumbled out of the Students’ Union at 6am feeling depressed that it went so fast and that the summer one will be my last as a student.

Photo: Pangaea Festival

Gorilla – 23rd January 2015 Photo: Alistair Hart@flickr

Henry Scanlan The story of Brian Christinzio, or BC Camplight, or in his own words “the guy who blew it”, is a romantic tale of redemption.

After modest success with his first two albums in 2005 and 2007, Christenzio hit the bottle hard. Presumably after watching Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, he relocated from Philadelphia to Manchester in 2011, reputedly to slowly drink himself to death in everyone’s favourite boozing hole, The Castle Hotel. But instead of finding a hooker with a heart of gold like Cage did in Vegas, Christenzio found himself a band. They’ve just released an outstanding album, How To Die In The North, which they played from start to finish for their set at Gorilla, embracing Christenzio’s creative rebirth and break from the past by eschewing all of his old material.

Given the backstory, it’s tempting to view the music through a prism of pain and catharsis and play tiny violins instead of applauding, but BC is far too self-deprecating, eccentric and downright fun for all that. The set bursts with ideas: wonderfully overwrought ballads (‘Why Doesn’t Anybody Fall In Love Anymore’),

9/10

pimped-out slow burners (‘Just Because I Love You’), and staggering psych-pop (‘You Should’ve Gone To School’), all topped off with Christenzio’s bittersweet, Brian Wilson-esque vocals. Reader, I command you to YouTube ‘You Should’ve Gone To School’ – it’s a track you can rely on in those moments at parties when you get control of the music and you’re psyched but then you panic because every song you’ve ever known suddenly disappears from memory.

(Recommending a YouTube search seemed more realistic than the absurd suggestion of buying the CD.) The atmosphere BC Camplight creates is as disorienting as the schizophrenic setlist; dry ice billows off the stage and into the crowd, and the periodic blindness caused by the fog

seems to fine tune the hearing senses (this is presumably the source of Stevie Wonder’s genius). Even without the help of fine-tuning-fog, the rich clamour stirred up by Christenzio’s fivepiece band is marshmallowy candy to the ears. The bass and percussion are laid down with mettle and funk, leaving plenty of wriggle room for all manner of accessories - trumpets, strings, honky-tonk piano, a cowbell (of course), and some welcome backing harmonies.

If, like me, you would like to meet BC Camplight, perhaps become his friend, and then harass him until he lets you join his band, then your best bet is to hang out at the Castle Hotel, because I hear he goes there a lot.

14

Music

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The Mancunion Recommends

This week in Music

Mark Ronson - Uptown Special

Yeezy Season Approaching Columbia Records; 13th January

7/10

At the time of writing this, the new Kanye album is not in existance.

Any day now could see the suprise release of one of the years most highly anticipated albums...

Dinesh Mattu I’m yet to come across someone who hasn’t got an opinion on Mark Ronson’s monster hit ‘Uptown Funk.’ From the headphone-wearing sing-a-longers who synchronise their steps to each snare hit as they walk down the street (i.e. yours truly), to the cynics who express absolute contempt at the song’s supposed unoriginality; it is one of those songs that will serve as a cultural yardstick in years to come.

What Ronson has done with this single, in a similar fashion to his 2007 collaboration with Amy Winehouse on ‘Valerie’ is that he has cemented yet another reminder in the hearts and ears of society that he is a super-freaking talented dude. However, given the enormity of the lead track, it is now near-enough impossible for him to commercially top what he has already achieved. There is no track on Uptown Special that quite has the same radio-friendly zeal but saying that, it doesn’t mean Ronson’s fourth album is by any means lacklustre.

It is a shame the album is overshadowed by the single because on the whole, it carries a similar energy and enthusiasm. To the critics that cry “imposter!” It is important to recognise that Ronson has never been shy of indulging in nostalgia. In fact he actively promotes it; one listen to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black proves just that. The variety of influence, from Stevie Wonder’s harmonica melody on ‘Uptown’s First Finale’ and ‘Crack in the Pearl, Pt. II’, to the 80s R&B boogie synths on ‘I Can’t Lose,’ is quite refreshing to hear in Ronson’s music.

A triad of collaborations from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker punctuate the album with dreamy elements of fuzz guitar and vocal psychedelia.

For a guy that started out as a Hip-Hop DJ, it is

Photo: peterhutchins @Flickr

King Kendrick Lamar

great to hear that influence remain true today.

Ronson’s adoration for Hip-Hop is evident on ‘Feel Right,’ which echoes a James Brown-esque arrogance of 70s funk, with an ever-eccentric Mystikal yabba-dabba-do rapping all over jam.

The album tries a little too hard to sound cool and atmospheric at times, ‘Crack in the Pearl’ and ‘Summer Breaking’ are less easy on the ear than the rest of the album, particularly in contrast to songs such as ‘Daffodils,’ which is a groovy primer to the essence of the album, and also ‘In Case of Fire,’ which sees a first vocal appearance for co-producer Jeff Bhasker.

The album isn’t particularly progressive or revolutionary, but acts as a funky throwback to an era long forgotten and is overall a solid album.

Peace - Happy People Columbia Records; 9th February

Photo: cavalierhorn @Flickr

BBC Radio 1 Residencies

Take action and report it online at: www.manchester.ac.uk/we-get-it, anonymously or for support. www.facebook.com/WeGetItUoM #WeGetItUoM

Kicking off this season of Radio 1 residents were Flying Lotus and Kaytranada—we’ll be tuning in again to the next session of John Hopkins and George Fitzgerald.

YOU GET IT? JohnDO Frushiate 7/10

Zakk Brown Call me cynical, but I approached this album with some dubiousness after hearing its first single ‘Money’. Despite being enjoyable musically, writing a song critical of rich greed on a golden Gibson Les Paul reeks of disingenuousness to me, especially being written after making their millions off the debut. Thankfully Peace delivers far more impressive content then ‘Money’ on their second album Happy People.

The album still mainly retains its up-beat element from the band’s debut In Love. Opener ‘Gen Strange’ with its uplifting sound will have you in a good mood before the end, until the completely jarring song transition before the dark ‘Happy People’ begins. Dominic Boyce employs some impressive drum work to the song, however, and it works with decent harmonic backing vocals which ultimately makes it an enjoyably fresh departure from their usual sound. Although it does have the cringey lyric “I’m a bad computer, I’m slow to load, I disconnected from you when I learned to love” - try not to cut yourself on all that edge, Peace. ‘I’m a Girl’ criticises traditional masculinity, questioning “do you feel like a man, because you’ve got blood on your hands?” The track is easily the hardest on the album, employing some shoegazing and industrial guitar twangs to marry the ironically blood-pumping macho rock to the subject matter while undoubtedly being a future crowd-pleaser. Peace also delve into some tongue-in-cheek territory with ‘Perfect Skin’, written as though they’re angsty, acne-ridden teenagers who’ve just lost a crush to the high school bully. Other highlights are ‘Lost on Me’ and ‘O You’, making for enjoyable funk tracks with a 70s disco influence.

However towards the end, Happy People runs out of steam a little, with ‘Someday’ doing very

And with rumours that Kendrick’s as yet unnamed album is shipping to stores as you read this, could the suprise rap album hype get any more... hypier?

Former RHCP guitarist John Frusciante released his first acid house track last week. Admittedly, it’s not that bad—although he could’ve tried releasing it ten years earlier. How about some dubstep?

You can now Cowell Pat report bullying, harassment and discrimination on line

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Simon Cowell’s pure shite sounding Ultimate DJ talent show has secured itself a home on online streaming platform Yahoo Screen. Clanged mixes and EDM are a certainty.

little to seem like it’s anything more than the obligatory acoustic track on the LP. ‘Under the Moon’, while a decent track when taken by itself, lilts like a retro-style break up song and feels out of place to the rest of the album’s sound. However the final track ‘Wold Pleasure’ raises the mood by blending 70’s funk and hip-hop in the same manner as Blondie’s ‘Rapture’, serving as a worthy finale.

Happy People manages to avoid recycling the same work as their debut like many other failed sophomore albums do by implementing some new influences like funk into their work, making for a worthy follow-up LP.

Photo: vagueonthehow @Flickr

‘ill Louis

Tragic news arrived this week that certified house DJ Lil Louis may have been permanently deafened by a manager at Sankeys testing an obnoxious new piece of kit. Get well soon.

Photo: Press shot

JESS LISHAK Women’s Officer, Students’ Union

Games

ISSUE 14/ 9th February 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

15

Editors: James Thursfield, Matthew Cole

Feature E-Sports becomes a 2nd level Olympic Sport James Thursfield discusses how E-Sports became recognised as a second level Olympic Sport in Korea and what it says about the entertainment industry.

On 27th January E-Sports was recognised as a 2nd level Olympic sport in Korea. In doing so, E-Sports has been placed alongside competitions such as Chess, Automobile Racing, Polo and Cheerleading. In response there has been a social media backlash, as commentators argue that video games need to remain separate from the Olympics.

To the uninformed, E-Sports stands for electronic sports. Competitive gaming over the last couple of years has transformed from a niche market to one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world. Reports estimate that League of Legends will see 42 million new players in 2015, with the global audience expected to grow to 145 million by 2017, and will generate over $600 million in revenue. Put into perspective, in 2013 and 2014, more people watched the League of Legends World Championship Final than the World Series or NBA Finals.

The creator of Warcraft, Rob Pardo, stated that, “There’s a very good argument for E-Sports being in the Olympics. It’s a very competitive skill-

News

set and you look at these professional gamers and their reflexes are lightning quick and they’re having to make very quick decisions on the fly.” However, he also conceded that gaming faced a cultural battle

Reddit user daydiem, following the announcement of E-Sports as a second tier Olympic Sport, stated, “It just doesn’t make sense, it’s not a good match.” The user argues that “E-Sports is not a single discipline”

Photo: Chris Yunker@Flickr

against more physical sports and the broadening of the definition of what is considered a “sport”.

and that the International Olympic Committee is merely integrating the industry for the youthful

King of the North 2015

Following the success of last year’s

of League of Legends, the largest

games like FIFA and Call of Duty for

event, the University of Manchester’s

eSport currently extant, have recently

all attendees to compete on. With the

eSports society has returned with

appointed

a

aim of being as inclusive as possible,

a whole new King of the North. The

veteran of CCP games among other

the eSports Society has invited the

event consists of national university

organisations, as university program

Manchester

tournaments in three video games

co-ordinator full-time. In a recent

a group of eSports fans across the

(Valve’s DotA 2, Riot’s League of

interview Steinarsson stated that

city, to host their own Hearthstone

Legends and Blizzard’s StarCraft 2)

he views the university scene, and

tournament on the day of the event

that culminate in a final live event

in particular the United Kingdom

which attendees can sign up for in

on March 11th open to anyone in the

university scene, as one of the ‘largest

advance. Some home-grown talent

country, hosted last year in Academy

potential areas of growth’ in eSports

will also be present, of course. The

2 in the University of Manchester

over the next few years.

University of Manchester’s Gaming

Student’s Union.

Olafur

Steinarsson,

Steinarsson, or RiotBro, to use his Riot

eSports

likes of Germany and America and their respective gaming venues.

What this all indicates is that it is irrelevant whether video games are a “sport” or not. The industry is growing at such an exponential rate that it cannot be ignored and cannot be marginalised, irrespective of its definition. Gaming presently sits at the forefront of modern technology whilst at the same time is beginning to dominate the entertainment industry. When something is earning in excess $600 million annually, it doesn’t need to be considered a sport – its popularity speaks for itself.

One interesting final thought is that E-Sports has been on television in Korea since 1999, with roughly a 15 years head-start over the rest of the world. Presently, over 20% of its population watches E-Sports and it is considered a national past-time.

Assuming that E-Sports continues to grow at its present rate, this not only indicates a huge growth of gaming in the rest of the world in a commercial sense, but also alludes to its potential of integrating into society and becoming a phenomenon in a cultural sense.

The University of Manchester’s eSports Society is back with the nation’s flagship competitive gaming event

Community,

Society are turning up in full force,

The King of the North 2015 is

Games moniker, is just one attraction

dishing

the biggest tournament yet in the

for attendees of the King of the North

competitions all day long, and there

university

competitive

demographic associated with the sport. This implies that video games are being aligned with other sports, not for cultural reasons, but for their sheer popularity.

Arguments against video games not being a legitimate “sport” have existed for several years. Points have been constructed around the notion that “proper” sports involve greater physical exertion. ESPN’s president, John Skipper, has previously commented on gaming, stating, “Its not a sport– it’s a competition… mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports”.

In spite of such comments, ESPN has also recently partnered with E-Sport League and Major League Gaming, to allow pro-gamers to compete at the same venues as other sports athletes, whilst regularly streaming games on their channel X-Games. E-Sports may not be officially a “sport”, but it sure as hell is being treated like one.

In the UK, E-Sports is also on the rise with Kingston-based Ginfinity planning to raise £3 million to build the UK’s first E-Sports Arena. This is intended to accommodate 500 spectators at a time and make sure that the UK does not fall behind the

out

prizes

and

hosting

gaming

Gaming Festival. His attendance will

may well be guest appearances from

community, a community that has

complemented by the presence of

other societies as well. Finally, local

seen amazing growth in the last 18

some of the most groundbreaking

gaming businesses will be represented

website*. They are playing for the

to gamers of all stripes across the

months. Events like the University

and forward-thinking organisations in

in Fraggers Gaming Cafe, situated in

largest prize pool in the history of

university community, and students

of Bath’s ‘Best of the South-West’,

the gaming industry at the moment.

Altrincham, and will be supporting the

university eSports – over a thousand

across the city generally. So, if you

Southampton’s ‘Battle of the South’ and

MSi Gaming Notebooks UK and

event with top-of-the-range gaming

pounds in cash and awesome gear to

want to support your local gaming

Queen Mary University’s ‘King of the

Cooler Master CM Storm will both

computers.

boot. The very best teams who make

contingent, hit up the website and

Capital’ are just the latest generation of

be presenting cutting edge gaming

The centrepieces of the event, of

it through the qualifiers on the 14th

snaffle those tickets while you can.

events hosted by student gamers, for

equipment - from laptops to mice and

course, are the finals of the King of the

and 21st of February will be the only

student gamers.

keyboards and other peripherals. The

North eSports tournaments in Dota

ones invited to the live final event – for

European Gaming League, one of the

2, League of Legends and Starcraft 2.

the viewing pleasure of those lucky

gaming

fastest growing amateur and semi-

Entrants are already signing up to play

enough to have tickets.

community in the last few years that

professional tournament organisers in

in the qualifiers of these tournaments,

With all this and plenty more besides,

Riot games, developer and owner

Europe will also be present with great

which you can find at the UoM eSports

King of the North 2015 should appeal

Such has been the growth in the university

competitive

Photo: uomesports website

by Jacob Harrison *www.uomesports.com

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

/mancunionfashionandbeauty @MancunionFash

Editors: Gráinne Morrison, Aimée Grant Cumberbatch, Nikki Patel (Beauty) Style 2

We have all witnessed iconic examples of couples

matching A$AP with an almost identical black

Ask Adrienne

matching on the red carpet. Like when David and

bomber jacket. Similarly, thanks to his songstress

Dear Adrienne,

Victoria Beckham dressed in their all leather Ver-

girlfriend FKA Twigs, Twilight heartthrob Robert

I’ve recently had a realisation about my everyday dress sense. Almost all my outfits consist of black

sace ensembles in 1999 or when Britney and Jus-

Pattinson has swapped the scruffy tees (cc: Kristen

skinny jeans, of which I have several pairs. Although they’re appropriate for my day-to-day student she-

tin wore head-to-toe denim at the 2001 American

Stewart) for edgy baseball caps and beanies in his

nanigans , it’s starting to feel a bit repetitive and I need some advice on how to switch it up.

Music Awards. These couples have made a con-

current style transformation.

All is fair in love and war Love your partner but loathe their style picks? Kathryn Murray’s got your back

Adrienne Galloway on the style benefits of conscious coupling

Stuck in a style rut? Resident fashion agony aunt Adrienne Galloway is here to help you out

scious effort to let the public know that when you

While the inevitable “what were they thinking?”

The first thing to do is not to panic because at

Finding the right pair of jeans is a strenuous but

get one, you also get the other. However, what hap-

question comes to mind when we see old photos

one point or another we’ve all experienced, or are

important fashion voyage for anyone who wishes to

pens when couples start dressing like each other

of David and Victoria with nearly identical hair-

still experiencing ECA (Emotional Clothing Attach-

blur the distinctive line between ‘I made a conscious

unknowingly?

styles, it is important to consider that many fash-

ment). Holding on for dear life to that one item that

effort today’ and ‘I woke up 10 minutes ago’. The den-

Well it’s safe to say that dress sense is influenced

ion industry empires have been built by couples

suits our needs perfectly, that has grabbed our heart

im industry has recognised this and has styles to ca-

by the people we surround ourselves with and

who inspire each other. Kim K has shown her sup-

what better way to show your coupledom than

port for Kanye by being seen wearing his collabo-

and refuses to let go. If you’re a casual dresser then

ter to all shapes and sizes. Boyfriend, mom, ripped

by shaping one another’s style? Last year we wit-

rations with Giuseppe Zanotti, as well as his cus-

jeans are likely to be one of your go-to pieces, espe-

(sometimes almost to shreds), distressed, acid wash,

nessed rapper A$AP Rocky and super model and

tom-designed Nike Air Yeezy II trainers. Though

cially with the unpredictable weather conditions

ankle grazer, high waisted or combinations of the

Yoncé star Chanel Iman share more than just a

couple’s style may seem cringe-worthy, we can all

that we’re currently experiencing. What I will say

above. Invest time and effort into jean shopping

love affair. On several occasions Chanel was seen

agree that there are fashion lessons to be learned

is that a little experimentation never hurt anybody.

and soon you’ll have much more to work with than

adopting A$AP’s monochrome street style, going

in every new relationship.

as far as wearing a bejewelled mouth grill and

Photo: rajjj19 @Instagram Former couple A$AP Rocky and Chanel Iman stare lovingly into each other’s eyes.

Photo: Madelineyoki @Flickr As Valentine’s Day approaches, a lot people are thinking about how loved up they are. How perfect their partners are. How amazing they are. How there is nothing they would want to change about them. But not me. I am too busy thinking about how rubbish his sense of style is.

Yes I want him to be an individual, happy with what he wears and confident in himself. But I always dread our nights out, knowing for sure that his hideous Hawaiian print shirt, brown suede shoes, and black shiny jeans will make a starring appearance.

However, I am comfortable in knowing that I am not alone. Surely it’s not just me who plots to change their partner’s style? Can I seriously be the only person who has considered spilling red wine over a not so popular pair of white trousers? Or accidentally catching a bracelet in some hair which hasn’t seen a pair of scissors in over a year? Is it possible I am the only one wanting to gain weight, so he stops stealing my skinny jeans? Surely not.

And I am equally certain that this isn’t just an issue for females in relationships. Everyone knows that the male species favour short, tight, verging on inappro-

priate outfits in contrast to their girlfriend’s signature ripped-jeans and oversized shirt ensembles.

From experience I can tell you straight off the bat that being honest is not the right way to go about changing their style. In fact, this is probably the easiest way to find yourself single and alone, wishing that you had the luxury of loathing your significant others’ favourite itchy jumper. No no, take your time. Slowly, slowly catchy monkey.

There is hope. This is how you create the perfectly dressed boyfriend/girlfriend: firstly, you compliment them on the few outfits that they own that you do in fact approve of. Then you comment on how other people style themselves. Examples include: “He has a cool jacket, I think something like that would suit you!”, and “I like her skirt, do you have one like that?”

Finally, you go shopping as a couple. Suggest a few items that would revamp their dress sense, casually rejecting items that they pick up (and that you despise).

If all else fails, you can be honest, hoping that they won’t get too offended. But if they do, at least you have saved the next poor soul the effort.

Why not try different colours and/or styles that fit your practical needs but also add a little edge to

Love,

your outfit? Try pairing light blue mom jeans with a

Adrienne x

black belt and long sleeve crop top to channel Janet Jackson’s statement Poetic Justice look, for example.

Get the skinny: Jean guide 3 of my favourite black jean alternatives:

black skinnies.

Have you got a fashion conundrum that Adrienne could help with? Drop her an email at fashion.mancunion@gmail.com

Topshop black super

Topshop blue mom

Zara checked cigarette

ripped jeans:

jeans:

trousers:

£45.00

£40.00

£25.99

Smug married couples

Readers respond

Best dressed: Dynamic duos

‘‘We Ask You Answer’’

Our selection of the most sartorially savvy couples on the planet

Valentine’s day is just around the corner and love is most definitely in the air. Last week we asked you: ‘‘Is fashion a relationship dealbreaker?’’

“Unless my other half’s style blends seamlessly with my look, it’s game over.”

-Nuala Timoney

Style guide

Destination: Date

“When I first started going out with my boyfriend he wore superhero t-shirts all the time. It was an issue.”

-Nadia G.

A date can be something of a fashion fright-fest, but wherever you’re headed this Valentine’s Day Kirsty Marsh has got it covered

Destination: Cringe

17

Agony aunt

Feature

The look of love

Fashion

Destination: Classy

Destination: Cool

“I couldn’t care less what someone wears, it’s what’s under the wrapper that counts.”

-Philip Shuttleworth Photo: theoliviapalermo.blogspot.com The couple that all couples want to be: Olivia palermo and Johannes Huebl.

“My ex-girlfriend used to not-so-subtly change my style and I hated it. Love me, love my Atkins fleece, that’s what I say.”

-Ben Murphy

Photo: ccottis@Instagram The couple that takes fashion a little too seriosuly at times...: Eddie and Patsy.

“My boyfriend has this weird beige jacket that I just can’t stand. Every time he wears it, I question our future together.”

-Aimée Grant Cumberbatch “No, but I did organise my boyfriend’s clothes into categories based on their acceptability.”

-Marcus Johns Jeans: £32, ASOS; Top: £40, Urban Outfitters; Boots: £82, Topshop So you’re going for a nice romantic meal at Nando’s, huh? Mmm, nothing says “I love you” like half a chicken and unlimited soft drinks! Lack of imagination aside, take comfort in knowing that even on a Nando’s date you can dress to impress.

As an LBD and killer heels won’t cut it this time around, aim for a casual yet sexy look. Combine high-waisted skinny jeans with ankle boots in a coordinating shade for the illusion of mile-long legs. The addition of a quirky crop-top is cool and fun.

Jacket: £30, Miss Selfridge; Dress: £34.99, Mango; Shoes: £50, River Island Your standard Saturday night may consist of Netflix and a onesie, but if you have a date scheduled at Australasia, it’s time to get glammed up!

Team an LBD with an embellished jacket and killer heels for a look that’s smart but not stuffy.

‘‘Team an LBD with an embellished jacket and killer heels for a look that’s smart but not stuffy.’’

“No.” -Anon.

Dress: £95, Topshop Boutique; Shoes: £35, Missguided; Earrings: £12, Urban Outfitters Forget what your granny told you about not stuffing your face on a date, because at Almost Famous, it would be a crime not to. However this does mean it may not be the time the break out that body-con dress or those high waisted jeans. At least not if you want everyone asking when your burger baby is due. Opt for a comfy and super-cool loose dress instead and style it up with some sexy shoes and edgy jewellery.

“What they wear should be the least of your worries.”

-Gráinne Morrison

Photo: keepingupwithgrainne @Instagram The power couple: Jenna Lyons and Courtney Crangi.

Photo: gaydom.blogspiot.com The so-beautiful-it-hurts couple: Zachary Quinto and Miles McMillan. And third wheel.

In next week’s issue, we’ll be tacking the sometimes tricky relationship between feminism and fashion. So we want to know, can you be a feminist and a fashion fan? Let us know.

18

Film

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Editors: Tom Bruce, Andriana Hambi, James Moules, Martin Solibakke Feature

TV Binge

Penny Dreadful Directors Don’t Deserve Special Chairs Elliot Coen tells us why we shouldn’t necessarily idolise the captain of the film set.

Kubrick is an exception, though.

Photo: Showtime

Similarly to the incredibly popular yet only mildly compelling American Horror Story, Penny Dreadful makes the clever marketing decision to acknowledge the cliché-ridden nature of the genre which it inhabits. Aware that the constant recycling of supernatural mythology has left it decidedly over-worked, the show locates itself within Victorian London, in which the ‘cheap’ Gothic fiction of its time (to which the programme owes its title) has vomited its tropes out onto the street. Penny Dreadful follows ruthless imperialist explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) in the search of his daughter, Mina, who has been kidnapped by vampires.

To assist him in his search, Sir Malcolm recruits the help of Mina’s childhood friend Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), with whom he shares a mysterious past, along with Wild West reenactor Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) and a mysterious scientist by the name of Dr. Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway).

Abandoning any attempt at plausibility, Penny Dreadful mixes together werewolves and possession with the specific literary examples of Frankenstein, Dracula and Dorian Gray to create an odd but weirdly successful cocktail of hamminess. Despite being conscious of its own melodramatic nature, Penny Dreadful escapes the label of parody by a whisker, as it combines humour with some genuinely disturbing and moving scenes; Rory Kinnear has some particularly affecting soliloquies as Frankenstein’s monster, and the sequence in which Vanessa spends time in an institution for the insane is uncharacteristically restrained, and thus all the more disconcerting by comparison. The show relies to a huge extent on its great ensemble cast, who provide performances which transcend the programme’s exaggerated style to produce some truly compelling characters.

If I’m being honest, the casting of Eva Green was what initially attracted me to Penny Dreadful, and she is indisputably its greatest source of appeal; the potent mixture of allure and threat which she always seems to exude works perfectly here—a genius piece of casting, considering she is simultaneously one of the scariest and most attractive actresses in Hollywood. It’s hard to believe that we’re expected to completely ignore the comic potential of her occasionally hilarious over-acting, for example during the scene in which, midséance, Vanessa presses Dorian Gray’s hand to her breast and starts babbling ‘is it the dysentery? I’ll have no more clean trousers’, but it cannot be denied that she has a particular talent for writhing around semi-naked on table tops while growling obscenities. These demented outbursts culminate in an impressive exorcism set-piece which lasts for a whole episode, and embodies the tone of the programme perfectly, as it is by turns funny, thrilling and emotionally charged. Series one ended on a compelling cliff-hanger, with every suggestion of a promising second series. With any luck, Penny Dreadful will continue its winning formula, maintaining the perfect balance of the absurd and the genuinely thoughtprovoking.

Eleanor Stead

We are now firmly in the 2014/15 film award season, a controversial time in itself, as film nerds all around the world cry out about how their favourite actor, director, or film of the year has been viciously ‘snubbed’ by respective judging panels. I want to take this chance, while passions run high, to focus on the director; why the director is important, and, conversely, why the director is not as important as we sometimes make them out to be.

“Who is your favourite director?”, is a question I’ll often ask when meeting new people who show an interest in film.

Naturally, the answer to that is subjective; there is no right or wrong. Often, the conversation will follow on as to why we like certain directors, and what it is directors do that particularly grabs us. I get told how people love the stories that directors come up with, how brilliant the dialogue they write is, or how well a director shoots with a camera.

By definition, a director doesn’t do any of these things. Typically, writers devise the screenplay and a director of photography (cinematographer) controls all aspects of the shooting of a film. The director’s job is to visualise the screenplay and coordinate all the moving parts on set, such as actors and the cinematographer, in realising this vision.

So, why do directors get all the limelight in popular culture, alongside the actors, when films are such a collaborative process between many artistic inputs?

This increasingly fervent celebration of directors is a lingering remnant from the development of 1960s auteur theory, the

belief that films are a self-expression of one individual, the director as an author. In the early stages of cinema, directors often were also the writer, cinematographer, and even took on other demanding roles,

Fincher, due to the incredibly popular nature of the films he directs, having his name at the helm of a project instantly overshadows anyone else working on the film.

There is certainly a spillover effect from these modern auteur directors who also write their films, such as Anderson or Tarantino. It raises the profile of every other working director in the industry because, aside from actors, the director is the easiest target to pin the success or failure of a film to. Now, directors become celebrities after box office success, appearing on television talk shows around the world. That never happens for the writers, editors, cinematographers, set designers, costume designers and so on, who each have artistic input which the success of a film is largely dependent on. When Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer talking about this issue, I’ll get asked, “Yeah, but how many film such as composition of the musical score editors or designers can you name?”, as if and lead production design on set. As the to say they don’t necessarily deserve great industry developed, these roles started to be recognition because they aren’t well known delegated to others to increase efficiency and already. It’s the reverse of this; I can name quality of the final product. very few film editors because the only real Arguably the most renowned director recognition they get is in the credits reel, or ever, Alfred Hitchcock never put pen to in the much, much lower down categories at paper for any of his films past his very early award ceremonies. work. Today in the industry, only a small I can’t speak for any of these unsung percentage of working directors are able to contributors to film. They seem to always be wear many hats and pull it off successfully, in work if they are good at their job. They may in my opinion. Paul Thomas Anderson well prefer not to be wrapped up in constant (Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) writes and media coverage. I just think that maybe directs all of his films, yet someone like David it’s time we paid more respect to film as a Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl) chooses only collaborative process. At least the credits give to focus on directing, letting others write the credit where credit’s due. screenplays for him. I think both are excellent directors respectively, but in the case of

Classic Review

Terminator 2: Judgement Day In the sequel to the much smaller budgeted 1984 Terminator ($6 million, compared to the 1991 T2 $100 million) Arnold Schwarzenegger returns once again as a T-800 Terminator sent back in time from a post-nuclear disaster world in 2026 where machines rule and a 45 year old John Connor leads the human resistance.

Unlike in Terminator, this time he’s been sent by the future Connor to protect his 10 year old self from a more advanced T-1000 Terminator that can morph into any human it comes in contact with which was sent back in time to kill him.

The entire film is essentially a chase: after breaking Sarah Connor out of the institute, the three form an unlikely family that learns from each other as they try to both outrun the T-1000 and destroy the technological developments that lead to the future apocalypse.

Cameron broke the mould in many ways with T2. Terminator had a much smaller budget of $6 million compared to T2’s $100 million but Cameron still maintained a lot of the simplistic style adopted due to budget restraints faced in Terminator. For example, in the 1970s there was a rise in ‘exploitation cinema’ that exploited easy and cheap locations rather than building sets. T2 still has its fair share of expensive locations, for example the shopping mall where the two terminators first come face to face with Connor between them but the rest of the locations were typically B-movie locations such as undistinguished hallways

Director: James Cameron Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick Released: 1991

and concrete river banks of L.A.. Therefore T2 still maintained the feeling of being a sequel to the Terminator which actually was a B-movie.

standards. Between Terminator and T2 Cameron directed Aliens and Abyss and took some things away from both of them. There’s the awe-inspiring protective mother figure (according to the Guardian, one of the greatest work out shots is of Sarah Connor doing slow push ups using an upturned bed frame in her cell) and the similar CGI from the water-based creature in the Abyss to create the T-1000’s effects.

Around the early 90s action films were getting more and more fast paced however Cameron ignored that with slow moving scenes between the action, the chases and the explosions: this film is a great antidote to Bay’s Transformers sequels which lack pace completely and feel as if the released films are fast-forwarded recordings of Photo: Tri Star Pictures original 4hr length films.

The film grapples with humanity’s big The most incredible spectacle of T2 is the issues including weapon development and action sequences. Cameron succeeded in destruction, technology and sacrifice. With creating a sci-fi/action hybrid and combining lesser overemphasis, even feminism (for CGI and props with explosions and chases example, Sarah Connor on men’s creativity in in the film. However the two elements were developing destructive methods vs women’s generally kept separate: meaning that almost ability to create life) and racism (the inventor no CGI was ever used during the chases, and whose work revolutionises the weapons real helicopters, semi’s, chopper’s etc were industry leading to self-aware machines filmed performing the real-life stunts and and the Armageddon is African American) crashing and burning. In the scene when are handled. On weapon development and T-1000’s chasing them in a helicopter and is technology Cameron has stated “Technology weaving over and under real traffic, Cameron in and of itself is not evil, but there is a great filmed that shot himself since the crew refused potential for evil in the human misapplication to shoot it because it was too dangerous. The of technology.”

CGI itself also holds up well, even by modern

/MancunionFilm

Film 19

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

@mancunionfilm

Review

Top 5

Big Hero 6 Sarah Wolff inspects the schematics of Marvel/Disney’s off the wall(-e) robo-adventure.

With its investment into the Marvel studios in 2009, Disney’s first attempt at sparkling up a Marvel comic has been anticipated for a while. With Big Hero 6 it has now finally reached the screens near you. Set in ‘San Fransokyo’, a colourful fusion of San Francisco and Tokyo that seems strongly reminiscent of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles, the story sets off in the gloomy surroundings of an illegal robot fighting ring and sees Tadashi Hamada rescuing his little brother Hiro (conveniently the hero of the story) from trouble. Unhappy about Hiro’s leisurely activities, Tadashi tries to convince him to give up ‘bot-fighting’ in favour of ‘nerd school’, which is crowned with success when Hiro is introduced to his brother’s latest invention: a distinctly huggable, self-inflatable medical care assistant resembling a puffier version of the Michelin man called Baymax. To get accepted into robotics college, Hiro invents so-called ‘microbots’, tiny robots which can assemble into any imaginable shape through the power of the mind. When a fire breaks out at the exhibition venue, Tadashi tries to rescue his professor and finds a sudden and unexpected end in the flames.

Devastated, Hiro is close to giving up on life when he coincidentally reawakens Baymax, who draws his attention to activities of the supposedly destroyed micro-bots. It turns out Hiro’s invention got stolen and is being abused by a masked stranger. With the help of an upgraded Baymax and the rest of the saucily named robotics nerd-squad from the robotics lab (Wasabi, Go Go, Honey Lemon and Fred—someone had to come up with the names), Hiro resorts to pin-

ning down the evil to avenge his brother’s death. After changing into their superhero gear, the six friends commence their marvel(lous) adventure.

Based on the lesser-known comic of the same name, Big Hero 6 allowed for enough creative scope

to perform a successful Disneyfication of the material, which is evident in character conceptualisations and motivations alike. Contrary to our expectations of the robot central to a comic adaptation, health care robot Baymax has an unprecedented potential to be of service and value to the public. This offers a platform for comedy and Baymax’s punchlines have a very respectable hit-rate. Painstakingly slow-moving

Cornerhouse Pick of the Week

and clumsy, one could assume his most dangerous weapon to be suffocation by extended hugging. While a point of reference to other recent comic book adaptations is successfully established through the miseen-scène, the strength of the film lies within its story arc’s constant reliance on humanity often lacking its thematic siblings. Enemies are not purely evil and the motivation for villainous behaviour is consistently linked to emotional struggles. Through Baymax, robots are portrayed as helpful assistants rather than uncontrollable and dangerous machines. The human individual behind them is stressed, evoking a peaceful cooperation rather than reciprocal exploitation of man and machine. In a crucial scene the robot acts as a reminder of humanitarian values when Hiro is in danger of forgetting them.

Furthermore, the recurrent theme of loss creates a subplot about emotional responses that stays in contrast to the stereotypical coldness preeminent within the superhero genre. In spite of some moments of Disney tackiness, the film altoPhoto: Disney gether manages to avoid a turn towards banality. However, the necessity of making up for its dark edges by throwing in some splashes of rainbow colour remains questionable. Nonetheless this is a charming take on a Marvel comic enjoyable regardless of age. On a scale from 1 to 10, how would I rate this cinematic experience? “I am satisfied with my care.”

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

Inherent Vice

The Oscar that cried wolf

Having read the book, Harry Daniels says this film adaptation can’t hold a joint to the source material.

Don’ t be sore Leo-sers, Andriana Hambi questions whether he deserves an Oscar.

Near the end of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel of the same name, L i e u t e n a n t Detective Bjornsen aka Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) uses one of his big feet to knock down the door to the apartment of the muddled hero of the film, Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), and then proceed to munch upon Doc’s still-smoking joint, eventually devouring all the accumulated hash ash on the plattercum-ashtray of his coffee table. This bizarre act appears to allegorise the one-hundred-and-twenty minutes that played before it. The film is an attempted digestion of an ash-heap of history: the Californian 70s, which plays out in the film as a paranoid comedown from the decade before it where hippies dreamed of peace and love, dreams now all but dying embers.

The film’s plot centres on the missing celebrity billionaire Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), who Doc’s ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay (Katherine Waterston) is in love with. Doc promises to help and is then led into an ever-expanding labyrinthine underbelly of intrigue.

Despite the plot’s intricacy though, it often lacks the fundamental interestingness of far less sophisticated whodunits. Viewers who are sat thinking they’re in for such a caper will be most definitely disappointed.

Ultimately, the plot is a sphinx without

defining role of his career? Not Titanic, “An outrage! A Travesty! I blame definitely not Inception; everything is Obama!” These are just some of the good, nothing is amazing. cries of indignation over the fact that It might sound it, Leonardo DiCaprio but this is definitely has not won an Oscar not an attack in his heroic 16-year on Leo, mainly career. It pains me because there’s to say, but there’s no nothing wrong doubting that he’s with just being made some great good. If it wasn’t for films and his recent being ‘just good’, marriage to Scorsese Wes Anderson has produced some would have no pretty good stuff; career, George key phrase, pretty Clooney would be good. The feelings of married to a less atrocity towards the cool lawyer and fact that he’s never most of us wouldn’t won an Oscar are be at university. absurd really when What do awards you consider how ceremonies even decidedly average mean anyway? he is when compared to the other Photo: Weinstein Company He can work with anyone he chooses, people nominated he doesn’t have to alongside him. do work just for money, that’s the dream He lost in 2005 to Jamie Foxx in Ray, for any actor! in 2007 to Forrest Whitaker in The Last Essentially, he is a good actor. He is King of Scotland and 2014 to Matthew consistently good and it would be a McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club. stretch to point out an objectively ‘bad’ Right there are three of the best films film he’s made in the last 10 years. But of the last 10 years, with three great how does this in any way qualify him performances. Each time he’s not for what is seen as the most prestigious won, he’s really not deserved it. This acting award in the Western world. is pure opinion, but there’s something And save your tears, Leo is one of the so smarmy about his presence on highest-paid actors in the world and has screen, and it’s very difficult to see past a free pass to behave in whatever way the fact that he is the ‘great’ Leonardo he likes. And on top of this, don’t forget DiCaprio. He has a reputation for he is 40 years old—he has plenty of time being in the upper echelons of actors to become legitimate. alongside your Oliviers, your Streeps, your Bullocks. But in reality, what is the

a secret, and many viewers will find this incredibly irritating. It is far more interested in conspiracy and secretiveness in general than any particular one of its tangled mess of events, and far more interested in shouting, “O tempora! O Photo: Warner Bros mores!” than keeping its audience on the edge of their seats— and even doing this without total conviction.

Those that love the idiosyncrasies of Lynch’s Twin Peaks residents will enjoy the strangeness of the characters Anderson lifts from Pynchon in all their kaleido-encyclopaedic variation.

But for all the novelty, a watcher will make little connection with the characters; even at the end of the film, when a main character is reunited with his family, something which in most other films would be wonderful, one feels no real happiness about the situation. This is perhaps the film’s main failing and the inherent vice with using the Pynchonian source.

Despite its hollowness, the film does redeem itself mostly through being consistently hilarious—especially through the masculine Bigfoot’s passionate but mechanical attempts at eating an incredibly phallic chocolatecovered banana.

Alfred Hitchcock Cameos 5) Lifeboat (1944) Hitchcock never satirised himself so well as his appearance on a ‘before’ and ‘after’ newspaper article about rapid weight loss. Perhaps this is the director’s own yearnings on display, or perhaps he is just producing a quick laugh at his own expense. Either way, it’s one of the most unique and brilliant of Hitchcock’s appearances in his own movies.

Photo:Universal

4) The Birds (1963) Arguably Hitchcock’s most iconic cameo, we see him walking his two dogs out of a pet shop. It should be noted that these were actually Hitchcock’s own dogs that he decided to give this cameo role. How sweet.

Dogs just make life in general so much better, don’t they?

3) Strangers on a Train (1951) Watching The Master of Suspense wrestle a double bass onto a train has to go down as one of the funniest moments in any of his films. This cameo gives us a great example of how Hitchcock’s brief appearances in his movies can set up the tone for the entire film. This is a genius at work here – make no mistake.

Photo: Universal

2) Rear Window (1954) The brilliance of this cameo comes down to its place in the setting of the movie. As a crippled Jimmy Stewart is spying on his neighbours, we see Mr Hitchcock talking to a musician in an adjacent apartment. At one point, he turns around to look at the man. Many have speculated that this was a fourthwall break from Hitchcock, questioning the standing of the voyeuristic viewer that he so brilliantly seduced.

1) Topaz (1969) It may not be Hitchcock’s best movie, but it’s certainly one of his most memorable cameos. He gets pushed through an airport on a wheelchair, gets out of the wheelchair, shakes a man’s hand, and walks off. The subtly absurd humour that Hitchcock mastered as well as suspense is on display at its finest here.

James Moules

20

Books

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

/TheMancunion: Books @MancunionBooks

Editors: Leonie Dunn, Ali Pearson

Satire

Komodo dragon beaten to death with selfie stick in Manchester bar brawl *No Komodo dragons were harmed in the writing of this story

Dave in his prime. Photo: Vagmak at the Zoo @Flickr

In one of the most shocking events ever witnessed in Manchester, a lairy 90kg Komodo dragon has been brutally beaten to death by a 122kg construction worker. The incident occurred in the early hours of Monday morning in the Pub Zoo bar on Grosvenor Street. Manchester will wake up today with an overwhelming feeling of sickness, sorrow and disbelief.

The Komodo dragon had escaped from Knowsley Safari park in Merseyside two days earlier.

Initial reports suggest the reptile—known as ‘Dave’ by the safari park staff—boarded a Northern Rail train at Rainhill disguised as the ‘Gunnersaurus’,

the Arsenal club mascot. Although the lizard attracted attention and abuse while on the train, it remained purely football-related. Onlookers were visibly shocked when the dragon—after slithering under the ticket barriers at Manchester Victoria station—preceded to ransack the fresh meat aisle in Sainsbury’s Local. The largest known reptile was then not seen for around two hours.

The police were first notified of the dragon’s presence when they received a call from 52-year-old mother-of-two, Linda, at 11:07pm. She informed the police of the significant amount of intimidation the lizard was directing towards students in the Picca-

dilly Gardens area.

One BA (Hons) Aquatic Philosophy student The Mancunion interviewed said: “You know that big wheel they’ve got now yeah? Well it was on that.

Not just on it on it, but properly on it—near the top.”

Greater Manchester Police were then unable to track down the Indonesian islander as it utilised Manchester’s centuries-old canal system to reach the Pub Zoo bar on Grosvenor Street in the student area of the city.

After just over an hour at the bar, a violent altercation began between the Asian reptile and the 48-year-old construction worker, Darren Atherton.

The trigger of the argument has been described as a “disagreement over peanuts.” As the Komodo dragon began to hiss and make threatening swipe gestures with its claws, Atherton grabbed a selfie stick from a helpless student and began to ruthlessly strike the Indonesian. After several brutal blows, the animal lay in a crumpled heap on the floor—barely twitching.

The large reptile’s remains were found the next morning in a Greggs carrier bag in the corner of the central Manchester bar. One of the victims attempted to retrieve her SIM card from the mangled lizard-iPhone stew—only to vomit into the carrier bag, further complicating the task on the hands of forensic specialists. Heston Blumenthal has reportedly been granted permission to have a “quick taste” of the carrier bag’s stewed contents.

When questioned afterwards, the perpetrator said, “the lizard should have minded its own fucking business if you ask me—it had no reason to be there. And let me tell you—if I ever see another one

Tom Learmouth

Top 5

Review

Wolf Hall, from Book to Screen

The television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s award-winning novels is BBC2’s most successful drama in over a decade

Image: t0msk @Flickr

Mantel’s 2009 and 2012 Man Bookerwinning novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies have managed to surpass all expectations. While winning the prize does invariably lead to a huge increase in sales, with Mantel’s books continuing to sell in their thousands, even in hundreds of thousands, the afterlife of most Man Booker winners, however, does not usually include both stage and television adaptations, making Mantel’s somewhat of an anomaly.

Mantel’s books captured the public’s imaginations at the time of their publication and they continue to capture viewers through their adaptation today.

Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies both tell stories of human complexity which recount a distant time and place with an unparalleled insight. With the breadth and depth of Mantel’s novels it would seem that Peter Kominksy is stepping into somewhat hazardous playfield in

of those green shits round here again, the result will be the same.” Witnesses claimed the father-of-46 reptile had been in a provocative mood since his arrival, showing a complete lack of respect for custom and law. However, most were deeply shocked

by Atherton’s reaction. One witness described the offender as “possessed” while he delivered the beating.

One of the federation’s favourite festive fairings, the selfie stick’s legitimacy must now surely come into question following the events of the night. One man has already been arrested today for selling the aluminium truncheons outside the Arndale centre. Many Labour backbenchers have urged Ed Miliband to comprehensively oppose the Tories’ decision for the sticks to remain legal.

“Shall we have a ban on trees now? Neither of the main parties have a clue how to react. UKIP are the selfie stick party!” quipped an incensed Nigel Farage. “Oh stop talking,” replied Secretary of State William Hague. Nick Clegg then stated, “Farage can think what he likes but I want to make this abundantly clear to the public—the Liberal Democrats are the only true selfie stick party.” “Oh stop talking”, replied Secretary of State William Hague.

Beyond the political, what this story certainly emphasises is just what a dangerous place the world we inhabit is. The events were truly shocking.

attempting to televise the books.

Yet Kominksy’s adaptation challenges the achievements of Mantel’s novel, succeeding in a clash of artistries that readers and viewers are relishing. While Mantel has almost limitless space within her novel, Kominksy has merely six hours leading to pace, flashback and visual impact that challenges Mantel’s work.

With the fourth episode of six airing this Wednesday, it seems that there is no stopping Hilary Mantel’s historical drama Wolf Hall. The Henry VIII drama first aired on BBC2’s screens on the 21st of January and having been watched by over four million viewers it swiftly became BBC2’s most successful drama in a decade.

With viewers and critics alike regarding the adaptation of Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel as “close to perfect television” and The Mail’s television critic Christopher Stevens giving Wolf Hall a five star review.

It is no surprise, then, that Kominksy’s adaptation has caused such a stir, with a cast consisting of Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Jonathan Price as Cardinal Wosley. With the media frenzy circling the filming and interviews with Rylance, Mantel and Lewis on their hopes for the programme, Wolf Hall really took on a life of its own. This is what sets apart Wolf Hall from other historical dramas; unlike The Tudors, Wolf Hall is taut and gloomy. If you are looking for lusty bed scenes and beheadings then Wolf Hall is unnervingly quiet and tampered down in comparison to The Tudors.

James Walton at The Telegraph was taken by the pace of the production stating “its willingness to allow a slow build; its defiant refusal to get overexcited by either its own material or its own hype; and, above all, its vivid sense that what we now regard as history (and therefore as somehow inevitable) is something that once unfolded—and unfolded uncertainly—in real time.” Kominksy sets Wolf Hall apart from the hype to present viewers with a paired down, concise and coherent interpretation that Mantel herself said exceeded her expectations.

The buzz over the novel and its televised adaptation is justified by many, and in a somewhat paradoxical manner BBC2’s adaptation has not discouraged anyone who hasn’t read the novels from reading them but leaves you wanting to either read or re-read the originals. Kominksy has not dumbed down the historical drama but rather approached it in a manner that feeds our curiosity; he cuts to the chase and feeds us our television in what could be coined ‘tablet form’. Catch Wolf Hall on BBC2 or BBC iPlayer and if you’re like me, make your Wednesday nights staying-in nights.

Leonie Dunn

Top 5 Author Name Changes Five authors who changed their names, and the supposed reasons why.

Photo Photo: Wikimedia Commons

1. Tennessee Williams (born Thomas Lanier Williams) The author of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ changed his birth name to the one we know today sometime in 1939. He once wrote that he had a “desire to climb the family tree,” and thus changed his name, but others have speculated that he called himself Tennessee because his college fraternity nicknamed him this due to his thick southern dialect.

2. Mark Twain (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens) When he was young, Twain wanted to become a steamboat pilot. Part of the process of operating a steamboat was for the leadsman to call out “mark twain,” which meant that the water was deep enough for the steamboat to travel. A seemingly standard expression in river boating would go on to become the name of one of America’s greatest writers.

3. George Orwell (born Eric Blair) Before the publication of ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, Orwell sent a letter to the publishing company saying he wished for the book to be released under a pseudonym as he did not want

his family to be uncomfortable at the fact that he had lived as a tramp. He settled for the name ‘George Orwell’ because it was “a good round English name.”

4. George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) George Eliot felt it was necessary to masquerade the fact that she was a woman in order for her work to be treated equal to men’s work. Although there were accomplished female writers at the time, like Charlotte Brontë, Eliot wanted to escape the cliché that women only wrote romantic novels, but didn’t think she would be taken seriously with a female name.

5. Joseph Conrad (born Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) His first published novel, ‘Almayer’s Folly’, saw Conrad adopt the recognized name. Born in Poland, but later moving to England, the name change can only been seen as a way of anglicizing his birth name. The choice of his third of four names, Conrad, appears to be a homage to the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz’s patriotic narrative poem, “Konrad Wallenrod.”

Ali Pearson

Societies

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Editor: Jenny Sterne

21

Zip it and help the Giving Voice campaign The Speech and Language Soci-

tional and local decision makers,

Afasic hopes that taking part in

ety are a brand new society set up

while showing evidence of their

‘Zip It!’ will help people to under-

and run by us, speech and language

efficiency and value for money.

stand how frustrating and difficult

therapy students. Speech and lan-

The SLT society have run GV cam-

everyday life can be for the many

guage therapists (SLT) assess and

paigns throughout the year to pro-

thousands of children and young

treat speech, language and com-

mote this. Our first event was at the

people in the UK who have speech,

munication problems in people of

Refresher’s fair, where we spoke to

language and communication dis-

all ages to help them better commu-

students about our profession. On

abilities.

nicate.

the 10th of February we are running

Money raised from the ‘Zip It!’

a bowling social... but with a differ-

challenge will go towards funding

ence.

Afasic’s Parent Helpline Service (£35

We also work with people who have eating and swallowing problems. Our society has been set up

We will all be taking on an excit-

keeps it open for an hour) and their

so students can get involved in the

ing challenge called ‘Zip It!’ for a

unique specialist youth clubs (£50

events we run throughout the year.

charity linked to SLT called ‘Afasic’.

pays for a young person to attend

Due to the financial climate hitting

Afasic supports families, children

for a month).

all areas of the economy, the Royal

and young people with language

College of Speech and Language

and

problems.

GV campaign as it is promoting our

therapists (RCSLT) realised that the

They are a great supporter of rais-

profession to the public by using

SLT service may be under threat,

ing awareness and the work of the

non-verbal means to communicate.

and that the profession would be

RALLI campaign as well.

We will be promoting this on our

communication

This challenge will be part of the

heading for a difficult period. As a

The challenge is to stay silent and

Twitter and Facebook accounts

result, RCSLT introduced the Giving

use only non-verbal methods of

and trying to get as many people to

Voice campaign.

communication for 30 minutes! We

donate as possible!

Giving Voice will help speech and

will be asking students to donate a

language therapy services dem-

small donation of £1 or more to go

onstrate SLTs’ unique value to na-

to Afasic.

From the University of Manchester Speech and Language Society Image: The Speech and Language Society

Student Action launch “Breakout” activity programme Jenny Sterne Socities and News Editor Student Action gives you op-

Manchester Debating Union ask: Should we reintroduce Grammar Schools?

Jenny Sterne

portunities to participate in or

Socities and News Editor

lead your own projects that help make a meaningful and beneficial contribution to people in the local community.

Finding it hard to fit in volunteering around your studies?

Student Action are running ‘Breakout’; a four-day activity programme in the week beginning the 6th of April during the Easter holidays with disadvantaged children aged 8 to 10 from a local school.

Breakout involves trips to the Manchester Museum and Sealife centre, team games and treasure hunts, cake decorating and T-shirt making and everything and anything else!

The aim is to inspire children to go to university and enjoy

Image: Student Action

cal skills.

There’s an increasing minor-

the National Grammar Schools Association.

ity within the political establish-

- Graham Brady MP, Conserva-

The Manchester Debating Un-

ment who argue that grammar

tive MP for Altrincham and Sale

ion are running a public debate

schools should be reintroduced,

West, former Shadow Secretary

on Thursday at 17:00 in Theatre

including the resurgent UK Inde-

for Europe and Chairman of the

B, Roscoe Building at the Univer-

pendence Party, believing that

1992 Committee.

sity of Manchester.

it offers an opportunity for the

Opposition

they

You’ll need a DBS check and

This week the Manchester De-

brightest students to thrive re-

- Melissa Benn, journalist and

may not usually have access

can also gain experience on

bating Union asks: Should we re-

gardless of socioeconomic back-

author, founder of the Local

to. Student Action wants to

their weekly projects running

introduce grammar schools?

ground.

Schools Network which cam-

make an impact. You will be

children’s activity sessions in

part of the team planning and

Fallowfield.

educational

activities

designing and running the

If you are interested in vol-

Grammar schools, dominant

Critics argue that it creates seg-

in the UK until the 1960s, ran un-

regation in our society, and only

paigns in favour of a totally com-

der a system of selective educa-

removes a few children from

- Professor Bernard Barker, Emeritus professor of education-

prehensive schooling system.

sessions, so we are looking for

unteering on any projects

tion. At age 11 all school students

their troubled backgrounds rath-

committed and enthusiastic

their next social is 25th Feb at

would be given a general intelli-

er than tacking the root causes of

al leadership and management

people.

the Students’ Union Activities

gence exam.

deprivation.

at the School of Education, Uni-

If you would like to be in-

Space.

volved they can invite you to information and training sessions by email. Places are limited so get in touch! Never worked with children before?

Speakers will include:

versity of Leicester, he was the

Proposition

first comprehensive school pu-

ically-based grammar school. If

- Robert McCartney QC, Barris-

pil to become a comprehensive

they failed they would be sent to

ter and Former Leader of the UK

a school focusing more on practi-

Unionist Party and founder of

If a student passed they would gain entrance to a more academ-

www.manchesterstudentsunion.com/studentaction action.su@manchester.ac.uk

school headteacher in the UK.

22

Food & Drink

ISSUE 15/ 16th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Editors: Ellie Gibbs, Adam Fearn

Review: Bourbon & Black Co-editor Ellie Gibbs samples the steak in Didsbury.

It’s not difficult to get your hands on a grill these days. In the centre of Manchester, Living Ventures somewhat have the monopoly on the trendy-but-affordable steak scene; most notably Grill on the Alley/ NewYorkStreetandArtisanaretheidealdestinations if you want to chomp on a good hunk of meat in a subdued, ambient setting. A far cry from the everyday student haunt, the prices reserve these eateries for special occasions. It is a shame, then, that every oneofmypreviousvisits(therehavebeenafew)have resultedindisappointment;overcookedsteak,underseasoned salmon, ambivalent staff. For this reason, I was excited when ‘Bourbon & Black’ opened, promising the same thing as these disappointments, but without the disappointment.

LocatedonWilmslowRoadinDidsburyVillage,the restaurant requires less effort to reach than heading into town. For the Fallowfield dweller, the bus there is significantly quicker, and for the many who have already migrated in the direction of Didsbury, the only thingeasierwouldbeaDomino’sdelivery(thechoice is yours).

Our waiter for the evening enthusiastically led us through the warm, well-lit interior to a roomy booth.

He then recommended two cocktails to go along with our nibbles of baby chipolatas glazed in a honey and mustard jus; their twist on the classic Old Fashionedwasparticularlyimpressive,withamellowand memorablesmokiness.The‘BourbonandBlackberry’ is also worth a go, its long, fruity freshness complementing the indulgent food.

The sausages were a promising start to the meal; thick,succulentandslatheredinastickysweetsauce, the portion was generous and the price modest.

For starters, we sampled a shallot Tarte Tatin, which piqued our interest due to the unconventional savouriness of the well-known French dish. Light and

crisp, it was a welcome change following the heavy pre-starter. Alongside, the hand dived scallops with Bury black pudding and minted pea purée balanced silky, buttery and fresh flavours beautifully.

All enjoyment, however, had been somewhat obscured by the apprehension and excitement of the mainevent.Wewererecommendedthe‘Tomahawk’ steak by the restaurant manager and owner; a colossal warrior of a cut which is recommended for two and boasts premium quality. With bated breath we awaited its arrival, dreadfully anticipating what a waste of meat it would be if it wasn’t cooked properly.

Fortunately, it was velvety and pink - executed to perfection. The huge bone left at the end was also rather funtowield.Thesmokedmashwechoseasasidehad a lovely light woody flavour and complemented the richness of the meat. We also opted for the restaurant’s speciality sauce (the ‘Bourbon & Black’) which was, frankly, phenomenal; thick and treacly and ending in that warming sensation that only whiskey leaves.

Having selected from every category on the menu thus far, it didn’t make sense to skip dessert. We were glad to have soldiered on; a sizeable slice of New York Cheesecake slipped down a treat. More importantly, the old-skool Cornflake tart booted my tastebuds assertively down memory lane, amped up by a slatherit-yourself jug of cheeky bourbon custard which made the dish strictly for adults. Our cheery waiter then proceeded to whip out an old-style Polaroid and hand us a souvenir photo; I felt like I had just come offarollercoaster,onlywithadifferentkindofwobbly legs and light head.

Well and truly satisfied, we rounded it all off with a taste of a couple of the impressively extensive selection of bourbons housed here. To any fans of that profound warmth that you feel spreading through

your body the moment a quality liquor hits your lips: I implore you to pay this place a visit.

Bourbon & Black is not just a destination for sampling fine whiskies; with an enticing atmosphere, personable staff and well cooked food which adds (usually alcoholic) quirks to the classics, this place provides a much more personal and memorable experience than you could hope for in the central-Manchester chains.

704 Wilmslow Rd Manchester 0161 448 038 http://www.bourbonandblack.co.uk/

Photos: The Mancunion

Dinner and Dessert Our top recipe contributor Tilly Embling gives us some cost-friendly ideas for making delicious food at home.

Chorizo Skillet

Maple and Bacon Popcorn

This skillet is a perfect lunch that won’t break your bank or rip your jeans and best of all it can be eaten straight out of the pan! Hopefully this recipe will go down well with any of you who, like me, are struggling with the miserable, freezing weather. The chorizo gives it a fiery, smoky hit and the oozy egg yolk brings a silky delicioustexture.An added bonus is that you can chuck just about anything in it. If you don’t have potatoes, sweet potatoes work well or youcanstirthroughahandfulofquinoa.Equallytinnedtomatoesworkjustas well as fresh ones. Spring onions, courgette and parsley all go really well with this too so it’s a great one for cleaning out the odds and ends of your fridge.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Photo: Tilly Embling

Ingredients:

One chilli A handful of cherry tomatoes A Potato Half an onion Quarter of a chorizo sausage 2 eggs Half a pepper

1 rasher of bacon 2 table spoons of maple syrup half a cup of corn kernels Method: Use the largest pan you have with a secure lid. If you only have a small pan you may have to cook the popcorn in a couple of batches. You want the base of the pan to be almost covered in one lever of kernels so that none of them burn. Put the pan on a medium heat with a dash of vegetable or sunflower oil. the kernels will start to pop open, leave it until the popping subsides but shake the pan often so the kernels do not stick to the bottom.

Method: Finely dice the chilli and onion and fry over a medium heat. Once they have softened down add the chopped chorizo. Fry for a couple of minutes before adding the potato and pepper.

Once everything is pretty well cooked stir through the tomatoes and leave for a minute until they soften. Now create two wells in the mixture for the eggs.

Crack in the eggs and continue to fry for a few minutes so that they cook on the bottom. Now put the pan under the grill to cook the top of the egg. This should only take two minutes of you like your eggs runny. Cook it for one or two minutes longer if you want them to firm up a bit. Serve on its own or with crusty bread.

Total Cost: £2.20

Recently I have been indulging in a fit of cinema going, occasioned by thereappearanceofslightlywatchablefilms.FromJunetoJanuarythereis a serious dearth of exciting cinema, and suddenly, as award season looms, like buses, all the good films come at once. If I decide to continue to indulge this habit, however, I will have to seriously re-evaluate my snacking habits.

One night of cinema junk blows my food budget for the entire week (and mypost-Christmasdietobviously).AssuchIdecidedtohaveagoatmaking myownsnacksforallthosecinemaloversouttherewhodon’tfancypaying four pounds for what is essentially a bag of sweet or salty air.

Photo: Tilly Embling

Grill the bacon until really crispy on both sides. Then crumble it up or finely chop it. Lay the popped corn out flat on a tray and pick through and removeanyburntbitsorunpoppedkernels.Pouroverthemaplesyrupand sprinkle over the bacon. Leave out for 30 minutes to dry off or put in the oven on a very low heat for 10/15 minutes. Bag it up and sneak it into the cinema!

Total cost: £1.15 (Cinema price is around £4!!!)

If you fancy your hand at food and drink journalism, whether it be interviews, recipes, reviews, or some interesting culinary anecdotes, email us at food.mancunion@outlook.com or get in touch via Facebook or Twitter .

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

/TheMancunion: Food & Drink @MancunionFood

Food & Drink 23

Recipe: Lemon and Hola Granola Orange Polenta Cake Review

Ellie Gibbs shows us how to make our own tastier, healthier version of the packaged stuff

Tilly Embling celebrates the end of exam season by making this citrussy polenta cake.

Ingredients:

200g mixed unsalted nuts (I get the resealable bags from Lidl, I think £1.89) Large handful rolled oats Large handful seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, mixed, etc) Handful raisins/ chopped dried fruit 2 Lemons Anything else granola-ey (I had toasted flaked almonds from a previous truffle1 Large Orange making session) 75g Polenta 1 heaped tsp cinnamon 40g Plain Flour 1/2 tsp ground ginger 40g Ground Almonds A ripe banana, mashed with a fork 3 Eggs 2 tbsp peanut butter 150g Unsalted Butter 3 tbsp honey - if you like sweet granola, use more (mine had more of a nutty 150g Sugar Eaten anywhereroasted nice reflavour than standard sugary taste, but less is obviously healthier) 50g Sugar Ingredients:

cently? Created something 1 teaspoon baking powder Method:

Photo: Tilly Embling

For most of us, exams are finally over. It is such a relief, not just because I can throw out the ridiculous amount of useless dates, facts and quotes I had attempted to cram into my brain for a week but mainly because I had completely run out of clean clothes. The end of exam season means a return to sanity (to some extent).

I no longer have to spend every waking moment, and a disturbing number of sleeping moments, reading or noting or listing everything I have ever leant over and over in my head until I go insane. I can wash my clothes, my bathroom no longer looks like a scene out of a horror film and best of all I have time to cook!

When you are attempting to procrasti-

nate, as all good third year students with dissertations currently are, the best thing to do is bake a cake. It takes a good long time, requires minimum concentration and allows for the spontaneous appearance of delicious baked goods. Unfortunately I am pretty rubbish at baking cakes but this recipe below is fool proof and the end result is delicious. Proof of this is in the lack of photographs of the whole cake; I couldn’t wait long enough to take a photo before I had some. It is a bit pricey with the polenta and ground almonds so I would only suggest making it if you already have one or both of these items or you are feeling particularly flush!

delicious? We want to know!

Tell us about it at food.mantocunion@outlook.com 180 degrees and

Preheat the oven grease a small cake tin.

Cream together the butter and 150g of sugar. Whip in the eggs one at a time, if the mixture starts to separate add a tablespoon of the flour in between the eggs.

Add the remainder of the flour, the ground almonds and the baking powder.

Grate in the rind of the lemons and orange and add the juice of one lemon and half of the orange. Finally, carefully stir in the polenta and spoon the mixture into the tin.

Bake in the oven for around 40 minutes.

Stir together the juice of the other lemon and the other half orange and 50g of sugar.

When the cake is done, leave it in the tin and prick all over with a fork. Drizzle over the fruit and sugar mix and leave to cool in the tin, unless like me you just can’t wait to cut yourself a slice!

Review: Per Tutti my comments surrounding the high quality of the ingredients that Per Tutti used. There was more than enough pizza to fill me and, even after sharing it with my two friends, there was still a few slices left over which Chris gladly wrapped up for me to take away.

Prices on the lunch menu are reasonable. Starting at £4 for folded pizzas and salad dishes, Per Tutti is definitely worth visiting if you’re hungry around lunch hours and would like to watch the world go by. Unfortunately, the evening menu is slightly more expensive. Most main meals are prices around the £12-14, which may stop most students regularly visiting.

However, if you’re willing to pay its prices, Per Tutti is one of Manchester’s hidden gems; its atmosphere is relaxed despite its up-market décor, its staff are warm and attentive, and the food is cooked to perfection.

3-11 Liverpool Road, Manchester, M3 4NW (Opposite the Hilton) Tel: 0161 834 9741 Info@pertutti.co.uk

Method: Preheat oven to 180°C. Chop nuts on a board until broken but still nicely chunky.

Mix all dry ingredients in large bowl.

Separately, mix mashed banana & PB, spoon the honey into a mug and warm on high in microwave for 10 secs, then add to banana mix..

Pour banana-ey goodness over nuts and combine until well coated.

Spread evenly onto a lightly greased tray and bake for around 20 minutes, till smelling nutty and delicious. Halfway through roasting give the mix a scrape to ensure big clusters don’t form. If you like big clusters in your granola, leave this part til the end of cooking.

Remove from oven, restrain from eating entire tray of granola. Cool and store in a sealed container. Serve on top of yoghurt, porridge, smoothies etc.

Pub of The Week: The Knott

Food and Drink Co-Editor Adam Fearn comments on his experience at the family-run cafe.

Per Tutti Café, Bar and Grill is an independent family-run business that specializes in offering modern European food. Located just off Deansgate on Liverpool Street (opposite the Hilton Tower), the location is perfect for those visiting the Opera House, Bridgewater Hall, Castlefield, or any other attraction that Manchester has to offer.

‘Per Tutti’ means ‘for all’ in Italian, accurately describing the diversity of the food found on both their lunch and evening menus. From freshly prepared salads and sandwiches to their Surf and Turf Carbonara, Steak Pizza, Seafood Pizza and array of fresh fish dishes, Per Tutti caters for every taste and mood, whether it’s a romantic date or lunch with friends. Set over two floors that are kitted out with Italian fizz on draft, five different types of wine, a wide range of cocktails and an exclusive prosecco bar, the restaurant is classy and extensive.

Chris, the restaurant’s owner, greeted us upon our entrance. After browsing the menu, I settled on the vegetable platter, which I shared with my friends, and a seafood pizza. Both were incredibly fresh; you could tell that the ingredients had been delivered that day through the taste of the pizza’s toppings: most notably, the generous helping of prawns that were scattered across each slice. One of my friends had their steak salad and supported

Photo: Ellie Gibbs

Sam Joyce and Charlie Filmer-Court head to Castlefield to review this week’s pub.

Photo: Tripadvisor

Per Tutti Discount!

The Knott Bar is a cathedral for lovers of beer. A somewhat Spartan interior under Deansgate railway station hosts clusters of local beerios swilling some interesting liquids. With twelve straight years in the CAMRA good pub guide and a host of other CAMRA accolades, it’s safe to say there is weight behind their slogan ‘we know about beer’. This should in fact be evident from the cornucopia of choice when approaching the bar. On cask they have ales from a swathe of microbreweries in Greater Manchester (think first chop, runaway brewery, marble) with some quirky international brews also on tap – Liefmanns fruit beer for one. Don’t be too baffled, ask for a bit of advice or go with your gut, grab a beer and take a seat. The food is supposed to be alright, also.

Drink? The list would far exceed the amount of space we get in this paper. Price tags are a little high but worth it.

Until February 11th, Per Tutti is offering 50% off all meals on their evening menu. Other 50% discount codes for the restaurant can also be found online. More details can be found at: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Offers/Per-Tutti Other notable offers include two steaks and a bottle of wine for £30, and free snacks when a glass of prosecco is purchased between 5-7pm.

Photo: The Skinny

Events: In keeping with their reputation, they host ‘meet the brewer’ events on a spontaneous basis – most recently with First Chop brewing arm. Follow on Twitter for updates.

Get There: Right under Deansgate tram and train station, or walk from Piccadilly gardens towards Deansgate locks. Don’t pretend you don’t know where that is.

Just in case: 374 Deansgate, Manchester M3 4LY http://knottbar.co.uk/

On February 26th, we will light up the city of Manchester, amplify our voices and say ‘No!’ to Sexual Violence Against Women. Meet at Owen’s Park, Wimslow Road, Fallowfield at 7pm!

Followed by an afterparty at the University of Manchester Students’ Union

manchesterstudentsunion.com/reclaimthenight

Theatre

ISSUE 14/ 9TH FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Feature

Editor’s Pick - Luke

NODA success for UMMTS

Top Hat

25

Sweeney todd, Photo: Meg Watt

Photo: Jess Ewart

Photo: Jess Ewart

Top Hat is the multiple Olivier award winning stage adaptation of the 1935 Mark Standrich film of the same name.

It follows the story of an American tap-dancer, Jerry Travers (originally played by the legendary Fred Astaire) who ventures to London to star in a stage show produced by the infamous producer Horace Hardwick.

Whilst practicing his routines in his hotel room, he manages to wake up Dale Tremont. She goes to complain to him, but instead he falls in love with her. Travers begins to follow her all over London and all is well... Until she mistakes him for Horace. Hilarity ensues. With music by Irving Berlin, Top Hat is bound to be a hit.

Manchester Opera House 10/02 - 21/02

Scuttlers The University of Manchester Musical Theatre Society swept away all expectations and won prizes and fans at the regional NODA awards. NODA stands for National Operatic and Dramatic Association and their aim is to keep amateur theatre successful and sustainable.

The UMMTS received 13 nominations and won 3 prizes at the 31st of January at the North West District One Awards for Best Programme (Basic Class) by Tom Durrant for Sweeney Todd, Best Supporting Actress in a Musical by Jess Ewart as Joanne in Company and Richard Aaron Davies received a prize for Best Director of a Musical for his outstanding work as the director of Sweeney Todd. I met Richard and Tom to talk about their experience working together and how the award ceremony gave the society more recognition.

The amount of recognition the society received was unexpected but Richard mentions that the cast was great and they knew that it was going to be a really good show.

“We were lucky that we had a great set team, a fantastic band and I was really passionate about the show. It was a very enjoyable show to rehearse and to perform. The nominations were just a really nice pat on the back. We didn’t expect to do so well because of the standards of the other shows.” Being affiliated with NODA, he was able to see many shows and he deemed them all as great.

Coming back together after such a long time was a good experience that both Tom and Richard mentioned.

Sweeney Todd was performed over a year ago and Richard says that it was nice to be back together at the Palace Hotel. “We had two tables for the society and every one of the team was there. Some of the team have already moved on, Tom who played Sweeney is now at Guild Hall in London and other people who are in London now came back up. It was a really nice reunion.

It was a really lovely evening and we had a good time”.

Although it was a very enjoyable experience to put Sweeney Todd together, there have been a lot of challenges: “Sweeney Todd is inherently a difficult show, musically and generally. It’s so easy to slip into melodrama while I was really aiming to keep it gritty and real. I was aiming to keep it relevant for the audience, that’s why we reimagined it in the 1950s. The challenge was not making it like a pantomime because it can be very easily over the top. Although I wanted it to be real and gritty, it should also stay funny since it is a black comedy. There are great funny moments in it. Keeping the balance was important. It’s such a hardworking cast; everyone gave their best and tried to fulfil the vision I had for it”, Richard remembers.

“Company was an entirely different story. It was rather an amusing comedy in a series of scenes.

The story didn’t have a linear narrative and it was much easier to put together, but still very challenging. Comic timing was very important.

It was a really good experience and a lot of fun”.

Being in the third year, Richard is a Music and Drama student with a full schedule. Most people cannot cope with university stress itself, now imagine how difficult it must be to be president of a society and to regularly direct award winning shows. Richard shrugs it off and admits that he thrives on having a lot to do. “I take each week as it comes.” Momentarily, he prefers being

on stage and this is the direction he wants to go in the future. He plans on taking a year off and then applying for a postgraduate theatre degree in London. Although he has not entirely decided on the direction he wants to take, he is fully occupied with directing Titanic at the moment which is a different kind of vision entirely.

Being in his third year and studying Music, Tom does not shy away from challenges either. The NODA awards had a category for the ‘unsung hero’, which Tom was nominated for, but unfortunately didn’t win. Richard elaborates: “we nominated Tom because he did a lot behind the scenes and held everything together. Parts of the set literally nearly fell off and Tom was holding it together.”

Tom was very happy to receive the award for Best Programme although he did not expect it. “Obviously it’s nice to win an award and I did put a lot of work into the programme but I think the highlight for me was – because the production happened quite a long time ago- to get together and cheer each other on” For him, it was not necessarily going up and winning the best programme, “No, that really doesn’t mean much to me. The atmosphere of the evening was more important. They announced ‘Sweeney Todd’ and everyone got up and cheered and you have to get on stage and get the award. And it’s a really delayed pat on the back for work we did so long ago. It was just so nice to cheer Richard on and he really deserved it.”

He also emphasises that the UMMTS is now seen as a credible society with a lot of enthusiastic people. “We got more recognition due to the awards and raised our profile throughout Manchester. It was also a good networking opportunity; you would talk to people and visit their show. We got aware of what’s going on and who’s doing what. It was quite nice in that respect.

Although it was an award ceremony it was not a very competitive environment.” Tom adds laughing: “We were all cheering very loudly. It’s always nice to get recognition. I’m more pleased for Richard although best programme is obviously amazing. It was a really good night and hopefully we’ll go again for Titanic.”

Richard is especially pleased that the society is going into the right direction of what he had hoped for. “Artistic excellence is of course very important. We also try to give opportunities to people who are just there for fun but also for people who are interested in a career in this direction. It’s completely inclusive. We’ve especially been successful with Sweeney Todd in providing a platform for people to really explore what they want to do. Furthermore, the showcase performance we did was completely unauditioned, anybody could take part. The audience was especially supportive.” He emphasises that that is actually not very common since young people who are still in training tend to be quite competitive.

“Especially in High Schools and Universities, it can be quite horrible, but I’ve never experienced any of that.”

A big hurdle for the society was the lack of academic support from the department, which meant that searching for a venue was very difficult. Richard comments: “obviously putting together a show is quite a demanding thing so in terms of booking a space and kitting it out with all the stuff like costumes is really

a nightmare. Sweeney Todd was a huge leap for the society in general. It really set the benchmark. Now the Union knows to which standard we work and the expectation we have is that we usually have spaces to work in. Artistically as well, it shows what is actually possible to achieve in little time with very busy students.”

“I certainly learnt a lot from doing it I learnt a lot about how you have to be prepared for all eventualities and how much the glamour of the theatre does not extend beyond the stage.”

Working behind the stage meant to have an entirely different experience for Tom. “There are so many menial things. You have to go into a dark industrial estate at the outskirts of Manchester to pick up a gun. That turns out to have a lot of rules coming with it and if I lost it, I would have been in a lot of trouble. It turned out to be the wrong gun because the Sweeney Todd we did was set in a different era.”

But apart from the many hurdles they faced, they were very pleased with the costumes. Surprisingly enough, the costumes that the blood thirsty Sweeney Todd and cunning Mrs. Lovett wore on stage were all from the Vintage Kilo Fair. “Most of it was done quite cheaply. The Royal Northern Colle of Music was extremely supportive.

They’ve been very helpful, especially with Sweeney, I’m very indebted to them”, emphasises Richard.

Tom also acquired great skills that won’t look good on the CV but should have required a separate award.

“The chair was difficult because Sweeney Todd needs a special catapulting chair. It was constructed from an old car seat. We upholstered it with blue fake leather and then bolted the frame to the stage. At one point it was wood, but literally three days before the show we had to change it to steel. I also had to set a contraption on it to let the blood out. That was probably what I am most proud about, never mind the programme, if there was an award for making a chair that throws people off and squirts out blood without looking cheap, I should have won that award”, he says with a smirk.

The important final question is where they keep their awards. They are probably on the mantelpiece or somewhere on display. Both have to laughingly disagree. “I don’t know! It might be in my kitchen.

I have the award in the kitchen to remind my flatmates of how important I am”, Tom says with a chuckle. “Yes, I think mine is in the kitchen too.

We sadly don’t have a mantelpiece”, Richard adds.

Jess Ewart also had very good experiences: “Joanne in Company was probably one of the most enjoyable roles I’ve had - she’s a lot of fun but also a very complex woman. Her song in the second act, ‘Ladies who Lunch’, was a real challenge for me, not only vocally but also in terms of acting and so to have won a NODA for my take on the character was absolutely amazing!

I am so glad that the hard work of all those involved with the society has been recognised, especially Rich Davies (winner of best director for Sweeney Todd) who is the most deserving winner I know. It’s a great society to be a part of and as someone hoping to peruse a career on in theatre winning the NODA was an amazing feeling! The whole cast deserved an award so my win is theirs too! Oh, and come and see Titanic!”

Scuttlers is a stage play set in 1870’s Manchester about the infamous Scuttler gangs, the original gangs of Manchester. Made up of mill-workers and misfits, the gangs are locked in a physical battle to stake a claim on the Ancoats, Openshaw and Salford, little do they know how much this fight will impact their lives. Penned by veteran Scottish playwright Rosa Munro and directed by Wils Wilson, Scuttlers promises to be an intriguing insight into the history of gang culture in Manchester.

The Royal Exchange 07/02 - 07/03

The Only Way is Downtown The Only Way Is Downton is the product of combining ITV’s hit series Downton Abbey, modern celebrities and a YouTube impressionist. That’s right, it’s a one man show. Written and performed by impressionist Luke Kemper, The Only Way Is Downton features over 30 impressions, so there is something for literally everybody. The show had a sell-out debut tour in 2013 and was met with critical acclaim, so it will not disappoint.

The Lowry - 12/02

Supreme Fabulettes; Viva Las Divas Viva Las Divas is a rags-to-riches story about the four-part girl group “The Supreme Fabulettes” who are managed by a “razor-tongued” manager, Miss Sheila Simmonds.

It’s a glee-style musical with song contributions from the Culture Club frontman Boy George, and created by the creative team behind Kylie Minogue. The show itself has been endorsed by Alan Carr (the Chattyman himself) and Boy George so it simply can’t be anything but good. Oh did I not mention that it’s in drag?

The Lowry - 13/02

26

Lifestyle

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2014 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Editor: Robert Firth Valentine’s Day

SAD: Singles Appreciation Day Embrace SAD! Kitty Treverton Jones asks: Why should couples have all the fun on 14th February?

Valentine’s Day each year appears to be dominated by two kinds of people. Firstly, the couples who are halfsickening, half-cute, proclaiming their love for each other by Instagramming their romantic meal and the gifts they’ve bought for each other. Secondly, there are the anti-Valentines, those who refuse to participate in it and lament the day as a consumerist, commercial, downright ridiculous excuse for a holiday.

This leaves single people feeling as if they either have to feel sad that they’re not in a relationship, or that they have to hate the day on principle.

However, the 14th of February for singles does not have to be

a choice between these two attitudes. Valentine’s 2015 falls on a Saturday, so there will be plenty of other things going on.

Call it the perfect excuse to go out and have a great night with all the other thousands of single people in Manchester.

Girls could alternatively choose to start celebrating ‘Galentine’s Day’ (as seen on US TV sitcom Parks and Recreation): Celebrated a day before the 14th, you go out for brunch with your girlfriends, and give each other gifts. What could be better? This can be for those who are in a relationship or not; it is a day for celebrating your friends, who are arguably much more important than your other halves anyway. As

the show’s protagonist Leslie Knope explains, “Ovaries before Brovaries.”

This mentality can be extended to the 14th as well.

Instead of thinking of Valentine’s Day as a day for romance, think of it as a day of love. Use it as a chance to tell your family and friends how much you love them and how important to you they are, and this automatically makes it a day filled with positivity, whether you are in a relationship or not.

Singles should not be excluded from Valentine’s Day, so reclaim the day as a happy one, and if in doubt, just go and see Fifty Shades of Grey.

Valentine’s Day across the globe

‘I love you’; ‘Je t’aime’; ‘Ti amo’ - Perisha Kudhail explores 14th of February customs from around the world

Photo: Simon Turkas @Flickr

WORST AND BEST

Valentine’s Day Gifts Get out of Ann Summers, bin the teddies, but keep the roses, so long as they’re not red, says Molly Allen

Photo: thinkretail @Flickr

And so the month of February has rolled around and we are faced with the teeth-hurting, cringe-inducing Hallmark festival that is Valentine’s Day. The day designed to make people in relationships even smugger and those who are single want to die a slow death being eaten by their cats.

Photo: Hadock @Flickr

Roses are red, violets are blue, we love Valentine’s Day and the world does too. The day of love has become a global phenomenon, as couples around the world express their love on the sacred 14th of February.

Just as we expect, roses and chocolates are a must, as expressing our affections is not stemmed down to a few flowers. For those of the Western Hemisphere, Valentine’s Day is an excuse to be cheesy and lovey-dovey to no end. The same goes in Japan, where the 14th of February is an extravagant event. Not only is it the social norm for women (who normally shy away from showing affection) to show affection for their husbands, but also for their friends. Chocolates are a must, as each chocolate represents a different relationship.

Although cards are a tradition in many countries, Denmark puts a special twist on the Valentine’s Day card. People in Denmark send transparent cards, which when held up to the light show a hidden message.

These notes of mystery are known as ‘lovers cards’.

With all these romantic (and not so romantic) notions of love around the World, how can we forget about our beloved Britain? Whilst we may not be harbourers of personal chocolates, we live in the land where Romeo and Juliet was written. With Saint Valentine on the tip of our tongue, our tradition is to write love-coated words. Now we tend to stick to good old roses and champagne, but maybe this Valentine’s Day we can step outside the box, and take some inspiration from other countries.

It also means being expected to waste money on pointless, thoughtless gifts. Well I like a good present just as much as the next person so here is my best and worst V-Day gifts.

WORST:

• Nipple clamps: one quick visit to the Ann Summers website and in about three clicks these monstrosities appeared. I like my nipples and am in no hurry to torture them, neither should you.

• Red roses: the epitome of the cliché that is this joke of a ‘holiday’. Try to be a bit more adventurous and go for something less thorny and less reminiscent of ‘America Beauty’, which, let’s be honest, ruined roses for life • Teddy bear: a juvenile waste of time, so-called effort and money. Moving on...

• Tacky underwear: no, no and no. We are not in ‘50 Shades’ or ‘Secret Diary of a Call Girl’. And even Belle de Jour managed to keep it classy at times

BEST:

• Roses that aren’t red: I’m willing to tolerate these thorny death traps if they are presented in different colours. I was once sent a single white rose on V-Day and it was so nice to have something a bit different, that wasn’t slut red • ‘A nice time’: Manchester is stuffed with alternative restaurants, bars and tea shops. Skip the gifts and just enjoy each other’s company • ‘A nice time indoors’: and by ‘indoors’ I mean between the sheets. Act out fantasies, try a new position (do not consult Cosmo for suggestions) or just do it a different way. Perfect for those on a budget.

Photo:not Elinafrom Baltina (Flickr) • Good underwear: Ann Summers or Primark, not in slut red and nothing crotchless, cupless or cutout. Try colours of cerise, emerald, deep blue (if you don’t know what I mean, Google it) And there you have it; a comprehensive list of all the crap you could possibly buy for this godforsaken day.

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2014 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

/TheMancunion: Lifestyle @MancunionLife

Lifestyle

27

Health Finance

Feast your eyes on these bullshit diets...

Fancy eating your T-shirt or drinking syrup?

With your January resolutions poisoned to sticky death by a week of post-exam sin and a sugar-fuelled fortnight of university, let Lifestyle editor Robert Firth rejuvenate you, by looking at some of the more bizarre regimes you may have been following.

THE SEVEN-DAY COLOUR FOOD DIET

Who: Generally attributed to Dr. David Heber What it claims: Following the diet should allow you to lose weight and improve your complexion.

A diet lacking in the different colours of fruit and vegetables can cause you to miss out on vital phytonutrients. A lack of these can allegedly leave you vulnerable to obesity-related illnesses including heart disease and cancer.

What you do: Devote each day of the week to a specific colour. You can only eat fruit and veg of that specific colour on that particular day, e.g. yellow on Tuesdays. Each colour family contains special phytonutrients such as the anthoxanthins found in white fruit and veg (bananas, onions, cauliflower), which supposedly reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. All very clever until you realise that ‘phyto’ is just Greek for plants, so all we’re on about here is plant nutrients.

What actually happens: You end up eating in the same as you would if you were following a Photo: Alan Cleaver @Flickr

healthy balanced diet, but make it unnecessarily difficult for yourself. The horror if you have a strawberry on Tuesdays!

COTTON BALL DIET

JUICE DIET

Who? Uncertain. Believed to originate with models wanting to stay thin.

Who: Has been around for a while now and multiple companies have squeezed as much money

What it says: Food is a necessary evil and juices are packed with sugar. as possible from the idea by developing their own concentrated super juice fortified with nutrients Replace all those hideously calorific meals with cotton balls—cheap, tasty and vitamins to make you even healthier. and calorie-free.

What it claims: Juicemaster.com, a website which fulfils every conceivable juicing need of yours

What you do: Consume up to five cotton balls in one sitting (no more, don’t including juice recipe books, blenders, even juice retreats in Turkey, promises a 7lb weight loss be greedy!) and you’ll feel full without the fat.

in seven days with its juice detox. You’ll also have higher energy levels, clearer skin and be freed

What actually happens: You’re eating bleached polyester pieces of from the dieting trap forever. Fans even deny that it is a real diet, preferring to call it a ‘reboot’. cotton—not healthy. Would you eat your tie-dyed T-shirt from two summers What you do: Stop eating and just drink juice for a period of time lasting from as little as a few days ago? Never mind malnutrition (there’s none of them super phytonutrients to a few weeks. in cotton). You also risk choking to death and potential obstruction to the What actually happens: You’ll probably end up taking laxatives to replace the non-existent fibre intestinal tract through the build-up of cotton balls.

in fruit juices, not to mention the issue of salt deficiency and your teeth liquidizing in all that sugar.

Jan 26 - Feb 22 2015

“Here at the Students’ Union, everything we do is for students, by students.

Sounds like a cliché, right?

Think about it.

15th Dec - 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

ISSUE 14/ 9th FEBRUARY 2015 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

SPORT

SPORT : 29 /TheMancunion

Sports Editors: Andrew Georgeson, Will Kelly

@Mancunion_Sport

Contact: sport@mancunion.com

The referee’s a...

Tom Cheetham despairs over the current standard of refereeing worldwide Tom Cheetham Sport Reporter How many times every weekend do you hear a former player complaining about a poor refereeing decision on Match of the Day? I would argue that there is at least one contentious decision every single weekend, I don’t remember this always being the case, but this season the refereeing has been diabolical.

Now I have been warned that I cannot be libellous in this article, so I will carefully choose my words throughout, but some referees are terrible aren’t they?

Speaking from experience for my club, referees can totally ruin the spectacle of a game. A couple of Friday nights ago my team had a table topping clash on Sky, it was a game placing the team top of the table versus my team, who had scored 12 in their previous two games. 28 seconds (twenty-eight seconds!) into the game the referee, who for risk of me getting in trouble will remain nameless, decided he was to produce a red card and remove our centre back from the field of play. This was Sky’s headline Friday night Football League game, ruined by the referee. To make the situation even

Seechum Rajindraparsad has came under intense criticsm for recent displays Photo: Screengrab

worse (particularly for me and fellow fans of my team) the red card was an abysmal decision that has since been rescinded. My club often seems to be on the brunt of these poor refereeing decisions, of our last 14 red cards we’ve received, 7 have been rescinded. That means in the last 3 seasons, 50% of the red cards we’ve received have been deemed incorrect by the FA in

retrospect. I appreciate referee’s only get one view of a decision, and that at real time speed it can be particularly difficult to make a decision, but surely err on the side of caution?

For a more high profile scenario that many of you might have seen this week, Jetro Willems got sent off for PSV vs NAC Breda after 29 seconds. Willems hadn’t made contact with the Breda player,

and also has since had his red card rescinded. It just seems that the level of refereeing at a high level is retracting, like the FA is doing with most of the red cards that seem to be being distributed (50%!!!).

Now despite me writing this piece blatantly criticising referees, that was more for a personal release of anger, I wouldn’t want for there to be an

introduction of technology. I think that referees making mistakes is part of the game, just not to the level that we unfortunately are seeing in so many big games on the global stage (we all remember the Frank Lampard ‘goal’!). I propose greater sanctions for referees after a bad performance, more like that received by Seechurn Rajindraparsad.

The Mauritanian official has been banned from officiating any game of football for 6 months, with the reason provided as “poor performance”. Mr Rajindraparsad will certainly come back a stronger official from this debacle, and I think he truly will have learnt from his mistakes. In the aftermath of the last African Cup of Nations, a Tunisian referee was banned indefinitely after a “poor performance” during the semifinals. Slim Jdidi went on to make the shortlist for referee’s at the 2014 World Cup, showing the ban is not impossible to recover from, and would allow referees time to recover and learn from their mistakes.

Review: The Life of Ryan

Will Kelly Sport Editor Gary Neville: “You don’t normally recognise greatness as it’s happening. Normally you would have to wait 20 years later or when you are dead for a statue.

He shouldn’t have to for what he has achieved”.

To play football for 24 seasons (963 appearances), win 13 Premier League Titles, 2 European cups, 4 FA cups and 3 league cups, all at one club, most certainly makes Ryan Giggs the greatest Premier League player ever to grace the game. His longevity in the game and his ability to play at the highest level to the age of 40 is beyond insane. He has played with and against the stars of world football as they have come and go, reflected in the opening credits as he explains what questions people ask him the most. As years go by, he has been asked what each star player in the team are like and the list is phenomenal with the likes of Cantona, Beckham, Ronaldo and Rooney. “They’re alright”, he replies with a laugh. The other main question for the last 5 years has been “when you finishing?”. As a United fan myself, I have never known when I would see the day.

You look at some players, including my favourite that was Paul Scholes and you just had a sense of when there time was up, which would mainly be seen by fitness. Giggs every year would still be darting in and out of everyone, dominating games.

Time will tell whether or not Giggs will be LVG’s successor Photo:WikiCommons

When asked what his answer is for this year, there was a sigh of disappointment: “Not this year no”. He goes on to explain he knew that it would be difficult for a new manager to replace Sir Alex Ferguson but at the moment, he is not playing and they are not winning.

This was arguably the first time ever in his career he has faced a time of crisis and certainly, it is extraordinary that this had come at the end of his career and how documented it was through this film. He repeats constantly that he was on the verge of retiring the season before with Sir Alex in order to “go out on a high”. There is a clear sense of uncertainty that surrounds him and he does not know what he would do once he has retired.

In a compellingly awkward flashback, the film shows Ryan Giggs sitting next to

the under-fire Manchester United manager David Moyes ahead of a Champions League quarter final against Bayern Munich. Giggs is prepped hastily by the Press Office, perhaps determined to show a public sense of unity between United’s longest serving player and a manager, who many already suspected was out of his depth and heading for the exit door. Giggs smiles and jokes about the lack of game time under Moyes, but as soon as he is questioned whether he would like to become Manchester United’s manager one day, his expressions turns to stony in the blink of an eye. The press officer intervenes, reminding that only questions about the forthcoming match are allowed.

Yet a few weeks later, Moyes had been dismissed after only a few months at

Old Trafford and Giggs, 24 years after making his debut for the club became manager until the end of the season.

It was perhaps fitting that one of the club’s greatest footballers would bow out by helping the team through a time of crisis. As Phil Neville remarks in the film, “This club is built on fantasy”.

As the likes of Sir Matt Busby, Sir Bobby Charlton, Dennis Law, Duncan Edwards and George Best are forever ingrained in the spirit and fabric of the club, so too will Giggs. With the insight from the Class of 92 (Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and David Beckham), along with Sir Alex Ferguson, Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick, the documentary leaves the impression that Giggs is a Manchester United manager in the waiting. Certainly the few weeks in charge showed how exhausting management

is. After thrashing Norwich City in his first game, Giggs is elated but exhausted.

After a shock home defeat to Sunderland he is distraught. Management certainly does not appear something for the fainthearted but what is interesting is how let down he was by certain players. There is a clear sense of anger, and perhaps reflects the sentiments that the players had also let down David Moyes.

Louis Van Gaal took over as manager at the end of the turbulent season and made sure that Ryan Giggs would be his assistant manager. He has certainly made sure how to make best use of a man Beckham claims “loves Manchester United more than anyone else.” Van Gaal has explained that Giggs has been able to provide him with very detailed reports for the teams he would have not have come up against in the past. Van Gaal is on a 3 year contract, compared to Moyes’ 7 year contract, which may suggests that Giggs is getting groomed for the job. No doubt in the future the Stretford end will be singing “Ryan Giggs’ Red and White army”.

‘The Life of Ryan’ is distributed by Universal Pictures, and costs £10 from most media outlets.

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ICC World Cup Preview II

In the final part of his World Cup preview, Nayeem Quraishi discusses the chances of England and Pakistan Nayeen Quraishi Sport Reporter

Captain: Eoin Morgan X Factor: Moeen Ali The No.5 ranked ODI side in the world and runners up of the last World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand approach the tournament after a tumultuous 2014. Alastair Cook has been removed as the ODI captain after England lost four out of the six ODI series in 2014, with the two series victories coming against Scotland and West Indies.

Ian Bell and Moeen Ali will open the innings for England, Ali will look to provide a quick start while Bell holds the other end. This is a new opening partnership and the two of them still need to develop an understanding between each other. However, the styles of these two players complement each other nicely, Ali will look to attack the bowlers in the powerplay overs by hitting boundaries and Bell will rotate the strike and attack any loose balls.

Ali has quickly established himself as a key component of the English ODI team through his batting and orthodox off-spin bowling, after the suspensions of Saeed Ajmal, Sunil Narine and Mohammad Hafeez it will up to him to carry the torch for off-spin bowling in this World Cup. Alex Hales is in the squad as a cover for the opening batsman. James Taylor will bat at the crucial number three position. After making his debut for England in 2011, Taylor spent the next few years in county cricket due to the presence of Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell in the ODI team, batsman who have a very similar style to Taylor. Having played only 11 ODIs to date, Taylor will be the most inexperienced number three batsman, among the test playing nations at the World Cup. He is in a decent form and has scored two 50s each in the Sri Lanka series and the recently concluded tri-nations series in Australia.

Joe Root, Eoin Morgan and Ravi Bopara will lead the lead the middle order. Joe root will bat at his favoured number four position, he is being groomed as the future England captain, he has shown that he has the capability to play a long innings and the intelligence to finish a match. His tendency to play the ball on backfoot will serve him well in Australia but he will have to adjust his technique in New Zealand.

Having only played 48 ODIs he is quite inexperienced as compared to other number four batsman in other teams. Root has played most of his ODI cricket against Australia, India and Sri Lanka, hence his game has not been thoroughly tested. The newly appointed captain Eoin Morgan will bat at the number five position, he is a naturally attacking batsman who has honed his craft in T20 cricket. He will look to bat till the end, building upon the start laid down by the top order.

Ravi Bopara has been selected ahead of Ben Stokes who was England’s best player in the disastrous Ashes

tour. Stokes has been out of form but a player of his ability should be part of the World Cup side, his power can make him a dangerous player in the death overs and his bowling is superior to Bopara’s slow medium pace, which would be targeted by the batsman due to the new fielding restrictions.

The decision to not select Stokes makes sense due to the presence of wicket keeper batmans Jos Buttler at the number six position. Buttler has shown that he can be a reliable batsman, batting at number seven prevents him from playing a long innings, however, his unconventional style suits the number seven position and he has lead England to victory in a few ODIs. The trend of inexperience continues throughout the English batting lineup as Buttler has only played 49 ODIs. Chris Woakes and Chris Jordan are in the team as bowling all-rounders and will bat at the number eight position.

James Anderson will spearhead the English bowling and he will be supported by Steven Finn and Stuart Broad. This is a settled bowling lineup which can cause problems to any team in the world. Anderson is an underrated ODI bowler, despite having taken 264 ODI wickets, his immense control over swing bowling will ensure that he ends up as one of the leading wicket takers in the tournament.

After being frozen out by the team management, Finn has been brought in by the new captain and his pace and bounce will make things difficult for the opening batsman.

Pakistan Captain : Misbah ul-Haq X Factor: Mohammad Irfan The No.7 ranked ODI team in the world and winners of the last World Cup, to be held in Australia and New Zealand, head into the tournament under wretched run of form which has seen them lose all four of the ODI series they have played in 2014-2015. It is not only the results on the pitch which are a cause of concern but also off field issues which always seem to affect Pakistan cricket at regular intervals. Pakistan will be unable to apply their strategy of strangulation by spin which has served them so well over the last five years. They have been deprived of the services of the No.1 ranked ODI bowler in the world, spinner Saeed Ajmal has been suspended from bowling after his action was found to be illegal, due to greater than 15 degrees flex in his right elbow during the bowling action. Pakistan will also be without the services of Mohammad Hafeez in bowling, the current No.2 ranked ODI all-rounder in world cricket. Hafeez can still get his bowling action cleared as he is planning on undergoing an official test before the start of the World Cup, Ajmal has also undergone an official test but has ruled himself out of the World Cup. Pakistan’s problems have been compounded by the fitness issues faced by their premier fast bowler, Junaid Khan has been ruled out of the World Cup due to hamstring injury he suffered in the domestic cricket tournament, after recovering from a knee injury which kept him

Eoin Morgan is crucial to England’s success Photo: WikiCommons

out of the Australia and New Zealand series.

Ahmed Shehzad and Mohammad Hafeez will open the Pakistan innings and will look to provide a good start during the powerplay overs. After experimenting with different opening combinations, Pakistan have settled on this combination. Over the last five years Shehzad has established himself as a dependable opener in ODIs and test cricket, he has the capability to play a long innings but at times he has found it difficult to rotate the strike.

Hafeez has switched between the No.3 position and opening for a while, he will have to justify his place in the team as a pure batsman now that he is suspended from bowling. Younis Khan will bat at the crucial No.3 position and will have to use all his experience to stabilise the batting line-up in the difficult conditions. He has been in and out of the ODI team for the last few years and has only found a place in the team due to his extraordinary batting form in the test series against Australia and New Zealand. Pakistan won the second World T20 under his captaincy and at that moment the future of the cricket looked bright under Younis, internal politics and problems with the cricket board, meant that Younis quickly lost his captaincy. If Younis had continued as a captain, Pakistan could have achieved a lot more in international cricket.

Captain Misbah ul-Haq, Umar Akmal and Haris Sohail/ Sohaib Masood will lead the middle order. Captain Misbah ul-Haq has provided the Pakistan team with immense stability after the ‘spot fixing’ scandal and has become the most successful test captain in Pakistan history. He has been unable to make a Pakistan a consistently well performing ODI team. He will play the role of an anchor in the innings and will look to hold one end and provide opportunities for other batsman to score. This role suits the Pakistan team but modern ODI cricket has changed and all batsman need to score runs at a quick pace. Umar Akmal is a talented batsman but he has not done justice to

his talent, after his impressive first year in cricket he has not taken the next step and his game has regressed to an extent that now he is being considered a pinch hitter. He started at the same time as Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson and Steve Smith and while the other three have established themselves as the best batsman in world cricket, Akmal is still trying to find his way.

Pakistan team management needs to take some blame as well, as they have not given Akmal an extended run at a fixed position but have constantly changed his batting order. Due to his left arm bowling, Haris Sohail has the edge over Sohaib Masood but over the course of the tournament Pakistani middle order will undergo some changes as the team management is still unsure of the best line-up.

Talismanic all-rounder Shahid Afridi and wicket keeper batsman Sarfraz Ahmed will lead the lower order.

Having announced that he will retire after from ODI cricket after the World Cup, this will be a farewell tour to one of the most entertaining cricketers in modern cricket. There are two Afridi’s, Afridi the bowler and Afridi the batsman. Afridi the bowler is consistent and is currently the leading wicket taker in ODIs among the active bowler.

After the retirement of Shane Warne and Anil Kumble it is Afridi who has carried the torch for leg spin bowling, he currently has 393 ODI wickets, tied with Shaun Pollock and 12 more than Glen McGrath, he needs 23 more wickets to overtake Waqar Younis, let this sink in. But, Afridi the bowler does not get the same attention as Afridi the batsman. He is more famous for his consistently inconsistent batting, it is his batting which made him famous in the first place when he scored the fastest century in ODI cricket. That record has been taken away from him and expect Afridi to try to get back the record which is dearest to his heart. Sarfraz has shown good form in the test series against Australia and New Zealand and will look to continue his good form. He has been tried as an opener and might get some

opportunities at the top depending on how the top order performs. Team will rely on him to be aggressive in the last ten overs and build upon the base laid by the middle order.

The tallest cricketer in world cricket, 7’1 Mohammad Irfan will lead the Pakistan bowling and will relish the opportunity to bowl on the bouncy Australian wickets. His height and pace will create serious problems for opening batsman and runs will be difficult to come by. He has not had the same exposure on the world stage as other Pakistani fast bowlers and the World Cup will be the first time some major teams will be facing him. Irfan has struggled with injuries and Pakistani team management will have to use him wisely in the long tournament.

With Junaid Khan out, Irfan will have added responsibility on his shoulders.

The other two bowling slots are still open for selection but Wahab Riaz should find himself in the team, Riaz has not lived up to the amazing bowling spell he bowled against India in the 2011 World cup semi-final but the presence of Waqar Younis has helped him rediscover some of his pace. Ehsan Adil, Bilawal Bhatti, Rahat Ali and Sohail Khan will be fighting over the last bowling spot. All three of them are relatively inexperienced and will receive a baptism of fire from the batsman in the World Cup. Despite all the problems, Pakistan have thrived when there is chaos around them and have got the capability to beat any team but consistently performing at high levels has been a problem. There is a general feeling that players perform well when things are not in their favour, a ‘cornered tigers’ mentality instilled in the team by their legendary captain Imran Khan.

Read the rest of Nayeem’s Wolrd Cup preview on mancunion.com

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Curtain time for on Jim White and co.

James Houghton has grown tired of the charasmatic Scotsman’s antics

James Houghton Sport Reporter

So the latest transfer window has now come and gone. In total around £130m was spent by Premier League clubs in this window, which, according to the BBC, is similar to last year’s expenditure, but also well below the record January spend of £225m, achieved in January 2011.

Transfer deadline day was, to put it mildly, underwhelming, as the three biggest incoming transfers of the window – Juan Cuadrado to Chelsea, Gabriel Paulista to Arsenal and Wilfried Bony to Manchester City – were all either completed before deadline day or had only the formalities left to be completed. This left Sky Sports News, and Jim White in particular, to attempt to wring out every last piece of drama from Aaron Lennon’s, a player who has started a mere three league games for Spurs this season, proposed loan move to Hull, then Stoke and finally to Everton, and Darren Fletcher’s free transfer to West Brom.

The BBC tried to get in on the act too, with a “transfer deadline day” weather report on BBC breakfast and a “transfer deadline day” Bargain Hunt video just two of the embarrassing ways that they used to commemorate deadline day.

Nevertheless, despite however hard Sky, the BBC or any other media outlets tried to create excitement, it did not work, as the general consensus was that this transfer window and deadline day had been one of the most boring of the lot.

But why should transfer deadline day be a cause for celebration and wall-towall coverage? Indeed, every football fan is excited to watch a new signing play for their team for the first time, yet nowadays it seems that, amongst some, the questions of how new signings will fit into a club and whether there will be a change in formation to accommodate the new signing are secondary to the club signing a new player in the first place.

And deadline day is not just about transfer news anymore; with any deadline day there is now the inevitable avalanche of memes plastered over the internet of Harry Redknapp (or a dog, there are a surprisingly large number of these on Twitter!) sat in a car, waiting to be interviewed, or of Jim White getting ready for deadline day etc. There was even discussion about Natalie Sawyer being replaced by Kate Abdo for the position next to Jim White for the closing few hours of deadline day.

Plus there used to be the idiots who thought that standing behind SSN reporters all day made them anything other than the pathetic fools that they were; alas, having seemingly decided that attacking a reporter with a purple dildo was the tipping point, SSN reporters are to be stationed within training grounds from now on, leaving the people who stood behind them to search for another way to attain fifteen seconds of fame.

Jim White’s tireless enthusiasm and the deadline day speculation were endearing a few years ago, but as each transfer window goes by they become more and more tedious. Nevertheless, even if the transfer window speculation borders on madness and the amount of

coverage for something in which no one actual sport takes place is perplexing, they are ultimately harmless, and the January transfer window should not be abolished because of these, but it should be ended for a much more important reason: it affects the integrity of the European leagues.

The premise of the Premier League is simple: each team plays the other nineteen both home and away once, with each game being worth an equal amount of points, and at the end the winner is the team that has amassed the most points (or has the best goal difference amongst teams that have accumulated the most points etc.). It is a system that is fair and much better than a play-off system, in which a team that has had a much better record over the course of numerous games compared to another is beaten to the title on the basis of one or two games.

But a mid-season transfer window negatively impacts the fairness of the league system. Firstly, it allows underachieving teams to buy better players in order to improve their squad and rectify their poor form, something which teams such as Burnley cannot do.

For example, why should Manchester United have been allowed to buy Juan Mata midway through last season in an attempt to reverse their poor form over the first half of the season?

Second, the transfer window creates uncertainty in the minds of players and managers. For example, Sean Dyche said that he thought of leaving Danny Ings, Burnley’s star player, out against Sunderland because Ings had been affected by interest from Liverpool.

While some may say that Ings should not be affected by such speculation, it is

The Football Ramble Logo Photo: Wikipedia Commons

only natural to expect that uncertainty over one’s future will disrupt, however small, their performances, and so it is Burnley being punished by a midseason transfer window, because their player has performed well enough over the first half of the Premier League season to attract attention from richer clubs.

Finally, a mid-season transfer window creates situations in which certain teams get lucky through the fixture schedule and face a team with a weaker squad. For example, Manchester City have twice faced an Arsenal squad without Gabriel Paulista and a Chelsea squad without Juan Cuadrado, whereas Manchester United and Liverpool have only once faced Arsenal and Chelsea without Paulista and Cuadrado. Sure, there are squads which are weaker at

certain periods of the season due to a combination of injuries, suspensions, international call-ups (e.g. African Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup), but these cannot, in the case of injuries and suspensions, be mitigated for by any league system, or, in the case of international call-ups, they are not something that can be avoided.

Therefore, the mid-season transfer window should be abolished in order to better protect the integrity of the league, despite however disappointed Jim White and the Bargain Hunt presenters may be by the decision.

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Sir Bobby Charlton was pulled from the burning wreckage by Harry Gregg, after being unconscious for quarter of an hour. Bill Foulkes also joined the search with Gregg, as they went in and out of the burning wreckage helping people. Bobby Charlton put his coat around Matt Busby, as he lay in a pool of water seriously injured. People who knew Charlton best, including his brother, say there is irrefutable evidence that he “stopped smiling” and left his sparkle in the wreckage. He would never forget a German patient in the hospital he was admitted to, reading out the names of the dead, “The names of all my pals”.

Friends he would go to the dance with at the weekend. Friends that would invite him over for dinner at Christmas. “It felt like my life was being taken away, piece by piece.” Matt Busby was critically injured and had to have his death rites read 3 times and Bobby Charlton remarks that Busby probably felt the loss more than anyone else: “He had brought

these players together, he had cajoled everyone’s parents to make them sign for Manchester United and then he took them into Europe when he had been told it was against the FA’s wishes”.

Everyone associated with football in England was devastated by the news.

Sir Alex Ferguson recounts whilst he was revising for a exam, his friends burst into his room in tears and his football training had to be cancelled because everyone was in shock. On a personal note, my grandad had taught the great Duncan Edwards whilst he was a teacher in the black country. He used to put Duncan in charge as he stepped out the classroom because “no one would ever mess with big Duncan”. Still to this day, fans who had the chance to see him in action get emotional. Many claim he was the greatest player they had ever seen at 21, which is quite something considering the likes of Ronaldo and Messi today.

As Matt Busby lay immobile in Mu-

nich, he told his assistant Jimmy Murphy (who had missed the trip because of his duties as Wales manager) to “Keep the flay flying, Jimmy”. As Harry Gregg noted in his autobiography, those who could play had to play and it saved his sanity. 13 days after the crash, United faced Sheffield Wednesday in the FA cup in front of an emotionally charged Old Trafford of 59, 848 fans. The team United’s chairman Harold Hardman left a message on front of the match programme that was simple, yet effective.

“Although we mourn our dead and grieve for our wounded, we believe that great days are not done for us....Manchester United will rise again”.

Perhaps then, just as Matt Busby returned to England when Manchester United reached the FA cup final it was fitting that the clubs badge would be a phoenix rising from the ashes. The frail Busby sat on the bench and watched his team finally run out of steam, losing 2-0. Murphy whilst in charge, proved be-

yond doubt that United would indeed go on as it was a minor miracle to have reached the FA cup final. In the European Cup semi final they beat Milan 2-1 at Old Trafford, before a valiant, yet comprehensive 4-0 defeat in the San Siro.

Yet 10 years later, Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy had rebuilt a team and won the European Cup, captained by survivor Bobby Charlton. Fittingly, the exuberance of local youth- the driving force behind Busby’s dream- played a full part in United winning the European Cup at Wembley, defeating Benfica 4-1 after extra time. This was for them, the ultimate debt to their memory. 50 years later from the Munich Air Disaster, Manchester United would become champions of Europe for a third time in 2008. Manchester United should have won many more European trophies than they have and they would have done had this terrible disaster had not taken place. Almost certainly, Real Madrid would not have dominated European football had

the Busby babes been around. Sir Bobby Charlton is also convinced with the quality of English players in the team, England would have won the World Cup a lot sooner than in 1966. Every year, hundreds of fans gather at the memorial to show their respect. The defiant song that is still heard in the stands today echoes around: “We’ll never die, we’ll never die, we’ll keep that red flag flying high, because Man United will never die”.

Oh England’s finest football team its record truly great, its proud successes mocked by a cruel turn of fate, Eight men will never play again who met destruction there, the Flowers of English football, the Flower of English football, the Flowers of Manchester. Eric Winter (1958).

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Cricket World Cup II

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The ‘Busby Babes’ Remembered Will Kelly remembers the tragic story of United’s young stars, 57 years on

The last time ‘Busby’s Babes’ would ever play together Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Will Kelly Sport Editor

February 6th, 1958 was the darkest day in United’s history. The ‘Busby Babes’ had just defeated Red Star Belgrade on aggregate to set up a European cup semi final clash with AC Milan. Flying back, the team had stopped in Germany to refuel where heavy snow was apparent.

The first two attempts to take off from Munich airport were aborted.

Following a third attempt,the plane crashed. 23 people, including 8 Manchester United players and 3 members of the clubs staff, suffered fatal injuries. Duncan Edwards, one of the 8 victims of the teampassed away 15 days after the crash. It is particularly upsetting to note that had the technology we have today been around at the time of the crash, Duncan Edwards would have survived.

Roger Byrne (28), Eddie Colman (21), Mark Jones (24), David Pegg (22), Tommy Taylor (26), Geoff Bent (25), Liam Whelan (22) and Duncan Edwards (21) all died, along with club secretary Walter Crickmer, trainer Tom Curry and Bert Whalley.

Eight journalists died- Alf Clarke, Tom Jackson, Don Davies, George Fellows, Archie Ledbrook, Eric Thompson, Henry Rose and Frank Swift, who was a former Manchester City player. Plane captain Ken Rayment perished, as did Sir Matt’s friend Willie Satinoff.

Travel agent Bela Miklos and crew member Tom Cable also died.

As you approach Old Trafford, you will immediately notice the Munich clock, where the time has frozen to 4 minutes past 3, the time of the crash. When you venture down the Munich remembrance tunnel, along with the forever glowing candle light there is an inscription that shines out, reflecting the romance that millions of fans around the world share with the club: “Before the tragedy at Munich, the club belonged to Manchester. But afterwards, Manchester United captured the imagination of the entire world”.

It is impossible to talk about the history of Manchester United without relating to the Munich air disaster. Taking over the reigns of the club on the verge of bankruptcy in 1945, Matt Busby and his assistant Jimmy Murphy

embarked on a journey to shape English football. Busby dreamed of younger, fresher legs, players to mould in his image. United would win the league title in 1952 but the team was ageing and it was time for Busby to bring young, homegrown players into his senior squad. Not all of Busby’s players were homegrown “Babes”. Centre forward Tommy Taylor was signed from Barnsley whilst goalkeeper Harry Gregg commanded a world record fee for a goalkeeper at that time. United would run away with the title in 1956 with the average age of the team at just 22. Captain Roger Byrne, known by some as the ‘father of the team’, was 28. “The marks of the nursery cradle were on them, but they did not show”, remarked a proud Matt Busby. It was this team that began to capture the hearts and imaginations of English football with their inspiring forward play. Having won the title in 1956, they were invited to enter a new tournament established

by UEFA, the ‘European Cup’.

This was a football competition for the champions clubs of UEFA affiliated nations but the English FA were in strong opposition to this, particularly the Football League’s secretary Alan Hardaker.

They had banned Chelsea from taking part the season before but Matt Busby defied the league and United became the first English team to play in Europe.

In their first season in Europe, Manchester United would reach the semi final but bowed out to Real Madrid, who had been European champions for 5 successive years between 1956-60. Manchester United were becoming a force to be reckoned with in Europe, and won the league title again in the 1957/8 season to once again embark on their quest for European glory.

“You’ve never had it so good” once proclaimed Harold Macmillan about the people of Britain and it was certainly true for the Busby babes. After an initial slump at the start of the 1958/59 season, United had closed the gap at the top of the table to 4 points after a thrilling 4-5 win at Highbury against Arsenal, where one Daily Telegraph respondent reported “The Babes played like infants in paradise”.

This would be there last league game together before tragedy struck at Munich after they had secured a semi final clash with AC Milan in the European Cup. Manchester United had charted the British European Airways

plane because as mentioned before, the Football league were not favourable towards United playing in Europe. This meant United had to make it back for their top of the table clash against Wolves or would face a point reduction. An investigation by West German airport authorities had originally blamed plane captain Ken Rayment, saying he did not de-ice the aircraft’s wings, despite eye witness statements claiming he did. 10 years later, Thain was cleared as it was later established that the crash was caused by slush on the runway, which slowed the plane down too much to take off.

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