Issue1

MANCHESTER’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER

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18th SEPTEMBER 2017 / ISSUE 1 FREE

Rayner: Hard Brexit risks undercutting universities

Speaking to The Mancunion, the Shadow Education Secretary argues that “Labour respects the result of the referendum but rejects the view of many hard-line Tories of a Brexit at any cost”

Cameron Broome Head News Editor

Photo: Unison @ Flickr

“Universities and students cannot be sacrificed to a disastrous Brexit designed to appease hard-line Tory backbenchers”, Shadow Education Secretary and Ashton-under-Lyne MP Angela Rayner told The Mancunion.

The Shadow Education Secretary said that the three million EU nationals living in the UK had “been treated as bargaining chips”, alluding to the government’s decision to not unilaterally guarantee their rights until the reciprocal rights of British expats overseas have been guaranteed.

Speaking to The Mancunion, Angela Rayner suggested that “Labour’s [Brexit] plans will provide maximum certainty to students and university staff.”

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Explaining her view, she said: “Since July 2016, Labour has urged the Government to guarantee the rights of the three million EU nationals in the UK unilaterally, to provide people who have made their lives here with the certainty they need and deserve. Instead, over a year on from the referendum, they are still unsure of what lies ahead for them.”

“Many of them are the researchers, academics and graduates of UK universities who have enriched our higher education sector and helped to make it the world leader that it is. Instead, they have been treated as bargaining chips and 100 EU nationals faced when they received receiving erroneous letters from the Home Office threatening deportation.”

“Our universities cannot lose out on expertise because of uncertainty”, Rayner argued, emphasising the “need to assure the EU citizens who come to study and work in our universities that they are welcome and valued and will continue to be.”

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Highlights

Outlining Labour’s Brexit strategy, the Ashton-under-Lyne MP suggested that Labour’s “proposals for a transitional deal stand in sharp contrast to the Government’s plans, which would see us crashing out of the single market and customs union in March 2017, leaving universities to adapt to two new regimes in quick succession.”

The comments come after Shadow Brexit Secretary, Keir Starmer MP, made a significant policy announcement, writing in The Observer that “Labour would seek a transitional deal that maintains the same basic terms that we currently enjoy with the EU.” Explaining why this would be beneficial for UK universities and students, the Shadow Education Secretary said: “This would mean that our universities only have to adapt to one new regime and have longer time to do it. Universities plan on a multi-year basis, as do students. A student beginning university this year needs to know if they will have the right, for example, to carry out a year abroad in an EU27 country. They need the time to

look forward and make plans with certainty.”

Jawad Khan, second year Politics, Philosophy, and Economics student at The University of Manchester, and Labour party member said: “The Labour Party accepts the result of the referendum but rejects the idea that we have to sacrifice living standards, good relations with Europe or the future of those currently in education because of this”.

The Labour Party activist who was a council candidate in 2016 for Gomersal and Liversedge described the current government’s handling of Brexit as “disastrous”, suggesting that “a Labour government will immediately guarantee the rights of EU nationals residing in Britain, which includes students at the University of Manchester.”

He said: “Labour’s last manifesto promised to continue working with our friends and partners in Europe by continuing our role in schemes such as Erasmus and Horizon 2020 as well as agencies such as Euratom and Europol”, suggesting that “only a Labour

Manchester University ranks fifth in UK for graduate employability Government can provide a Brexit deal with is cooperative rather than combative.”

Angela Rayner was also clear that “Labour respects the result of the referendum.”

However, she said Labour “reject the view of many hard line Tories of a Brexit at any cost”, adding that “the majority voted to get out: no one voted to lose out and our universities need reassurance that they will be supported to continue to lead in education, research and innovation.”

She argued that “we should be working to get a Brexit deal that puts jobs and the economy first, and our research and development economy is key to this.”

“The hard Brexit that this Government is pursuing cannot be allowed to undercut our universities and thwart the opportunities for students to study and work in the EU”, argued Rayner, adding that “Labour respects the result of the referendum but reject the view of many hard line Tories of a Brexit at any cost.”

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief Features p7 Interview with the founder of The Mancunion

I hope you all had a great summer and are excited to start your first term back at the University of Manchester.

It’s turbulent times we live in now; from the threat of international nuclear war, to the prospect of a hard and potentially damaging Brexit, to a weak pound, to the Students’ Union looking like a complete building site.

Not least, I imagine lots of you freshers are daunted by the prospect of moving to a new city, or perhaps even a new country, and

what the next few years may bring for you.

But there’s so much to look forward to: you’ve made it to the University of Manchester, which resides in a fantastic city with a tremendous musical and social heritage.

The university itself has the largest student population in the country, and you’re in the hub of it all during Welcome Week.

This is probably a good opportunity to introduce you not only to The Mancunion , but to Fuse FM and Fuse TV as well. Together,

we make the Manchester Media Group – come find us at the Welcome Fair to find out more about who we are and what we do!

I just want to finish by wishing you all the best of luck, whether you’re a returning student or a brand new fresher. Despite the bumpy political and economical road we’ve travelled until now, there’s so much to look forward to as well, and lots of it you don’t have to look very far to find.

A week after the NSS rankings were released, The Mancunion talks to Education Officer Emma Atkins who is adamant the work cannot stop here

Fashion & Beauty p17 What to wear on the sweetest of nights

The hotly anticipated National Student Survey (NSS) results were published last month, but the University of Manchester (UoM) was missing from its rankings.

Other Russell Group universities were also left out of the rankings, including Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge.

The Univeristy of Manchester’s absence has been attributed to the #Dontfillitin campaign fronted by Emma Atkins, the Education Officer for UoM’s Students’ Union.

Following this campaign, less than 50% of students filled in the survey, which led to its reopening in May. This, in turn, led to many students retracting their results, and the overall lack of engagement with it rendered the results unusable.

Emma told The Mancunion that she was “really proud of our students”, as these results showed her that they care more about future students than winning an arbitrary award.

When asked what she attributed the success of the campaign to, she said that it was by “making the campaign fun” through video and linking it with other events such as pancake day.

There were many complaints at the time that Ipsos Mori (the company commissioned to conduct the survey) were using aggressive and deceitful tactics to get people to fill the NSS in. These included asking vague questions about how satisfied they were with their course without stating what the answers would be used for, and calling at unsociable hours

Contact Editor-in-Chief: Kirstie O’Mahony editor@mancunion.com Deputy Editor: Tristan Parsons deputyed@mancunion.com Head News Editor: Cameron Broome Deputy News Editor: Rosa Simonet Deputy News Editor: Amy Wei E: news@mancunion.com

Opinion p10 A student responds to a controversial new appointment

Science & Technology Editor: Kieran O’Brien E: science@mancunion.com Features Head Editor: Catherine Bray Deputy Editor: Raine Beckford E: features@mancunion.com Head Opinion Editor: Sam Glover

Deputy Opinion Editor: Jacklin Kwan E: opinion@mancunion.com @MancunionOp Head Film Editor: Eloise Wright Deputy Film Editor: Jamie McEvoy E: film@mancunion.com @MancunionFilm Fashion Head Editor: Talia Lee-Skudder Deputy Editors: Amy Nguyen and Sophie Alexandra-Walsh E: fashion@mancunion.com @MancunionFash

of the day.

Emma said of this that people “resent being bothered” in such manners, especially “when studying”, as the NSS was being conducted over the summer exam period.

When asked what the future of the #Dontfillitin campaign was, Emma said “it’s not over yet!”

The NSS is used within the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), within which universities can raise their fees if they score well. This link is something that Emma wants to break, and she plans to lobby the university to disassociate with the TEF before 2020 (the next time the rankings are published).

This link between the NSS score and tuition fees is something that youth leadership charity RECLAIM thinks spurred momentum for nationwide boycotts. They believe that universities have been “failing working class students” and that the failure of the NSS shows “it is becoming impossible for universities to ignore students’ concerns” about their financs.

Educating All, a project founded by RECLAIM, produced a study in February that found “over 70% of students who identify as working class cited their class as a barrier when integrating at university.” As well as this, “the survey also showed that 86.7% of state school educated students worried about finance whilst at university.”

These palpable barriers are something that RECLAIM think universities up and down the country now need to address.

A spokesperson for The University of Manchester said: “The National Student Survey is an important way for the University to collect feedback and we use this information to deal with any issues and improve services for our all of students.” @MancunionBooks Games Editor: Jeremy Bijl E: games@mancunion.com Food & Drink Head Editor: Anokhi Shah Deputy Editor: Daisy Tolcher E: foodanddrink@mancunion.com Arts Editor: Cicely Ryder-Belson E: arts@mancunion.com Theatre Editor: Sophie Graci E: theatre@mancunion.com

Head Music Editor: Hannah Brierley Deputy Music Editor: Yasmin Duggal E: music@mancunion.com @MancunionMusic

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Assessing factors such as alumni outcomes and graduate employability, The University climbs global graduate employability rankings

Cameron Broome Head News Editor The University of Manchester is the fifth best university in the country for graduate employability, according to the QS Graduate Employability Rankings 2018.

Improving on last year’s 35th place, the University of Manchester positioned 33rd in the world in the QS rankings.

Employer reputation was central to QS’ assessment criteria — 30,000 global employers were asked to identify the institutions from where they hire the best graduates.

In this section, The University of Manchester scored 96 out of a possible 100.

Tammy Goldfeld, Head of The University of Manchester’s Careers Service, said: “The University of Manchester is working hard to produce well-rounded graduates who learn from world class-researchers but also gain the other non-academic skills demanded by employers. This increase in our ranking indicates that programmes such as Stellify and our ethical grand challenges, which all students are encouraged to take part in, are helping graduates succeed in the workplace.”

“Delighted by these results”, Tammy Goldfeld suggested that they were “indicative of the quality support the Careers Service offers graduate recruiters who target the University of Manchester for student and graduate talent” as well as the broad services on offer to students both during their time at the university and post-graduation.

QS used a broad range of metrics to assess “graduate employability” with employer reputation carrying the largest weighting in the ranking (30 per cent), followed by alumni outcomes (25 per cent), partnerships with employers per faculty (25 per cent) and employer/student connections (10 per cent).

1,000 universities around the world were considered and QS published a list of the top 500.

Stanford University was ranked number one in the world, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University.

In the UK, The University of Cambridge came out on top, followed by the University of Oxford, University College London, Imperial College London, and the University of Manchester.

The overall graduate employability ranking score for the University of Manchester was 76.2 out of 100, with the University scor-

ing well when it came to ‘Partnerships with Employers’, achieving 80.8 out of 100.

As the University’s Careers Service continues to develop and market its “Manchester Graduate Talent” (MGT) scheme, this particular score is more than likely to improve year on year.

The MGT scheme helps source paid graduate-level jobs exclusively for University of Manchester students graduating in 2017, working with a range of organisations based in Greater Manchester, from start-ups to multi-national firms, plus recruiters within the University, each offering a variety of different roles which will appeal to students from diverse backgrounds.

Advising incoming freshers and returning students as to how they can develop employability skills throughout the year, Tammy Goldfeld suggested looking at the Careers Service’s website, with tailored advice for first years, mid years, final years, and graduates.

However, Tammy’s quick top tips were to “take part in at least one extra-curricular activity; start to write a CV, and get some work or voluntary experience”.

£153,500 saved for students by Union advice service

Free, confidential service offered by Students’ Union providing information and advice on personal and academic issues has helped students save thousands

“It’s not over yet” — Manchester’s absence from NSS rankings marks huge success for boycott campaign Kirstie O’Mahony Editor-in-Chief

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E: sports@mancunion.com @mancunion_sport Chief Subeditor: Jack Casey Subeditors: Joal Ansbro, Daniel O’Byrne, Ciara Gartshore, David Cheetham Letters & Complaints: complaints@ mancunion.com Legal: legal@mancunion.com Advertising: Paul Parkes E: paul.parkes@manchester.ac.uk Phone: 0161 275 2942 The Mancunion @themancunion

Tristan Parsons Deputy Editor-in-Chief This year, the Students’ Union Advice Service has advised 3074 students, a three per cent increase from 2015/16. The total saved by the service’s successful cases was £153,459.

The figure is also likely to be conservative since students who apply for the Manchester Hardship Fund often fail to notify the Service upon receipt.

It is the first year that there has only been an increase in the number of academic cases (by 18 per cent). There has been a decrease in all other types of cases: finance (by five per cent), housing (by three per cent), and well-being (by six per cent).

However, the report states that the 18 per cent rise in students seeking advice on academic issues may be a result of the fact that bullying and harassment cases — themselves continuing to rise since 2014 — are being increasingly referred through subject-based support services.

There were marginally fewer students asking for advice on housing issues; though inquiries about council tax and contract details rose by nine and 14 per cent, respectively.

There was a 23 per cent increase (to 103) of students seeking advice

on mental health. The Advice Service does not employ counsellors; rather, it explains the options that are available. Some members of staff have been trained in rudimentary well-being techniques, such as mindfulness, to help deal with this demand.

The number of students that had been the victim of a scam rose by 64 per cent. International students were most commonly targeted — often by faux Home Office accounts threatening deportation. The Advice Service will be working with the university in the Atrium during Welcome Week to help raise awareness about such scams.

The Advice Service has received the most positive feedback to date, with great case outcomes and a record number of successful academic appeals.

During Welcome Week and the first week of term — the busiest of the year — the Advice Service operated a drop-in service only. By operating in this way, quick queries were answered more efficiently and appointment time was freed up for more complex issues. This dropin-only service will continue in 2017/18.

The Service provides advice via telephone, email, drop-in, and ap-

pointment. The former saw a 73 per cent increase, whilst the rest each rose by one per cent. This rise in telephone calls is mostly explained by the introduction of a staff rota system after difficulties in the previous year.

Photo: Alicia Love

Lemn Sissay launches university scheme to boost number of black males in legalsector “These are radical times”, The University of Manchester is a “radical university” and “radical is about access”, argues University Chancellor as he launches bursary scheme Cameron Broome Head News Editor Poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay, the Chancellor of The University of Manchester, launches a new university bursary designed to increase the number of black males embarking on careers in law and the criminal justice sector Working with community organisations, schools, regulators and legal and criminal justice professionals, the project aims to address black and minority ethnic under-representation in higher education and the professions – as well as to promote the relationship between the University and Manchester’s African & Caribbean communities.

The Lemn Sissay Bursaries specifically aim to address the obstacles faced by male students of African & Caribbean heritage who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, offering eligible applicants an annual grant of £3,000, funded by the School of Law. Speaking to The Mancunion, Lemn Sissay said: “the vision of the University of Manchester is to be one of the leading universities in the world by 2020. It centres on our three core goals: world-class research, outstanding learning and student experience, and social responsibility. When the director of Social Responsibility at University of Manchester, Graham Smith, identified that only 14 of the 12,000 law students over the past three years were black males and none were from Greater Manchester something had to be done.”

Lemn suggested that these figures were not “not unique to The University of Manchester”, though “the Lemn Sissay Law Bursaries are.”

He added that it was”important to see these bursaries alongside the broader nature of the many bursaries that the university offers.”

The bursaries are on offer to any student that is: male; Black African, Black Caribbean, ‘Mixed’ Black African Caribbean heritage/background/origin; has not attended a fee-paying school in the UK; has not attended a fee-paying school outside of the UK for which the fees are more than nominal.

Additionally, applicants must have had experience of being in Local Authority care, live in a “disadvantaged” neighbourhood, have been eligible for free school meals at a UK senior school (if under 21) or in receipt of means-tested benefit (if over 21) or the applicants current or most recent educational institution must have a performance lower than national average Having grown up in care, Lemn said: “I am immensely proud to have these bursaries named after me, as I fully understand how difficult it

can be for people from my background to advance in life”.

The University Chancellor added: “Our University aims to make itself available to all and this is one step of the journey in that direction.

We are proud of our diversity. We are proud of our access programme.

When a statistic like this arises we take action. These are radical times. We are a radical university. Radical about access. Radical about success. Radical about equal opportunities, radical about research and radical about student experience.”

Barrister Tunde Okewale MBE believes that that bursaries “will help to improve and increase the diversity within the legal industry, as well as facilitating a more open and transparent dialogue about racial inequality in higher education.”

“We are proud of our diversity.

We are proud of our access programme. These are radical times.

We are a radical university.”

Senior lecturer Dr Dawn Edge, The University’s Academic Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, said: “This initiative signals an important step in progressing with our local communities and partner organisations to ensure that people from all backgrounds feel a sense of ownership of and belonging to The University of Manchester and its cultural institutions.”

The bursary will be launched at an event which will feature debates with Greater Manchester Black & Asian Police Association, youth workers, and musicians about combating the recent rise in violence, cuts to local services, the role of the police, and making our communities safer.

Attendees will also be able to get advice on making an application to the University, working there and accessing its cultural institutions.

The event will take place from 6-8pm on Wednesday 13 September at the West Indian Sports and Social Club, Westwood St, Manchester M14 4SW.

Photo: Chris Boland @ Flickr

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Manchester student forced to crowdfund 1st year of her degree International students are commonly rejected from receiving student finance because they don’t meet additional criteria

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A Mancunian version of the Oyster Card is now available

Editor-in-Chief Kirstie O’Mahony A student set to study Physics at the University of Manchester is She was then encouraged by her aunt to set up a crowdfunding webonly able to do so because of the donations of strangers. site. After initially getting off to a slow start, her story was picked up by Agnes Harding, who was born in The Gambia, finished sixth form in Dispatches on Channel 4, and the night that documentary aired, her Dagenham in the summer of 2016. With hopes of becoming the first fund went from £4000 to £14,000. black, female astronaut, she applied to do Physics at lots of presThe messages she received from donators had tigious universities. her “smiling from ear to ear” and that the After getting three As at A-level, she received offers words of encouragement she received from four Russell Group universities, but opted for were unbelievable. People were writing: Manchester and applied for student finance like “You are British, you are one of us, we everyone else in her class. need more people like you.”

She was then told that because she had not But Agnes is not the only one been living in the UK under ‘Ordinary Resiwith a story like this. Up and dence’ for over three years, she was not eldown the country there are igible for a student loan. many international students ‘Ordinary residence’ does not have a who are not eligible for student definition as set by Government. It is the finance and therefore cannot phrase used to imply that a person — or, afford to go to university. more specifically, an immigrant — lives Let us Learn, a charity that in the UK habitually for either a long or has helped Agnes prepare short duration. It essentially allows imfor university, estimates that migrants to the UK to reside there for two 1000 people are affected by and a half years, and you need to be an this problem each year nationordinary resident for a decade before you wide. The charity has helped receive indefinite leave to remain, and then 770 prospective students who British Citizenship. find themselves in this position Speaking to The Mancunion, Agnes said that since 2014. the discovery that she could not apply for a loan A spokesperson for Let us Learn left her “heartbroken.” explained that “Our numbers were exShe explained that without the student loan amount, trapolated from a study by COMPAS at Photo: The Mancunion she would not be able to afford to come to the University Oxford University that estimated there were of Manchester, but that she would have allegedly been eligible 120,000 ‘irregular migrant children’ in the UK, had her family’s application for ‘Ordinary residence’ been processed who were largely either born here or who migrated in a year — she told us it took four years to be accepted by the UK Govhere at a young age.” ernment. She chose to take a gap year first to figure out what she could The Students’ Union Diversity Officer Riddi Visu told The Mancundo. ion that she’d like to “congratulate [Agnes] on her successfully crowd-

funding” of her first year, but that Agnes’ story “disappoints” her.

She continued that “as a union, we are committed to fighting for an education system free at the point of use for all as we believe that education is a public good.”

“We believe that this case is an example of how the funding system is grossly unfair, especially for international students. Whilst as an exec team we will continue to support the cause of free education in the short term we should at least start working on the easing the restrictions associated with accessing public funds.”

She finished by telling us that the executive officers at the Students’ Union will “look at other ways of improving the funding opportunities available to address this problem.”

The University of Manchester has so far not responded to The Mancunion’s request for comment.

Photo: The Mancunion

Exclusive: Alastair Campbell urges students to take action on Brexit

“[The] Brexit battle is far from over”, Alastair Campbell tells The Mancunion ahead of the upcoming ‘Stop Brexit’ march in Manchester this autumn.

Cameron Broome Head News Editor “[The] Brexit battle is far from over”, Alastair Campbell tells The Mancunion ahead of the upcoming ‘Stop Brexit’ march in Manchester this autumn.

Part of a planned ‘Autumn of Discontent” by pro-EU campaigners, the ‘Stop Brexit’ march is expected to be attended by thousands.

Campaigners have stated that the aim of the demonstration is “to make it clear that the ‘will of the people’ was always a lie and that public opinion has changed”, adding that the “conference is the place where the party will have to face up to the reality of Brexit”.

Speaking to The Mancunion, Alastair Campbell, former Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy, said: “There is no country in history that has built success by governing against the interests of its young people. Yet that is what this government is now trying to do. That is why students and all who support them need to turn out and show Mrs May and her team that the Brexit battle is far from over.”

Specifically appealing to the people of Manchester to take action and attend the march, Mr Campbell said: “I hope Manchester students, and the people of Manchester more generally, turn out in force to make sure the government understands the depth of concern and anger about Brexit, both the false prospectus sold, and the mind-numbing incompetence of the ministers in charge of the Brexit process.”

He added: “The decisions they are taking will have a massive effect on the lives of your readers, the kind of country you live and work in, the strength of the economy, the standing of Britain in the world, the ability of our university sector to continue to be a real force in the world.

Fifteen months on from the referendum, a journey from soft Remainer to hard Brexiteer and a botched election campaign behind her, Mrs May continues to have wishful thinking as the

“I hope Manchester students turn out in force to make sure the government understands the depth of concern and anger about Brexit” main driver of her strategy. The biggest political decisions of our generation are being taken with wilful disregard for the future.”

The march will take place on the first day of the Conservative Party conference, October 1st - beginning in Whitworth Park, Fallowfield before finishing outside the party conference, alongside the traditional anti-Tory and anti-austerity protests.

Mr Campbell is a keynote speaker at the march, along with Professor AC Grayling and Bonnie Greer.

Though results across Greater Manchester were spatially varied, 60.4% of voters in Manchester backed Remain in the EU referendum and the march is widely expected to be attended by thousands of protesters.

In addition to the large event in Manchester, a smaller anti-Brexit march will take place in Brighton on the 24th September at the Labour Party conference, as well as a demonstration outside the Autumn Liberal Democrat conference.

Photo: University of Salford Press Office @ Flickr

Photo: Martin Arrand @ Flickr

Shivani Kaura Senior News Reporter The ‘Get Me There’ smartcard launched by Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester is finally available for use on trams and buses.

A smartcard was initially introduced in 2015, however had to be eradicated due to delays and congestion in rush hours.

Greater Manchester trialled the ‘Get Me There’ project by creating an app which could be used as a contactless payment on trams alone which was a success, and has led to now introducing the oyster-like card so it can be used across the entire region on buses too.

Plans to include train fares onto the card have been discussed and transport bosses have “vowed to extend it to trains by 2021” according to Manchester Evening News.

The ‘Get Me There’ card differ slightly from the Oyster Card however, as it will not be used based on top-ups, but individual or season tickets will have to be brought before boarding a public transport service.

This will aim to reduce queue numbers and create less traffic during peak travel periods.

When Mr Burnham launched his campaign for Mayor he vowed for teenagers to receive better transport links to travel to school, work for

apprenticeships or work on weekends to make extra money.

He has stuck to his words and has allowed those who are between 16-18 years of age to travel at a reduced rate if using the ‘Get Me There’ card. Those that live in London get unlimited free travel up until the age of 18 though, something that its Manchester parallel does not yet offer.

Questions have been raised as to whether the card can be used on both Stagecoach and First services. On the website for the project, it has been confirmed that they will both be accepted as well as other bus companies.

Alex Tayler, the newly appointed General Secretary of the University of Manchester’s Student Union vowed he would negotiate a bus pass that could be used on both services; this has been a priority as well as developing a strong relationship with the new Mayor.

Alex Tayler has released a statement to The Mancunion about using his role within the Student Union to encourage a more advanced ‘Get Me There’ card to benefit students - ‘I am pretty optimistic about the announcement. I am currently in contact with Andy Burnham’s office and we are due to meet soon.’

‘This is going to be one of my main points for discussion. Clearly we are aiming for a reduced rate pass, and will also consider the possibili-

ty of a further reduced pass to cover all operators on the Oxford Road corridor specifically. We will also discuss the option of a reduced pay as you go rate for students with the cards compared with the cash fare.’

‘Finally, I will also try to include options for a daily and weekly price cap which would ensure that students never pay more for travel than they would have done if they had purchased the travel pass covering an equivalent time period.’

‘At the moment, I can’t make any guarantees as we have yet to finalise anything but I can assure you that we are all doing our best to put the case forward for affordable, simple student travel.’

Students have also enquired whether prices for fares would increase again due to additional commission charges.

The contactless card payments increased Magic Bus fares by 50p in April causing uproar amongst the student community, as the prices for season tickets have also inflated. Greater Manchester City Council have not yet responded to The Mancunion’s request for comment.

Even though the card is improving the quality of transport and reducing emissions, there are major steps required to advance to the level of transport that the oyster card in London accommodates.

The card is available to order from here and 7-day and 28-day tickets can be purchased for bus and tram transport.

G4S security return to patrol Manchester’s student suburbs Manchester City Council is implementing security in Fallowfield and Withington to control antisocial behaviour for the second year in a row Photo: West Midlands Police @ Flickr

Amy Wei Deputy News Editor Night-time patrols are scheduled to monitor student house parties in Fallowfield and Withington this Welcome Week. A security team from G4S, accredited by Manchester City Council, is being funded by both The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University.

The same security program was implemented during Welcome Week last year following 400 noise complaints by local residents in Manchester’s suburbs. A spokesperson for both universities told The Mancunion that the security staff were being hired to foster “positive relationships between students and residents.”

64 student properties were visited by officers in the first few weeks of term last year.

They were handed noise abatement notices, and students were told that they faced property seizure, exclusion from their courses, or prosecution if they did not stop their anti-social behaviour.

The Mancunion published comprehensive reporting last year about the alleged misconduct of G4S staff.

Multiple students came forward alleging officers had visited and threatened to sanction their households, despite not having received any complaints from local residents.

Students have previously expressed unease because they felt unprotected from their universities against crimes committed against their peers. In a survey conducted by the University of Manchester Student’s Union last year, 9 out of 10 respondents claimed to have been victims of crime while studying at the university.

A staggering three-quarters of women were victims of sexual crimes. The city’s universities, however, have decided to only hire secu-

rity to guard against anti-social behaviour for the second year in a row.

A spokesperson for both the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University said in a statement to The Manchester Evening News, “Following positive feedback, it has been decided to continue the night-time patrols to provide reassurance and support for both student and non-student residents alike.”

“As part of our ongoing commitment to positive relations and enhancing cohesive communities, we’re pleased to be able to continue the night-time patrols for the next academic year.”

Photo: Adam Bruderer @ Flickr

The patrols will operate from September 16 until November 5, and again during next year’s exam period. A dedicated phone-line will be installed for residents to call with complaints regarding student house parties.

Two G4S ‘mobile neighbourhood support officers’ will be active at all times, and will have received the following training: Incident Response Officers Licencing and Training, Front Line SIA Licenced, SIA CCTV Licenced, and Enhanced DBS check.

Students are encouraged to report any incidences where they feel unsafe to the University of Manchester Student’s Union.

Greater Manchester Police ‘inadequate’ at recording crime The city’s police force fails to record 15 per cent of crime reported to it Tristan Parsons Deputy Editor-in-Chief HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services has dubbed seven UK police forces to be “inadequate” in recording reported crime.

Of the fourteen forces inspected, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) was seventh worst, failing to record 15 per cent of crime reported to them.

Only three forces — Wiltshire, Staffordshire, and Sussex — were deemed to be “good”. These forces failed to record between five and nine per cent of crimes.

Four forces — Cambridgeshire, Avon and Somerset, Northumbria, and North Wales — were told that their recording of crime required improvement. They failed to record between seven and 12 per cent of crimes.

Leicestershire and Devon & Cornwall forces were found to record the least amounts of crimes reported to them — 24 and 18 per cent respectively.

Inspectors said the failure rate was a “serious concern” and would result in crimes not being investigated properly.

Police have claimed that many crimes were recorded but not classified incorrectly.

In 2014, it was found that UK police failed to record failed to one in five crimes.

HM Inspector Matt Parr said: “If a crime is not recorded correctly it is unlikely to be investigated properly and it can have a direct effect on the prosecution of the perpetrator, who may go on to commit further crimes [...] Inexcusably, it denies victims the proper service they are entitled to.”

GMP were unable to comment before this issue was printed.

Please visit our website, www.manchestermediagroup.co.uk, for updates on this story.

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Science

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Largest rocket launched from UK mainland by Manchester space tourism firm Aliya Ismangil Science & Technology Reporter

The reusable, carbon-fibre Skybolt 2 rocket built by Starchaser measures 8.2 metres (27 ft) and is designed to fly more than 100 km, or what is defined as the edge of space. Starchaser are the first to launch a rocket of this size on the UK mainland.

The flight was sponsored by the University of Chester. Skybolt 2 successfully blasted off on Monday 11th September from the back of a converted flatbed truck. The vessel carried test equipment to be used in future manned rockets, commercial products, a stuffed toy from the Morecambe Bay primary school, and an accelerometer as part of a science project from Sheffield Hallam University.

The Manchester-based firm is determined to have a stake in the space tourism market that is taking off. “One of the things we want to do is make space tourism a reality, we want to be launching people into space and this rocket was carrying various systems and experiments that will allow us to do that.” managing director, Steve Bennett, told the Guardian. The firm claim they are getting close to these goals and are only a couple years away from sending people into space for their holidays.

Space tourism is all about suborbital flight; reaching the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and space but not completing a full revolution of the Earth. As a comparison, the International Space Station orbits the Earth at 400 km, well above the suborbital threshold.

Affordability is one of the biggest challenges in making space tourism happen. The reusability of a spacecraft will be key in overcoming this. So far space flight has involved twostage rockets. The first stage of a rocket holds the thrusters; its heaviest, most powerful and most expensive part, at around

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

$30 million (over £22 million). Traditionally, it separates from the main part of the rockets at 69 km before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere and falling into the ocean, unable to be used again.

One solution is a spaceplane; a rocket-powered aircraft, that looks much like a normal aeroplane. The first, the SpaceShipOne, was built and designed by Burt Rutan and completed a manned spaceflight in 2004. Virgin Galactic has since evolved this design into the SpaceShipTwo. They have carried out several successful gliding tests (flight and landing without the use of rocket engines) of the SpaceShipTwo since

the crash of the first full test flight in 2014, which resulted in the death of co-pilot Michael Alsbury. Virgin Galactic say they are close to a second full test flight with engines.

Others are working on perfecting reusable rockets. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and his space company Blue Origin were the first to pull off an upright landing of a rocket in November 2016. But Elon Musk’s SpaceX were the first to re-fly a used rocket, in March 2017. It is estimated that reusing in this way could lower costs by 30%. SpaceX has also recently been in the headlines for revealing their astronaut spacesuit for the first time.

Aside from a shared ambition to get more humans into space, these companies have one other thing in common: they’re all based in the US. This makes Starchaser a pioneer in paving the way for British firms taking a position in the new space race. Bennett is not fazed by the big players though and, speaking to the Guardian, affirms, “Space tourism is a big cake and there’s a slice for everyone. There’s some people out there with a little bit more money than us but we’ve got a fantastic team of people, we’ve got the University of Chester behind us and we’re going to make this happen.”

The successful flight is a good sign for future plans to build bigger reusable rockets, and Bennett is aiming high. Starchaser’s next project, the 12-metre rocket Nova 2, will carry one person. If all goes to plan, it will launch within the next 18 months.

The firm also hopes the flight inspires the younger generation into science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) careers. Skybolt 2 is set to embark on an educational outreach tour to thousands of schools across the country.

University of Manchester-owned radio telescope given Grade I listed status Kieran O’Brien Science & Technology Editor

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Lovell Telescope’s ‘first light’—the point at which the famous radio telescope was first used to collect radio signals from the far reaches of the universe—at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire.

To mark the anniversary, six structures at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester have been granted protected status from Historic England.

Radio telescopes are used to observe distant objects in the galaxy and the universe too far away to be observed with visible light, in a phenomenon known as the Doppler effect. As stellar objects accelerate further away from earth, their visible light and radiation become stretched so that the wavelength of this radiation is no longer visible, but is detectable in the microwave and radio band. You have probably experienced this yourself—the Doppler effect applies to sound waves as well. When an ambulance with its sirens on speeds away from you, the sound of the siren appears to sound progressively lower in pitch. This is because the sound waves are being stretched relative to you, and therefore have a lower frequency.

The site was purchased by the university in 1939 and has been used for radio astronomy since 1945. The most famous structure, the Lovell Telescope, named after Sir Bernard Lovell—a physicist working at the University of Manchester— was completed in 1957 and at the time was the world’s largest steerable dish radio telescope.

The Lovell Telescope was given the honour of Grade I listed status in 1988. Structures joining this status for its diamond jubilee include the Mark II radio telescope, which was completed in 1964. Paired with the Lovell Telescope, this second telescope was designed to work in tandem to acquire more accurate data when monitoring distant stellar objects. The design of the Mark II has since become the cornerstone of

In the news this week...

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

Stories by: Kieran O’Brien, Amy Wei, Cameron Broome and Rosa Simonet

Africa: Rare white giraffes (un)spotted in Kenya Kenya Two white giraffes have been spotted in a conservation area in Kenya’s Garissa county.

They are known as reticulated giraffes, and rather than having albinism, the pair - a mother and child - suffer from a rare genetic condition called leucism, which affects pigmentation in skin cells, meaning they do not exhibit brown spots usually found on giraffe species.

Another white giraffe was spotted in January last year in a nature reserve in Tanzania.

Quoting from the Guardian, a local villager said “They were so close and extremely calm and seemed not disturbed by our presence. The mother kept pacing back and forth a few yards in front of us while signalling the baby giraffe to hide behind the bushes.”

Photo: Kieran O’Brien @Mancunion

Asia-Pacific: North Korea threatens Japan and USA N.Korea Following sanctions from the UN security council against the secretive state, North Korea has, for the first time since it began testing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), explicitly threatened Japan. In a statement by the state-broadcaster KCNA news agency, North Korea declared, “the four islands of the [Japanese] archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche.” ‘Juche’ being the ideology espoused by the regime, established by Kim Il-Sung, the country’s founder and first president.

North Korea also said in the same statement that the USA should be “beaten to death like a rabid dog”.

A spokesman for the Japanese government said the comments were “absolutely unacceptable” and “markedly heightens regional tensions”.

It is the latest in a tit-for-tat war of words between North Korea and in the international community.

Australasia: Same sex marriage dispute Europe: Macron’s proposed labour reforms spark protest France President Emmanual Macron’s attempt to “free up the energy of the workforce” by reforming labour laws in France has sparked protests.

Macron has voted to cut France’s unemployment rate, currently 9.5 per cent, to seven per cent by 2022.

France has a 3,000-page long labour law code and the reforms would empower individual firms, giving them more flexibility when it comes to settling disputes with its workforce on working hours and pay.

The first strike action against the new president, left-wing union CGT called 4,000 strikes and protests.

Though unions claimed turnout was higher, the interior ministry said 223,000 protesters attended the protests.

Despite being arguably the first big test for the French President, President Macron was overseas at the time assessing Hurricane Irma damage in the Caribbean.

radio telescope design throughout the world. The Mark II was the first in the world to utilise a computer to control its orientation — the Ferranti Augus 104. This computer had historically been used for military purposes for ballistic missile control, but with the 1960s came an increase in computers being used for more civil and commercial purposes — the Mark II telescope was certainly keeping ahead of the game.

As well as pioneering work in the study the moon, solar system, galaxy and the universe beyond, perhaps Jodrell Bank’s biggest claim to fame was in October 1957, when the Lovell Telescope was the first major telescope in the west to monitor the orbit of Sputnik I, the world’s first man-made satellite to be launched from earth by the Soviet Union.

Other buildings at the site to gain listed status this year are the Royal Park building—the control room for the Transit Telescope whose study of radio waves from the Andromeda galaxy confirmed that the universe extends beyond our own galaxy; the electrical workshop — the main purpose-built teaching building at the site; the Link Hut — used to investigate “cosmic noise”; the control building, and finally, the remains of the 71MHz Searchlight Ariel.

It is perhaps overdue that this centre of historical importance in the field of astrophysics gets the celebration and attention it deserves, but choosing the 60th anniversary of the first light of such an iconic telescope is indeed welcome, and hopefully will inspire the next generation of scientists to explore the deepest and farthest mysteries of the universe.

The Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre is open to the public and free to enter. One can learn more about the universe and tour the grounds, as well as get a breath-taking up-close view of the famous Lovell Telescope.

Global 7

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Australia Political tensions rise as Australia prepares for a vote on same sex marriage. The vote will be determined via a voluntary, nonbinding poll, which the Financial Times claim has turned into “a proxy civil war for control”.

Students at The University of Sydney have also clashed on the issue. A small group of ‘No’ campaigners were supposedly met by hundreds of same sex marriage supporters. Protesters from both sides were cautioned by the police. Both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigners have called for a civil debate to be held before the vote on the 25th September.

North America: Three hurricanes devastate the Caribbean US Hurricane Harvey broke a 12-year hurricane drought in the United States when it made landfall in Texas on the 25 August. Days later, it was followed by two further major Atlantic hurricanes Irma and Jose.

When Irma and Jose were active, it was the first time in Atlantic history that two simultaneous cyclones had wind speeds exceeding 150 miles per hour.

Irma struck five island states as a Category 5 hurricane. It destroyed 95 per cent of buildings in Barbuda, Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy. Together with Hurricane Harvey, it resulted in more than 150 deaths, including at least 108 in the United States.

In 2005, an estimated 250,000 pets were killed or abandoned when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. To prevent the same from occurring again, the United States National Guard cooperated with animal rescue charities to mount to biggest pet rescue operation in history.

Thanks to comprehensive preparation and relief efforts, the potential for a catastrophically higher number of casualties was avoided.

South America: Investigation launched into alleged massacre of Amazonian tribe’ Brazil The Brazilian government has launched an investigation into the alleged massacre of ten members of an isolated tribe in the Amazon rain forest by gold miners.

The tribe is deemed ‘uncontacted’, meaning they have never or rarely come into contact with the outside world. If proven to be true, the murders will be a major indication of deadly consequences to Brazil’s budget cuts to Brazil’s indigenous agency.

Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (Funai) has had its budget nearly halved by the business-friendly government of President Michel Temer, which has also recently proposed to reduce the protected area of the Amazon rain forest.

Mining and deforestation have for a long time been a major problem in the Amazon, affecting both local wildlife and ecology, as well as the livelihoods of indigenous tribes living in the area.

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Features

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George Osborne “The proof is in the pudding” says Mr Osborne to those who may have criticised his appointment as Editor of The Evening Standard...

Editor-in-Chief Kirstie O’Mahony also challenges him about another appointment a little closer to home Interview Kirstie O’Mahony Editor-in-Chief Sitting in the foyer of Northcliffe House, I was overwhelmed by my surroundings, and how it loomed over Kensington High Street. It houses the Independent, the Daily Mail, The Metro, and the newspaper I was there to visit, The London Evening Standard — so naturally it was buzzing with busy journalists who had no time to pay any heed to a random person who, unbeknownst to them, was about to interview their boss.

The building itself is awe inspiring, all white, gold, and glass. The perfect setting for an interview with a man many believe to have resided in one ivory tower or another for the majority of his career.

“

I certainly don’t think I have all the answers

”

That man is George Osborne. His office sits at the back of The Evening Standard newsroom, a bustling hub of creativity and concentration.

I am brought through and briefly shown around it — Mr “ Osborne’s new role as Editor of the team I pass through is something I’m eager to discuss with him. In the job since May, he is still fresh in the role... something he and I have in common.

I step into his office (which is remarkably minimalistic for someone with his amount of wealth). He asks me to sit down, and himself reclines on a sofa in front of me. He’s calm, collected, and charming, and it puzzles me trying to work out how much of that is inherent and how much is extensive media training.

First, I ask him about his appointment as honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester. He told me he was “flattered” to have been asked, and attributes it to his longstanding relationship with Vice Chancellor Nancy Rothwell through various projects in the scientific field and, more recently, the Royce institute.

His appointment caused somewhat of a stir in Manchester. The university’s Post-Crash Economics Society wrote to The Guardian, saying the decision was “undemocratic”, and a joint statement from last year’s exec team vehemently criticised it as well. When I asked how he felt about that, and what he would say to his critics, he told me that he’d “be disappointed in the state of student life if there weren’t differing views about the appointment of former politicians to posts at universities.”

He continued “students will have the opportunity if they want to, to ask me what it’s like to be chancellor/hold senior political office in this country and they can debate with me some of the decisions we took at the time and some of the big issues that face our country.”

I asked what actually would feature in his lectures — would they merely serve as a justification for the decisions he made as chancellor, or would they incorporate a broader look at the state of the national and international economy?

“I’ll be led by the students and the people that want to come and port minister Chris Grayling recently opted not to electrify the train engage with me. We can either talk about the past and the pretty draline between Manchester and Leeds, meaning the journey time will matic events in British Politics over the past ten years... or we can talk remain as long as ever, and The Associated Press recently published about the big decisions that the world faces at the moment…I’m up for analysis that stated the North of England is still primarily reliant upon a discussion about anything and I certainly don’t think I have all the 19th century infrastructure. answers.”

I asked him: do you think your project has failed?

Obviously, he knows his new students may not feel as he does He insisted not: “the Northern Powerhouse is very much alive but about his policies or his views for the future. I asked him if he expectinstead of being just a project that is talked about in Central London ed lively debate because of this, and he responded by saying “I hope or is the product of one politician’s plans, it is now something that so – university would be a very boring place if everyone agreed with lives and breathes in the North of England.” each other.”

That didn’t really answer my question on the lack of modern transDespite his bravado however, his assistant mentioned he is feeling port infrastructure, so he continued that “the whole is bigger than somewhat nervous about his first visit to Manchester, and the parts” – he explained that whilst transport development may be given that the university is practically painted screeching to a halt (as it were), the other projects that are thriving red, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. in the North and the North’s combined population means it’s Mr Osborne takes up his role on the starting to “rival London, New York, and Tokyo.”

Honorary Professor of Economics He did concede though that transport is important, within a matter of weeks. But and that the North “ultimately need[s] a new train before then, there is the small line through the pennines”, which is something matter of editing a daily newsthat he knows won’t happen overnight. paper, at a time when British I also asked him how the project benefits politics feels in a permanent students, and he pointed out that “it’s not state of turbulence. healthy to be in a situation where other Last month, it was reparts of the country feel overshadowed by vealed that the figures TheLondon, [and] if you’re a graduate of the resa May used as Home university, you need choices to fulfil your Secretary to crack down career and full potential... you’re now able on international students to do that in Manchester and Liverpool as overstaying their permit well as London.” were extremely misleadTime had flown by – we were prompted ing. Did Mr Osborne feel he that we only had five minutes left, so before could have done more? we finished I wanted to ask him about his His response was, at best, new role as editor. I was quick to point out that slightly vague, stating that “I he hasn’t been in the position on the long time, argued consistently in governand he was quicker to retort that neither have ment and now as Editor of this I – touché. However, I wanted to ask him what he newspaper for Britain to be as open wanted to say to those who have criticised his lack of to foreign students as possible” and experience.

Photo: London Evening Standard that international students are “a fantastic “As always in life, the only way you can prove people who thing for… Britain.” It seemed clear to me that he doubt you wrong is by just doing it… when I announced that I was certainly disagreed with their use, and when I pushed going to become an editor of a paper, I managed to offend 2 profeshim, he pointed to the editorials of the paper he owns, which “broadsions: politicians and journalists… but the proof is in the pudding – ly reflected his political outlook” to begin with anyway, and said “my every day there is Evening Standard produced. views on the student numbers are there for everyone to read.”

“I’ve published Corbynistas and hardcore brexiteers [in The And what a read they are – last month the editorial in the Standard Evening Standard]; people assumed it would all be towing the conread “the then Home Secretary thought it was better to stick with servative line and now I get criticised for attacking the conservatives false information than get the real facts, which might force her to too much! Well that strikes me as getting the balance about right.” change the policy.”

Did he have any advice, from one new Editor to another?

Harsh words – although not quite as vivid as Mr Osborne’s alleged “I hope when you edit the paper that you’re not afraid to call things desire, reported in a recent Esquire profile, to chop up Ms May and put as you see it, and you have to accept that people aren’t always going her in food bags in his freezer. Cold. to agree with you, but if they did you’d probably be doing something Speaking of his time in Government, one of Mr Osborne’s major powrong.” litical projects was the Northern Powerhouse Partnership. The trans-

Iqbal Shafiq – Founder of The Mancunion As we say goodbye to one Editor-in-Chief and welcome another, we chat with the man who started it all 53 years ago Jenny Sterne & Kirstie O’Mahony Former & Current Editor-in-Chief In 1964, less than four years after a ban had been lifted at the University of Manchester on student publications, the first free student newspaper appeared on campus: The Mancunion.

53 years later, the outgoing and incoming editors-in-chief sat down with the man who started it all, to find out a bit more about the man who created such a lasting impact on the Union and university experience of thousands of students.

A lot has changed since the first issue; initially it was more of a pamphlet than a paper as it was four pages long, the editorial team was made up of just four people and they had no women on board.

In comparison, we now have 32 pages of content, around 40 editors, and this year just gone we saw the largest number of women editors for a number of years.

Iqbal Shafiq spent his early years in Pakistan and then moved to Gloucestershire on his own to boarding school, as his father was a huge admirer of the British education system. After achieving what he describes as “very good grades” at A-level, he initially began to try his hand at accountancy.

He discovered early on, however, that this line of work was not suited to him, so he submitted late applications to Oxford, LSE and Manchester to study Economics. After receiving a handwritten letter of acceptance from the head of the Economics department, he packed his bags and set off for the North.

Shafiq admits that when he first arrived in Manchester as an economics student he was “very lonely” with his family so far away. That was until he discovered the Students’ Union, where he found the “warmth that I got from my home”.

Shafiq describes watching students from his faculty disappearing together after lectures while he went home and sat in his room, until one day he asked, “’Where does everyone go?’, and they said ‘We’re going to the Union, come and have a drink’, so I followed them.”

The welcome he received at the Union clearly had a real impact on him and he spoke fondly of the friendly atmosphere he encountered. He explains that this was how the iconic name The Mancunion was born – an homage to the Mancunians who welcomed him to the city and the Union that became his home from home.

Once he had created The Mancunion his loneliness was a thing of the past, as the paper became a close knit community with regular socials held in the Union bar, something we admitted has remained consistent in the 53 years that have passed.

When asked whether or not The Mancunion had a positive first reception, Mr Shafiq replied “much better than we expected”, although he admitted being a little sorry for his friends who worked for their rival student publication The Manchester Independent, established three years earlier which cost fourpence. “They were looking very sad, because they knew this was real competition and the first issue shook the newspaper.” The Manchester Independent lasted for ten years alongside The Mancunion.

The introduction of a free student publication certainly attracted attention, as The Guardian wrote a page 3 article about its first distribution. Shafiq recalled being interviewed by The Guardian journalist back in March 1964, and after the interview we tracked down this article in which he boldly claimed: “Our news will be objective and there will be no censorship from outside.”

As this is still a hot topic with student media we has asked Shafiq how much control he had over the editorial decisions, especially as it was so closely connected to the Students’ Union.

Shafiq explained that, while he was a Union council member, the Union and University had “no say at all” in the content he published, with most of it being objective news reports on the affairs discussed at union council meetings.

However he admitted that while he could be critical he felt much more restricted than we were today in how far he could go with the criticism: “I was a bit careful… because I was hoping that I would get a degree as well.”

We asked whether he has really thought that was a risk, explaining that if criticism was necessary we would not have been concerned that our degree would be threatened and that there had been many occasions throughout the year where we had let students openly express strong feelings against the University and Union: “I had noticed,” he joked, mentioning that he had seen the somewhat controversial articles from the beginning of the year concerning our interview with Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell.

While he explained that it didn’t stop him, he ul-

timately “tread carefully”. We asked if he could remember ever actually getting into trouble for what he published, and he recalled the head of his department taking him aside and saying “you should not have gone into this but now that you’ve started, alright we won’t say anything, but just be careful”.

The Mancunion appears to have been founded not long after a turbulent period for student publications, with The Guardian article mentioning the ban of student publications by university authorities in its write up about the launch. So it is perhaps unsurprising Shafiq felt the need to be careful..

Given that journalism in general is now in a period of flux, with the rise of alternative media and a growing distrust in mainstream news outlets we asked where he thought the future of journalism was headed.

“Nowadays if you have a cell-phone you get news from I don’t know where, news comes in all the time, so people buy less newspapers”, he replied in a somewhat baffled manner about the rise of online journalism and decline of print — something we admitted even student print journalism is struggling to catch up with.

However he was adamant that the paper had to continue and content that the paper is being left in (somewhat) capable hands, as “one of the nicest things in my life at the moment is that The Mancunion is doing so well”.

For the full length feature of this article go to: www.manchestermediagroup.co.uk

Features

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9

Freshers abroad: what to expect from your next big adventure As freshers descend onto Manchester once more, Kizzy talks to three third year University of Manchester students who are starting their new lives on their year abroad, discussing what freshers is like across the pond Kizzy Bray Head Features Editor Deciding to spend your third year in a whole new country is pretty daunting as a prospective student, so to make the application process a bit easier for those deliberating, I talked to three international freshers originally from the University of Manchester to see how their first week has gone.

Hari: Social Anthropology at VRIJE Universiteit Amsterdam If you decide to take the ERASMUS route in your adventure, like Hari, Amsterdam could be for you.

“Amsterdam is known to be pretty expensive so that worried me, but I managed to get my accommodation through the university for €350 a month. On the deadline day for accommodation, the website crashed and lots of people didn’t manage to get somewhere to live, so be prepared for a second option. Mine is the cheapest, there are shared bathrooms and no oven — you get a microwave and hobs instead — and you live with twelve people, but that’s part of the fun! Travel is expensive too, you can get an OV travel card but it gets expensive, most people here cycle — even to the clubs!”

For freshers events, the university has a pretty good international society that organises

a lot. “They give you campus tours, free gym lessons and a boat tour which you have to sign up to through email, all for free! ERASMUS Student Network (ESN) put on an activities weekend for €65. From Friday to Sunday you go to the Amsterdam dungeons, have a city tour, meals out, club nights and a boat party. Every Wednesday they put on a club night at Cocos Outback which is a lot of fun.”

So what should you know before applying to VRIJE Universiteit? For Hari, she warns us about organisation: “You need to expect to sort out all your modules yourself, even when classes overlap their system doesn’t pick it up and you’ll have to change it.”

But to try and get involved in your new home as much as possible! “Brush up on a bit of Dutch as well, everything in the supermarket is in Dutch and although most people speak English really well and the lectures are in English, it doesn’t hurt!”

Photo: Max Granger

Max: Economics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Catching a flight to Santiago will probably have you out of pocket for around £2000 for a direct flight in the summer months when term time starts, but you can get it for less if you’re a bit savvy, says Max. “I flew via Madrid which made it cheaper so it cost £1100 more or less. Just a 1-hour change over in Madrid so didn’t add too much time onto the trip.”

Luckily, travel in Santiago is pretty inexpensive. “You can buy a BIP card which you top up as you go and gives you access to public buses and the metro system. My uni campus is on one of the metro stops and I live 1-minute walk from my closest stop so I mainly use that. It probably costs me about £10-£15 a month.”

For freshers itself, there are options, even when there are no specific freshers events.

“There’s a student run organisation here called CAUC

which organised a few socials for us during the first few weeks. There aren’t specifically any freshers events, but my private halls ‘Livinn Santiago’ organise nights out. There is an event every Wednesday for exchange students called ‘Miercoles Po’ which changes venue every week so through that I’ve been able to experience most of the main clubs.

Alcohol is much cheaper than at home which is a nice bonus, roughly £3 for a big bottle of vodka.”

Santiago freshers should prepare themselves for the culture shock, Max believes.

“I would suggest insisting on living with Spanish speaking people if you really want to accelerate your language skills. Initially, classes were quite hard as you have to keep up with taking notes and understanding the professors, everyone speaks very quickly. The accent is quite different to Spain too. But I’m getting more used to it each week.”

Sofi: Business/Finance Major, University of Illinois, USA Situated in Urbana-Champaign in the state of Illinois, Sofi is now living the American dream. Sofi considered an apartment for accommodation when moving out to the US but felt that halls would be better for meeting new people, “but if you’re looking for the cheaper alternatives I would say go for shared flats instead as halls have cost over $13,000 for the year, not including a meal plan.”

Getting around is easy: “You mostly get around by walking, but you can’t get out of the mandatory transportation fee which entitles you to be able to ride any bus on campus by showing your student card.”

There is plenty to do while there. The international and exchange society BIEN organise meetups and activities and the dean even invited all the exchange business

students to her home for a barbecue, which surprised Sofi. “Her kids were even there! it felt so strange but apparently, that’s normal here!”

Because the legal drinking age in the USA is 21, most first years stick to frat parties — which Sofi assures us are true to the stereotypes. As a result, there is not much of a clubbing culture on campus.

Instead, people tend to hang in the campus bars which are the only ones in the country with the entry age of 19.

The one thing Sofi wants to let prospective students know is that it gets expensive, fast. “It all adds up really quickly and some people won’t even be able to go home for Christmas break because of that. But I would 100 per cent recommend having this experience, after all, it’s not every day you get a clean slate in a new place and new people!”

A very normal interview BAFTA award winning screenwriter, poet, comedian and co-founder of Baby Cow Productions, Henry Normal sits down to chat with Raine Beckford about the launch of his new book Raine Beckford Deputy Features Editor After announcing the upcoming publication of his new collection of poems ‘Raining Upwards’, I sat down with Henry Normal – a BAFTA award winning screenwriter, poet, and comedian – to discuss the launch of the book.

A lot has changed since Normal first moved to Manchester (for love, not poetry) but he maintains that the creative scene is alive and well. This is evidenced by the continued growth and success of the annual Manchester Literature Festival, the predecessor to which (the Manchester Poetry Festival) he co-founded.

Hailing from a council estate in Bilborough, Normal talks of dreaming of a career in comedy, writing, but feeling trapped, largely, by his working-class origins. He describes the life he led in Bilborough as ‘not very creative at all’, his only outlet being jokes and skits he would write down and stick on the walls around his school titled ‘please do not read’, hoping for feedback from his fellow students. He observes that this felt lonely as he was the only one doing it.

After the death of his mother when he was 11, his father raised him and his four siblings alone. Sometimes working seven days a week, Normal says the work ethic his father displayed meant he felt duty-bound to find a “job for life.” After leaving school he secured two jobs, as an insurance broker and as a bartender. Whilst working around the clock he continued to write at night, even drawing on his experiences at work as inspiration for his material.

Normal says “the pub was right next to a bus depot.

I was very young then, only 18, and all the old bus men used to come in and call me gay boy! But I actually put that into the Royle Family which is why Antony is called gay boy.”

Spurred on by the American comedians he would see at night (a self-proclaimed fan of Rich-

ard Pryor, Jack Benny, and the Marx Brothers) Normal quit his job and moved in with his sister to focus on becoming a writer. When asked if, in hindsight, this seemed like a risky decision, he said, “I’d been doing very well at insurance but if I was the best insurance man in the world I wouldn’t have been happy.” He describes being drawn to standup comedy in particular because it provided “instant feedback.” Either people laughed or they didn’t. This quickly became preferable to sending off manuscripts and waiting on rejections.

When asked what his favourite part of the early days of his career was he cited “the sense of community.” During his time in Manchester, Normal made the rounds in literary scenes up and down the country. Performing alongside a then-unknown Pulp in the Midlands, and forging lifelong friendships in Manchester with performers such as Steve Coogan, Lemn Sissay, and Caroline Aherne.

He eventually launched Baby Cow Productions, a collaborative effort with Coogan responsible for Moone Boy, Gavin and Stacey, The Mighty Boosh, and Human Remains among others.

Around the same time, he worked with promoter Rick Michael to launch what is now the Manchester Literature Festival. Speaking about his inspiration for the festival, Normal notes “I’d done this show called Packet of Three and I wasn’t happy with it. I got a lot of money from it but I was very upset because I thought it was dreadful and I didn’t think it was me. I’d gotten this money and I thought I’m going to do something with this money that makes someone else happy because it’s not making me happy.” The festival proved to be a runaway success, even hosting the poet Seamus Heaney only two days after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But after 30 years in film and television, even

producing the four time Oscar nominated Philomena, he resigned and settled in Brighton. On ‘Raining Upwards’ Normal talks of wanting to regain the independence and personal touch he feels only poetry can achieve. He says, “I’d sooner be able to communicate in exactly the way I want rather than somebody say well [you] can reach millions of people but I have to compromise myself. I’ve done that, I’ve done the Photo: Henry Normal compromise.

I want to do the pure communication.” In it he covers everything from his family life with his wife Angela and their autistic son Johnny (whose artwork emblazons the front of the book) to his thoughts on science, nature, and fame.

When prompted for advice for young writers hoping to launch a career today he stressed the importance of originality. “There are so many opportunities now but you’ve got to have drive and stamina. You’ve got to have something to say which is why most of the good stuff is being done by the unheard voices. If you’re saying the same thing that’s been said for 600 years it’s not that in-

teresting.” This approach helped to ensure the success of one of his earlier projects, The Royle Family, about which he states, “when we did The Royle Family it was the best depiction of working class people that had been on television because we were sick of seeing depictions of working class people on TV and thinking… well that’s not real.”

‘Raining Upwards’ launches on September 29 th at Manchester Central Library where Henry himself will give a performance. Copies of the book can be found at www.flapjackpress.co.uk.

Opinion

10

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Our homelessness problem

Jacklin Kwan Opinion Editor

Manchester is, in every sense, a modern metropolis. It is the country’s third largest city, with industrial era warehouses that it has wisely preserved and repurposed, maintaining a strong sense of heritage. A cultural center for the arts, a thoroughly urban economy, and, emblamatically of the 21st century — with income inquality now at the highest levels since the previous peak of the ‘roaring 20s’ — a place where you will find both England’s most affluent, and it’s most deprived. Walking on the streets, especially the busier ones in Northern Quarter or Piccadilly, you will encounter tens of people wrapped up in sleeping bags or sitting on cardboard — all with limited access to food, hygiene, and healthcare.

Homelessness in the UK is growing a disturbing rate — the scale and severity to which have complex origins with no simple solutions. Preliminary reading will inform you of factors such as the Great Recession of the past decade, the lack of social safety nets, affordable housing and prospects for economic migrants, and the demoralising absence of political drive to combat homelessness. And in these larger socio-economic trends, there are the personal tragedies of individuals who struggle with mental health, addiction, and histories of abuse and dysfunction. This article will not address the larger structural changes that need to take place to solve Manchester’s homelessness crisis. Instead, it is an appeal for compassion and a warning against our desensitisation to the hardship of others.

Most of us do not deserve the things we have, that is the plain truth. At least, we do not deserve the things we have more than anyone else that — if born with our circumstances and privileges — would probably have worked just as hard and achieved just as much. In many ways, we know this, though the illusions of our own merit extend far beyond their actual boundaries. It is this fear that we have not earned our happiness that causes us to turn away from suffering, because there is that frightening thought that if things had unfolded slightly differently, we would be also sleeping in the cold. These mirrored realities — of what is versus what might well have been — also make it easy to vicariously experience the pain of others that we see.

This is an excerpt. To read Jacklin’s full article, head to www.mancunion.com

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

It’s down to students to show the UK’s positive future

Elizabeth Rushton Contributor

Voluntourism harms communities Student volunteering expeditions will be furiously promoted at our university this week, but it’s our responsibility to ignore them, argues Amy Wei It’s enticing, I know, to be a holiday humanitarian. Helping villagers in Third World countries seems charitable enough to counteract the hedonism of lavish vacationing — and it should, if our work is meaningful.

At every Freshers’ Fair, a procession of pamphlet-pushing charity reps promote expeditions they promise help foreigners develop communities sustainably. Children smile welcomingly at us from their posters. There’s a £5,000 pound fee — but it’s a charity, it must be fine. So off we go, all professing the same noble causes of making “a difference/change/impact in [insert name of far-flung exotic country here].”

How these voluntourist expeditions really affect the communities who host us isn’t often questioned. The answer, of course, depends heavily upon each location’s political, economic, and ecological circumstances.

Voluntourism comes in two typical forms: building and enforcing infrastructure, and working in education.

Infrastructural voluntourism relies on the assumption that builders, plumbers, and engineers in developing countries are less qualified than their British equivalents. Each year, British expeditions export legions of school leavers with no experience in manual labour across the globe to construct schools and hospitals.

Unfailingly, this puts local professionals out of work — and yet, is reported back in the UK as a humanitarian success.

The truth is, Chinese and Chilean construction workers can build their own schools. They are even better at building schools than liberal arts students from the University of Bradford. Our layman

attempts at construction only waste time and local resources. Piles of mis-sawn planks of wood, bent nails, and pots of incorrectly mixed mortar are constant by-products of amateur manual labour.

East African Playgrounds, a charity founded by an English couple, is a regular at Manchester’s Fresher’s Fair. It offers to take students to Uganda to build slides, erect swings, and paint tires for local children to play with — which sounds reasonable at first. Children in shanty towns often resort to playing in dangerous areas, such as around dumpsters and amongst exposed wires people use to steal electricity from the grid.

Kampala, however, is already home to countless skilled labourers capable of designing and constructing playgrounds for their own children. The reason they don’t do it is because the structures would be dissembled and the parts stolen within 24 hours. The resources and labour required to maintain the playgrounds could be put to more pragmatic use elsewhere.

When the British found charities with a shallow understanding of the deep-rooted problems facing a specific country, they try to fix surface-level problems with infrastructural projects that are more symbolic than practical. From playgrounds in Uganda, to goat sheds in Tanzania, and school outbuildings in China — they make for a pretty picture but, frankly, are rather pointless.

It would be more productive if we all stayed at home. We could take the money we would have spent on flights, visas, and expedition costs (totalling $2 billion annually), and donate it to regional, grassroots organisations that only employ local

Opinion 11

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

In the eyes of many Europeans, Britain has become the closeted land of King Farage – and no-one has as much power to change that as we do.

Photo:FrontierEnviro @ Wikimedia

workers.

Educational expeditions are another popular branch of voluntourism. Organisations such as Project Trust, an official partner of the University of Manchester, offer students opportunities to teach English in rural communities in Cambodia, Guyana, and Honduras for one year.

It’s impossible to argue that there are any benefits to these expeditions. Village children in the countryside of Yunnan province, China, are unlikely to ever leave Yunnan, and aside from the very restricted openings in tourism in the mountains, they will never apply for a job where one year’s worth of rudimentary English will ever benefit them. It’s arrogant of British charities to presume that it would.

You’ll also be encouraged by the university to go on expeditions to developing countries to educate locals about infrastructure and sustainable development.

For this task, we are uniquely unqualified.

Raleigh International, a charity funded by the British government, exports student volunteers to instruct other countries on specialist subjects after only five days of training. This is far from enough to transform a fresher who gets defeated by broken bathroom doors at Antwerp Mansion into an authority on infrastructural development. They’re only trained in the absolute basics.

Even so, The Mancunion still endeavours to run headlines about Raleigh International such as “Manchester student to make an impact in Nepal,” even though the student is only travelling there for three months to “[educate] rural communities on the benefits of clean water, sanitation and hygiene.”

The only beneficiary of any of these programs is the British volunteer. In that respect, I can’t fault them. They provide exactly what they market: exercises in character and CV development in tropical locations from an Instagrammer’s wet dreams. Charities can market ‘life-changing experiences’ all they like. Living down in the dirt in a developing country is an excellent way to broaden students’ perspectives, and appreciate the privileges they experience in the UK. It’s inaccurate, though, to propose these expeditions are beneficial to their host countries whatsoever.

Freshers’ stall representatives will assure you that holiday humanitarianism is transformative to third world countries.

We make an impact. They need us.

Engaging in voluntourism is another form of jingoism. It may injure our egos to think it, but they don’t need us. There are no Djiboutians in distress waiting for us to rescue them from the heart of darkness.

The only people we please are ourselves.

On the face of it, Britain’s older generations have set ours on an increasingly likely downward spiral. It was largely them who, at the previous three general elections, installed Conservative governments who ordered last year’s Brexit referendum, the same people who mostly voted to take us out, and have conducted the subsequent negotiations with all the grace of Boris Johnson hastily exiting a field of wheat.

Our neighbours across the channel are not blind to this. We were hardly the most willing EU member even before the 23rd of June 2016, but we now come across as an aloof nation intent on walling itself in. Ask any European interested in British politics who today’s key political figures are, and they’ll likely answer with Nigel Farage, the demagogue so wildly popular that his party — which twice asked him back as leader after his resignation when no-one else wanted to do it — has no MPs. Theresa May’s likely challenger? Many Europeans long for the kind of enlightened rising star we have in the form of Jacob Rees-Mogg, with his modernising and morally grounded vision of Britain as a rainy remake of The Handmaid’s Tale.

But can we really blame them? We are famed for our unwillingness to learn foreign languages and thus engage in the valuable cultural exchange and understanding that it affords, and it’s increasingly hard to decry this perception. As part of the University of Manchester’s proposed cuts to 171 staff roles, vital languages including German and French may lose up to half their teaching staff.

Other universities have gone further, with Brighton among those to axe departments completely.

Can we really argue that Brexit is simply a case of “it’s not you, it’s me” and that Britain still values and respects its international partners when the

3 million EU citizens living here are still waiting for a solution that offers security and eases their concerns for their futures? Failure to fix this could have dire consequences — a Britain with a reputation for slapping away hands offering collaboration and cooperation is one which will sever our remaining opportunities to live, work and study abroad, and leave us with an economy that offers little even within our own borders.

It’s this threat to our own futures that we need to take into our own hands. We need to demand that our government delivers a Brexit which delivers opportunities rather than depriving us of them.

The year 2017 has posed the question of whose ally Britain will be once it goes it alone – will it remain

“It’s this threat to our own futures that we need to take into our own hands. We need to demand that our government delivers a Brexit which delivers opportunities rather than depriving us of them.” the EU’s friend, or sidle up to Donald Trump?

Crucially, showing that Britain’s youth doesn’t side with a president who condones racism and inequality will demonstrate to the rest of the world that this country has a more positive, outwardlooking future, which can patch up the damage being done now.

Action towards this needn’t be extravagant, and work has already begun — the massive youth turnout at June’s election and swing behind

one of the decisive factors for this level of discontentment: Austerity. And there was no bigger advocate of what became the default economic ideology of the UK government than George Osborne.

Fast-forward to September 2017 and, in the words of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (roughly “the more things change, the more things stay the same”). All of a sudden, Britain appears to be headed for a hard Brexit, but nobody is clear on what an EU pull-out will eventually entail. The socialist left is dramatically revitalised under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, but the government is still largely controlled by the Conservative Party. Jacob Rees-Mogg is now a potential option for leadership of the Tories, but he continues to live up to his reputation as the ‘‘Honourable Member for the 18th century’’. Most impressively, however, is that George Osborne is no longer Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he remains one of the most reviled politicians to discharge that responsibility in recent memory.

“It did not take me an eternity to learn of one of the decisive factors for this level of discontentment: Austerity.”

The former MP for Tatton will reportedly take up a sixth job this academic year when he lectures at the illustrious University of Manchester. His more pro-active platforms in the North West during his tenure have now either been proved to be ineffective or have been pushed to the back of the priority queue by order of an unconvinced (and judging by general election results,

Corbyn’s Labour, the most left-wing mainstream option for decades, has already shown that British youth is far from satisfied with what we are being offered. We can demonstrate this beyond where we put our crosses on the ballot paper whenever that opportunity arises. While the government leaves the EU citizens among our first-class staff (to quote the university) and classmates in the lurch, we must support them and, with xenophobia on the rise, refuse to let discrimination and prejudice grow in university spaces, challenging those who do. As students of the city of Manchester, this is part of a proud legacy which has only garnered greater global respect and recognition in the wake of May’s terror attack.

Academically, Brexit threatens to strip us of privileged opportunities. We still don’t know how our access to Erasmus programmes will be affected, and a government pledge to plug the gap left in research funding by the loss of EU finances has been met with scepticism — to say nothing of the lost opportunity to collaborate and easily share findings. Manchester is a university which could once rightly be proud of its open outlook

and world-class research, but this now hangs in the balance. We need to fight the compromising of our academic prospects, and that can start simply with defending our staff and rejecting the rampant cuts proposed by the board of governors.

Extortionate tuition fees have long transported British higher education a world away from its European counterparts, and the latest trend of further prioritising profit over progress brings us further down this path. But we can demand to turn things back — and doing so will show Europe that our generation is one that will come through to make Britain its collaborator and close neighbour, even from outside the EU. Brexit will impact us all, regardless of how we individually voted last summer – so it’s in everyone’s interests to demand our future is invested in. If we show Europe that we are different from the generation stumbling through the monumental labyrinth they created for us all, we show that there is still hope in Britain and we are not ready to be walled off from the rest of the world just yet. We are the future, and building it begins now.

A local guide for international students

In It Together? A Welcome to Professor Osborne Manchester has a fascinating political history full of controversy and societal change. But how will Professor Osborne cope with the controversy around his appointment?

It has been two years now since the Conservative Party conference was last held in Manchester, and two years since I left my hometown of Gibraltar for the wet, semi-urban pastures of Fallowfield.

The de facto North West was a key campaigning target at the time for the Tories (and indeed, continues to be), in large part due to the Devomanc and HS2 programs touted by the Conservative government, then spearheaded by former Prime Minister David Cameron and ex-chancellor George Osborne.

The week of the conference in 2015 happened to be my second week in Manchester, not long after fresher’s week.

I had heard of Manchester’s political history, especially ‘on the left’ of things, and my broadly left-wing alignment was satiated as I would soon write a piece (a joint feature with fellow student Fergus Selsdon-Games) in the Mancunion on Engels’ ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ 170 years after its publication. But I had not expected the physical and provoking activism that Manchester witnessed when the Tories were ‘welcomed’ with a public display of political frustration of the highest order.

Part of me was taking this positively – we were told that political apathy was endemic, in particular among students, yet an estimated 60,000 people marched in defiance of authority and the status quo. That was appealing to me. But the other part of me was curious – why the frustration? Who exactly is ‘Tory scum’ referring to? Why are there effigies of David Cameron fornicating with swine?

It did not take me an eternity to learn of

Photo: Everett @ Flick Photo: EdEd Everett @ Flickr

Observations about the British, and how to make most out of your first year by Jacklin Kwan

Photo: @UoMSalcStudents @Twitter Photo: Alicia Love

Photo: @ altogetherfool @ flickr

Mark Montegriffo Opinion Writer polling statistics, and cabinet infighting, an equally unconvincing Prime Minister) Theresa May. Of course, there is a certain reputational benefit to the university by recruiting an individual of the editor London Evening Standard’s stature. Such a divisive figure with such a destructive record in Greater Manchester might actually elevate the university’s profile (and hopefully that of the Northern Powerhouse too). While they ought to be credited for this coup, they cannot have envisaged the appointment to be controversy-free. The North West is a primary victim of the economic path pursued by Osborne and, as of now, the project to increase investment in Greater Manchester seems to have had minimal effect in comparison to the rise in food bank usage, child poverty and financial deprivation across the region. The socioeconomic crisis that has deepened entrenched levels of inequality, more noticeably since the 2008 global recession damaged progress in all areas of society from health and social care, to policing and the tackling of crime.

In a city where Conservatives are set to receive another wave of civil protest for their upcoming autumn conference in October, it will be interesting to see how George Osborne engages with a student population that may not be terribly supportive of his record in government.

One hopes that minds begin open, both on the part of George Osborne himself and the student body at large, and that strong and critical discussion is had in the spirit of inquiry that universities are based on, and the spirit of accountability that authority figures must be subject to. Osborne will not apologise for his unpopular direction of austerity and nor should anybody apologise for heavily criticising it either. But if he embraces the passion of many politics students, listens to them, and engages with them, perhaps the aristocrat can have a worthwhile experience at the university. Students from Arthur Lewis building to Antwerp Mansion should take the opportunity while Professor Osborne is obliged to lend an ear in his new role.

I’ve always been somewhat of a foreigner. Though I have Chinese ethnicity, I went to an international high school — the teachers were British, but every student spoke with a rather grating American accent. As a result, I came to the UK with somewhat of mix, culturally; Americanisms coupled with Asian mannerisms.­I was direct and outspoken to the point of being aggressive and confrontational. I disliked the pressure of having to make small talk with a cashier. And when someone asked me where I went to school, I thought they were genuinely interested in the details of my adolescence. Coming from an English-speaking country, I thought integration into everyday life in Manchester would come naturally, since I was already used to the bulk of Anglo-Saxon customs. Sadly, I, and anyone else who makes this assumption, would be grossly mistaken.

To the new class of freshmen arriving in Manchester from faraway, here are some tips compiled from my last year of cultural confusion, and advice looking forward to the next academic year.

What you should know about the British 1.

Get used to small talk. In Singapore when you went to eat with friends, you only ever made contact with your waiter four times: when they lead you to your table, when they took your order, when they gave you your food, and when they took your money. There wasn’t any effort expended to acknowledge there was an actual human being with independent thoughts that was serving you. The same goes for cashiers, street vendors, and pretty much everyone else working

in the service industry; and to my knowledge, this cold professionalism is prevalent in most Asian countries. It is different here. Even in the most casual of exchanges — whether you are filling out a form at the student office, or bumping into a someone when you are on your way to a lecture — people will ask you how your day was and expect a reply. When I first arrived I was struck at how important these short exchanges were to making longer lasting relationships. My advice is simple: if they are strangers keep your answer short, relaxed, but politely distant. If they are people you have met more than once, feel free to chat a bit more, and when you see them, make an effort to initiate small talk.

2. Be generous with compliments, but resistant towards accepting them. I used to smile widely and enthusiastically accept any compliment extended to me, but be pretty slow at offering any myself. I thought that giving compliments when one was only mildly impressed came across as disingenuous and distasteful, but again, I was wrong. As the Economist advises, “If someone compliments you, permit a small blush to rise to your cheeks, and say, ‘Oh, it was nothing’.” Also dole out a few of your own compliments, but make sure they are measured and come from a truthful place.

3.

Avoid tense confrontations and strong opinions. Though the Brits enjoy their fair share of heated political discussion as much as the rest of us, it’s probably a good rule of thumb to avoid any heavy topics when you first meet people.

This applies to when you work together on an assignment and come across a disagreement. I used

think that plowing through and arguing heatedly was the best way to resolve a conflict, since every party would have the opportunity to air out their opinions in a non-judgmental environment.

However, the British tend to value tact, symbolic gestures of compromise, and patient diplomacy.

Straight-forwardness and brutal honesty comes, if at all, after establishing a relationship of trust and mutual benefit.

4. Master the art of self-deprecation. I was once horrified to hear some of the things the British said about themselves — it just seemed like a masochistic ritual of self-humiliation. I still don’t quite fully understand it to be honest; maybe it’s an intellectual reminder to never take oneself or the world too seriously, or a self-defence mechanism where one critiques oneself so the judgments of others aren’t as hurtful. But nonetheless, learn to make the occasional light-hearted jab at yourself (just don’t make it too depressing). I also made the mistake of assuming that because people were already poking fun at themselves, it was okay to tease them with their own ammunition even if we had only just met. Short story: this isn’t true. Friendly teasing comes much later in the relationship and after you have sufficient evidence to show that they are okay with it.

Making the most out of first year 1. Travel! The UK, and Manchester in particular, is accessible to some of Europe’s most amazing destinations, and in your first year you aren’t beholden to many obligations. Take this chance to enjoy a trip over one of the shorter breaks to Belfast, Paris, Edinburgh, or Amsterdam. There are plenty of things to see closer to home as well like Birmingham, Oxford, and of course, London.

For many of you that have to take long flights or torturous road trips to cross state borders, your time in university presents a valuable opportunity that won’t come often. If you can’t travel far, definitely use the time to attend Manchester’s festivals and enjoy the city beyond its student-friendly pubs.

Manchester is, despite having the leftover façade

of an industrial town, a wonderful cultural center with musicals, concerts, and plays happening every other week.

2. Learn to do most of your socializing when you drink. It is hard to emphasise how important drinking culture is in the UK, especially when you’re a student. It is where the bulk of socialisation occurs; where, under the dim light with a pint in hand, people loosen their strings and make fun, light-hearted conversation as well as exchange more intense dialogue that may include their personal philosophical insights — dependent on how late it is, and how much they’ve had to drink.

Even if you’re not too fond of drinking, tag along to pub crawls or casual beers after class and feel free to stick to a Coke. I’ve found that Manchester students are open and accepting, and while they may be the type to pursue aggressive drinking with the sole purpose of oblivion, they aren’t likely to coerce you to do the same.

3. Make local friends. While missing home and unused to loneliness, it’s easy to mix with people who give you a comforting sense of familiarity.

Though it’s definitely valuable to have friends that ground you with shared cultures and experiences, try to mingle with people from all over. In my past year, I’ve met people who have been endlessly kind, humble, and wise. I’ve also met people on the other end of the spectrum. Being part of such a large and diverse student body is a large portion of Manchester’s appeal, and it’d be a missed opportunity not to take advantage of it.

I won’t sugar-coat it, the first year can sometimes be challenging. Loneliness in a strange city can be suffocating and the academia may be demanding. However, with new environments free of the burdens of past mistakes and the ingrained perceptions of others, university life as an international student can be freeing. It’s a time to fully commit oneself to being daring and openminded. And with that, I wish the incoming class the best of luck.

12

Music

Villians - QOTSA

Released 18th March via OVO Sound

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This feel good song will make those bed sheets seem easier to put on, I promise!

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1970 - The first Glastonbury in the UK takes

1969 – John Lennon announces that he is

est, and most influential guitarists passes away

place in Pilton Park.

leaving The Beatles after nine years of being a

in London at the age 27.

group.

1983 – KISS appear for the first time without

2009 – MUSE goes straight to No.1 with their

their infamous makeup on an interview with

fifth album The Resistance. It also topped the

MTV.

charts in 19 other countries around the world.

21st September

22nd September

23rd September

1981 – Adam and the Ants reach No.1 in the UK

1990 – Nirvana plays to their biggest crowd

1977 – David Bowie releases the single ‘Heroes’,

with the track ‘Prince Charming’.

so far of 15,000, one of which was Dave Grohl

and whilst this didn’t become an instant

who auditioned to be their drummer 3 days

hit, this single went on to be one of Bowie’s

later.

signature songs.

2007 – Snoop Dogg is sentenced to three years

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24th September

1957 – Elvis Presley releases the infamous ‘Jailhouse Rock’.

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This infectious song should be on any moving in playlist. It’ll make you sing and dance along, perfect for your journey to University.

Manchester, night by night

Hannah Brierley Music Editor So, welcome to your first week of this academic year! As you’re probably already aware, Manchester has an abundance of different club nights to offer. Here’s a quick run-down of some of the events that will guarantee a good time and won’t break the bank.

M O N D AY: QUIDS IN at Fa c to r y 2 5 1 .

The three floored venue has a mixture of hip hop, house, dance, and alternative music to ofPhoto: Wikimedia Commons fer. As it says on the tin, entry is only £1 before 12pm. The building itself is the infamous Factory Records, the studio home to the likes of the Happy Mondays and Joy Division. Take in the rich history whilst simultaneously having that Jäger shot.

TUESDAY: GOLDTEETH at Deaf Institute. This beautiful little gem plays the best in northern soul, funk, and feel good Mo-Town classics.

If this isn’t your bag then the modern hits and floor fillers of the second floor are for you! This a sure-fire good night, and a lot closer than venturing all the way to the town centre.

WEDNESDAY: Wednesday night is sport society night, which means

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of probation and 160 hours of community

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1970 -Jimi Hendrix, arguably one of the great-

This perfectly summarises new beginnings. a lovely little melody that’ll stick in your mind for the next week too.

Photo: Album Artwork

Villains is available now!

20th September

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Evil Has Landed” resembles one-time collaborators Biffy Clyro. Both songs possess a very Led Zeppelin feel, picked up possibly from Homme’s sessions with John Paul Jones in 2009. The latter is also the album’s undoubted stand out, spaffing out an array of riffs and time signatures to drown the listener in incredibly crafted noise.

This all amounts to a half-step in a poppier direction. The half-step is accommodated by Mark Ronson on production, called in to help make something, in Homme’s words, “very tight... with the air sucked out of it”.

It’s not obvious whether Ronson’s funky tendencies have influenced anything asides from the odd string or brass instrument, but the clean shaven sound Homme was after can be heard everywhere.

He sadly fails to make the most of drummer Jon Theodore, who is capable of so much more than simply ‘keeping it all together’ at the back of the mix, leaving it to the rest of the band to add rhythmic diversity. There are also far fewer guitar solos and shouty moments on this record, and one can’t help but miss the teeth-baring band of old at times.

The musicianship everywhere else is as ambitious and accurate as you’d hope, however. Homme’s crooning is as far from the strained wailing of his

19th September

Pho to: A lbum A

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rhythms and lyrics with cheek have always been the basis ”

18th September

service for carrying a collapsible baton.

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Hannah Brierley Music Editor

Artwork

“Tightly clenched

“So take the photographs, and still-frames in your mind Hang them on a shelf in good health and good time”

w S ou Ne

The genre is innately blessed with the attributes of sexiness, taboo and bad behaviour like a pair of Elvis’ suede underpants. The best bands know that rock can still be music to make love to. On album three, the Arctic Monkeys discovered this to great success, taking them from yappy upstarts to smooth crooners and making them a better band for it.

The man they learned this from was their then-producer Josh Homme, the lead singer, guitarist, songwriter, heart, soul, mind and body of Queens of the Stone Age. In a 20 year career spent directing one of the most acclaimed and heaviest bands in rock, Homme has always maintained this sexy element in his music.

Exhilarating song structures, tightly clenched rhythms and lyrics with cheek have always been the basis of Josh Homme’s sound. For this, his band have spent two decades sat back as they ascend through the ranks of hard rock to be one of the best acts still around.

In 2017, this sexiness is still at the heart of Homme’s sound. Much else surrounding it has changed, however. Lead single from their seventh album, “The Way You Used to Do”, their grooviest song to date – and perhaps their least characteristic – shows this off impeccably.

Ripped from the purest of rock’s roots, it sounds more like a Chuck Berry twist number than anything, handclaps and slinky guitar squeals inviting listeners for a boogie over a brawl in a mosh pit.

Homme’s words are directed to “a girl he first met [when] she was seventeen”, Brody Dalle, who he has been married to since 2007, having “jumped like an arsonist to a perfect match / Burned alive” and brilliantly capture his witty, salacious style. A track then, with the same old Josh Homme sex appeal, just wearing a jazz suit instead of leather jacket.

It’s been over two months since this tune first aroused Queens fans, and now finally with the full release of Villains, it’s clear the rest of the band’s new songs stay a similar course, both in sound and quality. “Feet Don’t Fail Me” kicks off proceedings in typically intense QOTSA fashion, unsettling guitars creeping up on you like an Ennio Morricone score played by Jefferson Airplane, before boiling over into one of the most irresistible riffs the band have come up with. It’s simple. It’s seductive. It’s a pleasant surprise.

The rest of the album follows this tone, moving straight into “The Way We Used to Do” and “Domesticated Animals”, which works around a three chord progression as beginner-friendly as ‘Smoke on the Water’.

“give us a smile / You got a number, is it the same? / Who you belong to? / You feral or tame?” Overall, he sounds like a man revelling in the challenges he’s set himself and in the end makes it all look far too easy.

Like so many other bands, QOTSA burden an early record that remains an undisputed classic; Songs for the Dead, which turned fifteen last week, will constantly be the album to beat, not just for Homme himself, but for all aspiring rock bands. Villains isn’t quite Songs for the Dead. It’s more on a par with their last album …Like Clockwork, which came out in 2013 after a six year hiatus to become their best effort since their behemoth masterpiece.

What’s odd – and endearing – about Villains though is it doesn’t seem to care for comparisons.

Homme and the boys have proved they can do fast and furious and now they’re looking for something more subtle. They sound like a band holding their breath and trying a few new things between the sheets. Their open-mindedness reaps rewards, ensuring they remain the meanest, cleanest, sleaziest act in rock music. Conservative QOTSA fans who only like it rough might struggle with this effort, but that is their loss – this is an accomplished and exciting instalment from one of the only bands left in rock with something interesting to say and will surely go on to be the genre’s album of the year.

As we find outselves in our first week of the acadmic year, let’s have a quick lookback at what this week had in store for musical history in days of old.

lbum Photo: A

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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of rock’s roots, it sounds more like a Chuck Berry twist number than anything ”

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“Ripped from the purest

As the song rises to a sore-throat finale, a cinematic string section transitions into the moody synth opening of “Fortress”, another unexpected turn for the rock purists. The synth comes back for “Un-Reborn Again”, which features a full bridge made of strings and a saxophone in the outro. Neither song suffers for it in the slightest, proving QOTSA have reached a point where their experimenting can be welcomed without risk of tainting their hard rock style.

The dabbling in unexplored sounds doesn’t stop there. There is a waft of something British going on in this album. On “Head Like a Haunted House”, their thrashing is almost reminiscent of protégés the Arctic Monkeys. The full-band staccato of “The

Rewind - This week in music history

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l Scre

8/10 early years it’s ever been. On ‘Villains of Circumstance’, a track destined to end the season finale of a show about a time-travelling biker gang at war with vampires, his falsetto chorus of “Always, evermore, and on and on” is hauntingly catchy.

Lyrically, he’s the same silver tongued bastard, telling his “love slave” on ‘Domesticated Animals’ to

Sex and rock ’n’ roll have been in bed with one another from the beginning.

Feature

ma

William Baldwin-Pask Contributor

Top 5 songs - to help you unpack

by Hannah Brierley

On their seventh album, the ever-strong survivors of alternative rock try new things with the same old successes writes William Baldwin-Pask

Music 13

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am

Album Album

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHETSERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

Venue to relaunch with students at its heart Kirstie O’Mahony Editor-in-Chief

Monkeys, Courteeners, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and more.

256 is the place to go. This place is a spectacle, with initiations as far as the eye can see. Its a very short walk from Fallowfield campus, and a short walk away from Chicken King, so everyone is a winner.

The popular nightclub on Deansgate, Venue is set to reTHURSDAY: SKINT at 42nd Street. For all your alternative indie pop launch bigger and better than needs. £1 entry before 12pm with a student card (£3 without a card). ever, with student offers galore.

Can you say no to a place that serves 60p shots, £1.30 vodka mixers, and plays classics such as Kasabian, Bowie, Oasis, and Stevie Won- It’s trying to distance itself from its indie-only reputation der? This is perfect solution for a boring Thursday night. with nights such as ‘Twist and FRIDAY: PROP BOX Revolution at Deansgate Locks, with a free pho- Shout’, a funk, rhythm and soul to booth with a collection of props to drunkenly pose with. As well as night which will be playing lots of this, they have fun printouts, wacky and weird cocktails, and a range Jamie Brown and Michael Jackof flavoured vodka shots to share with your friends. All these com- son. They’re also starting new ‘Thirsty Tursdays’, which will bined will create an exciting night out for all. include a range of house, grime, SATURDAY: Warehouse Project. If you are new to Manchester, R&B and Hip Hop, so there really WHP should be on your bucket list to visit at least once. But after go- will be something for everyone. ing once, you are more than likely be wanting to go again. WHP is on every Friday and Saturday (and sometimes Thursday) up until the But it’s not forgetting its indie end of the year, with a special New Year’s Day special on the 1st of Jan- roots though — ‘Jam Live’, its resuary 2018. WHP present a range of fresh and established electronic, ident indie live sessions will be continuing, with some exciting techno, and house DJs. collaboration with our very own SUNDAY: The Friendship’s Music Quiz. Free to enter, with a gallon Fuse FM to be announced! of beer up for grabs, this fine institution can help nurse your Sunday woes. First up, deciding team names, for which a fierce arms race has It’s also offering you ‘Indiedeveloped between locals and students. Those who are squeamish pendence Saturdays’, an indie and dance night that will be may wish to give it pass. showcasing the likes of Arctic

The most exciting thing about the relaunch though is the introduction of their new ‘society cards’ and ‘black cards’. These will allow anyone who’s on the committee of a society free entry to the Venue (on certain nights), and all other volunteers a substantial discount.

Games 14

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Review Album

Destiny 2

Does Bungee finally deliver on their ambitious vision?

Chris Glover Reporter

Photo:BagoGames @Flickr

For someone who sunk so many hours into the first Destiny game, I was surprisingly indifferent to the prospect of returning to Bungie’s first-personshooter-meets-RPG-meets-MMO universe.

This is almost entirely down to Destiny’s failure to present any one of its attempted facets as fully formed. Disagreements during development meant huge portions of Destiny’s story mode were dropped or rewritten, leading to a chaotic Frankenstein’s Monster of a narrative; badly cut apart and sewn back together.

As well as this, the MMO element was often frustratingly hollow and the class system didn’t quite do enough to diversify combat roles. It left the game feeling like a confused teenager, lacking any clear identity and woefully unsure of its place in the world. Perhaps the greatest praise I can give to Destiny 2, then, is that it made me regret spending so many hours on what was — in comparison to its successor — such a threadbare Destiny experience.

One thing that was never a complaint for Destiny was its gunplay, and I’m thankful to see that hasn’t changed. Unsurprisingly for a game from developers with such experience with first-person shooters, killing things on Destiny 2 is an absolute blast.

I think what makes the combat such a continuous delight is that, thanks to brilliantly designed feedback mechanics and striking, throaty gun sounds, every single one of the game’s many weapons simply feels powerful. The gameplay even manages to feel adequately smooth and responsive despite Destiny 2’s cap of 30fps — a comparatively low frame rate

8.5/10 considering other console shooters such as the Call of Duty games run at 60fps. Whilst this will certainly be noticeable to players who care about such things, my experience with Destiny 2’s gunfights was so thrilling that the issue never once entered my mind... after an initial 20 minute period of adjustment.

Destiny 2 has also altered the way in which you acquire some of its content, to become the latest in an ever-growing list of sleazy developers who incorporate micro-transactions into full priced titles.

It’s slightly redeemed by the fact that the rewards in these bundles (armour and weapon shaders, hover-bikes, weapon mods) are obtainable through regular play, but the transparent greed betrayed by the addition of micro-transactions still casts a disappointing shadow on Bungie’s otherwise much-improved IP. Undoubtedly the first thing that struck me about

Photo:BagoGames @Flickr

Destiny 2’s story missions is that this time, Bungie had actually given me some story to go with my missions. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that there are more cutscenes in Destiny 2’s first 20 minutes than the entirety of the first game. The story mode even features some memorable characters (a phenomenon completely absent from its predecessor) such as Cayde-6, a wisecracking Android who Bungie made sure to show off in advertisements in a bid to assure us their blockbuster space romp has some personality this time round.

And why not? Credit where credit’s due here —

Cayde brings a touch of Borderlands-esque silliness which punctuates the serious narrative just enough to prevent it from becoming overbearing.

I don’t want to overstate Destiny 2’s story, though.

Whilst it is indeed a lot of fun, it’s a rather forgettable sci-fi experience; the roughly 10-hour campaign sees you embark on a struggle against the Red Legion and their leader: a cruel, masked villain (Darth Vader, anyone?) with a giant planet-destroying spacecraft called the Death St— sorry, the Almighty.

The accompanying musical score, on the other hand, is anything but forgettable. The composers behind it succeeded in perfectly setting the tone of the campaign; ranging from beautiful, orchestral scores to enforce to the heart-pumping, electronic tracks for the more action-packed sequences.

It’s a testament to the things that Destiny 2 gets so incredibly right that the laughably easy story mode never becomes too tedious to be enjoyable, and it is laughably easy; there were missions where even the expertly crafted combat mechanics and soundtrack weren’t enough to distract me from the fact that fighting a horde of the Red Legion’s most elite troops felt more like a fly-swatting simulator than an epic struggle for humanity.

The hardcore fanbase of Destiny 2 will tell you that the truly rewarding experience doesn’t begin until the campaign is finished, and I’m inclined to agree.

Upon finishing the main storyline, I was the max level of 20, but my ‘power level’ — a number rating indicating how good your weapons and armour are — was only 200 out of a maximum 300. Indeed, viewing the story mode as one long, elaborate tutorial is perhaps the only way to explain Bungie’s decision to make it so effortless. Regardless, if you’re a player primarily interested in the story of Destiny 2, or you value difficult gaming experiences (that don’t require 10+ hours of play to unlock), this is something worth thinking about before you buy.

The question, then, is whether Destiny 2’s post-cam-

paign content is substantial and rewarding enough to justify Bungie’s apparent decision to position it as the main body of the game. Having finally put in sufficient hours to experience the Nightfall strikes (difficult 3-player co-op missions that require a power level of around 240+ to unlock) and the new Leviathan Raid (a much longer mission requiring a power level of 260+ with bosses and puzzles that necessitate teamwork amongst 6-player squads) I feel I can confidently answer in the affirmative.

Of all Bungie’s improvements to their IP this second time around, their overhaul of the way in which players grind for loot post-campaign is by far the most welcome. Pre-DLC, the end-game grind of the first Destiny was a mind-numbing slog of repetitive resource gathering for which you received a frustrating trickle of power-level-raising loot. Destiny 2, on the other hand, offers no shortage of methods to obtain this loot.

Each planet is teeming with side quests and their own post-campaign quest lines which feel just as thoughtfully designed as the main story itself. There are daily challenges and weekly ‘milestones’ to meet which encourage you to partake in all of what the game has to offer. This includes the Crucible, Destiny 2’s PVP arena which — despite suffering some slight balancing issues - sports a wider variety of game modes than its Destiny counterpart and offers players who aren’t crazy about PvE a viable alternative to grind for post-campaign rewards.

Destiny 2 marks Bungie finally delivering on their grand promise for an open-world first person-shooter MMO. Players have been given something previously missing from Destiny: a universe that players actually care about, and thus a reason to keep coming back for powerful gear that will let you kill stronger enemies for even more powerful gear. In short, Destiny 2 feels like the true beginning for Bungie’s ambitious vision. *Review copy of the game provided by Activision.

Review

Pro Evolution Soccer 2018

Jeremy Bijl Games Editor

Photo:Konami

Konami continues its annual attempt to escape the huge shadow cast by the sales leviathan that is FIFA in its latest instalment of the long-standing ‘PES’ series with a typically mercurial effort. Sometimes brilliant, occasionally superlative but overall lacking polish, Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 is almost as frustrating to review as it is to play. This is not a game I could comfortably call mediocre by any means, though. Rather, it is a binary of huge strengths against massive caveats.

The game’s presentation is an example of this: Visually, it is stunning, with a deep, varied colour palette, vibrant, atmospheric stadiums and nicely done grass and face textures. Replays are also excellent, and help to add that extra bit of immersive-ness.

Auditorily, however, it is very weak. The same background songs seem to repeat all too often and are quite obnoxious and intrusive - Coldplay and The Chainsmoker’s ‘Something Like This’ being a particularly egregious offender. The commentary, too, lacks variety, and it wasn’t long before I started to hear

Too many cons in Pro Evo.

7/10 the same phrases over and over, often in the same match. Whilst the hyperbolic tone of Peter Drury’s commentary does sometimes add atmosphere, it too often sounds ridiculous and loses effect. This is compounded by the fact that he often screams a player’s name at relatively speculative efforts, whilst remaining decidedly low key in regards to goalmouth action.

The on-field gameplay itself is possibly PES’s biggest strength, as you would hope. The movement and dribbling mechanics lack the ‘gamey’ feel of FIFA’s, and produce an experience which feels authentic and realistic. Passing and crossing are excellently done, allowing you to play some truly beautiful, expansive football with style and finesse, and the goals (and there are a lot of them) come in many different ways. Whilst FIFA has tended to shun crossing and heading in favour of dribbling and shooting, and tends to force a certain style on you, PES, on the other hand, provides you with all the tools of the game and leaves your playing style largely up to you. Neither does it shy away from the physical side of football, either. Aerial battles are hard fought and require positional sense as well as strength, while slide tackles are meaty (if a little haphazard at times), and require realistically precise timing. Although PES’s almost constant Hollywood football is refreshing, it does start to lose its novelty over time — brilliance tends to lose its edge through regularity — and it becomes a little easy to pull off that perfect pass or volleyed goal.

However, the excellent gameplay is again let down by a number of oversights. The goalkeepers, in particular, are given to the most unusual behaviours, seemingly losing any ability to do their job outside of their six yard box, and accordingly seem reluctant to leave it, even for corners which fly very close to them or when they need to reduce the angle for strikers bearing down on goal. Bringing them out manually is an equally futile endeavour, as running around them is far, far too easy. Defenders also seem to struggle in the penalty box, and too often make no attempt to challenge aerially. These observations may sound hypercritical, but they happen with such regularity they become exploitable, rather than endearing bits of wackiness.

Photo:Konami

PES’s career mode is worth playing in that it is the antithesis of FIFA’s. Whilst FIFA focuses so heavily on the basics that it sacrifices personality, PES offers a career mode which works hard to build a sense of team identity and player personality. Your player’s stats are tracked well, they develop quirky traits (i.e.

‘bad boy’, ‘protege’), and once a season you can select your favourite player to add a bit of sentimental attachment. However, the career mode is woefully inept in the transfer market to the point of losing immersive-ness. Harry Kane goes to Barcelona for 16 million, whilst Arsenal made a valiant attempt to sell their entire squad and started the season with only 4 defenders.

One thing to be wary of, as always, is PES’s ongoing issues with licensing. The days of ‘Peter Couch’ may be gone, but the majority of teams, leagues, and competitions remain unlicensed. Whilst PES has some done well to secure some big teams like Barcelona, Liverpool, Arsenal, Inter Milan and Dortmund, missing out on the majority of the Bundesliga, La Liga and the Premier League will be a big issue for a lot of players and adds to the unpolished feel of the game. Konami’s decision to add a team of ‘European Classics’ and ‘World Classics’ and then fill them with generated players is an odd one, too.

Nonetheless, PES is somewhat of a rough diamond.

What it lacks in the finesse and attention to detail of FIFA, it makes up for in playability, unpredictability and realisticness. With some refining and tweaking, it could easily make for a realistic challenger to EA’s series. *Review copy of PES 2018 provided by Konami

16

Fashion & Beauty

A new term, a new team

Fashion and Beauty Editor Talia Lee-Skudder welcomes you to the new team and reveals what’s in store for the pages this year September has returned and with it, the cold weather and rain. Also, thankfully, our student loans and a brand new fashion and beauty team at The Mancunion are accompanying them! I have been writing for The Mancunion since first year and last year I was fortunate to take on the role of deputy editor. This year, I am so excited to have been made fashion and beauty editor and continue the great work of my predecessor Sarah and the other deputy, Soph.

This year, myself, along with the new deputy editors Amy and Sophie, hope to get more involved on campus and see what you guys are wearing as the seasons change. We will bring you more regular features, including highend vs high street — because our student loans just don’t seem to be able to stretch far enough to cover a new Gucci belt, we hope to find you the next best thing! Finally, our aim is to secure some exclusive interviews with some names in the fashion and beauty industry.

We are determined to keep up the high standard of work and fill our pages with a diverse range of articles that will satisfy both fashionistas and shopaholics alike.

We hope you enjoy, and here’s to the next year!

ISSUE 1 / 18TH SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

Fashion player of the week: Gosha Rubchinskiy

Fashion & Beauty 17

ISSUE 1/ 18 SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

Made in Manchester

Fashion and Beauty Editor Talia Lee-Skudder reveals Manchester’s top homegrown talents in the fashion world and what makes the city the perfect shopping destination Ah, Manchester — the great city of The North. Home of Oasis, Joy Division, my not-so guilty pleasure Take That, and of course, City and United. Whilst Manchester is world renowned for its music scene and first class football teams, it is now becoming an emerging player on the fashion scene. What’s not to love? It’s considerably cheaper than London — lower rent and lower priced drinks! It’s no wonder that many of the UK’s biggest online retailers are based in our great city; from Missguided to Pretty Little Thing, the Manchester fashion scene is one to keep an eye on.

In addition to their huge online retail presence, Manchester is also home to a number of successful independent designers, and brands including celebrity favourite Zeynep Kartal, Forever Unique, and Beaumont Organic.

The Russian designer takes inspiration from a variety of post-soviet aesthetics. By Deputy Fashion and Beauty Editor Sophie Walsh

Zeynep Kartal Zeynep Kartal first unveiled her collection back in 2013 at Manchester Vogue Fashion Night Out and since then has been a sought after designer for celebrities and us mere mortals alike. Her signature style celebrates femininity, so expect to see lace and silk, but also leather and fur. Her latest Autumn/Winter 17 collection is predominantly made up of hues of pink: pink fur, pink leather, pink silk. Think less Barbie girl — but with added sophistication — these looks are timeless. Kartal also includes black and rich emerald green velvet in her collection — for those who want a sultrier look that still exudes femininity. Kartal studied design at Manchester City College and her showroom is based on King Street. Her A-list credentials include Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams, Marina of Marina and the Diamonds, and Pixie Lott, plus her designs have also been featured in Vogue, Hello, and Cosmo. Zeynep Kartal is a credit to the Manchester fashion scene, bringing a high fashion look to our great city.

Name: Gosha Rubchinskiy Birth: 29 June 1984, Moscow, Russia Occupation: Fashion designer and Photographer If you haven’t heard his name before, you soon will.

Graduating from Moscow College of Technology and Design, Georgiy Aleksandrovich Rubchinskiy launched his fashion design career with his first collection Empire of Evil for SS/09.

Rubchinskiy’s designs are inspired by post-soviet Russia. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the ending of rigid censorship there was a sudden influx of western culture that penetrated the formerly closed society. There was a new freedom to access previously prohibited and exotic art, literature, music, and fashion from the West.

Rubchinskiy’s designs are shaped by youth street culture, including his own experience as a teen in this new and uncertain time. He is particularly inspired by the youth football, skate, and rave scenes. For example, he has collaborated with several high-profile sporting companies such as Adidas and Kappa. His Adidas collaboration was also influenced by the fact Russia will be hosting the 21st FIFA World Cup in 2018 and features logoed football shirts and scarves. This heavy application of logos, both from sporting and known fashion houses such as Burberry, reflects the post-soviet obsession with western culture and all-you-can-eat style consumerism.

His shows are always held in meaningful locations that reflect his aesthetic. For example, his SS/18 collection was held in the Communication Workers’ House of Culture on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa, St. Petersburg’s. This location was said to have once housed electronica raves influenced by Timur Novikov, a radical artist and originator of the post-Soviet avant-garde. The models walked out to jolting rave music that created an ambiance of illicit fun.

His designs have made such a splash that they are beginning to be emulated on the high street. For example, his logo football scarf (as pictured) has inspired various stores such as Urban Outfitters and Topshop to create their own versions and can be found on shelves across the world.

Forever Unique The Manchester based luxury fashion label Forever Unique creates affordable, designer fashion, and is a celebrity favourite. Seema Malhotra, a Fashion and Design graduate from the University of Salford, established the brand in 2008 alongside her husband, Sandeep, and the business has gone from strength to strength. Seema started with a capsule collection of ten dresses and within one week the designs had sold out. Today, Forever Unique offers over 200 pieces and remains a roaring success. The designs are completely glam with a focus on embellishment, fringing, and figure hugging silhouettes. Forever Unique is a one-stop shop for dazzling day and evening wear that is unlike anything on the high street.

Photo: gosharubchinskiy @ instagram

Photo: Le.Fanciulle @ Flickr

Cristóbal Balenciaga: Shaping fashion Over the summer, Deputy Fashion and Beauty Editor Amy Nguyen explored the works of Cristóbal Balenciaga at the Victoria & Albert museum in London

Photo: Amy Nguyen

Photo: Amy Nguyen

I consider myself to be fairly literate in the world of fashion and design. However, the exhibition hosted by the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London and curated by Cassie Davies-Strodder really highlighted the influence Cristóbal Balenciaga had on the global fashion industry.

His creative DNA and bold, innovative designs can be seen to have inspired the likes of J W Anderson, Givenchy, Alexander McQueen, Oscar De La Renta, Emanuel Ungaro and Yves Saint Laurent - to name but a few. Simply put, ‘Haute couture is like an orchestra whose conductor is Balenciaga. We other couturiers are the musicians and we follow the direction he gives.’ - Christian Dior.

Fun fact: Did you know that Paco Rabanne was the son of Balenciaga’s former head seamstress? Regarded by his peers as the ‘King of Fashion’, his forward thinking stance on bold architectural shapes and tailoring are brought to life for all to see. Over 100 pieces are presented to punters, many crafted by Balenciaga himself but also pieces created by his students and disciples such as Hubert de Givenchy, as well as contemporary fashion designers like Molly Goddard, who have used and adapted his techniques.

Interactive elements within the exhibition allow you to channel your inner couturier as you are able to fashion a Balenciaga cloak/skirt into a ‘wear it your own way’ garment. Similarly, you can create your own mini paper Yoki coat, which involved cutting a singular line to mirror his genius ‘one seam’ coat, and provides you with a deep appreciation of his talent.

Intricacies of pattern making and eccentric shapes is a constant theme, highlighted through he exhibitions promotional imagery which focuses on the Envelope dress, designed in 1967.

Secrets behind the construction of his designs are overturned by an X-Ray project that explores the underbelly and structure of these famous pieces.This scientific lens enables us to comprehend the way Balenciaga married various aspects of design, art and fashion as fabrics, weights, and folds within structures were analysed and alludes to the fact there is far more than meets the eyes within these designs. For example, the use of disguised weights within pieces such as the Balloon Hem Evening dress and the Tulip dress created unique folds that would other wise not exist.

The embellished gowns and lavish accessories resonated with me; although his clients included the Spanish Royal Family, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy, Cristóbal Balenciaga exceeded the simple model of being a popular designer who dressed the stars. It is clear that his designs are an intrinsic link and the back bone to many of our most beloved fashion houses.

His notion that “a woman has no need to be perfect or even beautiful to wear my dresses... The dresses will do all that for her” is a message that echoes loud and clear throughout the manifestation of his work.

If you want to be as mesmerised and quite frankly googley-eyed as I was at the beautiful couture pieces and the many facets of the exhibition you’ve still got plenty of time. Whilst you are there be sure to wander around the newly opened Exhibition Road Quarter Gallery which will now be home to temporary galleries within the museum.

Exhibition ends on Sunday 18th February 2018, so if you’re around in London over the Christmas break, be sure to check it out. Tickets are £12 and can be booked via the V&A website.

Photo: Zeynep Kartel.co.uk

Beaumont Organic Beaumont Organic is a luxurious but affordable organic clothing line based in Manchester. Designer Hannah Beaumont creates pieces using the softest organic cotton that make timeless additions to your wardrobe. After researching the damaging effects that growing cotton has on the environment, Hannah wanted to make a luxury clothing line that is also environmentally friendly. From this, Beaumont Organic was born. Not only does buying from Beaumont Organic equip you with super on trend pieces, you’re also helping the environment! I’ve never heard a better reason to go shopping.

Whether you’ve just moved to Manchester, or you are starting your final year, take full advantage of the amazing and unique shopping that the city has to offer. From window-shopping at the Avenue, to bargain hunting in the vintage shops of the Northern Quarter, Manchester really does have it all. Grab your umbrella and fall in love with the endless fabulous shopping opportunities the city has to offer.

What do I wear to Pangaea?

Deputy Fashion and Beauty Editor, Sophie Walsh explores your various costume wardrobe choices for Pangaea Wonka’s World bonanza Pangaea is the pièce de résistance of fresher’s week, an excuse for fancy dress and dubious decisions.

This year the theme is Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and everyone with a Golden ticket to the gates of Pangaea has thought one of two things: A) what do I wear without looking a complete kn*b in a £40 costume from ‘Luvyababes’ that by the end of the night will be covered in various bodily fluids and ambiguous spirits, or B) looking like I haven’t tried at all with an ‘I’ll shove a fun hat on with jeans’ attitude.

I’ll admit, it’s one of the harder themes. So, to make it a bit easier I have chosen five looks you can do on the cheap, based on the 1971 and 2005 film adaptions.

Willy Wonka This one is for the cop outs/wannabe Johnny Depp’s. You can do it for a few quid and minimal effort. All you’ll need is a dressing gown and top hat (or knee length, burgundy, velvet blazer if you have one lying around). Decked out like an eccentric ex-Etonian, why not a go a step further and pair with Kurt Cobain style sunglasses as worn by Depp in the 2005 adaption (available on Amazon for £0.99).

DISCLOSURE: Do not buy a cane. Trust me the bouncers are more fastidious than airport security (I had a sparkly wand confiscated in 2015 and I’m still salty about it).

Oompa-Loompa This one is for the fashion conscious. Hear me out!

I don’t mean the 1970’s Oompa-Loompas with Geordie Shore tans and green hair. Instead, look to the 2005 adaption, with Oompa-Loompas clad in red vinyl. Invest in a skirt or tight fit trousers, because fortunately for you it’s a risqué trend you can wear again on other nights out. Pair with an oversized t-shirt or bandeau top.

Violet Beauregarde Here is an excuse to go all out Fallow style. I’m talking tracksuit, scruffy trainers, blunt cut bob, jaw swinging (with chewing gum). Bonus points if you re-use the outfit at Antwerp.

Mike Teavee For this one, definitely take inspiration from the 1971 film adaption rather than the 2005 one (unless you want to end up looking like a budget version of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong). With an easy cowboy theme, you can utilise that Stetson you almost certainly brought with you to uni just in case fancy dress was required, or just simply because you’re a country/western fan. Pair with a gingham shirt and red bandana, easily available on ASOS. Augustus Gloop This can go one of two ways. Drawing on the Germanic roots of Gloop, you can either opt for the German military style look chosen for in the 1971 film (but at risk of doing a ‘Paul Hollywood’). Or, the red candy-cane stripy t-shirt chosen in the 2005 film. I would suggest the latter as stripy t-shirts are easier to source nowadays. Remember to pair with a chocolate bar and you’re set to go.

DISCLOSURE: Be careful of cultural appropriation with this one, there is a strict policy against it at the Students’ Union and you don’t want a reprimand ruining your night.

Most importantly, enjoy! Your costume will probably be wrecked by the end of the night anyway, no matter what you wear.

Invest in the best for your beauty bag Deputy Fashion and Beauty Editor, Amy Nguyen recommends the key investment piece for your beauty bag September is once more upon us, and it’s hard to believe summer has been and gone! As our tans (real or faux) start to fade, and term time beckons, here is my top pick to invest in to stand you and your make-up bag in good stead for the remainder of 2017.

Stick to it - Hourglass Vanish Seamless Foundation Stick This multi-tasking magical foundation stick not only provides you with a lightweight flawless foundation coverage but also doubles as a concealer.

Hourglass have created this foundation stick to Photo: Amy Nguyen contain double the usual concentration of foundation pigment which not only will be able to cover those dark circles gained from endless partying in welcome week but also enables you to build the coverage in areas of your concern. (AKA blemishes induced by the high sugar content of all those Jägerbombs).

Not only does this weightless texture last for up to 12 hours, its waterproof abilities make it the perfect staple for the rainy Manchester climate!

My favourite aspect of this product is the application process. Simply place four dots on your forehead, cheeks, and chin, and buff into your skin with a foundation brush. The triangular shape of the applicator allows for further precision and perfecting.

Its compact packaging makes this the perfect foundation tool for the girl on the go; running around campus to all of your induction week lectures and seminars.

With 26 available shades, suiting all skin types — both dry and oily — as well as being indisputably cruelty-free and vegan, this foundation choice is a no-brainer beauty investment.

RRP £42, Space NK, 5 St Anns Square, Manchester M2 7LP The new term is about to commence, your loan is about to drop, so let your inner voice rule and treat yo’ self.

Are you a self proclaimed fashi and beauty addict?

Do you want to write for Fashion and Beauty?

It’s easy to get involved! Simply send an article to: Fashion.mancunion@gmail.com Keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates about contributors meetings.

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Film

18

Review

Interview

In conversation with Neville Pierce

Photo: Neville Pierce

“Someone has to write for movie magazines — so why not me?”

Eloise Wright Head Film Editor Having seen the marvellous short comedy Ghosted at this year’s Lift-Off film festival we approached director, Neville Pierce.

His career has been varied, from journalist to screenwriter to director. He shared with us some very interesting and honest insight into the world of film journalism.It was during his time at Bournemouth University that Pierce first developed his interest in journalism, and more so in writing about film. Being naturally good at storytelling, “spoken or written”, it is this that drew him to the art of reporting. Whilst studying journalism more generally, Pierce religiously read the now extinct film magazine Neon which led to him to push himself to try it for himself. His reasoning being: “Someone has to write for movie magazines — so why not me?”.

Starting off as the logical next step as a part of his journalism degree, a week’s work experience turned into two months working at the North Devon Journal. He recalls that the journalists there “were mostly only recent graduates themselves, but at the time seemed much older and wiser — and sexier — than I could ever aspire to be”.

Having been editor of the fortnightly paper The Nerve for a year, it was a natural question to ask what were his best and worst experiences in that position. To this, Pierce’s answer was an event that was simultaneously both, as he remembers “being shouted at by a columnist for editing his work — but he subsequently apologised, accepted the edit, and we remain close friends 20 years later”. If he could give his student editor self some advice, it would be to “admit your mistakes — even if only to yourself.

Everything is useful, even the failures. Everything can be shorter, from articles to meetings”.

A journalist before the explosion of the internet in the 2000s, his experience of journalism was quite different to that of film critics or any journalists today, the main problem being that beforehand, “people paid to read things. So YOU got paid”. A result of the use of the internet for film criticism was the development of aggregated review sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, which Pierce recognises as

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ISSUE 1 / 18th September 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

a useful tool, “if you want a barometer of critical opinion, though inevitably reductive”. He also points out that percentages will never replace an actual film review, as he might watch something a critic has not liked, depending on their taste.

As for him and his incentive to review films, he sums it up as a combination of “ego, enjoyment and earning” which may also be said for the majority of film critics. His response to what he wished to achieve through creating artistic content: “Buying a house”. His process of reviewing films is a unique one (this was before he was directing them), advising to, “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you just told them. I was told that at school, about public speaking, but it applies to that type of writing too I think. Sometimes you can be more playful, especially if you’re writing a long lead review – you can give more career context or make a point about theme. I always try to judge a film on what it is trying to achieve, as well as whether it is personally to my taste”.

Even critics have favourite critics. Pierce gave me this response when posed the question: “David Thomson changed the way I looked at film writing with Rosebud, his biography of Orson Welles. His Biographical Dictionary of Film is wonderful, too. I can’t remember who said if you write about film then you get to write about everything, but that would apply to him. Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) maintains a remarkably high standard.

Robbie Collin (The Telegraph) is eclectic and insightful. Guy Lodge (Variety) has a delightful turn of phrase”.

He continued: “I am in awe of the breadth and depth of Kim Newman’s knowledge. Others who are less critics — though they do write reviews – than general film journalists would be Damon Wise (Neon and Empire), who was a big influence who became a friend.

Matt Mueller (Screen International) is a fine editor and a fine man.

Ditto Dan Jolin, who gave me my first bit of paid work, back at Total Film. It’s a long list, really. I’m impressed by what Joe Utichi is doing with Deadline’s magazine Awardsline. Chris Hewitt and co are very good on the Empire podcast. Jamie Graham is a very fine interviewer and informed critic — I value his opinion highly.

The best all-rounder, broadcast and print, is Mark Kermode, for my money. Entertaining, informed, fluent on paper or on screen

or speaker — superb”.

Getting more and more influential in his work, Pierce went from a staff position editing Total Film to being a freelance journalist for Empire. The transition from one job to the other was a noticeable one. “I didn’t have to manage people, I just had to manage my time.

I didn’t have as much influence on what went in the magazine, of course, but I did have more freedom”, which led to an obvious change of pace for Pierce and a much better quality of life.

Less of a transition of sorts and more of a variation in that field of work, Pierce described his experience in both radio and print journalism as quite different ones. “Print generally allows more depth (though not always). It also allows you to edit yourself more effectively and hide your incoherence. Radio is merciless in that regard”.

Pierce managed to obtain exclusive access as a member of press to the film sets of Fincher’s Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. “I had interviewed Fincher for a retrospective piece on Fight Club and we had got on, but when I emailed his assistant asking to visit the Zodiac set I expected to be told no – because he doesn’t generally allow journalists on set. So, really, I was incredibly surprised to be there. I also felt — and feel — he is one of the greats. So I was soaking up every bit of detail I could – for me, it’s like having the opportunity to go on set with Kubrick. I think the best set visit article — of the many I’ve written for Fincher films — was probably for Zodiac, because it was so fresh and exciting an experience for me”.

Now Pierce’s time is mostly taken up by screenwriting and directing, this did not happen over night and was a gradual shift in his career. The short version of why exactly he is on the filmmaking end of movies now is that he always “at least subconsciously, wanted to do it – and eventually, the fear of failure was outweighed by the fear of not trying”.

In an industry where one’s work is constantly scrutinized, the fear of failure never dissipates. “Whether it’s articles or scripts or finished films, I don’t think you’re ever completely satisfied. You may look back years later and be able to say you think something was good – or, at least, close to what you had in your head.”

For my final question, I asked Pierce how he would describe the relationship between filmmaker and film critic. The answer was, “carefully”: “I think Barry Norman probably said it best: ‘All critics are parasites – but parasites can be useful.’ So, yes, critics can’t exist without something to comment on. But great criticism can be beautiful – and definitely useful. Some critics are snide and ill-informed, of course, and that must be infuriating when you’ve worked hard to make a film (I’ve felt angry and frustrated upon reading ignorant reviews of the work of friends or filmmakers I admire), but a great many are dedicated, informed people who love cinema and work very hard for modest reward. I think I used to look down on film journalism, basically because I did it.

Now I see its value much more. And it irritates the hell out of me when filmmakers are scornful of critics as a whole – especially filmmakers who are happy with critics when they love their work, then dismissive of them when they don’t. You have to take your lumps”.

You can find out more about his past, current and upcoming projects at nevpierce.com

Review

American Made James Gill Film Critic Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman reunite in an adrenaline-fueled tale of former Trans World Airline Pilot Barry Seal. Had this been a work of pure fiction, writer Gary Spinelli would be slammed for the unrealistic twists and turns the plot takes. But the film is surprisingly grounded in truth. From smuggling drugs for Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel to running guns for the CIA to Central America, Seal’s story was destined for a big screen portrayal.

His initial descent into smuggling was to add excitement into an otherwise humdrum life, whilst also earning some extra money for his family. As so many true story rise/fall films before this, the protagonist begins chasing the American dream before their greed leads to their inevitable downfall.

After a few years, Seal has so much money that the local bank dedicates a vault solely for him yet this does not stop him from continuing. The question as to why is left perpetually unanswered, is it more money, notoriety, thrills? Even his passion seems to slowly die as time progresses.

Eventually, he is arrested in a ludicrous scene in which every law enforcement agency in America raids his hanger at exactly the same moment, with one member from each helping to take him. The events that follow include a Presidential intervention, Harley Davidson Motorcycles, and the charity Salvation Army.

Any attempt at an explanation would be fruitless in a bizarre climax to the film. One that leaves both Seal

Tom Cruise’s smile does little to disguise the lack of real substance and I questioning our sanity.

Very quickly, the repetitive formula of the film became monotonous and tiresome. He’ll get caught in an act red handed but miraculously escape every time with a smile, while simultaneously digging himself a little deeper into the crime world.

Equally frustrating was the incredible wealth Seal accrued without spending it on anything more lavish than putting in a pool. Part of the thrill of similar films such as The Wolf of Wall Street was seeing Belfort’s drug fuelled escapades. The craziest moment during Seal’s free time comes when he takes a shot of Tequila at a garden party.

American Made offers up little to show the consequences of his actions, fuelling both a drug war in Miami and a rebellion in Central America. His pivotal role in the rise of the Medellín Cartel will have indirectly cost the lives of thousands but this isn’t mentioned. Alternatively, Liman could have made a critical political commentary of Reagan’s reign or the CIA but opts not to. Instead, he relies on the charm of Cruise and a breakneck narrative pace to disguise the lack of any real underlying meaning. The journey is undoubtably an entertaining one, but this, like Liman’s last project The Wall, is destined to be forgotten.

Peculiarly, director Liman has a person involvement with the resulting Iran-Contra scandal. His father Arthur L. Liman was chief counsel for the Senate investigation into the events and questioned Colonel Oliver North in the public hearings — a man who appears late on in the film.

The Limehouse Golem

A sinister Victorian murder mystery led by Bill Nighy

Jamie McEvoy Deputy Film Editor In an age where the big screen rarely sees period dramas, The Limehouse Golem is a breath of fresh air. Combining crime with the gothic, this cinematic re-telling of Bill Ackroyd’s story is a mystery which — with a ‘15’ BBFC certificate — packs a punch with its morose murders and mutilated victims. Bill Nighy leads a superb cast as Inspector John Kildare, who is assigned to the case of the ‘Limehouse Golem’ (the name taken from a monster in Jewish folklore), in order to spare the blushes of Scotland Yard poster boy Inspector Roberts, whose pursuit of the Golem has been unsuccessful.

However, leads begin to materialise as Kildare finds a book which appears to have the scrawled journal entries of the eponymous killer.

Four suspects fall under the scrutiny of Nighy’s inspector: philosopher Karl Marx (the one and only); real-life novelist George Gissing; Victorian performance artist Dan Leno; and the only fictional accused – John Cree. The snag is that Cree has recently been found dead, and his wife, Elizabeth Cree, is accused of poisoning her husband.

Kildare believes ‘Lizzie’ to be innocent, and regularly seeks her help as she waits on death row, believing her deceased lover to be the Golem. The rest of the story is a race against time, as the inspector — accompanied by Daniel Mays’ Constable Flood — seeks to unmask the Golem before Lizzie hangs. Bill Nighy was always going to be in his element here. He assumes the role of Inspector Kildare with tenacity and charm — a part which was originally going to be played by the late Alan Rickman. Oliva Cooke is equally impressive as Lizzie Cree and Douglas Booth is hilarious yet brooding as the eccentric performer Dan Leno. Other big British names complete an excellent supporting cast; along with Mays, Eddie Marsan stands out as the unnervingly friendly ‘Uncle’. For those unfamiliar with the original story, the inclusion of Karl Marx may come as an odd shock, but Henry Goodman does a terrific job of playing the Prussian philosopher.

Morgan Watkins’ fleeting portrayal of English novelist George Gissing is less convincing, yet commendable nonetheless.

The pursuit of the murderer is slow-burning and is littered with graphic, somewhat theatrical ‘re-enactments’ of the Golem’s crimes, imagined by the protagonist with a different suspect as the killer in each vision. The twist is rather predictable, yet Kildare’s revelation and the toll it takes on him is what makes The Limehouse Golem’s ending so effective. The film is doubtlessly one of the better Victorian ‘gothic’ adaptations to be released recently (2007’s Sweeney Todd and

Photo: Nick Wall @ Number 9 Films Limited

2009’s Dorian Gray were disappointingly dire). However, some will find that the crime is just not compelling enough. None of the suspects are really given enough screen time for there to be any real element of a progressive investigation – instead, all of Kildare’s significant leads come from Cooke’s Lizzie.

Perhaps we have been spoilt with the array of superb Scandinavian murder mysteries such as The Killing and thrilling American crimedramas like True Detective. Still, the fact remains that throughout the film’s entire narrative there are only two credible suspects, and at times I found myself just longing for the investigation to be over and done with.

The theatrical feel of the movie will divide audiences — for some, it will feel too much like a stage performance. It is this tone which makes the film thrive during the scenes in the Limehouse Music Hall,

where Leno and Lizzie perform. There is also the occasional feel of a TV drama, and some viewers may find themselves wishing the story had been adapted as a series for the small screen, as opposed to a cinematic production.

Nevertheless, director Juan Carlos Medina and screenwriter Jane Goldman have produced an authentic and spirited film which Ackroyd will most definitely endorse. It is a return to form by Nighy after the disappointing Dad’s Army movie last year, and rising star Olivia Cooke is terrific. It is the acting which is ultimately the film’s pièce de résistance, and occasionally its saving grace, amidst messy timelines and anti-climax. Despite never really breaking new ground, The Limehouse Golem is an entertaining adaptation of a Ripper-esque tale, with a feminist twist.

3/5

Review

IT

Lucas Hill-Paul Film Contributor

Through the swampy mires of found-footage, spin-offs, and the recently castrated, generic hybrid “action horror” — which is to be thanked for the likes of The Purge, Resident Evil and The Mummy — an exciting horror resurgence is beginning to boil. Perhaps the one to thank for this is James Wan, a flawed yet generous filmmaker whose Conjuring series — tight family dramas masquerading as supernatural thrillers in a period piece aesthetic — provide some of the only sincerity and creativity studio horror has to offer, despite an overreliance on genre conventions. More recently, audiences are more likely to turn to the indie scene than ever, with studio A24’s terse and existential thrillers starting to make names for themselves at the box office.

With Stephen King’s IT, therefore, we have perhaps only the second or third blockbuster horror film of the 2010s — Wan’s Conjuring films take the first two slots — with an ounce of creativity and cineliteracy. Though the first attempt at adapting the gargantuan book was admirable, the iconic television miniseries’ place in the canon of horror cinema is arguably mistaken, as it offers little in the way of scares, either human or cosmic, despite a winningly chilling performance from Tim Curry as Pennywise.

Thankfully, director Andy Muschietti and its host of screenwriters understand that the horror of IT hinges on two understandings.

Firstly, that the performance of Pennywise is not to draw inspiration from serial killers, paedophiles or Jokeresque supervillains, as Curry’s portrayal is occasionally guilty of. The eponymous “It” is a Lovecraftian, eldritch horror, a creature who may at first appear satanically enticing and seductive, yet eventually embodies the abject other. Secondly, the understanding that the core group of characters, the self-titled “Losers Club”, experience human terror, mirrored and exacerbated by the supernatural.

Almost every scene involving the kids interacting and growing together is wonderful, and there are some very promising talents within the cast of IT. Familial abuse, bullying and neglect are all factors in the original book that Muschietti takes care to include, ensuring that their world initially feels real, before “It” claws through the fabrics of reality to twist and distort their perceptions. Sadly, moving the setting from the 1950s to the 80s also removes an undercurrent of racism that

“IT” is one of the new “action-horror” hybrids to join the genre made the original text a little more biting, though the implication is still there.

The production of this film began with some bad news, with True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga leaving the director’s chair. Initially an enticing choice, with True Detective proving his skill of weaving between narrative threads non-linearly in a similar fashion to King’s original text, much of Fukunaga’s original scripting thankfully still remains. I was wary of his replacement, as Muschietti’s debut, Mama left much to be desired, but he’s learned much since, and the inclusion of cinematographer Chung-Hoon Chung gives some of the more striking visuals some much-needed presence. A frequent collaborator with Park-Chan Wook, whose Korean and English language films frequently combine character drama with sadistic violence, ChungHoon is an inspired choice who never loses sight of his careful and precise sincerity when pointing and moving the camera.

Unfortunately, it is clear that Muschietti is growing into a far more jobbing director than Fukunaga. During the film’s highly repetitive second act, many of the scares are constructed around the familiar, 21st framework of a slow build up and predictable pay off that belong in a far lazier movie. IT is only really scary when Pennywise is the focus, relative newcomer Bill Skarsgaard trying his utmost to inject some otherworldy horror into his performance so his character at times really does feel like a cosmic entity wearing a costume constructed to terrify children.

Unnerving visual effects pull the rest of the weight, with mixed results. This works best when the computer imagery is subtle. When the clown is injured, for example, the face twists and contorts like a mask worn by a creature with only a passing interest in how the human form is constructed, and the visual flair given to the layers of razor sharp teeth that extend and expand from the face of the clown are truly unnerving. Scenes involving a giant Pennywise, a leper or a headless ghost, however, are far less successful and call to mind the false moments of horror from The Conjuring or Insidious films.

Already taking the box office by storm, had the film been marketed more accurately as a Spielbergian throwback, a mature adventure movie first, horror second, perhaps it would have been even more successful. Having more in common with Lucas and Reiner than

Photo: Fanpop.com

Carpenter and Cronenberg, too much of IT is framed like a high school comedy for the horror to feel truly horrific. Audiences will find that before they have a chance to settle in for a good scare, a humorous line from Richie Tozier (Stranger Things alum Finn Wolfhard) will catch them off guard and the rest of the horror set piece will be spent suppressing a smile.

The filmmakers earn points for self-awareness, as many of the horror scenes also inject some comedic timing and imagery, yet I can’t help but imagine another film that balances its tonal shifts better and manages to deliver the dark counterpart to the onslaught of 80s nostalgia that we truly need. IT is an accurate adaptation of half of Stephen King’s intimidating novel, though there are moments of cosmic weirdness and character melodrama in the text that, if included in chapter two, don’t feel particularly earned here.

Independent horror remains on top this year, as IT never surpasses the true to life nastiness of Get Out or the quiet tension of It Comes At Night, though the film is thankfully far more rewarding than the rest of its ilk. More earnest and intelligent than Ridley Scott’s mess, Alien: Covenant, and more visually creative and self-aware than Rings, IT is the horror film to watch in 2017, despite its reliance on a modern framework that already feels outdated. Frustratingly close to a great movie, if the tonal footfalls and comic missteps of chapter one are tightened in the sequel, Stephen King’s drug-fuelled magnum opus should make for a surprisingly worthwhile duology.

3.5/5

Books

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Top 5

Profile

Remembering Roald Dahl: Author and Innovator The 13th of September, marks the 101st birthday of Roald Dahl — one of the world’s most beloved, revered, and internationally acclaimed children’s authors. Roald Dahl Day has been celebrated for many years, often with entire sections of bookshops dedicated to his famous works; works such as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, James and The Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, to name a few.

Dahl’s children’s books are pleasantly quirky, with recurrent dark undertones that are disguised by his matter-of-fact humour, which comically creates order in the often very confusing worlds that his characters live in. Having grown up reading Dahl, like many others, I felt a deep connection to the colourful stories and satisfying sense of escapism when reading them. I found myself vicariously living through his characters as they — often good, kind-hearted youngsters — triumphed over villainous adults, which gave me an unequivocal sense of poetic justice!

“I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended”.

I find it very difficult to say which one of Dahl’s novels I love the most — as I have taken something valuable from them all, however, one of my all time favourite Dahl books is The BFG. The story — a young girl named Sophie who is abducted by a friendly, vegetarian Giant living among carnivores — is a testament to the constant triumph of good over evil and innocence versus experience in Dahl’s novels. The giant, like Dahl, is an exception to most conventional rules and expectations and with Sophie’s help, captures the monsters and succeeds in saving all the children.The book is full of invented words that are fun to pronounce, like hopscotchy (cheerful), squibbling (writing), and scrumdiddlyumptious (delicious!). This is characteristic of Dahl’s work, so much so that lexicographer Susan Rennie has recently published a volume of ‘Dahlisms’ titled The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary.

His inventiveness did not end there. After his daughter’s death and his wife’s stroke, Dahl was a passionate advocate of immunising children against measles, and created an intensive therapy regimen for his wife, eventually leading to her full recovery. Dahl also was part of a team that invented a valve for treating hydrocephalus, which helped thousands of children until it was replaced by a newer design.

It is also understood that there is an autobiographical element to Dahl’s books. Having written about his experiences at a boarding school where ritual punishment was commonplace, it is not surprising that his novels are charged with messages about morality and the mistreatment of younger minds. It is also ironic that he was not considered a particularly talented writer by one of his English teachers, whose words represent the

Five must-see places in Manchester for its Bookworms 1. The Portico Library and Gallery, Moseley Street

Photo: Wikimedia Commons signature predicament that lots of Dahl’s characters find themselves in: not being understood by adults. His teacher, in one school report, remarked “I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended”. It is perhaps this rebellious and nonchalant attitude that drove Dahl to success.

His opposition to conventional, rigid structures, vibrantly illustrated within the confines of safe pieces of fiction, is what makes children and adults alike take comfort in the stories, where anything is possible.

Dahl’s sympathy for the innocence and fragility of human nature is what gives his writing it’s heartwarmingly distinct quality. He remains a great source of inspiration for me personally — reading most of his novels at such a young age is what contributed to my love for reading.

“Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books...”

Roald Dahl, Charlie and the

Chocolate Factory

I don’t think I will ever tire of occasionally, taking a break during stressful, busy periods and going dream-catching with the BFG, or losing myself in Wonka’s Chocolate Factory!

Hana Jafar

There is no doubt that September is a busy time for both new and seasoned Manchester students. To escape the Learning Commons and Main Library, it may be worth finding a place to recline and read in The Portico Library and Gallery, which is tucked away behind The Bank Pub on Moseley Street. The Grade II listed building is arguably one of Manchester’s most overlooked.

The indoor hues of deep brown and blue compliment its erudite and grand atmosphere. After ascending a spiral staircase, you will soon find yourself among The Portico’s brilliantly unique collection which is rich in 19th-century texts that reflect the creativity, intellect, and literary interests of the founders of the library. Become a member of this exclusive fold and join the Pankhursts, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Robert Peel. The library was opened a few months after the abolition of slavery in 1806 and is currently holding an exhibition relating to slave ownership in Manchester during the 18th and 19th-centuries: Legacies of Slavery and

Photo: The Mancunion

Photo: The Mancunion addition to Manchester’s literature stockists, offering another welcome addition to the growing literary scene.

3. The Richmond Tea Rooms, The Village This way to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party!

Walk on over to Richmond Street for a spot of afternoon tea in the Alice in Wonderland themed Richmond Tea Rooms, where a seemingly endless spread of sugary fancies and looseleaf teas are waiting to be enjoyed. The mismatched China and vibrant décor sprawled with Wonderland references are enough to make you feel like you have jumped down a rabbit hole into one of Carroll’s spectacular dreams.

4. Manchester Book Buyers, Church Street Manchester Book Buyers, another independent bookseller in the Northern Quarter, is a haven for out-of-print gems, intriguing newspaper cuttings from various decades, early edition hardbacks, classic British Literature, and haphazardly stacked towers of dusty paperbacks, falling under genres ranging from Gothicism to Gastronomy. This humble market style store near Affleck’s Palace has a charmingly familiar Black Books vibe, with vast amounts of unpriced bargains to be found. It is perfect for an afternoon of perusing for literature lovers and also very useful if you have an expensive reading list!

5. The Art of Tea, Didsbury

Abolition, which runs from the 15th of September to the 14th of October 2017.

2. ChapterOne Books, Chatsworth House, Lever Street This independent bookshop sits on the edge of the Northern Quarter and is the perfect place to find quirky reads in a relaxing environment. Thoughtfully selected and creatively presented books are dotted around all corners of the store, largely from non-mainstream authors and genres. You can enjoy a slice of cake or a cup of coffee, whilst you browse the eclectic collection of texts on offer — or channel your inner hipster and churn out a bestseller in one of the typewriting booths! ChapterOne Books is a refreshing

The Art of Tea is a cafe that is also home to the Didsbury Village Bookshop.

The cafe regularly plays host to local artists, showcasing their work and also has interesting playlists — so it even caters for the less bookish amongst us! This is a rewarding small trek away from the city centre, due to the fine teas and high-quality coffee blends on offer. You will not leave empty handed as there are hundreds of texts that are stacked from the floor to the ceiling — you may need a couple of hours free to sift through them all! A selection of beers, wines and spirits is also available.

Remember - write drunk, edit sober!

Books Editor Ayesha Hussain

MEET & EAT Biko Street, located in your Students' Union, is a space for students to meet, eat and get involved in student life.

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Food & Drink

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Preview: Alston Bar and Beef launches in Manchester

Anokhi Shah Food & Drink Editor

Calling all steak and gin enthusiasts; get ready for some exciting news!

Construction has begun this week on the Corn Exchange’s newest venue, Alston Bar & Beef. First opening in Glasgow, this will be the first restaurant of the award winning brand on English soil. The venue is set to open in autumn this year and will bring the highest quality steaks in the UK to Manchester.

It will build on the success of the Glasgow venue which has the biggest selection of gins in the city. It also hopes to incorporate Manchester’s rich food and drink heritage.

Alston Bar & Beef will be the first venue in Manchester to showcase Tweed Valley steak on its menu. The beef is selected from the top one per cent of Scottish beef and dry hung for

12 Manchester dining deals that will get you through September

world class flavour. Additionally, a selection of bespoke gin-infusions created in-house will be on offer. Each gin will be created using a unique blend of botanicals, some of which will have been foraged from the Manchester area.

Anokhi Shah Food & Drink Editor

Food & Drink 23

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

Want to dine with a difference? Experience the blind taste test at Vapiano Daisy Tolcher Deputy Food and Drinks Editor

It’s the start of a new academic year. The student loan has arrived. Here are some dining deals in Manchester that will allow you to indulge without causing injury to the precious student loan too early on in the term.

Rosso — 3 Courses for £25 and a bottle of wine for £9.95 Available Mon-Sat — book online: 43 Spring Gardens, M2 2BG Blackhouse — Sunday Roast for £12.95 Available Sundays — book Online: New York Sreet, M1 4BD

“We’re confident that when we open in autumn we will provide the perfect addition to Manchester’s buzzing restaurant and bar scene. We look forward to serving up the best steak and gin on offer in the city” As well as the premium menu on offer, the interior design of the restaurant is set to be a showstopper. Guests will enter the venue via a feature staircase and be greeted by a bespoke bar, the restaurant space will draw the eye to a 10m wide mural feature which has been specially commissioned by a Manchester based street-artist Tank Patrol. The interior will draw upon the heritage of the Corn Exchange location and the culture of the city of Manchester.

Alston Bar and Beef will certainly have steak and gin lovers waiting in anticipation for palate paradise to open in the heart of Manchester!

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Insolito — Lunch and soft drink or coffee Available daily — no need to book: 72 Mosley Street, M23LW Teppanyaki Chinatown — 3 Courses for £9.95 Available weekdays — no need to book: 58/60 George Street, Chinatown, M1 4HF Harvey Nichols — 3 Courses and cocktail for £22 Available Mon-Sat — book online: Second Floor Brasserie, 21 New Cathedral Street, M1 1AD Chilli Banana Didsbury — 1 small plate/2 small plates and noodle, rice, or special for £9.95/£11.95 Available daily — no need to book: 105-107 Lapwing Lane, Didsbury, M20 6UR Gusto — 2 Courses for £12.95 or 3 for £14.95 Available weekdays — book online: 4 Lloyd Street, M2 5AB The Deaf Institute — Buy-one-get-one-free on main meals Available Wednesdays — no need to book: 135 Grosvenor Street, M17HE Byron — Special Burger and beer for £13 Available daily — book online: Corn Exchange, M4 3TR The Alchemist — 2 for 1 breakfast and brunch Available weekdays — book online: various locations Dive — 55 per cent off food Available Mondays — no need to book: Tib Street Northern Quarter, M4 1SH Don Giovanni — 50 per cent off À la Carte (including lobster!) Available daily — book online: Peter House, 1-2 Oxford Street, M1 5AN

The most outrageous guacamole

Photo: Vapiano

Anokhi Shah Food & Drink Editor

This guacamole has oodles of flavour and can excite any dish.

I personally have this guacamole with nearly everything! From Mexican food as its traditional partner, to adding some attitude to your eggs on toast, or simply as a dip with some carrot sticks or nachos. It will last up to a week in the fridge giving you plenty of time to try it with many meals.

Ingredients:

For two nights in October, the laid back and authentic Italian establishment Vapiano will become a battleground for foodies hoping to prove their palettes are the most refined of them all. Those who think they know their “pestos apart” are encouraged to prove their culinary knowledge using only their tastebuds and sense of smell.

Unlike a traditional dining experience, guests will be put through their paces in the heart of the Corn Exchange; they’ll be asked to guess the Italian cuisines they are sampling whilst wearing a blind fold.

Despite not being able to see the food, the restaurant has ensured that this is “no bushtucker trial”. Instead, customers will have the chance to enjoy an array of homemade starters, pastas, pizzas, salads

Method: Depending on desired consistency either blend all ingredients together for a nice spread to add character to sandwiches OR Roughly mash the avocado and add all the ingredients finely chopped for a more chunky consistency, perfect as a side to chicken or eggs.

Juice from a lime Handful of fresh coriander

This tikka masala recipe has been passed on to me by my mum. It was always my first request when went home but I didn’t realise how easy it is to make myself. The marinade takes around five minutes to make and can spice up anything from big chunks of veg to pieces of lamb, chicken, and my favourite, salmon.

2 Tomatoes Half a red onion Half a fresh chilli (add the whole one if you like it hot)

Ingredients for tikka masala marinade:

One/two cloves of fresh garlic (depending on your taste) Teaspoon of salt Fresh black pepper

Easy peasy tikka masala marinade Anokhi Shah Food & Drink Editor

4/5 Ripe avocados

Photo: Valerie Hinojosa @Flickr

and desserts - coupled up with some drinks!

A statement from Vapiano promises that “you will be surprised by how much you can get wrong when you cannot see whats under your nose.” If you think you have the palette of a champion, make sure you get down to Vapiano on either the 3rd or 4th of October for this exclusive event.

Doors will open at seven in the evening and tickets will cost £18 a head. The restaurant does however encourage you to book your tickets fast, as previous events have sold out. You can buy your tickets here for both sessions.

Photo: Anokhi Shah

Tablespoon of coriander seeds Tablespoon of cumin seeds Tablespoon of caraway seeds Tablespoon of tandoori masala 2/3 Tablespoons of thick plain yoghurt Tablespoon of oil Teaspoon of crushed garlic Tablespoon of crushed ginger

Method: Grind up the coriander, cumin, and caraway seeds (I would recommend grinding up more than you need so next time you can skip this step).

Add all ingredients to the yoghurt.

Coat the meat or veg with the marinade.

Leave for a couple of hours for the flavours to infuse.

Cook in the oven at around 175 degrees, or for however long the meat or veg needs to go golden. Alternatively, this dish works brilliantly skewered on the barbecue.

I usually serve with a mixed leaf crunchy salad and some crispy, oven baked new potatoes.

Arts

24

Opinion

Feature

10 Alternative gallery spaces in Manchester Ten unconventional gallery spaces in central Manchester to find art and inspiration Cicely Ryder-Belson Reviewer In Manchester, we’re somewhat spoilt when it comes to large institutions, such as the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Manchester Art Gallery, consistently providing innovative and contemporary exhibitions within walking distance from Oxford Rd - so it’s easy to get complacent. However here we have ten alternative spots around Manchester to look out for and explore for yourself: 1. HOME Renowned for its work with film and theatre, HOME plays a pivotal role in creating a platform for diverse and independent art of all forms – yet you mustn’t overlook the exhibitions which adorn their walls.

6. Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFFCA) With a focus on emerging artists, the CFFCA provide a variety of exhibitions, workshops and residencies that engage in the trans-cultural debates which are central to Manchester’s diversity.

2. The Lowry 7. Nexus Art Café Set in Salford Quays, The Lowry is a registered charity committed to visual and performing arts. Manchester itself often acts as a silent central subject matter as its permanent exhibition focuses on the work of L.S. Lowry whilst also host to a variety of contemporary exhibits.

It’s as if you’re in someone’s front room as you enter this self-defined “creative space” in the Northern Quarter. The focus on community and grass root organisations provides a free exhibition space that ensures there will always be something different on display.

3. People’s History Museum 8. The Wonder Inn Set in a former Edwardian pumping station, their aim is to prove “there have always been ideas worth fighting for”, as their galleries take a political and historical focus rooted in Manchester’s past.

4. Manchester Craft and Design Centre A former Victorian fish market building tucked away in the Northern Quarter houses local designers and makers in an array of individual studios.

5. John Rylands Library The ornate neo-Gothic building in Deansgate is a work of art. However, it also houses a permanent collection of artefacts and manuscripts, as well as offering changing exhibitions.

This unassuming three-story building is curiously inviting from the outside; filled with plants and intimate glimmering lights as you enter, the second floor alternatively is host to a large open plan gallery space with events focussed around wellness and creativity.

9. Castlefield Gallery With a focus on contemporary artists and practise, we see a shift here to high art. The Gallery is able to boast that it has produced Turner Prize nominees and winners with their exhibitions.

10. Bureau Gallery Located in the lobby of an office block in Spinningfields, it’s easy to miss this spacious and stark modern gallery.

Review: Remembering Partition with New North South The Whitworth’s new exhibition ‘Beyond Borders’ responds to theanniversary of partition by reclaiming the tradition of textiles Cicely Ryder-Belson Reviewer As we reach the 70th anniversary of partition — the 1947 division of British India to form India and Pakistan — the North of England is collaborating with South Asia to mark this act of independence. Manchester will be exploring South Asian culture through various exhibitions, films, performances, and immersive productions. This is being branded as the New North South.

As this programme is felt widely throughout Manchester in different forms and into the next three years, we’ve decided to run a ten-week feature in which each issue will be dedicated to a different aspect of the collaboration.

Partition saw the end of British colonial rule and ultimately displaced 10-12 million people across newly bound religious borders, igniting a refugee crisis and a bloody mass migration. The horrific realities of partition are often conveniently left out of UK curriculums when relaying the pride of British Empire. There comes a responsibility to commemorate such a significant piece of history. However, New North South deals with the issue of commemorating by not trying to assert a conclusive or whole historical narrative, instead allowing glimpses at the new narratives which interlink and overlap to produce the modern identity of the subcontinent.

The Whitworth’s collection Beyond Borders is one of the first exhibitions in the programme to open; bringing together four artists based in England, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to respond to issues of post-colonial identity and belonging. Much of the work is rooted in textiles, referencing the older South Asian traditions, yet this is enlightened with instances of film, installation, and performance. Textiles had become central to trade and manufacture in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and this rich history has been lost, adapted, and revived throughout the last 70 years.

This sentiment can be seen through Raisa Kabir who, based in England, seeks to reclaim traditional textile techniques, focusing on how process can be used to different effects. Her pieces are frayed and unpicked as she employs her own ‘un-weaving’ technique exploring how trauma interrupts tradition and history. In her piece ‘It must be nice to fall in love…’ (2017) she creates an emblem of pre-partition India, distorted by the weaving process as its pulled in separate directions.

Yet each artist responds differently. Yasmin Jahan Nupur, based in Bangladesh, creates large scale pieces and contemporary textiles. The Indian CONA Foundation instead seems to question the roles of the artist and the designer in the historical context. Risham Syed from Pakistan instead re-imagines what we value as an heirloom and questions traditional rituals, as his work blurs the distinction between artefact and art.

Held in the Whitworth’s main textile gallery, each of the artists’ work is debuted alongside pieces from the Whitworth’s textile collection, the responses co-curating their own show. The centrality of textiles to the exhibit seems important. By emphasising materiality it deconstructs the fragile pre- and post-partition structures into loosely bound fibres. However, it uproots the traditional connotations of textiles, as for these women it is no longer contained as a domestic chore, but instead has become a medium of expression – these pieces are far from the traditional comfort of a patch work quilt.

Beyond Borders is on at the Whitworth Art Gallery from Saturday 20th May till Sunday 3rd June 2018.

Mancehster Craft and Design Centre Photo: Cicely Ryder-Belson

Theatre 25

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

‘For the love of God, give me diversity!’

Does the blame for the lack of female playwrights in top theatres lie solely with artistic directors? Emily Oulton argues not.

Emily Oulton Contributor Last week, a rather revealing new blog post from popular arts and culture writer Victoria Sadler circulated the theatrical Twittersphere.

The post, depressingly titled ‘2017 in Review: The Lot for Female Playwrights Worsens’, set to highlight and expose the monumental lack of work by female playwrights being programmed in what Sadler calls “the leading London theatres.”

This is Sadler’s third annual piece on gender imbalance in theatre programming — and her findings suggest that this year has made London an even bleaker environment for women playwrights.

Sadler’s original purpose behind writing these articles was to provoke what she calls “the shame factor,” figuring that — once exposed — theatres would revisit how and what they programme. This relates to how we often like to idealise our media — that it will expose, challenge and eventually change the status quo. Alas, as Sadler notes, calling someone out on something is likely to make them dogmatically continue on with programming the plays they want to.

Throughout the article, Sadler analyses data that she has gathered from theatres in this order: The Royal Court, the National Theatre, the Young Vic, the Donmar Warehouse, the Almeida, and the Old Vic. The descending order represents the number of female playwrights programmed in each theatre — starting with the very optimistic Royal Court figures at half representation, right down to the Old Vic whose number of female playwrights was at an impressive zero. So yes, there is definitely an issue here.

However, theatre shall not live on playwrights alone — and that’s the sore-thumb flaw in Sadler’s article. Georgia Snow, in The Stage last year, pointed out theatre’s largest audience demographic is aged 65–74. This audience, although there will obviously be exceptions, is likely to comprise of the more traditional theatregoers — and as we’ve all learnt, theatre tradition is fundamentally male. So perhaps these London theatres are only catering to their clientele? It’s a sad fact that

if Matthew Warchus were to programme a season of Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, and Timberlake Wertenbaker, then he is likely to alienate a large swathe of his audience demographic. It’s a complex tug-of-war between audiences and theatre-makers that will take years to rectify.

So, rather than condemning artistic directors, it is surely more helpful to involve them in the conversation. Attitudes are slowly changing but we’re not going to see an improvement in a short three years like Sadler wants to expect. Therefore, it’s the responsibility of the necessary evil of quotas and the upcoming generations to keep the wheel of progress spinning.

Sadler also suggests rather unhelpfully that if men don’t understand women’s plays, it’s because women aren’t writing for men. This is a problematic manipulation of information. Does this mean I can sit and have a great time at Raine’s Consent and Birch’s Anatomy of a Suicide but should shake my head and tut at Yerma because it’s written by a Spanish man? And God forbid enjoying Angels in America because that play was written by a man and about men! Isn’t the whole point of this that we’re trying to bridge the gap, and surely by making sweeping statements like that, we only serve to perpetuate the problem? Additionally, I struggle with the concept of telling a male playwright that “this isn’t your story to tell.” Stories have been bent, blended and borrowed since the beginning of time. By Sadler’s logic, I shouldn’t be allowed to be writing about the trenches of the Somme or about the Australian male rugby team, nor Shakespeare to be writing about teenage Italian star-crossed lovers. We should spend less time being offended by cross-demographic writing and more time on bridging gaps between the demographics. Sadler’s article is helpful and thought-provoking, but her approach seems to only transfer condemnation from artistic director to artistic director. There is certainly much to be done in British Theatre, and in the words of Prior Walter, “The Great Work Begins.”

Review

Review: Rita, Sue and Bob Too Jade Fox reviews Octagon Theatre Bolton’s revival of Andrea Dunbar’s seminal classic.

Jade Fox Reviewer

Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Poetic Staircase-2, 2017 Photo: The Whiteworth

In 1982 Rita, Sue and Bob Too told it how it was. The voice of writer Andrea Dunbar showcased reality using sharp humour and an even sharper social commentary.

Her presentation of an estate in 1970/80’s Yorkshire was controversial but on the whole was received with high acclaim.

Her voice has now been able to speak again. Octagon Theatre Bolton, Out of Joint and Royal Court Theatre has revived the 80s and for good reason. To encapsulate this play simply as two young girls having an affair with a married man would be an injustice. Within the play itself, the older generation denounces Rita and Sue, using the dreaded label ‘slut’, and Bob repeatedly claims his innocence because his wife Michelle is boring in the bedroom.

However, the audience is expertly guided through this tirade of opinion, left with a conclusion that is hard to face. Rita and Sue are undeserving of the title ‘homewreckers’ in the same way that Michelle’s lack of sexual prowess does not excuse her husband’s actions. Taj Atwal and Gemma Dobson bring a clever innocence to Rita and Sue which massively highlights the pair’s age and immaturity. Since the two are so compelling, Bob quickly becomes the villain. He is almost likeable in his humour yet his unsavoury opinions make him an easily recognisable figure: the lying and self-righteous husband. Bob is made colourful by actor James Atherton and his ability to deliver outdated sexism

with irritating entitlement. In fact, all three characters live up to their acclaim.

Photo: Richard Davenport

When they appear together, the actors give a masterful performance of fast-talking crude humour while simultaneously pointing to where our sympathies should lie.

Scene transitions are deemed the perfect time to show off the epic music that goes hand in hand with the time period.

Although parts of the choreography are a little stiff and lacking in spontaneity this is made up for by the lip syncing which entertains audience members,

causing some of them to bop along in their seats. The explicit nature of the play may initially be received with some silence and the stiff English upper lip but nudity soon becomes a thing of delight.

Rita and Sue, when they aren’t partaking in sex with Bob, provide captivatingly detailed expressions and perfectly timed commentary, bringing audience members to tears.

Relationship dynamics are handled with care. The tropes of unhappily married couples in this play are superbly faithful — if we turned back the clock that is. To see the brutal reality of marital arguments onstage in 2017 is something which could have easily lost the favour of a modern audience. However, Sally Bankes and David Walker’s hilarious portrayal of Sue’s mum and dad succeeds in revealing the attitudes of the older generation from this era. The piece boils down to the fact that these girls rarely entertain the notion of a way out of the estate. They truly believe that Bob’s wife could not be luckier to have a husband, children and every outfit she could ever wish to wear.

This proves to be perhaps the most false of their assumptions, alongside the hope that Bob has their best interests at heart.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too is at Octagon Theatre, Bolton until 23rd September.

Sadler’s original article can be found at victoriasadler.com/2017-inreview-the-lot-for-female-playwrights-worsens/

Picks of the Fringe 4 Edinburgh Festival hits heading to Greater Manchester soon...

1

Rashdash: Two Man Show @ Royal Exchange 23rd September

To celebrate the beginning of their new relationship with the RX, theatre company Rashdash are staging a one off performance of this Fringe First Award-winning show about gender, language, and humankind.

Mark Thomas: A Show Tha Gambles On The Future @ Sale Waterside Arts Centre 4th October

2

Mark Thomas looks back on the events of 2016 and sets out to discover what the future has in store by collecting and examining the predictions of his audience.

3

salt. @ HOME 6th-7th October

Selina Thompson’s multi-award winning account of grief, ancestry, diaspora and colonialism comes to HOME as part of the Orbit Festival 2017.

We Are Ian @ HOME 12th-14th October

4

Another offering from HOME’s Orbit Festival, In Bed With My Brother bring their Manchester-inspired theatre show/verbatim piece/ 80s dance party to its spiritual home.

26

Lifestyle

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

No problem too big or too small As the new semester begins, Student Advisor Laura Sullivan discusses how the Advice Service can help you during such a stressful period Laura Sullivan Student Advisor

For thos e of you arr iving in M a nche ste r for the fi rst ti me, the sheer amou nt of in for m ation th at’ ll come your way — location s, time ta ble s, n a me s, price s — can at ti me s b e b oth overwhe lm ing , a nd ye t le ave you w it h more q ue stion s th an you bega n with . Th is is whe re t he S tude nts’ Un ion Adv ice S e rvice cou ld be of he lp.

The Adv ice S erv ice i s a de d icate d s e r vice for the st ude nt s of the Un iversity of M a nche ste r. We offe r fre e, confidential, imp artia l advice. We a re a te a m of f ive pe ople includ ing Adv ice S e r vice M a n age r, Vic tor ia ; two S e nior Student Advis ors, Re be ka h a nd Su ; a nd two S t ude nt Advis ors, L au ra a nd Vick i. We a re a ll profe s s iona l ly t rained advis ors, on h a nd if you fe e l you h ave an

i s sue t h at you ne e d s ome he lp and g u id ance i n s or t i ng it out .

S t ude nt s v i s it ou r s e r v ice w it h a range of d i f fe rent q ue st ion s ab out acade m ic i s sue s — such as cou rs e t ran s fe r, app e al s, compl ai nt s, and d i s c ipl i n ar y he ari ng s. O t he r com mon q ue st ion s re l ate to hou s i ng — f rom pro ble m s w it h a l and lord to ge t t i ng you r de p os it b ack at t he e nd of you r te n ancy. S t ude nt s can al s o re ce ive f in anc i al adv ice regard i ng st ude nt f i n ance, b e ne f it s, and ge ne ral h ard s h ip i s sue s.

We of fe r adv ice on we l l- b e i ng i s sue s such as s ex ua l he alt h , fe e l i ng home s ick , conce r n for a f r ie nd , bu l ly i ng, and d i s c r i m i n at ion . We al s o prov ide adv ice on an ar ray of ot he r i s sue s such as e mploy me nt pro ble m s, con su me r i s sue s, and f i ne s, to n ame but a few. B as ical ly, we a re a one stop s hop for any i s sue s t h at you fe e l you m ay h ave. No pro ble m i s to o big or s m al l !

We a re t here to help a ll yea r round — we don’t even clos e over sum mer — a nd for t he f irst two weeks of term , we only of fer a drop -in s erv ice, which mea ns t hat we endeavour to s ee each a nd every st udent who v isit s t he s erv ice. D on’t worry t hough, you ca n st ill cont act us by telephone a nd em a il during t his t ime, we j ust ca n’t of fer a n app o int ment . We work in a way in which we t ry to emp ower you to go a nd get t he b e st re sult for yours elf, but w it h our supp ort a nd guida nce.

S o if you s hould f ind yours elf in a q ua nda ry a nd have no clue where to t urn, or you would j ust like to dis cus s your opt ions, p op into t he Adv ice S erv ice! We a re b a s ed on t he ground f lo or of t he St udent s’ Union on Ox ford Ro ad, a nd we a re op en f rom 10 a m-4 pm Monday to F ri day a ll yea r round.

No problem too big or too small

Manchester’s hidden gems

Greater Manchester is a unique mix of great neighbourhoods to explore. James Johnson discusses why you should consider taking your next trip outside of the city centre.

James Johnson Deputy Lifestyle Editor Arriving at university and discovering all of the many delights Manchester has to offer excites new and returning students each and every year. Whether you’ve arrived from the sleepy suburbs, a quiet country village, or another major city, sometimes the traffic along the Oxford Road corridor and the fight for the busy pavements can prove to be a little overwhelming.

Adjusting to the continuous hustle and bustle of Manchester’s unique network of social and cultural hotspots ensures you’re never too far from a new experience. We often venture into the heart of the city centre when we’re looking for the best place to get some productive study hours logged or to enjoy a new dining or caffeine-filled afternoon. But, Manchester has some great alternative options to wine, dine, study or relax the hours away, that can be found outside the hustle and bustle.

Sometimes heading out of town can serve to refresh you of the city rush and might just be your new favourite place to take the magic bus (or the tram) to. Find some suggestions below and plan your next trip outwards.

Withington Withington is that special place where the magic bus becomes a little quieter, where you’ll unlikely be finding yourself searching for an available seat. A little further south than Fallowfield, Withington is awash with local eateries, banks, coffee shops, and places you can get a little

work done (try the Withington library, open 7 days a week) outside of the library.

Didsbury Village The jewel in South Manchester’s crown, Didsbury Village is a popular spot for shopping and dining. The abundance of popular stores and coffee shops will be a welcome return to small town suburbia for many.

Its relaxed vibe is a great contrast to the rush of Piccadilly Gardens. You can also hop right onto the local tram stop, taking you to the heart of Manchester in under thirty minutes.

attractions. Just a short ride away from Piccadilly is Media City UK – the home of the ITV and BBC studios. Travel along Manchester’s infamous shipping canal to a place where any recreational needs are met. The Imperial War Museum is a must-see attraction for historians and visitors alike. Tours of the TV studios are also a highlight, or if this all sounds like too much, maybe just catch a film and hit the shops at the Lowry Centre instead.

Wherever you find yourself venturing to during your time at Manchester, you’ll always be spoiled for choice. Consider heading further afield next time to find your favourite new hangout or take a breather in one of Greater Manchester’s inspired out of town districts.

Trafford If you’re a keen shopper, or perhaps just a great Carrie Bradshaw impersonator, you might consider heading west to the famous Trafford Centre, where no shopper can go unsatisfied. Your feet will ache before you’ve reached all of the stores available here and there’s always a plethora of great food to be eaten. Hop onto the 250 from Brook Street West, or onto the X50 from Piccadilly Gardens, and you’ll be there in no time at all.

Media City Manchester’s innovative and incredibly efficient network of trams is here for you to explore all of Manchester’s outlying suburbs, towns and

Photo : James Johnson

ISSUE 1 / 18th SEPTEMBER 2017 WWW.MANCHESTERMEDIAGROUP.CO.UK

Running is horrible but I couldn’t have graduated without it As the semester approaches, Fiona Hallett discusses how running can help to maintain a clear mind during your studies.

Fiona Hallett Lifestyle Contributor I’m the first person to admit that. Running is horrible, running is hard, running is painful. As anyone who’s ever had the pleasure of running with me will know, I can barely get my trainers on without complaining about running for a solid 10 minutes. And then I’ll complain about it during the run and after the run.

Nevertheless, I continue to lace up my trainers, put in my headphones, and head out that door for a run a couple of times a week, as I have done for the past 5 years. And I love it. Because despite all this complaining, or arguably because of it, running is actually glorious.

When I started running five years ago I did it with the sole purpose of losing weight. Although that was just enough to push me out the front door, it wasn’t enough for me to actually enjoy the activity. Ever since I realised that running isn’t about burning off the calories from what you’ve eaten, or about making yourself fit into those endemic contemporary beauty norms, I discovered what running is really about. Running is about a celebration of what your mind and body are capable of, at whatever level that may be. I’m nowhere near the best runner I know. I don’t run very long distances, I don’t go super fast, I don’t always keep to a consistent running schedule, and that’s fine. At the This Girl Can campaign reminds us, “No matter how slow you go, you’re lapping everyone on the couch”.

Yes, running is hard. Running for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour without stopping, powered only by yourself, it’s bloody difficult. But it’s this challenge that makes running so rewarding.

The determination that it takes to run to the end of your street, to run around that park, to run up that hill, to run that half marathon – that determination takes both physical and mental strength. With each run, you rise to that challenge, and you become stronger with each step.

I’ve been in a personal running slump over the summer and have only recently got back into it. As always, the first few times after a break are the worst. Your physical fitness levels are down (My legs are on fire, how is no one outside noticing that my legs are literally on fire.) and your mental stamina is in dire need of improve-

ment (There is literally no way on this planet that I can keep running. I’m turning back, shuffling home, and spending the rest of the week watching Gilmore Girls.). But yesterday I started to break through that wall. For just a small part of my run, the ground felt like it was working with me, not against me. I was admittedly running downhill for that part, but the point still stands. Those moments — when it feels like you are pushing the whole Earth backwards with each step — that’s when you can really become aware of your potential. This appreciation of your physical and mental strength is where running becomes such a powerful tool. Running is hard, so when you do run it’s a great reminder of how strong you are. And that reminder works wonders on mental health.

On a more pragmatic level, running simply provides a platform for de-stressing. Aside from the physiological benefits of exercise on stress, the release of endorphins and so on (can you tell I’m not a medic?) helps enormously. When I’m at my most stressed and my mind is set to overdrive with various pressures, running lets me switch off and focus only on the immediate challenge of running to the park and back. If you have a pal who will run with you, that can be even better. Many a Tuesday evening has been spent running with friends at Run Wild Manchester, a society you can easily become a part of, blabbering their ears off about various problems and anxieties I’ve had. There’s just something about ranting while running that is so refreshing. You come back from a run reinvigorated and ready to tackle your problems with a clear head. After a shower and a post-run snack, of course.

This article isn’t meant to shame anyone who doesn’t participate in the terrible and wonderful activity that is running. We all have different abilities. We all flourish in different areas. That’s part of what makes us humans great. I do hope, however, that I have been able to convince some of you that although yes, running is hard, every drop of sweat, every aching muscle is more than worth it for that well-earned glowing sense of empowerment.

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United earn comfortable Champions League win The Red Devils make an assured start to the campaign

Photo: @ Max Pixel

James Gill Sport Reporter

United are entering the competition having qualified as Europa Cup Champions last season in a 2-0 win over Ajax in Stockholm. José Mourinho seems to have luck on his side after being drawn into arguably the easiest group of the competition.

That being said, Benfica should not be underestimated having reached at least the Round of 16 in their last two seasons. The other two teams in their group, FC Basel and CSKA Moscow, both came last in their respective groups last year and should cause few problems.

Lining up, there are six changes from the side that drew against Stoke. Smalling and Lindelof come in at centre back for the suspended Bailly and Jones. In the fullback positions, Young replaces Valencia and after his shaky performance at the weekend, and Blind takes the place of Darmian. Mata starts showing Mourinho’s attacking intent, and Martial gives the on fire Rashford a break. De Gea, Matic, Pogba, Mkhitaryan and Lukaku all start.

As the whistle blows on a rainy Old Trafford it becomes immediately obvious that Basel are playing for the point, sitting very deep with ten men behind the ball at all times. United start with intent, pushing forward with the ball and pressing hard to recover the ball quickly. Pogba captains the side on their 21st Champions League group stage.

The first chance comes in the second minute as a Mata corner falls to Lukaku and if not for a fantastic block, Lukaku would have fired it right into the top corner. Young runs freely down the right-hand side tracking back to defend strongly too. Shortly after he fires a volley wide, chances are coming quickly.

In the 14th minute, Lukaku uses his strength to hold up play well which leads to a chance for Mkhitaryan who heads over.

You can’t help but feel that, against a better team, these wasted chances might be costly. Shortly after this Pogba lands awk-

wardly and pulls up holding his hamstring. Losing a player of his quality for any length of time could hurt the squad but thankfully a returning Fellaini comes on in his place, fresh faced and bushy haired.

Another major chance is missed after a Lukaku cross to Mkhitaryan is pushed onto the post by the keeper from two yards.

Lukaku shows that he can create chances as well as score them.

Mkhitaryan is in his element here with great positional play and it could be said there is a twinkle of Paul Scholes in his ability to launch a ball cross field to a player in space.

The first Basel corner of the game was easily defended and Mkhitaryan once again tears up the field before getting slashed down by Balanta is a nasty tackle, the first yellow of the game.

Early on Lindelof looks calm on the ball in his first game of the season. The style of play in the Champions League is much less physical than in the Premier League and will suit the former Benfica man nicely.

Mkhitaryan threads a ball out wide to Ashley Young who in turn launches a brilliantly placed cross into the box for none other than Marouane Fellaini to head past the Basel keeper Vaclik to make it 1-0 in the 34th minute. Great build up play and a well-deserved goal. You would think this would force Basel to come out of their shell but you’d be wrong, they seem happy to stay compact and play for the low scoring defeat.

The rain is pouring down still and the Basel manager, Raphaël Wicky is getting absolutely sodden wearing just his suit, his coaching staff all wearing thick waterproof coats. My heart goes out to him. Towards the tail end of the first half, Mkhitaryan lights up Old Trafford — first with a phenomenal ball to Fellaini who could only head it down to Basel to clean up as no one was with him, and secondly with a cheeky nutmeg, much to the fan’s delight. The Armenian always seems to be eyeing up chances to embarrass opposing defenders.

As the half time whistle blows United are firmly in control with 69 per cent possession to Basel’s 31. The only negative really is the injury to Pogba. It looks like someone gave Wicky a raincoat during the break too, giving his suit a break from the rain.

Basel start the second half a bit tentatively but are certainly changing their game plan to be slightly more attacking, trying to grab a quick equaliser and return to their previous compact state. It seemed to be working too as they put together a few chances. They lack the end product in the final third though and most of their passing is intercepted.

The Reds look just as dangerous going forward as Martial takes on two before driving a low shot at the near post to win a corner. It is quickly taken short and driven into the box by Blind — right onto the head of Lukaku who doesn’t miss from this distance, 2-0. He just stood still as the ball came to him, the Basel defenders unable to outmuscle the Belgian. There is daylight now between the two teams.

Basel suddenly have an epiphany that if you park the bus when 2-0 down you can’t win the game. Elyounoussi leads the charge forward and they begin to hold possession more. Pressing high up the pitch leaves them susceptible to counter attacks, a big risk when you look at the pace in the United squad.

A poor pass by Mkhitaryan concedes possession and Basel run into the penalty area. Lindelof carelessly slides in and somehow doesn’t take down the attacker. De Gea makes his first proper save of the game from the resulting shot. The United defence holds up against the relatively weak attack — but a better side in the latter stages of the tournament would be more clinical in the final third.

Rashford is nothing if not consistent. He’s scored on his Premier League debut, his Manchester Derby debut, his League Cup debut, his Europa League debut, his England U21 debut, his England debut and now his Champions League Debut. A real poachers goals, a Fellaini cross is missed by Mkhitaryan, nutmegs two before being scrappily knocked in by the 19-year-old.

The whistle blows, a comfortable 3-0 victory at Old Trafford extending the unbeaten run at home to 32 games, since September 2016 — quite the fortress. Man of the match was Marouane Fellaini, and deservedly so, this season he has been the catalyst for United’s success.

WRITE FOR US Mancunion Sport 17/18 Contributors Group Email: sports@mancunion.com Meeting time: Tuesdays 5pm

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Salford pick up a 3-0 win on a wet night

Nuneaton had no chance against the well-resourced Salford in their upgraded stadium Arthur Salisbury Sport s Editor

Photo: Elislike @ Wikimedia Commons

Five sports societies to join this September The Karting and Motorsports club For any keen motorsport freshers or returning students Manchester’s only motorsport related society, The Karting and Motorsports club, is well worth getting involved in. Activities range from watching major events such as the F1, as well as getting behind the wheel yourself. The society attends British Universities Karting Championships events and is attending the Buckmore Park Test Day on the 2nd of November. Twitter: @UoMKC

Esports Society

GET BEHIND THE SCENES ACCESS AT TWO OF THE MOST FAMOUS FOOTBALL CLUBS IN THE WORLD, TAKE A TRIP TO THE UK'S MOST POPULAR ZOO AND BE SURE TO LEAVE NO COBBLESTONE UNTURNED. TAKE A BIKE, TAKE A TRAIN TAKE A COACH, TAKE A PLANE...

FIND OUT MORE AT: MANCHESTERSTUDENTSUNION.COM/WANDERLUST

One of the fastest growing industries has a place at the University with the Esports society. The society offers the chance to get invoked with play nights as well as competing in The National University eSports League. There is also the chance to play for the official society teams and tryouts will be in late September-October. This is not to say the society is only for experienced gamers — they welcome casual gamers too. Facebook: UoM Esports

That Salford and Manchester were never formally made one is something of a historical anomaly, but Salfordians like it this way. During the Civil War, Royalist Salford launched a short-lived invasion of Parliamentarian Manchester, and the city has maintained a certain contrarian civic-pride ever since. It’s a bit gloomier, a bit rougher round the edges; it’s also the city that produced Joy Division and the Happy Mondays, who are, of course, better than Oasis. But ultimately cultural differences can’t stave off geographical similarities, and for 90 minutes at Moor Lane, it was tipping it down.

Against this backdrop is an impressive new stadium. We all know the Salford City Fairytale Story™ — the club was bought by four Manchester United ex-players (Messrs.

Giggs, Scholes, Neville Greater and Neville Lesser) and elevated from Step 4 of the non-league system to the National League North at Step 2 — only a couple of promotions away from league football. The team took on professional status in July this year, and going into this evening’s game they were second-place on goal difference to Harrogate Town and unbeaten in nine.

If Salford City represent the trend of non-league clubs with ambitious owners buying their way up the pyramid, then Nuneaton represent the other, but often connected, tendency – clubs going bust. The old Nuneaton Borough were liquidated in 2008, with the FA subsequently insisting on a name change and a double relegation. Thus Nuneaton Town started life in the Southern League Division One Midlands, but three promotions in four years saw them back in the Conference Premier, the highest tier of the non-league system. The Conference Premier (formerly the Alliance Premier, now the National League Premier) used to be where relegated professional sides from the league above (Division Four, then Division Three, now League Two) would meet the Other World of semi-professional teams, traditional non-league giants like Telford, Barnet, and my club, Enfield (now two clubs – Enfield Town and Enfield 1893). These days, however, most of the Conference is professional, with smaller sides like Nuneaton struggling to keep up. The Boro overachieved for two seasons with mid-table finishes before postpone-able but inexorable financial gravity made its presence felt. After ending the 2014-15 season in bottom place, they dropped down a division to the National League North (formerly the… ah forget about it). Bankruptcies, name changes, points deductions, demotions, a forced change of ground and subsequent exodus of players to rivals Tamworth have produced a lot of cynicism for the visitors, who were hovering above the relegation zone with nine points from ten going into this evening.

Salford won’t have this problem when they go up, and if it’s not this year then it will be in the very near future.

Gary Neville and co. look to have built the club sensibly.

A lot of money has gone into bringing the ground up to standard and attendances have risen sharply. Despite

controversially changing the home colours from orange to red, presumably in an attempt to win over United supporters who don’t want to buy a new scarf, they seem to have retained the goodwill of the old fanbase.

The shape of the game was clear from before kick-off.

Nuneaton manager Tommy Wright, under a bit of pressure with one win from the last eight games, opted for six at the back and a let-them-have-the-ball-fingers-crossed approach. With a home tie against Kings Lynn in the FA Cup on Saturday — and the accompanying potential £4,500 prize money — the consensus was that key players were being rested. While understandable, it was fairly obvious in which direction we were headed even before captain Lois Maynard headed the Ammies in front inside ten minutes. Salford played in 4-4-2 with style and panache, full-backs I bou Touray and Michael Nottingham getting forward but with enough skill and wit to navigate through a crowded final third. A couple minutes after the opener Nottingham brought a save from ‘keeper Dean Lyness with Jack Redshaw’s follow-up pinging off the post.

Soon after Mark Shelton, coming down the right, cut back to Anthony Dudley who calmly slotted home to his left.

Shortly afterwards — and to some surprise — Nuneaton found themselves within shooting distance of the Salford goal but Callum Ball could only breathe a feeble shot at Max Crocombe, making his first, and, to my knowledge, only save of the match. Normal service was soon resumed, and another corner brought the third — Maynard’s header was blocked and after ten seconds of pinball Joshua Askew found himself with the ball 20 yards out, and a beautifully placed curling strike left Lyness impotent.

Salford kept up the pressure for the remainder of the half, too quick and having too much fun. 3-0 at the break flattered Nuneaton.

Any football supporter knows exactly what happened in the second half. The buzz died down slightly and the crowd began to turn their mind to other things. I was stood a few rows back in a covered stand but the heavy side-rain still soaked my jeans. Askew maintained his zip, jinking from side to side as if trying to avoid individual rain drops and Salford threatened a few more times. Michael Nottingham beat one centre-back and nutmegged the other but missed the target, before a collision left Boro’s Jon Ashton in the mud for a few minutes, the holdup confirming that familiar comfortable second-half apathy. Enfield Town went down 2-1 at Wingate & Finchley as I pondered why only Mike Phenix had opted for such tight shorts. It’s a fair trek back on a horrible midweek night for the few Nuneaton supporters that made the journey, and a shame Luke Trotman could only Johnny Wilkinson it over the bar in time added on, easily their best chance of the game. By the time the whistle blew, in true non-league style about ten minutes after it should’ve, the crowd was already looking ahead to the FA Cup weekend. It didn’t feel like a fairytale and one wonders how long Nuneaton will survive in their current incarnation, whether the club is destined to go in and out of business in perpetuity. For Salford City, unknown pleasures await.

Belly Dancing Sometimes running or going to the gym can become a little tedious — a great alternative is belly dancing. The weekly class runs from 18.30-19.30 on Monday and costs just £2. It takes place at 335 Stretford Road, Hulme, M15 5ZA. So if you don’t fancy braving the Manchester cold this winter, give this Arabic dance a go.

Facebook: Belly Dancing Society - The University of Manchester

Pole Fitness Another alternative exercise workout is pole fitness. The society welcomes all levels of experience — from complete beginner to advanced dancers. The classes, which take place in the Northern Quarter studio Bodybarre, are designed to improve flexibility and strength and can be a great way of meeting new people.

You can get involved either on a pay-as-you-go basis or in blocks of three and if you become a member you will get discounts on the classes.

Facebook: University of Manchester Pole Fitness 2017-18

Darts A chance for you to try your arm at one of Britain’s most popular sports. The Darts society plans to run meetings each week for games between the members and have ambitions to play other universities as well as in-house games. As well as playing, it is an opportunity to find a new group of friends who share your passion for darts and offer the chance to go to the Premier League Darts event at Manchester.

Facebook: University of Manchester Darts Society

Photo: Anthony Parkes @ Wikimedia Commons

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Is uni sport a viable alternative to the Premier League?

With ticket prices continuing to rise, more students are finding it difficult to follow their favourite club Sam Cooper Sports Editor For a student, deciding where to spend your money can be a hard decision. The expense of rent, food, textbooks, travel, and the miscellaneous costs that come with living independently can leave you a little short changed when it comes to socialising and indulging in your hobbies.A quiet pint down the local while watching the game on the telly is unlikely to cost you anything north of £10 but if you are a fan who likes the thrill of being at the stadium, you are going to struggle to pay anything less than £30, especially in England’s top division.

A quiet pint down the local while watching the game on the telly is unlikely to cost you anything north of £10, but if you are a fan who likes the thrill of being at the stadium, you are going to struggle to pay anything less than £30, especially in England’s top division.

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Manchester City has taken strides to address the issue by offering cheaper tickets for fans between the ages of 18 and 21 as well as selling match tickets through the Students’ Union. But any Premier League game at the Etihad is still going to cost at least £30.For many supporters, the cost is worth it as the feeling of being there and being involved with the game is something they look for week after week. But for students, it can be difficult to justify spending £30 for 90 minutes of entertainment every two weeks when you are living on a diet of pasta and rice. Of course, teams away from the Premier League will charge less but perhaps the smarter alternative is to look to University sport to get your live football fix.

For many supporters, the cost is worth it as the feeling of being there and being involved with the game is something they look for week after week. But for students, it can be difficult to justify spending £30 for 90 min-

Photo: Elislike @Wikimedia Commons

utes of entertainment every two weeks when you are living on a diet of pasta and rice. Of course, teams away from the Premier League will charge less, but perhaps the smarter alternative is to look to University sport to get your live football fix.Living in Manchester means an abundance of sports clubs in your local proximity. The university has 42 student run clubs which span 36 sports and 9 different football teams. In this upcoming Living in Manchester means an abundance of sports clubs in your local proximity. The university has 42 student run clubs which span 36 sports and 9 different football teams.

In this upcoming season, the University of Manchester Football First Team will be playing in the Northern 1A division. In this six team league, UoM will come up against Leeds Beckett, Liverpool Hope, Liverpool John Moores, Newcastle, and Sheffield. The team will be looking to improve on last season’s fourth place finish and start their campaign

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Photo: Anthony Parkes @Wikimedia Commons

on the 11th of October against Newcastle.

The chance to see affordable, live football is there and surely there can be no better sense of belonging than going to a game with a team representing an institution you go to every day and have done for the part one, two or three years. To actively support your university team should not be seen as you turning your back on your club side but instead embracing the players who represent you.

As well as men’s football, UoM has a strong presence in the women’s game. The first team will be competing in the Northern 2A division and start their season with a home tie against Liverpool John Moores. The game takes place on the 11th of October and will be played at the Armitage at 2 o’clock.

So while the money machine that is the Premier League continues to roll on, look inwards if you want an affordable alternative that provides similar levels of thrill and a sense of belonging.

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Photo: Max Pixel