Issue8

WWW.MANCUNION.COM

14th NOVEMBER 2016 / ISSUE 08 FREE

Bar brawl over Trump’s wall Fight breaks out at Students’ Union overnight broadcast A first-hand account of the atmosphere in the SU bar – page 3 Students’ respond to the result – page 3 Opinion: The Mancunion reacts – page 10 Photo: gageskidmore@Flickr

Burnham launches Greater Manchester Mayoral Campaign

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Not allowing gay men to donate blood is outdated

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Ways to relieve anxiety

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News

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ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Picture of the week: A view of a solar halo above campus. Sun refracting through ice crystals, superficially looks like a rainbow

Highlights P6

Science: Can nature documentaries promote conservation

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Features : Photo: Ben Farren

A student life

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Film: Review: Nocturnal Animals

Fight breaks out in SU bar Letter from the during US election Editor-in-chief overnight broadcast The overnight showing of the US Presidential election coverage in the Students’ Union bar turned violent as Clinton supporters clashed with Trump’s in the early hours of the morning.

The University of Manchester’s Students’ Union bar had to close and prematurely end their overnight broadcast at around 6:30am.

The Mancunion was made aware of the events while editors discussed the election results upstairs from the Fuse FM studios.

Students had been reporting from the bar in a live link to the studio, but were asked to leave along with the rest of the attendees after the fight broke out.

Accounts from the bar suggest that the fight arose between a supposed Trump supporter and students hoping for a Clinton victory.

According to eyewitnesses punches and drinks were thrown before the Union staff asked everyone to leave and informed

P25 Visit Our Website www.mancunion.com The Mancunion @TheMancunion Editor-in-chief: Jennifer Sterne editor@mancunion.com

Theatre: Interview: Daniel Rigby

Deputy Editor-in-chief: Elise Gallagher deputyed@mancunion.com Postal address: University of Manchester Students’ Union, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PR Phone: 0161 275 2989 Subeditors: Gemma Sowerby, Robert Parris, Jane Simmons, Hannah Foy, Christopher Tchen, Lauren Bramley, Adriana Elgueta, Lauren Pizzey, Stevie Grieves sub@mancunion.com

them that the Election would no longer be broadcast.

During the night The Mancunion reported that ‘Make America Great Again’ red caps had been spotted in the bar, with one student reportedly being told that if he shouted “build the wall” one more time they would be asked to leave.

The Students’ Union bar was open overnight to broadcast the US presidential election, which saw Donald Trump become President-elect. The bar had been packed for most of the night, with many students being turned away due to limited capacity when they arrived for the beginning of the results.

The University of Manchester’s Students’ Union have said: “At around 06:45 this morning the Union Bar was closed due to an incident. This is currently under investigation and therefore we will not be saying any more at this present time.”

Last week I wrote hypothetically of a Trump victory, suggesting that the only option would be to book a flight to Mars. I sincerely apologise that this is not an option. For this issue we have collected responses from Manchester students, to gauge the student populations mood on the controversial President elect; however the fight which broke out in the Students’ Union bar probably speaks louder than most of their responses.

When fights are breaking out across the Atlantic over the Presidents election, I think we can safely say his presidency may be slightly controversial.

Aside from the coverage of the ‘end of the world’, this week we are also launching our new feature ‘A student life’. We interviewed a free speech advocate, a pantomime prince and a quidditch player; read these to immerse yourself fully in the student bubble and forget about the wider world for a while – not something I would normally endorse but these are abnormal times.

Editorial Adviser: Charlie Spargo

lifestyle@mancunion.com

Head News Editor: Yasmin Mannan Deputy News Editor: Len Cotton Science Editor: Georgie Hines news@mancunion.com science@mancunion.com

Head Music Editor: Joe Casson Deputy Music Editor: Katie Shepherd music@mancunion.com

Head Features Editor: Jacob Nicholas Deputy Features Editor: Emma Shanks features@mancunion.com Head Opinion Editor: Tristan Parsons Deputy Opinion Editor: Marina Iskander opinion@mancunion.com Head Fashion Editor: Sarah Kilcourse Deputy Fashion Editors: Sophie Soar and Talia Lee Skudder fashion@mancunion.com Head Food & Drink Editor: Felix Sanders foodanddrink@mancunion.com Head Film Editor: Eliza Slawther Deputy Film Editor: Shema Begum film@mancunion.com Head Lifestyle Editor: Rachel Adams Deputy Lifestyle Editor: Araddhna Patel

Head Sport Editor: Harry Newton Deputy Sport Editor: Alex Whitcomb University Sport Editor: Ben Ryan sport@mancunion.com Books Editor: Roma Havers books@mancunion.com Games Editor: Stephen Lewis games@mancunion.com Theatre Editor: Brogen Campbell theatre@mancunion.com Arts Editor: Laura Joyce arts@mancunion.com Head Online Editor Rebecca Carr Deputy Online Editor: Holly Smith online@mancunion.com Photographers: Ben Farren Copyright belongs to the photographers. If you wish to reproduce them contact them

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

All writers are volunteers and new contributors are always welcome. No previous experience is necessary, just a passion for student media and a good story. You can get involved by turning up to a meeting, the times of which are listed on the Mancunion website’s Join page.

We gladly accept contributors from outside the University of Manchester.

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

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

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ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Student reactions to Trump’s victory Elise Gallagher Deputy Editor-in-Chief The events of the 8th–9th of November 2016 saw America vote for Donald Trump as their new president, shocking the world. Although we’re thousands of miles away from the White House, we turned to students in the UK to hear what they had to say on this divisive and polarising outcome.

Len Cotton, Womens’ Officer at the University of Manchester’s Students’ Union says: “To anyone who says that feminism in the 21st century is redundant, attention-seeking and outdated I hope this election result has shed some new light on your views. A man who has been accused of over 10 counts of sexual assault, who has referred to women in the most demeaning, derogatory terms has now become the leader of one of (if not the) most powerful countries in the world. For all her sins, (and I know there were many), Hillary Clinton as a president would have symbolised that politics is not an exclusively male domain. It’s been almost one hundred years since women gained the vote and still we have not gained political equality.

“Yes, Hillary was white and middle class and yes, she had some sketchy and questionable views, but were they really as bad as the blatant racism and misogyny that Trump has forged his campaign on? Hillary has over 30 years of political experience making her vastly more qualified for the role. Yet, somehow, Donald was seen as more ‘fit’ to be a leader. Clearly this evidences that the ‘glass ceiling’ is not a myth, it’s an accurate representation of how women the world over are constantly being held back from gaining key positions of power, despite their best efforts. “’A vote for Trump is a vote for change’ is the biggest pile of bollocks I have ever heard. Electing a rich, white, right-wing man is not revolutionary — it’s a rever-

sion of and insult to the years of tireless campaigning that women across the world have undertaken in the plight for equality.

I’m so angry and disappointed, and... [am in] despair.”

Conversely, Leeds University student, Elrica Johnson, said that Trump’s election brought a sense of hope to America: “Trump’s victory signals a victory for those who feel that the current establishment were not addressing the issues they felt most strongly about. People felt they could relate to the message that he was saying of making America great again. Those words resonate a sense of hope for the country that the Clinton failed to emulate. People wanted change and people believed that Trump would be the best person to deliver it. Although the result of the US election was a shock, it wasn’t surprising that someone who could connect with disenfranchised Americans won over an individual who relied on her gender as her winning card. People may disagree with some of the policies he proposed, but many felt they could get behind his vision and leadership for the country.”

Nathan, a University of Manchester alumnus said that Trump’s win “[is] disappointing. I’m hopeful that progressives will be able to reorganise and reach the pissed-off people through the grassroots.”

University of Manchester English Language student, Laura Joyce shared a similar feeling saying: “Obama’s time in office was all about progress, and bringing society up to date. Obama had a modern outlook on acceptance, unity, equal rights and safety. Electing Trump is basically America saying, “We’ve made progress, let’s turn back the clock.” For the majority of Americans they’ll be going back to the middle ages, women will have the same value as objects and attitudes towards racism and homophobia will reverse.

His head also looks like road kill.”

Newcastle University student

Jordan Taylor Scudder said, “He’s what’s needed to defeat mecha-Hitler.”

Rosie Kennedy Ward, a Film Production student at London School of Film, Media and Design shared this: “I think the real issue is not the man himself, he’s a Republican. You only have to do your research to see the insane things representatives of that party have said... He is just a person like anybody else who when they want something they become ruthless. He wanted to be president and so that was his target. The real sadness is how he managed to become president. Through by the most part... simple racism. People who are uneducated and do not have any motivation other than hate.

But just like you can’t generalise people of a certain religion, you can’t generalise people who voted for someone. Some voters for Trump will just be disgruntled Americans who took part in a protest and used the only power given to them by the the government. When people say they can’t believe he succeeded because he’s not a politician, the reality of it is that is the exact reason why he succeeded.”

Echoing the sentiment of many women around the globe, Caitlin Hughes, a University of Manchester History student, had this to say: “Do you know how it feels to be a woman, waking up to the news that the most powerful job in the world has been handed to a man, a man who said it’s more than okay to grab girls by the pussy? When you can’t even walk home by yourself after 6pm without a rape alarm or your keys between your fingers? People say they voted for change but a vote for this rich, white, privileged man is not a vote for change.

It’s a vote for misogyny, a vote for reclaiming white and male privilege. A vote to turn the clock back on women’s rights, the rights of minorities, our basic human rights. White, male supremacy is happening again, right before our eyes, and it’s absolutely terrifying.”

Photo: gageskidmore @Flickr Photo: gageskidmore @Flickr

An eyewitness account from the Union Bar Chloe Hatton News Contributor Trump’s victory was a surprise to many, even his own supporters who were draped in American flags and Trump hats, grouped together in the Students’ Union. Before polling closed the atmosphere was electric — people laughing and chatting and playing drinking games, gearing themselves up for the long night.

It soon became clear that the vast majority of students attending were pro Hillary, or at least ‘not Trump’. During this memorable night, the effects of the most divisive election in recent history could certainly be seen.

As the votes started to roll in, many dismissed the early lead Trump was taking, given that his first victories were traditionally Republican states.

There were huge cheers whenever the projections showed a Democrat state, and equally huge cheers from the comparatively small in number, but very loud, Trump supporters at

a Republican one.

What they lacked in numbers they certainly made up for in enthusiasm, a trait which has been shown time and time again throughout this election. It soon became clear, however, that their presence was causing some friction, with small arguments taking place, directed at those wearing the very recognisable red caps.

They were met with withering looks and a curt “sit down, you’re embarrassing yourselves”. It was certainly difficult to try and talk to them, but eventually an explanation from what seemed to be the epicentre of this group, a cap-wearing student draped in the American flag, was given.

According to him, “the fact is Hillary’s corporation is corrupt — Trump wants to lower taxes for hard-working americans and he is better for Britain as he would put us first in a trade deal, whereas Hillary used to be under investigation from the FBI”, which was promptly met with the rather

eloquent retort of “[expletive]”. It certainly seemed as though tensions were running high.

However, it seemed that some individuals were using Trump not just as an ideal President but as a reason to get under people’s skin — something he himself is obviously very adept at doing, with some claiming “I’m just here to troll people”. It certainly seemed as though nobody was actually expecting him to become America’s 45th President.

As the night progressed however, it became clear that Trump wasn’t just winning safe Republican states, and this was the point when everybody started to either fear or hope that he might just edge ahead. The excitement evaporated fast whilst the tension increased. There was less cheering and less laughter, everybody just waiting for the next prediction to be made.

Hillary was not managing to keep all of her hope for Democratic states, instead surrendering them to Trump. The final blow,

however, came as Florida was announced at 4:30 AM. The news was met with looks of both shock and glee, but all with the same question — how did this happen?

All predictions had shown that if Florida had gone to Hillary, then Trump’s chances of Presidency would have been very slim. However, his 49.1 per cent of the vote to Clinton’s 47.8 per cent ensured his path was free, and it was at this point that it became clear that he was the probable winner.

The majority of students watching being anti-Trump, this obviously caused some problems.

As his supporters became more rowdy, tempers flared and things really got heated, with a fight breaking out between groups of supporters.

This was swiftly broken up and, as a result, the footage was cut off in what may seem to some to be a rather anticlimactic end to what was certainly a roller coaster of a night.

Photo: meliflaire@Flickr

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ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Manchester Open Mind Network host successful anxiety panel discussion .

Manchester Open Mind Network invite panellist to discuss causes and solutions of how to tackle anxiety and mental health issues as they become ever prevalent amongst students.

Photo: Practical Cures@ Flickr

Len Cotton Deputy News Editor On the 7th November, newly established society Manchester Open Mind Network played host to a panel of anxiety experts, aiming to discuss the causes and solutions of the condition for student sufferers. Anxiety and related conditions such as PTSD have become a huge problem amongst young people, with an estimated 20% of students expected to experience some form of mental health illness during their times at university. Unfortunately, the panel also discussed how 35% of those living with a condition will not seek help. Thus, the event aimed to combat this issue by challenging the stigma surrounding mental health.

The event had an excellent turn out, with the room easily becoming filled within the first ten minutes. Each speaker talked through their own experiences with anxiety and depression, giving moving accounts of how this affected their lives and, most importantly, how they learnt to combat the condition. Three main coping mechanisms were explained: Mindfulness; Counselling and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Esteemed hypnotherapist Dianne explained how the mind works in a triangular manner, with thoughts, emotions and actions being directly interconnected and interdependent on each other. She went into detail about how anxiety occurs when the brain becomes trapped in a cycle of thoughts and feelings, with an inability to complete actions. Dianne advised that the best way to tackle this problem was to exercise ‘mindfulness’ by focussing on your safety and security in the present moment, rather than worrying about potential issues in the future.

After a few more speakers shared their experiences and combative strategies the event moved to a Q &A. Here the panel discussed reasons as to why anxiety had become such a prominent issue amongst young people. Some stated that this may be due to a feeling of disempowerment amongst youths, particularly in light of rising tuition fees and youth unemployment. Other also referenced how the internet had hugely contributed to an increase in anxiety amongst young people, as exposure to such vast amounts of information and broad range of opinions could be both confusing and intimidating.

In particular, the panel related the prominence of body dysmorphia, especially in young women, as attributable to the internet with images of celebrities’ ‘perfect bodies’ creating great pressure amongst young women to be thin.

Finally, the event closed with a speech from society members stating how a student could seek help if they were struggling with a mental health issue. They said that anyone can contact their Facebook page with queries, or come along to informal discussion socials which they will be holding in the future. As 1 in 5 people suffer from anxiety in the UK, with women from 15-50, being the most likely to develop the condition, the need for student support has never be so great. If you are concerned that you or a friend may be suffering from a mental health illness then you can contact Manchester Open Mind Network by liking their Facebook page and direct messaging them. Equally, Student Advice Services (located on the bottom floor of the Students’ Union, next to Student Voice) run a drop in session where you can walk in and ask for free advice in a non-judgemental environment.

Photo: Open Mind Network

Brexit Court ruling Eleanor Forrest News Contributor

Since the announcement on 23rd June Brexit has been a word on everyone’s lips, from student protests against the result to questions regarding when, or if, Article 50 will be triggered. However, how has the decision to leave the European Union affected university students and those EU funded employees, as well as the numerous research projects that the European Union has financed? On the face of it Brexit means that universities will no longer have access to a supply of income that facilitates the employment of academic staff, which comprises of 15% of University faculty.

As well as research projects and it will also jeopardize Erasmus funding. The most striking aspect of the developments on Brexit seems to be that the only certainty is uncertainty. This atmosphere, regarding both students and EU funded employees, allows for a period of contemplation. As the Lisbon Treaty or Article 50 are yet to be activated and Theresa May has not announced a clear line of action, the fate of the UK has very much been left in limbo. After the Prime Minister’s statement that “Brexit means Brexit” there persists to be a confusion that has trickled down from central government into every institution.

What matters most to universities is whether there will be a ‘hard Brexit’ or a ‘soft Brexit’, something that has been difficult to discern.

A ‘hard Brexit’ means the activation of both the Lisbon Treaty and Article 50, therefore removing subsequent funding for Britain’s universities as well as the ending of the Erasmus+ programme. This would leave a vacuum behind, in which universities will have to rely on their own global networks in order to keep certain exchange programmes operational. Therefore a ‘hard Brexit’ result will affect British universities differently depending on their own configurations, i.e. their global network. ‘Soft Brexit’, the one that will involve the least amount of change, will allow the UK to remain in the single market and add to the EU budget, allowing the UK to control her borders. Most importantly ‘Soft Brexit’ will not activate the Lisbon Treaty which will be most beneficial to UK universities as it means there will be room for negotiation concerning funding opportunities for EU faculties, the Erasmus+ programme and non-international students.

However, a point needs to be raised, concerning the monetary focus that these discussions have taken. The European Union, in 1993, changed from a purely economic construction to that of a coalition of countries dedicated to the promotion of peace, stability and human rights. Therefore, to many the leave from Europe represented Britain’s, or 52% of her, rejection of the ideals of peace, stability and prosperity. Without the European Union, regardless of the economic

benefits to this country, and the effect on our universities, the government now retains a position of absolute authority concerning every decision that this country makes. Unfortunately, this period of uncertainty is to persist, as Britain is yet to begin the arduous process of untangling herself from Europe. But, whether we voted to remain or not, the majority of the population have spoken, and it is the democratic duty of the government to comply.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Andy Burnham officially launches Greater Manchester Mayoral Campaign: “Let’s give Disunited Kingdom hope, not hate” Shivani Kaura News Contributor Andy Burnham has decided to give up his time in Westminster as the representative MP of Leigh, to stand as Labour’s candidate for the first elected Mayor of Greater Manchester.

Speaking at the launch for his mayoral campaign, Burnham stated that “politics is broken” post-Brexit, which should be a wake-up call to politicians telling them that the north and south divide in our country is bigger than ever and that “we must challenge Westminster who have failed to support the people of the north.”

Burnham’s campaign mainly focuses on reducing the amount of attention that London receives from parliament and channeling that focus towards bigger issues such as creating better transport links for young children and students in our city.

Burnham stated that he wanted “a democratic solution” — which would be new forms of political engagement, resulting in people having more power over their own lives. Prereferendum, the North relied on Manchester to make change and when the European Union expanded, this caused there to be pressure on wages and in primary schools, as well as industries collapsing along with housing prices.

This concluded with 700,000 people voting to leave in Manchester, far more than those that wished to remain. Burnham stated that he understood why they voted to leave, having parliament dictate policies upon them and forcing them to live with what they have and not expect change.

Labour’s mayoral candidate believes that this campaign will be the “start of something radical and something new” and promises that in light of the US elections, we will not get ‘Trumped’ and that it became a “cry for change”. Burnham wants to make Manchester the most “inclusive, diverse and safest place” and he wants to work with the people to write a manifesto to strengthen his campaign and to make sure that the government are closer to

Photo: iabuk@Flickr

them and to respond to what they are saying.

Burnham’s development in policy firstly focuses with young people being offered more opportunity in the surrounding communities.

Young people have become a quick target for cuts by the British parliament and that they choose to target their audience at the older generations as those are the ones that are able to vote, however Burnham believes that what politicians fail to realise is that they are the future of today. Burnham proposed that students between the ages 16–18 should receive free travel in Greater Manchester to encourage part-time jobs and extracurricular activities outside academia. A UCAS-style system should be created for those who prefer to move on to apprenticeships rather than university and companies should be asked to give more career paths for young adults without a degree.

For those that are newly graduated, Burnham wants to create links with international and UK companies to bring more professional jobs to Manchester so that more students are attracted to staying the city and that we become more cosmopolitan. Moving on to the health sector and social services, Burnham wants more council housing, built by younger adults, as well as those who work in care homes to be paid more than the minimum wage.

When questioned about the lack of women in politics, Burnham became impassioned about changing our society’s mentality, adding that every tier of education should be more involved in parliament — Burnham wants to introduce a youth parliament to Manchester.

He also stated that devolution would be a long process but one that was achievable.

With the rise of Manchester’s population and the increasing demand for support of students, young people, the homeless and the NHS, Burnham has shown that he wants unity and not division, and to create the Northern Powerhouse that Theresa May and other members of parliament have quickly ignored and dismissed in Westminster.

Women more likely to die from taking ecstasy

Eliza Slawther News Contributor

Ecstasy, or MDMA, is an illegal drug taken by an estimated half a million people in the UK every weekend. Whilst the drug does not usually result in death, it can be very dangerous and even fatal in high doses.

In the light of several deaths of young women, new information has arisen about the increased risk of ecstasy use for women. As well as statistics pointing towards circumstantial differences in the way that women and men take drugs — such as women being less likely to purchase their own substances or know how much they are taking — biological differences between males and females mean that women are far more susceptible to experiencing harmful side effects.

One of the main, and most dangerous negative effects of the drug is a condition called ‘hyponatremia’, which develops when there is too much water in the cells of the body. Ecstasy makes the body hold on to water, and people who take it also tend to drink water in order to feel hydrated. This has the potential to damage the brain as the cells swell. The reason why females are more likely to be affected than males is because oestrogen affects the ability of the cell’s pumps to remove this excess water.

A 2010 study at the ‘Awakenings’ festival in The Netherlands found that only 3% of men had a mild form of hypotremia, in contrast to over 25% of women. If too much ecstasy is taken, then this can become fatal.

Not only is ecstasy dangerous to women on a biological level, but it is very difficult to know ex-

actly how much is being ingested. The amount of MDMA in pills has increased over the past few years, and according to the Global Drug Survey 2016 there has been a “four-fold increase in British female clubbers seeking emergency medical treatment in last 3 years”. This increase in strength may also explain the increase in female casualties, as they have a tendency to react badly to high doses of MDMA. Sacha Lord-Marchionne, co-founder of Manchester’s The Warehouse Project explains that “over the last two years specifically, the strength of tablets has increased four or five times”, and also states that any club owner who claims that no drugs enter their venue is “a liar”. The Warehouse Project is the only nightclub in the UK that runs on-site drug testing, and can therefore issue warnings about any pills found to be particularly high in potency.

In the Netherlands testing facilities are in place, partly funded by the government, where drugusers can have their ecstasy anonymously tested for strength. Although ecstasy use is illegal in The Netherlands, the low death rate from ecstasy may be due to this safeguard being in place.

However, most people do not know how strong their ecstasy pills are, so the only way to stay completely safe is to not take ecstasy at all. This being said, women who do choose to take the drug should be aware of how much they are taking, and the general advice is to take only half a pill at a time, and never to take more than one. The global drug survey has issued a guide to harm reduction and taking drugs more safely, which can be found at globaldrugsurvey.com.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Science

AIDS-related deaths reduce with anti-fungal drugs Amy Bradley Science Reporter AIDS-related illnesses were responsible for 1,100,000 deaths in 2015, of which around half of were caused by fungal infections. These fungal infections take advantage of the weakened immune system of someone suffering from HIV/AIDS and can have serious effects.

The opportunity to save many of these lives may lie in the use of generic anti-fungal drugs according to data analysis by Professor David Denning of the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI), suggesting that early diagnosis and treatment of fungal diseases could save over 1,000,000 deaths by 2020.

GAFFI has been praised for highlighting the current issue of the undiagnosed and untreated fungal infections among people living with HIV, and the number of deaths this lack of research causes. It is predicted that there will be over 700,000 deaths by AIDS in 2020 and GAFFI urges for global research in identifying treatment and for raised awareness of the problem. GAFFI suggests that with progression in this area, the number of predicted deaths in 2020 could be reduced by 42 per cent and save the lives of many affected by AIDS, among whom the median death age is mid-30s.

The target of ‘zero AIDS by 2015’ has sadly been missed, but with new and advanced research into treating fungal infections related to AIDS, the vision of decreasing the death toll to a smaller figure of 500,000 a year is still a hopeful goal. With HIV and AIDS being one of the biggest challenges in global health, it is crucial that work on treatment and diagnosis, like the work of GAFFI, is continued in order to have an AIDS free world.

Eloise Burt, President of Manchester’s Youth Stop Aids, commented: “Contracting HIV is no longer a death sentence, providing people have access to the medicines they need. Unfortunately 3300 people are still dying from AIDS-related diseases each day due to a lack of available medicines and omissions in research and development. We are delighted to hear of GAFFI’s intent to address this issue; this brings us closer to our aim of an AIDS free world by 2030. Despite this, we are still calling on Priti Patel, International Development Minister to review the UK’s global work on HIV/AIDS.”

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Battle of the sexes: can men handle the contraceptive heat?

A recent study into male contraceptive injections was halted when men displayed side effects such as acne, weight gain, muscle pain and mood swings and it seems women are not happy about it Ciara Gartshore Science Reporter I remember during first year, the guy I was seeing asked me why I wasn’t on the pill when condoms were such a bore. What flew through my head was the idea of weight gain, acne, deep vein thrombosis, infertility, depression, and breast cancer, not to mention remembering to take a pill every day and being solely responsible for an unwanted pregnancy. The women in my family who had tried the pill as a method of contraception had turned into aggressive, selfconfessed psychos, and as a Biology student with some understanding of the complex interactions of hormones in the body, ingesting said chemicals every day had never really appealed to me. That said, after trying a few, I was lucky enough to find a pill that works for me; my skin is clearer and my moods are as stable as they’ll ever be. As for the longer-term side effects, I still worry about breast cancer, and every time the doctor checks my blood pressure I’m relieved to see it’s normal and that I’m not at risk of bloodclots and consequent death. However, side-effects such as depression and mood swings are much harder to identify, and often women don’t know the cause of their unhappiness. A recent study — the first of its kind, even though women have been taking the pill since 1962 — found a significant link between the pill and depression, with the likelihood of developing mental health issues rising to 80 per cent in girls aged 15 to 19 for some forms of contraception. For all the reasons aforementioned, I tutted and rolled my eyes along with the majority of women when I first saw headlines such as, ‘Male contraception injection halted due to ‘intolerable’ side effects that women have suffered for years,’ by The Independent. These articles were referring to a recent study into male contraceptive injections, and cited side effects such as acne, weight gain, muscle pains, and mood swings, which when

suffered by women are seen as a small price to pay for efficient contraception. However, on reading the original study, it became apparent that it wasn’t simply a case of men not being tough enough to share the burden of contraceptive responsibility.

This trial took place in 10 different study centres worldwide and consisted of 320 male participants aged 18-45, all of whom had female partners aged 18-38 with no known fertility problems. The men received hormone injections into their muscles once every 8 weeks for just over a year with a maximum total of 7 injections. The results were very promising. 96 per cent of participants had their sperm concentration suppressed to 15 times the normal amount and there were only four pregnancies reported: it was calculated that there was a 1.6 per cent risk of unwanted pregnancy. Within a year of stopping treatment, 95 per cent of the men recovered their full ability to produce sperm.

However, an independent monitoring committee decided to stop the research early due to the high incidence of adverse side effects, and an alarmingly high occurrence in one study centre in particular. Overall, 45 per cent the participants suffered from acne, 38 per cent experienced increases in libido and 20 per cent experienced moderate to severe mood swings. These rates were much higher than the expected estimates created from previous smaller studies, suggesting not enough was known about the drug and its effects. One of the participants committed suicide, although the researchers ruled it was unrelated to the study and his family suggested it was due to stress at work; although it’s unclear to me how you can definitively say that a seemingly mood-altering drug had no part to play in someone taking their own life. There was another attempted suicide by paracetamol overdose and a case of depression diagnosed, which were both ruled as possibly related to the study. What is surely

the most curious part of this experiment is the fact that the majority of the side effects were reported in one study centre – Indonesia. This study centre accounted for 62 out of 65 of the mood disorders reported, 65 of 71 of the muscle pain and 63 of 124 of the increases in libido.

This indicates either an unknown risk to certain groups of people or a discrepancy in the study methods, which could therefore render the results unreliable. Obstetrics & Gynaecology expert and science communicator Dr. Jen Gunter said: “The side effects were unexpectedly high and seemed skewed to certain testing centres.

That suggests that perhaps the drug is riskier than previously assumed, or simply that one or many of the testing centres weren’t running particularly good trials. Neither option is good.”

It was for these safety reasons that the trial was halted, not simply because men couldn’t hack a few spots and some hormonal cramps. Nature has definitely dealt women a poorer hand, and it’s easy to feel bitter about the ease with which men have avoided birth control responsibility for the last 50 years, yet we shouldn’t punish men by putting them through hormonal hell too. What we should really be focusing on is the gender inequality in scientific research. Why has it taken this long for there to be a large-scale investigation of this kind into male contraceptives? Granted, there have been some other male contraceptive trials, but these were discontinued due to reported shrinking of the testes. So, why are there FDA-approved contraceptive pills on the market that have been shown to shrink our biological equivalent, the ovaries?

Why have these side effects been deemed acceptable when they are suffered by women, but not by men? The conclusion that can be drawn from this study, and the exasperated reaction of women who read about it, is that we need more research into better contraception methods for both men and women.

Photo: TNS Sofres@Flickr

Can nature documentaries promote conservation?

Planet Earth II launched a day before news broke on a 50-year wildlife population low.

Nature documentaries have always valued themselves on being educational and entertaining — but are they teaching us anything?

Most people enjoy the beauty of the natural world. You can go scuba diving in the Cala d’Hort Marine Nature Reserve near Ibiza, trekking in the Schwarzwald in Western Germany, or you could scale the Alps. Without even needing to leave Europe you can engage with profoundly different environments. It’s often the environments at the extreme ends of the spectrum that draw the most media attention. Countless documentaries explore the mountains, jungles, deserts and seas of the world meaning we have access to images of places we could never visit and animals which we would otherwise never see.

The first week of November marked the start of the second series of Planet Earth with David Attenborough, arguably the most iconic nature documentary presenter of our times. The BBC has a long history of high quality nature documentaries such as the Planet Earth series, the Wonders of Life, The Great British Year and The Burrowers, to name a few. These programs and others like them masterly show us the world’s biodiversity but should they have also have a greater role in protecting it, and if so, how?

A recent article in The Guardian stated that “global wildlife populations have fallen by 58 per cent since 1970”. This statistic came from the Living Planet assessment, which is a report by the World Wildlife Fund using data from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) on the state of the world’s wildlife. This assessment is repeated every two years and the statistic seems quite precise but has been subject to some scrutiny. The distribution of data that feeds into the report is far from equal, with much of it coming from Western Europe and little from places such as South America. However Dr Robin Freeman, head of ZSL’s Indicators & Assessments Unit, said that they were “confident that the method [they] are using is the best method to present an overall estimate of population decline.”

Radio 4’s More or Less programme also explored this figure and

Tom Patterson Science Reporter explained ways that the data may be skewed towards certain wildlife populations. But there are benefits of having a figure to work with, as Louise McRae from the ZSL explained: “Using one measure and one number is an easy way to communicate what is happening to biodiversity globally.” Besides raising awareness, she went on to say that it’s useful for policy making and monitoring progress.

It is difficult to quantify vast trends such as worldwide population shifts and decline is not equatable to extinction. According to a lot of the information currently available we are reaching points of no return with certain populations.

The problem is that we often have a disconnect between the bigger picture of environmental issues and our engagement with them. If somebody lives in a city like Manchester, they may only engage with nature in a very minimal way by, for example, visiting a park every now and then. The only animals most of us are likely to see on a day-to-day basis are our pets, the pigeons and maybe the odd squirrel. There is an opportunity with documentaries to connect with people and to bring them knowledge about the balance of nature as well as the beauty.

In an exquisitely cinematic program like Planet Earth, there’s a rollercoaster of emotions with the plight of the animals in their natural environments. Without giving any spoilers, it’s safe to say that the penguins and iguanas in episode one have some pretty difficult obstacles in life. The main purpose of many nature documentaries is to remain neutral and simply record life in as unobtrusive a way as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to ignore the role of humanity in altering the environments in question.

Also on the first episode, you learn that the population of red

crabs on Christmas Island has been greatly reduced by the introduction of ‘crazy ants’. This damage now has to be monitored and controlled by people working on the island. It’s just one example of the impact that humanity is having on the ecosystems of the world.

Even having very small parts in documentaries which emphasise this impact is surely one way of bringing attention to conservation issues, hopefully followed by positive change.

The 2008 documentary series Wild China was a slightly more unflinching look at wildlife and our relationship with it. After watching an episode or two you may come to dread the inevitable sections about endangered species which are or were considered delicacies or hunted for alleged medicinal qualities. This doesn’t detract from the diversity of wildlife nor the awe-inspiring environments that the documentary explores. In some ways it actually enhances the preciousness of nature by letting us know about both the fragility of the ecosystem and the measures that people are taking to protect it.

It’s the job of the government to implement environmentally friendly legislation and to ensure that companies and individuals adhere to it. But it’s the job of the people to make sure the government knows what future we want for the world. Exposing people to environmental issues alongside images and sounds of what they could be losing is bound to create a strong argument for conservation. Documentaries are therefore a powerful tool for spreading both information and wonder.

Without realising the consequences of our own action or inaction, both as individuals and nations, we may lose some of the most beautiful species in the world. Nature is not just out there somewhere, in the jungles of Thailand or the Australian outback, it’s part of every piece of land and sea and we have a responsibility to preserve it and let it flourish.

Global 7

ISSUE 08 / 14th November 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

In theThenews this week... important and interesting stories from the wider world this week Stories by: Harry Newton, Elise Gallagher, Araddhna Patel, Charlie Spargo, Gemma Sowerby

The Loch Ness Monster — long time no sea?

UK Steve Frame was driving on the A82 road in Drumnadrochit when he stopped to take a picture of Loch Ness.

A bizarre strip of bubbles can be seen in his photo, possibly suggesting that Nessie made her way to closer to the surface.

Steve told the Scottish Sun: “There were no boats about and it definitely wasn’t a seal, a bird or a fish. It was much too big for that. I often see strange things on the loch. But this is the first time I have seen anything like this.”

Unfortunately, after examining the photos, Steve Feltham, a local Nessie hunter, could not say with certainty whether it was the sea monster or not.

Petition to rename fire ants ‘spicy boys’

US In a week where a petition calling for a second EU referendum has reached over 4.1 million signatures, one man in the USA is continuing the important political activism: he has launched a change.org petition named ‘Rename Fire Ants to Spicy Boys!!!’

“It’s 2016, there are 36 genders, bayblade might be a new olympic sport, why arent we calling fire ants ‘spicy boys’?” asks the petition, which will be delivered to Hillary Clinton and ‘Certified Daddy’ Morgan Freeman. Having already garnered over 82,000 signatures, news outlets including the Independent have reached out to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature for comment.

Man’s toilet trip discovers 49,000 year old Aboriginal site Australia Archaeologist Giles Hamm was surveying an area in Southern Australia, when he uncovererd a 49,000 year old aboriginal human settlement — from the toilet.

He was surveying a territory in Flinders Ranges with an aboriginal elder Cliffford Coulthard. Hamm labelled it “one of the most important sites in Australian pre-history” when talking to ABC News.

The large gorge and spring was surrounded by rock art, and was only discovered when Clifford had wondered away to try and find somewhere to go to the toilet. 4,300 objects and 200 bone fragments were recovered from the site.

This Australian toilet discovery has dunny some good.

Researchers study to combat selfie deaths International In the first eight months of 2016, there have been 73 deaths linked to selfie taking. This is an increase on the 39 deaths of 2015 and 15 deaths of 2014. Selfies are becoming increasingly dangerous, so researchers have put some time into studying ways to stop people dying whilst taking selfies.

PhD student Hemank Lamba is working on an app to warn people about the dangers of selfie-taking. 76 of the 127 confirmed selfie deaths took place in India, nine in Pakistan, eight in the USA, and six in Russia. Dying falling from a great height whilst taking a picture is the most likely, followed by water-related deaths such as jumping into the sea.

Dying whilst taking a selfie eh? Picture that.

Mars-mot spotted

Mars After carefully studying pictures sent back from the surface of Mars, a dogged UFO investigator claims there is irrefutable evidence of life on the red planet.

The editor of UFO Sightings Daily, Scott C Waring, is convinced he’s spotted not an extra-terrestrial, but an Earth native; a groundhog.

Waring is convinced he sees in the photo from NASA’s Curiosity Rover the large rodent standing on all fours, amongst the similarly-coloured rocks of Mars. “Its eyes, nose, hair and leg stance all match.”

“This is proof,” he says, “that some small animals are alive and well on Mars. Yes, I say it’s alive.”

In Science this week...

Salad bags can spread Salmonella UK Researchers at the University of Leicester have said that a combination of moisture and leaking nutrients inside bagged salad can create an environment where bacteria can thrive. Studies show that the risk of food poisoning is particularly bad in spinach and rocket leaves.

Dr Freestone, who was involved in the research, has said: “Don’t be alarmed, we still eat bagged salad, but don’t keep bagged salad any longer than you need to, we normally buy it on the day we eat it.”

‘Post-truth’ is Word of the Year

UK

Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year for 2016 is ‘post-truth’.

The definition of this is “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal beliefs.”

The term’s usage has increased by around 2000 percent in 2016, in comparison to the year before. In a world where ‘selfie,’ ‘omnishambles,’ and ‘reem’ are in the Oxford Dictionary, it seems apt for the company to make their Word of the Year something that has dominated the social landscape too! In a year of Brexit and the presidential election, the word seems to be a good choice.

Koala-ty financial advice Australia It appears that financial difficulties affect the animal kingdom too, after a koala bear in Leongotha, Australia, was spotted at an accountantcy firm.

The bear, which is in fact a marsupial and not related to bears, waited patiently outside the doors of the office before wandering in. Once it had finished its business there, it was calmly escorted off the premises, checked over by a vet and sent to a more “appropriate” location.

Australian MP Harriet Shing captured the event on Twitter. “I’m sure his taxes are entirely in order, but it’s important to be thorough”, she tweeted.

Sneezing is the big new sexual fetish International Thousands are part of a large fetish community dedicated to people sneezing. The winter does instantly become a little sexier if you have a sneezing fetish. Sneezing is the way your body expels germs, goz, and horribleness — but also a way to turn on thousands of people.

There is a whole forum dedicated to those people who have a fetish for sneezing, sneezefetishforum.org. This includes general chit-chat and naughty talk. Some evidence suggests that sneezing releases endorphins, similar to how an orgasm works, which may go some way to explaining this. People all over the world have been attempting to catch colds to stimulate themselves.

I’m pretty sure that if I called these people weird, they would say “back atchoo”.

New superplane faster than Concorde

UK The subscale XB-1 Superson Demonstrator is a ridiculously impressive name for an object, but it lives up to its impressive name. The prototype plane, nicknamed “Baby Boom” is going to be scaled up as a passenger plane for 45 people, and will reach up to 1451mph. This is 100mph faster than the famous Concorde that retired from action in October of 2003 due to safety fears.

Richard Branson has backed the plane and has the option to buy ten of them. The plane can fly from London to New York in 3.5 hours, which is approximately how long it will take you to get from Piccadilly to Stockport on a Virgin train due to delays.

Woman gets an unexpected mouthful Kenya A woman in Ghana discovered a phallic bit of meat in her meal from a fast food restaurant. After enquiring with the restaurant she discovered that they had bought it from a chop house in the suburb of Pokuase in Accra.

The diner, Akosua, was intent on finding out what the penis shaped piece of meat was and took it home and where she contacted her friend, a lab technician. “My sister opted to show it to a lab technician friend later, who said because the meat was cooked, an ordinary lab test wouldn’t be able to prove it to be animal or human.”

Akosua continued, telling 3news.com that the lab technician “advised a forensic test be done on it but considering the bureaucratic processes these things go through, we gave up and the meat lies in our fridge.”

Science by: Georgie Hines, Harry Newton, Charlie Spargo

Teenage girl wins right to be frozen after death

UK The body of a 14-year-old who died of cancer has been cryogenically preserved in the hope that treatment will be available some time in the future. A landmark High Court case, which ended on the 6th of October, ruled that the mother of the deceased girl had the right to make the decision on behalf of her late daughter.

The girl had written a letter to the judge saying “I want to live and live longer”, and that freezing “gives me a chance to be cured and woken up”.

The girl, whose mother supported her decision but whose father was against it, died last month and her body has been flown to America for preservation.

Kenyan vasectomies streamed live on Facebook

Kenya In Kenya, at least 150 men have had a vasectomy streamed live on Facebook. The procedure takes around twenty minutes and involves cutting off the tubes that carry sperm. After the procedure semen is still be produced in the same volume as before, but will not carry sperm.

The performance occurs behind a curtain on stage at the Kenyan National Theatre in Nairobi. The idea behind filming the procedure is to battle the stigma that is attached to Kenyan men wanting a vasectomy.

Dr Jack Zhang told the BBC that, ““Some men fear that in Africa there’s a high mortality rate so they need to have more children.” This is really cutting edge stuff isn’t it?

Napping can improve exam performance Singapore Having a quick nap could have as positive effect on your exam results as a desperate lastminute cram, a study has shown. There is also evidence that the long-term effects on memory could be more positive than revision too. Neuroscientists at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore tested a cohort of students and found they performed better in a test of recollection if they had napped for an hour than if they had watched a film or revised what they had been taught.

Results of another test after a week showed those who had napped still had the highest scores. It is thought that perhaps it is due to the creation of memories during sleep or that learning is enhanced following the nap.

8

Feature

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

A Student life

Welcome to a new weekly feature where we interview students about life outside their degree CV

The

free speech advocate

Photo: The Mancunion

Jennifer Sterne Editor-in-chief

J

o Mitchison was not your typical free speech advocate. Instead of being a passionate alt-right, clad in a ‘Make America great again’ cap to honour the new President elect, and carrying in a copy of the Daily Star in mockery of its recent ban, in walked Jo. Clad not in a red cap, but a knitted cardie and purple scarf, Jo, who despite warning me she was woefully full of cold and may not be sparkling, was someone you could not help but warm to.

Jo, a mature student in her first year of studying adult nursing, is a part of the Free speech and secular society (FSS) and described herself as a feminist and liberal leftie, not two descriptions I imagine many would have expected to come before ‘free speech advocate’ in the landscape of today’s student politics.

We met in the Students’ Union, surroundings which could have stirred up animosity for my interviewee, yet instead the interview ended with Jo saying she “would just love to see a dialogue” set up between her society and the Union.

She even suggested an event could be held for there to be a breakthrough in relations, arguing they just “need to be talking more. We’re never going to fix the world if we’re just shouting at each other from opposite sides of the wall” and then when they do talk they might “find we’re not on opposite sides of the wall at all, but unless we start talking we’re never going to find that out are we?”

“If we don’t engage with these awful, awful opinions, they’re just going to stay awful” During the interview Jo admitted the society is having to enforce some reputation damage control

this year, alluding to the string of reports of clashes with the Students’ Union Exec team, most famously in the case of the Milo Yiannopoulos and Julie Bindel no-platforming and the displaying of the

“People from the Students’ Union just do not want anything to do with us, and I know we’ve been called crazy rightwing, Nazis” controversial Charlie Hebdo cover. Jo stressed that most of this “bad reputation” was out of control of the society. She lamented the fact “that people from the Students’ Union just do not want anything to do with us, and I know we’ve been called crazy rightwing, Nazis, which is really misinformed”. Apparently invitations have been extended to the Exec, “but there is just an unwillingness to engage with us, probably because they think we’re a bunch of evil people but that’s wrong! It’s really wrong.”

Jo actually got involved in the FSS off the back of the Yiannopolos and Bindel controversy, after standing in to organise the Yiannopolos event on campus which eventually went ahead away from the Union building. After that Jo was kept on as what she describes as the ‘informal social events organiser’.

Our conversation started in the same way every conversation has probably started since Wednesday morning, with Trump. Jo believes the culture of not engaging with controversial topics it partly to blame for the result, as it has created “a sort of echo chamber.”

She argued that when “people say ‘I don’t agree with that opinion at all, that must make you a terrible person, and I’m going to ignore you to show that I disapprove of what you say’ that doesn’t stop them thinking what they think, talking and mobi-

Course: Adult Nursing, first year (used to teach Psychology and Social Politics) From: Newcastle Balance of life/society: Terrible. She “works two jobs, so basically I do what I can when I can… So yeah I balance it with difficulty.

Best part: “Meeting people. We’ve got gay people, straight people, people who aren’t gender binary, people from all over the world it’s so interesting, and I’m just getting my ideas shaken up and changed and I always love that.”

Worst part: “Feeling frustrated that I can’t initiate the kind of dialogues I want to initiate and where I’ve tried I feel like I’m in the middle trying to say ‘no don’t shout at each other, let’s just talk.’”

Where will you be in 15 years?: In the middle of a nursing career, a published fictional writer — if I ever get time to write the damn book.

How do you get involved?: We have socials once a month normally at Kro and we have a Facebook page and a website which says when they are. lising and eventually apparently winning really important votes.”

Jo spoke passionately about her belief that when people feel “shunned” and thought of as “terrible people” it only adds to the problem. She believes “if you don’t argue with those people they’re not going to change their mind, they’re just going to talk to people who agree with them, and it’s just always going to be polar opposites at odds.”

We then turned to safe spaces and trigger warnings, the two areas where free speech activists have clashed with unions most. Against what many might have expected, Jo claimed, acknowledging it might surprise some to find out, that she thinks “it’s great that there is somewhere where you know you can come and they’re not going to tolerate abuse.”

Jo revealed she had taught at a university level before and had herself imposed a sort of trigger warning before each lecture, explaining that if she thought a topic might be difficult for some “I’d just give them a bit of a heads up the week before and if they just decide ‘well I can’t have this, they just wouldn’t come’, it’s kind of just good manners.”

Jo then opened up to explain how this response stemmed from the personal tragedy of her Dad dying when she was young. She recalled skiving school if she knew that they would be doing family members in languages, because she “was terrified.

I didn’t want to have to say, my Dad is dead.”

While she believed that in this sense safe spaces and trigger warnings were good she still believes things can “go a bit far”, we need to keep “discussing controversial thing, things that might offend you, these are important ideas to engage with, because they’re out there, and they need challenging, discussing and combating.”

The most recurring theme in no-platforming seems to surround people’s opinions on trans issues, which Jo addressed, acknowledging that she is not a trans person and was speaking from her

“We’re never going to fix the world if we just shout at each other” “own privileged position.” She explained her belief that we need to accept “people have questions about it, they don’t understand it. Some people are very against it, they probably don’t know much about it, and I completely understand it’s awful to be constantly questioned, constantly bullied, and all that kind of stuff, but they [critics] are not going

anywhere.

“If we don’t engage with these awful, awful opinions, they’re just going to stay awful.”

I then wanted to explore more what it was like to be a “liberal leftie feminist” in a society which has been, as she described, compared to Nazis. Jo admitted it has been “challenging” because she had “never encountered these views before” and now she is encountering anti-feminists. However she celebrated the fact that people who she first met as really anti-feminist are “now less anti-feminist because they’ve talked to me so that’s got to be a good thing.”

Interestingly she claimed that while when she joined the society it was mainly right-wing, now it’s mainly left-wing. She explained this in relation to the way society is going: “Before the people whose opinions were seen as wrong and bad were the right-wingers, so they were the ones using the label of free speech to demand that they are heard, and that’s why free speech is associated with all these,

“If you say to someone, ‘you can’t talk about that it’s a terrible awful opinion’, what happens if they get in charge?”

in my opinion, terrible awful opinions.”

She admitted it is still this way in student politics as the NUS is still “definitely left wing, so they’ve got no reason to fight for what they’re trying to say, because it’s like they’re the ruling party and it’s the minority right-wingers who are saying ‘don’t silence us – free speech!’”

Yet she warned that “if you say to someone, ‘you can’t talk about that it’s a terrible awful opinion’, what happens if they get in charge? And they’re like ‘well you shut us up’?” I then brought up the recent calls by Tory councillor Christian Holliday for those still supporting EU membership to be charged with treason, as an example of the tables turning.

Jo agreed and claimed that “that’s why you’ve got to fight for free speech across the board, even though you might hugely, hugely disagree with it, because we need to uphold it, because you never know when it might be you needing free speech for something genuinely important to you.”

Do you or your society want to be featured in the Mancunion?

Email us at features@mancunion.com

Feature 9

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

The Quidditch player Jacob Nicholas Features Editor

L

ivi Dickinson is an avid quidditch player.

And yet, despite being someone who spends their free time running around a park with a fake broom between her legs, she’s completely self-aware, down to earth and friendly. She’s aware of quidditch’s eccentricities, but speaks with passion and enthusiasm both for the sport itself and the wider community that comes with it.

I started by asking perhaps the most obvious question – how does quidditch work in the real world?

“First thing, we don’t fly, but we do have brooms, which are just kind of tube plastic things we run around with at all times,” Livi replied, somewhat disappointingly, “it’s a mix between rugby and dodgeball. It’s a full contact sport, and it’s based off Harry Potter, so you have the positions of chaser, you have beaters, you have keeper and you have a seeker, but the bludgers are dodgeballs instead, so they get thrown at you and if you get hit you have to dismount and run back to your hoops… and the chaser game is kind of the rugby aspect, you’ve got quaffles and you’ve got to try to run up to the other hoops.”

The weirdest part of the sport, however, is that of the snitch. Instead of a flying golden ball you have “a person, a neutral party who has basically a sock with a tennis ball in velcroed to the back of their shorts

and they don’t have a broom, and the seekers have to try and grab the snitch without full contacting them, but the snitch can tackle them,” Livi grinned, clearly aware of how silly it sounds.

The sport ends up being a surprisingly solid interpretation of its fantastical inspiration: “It’s very like quidditch, we get recognised a lot in the park when we’re practicing,” Livi laughed.

Despite being perhaps a bit strange, and the Harry Potter series having finished both books and films, quidditch is growing at a remarkable rate, “there are nearly 40 teams across the country. They’re all university based, it started in America so it’s very big there, but here it’s pretty big and there’s quite a good community here. This year’s British cup there are going to be 32 teams.”

Livi seems relatively hopeful of UoM’s chances this year too: “We’re quite a new team but we’re not as new as other teams, we’ve got a really good group this year.”

I asked Livi what made here get involved in quidditch in the first place. “I guess it’s because I’m a Harry Potter nerd?” she replied, “that was my first reason, and I wanted something to do for exercise but I’d never really done sport, so I thought this would be a good place to start, because a lot of people who do start playing quidditch have never played sport before, because it is that kind of welcoming community.”

This sense of community seems to be hugely im-

portant to Livi: “I stuck because it’s a really fun game and the whole community is really lovely,” she told me. “Everyone’s really nice to each other, I mean you get friendly rivalries… but everyone wants to support each other and you don’t feel cut out from the wider community at all.”

“It’s a full contact sport, and it’s based off Harry Potter” The community spirit even extends to the rules.

Quidditch is a mixed gender sport, and so the rules are written specifically to be encouraging and inclu-

sive to everybody. “The rules are gender inclusive specifically. The seeker comes on about twenty minutes in, before that you have six people on the pitch… and you can’t have more than four of one gender on the pitch at one time, so it makes sure that it doesn’t become a boys’ club, because it is quite physical, so it makes sure it’s not dominated by one group of people. And non-binary people are recognised as independent. Basically it just makes sure anyone can play if they want to play it, and I think it’s a really lovely thing that you don’t see in a lot of sports, that it’s encouraging people to play it and anyone can play it.”

So really, whilst it initially sounds slightly ridiculous, quidditch seems to provide a way for people to hang out and keep fit by doing something a bit silly, whilst getting to belong to an inclusive and caring community. Who can ask for more than that? Well, apart from the flying.

CV Course: Religion and Theology (3rd Year) From: Norfolk How do you manage university life with quidditch? “I really enjoy it so it’s not too much of a hardship."

Best Bit: "I would say the best bit, well I just love the whole thing, it’s something I enjoy, and you also get the health benefits of it, and you get to meet great people and just get a whole new group of friends."

Worst Bit: "It kind of sucks sometimes with the weather, because we practice outside, and when it gets to the winter and you having to practice for two hours in the cold and the rain and the mud, that’s one thing I wish we could control a bit more."

Where do you see yourself in 15 years time? "Ooh I don’t know, well after I graduate I want to do a law conversion, so hopefully practising law. But if I can have it [quidditch] it’s not something I want to say goodbye to when I finish uni.

How do you get involved? "We have a Facebook page! It’s Manchester University Quidditch Club, and most Saturdays we are in Whitworth Park at one, and on Wednesday afternoons we have a games session where we just run around and play capture the flag and stuff. We’re really welcoming and we’re always looking for new people!"

Photo: Manchester University Quidditch Club

The Prince of the Panto Society

Emma Shanks Features Editor

M

eet Bradley Pascall, the largerthan-life postgrad managing to find time, alongside his studies, to be Social Secretary of The University of Manchester’s very own Panto Society, after a four-year long membership.

As I arrive at the Students' Union’s unassuming top floor of society spaces on a bitter cold Thursday afternoon, I was met by the warming sounds of a revised pantomime rendition of Pink’s Get the Party Started. “A big thing we value as a society is how informal and relaxed it is. I know some acting societies tend to take themselves seriously — we actively try and not take ourselves seriously and we try and put that forward on stage as well”.

But what seems an eccentric series of events for me constitutes an average mid-week rehearsal for Bradley. “I don’t think panto is the kind of society that attracts big egos very much. In order to really enjoy it you’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself.

We’ve got a lot of drama students who just love doing it because of how different and more relaxed it is – we do try and make it as comfortable as we can."

The crew are rehearsing for their upcoming show of Beauty and the Beast. “At the moment we’re making sure the cast of 22 get to know each other. The first few rehearsals are always quite informal while everybody is still getting used to the style of the show”.

“I wasn’t really comfortable with doing anything other than Shakespeare ” Though panto is certainly one of the more niche societies Manchester has to offer, Bradley explains how the group tailor the entertainment to suit its university audience. “It’s your classic pantomime,

CV Course: Postgraduate in Film Studies From: Telford, Shropshire Balance of university life and society: 80% societies, 20% academic Worst part: “Getting really drunk on a social the day before a weekend rehearsal and having a really awful excuse for turning up late.”

Best part: “The feeling of togetherness and that sense of solidarity, especially when we all have the big hug before the final show — and then obviously the after party is cool as well.”

Where do they see themselves in 15 years: “On stage.”

How to get involved: “Give us a like at our Facebook page, UOMPanto, or follow us on Twitter @uompanto, where we post updates on our fundraising events and let you know when we have auditions. But, honestly, even if you miss them and are still up for a little role, contact one of the committee members: there are always loads of chorus parts!”

with audience interaction, but obviously students’ heckling tends to be a lot rowdier so we actually invite it — we want it to be a student panto, that’s like our unique flavour.”

When asked how he first found a passion for the art, Bradley said: “I wasn’t really comfortable with doing anything other than Shakespeare before but I put my name down for about fifteen societies, as you do in first year, and panto was just one of the ones I went with because they made me feel so welcome — and I’ve come back every year since”.

But juggling studies with a further involvement in four more societies (Quidditch club, E-Sports, Gaming, and Comedy) can’t be an easy routine to uphold. “It is quite difficult to keep on a lot of stuff but I enjoy doing everything so it’s nothing.”

Having said that, ‘oh no it isn’t!’ all dance and drama for the members of Panto Society, who are famously good at enjoying the social side to this setting too. “Our spiritual home is Poptastic at AXM Club and our panto dame now works there so he invites us down. There was a group of fifteen of us last week, it was great, we just partied together and got free shots. We’re having a karaoke social next week — you should come!”

They proved their successes back in 2013 when they won the award for Best Arts & Media Society.

I asked Bradley if the group is working towards any similar titles this year. “We’re hoping that with Mean Girls the Panto coming up we can give it another go." On enquiring as to where all the funding for the society comes from and goes to, he said: “We never straight up ask people for money to fund our shows and it’s free to join the society. We usually hold fundraiser events, of which a small percentage goes to essentials, like paint for backdrops, but everything else we make on the door goes to R.A.G (Manchester Raise and Give).”

So while when it comes to choosing a society the options are endless, don’t overlook Panto — it promises to be a sanctuary of stress-free light-hearted relief. “The great thing about panto is that you don’t need to be able to sing, you don’t need to be able to act, you don’t even need to be able to dance, you just need to be ready to have a bit of fun!”

Photo: Emily Oulton

Opinion

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Have an opinion?

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

Please fix the bike pump Ed Potter Contributor Here lies a silent problem on campus that has long gone unreported. Every day he claims the tyres of the innocent and unsuspecting student. Whilst pretending to be a friend offering a helping hand, what he is actually doing is much more sinister. Let me tell you about my shocking experience.

It was a cold and dark Thursday evening in Manchester two weeks ago, when my housemate and I set on our way to Old Trafford to watch a football match.

Having decided to the most efficient means of transport was to cycle, we set off into the night, not knowing the trouble that awaited us. Rattling down the road we approached university, and saw Alan Gilbert Learning Commons. ‘Aha!’ we said, ‘there’s a public bike pump there, where we can quickly top up on air!’

“both man and machine are now looking equally deflated.”

Disaster strikes. We swing in towards Ali G and mount our bikes against the wall next to the pump. Whilst discussing the ins and outs of whether Zlatan will play or not, my housemate James begins to twist the pump end onto his tyre. That was when he stuck [bike tyre begins to make hissing noise as air escapes]. James begins pumping, the tyre keeps hissing. What’s going on here? Have we not got it fixed on properly? Fifteen minutes later, both man and machine are now looking equally deflated. James runs to the Students’ Union to find help, leaving me with the monster. I look at my different shaped valve, I look at the bike pump: I can do this.

On it goes [bike tyre hisses]. With all my effort I pump, desperate to keep the £20 bike that I have grown to love so much in operation. But he is merciless, my tyre is down, the pump claims a second victim in twenty minutes.

I have come to learn that this issue is widely known about by people around the city. For the man at Hillcourt street cycles, it’s a good source of potential income - but for many of us poor students the painful recollection of the encounter is just too much.

So the problem continues.

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

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

US election: The Mancunion reacts

Trump: our ignorance exposed, again The “surprised” reaction to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory says a great deal about the enclaves of opinion that many students reside in, argues contributor David Moseley

It seems that many people woke up on Wednesday with the foggy headache and the sickly unease of a post-election hangover, regardless of whether you stayed for the self-medicating and drinking, or tried to sleep through the storm. Waking to the news of a Trump presidency made a grey Manchester that bit greyer. There was a post-Brexit type heaviness; an atmosphere of mourning.

Throughout the day following the election, there emerged an expected slew of articles about how the world will end, how Americans are all preparing to run for the Canadian border, and the suggestion that Queen Elizabeth will reclaim sovereignty of the US. Facebook. If it looked anything like my feed, it was riddled with disbelief, outrage, disappointment, and comparisons to the day Hitler won a majority in the German Reichstag, amongst other predictable responses.

It was a day of knowing looks, unfortunate grimaces, and the difficulty of starting a conversation with the unavoidable whiff of President-elect Donald Trump in the air. The topic of the result seemed to act as a suction machine to all other conversation. Once you start down that path it’s difficult to talk about anything else.

Everyone felt like they had to say something, despite there not being an awful lot to say, apart from: what the Trump just happened?

If you thought we were clear of a Donald-dominated media, you share in the misguided idealism of a Bernie Sanders voter. Whilst this election cycle — which arguably began as long ago as March 2015, with the first candidacy announcements — is over, the speculation is only just beginning. Now that we have somewhat recovered from the shock, the internet is flooded with both ‘end of the world’

Photo: Gage Skidmore @ Wikimedia

doomsdayers and the ‘don’t panic’ camp.

What the surprise victories of the US election and Brexit show is that our societies are not what we thought they were.

Many of us believed that a Trump victory or leaving the EU were impossible because everyone we knew voted against them, or would have. And by “everyone” I mean the people we know on Facebook, the friends we have, other students in the mostly left-leaning liberal university bubble. To come into contact with a Brexiter or Trump supporter are relative novelties at university.

These protest votes for political ‘outsiders’ is largely to do with the phenomenon of globalisation. Many of us students have the resources and time to travel and study abroad. For us, globalisation means opportunity, now and in the future. But in truth, large swathes of Britain and America feel disenfranchised by this process.

Take Boston in Lincolnshire, as an exam-

ple. This borough voted 75.6 per cent for ‘Leave’ in June and has the highest population of Eastern Europeans outside of London. It was reported in the New Statesmen that white British residents in the town feel unwelcome due to the density of Polish, Latvian, and Lithuanian shops and restaurants. To them, open borders and immigration isn’t Erasmus grants and Full Moon beach parties on your gap year travels through Thailand; rather, it means not recognising your own home town and the languages being spoken around you.

In the same way, white working-class Americans (who constitute the bulk of Trump’s supporters) feel displaced in a global economic system in which jobs move abroad and the competition of international markets drive down labour costs. In the post-industrial Mid-West, there is a feeling that the world is moving on and leaving America behind.

On this point, in a recent Guardian piece,

Humanity’s fourth narcissistic wound

Thomas Frank argued that economic concerns were more important than racist motivations, and that, unfortunately, many people have formed their own simplistic ideas of what Trump supporters think. The illogic of fringe bigots makes a better 30 second slab in your news feed than the economic anxiety of a blue-collar worker.

We do ourselves a disservice by so easily writing off supporters of populist movements as racist. In doing so, there is a risk of ignoring the rest of their concerns. Bigoted attitudes are not limited to the ageing relatives who talk fondly of a pre-EU Britain; nor are they confined to that Facebook friend who shares Britain First posts while everyone else is bashing out Mic and Vice pieces. Many of us have withdrawn into our own internet enclaves and dismissed the views of a large social group. Now, we pay the price for our ideological blind-spots.

There are a myriad of reasons for Tuesday’s result, which other commentators probably understand better and can express more concisely than I have here. As I see it, one of the greatest lessons to be learned is that there is a great deal of ignorance to the range of opinions within our societies. In the wake of Brexit, Alexander Betts gave a TEDtalk in which he observed that the vote to leave the EU, “suggested that people like me who think of ourselves as inclusive, open, and tolerant, perhaps don’t know our own countries and societies nearly as well as we like to believe.”

In any case, we now face the inundation of predictions and guesswork about what all of this means for the US, for us in the UK, and for the wider world. In the meantime, life goes on. Mr Trump, the initial joker candidate and now-President-elect, will continue to be part of it.

Rebellion against the establishment?

Opinion Writer Lioui Benhamou argues that Donald Trump’s victory exemplifies humanity’s present inability to make political progress

When I was a child, I felt a bit sad that I didn’t get to see most of history. I was too young for 9/11 and not born at the right time for flying cars or the teleportation machine. I had the impression that I was born when history decided to slow down for a decade or two.

And I guess that’s good. A major challenge for Western countries and the world general at the time was terrorism. The next one, I thought, would be climate change. But, overall, I was quite optimistic about the human race: progress never stopped and the century before ours opened-up many possibilities; it was up to us to continue and explore the continuation of progress.

But Donald Trump’s election to be the President — the leader of the free world — and Brexit before that, have provoked a feeling that I believe to be the forth deception of humanity.

There is a famous psychological theory that argues that humanity has known three deceptions in his history — also referred to as narcissistic wounds. The first one came from Copernicus, who showed us that humans were not literally (or metaphorically) the centre of the universe.

Thus, we then knew that we weren’t at the centre of the universe, and we knew that we were not the most important beings in the universe.

The second deception came from Darwin, who scientifically proved that humans were the product of evolution, and were therefore a part of the animal kingdom. Thus, the knowledge that we shared biology with the rest of our world hindered claims to human superiority over other beings.

The third one came from Freud. His theories about the subconscious showed that humans are not in control of their desires and what they want; rather, they are merely in control of the choice of the super-ego. If we are not the masters of our own minds, then we are not the centre of our own lives; our desires and their roots exist separately from our own decisions.

The fourth narcissistic wound, I believe, is the way many of us feel right now: the realisation that political progress has reach its limits. Sure, we will survive Trump’s years, and real progress will occur again.

But if we don’t profoundly change the rules of our systems, we will come to the end of political progress. As things are, we do not seem able to use politics to achieve real progress in the face of our challenges.

I am not arguing that Hillary Clinton would have been the perfect candidate, or that the Americans are stupid. I am arguing that we are not capable of doing better than what we have done so far.

I understand the protest vote, I understand why the revolt against the system, against Neoliberalism, against the establishment. What I am saying is that we are not able to come together as one and effectively decide what we truly need to do for our future. Maybe that’s human nature.

As a political animal, humans need something to fight about.

But this election proved one thing: human free will is not at the centre of the future of politics; the economy and identity is. If we are not able to effectively adapt and change our institutions and political processes to assure our survival, then we are not even at the centre of our own destiny as a species.

I’m making it sound as if Trump’s election is one of the worst things that happened to humanity. It’s not at all that: far from it, in fact. But it is the perfect illustration of a more general problem: we want and need change, but we are unable to adequately process or reflect on it.

We tend towards easy discourse instead of pushing the limits of human possibilities. Americans are not happy, and fairly so. But instead of having a true political reflection on how to organise change, they have elected the man who was regarded as the joker candidate in 2014.

It is up to our generation to restore humanity’s ability to organise for change; to reverse the trends of the last few years, and the way in which it occurred “bigly” on the 9th of November 2016. We must rekindle the desire to push the limit of political, and human progress.

Despite the election of Donald Trump, I am hopeful. Though Copernicus might be right, we are the only species known to ourselves with the capacity to explore the universe. Darwin might be right, but we are the only species known that will be able to built Artificial Intelligence, which could potentially be more intelligent than is naturally possible. Freud might be right, but we are also a product of the context of our lives, and we are still able to reflect on our individual and collective desires and make progress towards them.

We might have reached the limit of what is politically possible for us to do. But humans are full of surprises. Perhaps the era of populism, if it falls or withstands, will be followed by a new horizons of progress.

Photo: Sam Howzit @ Flickr

Trisan Parsons and Marina Iskander Opinion Editors The result of the US Presidential election has been framed as a populist rebellion against the establishment, of which major universities are often regarded as a part of. Considering Trump’s denial of climate change, there are also notions of anti-intellectualism at play here. The opinions of Harvard students towards candidates before the election, as collected in a survey by the Harvard Crimson, were clear: 70 per cent of students viewed Clinton ‘favourably’.

3.5 per cent of students viewed Trump ‘favourably’.

And a quick note on the journalistic establishment, too. Media bias in favour of Hillary Clinton was a major talking point throughout the election. However, it was Donald Trump that provided the stories.

Many US news organisations have admitted that they produced too much content on him.

In light of our page of election reactions this week — though we are unsure as to whether The Mancunion is part of this ‘establishment’ — we regret the profitability of Trump.

Music

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Live Album

Feature

Live: PJ Harvey

3rd November at Victoria Warehouse

A sinister, enthralling set from the award-winning singer proves PJ Harvey’s worth as one of contemporary music’s greatest assets, writes Jack Ashworth Jack Ashworth Contributor

9/10

There are few artists who manage to retain an aura of mysticism around them akin to that of Polly Jean Harvey. For the past three decades, the reclusive songstress has mesmerized the music world with tales of the macabre, the grotesque, and the perverse. Set to the tune of growling bass lines, ethereal vocals, and peppered with traditional folk influences — Harvey simultaneously manages to reject any attempts by the press to psychoanalyse her personal incentives or her creative process.

On Thursday 3rd November, ardent disciples desperate to catch a glimpse of the alt-rock priestess, congregated at Victoria Warehouse to see PJ Harvey deliver her latest work The Hope Six Demolition Project, as well as a choice selection of hits from her extensive back catalogue.

Accompanied by her eight-piece ensemble, the elfin Harvey marched out of the darkness, saxophone in hand, and positioned herself centre stage. Adorned in black, her slight figure accentuated by heavy spotlight, PJ Harvey looked more like a creature from the pages of Tolkien than a 21st century rock icon.

Launching into ‘Chain of Keys’ a haunting lament to the victims of the Kosovo conflict, plucked from her latest album, she enthralled the audience with her effortlessly transcendent vocal range. The set continued with hits from the The Hope Six Demolition Project, (including the bombastic ‘Ministry of Defence’, ‘Community of Hope’ and arguable standout track ‘The Wheel’) in which Harvey turned her observatory gaze outwards towards global political turmoil in Afghanistan, Washington and Kosovo, and her politically-charged deliverance thronged the packed Warehouse.

“There is something undeniably English about PJ Harvey — not in a quaint, sunny, ‘merry-old England’ kind of way, but in a way that is evocative of something much darker, much more sinister”

Photo: Shirlaine Forrest @flickr

Following this with a selection of hits from her Mercury Prize-winning magnum opus Let England Shake, Harvey held a mirror to the rotten British establishment as audience excitement reached fever pitch, with classics such as ‘The Words that Maketh Murder’, ‘The Glorious Land’ and ‘Written on the Forehead’ ringing out into the frosty November night. As impressive as her unparalleled vocal range, Harvey’s stage

presence was further heightened by lithe and sinuous body movements — at times contorting herself deftly to the rhythm, at others standing with poise and conviction— as if sermonising to a frantic congregation.

At times feeling more like the prelude to a Paganist sacrifice than musical performance, Harvey continued to enthral the audience as she delved further into her back catalogue, drawing

Live

Live: James Blake

3rd November at Academy 1

An atmospheric and quietly brilliant show had the crowd quietly waiting on James Blake’s every word, writes Jacob Hopkins Jacob Hopkins Contributor

8/10

out haunting laments (including her fictional ode to her deceased daughter ‘Down By The Water’), devastating love elegies (the biblically laced ‘To Bring You My Love’ ) and acclimatising with her timeless rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’. Harvey more than proved her worth as one of rock music’s greatest assets, with a canon of music that transcends genre and time.

There is something undeniably English about PJ Harvey — not in a quaint, sunny, ‘merry-old England’ kind of way, but in a way that is evocative of something much darker, much more sinister, something much older than the conventional parameters of our historical narrative.

She draws out the spectral — both in her lyrics and her stage performance, drawing on the macabre and the mystical, while continuing to retain an aura of mystique about her that has endeared her to audiences for over 25 years. Long may she continue to do so.

Live: The Courteneers Katie Shepherd reports from a humble hometown instore show played by The Courteneers Katie Shepherd Deputy Music Editor

7/10

Photo: Katie Shepherd

Photo: Jacob Hopkins

Before last Thursday, in my (admittedly part-time) 11-year career as a gig-goer, I had yet to experience two scenarios; firstly, fans aggressively shushing one another to better hear the quiet songs, and secondly a packed-out crowd giving an enthusiastic if well-deserved round of applause to the illustrator Sir Quentin Blake, perhaps best known for his partnership with the late Roald Dahl. Both of these slightly odd moments nonetheless perfectly encapsulated the level of devotion shown by James Blake’s fanbase during his recent show at the Manchester Academy.

After an admittedly underwhelming DJ set by veteran producer Mark Pritchard,

Blake arrived on stage with guitarist and keyboard player Rob McAndrews and drummer Ben Assiter. Flanked by banks of spotlights and playing in front of a wallspanning LED screen, the three musicians played their way through an eclectic near two-hour set including a Joni Mitchell cover (‘Case of You’), a reworking of Blake’s collaboration with Beyoncé (‘Forward’), an appearance by grime MC Trim (‘Confidence Boost’), and Blake’s own material such as ‘Limit To Your Love’.

Throughout the set, a quietly confident Blake gave dedications and shout outs to his band, his collaborators, his Salford-born musician father, and yes, even Sir Quentin

(who provided the artwork to his latest album The Colour In Anything). Despite the dynamics ranging from quiet piano ballads to full-on rave electro, the three musicians handled each song with machine precision but never without warmth, while the range of moods was perfectly augmented by the visuals and lighting on offer.

What struck me throughout the set was the sheer affection of Blake’s fans, who would cheer and clap at maximum volume once a song ended, but listen in hushed awe as he played and sang. It was truly a mark of respect for James Blake, which his triumphant set more than earned.

All around me people are jumping, chanting, cheering, and singing along to the songs being performed by the band in front of them. People are on their friends’ shoulders, arms in the air and total joy on their faces. You’d be forgiven for thinking that I was describing a scene from a late night concert at the Apollo, and not that of an afternoon at the HMV Arndale. But then, that’s exactly what The Courteneers do. They make a venue their own. It doesn’t matter where they are performing, if you give Liam Fray, Michael Campbell and Daniel Moores a platform, they will own it.

Having just announced a huge 50,000 capacity show down the road at Old Trafford, it both seems humbling and exciting that within such a short space of time they would play the upstairs of a HMV

store alongside an album signing in the city they formed in.

It is not not surprising however, as the very essence of this band is their humanity and realness. The reason HMV was packed out with a crowd, filling the room with enthusiasm and have reached such heights of success is because of their lighthearted, often humorous, lyrics about the realities of life. This is reflected in their presentation; unassuming and effortlessly cool and yet they completely dominated the room.

It was a fantastic performance of some of their greatest classics, including ‘Not Nineteen Forever’ and ‘Are You in Love With a Notion?’ and the reception they received created a truly special atmosphere, only offered by the intimacy of an HMV live event.

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Feature

the

Feature

Fifteen years of the iPod - how has Apple’s gamble shaken up the music industry?

The iPod was introduced by Apple fifteen years ago, and we feel old.

Rebekah Shaw asks: what has the technology of the millennium brought for music?

Rebekah Shaw Music Critic

Photo: Apple

The 1980s had cassette players, the 1990s had CD players, and the 2000s had mp3 players. Brought out in 2001, the iPod has spent the best part of the last fifteen years in a state of near-constant flux and now it appears to be being led to a timely grave by its very creators.

What has the millennial technology brought for music, and why is it now best looked upon as a fond memory of our youth?

Ahead of its time, some would say, the iPod sparked the so called ‘mp3 revolution’. Many people had not yet decided if they even needed mp3s at the start of the new millennium: CDs were extremely popular, cheap and high quality forms of storing music. With only a couple of competitors’ models already on the market, initially it was an expensive, potentially risky move for a well-known computer company. Yet, the iPod became the most successful digital music player by far — how many other mp3 devices can you recall the names of?

The mp3 file changed the listener’s approach to the music album format: instead of listening in the order designed by the artist, you could instead pick and choose particular tracks to listen to at leisure.

For some albums, deliberately evocative in their track order, this could completely change the listener’s experience. As a result, there are some arguments that modern musicians are having to make tracks stand out from one another so they can make it onto a playlist for the casual listener, rather than creating a cohesive album. It’s

strange when a band’s ‘Outro’ appears in the middle of your workout playlist. Yet, the mp3 player eventually triumphed through the innovative iPod. The key to the success of the iPod was in Apple’s willingness to adapt and revolutionise the market. The first generation was clunky, and only worked with Apple Mac systems, so initial sales were low and CDs stayed strong. However, by the third generation it made a name for itself after the crucial introduction of the colour screen and video playback on the iPod in 2005, and competitors soon struggled to keep up. The iPod Classic was popular with many fans due to its huge storage space and iconic design, but Apple also brought out the Shuffle (2005), Mini/Nano (2004/5) and Touch (2007), with continuous design updates at varying successes. Much to the dismay of its admirers who had 40,000 songs they wanted to listen to on the go, the 160 GB iPod Classic was retired in 2014, yet the others live on. But who needs that much space just for ever shrinking music files? And who on earth doesn’t use multi-functional devices nowadays?

Diversification became a major aspect of Apple’s ethos, but there is only so long until constant modification causes the initial design to become obsolete. That point began with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Initially, the iPod touch was a good compromise for parents to get their technology-hungry teenagers a device that held all of the functionality of an iPhone (except for the telephone part)

with a fraction of the price tag. Hence, this multi-functional mp3 player survived Apple’s cull, and so did the Shuffle for the opposite reason: a sole use for fractions of a music library. Some users want a cheap music player to take to the gym whilst leaving their iPhone in their locker, however with the price of the iPhone 7 starting at £599, it’s hard to justify owning another portable music player.

Another key game-changer of this evolution came with the introduction of the iTunes Store in 2003, largely due to its compatibility for both Mac and Windows systems. It seems as if iTunes has slowly sapped away the physical reality of buying music, as downloads are just not as satisfying as holding onto a solid copy of an album in your hands — echoed in the resurgence in record player sales in the past 5 years. The launch of Apple Music last year, providing a fixed price every month to own their entire database, has been argued to have changed the value of music, bringing people to question whether renting music is better than paying musicians to own it.

Apple no longer focus on their iPod range, concentrating more on the ever-evolving iPhones and iPads, and bringing out the apple watch – arguably a modern iPod shuffle stuck to your wrist which you can carry out some very limited messaging on. So what does the future hold now we are firmly in the smartphone age, where separate portable music players are obsolete?

Interview

Interview: Sunset Sons Deputy music editor Katie Shepherd speaks to Sunset Suns about their birth and the escapist nature of their music Katie Shepherd Deputy Music Editor Having just released a deluxe version of their brilliantly catchy debut album, Very Rarely Say Die, Sunset Sons are a band that have burst out of the French Alps and onto the scene with a flurry of rocky guitar riffs, celebratory lyrics and the kind of feel-good factor only really good live music can give you.

As their name and album artwork would suggest, the beach has always been an important element to this band, initially formed by vocalist, Rory Williams, guitarist Robin Windram, bassist Pete Harper and Jed Laidlaw on drums, to fund their surfing habit. “We come from all over the place,” Jed tells me as we are sat in a quiet room above the Academy, where the band would be later performing. “But we ended up in this little place in the south of France. I was there teaching surfing and I saw Rory play in my friend’s bar and straight after we got chatting. I’d been in bands before and always played drums, but I was kind of sick of the scene there. Rory was the first person that made me want to be in a band again.”

Starting off as a cover band, the foursome had found the perfect job: “All of a sudden we’d invented a job for ourselves that meant we could play at night time and just hang out on the beach all day, which was perfect. When it got to the end of summer, we were like ‘what do we do now?’ Well, actually we could just drive across France because there’s the same thing happening in the mountains, surfing just gets swapped for snow sports, so we went and played the band there.”

It was actually on a journey from one of these shows in the snowy

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

mountains that the band came up with the title for their album.

“There was a lot of late night driving, and this one particular night we had about an hour and a half drive all the way down the valleys, but it was in January when it shits it down with snow. So it was like 3 foot of snow, 4 o’clock in the morning and everyone was hammered apart from the driver and we got stuck in a snowdrift halfway up a mountain. Rory had been asleep but he woke up and was like

‘what’s going on?’ and I was like ‘Rory, I think today might actually be the day we all die.’ And half-drunk, half-asleep Rory just said ‘No, no, no. We very rarely say die.’ And then fell back asleep. I was like, “I’m pretty sure its never say die...” but it just stuck. We’ve always had this never say die attitude.”

Having been on tour for almost the entirety of their time as a band, they’ve experienced a lot of weird and crazy things over the years, most of which are definitely unpublishable — but very funny. “We take the music very seriously, but we don’t really take ourselves very seriously.”

This comes through completely in the album, which deals with sad topics at times yet manages to create something celebratory and genuinely fun out of it. It’s an album that makes you want to dance and is incredibly enjoyable to listen to, while also poignant; seeking escape from heavy themes doesn’t mean ignoring them.

“There’s nothing wrong with liking escapism,” Jed says earnestly. “I think all the best records are about escapism.”

One track of the record that particularly stands out is ‘Lost Company’, which entirely embodies the power of taking a personal and sad topic and delivering it in a way that can create something truly positive out of it. “We wanted to write a song about that subject matter, but we wanted to make it a celebration. We wanted something that could be sad but uplifting. That was the aim.”

Very Rarely Say Die (Deluxe) is out now.

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Live/Interview

Interview: The Japanese House Amber Bain brings The Japanese House’s lush dream pop to Club Academy, writes Calum Pinder 2nd November at Club Academy Calum Pinder Contributor “[Club Academy] is a big venue and we’ve sold a lot of tickets. It’s nice to know your audience is there for you,” enthuses 21-year-old Amber Bain. She’s certainly not wrong. She walks onstage to cheers from a bustling crowd, many of whom have been patiently stood at the front since the doors opened to get the best view for her performance as The Japanese House. Sitting on the sofa in her dressing room three hours earlier she is remarkably laid back. Although being relatively new to the touring circuit she seems to have taken packing out venues in her stride.

Bain views her career as somewhat of an inevitability. “My father was quite musical so there were always instruments around the house. I always wanted a guitar and maybe to look like Avril Lavigne.” Her first performances started young, she recalls “being that asshole at school who would play in assembly, or on the playground.

Other kids would be like ‘shut up!’” Despite the tough critics she’s done very well for herself. After a stroke of fate involving Matt Healy chasing after her mate, she was able to play the 1975 frontman some of her music which he then took to Dirty Hit Records. Unsurprisingly, they in turn quickly signed her up. After touring in support of The 1975, and releasing a couple of EP’s with Dirty Hit, The Japanese House are now heading their own tour.

Amber tells me she enjoyed the experience of supporting The 1975, but is mostly excited about touring in her own right. After a show in London she’s heading off to Europe and then on to America. Having been touring for almost a solid year now, including playing packed out shows at Reading and Leeds, it’s amazing she’s still going. I wonder whether the diet cokes and pitta and crisp sandwiches that litter the dressing room hold the key to endless energy.

Supporting her tonight are London-based bands Fake Laugh and COLOURING. “They both have the voices of angels!” declares Bain.

She’s not wrong: apparently ditched by the rest of his band, Fake Laugh front man Kamran Khan puts on a charming acoustic set. His voice really is great and accompanies the toned down indie rock he plays. Following Fake Laugh, COLOURING’s hazy electro pop was plenty of fun, and got the already-receptive audience moving.

Finally The Japanese House entered. Opening with the Imogen Heap-esque ‘Clean’ she contrasts an ethereal soundscape of layers of vocals and soft synths with a clear impatient electric guitar. This contrast underpins the evening. Lush synth melodies, vocal harmonies, and hi-hat dominated drum lines are cut through by Bain’s guitar. Playing with ease the band coast through their collection with the crowd reacting warmly to singles ‘Sugar Pill’ and ‘Cool Blue’. Given the limited instrumentation, The Japanese House’s small discography does begin to feel a little repetitive in a live setting. However, newer tracks like the upbeat, guitar-focused ‘Good Side In’ break the trend and help to dispel this feeling.

Earlier in the evening, I asked Bain about her songwriting. A lot of her music relies on careful production and layered vocals — were the songs written with this in mind? “The lines are very blurred between production and songwriting; the two just go hand in hand for me”.

Following from this I want to know whether the soft dream pop genre that underlies the Clean and Pools To Bathe In EPs was something The Japanese House wanted to stay loyal to. “I never really think about it. I kind of just do what sounds good for each song, rather than applying a genre to a bunch of songs. The album will have strange things in it”. I certainly hope so. So far The Japanese House have been

Photo: Album Artwork

making considered and warm dream pop, but it can sound a little formulaic at times. However, the singles from her upcoming EP Good Side In are starting to stray from the soft melancholic style she’s established in a great way. More upbeat and funky grooves appear on ‘Good Side In’ whilst the beat on ‘Swim Against The Tide’ sounds like some strange collaboration between Mike Milosh and Aphex Twin in his more lucid periods. Fingers crossed the experimentation continues when the album drops.

Back onstage the band close their set with crowd pleaser ‘Still’. Bain gives a shout out to her mother who has come tonight, and walks offstage. I’m reminded that she’s only 21 and already playing her third time in Manchester. With 2 EPs and an album in the pipeline and no signs of slowing down, we’ve got a lot to look forward to from The Japanese House.

Live

Live

Live: Cadillac Three

Live: Christine & the Queens

Straight outta Nashville, The Cadillac Three thrill with more power than even mighty Zeus could handle, writes Jeni Lambert 5th November at O2 Ritz Jeni Lambert Music Critic

Top 5: Spoken-Word Songs The concept of a spoken word song seems almost contradictory and yet these songs are arguably some of the most powerful and emotionally evocative recorded, writes Katie Shepherd.

The French pop troupe pop the question, writes Ben Lomax — and the answer is a resounding ‘yes’

Ben Lomax Contributor

9/10

9/10

On 5th November, The Cadillac Three released the kicking mule that is their Don’t Forget The Whiskey tour into the UK and I can most certainly confirm that not a single soul had forgotten their whiskey. The venue was synonymous Photo: Jeni Lambert to a Jack Daniel’s steam room as the crowd’s plastic chalices of whiskey and coke permeated the air like a fine Tennessee perfume. Supporting act Tyler Bryant and The Shakedown set the house alight with a tempestuous brew of blues, punk and take-no-prisoners rock’n’roll, demonstrating their talent in balancing on the shoulders of giants like Muddy Waters with the ease of a seasoned alley cat.

In lukewarm pursuit, The Cadillac Three took to the stage without their usual authoritative stride, a discordant air of hesitancy in their performance. Lyrics were lapsed, beats were skipped and eye contact was averted.

Charmingly bashful frontman Jaren Johnston swiftly apologised, emphasising that the band were suffering from sleep deprivation. However, by the time their fire was sufficiently fed by the crowd’s relentless cheers, ‘Tennessee Mojo’ conjured a tornado to send Dorothy and Toto way outta Kansas.

From here on in, we were thrown headfirst into a raw blend of Johnston’s lip-biting riffs, Kelby Ray’s exquisite lap steel guitar slides and Neil Mason’s thunderous Tarzan-meets-Joey-Kramer percussion.

After delivering several lightning bolts straight from Zeus’ stash in the form of tracks such as ‘I’m Southern’ and ‘Back It Up’, the set simmered down into calmer waters in the form of ‘Graffiti’ and ‘Runnin’ Red Lights’. The levee to Johnston’s soul had broken by this point, every ounce of him flowing into his microphone as he growled his lyrical master class in southern state culture. Senior professors in neo-southern music, The Cadillac Three truly proved they are worth their salt (+ lime + tequila).

5) Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2 — Watsky Simplistic piano chords layered with cathartic rap. There is something deeply honest about this song that all seven billion and forty seven million of us can connect with. Sobering and poignant, George Watsky uses his voice to evoke emotion like no one else.

4th November at Manchester Apollo

Photo: Julien @flickr

The crowd at the Apollo are distinctly ‘Radio 6’ tonight, despite being here for an electronic pop outfit, and I oddly find myself one of the youngest in the room. Perhaps it’s the hefty £30 price tag on the tickets or perhaps the nature of Christine and the Queens’ recent rise to fame. With a critically acclaimed debut, Chaleur Humaine, released early this year and a Glastonbury performance largely lauded as a standout of the festival, the appeal to an older, musically clued-up audience is clear. That’s not all to say there isn’t a notable buzz in the room, as attested by the dashed burst of excitement every time the background music goes quiet between songs.

As the room finally descends into darkness, it’s pierced by the electronic thuds of set opener ‘Starshipper’, one of the 4) Body Love Part 1 — Mary Lambert The brutal honesty of this track will haunt you for a long time after listening.

The message of this song is conveyed almost painfully in the tone of her voice. Not easy listening, but necessary listening.

highlights of the set, featuring a brooding Christine emerging forward, illuminated through sporadic flashes with dancers in tow. Album track ‘Half Ladies’ features a giant, white-suited Christine projected behind the band, moving perfectly in sync with her three-dimensional, living counterpart. It’s a bold move that works well with the band’s distinctive, trademark choreography, coming across effortless.

The backdrop is used again featuring a larger than life Tunji Ige, for his guest verse on ‘No Harm Is Done’ allowing his part to translate live without feeling of being cheated that would come from just queuing the audio. The rest of the set flips between more synchronised dance numbers and the stripped back, solo performances, with radio familiar single ‘Tilted’

3) Chapter Twelve: Shores, and The New World — Levi the Poet Lyrics weaved effortlessly into beautiful narrative, Levi is a true story teller. He transports you into his world, immersing you in the layers of his voice.

A painter with his words and his voice.

getting by far the biggest reaction.

Despite the now classic pop star stage set up, and the many homages to contemporary pop titans (there’s a dance interlude to a Kanye West track and even a Beyoncé cover in the encore), there’s something distinctly oddball about Christine and the Queens. She makes multiple references to her short stature and French-ness, at one point remarking “I’m coming out to you guys, I’m French.” Admittedly these already separate her from most familiar pop stars, but her distinctive feel is more down to what she has to say. The narrative of a Christine and the Queens show is one of freedom and self-expression, Christine making multiple allusions to her desire to be a boy at times and telling the audience “This is a free zone tonight.” No doubt this perplexed some of the older members of the crowd, but it feels apt taking place in Manchester, a city known for its celebration of individuality and the vast majority of the room seemed completely behind her.

As the evening draws to an end she laments how she only has so much material to play, “I’m a fresh face — for now,” she quips, and it’s true. Christine will no doubt be back soon enough, hopefully with all the magic she brought with her tonight.

She ends with French ballad ‘Nuit 17 à 52’, before proposing to the audience, “I want to marry all of you tonight, I want to be your husband.” By the reaction she gets, the answer is a resounding yes.

2) Car Radio — Twenty One Pilots Love them or not, these guys are leading a revolutionary movement in music. There is something truly captivating about this melodic marriage of raw honesty in the lyrics and a simultaneously dreamy and dance-y instrumentals, climaxing with hard hitting screams of “silence”.

6/10

1) The Revolution Will Not be Televised — Gil Scott-Heron This powerful song has influenced a huge number of musicians since it was recorded in 1971. The brilliantly defiant lyrics were hugely important in the black power movement and continues to hold a haunting relevance today.

Games 15

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Feature

PSN accounts hacked Photo: BagoGames@flickr

Stephen Lewis Games Editor

Over the past few days, and possibly even before that, it has begun to appear that Sony’s PlayStation Network has been hacked in some form, but this time limited to the UK. Reports have come in of users getting locked out of their accounts as it no longer recognises either their email address or password. Following this, large sums of money have been taken out of associated bank accounts and placed into their PlayStation Store wallets, with values in the region of £120 being claimed in some instances, according to game news channel The Know on YouTube.

This is not the same as the PSN outage back in 2011, as that took the service itself offline, and affected more than just the UK. It also included the leaking of approximately 77-million account details to malicious hackers, one of the largest data security breaches in history, and the largest breach of any gaming network ever. As a response to the 2011 incident, Sony had a sort of compensation campaign which included a choice of free games and a free 30-day subscription to PlayStation Plus.

This situation is nowhere near as large in scale, but the effects are still

It has happened again.

Sort of...

Upcoming Releases November 15th - Watch Dogs 2 (PS4/Xbox One) November 18th - Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection (PS4/ Xbox One) November 23rd - Pokemon Sun/Moon (3DS) November 29th - Final Fantasy XV (PS4/Xbox One) December 6th - Dead Rising 4 (PS4/Xbox One)

troubling, especially if you become one of the gamers affected.

A brief look at the PSN UK support account on Twitter (@AskPS_ UK) shows the sheer volume of support requests that have come in regarding this matter. Whilst Sony isn’t exactly covering up the situation, they are responding to all support request and trying to fix the issue, this story has not been covered as widely as perhaps it should be. If you own either a PS4, PS3 or are one of the few PS Vita owners, I strongly urge you to change your account password as soon as possible, regardless of whether you brought consoles to university or not. If you own a PS4 you can also take an extra measure by enabling two-step verification

from the settings menu. This is also possible on PS3 and Vita but can only be enabled from either a PS4 or the PlayStation website.

On these older systems you will instead be shown a single-use code to enter into your password box upon login, after already entering your email and password as usual.

Confidence in Sony has been hurt in the past by such security failings, but there is still strong support from amongst consumers, as shown by the stellar sales the PS4 has enjoyed over its lifecycle so far. With the release of the PS4 Pro on the 10th of November, this hasn’t come at the best of times for Sony, but hopefully this issue will be resolved as soon as possible.

Decmber 9th - The Last Guardian (PS4) Dates based on retailers listings and subject to change

Want to meet fellow gamers in Manchester?

Come and visit the University of Manchester Gaming Society stall at this years freshers fair!

We host weekly events and have always been a good place to make friends and play some amazing games as a community.

Retro Corner

The dawn of the NES Connor McBride Games Conribuor

In Japan, a small consumer electronics company called Nintendo (you may have heard of them) was having lots of success with their console the Famicom.

Only slightly set back by hardware issues at launch (it had a tendency to freeze), it quickly went on to become the best selling games console of its time in Japan. The Famicom was a weird beast: it had a microphone port in the second controller, sported a red and cream paint scheme, and had an expansion port built in which allowed modems and keyboards to be plugged in. Wanting to garner international success, they locked their sights on the USA. The North American video game crash of 1983 did a number of things on the games industry in the USA to say the least; sales of video games were at an all time low and retailer confidence was nonexistent.

They would not touch anything video game related, even with a ten-foot barge pole. Nintendo, in their blissful optimism, tweaked the Famicom a little bit so it would appeal to American sensibilities and came up with the Advanced Video System Home Computer, a grey keyboard with a myriad of

wireless peripherals. They called it a ‘home computer’ so potential retailers wouldn’t be as scared of it. It was a rather advanced piece of kit for the time; sporting wireless controllers, a light-gun, cassette deck and, for reasons unbeknownst to us, a musical keyboard. However it was ostensibly a video game console. So nobody ordered any.

Back to square one.

After their first thinly veiled attempt at smuggling a video game console onto the market failed, Nintendo tried again. The keyboard and cassette deck were removed, in favour of a sleeker, more boxy approach. The top loading port of the Famicom was moved to the front and covered so cartridges were out of view. The whole aesthetic was styled to be as far removed from video game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Colecovision that still haunted retailers. Nintendo’s plan was to market it as more of a toy than a console, an ‘entertainment system’ if you will. Cartridges were out in favour of game paks that you put in your control deck, not console. They wanted to shake off the stigma that Atari had left behind.

The final pieces of the puzzle, to cement the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) as a

The end of the crash

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

toy instead of a console, were two peripherals: a light-gun called the zapper and R.O.B, a toy robot that could be controlled by flashing images on-screen. R.O.B did a very good job of garnering the attention of the public in the product, even if in actuality he was a bit rubbish.

More importantly, however, he allowed Nintendo to go to the retailers and say “This isn’t a games console, it’s more than that.”

Even after gaining attention for the NES through R.O.B., retailers were still unwilling to take the plunge and buy it. They were once bitten, twice shy. Nintendo had to take a risk. They went to retailers in New York with a proposition.

For a test period, Nintendo offered not only to handle store set up and marketing, but also to accept returns of unsold inventory, give 90 days credit, and asked for no

money upfront from stores. They had to make it so there were no risks on the stores part. It was a bold move, but the idea was if you could make it in New York, you could make it anywhere.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The NES sold like hotcakes, the test period in New York was a huge success and the NES was quickly rolled out across the rest of North America. One of the main factors behind its success was the stifling level of quality control Nintendo had for third-party developers.

After watching Atari run itself into the ground thanks to a deluge of unregulated third party tat for the Atari 2600 just a few years prior, Nintendo introduced licensing for the NES. You had to pay them for the privilege of developing for the system and stringent quality assurance took place. While

commonplace now, this rocked the video game industry at the time, even getting Nintendo embroiled in a few lawsuits because of it. But ultimately you had less ‘Cheetahmen’ and more ‘Legend of Zelda’. It was also good value for money; the deluxe set, which came with the console, two gamepads, a zapper, ‘Gyromite’, ‘Duck Hunt’ and R.O.B. was only $299. A bargain compared to the Atari 2600 which was still retailing at $199 and only came with 2 controllers and the infamously bad ‘Pac-Man’ port. The NES also had ‘Super Mario Bros’ as a release title which probably helped...

The NES managed to singlehandedly revive the massive, dead, North American video game market, going on to sell 60-million units worldwide. It has remained a well loved icon into the present day and is considered one of the best consoles of all time. It also showcased Nintendo’s innovative and sometimes oddball strategies with regards to products. So when you look at the Nintendo Switch and think Nintendo has lost the plot, just remember how close the Nintendo Entertainment System was to coming with a musical keyboard and ended up with a toy robot instead.

Fashion & Beauty

16

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

The ultimate high street brand

Want high end inspired clothes for high street prices?

Talia Lee-Skudder reveals the ultimate shopping destination for all of your fashion needs

Fashion & Beauty 17

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Perfume: necessity or luxurious extravagance?

With student budgets pinching hard, our little luxuries can often take the hit. Deputy Fashion and Beauty Editor Sophie Soar discusses whether perfume is a necessity or a throw away extravagance Marilyn Monroe, the beautiful bombshell and world-famous actress, knew how to work the press. She drove them wild with tantalising titbits that screamed every bit the sex-goddess reputation Monroe possessed. In a 1960 recording, only released in 2013, Monroe discussed the demands of the press: “You know, they ask me questions. Just an example: What do you wear to bed?” And she did not disappoint: “so I said ‘Chanel No. 5,’ because it’s the truth!”

Whilst Chanel’s brand manager probably wept for joy over the find of such a recording, it raises another question: just how necessary is the perfume in our make-up bags?

The recording of Monroe exudes her startled innocence. She saw no extravagance in her choice of nightwear; it was simply a statement of fact. Many women swear by their scent of choice, seen as just another element to their daily make-up routine. It is as much a staple as a slick of red lipstick.

In reality, however, it’s a relatively bizarre notion: you are tailoring your scent; sharing an artificial aro-

For those of you who lust after the high-fashion designer aesthetic but don’t have the funds nor the patience to camp out over night for the hottest new high-street designer collaboration (Kenzo x H&M we’re looking at you), then what’s a girl to do? H&M are the ultimate high street brand to collaborate with the top designers in the industry, creating lust worthy clothes at a fraction of the price of their high-end counterparts. Who can forget last year’s Balmain army domination, fronted by none other than the hottest models of the moment; Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner. The hype around the collection was huge with magazines revealing the collection weeks before the launch date and top celebrities wearing the designs in the run up. Fashion lovers everywhere were rejoicing that they could snap up some Balmain pieces on the high street — but then came the launch day. The website crashed and the queues were phenomenal, it was near impossible to get your hands on any item from the collection — unless of course you were willing to pay £400 for a £80 top on eBay. This years launch of Kenzo x H&M was no different. It seems fashion lovers everywhere are so desperate to get their hands on limited edition high street designer collabs.

For many of us the thought of ever owning an item from a H&M designer collaboration seems like a highly unrealistic, unattainable goal. So where does one go when they want to look chic and fashionable for high street prices? Zara, of course. The ultimate shopping destination for all of your high end inspired fashion needs. This AW season is as fabulous as always and a particular winner for winter coats, from aviator flight jackets to puffa coats and the trusty, timeless camel coat. This season Zara are also killing it with footwear. Replicas of the blue velvet Aquazzura boots Kourtney Kardashian was seen wearing at a Kanye West concert last month are available at Zara for £69.99. There is also an abundance of Gucci inspired loafers available at variety of prices, leaving you struggling to muster any excuse as to why you should not purchase these bargain beauties.

As if we could possibly need any more reason to love Zara, they also have their TRF range which is filled with items that are even kinder to your bank account. Zara seriously know how to mimic high-end pieces at high street prices, the quality of the clothes is great and feels more like an investment compared to other stores on the high street. So whilst we’re feeling sorry for ourselves that yet another H&M collaboration passed us by without even an accessory to show for it, we can drown our sorrows by trawling Zara’s website for an extra half an hour more than usual. Maybe next year will be the year that H&M will finally cater for us fashion lovers who don’t have the time to queue over night for their next collaboration collection drop, although where’s the fun in that?

Photo:khressy @ Flickr

ma; impressing upon people a fragrance shared by many others across the world. To think we personally spend hundreds of pounds on these elixir bottles of scented liquid seems mad, especially when propelled to buy these scents from their advertising campaigns. Do we really subconsciously believe we will embody Keira Knightley’s confidence whilst straddling a motorbike in a beige leather jumpsuit or Charlize Theron’s sexual allure whilst ripping off pearls, simply by sharing their perfume?

When also confronted with a limited student budget, our luxuries are the first to take the financially imposed hit. A Superdrug find replaced my Mac bronzer too soon into my first year at university and when purchasing mascara, the lowest price always prevails, despite my fear of my eyelashes falling out.

My perfume also took the hit but rather than give it up completely, I only spritz on special occasions and hold out for the annual Christmas present for a new bottle of my favourite perfume.

From a young age we learn to love sensuous fragrances, playing through our mother’s perfume collections or buying our first body mist from Claire’s Accessories at the age of 12. The search for our favourite scent starts early. I for one follow not only in my mother’s footsteps but Monroe’s too, opting for the classic scent of Chanel No. 5.

Despite its age, the perfume remains loved 95 years after its first release. It is the epitome of a timeless classic, as is consistent with the entirety of Chanel’s work. Launched by Coco Chanel herself, the brand insists the scent remains extremely true to its original form from the 1920s. It is historical.

Whilst Chanel’s advertising campaigns may have us believe we share our scent with women of today, from Gisele to Nicole Kidman, we share our choice of perfume with hundreds of thousands of women over the last century, including the designer herself. The perfume may be a luxury, but one imbued with memories.

Designer Jean Paul Gautier once said “perfume is the most intense form of memory.” Whether referring to the lasting impression you leave when meeting someone new, or perhaps a memory of your mother’s perfume, maybe even the memories of women throughout history sharing the enjoyment of one scent, his point is that of a fragrance’s personal significance.

Whilst perfume may technically be unnecessary, it is a luxury we often struggle to sacrifice. Our chosen scent, selected over years of abusing testers in shopping centres and purchased by scraping funds together, is an extension of us. And besides, apparently it’s a solid way to make an impression. However, as Monroe teaches us, that may solely be dependent on how you wear it.

Photo: Zara@Instagram

Wishlist: the most luxurious accessories

Manchester Fashion Weekender event

Manchester Arndale launched their first Fashion Jai Joshi unearths the top three of fashion’s most Weekender event to roaring success. From fashhighly sought-after luxury accessories ion tips to free makeovers, this annual event is not Now that we are in November and only a month away from Christmas, it is time to start creating those one to be missed! By Talia Lee-Skudder envious wish lists. What better way to receive some gift inspiration, than to discover the top three super luxurious accessories to get us in the mood for the Christmas season. Please note the following article may cause extreme jealousy.

Louis Vuitton’s Petite Malle iPhone Case This gorgeous accessory was shown on the runways of Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2017 Show and have caused a frenzy ever since. Originally based on the Petite Malle Bag which made its debut on the runways of Louis Vuitton during the AW16 collection, Creative Director Nicolas Ghesquiere adapted the design of the bag to create a piece of incredible art, in the form of an iPhone case.

This item is a hot accessory that any luxurious individual will be undoubtedly lusting over. A price for the latest tech accessory is still to be confirmed. This one will most definitely be added onto my Christmas wish list.

The Hermès Vintage Birkin Tote

Photo: LouisVuitton@Instagram

Iconic and famously known as a staple for many celebrities, the Hermès Birkin Bag is the ultimate luxury for any woman. This vintage piece from the year 2000 is available to purchase on Farfetch and is worth a cool £58,000. Hand crafted in France, made from crocodile skin and calf leather, this bag is not only a very luxurious accessory but an investment piece that any fashionista would certainly want if not need. Designed as an inflight bag, the glamourous accessory is fitted and suitable for international travel. Is anything more luxurious than a Birkin? I think not!

Diamond Pear-Shaped Earrings Designed By Harry Winston

Photo: Farfetch.com

Diamonds are definitely a girl’s best friend. A statement piece that is only worthy of being worn to Oscar parties and royal soirée’s. These earrings are a gorgeous luxury accessory and the most expensive piece available to purchase in the jeweller’s house to date. Costing a $8.5 Million dollars, they are available to purchase in the Harry Winston Boutique on Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California. Coincidentally this is not surprising at all, any starlet would die for a pair of Harry Winston jewels. Weighing in at 60.1 carats these pear-shaped beauties are desired internationally and definitely have me star struck. Totally worthy of luxe status.

Last weekend saw Manchester launch their first Fashion Weekender event hosted at the Arndale Centre. Visitors had the chance to learn about the hottest new trends set to take Autumn/Winter by storm and also hazard their luck on getting their hands on the huge selection of freebies that were on offer. The event collaborated with top make-up brand Kiko Milano who’s make up artists were on hand to spruce up your daytime look with a full makeover or simply touch up your lippie before you continued on with the rest of your day.

The event included a game of Style Spinner, whereby shoppers had to match the three catwalk models from the same retailer which were displayed on the screens. Not only was the game a bit of fun, there were also amazing prizes up for grabs. Even the losers got to choose from a selection of Kiko’s nail varnishes, while the lucky winners received vouchers to spend anywhere in the Arndale Centre. I am happy to say that I was a proud recipient of both prizes and cannot wait to take a cheeky stroll down to Topshop and get money off my next purchase.

Now freebies aside, we were also enlightened about the hottest trends that are about to hit the stores this season. The lovely Arabella Greenhill of InStyle magazine informed us of what styles we should be currently coveting this Autumn/Winter. Arabella revealed her journey to success, breaking into the industry as a model before going on to work as an assistant, an editor and now to her current role as fashion director at InStyle. Her credentials also include working at some of the top fashion magazines in the industry from Marie Claire to Vogue. Fresh from the fashion weeks, Arabella gave us the scoop on what trends stormed the runway. Velvet is back in a big way, turtlenecks are as chic as ever and our bags need to be miniscule, only leaving room for our ultimate accessory: our iPhones.

Moving away from high fashion, Arabella revealed which looks have been translated onto the high street and that were available to buy from shops in the Arndale. Starting with coats, puffa coats are a wardrobe staple, with Topshop doing a sophisticated twist on the classic design. Pale pink, longline and satin, this coat is surely a winner and should have a firm place on your upcoming Christmas wish list. The next coat up was the black, shearling flight jacket available from Warehouse, one of my particular favourites and also up for winning. This style is dominating fashion this season and for one lucky girl the Warehouse beauty is now hanging in her wardrobe ready to face Manchester’s freezing winter. Finally, the print we should all be rocking is cat print. It’s time to unleash your inner cat lady and embrace this trend for the coming winter.

A fantastic event promoting the Arndale Centre and all of the fabulous shops it has to offer. From freebies to fashion top tips, this event is not one to be missed and should have its place in every Mancunian fashion lover’s diary.

Photo: ManchesterFashionWeekender

It’s Competition Time!

For your chance to win a Soap & Glory Cocktail Making Kit, simply post a picture on Instagram of your favourite outfit and tag: @mancunionfashionandbeauty and @soapandglory

Photo:daspunkt@ Flickr

The luxurious four Amidst the vast portfolio of designer brands, it is hard to choose just one that possesses sole ideal opulence when buying classic fashion pieces. Tarun Daryanani shares his top four to lust for…

Photo: vpickering@ Flickr

VERSACE Sex Sells. This statement has proven to be true, especially for the modern day seducer and attention grabber. Gowns with slashes to the upper thigh teamed with 6-inch platform sandals place the Versace wearer apart from the crowd. The brand injects a high volume of sultriness that presents the Versace woman as one to be slightly feared but lusted after nonetheless; female empowerment is at the label’s forefront. Italian craftsmanship makes the brand one of the luxury giants, whether it be Swarovski-adorned straps or golden Medusa heads embellishing the buttons of body-hugging blazers. Sexiness is a term most identifiable with Versace and the brand dresses the woman who moves as if she were on a catwalk 24/7. The ubiquitous influence of a Versace-clad individual is all down to the power of each provocative piece.

ALEXANDER WANG People say that the modern day hipster cannot have the edge over everyone else; they are too “basic”. Wrong!

Wang can make a youthful fashion rebel grungy whilst keeping her fashion savvy. Fluffy beanies and leather skirts teamed with metallic emblazoned boots epitomises a streetwear-inspired punk, whilst staying true to high fashion conduct. Lambskin leather and cashmere fuse to form dresses and oversized sweaters that place the WANG girl ahead of the fashion times, and mismatched fabrics make for the ultimate statement piece.

Photo:perspexstream@ Flickr

DIOR The classic Parisian label has undergone constant reinventions since Christian Dior passed. Many creative visionaries have nurtured the label, expanding the brand’s portfolio but retaining key pieces, including the Dior Bar Jacket. The clinched-in waist exudes a sexiness that is subtle and elegant. The versatility of the fine tailored jacket enables it to be a key evening and day piece; the one that empowers the seductive, modern-day, working woman. Another key piece is the Lady Dior bag. The boxy square frame accentuates a certain gracefulness about the woman carrying it. Whilst Dior seemingly conveys the image of Princess Diana turned mod, it does also sustain the level of grace that flows through the DNA of the label.

The brand has evolved throughout the years and constantly transforms its aesthetic. Galliano was a key successor, developing the brand’s vision to include dark, romantic sheer gowns oozing sex appeal with low cleavage cuts and slashed side panels. Micro-short skirts paired with seductive boots reinvented the Dior woman into one who could confidently strut down a Parisian street, inevitably turning all heads. Raf Simons followed this, combining a modern Futurism with the elegant roots of the brand. Most recently Maria Grazia Churi has taken over the creative helm, presenting a refreshed Dior palette; one that channels vulnerability whilst staying true to the brand’s famous aesthetic as set by its founding designer. Therefore despite a constant change in creative direction, Dior’s key pieces are rooted in history and retain craftsmanship of the finest quality that would (hopefully) set the modern fashionista Dior crazy.

CHANEL The name immediately springs to mind classics: tweed suits, pearls and the 2.55 bag. Chanel is a juggernaut in the fashion world as a leader of undeniable quality and design. The classic 2.55 bag always whets the fashion hungry appetite, with everyone lusting after it. Made of the softest leather paired with the gold lock makes the Chanel item one of the most coveted. The fact that this bag increases in value with age makes it a necessity.

The tweed suits also exemplify the elegance and heritage of the label. It transforms our silhouette from ordinary to chic, providing a visionary woman who would undoubtedly obsess over Sauvignon Blanc and some black truffle at the Ritz.

Photo: ekhensell@Instagram

Photo: banyan_tree@ Flickr

Film

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TV Catch Up

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Review

Atlanta In a world devoid of original sitcom concepts, Donald Glover’s Atlanta provides a topical comedy with more heart and creativity than anything currently on TV

Photo: FX Network, 20th Century Television

William Green Film Contributor

Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals welcomes the viewer into its world thrilling world of riches and lost love Eliza Slawther Head Film Editor In a strange meeting of themes, the absurd luxury of high society becomes interwoven with a Texan horror film and the cosy nostalgia of the past. Tom Ford’s second feature-length film, Nocturnal Animals, is nothing short of a sensory triumph.

Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is a successful art dealer living a lavish lifestyle when she receives the manuscript of a book her exhusband has written and dedicated to her.

From thereon the film separates into three parts; her past life, her present life and the story within the novel. Jake Gyllenhaal takes the lead as both her ex-husband Edward and the protagonist of his own novel. Despite this multi-layering of plot, the film remains relatively simple and easy to understand.

Perhaps a little too simple, however.

There is certainly a sense throughout the film that although each separate story is equally melancholic, there is no particular complexity or depth to any of them. I was left feeling with the sense that each plot could have been an excellent film in itself, had it not been a mere fragment of the whole story.

Photo: Fade to Black Productions

is not the case. The style is what makes the film so seductive to watch and it reflects the reality of the life of the protagonist, drawing the audience in for a taste of her cold yet striking world.

Not only this, but it serves as a reminder that the sub-plot of the Texas thriller is not the film itself, but a book within a film. The drawn-out road chase scene and chainsmoking small-town detective (Michael Shannon) are clear tropes and symbols of the genre it wishes to portray, but this avoids coming across as lazy plagiarism because it is depicting Susan’s imagined version of the novel. It also avoided, perhaps due to this self-awareness, being overly clichéd and was genuinely terrifying and emotionallywrenching to watch. Equally the warmth and intimacy of scenes showing her former life, when she was far less well-off and married

O ve r t h e l a s t d e c a d e i t ’s s a fe t o s ay t h a t D o n a l d G l ove r h a s c o n q u e re d j u s t a b o u t e ve r y m e d i u m k n ow n t o m a n . H e i s a G ra m my awa rd n o m i n a t e d a r t i s t u n d e r t h e n a m e C h i l d i s h G a m b i n o, s t a n d - u p c o m e d i a n , w r i t e r fo r E m my w i n n i n g 3 0 Ro c k , s t a r o f c u l t favo u r i t e C o m m u n i t y, a n d w i l l p o r t ray t h e b e l ove d L a n d o C a l r i s s i a n i n t h e u n t i t l e d H a n s S o l o S t a r Wa r s m ov i e . G l ove r ’s l a t e s t p ro j e c t , F X ’s At l a n t a ( i n wh i c h h e s t a r s , w r i t e s , p ro d u ce s a n d d i re c t s ) , co u l d j u s t b e h i s b e s t ye t .

As to be expected from director Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals is so immaculate in its beauty that watching it leads to a feeling of being in a trace. The focus on the aesthetic appears to come above all else; yet this is not over-bearing as it is so expertly done. The expensive, immaculate cinematography could easily be accused of overshadowing the plot and characterisations, and yet this

At l a n t a fo l l ow s E a r n M a rk s ( G l ove r ) a n e s s e n t i a l ly h o m e l e s s b u t s m a r t m a n s u p p o r t e d by t h e m o t h e r o f h i s d a u g h t e r Va n ( p o r t raye d e xc e l l e n t ly by Z a z i e B e e t z ) . I n s t e a d o f g a i n i n g f i xe d e m p l oy m e n t , h e c h o o s e s t o l o o k a t t h e b i g ge r p i c t u re , a t t e m p t i n g t o m a n a ge h i s c o u s i n A l f re d / P a p e r B o i ( B r i a n T y re e H e n r y) , a s u cc e s s f u l u p - a n d - co m i n g ra p p e r m o n i ke re d w i t h t h e l a bel of a thug.

Review

Fo r t h o s e e x p e c t i n g a l a u g h - o u t - l o u d s i t c o m t h o u g h , t h i n k a g a i n . At l a n t a i s s o m u c h m o re t h a n t h a t . I t i s a ra re i n s i g h t i n t o t h e h a rd s h i p s fo u n d i n p l a c e s s u c h a s At l a n t a a n d j u s t h ow d a n ge ro u s t h e y c a n b e , b u t a l s o h ow m u c h c re a t iv i t y t h r ive s i n t h e s e e nv i ro n m e n t s . I t t a c k l e s re a l -wo rl d i s s u e s t h a t a re c r y i n g o u t t o b e a d d re s s e d s u c h a s p o l i c e b r u t a l i t y, g u n c o n t ro l , m e n t a l i l l n e s s a n d t h e t re a t m e n t o f t h e t ra n s ge n d e r c o m m u n i t y. T h e c o m e d i c e l e m e n t s a re a l s o s u p e r b ly wo rke d i n t o c o u n t e r b a l a n ce t h e h e av i e r t h e m e s . I t d o e s n o t s e e m fo rce d i n a ny way, c re e p i n g t h ro u g h o u t t h e s e r i e s a t u n e x p e c t e d t i m e s a n d p l a c e s , o n ly a d d i n g t o t h e e cc e n t r i c c h a r m o f t h e s h ow.

A feel-good story let down by feelnot-so-good storytelling and tone

T h e s h ow e ve n t ra n s c e n d s t h e ove r s t a t e d c o m e dyd ra m a m i x t h a t c u r re n t ly p l a g u e s m o d e r n T V. “ T w i n P e a k s fo r ra p p e r s ” i s t h e m a n t ra G l ove r h a s u s e d t o d e s c r i b e h i s s t yl i s t i c t a ke o n t h e At l a n t a ra p s c e n e , a n d i t c o u l d n’ t b e a ny t r u e r. H e , a l o n g w i t h d i re c t o r H i ro M u ra i , d a b b l e s i n n o i r, s u r re a l i s m a n d e ve n s ke t c h c o m e dy ( l o o k o u t fo r t h e p a r t i c u l a rly d i s t i n c t ive t a ke o n c o m m e rc i a l i s m i n e p i s o d e 7 ) t h ro u g h o u t t h e s e r i e s . I t i s t h i s a m a l g a m a t i o n o f j u x t a p o s i n g s t yl e s t h a t m a ke s e a c h e p i s o d e fe e l f re s h a n d m o re s o l i ke i t s ow n i n d e p e n d e n t a n d c re a t ive p ro j e c t , a l t h o u g h a l i t t l e m o re d i re c t i o n a s t o wh a t e x a c t ly G l ove r wa n t s h i s s h ow t o be could be the final piece in this most unique puzzle.

U l t i m a t e ly, G l ove r a n d h i s t e a m s t i l l m a n a ge t o f i n d wa r m t h a n d h e a r t w i t h i n t h e s e c h a ra c t e r s , d e s p i t e t h e s e p o i g n a n t m e s s a ge s a n d g r i m u n d e r t o n e s , m a ki n g fo r wh a t c a n b e d e s c r i b e d a s a t h o u g h t p rovo k i n g b u t u l t i m a t e ly g ra t i f y i n g c o m e dy e x p e r i e n c e t h a t t h e wo rl d n e e d s m o re t h a n e ve r r i g h t n ow.

4/5

for love, reflect Susan’s own memory and perception of these days. Each sub-plot had a very distinctive essence, without being disjointed.

This being said, there was something about Nocturnal Animals that left me feeling wistful. I walked out of the cinema wanting to learn more about the novel, more about Susan and Edward. In hindsight, however, this only added to the whole experience.

Viewing Nocturnal Animals was a sensory experience above all else, a fragmented and fleeting glimpse into the distant life of the rich and successful.

4/5

A Street Cat Named Bob Esther Hamilton-Ivory Film Critic A Street Cat Named Bob is based on the true story of the life of James Bowen and his cat, Bob. Adapted from the best selling novel with the same title, the film follows James’ journey of getting off heroin and slowly rebuilding his life. All of this, he says, was only possible due to him finding a stray cat, taking him in, learning to care for him and through this, in turn, learning to care for himself.

This film is one which has its heart in the right place: a tale triumphing a man who, unlike others, manages to overcome his hardship and win the battle against his addiction against all odds. However, it doesn’t quite succeed in asserting the right tone; it was unclear as to whether it is a comedy, drama, romantic comedy, or anything else for that matter. This is not to say that it can’t be more than one of these categories, it is more that it doesn’t actually commit to any one at all.

Perhaps it was this ‘heart-warming’ aspect of the film that was problematic. It seemed the makers of this film wanted a celebratory tale which shows a troubled young man overcoming adversity against all odds (which it succeeded in doing). But this also meant that the bleak and difficult reality of heroin addiction and consequences of absent fathers was not deeply enough explored, as of course this does not make for a feel-good film. But to not deeply explore these aspects enough is to take away from and confuse the tone of the film.

It was for these reasons that one finds themselves bored at certain points in the film. But here the makers of the film, again,

Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment

seem to be making it difficult for themselves; it is very hard to make a film interesting in which one of the main characters is a cat who cannot speak. Yet, despite having a cat as his supporting role, Luke Treadway carries the story along and plays the part of James very convincingly, truly making clear the caring relationship James has for Bob Overall, despite its tonal inconsistencies, A Street Cat Named Bob is an easy watch that will most likely lighten your mood, but it is certainly not worth rushing to the cinema to watch.

2/5

Film 19

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Review

TV Catch Up

The Light Between Oceans Derek Cianfrance’s new film offers a wide range of aesthetically-pleasing footage. Unfortunately, his character development is not as pleasing

Black Mirror: Nosedive Nosedive is a technically successful pilot episode for the new season of Black Mirror — but is it really all that original?

Emefa Setranah Film Contributor This years new series of Black Mirror kicks off with an episode entitled Nosedive. It is a critical look at the future of social media use. Imagine a world where people’s perceptions of you are moulded through the online persona which you create. Every meal, memory and moment posted online for others to judge and scrutinise — sound familiar?

Photo: Heyday Films

Isidora Cortes-Monroy Film Contributor Being someone who easily bursts into tears during weepie movies, The Light Between Oceans was a thorough disappointment.

Based on M.L. Stedman’s novel, the movie follows the story of an Australian lighthouse keeper, Tom (Michael Fassbender) and his wife, Isabel (Alicia Vikander) as they struggle to create the family they’ve always wanted on the far off, uninhabited Janus Rock. After two unfortunate miscarriages, it seems that the couple will never be able to hold a child in their arms. However, almost immediately after the second miscarriage, a rowboat appears in the distance carrying a crying baby and her dead father. The biblical miracle seems suspiciously well-timed. Nonetheless, after a few minutes of deliberation both Tom and Isabel decide to raise the child as their own, naming her Lucy.

All is well for the first two years, until they go back to the mainland where Tom spots a woman mourning her husband and daughter who were lost at sea two years ago. At that moment he realises the gravity of his and Isabel’s decision and is haunted by the guilt. Albeit it takes him another two years before he lets

his own guilt destroy the family life he and Isabel had striven to build. As a way of making amends, he sends Hannah (Rachel Weisz), the biological mother, the toy which he found next to his adopted daughter on the boat. Unfortunately, thanks to this little gift, Hannah is able to track down Lucy, thus ensuing the legal battle for motherhood. What should follow are the movie’s most heart-breaking moments, shots to keep you grabbing at tissues wherever you may find them.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Although the acting is impeccable, the characters themselves are difficult to sympathise with. True, Fassbender, Vikander and Weisz are all incredible actors that possess the skills to transmit a wide range of raw emotion. Yet, there is something about these two-dimensional characters which inhibits the viewer from feeling a ‘connection’ with them.

Firstly, there is a lack of character development. Although the camera examines the actors from various angles, the viewer is nonetheless left with limited insight into the characters. There was something Twilightesque about Light Between Oceans in that it was a film about beautiful people who know

how to give penetrating stares. The overall aesthetics of the movie were impressive: gorgeous actors, breath-taking views, poetic lighting. But all this served was to create the impression of an elongated perfume commercial, rather than a 2-hour film.

Secondly, having watched this with someone who had read the book, it quickly became obvious that Derek Cianfrance had counted on the majority of his viewers to have read the book. Perhaps this is where most of the character development can be found. In any case, as a viewer who has not read the book, you can’t help but feel as if much of what was written was given up in order to make room for more commercial footage.

Overall, The Light Between Oceans is perfect for those who would love to see different shots Michael Fassbender or Alicia Vikander in period drag, or for those who dream of travelling to New Zealand and Tanzania, where the film was shot. However, for those who would like to see a film worthy of their tears, I would recommend saving your money for another movie.

2/5

Review

Yage is Our Life An insightful and poignant look into the effect that the commericialistion of yage is having on the indigenous people of Putumayo, Colombia

Photo: Awkipuma @Wikimedia Commons

Danielle Kosky Film Critic Yage Is Our Life is a thought-provoking short documentary on the relationship between the indigenous people of Putumayo, Colombia, and the traditional medicine yage. The documentary first came to my attention when I received an e-mail from the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Being of half Colombian descent, I hold a magnificent amount of pride for my country and relish the opportunity to learn more about my own culture. On top of this, I had heard a fair amount about the drug ayahuasca (more commonly known as DMT in the western world) and was eager to find out about its significance to the indigenous people and the effect the commercialisation of it has had on these deeply spiritual people.

Although Yage Is Our Life is only twenty five minutes long, the filmmakers were present at the screening and spoke about the content after. Lesly Vela White, one of the principal researchers for the documentary, was born and raised in Colombia and went into this with the aim of wanting to gain a deeper insight into the indigenous perspective. Admittedly, before having seen this film I thought ayahuasca was simply a very potent natural psychedelic that was grown in the rainforest. However, the reality of this is very, very different.

For the people of Putumayo, this traditional medicine is used to cleanse, heal and guide people towards the right path in life. From their perspective, it is a spiritual drug, only to be used by the Taitas (a traditional doctor). The documentary emphasises the grievance felt by many in the tribe. The recent spark in interest within the western world means that there has been

an increase in the number of fake Taitas performing rituals involving yage, which is not only dangerous, as proven by the death of an English teen, but also clearly being used for the entirely wrong reasons.

Something that really struck me about the documentary was the sincerity and pain felt by those interviewed. I really got the sense that this medicine was something that held a lot of meaning for them and when the Taitas and indigenous people spoke, you really felt the passion for the ayahuasca.

For them, yage isn’t about being used solely for their tribe, they don’t want to be selfish with it. They want to share their knowledge and experience of this with the world. The only thing is, they want the world to experience it safely and with a more spiritual intention, rather than just as a means to feel something, for example the intense hallucinations it can induce.

Reverting back to the point I made about the sorrow they felt about the spread of the drug in the western world, the people of Putumayo are unhappy that because of this, their earth is being tainted. Not only in an emotional sense but also in a literal sense, as people invade their territory in an attempt to keep up with the demand for DMT. In a way, the misuse of ayahuasca reminds me of cultural appropriation, an issue that currently dominates the media. To a certain extent, this traditional medicine is an integral part of someone’s culture, in the same way that someone’s clothes or hair are representative of another’s culture. Although having said this, it is clearly not entirely the same thing but there are very similar elements that prevail.

Although I had no desire to take yage before, after having seen this poignant documentary, I feel even less inclined to do so now, knowing its significance and importance to the people of Putumayo. Give it a watch and hopefully you too can see their point of view and if you are thinking of taking it, bare in mind the dominance it has on these people’s lives and how dangerous it can be when not done by experts on the drug.

The programme stars Bryce Dallas Howard as Lacie, and homegrown talent Alice Eve as the vivacious and seemingly perfect Naomi. The episode is written by Charlie Brooker, who is also the show’s creator. Joe Wright, best known for her romantic films such as Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, directs.

Lacie’s persona can be best described as akin to cotton candy; sickly sweet with a wardrobe consisting of pastel pink. In the world Brooker has created, everyone is assigned a rating out of five. Lacie is rated a 4.2 and needs to surround herself with “high quality people”. There are people such as Naomi, who is at a staggering 4.8. Being a highly rated individual allows you into the “premium users” club. This is for people 4.5 and above. Our girl Lacie desperately wants to be in the club, because elite high ranking members have access to certain perks and luxuries.

The plot line centres around Lacie’s commendable efforts to boost her social standing. She plans to use Naomi’s upcoming nuptials as an ideal hunting ground. The logic is; when you associate with high ranking people, you become one. However in true Black Mirror fashion nothing goes to plan and Lacie’s social standing begins to take a Nosedive.

This introductory episode does not fall short of Black Mirrors reputation. It is a social commentary on the potentially detrimental effects of technology. However, it is a tune that has been played one too many times. The show’s warnings against technology are becoming repetitive and predictable. The unpredictability and forward-thinking ideas are what made Black Mirror so popular in the first place. It is sad to see it take a departure from the brilliance that was once produced.

With that being said, the performances and production value of the show have maintained their high standards. Netflix have put a lot of money into the show’s production, and it shows. This further cements the online viewing platform as a high quality visual medium capable of competing with television.

Nosedive’s vapid construction of our future online exploits are too close to home. None of the ideas it presents are new or challenging. Many of us now are aware of the false veneer presented online and actively take part in the illusion. However the programme does serve a didactic purpose nonetheless. It reaffirms the lies we all tell. For example, when Lacie posts a picture of her coffee, but then grimaces as she sips it, realising that it is not as appealing as she had portrayed it to be.

Overall, the show holds a mirror up to us, the viewer, no pun intended, of how ridiculous and out of hand our online representations have become. We cherry-pick the highlights of our lives. And in the age of Instagram models with no morals, catfishes and rating systems, we all have something to learn from Nosedive. Namely, what could potentially go wrong when you try too hard to be something you’re not.

3.5/5

4/5 Photo: Netflix

Books

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Profile

ISSUE 08/ 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

The Society of Young Publishers

Danielle Kosky introduces The Society of Young Publishers and explains how you can get involved Publishing is an ever-fluctuating business as technology develops and becomes a more dominant part of our lives. For a while, it almost seemed as if physical copies of books was rapidly diminishing and would be eradicated from society, much like a horribly realistic dystopian novel, especially with the increase in self publishing. With that panic over however, publishing is once again flourishing. Despite this, a major setback within the publishing community is how to actually successfully worm your way into the role of your choosing. It is an incredibly competitive industry and one that has previously relied on networking and having contacts from within. This is where The Society of Young Publishers step in to save all you poor souls who may feel lost or like there’s no hope of getting into publishing.

The Society of Young Publishers was first set up in 1949 with the intention of assisting anyone with less than ten years of experience who would like to break into the industry but are unsure of how they can do so. It is run by a team of committed volunteers whose main goal is to give you the help you need.

The society act as a kind of support group, giving out invaluable advice and encouragement. They are also great for meeting like-minded book enthusiasts who will be there to progress and

Photo: The Society of Young Publishers

develop alongside you.

The society in the North of England have just revamped their committee who have been garnering new ideas to allow its members to effectively advance within the publishing community as well as establishing more contacts, which proves to be a vital and crucial aspect of being successful. Steadily they have been gathering more momentum and influence in the North and would like you to be a part of it. Although it was

initially aimed at under thirty-five year olds, all are more than welcome to join.

There are so many reasons why you should join, primarily because a lot of the events involve networking which is extremely important, especially since a lot of these industry professionals may be looking for interns or can provide advice on how to achieve an internship. I cannot emphasise enough how making contacts in publishing is of paramount importance, in addition to this networking is not a skill that tends to be taught at university so these events are an excellent way to improve on this.

If you want to get involved, now is the time! Regular events are held in Manchester and Leeds including author and illustrator interviews, speaker events with publishers and other thriving industry professionals, book clubs and so much more (sounds dreamy, doesn’t it?) If you want to be involved with such a fantastic and worthwhile group.

You can register your interest by emailing syp.north@gmail. com and following @SYPNorth on twitter to keep up to date with any updates. They also have a Facebook page ‘The Society of Young Publishers North, if you prefer to keep a track of things on there instead.

Feature

The BBC’s #lovetoread campaign

James Blower introduces the BBC’s new scheme #lovetoread and urges students to take up the challenge Reading is one of life’s great pleasures; delving into a good novel can inspire, provoke thought and discussion, stretch your imagination and let it run wild, not just as a wide-eyed child but throughout adulthood too.

Studies by The Reading Agency have shown that reading for pleasure plays a greater part in a child’s development than a general school education does. Using the power of social media, the BBC hopes to reinstate the value of reading to adults, teenagers and children alike.

This month has seen the BBC launch a campaign named #lovetoread in an attempt to get the nation talking about which books matter the most to them. They want to encourage people to turn off their televisions this autumn and to instead curl up on the sofa with a good novel. After having spent the summer months lounging around the pool, reading book after book, most students set themselves resolutions about trying to read more over the coming academic year. As the nights grow ever longer we wonder whether these well-meant resolutions are being kept!

Campaigns like the BBC’s #lovetoread are essential because of the necessity to inspire a generation who are able to reach, more than ever, for an infinite number of screen-based forms of entertainment.

The BBC has always placed a great emphasis on authors and books but this campaign is designed to make reading for pleasure a greater priority.

Using radio, television and online presence as well as combining forces with regional and national literary organisations like The Reading Agency, the BBC are well and truly on a quest to

“

After having spent the s u m m e r m o n t h s l o u n g i n g around the pool, reading book after book, most s t u d e nt s set themselves resolutions about trying to read more over the coming academ ic year

”

inspire.

Up and down the country, local libraries are hosting events and promoting new book clubs to engage the local community and bring people together through a love for literature. Simon Mayo is running a spin-off of the highly popular Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs but is instead ‘casting away’ authors Marian Keyes, David Nicholls, Jilly Cooper and Ian Rankin. He asks

them which books played an influential part in their lives, delving deep into their diverse and fascinating imaginations.

BBC2 on Saturday nights for the last few weeks has been literature night with many literature-related programmes celebrating authors, books and much more. All are still available on iPlayer, but if you are taking heed of the BBC’s message to cut down TV time and haven’t got time to catch up on all of their shows, the pick of the bunch is The Secret Life of Sue Townsend Aged 68 ¾, which follows the life of Adrian Mole’s creator, and is narrated by Julie Walters.

So why not reignite those summer resolutions and, with an open mind, tune into one of BBC’s radio or television shows that are all so conveniently stored on iPlayer? Be prepared to be inspired once again by the pure joys of reading!

Photo: AndyRoberts@flickr

Book recommendation of the week

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi “This was the book that ignited my love for graphic novels. It is a memoir of an intelligent, outspoken girl who grows up in Iran during the Islamic revolution. The book highlights the power of human resilience and reminds us that, collectively, what we have in common far outweighs our differences.”

Chosen by Aiswarya Kishor, International Student of Tissue Engineering

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I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to get so angry xx I’ve told you before there is nothing going on, they’re just a friend x I only get jealous because I love you so much xxx C

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Food & Drink

22

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Hispi

Tweet In honour of Miriam going to Hispi, owned by one of Twitter’s most infamous/lol chefs, we have decided to share some of his and Mangal 2 ’s (also Twitter infamous/ lol) best tweets. Gary Usher, the owner of Hispi, Burnt Truff le and Sticky Walnut, has an amazing online presence. He rips people on TripAdvisor, and is a breath of fresh in the inane world of restaurant social media PR . Ferhat Dirik, manager of Mangal 2 and son of the head chef, is hilarious. His poltical commentary rivals The Economist ’s.

Miriam Mizzi Contributer

Hearing a new restaurant is opening nearby always fills me with a slight nervous excitement. In October, Hispi, a new bistro brought to us by Gary Usher, opened its doors to the keen residents of East Didsbury. Gary’s previous ventures include The Sticky Walnut in Chester and Burnt Truffle in Heswell, which both continue to have outstanding reputations. Therefore, my usual nervous excitement was pushing on to a more urgent fidget.

Despite some awful delays caused by the 142 bus being somewhat infrequent this evening, the genuine front of house waitress welcomed us in and beckoned us to a candlelit table. I was finally sat in Hispi’s exposed brick, relaxed yet chic, dining room. My initial feeling was that I was actually back at home, in leafy Surrey, in one of my friends’ homes where I feel more than comfortable putting my feet up on the sofa while sipping on a much needed, end of week glass of wine. The wall, which is decorated with a large mirror, boasts the names of the people who contributed to this crowdfunded project, it shows the respect Hispi has towards their help. The gentle hint of tasteful classic music immediately allowed my ‘being late’ stress to float away and my attention to turn to the simple sheet of paper that was presented in front of me and the thick, well-filled drinks menu. We ordered some Italian white wine, which I deem a must, and began to mull over the food options.

The menu was littered with seasonal ingredients, especially truffle, which was fitting due us being in the depth of truffle season. We felt the need to venture into all corners of the menu in order to gain a real insight into the themes and flavours Hispi wants to bring to South Manchester.

We started by sharing the truffle potato salad. A small introduction into just how well Hispi can make simple ingredients dance on your tastebuds.

This rich, creamy, oniony dish was scraped clean

Hispi @HispiBistro

in seconds. Next, came our mains. I chose the Gressingham duck breast, due to duck being one of my go to meats when indulging. My plate was artistically splattered with celeriac puree, confit garlic, crisped young onions, a vibrant green parsley sauce, roasted shallots and a single spring onion, which all worked together to push to view the beautifully pink slices of duck. Each carefully engineered element to this dish was necessary and added to the dish in a unique way, my favourite being the softened hearty pockets of garlic and the texture of the crispy onions. My eating partner opted for braised featherblade beef with grilled broccoli, truffle and parmesan crisps. Despite looking a little less elegant than the duck dish, the hearty flavours were unmatchable, this dish really was ‘no-frills attached’ good food. Our experience of the savoury parts of Hispi’s menu was definitely one to remember and to pass on under our breaths to fellow Manchester food lovers.

Although neither of us are renowned

for having a sweet tooth, Hispi’s desert menu can tempt even the strongest dessert cynics. We decided to share the parkin (a rich gingerbread flavour cake) which came with a butterscotch sauce and a creme fraiche sorbet. Its intense flavour reminded me of my favourite childhood school dinner desserts. Some might think of their school’s food as horrifying, but the desserts were always a winner in my eyes. This dessert balanced the extremely sweet, perfectly with a quenelle of slightly sour crème fraiche, and worked to finish off our dining experience in an impressive manner.

Hispi’s atmosphere is what I’d like to call refined homeliness. Somewhere that feels special, yet you can relax in. Hispi’s food is what I’d like to call elegant heartiness. Somewhere that serves visually perfected food, which still warms your insides with flavour.

Cottonopolis’ New Gin for. Just as we thought this, a lovely representative from Haig Whisky tapped me on the back offering samples of their new whisky. It had been aged in caskets to release the full extent of its flavour and was much lighter than their original whisky.

Pouring it into a glass with coke and a dash of lime, it had both me and my companion wanting more.

As the night went on and DJ Paulette continued with a smooth mash up of funk music and jazz, we decided to take a seat and finally purchase ourselves a cocktail with Cottonopolis’s newly made gin. Before we could do this however we were side tracked, by more delicious sushi canapés. We were first tempted with a Beef Nori Taco, marinated beef on a crunchy shell, which my companion could only describe as ‘beauts’. Next was a Crab and Rice sushi roll, while not quite as nice as the Beef Nori I had just tried, was still a wellmade and tasteful piece of sushi. Finally, to finish off was the classic Salmon roll, slightly typical, but always a crowd pleaser.

It was now time for the main course, the whole

Hispi @HispiBistro TART. Sometimes if there’s any left I put a slice in each of my coat pockets then I walk to my car squishing it all between my fingers.

Mangal 2 Restaurant @Mangal2 The only negative to illegaly imploying children is that all the staff are out trick or treating tonight. Fuming.

Mangal 2 Restaurant @Mangal2

Akim Wright Contibuter Venturing past the Curry Mile for anything other than a night in Factory or a trip to Fifth may seem unusual for some. But the other week that’s exactly what I did. Myself along with my sesh, I mean eating/drinking, partner took a ‘press’ trip (the thought of which made me feel both proud and important) to Cottonopolis’s night of debuting it’s new gin.

My eating companion and I arrived with high hopes and expectations of what we both assumed would be a classy night of laughs, glass clinking and witty conversation. Upon arriving at the steps of Cottonopolis, we were greeted by two bouncers who smiled at us upon entry. As soon as we entered we both realised one thing, we were probably the youngest people there. However, this did not deter us, and, as naturally hungry students we made a beeline for the first piece of free food we saw. On a table at the back of the bar was a lovely Tuna Coriander Pesto Sushi Canapé, lovely and light, with a deliciously sweet after taste.

After revelling for what seemed like an age at the wonder of this fine sushi, we knew we had to push on in search of the very thing we came

CHEFS! We need a fucking chef D. This is fucking ridiciulous now! 2 boys have started and fucked off after a day. Don’t be a flake, JOIN US

reason we were there, to try the new Cottonopolis Gin. I went up and ordered two Gimlets, made with Cottonopolis Gin, calamansi lime and mandarin cordial. Maybe it was all the excitement we had built up in our head for being our first press event, maybe it was the highly delicious standard of the sushi we had just previously eaten, but the cocktail wasn’t that great. A little too bitter for our liking, and it seemed the Gin and the cordial we’re fighting for the stronger taste, but our conclusion was that Cottonopolis’s new Gin was a miss. What’s more, for the money we paid for it (certainly not student friendly), we were just a little let down.

Despite all this, the night was wonderful, and we went home feeling all the more pleased that we had this experience. If I had to suggest taking your significant other out for a night of classy cocktails and The Font isn’t what you’re looking for, I would recommend Cottonopolis. Just remember to bring quite a bit of change. Thank you to my lovely friend and eating companion Ingeline for accompanying me, and I will see you on the next one.

Just got married. Party at Mangal 2 tonight. I won’t be there, but cash payments would please me. Fuck Nando’s Mangal 2 Restaurant @Mangal2 Are we humus. Or are we dancer?

Mangal 2 Restaurant @Mangal2 If you come here and try and pay wih one of those old £5 notes I will burn your house down.

Food & Drink 23

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Recipe

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup Cold? We have recipes for winter warmth.

I found myself standing in the supermarket surrounded by shelves stacked with my favourite autumnal vegetables. There was only one thing for it, my classic more-ish winter dish, a roasted butternut squash soup.

This recipe is one I ’ve experimented with lots of times before, dependent on availability at different times of the year, however, today I could get everything I needed.

Photo: Paleo Grubs@flickr

Start by roasting the butternut squash in the oven. I cut mine into quarters and seasoned it with salt, pepper, paprika and chilli f lakes, and then doused it in oil. Pop in the oven at about 200 degrees.

Then, peel and chop the sweet potatoes, season them and add them to the oven about 15 minutes

after the squash. Keep checking the veg until it has softened up.

Add the chopped red pepper.

Once it ’s all soft enough to blend, remove and cool.

Spoon the f lesh out of the butternut squash and add it to a saucepan. Add the soft pepper and sweet potatoes.

In a jug , mix the vegetable stock with a pint of boiling water.

Slowly add this to the saucepan of roasted vegetables and begin blending .

It ’s completely up to you how much stock to add, consistency is down to individual taste.

Chop the chilli and sprinkle on top. I added a few chopped spring onions too for crunch!

One large butternut squash, Two sweet potatoes, A red pepper, Vegetable stock, One chilli Miriam Mizzi Contributer

@hungoverhabits

Recipe

Tartiflette

Lily Carden Contributor

a garlic clove 6 medium waxy potatoes, cut into 5mm rounds 150g pancetta or bacon, diced

Any skier knows you burn a lot of energy on the slopes and that ’s a good excuse to eat what you want to keep fuelled.

Well, we might not be in an Alpine chalet here in Manchester (unless you’ve taken up residence at Chill Factory or the Christmas markets) but it ’s damn cold right now, so making a hearty meal sounds perfect.

Tartif lette was thought up in the 1980s by Reblochon manufacturers as a way to drive up sales, and it ’s salty rind definitely means it ’s the best cheese to use.

@gorgeousgateaux

Layer a third of the potatoes in the baking dish and top with half the pancetta and onion mix, season with black pepper, repeat with another third of the potatoes and the rest of the onion mix (more pepper here). After the top layer of potatoes, pour over the cream and place the 2 pieces of reblochon rind sides up on the top.

Bake in the oven for 2 5-30 minutes until the cheese has melted and the dish is bubbling .

Serve your tartif lette with a crisp salad and the rest of the Riesling .

knob of butter 2 white onions, cut into rounds

black pepper 50ml double cream ½ a round of reblochon, cut horizontally so that the 2 halves both have the rind on one side

Photo: Lily Carden

Cut the garlic in half and rub the cut halves over a 2 person baking dish. Place the potatoes in a pan of cold water, turn on the heat and bring to the boil.

When boiling , cook for 6 minutes before draining them . Meanwhile, cook the pancetta in a large frying pan and then transfer to a bowl. Add a knob of butter to the frying

pan and fry the onions until they are soft and beginning to caramelise.

Return the pancetta to the pan with the onions and pour over the wine.

Boil for a few minutes to reduce the wine. Season with black pepper (the pancetta and reblochon are salty enough that you don’t need to season with salt).

100ml white wine (Riesling is excellent and great to drink with the meal)

Arts

24

ISSUE 08 / 14TH NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Feature

The Trafford Centre: Not your average shopping experience To celebrate Intu Trafford Centre’s 18th birthday, we explore the inspiration behind its creation Laura Joyce Arts Editor

Photo: Aaron Crowe@Flickr

Editor’s Picks

Photo: Hamed Masoumi @ Flickr

Manchester’s Intu Trafford Centre has a hell of a lot to offer. From the largest food court in Europe, to the busiest cinema in the UK (and not to mention over 200 shops) Manchester’s largest shopping centre certainly has it all!

But what exactly is it that separates this centre from the rest?

The answer is simple, architecture. Opened in 1998, you might expect a fairly modern approach to this ultimate shopping experience. Originally owned by The Peel Group, it’s chairman, John Whittaker had other plans for the project. Whittaker convinced architects to create a one-of-a-kind centre, inspired by a collection of eras and styles.

He said: “When we first started the architects said, “you shouldn’t be doing all this and giving it all the razzmatazz and showbiz, leave that to the retailers. Make it plain, make it clinical, make it white and hospitalised and let them do the work”. So then we put in the paintings, we put in the real gold leaf, we put artefacts everywhere, paintings. It is the people’s palace. It is something to attract shoppers ... to give them the Dallas effect.”

The vast shopping centre spans over two floors and involved an innovative design that ensures an equal number of entrances on both floors to avoid upper-floor

retailers from missing out on custom. There is also a third floor which has a 23-screen ODEON cinema, a laser quest, and a mini-golf experience.

The extra large food court is known as The Orient, and is designed to look like a 1930’s cruise ship. This gigantic eating area also includes street-like areas inspired by countries from around the world including New Orleans and Egypt, among many others. It’s not very shopping centre that has a miniature set of the Sphinx don’t you know!

Crossing the threshold into the Great Hall is like stepping onto the Titanic. A stunning addition to the centre in 2007, and costing a whopping £26 million, the Great Hall is truly sensational. The extension is encased in marble imported from China and is thought to home to the largest chandelier in the world. You can’t help but imagine Leo waiting for you on the grand marble staircase, hand outstretched, donned in his dashing tux. A girl can dream.

The Main Dome is claimed to be larger than that of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. And, given its grandeur - that would not be surprising. Donned in gold detailing and adorned with semi-nude paintings and sculptures, there is no other entrance to a Selfridge’s store quite like it.

Walking through the Trafford Centre you are truly transported to a different age. Each step is a different country, a different period, a different inspiration. The Peel Group set out to give an alternative shopping experience to its patrons, and let’s face it; you don’t see many 20th Century Art Deco shopping centres now do you?

Feature

Rare painting by LS Lowry makes its Salford debut A few of our top picks

What’s on this Week?

across Manchester over the coming week Miniature World At Castlefield Galleries 18 November 2016 - 22 January 2017

This winter Castlefield Gallery brings you Miniature World, an exhibition of film, sculpture, 2D work, astronomical artefacts, miniature models, and diagrams of the finite-infinite relation. Acknowledging our relentless pursuit for knowledge, the exhibition considers the potential of things in small-scale to help us understand, document and communicate the world in which we find ourselves, ultimately arriving at the joy we find in these modest-sized artefacts in their own right.

Extinction or Survival?

At Manchester Museum, Manchester, 21 October 2016–20 April 2017 Perhaps the most urgent-feeling of the exhibitions on our radar right now is Extinction or Survival? at Manchester Museum. A succinct but powerful look at the times when humans have influenced the survival of species on earth, the exhibition tells some well known stories, like that of the dodo, alongside lesser-known fates, treading a careful balance between being harrowing (take the mountain of bison skulls on show in one photograph) and inspiring. A must-see.

Fancy getting involved?

If you enjoy art, and would like to write for the Arts section, join our Facebook group : Mancunion Arts Contributors 2016/2017.

OR Come along to our weekly meetings in the Activities Space in the Students’ Union. at 5.30pm on Mondays.

Photo: The Lowry

Lowry’s 1959 Berwick-inspired painting finds its way to Manchester Georgia Welch Contributor Much to the delight of LS Lowry fans, the infamous Lancashire-hailing industrial painter, one of his rarer works has recently been placed on display at the eponymous Lowry gallery in Salford, thanks to its anonymous owner lending the painting for one year. ‘On The Sands, Berwick’, painted in 1959, was originally part of the Royal Academy’s posthumous exhibition in 1976, celebrating Lowry’s resounding legacy. Since then it has remained in private ownership, until the painting previewed at the Granary Gallery in the

titular seaside town of Berwick, and later made its way to Salford’s own Lowry gallery.

The painting is one of approximately 20 drawings and paintings Lowry produced of Berwick, a seaside resort he is said to have enjoyed visiting regularly between the 1930s and 1970s. It depicts a number of adults and children playing around the pavilion in the centre of the composition, with its bright, sandy backdrop providing quite the contrast to the harsher, more angular depictions of grey industrial landscapes throughout the North West that Lowry is perhaps best known for.

The aforementioned pavilion was repaired by the local council after falling into disrepair some time

in the 1990s, with the Lowry connection being hailed as the motivation behind this. It now features as part of Berwick’s Lowry Trail.

Now that the painting features in Salford, large crowds can be expected, predictably those who have never seen it up close and personal before.

Lowry’s huge notoriety within Manchester and its surrounding towns is undeniable, with his infamous ‘matchstick men’ style and brooding landscape paintings gaining him countless admirers and cementing his immeasurable cultural influence. ‘On The Sands, Berwick’ is just one of many of the works which created this legacy, so be sure to see it at the Lowry while you have the chance.

Theatre 25

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Interview

Interview: Daniel Rigby Brogen Campbell talks to Daniel Rigby about playing Alan Turing, artificial intelligence, and his advice for young actors

Brogen Campbell Theatre Editor The Mancunion spoke to Daniel Rigby, who is currently playing Alan Turing in Breaking the Code at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

What was your approach to getting the characterisation of Alan Turing?

My primary approach was to read as much stuff about his life and him and to absorb as much literature as I could. This is because there is very little by the way of audio and visual recordings of how he moved or what he sounded like. My aim was to read as much as I could and try to get an impression of him.

What attracted you to the role in the first place considering you don’t have a background in science?

The truth is there are a whole bunch of reasons why I wanted to do it. The director (Robert Hastie) is a very old friend of mine and I really wanted to work with him. When I read the play I relished the idea of having a go and trying to speak a bit of maths. I liked the idea of learning about it, not that I have learnt about it in any significant way. I’ve got my head around as much as I need to make sense out of it. The challenge of it was a nice idea.

Did you watch ‘The Imitation Game’, which features Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, for inspiration?

I didn’t actually. Once I found out I had this role I avoided watching the film because occasionally when you see another actor playing the same part you subconsciously steal some of their characterisations. I didn’t want to be too influenced by the film. I’ve been told that my performance is very different to how Benedict plays Turing in the film. I think that is partly down to the fact that Alan Turing himself is a multifaceted man, from what I read about him he had a lot of different sides to his personality. I think it depended on who you were and how you related to him to what side you saw. There was quite a few of his friends who would comment on him, when he was talking about science that he loved, as being very childlike and enthusiastic. There was this lovely mischievous, impish quality, which kept popping up to me and spoke to me more than the other stuff that was a bit colder perhaps and not a true reflection of who he was. The people who found him cold were people who he didn’t get on with him or had some sort of funny professional relationship with him. The people closes to him thought he had a good sense of humour, friendly, childlike and mischievous and that’s what I took and ran with.

That endearing nature definitely came across in your performance of him. How did you find getting your head around the mathematical speeches in the play?

It was very tricky especially the speech about the incompleteness theorem. It really taxed the old grey

matter because it almost straddles mathematics and philosophy, I could get my fingertips around the concepts but it was difficult to get a full grasp on those mathematical concepts.

Review

The Rocky Horror Show

Elise Gallagher is in for a theatrical treat at The Rocky Horror Show

Does the play have a relevance today considering it was first performed in 1986?

Yes I think it has more relevance now than ever because there are sections of the play that discusses about computing and artificial intelligence. We are in an era that is on the cusp of great advances in these areas and feels like we are at the cusp of virtual reality and proper artificial intelligence. It feels very relevant when he is talking about computers because it feels like we are starting to see some of the things he predicted would happen right now.

How was performing at the Royal Exchange Theatre?

It was brilliant. It’s probably my favourite theatre that I’ve performed in to be honest. It’s in the round so you are surrounded by people, but it’s not intimidating. The way that it’s designed everyone feels on top of you but in a very, very good way. In a comforting way almost.

How was working with the rest of the cast?

It was really nice because there is a really mix of experiences and ages. It’s a weird play, as if you aren’t playing Alan Turing, you bob in and out in a sporadic way. I think it’s unique in that sense. Everyone has to find their place in it and I can imagine that a sense of company would fall apart because you aren’t working all the time, but it hasn’t, it’s been lovely.

How did you get into theatre?

By dint of not being able to do anything else basically.

At school I was rubbish at most things, but played Fagin in Oliver when I was eleven at my junior school and it was great. People clapped and laughed and I thought this was my thing.

That’s what inspired you. Do you have advice for younger actors?

See as much as you can. Do as much as you can. Be as proactive as you can. Try and add some more strings to your bow, because those things are important too What are you involved in next after Breaking the Code?

I’m doing a Twelfth Night at the National Theatre in the New Year and I’m filming a few things next year so that’s all happening. I’m also writing a comedy pilot, which I’ve been commissioned to do, so I’ll be trying to write that before the end of the year. So I’ll be nice and active.

Breaking the Code is on until the 19th of November.

Photo: Opera House

Elise Gallagher Deputy Editor-in-Chief I feel there needs to be an important disclaimer to this review: my only experience of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show was the song Time Warp, and I thought that was all there was to know.

How wrong I was.

Something swept over Manchester on that frightful night, as we approached Manchester Opera House brightly coloured wigs dotted nearby pedestrians, every now and then until we made it to the stage door, we were in a sea of sequins, corsets, red lip stick, and suspenders.

My friend and I have been attending plays for many years, ranging from the quirky and sometimes frankly odd productions above pubs to West End musicals. So when audience members began to shout out “gang bang” and “blow job” at the night’s narrator (Charlie Condou) my friend turned white. Before we realised that this was a part of the show audience members thrung themselves on their feet to dance to the Time Warp (again) — it went against every theatre etiquette rule in the book and I loved it.

The interuptions got too much for Condou however to the point where he had to re go over his lines on stage, at one particular instance he started his whole paragraph again complete with exit and re-entrance. But I feel that’s the beauty of this show, it is fun and it is hysterical. I was absolitely exhausted when I’d left but the thrill of seeing men, top half clothed by the stereotypical office shirt and tie to slowly peer down to see their legs donned with

fishnets, garter and high heels I wouldn’t even attempt to stand in.

One person I refuse not to let go without note is Kristian Lavercombe as Riff Raff.

Lavercombe has performed in the Rocky Horror Show nearly a thousand times, most notably for the UK’s 40th Anniversary Tour, the New Zealand and Asian Tours, and also the recent Australian Tour - where he performed alongside the shows creator and original Riff Raff — Richard O’Brien. I still now to this day have his verse from There’s a Light Over at the Frankenstein Place — trust me, you’ll know when it’s his verse.

Another cast member, who of course had to steal the show, was Liam Tamne as Frank N Furter arguably new to the Rocky Horror Show tour, Tamne confessed he didn’t actually know much about the show until he got the part but easily embodied the charasmatic role.

Although some have said there isn’t much of a storyline and that what there is serves as a mere vehicle for fluff and filthiness, I believe the comedic nature of the narrative is a breathe of fresh air for audiences. It is fun viewing, not strict blink and you’ll miss it. The point of the show isn’t the nature, it’s the fun of being there experiencing it all.

Every song hits the right note, every cackle, heckle, and scream satisfied the audience.

The song Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me performed by Hayley Flaherty (who plays the role of Janet brillaintly), was by far the most fun and catchy.

If you like a bit of fun, and it doesn’t have to be the kinky kind, it is impossible not enjoy this show. I’m looking for a ticket now.

Write for the Theatre Section Do you want to review the latest shows? Do you fancy writing for the Theatre Section of The Mancunion?

If so, join the facebook page Mancunion Theatre Section Contributors.

Meetings which are held every Tuesday at 5:30pm in the Activities Space in the Students Union. If you want to contact the section just email: theatre@mancunion.com

Photo: Royal Exchange Theatre

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Lifestyle

ISSUE 08 / 14th NOVEMBER 2016 WWW.MANCUNION.COM

Ways to relieve anxiety

Taking care of your own mental health is important — here are some ways to manage anxiety whilst waiting for professional help Ella Kashti Lifestyle Contributor Way too many of us suffer anxiety disorders at this age. It’s a prime time for mental health issues to sprout, since we’re all of a sudden exposed to more than we’ve ever known. This means plenty more chances for real reasons to worry, and a mindset prone to worry about things we really don’t need to.

Unfortunately, the waiting lines are long and resources are limited. It’s hugely important to seek and accept help, because your mind can be trained to health like any other muscle in your body. But, you’re not going to lift 100kg in your first session (you get the point). It takes time and sometimes it doesn’t seem to progress fast enough. So, from my experience, there are a few little tweaks you can incorporate into your lifestyle to make things a little easier in the meantime.

1. Reading helpful books There are endless books out there to assist you in understanding your situation. With knowledge comes power (great saying) and when it comes to understanding your brain, if you’re anything like me, all knowledge is new knowledge and can extract the fear you have of the unknown.

Knowing someone out there has an explanation

Photo: Practical Cures @Flickr

of how and why you’re feeling like you do makes it all seem less daunting. ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Professor Steve Peters is a great place to start, as is ‘Mindfulness’ by Williams and Penman.

2. Meditation Meditating helps you focus on the immediate sensations affecting your body right now and slowly control your mind over the little things. In time, this can then help to gain control in the more imaginative areas that cause stress and worry.

Apps such as ‘Headspace’ and ‘Stop, Think & Breathe’ help guide you through mediations based on the mood you’re in and log your activity. They can also be useful in reminding you to keep it up.

3. Cut out/down on the stimulating factors Often with anxieties, the mental worry sets off a physical reaction. Things like caffeine, alcohol, and sugar all tend to heighten your physical reaction, so where they can be avoided or lessened, do. It’s easy enough to drink decaf teas and coffees and cut down on sweets, but considering general life at university, alcohol is harder to cut out. Drinking less, more regularly, rather than binging will help reduce the associated anxiety.

Although these changes may help lessen the affects, anxiety disorders are mental dysfunctions that need professional attention. Be prepared for a long process, but one that will be worth it.

Escaping the concrete jungle Fed up with Manchester looking so grey? Get some green in your life and discover a park near you, with the help of VoucherCloud’s Manchester Student Guide

Rachel Adams Head Lifestyle Editor

Photo: huasito @Flickr

Sometimes Manchester can feel and look a bit, well, grey. There’s so many buildings, roads, and traffic, that it’s difficult to escape to monotony of campus life. It’s so easy to get trapped in the ‘Fallowfield bubble’ and not explore the rest of the city: there is a lot more to discover away from Oxford Road! If you want to see something green that’s not on your plate, or if you’re missing the green, green, grass of home — thanks Tom Jones — or just fancy broadening your horizons a little, then look no further than the new Manchester Student Guide, designed by VoucherCloud.

They’ve put together a load of information for

new — and current! — students in Manchester, including places to eat and fun days out. They’ve also put together a handy list of all of nearby parks and green spaces around Fallowfield and the university campus for you to explore; a park is a great place to exercise too! Check out their list below and take a look at the guide here: “Towards Fallowfield and Withington you can find Platt Fields Park which has always been a student favourite.

Whitworth Park off Oxford Road has recently been reunited with the beautiful Whitworth Art Gallery so has been adorned with many

important sculptures — a great way to spend an afternoon or a gap between lectures.

The Garden in front of The Lawn Club of Spinningfields is a beautiful and very spruced up canopy where you can chill with outdoor heaters and maybe even grab some nearby street food.

The Vimto Park on the UoM’s Sackville Street campus, easily identified by its own monumental soft drink on display. Read through your notes here at leisure and enjoy a cheeky Vimto perhaps in the very place where it was created back in 1908.

All Saints Park is situated in the middle of the

MMU campus, a nice bit of grass for students and university staff alike to enjoy.

Langworth Park in Salford is worth a visit, just for the view of lovely Chimney Pots due to its raised position. Here you can enjoy floral arrangements, a bowling green and there is a fivea-side football field too.

Peel Park in Salford is another great space for students to relax between lectures. It features sports pitches too alongside a couple of sculptures which play a part in the Irwell Sculpture Trail.”

Happy exploring!

Lifestyle 27

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A merry student Christmas Christmas on a student budget can certainly be tough, but here are a few ideas to get you going

Chloe Hatton Lifestyle Contributor

It’s that time of year again. The time when you that remember you promised yourself things would be different. You swore you most definitely would not leave your Christmas shopping until two days before, and this time you’re determined to make sure you don’t give people Sainsbury’s Basics chocolate and a cheap scented candle. Your only problem is that you’ve bought a few too many Jägerbombs this year and your loan seems to have dwindled into nothing. So, what’s a poor student to do? Never fear, here are a few ways to make Christmas an occasion to be proud of: The first thing is to start budgeting your money now and buy your presents nearer to the time, either that or buy all your presents while you still have some cash and get it out of the way early. This way you can be sure that you’re able to get nice presents whilst still being able to feed yourself, which is obviously very important.

Christmas doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, and if you happen to be on the arty side — meaning you can draw more than a stick figure — it’s often really cheap to make presents for people, whether it’s a painting or purse you’ve sewn. Even if you’re not particularly arty this is a good idea when considering gifts to give parents and grandparents who are certainly not allowed to criticise the work of their darling child or grandchild! Charity shops can be absolute gold mines when it comes to finding Christmas presents, and if you can’t find a suitable gift in its original form, there are often things like photo frames that can be personalised really easily with some paint.

Sale season is starting soon and it’s the perfect place to start if you want something like clothes, shoes, and accessories. This is a good idea if you really have left it to the last minute; things will start to get a lot cheaper as Christmas draws near. Bulk buying is another great idea if you’re buying presents for lots of friends, and companies like Amazon or The Book People are a useful place to

Photo: fussyonion @Flickr

start. A little closer to home, there are shops in Manchester that also offer potential for Christmas present shopping. Oklahoma in the Northern Quarter is one, offering cute and quirky gifts that fit almost any budget, and are fantastic if you want something a little

different. The Christmas markets are another place to look if you want gifts appropriate to the season and it’s a wonderful excuse to have a day out and drink lots of mulled wine which, as we all know, really is the true spirit of Christmas.

Work out your A student’s guide to budgeting winter workouts Kevin Gunan Shang Lifestyle Contributor

Cachella Smith Lifestyle Contributor

I’ve just come in from my run. My eyes are streaming, my fingers are close to becoming separate from my hands, and I’m pretty sure my lungs have turned to ice, since no matter how much I try, I cannot seem to get enough oxygen back into my body.

I’m not sure how long I can continue doing this. It’s winter — that’s a good enough excuse not to exercise right?

Wrong! The cold should never be an excuse to forgo all exercise. There are plenty of ways you can maintain your fitness regime despite the sub-zero temperatures blasting your face every time you open the door.

Have a look at my top tips, or even simply continue as you are: a slight freshness in the air never hurt anyone!

1. Do as much as you can indoors A gym membership at this time of the year can often be a lifesaver.

Even without one, strength, muscle and stretching exercises can all be done indoors. Try ‘warming-up’ whilst you’re still in the warm, this way your muscles won’t get as much of a shock when you go outside!

2. Switch up your routine Even if your regime is more cardio-based, why not try and switch it up over the colder months? Try new sports that can be done inside — from

following YouTube videos to trying out a dance or Kung-Fu class. In fact, if you want to take keeping warm to this extreme, why not try out a Bikram Yoga session in the Smithfield Building, Northern Quarter? At £16 a session, or just £30 for a month’s pass, these 90 minutes yoga classes are done in 40C heat; a brilliant way to melt the icicles off of the end of your nose!

3. Embrace the cold If you do decide that your exercise regime simply wouldn’t be the same if you don’t go outside, layers would be the best way to fight against the

cold. The parts of your body from which you lose the most heat are your ears, fingers and toes. So invest in a decent headband and pair of gloves (and some socks I guess if you’re prone to exercising outdoors in bare feet?!) Often the chill air encourages us to work harder anyway, anything to gain a bit of warmth!

If all else fails, simply remember your motivation! Think how much more you are doing than all those who saw the winter as synonymous Photo: 401kcalculator.org @Flickr with hibernation and hot chocolate.

We’ve all been there — having to turn Don’t forget — summer bodies are down a night out because you don’t have kick-started in the winter! enough money. However, having a lack of money as a poor student should never get in our way of having a great time. Sit down and create a budgeting plan for at the start of the academic year; you will make your money last longer and never have to miss a night out again. There are more ways than you imagined to prevent the good times turning bad. Here are six top tips on budgeting as a student: 1. Make a plan Make a list of the items you need to buy in the foreseeable future and start thinking about how to get it. Plan for affordability, not desirability. Budgeting weekly or monthly expenses in advance will help you save a lot.

2. Make the most of your student discounts Use your student ID to pick up discountPhoto: hernanpc @Flickr

ed items and pay restaurant food bills. If you don’t notice a discount advertised, just ask! Not everywhere will offer discounts, but if you don’t ask, you never get.

A key part of budgeting is realising where you can get discounts, and using them.

3. Play with eBay There are always loads of bargains hidden on eBay, good news for your budgeting needs! You do need some patience to dig out those hidden, less bid-on, auctions.

Many people like you are searching for products online — so why not put your unwanted items online and sell them? This might generate the money to meet other needs. All you need to do is photograph the items, put them online, keep track of the app and ship them.

4. Stay away from expensive shops We’ve all been there — luxurious window displays enticing you in, despite their hefty price tag. Avoid temptation straight off and just steer clear of those expensive shops. Keep track of the plan you have made and make it work.

5. Save money eating out at restaurants Being a student often means loads of social events, and eating out at restaurants.

Whilst you want to keep your friendships going, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to break the bank. See if you can split a starter with your buddy and skip the dessert. Don’t be afraid to say no if your budget can’t stretch that far.

6. Enjoy yourself Most importantly, student life is meant to be fun. So never let financial pressure ruin your experience. As long as you are mindful of your budget, you won’t miss out or find yourself panicking about money.

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@Mancunion_Sport

OGC Nice to Meet You

Nice are punching above their weight, but how have they managed to contest PSG and Monaco?

Magnus Henderson Sport Reporter There is a very legitimate reason why the Premier League is hailed as the best club division in the world. One simply needs to look at the last four champions: Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Leicester City. This consistently revolving power is not found in the remainder of the ‘big five’ leagues. Bayern Munich have won all of the last four Bundesliga titles, as have Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus in Ligue 1 and Serie A respectively. Barcelona have won three of the last four La Liga titles with only Atlético Madrid’s 201314 title triumph disrupting their reign. Every once in a while however, we get a small, well organised club playing David and Goliath with the league’s monsters. Step forward Olympique Gymnaste Club Nice Côte d’Azur, or OGC Nice.

Currently sitting pretty at the top of Ligue 1 (pronounced “Ligue Un”, not “League One”, to avoid confusion with the English third division), OGC Nice have amassed 29 points over 12 games and, despite losing their first league game of the season in the last round of fixtures, still have a three point lead over Monaco and PSG. For those who are more keenly eyed, this should not be much of a surprise. Last season, Nice finished in an astonishingly high 4th place, which was only the second time the club had finished in the European places since 1976. This season, the club is giving PSG and Monaco serious cause for concern.

So where has this sudden momentum come from? There are always a number of factors which have to work in tandem to turn results from negative to positive: a tactically astute manager, a club philosophy which everyone buys into, a clever transfer strategy and a strong mental will to succeed. Often, the first of those factors, the manager, is responsible for the rest, but all are of equal importance. For Nice, the expertise of Claude Puel (the current Southampton manager) and Lucien Favre have been crucial in the past two seasons and the club have used a transfer strategy which may be risky, but when executed correctly can have a dramatically positive influence.

Claude Puel’s team in the 2015/16 campaign was a fine example of craftsmanship, constructed so that each individual played his preferred role to complement the team. The imperious Paul Baysse put heart into the defence while Ricardo Pereira (on loan from Porto) and Jérémy Pied (now at Southampton) comfortably fulfilled the fullback

positions. Nampalys Mendy held down the defensive midfield role so effectively that he was signed

by Leicester City in the summer as a replacement for fellow countryman N’Golo Kanté. Mercurial talent Hatem Ben Arfa revived his career in the 2015/16 campaign, scoring 17 goals and picking up 6 assists in 34 appearances, earning the Frenchman a dream move to PSG. With Valère Germain providing the firepower up front, the well balanced squad finished in the Europa League spot, only two points off Lyon in second.

Puel decided to leave Nice that summer for Southampton, but what he left behind provided the bedrock for Lucien Favre to build on. As the cliché goes, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. Farve’s high-tempo, attacking football philosophy which he had implemented so effectively at his previous club, Borussia Mönchengladbach, was similar to Puel’s style, which made the transition between the two coaches very simple.

For Nice’s defence, Favre brought in Baysse permanently and complemented his brawn with, well, more brawn in former Bayern Munich and Brazilian defender, Dante. Although Nice could not keep hold of Pied, they managed to secure the versatile Pereira for a second loan spell; he has already scored one goal and laid on three assists for his teammates, all from fullback positions. On the left side of defence, Nice brought in the reasonably unknown Dalbert from Vitória de Guimarães for just £1.7 million, and he has established himself as an important starter. The most impressive business Nice have done in defence was actually to promote Malang Sarr from the youth team. The 17 year old has started every single game of Nice’s season so far, displacing Dante from the centre of defence, and proving the old cliché “if you are good enough, you are old enough”.

Sarr is not the only promising youngster to play for Nice. Olivier Boscagli, 18, is regarded as a very capable defender and Vincent Koziello, 21, notched up three goals and six assists from midfield under Puel last season. Wylan Cyprien, 21, a summer acquisition from RC Lens, has already scored four goals and picked up two assists from central midfield too. The real creative fulcrum in Nice’s midfield, however, is Jean Michael Seri. The Ivorian has only been playing top division football for three seasons, but seems really at home under Favre’s tutelage, already accomplishing a goal and six assists in ten starts. Adding some experience to Nice’s midfield is on-loan Younès Belhanda. If you

G re at e r M a n c h e st e r ’s

FA C u p

Stockport 2-4 Woking

George Ball Sport Reporter

Maidstone 1-1 Rochdale An equaliser by Rochdale with the last kick of the game broke Maidstone hearts and meant the tie will require a replay to decide who will play Carlisle for a place in the third round. Maidstone, who play two divisions below Rochdale in the National League, went ahead in the first half thanks to a 21st minute penalty. A 94th minute deflected free kick meant the contest ended all square.

Bolton 1-0 Grimsby Bolton continued their fine recent form to overcome Grimsby with a victory by a single goal. The goal came in the 20th minute when Liam Trotter converted Zach Clough’s corner into the back of the net with a measured header. They will play fellow League One promotion hopefuls Sheffield United at home in the second round.

Oldham 2-1 Doncaster Oldham put their League One struggles to one side as they overcame League Two Doncaster. Goals either side of half time ensured progression, with Doncaster converting a late penalty which was no more than a consolation. They will visit Lincoln City in the second round.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

recognise the name, it may be because he was instrumental (along with Olivier Giroud) in Montpellier’s legendary Ligue 1 title in the 2011/12 season.

In attack, Nice have two very capable forwards.

Alassane Pléa is a multifunctional player who, at 23, seems to be hitting the potential he was touted for back at Lyon. With eight goals in sixteen appearances, the Frenchman has already surpassed his personal best scoring tally in a season. Rotating the striker position with Pléa is a certain Mario Balotelli. The Italian striker was snapped up by Nice on a free transfer on the last day of the 2016 summer transfer window. Having failed at AC Milan and Liverpool most recently, Mino Raiola, Balotelli’s agent, clearly noted Nice’s ability to coax performances out of frustratingly talented footballers like Ben Arfa. And so, it makes sense that the former Manchester City striker has scored six goals in six appearances for the club and, of course, picked up a red card along the way.

The potential in Nice’s youngsters is huge, so when one combines that with experienced quality, you have a serious winning formula. In Balotelli, Dante and Belhanda, Nice have a thee time Serie A and Premier League champion, a three time Bundesliga champion and a Ligue 1 cham-

Despite going ahead twice against Woking, Stockport lost out in a game that finished 4-2 to the away side.

Despite a more than admirable fight against opposition from the league above, County could not find a goal after Woking made in 2-3 in the 59th minute. The seal was put on the win with a further goal in injury time.

The second round ties will be played between Friday 2nd December and Monday 5th December.

Westfields 1-1 Curzon Ashton Curzon Ashton left it late against the lowest ranked side left in the competition, ninth tier Westfields FC. Despite going behind within 10 minutes, National League North side Curzon dominated the game and were rewarded with a goal from a goalmouth scramble with nine minutes to play. The winners of the replay will earn a home match against the winner of the Bury versus Wimbledon replay.

Bury 2-2 AFC Wimbledon Bury face a replay with AFC Wimbledon after they threw away a two-goal lead at Gigg Lane. Hallam Hope’s double inside the first thirty minutes meant it looked like the Shakers would be progressing, however two goals in six second half minutes brought the visitors level. The winners of the replay will face a trip to the winner of the tie between Westfields and Curzon Ashton.

Lincoln City 2-1 Altrincham Altrincham faced a tough test in their game against Lincoln but could not get the result required against a side who play in the division above the Robins. It is fair to say the home side dominated, both on shots and possession. Whilst John Cyrus’ goal in the 75th minute gave the visitors hope, it did not leave enough time to get an equaliser.

pion. Under Lucian Favre, Nice have got a coach who knows how to harness a player’s potential.

Examples of youngsters who have grown with the Swiss manager are Marco Reus, Granit Xhaka and Marc-André ter Stegen, all now plying their trade at Borussia Dortmund, Arsenal and Barcelona respectively. If Favre can have the same impact on his youth at Nice, and manage to keep hold of them beyond the January transfer window, the club has a genuine shot at the title this season.

Having not won the domestic title since the 1950s, the achievement would be beautifully romantic as well as seismic to French football.

Breathing down Nice’s neck, however, are the French giants of Paris Saint-Germain and Monaco.

The former have needed time to adjust from Laurent Blanc’s regime to Unai Emery’s, but are starting to click into gear with four wins out of the last five. Monaco, under the exciting manager, Leonardo Jardim, also have a young squad bursting at the seams with talent. Nice’s problem may be their lack of squad depth when it comes to keeping up their title push. However, under a coach like Lucien Favre, anything is possible.

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From Mexico to Austria: Two World Championships, one Gold Medal David Brierley relives his time at the Eighth Shito-Ryu Karate World Championships and offers insight into the WKF World Karate Championships

I was privileged to attend the Eighth Shito-Ryu Karate World Championships with the rest of Team England Shito-Ryu over the 21st – 23rd of October in Monterrey, Mexico. Happening every three years, the Championships bring together representatives from over 50 countries who practice the Shito-Ryu style of Karate, one of the four main

branches of Japanese Sport Karate.

In an event dominated by the Japanese, Team England came away with bronze medals in Female Team Kata (Forms), and Male and Female Team Kumite (Sparring) after three days of competition, including the Open event which saw over 3,000 athletes take part.

A young and inexperienced English team did themselves proud in what was for many their first World Championships: No mean feat considering that Karate athletes tend to find most success later in their careers, many reaching their peak at the age of 30.

I myself was happy with getting to the third round of the Individual event in

Photo: Xavier Servolle / WKF

my first time competing at the championships, as well as getting to the Bronze Medal final in Team Kata — however, mistakes we made in the final cost us a medal which went to the exceptionally strong Brazilian team, and we came home with a frustrating, but ultimately promising, fifth place.

Not a week later, and the WKF World Karate Championships took place in Linz, Austria. While each of the four main styles of Karate have their own World Championships, the WKF Worlds represents the highest level of Karate competition: A single, mixed-style competition between the best each country has to offer of all four styles of Karate.

Representatives from the EKF National team, who represent the most skilled Karate-ka (Karate Athletes) in England set off for Linz having not won a medal since 2010, with the gold drought being longer still. In the late 90s English Karate was particularly strong, but a range of factors had hampered England’s efforts at the world stage.

Early disappointments in the Kata discipline frustrated our medal attempts in Linz, with Reece Taylor folding in the first round after a stumble that put him out of the competition far earlier than many had expected. However, impressive performances from Katie Hurry and Jordan Thomas in Kumite catapulted them to the Bronze and Gold medal finals respectively — Thomas not dropping a single point in any of his bouts.

Katie Hurry unfortunately lost her bout, placing her in a frustrating but still exceptionally respectful fifth place.

However, the weekend was Jordan’s as he dominated his opponent in the jaw-

dropping finals of the -67kg Men’s Kumite to bring a gold home for England for the first time in 12 years, beating his opponent 8-0 in a match that saw Jordan one point away from disqualification for technical offenses, but controlling his opponent’s distance perfectly to deliver a flurry of punches and one exceptionally quick roundhouse kick that cemented his already solid lead into the closing minute of the match.

Both the National team and the Shitoryu Team’s performances over October display a confidence and presence returning to English Karate, at a variety of levels: From those just starting out, such as those of us competing in Mexico for the first time, to those who are pushing towards goals seemingly unattainable a few years ago.

For me, the next edition of the ShitoRyu World Championships will be held in three years time in Tokyo, Japan, one year before the Olympics, which will see Karate featuring as a participant sport for the first time. It is my intention to start attending the Karate Premier League Events to improve my ranking, and work hard on my performance to improve for future years: And to see English athletes attain fantastic success at the World level is incredibly encouraging for myself and everyone taking a journey in a sporting career.

Karate as a sport is growing, and English Karate growing with it – and English athletes will look to the successes of their peers and predecessors hungrily.

For the youngest Olympic sport, the future is bright.

UoM Women’s Basketball on the up Coach Case has the University Basketball team improving this season Michael Case Coach In the last 15 months, women’s basketball at the University of Manchester has transitioned from being comfortable residences at the bottom of the league in British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) to becoming a dominant force and the team to beat this season.

The profile of women’s basketball is now on a rise, with players from all over the world participating in the sport. The University of Manchester now has two women’s teams, with the first team competing in BUCS and the second team (also known as the development team) playing in the University campus league. This enables both experienced and less experienced players to participate in the sport, with fluidity between the teams to allow progression.

Training sessions averaged only seven players in 2014/15, but now they are now averaging up to sixteen — things are looking bright.

Since the beginning of the 2015/16 season, Women’s Basketball appointed a new coach Michael Case, who has brought a new philosophy to the team. The concept of F.H.M (Family, Heart and Mentality) has the team playing smart hard and honest with ability to exceed their best. The team are very much a family on and off the Court Last Season was the start of the new beginning; from only winning two out of ten games in 2014/15, the team only lost two out of ten games in the league last season; having the best defence and offence in the league and taking home the Christie Cup. Not to mention participating in a tournament in Rome.

As Coach, I am extremely happy with how the players adapted to the philosophy. We didn’t win the league but we definitely ensured that we are now acknowledged as a formidable team, this season is far from a bad season for the team. I came here to make a difference, next season this team will be stronger; we will win the league.

With recruitment being a success, although women’s basketball lost some great players due to graduation, the Manchester basketball programme has gained some exceptional talent this year to build with the existing players from year before.

The team have shot off to an undefeated start with a 3-0 win to Liverpool, beating newly promoted Keele and taking on Lancaster last week who came down from Division One. University of Manchester Women’s Basketball Club (UMWBC), who are currently sitting top of the table, had to show real character in their last game against Lancaster University, managing to overturn a 17-point Deficit to win the game 64-57.

The women’s team went into the game without some of their first team regulars, however where a player misses out is another players’ opportunity to step up and bring their talent to the table.

The “Purple Warriors “ started incredibly slowly in this game. With the first quarter going to Lancaster 16-20, Manchester found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Having only been down in a game twice last year, the UMWBC have very little experience in this situation, so the struggle continued and by half time they found themselves losing 26-40.

At half-time, after a slight change of tactics, I asked the players if they were willing to fight to turn around the game, and with Manchester being

known for their strong third quarters, the fight was certainly on. Giving up the first points in the third quarter, the team went down by 17.

But they did not give up the fight, with exceptional defence and hustle; the third quarter restricted Lancaster to nine points, with Manchester scoring 17. The game was back on for the last quarter; at 43-49 Manchester were now only 6 points behind.

The pride of purple proved too much for Lancaster in the final quarter, with Manchester scoring 21 point and reducing Lancaster to only eight. This

Photo: Women’s Basketball

concluded the game with Manchester winning 64-57.

The heart, determination and team work demonstrated by the team last week represents our philosophy.

Next game is the battle of Manchester Universities (UoM Vs Man Met) on the 16th November! The day after University of Manchester head Rome to Compete for the second year in EuroRoma.

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Andy Murray clinches world number 1 spot for first time Luke Maguire Sport Reporter Andy Murray has achieved what no British singles tennis player has achieved in over 40 years.

He has just taken the men’s tennis world number one spot at the expense of Novak Djokovic. This is the first occasion Britain has had a male singles number one since computerised rankings first started for tennis in 1973. This is a momentous occasion both for Andy Murray personally and for British tennis as a whole. The achievement is all the greater considering that Djokovic had almost double the amount of ranking points as Murray in June.

To top off an already fantastic week, he has also just won his first ever Paris Masters final, beating

the American John Isner 6-3 6-7 (4-7) 6-4. This was a hard-won victory for Murray, who was pushed to his limits at times during this match particularly during the third set with the 6’8” American’s serve proving too much for Murray at times. However he rallied in the final set, and won the final game and the match with a trademark precise backhand that left Isner well beaten.

This has been a stellar year for Murray with some memorable moments coming in the form of winning Wimbledon and achieving Olympic gold. He also reached 11 finals in 12 events and has had a personal best of winning 73 matches. Not to mention the birth of his first child, Sophia, back in February. Praise has been coming in from various corners in the wake of the rankings this week, with Nicola Sturgeon, Justin Rose and even fellow rival

Roger Federer offering their congratulations on Twitter. This will clearly be a difficult year for Murray to top in terms of achievements, but his aim now must be to maintain his run of good form and his number one spot. Novak Djokovic will have renewed determination to reclaim the top spot so Murray cannot rest on his laurels if he wishes to hold on to title of being the best in the world.

Having a British player at the very top of world tennis will do more than just give ordinary Britons bragging rights, it will hopefully inspire others to take up the sport in the knowledge that one day they could follow in Murray’s shoes and achieve some of the incredible feats he has done. In recent years, interest in tennis has certainly increased at a grassroots level, and some credit for this must surely be given to Murray due to the media atten-

Northern Hemisphere Rugby Resurgence?

Photo: M+MD@flickr

With Ireland’s excellent win over New Zealand, Toby Webb assesses whether the autumn internationals will signal a turning in the tide of international rugby The 5th of November 2016 will be a special day forever in the history of Irish rugby, the day they broke a curse stretching back to 1905, the day they finally secured victory over New Zealand, 40-29.

No one who watched the game would say Ireland’s victory was undeserved. They matched New Zealand in sophistication and power, taking advantage of several lapses in concentration. Most impressive was the Irish resistance when New Zealand mounted the counter-attack; with a slender 33-29 lead, in the dying embers of the game, Ireland maintained their attacking instinct, scoring the decisive try. In doing so, they banished the painful memories of November 2013, when New Zealand scored a winning try in the last play of the game.

While it was a hard-earned, deserved victory, big questions remain as to whether the performance level exhibited on that day can be replicated regularly. More ominously, a backlash is expected from New Zealand.

Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt remarked after

there is ‘no chasm’ between northern and southern hemisphere teams; an easy remark to make off the back of a victory over the All Blacks. The hype that has followed the Irish victory is similar to that which followed England’s victory over New Zealand in 2012. It was, undoubtedly, a momentous day, a day when Stuart Lancaster’s regime appeared to be taking England to new echelons. Hindsight has shown how futile that thought was, Lancaster’s regime capitulating to the embarrassing exit from the 2015 World Cup. Ireland’s win deserves to be celebrated, it was historic after all. However, if the team has true ambition, they will see it as the first stepping stone on a journey. I expect them to be royally hammered by New Zealand in the return fixture, however, victory against Australia in their final game and they will view the autumn as a success.

On their opening game of the autumn series, Wales endured starkly different fortunes to Ireland, losing 32-8 to Australia; subsequently, they extended their losing streak to the Wallabies to 12

games. The consensus is that Wales’ approach to the game was completely wrong, choosing power over finesse. Australia adopted an expansive style, Bernard Foley tearing the opposition apart like he so often does; they secured victory without reaching top gear. Wales must draw inspiration from their terrific campaign at the 2015 World Cup. I foresee them having a variable autumn. Victories against Argentina, and particularly Japan, are achievable; they will not be achieved with performances like the Australia match. Their final game, South Africa, will be a fascinating encounter, particularly as South Africa are perceived to be on the decline.

It will be decisive to the overall assessment of their autumn series.

This brings me on to England. Off the back of the landmark 3-0 series win in Australia, the autumn internationals will be pivotal to the Eddie Jones revolution. Many commentators are suggesting that Jones will finish the autumn with his 100 per cent win record intact. Perhaps these are naïve pre-

Photo: Adifansnet @Flickr

tion that his success has brought to the sport.

He now has to look forward to the season-ending World Tour Finals which take place in London at the O2 arena from the 13th – 20th November. The tournament is made up of the eight best qualified men’s singles players which are split into two groups of four. Alongside Andy Murray in his group is Stan Wawrinka, Kei Nishikori and Marin Čilić.

The former number one Novak Djokovic is placed in the other group, and if Murray and Djokovic do meet in the final, Murray will be seeking revenge for his defeat to Djokovic in the French Open earlier this year, whereas Djokovic will be chasing his return to number 1 seed. This will make for an even more exciting and nail-biting end to what has been an exceptional season of tennis. dictions. If England have secured victory against South Africa, it will have been extremely hardfought, especially with the current injury crisis: Maro Itoje, George Kruis and James Haskell, currently absent, were instrumental in the summer.

What Jones has done with England since taking over is staggering, not only winning 9 out 9 games, but altering the style of play and team mentality in a hugely effective manner. He has got Owen Farrell and George Ford working symbiotically, something Lancaster, despite trying, never managed. Moreover, he has the forwards dominating the set-piece, while maintaining that dynamism so crucial to modern rugby. Having several key forwards all playing for Saracens, the best English club and current European champions, has helped massively.

Despite this, it feels like only the start for Jones.

The improvements made by Jones lead back to the opening question. The situation looked very bleak following the 2015 World Cup: there were no Northern Hemisphere representatives in the semifinals. However, to me, England have the potential and resources to solidify their current position of 2nd in the world. Jones has young players as the basis of the team; they will form the foundation for years to come. Yet, while there are reasons to be optimistic, there are question marks as to whether England could reach the level of execution that New Zealand operate with. We shall wait and see.

Ireland and Wales have several world-class players in their ranks, Jonny Sexton and Leigh Halfpenny for example. The difference between these two and England is mentality. Despite the success achieved so far, Jones and England have remained moderate in their celebrations, in stark contrast to the wild Irish celebration the other week. Despite bridges in class, Northern Hemisphere teams must not put their Southern Hemisphere opposition on a pedestal, they must show respect, but not too much.

England, as well as Ireland and Wales, have the potential to beat Southern Hemisphere teams regularly, in doing so reverse the hammering they took in the 2015 World Cup and alter the balance of power in international rugby. A change in mentality, the removal of the inferiority complex, will go a long way to achieving this goal.

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Is it right to mix politics and Sport?

In the wake of the debate over whether international footballers should display a poppy on their kit, maybe it is time to realise that, contrary to the well-worn adage, sport and politics should, and do, mix regularly James Haughton Sport Reporter FIFA’s decision to prohibit England and Scotland players to wear black armbands emblazoned with a poppy because it would contravene rules banning political, religious or commercial messages on shirts has caused uproar.

Unsurprisingly, politicians quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Theresa May called the stance by world football’s governing body “utterly outrageous”. However, the poppy, for some, has become a tool to celebrate past British wars and attack those who do not wear a poppy. By the letter of football’s laws, FIFA are probably correct.

The FA and SFA have s a i d pub-

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licly that they will ignore FIFA’s directive and wear the armbands, but what makes their indignation farcical is that the laws of the game are created by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), of which FIFA and the four Home Nations each command four of the eight votes. FIFA enforce the laws created by IFAB. In effect the FA and SFA will defy a ban on political messages that they themselves created.

A sensible, long-term solution would be to acknowledge that sports and politics do mix regularly and that the two fields can work together to affect positive change. Too often today, the actions of governing bodies, in conjunction with the rich and powerful, betray their words: They preach that sports and politics should not mix, while indulging those who want to exploit sports’ grandest competitions for their own purposes.

There is a simple reason why politics regularly exerts an influence on sport: sport is massively popular around the world. Russia’s hosting of the Winter Olympics and Qatar’s successful bid to host the World Cup in 2022 are two examples of states seeking to use sport for political purposes.

The cost of the Sochi games is widely agreed to have been extravagant. Some estimates put the cost at $50 billion.

Why would Russia spend so much?

A n d why

would Putin appear at the games, as he will almost certainly do at the next World Cup, when he did not help to organise them? Because Russian politicians wanted to project to the world that it was a prosperous and successful nation, and Putin wanted to associate with that image and the Sochi games. He isn’t alone. Numerous political figures and royals have attended World Cup final matches, eager for the national goodwill that accompanies sporting success to extend to them.

Qatar is a tiny, yet extravagantly wealthy (for some) country. Hosting the World Cup gives the ruling royal family the chance to present their country to the world as a burgeoning centre of football and commercial excellence. They further that image by, for example, employing footballing icons such as Xavi and Pep Guardiola as ambassadors for the 2022 World Cup and buying PSG. The Qatari establishment values those links to football, and the political worth that can be gained from it, enough to take the reputational damage it receives from harrowing reports by the likes of Amnesty International, which detail the brutal conditions migrant workers building the stadia for the World Cup are alleged to suffer, and exposés on the punitive Kalafa system, which prohibits migrant workers in Qatar from leaving the country without permission from their employer. But with FIFA’s refusal to act meaningfully on those reports or reprimand Qatar, it is not surprising that the country feels it’s a risk worth taking.

In 2015 it was announced that the 2021 Athletics World Championships would be held in Eugene, Oregon. The

American sports giant Nike was founded and are still partly based there, and that connection has led to questions about the bidding process. The IAAF revealed Eugene had been chosen after a surprise secret ballot. There was no open bidding process, which had happened before, when Osaka were awarded the 2007 championship.

“

T h e re i s a simple reason why politics regularly e xe r t s a n influence on sport: sport is m a s s ive ly popular around the world

”

Sebastian Coe, who became the president of the IAAF later in 2015, only resigned from a paid ambassadorial position with Nike after prolonged, intense media scrutiny concerning a potential conflict of interest once he had been appointed to his role. In 2015 French officials opened investigations into Lamine Diack, Coe’s predecessor,

who presided over the secret vote to award the 2021 championships to Eugene, and his son, Papa Massata Diack, over alleged corruption charges, including Eugene’s bid to host the 2021 championships and Tokyo’s successful bid for the 2020 Olympics.

Nike had previously been embroiled in controversy when the US athlete Nick Symonds was not allowed to compete at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing because he refused to sign a contract, declared mandatory

by US Track and Field for athletes competing in Beijing, to wear Nike clothing.

Even today, however, there are examples of sport unifying people and fighting bigotry. The success of fanowned sides like AFC Wimbledon is testament to clubs that act with the fans’ best interests in mind. The wearing of rainbow laces is a small, yet visible statement that homophobia in football is unacceptable. Plus, while racism is still a significant problem in football, it would be a worse one if not for the tireless effort of organisations like Kick It Out and Football Against Racism in Europe, who have used the popularity of football to spread a message of inclusivity.

Sport has not been, and never will be, apolitical. Powerful people and corporations might like to say otherwise, but their actions demonstrate the exact opposite. But being political is not something to be ashamed of. Books, films, art, music and TV all demonstrate that incorporating political messages isn’t just possible, but that it can benefit society and the medium itself.

Likewise, sport can use its popularity to promote acceptance and tolerance internationally, and it should embrace that responsibility.