Palatinate Issue 710

On and off the road Charley Boorman on going solo Lifestyle, Profile

In (500) words The latest Indie offering turns the traditional romcom on its head Arts, Film and TV

PALATINATE

The official student newspaper of Durham Students’ Union since 1948

Friday 16th October 2009 | Edition 710 | palatinate.org.uk JAMES DUNN

Alumnus tipped for future cabinet defence post by Conservatives

Continued on page 5

Major new developments in sports facilities announced

Maiden Castle and Queen’s Campus to be upgraded by £500,000 investment Page 3

Another lights festival to take place this coming November

Despite the problems with last year’s Enlightenment Festival, the experience is set to be echoed by ‘Lumiere’

Peter Bolton

Sir Richard Dannatt, former head of the army and Durham graduate, is to be made an advisor to the Conservative Party defence team, a Conservative peer in the House of Lords and may also join a possible Tory-led cabinet.

It was announced by David Cameron at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester that Sir Richard is going to be made part of the shadow defence team and will be made a member of the House of Lords. It was also announced that he would become a cabinet minister should the Tories gain power at the next general election.

However, the revelation of his appointment to the Tory front ranks has led to considerable controversy. Dannatt was in the news just days before the announcement, appearing on news channels such as Sky News to criticise the Brown government for its handling of the Afghan war and failure to provide for troops.

Political leaders from across the board have brought the proposal into question, on grounds such as fears of politicisation of the armed forces.

Cameron later appeared to backtrack from the decision saying that the public would have “wait and see” if Dannatt was to become part of a future Tory government.

The Conservative leader said: “I think he’s given great service to our country. and I have spoken to him - and you’ll have to wait and see”.

The announcement also led to a political gaffe made by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling. When asked about the appointment, initially thinking that it had been announced by the Labour government rather than his own party, he said: “I admire the work of General Dannatt and other senior generals who’ve done so much in

Newsbox

Page 5

University scientist involved in NASA lunar ice project Dr Vincent Eke ‘s role in the exciting search for water on the Moon Page 5

Palatinate investigates how students access their news

Following the closure of the DSU shop, will we continue to buy newspapers?

Page 7

Photo Feature: A selection of items from the Affordable Vintage Fashion Fair, which hit the DSU last week

Student loan system chaos

Admin blunders and soaring application rates leave SLC unable to pay out

John Marjason-Stamp

Up to 175,000 students are still waiting for student loans and maintenance grants more than a week after university courses began.

Worst affected are first year students, with data released under the Freedom of Information Act revealing that 28% of new applications are still waiting to be processed.

Universities across the country are being forced to make emergency pay-outs, with Durham being no exception. Twice as many emergency loans have been handed

out by the University as the same time last year. A record one million students applied for funding this year and it is estimated that around 1 in 6 are still waiting for their loans or grants.

This year has seen a dramatic change to the way in which student loans are processed. The 2009-10 academic year was the first in which loans have been applied for directly to the Student Loans Company (SLC), rather than to local authorities.

The rationale behind the change was to create a homogeneous system of applica-

tion and to provide equality in treatment, although this has not had the desired effect of improving the service. Local authorities previously offered a high level of support, but the option of receiving face-to-face help and advice with applications has now been entirely removed.

SLC, the company responsible for administering student finance on behalf of the government, blamed late applications and a series of technical problems that resulted in Continued on page 5

Pressures of beauty The un-fairer sex?

Comment, page 13

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Editorial Favourites, letters, corrections and editorial

PALATINATE Making a splash T

Avoiding the sensationalism of tabloids

his newspaper has in the past been the subject of satire for being a little too keen to mention those former editors who have done well for themselves in the media.

Perhaps the Durham alumnus with the most interesting journalism career, however, never worked for this newspaper: Sylvester Bolam graduated from Armstrong College in Newcastle with an economics degree. He died young, but has entered into the colourful history of Fleet Street as an important cautionary tale about the tightrope relationship between press freedom and the law.

As editor of the Daily Mirror (at the time when it was the most popular daily paper in the country), Bolam became associated with a style known as ‘sensationalism’, which he vigorously defended: “The Mirror’s a sensational paper, but sensationalism doesn’t mean the distortion of the truth.

It means the vivid and dramatic presentation of events so as to give them a forceful impact on the mind of the reader.”

This approach to news, however, landed him in Brixton prison for three months, following his paper’s florid reporting of

the 1949 arrest of John Haig, ‘the acid bath murderer’ - which was deemed to have influenced the trial.

Not long after his release, at the age of 47, he died. The legacy of the style he defended - the vivid and dramatic presentation of events - is the quite extraordinary and often disturbing behaviour of the British tabloids. But it is probably wise to read this monstrous press activity as a reaction to the central difficulty with newspapers: they are not a very good way of making money.

The industry as a whole is constantly scrimping and saving, meaning it is less able to afford costly investigative journalism and more fear of expensive confrontations with the notorious British libel laws.

Not to mention greater dependency on the goodwill of advertisers, a heavier emphasis on cheap journalism like opinion articles, and of course a desperation to get people to pick up the damn thing - sensationalism.

It’s not until you’ve tried out a bit of news-gathering and reportage yourself, though, that you understand the temptation to make a splash. This week Palatinate received an email tip-off about an alleged

spew of University buildings which have achieved the lowest possible rating - G - for energy efficiency. Some of these buildings are quite recently constructed, including the Calman Learning Centre (CLC) and the Ogden Centre. Our first thought was ‘excellent, a story’.

On further investigation, however, what looks like a scandal is really nothing of the sort. The Display Energy Certificates, DECs, which provide this numerical and graded rating for all public buildings, are generated by a computer program that feeds in limited data.

Reading through the accompanying advisory reports, it is easy to see how generic they are. Moreover, some of these G ratings are attributed automatically in the absence of sufficient data. The CLC, for example, falls into this category. After speaking to the people responsible for engineering specific energy efficiency solutions for University buildings, you realise how easily a bit of shoddy reportage could anger the experts.

So we have resisted the desire to make a fuss over nothing, and we will endeavour to do so in the future, lest we end up editing The Sun.

Letters Share your views ‘Cameron talks tuition fees’, No. 709

Dear Editor, I write with reference to the article from Edition 709 entitled “David Cameron’s message to students: ‘The money’s got to come from somewhere,” in which you erroneously state that the Liberal Democrats intend to “U-turn on their promises.”

It would then have been more accurate to describe an evolution of tuition fee policy in response to recessionary times, rather than a U-turn. The commitment remains, the scrapping of tuition fees is one of the Lib Dems’ most important priorities, but it is not necessarily to be implemented immediately until a significant chunk of the deficit has been closed. It is

Comment Debate

Should we fear an Iranian nuke?

Our writers fight it out page 9 Fashion

The brutality of fashion internships

Stage

Michael Karim

The two pillars of sketch comedy

Wittank and the Durham Revue page 22

Contents News pages 3-7 Comment pages 8-13 Features page 14-15, 18

Corrections For the record Durham floods Our main photograph on the front page of the last edition was incorrectly credited to Alastair Barber. The photograph of flooding around the Boathouse area was actually taken by Marcin Reweda.

We apologise profusely to Mr Reweda for this mistake.

16.10.2009 No. 710 Favourites

A view from inside the industry page 20

not politically glamorous, perhaps not even a vote-winning approach, but it is realistic and honest. Furthermore, reducing the deficit must also take precedence in the short term because it is those of us who are studying now who will bear the burden of our nation’s debt.

Given that the forthcoming General Election will not be based on a shopping list of new spending commitments from any (sensible) party, such nuanced difference in principle is of great importance. Labour and the Conservatives are ideologically opposed to abolishing tuition fees; the Liberal Democrats would abolish them at the very first opportunity they could find. That is consistent principle, not a U-turn.

No Lib Dem U-turn

To have your say on anything featured visit palatinate.org.uk

Drugs at Oxford In our interview with David Cameron, we implied that the Tory leader had admitted to taking drugs while at Oxford University. Cameron has only previously confirmed that he took drugs at Eton, whilst refraining from answering questions about drug-taking at Oxford.

Balmoral Our feature on Durham student performers at the Edinburgh Fringe accidentally referred to the Royal Mile as the street running from Edinburgh Castle to Balmoral. This is obviously a mistake: Holyrood Palace, not Balmoral, marks the lower end of the Royal Mile.

Listings page 16-17 Profile pages 19 Fashion page 20 Food and Drink page 21 Stage page 22 Visual Arts page 23 Film and TV pages 24-25 Books pages 26-27 Music page 29 Sport pages 30-32

Palatinate is published by Durham Students’ Union on a fortnightly basis during term and is editorially independent. All contributors and editors are full-time students at Durham Send letters to: Editor, Palatinate, Durham Students’ Union, Dunelm House, New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3AN. Alternatively, send an e-mail to editor@palatinate.org.uk

Editorial Board

Editors-in-chief Daniel Bjelis Chris Wright editor@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Editor Liza Miller deputy.editor@palatinate.org.uk News Editor Vincent McAviney news@palatinate.org.uk Deputy News Editors George Stafford Adam Painter Jack Battersby deputy.news@palatinate.org.uk Comment Editor Thom Addinall-Biddulph comment@palatinate.org.uk Chief Lifestyle Editor Dipal Acharya lifestyle@palatinate.org.uk Features Editor Ally Bacon features@palatinate.org.uk Food and Drink Editor Fiona Hicks food@palatinate.org.uk Fashion Editor Dipal Acharya fashion@palatinate.org.uk Profile Editor Vacant profile@palatinate.org.uk Travel Editor Vacant travel@palatinate.org.uk Listings Editor Alison Moulds listings@palatinate.org.uk Books Editor Matthew Richardson books@palatinate.org.uk Film and Television Editor Alison Moulds film@palatinate.org.uk Music Editors David Tshulak Olivia Swash music@palatinate.org.uk Stage Editors Daniel Dyson Sophie Zeldin-O’Neill stage@palatinate.org.uk Visual Arts Editor Rosanna Boscawen visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk Sports Editors Rajvir Rai Simon Lamb sport@palatinate.org.uk Chief Sub-Editor Liza Miller sub-editing@palatinate.org.uk Contributing Sub-Editors Georgie McCluskey, Joanna Harrod, Aysling Gaffey, Katy Ashcroft, Lucy Menzies, Ellie Austin, Lisa Paul, Daisy Wyatt, Bethany Corcoran, Louise Quarmby, Katie Price, Kayleigh Brandon, Emma Hyde, Lorna Cruickshanks, Emily Campbell, MarieSophie Schwarzer, Clare Nadal, Natalie Kent, Jessica Stewart, Joanna Turner, Lloyd Forfar, Emma Pursey, Joy Wigg and Vicky Woodcock Website Editor Vacant web.editor@palatinate.org.uk Multimedia Editors Alastair Barber Ben Swales multimedia@palatinate.org.uk Illustration Editor Anthonie Chiu-Smit illustration@palatinate.org.uk Photography Editors James Dunn Jonathan Allen photography@palatinate.org.uk

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Durham News

JONATHAN ALLEN

For even more news visit palatinate.org.uk

The indoor facilities at maiden castle should soon match the impressive outdoor ones.

Durham and Stockton sport facilities get major upgrade Jodie Smith

Durham’s sports facilities at Maiden Castle and Queen’s Campus are to be completely revamped with several multi-million pound projects in 2010.

Work on Maiden Castle should be completed by December, and new facilities will include an indoor rowing tank, a worldclass fencing piste, indoor cricket nets, and an extension to the existing sports hall.

New storage will also be built at the site to free up space in the rest of the University.

Queen’s Campus Stockton will be able to offer its new state-of-the-art sporting facilities to students as of September 2010.

The £5.5 million eight-court sports hall project will also encompass a fitness suite, ergo gallery, spinning room and dance studio, as well as medical support rooms.

Annual book festival attracts big names Alex Dibble

From 23 October – 1 November, Durham will welcome its annual book festival for the 19th year running. With something for everyone, Free Range Reading promises to showcase some of the finest writing talent in the country.

Utilising venues such as the Botanical Gardens, Clayport Library and the Debating Chamber, Nick Hornby, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Jack Dee and others will read their work and run workshops as part of the ten day celebration of reading.

Other plans include creating better access fora athletes with disabilities, as well as a restaurant and bar, contrast bathing provisions for athletes and new offices for staff members.

The refurbishments and new provisions come as part of a university-wide development of sports facilities and is being supported by a £500,000 investment from Sport England’s Sustainable Facilities Fund.

With the London Olympics coming up in 2012, Sport England’s aim is to create a ‘lasting sporting legacy’ from the event and as part of this they offer support to modern community sports facilities. They want to help Durham continue its long and prestigious sporting history and its important work with social outreach programs.

Over ninety percent of Durham stuThis year sees a continuation of the festival’s partnership with the Pakistan Cultural Society, aiming to promote ‘world literature’ and stories that resonate across societies and cultures. Free Range Reading is also part of a wider push to see Durham named the UK City of Culture for 2013.

Working closely with the University, the festival aims to unite the city with events for students and adults and budding young writers from the local area.

Tickets are available online and from the Gala Theatre Box office.

dents are involved in sport in some way, and the university is ranked in the top 6 sporting universities in the country.

Famous faces and celebrated athletes, including Andrew Strauss, Will Carling and Jonathan Edwards began their careers at Durham, as well as presenter Gabby Logan and the inventor of Hawkeye, Dr Paul Hawkins.

The University’s community scheme, which helps thousands of people across the North East, will also benefit from the project as outreach sessions are currently at maximum capacity and more space and facilities are badly needed.

Every year many student volunteers are involved in tackling social problems and raising aspirations across the region.

Through football and multi-sport activities, the University’s weekly projects reach ex-

offenders, women at risk, the homeless and people recovering from substance abuse, as well as fostered children’s groups and local school children.

Assistant Director of Community Outreach, Emma Hall-Craggs, said: “The University has invested heavily in its staff to deliver its three strategic strands of high performance, participation and outreach.

“This long awaited redevelopment will enable us to match this expertise with world class facilities, the combination of the two resulting in a lasting legacy for 2012.”

Dr Peter Warburton, the university’s Director of Sports, is ‘delighted’ with the investment from Sport England and is looking forward to seeing the completion of work next year. “It’s a fantastic commitment from both Durham University and Sport England, and it’s been many years

University reaches highest ever position in league table Adam Painter

The University was given reason to celebrate this summer as an influential university guide placed Durham in its highest ever position.

The Sunday Times University Guide, published annually, is widely respected across the education sector. Over the last 10 years Durham has averaged 11th place, appearing inside the top 10 in five of those years. However, this year has seen the University achieve its highest ever position of 7th overall.

Similarly, The Times has Durham in 8th place, equaling its highest position with the newspaper. Earlier this year, The Independent newspaper’s Complete University Guide ranked Durham 5th, adding to the University’s successes.

Professor Chris Higgins, Vice-Chancellor of Durham University, said: “Once

again this guide recognises our tremendous strengths in offering high quality teaching, delivered by some of the world’s leading researchers, coupled with the unique social and personal development offered by our collegiate system and superb access to extra-curricular activities, such as sport.

“The newspaper within its description of the university says it “dominates” the North East and is “academically distinctive and capable of competing for the brightest of students”.

The Guardian places the University 14th, up from a 2008 ranking of 16th. However, the methodology used to compile the rankings varies, with guides using different marking criteria to judge university performance.

The newly-released Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings table also provided mixed messages. Although Durham rose 19 places to achieve

since we’ve seen such an investment,” he says.

“Our existing outdoor facilities are already amongst the best in the country, and soon we will be able to offer outstanding indoor provisions as well. Some parts of the development have already been completed; in September we opened our impressive new floodlit all-weather surface which will be used for training, college games and by outside users as well,” he adds.

“We are extremely pleased to be able to build on the excellent sporting provisions that we already have in place. When work is completed we hope to encourage more interaction between the two Durham campuses and utilise the new facilities to the full.”

a record position of 103rd, it still stands far behind other similarly ranked UK universities. York was placed 70th, Warwick 58th and Britstol 34th.

Speaking to Palatinate, the vice chancellor remained upbeat about the university’s performance. “Our target is to be in the top 50 world Universities by 2020 and given our intrinsic strengths in research and teaching this is achievable if we promote our University on the world stage as well as we do in the UK. “The world league tables show the great strength of UK Higher Education. Durham University improved its position by 19 places this year which is a considerable achievement and we expect to improve our position further in the next few years as we increasingly conduct research and recruit students worldwide and raise our international visibility. You may not know, for example, that the university’s international reputation is such that we now have the highest proportion of non-UK academic staff of any UK University.”

Higgins also raised concerns over the methods used to compile the table, arguing that the world rankings favoured larger institutions set in larger cities.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Durham News

News Durham JONATHAN ALLEN

DUCK Officer’s Column Mel Punton

21st Century DUCK – it’s an exciting animal. Over the summer we’ve been working to make DUCK as aerodynamic, bionic and shiny as possible. Just one example: our Jailbreak this year is all online, with a built-in GPS tracking system so we can see exactly how far away you’ve managed to blag yourself.

Sign up from this Friday at our snazzy new website, duck.dsu.org.uk.

You can even buy your DUCK Race tickets without moving more than a couple of muscles, by texting DUCK to 82055 (texts cost £1.50). We’re also working on getting DUCK on JustGiving, meaning that you can fundraise for us quickly, easily and securely online, and we get to claim GiftAid into the bargain. Finally, we’re even experimenting with this tweeting malarkey – follow us at dsuDUCK! Of course, none of this means we’re afraid to go back to basics. As basic as you can get, in fact. We’ve had an unprecedented response to our naked calendar call to arms, with hundreds of you clamouring to be part of our glorious nudist extravaganza.

My own naked calendar experience was a painful and rather embarrassing one, back in the summer of 2006 when on holiday in Egypt with the venerable Durham University Sub-Aqua Club.

Someone came up with the bright idea of a naked dive, and we enlisted the help of a slightly creepy passer-by to take the shots. I managed to impale myself on a particularly malicious sea urchin on the way down, so spent an extremely uncomfortable naked twenty minutes with a foot full of spines trying not to brush into anything inadvertently (tricky when underwater, since it’s very difficult to keep things from bobbing around!).

However, there is a moral to this story – we got into the calendar and made a little piece of history, not to mention a slightly creepy addition to the things-to-show-the-grandkids box - and you can too. And to avoid any criticisms of being elitist, we’re opening nudity to all this year!

This Sunday we’re looking to do something that’s never been done before (as far as we know…) – we’re creating a giant duck entirely out of naked people at Durham City Rugby Club, and we want you all to be part of it. Come down at 4.30 with as many friends as you can beg, bully or bribe, and we’ll reward you with freebies and Loveshack Q-jump (also, girls, we won’t insist on complete nudity, we’re nice like that). And if that’s not enough of an incentive, you’ll get to grace Bill Bryson’s mantelpiece for the whole of 2010.

Finally, expedition season is beginning at DUCK, and the first project in the spotlight is Sri Lanka. Fancy spending your summer working in a Sri Lankan village, on projects including teaching English, music, drama, art, and playing sport? Download an application form from our website now, and get involved!

they would introduce substantial increases to tuition fees after the next election. This comes after a report in September by the Confederation of British Industry, warning that students could be required to pay as much as £5,000 per year to cover predicted shortfalls in the higher education budget.

It seems that the Conservatives are the only party which is seeking to attract students with a flagship policy. Under a Tory government, 10,000 new university places would be funded by encouraging graduates to pay back student loans early. It is estimated that a 10% discount for up-front repayments of over £500 would encourage graduates to pay back an estimated £100m in fees.

“Students are failing to register their protests at the ballot box” The three leaders had little to say to students at their last party conferences before the general election.

Liberal Democrats abandon top-up fee abolition pledge Jack Battersby

As politicians and activists return to their constituencies, the latest round of autumn party conferences may prove to have been the most crucial in a decade. With a general election due next year, Palatinate investigates how the UK’s three main political parties fared in beginning their campaigns to win over the student voter.

Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, is unequivocal on how he believes the election will be fought and won. “The biggest issue for students in higher education is top-up fees, and whether or not they will go up after the election...

It is not acceptable for the leading parties to knock on student doors and say absolutely

nothing about this”.

At their party conference in Bournemouth, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg made headlines as he ended his party’s three year commitment to abolishing tuition fees as soon as they entered government. He warned delegates “people tell us that it would cost £12.5bn over a parliament”.

However, Michael Karim, President of Durham University Lib Dems, remains optimistic over the future of the flagship policy. “The commitment stands...but it is not necessarily to be implemented immediately - not until a significant chunk of the deficit has been closed”.

Although the Lib Dems remain the only mainstream party with a manifesto pledge

to eventually abolish top-up fees, student voters will now no longer be able to demand an immediate post-election change to the UK’s higher education funding policy.

With the campus vote apparently up for grabs, how have Labour and the Conservatives responded? Streeting is clear on how he wishes both parties to approach the election. “We want parties to be honest about their thinking on higher education funding and to give students and families up and down the country a real choice”.

But with an independent review of higher education beginning this autumn, parties are remaining surprisingly quiet on the issue. Politicians on both sides of the Commons are refusing to reveal whether or not

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that higher education funding will not form a key part of next year’s election campaign. Political parties are now shifting the focus of their manifestos towards public spending, economic management and social care.

This is perhaps unsurprising given turnout within the 18-25 age group. The 2005 general election saw only 37% of young people reach the polls, compared to more than 75% of over-65s. It would appear that whilst students harbour strong feelings over issues such as tuition fees, they are failing to register their protests at the ballot box; or it could be that select students make a clamour in organisations like the NUS, leading to the impression that today’s students are more impassioned than they truly are.

In university-dominated towns and cities across the country, students continue to hold a remarkable degree of electoral strength. In 2005, the City of Durham constituency was decided with a majority of just 3,274 votes.

With a general election expected in May 2010, a student turnout equivalent to the size of the university’s three biggest colleges could therefore be enough to decide the outcome outright.

Society for ambitious entrepreneurs launched George Stafford

The launch event of ‘Entrepreneurs Durham’ took place on Saturday 10th October in the Calman Learning Centre on the Science Site. The event featured interactive displays, speeches from developing and successful entrepreneurs, and an opportunity to meet the executive of Durham’s newest society.

The event was organised primarily by the Co-Presidents, second year computer scientists Danny King and Alan Heppenstall. Both keen entrepreneurs, they found no tangible entrepreneurial community in the University when they arrived last year.

So together with Daniel Colgate and Esther Dingley, they decided to create their own.

Last year saw two events organised aiming to bring together student entrepreneurs to build a community that could give support and inspiration to those who are thinking of setting up a business. Following the success of these events, they built up an email list of nearly 500 students, and decided to create a formal society.

‘Entrepreneurs Durham’ aims to encour-

age entrepreneurship within Durham and support those who wish to start a venture.

To achieve this an ambitious array of events over the year have been planned, including workshops, networking events, and presentations by successful entrepreneurs from all areas of business.

One of the Co-Presidents, Danny King, told Palatinate why he thought creating an entrepreneurial community was so important: “Starting up your own business, let alone thinking up an idea for one, is an extremely daunting task.

Entrepreneurs are seen as warriors who go and do everything themselves, but we need other entrepreneurs for help and support”.

The event was designed with this in mind, with plenty of opportunities for Durham students to discuss their ideas with each other. These were interspersed with presentations from visiting speakers. The first was by David King, an up-and-coming young entrepreneur.

The second was by Max Robinson, founder of Kromek, who shared his inspi-

ration and experience gained by creating a highly successful technology company that has reached a value of £90 million in under three years. Mr Robinson called the society “an absolutely fantastic idea”, and added, “if there is anything I can do to support any of you, I will”. His company manufactures image scanners capable of detecting what kind of liquid lies within a container - thus, if widely implemented, his devices could seriously decrease airport frustrations.

The point that he stressed the most was that entrepreneurs not only “shouldn’t be frightened of failure”, but should welcome it, suggesting that it is the only way to ensure that you gain enough experience to eventually become successful. He ended with a challenging suggestion in response to a question about what a student entrepreneur should do if they were considering starting their own business: “If you feel really passionate about it, just do it. A lot of people look for the right time, but there is no right time really. When you come out of university, you are going to be in debt. Why not double it?”

The executive of the society produced

a very professional event, which had some excellent speakers. The organisers had also acquired some notable sponsors: Nichols provided free food, Trampas supplied gifts for the speakers, and Red Bull donated copious amounts of soft drinks.

However, it was quite poorly attended, with only around 80 students present. This may well have been the result of it being organised on the first Saturday of term, when many Durham students play sport, and limited footfall past the library means fewer will wander in. But the professional nature of the launch and the commitment of the executive suggest that this is a society that will go from strength to strength.

Entrepreneurs Durham is not a standard DSU society, but holds semi-departmental status within the University similar to that of Team Durham. The founders are currently writing a constitution that will allow the society to elect a new president and executive, so that it can continue after they leave. Membership is free - if you are interested in joining Entrepreneurs Durham, go to www.entrepreneursdurham.com for more information.

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Durham and national News LIZ FUNG

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Last year’s Enlightenment Festival attracted 30,000 visitors to Durham

City attempts to stage another lights festival Alex Dibble

Durham will experience a strange case of deja-vu in November as its bridges and landmarks are transformed by an imaginative arts festival. Lumiere will take over the city between 12-15 November, almost exactly a year after the Enlightenment festival produced light structures on Elvet, Kingsgate, and Silver St bridges.

News of the plan arrived just a week before Durham submitted an initial bid to be named the first UK City of Culture in 2013.

Durham, along with a long list of UK cities and counties including Cornwall, Bath, Brighton, and ‘The Countryside’, are in the running for the inaugural award, to be announced in the spring of 2010.

Organisers were keeping their cards close to their chests as to what exactly Lum-

iere will provide. However, Artichoke, the London based company behind the festival, promises that Lumiere will “work with light, fusing sight, sound and movement in a mesmerising series of site-specific installations”.

Chief executive of Durham County Council, George Garlick, appeared enthusiastic about Lumiere’s potential: “What a coup this is. It’s great for Durham to be working with a company of the pedigree of Artichoke.” Paul Gudgin, creative consultant for Durham’s City of Culture bid was equally excited, citing Enlightenment as the foundation for a new “truly spectacular and inspirational event for Durham as part of our broader cultural offering.”

Eyebrows will inevitably be raised at such hyperbole amongst local residents and students with a fresh memory of the lights festival twelve months ago. Enlightenment cost £210,000, illuminating Durham’s bridges for only three days. The project was a major inconvenience for students as Kingsgate bridge was sectioned off, and, as Palatinate revealed at the time, local businesses also failed to benefit as forecast from the event.

The case must also be made that if Durham is to be named the first UK City of Culture, it should be inherently qualified. One-off projects such as Lumiere may be eye-catching, but surely patronise the Cathedral and the Castle, which along with the city itself provide ample, historysteeped culture to add weight to the bid. If it is argued that the light festival proves that Durham possesses the ability to organise large-scale events, many will point to the Bobby Robson memorial service held in the Cathedral as evidence that the city can cope admirably with such requirements.

“Eyebrows will inevita- Emergency paybly be raised at such hyperbole amongst local outs offered Continued from front page residents and students employees having to input high volumes manually. with a fresh memory of of data A sharp 16% rise in applications was attributed to the difficulties. The rise the lights festival twelve also is above the 10% increase in students goto university; the discrepancy has months ago. Enlighten- ing been put down to more students opting to take out a loan under increased finanment cost £210,000, cial pressure during the current recesThe national figure is thought to be illuminating Durham’s sion. closely representative of the increase in requested by Durham students. bridges for only 3 days.” loansStuart Harvey, Durham University Artichoke, who will be working with Sky Arts and supported by North East initiators Culture 10, have an impressive track record of architectural and visual performances.

In September last year they successfully built a fifty-foot spider to walk the streets of Liverpool, and in 2006 were behind the Sultan’s Elephant parade in London. Helen Marriage, co-director of Artichoke, claimed “the element of surprise and delight is key to what we do. All our work is about giving the public unforgettable, magical experiences.”

Following last year’s Enlightenment festival, Durham residents, students and visitors will be hoping that Lumiere lives up to its billing.

Adam Painter

Research by one of the University’s leading scientists has played a key role in NASA’s latest ground-breaking mission, Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). Taking place on Friday 9th October at around 12:31BST, NASA set out to crash two unmanned spacecraft into the moon in search of water. Durham’s Dr Vincent Eke’s research aided NASA in pinpointing the impact location.

The mission involved the initial spacecraft separating into two parts, which was achieved in the early hours of Friday morning. The first rocket then crashed into the lunar surface, creating a plume of debris which was to be examined by the second craft.

Based in the Institute for Computational Cosmology Dr Eke said that: “Ice could be stable for billions of years on the Moon provided that it is cold enough. If ice is present in the permanently shaded lunar craters of the Moon then it could potentially provide a water source for the eventual establishment of a manned base on the Moon”.

The Mission fully known as the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite cost $79m and produced some 350 tonnes of debris upon the first impact. To the disappointment of some, no large spectacle

GODDARD

Durham scientist plays key role in NASA lunar mission

Fast-tracked exarmy head Continued from front page

was visible from space, although NASA insists the mission was a success. Dr Colaprete, from NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California said: “We saw the impact, we saw the crater. We got good spectroscopic measurements which is what we needed of the impact event.”

“If ice is present in the permanently shaded craters of the Moon, it could potentially provide a water source for a manned base.”

Currently NASA is still analysing the data to see if water has been detected, it’s discovery would prove vital in paving the way for NASA’s future missions.

Although LCROSS was due to preclude mans return to the moon by 2020, these plans are still uncertain after US President Barack Obama requested a sweeping review of NASA’s manned space programme.

student finance support officer, has criticised the current situation, attacking the “added stress to freshers coming to university, which no new student needs.”

However, he reiterated the fact that Durham students need not worry if they are still waiting to receive their loans.

For students living out it is possible to obtain emergency loan of around £500, depending on individual circumstances.

Students living in colleges can also apply to have their residency charge delayed.

It would appear that the University has responded to the problem well, with only 10 emergency loans handed out to date. William Lucas, a second year student currently living out, told Palatinate “It has added unnecessary stress to a busy start to term, though I’m happy to have good friends around to help me through the wait.”

The NASA spacecraft prepares to lauch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Afghanistan and done so much to lead.

I hope that this isn’t a political gimmick.

We’ve seen too many appointments in this Government of external people where it’s all been about Gordon Brown’s PR…I’m always suspicious of Government’s motives when it does things like this.”

Sir Richard graduated from Durham with a degree in Economic History before joining the Green Howards Regiment in 1971. While at Durham he was the President of the Oxford Union Society and a member of Hatfield College.

He rose to the army’s highest rank of Chief of the General Staff of the Army in August 2006 and resigned earlier this year. Controversy arose around this time when it was alleged that he had been snubbed by the government by not being promoted to the head of the entire military. The Sunday Times reported that the promotion had been blocked personally by Gordon Brown “because of his repeated calls for better pay and conditions for servicemen”.

Previous positions Sir Richard held include Assistant Chief of the General Staff in the Ministry of Defence and head of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. He is also appointed Constable of the Tower of London, a post he was appointed to by the Queen and took up earlier this year.

Dannatt is also a committed evangelical Christian, he is vice-president of the Armed Forces Christian Union and is a churchwarden of two churches in Norfolk.

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News Feature

Old media vs ‘New Media’

With the closure of the DSU shop - notorious for selling bargain price newspapers - and the much discussed rise of ‘New Media’ Palatinate decided to investigate where Durham students get their news from these days

Rob Flanagan, Andrew Willard & Emma Woods

Do you buy newspapers often?

F

ollowing the controversial decision to close the DSU shop, and the consequent loss of subsidised newspapers, Palatinate took to the streets of Durham to question the impact that this has had on students. What it discovered underlined a much broader issue, of whether the daily paper is still a thriving medium in today’s rapidly progressing technological age.

The survey, which consulted over a hundred students on their preferred point of access to the latest headlines, revealed that the newspaper undoubtedly remains a stable genre within the university, with over half of those questioned responding that they bought a daily paper regularly.

Furthermore, the DSU shop’s discounted rates on publications proved an attractive proposition for all but one of those students. One third year commented that one of the most useful functions the DSU performed for students was to provide them with an affordable way to access the news.

Indeed, the closure of the DSU shop has impacted students’ ability to access not only newspapers but also more specialised publications. Though the subsidised edition of the Times costs only thirty pence - a third of its normal cover price - one student commented that the loss of the one pound discount offered on The Economist has impacted her far more.

The shop’s closure will surely tug on Durham students’ purse strings. People are thinking twice about paying daily for accessing news they can get for free elsewhere.

The survey revealed internet sources such as the BBC News website and the online editions of existing publications, such as The Guardian and The Times, to be by far the most popular providers of up-to-date information.

Over 75% of those asked said that they relied at least primarily, if not solely, on internet news. This brings in to sharp relief the decline of the more traditional news mediums, such as radio and television.

Even with over half the students interviewed buying papers on a regular basis, the number of those who rely on the printed word as their primary source of news was significantly lower. This not only indicates that newspapers may be becoming superfluous, but also that even the people who buy them consider the medium to be limited.

This is hardly surprising given the accessibility of online news, and the abundance of choice when it comes to its providers.

The internet caters to any political leaning, and provides specialist news on any topic for free, making it an ideal mine of information for students.

However, the student love affair with internet news websites could soon come to an end. More and more discussion has centred on whether it is still practical or profitable to provide internet news for free.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Times and The Wall Street Journal, has recently outlined plans to start charging for online news content.

It would appear that the market for printed news has declined to the extent that

Will you still buy them from elsewhere?

Yes No Unsure

Yes No If it were reasonably priced, would you be willing to pay for online news?

Results from our student survey

Yes, I will No, I won’t Unsure

Based on the responses of 103 students interviewed in Durham

news corporations are looking elsewhere for a profit, and are considering turning to the far more popular medium of internet news as a way of balancing the books.

This proposal has been met by an unenthusiastic student response, with less than one fifth of those asked expressing a willingness to pay for premium online news content. Even those who said they would be prepared to pay conceded they would only do so if it were specialist information, such as financial journals. Some students felt incredibly strongly about the potential situation, with one second year viewing a commercial model of such a service as contrary to “the spirit of the internet”.

The rapidly changing dynamic of internet usage is also offering new avenues for how news is reported and interpreted. The internet phenomenon Twitter has caught media headlines as a newly emerging alternative to conventional forms of internet news.

The so-called “forefront of citizen news”, Twitter was the first port of call for details of the Hudson River plane crash and arguably the biggest story of the year: Michael Jackson’s death. Although citizen news is still in its ascendancy, as indicated by Palatinate’s survey, perhaps in the light of potential charges for online news, mediums such as Twitter will emerge as a more mainstream source for the latest information.

The undoubted growth of technologydriven news updates, and the decline in other forms of traditional broadcasting, could lead one to expect to see daily papers ranked lower in student news habits. But with nearly half of those asked citing newspapers as one of their main sources of information, perhaps the decline of the written format is being overestimated.

As one second-year student put it, “There is a simple pleasure gained from sitting down with a paper, that can’t be matched by staring at a computer screen”.

This mentality could ensure newspapers place in the student household.

Durham students’ news sources

Based on the responses of 103 students interviewed in Durham

DSU President’s Column Natalie Crisp

When at the Freshers’ fair last week, one of the questions which kept being asked, was, what had happened to the DSU shop? In stark terms; the shop wasn’t profitable, and it hadn’t been for many years. When forced to make tough choices between integral welfare services, such as the Nightbus and a failing commercial venture, closing the shop was the right decision for the Trustee board to have made.

The trustee board consists of 4 students elected in a cross campus ballot, the 4 sabbatical officers of the union and 4 external trustees. This ensures that students hold the voting majority on the board, and no decision can be made without the agreement of this majority. The reason why, these four students were elected is to make strategic decisions such as this. The trustee positions are exceedingly important, and publicity of these elections, and ensuring that the student body truly engage with these elections, is something which we are keen to promote this year.

In the interests of transparency, I am ensuring that there is a written report submitted to union council once a term by the trustees. The council chair will also report to the board of trustees, ensuring that a two way dialogue is occurring. Evidently sometimes we will be bound by the law and unable to discuss issues, but wherever possible students will be informed.

The space is going to be transformed into a focal point for student societies.

Over the summer we have been consulting with Senior DSU Reps, JCR Presidents and DSU Officers for their thoughts and ideas. They were asked to consult with students, so this information should have been disseminated to the entire student body.

It is important to bear in mind that although the union is dependent on the university for income, in the form of our block grant, our position is a lot more positive than many other student unions. We still have an independent revenue stream in the form of our exceedingly profitable club nights such as Planet of Sound and Revolver, and Riverside café, which this year has extended its menu; now selling smoothies, as well as chips, sandwiches and paninis.

In contrast at least 15 unions across the UK have removed all commercial services from their remit.

However, this does not mean that as a union we should be complacent. Our legitimacy stems from the representation which we provide, the development opportunities which we facilitate and the independent welfare services we provide. Demonstrating this, to both the university and the student body, requires that we engage with individuals better. When I was elected, I stated that I believed representation is a two way process. In order to know what students think, I have to ask them, and in return, I have to tell them what I am doing about it. This hasn’t changed. Illustrating that we are an effective body, one driven by the interests of our members is something which we will be working on for the year ahead.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Our writers discuss topical matters This edition: should Iran worry us?

The moral submissiveness of Roman Polanski’s defenders Peter Bolton

E

ntertainment scandal is always a source of in-depth coverage, so Palatinate readers may already be well aware of the story surrounding Roman Polanski, who is currently being held in Zurich, and facing extradition to the US for child molestation charges which he admitted committing back in the late seventies.

The French-born director, famous for films such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Pianist is accused of the rape of a thirteen year old girl and has been on the run from the law ever since release from the Californian authorities. Due to their weaker extradition policies, he has been living in France and Poland and avoiding all countries where he may face arrest. He was arrested by Swiss authorities whilst trying to enter the country last month.

The response to this by the public and the media has been quite peculiar to say the least. To give just two examples: as it currently stands, over a hundred people from the film industry have signed a petition for his immediate release from custody, and politicians from both France and Poland have criticised the arrest.

Comments made by public figures reached their zenith of stupidity when French Minister of Culture and Communication Frédéric Mitterrand uttered “the sight of him thrown to the lions for an old story which doesn’t make much sense, imprisoned while travelling to an event that was intending to honour him: caught, in short, in a trap, is absolutely dreadful”.

He then added, presumably with a straight face, that Polanski “had a difficult life” but had “always said how much he loves France, and he is a wonderful man”.

Two main arguments in favour of Polanski’s release, both epitomised in Mitterand’s nonsense statement, seem to form the backdrop for those wishing for his release.

Both show the person making the argument to have little to no understanding of the way the law or our society works.

Firstly, let us deal with the argument presented in the media, the suggestion that as the alleged crime is said to have been committed a long time ago it is somehow of relevance to the case – the “it all happened such a long time ago” argument if you will. We have seen this point being repeated ad nauseam, usually in an apologetic tone as if this is a sublimely wise and noble position to take.

For anyone who knows the least thing about law, there is no time limit threshold, short of the pursued fugitive’s death, when a person who has charges against them is suddenly considered to be free from facing court and having those charges considered and tried.

Thankfully, the policy of law and law enforcement officials is to pursue fugitives for as long as the charges remain outstanding; and through all legal and available means. If this was not the case we would never have seen war criminals such as Adolf Eichman,

architect of the Holocaust who went into hiding in South America for over 10 years, face justice for the death and misery he caused.

Are those who claim that the staleness of Polanski’s alleged crimes is reason for his release willing to follow their logic all the way through? I think and hope not. (As a side note, we may point out that in terms of personal morality, surely the fact that someone has evaded justice for so long should make us want him or her to face the consequences of their actions all the more.)

The second argument given in favour of Polanski’s release is the evoking of his achievements and talents as a director and artist. Naturally, this is often done in vague and ethereal tones such as those by the French minister, attempting to gloss over the sinister premises behind the argument.

There are some hidden conclusions or insinuations in this argument that remain unsaid, but are baffling once exposed.

“Those who make such an argument show themselves to be foolishly ignorant of the fundamentals of our law: the law judges actions not people” One of the following should sum up the gist of what is being implied; that these achievements somehow make him exempt from the law and that he should no longer be pursued, or even worse, that he must by definition be innocent and need not be tried.

Again, those who make such an argument show themselves to be foolishly ignorant of one important fundamental of the law: that the law judges actions, not people, and that personal achievements do not put anyone under a separate consideration of any kind. Household names cannot be treated any differently if our society is to be considered fair.

This argument also shows a childish handling of logic – by using his achievements to insinuate that he should not be tried, they are committing what is known as the ‘irrelevant thesis fallacy’ - where irrelevant information is used to distort or lie.

And if people such as Mitterand are claiming talented people must by definition be innocent (only he knows what nonsense he was really insinuating) then why not let Polanski prove this by facing trial and clearing his name?

Of course, we must mention that there may be issues regarding a person’s circumstances that are worthy of consideration. We have seen a thoughtful and well meaning debate arise concerning the fate of Gary McKinnon who faces extradition to the United States on charges of hacking

JOHN LINWOOD

Those who would defend the Chinatown director need to take a good look at the legal and moral case against him

Roman Polanski is the award-winning director of The Pianist, yet he is also a fugitive from justice, and many wish him to remain so

into the systems of the Pentagon and CIA. The fact that McKinnon suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism, is certainly a consideration that may be valid in this case, perhaps also that he was hacking into the systems in an attempt to find evidence of alien life.

But surely in cases of personal achievement or talent this cannot be a serious consideration. Again, follow this argument to its natural conclusions and we see why it is so far outside what the law accepts – does the fact that Harold Shipman was a doctor, and hence was certainly intelligent and probably helped as well as harmed many, excuse his actions of murder? We could all come up with many more examples of this logic in action which show the absurdity of applying it to criminal cases.

This form of pseudo-argument was displayed similarly at the 2003-2005 child molestation trial of the late Michael Jackson. Perhaps we will never know whether he was guilty of the alleged crimes, but either way who can forget the people who were hollering from the rafters about what a great singer and cultural icon he was - of course omitting the obvious insinuations that this somehow excused child abuse, that he deserved not to be tried as a result or that these facts must proclaim his innocence.

Many pages could be devoted to the aspects of law that render these arguments hopeless, but apart from displaying a laughable ignorance of the law, those who wish for Polanski not to face trial are also displaying a wholly repugnant moral submissiveness. Perhaps they should be reminded of the details of this case:

Polanski is accused of not just having sex with a minor. According to the charges and the victim’s account he boozed her up on champagne, drugged her and then raped her, not just in the statutory sense as many suggest, but fully against her will.

These are very serious offences which cannot be accepted in a society that for a second calls itself civilised. Who of us with female relatives of this age can think of them being subjected to this treatment by a 44-year-old man - who had all the while been put in a position of trust by having her over for what was arranged as a harmless photo shoot - without feeling our blood curdle in disgust?

“Apart from displaying a laughable ignorance of the law, those who wish for Polanski not to face trial are also displaying a wholly repugnant moral submissiveness” Certainly statutory rape is a contentious moral and legal issue. This issue was debated in a serious and civil manner on Radio 4 earlier this year when the boyfriend of a fourteen year-old girl was convicted of statutory rape. The case was made more controversial still by the fact that the mother of the girl knew that a sexual

relationship was going on. The mother said that she would have preferred for it to happen at the house than elsewhere and was both praised and scorned in the media.

The case raised many moral and legal issues and debate regarding the age of consent still remains unsettled – the age of consent varies widely across Europe and the world and defying it holds varying penalties.

In Spain the age of consent is currently thirteen - the boyfriend of this fourteen year-old girl would have been in the clear had their sexual relations taken place in that country rather than in Britain.

Whether you agree with their laws more than our own or not - and it seems that the debate on the age on consent will continue for years to come - it is not true for a second that Polanski would have been innocent had he committed these alleged acts in Spain. Above all, don’t believe those who pretend that statutory rape is all that has been alleged to have taken place.

Had the charges been that Polanski had sex with a thirteen year-old who had consented to sex, then maybe - and I stress maybe - some of the permissiveness would be justified. But it cannot be ignored that what is said to have happened was the boozing and doping up, attack and rape of another person.

Even if the person had been above the age of consent, this would still be a terrible crime. The girl’s age and her vulnerability only makes it more imperative that this man should be brought to justice. His talent as an artist has no bearing on his innocence or guilt in this case; it is time that the public, and public figures, realised it.

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Debate Comment

The prospect of Iran as a nuclear power should concern us If Iran is genuinely developing an illegal nuclear weapons programme, should we be genuinely worried by it?

DOMINOES CHEN

Chris Wright YES

D

oes anyone remember a time not so long ago when it was difficult to mention the words ‘Iran’ and ‘nuclear weapons’ without being shouted down?

It’s like Iraq all over again, everyone complained: all this talk of WMDs is just bellicose propaganda. A National Intellgience Estimate report in December 2007 appeared to declare that there was no evidence for a nuclear weapons program, demonstrating that the whole issue was mere hot air.

You don’t hear so many people making this argument now, or at least not with such confidence. The Iranian government still claims to be seeking only a civil nuclear capacity, but you can tell from the tone of its apologists that even they don’t really believe that.

The reason is that before last month we only knew about the heavy water plant at Arak and the uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz (revealed in 2002 by Iranian dissidents, who probably knew that countries with merely civil programs prefer to buy enriched uranium rather than produce it).

Even though countries with merely civil nuclear programs buy enriched uranium rather than produce it, these undisputed facts weren’t good enough for some people. Now we know, in addition, that there has been a further, secret nuclear facility under development at Qom. The existence of the facility has been admitted by the Iranian government, but only once they learned that Obama would be announcing the information to the world at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

So the challenge for the apologists is how to gracefully shift their position from ‘How do you know?’ to ‘So what?’ After all, runs the new argument, we have nuclear weapons - why shouldn’t Iran?

There is one very simple answer to that question: Iran are signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which forbids it from developing a nuclear arsenal. If you allow the Iranian government to straightforwardly rip this agreement to shreds, you are granting them leave to act as they will.

References to Israel and international law at this point are all well and good, but why change the subject? The question is about Iran and the legal position is straightforward.

“A country with greater cause for concern than Israel is Bahrain.”

There is also an answer to the charge of double-standards or hypocrisy. Iran is not like America or Israel or Britain: it is a deeply authoritarian theocracy, with more cause to worry about the defiance of its own people than about the aggression of the Great Satan. It is the mullahs who are playing with uranium enrichment, not the people. They do so not because of energy concerns, but because their only conception of Iranian national dignity lies in posing as a pious state amid a corrupt Zi-

Matt Urwin NO

I

Will an Iranian nuclear bomb be little more than an expensive exhibit, or something to fear?

onist world order. You can’t hand a victory to the theocratic constituency without setting back the democratic one.

A further difficulty is the threat implicit in standard Iranian rhetoric to a member state of the UN. President Ahmadinejad is a racist conspiracy theorist who denies the Holocaust and clearly looks forward to the end of the Zionist regime in Palestine. It is possible, as some people do, to misconstrue and distort what this threatening language means. To commit an act of mass-murder and destruction in the Holy Land would be the last decision of Iran as a country and would contravene Islamist piety, especially since among the rubble would be Islamic Holy places and Muslim bodies. To think of Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic as the next Hitler and Nazi Germany is to pathologise an already disturbing political reality.

From thew Israeli point of view, however, even a tiny chance of nuclear attack is difficult to tolerate. But here a little awareness of alternative perspectives is morally instructive: countries without nuclear weapons feel that they are forced to tolerate just such a submission to fate and to the permission of their nuclear-armed enemies. To trade on paranoiac possibilities of this kind is a recipe for chaos and warfare.

Although these nuclear weapons will not be used to wipe Israel off the map, they will confer certain advantages on a regime which does engage in proxy war with Israel through Hizbullah. Moreover, a country with greater cause for concern than Israel is Bahrain. Back in 2007, a diplomatic stir was caused by an editorial in an Iranian newspaper, Kayhan, arguing that Bahrain (a former Persian colony, but recognised as independent state by the Shah) should be considered a province of the mother country. More recent comments from Iranian officials have reopened the wound.

If Iran goes nuclear, what is to stop them walking in?

So really the case against the Iranian bomb is extremely simple. Do you or do you not want one more nuclear weapon in the hands of one more borderline insane and unstable regime?

In one of his more humble speeches, Saddam Hussein admitted to a single mistake in his career: invading Kuwait before constructing a nuclear weapon. The logic of Mutually Assured Destuction, in other words, does not come without its compromises.

This issue is a moral and political minefield, but it’s difficult to see how anyone could seriously consider an Iranian bomb a matter of indifference.

am not a fan of nuclear weapons.

Controversial, I know, but I’m prepared to stand by that statement. It must be something to do with that whole ‘kill countless innocents within seconds’ thing that they’ve got going on. So when Iran was discovered establishing a secret nuclear facility near Qom, I could completely understand why the Western World decided to collectively soil itself in terror.

Then, you ask, why am I not frantically hoarding canned goods in a bunker as you read this? Why am I not joining certain US senators, such as Senator Joe Lieberman, in saying that if sanctions haven’t worked in the past and won’t actually put a stop to Iran’s nuclear programme, then perhaps declaring war finally will? Why am I not that concerned?

For a start, it’s because I don’t believe Iran is, at this very moment, building a nuclear bomb. True, it’s capable of doing so, but that is given a significant amount of time. Although. it definitely has the uranium, whilst a leaked document from a United Nations report suggests that Iran might even know how to combine a bomb with a missile. But there is no real evidence to suggest that, as you read this, weapons of mass destruction are being planned and constructed in Tehran.

Furthermore, the International Atomic Energy Agency also pointed out that there is ‘no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons programme in Iran.’ Even the US’ National Intelligence Estimate recently had to admit that Iran did seem ‘less determined’ to produce nuclear weapons than had been originally supposed by other agencies and organisations.

This shouldn’t really surprise us at all.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said that construction of a nuclear weapon would be ‘retarded politically.’

Eloquently put, Mr Ahmadinejad, but for once he has a decent point. To make a nuclear bomb would be political suicide, even for a country like Iran that has a long and proud tradition of giving the finger to the entire Western World.

Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, part of which states that those nations who did not have nuclear weapons in 1968 cannot now enrich their uranium to dangerous weapon-grade levels. If caught trying to do this, even Iran wouldn’t be able to find a way to pretend it wasn’t deliberately breaking International Law. On the other hand, if Iran tries to drop out of the treaty, it will have to give a whole ninety days notice beforehand. In which case, the country might as well paint a giant bulls-eye over Tehran, with a large sign above it inviting the international community to ‘go ahead and shoot us. It’s okay, we’re building a Weapon of Mass Destruction.’ Either way, trying to make a nuclear bomb would be sheer idiocy.

The reality is that the only thing close to a piece of evidence in favour of the Iranians actually wanting to build a nuclear device is that they’re ‘evil’ – and by ‘evil,’ I of course really mean that they ‘haven’t invited the US round for tea lately.’ Yes, President

Ahmadinejad and his government are rather unpleasant, to understate the situation more than a little. But, despite the secret nuclear installation hidden under a mountain, they are not some sort of ‘James Bond villain.’ Even they know that they can only push the international community to a certain extent, before they get into more trouble than they are able to handle.

But assuming Iran had the capability of making a nuclear weapon; assuming it was stupid enough to want to make one; assuming it actually managed to construct one without getting bombed back to the point where ‘the Stone Age’ would be a step up; even then, I wouldn’t be feeling overly worried about the situation. Around eight hundred miles away from Iran is Israel, which is in possession of what could be up to two hundred nuclear bombs.

Watching the country’s every move is the US, with over two and a half thousand active nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

If an Iranian Weapon of Mass Destruction so much as dared to fart, let alone was launched, the country’s population could be turned quickly and efficiently into seventy million small piles of ash before you could say ‘Mutually Assured Destruction.’

And although Iran may be part of the ‘Axis of Evil,’ I suspect that even President Ahmadinejad doesn’t think the pay-off would be quite worth it. Back in the Cold War era, the USSR, despite possessing several thousand nuclear warheads, absolutely refused to play ‘atomic war chicken’ with the US, Therefore, I don’t see why Iran, which is far smaller and far less impressive on the world stage, would ever consider that possibility.

“To make a nuclear bomb would be political suicide, even for a country that has a tradition of giving the finger to the entire Western world” It’s also interesting to note that Israel owns up to several hundred undeclared nuclear weapons, and is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Moreover, their actions with regard to International Law include illegally building several dozen settlements and a wall on disputed land. And yet Israel, despite all of this, is not considered by us to be a threat to world peace. By contrast, Iran, which may or may not have the potential to build a nuclear weapon, although it quite possibly doesn’t really want to, is such a threat that there are politicians in America that would be quite prepared to start yet another costly and draining war to contain it.

Iran is a troubled country in a few ways; a country which needs to be held in check diplomatically, and which also needs to be properly reformed to fulfil its vast potential. But at a time when the world faces so many more pressing problems – swine flu epidemics, mass poverty, international wars, environmental devastation – is it really wise to focus so much of our energy, worries, and fears on a threat that is largely imagined?

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Higher education should be free, and not led by business JAMES DUNN

As recession rhetoric abounds in every part of public life, we must do our utmost to protect our future students James Funnell

T

his year’s freshers are warmly welcomed into Durham University with the prospect of owing £23,500 by the time they graduate. This looming black cloud of debt already leaves thousands of students hanging by a thread.

Yet with ‘savage cuts’ to public expenditure now the talk of the town, students look set to suffer once again. The recession will no doubt be considered guilty by the majority. However, it is rather just a stumbling block on the border of one huge, underlying issue; that the higher education funding system is a disastrous mess.

The grim reality of the situation is that New Labour’s rhetoric of radical educational change has not only failed to materialise, but has severely damaged higher education in this country. With one of the lowest higher education completion rates in the developed world and a declining number of graduates in employment, alongside progressive privatisation and increasingly questionable graduate prospects, a higher education crisis is evident.

Recent proposals suggest that the worst is yet to come. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has advised the state to cut grants, increase loan rates, and raise tuition fees to £5,000, claiming that

Durham could charge thousands of pounds

the government has “little choice but to plan to raise student contributions”. The director general of the Russell Group is considering similar plans to solve the socalled ‘university funding crisis’. Moreover, the three main parties all look increasingly likely to adopt some sort of policy along the same wavelength, in the name of unavoidable cuts to public spending.

Yet, in reality, this crisis only exists in the sense that the government refuses to allocate money to higher education. To claim that the world’s sixth largest economy cannot afford the investment is nonsensical. The annual OECD educational report provides concrete supporting evidence, finding that public expenditure on tertiary education as a percentage of total public expenditure was significantly lower than both the OECD and EU19 averages.

Undoubtedly, if the British government were to allocate funds at the comparative expenditure rate of the United States, Finland, or even Mexico, it could comfortably provide a publicly funded higher education in its entirety. Yet it seems that more ‘pressing’ economic priorities are believed to exist elsewhere. namely illegal imperialistic wars, multi-billion pound bank bailouts, the Trident nuclear programme, and corporate tax breaks. If “the money’s got to come from somewhere”, why not take your pick?

Even the NUS has unwittingly coupled itself with the current, deeply flawed system through its proposal of a graduate tax.

Rather than campaign for a complete over-

haul of the way higher education is funded, it has settled for meddling with an already broken system. Although the progressive nature of the blueprint is commendable, it is completely overshadowed by the NUS’s failure to realise that we effectively pay a graduate tax at the moment. A percentage deducted from your wages every month to pay for your university tuition – does that sound at all familiar?

chancellors in support of deregulation and privatisation, and a senior partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers. In a world where professional associations already exert significant influence over university education, surely the undemocratic corporatist structure of our funding system should be one of the last things we want to preserve.

Thus, behind the façade of its wellpolished ‘Funding our Future’ blueprint for an alternative funding system, this is a proposal which bears remarkable similarities to the crippling burden currently lumped on students. The NUS has drawn its line of battle in completely the wrong place. The answer, in fact, is simple: a free, accessible, publicly-financed higher education. Higher education exists to serve the public interest and society as a whole, and is not a commodity which can be bought or sold. Yet, despite the fact that Britain has signed multiple agreements to this exact word, it still promotes creeping privatisation, marketisation, and the reinforcement of social inequality and immobility in our society.

With a high-profile debate and DSU referendum pinned on the Michaelmas calendar, there is no excuse to remain silent. It is time for Durham students to reverse the landslide of apathy and reduced participation in student democracy and politics by campaigning for a free, publicly funded higher education. Our future truly does depend on it; if we don’t act now, we will quite literally be paying for it for the rest of our lives.

“With cuts to public expenditure, students look set to suffer once again” Closer inspection of the framework only exposes further irregularities. For instance, the decision to leave the Higher Education Funding Council for England in charge of its proposed People’s Trust for Higher Education quite literally shoots itself in the foot. The HEFCE funding board has been a key player in the drive towards privatisation. It has recently been seen threatening academic freedom by imposing measures to restrain ‘blue skies’ speculative research (in which some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs have historically occurred) for the causes of market, business, and government interest.

No surprise, then, that its funding board is comprised of businessmen, vice-

Durham needs to get serious about University Challenge

Our teams have performed terribly in recent years; from now on, we need to organise ourselves better

A

fter yet another shocking performance by the Durham team in the TV quiz show University Challenge, my mind began to boggle as to why we do so badly.

We are, after all, the eighth best university in the UK according to the 2009 Times Good University Guide. Yet we have failed, for the last three years, to get through the first round. Last year’s opponent was Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who scored 330 against our feeble score of 95. This year we faced St John’s College, Oxford, who scored 270 against an even worse score by us of 90.

This awful run of losses began after the 2006/07 series in which we successfully reached the semi-finals. So why have we suddenly become so useless at a quiz designed for students? Are these shocking results due to a fear of TV crews, or are we just not as clever as we think we are?

Luckily, having looked into why we can’t succeed, my conclusion does not in the slightest point to our limited TV skills.

Rather, it seems our failure can be put down to the lack of organisation and realistic thinking by those in charge of creating the intellectual ‘A-Team’ of Durham. The

current procedure for creating the University Challenge team begins with an inter-collegiate ‘University Challenge’. The college that wins then goes on to represent the University on the show. So even though the sign on the BBC2 show says ‘Durham University’, what it really means for the 2010 series is ‘St Mary’s College, Durham’.

This system may work for Oxford and Cambridge, but not for us, as we simply don’t have the same percentage of ‘geniusper-college’ as the Oxbridge colleges do - so reducing our pool of contestants to one college is quite simply mad. We put ourselves at a direct disadvantage before we even get under those TV lights and go head to head against another team.

“Reducing our pool of contestants to one college is quite simply mad” The inter-collegiate ‘University Challenge’ is hurriedly put together, with emails going out to the colleges days before the matches, creating a first-come-first-served basis for the places in the team.

As we all know, geniuses don’t necessarily check their emails, leaving colleges to field less then perfect teams - one member of the Hatfield quartet didn’t even know

DAFYD

James Dunn

with contestants joking around and the quizmaster attempting to keep control, they are rushed out to make way for the next event in the room.

“Durham needs to found a University Challenge society whose sole mission is to find the next Stephen Fry” All smiles in the studio, yet our recent teams have not entirely covered themselves in glory

how the quiz worked. These teams are then put into the Vane Tempest room in the DSU with their friends in tow, cheering and jeering at them.

The questions are read from a book called the University Challenge Quiz Book, so old that Jeremy Paxman’s picture on the front of it contains a full head of brown hair which has now very much gone grey, most probably from waiting for bumbling students to answer questions incorrectly so he can mock them.

As each question is read out by Durham’s answer to Jeremy Paxman, the teams

hurry to use the buzzers, wired up to the quiz master’s control, which he often forgets to unset. This leaves the other college unable to buzz-in, creating something of a disadvantage.

The quizmaster then turns to the back page of the book for the answers, stumbling as he goes, occasionally reading out the wrong answers. This really highlights the lack of organisation; even the questions aren’t pre-prepared, making it subordinate to the most amateur of pub quizzes. After the half hour comes to a close, most of which has been filled

Obviously something must be done to avoid future embarrassments in the quiz department. Many suggestions have been bandied around, including having auditions in front of last year’s team, exams, and on-camera auditions to get a taste of things to come and to sort out the masterminds from the ‘just clever’ people.

However, in my opinion, to ensure a lasting and constant success, Durham needs to found a ‘University Challenge Society’, whose sole mission is to find the next Stephen Fry, and give Durham back some quiz show pride. When Paxman says “and it’s goodbye from me - Goodbye”, I am sure we all want to be celebrating a victory by Durham, and not another failure to make triple figures.

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Browse our archived opinion pieces at palatinate.org.uk

Opinion Comment

We all talk about fate, but to what extent is it really there?

‘It was meant to be’ may be a cliche of Hollywood films, but what happens to us is largely the result of our choices

F

ate, I think, is like heaven. We all want to believe it exists but to many of us the notion is so logically absurd that try as we might to convince ourselves, the inner cynic reigns supreme.

The attraction of fate is that of an all encompassing get out clause. Why did you play badly in the football match? It was fate. I was destined to play badly. This curiously widely held conviction therefore alleviates any blame on the individual.

Certainly it sidesteps awkward questions; would you have played better if you had trained harder? Such queries are difficult to refute, and emphasise the importance of endeavour rather than fate. Fatalists may argue that it is only smaller, more specific incidents, such as the bounce of a rugby ball or the toss of a coin that can be determined by fate. However, the directional bounce of a rugby ball is down to the technique of the kicker – a skill he will have honed during training. Coin tossing admittedly is down to luck. In the final Ashes Test, Australian captain Ricky Ponting lost the toss, giving England the initiative to produce a large batting total which Australia could not replicate. The outcome of the coin toss, not for the first time in cricket, was considered pivotal

to the outcome. It was not simply “good luck” that saw England regain the Ashes, but superb play from cricketers such as Stuart Broad which swung the series.

NAD RENREL

Chris Atkin

“Personally, I think major decisions regarding careers and friends are nothing to with fate” Gary Player famously said, ‘the harder I work, the luckier I get’ – yet sportsman often believe it is God who has the greatest influence over their success. Arguably the most famous example of this is Diego Maradona’s ‘hand of God’ goal in 1986. Teams who fail to achieve, such as Chelsea in the Champions League, also look to external factors. Last season board members, such as Bruce Buck, felt that fate was against them after once again losing in close or controversial matches.

The other huge appeal of fate is the romanticism. How many times have you heard ludicrous comments similar to ‘we were born to be together’ or ‘you’ll find the one’? Despite sounding like Scrooge’s bitter brother, I actually think we all have a secret desire to feel fate has some small part to play on our course to everlasting happiness. My own personal dream

Are our friends the people we’re destined to share our lives with, or is it choice and chance?

is that, reaching for the coleslaw at the college salad bar, my hand brushes a girl doing likewise, we make eye contact and start a whirlwind romance. I can’t see it happening though. Especially as I do not live in college.

The humble shuffle feature on your ipod raises numerous possibilities for fate.

Does it know what I’m thinking? Can it really be sheer coincidence that, of all the songs on my ipod, when I’m deep in introspective thought, Michael Jackson’s ‘Man in the Mirror’ pops up? Unfortu-

nately, whilst I love the idea of there being a music man in tune with my conscience, I am somewhat dubious. It would be great to believe we live our lives in some broadly pre determined, ‘Sliding Doors’ esque bubble. And to a greater or lesser extent, we do in Durham. It is a heart warming, yet slightly lazy idea that just like Gwyneth Paltrow, we will meet our one true love eventually – whichever choices we make in life.

Part of the appeal of religious conviction is that we can convince ourselves that

we are part of God’s beautiful tapestry, that everything happens for a reason and that we only get to see the true beauty of this creation when we die. Perhaps strangely, I am happy to discount God’s existence – along with the tooth fairy and doggy heaven. Yet I cannot quite let go of the idea that someone is waiting for me just around the corner.

One of my best friends was in the room beside me in college last year. On first meeting I did not like him. The feeling was mutual. Yet our friendship leads to more questions about fate. Was it fate that we were put next door to each other?

Would we be friends if we had not? Personally, I think major decisions regarding university choices, careers and friends are nothing to do with fate. Forty years ago my great uncle was given a choice to work in Edinburgh or London for three years.

He and a friend tossed a coin to decide and my uncle won, choosing to live in Edinburgh – where he has stayed ever since.

Such life changing decisions would be considered as fate’s course by some, but are in reality just a decision an individual must make the most of. The world is an increasingly small place and unlikely coincidental events should be considered as such. Everyday produces opportunities and it is up to us – not fate – to make the most of them. Having said this, a hung over friend recently told me that he ‘goes out of his way to make sure fate happens’.

The more you think about it, the more profound that is.

Durham’s colleges offer an enhanced, unique experience SEB PAYNE

The colleges are central to the university, and are very much worth keeping lest we lose part of our identity David Morris

I

don’t want to sound sentimental here.

And yes, it is a cliché to say so here in Durham, but the collegiate system really is superb. In the last issue our esteemed comment editor, Thom, seemed to disagree, pointing out what he believed to be fundamental flaws in the concept of ‘college spirit’, citing a few unsavoury incidents from the last year as examples.

Now I have already written in Palatinate about what I believe ‘college spirit’ to be, and trying not to repeat myself, I will just say that to a large extent the incidents cited do not constitute what I, or many people, believe ‘college spirit’ to be. I’m as guilty as any for shouting a few silly things late on a Saturday night outside a college building, but this isn’t ‘college spirit’. It’s called ‘being intoxicated beyond reason’ (or ‘two minutes to chunder’), and that happens at any university – the difference is in the emphasis. If anything, the focus here in Durham on jokingly mocking an institution (as opposed to individuals) is far more docile than possible alternatives for drunks (like myself) to vent their inebriated stupidity at. And sorry if I woke you up Thom.

It is often stated that ‘together we stand, divided we fall’, and this is probably true.

Thom’s argument cited practical difficul-

have the same quality or quantity of events offered by the JCR’s here at Durham. Neither do they have the same amount of influence in the way their student experience turns out to be – halls of residence are not close in the scale of student representation in their day-to-day running. This is due to the unique way in which many Durham students feel they belong to something greater than themselves, and hence often sacrifice a lot of their time, effort, money and sometimes their degrees to put on a formal, run a shop, or provide a friendly, caring and close to home welfare service, complete with condoms and dental dams.

Durham colleges, far from being boarding houses, are important and valuable communities

“College spirit is not about waking up the opposition at 3 a.m.”

ties that implied this maxim. With catering and administration divided, the costs to the university are greater. Indeed the university seems to be recognising this with centralised catering. This seems a step in the wrong direction to me. The colleges are not divided, but united under the umbrella of the university. Within this they can maintain a level of autonomy so that they can all learn from each other about the best ways to maintain a high quality of student life. If this independence is neutered then the university as a whole will be less open to new and original ideas, and if

Some of the problems created by the collegiate system are not fundamental, but instead can be overcome with sensible leadership and the coming together of the student body. Perhaps the greatest downside to the influence of the JCR’s is that the DSU suffers as a result, both in its capacity as a representational body and in its finance. But this can be overcome by strong campaigning, advertisements and awareness over DSU issues, more sensible financial management and more active work by the various junior and senior DSU reps in colleges.

anything will become more conservative rather than progressive as Thom suggests.

Things might be cheaper, but less would happen too.

College spirit is not about waking up the opposition rugby team at 3 a.m., nor is it about sacrificing reason or sense in the irrational defence of everything a college does. It’s about coming together as a group of people to create the best student experience possible, and in that respect, the college system and its JCR’s succeed without a doubt. None of my friends at universities across the country (not even Oxbridge)

Thom may well be right to point out that our colleges do not have the same prestige or influence on our degrees as those in Oxbridge. But prestige and history only really seem important when you’re applying to university. I’ve realised that in Oxbridge it is easy to confuse ‘learning with the smell of cold stone’, to quote Richard Griffiths from The History Boys. Being a younger university and not being taught in colleges allows us in Durham to make that distinction and to discard all the pomp and circumstance that would otherwise blight our education (both academic and other).

So I say to you freshers, grow to love your college. Banter with other colleges is both great and refreshing, but you’ll find no reason to actively dislike another college or people from it. Please do not go to Thom’s college at 3am on Sunday and wake him, or anyone else up, in the name of college spirit.

Rather, if you love your college, enjoy the events, socials and formals. Perhaps even join a committee or work the bar.

Above all, make the most of your time at Durham experiencing the unique feel of belonging that accompanies the collegiate system. These are things that few other university students are able to do, and we are lucky in Durham that the autonomy and independence of our colleges creates such oppurtunities for us. Besides, can you name another university with seventeen student bars where you can get a pint for less than £2? No, I thought not.

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Browse our archived opinion pieces at palatinate.org.uk

Opinion Comment

Expectations of beauty affect both the sexes

From the Union

Girls face pressure from media portrayals of women, but we mustn’t forget men do as well COLIN MERCER

Danny Dyson

I

t has been said a thousand times and will be a thousand more, but beauty is a fickle thing. Everybody wants to be it, and most will do anything to get it.

It is impossible to open up a magazine these days without seeing some halfnaked young thing strutting their stuff, photoshopped beyond belief so they are almost unrecognisable as human.

Yet, we are supposed to worship this ideal, and, perhaps more worryingly, expect it in our partners. But, in case you were thinking I was preaching to the choir, I was talking about the men.

Male beauty in particular is an unusual topic to talk about. People are quick to jump on the bandwagon talking about how the media has unrealistic expectations of beauty in women that they forget the same is true with men. Everybody knows that women are not naturally that pruned and polished but does everybody know that neither are the guys? The (hopefully) obvious answer is ‘yes’ but I’m not so sure.

Try looking for a major ad campaign which doesn’t feature a man with a body that would make Brad Pitt jealous and let me know when you find one. It is nigh on impossible. Flicking through my housemate’s Cosmo was a humbling experience at best, what with the multitude of ruggedly handsome gentlemen and their toned physiques, wearing next to nothing.

“Try looking for a major ad campaign that doesn’t feature a man with a body that would make Brad Pitt jealous” Of course, women have it tough too; bikinis aren’t that flattering for the majority of ladies out there but at least with women, there is a much wider variety of shape and size; see yet another trashy magazine – anorexia to ‘elephant bum’ fat in approximately 50 pages – a far cry from the strict triangular male build that is constantly thrown in your face with us guys.

Obviously, when it comes to advertising, it is all about sex, but that is precisely the point. Whilst countless girls are off dieting and plucking in order to try and get a guy, countless boys are knocking back endless protein shakes and living their lives around the gym in order to try and get a girl because somewhere, somebody has told us that if we don’t look perfect, nobody will ever love us. It sounds absurd said like that, but then, if it isn’t true, why do people do it? Even if it is just to feel better about themselves, why do they need to fit in the first place?

This question is, of course, rhetorical.

The reason people try to change themselves is that (bizarrely) what you look like is said to lead to what you become.

Supposedly, if you look good, you’ll feel good. Naturally, a plethora of products

The media is saturated with images of ideal beauty, but how do the rest of us live up to this harsh and exacting standard?

is required to become a ‘better you’ in consumerism at its best, (or, depending, worst.) It seems like a waste of breath to state though that what usually happens is that you end up consuming the product, and feel no better, if not worse. There’s always something else to do to yourself and something else to buy.

It isn’t just advertising though; entertainment plays a large role in this preaching of unrealistic expectations. One culprit in particular is the latest craze, the vampire phenomenon Twilight, based on the books written by Stephenie Meyer. For those not in the know, normal human girl falls in love with supernaturally attractive vampires. For those who have read them, can you count the amount of times the heroine talks about how physically attractive her beau is? I couldn’t. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so fundamentally disturbing. He loves her because she is beautiful within (and delicious, in an edible sense.) She loves him because he’s hot.

If the roles were reversed, it is highly unlikely that you would have even heard of Meyer but instead, this propaganda (for want of a better term) is quietly assimilated. Unfortunately ladies (and, a few gentlemen), the man you end up with is not going to look like Edward. However, in an irony that is almost delicious, not even Edward, the male protagonist played by Robert Pattinson, looks like Edward. The chiselled physique he will be showing off soon in cinemas near you is the result of careful make-up (unless he has had a body transplant since he filmed Little Ashes. ) The standard you see from the men is just

as artificial as that of the women yet this is seemingly unspoken.

Allegedly though, men are not as concerned over their physical appearance as women. If this is the case then could somebody explain to me the rise of the ‘metrosexual’, why the male toiletry industry is the fastest growing one in the UK and now worth over one billion pounds or why liposuction and breast reduction rates in men are becoming increasingly common?

“Unlike women, there is nobody telling these boys that what they see isn’t real or indicative of the everyday man’s body” Worse, can someone please explain why over 11,000 men per year now seek treatment for anorexia? Young men are under just as much pressure to look good as young women but the difference seems to be that unlike women, there is nobody telling these boys that what they see isn’t real or indicative of the everyday man’s body.

The problem runs deeper than the media though. It is an unfortunate truth that many guys simply don’t talk about their insecurities with their peers as women

do. Instead, they tend to bottle them up which probably explains why the male teenage population is the most likely to commit suicide.

Even today, to talk about such worries as that of body self-perception is seen as ‘unmanly,’ as is the failure to have a sixpack when this should not be the case. We are taught as children that ‘boys don’t cry’ because boys are tougher than that. Physically, yes. Emotionally? I’ll get back to you on that one.

Ultimately, half of the problem is that gender roles are still deeply inbred, and feminism and its related movements haven’t come as far as they think they have.

Still to this day there is the feeling that women are to be desired, whereas men are to desire and both have to have the physique which the social code entails.

Happiness, according to this code, does not exist for those who deviate.

Naturally, the majority of people do deviate, which is why the issue of beauty is so frustrating. Your random person in the street isn’t going to look like they got lost on the way to some modelling audition but a quick flick through some magazines would make you think otherwise. And yes, whilst the hourglass figure or the triangular body does look good, it cannot be denied, for the most part, it is an ideal aesthetic standard, and, as communism told us, to put the ideal into reality often leads to trouble.

In other words, most of us are going to live our lives distinctively average looking and we should come to terms with that, both in ourselves, and in others.

Jamie Scott & Tom McCall

As The Independent’s headline suggested, Friday, 9 October, was a day of war and peace: the former was the memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral for those who had died fighting in Iraq; the latter was Obama winning the Nobel Prize for not being George Bush.

With these twin legacies of the Iraq War at the forefront of the day’s news – Britain’s casualties, as well as the hobbling effect it had on multilateralism, which the new President has now resuscitated – it was a perfect occasion for the Durham Union Society’s first debate of Michaelmas: “This House Believes Iraq Was Worth the Price.”

A stellar line-up of speakers, including the Chairman of the ‘Stop the War’ coalition, Andrew Murray, spoke on the subject to laughter, applause, and even jeers. By all accounts the proposition speakers, including James Wharton, Conservative PPC for Stockton South, made an eloquent case for the contentious motion, but in the end the house decided - narrowly - to vote with the opposition.

In all, the event lived up to the expectations all might have had for the Union’s showpiece debate for our new Freshers. While the evening was enjoyed by all, it was ultimately those just starting at Durham that we had hoped would leave most impressed.

The membership fee of the Society has increased fractionally this year, and so I suppose a good number of students might be wondering not about Iraq, but whether the Union itself was worth the price? I hope such an excellent evening answered in the affirmative for those there; I’m sure those who enjoyed the champagne and pizza on offer at the Freshers’ Drinks were similarly satisfied; and I am confident that those who have begun to attend our debating workshops on Monday nights have settled the same question in their minds.

The Union is a wonderful place, inviting and generous – not only are we debating top issues with the people that matter every week, not only do we have such high-profile speakers as Bertie Ahern and Michael Mansfield addressing the Union in the coming months, not only do we have socials and balls to indulge yourself at, not only do we have our own bar, 24 North Bailey Club, and not only do we have a very successful competitive debating wing (veterans Calum Jones and Thomas Ball finished sixth in the European Universities Debating Championships this August), but in addition to all that, we try our utmost to put our members at the heart of all we do.

So if you’re already a part of us, please do come along to our events – whether this Friday’s debate, ‘This House Believes Only Capitalism Can Save the World’, or the upcoming ‘Jazz and Cocktails’ night – and if you’re considering joining, we would love you to be part of the Union experience. Is it worth the price? It’s one of the best bargains in town.

The Durham Union Society is based on Palace Green and holds debates at 8:30pm every Friday.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Lifestyle Features

Lifestyle

Pitch your own feature ideas to us: feature@palatinate.org.uk

Relax with six pages covering student life Includes Food and Drink, Features and more

Five original Durham dates His Profile Name: Jono Simpson Age: 21 About him: 5’10”, dark hair/eyes, GSOH, N/S, in a LTR

ANNETTE ELLIS

Want a date that’s different from arranging to meet up plastered at Klute, or chatting over a cup of tea at Vennels?

It’s now a fortnight into term and the carnations you bought her last week are starting to wilt.

You want to show your affection, but flowers and dates to Bella Italia (on a Tuesday - student night) just seem adolescent and clichéd.

Well, having been going out for a year now and, having exhausted all the standard date spots in downtown Durham within two dates, we had to look further afield, and what a mine we found.

We’ve put together a list of five of our favourite dates that we hope will inspire you to indulge in some good wholesome merrymaking. They range from the actionpacked to the artsy, the nostalgic to the cultured.

Her Profile Name: Lucy Floyd Age: 21 About her: 5’5”, blonde hair, blue eyes, coy, shy, cheeky, in a LTR. ‘Love at first sight’: a concept formative to everyone’s weltanschauung ever since Shakespeare penned his first Sonnet.

Despite my summer dreams of spying Mr Right across the college bar during Freshers’ Week, first sight and love were the ultimate dichotomy when I first saw Jono.

Although the lecture theatre was buzzing with fine theological talent, he certainly was far-removed from it: obnoxious, floppy-haired and plum-eating.

Even worse, he was one of those kids who gave announcements in lectures, and tried to learn everyone’s names.

“Pack a picnic and head for the impressive Brancepeth Castle”

An insight into our diverse attitudes to the gratuity culture JONATHON ALLEN

Ahh, the art of tipping. It’s a complex system, so much more than just shoving a few coins into someone’s hand.

First, when to tip? Let’s take taxi drivers. In reality, they’ve only driven a few miles, and they even have sat nav to get them there. People drive all the time and hardly find it a laborious process. Frankly, I’d say tipping a taxi driver would be downright patronising: you drove, well done you!

Now let’s take waitressing. I might be quite biased here, seeing as I’m a waitress myself. But believe me, there’s nothing

your bicycles (or hire from Cycleforce on Claypath) and head to the cycle track past Neville’s Cross.

Pack a picnic and rug in your front basket and head for the grounds surrounding the impressive Brancepeth Castle to munch your supplies.

It’s a secluded fourteenth century stronghold in excellent condition just 5 miles SW of Durham.

There’s usually no one to be found, so you can wander around as you please before heading to the pubs further along the route.

On the way back, cool off with an upriver swim in one of the Browney’s natural pools.

1. The Ceramic Experience: paint your own crockery.

You certainly don’t have to be a budding Warhol for this date – in fact, it’s far more fun if you’re not.

Once you’ve finally found the daisy-clad building, ‘fun really is the business’. Choose from a vast selection of unglazed pottery from egg cups to tea cups, and if it’s your sort of thing, creepy animal figurines.

In an attempt to curb Lucy’s caffeine addiction, we decided to paint a teapot and two cups and saucers.

Make sure you leave yourselves lots of time – we were there for over four hours, munching on various snacky things from their café. Check out theceramicexperience.com for more info.

Take the off-peak train to Newcastle, then grab 602 bus to Blaydon.

4. Champagne and Watch Towers The viaduct’s hidden treasure (aside from Domino’s) is undeniably ‘The Fort’.

Barely 50 metres past the North Road roundabout, you’ll find a set of steps leading to Dunelm’s watch tower.

Whilst vigilantly watching over your city, you can re-enact scenes from your favorite Hollywood romcom, sipping Cava and feeding each other gâteaux.

Cava: £5.99 on special offer from Tesco’s.

2. Duo Triathlon: cycle to Brancepeth Castle, drink in the Clubhouse of Brancepeth Golf Club and swim in the River Browney.

As soon as the sun decides to bare his face on our little bit of the North East, take

The gentle art of tipping Alex Mansell

The only thing I could have thanked him for was that he aided my bonding with newfound course mates; all united in annoyance at him, any awkward silence could be filled by expressing repugnance at his overenthusiastic chivalry.

Two years on and I’m sitting here with him tapping out an article on some of the best places to take your date in Durham.

But perhaps, fresher ladies, unlike me you’ve already set your heart on some hunk in Klute, or the sound of him tooting his flute in a concert band has tickled your fancy, and you’re looking for some ideas of things to do together.

Or you’ve been going out with the guy who plays a mean hobbit in Treasure Trap for a year now, but you’re craving some alternatives to his crummy college room for quality time together.

Freshers, if you haven’t heard it already, stats (or myth, whichever is less reliable) have it that 70% of Durham graduates meet their spouses at this joint.

I hope this mini-guide might get you on your way to making the myth a reality.

In the words of Will Shakespeare, “Journeys end in lovers meeting/Every wise man’s son doth know”.

more annoying than being sickeningly polite and bending over backwards for a table all night, only to receive nothing at the end of it.

I mean, I could get away with doing a sub-standard job, but I don’t: I smile sweetly and act like you’re the bloody queen, and some appreciation would be damn well appreciated. I mean, not a lot, just a token to say “Hey you, you did good”.

Saying that, it is hard to control myself when I have to act so very grateful when a man winks and says “Keep the change” when the bill is £39.60 and he hands over £40. “Oh thanks, that’s really very kind of you!” I cry, my sarcasm being misread for genuine heartfelt joy every time.

Americans, however, take it to a whole new level. It seems our over-enthusiastic cousins love to show their appreciation, as a part of their whole ‘Good-job-buddy-gimme a-high-five’ culture.

3. Pancakes and Row Boats For a little over a tenner, you can have yourself a romantic morning date.

Bumble down to Brown’s boats (below Elvet Bridge) and row-row-row your (hired) boat along to Prebends bridge and back.

Having worked up a cheeky appetite, enjoy a Dutch brunch at the Georgian Pancake House, halfway up Crossgate which is just up from North Road.

5. Culture Club For those of you with too sophisticated a palate for row boats and egg cups, you are in the wrong university town.

Having said that, the Gala theatre hosts Foreign Film Night each Monday.

Back-row snogging is inappropriate in this intimate film-house, but impress your date with an interest in 70s Italian cinematography.

Search ‘Jono and Lucy’s Durham Dates’ on Google maps for more details.

I remember once looking aghast at a $50 service charge for a meal in Florida.

Needless to say, we left $7 and got the hell out of there.

They even have tip boxes on the counter in McDonald’s out there. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with working in McDonald’s - ‘tis an honourable profession. But tips? Really?

What of our brethren on the other side of the world? In Australia, tipping is practically unheard of; they just don’t do it. Even more surprising, in Asian countries, it’s actually considered an insult to tip. Apparently it makes you come across as arrogant and condescending.

It’s easy to get pressured into giving too much, but I’d advise avoiding American generosity. That said, I wouldn’t recommend following Australian and Asian customs and leaving nothing at all.

The best tip I can give you? Judge the situation and make a decision accordingly; if they really deserve it, tip.

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PALATINATE Friday16th October 2009

See our archived features online a palatinate.org.uk

Features Lifestyle

Babbling with brilliant buskers JAMES DUNN

Palatinate chats to some of the fascinating people we pass by every day on Durham’s bridges Emily Ashton

Nick, known by many as the ‘One-Man Band’, entertains and amuses us daily with his eclectic kazoo, guitar and drum kit mix as we wander through Durham’s bustling streets

Marie-Sophie Schwarzer & Lucy Floyd

A

s we shuffle into town early on a Saturday morning, the Bailey - so animated just a few hours ago now lies dormant, her only inhabitant a biting north-eastern wind. It is far too cold for October.

Yet as we reach Market Square we are thawed by the vibrations emitted by a lone guitarist and his amp. Standing outside an abandoned shoe shop, he appears to be playing only to the rising sun and the few shop assistants who scurry to their work posts. The scene is bleak and the music is its only saving grace.

We head to Nero’s for hot coffee and are accompanied by the fugues of Bach’s double violin concerto. Strategically placing ourselves in the window seat, we admit that we actually take little notice of the buskers who line our streets.

Even though one of us spent a year playing Bach to the disgusted of Tunbridge Wells (who were in fact more than appreciative), we often march through town, bee-lining for Topshop or college with our iPods drowning out the world around us.

Back out on the streets the first busker we meet, Andreas, greets us with a wide smile, embracing cold hands and an accent that suggests he was born nearer the Bells of Bow rather than the cathedral behind us.

We ask him if he minds being interviewed: “This is what it’s all about” he professes, “it’s not the money that matters, but the people, especially those who come and chat to you”.

Incongruous with his accent, Andreas is Greek Cypriote (with English ancestry)

and has spent most of his life either in that warmer clime or globe-trotting with his guitar.

And at 48, he has done a lot of travelling. Our preconceptions dashed, he eagerly shares with us his abundant tales, from serenading Europeans on cruises to plucking his strings before Arab hoteliers in the Emirate States.

We suddenly feel privileged that his current gig is Silver Street. Why? “I followed a girl up here; she left, but I stayed.” We must admit that we are puzzled as to why any busker would stay in Durham - let’s face it, it’s not exactly the cultural capital of the North and there never seems to be much more than copper lining their cases.

At this hour, the streets are still quite forlorn and only the occasional passer-by stops to toss a twenty pence piece into his case.

Nonetheless, Andreas is convinced that Durham is a great place for buskers, claiming that there is a true ‘street’ community here and life isn’t the ugly rat race it is in London. “I love the vibe; people have time for you and even the students stop to listen and give money”.

To Andreas, busking is an art in its own right, where the performer must stand tall and proud and dress better than the people who parade before him. The fact he’s not hired gives him a certain freedom: “Being a street musician is like being a buffet, the passers-by can take as much as they like - and they usually give back quite generously.”

Last Saturday alone he made £100.

Finally, we ask Andreas what his dreams are and his eyes light up. “This kind of life is rewarding but it is tough. My dream is

to write songs and get them recorded by other people”.

He promises not only to get his own creations aired, but to play student-friendly songs, “Snow Patrol and Travis, right?”

As we turn to leave, he starts to play a familiar anthem of recent generations, REM’s ‘Losing my Religion’.

A little girl skips over to give him her pocket money, giggles shyly and runs off.

“That is what truly means a lot to me. For children, even one penny is a lot to give and it’s an honour when I see them spending it on me instead of sweets”, he says.

As we make our way onto Framwellgate Bridge and “Oh no, I’ve said tooooo much” drifts out of earshot, our little market town in Blighty is replaced by Paris.

The noon sun pierces the grey cloud cover, Notre Dame towers above and outside Café Rouge couples sip espressos and watch the city drift by. It feels like it could be the Seine’s waters that flow beneath the bridge.

OK, we exaggerate, but this is the effect the accordions have on the atmosphere.

The man hunched over his bellows even sports a little black cap, moustache, and seems to continuously smoke.

We approach him and once again our preconceptions are thrown to the wind.

He cheerily exclaims (in Romanian) that he doesn’t speak a word of English. Who needs a Durham International Festival?

Another 10 metres along from our Renoir scene and Bert from Mary Poppins steps into our path.

Also known by all as Nick (it’s blazoned across his drum), his lively beat and puff drags you far from the continent, plonking you firmly onto British soil.

This one-man-band has been entertaining Durhamites for the last 15 years, but his career as a busker stretches back over more than 40.

Originally from the south, he followed the love of his life to the hills of Switzerland. Once there, he bought a guitar and started working. He loved it and success soon followed, allowing him to play his way around the world.

“Being a street musician is like being a buffet, the passers by can take as much as they like - and they usually give back quite generously” From Austria to Canada, the streets became his stage as he shared his talent with passers-by. “My wife was Miss Magic and used to do acts alongside me, but now she’s an English teacher up here so our travelling spree has come to an end”.

Main musical influence? “Rod Stewart, the Kinks and Mango Jerry”. Incidentally, Stewart is one of the many big names who started out busking for bread in London’s Leicester Square.

As the first shops close their doors, a couple of younger buskers begin to bash out some folky numbers. They are students and unashamedly admit that they flaunt their talent for cash.

Studying at Newcastle, they explain that Durham’s firmly on the busking map, “because it’s the south of the north. We earn up to 20 quid an hour but it does get freezing and we often crave a cuppa!”

For Nick however, business seems to have decreased; whilst he used to earn at least £45 an hour, he now makes no more than £3 - surely not enough to feed his family of five.

The problem? “Buskers in Durham don’t need a license, which means that anyone can come out to play. I believe that only good acts should make it onto the streets” says Nick, before stamping his foot pedal.

Surely that’s something the punters themselves decide though, Nick?

Undoubtedly we often take for granted, or at worst ignore, the Andreases and Nicks who share their melodies with those who care to listen. Yet they make up the soundtrack of our lives here. They are part of a rich musical tradition in Durham, dating back to a time when Benedictine Monks sung out their praises in the cathedral.

Whether it’s harmony or dissonance they create, being affected by your surroundings is an undeniable part of being alive. So open your eyes, take a look around and engage with those who accompany your time around town.

For as Plato put it “music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul”. *If you’d like to witness Andreas’ talent, check out his song ‘It Must Be Madness That Keeps Me Loving You’ on YouTube.com

16

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

Listings

LISTINGS By Alison Moulds

PURPLE

YOUR POSTER-SIZED EVENT GU Highlights this fortnight Wed. 21 Oct

Freshers’ Ball ‘09

W

hilst last year’s offering admittedly left a lot to be desired, the annual ball is still unmissable entertainment for all freshers craving a bit of excitement now that the debauchery of Freshers’ Week is over. Not only is it a decent excuse for girls to don their gowns and the boys to dig out their tuxes, but the night also promises the usual line-up of live music (featuring Amanda Wilson amongst others) and attractions, this time ranging from showgirls to a casino. Ramside Hall Hotel, coaches from 6PM. £35

Fri. 23 Oct - Sun. 1 Nov

Durham Book Festival ‘09

T

he festival returns for its 19th year, with an ambitious ten-day programme that hopes to back Durham’s bid for City of Culture status in 2013. With appearances from the likes of Carol Ann Duffy, Jack Dee and Labyrinth author Kate Mosse, the festival has a lot to offer for both the consummate Literature student and the casual reader. This year’s featured read is David Nicholls’ Starter for Ten. Time and venues vary

Thu. 29 - Sat. 31 Oct

The History Boys

D

urham Student Theatre’s ambitious production of Alan Bennett’s much-loved play is a highlight of the student theatre programme. With comedy and pathos in equal measure, the script is a treat and alongside the acting talents of our student body a number of non-students will also feature amongst the cast. Fans of the play and recent film will not be disappointed, whilst newcomers will discover a real gem!

The Assembly Rooms, 7.30PM (+2.30PM Sat). £5 NUS, £4 DST

Art Until Sat. 24 Oct

Tranquillity by CS Cape Exhibit of Case’s romantic but potent landscapes, which evoke not only a sense of place but also the feeling one has intimate knowledge of it.

Bishop Auckland Town Hall, 10AM4PM weekdays, 9AM-4PM Sat

Until Sat. 31 Oct

Thetis Black Retrospective Retrospective celebration of the works of painter and singer Blacker, who passed away in 2006. She was one of the leading practitioners of the little-known dyed-fabric technique batik.

The Old Library, Grey College, 10AM-6PM. Free

Until Sat. 7th Nov

Exhibition: The Curse of the Lambton Worm Showcases Huddersfield artist Andrew Jenkins’ new book, which re-imagines the legendary story of the Lambton Worm and accompanies it with beautiful watercolour illustrations.

Clayport Library, 9.30AM-7PM

Until Fri. 4 Dec

Works of Illumination Exhibit of Judy Hurst’s paintings, which represent a fusion of ancient and modern influences, methods and materials. Her inspirations range from British and French wildlife to Celtic history.

Trevelyan College, 10AM-4PM

Until Wed. 16 Dec

Tim Fowler: No Words Showcasing Fowler’s emotionally charged photographic collages which use images of landscapes, technology, and even found objects.

Van Mildert College, telephone for details

Until Wed. 16 December

Dusk, Interrupted and Please Switch Off Lights When Not Required Photographic exhibition from local freelance artist Anthony Hope.

‘Dusk, Interrupted’ examines the relationship between natural and man-made light sources whilst the latter exhibit offers an insight into the lasting human footprint on disused industrial buildings.

Van Mildert College, call for details

Film Sat. 17 – Sun. 18 Oct

Public Enemies Michael Mann crime drama based on true events. During the Great Depression, FBI agent Melvin Purvis (played by American Psycho’s Christian Bale) attempts to stop a band of criminals.

Presented at Caedmon Hall by the Bede Film Soc. Caedmon Hall, Hild Bede College, 8PM. £1 members, £2 nonmembers

Mon. 19 Oct

Broken Embraces Pedro Amoldovar’s latest film, starring Penelope Cruz, screens as part of Gala’s World Cinema series.

The Spanish film tells a complex story of a film director who has disappeared from public life and who recalls the series of events that led to the loss of his beloved actress.

Gala Theatre, time TBC. £4.50

Music Sun. 18 Oct

Bowling for Soup The Texan rockers hit Newcastle for their Party in Your Pants Tour 2009. With support from Zebrahead, MC Lars and the Leftovers.

O2 Academy Newcastle, time TBC. Price TBC

Thu. 22 Oct

Basshunter Jonas Erik Altberg. the Swedish singer-songwriter and producer who styles himself as the famous Eurodance artist Basshunter, arrives at the O2 Academy. Book your tickets now!

O2 Academy Newcastle, 7PM. £21.50

Thu. 22 Oct

Ivan’s Childhood The Clayport Film Club presents Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s first film (released in 1962 in the then-USSR), which looks at the tragedy of youth lost in war. The film is based on the 1957 short story Ivan, penned by Vladimir Bogomolov.

Clayport Library, 7.45PM. £5 membership/£3 per film

Sun. 25 Oct

Moon The Bede Film Soc screens the 2009 sci-fi thriller about a solitary lunar employee (Sam Rockwell), who has only a robot (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company and is faced with a personal crisis as his three year stint finally draws to a close.

Caedmon Hall, Hild Bede College, 8PM. £1 members, £2 nonmembers

Mon. 26 Oct

Starter for Ten Author David Nicholls introduces this screening of the fantastic adaptation of his hilarious novel at the Gala Cinema. The movie stars James McAvoy as a workingclass student at Bristol University in the 1980s. Showing as part of the Durham Book Festival.

Gala Cinema, 6PM. £5

Thu. 22 Oct

Karine Polwart The Scottish songwriter and storyteller, twice-winner of the BBC’s Best Original Folk Song Award, offers a line up of traditional and original songs.

Gala Theatre, 7.30PM. £10

Sat. 24 Oct

Show of Hands with Miranda Sykes The former Glasto headliners team up with Sykes for more refreshingly edgy folk tunes. With special guest Flossie Malavialle opening the show.

Gala Theatre, 7.30PM. £14

Tue. 27 Oct

Alphabeat The Danish popstars best known for infectious songs such as ‘Fascination’ and ‘Boyfriend’ play the O2. This tour comes ahead of the November release of new album The Spell.

O2 Academy Newcastle, 7PM. £11

PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

17

Listings

E DIARY

UIDE FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS Nightlife Sat. 17 Oct

Inbetweeners’ School Disco Studio cash in on the success of Channel 4’s hilarious sixth form-set sitcom The Inbetweeners with a night of back-to-school delights. Emily Atack (who plays Will’s crush Charlotte Hinchcliffe) makes a special appearance, heading up the stage games.

Plus the best boy and girl school outfits win £50 in cash.

Studio, time TBC. £4 advance, £5 NUS

Sport Sun. 18 Oct

Basketball Eagles vs Everton Tigers Newcastle’s Eagles play the Everton’s Tigers at the British Basketball League’s largest-capacity venue.

Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle, 4PM. £8

Wed. 21 - Sat. 24 Oct

Doubt THIS Theatre Company present the Tony Award– and Pulitzer Prize- winning play which was recently turned into an Oscarwinning film.

The Assembly Rooms, 7.30PM. £5 NUS, £4.50 DST

Wed 21 Oct

Thai Beach Party Studio’s new regular Saturday night entertainment, Dirty Stopout, brings you a night of hedonism in the form of an apparently ‘authentic’ Thai Full Moon party.

Studio, time TBC. £4 advance, £5 NUS

Thu. 29 Oct

Fidget DSU Launch Durham favourites ‘Fidget’ bring an Ibiza UV Rave to their new home, the Student Union.

Expect UV cannons, lasers and a massive sound system. Grab bargain UV accessories from town during the day and hit the DSU by night to scoop up all the freebies on offer, from glow sticks and UV paint to mix CDs. DSU, 10PM. £4 advance, £6 on the door

Wittank Last-ever show from Durham’s celebrated comedy foursome, hot on the heels of their performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. An hour of riotous entertainment.

The Assembly Rooms, 9PM. £4.50 DST and £5 Andy Parsons: Citizens Night of political comedy from Parsons, regular on BBC’s beloved Mock the Week and QI. Gala Theatre, 8PM. £15

Revolver: Wild West Night Too intimidated to hit North Road on a Saturday night? Then stay safe at the Student Union with good old Revolver. This week has a Wild West theme, with Jack Daniels bar promotions.

DSU, 10PM. £4 (£3 with Gold Card)

Sat. 24 Oct

Until Sat. 17 Oct

Wed. 21 Oct

Sat. 17 Oct

Freshers’ Ball With music from Amanda Wilson, Stonebridge, Diablo, global DJs Master J and J4de Rox and G Child. Plus casino tables, showgirls, food courts and eight different bars. Grab your handbags and gladrags now for an evening of quality entertainment not to be missed.

See ‘Highlights this Fortnight’.

Ramside Hall Hotel, time TBC. £35

Stage

Wed. 21 Oct

University Football: Women’s 1sts vs Leeds’ 1sts The women’s football team help kick off a new season of uni sports in their home match against Leeds.

Details TBC

Fri. 23 Oct

Dave Spikey: Best Medicine Tour Comedy from the British comedy award-winner who was a cowriter and star of Phoenix Nights and team captain on 8 Out of 10 Cats.

Gala Theatre, 7.30PM. £15

Wed. 21 Oct

University Lacrosse: Men’s 1sts vs York’s 1sts It’s the clash of the North’s best unis as the men’s lacrosse team take on our nearby Yorkbased neighbours in the first home game of the season.

Details TBC

Wed. 28 Oct

University Tennis: Men’s 1s vs Liverpool The university’s tennis talent wield their rackets against the lads from Liverpool in their second homebased match this term.

Details TBC

Mon. 19 Oct

“A More Beloved Existence”: From Shakespeare’s Venice to Byron’s Venice Mr Bernard Beatty of Liverpool University opens this new series of lectures discussing ‘Venice and the Cultural Imagination Since 1700’, which studies the representation of Italy’s beautiful city in the arts.

Room 201, Elvet Riverside 2, 6.15PM. Free

Tue. 20 Oct

Water on the Earth and Beyond: Seismic Oceanography Start of a new lecture series. In the first instalment, Durham Uni’s Doctor Richard Hobbs offers a new look at ocean processes. The public lecture is followed by a Q&A session.

The Old Library, Grey College, 8.15PM. Free

Sat. 24 Oct

Are We Losing our Liberty?

Ben Wilson, author of What Price Liberty?, reflects upon the construction of civil liberties throughout the centuries and considers how recent controversies have challenged long-held principles. Part of the Durham Book Festival.

Gala Studio, 4PM. £2

Mon. 26 Oct

Sun. 25 Oct

Basketball Eagles vs Essex Pirates Following their game against the Tigers, Newcastle’s homegrown talent shoot the hoops with Essex’s Pirates.

Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle, 4PM. £8

Talk

Thu. 29 - Sat. 31 Oct

The History Boys Alan Bennett’s highly-acclaimed play follows eight boys in ‘80s Sheffield as they attempt to gain places at Oxbridge - something most of us Durhamites are probably familiar with! See ‘Highlights this Fortnight’.

The Assembly Rooms, 7.30PM (+2.30PM Sat). £5 NUS, £4 DST

In Conversation with David Nicholls The new campus-wide campaign Durham Student Read has opted for Nicholls’ brilliant Starter for Ten as their first read. It was recently brought to the big screen with the adorable James McAvoy in the leading role. Author Nicholls appears in conversation as part of the Durham Book Festival ’09, discussing his coming-of-age tale, as well as new novel One Day. See ‘Highlights this Fortnight’.

Clayport Library, 6PM. £3

Tue. 27 Oct

Facing Climate Change Professor Ezio Todini discusses the possible environmental progress that can be made through the sustainable planning and management of the world’s water resources.

The Birley Room, Hatfield College, 5.15PM. Free

Other Fri. 23 Oct

Durham Book Festival Launch Party Authors Victoria Moore and Catherine Blyth help launch Durham’s annual festival, with the former even mixing up literarythemed cocktails for you to enjoy.

Festival Laureate Andrew Motion makes a special guest appearance.

See ‘Highlights this Fortnight’.

Gala Theatre, 5PM. £10

Tue. 27 Oct

Halloween Ghosts and Grisly Death Walk Durham’s original ghost walk offers an out-of-season Halloween special. See the sights of Durham by night and learning about the murky events that have taken place in some of your favourite haunts. Book in advance!

Meet outside the Tourist Information Centre, time allocated upon booking. £4

Sat. 24 Oct

Teikyo Festival Students from the Japanese University hold their annual festival. The full-day programme consists of Japanese Tea ceremonies, Martial Arts demonstrations, Kimono and Japanese brush writing, as well as including live music and Japanese food. All donations will be given to a local children’s charity.

Teikyo University, 10AM-4PM. Free

Tue. 27 Oct

Autumn Moonwatch Staff and students from the university Physics Department, along with members of the Durham Astronomical Society, have set up telescopes in the beautiful Botanic Gardens and will be on hand to explain all about the night sky.

Botanic Gardens, 6.30PM

Wed. 28 Oct Manga Art Workshops

Free workshops led by manga artist Nana Li. All materials are provided and new techniques and inspiration will be offered to all aspiring artists. There will be one class for beginners and another for more experienced illustrators.

Oriental Museum, 1PM. Free

Firday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

18

Lifestyle Features

Pitch your own feature ideas to us: features@palatinate.org.uk

The web project dedicated to the “Spread of Ideas”

Cosy in a coffee shop...

With Paul Loudon, the Men’s 1st Rugby Captain Madeleine Pitt

Intelligent, charismatic Ted; The smarter version of YouTube Ally Bacon

I am in love with Ted... Charismatic, intelligent, smart, funny, confident, inspiring Ted. Ted and I are a match made in heaven.

I even want to be like Ted. Ted is a musician, a brain surgeon, a bio-economist, a philanthropist, and so much more. Ted makes my pulse race and casts a spell over me every time we meet. Oh Ted, how I adore you.

Unfortunately, Ted is not a tall, dark and handsome man after all, but a non-profit organisation dedicated to the “Spread of Ideas”.

The website www.ted.com is a treasure trove of speeches by some of the most interesting people on earth, allowing them to communicate what they are most passionate about, untainted by corporate influence.

Each hortatory ‘TED’ talk starts with a bang and keeps banging ‘til it explodes in fireworks. It’s completely addictive, and even if you do spend all day watching videos, you know you’ve been expanding your mind and educating yourself in ways you could never expect.

TED (which stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’) was founded in 1984 by the architect Richard Saul Wurman and his partners. Their first conference included one of the first demonstrations of the Macintosh computer and the compact disc.

“Once you start watching TED talks, ordinary life falls away” In 2001, TED was acquired and is now run by Chris Anderson, the New Media entrepreneur who started Business 2.0, among other magazines and Web sites.

Giving a TED talk has become an opportunity for name-in-lights speakers to throw down, set forth “ideas worth spreading” and prove their intellectual heroism.

Speakers as acclaimed as Bill Clinton, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates and Isabel Allende have all given speeches at these conferences, but what is great about TED is that it brings you ideas and novel thought from people you’ve never heard of, but could - and quite often should - change the world with their findings.

I myself came across the website whilst researching Alain De Botton, a brilliant philosophical author of our modern times.

The first ever TED I watched was one of his own talks featured on the site. He examines our ideas of success and failure - and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always

earned? Is failure? What even is failure these days?

The video itself sent me reeling. The quote in de Botton’s message that made me really cheer was this; I learnt from his video that comparison to others is something that plagues human beings in general. But what we compare ourselves by is unfortunately boiled down to common tools that don’t include the myriad experiences of success.

It appears that once you start watching TED talks, ordinary life falls away. The politicians, news readers and the celebrities normally on our screens crumble away, and a new in-crowd emerges: the one that loves Linux, organic produce, behavioural economics, Flickr, transhistorical theories and An Inconvenient Truth.

I love their greed for hope, their confidence in ingenuity, their organised but goofy ways of talking and thinking.

TED supplies its speakers with strict guidelines. “Start strong” is the most obvious one, and there is virtually no throat clearing or contrived thanking. Instead, speakers blaze onto the stage like stand-up comics, hellbent on room domination.

Some consult notes and stay close by their audiovisual equipment. PowerPoint is used for emphasis, but it never directs the talks, while others pace, spread their arms wide and take up space.

No one apologises for himself. No one fails to make jokes. The appreciative room roars at humour, when they’re not literally oohing and aahing at such insight.

Some show off inventions, others show off musical talent, some show you how to be happy, others how to survive a nuclear explosion. The variety is always surprising.

All videos are categorised according to their effects: Rated jaw-dropping, persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny, informative.

And also by certain themes: How We Learn, Unconventional Explanations, What Makes Us Happy? and so on.

My personal favourites so far, though I have yet to watch them all, are: Nancy Etcoff on the surprising science of happiness,Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice, Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, Emily Oster who flips our thinking on AIDS in Africa, and Helen Fisher telling us why we love and cheat.

Online bloggers like to discuss which TED talks are the best too, and their idiosyncratic lists are often more interesting than the “Most Popular” category on the site. Nam-ho Park has a good list on www. strangesystems.com, as does Tara Hunt at www.horsepigcow.com. The TED group on Facebook is another great place to discuss these talks.

So sit back, load a video, and get psyched.

He’s already led the 1sts to a mighty 70-0 victory over Edinburgh, but where does this Cuth’s man’s allegiances lie when it comes to Cheryl Cole, Jane’s and Disney films?

The most embarrassing Durham moment to date is…a naked dash from Maiden Castle to the DSU. And it was in broad daylight.

The hottest sportswomen in Durham are…

The lacrosse girls.

Cheryl Cole or Gisele?…

Cheryl. Definitely.

The location of a top Durham date would be…

Costa or Café Nero.

Is being a first team rugby player a regular chat up line?…

No. Because the charm does the talking! But if they happen to ask…

Keeping fit during the holidays is done by…

Playing for my local club, the Edinburgh Accies.

A protein shake or a steak?…Ideally a steak every time but that’s unrealistic when we have to eat four to five meals a day.

The most inspiring rugby player is…

Brian O’Driscoll If it wasn’t rugby it would be…

Golf.

Women’s rugby is…

A great addition to university sport and I completely support it! £1000 to spend in Durham would be blown at…

Coral’s betting shop. On the red.

Would you put your money on a rower or a cricketer to win a fight?...

The amount of time they spend in the gym and their size means I would back the rower every time.

The Lion King or Aladdin?...

I’ve got a lot of time for both. It’s a very close call but The Lion King has to be the narrow winner.

The best club in Durham is…Loveshack on a Wednesday night.

Would a year’s worth of free Jane’s or free Sky Sport be more tempting?

Considering the guilt of last night’s post-Loveshack kebab, I would opt for Sky Sport!

19

PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Browse through previous interviews at palatinate.org.uk

Profile Lifestyle

Charley Boorman talks about life after Ewan The star of Long Way Round and current series By Any Means 2 reflects on broken bones, missing his family while on the road and his upcoming trips over the next decade James Dunn

A

few days ago, I sat at my desk in the middle of the afternoon, nervously awaiting the scheduled phone interview with Charley Boorman, BFF of Ewan McGregor and star of Long Way Round, Long Way Down, Race to Dakar and By Any Means. After twenty minutes of waiting for him to call me, I finally heard from a very embarrassed Charley. The problem, it transpired, was a miscommunication in which he had failed to fully take in his PA’s instructions, and thus whilst I sat awaiting his call in Durham, he had sat in London expecting to hear from an eager student journalist in the north. Tired of waiting, the motorbike enthusiast and presenter had begun editing his new show By Any Means 2. Sadly the interview was over before it had begun, so we had to agree to reschedule, with Charley constantly apologising profusely for the mix-up in the background.

At 4pm I rang him back and was startled to get an earful of a very shouty Boorman as he struggled to be heard over a loud siren in the background. The comedy of errors continued as he fought to subdue his burglar alarm, recently armed by his cleaner. Finally, almost every conceivable distraction firmly out of the way, we were able to settle down

and begin to chat about his early work with Ewan McGregor.

Long Way Round described a motorbike trip undertaken by the pair, which saw them travel from London to New York overland, only once using a plane in which to get them over the Bering Straight.

“Sneaking into Tibet with a film crew would be too obvious, and I wouldn’t do too well in a prison..”

I asked him about the early setback of getting rejected by KTM (major bike manufacturer) for the three bikes they needed for their trip Charley says “At the time it was a massive disappointment but looking back now I really don’t think it was.

Ewan was always keen on the BMW bikes and the KTM’s had major flaws for a trip like ours. BMW did well out of us too, with a 53% increase in the sales of the bikes we used (BMW R1150GS Adventure) after it went on air”. On the subject of any residual bitterness between the team and KTM, he revealed that in typical Boorman fashion, he had sent them an email from Magadan - after completing the hardest part of the journey which KTM skittishly pulled out of - saying, “Ewan and I are having a great time and loving the BMW bikes”. Unsurprisingly, he is still waiting for a reply.

During our conversation it became evident that one of the most challenging aspects of Boorman’s work is the long absences from his nearest and dearest. He clearly struggles with leaving his family, wife Olly and his kids Doone and Kinvara. This is revealed by the tales of warm welcomes received upon returning home from all his trips - but as his children grow up, it seems they are finding it harder too. Boorman muses that “There is always a dark cloud to the silver lining of getting to travel”.

I was shaken out of our introspective moment by a sudden barrage of “Shit!” and “Bugger!”. After making polite enquiries as to his wellbeing, it was revealed that he had tried and failed to make an experimental latte one-handed with his new coffee maker, resulting in a kitchen surface flooded with hot milk and a profuselyswearing Charley.

Crisis averted, the conversation then turned to the terrains Charley has ridden across - some of the roughest in the world.

Despite the inherent discomfort such a trip involves, he has never seriously wanted to pack it all in and go home. “It’s very rare to feel like leaving, it only happens when you feel sorry for yourself and even then I’ve only wanted to quit places, not the actual trip. Like the Road of Bones in Siberia, but you can’t complain because we made the route - and we were never looking for the easy route”.

In January 2006 Charley competed in the Dakar Rally, an annual endurance race from Lisbon to Senegal featuring mostly amateur riders. Sadly he only completed five days of the route before being forced to pull out with broken bones in both hands after toppling over his bike; the event is known for being much tougher than the word ‘rally’ would normally suggest. Unperturbed by his first attempt, Boorman is determined to compete again.

“Definitely, 100%. I’ve always got plans to try again, and now it’s in South America, so the draw is massive”.

“Colin [Ewan’s brother] was very disappointed I wasn’t arrested - he was eyeing up my place on the trip!”

The conversation turns to the beginning of Long Way Down, another motorbike trip which began at John O’Groats at the northern tip of the UK and finished in Cape Town, South Africa. Infamously, Charley was ‘arrested’ by airport security staff at Gatwick for using the word bomb after a row with a member of staff. “Ah the bomb situation! In the context of the argument, she was being so unreasonable, complaining about my bag I’d left ‘unattended’ against a wall. There were only two other people in a lounge big enough for thirty, and they also agreed how rude she was”. The result of the row was that he missed his intended flight but it could have been far worse. He now sees and admits his own failings; “I didn’t help the situation at all by getting angry. Colin [Ewan’s brother] was very disappointed that I wasn’t arrested - he was eyeing up my place on the trip!”

Although his trips are epic in both magnitude and mileage, they tend to be tiny in their timescales; he takes a few months to do trips that have taken some people years. As a result, the schedule is often jam-packed and punishing. During the months spent travelling, he gets little time to himself - only one afternoon in the entire three months of the latest trip. “Of course you have to make the most of your time, but I wish we could have more. But even if we did have more time I would still never have enough to see what I want. I met two Irish guys at the airport in Kathmandu who were arguing what to do with their last 6 months. They saw me laughing at them and they asked why; it was because we were having the same issue with only a month left!”

Since leaving Ewan McGregor to his acting career, Charley has gone solo. However, he received worrying reviews prior to By Any Means being televised. The split happened because Ewan’s film schedule began demanding more and more of his time. “I had already done the Dakar Rally by myself and Russ [director/producer] pushed me towards the change. It changed the pace of everything, and the dynamic change was really important. Ewan is still really up for the next trip, but it’s a matter of finding the time”.

Filming By Any Means involved a planned trip from the UK to Australia using as many forms of transport as possible, with the exception of planes. Featured modes included a London bus, a rickshaw, and of course a few motorbikes. By the end of the series, 112 forms of transport had been tried with varying degrees of success.

However the route had to be changed to avoid Afghanistan and Tibet, as China closed the borders. “Missing Afghanistan was a major bugger as I wanted to meet the troops, but it would be too time consuming for the soldiers to look after me. Sneaking into Tibet with a film crew would be too obvious, and I wouldn’t do too well in prison - going in a virgin but coming out something else!”

Boorman’s had a fair few setbacks and breakdowns along the way, but as he puts it, “breaking down is the journey”. His best memories of the trips are the difficult journeys, from a broken-down boat in Borneo to “the crazy Indian roads”. His new adventure, aptly named By Any Means 2, in which Charley travels to Japan from Australia, is unsurprisingly done in the same vein as before - he island hops his way to Japan via the Pacific Rim. He con-

fessed that he used far more motorbikes for this ‘By Any Means’ journey, since it is his favourite form of transport wanted to be able to share his love with the viewing public.

Charley also deliberately chose the region travelled in; he explained his interest in the Pacific Rim since childhood. “The Pacific Rim always interested me, Papa New Guinea especially. Cannibalism really drew me in. It’s such a new country - it wasn’t until 4th August 1938 that Richard Archbold discovered 500,000 people living in the forests.

“Ewan is still really up for the next trip, but it’s a matter of finding the time” “Tokyo was such a contrast, with a lot of aggression, especially at night, due to their low alcohol tolerance. We’ve been drinking for ages!”

After such a long and hard trip you would expect Charley to want a year out, but he aims to do a trip every year for at least ten years. His next dream trip (which he couldn’t confirm due to producing rights) would be travelling from Britain to Tunisia, then up to Sicily by boat, and then back home again.

He wants to take his family and make it a gastronomic tour of the countries’ cuisines. Travelling with his family will of course relieve his fears of leaving his family for such long periods. However, with the arguments he tends to have with some of his fellow travellers, I hope that his family won’t drive him up the wall too much; after all, no one likes to watch an arguing family.

We ended the call with Charley trying to get me thinking about my dream trip, encouraging myself and anyone else to think big when it comes to travelling, and of course to make the most out of the time you have in a country.

Chatting to Charley left me with the impression of a warm and friendly man, which must be why his shows are so successful; I for one hope that he doesn’t stop travelling the long way round, or by any means.

His TV show began on 27th September and the book follows shortly.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

20

Pitch your own fashion ideas to us: fashion@palatinate.org.uk

The Intern Diaries Exploring the real world of a fashion intern Charlie Byrne

F

ollowing the recent launch of Running in Heels, E4’s latest reality TV import from the US, a new debate has sprung up regarding the ethics of fashion interning. The hit show has allowed outsiders into the office of Marie Claire New York to witness their ruthless internship program, which shows how girls must fight, tooth and French-polished nail, to nab a badly paid job in one of the most unpleasant commercial industries around.

But is this really the environment in which our glossies are produced, or has it been exaggerated to rake in viewers? Are the stereotypical cinematic representations of fashion interning such as The Devil Wears Prada, anywhere near a reflection of the truth?

“you must mentally sign a disclaimer for your own sanity and safety when you walk through the door.”

Well ladies, I am afraid they are. The more publications I work for, the more I realise that to be a fashion intern you must mentally sign a disclaimer for your own safety and sanity when you walk through the door. Despite the common misconception that the sum total of the role consists of making peppermint tea, tasks actually include carrying full suitcases up five flights of stairs in 30° heat, climbing rickety ladders to file magazines on 10ft high shelves, and testing the stability of various contraptions that models are due to pose on. For example, I recently ended up with severe sunburn from balancing on a table top rested precariously on two iron bars, on a boiling London rooftop... so it stands to reason that I cannot stress enough how physically and mentally demanding the role of the intern can be.

In this case, why do I still offer myself up on the altar of these magazines? I am going to lay my cards on the table. Working in fashion has been my life-long dream (minus a slight detour at age 8 when geology looked appealing - however this was due to the prospect of unearthing sparkly things, hence the return to the fashion career at age 9). And this is precisely where the magazines find their prey. They remain safe in the knowledge that for every girl who won’t put up with the working conditions, there are ten who have dreamed of doing so for decades.

The more recent debate however, lies not just in the unmonitored intensity of the role, but in the fact that only those who can afford to travel to, or live in London, are able to undertake these placements.

Industry experience is vital when trying to establish a career in magazine publishing, and although a handful of publishers are prepared to offer about £10 per day towards your cost of travel, the vast majority of placements are entirely unpaid. This instantly rules out many talented interns who simply cannot afford the extra living costs. The current financial climate has only served to highlight the blatant exploitation and prejudice of this system, which can only be described as archaic. Calls have been made for government involvement to introduce fairer legislation, although no amendments have yet been made to the current law.

Magazine publishing falls short of employment standards in other ways too, as interns are often subject to the renowned cut-throat and bitchy attitude so often portrayed in comedy TV series like Ugly Betty.

However in real life, working in a hostile environment is rather less entertaining, and it baffles me that this rude, hierarchical ethos is still thriving. It seems that as soon as the word ‘Editor’ is slapped onto someone’s pay cheque, they sign their soul over to Satan and totally forget the phrase ‘common courtesy’, which used to exist as a basic necessity of the workplace. I have tried to put myself in the place of these women: they are high-powered executives with far loftier heights to consider

than my personal development as the potential future of their industry, and yet somehow, I know that when I get to those heights, I will still understand the concept of learning one new name a month, or offering a ten minute opportunity to discuss publishing as a career. The last time I dared ask for such a thing, I was told that the Editor could only afford me 30 seconds that fortnight, and that I must book them in with her PA. Frankly, her coldhearted response told me all I needed to know, and I never bothered to trouble her PA - she was clearly troubled enough.

So is it all worth it? Last week I trundled home from my two hour commute at the end of my most recent placement, dragging my goodie-bag (the Holy Grail of interning) behind my heels. Aside from supposedly gaining wisdom and experience, this bag represents the only compensation for all the blood, sweat and tears of interning, and is what keeps most girls going through the hard times. I was lucky to be given a couple of fairly covetable make-up products, but on the whole it contained the usual sea of industrial looking moisturisers, orange nail polish and one last product that really said it all: Shu Uemura white eye liner. The fact is with fashion interning, that despite the glamour of it, on the surface it is fairly useless to you.

ANYA QUINN

Lifestyle Fashion

“I was told that the Editor could only afford me thirty seconds that fortnight” The value comes in knowing that if you wrack up enough experience, if you put in the hours and continue to reap these relatively useless rewards, you could end up with Shu Uemura begging you to wear their not-yet-released cobalt eyeliner and attend their press party. That is what makes it worthwhile, what makes it alluring, and ultimately what makes me, and thousands of other girls… slaves to fashion. The line has to be drawn somewhere though; it is clear that the industry needs to accomplish real advances in employment policy, and thanks to bare-it-all shows like Running in Heels, hopefully magazines will no longer be able to hide under this image of frocks and frippery.

Select fashion blogs T

he internet has never been more vital to the fashion industry; instantaneous streaming of fashion shows all over the world, some of the most original and inspiring blogs, and feverishly fast updates on online publications mean that the world of fashion is never more than a click away.

Dipal Acharya offers four recommendations:

Tavi Gevinson, the 13 year-old behind the blog, has taken the fashion world by storm.

Originally believed to be a fake set up by industry professionals, Tavi’s blog is slick, current and thoroughly enjoyable.

With her eccentric perspective on everything from editorials to Victorian photography, this blog is an absolute must read.

Read the blog at http://tavi-thenewgirlintown.blogspot.com

The darling of the Parisian fashion scene, and celebrated photographer, Garance Doré conveys her effortlessly chic style through her clean and simple blog.

Punctuated by her beautiful illustrations, the blog captures the ephemeral quality of everyday life, providing snapshots that are equally original and inspiring.

Read the blog at http://www.garancedore.fr/en/

‘The Sartorialist’ has long been the style Bible for industry insiders.

Scott Shuman’s background in fashion was harnessed into this highly influential blog, pioneering the use of fashion photography in the online form.

The realism in his ‘street portraits’ not only emphasises the power of detailing, but also how fashion and style can be incorporated into everyday life.

Read the blog at http://thesartorialist. blogspot.com

Lauren Luke’s online make-up tutorials caused such a sensation that the people at YouTube have registered over 56 million views and 280,000 subscribers since her first upload.

Self-taught, Luke unravels and explains the techniques for creating high fashion and celebrity looks, using easily accessible tools and affordable cosmetics.

Watch Lauren’s video tutorials at http://www.youtube.com/user/panacea81

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Send your recipes in to us: food@palatinate.org.uk

Food and Drink Lifestyle transform the uptight and sexually frustrated inhabitants of a small French town.

Dark chocolate contains a chemical called Phenylethylamine, which is naturally stimulated by the brain when you fall in love. Newtree Sexy Dark Chocolate with Ginger (£1.99 for 80g from Waitrose) claims to have aphrodisiacal qualities. The Aztecs themselves used chocolate as a form of Viagra.

“There is a common misconception that chocolate is bad for you.

This is not true”

Craving Chocolate It is officially National Chocolate Week.

Palatinate delves into the history of decadence Lydia Ashby

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hat’s long, brown and (occasionally) sticky? You guessed it: chocolate.

Who can blame Augustus Gloop, the glutinous character from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for falling into the molten chocolate river at Willy Wonka’s factory? I am sure that most people in the same situation could not resist a little taste. In this instance, death by chocolate seems terribly appealing.

The 12th - 18th October is National Chocolate Week, and is testament to Britain’s status as a nation of chocoholics. The chocolate industry is worth £3.5

billion - more than any other European country. The impending doom predicted by economists due to the recession seems to have bypassed the chocolate industry; the consumer’s sweet tooth has helped Thorntons to a quarterly rise in sales.

Chocolate has a long and illustrious history: the Olmecs were the first civilisation known to use the wild cocoa beans that grew in South America three to four thousand years ago. More famously, the Aztecs were known to enjoy ‘xoco latl’ (bitter water), a stimulating chocolatey drink. Chocolate was first introduced to Europe after the Spanish Emperor, Cortes, was given ‘xoco latl’ by the Aztec Emperor, Montezuma, who believed Cortes to be a

long-awaited God. Chocolate then spread throughout Europe, largely because of its perceived medicinal properties.

The transformation of chocolate from cocoa bean to the more familiar (and more palatable) bar is a lengthy process.

Cocoa pods are split open and left to dry and ferment in the sun. The seeds are then scooped out, roasted, crushed and ground to produce cocoa mass. Sugar is added to help counter-act the bitterness of the cocoa and cocoa butter is added to enable the melt-in-the-mouth feeling so loved by chocoholics.

There is a common misconception that chocolate is bad for you. This is not the case; it is only the added sugar which is unhealthy. Cocoa beans are one of the richest sources of Flavanol antioxidants, thought to prevent cancer, heart disease, strokes and premature aging. Intriguingly, the chocolatiers Prestat have created Choxi, a chocolate that naturally contains more Flavanol than any other food. Eating just two squares is equivalent to eating 1lb of brussel sprouts or 5lbs of apples.

Lasse Hallström’s film Chocolat focuses on the power of chocolate to

With such an overwhelming number of bars and products it can be diffcult to find a good quality chocolate which contains the health benefits and antioxidants associated with cocoa. Ideally, good chocolate should contain a minimum of 30% cocoa solids for milk and 60% cocoa solids for dark. Dark chocolate tends to contain more antioxidants than milk chocolate. However, black chocolate is not necessarily good, as the beans may have been over-roasted. Luckily, the UK’s new fixation with health and antioxidants means reputable chocolate bars are more easily attainable, such as Divine or Green & Blacks. There are also online shops such as Montezumas, Oohlala Chocolaterie and Prestat. However, be prepared because good quality chocolate is expensive.

Chocolate has been used in savoury dishes in Mexico and South America for generations, such as in the Mexican sauce ‘mole’, used to create a ceremonial turkey dish. In Europe too, chocolate is being increasingly used in savoury cooking.

Chocolate in any meat dish is almost unidentifiable, providing silkiness rather than sweetness. 100% cocoa is most appropriate (try Venezuelan Black, 100% Pure Cacoa, found in Selfridges and Waitrose). Grate a little into chilli con carne, gravy, or even venison stew for added richness.

With Chocolate Week in full swing and freshers’ flu rampant, it’s a great time to experiment with the aphrodisiacal and medicinal qualities of chocolate. Be adventurous; rather than just devouring it, have a go at adding it to your savoury dishes. At the very worst, it might save you from ever having to cook for your housemates again.

Recipe: Warming Hot Chocolate Emily Betournay

If forced to write a list of top ten indulgent treats, I’m sure that many people would feel obliged to include arguably the most indulgent drink around: hot chocolate. Supposedly invented by the ancient Mayans over two thousand years ago and brought over to the Western world by the Spanish, this comforting drink has been popular ever since.

Anyone who has stepped outside over the past week will have realised the obvious: summer has well and truly finished. As the days get greyer and colder, what better way to embrace the changing seasons (and recover from freshers’ week) than to have a quiet night in with a warm mug of homemade hot chocolate? Although a beverage usually enjoyed by the student population with a sachet and some boiling water, this hot chocolate is quick and easy, creating a simple yet luxurious treat guaranteed to keep you warm on a chilly Durham evening.

600ml whole or semi-skimmed milk ½tsp mixed spice (allspice) ½tsp cinnamon 150g good quality dark chocolate A few drops of vanilla extract 100ml double cream, lightly whipped

Review: The Undercroft Restaurant Palatinate goes to the very heart of Durham to sample cathedral cuisine Fiona Hicks

Gastronomically speaking, cafés are what define our fair city. Despite its best attempts, Durham’s menu of restaurants barely extends beyond a smattering of Italians, with the odd Indian thrown in for good measure. Coffee shops, on the other hand, are an entirely different story. There are quaint ones, bustling ones, brilliant and basic establishments. If cafés were tailors, Durham would be Saville Row. It seems fitting, therefore, that this culinary obsession should extend to the very jewel of the city – the cathedral. Yes, apparently even the imperial stone walls of a world heritage site would not be complete without a little kitchen rustling up coffee and walnut cake. Palatinate went to investigate.

The Undercroft Restaurant is a surprisingly large eatery nestled in what used

to be the monks’ wine cellar (considering the dimensions of the place, they clearly enjoyed a tipple or two). It is a curious combination of arching stone ceilings, ancient steel-rimmed windows and, erm, Ikea furniture. It is difficult to define the vibe of the place. Being built into a 1,000 year-old place of worship obviously gives it an edge, but it is wholly unpretentious. It is self-service, with slightly scuffed plastic trays and milk provided in little UHT pots.

The Restaurant menu is served between 12-2pm daily, and definitely offers food more on the comfort than the creative side.

There are your standard jacket potatoes and sandwiches (with a limited yet safe variety of fillings – think tuna mayonnaise and ham salad), soups, and a small selection of hot meals. For under £6 you can treat yourself to a warming Steak and Durham Ale Casserole with Dumplings, or Vegetable Lasagne. The meals are mar-

keted as homemade and, although they are pre-cooked in bulk as opposed to made to order, they certainly have the handmade touch.

My dining partner and I focused on the cake selection which is available all day.

This is where The Undercroft Restaurant (‘Restaurant’ perhaps being a little grandiose), really excels. There is an impressive range of sweet things, all exhibited temptingly behind a glass service counter.

From egg custard tarts to sticky iced ginger cake and individual trifles, all of the cakes look as if they were baked in a farmhouse kitchen. And if the fruit scones sampled by my friend and I are anything to go by, they taste like it too. Perfectly moist, crammed with succulent raisins and sprinkled with just the right amount of sugar, the scones really were a testament to uncomplicated baking. Admittedly, they were let down slightly by the butter and jam being served

in individual plastic servings oft-favoured by cheap hotels, but they were so good that they were enjoyable nonetheless.

Being slightly out-of-the-way, you’d be unlikely to plan an exclusive visit to The Undercroft Restaurant. There are many more equally good, and better, cafés positioned conveniently in town. However, if you fancy getting out of student-land for a little while, the cathedral’s café is perhaps the perfect place. With a clientele consisting of Granny-on-a-day-out, snap-happy tourists and the occasional academic with a book in the corner, it really does feel a million miles away from the student-filled Durham of Brown Sugar and Klute. Ten years ago, the Sunday Times asserted that The Undercroft Restaurant was “everything you could want from a cathedral café”. Having previously had no opinion on the matter, I am now peculiarly inclined to agree.

1) Begin by pouring the milk into a small saucepan and place over a low heat. Sprinkle in both the mixed spice (allspice) and the cinnamon, along with a few drops of vanilla extract.

2) Break the chocolate into small pieces and add to the milk.

3) Stirring continuously to avoid burning, heat the mixture until all the chocolate has melted and the milk is just beginning to boil.

4) Pour the hot chocolate into two mugs and top with a dollop of whipped cream to serve.

5) Enjoy.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Arts Stage

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Arts

The best in Durham-orientated arts and culture Including Visual, Books, Film and TV, Music and Stage

The Tank makes its final stand

The Durham Revue tickles Palatinate’s pickle in yet another comedy bonanza OSCAR BLUSTIN

Wittank Wittank The Assembly Rooms

Sketch comedy reigns supreme

««««« Sophie Zeldin-O’Neill

Ah yes, the mighty tank of wit. A comedic tour de force to reckon with and one of Durham University’s greatest treasures. I had heard of these guys before I arrived, and I can recall with perfect clarity the physical pain through which they put my abdominal muscles when I first saw their comedic acrobatics in The Assembly Rooms.

Their offering at The Fringe this year was nothing short of spectacular. After dabbling, highly successfully, in metacomedy and film last year (youtube ‘Soap’, I implore you), the group have honed their talents to create one of the most superbly crafted pieces of WITTANK

The members of the Durham Revue bask in the glory of their recent accolades at the Edinburgh Fringe

Naz Osmanoglu bathes in the limelight

comedy theatre I have seen. Some of the most memorable sketches include the hilarious ‘Mr Jubjub’, in which Naz plays a monster under a little boy’s bed who suffers from low self-esteem, the supermarket sketch in which the team enter a magical world beneath the checkouts, and ‘the claw sketch’, in which Guy and Naz bond and fall in love after identifying their mutual affliction of a deformed hand. I mean it really is the stuff that houseparty banter is made from.

Wittank are loud, bold, short on shame but long on beards, and completely irresistible. These guys have gone from strength to strength since they started out four years ago, and their following of adoring fans has risen with every show. Minus this week’s returners’ show, this will be their last outing in Durham for the foreseeable future. And I think I speak for everyone who has ever been party to Naz’s impression of a Corona bottle or Guy’s outbreaks of rage when I say that they will be sorely missed. The four complement each other beautifully, and whilst it is impossible to say what the temperamental world of performance art has in store for Kieran, Guy, Naz and Mark, one thing is for certain – we haven’t seen the last of ‘the tank’.

Knees Up Mother Brown and Other Obituaries Durham Revue The Assembly Rooms ««««« Lorna Cruickshanks

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inning the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s 2009 Underbelly Sketch-Off, and the National Student Best University Sketch Group, Durham Review’s ‘Knees Up Mother Brown and Other Obituaries’ certainly had something to live up to. Immediately upon entering the Assembly Rooms, you could see that it was not going to fail to impress.

The stairway leading up to the theatre entrance set the scene, welcoming the audience to Mother Brown’s funeral with a morbid display of her belongings and a witty ‘Order of Service’. Upon arrival the ‘funeral attendees’ were led to their seats using clever audience participation. Several had to sing to Mother Brown’s portrait on the wall, lick their seats, or were told their shoes were not appropriate and they had to take them off and walk down to their seats waving them in the air whilst everyone clapped. Such engagement of the audience entertained so that the wait for the start of the show seemed seconds long, ensured the room was excited and ready for more, and set the black comic tone.

The central tale of the show followed the Tooting Times Department of Obitu-

aries, for which too few people were in fact dying, leading to a series of pre-emptive obituaries and killings led by the department head Mr. Ted. Tom Lyons seemed to thrive in this sinister role, with brilliant facial expressions particularly when complimented by cartoon ‘baddy’ music. The use of a simple plot and flourishing characters engaged the audience without losing comic value in this clever and original running story. Liz Smith as the alcoholic Peggy Button, Matt Mulligan as the youthful, keen Clerk Brogue, and Hugo Soul as the only character with a conscience, Larry Finger, also commanded many laughs. The Department of Obituaries was revisited in between numerous hilarious skits and sketches.

“The sketches were shrewdly observed, providing an all too realistic portrayal of an increasingly silly world.”

The energetic and ingenious sketches allowed the six members of Durham Revue to shine. Many of the sketches were shrewdly observed, providing an all too realistic portrayal of an increasingly silly world; the Macs vs. PCs skit was a favourite all too familiar, along with the over-

dramatic presenters in the Crimewatch UK sketch, and the e-option selection call centre confessional.

Other inventive sketches saw a variety of scenarios and characters being explored.

An advertisement for the release of the latest The Secret Garden made room for an incredible Maggie Smith impersonation from Stevie Martin. The University Challenge sketch commanded hilarity through its amusing surnames and characters. Tom Lyons, shining in yet another sinister role, portrayed an irate and controlling Jeremy Paxman with a quickly developed vendetta against an eager Durham student, effectively played by Adam Usden. The comic timing, facial expressions, witty speech, and the structure in this sketch made it one of the most successful.

Perhaps the less successful sketches were those without distinct direction.

Although all the sketches were clever concepts, perhaps one or two seemed to rely on this alone and thus faded out rather than delivering a final punch, such as in the bomb defusing sketch. This sketch just did not quite live up to the others or the bar-raising running story.

Whilst there also was an apparent momentary lighting lapse, this was reacted to by Matt Mulligan and Tom Lyons with ease and wit, and caused no real disruption to the show. Overall the lighting was used simply but effectively and complemented the talented cast.

The set, designed as the Obituaries Department housed in a disused London Underground station, gave a strong space

for the cast to work with. When the show was following the Obituaries Department tale, it added a sense of darkness, but it became quite neutral when other sketches were being performed.

“The use of music must also be commended.

Between sketches snippets of well chosen music set the tone for the next sketch as well as distracting the audience between sketches.”

The use of music must also be commended. Between sketches snippets of well chosen music set the tone for the next sketch as well as distracting the audience from time between the activity. Much of the music fitted with the through line of the Obituary writers and also Mother Brown, both seemingly set in 1920s/30s London.

Durham Revue’s latest offering is undoubtedly a success, with confident and accomplished performances and a great mixing of the troupe, as well as a clever construction of an original show.

23

PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Want to get involved? E-mail editor@palatinate.org.uk

Visual Arts Arts

Is Popeye more than a spinach eating sailorman?

Jeff Koons’ exhibition in the Serpentine Gallery reveals fishy inconsistencies in his ideas about the purpose of art

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hen thinking about a large inflatable lobster, is the first thing that comes into your head ‘Art’? Or do you just dismiss it as a child’s toy? What if a giant inflatable lobster is exhibited in a gallery - should it then automatically be considered art? Generally it is accepted that a piece must be art if a gallery has deemed the work worthy to be put on show. People go to see this ‘art’ and read into it, making interpretations. This seems to be exactly what Jeff Koons is trying to question with his work.

“if a giant inflatable lobster is exhibited in a gallery, should it be considered art?”

The Popeye Series, Koons’ first major solo show in the Serpentine Gallery, acts as an introduction to the artist and holds many of his key themes; his interests in consumerism, taste, banality, childhood and sexuality which have been prevalent in his creative output since he burst into the art world in the 60s. An American, Koons is famous for his connection to the Pop Art movement, in which the concept of high art was rejected in favour of low art or ‘art for the masses’. In his early years, Koons filled a room with inflatable toys in the

shape of the Incredible Hulk in an attempt to challenge the idea that art is something hand-made by the artist.

This concept is continued at the Serpentine by using archetypal, everyday objects that anyone would be able to relate to. The stammering sailor, on whom this series is based, is admired by Koons for his catchphrase, “I am what I am”, and his self-acceptance is a crucial message to send out to the visitor. It is not the first time that Popeye has made an appearance in Pop Art. Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Popeye’ (1968) also features the cartoon; however Koons intended the viewer to look back to Popeye’s creation eighty years ago in the Great Depression of 1929 because he recognised that Popeye’s message of perseverance is relevant to our current political situation.

When interviewed about his work at the opening of this exhibition, Koons stated that his art has “always been political even though people don’t look at it that way”. He feels that in this exhibition he has been involved in a “very political activity: trying to make something that really empowers people”.

Always contradicting himself however, he has also said that the visitor’s experience of the work is the essential element of the art rather than the objects themselves, and even rejected the notion that there is any hidden meaning in his artwork. Instead, he allows the onlooker to form his or her own view, without the pressure to ‘see’ the ‘meaning’, such as his own political views.

Indeed, just what can one make of the large and brightly coloured sculptures, whose bizarre compositions are both fascinating and disorientating? The inflatable

JEFF KOONS/LAURENT GILOT

Sherna Bhadresa & Rosanna Hutton

“The illusion of an inflatable dolphin, hung with thirteen saucepans and frying pans, was a disturbing and strange conjunction”

ALEX GRANATO

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n many a cold Durham night I find myself thinking back to my summer in Tuscany, the nights spent enjoying midnight feasts on the roof, feeling the heat of the day cool to a night time summer breeze. For six weeks I was part of the curatorial team at the Art Museum of Chianciano Terme, a small town half an hour’s drive from Siena, on the brink of untouched Tuscan countryside. The town has been popular since the time of the Etruscans for its hot springs and stunning pastoral landscapes. The museum is palatial, and upon arrival I was shocked at the size of the collection; spread out over four floors, it includes works by Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Dalí.

Not only were the other interns and I told to organise the impressive permanent collection at the museum, but also to prepare ourselves for the oncoming Biennale in September, an event that would welcome over a hundred and fifty international artists. To say that we were daunted by the task is something of an understatement.

Hanging paintings, phoning artists and organising the Biennale catalogue from the word ‘go’, it was certainly the best way to learn, even if it involved sleep deprivation.

The Royal Academy goes modern Rosanna Boscawen

An internship in an Italian gallery One thing we hadn’t prepared ourselves for was the wine-loving Italian builders we worked alongside, as they finalised the interior of the museum. I don’t think they reacted too well to their new English colleagues, and so took the time to enlighten us with their own, rather more crude, version of the Italian language. However, after several glasses of the famous red wine of Montepulciano and some slices of fresh Pecorino, we were one big Italian family.

After six long weeks of grafting we had finally put together an exhibition space worthy of eager visitors, many of them curious locals or tourists. Of course, we were happy to give them tours, testing our new-found language skills ; it was also an opportune moment to expound our artistic theories which had been growing as the weeks passed. I think they were impressed - the copious amount of cake they made for us the day after was very welcome, anyway.

My time in Chianciano was a summer well spent and one not easy to forget.

Looking at an exhibition now, I’ll see beyond the paintings on the four walls to all that goes on behind the fantastic and renowned works that I used to see on wandering into a gallery on a lazy afternoon. They are precisely hung in a long pondered-over order, as if they have been there together all their lives.

Still, his ideas to not attributing meaning to his own work seem to obscure its value. He wants to question what art is through a medium that looks to all intents and purposes like art. Then he says it has no meaning. But perhaps art - especially contemporary art - is in fact something to read into after all, something from which to form one’s own meanings, opinions, representations and inspirations. Perhaps the philosophy of art, in the end, is for the individual to decide.

Koon’s lobster is arresting when visitors chance upon it in the Serpentine Gallery

A Tuscan summer Alex Granato

swimming pool toys cast in aluminium were juxtaposed with household objects.

They were so convincingly real that you could be excused for showing surprise that their air filled bodies could support the heavy weights suspended from them. The illusion of an inflatable dolphin hung with thirteen sauce pans and frying pans was disturbing because of the individual objects’ familiarity but strange conjunction.

The artist believes that it is this tension that creates the moment of seduction which allows the visitor to engage with the world on a deeper and more intense level.

I

The wild Tuscan countryside proves an apposite setting for a chaotic gallery in the making

f, like me, you associate London’s Royal Academy with the masters of British art and their works, you may be in for a surprise.

The current exhibition of Anish Kapoor’s work has taken over the whole of Burlington House, and includes many a weird and wonderful surprise which you would be forgiven for expecting to see in the Tate Modern. Still, it is perhaps fitting in these times of artistic installations that one of our foremost galleries should be the lead carriage.

The largest feature of his show is entitled Svayambh., from the Sanskrit which means ‘self-generated’. A huge block of red wax circulates on train tracks through five of the building’s rooms, leaving much more behind it than just a crowd of visitors who feel both inspired and bemused. The piece is forced to shed wax as it scrapes through the doorways, showing vividly how art can be exhausted - yet only to a point. Ingeniously, once so much is peeled off that it will fit comfortably through the doorways it from then on remains intact, allowing visitors to ruminate on the many other interpretations it holds within. Thus, not only is it self-generating, but it is also self-protecting.

The exhibition holds many more of Mumbai-born Kapoor’s typically colourful works besides this, and runs until 11 December.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

24

Arts Film and Television

Know your film and television? Enjoy your writing? Write for us. E-mail film@palatinate.org.uk

The beautiful and the damned CHANNEL 4

The new primetime telly fodder to sink your teeth into...

Alex Walsh

A

ll we poor maligned students forced to live a cursed life without Sky will have heard some good news this week: True Blood is finally hitting terrestrial!

True Blood takes place in a world where vampires - spurred on by the invention of fake blood by Japanese scientists - have come out of hiding to live alongside humanity and subsist upon the eponymous ‘Tru-Blood’ (which comes in beer-like bottles in different blood types and is warmed before drinking - just for added visceral detail).

However, as can be imagined, their previous hematophagy predilections have meant that they haven’t been given the friendliest of welcomes, especially in the Bible-thumping hillbilly counties of the southern US where the main body of the series takes place. Pairing this with a cult of people sexually obsessed with vampires and the fact that vampire blood can be taken as a hallucinogenic, aphrodisiac drug known on the street as V, a very rich scene arises.

Into this mix is thrown Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin, who portrayed Rogue in X-Men), a foxy mind-

less-than-tolerant inhabitants of the area in which the show is set) and other social issues, and has no fear of convention, judging by the amount of sex, gore, drugs and nudity pursued throughout. For all the interested parties out there, let me reassure you that yes, there is a lot of nudity, and that the very pleasant Sookie will be among those partaking in it - although it does

“dark, brutal and extremely sexy at times, the writers take a welltrodden premise and run with it” Love bites for Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin

reading waitress at a bar in rural Louisiana who finds herself inexplicably besotted with the new vampire in town, the broody and mysterious Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer).

Arrayed around this central pair are a host of other drama-laden characters, many of which are vaguely recognisable from minor roles in other shows and films, but none of them especially famous; Sookie’s pretty-but-dumb brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten); Sam, her boss (played by Sam Trammell) with an unknown past and an unspoken love for her; her best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley), who has an alcoholic mother, a scathing wit and a burning tem-

per; her picturesquely fond and doting grandmother, Adele (Lois Smith); many obligatory bigoted rednecks, and a whole host of other intriguing minor characters.

I know what some people may think of the story at first glance: another copy-andpaste vampire romp crashing in on the post-Twilight fever for all things vampiric, as soulless as the vampires it depicts and with the writing skill of a werewolf, left in the room with a typewriter covered in beef and a season boxset of Buffy.

But even after just one episode (and certainly after many, as anybody lucky enough to have parents foolishly leaving their Sky+ unattended can attest to) it can easily be

seen that this is anything but the case: dark, brutal and extremely sexy at times, the writers take a well-trodden premise and run with it, making it a very refreshing break from the usual oh-no-vampires-actuallyexist-and-we-have-to-fight-them-but-don’ttell-anyone storyline of most shows of its genre.

The intricacy, grittiness and downright believability of the writing sets it starkly apart from its peers, and it’s not afraid to shy away from parodying the intolerance of southern rednecks to minorities (the sign ‘God hates fangs’ shown in the opening credits, serves as a sobering reminder of some of the current victims of the famously

require waiting a few episodes for it.

Now may be the time to dig up some miniscule criticisms just to make this review seem balanced, so: the title sequence is just plain weird, and has very little to do with the actual show, although it’s really the complete opposite of Buffy, so perhaps that was the intention; the show plays on a lot of stereotypes, although it’s done so well that it doesn’t matter very much, and perhaps my greatest and most damning criticism; it’s only on once a week!

Verdict: Superbly written, refreshingly executed, well acted, definitely worth a watch, and since it’s on 4OD right now for free (even if it does require navigating through that monstrosity of a site), there’s no reason for you not to be watching it!

A guide to love, loss and desperation Ben Swales reflects on a very bitter-sweet (500) days of summer...

(500) Days of Summer Marc Webb Fox Searchlight Pictures ««««« Ben Swales

...And then Tobias says: “Well I’ve always wanted to remake Annie Hall”

I

t’s one of my favourite quotes from that brilliant and sadly missed TV comedy Arrested Development, not because it’s a particularly funny line, but because it’s such an embarrassingly stupid idea.

Annie Hall signified Woody Allen’s cinematic coming of age, his film Bar-Mitzvah.

It’s his transformation from comedy writer to visionary filmmaker. To remake it would be like remaking The Godfather: pathetically hopeless. However, that’s what (500) Days of Summer has almost done... kind of.

It’s about as close as you can get to Annie Hall without actually doing the redux - but this is not necessarily a criticism.

Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber’s story revolves around Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who earned his indie film stripes with 2005’s Brick) and his

relationship and consequent break-up with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). The tale is fed to us in the form of memories, slowly deconstructing the wreckage of his love life and his philosophy on love. In a virtual reverse of the way that Annie Hall dissects Alvy Singer’s ‘anhedonia’ - his inability to derive pleasure – (500) analyses

“a good antidote to that pseudo-spiritual guff that’s come to populate consciousness” how Hanson derived a whole relationship where there wasn’t one.

The tagline is “Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t.” It’s the perspective of one person, and throughout the story we can really tell this, from his first encounters with Summer to the many aspects of their “relationship”. All we see are his feelings, and all we hear are his thoughts.

The plot is non-linear, so instead of merely chronicling what actually happened, we get a selection of Tom’s memo-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as irrepressible romantic Tom Hanson

ries, as he remembers them. It might feel a bit unfamiliar at first, but it’s easy to get used to once you’ve been sucked into this beguiling story by the good character building and identifiable realism. Further, by constantly referring back and forth between earlier and later memories, we can really get to know the characters in more depth, much more so than if we only saw them in the ‘now’.

The soundtrack is faultless. It features everything from the Doves to Regina Spektor and Feist, even finding room for music from Carla ‘wife-of-Sarkozy’ Bruni.

All the songs brilliantly suit the mood of the scenes they accompany; like a smell,

music stimulates the memory and evokes emotions from past experiences; ‘our song’ and all that.

Indeed, the story is somewhat overtly autobiographical, although we see a disclaimer at the beginning, explaining that none of the events or characters depicted are real... “Especially you, Jenny Beckman.

Bitch.”

In the end we see how Tom’s philosophy on love has totally changed: fate does not exist – things do not happen for a reason, and there is no pre-ordained script.

Things happen by sheer coincidence.

Those star-crossed lovers never existed.

Thus, the film is a good antidote to all that pseudo-spiritual guff that’s come to populate our consciousness: humans tend to use notions like karma as ways to explain things we simply cannot. You’re not going to meet the girl of your dreams because one day, three and a half months ago, you gave an old lady your seat on the bus. As scary and uncertain as it might be, there are things we can’t get our heads around.

The sort of people who use the phrase “it insists upon itself” – and not in an ironic way – will probably say just that about (500) Days of Summer. And yes, it is self-absorbed and yes, it does show off - but then so did Annie Hall.

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Murder, my sweet

Welcome to the treacherous underworld of film noir...

Alison Moulds

“Yes, I killed him. I killed him for the money and for a woman. I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?”

Walter Neff’s delightfully acerbic remark in Double Indemnity is characteristic of the genre boldly branded ‘film noir’.

With its devastating cynicism, despair of materialistic motivations, and caustic protagonist with enough screen allure to make even the most unresponsive audience member painfully envious, the 1944 Billy Wilder movie is almost a paradigm of the classic noir.

As this October marks the 65th anniversary of the release of Otto Preminger’s famous film noir Laura, I decided I had landed upon the most superbly tenuous pretext for an article celebrating one of cinema’s most prolific, oversimplified and downright gratifying genres.

To most, the term ‘film noir’ is merely synonymous with the legendary Humphrey Bogart or similarly gruff-voiced actors, the unflinchingly glamorous portrayal of tobacco and ruthlessly vindictive, impossibly seductive femme fatales.

The trademarks of film noir have become enshrined in popular culture, which is why many self-proclaimed cinema experts and film-lovers alike condescendingly deem it a

Film and Television Arts

ALLSTAR COLLECTION/ CINETEXT

Know your film and television? Enjoy your writing? Write for us. E-mail film@palatinate.org.uk

mass-marketed Hollywood product of the 40s and 50s.

So the next time you find yourself in truly pretentious company (and given that we’re studying in Durham, it shouldn’t be too long) and seeking to gain some cult credentials, simply use this, Palatinate’s handy, compact guide to defending the finer points of film noir:

The hardboiled tec’ What marked out the noirs and their literary precursors were their wonderfully unsentimental protagonists who have since well and truly achieved iconic screen status.

These leading men of the film noir world have been based on characters such as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and have earned wide renown for their flippant and corrosive discourse. Director Billy Wilder declared it was as if “a kind of lightning struck on every page”.

Femme Fatales With women almost exclusively represented as being downright devious, viewers could be forgiven for making the simple assumption that the genre has rather prominent misogynistic overtones.

Yet given that the prevailing roles written for female characters remain somewhat

Suspicious minds... Ralph Meeker is pulled into a deadly pool of intrigue in Kiss Me Deadly

limited even in this day and age, it’s notable that the female antagonists of the noir world are at least active and manage to exude some sort of power over their male counterparts.

Ones to watch With some truly questionable hallmarks (see below), it isn’t easy to spot a film noir, with Alfred Hitchcock proving particularly contentious for purists. It’s true that good old Wikipedia can present you with a chronological guide of a whole host of films, stretching from the so-called ‘protonoirs’ of the 1900s to David Lynch-esque

‘psycho noirs’ of more recent decades - but the more discerning novice may want to pick and choose.

being considered the first major mainstream noir.

If all this sounds far too pretentious then rest assured that the standard film noir is about as far from your average intimidating arthouse experience as you can get. With more than a modicum of plot consistency, more sexual tension than you can shake a stick at, and the kind of old-screen glamour Scarlett Johansson can only aspire to, the classic noirs of the Hollywood Golden Age are the perfect choice for those who want disposable entertainment, or to discover some of the most pioneering films ever to exit Hollywood.

“some of the most pioneering films ever to exit Hollywood” Any noir newcomer should most definitely get their mitts on a copy of The Maltese Falcon, which is frequently rated amongst the top films of all time as well as RADIO1 INTERACTIVE

Never mind the autocue

Who’s holding whose hand for a new series of Never Mind the Buzzcocks...

Jonathon Knowles

Normally it’s uncommon to review new series of very old shows, but with Never Mind the Buzzcocks changing its line-up and style yet again, it’s worth taking a look at how the new series is shaping up and comparing it to the show’s heyday back in the era of Lamarr, Jupitus and Bailey.

We’re returning to a new era of guest presenters, last seen a few series back before Amstell took the reins, which of course leaves us apprehensive following the very hit-and-miss quality of the series.

First impressions of this new take on the show leave us viewers feeling that we’re going to get a very similar set of episodes of fluctuating strength, not entirely helped by new team captain Noel Fielding.

Fielding, of Mighty Boosh fame, is notable for his excellent delivery and his ability to turn small throwaway lines into big laughs. In terms of his wit and actual lines on paper, however, he pales in comparison to Bill Bailey, who remains sorely missed on the musical show, now obviously suffering for its lack of musical talent amongst the regular panel.

With his offbeat timing and randomness, Fielding brings a well-appreciated surreal touch, yet alongside the hit-andmiss presenting, the show is rapidly sliding

away from its previously witty, scathing, satirical self, instead relying on silly jokes and put-downs that it would have been ashamed of eight years ago.

Gone are the days when Mark Lamarr would simply shout “DIE! DIE! DIE!” whenever Chris de Burgh’s name was mentioned, resulting in laughs all round.

Instead we are left with comparatively unfunny remarks, including a rubbish ‘your mum’ joke in relation to a complaint about Brian May. The lack of wit is apparent in the style of autocue fumbling utilised for so many ‘big jokes’ as well as in the clearly pre-scripted dialogue in the opening round, such as Ben Miller pointing out a subpar ‘Uranus’ gay joke in a Blue video. This leads us to wonder whether the banter present on the show has always been pre-written?

So many of the jokes really don’t hit the mark, yet the audience always erupts in over-the-top applause. As viewers, we really start to feel that the man holding up the much-required ‘laugh now’ sign must be getting pretty tired arms. Åll these shortcomings could be down to the presenters, of which James Corden was the first. He seemed desperate to try to emulate the witty style of Lamarr and Amstell, yet fell down spectacularly at nearly every hurdle. He couldn’t read an

and the Amstell eras stand out was the chemistry the hosts had with the captains, with the former’s scathing put-downs and the latter’s intended inability at hosting making the episodes feel more of an ensemble as they played off each other to great comic effect.

This is, of course, not to say that the new series doesn’t get some genuine laughs.

Gilbert has some great lines that seem really witty, and it’s hard to not laugh when Jupitus calls the members of Blue ‘Thick, Thicker, Thickest, GAY!’, especially when combined with the show’s trademark Anthony Costa bashing. Perhaps the series will pick up, with upcoming hosts such as the charismatic Alex James and Frank Skinner to potentially give us some very entertaining episodes.

“the fact that this guesthosted series will be hit-and-miss seems almost inevitable” James Corden proved desperate to please on screen

autocue, he couldn’t hold a conversation, and he couldn’t interject witty comments; all he really proved is that to be funny he needs Mathew Horne holding his hand for the entire journey. His attempt at singing the opening to ‘Sex on Fire’ in the missing words round should be in the running for the ‘least funny and most cringe-worthy moment on TV this year’ award.

Rhod Gilbert’s input in the second episode was far more welcome; Gilbert seemed to be genuinely witty, avoiding

slipping into appearing obviously scripted, unlike every guest on the show - even the relatively funny Greg Davies gave us a hideously delivered bacon joke about Vanilla Ice that sounded as if he was reading out of a Ladybird book.

Gilbert’s voice-overs, as well as his banter with Logan (what’s the final score?) also raised many a smile, but perhaps he just tried to make it a one-man show; he certainly made the strongest impression of the episode by far. What made the Lamarr

That said, it’s hard not to feel that the series needs an anchored chair, a host who knows what he’s doing, and as such the fact that this guest-hosted series will be hit-andmiss seems almost inevitable. The show has lost some of its humour and the wit seems to have fled, leaving it paling in comparison to competitors including QI, Have I Got News For You and Mock the Week.

Nevertheless, it still provides plenty of moments that make us smile, and maybe we’ll find a new host as a guest star. This was, after all, how Simon Amstell was spotted a few years back. This is perhaps the lowest the show’s ever been – but that’s not to say it’s not still very, very, very enjoyable.

Roll on Thursday night.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

26

Go to palatinate.org.uk

Top festivals in the literary world

MICHAEL WOODS

Arts Books

Durham Books Festival may soon compete with the might of Hay or Cheltenham

Matt Richardson

Literary festivals have started breeding like mothers in the Third Reich. Bang, wham, out another one pops, squealing with the usual suspects and bordered as ever by creative writing workshops, cafés, wine bars, courses and, of course, the eponymous book tent where all the plugged goodies can be bought.

And, easy as it is to be cynical about the whole lit fest wave, I for one quite like the paraphernalia of it all. The white marquees, the paratrooper-like presence of the Waterstones staff, the chance of seeing some half-famous faces doing improbably normal things like drinking coffee and emerging from the gents.

It’s also quite amusing watching as every city, and every town, and every hamlet or every house begins wheeling out its own unique versions.

So for those of you yet to boogie on down bookishly to the festival scene, let’s start with the big boys: those grizzled, stubbly veterans of the festival circuit.

To kick off with, there is Hay-on-Wye, the Glastonbury of literary festivals. Come togged up in wellies, scarfs and several layers of thermals to trudge through the mudlashed grass. Such is the prestige and pomp of Hay that luminaries can now be known as ‘darlings’ of Hay, a title currently held by the redoubtable, and rather unmoveable, Mr Stephen Fry. Hay, of course, is very much a Guardian affair; it is socialistic, goosed up with Labour luvvies and mac-wearing literary types. Charlotte Higgins does video diaries, Mariella Frostrup questions her guests in that alluring throaty growl and David Crystal’s beard somehow manages to seem almost normal.

The next big player in the lit fest game is, of course, the wonderful Cheltenham, by far the oldest and the best. My beloved hometown, full of wide and spacious streets, serves as the impish elder brother to Hay’s rural charm. Cheltenham is

urbane, sophisticated. You want to find John Grisham gracefully sipping a frescato or Jeremy Paxman letting loose a trial smile just for the heck of it, then motor on down to the cream-and-cultured Regency jazz of ‘Chelters’ (as we locals insist on calling it).

It is the sort of festival you would expect to be sponsored by the Times. For Cheltenham, there are not the pulsepacing extremities of Hay. It is middle-ofthe-road; the old town hall packed full of awfully nice retired couples kitted out in Herringbone tweed and still eager to retain a certain mental stimulation other than their daily trips to Waitrose.

The ‘Cheltenham darling’, if such an appellation exists, would be someone like David Dimbleby or John Simpson. The sort of snowily-coiffured BBC type who you wouldn’t mind inviting round for a glass of port and a Cuban cigar, who would never dream of gracing the stage in anything less than a bespoke tailored pinstripe of some form or fashion.

“You want to find John Grisham gracefully sipping a frescato” But now a new player is rising to prominence. Fresh-faced after little more than a decade in the running, and still trying out a new title (it was previously called the Durham Literature Festival), ladies and gentlemen prepare to clap warmly for the Durham Book Festival.

That’s right, in our very own university town, a Book Festival is born! Forget Oxford’s piddling effort, or Cambridge’s eye-wateringly paltry surge at prominence with their history of Milton and Wordsworth (two words: George Alagiah!).

This Northern cobbled one-marketplace sort of a town is about to be filled with the famous.

Carol Ann Duffy can be seen at Durham Town Hall on Friday 30th October as part of the city’s very own lit fest

Coming our way in the next few weeks are a list of legends.

First up, the launch night on Friday 23rd October. Driving Durham-wards for the big occasion is none other than the knightly presence of Sir Andrew Motion, who will be reading a brand spanking new poem written especially for the occasion, accompanied by conversational expert Catherine Blythe and diva of all things drinkable, Victoria Moore.

Having bantered with the former Poet Laureate, one might fancy toddling on to the town hall for the Scottish poetry night.

Not perhaps the thing to most instantly fire up your passions, but with Don Paterson reading from his new collection and other guests including Judith Taylor and Robert Crawford, it should be fun.

Next up, if you fancy some iron-girded political debate then Ben Wilson is here to talk about his book Are We Losing Our Liberty? in the Gala on Saturday, followed by

Julian Baggini promoting his thin volume, When In Rome.

Now: eco-poetry. Whether or not it means inscribing your villanelles on tree trunks or just lots of pratting forth about the divineness of daisies, who knows.

However, if the thought of eco-poetry floats every one of your boats then head to Harriet Tarlo at the Botanic Gardens on Sunday 25th.

How’s the love life going? If, like me, when in the presence of a good-looking girl the simple sentence ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ becomes a tongue-clamping verbal minefield, then help is at hand.

Nick Hornby and David Nicholls are here to natter ‘On Relationships’ at the Gala on Sunday 25th, both eminent scholars in the field of male emotional constipation through field-defining works such as About A Boy, High Fidelity, How To Be Good, Starter for Ten and The Understudy.

Equally, if you wondered why in the last issue we seemed to have mentioned David

Nicholls quite a lot, then it was because he is currently bobbing back up as the debut entry in the new Durham Student Read with his novel, Starter For Ten. David will be appearing at the Durham Clayport Library on Monday 26th.

Comedic genius Jack Dee will be hitting the Gala theatre on Wednesday 28th while Kate Mosse will be here with her brand new novel, The Winter Ghosts, on Thursday 29th at the Gala Theatre. Furthermore, to continue these literary offerings, Friday 30th sees Andrew Motion again, followed

by Carol Ann Duffy at Durham Town Hall.

So there we have it, the literary joys to be had in the next few weeks. Perhaps not quite as headline-grabbing as Hay or the snazzy sizzle of Cheltenham. But Durham still has to offer a pleasant mix of the old, the new, the experimental and the traditional; slightly like the town itself in a rather oddly neat, and brilliantly articleending, way.

The glories of literature in nice, digestible chunks Why short stories deserve to have greater prominence than their thicker, novelistic counterparts Graham Bailey

Allow me to reminisce about my first year morning routine for a minute. It’s six in the morning and all my friends are either sensibly in the land of nod, nursing hard-earned hangovers or out rowing – but not me. As a fresher, I would set my alarm an hour or so earlier than necessary and get up.

The motivation for this seemingly bizarre act is quite simple: my love of reading.

As a student (and an English student, no less), I found it hard to find time just for myself, to give in to my own personal reading urges.

However, although I was completing novels eventually, I needed more from my

morning reads. Instead of reading a chapter here and there, I longed for some variety in my reading and a bit of narrative closure.

So I quickly gravitated towards collections of short stories (the university library has a good range, and if that fails you then the town library on Claypath can order in pretty much anything you want).

Although the brevity of the short story can take some getting used to, it offers a unique and satisfying reading experience for anyone with a busy timetable.

Apart from anything else, I found this type of reading liberating and exciting.

There’s something undeniably satisfying about completing a short story, and enjoying the sense of containment and finality

that it embodies. Instead of being stuck for the course of several hundred pages with characters you might find irritating or, even worse, bland, if a story didn’t grab me it was over in a few minutes.

From classic pulp writing to new and emerging fiction, the short story has come to be seen as the proving ground for new writers attempting to break into the market.

However, it would be wrong to see the short story as merely a stepping stone to the more respectable novel.

In fact, many famous writers limited themselves mostly or even completely to works of short fiction: O Henry, Saki and Franz Kafka are such historical heavy-

weights but in reality writers ranging from James Joyce to Stephen King have all penned a few short stories in their time.

The range of fiction available in this small, easily-digestible format is almost limitless. If you enjoy science fiction, try Kurt Vonnegut’s aptly-titled Welcome to the Monkey House. If you like your reading fantastical and quirky - and above all unpredictable - check out Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors.

If you prefer, say, some Victorian social criticism with a few ghost stories thrown in for good measure, track down some of Charles Dickens’s short stories.

For a dose of jolly good daftness, explore some of PG Wodehouse’s scribblings

(and there’s a lot of them, even if Jeeves and Wooster don’t do it for you).

For the horror fiends out there, Clive Barker’s Books of Blood can’t be beaten, and are every bit as grisly as they sound. And if you enjoyed the film Trainspotting and long for more stories of dirty, grimy, drugaddled Scotland then Irvine Welsh’s The Acid House is an ideal read.

Short stories are a great way to spend a few spare minutes and to discover new writers you may not have noticed otherwise. I hope by now that I’ve convinced you to investigate some of these great works of short fiction – even if not to get up at 6am to do so.

27

PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

Are you a bit of a bookworm? Write about your passion. E-mail books@palatinate.org.uk

Books Arts

The backlash: why literary prizes haven’t become boring!

The Books Editor was wrong about the Booker - popularity does not equate to literary merit SAAJID VAWDA

Freddy Myles

to life the otherwise unfathomably remote characters of Tudor England. Making understandable, living, breathing creations requires more than Dan Brown’s ciphers whizzing through plot points.

None of this, of course, is to say that superior books cannot be funny, exciting, or any other lively adjective woefully inaccurately applied to some of the detritus on the bestseller lists. Life is, after all, comic and fascinating just as much as it is anything else. The supposedly weighty Thomas Pynchon regularly supplies his characters with bafflingly absurd names (Zoyd Wheeler/Mike Fallopian), before throwing them around super-inventive hyper-realities to screamingly bizarre ends.

The perusal of a classic of the supposedly ice-cold cannon often reveals a more modern, shocking experience than expected. Thomas Hardy may look in your schoolbooks like a boring old suit, but gosh - Jude The Obscure is nasty!

Pat Barker, a 66-year-old lady who won the Booker in 1995, wrote some of the most harrowing sexual scenes in print to open her 1993 novel, The Eye in the Door.

Not every writer, either has to or should be, attempting to reach the literary heights of the greats. Nick Hornby and David Nicholls, two writers praised in the original article, are fine artists in so far as what they do (it should be quickly noted that the publishers of these authors in all

I

n the last issue of Palatinate, the Books Editor criticised the Booker Prize shortlist - along with other prestigious literary prize shortlists - as being “dull”.

Such a misguided conclusion can only have been reached, as the editor himself admitted, by not having read the books in question. The overwhelming majority of the authors who make such shortlists are writing the most insightful, truthful and yes, fun - novels published.

The article appeared to accuse any writer not willing to cloak intelligence as producing “dreary, pretentious guff” which is presumably code for “the best analysis of the human condition we have”. Literature, at its best, looks to understand people.

What it is for us to live, why we do things, what feelings are. The answers to these can be rather complicated. Depths, subtleties, anything we don’t and couldn’t portray through a few short and obvious anecdotes, make up a life. These, through complex character study, deft symbolism, and the maligned “narrative trickery” is what the most affecting authors create. Wolf Hall, Hillary Mantel’s victor in the Booker race, uses an unsettling present tense across the historical narrative (“The priest says he has never heard of such a thing”).

This unconventionality could be considered “self reflexive…verbal flatulence”, or it could be an innovative method of bringing

Heavy yet ephemeral Big hitting historian Izzy Cave takes looks at Half of a Yellow Sun Why is Niall Ferguson so successful?

HarperPerennial ««««« Izzy Cave

For over three years in the late sixties, part of Nigeria became the state of Biagra in a bloody secession. Addressing the harrowing events, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun does not, as most would, fall back on the tradition of portraying its protagonists as mere victims of the atrocities of war.

In her depiction of the convergence of the disparate lives of Ugwu (houseboy to the passionately anti-colonialist Professor Odenigbo), Odenigbo’s mistress Olanna, and her twin sister Kainene’s English lover (the Igbo-Ukwu art enthusiast Richard), Adichie confronts numerous thought-

“A nation, and a family, battling against the imminent threat of disintegration” However irrelevant Adichie appears to portray the nobility of ideals to be, the reader remains left with hope in the depiction of the ability of love to overcome all, even as we watch a nation and a family battle desperately against the imminent threat of disintegration. A fascinating insight into the religious, cultural and ethnic tensions of the people of Nigeria.

DAVID FARRER

TALATU-CARMEN

Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

provoking and troublesome issues. These range from the stark inhumanity which inevitably results from a military attempt to procure a more humane future for the Igbo people, to the all-pervasive power of warfare to redefine one’s place in the world.

Adichie’s seemingly effortlessly interweaves the effects of political struggle on individuals, and the passionate patriotism followed by inevitable disillusionment, with the intimate details of the personal lives of her characters, the struggle to love in a time of hatred, and the lengths to which people will go to preserve a relationship. The effect is a mixture of brutal honesty, in which the most shocking atrocities are committed by characters we have come to know and love, and a sympathetic depiction of the continually hopeful force driving the lives of the central characters.

Niall Ferguson: a titanic force in modern history writing

James Leadill

Niall Ferguson is a rare breed. Not since AJP Taylor has a historian mastered the elusive combination of stratospheric sales and a towering academic reputation.

This feat, allied to his regular TV presence including the recent Ascent of Money and Empire series, have catapulted him into the public consciousness. Whereas

Taylor’s notoriety was enhanced by his vitriolic spats with rival historians, his stinging wit and memorable paradoxes such as “the greatest masters of statecraft were those who did not know what they were doing”, Ferguson’s fame is little bolstered by infamy.

What is it then that caused the Times to laud Ferguson as “the most brilliant British historian of his generation?”

probability did not even put their novels forward to be judged, so the original article’s wrath should have been directed not at the judges but, curiously, at the publishers supplying these very books). High Fidelity is full of giggles and the odd tut of recognition in its portrayal of young manhood.

Starter For Ten is an absolute riot, truly funny and acutely aware of our silliest little thought processes.

Attacking judges for ignoring bestseller lists is also a misnomer. We’re past the stage of arguing that, due to Transformers grossing more than Citizen Kane this year, it is therefore the better work.

It is perfectly possible to be both popular and talented, but the former does not entail the latter. Philip Roth and James Patterson are both widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, but I needn’t ask which one shall be awarded the Nobel Prize at the next American opportunity. It is the judge’s literary criticism that guides those of us who are unsure which novel offers a fuller meal. In consideration for prizes, novels which haven’t previously reached the bestseller lists (i.e. Wolf Hall) are given an equal opportunity to display their qualities, regardless of name recognition or the savvy of their publicity machines.

The flagpole literary prizes’ great strength lies in congratulating and introducing to the general public the authors who truly change our lives. If you can’t understand that...one of us must be wrong.

In a profession focused on substance, Ferguson is differentiated by style. His airbrushed good looks prominently adorn the bestsellers that have elevated him to the dangerous rank of public intellectual.

Another key factor in his success is his rapacious agent, Andrew ‘The Jackal’ Wylie, who has made Ferguson accessible to the public by persuading high street bookshops to stack his books alongside more familiar celebrity autobiographies.

Finally, to Ferguson’s literary and historical merit. Reviews of his books are often written by friends, and are frequently supplicating, confining themselves to a contemptible flurry of eulogistic adjectives.

However, Ferguson undoubtedly writes with a verve which elevates him above most of his contemporaries even if he falls short of the rarefied heights of Tacitus, Gibbon and AJP Taylor.

A self-labelled paleo-conservative, Ferguson’s work undoubtedly falls into the category of revisionism, essentially rewriting history by ostensibly putting it into its historical context. It is his controversial reinterpretation of seemingly long-settled issues which is the bedrock of his fame.

His praise for the British Empire’s export of liberal political, social and economic institutions and his urging for America to extend its imperial commitments are not only provocative but persuasive.

Thus, Niall Ferguson’s career has demonstrated both his real talent as a historian and the relentless ambition that has seen him propelled to simultaneously hold a professorship at Harvard along with a Senior Fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford - a feat extremely rarely achieved.

However, the real test of a historian is whether they define the historical period being written about or whether, as in Ferguson’s case, their contemporary socioeconomic context defines their work.

His work may not be Great History but it should be indulged in.

PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

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Music Arts

Read these and other music pieces online at palatinate.org.uk

Bloc Party impress after an uncertain start Bloc Party O2 Academy Newcastle Eloise Konieczko

A

t the end of Freshers’ Week, having exhausted the nightlife options of Durham, a trip to Leeds to see one of my favourite British bands was a welcome escape from the ‘Durham bubble’. After an impassioned performance by the feisty supporting act, Grammatics, the O2 Academy crowd was ready for a night of carnage.

Bloc Party’s set didn’t get off to a promising start when the most recent single ‘One More Chance’ was stopped halfway through, with assurances from Kele Okereke that the song would be revisited later. Whilst this ‘mistake’ was clearly planned for effect, the same could not be said for the lacklustre performance of ‘Mercury’ that followed. Kele struggled with the timing of the lyrics, forgetting a couple of lines altogether, and the crowd’s reaction to one of the group’s biggest hits was under-

whelming.

However, Bloc Party grew in confidence throughout the night, and their impressive back catalogue of modern indie classics spoke for itself. Tracks from the band’s debut album Silent Alarm featured heavily in the set list, including the fast-paced and frenetic ‘Banquet’ and the ethereal ‘Blue Light’. Songs from A Weekend In The City also failed to disappoint, as every word of ‘Hunting For Witches’ and ‘Song For Clay (Disappear Here)’ was screamed back at the band’s grinning lead singer.

ALTERNA2

A Bloc Party gig provides the ideal excuse to leave the ‘Durham bubble’ - but is it worth it?

“The set didn’t get off to a promising start”

When the band re-appeared after a short break, the boys launched into a blistering rendition of ‘Helicopter’, sending the crowd crazy. The manic dancing didn’t stop until the last note of ‘One More Chance’, which the boys eventually played in its entirety as a final encore. Bloc Party’s set may have had a shaky start, but by the end of the night a Lazarus-like resurrection had taken place.

Seeing this band was worth sitting with the drunks on the last train back to Durham.

Bloc Party have an array of hits with which to delight live audiences, but the performance at times left much to be desired

A potent ending to The Maccabees’ finest tour yet Sublime music and a lightshow combine to produce a mesmerising performance The Maccabees O2 Academy Newcastle John James Greene

I

knew I was going to enjoy this gig as soon as the headline act took to the stage. Shocked, I checked at my watch; sure enough, The Maccabees appeared before nine pm, providing one of those magical evenings in which Durham fans can actually enjoy the entirety of a gig, and avoid the last train home.

The one-and-only support band of the evening, Peggy Sue, made a rather muted entrance. After a slow start to the evening, the three-piece began to layer percussion with vocal harmonies, creativity that gave the bluesy guitar riffs a powerful foundation to work from. Peggy Sue left to an enthusiastic and warm ovation, leaving me to ponder the possibility of their future notoriety and subsequent headlining gigs.

Fans of Emmy the Great and Laura Marling should check them out.

‘Indie heartthrobs’ is perhaps a reasonable label to assign London-cum-Brighton’s The Maccabees, and this was emphasised by the reception to their entrance by a noticeably excited female demographic. Without missing a beat the band jumped straight into ‘No Kind Words’, the track’s crescendo working perfectly to build the already enthusiastic crowd to fever pitch.

“It is clear that The Maccabees firmly regard themselves as a band that lets their art do the talking”

Whilst a few years ago the band would have been upstairs in Academy 2, the larger capacity downstairs is ideal for the bigger guitar sounds of current release, ‘Wall of Arms’. Other highlights included the ‘walls of sound’ generated by crowd favourite ‘Can You Give It’.

Maccabees’ frontman Orlando Weeks delivered an evening to remember, whilst allowing bandmates to share the limelight

Song of choice ‘Dinosaurs’ truly demonstrated an intensity and maturity that translated from album to stage perfectly.

To the band’s credit, a lack of needless inter-song banter allowed this intensity to build in an almost relentless fashion. It is clear that The Maccabees firmly regard themselves as a band that lets their art do the talking. In that sense, it seems perfectly acceptable, appropriate even, for the band to work with a well thought-out lightshow.

Every song of the set had an aesthetic that complimented its mood, ranging from frantic strobes to colourful rainbows. This

bringing together of music and light created a multi-sensory experience that was all their own.

It was a welcome change to see guitarists Felix and Hugo taking on Orlando’s vocal duties for performances of rarely heard B-sides such as ‘Hearts that Strangle’.

These songs worked nicely as breaks, giving the audience down in the mosh pit a chance to catch their breath – breath that was lost again through performances of the anthemic ‘Latchmere’, that favourite of female fans ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ and the intimate ‘First Love’. For the main body of the

set the band were on stage for over an hour, but they still came back for more. Many fans would consider a Maccabees encore without the haunting ‘Bag of Bones’ to be criminal, but thankfully they obliged. In a final parting gift, the majesty of ‘Love You Better’ exuded warmth before the audience bid farewell to the band and said hello to arctic temperatures outside.

This particular tour is almost over – but with the thought and sincerity that was on display in the Academy, you would be forgiven for thinking it was opening night. A fantastic, versatile display.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Sport

Sport Plus Team Durham and the community.

Have your say at palatinate.org.uk

A look DUAFC’s and DURFLC’s preparations for the new season.

Martin Jones

MARK LOVELL

DUAFC have high hopes for promotion push With the new BUCS season almost upon us, Durham University Association Football Club returned for pre-season training two weeks early, looking forward to the year ahead but determined to get in the best possible shape prior to their first BUCS game. British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) has got the biggest sporting programme in Europe, with 157 institutions of higher education participating.

Despite the disappointment caused by the relegation of Durham’s first team to the second league, the players returned to the field with a strong promotion push at the forefront of their thoughts.

As both teams are now playing in the same league though, the Durham teams are looking to star in the top two spots in the final tables at the end of the season.

However, with many key players having graduated from the first team last year, and with the lack of a recognised goalkeeper at the club, the team has had to take full advantage of inviting new players to training in order to be able to select the best.

With a tremendous turn-out of around DUAFC showing signs of brilliance in last year’s disappointing campaign. However, the club believes this season will be better. fifteen new faces keen to impress, the squad has been able to make full use of the time ball skills sessions, which are being lead by Away from the score line, this was the The starting line-up consisted of nine new spent together.

Club Captain John Meehan, alongside new first opportunity that the team had to show players, with the team showing great promWith places in the squad up for grabs, second team coach Chris Daniel, both of its worth in a competitive eleven-a-side ise and enthusiasm from the start. the new faces have been giving it their all, whom are looking to push the first team to game. With better finishing, it could arguChanges at half-time saw the current keen to show what they can add to the al- the top spot. ably have won the game, as chances were team members take to the field, with the ready talented group.

The team started with a pre-season smoothly created throughout. The match lead being taken by George Cockbill. Good Since then, the team has been pushing friendly against Durham New College on also gave the team an opportunity to adjust work was evident down the left from Cothemselves to the maximum during their the newly laid 3G pitch at Maiden Cas- to the new surface of the ‘rubber crumb’ simo Codacci-Pisinelli. strenuous fitness sessions with Cameron tle, where they lost 4-2. Goals came from pitch, which it will be using in the upcomThe team doubled its lead with a towHenderson and Rich Warburton, in order pacey wide-man Jimmy Scott, and Craig ing season. ering header from new boy Javier Garay, to prepare for their upcoming challenge, Ashby, who was able to take full advantage The second pre-season game resulted and a further two were added by front man Accompanying the fitness training are of a penalty. in a 4-0 victory against Newcastle College. Luke Larkin, who narrowly missed out on

Rajvir Rai

The decision to show England’s World Cup qualifier against the Ukraine exclusively on the internet has given us a glimpse into the future of sports coverage across the globe.

And what a bleak future it is!

The event was hailed as an historic sporting moment and reports suggest that it attracted half a million viewers, leading many to speculate on the potential size of audiences for even larger matches.

Clearly, there is no doubt that from a financial point of view, the internet could provide football associations and clubs with enormous amounts of extra revenue, but what they will destroy is priceless.

Fans will still be able to watch games at pubs that pay the asking fee and set up projector screens, and it was even reported that some cinemas showed the game last week but what do those who don’t fancy going to their local, or those who do not have access to internet, as crazy as that seems, do?

Radio 5 Live has good coverage of games, Ceefax is always an option, or sup-

porters can just wait for the post-game reports; but after getting so accustomed to watching games at our luxury, it seem like sports broadcasting is taking a massive step backwards.

While papers, bloggers and fans alike have already highlighted the ridiculous state of affairs that could ensue, one group of people have been criminally overlooked in this whole saga.

Yes you guessed it, the real forgotten victims of any switch to online, pay-per-view football, will be the students!

Being charged to watch football is an expense that we could all do without. £11.99 was the price many fans paid to see Fabio Capello’s boys lose their 100% record last Saturday; £11.99, how many trebles is that?

Or how many Sub of the Days could you get in place of that? Simply put, for a student, £11.99 is a lot of money.

Let’s not forget that without the option of going down to your JCR bar to watch the Three Lions, the only alternative available other than watching the game by yourself, which is frankly a depressing image, is Is this what students will be forced to do? A dreary picture to say the least.

FLICKR.COM

What effect will the internet have on the future of sports broadcasting?

a hat trick.

With so much promise being shown so early in the season, it looks as though it is going to be a very prosperous season for DUAFC, which will hopefully erase some of the memories of last season.

The team’s structure is finely balanced with the current crop of players and the new additions, and both teams appear strong and determined for success in both the league and the cup. Only time will tell if the new line-up can deliver. squeezing all of your mates into your room.

Just imagine Dave, John and Ricky all squashed onto your single bed while Tom, Oscar and Chris are sitting on the ever-socomfortable floor, and everyone is leaning forward as they struggle to make out what is going on because quite simply, your fourteen inch screen is just not big enough.

Then to top it all off, you forget to plug in your charger and your laptop decides to die at that all important moment!

On second thoughts, maybe watching the match alone isn’t such a bad idea...

The point is that England matches should not be watched in dark dingy rooms on little screens, or in cinemas, or in pubs with a dodgy feed from somewhere in Eastern Europe; the beautiful game needs to - scratch that, deserves to be - watched free of charge by its fans wherever and however they like. End of.

So although we are still years, perhaps even decades away from actually seeing the migration of sports broadcasting from televisions to internet becoming a real possibility, it is clear that it would be a disastrous change; not only for students but for football in general. Let’s just hope the recent England game was a one-off event.

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PALATINATE Friday 16th October 2009

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Sport

Help Team Durham support the community ANDREA HOSKINS

Ben Embleton

Voluntary work is a great way to boost the CV, but all too often we just ‘can’t find time for it’. Besides, why would you give up your spare time when you could be playing football, rugby, or many other sports?

The Team Durham outreach group, based at the Graham Sports Centre at Maiden Castle, oversee a number of community projects involving sport. By becoming a member you can combine volunteering with a wide range of sports - it really is as simple as that.

There are opportunities to volunteer for just an hour a week in a wide range of sports and activities.

It may sound a little clichéd, but too much time spent in the Durham ‘bubble’ can lead to you forgetting that there is a world out there.

Throughout the summer, Team Durham Community organises sports camps, allowing students to mentor and even lead coaching sessions with local children. This year the sports ranged from fencing and cricket to Aussie Rules Football and even Boxercise. If you are considering a career in sport or just coaching as a hobby, the summer camps form great work experience.

Volunteering is primarily about the benefit to the recipients; Team Durham offers sporting opportunities, the likes of which Durham students have in abundance through college and university sporting programmes, to those less fortunate.

If you would like any more information about the work of the Team Durham Community Section, contact them by e-mail at: teamdurham.community@durham.ac.uk

Alexander Shirreff

Action from a football course run by Team Durham’s outreach programme

THOMAS BREWSTER

DURLFC hope their rugby this year will be as eye-catching as their new kit, as they look to tackle the challenge posed by the country’s top student rugby league teams.

Revamped DURLFC aiming to repeat last year’s success Thomas Brewster

DURLFC has undergone a complete facelift, and the re-birth of rugby league in Durham began back in March.

Now a week away from their first fixture, the team cannot wait to get the 2009 Student Rugby League season started away at Newcastle.

Last year was one of the most successful in the club’s history, reaching the national semi-finals of the BUCS plate as well as earning promotion into BUCS North Division One. The squad will look to build on this already very stable platform, but find themselves facing a new set of challenges as they

Durham boy reinvigorates England

encounter tougher sides - a challenge which they are not afraid of.

The 2009 fixture card sees Durham playing in new locations such as Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds and London in addition to more established local rivals Newcastle and Sunderland.

The re-structure of the club has posed some key challenges. How do you expand a sports club whilst maintaining that close friendly environment that rugby league stands for? How does one improve personal performance and get the best out of all players?

However, DURLFC believe that they have the innovative solutions required for the road ahead.

With the majority of previous first and second years returning for more, along with the influx of new freshers, competition for places will be fierce.

At the centre of the club improvement plans are its members, and to this end DURLFC has a whole host of other vital non-playing staff positions including trainers, physios, coaches and team assistants, dedicated to maximising the club’s chances of success.

From a strong base the squad now move into the season with a lot of confidence as DURLFC has never looked stronger during pre-season.

A very healthy intake during Freshers’ Week has given the squad the required

depth to perform successfully at this level.

The development of the club this year could not have been possible without the support of its sponsors to which the whole camp is very grateful.

This year the club is pleased to announce partnership with MyUKStudents.com, Barclays Capital, Proctor & Gamble, MDS, UnisportUK.com, and nutrition partner Maximuscle.

There is a fantastic buzz about training at the moment, and with enthusiasm sky high, the team firmly believe that this season it will complete all its objectives: raising the profile of the game and, most of all, having a lot of fun in the process.

2009 began badly for English cricket; like a Sophoclean Greek play, tragedy struck the hubristic leadership of Kevin Pietersen and chaos began to hinder preparations for what many thought would be the team’s defining year.

Helmless, England struggled through a shambolic tour in the West Indies and displayed nothing to challenge the looming Australians.

Now, however, barely seven months later and with the urn in their hands, a reinvigorated, confident, and tightlyknit unit prepare to embark on 2009’s final challenge: taking down South Africa.

By any standard, certainly in test cricket, it has been a dramatic reversal of fortune. The key lies in leadership. The pathetic and dysfunctional relationship between Pietersen and Moores has given way to the professional and determined management of Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower.

This much-needed peace at the top has allowed the squad to flourish and realise their obvious potential.

Individuals such as Graeme Swann, James Anderson and Jonathan Trott have been able to emerge from under the shadow of KP. Strauss, himself a Durham University graduate, has led the side with huge distinction. Intelligent, articulate, and fiercely competitive, he has risen to the occasion, accepting his responsibility with honourable pride and a passionate resolve to save the sinking ship that he inherited. He has done so in magnificent fashion and, over the course of one summer, etched his name into the annals of cricketing greats.

Always leading by example, batting at the top of the order, he managed to demoralise the Australians at critical periods throughout the series. As a captain he displayed an effective mixture of charisma and sternness, ensuring that England played with dogged professionalism and resolute ambition.

However, it is this intangible spirit, initiated by harmonious leadership and emphatically increased by the Ashes victory, which England must fight hardest to preserve if they want to dominate in South Africa.

Napoleon Bonaparte said in battle “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” This team spirit, defined by compelling characters such as Swann, might well give England the edge in what will be a fascinating encounter. In this regard, perhaps it is not surprising that the occasionally sulky and reluctant traveller Steve Harmison has been omitted. Though harsh on the loyal Harmy, the last thing England needs when away is negativity.

It must play positively and, with centurian Strauss setting the example, really take the fight to the ever-increasing hubris of the South Africans under Graeme Smith; perhaps it is now the Proteas’ turn to suffer tragedy.

Friday 16th October 2009 PALATINATE

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Sport Back page

Catch the latest Durham sports news and results at palatinate.org.uk

Sport Plus Team Durham and the community. Sport inside.

A look DUAFC’s and DURFLC’s preparations for the new season.

American recruits strengthen DUWLC title ambitions

It started last year with an American coach and this year the influx has continued. The Women’s Lacrosse team now has an American Assistant Coach, Chelsea Martinez, and three American players, Dana Simmons, Marlo Tersigni and Maddy Sminkey.

They all played American college lacrosse and thus are bringing a heightened intensity and drive to the squad.

They may be here studying for a Masters but they all have a higher goal; winning the BUCS National Lacrosse Championships with the Palatinates.

The 1st team was knocked out of the quarter finals last year by a strong but beatable Cambridge outfit.

They were all left with a bitter taste in their mouths. Knowing that they were talented enough to beat Cambridge, players admitted that they perhaps played poorly due to the pressure of being reigning champions. One bad game, one bad day, and it was all over.

This year, however, the girls go into the competition with a new sense of confidence. The first team has nine new players, none of whom have ever faced the likes of Loughborough, Birmingham or Cambridge, and none of whom care about previous reputations of other universities.

The squad had the potential to win last year, and did in fact beat the two finalists in the group stages.

Previously held back by a lack of belief that they could win, the Palatinates go into this year a changed outfit.

For the first time, Durham enters the season as the favourites, and providing that they maintain focus and control, they see no reason why they shouldn’t be crowned BUCS champions come the end of the season.

Already, other teams are asking questions about their training schedules and new players. The Birmingham coach has gone as far as coming up to scout players in

JAMES KING

Women’s Lacrosse captain Alsi Buchan talks to Palatinate about new US stars, last season’s disappointments and hopes for this year

Durham Women’s Lacrosse in action last year. This time round they are adamant they will learn from their mistakes and bring home some silverware

a pre-season friendly against Newcastle.

Training continues as intensely as ever; an extra week of pre-season training was held to ensure complete preparation and thorough integration of the American recruits.

A mildly amusing language barrier has thus far been the only stumbling block; the Americans are slowly being convinced to say attack not offence, pitch not field and boots not cleats. They aren’t taking it lying down though, with impersonations of the British girls high on the priority list in the banter stakes.

Beyond that, however, the squad is extremely cohesive. They have developed a style of play that focuses on the team as a whole rather than two or three star players, which is what most universities are forced to do.

This depth of talent has been boosted by three very promising freshers. Tash Bott, Verity Allanson and Hannah Shaw have all made a place for themselves within the already talented squad.

The core of the team from last year remains the same, with key players remaining in the defence, midfield and attack. As such,

there is already a solid familiarity in the style of play. This has allowed new faces to prosper in the knowledge that the stability in the team is such that one can play with an unshackled freedom.

All of the hard training was put into practice on Wednesday in a match against Cheadle Marple, a club from Manchester.

With no idea what standard they were, the Palatinates went into their first match blind. However, it soon became clear that they were indeed quite superior to this comparitively young team. As such, it was used as a practice match, particularly for at-

tacking motion and set plays.

The eventual score of 18-2 was almost inconsequential for a group of girls who found the match more useful than anything.

It was followed by a friendly against Newcastle on Sunday, and the first match of the season proper against reigning champions Loughbrough on Wednesday.

The girls hope that last year’s mistakes will not be repeated; they will go in with total confidence that they can win. The team is freshly starred and striped, and ready to be champions.

Fresh faces spark competition in University Boat Club Ally Bacon

With the influx of talented freshers, Durham’s chances of great success this year in rowing are looking very promising.

Last year, with a significant focus on the eights, the club took bronze at BUCS and reached the quarter finals of the Henley Royal Regatta, missing out to eventual finalists Brown University, who went on to lose to Princeton.

However. the team have subsequently been heartened by the recent push on the squad by able new rowers, many of whom could well displace their more senior teammates from their seats.

The main aim for the men this year is to win Henley in the Temple Challenge Cup and to beat old rivals Oxford Brookes at their next meet.

A number of Durham rowers are hoping to enter national squads too, with Rory Ma-

cleod aiming for the GBR U23s, and one of the most talented female rowers, Sarah Cowburn, aspiring for gold at the Senior World Championships.

During the summer months, the rowers competed in a number of national and international competitions.

The girls claimed gold in the Academic Fours at Henley with an easy win over opponents Birmingham University, beating them by a length and a half.

The crews also competed at the European Universities event in Poland in September, with the Women’s Eights coming second, beating Cambridge and Edinburgh along the way, but narrowly losing out to the Polish Champions. GBR came second overall in the event.

Durham Women’s Fours were also successful, receiving Bronze in Europe, beating eight crews along the way. Alex Foster and John Ford, were also victorious in Europe

reaching the final of their category.

The women’s main aims are to finish in the top five at the Head of the River in February, and to triumph again at Henley with their Senior Eights crew.

With new Australian coach Matt Pearce joining the ranks, and dozens of gifted newcomers, the Durham rowing crews are looking to further improve this coming season as they look for individual and team success again.