Palatinate 811

Palatinate Officially the UK’s Best Student Publication, 2018

Thursday 15th November 2018 | No. 811

Investigations uncovers the culture of drug dealing in Durham and speaks to the students involved

www.palatinate.org.uk | FREE

Features’ ‘Ode to Autumn’ reflects on the beauty of Durham at this time of year

▲A view of Durham Cathedral from the riverbanks in autumn (Laura Cutts)

Durham’s housing rush reaches record levels as student demand continues to rise • One estate agent reported letting the same number of properties in seven days this year as they did in seven weeks last year • Several companies have called for a consultation between agents, students, and the University to alleviate the issue Clara Gaspar News Editor This year’s rush to sign student houses for tenancies beginning in 2019 has been unprecedented, Durham estate agents have reported.

Estate agents across Durham have spoken to Palatinate about experiencing record levels of demand for student housing, with some calling for a consultation between agents, the University and students to alleviate the city’s annual housing rush.

Frampton Roebuck told Palatinate they have let the same number of properties in the first seven days this year as they let in

the first seven weeks last year, following the release of their property list on 1st November.

Meanwhile, agents at JW wood observed that houses have sold “dramatically faster” than previous years. They said: “we’re 4 weeks ahead of where we usually are”, having already let 127 of their 142 properties. Kirsty Wilson, an agent for the company said “there seems to be a panic” among students looking for housing.

Similarly, Robinsons estate agents have so far let 101 properties of their 150-strong portfolio, adding that, at this point last year, they had not let half of that number.

Last week groups of students were pictured camping outside

estate agents overnight in the hope of signing tenancy agreements for the most popular houses released on the 1st November.

The closure of Durham University’s Stockton Campus has increased the strain on housing resources, with more students seeking accommodation in the city than ever before.

Dan from Rise Estate Agents said that the rush for houses “gets earlier and earlier every year”. He added that in previous years, Rise’s properties “all went towards the end of November” after being released in mid-October.

The agents added that they were working a “lot of over-time” to process the high volume of applica-

tions for student lettings. Lauren from Robinsons described this year’s housing rush as “absolute mayhem”.

Whilst Robinsons had no official release date for their properties, the agents released as many properties as they could earlier, in line with student demand.

JW Wood stated that they have been torn between releasing lettings earlier, hence fueling students’ panic to sign houses even earlier, or to uphold their release date of 1st November and tolerate the ensuing inundation of students looking to sign their properties on release day.

In a bid to quell hasty and illconsidered house signings, JW

Wood offer students a 24-hour reservation period, following which students have a seven-day ‘grace period’ in which to pay deposits, longer than many of Durham’s other estate agents and private landlords.

Kirsty Wilson added: “What we strive to do is aid students and we have a different structure. We’re not a pushy agent and we pride ourselves on that”.

Daniel Woolstencroft, a firstyear Hatfield student commented on his experience finding housing for this year: “The housing companies were helpful and current residents of potential houses were happy to let us look around...

Continued on page 5

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Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

Editorial

I

Inside 811

Student journalists: “disrespectful thugs”

t has been a busy few weeks in Durham.

As you will have seen from our front-page story, the race for Durham student housing has begun – and it’s already a bit ridiculous.

On my way to a friend’s house on 31st October, I came across a group of students quite literally camping outside of a letting agency in order to be first to sign for a house. The contracts were to be released at 5am the next morning.

It was pretty cold already, but they were well equipped with sleeping bags, blankets, and pizza.

My first reaction, and probably yours as well, was that these students were acting absurdly. We’re in the North-East, it’s winter, no one should voluntarily want to sleep on the streets. No student house is that good. But they weren’t the only ones; outside each estate agent across the city small camps of students were established in a bid to sign houses as early as possible.

I should remind you that Freshers’ Sunday was little over six weeks ago Whilst I will never be able to fully understand their reasoning; this mass-hysteria over housing is almost palpable at this time of year.

It is probably now that I should remind you that Freshers’ Sunday was little over six weeks ago.

The University reassure us each year that there are enough houses in Durham for us all, and yet our News team report in this edition that the rush for houses, at least according to the letting agents, appears to be getting worse.

With the University expansion well underway, I wonder how many more campsites will appear this time next year.

If you are a fresher reading this and have not yet signed a house - don’t panic! Take your time to find a house without rising damp or broken radiators - trust me, it will be worth it. Come January, there will still be houses available and you will be able to sign with people you’ve known for at least three months!

Take your time to find a house without rising damp or broken radiators And if term wasn’t already busy enough, college life has been pretty eventful too.

The academic Dr Stephen Pax Leonard has been removed as an honorary fellow of St Chad’s after comments he made online, as reported by Cherwell, Oxford’s student newspaper.

The decision was not taken lightly and was after weeks of consideration, but it has still very much divided opinion.

Conversations in the dining hall have rarely been so heated, with many arguing vehemently on either side of the debate.

I’ll leave the opinions to my three fellow Chadsians who eloquently argue their cases on page 3 - grappling with freedom of speech, tolerance, inclusion, and interlectual independence. Don’t say Palatinate never tackles the big issues.

I will only weigh in to add that Dr Pax called the student who wrote the original Cherwell story a “disrespectable thug who mas-

querades as a student ‘journalist’”, and an “anti-freedom of speech activist”.

As a student journalist myself, I can assure Dr Pax that publishing an article revealing anti-Semitic and Islamophobic views does not make you anti-freedom of speech - far from it.

Elsewhere in the edition, Profile have an exciting interview with Michael Crick, the esteemed political journalist. Crick, fittingly, argues that it is the job of the journalist to hold people in power to account.

Our investigation into student drug dealing on page 7 speaks to the dealers themselves and asks them why they do it. The largely underground illegal business can make students thousands of pounds per month, but some students talk about the paranoia which accompanies such criminal activities.

Politics have a feature on climate change whilst over in Indigo, Fashion take a look at the best Durham street styles and Books looks at the post-Europe phenomenon of ‘Brexlit’.

I hope you enjoy reading whilst your summative deadlines creep closer, I know I will.

Julia Atherley

News pages 4-6 Investigations page 7 Comment pages 8-10 Profile page 11 Politics pages 13-15 SciTech page 16 Sport pages 18-20

indigo

Editorial page 2 Travel page 3 Fashion pages 4-5 Film and TV page 6 Creative Writing page 7 Bookspage 8 Food and Drink page 9 Music pages 10-11 Visual arts page 12 Stage page 13 Features pages 14-15 Interview page 16

Current vacancies •

Deputy Politics Editor

Email editor@palatinate.org.uk for more information

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The bestwww.palatinate.org.uk of Palatinate Online

NEWS: Students camp overnight to sign housing contracts Durham University students hoping to secure student properties were seen camping outside letting agencies in the city through low temperatures.

STAGE: Miscast review: ‘Entertaining and thought provoking’ Sightline Productions promised “an exciting night of monologues like you have never seen them before” and certainly did not disappoint.

COMMENT: Remembrance shoudn’t be a choice but an expectation Conor Johnson comments on how we commemorate wars, past and present, and how we honour our soldiers - 100 years on from the end of the First World War.

CREATIVE WRITING: Palatinate Poetry: Sailing into the Unknown Munia Muzammel Shethi writes for Palatinate Creative Writing: “As the burden of the world rests upon his departed soul, all he wants is to leave his own self behind”

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 University. 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 Cameron McIntosh & Julia Atherley editor@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Editors Millie Fender & Oscar Elmon deputy.editor@palatinate.org.uk News Editors Clara Gaspar & Anna Tatham news@palatinate.org.uk Deputy News Editors Madeleine Horton, Melissa Tutesigensi, Lydia Blundell & Naomi Clarke deputy.news@palatinate.org.uk Investigations Editor Joe Banfield investigations@palatinate.org.uk Comment Editors Scarlet Hannington & Jack Taylor comment@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Comment Editors Jacob Whitehead & Hannah Anson Profile Editor Ella Catherall profile@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Profile Editor Jamima Westermann Science & Technology Editors Ewan Jones & Charlie Hetherington scitech@palatinate.org.uk Politics Editors Alice Lassman & Sarina Rivlin-Sanders politics@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Politics Editor Matthew Spivey Sport Editor James Smith sport@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Sport Editors Ed Lord, Alana Ker Mercer, Tim Sigsworth & Finlay Smart Indigo Editor Adele Cooke indigo@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Indigo Editor Alex Leggatt deputy.indigo@palatinate.org.uk Features Editor Kleopatra Olympiou features@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Features Editor Imogen Usherwood deputy.features@palatinate.org.uk Food & Drink Editors Rebecca Russell & Piers Eaton food@palatinate.org.uk Fashion Editor Anna Gibbs fashion@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Fashion Editor Ana Hamilton & Frankie Reffell Film & Television Editor Hugh Johnson film@palatinate.org.uk Stage Editor Kishore Thiagarajan stage@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Stage Editor Martha Wrench Music Editors Tom Watling & Francesca Howard music@palatinate.org.uk Creative Writing Editor Rhiannon Morris creative.writing@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Creative Writing Editor Susie Bradley Books Editors Freya Neason & Shauna Lewis books@palatinate.org.uk Visual Arts Editor Stella Botes visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Visual Arts Editor Jo Chandler Interview Editors Zue Leong and Nathan Kelly Chief Sub-Editor Daisy Robinson Sub-Editors Heather Craddock, Ines Pandzic, Isabella Beaumont, Constance Castle & Freya Ellingsen Photography Editor Madeleine Flisher photography@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Photography Editors Claire Cortese and Yangjia Lin Illustrations Editor Nayva Lobo illustration@palatinate.org.uk Deputy Illustrations Editors Charlotte Way, Akansha Naraindas & Holly Murphy Website Administrator Bilal Mohd web.admin@palatinate.org.uk Advertising Officer Harriet Willis

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PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

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Featured

St Chad’s Senior Research Fellow removed after online comments revealed Clara Gaspar and Anna Tatham News Editors I’m a strong believer in student voice being heard on both a local and a national level, and registering to vote is a key way to achieve this.

It’s a democratic right for all UK citizens, and one I want to make sure is as simple as possible to access in Durham.

This is why Charlie Walker, your Opportunities Officer, and I have teamed up with the University and Durham County Council to get as students as possible registered to vote.

I’m keen for students to register to vote in Durham because it gives you the opportunity to shape the City and County, which, for the duration of your degree and maybe beyond, you will call home. Registering in Durham also gives you the flexibility to choose whether to vote here or at home in national elections, and to vote in both locations for local elections.

Beyond these more obvious advantages to being on the electoral register, there are financial benefits, as the register is used by banks to confirm your details when receiving applications for a mortgage, loan or any other form of financial account.

And if this hasn’t convinced you, as part of our campaign we’ll be running a competition, in which £250 will go to the JCR at the college where the highest percentage of livers-in register to vote.

It’s really easy to register to vote. Especially during these next couple of weeks (12 to 23 November), when Electoral Registration Officers from Durham County Council will be visiting colleges and running voter registration stalls. All you need is five minutes and your National Insurance number, and you can be registered on the spot.

In the long term, we’re hoping to include registering to vote as part of the enrolment process at Durham, so that it’s even easier for students. For now though, get to the voter registration stalls and try and win your college that £250!

George Walker

A Senior Research Fellow at Durham University has had his fellowship revoked after comments he made online were revealed earlier this week.

Dr. Stephen Pax Leonard, a Senior Research Fellow at St Chad’s College, had stated that “tens of millions of Muslims support ISIS,” and said that the Mayor of London “just wants London to be a Mecca for Muslims”.

On his personal twitter account, @stephen_pax, he had written: “With so few Jews, it is extraordinary that the [Swedish] print media is largely owned and edited by

Jewish families.” However, these Tweets have since been deleted.

Leonard had also recently withdrawn from speaking at a conference for the far-right Traditional Britain Group (TBG).

The anti-immigration group had previously called for “non-European stock” to be “requested to return to their natural homelands” in 2013. The group has also previously referred to black people as “aliens”.

In an email explaining St Chad’s College’s decision to strip Leonard of his fellowship to members, the Principal of St Chad’s College, Dr Margaret Masson stated: “St Chad’s College is fully committed to free speech. However, as Principal, I believe that Dr Leon-

ard’s comments – as reported – were objectionable and illjudged.

“St Chad’s College is fully committed to free speech” “I have therefore withdrawn Dr Leonard’s research fellowship (which is an honorary, unpaid position).”

She added, “These are very difficult issues, bringing into sharp juxtaposition two values that St Chad’s College holds dear – that of being a diverse inclusive community which welcomes and supports people from a wide range of backgrounds, ethnicities and beliefs, while also being

an academic community absolutely committed to freedom of expression – even when that is challenging; this has provoked careful scrutiny of our policies and values and much rigorous discussion.”

“We appreciate that there are will be a variety of strongly held views on this, both within the St Chad’s community and beyond. We hope that discussion will be thoughtful and respectful as well as robust.”

Dr Pax studied Modern Languages at St Chad’s College as an undergraduate and began as a Senior Research Fellow in October 2017, with an interest in linguistic anthropology.

Dr. Stephen Pax Leonard has been contacted for comment.

DEBATE: Was the dismissal justified?

Oliver Griffiths Chad’s was wrong to remove him I suspect that there are many people like myself who don’t hold strong political views and rarely feel obligated to say what they think. I’m afraid that in light of recent events, I feel duty-bound to express my disagreement to the removal of Dr Stephen Pax Leonard’s fellowship at St Chad’s College. Moreover, I hold in greater contempt the assassination of his character by people who are completely ignorant of his work or those that have never had a discussion with him.

It is much easier just to agree with the majority Already this week I have heard students throw around words and phrases such as ‘racist’, ‘fascist’ and ‘alt right’ who upon me asking why they thought that, appeared dumb-founded that I didn’t agree.

I have taken the time to read Stephen’s work that I reject these unfair and slanderous characterisations especially as he states explicitly that he abhors identity politics and does not accept the alt right.

It is much easier to just agree with the safely moral majority rather than enquiring into the matter and thinking for oneself, but isn’t the point of being at an academic institution to inquire independently? Those who decided to form their opinions on one article without reading his work demonstrate themselves to be incapable of being independent learners.

There is no doubt in my mind that the College’s potentially damaged reputation was a large factor in the decision to remove Stephen’s fellowship but what comes first; the reputation of the college, or the duty of an academic institution to not reprimand an academic for speaking their mind and to defend freedom of expression? It is clear to me that the integrity of an academic institution is best maintained by not trying to distance itself from members that hold a controversial viewpoint.

Lucy Hull Chad’s was right to remove him

Dr Masson also mentioned the issue of free speech in her email.

Obviously, while this is again something that St Chad’s should be promoting,

Chad’s claim to pride themselves on diversity

I think that it is right that Stephen Pax has been removed from his position at St Chad’s. It is not appropriate for a member of St Chad’s to be making the comments that he did and for this to go unchallenged, especially when Chad’s claim to pride themselves on their diversity.

I do not think removing Dr Pax is necessarily in breach of this.

There is a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech; preserving the right to free speech does not mean that anything can be said without any consequence.

Students of every gender, race and belief should feel completely safe and at Durham, but this cannot happen when hatred and racism are allowed to go unchecked.

Free speech does not mean anything can be said without consequence

Tamara Celeste Herrington

By not removing him it would have seemed as though Chad’s were condoning the messages in the comments of Dr Pax. I feel that this is especially poignant at Durham, where we should be trying to encourage a more diverse range of students to apply, and comments like Dr Pax’s are doing little to encourage that and if anything, working against that goal.

We should be debating his opinions In terms of personal morality, I agree with the actions of St Chad’s College. Pax made disgusting comments that are completely divergent from the ethos of St Chad’s.

However, I wouldn’t have made

Photograph: Maddie Flisher

such a decision if I had the power.

I hoped for the college to invite Pax for a question and answer forum on his latest book, not because I agree with his views but instead to rebuke them. I fear that silencing him could embolden him or his base followers.

Silencing doesn’t stop the problem Silencing doesn’t stop the problem but moves it to another area.

It gives these people a sense that they are right and others are afraid that such ideas will ‘hurt our feelings’.

Pax especially tweets about ‘PC culture’ and the so-called suppression of free speech on university campuses. I’d hazard a guess that the removal of his fellowship will make him feel more valid in his views.

I say we should bring Pax to speak to us. We should listen to what he says, and then strip his arguments of all validity. The best way for us to silence him is to academically decimate his views.

Disgusting ideas like antisemitism and Islamophobia are best dealt with by making such believers see how wrong their prejudices are.

So, I detest what Pax has said, but I would rather debate him. I fear the college may have given more fuel to his fire.

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Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

News

Reformed student group constitutions rejected by Assembly sioned speech against the “undemocratic” nature of the changes. He told the assembly, “The thousands of student I represent have had no consultation about this motion”, and called the proposals “f****** absurd”.

Naomi Clarke Deputy News Editor A motion to alter the Students’ Union’s constitution was defeated last Thursday, after the Durham Students’ Union Assembly voted against the changes.

The ‘Durham SU Model Student Group Constitution’ was proposed

by Charlie Walker, SU Opportunities Officer, and intended to bring cohesion to the Durham SU with a “flexible and happy balance between a common regulatory framework” but still “protecting themselves – and individual student group innovation.”

The motion saw considerable debate at the assembly meeting.

The new ‘Model Student Group Constitution’ was formed by a Working Group in summer 2018, a group established by the Assembly and Board of Trustees last year to “find a new framework which struck that balance” between regulatory and protection for SU student groups.

The motion stated that there are “roughly 250 Durham SU student groups, all of which are fully regulated by the SU. They aren’t legally distinct bodies but operate with a high degree of trust and freedom.” To protect this freedom, this SU presents itself as a “legal backstop for student groups.”

One of the reasons this motion was sparked was due to students’ groups, such as Champagne Society and Islamic society, who sparked controversy in the press.

Durham SU was subsequently

Opportunities Officer, Charlie Walker, said the proposal was the “beginning and not the end of conversation about student groups”

▲ Students were concerned about the proposed changes (Durham Students’ Union) held liable for their actions, despite being unaware of the behaviour.

Prior to Assembly, Charlie Walker told Palatinate that such events were due to “mismanaging” by Durham Students’ Union.

The Chair of Societies Committee described the changes as “undemocratic” bemoaning the lack of student consultation He described the motion as “a really necessary first step to mak-

ing all of our student groups safe” and said “it’s not about cracking down on people’s ability to have an opinion on things.”

Charlie Walker, speaking at the Assembly, noted that his proposal of the motion was the “beginning and not the end of conversation about student groups.”

They stated that the way this document was rolled out was not perfect but they believed risks surrounding student groups were currently too high and a vote for a framework was required.

Arguments against the motion were put forward by Amelia McLoughlan, president of Durham

Students with Disabilities Association.

McLoughlan stated that SWDA “were not against student group guidelines as a concept” but that “the content of the motion and documents presented with it were incredibly confusing.”

McLoughlan remarked that “we were given no consultation” and that “one meeting was not enough time to understand this motion”, meanwhile Dan Boyle of Durham’s ESports society noted there was “too much grey area” in the new constitution.

Steven Lowes, the Chair of Societies Committee made an impas-

Clarification on hotly contested points including societies’ freedom to speak to the press was amended to read that each student group would be able to give comments to the press as a member of an individual society rather than as a representative of the SU. The original motion made it compulsory for each committee to have particular officers, but amendments were passed such that the executive positions may be named as appropriate to the group, as long as positions encompassing the roles of Chair, ViceChair, Treasurer and Society Secretary were upheld.

Meg Haskins, Welfare and Liberation Officer, discussed what the constitution, once fully discussed and rectified, could provide.

Haskins stated there will be a document about support that groups can get, “the student group agreement codifies support for groups and hold [SU] to account for that”.

Durham student accommodation second best in UK Madeleine Horton Deputy News Editor Durham University has been ranked second in a list of the best student accommodation in the UK. 17,929 students took part in the survey via the website StudentCrowd, which compiled the results to release a list of the top twenty universities.

Only one in ten Durham students would describe college halls as value for money Students were asked to choose a rating of between one and five on several factors, including; location, cleanliness, social spaces, social experience, WiFi and hall management.

Loughborough University was crowned first overall in the list, while the University of St Andrews

trailed Durham as third best in the country, and the only Scottish university to make the top twenty.

The results come at a time of significant controversy regarding the University’s student accommodation, as the University announced that it would raise annual college residence fees by 3.5% to £7,672 next year in order to meet rising staff, building and utility costs.

The decision was met by backlash from the student community, who held a protest on Palace Green as part of the Ripped Off campaign, the move was also rejected in a vote by the local parish council.

the standard of some university accommodation, with claims of mould, rat infestations and dilapidated buildings.

A Palatinate survey in February

found that only one in ten Durham students would describe college halls as value for money.

Owen Adams, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Colleges and Student Ex-

“

There are more major works planned over the coming months and years

Loughborough University was crowned first overall, while the University of St Andrews trailed Durham in third Some students complained that the increase in costs did not reflect

perience), said: “We continue to invest in our Colleges to offer an excellent student experience.

“Recent examples of refurbishment projects include a £5 million redevelopment of accommodation and the social space at Hatfield College, and there are more major investment works planned over the coming months and years.”

(barnyz via Flickr)

”

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

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News

University apologises to staff for late October pay Madeleine Horton Deputy News Editor A technical error in Durham University’s payroll system has resulted in delayed salary payments for 80 academic staff members.

Internal emails sent out to those affected explained that they would receive only 75% of their due wages at this time, and apologised for the natural impact this would have on individuals.

It has been reported that some staff members failed to receive any explanatory emails, and discovered the error only upon checking their bank account.

Staff were advised to contact the University Finance Department in order to receive the ‘advance payment’ of just 75% of their monthly salary. The remaining 25% will be reimbursed at the end of November.

This is reportedly the second year in a row that such a delay has occurred Pay for both October and November will be transferred to staff who do not apply to the Finance Department at the end of this

month.

This is reportedly the second year in a row that such a delay in payments has occurred.

Several users took to social media to express particular concern about staff members employed on hourly contracts. Such employees face greater financially difficulties as a result of pay delays, especially during the expensive Christmas period.

“Durham Uni seem to think that paying staff is optional” Many Durham academics and Students Union members have voiced support online for affected staff, and have criticised the university for failing its employees.

DurhamCasuals, a group of academics which speaks out against employment practices in higher education bodies, tweeted: “While most staff got paid as usual for October, Durham Casuals is hearing from a number of people who haven’t. This is not on.”

On Twitter, UCU also wrote: ‘Durham Uni seem to think that paying staff is optional.’

Jon Bryan, Regional Support Official for the UCU said: “We have been told by the University that this affected around

80 people, who now have all been informed. We have also been told that the problem has been rectified and will not happen again” “Our concern is that something similar happened last year and some casual staff did not get paid at the end of October 2017 when they should have been.”

“It is not acceptable that staff are not paid for the work that they have done. Particularly when it affects casual staff who feel precarious enough as it is. The union will continue to support members in helping to resolve matters like this and is looking to campaign around these issues over this academic year.”

George Walker, DSU President, took to Twitter to say; “Regularly hear stories of not being put on payroll and partial ‘advance’ payments for student staff too. Simply not good enough for the University to treat its staff with such neglect and complacency.”

“It is not acceptable that staff are not paid for the work that they have done” In response to complaints from staff, Denise McConnell, interim Chief Financial Officer, commented: “We apologise profusely to the

80 valued colleagues who have been impacted by this error in our systems.

“We can confirm that all those affected have now been paid.

“We have reviewed our current processes and identified the fault

(Maddie Flisher)

in our system which allowed this to come about. We will now be able to ensure a mistake like this will not happen again, as we fully appreciate the difficulties that late payment can cause.”

“Durham has a culture of panic when it comes to housing” Continued from front page ....and ask questions.

“From what people have said, certain colleges start worrying about housing much earlier than others. It seems to be endemic to the Bailey ones.”

“I think in general I found the process to be pretty stressful. It’s interesting how everyone enters a sudden frenzy of panic about finding housemates and searching for houses in the ‘prime location’.”

Meg Haskins, Welfare and Lib-

eration officer for Durham Students’ Union, issued a response to Durham’s housing situation on the SU website, in which she stated that “Durham has, for many years, had a culture of panic when it comes to housing. Students sign contracts earlier and earlier every year, trying to secure the best houses in Durham.”

She wrote: “Estate agents ultimately want you to sign for their houses as soon as possible, and so artificially create an atmosphere in which students believe they must secure homes as quickly as

possible.

“This is a marketing and competition tactic that does not benefit students. Not only does this atmosphere make you rush into a decision you may regret, there’s a good chance you will also end up paying more than the house is worth.”

However, Sean Lawless, Durham Graduate and director of Bill Free Homes, disputed the claim this situation was to the benefit of estate agents. Of Bill Free Homes’ 200 properties in the city, around 120 have already been signed, as opposed to 80 at this point last year, and 70 in the letting year 2016/2017.

One agent described this year’s process as “absolute mayhem”

▲The popular student area of the Viaduct (John Whitehouse via Flickr)

In reference to these statistics, Lawless said: “On the face of it, it may seem that we would be happy with this, but we are really not. We would much like to see a 0% next to our statistics until January and start to let our properties from then.”

He added: “We have started discussions with the student population and hope to meet with the

University soon to see what can be done to create an agreed letting period for all, say from the start of term in January.

“The time has come to make a fairer system for all students at the university, a system that puts students first” “This has to be led by agencies like ourselves, the University and students - this has been mooted for many years and has failed many times, however I am sure the time has come to make a fairer system for all students at the university, a system that puts students first”.

Similarly, an agent at Frampton Roebuck commented that the rush to sign houses is “unfounded and unnecessary”. He added: “It would make our lives as agents a lot easier if the houses let more slowly.”

He denied the claim agents had been building hype, citing their choice to maintain a later release date of the 1st November, despite having to turn away students who came looking for properties before the release date. He said “you don’t turn people away from a shop unless you’ve got reason”.

These sentiments were shared

by Morgan Douglas: “We do not support the hype and pressureselecting your home needs to be very seriously considered.

“Just as Morgan Douglas supported Durham City County Council with one To Let board in every street, Morgan Douglas would also be happy to work with Durham University and partners on the subject.”

The rush to sign houses is “unfounded and unnecessary” Owen Adams, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Colleges and Student Experience), said: “The University’s Accommodation Office offers advice to both current and prospective students in seeking privately rented accommodation. Its website includes much useful information, including house-hunting tips and answers to frequently asked questions.

“Additionally, Colleges and Junior Common Rooms provide advice during Michaelmas Term, and we are continuing to work with Durham Students’ Union.”

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Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

News

International students must return to Durham for resits

Lydia Blundell Deputy News Editor Durham University has announced that from 2019 onwards, all students will have to return to Durham to resit their examinations.

Each year, following the main exam period of May and June, an additional resit timetable is in place throughout August for those who did not get the results that they needed or were unable to sit their exams.

30% of Durham students are from outside the UK Up until now, students with permanent residency outside of the UK could go to the British Council to request that they take the examination in their home country, if that was a facility offered. There was a £50 charge to take exams overseas, with the possibility of further charges incurred by the British Council.

Previously, international students would not have to travel back to Durham for their resits, so long as they had approval from Student Registry and their aca-

demic department and providing that their exams were not practical or computer-based.

“We regularly experienced issues with various overseas venues not following invigilation and quality control regulations” However, international students will now be expected to travel back to Durham in August this year if they have to resit their examinations, the results of which they will only find out two months prior.

Michael Gilmore, Academic Registrar, said: “In recent years, the University has experienced increasing problems with the organisations that host its overseas examinations, including the reliability of venues, the quality control of examination invigilation and the cost to students. These issues were compounded by the changes to the structure of the academic year.

“In October 2017, the University decided to offer exam re-sits in Durham only, and not abroad.

As it stands, 30% of Durham

▲ Previously international students did not have to travel back to Durham for resits (Thomas Huang via Flickr) students are of non-UK origin and will be subject to these changes, should they need to resit their examinations.

Gilmore added, “Prior to this decision, we regularly experienced serious issues with various overseas venues not following invigilation and quality control regula-

tions, refusing to host re-sit exams at the last minute, and not being accessible to disabled students.

“Not all examinations could be taken overseas; students with practical or computer-based examinations had to return to Drham.

“Students re-sitting exams in

British Council venues overseas often had to pay considerable costs to do so. In many cases, it was cheaper for students to return to Durham.”

New Student Employability Fund available for disadvantaged Melissa Tutesigensi Deputy News Editor The new Student Employability Fund is available for students and graduates from families whose household income is less than £25,000 per annum.

The motivation behind the fund is to help students compete in an “an increasingly competitive labour market”.

The contribution of the fund includes the cost of travel, subsistence and suitable work clothing.

A separate application for clothing (up to a maximum of £150) and up to three applications for subsistence (daily allowance of

£20) and travel (one return journey up to a maximum allowance of £150, a weekly travel pass up to a maximum of £25 or monthly travel pass up to a maximum of £100) can be made each year.

The scheme aims to help students compete in an “increasingly competitive labour market” The online form is available on the University website along with details of how to get in contact to find out more information.

Durham Students’ Union Opportunities Officer, Charlie Walker, said: “Every student in Durham

should be able to access the wider opportunities available to them while studying here.

“There are many extra costs that come up for students in Durham, whether that’s the cost of a train ticket to recruitment events or pricey extracurricular activities.”

He continued: “It’s so important that all students have access to the opportunities that will shape their future, and so I’m really pleased to see the new student Employability Fund addressing this issue and know the difference it will make to so many students when planning their progression from Durham.

“The fund is a really positive step and the kind of thing I hope we can begin to see more of in Durham.”

(Durham University)

National Union of Students on the verge of bankruptcy Lydia Blundell Deputy News Editor The National Union of Students (NUS) have announced that they are on the verge of bankruptcy, after failing to meet their projected £3 million deficit this year with reserve funds.

The NUS released a statement regarding the matter: “The boards, officers and executive team are agreed that we need to deliver fundamental corporate,

democratic and financial reform by summer 2019.

The NUS failed to meet their projected £3 million deficit with reserve funds “This means there will be a range of proposals brought to a strategic conversation meeting in November 2018 for consideration and refinement with the help of our members, and subsequently to national conference 2019 to be

voted on by our members.”

NUS president Shakira Martin, along with CEO Peter Robertson, also sent out a letter to Student Union presidents and Chief Executive’s throughout the country to announce their financial situation.

The letter refers to “competition in student discounts” as a reason behind their financial struggles. Unidays and Student Beans both offer students free accounts which can then provide them with discounts from numerous stores.

Comparatively, the NUS

charged £12 for their NUS extra card, also providing two and three year cards at prices of £22 and £32 respectively. The NUS recently replaced the extra scheme, which was their main source of income, with a Totum card to better serve their members and to try and rival their competitors.

To remain solvent, the NUS will be borrowing against the building and making cuts

The letter announces that the NUS are facing, “competitors in student discount, trading support and policy and strategic support.

We have faced challenges to all three of these income streams, but rarely to all three at the same time.”

Looking forward, Martin states that in order to remain solvent the company will be, “borrowing against the building we own, making cuts to staff and turning off some of the activity we deliver.”

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

7

Investigations

Parties, profit and paranoia: Drug dealing in Durham

Investigations examines the culture of student drug dealing at Durham University Joe Banfield Investigations Editor A number of Durham undergraduates are making thousands of pounds of profit from selling illegal drugs purchased on the dark web to fellow students, a Palatinate investigation has found.

The drugs, which are bought from torrented sites such as Dream Market and Alpha Bay, can be sold at street value for up to 700% profit, fuelling nights out in Newcastle and afterparties in Viaduct basements.

Durham students exploiting this gap in the drugs market have spoken extensively to Palatinate about why they do it: for the money; for a freer social life; for the cold-blooded feel of being a criminal escaping justice.

In an unprecedented series of interviews, four Durham student dealers talk openly of their fears and dreams, between them describing a subculture in the city that until now has managed to stay well underground.

Meet the Dealers

Dec, a Trevelyan College finalist, smokes weed. For Dec it’s the textbook method: find a local dealer you can trust, and have the cannabis delivered to your doorstep.

“It’s an out-of-car-window job”, he says. “My guy at the moment literally just drives up to my front door.”

In a city where the police chief has called publicly for marijuana to be legalised, “people who deal only weed are a lot more relaxed than others”.

But some of Dec’s friends have in the past couple of years taken an altogether different tack. They “pick stuff up off the dark web” and “sell it off to mates for a profit.”

What’s the dark web? As Dec puts it: “It’s just Amazon for drugs”.

Dream Market; Silk Road 3; Alpha Bay: dozens of trusted Amazon-like sites exist, which anyone can access, and no-one can trace.

Cheap drugs, tried and tested. To prospective dealers with some time on their hands, nothing could be more appealing.

“I carry acid around with me in a book. It just slots in there. Dogs can’t smell it, and sometimes even I can’t find it, let alone the police”

It was the ease of buying from the dark web that got Ralph, a Hild Bede undergraduate, into routinely selling class As to his friends.

“Truly”, Ralph says, “truly, the stuff you get on there is the purest, the least messed with, because it depends on a rating system to sustain itself, and you’re never going to get that with a face-to-face with a random guy on the street”.

Ralph has never used the dark web for profit. But some Durham students have spotted the market’s gap.

“Last year I made about four thousand pounds in six months.

Three quarters of that I made in one month, right after exams. So I guess it was worth doing” – that’s Wilf speaking; he’s a third-year with a taste for fine clothes, and he’s looking for a job in The City when he graduates.

“I consider myself to be a businessman, and a lot of what I do is to do with money. I’m not really that poor, I don’t need it, it’s just the attraction is there and it’s so easy to do.”

Wilf started out selling to his friends, then their friends, and now he has a whole network of people who come to him without

▲ MDMA tablets can be bought cheaply on the dark web and sold for profit in person, fuelling nights out in Newcastle and afterparties in Viaduct basements (Wikimedia Commons and Yannig Van de Wouwer via Flickr) him even having to try. He describes himself as intelligent and studious.

“I carry acid around with me in a book. It just slots in there. Dogs can’t smell it, and sometimes even I can’t find it, let alone the police”.

MDMA he buys for £5 per gram, he says, and sells it on for £30. Ketamine doesn’t bring in much profit, but spend £2.50 on tabs of acid, and you can sell them for a tenner.

Xanax and Valium are 50p each, but Wilf sells two for £5, while an £8-box of nitrous oxide canisters can sell for £50 when priced individually.

Struggling for scale? The multithousand-pound-a-month businesses that students like Wilf are running are “miniscule” compared to “the two main dealers in Durham”, who treat the trade as a fulltime job. And one of those dealers, Wilf and Palatinate’s other sources all agree, is “number one top dog in Durham” – and a student at the university, too.

“I know I am a criminal - it’s just the money is so easy and so good”

(ADTeasdale via Flickr)

James, a friend of this “top dog”, is a social sciences student at Durham. Buying his weed from “the other main supplier” for £180 per ounce, selling it for £300 in smaller bags to students who trusted him over a local dealer, and trading roughly one ounce per day, he was making thousands of pounds of profit every month.

“One night I dealt three ounces, so that was a grand of cash that I was handling in a single night”.

After some weeks of dealing and hedonistic nights out, eventually he found his supplier too unreliable, and switched to buying from the dark web.

“Last year I made about four thousand pounds in six months. So I guess it was worth doing”

“This other guy was just getting it off someone else higher up the chain. If you’re smart, you get it off the dark web. It comes vacuumpacked, in a normal parcel. You can have it delivered to college halls undetected.”

But it’s not always drugs equals money plus freedom. James and Wilf both talked passionately about the fear and paranoia that possesses a dealer; the torment of believing every day that if you’re not quite careful enough, you’re going to get caught. In fact, that fear is what made James quit.

“You know when you’re smoking inside and there’s just balloons everywhere and the police could just come because of a noise complaint any minute, that’s scary. At that point you’re just stressing, at the back of your head, you are just like, ‘fuck!’ So it just sort of started spiralling out of control.”

Wilf, too, is kept up at night by the thought of being found out.

“I know I am a criminal”, he says. “I’m quite a paranoid person.

I take a lot of precautions and I’m sometimes anxious, sometimes too much, because I can look at other dealers and see bait behaviours, like people going round

clubs absolutely wrecked off their face selling drugs and I have no idea how they don’t get caught.”

But for now, avoiding the police, and well under the University’s radar, Wilf and his fellow dark web dealers will continue to make thousands of pounds of profit, supplying illegal substances to hundreds of youngsters in Durham looking to spice up their nightlife experience.

And, as far as they’re concerned, they’re going to get out of it scotfree.

The University Responds

Owen Adams, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Colleges and Student Experience, said: “We’re concerned to learn of Palatinate’s findings and we’d like further details so as to understand better the scale of the problem they identify.

“Students found selling illegal drugs would clearly be committing a criminal offence and breaching the University’s disciplinary regulations, which would be applied accordingly.

“We work closely with Durham Constabulary, which has not expressed concerns about the sale and availability of drugs on campus. If substantive concerns are raised we will consult local police about the appropriate response.”

To preserve their anonymity, the students’ names have been altered.

If you been affected by any related issues, please contact the University Counselling Service.

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

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Sexism in Players: Durham’s newest nightclub’s unsavoury side Page 10

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Comment

Access to Durham: who’s to blame?

Amelia Hatfield looks at the growing problem of access for disadvantaged students to Durham Amelia Hatfield According to the BBC, 93% of teenagers in England attend state schools, yet at Durham the percentage of students from state school’s is at a mere 60.5%.

This presents a clear problem: those who’ve already had the most privileged start to life disproportionately continue to gain advantages, progressing into higher education and consequently onto the higher earning jobs that a degree from an elite university grants. So why is this, and is Durham University to blame?

It is persistently argued that Durham University is not doing enough to address access issues, both in the admission and retention of students from state schools and recent events at Durham have gone on to highlight this. Last year, it was announced that the cost of catered college accommodation would rise to £7,672 a year, despite the maximum available

maintenance loan being £8,700.

Such high accommodation fees inevitably discourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds from applying. Consequently, the less financially privileged are alienated and excluded, contributing to the low percentage of state school students at Durham.

It is essential that we do not forget the root causes of access inequality Furthermore, the university has a reputation for being dominated by privately educated students.

This can depress applications from disadvantaged students, promoting the idea that somewhere like Durham is ‘not for people like me’. Even at Cambridge they try to mitigate this alienating effect through access officers on each JCR working to ensure that both students and potential applicants feel integrated into the university and not intimidated by the new, often overwhelming surroundings and people. Thus far, it seems that

Durham is lacking in such initiatives.

This is not to say that Durham does nothing to confront access issues. It has recently established an Access and Admissions Committee which ‘considers applicants’ qualifications in light of their socioeconomic backgrounds’ and provides bursaries to help some students afford college accommodation.

Foundation courses for students lacking the required A Levels for some degree programmes are also held to help widen participation. Additionally, there is a push for improved access by various student groups, which has been an aim of Durham Working-Class Students Association, and the newly established 93% Club Durham, which is also advocating for better access and offers support and resources to current students.

High accommodation fees inevitably discourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds from applying However, fixating solely on the university’s role in increasing access

detracts focus from deeper causes of inequality. To greatly simplify the issue, access is more systemic a problem than can be solved by lowering grade requirements for students from disadvantaged schools. Access is a problem rooted in the way the education system is organised, stacked favourably towards those who attend more elite schools. Compared to their private counterparts, state schools have a chronic funding shortage.

A 2016 guardian report illustrated that per pupil spending in state schools amounts to a fraction of that in private schools. On the surface, lower funding equates to a lack of adequate resources and facilities, but it also deeply affects what opportunities pupils are granted. This is apparent in relation to personal statements: whilst in some state schools advice on university applications and UCAS is sparse, extracurricular activities crucial to personal statements such as fieldwork or music lessons are also severely lacking. Being unable to demonstrate experiences outside of the classroom, like a ‘trip to

Iceland’s volcanoes’ or ‘volunteering in Malaysia’, puts state school pupils at a significant disadvantage.

Access is more systemic a problem than can be solved by lowering grade requirements.

The cause of this inequality in funding can be attributed to a number of sources, including the coalition government’s academisation of schools, continued austerity policies and an outdated system that allows private schools to segregate students by economic background.

What is clear is that inequity in funding creates often insurmountable barriers to accessing higher education. Therefore, it is essential that, whilst we continue to press the university to be more inclusive, we do not forget the root causes of access inequality. These are the real issues that must be tackled if inequality in access to higher education is to ever be eradicated - a plaster in the shape of lower grade requirements simply won’t do.

Black History Month: “When was that?”

Hannah Anson Black History Month happens every October. It has done so since 1970, when it was first established in America by the Black United Students at Kent State University, and from 1987 in Britain, under the promotion of Akyaaba AddaiSebo, the leading proponent of BHM in the UK. As such, this is clearly not a new tradition. This month of celebration is not merely the product of a new wave of millennial “political correctness”; it is a long established commemoration of the contributions of the black community.

This month of celebration is not merely the product of a new wave of millennial “political correctness” So why was this celebration allowed to fall so far under the radar at Durham? When researching for this article I asked numerous friends about their experience of Black History Month, and was met almost unanimously with the

response of “when was that?”

One could argue that the University is under no obligation to promote Black History Month, that it is not their role to become involved in student politics. But even if you believe this, it is hard to deny that they have an obligation to at least advertise it; to make students aware of this seminal celebration and at least give them the opportunity to participate, should they so wish.

Perhaps there were simply no events for the University to broadcast.

But quelle surprise; this was not the case. Durham People of Colour Association, DPOCA, organised not one but four panel talks throughout the month, examining crucial issues such as the experiences of black women, the concept of ‘B(l) ack Handed Compliments’ and the extent to which progress has really been made in 2018.

The Feminist Societies of St Cuthbert’s and Josephine Butler also organised a talk and workshop

by Fope Olaleye, who sits on the NUS Black Students’ Committee and National Executive Council, entitled ‘Decolonising Gender: Feminist Perspectives on Black History Month.’ Fope gave a thoughtprovoking workshop, giving

personal, harrowing accounts of everyday racism. They examined the damaging effects of growing up in an education system where the only curriculum offered on black history related to slavery, never examining the developments and achievements of the black community in its own right.

I asked numerous friends about Black History Month, and was met with “when was that?”

Yet out of a University of around 12,000 students, less than 50 attended this talk. And why was this? It was not the fault of dedicated students who worked hard to promote the event; instead, I believe it was because, at a fundamental level, the University did not sufficiently engage with the celebration as a whole. Of the dozens of emails I received this term, only one – at the end of October - related to Black History Month. While this was a worthy tribute which appeared on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion webpages, it was clearly not sufficient, given that the overwhelming majority of students I have asked about Black History

Month did not even know it had occurred.

I believe we have a responsibility to engage in progressive debate At this point, some people might interject that Durham is not a University renowned for its ethnic diversity, with black students making up only 2.3% of the full-time population in 2017/18. Some might use this to argue that Black History Month is not representative of the student body as a whole, and that therefore the significance of this month is lessened.

To me, this seems a dangerous argument. If anything, the fact that Durham is a predominantly white University is an even greater reason to be promoting events such as these.

DPOCA organised four panel talks Progress and tolerance are dependent on knowledge, and as one of the most highly achieving establishments in the UK, I believe we have a responsibility to engage in progressive debate – but how can we do so if these debates are not even properly advertised to us?

Elvert Barnes via Flickr

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Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

Comment

Comment debates: a safe drug campus?

As Sheffield’s SU offers harm reduction advice to students, Comment debates safe drug taking initiatives across universities Josh Gallichan

Better safe than sorry?

Anybody who denies that there is a relationship between illegal drugs and students is either incredibly naïve or incredibly ignorant. A survey published this year by the National Union of Students suggests that around 39% of students use illegal drugs, indicating that this is clearly present in University culture.

Despite recent criticism, the Sheffield SU defended their drug advice policy, with a spokesman arguing “we think it is ­important to ensure that... if a s­tudent does choose to take drugs, they are as informed as possible and take steps to take reasonable precautions”.

Obviously, the SU’s primary message is ‘do not take drugs’. However, it faces the reality that despite this, many still do. Such an approach prioritises student safety over any criticism the University may face, and while the issue of normalisation is an obvious concern, the fact that nearly 2 in 5 students use drugs suggests that for a large number it is already, in some form, a normal part of university life.

“Sheffield should

be commended for taking positive, harm reducing steps, and it is my view that Durham should duly follow suit

address the root of the problem.

Because the issue is not the act of consumption itself but its consequences. With cocaine and MDMA related deaths at their highest since records began, surely the primary concern of all Universities should be the safety of students, and ultimately, Buckingham’s proposed anti-drug contracts will not stop one from overdosing.

How do you ask for help with a drug problem in an environment in which they do not officially exist?

Moreover, how do you ask for help with a drug problem in an environment in which they do not officially exist, and possession could jeopardise your hard-earned place at the University? In a time where Universities especially are trying to create an open environment to discuss mental illness, why should addiction or other drug related issues be treated differently?

So where does Durham stand?

Well, the current stance is a confusing one. The University Code of Practice states “any students found to be using or in possession of any controlled drug, including cannabis, on University premises will be subject to its disciplinary procedures and the police will be informed”.

However, the University also co-authored a joint report earlier this year with drug-related harm reduction charity The Loop, who have recently become prominent in offering drug testing at British music festivals. This report presented a different view, suggesting measures such as testing facilities in nightlife areas.

Report co-author Professor Fiona

Measham, Director of The Loop and Professor of Criminology at Durham University said “UK festivals have been introducing evidence-based and effective measures to address the growing drug-related problems faced in the UK… Drawing on festival drug policy and practice, this report makes key recommendations to bolster our night time economy and to protect the customers and venues within them”.

This displays a slight contradiction.

Currently, the University and SU do not offer anything in the way of advice or testing, but have openly stated that these are important and effective measures. If the University acknowledges that harm reduction is better than the alternative, then why has their official stance on it not changed?

This is quite possibly due to a fear of negative media representation; understandably, the University would not want to be associated with headlines suggesting it promotes drug usage.

Currently the University and SU do not offer anything in the way of advice or testing However, the reality remains that where advice and testing has been trialed, it has created a safer environment in which people can make informed choices and have access to help if they need it. The SU in Sheffield should be commended for taking positive, harm reducing steps, and it is my view that Durham should duly follow suit.

Dominic Dixey

We shouldn’t be encouraging drug taking Sheffield University’s recent decision to provide information on how to take drugs safely is symptomatic of a country whose drug policy is fundamentally misguided. As Peter Hitchens details at length in his book “The War We Never Fought” - the view that the “war on drugs” has failed is an utter fallacy because, as the title suggests, we haven’t properly enforced our drug laws since they were passed in 1971.

Recreational drugs have been de-facto decriminalized for decades now. Police chiefs openly boast about how their forces no longer make arrests for drug possession.

This move by Sheffield University is simply the latest example of a country that has given up on trying to stop people from taking recreational drugs and is sliding inevitably towards legalisation.

“

Providing advice on how to take drugs only seeks to encourage consumption

”

”

In contrast, Buckingham University’s plan to become the UK’s first drugs-free campus is, quite frankly, unrealistic. Even their Vice-Chancellor admitted that such measures are unlikely to “stamp drugs out altogether”. Buckingham’s use of sniffer dogs on campus in 2016 was borderline Orwellian, and while these punitive measures may act to deter a few people, they do not

Victor via Flickr

Marco Verch via Flickr

A labour councillor (and son of a shadow-minister) was recently arrested for possession but spared jail time by a judge because the quantity of drugs was deemed to be for personal use and not profit making. He had around 30g of ecstasy (enough for around 250 pills), 6 grams of ketamine (enough for around 100 doses, depending on how it’s consumed) and nearly 8 grams of cocaine (enough for as much as 100 lines). The notion that it was all for personal consumption is patently absurd and serves to prove the extent to which we no longer care about deterring people

from taking drugs. It begs the question – what would one have to do in order to be jailed?

Students at university who haven’t experimented with drugs are in a minority and on campus it’s probably easier to get your hands on a baggie than it is a rightwing newspaper. Providing advice on how to take drugs only seeks to encourage consumption and does nothing to actually resolve the problem. No policy solutions, whether they be from government, charities or in this case, universities, seem to be based around preventing drug consumption. The most effective way of doing this would be an active deterrent.

They should be ashamed of themselves Buckingham University claims to be taking a different approach and hopes to become the UK’s first drug free campus. It asks students to sign a contract saying they will not take illegal substances on university premises and brings the police and sniffer dogs onto campus.

However, even they say this is to “help” students and not be “punitive”. It is completely baffling that we find it so unpalatable to punish people who are committing a crime. Proper punishment would actively deter people from taking drugs (particularly at a young age) rather than pathetically trying to manage the symptoms of the problem. To say this has been tried but failed is utter nonsense. For the last 40 years we have gradually weakened our stance and allowed drug taking to become more and more normalised.

We are constantly told that today’s youth are experiencing a mental health crisis and yet somehow we need to be more and more relaxed about allowing them to take mind altering substances. Or, in the case of Sheffield University, actively advise them on how to do so. They should be ashamed of themselves. If we really want to stop this scourge the hard truth is we need to actively deter, not encourage drug taking.

HAVE A DIFFERENT OPINION?

Tell us what you think by emailing us at comment@ palatinate.org.uk

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

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Comment

Political groups hold the key to defusing climate change Ben Wynn

It’s undeniable that environmentalism as a movement has changed dramatically over the past few decades. What was once a fringe movement of activists, in groups like Greenpeace, has become a widespread popular phenomenon.

We’re told the way to save the planet isn’t for a few to hug trees or protest oil rigs, but for everyone to make small changes in our day to day lives.

We’re constantly urged to reduce meat consumption, to separate our recycling and switch off unused appliances. At the same time, environmental activism groups are viewed as outdated, even extremists.

The media coverage these groups receive is overwhelmingly negative, as they’re portrayed as ineffectual neo-Luddites, carrying out irresponsible protests more for

their own publicity than to achieve any environmental good.

Just 100 companies have been responsible for 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 The effectiveness of this shift in approach is questionable. Is it beneficial for us to embrace a model where consumers are expected to take all responsibility for climate change? Should we be rejecting the very political activist groups that founded the climate change movement?

To understand the most effective way to fight climate change, we must first understand where it’s coming from. A recent report by the Carbon Disclosure Project showed that just 100 companies have been responsible for 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since Roberta F. via Wikipedia Commons

1988. Most of our gas emissions are the result of a handful of megacorporations, and while consumers are responsible for using the products these companies produce (such as fuels, plastics and food) the only way to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions is to fundamentally change the way these companies operate.

Influencing the way an international corporation works has never been an easy task. Major polluters have understood the significant and imminent danger posed by climate change for decades now: the 1991 film Climate of Concern warns of climate refugees, famine and flooding, a warning “endorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists”. Not only was the information available at the time, major polluters clearly understood it, since the video was produced by the oil company Shell.

Since then Shell have continued to invest in ever more polluting hydrocarbon sources and to fund lobby groups that cast doubts over the scientific consensus on climate change.

It’s naïve to assume we can affect the behaviour of global corporations by simply changing our spending habits: most consumers can’t afford to drive electric cars, buy local produce or enact many of the other changes supposed to reduce our

carbon footprint. It seems wrong to continue to pin the blame on the consumer when the Shells of the world, who clearly understand the issue and have the power to fix it, make only token efforts to alter their environmental impact.

If then, the responsibility lies with corporations, is there anything we can really do? To clarify there is no issue with doing the small things: recycling, reducing our meat consumption and trying to buy sustainable products are important changes we can all make. But they aren’t the solution. History shows that the only way to really change the way corporation act is through law changes, they’ll pay no heed to any moral arguments when they answer at the end of the day, to shareholders.

It’s naïve to assume we can affect the behavior of global corporations We need strong action from national governments, introducing punitive carbon taxes, and banning the dirtiest fossil fuels such as tar sands and oil shales. Only by forcing them to change will we see any movement from the true culprits of climate change.

To effect such change, and take a meaningful stance against climate

change, the most important action we can take is political.

To effect such change, and take a meaningful stance, the most important action we can take is political Through powerful and aggressive activism, we can force governments to hold businesses to account.

Political groups like Greenpeace will always be labelled by some as extreme, even dangerous, but that’s always the case with such movements.

It’s in the interest of the corporations who hold so much power today to paint environmental activists as a threat, because they threatened unchecked power of those corporations, just as the establishment tried to paint the suffragettes as dangerous in the early 20th century, and the American regime in the 60s attempted to smear civil rights leaders.

Those who pose a threat to the vested interests of the rich and powerful will always face such attacks, but despite this it’s the political efforts of such groups, not the tiny lifestyle changes of consumers duped into thinking they’re guilty, that holds the key to defusing the ticking bomb that is climate change.

Sexism in Players: Durham’s newest nightclub’s unsavoury side Henry Jones The most recent addition to Durham’s humble collection of nightclubs is the franchise Players, taking up Loveshack’s previous location in the Walkergate area.

Having only been open for a little over a month, the bar has already drawn some negative attention.

The uniform also fails to provide pockets On entering you quickly notice the staff uniforms — or specifically, the uniforms of the female bar staff.

While male waiters are dressed in long-sleeved black shirts and trousers, the women don fauxcheerleading outfits that make Hooters Girls look conservative.

The uniform is comprised of a tiny bralette top and a skirt so minuscule that one member of staff said, ‘some of the girls wear shorts underneath’.

The uniform also fails to provide pockets, leaving the women no option but to lodge their bottle openers into their bras. On ordering a beer then, one may be treated the experience of said opener being

foisted from its bosomed location, opening your beverage, and being nestled home. What a treat for us and, I’m sure, the bar staff performing such a task.

Speaking to a male bartender, he said that he found ‘the difference between the male and female uniforms weird’ and ‘outdated’.

‘Everyone that comes up [to the bar] will go for the girls’, and he suggested that the uniforms were clearly aimed at increasing sales.

One female source close to management (who does not work on the bar) said she found the female uniforms to be ‘perverse and problematic’. ‘It seems increasingly unfair that the men can be completely covered up yet the women are forced to wear skimpy outfits in ridiculous temperatures.’

She also stated that while, ‘to some extent it is their choice, this image and message is not welcomed by Durham students.’ One female clubgoer said she thought the uniform disparity was ‘verging on exploitative’, and her male friend said that he was ‘not a fan’ — it is ‘clearly just to get boys to buy drinks’.

Put simply, I see the bar as a sexist institution. This is 2018, the supposedly post-MeToo, postequal-pay-transparency, postrubbish-like-this era, and somehow

Players can still operate an abhorrent uniform policy.

However, one female bar worker said that ‘none of [the women] have a problem with it’, adding: ‘I feel fine in the uniform and if I didn’t, I would ask to change’. Although, when I asked a different bartender if she had to wear the uniform she said, ‘Yeah. It’s what all the Players bars do. When you sign up they say here’s your uniform.’

The problems are not just behind the bar, as ‘outside it’s different … just because of the kind of men you get here on a Saturday … I often change before getting my cab home.’

The uniforms in Players are a sexist and outdated presence in Durham Of course, people can choose to wear what they like, and it would be ridiculous to shame women for wearing any kind of clothing. But why should we tolerate a uniform that leaves staff feeling vulnerable?

Work uniforms should be provided on the most genderneutral terms possible, and the choice to bear the majority of your flesh should be a personal one,

not the expected position of your employer. It is extremely distasteful to use the hypersexualisaiton of staff to boost your profits, and the situation is exacerbated when such a blatant gender imbalance is in play.

Players pay a middling rate of £6.08, but on weekends that increases to £7.50, making it one of the highest-paid bars in Durham.

Pairing that with the £1 bonus for each person that staff manage to sign up to events, along with other cash bonuses for sharing promotions on social media, it becomes fairly obvious that the club offers the most lucrative deal in Durham. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the majority of women working in the club expressed little

issue with a uniform that provides them access to a greater income.

Daniel Ormonde, general manager of Players Bar Durham, told me he did ‘not have an opinion on the uniforms.’ He shrugged off suggestions of a sexist uniform policy and said that decisions like this are made by company directors, not general managers. ‘I just work for a company’, he added.

In short, the uniforms in Players are a sexist and outdated presence in Durham, and it baffles me that such a policy can still be enacted.

It is time that people woke up to everyday sexism and stopped ignoring such flagrant disregard for equality. Is that too much to ask?

Elliot Brown via Flickr

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November

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Profile

In the Crick of it: regret, pressure and evolution in the world of political journalism Esteemed Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick speaks to Profile on why he doesn’t vote, what Theresa May was like at university, and why we should want to make politicians scared

Ella Catherall Profile Editor In 2005, a common joke in journalism was that the five most terrifying words in the political lexicon are “Michael Crick is in reception.”

My experience, thankfully, was rather different, and as he begins to reminisce on his time as Oxford Union President, I breathe a sigh of relief that I’m the one asking the questions today.

“I had a whale of a time”, he recalls. The list of speakers he hosted who went on to big things is long and impressive, but one name sticks out from the rest.

“Theresa May’s husband, Philip, was President of the Union the term before me, and I knew him a bit better than Theresa.”

“She was quite difficult to get to know, was Theresa” The picture he paints of our Prime Minister is one quite

different from the May we recognise today. Crick reckons she was ‘a better speaker than she is now”, and claims that when she is relaxed, she can be ‘”very very funny.” I guess we’ll have to take his word on that one.

“My ambition was at that stage to go into politics” Despite the hard time politicians get from Crick nowadays, it could have been him getting a grilling of that kind. “My ambition was at that stage to go into politics, but in those days it was much more difficult.”

A lack of opportunities steered Crick into journalism instead, and he quickly decided he “liked it too much” to quit.

Crick admits he “occasionally” regrets not pursuing political rank when he sees contemporaries line the front benches, but recognises the immense pressures MPs have to deal with. Although they may have more power, he claims, “I’m sure I’ll have more fun.”

Michael Crick was a founding member of the Channel 4 News Team in 1982. (Wikimedia Commons)

“I don’t know how quite it will be,” Crick comments on the future of journalism, “but it ain’t gonna be the world of yesterday.” (Photograph: Martin Deutsch via Flickr) Crick has seen a lot change since the start of his broadcasting career in the 1980s.

“When I started in television there were only 3 channels: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV”, he recalls, and while he recognises that an increase in competition between stations is healthy, he claims there are “severe drawbacks” to the pluralism of today’s media.

With radio, television and newspapers merging online and losing individual influence, Crick believes serious journalism is “in decline”, and this can have grave consequences for what he sees as the purpose of journalism- holding powerful people to account.

“Essentially our job is to hold powerfully people to account” “I suspect some people in power feel a little more relaxed and comfortable than they did ten or twenty years ago”, he explains.

Crick believes politicians don’t worry about journalists the same way they did years ago; they don’t have the same fear that whatever they do wrong will end up in the press.

“It’s our job to keep them on their toes”, he explains, and while he admits journalists may only uncover “one percent of the world’s wrongdoing”, he emphasises that such thinking misses the point.

“They’ve got to be worried about the possibility we might expose their wrongdoing.”

Despite this, Crick insists we “needn’t worry” about the future of journalism anytime soon, and although it “ain’t gonna be the world of yesterday”, he believes political journalism is “hugely stronger” than it used to be.

“When I first became a journalist in the eighties, the lobby were much more deferential towards politicians”, he explains, but now believes journalists are much more “challenging” towards people at the top.

“I love Twitter, it’s given me a new lease of life” Just ten years ago, Blair and Brown used to give monthly press conferences, but “May and Corbyn never do that.”

Even though he admits they are now “terrified of scrutiny”, when asked whether this is necessary, he couldn’t be clearer: “Yes! The people in power should be asked tough questions at regular intervals”, he explains.

Luckily it doesn’t seem Michael will be stopping anytime soon, and he doesn’t appear to be trailing contemporaries in the online world either.

“I love Twitter, it’s given me a new lease of life.”, he claims. As well as using it for “little thoughts, little quirks”, it has journalistic purposes too, and allows Crick to put out things quickly that “can’t wait till 7 o’clock.”

It can be “terribly dangerous” he admits however, and confesses a tweet or two might have got him into trouble in the past.

“I decided I wasn’t going to vote, because it doesn’t feel right” Although he now takes care to remain unbiased on social media platforms, Crick is a “great believer” in the idea that broadcasting rules on objectivity should apply to journalists on

Twitter too.

As lines between online and television journalism become increasingly blurred, a new set of rules must be formed to navigate this new realm, and Crick believes neutrality is the key to staying sane in political broadcasting.

This neutrality extends to his personal life too, and Crick is quick to stress that he has no party biases when asked about politics- in fact, he doesn’t even vote. While this may seem surprising for someone so politically-minded, he insists he has “fewer and fewer views” as his career goes on.

“

I suppose I’m known for doorstepping people and chasing them down the street, but I don’t actually do that that often

”

To see more Palatinate Profile interviews, including Nish Kumar & Lord Adonis, visit: palatinate.org.uk/category/ profile

13

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

US Midterms: Jeff Sessions’ resignation ever possible.Many of the policies he sought for the Justice Department are racial in outcomes, even if not explicitly in intentions. High mandatory minimums and sentencing for low-level offenders tends to lead to huge incarcerations of young black men, despite the fact that both whites and blacks in America tend to use drugs such as marijuana at the same rates.

Carolina Mayberry Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ appointment to the post two years ago was a deeply controversial issue amid allegations of racism.

Coretta-Scott King - wife of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King - had testified in front of a Senate Committee in 1986 asking that Sessions not be confirmed as a Judge on the District courts.

The President will try to delay the process of confirming a successor

In 2016, the issue of voter fraud was as much racial as it was in 1986

Her powerful testimony included the fact that Jeff Sessions used his position as US attorney to prosecute demonstrably innocent black civil rights activists, including Albert Turner for crimes of voter fraud. “The only sin they committed,” she said at the hearing, “was being too successful in gaining votes.” In 2016, the issue of voter fraud was as much racial as it was in 1986, and Coretta Scott King wrote to the senate again

stressing Sessions’ record. Jeff Sessions was nonetheless nominated to the highest position in the Department of Justice.

In his tenure as the Attorney-General, Sessions focused on undoing huge swathes of Obama-era practices. Much of this was done through de-emphasis, rescinding guidelines, and starving new departments like the Office for Access to Justice. He took to the DOJ’s guidance documents; cutting back on protections against high fees

Gage Skidmore via Flickr for the poor and requirements of access for people with disabilities. However, his Department of Justice will most likely be known for its dramatic reversal of Obama doctrine on drug-related crime.

Sessions put out new guidelines to the effect of pushing judges to use maximum possible sentences on criminals of all levels, and a memo this year telling federal prosecutors to be seeking capital punishment for major drug dealers wher-

Sessions was a hardline law and order Attorney General, and the United States will be seeing the results of his policy direction for a long time to come. Sessions also worked with a new Presidential Commission set up to look into voter fraud after the president suggested without evidence that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The Commission harkens back uncomfortably to Sessions’ historical disenfranchisement of minority voters.

Politics

Despite his adherence to Trump doctrine on crime and voter fraud, it seems an open secret in the White House that the President has wanted a new Attorney General for some time. Sessions has, by many accounts, been out of the President’s favour since he recused himself from investigations into the Trump campaign.

His resignation, was sudden but not entirely unexpected as the November 6 midterms gave a little more power to the Democrats to push Mueller’s ongoing investigation.

The President’s appointment of an acting attorney general has for this reason been deeply partisan, with some lawyers calling the appointment unconstitutional.

The President will try to delay the process of confirming a successor in order to block Democrats from using the House they now control to push investigations. However, with rising outrage over the new appointment, who has been vocally against the Mueller investigations, it remains to be seen whether the President might have to back down to save face.

Bolsonaro victory: How the right wing succeeded in Brazil

Rhodri Sheldrake-Davies On the 29th of October 2018, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, the candidate for the ‘Partido Social Liberal’ (Social Liberal Party), was elected President of Brazil, taking more than 55% of the vote against rival Fernando Haddad of the ‘Partido dos Trabalhadores’. Brazil’s complex political situation have been continuously mischaracterised throughout this election, so here we’ll try to set the record straight.

The divisive now-President-elect has long been a political heavyweight in Brazilian establishment conservative and military circles.

Bolsonaro’s rise to prominence is reflective of growing trend towards authoritarian tendencies

His career began in the military in 1977, serving under the authoritarian ‘populist’ military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. In a 1998 article, Bolsonaro recounted his nostalgia for these years, which remained formative in his politics, and to this day his greatest on the record condemnation of this dictatorship was that its ‘mistake was to torture but not kill’.

His first public recognition came in 1986, following an article he penned in Brazil’s ‘Veja’ magazine, criticising military leadership, which led to his arrest. Following acquittal some two years later, he joined the military reserves at the rank of captain, and proceeded

to run for the Rio de Janiero City Council, being elected in 1988. In 1990, as part of the Christian Social Party, he was elected as a representative to the lower chamber of the Brazilian Congress. He has held this post for more than 30 years, being re-elected six times.

Throughout his career he has perpetuated racist stereotypes

Bolsonaro represents the face of a well-established political force, with significant capital and experience.

The controversy surrounding Bolosnaro’s election, which led to widespread protests, and even an attempt on his life during the campaign, stems from his consistent attacks on marginalised groups in Brazilian society. Throughout his career he has perpetuated racist stereotypes towards black Brazilians, expressed hatred for Brazil’s LGBT+ community, proclaiming himself a ‘proud homophobe’, and often resorted to misogynistic attacks on women. Bolsonaro wears his violent rhetoric as a badge of honour; his personal website prominently featured videos of his abuse of a fellow congresswoman for example.

Bolsonaro’s rise to prominence is reflective of growing trend towards authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies reborn in the political establishments.

With this in mind, we must ask, what has compelled Brazilians to-

wards Bolsonaro?

Modern Brazil is a nation divided. Following a crisis in 2014, its economy has suffered a depression. Though now entering a slow recovery the cost of living is at an all-time high. At the same time as this, violent criminality has soared, linked to the drugs trade and dwindling police resources, which necessitated the deployment of the military in several major cities to deal with record numbers of homicides. These issues have played a major role in the election, generating disaffection with the incumbent Worker’s Party leadership and Brazil’s political establishment, with which Haddad, Bolsonaro’s presidential election rival, had closely associated himself.

This alienation has only been further exacerbated by ‘operation carwash’. Originally an investigation into money laundering scheme, this quickly spiralled into a major corruption scandal investigating 232 people, many major political and business figures, and indicting 179, including former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Roussef.

The fallout from this has been far from just political however, it has also involved more than $1 bn in misappropriated funds and a reimbursement request of $ 11.3 bn, leading to the closure of a variety of projects involving sixteen companies, in turn costing Brazil almost 500,000 jobs. Needless to say, this led to outcry as early as 2016, which has only intensified as the scope of the investigation has

grown.

Bolsonaro’s message has been tailored as the ultimate snake-oil remedy to these woes: an alternative campaign promising ‘decisive’ and hard-line action against criminality, a novel neo-liberal reform of the economy, and the key promotion of a variety of anti-corruption pledges.

He has marketed himself as an ‘alternative’

He has built a perception of himself as simultaneously a ‘populist’ political outsider and a hardline authoritarian strongman offering order in the face of turmoil.

Despite warnings from academic and political commentators that this narrative is based on falsehood, and that his policies may only fuel the flames of division further, Bolsonaro has still found success in using his ‘call to order’

Senado Federal via Flickr to draw in support from a wide variety of bases who were already disaffected with the ‘old politics’ of his opponent Haddad.

Many Brazilians were prepared to look past the now-Presidentelect’s worrying social attitudes and autocratic militaristic tendencies, not because they endorse his vitriol, but because he has marketed himself as an ‘alternative’, with many seeing him as the last resort for a Brazil on the edge of turmoil.

His election is indicative of widespread disenfranchisement with a democratic politics that has failed again and again to be accountable or responsive to the people it claimed to represent at all levels.

The worrying ramification of this however, is that it may well see Brazil join the growing list of nations that are turning away from democracy, and towards authoritarian strongmen, as the remedy for their woes.

Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

14

Politics Charlie Hetherington Sci-Tech Editor Astronauts, when they first see Earth from above, often comment on both its captivating beauty and vulnerability: a lush, verdant world protected from the abyss of space by just a flimsy layer of gas.

NASA’s Ron Garan puts it succinctly: ‘our home is a stunning, fragile oasis, [an] island...given to us’.

The experience is so profound it results in a cognitive shift, known as the ‘Overview Effect’, and manifests in a deep desire to protect the planet.

It is no surprise then that many campaign zealously against global warming: climate change is the single greatest threat to mankind.

Science is now unequivocal: human activity, predominantly the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, is causing a longterm rise in the average tempera-

ture of Earth’s climate. A recent UN report, a collation of over 6,000 peer-reviewed studies, proves this beyond reasonable doubt and details the gruesome consequences: more extreme weather, massive ecological damage and the climateinduced poverty of many hundreds of millions of people, from water scarcity and food shortages.

Moreover, the report outlines the stark difference between an increase of 1.5 and 2 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial average. The latter has been the agreed target of climate policy for years but is insufficient to avoid the harshest effects. Meeting this new lower threshold would require no net emissions by 2050 and so would have radical implications for civilisation: a threefold increase in the use of renewable energy, the complete elimination of the internal combustion engine, and the conversion of vast swathes

William Anderson via Flickr of agricultural land (between the size of Canada and India) to carbon-capturing forests. Implementing this will require enormous political will and unprecedented international co-operation.

Nevertheless, world leaders are reluctant to grapple with the scale of the challenge, with some stooping to bickering and even outright denial. How can the impasse be broken? Perhaps Apollo Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell offers the solution: “From out on the moon, international politics looks so petty You want to grab a politician by the scruff of his neck, drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say “Look at that you son of a bitch”.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report, one of the major symptoms of climate change will be changes in the ice sheets and polar glaciers as melting in the Arctic circle will cause glaciers to retreat. NASA’s photo shows a view of Antarctica’s ice sheets, which alongside Greenland have seen an acceleration of ice mass loss since 2009.

This will lead to a loss in sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean which, due to the Albedo effect, will reinforce a temperature-warming spiral as there are fewer light surfaces to refelct insolation.

NASA Goddard via Flickr

Denial as party rhetoric

Piers Eaton Some political parties have chosen, rather than provide a plan to fix looming environmental problems, to just outright deny the problem exists. The most famous case of this is the Republican party in the US, but parties across Europe too - UKIP, Front National and various other right-wing nationalist parties have denied or dismissed the problem of climate change.

Conservative males with xenosceptic views are more likely to

Max Pixel via Flickr

deny climate change, according to studies done in the US and Norway

by McCright & Dunlap and Hultman. This makes it natural that conservative parties would reflect this, as parties need to reflect their voters’ views. This explanation has some limitation, however, because there are many conservative parties, like those of the UK or of Canada for example, that do not deny that climate change.

There are many conservative parties which do not deny climate change

The thing that ties climate change-denying parties together is that they are all right-wing nationalist parties. This is most likely because all solutions for a problem like climate change seem to be incompatible with a nationalist outlook. A nationalist party professes to only care about their own nation, therefore under a nationalist philosophy, negative externalities like factory CO2 emissions that are

damaging to the atmosphere become unimportant.

Collective action problems become unsolvable if everyone is only pursuing their own good

Collective action problems that make environmental governance so difficult, widely known as ‘the tragedy of the commons’, become unsolvable if everyone is only pursuing their own individual good, which is precisely what nationalists suggest their nation do.

Historian and author Yuval Noah Harari puts it bluntly, saying that “nationalism has no solution to climate change, because obviously you cannot solve it in just one country, so the only option is to deny it”.

REALITY CHECK? For sources on this and all our articles please see our online editions at www.palatinate.org.uk

FEATURE Climate Change “Final call to save the world” Sam Sandham Climate change is real, anthropogenic and catastrophic. Depressingly, Donald Trump has only recently been persuaded to believe one of those things, probably because he can’t spell the other two. Having a world leader who isn’t convinced about climate change has misleading effects in the media’s coverage.

Recently, the BBC programme Newsnight covered the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This report created headlines like “Final call to save the world from ‘climate catastrophe’” and “‘Unprecedented’ action needed to prevent 1.5C of global warming by 2030”.

“Final call to save the world from ‘climate catastrophe’”

Newsnight featured climate change sceptic Myron Ebell due to

his links with Donald Trump. His appearance caused widespread condemnation among climate scientists; having Ebell give his opinions on climate change is like inviting an uninformed guest on to speak about the existence of gravity.

On the day of the IPCC report publication, only two national newspapers featured it on their front page

False balance is an issue the BBC has dealt with many times previously, causing them to admit they “get coverage of it [climate change] wrong too often”. On the day of the IPCC report publication, only two national newspapers featured it on their front page. Despite this, the media’s portrayal of climate change has improved, which helps inform the public so they can put greater pressure on policymakers and corporations.

SDGs: Global Solution?

Mimi Albanyan While the world must take action to slow down the pace of climate change, imposing universal initiatives, like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), dismisses some of the needs of developing countries.

Western media blames much of climate change on the third world’s rapid modernisation. It is true that China, a ‘developing’ country, is the world’s highest emitter of carbon. However, 10% of the world’s richest countries produce almost half of global carbon emission, according to an Oxfam report.

Climate change is likely to have a worse efffect on developing countries. With fewer resources to face the challenges of severe weather conditions like drought and floods, these nations face increased risk of homelessness, unemployment, and further shortage of resources. It is undeniable that sustainable development is beneficial to developing countries.

It is difficult to implement the

same goals in all countries. SDG 7, which aims to increase the use of renewable energy, disregards the risk that diverting crops to biofuel production can be detrimental to food supply and food prices.

It is more beneficial to prioritise focused goals

The push for reducing carbon emission can limit the use of advanced production techniques in developing countries. Lower energy consumption and lower production would be better described as “sustainable de-growth”, rather than “sustainable development”.

Global carbon emissions would increase by only 1% if electricity is provided to the estimated 13% of the world who have no access to electricity. This is a small cost for improving the quality of life of more than 1 billion people.

Rather than imposing identical goals upon all countries, it is more beneficial to prioritise focused goals tailored to each nation’s socio-economic reality.

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

15

Politics

It is time we warmed up to tech start ups Sophia Obrecht Over the past few years extreme weather has become a regular feature across the globe and as fear mounts for the future of our planet, companies are beginning to realise that there is opportunity in climate change. Decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy sources, for example, protects us from oil price shocks while also reducing our impact on the planet.

Companies are beginning to realise there is opportunity in climate change

Across the globe, innovation in green technologies has helped to drive economic growth - and not just for developed nations. In emerging countries, green technologies and the move to a green

Waste Management utilising plastic waste in the construction of roads. According to their website, they have laid 2000km of road using 1000 tonnes of plastic in Bangalore alone.

In many ways, the potential of green start-ups in ‘developing’ nations shows us what could be possible in the future if innovation and investment levels in the sector continue.

economy offer a wealth of opportunity.

Innovation in green technologies has helped to drive economic growth

As research and greater investment into new technologies increases, so too has affordability and accessibility. With this, tech start-ups in ‘developing’ nations are taking on the opportunity to combine economic possibility and entrepreneurial genius with green sustainability. Latin America, for example, is a region with ample interest and desire to increase investment in sustainable solutions to the ongoing issue of waste disposal, water shortages, rapid urbanization and general pollution. Among an army of start-up, the Columbian company Conceptos Plásticos works to turn waste rubber and plastic into recycled construction material for

There is money to be made from making a positive impact on the planet shelter and housing. Meanwhile, in Argentina, the young company Semtive develops wind turbines made from recyclable materials and designed to fit in suburban and urban areas.

In India, tech start-ups are also jumping onto the sustainability band wagon, using green technologies in innovative projects. Chakr

Tony Webster via Flickr Innovation launched in Delhi in 2016 has developed a new technology that takes diesel soot from generators and then converts this into inks and paints, serving to cut pollution in the country.

Improving transport infrastructure is also on the green radar, with start-ups such as KK Plastic

There is money to be made from making a positive impact on the planet - and young start-ups are tapping into this potential, while providing the ground for change.

Grassroot solutions: The way to solve climate change?

Isabella Chalmers-Arnold Grassroots solutions are increasingly being conceptualised as the ‘way’ to successfully solve the issue of climate change.

Simple solutions are empowering

But this is a partial and totalis-

ing view that needs to be critiqued.

Grassroots approaches aim for a grounded, collective engagement of all people in local communities collaborating to initiate change.

The Lorengelup Community Development Initiative has achieved a 150% increase in school attendance in Turkana, Kenya, by teaching local people about the links between climate change and oil ItzaFineDay via Flickr

development and installing solar panels.

Simple solutions to climate change like this, and the use of local community memory are being empowered by activists including Nnimmo Bassey within the international grassroots environmental network Friends of the Earth.

The localised grassroots scale offers an ideal location to make the concept of climate justice mean something.

The localised grassroots scale offers an ideal location to make the concept of climate justice mean something

To go beyond the perceived binary distinctions between environmentalisms of ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ nations.

Yet the unquestioned idealistic

narrative surrounding grassroots approaches is currently hindering climate justice from being achieved.

The gender dimension to climate change is being highlighted

Projects can be criticised for not fully using the opportunity to address existing inequalities that are disproportionately experienced by women, people of colour etc. in particular locations and are now being compounded by the impacts of climate change.

As a result, climate justice remains ambiguous at international climate change forums.

The Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice is taking on this critiqwwue by bringing a Feminist lens to the forefront of grassroots solutions.

The gender dimension to climate change is being highlighted .

In their funny, informed podcast ‘Mothers of Invention’, bringing in women’s voices as part of the solution. By discussing issues of colonialism, poverty, migration and racism in relation to climate change, grassroots solutions become more complete - allowing better answers to climate change to be realised.

“

Grassroot solutions allow better answers to climate change to be realised

What will the geopolitical impact be?

Anya Southby With climate change comes freak weather patterns, melting ice caps, rising sea levels all set to increase in the coming years.

Flooding and drought could lead to mass migration

The Syria crisis demonstrates how the changing climate impacts politics. Five years of drought spanning 2006-2011 devastated

agriculture resulting in the migration of almost a million people to urban centres. This strain on infrastructure was not the cause of the crisis, but certainly ‘helped fuel the early unrest’, as noted by President Obama.

Increasing flooding and drought could lead to mass migration, impacting on the politics of both the region itself and countries further afield. Pressure on resources could lead to increasing political and military tensions.

In order to ensure that climate crises are not exacerbated, global

climate control infrastructure is pivotal.

Geopolitical conflict as a result of the changes already made is inevitable

The 2015 Paris Agreement provides an opportunity for climate change to exert perhaps its only positive geopolitical effect – the chance for global cooperation and mutual aid, benefitting both those affected now and those who could be affected in the future.

This is only possible if every big power contributes. Trump’s decision to remove the US from the agreement is devastating: as the world’s second largest CO2 emitter America has a huge responsibility to curb its carboniferous capitalism. Trump may deny climate change to ensure the US is not ‘put at a disadvantage’ in economic terms, but this decision ignores the plight of the developing countries bearing the brunt of climate change.

Even with worldwide cooperation to limit the effects of the

”

changing climate, geopolitical conflict as a result of the changes already made is inevitable.

Geographer Simon Dalby hints at the best way forward in the current ‘climate’: individual efforts.

‘States and nations don’t build fossil fuels; individuals, institutions and corporations do’. Climate change could be the impetus for serious political change.

Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

16

SciTech

The reality of sex and gender is not simple SciTech look at how defining biological sex in the modern age is not so clear cut

Charlotte Hartley In a memo leaked to The New York Times, the Trump administration revealed its intent to define ‘transgender’ out of existence.

Under new rules, a person’s sex would be forever defined by “biological traits identifiable by birth”, removing the legal path to selfidentifying and denying them protection under discrimination laws.

The Department of Health and Human Services justifies this proposal with the need to define gender “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” But here lies the problem: there is no scientific grounding for an inflexible definition of gender based on only anatomy or genetics.

There is no scientific grounding for an inflexible definition of gender This idea was abandoned by researchers and healthcare providers decades ago. “I can tell you this is ludicrous,” writes Jack Turban, a resident psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, “There is no scientific definition of gender.” The American Academy of Pediatrics

emphasises a “gender-affirming approach” to children struggling with dysmorphia (the feeling that your body is the wrong sex) which encourages respect for their preferred gender identity. Furthermore, over 1,600 scientists have signed a letter opposing the U.S. government’s proposal, labelling it “fundamentally inconsistent [with] science”.

forming in the USA, and records of gender-diverse individuals go back centuries.

Even within more progressive circles, however, there is often a prevailing assumption that while gender identity can be fluid, biological sex is binary and unchangeable. The reality is not so simple.

Some estimates put the number of individuals born with ambigu-

ous external genitalia, as high as 1 in 1,500. Genetics can also leave room for contention. Some people with XY chromosomes can develop female traits due to an inability to respond to testosterone.

Others with XX chromosomes can develop male traits as a result of accidental transferral of some Y chromosome genes onto an X chromosome. Furthermore, some

Some people with XY chromosomes can develop female traits Gender is a complicated concept – a combination of sociocultural conventions and personal identity as well as biology. Sex hormones, which bring about sex-specific changes at puberty, have been suggested to affect gender identity and expression of gender-stereotypic traits. But girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a genetic disease which results in unusually high exposure to male hormones like testosterone, are less likely to show stereotypical female traits.

Why the gender of some people does not align with their physiological characteristics is not clear.

What is, however, is that it is neither a choice nor a trend. About 1.4 million individuals identify as transgender or gender non-con-

▲ Some estimates put the number of individuals born with ambiguous external genitalia, as high as 1 in 1,500 (Selbe via Flickr)

individuals have XX chromosomes in some cells and XY chromosomes in others, a condition known as chromosomal mosaicism. For these reasons, no genetic test currently exists that can unambiguously define a person’s sex or gender anyway.

It seems clear that the U.S government is using false assertions to push an agenda Evidently, the idea that penis equals male and vagina equals female, while generally true, is a deliberate oversimplification of scientific knowledge. It seems clear that, here, the U.S government is using false assertions about biology to push an agenda - an all too familiar tale. Fascists have historically used skull measurements to make erroneous claims about the relative intelligence of different ethnic groups – termed ‘scientific racism’.

Drafting legislation that will only increase discrimination towards an already vulnerable group, under the pretence of ‘scientific fact’ is a devastating, if not surprising, step backwards. History tells us we need to oppose attempts to force people into strict dichotomies with no scientific justification, and remain sceptical of the motivations of those who endeavour to do so.

Cyanobacteria: life on mars?

Indraji Wanigaratne Cyanobacteria, known informally as “blue-green algae”, were perhaps the first life on Earth. Indeed, the oldest known fossils are 3.5-billion-year-old fossilised cyanobacteria, found in the Archean rocks of Western Australia. Not bad, considering that the oldest rocks ever found are only 3.8 billion years old!

Not only are cyanobacteria the oldest organism, they’re also one of the most versatile. Think of pretty much any habitat, and chances are you’ll find them thriving there: oceans, rivers, deserts and even the icy wastes of Antarctica - cyanobacteria can live basically anywhere. However, as they produce energy through photosynthesis (chlorophyll gives them their distinctive blue-green tint),

it was assumed that they could only survive in environments that had at least occasional exposure to sunlight.

So it was understandably shocking when cyanobacteria were found living 2,000 feet below the surface of the Iberian Pyrite Belt in Southwestern Spain.

The scientific team were looking for bacteria that survive by oxi-

▲ The Mars rover (ESO/G Hudepohl via Flickr)

dizing iron and sulfur but instead found cyanobacteria. The bluegreen algae were thriving, congregating in tiny pockets of air dotted amongst the subsurface.

Cyanobacteria can live basically anywhere To do this, the subsurface cyanobacteria had repurposed cellular machinery for photosynthesis to instead ‘digest’ hydrogen.

For the most interesting implications of this discovery, however, we need to look the other way.

The discovery of these microorganisms in such a harsh environment dramatically increases the likelihood of finding life in our solar system. Take Mars. The planet is a frozen, barren wasteland on the surface: average daily temperatures reach minus 125 degrees centigrade at the poles, and rarely

go above 20 degrees at the equator. All water is frozen - locked away from life - and solar radiation scorches the surface. Dig a little deeper however, and things become a bit more hospitable.

The Martian subsurface was once ideal for life. Not only would there have been enough dissolved hydrogen to power a global subterranean biosphere, the temperature was high enough for pockets of liquid water to exist.

The discovery of these microrganisms increases the likelihood of finding life in the solar system Radiation too is minimal just a couple of thousand feet underground, meaning that any organisms would have faced conditions essentially identical to those on

Earth. No wonder then, that astrobiologists have their sights set on Mars.

The dissovery of these underground cyanobacteria promises to revolutionize our understanding of the limits of life, both on Earth and on Mars. If we extrapolate just a little further, we can see how this could guide our understanding of life on planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. It’s too early to be sure, but it isn’t unreasonable to imagine colonies of primitive microorganisms, thriving under the surface of some distant planet.

Whether on Earth, Mars or some yet-to-be-discovered planet, it seems that life does always find a way, even if that way is to hide deep underground!

Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

18

Sport

Steven Gerrard: the new kid on the block

Oliver Scott finds out how the former-Liverpool star’s new career is shaping up Oliver Scott After the disastrous tenure of Pedro Caixinha, fans of Glasgow Rangers feared they may never return to the glorious heights that the club achieved before financial turmoil struck in 2012.

However, the appointment of Liverpool legend, Steven Gerrard, earlier this year has seen a new lease of life in the club, not only in the domestic scene, but in Europe as well. At the time of writing, after eleven league games and just two losses, ‘Gers’ sit five points off the top of the table, with a game in hand over leaders Hearts.

Although they have benefitted from Celtic’s uncharacteristically poor start, Rangers still find themselves in the mix with a third of the season gone.

Gerrard has come under some unfair criticism for his start but after fifteen summer signings and only one loss in the league since the end of September, it is clear that his side are starting to gel.

The true test for Gerrard’s Rangers side will come when Brendan Rodger’s Celtic hit top gear. The ‘Bhoys’ are hoping to complete a historic ‘treble-treble’ this season after enjoying a onehorse race for the Scottish title for the best part of a decade.

The experienced Kyle Lafferty needs to step up However, they have had an shaky start to this season allowing for a close contest at the top of the table, to the surprise of many fans.

With a budget far larger than any other team in the league, Rodger’s side will certainly go on a long unbeaten run at some point and the test for Gerrard’s team is whether they can compete with this.

In order to do this, the experienced Kyle Lafferty needs

to step up in front of goal, having netted just one domestic goal since his debut.

Like last season, there has been a huge reliance on the talented Alfredo Morelos for goals and if he gets injured or suffers from a poor period of form, then Rangers will have a significant reduction in their firepower.

This was shown in the League Cup Semi Final on the 28th of October, when Rangers crashed out disappointingly to Aberdeen.

A Lewis Ferguson strike in the 79th minute was all that separated the sides.

Rangers were without both Morelos and Lafferty meaning they struggled to create any clearcut chances.

It has been in Europe where Rangers have really impressed

off leaders Villarreal. Arguably their most impressive result in continental football, since their Europa League semi final victory in 2008 against Fiorentina, came earlier this season when Gerrard’s side secured a 2-2 away draw with Spanish giants Villarreal.

The Castellon-based side led twice but Rangers fought back to gain an invaluable point. Gerrard was brave in his tactics, allowing full backs Tavernier and Barisic to push forward and was rewarded when Kyle Lafferty stabbed home what felt like a winner in the 76th minute.

Another draw against Spartak Moscow followed, before a win over Rapid Vienna at Ibrox left Rangers fans reminiscent of their glorious run to the Europa League final in 2008.

At the other end of the pitch, however, veteran goalkeeper Allan McGregor, has been in fine form, with a MOTM performance against St Mirren on Saturday mirroring many of his games this season.

Defender James Tavernier has also popped up with five goals this season which have proved to be vital, particularly his brace in the win over Hamilton in October.

Therefore, domestically there are plenty of positives for Gerrard to build on and with his side now up to third they are going in the right direction. Provided talisman Morelos can continue his fine form and, equally, if Celtic keep on dropping points, Gerrard’s side could easily see themselves in the mix come May. However, it has been in Europe where Rangers have really impressed. Before their 4-3 defeat to Spartak Moscow, Rangers were unbeaten in 11 games in Europe.

Despite being fourth seed in their group, they sit just one point

Although Thursday night’s defeat has dented their hopes slightly, Gerrard’s side should remain optimistic, scoring three goals away in Russia is an impressive feat.

This being said it remains critical that they shore up defensively in order to secure European football.

Domestically there are plenty of positives for Gerrard If they do so, it would defy ‘Gers’ fans expectations particularly considering they couldn’t even make it past the first qualifying round last season.

Despite initial criticism from the footballing community,

Gerrard is slowly improving this Rangers side, who have so much potential.

It is easy to forget that this is his first job in management and he is adapting to the new demands of the role.

By no means has he made an incredible start, but it is one which Rangers fans should be satisfied with. They have lost just two games in the league, with an eleven-game unbeaten run in Europe and most importantly, are continuing to ensure that it’s not just a one-horse race for the title.

So, whilst Gerrard’s start may not be remarkable, it is admirable and many English football fans will hope he can build on this and finally end Celtic’s dominance of Scotland’s top tier.

▲ Steven Gerrard facing the Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge, back in 2006 (Ben Sutherland via Flickr)

“Support has been arriving thick and fast from the team” Continued from back page ... stating “it just lifts me, inspires me and makes me work even harder.”

Great Britain’s first match will be against hosts China on 17th November, on the opening day of the tournament.

Tess however remains focused “I don’t think I will be nervous about playing,” she tells me, “I just will focus on playing the game I love with exceptional teammates and trust the process.”

She will certainly be supported all the way, with both of her

parents making the long trip to Changzhou as well.

Support has also been arriving thick and fast from inside the team.

As part of her move into the senior squad Tess was thrown a Welcome Ceremony on the Monday of her arrival at training, describing the event she called it “the highlight of my experience so far.”

“I don’t think I will be nervous about playing” During the ceremony the head coach David Ralph told her to “stay true to who you are”, this

was followed by words from the captain, Hollie Pearne-Webb, on what joining the senior team meant.

“It lifts me,

inspires me, and makes me work harder

”

This clearly left an impact of Tess, who said she left the evening feeling “incredibly fortunate and inspired”.

So with just a few days until the first game there seems little left for Tess to do, but stay focused and look forward to what is sure to be a life-changing experience.

Not that it sounds like she needs it, but we certainly wish her the best of luck!

For anyone back in Great Britain who wants to lend their support, or just to keep up to date with what is going on in China BT Sport will be broadcasting the matches live, just

be prepared for some early starts if you are going to watch!

Great Britain Ladies Fixtures in Changzhou 17/11 vs China 18/11 vs Australia 20/11 vs Japan 22/11 vs Netherlands 24/11 vs Argentina

19

PALATINATE | Thursday 15th November 2018

Bradley Wiggins: crossing the wrong line?

Jac Edwards Lance Armstrong was the ‘perfect’ Tour de France winner, ‘precisely the sort of winner’ the race founder had pictured.

Not the words of the disgraced American rider himself but of Britain’s first Tour champion Sir Bradley Wiggins in his new book ‘Icons: My Inspiration. My Motivation. My Obsession.’

Wiggins’ reverence for the biggest cheat of them all is yet another example of cycling’s continuing ambivalence towards those who bend the rules to win.

This is not to say that the sport accepts doping – it doesn’t; or that the sport does nothing to prevent doping – it does.

And Wiggins himself is not condoning Armstrong’s behaviour.

But his warm words for the

sport’s worst offender shows how cycling hasn’t managed to fully erase doping from its culture, and probably never will.

He was an inspiration to him at the time It appears that, from the outset, some regarded cheating as just part and parcel of the Tour de France.

Henri Cormet, the 1904 winner, was only awarded the winner’s prize after the original top four finishers were found to have been aided by cars and trains.

Steroids and amphetamines were used by top cyclists throughout the 1970s, including legendary Tour winners Eddy Merckx and Luis Ocana. Five-time winner Jacques Anquetil famously said that the Tour ‘can’t be won on

▲ Wiggins wearing the yellow jersey during the 2012 Tour de France (Josh Hallett via Wikimedia Commons)

mineral water,’ and that ‘everyone takes dope.’

Although cheating in the EPO/ Armstrong era was much more effective and destructive than ever before, rule-breaking has always been around in a competition that stretches human endurance to the limit.

Much of what Wiggins says about Armstrong is true – that his opponents disliked, but respected him, that he won all kinds of races in the yellow jersey, that it took an incredibly driven personality like Armstrong’s to win the Tour.

Armstrong was indeed “immense,” and it’s no surprise that a thirteenyear-old Wiggins was dazzled by Armstrong’s achievements.

Rule-breaking has always been around “I remember watching the ’04 and ’05 Tours with my father, also captivated by the images on the television.”

Undeniably, there is much to admire about Armstrong – the fact that he recovered from cancer to participate in arguably the world’s toughest sporting event remains an extraordinary feat.

It must also be remembered that Wiggins’ book aims to recall the figures that inspired him to become a Tour winner himself.

As Wiggins argues, the fact that Armstrong was later exposed as a cheat does not change the fact that he was an inspiration to him at the time, just like he was to many others.

However, Wiggins’ comments also suggest that the sport is not willing to eradicate doping from its culture.

Despite the deception that undermines all of Armstrong’s successes, he is still lauded by Wiggins as the “archetypal tour winner” as imagined by Henri Desgrange when the race was founded.

Cycling hasn’t managed to fully erase doping from its culture The “perfect rider” who was not only able to beat his opponents, but able to overcome everything that his surroundings threw at him.

Few fans will readily forget how Armstrong avoided a nasty crash in 2003 by riding across a ploughed field, or how he recovered after being accidentally tripped by a young fan on the climb at Luz Ardiden in the same year.

But yet, all seven of his Tour de France victories were tainted by systematic, devastating doping – sadly, we’ll never know to what extent the victories were down to raw talent.

Wiggins’ suggestion that Armstrong was the ‘archetypal tour winner’ either insults any rider that won the Tour cleanly or suggests that cheating is inherent in any Tour victory.

Perhaps Wiggins is poignantly correct – that going above and beyond the boundaries of normal

Sport

human ability is the essence of any Tour winner, of whom Armstrong is the ‘archetypal’ example.

Whilst this does not taint all Tour winners with the accusation of doping, it reiterates that extreme sacrifices must be made in order to win the Tour de France.

But can “the perfect rider” ever be a drugs cheat – in Armstrong’s case the biggest cheat in the history of the sport?

If Wiggins is happy to describe Armstrong as the “perfect rider,” does he not suggest that cheating is an inevitable step to reaching the top in cycling?

Wiggins’ own status as the golden boy of British cycling was tarnished in recent years after hackers revealed he’d obtained a therapeutic use exemption for the drug triamcinolone before racing in Grand Tours.

Apart from helping his asthma it also had the potential to boost his power in races.

A parliamentary report earlier this year said Team Sky “crossed an ethical line” over Wiggins’ use of the drug, a conclusion that both he and Sky reject.

Extreme sacrifice must be made in order to win I’m certainly not telling Wiggins how he should feel about his heroes, or about his sport.

But maybe cycling needs to accept that its attitude problem with doping is not going away anytime soon.

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha: An Obituary Tim Sigsworth Deputy Sports Editor In August 2010, when a largelyunknown Thai billionaire by the name of Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha purchased Leicester City Football Club, no one could have expected that the Foxes would win the Premier League title within six years.

No one could have expected that the Foxes would win the Premier League title After all, the club had only just been promoted to the Championship and didn’t even own their own stadium.

However, during the 2015/16 campaign, just two seasons after they won promotion from the Championship, Leicester City won the Premier League by ten points in an expectation-defying campaign which they had begun as 5000/1 outsiders.

Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and

N’Golo Kanté captured the hearts of fans and neutrals alike, as Claudio Ranieri’s blitzkrieg-esque tactics blew away the league’s established ‘top six’.

Yet, despite the footballing fairy tale he helped create, not much is known about the origins of Khun Vichai except that he made his wealth in the duty free business.

Additionally, the reasons behind the success he enjoyed are also well-debated.

Some point to underperformance from other clubs – namely Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea, whilst others focus on the subtle, calculated player acquisitions made by Steve Walsh, then head of recruitment.

as player and staff recruitment and financial management was supplemented by a personal touch.

He made several donations to hospitals On his birthday, a free beer and a donut were offered to all fans in

attendance and Buddhist monks, flown in from Thailand, would bless the pitch and players before every home game.

Further, it has been reported that he made several seven-figure donations to hospitals, charities and infirmaries in the Leicester area.

Ultimately, Vichai was

The football community rightly united in tribute When he and four others died in a helicopter crash outside of the King Power Stadium on the 27th of October, the football community, so often divided along tribal boundaries, rightly united in tribute to a man who had achieved the impossible and shown immense kindness to everyone he met along the way.

May he rest in peace.

Vichai’s influence on Leicester’s success shouldn’t be played down Vichai’s influence on Leicester’s success shouldn’t be played down, however. His effective execution of typical chairman activities such

something different. Foreign owners, so often disconnected from fan sentiment and rarely anything more than a distant observer concerned more about profit than people, rarely have a fraction of the impact he has had.

▲Vichair after Leicester won the Premiership (Peter Woodentop via Flickr)

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Sport

Thursday 15th November 2018 | PALATINATE

Bradley Wiggins: crossing the wrong line?

Sport looks into whether the Tour de France champion’s defence of Lance Armstrong is justified (page 19)

Stevie G: new kid on the block Oliver Scott looks into how the ex-Liverpool captain is getting on at Ibrox (page 18)

▲ Durham University’s women’s hockey team (Team Durham)

Tess Howard taking the biggest step

Durham Second-year Geography student Tess Howard was recently called up to the GB women’s Hockey Team ahead of their trip to the FIH Women’s Champions Trophy James Smith Sports Editor Commencing on 17th November six world-renowned international hockey teams will descend onto Changzou, China to compete in the 23rd FIH Women’s Hockey Champions Trophy, in a week of high-quality sporting action.

Amongst the visiting teams this year are reigning World League Champions, Netherlands, 2016 winners Argentina, but most importantly for us, Great Britain.

Even more significantly, this year Durham second-year undergraduate Tess Howard has been called up to join the eighteenstrong squad, to help them follow their Olympic gold medal-winning performances in Rio two years ago.

I spoke to Tess about how she was feeling ahead of the tournament, and just generally about her hockey career so far.

“I guess I’ve had a hockey stick in hand for around eight years now”, she tells me, having originally played rugby until the age of eleven, before switching to play to play for Cambridge City Hockey Juniors on a Sunday instead.

It was here that she first fell in love with the game, “anything can happen,” she explains, “the rules of the game are designed to allow for team and individual flair.”

And the ability for individual flair has certainly not been lost on Tess. Playing in the centre of the park she is always at the centre of the action, well known for her creativity, having last year been DU women’s top goal scorer.

Tess’ career trajectory is certainly as impressive. Whilst playing for Cambridge City she was invited to train with the ladies 1st team aged only fourteen, whilst on the very same day she “received a surprising letter that I had been selected to trial for the undersixteen England squad.”

She didn’t get selected that year, but did not give up there, and was later selected for her debut in 2014.

Moving from this she won a European Bronze medal in 2015 with the under-eighteen’s squad.

As recent as this summer she was playing for Great Britain undertwenty-three’s team in the six nations.

Despite all these successes Tess remained with her feet on the ground, stating “I never expected a call up to trial for the Great Britain senior team.” Going on to say how “proud and grateful” she is to be given this opportunity with such a great team, with “an inspiring legacy and future” We then moved on to how Tess has been able to balance her university work as well as her sporting commitments. She thanks her love for both the sport and the work saying “there is no motivation needed to do both.”

In fact, she said that balancing

work and sport was her “normal”, having done it for so many years, but that the hardest thing for her has been trying to balance social commitments around this as well.

Clearly being a top-level athlete requires a little more time on the sports field, and a little less time on the floor in Klute or Jimmy’s.

The Castle second year was clear to me in her commitment to both her sport and her degree.

“I will do both sport and studies with the same effort and diligence as I am passionate about both”, she tells me.

Tess does concede however, quite clearly, that for the few weeks her hockey is her main priority.

Despite this she has thanked the support of the university, her team mates, and Team Durham with her work whilst being away from the North-East.

And with her lectures all being recorded, she is still able to keep up with the world of Geography.

Looking ahead to the Champions Trophy Tess says she feels “no pressure at all”, at being the youngest player in the Great Britain squad; “I am very ready to just go out and express myself.”

Despite being the youngest player in the squad, she is not the only debutante travelling to China.

In fact, Erica Sanders will also be joining the team, having played with each other at under-twentyone level for some time now Tess was pleased that they were playing alongside each other once more, saying that they “connect very well, so it will be a special moment to play with each other on the big stage.”

At the other end of the scale the Great Britain squad is littered with players who command immense respectability, having donned the shirt over a hundred times during their careers.

Tess was incredibly positive about playing alongside them...

Continued on page 18