THE NAB CHRISTMAS PULLOUT: CHRISTMAS QUIZ - AU CHRISTMAS CAROL - SOCIETIES
Beaver Issue 822 | 09.12.14
the
newspaper of the LSE Students’ Union
Motion to Condemn Sri Lanka Passed at Rare UGM Liam Hill Features Editor THE FIRST UNION GENERAL Meeting (UGM) since week 2 took place on Thursday 5th December. The Meeting was dominated by the debate of a motion, proposed by Harish Karunalingam and seconded by Hari Prabu, which posed the question “Should LSESU condemn Sri Lanka and support sanctions against the government for violations of human rights?” The motion was opposed by Dinesh Perera. Harish Karunalingam, LSESU Tamil Society Campaigns Officer, alleged the culpability of the Sri Lankan government for the deaths of 40,000 Tamils in northern Sri Lanka in 2009, the year that the Sri Lankan government defeated the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), a rebel nationalist group whose aim was to create an independent state in northern Sri Lanka. The LTTE remains regarded as a terrorist group by the USA, the UK, the EU and by India. Karunalingam went on to call the Sri Lankan government’s actions “an affront to our core values”. Hari Prabu, President of LSESU Liberal Democrats and LSESU Tamil Society Tamil Student’s Initiative (TSI) Representative, said that “for five years, not enough has been done... there has not been the same amount of outrage” and protested that “40,000 civilians are not collateral damage.”
Dinesh Perera, opposing the motion, turned the focus of the debate toward the nature and the actions of the LTTE, calling the organisation “evil” and saying that “it had to be defeated militarily,” adding that the defeat of the LTTE is the “greatest achievement of the Sri Lankan government.” Unusually for a UGM, where typically speakers take turns to respond to each others points, Prabu and Perera shared the stage, answering each others points in turn. This forum made for a back-andforth discussion that was praised afterwards by some of those in attendance, including Nona BuckleyIrvine, who tweeted that it “had been “one of the most interesting UGMs we have ever had.” The motion was then passed by an overwhelming majority by LSE students who voted, by a margin of 298 votes to 15, with 19 students registering a vote for ‘Undecided’. Afterwards, Prabu told The Beaver “It means a great deal to me, as I’m sure it does to every Tamil at LSE, to see our Union taking such a strong stance against the abuses committed by Sri Lanka when much of the world has stayed silent for too long. “The passing of this motion will hopefully encourage many other student unions to take such a position themselves. I hope that such collective voice will persuade the U.K. government to put pressure on Sri Lanka to ensure that UNCHR inquiry, finally mandated this year, proceeds in an independent
Continued page 3
L to R: Nona Buckley-Irvine, John Sweeney, Prof Paul Kelly, Prof Craig Calhoun, Andrew Farrell. Cartoon by Jack Hodsoll
Sport Comment
Another Year of Carol Revelry A Difficult but Rewarding First Term Page 32 Page 8
Room 2.02, Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, LSE Students’ Union London WC2A 2AE
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Executive Editor Jon Allsop
editor@thebeaveronline.co.uk
Managing Editor Alexander Fyfe
Tuesday December 9, 2014
Established in 1949 Issue No. 822- Tuesday 9 December 2014 - tinyurl.com/beaver822 Telephone: 0207 955 6705 Email: editor@thebeaveronline.co.uk Website: www.beaveronline.co.uk Twitter: @beaveronline
From the Executive and Managing Editors
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News Editor Megan Crockett Mahatir Pasha
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Comment Editors Sebastien Ash Ellen Wilkie
Jon Allsop and Alexander Fyfe reflect on a fascinating and successful term
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PartB Editors Jade Jackman Vikki Hui
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The City Editor Julia Wacket
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Photo Editor Helen Hasse
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Design Editor Liam Hill
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Online Editor Harry Maxwell
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Collective Chair Dorothy Wong
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A Badwe, A Doherty, A Fraser, A Fyfe, A Howells, A Laird, A Leung, A Lulache, A Moro, A Qazilbash, A Santhanham, A Tanwa, A Thomson, B Phillips, C Holden, C Hulm, C Loughran, C Morgan, C Naschert, C Hu, D Hung, D Lai, D Sippel, D Tighe, D Wong, E Arnold, E Wilkie, G Cafiero, G Greenwood, G Harrison, G Kist, G Linford-Grayson, G Manners-Armstrong, G Rosser, G Saudelli, H Brentnall, H Prabu, H Toms, I Mosselmans, I Plunkett, J Allsop, J Cusack, J Evans, J Foster, J Grabiner, J Heeks, J Jackman, J Momodu, J Ruther, J Wacket, K Budd, K Kalaichelvan, K Owusu, K Parida, K Quinn, L Hill, L Kang, L Kendall, L Erich, L Mai, L Montebello, L Schofield, L van der Linden, L Weigold, M Akram, M Banerjee-Palmer, M Brien, M Crockett, M Domenech Ensenat, M Gallo, M Jaganmohan, M Johnson, M Malik, M Morissette, M Neergheen, M Pasha, M Pearson, M Pennill, M Petrocheilos, M Rakus, M Rakus, M Strauss, M Warbis, N Antoniou, N Bhaladhare, N Buckley-Irvine, N Stringer, O Hill, O Gleeson, P Amoroso, P Blinkhorn, P Gederi, R Browne, R J Charnock, R Chouglay, R Chua, R Huq, R Kouros, R O’Rourke, R Park, R Serunjogi, R Siddique, R Soni, R Uddin, R Watt, S Ali, S Ash, S Barnett, S BrS Crabbe-Field, S Donszelmann, S Kunovska, S Povey, S Sebatindira, S Thandi, T Maksymiw, T Mushtaq, T Odayar, T Poole, V Hui, Z Chan, Z Mahmod Any opinions expressed herein are those of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the LSE Students’ Union or Beaver Editorial Staff.
The Beaver is issued under a Creative Commons license. Attribution necessary. Printed at Mortons Printing
Comment: 9: More space on campus 11: Rugby and mental health Photo: 12: Christmas on campus
THE NAB: 13: AU Christmas Carol 14-15: Christmas quiz 16-17: Satire 18-20: Society round-up
The City: 24: The city and inequality
features@thebeaveronline.co.uk
sports@thebeaveronline.co.uk
News: 3: Your Union Week 5: Radhanath Swami 6: High Holborn elections 7: Norman Baker
22: The end of iTunes
Features Editors Liam Hill George Harrison
Sport Editor Robin Park
This Week’s Contents
PartB:
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THAT’S ALL FOLKS, THIS IS the last edition of The Beaver for 2014 and our last editorial (brace yourselves for nauseating descriptions of Alex’s Christmas next term). From Men’s Rugby, via Sweeney to Email Surveillance; we’ve covered a lot in the past ten weeks. Firstly, however, we would like to put on record an update on our stated priority of making The Beaver more inclusive, that Jon outlined in his first editorial (issue 812). We’ve made big changes to make sure that we engage with everybody on campus; from launching an online submissions system, to electing new editorial board positions, to taking a strong stance on liberation issues. In order to ensure that new students knew who we were and what we did, we made a gargantuan effort to distribute 4000 copies of our Freshers edition straight to halls of residence. After a weekend of lugging copies of The Beaver around central London, almost every new first year undergraduate and around two in three new postgraduates received a copy of the paper on move-in day, put straight in their hands. Our Freshers Fair drive aimed to address the commonly-held misconception that in order to write for the paper, prior experience and proven writing ability are necessary. Although our plan to produce an entirely Fresherwritten edition in week one was somewhat scuppered by Freshers’ Fair logistics and the Men’s Rugby Scandal, we still boasted a host of new contributors, particularly in the Comment and Features sections. In terms of the make-up of our editorial board, we have come a huge way in ten weeks. Starting out with five men and one woman, seven of the ten editorial board members we have elected
since have been female. We now have an editorial board which better reflects LSE as a university, representing an array of different nationalities, cultures, degree subjects and levels of study. We have two first year editors who will surely bolster the future of our newspaper, one of whom, Mahatir Pasha, was elected as a result of our promise to get a first year News editor on board. Both of these outstanding young individuals have proven that with drive and interest, anyone can get involved with The Beaver at a high level straight off the bat. We have also done more than ever before to cover liberation issues on campus, because this is a university where liberation politics really matters. From our exhaustive coverage of the Men’s Rugby Scandal, to our front page spots for Feminist and Afro-Caribbean Society campaigns, we have worked to ensure that liberation issues are placed prominently in the paper on an almost weekly basis. Our Pride Week Special, boasting ten pages of special content, guest editorials and a dedicated front page photo interview, was an interesting way of highlighting that Pride Week is, as LGBT+ Officer Alex Leung wrote, “not just an excuse to party”. I believe that the reforms that we have made are reflected in our readership statistics, with well over 100 000 page views on our new website, and over 60 000 unique visitors, The Beaver is more widely read on campus than it has been in a long time. Whilst the Men’s Rugby scandal gave us a boost in this respect, counting well over 30 000 page views in a week, this contributed only 18 per cent of our total readership. Our Online Editor Harry Maxwell must be credited with revitalising our online presence, adding unique content and the new submissions system.
We certainly had a baptism of fire, as the Men’s Rugby scandal dominated headlines both at LSE and nationally. We broke KMPG pulling their funding, along with all the official statements from relevant parties. We also featured Michael Etherdige’s letters - which were read internationally, and quoted across the media. Jon found himself on BBC World Service, Alex answering questions at 7pm from 5Live. Almost immediately, we segued into an exclusive interview with journalist and LSE alum John Sweeney. Whilst his opinions were contentious, he raised very pertinent questions about how the school is funded and the lack of transparency in this area, which were carried by the Evening Standards amongst other national publications. In the same week, Ken Livingstone declared in a Beaver interview that the next London Mayor could not be worse than Boris as Jimmy Saville was dead, which again was picked up by the national press. Subsequently, our report on Academic Registrar Simeon Underwood’s proposals to increase email surveillance, raising both legal and ethical concerns, started a debate on campus over the appropriate extent of the School’s monitoring capabilities. By mixing up big stories and special issues dedicated to Remembrance and Pride, we hope we have fulfilled the dual function that we believe student newspapers should strive to satisfy: reporting on newsworthy events, whilst never forgetting that this newspaper is a voice for those on campus who have something to say. New sections like Photo and The City, and our newly appointed Beaver Business Team are giving people who wouldn’t normally think to contribute to the paper a chance to do so. It is a chance we hope you will continue to grasp next term.
Features 27: Tax evasion and povety 28: Chizil: a new global force Sport: 31: Abacus FC 32: Bev Report special Billie Selby @billie_selby @beaveronline the History of the Beverage Report?
Mahatir Pasha @mahatir_pasha The Cat likes The Beaver guys! @beaveronline @Jon_ Allsop :D :D :D
Kieth Hughes @KiethHughes @lseau_wrfc players who can come up with the best caption for this photo? #wrugby #rugbyunited @beaveronline @lsesu
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
Section editorial: SO BEAVERS, CHRISTMAS is finally upon us, and despite all the essays and end of term stress we’re sure you’re all looking forward to your own beds, Christmas Dinner and royally over-eating and drinking. We’re really looking forward to next term, no doubt there’ll be loads of News, General Elections, and, more importantly, SU elections. Freshers prepare yourself for the extraordinary level of canvassing and tedious puns that will bombard you every time you set foot on Houghton Street. This week was Your Union week, where the Union was looking for your feedback to make sure they’re on the right track and staying accountable to you. Despite something of a lack of interest on Houghton Street, we’ll strive to make sure that we hold the SU to account. We have some great news in store for you in this week’s edition. Find out how students have the potential to significantly help out the Labour Party in the upcoming General Election on page 4 and why The LSE has been given £1 million of sholarships on page 6. Read about Radhanath Swami’s trip to LSE and how private schools know how to game elite universities by heading over to page 5. Enjoy your Christmas and your time away from university. We’d love you to use the break to re-energise your writing skills and come back next term with a motivation to contribute to The Beaver every week!
News
Megan Crockett and Mahatir Pasha
Section Editors: Megan Crockett and Mahatir Pasha news@thebeaveronline.co.uk
UGM Report: Sri Lanka Debate and Updates From the Sabbs Continued from page 1 and unobstructed manner”. This motion had only been the third motion to be discussed at UGM this term, after the motion to change the name of the LGBT Officer to LGBT+ Officer was passed, and the referendum on LSESU’s affiliation to the NUS failed to reach the higher level of quoracy required for a referendum to be passed. The final motion of Michaelmas Term will be debated at this week’s UGM, on the 11th December, at 1:00 PM in the Old Theatre and is entitled “Stop Anti-Semitism Now”. The meeting itself was opened by London School of Economics Students’ Union General Secretary Nona Buckley-Irvine who explained how she is attempting to make the Students’ Union more “transparent, accountable and accessible.” Buckley-Irvine then an-
nounced that a consultation on student democracy would take place in January 2015. This announcement was followed by reports by all five Sabbatical officers on their work this term. Buckley-Irvine focused on the “amazing” work of the liberation officers and societies within the Operation Liberation events. Alistair Duncan, LSESU Activities and Development Officer, focused some of his report on the reaction to the Men’s Rugby Scandal at the beginning of term. Duncan said, “what happened earlier this year was a surprise” and that “my AU for all campaign... has had to be kickstarted by the Men’s Rugby scandal”. Tom Maksymiw announced that the fourth floor of the library will be a study space by Lent term. Seb Bruhn, Community and Welfare Officer, mentioned a
number of ongoing projects, including getting societies involved in the build up to May 2015’s general election, the success of Interfaith Week and the
Operation Liberation campaign, a broader “well-being project” that he is working on, and the first official handover training for halls committees.
L to R: For the motion, Hari Prabu; against the motion, Dinesh Perera; and Rayhan Uddin.
News Analysis: Your Union Week Megan Crockett LAST WEEK SAW THE STUDENTS’ Union (SU) bring “Your Union” week onto campus. The week kick started on Monday 1st December, with activities taking place throughout campus. Thursday’s Union General Meeting (UGM) was largely devoted to discussion of the SU and the work of the Sabbs so far, as well as a Q&A with General Secretary of the SU, Nona Buckley-Irvine, on Twitter on Thursday evening. However, turnout at these ‘events’ and interest in the week on the whole has been dire. When asked what they had thought of ‘Your Union’ Week one student, who wishes to remain anonymous, replied, ‘what is Your Union week? When is it ... Has there been stuff going on?’. According to a publication on the SU’s Tumblr by Buckley-Irvine, one of the main motivations behind the week was because the SU ‘want [student] feedback’. According to the article the week consisted of members of the SU team and Sabbs ‘handing out feedback forms in person around campus’ from Monday to
Wednesday, this feedback would then be shared in the UGM on Thursday, and then, as has been previously mentioned, there would be a Q&A held on Twitter. Buckley-Irvine signs off the article stating that she ‘looks forward to reading your comments!’. However, the volume of comments received is dubious.
“The poor turnout at the UGM reinforced again that it is not a rigorous tool for democracy... Students said that they saw the UGM as pointless... I can’t help but feel that these sentiments have changed very little.”
Although the Beaver does not know the specific number of responses to the feedback forms being given to students around campus, there was a ‘unimpressive turnout’ at the UGM on Thursday with Buckley-Irvine even commenting on twitter, ‘This is one of the most interesting UGMs we have ever had, wish there were more people here!’. In addition, it appears that there were no questions submitted for Nona’s Q&A on Twitter. Clearly the student body is apathetic, or disinterested in the SU. In response to the low levels of interest Buckley-Irvine said “the poor turnout at the UGM reinforced again the fact that it is not a rigorous tool for democracy. In our Annual Survey last year students said that they saw the UGM as pointless and irrelevant. Judging by the turnout this week, I can’t help but feel that these sentiments have changed very little. Regardless, it means that we can ask more questions about how students should be able to hold the SU accountable, and I hope that people participate in our consultation in January about this”. This seems to infer the motion for a
Student Council may return in some form in Lent term despite it having been taken off the table earlier this term. UGM chair Rayhan Uddin, meanwhile, commented that ““By the end of this term we will have had 5 UGMs which include 3 motions, 1 referendum and an address by the SU Gen Sec about the rugby scandal which was attended by over 100 students. We also had the highest turnout we’ve ever had for MT elections, with several BME and women candidates both running and winning. All this has been positive but we recognise that there are still issues to be addressed with regards to UGM turnout and the way in which SU democracy functions. To that end, the Democracy Committee will work closely with the Sabbs in helping with the SU democracy consultation next term which will involve the input of as many students as possible.” Having publicised ‘Your Union’ week on the LSE SU website and SU Tumblr the low levels of interest are embarrassing; perhaps the strongest feedback the SU can take from the week is the lack of interest in their roles on campus.
News
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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In Brief The Student Vote ‘Could Swing Ten
LSE Christmas Concert 2014 LSE CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA Christmas Concert 2014 will be kicking off at 7.45pm tonight! The much awaited event has already sold out and will be taking place at St Clement Danes in Stand. The LSE Choir will perform Gloria by Vivaldi, and a selection of Christmas carols. The LSE Orchestra will perform Beethoven Aria: ‘Ah Perfido!’, Cy Lloyd: Elegy for Jayne (World Premiere) and Beethoven: Symphony No.5 in C minor.
Lives of over half of the UK’s millennium generation touched by Poverty MORE THAN HALF OF THE children born in the UK at the turn of the millennium have experienced poverty at some point during their first 11 years. A new study, edited by Lucinda Platt, Professor of Social Policy and Sociology, also found that more than one in six of the 13,000 ‘children of the new century’ have been brought up in persistently poor families. “Our findings are concerning because poverty is undoubtedly bad for children,” said Professor Platt. “It can have a negative effect on their educational attainment, health and behaviour in childhood, and can have adverse consequences in adulthood. Long durations of poverty put children at particular risk of poorer outcomes during their school years and in later life.”
The New LSE Hoodie A NEW LIMITED EDITION hoodie has been released. The hoodie has the words ‘I Study at LSE.To save time let’s just assume I’m always right,” written across it. The release of the garment has caused controversy with critics accusing it of fuelling elitism and comparing it to the ‘more intelligent than you since 1895’ LSE Tshirt which is still being sold. The hoodie comes in four colours and could be purchased for £28.21. Sales closed on Sunday midnight. Would you wear this?
Seats to Labour’ in the 2015 Election Megan Crockett News Editor
THE STUDENT VOTE COULD swing the advantage to Labour in about ten seats at the next election; this is the message from a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI). HEPI looks at the student vote in past elections and predicts possible scenarios for the following election. The report suggests that ‘students are not as powerful an electoral force as is sometimes supposed, but they could swing the result in just over ten constituencies, principally to the advantage
of the Labour Party.” It was also suggested that the Liberal Democrats may suffer at the hands of students. The report claimed that ‘in a close fight, [students could] hold the keys to power.’ Looking at past election results and the student vote, the report, titled ‘Do Students Swing Elections? Registration, turnout and voting behaviour among full-time students’, argues that ‘many student voters are motivated by policies that directly affect students even if they are no longer a student by the time the policies come into effect. Identifying student-heavy seats where the Liberal Democrats finished ahead of Labour
in the 2010 elections, such as Manchester Withington and Norwich South, the report suggests that it currently ‘looks very difficult for the Liberal Democrats to hold [their seats in these constituencies] without a major revival of support’. Seats such as Bermondsey & Old Southwark and Bristol West ‘might be won by Labour ... if there is an extra Liberal to Labour swing in the student vote’. However, HEPI warns that Individual Electoral Registration, which replaces the system whereby householders were responsible for registering voters, creates ‘a risk that the democratic student voice of students ... could be diluted by the new bureaucratic hurdles’. Despite this new complication, the report concludes that
‘assuming ... students vote in similar numbers as previously ... it seems that the result in a small number of constituencies, are likely to depend on the choices of student voters’. However, there is debate as to whether or not Labour would have to commit to £6,000 student fees in order to secure the student vote. With the School being a hub for political debate and activity, it can only be expected that Houghton Street will be full of societies, canvassing for students votes come May; this appears to be even more important in light of this Higher Education Policy Institute’s report. Interview with British government expert Tony Travers can be found in Features page 23
Nobel Prize Laureate Visits the LSE Rahat Siddique Staff Writer ON THE EVENING OF Thursday 4th December, the London School of Economics (LSE) Students’ Union (SU) Economics Society hosted 2013 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Lars Peter Hansen. The talk was co-hosted with the School’s Centre for Macroeconomics, the University College London’s (UCL) Economists’ Society and the UCL Economics and Finance Society. Professor
Hansen is currently researching the links better models and financial markets at the University of Chicago, where he is a distinguished Professor of Statistics and co-principal investigator for the Macro Financial Modelling group. The speech titled ‘The Consequences of Uncertainty’ was chaired by Professor Woulter den Haan, a Professor of Economics at LSE, and attracted an audience of four hundred, filling the entire Sheikh Zayed lecture theatre. This was consequently the Economics Society’s largest event of
the term. Professor Hansen began speaking about the implications of uncertainty and the difficulty in incorporating a ‘measure’ of uncertainty on a macro level. He continued to explain the various components that contribute to this uncertainty, model risk, ambiguity and misspecification all make it difficult to have complete confidence in the models that are currently being produced. Because a model is only as good as the assumptions that are made in it, it means that a sensitivity analysis is required for each model. This methodology allows you to deal with a model being wrong by initially understanding the consequences of such an error. A broad range of questions from the audience kept Hansen on his toes, as he answered questions ranging from the implication
of behavioural economics in the models and whether economists are producing better models or merely a greater number of models. As the evening brought to a close, the general message was that of advancement and predictably, ever more questions about the future of macroeconomic model.
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Private Schools Know How to Game Elite Universities, such as LSE Kallum Pearmain Staff reporter AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY the guardian this week suggested that ‘private schools know how to game elite universities, such as the London School of Economics (LSE) and Oxbridge,’ whereas state educated students do not have the same privilege; as a result, state educated students tend to miss out on opportunities to attend these elite institutions. The problem has been put down to an asymmetry of information in the post-sixteen education system, with the critical determinant being class. Students who attend private schools can, according to the Guardian’s report, rely on their school receiving continual informal contact with elite universities, a luxury many state schools miss out on. Despite Russel Group Universities’ hard work with outreach
teams and access teams in state schools, there seems to be an inbuilt advantage among those going to private schools based on informal knowledge. The asymmetry of information deepens when it comes to the additional. bespoke tests many elite universities require; for example, if you wish to study engineering at Cambridge University one would have to sit an additional exam called Step. The Step chief examiner for 2014 claimed that only 3.8 per cent of applicants scored top marks, concluding that the majority were not prepared for the kind of thinking that they were required to do. It has been suggested that those who scored top marks did so as their teachers had long term experience of the Step exam, and the others, who tend to attend state school, did not. This asymmetry of information fails bright pupils from ordinary backgrounds. In addition to the asymmetry
of information, government tables show that the achievement gap between state and private schools is quite visible; sixtynine per cent of students who took further maths in private schools achieved an A or an A*, whereas only fifty-four per cent of their state educated colleagues achieved the same result. This
gap is said to be even bigger in subjects such a ordinary maths, biology, chemistry and physics. Although the LSE does not ask for any additional examinations in order to attend the School, the question still remains as to whether students are unable to successfully apply due to an asymmetry of information.
LSESU Welcomes Radhanath Swami Sebastian Bruhn Community and Welfare Officer THE LSESU WELCOMED Radhanath Swami to the Hong Kong Theatre to present at the ‘Investing in a Better Future’ event on Tuesday. The evening was busy and historic, being a result of one of the largest collaborations of LSESU societies, at least in recent times. Over 250 people attended and the Krishna Consciousness, Hindu, Economics, Investment, Entrepreneurs, Russian, Trading, and Finance society all collaborated in putting the event together.
Radhanath Swami is a prominent Gaudiya Vaishnava guru who, although originally from the United States, travelled through Europe and Asia extensively. Throughout his travels he encountered numerous beliefs and cultures, until finally settling in India and embracing its rich faith tradition. Drawing upon many of his own ventures and meetings with leaders and intellectuals, he dealt with various weighty and thought-provoking topics in his talk, related to improving one’s happiness and fulfilment in life. He touched on several ideas, such as morality, compassion, spirituality, and common humanity, linking
them all to the everyday hustle and bustle of modern life. Attendants, who represented numerous different faiths, nationalities, societies, and disciplines, were generally positive about Radhanath Swami’s presentation. Some felt that, at times, it was challenging to fully relate to some of the more mystical themes that he brought up, but many also expressed great enthusiasm with his universal message and with hearing ideas that aren’t always regularly presented on at the LSE. Lina Lives, a third year undergraduate, described the event as being, “irie” and “a great reminder.” Yaajan Govinia, one of the chief organisers of the event, said, “the key to success is normally one which is hidden and inaccessible to the majority of us. And as students we’re all extremely ambitious! Tonight Radhanath Swami uncovered some of those secrets to success and shared them with us all to cherish and implement in our lives.” The talk had a visible impact on a large portion of the audience, many of which stayed behind after for book signing or a quick conversation. Moreover, with the amount of effort and people involved, it
would seem that it was a sign of more initiatives to come here at the LSE, especially from students and students’ union societies. A quote from the night that was continually repeated by attendants afterwards acts as an ideal summary of the event; “‘you can count how rich you are by the number of things you have that money can’t buy.”
London Uni Round-up THE FOYER OF KING’S Great Hall was occupied by students protesting in support of free education last week. The sit-in protest welcomed speeches from KCLSU officers, a representative from the National Student Assembly and students, all addressing concerns with the cost of accommodation and tuition fees. The protest was apart of a nationwide call from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts for campus occupation. Cat Denby, a King’s student involved in the organisation of the demonstration said: “momentum seems to have carried on not just from those who are politically active at KCL, but also those who want change within our university system”.
THE INSTITUTE OF Education (IOE) and UCL have merged. The student population will increase to 35,000 and combined research income will be over £1 billion. With 19,000 postgraduates and more than 11,000 staff, UCL will also become the UK’s largest postgraduate institution. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said, “This bold move by one of the world’s greatest universities and an international leader in education and social science will ensure they continue to lead the way on the world’s higher education stage.”
A POSTHUMOUS EMAIL HAS allegedly been sent by an Imperial professor who died “suddenly and unexpectedly” in September, to his colleagues. The subject line of the email was “How Professors are treated at Imperial College.” Professor Stefan Grimm from the Department of Toxicology within the Faculty of Medicine, aged 51, died in late September. Around a month later on October 21st, an email from an account named professorstefangrimm@ gmail.com, was sent. A spokesperson from Imperial said there was no reason to believe the email was fake.
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
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High Holborn Committee Elections: LSE Awarded £1 million in Scholarships to Study Inequality A True Display of Democracy? Kanan Parida Staff Writer THE RESULTS OF HIGH Holborn Hall committee elections were announced on 26th November. However, there has been a movement since then contesting the fairness of these elections. A petition was run over last weekend from about Friday 4pm to Monday morning, with around 50 signatures contesting the elections. However, it isn’t the results of the elections being disputed but the way in which the elections were conducted. Henry Goodfellow, ex-candidate for the position of President says, “The petition is contesting the way the elections were run and the campaigning tactics undertaken by certain candidates. In particular the ballet box was closed 10 hours earlier than it was supposed to be (2am rather than 12pm). Also, there were some candidates who went door to door knocking with ballet sheets intimidating people into putting their name down on the sheet and posting the sheet
for them. Several people complained about harassment to the old committee and to me but so far nothing has been done.” Conversely, the current committee contests this notion of “unfair” elections, commenting that this argument is baseless. Goodfellow argues, “Halls elections were taken too seriously and it became more about winning no matter what rather than who could benefit the halls the most. Essentially the ends haven’t justified the means.” However, is this a fight for democracy or are the arguments being made unfounded? A current committee member commented, “This election has snowballed out of control. Elections were held, some candidates were unsuccessful and now they’re trying to fabricate an issue based on nothing.” Additionally, though there has been a movement against the results of the elections, one student’s comments on the election results have contained racial undertones. Though these sentiments are not reflected by the general contention of the elections, there nevertheless
remains some ambiguity as to whether these racial undertones form a part of the argument. According to a previous committee member, “The elections were fair. Elections were held in exactly the same manner as last year and there were no issues then. There is no rule against trying to convince people to vote for you and there was no definitive evidence of coercion. There were also issues of candidates not behaving diplomatically with each other in the first place.”
Mahatir Pasha News Writer THE LEVERHULME TRUST has awarded the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE) fifteen doctoral scholarships, worth £1million, to be used over the next three years. These scholarships are aimed at students who wish to undertake interdisciplinary research on ‘the challenge of escalating inequalities’. The scholarships, worth £7,000 each, will be affiliated with the School’s new International Inequalities Institute which is due to open in May 2015. The department will be directed by Professor Mike Savage who is currently the Head of Department of Sociology. The new scholarships, the new Institute and the forthcoming MSc programme on ‘Inequalities and Social Science’ are all part of the School’s increased focus on interdisciplinary research which tackles inequality and social cohesion. The School is one of only fourteen universities to receive the Leverhulme awards. The awards were launched in January 2014 as a means to support the future gen-
eration of researchers in progressing to doctoral study in the UK. Professor Savage commented on the awards claiming that “[the School is] delighted that the Leverhulme Trust has agreed to fund these studentships, which will allow us to build a distinctive graduate programme linked to the new International Inequalities Institute.
Over the past decade, there has been a significant growth of inequalities both within and between nations. There is also a growing acceptance that the wider inequalities between all groups, including the advantaged, are affecting social cohesion, solidarity, social welfare and well-being. These dramatic changes have led to an increase in interdisciplinary energy to address this topic at LSE and were the motivation behind the creation of the new Institute, which will seek to better understand the causes and consequences of widening inequalities.”
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News
Tuesday December 9, 2014
The Beaver Attends Special Leveson Lecture Alexander Fyfe Managing Editor ON WEDNESDAY 3RD DECEMBER, campaign group Hacked Off held the 2nd annual Leveson Lecture. Managing Editor Alexander Fyfe and Comment Editors Ellen WIlkie and Seb Ash attended the talk, given by MP for West Bromwich Tom Watson. The lecture was attended by a large crowd, from Hacked Off members, phone hacking victims, politicians and journalists. ‘Unfinished business’ was Watson’s theme, with regards to media landscape in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry. He railed
against tabloid owners and editors who continue to obstruct the push for a statutory regulator, arguing that they continue to bring journalism into disrepute. In a passionate speech, he detailed the worst excesses of the press; phone hacking, intimidation and bribing officials. Rebekah Brooks was derided as a “swamp dweller”, culpable journalists “thugs” and their actions as “habitually disgraceful.” “It was not possible to tell who ran the country.” he argued, during the height of the Murdoch empire. Paul Dacre and Richard Desmond were also on the receiving end of Watson’s wrath, portrayed as obstinate cowards.
Looking to the future, he hoped that Impress would seek statuatiry recognition, and that Leveson part two would expose further wrong-doing along with the full extent of police collusion. His lecture was received with a standing ovation from many in the room, and was followed by a Q&A with Watson, solicitor Charlotte Harris, Hacked Off Director Joan Smith and Hugh Grant. Questions varied from those critical of Hacked Off’s mission, to ones from individuals clearly enraptured by Watson’s words. One notable question came from the Beaver’s old friend John Sweeney, as he announced he’d been fired by the
BBC, and asked about the Attorney Generals’ interventions in his recent Panorama programme exposing Mazher Mahmood. Watson made an impassioned
plea for finishing the business of reforming the media landscape, it remains to be seen if Hacked Off can mobilise enough support to achieve this.
Lib Dem and Tibet Societies Welcome Norman Baker Nancy Williams LSESU Liberal Democrats THE LSESU LIBERAL DEMOCRAT Society and LSESU Tibet Society warmly welcomed Norman Baker MP to discuss his support for the freedom of Tibet, explain his reasons for resigning as a Home Office minister and his opinion on the direction of UK drug policy. Frustrated by the slow progress of Conservative colleagues, Baker resigned in order to bring attention to a report stating that tougher laws on drug use do not lead to decreased levels of usage. He stressed his desire for rational evidence-based policy and highlighted that the ineffectiveness of current drug policy is not going unnoticed. Not just by Russell Brand, but the UK public as well, with 73 per cent of us wanting drug reform according to a poll conducted by the Sun. Published three weeks after its release, the report’s findings supported a Portuguese model of drug policy whereby criminal penalties for the use of drugs are replaced by administrative ones such as community service or rehabilitation. This, Baker stressed, was important to warn of
the long-term and devastating consequences of drug use. For example, there is a growing number of young people with bladder problems as a result of Ketamine use in the UK, which may have been prevented if such a drug policy model existed. As he said, it’s “time for growing up” in UK drug policy. Norman Baker then moved onto discuss his work in support of Tibet. His passion to protect the culture and society in Tibet was clear and he identified that the issue of freedom for Tibet encompassed not only sovereignty and cultural issues, but also one on the violation of human rights. With the limited ability for multi-nationals to get involved in the Chinese occupation of Tibet due to China’s strong international position, Baker stressed the need to communicate directly with the Chinese people in order to encourage change. UN resolutions have been made, but also gone unnoticed, so he suggests we should work from the roots-up. Although the free Tibet movement has become less popular, Baker highlighted that here at the LSE we should engage with fellow students to help increase awareness of the situation in Tibet.
Comment Section Editorial: AS IS EVIDENT FROM
Nona’s Comment piece, the end of Michaelmas term is a time that lends itself to reflection over the past ten weeks. My own term has been dominated by my involvement with The Beaver, starting humbly as a Part-B Sub-Editor and midway through the term being elected to co-edit Comment. It has been a pleasure to work with the rest of the editorial team and I feel honoured to be a part of such a high quality newspaper. At our Editorial Board Christmas social on Friday these feelings of happiness, pride and enjoyment of my position were- with the help of too many shots of the Christmas Spirit- manifest. Manifest, that is, on the floor of The Three Tuns. Resolutions for Lent Term: keep Comment alive and learn to hold my drink. Merry Christmas everyone!
Comment
Ellen Wilkie
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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Section Editors: Sebastien Ash and Ellen Wilkie Deputy Editors: Mallika Iyer, Natasha Su Sivarajah comment@thebeaveronline.co.uk
A Difficult But Rewarding First Term LSESU General Secretary reflects on Michaelmas Term at LSE
Nona Buckley-Irvine “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.” - Nelson Mandela WHEN WE LOOK BACK TO the rugby club incident, I think we would all say that his term has been a rather big hill to climb. But it was an incident that raised a set of new hills or challenges too. Sexism, misogyny, homophobia, elitism, classism, and racism are all forms of discrimination that were highlighted with the incident. People have quite rightly pointed out that it is not just members of the rugby club who are culpable in these respects. It is not just sports teams. Nor LSE. These attitudes are prevalent in society as a whole. Yet this doesn’t mean that there are not tangible improvements that can be made to our campus community. It strikes me that in the past few years that I’ve been here as a student, there’s has always been complacency towards these underlying issues. Don’t get me wrong, student life and our community is fantastic. My three years here were and always will be some of the best years of my life, as I hope they will be for you too. But issues such as elitism and referring to universities as “polys” have gone largely unquestioned. Treatment of women on nights out and harassment has barely been discussed. The exclusion of community groups such as LGBT+ from spaces such as sports teams has not even been touched upon. To be perfectly honest, this isn’t the year that I was planning on having as General Secretary. However, I think it was incredibly important that these issues were raised, otherwise things would have carried on as usual. A significant number of people do feel discrimination at LSE. They’ve told us in forums, in Beaver articles, in the Operation Liberation survey. You’ve had your say, and now we are collating everything into a big report so we can come up with the
actions based on what you have said. Now is the time to act. But we have already started taking action. We’ve partnered with the Good Night Out campaign, an organisation that trains our bar staff on dealing with sexual harassment in our venues, so that everyone and anyone who experiences harassment will feel comfortable coming forward and making a complaint. There is all the fantastic work that the liberation officers have done throughout this term. The AU have held forums, worked with us on developing training. The Men’s Rugby Working Group is holding a touch rugby session this Wednesday open to everyone. It’s all headed in the right direction. The School have put pressure on us to act and part of my job this term has been to defend us against this. We have shown that we don’t need pressure in order to act – we can do it ourselves, and we have been doing it ourselves. More importantly, we have to do it ourselves as we are an independent Union, as outlined in law. Yet, some students have ques-
tioned the prioritisation of liberation this term. Prioritising liberation was undoubtedly the right thing to do. This doesn’t mean that we haven’t been working on other things. The School are working with us on finally developing a rent guarantor scheme, they are promising to include us in the discussions about setting halls rents, and we are constantly telling the School that we need more space. We’ve changed around the Annual Fund scheme and increased the amount of funding the societies and clubs can get from £250,000 to £300,000. We’ve made our SU catering cheaper – and we’re looking into making it even cheaper. My own self criticism is that we should be telling you this more. Some students have also questioned whether anything has changed. It definitely has. The fact that there are so many people working on making LSE inclusive, and actually talking about why it isn’t inclusive, is a change in itself. Cultural change takes time, but it has already started. That said, there are some who are determined to carry on as usual, and
deliberately work against some decisions that have been taken. To those people, give it up. We need to use this year to see through long lasting change, and we will do it. I am proud to have been part of a Union that has taken a stand on discrimination this term, and challenged the complacency that we have been used to in the past years. I hope you can join me in this. To all the new students this term, congratulations – you have survived Michaelmas! Orientation feels like such a long time ago now, I can’t believe it. I hope your first term has been everything you hoped it would be, and LSE lived up to expectations. To everyone else, have an amazing Christmas and get ready for a Lent Term with more work on Operation Liberation – but a term with the added bonus of a General Election to fight. We’ll be lobbying MPs on key issues related to students. For now, we have climbed a hill this term. There are many more to climb for sure. And that is an opportunity to relish.
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Comment
Tuesday December 9, 2014
LSESU Societies and Clubs Need Space to Breathe We need more space on campus to show off our university’s creative side
Lodewijk Vriens ATTENDING A UNIVERSITY located right in the centre of London, most students are keenly aware that space on campus will always be in short supply. We did not expect football pitches, dance studios, rehearsal spaces all nicely located on a leafy campus. That does not mean however that students do not want to have access to such facilities, and that the school should not do more to supply them. With over 3,000 students in the AU, and over 190 societies at the school, a huge number of students find themselves involved in activities other than classwork. All these activities find themselves vying for space. Most AU teams find themselves with long-travel times, whilst those who have the luxury of having space at school, be it the martial arts in the AU, to the dance or
drama societies, are competing for the small number of spaces on offer on campus. It is true that the number of spaces available on campus seems to have increased this year. The impressive Saw Swee Hock building has both the 6th Floor Space, as well as The Venue. Yet this is largely balanced out with the Shaw Library being closed for performances a little over a year ago, and the Parish Hall being closed for asbestos removal. In preparation for its destruction next year, parts of the Clare Market
“Increasing the amount and improving access to spaces at LSE will allow us to train, rehearse practice and perform in a manner that will highlight that we are not just an academically prestigious university.”
“With the growth in the LSE student body, and the rising popularity of societies and the AU, students are increasingly competing for already limited space.”
have also been removed for use. This has meant that, combined with the growth in the LSE student body, and the rising popularity of societies and the AU, that students are increasingly competing for already limited space. The SU makes certain rooms available during the evenings for rehearsals and practice, for societies ranging from national societies to Salsa or Swing Dance, but most of these spaces are block-booked weekly, at the start of term, making it more difficult for societies which run on more flexible timetables. With the purchase of 44 Lin-
coln’s Inn Fields, currently the Cancer Research Centre, there is the potential that facilities are setaside for the societies in the SU and AU clubs. The need to ensure that this happens is increasingly pressing with the closure of the East Building and Clare Market coming soon. Increasing the amount and improving access to spaces at LSE will allow us to train, rehearse, practice, and perform in a manner that will highlight that we are not just a academically prestigious university, but one with a highly active student body, covering all manner of interests.
Hong Kong’s Ambiguous Revolution Protesters must break their barricades but not with each other Janis Wong LAST WEEK, HONG KONG made itself back into the headlines of BBC News. We saw violent clashes between the police and protesters, the surrender of Occupy Central’s founders, and students beginning their hunger strikes. Just as the issue was being swept under the rug, Hong Kong came back with a bang– albeit with mixed messages. I often get asked the same questions: What is actually happening? Why now? Do you really think this will bring about change? The answers stretch far beyond the Umbrella Movement itself, deeply rooted within ideals we once thought were in reach. With the police tearing down iron barriers, literally translated as iron horses, activists must once again unite the people of Hong Kong in a Movement they once had faith in. In 2013, there was a popular internet saying: “Sometime
ago, we lived in Hong Kong. Now, we only live in a place called Hong Kong.” For better or for worse, the political environment has shifted further since then. Frankly, the Movement has lost its momentum. The glisten in our eyes has been replaced with a slight absent glassiness. Although we still yearn for universal suffrage, we are tired and fed up of slow progress. The days of artistic and creative protesting have gone. Even though the Lennon Wall remains, smaller projects are fading out of the picture. There seems to only be so much that we can say through art. It can open doors for discussion, provoke interest in politics, as well as provide insight on wider implications. That being said, what is left when so much of our human emotions and nuances have already been explored? Perhaps, most difficult to digest is the disparity between responses towards recent police
brutality. The original conveners of Occupy Central turned themselves in to police. Their surrender was, dare I say, humourously ignored. The students stepped up their game, which too is being hopelessly neglected. It was a brave move for the founders to accept responsibility and braver still for students to risk their lives. However, this is not defeat. Both groups continue to strive for the same cause, but on the surface, there is disorientation and lack of direction. As the movement becomes more complex and segregated, all factions must search for the middle ground. In order for public engagement to continue, radicals need to maintain support from the people, particularly the middle-class, of which the Movement heavily relies upon. The youth must continue to use their voices and maximise their online reach. It is necessary for the older generation to continue leading from their
“The youth must continue to use their voices and maximise their online reach. It is necessary for the older generation to continue leading from their posts, demonstrating that their efforts have not been in vain.” posts, demonstrating that their efforts have not been in vain. In discussion with Mr. Edward McMillan-Scott last week, he was optimistic about future developments, as “someone in
Beijing will be ready when the time comes, and the time will come.” Though he is right, we cannot afford to wait much longer. It has been 25 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in ’89 and seventeen years since Hong Kong’s return to China. Our ‘one country, two systems’ deadline in 2047 looms dangerously close. The Hong Kong governement shows no sign of backing down, but neither do the Hong Kong people. How much has our politics changed? You do the maths. As I prepare to return home over Christmas, I am conflicted between whether I want the protests to simmer down or for them to escalate. We are walking along a tightrope, where a slight gust of wind could tip the balance either way. Tempting as it may be to pack our bags and retreat to the comfort of our air-conditioned shopping malls, we must continue to sit in the open air. It is the only way to keep our glowing wicks alive.
Comment
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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Who Is Vulnerable In America?
The uprising in Ferguson shows that institutional racism is present in America Zoe Oakley YET ANOTHER BLACK MAN was killed at the hands of the police this August; and yet another verdict this week sidesteps recognising a degree of racism in the law enforcement system. Segregation is still rife. A sector of Americans feel threatened by a system supposed to protect their livelihood. I’m angry. I’m far from St. Louis now, where I spent four years of high school and had my eyes opened to a division that is as sharp as crossing the street on Delmar Boulevard. This one road separates my white, privileged area from the predominantly black, impoverished neighbourhoods to the North. My context on the white side told me I was a different species. The only time I was actually encouraged to go to a predominantly black neighbourhood was for a community service trip – if that says anything about the relationship between black and white people in America. The rest of the year, I
must avoid the supermarket two blocks north at all costs and instead go to Straubs, where the same apples cost three times as much. Yes, apparently it’s worth paying three dollars to avoid my neighbours. I’m annoyed at myself, because, after I finished high school I escaped that world without doing anything.
“In between each brief exposé of another black man’s death at the hands of police officers, the racism endures unquestioned.” America too remains silent on the subject until a case like Michael Brown’s is brought to light. As the media announced that the unarmed, black 18-yearold’s killer, police officer Wilson,
would not be indicted, residents of St Louis County and cities all over the US took to the streets to express their sorrow, outrage, and disillusionment. In between each brief exposé of another black man’s death at the hands of police officers, however, the racism endures unquestioned. From the limited extra information the FBI does gather, we can see who is hurt the most by the injustice in the law enforcement process. The FBI’s 2012 Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) reveals that 31% of all victims of police homicides that year were black, while only 13% of the US population identified themselves as AfricanAmerican. In cases where victims did not attack the officer before being shot, the proportion of black victims increased by 9 percentage points: more black people were killed when the officers were unprovoked. Information on whether victims are carrying guns is non-existent in the SHR, providing another loophole for officers to escape culpability. Where the data is available we
see patterns of racism, but to this day it is not mandated and therefore poorly collected.
“American government officials are prioritising the safety of some citizens while failing to defend the others.” The effect of a system virtually allowing police to disguise and shroud unjustified murder—the victims of which are disproportionally African-American—is to make a large group of society feel threatened by the very same system meant to protect them. As I watched my old classmates react to the release of Michael Brown’s verdict this week on social media, I felt sick at the terrible things I did not
know they were capable of saying. They did this as their white affluent neighbourhoods were protected by tanks and the National Guard, while in Ferguson on W Florissant, a block away from where Michael Brown died, buildings were left to burn in flames. Twenty-five properties were ablaze in Ferguson on Tuesday morning as the verdict was announced. The state’s failure to safeguard the city where Michael Brown lived is a blatant demonstration that American government officials are prioritising the safety of some citizens while failing to defend the others. The weakness of police homicide records and the unequal protection of American people and towns in the aftermath of the grand jury’s verdict highlight a pressing concern: racism continues to be inherent in American institutions. But it remains unspoken about, trapped on either side of Delmar Boulevard, the Ferguson city limits, or the dividing line of any other US city.
The Value Of A Black Life
The Michael Brown killing raises questions about equality between ethnicities Shakiesha Beckford WHAT IS THE VALUE OF a black life? If one could be purchased on the market what would be its market value? If I was to terminate the life of a young black man, would that be considered a loss or a gain? Would that life be mourned to the same extent as the tragic death of a white middle class male? If the authorities were to gun down and kill in broad daylight an unarmed black male, would there be a public outcry? Would the general public take to the streets in protest and demand justice? Would an entire country mourn this death? Would the authorities cease to justify the ‘unlawful’ killings of young black males? Or is a black life dispensable? Racism isn’t simply an attitude or a set of beliefs; it manifests itself in practices, institutions and structures. Embedded within such manifestations is a deep rooted sense of difference that sustains and imposes an established racial order, which is believed to reflect the laws of nature or the decrees of God. Historically blacks have occupied a subordinate and inferior status to whites; the value of the black life continues to be mar-
ginal to that of whites. In the criminal justice system blacks have historically been subjected to brutal and oppressive police controls. With vast numbers dying in police custody and many more dying at the hands of the police. I have begun to ask why? Why does this happen? Why is this allowed to happen? It seems that although on paper the rights and equalities we have pressed for have been achieve, in reality it is still questionable whether the position of blacks changed. Has equality been achieved? There was a time when the killing of a black man was not a crime at all, as long as the perpetrator was white and had political and public support. The case of Emmett Till may seem like an old example but it is still of relevance. What is the difference between the murder of Emmett Till and the ‘murders’ of Mark Duggan or Michael Brown? I would argue that there is no difference since the victims were all black and of low socio-economic position, all the killings were justified or justifiable, all were unarmed but all died. This is quite ironic, but I now have to ask why? This is a multifaceted is-
sue. I could offer an exhaustive list as to regards to why blacks are targeted by the police and why blacks occupy a precarious status. Blacks are deemed as dangerous, feckless, criminally inclined and time after time po-
Photo Credit: Flickr: peoplesworld
lice employ shoot-to-kill tat-tics when engaging with black suspects. I posed the question ‘what is the value of a black life?’ in response to the recent killing of Michael Brown and many others like him. This question is of
stark importance and it is a question that needs to be answered. I posed this question to you my reader to begin thinking about; since it is only once we begin to critically engage with this issue can we reach a clear answer and
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Comment
Tuesday December 9, 2014
The Rugby Ban And Mental Health
Disbanding the Men’s Rugby team ignores the mental health benefits sports provide
George Greenwood RUGBY HAS BEEN A massive part of my life since I discovered at thirteen, by chance, that I tended to bounce rather much better than other school children when hurled at the ground in PE. But recently, it has caused me some rather serious issues. This year, I started my Masters at LSE. As I had at Oxford, I was relying on rugby to help me through a difficult time. I was coming to the big city from rural Devon, with few friends from university around, living with people I didn’t know in an “edgy” (rough) part of London I had never been to before. Rugby, was going to be my way into the social side of a new university and an instant group of friends, and would enable me to feel a part of something that cannot be replicated in any other field; the teamwork of the scrum, the incomparable elation of fighting for the guy next to you to exhaustion to win a tight game, or sprinting across the pitch to make that match saving tackle on your own five meter line. Sadly, thanks to the infinite wisdom of LSE RFC, and of the LSE SU, this was not to be. As has been widely reported in the press, some of the brightest sparks that LSE RFC had
Photo Credit: Wikicommons RFU
to offer felt it would be a really good idea to cook up a leaflet espousing the “values” of the rugby team. Apparently these were misogyny, and homophobia, which was certainly news to me. But rather than punishing those few immature idiots responsible for this rather infantile “banter,” the SU decided to immediately cave to media pressure and ban the team outright. Goodbye new friendship group, goodbye regular exercise and goodbye match winning feeling.
“Students’ Unions often misunderstand the impact that banning clubs in reaction to the actions of a few can have on the rest of its membership” Unsurprisingly, I was upset. To people who don’t play sport or who don’t have a hobby that has played as big a role in their life as rugby has for me, it may sound childish or trivial but I felt absolutely robbed of a huge part of my identity. I started to find myself struggling to get out of bed in the morning and to read the articles that I had been set for my course. I started to turn up to class having done the bare minimum and just trying to muddle through to greater or lesser success. I felt as if I was walking through a fog, with no positive aspects of my life seem-
ing to have any impact. I was bouncing from concrete commitment to concrete commitment doing nothing in-between. I told myself it would be ok. It was just temporary, I could still go for a run or go to the gym. I told myself to man up, to stop being so lazy, to stop being stupid and weak. I continued this cycle, some days barely leaving my room, and only just being able to drag myself onto the bus, beating myself up internally. I had stopped eating properly, relying on Lucozade and the odd grabbed sandwich, when I remembered, to see me through the day. Eventually, the very convincing façade I had put on for friends and family shattered. I broke down on the phone to my mum and I finally admitted that something was really, really wrong. When she threatened to take me personally to the doctors herself, I booked myself in for my appointment. Two months after I had first noticed that something was amiss, I numbly sat in the dingy office of my local GP, and asked, begrudgingly, for someone to help me. For me, this experience has exposed how paradoxical rugby can be. On the one hand, the feeling of camaraderie is one of the most meaningful aspects in one’s university career, and in life more generally. But my identifying myself so closely as a “rugby man”, as someone who is tough and doesn’t get hurt, prevented me from admitting to myself that I needed help. I was scared people would lose respect for me, for “being soft”, and that I would suffer the ridicule that not living up to this per-
ceived ideal type of masculinity frequently presents. One part of you cries out for help. The other tries to suppress this urge, to “man up” and to just get on with it. This prevented me from seeking proper medical help for months after I noticed the first symptoms of my depression. In my case this was disruptive. For others, in far worse situations than my own, it could be devastating, or even fatal, as the horrific statistic that three young men choose to end their lives every day in the UK shows.
“ We need to break down the myth that if one engages in masculine sports on the one hand, one cannot be anything but mentally composed at all times” So what can we do? On the one hand, LSE has let me down in terms of mental health. I rang the student drop in centre to try to arrange an appointment to finally get help about halfway through this period. Sadly, living in a hall south of the river. They advised me that they were very sorry, but that I would have to go to a public drop in centre far from campus, as I was not eligible to register. This might sound reasonable, but looking back on my
mind-set at the time, it absolutely infuriates me. When you are in that dark place, in a rut you don’t know how to get out of, when a simple administrative barrier get in your way it can be incredibly difficult to find the courage to seek help again. It was three weeks before I tried again. This needs to change immediately. My experience of losing the University rugby club has also taught me that we need to get away from a student culture of banning clubs when it is merely a symbolic action. Student Unions, preoccupied in their high towers by the need to “make progress” and “achieve concrete results”, often misunderstand the impact that banning clubs in reaction to the actions of a few can have on the rest of its membership. They need to realise how meaningful clubs and societies are to their members, and that collectively punishing members for the actions of a few, can have really nasty consequences for those let down. I thought the leaflets were completely unacceptable. And yet a key support had been kicked out from under me, and worse, labelled me as something that I was not - a virtual caveman impossible to conduct independent thought - when I had done absolutely nothing wrong. The LSE Rugby Scandal rightly raised alarm-bells about the unacceptable misogynistic and homophobic behaviour that persists in male sports. But we need to break down the myth that if one engages in masculine sports on the one hand, one cannot be anything but mentally composed at all times on the other. Rugby culture has still to be able to accept this today, but it is far from alone. To fail to make progress on this issue, is to condemn another generation of vulnerable young men to seek help on their own. For me, this led to depression. Others might lash out. And some will not be able to cope with being mentally ill on the one hand, and needing to live up to the masculine stereotype they have created around themselves on the other. They will become sad statistics. Thus for me, Rugby remains a double edged sword. It is part of who I am, and this part of me can encourage me to avoid seeking the help I need. We need to work to dull this latter edge, make it socially acceptable for men to get the mental health support that they need and change our current perception that to ‘be a man’ is to be completely ok, all of the time.
Jon Allsop and Alexander Fyfe
Photo
Photo
Tuesday December 9, 2014
Christmas on campus (above), Revellers at Carol (bottom right) and The Beaver editorial board’s social (below)
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NEW GRANT INTRODUCED FOR UNDER-PRIVILEGED STUDENTS
AU Christmas Carol by Charles Prick-ens
O
nce upon a time, there lived a wicked old miser called Ebe-Calhoun Stooge. Stooge thought that the AU Carol was ‘humbug’ and refused to allow the Athletics Union to drink, chant and strip off outside of his Houghton Street chambers. Stooge even had his poor Academic Registrar, Two-Bob Hatchet, write up a meaningless report on how the Athletics Union should consider scrapping their Carol altogether as it didn’t fit in with Stooge’s vision for an LSE free from all reputational damage. On Thursday night, however, when noone was a-wakefield, Stooge was visited by a terrifying apparition in the form of his former LSE-is-first-and-foremost-a-business partner Jacob
Mar-Kelly. Dragging a clanking elevator behind him, Mar-kelly warned Stooge that he would be visited by three spirits over the course of the night. Stooge felt sure that all of the spirits on campus had already been consumed during the day, and so ignored Mar-kelly’s prophecy. Little did he know that he was about to be proven wrong. The first spirit to visit Stooge was the Ghost of McScandal Past. He took Stooge to witness him and his friends gradually undressing themselves outside a decrepit old world pub formally known as The Three Tuns. Unspeaking, possibly as a result of intoxication, McScandal took Stooge to the AU Ball, where he was noticeable by his absence. The second spirit to visit Stooge
was the Ghost of Banter Present. Stooge was taken right into the heart of Hatchet’s Inclusivity Report, where Stooge was taken aback by the poverty of the work he saw there. He was shown Hatchet’s poor son Little Sam, and two children named Ignorance and Want, who weren’t in fancy dress as they’d just left their disciplinary hearing. The final spirit was the Ghost of Christmas Shit. He took time out from his busy schedule of rehabilitating young offenders to remind Stooge of his continued existence, and to show him that adjusting to life after LSE can be difficult. The Ghost pointed to a gravestone bearing the inscription ‘Craig Calhoun: a wretched academic’. It was at this moment that Stooge realised that he
must change his ways so as to distance himself from any future controversy. Stooge awoke on Friday morning to the sound of football players chanting ‘see it off’ outside his window, and was filled with joy. Pulling on his lame duck costume, he ran downstairs and gave a Squash player £3 to buy a pint. From there he proceeded to pay for a lunch for all the nice members of the AU from a notat-all dubiously named catering company, and treated Little Sam to a trip to the Zoo. At the end of the day, Stooge settled back into bed. Rubbing the yellow paint from his eyes, he reflected on his revelation and resolved to become a nicer man. God bless us, every one (apart from Chris Moos).
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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THE NAB CHR University Challenge Christmas by Jimmy Chen
Politics (and Forum) in 2014 by Christopher Hulm
1. Which chemical element, with the atomic number 79, has been regarded throughout history as being one of the most precious metals in nature? The Staffordshire Hoard, discovered in 2009, is the largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon jewellery made from this metal that has yet been found. 2. ‘Always winter, but never Christmas.’ This description applies to which fictional land, the subject of a series of fantasy novels, whose author died on the same day as the Kennedy assassination? 3. This city was named after the British Prime Minister who was in office during the coronation of Queen Victoria. It has played host to the Australian Formula One Grand Prix since 1996, and its 100,000 seat cricket ground holds an annual Boxing Day Test match. Name this city, which hosted the 1956 Summer Olympic Games. 4. Which popular Christmas song, written by Joe Beal and Jim Boothe, was first released by Bobby Helms in 1958? It features prominently in the 2004 film Mean Girls. 5. Which 4th century Christian saint from Turkey, known as the Wonderworker, is the patron saint of sailors, thieves and prostitutes? He is said to be the model for the figure of Santa Claus. 6. “The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.” Which American talk show host, who hosted the Tonight Show until February 2014, said these words? 7. Which Christmas carol, which has been attributed to a number of composers including King John IV of Portugal, is sometimes known by its Latin name ‘Adeste Fideles’? 8. This internationally renowned American/Canadian wrestler was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1972. As an actor he has appeared in the Fast and Furious movies and recently starred as the title character in a film based on the life of a Greek hero. Provide the ring name of this man, whose real name is Dwayne Johnson. 9. This Eastern European despot ordered the construction of the People’s Palace, one of the largest buildings in the world. Name this dictator, regarded as being the most tyrannical of Stalinist leaders, who was executed by a firing squad on Christmas Day 1989. 10. Which Russian Empress, who ruled between 1730 and 1740, was responsible for the construction of an Ice Palace as part of the festivities to mark the conclusion of a successful war against the Ottoman Empire?
1. In August, Marine Le Pen’s cat ‘Arthemys’ was killed on the family’s Montretout estate. But who killed Arthemys? 2. Why did the logo for Wall’s Ice Cream make political headlines this year? 3. There are 29 men called David or Steven standing for UKIP in next year’s General Election. But how many women are standing? 4. Why was Tory MP Brooks Newmark forced to stand down in September from his role as Minister for Civil Society? 5. Labour MP Emily Thornberry recently resigned as the Shadow Attorney General after tweeting a photo of a house in Strood that displayed three England flags outside. But which football team’s logo was in the middle of one of the flags? 6. In September, Ville Niinistö, leader of Finland’s Green party and former environment minister, said his own government’s decision to approve a Russian-built nuclear reactor invoked a sense of what? 7. The European Parliament overwhelmingly rejected a nominee to the new European Commission in October, but which member state was the nominee representing? 8. In November, Jose Socrates was the first Portuguese ex-premier to be remanded in custody since Portugal became a democracy. But how many years ago was the Carnation Revolution? 9. Who replaced Herman Van Rompuy as the President of the European Council this month? 10. In August, the UKIP leader Nigel Farage was selected as his party’s general election candidate for the constituency of South Thanet. But when was he first elected as an MEP?
Answers online Satu Picture 1. Which Sabb is missing from this photo (and many others)?
We don’t need no, education by Tom Maksymiw 1. Who, in a speech, referred to Lords (in the House of Lords) as ‘randomly selected from the unemployed’? 2. Who was the last British Prime Minister not to go to university? 3. How many points do you get for a touchdown in American Football? 4. The manager of which
Premier League football team allegedly told one of his own fans to ‘fuck off and die’ recently? 5. Which comedian headlined the Saw Swee Hock official opening event? 6. The poet Lord Byron died after attempting to start a revolution against the Ottoman Empire in which country?
7. Which philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment is associated with empiricism? 8. What is the name of the Australian national anthem? 9. Which Ancient Greek hero killed the Minotaur? 10. What is the most commonly spoken language in Iran?
1. Wh 2. Where and what is this building and how was it relevant to LSE this year?
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
RISTMAS QUIZ The NAB Quiz of the Year 1. John Sweeney has 10 axes to grind. It takes him 10 minutes to grind a large axe and 8 minutes to grind a small axe. If he has 4 small axes and 6 large axes, how many can he grind in 2 hours? 2. How many Saucy fire alarms have there been in 2014? 3. LSESU got into hot water in September after accidentally addressing new students as which cartoon character in an e-mail? 4. You bump into a King’s College graduate at their place of work. Do you get a coke and upgrade to a Big Mac meal? 5. How did the government amend their policy on tuition fees in the wake of the No Fees, No Cuts demonstration earlier in the year? 6. The Old Building lift can hold 9 people at a time. On the ground floor the lift is empty and 7 people get in. On the first floor 5 get out and 6 get in. On the second floor 1 person gets in and noone gets out. On the third floor, Paul Kelly gets in. How long will he be stuck for and how much of his GV100 lecture will he miss as a result? 7. In her campaign video, how many things does General Secretary Nona Buckley-Irvine drink out of a cup? 8. Who did former London Mayor Ken Livingstone (almost) compare to Jimmy Savile in an interview with The Beaver? 9. Craig Calhoun is Santa and every year goes down chimneys to distribute presents. Due to the recession, however, Santa’s workshop has gone out of business. If the workshop needs a capital injection of 30 million yuan to stay afloat but the Chinese government only wants to contribute 20 million, which other dictatorships make up the shortfall? 10. Will killing the cardboard cut-out of Nicholas Cage bring back your goddamn honey?
urday 13th December Round 1.
2. 3. Who is this Commonwealth Games gold medal winner hiding behind an edition of The Beaver? She visited LSE for the opening of the new student centre in October to give a fitness centre demonstration in her discipline. 1. 2. 3. 4. Fill in the names of the LSE University Challenge team.
A Question of Sport by Robin Park 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Who was Li Na’s opponent in the final of the Australian Open? Which country won the Six Nations? Which team won the Super Bowl? Who scored Atletico Madrid’s only goal in the Champions League Final? Where was the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup held? Who scored the first goal in the FIFA World Cup? Which country topped the medal table in the 2014 Winter Olympics? Who was the last batsman to score a triple century in test cricket in 2014? Who won the British Formula 1 Grand Prix? Name the two team captains from this year’s Ryder Cup.
On our front page in 2014 1. #_____Gate at LSESU 2. _____’s Return to LSE Sparks Debate 3. AU Strikes _____ 4. Democracy Threatened as _____ Accused of Breaking Rules 5. ______ Library @ LSE Opens 6. Men’s Rugby in ________ ________ Scandal 7. ______ to Pull Athletics Union Funding in Wake of Men’s Rugby Scandal 8. ‘Not _ __ ___ ____ ______ __ ___ ___ ____’: Sweeney slams Calhoun 9. LSE Inclusivity Report Proposes Increased ______ _________ 10. Student Waits Year for ______ SU Repayment
The City Quiz of the Year by Julia Wacket 1. Jean Tirole received the Nobel Prize for Economics this year. What is his work on? 2. Which book from a French author started a new debate on inequality this year? 3. Jack Ma’s Alibaba, ranks as the worlds’ biggest IPO launch. Which American company profited heavily from this? 4. The Scots decided to stay
5. 6.
7. 8.
in the Union. How many of them voted for independence in September? Which country introduced the Euro at the beginning of 2014? Finland’s economy was downgraded this year. Who did Finland’s prime minister blame for this? Which scene of Putin at the APEC meeting did Chinese censors delete? Uber, the new Taxi-app,
is everywhere. One of its biggest investors is Goldman Sachs. Who else is an investor? 9. Happy Birthday, Facebook. In February the social network turned 10. How many users does Facebook have worldwide today? 10. What stimulus measures did ECB president Mario Draghi announce this summer to revive the Eurozone?
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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ChRISTMAS WI ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS I won’t ask for much this Wednesday, There is just one thing I need, I don’t care about the ban handed down to Men’s Rugby, I just want to spend my loan, Losing cards and breaking phones, Quick one in the loo? All I want for Christmas is Zoo Zoo Bar is the perfect way to end an afternoon of sport, Although I hope that I won’t end up in the fucking Bev Report, Fined for lateness
to the Tuns, Brick Lane dinners gave me the runs, Christ I need a poo, All I want for Christmas is Zoo BRIDGE: All the lights are flashing, so brightly everywhere, And the sound of screams as Laura Weigold falls down the stairs, And everyone is kissing, And Men’s Rugby are missing (LOL JK), Santa won’t you bring me the cash we really need, It got stolen by KPMG….
I don’t want a lot this Wednesday,
This is all I’m asking for, Not to have the Zoo bar bouncers kick me out the fire door, I just don’t want to be barred, All I want’s a captain’s card, Help me skip the queue, All I want for Christmas...
is Zoo!
THE BEAVER ORDER OF SERVICE Beijing-le Bells, Beijing-le Bells, Visit to Beijing, To elicit secret funds from our mate Xi Jinping I Saw Swee Ships Come Sailing In We three students of King’s College are (studying hard to work in a bar)
The Poly and the Ivy, When they are all full grown, Get a worthless King’s degree, And waste their student loan
HACK, the Herald Angels Sing
Away in a Pret a Manger
The First Nowell The 2.1 Nowell The 2.2 Nowell The might-as-wellnot-have-bothered Nowell
I WISH IT COULD BE CHRIS HULM EVERY DAY
Rude oaf the red-faced Wakefield BANNED AID 30
RAYHAN PUDDIN’ UGMmmmmmmm!!! Pull up a Chair and tuck in
THE BEAVER CHRISTMAS LUNCH MENU
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
ITH THE BEAVER ELEVATOR ROASTED PAUL KELLY Bake in Old Building lift for 45 minutes, or until rescued
Uncle Craig’s All-American Inclusivity Turkey -
SAW SWEE HAM HOCK TERRINE
Careful not to Simeon Undercook! STANDARD ISSUE LSE WHINE
May not contain substance. Stuffed with male privilege
WHY DIDN’T I GET INTO OXBRIDGE?
TWINS PIES WITH BRUHNDY BUTTER Now have separate Facebook accounts. Heat Bruhndy butter in non-existent campus microwave
GooSE TV SEXIST PIGS IN BLANKETS Men’s Rugby shall meat no more
Liable to flap aimlessly
Angular shape may cause problems. Cost: £24 million
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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Society Listings In only the second year of the LSESU Politics and Forum Society, we now boast nearly 300 members and Michaelmas Term has laid an excellent foundation for what will be another fruitful year.
will also be teaming up with the UN Society to host a ‘Model Parliament’ debate, and our Lent Term speaker is The Rt. Hon Greg Clark MP, Cabinet Minister for Universities, Science and Cities.
We have hosted two popular ‘Question Time’ panel debates, a Politics Breakfast, and a workshop to launch our second annual journal to be published next term. We have also hosted the BBC’s Europe Editor, Gavin Hewitt, who spoke about the future of the European project, and of course, our pub crawls have gained a noble status on campus.
The end of Lent Term will see our flagship event, ‘The Dublin Exchange’, where 50 members will get the chance to debate with members of the Politics Society at Trinity College Dublin, visit the Dáil Chamber at Leinster House, and hear from Members of the Dáil Éireann for a ‘Question Time’ panel debate.
Despite an inevitable focus on British politics next term, January will give centre stage to the ‘forum’ side of the society, with an ideas network collaboration with Edinburgh University’s Buchanan Institute in London. We
On behalf of the Politics and Forum Society Committee, I wish our members a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
FINGERS ON BUZZERS LSESU QUIZ SOCIETY UP AND RUNNING From appearing in front of millions of British televisions on University Challenge to being stuck around an Oxford college for a whole day answering questions is an experience familiar to many experienced university quizzers. On Saturday 29 November, I captained a team of three LSE students (Tackin Tarighian, Benjamin Thomas and myself) to the Penn Bowl Mirror tournament hosted by Oxford University Quiz Society at St John’s College. In my personal opinion, the questions were harder than those asked by Jeremy Paxman on University Challenge. After having forfeited the first match due to late arrival, a couple of victories against Oxford Brookes and Imperial provided us with confidence for the rest of the competition. This confidence was sadly misplaced as we managed to lose all subsequent matches (though a 240-200 defeat to Oxford B could easily have been in our favour), before beating Brookes again in the final play-off game. Despite having finished 7th of 8 teams, there were some silver linings to our performance. Firstly, LSE’s place in the world of university quizzing is slowly becoming established, and secondly, we had managed to defeat the only other London university present at the competition.
In order to encourage further LSE participation in such quiz competitions, I have taken steps to set up a Quiz Society that should be running by Lent term. It will be an opportunity for LSE students to practice their quizzing skills on the buzzer and learn absurdly pointless information concerning the most obscure subjects, useful for little else than a bit of showing off. However I believe a Quiz Society can also be harnessed to provide a training facility for any LSE University Challenge team. Last year, having reached the televised stages, we organised some training amongst ourselves armed only with a University Challenge quizbook. It was difficult to effectively reproduce the environment of the real quiz. A university with the reputation of LSE deserves to have a strong quiz team that can compete effectively in University Challenge and in the other university quiz competitions. The LSE University Challenge team for the coming series has already been selected. However, for more information about Quiz Society and to express interest in taking part in future quiz competitions, please email me at j.chen32@ lse.ac.uk by Jimmy Chen
The wheels have not stopped turning for LSESU Cycling Society this year. Intrepidly cycling forth every weekend, we have explored new parts of the city and discovered hidden gems, from Off Broadway on the misty banks of Regents Canal and its heroic breakfast offering to Stepney City Farm and its resident acrobatic goats. Despite the frost drawing in, last weekend saw the first Club Run of the term, with some members getting the Lycra on bright and early for a fastpaced ride to Richmond Park. Next term we hope to run these weekly alongside our social Casual Rides
(which meet at the same location for coffee and/or breakfast/goats) as the society expands and we form a cycling team proper. We have also secured a partnership with Cycle Surgery Holborn which gives members a discount and hopefully will help even more people saddle up and join us for more trips around the city. We have more of this and lots of surprises in store for next term, so watch out for a Cycling Society presence on Houghton Street and make sure to ask for a new bike for Christmas. by Conor Langan
LSESU Cycling Society Round-Up
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
End of Term Review LSESU LIBERAL DEMOCRAT SOCIETY
LSESU Bright Futures Society LSESU Bright futures have had a cracking term, improving employment opportunities for it members and doing valuable work in the community promoting the benefits of university education to school aged children. Highlights of the term include the BoE Trading Game where everyone who attended has been invited to an Insight Day next term, the AIG All Bar One Event, the FCA Case study/Mock Assessment center and the IntoUniversity Buddy Day! This less well known society comprises dedicated members who are constantly working to provide the most valuable and exclusive careers opportunities for students and
is a real hidden gold mine amongst the careers focused services on campus. If you would like to benefit from these bespoke and intimate events and make those steps to securing your own career after university, we are well worth checking out. Watch out next term for: an IBM event with LSESU Women in Business Society (WiB) (TBC), RPC Insight Day (for universities in London that are part of Bright Futures),and a commercial awareness event with RPC, Wragge & Co and BPP about a law career in the law and how to secure that all important training contract!
by Georgina Arnold
LSESU AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY be followed up with a showcase of the documentary ‘Lessons In Dissent’. We recently collaborated with the TedX society to run a workshop for students about Activism
It’s been a busy term for the Amnesty International Society! Here are a few of our highlights: We kicked off the start of the academic year with a Meet and Greet where students could find out our plans for the year and how to get involved Shortly after this several members took part in a Stop Torture Photo Campaign with other University of London societies - as part of Amnesty International’s global campaign against the use of torture. We ran a bake sale and raffle on Houghton Street to fundraise for Street Child - a charity currently working to give emergency assistance to orphans in Sierra Leone and Liberia (it is estimated that there are over 20,000 orphans due to the Ebola crisis) This raised an amazing £762.87 for the charity’s Ebola Appeal! We held a stall on Houghton Street to raise awareness for the Hong Kong Occupy Central with Peace and Love movement - inviting director Silas Fong, founder of ‘doing.HK’ to discuss his work on the promotion and protection of Cantonese culture. Next term, this will
And finally we are running a Refugee and Asyluum Seeker Rights Campaign with STAR (Student Action for Refugees) THIS WEEK involving petitioning, a photo campaign and a bake sale for the IRC - a charity that helps refugees to flee, recover an rebuild their lives in the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. There is also a Panel Event on Tuesday at 6.30pm in New Theatre E171, East Building with several high profile speakers discussing the topic on “To what extent is the UK asylum system just and fair?” so please come along! Next term we also have week-long campaigns on Women’s Rights and Activists’ Rights coming up - as well as many more fundraisers including a pub quiz, open-mike night, group 10k run and a lot more! We also have an LSE Amnesty International Journal that will be published at the end of the year and is still open for submissions. It’s never too late to be involved with the wide variety of events, campaigns and fundraisers the Amnesty International Society holds - so drop us an email and/ or join our facebook group if you’re interested: su.soc.amnesty@lse.ac.uk https://www.facebook.com/groups/lsesuamnestyinternational/ We hope to see even more faces to helping promote and fight for human rights next term! By Bella Mosselmans
The Lib Dems started this year in true Thick of It style when Lord Paddock was removed from fresher’s fair for being a security risk. Ironic as he was once the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police... However, we rekindled our relationship with the Houses and have brought in two speakers this term, Stephen Williams MP and the Rt Hon Norman Baker MP. Stephen, Member of Parliament for Bristol West, talked to us about universities; touching on the recurring nightmare that is tuition fees, post-graduate loans (one of this week’s hot topics after the Autumn statement) and student housing. Then, at a joint event with
the Tibetan society, we also introduced Norman Baker, who touched on his departure from the Home Office, the drug report that sparked it, and his passion to protect Tibet. As per usual, we have continued our trips to the Tuns, with lively discussions on all manners of topics and the committee is now busy arranging great things for next term! We’ll hear from some more speakers, have some campaign days to attend, and a blog (in true Lib Dem voice fashion). So watch this space, and if you’re interested in getting involved, head over to the SU website and join. by Nancy Williams
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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A MUSICALLY CHARGED TERM The Michaelmas Term has truly been a musically charged term at the LSE.
The Welcome Party kickstarted the musical year for us at The Venue. Many of us got to know more about what the LSESU Music Society offered, find potential music collaborators, discover musical soulmates and party the evening away to live music put up by our very own LSE musicians. Fortnightly open mics saw the showcase of many rockstars as well as hidden talents who managed to pack out the Three Tuns on Tuesday evenings with their enthralling renditions of pop songs,
original music and instrumentals.
The Michaelmas Term Chamber Music Concert, which featured pianists and voices proved to be a hit and managed to raise over 160 pounds for the Worldwide Cancer Research.
Come Lent Term, the LSESU Music Society will be bringing you an even more exciting lineup of events set to unleash your musical innerbeing. There is literally something for everyone!
Here is a sneak peek at some of the things that will be going on in Lent Term:
• Lent Term Chamber Music Concert
• Chamber Choir Lunchtime Recital happening on the 23 Jan, 1-2pm, at The Shaw Library. The chamber choir will be featuring pieces from Bruckner, Praulins and many others. Best of all, it is FREE!
• Musical/ Jazz-themed open mics: dates to be confirmed
If you hope to get involved, want to see something organised or just wish to snag up a spot on one of our events, feel free to contact us at lsesumusicsoc@gmail.com
A JEW AT KRETZMACH by Joe Grabiner It’s at this time of year that I feel small, somewhat oppressed, and like an outsideryet I couldn’t be happier about it. Kretzmach is coming.
Ask them if they believe Jesus to be the messiah and I doubt you’ll get far. But somehow Christmas has become a day for all regardless of this.
On the odd occasion where I am forced to weave my way down Oxford Street in mid December my eyes are confronted by garish, glorious, and impressive festive decorations. However, the festivities that they celebrate do not belong to me. The often sighted maxim that ‘Britain isn’t really a Christian country’ seems to go out the window when we get to the commemoration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The non-practicing Christian public in this country, and perhaps more strikingly, the multicultural mosaic of London, bloody love Christmas.
However, I care not for it. Carols sound nice- they’re just not mine. Mince pies are deliciousbut I ain’t going for them. Mulled wine is unmistakably lovely- but I’ll stick to my luke warm tea please sir. This Jew seems to have a mental block when it comes to accepting that Jesus’ birth can be for everyone. If it wasn’t for Christmas being a historically popular time for massacres and pogroms of the Jews maybe I could get on side. Or perhaps I need to get over the very assimilationist fear that once you start celebrating Christmas next you’ll be taking
communion. It was this attitude that led Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the UK, like my own family, to refer to Christmas only using the Yiddish phrase ‘Kretzmach’ as just the uttering of ‘Christ’ was a dangerous step on the path to Jewish oblivion. However, I actually think there is more to it. Jewish festivals are intrinsically linked to the Jewish past. They are, for the most part, rooted in the Ancient agricultural cycle of the Israelites, or they mark moments of the collective Jewish story like the Exodus from Egypt. Someone who doesn’t identify with that past wanting to celebrate the festivals would seem peculiar, if not a little insincere. I think this is how I feel about Christmas.
We’ve got our own festivals and stealing those of sincere Christians just seems, well, a little greedy. This year over Christmas, Jews around the world will be celebrating the eight day festival of Chanukah. It commemorates the great revolt of a small Jewish minority against a Greek regime that sought to destroy the holy temple in Jerusalem. This tale, accompanied with a connected miracle involving a candle burning for much longer than it should have done means that the Jewish population have a wonderful eight day oil-soaked party where candles are lit, doughnuts are eaten, prayers are said, and light is brought to a seasonally dark world.
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
PARTB
AN ODE TO BRUNCH
Y
ou really beat yourself up. You mutate from your usual cosmopolitan form into someone whose cheeks are as blotchy as a wizened drinker. You allow yourself to hobble around tongue out and panting, like a mongrel that has seen far better days. Perhaps, you naively ask, why do we punish ourselves? Some might quip that it is all in the name of health. In reality, all this exercise is done for one reason. That reason is so we can eat a guilt-free brunch.
Photo credit: triptease.com
Photo credit: FreeState Coffee
It is undeniable that brunch is great. In my humble opinion, the resurgence of brunch dates is probably linked to the fact that it affords us another opportunity to instagram our food. However, aside from the sepia-toned veneer that shrouds almost everything these days, there are a few places that no filter can do justice.
Freestate coffee: Located near Holborn station, this new little coffee shop sprung up to offer a sort of Utopia for all the surrounding students. FreeState is filled up with an eclectic selection of furniture that looks like it was sourced from a junk yard. Naturally, this adds to its ‘popup’ charm. More importantly, the coffee is fair trade. Of course, this is brilliant. Who doesn’t want to feel like a good person whilst fighting through the early morning haze?
Photo credit: Flickr - Stef
The Breakfast Club: With more than a dash of last night’s Smirnoff still in their veins, people drag themselves out of bed to dutifully queue for the Breakfast Club. If that isn’t a testimony to the food then what is?
Regency Café: Well, the Regency does what the Shoreditch hipsters cannot replicate. The shouts that emanate from the woman behind the counter reverberate around the whole café, reminding the diners that you aren’t just here for the food but experience. The presentation is far from beautiful, and the location is unlikely to be one that is frequently tagged on instagram… But, you can get a large breakfast for under a fiver so it is certainly value for money. JADE JACKMAN
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
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partb
I
THE DEATH OF ITUNES?
t seemed just a few years ago we were talking about the death of CDs in favour of the lighter, more practical and more spacious MP3 player. However, there seems to be a new music revolution taking place, which may signal the end of music sales. We have already seen the sales of music from iTunes slumping. In the year 2013, for the first time in its existence, iTunes sales faced a decline on the previous year of 5.7% (from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion). Since iTunes accounts for over 75% of the digital music market, it seems this proportion is fairly significant.
buying music. From iTunes’ pathetically short previews, the user must decide to invest between £0.59 and £0.99 in the track, of which they are likely to get bored in a matter of weeks. As such, streaming usually requires a small monthly or yearly fee, for which you are allowed to listen to as much music as possible. Each service allows
the user to play full tracks, either supported by adverts or subscription costs. It also aids new music discovery, playing similar tracks to the ones the user already loves. Also for the music industry, although revenue per track decreases (Spotify makes roughly £0.004 per play), it means access to a new market that was previously untouched
Why are we seeing these trends? The accessibility of companies to the App Store is now unprecedentedly simple. Music streaming services have become the new market, with companies battling to make it faster, cheaper and with exponentially larger music libraries. Over the last few years, we have seen the explosion of Spotify, Beats Music and Pandora. Furthermore, existing market players are looking to get in on the action – Amazon and Tesco’s Blinkbox service are now streaming music and movies to subscribing customers.
from the iTunes payment model. Apple seems to have recognised this trend with its acquisition of Beats Electronics (including Beats Music) for $3.2 billion in August 2014. What about the future? With the rise of these services, each accessible with a simple app download on your phone or computer, it seems that users are migrating to a preferential service with little tying them down. The presence of a data connection seemed a prerequisite, however Spotify now even allows offline access for those moments where you need to check out the new David Guetta album on your monotonous tube journey. It is probable we see the consistent decline in iTunes sales, as the music market is adapting to the fast-moving, mind-changing, on-trend youth population who consume an ever larger amount of content.
ROHAN SONI
What is the attraction? From the side of the consumer, streaming is a preferred service over
T
he news that HBO, the television channel with a fetish for dense and complex plots, is adapting Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy has begun to circulate in the past months, exciting readers of the cult novels. Whilst they won’t finish their adaptation for years, readers are already asking if the home of George R. R. Martin’s own fantasy series will help Atwood’s work reach the levels of popularity it deserves. The Maddaddam trilogy takes place in a dystopian and not-so-distant future, where Atwood has drawn on existing scientific technologies and her own cornucopia of imagination to create a world that is both alien and instantly recognisable to the reader. Set in the time after a manmade plague, the metaphorical flood, that wreaked havoc on the planet, the trilogy details the struggles of the few survivors as they try to make sense of the world they find themselves in. Through the protagonists’ memories we see biochemists splice genes, protected and isolated by their multinational
h NO
corporations from the uncivilised pleebs. Pigs become pigoons bloated with organs for human transplants, and liobams are engineered by religious fundamentalists who take the idea of the lion lying down with lamb a little bit too seriously. We see the police privatised and replaced - corporation sponsored gangs reign in the slums through a heady cocktail of violence and corruption. In its sheer attention of detail, Atwood’s trilogy (Crake and Oryx, The Year of the Flood and Maddaddam) rivals Martin’s. Her novels submerge the reader in her world, and do so addictively. But the addiction doesn’t come just from the plot, but from the knowledge of how the story ends. Like being the driver on a runaway train hurtling towards a broken bridge, the reader knows that humanity is hurtling towards its own end, making every new piece of information a gift in the quest to understand why the manmade plague began. I don’t feel a television adaptation could do justice to this element of Atwood’s work - showing the why is a lot harder than showing the how, and with many of the characters isolated in the post-plague world dialogue would be at a premium. What Atwood does as well is to mix subtlety with satire: although her critiques of modern society are thinly veiled, it’s her effective use of nuanced language that give them real bite. Consider her division in the narration of the first two books. Oryx and Crake is purely from the standpoint of Jimmy, and the women who feature are two dimensional, seen only as sexual objects. The Year of the Flood in contrast comes from the point of view of two women, Toby and Ren, and the differences in tone and language are stark. A whole new side of Jimmy’s world is unveiled, and the reader is shown the violence women face in Atwood’s fiction, a role reversal that can throw an unexpected reader off balance. Atwood’s strengths lie in her choice of words and her imagination. HBO might be able to portray the latter, but expecting them to capture the former is unrealistic. The Maddaddam trilogy is no Song of Ice and Fire, and unless Atwood decides to try her hand at script writing and adapts her novels herself, I’d rather HBO stay clear of this particular trilogy. GARETH ROSSER
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
partb
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The City Section Editorial:
Tuesday December 9, 2014
Section Editor: Julian Wacket Deputy Editor: Mika Morissette city@thebeaveronline.co.uk
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Features: Sport: Tony Travers Interviewed Meet Snowsports Page 26 Page 30
When the City’s Most Sucessful Say No to Wealth Inequality
THIS WEEK OUR LOVELY Editor George Julian Wacket is not with us, which is a shame because we are looking at inequality and big businesses: how big businesses add to wealth inequality and how they are trying to remediate it through PPPs (Public Private Partnerships) among other things. On this page, Tom Wright discusses a recent talk by a former LSE student Gary Stevenson who left the City with a bitter taste in his mouth after witnessing first hand the extent to which banks and traders in particular contribute to the growing income gap in the UK. On the other hand (literally), we also have the story of businesses opening their own schools in underprivileged neighbourhoods in the US to deal the inequality of job prospects available to graduates from different socio-economic backgrounds in America. This issue has interested me for a while now and I’ve been wondering how the success of these schools justifies letting big businesses take full reign of children’s lives. Of course, inequality and the City is a perennial issue that we can’t forget now that times are, gradually, getting better for some at least. Please write in if you have any opinions on this: we are on the lookout for new ideas and opinions to publish after the break! Mika Morissette
Last month, the Post-Crash Economics Society invited former Maths and Economics student Gary Stevenson to discuss his experiences as a trader and why wealth inequality matters for all of us
ARRIVING IN 2005 AS A wide-eyed 18 year old from Ilford, Gary Stevenson found himself in a minority – although suspecting that he wanted a graduate job in finance, he didn’t have a meticulous 3-year plan to get one. Sometime in 2nd year he realised that he hadn’t got enough A*s or climbed enough Himalayan peaks to get a job through the normal application process, so he decided to enter a ‘Citi on campus’ card competition, where the prize was a job at Citi bank. He took time off from his studies and memorised all the mathematical possibilities of the game. And it paid off – he won. They whisked him off to Las Vegas when he should’ve been revising for his final exams and started him working the day after he’d finished. He confesses to being in permanent state of confusion when he started, but somehow managed to navigate the shifting sands of 2008. Fastforward a few years and he had become Citi’s most profitable trader, globally. How did this happen? Firstly he noted that his colleagues with economics degrees weren’t the best traders, but had exceptional talents for writing long emails. So he
Photo Credit - Wikicommons
The City
Tom Wright City Correspondent
decided to get trading and began aggressively loaning US dollars to non-American banks who were badly in need of them after the crisis. Around the time that the profitability of this position dried up, he began trading in markets for short-term interest rates. This was a time when central banks around the world had engaged in huge monetary stimulus and everyone thought that in 12 to 18 months the effects would kick in. Yet they kept being pushed back and back – as each corner was turned, experts predicted recovery around the next. Economies faltered and debt crises loomed. Economies like the UK were suffering from insufficient demand. Most people and their governments had huge debts, but as Gary rightly points out every debtor needs a creditor – only extreme concentrations of wealth make it is possible for a majority to be in debt. Insufficient demand is a strange concept – it means that we are able to produce things, but can’t get them to people – what was being produced before is no longer wanted. To recover you need to produce things that the wealthy will buy. But the wealthy don’t spend in proportion to their wealth. In fact, they mostly save - if this wasn’t the case we could have full employment producing yachts and expensive biscuits. Their savings go into wealth as
Construction of mansions in the UK has boomed post-recession
a store of value since there is no appetite for investment. The upshot of all this is insufficient demand and the associated unemployment, depressing wages across large parts of the income distribution. Most people aren’t aware that the UK’s wealth to income ratio is well over 500%, which probably bears testament to how concentrated it is. As outlined above, it means that domestic populations have diminished wages with no purchasing power, and combined with widespread austerity it makes recovery problematic. Using this understanding, Gary became the most profitable trader at Citi by repeatedly betting against interest rate hikes (i.e. recovery). To his knowledge, no one else did this. Which he attributes to the central bank’s skill at convincing the markets of imminent recovery, and also to the inability of mainstream macroeconomics to account for factors such as inequality and uneven debt burdens. Behind the inevitable smoke and mirrors of Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, the consequences of inequality are manifest. Levels of production and wealth are at historical peaks, but ‘we don’t have enough money’ to adequately fund crucial public services. GDP has been growing but real wages have been falling since 2008. In 2013 earnings for
the top 10% increased by 3.9% and fell by 2.4% for the rest. This has eroded tax revenues the slight deficit reduction that has occurred consists entirely of cuts. These are the reasons why Osborne and his newly formed Office for Budget Responsibility have been consistently way off the mark, and will continue to be. Wealth inequality doesn’t just matter for tax revenues and growth. Huge quantities of capital sloshing around looking for a return can cause asset bubbles. This is especially true with low interest rates and quantitative easing – the factors underlying soaring house prices. Wealth inequality therefore not only savages wages, but also means that the only way consumption can recover is by borrowing against rising house prices. This is happening again in the same way it did before 2008, making the recent ‘recovery’ questionable at best. Back to our friend Gary, his conscience got the better of him and he left Citi rather than continue to profit from the lack of recovery. The story of what happened when Citi’s most profitable trader departed on moral grounds is both terrifying and fascinating, and best left for another day. Gary is now working with the New Economics Foundation to try and bring the wealth inequality discussion to the forefront of economic policymaking. The question is why is it not already? It is likely that credit expansion in the decades leading up to 2008 did a good job of obscuring these trends. For too long there has been a widespread idea that economic performance and inequality are at variance. Judging from the emerging literature this might be about to change. Economists are slowly realising that the tradeoff between fairness and growth is about as about as non-existent as Jean Claude-Juncker’s credibility on the morality and ethics of tax havens. It will be interesting to see how and to what extent this inf luences economic policy.
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The City
Tuesday December 9, 2014
The School that Teaches Kids to be Corporate What if big corporations like IBM were creating schools as a pipeline to seamlessly move 14 year-olds from classroom to boardroom? In the US they already are...
Mika Morissette Deputy Editor
Photo Credit: Whitehouse.gov
IT’S BEEN A LITTLE MORE than three years since P-Tech, short for Pathways in Technology Early College High School, first opened its doors to students in an under-performing school district in Brooklyn in 2011, but since then it has spawned something of a mini educational revolution in the US. Unlike normal public schools funded and managed by a local school board, P-Tech is managed in conjunction with IMB with a number of its classes developed in collaboration with the company and students guaranteed an IBM or other IT job upon graduation. Of course, it’s not uncommon for big tech companies to sponsor computer labs or coding programs to help schools produce the tech-savvy graduates employers want, but IBM went a step further: it helped the school develop a whole new type of curriculum focused on acquiring the skills businesses need and closely follows students from their entry into high school to well after their graduation six (rather than the standard four) years later. IBM has since gone on to open seven other schools where it plays an even bigger role and SAP, IBM’s rival in enterprise-oriented software, has also gotten on board with a school it opened in Queens, New Jersey, based on P-Tech. Most of these schools have opened in neighborhoods with high dropout rates where conventional publicallymanaged school boards have failed to turn education into a tool for social mobility for struggling demographics. Kids in P-Tech model schools face a rigorous curriculum with an emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and business based subjects and need to stay in high-school for two extra years (for a total of six), but in exchange they earn an associate’s degree enabling them to get a high-paying technical job without going to university, something few of
them could otherwise afford in the expensive American educational market. Company-run public schools are only one of a long line of alternative public schools which attempt to better deal with the problem of unequal posteducational opportunities in the US. Solutions proposed by other schools range from incorporating professionalskills classes and internships into the curriculum to offering courses which count towards college credits, thus reducing the overall cost of a university degree, but none go as far as the P-Tech model where corporations choose curriculums, support students and offer them jobs when they are finished. This new type of school hasn’t been in place long enough to see how students fare on the job market but supporters include some major policy makers including Barack Obama himself. Policy-makers seem to agree that this model marks a positive shift, but is it a good idea on the long run to allow big profit-driven corporations to play such a big part in educating the future generations? On one hand, perhaps the current publically-managed educational curriculum has not adapted quickly enough to the realities of the 21st century. P-Tech model schools have managed to achieve many biggerpicture goals which traditional schools still struggle with: they give girls equal encouragement to participate in subjects where there is a strong gender gap and stress that STEM subjects are accessible to everyone regardless of natural ability. As society becomes more corporate, maybe being trained for life in a corporation will prepare children well for life in society as a whole, but then again maybe not. Whether the standard educational system is doing any better at preparing children for the big world outside the school doors may be questioned as well. On the other hand, many questions can be raised about the more specific goals of P-Tech schools. The purpose of pre-university education is not only to cram kids’ heads full of knowledge on things like algebra or chemistry but
Obama is one of P-Tech’s biggest supporters also to teach and shape them into functional adults. All educational systems have a different definition on what a ‘functional adult’ is, but what are these kids being shaped for other than the corporate world? The spread of the P-Tech model comes with the risk that big corporations will have a disproportionate amount of influence on children during the formative years which shape who they become as adults. What makes the success of P-Tech model schools in difficult school boards possible is the sheer amount of personalized attention each child receives, but there are doubts about whether this is possible on a larger scale. One P-Tech school director, Sarah E. Goode, provides students with personal IBM mentors to follow them during their academic career. P-Tech model schools in general have much higher staff to student ratios than average. This would not be possible without the contribution of corporate money on top of
the standard public funding. However, how far can this model go if it becomes more common? Will more companies step up and engage in Public Private Partnerships with schools, or will the current companies drop out if they feel this is not profitable enough? Thus, though feedback from the current handful of P-Tech model schools seems positive especially when it comes to integrating gender and socio-economic minorities into the corporate ladder, it’s hard to say whether this model can maintain equally good standards over time and on a larger scale. With PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships) all the rage these days among local governments and big corporations, it’s not surprising that education should be the new social enterprise of socially responsible corporations, but the jury is still out on whether profitdriven corporations can responsibly manage the hundreds of hopeful teenagers who are now their charges.
How to Ace that Terrifying Phone Interview Mika Morissette Deputy Editor POST-NOVEMBER ONLINE application form hustle, December and January (and beyond) are prime phone interview months. If you’ve never done one before (and even if you have), the thought of selling yourself without seeing your listener and their body language can seem terrifying, but here are easy some tips to do well on the day.
1) Wear a suit Even if you know that no one is there to see you, wearing your interview best will make you feel confident and professional and this will come through in your voice. 2) Stand Stand up straight and don’t be afraid to walk around. Standing gives your voice more depth and authority and you’ll sound more energetic and dynamic than if you are sitting. Being away from your desk will also prevent you from fidgeting.
3) Keep Crib Sheets Use the fact that your interviewer can’t see you to your advantage. Draw some easy to see crib sheets to help you organize your thought process. Phone interviews are often elimination stage interviews so you can expect standard questions without any curve-balls like “why this company”, “why this job” or any basic competency-based questions (on team work, current affairs, etc). Because each phone interviewer will no likely be asking the same questions to dozens if not hundreds of applicants, make sure your narrative is understand-
able and that your ideas are clearly listed in coherent bullet points. 4) Know when to stop Silence is one of the most unnerving things in phone interviews. You can’t see your interviewer so you have no idea if you’ve said enough or not. The worst thing, however, is to ramble on and say things you regret, so when you feel you’ve said enough just stop and wait for your interviewer to respond. Crib sheets will help you keep on track and say everything you want. Finally, good luck!
‘The City’ News of the Week Sony hacked by North Korea? Perhaps this week’s most bizarre piece of news is an allegation that North Korea carried out the massive hack which hit Sony earlier this week, releasing several movies and staff data online, after the media giant refused to halt production of an upcoming Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-un. Though North Korea denied carrying out the hack, it did praise the hacker for their services. Record US Manufacturing Trade Deficit Mid-term figures released by US Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest that the American trade deficit is set to reach a record high this year. Though manufacturing employment and output have increased since 2012, one explanation for this might be that a post recession spending glut has pushed up imports faster than domestic production. Morgan Stanley glum for 2015 As 2014 winds to a close, Morgan Stanley released a statement saying that it expects a “bumpy, bellow par, brittle” world for 2015 with their Chief Economist Joachim Fels saying 2015 would yield at best “triple-B, out-ofsynch global expansion”.
Features
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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Section editorial:
Section Editors: Liam Hill and George Harrison
ELEVEN ISSUES OF the Beaver later… While it is only four months or so that have passed since Jon and I began to pore over our meticulous redesign of the Beaver, it certainly feels like much longer. Do read Jon and Alex’s editorial on page 2 for a full appraisal of exactly how brilliant we’ve been this term, and please allow me to do the same for this section. My proudest achievement so far is that very nearly every edition of Features this year has included at least one article about liberation issues, and this includes our Pride Week special. Given that the section’s first liberation article was featured in the same week as the Beaver broke the disbanding of Men’s Rugby, I would like to think that I was ahead of the curve. Even if that’s not quite true, it has still been fantastic to feature some of the discussion happening on campus about liberation issues. I am also very happy with the fantastic Features team we have assembled, which better reflects LSE than the team I was a part of last year. We have a postgraduate and two nonUK students, though there still, of course, remains a stubborn and ineradicable West Country bias. I also have, in George Harrison, a formidable co-Editor. But enough about us, though. Happy Holidays and we will see you all in January!
Tony Travers Talks GE2015
Features
Liam Hill
features@thebeaveronline.co.uk
Liam Hill & George Harrison Features Editors WITH THE 2015 GENERAL Election mere months away, we are beginning our coverage of all the build-up, starting with an interview with Tony Travers: a prominent academic and political scientist at the LSE. Why have UKIP done so badly in London? It would be easy to think that UKIP has done badly simply because Londoners have different sensibilities, but if you consider the London population, of which around 40% is overseas born and lots of people are relatively young, then would it be unusual for UKIP to struggle here? London has very few of all the predictors for an area to vote UKIP, but what we yet don’t know is if the types of voters in the rest of the country who’ve voted UKIP would vote UKIP in London. What we can tell is, for whatever reasons, London appears to be pretty poor soil for UKIP to plant much in; on balance I would say that it is unlikely that UKIP will win a single London seat in the General Election. Can we expect Labour to clear up in London then? London has become more of a Labour city since 1997, before which Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems polled at roughly the same levels in London as they did in the country as a whole. Since 1997, it has drifted towards Labour and I suspect that the real jumps in immigration aren’t the reason for this, since they postdate 1997. If I had to hazard a hypothesis, it would be that New Labour was particularly comforting to Londoners with relatively high incomes, who are socially progressive but worried about tax. New Labour gave them the chance to vote with their progressive values whilst being reasonably sure that they wouldn’t pay more tax as a result. I believe this to be the New Labour effect, and interestingly, it persisted ever since: even under Gordon Brown in 2010. The big test for this thesis would be to see whether the more openly leftwards tilted Miliband and Balls lose this advantage; something we will be able to test in real time at the General Election. Indeed, the poor Lib Dems are locked in a terrible squeeze; even though Labour and the Conservatives are both polling at lower than they used to, the fragmentation of the rest of the vote means that, for the one dominant
party in any given area, it’s fine. It’s the third and fourth parties who suffer from the fragmentation. Do you feel that there are new lows yet to be reached by the Lib Dems? If you’d asked me that question a year ago, when they were getting 12% of the vote share, I would have said no, but they have. I’m slightly surprised they they’re polling as low as 6% now; I always thought that their core vote share was about 10% but it may well be that it’s in the region of 5 to 10%. At the risk of condemning them, I suspect that this is as low as they’re going to go. I still think, on a hunch, that as the General Election approaches they will do somewhat better though. The problem at the national level is that they’re bleeding votes all over the place, even Lib Dem to UKIP as a pure protest vote. I’d always thought that the Lib Dems are quite limpet like in their capacity to hold on, but work has been done that suggests that they don’t actually have this incumbency vote. If that’s true, then they’ve got real problems. Given that UKIP could conceivably do quite well in both the North and the South, will that create issues for them to do with the identity of the party, which currently contains left nationalists, right libertarians and social conservatives? Well of course at the moment it contains all of those things and that doesn’t matter for the time being. We have to assume that many people voting UKIP aren’t doing so as the result of careful policy analysis but because a vote for UKIP is a way to express distaste in the major parties. So long as they can continue to do that, they’ll be fine. This suggests that they would be well advised to steer clear of government and heed the lesson of the Lib Dems, in being very careful to go anywhere close to a coalition. I think that as UKIP matures, they will have to think very carefully about what the party stands for; they couldn’t rely on it simply being a protest party. They could then merge together classic economic liberalism with libertarian views, Douglas Carswell is a very interesting person in this regard since he is very much a libertarian and it’s not clear to me that the whole of UKIP are themselves. But for now UKIP is fostering a mix of all these ideologies, can that continue? Indeed, and it is an interesting populist mixture. As such, it will come under real scrutiny, unless it
Deputy Section Editors: Zita Chan, George Greenwood, and Taryana Odayar tweet @beaveronline
can stay together as a coalition of people who are fed up with everybody else. If that can continue as a coalition of the fed up without the need for UKIP to go into too much detail then they’ll be okay, yet the nearer they get to power, the more it would be necessary to define what they stand for. Having said that, there’s no evidence that UKIP councillors are wildly out of line with those of other parties, although that’s partly because many of them come from the other parties! They are trying to appeal to many differing parts of the electorate, but to be fair to them so are Labour and the Conservatives, who are trying to fight a war on two, three or even four fronts with a smaller group of troops than before. Do you think that the talk of a UKIP-Tory pact is merely talk, or could it one day be tangible? There is this section of the Conservative party, who would love some kind of arrangement with UKIP. Firstly, to make it easier to win elections and secondly in the hope that the Conservative party could be taken in the direction of UKIP. Mark Reckless probably thought that he would be safer in UKIP than he was when he was fighting against them and we’ll find out if that is right at the General Election. It is probably true that there’s a degree of electoral self-interest involved, whilst others are more focussed on taking steps to align the two parties ideologically. Of course, Labour has also been left with this UKIP challenge, just in a different geographical area. Is it fair to suggest that Balls and Miliband are liabilities to Labour? Well the polling is not great for Miliband and Balls, it must be said. Popularity is a problem for all three of the party leaders, but with Miliband more unpopular than Clegg and Cameron are. It is however, possible for leaders to win elections even though they’re less popular than the party, as Mrs Thatcher did in the 1979 election. Anyway, Labour are the party which is least likely to ever get rid of a leader; the
Conservatives are quite ruthless at getting rid of leaders but Labour seems to find it harder. In the end though, people vote for parties rather than leaders, even in our more presidential system; if you had asked the question: “Could Labour win elections even though Ed Miliband is unpopular?” then the answer would be yes, yes they could. Although in our system, some people do see the Prime Minister as the Mayor of Britain, something which is reinforced by the media and sometimes the politicians themselves. The media conditions that politicians must operate in do push them to be more presidential than in the past. In that sense, would Labour have been better off choosing someone else as a leader? I think that it’s hard to tell but, if I’m honest, Alan Johnson would have been a far more difficult character for the Conservatives to fight. He’s one of those politicians who is liked by people in all parties and has an extraordinary capacity, as does his very different namesake Boris, to connect with people through the media; he’s got the touch to do the media across the board. Frankly, I do think that Ed Miliband could win a General Election, but Labour must have wondered what it would have been like if they had David Miliband or Alan Johnson. Professor Travers is in the process of establishing an LSE General Election focused website, featuring analysis from LSE students, staff and other experts. The site will feature a blog which students are invited to get involved with, and a string of Election focussed events will be coming up in the new year. Anyone with an interest in British politics is encouraged to contribute their analysis; watch this space for an update on the website and for information on how to get involved.
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Features
Tuesday December 9, 2014
How Tax Evasion Perpetuates World Poverty Bella Mosselmans Third Year Undergraduate
Marta naian Luttgrot, a stall o G wner. ha-
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES lose an estimated three times more to tax havens than they receive in foreign aid each year. Raymond Baker, the Director of Global Financial Integrity, has called it the “ugliest chapter in global economic affairs since slavery.” The One campaign has labelled it a “trillion dollar scandal.” If you read this article quickly, approximately another 90 people would have died from malnutrition and preventable illnesses across the world. Developing countries lack the public resources that would provide the nutrition, healthcare and education to lift people out of poverty. Although public opinion perceives that corruption in developing countries is the key cause of global poverty, recent studies have demonstrated that sixty tax havens and the banking sectors of London and New York have much more to account for. While the World Bank estimated that in 2012 corruption by government officials cost developing countries a significant US$30 billion, this was only 3% of the US$900 billion of public funds lost through tax evasion schemes and other illicit practices by multinational companies. The primary way which money flows out of these countries is through transfer mispricing. In its simplest form this entails three steps. Firstly, a corporation working in a developing country sets up a subsidiary in a tax haven. Secondly, they sell their product at an artificially low price to this subsidiary, which enables them to owe minimal tax to the developing country. Thirdly, their subsidiary in the tax haven sells the product at the market price, for comparatively huge profits coupled with a low tax rate (or none at all). In other words, corporations are manipulating prices to avoid paying taxes. This practice is estimated to account for 60% of capital flight from Africa. For instance, state-owned mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were sold to anonymous “shell” companies in the Virgin Islands for an exceptionally low price, only to then be sold on at their market
price to major listed companies. Such deals cost the DRC US$1.35 billion, which is twice the education and health budget of a country where 71% of the population lives below the poverty line. The shell companies’ owners who benefitted from these dubious transactions remain hidden. While banks have a critical role in the global economy, many banks also play a significant part in facilitating tax avoidance schemes. Barclays, the largest UK bank in Africa, channels some of its business through tax havens, enabling its clients to avoid tax and consequently deprive developing countries of vital resources. In 2012, 471 of their subsidiaries were listed in tax havens. ActionAid previously launched “Clean-up Barclays Campaign” highlighting two key concerns about Barclays’ practices. The first is that their Offshore Corporate division is encouraging investors in Africa to use Barclays in order to benefit from the low tax offshore jurisdictions used by the bank. The second is that the bank’s advertising campaigns in Africa are aggressively promoting the benefits of establishing a subsidiary in the tax haven of Mauritius; as a way of channelling investment into Africa through a “favourable local tax regime.” Recently, due to the campaign, Barclays has agreed to stop promoting tax havens on its website. Nonetheless, ActionAid believes the British Government and public must continue to pressure Barclays, and other banks, to eliminate all activities in tax havens that do not support the real economic substance of its customers’ businesses. Tax avoidance schemes used by multinational corporations can lead to situations such as that of Marta Luttgrodt and Caroline Muchanga. Marta, a small scale businesswoman in Ghana who runs a beer and food stall, pays more tax than Accra Brewery – a member of SABMiller, which makes profits of US$2 billion a year. SABMiller are responsible for dodging over $20 million a year in developing countries - enough to educate 250,000 children. Caroline Muchanga, a small trader from Mazabuka, Zambia earns US$4 on a good day. Despite her modest wage, she still pays more tax than Zambia Sugar, a company that makes over $13 million profit per year in Zambia alone. Zamb i a Sugar is estimated to have deprived Zambian public services of US$ 27 million
as a result of their tax avoidance schemes. Caroline states: “Our profits are never enough to supply us with good food at home. We feel so bad because Zambia Sugar does not pay tax, and for sure we are suffering.” A change in policy is necessary: It is increasingly difficult for under-resourced revenue authorities to track profits and tax liabilities through a maze of shell companies, holding companies and offshore entities used by investors. Foreign direct investment, instead of acting as a catalyst for development, can harm long-term social and economic prospects – particularly when corporations are reaping developing countries’ resources without giving governments their deserved tax revenue. The Daily Mail’s nationalist pleas to the government to “stop
giving foreign aid” seem misplaced when one considers these statistics. It appears that flows from poor to rich countries vastly exceed those from rich to poor. One mining company, Glencore, single-handedly cost Zambia £79 million through their tax evasion schemes - £20 million more than Zambia receives in UK aid. In total, developing countries lose 3 times more to tax havens that they receive in foreign aid. The ONE campaign has calculated that the world’s poorest countries are deprived of at least US $1 trillion each year due to money laundering, tax evasion and embezzlement. Rather than cuts to overseas aid, what is necessary is a change of policy towards tax evasion. Western governments need to close the loopholes which allow companies to use the “letter of the law” to avoid paying tax. If developing countries are
not able to reap the multi-billion dollar benefits of their countries’ iron ore, diamonds, oil, copper and so on, then how will they ever stop needing foreign aid? As Winnie Bylance, the director of Oxfam has stated “As long as most of Africa’s natural wealth continues to haemorrhage from the continent, inequality will continue to rise and all this spectacular growth will not do enough to help ordinary Africans.” Action Aid has recently launched new campaign called Towns Against Tax Havens. Murray Worthy, Tax Justice Campaign Manager at Action Aid reports: “We are asking campaigners up and down the country to contact their local councillors and ask them to pass a motion against tax dodging. Next year is the general election in the UK. If we can get every council to pass a motion saying they support cracking down on the tax dodgers, we can send a powerful message to all the political parties that communities want change.” Tax-related capital flight is a problem all over the world. The topic of tax avoidance flooded the news in Europe recently after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released a series of documents detailing how Luxembourg has been serving as a tax haven for hundreds of multinational corporations. A recent survey carried out by Christian Aid and Action Aid demonstrated that across the political spectrum, the British public believes that tax avoidance is morally wrong even it is legal. 85 per cent of Liberal Democrat and UKIP supporters, 88 per cent of Labour supporters and 90 per cent of Conservative supporters agreed with this statement. Furthermore, the survey revealed that four out of every five members of the British public believe that large companies pay their fair share of tax in developing countries. Political pressure to crack down
ActionAid’s Towns Against Tax Havens campaign. Including the author, third from right.
on tax evasion in the West is beginning to work. George Osborne has recently proposed implementing a 25% levy on profits shifted abroad by multinationals such as Google, Apple and Starbucks. The Luxembourg scandal has pushed Junker to draw up rules that would require countries to share details of corporate tax deals with other EU governments. Nonetheless, following the Brisbane summit, ActionAid’s global advocacy coordinator, Sameer Dossani, said G20 countries were more concerned with raising their own tax revenue than ending “the ongoing plunder of developing countries”. Oxfam’s international executive director, Winnie Byanyima, said what was on the table currently was not enough to stop poor countries being “bled dry.” Toby Quantrill, Principal Economic Justice Adviser at Christian Aid, states: “There is much more the UK could do to reduce the problem of tax dodging by multinationals. It should make good on commitments to create a public registry of company owners and ensure that the UK-controlled tax havens (the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies) follow this lead. We can also get ahead of the game globally by ensuring that UK companies are required to report separately on their economic activities in every country in which they operate, so as to reveal any artificial operations that may be used to reduce their global tax bills.” Kofi Anan, former UN Secretary General: “It is time to draw back the veil of secrecy behind which too many companies operate. Every tax jurisdiction should be required to publicly disclose the full beneficial ownership structure of registered companies.” The UK and other Western governments have a substantial influence over corporations operating in developing countries – and a duty to help people living in poverty benefit from the tax revenues their government should be receiving. As Action Aid states “we need to encourage politicians and legislators to move past halfway measures and deliver strong and comprehensive action to put an end to tax dodging.” The ONE campaign estimates that as many as 4.3 million deaths could be prevented each year in developing countries if action is taken to end the secrecy that allows corruption and criminality to thrive and the recovered revenues were invested in health systems. That would be 35 fewer people dying in the time it took you to read this article.Of all the measures that could be taken to eliminate world poverty, stopping tax evasion appears one of the most effective options.
Features The Pocket Philosopher: On News and Negativity Louis van der Linden Pocket Philosopher ALL OF YOU WILL HAVE heard of Islamic State and the havoc being wreaked in Iraq. Many of you are aware of the FIFA corruption scandal. But how many of you have been reminded that the global infant mortality rate is at an all-time low? Or that poverty has decreased more in the last fifty years than approximately the five hundred years before? Our news tends to be bad news. Obviously, wanting to know about bad news is rational: motivated by desires to avoid danger, learn from past mistakes, and gain awareness of where we can best place our efforts towards improvement. Our collective obsession with negativity, though, runs deeper. Barbara Tuchman, a historian, points out that it has been around at least since the 14th century, writing “The normal does not make news: documents that survive lean heavily on crisis and calamity, crime and misbehaviour”. How come? First, editors will point toward a crass answer: good news doesn’t sell. Reading that a man walked to work in a large city and was not, in any way, negatively affected by another human being is neither riveting, nor particularly useful. The second answer, though, is more profound: good news is boring. Why? Because it’s common. Of course it’s somewhat miraculous that most of us are never subjected to actual calamity but, due to the ubiquity of such success-stories, writing about that observation is both impractical and humdrum. Better to reserve the papers for the more informative outliers. I worry, though, that an incessantly negative media-focus has made us forget that we should view the news as the exception, rather than the norm. Wouldn’t it be good if more people were aware of some of the big-picture positive trends like those mentioned earlier? And, when it comes to human interest pieces, are stories of celebrity scandals a better reflection of human values than stories of people overcoming adversity? There are still news sources that heed this advice. The New York Times, for example, published a story last week about a couple’s successful determination to get married despite being divided by IS forces. This writer is proud to represent a newspaper that, as you’ll see turning the pages, embraces similar values.
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A Serially Successful Podcast Gabrielle Beran First Year Postgraduate ADNAN SYED. A NAME THAT until two months ago meant nothing in particular to many people. But now this young man is the central interviewee, suspect, victim and character of the podcast series Serial. Serial was created by Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, producers from well-known WBEZ Chicago podcast series, This American Life. It is now the most downloaded podcast in the English-speaking world. The premise is that on January 13, 1999, a senior high school student, Hae Min Lee, from Baltimore, Maryland, USA went missing and her body was found in a nearby park. Her ex-boyfriend, Syed was charged with her murder. Koenig and her crew set about investigating what really happened and Serial, “one story, told week by week” presents their results. Its origins are equally intriguing: when Koenig was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun newspaper
she wrote an article about disbarred attorney Cristina Gutierrez. Years later she received a letter from a friend of Syed’s to say that Gutierrez was Syed’s attorney and there was concern that she threw his case on purpose to get more money by doing an appeal. “If you're wondering why I went so nuts on this story versus some other murder case,” says Koenig in episode one, “the best I can explain is this is the one that came to me.” The BBC’s Newsnight quoted an unnamed American journalist calling it, “Dickens of the podcast age.” Indeed it is a very old fashioned format, to present words only, no images, telling a story each week. Yet, by Serial being a podcast (and podcast only) it has created a worldwide audience base. There are reports of fans around the world even having Serial listening ‘parties’ when each new episode is released. In this age of Netflix letting us binge-watch series and media having to be faster, more accessible on all our devices and arguably dumbed down, how is a show that
demands you pay close attention to each weekly episode managing to be such a sensation? Of course the premise itself is straight out of a crime thriller show: smart, talented, popular teenage girl dead, ex-boyfriend the suspect. But Serial is much more than that. It questions lies, truth, memory and love. It reminds us how unreliable we are as witnesses to the events of our own lives, how we are seen by others and how the law enforcement system works. Arguably, it is unique because of Koenig. It is her reporting that has gripped the world and she has been compared to Truman Capote in too many sources to cite. Koenig is professional, dogged and always brutally honest – about her thoughts on her discoveries and about those she interviews. She interviews and chases down everyone and anyone conceivably connected and she gets expert opinions too. Serial has come under fire for popularising a true murder but it is Koenig’s obvious integrity and sincerity that prevent the show
crossing the boundary into sensationalism. Nor does she focus on any of the gory details so prevalent in crime television; first and foremost, this is a story about people. The other intriguing feature of Serial is that neither the listener nor the creators know where it will end. They have committed themselves to following it “as long as it takes” and while information is gathered and tallied every episode, the web of complexity surrounding this murder means that it is a real possibility that they may not reach a conclusion as to whether Adnan Syed is really guilty or not. Despite this uncertainty, through crowd funding, the producers have managed to raise enough to make a second season of Serial. The next season will be about a different story but it promises to continue “in-depth reporting and following a story wherever it takes us.” Serial is a new story in a new medium, working very successfully in an old format. Truth, it seems, really is stranger than fiction.
‘Chizil’: A New Global Force Taryana Odayar Deputy Features Editor BRAZILIAN MINISTER OF Strategic Affairs Marcelo Neri was optimistic about the direction of socio-economic policy decisions in Brazil, as he delivered a public lecture here at the LSE which was organized by the LSESU Brazilian Society. Minister Neri is a notable politician and academic who holds a PhD from Princeton University and has appraised the policies of over 24 countries, as well as being instrumental in the design and implementation of policies at three different governmental levels in Brazil. He is also the founder of the Centre for Social Policies, former Secretary General of the Council of Economic and Social Development (CDES) and former President of the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea). The lecture covered the growth of social welfare in Brazil over the past twenty years, and provided a detailed analysis of the role played by public policy instruments such as housing, technical education and median income in Brazil, the latter of which, according to Minister Neri, rises during the election year and then falls soon after the new candidate is elected, leading
Neri to jokingly quip that perhaps Brazil “should have elections every year”. Neri also pointed out that although Brazil seems to be at odds with both developed and emerging economies, the country is a good mural of the world; the poorest in Brazil are as poor as the untouchables in India, whilst the richest in Brazil are as rich as the richest in Russia, resulting in what he referred to as “a world within Brazil” comprising of both developed and undeveloped areas. But arguably the key idea from the lecture was Minister Neri’s evaluation of the increasingly important “Chizil” (China and Brazil) relationship which can be traced as far back as the early eighteenth c e n t u r y, and which was only disrupted with the
creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Diplomatic relations were quick to resume officially in 1974 with the establishment of the Brazilian Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Brasilia, and a cordial relationship has subsisted between the two countries ever since. In 2010, efforts to strengthen these mutually beneficial ties were increased, culminating in proposals for more cooperation between Brazil and China in political, financial, energy, mining and agriculture related fields at the second BRIC Summit which was held in Brazil. And in 2012, when former Chinese Presid e n t Hu Jintao addressed the
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
Brazilian Congress, he was firm in his belief that, “both Latin America and China have similar experiences in gaining national liberation, defending national independence and constructing the country” and therefore the two countries are “expected to support each other in the political fields, strengthen economic complementarity, and carry out close cultural contacts.” Indeed, this is exactly what the two countries have been striving to accomplish, with China becoming Brazil's largest trading partner in 2009, bringing former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to dub China “Brazil’s most promising business partner and a strategic ally”. According to Minister Neri, this situation is ideal as it is conducive to bringing about an ideal combination of Chinese growth and Brazilian inclusion, thereby reaffirming the statements expressed by Deborah Wetzel, the World Bank Director for Brazil. Wetzel said earlier in the year that she “often joke[s] with some of [her] government counterparts that we need to create “Chizil”, which is a connected breed of China and Brazil. If we could get China to have Brazil’s social and environmental sense of things and if we could get Brazil to have China’s planning capacities together it would be perfect.”
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The Umbrella Revolution: Hong Kong’s Dreary Future Zita Chan Deputy Features Editor FOLLOWING THE DECISION of the Hong Kong government to dispatch police forces to clear the streets of Mong Kok and other venues, the situation in the troubled region spiralled out of control. Footage of police officers using unwarranted physical violence against protestors was leaked as the student demonstrators called for talks. Despite increasing political instability and poliarisation, Chief Executive CY Leung blatantly rejected the students’ calls and warned that the protestors’ “furious resistance” will not be tolerated on 7th Dec. Hong Kong is in a state of dystopian chaos. Few expected that a local campaign for more democratic elections in Hong Kong would have evolved into a fully-fledged “revolution”, garnering such an extent of international media coverage. Some have even compared the Umbrella Revolution to the 1789 French Revolution, yet there is much controversy regarding the legal basis, practicality and ideological motives of this revolution.
At first glance, the Umbrella Revolution seems to be backed by the law completely. Protestors ground their campaigns on Article 45 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that the “Chief Executive should be chosen by universal suffrage”. During the signing of the Sino- British Joint Declaration in 1997, the policy of ‘One Country Two Systems’, as proposed by Deng Xiaoping, was formalized. With Hong Kong possessing political autonomy legitimately, its government can and should be formed in a manner contrary to the Chinese government, where fellow party members control the elections from within the Communist Party. However, should Article 45 be followed to the letter, the grounds for the Umbrella Revolution are shaken. This is because the principle of universal suffrage need not underpin the entire election process of the Chief Executive. The Basic Law not only states that the citizens of Hong Kong will have the right to vote for Chief Executive candidates nominated by a ‘nomination committee’, but also that the pursuit of ‘universal suffrage’ is merely an ‘ultimate goal’. Therefore, the Basic Law may have negated the legal foundation of the Umbrella Revolution. Moreover, the ambiguous phrase ‘ulti-
mate goal’, indicates that the election process need only be conducted in a way that ‘honours the spirit’ of universal suffrage and suggests sufficiently that Hong Kong is ‘moving towards’ universal suffrage. What the protestors are campaigning for: universal suffrage in the election of the Chief Executive from the beginning to the end of the process may, in fact, lack solid legal foundation. Apart from the question of legitimacy, there are practical concerns regarding the economy of Hong Kong and the efficacy of the Revolution. It is inevitable that the large-scale occupations of key commercial districts, such as Central and Mong Kok, may have caused detriment to the economy of Hong Kong. Although figures suggest that tourism has flourished, contrary to expectations, it is true that local businesses in the occupied districts have suffered. The Hang Seng Index, though having recovered previously, has shown a pessimistic trend, whilst foreign investments are being pulled out of Hong Kong, suggesting that business confidence has dwindled significantly. Apart from inducing possible economic distress, there are questions regarding what the Revolution can even achieve, since local capitalists rarely express any support for the campaign. China had already openly rejected the proposal for universal suffrage and declared denunciation of the Revolution in Hong Kong; dis-
cussions are unlikely to re-open. It has been suggested by some critics that the Chinese government has pushed Hong Kong ‘to the side’ in recent years, in light of the Mainland’s thriving economy and tumultuous party dynamics. Nonetheless, from an ideological perspective, it is absolutely essential to defend democracy. Democracy is the thing that distinguishes Hong Kong from other Mainland provinces; the Umbrella Revolution is Hong Kong’s largest-scale sociopolitical campaign to date. Campaigners should ride on the momentum of the current movement to continue raising awareness and garnering greater local and international support. Democracy lies at the heart of the moral and political fabric of the society; the hostile attitudes the Chinese government currently holds regarding the Umbrella Revolution seem to be suggestive of a dreary future for the politics of Hong Kong once the ‘50 year- rule’ Deng imposed ends. All in all, the Umbrella Revolution is vital in maintaining the spirit of democracy in Hong Kong. However, its legal grounds seem uncertain, whilst the campaign also raises practical concerns that make it unclear what the future holds for Hong Kong and its fervent campaigners. Regardless of matters of legitimacy, feasibility and ideology, the vehement passion of the student campaigners calls for respect and commendation.
Investigating Socioeconomic Diversity at LSE Manoj Paudel LSESU Economics Society IN THE PREVIOUS NINE weeks there has been an ongoing dialogue regarding the state of ‘elitism’ here at LSE. Many have questioned what can be done regarding this problem; others have offered their own solutions. What has not been questioned, at least not to the standard that this institution expects of its students, is the extent of ‘elitism’ here. Asked another way, is LSE socioeconomically diverse, and what, if anything, is the school doing to foster that diversity? This year, the LSESU Economics Society Research Division seeks to answer those questions. Each year, the Economics Society researches something about the LSE student body. Last year’s report focused on the employability of LSE students and found that attending career events, being a society officer and obtaining work or internship experience are all positively correlated with getting an invitation to an assessment center and receiving an offer. This year’s team is led by Director of Research Jan Friedemann
and Research Coordinator Vinit Agrawal with committee leads Tvisha Nevatia and Anne Kersting, Heads of Literature Review; Shantanu Singh, Head of Survey Design; Ole Agersnap, Head of Econometrics and Manoj Paudel, Head of Reporting. The team is also assisted by eleven graduate and undergraduate subcommittee members: Lukas Bolte, Carey Chen, Anthony Cilluffo, Pinar Gorgulu, Fergal Hanks, Vlad Mankov, Alberto Martelli, Neelgoon Safdar, Alex Tse, Hayden HoTing Wong and Rebecca Wu. Unlike previous studies, the Econ Society study will study differences in international student participation. Last week, The Beaver reported that over half of the LSE student body comes from overseas. Tvisha Nevatia is an MSc student The Economics Society Research Group
from India and found the transition from rupees to pounds challenging. She was then “curious as to how people belonging to different countries and different socioeconomic backgrounds are able to afford tuition fees at LSE”, which is the same issue for everyone. International students also face unique challenges, including recent changes to student visa status and difficulties obtaining funding, that may affect the ability of international students from lower socioeconomic statuses to attend LSE. This study seeks to evaluate, on a cross-national basis, the socioeconomic representativeness of the student body. The second part of the study’s research question asks what, if anything, the school is doing to foster socioeconomic diversity here. This
has been an area of increasing concern for universities since the introduction of variable tuition fees and recent fee increases, with some claiming that those measures decrease the opportunities of students from lower socioeconomic groups to participate in higher education. Other measures, such as the muchdebated Graduate Support Scheme (GSS), are intended to assist meritorious students that otherwise don’t have the means to attend LSE. The evidence on the broader issue is certainly mixed, with a 2010 Russell Group report finding that variable tuition fees have significantly increased participation from disadvantaged students while a National Audit Office Report instead found that significant inequalities still exist in UK higher education. In order to answer these questions in the context of LSE, the Econ. Society is conducting a student survey to assess the socioeconomic diversity and financial aid assistance to students. We will be asking students to complete a short survey via email during the end of the Michaelmas Term into the beginning of the Lent Term. We plan to publish a report before the end of the Lent Term.
corner Katie Budd RAG President AS THE TERM WINDS down and essay deadlines finally subside, we’ve become a bit reflective at RAG HQ. It seems only yesterday that we sat down to plan the year and now half of it is well behind us... It all began in freshers’ week, when everyone donned their dashing RAG bands, getting them into the four best nights an LSE fresher has ever seen (we’re very modest, I promise). Even if it was just a sneaky excuse for us to re-live our fresher days, the week raised well over £13,000 and we’re pretty darn chuffed with that! We continued the term dressing as giant carrots to shake buckets for World Food Day, selling poppies for the British legion and raffling off a place on the AU tour. This term has also been challenges galore, with recruitment flying through the roof. A few weeks ago we sent 75 RAGlets, blindfolded, to the deepest corner of Wales (Barry Island), from which they raced back to London, all in aid of Spires. On top of this, we’ve got 40 Tough Guys (and girls) ready and waiting to take on the world’s most challenging obstacle course in February and many more signed up to take part in our first EVER Jailbreak at the end of RAG week! And that’s not to mention the incredible fundraising efforts that have been going on across campus, independent of us. Our Morocco trekkers have already managed to raise over half of their collective total, holding creative events, from lunch box sales to putting on concerts. Meanwhile, the Islamic Society has been putting RAG week to shame, raising a frankly unbelievable figure of £33,335 during their charity week. A huge congratulations to them! Now I’m off to eat a mince pie or 10 - very happy holidays to you all and we’ll see you next term for some more RAGging!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Disagree with any of our whole Features Team!
writers’ analyses? Send in your own to Get writing for us over the features@thebeaveronline.co.uk holidays! or submit online!
Sport
Tuesday December 9, 2014
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Meet The Committee: LSE Snowsports
Harry Philpot - President
Will Gurney - Vice President
Milli Karlstrom - Treasurer
Joanne Maure - Media
Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? Definitely the last day. After four days of bluebird, being knee deep in powder for the last day was a beautiful change from the t shirt days.
Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? It wasn’t a stellar trip from me.
Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? There was one really fun après at a bar called Smokey’s with lots of food, drink and a live band.
Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? Skiing in a big group of friends better than me was exhilarating. I didn’t turn so that I could keep up and it was so scary, and then I tried to follow the others off piste but I did a little roly poly down the mountain instead.
What have you done differently to last year? We’ve gone hard and made a huge change to the trip. Rather than having one or two mediocre acts playing in resort we’ve gone for Rise festival – what some of us would call a ‘game changer’. LSE have been very lucky to get involved with this. Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? No, myself and a certain member don’t see eye to eye, lets leave it at that.
What have you done differently to last year? The previous committee was better than us. Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? We haven’t. Tour advice for freshers? The higher the altitude, more chance of a crack. What song reminds you of ski tour? Eye of the tiger.
Tour advice for freshers? You can sleep on the coach home. Don’t waste your precious time catching up on Z’s at 11am – get up and get out and within an hour your hangover will be cured.
What have you done differently to last year? We went to Ibiza, they didn’t. Sucks to be them. Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? We deal with the animosity by bitching to each other behind each others’ backs. No harm done. Tour advice for freshers? Make the most of both the days and the nights. Sleep is for the weak, and you can rest once the trip’s over! What song reminds you of ski tour? ‘One Day/ Reckoning Song’
Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? Les Deux Alpes was clearly the best place to go; it’s really great that everyone agreed with me. Whilst we’re over the stand off about locations, I am worried about a new growing friction between Philpot and Umut that could escalate in resort. The rest of the team have decided to split them into different rooms but watch this space… Tour advice for freshers? Have a massive first year pres and speak to everyone! Ski trip is a great way of meeting friends for the rest of uni. Also, start saving up for next year’s trip; once you go on one trip, you won’t want to miss out on the others!
What song reminds you of ski tour? Led Zeppelin – When the Levee Breaks – standing on the edge of a cliff off piste and alone, crank this beauty up and smash it.
Do you want your club’s members or committee profiled in The Beaver? If so, e-mail Robin Park with your club details at sports@thebeaveronline.co.uk
What have you done differently to last year? Pre-trip curry night. Mixing dragon scoop and white wine was a first for me – and probably the last time I’ll be doing that.
What song reminds you of ski tour? Genuinely can’t remember a single song… recall Fairy Tale of New York.
Harry Poole - Social Sec
Jack Norris - Race
Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? The first day of Après at Folie Douce, with all my buddies, the sun was out. Heaven.
Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? Favourite moment would have to be the 1976 race, we didn’t win but we were technically unbeaten.
What have you done differently to last year? I like to think we have got ourselves out there as a club, especially the freshers who are loving the hype for the trip.
What have you done differently to last year? This year we have decided to go for the festival which will give us our best après yet.
Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? It’s been tough. But Umut & I are always right. Tour advice for freshers? Go as hard as you can on the slopes and in the bars, speak to everyone, don’t be afraid to mix it up. This is the best week you will have at uni. What song reminds you of ski tour? Baby Got Back - Sir Mixalot because it’s Joanne’s fav.
Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? Philpot now only stands as a figurehead but yields no actual power, it makes everything much easier. Tour advice for freshers? Irish coffees are great for pre drinks. What song reminds you of ski tour? C2C - delta, great song to ski to.
Umut “I’m not rude I’m just honest” Events Favourite moment from last year’s ski tour? Going on my first run in over four years, with it accidentally being a black run, and then having my first near-death experience. What have you done differently to last year? We had much less clear direction than last year’s committee, our president suffered from a bit of absenteeism. Did you recover from the tour location stand-off? We haven’t really, none of us speak to each other much, we’re all just sort of going through the motions. Tour advice for freshers? Get with as many people as you can, we all know that it’s an easy way to make ‘friends’. What song reminds you of ski tour? I have an extremely vivid memory of Ella Britton singing Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus and just colliding into things in my room.
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Tuesday December 9, 2014
LSESU ABACUS FC Debut Season Ho-Shing Mak LSE ABACUS FC Captain “WHAT DOES HE KNOW about football, coming from Japan” was a criticism aimed at Arsene Wenger by Sir Alex Ferguson when the great Frenchman first came to England. Although a man from Scotland can hardly boast about a rich footballing heritage, he has a point. Or rather he had a point, as times have changed and Asians are now all over football. LSE ABACUS FC is a newly established football team that is closely linked to the main ABACUS society (Association of British and Chinese University Students) and accepts players of all backgrounds and footballing abilities. Please enjoy the following match report from our first ever season. Early on a Saturday morning fifteen members of LSE ABACUS FC made their way to Acton to face IC (Imperial) ABACUS. We had just come off the back of a gutting 9-8 loss in the LSE 5-a-side league on Wednesday, a league in which we are unfortunately “Burn-
ley”. However, an 11-a-side match against a rival university was the perfect opportunity to bounce back and propel ourselves up the London ABACUS League. IC dominated the first five minutes, forcing me into some fine saves early on. However, after weathering this early storm, the players began to settle. LSE finally broke the deadlock when Eric Lee crossed for Dom Lui to power in a header. We continued to restrict them to occasional ventures into our half, thanks to the authoritative defending of Robin Park and Rich Smith. Yet the second goal continued to elude us. We picked up where we left off in the second half and found ourselves two nil up after Dom Lui slotted home a Macario Chung through ball. Soon after we found ourselves three to the good after Ulugbek (Uzzi) Pessoa, our defensive anchor, picked up the ball from the edge of the box and curved it into the top corner. LSE ABACUS FC is in its first ever season, but this was easily the best goal we had scored so far. Afterwards we pushed for a
fourth, which IC capitalised on to break a few times, forcing me into a couple of saves. However, we soon got a fourth when Dom Lui and Macario Chung combined again, the latter taking it round the keeper to smash home. The fifth goal came after some fine work in midfield by tireless Nathan Wong and D-Troy Gwakuba to set up Dom for his third of the
game, a volley from inside the area. After proving a threat on the break throughout the game, IC finally pulled one back after an error by me led to their striker lobbing the ball into an open net. Five minutes from the end however, we got another as Dom Lui squared for Phillip Ho (our beloved president) to slot in. Final score: LSE ABACUS FC 6 - 1 Imperial College ABA-
CUS FC. Starting line-up and substitutes (4-2-3-1): Hosh Mak; Eric Lee, Jerry Lai (Will Mayhew 60), Rich Smith, Robin Park (Nigel Leung 50); Ulugbek Pessoa, D-Troy Gwakuba; Nathan Wong, Tien Zheng (Phillip Ho 45), Macario Chung; Dom Lui.
More Than Just ‘Ticking the Boxes’ San Puri on the LSESU Men’s Rugby Working Group’s activities and plans for the future San Puri Men’s Rugby Working Group IT’S BEEN A FEW MONTHS since the disbanding of the Men’s Rugby club. In that time, a lot of things have changed: the Men’s Rugby Working Group has been set up. Let me be clear, the club isn’t just going to ‘come back next year’. Activities and Development officer Alastair Duncan made this very clear in our first meeting. The activities of the working group are going be analysed in May 2015, and provided there has been enough ‘positive engagement in the rehabilitation process’, the club will be reinstated. What is the purpose of the working group? And what are its main aims? The working group is about so much more than just ticking the boxes. Its aim is to re-establish a men’s rugby club focused on playing rugby with a culture that encourages diversity and inclusivity through open-mindedness and approachability. We meet weekly, with a rotating chair and secretary each week. The structure is such that ONLY second years and freshers can attend. Those people can make a serious change next
year. Our goals are as follows: • To create a men’s rugby club primarily focused on rugby rather than socialising. • To engage actively with both those wronged by the club’s past conduct and with the wider LSE community as a whole. • To become the most inclusive and open club in the AU and lead a culture change within the AU itself. • To establish a program of community outreach with a view to this continuing into following years. • To work with the SU to give opportunities to play rugby to all students, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, experience or ability. How will we achieve these goals? By far reaching changes to club structure, we intend to put rugby first, not as an optional afterthought to social activities. Through workshops and leadership training for our members made optional to the wider AU, we hope to lead the way in addressing culture problems within the AU
itself. Through the establishment of a new touch rugby club we aim to make it so that any LSE student, regardless of ability or past experience can have access to this fantastic sport. With forums and anonymous feedback we aim to engage with any people offended by the club in the past, using this input to make changes ensuring the new Men’s Rugby Club can exist peacefully within the AU and the LSE community in the future. We will change the image of the club permanently with a high profile public event towards the end of the school year, and through the establishment of an ongoing programme of charitable community outreach work. There will be, without doubt, scepticism in relation to our goals. Statements such as ‘they’re just doing this to fulfil the criteria of the board of trustees’ will most definitely be heard in the future. But we haven’t been provided with any criteria from the Trustee Board. Alastair Duncan has merely provided guidance as to what they may expect. He believes that we are now showing ‘a more proactive approach to coming up with ideas and executing them’ and he
believes that we are ‘off to a good start’ that he hopes will continue next term. It’s about so much more than just ticking the boxes. We are already acting on our goals. Members of the MRWG attended an AU forum a few weeks ago which included club captains, team captains and members of various liberation groups. The feedback we gained was very useful to us; it is important to gain the perspective from other people on the former Men’s Rugby Club, and suggestions on how to go forward. Further to this, we have an anonymous online feedback form. Your feedback is important to us, and we want to hear how you feel. This can be found on the LSESU MRWG Facebook page (http:// goo.gl/forms/S7a4C8q5Xt). This feedback will not be published, and will be used in confidentiality in our meetings. We want you to feel comfortable giving feedback. The first MRWG event has also been launched. A Touch Rugby taster session. How is this relevant to changing the culture of the club? Well, we want to do more than just ‘set up a club next year’. We want to engage with the communities that were excluded from the for-
mer LSE Men’s Rugby Club. The whole purpose of the touch sessions is to promote and encourage mixed, inclusive sport in an informal, fun way. I will leave a link here for the event for those who are interested: https://www.facebook.com/ events/369149283252236/. I’d like to stress that these activities will not stop if the club is reinstated next year; we aim to continue with all the positive initiatives we have started this term, and those that are created next term. We both ask and encourage you to support the activities of the LSESU MRWG. We urge you as readers to not dismiss these initiatives based on the previous perception of the Men’s Rugby Club. The success of these events is determined by your participation. There is change that needs to be made, and it will be much easier if we work together rather than against each other. Full list of Members of the LSESU MRWG: San Puri, Carwyn Evans, Benedict Hughes, James Wurr, Matt Howells, Matthew Davies, Owen McDermott, Tom Carmichael, Noah D’aeth, Alex Clarke, Kian Newlyn, Anton Wassell
Sport
THE BEAVER WISHES YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
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Beaver
Editor: Robin Park Email: sports@thebeaveronline.co.uk
Another Year Of Carol Revelry
Robin Park Sport Editor “CAROL IS A DIFFERENT universe. In this universe there is a Friday, Thursday, maybe even a Wednesday.” The much-loved Athletics Union event returned for another year, which began for the first time ever at the new Saw Swee Hock Student Centre. AU President Taylor Rampton recalled, “I think it was a great day. We sold 700 tick-
‘TWAS THE MORNING OF Carolmas, and all through Saw Swee, Not an athlete was working, not even ‘rugby’, The shots were aligned on the bar with great care, In the hope some poor freshers would soon find them there. The 300 men with their tanned looking ‘abs’, The old FC talents weren’t at all looking drab, And netball and hockey and badminton too, All graciously pranced their way down to the zoo.
ets for the new venue and things got vibey. Saturday was horrendous; but so worth it.” Despite many geriatric thirdyears pining for the old Tuns and Crush, the new venue was indeed well received by most revellers. The makeshift bar in the mezzanine was a particular favourite for a strange coalition of Spartans and Polar Bears (and effeminate Persians). The free pint tokens and food on offer by the curiously named ‘White Men Can’t Jerk’ was yet another
popular feature of this year’s Carol. Hopefully the trend of freebies will continue in the future for posterity. After three years of Carol I am still unsure as to what happens in the official Tuns ‘fines/event’ in the morning. This year was no different, as the strange handcuff rituals and disorganised beveraging of many pints was hosted by the AU Executive, and the crowd liked what they saw. After a short interlude it was off to Zoo Bar, much to the amusement of oblivious families and shoppers
in Covent Garden and Leicester Square. One curious tourist asked very perceptively if we were singing carols. A group of confused Spartans answered no, but no one was in the mood to disappoint, thus possibly for the first time ever real Christmas carols were sung on Carol. Champagne. Around four hours later, the wheat was separated from the chaff as people crawled back to the Tuns for a final few hours of beveraging. A rather curious moment happened
When outside the jungle did drama unfold, The conflicts and lovers of those new and old, The carnage unravelled inside in a spree, Left poor old Molltiple leaving as three.
from sprinting young Meade.
Britton and crew, We hear there was napping that carried you through.
An injury here and an injury there, One Face left the toilet in a state of despair, A fresher he wooed Lived a rather wild day, A treasurer soon caught her and swept her away. So hard did he try that he damaged his shoulder, No effort at all when compared to young Calder, His Sil-bridal babe is now taking the lead, Rumours hear she took tips
When out on the dancefloor, a prophet found Jewels, And snogged her and snogged her on the cheap leather stools. Then away from the lights, surrounded by vomit, A hockey was lovestruck by a WRFC Gromit. A seventh team lady fooled around with DB, No knowledge at all that he was Mr LSE? Returning and running to our big campus name, Some say she was Max’ing her chances for fame. Now Boulder, and Sutton, and Scholsey and Seed, Mop up your messes and carry on indeed, And Walshy, dear Capon, Miss
As night drew us near, then did come the fighting? Handcuffs and rough-ups? Oh how exciting, No names shall be mentioned, no judgment shall be? On the old Fat man’s list, may we all see. The day it did end, for old ones and young’uns, As we all made our way home from the three tuns, But alas, do not fear, for Carol lives on, In the hearts of the AU it will never be done. Come Saturday we hope that you all were alright, Merry Carolmas to all, and to all a good night.
to me during this period when I sang abuse to a terminated banana, calling him out for his weakness. It turned out this was my flatmate, which stirred up considerable retrospective guilt. Sorry mate. The strong didn’t stay strong however, as everyone finally succumbed to termination the following Saturday; but as a wise man once said: “I die, you die, we all grow stronger.” Such evil and ridiculous advice never seemed so appropriate as it did on Friday.