Week 11 - The Student - 20082009

Down in the dumpster Believe it or not, some students are happier shopping in local dumpsters than Tesco. Julia Sanches investigates.

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Get ready for love Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds triumph at the Corn Exchange.

Student Lifestyle page 24

Music page 16

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SCOTTISH STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2007

www.studentnewspaper.org

Week 11 02.12.2008

Since 1887 - The UK’ s oldest student newspaper

Katy Kennedy

Katy Kennedy

Medication, medication, medication • Huge spike predicted in students taking prescription drugs to boost concentration • Prescription drugs cheap and readily available online as experts warn of dangers Sarah Morrison WHILE COFFEE has traditionally been the students study aid of choice, many are now turning towards ‘brain boosting’ drugs in an attempt to study longer, concentrate harder and improve their exam results.

Prescription drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall and Modafinil have traditionally been prescribed for sufferers of ADHD and narcolepsy, but according to the British Medical Association (BMA) they can improve memory, concentration and attention span in healthy people, as well as those with impaired functioning.

Despite the long-term side effects of such drug use in healthy individuals being largely unknown,

some students at the University of Edinburgh said that their benefits outweighed any concerns of potential harm to their health.

“The drugs put you in a zone where you don’t mind working and are able to concentrate for hours,” said ‘Amanda’, a fourth year student who has taken Ritanol a number of times. “I don’t worry about the side effects at all, because I don’t think I take them enough to do me any harm.”

‘Amanda’ added that while she only took the drugs occasionally, she knew a friend who wrote his dissertation in five days using several pills each day to keep him alert and motivated.

Despite many students feeling no decline in their health after us-

ing such drugs, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence said the side effects of Ritalin could include insomnia, anxiety, stomach and

“The drugs put you in a zone where you don’t mind working and are able to concentrate for hours” ‘Amanda’ , fourth year student headaches, as well as an increased heart rate, palpitations and raised blood pressure.

The BMA also warned of the hidden disadvantages of the cognitive enhancing drugs, including the risk of users being plagued by unwanted

or painful memories as well as being prone to excessive wakefulness for periods of time.

Despite experiencing ‘sweatiness’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘feelings of nausea’ while she was on Modafinil, recent Cambridge graduate ‘Emma’ said that the sale of the drug became a ‘roaring trade’ during her final year at the university, with students taking it as often as two or three times a day for several weeks, or even months.

“Loads of students tried it and you would see people working day in, day out without a break,” she said. “You can do so much more when you’re on it and you are not only less distracted but really enjoy the work you are doing. I mean, students would actually deal them in

the library during finals.”

However, when not prescribed, Ritalin is a class B drug in the UK, and possession can lead to a fiveyear prison sentence, with dealers running the risk of 14 years behind bars. Despite Modafinil also not being available without a prescription, Snowton said students could access the drugs relatively easily.

“I got the drugs from someone I knew who had ADHD and therefore had a constant prescription”, she said. “You can get the drugs if you want them here and I think it is quite rife among the Edinburgh community.”

‘Tania’, a fourth year Edinburgh student said she got her prescriptions Continued on page 2

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2 News

This week in Student Comment 8-10

Maddie Battersby looks at Boris Johnson’s calls for high culture

Interview 12 Liz Rawlings talks to Alter Modernist artist Charles Avery

Features 13-15 Lee Bunce looks at sex work in Scotland

Film 16-17

Film choose their favourite Christmas movies

Music 18-19 Live reviews of Nick Cave and Sigur Ros, and the last hurrah of Student’s longest serving section editor

Tech 22

Tech break up with Sonic the Hedgehog.

It’s not pretty.

Sport 26-28 Misa Klimes reports on Teviot’s annual fight night

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

Brain boost drugs rife in universities Continued from front page direct off the internet site urantiapharma.com, where Modafinil is sold for as little as 46p a pill.

“I just order it online and use it when there is a work emergency and I have to get something done really quickly,” ‘Tania’ said. “It doesn’t make me wired or anxious and I think while the use is not yet widespread, there is a growing scene in Edinburgh.”

While internet websites make it easy for students to access the drug, the BMA said the unregulated use of a prescription drug could lead to misuse of the drug in question.

“For us, there is a concern when people obtain prescription drugs via the internet or through other means,” said a spokesperson for the Association. “Forgetting the issues concerning cognitive enhancers, it is never a good idea to use prescriptions that are not assigned to you.”

A recent report by the Academy of Medical Sciences predicts an increase of the use of such drugs among students in future years and calls for increased research into the health effects further down the line.

“There needs to be greater understanding of the risks and safety of these substances,” said Robert Frost, the senior policy officer at the Academy. “If the use is going to increase then we need to be able

to make a better assessment of the effects among healthy people.”

According to ‘Amanda’, most Edinburgh students who take study drugs get them from America, where the number of students taking them is believed to be higher

“I became dependent on the drugs... almost because it made working so fun” ‘Tina’, UC Berkeley Dramatic Arts Major than in the UK. A study in America that considered anonymous responses from 1,025 American college students found that 16.2 per cent reported use of cognitive enhancers, with 96 per cent of these using Ritalin

Fresh off Air due to mess, ‘hobos’ Jonathan Holmes FRESH AIR, the Edinburgh University radio station, is to shut off broadcasting one week early to ‘clear up’ the studio. This comes after a series of thefts and ‘hobo’ incursions into its Pleasance studio, as well as some strict new rules for the broadcasting talent.

Student has received a leaked email from the Station Manager, which indicates that due to staff ignoring ‘pleas to tidy up’ the Pleasance based studio, the entire programme output of the station will cease on Friday 12 December. This date is one week before the previously intended close down for the semester.

This early bow out is to allow staff to ‘clear up and sort the equipment out’, which apparently has been left in an ‘awful condition’.

The station manager apologised to ‘those who have kept things neat’, but hoped that this blanket ban would teach people to have ‘a little more consideration’ for the studio.

In addition to this self-imposed radio silence/scrub down, the email also outlines several new security rules, designed to combat a wave of

thefts and ‘hobo’ loitering which the email claims ‘have been a massive problem this year’.

According to the email, Fresh Air has had a CD deck stolen from their studio, and Pleasance staff have repeatedly had to ‘shoo away’ vagrants that have wandered into the complex.

Recipients of the email are advised to remain vigilant and report any ‘hoboish’ activity.

This stern warning comes with a vow to ‘come down more harshly on those evading studio rules’. To this end, a list of ‘show penalties’ is included. An infraction such as a presenter accidentally taking the Fresh Air studio keys home would result in their show not being broadcast for one week, while a more serious crime like ‘speaking about sponsors/advertisers on air’ or ‘being on drugs in the studio’ incurs a ban for the rest of the semester.

Even though the email assures recipients the shut down and new rules are only prompted by the ‘antics of a small number of people’, Student’s informant described the station manager’s actions as ‘draconian’ and ‘hilarious’. news@studentnewspaper.org

in order to improve attention, prolong partying, reduce hyperactivity and improve grades. 15.5 per cent of these students used the drug at least 2 or 3 times a week.

‘Tina’, a UC Berkeley Dramatic Arts major, told Student she overused study drugs and became concerned with what she felt were their addictive nature.

“I think I became dependent on the drugs to work at one point and I would take them literally just to read for no reason...almost because it made working so fun,” she said.

As well as possible health concerns, recent reports have questioned the ethical concerns that arise when students take drugs to improve their academic grades and exam performances.

“Assuming that these drugs give students an advantage, one must question whether this is unfair or not,” said Steve Rolles, head of research at the Transform Drug

Policy Foundation. “I mean plenty of students rely on caffeine as a stimulant, it is just that coffee is culturally accepted.”

He added that even if the drugs were proven undesirable among healthy students, there would be little or no way to regulate it.

“Any university would be treading on very shaky ground if they tried to disqualify students who use certain stimulants,” he said.

“Testing students against their will raises civil rights issues of privacy.”

For ‘Amanda’, the use of study drugs is a direct result of the increasing and often unmanageable demands put on students by the University community.

“I think if you’re going to put students under such intense, stressful situations, they will have to resort to drugs to cope with the pressure,” she said. news@studentnewspaper.org

02/12/08

News 3

www.studentnewspaper.org

Copycats cheat the system • Student survey reveals that 5% of students admit to plagiarising, but only 1 in 15 is caught • 14% of students not confident they know what constitutes plagiarism

Julia Sanches

COPY AND PASTE: Student has found that 1 in 20 students at the University has submitted plagiarised work, and 1.8 per cent have bought essays online

James Ellingworth Five per cent of students at the University admit to submitting plagiarised work, with almost two per cent having handed in essays bought from the internet.

The statistics emerged in a survey of 294 students conducted by Student into plagiarism at the University, which also found that 14 per cent of students do not feel confident about what constitutes plagiarism, including some postgraduates.

Student has also found that only 1 in 15 of those students who admitted to plagiarising had been caught, a statistic that casts doubt on the University’s claim that it “views any case of plagiarism extremely seriously, and is committed to ensuring that plagiarism is, wherever possible, both detected and dealt with appropriately.”

The results have sparked controversy, with EUSA President Adam Ramsay saying that the problem ‘sometimes stems from a lack of support and teaching contact time.’

A similar survey conducted recently by the Varsity student newspaper at the University of Cambridge found that 49 per cent of students there admitted to plagia-

rising, including 67 per cent of law students.

University of Edinburgh statistics show that between 1999 and 2004, the last year for which data is available, 26 cases of plagiarism were investigated by University authorities, although it is believed that the problem has since worsened.

Student found that the most common method of plagiarising was

“The lecturers on some of my courses don’t really care about referencing.

Some of my essays have been copied from Sparknotes” Second - year English Literature student deliberately failing to cite sources, which 60 per cent of those who had plagiarised admitted to.

One-third of students who had plagiarised had submitted work written by someone else, and 13 per cent had paid for their work to be edited.

EUSA President Adam Ramsay criticised the University for failing to ensure students are well informed about the issue, claiming that this is a particular problem for international students.

He told Student: “Expectations about quotations, citation and plagiarism vary by country. Often students from other countries aren’t adequately informed about expectations here.”

“However, the Student survey also shows that some students plagiarise intentionally.”

“This sometimes stems from a lack of support and teaching contact time. These problems need to be addressed.”

Student spoke to a second-year English Literature student at the University who submits work copied from online sources.

She said: “The lecturers on some of my courses don’t really care about referencing. Some of my essays have effectively just been copied from Sparknotes.”

A second-year German student commented that: “There’s so many websites, it’s hard not to research without paraphrasing whole chunks of stuff, especially when really tired and hungover from all that student

partying we’re meant to be doing.”

In a further development, a fourth-year Law student raised concerns about the effectiveness of the University’s anti-plagiarism software, which claims to be able to detect plagiarism by comparing pieces of work against various sources.

According to a recent report by the Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee, the chance that a student caught plagiarising work will be expelled is small.

While expulsion is the most severe penalty for the offence at almost all UK universities, including Edinburgh, researchers found it was used in only 143 of 9,200 cases surveyed..

In most cases, the student concerned was simply asked to resubmit the work in question.

He commented that the Turnitin software is over-sensitive and that there is a widespread problem with it falsely accusing students of having plagiarised work, which is a particular problem in the law school.

No-one from the University was available to comment as Student went to press. news@studentnewspaper.org

5%

of students have submitted plagiarised work

2%

have bought essays online

29%

of students know someone who plagiarises

4 News 118 118 sends racist joke texts DIRECTORY ENQUIRIES service 118 118 faced accusations of racism last week after an operator sent offensive text messages to a British Muslim student.

University of Central Lancashire student Kameron Abbas, 21, sent the keyword ‘Asian’ to the company’s SMS joke service, only to receive two replies referring to drowning Pakistanis and telling Asian immigrants to ‘go home’.

After Abbas complained, the company traced the messages to an operator in the Philippines, who was formally reprimanded but did not face dismissal.

Abbas said he was ‘horrified’ and that the messages were “more Bernard Manning than Harry Hill.

It was disgraceful and these people should be reported.”

LB

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

Student experience in focus

Police slammed over evidence ‘filtering’ Lothian and Borders Police have been criticised by the Police Complaints Commission for allegedly ‘filtering’ evidence sent to the Procurator Fiscal.

The force is accused of “a potentially serious systematic failure”, after Police Complaints Commissioner Jim Martin investigated reports that the force had passed incomplete and inaccurate information to prosecutors.

The commissioner found that “a number of officers, of varying ranks, within Lothian and Borders Police up to deputy chief constable, appeared to be of the view that it was acceptable to submit only evidence that could be proved and was corroborated”.

Lothian and Borders Police said they “will consider [the report’s] findings, as well as any requirement for further investigation.”

JE

Gumtree robbers convicted THREE TEENAGERS from Edinburgh were in court last week accused of stealing thousands of pounds’ worth of possessions listed on online classifieds website Gumtree.

After using the site to attain addresses of sellers in Kinross, thegroup, aged 16-18, embarked on a spree of thefts in late October, making off with a range of goods including a laptop, a games console and even a lawnmower.

Sheriff Robert McCreadie of Perth Sheriff Court told one of the gang that since he was on probation at the time of the thefts, he could have been jailed.

Sentences for all three were deferred after each admitted to charges of theft.

LB

Calum Toogood HARD WORK: 46% of students are forced to work during term time to make ends meet, research by the National Union of Students has found.

Guy Rughani THE NATIONAL Union of Students (NUS) has brought its first Student Experience Report to Parliament last week, highlighting the difficulties of university life.

The study finds that 46 per cent of students are forced to work during term time, mostly because their living costs exceed their loans.

A third work 17 hours a week, and 3 per cent work over 33 hours.

Quizzing over 3000 students at 146 UK universities and colleges, many working students admitted that the pressure to work had a negative

impact on their studies.

Although not discouraging students from term time employment, the University of Edinburgh recommends that full time students work a maximum of 20 hours a week.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents lecturers and other academic staff, said: “We are concerned that so many say they are forced into paid work during term time and that they concede this has a negative impact on their studies.”

“Staff have little desire to be teaching students that are exhausted from their employment or even forced to

skip classes to pay the bills.”

For the first time in three years, the government is holding a consultation on the English tuition fee system, which may lead to the removal of the current £3,145 cap on fees.

The investigation found that only 29 per cent of students went to university “for the experience,” with the majority motivated by the opportunity to improve their future career prospects.

When choosing an institution, most students studying at institutions in the Russell Group of leading research-focused universities, of which Edinburgh is a member, said that they

made their choice based on the establishment’s reputation, whereas those attending post-1992 universities tended to be more motivated by the prospect of improved earning power.

Academic feedback, for which the University of Edinburgh has recently been heavily criticised, was found to be poor across the board.

Only 25 per cent of the 71 per cent of students wanting feedback on assignments and examinations received it.

Read more on the report below and facing

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news@studentnewspaper.org

Poverty keeps students from moving out Anna MacSwan Financial concerns have a significant impact on students’ choice of university, especially those from poorer backgrounds.

According to research carried out by the National Union of Stuents (NUS), one in three students chose their university for being close to home, and one in five live with their parents.

While only 22 per cent of students who felt the need to stay close to home were of an upper middle-class background, this figure rises to 53 per cent among students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

This distribution indicates that the majority of students studying close to home are forced to do so

due to the prohibitively high costs of moving out.

There have been claims that poorest students could therefore

“Fees and spiralling living costs are forcing those from poorer backgrounds to choose a university close to home.”

Wes Streeting, NUS President be the first to suffer should tuition fees rise.

Michael Tait, a second-year Law student at the University of

Edinburgh living at home, said “I definitely made my choice of university for financial reasons, given that I cannot rely on my parents to support me and don’t make enough working to move out.”

“However, had I been living in a city where all universities were substandard, I would have seriously considered going into greater debt, because you need to push yourself, and that extra effort would most likely weigh up in the future.”

Only 19 per cent of students choosing their universities for being close to home were at Russell group institutions, compared to 41 per cent at post 1992 institutions.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents academic staff, said: “We have concerns that stu-

dents from poorer backgrounds are more likely to choose a university closer to home.”

“There is not the same range of choices of courses throughout the country and we do not see the benefit for the student, institution or the country of students forced to settle for second best because of prohibitive costs.”

Wes Streeting, NUS President, said: “Fees and spiralling living costs are forcing those from poorer backgrounds to choose a university close to home.”

“This has to be taken into account in the review of higher education funding. We cannot allow fees to continue to exacerbate this problem.” news@studentnewspaper.org

02/12/08

News 5

www.studentnewspaper.org

Eden Springs pulls out of East Scotland Controversial water company closes local depot just months after University of Edinburgh boycott vote Neil Pooran PRO-PALESTINIAN activists are claiming victory after water-cooler company Eden Springs shut down its East of Scotland branch.

Groups such as the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) say that their efforts to boycott the company have cost the company vital contracts.

Organisations that have boycotted the compnay include East Lothian and West Lothian Councils, Caledonian MacBrae Ferries and various colleges and universities around the country.

SPSC claim the company has unethical links to Israeli firms which source their water from the disputed Golan Heights region of Syria.

In 2007 the Student’s Association’s General Meeting voted to boycott the company because of these perceived links; however the motion was opposed by students saying that Eden Springs is a British company which sources all of its water in the UK. Eden Springs declined comment on the closure of their East of Scotland branch when contacted by Student, but it is understood that they partially blame the shutdown on the current financial crisis.

Mick Napier, chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

said: “This boycott campaign is in response to the appeal from Palestinians, and is supported by the main Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, who oppose Eden Springs’ violations of international and human rights law in the occupied Golan Heights.”

A campaign to get the City of Edinburgh Council to boycott the company ran aground earlier this year.

Liberal Democrat and SNP groups in the council opposed the move on the grounds that it might be illegal. The council’s Labour group voted in favour of the motion.

The Scottish Trades Union Council and Heriott-Watt University are among other institutions which have boycotted the company.

SPSC quotes anonymous ‘industry insiders’ as saying that the series of boycotts was responsible for the loss of contracts to provide water coolers around Scotland.

The contract with the City of Edinburgh Council alone is worth over £100, 000.

Israeli peace activist group Gush Shalom also called for the boycott, but Eden Springs have highlighted in the past that they are a UK organisation which employs over flickr user: shrff14

Read more in Editorial page 11... news@studentnewspaper.org

WATER LOT OF TROUBLE: Eden Springs water company was the subject of heated debate at a EUSA GM last year

Bullying plagues campus as complaints soar Alexandra Taylor

EUSA’s Advice Place has seen enquiries about harassment soar in the last year

The number of harassment complaints received by The University’s Advice Place has leapt by over 600 per cent in a year.

At the University of Edinburgh, EUSA encourages students to approach the Advice Place with bullying-related problems.

In 2007-2008 the number of queries relating to harassment was second only to those regarding financial hardship funds.

At 1156, complaints about harassment rocketed compared to the previous year’s figure of 184, although the Advice Place could not identify how many could be specifically described as bullying.

The increasing demand for bullying support services encouraged the Anti-Bullying Network, a local� non-profit organisation, to relaunch at the end of last year.

The network, originally set up by the University in 1999, focuses on providing support and training for tackling bullying in local schools, although it has also published advice for university students.

Last week’s NUS Student Experience survey found that seven per

cent of students had been victims of bullying during higher education.

According to the NUS study, many cases go unreported to the institution in question. This was largely because the victims, who were predominantly female, were unsure who to talk to.

Another reason that the targets of bullying chose to stay silent was that many preferred to rely on their friends to help them cope with the problem rather than seeking institutional support.

The level of assistance varied greatly at different universities. In some institutions, 38 per cent of sufferers said they had benefited from support.

An equal number said that university intervention had not solved the problem, while 23 per cent claimed that their university had refused to intervene.

The report states: “Of those that had experienced bullying, the majority, 79 per cent, said that it was carried out by another student with 24 per cent saying it was carried out by a member of staff”. news@studentnewspaper.org

184

harassment complaints to Advice Place, 2006-7

1156

complaints in 2007-8

7%

of UK students have been bullied

6 News

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

EUSA to award teaching ‘Oscars’ Joshua King Teaching awards are to be launched this week in response to the University of Edinburgh’s poor performance in the recent National Student Survey (NSS), the largest nationwide study of student satisfaction.

EUSA have set up the awards and claim that the proposed awards the first of their kind in Scotland and aim to acknowledge the University’s top teaching staff.

The NSS, which takes into account the views of 220,000 finalyear students, shows that general satisfaction with teaching at the university has fallen to 71.1 per cent, down from 82 per cent in 2007.

Students will be able to nominate lecturers, tutors and dissertation supervisors in categories such as ‘outstanding communicator’ and ‘best use of innovative teaching methods.’

One key category is set to be ‘best feedback’, an area in which the University has been heavily criticised.

Robert Jenkin, the Students’ Association Teaching and Learning Convener said: “One reason for the university’s poor performance is that the systems put in place by the university and the government have failed to give great teachers the recognition they deserve.”

In recent weeks, the university has been hit with criticism that teaching standards have been sacrificed for a higher quality of research.

Guy Bromley, EUSA’s Vice President Academic Affairs, told Student: “There’s a great injustice that those academics that put in a great deal of personal effort into delivering good teaching for their students go unrewarded, and colleagues that do not expend this effort often ben-

efit because they are able to spend more time on their research.”

He also said, “It can’t be right that teaching is seen as a less important activity than research.

“It’s time everyone in the university woke up to the idea that disseminating knowledge and understanding should be as vital as advancing it.”

It is now the University’s desire to shift focus from academic research and once again put undergraduate teaching front and centre.

This view is shared by Professor Judith Green, a lecturer and Direc-

“The university and the government have failed to give teachers the recognition they deserve”

“The university and the government have failed to give teachers the recognition they deserve” Robert Jenkin, EUSA Teaching and Learning Convener tor of Studies at the university, who told Student that her “personal view is that the primary stimulus to effective teaching is first and last students and the opportunity to share an enthusiasm for the subject with them.”

The awards will run throughout next semester and are set to be sponsored by the Spanish Banco Santander, who say they are eager to show “that one of Europe’s largest employers puts high value on well taught undergraduates.”

The launch of the EUSA awards be held in Teviot on Tuesday December 2 and students will be able to nominate academic staff who deserve recognition online at eusa. ed.ac.uk/teachingawards.

An award ceremony will take place later on in the spring. news@studentnewspaper.org

Julia Sanches

Flickr: Aithbhraec The University’s top teaching staff will be recognised in a EUSA intiative to award lecturers for their teaching, rather than research credentials.

Student loan pay-outs on the increase in Scotland Stefan Hyman According to The Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) the overall funding for students in Scotland last year increased although the student numbers remain constant.

The SAAS provides financial support for all Scottish students studying inside the EU and European students who enrol in Scottish higher education. The recent findings were highlighted in the SAAS’s financial report for 2007/8 which was published last Tuesday.

According to figures the agency paid out more than £450m last year. The SAAS pays Scottish student’s tuitions fees directly to their

college or university together with offering students maintenance loans and grants.

The total amount spent on grants increased by 2 per cent whilst fee payment rocketed by 11 per cent.

Officials claim that this does not necessarily mean there are more students in higher education but point to last year’s rise in UK tuitions fees.

The SAAS pays full tuition fees for EU students although non-Scots are not entitled to claim a living allowance. EU students only count for 7 per cent of the monies spent indicating that Scots make up 93 per cent of those receiving awards.

Nevertheless, over the last five years the amount of EU domiciled

students receiving support from SAAS has increased by 95 per cent. Sources suggest that the Scot-

£450m

paid out in loans and grants to students studying in Scotland tish Government wants to attract more foreign students in order enhance its universities’ international

reputation.

Since 2006-7 the SAAS has provided loans to Scots undertaking courses outside the country. Scottish domiciles are still eligible for full UK tuition fees at English and Welsh universities which in some cases amount to £3,145. However, officials note there are often bursaries available.

The total amount of students receiving support last year was 120,000, unsurprisingly the majority of whom were undertaking their first degree and aged between 18-20.

In previous years 10 per cent more girls received grants than boys, which would indicate a higher overall female university

population. However, last year the percentage difference dropped to just 6.

The report also highlighted better provisions for disabled students whilst at the same time showing a rise of 7 per cent in the amount of applicants requesting the Disabled Students Allowance.

Not all students were happy with the report from the SAAS: “£4,500 is not a particularly high amount for twelve months when you factor in rent, bills, food and transport. Edinburgh is really expensive city and those of us who live here deserve to get a little bit extra,” said one Politics student. news@studentnewspaper.org

02/12/08

News 7

www.studentnewspaper.org

Council to triple CCTV in city centre Harriet Kay

RANGERS CHAIRMAN, Sir David Murray, is among those set to receive an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh at a ceremony to beheld in McEwan Hall later this week.

Murray, who will graduate as Doctor honoris causa, is the owner ofMurray International Metals and a prominent benefactor of charities for sufferers of limb loss and absence. He has been owned RangersFootball Club for 20 years and was knighted last year for services tobusiness in Scotland.

Others receiving the accolade include Law Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, TV executive Steve Morrison and education official Matthew Macleod MacIver.

LB

Edinburgh City Council plans to triple the number of closed-circuit surveillance cameras in the east of the city near the Omni centre.

Originally the area was served by a single camera that was on Picardy Place and commanded a view of the surrounding streets; however it had to be disconnected due to the ongoing installation of the city’s new tram system.

Three new cameras will be in-

830

The number of CCTV cameras across Edinburgh stalled to recreate views to cover Leith Walk, Leith Street, Broughton Place, Queen Street and Picardy Place.

Ross Neill, Operations manager of CCTV at the council, insists that the increased number of cameras is necessary only due to recreate the view that will be lost when the tram is installed and not due to any increase in suspicious activity.

He said: “If it had been viable to keep the original camera in place then there would be no requirement to install further cameras.”

In the last year, 40 new CCTV cameras have been introduced to the city bringing the total up to over 830.

However, Neill told Student that the majority of the new cameras are in the outlying areas of the city rather than the centre, where the number of cameras has remained fairly consistent for the last few years. news@studentnewspaper.org

Edinburgh debaters in St Andrews’ Day battle

Calum Toogood THEY’RE WATCHING YOU: The number of CCTV cameras in the east of the city will triple this year; meaning more surveillance in areas such as the Omni centre, Leith Walk, Queen Street and Broughton Place

Russell Group graduates cash in James Ellingworth Graduates from leading universities are twice as likely to become high earners than those who studied at other institutions, new research has found.

Among students from universities in the Russell Group and 1994 Group, two associations of leading researchfocused universities, almost half were found to be earning over £25,000 three years after graduation, compared to 27 per cent of those from universities outside these groups.

The University of Edinburgh is a member of the Russell Group, which also includes universities such as Oxford, Glasgow and the London School of Economics.

Science and technology graduates from research-focused universities

Honorary degrees announced

fared particularly well, with 31.7 per cent earning between £30,000 and £50,000 three years after graduating, compared to 16 per cent of those

“Students are entitled to know what the financial returns for particular courses at particular universities ” David Willets, Shadow Education Secretary who had studied the subjects at other institutions.

Graduates from research-intensive universities stood to earn more in the

case of every subject except education, the report found.

Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of Exeter University, said: “This research shows incontrovertibly that employment and earning potential are significantly enhanced by the experience of higher education.”

David Willetts, Shadow Universities Secretary, said: “When young people are borrowing money to study they are entitled to know what the financial returns are for particular courses at particular universities.”

The report was criticised by representatives of many leading institutions over the way the data was compiled.

Deian Hopkin, vice-chancellor of London South Bank University, representing the Million+ Group of newer universities said: “If you con-

trol for prior attainment, social background and strip out medical schools and postgraduates, the differences would fall away.”

“Going to university is about improving students’ prospects and ability to progress and help employers develop.” He also disputed the “arbitrary” distinction between researchintensive and other institutions.

Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, said: “It is no surprise that graduates from research intensive institutions go on to earn more on average.”

“However, we need to remember that these returns are far from guaranteed, so these figures cannot be used to back up the argument for institutions to set their own fees.” news@studentnewspaper.org

Debaters from Edinburgh will take on teams from five other Scottish Universities as well as a group of Scottish students studying at Oxford in a tournament to be held at Holyrood next week.

The six teams will battle it out to win the coveted St Andrews Day debating prize at the Scottish Parliament.

Keen students and other members of the public will be able to follow the hotly-contested tournament from the public viewing gallery of the debating chamber, or can watch it live on holyrood tv.

Chairing the debates will be the Scottish parliament’s presiding officer Alex Fergusson.

LR

JK Rowling and Stephen Fry, not our rectors Bestselling author JK Rowling and renowned broadcaster Stephen Fry have confirmed that they will not enter the Edinburgh University Rector race, following requests from students.

It is understood that Rowling, whose books have sold over 400 million copies, politely declined to run for the position after looking at the requirements of the job and deciding that she would not have the time to do it. Fry declined for similar reasons, with his spokesperson saying: “He feels hugely honoured. However, sadly, he cannot accept a post of such prominence, with his work schedule the way it is or the foreseeable future, he would not be able to offer it the time it deserves.”

NP

8 Comment

02/12/08

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Liberté, égalité, financially As the Brits prepare for a bleak midwinter, Henry Birkbeck admires the laissez faire attitude of our Continental Cousins

“The French are wiser than they seem.”

Francis Bacon

U

sually at this time of year, it is customary for the country to flex its consumerist muscles. But as everyone knows, this year things are a bit different.

Money is sparser, and to combat this, the unthinkable is starting to happen: pre-Christmas sales. A veritable shopper’s paradise, products are being reduced at the one time of year when it is normally deemed pointless to do so, from a retailer’s point of view.

The worry is that without these sales, no one would be shopping at all; with the media constantly telling us that the inescapable grip of an “economic crisis” is upon us, most are wary of spending. Now more than ever, though, the economy needs consumerism desperately, and the government must also try to revive the country from this alleged downturn.

As the proposed actions of Alastair Darling’s pre-budget report sink in, the reaction seems fairly mixed. The economy has caused the media to throw up its arms in sadistic joy—there’s no news like bad news, as they say—and Labour is trying to take the hit in its stride, proposing colossal fiscal stimuli through VAT cuts and a £20bn giveaway approach, that

will attempt to combat the short-term problems we face. Unfortunately, by most accounts, it will only lengthen our long-term economic predicaments, plunging the country much farther into debt, and creating a hefty new pile of unresolved matters that will have to be tackled in 2010 and later, such as the National Insurance tax rise. Naturally, the Tories showed no hesitation in attacking the report, and the gamble taken by Brown and Darling will either be Labour’s saving grace, or the icing on their cake of unpopularity.

As a nation, we are far from the only ones with economic statistics to panic over. This is fast becoming a global issue, and as usual, our consumerist trends echo those of America. But what about our nearby friends from across the channel: how are the French holding up?

There are similarities in our situations. In France, the crisis plagues radio and television discussions, though it is often referred to as “financial”, rather than economic, which suggests that the problem is that of the governments, banks and businesses, not of the French people.

The French newspaper Le Monde has a section of its website dedicated to “L’économie en crise”, and the rate at

which it is updated with new reports suggests that France has its fair share of turmoil to plough through. Unemployment has reached the 2m mark (we’re not far behind that in the UK), and real estate is an equally pressing problem.

Yet the French managed to dodge recession—albeit only just—and thus did not follow Germany into economic decline, as suspected. So, it could be argued that things aren’t quite as bad on the continent. What strikes me, though, is not the volume of statistics in either country, but how France is coping with the economic climate.

Psychologically, the French seem better suited for such turbulent fiscal times, for various reasons. Compared to their British counterparts, most appear to have a sense of frugality ingrained in them. While Brits consume coffee in an average of 5 minutes, a Frenchman will take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes to drink a coffee that’s half the size. The world might be collapsing around them, but heaven forbid it should prevent them from taking the (statesubsidised) two-hour lunch break that they’re entitled to. This attitude is famously French, and it is derived in part from a belief in their society;

Mother France has the people’s best interests at heart, and if things look dire, she has them covered. (The British government, by contrast, will side with the creditor institutions.)

“We seem to be run-

ning in circles flailing our arms and declaring the economic apocalypse.

Our habits have come back to haunt us.’’

Similarly, individual rights for the French are much stronger than for Brits, and this makes banks very wary of lending too much; bankruptcy has a much stronger stigma in France that it does on this side of the channel.

So, for the average French 9-to5 worker, things remain mostly the same. France has a relatively high rate of disposable income in urban areas, and consumerism continues as usual. Furthermore, due to French law, sales are regulated and only permitted twice a year, so no preNoel discounts can be enjoyed by

those still shopping away as normal.

But despite this, the French do not run into the problems that we do, largely because they do not rely on credit. They are feverish savers, and when they do part with money it is from debit accounts, and they rarely exceed their limits; conversely, excessive borrowing on credit is a major cause of the British credit crunch.

What does this say about the UK’s attitudes? By comparison, we seem to be running in circles flailing our arms and declaring the economic apocalypse. Our habits have come back to haunt us. Things may indeed be worse here—Britain has the highest indebtedness per household in Europe, while France has one of the lowest—but all the scaremongering and political finger-pointing only adds to the sense of impending doom.

Perhaps we should—‘ow you say?—take a leaf from France’s book. Take a deep breath, sit down with a croissant and an espresso, and try to work things out from the ground up. But what would the media report then? After all, we do love a catastrophe. comment@studentnewspaper.org

02/12/08

Comment 9

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Talkin’ about a revolution?

Phoebe Benjamin

I

Jonny Stockford

Puccini, not P Diddy As Boris gets high on culture, Maddie Battersby asks if London will join the party

L

ove or hate the floppy blond hair, quick-witted asides and idiosyncratic approach to political correctness, Boris Johnson is widely acknowledged as one of the most eccentric nonconformists to grace British politics. Londoners and country bumpkins alike were divided between gasps of horror and utter glee when the man who once described the Conservative party as “...the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth” became the Mayor of London this year.

His consistent internal battle between the desire to be taken seriously and an incapability to portray public discrepancy leads to a beautiful duality. This duality ranges between the much-loved but verbally uncontrollable quizshow host, and an intelligent and serious politician. All eyes are on him to see whether, after a mixed career speckled by both scandal and success, he can hold his tongue for long enough to implement effective policy in the capital.

His latest controversial initiative is arriving in the form of a push for more young people to be integrated into ‘high culture’ including art forms such as opera, ballet and the composition of classical music. Johnson, who has some short-lived experience in the field after he held the post

of Shadow Arts Minister for a short few scandalous months, has now accused art chiefs of patronizing young people by steering them towards archetypal forms of popular culture like hip-hop.

Funding has been given to the London Jazz Festival, plans made for London Film Day to host special screenings throughout 2009 and an amnesty proposed for unused musical instruments: these are just a few of the ways in which Boris is trying to involve younger people in areas of culture which are dominated by older, more static segments of the population.

An injection of fresh blood could indeed blast operatics back into a more popular area of music.

With the prospect of Pavarotti replacing Mick Jagger as musical inspiration, the world of culture could get rather artistically messy.

But who says that popular culture is a tag affixed only to the youngsters? And who has the authority to categorize vast chunks of culture?

A city where middle aged men bop along to Kanye West and young fashionistas attend opera recitals two nights a week may look quite strange on the outside, but might reflect a more diverse image of London, and indeed reflects the eccentricity of the man

implementing it. The quiz-show regular renowned for his quickthinking wit, perched upon a bicycle and topped with a tidal mane of windswept blond is intelligent and well-meaning, but a little strange on the outside. The image of London as some sort of categorically confused cultural experiment is perhaps an extension of his own persona, a mish-mash of good intentions and ideas haphazardly organised and uneasily implemented.

“Turning London into a timebomb of structured culture isn’t actually as debilitating as critics proclaim” But it’s not all doom and gloom for London’s new political champion. Turning London into a timebomb of structured culture isn’t actually as debilitating as critics proclaim. Students are strapped for cash as it is, and so will benefit from substantially discounted tickets. This could be just what it takes to encourage more people into the theatres, which do seem to have been struggling to pull in

the crowds lately, especially in the outer zones, as every mega movie boss turns theatre productions into over-priced blockbusters and publicity for smaller productions dwindle. The three-year strategy aims to support outer boroughs as well, which struggle to compete with the city centre.

Although at first glance the whole scenario seems like a well planned desire to control and dictate the cultural creations of the capital, Johnson stresses that his role is going to be nurture and support all areas of cultural diversity. When presenting the initiative, he said: “My job is not to back heritage over modernism, nor to allow the destruction of much-loved old buildings. It is to encourage all manner of artistic expression, in the knowledge that culture is not just an add-on to the necessity of modern politics.”

For better or for worse, with this attitude funding the future of London’s eclectic cultural development, perhaps the days of the bumbling sporadic behavior and borderline offensive remarks of this controversial character are long behind him, replaced by a conventional, assertive new leader... perhaps.

comment@studentnewspaper.org

t has recently been suggested that an overhaul of the UK’s university grading system will take place in the next few years.The current system of degree classification, which has been in place for the past 200 years, has been described as unsuitable for today’s prospective employers and therefore in need of revolution.

A suggested replacement, currently being trialled in eighteen UK universities, is a ‘report card’ system. This aims to detail comprehensive information regarding a student’s performance at university, including details of achievements in each of their courses and any prizes they may have received.

In addition, report cards may detail a student’s achievements outside of their courses, such as involvement in societies and any work experience they have gained. The proposed system’s implications for student life have yet to be debated.

The increase in the proportion of students receiving a 2:1 or greater from 45% in 1996 to 66% in 2008 no doubt poses a threat to the validity of current degrees. This situation should not lead us, however, to the conclusion that a comprehensive overhaul of the present setup is the only viable option.

Graduate employers may have described today’s classification system as providing too little information, but this misses the point of higher education. By emphasising the importance of ‘the student experience’, today’s media have lost touch with what it means to study a subject at an indepth level, and it is rightly success in this area alone that is reflected in a graduate’s final qualification. By highlighting achievements in every area of student life, the report card will simply replace the CV, and therefore prove an even blunter instrument than what is now being criticised.

In addition to this lack of utility, the suggested report card system will arguably have a detrimental effect on student well-being. There is no doubt that many of today’s undergraduates are under immense academic pressure, which would only be increased by the implementation of an ‘every grade counts’ strategy. No harm is done by giving those who have just started life away from home a few years’ break from public academic scrutiny. In contrast the proposed grading system would apply from the first weeks of a student’s career. Performance in university societies, which is also suggested as necessary for inclusion in the report, would similarly become a matter of necessity rather than inclination. This would render societies tools in an unrelenting academic competition, and no longer simply groups of like-minded individuals.

The existing degree classification system may not be perfect but the suggested revolution would, in this light, be a tragedy by comparison. comment@studentnewspaper.org

10 Comment

02/12/08

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It’s a Student’s Life Oliver G W Mundell

E

veryone seems to be talking about it. But what and whose is the student experience? Whilst I’d be lying if I said I read every word of the National Union of Students (NUS) ninety-eight page report on the Student Experience, I have looked at most of it!

I read that 84% of students are happy with their accommodation, something that astounded me given our own situation; however I’d imagine the remaining 16% were all from Edinburgh where we have some of the most expensive student accommodation in the country.

It was disappointing but unsurprising to see that financial inequalities are still rife and that a student’s socio-economic group has a large part in determining whether you will go to university, something I find unacceptable.

The research suggests, in my opinion sadly, that many students see university as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, with only 29% of students saying that the main reason for them wanting to go was ‘for the experience’ This issue is particularly relevant to the University of Edinburgh as we have repeatedly failed to meet our widening participation targets.

This is one of the main reasons I’m working on setting up an Edinburgh wide student led scheme called EUSA-Smart, to help encourage more pupils from state schools to consider university.

Money, as ever, dominated much of the findings, and rightly so given the inequalities students face. It showed that generally students significantly underestimate their basic living costs, by 39% for their groceries and 35% for routine travel. However this appears insignificant in my mind when over a third of students are more than somewhat concerned about their current levels of debt. This is combined by the worrying figures on student employment that state three quarters of students undertake paid employment while at university. Whilst I’m less concerned that around half of students work during their holidays, I find the fact that 35% work during term time frustrating as this must effect their student experience and indeed academic study.

I think overall we are prone to spending too much time talking about the student experience, it is time to start living it. However the only way this can be achieved is if the government both at Westminster and Holyrood take a serious look at solving the financial pressures students face.

Oliver G W Mundell is the SRC Schools and Induction Officer comment@studentnewspaper.org

Henry Birkbeck

Bye bye Bush As George W. Bush prepares to leave office Catherine McGloin examines his last minute legislation and what it could mean for the environment

F

inally we are into the countdown phase. With less than sixty days to go until January 20th, we’re almost home, if not dry, and rid of the Bush adminstration that has plagued world politics for the past eight years.

However, what would student journalists and film producers have had to inspire and ridicule if George W. had not been commander-incheif? To be certain, international affairs would have been a much quieter place without such amusements.

Alas, it seems George Bush has provided us with one last opportunity to display some vitriolic rhetoric. The Bush administration is now frantically destroying key environmental safeguards which currently protect wildlife and national parks, opening two million acres of land to the development of oil shale.

Just when all the accusations over oil and the war in Iraq had been explained, or vaguely swept under the rug, George decides it’s a good idea to promote the production of what the Natural Re-

sources Defence Council terms the “dirtiest fuel on the planet”.

If we all thought Bush would remain silent during this lame duck period, it appears his desire for posterity has urged him into action. I’m not sure, however, that deregulating environmental protection acts, in a world already heightened to the realities of global warming, is the right angle for George to take.

New rules would exclude industrial scale cattle farms from the Clean Water Act as long as they announced they were not dumping waste in rivers or lakes, whilst land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado would be utilised for the production of oil.

Moreover, mountaintop mining would be authorised, while coalfired power plants would no longer be required to install pollution controls, clean up soot and regulate smog pollution. In addition, and perhaps in keeping with the conservative legacy that George Bush has propounded since 2001, the Pentagon and government agencies will not be obliged to

carry out environmental studies on the impact future projects may have on wildlife.

Bush cannot believe that these new policies – otherwise known as midnight regulations – can have any positive impact on the world’s environment. Perhaps he is simply

“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”

George W. Bush overwhelmed by the egotistical instinct to establish a Bush legacy, when most, including Obama, simply wish to move forward in a very different direction.

Many countries look to the United States as an example in

business and production. To see such measures approved would surely serve as evidence for other industrial nations, such as China, to justify their limited action in protecting the environment.

If these regualtions come into force President Barack Obama will take office on unacceptable terms considering his stance on climate change during the election campaign clearly denoted an element of stewardship, as well as an acknowledgement of the need for action in order to protect our world.

I am not a member of People of the Planet, I don’t vote Green, but like most I realise that the environment should be safeguarded and I see that Bush’s latest oversight has more to do with stubborn adherence to an ideology inconsistent with our current climate crisis.

The only impression made by these last minute rule changes is that George Bush knows little about losing power gracefully and even less about the environment. comment@studentnewspaper.org

02/12/08

Editorial 11

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Student Since 1887 - The UK’ s oldest student newspaper

Consumer power

N

ews that water-cooler company Eden Springs has had to close its East of Scotland branch due to the alleged success of a boycott campaign highlights some interesting issues around political engagement in the UK. While not everyone will agree with the aims and motivations of the groups involved (and Student does not intend to delve into that rather prickly subject in this editorial), and yet more will disagree with targeting a company that employs 200 Scots, it seems that consumer choice has achieved what protests and petitions could not.

Why does this matter? To put it simply, our consumer preferences are more or less the only method that students have left of making our protests effective. While this may seem counter-intuitive to any of the hundred or so students who protested against the SNP’s plans to raise the drinking age earlier this year (to pick a random demonstration) it is undeniable that student protests are more often about publicity and raising awareness than effecting any kind of on-the-ground change.

These tactics have their uses, but no one would argue that the days of students barricading streets and staging mass sit-ins are long gone.

Amnesty International are lucky if they can scrape together 50 or so activists for an orange-jumpsuit-clad parade against Guantanamo Bay. The terrifying political behemoth of campaigning group People and Planet struggles to get more than a handful of people together for an outdoor protest

on a rainy day.

Yet as our strength in numbers has dwindled since the heydays of the 60s and 70s, our spending power has shot up. Not only are there more students today than there were back then, but we are more affluent. Students pump hundreds of millions of pounds into local economies, a fact which local anti-student groups are reluctant to admit.

If students were able to direct even a small amount of this spending power into achieving any kind of political goal, then governments and other authorities would soon start taking the student voice seriously.

Our Student’s Association is attempting a similar tactic within the university. In response to the University’s proposals to charge students VAT in University cafes, EUSA has threatened a boycott of the outlets, which has reportedly increased their bargaining position.

Of course ethical consumerism is not a new idea. left-wing magazine Adbusters championed the worldwide Buy Nothing Day last weekend, to coincide perfectly with the start of Christmas shopping. Yet this largelyignored promotional non-event is quite unlikely to have Alistair Darling and the Bank of England quaking in their boots at a sudden plummet in consumer confidence.

Edinburgh students will not bring down the global economic order with consumer boycotts, but they just might manage to make their opinions carry more weight. Our university cafés might be a good place to start.

Editor’s Note Student would like to congratulate two of our contributers for picking up awards at the UK-wide Guardian Student Media Awards, which recognises the best student journalists from around the country.

Fern Brady was runner up for Student Critic of the Year, for her regular columns in Student’s TV section.

James Robertson was awarded Student Photographer of the Year for his outstanding photography work. James has now graduated and is available for photography at functions. Booking can be arranged at www. jamesrobertsonphotography.co.uk Well done guys.

Editors Lee Bunce/Neil Pooran Comment Mairi Gordon/Robert Shepherd/Zeenath Ul Islam Copy editing Lottie Fyfe/ Culture Rupert Faircliff /Emma Murray Hannah Ramsey Design Jamie Manson Features Jonathan Holmes/Rosie Nolan/ David Wagner Film Tom MacDonald/Sam Karasik Illustrations Harriet Brisley/ Henry

Birkbeck/ Zeeneth Ul Islam Interview Anna Dudina/Catherine McGloin Lifestyle Kimberlee Mclaughlan/ Maddie Walder Music Andrew Chadwick/Thomas Kerr News Lyle Brennan/James Ellingworth/ Liz Rawlings Senior News Writers Sarah Morrison/Patrick Andelic Photography Katy Kennedy/Julia

Your Letters Ergo, I’m right When I started writing a column in a Swedish student newspaper about life as an exchange student, I never expected that the consequences would reach Edinburgh.

When I read Hinde’s patronising, self-righteous critique of my column (In Student Week 9) – where he suggests that I assume my secret will be safe in Sweden because no Scots have access to my column – I cannot help but wish that my text about Scandinavian lovers was actually accessible to the Englishspeaking community. For how else can I point out Hinde’s misinterpretations of my article? (Google translator is not an option, really.)

Hinde implies that a columnist has a ‘responsibility’ not to reproduce stereotypes – and that a column is all about profound analysis (I am pretty sure that Hinde can find those analyses someplace else, like in one of Sweden’s “most respected newspapers” that I apparently work for). Generalisations about nationality, class (and documentaries on television) can obviously be taken very seriously, even in something written to amuse.

I write about stereotypes, whether it is Scottish or Swedish, in the same way that exchange students talk about stereotypes. In a column about life as an exchange student, I would consider it dishonest to pretend that half of the conversations here are not about the Brits preferring milk in their tea (why, oh why?) or about Italians being good cooks.

Or about Scots still loathing England. This – obviously – does not necessarily mean that I, or any other exchange student, actually has a view of the world that is completely stereotypical. Claiming that is not just convenient but also makes for a sweeping statement. It encourages stereotypes, in Hinde’s own words.

My point in writing about the course in Old Norse, about Vikings and Scandinavian lovers was not to mock my fellow students as Hinde suggests, but rather to paint a picture of a context where Scandinavia

Sanches President John Herrman Secretary Rachel Hunt Sport Martin Domin/Misa Klimes Tech Alan Williamson/Craig Wilson Treasurer Madeline Rijnja TV Rory Reynolds/Susan Robinson Website Bruno Panara/Jack Schofield

is actually the centre of interest. This is entertaining for the Swedes reading my column – as we all know, Sweden is not spoilt with that kind of attention, having been on the periphery of Europe for the last 250 years.

I have read that the first thing lost in translation is irony. Having said that, I still find it hard to believe that Hinde did not grasp the ironic undercurrent in my column, which actually ends by challenging stereotypes.

What Hinde does in his article is to take a text out of context, deliberately misinterpret it, and write about is as if it were to be read the same way as a front-page story in a newspaper. It seems like an exemplary case of “If there is no story, you have to make one up”.

Perhaps Hinde assumed that his secret would be safe in Scotland where nobody has access to my column?

Having said this, I am very much looking forward to Hinde’s response to my column next week about Britain’s execrable politics on paternity leave.

Malin Nauwreck Writer, Ergo University of Edinburgh student

Foulkes fightback I read with interest the fact that George Foulkes is standing to be the rector of our university and also the discussions upon the letters page about his voting record.

One part of his record which I have been personally very impressed with is that on LGBT rights. I don’t think it is an exageration to say that George seems to be the most LGBT friendly of all Labour MSP’s.

George has voted for liberty and equality whenever he has gotten the opportunity: voting for civil partnerships, for ending the ban on gays in the military and is currently backing the LGBT Hate crime legislation in the Scottish parliament. In a time when gay rights are being challenged around the globe and when the situation in California shows how fragile these rights are it is important to

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have someone representing us that stands up for all.

George Faulkes has demonstrated his commitment to equality and to respecting and helping minority rights and that is why he will have my vote.

Nick Ward BLOGS Committee SRC

Kind Foulkes In response to Stephanie Spotos comments last week, can I just say that I too regret that the UK Government ever entered Iraq and am appalled that thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians died needlessly.

However, when I cast my vote for rector, I wont be basing my judgement on a vote cast 5 years ago, a vote sadly shared by the vast majority of British parliamentarians.

And as much as I dislike ID Cards, the Labour Government stood on a platform of the introduction of ID cards in 2005 and still won the election. ID Cards are not some sort of nanny statist policy which Labour have sneaked in through the backdoor. ID Cards have been at the forefront of our civic debate for years and the governments policy is much more moderate now as a consequence.

And if we’re going to talk about voting records, let us not forgot all the positive things that Labour have done like pushing for Civil Partnerships and doubled the percentage of GDP that the United Kingdom spends on International Development, investing in schools and hospitals – even dare I say it on our higher education system.

But ultimately, I want to know what the rector is going to do for us now – not what they ve done in the past so I await Lord Foulkes manifesto with great interest.

Kind regards, Alison McKenzie 3rd year History.

Student welcomes letters for publication. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity.

Anonymous letters will not be printed but names will be witheld on request. The letters printed are the opinions of individuals outwith Student and do not represent the views of the editors or the paper as a whole.

Published by and copyright © Student Newspaper Society, 2008 Printed by Cumbrian Printers Distributed by Lothian Couriers, North Berwick Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

12 Interview

02/12/08

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Island of Imagination Liz Rawlings catches the celebrated Scottish artist Charles Avery at the openning of his multimedia exhibition

I

MEET Charles Avery at the opening of his new exhibition, The Islanders: an Introduction at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Surrounded by texts, intricate drawings, installations and sculpture, we stand in the centre of his imaginary island – a fictional land constructed by the artist in painstaking detail to critique and explore modern society.

Avery is nothing like I imagined: for someone who is constantly bracketed and labelled a ‘Scottish’ artist (he comes from the Isle of Mull), he has a broadly posh English accent.

Similarly, although approaching his forties he wouldn’t look out of place in a student bar. He is also remarkably intelligent – eloquently explaining the significance of his work; deftly moving from the particular to the universal in the manner of a philosopher rather than an artist.

The Islanders: an Introduction is the latest instalment in an epic fouryear project created by Avery, which describes life on his imaginary island. The exhibition details the landscape, customs, and culture of the Island - creating a place sufficiently removed from our own world, yet complete with striking similarities which create a challenging space for philosophical inquiry. Considering he grew up on the Isle of Mull, is it a coincidence that his exhibition explores Island life or did his childhood influence this project?

“When I started, I had a couple of choices...I could have based it on

the actual shape of the world and attributed new names and everything to that, but the world itself is too familiar, so I took Mull and cut it off at the neck and put it on its head and stuck it in the centre of [my island]. I distorted it a bit and it just seemed more interesting to me to actually give new meaning to something that already existed, rather than to actually just have higglydly-pigglydy randomness.

“I see it very much as a fiction.

It’s not like another world which I believe in, in some visionary sense.

Everything, as far as I’m concerned, is a part of this world, every idea, everything, so what I’m doing is creating a fiction, a kind of pure system. In this fictional realm and the real realm there is a kind of tourism that exists between the two, a trade which exists between them.”

Avery is wise to use the word ‘fiction’ to describe his Island because that is the best way to view the exhibition. The art sculptures and pencil drawings of islanders are interspersed with texts hung on the wall which provide a literary branch to the concept. Similarly, there are physical artefacts like stones and shoes on display, representing items brought back by the intrepid ‘hunter’ at the centre of Avery’s land.

These different strands of The Islanders work together to create an artwork which is multi-faceted; an imaginative space where the whole is greater than the parts: “It’s unrecognised, the island,

but there are certain contradictions in that. I enjoy those inherent contradictions; like you’ll see someone using a piece of equipment which you don’t associate with this epoch.

I know that my work has all these values in the larger world, but they also have a new set of meanings in the framework of this fiction. So you can take stones out into the world, and in the world they’re stones and if that stone’s ended up on somebody’s shelf they might have meaning as a paperweight but in the context of this project they’re stone mice and

“I don’t have any influences in the art world, no ... my influences come from film and comedy” that is all the information I want...to be encapsulated in an encyclopaedic fashion, not an encyclopaedia, but certainly a volume of encyclopaedic proportions.”

As is evident from the title, The Islanders: an Introduction is just the beginning of Avery’s concept. It’s a project he expects to work on for the rest of his life: “People talk about my intentions in a kind of transcendental sense, in the sense that I might somehow have had this scheme of which every part [of the Island] was immediately ap-

parent to me and that, by my artistic career I’m simply going to elaborate that. That’s the perception which is conceived but it’s impossible to uphold. What the project is for me, its meaning, changes all the time.

Whereas I did see once that it would be this kind of analytical, pure kind of system, rapidly it has become something like a structure - means by which to relate all the terms of this particular body of work to one another and it may become something else. It’s just something which I’m preceding through and discovering, discovering the flaws and contradictions and trying to enjoy it as much as possible.”

Avery has been linked with the contemporary movement Alter Modernism – a coin termed by Nicholas Bourriaud, meaning art made now in response to global society and as a reaction against commercialisation and standardisation. Viewing The Islanders it isn’t difficult to see where this comes from; Avery is clearly extremely philosophical about his work, viewing it as an artistic space in which to satirise and study the world.

“There is a critique of capitalism of command economy, it is a critique of dualism right down the middle, right through to the gods, who seem to embody a kind of concept that’s neither one nor two but is definitely not one and a half. [The God] is constantly caught in that struggle and this kind of philosophy is driven with this problem and nobody’s really answered it.”

In 2007 Avery was selected with five other artists to represent Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale and is constantly referred to as a ‘Scottish’ artist in contemporary circles.

However, Avery is weary about being viewed exclusively in this way: “It’s just geographical provenance, rather than being relevant to the work...I don’t keep track of modern Scottish art,” he said.

Avery has a complex character.

As soon as I met him he altered my preconceptions about his personality and work. Similarly, after speaking non-stop about philosophy and intellectual conceptions about his art, right at the end of our interview he manages to surprise me again.

Asking what his influences are and expecting an answer including epic literature and philosophy, he states: “I don’t have any influences in the art world, no. I mean I’m interested in everyone who draws implicitly but no, my influences come from film and comedy. I absolutely adore comedy...from Coen brothers to your really dumb-ass Superbad.

Superbad is just absolutely my favourite film”.

And with that, Avery shakes my hand and leaves, retreating further into his Island exhibition and leaving me, after all that deep philosophy, with a final image of America’s ‘dumb-ass’ teen comedy, Superbad.

Profile • Born 1973, Oban, Scotland • Grew up on the Isle of Mull • Kicked out of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design after six months • Part of a new generation of artists practicing under the banner of Alter Modernism • Avery’s work was shown at the Venice Biennale of Art in 2003 and 2007 • On completion of The Islanders project Avery intends to publish the work within several large, leather-bound encyclopaedic volumes • Nominated for the Jerwood drawing prize in 2004 and 2006

02/12/08

Features 13

www.studentnewspaper.org

A little bit of history rescripted Anna Dudina dusts off BBC1 series A History Of Scotland, uncovering an ancient feud between accuracy and entertainment

T

HE AMBITIOUS ten-part BBC series A History of Scotland was steeped in controversy long before it came to our TV screens this November. In March 2008 the programme hit the news with its first major scandal when Professor Allan MacInnes of the University of Strathclyde quit the advisory board due to the ‘Anglocentricity’ of the series. The senior Scottish historian criticized BBC for the ‘dreadful’ script in which Scotland was portrayed as a backward and divided country until the 1707 Union with England.

And this was only the beginning – the series has divided Scotland’s academic community into those who support it as a valid version of the country’s past and those who condemn it for its English perspective, its content and the choice of Neil Oliver as a presenter. Among the latter was Professor Tom Devine, one of the most prominent and bestknown Scottish historians. Revealing that he turned down the offer of a place on the advisory board, Devine disapproved of the programme starting with the arrival of the Romans, and took offence at the decision to have an archaeologist present it.

Such comments, however, were made before the eminent historian was able to see the end product. Intrigued about Professor Devine’s reaction to the first episode of the series, I asked him for a few remarks. What I got was a lengthy, fascinating conversation and an unexpected confession that

he was ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the programme.

Professor Devine started with an apology for his ‘unfair judgment’ in criticism of a presenter from a different discipline.

“The big discovery was that I was totally wrong about the significance of the presenter. While watching the first episode I realized that this person is just an actor – all he is doing is reading the script. There is little or no evidence that he put any personal stamp on this.

“The episode was in danger of creating new myths that are little better, in terms of historical validity, than the old ones it was rejecting.”

So arguably, Oliver’s lack of historical knowledge and authority does not make a difference, since it is the text, written by the academic advisors and the production team, that serves as the ultimate authority.

This approach to history on TV is thus completely unlike the programmes by Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson, who research and write the scripts themselves. Yet, in the media and among the general public A History of Scotland is constantly referred to as ‘Neil Oliver’s series,’ the product of his intelligence and hard work.”

The presenter himself dishonestly

pushes forward this idea of being the ultimate brainpower behind the programme. As Professor Devine noted: “Although he is clearly not an authority on the period or the subject, he from time to time uses the words ‘I think that…’ or ‘My interpretation is that…’, which is an entirely vulgar statement because it couldn’t possibly be his interpretation.”

While Oliver does have a degree of appeal, his lack of authority and gravitas take away from the potential impact of the series. Devine calls this “a classic example of BBC shooting themselves in the foot and not getting somebody who’d do the business”.

Presenter aside, there were some positive aspects in the first two episodes of the programme. Its strength lies not so much in the presentation, but rather in the photography, in which remarkable landscapes are captured.

According to Professor Tom Devine, the series ‘would make a great film for VisitScotland.’.

But even the beautiful shots of Scottish scenery by the end of the second episode grew tedious as similar images were repeatedly recycled the same can be said about the music, which in the beginning seemed stirring and well-done but, as Devine justly notes, “became more and more reminiscent of a cross between Braveheart and Rob Roy”.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the series, though, is its educational value and historical accuracy. Dr James Fraser, an early Scottish history

Two giants of popular Scottish history survey their kingdom (Left to Right: Neil Oliver, Mel Gibson)

expert, noted that the text is quite up to speed with current interpretations, which shows that the producers have done their homework. He also commented on the series’ ‘noble attempt’ to radically demythologize the country’s past: “Where it saw itself as most radical - reinterpreting the careers of St Columba and Kenneth MacAlpine - it was covering ground that has been familiar to scholars for quite a long time.”

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “for much of the time the first episode portrayed scholarly theories as facts.

In other words, the episode was often in danger of creating new myths that are little better (in terms of their historical validity) than the old ones it was rejecting.”

Nevertheless, the series is bound to have a great educational impact. Firstly,

it serves as a spark to trigger a range of BBC radio programming, audio walks, concerts, events and a new website devoted to the exploration of Scotland’s history. Secondly, the programme has an aesthetic appeal, which will attract all sorts of people.

Given the inadequate teaching of Scottish history in schools and the unawareness amongst the general public of the Scotland’s past, such a series could be invaluable in providing a basic understanding.

Just like any other television history programme, A History of Scotland is not aimed at a professional audience and cannot substitute for a lecture or a course. But what it certainly can do is ignite interest in history and introduce the general audience to a theme which they then might want to explore further through a more academic medium.

“I just can’t take it anymore...”

A Nightline worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, explains why a late night chat can make all the difference

W

HAT DOES Nightline mean to you? Most of us have seen the stickers on the back of every toilet door across the university or may even have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a Nightline Dog in the queue at Potterow, but behind these publicity gimmicks is a serious service and it’s there for all students in Edinburgh.

Nightline is a support and information service run completely by student volunteers. It was first set up in Durham in 1970 and based on a model similar to the Samaritans, training up a few students in order to give their peers someone to talk to.

From then on, many universities have adopted a similar service, and there are now over forty Nightlines running in universities across the UK under the umbrella body of National Nightline.

Of all of these, Edinburgh Nightline is one of the largest and longest-running, providing support to students of all the universities and colleges in the Edinburgh area.

Students face a growing number of pressures, be it academically,

financially or socially, and all too often they lead to periods of stress, depression or further mental health problems. Only a matter of weeks ago, Student reported on the increasing number of students turning to the Student Counselling Service for help and support; this has led to a shortage of resources and longer waiting times for appointments.

Nightline is not a substitute for professional counselling services but can play a part in helping students who are facing these difficulties and more. They offer a listening service on the phone every night of term from 8pm - 8am and is completely anonymous, confidential and nonjudgemental. The anonymity is there for both the caller and volunteers, so you’ll be speaking to someone who doesn’t know who you are and who you don’t risk bumping into in lectures the next day. You can discuss anything, no matter how big or small it seemswith the complete confidence that it won’t go any further and you won’t be judged. As a listening service, Nightline is also completely non-directional;

unlike peers who might be involved in the situation, they’re not going to try to tell you what to do or what your priorities should be. A solution you work out for yourself is a million times more likely to work for you in the end, so you won’t be pushed to any conclusion; they’re there to listen and support on whatever is bothering you, giving you time to think through the issue and your options.

New for this semester is an online E-Listening service - an anonymous instant messenger run every night of term between 8pm and midnight.

The principle is the same as on the phone; it’s still completely confidential and non-judgemental, your email address and IP address are hidden and you’re not asked for any other details. Many people find it

easier to chat online, and it can offer an extra bit of time and space to work out what you want to say. Being online it’s also absolutely free, so you won’t have to worry about your phone bill.

Nightline also runs an information service and has a massive database of information at hand.

With close links to all the relevant student services in Edinburgh - be it counselling, accommodation or an exam time - they will be able to get you a contact for anything you’re unsure about. It doesn’t even have to be major - how many other people do you know awake at 4am willing to find you a taxi number?

It’s a worthwhile number to have in the phonebook just for that.

A l l Nightline volunteers are students in Edinburgh who give up a few nights each semester. They’re always looking for new volunteers and

hold training sessions at the beginning of each semester; in September and again in January. If you think that you could spare a few nights a term and could listen and not judge, then why not think about volunteering.

You can find out all the details on the website: www.ednightline.com.

You can call Nightline any night of term from 8pm-8am on 0131 557 4444, or access the E-Listening service at www.ednightline.com, where you can also find their information database.

If you’re new to Edinburgh this semester, the number is on the back of your matriculation card. If you’re in University accommodation, it’ll be on the back of your EUSA keyring. You might have picked up a wall planner at the start of term, or have a pen kicking about somewhere - failing that there are always those toilet stickers.

We all have times when we are feeling lost or lonely, overwhelmed or stressed, especially as deadlines and exams approach. The next time you need a bit of a chat, why not try calling Nightline or talking to them online.

You never know - it might just help.

14 Features

Old Profession, New Problems

Lee Bunce talks to Ruth Thomas of the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project, finding out that recent legislation designed to protect sex workers has only made their lives more dangerous

J

ust over one year ago the Scottish government launched radical new legislation to deal with prostitution in Scotland. The Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act, inspired by legislation passed in Sweden in 1999, for the first time criminalized seeking to buy sex, in addition to existing legislation that targeted the workers themselves.

“It corrects an unfair legal position where only those engaged in prostitution could be targeted, while the kerb-crawlers demanding their services - often harassing the wider community in the process - get off scot free,” enthused Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. “Those who leave their comfortable homes to exploit the vulnerable women on our streets, without a thought for the damage they do, will rightly face the full force of the law.”

By addressing both supply and demand in the sex industry in Scotland, the Scottish government hoped it had found a definitive answer to the persistent problem of prostitution in Scottish cities. Sadly this has not been the case.

Two weeks ago, Aberdeen police reported prostitution had not declined in the city but had merely been displaced. Following the eradication of a managed zone of prostitution in the city after the new legislation was passed, sex workers in Aberdeen have now migrated towards the city centre. No evidence exists to suggest prostitution has declined, and whereas previously sex workers could work in some degree of safety in the managed zones, the new legislation has forced prostitution ‘underground’,

making it more dangerous. In effect the police announced the new laws are not working.

Edinburgh has seen similar results.

While again there is little reason to suggest prostitution has declined, research shows attacks on sex workers has increased significantly, with fewer women feel comfortable reporting it.

As Ruth Thomas, head of Leith based charity Scottish Prostitutes Education Project (Scot-PEP), explains: “Scot-PEP have recorded attacks on women since 2001. In the last year of our managed area of street prostitution we had 11 attacks in the year, seven or eight of which were reported

“‘Sex work should not automatically be seen in a negative light” to the police and we had four or five convictions. Last year we had 134 attacks, only six or seven of them were reported to the police, and we’re not aware of any convictions.”

As a charity that works with prostitutes on a daily basis, Scot-PEP are better placed than many to explain why. For Thomas the reasons are obvious.

“The Swedish model is about trying to address demand for sex, and the Scottish legislation has had an impact, there are fewer clients out on the streets. But the number of women out on the street hasn’t reduced, and the amount of money they need hasn’t reduced. They’re out there be-

cause of their dependency.

“There aren’t many other reasons why women engage in street prostitution other than economic necessity to meet their drug use, and their partners drug use. So those needs haven’t changed, but there are fewer clients, and that’s resulted in far more women working more frequently” Besides failing to solve the root causes of prostitution, the legislation may also cause new ones. While sex trafficking in Edinburgh is not currently seen as a major problem, Thomas can foresee the situation changing as a result of the laws.

“Recently four establishments were raided where they found seven potential victims, however not all of those were confirmed. Seven women is one percent of the women working in our indoor industry. They did six months of raids and visits to establishments across Edinburgh and that’s all they found, so I don’t think trafficking is a big problem, and I think where you have a pragmatic approach to prostitution where you have agency’s like ours going in and out on a regular basis it is very difficult to contain victims of trafficking when you are open and accessed by external bodies.”

“But where you find there is not the same tolerance, you find much higher levels of trafficking, and for me it is a further argument for decriminalising, regulating and managing prostitution, not trying to eradicate it. The more you try to eradicate it the more you make it worthwhile for the criminals, because they are the people who will take the risks and try and profit from abuse that we

W

want to stop.”

Though few commentators have questioned the intentions of new legislation, Thomas claims it may have been ill informed. While the Swedish legislation on prostitution has been widely hailed, with the Swedish government itself claiming an 80% reduction in the number of prostitutes, Thomas claims the Swedish data is flawed.

“There was a press release put out by the Health and Welfare Board, a government agency, which has re-

“The legislation means there are fewer clients, but that’s resulted in far more women working more frequently”

Ruth Thomas, Head of Scottish Prostitutes Education Project

viewed the state of prostitution in Sweden, and although in the first few years they had a significant drop, certainly in street prostitution in Sweden, the reports now from every municipality is that prostitution is still present, street prostitution is still around.

“So if the aim of this legislation is to eradicate prostitution then it isn’t helping at all, and it hasn’t done what it set out to achieve. The Swedes claim they have reduced Sweden by 80%, I find that fascinating because they had no baseline data. You can-

hen Frank Woolworth opened his first store in 1909, his brica-brac retail methods were something of an innovation. His empire grew rapidly, and once upon a time Woolworth tower was an imposing component of the New York skyline. However the Woolworth skyscraper was soon shadowed by larger, more impressive buildings.

Similarly, poor management, a lack of diversification and a failure to reinvent has brought an end to Woolworths’ time in the sun, with the demise of a familiar high street façade and the loss of up to 30,000 jobs.

brand is difficult to comprehend now, especially considering the polyester ‘Chad Valley’ ranges of recent years. However, The Times online archive documents such an unlikely event in 1977: ‘Those who did not know that Woolworths

Woolies had its heyday in the 1970s, when the company even used to stage fashion shows. Such glamour being attached to the

were bidding to rival Dior and Chanel might have been surprised by the snappy professionalism of the show. The theme was well

“Woolworths was the dinosaur of the high street.

The recession was the impact which wiped them out.”

not if you don’t have baseline data start to measure actual reductions, and particularly reductions of 80%.”

One country that has taken a more liberal approach to prostitution is New Zealand, an approach viewed

by Thomas as more promising.

“New Zealand I do think is an interesting model” says Thomas. So five years ago they decriminalised street prostitution and brothel keeping, but not exploitation. What’s interesting is that you hear cries that street prostitution has exploded. There is no evidence in any of the reports that have been commissioned by the New Zealand government because unlike Sweden, which hasn’t yet evaluated after nearly 10 years, New Zealand invested heavily and got a number of universities involved and has published I think four reports.”

Though the results from New Zealand have not been perfect, Thomas is keen to emphasise a long-term approach to tackling prostitution.

“There hasn’t been a reduction in violence, but I wouldn’t expect the endemic violence that sex workers experience to be eradicated in five years. The stigma of sex work is not going to change after 5 years. I think if New Zealand maintains its legislation I think if we look back at it in 20 years time we will see a significant decrease in violence. But that takes many years.

“I think Edinburgh’s nearly 20 years experience of a managed zone clearly showed what you could achieve in terms of minimising involvement of children, minimising drugs, minimising criminality, and most significantly, minimising attacks

stated at the outset, when the first model took the floor banging an enamel saucepan as loudly as she was able with a wooden spoon. The commentator, pausing momentarily to take notice of her polyester housecoat, emphasized that both saucepan and spoon were available at Woolworth’s also.” Although such displays were outdated and laughable, even for 1977, the convenience of buying a housecoat, wooden spoon and saucepan all under one roof still had its appeal for the busy housewife.

What’s more, for previous generations, the ‘bargain bin’ provided many their first record buying experience. Indeed, the rather sad Tollcross store was where my mother purchased her first single: Cat Steven’s Mathew and Son.

Tontine “I don’t believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”

- Woody Allen

Alan Brownjohn, Psychiatrist

by Peter Candy

Erica Moroz

[Alan Brownjohn, Psychiatrist, is seated cross-legged, conspicuously reading ‘Native Mongolian Fungi’. G enters through the door, and sits down in the seat opposite. A plain coffee table separates the two of them].

A: (unflinchingly) Have you paid?

G: Yes… A: That’s good; we’ll start in four minutes.

G: Can’t we start now?

A: The session starts at 6:00, it’s 5:56 now, that leaves four minutes.

G: Right…

A: I’d recommend this book to fill the time. It’s on Native Mongolian Fungi, I particularly enjoyed the index.

G: I’ll read it later.

A: No, no, no, I insist. Native Mongolian Fungi have fascinated biologists for centuries.

Professor von Flugenspore explores the origins of fungi, their significance in Mongolian culture and… Shall I read more?

G: That’s quite fine… My dad died last week and…

A: Session starts in forty seconds.

G: (Agitated) Can’t we just start?

A: If we finish early…

G: Right, we’ll finish early then.

A: There’s no need, the session starts… Now. What seems to be the problem?

G: As I said, my dad died last week and…

A: Any other problems?

G: Well, I’m quite upset…

A: My father died last year, do I look upset?

G: Well…

A: Don’t answer that.

G: I paid good money for your help and that’s all you can say?

A: No, I can say fungi, oboe and cheque book for 50p per minute more.

G: You’re not charging me for that are you?

A: Do you want me to?

G: Look, all I want is some advice on how to deal with bereavement.

A: That’ll be £6.99.

G: (Disbelieving) Why? (Short pause) Here’s seven quid.

A: (A reaches onto the coffee table and picks up one of the books. It has the title ‘How to deal with Bereavement’. He gives it to G).

There you are, How to deal with Bereavement…

[G wears an astonished expression on his face, he slowly fingers through the book for a short while. A checks his watch after about 30 seconds].

Edited by Julia Sanches and Jonny Stockford

A: Right, that’s the end of the session…

G: (Suitably outraged) But it’s only been 8 minutes, I booked 30! That’s outrageous!

A: Company policy states that a silence of more than 2 minutes terminates the session…

G: You’ve just made that up on the spot!

A: No, I’ve got it here in writing.

G: But you’ve just written it on the back of your business card (Grabs it), Look!

A: If you like you can take it as you leave…

G: I’m not leaving, I demand my 22 minutes!

A: That’ll be 6.99…

G: (Suitably livid) What the flaming hell for?

A: (Hand’s G ‘How to deal with excess Rage’). ‘How to deal with excess rage’, it might help you deal with your excess rage…

G: Look here Brownjohn. Shove your company policy and ridiculous psychiatric leaflets up your fungi and give me my session!

A: I’ll make an exception then, (pushing a sheet of paper across the table) sign here please.

G: What’s this now!

A: Liability waver.

G: (Scribbles signature frantically) A: OK, we’ll start with some eye exercises…

[A puts a tape in the recorder, they listen to a woman repeating: ‘Look up, look down, look around, look around’. A follows the instructions, rolling his eyeballs appropriately.

After a while G slams the recorder to stop].

G: Is this some sort of joke?

A: Do you want to start a new exercise?

G: (Sarcastically) What? Thumb Twiddling?

A: Certainly, I’ll just get the tape…

G: No, no… How about that thing where you hold cards up and I have to tell you what I see in them?

A: I’ll just get them…

[A takes some cards out of his bag and shows one to G].

What’s this?

[A hold up a 50th Birthday card].

G: (Profoundly) I see age, death, my father was 58 when he…

A: No, it’s 50th Birthday… And this one?

[A holds up a ‘congratulations’ card].

G: I see a wedding, marriage, happiness…

A: No, divorce, that’s two wrong in a row.

G: Do you have anything constructive to say?

A: Where did you get your haircut?

Continued on the next page

Contact tontine.studentnewspaper@gmail.com

Tontine

Tontine

Week 11 02.12.08

Danielle Party are going to put microchips in all new passports, which can be constantly monitored via satellite.”“I hadn’t heard that.

Continued from previous page

G: (Inquiringly) Err… Gaudlebury barbers…

A: Don’t go there again.

[G shoots off his seat, furious].

G: Right! I’ve had it! I’ll demand a refund unless you do a damn good job of the next 10 minutes!

A: Sir, please calm down, I’ll put some music on and we can chat this over…

[A takes ‘Heavy Metal Oboe’ CD out of his collection on the bookshelf and puts it in the recorder. The horrific noise of screeching oboes fills the room and an aghast expression covers G’s face].

G: What—in God’s name—is this?

A: ‘Heavy Metal Oboe’, volume 4. This is my favourite track- ‘Oh so Oboe in D minor flat major’.

G: Just turn it off, it’s trash.

A: Sir, I’m offended.

G: I don’t care, just turn it off.

[A sulkily turns off the tape].

G: (With a determined coolness) Let’s get this clear- there are 5 minutes left, and you’re going to ask me about my father, and give me damned good advice on how to deal with my loss. Now start.

A: (Starting to get up) I need some water…

G: Sit down and ask me about my father you imbecile!

A: (Reluctantly sits down- there is a short pause) What was his name?

G: Jeremy.

A: Age? G: 58.

A: And your age?

Doodle No. 1 G: …32.

A: So he died 27 years too late…

I do wonder what Aberdeen is like.

G: Pardon! (Cut short) A: Occupation?

Like a Wagnerian place.

G: (Exasperated) Butcher.

A: Spouse? No, no spouse…

Storms, songs...

G: Why do you say that?

Nazis (maybe).

A: You’re a bastard… (Sniggers).

G: I can’t believe… (Cut short).

Local geographers A: Session’s finished, it’s 6:30…

And wikipedia [G opens mouth to speak but is cut short as A puts Can’t compare (possibly) a sign on his desk saying ‘Does not work Overtime’ To being there. and walks out of the room- the stage grows dark].

I do wonder, What Aberdeen is like?

- Kieran Cullen

Other Lands Dream Do you think other lands dream?

Waking with softbreaking flight flutter of birds eyelashes— butterfly kisses to the sky?

Africa, robed in cerise and deep browns of turned earth in the garden, that smell of mulch on your fingers so strong you want to lick the crumbs of dirtchocolate cake desert of the earth.

Africa stretching out smooth limbs of jungle fauna and flora—mist burned tangled green skin she sweeps back her sea froth hair with storms and monsoons that ring her wrists with islands filled with amber sand and my own memory of the red earth after rain kiln hot and aromatic, wet to leonine roars of thunder.

Asia too rises slowly from her silky slumber she shivers with silver bubbles of surprise, vapors rising from her secret places of jade rivers and soft, snow topped knuckles— her Himalayan train needs adjusting with quick hands: She dreams in soft grays and pearly whites of young men who whisper that all is all right.

While shaking and stretching with tectonic strength bursting ice caps and ruffling rivers, frost-locked into moaning capitulation, blue-raspberry slush puppies, licking my lips to catch the colour in its taste— Scandinavia shakes her frozen mane and stretches sharp nails along Britain’s cosseted shore; she never leaves her gulf bath for long, it’s not quite lady like, to be undone before she’s finished all her powdering.

And so she shuts her eyes and sings herself sweet lullabys of when she and Europe were lovers, joined for millennia.

Her wedding vows were broken by seismic convulsions— Europe has never forgiven her nor bothered to say how perfect they were, but forgot that forever and a day is hard to come by even for lonely lands like their selves who dream of joining other lands, and instead they dream, of other things that might have been.

- Lara Barbier

Gillian Limhui

The Door Swings Shut My father stands in the hallway, beside the final crate Well, hopefully the noise won’t be too bad…

Behind me is an empty room; bare surfaces and a characterless bed.

He leaves the flat. The door swings shut… ~ The dancefloor is so crowded. Sticky with the drunken debris of Halloween costumes and garishly coloured cocktails.

As the grotty club heaves, while on the edges a line of people snog incessantly, I try to dance but my body cannot move. …The door swings shut… ~ I close my eyes and his lips brush mine, then rub back to find purchase.

The circle of friends’ catacall rises every time my tongue slides into his mouth. …The door swings shut… ~ So very gently I reach my fingers to the base of my skull.

Amid the tumbles of long, beautiful, curly celtic hair I feel the jagged and spiky root of the first dreadlock. …The door swings shut… ~ Together our war-cry soars into the grey sky Over the mud-tossed plain It rolls and rises and crests and dips and then cried again. …The door swings… ~ I am dancing now on their kitchen unit. My back arches and legs sway. Catacalls and laughter oscillate when they hear the words I dared myself to say. …The door swings shut. There is the sound of a lock clicking.

There is the sound of a lock clicking. The door swings open.

Father stands in my hallway, beside the first crate.

Well…

Behind me is my empty bedroom; book-stripped shelves and my duvet-less bed.

We leave my flat. After those 9 months, again that door swings…

Shut.

- Claire Lucy Jarvis

Symmetry The queue through the schoolyard wasn’t as long as Adam had expected, yet it was moving incredibly slowly. Every few minutes he shifted forward a couple of inches, sighing impatiently as he did so. At least it was a nice evening for it.

Nice, he thought abruptly, but not pleasant. The sky was clear of clouds, but the air felt oppressively warm, as if the sunlight was a piston trying to push the Earth downward. Adam ran his finger beneath his shirt collar, and considered taking his suit jacket off. But everyone around him still appeared to be wearing theirs. Nervously, Adam poked his head out of the queue.

“What are you doing?” Anna hissed in front of him.

Adam ignored her. There, four people ahead of him, stood a squat balding man who had removed his jacket. With a sigh of relief, Adam shrugged the damp black jacket off his shoulders and folded it across his forearm.

He adjusted his tie, wondering whether to remove that too, but he couldn’t see whether the man in front had taken his off. Now if only he could do something about that awful honey stench...

“Who are you going to vote for?”

The words startled him. Not because of their harshness – a question asked in the tone of a demand. Rather, he simply hadn’t considered a potential answer. He hadn’t come down to vote; he had come to see his sister.

“Well?” Anna said impatiently.

“I don’t know. I only came because you asked me.”

“I’ve barely seen you for six months. I thought it was as good an excuse as any. Besides, you should vote. People fought and died for our right to vote. I’m voting for the Daniel Party.”

“Really?”

Anna frowned. “You sound surprised.”

“I thought you’d be more inclined to support the Danielle Party.”

“Why did you think that?

Adam thought for a moment.“Not sure.”

“Is it because Danielle is a woman’s name?”

“No!” Adam gasped, then added; “Well...”

Anna sneered, and turned swiftly away from her brother.

Her thick auburn ponytail swung across her shoulders like a wrecking ball, releasing a choking waft of honey into Adam’s face. Over the past few months, Adam had grown to despise the smell of honey. It was as if the whole world had become obsessed with bottling it.

Shampoos, perfumes, hairsprays; they had even brought out a honey scented aftershave a few weeks ago. Adam was amazed that the queue before him wasn’t being swarmed.

“So why are you voting for the Daniel Party?” Adam said to his sister’s hair.

“Because they promised to cut income tax by three percent.”

“But they said on the radio

yesterday that the Danielle Party would cut income tax by four percent.”

Anna laughed. “That’s a blatant lie. Four percent is an insane amount. The economy would collapse.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“An analyst said it on television.”

“One analyst?”Adam sniggered.

“Well then, it must be true. The Daniel Government obviously set that up. Let me guess, it was on Channel Six?” “Yes,” Anna said brusquely.

“But you’ve forgotten one thing.

It’s the Danielle Party that’s in power.”

Adam felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach.

“When did that happen?”

“Only about ten years ago.

Don’t worry; you’ve not missed much. That’s also why I’m voting for the Daniel Party, it’s time for a change.”

“Change? How exactly is the Daniel Party going to change things?”

“Well...” Anna’s eyes fluttered left and right, as if she were a cornered jewel thief looking for an escape route. Then they lit up, as if she had spotted it. “Look at their policies on ID cards. The Daniel Party...”

“I heard the announcement, they’ve proposed ID cards for the whole population, which will have to be swiped whenever a purchase is made or a public building is entered. And we have to pay for them. I take it the Danielle Party are against it.”

Anna shook her head. “The

“I’m not surprised. They kept it out of the papers. I only found out through a friend at Accounting. Her husband is a member of the local registry. But there’s proof of change.”

“So I can have my civil rights eroded openly instead of surreptitiously?”

Adam said bitterly. “That’s just great.”

The crowd crawled forward like a drugged caterpillar. Adam stared furiously at his shoes, as his mind ravaged his sister’s information. Yet all too quickly he found his anger and confusion dripping from his thoughts, and his attention wandered to the shoes themselves. Gators, they were called, made from synthetic alligator skin. They looked awful, like he had trod on a pair of fluorescent turtles.

He wasn’t sure where he had got them, though he suspected they were a present from somebody.

Everyone at Admin wore them; like little rebellions against the suits they all wore. Personally, Adam despised them, but he couldn’t think of anything else he could possibly wear.

Suddenly, Adam realised he wasn’t looking at his shoes anymore, but at his sister’s legs, specifically, a mole just above her left ankle. It was quite a big mole, about the size of five-pence coin.

Yet there was nothing about it to make it unsightly, neither raised nor hairy, it was simply rather large.

“I wish I had another one.”

Adam looked up. “Hmm?” “You’re looking at my mole, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Anna turned to face him. “I wish I had another mole on my right leg, so they matched up.”

“Why?” “It just feels weird that my legs aren’t the same.”

“Nobody’s legs are. Nobody’s anything is.

It’s unnatural.”

Adam glanced at the mole again.

“If you feel that strongly about it, why don’t you get it removed?”

“Because then I’d have a scar, and my legs still wouldn’t be the same.”

Adam felt a jolt of anger. He wasn’t sure precisely why, but at the same time, he felt he understood something.

“I know who I’m going to vote for,” he said abruptly.

“Who?” “The Dan Democrats.”

Anna gaped. She looked at her brother as if he had just slapped her. “But that’s a wasted vote!”

“Why is it wasted?”

“Because they’re not going to win.”

“You’re not supposed to vote for who you think will win. You’re supposed to vote for who you believe has the best policies.”

Anna folded her arms across her pinstripe suit jacket. “Oh really?

Tell me, what are the policies of the DanDem?” Adam shrugged.

“Then why are you going to vote for them?”

“Because I get one vote every five years, and every time I have to choose between two candidates, who, frankly, might as well be one candidate. Oh, I’m told there are other options, other parties, but I might as well not bother, because it’s a wasted vote. Well, I say to you that every vote is a wasted vote!

They don’t make a difference, not as a single vote or en masse.

You have no influence over bills or policies, not even in this world of instant communication, where the entire population could have a say on every subject. No, the only democratic right you have is to choose who is going to run your life for the next decade, a choice between identical twins, or no choice at all.”

Adam heard an intake of breath behind him, and it took him a moment to realise that he had just shouted. Reluctantly, he glanced over his shoulder.

The queue had gained a parting as people leaned outward in an attempt to glimpse the source of the commotion. They all had the same, shocked expression.

But it wasn’t the visage of the appalled or offended; it was a look of comprehension – that they had always known the things Adam had voiced, but had never considered it abnormal.

Anna also stared at her brother, her mouth opening like a cave being weathered into a rock face. All she said was: “We’re next.”

She turned, and entered the school.

Five minutes later, Adam was also called in.

The contrast from light to dark as Adam stepped inside was like being dipped into a black hole.

When his eyes finally adjusted, Adam saw he was in the school’s gymnasium. The school had closed for the summer break a month beforehand, making it an ideal place to place the ballot boxes for the constituency. To Adam’s right were several plastic tables with a stern looking old woman stood behind them, and to his left were a series of cubicles. Adam spotted his sister’s legs poking out beneath the purple curtain in the far-left chamber.

Adam stepped up to the sternlooking woman. He gave his name and number, showed his passport, and was handed a ballot paper. In all, there were four parties competing in the constituency. The Daniel Party, the Danielle Party, the DanDems, and... Adam squinted, but he couldn’t make out the name of the fourth party – the font had been squeezed on to the bottom of the page, as if it were a misprint. He shook his head, and wandered over to the empty cubicle beside his sister.

Once he had pulled the curtain across, Adam placed the ballot paper on the chesthigh desk jutting from the back wall like an under bite, and lifted the chained-up pen out of its black plastic holder.

Then he commenced to stare

at the page. He scratched his head and shuffled his feet, and was surprised when he heard something crackle beneath his left Gator. He glanced down, and saw at least thirty ballot papers screwed up and cast to the ground like little white meteorites. It puzzled him. Why had they done that? Why hadn’t those before him simply spoiled their papers and placed them in the box?

All of a sudden, the task became insurmountable. The act of placing the pen on the paper became a paradox, an unsolvable contradiction that encased his mind. The pen became immeasurably heavy and yet impossible to put down, as if he were holding the sky in his hand. He felt utterly stupid.

It was such a simple task, and yet so futile his body refused to expend the effort required to complete it.

A voice emanated from behind the curtain. “Sir?” The voice belonged to the stern woman. The distraction was wonderful, Adam answered with an eerie eagerness.

“Yes?” “Are you alright? You’ve been in there for over an hour.”

The words were like a static shock.

Adam tugged his shirtsleeve down and glared at his watch. Time had crumbled, dissolved like a pill in warm water. He had to do something, yet the thought of doing merely made the act harder.

“I’m fine, won’t be a minute,” he squeaked.

Thirty seconds later, the purple curtain billowed, Adam stumbling through it. He looked as if he had been in a fight – sweat slicked forehead, collar and cuffs undone, tie ragged around his neck. He gazed across the room, and felt frustrated as he noticed Anna hadn’t waited for him.

Then he frowned, and glanced behind him. The mole was there, still hovering beneath the purple fabric.

It was another ten minutes before Anna drew the curtain shakily aside, and stepped cautiously out of the cubicle.

Adam noticed she was red in the face, and curious glimmer in her eyes, as if she had undergone a religious conversion. She smiled weakly at her brother.

“Been waiting long?” she said.

“Long enough,” he answered.

“So, who did you vote for?”

Anna cocked her head, looking at him as if the question were redundant, and the answer inevitable: “The same as you,” she said softly.

- Richard Lane

Tontine

Week 11 02.12.08

The Backside Top 10 Student Fears

Bullies’ Favourite Names If it’s a boy...

If it’s a girl...

Andrew Andrews Paul Rick Chuck Weasel III Dan Druff Dan D. Lyons Drew Peacock Eaton Wright Eric Xin Hugh Jass I. D. Clair Seymour Butz Wanna Hickey Warren Pease

Anna Reksiek R. Sole (Rosemary? Rachel? Take your pick) Candace Spenser Constance Noring Dinah Soares Ella Vader Liv Good Iona Frisbee Laura Norder Paige Turner Sue Yu Sue Flay Tora Bolokov

10. That the things they say about beans on toast being bad for you are true 9. That the exam marker might not find those smiley faces you drew on the exam paper that funny.

8. Being judged for buying too many cans of unidentifiable Polish-labelled vegetables by your fellow Lidl customers.

7. Any envelope addressed to you that bears the logo of a power company, the University, or your landlord.

Hell, anything with any kind of logo on it at all.

6. The ways those guys in that old man’s pub look at you like they’re accusing you of something.

5. The dark.

10 Things To Do Before You Die

4. The immiseration of the working class.

1. Make sure that you haven’t left any taps running, and that the central heating is switched off. You don’t want to be overcharged in the after-life, do you?

3. That a snap parental inspection finds you unkempt, broke and not studying. And no convenient natural disasters to blame it on.

2. Kick the cat out. It can fend for itself in the wild, or perhaps survive by stealing the neighbours’ Whiskers portions. You never liked them anyway.

3. You’re as nimble as you’ve ever been, and have always fancied yourself a midnight marauder. So there’s no better time that the present to design your own tag and to give that slippery Banksy fella a run for his money, is there?

4. Gorge yourself on drugs. Especially Calpol, seeing as you haven’t had it since you were 3. And, man, that shit was good.

5. Moon as many people as possible in one day. On the bus. Down the tip. At the local leisure centre. In the church. On a motorway overpass. Anywhere.

6. Make a bonfire out of Dan Brown books, Daily Mail cut-outs, dentured, toupes, wigs and your old pink jumpsuits.

7. Go to the playpark. Scare every single kid off the rides, have a pee on the slide. And then invite them back with promise of sweets.

8. Hire a quadbike, and smash the bastard in to Marks and Sparks. That’ll learn ‘em for selling ill-fitting lingerie and poorly elasticated y-fronts.

9. Get shagged on your favourite tipple. Then heckle the yoofs with insults such as “I had your great-grandma last night. She was creaky. So was the bed.”

10. Visit the local prison and ask for hugs. Dressed as Santa.

11. Learn to count.

2. Russian foreign policy.

1. The fifth floor of the George Square library.

Literary events Tuesday, December 2nd Blackwells, 6.30pm 53-59 South Bridge, Edinburgh With Readings From: Ron Butlin - Edinburgh’s Makar (Poet Laureate).

Lindsay Bower frequent contributor to many magazines.

Nick Holdstock his work has recently appeared in Stand and the Edinburgh Review. + With live music from the brilliant songwriter --- Poor Edward! with complimentary wine and juice! How nice!

Dave Coates

tontine.studentnewspaper@gmail.com

02/12/08

against women involved in street prostitution, which was less than 1 a month. The levels of violence decreased gradually until 2001, the last year of our managed area. So that’s something that happens gradually, over decades. You don’t change that sort of thing overnight just by changing a piece of legislation” Perhaps just as important for Ruth Thomas and Scot-PEP then is a change in mindset. Sex work, according to Thomas, should not automatically be seen in a negative light, and respect should be given to individuals right to self-determination.

“Some of the women we work with have made informed decisions to enter sex work, but others are going to do it because they have very few options. But there is no single clone of a sex worker where there is a solution. There are very many different individuals with different needs, different reasons for being involved, different circumstances. Belle de jour is the diary of a sex worker, that’s quite an attractive lifestyle that actually some sex workers have. You’ve seen some of the horrendous dramas about murders of sex workers, that’s also a reality in the industry. But you can’t just say ‘it’s all bad’ and put it all together.”

Just one day after the Aberdeen press release Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, with the backing of Deputy leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harmen, announced plans for new legislation more in line with that of Scotland. The new laws will make it an offence to purchase sex from any woman who is being exploited, even if the client is not aware that

the worker is being controlled by a pimp or has been trafficked. It also removes restrictions of ‘persistence’ on the prosecution of kerb-crawlers, making kerb crawling punishable as a first-offence.

The news has been met with further derision from workers on the ground, and Andy Hayman, former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has said: “What these women need is help. Many of them are drug addicts or behind with their rent; they already have criminal convictions so they can’t find another job. They don’t need to be forced farther underground. Most are already very co-operative, and they are great informers. Coppers will ignore this one.”

For the time-being however, neither the UK nor Scottish parliaments are showing any sign of changing policy direction, with Thomas quick to speculate as to why.

“I think there are a group of politicians who hold an ideological position on prostitution, defining it as violence against women, which ignores the significant number of men and transgender who are involved in selling and a reasonable number of women who are actually involved in purchasing as well” she explains.

“I think there is a particular brand of feminism which is ideologically opposed to sex work, and I think they currently are in the majority.”

As Student went to print the Scottish government had failed to respond to requests to contribute to this article.

Jonathan Holmes

Woolworths’ sad yarn

Susan Robinson unravels Woolworths’ intricate tapestry of mismanagement, incompetence and pick n’ mix sweeties, and asks what looms in the future for those made redundant from the high street’s black sheep Unfortunately, the stock has barely been updated since, and neither has the layout of the stores been improved. Richard Perkins, an analyst at Mintel International in London believes that “its glory days between the wars were great, but it never really reinvented itself.” The result was dwindling sales, a tired brand image and an archaic approach to business. Who wants to spend £3 on a Justin Timberlake CD when Fopp can sell more interesting and obscure albums for the same price? What’s the point in offering the latest Jodi Picoult slush when you can pick it up from your local supermarket, replete with a moral crisis over whether your tuna is dolphin friendly.

For many years now, since the

fascination for Ladybird books and character themed pyjamas has waned (although I would endure any hardship for another set of 101 Dalmatians pyjamas) the rest of the store has just served as dressing for the pic ‘n’ mix stand.

Its prolonged failure to adapt to the market saw shares drop 9% on the 25th November and morning trading suspended on the stock market the following day. Valuing the company at just £17.8 million which is 95% less than its £385 million debt means that Woolworth’s biggest shareholder, Iranian magnate Ardeshir Naghshineh, is set to lose around £5 million.

Although the company is set to recoup some of its losses by selling its 40% share in 2Entertain, a DVD and CD publishing business

also part-owned by the BBC. Considering a household’s finances are now more precious than ever, retailers have had to up their game to persuade customers to part with their cash. Woolworths was the dinosaur of the high street, refusing to change their outdated

“Not a penny for this vast undertaking was raised on mortgage” F. Woolworth, published in 1919

and obsolete methods. The recession was merely the impact event which wiped them out. Hopefully newer, more dynamic retailers will emerge from the subsequent primordial ooze. This prospect is

unlikely to fill those starting the year out unemployed with festive cheer. Woolies was never known to pay well in the first place.

With the feeble consolation that employees will keep their jobs until at least Christmas day, and the almost simultaneous collapse of cheap as chipboard furniture retailer MFI, should we declare that Christmas is cancelled?

Fear not, Gordon Brown has shouldered responsibility for saving the festive season: promising those being made redundant that “we’re going to move in immediately to give advice” because “the important thing is in the long run that employees in this company... can get other jobs quickly.”

These words are of little comfort to the approximately 20,000

pensioners who are faced with a 100 million pound deficit in their pension funds, lost through the reckless investments of the company they worked for. This high risk game played with other people’s money is in stark contrast to the attitude of Frank Woolworth himself, who claimed that he had never borrowed money in the entirety of his business career. Such a business ethic is nearly impossible to find today.

Mr Woolworth may be turning in his grave, but our sympathies should lie with those starting 2009 on a rather unfortunate foot. We cannot know what will befall them in the future, but an even more important question remains unanswered: what will happen to our furry friends Woolly and Worth?

16 Film

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

Dreaming of a white Clint-mas Changeling directed by

Clint Eastwood

aaaad Changeling can’t escape the typical trappings of Hollywood with its good cop-bad cop drama, a storyline that plays to all emotions accompanied by a soundtrack that will have every row weeping into their popcorn and one of the world’s sexiest women in the leading role.

However, Clint Eastwood’s latest film as director manages to eschew the potential for Hollywood weepy and manages to craft a drama of real power, helped by a fantastic lead performance by Angelina Jolie.

The film traces the story of Christine Collins, a single mother living in 1920s Los Angeles with her son, Walter. Asked to work an extra shift at the telephone exchange instead of taking Walter to the movies one night, she accepts, but on her return home is horrified to find her son missing. She searches frantically for him, scouring her house and neighbourhood, becoming increasingly desperate, the distressed search which dominates the frantic first half of the

film.

When the LAPD become involved, they soon manage to find a boy and reunite him with Christine, the apparent happy-ending attracting huge press interest.

Collins, however, is adamant that the boy ‘returned’ to her is not her son. Due to the bad press that

the LAPD and its corrupt ways received during the 1920s, the police captain insists this isn’t reinforced and convinces Christine that the boy is her son.

She takes him home on a “trial basis” which further convinces her of her earlier suspicions. From this point the film traces the fight of

a desperate woman battling with the LAPD to find her son whilst being insulted, accused of being a bad mother, and ultimately being thrown into a mental hospital.

When the Rev. Gustav Briegleb (a typically excellent John Malkovich) fights for her release, Christine continues her battle with his

help, searching throughout the film, and throughout her life, never losing hope.

Michael Straczynski claims to have written 95% of the film around facts found in articles and other documents contemporary to the period. Moreover, he avoids making the film too horrific and misses out some of the more disturbing details of the story that it’s based on.

Changeling is an excellent film for many reasons. It tells a good story, with a good twist, that would be almost unbelievable if it were not based on a true story. It is well cast, with an interesting style, and covers a variety of themes.

It has an almost film noir style, with a suitable soundtrack, typical of an LAPD drama, but with a lighter touch, in keeping with the more sensitive side of the story.

Jolie is an excellent leading lady in a story about a strong woman in a male dominated society, although the nature of Hollywood is not forgotten and we are allowed a quick glimpse of her naked flesh. Overall the film is superb, although be prepared: it is not easy to watch, and scenes of violence may take you by surprise.

Katy Kennedy

Film’s Top Ten X-Mas Movies!

Die Hard People forget that this is a Christmas movie, what with all the killing and off-colour language, but this flick is a true holiday heartwarmer. A New York cop flies to LA to be with his estranged wife, only to find her office Christmas party taken over by EAST GERMAN TERRORISTS! The only way to save Christmas is to kill all of ‘em! Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker! Jesus would be proud.

It’s a Wonderful Life Ever have one of those days where you wake up, drink a whole bottle of gin and wander on to the motorway? That used to be us here at Film. This movie changed everything! Now we know that we all make a difference in other people’s lives, and all we need is love and a faithful dog, or something.

X- Men II This gripping mutant action film is... X-MAS...! Never mind.

The Muppet Christmas Carol In this brilliant, post-modern reimagination of Charles Dickens’ classic tale, all of the people are replaced with anthropomorphic, oddly sexual cloth puppets. Sir Michael Caine lends his voice to the old miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who finds the real meaning of Christmas by travelling through time with ghosts!

Forget Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, THIS is a drug movie.

Home Alone A chilling, hyper-violent tale of a boy abandoned by his parents on Christmas who manifests his rage by torturing two impoverished men. Macaulay Culkin plays the sadistic child, who sets

violent traps around his house that give the killer from Saw a run for his money. I don’t know why this is such a beloved Christmas film. Truly disturbing.

The Snowman A magical film about a boy whose snowman comes to life, taking him on a journey to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. There are no words, only a haunting soundtrack playing behind the brilliant animation. A tale of love, loss, scarves, and the re-released version is narrated by David Bowie! Another entry into the Christmas drug movie category.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Another animated Christmas flick about a misfit reindeer who uses his glowing, red nose to guide Santa’s sleigh through the night

sky. Yeah, yeah, whatever. What’s really cool is that if you play this simultaneously with Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, the lips synch up PERFECTLY! Also, I believe this the first on-screen appearance of the abominable snowman, who later changed his name to Judi Dench.

Santa’s Slay Possibly the finest offering in the Christmas horror sub-genre, this film presupposes that Santa is actually Satan, who lost a bet with an angel that said he had to distribute gifts to children for centuries. But this Christmas, the bet is off, and Santa goes on a bloody rampage! The greatest thing about this movie is that Santa is played by Jewish pro wrestler Bill Goldberg. Classic.

The Nightmare Before Christmas Don’t let the tweenage goths ruin

this one for you. Tim Burton has created, nay, dreamwoven, a brilliant vision that marries the macabre, Victorian style of illustrator Edward Gorey with Burton’s darkly funny, touching storytelling that echoes his earlier Edward Scissorhands.

Danny Elfman provides an amazing score and the singing voice of hero Jack Skellington, who brings Christmas to Halloweentown!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

A prescient look at the dangers of cave-dwelling, Christmas-hating grinches. Did Dr. Seuss have Osama Bin Laden in mind when he wrote this tale? If so, we need to send a care package of Whopudding, roast beast, and bizzlebinks to the Afghan mountains right away! And that mean old terrorist’s heart will grow three sizes on that Christmas day!

Sam Karasik

02/12/08

WHAT JUST HAPPENED DIRECTED BY

BARRY LEVINSON

AADDD

FOUR CHRISTMASES DIRECTED BY

SETH GORDON

AADDD IN THE King of Kong, its director (Seth Gordon) created an innovative, amusing and engaging documentary about the obsessed players of an arcade game. It is such a shame then that his second film, Four Christmases, possesses few of these qualities.

The introduction to the film and its main characters, played by Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, shows promise. A remixed version of ‘White Christmas’ plays behind some biting dialogue, suggesting this might be something more than a formulaic Christmas movie, and for the first five minutes of the film this is absolutely true. What follows, however, is for the most part mundane and disappointing.

Vince Vaughn’s presence leads one to expect a certain level of humour… However, whether due to the editor’s incorrectly cutting some of his infamous adlibs or the fact

BLINDNESS DIRECTED BY

FERNANDO MEIRELLES

AADDD THE AUDIENCE are left clinging to hope in Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles. A city finds itself paralysed by a sudden and unexplained epidemic of ‘white blindness’, forcing the government to take decisive action and set up quarantine facilities for those afflicted in an abandoned mental hospital. The blind are deserted, left to form their own society.

Film 17

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that his repeated portrayal of the same persona has become tiresome, he came across as one-dimensional and often annoying. That isn’t to say that comic moments that worked were entirely absent, but the majority of these can be seen in the trailer.

Whereas Vaughn is an old-hand in comedy, Witherspoon has only the Legally Blonde films to her name in this department, and it seems that the writers, fully aware of this, decided to have her stuck playing straight against Vaughn’s fool, which although expected to some degree, does seem rather a waste of her talents.

Surprisingly, considering the unremarkable nature of the rest of the elements of the film, some of the cinematography of the San Francisco setting was breathtaking. This almost inconsequential point can’t possibly be seen as a redeeming factor in a film of this type, where the focus should be entirely humour.

Ardent fans of either Vaughn or Witherspoon will be disappointed by a film that offers little festive cheer in what purports to be a Christmas comedy.

Edward Bower

Amongst the first to be struck down is a doctor, accompanied to the hospital by his devoted wife, played by Julianne Moore. She feigns blindness in order to remain with her husband (Gael Garcia Bernal) and finds herself living amongst the blind as the only one who still possesses the ability to see. Becoming horribly aware of the terrible condition that the blind have been left in she becomes overwhelmed with a maternal sense of duty, caring for those who live in the ward.

As the hospital becomes overcrowded and Moore becomes estranged from her husband, a

WHAT JUST Happened is an awkward comedy, a film with a lot of bark but no bite. Based on the best-selling memoirs of producer Art Linson, What Just Happened follows hapless producer Ben (De Niro) as he attempts to persuade Bruce Willis (as himself, in excellent form) to shave for a coveted role, Sean Penn’s latest action flick to make a profit and his home life to turn around. What ensues is a film that entirely fails to make good on the potentially hilarious material.

The cast show some flair and try to invest the film with a little punch, particularly De Niro, who seems as though he’s having the most fun that he’s had in years, but their efforts ultimately seem a little desperate.

Not unlike How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the plot offers a sharp critique of those

criminal contingent take over one of the wards. Food supplies are stockpiled and ‘inmates’ are forced to give up all their valuables and, finally their dignity, the women pawned off as a new ‘currency’. Gael Garcia Bernal is resplendent as the sadistic ‘King of Ward Three’. All sense of morality is lost as panic and basic instinct take over. However, the palpable claustrophobia so pervasive in Jose Saramango’s novel is only sporadically evident and the celebrated work ultimately finds itself let down by Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation.

Forgotten by the world they in-

surrounding De Niro’s principal player but softens entirely when it comes to evaluating their own character. The director seems to have succumbed to the fatal flaw that has taken down all too many comedies of late; that is, spending an age ridding main characters of flaws and in the process forgetting to provide the jokes.

The conflict between Willis and De Niro is easily the film’s strongest element, evoking he supposed diva-esque tendencies of Alec Baldwin before the shooting of The Edge. The hilarious scene in which Willis’ inner diva is let loose, a monumental tantrum ensuing, in which an entire studio is smashed up, is brilliantly conceived, unfortunately an anomaly in an otherwise dull film.

What Just Happened is difficult to recommend. Anyone who is a fan of De Niro, Willis or Penn should wait until certain scenes appear on YouTube. Everyone else should find something better to do with their time.

Sean Cameron

habit, these blind are left isolated from society, and yet the connections they form allow them to re-establish their sense of ethics and true community. Normality is turned on its head as the only truly alone person is the one with the ability to see. The characters, all left nameless, are no longer people, only identifiable by their voices, forcing the audience to question how we judge one another and what signifies identity.

The film is pervaded by a colourless light, at times the white taking over in an attempt to have those watching to experience an empathetic claustrophobia and emptiness of complete light.

The film occasionally lacks purchase, losing its footing as it stumbles into each new scene of horror. The desperate situation of these people may act as an excuse for these faults in the plot, but more explanation could have been afforded.

The audience are left dissatisfied by a conclusion that seems out of place with the rest of the film and felt unnatural and sudden. Meirelles offers a disappointing adaptation of a brilliant novel, failing to capture the depth and power of Saramango’s commentary on societal bonds and ethics.

Avoid the film and read the book.

Claire Cameron

Brangelina Jolie-Pitt’s

Hollywood Roundup!

Brad! If you’re going out for some milk can you get me a Cambodian? Hi, Brangelina here. Our most anticipated film of next year and all time is Expendables; balls-to-the-frickin’-wall action as written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, who has recruited distinguished geezers Statham and Li to kick ass alongside him. Yes please.

Dolph Lundgren has signed up for a part? Me-oh-Maddox! “It’s a homecoming of tough guys” explained septuagenarian Stallone. Now all we need is Steven Seagal on board, a man so tough that even the glorious potential for bird-related puns becomes a no-go area …

But what’s this?! The best executive decision EVER has been made! Steven Seagal in his own reality TV show? Yes please. But what shall we call it? I know!

Steven Seagal: Lawman! The show will see the ponytailed pugilist hit the streets of New Orleans in order to throw a few justice-tinged chop sockies in the direction of the city’s worst, but also display Steve’s role as submissive second-in-command family man at home. It’ll be like My Super Sweet Sixteen with blood and guns and ponytails.

Steven will be pleased to hear that bloods’ proverbial star is currently on the rise, with Twilight –the film of the teen-lit novel-taking a haul of $70million in its first week at the US box office. Teen silver-ringthing-supporters attended the sex-doesn’t-exist-but-vampiresdo film in droves.

Have you seen Mamma Mia? If you haven’t then you’re, like, some kind of freak. The so-badit’s-terrible ABBA-based musical is officially the fastest-selling DVD in history, with two million Brits currently enjoying the fact that they can now happily get all hot and bothered over Pierce Brosnan’s DoubleGlazingCo.sponsored wail in the privacy of their own homes. Famous for his method acting, Brosnan had his throat removed and replaced with a full-size blackboard for the part.

Next Week...

We quit.

Write your own newspaper.

18 Music

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

Bands Bjorn Again James Ellingworth hasn’t written the greatest story in the world; this is just a tribute.

I’d like to begin with a short message for the faux world-weary trilby-wearers of Razorlight. At a recent sold-out gig at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange by the Complete Stone Roses tribute band, the management were desperate to sell tickets for Razorlight the next day. Now that’s just embarrassing. So Razorlight, please stop now. It’ll be better for everyone that way. Right, that’s that sorted.

Tribute bands are the methadone of music – filling the gap in the user’s life where the full-strength hit should be. And it’s a big business.

Just look at Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, who can pack arenas full of screaming ten-year-olds, despite essentially being a tribute to herself.

There are thousands of tribute bands out there, with names ranging from Abba-apeing housewives’ favourites Bjorn Again, through the Antarctic Monkeys (billed as “the UK’s hottest tribute”) to the frankly rubbish-sounding Oasis wannabes Definitely Mightbe . There are even tribute bands to fictional groups such as Spinal Tap and The Commitments, which prompts all sorts of

philosophical questions.

You can even invent your own, given 30 seconds and a stereotype.

How about Kneecap, a Northern Irish take on the post-modernism of Elbow? Or Rabbie Williams, Stoke’s finest given a Scots twist? Or even Gaye Marvin, making “sexual healing” fabulous?

Some tribute bands have even reached a certain level of respectability, even credibility. The Complete Stone Roses, for example, have played festivals, and even had the real band’s bassist, Mani, play alongside them as a ‘special guest’.

However, there does come a point where the line separating faithful imitation from actually thinking you’re the band in question begins to blur. When the Complete Stone Roses played Edinburgh recently, in between the stonkingly-rendered big, numbers, they inserted about 30 minutes worth of obscure early material that left the audience cold, a sign perhaps of the confusing situation tributes can find themselves in if they start to be appreciated for what remains someone else’s work.

There are also those acts that pay their tribute in an altogether more

The Complete Stone Roses or just The Stone Roses? Even we’re not sure creative, some would say bizarre, way. The Red Hot Chili Pipers add bagpipes to Californian rock, while Dread Zeppelin are probably the only people in the world ever to

think that what Robert Plant’s vocals needed was reggae delivery from an Elvis impersonator.

But finally, spare a thought for the poor deluded souls who are des-

tined to fail, who imitate the wrong band and then wonder why no-one turns up. Yes, I give you Razorlike, “the UK’s only Razorlight tribute”.

One word: why?

Student’s Albums Of 2008 T

he run-up to Christmas always marks a bit of a lull in exciting album releases as the endless stream of best ofs, pointless compilations and box sets start to flood the charts and record store shelves to exploit the festive season as much as possible. It’s pretty safe to say we’ve heard everything 2008 has to offer in terms of albums, so we decided to dispense with the usual format this week and have a look back at our favourite records of 2008. It’s been a vintage year for music, let’s hope 2009 keeps it up and produces as many gems. With releases due from Dananananaykroyd, Animal Collective, Franz Ferdinand, Antony and the Johnsons, Trail of Dead and (fingers crossed) Fleetwood Mac, things are looking promising.

Friendly Fires Friendly Fires

September

A Cracking debut from St Albans’ Friendly Fires, who most people thought would fade into obscurity with the demise of nurave. It turns out they’re a lot smarter and more interesting than anyone first thought. ‘Jump In The Pool’ surpasses previous single ‘Paris’ in the epic, dreamy dance anthem stakes, cowbell and all.

The rhythms are tight, the tunes massive, the vocals, high. Everything you want from a dance-rock album, and more.

Johnny Foreigner

Hot Chip

Frightened Rabbit

June

February

April

Waited Up ‘Til It Was Light

Brummie pop-punk? Go on then. This was another debut that fulfilled the considerable potential of the band in question. 100mph songs with crossover vocals and twelve millions hooks per chorus, managing to sound sweet and earnest in the process. Plus, Alexei is an immense guitar player, which is something we don’t even care about normally, but it’s so obvious on this as he’s playing about four different tunes at once. Listen carefully to spot the things they stole from early Idlewild, of which there are quite a few. This is a very good thing by the way.

Cut Copy

In Ghost Colours

May

It took a while coming, but Cut Copy’s second album takes the perfect summer record concept and takes it to a whole new level, making a couple of bars of any given track on this a perfect antidote to Scotland’s frozen winters.

Disco, electro, synth pop, whatever you want to call it, Cut Copy are masters of it, and tunes such as ‘Hearts On Fire’ and ‘Lights And Music’ will be lighting up dancefloors for many a moon to come, regardless of the season.

Made In The Dark

Hot Chip’s third full-length saw them go mainstream proper with single ‘Ready For The Floor,’ arguably one of the finest pop songs of the decade. The rest is a mixture of sweet ballads (‘Made In The Dark’) quirky, r&b-style pop (‘Wrestlers’) and Todd Rundgren-sampling dancefloor stompers (‘Shake A Fist’) that confirms their genius and ability to appeal to the masses whilst never once compromising their creativity.

A real treat.

Fucked Up

The Chemistry Of Common Life

October

2008 marked the year Fucked Up were on the cover of NME. Anyone who knows anything about this band knows how crazy that is. But to those unphased by all notions of ‘selling out’, this was also a very good thing, as it allowed one of the most ferocious and exciting bands in the world to be heard by more people than ever expected. The Chemistry Of Common Life is a brutal, grand hardcore masterpiece that could melt faces at 100 yards and gained Fucked Up countless plaudits from people who would never usually have touched their sort with a bargepole.

The Midnight Organ Fight

It could be that we’re slightly biased, and felt the need to pick a Scottish band for our album of the year, but we’re pretty sure it isn’t.

More likely is that The Midnight Organ Fight is simply the most addictive, beautiful, affecting record released in 2008.

Following in the grand tradition of Arab Strap and their miserable

Scottish forebears, Frightened Rabbit fashion a sound and approach that’s both direct and original in its exploration of the highly unoriginal subject of pain and heartache, getting drunk, contemplating suicide and all of those things that have kept pop music alive over the past 50 years.

Add to that the fact that ‘My Backwards Walk’ contains the line ‘You’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it,’ and you have far more justification than is required, even in this excellent musical year, to deem this the best record of 2008.

AC

02/12/08

Music 19

www.studentnewspaper.org

Live Reviews

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Corn Exchange

26 November

aaaaa

Going to see Nick Cave is a kind of religious experience. There are the faithful and the zealous fans, people who have followed the band through sickness and in health. Then there are the people who have been dragged along, having never heard anything other than ‘Dig Lazarus Dig’. This group are the soon-to-beconverted.

The band sweep on stage. There are few artists that have the stage presence of Cave. These may be balding, forty-somethings, but they are the most captivating band I have ever witnessed. Their set opens with a slow bluesy number that segues into the rollicking ‘Dig,

Sigur Rós

Alexandra Palace

20 November

aaaaD Crushed in with hundreds of jumper clad folk at the back of the Alexandra Palace in North London, I realised that there must be something pretty special behind a band which sounds so predominantly like whale music and yet still manages to fill the massive 7250 person hall to its limit.

Surrounded by unfathomably tall men, I was perturbed at first at not actually being able to see Sigur Rós on stage and dubious as to whether any intimacy could be produced in such a big venue.

With the opening sounds of ‘SvefnG-Englar’ however, all doubts were dispelled and the crowd were able to settle into a good hour and a half of meditative swaying and downright bewilderment. Audience participation helped to bring the size of the hall down, as the extremely shy and endearing Jónsi Birgisson broke through cheers, stuttering his thanks and warmly encouraging us to sing along, despite

Lazarus, Dig!!!’, before climaxing with the disturbing, Revelationsinspired ‘Tupelo’.

The set was hard and fast, with the band modifying a few of their songs to suit the mood. This was, as he himself put it, “Classic Cave”, harking back to the Tender Prey and From Her to Eternity albums.

Cave jerked and leapt all over the stage in his idiosyncratic dancing style, while Warren Ellis shred his violin bow to pieces with the sheer force of his playing.

Aside from the opening three, the set held many more highlights. The Bad Seeds are not afraid to delve heavily into their back catalogue.

Indeed, the audience was given due attention in the choice of set, as Cave took requests. The rendition of ‘Mercy Seat’, turned harsh and loud to the point of screaming, was completely mesmerising. The thrilling ‘Red Right Hand’ and there being, in fact, no lyrics.

Grudgingly having been forced to watch a good part of their 4 hour long documentary Heima beforehand, I could finally agree that knowing about the Icelandic background of this band and their music really helps to relax into it. Yes, Birgisson did get his bow out to saw away on his guitar, and experimental techniques in lighting, projection and sound added to the other worldly atmosphere that Sigur Rós effortlessly seem to achieve.

Although technically promoting their most recent, far more upbeat and album með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (catchy), the set list mainly focused on their older, fairly heartwrenching tunes. The audience did get a chance to lighten up and dance though, with their newer songs ‘Gobbledigook’ and ‘Við Spilum Endalaust’. The support band, For a Minor Reflection, provided an extended rhythm section for these, and created a great energetic climax to the gig.

Despite previous reservations, Sigur Rós proved to be a perfect excuse for a self-awarded, mid-semester, mid-week trip down south and left me entranced all the way back to Edinburgh.

Sophie Beeston

‘Deanna’ also contributed to the over-whelming tone of hardedge rock. ‘The Weeping Song’ and ‘The Ship Song’ brought the mood down to a melancholy pace, quickly brought back up to speed with ‘We Call Upon the Author To Explain’ from latest album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!. By the time that ‘The Weeping Song’ was being played, my friend, who had never heard anything before Abattoir Blues/ Lyre of Orpheus, was converted.

The only low point of the main set was ‘Get Ready For Love’, which had been heavily modified with Cave missing a verse and the pre-chorus. Taken with the rest of the set however, this small omission hardly mattered.

They played for an hour and half, before coming back on for the encore to shouts of adulation and whoops of pleasure. It is tradition with Cave that he plays ‘Stagger

IS THIS IT?

Lee’, his dirtiest murder ballad, as the finale to the show. But first, there was some audience participation in ‘The Lyre of Orpheus’, singing the doleful “O Mama” back to Cave’s lead and realising how difficult it actually is to keep time. Then, the moment the crowd had all been waiting for: ‘Stagger Lee’. Cave’s attitude becomes harsher and more arrogant, growling the chilling lyrics before descending into a screaming, discordant frenzy.

This is a band that has survived drugs and disorder to appear triumphant. You may be amongst the youngest people there, as we were, but don’t let that fool you.

Despite their respective ages, the Bad Seeds are still very much able to put on the best show you shall ever see. Putting a different twist on every concert, Cave will hold you utterly captivated.

Claire Cameron

Three years and three months ago a young wannabe-music journalist, that’s me, shuffled along to a Student meeting and signed up to write vague, poorly-phrased music reviews. Today I stand before you a departing music-editor writing a vague, poorly-phrased farewell column. It’s time to call it a day. Like an ageing African dictator I’ve held onto power well past my prime, ignoring a succession of talented, eager young writers in favour of a tyrannical rule and blind favouritism. I make no apologies for this.

Under my regime the Music section has been a shameless friend to the industry. In 2005 we became one of the first media sources in the country to interview the Arctic Monkeys after I joined the nationwide conspiracy to promote Alex Turner and his band as the voice of the youth. Of course, we drove a hard bargain; receiving in return a McFly boogie board, a lifetime supply of U2 stickers and a 26-track thrash metal compilation.

Despite this eager compliance with the NME agenda, Student has become a byword for incompetence and obstinacy in the PR industry thanks to our hardline No-Communication policy. Reckless disregard for our readership has seen us review albums four months in advance of release. This diligent approach to our work has assured the music section countless invitations to student media award ceremonies (two times winners of the Rory Reynolds Most Ridiculous Abuse of Free Bar Award) and extravagant praise from our Student colleagues such as, “big pictures, biggest font size (ever!) for the headline.”

I like to think I’ve pushed the boundaries as well. Two years ago I became the first and possibly only Student critic to ever award zero stars in a review. The object of my disdain was an atrocious Ordinary Boys record; naturally, my disregard for Student guidelines spawned from a petty dislike of lead-singer Preston rather than critical integrity. During my time the Music section has also prided itself on printing any old piece of self-indulgent shite, even if it’s blatantly a lastminute cobbling together of weak in-jokes with nothing to do with music. It’s things like this that have made Music an integral section of the middle-to-end part of Student.

Thankfully, I leave the Music section in safe hands. My co-editor Andrew Chadwick is eagerly stepping into my dictatorial shoes as I write, firing off angry and drunken rants to our writers about apostrophes and quotation marks. He’s being joined by Jonny Stockford, who was appointed on the strength of his brilliant jumpers. Together I have no doubt they’ll continue the proud traditions of this section and continue our steady journey backwards through the newspaper, in the hope that one day we will supersede Sport on the back page.

Thank you and goodnight.

Thomas Kerr

20 Culture

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

THE SECRET MARRIAGE FESTIVAL THEATRE 26-29 NOV

AAAAD

Julia Sanches

THE ORESTEIA ADAM HOUSE 27-29 NOV

AAADD AROUND TWENTY-FIVE hundred years ago, something unexpected happened on the Athenian stage.

Actors, instead of patiently awaiting their turn for a soliloquy, began to talk to each other; so the old way of storytelling, isolated outpourings backed by a chorus, melted away.

The writer, who thus unleashed human beings against each other, was called Aeschylus, and the result of his daring was drama. The burden, then, of any attempt to stage one of his few surviving plays is clear: it returns, and must reconcile itself, to the very source of theatre.

This is worth keeping in mind when considering the curiously brave flaws of Theatre Paradok’s production, at Adam House last week, of an impressive though problematic The Oresteia.

Theatre Paradok, an alternative student theatre company with several big plays already under its belt, spent four months putting The Oresteia trilogy together. The three shows: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides have been sliced down to a manageable three acts, striking costumes provided for a big cast, and an imaginative, tableau-like staging composed.

These aspects are labours of care and not necessarily integral to the meat of a play, but Paradok does them particularly well. And if the play in question is a saga about murder, revenge, and a great family, the House of Atreus, tearing itself to pieces, then the value of a smooth and undistracting production cannot be underestimated. Balance is required between utter fascination and sneaking incredulity at the tortured passage of events. The lighting, in this regard, is perhaps

the single most impressive aspect of Paradok’s The Oresteia. A flickering of darkness against lighter shades of darkness, occasional reds and blues, and plenty of candles, it gives the whole production the gleam of a painting, full of chiaroscuro and muted violence.

It is a fitting set up to this great and bloody tale. Agamemnon opens on Clytemnestra’s rage: Troy has finally fallen, and her husband the King is coming home, unwittingly hastening a long-brooded-over revenge for his sacrificing of their daughter. Agamemnon returns and is murdered along with the prophetess Cassandra, though not before the latter predicts further agonies in store for the House of Atreus.

No surprise, then, when in The Libation Bearers, the son Orestes arrives and, spurred on by his sister

“By not showing too much, speaking slowly, and letting changes gradually come over their characters, they escape a trap the others fall into, a seductive idea of Greek drama.”

Electra, kills Clytemnestra in his turn.

And just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, a pack of Furies show up to torment Orestes in The Eumenides, leading to a final trial (literally) with Athena and Apollo to decide the measure of his guilt. It is the coherence in recounting these events, admittedly not an easy task, that Paradok’s Oresteia runs into some problems.

The first act is especially hard to follow. A jumble of flashback and other attempts to bring the audience up to speed, it allows the dramatic tension, which should by rights be unbearable, to quietly dissipate. The later acts are more direct and purposeful, driven by

the urgency of the inevitable. Yet you don’t ever get a firm grip on the characters, motivations, and torments—the emotional core of The Oresteia and the means of its underlying passage from savage to lawful society—and a large share of the difficulty lies with the acting.

It is no fault of timidity; rather, the actors are all over the place. Lines come at all pitches and speeds, as, without really listening to each other, the players attempt to cover every range of emotion and lay bare every nuance of their characters.

Praise, however, much be given to the admirably focussed performance of Fiona Jarrett as Clytemnestra, and the one scene—a meeting between Electra and Orestes at the beginning of the second act— that works really well. Both Jarrett and Jenny MacDonald, as Electra, wrest and hold the audience’s attention by virtue of their restraint.

By not showing too much, speaking slowly, and letting changes gradually come over their characters, they escape a trap the others fall into, a seductive idea of Greek drama.

For in a sense, overplaying is true to a notion of these ancient people, and this ancient art, as open, plain, and passionate. The murderous family members are slaves to their passions and have a sense of what is right, and so they may deserve an expressiveness beyond modern reticence.

Yet by returning to Aeschylus in this way, the company loses both the psychological complexity and deep moral difficulty of the plays.

At the close, the audience may, properly, be unable to find a resolute answer as to whether Orestes is right to kill his mother. They need to be rather more invested in the characters, however, in order to feel the true despair of the dilemma, the sheer hopelessness of all these cruel fates. Oresteia is big and unafraid, and deserves much credit. But the best compliment would be to go out and read the whole thing.

Ben Fried

BEFORE GOING to The Secret Marriage I’d never been to the opera and I have to say it was far from what I expected. My prejudiced impression was of opera as an outdated and stuffy art form, a play where for some reason the characters sung instead of spoke and the audience comprised of duchesses and men who couldn’t keep their monocles from slipping into their champagne flutes. I also expected it to be long.

The Secret Marriage however, was none of these things. Well, they did sing. A few arias in, I began to understand the absolute centrality of the music, not simply to underscore the drama but to explain and mould it. A written opera consists of a libretto -the script- and a musical score. The beauty is in the way they interact with one another, condensing the meaning of both and together creating a skilfully controlled and resonant impression.

The Secret Marriage tells the story of a young middle class girl who secretly marries her father’s servant. The lovers, fearing how her father will react when they reveal what they have done, try to arrange a marriage between her older sister and the Count, a man with a title and reputation but financial difficulty. They hope that this social ascent will compensate for her loss of status as well as their deception. Their plan backfires when the Count falls in love with the wrong sister.

Although this may sound farcical -

and it does work on that level - it also offers important insight into socio-economic transition and the marriage market which is as relevant to recent British history as it was in Cimarosa’s Italy. The libretto was actually taken from the British play The Clandestine Marriage, and there is clear resonance of the British class system within the opera.

Harry Fehr sets his production in 1950s England and it is a surprisingly smooth transition. When the young lovers decide to elope, he swaps his tux for a leather jacket and she her tea dresses for tight jeans. The transformation is as funny as it is apt and demonstrates the transcendence of this opera.

The set design was heavenly.

The action took place in a stately British home which was like a life size Edwardian dollhouse filling the stage. The rooms were decked out in glorious pink and gold with a marble staircase facilitating dramatic confrontation in the centre stage. The whole thing scattered with fresh roses, their smell filling the whole opera house.

One of the real pleasures of The Secret Marriage is simply to see the amount of hard work and skill that goes into the production. The cast’s vocal projection and ability to give nuanced emotion to simple words was very impressive. A special mention must be made for Donald Pippin’s translation, which seemed to lose none of the sense of the original and worked in perfect complement with the music.

Even for a complete novice, it’s easy to appreciate the way in which the composite parts work together and the degree of mastery required on all fronts to make it successful. The Secret Marriage is flawless both in the talent of the individuals and in the way such talents are used together to form the whole.

Lisa Parr

02/12/08

Culture 21

www.studentnewspaper.org

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Lyceum Until 3 Jan

aaadd It seems that in children’s theatre, the ‘baddies’ always get the best costumes. Such is true of Mark Thompson’s production of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The White Witch’s (Meg Fraser) cronies, are darkly comic: Sandy Grierson’s Maugrim the wolf with his rock ‘n’ roll leather jacket and skinny jeans, and the dwarf, played

by Owain Rhys Davies, with his acrobatics and slapstick humour.

Indeed, for a witch-queen who banishes Christmas from her kingdom, this one sure likes a laugh, bringing a hint of pantomime to the production, as do Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (David Lucas and Ruth Connell), who break into somewhat misplaced and misjudged song half way through the play.

The production is not a simply frivolous one, however. The opening scene takes the audience on a train journey with four evacuees, Peter (Scott Hoatson), Susan (Jenny Hulse), Edmund (Neil Thomas) and Lucy (Amy McAllister). They travel from the air-raid sirens of the city to the isolation of a remote country house, in a movement and music piece that really evokes the rush and panic of evacuation. More dark humour conveys the grim repetition of servant life in the 1930s, as preparations are made for the children’s arrival.

Plenty of kilts, Fair Isle tank tops, gas masks and sensible shoes make up the costumes of the ‘goodies’, as they enter a strange and old-fashioned world of sprigged wallpaper, antique furniture, smoking jackets and fur coats. The humour of the dour Scottish housekeeper, Mrs. Macready, played by Ruth Connell is not, of course, lost on an Edinburgh audience. All audiences would, however, recognise her as every child’s nightmare, with her rules of no playing and bed by nine o’clock. It is a credit to both the actors and the direction that the children’s mannerisms, especially

Lucy’s, are convincingly childlike.

It is clear that the children in the audience recognise this and warm to the characters of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. Indeed, when Lucy asked them to imagine a ‘world without presents’, it was poignant, not to mention a little frightening, how the children in the audience laughed as if she had said something ridiculous.

Although Thompson’s artistic direction and Ken Harrison’s design make this play a magical Christmas spectacle, its biggest problem is perhaps that the moral of the story is one that children can no longer relate to. Whilst the high drama of the second act provides a climactic end to the production, the religious imagery of Daniel Williams’s Aslan, sacrificed on the stone table of Cair Paravel is arguably lost on today’s children.

This is easy to say as an unenchanted and cynical student. Director Thompson points out that audiences come to the play ‘over agendered’, either ascribing to a contemporary production of the play moral duties which it never professes to take on, or condemning it for religious moralising. It is hard to reconcile a play about the immorality of lies and the enduring nature of truth with a modern, largely secular audience. As is the uncomfortable suggestion that girls make natural nurses whilst boys are natural soldiers.

But the production gets its laughs where they are needed, a subtle adult subtext being interwoven with the children’ s material, to ‘appeal to both levels’ (Thompson). According to Meg Fraser, it is exactly this comic effect that humanises the rather moralising tone of C.S. Lewis’s story.

This production offers not so much a Christian perspective of good and evil as the Potteresque idea that bravery and loyalty will with any luck get you further than trickery and treachery.

Eleanore Widger

Cecily Rainey

Problems in Paradise Alanna Petrie muses on the pervasive Paradise Lost

I

spent my first year of English literature at university pretending I understood and liked Paradise Lost. However, I now know I am a lone infidel amongst a gaggle of Milton fans. With his 400th birthday upon us, I am now prepared to stand up and say “my name is Alanna and I’m not a fan of Paradise Lost.”

I am not a total philistine, I just think Paradise Lost is a bit over-rated, over-used and when forced, quite torturous to read once the general concept has been explained. I do not deny however that it is a key part of any literature course due to its merits; addressing big philosophical and theological issues, some pretty nifty literary techniques and perhaps most notably the basis for Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. It is one of the most influential and widely quoted texts in existence with Milton’s words echoed in classic works such as T. S Elliot’s The Wasteland and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Understanding these canonised texts which intertextually borrow from Milton would at times be difficult without the background knowledge of Paradise Lost which seems to crop up everywhere.

I do find the thematic concerns of the text interesting; the idea of seeing events which have influenced society for centuries from another perspective and the allure of evil

(“it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”) both appeal. But despite my enthusiasm for these themes, I fail to see the advantage of the text being so, so long and complicated, and fail to understand it without succumbing to the pull of Spark notes. Perhaps if Milton had chosen not to flaunt his vocabulary and poetic style, and had just made his work more accessible to your average reader, many would find his epic more alluring.

I’m sure many would readily agree that attempting the text in a single evening is a daunting, even terrible, prospect especially when faced with a time limit, as all students are. Not only this, but the text seems to be all pervasive and inescapable, influencing varied forms of culture to this day. JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth is said to be based on the imagery of Milton’s hell, the film Se7en features quotations from the poem, and within the genre of death metal music there are any number of references to Miltonian ideas.

The thing I dislike most about Milton is his awareness of his own intelligence which is stated at the start of the epic when he claims he can “soar/ Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues/ Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” (only line 14 of a rollicking 10568). This is Milton’s not so humble admoni-

tion that he thinks himself the most amazing and innovative writer ever to have existed because he can do what nobody else could even conceive of doing. This is an example of the misogyny that the likes of Virginia Woolf objected to in Milton’s writing which does seem extremely centred around images of masculinity.

Ultimately however, the professors who force the poem on us are right. It is over-rated, but although his unashamed self-promotion makes me want Milton’s epic to be drivel, it really isn’t - if you take pretty much any ten to twenty line section of Paradise Lost there will be something significant regarding history, philosophy, literature, morality or theology within those lines making it just about worthwhile for anyone to push themselves to read and particularly indispensible for literature students.

So happy 400th birthday, and well done to John Milton for having such a durable legacy – I am sure it will continue long time to come as there seems to be no relent in Milton-plugging in literature, cinema and other entertainment. But just maybe critics and writers could accept that things have happened in the last four centuries, move on a bit, and think of something new to excite themselves over.

22 Tech

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

It’s not me...it’s you Alan Williamson is left broken-hearted by Sonic’s latest disaster SONIC UNLEASHED Those were th e

days...

SEGA

X360, WII, PS2 , PS3 £39.99

ADDDD

t, but I A little fa you still loved

All style

and no substa nce

ow who even kn I don’t e any more you ar

DEAR SONIC, We’ve been together for a long time now, but lately I feel like you’ve changed and you’re no longer the same hedgehog I fell in love with all those years ago. We’ve been together through good times and bad, including your awkward transition to 3D, no matter how many strange sidekicks you befriended. I even forgave you for that time you cheated on me with Mario at the Beijing Olympics.

But this time I can’t take you back.

It’s over, Sonic.

When we went to counselling after your disastrous 2006 outing Sonic the Hedgehog, we both agreed the only way for you to get your life back on track was a return to what made you so great in the past. Remember those days? Blasting through garish environments at high speed, smashing Robotnik’s evil creations and collecting Chaos Emeralds. With the lack of a third dimension to screw everything up, we could concentrate on the thrill of playing rather than the fear of impending death. It was magical.

Then tragedy struck. While Mario cavorted around in 3D, you struggled to adapt to the challenges of a new generation. When you finally returned in 1998’s Sonic Adventure, it was still your charming face on

the box, but the game just wasn’t the same. What you never understood was that the old Sonic games were never about pure speed at the expense of control. More importantly, they also weren’t about fishing, hunting for emerald shards, or running around with a gun- elements Sonic Adventure added, but nobody wanted.

So here we are again with Sonic Unleashed and you’ve decided the best way to go “back to your roots” is by transforming into a werehog for half of the game. Excuse me, but what the hell is this? Whenever you say you’re going back to your roots, they’re not supposed to be the roots that fans of the series have been verbally hacking at for years. The werehog sections rip off the PS2 classic God of War in so many ways that if I listed them all, I’d run out of space.

The only thing not pilfered from God of War is sheer entertainment, which was plentiful in the aforementioned but non-existent in Hog of War… I mean, Unleashed.

With the power of the new Hedgehog Engine under the hood, Unleashed is a stunning game to look at. Of course, this doesn’t count for much when the underlying game is so fundamentally broken. Sonic’s stages work perfectly until control is handed over to the player, where upon it all falls apart quicker than a leper in a wind tunnel. Rather than controlling Sonic directly like every computer game since 1978, you roughly suggest where you’d like him to go as he runs off cliffs,

crashes into barriers, or plummets to his death time and time again.

As much as Sega would like to pretend that Sonic has changed for the better, a simple removal of the third dimension is not enough. The camera’s position makes it difficult to gauge what’s coming next and the unresponsive controls ensure obstacles are impossible to avoid anyway. Awful level design nighguarantees that any fun you’ll have with Unleashed is always a fleeting experience. Worse still, the game’s developers know how poorly constructed the stages are and always provide extra lives before punishing sections, rather than fix the broken mechanics.

The saddest thing of all is that there could be a genuinely entertaining game here, albeit buried under hundreds of awful design choices.

Why does Sonic have yet another irritating sidekick? Why do you have to report to a professor so he can tell you what to do next? Why do you have to “level up” Sonic between stages to make him faster? Why does there even have to be a story, never mind one about Eggman cracking the planet into chunks with a giant laser? Why does Sonic actually do less damage to enemies after transforming into a hulking werehog with pneumatic fists? Why does no one question an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog running around talking to humans? Sonic Unleashed is the ultimate evidence that Sonic Team have no idea what to do with the franchise and probably never will.

So don’t bother telling me you can change, Sonic. I’ve heard it all before and I see no reason to believe that next time will be different. Don’t call me, I won’t answer. Don’t write me letters, I won’t read them. While I’ll never forget the way you were and how much you meant to me, I can’t forgive what you have become, werehog or otherwise. I’d really appreciate if you could box up all of my things and leave them round at Mario’s house when you have the time. But I’m keeping your CDs.

old ach an Can’t te w tricks hog ne

Merry Christmas! love from Tech xxx

Three guys, a girl and an apocalypse Richard Lane shows it’s not just playing games that damages the brain LEFT 4 DEAD VALVE

PC, X360 £26.99

AAAAA

ANYTHING CAN be made entertaining by adding a zombie holocaust. Charlie Brooker’s recent Big Brother parody Dead Set showed us that. Likewise, a game’s fun doubles with the inclusion of a cooperative mode. So any game including cooperative brain-munching fun should be a success from the get go.

Indeed, Left 4 Dead could have been a zombie-themed chat room and it still would have been fun. Try to type anything in game, however, and you’ll discover the reason for the game’s title: it is a terrifying, exhilarating, utterly bonkers chunk of multiplayer mayhem.

The premise is simple: survive.

With sparsely scattered safe rooms the only place to hide, everywhere else is infested with the speedy, hiveminded ‘Infected’. Your objective is to get

from one safe room to the next without being chewed on or mashed into a small red puddle.

Left 4 Dead’s presentation is immediately striking. The Infected are fantastically realised, shambling about and fighting one another until they become alerted to your presence and they sprint head-on at you, arms flailing and teeth bared.

Ambient music alters depending on the dangers ahead: aside from adding to the tension, it’s particularly helpful when a large horde of Infected is approaching as it gives a fleeting moment for players to form a defence before they are slaughtered.

Dynamic sound is part of a larger mechanic assessing the progress of the players, constantly throwing up new obstacles in an attempt to catch them off-guard like a sudden rush of zombies or unleashing one of the Special Infected. These are five boss-like zombies; Hunters leap about like a cat with its arse on fire, while the lumbering bag of sinew that is the Tank will drain your health bar faster than bank share

prices if you get too close.

Everything in Left 4 Dead is geared towards teamwork. When a player runs out of health they are incapacitated, and must be helped to their feet by a teammate before they bleed to death. Certain situations require organisation in order to succeed, particularly the final battles. One scenario saw my team awaiting rescue at a riverside cabin, when an enormous horde swarmed in from all directions. Hastily, we retreated to the top floor. This funnelled the Infected through a narrow stairwell into which we threw pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails.

This strategy worked well until a Tank smashed through a window and swiftly redecorated the cabin with our various body parts.

Working together with three close friends is when Left 4 Dead is at its best. In contrast the solo experience, while perfectly playable, just isn’t as much fun. This is in part because the computer-controlled Survivors are even more brain-dead than the zombies, often lagging behind and getting stuck in the scen-

ery. They are decent enough shots, but the experience just isn’t the same without three friends by your side swearing hysterically. A special mention should be given to the insane ‘Versus’ mode, pitching the four Survivors against four players controlling the Special Infected. The result is a mad dash to each safe room as the Survivors try to avoid the carefully planned ambushes of the Infected. This extra mode adds significantly to the lifespan of the game, though bizarrely only two of the game’s five campaigns can be played in Versus mode.

Left 4 Dead makes you feel like part of a world gone horribly wrong.

This idea is epitomised in the graffiti of other survivors scribbled inside the safe rooms. One amusing scrawl stated ‘we are the real monsters,’ beneath which was inscribed ‘you are a real moron.’ At its putrid heart, Left 4 Dead is simple, messy fun. Rife with comical moments whether intentional or player-created, often while knee-deep in the dead, Left 4 Dead is the twisted paragon of cooperative gaming.

02/12/08

TV 23

www.studentnewspaper.org

Dawn of the Dull

It’s the end of the world, not that anyone would really notice the difference Survivors BBC One

by James Ellingworth

Throughout human history, the apocalypse has generally been imagined to be a fairly exciting event. From Medieval paintings of judgement day, full of devils leering over cauldrons of boiling oil, to the visceral 28 Days Later, depictions of the end of the world haven’t tended to lack drama.

Viewed in terms of this tradition, Survivors is worth watching for the simple reason that they’ve managed to make the apocalypse look, quite frankly, a bit boring.

Firstly, the disaster itself.

Everyone just gets the flu, goes a bit clammy, and keels over politely, doing their best not to get in anyone’s way. It’s all very British.

Some people are immune to this pandemic and they don’t die. And that’s that. No zombies, explosions

Do you think you could you survive the Survivors? or chases – in fact, no drama of any description.

The survivors stand about to a soundtrack of mournful, droning piano, looking a bit confused. Their blank stares mostly seem to reflect their surprise that they don’t really

have anything to do, especially now that the dead haven’t got back up and started on their expected highprotein diet.

The first episode’s ten-minute closing scene (stretched out with yet more dirge-like piano) basically

Exorcise your rights

boils down to: “I want some milk in my tea, but all the milk’s going off now and everyone I know is dead.

I’d still like some milk, though. I’ve heard it comes out of cows, we could get one of those.”

Survivors’ vision of Armageddon

isn’t only bland, it’s surprisingly female-friendly. What plot there is concerns a mother searching for her lost son, and the obligatory rugged male leads are neutered by silly roles. One just wants to settle down, another is a playboy who becomes a father figure to a young boy, and the ‘criminal psychopath’ character is played by a fugitive from the fluorescent high-camp dross that is Hotel Babylon. Enough to snuff out any lingering embers of credibility.

Survivors, therefore, is for anyone who wants to watch the world end with minimal fuss, some emotional bonding and minor piano chords. It is in fact, so unique, that I think it has only one conceivable use.

If ever your granny asks to see 28 Days Later, show her this.

There’s no nasty eye-gouging, it’s marginally less exciting than overcooked peas, and you can even enjoy a nice scone as you vegetate to the ever-present sound of that mournful bloody piano.

Wack or Jack?

Helen Harjak wonders what posessed the BBC

Jen Blyth gives the Jacksons one more chance

Satan! Exorcists! Steamroom Skinning! It’s all in an hour long episode if it is Apparitions you happen to be watching.

Written by Joe Ahearne, the new BBC horror-drama has been hyped as one of the goriest and most controversial TV productions of recent times. We follow Father Jacob (Martin Shaw, who apparently insisted on playing an exorcist), who is considered somewhat of a maverick in the Vatican, trying to establish Mother Teresa’s sainthood and performing exorcisms whilst Satan brays after his soul.

However, the horror isn’t particularly impressive, resulting mostly in crying blood and ‘scary’ voices from Hell. As for the controversy, the story lingers on the boundaries of offence leaving the viewers to question what sort of morality is being presented.

Perhaps there is no morality, after all, it is a supernatural TV

Tito Jackson: a man of many hats

series where anything could happen. Although when it does, it certainly seems to make some dubious points. The Catholic Church is depicted as a hotbed of intrigues and conspiracies in a belatedly fashionable manner following Dan Brown and other copycat authors.

Atheists who read Richard Dawkins and watch Jerry Springer are apparently particularly prone to being possessed. A young Catholic priest candidate, who is refused his vocation and then, predictably, ventures into a gay sauna, is skinned alive by a homeless man who happens to be possessed by a demon. A former prisoner of Auschwitz makes a pact with Satan to survive. It’s just the meat and potatoes of any midweek occult-drama.

Although some of the blame is circumvented by Father Jacob when he admits he has read Dawkins and is compassionate

Father Jacob likes DRINK, GIRLS and...wait, wrong programme...

towards the young priest, it’s not about what is being said but what actually happens in the plot. There might be a revelation at the end of the six-part series to help clear the message behind this crooked puzzle. Until then we can just wait for the fourth episode which features Father Jacob’s visit to an

Featuring dialogue like: ‘You have a talent for exorcism.

Use it.’ the show seems to aim for an agenda of setting the fight between good and evil abortion clinic.

The problem is, Apparitions takes itself too seriously. Despite the diligently performed dialogue, along the lines of ‘You have a talent for exorcism. Use it’ and dramatic music, the show seems to aim for an earnest agenda of depicting the fight between the good and evil. If it included any intentional frivolity the outcry for political correctness would be quite irrelevant but everything textually ridiculous remains undermined by the insistently realistic setting. It wouldn’t hurt to cheer things up a little.

I wonder if they’re going to do a Christmas special, including a possessed Santa perhaps?

‘The Freak Circus Comes to Town’ shrieks The Daily Express as Tito reads on impassively. After living in Los Angeles for most of their lives, The Jacksons Are Coming. This C4 documentary chronicles their remarkable decision to move to Appledore, a small village in Devon. Ultimately, of course, it is not the location that matters so much as their obvious desire to seek some kind of grounded normality.

The show is a difficult watch: the more you see of the family, the more endearing they become. Aided by Jane Preston’s sympathetic narration, you’ll want to feed them biscuits before the end credits. The media may have branded them strange but Preston’s documentary has cleverly subverted this idea, capturing the lunacy surrounding the family rather than any inherent madness from within.

Matt Fiddes is the pony-tailed owner of a chain of martial arts clubs and after this documentary, the recipient of a slew of hate mail.

He organises the security team for

the Jacksons and covertly leaks their whereabouts to the press. As a result of his underhand tactics the family stand, bizarrely, in front of Boots as photographers snap away and politely greet baffled locals who have dressed sports-casual for the occasion. The depressing British greyness is a far cry from the palm-tree groves of Los Angeles, and you have to wonder: is this really normality for the Jacksons?

As a documentary, it fails to steer away from some obvious ploys.

Preston tells us that the elderly Mrs Jackson is uncomfortable with the rapacious paparazzi. ‘Sometimes you don’t trust anyone,’ she says as the camera glares over at an oblivious, unbearably evil, and no doubt scheming Matt.

If anything, it is a touching lesson in how the glory associated with fame and fortune is nothing but an illusion. As one of Tito’s posters of the band says, they were just kids with a dream. Sadly, that dream was achieved too long ago and its repercussions have become nightmarish.

24 Lifestyle

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

Down in the Dumpster Julia Sanches explores the trendy new philosophy of ‘freeganism’, where eating garbage and raiding dumpsters is the height of cool that will go to costly lengths to prevent people from stealing their waste. They might secure the bins and fence them in, hiring security guards to watch over their rubbish and compromising the food by spilling blue dye on it, in the hope that skippers will be deterred.

And just to clarify, yes, skipping is illegal; shops’ waste is considered to be their private property until it gets delivered to the tip. Now, let’s not get hung up on the fact that this private property of theirs is rubbish, literally, metaphorically, or in any way you’d like it to be.

The truth is that shops are far too aware of the ethical can of worms that the prosecuting of skippers would eventually pry open. How dare they, those skippers, how dare they eat this food that we no longer want! How dare they recycle the plastic and cardboard that our unwanted food is packaged in!

Surely, if they weren’t diving in our bins, they’d most certainly be in our shops buying the food.

Freeganism, however, is not a solution. As far as solutions go, Freeganism would have to be

F

ree-gan-ism: If you tear the word apart, syllable by syllable, you’ll still find that you won’t be much more enlightened than you were a couple of seconds ago. It’s not a word of tradition, it’s a new phenomenon, spawned from the capitalist womb.

Someone came up with a clever play on words that compiled “free”, as in no money, liberated etc. and “vegan” (which means no animal products at all) and then stuck an “ism” on the end. It is an ethically charged word, a political statement.

But only if you understand the whole scope of the term, because the word itself is only half of any meaning at all.

Being Freegan means living by spending as little money as possible, or no money at all. However, it doesn’t mean living cheaply for the sake of living cheaply; Freegans aren’t stingy people who glorify their stinginess by slyly turning it into a political movement. It is living cheaply as a political statement; it is spending little to nothing on food by salvaging trade waste and then dedicating the time that needn’t be spent working to pay for said food in creating community projects. It’s trading skills instead of paper and pennies, swapping clothes instead of buying the latest fashion from Topshop or H&M because, let’s face it, those shops are cheap for a reason. It’s getting from A to B and leaving as little a carbon footprint as possible. It’s dodging an inundation

of advertising. It’s either just plain recycling or using recyclable materials for creative projects. In other words, it’s optimising what other people deem obsolete, and by so doing, living both within and without a system that is, sadly, allpervasive. It’s going Green with a twist.

It may still sound like Freeganism is essentially a form of glamorous laziness, scavenging other people’s labour under the guise of politics because really they just can’t be bothered to get a job. And in some fairly skewed way, Freegans are

“In Britain alone, 17 million tonnes of food goes into landfills every year, 4 million of which is perfectly good to eat” dependent on the system they challenge. However, there’s only so much that can be done from the inside. It is difficult to conceive of a society in which everyone lives off waste. It’s paradoxical, even. Being Freegan is not a movement towards absolutes, it is not an attempt to enforce an ideology on everyone, but more of an attempt to live as ethically as possible in a system that is consumer driven.

It is a way of bringing to light how illogical it is to produce a demand for goods that, at the end of the day, are chucked away. Let’s face the facts - we’re no longer

dealing with consumerism as we know it, but over consumption.

Over consumption which leads to overproduction, which leads to more and more unnecessary waste.

Skippers, dumpster-divers, binraiders, etc. generally have the reputation of being something akin to scavengers, jumping into dumspters, swimming in rotten vegetables and waste juice.

However, if you consider the amount of packaged food that will go into bins, you’ll come to see how they are mostly swimming in otherwise recyclable materials, such as plastic and cardboard packaging that we might hope shops would have the decency to recycle, just as most households do.

In Britain alone, 17 million tonnes of food goes into landfills every year, 4 million of which is perfectly good to eat; and it is estimated that by 2016, Britain will run out of landfill space. Shops, from the independent ones to M&S and Scotmid, have to bin all food that has passed its sell-by date. Yet, there’s a curious gap between the sell-by and use-by date that makes most of the food they chuck still edible. And this is only one of the reasons why such a large quantity of perfectly digestible food gets chucked everyday.

Certain shops will throw their food into unlocked bins, probably knowing that skippers will raid them as soon as the doors are locked and the lights are out. On the other hand, there are shops

inciting change to be one.

And skipping is not without its problems. Just like most trends that start with a political purpose, it has become fashionable; where more vulnerable people, i.e. people who actually need the food, would skip for meals, Freegans and skippers have become a middle-class phenomenon. Although Freeganism is not, strictly speaking, a solution, neither is it without its merits.

It is more of a personal choice than a pro-active change provoking lifestyle. Maybe the next step is to stop shirking around in the shadows (of dumpsters, undeniably) and finally get conglomerates to open that afore mentioned ethical can of worms and face the facts: while they are chucking away tonnes of fit for feasting food, there are millions in Britain alone who can’t afford to buy healthy meals.

Even now, with the recession, the (ironic) trend is that the cheaper goods get bought in shops and the luxury items go to skippers. Essentially, plans need to be devised so that their waste and others’ food be fairly distributed.

Mairi Inglis

02/12/08

Lifestyle 25

www.studentnewspaper.org

All I want for Christmas

Is there such a thing as an ultimate Christmas wish list? Maddie Walder says yes...

S

o here we go: It’s time to jump aboard the Christmas train, and affirmative, I know it’s only just December. I’m sorry folks, but duty calls - my tinsel is sparkling, my advent calender is awaiting and my goose (cough) is getting fat. However, I am now rolling towards my 21st Christmas, and, like most fledgling scrooges, am getting a little bored of the ‘same shit, different season’ pressies that crop up annually, increasingly hideous every year. So, rather than bracing myself for the usual pile of ill-patterned tights, dodgy CDs and those god damn bath bubbles, I have devised a jolly good, if slightly metaphorical, list of my top ten Christmas fantasies... Bye bye lump of coal...

1

Smiling staff in the Union cafes. Is this really so much to ask? Just a smile? A glimmer of hope? A nod of acknowledgement to send you on your merry way?

The library cafe is my home from home, a home where I want to be loved! I once asked for a fork to eat my packed lunch salad, promising, ‘I won’t steal it!’, wide-eyed and earnest. The response was simple.

‘No. ’Cause then we’ll have to wash it.’ Unbelievable. I ate my tuna with my fingers. The social consequences were painful.

2

More than one copy of each book in the library. Alright,

I’m aware that this is a cliché student niggle, but the number of times I’ve trudged to the fourth floor in search of that coveted, yet elusive little number topping the reading list for Essay 2, only to find that the computer has lied, the shelf is empty, all hope is gone. ..Worse still is the gap where the book once sat, so perfect and so whole, which now mockingly points you in the direction of Blackwell’s.

Why is Edinburgh full of freaks?

And am I one of them?

3

6

Capital punishment for bike vandals. As the (many) avid readers of Lifestyle will know, I have a passion for cycles. And when this passion is savagely undercut by the cruelty of jealous on-lookers, I cannot hide my heart-felt distress.

Unprovoked attacks on the innocent have always got my goat, but when two wheels and a metal frame are thrown into the equation, I reach my limit. String ‘em up, I say, and let it be a lesson to all.

4

Larger numbers of eligible members of the opposite sex.

5

Compulsory Spontaneous combustion for all those ‘sexy santas’. Spare us from the sight of half naked girls screaming outside the clubs and pubs all Christmas round. They clog up my pleasure sensors, with their teeny weeny shorts and fluffy tuffy hair. Get back to the North Pole!

A mute button for the spoilt brats of the 21st century.

What is it with the kids of today requesting an I-Pod and laptop on their Crimbo list? We remember the days when we got oranges for Christmas, and we were grateful.

Santa does not have electricity, kiddo.

7

The end of the English/ Scottish divide. I was recently subjected to an unwarranted verbal attack for my nationality. Britain is a free country guys - less of the hatred please, and that goes out

Quiz Time Across 1. Comes as a pair, and you will always get this for Christmas.

(5) 4. Find me in a tree. (8) 6. ts fun to make your own, and you’ll save a small fortune. (4) 9. Spicy alcoholic beverage. (6,4).

11. This poor bird should watch itself. (6) 13. Sweetened dairy based beverage (6) 15. Rhymes with Joel. (5) 16. A cunning female that shares her name with a famous helper of Santa. (5) 19. Simpson’s pet. (6,6,6) 21. Annoying sound familiar to Christmas adverts. (6) 22. Russian Santa Claus. (6,5) 24. Traditional Scottish song that hardly anyone knows the lyrics to. (4,4,4) 25. Kisses (9) 26. A game you may play with your drunk uncle on Christmas day. (5) 27. Christmas lost in New York City (4,5) Down 1. It’s not a woman, but it certainly is as frosty as one. (4,3) 2. Songs of praise. (5,7) 3. Winter sport (3,7) 5. Dickens character infamously hated Christmas. (8,7) 7. Merry Christmas. (8) 8. Frankfurter galore. (6,6) 10. Tune in on Christmas day (6,6) 12. It aint heavy, but its festive. (9,6) 14. Superstition that every one of these eaten would bring one month of luck in the year ahead. (5,4) 17. Japanese New Year. (9) 18. A snowman to be feared. (10) 20. Little helper. (3) 23. A sparkly garland. (6)

Last week’s answers...

1

5

P 6 T O A S T T T A E R R B 9 U C 11 B I K A S R 13 A L C C K

EclipseCrossword.com

2

3

E G T U Y 7 L I B M B R E A E R Y

4

G P L A N T E M O 8 S O N I C A 10 L L A S V T 12 I S R A E L A R O 14 O P O P W I I D 15 B U C K F A S T

to all races and nationalities. Hear this, abusive shop keeper - it’s not my fault your daughter didn’t get into Uni.

8

Payment for the first class writing we churn out every week here at Student. ’Cause, hey, if we have to do Christmas, it’s gonna cost. And, due to spending all our free time in this lovely office, rather than behind a bar, pennies are low. At the end of the day, if you can’t fight the festive shopping fever, may as well jump right in.

9 10

A nicer face. Life’s a hoot if you’re cute. Fact.

And finally, for everyone to just chill out and enjoy the festive season. Here at Lifestyle, we despise the way Britain goes bonkers for the month of December.

It’s time to calm down. Take note, Walder family - no tears on Jesus’ birthday. And on that parting shot, Merry Christmas, everyone.

Easy

Hard

26 Sport

02/12/08

www.studentnewspaper.org

Recipe May the best man win Brett Heasman looks ahead to the race between two of Britain’s best sportsmen for disaster? T Ed Senior

w

ith the recent, horrible events in India taking place last week, should the English cricket team pull out of the country and refuse to play-out the remainder of their tour there? Especially with the attacks being aimed at British and American people, is it even safe enough to stay?

Well, as you can image, the players themselves are worried about their safety and the team has flown home. But despite this, they have been told the test matches in India will still go ahead. However, Kevin Pieterson has suggested that no players will be forced to return to play. Yet, whether you play at a grassroots level or represent your country on the international stage, sport’s separate identity from world issues has always been a major plus point.

But increasingly people are starting to see some benefits in using sport for more then just a means of enjoyment for the masses. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that sport has been caught up in the wave of commercialism that has swept the globe. Reaping in great profits with world class players for some, whilst others face bankuptcy. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on whether you speak to a Chelsea or Leeds fan. Commercialism is not the only intruder as sport is becoming more and more political.

The English cricket team toured Zimbabwe in 2004 only after the ban on British journalists not being allowed in the country was lifted.

The reason England cannot pull out of India is because this may lead to countries refusing to come to England for the World Twenty/20 that is being held next year. They are not saying that this will rid the tournament of some of the world’s best players, simply that countries would refuse to come because politically the countries don’t get on.

So should sport and politics stand apart? Not entirely, but it should at least try and remain a separate identity so that sport can be the escape from everyday life that so many of us see it as.

As soon as politics become involved it ends up being the fans who miss out on seeing their heros in action and for sport to continue to flourish in this country, it must remain accessable to all who wish to enjoy it.

hey are the epitome of British sporting success. Yet, despite their vast achievements, it seems there is still one thing left for Lewis Hamilton and Chris Hoy to conquer. Each other.

On December 14th 2008, they will race at Wembley stadium. The event organiser, Fredrik Johnson, is pitching this as the ultimate battle of man vs machine, but it’s more likely to be the battle of the Somme.

Two questions are worth considering carefully. How has this remarkable situation materialised and what can either sportsman hope to gain from such a radical juxtaposition?

The spectacle itself is intended to be an amusing warm-up act to a larger event known as the ‘Race of Champions’ happening on the same day, with competitors such as Michael Schumacher and Sebastien Loeb taking part. But F1 and rally drivers are of the same discipline, whereas Hamilton and Hoy are like chalk and cheese. Is spectator value alone enough to reduce our top sportsmen to crowd-pleasing acts? Despite being an overwhelming underdog, Hoy is remarkably pragmatic, commenting: “I can kick out about two and a half brake horsepower so that’s not going to quite match his car, but I think they’ll make the race as close as possible and I’ll be giving it absolutely everything”.

What small coincidence it is that the same day is also the date for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Furthermore, in an uncommonly rich year of sporting success, Hamilton and Hoy are arguably the front-

runners for the award. Amongst the plethora of medallists from Beijing, Hoy and Rebecca Adlington are in the running for the award. Hamilton meanwhile captured the F1 crown with Hollywood-scripted panache.

Could this stunt therefore be an attempt to widen their public appeal prior to the BBC’s award? Fredrik Johnson’s scheme was concocted purely out of a wish to see “Britain’s two best racers battle it out to be an ultimate champion”.

Besides, Hamilton and Hoy are top athletes and have little left to prove in their sports. Why would a television broadcaster’s award compel them to such extremes? Well, one only has to look at the list of past winners to see the countless icons that have become cornerstones of national pride. Due to its unique exposure and tradition, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year carries all the gravitas of a public knighthood. If Hamilton and Hoy are partaking in profile boosting schemes in the subsequent runup to the ceremony, who can blame them? To win the award would be to cement their place in history.

However, if this was purely the case then why are other nominees not taking similar action? Why is Adlington not racing the QE2 or Joe Calzaghe boxing the CERN Hadron Collider? The answer may lie in the fact that both Hamilton and Hoy have potential hurdles that could undo their chances of winning the coveted BBC prize. Hamilton should have claimed the F1 title in his rookie season, and only clinched this year’s championship courtesy of an

aquaplaning Timo Glock. Hoy meanwhile will have to battle any Scottish prejudice that exists in a largely English dominated vote. That said, Calzaghe did win last year and the profile of cycling has certainly risen to a near mainstream sport since the Olympics.

Either way, whether fun or careerenhancing propaganda, it is the public that are the real winners. They are the ones who will revel in the sport stars’ success as if it were their own and take delight as their idols scramble around for a piece of immortality.

EYE ON THE PRIZE: Hoy will be looking to add another gong to his collection

Edinburgh edge out Abertay Men’s Rugby University of Edinburgh 2nd University of Abertay 1st

8 0

Alistair Shand Edinburgh University’s 2nd XV earned a convincing victory over Abertay in their latest clash at Peffermill. A heavier Abertay pack looked as though it may cause Edinburgh problems as the visitors enjoyed all the early territory but the home side defended stubbornly.

The home side first ventured into the Abertay half after five minutes as slick passing allowed the wingers to run the ball into the away team’s 22.

From a resultant scrum Edinburgh launched an attack as a low kick was touched down under the posts by a retreating Abertay back It was obvious from the outset that Edinburgh would adopt a running style to create try-scoring opportunities and rely on their wingers to

unlock the away defence. Meanwhile Abertay were far more content to play mauling rugby and use their weight advantage to push over the line.

Edinburgh’s style was far more effective and provided several opportunities to score but errors were made.

However, Edinburgh would not have to wait long for the first points of the game and these came via the boot.

Impressive work by home forwards forced a penalty, which Edinburgh’s fly half duly converted for a 3-0 lead.

The remainder of the half saw Edinburgh continuing to pass the ball well across the field and break the line several times. Nevertheless, at the end of the first period the advantage was slender at 3-0. Based on territory alone Edinburgh’s lead was richly deserved.

The conditions at Peffermill at half time failed to hamper the Ed-

inburgh backs who maintained their momentum from the first half. An enormous kick from Edinburgh’s full back found touch metres before the Abertay try line, giving the hosts a perfect staging point for an assault.

However, the line out was contested well by Abertay and the danger averted.

The best chance for the visitors came midway through the second period by way of an intercepted pass.

However, Edinburgh backs were alert to the danger and chased back to prevent the winger reaching the ten metre line.

Edinburgh continued to control the tempo of the game and their standoff did well to draw a penalty barely five metres inside the Abertay half. From the penalty Edinburgh went for the posts but the effort proved speculative and the kick lacked length to threaten increasing the lead.

As the match moved into the final

ten minutes both teams scrapped hard in the loose earth to try and build some momentum. This resulted in hectic rugby in the midfield amid which neither Edinburgh nor Abertay could maintain possession.

However, despite this untidy spell Edinburgh found the energy reserves for one last siege on the Abertay line.

From a scrum on the visitor’s 22 metre line Edinburgh’s scrum half scooped up the ball and drove through a gap in the defensive line. After dodging two tackles he was not to be denied and duly crossed the line for an 8-0 advantage.

The resulting kick was sent wide but nevertheless Edinburgh had enjoyed a good win over the Abertay 1st team and the last gasp try added a welcome gloss to the score line.

Their focus on playing running rugby served them well and ensured that the heavier Abertay pack could not gain the upper hand in the game.

02/12/08

Sport 27

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Edinburgh punches big Michael Klimes reports from the boxing club’s annual fight night In his classic account of boxing in 1950s America The Sweet Science, A.J. Liebling, a journalist par excellence, made the observation that boxing will always exist in some form among those who have the urge to see other people punch each other in the head. The crowd which came to Teviot Debating Hall to watch Edinburgh University Amateur Boxing Club’s annual show last Thursday were a testament to Liebling’s common sense. They were treated to a number of exhilarating bouts.

The first fight was between Edinburgh’s Dave Smylie and Steve Nichol in the light heavyweight category.

Smylie is an elegant boxer who landed good jabs in the opening round as he controlled the pace of the contest.

Although he won the round comfortably, Nichol made things competitive by scoring with a potent right hand early on. For the rest of the fight, Nichol forced his way onto the inside and made it more of a brawl. Smylie was successful with his right uppercut in the second round but Nichol levelled it with the bigger punches.

The third was close again. Nevertheless, Smylie did enough to secure a well deserved unanimous decision.

The next fight was very lopsided as Gimmy Steyl took on Florian de Beauffort from Aberdeen University. Beauffort was introduced as the ‘‘Belgian Beast from Brussels.’’ Unfortunately for Beauffort, his boxing style was not synonymous with his nick name and Steyl hammered the Belgian comprehensively with jarring hooks and upper cuts. During the second and third rounds, the

pace of the fight decreased visibly yet de Beauffort found some inspiration as he delivered a spirited counter-attack toward the end of the third that put Steyl on the ropes. However, he did not have the punching power to capitalise on his brief fortune and Steyl’s victory was impressive.

Strathclyde University’s Derek Robson encountered Edinburgh’s Neil Johnstone next. Robson’s hand speed and the precision of his punching gave Johnstone a degree of trouble but not enough to justify the referee stopping the fight so prematurely. The ruling against Johnstone was confused as it took a long time to be formulated. Even so, Johnstone’s punches were a little too roundhouse when compared to Robson’s and that is what caused Johnstone to be beaten to the punch on many occasions.

In one of the most entertaining bouts of the evening Freya Beamish from Edinburgh took on Katy Aitken from Aberdeen University. Both of these ladies were making their debuts but one would not notice due to the quality of the fighting. It was an encounter that was bound to be fun: Beamish was the tall and rangy boxer determined to control the distance with a jab and right hand and fight in a rhythm. Aitken was short and stocky, looking to get in close and throw punches in stinging clusters. Aitken had a lot of energy but Beamish did well to make it her type of fight in the first round with a cracking jab and competent marksmanship. She bloodied Aitken’s nose and put her in a corner. However,

HHter Terry

James Pope

Neil Hodgins

Aitken reminds us of somebody like Joe Frazier or Henry Armstrong, a fighter who has perpetual motion and never stops throwing leather.

She went after Beamish and there was nothing Beamish could do apart from punch with Aitken on the inside. In the third, Aitken came out swinging and Beamish had to muster all her resilience to make it through.

This she did and she won a split decision.

The following bout between Calum Johnstone and Gareth Fuller from Aberdeen University was a very technical fight with the irritating occurrence that his head guard

Neil Hodgins

ON THE INSIDE: Edinburgh’s captain Mark Shotter looks to pierce the guard

kept falling off during the first round.

During the second and third rounds both looked to land accurate jabs and right hands. Johnstone did well to penetrate Fuller’s guard in parts but could have done more work to the body. As a result, the judges scored the bout as a majority decision for Fuller.

The next fight was a travesty as Steve Shields fought Mike Atkinson of Strathclyde University and lost a split decision when he clearly won the fight. Shields boxed very well in the first and second rounds where he was faster, the more accurate puncher, more powerful and simply the superior fighter. It was only in the third round where Atkinson was competitive since the fight became more of a close range affair. Even if Atkinson was awarded that round, the judges were wrong in their overall deliberations. What they were thinking during their reflections is open to debate but the actual winner of the bout, Steve Shields, is not.

Edinburgh’s Hamish Crerar and Aberdeen’s Jim Johnstone had a tactical fight themselves where they fought at the distance. Crerar was a little too square on at times and perhaps this contributed to him being beaten to the punch and gave him less mobility in parts of the bout.

Nevertheless, he did land his share of punches and the closeness of the bout was reflected in the split decision the judges awarded to Jim Johnston.

The last two bouts were between them the fights of the evening. Ian Mack fought Cammie Hunter in a bout that should be remembered

for a long time. Hunter was an extremely aggressive and wild swinging brawler who did not care how many times he was hit and possessed exceptional perseverance. However, he met a man who was more than his equal in Mack who had to weather many barrages of punches to unleash his own carefully thought out blows.

This is not to say that Hunter did not land hurtful shots but Mack demonstrated guile and guts by being able to maintain his composure in the face of such a tough minded and rugged adversary. The judges gave Mack a unanimous decision.

Mark Shotter, captain of Edinburgh University’s boxing team and Stephen Brewster of Stewarts Melville Amateur Boxing Club produced an excellent fight themselves.

Brewster attempted to use his height and range to keep Shotter at the end of his punches but he was unable to do so as Shotter demonstrated clever head movement, blocking and body punching to slow his opponent down. The crowd really got into the fight as none of Brewster’s supporters could not be heard. Brewster issued Shotter with a very stern test as they had numerous memorable exchanges and the importance of the victory was evident in Shotter’s heartfelt celebration.

Again, Fight Night proved to be a tremendous success as a sell out crowd was in attendance and contributed to the wonderful atmosphere during the evening. A sizable contingent of the fans and fighters went to the after party at Medina where the celebrations continued. A.J. Liebling would have been proud.

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Week 11 02.12.2008

Jitsu club fight their way to second place Andreas Lerch and Natalie Salvesen report from the Jitsu Foundation Atemi Nationals EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY Jitsu Club performed well in The Jitsu Foundation (TJF) Atemi Nationals last weekend, a course and competition involving Jitsu clubs from all over the UK. Hundreds of people of all grades came to this annual event held in Telford to receive training from the best instructors in the country and to show off their Jitsu skills in a competitive environment.

This year Edinburgh was particularly successful and returned home with a clutch of medals. These along with the efforts of all competitors contributed to the award of overall second place in the Foundation’s competition, the club’s best result in recent years.

The club recorded several excellent results from the afternoon competitions with seven contestants reaching the finals to take place the following day. The Jitsu competitions are divided up according to the grade of the consetants and offer an opportunity to show off style as well as fighting proficiency. Each contestant runs a ‘gauntlet’, which involves the contestant walking between two lines of fighters of which any one person

can attack the contestant at any time. The contestant is expected to dispose of the attacker showing a high degree of style and finesse.

The second phase of the competition features a ‘V’ in which the contestant faces two lines of people who rush in to attack them one after the other in short intervals. In this slightly more frantic setting the contestant has to simply dispose of these attackers quickly and effectively. This is all overlooked by a panel of judges who decide which contestant shows off the best Jitsu.

The competition finals were held on Sunday afternoon following training and the results were spectacular across the board.

Alana Lean came second in the highly competitive novice category featuring around 250 entrants; a truly magnificent achievement.

Chris McEnulty also qualified for the finals and made it into the top ten. In the Orange Belt category, Seamus Pablo Finlayson and Mungo Frost made it to the finals with Frost taking fourth place in his first ever competition.

Jonathan Barkey came fourth in the Green Belt competition in only his second Atemi nationals compe-

tition. Edinburgh also had two finalists in the Dark Blue Belt category, Andreas Lerch and Robert Morgan.

Unfortunately Robert Morgan, a bronze medalist last year, was unable to participate due to inju-

ries sustained the previous day.

However, Andreas displayed some of his best Jitsu to date and was able to take the gold in an intense final, featuring a playoff for first place.

The club is now looking forward

to the next Nationals event, the Randoori Nationals in March. Afer such a successful event in Telford, the club will be looking to carry this performance into that and future competitions.

V FOR VENDETTA: Alana Lean begins her gauntlet, then faces a ‘V’ of attacks from skilled fighters

Edinburgh record second league win of season Men’s Football University of Edinburgh Lothian Thistle

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Matthew Riley THE UNIVERSITY of Edinburgh moved up to eighth place in the East of Scotland Premier League after disposing of Lothian Thistle at Peffermill.

Edinburgh were trapped in their own half in the opening spell as the visitors demonstrated the passing ability and skill that had taken them to third in the league. Mark Tait’s uncertainty in the goal spread through the defence, who scrambled countless probing balls clear. Edinburgh’s lack of composure looked as though it would cost them, but a breakaway put the home side ahead against the run of play. Peder Beck-Friss, who had come in for the injured Michael Hazeldine, cut in and forced the Lothian keeper to push away his

venomous drive only as far Ryan MacIntosh who bundled the ball over the line. This goal helped Edinburgh settle down and, with the presence of the experienced Neil Irvine and classy Jamie Redman in central midfield, began to exert some control.

With Redman linking up the play and acting as the driving force, Edinburgh tested the goalkeeper with several efforts.

However, in the tenth minute their momentum was abruptly halted by the injury suffered by Ruaridh Scott.

Victim of a slide challenge with studs showing, Scott was in intense pain and it took seven minutes to move the stricken player from the field.

As a result, the side lost their focus, which was brutally exposed in the 21st minute, as Thistle’s Dickson floated through the midfield and drove a 25 yard shot into the top right hand corner. The 1-1 score line lasted only two minutes however, as Redman took a hold of the game and

took a optimistic shot from 20 yards out, which took a huge deflection, leaving the Thistle goalkeeper on the ground as the ball bobbled teasingly past. The nature of the goal made Redman almost too embarrassed to celebrate.

With a renewed focus and an increased incentive for victory, Edinburgh proved hard to break down.

Thistle’s endeavours earned little, bar a few hopeful shots which were easily dealt with by Tait in the Edinburgh goal. At the other end, Edinburgh were still looking threatening, with both Scott Fusco and Redman going close through a drive and a volley respectively. With minutes left until half time, Ryan MacIntosh should have extended Edinburgh’s lead, but his weak effort was blocked by the keepers legs. The home side did add a third in injury time however as Ally McKinnon shrugged off two challenges to coolly side foot the ball into the net. At 3-1 Edinburgh

were firmly in control, with such a commanding lead causing ructions amongst the visitors.

After the half time interval the visitors came out with a clear attacking intent, with the players streaming forward at every opportunity. Their increased enthusiasm earned little as the few opportunities created were wasted. On the hour mark, Beck-Friss should have made it 4-1 but poor composure in front of goal meant the keeper easily fended off his shot.

Over the next 15 minutes, opportunities were few and far between, but those that did open up were poorly executed by Thistle, whose increasing desperation was reflecting in rash efforts. However, in the 75th minute they pulled the score back to 3-2 with a drive through a crowded box eluding Tait. As the darkness descended on Peffermill, doubt began to spread through the Edinburgh team, who faced the prospect of an onslaught from the physically supe-

rior visitors. However, the university stood strong and withstood the intense pressure. The visitors began to look clueless and ran out of ideas as to how to penetrate the highly committed Edinburgh defence.

In the final minutes, Edinburgh broke away, with a quick sweeping counter attack clinically finished by Gordon Milne, whose shot caused wild celebrations in the home dug out.

Manager Dougie Samuel was justly proud of his team: “After we survived the opening 20 minutes, I thought in the first half we played very well.

“I thought we were comfortable in the second half and Stephen Thompson was magnificent at the heart of our defence.”

On Ruaridh Scott, Samuel commented: “He’s stable, It doesn’t look like it’s a break but it does look like the muscle has come away from the bone.”