Week 3 - The Student - 20082009

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You are being watched

Week 3 07.10.2008

Students force Topshop off campus Lee Bunce

Julia Sanches

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU: Some students have been alarmed by the number of CCTV cameras in the city

Biggest ever increase in CCTV cameras across Edinburgh George Square most camera-concentrated area of the city Sarah Morrison STUDENTS ARE now being watched more than ever as Edinburgh sees the largest annual increase in CCTV cameras in its history.

In the last year, 40 new closedcircuit television cameras have been introduced around the city and 15 on University-owned land - the highest number that either the city or the University have ever recorded in just one year.

With the second largest surveillance system in Scotland, Edinburgh now has over 830 cameras

scattering the city, with a further 220 CCTV cameras inside and outside University buildings and grounds.

When asked, some students said they were not aware of the number of CCTV cameras around University and seemed surprised about the recent increase.

“There should be more notices warning students of cameras, which would both alert us and act as a deterrent,” said Jessica Summer, a fourth year student at the University. “I think the whole thing at the moment is just too secretive.”

The University’s Security Division controls the hundreds of cameras on University property, and said that the equipment is used to protect students and not as a surveillance or spying tool.

“I am trying to keep staff and students safe and produce a safe working environment,” said Adam Conn, the chief security officer for the division. “I am certainly not

using the cameras to spy on people for the government, I just want to prevent and detect crime.”

Conn, who is ultimately responsible for all University-run CCTV, said the increased number of cameras is due to the construction of two new University buildings in Bristo Square.

“As more and more modern buildings are created for University purposes, there will be an increased expectation of more CCTV coverage”, he added.

While CCTV is used in all University property around the city, there are around 22 cameras

“the whole thing at the moment is too secretive” Jessica Summer, student

operating in and around George Square, the highest number in any concentrated area.

Conn said he could only remember 20 incidences where police may have used their CCTV footage over the years, but added that the cameras have helped stop incidences of theft on campus, identified wanted criminals and helped to put them in jail.

A local campaigner who opposes the idea of increased city surveillance said that we must question how long certain images are kept for, who can see them and to what ends they are used.

“It is the building up of information about each one of us that concerns me and the uncertainty about what ultimately happens to the data,” said John Welford, the Edinburgh coordinator for No2ID, a nationwide group opposed to the government’s planned ID card and National Identity Register.

Continued on page 3

TOPSHOP CANCELLED a promotional event on campus last week following protests from student campaign group People and Planet.

Topshop owners claimed they feared their staff would be put in danger by the activities of the student campaigners, a claim People and Planet have angrily refuted.

Amy Elderton, a spokesperson for the Arcadia group who own Topshop, told Student: ”Due to the reaction against the Topman activity that was at Edinburgh University the week before the Topshop activity was scheduled, we took advice from the University and through our University contacts and decided we didn’t want to put our staff in any danger by continuing with the T-shirt printing part of the activity. ”We have however continued giving out bags and water which has had a great reaction with Edinburgh University” Fiona Ranford, Event’s co-ordinator for People and Planet’s national working group, stated: “We have been nothing but peaceful in our approach to challenging Topshop’s supply chain practices. Their withdrawal reflects their fear of being asked difficult questions and having an unfavourable light shed on their brand, not some ungrounded fear of staff abuse.

“Students will continue to ask questions of retailers who can’t provide a serious plan to improve conditions and wages for exploited garment workers, soon Topshop will have to stop running and start answering. Students won’t be fooled or satisfied by token gestures.”

Topshop however have denied any wrong-doing in the production of their garments, saying “We make it clear at the beginning of our relationship with a supplier that we will not work with any factory that employs child labour. We believe every worker has the right to join a trade union, we support the principle of a living wage and with regards to the environment we have made significant progress on a number of fronts”.

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2 News

Student

Week 3 07.10.08

MI6 headhunts staff on Facebook Anne Miller MI6 HAS taken a step away from its secretive reputation and is encouraging new recruits through social networking site Facebook.

The new style of recruitment follows initial changes brought in last year when Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service decided to move towards a more open employment process with the intention of attracting a wider representation of society.

There are three adverts circulating on Facebook targeted at graduates, those looking for a career change and people with an interest in world events. The graduate advert reads: “Graduates of all ages can develop long-term careers as operational officers, collecting and analysing global intelligence.”

The official Secret Service website has a dedicated graduate section which states “Join us, and whether you take on a role running agents, translating vital intelligence or creating secure global communications networks, we can offer you a career like no other.”

They also state they are “serious about work/life balance.”

However MI6 were keen to stress that working for Her Majesty’s Secret Service is nothing like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Last year the head of MI6 recruitment, known only as ‘Mark’, said: “We don’t have a license to kill - we don’t carry Berettas that’s simply not true.”

Spooks, BBC1’s MI5 based drama, portrays an equally fictional account of life as a spy. When asked what they do for a living the characters typically reply ‘IT.’ It is therefore interesting to note that the two degrees the MI6 website lists as the most desirable for certain roles are “languages and IT.” In a further move towards a more open public image, an MI6 officer known as ‘John’ recently appeared on BBC1’s The One Show to talk about recruitment.

He insisted that spying is a far cry from the public perception – it is apparently more about “the ability to understand other people” than it is breaking, entering and seducing.

However, there were complications when ‘John’s’ false moustache began to slip off of his notably stiff upper lip. He had been wearing it for several hours and the studio

Sophie Johnson KEEPING A LOW PROFILE: MI6 operatives are probably rather careful with what they put in their ‘employment history’ section lights had weakened the glue. In the screened interview, ‘John’s’ voice is disguised and viewers cannot see his face.

Gone are the days when MI6

could hand-pick recruits from the nation’s brightest students and leading figures in the establishment.

Yet the moustache incident goes to show that some classic stereotypes

of the spy game are just too deeply ingrained to be forgotten.

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Scottish Tories incensed Recorded crime in Scotland plummets over university funding amid anger over newspaper leaks Neil Simpson IN A Student exclusive, Murdo Fraser, the Scottish Conservative shadow education minister, has spoken out against the dangers of SNP education funding cuts.

He adds his voice to a significant group, including Mark Ballard, Rector of the University of Edinburgh, expressing concerns

“There are concerns that Scottish institutions are falling behind their English counterparts” Murdo Fraser, Scottish Conservatives shadow education minister

about the future of Scottish higher education.

Fraser told Student that: “There are real concerns in the higher education sector that Scottish institutions are falling behind their English counterparts in terms of funding.”

He added that this would have “serious consequences for the future quality and reputation of Scottish universities.”

This is the first time that the Scottish Conservatives have voiced their disaffection with SNP policy in such strong terms.

The Scottish Conservative party has called for an independentlychaired review on the state of higher education in Scotland.

Fraser has expressed a desire to include a wide range of interested parties in the review.

He has however noted that it would be “unrealistic to expect large additional Government grants”, due to the recent financial turbulence.

In this respect the Scottish Conservatives dismissed Mark Ballard’s call for funding universities with an increased share of general taxation.

Last year Scotland’s university rectors called for an extra £168 million in government funding to keep pace with English and Welsh universities, yet disappointed to recieve just £40 million.

Fraser said that an independent review would be able to rectify the spending problem by looking into “other possible sources of income”.

Rectors from four of Scotland’s ‘ancient’ universities spoke out against the SNP’s funding deal in September, and will welcome the political pressure added by Fraser’s comments.

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Patrick Andelic RECORDED CRIME in Scotland is at its lowest level for more than 25 years, according to figures released last week by the Scottish Government.

In total, 385,509 crimes were reported over the last year, the first time that the figure has fallen below 400,000 since the early 1980s.

Overall, the 2007/08 period saw an 8 per cent fall in the official count of crimes committed in Scotland.

The statistics show that non-

419,257

Crimes reported in 2006/ 2007 sexual violent crime, including murder and attempted murder, has fallen by 9 per cent to 12,874, and drug offences fell 4 per cent to 40,746.

Sexual crimes have dropped 3 per cent to 6,552, and reported rapes or attempted rapes are down 6 per cent to 1,053.

Vandalism, including fire-raising and ‘malicious mischief’, are also down 9 per cent to 118,025.

However, new legislation introduced last June which made it illegal to solicit for the purposes of

prostitution has resulted in these types of crimes more than doubling, from 77 to 187.

Crime figures in the Lothian and Borders area emerged as the second highest of Scotland’s eight police forces, although the total number of crimes and offences, at 160,221, pales in comparison to Strathclyde’s 423,820.

Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill commented that these findings are further evidence that the SNP continues to deliver: “I welcome this evidence that there were tens of thousands fewer crimes and so tens of thousands fewer victims

385,509

Crimes reported over the last year during our first year in government.

“However, we’re committed to taking the action needed to drive down crime for the long term, not just for one year.”

However, some have argued that the figures are unrepresentative of the crime problem in Scotland.

The Scottish Crime Survey, which records data from victims, estimates that around 50% of crimes go unreported, a figure which has been confirmed by the Scottish Government.

It has also been noted that the statistics only give half the picture.

Minor crimes, such as breach of the peace, drunkenness, and minor assaults are not included because they are officially recorded as offences not crimes.

When these offences are included with the crime statistics the figure rises to 957,390.

A controversy has recently erupted after the statistics were leaked to a Sunday newspaper prior to their official release.

Scottish Labour has claimed that this could not have taken place without Mr. MacAskill’s knowledge, but government sources have hit back, denying the charge and announcing that an investigation into the leak was currently underway.

Jonathan Raynor, a fourth-year Music student commented: “Although the data seems to show that the SNP are making progress in government, I am always inclined to be sceptical when progress itself is based solely on statistics.”

The Scottish crime figures come after the Home Office announced that recorded crimes in England and Wales have dropped by 10 per cent, with a particularly large decrease in violent crime, according to the 2007/2008 British Crime Survey.

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Student

Week 3 07.10.08

News 3

Victory for student campaigners after drinking age protest MSPs vote against drinking age proposals 72 to 47 Students team up with politicians in opposition to plans Sara D’Arcy UNIVERSITY OF Edinburgh students and opposition politicians successfully put a halt to the SNP’s plans to increase the drinking age for off-sales alcohol after joining forces outside the Scottish Parliament last Thursday.

The protest saw a collection of young people and MSPs gathering outside the Parliament to display their opposition to the proposals.

Over 100 students joined forces with MSPs from several parties chanting “citizen, not criminal”.

The SNP launched their controversial approach to tackling alcohol misuse and alcohol-related crime by getting tough on the 1821 year-olds who they believe to be at the heart of the problem.

The Scottish Government’s Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill supported the policy stating that “we can no longer sit back and let alcohol misuse continue to take its shocking toll on our criminal justice system, health service and economy.”

The SNP remained defiant over the issue, claiming alcohol misuse costs Scotland’s taxpayers £2.25 billion each year.

This policy united students, young people and opposition parties against the plans. Mike Pringle, Liberal Democrat MSP

for Edinburgh South, said: “these proposals are a reactionary and misguided move by the SNP Government, designed to appear tough rather than solve the problem.”

He continued: “surely Scotland should not become a place where at age 18 you can bravely fight for your country, or vote in an election, but are not trusted to buy a bottle of wine to enjoy with friends over an evening meal or a couple of beers to watch the match with?”

Pringle’s stance was reflected in the parliamentary vote, in which 72 MSPs voted against the motion on Thursday evening, defeating the SNP’s 47 votes.

The plans have been effectively scuppered with little chance of them resurfacing during this legislative session.

Tom French, former EUSA sabbatical and co-ordinator of the Coalition Against Raising the Drinking Age in Scotland (CARDAS), submitted a 10,000 signature petition against the policy and led the protest at the Scottish Parliament. He labelled the SNP’s proposals as ‘daft and discriminatory’ and said the proposal is “a gimmick to make the SNP appear tough on crime and order.”

French later congratulated everyone who participated in the CARDAS campaign after the results from the debate were announced. Addressing supporters in a Facebook message, he stated that “We’ve won an overwhelming victory and it is down to each and every one of you. Thank you.”

Julia Sanches Contact news@studentnewspaper.org

SWEET EIGHTEEN: The protest outside the Scottish Parliament saw a strong turnout for the 9am demonstration

Students express concerns over privacy with CCTV on the rise Continued from front page According to the University Security Division, footage from the cameras is held between 7 and 14 days, and then is automatically erased from the database, in accordance with the Data Protection Act guidelines.

Cohn said that he has received requests from staff and university officials to look at data from time to time, but would not allow them to access footage without filing an official police complaint and filling

out the required police-authorised forms.

While University officials would not reveal the amount they spend each year on CCTV, the City of Edinburgh Council, who operate 180 CCTV cameras in the city, said they spent £1.5m to erect the 40 new cameras and spend at least £800,000 a year in equipment maintenance.

Most of the University’s CCTV footage is streamed into a central control room in Appleton Tower,

but unlike the City Council, they do not monitor footage continuously over 24-hour periods.

Both members of the Council and the University Security team said there had been talks to link their technology, so that they could track someone over the entire city; from its perimeters to university grounds.

In accordance with the Data Protection Act, all cameras around the city have signs warning of surveillance. While both council

and university officials said these might not always be seen by students, Cohn added that no student who is acting lawfully will be penalised by a camera’s footage.

“I know it’s a personal thing, and there will be students who worry about CCTV,” he said. “But, if you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.”

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Scion of Pakistani political dynasty stands for EUSA position James Ellingworth Pakistan’s most famous political dynasty this week extended its reach – into Students’ Association politics.

Among the nominees for the Undergraduate School Representative positions is Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, daughter of the current Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Members of the Bhutto family have played a key role in Pakistani

politics over the last fifty years.

As well as Miss Bhutto Zardari’s father, Asif Ali Zardari, who has been serving as prime minister since an election in February of this year, her mother, Benazir Bhutto, and grandfather served in the role – and both were killed due to their political activities.

If Miss Bhutto Zardari is voted in when the EUSA election takes place on Wednesday and Thursday, she will take a seat on the Students’ Representative Council, which

votes on EUSA policies.

In getting involved with student politics, Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari is following in the footsteps of her mother, the first female president of the Oxford Union.

110 various EUSA seats were available for nominations last week, and a total of 79 students are standing.

However, only 42 roles will be contested, as the lack of nominees means that many candidates will be returned unopposed.

The jobs up for grabs include positions on the Committee of Management, as delegates to the National Union of Students, and as representatives for various academic schools.

Miss Bhutto Zardari was unavailable for comment as Student went to press.

Her brother, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, is currently the nominal head of the Pakistan People’s Party.

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Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari

4 News

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

EMA debacle drags on

Uni ignores Moray House complaints

Kirsty Leys Thousands of school pupils have been told this week that there is no guarantee they will receive their Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) grant before Christmas.

The scheme, which awards up to £30 a week to pupils aged between 16 and 18 from low-income families, was introduced by Labour as an incentive to keep young people in education past the statutory school leaving age of 16.

The application process was plagued by problems this year, ranging from glitches with the telephone lines to the complete closure of the recentlyintroduced online application form.

The Guardian reported that in some colleges less than 10% of pupils who applied for the grants have received confirmation of their application.

The Secretary for Schools, Ed Balls, is said to be “frustrated” at the delays to this years EMA, and there have been calls for his resignation.

The company responsible for processing the 425,000 applications, Liberata, has admitted that more than a third of the applications have not yet been processed.

As a result, Liberata has been fined £3million by the Financial Services Authority, but it not the first time they have been punished for administrative errors.

In April this year they were fined £525, 000 for failures in their systems which caused life and pensions policy holders to lose over £17,000.

The National Union for Students has warned that these delays may mean that students are forced to drop out of further education courses.

Rob Wye, a senior official at the Learning and Skills Council, the body responsible for overseeing Liberata’s work, told The Guardian: “It is important to recognise that learners can be assured that they will receive their EMA, as our policy is to backdate all payments for applications received within 28 days of when a course starts”.

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Most students funded by parents Lyle Brennan

a survey conducted by Halifax has revealed that over half of UK university students are having their studies funded by parents.

Parental contributions have this year overtaken jobs as the most common form of financial support, with 53 per cent of students now relying on parental income.

Perhaps as a result of goverment funding for tuition fees, Scottish students proved to be the most dependent on parents, with 60 per cent receiving parental support.

Halifax’s Head of Banking, Mike Regnier, said, “The bank of mum and dad is still a key contributorto students affording further education.”

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HOUSE OF HORRORS: Dissatisfaction with facilities at the Moray House campus has led students to consider repeating last year’s protests

Mairi Gordon PROBLEMS CONTINUE to plague Moray House, the University of Edinburgh’s School of Education, with complaints over a lack of study space and expensive food.

Students at the campus, who launched the Free Range Teachers Campaign last year to raise awareness about a lack of study and social space, remain dissatisfied and feel the university has been unresponsive to their complaints.

“There’s a lack of contact with students and a lack of respect for their concerns,” Ross MacRae, a second year student at Moray House and EUSA Executive Academic Services

Convener, told Student .

He says conditions at the campus “simply aren’t good enough.”

Last year’s campaign for more study and social space followed news that students had to sit outside in the car park to study and chat due to the lack of facilities.

Campaigners were innovative, with some dressing up as chickens and others giving out chocolate eggs to gain the attention of the university and their fellow students.

However, with the start of a new academic year, little seems to have changed at Moray House.

Charter’s Land, one of several buildings incorporated in the campus, is being renovated, and it is hoped that

Initiations condemned Lyle Brennan UNIVERSITY SPORTS teams across the country were under scrutiny last week after the BBC released controversial footage exposing the practice of dangerous and humiliating initiation ceremonies.

The minute-long clip, recorded in secret by a broadcast journalism student at the University of Gloucestershire, shows a group of students wearing plastic bags over their heads as they are led through the streets and encouraged to drink to the point of vomiting by a man dressed in what appears to be a Nazi uniform.

The university has since launched a formal investigation into the incident, with representatives stressing that “initiation events that include intimidating or bullying behaviour will not be tolerated.”

The National Union of Students (NUS) has responded sternly to the exposure, with calls for a blanket ban on the practice known as ‘hazing’ now emerging.

NUS president, Wes Streeting, said, “We are totally opposed to student initiations.They put students at serious risk and exclude students who don’t want to take part in that binge-drinking culture.”

Meanwhile, NUS Scotland’s president Gurjit Singh spoke of ‘a UK-wide NUS policy against the practice’.

Despite apparently widespread acknowledgement among students

that initiation ceremonies of an extreme nature do occur, some have raised concerns that fears of humiliation, peer pressure and exclusion deter some students from taking part in university sports.

One third year student at the University of Edinburgh, who did not wish to be named, told Student: “I think people see initiations as too big a part of tradition for universities to be able to stamp them out completely. It’s quite often thought of as a way of building team spirit and just getting to know other people. It’s true that they do sometimes go too far and I don’t see why anyone should have to drink themselves stupid or get naked just to be accepted.

“That said”, she added, “I think as long as people aren’t forced into initiations, the people that do take part should probably know what to expect.”

Student previously ran an article detailing incidences of initiation rituals at the University of Edinburgh. Accounts emerged of freshers being coerced into dangerously excessive drinking, streaking through the Meadows and setting their pubic hair alight in a bizarre act known as ‘The Flaming Mangina’. These reports prompted a university GP to warn students of the injuries and illnesses associated with such behaviour.

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this will improve facilities and create more space.

The current situation, however, remains a tight squeeze for Moray House’s 2,000 students.

Closure of one floor of the library has exacerbated a shortage of study space and computers, with many students moving to the roomier main library.

Another cause for complaint is the price of food and drink at Paterson’s Land Café.

“A cup of tea is £1 at Paterson’s,” says Masters student Gemma Carey.

“That seems excessive when it’s only 70p at the Pleasance.”

Unlike the Pleasance and Potterow outlets, which are EUSA run, the

Paterson’s Land Café is run by Edinburgh First and charges VAT. Many students are opting to eat and study at the cheaper and more spacious Pleasance Bar in an informal boycott.

Ross Mac Rae, who played a leading role in last year’s campaign, has contacted the Educational Institute of Scotland, the world’s oldest teaching union, about ongoing problems at Moray House.

He said: “If things don’t improve, we would consider planning another protest, but I hope these issues can be resolved through talks between the university and students.”

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Meadows makes a splash

DRINK TO YOUR HEALTH: Council aims to make outdoor exercise more appealing He told the Edinburgh Evening Claire Cameron News: “Scotland is facing a health THIRSTY STUDENTS will be thank- crisis and anything we do to help ing the City of Edinburgh Council, that is great.” as a jog in the Meadows becomes However, not all student fitness more refreshing with plans to install fans agree with the council’s plan. new drinking fountains.

One student jogger told Student: It is hoped that the project will “I think it is a little silly. It’s not like encourage more people to get up off it’s difficult to fill a bottle up at your their sofas and exercise regularly in tap.”

Nevertheless, for parched the city’s parks.

The fountains may cut the cost of students feeling the effects of the exercise for many students reluctant current credit crunch on their utility to bear the cost of gym membership bills, the Meadows will soon provide fees by making the option of jogging an economic source of water. in the Meadows more attractive.

The council’s Culture and Leisure City Councillor Gordon Buchan Committee will produce a report has put the plan before the on the plan’s possible benefits and council following a request from downsides before any decision is a constituent displaying a healthy made. regard for exercise.

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Week 3 07.10.08

News 5

Student

FACE TO FACE: Edinburgh’s Hindu community celebrated the festival of Dushhera on Sunday with a parade that snaked through the Royal Mile onto Calton Hill. Festivities on top of the hill included displays of fireworks and Bhangra dancing as well a banquet of Indian food. The festival celebreates the victories of good over evil, and is one of the most important festivals in the Hindu faith. Picture by Julia Sanches

New translation device ensures no need for French class Madeleine Walder EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY’S Informatics Centre is developing a machine capable of translating someone’s voice voice into another language in real time.

Similar in concept to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’s ‘Babel Fish’, this latest advancement in linguistic technology has the potential to break down communication barriers worldwide.

The organisation behind the

a small sample of their speech.”

“Nothing will be lost in translation,” said lead scientist Steve Renals.

“It’s not just the words that are important, it’s how you say it, and if you could keep that across languages it’s more natural and you can avoid misunderstandings.”

Developments are being sponsored

by Nokia Phones, who are hopeful of having the EMIME device installed upon their products by 2011.

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Nothing will be lost in translation Simon King, Centre for speech technology research

project, Effective Multilingual Interaction in Mobile Environments (EMIME), describe the machine as “a mobile device that performs personalised speech-to-speech translations”.

EMIME not only picks up and converts a language as it is being spoken, but can detect tone, pace of speech and accent.

Simon King, from the Centre for Speech Technology Research at the University told Student: “we can make a computer speak with anyone’s voice, given only

Flickr.com- Alex Healing TOWER OF BABEL (FISH): Edinburgh’s Informatics forum is at the cutting edge of new research. Courtesy of The Scotsman

Universities offer a helping hand to state school applicants Catherine McGloin A REPORT by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) published this week, suggests that 17 universities are making lower offers to state school applicants from the poorest homes.

Research reveals that 51 institutions currently run ‘compact’ schemes which target promising students who attend secondary schools which sit at the bottom of the GCSE league tables.

Almost a third of these go beyond recommendations by altering admissions practices.

Such incentives are designed to support applicants who can’t afford university, or who are the first in their immediate family to go on to higher education.

Every year 8,000 students are helped by these schemes into competitive universities such as Newcastle and Birmingham.

Cambridge even offers a points system for pupils from underachieving schools.

The University of Edinburgh’s admissions principles includes considering all applications “individually and a holistic decision is made with regard to the individual’s academic achievements, taking into account their context.”

This follows National Council for

Educational Excellence guidelines, that universities should consider “contextual” evidence during the admissions process.

Bill Rammell, higher education minister, supports the Hefce’s “recommendation for clear accessible information...which sits firmly alongside the government’s call for greater transparency in overall admissions process”.

Outraged universities and private schools, however, fear that their students will be discriminated against. Lord Patten, chancellor of Oxford University, has said that tailoring offers means that universities are left to “make up for the deficiencies of secondary schools”.

However, Skills secretary John Denham disagreed with Patten’s view calling it ‘outmoded.’

Denham said: “It is my belief that there is now widespread acceptance across our universities that the current system does not yet capture all the talent that exists in young people across the country.

“Which is why it is all the more disappointing to hear the comments of critics like Chris Patten who have an outmoded view of the central issues in widening participation.”

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Student

6 News

Edinburgh Uni brings stem cell research to schools

Week 3 07.10.08

New graduate recruitment scheme launched

Neil Pooran

in religious studies, praised the university’s Edinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme (EPIS) as “the next best thing to an entrepreneurs’ training programme”.

The EU-funded scheme provides advice and finance to budding entrepreneurs.

He added: “My advice to students looking into entrepreneurship is to just go for it while you’re at university, start exploring new ideas.”

“You’ve got a window of opportunity while you’re at university to really explore the market and explore business oportunities while you don’t need to earn cash.”

STUDENT CAN reveal the University of Edinburgh holds substantial investments in Lloyds TSB and HBOS, two banks which have been buffeted by the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis and have been forced into a merger.

The University’s finance department sounded a note of caution about the current economic climate, but maintained that the University could ride out the situation in the long term.

University Finance Director Jon Gorringe told Student: “The university is carefully monitoring the activity of our investment managers – our endowment funds, our general funds and our pension funds. We have investments in a range of equities and bonds which will include many of the major UK banks.

“Clearly in the last year there have been a substantial fall in the capital value of those investments, but they are long-term investments, and their capital value does not directly impact in the short term on the activity of the university” The takeover of HBOS by Lloyds could see some HBOS shareholders losing out, but is widely regarded as being necessary to secure the future of the bank. The University has shares in both banks on its investments portfolio.

The next few weeks will see First Minister Alex Salmond present the case for keeping banking jobs in Scotland to Lloyds TSB bosses, who will have the ultimate say on HBOS’s fate.

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Claire Cameron THE UNIVERSITY of Edinburgh has created an interactive workshop to help promote knowledge about stem cell biology in schools.

The initiative is a product of the university’s The Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine, and involves Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, who created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal.

Including a model of Dolly the Sheep, the road shows will include 40 interactive exhibits led by experts from the University.

Professor Wilmut commented: “Public engagement of science is very important and working with schools is a key element…road shows such as this can really make a difference in explaining what may seem like a very complicated subject.”

The workshops are being run as part of the University’s SCIFUN project, which aims to bring a greater understanding of scientific subjects to pupils in Edinburgh in advance of them choosing their Standard Grade subjects.

The number of pupils enrolling on science courses throughout the UK has remained low over the past few years.

The MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine leads much of the research done into medical therapies for diseases of the blood, bone, brain and liver, for which stem cell technology could provide effective treatment.

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University invests in wounded banks

BRAVE NEW WORLD: Alumnus Lucian Tarnowski aims to put graduates on the fast track to success

James Ellingworth AN EDINBURGH graduate entrepreneur is set to launch what he claims is the world’s first “pre-employment networking site”, aiming to connect students to potential employers.

Lucian Tarnowski, who graduated from the university last year, was recently voted one of the UK’s top five young entrepreneurs by NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

His new venture, BraveNewTalent. com, is set to go live soon, and aims to “flip the whole process of recruitment round”, according to Tarnowski, the firm’s founder and managing director.

The site will work by allowing students to create a ‘talent profile’, and connecting them to the companies they want to work for.

Tarnowski told Student that: “Rather than having companies go out to students, we get students to come to companies, which is really good in a recession.”

“The competition’s got harder this year. There’s very few graduate jobs available, which is a big concern for a lot of students,” he added.

“What they need to do is really make sure that they’re branding themselves. They need to really invest in their own talent brand.”

Tarnowski, who graduated

Edinburgh astronaut helps to bring science to the masses James Ellingworth

SPACE AGE PR: Sellers has flown in two Space Shuttle missions

DR. PIERS Sellers, an Edinburgh graduate and NASA astronaut, was present at the blast-off of a new scheme to promote public understanding of science.

The University of Edinburgh is teaming up with Heriot-Watt and Napier universities in Edinburgh, as well as the UHI Millennium Institute, based in Inverness, to take part in the Edinburgh Beltane Beacon scheme, which aims to foster contacts between researchers, and help them to present their work to the public.

The University will take the lead in the project, which will also involve organisations such as the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, the National Museums of Scotland and the Herald newspaper.

The initiative, billed as a “festival of networking” will be one of six of its kind in the UK, each centred around a leading research university.

Launching the initiative at the Our Dynamic Earth museum via video link, Dr. Sellers said: “It’s vi-

tal that those who actually do the work in challenging technical fields pass on their experiences to young people,” and cited NASA’s strategy as an example of how this can be done well.

The £1.2 million campaign, part-funded by the Scottish Gov-

“Major universities have got to get the public to understand what it is that they’re doing”

Sir Timothy O’Shea, University of Edinburgh Principal ernment, will encourage researchers from the organisations involved to present their work to the public and be open to questions. As part of this, scientists will visit schools, and several public debates are planned over the project’s four-year span.

Jim Mather MSP, the Scottish Government Minister for Enter-

prise, Energy and Tourism, told Student that the project was “a lively extension of the National Conversation” with the aim of “squaring the circle and making Scotland a talking-shop that gets things done.”

Also present were the former rector of the University of Edinburgh, Sir Tam Dalyell, and the Principal, Sir Timothy O’Shea.

O’Shea told Student that: “The Beltane project represents a really important opportunity, we see this really as part of the university’s mission. We do the scientific, and the medical, and the technical research, and then we want people to understand it.”

“It’s not just a great thing to do, it’s the right thing that major universities have got to get the public to understand what it is that they’re doing,” he added.

The university is also set to launch a new prize for researchers who communicate their work to the public. The first winner of the Tam Dalyell prize will be announced next week.

Contact news@studentnewspaper.org

8 Features

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

Are you being taken for Granted?

Rosie Nolan’s ceiling is all over her floor. While she tries to get it back overhead, rather than underfoot, she talks to students let down by Grant Management, and discovers some (literally) shocking instances of customer service

F

Rosie Nolan

Rosie Nolan

Stephanie Magowan

or those of us who weren’t freshers this fine September, the flat-hunting ordeal should now be reaching its conclusion.

While the ones who sought shelter from the University in first year will recall the feeling of numbing excitement suppressed beneath feigned apathy during move-in weekend, anyone who has flown the nest for pastures new (and privately let) this year might have had more depressing duties to keep them busy than meeting one’s studious/hyperactive/morose new neighbours.

Back in January, my first year flatmates and I pondered the potential difficulties of lassoing together a group of compatible people to rent a flat with in September.

We stumbled over the hurdle of “the one to leave behind”. We bickered over window views and thickness, carpet vs. floorboards and fridge size.We debated the pitfalls of renting a flat six flights of stairs up (good for legs, bad for nights when drink was consumed).

But having established some common specifications, we thought we’d nailed it.

Apart from one tiny little issue.

“It’s with Grant Management?”

Daddy Nolan, not known for his dramatic outbursts, practically shrieked down the phone.

“Yes, but they’ve improved now.

They had to change things so they could get accreditation.”

“But didn’t you learn?”

Unfortunately we hadn’t learnt to avoid Grant Management. They’d double-let our first flat even after we’d paid a holding fee and deposit.

“They’ve helped us find this really nice new one for the same price.”

Ominous silence emanating from Daddy Nolan, followed eventually by a grunt.

I ignored him.

We breezed through the letting process. Paid our various stratospheric sums of money. Viewed the flat twice, smugly chanting “We have, we have, we have almost moved” as we mounted each of those six tortuous flights. Erupted into gleeful smiles whenever we contemplated what we’d be able to do in this flat that had been forbidden in University ones, such as lighting candles.

Instinct, although never to be ignored, was brushed under Grant Management’s spherical carpet and we signed away our future happiness for the keys to a top floor flat.

Five months on. Myself and Flatmate B are perched opposite one another at the table in our “new” flat, huddled round mugs of tea, reminiscing sadly about this time last year, and wishing we were still young and innocent and untainted by letting agent ugliness.

In the two months we’d been back in Edinburgh so much had gone wrong, the only viable cure was tea and talking therapy.

“Remember our old hall ceiling?

And the way it never partially collapsed?”

Like here.

“Oh God, yeah that was great. And all those nights our lock didn’t break and we weren’t locked out till six?”

Like here.

“Absolutely. Personally, my favourite thing about Warrender Park Crescent was the wallpaper…I mean, it was plain, but there was no damp on it.”

Like here.

“I quite liked that the whole building was, you know, structurally sound.

No dry rot which meant we had to suddenly move out for two weeks.”

Like here.

“Definitely. But it did sometimes smell a bit funny, when everyone had been cooking different things.”

“At least it wasn’t a gas leak.”

Like here.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Admittedly, not all of the above were foreseeable. And Grant Management continually deflect responsibility for the worst of it by saying they “weren‘t aware” and that they sympathise fully with our run of “bad luck.” But no matter how hapless the students, or how unpredictable the damage sustained by one little flat,

posal consisted of: a) Rehousing us permanently in another Grant Management flat which was not the property we had chosen, and – crucially – cost almost £90 extra per person per month. b) Finding our own place to stay for the two weeks, having been refunded our first four weeks (not one month) rent. Let’s not forget that £291 wasn’t going to travel very far in the Fringefestooned tourist capital at the height of its busy season. In fact, since the refund arrived almost two weeks late and just as we were about to move back in to the (partially) restored flat, it didn’t help us very much at all.

Not an overly caring attitude from the people we’d signed a contract with to put a roof over our heads. Come to think of it, they even had some trouble getting the roof to stay there.

Alan Williamson, a 4th year psychology student, admits similar architectural anguish: “The day before I was due to leave my GM flat, a hole developed in the roof and water leaked in through the ceiling during a heavy rainstorm. The hallway of the flat was completely flooded and the closet toilet was also soaked (water came in through a skylight).

“Remember our old hall ceiling?

And the way it never partially collapsed?” the buck has to stop somewhere.

And, in my opinion, this should be with the letting agency who haemorrages your student loan every month in exchange for an inhabitable property.

In reality, however, once they have your money, customer care seems to cease to be a priority. While the list of problems with our residence drips on with the monotony of a leaky tap, the despair and frustration might be somewhat assuaged if Grant Management could convey with sincerity that they are as appalled by this catalogue of catastrophes as we are.

Perhaps by making our flat inhabitable without weekly prompting from us.

A prime example of how compassionately we were treated is conveyed by the “alternative” accommodation we were offered while the dry rot repair work – which obliged us to move out – was underway. Even though we had signed a lease agreeing to a twelve-month residency in a Grant Management flat (which was undermined by the requirement that we move out for a fortnight in our first month) their magnanimous pro-

My flatmate received an electric shock when using the toilet and it became apparent the problems were serious - paint was flaking off the walls and it was in danger of damaging our property in the bedrooms.

We called GM’s “emergency line” and they first said they would send out a plumber. I called back an hour or so later and they said there was nothing they could do because it was too dangerous to send a roofer out. Basically, we were - pardon my language- f****d.

We tried our best to dry out the flat but it was hopeless. I heard from my old flatmates it took GM over a fortnight to do anything about the damage. Instead of replacing the damaged carpet, they issued fan heaters. This is a fortnight after the incident, remember, so those were as much use as a chocolate biscuit in the event of fire. The service we received from GM was appalling and hardly befitting of the caring, sharing image they like to create for themselves.”

Grant Management have a massive share of the student flats in Edinburgh and many other cities all over Britain.

Surely, something they should know is how to do business without infuriating

Week 3 07.10.08

the people with the least money and the most to lose? However, given the number of complaints Student has received, we know that we’re not an isolated case. Heinous examples of Grant Management’s spectacular mismanagement are materialising more frequently than mould on our damp-stricken walls. A Student colleague sadly related his Grant Management woes, whereby his flat went without a phone point for their entire year of residence, in spite of increasingly more exasperated reminders to Grant Management.

“When we first moved in to our Grant Management flat in October 2007, everything was great apart from one small thing: there was no landline phone socket. It wasn’t a huge complaint; certainly, it should have been easy to remedy.

“When we called, we were told someone would be sent over to deal with it. No-one ever came. When we called again, we were told there was no record of our previous call.

When we offered to employ our own electrician, we were told this was against the terms we had agreed to when we moved in. When we pointed out that the lease also required us to have a landline phone for emergency calls, we were told someone would be dispatched to deal with it. When we said we’d been told that many times before, we were told there was no record of our calls.

“This cycle repeated over and over again. There seems to be an atmosphere of casual incompetence at Grant Management that gets very tiresome after a while.”

Greg Traill, a 2nd year French student, experienced similar indifference when he and three flatmates moved into their Tollcross flat in August this year.

“First, they gave me keys to the wrong flat. Then it was basically up to me to go back to Coates Crescent

Student

and exchange them. That afternoon, the handle on my bedroom door fell off, effectively shutting me out of my room; we couldn’t get hold of anyone on Grant Management’s emergency line, so we had to call an independent locksmith who told us only two of the three screws on the handle had been secured. He charged me £65 and wrote on the receipt that it was an incorrectly fitted handle so I could at least get my money back, but even though Grant Management said they would send me a refund by cheque, it’s been five weeks and I’m still waiting.”

Something of a double standard, considering the alacrity with which their credit control department will chase up unpaid rent.

Greg’s troubles don’t end here, however.

“We viewed the flat a couple of times, the second time in July, before moving in on the first of August.

At that viewing, we noticed a few things that should be fixed before we moved in, such as the toilet seat, which was broken and about to fall off, and the chest of drawers in one of the bedrooms. I said to the agent that these must be fixed before we moved in and she reassured us that they would be.”

And so, returning on the first of August, were Greg and co pleased with their new place?

“Well, apart from being given the wrong keys, and the whole door handle incident…no. The toilet and chest of drawers were still broken, the kitchen bin hadn’t been emptied, the toilet brush was filthy from the previous residents…it wasn’t brilliant, having to sort all of that out the moment we moved in. We’ve phoned them various times, about the stuff needing fixed, and the only time anyone has turned up was an electrician to re-fit some plugs. And he then found out that in the kitchen, the fridge and cooker had been wired together so they couldn’t

Features 9

be turned on or off independently of one another. Grant Management just don’t seem to care, and you’d expect much better service for what we’re paying.”

Nevertheless, Grant Management - like any letting agent registered with the Edinburgh Landlord Association - is endorsed by, and entitled to advertise with, EUSA. How can an organisation specifically designed to protect and publicise our student rights work with a company which shows such apathy towards the same duties?

Can it be that we (the unlucky few) and all of those people who contort their faces in expressions of mingled pity and disbelief when we mention that we’re with Grant Management, have allowed our atrocious experiences to taint an otherwise reputable company? Can EUSA President and sworn enemy of poor student accommodation, Adam Ramsay at least offer some impartial advice?

“If students have any problems with Grant Management, they should report them to the EUSA Advice Place. If Grant Management haven’t improved as they claim, they ought to lose their accreditation. If there’s consistent evidence that they haven’t improved, we will have no qualms about making sure students know this.”

In response to Peter Grant’s statement: Grant Management didn’t offer us compensation; they offered us a refund of four weeks’ rent. Two of those weeks were spent in our flat, in a state of transience, disruption and uncertainty and the two which followed were spent in other premises.

A good-will gesture? Not nearly good enough.

Have you had any bad experiences with letting agents? Tell us about them at www.studentnewspaper.org

Stephanie Magowan

Fourth-year psychology student Alan Williamson’s skylight fell-in after a heavy rainstorm, flooding his GM flat. The letting agency didn’t fix the leak for two-weeks

Statement from Peter Grant, Chief Executive of Grant Management If any tenant has experienced a problem, I’d like to give my personal apologies.

Grant Management prides itself as being a first class and responsible property manager. We manage nearly 1800 properties across the UK and deliver an outstanding level of customer service. We continually look at ways to enhance our customer service. We believe we are the best in our sector at responding when tenants experience problems that are caused by factors beyond our control, such as bad weather, property abuse or through third party repairs.

GM has a process in place to deal with problems that tenants are experiencing. Student has brought a number of complaints to our attention. We would like to respond in full to all of those claims. However, in the absence of names and addresses being provided we are unable to do so as we have no way of verifying them.

In the case of Rosie Nolan’s

flat we can respond specifically.

The core issue is that the council carried out a common repair on the building. As the council manages this, we are not in a position to really comment on what they have done. There will have been disruption to all occupiers of the building, and I believe the landlord did the right thing by offering compensation. Rosie was advised as soon as we were aware of the common repair. We offered various solutions that were possible and practical at short notice. The hole in the ceiling was caused by the council workmen, and should now have been fixed. I believe all problems are now either resolved or very close to being resolved.

What should you do if you have a problem with a Grant Management property?

Advise us of the problem on our tenants’ number – 0845 230 2288. We will do all that we can to resolve it quickly - If you feel your problem is not being properly handled contact me by email on:

pg2@grantmanagement.co.uk Small repairs: Rented or owned, things sometimes go wrong in a home.

Past tenants more often than not leave a property in a good condition when they vacate, but not always. A cleaning company manages the work of ensuring the property is ready for the next tenants. A video inventory of the “before and after” helps us solve disputes that may arise when tenants vacate. We always ask tenants to advise us when something arises, and we will put tenants in contact with the independent sub contractor.

This allows contractor and tenant to liaise, and helps get the work done quickly. We do not employ contractors direct.

Bigger repairs: A major repair such as a leak can get complicated if insurance companies, the council or neighbours are involved. Again we will instruct them on the

same day. The council may not be able to respond quickly. The insurance company may demand an assessor visits. Estimates may be required. A neighbour may refuse access. Normally a leak would be fixed quickly (ie within 24 hours). Re-instatement can sometimes take longer. If a major storm hits a city, then lots of householders are affected. We are normally able to get contractors to give us a priority rating.

Safety: In the event of a gas leak, switch everything off and dial 999. If a leak is affecting an electric item, switch it off, and switch the circuit off at the mains fuse board.

Emergencies: Real emergencies (which cannot wait until the day after) should be notified to our 24hr emergency repair line, which is .

0131 220 6360 How can Gm help in the event of a repair? We log a repair and assign an independent contractor

as we are notified. We give the tenants the contractors’ details so they can speak to them direct.

We also have a web site at www. gmhelp.com http://www.gmhelp. com that gives practical advice.

How can tenants help in the event of a repair? Speak to the contractor direct. Inform us if the contractor has given poor service, or has not carried out the repair when he said he would. We will assign another contractor and give you his name.

Student provided details of all complaints, the streets on which they occurred and the dates on which they were reported to Grant Management.

10 Features

Student

Style me famous

Week 3 07.10.08

Neil Simpson wipes the lipstick from Sarah Palin, and explores style over substance in politics, both at home and abroad

M

ENZIES CAMPBELL, at a recent promotion of his autobiography, recalled his days as a runner for the British Olympic team in 1964. As he reminisced, it was evident that it was a simpler time for budding athletes: no special diets, no multi-million pound training equipment, and very little sponsorship. Yet there was no hint of bitterness from the former Liberal Democrat leader when Chris Hoy and his commercial success was brought up. As Hoy’s website shows, modern sporting success equals big sponsorship. BT, B&Q, Adidas, Shimano, Miller, SIS, QTS, Dolan: all have invested in the potential of the Scots cyclist.

However, when it comes to politicians, Mr Campbell took a very different view of glamour, glitz and advertising. This is understandable from a politician who was mercilessly harangued about his age, regardless of his message.

Despite the fall of Aliaster Campbell and the Blair era, the importance of image remains embedded in politics, and frequently overshadows substance. Photo opportunities, magazine interviews and ‘re-branding’ exercises dominate now more than ever. A recent ‘analysis’ in The Times of David Cameron’s speech spent

a whole page dissecting Samantha Cameron’s dress. Lisa Armstrong – a fashion editor – noted that “in these turbulent times, a decorative wife is every bit as important as a strong economic policy.”

Read that again. Turbulent times require a “decorative” wife. This is worrying. Yet political spin and showboating remain not only necessary, but desirable if modern democracy is to work.

This theory is alive and well in university politics. ‘Life is Better Under a Conservative’ proclaimed the University’s Tory stronghold. A fairly inoffensive statement, you would think.

But buff it up with a pouting ‘yah’ girl and the ‘phwwor’ factor kicks in. The message has succeeded in provoking a reaction. Outside student politics, in the relevant world, the same premise applies. If your message is boring – or you don’t have one – it is easily glossed over with the 21st century equivalent of bread and circuses.

George Osborne, the hamstercheeked shadow chancellor, is acutely aware of this. The time of the easygoing, floppy-haired Tory boy has gone. The age of the dour-faced Calvinist prophet of economic despair is upon us. In his sermon, Osborne, scowling at his congregation, derided the current ‘Age of Irresponsibility’.

He didn’t quite say we’re doomed, but he might as well have.

Yet the unpleasant truth is that without spin, stage management and ‘massaging images’, democracy would shudder to a halt. Economic figures, party manifestos and speeches would all become irrelevant without it. It’s the reason we vote for politicians rather than civil servants, who invariably seem to run government departments anyway. Alan Clarke once noted the effect of civil servants: “The unfortunate Minister blunders about like a bull on sawdust with the picadors galloping round him sticking in their horrid barbed banderillas.”

Even Gordon Brown, the epitome of all substance, no style, has shown a basic understanding of the value of image. His wife, appearing on stage next to him, has highlighted that he is, in fact, a human being like the rest of us. He smiled – even joked – and exuded charm.

Let’s take the idea a stage further.

Sarah Palin, the gun-toting, ‘hockey mom’ with clear ‘specs’ appeal, is the embodiment of style trumping substance. Many an urbane European, drinking their skinny lattes on pavement cafes and flicking through their Guardian, have balked at the prospect of Palin as vice-president.

Not only is she ideologically re-

pugnant to many, she also seems to represent a mindless populism and outdated social conservatism. Many simply render her wrong, believing the voters gathering behind her are little more than poor misguided sheep. Yet her popularity – especially amongst rural voters – should not be dismissed so easily. She connects with a part of American society which Barack Obama cannot. ‘Palin Power’ has mobilised a base of support from parts of America which are often alienated from political debate.

She effortlessly jumps from the US stock market to the football field, talking directly to average American folks. Obama’s Harvard education, Kenyan father and perfect family, on the other hand, has an air of unreality about it to many.

Britain is not as good at this political populism. Voter turn-out is invariably low and the result is that a large proportion of the population are politically sidelined. Can anyone really envisage David Cameron whipping up a 50,000 seat stadium in the way Palin or Obama can?

This is not because of any enduring British stoicism, disregard for populism or political astuteness. Witness the enduring success of Katie Price (aka Jordan) in the book sales market; the dog from Shropshire

who managed to get into the top ten of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’; and the sustainability of everyone’s favourite box opening programme, ‘Deal or No Deal’. Britain, like America, has a large section of society disconnected from politics. In the long run, neglecting this audience will be damaging to democracy. Apathy will rise, political debate will be closed to the majority, and democracy will lose value.

We would do well to remember that democracy remains one big popularity contest. This means we have to accept the importance and relevance of politicians like Sarah Palin. Blatant populism in the face of good sense and reason is never a good idea. However, politicians must remain accessible if democracy is to work properly.

Stepping down from soaring rhetoric and high-minded ideology and engaging with the ‘folksy’ electorate is vital; politicians must pay close attention to the image and style they project. An element of dumbing down and setting aside policy in favour of populism is thus necessary. British folks could learn a thing or two from American political populism.

What do you think of Sarah Palin and her moose? Join the debate at www.studentnewspaper.org

Striking the right chord Jen Bowden meets Charles Finn, President/Maestro of Edinburgh University’s Music Society

E

DINBURGH IS potentially one of the most musically diverse cities in the U.K: with a range from opera to rock and classical to cheesy pop, there’s more often than not something for everyone.

But how would it feel to be at the head of one of Edinburgh University’s oldest musical societies? Add the usual society president’s role to a 140-year-old tradition and throw in more than 270 members and you arrive at Charles Finn, 2008-9 President of the Music Society.

Whilst this may not impress a lot of people - after all, each society has a history and a worthy President - Finn is in charge of three of the university’s most celebrated musical groups, not to mention making sure that Edinburgh University Music Society continue to enhance the cultural excellency of Edinburgh.

Finn insists that the key to a smooth running society is delegation. The Music Society has a staggering 20strong committee, each with their own part to play in ensuring that everything is kept in order. They run three different groups; the Symfonia Orchestra, which is part-auditioning and contains about seventy

members, the Symphony Orchestra, again containing 70 members, but all have to audition, and the Chorus, a 130-strong choir with no auditioning necessary.

The fact is that the job is a big one, though Finn continually emphasises the imperative role of the ‘fantastic’ committee. Somewhat naïvely, I presumed that all the decisions were made by the president, but in fact the entire committee makes most decisions, though the larger ones tend to eventually fall to the President, Secretary and Treasurer.

Freshers’ Week, according to Finn, was the most stressful aspect of the job. Organising stalls, recruiting new members and trying to know everything that’s going on without being able to be everywhere at once. Of course, the new experience of chairing meetings can be a daunting one, but Finn insists he’s “getting used to it, slowly.” It appears that the MusSoc, as they are affectionately known, have a few things up their sleeve for the coming year. A new commission for Symphony Orchestra is in the pipeline, potentially to be performed in November 2009 and plans are under way via the

committee to make sure it’s as much a success as the impressive Verdi’s Requiem concert in November last year. The composer for this new piece ‘Dark Rain’ is a man called Andy Scott, maybe not such a big name to the occasional classical dabbler, but having won the Wind and Brass Band category of the British Composers Awards in 2006, it seems that MusSoc have got their fingers on the cultural pulse. The piece is a jazz composition, arranged for Symphony Orchestra, which should have audiences flocking in doves, if not for the musical renown of the orchestra, at least to hear this potentially unusual piece.

All of this seems like a lot to organise and a lot to be responsible for, but Finn remains unfazed. Having played for Symphony Orchestra for two years (he’s one of several first violins), he’s a MusSoc veteran and said he was ‘touched’ that so many people thought he was up to the job.

He insists that it’s a tough job, but he’s confident that he can live up to the reputation already attached to the 140-year society. He admits that there’s a certain amount of pressure in keeping Edinburgh University top

in the musical culture stakes, though tells me that a lot of that comes down to professionalism. Each ensemble has its own professional conductor, who ultimately chooses the pieces, although the committee can step in if there’s a dispute, and lends a definite gravitas to the classical sound and standard that MusSoc maintain so well.

When asked if there’s anything particular that MusSoc would like to achieve, it takes a moment to think of something that hasn’t been done.

In the end, Finn opts for an improvement of popularity and success in their tours abroad. Also, admirably, another scheme is being continued under his watchful eye and that involves elements of school liaison in the area. Their aim is to perform for children who wouldn’t usually be exposed to classical or orchestral music by offering free tickets and the chance to ask questions to the students. With other societies such as Children’s Holiday Venture already broadening the public liaison ideas, MusSoc are simply keeping up with a fast moving student/charity idea and ensuring that everyone has the chance to get involved in music.

As a relatively new President, Finn is coping well with the demands of such a prestigious society, and the demands of his studies. Three years into an MSc in Astrophysics hasn’t quelled his love of music and he manages to divide his time between the demands of quantum mechanics and evenings with the Music Society.

He admitted being a little intimidated by the long line of Presidents before him and an entire history of committee-meeting archives held in the National Gallery, nevertheless insisting that he doesn’t feel above anyone else.

In a time when culture is becoming increasingly more important in Edinburgh, Finn is a breath of fresh air to the Music Society. It’s fantastic to see that someone who believes in and loves music is continuing the University’s classical music reputation. The fact that he frequently insists on the power and support of the committee serves to show that prestigious societies don’t have be headed by an egotistical maniac to achieve success. The most refreshing thing is that so many students can progress and develop under their 40 watchful eyes.

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

Comment 11

Student Comment

The Price of Education

Harriet Brisley

Lee Bunce argues the time has come to change the way our higher education institutions are funded

“When it comes to investing in public services, the simple truth is you get what you pay for”

A

nother week, another story of social obstruction to in our higher education tier.

This time, a survey for Halifax Bank indicating that parents help more than half of all students pay their way through university has been reported by the media in a misleadingly benign way. “Students! What are they like?” exclaim the press, “Thank heavens for the good old bank of mum and dad!”

But this way of thinking masks the real significance of the findings, which show a significant increase in parental funding on previous years. That so many students rely on their parents to finance their university career is really just another way of saying that the whole experience is more than the typical student can afford on their own, and once again, poorer students are being unfairly disadvantaged.

In a report that was recently released by the National Union of Students (NUS), it was estimated that the average student is now leaving university with nearly £40,000 worth of debt. The consequences are predictable.

Firstly, students from poorer backgrounds continue to be put off applying for university by what they per-

ceive as unaffordable costs. According to a SuttonTrust report released earlier this year, 59% of students not pursuing university reported that avoiding debt had ‘much’ or ‘very much’ affected their decision, while 42% from families earning less than £35,000 are likely to consider a local university.

The second point is those who do proceed to higher education are forced to take part-time term-time work to make up the difference between loans and cost. The NUS again claims that as many as three in every four students takes some kind of paid employment to supplement their student loan. This can range from a few hours a week to an almost full time job, with the obvious relationship that those with greater financial difficulties are working more, and those who work more are spending less time on their degree.

That could be the difference between a 1st and a 2:1, or a 2:1 and a 2:2, distinctions that could be crucial as the credit crunch puts more pressure on finding graduate level employment than ever before.

As noted in a recent editorial in this publication, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University Alison Richard, speaking at the Universities UK

conference, argued that universities exists purely to educate, not to act as ‘engines for promoting social justice’.

Alison Richard is wrong. Universities are vehicles of social change, whether they like it or not. In fact that is how they sell it. It has been suggested that an average university graduate could earn £400,000 more than an average non-graduate over the course of a career, and as such universities can play a crucial role stifling or promoting social mobility.

The Labour government has made some positive steps in this respect, albeit rather limited ones. Student loans have risen, as has the starting household income at which parents’ income is routinely taken into account when calculating student loans. The number of students receiving non-repayable grants has increased, and is indeed now fairly common.

Here in Scotland, the SNP led government has made its own contribution, making higher education free for Scottish students with its scrapping of the graduate endowment fee earlier this year (although paradoxically the Halifax survey found students in Scotland were the most likely to say that their parents were assisting, with two-

thirds saying parents were paying for their studies).

Then we have Universities such as ours who have chipped in with their own grants and bursary systems, and educational charities and trusts also exist who offer students non-repayable grants to students to assist them with their studies. Options are available.

But it’s simply not enough. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, this is merely to nibble at the consequences of unjust power, instead of redressing the injustice itself, as the Halifax survey itself clearly indicates. When it comes to investing in public services, which Universities still are let’s remember, the simple truth is you get get what you pay for.

But there might be a problem here.

In a recent league table of world universities compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 17 of the top 20 institutions, and indeed over half of the top 100, were American. Given the unique way in which those universities are funded, how can British universities possibly hope to compete?

It’s a difficult question, but it could be a misleading one. We may be confusing ends with means.

Take Norway as an example, the nation came top of a UN ranking of the worlds developed nations as the best place for children to grow up in.

Over there, public spending accounts for over half of the GDP, and education is free from pre-nursery level to post-graduate, and student loans far exceed those we see in Britain. The result? A far more equal society, with far fewer restrictoins to social mobility.

So where do Norway’s top universities stand world wide? In that very same table, Norway’s finest institution, the University of Oslo came 64th (nine places behind Edinburgh). It’s good, but not great.

Perhaps the reason for that is university league tables almost always give a heavy wieghting to research.

But as we all know, good research and good teaching are very different things. While generally speaking Norway’s universities might not be at the cutting edge of academic research, they are having a profound influnce on Norwegian society.

And that, I think, is more important. comment@studentnewspaper.org

Student

12 Comment

Week 3 07.10.08

Student Comment Can policy fulfil party promises?

Holyrood is heating up, Stewart Stevenson MSP and Sarah Boyack MSP debate the forthcoming climate change bill

The Scottish Government...

Stewart Stevenson MSP outlines the Scottish National Party’s official stance

T

he Scottish Government fully recognises that climate change is one of the most serious threats facing Scotland today.

Across the country we have already seen extreme weather events leading to flooding and landslides, while our seasons are changing, affecting wildlife, agriculture, tourism and our marine environment. Climate change threatens our economy, our lifestyles and our future prosperity as a nation.

That is why we are taking ambitious action, and taking it now. The Scottish Government is determined to become a world leader in our response to climate change, putting Scotland front and centre in developing technological solutions, and sharing our expertise with others.

Before the end of 2008 the Climate Change Bill will come before the Scottish Parliament, a piece of legislation which we hope will usher in a generational shift in Scotland. At the heart of the Bill is an ambition to cut our emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. That date may seem distant as we approach the end of 2008, and the target may seem high, but the Bill sets

out a framework which makes our commitment to achieving an 80 per cent reduction real, and achievable.

In 2050, today’s 18-year-olds will be 60 years old, and the planet will have felt the effects of climate change in ways we cannot fully predict today.

We must take action now to prevent more damage where we can as a society.

Cutting emissions and maximising opportunities are the principles at the heart of the Bill. During the consultation phase of the Bill young people in particular responded very strongly over 21,000 responses were received from Scotland and around the world, showing the strength of feeling about this legislation.

There is already some good work underway. We recently launched a consultation called Adapting Our Ways to ensure we are prepared for the challenges as well as the considerable opportunities that a changing climate will bring.

The Scottish Government is also fully supporting initiatives to harness Scotland’s potential in renewable energy - we are aiming to become the green power-house of Europe,

and several of Scotland’s top universities are creating fantastic research in this area. We want communities to play a leading role too, and so have tripled funding for community and microgeneration. Across the country a series of sustainable travel demonstration towns are emerging, and we are also offering a £18.8 million fund to enable local action to deliver emission reductions.

As a Government we recognise the importance of leading by example and we continue in our efforts to reduce emissions from our own operations. This includes a commitment to promote more sustainable travel and to deliver a 20 per cent reduction in our business travel emissions by 2011. Last year we recorded a 12 per cent reduction with the number of miles travelled by air falling by around 18 per cent while those from rail travel increased by 39 per cent.

Renewable energy in particular is one of the key solutions to the challenge of reducing carbon emissions.

Scotland has a clear, competitive advantage in developing clean, green energy sources such as wind, wave and tidal power - we are on track to

becoming the green energy capital of Europe.

Scotland is already leading the world in the development of marine energy. Our £10 million Saltire Prize - the largest Government innovation prize in the world – will galvanise Scottish and international scientists to push the frontiers of innovation in clean, green marine renewable energy and cement Scotland’s global reputation as the home of a thriving renewables industry. Just last week Scottish Power unveiled ambitious plans to take energy from the tides in the Pentland Firth. And the Crown Estate is playing its part by opening up Pentland Firth for development – the first marine power site in the UK. To help drive the sector, we have introduced a target to generate 50 per cent of Scotland’s demand for electricity from renewables by 2020, and we are well on track to achieving our interim milestone of 31 per cent by 2011.

We want to see other Scottish companies follow in the footsteps of businesses like the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney - a unique, world leading facility for

testing wave and tidal technology.

Nine projects have now been funded through the Wave and Tidal Energy Support scheme, worth over £13 million, mainly for deployment at EMEC. Our renewables policies are not just about large scale projects. We have tripled our funding for community renewables and microgeneration to ensure that more communities benefit directly from the development of renewable energy.

But we want to do more.

The next four decades will see huge changes affect our planet. I want to see individuals, businesses, universities and the public sector engage with the issue of climate change in the way we learn, work and invest.

Scotland cannot tackle this simply on home soil – climate change is a global problem, and Scotland is part of a global system in finding solutions. We will all have to play our part in tackling climate change and I’m sure that we can rise to the challenge, and that together we can build towards a more sustainable future.

Stewart Stevenson MSP is the Cabinet Minister for Climate Change.

...And The Opposition Sarah Boyack MSP gives Labour’s take on the climate crisis

S

cotland’s aim should be to lead the world on climate change. Government leadership is crucial in leading the way.

I support the Scottish target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and welcome Gordon Brown’s commitment at Labour’s conference to working towards the 80 per cent target across the UK as a whole. But ambitious targets are worthless unless they are matched by action and we will not achieve these targets north or south of the border unless we make a start immediately.

Labour has a strong track record of tackling climate change in Scotland. When we ran the Scottish Government Labour set radical targets for waste and renewables and started a massive programme of investment in public transport, walking and cycling.

We met our targets for renewable generation early and are campaigning for 50 per cent of our electricity to come from renewables by 2020 but this will only happen if the Scottish Government supports our renewables industry now.

Labour transformed Scotland’s recycling record and will support strong action to reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place. We put in place legislation to ensure that Strategic Environmental Assessments are carried out on major Scottish Government decisions and subjected our budgets to independent scrutiny from environmental experts.

We made real progress so it is deeply disappointing that SNP Government policies on transport, on energy and on energy efficiency are falling behind the approach adopted elsewhere in the UK. Emissions reductions need to come down by 3 per cent every year on average if the 2050 target is to be achieved.

When in power Labour ensured that all electricity purchased by the Scottish Government came from renewable sources. Since entering government the SNP have endangered this, putting out a tender for electricity supply to the Scottish Government which requires only a portion of the electricity to come from ‘green sources’. We want that decision reversed.

Labour committed resources to new rail and bus investment – in particular new railway lines approved from Larkhall to Milngavie, Stirling to Alloa, and Airdrie to Bathgate. We introduced a national concessionary travel scheme for older people and provided financial support for bus services which saw a huge increase in bus patronage. Regrettably, the SNP have capped resources to support bus travel which amounts to a cut in real terms, they have reduced spending on rail infrastructure and most disturbingly they sought to cancel the Edinburgh Tram project, which Labour led the successful fight to retain.

Meanwhile the SNP has announced a number of new road projects, including a second Forth crossing, while removing the tolls on the Forth Bridge, despite the projected 8000 tons of additional carbon generated. Ministers have said they are in favour of increased capacity on existing roads such as the A9 which could have negative carbon consequences.

It is inconsistent of this SNP government to portray itself as a champion of tackling climate change while at

the same time making choices, especially in relation to transport and energy policy, that increase carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.

Our biggest source of carbon emissions comes from our buildings and at a time of rising fuel bills Labour believes that we have to tackle our existing building stock now. The practical support to householders for installing energy efficiency measures which the UK government has announced for people in England and Wales has not yet been matched by the Scottish Government, although the SNP has announced an increased budget for energy advice. But householders, especially those on low incomes, need practical action now. I’m promoting a Members Bill on Energy Efficiency and Micro generation which would give people money off their Council tax for energy efficiency measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation and create a mass market for small scale renewables.

Scotland’s Climate Change Bill needs to set targets for reducing harmful climate change emissions

so that Ministers can be held to account. The carbon emissions of every spending commitment should be properly accounted for so that the right long term decisions are made.

In September’s debate on the SNP’s Programme for Government Labour pressed Ministers hard to adopt this suggestion in recognition of the views of the 20,000 members of the public who have lobbied for a radical Climate Change Bill. We will work with groups such as WWF who are working to achieve that goal.

The most important thing we can do is act now to reduce carbon emissions. The Scottish Government must include carbon assessment criteria for major capital projects and set emission reduction targets not just for its own activities but those of Health Boards, Local Authorities and Universities. Students can play an important role in lobbying political representatives to deliver not just a strong Climate Change Bill, but action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. comment@studentnewspaper.org

Student

Week 3 07.10.08

Comment 13

The Time Has Come Ric Lander

W

Zeenath Ul Islam

Two Degrees of Change Power of the people: Dr Dave Reay looks at the crucial impact that our University and its student body can make on climate change

T

he 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke once said “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little”. At the time, the industrial revolution that would rapidly transform the world was only just cranking up into second gear. More than two centuries later, and with the fossil-fuelled legacy of human-induced climate change now threatening millions of people, his words have never been more appropriate.

The idea that individuals can play a role is one that all too often wilts in the face of the enormous challenge we face in climate change. The belching chimneys of power stations and the glacially slow movements in government policy provide an easy excuse for inaction – what’s the point of one person doing anything when it is business, industry and government that hold all the power and responsibility? Yet it is individuals that put the politicians into office, that buy the ‘stuff’ the businesses provide, and demand the energy

from the power stations. Enabling and empowering individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions is the central plank on which all efforts to avoid dangerous climate change in the 21st century ultimately rest. It will take both carrots and sticks, it will require a global price for carbon that fully represents the damage that greenhouse gas emissions cause, and the provision of viable low and zero carbon alternatives to the myriad facets of our lifestyles that currently drive enhanced global warming. It won’t be easy.

Knowledge, and good exchange of it, will be key to achieving these goals. Without it, some nations will be deprived of the tools they need to reduce their own emissions, policies will be imposed that do more harm than good, and we the public - will fight tooth-andnail changes that will help protect us, our children and the generations to come.

On knowledge and knowledge exchange, you don’t get much better than the University of Edinburgh. The thriving hotbed of

expertise and intellect we are part of is something to behold as the academic year swings into action.

On climate change research and teaching we are already worldleaders, and with each year Edinburgh becomes ever more important in providing the expertise the world needs. From leading climate change scientists to renowned energy experts, from on-site combined heat and power systems to attention-grabbing initiatives like Green Week, there’s a lot going on.

This year saw the launch of the new MSc in Carbon Management – a groundbreaking collaboration between the School of GeoSciences, the Business School and Economics. Forty students are drawn from all over the world and bring with them a wealth of experience and buckets of enthusiasm. They are part of our aim to provide the very highest standard of expertise in mitigating and adapting to climate change to government, business and industry. The lecturing team for this programme is testament to the great breadth and

depth of knowledge Edinburgh boasts and the willingness of people across the University to collaborate to make things happen.

Alongside such cross-University programmes we are also developing the Edinburgh Climate Change Centre to better bring together the climate expertise of staff and students and provide the access to it that business and government need. We have a real opportunity over the coming months and years for our graduates and our research to help shape the future and move the world towards a low carbon economy. Yes, the challenge is immense, but then so is our capacity for innovation and adaptation. Edinburgh University can and is making a difference.

I’m just proud to be part of it.

Dave Reay researches carbon emmisions at the University of Edinburgh and is a lecturer in Carbon Management. comment@studentnewspaper.org

Want to illustrate for comment?

Contact us at comment@studentnewspaper.org

hen it comes to climate change the powerful have a lot to gain from espousing contradictions. Banks will tell you they exist to conserve the environment. Oil companies will tell you they don’t like oil. Airlines will tell you that flying can be sound. Supermarkets will tell you you need to spend more (1p from every bag goes to the rainforest!). Politicians will tell you it’s your fault whilst others will reassure you that you can carry on as you are.

Do not believe a word of it; when it comes to climate change, we must challenge everything we’re told.

Every one of these contradictions are carefully devised ploys to make you believe that these people know what the problem is, and that they can be trusted to see us through it. They are wrong.

The threat to our global climate is a crisis of phenomenal scale and with no previous precedent. Companies and law-makers would like you to buy (into) their solutions to this problem because that keeps their position secure. But solving this crisis requires that their positions be anything but comfortable. Change must come now, and be drastic.

So we need to find out for ourselves what is going on. We must challenge banks such as RBS who tell us their green credentials whilst investing billions in oil extraction projects.

We must challenge the oil companies for failing to invest in renewables adequately. Because short-term thinking got us into this mess, we must challenge politicians who insist that sustainability comes second to short-term economic growth. We must challenge law-makers also when they tell us that you can have climate legislation that gives shipping and aviation companies a free-ride.

Ethical shopping and diligent recycling will not solve this crisis. We must use our collective power as students to hold leaders of business and government to account to ensure they are making the right steps towards creating a low-impact society. So I urge you: read this issue of Student. Read the IPCC synthesis report (try it in Google). Write to your MSP about the Climate Bill currently being discussed in the Scottish Parliament. Talk to your banks, your energy provider and most of all your friends.

We are either at the start of solving this problem or on the verge of letting it slip out of our hands. Radical change is inevitable – if we don’t act we will see radical change for the worse, if we do act we have the opportunity to deliver radical change for the better: a habitable planet, a sustainable economy, and a fairer society. And anyone who tells you that achieving this is simple – challenge them. You know what they say about things that are too good to be true. comment@studentnewspaper.org

Student

14 Interview

Give Tax a Chance

Week 3 07.10.08

Polly Toynbee, renowned journalist and author of Unjust Rewards, explains to Lee Bunce that we shouldn’t be afraid to tax the wealthy

i

t’s fair to say Polly Toynbee divides people. Described

by Independent columnist Johann Hari as “the best exponent of British social democracy in her generation”, and by Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, as “the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and ‘elf ‘n’ safety’ fascism”, such extreme differences of opinion have characterized her 30 year reign as Britain’s most important social commentator.

Her latest book Unjust Rewards, co-authored with her partner David Walker, has been no less polarizing. A scathing attack on the inequality of modern Britain, the work has already been widely praised from the left, and equally panned from the right.

Now working as a columnist for the Guardian, after previous positions at the BBC and Independent, Toynbee has made a career of writing on social justice in Britain, with a common emphasis on UK poverty, a theme she revisits in earnest in her most recent book.

“A lot of people say ‘well in my day people were really poor, they didn’t have televisions’ and so on,” she explains. “Yet there is only really one effective measure of poverty and it’s the one used by the UN, the EU, and by the OECD, which is hardly a leftie outfit, which is 60% of the median in each country, because where you stand in the pecking order is what really matters.”

“The poorest person in Glasgow East is going to feel like a millionaire if you transfer him or her to Rwanda, but it’s meaningless.

It’s where you are, it’s how you compare yourself with the world around you in the society you live in.”

Toynbee argues that research into global happiness and health has shown that people in some poorer South American countries, such as Costa Rica, where incomes are more equal, “actually live longer, are happier and record in every way that being poor in Costa Rica is better than being poor in Britain”.

And when it comes to addressing this, Toynbee certainly isn’t short of ideas. Unashamedly protax and public spending, Unjust Rewards is rich with policy ideas and practical initiatives, from raising the minimum wage - Toynbee believes the current level is completely inadequate - to simply cracking down on tax avoidance, a measure that could drastically reduce the need for further taxation.

But it is her fiery attack on Britain’s wealthy elite that is

most noteworthy. While conventional wisdom holds that higher taxation of the nation’s highest earners would result in their mass exodus, Toynbee argues there is little evidence in support of this argument.

“Oh some of them would leave” she accepts, “and there would be a big hoo-ha about the few who did. There were a couple

If we had had the level of spending in health and education that Scandinavia has had for the last 60 years, we would be in a very different place now of companies who recently relocated to Dublin and the Financial Times went on, day after day, saying ‘this is what happens if we don’t cut corporation tax even more, many more companies will go to Dublin where the climate is much more favourable’. Actually, only two small, insignificant companies went. It’s very difficult for companies to relocate. They have to sack all their staff and find new people, the disruption is enormous.

“Some non-domiciled residents who are very footloose, and possibly don’t even make their money here, might scoot off. Some chief executives might go off to New York, then somebody else will take their job, and there’s no rea-

I never thought that we would reach a point where the health service effectively doesn’t have waiting lists - that’s astonishing son to think that the person who takes it will be any less good.

“But you’d have to have a government strong enough to take it on the chin and say ‘yes that’s fine, a few of them will go, we can sustain that’. I just think the duty of paying taxes is more important than keeping a handful of guys that we can replace, but that takes a lot of bravery.”

Strong government is key to her argument. Toynbee is a powerful exponent of the view that government regulation is crucial to a fair and successful economy.

A glance across the developed world seems to indicate why.

“You can look across Europe

and say that, on the whole, the most successful European countries have been higher taxing.

Nordic economies are top, Germany and France next, and us traditionally less successful.

“America has on the whole been a high tax country and very unequal as an alternative example, but America is a bit different because it is a different sort of economy in all sorts of ways.

You might say, looking at the American economy, that inequality can be functional, but that depends on how you define your economy, because the way they define and measure the American economy now is daft. It’s like taking a country in Africa and a more developed country and averaging them together and calling it your GDP. They are such a divided nation that I would dispute the way they count it.”

“But if you look at European economies there’s a pretty good correlation where the most successful countries in industry and in the economy generally are the most equal.”

In particular, Toynbee sees the Scandinavian economic model as one Britain today should look to emulate. “If we had had the level of spending in health and education that Scandinavia has had for the last 60 years, we would be in a very different place now. If we can keep at these levels of spending, never mind spend a bit more, and keep it steady for the next 50 years we will gradually see things start to get quite a lot better.”

“I think you have to think of it in that sort of Social Democratic gradualistic way and see that the more you invest, the more you get out. And it does take a generation, maybe two generations, to really break cycles of poverty and get children into good nurseries, into social schemes that really catch those that need most help.

“If you can improve children’s chances by 10 or 15% through programs like Sure Start [a government programme to help disadvantaged children], that makes a big difference. It might make the difference between coping with life and not coping.”

Toynbee’s political inclinations then will come as no surprise.

While Toynbee has often been the first to hold New Labour to account for its failings, her deep affiliation with the Labour ideals has proved impossible to shift.

“I have always been a supporter of the Labour government, on the grounds that it isn’t a Tory government, and it’s the best government we have,” she says, “but I always wish them to be braver, bolder and more ambitious.

“They still remain, even though I say it with a gulp, probably the

best government of my lifetime, in the sense that they made more efforts towards social justice and more efforts towards redistribution.

“I think a lot of their social programmes, whether it’s tax credits or the Sure Start program, the

It remains to be seen whether Cameron can get through a whole election by just analysing and describing a broken society without saying how you fix it exactly. That’s still a mystery. sheer amount they put into education, the fact that we now hit the European average of spending, which we’ve never done before.

“These are big things that make a big difference. I never thought that we would reach a point where the health service effectively doesn’t have waiting lists. That’s really astonishing.”

Recent developments on the political stage have brought new urgency to Toynbee’s call. As we

stare down the barrel of a Conservative government, with the expectation of mass cuts in taxation and public spending, Toynbee has been more vocal than ever before in her praise for the Labour regime.

“A lot of things have got much better, so I wouldn’t want to say ‘oh this government might just as well be Tories’ because we’re going to find out shortly, alas, what the difference really is. It’s a bit of a reality check for people who rubbish the government too much.

“What is interesting about the conservatives is that they’ve bought quite a lot of the analysis and that’s fine, but what are you going to do, Dave? What’s your policy? And what we haven’t seen yet is whether he can get through a whole election just analysing and describing a broken society without saying how you fix it exactly. That’s still a mystery.”

Unjust Rewards arrives at a fascinating crossroads in British politics. With New Labour largely out of favour, and a Conservative alternative that lacks substance, Toynbee’s ideas are more relevant than ever. If Gordon Brown hopes to save himself and the Labour Party he leads, a new direction seems imperative. Perhaps its time he listened to Polly Toynbee.

Tontine

This week we have a poetry competition... disaster in the form of cold coffee... a glimmer of hope for reality TV... and the concluding part of The Reflection

“Stars are asteroids on steroids.”

-Ali Smith

The Reflection, Part 2 Xenia Huyton

- We admitted, or rather captured, a new patient today… A boy of six. His name is Cameron. Angelic lookin’ kid…apart from the fact that he brutally murdered...no...slaughtered…his mother. Then he went to school and…oh God…it makes me sick just saying it out loud…he ripped out the throat of a guidance teacher who worked there…

- He did WHAT!? gasped Jason, his face and hands turning so white that they matched his coat.

- Yeah. I mean we’ve had cases like this before but with adults! You should see this kid… he is so innocent looking. Beyond the surface is a…a monster! Whenever somebody asks him a question he tries to attack them. He tried to scratch out the eye of one of the nurses just because she asked him his name! Obviously we had to completely isolate him…

Jason sat, staring in horror at his desk.

What kind of a psychological problem could this child have? More to the point, how could anybody even attempt to cure with such obvious resistance? He hadn’t even seen the kid and he was stumped!

Jason cleared the shock out of his throat.

- What does Redmond say about him?

- Oh yeah. Chief told me to tell you…now what were his exact words?

“No possibility should be ruled out when handling this case.” He said you’ll know what that means.

Jason didn’t have a clue.

- Guess he wants Cameron out of here A.S.A.P. Continued Steve thoughtfully.

- The press are gonna be all over this. The kid’s going to be in the papers till he gets out of here. The public will want to know what’s goin’ on. Your first session with him is scheduled for 4. That gives you a couple of hours to have a couple of stiff drinks. Trust me buddy, you’ll need them.

Steve grimaced and left. Jason’s thoughts were wreaking havoc with his brain. It felt as though they were trying to rip

his brain apart just to make him listen to every one of them. He rubbed his eyes in a troubled manner and put his glasses back on. Frowning, he stood up and went over to his bookshelves where the hundreds of tomes, looking as tired as himself, rested comfortingly, concealing the answers within their worn covers. For a moment Jason contemplated them fondly. Miracles.

So plain and lacklustre on the outside but just beyond the surface lay their concealed, ripe fruit. The most desirable power could be granted by these objects’ knowledge. Jason sighed and began scanning the shelves for relevant books that could help him with his new patient.

Two hours later he had read up on about a hundred conditions that bore resemblance to Cameron’s. Feeling more confident and relaxed than he would have done had he followed Steve’s advice and had a drink; he scanned the boy’s file once more, waiting for the nurses to bring him in.

Cameron Brandon Age: 6 Family: Mother, deceased Father, executed for the murder of 3 children.

No other known family.

The door opened and a nurse walked in.

She looked frightened and dishevelled.

Clearly the child was not going to be a willing patient. The woman looked questioningly at Jason and he nodded.

- Let him in.

Two men brought in a child who was struggling to be let free with an inhuman strength. His golden blonde curls were sticking to his forehead with sweat with his eyes wide open. He was panting and grunting with the effort, almost succeeding in breaking the arms of his captors in the struggle to get away. The men forced him down on to the chair and—glancing at

each other—gathered the rest of their strength in order to hold him down.

Jason observed Cameron (Was he human?

He had a supernatural air about him…) in front of him quietly. He was a child. The type his sister, a mother of four, would coo and fuss over. What happened to make him this way? Clearing his throat he took a deep breath and started the session.

Two hours later Jason sat crumpled at his desk, his hands shaking. He seemed to have shrunk during his session with the little demon child. For two long and painful hours Cameron sat opposite him, held down by two male nurses who seemed to be rapidly losing both their patience and strength, and stared at him with an insane grin distorting his otherwise innocent features. Every time Jason asked a question the child struggled violently to escape the grasp of the two men and attack the patient psychiatrist sitting before him. It was as if the very attempt to breach the surface, the confusing exterior of the boy, sparked a concealed fuse, igniting him to kill, tear, hurt. There was something else, too. His very presence emanated a suffocating, all consuming feeling of distress that engulfed Jason in a thick invisible cloud and made concentration and evaluation impossible. He could hardly breathe.

Now he tried desperately to recover from that feeling. The child scared him more than anything had ever scared him before. A feeling of dread settled in his stomach as he thought about the time he was going to spend with the boy.

The next morning he sat at his desk merely gazing at his troubled and troublesome patient with all hope draining out of him. He sighed, waved his hand and walked round to the front of the desk whilst the nurses began to

manoeuvre Cameron towards the door.

- You look tired doctor Koster. Can I get you anything? inquired Ellie, a young nurse who had only arrived at Spring Break a month before. She looked at him, her eyes brimming with concern. Jason glanced into the mirror hanging on the wall and froze, his skin creeping, the hair at the back of his neck sticking up with horror. Cameron had turned around to look at him. His reflection in the mirror was not that of the little boy, but of a monster. The face resembled the traditional depiction of Satan; and he was not standing in the comfortable, light-flooded office anymore. Darkness surrounded the horror in the mirror and a terrible noise replaced the soothing, quietness of the room. Jason spun around so fast that his neck made a revoltingly painful sound. The room resumed its silent restful appearance.

He was met with the confused stares of the nurses. He shook his head as one does to remove the melting snowflakes from one’s hair as he stared at Cameron. The child’s grimace was more foul and evil than before. Jason’s voice was caught in his throat. This child was possessed. That’s what Redmond meant by not ruling out any possibility! Natural or supernatural.

- Leave the boy with me, he croaked.

- Alone.

The nurses looked at each other uncertainly then nodded, and having forced the straight jacket onto Cameron, left the room. Jason waited until he was sure nobody could overhear him. But before he even opened his mouth to attempt the exorcism, a deafening laughter filled the room and suddenly Jason felt claustrophobic and more suffocated than ever before. He crumpled to the floor. slowly strangling him so that he could not make a sound. He gathered his last ounce of strength and struggled up.

(Continued overleaf)

tontine.studentnewspaper@googlemail.com

Tontine

Student

The Reflection, Part II (Contined from previos page)

The invisible hand seemed to have weakened.

- THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELLS YOU! LEAVE THE BOY! he choked out.

The hand was back on his throat squeezing his wind pipe. The awful laughter once again filled the room. The little boy with golden ringlets, now tangled and dirty from lack of attention, stood at the door, his eyes once baby blue now gleaming red.

- You don’t know what you’re dealing with PRIEST! You prying humans. Who asked you to delve and burrow beyond the surface of things that should not be disturbed??

I had my victim; the two foolish women had their lives…their curiosity knew no bounds and they had to be punished. Silenced. But I will be merciful, PRIEST! I will do as you ask. The boy is getting weak by the second, I need a stronger body…

Jason heard the laughter as he lay suffocating under his desk. And then he heard nothing.

The nurses heard a cry from Dr, Koster’s office. Ellie rushed in. Cameron was sitting in the corner, sucking his thumb, looking in horror around him. Jason Koster sat at his desk, observing the behaviour of his patient quietly.

- I think that’s enough for today, Koster said, his voice eerily hollow.

- I’m tired and I’m sure Cameron is, too. I think we’re making progress! The remark although clearly a cause for celebration was uttered monotonously.

The nurses looked at Koster with curiosity, but decided not to pry.

There was something not quite right about him, something that made you want to run away and escape his presence... He seemed to have changed abruptly. He left the room with the sobbing boy hurriedly.

Sitting at his desk, Koster leaned back. His eyes shone white for a second and then became blood red. The demonic laughter once again filled every corner every space of the dark, malevolent room and the unearthly voce shouted cruelly: - “Georgie Porgie puddin’ an’ pie, Kissed the girls and made ‘em cry, When the boys came out to play Georgie Porgie ran away.”

Tontine

Week 3 07.10.08

Insomnia

Diffusing

Dorothea’s Chair

Sleeplessness is my affliction.

Symptoms include: sibilance,

reluctance,

conscience, And a particular dissonance acutely heard midst the Herds of exhales and squeaks, Creaks and

Meek sighs.

My polka dot Eyes perceiving opaque shadows, which Grow and

Weave Through cracks on the ceiling. I can smell the paint chips

Peeling; daintily they fall Through air.

On their way they spell red

Zeds, zigzagging to the floor.

What’s more, The air turns cold as my Old, Fair hands, purple-painted, spasm in reaction to

Chasms of white; my fingers

Linger long enough to

Snuff out the

oblong space no longer void of any

trace of the human

race.

Before my mind can pace the realm of the blind, each line must be weighed down with faded nouns.

I can not keep egg whites

right of the margin if I am to finally fall at long last, here, asleep.

- Margot Peppers

On some stark pinnacle veiled by flotillas of rushing cloud from its sister peaks, from cascading buttresses of lichened rock and downrushing small stones streaming into glens, in brutal elevation from the succour of green I find a quivering insect, a perfect effigy of a leaf flung far from the forest.

Here, a swirling anywhere where sense is obviated and substance is reduced to spectral half-things in a torrent of grey, we meet by random incidence, and part with nothing more meaningful than a little more of the meaning in all things – but this transient sensation of a hand glimpsed.

In headrush euphoria the symbols scatter and flux; as sliding into sleep the strands of stars encoded on the dome of night diffuse, drifting loose to new connections like diaphanous cobwebs brushed at dawn, wiping the artistry off the sky and leaving only the given; an insect in a glass case, a pinnacle in photograph.

- Andrew Moles

Why The Family Matters I was close to giving up on reality TV, and I’m sure almost everyone else was by the end of this summer with yet another Big Brother series ending after what must have seemed like decades. I expect Davina had at least three kids during broadcasting, and viewers were more interested in what shade of cherry her hair was at the time than what was actually going on in the house. Surely, surely that must be the end? The lowest viewers recorded yet, and an unequivocal response of total apathy towards the winner.

Did you hear? (Probably not, because I just made this up) her auntie decided to watch Crimewatch instead of the final broadcast. I wonder if a crowd turned up? I can picture the winner now, walking down the stairs as her mum, dad and siblings wave sparklers, and a replacement host – probably her nan – tries to slip into one of Davina’s black dresses.

I saw the winner’s face on Heat magazine while I was at the check-out in Sainsbury’s.

I felt very uncomfortable looking over; it was like walking in to the ladies’ toilets. But there’s not much else you can do in these situations apart from re-arrange your food to spell rude words upside-down, so that the check-out girl will see and hopefully give you a disapproving look. I haven’t done that, mind, I’m just thinking about the possibilities. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been looking at the cover of Heat magazine after all... Anyway, I did, and the caption was something like this: I STILL haven’t had sex with my boyfriend – the ONLY interview So it’s safe to say that her bloke’s going to be itching to jump on her after reading that.

I have another guilty admission: I have watched a couple of the early X Factor shows. The ones with deluded contestants, arguments between the judges, that kind of thing. It’s great entertainment in the beginning, before it starts to take itself too seriously and the winner eventually fades in the collective memories of the nation. That feeling of boosting Simon Cowell’s wealth and his ego isn’t a great one though, and watching members of the general public humiliate themselves by begging for the opportunity to – most likely – not make the next cut doesn’t make you feel too good.

So I can not love the X Factor no matter how hard I try.

It won’t surprise you to hear that when Channel 4 showed trailers for its latest reality TV programme, The Family, I wasn’t too excited. But I must say: I love it—it’s the best thing on telly at the moment.

This documentary on the lives of the Hughes Family makes a laughing stock of the shock tactics used by the Eastenders writers, and the buffoonery of My Family.

The bust-ups in The Family are not drawn from paedophilia or incest or rape, they’re caused by far more everyday situations: a 19-year-old daughter’s habit of going out on the lash and phoning in sick for work the next day; or the youngest daughter, Charlotte, being so unhappy at school that she starts bunking out. There are many intense, heated arguments, and both parents can be seen at times to be shouting down at each other when they are trying to resolve their children’s problems. But it’s in these moments when the emotion takes over that you feel an extraordinary connection to these people, because they’re not characters, and the best actors in the world could not recreate this kind of drama on screen. More to the point, these

arguments aren’t taking place needlessly: they cause pain, but allow honesty and reason to eventually take hold. And when that happens, the broken conversations are fixed, and there is an enormous sense of relief and open affection which all of the Hughes Family display. This is one of the most uplifting, heart-warming programmes I have seen recently, and it has given reality TV some much needed credibility.

- Jonny Stockford

Autumn

Faces He carefully carries the coffee to a table.

Clunk.

Some more cautionary glances. Slowly he lowers his tired frame into the hard seat, making sure not to draw too much attention to himself. As he kept reminding himself, he was just a person. This ‘just a’ prefix had taken a long time for him to accept but he was content with it now. The mug begins to be strangled by his tight grip, the warmth banishing the harsh climate of the outside.

Staring down into it, a rippling reflection stares back from the murky surface. But the face seems unrecognisable to him. He remembered this did not matter though.

Between tables, people shuffle endlessly.

I let the autumn in my window.

I left it open all October.

The autumn lights fill my view with far away blurring, moving lines.

It ruffles my hair and pulls my clothes with cold, dry wind and straw.

The threat of winter and a scent of summer blend together in small whirlwinds in the corners of my eyes.

My hair is leaves, my eyes are chestnuts, and if I were to vanish now, there would be an empty piece of sky in the place where I am standing.

- Nicholas Cole-Hamilton

She had been sat waiting for almost an hour now. So long that she felt that she may have become merely an extension of the furniture in the café. Everything had gone cold. Her drink. Her patience. All she had left was the book. In it, she would lose herself within the symbols which brought about instances where people actually spoke to each other. She imagined she was Helen and everything else was fiction.

“Did anyone order a double espresso?”

After staring hard into the mug, he hauls his head up. His eyes encounter a familiarity among the strangeness. The face of a

The mug is now empty. His time is up. He has to leave. As he raises himself from the seat, he glances once again. She is looking straight at him.

Everything hangs still.

Seconds extend within them.

They both know.

The gaze breaks. He continues on his way, brushing by a book on his way out.

- Anonymous

The curtains are a halfopen deep green disclosing a midview of skyscrapers and fairly weathered rain. Beside this, the wornthrough chair. And on the wornthrough chair’s elbow perches Dorothea.

Limbs like a spider wrapped around an egg, face like a wrinkled moon and soaked hands. Perching gazing listening. Contemplating nothing. She smells free but spends time and time again hiding in cracks in the wall and eating jacks of hearts from magicians’ ceilings. Either wrapping her limbs around herself or sprawling; more like string than tissue and bones.

She’s of the kind who gets coffee stains on her elbows and nicotine stains in her hair. Patchy.

Wine generally prefers her left thigh and trickles streams down her protruding chin like rivers down a continent, never finding the sea. In the way that rivers meet, the trickles knot themselves at the end of her chin into a drop. They are volcanic trickles, staining riverbeds, muddy, permanent.

She ashes dry paint onto her black turtleneck waistcoats trousers gipsy skirts and with this sketches dead boughs. Now and then the cherry burns her; mostly, though, missing her by lucky millimetres. Point two point three point four.

girl through the countless others in the continuing flux. Delicate, pale with soft eyes, it seduces his stare. Recollection from where was not forthcoming. Maybe he had spoken to her many years ago. Maybe they just happened to be in the same place quite frequently. Just the outcome of a series of coincidences that could easily be explained. Coincidences he knew that would never escape to become anything more.

The book had lain on the table for five minutes without being touched. Helen had lost all her hope and was left with no-one before it had been discarded. Her head was bowed clutching a phone, just holding it to make it feel and look like she could make contact. When she finally had the courage to embrace her actual situation and look up to her surroundings, an unconscious blur confronts her. But as her mind disentangles the scene into nouns, one actually made out to her she had some sort of connection with it beyond the now. Piercing dark eyes above thin curled lips. She knew it did not matter though.

The chair has elbows, armrests: they are bony and fairly worn out from all the resting of people upon them. By virtue of this, the chair is an armchair. Anthropomorphic on the best of days. On it rests a book worn through by a fair amount of misuse commonly mistaken for appreciation. Sometimes this mistake is true, but mostly arbitrary. Worn in shoes are both appreciated and misused. Worn in worn through worn out. People. Pets. Plants.

The books know this. The chairs know this. People know this; actions ideas things are ambiguous and easily confounded for opposite and sameness. Chairs for people. People for perchingplaces.

She paints with smoke and sculpts with fag-ends.

- Julia Gomez

On Bob Dylan I grew up listening to Bob Dylan. I still listen to him. I even know his real name. But I suppose a lot of people must, too. There’s this song by him that’s jammed into my brain and therefore is an unfair entry into ‘favourite song’.

I first heard this song far from home, piled with blankets against the frosty bite and long dark stretches of Shanghai in winter. It was New Year, around the start of February, and never before had I seen a nation more intent on self-detonation. The Scots proudly claim that no self respecting terrorist can cause Edinburgh more damage than a native can at New Year time, but in reality, as I see it, the Chinese have the Scots out-numbered and out-gunned. The occupants of the house in which I stayed had taken me to hospital with a dislocated knee-cap.

The fireworks burst overhead as the ambulance crawled through traffic, conjuring for me bizarre juxtapositions between myself and my left leg. On returning home, my leg sealed in plaster for the next month, I made straight for bed (my pile of blankets) and for the comfort

of my mp3 player. As the music played, a song crept into the speakers which I had definitely never heard before. It was a song that sounded like it came from some vast, cold hall, played on some ancient bone piano. The instinct to skip an unknown track is always a strong one, especially when I am feeling sentimental and would rather dwell than explore; however, with this new song, a definitive kind of energy was emitted, and so immersion was instant and unquestionable. During that initial period a voice startled my slumbering ears, a voice I have known through the course of my present life. I am aware that some people believe his voice to be unsavoury or even rough, and I can understand differing personal preferences, but to me it speaks plainly and there is no rough touch in it. It is the voice of my parents’ most lucid moments, sliding from frame to frame in their amazing and baffling way, and with Dylan in backdrop to them, their every movement still makes sense. Now, the last stitch in this seam may seem strange, but its only to help you

understand what I’m banging on about here.

Feel free to discredit what I will explain on the basis of the recent trauma in my leg if you wish, however I felt it real enough, and so to me it is real. The song literally made me cold.

But to put it more succinctly, the song made me feel like I had folded, and become one of the blankets I slept under; it snuffed the life out of my body, leaving no room for any of this pain. All I was left with was the awareness of fabric on my skin. No one could sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell. Not the woman by the river, nor her fine young handsome man. No charcoal gypsy maiden, nor slavery ship could tell of more woe than him. I barely know his name, but through the vessel of the song, I was able to join him in his human-less state, lying beyond all suffering, haunted and in-human and invulnerable from anything, just alone with the song.

- Nicholas Cole-Hamilton

Tontine

The Girl and the Scarecrow T

WO BLACK sticks in the ground, the remains of Mother’s broom after the end fell off. Pinned one across the other, the outline a crucifix against the pale sky.

It sat there through the winter, ramrod straight in the cold hard ground until the spring came and the seeds were sown.

“We’ll need a man out there soon,” mused Father by the window.

The girl by the hearth looked up from her drawing.

Tontine

Week 6 17.02.09

“You want to help your dad build a scarecrow?

You can name him if you like.”

A silent nod.

“Good lass.”

Old clothes were dragged from the drawers into which they had been banished when they grew too small or too far-gone to mend.

“You choose.”

She selected an old blue shirt that still had some colour in it and a pair of old cord trousers that were nearly through at the knee.

Sitting in the doorway of the barn she watched as Father stuffed the clothes with straw and rags.

“Why don’t you draw a face on this sack?”

When Father looked over her shoulder the round, dark eyes of a child stared back at him, knowing and sad despite the thin red line of a smile below them. He blinked at the picture, touching the girl lightly on the shoulder.

My hundred year-old ghost “That’s nice love. Have you thought of a name for him yet?”

“Eric.”

The sack was stuffed too and sown roughly to the top of the shirt. Father dragged the whole dirty heap out to the field in a wheelbarrow while she followed behind.

He nailed the scarecrow tightly to the cross and gave it a shake to make sure he was secure.

He pulled the worn cap from his head and slid it over the top of the post, the brim shading the straw-man’s eyes.

“There you are Eric, all done.”

He left but the girl stayed behind, staring at the scarecrow with her own dark eyes. There was something still to be done.

Reaching into her pocket she withdrew the stone. She had found it in the field weeks ago and kept it in the box where she kept all the special secrets of a child: the pins and bits of ribbon and shells you found on the beach. The stone was flat and grey and the size of a baby’s hand and if you squinted a little and turned it slightly it looked rather like a heart.

Reaching out, she tucked the stone safely beneath the shirt, amidst the rags and straw, so that it wouldn’t fall out. Then she reached up and straightened the hat, giving the thing a kiss on its painted cheek. Now he was finished.

The sun came and the crops grew and the crows came and nibbled on them and on the scarecrow. Every day the girl would come with a pot which she would bang with a wooden spoon and march up and down the field clanging until they had all gone. Then she would straighten the scarecrow gently and sit on the ground before him, staring silently.

“What on earth are you doing girl?”

“I’m talking to Eric.”

“Well come inside, it’s time for dinner.”

Mother bit her lip and glared at the figure on the pole but Father only shook his head.

“She’s only little, let her be.”

But when the rain came and the girl was outside again, crouched in the mud before the sagging straw man father began to worry.

“Play inside where it’s dry.”

“But Eric’s getting wet.”

“He’s a scarecrow love, he won’t get sick like you could.”

“He worries if I don’t go and see him.”

“You can see him from your window.

Don’t go out in the rain again, understand?”

But the rain stopped soon and she was back outside.

“It isn’t healthy.

She should be talking to the other kids, not sitting in a field all day.”

“At least she’s outside.”

“She thinks that thing is

real.”

“Hush now, it’s just like talking to a stuffed animal, or having an imaginary friend. She’ll get over it when we take him down after harvest.”

But when the harvest came, and Father put Eric in the barn, the girl kept visiting him.

“He’s lonely in there by himself, although he says it’s nicer in there than it was in the field.

Why did you put him in the barn?”

“Because he doesn’t need to protect the field any more. We’ll have another little job for him in a couple of months.”

She spent much of that time in the barn; the scarecrow propped up against the wall while she sat opposite him: this was better than being in the field, it was dry and warm in the barn and she could stay out here with a torch until after it was dark.

They sat in silence, the straw-man and the little girl, watching each other in the quiet, telling each other things without words. Each night, when she was finally called in by mother, she would kiss him on the cheek and whisper her goodnights.

Autumn was ending and winter had already begun when Father brought Eric out in the wheelbarrow once more. He trailed the strawman and the girl around the village knocking at doors.

“Penny for the guy, sir?” she’d ask when their summons was answered and people would pass over a few coins and promise father they would be at the party and ruffle her hair and say wasn’t she growing up fast.

They sat Eric on a chair atop a pile of wood on the green. As it got dark, people began to gather and someone played songs on the guitar. This was the first time she had been to the party and Mother gave her a toffee apple and a sparkler and told her to stay away from the fireworks.

They rumbled overhead like a brilliant thunder-storm, bursting in all the colours of the rainbow. The little girl stood mesmerised, holding mother’s hand and sucking on her toffee apple.

The air was thick with sweet smelling smoke.

And when they were done a couple of men appeared with big fiery torches and danced around in a circle before setting fire to the pile of wood.

The bonfire went up like a dream while everyone cheered. No one heard the little girl scream.

She stood, pale faced and still as marble.

When her voice finally gave out she continued to scream in silence, echoing the silent screams only she could hear from the body of the flames. Tears tracked down her cheeks reflecting the burning glow before her. Her little fists were clenched tightly.

When the fire had burned down and all that was left was smoking ash, Father picked her up to carry her home and she swivelled in his arms to stare back at the blackness.

“Better go tomorrow and help clean up I suppose.”

“Can I come too?” It was the first thing she had said since the blaze had begun.

“If you like, I suppose.”

Digging through the soot and ashes next day she found what she was looking for.

She wiped the little heart shaped stone on her jumper and kissed it lightly before putting it into her pocket. A heart of stone was still a heart and, unlike her own, it was unbreakable.

- Jennifer Bryce

My 100-year-old ghost sits up with me when the power cuts, tells about the trout at Unkee’s Lake, the wood house burned on the hill.

He says he was intimate with every leaf of grass.

Wore one hat for Griswold, another for his own field, the possibilities of the century laid out; an endless string of fishing pools.

But they never got ahead of my ghost he took them like cows, one at a time, never lusted for the color of trout in a pool a mile away.

He knew from the smoke in the sky Mrs. Johnson was starting supper,

Mar Arrepiado

and, in March when the candles appeared, he knew Bobby’s boy had died

The sea shivers under the window; shivers slender under the wind’s blow,

My ghost only ever had one bar where the keeper didn’t water his drinks,

which snakes across, through and round, scaling waves, riding waves, and

nor did he feel the need to hide his moth cap, his potato clothes, or scrub himself birth pink.

My ghost tells me there was a time you’d look out and not find a Dairy Queen.

You could sit on your porch a whole life, and never think about China.

Sometimes I see my ghost bringing cut sunflowers to his wife and it seems so simple.

Then, sometimes, it is dark he’s just in from work and Griswold says they ain’t going to raise his pay.

And even back then the power went out, long nights when they had no kerosene.

And my ghost tries to sell me on simpler times: the grass soft, endless lampless nights, pools of crickets singing.

meanwhile:

San Juan Blackness: Looking for you - I found a guide: ‘ ‘ a cloud of nothing ‘ ‘ More looking, Then I found your face, a heavy door squeaking shut, wind tearing the pampas grass, a flurry of wild beast blood red coral, The smell of a torrent fishing nets, gunpowder, Titan Arum in bloom, warm-reekin’, rich!

And pungent wet lillies, burning holes in the night.  Luke Healey

- Ryan Van Winkle

(You play me like tomorrow’s bass line, lined up like Klein’s blue ladies: I lathered myself in paint to print myself on your beige walls.)

Meanwhile, the winds want snow in the North, torrential floods down South.

(We part the seas in the supermarket aisles.

We pick at foods, buoying ‘round our torsos, we pick at foods like gulls) Meanwhile, the winds, they blow the smells out like souls (blow the sax clear like Soul) in a city of rooms with open windows, beneath which the sea shivers slender and slow.

And meanwhile, Stars wrap themselves around our limbs like water.

And the wind blows us out, shivering, into the sea.

-Julia Sans Chaises

La Mentira

Venice

Ambos me dieron su corazón. Uno era naranja y de zanahoria. El otra de hierro pintado de rosa.

Los dos me gustaban. Uno me lo comí y el otro me lo puse. Entonces pensé que los tenía, pero me equivoqué. Ellos sólo se querían entre ellos.

The Lie They both gave me their hearts. One was orange and made of carrots: the other of iron, painted pink. I liked them both. I ate one of them, and the other one, I wore. And so I thought I had them, but I was wrong. They both only just wanted each other.

-Nerea Pereira Rodriguez (translated by Julia Sanches)

Faith Nicholson

Faith Nicholson

Life Abroad

Something is passed over here, Something is forgotten, Something fills the fountain’s silence As a pigeon wets its wings, And lingers when the tourists leave, Who idle over bridges.

Something here outlasts the heat That’s sucked up into cloudless nights, Other than the shining sheets The streetlamps light, Draped from windows, drying.

Something remains: A smell, a salt wind slunk in through alleyways With the odour of decay: The breath of a patient ocean, waiting.

- RM

I

T IS a fact that deserves to be more widely known that in the city of Munich there exists a battered blue door through which another world can be reached. You will not find it mentioned in any tourist guide. None of the excellent maps or signs in the town give any indication as to its presence. Rather it is just there, reassuringly present like the tramp who sits near the steps of the Justizpalast or the woman who stares out of her window on the filthiest street in the centre.

Informed poets often claim that the door is disregarded by an over-stimulated world, too fixated on passing pleasures to care about the mystical things in life. In reality, human indifference merely speaks of an uncomfortable truth, which is this: the other world is rubbish.

“Oh!” travellers through the door will exclaim. “But the world-inside-Munich has things the likes of which simply cannot be seen in our

own!” In dizzying tones they will talk of Maiben Tau and the Sound Castles of Genhaj, as travellers from the other side talk of Rome and Angkor Wat. And inevitably they will leave out the airports, the haze and the smog, as travellers so often do. For the sights and sounds of the other world are but a tiny part of it, and for every wonder and excitement there are a million things exactly the same as in our own. Around their cities are identical suburbs, and in the mornings identical people go off to identical jobs. Or perhaps not quite identical: academics have argued that this world works in several fascinatingly different ways to our own, and, were we to realise why, we could revolutionise both in an afternoon. But this is meaningless to you, as confusing as the babble of aliens you are resigned to hearing every day.

And so after a while, this other world’s peculiarities become utterly forgotten, like the quirks of one lover merging into the next. In time, the fact that camels never existed there becomes unremarkable, that watermelons taste like fish tedious. The new geography of the planet becomes mundane: a fractured backdrop for the same endless meetings, conferences and calls.

Occasionally, you will mention Holland or Pisa by mistake in a pub, and people will listen in pretend fascination at the fantastical places you describe. How could a country exist that was a part of the sea, held up by windmills like some fantastic creation of childhood? Why would anyone build a tower that was always falling over like some old drunk man? And you will laugh at the ridiculousness of it all through the night, and in the morning you will nurse your hangover and start to work once more.

In the city of Biln, four hundred miles away from where the door from our world opens out, there exists a skip through which another world can be reached. Here are the same suburbs, the same people, the same listlessness. It is said that in every city there are some travellers more lost than the others, traipsing through hostels and dusty squares with empty eyes. It has often been theorised that at least some of them have come through many doors and become lost, no longer able to distinguish one world from the next. Perhaps, you feel, one day they will find our world and be truly happy, for it is, of course, the best of all. Until then, they walk on like nomads in the sand; travellers in a desert of identical streets that never seem to end.

- Robert Shepherd

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

Student

Letters 15

Your Letters

SCOTTISH STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2007

George-Streeters

Since 1887 - The UK’ s oldest student newspaper

Surveillance Society Last year saw the largest ever annual increase in CCTV cameras across Edinburgh. There are now more than 800 cameras monitoring the city, with a further 220 surveillance devices scanning our own University campus. These figures certainly sound extreme, yet, should we be thankful of the extra security, or alarmed at the very nature of this ever-present eye? As reported in Student this week, figures released by the Scottish Government show that recorded crime is at its lowest in the country for more than 25 years. It isn’t difficult to see the connection – CCTV cameras make a city safer.

However, while there certainly seems to be evidence for a link between the drop in crime rates and CCTV installation, is it significant

enough to justify their excessive presence and are there civil liberty issues which need to be addressed?

Britain has five million surveillance cameras - more than 20% of the world’s CCTV devices.

As a result The Washington Post recently labelled the UK ‘the world’s premier surveillance society’ – a statement which is backed up by the fact that in Edinburgh the average student is likely to be caught on camera over 100 times a day. Aside from the usual objections to being ‘spied’ upon, students are right to be concerned about the city’s camera crusade.

The cameras employed to monitor Edinburgh are more expensive than other cities. Due to our often dull and dreary weather each device has sophisticated technology

implanted to lighten up images, meaning that a singular camera costs £24 000. Across the whole of the city, this adds up to over £24m spent solely on surveillance.

Surely this money could be put to better use? Moreover, with the increase in reality TV, YouTube and blog culture, our generation is becoming increasingly voyeuristic and CCTV cameras not only mirror this change, but justify it.

The rise in the number of CCTV cameras across Edinburgh seems to be a double-edged sword.

According to the government we’re safer - but what price are we paying to achieve such a goal? To lower crime rates, it seems to be a case of the end justifying the means, and as a result, surveillance will continue its iron grip on society.

Faceless policies, false promises It has been reported this week that 17 universities are making lower offers to state school university applicants from the poorest homes. This news comes forth in the midst of what has been an ongoing and somewhat unproductive debate. For a long time, there have been promises of widening participation, of admitting more working-class students from tough backgrounds; ultimately, of changing the system for the better.

But what progress has really been made? Positive results are not terribly apparent, and yet it is difficult to argue with such persistent promises. The principles behind Labour’s current widening participation policies cannot be criticised. Social inequality has been recognised, rightly so, and it must be faced. Universities are responding to the pressure that Labour has applied.

Yet there is something fundamentally wrong with this entire debate.

Where is the working-class voice?

The people that talk about the fates of poorer students are their polar opposites. Academics and politicians from around the UK are deliberating

the lives of kids who couldn’t care less. Kids who couldn’t care less because they have never been shown why to care more. Universities are stuffed with middle-class twits who are pompous enough to decide what is best for the next generation of underpriviliged students, and this strikes an uncomfortable dynamic that screams misunderstanding.

Lord Patton, Chancellor of Oxford University, has vehemently claimed that struggling working-class students aren’t his problem. Of course not. He has never visited the housing estates in the East End of Glasgow, or the struggling comprehensive schools in Moss Side, Manchester. Yet his honesty is valuable. Perhaps universities are not responsible for ‘social engineering’ as Patton sees it. He hasn’t got the faintest idea about working-class life, and nor does he claim to. Labour go wrong by making claims that they understand, because they just don’t.

Although their policy is commendable, it is faceless and lacks true conviction.

Young people from poor

backgrounds need to be inspired, they need role-models, they need to be given confidence to make the jump into Higher Education.

For universities to lower grades is patronising. It is an act of charity that poor students resent. Furthermore, it is too quick and lazy a solution.

Instead, universities must monitor their admissions more carefully. They must think harder about the students that they accept. Lazy admissions processes are not good enough.

There needs to be a greater science behind admissions – hard evidence and understanding must be forced into the procedure. Last month, Student revealed that black students have half as much chance of getting into Edinburgh as white students.

Where is the equality? How much consideration does a bright student from a poorer background currently get? Just how much, really? More work must be done to find out and to understand.We’ll believe this widening access nonsense when we see it.

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Interview Hannah Carr/Anna Dudina Lifestyle Kimberlee Mclaughlan/Preston Park Music Andrew Chadwick/Thomas Kerr News Editors Neil Pooran/Lyle Brennan - Senior News Writers James Ellingworth/Sarah Morrison/Patrick Andelic Photography Julia Sanches/Katy Kennedy/ Sophie Johnson President John Herrman Secretary Maddie Walder Sport Martin Domin Tech Alan Williamson/Jamie Manson

profundity that is too infrequently realised; rich people are bad. They are an unfriendly, disinterested race that cannibalises children for petty public school infractions and indulges in strange ritualistic gatherings with top-shelf spirits and different variations of white and yellow powders. An article in this month’s National Geographic calls them, “fascinating!”.

It is only from an educated vantage-point that we can discern right from wrong, fun from tiresome, enlightenment from small-mindedness. It is only whilst behind the guise of toleration that we can be intolerant. Those poor, simple freshers in their wide-eyed splendor! To think the lot of them have never made respectable friends before, never gone ‘all the way’ with someone, have never really practised the type of self-confident judgement that you and I seem to possess so naturally! After all, they are so young.

Hats off to us, my friend! We have seen the light. My name is F. Taylor Colantonio and I have been GeorgeStreet-clean for almost twenty four hours now.

- F.Taylor Colantonio

The waiting game I am frustrated by the late publication of the December exam timetable (27 October). I plan to fly overseas to be with my family for Christmas, however, I am faced with a lose-lose situation; either book now to fly on the last day of the exams (Friday 19th December) or wait for the timetable to be published. Booking now may mean missing precious days at home after I discover my exams finish earlier than expected, while waiting for the exam timetable will mean flights will have risen in price considerably.

I received a helpful email from the University explaining that it is necessary to ‘finalise course sizes before timetabling can begin’, but surely by this stage, with tutorials and practicals underway, class sizes are obvious? Instead students are made to wait almost a month during which flights will rise over £100.

Considering that the University is happy to charge exorbitant foreign fees, it would be greatly appreciated if next year they could publish the timetable sooner rather than later.

- Luke Kennedy Burke

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www.studentnewspaper.org Editors Jenny Baldwin/Liz Rawlings Comment Lee Bunce/Zeenath Ul Islam Copy editors Mairi Gordon/Maddie Walder/Neil Simpson/Lottie Fyfe/Kristin Baldwin Culture Hannah Ramsey/Rupert Faircliff/Emma Murray Design Jamie Manson Features Jonathan Holmes/Rosie Nolan/David Wagner Film Tom MacDonald/Sam Karasik Illustrations Jamie Manson/Zeeneth Ul Islam/ Harriet Brisley

I hope Andrew Chadwick’s warning has deterred any dithering freshers from leaving their Pollock Hall accommodations for the insidious snares of George Street. In fact, I hope his article in a previous Student (23.09.08) has helped to perpetuate the kind of closed-mindedness that he so eloquently ridicules. You, sir, are a beacon of conviction amongst a sea of treachery.

I am writing as a former GeorgeStreet-goer; though it is painful for me to reflect on that time of my life, it was Andrew Chadwick’s article that scooped me up like a mother bird just before I was about to hit rock-bottom. In fact, after reading the article on Saturday afternoon, I did not go to the Opal Lounge for extortionately expensive cocktails, dull banter with plum-in-throats, or the dreadful Euro-trash noise (that sometimes used to make my ears bleed) later that night. I heeded your caution, Andrew, and wandered over to the Royal Oak to see a good band alone and then came home and masturbated twice before crying myself to sleep. It was the best night EVER. The apex of your piece, in my very humble opinion, is a

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16 Film

Student

Week 3 07.09.08

Brideshead Revisited Revisited Alexandra Grant finds Brideshead to be ultimately all surface and little substance Brideshead Revisited directed by

Julian Jarrold

aaaDD This new screen adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel seduces in classic costume drama style, with its splendid settings and costumes almost overwhelmingly audacious The film relates the story of Charles Ryder’s (Matthew Goode) infatuation with the Catholic Flyte family, residing in their aristocratic seat, Brideshead. Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock’s screen adaptation revolves primarily around Ryder’s sexual intrigue with daughter, Julia (Hayley Atwell) and underplays Charles’ homoerotic attraction to her brother Sebastian (Ben Whishaw). Who and what really is the object of Charles Ryder’s fascination becomes the central intrigue of the film.

Like the protagonist, audiences will be allured by the film’s lavish settings: the magnificent Castle Howard perfectly fills the eponymous role of Brideshead; Venice

is portrayed with seductive lustre, the city forming the backdrop to Charles’s sexual encounter with Julia in the main departure from the novel.

Andrew Davies is, of course, an old hand at this genre, having suc-

cessfully written and directed numerous BBC adaptations including Sense and Sensibility and MiddleMarch, also collaborating on the screenplays for both Bridget Jones films, but he struggles with the darker material here; sometimes going

too far, at other times too reserved, the script ultimately feels a little messy.

Director Julian Garrold casts a convincing gothic shadow over the drama, drawing attention to the darker elements of Catholicism

in the story, the action effectively punctuated with haunting shots in the galleries and hallways of Castle Howard. Emma Thomson gives a subtle performance as the uncanny and obsessive Lady Marchmain, but Sebastian is overacted by Ben Whishaw as a debauched and degrading figure; his character lacking homoerotic magnetism and coming off as somewhat unconvincing. Ed Stoppard’s portrait of Bridley injects some humour into a sombre film and Michael Gambon, ever reliable, gives a moving portrait of Lord Marchmain.

Literary buffs will appreciate this dramatisation of Waugh’s novel despite its deviations from the novel’s plot. Yet at two and a half hours long and both written and shot at a slow pace it’s difficult to remain engaged.

You sometimes get the feeling that the cast and director are well aware of this drawback to their story, not always doing everything they could in order to help. Matthew Goode’s performance as Charles Ryder sustains our interest but ultimately the drama in ‘Brideshead Revisited’ is always acted but never felt.

though, the relationship of the two leads - and the film itself - makes sense. She’s abusive and disturbed; he’s damaged but exceptionally patient; they’re a peculiar couple for sure. But slumped on the sofa in front of 70s porn in a rundown flat, that they complete each other is obvious.

Marianna Palka has said that her intention with Good Dick was to explore the modern definition of romance and sexuality through the lens of pornography. Romantic build-up is abandoned, apparently irrelevant. The fact that we never learn the names of the main characters actually adds to the realism. the film dragging us along as mere onlookers, only partly informed, the prevalent anonymity and sparing background information also reflecting the influence of a porn-soaked culture.

Concealing most of the characters’ lives seems initially to leave viewers kicking in shallow waters but eventually humanises them more than any overly dramatic outburst

of feeling ever would. This is a film with a long ancestry - two solitary people reaching out for each other in a world that doesn’t understand them - and yet it manages to avoid many of the trappings of a sometimes over-familiar genre.

A low-budget feature, Good Dick is obviously not for the mainstream.

Yet it manages to avoid being burdened with the pretensions sometimes associated with independent cinema, only offering a depth and sincerity unknown in Hollywood.

Palka and Ritter do well as the two leads and lend the film a lot of charm and strange allure.

It is a small film about odd people; a conventional boy-meets-girl story unfolding in a far from conventional way. Instead of sickeningly cute moments, expect a flood of awkward yet amusing situations. Your enjoyment of these dependent on how uneasy proclaiming the film’s title makes you feel. And if you aren’t convinced, be assured that there’s no-one named Richard in this film.

What Tory party conferences used to look like.

88 Minutes

Good Dick

directed by

directed by

Jon Avnet

Marianna Palka

DDDDD

aaaaD

It’s unthinkable. The hammy old thesp up on screen, visibly bewildered by the laughable lines falling from his mouth, lost eyes weighed down by ten tonne bags sometimes quite blatant in their search for something more interesting off-camera, is arguably the greatest actor of all time.

And so it is that Pacino follows an unintentionally hilarious turn in last week’s Righteous Kill with another tragicomic display of his failing ability to choose a director or dialogue worthy of him. Here’s a clue Al: if Jon Avnet is involved - the celluloid Antichrist behind both this and the aforementioned career low - best avoid.

The script for this intellectualcopycat-killer-on-the-loose dross, itself derivative, makes long and unhealthy strides in cinematic incompetence. Dr. Jack Gramm’s (Pacino) attempt to outwit the mystery malefactor setting him a literal deadline consists of little more than endless frowns into street-corner telephones

“Looks like rain again...”

- not especially edge-of-your-seat stuff for the audience - punctuated by a fair smattering of misogyny.

Our lead’s absurdly bouffant coiffure, a masterwork of construction and doubling the good Doctor’s presence on screen, is magnetic, but not quite distracting enough over the course of 107 minutes (The moment at which you realise the film’s longer than it promises will stay with you).

Still not convinced? Consider the fact that at one point Al murmurs “There’s been a breach in my most secure area. That’s so…annoying”.

Got it?

You might imagine that 88 Minutes is a film made with a sly wink, a film ‘so bad that it’s good’. And yet it never reaches the dizzying heights of, most recently, Mamma Mia; this is tosh at 24fps.

The dialogue is tragic, the direction is reminiscent of You’ve Been Framed, and the acting is boondoggle as art. Do. Not. See. 88. Minutes.

Chameel Itarimann

In her debut film, Marianna Palka achieves an excellent balance between fragility and defiance. Taking the lead role, her piece tells the unconventional story of a mute woman who arrives at a XXX video store at exactly 4pm each day and the relationship that she develops with the shop’s owner.

Jason Ritter, Palka’s real-life boyfriend and co-founder of their production company, plays the video store clerk drawn to the mysterious girl. Spending his idle days listening to his colleagues’ existential conversations and relationship problems – a memorable bunch, especially Martin Starr’s sad fellow with a far from satisfied girlfriend – Ritter’s character forms a strange attachment to the girl which culminates in him lingering outside her apartment for hours at a time. As might be expected, Palka’s anonymous ‘girl’ reacts with hostility, but after careful persuasion on the mysterious man’s part she decides to let him into her life.

Due to the film’s slow-paced realism, reluctant conversations and the camera invariably finding its principal players in a state of pensive gloom, the characters could easily have been negating and unsympathetic, but the motives for their behaviour gradually become apparent and a quietly developing intimacy between the two loners emerges, the story’s bittersweet humour softening what seems an impossibly weird concept in synopsis. Suddenly

- Helen Harjak

Week 3 07.10.08

Film 17

Student

News You Can Use

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People Directed by Robert B. Weide

aaaad Years ago now an upcoming British journalist was hired into Vanity Fair magazine as celebrity correspondent. His arrogant manner and egotistical approach earned him the wrath of the celebrity community, and he was soon expelled. Embittered, he wrote an account of this period, which went on to become a bestseller.

Now, taking this uncut diamond of a story and smoothing the edges, coating them with a protective rubber, is a film adaptation of How

to Lose Friends and Alienate People. The film essentially re-hashes

the ideas of the novel, but makes the whole affair a little more PC. Simon Pegg - flavour of the month in Hollywood it seems - is the aforementioned journalist, one Sydney Young. The editor of a small guttersnipe magazine entitled Post Modern Review, Young is called out to New York, having been spotted by the editor of the conservative lifestyle magazine Sharps.

Young happily takes to the high life but, batting off constant rejection and pervading hostility, he makes a negligible impact. As events turn in his favour, however, he finds himself forced to choose between love

interest Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) and lust interest (Transformer’s Megan Fox in sizzling form; the original reason that I wanted to review this film…..)

Thus the seeds of the perennial romantic-comedy-love-triangle are sown. However, the film succeeds, and the reason for this lies primarily in the manner in which those seeds are cultivated. Taking tips from the over-pretentious farce that was 2005’s Match Point, How to

Lose Friends and Alienate People

never becomes over serious and never pretends to be more than it is, much to the film’s benefit.

The man who really steals the show here is, unexpectedly per-

haps, Jeff Bridges, playing the owner of Sharps magazine, Clayton Harding. Bridges is clearly having a ball; Clayton Harding is what The Dude from The Big Lebowski might have become had he ever made his way into high office (a grumpy shirt-hater apparently).

The film does make several changes to Young’s original bestseller, but it stays true to it’s source’s good humour and sense of fun. Part of the book’s charm is that Young appears at once both totally unaware of how socially incompetent he is whilst also revelling in the very fact, and this is something that the film-makers have translated to the screen perfectly. Pegg is simply perfect

for the role; he’s believable as an awkward man lost in the Big City, whilst also effortlessly likeablemany others would have struggled to endear themselves to the audience, but Pegg is a natural.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People as a whole is a well-made and accomplished feature that knows and accepts its limitations. The film benefits from Dunst’s clever one-liners, Pegg’s talent for physical comedy and Bridges’ just being there (let’s face it, the guy’s a comic genius), and so can be thoroughly recommended by this reviewer to anyone with a funny-bone and a pair of fully functioning lungs.

Sean Cameron

Simon Pegg: Rise of The Geek Shan Bertelli tells the story of an unlikely export It’s difficult to believe that once upon a time, the immensely likeable Simon Pegg used to be just ‘that guy’ in ‘that thing’. Now he’s got one of the most recognised faces in Hollywood, where he’s starring in big-budget films, hanging out with Quentin Tarantino and meeting Steven Spielberg. So how did Simon John Beckingham, born on Valentine’s Day in 1970’s Gloucester, end up as our current King of Comedy?

Pegg’s career began at 16 when he was a drummer for the band God’s Third Leg. The dream was short-lived and Pegg went on to get a degree in Film, Theatre and Television from Bristol University. In 1993, Pegg moved to London and spent the early 90’s trying to make it as a standup comedian, even performing his one-man show at the Fringe in 1995, and going on to appear in various small but notable roles in a number of television comedies. Simon appeared in everything from I’m Alan Partridge to Black Books. However, it was not until Spaced that Pegg really got noticed. His quick-witted writing, teeming with references to pop culture (particularly Star Wars), achieved much popularity with audiences and critics.

Primarily funded with money from the not-yet-deep pockets of Pegg and his co-writer Jessica Stevenson (also his flat-mate at the

time...the two have often remarked upon how true to life their creation was), the show stood up and announced its Geekdom with pride, many more enrolling within the first few weeks. And the best thing about promoting the oft-mocked ‘geek’?

Hollywood is full of geeks. And they loved Spaced. They had to befriend whoever it was that had so lovingly

worked hilarious and sometimes moving homages to their favourite films. Hollywood had found a friend.

From that point on, it was a matter of watching the dominos fall. The Spaced team (including best friend Nick Frost and Edgar Wright) pooled

talents and created Shaun of the Dead, the ZomRomCom that turned into an instant cult classic, not only amongst us normal people, but also with the big names like Tarantino and J.J. Abrams. Since then, Pegg has been landing roles in films such as Mission Impossible III, Grindhouse, and Star Trek as well as getting a much bigger release for Hot

Fuzz, the second film in the ‘Blood and Chocolate Trilogy’.

This week sees the opening of

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a film in which Pegg portrays Sidney Young, a celebrity journalist who spends five years annoying practically everyone in Hollywood.

This could hardly be further from the truth it seems.

Pegg is not alone on his journey across the pond. There seems to be a current high demand for British actors in Tinseltown and they - many of them, interestingly, from the smaller screen - are heading over in droves.

Along with Pegg, Ricky Gervais, James McAvoy and the unstoppable force that is Jason Statham are some of the better known Brit names in America. However, despite his success in the States, Pegg reassures his fans that he will not abandon the UK; as he told The Times, ‘LA can be the most exciting place on earth, and it can be the loneliest, darkest place…’

Looks like he won’t be leaving his Crouch End home in a hurry then.

Having said that, though, his next role will take him a long way from home indeed; Pegg has been cast as a twenty-first century ‘Scotty’ in J.J. Abrams’ (he of TV’s ‘Lost’) take on the Star Trek universe.

Although his Rotten Tomatoes rating may be dropping, Simon Pegg’s star keeps rising and whichever role he takes, be it the despicable Sidney Young, the indomitable Sergeant Nicholas Angel or a Grindhouse ‘Bearded Cannibal’, Simon Pegg remains one of the most beloved actors and unlikely heroes of our age.

Shan Bertelli

Director Spike Lee has provoked uproar in Italy with his just-released Miracle at St Anna. The WWII epic has been set in direct opposition to the official Italian account of the Sant’Anna di Stazzema massacre, local partisans collaborating with Nazis and African-American soldiers taking rather a larger role in proceedings than was apparently the case. There has even been a call to ban the film completely. Lee’s response to these accusations? “I am not apologising for anything”.

In other WWII-related excitement, George Lucas’s war epic Red Tails - which has been in development since 1989 - has finally found a director in the form of Anthony Hemingway. HURRAH. We can now look forward to the arrival of Red Tails to the big screen by about, what? 2025, shall we say?

Further controversy is raging in Hollywood around Oliver Stone’s new film W. The forthcoming biopic will explore Bush’s journey from alcohol-abusing mess to most powerful man in world politics. It would seem that Stone is rushing through production so that the film is ready for release in America on 17 October, just three weeks before the presidential election.

This could make for an interesting outcome…

Another interesting outcome should arise from the collaboration of Rodrigo Garcia (Columbian director of Passengers) and the little help he will be receiving from his friends in the production of his next movie Mother and Child. Said friends are none other than Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; joint owners of the Mexican production company Cha Cha Cha. With friends like these you can’t go far wrong: Mother and Child could well be a good ‘un.

Next Week...

Spike Lee bemoans lack of chocolate milk in Harry Potter dining hall scenes...

18 Music

Student

Week 3 07.09.08

ALBUMS JAMES MORRISON

SONGS FOR YOU, TRUTHS FOR ME POLYDOR

ADDDD

The Streets: Dry your clothes, mate

THE STREETS

EVERYTHING IS BORROWED 679

AAADD

MIKE SKINNER is in contemplative mood these days. Everything is Borrowed, the Streets’ fourth and penultimate LP, according to Skinner, paints a picture of an artist who has come to terms with success. Out goes that old theme of ordinary life on the streets – something wisely left to those who still live it – but more surprisingly he also abandons the source material that defined previous LP The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living – coke, tabloids and fame.

Everything is Borrowed is Skinner’s attempt to make a timeless album; it’s entirely free from modern references, preferring instead to take life, emotions and philosophy as its watchwords. In that sense, it is a remarkably mature album, and Skinner deserves credit for abandoning the lads-mag themes that made him a success, but lyrically Everything is Borrowed is a drab oil painting of an album – all broad, peaceful sweeps

FLOBOTS

FIGHT WITH TOOLS ISLAND

AAADD

PICTURE THE scene. November 2004. The world’s most influential and powerful position has fallen back into the hands of one of the least intelligent men walking its surface. Despair begins to set in…but wait. Out of the wreckage (from Denver, Colorado) emerges a crusade in musical form – a self proclaimed ‘fighting force’, going by the name of…Flobots.

Four years later, Johnny 5 and his motley crew of MCs and musicians have achieved the global success they

and pastel colours, pleasant to look at from a distance but sadly complacent when subjected to closer scrutiny.

Nowhere is this truer than on the eponymous title single, where Skinner casually admits that, “I came to the world with nothing / and I leave with nothing but love / everything else is just borrowed”. An admirable sentiment, although somewhat easier to express when your bank account stretches to seven digits. ‘Heaven for the weather’ sees Skinner propose hitting up heaven for the rays and hell for the company, and instantly becomes the most forgettable moment of the entire album. Meanwhile, ‘The way of the dodo’ proves a predictably weak environmental annihilation prophecy. Surely Mike Skinner, the geezer’s poet laureate, can do better than this?

Thankfully, he can. Skinner still retains his uncanny ability to express inner self-doubt; “I think I love you more than you like me / because this is even crossing my mind” he bemoans on ‘I love you more’ evoking the melancholic acceptance wellknown to anyone who has ever been the more enthusiastic half of a relationship. The LP’s sole true triumph, however, belongs to ‘On the edge

of a cliff’, a story of a man preparing to commit suicide being told to consider that for millions of years, each of his direct ancestors on both his parents sides defied the odds to successfully survive and pass on life.

To some that might sound trite, and it’s admittedly about as profound as asking someone to consider the odds the average sperm must overcome, but it’s expressed with a genuine softness by Skinner and would surely put a smile on even the most miserable of marginal-constituency Labour MPs. This is a long way off from a great album, however. The more alert might have even noticed that this review makes no mention of the actual music backing Skinner’s lyrics - for that, just search out a review of any of his previous LPs. But despite the total musical stagnation it’s hard to find real fault with a man who is so obviously content with life, and has the common decency to try and pass on the life philosophy and wisdom which has helped him reach that point. And in a music industry where misery and violence sells, it is genuinely refreshing to see a major figure release an album that is uplifting and positive. I guess that means we’ll let this one slide, Mr. Skinner.

Thomas Kerr

need to ensure that, like themselves, we too can become “socially aware”.

‘Handlebars,’ the first single to be taken from Fight with Tools has been gracing our mainstream airwaves for many a week now, complete with a warning for all against the corrupting capabilities of power and ambition.

The six-piece appears to be operating on the presumption that no one else is, or has ever been, prepared to speak out on issues ranging from racism and globalisation to Guantanamo Bay and Iraq (which conveniently is title for the ultimate track of the album). As with the Green Day politically-minded LP American Idiot, it leaves any even slightly informed listener feeling decidedly patronised.

Despite failings on the lyrical front, musically, Flobots show talent and originality. In a break from the hip-hop norms, guitars, trumpets,

horns and even violas are the predominant force on this record - with a decidedly quirky result. Although ‘Handlebars’ does tend to grate somewhat, the complexity it displays is a good indicator of the experimentation on the rest of the album. This musical potential, comparable to that of The Roots or N.E.R.D, desperately needs to be matched by maturity in their writing.

However, all is not lost - we are able to take some solace from their lyrical output. Regardless of their onerous task of changing the world, Flobots still manage to pledge to “make ya jump around like you needed to pee” – and if they are not too badly affected by the tragedies of modern, then we should all be all right.

Rachel Hunt

AH, THE difficult second album. James M o r r i s o n ’s response to the dilemma faced by all commercially successful singers of how to develop as an artist without alienating the core fan base is a defiant statement of if-it-ain’tbroke-don’t-fix-it. The only problem being, he was never really very good in the first place. His jazz-lite pastiche and gruff (read: whiney) vocals may have won him legions of fans, but it remains to be seen whether they will be willing to stick with him through another album of the same songs but with different, slightly more angst-ridden lyrics.

Lead single ‘You Make it Real,’ currently riding high in the charts,

THE KING BLUES

SAVE THE WORLD/GET THE GIRL ISLAND

AADDD “ G R E AT ! ” THAT’S what you’re thinking. More gritty music from London. No, come back!

Despite being pictured on the sleeve of this record with bandanas and sunglasses, The King Blues, it turns out, are not totally devoid of brains and musical ability. Reasonably far from it. Over a pleasant background of reggae fused with punk and played acoustically (mostly), vocalist Jonny Fox sings (well, tries to sing), raps, talks and comments about life, the universe and everything, his gritty lyrics similar in style and delivery to Jamie-T. There are a couple of memorable tracks that shine, but the lesser tracks flicker out and die in our minds, utterly failing to hold our attention. Current single ‘My Boulder’ kicks off Save the World/Get the Girl in relative style, complete with excerpts from Robert Browning’s ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlyn’.

Playing with our expectations by beginning with plucked guitar, the band then launches in, with Fox singing, “You can lean on me, cry

is one of few more upbeat moments on the album, which largely sees Morrison bemoaning the loss of his youth, innocence, and with deadening frequency, loves. In strings of clichéd lyrics he wails that ‘Nothing Ever Hurt Like You,’ and duets with a disinterested Nelly Furtado on the obviouslymetaphorical ‘Broken Strings,’ before declaring the pointlessness of life ‘If You Don’t Wanna Love Me.’ I think that by now you can probably get the general drift of Songs for You, Truths for Me. Sadly, this is the kind of album that will probably sell in droves, the perfect soundtrack for upscale clothes stores aimed at middleaged women. Some of the clientele will then presumably go on to put on Songs for You, Truths for Me as background music to coffee with friends, wondering absently why that nice young man has gotten so depressed. They shouldn’t worry though, as he’s probably laughing all the way to the bank.

John Sannaee

on my shoulder.” It’s ridiculously catchy, optimistic and very listenable, but too clichéd for them to become anything more than local heroes. This is the most panache the band can seemingly muster up.

‘Save the World/Get the Girl’ (0/10 for good titles, by the way) is the other central tune. The lyrics keenly observe the real world; the band stated themselves that this, their second album, would feature “a much more personalised take on social ills”. However, there remains at the heart of The King Blues a belief in people and a belief that, however bad the situation is, everything will improve: “I will save the world. I will get the girl.”

It’s a refreshing attitude, but, again, the song is obvious and could have been written by any half-competent guitarist who’s ever listened to The Clash. ‘The Streets Are Ours’ (which references Indymedia and Tiananmen Square) and ‘Hang the Landlord’ are acutely observed pieces of writing, but the music lets the words down. ‘The Schemers, the Scroungers and the Rats’ is a demonstration of how poor this genre of music can be, with its chorus like a riotous singalong in a pub. You can almost hear the glasses smashing in the background... Yes, it’s fine, but just listen to it on MySpace, rather than wasting your pieces of eight.

Alex Sutherland

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

MusicReview 19

Scared Bunnies FRIGHTENED RABBIT THE CAVES THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER

AAAAD

LESS THAN a year ago, Frightened Rabbit were a new Scottish band with a promising debut album and a truly brilliant Christmas single.

Since the release of their second, The Midnight Organ Fight, they’ve turned into the type of band whose fast-growing audiences know every word to every song, and sing it back with the kind of devotion usually only found in Biffy Clyro fans, or churchgoers.

Every song is an anthem, and not the kind of throwaway ‘anthem’ that is an average verse with a radiofriendly chorus tacked on, but real solid-gold future-classics containing the special combination of misery and black humour that Scots do better than anyone else in the world.

This is best illustrated in the closing refrain of ‘My Backwards Walk’: “You’re the shit, and I’m knee-deep in it”, or the painfully glum ‘Poke’: “Why won’t our love keel over as it chokes on a bone?/We can mourn its passing and then bury it in snow/Or

should we kick its cunt in and watch as it dies from bleeding/If you don’t want to be with me just say and I will go.”

Tonight they kick off with ‘I Feel Better’, and follow up with ‘Fast Blood’ two of Organ Fight’s many highlights, and as is now standard, like every FR show this writer has ever seen (of which there have been quite a few) they’re played with the kind of fervour most bands could only muster if a firing squad awaited them should they deliver anything less.

Throughout the regular swapping of instruments and stage positions, first-class on stage banter ensues as is now customary, which gives Frightened Rabbit the unique ability to make their audience cry then laugh heartily within the space of a few minutes. This reviewer knows of no other band who manage to get an entire crowd singing the words “I’ll get my hole” and make it seem sweet and innocent.

It’s a special ability, and as the closing chords of ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ draw the show to an end, it’s pretty clear everyone present is fully aware of that fact.

Andrew Chadwick

KINGS OF LEON ONLY BY THE NIGHT RCA

AAAAD YOU MAY have preferred the Kings of Leon when they had beards and quirky haircuts but musically, they haven’t undergone any radical transformation.

Caleb’s soulful, emotive voice that is slightly wallowing without being wearing is still a staple component.

In fact, his vocal carries some of the more repetitive tracks. Only By the Night is a great first listen, words such as anthemic and stadium-rock come to mind, abhorrent or uplifting as they might be.

With Caleb at the wheel in ‘Closer’, streaking past synths like subdued sirens as the guitars screech like burning rubber, you’ll be singing along in the backseat before the second verse. ‘Crawl’ is a yet dirtier number, the friction of grinding guitar virtually setting the American flag aflame: “They want to see us

is this news? crawl, the reds and the whites and the blues that crucified USA, as the policy unfold, all hell is surely on its way.”

If you have any exposure to TV or radio ‘Sex is on Fire’ is probably already embedded on your brain so I won’t elaborate. The title ‘Use Somebody’ has an unfortunate resemblance to a Bridget Jones soundtrack and there is a wailing female backing vocal. However, it is tightly controlled with minimal instrumentation, a bare background of thrumming guitar lets Caleb’s gripping vocal take the fore.

Similar can be said of ‘Manhattan’ except the conversation between the sweet, resounding lead guitar, grooving rhythm and taut drumming will keep you rapt.

In ‘Revelry’ Caleb continues to coo, ‘you know I’m a dancing machine’ to metallic rattling drums and wistful guitar. ‘Notion’ is more of the same except this time he warbles: ‘don’t knock it’. Sadly, I have to, Only By the Night hits all the right notes but all the same ones, a little too often.

Susan Robinson

Flags are at half-mast. The world mourns. Yes, the rumours are true - Dirty Pretty Things are no more.

What do you mean you didn’t notice? The band that made ‘Bang Bang Your Dead’ (an “insta-classic” according to the NME, no less) are gone, and no one even seems to care.

Carl accumulated less column inches with the death of his band than Pete Doherty’s cat managed earlier this summer when it went off it’s food.

Poor Carl, seeing a crack-addled excolleague taking all your plaudits is a frustrating experience, as anyone who has ever attended a media awards ceremony will attest.

But with the departure of one great musical institution so another returns to us. Fred Durst, who many of us believed to have dropped into a musical abyss so deep even a zeppelin would struggle to escape, this week dropped hints on the band’s Myspace page that Limp Bizkit would be reforming later this year.

“It’s getting very close to time to drop the Bizkit on the universe” said the rap-rock relic. “Besides, if we were shit then we can’t very well be any worse, can we?” he might have added, before begging God’s forgiveness.

News reaches us from our Internet Correspondent of Rick Astley’s longawaited nomination at the MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Act Ever.

Astley, a pelican-trapper by trade, faces stiff competition for the award from the likes of Britney Spears, Green Day and U2. Of course, if the MTV Europe Music Awards were a horse it would be taken out back and shot, but thanks to cryptic EU trade regulations its not.

And now, the latest endorsements for Barack Obama: Slash, Vampire Weekend, Joss Stone, Chuck D, the National and Russell Brand. Is This News? is confident that this latest boost to the Democrat campaign would be just enough to help secure the crucial elderly Jewish vote in Florida if only the Grateful Dead would reunite for Obama. Oh wait, they already have? Good.

Frightened Rabbit: not actually frightened, not actually rabbits

THE MAYBES? PROMISE XTRA MILE

AADDD THAT’S IT. It’s gone too far.

The UK is fed up and any emerging band called “The ...s” should be treated with immense suspicion for fear of once more having to go through the unpleasant experience of having excrement come into contact with our ears.

Not even the “?” which this band have (cleverly?) added to their name

detracts from our current misgivings when presented with the definite article.

When Promise found its way into my possession, therefore, I was worried and suspected 12 songs of sub-Wombats: jokey pop soon to be condemned to the scrap heap of the 21st century.

I was almost right. Catchy, listenable and well-constructed these songs might be, but this band lacks the originality to break on through to the other side and join their peers such as the aforementioned Wombats, who, sadly, are chart-regulars these days.

Opener ‘Turn Me Over’ begins with a dull U2-meets-Coldplay riff, which will make you want to turn

off your CD players (with your prejudices confirmed), until singer Nick Ellis enters, sounding like Richard Ashcroft with an added pulse. These vocals give the track an unexpected energy and urgency and the chorus verges on glorious. It’s as immediate a tune as you’re likely to hear.

Previous single ‘Boys’ continues the trend with its infectious guitars and rhythms, which mercifully make us overlook the horribly clichéd chorus of “boys will be boys and we’re lost in the city tonight”. It’s the album’s best moment.

The singles ‘Summertime’ and ‘Talk About You’ follow its triedand-tested formula but irritatingly remain distinctly average. The Vervey ‘Trick of the Light’, one of the al-

bum’s slower moments, is a beautiful song in which Ellis sings cryptically of saints, heaven and peace of mind.

It’s a lyrical and musical highlight.

However, despite these moments, Promise is littered with filler. ‘The Come Around’ and ‘Ronnie Loves Julie’, for example, are superfluous and banal and painfully remind us of the pathetic breed of bands who play prom on the OC. In the end, although I’m not a majorly cynical person, I feel the need to ask: “Who cares?” I thank The Maybes? for producing some good music and for not abandoning their guitars to plonk in an inconsequential keyboard. Cheers, guys, but don’t give up your day-jobs just yet.

Alexander Sutherland

And on that note we’d like to offer our own personal endorsement of Barack Obama. Not because of his politics or some mis-guided notion that our opinion counts for shit, but just because he seems quite nice, doesn’t he?

Thomas Kerr

20 Culture

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

International Surrealist Exhibition, London June 1936. Salvador Dalí in diving suit and helmet with seated on ground: Paul and Nusch Eluard, E.L.T. Mesens; seated behind Diana and Rupert Brinton Lee.

Exhibiting Surrealism Dean Gallery Until mid December

aaadd

Alan McCrediee

Cherry Blossom Traverse Theatre Until 11 October

aaadd Admittedly, the prospect is daunting. A bilingual drama about Polish immigration to Scotland is unlikely to be anyone’s idea of a thrilling night out. But those who venture to the Traverse Theatre’s new play, Cherry Blossom, during the next week, will witness something remarkable: a play that is both a stunner and a failure, and a possible foretaste of theatre to come.

Cherry Blossom is about being lost in the world, and as such its strengths—energy, inventiveness, and an appetite for misery—are evident from the beginning. At the centre of the play lies Grazyna, a middle-aged Polish woman and a model of that fierce determination which is born out of desperation.

Burdened with a daughter whose university fees must be paid and a husband too useless to do the earning, she leaves for the UK in search of money. The bulk of the drama then alternates between the small triumphs of Grazyna’s first year in Edinburgh—a job at the meat factory, a burgeoning love affair—and the long-distance dependence and disintegration of her family in Poland.

The play’s final element, which hangs over the fictional lives, is the recounted killing of Robert Dziekanski. An actual immigrant, he was tasered to death in 2007 following some misunderstand-

ings at Vancouver Airport.

This much the audience can safely, if depressingly, grasp. However, a large part of the play’s content and ambition does not filter through in any such coherent fashion.

For the playwright Catherine Grosvenor and her collaborators are not content with merely putting a piece of real-world misery on stage; they want to jolt the watcher into a new experience of theatre. Thus the actors - two Scots and two Poles - switch characters and languages with a bewildering, unsubtitled rapidity. Just enough English is used for the gist to come through clearly, but our bearings continually fall away.

The stage, bare except for a set of white panels, is suddenly revealed to be a digital chalkboard. The panel-screens fill with the spatter of a vivid red during Grazyna’s first shift cutting open a pig; and when the Edinburgh weather turns cold, snow whirls across them in dizzying drifts. In all this, one can taste the play’s radical intent. Planting one foot firmly in the troubles of our current world, Cherry Blossom pushes excitedly forward with the other into a novel, sleek theatrical environment.

And so the play works, for the first half-hour. You can’t help admiring the unusual demands it makes on actors and audience, or its attempts to flesh out a worldly perspective which delves beyond gender, nationality, and language.

But then a gesture, too easy or cute, will put you off balance. The piggishness of Grazyna’s husband, and the benevolence of her Scottish lover, become increasingly un-

believable. The tide of unmemorable lines begins to trigger some irritation. It finally dawns on you that in the rush to be daring, Grosvenor and company have simply forgotten to write a good play.

However sadly predictable this twist may be, the scale of the creators’ oversight is still staggering.

The intricacy of the play is exhaustive, and yet the most basic requirements, and pleasures, of theatre seem to have been hardly thought out.

Forget that the climax is so poorly staged that the audience hardly grasps its import, and you are still left with a script which, despite its undoubted revisions, has not one beautiful line to its credit. The story of Robert Dziekanski, meanwhile, is simply read aloud by the actors and left hanging around the edges of Grazyna’s, not intertwined in any but the most superficial sense of their being both Poles.

Speaking to The Scotsman before Cherry Blossom opened, the director Lorne Campbell described his project as “a new way of writing a play.” He probably only had the play’s bilingualism and advanced multimedia in mind.

Nevertheless, what winds up being more distinctive about Cherry Blossom is how it places those noble intentions and great effects ahead of good writing.

For all its novelty the play is less a departure than the latest in a tradition as old, and slightly inglorious, as theatre itself. Cherry Blossom is both an emphatic work of the present moment and a lousy play.

Ben Fried

The Dean Gallery’s outstanding collection of Dada and Surrealism is currently complimented by a display documenting The International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936 held in the New Burlington Galleries, London.

The Exhibition, organised by British surrealist Roland Penrose, was a huge success which excited and shocked a London public unaccustomed to the ambiguity and menace of works by Dalí, Ernst and Miró et al.

Invitations, posters, and newspaper reviews from the Roland Penrose Archive are enclosed in the glass cabinets of the Keiller Library which adjoins the permanent collection of Surrealist works at the Dean.

The documents, which put the Exhibition and indeed the entire movement, into its political context, form the most interesting aspect of the display.

A free handout of Penrose’s typescript explaining the circumstances of the exhibition, describes the ‘complaisant view of life’ in London which angered the members of the movement who predicted instead a ‘catastrophic showdown’ in the face of Fas-

cism.

This clash of views helps to explain the outraged response of Londoners and the media in 1936.

The papers that contextualise the exhibition highlight the aims of the Surrealists and help underline their message.

Their angered response to the political climate is particularly prominent in works showing the artists’ reactions to the First World War, such as Magritte’s Black Flag, which is on display.

Pieces of artwork on sale during the event in 1936 add interest to the small gallery space. The fine sketches - particularly those

by Miró - are worth a look and brighten up the display made up mostly of texts and cuttings.

The collection is a welcome compliment to the Surrealist display next door, but as an exhibition in its own right, Exhibiting Surrealism is a little underwhelming. For those yet to visit the Dean Gallery’s renowned collection however, the Keiller Library’s current offering is certainly worth a look.

Katie Hobson

International Surrealist Exhibition, London June 1936, installation shot of the main exhibition room.

Student

Week 3 07.10.08

Culture 21

Sunset Song King’s Theatre Until 4 Oct

aaaad “Things have got to change” is the idea offered to the full house attending Sunset Song at the King’s Theatre.

Set in the early twentieth century, upheaval is certainly imminent due to the onset of war and the perishing of North-Eastern rural life in Scotland.

The need for change is most prominently highlighted by the struggles of a young woman, Chris Guthrie. Beautifully played

by Hannah Donaldson, Chris provides the main thrust of the play as it follows her life and struggles, originating from her nursing of an ageing and tyrannical father.

On top of this pressure, her husband goes off to fight in the Great War which subsequently overpowers any ambitions she has for education. Instead she is forced to remain at the family farm and forgo a life of intellectual advancement and any chance to progress in society.

Donaldson portrays her character’s struggles by dramatising an A to Z of emotions through passionate monologues, drawing the audience into the fraught nature of the time.

A particularly notable scene during which a few handkerchiefs were removed from handbags sees Chris being told of the death of her husband, leading to the plays subdued conclusion.

However, the performance is not all doom and gloom and there are numerous comic interludes.

A Flying Start: Denève conducts Mahler 5 Festival Theatre 1 October

aaadd This is going to be an unorthodox review. I’ve seen Fantasia and I love it - particularly when the little mushrooms hop around in formation - but classical music to me largely connotes my mother turning on Radio 3 at 7am as a ‘cheery’ wake-up call every morning at home. Similarly, when it comes to orchestral scores, most of what I know stems from Jilly Cooper’s Rannaldini, the rascal conductor featured in some of her finest romps. Suffice to say, I am no connoisseur.

That said, an evening listening to the RSNO, led by their acclaimed musical director Stéphane Denève, proved elevating and accessible - even to the layman.

Despite this, once seated, I wondered how to describe watching an unfamiliar piece of music being performed, and wondered what benefit is derived from seeing it live rather than listening to a re-

cording. I settled upon comparing it to that singular feeling one gets looking at the countryside from a train window. Looking at the landscape provides a comfortable way of unfolding ones thoughts as the eye takes in a more general picture. But then I rejected the comparison as it turned out the music was more - much more - than that. I was able to engage with it, only on my own level of course, but still.

As the programme informed me, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was written at a time of poignant change in the composer’s life. In 1901 he nearly died from intestinal haemorrhaging, yet by 1902 he had married the love of his life, was expecting his first child, and was approaching the apogee of his career. As a result, the Fifth Symphony develops from the funereal trumpet motif resounding through the first movement, to the dizzying triumph effected by the clash of the cymbals in the finale. In short we hear a passage of music relating a journey from darkness to light.

I was not always sure which part of Mahler’s life the respective movements referred to, but that doesn’t matter. As with all good music when the tone becomes sombre, so do you. It is affecting.

Accordingly, following the adagi-

etto (a slow build up), the crescendo finally reached by the strings was arresting; imagine the bows of roughly thirty violinists atremble in perfect synchronicity, accompanied by an exciting backdrop of sounding trumpets.

Towards the end of the same movement, Denève hushed the stage and cued in the strings alone

who proceeded to play the next part by tapping the wood of their bows onto the body of their violins. This struck me as pure innovation. If it was an adlib of Denève’s onto the score, it lent a new light to the performance and thus proving the malleability of a score dating back to 1902.

Who knew I would find an an-

The Reverend Gibbon certainly brought a bit of fun with his enthusiasm for a biblical description of breasts; to much of the congregation’s delight.

The director, Kenny Ireland, ensured the audience’s attention was held by providing an energetic show. This did mean, however, that the earlier scenes were perhaps a little rushed which created problems in terms of understanding the story for those who are not familiar with Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s story.

Unfortunately this hurrying of the initial scenes meant that sometimes the actors’ voices became a little strained. However, this did not affect the visual appeal; chiefly arising from the layering effect of characters on stage and a number of movement sequences which added fun to the performance.

This physicality also made the most of a set designed to look like a ploughed field, curving up towards the back of the stage and giving the feeling of open country.

Ultimately the success of the play was the creation of a real sense of the time - most notably due to the live-on-stage fiddle music. An echoing quality gave a sense of looking back on a time past and forgotten, but for the dissemination of culture through mediums like Grassic Gibbon’s story.

Long Rob of the Mill remarks during the play that many old Scots songs are being replaced by “fine new songs from America.”

This gives a concluding sense that, inspite of the devastating effects of war, Chris Guthrie’s time has truly past and can never be returned to.

Alanna Petrie gle in? Probably everyone who knows better than me, but for any sceptics it was an edifying performance. Perhaps a new door is ajar? Perhaps next time Radio 3 issues from my kitchen at dawn the boiling rage I used to feel will be quelled.

Hannah Joll

22 Lifestyle

Student

Week 06.10.08

LIFESTYLE: FOOD

How to...Eat like a student

Kate Beioley grapples with the bizzare concept of ‘student diet’

One of the distinctive features of the student lifestyle revolves around the student diet. It is based upon several key factors, namely budget restrictions, the inability to spend more than five seconds preparing a meal and the turf war that is the shared student kitchen.

To use the term “budget restrictions” is actually a little misleading; any constraint is more to do with the fact that student priorities steer towards having a good time rather than sensible nutrition.

Any budget must be divided into several categories: food, clothes, books and alcohol. Or - to be more precise - food and alcohol. Though even then food is really an optional component for most Edinburgh students, for whom a strict diet of Jack Wills and vodka is more than adequate nourishment.

Clearly, an evening spent getting disgustingly drunk before passing out on a putrid Why Not? sofa is always preferable to a cosy night in with a lasagne – meat and pasta just doesn’t

have quite the same effect as a pint of £5 champagne.

However, this isn’t the only issue when it comes to food preparation.

Time and effort have to be considered.

The typical student day for those of us lucky enough to take arts subjects is a jam packed circuit of naps, family guy, more naps, a cup of tea and, for the more active among us, half a work out video. So it’s hard to imagine where one could find the time to knock up a duck a l’orange. Typically the cooking process goes something like this: “Hungry…Fridge…butter…. cheese….cupboards …..HUNGRY NOW……cereal, cheese and beans!”, resulting in an appetising medley of stale bread, suspiciously shiny cheese and cold beans from the tin.

And all this is without the consideration of the minefield that is the temptation of your flatmates’ cupboards…that bar of chocolate which you

really will replace later, that last slice of bread that you think they’d probably give to you anyway. And really, what’s a pork chop between friends?

I can tell you, the student’s is a cupboard never fully stocked, with luxury items “borrowed” the minute they touch the shelf. The student kitchen is a dog-eat-dog world, only the food’s not quite up to “Pedigree Chum” standard.

Jamie Manson

Student Recipe of the Week Spicy Shrimp and Asparagus Stir Fry *Ingredients:*

Tantalizing three courses for under a tenner?!

Kimberlee McLaughlan ventures into the world of cheap dining A decent dinner for under a tenner?

Armed with a ten pound note and a determination not to be sucked in by an alluring billboard only to be served a microwave meal with a pint of Tennants, my dinner companion and I hit the streets. Wandering around Victoria Street, we stumbled across the French style bistro ‘Maison Bleu’, which boldly offered three whole courses for the meagre sum of £9.90. Impressed by these claims and absolutely starving, we floated nose first into this heavenly recluse.

The restaurant is what most would call ‘cosy’, and what those not used to intimate dining may term ‘claustrophobic’. The tables are closely packed together, though neatly presented with candles and fresh flowers. The chairs, however, could do with a cushion to disguise the fact that they have been well

used over the years. In terms of décor, the restaurant subscribes to North-African and French influences, which contributes to a young and quirky atmosphere.

In spite of these foreign flavours, ‘Maison Bleu’ is a quintessentially Edinburgh-esque restaurant, boasting masses of character due to its unique position beneath the stone arches of the Old Town.

The lunch time menu offers just enough diversity, with seafood, meat, cheese, and tasty-looking vegetarian options. Not expecting a massive amount of food considering the budget limitations, we were pleasantly surprised by the generous starters, which consisted of succulent mussels in white wine sauce, and grilled goats’ cheese on ciabatta for my lunch buddy. Following a reasonably quick delivery, the starters

were well presented and thought out, which was a great reflection of the restaurant’s chic interior. And, most importantly, the ingredients were fresh and flavoursome. Our fish of the day and grilled pork chops lived up to a similar standard, with the pork oozing just enough juice to signify a well-cooked piece of meat, and the fish served with a white wine and fennel sauce to jazz up what could have been a dull dish. Food served on square plates accentuates the chic slant that ‘Maison Bleu’ breathes into old-school French cooking.

Unfortunately, dessert did not merit such praise. A rather rectangular looking strawberry cheese cake looked chunky and misplaced on an even chunkier plate, and the fork provided did little to elegantly slice the thick biscuit base, resulting in a sickly wedge.

One would

perhaps be better off opting for two courses for £8.50, or one for £6.50.

Rather typically of places offering good food at low prices, the service was slapdash and slow. The plates tended to stay put until the next course was due, and we had to ask for the bill after a lengthy wait, which led me to wonder how slow the service might be on a busier day than ours. We were one of two tables in the restaurant. The waiting staff may have looked good, but it should be suggested to the waitress who slammed down our plates without so much as a nod of recognition, that service with smile works wonders.

Nevertheless, the food and unique ambience of ‘Maison Bleu’ makes the experience well worth your while, and for a few more quid than your regular Palmera pizza, it’s ‘tres bien’ to do it the French way.

½ cup of white or brown rice 1 tsp of cooking oil of your preference ½ onion – chopped 1-2 cloves of chopped garlic 1 c of mixed chopped peppers 1 c of broccoli or any other vegetable of choice 1 c chopped raw asparagus ~ 8 oz shrimp – preferably defrosted 1 tbsp soy sauce Hot Sauce of Choice Salt and Pepper

*Preparation:* 1) Prepare brown rice via pot or Cooker ( follow directions on package) 2) Add oil to wok over high heat. Once oil is hot, add onions, peppers, garlic, asparagus and other vegetables, then stir fry for 5 minutes or until vegetables have browned slightly 3) Stir in shrimp, soy sauce, hot sauce and cook for additional 2-3 minutes 4) Season with salt and pepper 5) Serve on top of rice or on the side 6) Enjoy!

Week 3 07.10.08

Threesome LAST WEEK’S TV

by Jonathan Holmes

Dawn Porter: Free Lover Channel 4

My Big Breasts and me BBC iPlayer

Page Three Teens BBC iPlayer

ADVERTS FOR DAWN PORTER: FREE LOVER seem to promise that our oddly alluring, animated-chipmunk presenter will be engaging in wanton acts of public lewdness and depravity.

After all, the trailers are full of blurred images of flabby bodies having flabby orgies and Dawn crammed into over-populated hot tubs. However, I would urge those channel-surfing for smut not to break out the shag pile and baby oil just yet.

After a recent move from BBC Three to Channel 4, Dawn’s new programme, Free Lover, is the continuation in a a string of risqué ‘investigations’ by our cartoon heroine, following on from Dawn Gets Naked and Dawn Goes Lesbian). Disappointingly, while the titles may suggest mildly titillating, publicly-funded pornography (perfect for an insomnia-addled audience unable to face the CSI: Anal imagery of the internet) the programmes are invariably as arousing as a Powerpoint presentation on feline diabetes.

The first episode of Dawn Porter: Free Lover stuck exactly to the

TV 23

Student

format of her previous shows: instead of soft-core porn, we’re left with ugly people doing mildly embarrassing things in living rooms and endless diary pieces to camera from Dawn. The effect is closer to a controversial Jacqueline Wilson novel than smut. Even when there’s nudity or group sex or girl-on-girl action, it’s as erotic as watching gorillas humping: far from the hotel room pay-per-view fun we’d been promised.

Dawn is not the only one practising false advertising. BBC Three is especially prone to cock-tease programming: filling their schedule with shows that promise debauchery and deliver spreadsheets. Even more infuriatingly, the programme makers act as if you’re a filthy, filthy pervert for thinking that MY BIG BREASTS AND ME might be an enjoyable evening in the company of, well, big breasts and their owners, rather than an hour of solid mammograms and surgery. Despite the raunchy titles and subject matter, there’s a disapproving air taken towards anyone interested in such things.

However, the producers are not as innocent as they claim. In Free Lover, underneath all the pop-psychology about love and jealousy in the commune, there was the subtle teasing of whether Dawn herself was going to take part in a mass ‘oil ceremony’ (group molestation) performed, hilariously, on top of a tarpaulin.

Even more blatant was PAGE THREE TEENS, which followed 17 year-old potential glamour model Chelsea White as she approached

her 18th birthday and contemplated selling her soul (and other bits) to Page 3. The expressed intention was to examine why so many young girls aspire to giving 45-year-old men erections at the breakfast table. However, the unspoken driving force of the programme was whether you got to see some barely-legal flesh at the end.

The endless scenes of jailbait blonde Chelsea deciding whether to bare-all, and the near constant references to her approaching birthday, created a sense of tension that far surpassed any episode of 24: “Will Chelsea sacrifice her commercial career to try to make it as a glamour model?”

“Will she attend the topless shoot scheduled on her birthday?”

“Will you get to see them?”

“Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror tomorrow?”

Of course, in the end, Chelsea decided against the tabloid lifestyle: leaving the viewer desperately trying to rationalise their foray into the Sex Offenders Register.

“How interesting: I never realised few glamour models are successful enough to support themselves” you mumble, as your penis shrivels to uselessness.

Dawn Porter: Free Lover left me cold (and limp) because, despite dressing itself up as Dawn Does the 1960s, the series is as awkward and off-puttingly sweaty as attending an actual free-love orgy.

Provocatively titled shows like this always promise filth; but it is the viewer who ends up feeling dirty, humiliated and flaccid.

Fatal Adaptation

Forget Bravo and Five - when it comes to big knockers, ‘glamour models’ and free willy, BBC Three is the one to watch

NEXT WEEK - Posh totty/ national treasure Nigella ‘The Body’ Lawson gently massages our screens

Period drama adaptations are cynical and tasteless - not to mention almost always terrible, says Ciara Mullally SUNDAY SAW the final, devastating chapter of BBC1’s latest period adaptation, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I should make a small confession: I only read it this summer after finding out it would soon be hitting the small screen.

I always read the novel before seeing the adaptation - it’s important to form your own interpretation before allowing yourself to become immersed in somebody else’s.

Reading the book afterwards is fine, although you may find yourself picturing events as they were on the screen, rather than imagining them for yourself - plus, you may find yourself searching for a certain Mr. Darcy wet shirt scene that fails to materialise.

Far worse than the people who see Colin Firth when they read

about Mr. Darcy, though, are those who don’t even get that far. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man not in possession of a good deal of time, must be in want of a period d ra m a .

Class i c novels are there to be read, and although I enjoy their TV equivalents, they can never manage to transfer all the nuances and emotion from

page to screen.

Recently, ITV aired an abomination to the entire period drama genre: the preposterous Lost in Austen. As if Pride and Prejudice wasn’t already overexposed on our screens, this version actually had the gumption to rewrite the story.

It even erased completely the romance between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, which as well as being one of the most famous love stories ever written, is the entire essence of the novel.

How anybody could think that

“ITV’s latest period drama abomination, Lost in Austen, is like giving the Mona Lisa a nose stud” adding a modern twist to a classic story in such a ridiculous manner could ever be a good idea seems completely unfathomable to me – it’s like giving the Mona Lisa a nose stud.

If people insist on creating TV shows out of much loved novels, they should at least stick to the original plot; partly out of respect for the author, but also because the original is, more often than

not, impossible to improve upon.

Perhaps I am being too pessimistic. Perhaps period dramas are doing a world of good to the nation’s reading habits. There is always the chance that legions of committed couch potatoes are being inspired to relax with a good novel - sales of recently adapted classics with shiny new covers proclaiming: ‘As Seen on TV!’ do seem to increase after the programme has aired. But I can’t shake the feeling that those making the purchase proceed to place the book on a shelf for a rainy day which never comes.

Next up on the BBC is Little Dorrit, another one that I admittedly haven’t read yet. Luckily, though, I still have plenty of time to head down to the library and pick up a copy...

Student

Week 3 07.10.08

Tech 25

The Force, Leashed Craig Wilson finds your lack of faith disturbing THE FORCE UNLEASHED LUCASARTS

X360, PS3, WII £39.99 THE FORCE is a mysterious and powerful manifestation of nature: a source of great strength for a Jedi as well as his potential downfall. How apt it is then that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is both good and bad: light and dark, stunning and sordid.

With a story sandwiched between the third and fourth Star Wars movies, you are the secret Apprentice to Darth Vader, undertaking covert missions such as hunting the remaining Jedi, without interfering with the established canon. Considering the tight restrictions, the game manages to carve out an enjoyable story that fits neatly into the Star Wars universe.

If only the gameplay was able to exhibit such freedom. What appear to be detailed levels are ridden with invisible walls and ceilings. Travel along an alternative yet completely accessible route and you’ll slide gently off the scenery, back to where the designers think you belong. This is normally into battle against hordes of stormtroop-

ers, which would be fine if the camera didn’t have its own covert mission of crippling your progress.

It is where your character faces, not the camera, that attacks are targeted.

Each encounter becomes a tiered battle where the camera must first be wrestled into submission before the enemies themselves can be dispatched.

This dynamic changes during boss battles where the camera flees to a fixed position on the edge of the screen, like a boxing coach watching his fighter get pummelled mercilessly by off-screen attacks.

In early sections, a gentle flick of the Force is all that is needed to send a stormtrooper hurtling through a plate of glass. However, you soon find that one in every four stormtroopers has purchased the new Force-ShieldTM that completely negates your most powerful Force attacks. It’s terribly unfortunate that this product was discontinued in later years. Cheap tricks like this result in the Force rarely being unleashed, merely dispensed with when allowed. You are never challenged in new ways; only shown that old tactics can be negated at will. Pulling down a giant starship into a planet using the Force should be cool, right? Not here.

Somehow what should be a highlight turns into one of the most frustrating moments of the game, thanks to attacking TIE fighters that distract you from the real objective.

The game faces the challenge of incorporating a lot of new technology. Euphoria gives each enemy a sort of biomechanical AI; push them and they stumble and flail around trying to protect themselves, their reactions driven by simulation and not premade animations. Digital Molecular Matter gives material real world physics: wood splinters, while metal warps under pressure. These engines are showcased in all their glory when the player takes Darth Vader on a stroll through a tropical jungle early in the game. Here, the Force is truly unleashed: lifting a hairy Wookie into the air, you watch him flail helplessly trying to grab hold of something. Another Wookie grabs his leg and they flounder together - you throw them through a wooden hut and watch as they spiral off into the sunset.

When The Force Unleashed gets things right, it is a euphoric symphony of destruction. However if you’re looking for a consistent blend of lightsaber action and groundbreaking physics, this is not the game for you.

CRYSIS: WARHEAD EA PC

£19.99

A QUESTION to ponder: Why would Crytek choose a man like Sgt. Michael ‘Psycho’ Sykes, a grizzled, seen-it-all, macho Londoner to star in a game like Crysis: Warhead?

This is a game which takes aim at all the major flaws of the original Crysis and eliminates them with sniper-like precision. Not enough action? Bang. Rubbish vehicles? Bang. A bizarre and disappointing shift from ‘only shooting at humans’ to ‘only shooting at aliens’ two-thirds of the way through? Bang.

Why would a man like Sykes star in a game which, unlike the original Crysis with its crushingly dull protagonist, actually contains enough of a whiff of character development to give this RPG-loving reviewer’s heart a little lift?

Sure, there isn’t much, but it’s there and it’s a step forward for a genre (that is, first person shoot-

BREAD ers starring large, power-armour clad muscle men) where all too often the developers forget the second word in the phrase ‘player character’.

Maybe it’s because, as he keeps telling us throughout this shortbut-very-sweet standalone episode, he’s “British, you muppet.”

Or maybe it’s because Crytek have decided that he would be a supremely fun character for us to play as they grace us with a thrilling, visceral and above all memorable addition to their Crysis franchise. Other developers take note: look at Crytek, or look at Valve’s Half-Life. We want short, cheap, high-quality games and we want them often. Just as brevity is the soul of wit in literature, it can equally be the soul of entertainment in computer games.

Of course, only by buying an enormous PC powered by the sacrifice of goats and the burning of terrible Tom Clancy novels will you see Warhead at its best. But then again, it’s Crysis. What did you expect? You muppet.

-Stuart Ritchie

USEYOURLOAF

ALL MAJOR CONSOLES £0.59 I DIDN’T have enough space to review Braid in this issue of Student, so decided to review the similar Bread. While the premise of Bread is a little half-baked, it contains the right ingredients to make a tasty experience.

Bread will not appeal to everyone. Some stages can be much harder than others, especially on Wholemeal difficulty - it’s often all too easy to get into a jam.

On later levels, one false step and you’re toast. However, slice through the crusty exterior and there’s a delicious core to be found.

Bread is available in both regular and stay-fresh editions from all major supermarkets. It’s clear to me that Bread will be part of every gamer’s staple diet for years to come, especially with the expansion pack Cheese on the horizon.

-Alan Williamson

26 Sport

Student

Not such an easy job after all Having spent the vast proportion of my student loan in Margiotta’s, I was inclined to take up a part-time job to make ends move slightly closer to one another.

I applied for the usual jobs; working at the Odeon, spilling drinks and short-measuring at Lava Ignite, and even stacking the shelves and changing the expiry dates at Margiotta’s, hoping that I could earn back some of the millions I had deposited in its rancid pockets. But, alas, I was not a desirable candidate.

I was too clumsy to tear tickets at the Odeon, too honest to work at Lava Ignite, and too important a customer to be accepted into the Margiotta mafia.

Just when I was contemplating calling the bank and requesting that my overdraft be extended further, I spied a job advertisement stating the need for referees at the local five-a-side league. At the bottom it read ‘£10/hour’. I was sold. I was going to be a referee.

I phoned the number on the advert, and after lying about my refereeing qualifications - that is

to say I made them up - I was appointed to take charge of a match that very evening.

I was supplied with a whistle and given a brief, but not exhaustive, run-down of the rules. I did my best - I made honest judgements, tried to maintain discipline and let the game flow. Despite my noble sentiments and actions, I was not well received. In fact, never before have I been the subject of such abuse in all my life. I was sworn at, intimidated, hit and spat at, and all by a bunch of kids playing 5-a-side. I took my £25, went home, and never answered the call to referee ever again.

That was my personal ordeal, so when I read Graham Poll’s autobiography, Seeing Red, it was with a certain amount of haunting, thanks to my experience, and pity for the man that I had vilified nearly every time I had encountered him in the past.

The book itself feels like it has been written by a lawyer, a point by point defence of every major or contentious decision the man ever made in a 26-year career, but

CARD TRICK: Graham Poll issues a red card

the reason it struck a chord with me was that the abuse I received during two and a half hours of 5a-side refereeing was just a regular trip to the shops for Mr. Poll.

I only had to deal with ten players at a time; professional referees are dealing with 22 players, two managers, all the fans in the stadium, the media and the fans at home. When you talk about showing three yellow cards in a world cup match to one player, you’re talking about total vilification by an audience of almost half a billion people, while only 50,000 or so throw things at you and tell you your mum’s a whore.

Pressure and abuse aside, the book gives a unique insight into the workings of the FA, the personalities of some of the players, the skills needed to be a successful referee and the frightening criminal underworld that tries to snatch control of football from time to time. The FA, in the book, is lambasted for not protecting referees - by allowing referees’ integrity to be questioned on a weekly basis by managers and players without

Week 3 06.10.08

David Wagner lends his support to the maligned men in the middle

caution. Poll complains that the FA, by not reacting to such accusations, has allowed a climate of illdiscipline to envelope the football leagues. The FA aside, Poll lists the main offenders of these integrity accusations as, surprise surprise, Jose Mourinho, whom he describes as one of the biggest serial liars in the game’s history, John Terry, and gifted referee insulter, Neil Warnock. In addition, he mentions Ashley Cole on numerous occasions if only to highlight the fact that the Chelsea left-back is a twat. Who would have thought that Poll would accuse Chelsea of

I took my £25, went home, and never answered the call to referee again

being the main offenders, especially after he was alleged to have been a Chelsea supporter by the News of the World in 2005?

Another surprising Poll anecdote is that the supporters he has been threatened by most frequently are Newcastle fans, and they still claim they’re the best fans in the world. One of Poll’s best stories concerns the ‘truth’ about Robbie Savage. I won’t ruin it for you by writing it here, but the book is worth reading for this alone.

Poll talks about the indomitable Pierluigi Collina and how he prepares for games by identifying possible flash points, mapping the tactics of both teams and deducing how this will affect the game, and preparing a persona for himself jokey, stern, quiet, etc. - that will most effectively control the game depending on who is playing. Graham Poll just used to tell his linesman what part of the pitch they had to cover and that was that.

And people wonder how Collina was so clearly the best referee of his generation.

Finally, and in a somewhat sinister tone, Poll tells of the powers of corruption that are available to referees. Poll claims to have never been approached directly to throw a game, but tells stories of thrown games in Germany, Italy, Spain, literally everywhere in Eastern Europe, and most prevalently in Russia.

A Russian referee friend of Poll said to him that the hardest games he’d had to referee were the ones where he already knew the final score. Poll vehemently claims that he has heard no such instances of match-fixing in Britain, and adds that British referees are “virtually incorruptible”. That sounds nice and convenient, but I hope he’s right.

The book, even if you still maintain a virile hatred for Graham Poll, is worth reading for its largely unbiased insider accounts of player scandals. Fights and words exchanged between managers and players are all observed from the non-partisan referee’s position.

I still don’t want to referee a match ever again, not even to avoid asking for another overdraft extension, but the next time a referee makes a wrong decision, I might just have a little more patience for him.

Week 3 07.10.08

Student

Sport 27

Elite feet or drugs cheat?

Alistair Shand debates whether Usain Bolt is all that he seems Even the most pessimistic of sports fans could not help but be inspired by Usain Bolt at Beijing 2008. The rangy Jamaican sprinter powered his way to an electrifying double in both the 100m and 200m events as well as smashing both world records.

In setting his time of 9.69 seconds in the 100m, Bolt even seemed to ease off and eat up the final yards at a canter. The ridiculous margin of victory for the sprinter only accentuated just how far ahead of the rest of the world Usain Bolt is. However, before this victory stunned the world in Beijing, sprinting was enduring one of its darkest periods in Olympic history.

The list of discredited champions is disconcertingly lengthy in a sport which should represent some

of the most finely-tuned specimens on the planet, the most notable of which is undoubtedly Dwain Chambers. A man who, for years, was a beacon of light for British sprinting and a genuine contender for Olympic gold has now joined the long list of banned athletes after failing a drugs test.

Chambers suffered more anguish than most on his way to eventual decline, but at least his rise to the top of sprinting was well-documented. Although I am as electrified with Bolt’s meteoric rise as the next person, no one seems to know where it came from. Bolt has travelled from mediocrity to superstardom frighteningly quickly and the inherent doubter in me cannot help but ask how?

Performance-enhancing drugs have long cast a shadow over mod-

ern-day sport, particularly sprinting, and have obliterated the career of many a promising athlete. The temptation to be at the pinnacle of a sport is often irresistible and steroids provide an illicit highway to achieving such a position. With this in mind, it is challenging to see Usain Bolt’s meteoric rise as a result of graft, natural talent and a physique simply made for sprinting. There is no doubting the attraction of such a route to the summit but it just does not seem to happen today.

Disgraced double Olympic Champion Justin Gatlin is a case in point. The young American powered his way to a sprint double at the Athens Olympics of 2004 and was viewed as the future of sprinting, as someone whose hard work, commitment and raw speed had

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? Usain Bolt celebrates after destroying the 100m world record at the Olympics this year

resulted in fairytale Olympic success. Two years after his triumph in Athens, Gatlin was banned from athletics for four years for doping, and the watching world lost faith in sprinting once and for all.

Usain Bolt’s victory, however, has threatened to start a sprinting renaissance with people around the globe enthralled by the precocious, self-confident speedster. If this new king of the track is genuine then a renaissance is indeed imminent and Bolt represents a role model for all young athletes. On the other hand, suspicion perisists in any sudden sporting success and the worry remains that Bolt will follow the painful example of many a sprinting star.

Olympic legend Carl Lewis was the first high-profile questioner of Bolt’s dramatic victory. Lewis commented: “To run 10.03 seconds one year and win the Olympic final with 9.69 the next - if you don’t question that in a sport with the reputation it has right now, then you’re a fool.” Although the remark has been widely condemned by no less than Jamaican sprinting star Asafa Powell, it undoubtedly expresses the views of many a sports fan. It is not small-minded pessimism but justifiable doubt, especially in a sport which in recent years has seen athlete after athlete crumble into insignificance.

Jamaica has consistently boasted a clean record in terms of doping and one would be hard pushed to remember a scandal involving steroid use by a Jamaican athlete.

However, admirable as this record is, it is also true that Jamaica does not have an independent, out-ofcompetition testing program for its athletes, nor has it joined the Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organization. This has been the cause

Promising start for Uni sides Sportline Martin Domin As the University sport season got underway last week, there was success all round for the various sides in action.

The badminton sides were first to demonstrate their credentials as they travelled to Aberdeen and promptly consigned their hosts to three heavy defeats. The men’s side triumphed 3-1 before their female counterparts went one better as they recorded a 4-0 clean sweep.

The success was rounded off by the mixed side who completed a 10-2 demoltion job of their northern rivals.

Although the women’s hockey 1sts lost out narrowly to Hillhead Ladies in their first match of the season, they recovered to see off Edinburgh’s second string 8-1 to

keep their reputation intact. Also at Peffermill, the men’s 1sts edged out local rivals Heriot-Watt 2-1.

The lacrosse side have been one of the most successful in the University over the last few seasons and the women’s 2nds made quick work of Stirling’s first string as they scored no fewer than 20 without reply. The men’s 1sts were unable to match that scoreline but also ran out comfortable winners with an 82 scoreline.

The Stirling camp’s day went from bad to worse as their men’s rugby team were beaten 32-25, while the men’s football 1sts put recent defeats behind them to run out 4-1 winners. The day’s events were rounded up on the basketball court as Edinburgh’s women’s 1sts emerged 54-47 winners to send the Stirling sides home with a whim-

per.

This week sees the football side turn their attention to the Image Printers Cup as they take on Craigroyston in the Third Round. Men’s basketball begins its campaign at home to Robert Gordon while the badminton sides welcome Strathclyde as they look to build on their impressive start.

Sports President Joe Gray is well aware of the university’s reputation: “Being one of Britain’s top 5 sporting Universities as well as Scotland’s premier institution for sport means that a massive emphasis is placed on BUCS (the new BUSA) by the Sports Union and its athletes.

Let’s see if we can carry on from last week’s great start of 9 fixtures, 8 wins and a draw. Well Done.”

Badminton: Men:

of murmurs of discontent among athletic bodies. Not because anyone holds the steadfast belief that Usain Bolt or any Jamaican champion is guilty of drug cheating, but simply because if you do not test then how do you know for certain that a victory is pure? Thus, although the overwhelming likelihood is that Usain Bolt’s astonishing double was unadulterated, the web of doubters, fuelled by years of Olympic scandal and expulsion, will never truly be silenced unless Jamaica does more to test its athletes at every level. Conversely, there is a view held by euphoric sports fans around the globe that Usain Bolt is a true people’s champion.

He is someone who has emerged from years of training and taken the sprinting world by storm with his inimitable style and charismatic manner. The “Lightning Bolt” knew what he wanted to acheive and pushed himself to the limit of his physical powers in order to succeed. He is the man who everyone now wants to be, the first poster up on a bedroom wall - Bolt crossing the finish line with his arms aloft and the rest of the field disappearing into the Beijing smog. This is an image that is rightfully held and should still be held years down the line. A true champion, immune from drug scandals and the moanings of suspicion. Usain Bolt: the architect of a sprinting renaissance and an inspiration for every corner of the globe. Here’s to hoping that such a view remains forever in sporting history and that doubts are cleared. However, until that final proof arrives, those who still reluctantly hold nagging doubts can be forgiven and it is up to the powers that be and the man himself to assure us of his clean brilliance.

Hockey Men: University of Edinburgh 1st 2-1 Heriot-Watt University 1st

Aberdeen University 1-3 University of Edinburgh

Women:

Women:

University of Edinburgh 1st 8-1 University of Edinburgh 2nd

Aberdeen University 0-4 University of Edinburgh

Mixed: Aberdeen University 2-10 University of Edinburgh

Basketball: Women: University of Edinburgh 1st 54-47 University of Stirling 1st

Football Men: University of Edinburgh 1st 4-1 University of Stirling 1st

Lacrosse: Men: University of Edinburgh 1st 8-2 University of Stirling 1st

Women: University of Edinburgh 2nd 20-0 University of Stirling 1st

Rugby: Men: University of Edinburgh 1st 32-25 University of Stirling 1st

For full results and reports go to: www.eusu.ed.ac.uk