The Journal - Edinburgh Issue 005

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EDINBURGH’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER

ISSUE V

WEDNESDAY 27 FEBUARY 2008

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION » 23 Congolese author Alain Mabanckou is shaking up French literature

FREE KOSOVO » 19 Ian Traynor asks if the Balkans are ready for more conflict

» 16

University staff cuts blamed on SNP budget

The politics of AIDS » 24

» 100 redundancies at Dundee University » Vice-Chancellor says decision forced by "poor" funding provision » Opposition parties take aim at government

Paris Gourtsoyannis paris.gourtsoyannis@journal-online.co.uk

OVER 100 JOBS are to be lost at Dundee University in the first case of staff cutbacks blamed directly on insufficient government funding for higher education.

Faced with a budget shortfall of £3 million over the next two years, Dundee University Principal and Vice-Chancellor Sir Alan Langlands says he has been forced to instigate the current restructuring program as a result of the “poor” funding settlement offered to universities in this year’s Scottish Budget.

“Given the disappointing outcome from the government’s comprehensive spending review and the pressures on pay, pensions and utility budgets, the action taken following the university’s own sustainability review and delivery of the targets set in our strategic framework will move us towards a breakeven position,” said Mr Langlands.

The cuts at one of the country’s foremost centres for biomedical research and training have raised fears of financial difficulties damaging Scottish universities’ ability to compete for talent in the global arena.

Speaking exclusively to The Journal, the Scottish Labour shadow Minister for Education, Ken Macintosh, said: “Dundee University is at the leading edge of Scotland’s knowledge-based economy.

“We want to see urgent action to prevent similar cuts at other universities before more damage is done to Scotland’s standing as a centre for excellence.

“To this end we will be calling for a full independent review of the way higher education is funded.”

His sentiments were echoed by the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ spokesman for education, Jeremy Purvis MSP. “There seems to be a feeling in the SNP that the only things students are concerned with is the cost of university,” he said.

“In reality, students seek not only cheap education, but the best academic environment possible.

“Professors and students are sensitive to the research environment of the institution in which they work, and there is a danger that without proper funding, the best talent could leak out of Scotland to the detriment of academic quality.”

Mr Macintosh, whose represents Dundee as a regional MSP for North East Scotland, suggested that there could also be wider economic repercussions as a result of the decision.

“Students and staff make an important contribution to local communities in areas like Dundee. This will not be welcome news to residents,” he said.

The funding settlement for universities included in this year’s budget represents a fall in funding of 0.2 per cent, a figure debated by the SNP but supported by both the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

Scotland’s universities had requested £168 million in the run up to the budget, but are now unlikely to see anything approaching that figure with the budget having already been approved.

Continued on page 2

Jon Rawlinson

CAPITALISING ON THE AIDS EPIDEMIC

The differing agendas of governments and aid organisations have been carefully stage-managed, says AIDS researcher Alex de Waal

Cole campaign running anonymous attack blog EUSAless Ben Judge ben.judge@journal-online.co.uk

EUSALESS, THE ONLINE blog notorious for attacking elected officials at the Edinburgh University Students Association, was a “campaign tool” being run by several members of presidential hopeful Harry Cole’s campaign team, an investigation by The Journal can reveal.

Alastair Sloan, press officer and spokesperson for Harry Cole’s campaign, has been secretly running the anonymous blog, alongside several other contributors close to Mr Cole, since November 2007.

In that time, EUSAless has been

particularly influential in undermining public opinion of EUSA sabbatical officers Josh MacAlister, Tom French and Gordon Aikman while attacking Mr Cole’s political rivals.

If elected, Mr Cole will be expected to work closely with the permanent secretary, Graham Boyack, and the communications adviser, Tony Foster, two non-student members of staff at the Students’ Association also heavily criticised in the blog.

In a statement released on Saturday, Mr Cole apologised for misleading voters, admitting to “having influence on its direction” and that some may see it “as a campaign tool.” In the statement, he claimed to have worked with the people behind EUSAless “in

the past,” however, after being presented with claims by The Journal, he admitted that current members of his campaign team were writing the blog.

On more than one occasion, EUSAless has attempted to appear independent of the Harry Cole campaign. In an entry dated 12 December 2007, it denies suggestions that Mr Cole was involved with the blog, while another post, dated 5 February 2008, attempts to imply that Mr Sloan also had no involvement.

Nick Ward, a rival presidential candidate who has come under heavy fire from EUSAless in the last week, Continued on page 16

HAVE SUPERFOODS GONE SUPER FAR? » 19

2 News

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

This week in The Journal... university staff Student election coverage » 16 The Journal continues indepth, down-to-the-wire coverage of student elections across the city

Afghan cinema » 27 Boxing clever » 32

Sigga Jonsdottir looks at filmmaking in Taliban-era Afganistan

Tom Crookston reports on Edinburgh’s biggest amateur fight night of the year

Spaced out » 21

“What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.“

G. W. F. Hegel

cuts blamed on SNP budget Continued from page 1

“The SNP has promised to make universities a priority if any end-of-year flexibility funds become available,” said Mr Macintosh.

“However, the government has also promised to use these funds – which are only a possibility in the instance of surplus revenue – to reduce business duties.

“Certainly, universities do not feel prioritised.” in blaming its decision on the SNP’s funding provision for higher education Dundee university has broken ranks with fellow institutions and representative bodies. universities Scotland – the umbrella organisation for Scottish higher education – has failed to endorse Sir Alan Langland’s judgement in finding the government at fault, instead adopting a conciliatory tone. in a letter to the Scotsman on Thursday 21 February, David Caldwell, Director of universities Scotland, said: “We welcome with... warmth the positive and constructive engagement we have had with the Scottish Government in recent months.”

Speaking to The Journal, a spokesman added: “universities Scotland has explained to the Scottish Government that the budget settlement will leave the sector facing financial pressures in the next three years.

“We have had a sympathetic hearing, and welcome the fact that the Cabinet Secretary has already found £10m of extra investment. This is a good start and we will continue to work with the Government to address the cost pressures.

“People are the most valuable resource in universities, and we hope to be able to address the cost pressures without the need for significant job losses.”

The decision to implement staff cuts has also come in for criticism from the main lecturers’ union.

Tony Axon, speaking for the uCu, said: “[Dundee] shouldn’t be so quick to react to this budget, particularly in the first and second year of this funding, because there is opportunity to get better funding in the future and to ride the storm.”

The Dundee university has attempted to limit the damage to its image caused by the staff cuts.

A spokesman for Dundee said: “We expect that, come 2010-11, we will have roughly the same number of staff

working at Dundee as we do now.

“The point is that, in many cases, they will be funded through different routes than central funding from government, such as research council funding.”

The situation at Dundee university has already demonstrated its potential to have serious political consequences for the current administration at Holyrood.

SNP First Minister Alex Salmond has touted his first budget in charge as a red-letter achievement in which many of his flagship policy are enshrined; during question time at the Scottish Parliament on Monday 25 February, he faced sustained attack from his rivals.

Former Deputy First Minister and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen asked: “is this an efficiency saving or a cut?

“And will the lecturers and students who suffer as a result be able to tell the difference?” unsatisfied with Mr Salmond’s response that “an institution... is facing up to a difficult budgetary situation in a responsible manner,” Mr Stephen continued: “The truth is that Scottish universities are facing a record cash crisis.

“Never since the creation of this parliament has there been a real-terms cash cut in university funding until now.”

Of Edinburgh’s five universities, only Edinburgh university offered comment on the matter of staff cuts when contacted by The Journal.

A spokesman said: “There are currently no plans for redundancies at the university.”

Elsewhere in Scotland, the picture is more bleak.

Strathclyde university has confirmed it will go ahead with the 250 redundancies announced before the new budget.

Glasgow university announced on Friday 22 February that it may have to reduce staff numbers in its School of Modern Languages as a result of a downturn in the number of student studying in certain of its subject areas, particularly German.

According to The Herald the prestigious research body, Scottish Centre for Research in Education, is also under threat of closure.

The Scottish Education Minister, Fiona Hyslop MSP, was unavailable for comment when contacted by The Journal.

EDiNBuRGH’S STuDENT NEWSPAPER Editor Ben Judge Deputy Editor Hannah Thomas Art Director Matthew MacLeod Deputy Editor (News) Paris Gourtsoyannis Deputy Editor (Comment/Features) Evan Beswick Deputy Editor (Sport) Tom Crookston Photo Editor Eddie Fisher Chief Illustrator Lewis Killin Copy Editors Alex Reynolds, Gavin Lingiah, Kasmira Jefford, Katia Sand, Kayleigh Woods, Sarah Galletly Sales Manager Devon Walshe Sales Executives Katherine Sellar/Steve Jones News Investigations Miles Johnson General News Hamish Fergusson Edinburgh News Graham Mackay Academic News Neil Bennet Student Politics Sarah Clark/Tim Goodwin National Politics Helen Walker National Student News Nick Eardley/Joanna Hosa Features George Grant Profile Alison Lutton Entertainment Chris McCall/Lucy Jackson Eating & Drinking Nana Wereko-Brobby Hockey Emily Glass/Becky Owen Football Dominic Moger Rugby Jack Charnley/Jonathan Burt The Journal is published by The Edinburgh Journal Ltd., registered address 52 Clerk Street, Edinburgh EH8 9JB. Registered in Scotland number SC322146. For enquiries call 0131 662 6766 or email info@journal-online.co.uk. The Journal is a free newspaper for and written by students and graduates in the City of Edinburgh. Contact us if you’d like to get involved.

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News 3

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Saudi flagship university to be built on ‘freedom island’ » Western-style institution to enjoy

freedoms denied to rest of population

Joanna Hosa joanna.hosa@journal-online.co.uk

KING ABDULLAH OF Saudi Arabia is investing $12.5 billion to build a graduate research institution from scratch on a Red Sea island near the village of Thuval.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) will be overseen by Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi, the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. Saudi Aramco, the largest oli corporation in the world, will be responsible for building the campus.

The university is expected to open in September 2009. With more than $10 billion, it will have one of the largest endowments in the world.

Nadhmi Al-Nasr, KAUST Interim President, said: “We would like to see KAUST reach the level of MIT in the next ten years. I know it took MIT decades to be what it is. I am a believer that KAUST can achieve this goal with the nation behind it and the leadership fully supporting it.”

The aim is to transform Saudi Arabia into a knowledge economy to help create wealth through innovation, rather than depending too heavily on oil revenue.

KAUST will offer only engineering and computational science degrees.

International cooperation and the recruitment of leading academics is considered crucial to the future success of the university.

The institution has already an-

nounced its partnership with the renowned German research university, Technische Universität München, and professor Shih Choon Fong, currently president of the National University of Singapore, has been chosen to be KAUST’s founding President.

The university hopes to lure international scholars with impressive facilities and the offer of generous scholarships. It is expected that initially about two thirds of the 2000 students will come from abroad. King Abdullah has promised that they will enjoy full academic freedom, with men and women from all religious and ethnic groups working side by side.

However, Israeli citizens will be barred from both studying and teaching at the institution.

All other universities in Saudi Arabia will remain subject to Sharia law, which limits women’s rights and prohibits coeducation. Scientists at mainstream Saudi universities often complain that they self-censor their work for fear of offending Islamic beliefs.

KAUST aims to stop the mass emigration of scholars across the Arab world. The Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo reports that every year Arab states lose half of their newly graduated doctors, a quarter of their engineers and 15 per cent of their scientists.

Arab graduates depart mainly for the UK, the USA and Canada, and 45 per cent of Arab students never return to their native countries to work after gaining their degrees.

KAUST: aims to stop the mass emigration of scholars being experienced across Arab world

Will out of sight mean out of mind?

Hamish Fergusson News Editor

hamish.fergusson@journal-online.co.uk

“The institution’s inception forms part of a drive to reform higher education in Saudi Arabia... time will tell whether significant social change will accompany these reforms.”

THAT THE KING Abdullah University of Science and Technology is to be positioned on a remote, reclaimed peninsular and segregated from the rest of Saudi Arabia comes as no surprise. The institution will be a cultural anomaly within wider Saudi society, exempt from the state’s Islamic legal framework.

The kingdom’s religious establishment restricts opportunities for women to enter higher education and rarely tolerates coeducation in line with Sharia Law. There is currently only one Saudi university where women and men can study side by side, while in the state’s public institutions they must enter classrooms through different doors and are separated by partitions during lectures.

In addition, research into advanced genetics and stem cells is tightly controlled.

Such constraints will not apply within the walls of the KAUST campus, where men and women of any ethnicity are welcomed and where the zealous Saudi religious police will have no jurisdiction.

Certain values will, however, be upheld: no Israelis will be allowed access and alcohol will be forbidden.

KAUST will not be the first example of a privileged enclave existing within the kingdom. The university’s status mirrors that of the secure compounds that have housed Western oil workers in the country for decades,

and is the latest manifestation of the conflict within Saudi Arabia between the state’s commitment to its traditional constitution and its aspirations as a global power.

Although the workers’ compounds remain subject to Sharia Law, their existence is an anathema to religious conservatives in the region and the buildings have been subject to terrorist attacks.

But the skills and knowledge of their residents, and the international collaboration they represent, are vital to securing the oil profits upon which 75 per cent of the country’s economy is dependent.

The venture has, as its name suggests, been fully endorsed by the King. Significantly, he has charged the state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco with building and staffi ng the institution on a pro bono basis.

Those involved in leading the enterprise have been remarkably candid about its purpose.

“There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization,” said Abdallah S. Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco.

“We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era.”

King Abdullah himself stopped short of directly echoing these sentiments, but hosted a lavish, highprofile foundation ceremony last year.

At the event he is reported to have said: “We hope that the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology will be a lighthouse for knowledge and a bridge connecting civilizations and nations to exercise a sublime humanitarian message.”

However, the wider significance of KAUST’s establishment within Saudi Arabia should not be overemphasised.

The appointment of Aramco as the university’s developers leaves the Saudi education ministry entirely out of the loop, and the institution will only target elite and international students, offering them a narrow range of science and technology courses.

Nonetheless the institution’s inception forms part of a drive, led by the King, to reform higher education in Saudi Arabia. He aims to expand opportunities for Saudis to study at university level, and to shift the tertiary education sector’s emphasis from religious scholarship to scientific research.

The initiative is to be combined with a programme of economic liberalisation, to ready the private sector for the growing stream of domestic graduates.

However, time will tell whether significant social change will accompany these reforms. The philosophy behind KAUST is an important exception to a general consensus among educators in the kingdom that the

pursuit of international standards in Saudi universities need not entail any cultural ‘Westernisation’.

Professor Usama S. Tayyib, President of the King Adulaziz University in Jeddah, said: “We will be faced with strong sweeping currents that will lead to even more powerful competition among academic and commercial institutions and will require from us high level development standards to enable us to cope with such rapid changes in a way that will preserve the culture heritage and identity principles on which we have been raised.”

The university’s ‘vision’ mission statement reads: “Beacon of knowledge: Islamic values, old college traditions.”

Experts are predicting a political backlash against the king, who will face criticism from conservatives, particularly for curbing the reach of Sharia Law at the university.

As Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi newspaper editor has observed, “there are two Saudi Arabias, the question is which Saudi Arabia will take over.”

It is a tension neatly symbolised by copies of The Economist distributed at KAUST’s foundation ceremony.

The edition contained an expensive advertisement for KAUST that appeared as an extra cover, but an article on legal reform in the Middle East had been individually torn out of all the copies by state censors.

4 News

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Edinburgh strives for greater international profile Hamish Fergusson hamish.fergusson@journal-online.co.uk

EDINBURGH COULD BECOME a global holiday destination despite a recent slump in tourism, European experts told Scotland’s industry leaders at a conference last Tuesday.

The Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG) conference, held at Murrayfield Stadium, forms part of an SNP drive to increase tourism in Scotland by 50 per cent.

At the event, tourist chiefs from Sweden and Canada described how they boosted the international profiles of Gothenburg and Vancouver.

Claes Bjerkne, managing director of Goteberg and Co, and Paul Vallee, executive vice president of Tourism Vancouver, highlighted examples of effective tourism practice from around the world.

The government hopes to double the country’s revenue from tourism by 2015, and the Scottish Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism committee have launched an enquiry to establish how best to achieve this target.

Barbara Smith, head of ETAG, said: “Edinburgh is clearly already an internationally renowned tourism destination but we know that we need to stay fresh, as competition grows. Tourism is everyone’s business, whether it is through creating jobs, supporting the local economy or its impact on our environment and facilities.”

Faith Liddell, director of Festivals Edinburgh, also spoke at the conference. Festivals Edinburgh was created last year to coordinate the activites of 11 of the city’s major festivals, which

News Shorts

attract more than 2.5 million visitors to the capital every summer, and are thought to generate £12 million worth of global media coverage.

However, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a flagship festival event, has experienced a slump in sales this year. For the first time in a decade, hundreds of seats are yet to be filled for the August event. Last year’s show was sold out by mid-January. A decline in overseas sales, particularly in the United States, has been reported.

According to director, Jonathan Mills, the future of the Edinburgh International Festival could also be uncertain. Earlier this month he predicted an imminent funding crisis for the annual event and warned that it could suffer “the death of a thousand cuts.”

The convener of ETAG, Tavish Scott, said that the enquiry would focus on such issues, and would attempt to find measures to overcome any challenges.

One such challenge was the rejection by local councillors of plans made

by American tycoon Donald Trump to build a golf complex near Aberdeen, a decision currently under review in Edinburgh. Another was the widespread derision which greeted the Government’s announcement last year of Scotland’s new, £125,000 national slogan, “Welcome to Scotland”.

But a new strategy is seeking to target the diaspora of Scottish expatriates around the world, which has been identified by industry experts as a lucrative latent market.

A number of initiatives have been launched to encourage descendants of Scots emigrés to visit the country and explore their heritage. They include Scotland’s People Centre, a complex

wear them

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… AN EDINBURGH MAN last week pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of a friend while on bail for three separate offences.

Martin Torres stabbed drinking buddy Ian Thompson with a kitchen knife after an argument in a hostel.

Torres, who has a history of convictions for violence and petty crimes, attacked Thompson at the Thorntree Street hostel for chronic alcoholics. The attack took place on 23 October last year.

In court, the judge said: “This is a very serious offence whatever may be said about the circumstances. And frankly, all that has really been said is that Mr Torres was drunk.”

Sentencing has been deferred.

REPLICA GUNS SEIZED FROM CITY TARTAN SHOP POLICE HAVE SEIZED a number of replica firearms during a raid on one of the city’s largest tourist shops.

The fake guns were found at the Gold Brothers’ store on South Bridge, which sells a range of replica weaponry and tartan souvenirs.

Galab Singh, the store’s owner, claimed that the police visit was part of a “routine inspection” but refused to answer further questions.

The manufacture and sale of imitation firearms is illegal under the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006.

housing family archives to be opened in Edinburgh this spring, and Homecoming Scotland, consisting of a number of events in 2009, marking the 250th birthday of national poet Robert Burns.

Scotland’s Tourism Minister, Jim Mather, has spoken of “our empathetic connection to the world, our ability to bring back the Scots diaspora, 29 million people out there, getting them to consider buying more Scottish produce, coming back for further visits, buying a home in Scotland, investing in Scotland.”

It has also been revealed that Edinburgh has lost ground in the latest index of global status. A World Edition of the board game Monopoly is being launched by toy company Hasbro, and the company has invited web users to vote for their favourite cities. Only cities voted in the top twenty will feature in the new game, and will be ranked around the board accordingly.

A campaign to secure a good position for Edinburgh has been launched

by Tom Buchanan, convener of Edinburgh City Council’s Economic Development Committee.

He said: “It would be great if people could get on the website and vote.

It would almost be hard to imagine a global Monopoly board without Scotland’s capital city. We want to be at the Mayfair end of the board.”

But Edinburgh may be lucky even to occupy the Old Kent Road position.

With just eight days to go before the deadline, the city was in 39th place with only 0.9 per cent of the vote. Istanbul currently heads the table, and Edinburgh has recently fallen behind London, the highest ranked UK city at sixth place.

BROWN VISITS CITY TO RAISE PARTY MORALE Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Edinburgh last Friday to rally the Scottish Labour party after months of troubles north of the border.

The event was designed as a show of support for the embattled Scottish Labour leader, Wendy Alexander and also as a stage for Brown to discuss plans for a new constitutional committee to look into the devolution settlement.

The meeting, which was attended by less than half of Labour’s MSPs, was described by the SNP as “a failing attempt to get back on track.”

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scotsman: “It is precisely because Labour in Scotland are under London's thumb – and completely clueless about how to form a functioning opposition in Scotland – that they are performing so badly.”

Lunar eclipse totally eclipsed by weather Hamish Fergusson hamish.fergusson@journal-online.co.uk

MILLIONS OF EAGER astronomers across Scotland failed to witness the total lunar eclipse that occurred in the early hours of Thursday 21st February.

The event promised to showcase the power and elegance of the cosmos, but cloud cover amassing from Wednesday afternoon obscurred the phenomena.

Those hoping for a repeat of the clear skies of March last year, when Scotland was treated to a stunning view of the most recent total lunar eclipse, were disappointed.

The eclipse was hidden behind

heavy cloud cover across most of the UK. Whilst viewers in the United States were able to post stunning pictures of the event onto the internet, only a few of those who had stayed up until three am in Britain were rewarded with a break in the clouds.

Edinburgh University student Corey Gibson said: “My flatmate and myself decided to stay up and had a look from our kitchen window, but I could hardly see the moon at all, and didn’t see any red colours. I was all a bit disappointing.”

Stargazers will have to wait until September 2015 for their next chance to witness a total lunar eclipse in the UK, according to the Royal Astronomical Society.

The spectacle is produced when the sun casts the earth’s shadow onto

a full moon, while all three celestial bodies are lying in the same plane of orbit. Some sunlight, however, still reaches the moon, having been refracted through the earth’s atmosphere.

During this process, blue light within the sun’s rays is scattered. As a result, the light reaching the moon is predominantly red, making it appear anything from a rusty orange to a dark burgundy in colour.

An eclipse is thought to have inspired a Pink Floyd song of the same name on their celebrated album The Dark Side of the Moon. Any fans of the band left disappointed by Thursday’s overcast conditions might comfort themselves with an alternative selection of their tracks: ‘High Hopes,’ ‘Let There Be More Light,’ and ‘Obscured

by Clouds’ are recommended.

EDINBURGH FESTIVALS: key to capital’s global appeal

Ethical deli opens next to George Square Graham Mackay graham.mackay@journal-online.co.uk

THE HIGH-MINDED IDEALS espoused by students in recent years, such as environmental sustainability, Fair Trade and healthy eating, have never been easily reconciled with the more traditional image of the student diet - fast and cheap.

However, these two opposing lifestyles are being drawn together in a new venture near Edinburgh University’s George Square campus.

Green’s Deli, which began trading on Buccleuch Street two weeks ago, is a salad and sandwich shop devoted to the promotion of healthy eating and environmental friendliness.

The deli’s two proprietors, Jillian Hamilton and Alexandre Simon, are both fine dining chefs, and have worked at several of Edinburgh’s five star hotels and rosette fine dining restaurants, including the Caledonian Hotel, the Sheraton Hotel and Prestonfield House.

With over 27 years of culinary experience between them, opening a sandwich bar may not have seemed the obvious career-advancing step for the pair. However, in an interview with The Journal, Ms Hamilton explained the inspiration behind their new venture.

“When you have been a chef for as long as us, it’s for a reason and our reason is that we are truly passionate about good food. As well as the benefits a well balanced diet can have on your health, we are also conscious about the

environment,” she said.

“With so many take-aways surrounding Green’s Deli, we wanted to create something different for the customers and give them the opportunity of choice.”

Ms Hamilton explained that as people become more educated in the ways of healthy eating and recycling, the places where they buy their food should reflect society’s increased attention towards such values.

She said: “Green’s Deli is an environmentally friendly business. All our packaging is 100 per cent biodegradable, from our coffee cups to our plastic salad boxes, made from PLA, an environmentally friendly thermoplastic polymer made from the renewable resource of corn starch.

“We supply Nespresso AAA sustainable quality coffee which has a collaborative partnership with the Rainforest Alliance and is in direct contact with small-scale coffee growers, and also offer products such as Green and Black’s Organic Fair Trade Hot Chocolate and Fair Trade sugar.”

Encouragingly, Ms Hamilton told The Journal that as well as students, a number of local professionals who visited the shop are also demonstrating environmental awareness and are keen to improve their general diet.

“We still get the odd customer coming in for a portion of chips or a bacon butty, but they are not going to find anything like that here. We try our best to persuade them to go for a freshly prepared fruit salad or a wild rocket salad with butternut squash and goat’s cheese instead.”

News 5

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Scot smashes round-the-world cycling record Demian Hobby demian.hobby@journal-online.co.uk

He HaS oFFicially broken the world record for the fastest cycle around the world, covering 80,000 miles and beating the previous record holder by 81 days.

He is probably a bit sore.

Politics graduate Mark Beaumont, 25, of Fife, has spent the last six months cycling around the world, collecting donations for five different charities including the Royal Patron Prince William’s Wildlife Trust, Tusk and the homelessness charity cyrenians.

Publicly endorsed by Prince Phillip and congratulated by alex Salmond, Beaumont crossed the finishing line at the arc De Triumph in Paris on 15 February. in an exclusine interview with The Journal, Beaumont spoke about his cyclling circumnavigation of the globe. “i was still in the Punjab region of north west india when the first attempt [to assassinate Benazir Bhutto] happened which brought about martial law. “i didn’t really get a true sense of Pakistan; i didn’t really get to meet the people and i didn’t get to engage in conversations because i was under police escort the whole way, which was difficult as the police had almost no understanding of what i was doing.

“To ride 100 miles a day sustainably… i needed go at my own pace, stop, hydrate, feed and get the correct sleep pattern. But because i was under escort i found that stretch incredibly tough. it was about… eight days into Pakistan when i got food poisoning. “at that point, when you're in a police station over night and you’ve got really bad food poisoning there’s no

option to stop, i just had to get back on the bike and ride another 100 miles with the police escort. i got to lahore and had lost about a stone in weight and had to take a couple of days off there to recover.” other than food poisoning, Beaumont was knocked off his bike in india, Pakistan and Florida, as well as being mugged for his camera and phone.

“The hardest situation was when i was mugged and threatened in louisiana, that was probably the only time in the whole cycle where the situation was entirely out of my control. “iran, out of all of the countries, was the biggest revelation for me. i had - like most people do - this preconception about iran but the reality is that it is incredibly safe, the infrastructure is 10 times better than that of Pakistan or india. i’d have to leave my bicycle to go and pick up supplies… and there was never ever a concern. i was far more concerned when i was in the southern states of the US and other parts of the world.

“The welcome i had [in iran] was just overwhelming… they give rest and accommodation to travelers for up to three days. i would cycle into any town and just stay at mosques, which were always open."

Beaumont had to endure floods and extreme weather conditions in South east asia, followed by the 3,000km stretch across the Nullarbor Desert in australia. “i was doing 160km a day. once you're physically fit enough it's actually really easy, and your legs can do it. The tough bit is the conditioning to sit on the bike for long, long periods of time. you know, the saddle sores, wrist pain, back pain, neck pain, that kind of thing.

“The saddle sores were actually the

worst in australia. i had 1200 miles in 12 days - monsoon conditions and very heavy rain in South-east asia. So i landed in Perth and just because [i was] soaked the whole time i had aggravated some of those tender parts and going through the outback in australia not able to clean everyday, and sleeping in tents for long periods and not able to wash my dirty lycras obviously aggravates those pains.

“So that was actually one of the hardest parts. it wasn’t specifically aches and pains to do with the legs because they were absolutely used to what they were doing. it was the saddle sores and the numbing of holding the handle bars and that kind of thing. and there’s nothing you can do, you just have to keep going. “actually finishing, just keeping in mind my physical and mental exhaustion at that point, the excitement and the sense of achievement was more to do with the fact of being reunited with friends and family and the incredible reception i had in Paris.

“There were 40 or 50 people there and then the press probably made it up to about 70 so the reception was incredible… after 195 days entirely on my own it was just amazing for those first few days to be back and to be finished and to spend time with friends and family, that was the initial sense of achievement. “it's been incredible… the main outcome is my impression of the people who i’ve met around the world - the generosity of strangers and the friendship despite all the challenges i’ve had and the general warmth and friendship from all parts of the world.” a four-part BBc documentary series on Beaumont's journey is scheduled to be broadcasted on BBc2 in april.

Exhausted record-breaking Scot doesn’t want to sit down onEdition

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What happens when an opera company puts crime writer Ian Rankin and Grammy Award-winning composer Craig Armstrong in a room together with a blank piece of paper? What about novelist Bernard MacLaverty and composer Garth Williams?

Scottish Opera and The Journal are providing four local students with the chance to find out!

Five:15 is an exciting fusion, bringing together some of Scotland’s most renowned writers and composers to produce five new fifteen minute operas. Two pairs of tickets will be given away.

Simply send an email to under26@scottishopera.org.uk with Five:15 in the subject box.

Be sure to include a daytime phone number.

Hurry! Closing Date is Thurs 6 March at 5:00 pm TERMS AND CONDITIONS Email entry closes at 5 pm on Thurs, 6 March 2008. Tickets are not eligible for refunds or exchanges. Scottish Opera may contact you from time to time with information regarding performances, discount ticket offers and special events. If you do not wish to be contacted, simply send an email to under26@scottishopera.org.uk after the prize draw stating “unsubscribe” in the subject box.

6 Edinburgh News

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

New council budget makes partial withdrawal on funding cuts Rebecca Sibbett rebecca.sibbett@journal-online.co.uk

Edinburgh City Council unveiled their new budget last week amid speculation over cuts targeting Edinburgh’s voluntary sector.

The Lib Dem/SNP coalition has been subject to widespread criticism over the past few weeks due to intended cuts to a range of schools, community projects and charitable organisations.

Councillors last week were met

with cries of “No more cuts” outside the Lothian Chambers by Unison members, the city’s union representing Council and voluntary sector workers, who protested against the proposals.

But despite a continued freeze on council tax, the new budget promises refurbishments to a range of city leisure facilities, including 21 million pounds to be spent on the Commonwealth Pool, as well as spending on the rebuilding of city schools.

In addition, a number of the charities expecting to suffer from slashes of around seventy-five percent in fund-

ing have been spared. However, many more are still going to be affected by major cutbacks.

Despite the budget’s aims to improve services for the elderly and young people, individual schools will have to make efficiency savings of up to 1.5 per cent which works out at roughly 2.5million city-wide.

Tina Woolnough, a front liner in the campaign group Parents in Partnership, along with other spokespersons from six different organisations, appealed to the council for more to be spent on their respective organisa-

tions, but to no avail.

Other cuts that will be going ahead include the scheme Go4It and Play4It, the city’s school holiday activity camps which are popular among young people and parents alike. Significant cuts to other community learning groups are set to result in the loss of several jobs.

Labour and Green councillors have been active in the multiple campaigns that have surrounded the run up to the setting of this year’s budget, with a number of them voicing concerns about how the current plans will affect those who need help the most.

Microsoft announce plans to move into Edinburgh's Waverlygate Amadeus Finlay amadeus.finlay@journal-online.co.uk

SOME OF THE world’s leading technology and financial companies have expressed interest in renting space in Edinburgh’s former General Post Office after Microsoft confirmed it was to make the top two floors its Scottish headquarters.

The US-based software company recently revealed that it will create a “technology centre” at Waverley Gate to showcase its products to clients from across Scotland.

Raymond O’Hare, director of Microsoft Scotland, said: “If a customer wanted to see a new system we would have the technology available to show them.”

Six other companies have viewed the building in the past fortnight, with several others expressing a keen interest. Leasing agents are confident another major deal is on the horizon.

Nigel Crump, a spokesman for the developer Castlemore, said: “We are talking to a number of companies at the moment. The first letting is always difficult but it was fabulous that we got Microsoft here. As soon as that was announced, it generated a lot of interest in the building.”

The renewed interest has been a boost to developers who have waited for over three years to attract tenants since the building’s £100 million refurbishment was completed.

Mr Crump said: “There is a gathering momentum and we’ve had half a dozen viewings in the last fortnight – all of them either national or international names.”

While Microsoft has leased 3500sq ft of space on the top floor and 8600sq ft of space on the fourth floor, there still remains more than 200,000sq ft of unoccupied space.

However, Ben Reed, director of the leasing agent Jones Lang LaSalle’s office agency team, said: “There has certainly been a positive response to Microsoft committing to the space. Some companies are within the technology sector and that seems to be buoyant at the moment.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft Scotland commented that its new Scottish headquarters will perform a similar role as the main UK headquarters in Reading.

Ron Hewitt, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, said: “Microsoft is a great anchor tenant. It is names like that that other companies want to be associated with.”

News Shorts wear them CABARET VOLTAIRE CELEBRATES THIRD BIRTHDAY POPULAR CITY CENTRE nightclub Cabaret Voltaire is to celebrate its third birthday on Friday 29 February with a massive party.

The sold out event is hosted in partnership with Sugar Beat and will feature DJ sets from Erol Alkan, Herve and Sinden with a rare appearance from Scottish DJ Richard H Kirk in addition to the usual house performers.

SCOTT FREE, JUST SCOTLAND RUGBY INTERNATIONAL Scott Macleod has escaped serious punishment for failing a doping test.

Mr Macleod tested positive for the drug Terbutaline, present in his asthma inhaler.

However, the error was deemed to be mainly a bureaucratic one, as the player was not aware that a separate legal exemption on medical grounds was needed for each separate substance which is present in medication.

Mr Macleod had an exemption for a different substance found in an earlier inhaler.

He was nonetheless issued with a formal warning; he therefore faces an automatic two-year ban for a second transgression.

MILLIONAIRE FAILS TO PAY THE BILLS PLAYERS SCOTTISH PREMIER League strugglers Gretna had more to worry about last week as they found out their wages would not be paid.

Millionaire club owner Brooks Mileson has bankrolled the club’s meteoric rise from the foot of the professional leagues to the greatest stage in Scottish football, but was unable to send out the players’ cheques for February as he was laid low by a mystery illness.

Mr Mileson has been taken to Newcastle for testing, and remains in hospital.

Sturgeon responds to Sick Kids campaign Health minister meets with leading campaigners over hospital closure Demian Hobby demian.hobby@journal-online.co.uk

SCOTTISH HEALTH MINISTER Nicola Sturgeon, has responded to concerns over the future of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children by agreeing to meet with campaign leaders.

The ‘Hands off the Sick Kids’ campaign, led by former tumour patient Ross Newlands, 16, gained the public eye thanks to the backing of the Edinburgh Evening News.

Sturgeon met with Newlands and his father to talk about the issue in the run up to the government’s decision on whether to centralise health services.

She told them: “Without pre-empting the [final] decision, I hope you will

feel the right decision has been made when we get there.”

National healthcare experts are reviewing paediatric services in Scotland, to assess whether top level neurology and children’s cancer services would be more effective if centralised on one or two main sites.

The Scottish Government will consider recommendations during a three month consultation period before announcing a final decision.

Ms Sturgeon said: “As a Government we are very committed to having services as close to home as possible.

People don’t want to travel if they don’t have to.

“I am very committed to the Sick Kids and any decision we take will be with keeping services as close as possible in mind.”

‘Invincible university’ a serious prospect Singer Donovan wants capital's waterfront as site for campus Graham Mackay graham.mackay@journal-online.co.uk

AFTER INFORMING THE world that he is to found an ‘Invincible University’ as instructed by the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi almost four decades ago, 61-year-old Donovan has revealed that the £5 million institution will definitely built in Edinburgh.

The legendary folk singer said that he had shortlisted three potential sites in Scotland, including one in his native Glasgow, but has decided that the capital’s waterfront is to be the home of the university that will seek to bring enlightenment to the country’s young people.

He said: “I am coming to Scotland later this month to continue the Invincible Donovan University that I will build in Scotland. It looks like it is [going to be] in Edinburgh.

“I wondered what Glasgow would think of that, because I am a boy from Glasgow and I am building my university in Edinburgh.

But I think it is a beautiful development area that is happening on the waterside.

“It looks like the development of that area along the waterside is very positive towards the university.”

Waterfront Edinburgh chief executive Colin Hunter revealed that talks are currently underway with Donovan and American film maker David Lynch, but no final site had thus far been selected.

He said: “We had an exploratory meeting so I could understand what they were looking for. They wanted to know if we had any sites that we could identify for them.

“We would like to know more details, but it does not sound like something we would be against if we could find a site suitable.

“No site has been identified yet. We do have sites available but whether they would be suitable for a university would require further discussions.”

Donovan has stated his intention to attract roughly 1000 students to the university, but Lynch claims that it will only take a quarter of that number to bring peace to Scotland forever.

“For a country the size of Scotland, it would take only 250 students meditating to protect it from its enemies and to bring peace, to stop violence and drug abuse. That is just a byproduct of the students meditating together,” he said.

As well as conventional university subjects, the Invincible Donovan University will teach transcendental forms of meditation as part of its curriculum, which its directors believe will boost learning, culture, art and wellbeing.

Allan Jackson, who represents the Forth ward, said: “If Donovan has the backing to set this up it would certainly be worth a look.

“I’m of an age that I can remember him for his hits such as Mellow Yellow and Catch The Wind. Let’s see what he comes up with. It might be something to benefit that end of the city and Edinburgh in general.”

8 Edinburgh News

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Forth Bridge restoration to be completed in 2012 Hannah Thomas hannah.thomas@journal-online.co.uk

tHe LAnDmArK FortH rail Bridge will be free of scaffolding and be fully painted by 2012, rail chiefs have announced, killing off one of Britain’s best loved idioms. the specialist paint coating the 118-year-old bridge is expected to last up to 30 years. though the restoration work started in 2002, the scale of the task meant bridge bosses have not announced the project’s deadline until now. network rail, the bridge operator, has signed a deal worth £74 million with existing contractors, Balfour Be-

atty, to complete the remainder of the work.

Iain Coucher, network rail’s chief executive, said: “the Forth Bridge is a working monument to the genius of British railway engineering. “the work currently being undertaken will restore the bridge to its original condition and preserve the steelwork for decades. “the team currently working on the bridge has now completed some of the most difficult work and they have already overcome the most significant challenges that this project posed.

“For that reason, we have taken the decision to accelerate the work, increasing the annual investment from £13m to £18.5m with the aim of gener-

Hearts fans ‘brutalised’ PoLICe BrutALItY toWArDS Hearts fans has been condemned by two leading edinburgh politicians.

David mcLetchie said supporters had complained about the “intimidatory atmosphere” caused by Strathclyde Police force’s heavy-handed policing at last Saturday’s match against Celtic. george Foulkes also claimed the force had treated fans like “animals” at previous fixtures, and criticised their attitude towards Hearts supporters as “prejudiced.” mr mcLetchie said: “I have had a number of complaints and I know the club has as well. I’d rather hoped that some of these issues about policing had been resolved.

“It’s completely unsatisfactory.

Fewer and fewer fans are going to Celtic Park to support Hearts because of what they perceive to be an intimidatory atmosphere.”

His comments were backed up by fellow mSP mr Foulkes, who said this was a long standing problem.

He said: “this isn’t the first time this has happened. I think there’s something that orientates the police in glasgow against Hearts fans.

“People who are wearing maroon scarves get treated like animals and it’s not acceptable.”

Fans said police officers and stewards had acted in a heavy-handed fashion, ejecting supporters for standing up in their seats. one supporter wrote on the online messageboard Jambos Kickback that supporters of the edinburgh club were made to feel like “second-class citizens.” the supporter, who referred to himself as Andy68Hearts added: “never ever have I been made to feel like that as a human being.”

ating long-term financial savings.”

He added: “the restoration has been ongoing since 2002 but, due to years of under-investment during the 70s and 80s, the scale of the job was initially unclear. “only now are we in the position to name a completion date of 2012.” marshall Scott, managing director of Balfour Beatty Civil engineering, said that the company had already worked 2.6 million hours on the bridge over the last six years.

He said: “We now look forward to taking this project to completion.

With the removal of the scaffolding, the restoration of this remarkable bridge will return it to near pristine condition.”

Student banned from edinburgh for drunken break-in Graham Mackay graham.mackay@journal-online.co.uk

A StuDent From Bristol has been banned from the city of edinburgh for breaking into a marchmont flat, thinking he was being excluded from a party.

21-year-old Arthur Keegan-Bole kicked down the door of the flat, terrifying the female student inside. the court was informed that the student, who has chosen not to share information with the press, was woken up at 1.30am on 27 January by repeated banging.

After breaking down the door, Keegan-Bole then attempted to force his way into the girl’s bedroom, but

’ s a m o h Th

Hanna

she was able to hold the door shut.

Fearing that she was going to be attacked, the woman picked up a bottle to defend herself.

When police arrived at the flat on marchmont Crescent, they found the man asleep and placed him under arrest.

Defence QC Leanne mcQuillan told the court that the court that Keegan-Bole had got extremely drunk at a nearby flat party and briefly left the property. the music student believed his fellow party-goers were playing a joke on him by locking him out. He had, in fact, returned to the wrong flat.

“He thought he was going back into number 16 where the party was still going on but he wasn’t; he was

Week #2

Don’t talk y r a i D n o to me! h t a r a M s Meadow

I

’m noW enterIng the fourth week of this tortuous regime. the blisters, the early mornings and the mounds of extra washing are bad enough, but what has really started to grate is the sheer monotony of circling the meadows. there is not an inch of that track I don’t know. I’ve done the loop so many times I’ve got to the stage where I can calculate - at any given point en route - the precise degree of physical pain and boredom I’ll have to endure just to make it back round to where I started. the desire just to skip that final lap is almost unbearable. music helps. But it doesn’t compare to the quality televisual entertainment that accompanies my jogs on the treadmill. Boredom is simply not an option when you’re in the company of Shakira, Christina, Beyonce et al.

And if I’m not in the mood for their erotic prancing, the dull-yetreassuring predictability of Friends, or a sneaky episode of Style Her Famous, then the Jeremy Kyle show is always a winner. running that extra mile is not such a chore if you get to watch some pathetic wretch find out his girlfriend is shagging his dad. the suspense. the drama. that’s what keeps me going.

When the temperamental Pleasance gym televisions decide to work, anyway.

But I digress. ennui is not actually the biggest problem of training in the meadows. It’s my fear of (literally) running into someone I know.

A non-jogger will, perhaps, find it hard to imagine just how uncomfortable these chance meetings can be.

Well picture this. You’ve already been round the track four times so you’re red, gasping for breath, and sweat is oozing from every pore of your body. It’s even dripping from your face. the mascara you forgot to remove the night before has now slithered south and taken up residence beneath your eyes, giving you the look of a sweaty goth.

You’re not a pretty sight.

I think you’ll understand, then, that when I’m in this condition I definitely don’t want to be seen, and I especially don’t want to be spoken to, by someone I know. on one particular morning a couple of weeks ago I spotted whatsisface from my tutorial up ahead. It was my own fault, really. I’d planned the run badly and inadvertantly managed to coincide with the hourly pre-lecture rushhour. now I was going to suffer for it.

‘Damn, it’s too late to turn sharply off onto a side path,’ I thought. ‘He’ll definitely think I’m weird if he spots me hiding behind a tree, and a u-turn from this proximity is simply not an option. there’s nothing for it but to keep going,’ I told myself.

‘Head down, eyes to the ground. If I pretend I haven’t seen him then he might just ignore me,’ I hoped.

We’re all practiced in the george Square blanking technique, and, in this particular situation, it really would have been the polite thing to do.

Well, friends, that was not the case. And the awkward, breathless, sweaty conversation that followed is one that has since been repeated more times than I’d like to remember.

You want to know the worst thing about it all? As soon as I spot that flash of recognition in an approaching pedestrian’s eye I become inexplicably self-conscious about the way I run. Are my arms flapping in a weird way? Do my feet splay out in strange directions? Is my head bobbing up and down like some of the unfortunate joggers I have silently smirked at in the past?

Yes. Be warned. these are the things that run through my mind as I approach you, and they don’t pave the way for comfortable conversation.

So for future reference, don’t take my smile as an invitation to chat: it’s actually a grimace that translates as ‘leave well alone’.

Eddie Fisher

going into number 19,” said ms mcQuillan.

“He broke the door down and he can’t explain why he did that. “there was no intention to steal and no intention to harm anyone; it was a completely misplaced belief that someone was having a joke on him.

“He completely understands how frightening this must have been for the girl who was within her bedroom.

“He’s very ashamed of himself and extremely embarrassed. He’s very sorry for his behaviour.”

Keegan-Bole admitted a breach of the peace at edinburgh Sheriff Court on 14 February and will be sentenced next month. He has been banned from visiting the city unless to attend court or see his solicitor.

Edinburgh News 9

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Children’s commissioner campaigns for ban on Mosquitoes Amadeus Finlay

the “Buzz off” campaign was launched in england two weeks ago by amadeus.finlay@journal-online.co.uk Professor Sir al aynsley-Green. in december, ms marshall deScotland’S children’S comiS- scribed the devices as “sinister” and Sioner has backed a campaign to ban called for them to be withdrawn from a device that deters youths from loiter- sale. in a statement on 12 February, she ing by producing a high-pitched sound vowed to continue to lobby the Scottish only the young can hear.

Government, the police, supermarkets the appliance, called the mos- and the device’s manufacturers for a quito, uses young people’s ability to ban. hear high frequency noises, an ability the exact number of mosquitoes in which diminishes when people reach use in edinburgh is unknown. their mid-20s. a spokesperson from compound as many as 3,500 mosquitoes are Security Systems, the manufacturers, estimated to be in operation across the said that because the devices are availUK to disperse children and teenagers able online, it is hard to be sure how in public areas such as parks and shop- many are being used in any one area. ping centres.

John loughton, chair of the ScotKathleen marshall, commissioner tish Youth Parliament, said: “if ever for children and Young People, joined there was a device which highlighted civil liberties campaigners in con- the terrible way in which young people demning the device and agreed that it are treated in society then this is it. did not respect children’s rights.

Since when did standing in an area bems marshall said: “the ‘teen tor- come a crime?” mentor’ or ‘teen repellent’ is an ultrathe mosquito was invented by sonic weapon used against our children howard Stapleton, from merthyr tydand young people indiscriminately. its fil, South Wales. mr Stapleton stated use would not be tolerated for any oth- that a test case in the courts might be er section of our society. Young people the only way of establishing the legalhave a right to assemble and socialise ity of the device. with their friends, without being treatShop owner rob Gough from Barry ed as criminals. in South Wales, who was the first to “there needs to be an outright ban test out the device, said he would defy on this device which affects not only any ban. teenagers, but also young children, mr Gough, who has used the mosbabies and young people with disabili- quito for over two years, said “it’s been ties.” great1success for me.”

135087a (Unilever) x180.qxd 18/6/07 16:50 a Page 135087a (Unilever) x180.qxd

18/6/07

16:50

BUZZ OFF: The exact number of Mosquitoes in use in Edinburgh is unknown Compound Security Systems

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Leith Easter Road, 1150, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Portland Street, 1000, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Bernard Street, 1000, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Great Junction Street, 932, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Cables Wynd, 925, 3, 1S 2D G CG P, 0870 062 9460 Largo Place, 900, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Trafalgar Lane, 795, 3, 3D G P, 0870 062 9456 Ferry Road, 735, 2, 2D, 0870 062 3700 Salamander Court, 665, 2, 2D G P, 0870 062 9456 Fox Street, 650, 2, 2D W O, 0870 062 9378 Giles Street, 650, 2, 2D E P, 0870 062 9456 Giles Street, 650, 2, 2D E CG P, 0870 062 9558 Giles Street, 625, 2, 2D E CG P, 0870 062 9558 Couper Street, 600, 1, E, 0870 062 9508 Fox Street, 575, 2, 2D W P UF, 0870 062 9378 Lorne Street, 540, 2, 2D E CG O UF, 0870 062 9434 Halmyre Street, 480, 1, 1D G CG O, 0870 062 9522 Murano Place, 475, 1, 1D E P, 0870 062 8252 Albert Street, 450, 1, 1D W, 0870 062 9326 Lorne Square, 430, 1, 1D CG O UF, 0870 062 9434

Leith Links Duke Street, 650, 2, 2D G P, 0870 062 9486 Salamander Court, 600, 1, 1D G CG Z, 0870 062 3768 Bathfield, 460, 1, G O, 0870 062 9522

Leith Walk Leith Walk, 1300, 5, 5D, 0870 062 3700 Leith Walk, 1225, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Leith Walk, 1220, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Leith Walk, 1200, 4, 4D G O, 0870 062 9460 Smith’s Place, 1000, 4, 1S 3D G CG O, 0870 062 9340 Leith Walk, 900, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Brunton Gardens, 850, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Dryden Gait, 850, 3, 3D G P, 0870 062 9460 Leith Walk, 850, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Hopetoun Crescent, 795, 2, 2D G P, 0870 062 3768 Springfield Lane, 625, 2, 2D, 0870 062 3700 Albert Place, 610, 2, 2D G, 0870 062 9332 Jameson Place, 550, 2, 2D W CG O, 0870 062 9312 Leith Walk, 475, 2, 2D, 0870 062 3700 Iona Street, 475, 1, 1D G PG O, 0870 062 9522 Lorne Place, 430, 1, 1D CG O UF, 0870 062 9434

Liberton Upper Craigour, 650, 2, 2D E PG P, 0870 062 9558 Howden Hall Court, 590, 2, 1S 1D G PG P, 0870 062 9558

Lochend Lochend Road, 595, 2, 2D G P, 0870 062 9456 Loaning Mills, 575, 2, 1S 1D G P UF, 0870 062 9384

Longstone Inglis Green Rigg, 650, 2, G P, 0870 062 9334 Redhall Crescent, 600, 2, 2D G CG P, 0870 062 9234

Marchmont Marchmont Road, 1300, 4, 1S 3D G Z, 0870 062 9324 Strathfillan Road, 1300, 4, 4D G CG, 0870 062 1108 Warrender Park Crescent, 1300, 4, 4D G P, 0870 062 9362 Thirlestane Road, 1280, 4, 4D G Z, 0870 062 9362 Arden Street, 900, 3, 3D G CG O, 0870 062 9322 Moncrieff Terrace, 470, 1, 1D CG Z, 0870 062 9334

Maybury Barntongate Terrace, 550, 1, 1D G P, 0870 062 9558

S Single D Double T Twin B Box G Gas Central W White Meter E Electric PG Private CG Communal Z Zone O On-Street P Private UF Unfurnished

Meadowbank Royal Park Terrace, 1180, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Restalrig Road South, 795, 3, 3D G CG O, 0870 062 9460 Cadzow Place, 695, 2, 2D G CG, 0870 062 9468 Waverley Place, 630, 2, 1S 1D G PG O, 0870 062 9234 Piershill Place, 575, 2, 1S 1D G O, 0870 062 9320 Dalgety Avenue, 550, 1, 1D, 0870 062 3700 Dalgety Avenue, 475, 1, 1D G, 0870 062 9332

Morningside Morningside Road, 1700, 5, 5D, 0870 062 3700 Morningside Road, 1360, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Morningside Road, 1360, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Woodburn Terrace, 1100, 2, 2D, 0870 062 3700 Comiston Road, 950, 3, 3D, 0870 062 3700 Craighouse Gardens, 720, 3, 3D E CG P, 0870 062 9302 Maxwell Street, 650, 2, 2D W CG Z, 0870 062 9334 Comiston Terrace, 550, 1, 1D 1B G CG O UF, 0870 062 9434 Springvalley Terrace, 500, 1, 1D G CG Z, 0870 062 9334

New Town Mansfield Place, 1620, 5, 2S 3D G O, 0870 062 9316 Scotland Street, 1565, 4, 4D, 0870 062 9316 Gayfield Square, 1270, 4, 1S 3D G Z, 0870 062 9316 Great King Street, 780, 2, 2D G PG Z, 0870 062 9434 Barony Street, 750, 2, 2D E, 0870 062 9434 Cornwallis Place, 750, 2, 2D G CG Z, 0870 062 9578

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Old Town Buccleuch Street, 900, 3, 3D G Z, 0870 062 9438 High Street, 800, 1, 1D G Z, 0870 062 1108 West Port, 750, 2, 2D, 0870 062 3700 Calton Road, 640, 1, 1D E O, 0870 062 9322

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Peffermill The Aspect- Peffer Bank, 600, 2, 2D G P UF, 0870 062 9592

Pilrig Rosslyn Crescent, 1500, 5, 5D G O, 0870 062 9486 Dryden Gait, 800, 3, 3D G P, 0870 062 9522

Pilton Muirhouse Crescent, 575, 2, 2D G O, 0870 062 9384

Polwarth Polwarth Gardens, 1300, 4, 4D 1B G CG Z, 0870 062 3704 Polwarth Gardens, 1300, 4, 4D 1B G Z, 0870 062 9320 Angle Park Terrace, 1100, 4, 4D G O, 0870 062 9486 Polwarth Crescent, 990, 3, 3D G CG Z, 0870 062 9460

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Sciennes Sienna Gardens, 850, 3, G CG P, 0870 062 3780

Shandon Merchiston Grove, 650, 2, 2D G CG O, 0870 062 9464 Hazelbank Terrace, 575, 1, 1D G PG O, 0870 062 9456

Sighthill Westburn Grove, 695, 3, 1S 2D G CG P UF, 0870 062 9558 Broomhouse Street South, 660, 3, 3D G PG O, 0870 062 9302 Murrayburn Park, 650, 3, G O, 0870 062 9384 Broomhouse Avenue, 595, 3, 3D G CG P UF, 0870 062 3768 Calder Court, 550, 2, G, 0870 062 9384

Silverknowes Ferry Road, 595, 2, 1D 1T G, 0870 062 9456 Ferrygait Place, 550, 2, 2D E P, 0870 062 6458

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South Queensferry Provost Milne Grove, 800, 3, 3D G PG P, 0870 062 9522 Moubray Grove, 600, 2, 2D G, 0870 062 9332

Stenhouse Stenhouse Drive, 600, 2, 2D G CG O, 0870 062 9302

Stockbridge Comely Bank Road, 750, 2, 2D G CG Z, 0870 062 9446 Raeburn Place, 650, 2, 2D, 0870 062 3700

The Shore Western Harbour Midway, 720, 2, 2D E P, 0870 062 9522

Tollcross Valleyfield Street, 1300, 4, 4D G CG Z, 0870 062 9448 East Fountainbridge, 750, 2, 2D G Z, 0870 062 9312

West End Roseburn Terrace, 1280, 4, 4D, 0870 062 3700 Alva Street, 750, 2, 2D G, 0870 062 9326 Eton Terrace, 550, 1, 1D E CG Z, 0870 062 1108 Randolph Place, 550, 1, 1D G, 0870 062 1108

Willowbrae South Elixa Place, 575, 2, 2D W, 0870 062 9332

Academic News 11

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Turner Prize-winning artist to undertake residence at ECA Mark Wallinger will work with final-year students and produce portfolio for university

Neil Bennet IN BRIEF

MARK WALLINGER

neil.bennet@journal-online.co.uk

While he owes much of his current celebrity to his 2007 Turner Prize success for ‘State Britain’, Mark Wallinger is an old hand of the modern art movement. His first exhibitions came in the 1980s, and the Tate Liverpool held a retrospective of his work, Credo, in 2000.

TURNER PRIZE WINNER Mark Wallinger is set to become artist in residence from February to March 2008 in a joint initiative between Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) and the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS).

The artist – who won the prestigious award last year – will stay at Randolph Cliff, a spacious Georgian apartment overlooking the Dean Bridge, along with fellow artist in residence Anna Barriball.The Randolph Cliff art initiative was set up

by Dr Clémentine Deliss - Director of Future Academy at the ECA - and co-curated by art patron Charles Asprey to provide leading artists with the opportunity to develop new ideas in Edinburgh, and to meet with fi nal year and postgraduate students at the college.

Mr Wallinger’s Turner Prizewinning work, State Britain, was installed in the Tate Britain gallery in London in January 2007. The piece is a meticulous recreation of Brian Haw’s anti-war protest site facing the Houses of Parliament, which he maintained continuously from 2001 until it

Wallinger was amongst the first generation of nascent talent taken under the wing of Charles Saatchi, breaking into the public consciousness with his inclusion in 1993’s Young British Artists II exhibit.

He specialises in performance pieces and installations run through with political and social commentary.

‘The Bear’ – which saw Wallinger don a bear suit and wander around an empty exhibition space in a Berlin gallery – was said to represent the absurdity and isolation of the collapsed East German communist regime.

was shut down by police in May 2006 following new legislation banning protests around Westminster.

Dr Clémentine Deliss said: “We’re tremendously excited and honoured to invite such cutting edge international artists to Randolph Cliff in what is looking to be a busy first year for the initiative.

“As well as the obvious benefits these residencies bring to students and the general public through collaborations and talks, Randolph Cliff also encourages artists to conduct research and develop new ideas. We are hoping to develop a new research collection of works created during the residency, to be jointly owned by the ECA and NGS.” The initiative was set up in 2007, hosting Austrian Franz Graf and German Christian Flamm – best known for his paper cut-out silhouettes - as artists in residence. Both worked closely alongside ECA students during their stay in Edinburgh.

As part of his residency Mr Wallinger will also give a free public talk at the National Gallery Complex on the Mound, on Monday 3 March. The talk begins at 6pm and will take place in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, situated within the galleries.

News Shorts

wear them OIL BARONS ATTEMPT TO BUY UP PRINCES STREET CITY LEADERS DISCLOSED this week that Middle Eastern oil barons are interested in buying up every building on Princes Street.

They claim that a state-owned hedge fund has opened talks with an eye to buy up the entire street, a move the council sees as integral to its plans to renew and reinvigorate the flagship shopping precinct.

Councillor Tom Brown said: There are people talking to us with access to sovereign funds. They have large amounts of wealth and they could invest these kinds of funds in Edinburgh.”

However Alasdair Humphery, director of capital markets at Jones Lang LaSalle Edinburgh, said: “I fi nd it hard to believe we will ever have a day that Princes Street or Buchanan Street will ever be owned by one sovereign fund.”

160,000 VOTERS TO BOYCOTT NEXT ELECTION

THE BEAR: Political commentary

THE ELECTION FIASCO of May 2007 has put a huge number of voters off Scottish democracy according to researchers from Strathclyde University.

The impact of the scandal, in which 140,000 ballot papers were spoiled, has resulted in over half of Scots believing the result of the vote was “unfair.”

5% of those who voted in the election say that they are less likely to do so next time around in 2011, while 3% claim it to be “much less likely”. This could lead to an all-time low turnout of just 44%.

Stem cells used to regrow bone tissue

Study questions the benefit of school exams

Edinburgh researchers developing method for using patients' own stem cells to regrow bone and cartilage

Thousands of British teachers questioned by Edinburgh University researchers

Cameron Robinson

John Beck

cameron.robinson@journal-online.co.uk

john.beck@journal-online.co.uk

RESEARCHERS AT THE University of Edinburgh are helping to develop a revolutionary new technique to repair damaged bone and cartilage using a patient’s own stem cells.

The initiative centres around a pioneering “bioactive scaffold” constructed to protect the patient’s stem cells, whilst stimulating their growth into bone and cartilage. This innovative structure enables growth and repair to take place inside the patient’s body at the site of the damaged or affected tissue. £1.4 million of funding has been made available by the UK Stem Cell Foundation, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Scottish enterprise in conjunction with the Chief Scientist’s Office to help further the research.

Dr Brendon Noble, of the University of Edinburgh’s MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, said: “This is a novel approach in terms of treating damaged bones and cartilage. The aim is to translate the knowledge we have gained from bone biology studies into tangible treatments for patients.”

To this end, research will proceed in conjunction with clinicians to transform findings into treatment techniques for diseases such as osteoarthritis, and even the repair of bones shattered as a result of extensive trauma.

Researchers will also be working in collaboration with the Scottish

A STUDY INTO the benefits of school exams is being conducted by researchers from Edinburgh University.

Questionnaires have been sent to 10,000 British teachers in an attempt to determine the impact of data collection and quality assurance on compulsory schooling.

The independent study is part of a series of linked national projects, with equivalent surveys being undertaken in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.

This will be the first time that primary and secondary school teachers in Scotland and England have had an opportunity to voice their opinions on the ways in which teaching and schooling have been affected by mounting requirements for data collection and evaluation.

Dr Linda Croxford of CES said: “For well over a decade, governments in Britain have been preoccupied with raising school standards through measuring students’ performance and setting targets. Policy makers claim the quality of education is improved by audits and inspections, but teachers often complain that they are being distracted from their real work by form-filling.

“This questionnaire asks what real quality in education is - and whether quality assurance has helped improve teaching.”

In recent years there has been a considerable rise in regulation, evaluation and other forms of performance

National Blood Transfusion Service in order to culture bone-forming cells derived from blood, as an alternative to using cells from bone marrow.

Harvesting the stem cells from the patient’s blood supply removes the need for surgery whilst limiting the likelihood of rejection, a consequence with potentially fatal results.

This initiative could impact a significant number of patients’ lives; hip fractures alone kill around 14,000 elderly people a year in the UK.

The research also has economic ramifications, for example upon the worldwide market for orthopaedic devices - a $17 billion industry.

Dr Anna Krassowska, research manager for the UK Stem Cell Foundation, commented: “This research has the potential to open up one of the largest stem cell markets in the industry.”

The Edinburgh research team aims to set up the initial clinical trial within two years, likely involving around 30 patients.

assessment in schooling across Europe, and these methods are now attracting scrutiny. Recently published figures indicated that pupils at Finnish schools, which are not subject to external examination or an official inspection system, performed better than British students in the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.

A spokesperson for the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland’s largest teachers’ union said: “While measuring performance in this way is attractive to local authorities and can offer some useful indicators for parents, the EIS believes that an over-emphasis on testing, measuring and target-setting brings little benefit to the education of young people.

“An obsession with testing and measuring has little to do with setting high standards, as can be attested by the noted success of Finland’s comprehensive education system.”

Mike Pringle, Liberal Democrat MSP for Edinburgh South - whose constituency is home to one of Edinburgh’s largest primary schools, James Gillespie’s - agreed, commenting that “teachers are asked to do far too much apart from teaching and as a result spend more time out of the classroom than they should.”

The multinational results of the study will allow comparison both internally and across schooling systems.

Findings will be returned to all relevant local and national governments as well as appropriate professional institutions and researchers.

12 National Student News

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Oxbridge debating societies in turmoil Joanna Hosa joanna.hosa@journal-online.co.uk

Physical viOlence, inFighting, reports of intimidation and accusations of electoral malpractice have plagued the prestigious Oxbridge Unions over recent weeks. three leading members of the cambridge Union stepped down after a debate turned violent. this event followed just one week after the culmination of a vicious election campaign at the Oxford Union.

Will Wearden, the cambridge Union president, James Robinson, the secretary, and Dominic Benson, the treasurer-elect resigned following a vote of no confidence for Mr Robinson. the trio issued a statement claiming they could no longer continue their work in the cambridge Union, “when petty politics and people’s personal dislike of those trying to democratise and modernise has proved triumphant.” the vote of no confidence came after Mr Robinson attacked a fellow Union member during a debate. sources present at the debate reported that Mr Robinson interrupted the speech of Mr al-ansari, the former president of the union.

Mr al-ansari said: “i was making a speech while James was chairing the meeting, and he accused me of lying to the members.

“he told me to ‘shut up’ and retract my statements. When i refused he asked me to leave, and i again refused, in the name of the freedom of speech. he was shouting over me the whole time, and not in a calm manner. “he told the president to fine me £2.50, but when the president refused James stood up and shouted ‘the secretary hereby resigns’. “he came down from the chair and walked past me - and the audience cheered at his resignation. he got very angry, and turned round, raised his arm, and threw a punch. “that missed, but he then barged me, grabbed me, and threw me on to a bench, and punched me in the chest.”

Mr al-ansari continued: “i was shocked, i didn’t expect to be attacked in the cambridge Union, particularly as i am an ex-president. But a group of spectators then jumped on him and pulled him off. “i’m not going to press charges because he sent an apology which i accepted. But i certainly don’t think he should stay in the cambridge Union.”

Mr Robinson said: “i wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologise to ali for the altercation on tuesday evening, and in particular for grabbing his shirt and pushing him on to the bench.”

Over at the Oxford Union, conflict over the staging of controversial debates led to a vicious presidential battle that has left the two prime candidates claiming foul play.

accusations of electoral malpractice and sexual harassment have been flung between the presidential hopefuls. the reputation of the Union has disintegrated to such an extent that one student put forward a motion last month advocating the abolishment of the famous debating society - whose former members include William hague and tony Benn. the high-profile debates which fuelled the feud included an invitation in november to nick griffin, leader of the British national party, and David irving, the right-wing historian. in January the Union also held a vote to determine whether israel should be allowed to exist. sociology student Krishna Omkar, 23, won an election by over 200 votes in november to be president of the union for the summer term. he beat charlotte Fischer, 21, who is studying modern history and politics. however, Mr Omkar, the union’s treasurer, was disqualified and banned from standing again by a university tribunal after Miss Fischer complained that he had breached the rules of campaigning by holding an eve-of-poll meeting. supporters of Mr Omkar claimed that Miss Fischer, the union’s librarian, was represented illegally by a london barrister.

Miss Fischer was expected to win the new election, but she stepped out of the contest after claiming that she

had received threatening text messages from union officials, including one that read: “fancy a fuck?”

Miss Fischer said she was tired of personal attacks and went back home after arranging to continue her degree next year.

Mr Omkar and Miss Fischer were formerly friends, but the pair rowed over the invitations to Mr griffin and Mr irving and decided to stand against each other.

Mr Omkar’s stance was that the pair should be allowed to speak in the interests of free speech. But Miss Fischer, who is Jewish, wanted their invitations withdrawn.

Miss Fischer said she was reluctant to accuse Mr Omkar of electoral malpractice because she hated to see the union “weakened” and brought into disrepute by the corruption.

Mr Omkar, an extrovert who reportedly addressed the union wearing

embroidered Moroccan-style slippers, said: “i have been punished for doing something most other presidents have done. i held a meeting of 30 people. it was not a party. there was no alcohol present. i had no idea charlotte had been getting these text messages until i read her resignation letter.”

One union insider told the sunday times: “there is a lot of tension. Krishna has quite a dress sense and is considered by some as rather brash. But charlotte’s decision to call a tribunal and bring in a barrister is seen as unsporting. But both are ambitious and there is a lot at stake. Being president of the union is quite a role to have.”

Founded in 1823, the union has hosted a variety of high-profile speakers over the years, including Mother teresa, the Dalai lama, Malcolm X, Michael Jackson and the former american presidents Richard nixon, Jimmy carter and Ronald Reagan.

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Guards! Taking Liberties

EUTC works Pratchett’s Discworld magic 20

David Blunkett talks about life on the back benches 15

New stem cell research advances cancer treatments Cameron Robinson

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National Student News 13

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Queen Margaret University proposes Singapore campus Hamish Fergusson hamish.fergusson@journal-online.co.uk

QUEEN MARGARET UNIVERSITY has announced plans to establish an overseas campus in Singapore, in collaboration with the East Asia School of Business.

The QMU Asia Campus will offer a variety of business management degrees, as well as courses in banking and fi nance, and will be opened in April. The enterprise builds on the university’s existing links with the EASB. Professor Anthony P Cohen, principal of QMU, said: “This is an enormously exciting and innovative project for Queen Margaret University and for the EASB. “It gives us both the confidence to extend our partnership for the great benefit of Singaporean and regional students and of the businesses for which they will eventually work.

“It is based on a sound record of collaboration which has succeeded over seven years because both partners are absolutely committed to the quality of our educational provision.”

The venture is well placed to target

the lucrative market for international students. It is hoped that Singapore’s booming tourist industry will attract undergraduates from across South East Asia, and, in particular, from China. To this end, the university will offer a bilingual English – Chinese curriculum.

Students will number around 1,500, with each paying an average of $10,000 a year in tuition fees. They will occupy existing, state of the art premises boasting tennis and basketball courts, as well as advanced classroom technology, and leased by the university at an estimated cost of $38 million in rent over the next 15 years.

Asia has recently attracted heavy investment from Western academic institutions. Australia’s Monash University have established overseas premises in East Asia, as have a number of American business schools, many of which have also settled in the Gulf.

Nottingham University is one of a number of UK universities also involved in the region, with facilities in Malaysia and China, whilst Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt university recently followed suit with a new campus in Dubai.

But QMU is the first UK university to set up a campus in Singapore, following Warwick University’s decision to abandon plans for a 15,000 capacity facility on the island in 2005, in response to concerns over academic freedom.

Singapore-based educational institutions are obliged to operate within the state’s strict legal framework.

Warwick University staff and students expressed concerns over possible research restrictions as well as limits on freedom of speech, assembly and press on campus.

The withdrawal was seen at the time as a major blow to Singapore’s ambition to become a regional hub for higher education. However it was noted that Warwick hoped to offer a range of social science degrees, in contrast to the specialised, industryfocused courses more commonly offered by international institutions in Singapore.

The island already hosts a number of prestigious organizations, including the University of Chicago Graduate Business School and the German Institute of Science and Technology, as well as the Singapore-MIT alliance and Singapore-Stanford Partnership.

SINGAPORE: A far cry from the Edinburgh Bypass Devin Kho

Cambridge set to scrap Report shows large increase in separate admissions applications to study in the UK Nick Eardley nick.eardley@journal-online.co.uk

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY HAS announced that it will scrap its separate application form from 2009, with the £10 fee currently charged to applicants also being dropped.

The move leaves Oxford as the only university in the UK which uses a separate application form for all courses.

The university made the decision in response to criticism that it attracts too few applicants from state schools.

In January a report from education charity The Sutton Trust claimed that many teachers hold misconceptions regarding the institution that negatively impact upon the number of applicants from state-funded schools.

A statement from the university said: “The changes reflect Cambridge’s determination that its application procedure should be as straightforward as possible for applicants, especially those from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds.”

Currently, applicants to Cambridge must complete a standard application form through UCAS in addition to a Cambridge Application Form (CAF) and a separate questionnaire. The new process will remove the CAF, but the questionnaire, used to gather more precise exam information such as marks obtained in separate units, will remain.

The step is part of a wider cam-

paign by the university to attract students from a diverse range of backgrounds, and earlier in the month, a conference was held by the Cambridge University Students Union for 260 pupils from state schools. The event was aimed at individuals who the union believes would not normally have been attracted to the university, with many coming from families with no history of higher education.

The university’s Director of Admissions, Dr Geoff Parks, said: “We are aware that the transition from school or college to university can seem daunting to young people and their families if they are unfamiliar with the process.

“We are pleased to be able to make these changes now to simplify the process of applying to Cambridge and bring it in line with that at other universities. Naturally we hope that, as a result, gifted students all over the country will feel encouraged to apply to the university.”

The university will retain a 15 October deadline for its applications, three months before the deadline for most UK institutions. This is due to the logistics of the university’s interview process, which sees over 20,000 applicants throughout December.

Applicants to all courses at Oxford University, as well as those applying for courses in Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Dentistry are also subject to the earlier October deadline.

Nick Eardley nick.eardley@journal-online.co.uk

THE NUMBER OF applications submitted to universities and colleges in the UK has risen by over 26,000 in the past year.

A report from UCAS, the group responsible for administrating applications to British institutions, has shown that the number of applicants grew 6.7 per cent this year.

However, UCAS highlighted that the fi ndings may be affected by the inclusion of those applying for diplomas in midwifery and nursing, who had not been included in the 2007 statistics.

The report, which is based on all applications submitted before the 15 January deadline, also showed an 18.2 per cent increase in the number of applications from people over the age of 25.

The number of overseas applications have also risen by 8.8 per cent.

However, despite increased funding being allocated to widening participation in further education, there was only a small increase in the number of applicants from lower income backgrounds, from 28.9 per cent in 2007 to 29.6 per cent this year.

The largest rise was in the number of Bulgarian applicants, which doubled from 400 to over 800.

There were also marked increases in the number of applicants from China, Norway, Canada, and Lithuania. All home nations also showed an increase in applicants.

The only overseas countries highlighted as having fewer applications than the previous year were Nigeria, Poland, Sweden, India and Ireland.

The report also looked at applications by gender, highlighting the continued trend of more female than male applications. However, the gap has got wider with a 7.2 per cent increase in male applicants being shadowed by a 10.2 per cent increase in applications from females.

UCAS Chief Executive, Anthony McClaran said: “These figures show that for the second year running we are seeing strong growth in the level of applications for undergraduate courses.

“These figures provide an encouraging indication for the likely position in the summer and, of course, there will still be thousands more applications between now and then.”

Although there was a drop in the number of applications to most individual subject areas and institutions, UCAS blamed this on the change in the number of courses applicants can choose, reduced from six to five in 2007.

The most popular area remains law by subject, followed by pre- clin-

ical medicine, psychology, English Studies and Management Studies.

Applications to most Edinburgh universities were also down, with Edinburgh University applicants falling 5.7 per cent. Applications to Napier were down 1.0 per cent, whilst applications to Heriott Watt and Queen Margaret were both dropped around 9.0 per cent. Only the Edinburgh College of Art showed had more applications than last year, up 4.8 per cent.

However, the National Union of Students warned against celebrating the fi ndings of the report.

NUS President Gemma Tumelty said: “It would be extremely misleading to use these early, snapshot figures to judge the Government’s performance on widening participation. They do not show the full picture of this year’s applications, and they include nursing and midwifery statistics for the fi rst time, meaning that any comparison with last year is pointless.

“It is far more useful to look at the complete statistics on accepted applications from 2007, which were published by UCAS just a few weeks ago - they showed that the number of students actually entering university from working class backgrounds had fallen since top-up fees were introduced.”

The next UCAS report into 2008 applications is expected in April.

14 National Politics

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Scotland may lose some devolved powers, claims Brown Helen Walker helen.walker@journal-online.co.uk

The PriMe MiniSTer Gordon Brown announced that a review into devolution could actually result in the loss of some of Scotland’s existing powers as well as the increase in others.

Mr Brown voiced his support for the Scottish Labour Party leader Wendy alexander’s Constitutional Commission in an interview with the BBC. however, he stressed that a review would not be a “one-way street” and that powers previously devolved could be returned to Westminster.

Mr Brown specifically sighted areas such as foot and mouth and terrorist threats as ones with which a UK wide policy might deal more effectively. in what seems to be a significant policy change since last year Mr Brown conceded that it might be beneficial for the parliament to have increased tax raising responsibilities.

The move by the Prime Minister comes as somewhat of a surprise after the Scotland Office Minister, david Cairns, recently dismissed calls for further devolution, asserting that they were only the concern of the “McChattering classes”.

Plans for the commission were originally unveiled by Ms alexander in her St andrew’s day speech last year and have since received the backing of the majority of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.

Mr Brown said: “There is an issue about the financial responsibility of an executive or an administration that has £30 billion to spend but doesn’t have any responsibility for raising that.”

Of Mr Brown’s support, Ms alexander said: “the Prime Minister’s backing is very welcome.” She argued that a “cross-Border, cross-party approach” is the best way to tackle the issue. however, deputy leader, nicola sturgeon has warned: “This is about Gordon Brown getting control of the issue.”

She said: “Wendy alexander’s Scottish Commission has become a Westminster review and already we have talk of powers going back from the Scottish Parliament to Westminster.”

Privately Ms alexander may see the Prime Minister’s intervention as a mixed blessing. While any support must be welcome after Ms alexander’s recent scandals over campaign donations, the intervention by the Prime Minster could be seen as Westminster hijacking an initiative which had potentially promised to give the Scottish Labour Party and Ms alexander’s leadership much needed direction.

Former Labour First Minister, Jack McConnell, has also come out in support of the Commission. in his first interview since stepping down as the leader of the Scottish Labour Party Mr McConnell told BBC radio Scotland that the believed the time was right to look at the relationship between Scot-

land and the rest of the UK. however, Mr McConnell stressed that there was a need to have a “real debate” about how the powers are currently being used. he said: “i think there are choices being made which will be damaging to Scotland.”

The initiative is part of Ms alexander’s aim for Scotland to “walk taller within the UK, without walking out.”

This commitment to continued membership of the UK while still reviewing devolution has offered an alternative to the SnPs proposed “national Conversation” on independence.

Lib dem and Conservative MSPs have joined forces with Ms alexander and the Labour Party on the issue.

Plans for progressing with the idea were discussed at a meeting in January of leading MSPS and MPs of the three parties. in a statement after the meeting the parties emphasised that the commission is “in accordance with mainstream opinion in Scotland, where the clear majority of people support evolution, value the United Kingdom and reject independence.”

They pointed out that the commission has been supported by a vote in the Scottish parliament, whereas “ ‘the national conversation’ set up by the SnP administration has no such mandate from the Scottish parliament.”

The group is due to meet again soon to discuss the implementation of the commission and it will now be interesting to see what role Westminster will play.

BROWN: backtracking on devolution promises

Sheridan’s wife and father-inlaw charged with perjury

Opinion split over government's attitude to drugs and alcohol

Helen Walker

Graham Mackay

helen.walker@journal-online.co.uk

graham.mackay@journal-online.co.uk

The WiFe and father-in-law of the former Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan, are the latest additions to the list of people charged with perjury in relation to Mr Sheridan’s defamation case.

The Scottish poltician, who successfully sued the ‘news of The World’ over a story which reported that the he had engaged in drink and drug fuelled orgies, was charged last december with perjuring himself in the initial court case. now his wife, Gail Sheridan, and father-in-law, Gus healy, have also been implicated.

Mrs Sheridan had always denied that her husband had been unfaithful or had attended swingers clubs. The alibis that her and her father gave Mr Sheridan were extremely important in the case against the newspaper.

Mrs Sheridan and her father were taken to Gayfield Square police station in edinburgh last week, questioned extensively and subsequently charged.

Mrs Sheridan was questioned in court last year by her husband after he sacked his legal team. asked by Mr Sheridan if she would have testified had she believed the allegations, she told the court: “There is no way i would have been here. in fact, neither would you, because you would be in the Clyde with a piece of concrete tied round you. it would be me in court getting done for murder.”

an ideOLOGiCaL deBaTe on how Scotland addresses the issues of drug and alcohol abuse is being waged between elected representatives at holyrood and the nation’s leading social workers.

Lothians MSP ian McKee has called for a reappraisal of the government’s present stance on tackling the abuse of drugs and alcohol in Scotland, forcing a defence of current measures by Scotland’s anti-drugs and alcohol taskforce. dr McKee, an SnP backbencher and former GP, has expressed his view that the Scottish association of alcohol and drug addiction Teams has created a major problem by focusing the bulk of its attention on drugrelated incidents at the expense of those involving alcohol. dr McKee highlighted the fact that, whilst the government aims to reduce the abuse of drugs and alcohol, the two are rarely combined, with only ten per cent of cases involving both narcotic and alcoholic substances, according to health experts. he said: “Our strategy for dealing with alcohol and drugs is to combine the two - that’s why we have alcohol and drug action Teams throughout Scotland.

“But they have concentrated mainly on drugs. and while that’s very important, alcohol is probably one of the biggest causes of premature

death in Scotland. it deserves a good crack of the whip and i’m worried it doesn’t get it. “apart from both being addictive habits, they are two very different problems and they deserve individual specialist strategies.” he continued: “We already know the vast majority of people with alcohol problems do not have a drug problem. We now know in Lothian only ten per cent of people with a drug problem also have an alcohol problem. That’s a very tenuous link and it blows away the idea the two should be linked in alcohol and drug action Teams.” however, in an exclusive interview with The Journal, Tom Wood, Chairman of the Scottish association of alcohol and drug Teams, claimed that there is an inextricable link between drug and alcohol abuse, maintaining that the two should be treated and addressed together. “if you keep drugs and alcohol separate, you are destined to fail,” he said. “The truth is that they are almost always linked. not identifying the relationship between the two has been a mistake in past years; we tend to separate drugs and alcohol as we see one as illegal and the other as social. We treat them separately in the same way as we deal with homelessness, isolation, and crime as separate issues – this is a big mistake.

“We must be sure to read across and recognise the relationship between the two; drugs are much, much more of a problem than alcohol, and this is where i agree with what ian

McKee has to say. What i am saying is this: fifteen years ago, drugs were our major concern with the rise of aidS and hiV and the deaths they were causing. nowadays, it is true that far more deaths are being caused by alcohol, but let us not let the pendulum now swing the other way so that we ignore the impact of drugs by focusing all of our attention on alcohol; they are both related and must be treated as such.

“The papers in Scotland are always talking about drug-related deaths; the truth is that there is virtually no such thing. What we see is people who may have ultimately died of an overdose, but who, in almost every case, have a history of both substance and alcohol abuse. The two exist almost always together and this is a good example of why it is unwise to isolate them.”

Mr Wood told The Journal that there are three key elements to ensuring that drug use, particularly amongst the youth population, remains under control in Scotland. he said: “The first step is to make sure that young people are given the information required in order to make important choices. if they decide to experiment with drugs, we want to make sure they are doing so with their eyes open, so that they are aware of the risks and implications involved.

“Secondly, we want to get a hold of people who are already involved in drug-taking so that we can reach out to them, providing them with help and support.

“and finally, we want to provide a recovery service which will show people the way through.” although Mr Wood’s sentiments towards treating drug and alcohol related cases as virtually one and the same may appear somewhat controversial, they were echoed by Fiona Watson, clinical lead for substance misuse within nhS Lothians. dr Watson acknowledged that the number of cases involving patients with both drug and alcohol problems is comparatively low, but stated that it is important not to separate the two.

She said: “having reviewed the drug service caseload we have found approximately ten per cent have a drug and alcohol problem. Services must address the needs of all patients in a holistic way as we are increasingly seeing patients with a range of drug and alcohol issues. The direction of travel is to integrate drug and alcohol services.” health Secretary nicola Sturgeon remained neutral on the issue of whether drug and alcohol misuse should be bracketed together by the police and health services, but reiterated the government’s intention to devote maximum attention to instances of misuse.

She said: “We recognise that most individuals with addiction problems require different types of treatment at various times during recovery and we are determined that people will have access to all appropriate support, when it is right for them to do so.”

Student Politics 15

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

English universities claim rise in fees needed to fight debt higher education institutions borrowing millions to finance campus improvements

Student campaign calls for extra study and social space at Moray house Sarah Clark sarah.clark@journal-online.co.uk

Sarah Clark sarah.clark@journal-online.co.uk

BRitiSh UnivERSitiES ARE borrowing millions in order to finance plans to improve their campuses in response to students’ demands for better facilities.

Some institutions are hoping the government will raise the £3,145 cap on fees in the 2009 Review in order to cope with their increasing debt.

Although the introduction of tuition fees has raised billions of pounds, universities are in more debt at the current time than at any point in the past decade.

Steve Egan, the higher Education Funding council for England’s deputy chief executive, said: “the level of borrowings, as compared to the level of total income, is the highest since 1997. in actual terms - the amount rather than the percentage - the levels of borrowings in 2005-06 were higher than ever before.” this comes at a time where UK universities face further financial difficulties, particularly as a recession is thought to be imminent. dropout rates remain steady at 22 per cent, despite an £800 million drive to reduce them. Furthermore nUS are demanding that universities repay the £24 million owed to students from bursary funds.

Phil harding, chairman of the British Universities Finance directors

group, said the national Student Survey, which asks students to rate their university, had put pressure on universities to increase their spending on buildings.

Mr harding said: “i think we are borrowing with a degree of confidence and a reasonable expectation the cap on tuition fees will either come off or be lifted so that universities will be able to charge higher fees.” concerns have been raised that future generations of students, who already struggle with financing their university careers, will be further burdened with the effects of universities’ ambitious spending plans.

A spokesperson from UniversitiesScotland, said that Scottish higher education institutions have not been borrowing on the basis of expected future income. he told the Journal: “A decision has been made by Scottish politicians of all parties that Scottish universities will be publicly funded and so we don’t have in place conditions which would lead to speculative borrowing. “in Scotland we simply have to work within the budgets available to us and to be ingenious in raising more income from other sources.

“Scottish universities are not going into debt. We believe that the real answer is to build a national consensus on why higher education is a national priority and why it is in everyone’s interests to invest in universities.”

Last year Scottish university leaders announced that they would need £168 million to compete with their English counterparts. however they originally received only £30 million from the Scottish Executive and an additional £10 million in January. the Scottish government have stressed that they are committed to maintaining a competitive university system which generates education, science and research ideas that make Scotland attractive for economic growth.

A spokesperson for the Scottish government, said: “the real issue at stake now is the timing of any review of top-up fees in England and the implications of that for universities in Scotland. the first year when any lifting of the cap can take place is 2010-11 and, even then, we’re unlikely to find ourselves looking at a free market free-forall with individual universities setting their own fees. “that’s because the cost of fee loans will have to come from the government in the first place so we can expect the treasury to keep a firm grip on the purse strings. “here in Scotland we’re considering the future for universities through our joint futures taskforce which is considering what we want our universities to be in the future and how we can achieve that.” however, last week, Sir Roderick Floud, former vice-president of the European University Association, warned

that universities can no longer rely on international students for revenue as it is predicted that the number of international undergraduates attending UK universities will fall as other countries, such as china, cultivate their own institutions. higher education development overseas is likely to have a negative impact on Scottish universities.

James Alexander, president of nUS Scotland, said: “Although Scottish students don’t have to pay fees, institutions in Scotland have for years been relying on the revenue raised by international fee paying students.

“Universities should not be funded by a rise in fees which will have a detrimental impact on students but by a general taxation. Universities don’t just benefit the attending students, but the whole of society. the country needs doctors and lawyers, just as it needs garbage workers.”

Edinburgh college of Art (EcA) has recently consolidated its campuses onto one estate. the move involved the purchase of a new building.

Sarah Beattie-Smith, president of EcA Students Union, said: “this means we are now in some debt and as far as i understand some of this debt will be repaid through fees from international students as fees go into a central pot. “however, the main source of funding which the institution used to make the estates changes was money from the Scottish Funding council.”

Edinburgh University Rector speaks in favour of free higher education Mark Ballard joins MSP and student association candidate in calling for a new deal for students

Neil Bennet neil.bennet@journal-online.co.uk

EdinBURgh UnivERSity REctoR Mark Ballard has called on the Scottish government to improve the state of university funding, warning that prospective students could be put off studying by the cost of higher education and the sector's poor financial outlook.

Students at the University of Edinburgh hosted a public meeting entitled “Where next in the battle for a free, fair and funded education system?” on thursday 21 February, featuring Ballard, vice President Academic Affairs candidate Andrew Weir, and Scottish national Party MSP and member of the Scottish Parliament Education committee Aileen campbell. the meeting was held jointly by the Edinburgh young greens, the Socialist Society and Scottish nationalist Society at the university, ahead of the final reading of a bill to scrap the graduate Endowment, due to take place at holyrood this week.

Mr Ballard, who is a former green Party MSP, spoke about fees and debt putting many young people off going to university and about the need for widening access. he said: “Spreading knowledge is a good thing, having an educated society is a good thing.”

Mr Ballard also challenged the

Scottish government to match with public funding the additional money English universities will be receiving through the charging of top-up fees.

Ms campbell, who at 27 years old is the youngest member of the Scottish Parliament, admitted that she was still paying off her own student debts of around £15,000. She said: “if we were an independent country we could make [the] decisions, and be able to fund free education.”

Mr Weir, who was speaking in his capacity as Secretary of the Socialist Society, told the meeting: “there is a discourse being created in this country, one that says that free education is a really nice idea, but that there's just not the money to pay for it, and after all the world doesn't owe us a living.”

"Strangely enough the people that say this are very often members of the political party that took this country to war in iraq, that signed up for the second generation of trident nuclear submarines, and that have plans to bring in id cards.”

A demonstration by students is planned outside the Scottish Parliament on thursday 28 February to put pressure on MSPs before the final vote on scrapping the £2,289 graduate endowment. the vote is expected to be close, with the SnP, the Liberal democrats and greens supporting the move, and Labour and conservative MSPs expected to vote against.

EdinBURgh UnivERSity StUdEntS have demanded more study and social space at Moray house, the crowded city centre campus.

Moray house facilities can no longer cater for the 2614 students enrolled, with some students reportedly forced out into car parks. consequently the university is facing calls to make more space available for studying and socialising.

Josh McAlister, president of Edinburgh University Student Association, said: “there’s been an increase in student numbers, but there hasn’t really been a change in the physical space. the estate is quite restricted in its size. there’s a real problem with the lack of social space. “this means people are using the group discussion rooms in the library to eat their lunch, and people are having to study in the canteen. “the university just needs to open up a few rooms to relieve the pressure on the study space. But they are not being particularly helpful. “it’s a fairly straightforward problem and it should have a straightforward solution. Students deserve decent, fit-for-purpose social and study space, and at the moment this is not the case.”

As part of the protest, over 200 students participated in the ‘free range teacher’ campaign, where some students dressed up in chicken costumes and others handed out chocolate eggs to highlight the issue. dr Jim o’Brien, head of the Moray house School of Education, said he met with EUSA prior to the christmas break to discuss the matter. dr o’Brien said: “i advised that the School already provides a common Room for students and has added chairs and tables and some computers for general usage to spaces within the St Leonard’s building.

“From the School of Education’s resources and space available to it on the holyrood campus this is the most we can offer. i suggested that EUSA might engage with Estates &Buildings to seek access to some classrooms at lunchtime under the cBR system. “i am planning a meeting shortly with Anna davidson, EUSA vice President Academic Affairs, to continue to work with EUSA on this matter.”

A spokesperson for Edinburgh University said: “We are aware of the issues which have been raised and we are always seeking to improve the facilities we offer students.

“We are working with the Students Association to address any concerns students may have.”

gEt MoRE on thE WEB

viSit

JoURnAL-onLinE.co.UK BALLARD: “Spreading knowledge is a good thing” Ken Wallace

FoR thE LAtESt BREAKing nEWS

16 Elections 2008

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008



Elections 2008 17

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

 



Student Elections 08

Ramsay takes lead but undecided voters hold key to presidency » Poll shows Green candidate in the lead by 6.3 points

Adam Ramsay Harry Cole Nick Ward Undecided Not voting

9.4%

39%

Important issues: 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5%

Sarah Clark sarah.clark@journal-online.co.uk

THE HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY Students Association (HWUSA) executive for the coming academic year was announced last week.

On Friday February 22, Ruth Bush was elected as President. Stephen Batchen and Steven Connel (Scottish Borders Campus) will become the Vice Presidents; Ewan Wood will take up the post of Secretary, and Colin Farquar will take on the position of Treasurer.

Ruth Bush, elated by the results spoke of her intentions to keep HWUSA as a strong and active union.

Ms Bush told The Journal: “I’m really pleased to have been elected as HWUSA President and not only looking

forward to working with our own Executive, but also continuing to build strong links with all Edinburgh students associations.

“I come in with a clear agenda of improving sustainability in both the university and our own Students Association, raising awareness and embedding environmental issues as part of student life.

“We’ve never been closer to free education for Scottish students but the priority now has to be leveling the playing field so that students from any and all backgrounds have the opportunity to access higher education.

“I will continue to empower students at the grass roots by supporting societies, sports and student activity. Communication is key to students taking ownership of their Association.

“Campaigning is our bread and butter - so as well as working on enhancing the student experience, we must remain political and promote the student voice at every opportunity.”

There were three other prospective candidates for president: David Odie, Lexy Marston and Louise Moncrief.

Liam Burns, current president of HWUSA, said that it was a close contest between the women, but Ms Bush had an especially focused campaign and was very confident at the hustings.

Mr Burns said: “I’m over the moon for Ruth and the new exec. They will do a fantastic job next year and no doubt continue to go from strength to strength.

“All that’s left is for this has-been to wish them luck and thank all the Heriot-Watt students who voted in the elections.”

MORE STUDENT ELECTION COVERAGE ONLINE AT WWW.JOURNAL-ONLINE.CO.UK » NUS SCOTLAND ELECTIONS » EUSALESS FALLOUT » RESULTS AS THEY HAPPEN

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ADAM RAMSAY, LAST year’s runnerup, is the 2008 front-runner according to a joint poll conducted by Edinburgh University’s Student and The Journal.

However, Mr Ramsay’s lead is small, at only 6.3 percentage points, and could be subject to a huge reversal, with more than half of respondents either undecided or not intending to vote for any of the three candidates.

Mr Ramsay leads with 16.5 per cent of respondents backing him, compared to 10.2 per cent backing Harry Cole and 9.4 per cent backing Nick Ward.

However, the race will be determined by the undecided voting block which comprises 38.9 per cent of all respondents. A further 26.4 per cent have said that they are not intending to vote for any of the three candidates.

The poll was conducted on 21 and 22 February around the University of Edinburgh’s central campuses.

In total 254 students were surveyed.

The poll took place days before Gabriel Arafa announced that he was joining the race and does not take into account the effect that his candidacy will have on the election.

Mr Arafa told The Journal: “Less than half of likely voters said they might support any of my opponents.

That leaves an enormous number of votes left up for grabs. I believe that as a fresh face, an independent candidate and the only one with a truly achievable manifesto, I have the best chance of taking those votes.”

Despite beginning his campaign last out of the three candidates, Mr Ramsay—who officially launched his manifesto this weekend—scores highest in terms of name recognition with 60.6 per cent of positive responses compared with 57.5 per cent recognising Mr Ward and 44.5 percent for Mr Cole.

As a result of increased coverage of the student elections in 2008 compared with previous years, 75.6 per cent of respondents claimed to be able to recognise the name of at least one candidate.

On issues voting, Mr Ramsay comes out top among students who feel qual-

10.2%

26.4%

Te a

benjamin.edwards@journal-online.co.uk

ity of teaching to be most important (38 per cent) and availability of university facilities (31 per cent). He also gains the most support for his campaign pledge to “cut the cost of student living” although only 17 per cent consider this to be the most important issue.

Mr Cole fares best amongst those concerned about student union facilities, coming out narrowly on top. However, only 22 per cent feel the running of the Students Association is most important election issue. Meanwhile, Mr Ward does not hold a lead on any issues.

Mr Cole has a strong following among those who align themselves politically with the Conservative Party, 42.4 per cent of whom say they would like to see Mr Cole win the election. Of Conservative supporters who have expressed an intention to vote, Mr Cole commands 93.3 per cent support.

However Mr Cole is picking up the least support among people of no party affiliation with only 5.6 percent. However, most non-party affiliated voters remain undecided (51.1 per cent) Mr Ramsay’s political base is widest, enjoying the greatest support from Green (44.4 per cent) and Labour (21.6 per cent) supporters in addition to supporters of smaller political parties (17.6 per cent).

Surprisingly, for a staunch unionist, Mr Ward commands half of the SNP vote.

The majority of Lib Dem supporters and those who don’t support a political party are, as yet, undecided.

Initial polling results would appear to suggest that turn-out for this year’s election will surpass last year’s record high of over 20 per cent. 51.2 per cent of respondents signaled an intention to vote, and whilst a turnout of this number is unprecedented, an increase on the size of last year’s electorate is not impossible given the highly publicised political scrapping between the candidates.

Mr Cole, who is relying upon a huge influx of new voters to turn-out to vote if he is to stand a chance of victory, told The Journal: “If nobody’s getting anywhere near 25 per cent of the vote, it’s going to get very interesting.

“My priority is making sure that those who don’t normally vote to do so.”

paris.gourtsoyannis@journal-online.co.uk

ben.judge@journal-online.co.uk

Students’ voting intentions: 16.5%

Paris Gourtsoyannis

Ben Judge

State of the Union

» Results suggest election turn-out will reach record high

Benjamin Edwards

Latecomer joins the fray THE RACE FOR the student presidency at the University of Edinburgh got a bit busier last week as Gabriel Arafa, an eleventh-hour candidate, announced his intention to stand.

Mr Arafa told The Journal: “I decided to enter the race very late in the day. I made the decision at the very last minute but I think coming in late is an advantage.”

Speaking just after his launch event on Monday night, he said: “We had a great night tonight, and a great turnout. I think the reason for that was that tonight, like the campaign, was all about real students, not party politics.

I’ve got a strong team behind me, we’re excited and ready to go, and we know we can win.

“In my manifesto, I’ve got 15 clear, achievable policies that will be good for students.

“I want to see the Students’ Association campaigning for students on student issues. Each year every candidate makes the easy pledges of opposing fees and better feedback. Of course that will be part of my manifesto, but I’m also going to be looking at a range of exciting new policies as well.”

Mr Arafa is being supported by former student president Tim Goodwin, who resigned from his position as elections correspondent for The Journal on Friday 22 February to run Mr Arafa’s campaign.

Mr Goodwin said in a statement: “I’ve been really inspired by Gabe. I believe he is the only candidate who can heal the party political cracks in our Students’ Association. A Gabe victory in this election would mean a return to the days of student representation, not partisan politics.”

Presidential rivals Harry Cole and Nick Ward have both already attacked Mr Arafa for adopting a number of their own policies.

Mr Cole, in a statement on his website, said: “Gabriel Arafa is a late entry to the presidential race and I welcome

Ward apologises for misleading web image

ARAFA: the eleventh-hour candidate Eddie Fisher the competition. A bigger field is normally a better one, because you’d hope it would lead to more ideas about how EUSA should be run.

Unfortunately however, Arafa’s manifesto doesn’t really represent much in the way of fresh thinking. Essentially, he’s cherry-picked the best

from each candidate and is trying to pass off their ideas as his own.”

Mr Arafa refused to be drawn into the political squabbling saying: “I’ve been watching the negative campaigning, and I defi nately want to avoid it.

It’s not my style. I don’t want to engage in petty squabbles.”

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE NICK Ward has been left red-faced by a gaffe which saw an image of a comprehensive school in Wales placed next to text on his website touting his state education.

His opponents in the EUSA presidential race have attacked his manipulation of class as a campaign tool.

“I, of course, apologise for such a silly mistake, especially if it confused anyone. Once it came to my attention it was quickly rectified,” said Mr Ward.

“I want to concentrate on the things that matter to students and can make a difference to their lives and this isn’t one of them.”

Mr Ward attended the Harris Academy in Dundee, whose alumni include firebrand socialist MP George Galloway.

He has been accused by rivals of attempting to mislead voters into thinking his school background is worse that it was.

The image he used was of Penyrheol Comprehensive School in Gorseinon, South-West Wales, and appears as the fourth search result if one inputs ‘comprehensive school’ into the Google Images search-engine. The building was gutted by fire in 2006.

According to its online prospectus, Harris Academy boasts exam results that are “significantly above local and national averages.”

Fellow presidential candidate Harry Cole has led the attacks on Mr Ward.

“No-one would have cared where any of the candidates went to school until he made it an issue. If he’s trying to make class an issue an issue then he’s seriously running scared,” he said.

“Nick was willingly deceiving the electorate and deliberately bringing class into the election.

“To deliberately put up a picture of a bog-standard comprehensive school in Wales and pass it off [as his own] – you’re abusing your voters.”

Mr Cole attended the prestigious Tonbridge School, a private boarding school in Kent.

Cole campaign behind anonymous blog Continued from page 1 told The Journal: “I’m really sad and really disappointed in Harry and in Alastair. I think they’ve brought shame on themselves and on student politics in general.

“To be associated with something that is as vile and offensive as EUSAless says something about their characters, and it’s not positive.”

Mr Cole had, as reported in The Journal two weeks ago, encouraged his rival candidates to sign a “clean campaign pledge.” Mr Ward has since accused Mr Cole of breaking his promise.

Mr Ward said: “At the start, Adam [Ramsay], Harry and myself signed a pledge with one of the points being that we have no part in any outside websites. We asked him explicitly about EUSAless and he put his hands up and said he had nothing to do with it. He was lying to us.”

The incumbent EUSA President Josh MacAlister, another figure tar-

geted by the blog, told The Journal: “Most students want to see their student union working to change and improve the lives of students. The people that have been involved in this care more about mud slinging and destroying people.”

Mr Cole said: “EUSAless existed to gauge reactions and gauge opinions. In order to get attention it had to be controversial. But it was a monster that was unleashed and grew to be bigger than anyone’s wildest comprehension; that tapped into a general unrest that’s really out there.

“It was never meant to be a campaign tool; it was giving voice to those who want change in EUSA.” At its peak, EUSAless had a readership of 3,500 and was daily reading for the student politics circle.

Mr Sloan, who was a former member of staff at The Journal before leaving to run Mr Cole’s campaign, said: “EUSAless was set up as a research project to gauge students’ opinions and to work out solutions to EUSA’s prob-

lems. From the start it was against EUSA being run by a small clique of people that see EUSA as ‘their’ students association.”

“After Harry decided he was going to run, we couldn’t reveal ourselves as being behind EUSAless as that would nullify any impact it had.”

The Journal discovered the identity of the anonymous bloggers after an email sent by EUSAless was found to have originated from Alastair Sloan.

Mr Sloan’s involvement was then confi rmed by two anonymous sources close to the Harry Cole camp.

Mr Sloan denied EUSAless was a part of Harry Cole’s campaign, saying: “It’s difficult to defi ne ‘campaign tool’.

Writing a blog is not too different to journalists from Student or The Journal taking sides and trying to manipulate voters’ opinions. It’s the same kind of thing.”

He also said it was their intention to wind down the blog before the election, saying: “It’s better to be honest now that it’s coming up to the vote. It’s

actually quite brave for Harry to hold his hands up before the election and put it out in public as it would be disastrous if this were to come out after the vote.”

Adam Ramsay, the front-runner in this year’s election according to a Student/The Journal poll conducted this week, said: “Harry and his team have every right to criticize me if they think this is the best use of their time. However, some of the criticism of others has been unacceptable as is the criticism of EUSA staff that shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

When asked for his view, newcomer to the race Gabriel Arafa said: “I have to say that I was disappointed to hear that Harry had been involved in this. However, I got into this race to campaign on the issues, not trade insults. My opponents seem like decent guys, and I’m just concentrating on my campaign.” http://eusaless.blogspot.com

Harry Cole (Gibson Laurence)

HE’D TELL ME IF HE HAD HIV

40% OF GAY OR BISEXUAL MEN WITH HIV DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE IT GET TESTED

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0131 558 94 4 4

Comment 19

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Comment editors: Chris Williams & Simon Mundy comment@journal-online.co.uk

Comment Discussion&Debate

New republic; new divides

Practical obstacles and Serbian frustration could spell disaster for the new Kosovan republic Ian Traynor ian.traynor@journal-online.co.uk

B

ELGRADE IS BURNING and Serbs are on the rampage – in the Serbian capital, in the slice of northern Kosovo they control, and in the half of Bosnia they govern.

The US embassy and other western targets in Belgrade are being attacked by mobs. United Nations police in Kosovo have been using tear gas to try to stem the rioters. Next door in Bosnia, the Serbian half of the country is threatening to secede, a move that could kickstart a war.

It might be 2008, but there’s a distinct whiff of 1991 when the Yugoslav wars started with similar events in Belgrade, in Kosovo, and in Bosnia.

The similarities may be real. But they are also superficial. The fundamental difference between now and then is that there is no Slobodan Milosevic, no evil genius to mastermind the bloody chaos. Rather, a bunch of very aggrieved Serbian nationalist leaders who lack the dead dictator’s talent, cunning, control, and ruthlessness.

The reason for the return of mayhem is Kosovo. Nine years after NATO drove Serb forces out of their southern province, inhabited mainly by ethnic Albanians, and after two years of futile negotiations between Serbs and Albanians over what is to become of the province, the Kosovo leadership declared independence on Sunday 17 February to become the world’s 193rd state.

Such declarations are not worth the paper they are written on unless they attract international support. But the move was closely coordinated with Washington and Brussels and, within a week, the new Republic of Kosovo was recognised by more than 20 states – most importantly the USA, the big EU countries, Germany, France, Britain, and Italy, and a host of others with many more to follow.

But Serbia will never recognise an independent Kosovo. Its biggest backer, Russia, is also furious, warning of new wars, destabilisation, and a domino trick of dozens of other secessionist movements following suit worldwide, not least in Moscow’s own post-Soviet backyard. The Russians and many others argue that the Kosovar Albanian action turns international law upside down since an international border has been redrawn without the agreement of one of the parties and without UN blessing. They have a point.

The west and the Kosovars argue that Kosovan independence is inevitable, the last act in the bloody collapse of former Yugoslavia and its refashioning into seven new states.

They have a point, too.

And the independence is tenuous and incomplete. Kosovo is no longer a part of Serbia – as it had been since the Ottoman empire collapsed in the southern Balkans in 1912. But nor is it fully sovereign. The US and the EU were the midwives attending the birth of Europe’s newest country. Brussels now takes on the role of foster parent, attempting to raise its infant ward to adult statehood.

It is a tall order, the EU’s toughest ever. The independence declaration launches the EU on its most ambitious exercise in state-building. The EU policy and actions are hugely contentious and divisive – politically, legally, practically, and morally.

Just when it is striving to concoct common foreign policies, Europe is split between those who support a separate Kosovo state, those who oppose it, and those sitting on the fence.

The policy has triggered a crisis in relations between Brussels and Serbia.

Moscow, Serbia’s main backer, is also exploiting the international equivocation over Kosovo to try to undermine EU unity.

For the past nine years since the Nato air campaign against Serbia, Kosovo has been a UN protectorate.

But over the next four months it is to morph into an EU protectorate, with 2,000 European police, judges, lawyers, diplomats, analysts, and administrators replacing the lacklustre UN mission. A French general, Yves

De Kermabon, will head the so-called EULEX operation aimed at basing Kosovo on the rule of law. The NATOdominated KFOR peacekeeping force will effectively be a European military operation. Meanwhile, a Dutch diplomat, Pieter Feith, will oversee the European protectorate, replacing the UN’s Joachim Ruecker.

The EU is already the biggest international donor to Kosovo, having spent some 2 billion euros on Kosovo.

It plans to spend 330 million more by 2010, making Kosovo the biggest per capita beneficiary of EU largesse.

But along with these commitments, there are already suspicions that the EU is biting off more than it can chew, particularly in the north.

The northern half of the town of Mitrovica and the surrounding region above the River Ibar is controlled by some 60,000 Serbs, roughly half of the remaining Serbian minority in a state of around two million. Belgrade directs the local Serb leaders, pays the salaries, provides the health, education, and welfare services and is bent on a de facto partition of Kosovo. This northern area also abuts the Serbian border. The Europeans will struggle to assert control here.

Practical and operational difficulties aside, there remain big questions about the legal basis both for redrawing international borders to create a new state and for the European mandate in Kosovo. The US and the Europeans wanted a UN mandate

“Europe is split between those who support a separate Kosovo state, those who oppose it, and those sitting on the fence” but the Russians made sure that was not available. The West argues that Serbian behaviour—the erection of a police state in Kosovo in the 1980s, mass repression of the Albanian majority, and Belgrade’s war that drove hundreds of thousands of Kosovars from their homes and left thousands dead—invalidated the Serbian claim on retaining Kosovo.

The Serbs and the Russians counter that the UN Security Council which ended the 1999 war and authorised the UN takeover—Resolution 1244—affirmed ultimate Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. Indeed, knowledgable European officials say that the Finnish envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, who negotiated the war’s end with Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, specifically promised Belgrade continued sovereignty, which was one reason that Milosevic agreed to the peace terms.

The Europeans, by contrast, insist that Resolution 1244 enables both the European mission and Kosovo independence. A confidential four-page

analysis by legal experts at Britain’s foreign office reasons that the EU mission is legitimate unless the UN rules otherwise and that the UN resolution does not preclude the act of secession.

The new state is to be established on the basis of the independence terms drafted by Ahtisaari over 18 months of the failed negotiations he mediated between the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians. The Europeans are to oversee implementation of the Ahtisaari plan which provides for far-reaching decentralisation and autonomy for the Serbian minority in Kosovo.

However, the benefits for the Serb minority will only be enjoyed if the Serbs take part in the governance and institutions of an independent Kosovo.

Sadly, this seems an unlikely prospect, at least in the short-term, since Belgrade is ordering Kosovo Serbs to boycott and block the new state and to pursue the informal partition.

Ian Traynor is the Europe Editor of The Guardian

20 Comment

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Drug testing:

Criminal injustice The return of disgraced sprinter Dwain Chambers to the British athletics scene has sparked outrage – but perhaps the establishment’s approach to drugs in sport is part of the problem

Brent S. Rushall brent.rushall@journal-online.co.uk

T

HE ANTI-DOPING IN Sport (ADIS) movement is a remarkable institution: in its brief life, its dogma has swept the world. It has hoodwinked a non-discerning press (who should know better), UNESCO, governments, and the public. The media is full of less-than-qualified assessments and blog offerings commenting on individuals and their appropriate punishments, and features a level of vindictiveness that permeates the movement from its very head down to the lowest level of involvement.

But some of the proven, although unadvertised deficiencies of the ADIS movement, might awaken some to better critically assess this phenomenon, particularly its parent organization, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

WADA operates as an oligarchy that shrouds itself in a deceptive aura of being “scientific.” It has always been a disappointment to see once-respected scientists sell their souls to this movement. In doing so, most have forgotten the basic tenets of science; two notable ones being the requirement for replicated objective evidence before making a definitive statement, and the limits upon creating generalizations solely on beliefs formed without proof.

The WADA propaganda machine, which has largely been lawyer-driven, has been particularly effective in swaying the opinions of the masses, governments, and international organizations. This has resulted in actions being popularly endorsed despite many of them being contrary to known evidence or having no basis in fact.

There exist three false impressions

entertained by the public.

The first fallacy is that the drugs and procedures listed and banned by WADA are performance enhancing.

For most items, there is no scientific evidence to support this claim. For example, there are scientific studies that show unequivocally that human growth hormone does not enhance performance. The manner in which substances are included in the banned list is baffling. Even if an educated guess were made as to the likelihood of a substance improving performance, credibility in the inclusions is broken in many instances.

The case of American cyclist Jared Bunde illustrates this point. He was banned for two years for testing positive for the banned substance, clomiphene – a hormone used to induce ovulation (egg production) in women.

Clomiphene is in a class of medications called ovulatory stimulants. How could this substance improve cycling performance in a male? That a punishment was meted out in an undiscerning manner should be cause for alarm.

The usual question to this example is: “why did he test positive?” The answer is in the scientific literature: studies have shown that exogenous female hormones (e.g. clostebol) can be transferred to males during sexual intercourse, resulting in positive ADIS tests. The WADA banned list does not contain all substances and procedures that have been demonstrated to produce enhanced performances.

The second misconception is that ADIS testing is perfect; results cannot be disputed, and positive results are indicative of a conscious effort to cheat. Few people realize that if a positive test is declared by an ADIS organization, athletes have no rights to absolve themselves of the indictment.

Criminals and war prisoners have more rights. Such a violation of human rights in other domains would yield protests, governmental sanctions, etc.

But in sports, an opposite reaction occurs. Drug or substance testing is far from a precise science, hence why second opinions for important initial test results are sought in medicine or criminal justice, among other institutions. In the ADIS movement, however, many test results rely on interpretations by the technician. It is this writer’s personal experience that when results have been assessed by compe-

tent judges, many test results claimed

by ADIS agencies have been found to be unreliable and erroneous. Even WADA itself admits that its “evidence” and accusations would not be acceptable in employment, civil, or criminal courts. That appears to be why it has cleverly constructed its own deliberative and judgmental procedures that deny athletes access to socially valid judicial procedures.

The third fallacy is that ADIS activities are socially acceptable.

This misconception is promoted by society in general despite the basic so-

cial failing of athletes being charged, judged, sentenced, and ostracized by the same body. The United States AntiDoping Agency on occasion appears to have taken steps to ensure that when an athlete appeals a charge of a positive test result, the appeal will be denied.

Appeals are limited to arguing for a reduction in sentence although occasionally a tribunal strays outside the machinations of ADIS’s “kangaroo courts” and absolves athletes of charges, mostly because of a procedural transgression by the ADIS. In most democratic societies, the sorts of decision-making procedures from within ADIS would be reviled, but not in sport! There is no reasonable avenue for an athlete to recover from a false accusation. It is disturbing that the media and public generally embrace this form of “justice”.

These three points are but a few of the many deficiencies in the ADIS movement.

The glib acceptance of ADIS institutions and behaviours should be interpreted as a notable and undesirable backward step in human development.

At a minimum, two things should be demanded of the ADIS movement: it should display the objective evidence to support its claims, and should provide standards of procedures to ensure charged athletes are afforded normal standards of justice. More demands should be made; but at least those two demands should be met before an athlete is discredited and denied employment or participation, and the seamier sides of public behaviour encouraged.

Brent S. Rushall is Professor Emeritus of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences at San Diego State University

Graduating in the credit crunch Despite the big crunch, noises from industry indicate that the graduate recruitment market is still crisp

James Russell james.russell@journal-online.co.uk

I

T’S BEEN HARD to avoid the Credit Crunch. Everyone, from City bankers to Shetland farmers, has heard tales of the how the dreaded sub-prime mortgage market and a failing US housing market led to a global credit squeeze and near meltdown in financial markets. The US now sits on the precipice of recession, with the very real risk that it could drag down the rest of the western world. But how has all of this affected Scotland? And what implications does it have for all of us as we consider our future careers?

In the face of an economic slowdown Scotland has generally escaped unscathed. A Lloyds TSB Scotland report last month claimed that economic growth in Scotland was continuing at just below the longterm average. 42 per cent of the 1,900 companies polled reported increased turnover in the last quarter of 2007,

with much of that coming from new customers. Meanwhile house prices in Scotland are holding steady and consumer confidence is strong. Indeed one sector that has done particularly well recently has been property rentals – fewer people taking out mortgages means fewer house purchases but more rentals. Here in Edinburgh the average rental for a one-bedroom flat shot up four per cent year-on-year with 79 per cent of flats being rented within a month of going on the market. Compared to the dizzy heights of a year ago, when record profits and a booming economy drove Scotland forward, the current climate represents a challenge. But with unemployment at just 2.6 per cent, nearly a 33-year low, the outlook for the Scottish economy as a whole remains relatively bright.

When looking more specifically at the financial sector however, things look a little different. The Centre for Public Policy for Regions recently claimed that Scotland’s financial services sector was technically in recession as a result of its output drop-

ping 3.4 per cent in the last quarter of 2007 and over 6 per cent since this time last year. Owen Kelly, of Scottish Financial Enterprise, rubbished the claims as “nonsense”, but there’s little doubt that the financial sector has borne the brunt of the Credit Crunch.

Shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland have dropped almost 50 per cent over the last year with HBOS suffering a similar slide. In the case of RBS that represents a drop in valuation of over £30 billion, a vast loss to its shareholders and an example of the decline in confidence in the financial sector.

But what to make of it from a student perspective? It’s quite tough to predict how this will affect the graduate job market in the financial sector.

After the dot-com crash of 2000 and the ensuing recession, most banks and asset managers dropped a large proportion of their graduate programmes, seeing them as an unnecessary cost in a time of economic turmoil. As a result, when the period of growth began in late 2002, these same companies now lacked the analysts they so

badly required and ended up paying over the odds to bring in new talent.

Banks today say they’ve learnt their lesson. Graduates are after all a cheap commodity – the salary of one MD is equal to that of ten or more recent graduates. So in a period of cost-cutting it makes more sense for financial institutions to move more expensive commodities—the failing traders and credit specialists—off of the balance sheet. Whether this theory has held true is yet to be shown, but there seems to have been little impact on this year’s graduate intake.

Outside of finance, it’s similarly hard to predict. A slowing economy usually leads to lower profits, less expansion and fewer jobs, which implies that the graduate job market should be somewhat depressed. The truth however seems to be just the opposite.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) claims that the number of graduate vacancies will increase this year by 16.4 per cent with wages increasing by an average of 2.1 per cent, and says there is a fear that some

companies may not even fill all their vacancies.

The true impact of the Credit Crunch is still unknown. Jobs have been lost in the financial sector, but recruiters claim this will not affect graduate level positions. Meanwhile statistics from the AGR point to an ever-expanding graduate labour market and an increasing number of jobs at a higher average wage. It seems we shouldn’t be put off by the sweeping depression which seems to have engulfed the financial media. Indeed Guy Davies, of Hogarth Davies Lloyd, an executive recruitment firm, told The Times at the end of last year that graduate recruitment is expected to continue at a pace. The message coming from all of this seems to be “have no fear, the jobs are still here” – which is of course good news for all of us.

James Russell is Editor for the Edinburgh University Trading and Investment Club. EUTIC meets every Thursday at 6.30pm in Appleton Tower, G5

Comment 21

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Apathy: the barometer of success George Grant george.grant@journal-online.co.uk

Tom Hunt

I

Lewis Killin

‘‘ ,,

The Race for Space

As speculation mounts over British manned expeditions into space, it’s time to ask whether this is a dream worth pursuing

Nick Dusic

Technology Lobbyist nick.dusic@journal-online.co.uk

T

HE RACE FOR space is back on and the UK doesn’t want to be left behind. This month saw the release of the UK’s Civilian Space Strategy 2008-2012 which aims to keep the UK “at the forefront of the evolving space scene.” The headline grabbing announcement was that there would be a fresh look at the merits of participating in human space missions. The UK has not participated in such missions since a decision by Margaret Thatcher in 1986 to pull out of the European Space Agency’s human space missions.

Despite the lack of human space missions, the UK does have a fairly strong track record in space. There is an impressive private sector space industry focused on satellite technologies and robotic missions. The UK has also been at the forefront of space science in many areas. There have even been four British astronauts: one was part of a privately financed space flight and the other three gained US citizenship in order to take part in NASA missions. However, if the UK is going to participate in the next wave of human space missions it needs to substantially increase its investment and commitment to space exploration.

The British National Space Centre has been tasked with making a recommendation on the costs and benefits of the UK government participating in space. On scientific grounds, there are valid reasons for human missions to explore the Moon or Mars. Drilling down into the depths of the Moon or Mars to take core samples could answer many fundamental questions

about the history of our solar system and the possibility of life on Mars.

On technical grounds, such missions could lead to significant technological spin-offs which could be applied to earthly pursuits. Public interest in space, science and technology would also be raised by British participation in human space flights.

What the Space Strategy does not contain is information about the sort of missions future British astronauts could find themselves participating in. More than likely, the UK would participate in the European Space Agency’s (ESA) manned programmes which are mainly run in collaboration with NASA. The UK could not afford to go it alone and would need instead to collaborate with other countries.

Current spending on UK space programmes comes from a range of government departments, agencies and research councils. The Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) is the largest funder of the British National Space Centre. If the UK is going to increase its commitment to space exploration it will need to invest a significant amount of new money into the system. Crucially, it cannot come from the general science budget.

Sadly, though, the current funding situation for basic research in physics and astronomy is in disarray following an estimated £80 million shortfall in the STFC budget. The STFC has announced 25 per cent cuts to the basic research grants required to improve our understanding of space and train the types of highly skilled individuals needed to contribute to a growing space industry. The STFC funding crisis has also meant that the UK has been forced to pull out of or renegotiate various international collaborations, to the extent that the UK is not seen as a

“partner of choice” by the international scientific community. The Government needs to sort out the funding problem in basic research before it can hope to get the support of the scientific community for human space missions.

If the UK is to play a bigger role in space exploration, the British National Space Centre (BNSC) needs to be radically reformed. It would almost certainly need to become a government agency with its own funding stream.

This would help to ensure that the science budget does not get raided to fund space exploration. Unfortunately, the Space Strategy does not have any firm plans for strengthening the BSNC, so there is already considerable concern within the scientific community that ambitious plans for space exploration could come at the expense of space science, which is already in trouble.

To justify the increased expenditure required to make the programme a success, the government would need to factor in the wider economic, social and political benefits of an expanded UK space programme, including human missions. Human space exploration is an exciting area of endeavour, one that other countries have pursued and will continue to pursue without us. The UK has already carved out an extremely important niche in the space sector without sending people into space. Now it’s time to have a thorough public debate about the UK’s future up there.

Nick Dusic is the Director of the Campaign for Science & Engineering.

CaSE is an organisation working to improve government policies and funding for science and engineering in the UK. Student membership costs just £10; for more information visit www.sciencecampaign.org.uk

DEBATE WITH THE EXPERTS ON THE JOURNAL’S WEB FORUMS VISIT WWW. JOURNALONLINE. CO.UK

F I WERE given a pound for every time I heard someone lament the level of political apathy and the lack of choice between the mainstream political parties, then I’d be a very rich man. Political apathy is widely regarded as a sign that politics isn’t working, and the ferociously boring battle for the centre ground is seen as somehow detrimental to the entire political process.

But what this says to me is that, more or less, everything is working really rather well. When I asked an acquaintance of mine which party he was planning on voting for at the next General Election, he said to me that he wasn’t voting for any of them as politics didn’t affect him. Whilst this opinion is sad - not to mention wholly erroneous, since realise it or not, politics affects every part of our lives, right down to the duty that determined the price of said acquaintance’s beer - it is at the same time tremendously encouraging. In his world, political intrusiveness was at such a low level that that he had come to believe that politics didn’t affect him at all.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the great libertarians, described the sum of good government as that “which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned.” It is absolutely no coincidence that, as a general rule, people only get political when they feel they have something to lose by remaining idle. If all the employees of the NHS felt that the present administration was providing to their satisfaction, then they would not become so vigorously political as to go on strike; if serious grievances did not exist regarding Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom, then there would be no independence movement.

The reason individuals of all ages and political stripes were §so politically active in the 1970s, for instance, was because, with a 3-day working week, inflation as high as 40%, and the FTSE 100 as low as 150 points, the situation was so dire and the possibilities of personal and collective loss so great as to merit a real concern in the political process.

It is surely true that the desire to see one’s ideology incorporated into the political process is motivated as much by a belief in the personal or collective loss of not having it implemented, as by a belief in the gain that having it implemented will bring. That all the main parties are fighting for the centre ground in Britain is simply a reflection of the fact that most Britons are moderate individuals who are broadly in agreement. Wrongly or not, the Socialist Workers Party does well in areas where social inequality is perceived to be unacceptably high; the British National Party, likewise, does well in areas where whites perceive their way of life to be unacceptably threatened by large presences of ethnic minorities. Heaven forbid that enough public opinion should ever give parties such as these widespread electoral credibility, for then politics really would become interesting, and political apathy would cease soon enough.

One need look no further than the miles-long queues of black South Africans waiting in the sweltering sun to cast their vote when apartheid finally finished there in 1994 to see that political apathy vanishes when the state acts in such a way as to be truly detrimental to individual freedom and happiness.

Voter apathy in this country will only start to diminish when the consequence of letting the other guy’s party assume the reins of power is perceived to be disastrous enough, either on an individual or collective level. So here’s three cheers for political apathy and indistinguishable centrist politics. Long may it last.

22 Editorial

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Comments

comments@journal-online.co.uk dear Editor,

Edinburgh’s studEnt nEWspapEr | issuE V

university Funding

approaching a crossroads arthur C. CLarKE, the doyen of the science fiction genre, has never let the more technical elements of his encyclopedic intelligence get in the way of a good witticism. despite his advancing years, one of his more recent works, 3001: the Final Odyssey, contains this gem, on the subject of university finance: a college dean is touring his campus, speaking to the lecturing staff. On his way through the science building, he is accosted by a group of professors, who complain about the lack of support from the administrators and demanding funds for all the latest equipment. angered by their sass, the dean replies: “Why is it that the science department always needs such expensive gear? What can’t you be more like the math department? all they need is a blackboard and a wastepaper basket. in fact, why can’t you be like the philosophy department? they don’t even need the wastepaper basket.” in a fell swoop, Mr Clarke expresses both the current government’s attitude towards university finance and a perspective on higher education in general which, if it were more widely subscribed to, might resolve the current impasse. universities in scotland are in crisis – a fact which the announcement from dundee university reported in these pages should finally drive home to the sceptics, particularly those in power at holyrood. the snp is guilty of the same naivety as the dean in Clarke’s gag if it believes that one of the nation’s premier centres of medical research making staff redundant is part of a “period of

planned restructuring,” as a scottish government spokeswoman told the Journal.

Long-term planning cannot have come into the matter if the £168 million requested from the government by universities scotland merely to keep pace with English counterparts was met with a paltry £40 million investment. scottish universities will not maintain any reputable status on a shoestring budget – not if their most prestigious professors, such as Edinburgh university’s recently-departed richard Mackenney, are poached by institutions abroad; not if humanities students in their honours years get four hours contact time a week; not if a lack of funds lead to crumbling facilities and canceled classes. the formula for success is not rocket science. Edinburgh university received top marks for investment in its medical program in last year’s guardian universities guide, and continues to enjoy a high ranking for the department. it received only four marks out of ten for funding of its history department; the program’s ranking has correspondingly dropped. if tight-fisted funding policies have driven down quality at scotland’s universities, the situation has hardly been helped by burgeoning sentiment – peddled since 1997 by the current Labour government – that more people need to be crammed into universities. this tactic is clearly not working, highlighted by scotland’s persistently high university dropout rate, or the difficulties graduates increasingly face in finding work in their subject area due to the falling value of qualifications.

under no circumstances should a university education ever return to being the preserve of the privileged classes as it once was. gifted students from all backgrounds should be able to pursue their academic passions whatever their financial status. however, the british government must realise that it cannot currently afford to put as many people through higher education as it would like while maintaining standards at its universities. higher education in this country is at a crossroads: society must decide whether university should be for all or only those who truly want and deserve its challenges and benefits. the former requires a radical overhaul of not just university funding but a wholesale improvement of compulsory education not to mention political bravery from government in terms of fiscal reform; the latter, a reappraisal of the role of vocational learning and qualifications. in 1945, a young raF radioman whose dream of attending university was put on hold by a lack of funds and the outbreak of World War two circulated a paper amongst fellow members of the british interplanetary society. its subject was the then-fantastic notion of satellite communications; so accurate was the description of technologies that were eventually developed, that when the first commercial telecoms satellites were launched in the 1970s, their owners had to ask his permission so as to avoid breach of copyright. arthur Clarke gave it willingly. he was born into a privileged home Counties family, and attended a prestigious grammar school, but did not attend university until 1949.

Oxbridge applications

Levelling the playing field bEtWEEn 1791 and 1794, the poet samuel taylor Coleridge attended Cambridge university – a university to which he was remarkably ill suited. his Cambridge career ended following his enrolment in the King’s Light dragoons under the name silias tomkyn Comberbache, and his subsequent dismissal, recorded: “discharged s. t.

Comberbache, insane.” such were the days when “going up to Cambridge” was less a stepping stone to a career, than a rite of passage for the nation’s intellectual elite. but for today’s aspiring undergraduates, Cambridge, like any university, provides an opportunity for more than amusing feats of witty bravado.

For this reason, the news that Cambridge university is to drop the requirement that applicants submit a separate

form ought to be treated, in a small way, as good news indeed. For last year’s Cambridge intake to comprise of only 56 per cent students from state schools, compared to around 85 per cent across the whole of the russel group institutions (a figure considered low enough in itself) is clearly unacceptably disproportionate for a university which, in reality, sits in the same undergraduate market space as its competitors. Whether as a result of nagging from the government or a realisation that Oxbridgecalibre students from “middle ranking schools” are being advised by teachers against applying to the famous pair, the message out of Cambridge is clear: that the institution is to be considered by candidates alongside other top universities and not as an unreachable strata of higher education.

the move won’t solve the problem of disproportionate admissions of state school pupils to top universities. there are clearly numerous barriers of inequality of opportunity still to overcome, though the pledge to offer full grants to those whose parents earn less than £25,000 is undoubtedly a positive one. but in dropping at least one of the hoops candidates must jump through, a first step has been taken towards clearing the fog of mystique which surrounds the Oxbridge application process. Let’s now see Oxford follow suit. and let’s put to bed the mutually exclusive Oxford or Cambridge system of application which sustains the aura of Oxbridge as the ancient sandbox for poets and politicians. now, who remembers the one about Lord byron’s pet bear?

the Wednesday poem

Custard Molecules thin

fat

baby

fat

fat

slat

baby

bat

spin

fat

baby

flat

fat

thin

baby

skin

flat

shat

baby

vat

skin

that

baby spat

skin

thin

baby

cat

pat

win

baby

grin

pin

that

baby

that

cat

baby

fat

gin

skin

baby

in

win

thin

baby

gin

cat

shat

baby

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fin.

Chris Lindores The Wednesday Poem is provided by read this magazine

You accuse me of “failing to engage students” in my campaign, because i haven’t yet hosted a ‘manifesto launch’ event, and my two opponents have.

While they were organising these events, i conducted an online survey on student spending, to which hundreds of students responded. Your accusation gets to the core of one of the things that Eusa could get better. the way to engage with students is not to organise a ‘launch’ event for your friends and a few student politics enthusiasts. the way to engage with students is to talk with them - either in person or, as i did, online. as president, i will engage with and work with students across campus, not just the minute minority who will turn up to the sort of events organised by my rivals.

Adam Ramsay EUSA President candidate i am glad that tim goodwin (“rumour Mill”, 13 Feb) thinks my stance on free education is “admirable” and even more glad that i have apparently “caused controversy amongst the student politics community”. however i would like to reply to his suggestion that i am mixing up the role of president and Vpaa by taking a stand on free education.

My campaign will certainly have plenty to say on the “traditional” role of the Vpaa in liaising between students and the university on matters like feedback and academic services. i’m sure, for example, that Mr goodwin will be happy to hear that i will be campaigning for longer library opening

hours, not simply for the sake of it, but so that students from any background— whether working, with dependent children, studying part-time—can access books in the Library when they want to. Or that i will campaign to change the current role of director of studies into that of a Mentor, someone with real knowledge of a student’s personal and academic development (as is currently the case at, for example, heriot-Watt). however, one of the roles of the Vpaa is to work on the “widening participation” agenda, i.e. encouraging students from non-traditional backgrounds to come to university. Mr goodwin should know this better than anybody, as the Vpaa he worked with as president, ross neilson, did a lot of work on this issue. how better to encourage “widening participation” than campaigning for free education?

Furthermore, the financial burden placed on students has a negative impact on the quality of our degrees and our experience at university, especially when many students have to take termtime jobs to sustain themselves. a study commissioned by universities uK and the higher Education Funding Council for England showed that students who work more than 15 hours a week are only 60% as likely to get a good (2:1 or above) degree as those who don’t have to work.

Matters of funding—both for individual students and for universities— therefore certainly qualify as “academic affairs”, and i don’t think it should cause “controversy” to speak of my support for free education.

Andrew Weir VPAA candidate / Socialist Society

LEttEr OF thE WEEK dear Editor, in the latest edition of The Journal (issue 4, 13th Feb 2008), tom Crookston offers his opinion on the ‘withering grassroots of university sport’. Whilst he is to be commended for drawing attention to the current lack of support at home games and the differences between the usa set up and the uK set up, he makes a few incorrect assumptions which are disappointing. his assumption that you can no longer use university sport as a “viable route into the professional game” is correct, but only as far as his article goes. he concentrates primarily on football and it is true very few professional footballers have come through university. however, football clubs tend to sign the best youngsters pre-gCsEs, and professional football players have six-figure sum salaries. it is not an easy climate to compete in. using the example of rugby, he goes on to comment on the differences between the past number of athletes going through university to become professionals and the current level. it has to be remembered that sport and the training programmes that go with it have changed massively over the last few decades. take the rugby example: compare players’ build 20 years ago (when it was an amateur sport) with that of today. they are simply incomparable. it is therefore correct that it is highly unlikely you will see the new ronaldo kick his first ball down at peffermill. however, there is still currently a huge stream of professional, or world class, athletes in other sports coming through Edinburgh and other universities’ ranks. For instance, Chris hoy (cycling) and Katherine grainger (rowing) will be at the Olympics in the summer and both went to Edinburgh university. incredibly, Katherine had never rowed before she came to university. alan Clyne (squash, scotland 2) currently studies at Edinburgh university and is just starting on the psa World tour.

Other athletes to have gone through our ranks include rugby players such as gregor townsend, simon taylor and stuart grimes, judo medal winners (Winston sweatman, graeme randall, both Commonwealth games medal winners), football players such as Julie Fleeting (100 goals in 100 scottish caps, currently plays for arsenal Ladies) or

pauline Mcdonald (scotland captain) and the list goes on. Looking to other universities, Monty panesar (Cricket) is a graduate of Loughborough university, Matt stevens (rugby) went to bath university. tom goes on to say that “it is time for the universities themselves to take it seriously”. this is already the case, and very much so. all universities currently inject very large amounts of money into sport, be it for their sporting infrastructure or for their sports union and their athletes. at Edinburgh university, for example, we offer 12 team bursaries and 27 individual bursaries, thus attracting and retaining the most elite sporting students around. the same can be said of most other universities. some universities concentrate on one or two specific sports (e.g. London Metropolitan for tennis and table tennis) whilst others like ourselves have a slightly broader approach. nevertheless, it is correct and, being perfectly honest, a shame that home attendances are so low around the country at university matches. On the other hand, and this is no excuse, crowds at all sporting events are dropping like a stone, due to the influx of sky and other broadcasters showing matches live on tV and other new means of distraction such as internet. as tom rightly says, the talent on show at university is immense, and rarely, if ever, in one’s future will a student get the chance to see such talent and skills for free. i would therefore encourage everyone to come along and watch our home teams play.

Edinburgh university has 65 different clubs, and most other universities in Edinburgh have around 30 to 40, meaning there is a vast range of entertainment available on your doorstep. as a conclusion, it is incorrect to say that university sport is withering based uniquely on football observations.

Edinburgh university has produced some of the world’s best sportsmen and sportswomen, from Eric Liddell through to Katherine grainger. this won’t stop, and the sports union and the university are committed to developing talent for the future. they may never get the chance to score in the football Champions League final, but please rest assured that they will be world beaters.

Simon Messenger President Edinburgh University Sports Union

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The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Translating the blank generation award-winning Francophone author, alain Mabanckou, has finally unleashed African Psycho, his Congolese re-imagining of American Psycho, upon the english-speaking world

Alison Lutton aslison.lutton@journal-online.co.uk

T

ouTed as “a remarkable new african voice,” alain Mabanckou is in fact anything but. Born in Congo-Brazzaville in 1966, the author has, since the appearance in 1993 of his first book, a collection of poetry entitled au jour le jour, enjoyed over a decade of prolific writerly activity.

Now, with six novels, six volumes of poetry and a representative sample of prestigious francophone literary prizes to his name, Mabanckou’s prose is finally, having been woven into Hebrew, Korean and Portuguese amongst other languages, being made available to english readers.

Mabanckou remains a virtual unknown in the uK and, if you’ve heard his name so far, chances are it’s through comparison with Bret easton ellis and american Psycho, a novel which the skewed Bildungsroman african Psycho (originally published in France in 2003 and now the first of his works in english) overtly and gleefully parodies. “I want to conceive of everything from beginning to end and plant my foot upon my victim as a sign of satisfaction, like a hunter happy to have killed his first big game” relates Grégoire Nakomobayo, african Psycho’s troubled protagonist. In a state of mind not wholly dissimilar to that of ellis’s Patrick Bateman, Grégoire believes that killing his girlfriend, Germaine, will endow him with the right status to transcend his tawdry life. His circumstances, as a car mechanic in a rundown suburb, could not be further from those of city slicker Bateman, though.

In fact, Bateman is far more recognisable in african Psycho as the character of the late “Great Master” angoualima, a quasi-mythical serial killer whose reign of terror Grégoire seeks to ape, and with whom he, apparently, converses. angoualima’s grisly trademark of leaving “twenty-five Cuban cigars burning” in the “thing” of any woman he cares to rape, for example, recalls american Psycho’s infamous rat scene. While Mabanckou details that he was “fascinated and captured” by the novel and wanted to create “a kind of tribute to Bret easton ellis,” it was far from his intention to fashion another polished serial killer. asked how his project differed from american Psycho, he notes: “Bateman, the main character of that novel, looks so perfect when committing his murders. My idea was to create an awkward character far from Bateman, not at all well educated. a kind of loser – a would-be serial killer.” african Psycho continues what Mabanckou himself identifies as a pattern of writing about losers, which he continues largely because “it is more exciting to get to know someone who is fighting and fighting again against his fate than someone who is successful in his goals.” With almost comic certainly, Grégoire’s various violent endeavours, despite meticulous preparation, are persistently ham-fisted. an armed (with a hammer) robbery on the offices of a corrupt local official ends in a botched, although not fatal, assault and a penniless retreat. It is almost possible to read Grégoire as a tragic hero, especially since his ultimate ineptitude, and isolation, is so poignantly depicted. as Mabanckou explains, “the end of my story shows a desperate character who seems to regret his gesture.” This, indeed, is a far cry indeed from the selfindulgent unravelling of Bateman.

Humour, however, mediates african Psycho’s tragic elements.

Mabanckou is adamant that he “wanted to laugh in [the] book and to show at the same time that africa does have its serial killers even if they don’t look like my main character Grégoire!”

It is this fine balance, painstakingly maintained throughout the novel, which makes the characterization of Grégoire so effective: his rectangular head and hesitant manner make him more pitiable than menacing. Though he himself fails to realize it, he is, as Mabanckou notes, a highly improbable killer. By psychologizing Grégoire fully from an early stage as the product of a problematic childhood spent in various foster homes, Mabanckou enables a degree of understanding of his protagonist’s motivations. It is in this, and not simply the depiction of an outright loser, that he most notably diverges from ellis’s model. serial killers mean something quite different in african culture. asked what precisely that is, Mabanckou says: “we [africans] try to explain serial killers by stating that it is a mystery, that the killer is possessed by a spirit like my character who refers to his mentor angoualima.” enriching what could otherwise be (and has been, in the hands of ellis) a bleak psychological portrait, Mabanckou foregrounds the sense of folklore which permeates african Psycho’s every word. It is his seamless deployment of Congolese oral tradition which means Mabanckou is spoken of in the same breath as such post-colonial giants as Chinua achebe, whose seminal Things Fall apart (1958) combined folklore and proverb to create an enduring portrait of a Nigerian farmer. Grégoire, psychotic tendencies aside, is a master storyteller: whether explaining why his home village is known as “He-Whodrinks-Water-Is-an Idiot” (due to its proliferation of pubs), or detailing, with due reverence, the history of his “idol” angoualima—”[h]e had six fingers on each hand and a harelip”—Grégoire represents an authentic folkloric voice. such an innate cultural awareness is liable to be diluted in translation: was Mabanckou worried about this?

Not a bit of it, he demurs: “I think translation should not be considered like just a flat translation of what an author wrote previously. That why I am always amazed to discover how a translator is dealing with my books since I write in a kind of oral language inherited from my Congolese culture. so far I have been very happy when reading my work translated.” This notion of the text as dynamic, imbued with a significance not fixed by its author, very much pitches african Psycho as a contemporary fable.

Mabanckou is not alone in his aim to imbue contemporary fiction with a sense of tradition in this way. Certain criticism of african Psycho following its us release last year alluded to the author’s as part of an african “blank generation” loosely analogous with the american equivalent, which came to prominence during the 1980s. asked how he feels about such comparisons, Mabanckou is adamantly positive: “I am not irritated by the drawing of these parallels. I do believe that we are in the age of an african blank generation which began around the 80s – like in america. That blank generation does not want to write in a ‘French way’, the task is to break the language and the rules of the French language. Most of the writers from african blank generation were born after 60s when africa was earning its independence. The goal was then to build another ‘littérature’, to rethink the French language and the role of francophone literature in the world. We are trying to move forward in that direction.”

Giallard

“I want to conceive of everything from beginning to end and plant my foot upon my victim as a sign of satisfaction, like a hunter happy to have killed his first big game” This raises a number of issues, but most notably suggests that perhaps Mabanckou ought to be irritated by such parallels, as the african blank generation’s project seems entirely opposed to the casual nihilism commonly attributed its us equivalent, whose exponents included Jay McInerney, dennis Cooper, Lynne Tillman and— predictably—ellis himself. Further, it suggests a sense of proximity to, and yet estrangement from, his own language, and country, which once again recalls achebe. Questioned about how the distance between the writer and his subject affects its presentation—he has lived in California, where he is currently Professor of French Literature at uCLa—Mabanckou says: “distance does affect the subject. Living and writing abroad modify our way of seeing the world. That’s why I try to go back to my native country each year.

I need to take from the world without losing my roots.”

This relationship between writer and context entirely underpins

Mabanckou’s literary ethos. The need to appropriate, amuse and illuminate particularly informs his presentation of the more problematic aspects of Congolese culture, and in particular the circumlocutory obscurity of its media, which african Psycho heavily satirises.

Mabanckou summarises that “the fiction is always close to the reality”, and adds that “satirizing the media is my way of requesting its freedom in my country” – the blank generation desire for change once again emerging strongly. asked whether his personal relation to the media is equally problematic, however, Mabanckou’s humour surfaces: “as a writer I have a great experience with the media. Journalists from my country then have the opportunity to discuss literature instead of politics – even if sometimes I criticize the system.”

Given his almost revolutionary zeal, and desire to turn literary tradition on its head, Mabanckou is perhaps not the most obvious doyen of the French literary establishment. His lat-

est novel, Memoires de porc-épic (Memoirs of a Porcupine), however, won him the prestigious Renaudot Prize in 2006. second only to the Goncourt, France’s Booker Prize, the Renaudot’s previous winners include heavyweights such as Louis Ferdinand Céline and Georges Pérec. It is any wonder, then, that Mabanckou sees the prize as “my most significant achievement to date.”

With the significance of his literary project now appreciated, what is next for Mabanckou? “I would like to write a novel which will deal with america since I am living and teaching there”, he relates. The erstwhile us blank generation had better watch out, then, as the recontextualizing energy which his parody brought to bear on american Psycho can only have a yet more devastating effect when unleashed on its home turf.

African Psycho is out now, published

by Serpent’s Tail. A translation of Verre Cassé (Broken Glass) will follow in 2009.

24 Feature

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

AIDS in Africa

Coping with crisis In spite of the tragic AIDS pandemic, African governments seem remarkably secure

Alex de Waal AIDS Researcher

alex.dewaal@journal-online.co.uk

I

N THE FIFTEEN years after Africa’s first AIDS cases were reported on the shores of Lake Victoria in the early 1980s, the virus spread further and faster than any epidemiologist predicted.

Early estimations were that it was impossible for more than ten per cent of the adult population to become infected. This ceiling was soon broken, hitting 20 and then 30 per cent, with some populations even pushing 40 per cent, at which point the lifetime chance of a teenager contracting and dying from the disease is almost 100 per cent. Life expectancy crashed in a manner unprecedented for a peacetime population, with some southern African populations seeing expected longevity plunge from about sixty years to less than forty.

Scholars of historical calamities observe that one disaster often portends a second one. What else might AIDS bring in its wake? Economists projected that the loss of national income due to AIDS could send some economies into a tailspin – “Adam Smith in reverse” is how Malcolm McPherson of the Kennedy School at Harvard described it. Management specialists expected that loss of skilled workers would result in essential services such as schools and clinics—not to mention armies and police forces—grinding to a standstill.

Drawing upon studies of how rural people survive famines, I coined the term “new variant famine” in 2002 to describe the vicious interaction of drought and AIDS unfolding in southern Africa at the time, arguing that households hit by the disease would be unable to cope with the extra demands for coping with a food crisis, and would be plunged into indefinite destitution. Political scientists feared for Africa’s stability. How could democracy function when, as one Kenyan nurse protested, “all the voters will be dead”?

Many of these fears are indeed materialising. Others still loom. But some have been proven unfounded or at least exaggerated, diminished to manageable proportions. Foremost among the dire mis-predictions has been that the expectation that the epidemic would cause a governance crisis, leaving conflict, repression and anarchy in its wake. Africa has these ills aplenty, but AIDS isn’t indicated in their etiology.

Since 1999, the University of Cape Town has conducted public opinion surveys in a growing number of African countries. These “Afrobarometer” surveys are a rich source of data on what ordinary citizens think. They have revealed a simple but surprising fact about public opinion, namely that

“Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has turned Africa’s first national AIDS epidemic to his political advantage” AIDS is never at the top of the list of issues of concern to a population. That position is occupied by unemployment, poverty, famine and crime depending on the country in question. Although “health” occasionally makes it in at number two, AIDS very rarely breaks into the top three or even top five issues, though in some countries (notably South Africa) it has been climbing the ladder of concern.

AIDS occupies a commensurately marginal place in African political life: no African government has been overthrown because of its AIDS policies. No election has been decided on this issue, and in South Africa, the

ruling African National Congress were returned with an increased majority in 2004 despite President Thabo Mbeki’s notorious denial that HIV causes AIDS. True, South Africa has seen street protests over access to treatment, but the Treatment Action Campaign which organises them has no counterparts elsewhere in the continent. Also, its agenda is reform and not revolution – surprising as it may seem to AIDS activists from elsewhere, many TAC leaders remain loyal ANC members.

Their dispute with Mbeki is not the insurrectionary fervor of the ANC toppling Apartheid, but rather one wing of the new political establishment struggling to bring their errant colleagues back to the right path.

Why is it that a disease that will kill one in six adult Africans, and more than half in the continent’s six southernmost countries, is not the subject of overwhelming political passion? The demographer John Caldwell noted that life expectancy in many African cities is comparable to that in France during World War One, and has been over a much longer period than those four years of war. But while France was traumatised by the death of so many young men, political life in Africa continues in a remarkably normal way.

Most notably, democracy is actually spreading.

A large part of the answer to this conundrum lies in denial. From the earliest days of AIDS, some individuals have struggled with the reality of infection with a sexually transmitted disease for which there is no cure.

This remains common. But collective denial—as happens when an entire society refuses to contemplate a disturbing reality—is a level beyond. As Stanley Cohen notes in his analysis of the ways societies deny their culpability for genocide, one often finds the construction of an alternative reality in which people attempt to keep key social and moral frameworks unchanged. A severely AIDS-impacted community in southern Africa faces a similar challenge: how to maintain a social order based on lineage and ancestorhood when so many people

AIDS in Africa 27.4 million sufferers in Africa 12 million AIDS orphans in 2005 48.3 years African life expectancy $4.5global billion AIDS funding 2007

Kait Curran Palmer are dying of a “bad” disease with their life-cycle incomplete, and who will therefore struggle to attain the status of “ancestor”? One response is to ensure that the deceased is provided with a lavish funeral, entertaining all the neighbours and relatives who were unable to receive largesse during the lifetime of the departed. Across Africa, poor households struggle to pay for expensive burials, even in the age of AIDS when death is so common. Could the explosion of sorcery accusations in many African cities be related to the need to give meaning to such pervasive misfortune?

Most attempts to overcome AIDS denialism and encourage protection against HIV are based on a straightforward and rather paternalistic model of public education. The same simple messages are broadcast on all possible media. But for publics accustomed to state-controlled media, and therefore used to screening out official commands to be more patriotic and vote the president in (again), exhortations from on high to abstain or be faithful are unlikely to make much of an impact. More effective is to make AIDS the subject of popular debate by keeping it in the news and stirring controversy. People trust a high-quality and independent media.

People talk about the news, and what they talk about with their friends and families influences how they act. An unpublished study by Jacob Bor of Harvard University shows that there is a strong correlation between the quality of the press in a country and the extent to which its citizens think that AIDS is an issue for public policy.

It is open and democratic debate which is overcoming denial.

A second explanation for the persistence of political normality is that, unfortunately, we have yet to see

the worst. AIDS is a long wave event: just as the peak of AIDS deaths occurs eight or ten years after the steepest increase in HIV prevalence, so too does the impact of AIDS on the social fabric lag behind further.

Nonetheless, AIDS is causing a number of visible problems for African governments, both authoritarian and democratic. Many of the problems facing functioning democracies are being studied in an ongoing research project by Kondwani Chirambo at the University of Cape Town. These include the need to update voters’ rolls more regularly to ensure that deceased voters are removed and the need for special voting facilities for the sick and their carers. An increased number of by-elections due to more MPs dying puts financial strains on first-past-thepost electoral systems and, in African political systems, also advantages the incumbent because the ruling party is better able to find the resources necessary to mount by-election campaigns.

But these are manageable problems, not an overwhelming crisis.

But this could get worse. Cautiously, I added the last word “yet” to the title of my book AIDS and Power: Why there is no political crisis – yet. Arguing that the prediction of doom has yet to be refuted (if, indeed, it is refutable) fails to do justice to the intriguing complexity of what is going on.

More significant is the third part of the explanation, namely, that African governments are expert at managing multiple crises and even turning them to their advantage. There’s a rich literature on ways in which regimes of all political complexions have thrived despite famine, crime, unemployment and all manner of social disasters that would have destroyed the legitimacy of a western government. The devastation caused by AIDS—the numbers

Feature 25

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

of people lost, the trauma and the impoverishment—is in some ways little different from the impact of misgovernment over the years. Africa’s big men have learned that disorder can be a political instrument – that where the social and political infrastructure is limited, opposition cannot sustain sufficient organisation to unseat a ruler who floats above the turmoil and deprivation. Why should HIV/AIDS be any different?

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has been particularly masterful.

He has not only presided over Africa’s first national AIDS epidemic but has turned it to his political advantage.

Just how and why Uganda managed to turn the corner in reducing HIV prevalence some ten years before any other country in sub-Saharan Africa remains a mystery. Perhaps it was the unique trajectory of this early and

atypical epidemic, which began in the rural areas and spread to the cities just as a return to peace meant that many urban dwellers were returning to the newly-prosperous countryside as schools reopened and agriculture boomed. Quite likely the efforts of Uganda’s civil leaders were instrumental – notable among them the singer Philly Lutaaya who, in an act of conspicuous personal courage, played his last tour visibly sick with AIDS and enjoined his audiences to stand together to fight the disease. Newly installed in power at the head of a revolutionary government, professor-turned-guerrilla-turned-president Museveni also led a remarkably energetic administration in his first few years—a characteristic of liberation movements in power—before becoming mired in the limitations of a centralist ruling style.

Whatever finally emerges from a

full examination of the social epidemiology of AIDS in Uganda (a topic into which the Ugandan government discourages independent analysis), two things are clear. The first is that the Ugandan response and its success pre-dated any significant foreign spending on AIDS in the country.

Incidence was reduced while national AIDS expenditures were less than $10 million in total.

Second, Museveni banked the credit. Aid donors and public health activists needed an African “success story” and Uganda was not only Africa’s first one but for a long time it was the only one – cases such as Senegal where public policies had helped actually prevent an epidemic were, of course, much less visible. The AIDS industry needed Uganda, and Museveni needed their money and political endorsement, especially as

he had no intention of relinquishing power. Speaking to foreign audiences, the Ugandan President is ready to tailor credit for his country’s success in reducing HIV to the donor of the moment. To evangelical Christians he emphasises abstinence and fidelity; to AIDS activists he jokes about the number of condoms his country needs; to European ministers of development cooperation he stresses the integrated national AIDS program located in his own presidential office. In return, the world has paid little attention to his government’s single-party rule, military adventurism and corruption.

Uganda’s AIDS program is, in fact, a piece of Museveni’s left-wing militarism. Like his fresh and radical plans for restructuring provincial governance to help his country emerge from the trauma of genocidal violence under his predecessors, Museveni’s approach to AIDS was refreshingly frank and energetic. As with international audiences, his different policies are targeted to different groups. In the capital city, he has provided a circumscribed liberal space of uncensored newspapers and resurgent university life – and has encouraged condoms.

In the rural areas, there is an exercise in tight administration through a hierarchy of “resistance councils,” and puritan moral standards including campaigns against condom use are enforced, sometimes with coercion.

The centralised control of the national program in the presidency is less the vision of a comprehensive and coordinated program—Museveni has never in fact signed the most important pieces of legislation developed by his talented health administrators— than a determination to keep personal control of a crucial national asset. The Ugandan AIDS program has as much to do with the President’s ambition to stay in power for life as with “best practice.” AIDS has served Museveni extremely well in his quest for regime stability. Whether his regime in fact warrants the “success story” label is another matter: the last two years of HIV surveillance show that after fifteen years of decline, incidence is sharply rising.

There’s a forth and final reason for African governments’ apparent ability to survive the AIDS crisis – one which is, oddly enough, quite heartening.

Left to their own devices, most African leaders would have followed the Cuban model of AIDS policy: compulsory testing and a denial of rights to those infected. Where such approaches have been possible, for example in armies, this is more or less what has happened. Every African army that can do mandatory testing does so, and most of them summarily decommission those found to be HIV positive.

But, surprisingly, national AIDS programs for the general population have not followed this path. True, stigma and discrimination persist, but official policies are consistently liberal. Civil society organisations are active in AIDS work such that legislation formally grants rights to people living with HIV and AIDS. A remarkable number of senior leaders speak frankly about the disease and, year on year, the number of functioning democracies in Africa has increased and indicators of civil and political liberties are rising.

The reason for this encouraging conjunction of circumstances is that the leadership in AIDS programming has lain with an international network of activists who have succeeded in penetrating—and indeed in many cases building—international institutions. The epidemic struck at a time of democratic transition and globalisation and so, because the existing institutions, most notably the World Health Organisation, were so slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic, a new architecture was set up.

New organisations like UNAIDS and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria have had their agenda set in significant part by civil society activists. That agenda has included a major focus on human rights, including the right to privacy, voluntary testing, the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA), and the participation of PLWHA in making policies that affect their lives includ-

ing representation on the boards of UNAIDS and the Global Fund. This has been resoundingly successful.

Africa’s AIDS activists are globally networked and are part of this international phenomenon. While Uganda’s first AIDS activists focused on mobilising their local communities, the subsequent leaders of the movement have cultivated ties with international nongovernmental organisations, multilateral institutions and donors. While they may not get through the front door of national ministries in their own capital cities, they are invited to meetings in Paris, Geneva or Washington DC by Médecins Sans Frontières, UNAIDS or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Finding that the gates of foreign citadels are open to them, and that these geographically distant but more sympathetic institutions have the power of purse over African governments, activists compel African leaders to take notice.

This is a circuitous accountability, which has the potential to turn the aid encounter into a force for human rights and political liberalism. Most political science analyses of the impact of aid dependence conclude that governments become less accountable to their citizens the more they rely on foreign aid. During the Cold War, this was one of the major raisons d’être for aid, to keep loyal governments in power whatever their citizens thought about it. Well-intentioned aid, for example for famine relief, has too often had a similar effect of immunising a government from the pressures of its citizenry, providing band-aids to problems whose solutions demand policy changes. The prospect of aidfor-AIDS dependence could be frightening indeed: entire nations relying on the largesse of foreign donors for the drugs that keep millions of their citizens alive. But, thus far, the way in which the international aid apparatus has become more transparent and accessible has meant that new tracks of accountability have emerged leading to new pressures for respect for rights.

The entrenchment of civil society and human rights is an unsung victory for the global AIDS community.

This is neither an even nor an assured success. There are still huge problems of denial and stigma to overcome.

But this activist revolution has come further and faster than we would have imagined a decade ago. And there is no question that this has had wide ramifications for the protection and promotion of democracy in Africa. The spectre of AIDS-prompted governance regression has not occurred.

Activism’s greatest successes have been in the field of treatment. In retrospect, there are reasons that make treatment access the obvious locus for a breakthrough in activist effort.

There are constituencies that stand to benefit and can be organised (PLWHA, health professionals), and the responses are concrete and measurable.

But the scale and expense of treatment needs meant that, even five years ago, the level of today’s access to anti-retroviral therapy was considered an impossible challenge in poor countries.

Targets for three million people in the developing world on AIDS treatment by the end of 2005 were not met, but the scale-up of treatment is nonetheless impressive. Most importantly, the tenfold increase in funding for AIDS that has been unlocked has changed entirely the landscape of possibility for global health efforts.

The next big challenges for AIDS— prevention of HIV infection and care for the sick and orphans—present greater difficulties. The political incentives for action are less easy to grasp; the constituencies are less easy to identify and mobilise; and the measurement of success is much more difficult. The key lesson of the last five years is that getting the political engineering right is the key to success. Overcoming AIDS and its dire consequences is a task for social and political scientists as much as for physicians and epidemiologists.

Alex de Waal is a program director at the Social Science Research Council.

He is the author of AIDS and Power: Why there is no political crisis – yet, published by Zed, 2006

26 Arts & Entertainment theatre

Six Characters in Search of an Author  DIr. mark tHomson LyceUm tHeatre 21 FeB – 8 mar Questions of identity formation are overlooked as self-referentiality dominates this performance Hannah Thomas

hannah.thomas@journal-online.co.uk

Its FIrst perFormance caused legendary riots amongst the Italian audience, who furiously chased writer Luigi pirendello out of the theatre.

87 years on, however, the play no longer provokes such outrage. Films like Groundhog Day have exposed modern audiences to the self-referentiality of art, and titles like the truman show have forced into the mainstream the idea that the performance space represents a microcosmic version of life.

But the beauty of six characters is that it simply doesn’t matter that the foundational concepts of the play are no longer shockingly novel. pirendello doesn’t just beat the audience over the head with sober philosophy, he creates a whole host of juicy characters who are imbued with just the right amount of hatred and selfloathing to draw those watching into the drama.

In scottish writer David Harrower’s adaptation of the play, the performance opens to reveal a threadbare stage upon which a director prepares to conduct a rehearsal of pirendello’s mixing it Up. Just as his actors assume their roles, they are upstaged by the intrusion of six strange characters who demand to speak to the director. the strangers turn out to be fictional characters, produced by the imagination of an author who failed to write them into material existence. so they exist, like wraiths, in a state of tortuous transcience, waiting for their roles to be realised on stage.

Under mark thomson’s direction, the production presents a brilliantly accessible deconstruction of the theatrical process, laying bare the layers of creativity involved in the

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

transition from authorial concept to its directed—and acted—imitation on stage. the simple lighted square creating a stage-within-a-stage effectively delineates the boundary between actors and characters and, with thomson’s intelligent direction, the notion that the actors are imitators of reality is simply portrayed. the self-referentiality implicit in pirendello’s play also extends to a satire on the theatrical world. this is an aspect of the original which Harrower prioritises in his adaptation, but with limited success. the parodic rendering of the actors’ arrogant and attention-seeking behaviour provides fragments of comedy, but these come at the expense of serious philosophical commentary on the nature of identity – one of the play’s most compelling themes. the intentionally hammy acting and the persistent comedic thrust of the performance—epitomised by the ludicrous entrance of the pantomimic madame pace at one of the play’s darkest moments—distracts from and deadens this important aspect of pirendello’s play.

music

Late of the Pier  caBaret VoLtaIre 21 FeB

pounding synths and glam appearence, won’t get anybody dancing to Late of the pier’s beat Chris McCall

chris.mccall@journal-online.co.uk

“can We HaVe a big hand for our sound guy, mellie? He’s the one you guys should really be cheering.” this might sound like an innocent gesture of thanks from samuel eastgate, Late of the pier’s glam frontman, but he’s actually thanking the one man that holds this band together. mellie is the man responsible for ensuring Late of the pier’s synth sound sufficiently Gary numan sized. Without these, Late of the pier’s songs would die a rather painful death.

But when they arrive on stage, they certainly look the part. With their patrick Wolf haircuts and sparkly ripped t-shirts, they are a lesson in studied cool. yet their set is largely a let-down.

In a live setting, their songs stutter rather than swagger. those at the front are obviously eager to dance, but anytime Late of the pier find a groove, they seem to lose it far too quickly. the problem is, under the heavy layer of electro samples supplied by the ever reliable mellie, songs like ‘space and the Woods’ just don’t have much going for them. Lewis carroll inspired lyrics might be amusing, but you can’t dance to them. the band themselves don’t seem to mind, keeping the crowd amused with their increasing off-kilter descriptions of their songs. “this is the sound of what it would be like to be lost in space, wearing the wrong hat.” perhaps they’re right. perhaps Late of the pier are travelers from another world, sent to pass on their unique and dangerous brand of electro. or perhaps they’re simply another bunch of poseurs, a classic case of style over substance. either way, they will probably invade your world soon.

Arts & Entertainment 27

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Film

The Reel Afghanistan The fact that some of the festival’s films were nearly destroyed by the Taliban is reason enough for this festival

For FULL deTaiLS aNd ScHedULe viSiT WWW. reeLaFgHaNiSTaN.org Sigga Jonsdottir

sigga.jonsdottir@journal-online.co.uk

Music

Rob St John  HeNry’S ceLLar Bar 13 FeB

its only a matter of time before the rest of the country falls in love with this local folk hero Fergus Weir

fergus.weir@journal-online.co.uk

Media coverage oF afghanistan and its peoples has dwindled significantly since 2001 when the Taliban were overthrown by US Special Forces after years of repression, fear and instability. The perception at the time was that this was the dawn of a more stable, secure and free afghanistan.

But with start of 2007 came reports that the Taliban were gaining new ground, reclaiming vulnerable areas and getting stronger by the month.

The situation remains unchanged, and so it becomes increasingly important to shift focus back onto the country. in an effort to raise the public profile of afghanistan and interest in afghani culture, education Through art—supported mainly by the British council—is holding what they describe as “the first festival of afghan cinema and culture in the UK.” With the aim of celebrating the country’s rich culture and of “building awareness of issues surrounding the country,” the festival, held between 21 February and 8 March, packs cinema, art exhibitions and music alongside other cultural events. inspired by a visit to afghanistan by dan gorman and Zahra Qadir the festival was initially to cover only afghani films. it is so often the way, though: plan a small film festival and it so easily takes on a life of its own.

However, these “few screenings,” which dan gorman describes as the original idea, have now expanded into solid fortnight of film screenings at the Filmhouse and the cameo, and almost a dozen other events held throughout the city.

Without a doubt, cinema remains the centrepiece of the festival, and brings with it a slew of renowned films covering afghanistan’s most pertinent social, political and cultural issues – women’s rights, refugees and the grinding poverty which is especially rife in the rural areas each find expression. events got under way earlier this week with Siddiq THe SceNe iS almost dickensian in Henry’s cellar Bar, the molten candles overflowing from wine glasses spread across old wooden tables giving the underground den an amber glow. No blaring music either, just a quietly playing folk soundtrack. Neither is there standing room, the code for the evening is to sit cross-legged and enjoy the acoustic musings. These languid surroundings then, are the perfect accompaniment to the musical delights coming up.

The edinburgh music scene would appear to be blossoming at the moment, and part of this is the revival of the city’s folk tradition. continuing the work of musical ancestors Bert Jansch and davy graham, the Fife Kills network is the foundation and platform for a host of acts that have already played up and down Scotland as well as London. rob St John is one such exponent of this group. originally playing solo, the wistful melancholy of his songs is gracefully carried by his voice and guitar alone. of late however, he has done a full ‘dylan’ and recruited a wholesome band to augment the already beautiful sound. The result is no less than astounding. Bass, drums, cello, glockenspiel, autoharp, harmonium, ukulele and the rare sighting of a musical saw form the extensive band, combining to add a priceless vibrancy. coupling a vivid vocabulary and a fine knowledge of florid tunings, St John plays a fantastic set, and the audience are enthralled into deathly silence. even the stumbling towards the front of a drunken man with a tottering pint cannot upset the gentle peace that fills the room. recently released eP Tipping in is played fully, an almost sold out record which has already gained rave reviews from a host of fanzines. The title track is a magnificently winding piece of song writing, the lyrics poetic in their personification of nature – “a certain delicate refrain, a fine splinter cracking, in a keening embrace for love’s sweet refuge ‘til the weather breaks.” ending with ‘The acid Test’, an unhurried tale of times past and places unchanged, rob, and the St cool’s as they are tonight dubbed, show Henry’s anything but a hollow heart.

Barmak’s osama, which won a golden globe for best foreign film in 2004, telling the story of a widow forced to disguise her twelve year old girl as a boy so the child can provide income for the family. it’s an opening which strikes right at the divide between afghanistan’s awful Soviet legacy, and today’s cruelty under the Taliban. other screenings include the award-winning documentary The Boy who plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan (February 29th), originally released back in 2003. astute observers might recognise in the title a reference to an incident which caused an international furore: in March 2001 the Taliban ordered the destruction of the world-famous, priceless, and irreplaceable Buddhas of of Bamiyan as part of a bid to rid the country the remnants of the “gods of the infidels.” an action less debatable than universally lamentable, the notoriety of the Taliban’s senseless Buddah-blasting ought to make this a popular screening; Phil grabsky, the film’s director, will attend the screening and host a discussion at the Filmhouse. another exciting prospect is the special “surprise showing” of a film from the afghan National archive of Film on 1 March. The archive stored some of afghanistan’s greatest celluloid treasures but came under increasing scrutiny and censorship in the 1970s with the arrival of the Soviet forces. as an extra bonus, the screening will be attended by engineer Latif the director of the institution, who took part in hiding films in order to save them from destruction: a risk of remarkable foresight and of real importance since Taliban eventually sacked the archive, hoping to destroy the last remnants of afghanistan’s celluloid heritage. it’s the all-too-rare opportunity for afghani artists to perform and discuss their work on an international stage which marks reel afghanistan out as such an exciting prospect.

Budget flights in and out of afghani-

stan being in short supply, the organisers—with invaluable help from the British council—have provided visas and finance to enabling ten afghani musicians to play in edinburgh and discuss their experiences with the audience – introducing: Music of afghanistan is on 23 February. This engagement with audiences is a major part of the event’s ethos: speaking at a screening of his film earth and ashes, writer atiq rahimi described the role of the artists as not to change things but to question them and “be witness” to social surroundings. He continued

to say that he wanted to focus on “the effect of war,” not necessarily the fighting, but the consequences, which have proved even more devastating for the country. run entirely on a voluntary basis, reel afghanistan provides an avenue for afghans to start to reclaim their country and culture on their own terms and reintroduce their plight to the world. The struggle is far from over even though much has changed. as atiq rahimi describes: “The good has gotten better but the bad has gotten worse.”

MUSIC NON-STOP 19 March Dominic Kirwan 27 March Reinventing the Reel with Lau & The Ross Ainslie/ Jarlath Henderson Trio 7 April Julie Fowlis Special guest Catriona McKay 13 April Karine Polwart 25 April Mikel Rouse Music For Minorities 29 April Enrico Rava & Stefano Bollani 14 May Amy Macdonald 16 May Fiddle Rendezvous with Bruce Molsky & Mary Ann Kennedy MORE REVIEWS ONLINE

20 May Feist 23 May The Peatbog Faeries

journal online www. journal-online .co.uk

TO BOOK YOUR TICKETS CALL OR VISIT 0131 668 2019 WWW.THEQUEENSHALL.NET

28 Arts & Entertainment Comedy

The Penny Dreadfuls Former students of edinburgh University, The Penny Dreadfuls, return to the city of “romance with a capital r” to premiere their new show.

Three years on from their first appearance at edinburgh University’s own Bedlam Theatre, the Penny Dreadfuls have garnered multiple rave reviews, been commissioned for their second radio series and are looking forward to their third sell-out Fringe.

But on March 7th, the Victorian comedy sketch troupe will return to its roots to premiere its new show: aeneas Faversham Forever. Leaving the sketch format, the trio present an hour-long exploration of the murky Victorian underworld, in which the lives of a policeman, a cripple and a children’s author are irreversibly intertwined.

The Dreadfuls are David reed, humphrey Ker and Thom Tuck, and, along with half their production team steve Greer, have all directed The Improverts, edinburgh’s improvised comedy institution, during their careers at edinburgh University. Producer Idil sukan produced the Imps for three years, while lighting designer neil e. hobbs was both a player and their technical manager. The whole team were heavily involved in the edinburgh University Theatre Company during their student days. I catch up with humphrey Ker for a quick fire round of questions and (improvised) answers:

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

You performed with and directed The Improverts. What are your favourite memories?

"I had an awesome time with the Improverts, I was going to join the army before I joined so it really did change my life. My favourite memories are of saturday workshops, and sitting in Greyfriar’s Bobby afterwards eating poorly reheated mashed potatoes, before it became touristy and kitsch."

Would you encourage other students to go into comedy? "absolutely and unreservedly. here is an example of my typical week: on Monday I was recovering from Leicester comedy festival, on Tuesday and Wednesday I filmed a sketch show for BBC3, which involved dressing up as ninjas with Brian Blessed and then as a superhero for a sketch with Dr. Fox. on Thursday I was in the BBC office eating a sandwich and surfing the in-

ternet. It kicks ass."

What influence did being in Edinburgh for your student years have on your comedy?

"Lots of sketch comedians come out of oxford and Cambridge, and I think that not coming out of oxbridge gives us different perspective. edinburgh is a very romantic city with a capital r.

Think of the cobbled, winding, gothic streets: part of that inspired our show. of course The Improverts were a key part of our formation. If I’d gone to university anywhere else, I wouldn’t have been involved in The Improverts and I’d be in afghanistan right now.” so there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. For your delectation, The Penny Dreadfuls. If you can’t make their edinburgh show, they’re doing the comedy festival in Glasgow the very next day, and if you can’t make that- stick around for the Fringe!

What was sketch comedy like in the nineteenth century?

aeneas FaVershaM ForeVer BeDLaM TheaTre 7 Mar

"It was bawdy, it was raw, and in fact it was the catalyst that drove the empire.

Initially, there were only a few comedy scenarios available for sketch comedians, and conquering the world produced more hilarious situations and possible cases of mistaken identity."

Gladstone or Disraeli?

£10/£12 or £3.50 WITh eUTC MeMBershIP (£5) Lucy Jackson

lucy.jackson@journal-online.co.uk

"Definitely Gladstone because he was pro home rule in Ireland and I’m theoretically Irish, or rather my dad’s an Irishman. also I’m a liberal, and Disraeli was a Tory."

Theatre

Goodnight, Day  DIr. JaMes yeaTMan BeDLaM TheaTre 21 FeB

express yourself

journal online www. journal-online .co.uk

James yeatman and Company devise an aesthetically beautiful play based around Jean rhys’ novel ‘Good Morning, Midnight’ Eoin McGreevy

eoin.mcgreevy@journal-online.co.uk

Music

Rock School Africa

 LIqUID rooMs, 22 FeB Chris Hammond

chris.hammond@journal-online.co.uk

TonIGhT In The Liquid rooms, XFM’s larger than life champion of the upcoming artist, Jim Gellatly, hosts a marathon five-band charity concert in aid of education For africa. Featuring as diverse a selection of groups as the venue has seen this year, the punters are out in force for a worthy cause.

Beyond the enthusiastic audience the other encouraging aspect of this evening is the sheer volume of edinburgh talent seizing the chance to gain a new group of admirers. all of the five on display—opening acts Little Green Machine, emergency red and 8 Track stereo to headliners, :cryoverbillionaires and The acute—were conceived and still base themselves in auld reekie – though how much longer headliners The acute are likely remain in the area one couldn’t possibly say. set up nicely by a rip-roaring rock performance from crowd favourites :cryoverbillionaires, The acute swagger onto stage to perform the closing set. With a seemingly inexhaustible amount of energy the spiky trio bombard the hall with their own brand of ambitious electro-rock. With a knowing sense of style, total command of the stage and a very warm welcome from the fairer sex, this is a group whose progress will be followed with interest by many here tonight. If things keep moving for them at this current rate you mightn’t want to put money on the band being home for the Capital’s next rock school africa fundraiser.

In 1949 Jean rhys wrote her modernist masterpiece Good Morning, Midnight: a partially autobiographical account of a desperate woman’s attempt to recover from a devastated past. sasha Jansen spends a few weeks in Paris, avoiding certain cafés and frequenting others, trying to escape the depression and madness taking hold of her through alcoholism and false joys.

James yeatman’s adaptation of this work, Goodnight, Day combines all the tragic elements of sasha Jansen’s aimless wanderings though the streets of Paris whilst at the same time bringing to the piece certain touches of comedy which are executed, for the most part, flawlessly within the performance. as the audience files in, a seductive, unsettling crimson glow illuminates the sleeping figure of sasha (holly McLay), flanked by four canvas screens with sinister suggestions of figures looming behind these thin divides. The stage smoothly transforms from scene to scene, café to hotel, hotel to hospital, hospital to café again. The design captures perfectly the loose interior monologue of the original text, portraying the modernist ‘stream of consciousness’ concept which pervades rhys’s literary works.

McLay’s portrayal of Jansen may at times seem incoherent to an audience unfamiliar with the novel: a commanding presence on stage one moment falls away to reveal a timid, frightened creature the next. It is these conflicting personas which convey the essence of sasha’s fragile state of mind, and as such her performance is wholly commendable. This duality is explored further by the decision to have Gwennie Von einsiedel play sasha as a young woman, falling on hard times, struggling through failed love affairs and attempting to cope with each new blow life throws at her.

Goodnight, Day is a sharp, dynamic, and moving visual realisation of rhys’ original work which has been handled with care and sensitivity, successfully evoking the unforgettable portrait of woman forced to confront her own broken dreams and inevitable solitude.

Eating & Drinking 29

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

superfood

Me

More antioxidants than your body weight in blueberries: Nana Wereko-Brobby asks if superfoods have gone super far?

i

t’s HARd tO pinpoint the exact moment when the taste of food became irrelevant. When Gillian McKeith’s seeds, weeds and berries turned us into hamsters, the WAGs switched to vitamin milkshakes and Beyonce lived off “nutritionally balanced” lemonade, the media was quick to dismiss this flagrant disrespect for substantial grub as faddy.

Certainly new diets come and go depending on varying levels of celebrity endorsement, press coverage and the scientific-sounding jargon surrounding it. However, what has persisted throughout, and to an extent defines this generation of food stigmatists, is an inability and unwillingness to differentiate between food and medicine.

Whilst the focus on the healing, redemptive or energising qualities of certain foods is not a novel concept, what is particular to the last decade is the rampant commercialisation of such ideas. We receive the mantra of “superfood” from every glossy magazine and nutritionist around. Hailed as miracle foods because of their crazily high phytonutrient content—age-busting antioxidants, for example—the superfood heroes respond to a social disposition that desires the greatest possible benefits, in the smallest possible quantities; as many nutrients as possible without the pesky nuisance of substantial food. the emergence of the juice bar is not an entirely new phenomenon. What is new is the shift in what the customer demands from it. no longer a refreshing spot to sample combinations of blended fruit, the customer now expects a prescription to come with their drink. From the “Fat Burner” to the “energy explosion,” we are consuming more than a beverage: we are consuming a cure.

Adding a list of tasteless “booster” shots to the wholesome smoothies, such as the repugnant wheatgrass, aloe vera and acai varieties, we are effectively buying into a Mary Poppins approach to medicine. A novel idea, if a little over marketed. in edinburgh, the relatively recent proliferation of such “super bars” reflects the gastronomique shift.

Red Sugar Superfood Café We Witnessed in horror as the Hanover street Chinese buffet was replaced by a ‘Juiced Up’ in 2007, losing sweet and sour delights to ginsenginfused concoctions. However, more recently, a super bar has emerged in edinburgh that offers something slightly different, slightly charming and slightly less commodified.

Attempting to tailor the superfood obsession to a local community of cynics who are unconvinced by the chains, stockbridge’s Red sugar certainly deserves a chance. there is something perhaps a little obsessive about spending 24 hours making a cake. However, it is attention to detail that makes Red sugar far superior to its competitors.

Having just opened on Wednesday 13 February, this is edinburgh’s newest addition to its health café scene.

Combining a devotion to Fair trade with a commitment to organic produce, veganism and superfood recipes, Red sugar initially appears to be too virtuous to be enjoyable.

With chairs made from bamboo shoots, Led lights ensuring that electricity bills are kept at a crazy £30 a year, organic paint adorning the walls and recyclable cups holding their creations, the café takes “environmental friendliness to a OCd level” (their words, not mine).

But balancing the broad spectrum of superfood smoothies and boosters—all tailored, of course, to meet each customer’s requirements— is an array of what must be described as the most guilt free cocao (raw chocolate) experience around. Cocao, in its purest form, is fused with amber agave nectar (a sweet syrup from the cactus used in tequilla), gojo berries and hemp seeds and put in a dehydrating machine for hours, the result being one of the most delicious, health boosting chocolate cakes around. trying to describe the taste is difficult. imagine a nutty chocolate brownie with a piquant berry taste, moist but crunchy and then topped with a decadent layer of something similar to flourless chocolate cake, rich, smooth and intensely chocolaty. the crunchy under-layer bal-

ances the topping so well that one can imagine, and apparently some do, eating the cake both for breakfast and as a desert. At £3.99 for a slice, it ain’t cheap, but it is genuinely unlike anything you will have tasted.

Furthermore—and this is where the science bit comes in—the Red sugar team claim that the chocolate has more antioxidants than your body weight in blueberries, proving that raw cacao is the most antioxidant rich foodstuff in existence.

Following the Raw Food movement, which dictates that nothing is cooked in order to conserve as many nutrients as possible, the chocolate bars are put together without roasting/toasting of the beans. no dairy and no sugar mean that it is already considerably lower in calories. However, according to the owners, steve Montgomery and former nutritionist Gillian, the MAO inhibitors in cacao act as an appetite suppressant and thus aid weight loss. in fact, one of their regulars is a slightly overweight boy whose mother is trying to wean him off the Mars bars and onto the Cacao ones, convinced of the veracity of the Red sugar philosophy. the most appealing of their bars is a tempting rum infused-one which apparently, perhaps due to the healthy sloshing of booze into the mixture, really does pack a punch.

For those not crazy about chocolate, they offer a lemon cheesecake, with a base made from an assortment of ground nuts and a sizable, zesty, creamy top layer. At £4.99 this really is a bit steep but since the cashew nuts are imported from Peru at £11 a bag, you learn to savour every last bite of the thing (perhaps the crumbs too). in fact, much of the produce is imported from Hawaii and tibet to ensure the best superfoods are obtained. the café itself, if you choose to sit in, has a minimalist white/ cream colour scheme and is littered with information about the various ingredients on offer and their health benefits. there is certainly a sense that the owners are keen to spread the dictum of the Raw Food movement around

Eddie Fisher

“With prices equaling or exceeding starbucks, the promise of a Fairtrade skinny latte from the corporate machine is a habit too hard to break” edinburgh. However, despite the quality of their smoothies, the personal touch, the divine food and the all-round virtuous feel to the place, its food repertoire is a little narrow and the prices a little steep to merit steady regular custom. Whilst their health-obsessed approach to food makes sense and probably works, one still feels that there may be more to café culture than downing algae

shots and musing on the merits of life-enhancing nutrients. For a novelty couple of visits, Red sugar will not disappoint. However, with prices equaling or exceeding starbucks, the promise of a Fairtrade skinny latte from the corporate machine is a habit too hard to break. the selling point of the products in these cafes is that they are surprisingly tasty for something so good for you. similarly,

Calpol is surprisingly yummy considering it is medicine. For health gurus, this place is a haven. For foodies, the gimic factor prevents regular patronage. Unfortunately, superfoods aside, i’ve tasted better.

Red Sugar Superfood Café 27 Raeburn Place Stockbridge 07787 552 927

30 Sport

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

Edinburgh pay the penalty as cup curse continues Birmingham eventually come out on top after eight goals, two red cards, one hundred and twenty minutes and nine penalties

Football

Birmingham 4 Edinburgh 4 (aet Birmingham win 3-2 on penalties)

George Kotschky & Tom Crookston tom.crookston@journal-online.co.uk

In What has to go down as one of the most dramatic matches in BUsa football history, Birmingham progressed to the quarter finals after an epic encounter that was leveled four times, saw both teams reduced to ten men and was finally settled from the spot. the drama began with less than a minute played, as Edinburgh goalkeeper Ross harkness skewed a clearance into the path of Birmingham’s Jack Leadbetter, who was left with a simple finish into an unmanned net. seven minutes later Birmingham doubled their lead, John Cullen finishing powerfully from a fizzing cross from Craig Connor. two-nil down inside ten minutes and playing away from home, Edinburgh might have crumbled. Instead, they were spurred into action, fighting for possession and trying to get a grip in midfield. their avenue back into the game came after a dubious foul was

given against Birmingham’s Marcel simpson, when Jack Beesley’s whipped ball was cleared only as far as Michael hazeldine who made no mistake with the finish. Minutes later a long Edinburgh throw into the box caused more problems for Birmingham and the unfortunate simpson, under pressure from Peder Beck-Friis, headed into his own net.

In dire need of inspiration, Birmingham found it in the work-rate of James Coulman, whose intelligent movement between defence and midfield allowed them to regain a foothold in the game. the home team began to dominate possession and five minutes before half-time they went in front again with arguably the day’s finest goal. a long throw-in was flicked on and Cullen grabbed his second of the game with a stunning bicycle kick from twelve yards.

It seemed as though Birmingham would enter the break on top, but yet another twist was in store in this action-packed half when stephen Maxwell met Jack Beesley’s fine cross to head beyond Birmingham keeper simon Lyn level the score at 3 - 3. Perhaps frustrated by his team’s sloppy defending, Coulman allowed this frustration to get the better of him and reacted angrily when Edinburgh captain Jamie Redman clipped his heels. after a brief scuffle both Coulman and hazeldine,

who had waded in unnecessarily, were shown the red card before the half-time whistle.

Both teams started brightly after the break, with the best chances falling to Birmingham’s strikers, but neither side was able to break the deadlock in a closely fought second half. Birmingham, desperate to get back in front, replaced left-back temilade ajimoko with striker nick Williams before the start of extra time and their gamble almost paid off immediately. simpson raced beyond Fraser Munro drilled a cross into the Edinburgh area but Cullen, although well-placed, was unable to find the finish. that was the only real chance of the first period of extra time but the second proved to be much more lively. Edinburgh soon found themselves breaking with men to spare, and substitute Chris Woods picked out Liam hughes in the area. hughes’ touch let him down but the tireless andrew Cook arrived to slot the ball between Lyn’s legs to make it 4 - 3 with just five minutes remaining. the goal was met by a pitch invasion by Edinburgh’s coaches and substitutes, as they celebrated what they thought was the winner. But there was more drama to come, as andy Durnford received the ball straight from the kick-off, cut inside and unleashed a screamer that dipped into the topleft corner of harkness’ goal. now Bir-

Pablo Serrano Gálvez mingham staged their own pitch invasion as supporters, players and coaches sprinted to congratulate the player who had replaced Craig Connor after ninety minutes. Both sides had chances to kill off the game, but Lyn pulled off an incredible double save from Beesley and Woods to earn Birmingham a well deserved draw. there was to be final act, however, as the match went to penalties. the first two penalties were converted by Beesley and Cullen before Edinburgh’s stephen Maxwell saw his effort come back

off the post, and Chris Godwin and stuart hagg brought the scores level at 2 - 2. holt and Redman both missed chances to put their teams ahead as both penalties were saved, but Durnford then buried his spot-kick to tip the balance in Birmingham’s favour. It was Lyn, however, who took the plaudits as he saved hughes’ penalty and sent Birmingham thought to the next round.

An extended version of this article appeared in Redbrick, Birmingham University’s student newspaper

Commitment not enough as Edinburgh women miss out Women’s Hockey Durham 4 Edinburgh 1

Emily Glass emily.glass@journal-online.co.uk

a tEnaCIoUs PERFoRManCE from Edinburgh University, typified by siobhan Prise’s decision to play despite wearing a cast on her broken arm, couldn’t prevent the team falling at the first hurdle in their fight for the BUsa Championship. Durham University’s goal eighteen minutes into the second half of this knockout match ensured that they remained in the championship running for another week. the 4-1 result, however, does not reflect the balance of a match that, during the first 30 minutes, looked set to go either way. a lacklustre first half hour brought on by both teams’ determined defending seemed promising for Edinburgh as they fended off a team who

had beaten them 3-1 earlier in the season.

Durham’s first goal came in the 31st minute courtesy of horn who eventually found the back of the net on her third attempt, doggedly beating Edinburgh University goalkeeper anna Kelner.

Durham, clearly spurred on by their success, capitalised on a clear path to the goal with horn powering the ball in for a second time just three minutes later giving Durham a 2-0 lead going into half time.

Durham’s dominance continued in the second half of the match as after just three minutes Gordon snuck the ball into the bottom left-hand corner, expanding their lead to 3-0. Edinburgh played hard for an equaliser and a couple of short corners provided ideal opportunities to score but unfortunately neither of the goal attempts were successful.

Edinburgh fought on despite the fast diminishing sight of a well-earned win after a clean sweep last season. their resolve was embodied in siobhan Prise who opted to play despite her bro-

ken arm, a cast on which clearly wasn’t a hindrance.

Disaster struck in the 52nd minute, however, as a stray ball hit Prise’s left shoulder leaving her with a second play-induced break, this time her collar bone. Durham capitalised on the flustered Edinburgh side and a minute later Gordon secured their success over Edinburgh with her second goal of the match. the Edinburgh players pushed on undeterred and their persistence was rewarded with a stunning goal courtesy of Rona stewart in the closing seconds of the match leaving the score at the end of the clash at a respectable 4-1.

Despite their loss Edinburgh University Women’s 1st XI’s brilliant form throughout the season secures their status as a highly skilled hockey team and finishing in the last 16 of the BUsa championship is a result to be proud of. the team may have had their reputation as ‘unbeatable’ tarnished by this match but they have certainly earned themselves a standing as an ‘unwavering’ squad.

Edinburgh Women’s 1st defeated in first BUSA knockout Eddie Fisher

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Sport 31

The Journal Wednesday 27 February 2008

: R E Q&A K C A H Everyone’s a loser in the battle A MALIGN LOOK AT THE WORLD OF SPORT

for the moral highground Barry Davies was right: "It's sport, gentlemen"

Paris Gourtsoyannis Deputy Editor paris.gourtsoyannis@journal-online.co.uk

“There is a pattern being established in which western countries are unable to accept with good grace an Olympiad taking place in a developing country”

B

ARRY DAVIES, THE BBC’s sporting sage, sounds like England to me. His steady, even tones are pure Albion – reedy, yet soothing, and conveying, without any pretentiousness, a sense of profound dignity and intelligence.

He is, in short, the very antithesis of Alan Green.

It tickles me that Davies received an MBE in 2005 for ‘Services to Sports Broadcasting’, not least since it’s rare for a knighthood to fall upon someone so deserving, but because listening to Davies feels in itself like you’re having tea with the Queen. He is possessed of a near-flawless English reserve, letting the mask of decorum slip only in cases of gross offence to his sense of fair play: an uneven pitch, perhaps, or Derby County scoring – that was Francis Lee, by the way, back in 1975.

When the cool Mr Davies says something just isn’t right and proper, therefore, one sits up and takes notice.

So it was during first few days of the Athens Olympics, when Davies was performing a cameo role commentating on the heats of the judo competition.

An Iranian athlete who chose to withdraw in the opening round rather than face an Israeli competitor was served with a scolding so dry, so barren in its contempt – so very English – it was as punishing as a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face.

“It’s sport, gentlemen.”

Ahmedinejad, your boy took one hell of a beating.

Eight years on and Davies’ talents are required once more; on present form, this summer’s Beijing Olympics risk unfolding under a cloud of political discord.

It began with Steven Spielberg, originally signed on as an artistic consultant for the opening ceremony.

With a nod to Alec Baldwin’s turn as celebrity-turned-peacemaker in Team America, World Police, Spielberg publicly abandoned his role claiming that the Chinese government has failed to act to stop the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. “My conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual,” he said.

With depressing similarity to their screen-puppet counterparts, a mass of global public commentators and social consciences followed; close to home, UK Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell suggested that it was right to

Sport Round-up FOOTBALL

FIXTURES Birmingham vs Brunel

BUSA Championship

Leeds

vs Leeds Met or

RESULTS

Bath

vs Northumbria

Heriot Watt UWE Hartpury vs Brighton

Birmingham 4 - 4 Edinburgh Birmingham win 4-2 on penalties Brunel 2 - 2 Lincoln Brunel win 7-6 on penalties Leeds 1 - 1 Loughborough Leeds win 4-2 on penalties Leeds Met P Bath 5 Northumbria 2 Hertfordshire 0 Hartpury Exeter 1

-

P 0 1 2

Heriot-Watt Oxford Swansea UWE

- 2 Brighton

WOMEN’S HOCKEY BUSA Championship Glasgow

0 - 4 Birmingham

put “pressure” on China to do more She was echoing the sentiments of a collection of Nobel Peace Prize winners, who in a letter also signed by political figures such as Dame Shirley Williams, called on Chinese President Hu Jintao to act in Sudan to stem the violence.

Prince Charles announced he would turn down the invitation to attend the opening ceremony, while Archbishop Desmond Tutu went so far as to suggest that a boycott should be staged if China’s government failed to change its policy on Darfur.

Troubling imagery has been deployed to support their cause. Readers of The Economist were, in the same week as Spielberg’s announcement, greeted with a full-page advertisement taken out by the ‘Save Darfur’ charity and lobbying group, featuring an image of gymnastic rings suspended from munitions belts.

Melodrama gold must go to actress Mia Farrow, who compared this summer’s games to the Nuremberg Olympiad of 1936.

Western outrage this shrill is hardly subtle; just as in Thunderbirds, you can see the strings – and one is left to wonder who is pulling them.

The difficulty isn’t the content of the complaints. China’s involvement in Darfur has been at best opportunistic, at worst unashamedly destructive.

Most worryingly, the Chinese authorities seem unfazed by the possibility that arms sold to the Sudanese government are likely being used in a genocidal campaign against innocent civilians.

What grates is the hypocrisy inherent in western condemnation of Chinese foreign policy.

The core issue is the manner in which western media and commentators, if not governments themselves, have seen fit to criticise Chinese foreign policy while flirting with the possibility of gagging athletes who want to speak out about China’s appalling domestic human rights situation.

Team GB has retreated from the prospect of its athletes being forced to sign a declaration preventing them from criticising the Chinese government while in Beijing this summer.

However, Belgium’s representatives at the Olympics will be asked to do just that; they are unlikely to be alone.

There is a pattern being established in which western countries

Loughborough 3 - 1 Bristol Leeds Met

2 - 1 Manchester

Edinburgh

1 - 4 Durham

Cambridge

2 - 1 Exeter

Oxford

2 - 1 Northumbria

Bath

4 - 3 London Met

Cardiff

4 - 0 UWE

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LOSING FOUR OF their six games this season and being relegated from the Scottish Conference was a bit of a shock for the University of Edinburgh side, who have won the league for the past two years, but they have a chance to redeem themselves in two weeks time when they travel down South to play Birmingham in the first round of the national university knock out competition. The Journal caught up with the rugby club captain and No. 8 Kyle Vivian to discuss the sting of relegation and their chances of knockout success.

What was your assessment of this season’s performance?

An unlikely sight at Beijing 2008 are unable to accept an Olympiad taking place in a developing country with good grace. What began with the sorry tit-for-tat boycotts of the 1980s persisted in the International Olympic Committee’s selection process following the end of the Cold War. That process, which has since been exposed as hopelessly corrupt until very recent times, has failed to deliver a single games to either Africa or South America, despite repeated near-flawless bids from Buenos Aires.

Nor did the IOC recognise the significance of awarding the centenary 1996 Olympics to Greece, missing a chance for a momentous homecoming – though that error was eventually remedied.

However, the 2004 Athens Games were nonetheless marred by a western fi xation with security, which drove up costs astronomically for an event which saw no threats of any kind, from terrorists foreign or domestic.

The only attack took place during the men’s Marathon, when a defrocked Irish Catholic priest tackled a leading competitor – hardly worthy of the suggestion, bandied about at the highest levels of the US government, that Osama bin Laden was going to snap his fingers and make Athens fall into the sea.

China is an unpleasant place in certain respects, though it will doubtless mount magnificent games.

However, if we are to miss out on the Kathy Freeman-esque sight of a western competitor donning the Tibetan flag in solidarity with those who cannot speak out for themselves, the shame it being due to our own governments’ censorship is greater than any caused by China’s foreign policy.

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JACK CHARNLEY QUIZZES RUGBY CAPTAIN KYLE VIVIAN ON EDINBURGH’S CHANCES IN THEIR FIRST-ROUND GAME

It was a productive season, the results weren’t good but we’ve got a young side. We lost a lot of players through graduation last year and we’ve taken lots of freshers on board. We got better as the season’s gone on, and I think we’ve done well with the resources available to us.

Our captain Lawson Steel has been injured all season but he took on a coaching role and he’s been paramount in holding the team together.

We’ve all stuck together as a team.

Has any player stood out?

Our captain Lawson Steel has been injured all season but he took on a coaching role and he’s been paramount in holding the team together.

We’ve all stuck together as a team and produced performances as a team.

What weaknesses will you hope to address for next year?

Our only problem is lack of experience, loads of new players have come in but we’re only going to be loosing one player next season, so we’ll be more or less unchanged, that means the team can really gel.

With more support coming along on Saturdays I’m sure we’ll be able to bounce back. It would be great to see more people coming down to watch the games.

How did the team handle relegation?

They’re restructuring the BUSA league at the moment so we’re not sure what the format will be next season. The way it looks is that we’ll be relegated and Aberdeen will take our place. We won it for the past two years, each year I’ve been at Edinburgh we’ve won so it was really hard for us to take, especially for the older guys. As far as the new players in the team, it was a really productive season for them, they had some tough games, learned a lot, and are relishing the opportunity to get back next year.

What about the knockout this season?

We’ve got Birmingham in the first round- we played them last year, the match went to extra time and they won with a penalty in the last play.

We know what to expect, it’s going to be a tough game. Birmingham have only won one game all season so they’ll be in a similar situation to us.

How have you prepared?

The lads are training really hard; we’ve been hitting the weights and getting fitter. Injury permitting we should have a full strength team.

We’ve got some tough games in the national shield against Linlithgow and Falkirk and that’ll help us to perfect our game. They’ll be a great preparation for the match against Birmingham.