Trinity News 09-10 Issue 12

Irish Student Newspaper of the Year 2009

AHERN INTERVIEW IEW W JAMES JEAN

ART FEATURES TN2, P14

ALEX HAMILTON SITS TS DOWN WITH BERTIEE BUSINESS, P10

COURAGE OR CRUELTY? TRAVEL, P21

Wednesday April 7 2010

www.trinitynews.ie w.trinitynews.iie

Xmas exams on agenda

Issue 12, Volume 56

HEALTH AND SPORTS WEEK GETS TRINITY MOVING: PAGE 3

» 90% of students overworked, says survey » Referendum planned on Christmas exams » External review of semesterisation to occur Claire Acton Staff Reporter THE ONGOING discussion of the effectiveness of semesterisation in College has led the Students’ Union to call for a referendum on the issue.

The call for a referendum comes after a series of events beginning in December 2009. It began with a rise in discontent from students regarding the structure of semesterisation and the influence of the new structure on the revised Foundation Scholarship examinations.

According to Education Officer Ashley Cooke, however, attendance of the Scholarship exams was considerably greater than other years.

Education Officer Ashley Cooke comments “opinion has changed” from the intial response among students to semesterisation Complaints from the student body regarding semesterisation centred upon the increase and imbalance of workload, and the decision not to hold Christmas exams. The survey put to students by the Union was aimed at gaining a College-wide response to these issues.

It was found 90% of students felt that their workload increased as a result of semesterisation.

Furthermore, there were strong feelings regarding Christmas exams with students wishing to see their introduction.

Additionally, the majority of students were clear in their preference for the former structure of three terms.

Cooke says the Union were careful to bear in mind the silent majority

when taking the results on board.

However the survey spurred himself and the Education Officerelect, Jennifer Fox, to propose and pass a motion at Student Council to hold a referendum to the entire student body in order to hear the feelings of all parts of College.

The referendum will ask, "Do you support the Students' Union to campaign on the 'Semesterised Examinations Policy'?"

The policy, if implemented, would see workloads evenly distributed between the two terms and Christmas exams taking place to aid in the attempt to reduce pressure at the end of the College year.

However, even if the projected referendum is passed, the decision of the College year structure lies with the College Authorities – the referendum will mandate the Union to campaign for change only.

The animosity towards semesterisation has not been solely directed towards the Students’ Union.

College lecturers have also been approached by students regarding the issue seeking to do something to revert to the former year structure.

Cooke says the previous consultation between the administration, academic staff and Students’ Union was prosemesterisation; however “student opinion has since changed”.

If passed, the referendum will give the Students’ Union policy backing for further consultation with a clear view of what the student body wants.

Moreover, an external review on the outcome of semesterisation in Trinity College is taking place the same week of the referendum. The referendum will be held 7th and 8th April in the Hamilton and Arts Buildings.

Failed experiment: Editorial, P11

Residents billed for exam period again Shane Lynn Staff Reporter RESIDENTS IN College accommodation on campus and in Cunningham House will have to vacate their rooms in the middle of the exam period unless they pay extra in daily extension charges.

In an e-mail circulated on 19 March, the Accommodation Office reminded students living in rooms that their term of residency ends on 8 May 2010.

Students who wish to remain in rooms until they finish their exams must submit an Extension of Tenancy application form by Tuesday 6 April stating by how many days they need to extend their tenancy. Payment in advance will be required from them once their application is accepted.

Those students who wish to retain their place in rooms must also pay a higher price per day. Not including utilities, rates for a standard single bedroom in the Rubrics in each of

the three rent periods between 23 September 2009 and 8 May 2010 remained below €17 per day. After 8 May the same room will cost approximately €19 per day; a 13% increase, bringing the cost of basic rooms up to that of modern accommodation in Trinity Hall.

However, students staying in modern rooms in Trinity Hall are not required to undergo the same process.

Their term of residence extends to 22 May, by which time most students will have completed their exams. A spokeswoman for the Accommodation Office refused to comment on why this was the case.

For students in courses where exams finish late, these circumstances could pose a considerable financial burden.

Medicine students living in rooms could be faced with rent bills of almost €800 each, since some do not sit their last exams until 17 June.

Ó Broin and Redmond take USI officer elections by storm » Trinity Students’ Union President elected to position of Deputy President of the Union of Students in Ireland at annual meeting on campaign based around major reform » UCD Students’ Union President Gary Redmond elected as next year’s USI President, defeating current Equality Officer Linda Kelly Claire Acton Staff Reporter STUDENTS’ UNION President Cónán Ó Broin has succeeded in his bid for the position of Deputy President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). Ó Broin defeated Jono Clifford, current USI Southern Area Officer, for the title. He will take up office on 1 July of this year just as his term as Trinity Students’ Union President comes to a close. Ó Broin was elected at the USI Annual Congress which took place in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway over four days last week.

USI is the national representative body for all third- and fourth-level students. Attending the Congress were 230 delegates: representatives of Student Unions from colleges and universities across Ireland including three institutions from Northern Ireland. The delegates gathered for four days, providing a forum for discussions on the pressing issues facing the higher education system.

For Ó Broin, the ultimate role of Deputy President is the chief campaigns officer. As such, Ó Broin plans to focus on three main national campaigns.

Firstly, the reform in the grants system which is being brought before the Oireachtas, in order to aid students

from disadvantaged backgrounds to continue to third-level education.

Secondly, the registration fee campaign, which Ó Broin has worked on intensely over the previous few years. He plans to Ó Broin plans to continue to campaign against fees, an increased student charge, and help students from disadvantaged backgrounds maintain the pressure on TDs from all parties and sustain the success of last year, including the prevention of the rise of the registration fee to €2,500 as was planned for in the 2010 Government Budget. However Ó Broin is acutely aware of the economic environment in which he will be campaigning and lobbying. He recognised it as an “uphill battle” to prevent an increase in the registration fee in 2011’s Budget. Finally, he acknowledges the instability in the current government, foreseeing an inevitable general election in the next year to eighteen months. Ó Broin plans to ensure that whatever government does emerge is committed to free

education for third-level students.

Throughout the year, Ó Broin will be working closely with the President of USI, who was also elected at the Congress on an unofficial joint ticket with the Trinity Students’ Union President. The coveted position went to UCD Students’ Union President, Gary Redmond, who won by a majority vote of the student delegates present at the Congress by only a few votes. Redmond secured the position over one other applicant, Linda Kelly, current USI Equality Officer. Ó Broin spoke of his “delight” at Redmond’s appointment and how he looks forward to working with him to get students interested at a national level.

When speaking of his win Redmond highlighted his happiness over the support he has received all over the country, commenting that he feels “a momentum building around issues like the maintenance grant, the registration fee and higher education funding”.

Redmond’s aim is to push “student agenda to the forefront of the country’s affairs”.

He called for investment in education as vital for meeting targets under the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education. Redmond’s post requires him to lead the USI in lobbying the new Minister for Education, Mary

Coughlan, which will also be central to Ó Broin’s role. The incumbent President, Peter Mannion, gave a positive response to Redmond’s appointment stating that he has the “necessary skills to lead a powerful student movement”.

Both Redmond and Ó Broin will be taking up their positions in the 50th year of the organisation, which represents over 250,000 students from institutions throughout Ireland.

The USI Congress was not the only student election forum taking place Incoming USI President Redmond feels “a momentum building around issues like the maintenance grant, the registration fee and higher education funding” recently. Trinity’s Students’ Union Council saw 15 new elects fill the positions of Part Time and General Executive Officers, which included current Welfare Officer Cormac Cashman obtaining the LGBT office.

The positions of Electoral and Oversight Commissions were also filled by 7 new members.

2

COLLEGE NEWS “Uphill battle” Students’ Union President Cónán Ó Broin’s take on the battle facing students against higher registration fees

“Student opinion has changed” Students’ Union Education Officer Ashley Cooke describes the reaction to semesterisation among College, which was initially positive among staff and Union representatives

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

THIS FORTNIGHT THEY SAID...

“Push student agendas to the forefront of the country’s affairs” UCDSU President Gary Redmond, soon to be President of USI, speaks about his upcoming role “Some audiences just don’t get it, they just sit there in respectful silence” Canadian director David Cronenberg talks about the humour in his graphic films, whilst addressing the University Philosophical Society

Compiled by Kate Palmer

“Wrap it before you tap it” The mantra of College’s annual SHAG Week

“A small change makes a big difference” The mantra of the College’s annual Health and Sports Week, which aims to promote healthy living

“Funding shortfall” The reason why the Trinity Foundation are asking BESS soon-to-be graduates to donate their money to the charitable organisation

NUMEROLOGY

“Given the upheaval of the moment, what could be more important than exploring new creative ideas that will inspire the soul while simultaneously stimulating new ways of thinking, living and working” Provost Dr. John Hegarty talks about the importance of College’s annual Trinity Week

“It’s like a kindergarden for grown-ups” Margaret Wertheim, co-creator of the ‘Hyperbolic Coral Reef’, describes her creation, a crochet coral reef made entirely out of wool. The work of Margaret and her twin sister Christine is currently being featured at Trinity’s Science Gallery

TRINITY NEWS AND DR. GERALD MORGAN

ICARUS AT 60

IN AN edition of Trinity News published on 14 October 2008, in an article entitled “No Classes during Morgan hearing”, certain false and inaccurate statements were published regarding Dr. Gerald Morgan. Dr. Morgan has been a member of staff at the College since 1968 and his contribution to the School of English has been considerable.

We hereby acknowledge his many achievements as a scholar, academic and lecturer and in particular his distinguished publication record of both articles and books.

Compiled by Kate Palmer

90% » The percentage of students who feel their workload has increased due to semesterisation, according to a recent survey carried out by the Students’ Union

8

1. Trinity News wish to make it clear that Dr. Morgan was never accused or charged with sexual harassment.

» How many days some people have to pay a daily extension fee in order to keep their rooms on campus during the examination period

2. Dr. Gerald Morgan was not suspended from teaching. At the request of Dr. Morgan he was granted study leave for the Michaelmas term 2008 and alternative arrangements for teaching were put in place for the term.

1 » The number of transfer votes it took for UCDSU President Gary Redmond to become USI President over USI Equality Officer, Linda Kelly

50th » Anniversary of the Union of Students in Ireland

60 » How many years the creative writing publication Icarus has been in production

INFORMATION Editor: Deputy Editor: Website: Business Manager: Copy Editors:

Photographs: College News: National News: International News: News Features: Features: Opinion: World Review: Travel: Business: Science: College Sport: TN2 Editor: Deputy TN2: Film: Music: Fashion: Books: Theatre: Art: Food and Drink: Television: Games and Technology:

David Molloy Aoife Crowley Tom Lowe Jennifer Finn John Colthurst Aoife Fleming Bina Dangol Eleanor Friel Eoin Silke Tess O’Leary Cal McDonagh Yuliya Bespala, Jean Morley Kate Palmer Fearghus Roulston James Coghill, Stuart Winchester Hugh Taylor, Peter Martin Charles Baker, Sarah Fulham Claire Brett, Shane Quinn Grace Walsh, Paul McDonnell James Lee, Ralph Marnham Jason Somerville, Lisa Keenan John Engle Paul Galbraith, Alexandra Finnegan Michael Armstrong Karl McDonald Rebecca Long, Alex Towers Verity Simpson, Karl McDonald Patrice Murphy, Ana Kinsella Niall O’Brien, Cillian Murphy Rachel Parker, Jamie Leptien Theresa Ryan, Aisling Deng Kara Furr, Kiera Healy Dan Kennedy, Conor McGee Andy Kavanagh, Saoirse Kerrigan

All Trinity News staff can be contacted at firstname.lastname@trinitynews.ie.

Trinity News is funded by a grant from DU Publications Committee. This publication claims no special rights or privileges. Serious complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Trinity News is a full participating member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme, in addition to defending the freedom of the press, offers readers a quick, fair and free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go to www.pressombudsman.ie

Icarus Editor-in-chief Dan Sheehan, speaking at the launch of the 60th anniversary collection in the Irish Writer’s Centre on Thursday last, which was hosted by poet and lecturer Gerald Dawe.

THURSDAY NIGHT last saw the launch of the 60th anniversary edition of the creative writing magazine Icarus in the Irish Writers’ Centre.

The event was hosted by poet and Trinity English lecturer Gerald Dawe. Brendan Kennelly and Nicholas Grene were among the speakers addressing the packed house.

The 250-page collection showcases prose, poetry and drama, as well as literary reviews and articles from six decades of the magazine. It

features contributions from Sebastian Barry, Paul Muldoon, William Burroughs, Michael Longley, Sean O’Casey, Marina Carr, Colm Tóibín, Louis MacNeice, Eavan Boland and dozens more of Ireland’s most prolific contemporary authors.

The book will be available for €3.50 in the Arts Block, Hamilton and SU Shops until Friday 9 April.

All profits will be donated to Aware: Helping to Defeat Depression.

3. The College never brought Dr. Gerald Morgan to either the High Court or Supreme Court.

In December 2002, disciplinary proceedings under the College statutes were invoked as against Dr. Morgan. Dr. Morgan issued High Court proceedings seeking to injunct a disciplinary hearing in respect of those charges. He was unsuccessful in this regard in the High Court and Supreme Court.

Trinity News would like to apologise to Dr. Morgan for any embarrassment caused to him by its misrepresentation of events.

HE SAID, SHE SAID...

DO YOU THINK THE USI REPRESENTS STUDENTS EFFECTIVELY? Compiled by Kate Palmer

1

1

CIARAN DONOGHUE SS BESS

“I have three weeks worth of preparation time to do for the exams, shouldn’t the USI do anything about that. As far as fees go, they can’t really do anything about that. They’re gonna come along eventually”

2

3

4

2

3

4

“They could’ve done a lot more for us with the semesterisation.

It was a joke, really. We’re still doing all the exams at the end of the year, unlike UCD who do the exams during Christmas.”

“The USI don’t seem to care about semesterisation, we had exams during reading week and an exam on a 1,000 word book.”

“To be honest. I have no idea what the USI even do. I’ve never heard much about them in my two years at university.”

SCOTT MCKEVITT SS BESS

MARK MURDOCK SS BESS

BEN HUTCHINSON SF HISTORY

COLLEGE NEWS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

3

Sports week raises awareness– and pulses » “Legacy of Life” theme for Trinity’s annual Health and Sports week seeks to promote healthy living and a balanced lifestyle in College » Department of Health statistics show there has been a 30% increase in obesity levels in Ireland over the previous decade Shane Lynn Staff Writer COLLEGE HEALTH and Sports Week took off on 22 March with an exhausting array of activities aimed at raising awareness – and the pulse.

This year’s theme, entitled a “Legacy of Life”, sought to promote healthy living and to help the College community achieve the correct balance between work, rest and play.

Students and staff members participated in indoor and outdoor physical recreation events around campus, from free Pilates and Capoeira classes to cycling and GAA 7’s.

“We received a great response,” said Michelle Tanner, College’s Director of Sports, “especially for the outdoor sports activities.”

Sam Sun, Tai Chi Master and Chairman of the Chinese Kung Fu Association (Ireland), attracted a crowd for a free Tai Chi class in New Square on Tuesday.

“We have a very experienced Tai Chi instructor from China. Having him teaching here was a real honour,” Tanner said.

“I think that was a real highlight.

It was great to see people who were walking by just stop and join in.”

During the week the Students’ Union

ran a stand in the Arts Block to provide students with information on health and sports. Students were offered tips on posture, relaxation and how to cram a day’s exercise into a busy schedule.

Tanner praised the collaboration between the Students’ Union, the College Health Service and the Sports Centre in making the week a success.

“There was a real team atmosphere,” she said.

During the week Locum College Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Doran gave a lecture entitled “Headwrecked – Head Shops and Party Pills” in the Edmund Burke Theatre. Attendees described the talk as “very topical” and “eyeopening”, particularly in the context of recent controversy surrounding the use of legal drugs like mephedrone, which is suspected to have caused the death of several young people in the UK this year.

The programme of physical recreation and information distribution coincided with Healthy Eating Week in the College Catering Service.

Menus at the student and staff buffets were stuffed with healthy eating options for the week, with the kitchens working to keep salts, fats and sugars to a minimum.

Grab & go fridges, sandwich bars and salad bars in College were stocked

specially with healthy, low-calorie and low-fat snacks.

According to Tanner the week was “very timely”, since in the coming months students may tend to push exercise to one side. “At this time of year especially students can be stressed out about exams.”

Department of Health statistics show a 30% increase in obesity (according to BMI levels) in Ireland in the previous decade. However, according to a Eurostat survey Ireland is still above the EU average for feeling healthy.

The most recent survey indicates that about 60% of people aged 16-24 in Ireland believe that they are in “very good” health, while just over 30% feel that their health is “good”.

The mantra of the annual Health Week is a “small change makes a big difference”.

Students are encouraged to fit 30 minutes of exercise into each day, get their health checked out by a GP, stay safe in the sun and “rate your hunger” to avoid over-eating.

Overall, the week aimed to get across the message to “learn to listen to the whispers of the body before it needs to shout at you”.

The Health Week Committee was headed by Dr. David McGrath, Director of the College Health Service.

Tai Chi Master Sam Sun, of Chinese Kung Fu Association (Ireland), teaching students in New Square.

Canadian filmmaker directs Phil event Alex Towers Staff Reporter TRINITY’S PHILOSOPHICAL Society have honoured the renowned Canadian filmmaker, David Cronenberg.

The director is internationally known for his brutally graphic films such as Eastern Promises and A History of Violence. However, his filmography seems to be at odds with his personality – his interview with Dave Fanning

revealed the director as a softly-spoken and laid-back individual, who regaled the gathered audience with funny, selfeffacing tales from his life and career.

Cronenberg began the evening by complaining about how many people often don’t understand the inherent humour in his films. “Some audiences just don’t get it,” he griped, “they just sit there in respectful silence.”

However, when the conversation turned to the possibility of the

director taking more mainstream projects, Cronenberg was surprisingly enthusiastic. “I’ve been trying to sell out for years,” he declared drolly before going on to detail the recently failed development of a $150 million action movie that was set to star Denzel Washington as an American agent and Tom Cruise as a Russian spy.

“It wasn’t my fault it fell apart, the studio went bankrupt,” he said before adding that he is still “very curious

about spending $150 million”.

Cronenberg also mentioned that his stop in Trinity was his last on his way to Cologne in Germany, where he would “hopefully start pre-production” on his next project entitled “The Talking Cure”. The film was set to star recent Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz as Dr. Sigmund Freud. However, according to Cronenberg, the actor’s recent success drove him to abandon the film for more conventional fair. “He waltzed

“incredible frustration” he experienced when trying to create a television series.

When asked if he was going to embrace any of the new filmmaking technology that has recently become popular, he stated he would “leave that to James Cameron”.

After thanking the society for honouring him, the director left the Graduates Memorial Building to deafening applause.

Essential tips to ival... surviving a music fest

Advertising Feature

Win a VIP e c n e i r e p x e n e g Oxe with

off,” the director quipped dryly, before announcing he had found a more than able replacement in frequent collaborator Viggo Mortensen.

The talk wound down with Cronenberg touching on a number of other topics as well as answering several questions from the audience.

After musing on the situation of being commissioned to write a screenplay for a remake of his own film, The Fly, Cronenberg then discussed the

®

is out and easy to find…there • Make your tent stand ts ten of gle jun a through nothing worse than trekking when every reveller under n ma two en gre a for looking ht e one! Think flags or brig the sun has the exact sam colours! ious essity at any festival for obv • Bring toilet paper…a nec r you ect exp long time, don’t reasons, three days is a ! neighbour to provide it for you

®

s are ke sure you know what act • Do your homework…ma es!!! on what stages at what tim st ere are usually tea and toa • Get a good breakfast...th ter bet ch ival and are a mu options available at a fest ger. bur asy gre breakfast than a tival black bags – The faithful fes • Always bring plenty of tent y leak on, emergency bin liner for rubbish, sitting cho. repair, or emergency rain pon

t Fizzical at this ge to s ke ta it t ha w ve ha Do you ? summer’s hottest festival to take part in the is now giving you the chance er eltz a-S Alk , yes is r we If your ans sing, dance or recite your to be in with a chance to nge alle Ch al zic Fiz t Ge Let’s tival. this year’s Oxegen music fes way to an amazing prize at nge will receive two highly zer Let’s Get Fizzical Challe The winner of the Alka-Selt lude two nights camping. ets to Oxegen which will inc sought after weekend tick ls film / clip (we ply create a short, no fril Sim ? win to do to e hav ) incorporating the So what do you r, under 3 minutes will do! the dfa Go e Th of ake rem a don’t need to win. wing us why you deserve word Alka-Seltzer and sho competition page on video, upload it to the r you d ate cre ’ve you Once rate your film/clip. The clip ourage all your friends to enc and r.ie tze sel lka w.a ww l win.* with the highest rating wil see all the off to Oxegen this July to ing izz wh be l wil nd frie The winner and one in Punchestown. will grace the many stages great Bands & Acts which

in the – brilliant for a quick wash • Take wet wipes with you the out ugh anliness thro morning and general cle weekend. the the Irish summer without • Don’t venture out into coats! essentials - wellies and rain of a screen…ok so it’s a bit • Don’t forget the sun how w kno but let’s face it we contradiction to the above a not is r ste lob the nge and quickly the weather can cha . her hig or 15 SPF m imu a min good look for anyone. Wear ad stock up on Alka-Seltzer ahe • Bring the trusted cure & a from ef reli fast water for of time....let it dissolve in ling fee ’re you er nev whe ch headache and upset stoma dog rough!

to for? Get fizzing on screen So what are you waiting

Get Fizzical at Oxegen!

www. alkas eltze r.

Alka-Seltzer provides rapid pain relief from headache and stomach upset. So if you are feeling the effects of a hard weekend the rapidly dissolving Alka-Seltzer tablets get to work straight away, allowing you to put the fizz back in your step.

ie

For more information and to enter the Let’s Get Fizzical Challenge go to: *Terms and conditions apply. Preparation Date March 2010 CC 03.10.0024.ie

www.alkaseltzer.ie

PUTTING THE FIZZ BACK IN YOUR STEP!

4

COLLEGE NEWS

SHORT CUTS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

DU MUSIC’S PIANO MARATHON

College makes a gene-ius discovery

SCIENCE

» Trinity leads research project to shed light on incurable disease » 1 in 50 Irish affected by schizophrenia and bipolar disorder Cal McDonagh Staff Reporter

PROFESSOR PRESENTS NEW THEORY ON SLEEP IN TRINITY PROFESSOR JOHN Allen Hobson, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, introduced his new theory of dream consciousness at a recent talk in Trinity College hosted by the Dublin University Neuroscience Society and the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. The lecture was run as part of Trinity College’s involvement in International Brain Awareness Week.

In his talk, Professor Hobson explained that since the discovery of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, a normal stage of sleep characterised by the rapid movement of eyes, the neural underpinnings of dreaming have become increasingly well understood.

To complement the details of these brain mechanisms, Professor Hobson proposes a theory of consciousness that is derived from the study of dreaming. This theory suggests that REM sleep may constitute a proto-conscious state, providing us with a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness.

This hypothesis, which has its grounds in neuroscience and was published recently in the leading international journal Nature, maintains that the development and maintenance of waking consciousness and other brain functions depends on brain activity during sleep.

Kate Palmer

ENVIRONMENT

TRINITY HELPS TO TACKLE OCEAN CONTAMINATION MARINE SCIENTISTS from around the world recently met at Trinity to discuss ocean contamination. It was the first time that the annual event was held in Ireland.

The working group, which meets annually to set guidelines on behalf of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, concentrated on biological effects, assessing the impact contaminants have on the marine environment. Both current and innovative methods for such monitoring are routinely evaluated by the Group.

One of the main outcomes of the conference was a special concern with the effects of residual contaminants which damage the marine ecosystem, making some species sterile. Present work by the Department of Zoology focuses on the effect of new, emergent, as well as old, conventional, contaminants on the marine environment.

Cal McDonagh

Above: Students showcase their talents at the 12-hour musical marathon. Photo: Stephen O’Connell TRINITY STUDENTS throughout the College took part in a 12-hour piano marathon organised by the Dublin University Music Society, raising hundreds in aid of Oxfam.

The event, which took place Tuesday 30 March, transformed Public Theatre into a day-long concert of all imaginable musical genres, ranging from classical to jazz and traditional to Latino.

The charity event was supported by the School of Drama, Film and Music, and is run annually. The College describes the event as an “opportunity for students to showcase their musical talents”.

DU Music commented: “Despite the weather the day went well, and the 12 hours of piano playing went smoothly, with some really spectacular pianists playing.

“It was a fun event with lots of wonderful music, and we’d like to thank everyone who made it happen, and who donated their time for such a good cause. We raised hundreds for Oxfam, and hope to raise even more next year”.

Kate Palmer

GENES WHICH create a predisposition to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may have been identified in a study by researchers at Trinity. A study assessed hundreds of thousands of genetic markers in almost 15,000 subjects and found that those carrying certain genes were more likely to have developed either of the conditions.

The Cell Adhesion Molecule gene, which is involved in helping brain cells to connect, was found to significantly increase an individual’s likelihood of developing either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. However the study showed that on an individual level the risk generated by the presence of the gene was small and therefore the gene could not be used as a diagnostic criterion for the conditions.

Researchers implemented a new method of analysis, developed by the Trinity College Dublin Psychosis Research Group, to produce the findings. 212 different molecular pathways were examined for genetic variants which increased the chance of developing a psychotic disorder. A pathway is a group of genes implicated in a biological process.

The Psychosis Research Group is part of the Neuropsychiatric Genetics Research Group at Trinity which investigates autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in addition to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The study, funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the Health

Research Board, involved researchers at Trinity collaborating with academics from Europe and the US, most notably the International Schizophrenia Consortium, Genetic Association Information Network and Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. It was published in the Molecular Psychiatry journal.

Head of the Psychosis Research Group at Trinity, Dr. Aiden Corvin, called the findings “really intriguing”, saying that the study “suggests that regulation of brain-wiring is playing a significant role in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder”.

Dr. Corvin, who is also Principal Investigator at Science Foundation Ireland, further said: “What is surprising is that some of the genes contributing to this effect have previously been implicated in disorders of language and autism, suggesting that this regulatory process is critical to the development of many different neurodevelopmental disorders which until now we have considered separately.”

The biology behind schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, conditions which affect some 1 in 50 Irish adults, remains elusive and the authors of the study hope that their findings will provide new directions for research. Researchers at Trinity are now investigating whether the effects of the Cell Adhesion Molecule can be reversed.

It is thought that the molecular biology which underlies the disorders will provide further insights into their diagnosis as well as treatment.

Witness the Wertheims’ woolly wonder Kate Palmer College News Editor THE SCIENCE Gallery has launched a novel new exhibition which merges art and science in aid of evironmental awareness.

The “Hyperbolic Coral Reef” is a sealife exhibition with a twist: the coral on display is made entirely out of wool. The Coral Reef will feature the crochet techniques of Australian twins, Margaret and Christine Wertheim, who aim to put the fate of coral reefs in the public eye through the medium of wool.

Millions have already queued up to see the pair’s technique, which is being featured in the Trinity College Science Gallery every weekend, including Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The Gallery is encouraging visitors to “pick up a crochet needle and dive into the deep”. Visitors can sign up for the exclusive tour, where student mediators act as guides through a

number of environmental and mathsbased activities.

Spanning two floors of the light-filled Gallery are crocheted coral reefs with incredible visual resemblance to the coral reefs whose environmental destruction they set out to demonstrate.

Tightly-bunched mounds of brain coral, wavy strands of kelp, tubeworms, sea slugs and nudibranchs have all been mimicked with the twins’ techniques.

Just as the diversity of living species results from variations in an underlying DNA code, so too a huge range of hyperbolic crochet “species” may be brought into being through modifications in the underlying crochet code. Featured at the Gallery is an everevolving crochet “tree of life”.

The centrepiece of the show is called the “Toxic Reef”. Made up entirely of plastic, it is designed to remind visitors that 10% of plastic waste ends up in the ocean, threatening sealife and the environment.

At the opening of the exhibition, Margaret Wertheim commented, “Scientists now believe that it is entirely possible that there will be no coral reefs left by the end of this century.”

Plastic that has been dumped in the ocean is estimated to have killed 100,000 marine mammals and 1 million seabirds each year.

The “Toxic Reef” reveals sea anemones made from shopping bags, a forest of kelp made from discarded video tapes and jellyfish made from plastic bin-liners.

In total, it is estimated that 10,000 hours of voluntary human labour carried out by about 3,000 women (and a few men) have contributed to the making of the Woolly Wonder.

“It’s like a kindergarten for grownups,” says Margaret Wertheim, “We are proposing an alternative way of doing things: The Play Tank, where people can engage with the highest levels of computing, maths and logic.”

Above: The woolly species of Coral took thousands of volunteers to make

Treasure and tradition this Trinity Week Kate Palmer College News Editor ANNOUNCED BY the Provost as a “highlight of the academic year”, Trinity Week 2010 will take place on Monday next. The week is set to include a number of events, including lectures and activities involving members of the public, not to mention the traditional announcement of fellowship and scholarship elections by the Provost in Front Square.

Trinity Week 2010 was officially launched by the Provost last Thursday, described as a week “when we as a community celebrate College life and the high standards of academic achievement of our students and staff”.

Despite the earlier date due to semesterisation, Dr. Hegarty maintains the week, starting with Trinity Monday, “is one of the oldest and most valued traditions of the university”.

The activities, all of which are open to the public, will take place from Monday 12 to Saturday 17 April across the Trinity College campus. Organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub on behalf of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social

Sciences, the theme for Trinity Week 2010 is “Ideas for the future”.

At the launch Dr. Hegarty commented, “Once a year, during Trinity week, Trinity College turns its intellectual energies to an issue of great importance to the world today. Given the upheaval of the moment, what could be more important than exploring new creative ideas that will inspire the soul while simultaneously stimulating new ways of thinking, living and working.

“This year’s programme for Trinity Week will showcase the enormous appeal of the Arts and Humanities and their contribution to generating new ideas for the future.”

A new schoolchildren’s learning resource, the “Trinity Treasure Trail” will be launched. Children will be invited to participate in this scavenger hunt across the oldest parts of Trinity College’s campus. Intrepid explorers will receive a specially designed map with a set of questions about the people, places and spaces associated with Trinity.

On Tuesday 13th, in association with Children’s Books Ireland, Trinity Week will host two events by children’s

author Philip Reeve. “Fantastic Futures”, with Philip Reeve, Oisín McGann and Conor Kostick is a unique opportunity for children to meet three of the foremost science-fiction writers from the UK and Ireland. Teen and adult fans are invited to listen to Philip Reeve in conversation with Robert Dunbar.

“We as a community celebrate College life and the high standards of academic achievement of our students and staff”Provost, John Hegarty talks about Trinity Week The Cinemobile, Ireland’s only mobile cinema, will be located on campus for two days of Trinity Week.

The Cinemobile will have a range of films from classic horrors to Ireland’s Oscar-nominated and winning short films, as well as a specially designed programme for children.

The Oscar-winning Trinity College Professor Anil Kokaram will hold a film workshop. He will give away some of the secrets of special effects behind

the ground-breaking Matrix films. How does an actor freeze in mid air? How do you mix slow motion and computergenerated images with live action? All these questions will be answered. The rest of the day will be devoted to horror with “Freaks” and “The Old Dark House”.

Another workshop will be held on Wednesday, by the Oscar-nominated director Tom Moore. “The Secret of Kells”, will guide children through the steps of how an animation goes from an idea, to a character, to the screen. The workshop will take place just a few steps away from the Long Room where the actual Book of Kells, the inspiration for this animation, is housed.

On Wednesday the Academic Symposium “20/20 Vision: what will the world be like in ten years time?” will look forward to the state of the world in the year 2020. Global Chief Economist at HSBC Bank, Stephen D. King will talk about the impact of emerging nations on Western economic prosperity. The author Howard Friel will present a vigorous defence of the science behind models of man-made climate change.

Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff will

examine the likely effects of a profound cultural shift away from the printed word towards the visual image.

Taken together, these presentations will sketch some of the most pressing problems facing society, and the ways in which humankind can employ reason, evidence and critical thought to surmount these challenges.

On Friday, the renowned literary critic Terry Eagleton will discuss the subject “What is evil?” For many people, the concept of “evil” is anachronistic in the modern age. In this talk, Eagleton will launch a defence of the reality of evil. It is, he will suggest, a phenomenon with palpable force in the contemporary world.

On Saturday, Philip Pullman will discuss his controversial new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ in conversation with Fintan O’Toole.

Trinity Week is an annual week long programme of events where all are invited to Trinity to celebrate College life and the high standards of achievement of students and staff. Every year a different Faculty hosts Trinity Week under a nominated theme.

COLLEGE NEWS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

BESS fill funding shortfall Kate Palmer College News Editor THE TRINITY Foundation is appealing to soon-to-be BESS graduates to fill the “funding shortfall� of the Alumni Foundation. The Foundation plans that the pilot scheme, which is being directed towards BESS Senior Sophisters, will eventually be extended towards all final-year students.

All BESS Senior Sophisters have been asked to donate to the Foundation, with the option to specify areas of funding to which their donation will be allocated, such as the Trinity

Access Programme or extra facilities for BESS students.

Forms were distributed in a lecture, requesting the students leave a “class gift� in the form of cash or credit card. Currently, the Trinity Foundation receives funding from alumni via the Trinity Annual Fund, UK Trust for Trinity College Dublin and University of Dublin fund in the USA. The Trinity Foundation is a charitable organisation with a sole purpose to support the implementation of College’s educational, research and outreach programmes.

Trinity Foundation representatives were unavailable to comment on the scheme.

College gets creative with Dublin schools Ben Hutchinson Staff Reporter AN EXHIBITION of handmade books inspired by works from the Trinity College Library and created by students from three Dublin primary schools was opened in the Long Room of the Old Library on 24 March by Trinity Librarian, Robin Adams.

The collection marks the completion of a three month project called Bookmarks, a story writing, illustration and bookbinding programme that featured workshops with renowned authors, artists and academics.

The Bookmarks programme, which is organised by the Trinity Access Programmes (TAP) in collaboration with The Ark, a cultural centre for children, involves students from TAP-linked primary schools designated as disadvantaged and aims to inspire children to become the next generation of authors, illustrators and publishers.

During the Bookmarks programme author Conor Kostick made a number of visits to each of the participating schools to speak about his books and life as an author of children’s literature.

Ark artists Liz Smith and Laura de BĂşrca also held regular workshops with the children to help them with their illustration and bookmaking skills, including collage, cut-out, silhouette and pop-up techniques to enhance their storylines.

Other workshops, delivered by Trinity’s Amanda Piesse, Senior Lecturer in the School of English, and Charles Benson, Keeper of Early Printed Books in College, helped children develop their adventure storylines by introducing them to the Pollard Collection, a collection of over 10,000 historic children’s books spanning three centuries.

The children were also given the opportunity to explore the Trinity campus, visit the Old Library and view the Book of Kells as part of the Bookmarks programme.

This year the Bookmarks programme involved 70 fifthand sixth- class children from the primary schools: Scoil Mhuire SNS, Drimnagh Castle Boys SNS and Our Lady of

Weekly guide to entertainment

Good Counsel Girls SNS. The schools are linked to the College through the Trinity Access Programme which offers support to students from under-represented backgrounds to progress to higher education.

The Bookmarks programme is one of a number of outreach activities for primary schools which aim to build a positive relationship between school students and Trinity with the hope of raising their aspirations regarding third-level study.

Commenting on the success of Bookmarks, Kathleen O’Toole of Trinity Access Programme said: “TAP is very proud of the Bookmarks programme and the unique opportunity which it provides for children to acquire new skills and to be exposed to the world of children’s literature in a very handson manner.

The quality of the children’s books are excellent, and with continued involvement in TAP’s outreach programmes, which attract over 4,000 students annually, these same students and their peers will successfully make the transition to both second- and third-level�.

O’Toole continued, “We’d also like to acknowledge the generous contribution of Trinity UK Alumni, through the UK Trust in support of the development of the Pollard Children’s Literature Collection in Trinity, including the Bookmarks programme.�

Eina McHugh, Director of The Ark, said, “The Ark is committed to encouraging and nurturing creative innovation as an important part of the education process for children, teachers, parents and schools. Our work in visual arts will continue after Bookmarks in the Ark when a series of workshops with Ark artist Liz Smith exploring the art of popup have been organised for both the public and schools.�

The children were each presented with a certificate of achievement by Kostick, author and research associate at the Department of History. Their books will be displayed in the Long Room as recognition of their achievement and can be viewed by the public.

Every Friday with

UCD SmurďŹ t School Open Evening

Special student rate 80c

Date: Wednesday April 14th Time: From 4pm Venue: UCD SmurďŹ t School, Blackrock Campus.

Event information and registration at smurďŹ tschool.ie

5

6

NATIONAL NEWS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

SHORT CUTS

European praise for Irish system

UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER’S NEW CAMPUS PROJECT RECEIVES €16M NORTHERN IRELAND’S Minister for Employment and Learning, Sir Regy Empey, has pledged €16 million towards University of Ulster’s new campus in a bid to increase the number of participants in higher education. Outlining his aims for the project Mr Empey stated: “One of my department’s key goals is to widen participation in higher education, especially among communities which traditionally have tended not to believe university is for them.”

The plans for the project, which were unveiled last year, outline the development of the college’s new campus in Cathedral’s Quarter, Belfast.

The project will cost a total of €250 million and will be the largest planned development in Belfast city centre since Victoria Square.

Speaking of the UU’s wider community, Mr Empey stated his hopes of the advantages the project will have for the region: “The development will bring many benefits beyond the university and will be a welcome boost for our currently beleaguered construction industry.”

The expected increase in the number of students in the area with UU’s relocation of courses from Jordanstown to the new Belfast campus is expected to bring economic, as well as cultural, benefits to the city. The construction of the new campus is expected to be complete in 2018.

Aine Pennello

UL ‘CHARITY WEEK’ A SUCCESS UL’S RAG week, re-branded Charity Week as part of the university’s aim to combat anti-social behaviour, was a huge success according to local reports. Student Union President Ruan McLoughlin was proud to announce that, unlike previous years, the SU was not approached by the Gardai in relation to arrests made during the week, and complaints from local residents were considerably reduced.

The positive outcome stemmed from successful measures put in place including safety patrols for students returning late at night, and the provision of a telephone number for students and residents in the case of anti-social incidents. The use of student patrols with Gardai as back-up defense was also deemed a successful policy, and is to be continued for future Charity Weeks.

However the university’s positive image campaign did not stop with safety measurements as the week’s events were also re-orientated.

A number of non-alcohol events were introduced to the programme this year including sumo and jelly wrestling, pizza eating competitions and helium karaoke.

So far an estimated €7,000 has been raised by students during the week for the Irish Heart Foundation, Limerick Youth Service, Mid West Simon Community and Make a Wish Ireland although official figures have yet to be released. “It was all very positive,” SU President McLoughlin confirmed; “the residents seem happy and the Gardai were happy with the way the week went. We’ll be aiming to improve on this for next year.”

Aine Pennello

Fearghus Roulston National News Editor

Queen’s, above, where the union is seeking the right to approve newspaper content before print.

Spat between Queen’s SU and campus paper Seamus Donnelly Staff Writer A DISPUTE between sabbatical officers of the Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union (QUBSU) and members of The Gown (QUB’s campus newspaper) has seen the paper’s editorial team banned from their offices. The decision taken by Andrew Dodge, the Director of the Students’ Union, was recommended by three sabbatical officers following complaints over the content of some articles published in The Gown through the course of the year.

A document containing comments made to the Union claimed that in The Gown; “sensationalism and exaggeration are commonplace,” and that “The Gown is just taking liberties with articles that contain blatant lies”. These claims were rejected by the paper. They said that: “On rare occasion, very minor errors occurred, regarding a mix up of names and figures, but were retracted and apologies for immediately once they were brought to the editor’s attention.”

A memorandum was presented to

newspaper management earlier in the year in which the editor was asked to agree to a number of requests. These included requests that the Union be allowed to review all publications before they went to print, that the Union manager or President could sit in on The Gown Trust meetings, and that cold calling on Union staff and sabbaticals was forbidden. The team behind The Gown was presented with the final draft of the memorandum last week.

The management of the paper have so far refused to sign the memorandum.

Editor Catherine Wylie has stated: “At no time in the history of The Gown has the editorial team allowed Union staff to see issues before they go to print, and this won’t change.” As a result Students’ Union director Dodge has renewed the office ban on the newspaper.

The Gown, has been operating as an independent newspaper in Queen’s for over half a century, and saw a re-launch this year. It is not the first time it has been banned from their offices but it is the first occasion that they have been asked to sign a Union memorandum.

Tensions between the Union and the paper first emerged in February after ‘The Hood’ made references to the effectiveness of some of the Union’s sabbatical officers following their officer appraisal. This prompted Paul Lilly, Vice President Equality, to write a letter to the paper in questioning the ‘integrity’ of the reporting.

This divide deepened further following the reporting of the Student Union sabbatical elections, when the GAA-Law ticket with which some of the officers where aligned where accused of ‘election vote fraud’. It may be assumed that the bitterness between the two sides has continued in recent weeks.

The Students’ Union were disappointed that the newspaper agreed to advertise rival nightclubs in their publication. The newspaper has hit back, stating that the Union has failed to fulfil a ‘contractual agreement’ by failing to advertise in the final two editions of the paper.

The dispute has shown no signs of resolving itself at the time of going to print.

IRISH UNIVERSITES have recieved a major boost from an EU study revealing that their graduates are the most highly employable in Europe. The study placed Irish universities top of a table for ‘efficiency’, despite weeks of concern for third-level education about dumbing down, overspending and grade inflation.

The president of NUI Galway, Professor Jim Browne, saw the study as a clear vindication of the Irish education system. He claimed that despite the recent focus on ‘input’ and hours spent teaching, the real measure of success was the output of universities, which was praised by the EU study. Professor Browne also praised his staff for coping with a decrease in numbers of staff, despite increasing student numbers.

“Coping with this increase in student numbers is a great tribute to the staff,” he said.

The report describes Irish and British graduates as being highly employable.

On the other hand, Spanish, Polish and Portuguese universities perform poorly on this yardstick. It says also that considering their size, Finland, Ireland and Sweden are the countries with more universities pointed to by their peers as being “excellent”.

The report claimed that; “in some cases, this was essentially due to excellent scientific production (Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands), whereas Ireland attained its position due to the graduation output, which is not only high in number but also the best in perceived quality.”

The report says efficiency tends to be higher in countries where institutions are publicly evaluated by stakeholders and independent agencies. The autonomy of the institution when it comes to hiring and firing is another factor linked to efficiency.

This positive news was welcomed by figures across the Irish education system.

Dr. Padraig Welsh. the chief executive of the Irish Universities Quality Board, was pleased by the findings, but warned that the Irish university system had to be made more transparent.

“It must improve how it informs the public as to who is responsible for standards and quality and how it intends to provide sufficient data and, more importantly, a sufficient level of analysis about the system to the public.”

Professor John Hughes, of NUI Maynooth, also welcomed the report.

Writing in the Irish Independent, he said that; “the simple message is that investment in Irish higher education is money well spent.”

“The study provides compelling evidence that Irish universities are highly efficient by comparison with their European and global counterparts.

When the overall views of employers are taken into account, it shows that we are also very effective, and our graduates are highly prized.”

EU STUDY RESULTS Ireland ranked 15th out of 25 countries in terms of expenditure on higher education as a percentage of GDP Ireland ranked first out of 28 countries on graduates per 1,000 inhabitants Ireland ranked second out of 27 countries in terms of graduates per academic staff member Finland has the highest spending on education as a percentage of GDP, at 1.2 percent, while Japan has the lowest at 0.49 percent.

DCU formalise Irish experts and new Indian Disney discuss brand partnerships John Fitzsimons Staff Writer

Mairead O’Casey Staff Writer DCU PRESIDENT-DESIGNATE, Prof. Brian MacCraith signed a formal alliance agreement with the Institute of Technology (IITD), Delhi. Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, was in India that week for the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and also attended the signing.

During this visit to India, Dublin City University also signed agreements with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, National Physical Laboratory, New Dehli and the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Karnataka, Surathal. Another agreement with the Indian Institute of Technolgy (IITM), Madras was signed later that month.

Professor MacCraith said that DCU were particularly pleased to establish formal collaborations with such wellregarded third-level and fourth-level institutions in India, especially given its pivotal position as a rapidly expanding economy in South-East Asia. “India is one of the top-ranking countries in the world in the field of basic research.

Indian science has come to be regarded as one of the most powerful instruments of growth and development worldwide.

The Government of India is very clear about the importance it attaches to research and innovation for the future of the economy and the benefit of its people.”

The institutions with whom DCU signed alliances with are particularly prestigious; the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore is India’s premier

research institute and only 1 per cent of students in India qualify for positions into the Indian Institute of Technology division.These new agreements are part of DCU’s initiative to strengthen relationships with international partners and develop opportunities for research students to engage in research outside of Ireland as part of their PhD programme.

DCU already has key relationships with universities in over thirty-eight countries, including China, the United States, Mexico, Australia and many countries in Europe. There are 39 postgraduate research students from India currently working in DCU, as well as 92 others in Undergraduate programmes, Postgraduate programmes and post-Doctoral research.

Minister Eamon Ryan stated: “Last year, the Irish Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Indian Department of Science and Technology established a programme of funding to support joint research projects. With our similar economic goals, these projects were focused on key growth areas such as biopharma, biotechnology and renewable and sustainable energy. The signings were a major step in developing a strong educational alliance with our Indian partners. Educational institutions in both countries are renowned for their high-level research and innovation, and in working together their work will certainly be enhanced.

There is mutual benefit to be gained from such collaboration, and I wish DCU and all of the Indian Institutes the very best in their future partnership.”

A COLLABORATIVE research project in broadcasting and sports visualisation has been officially launched by Disney and CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies. CLARITY is a partnership between UCD, DCU and Tyndall National Institute (TNI) Cork, that is funded by Science Foundation Ireland.

The cutting edge research will seek to investigate ways in which the use of multiple cameras, even dozens, can enhance the broadcasting of major athletic events. Furthermore, it will examine the opportunities for less wellknown sports to develop larger fan bases through the use of this technology. It is also suggested that the research could mean that youth sports may be viewed remotely and will provide coaches with enhanced visuals and statistics, enabling them to improve their teams’ performances.

The commercial element of this venture is expected to yield many opportunities for the sports network ESPN, of which 80% is owned by Disney. It is believed that the company will expand its already multinational, multimedia sports entertainment platform, by using the technology.

Speaking about the launch, Dr Joe Marks, Vice President of Disney Research declared that; “Disney Research was created to determine how the next generation of technologies will transform the businesses of The Walt Disney Company. This project could lead to groundbreaking broadcast technologies and opportunities for ESPN and The Walt Disney Company.”

The National Hockey Stadium at UCD was the first subject of experiment.

On the 18th March, project researchers

and film crew captured the action of a Ladies A Exhibition Match between Ireland and Germany. The stadium is to remain equipped with 21 cameras so as to allow researchers to gather a wide variety of information for evaluation on a weekly basis.

The initiative is essentially aimed at enhancing the work of Sports Directors by allowing them to cover a wide range of sports and events in a cost effective manner using the additional camera coverage. It is therefore fitting that Emmy Award-winning Sports Director, Artie Kempner, is to provide practical feedback to the research team.

He will also strive to push the research towards providing a professional broadcast quality result alongside a compelling story for each event. Speaking at the launch of the project, Kempner said: “Sports and sports broadcasting have always been

“It is so exciting to be part of this groundbreaking project.

Microcasting will broaden the ability for fans to see their favourite teams” my passion, and it is so exciting to be part of this groundbreaking project.

Microcasting will broaden the ability for fans to see their favourite teams, favourite players, and maybe even their own children performing on many fields of play, spanning the gamut from professional competitions to youth tournaments.”

In what is surely a welcome investment for the government, Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan T.D., said

he sees the initiative as more than just a standalone project.

“The announcement of a new collaboration between Disney Research and CLARITY represents a very exciting development for innovation in Ireland.

The Walt Disney Company is the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, and its decision to form a strategic partnership with the Science Foundation Ireland-funded CLARITY Centre is an endorsement of the expertise and pioneering work being carried out in our laboratories and third-level institutions.”

Angus Kirkland, the executive of the Irish Hockey Association, echoed these sentiments, and agreed that the collaboration was likely to continue on past this paticular initiative. “The IHA are delighted to support the collaboration of UCD, CLARITY and Disney Research on a project that is at the forefront of sports micro casting. We are looking forward to seeing the results of the research and are in no doubt that this will be of significant benefit for the training, analysis and profile of our high performance teams.”

This initiative represents the fruition of extensive work,” stated UCD Professor Gregory O’Hare, a Principal Investigator within CLARITY. “It is truly pioneering, and establishes a state of the art facility based at the National Hockey Stadium at University College Dublin.”

He was supported by his colleague Noel O’Conner, who said that: “This project presents scientific challenges in a wide variety of engineering and computer science disciplines.

We intend to push the technology to a point where we can create more sports broadcasting platforms, as well as the way in which individuals engage in the viewing experience.”

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

Global Campus

Institutions worldwide still plagued by economic crisis

7

UNITED KINGDOM

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN MEPHEDRONE ‘EXPERIMENT’ FIFTY STUDENTS at Liverpool’s John Moores University were allowed to take the controversial party drug mephedrone or ‘miaow miaow’ as part of an “experiment”. The university asked for “guinea pig” students to take the legal drug, and describe their mood as it takes effect. Last week, Mephedrone was the subject of intense British public attention following the deaths of teenagers Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, both of whom had taken the drug. It is now believed the drug will be classed as an illegal class B drug within weeks, following a lengthy debate in Parliament. Dr. Cathy Montgomery, the psychology lecturer behind the research said: “During these tests, the university makes it clear they do not condone drug use. Until now, most evidence comes from people anecdotally. We will be holding structured interviews with users, asking them how they feel at different time points.

Students here at John Moores tell us they prefer mephedrone over the drugs they were using before.”

Universities across the world have yet to emerge from the depths of last year’s financial crisis. Photo: PitsLamp Photography

>> Universities worldwide still trapped in the mire of recession, as governments claim to be out the woods >> The UK braces itself for “extensive strike action which will disrupt lectures and examinations” Monika Urbanski Staff Writer BEGINNING IN the United States in December 2007, much of the industrialized world has continued to feel the effects of the global financial crisis. Ireland, like many other affected countries, is trying to revive its troubled banks and pull its economy out of it. Some, like the UK, seem to be pulling out of the recession quicker than expected. Many questions are being asked, from how it could have gotten that bad in such a short time, to how these changes are going to influence our future or even our mental health. As Trinity News has been reporting, one of the questions that is being asked repeatedly over the last year, is in how far students around the globe have been affected by this recent crisis.

In the US, public institutions are struggling to maintain their traditionally high standards. Higher Education Budgets and the Global Recession, a report published by the University of California at Berkeley’s Centre for Studies in Higher Education last month, outlines the discouraging picture.

According to the report, 34 states have already been forced to make draconian cuts to spending on their colleges and universities, imposing measures such as furloughs, layoffs and tuition increases. The projected cumulative budget deficit for all 50 states and Washington DC in 2011 alone is US$142 billion.

After surviving the financial crisis for two years, Britain’s higher education sector has now succumbed, and is bracing for perhaps the most severe round of retrenchments in Europe.

With the budget for England’s universities cut by £573 million, at least a quarter of the 130 universities will suffer real-term budget cuts this year. In practice, this suggests a sharp rise in the number of qualified young people failing to win a university place this year. Last year, 160,000 applicants failed to get into university while this year the figure could be up to 200,000.

Mary Curnock Cook, head of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, said school-leavers should consider going to university in later life: “I can’t wave a magic wand and pretend they are going to have to do anything other than

re-appraise their aspirations. They should be looking at other options, at further education colleges and they really shouldn’t be disappointed.”

But how can one not be disappointed when universities all over Europe experience the same downturn? The recession has hit spending on higher education in all European countries, though some more than others. “There is a huge diversity of situations in Europe at the moment but what is common to all is uncertainty and confused change,” says Thomas Estermann, head of unit governance, autonomy and funding at the European University Association. A conference to be held by the EUA at the University of Bologna this month, Towards Financially Sustainable Universities II: Diversifying income streams, will include a major examination of the effect of financial crisis on European higher education.

Closer to home, in Ireland the situation for universities seems to worsen as well. Although higher education is seen as a refugee for school-leavers and jobless adults, it appears that the country cannot afford the projected expansion while still aspiring to offer a world-class higher education system.

It is not only a problem of applying for a degree successfully, but also, once taken, to find a job afterwards. Many students regret their degree choice and believe that the downturn will jeopardise their career prospects.

In The Irish Times Shane Fitzgerald describes the situation many graduates are in at moment: “The career choice for more and more young Irish graduates is to leave these bankrupt shores and escape to greener pastures. All my fellow 2009 graduates seem to have fled Ireland, the same as myself, or else have retreated into a master’s degree for one more year’s insulation from the real world...Irish university students were promised the world and now the world seems to be getting us, in increasing numbers.”

Having looked at all these examples it seems obvious that the situation at universities all over the world is becoming worse with every year the recession stays on. But what can be done, and what is being done to avoid further cuts? The recently passed Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act is supposed to fundamentally reshape the US healthcare system, but it will also improve the way students

fund their post-secondary education. With this Act being ratified in the near future, hopes are high in the US that the conditions of higher education will improve. Nevertheless, the legislation was marked by many compromises and sacrifices compared to the original one proposed in September 2009.

As the problems universities are facing are being addressed continuously, this year’s Going Global International Education Conference theme was World Potential: Making Education meet the Challenge. The conference explored the trends and implications for the international education systems and tried to deliver frameworks for action.

Additionally, protest coming straight from the students and their campuses is becoming “louder”, and unfortunately in some cases, more aggressive. Students are very aware of the problems surrounding them and are taking to the streets all over the world. Only recently, tens of thousands of students united on March 4 during the “Strike and Day of Action to defend Education” in California and all over America. All over Europe, students are protesting against tuition fees and budget cuts. According to the The Guardian, the funding squeeze in Britain had already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities; “raising fears of strike action which could severly disrupt lectures and examinations.”

At the end of this academic year many students will be wondering what will happen next. Will there be more cuts and higher fees? Will there be less room for more and more willing and ambitious students? Will there be a job available by the end of it all? There are no clear answers to be given for now. But one thing is for sure, the issues have to be continuously addressed and voiced, particularly in the instance of minorities who need to be considered and represented where they can’t stand up for themselves.

Dr Saleem Badat, vice-chancellor of Rhodes University, South Africa, writes about his hopes for higher education in his country. He also voices what is universally important for the future of higher education: “Free higher education exists in a number of countries. It is not an impossible dream. It must continue to remain an ideal that we aspire to achieve, one of the markers of the good society that we should be committed to developing and leaving as a legacy for future generations.”

UK student living costs rocket Thomas Valentine Spendlove Contribuiting Writer THE NATIONAL Union of Students (NUS) in the United Kingdom has reported that the cost of university accommodation has risen by an unprecedented 22% in the last three years.

A survey conducted by the NUS of 132 university and private sector landlords, accounting for around 40% of total student bed-spaces, found that room cost had risen from an average of €90 in the academic year 2006-07, to €110 in 2009-10.

The rise in prices can be attributed to a number of factors. NUS claim that it is the fault of the private sector pushing up the prices of accommodation and the high demand for accommodation in specifically student areas is allowing landlords to increase the rents even further on their properties.

The property developer Unite Group said that the private sector invested €5.5bn in new student flats. The distinct rise in prices they claim are due to a noticeable rise in the quality of student accommodation.

Chief Executive of Unite Group, Mark Allan, said: “Compared to the old housing stock built in the 1960s and 1970s, it is more expensive but that reflects the fact that it has been built in the last five years so its more modern.

“Our properties tend to be located in city centres which is where students tell us they want to be living. £5bn (€5.5bn)

translates to about 130,000 rooms.’

The report also noticed a significant increase in the amount of students that have en-suite facilities. Three years ago 43% of students had en-suite, whereas now 47.8% of those surveyed had these facilities. Likewise there has been an increase in student accommodation providing broadband, 24-hour security, and even gym and leisure facilities.

Critics say that the students often don’t have a choice as to the calibre of accommodation available to them, many paying for facilities and services that they either do not need, or cannot comfortably afford.

Geoff Hotchkiss, a student at the University of the West of England, whose accommodation is owned by the Unite Group said: “You’re not expecting a five star hotel when you go to university.”

NUS president Wes Streeting is concerned at the trend of rising prices for accommodation: “I think universities need to look very clearly at the cost of their rents and look at capping rents to make sure they remain affordable to all students.

“We also need to ensure that the private market which is inflating rents doesn’t continue to dominate and that there is real competition by universities and housing associations.”

The NUS does however concede that there are huge regional differences in prices. Students living in London pay on average €169 per week as the most expensive area to live for students, this is compared to Northern Ireland where students pay on average just €76.

Cost of student accommodation

40 PERCENT OF FEMALE STUDENTS WOULD STRIP TO FUND STUDIES SOME FORTY per cent of female students would be willing to pose topless to finance their studies, while more than a third would consider working in a gentlemen’s club, a recent survey in the United Kingdom found. Two percent of students have worked in a gentleman’s club while at university with almost half saying they took the job because it was “easy money”, the survey claimed. The survey of more than 1000 females at university found that three in ten said they would consider taking their clothes off for money, with almost one in five saying they know of somebody in their year that had worked as an exotic dancer. Sue Harrison, co-founder of Studentgems.com, said: ‘’When students are away from home and trying to show their independence, they may well consider doing things that they don’t really want to, so they can afford their independent lifestyle. It would be so much better for the students to work in a job they feel happy in as well as a job that would benefit their career once they graduate.”

CHINA

MCDONALDS OPENS FIRST ‘HAMBURGER UNIVERSITY’ IN CHINA MCDONALDS HAS opened its first university in China to train new generations of managers to fuel its expanding presence throughout the country. Shanghai’s 150 million Euro Hamburger U., the company’s seventh worldwide, has a statue of company symbol Ronald McDonald but will not teach how to make hamburgers and fries.

The emphasis is on running businesses better.

McDonald’s, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, has more than 60,000 employees in more than 1,100 restaurants in mainland China after 20 years in the country and plans to expand to 2,000 outlets in three to five years. The school, located in a nondescript office building in an industrial park in the suburbs, aims to have 5,000 graduates over the next five years. Hamburger U. Shanghai’s courses can be used in some cases to earn college credit and the company says graduates use such schools as a springboard to pursue college degrees.”We will do our best to be the Harvard for our industry,” said the school’s dean, Susanna Li.

1994-95

UNITED STATES

1996-97

STUDENTS SEEK SUN

1997-98

ACCORDING TO research by Professor Uri Simonsohn of the University of California, San Diego, a survey of students found that, unsurprisingly, undergraduates prefer studying on cloudier days and having free time on sunnier ones. These associations may mean that weather during a university visit tints how a place is perceived. In particular, universities visited on cloudy days may seem more compatible with academic activities. The survey collected data on campus visits by 1,284 prospective students to a university well known for its academic strengths.

The results showed that one standard deviation increase in cloud cover was associated with a 9% increase in enrolment.

1999-2000 2000-01 2001-02 2003-04 2006-07 2008-09 2009-2010 0

20

40

60

80

Average weekly rent (GBP)

100

120

8

NEWS FEATURES

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

Easter miracle: Irish drinking less Statistics show lower drinking levels, but are the numbers misleading?

Neil Warner Staff Writer WHATEVER YOU say about statistics, it is absolutely certain that they are bound to be telling you something. What’s more, a significant statistical change is bound to be telling you something significant. What exactly is it that they’re telling you? Well that’s another question.

This difficulty arises when it comes to a recently released Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI) report detailing the amount of alcohol consumed in the Republic of Ireland. There has, the figures in the report say, been a substantial decrease in the amount of alcohol consumed in this country. The total alcohol consumption figure is down by 8.9%. On a sectional level, the decline at its greatest is 18.5% among spirits.

This is, as a matter of fact, not a new trend. The amount which we drink has actually, despite what we might infer from media coverage, been falling since a high-point in 2001. From 14.1 litres of alcohol consumed per adult (not accounting for cross-border imports) nine years ago, the figure had fallen to 13.3 litres in 2006 and is now at 11.2 litres.

We have, then, some very interesting figures that tell us something significant in the trends in alcohol consumption in Ireland. The question is, however, what exactly are we being told? Are we, as an Irish Times article on the subject recently put it; “falling out of love with alcohol”? Is the famous Irish drinking culture in decline? Well frankly that doesn’t seem very likely. I don’t mean that in a cynical, “sure we’ll never change” kind of way. My reaction comes

rather from a sense that the facts don’t seem to lead us in that direction on closer examination and that we have much more logically straightforward explanations for the figures without turning to some tectonic cultural shift in the way of life of this country.

The process at play here is actually quite likely to be very simple. As people have less money, and as alcohol costs more, so we will consume less alcohol.

There are many other sophisticated

Thirty per cent of 15- to 34-year-olds still report frequent or heavy drinking. The next highest state in this respect, Denmark, has only 18%. philosophical and sociological interpretations which could be and have been made of these figures. For example, it has been argued that this may be the consequence of the aging and recalibration in situation of Ireland’s modern baby-boomer generation, of David McWilliams fame, who peaked in 2001 and are now in their 30s and struggling with the realities of the recession.

The change generation in the 18-25 age-group that is the primary consumer of alcohol may account for certain changes in taste such as the decline in alco-pops that is also being reported.

But to ascribe more general trends in the amount we consume to something

as abstruse as this seems to be pushing things.

Instead, it may be better to follow the guidance of Occam’s razor and suggest that “the simplest solution is usually the correct one”. In this case we should follow the money. This argument is backed up by the fact that it has long been argued that alcohol is price-sensitive; as its relative cost for the consumer increases, so it is likely to be consumed considerably less. We are in a recession, people have less money and are spending less; and that includes on alcohol. As a demonstration of this, consider the fact that soft drink consumption in 2009 actually fell by more than wine, beer or cider.

There are objections to this very crude explanation. Firstly it could be said that consumption of alcohol has fallen by more than consumption in general has fallen. But the difference is not that great. General consumption in Ireland in 2009 fell by 7.2%. The fact is that alcohol may be particularly price sensitive; for which there may be a variety of reasons, such as the unusual strength of cash transactions in the pub and the price in disparity which taxes impose between here and the north.

As it stands however, the difference from the norm is so small that it does not necessarily require a great causal discovery.

Secondly what of the pre-recession decline in alcohol? Well demand for alcohol responds to the cost of the product as well as the income of the buyer. In the last decade we have seen a significant increase in the level of alcohol VAT that may explain the change. More importantly however, the fall up to 2006 was a very small 0.8%, which contrasts with the much greater 2.1% decline

The Irish pint may well be under threat from the recession. Photo: Nick Page in the last three years, when people properly started to feel the amount of money in their pockets lightening.

It could also be asked if the connection between drink consumption and the ability to pay for it is really quite so straightforward. Aren’t the causes of a drinking culture deeply sociological as well as economic? Didn’t Ireland have a reputation for drinking long before we had money? This may be true, but sociology possibly applies to a much greater extent when it comes to habits of drinking than to the actual quantity.

Just as we are still wealthier now than we were 20 years ago, so the amount of alcohol we consume is still higher

Legal highs or legalise?

Head shops (and the products that they sell) are here to stay, despite renewed scrutiny.

An outside wall of the “Nirvana” head shop in Capel Street, Dublin, that was burnt down in a suspected arson attack. Photo: William Murphy Jonathan Lee Staff Writer THOUGH MAYBE not apparent from the recent explosion in publicity, head shops have quietly operated in Ireland for years, peddling a range of legal highs with effects broadly comparable to the illegal substances they emulate. Firsttime customers are often surprised by the efficacy of the products on sale—the smoking mixes actually get people stoned, and the pills and powders will keep you dancing and chatting until the sun comes up. Perhaps more surprising is that you can buy them in a shop, complete with security cameras and computerized tills, instead of a club toilet or dimly lit alleyway. Minister Lenihan even gets tax revenue to spend on more one-cent Anglo shares.

One of the most popular offerings, Mephedrone, has recently been on the tongues—and noses—of many people

in Ireland. It has made headlines following the deaths of several young people in the UK attributed to the drug. Serious concerns regarding its cardiotoxicology have been raised, and the public outcry for its use and sale to be banned has become deafening.

Indeed, Mephedrone and related compounds are due to be outlawed in Ireland and the UK later this year, following legislation introduced in the UK last December to regulate smoking mixes based on synthetic cannabinoids and the stimulant 1-benzylpiperazine (BZP) and its derivatives previously sold in head shops.

Once confined to the murky Internet forums of psychonauts (people who explore the use of research chemicals for possible recreational effects), the use of Mephedrone as a club drug became widespread last year, and has since entered the mainstream public consciousness through alarmist

media reports. On the molecular level, Mephedrone, or 3-fluoromethcathinone in systematic chemical nomenclature, is remarkably similar to amphetamine in structure, and therefore in its effects. In fact, snip off a fluorine atom here and an oxygen atom there, replace a methyl group (-CH3) farther along the molecule with a hydrogen atom and voila! You have transformed Mephedrone into amphetamine.

These kinds of structural subtlety at the atomic scale makes controlling the products that head shops legally sell very tricky. Legislators cannot simply ban “anything that has the same effect as an illegal drug,” but must specify the exact structure and possible derivatives of the compound to be prohibited. It is easy to imagine the game of chemical cat and mouse that will follow any legislation, where a moderately skilled chemist can modify an existing compound to circumvent the law.

The current strategies to control drug use should be reconsidered. Head shops and legal highs exist as a direct consequence of the prohibition of ‘real’ drugs and the criminalisation of users.

A worrying trend is developing: As legal substances are gradually banned, more obscure compounds will be commercialised as legal highs. Whereas the pharmacology of illegal drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines has been studied intensively, virtually nothing is known about the effects of substances such as Mephedrone. This is clearly a state of affairs that needs to be rectified, and is a direct conseqence of lawmakers putting their heads in the sand.

The reality is that prohibition does not effectively diminish the prevalence of drug use and that, as in the case of tobacco, stringent regulation of retailers and consumer education are far more powerful approaches to curbing drug abuse.

than the 10.1 litres number that was there in 1986. The main tendency which actually marks Ireland out in terms of its drinking culture is not the amount we consume but rather the manner in which we consume it. Essentially Ireland gets its name for drinking from the degree to which many of us consume an

awful lot in a very short amount of time.

Thirty per cent of 15- to 34-year-olds still report frequent or heavy drinking.

The next highest state in this respect, Denmark, has only 18%. Over half of Irish people engage in binge-drinking.

In this area, sadly, we are still very much living up to our name.

Cabinet reshuffle causes TD ruckus John O’Rourke Columnist WERE THERE to be a Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races this year, there would be a certain scent of blood in the air. Following the party’s prolonged recent stay in the doldrums, high expectations abounded that the postPatrick’s Day Cabinet Reshuffle would introduce a significantly revamped ministerial line up. Gone would be gaff-prone Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, and her indubitably disastrous track record in the Department of Trade and Enterprise. Sayonara Mary Harney and her furiously unsuccessful six-year spell at curing the Health Services. The third Blessed Mary (in this case Hanafin) of Cowen’s Holy Trinity would now be allowed to step up, after two years spent waiting in the wings of Social Welfare.

The reshuffle, though ostensibly necessitated by the unprecedented departures of Willie O’Dea, Trevor Sargent and Martin Cullen, was long suspected. With Fianna Fáil due to face almost guaranteed devastation in the next general election, some kind of attempt at rejuvenation was certainly in order. Quelling increasing dissent amongst the Greens was also a priority; fulfilling the original promise of a second junior ministry would help keep the coalition party in check, for a little longer at any rate.

Armed with the knowledge of an imminent redistribution of coveted jobs, the recent proliferation of often calamitous media appearances by the main party’s back-benchers is more understandable. Deputies such as Thomas Byrne, Michael McGrath and Chris Andrews have continually graced our airwaves in recent weeks, either on radio shows like RTE Drivetime or Sam Smyth’s Sunday Supplement on Today FM, or on television programmes like TV3’s Tonight with Vincent Brown, or (last but not least) RTE’s The Frontline.

As mouthpieces for an increasingly loathed party, the TDs’ guest appearances take on slightly ritualistic resonances.

Like human votives from Aztec times, these politicians, fully complicit in their impending fate, act as human sacrifices, laying themselves open again and again to vitriolic heckling from the general public. With their only recourse being the unpopular but dogmatic doctrine of Fianna Fáil, the back-benchers, in the hopes of potentially moving up the cursus honorum to a junior ministry, are mauled apart by indignant members of the panel or audience.

Two recent appearances by Thomas Byrne are a perfect case in point. On a Frontline special about the lack of hiring opportunities for young people at the end of February, the Meath TD was tasked with delivering a ninety second

piece about Fianna Fáil’s plans to reinvigorate the employment landscape.

The audience, consisting mostly of disenfranchised graduates, and a bizarrely sanguine Bill Cullen, jeered and cajoled Byrne for the duration of the minute and a half, before descending into a brutal opprobrium once he had finished speaking. No cabinet minister would dare open themselves up to such a ferocious public annihilation, but Byrne, clearly harbouring dreams of front-bench promotion, endured the unrelenting torrents of abuse.

Widely tipped for the career advancement that a junior ministry would have entailed, Byrne survived

The redistribution of coveted jobs saw a proliferation of (often calamitous) media appearances by government TDs. the onslaught and was most recently seen on the post-reshuffle discussion on last week’s Tonight with Vincent Brown. Though likely still reeling from the disappointment of earlier on in the day, the TD maintained a dignified composure throughout the show. Yet again prevailed upon to defend Fianna Fáil policy against vitriolic opposition from his panel colleagues, the cagey Byrne may likely have to tread this path for some time to come.

However, following the significantly diminished chances of career advancement for back-benchers in the wake of the uninspired reshuffle, there were clearly no candidates forthcoming for last Monday’s Frontline debate on the state of healthcare in Ireland.

Mary Harney herself deigned to make an appearance, but in much changed circumstances. Throughout the whole show, presenter Pat Kenny promised in hushed tones the upcoming appearance by the Minister for Health, before Harney parachuted in after the final commercial break. Ignoring the bleating of the audience, she rushed through reams of learnt off facts and figures as evidence for improvements in the HSE. While disgruntled audience members tried to interject as the Minister paused for breath between statistical regurgitations, she continued to shout the studio down until the credits rolled. Perhaps if back-benchers like Byrne adopted the Harney model of hiding until the last minute before outrageously patronising the general public, they might have fared better last week.

FEATURES

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

9

Greatest Irish of, like, all time?

RTÉ recently published a list of the top 40 greatest Irish people who ever lived, as chosen by the public in “the most statistically Connell, John representative way” by a leading market research group. But with names like Daniel O’Donnell alongside Daniel O O’Connell, Colthurst takes a look at the great Irish men and women who have been forgotten by the public.

John Colthurst Staff Writer In those rather disorientated days between St. Patrick’s and April Fool’s, RTÉ delivered the home birth of its quest for Ireland’s Greatest (person). Down in Donnybrook, the family were delighted to announce the news, but like many a celebrity baby they won’t be releasing the pictures to a prying public for a number of months yet, leaving the people just a bewildering number of names to ponder over in anticipation. Instead of an Apple or a Peaches Honeyblossom, they’ve given us Louis Walsh and some of his offspring – although, given some of those selected, a second Geldof can’t have been too far from bridging the gap between the list and the metaphor.

Keeping up the celebrity credibility, RTÉ revealed the process to be a mixture of IVF and gestational surrogacy, with the people of Ireland, not your average Nobel sperm bank, providing the seed, and pollsters Ipsos MRBI carrying the pregnancy to delivery. Offering the sort of say in the final shakedown of names that Heat can only dream about, the online public had from 22 March-2 April to cut the collection down to five.

John McHugh’s Tyrone Productions will then film respective one-hour documentaries fronted by champions – not quite people’s champions, but the “well-known personality” sort of champions – rolling over the schedules in September, and a telephone vote will precipitate a winner

ness n i u G r A rthu announced on The Late Late Show in October.

Relayed over The Tubridy Show, the man responsible, John McHugh, explained that he had been inspired by the BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons, thinking “how much better that would play here… because what they don’t have is that robust sense of argument and debate, that we have”. Tubridy – who, to be fair, wasn’t entirely in the loop – was enthused by the prospect of an apparently obscure figure like Brunel, number two over there, shooting to the top over here. However, that didn’t account for either the difficulty that Brunel was shot to the top out of the matchless motormouth of Jeremy Clarkson, or the fact that there was nobody from the sciences on our list. And before the paddywhackery begins, bear in mind that in third-place was Diana, creating a royal sandwich with sixth-placed QEI, with Darwin, Shakespeare and Newton for fillings. Almost needless to say, the Discovery

Ha m Willia m

Channel’s The Greatest American was topped by Ronald “No regulation Reagonomics” Reagan, squashing Lincoln, King, Washington and Franklin between himself and sixth-placed George W. Bush. As for a nation with no such hang-ups or humility, how about them 200 Greatest Israelis?

Rather than just scoffing, sniggering, snorting, sneering at the people and knowing better than any of this, consider

Ipsos MRBI were asked to carry out “the most statistically valid way of generating a list from the public”, proceeding with 1000 face-to-face interviews. Women made up half of the sample, but only three were shortlisted. instead why it is that nearly 10% of Ireland’s “Greatest people” were behind Boyzone. While we have a particularly strong line in tragicomedy, even a bitterly excluded Beckett himself might hold back from having three hours of mayb two of Dolan them, plus maybe and O’Donnell, O’Donnell screened just laug at ourselves, so we can laugh o or, really, at others beneath wil argue/believe us. Some will kin of “awards” that this kind exercise is wrong, but p more are probably trying “iron to be “ironic”.

Were the likes of Colin Farrell Ste and Stephen Gately nominate as an oh-sonominated p clever post-modernist parody of popular culture, or because people didn’t know bett Either way any better? uns it’s unsatisfactory and rea that funny. not really Ipso Ipsos MRBI were asked to carry out “the most statistically valid way of gene generating a list from the public”, proc proceeding with 1000 face-to-face intervie interviews.

Women u half of the made up sample sample, but only shor three were shortlisted.

There guide were “non-directive guidelines”, but the only substantial one was the exclusion of RTÉ figures and serving politicians – the latter, amusingly, out of the apparent risk that one might make it through to the pictures round and get into difficulty with the Broadcasting Act. (Still, surprised Bertie couldn’t get an exemption.) As John McHugh emphasized, “this is a genuinely democratic list”. And so, however trivial it may seem, it calls into question the constituent state of our democracy (again). Everyone by now should already be aware that we are getting the governments that we vote for and political apathy is the problem and not the solution. More than just that routine reminder, this exercise offered the opportunity to show and to set before people examples of what greatness there has been in Ireland’s history, and at an appropriate time when Irish identity has been deracinated and dismissed.

The problem is one of public Th awareness. There is a clot i the heart of celebrity in natio and the of the nation histo seems to valve of history o It needs be closed off. plasmati wave of a plasmatic perspective to break a it down and wash it i obviously away. It is pretentiou pretentious to pretend to know “prop a “proper” list of 40, and personal preferen preferences or prejudic prejudices are probab the only probably fa fixed factor.

There is no cohesive, all-enc all-encompassing accou account of Irelan Ireland from whic to cast. which It is where experiments n in nationalism can become nebul nebulous.

So,

ilton

with consideration to the confines of space and subjectivity, who else should have been in the shakeup?

What are the criteria? Is it enough that they, or us, have some claim and that they aren’t in RTÉ or the Dáil?

Should they be born on/in Ireland?

Maybe, even if they play U-21s football for England, so long as they can be capped by Trapp with the blessing of FIFA it is enough – after all, the rules and remit of that organization seem to engage minds more than most others.

Them and their conspiracies… Maybe the rugby team is a better example.

But did “Nordies” have their chance with the Britons series; are Bono and Sir Bob likewise voided? The legacy of colonization, empire and partition demonstrably complicates such things.

For now, perhaps it’s easiest to begin with “born in Ireland” and see how far that goes.

From prehistory towards the end of the early modern period, very complacently, there stands Sheamus O’Shaunessy, from 3000 BC and a WWE world champion, Saints Brigid (451-525) and Columba (521-597), theologian John Scottus Eriugena (c. 810-880), Brian Boru (941-1014); passing over the clan chiefs, we come to St. Oliver Plunkett (1629-1681), perhaps the primer for Irish martyrdom. John Toland (1670-1722) was one of the first freethinkers of “modern” times, radically challenging the Church and prefiguring the Enlightenment. When it comes to the frenzied politics of nationalism, the complexities, conflicts and contradictions are the one constant; it takes all sorts though. The romantic heroes of the United Irishmen and the Fenians have been rhapsodized, but about the women? Anne Devlin (17811851) was, the unpaid housekeeper to Robert Emmet enduring torture and incarceration to protect him and the wider cause. Mary Ann McCracken (1770-1866) also provided refuge to the United Irishmen, as well as raising the orphaned illegitimate child of her executed brother against her family’s wishes; being a progressive employer and philanthropist in Belfast; being a forceful voice of feminism in the nationalist movement; an ardent abolitionist, particularly as it was almost forgotten in Britain after the Act of 1833 while it continued in America and elsewhere; secretarying to Edward Bunting in his collection of Irish music, amongst other cultural contributions; and a secretary in the Belfast Charitable Society amongst much other charitable work, including in the Poorhouse where she helped to establish an infant and a ladies school, and in work for the relief of Irish and sick destitution. All that and more for 96 years.

In the more peaceful current of the political waters were such early Irish patriots as Henry Flood (1732-1791) and Henry Grattan Sr. (1746-1820), prominent pioneers of the movement for legislative independence and emancipation. Contrariously, consider: arch-villain Lord Castlereagh (17691822) who tried to redeem his reputation in Ireland with Catholic emancipation, was the War Secretary behind the Peninsular Campaign and the Foreign Secretary behind the defeat of Napoleon and Congress of Vienna and the settlement of Europe for nearly the next 100 years; Edmund Burke (17301797), whose legacy is so substantial and contentious that it can’t be approached in a few words; the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), Waterloo and all that, gave a decisive, if politically expedient, final push to the Catholic Emancipation Bill.

Sorry if that was a bit silly.

Sifting through the hazardous hinterland of Home Rule, following from Isaac Butt (1813-1879) and John Martin (1812-1875), we come across the political poltergeists of the likes of Michael Davitt (1846-1906), William O’Brien (1852-1928), Horace Plunkett (1854-1932), D. D. Sheehan (1873-1948), Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (18781916) and Tom Kettle (1880-1916), more conciliatory political reformists whose grassroots campaigns achieved major social advances in land and labour laws. The Rising’s executed are rightly remembered, and the remaining men and independence insurgents made up the establishment afterwards. Again, the role of women seems to have been short-shrifted. Constance Markievicz (1868-1972) and Maud Gonne (18661953) are fairly famous. Jennie Wyse Power (1858-1941) was one of those most loyal to Parnell to the bitter end; she became a member of the executive of the Gaelic League; co-founded the Daughters of Ireland and, later, the Women’s League; was a guardian of the North Dublin Poor Law Union,

a founding member, treasurer and vice-president of Sinn Féin, at every opportunity advocating suffrage and women’s rights; and it was in her Henry St. restaurant that the Proclamation of the Republic was signed, and from where she brought food to those in the GPO during the Rising. Kathleen Clarke (1878-1972) was entrusted with the IRB’s Volunteer Dependants’ Fund and gave Michael Collins his first position of administrative responsibility within the republican movement; with Wyse Power she succeeded with a motion that equal rights for women became Sinn Féin party policy in 1917, was proactive in charities, and later, as a Senator, opposed the Government as it betrayed women’s rights, boldly criticizing the 1937 Constitution in this regard. Other significant feminist figures include Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (18771946) and Helena Molony (1883-1967), who introduced Markievicz to the nationalist and feminist movements, was the first Irishwoman of her generation imprisoned for a political offence (throwing a stone at a portrait of the King) and a frequent player for the Abbey Theatre, spirited Jim Larkin (1876-1947) into the Imperial Hotel in disguise for his “Bloody Sunday” address, was the general secretary of the Irish Women Workers’ Union, and took full part in the Rising, later continuing in the cause of women’s and workers’ rights.

In the aftermath, W. T. Cosgrave (1880-1965) deserves more credit than he probably gets for the steady establishment of the state, if not for the achievements of his Government (unarmed Garda Síochána; 1923 Land Act, 1924 Courts of Justice Act; ESB, Ardnacrushna and the first national grid in Europe; balanced budgets, Agricultural Credit Corporation, Industrial Credit Company; as against the executions without trial of republican prisoners during the Civil War and later “red scare”-mongering), then for the peaceful and democratic handing

[Noel Browne] has been recognised; however, the woman on whose work the TB programme was based was not.

Dorothy StopfordPrice introduced the use of BCG in Ireland and was nominated for the World Health Organization Leon Barnard prize for her contribution to social medicine. over of power, heading off a potential military coup by O’Duffy in favour of a bitter rival at a time when Europe was falling to fascism. Seán Lemass (18991971) oversaw the reform and recovery of Ireland from de Valera’s economic protectionism and isolationism, and he would have been the first to recognise the role of the ideas of economists T. K. Whitaker (1916-) and Patrick Lynch (1917-2001); and also ministers such as Paddy Hillery (1923-2008) and Donogh O’Malley (1921-1968), who combined to bring in comprehensive and free education up to the age of 18, as well as establishing Regional Technical Colleges and rural transportation schemes. Hillery also introduced legislation for equal pay for women as European Commissioner for Social Affairs and put the constitutional above the party-political in his reluctant role as President of Ireland. Seán MacBride (1904-1988) showed the potential of a junior partner in Government: as Minister for External Affairs, he opened Ireland up to Europe, helped draft the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and effected the Declaration of the Republic of Ireland; in later life he helped to establish Amnesty International and was the only person to win both the Nobel and Lenin peace prizes. He also brought into the Cabinet his Clann na Poblachta colleague Noel Browne, who has been recognised; however, the woman on whose work the TB programme was based was not. Dorothy Stopford-Price (1890-1954) introduced the use of BCG in Ireland (and, indeed, Britain) and was nominated for the World Health Organization Leon Barnard prize for her

contribution to social medicine.

O t h e r significant sociological figures slipping the net are: Nano Nagle (17181784) and Teresa Mulally (1728-1803), founders off n the Presentation d Order in Cork and nd Dublin; Edmund 4), Rice (1766-1844), ed who then founded an the Christian nd Brothers and ion the Presentation ine Brothers; Catherine 841) McAuley (1778-1841) head and Mary Aikenhead (1787-1858), who ters of founded the Sisters eligious Mercy and the Religious Sisters of Charity; Thomas Barnardo (18451905), of the charity that takes his name; Francis Maginn (1861-1918), establishing the British Deaf Association; Aengus Finucane (1932-2009) of Concern and Niall Mellon (1967-) of the eponymous Township Trust.

Culturally – shoving in sport as per Government guidelines – the most overtly overlooked are: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745); harpist Turlough Carolan (1670-1738); philosopher and Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753); GAA co-founder and athlete Maurice Davin (1842-1927); GAA co-founder Michael Cusack (1847-1906); co-founder of the Irish Literary Theatre and folklorist Lady Gregory (1852-1932); dramatist, polemicist, Fabian and Nobel Literature laureate extraordinaire George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950); Gaelic League founder and first President of Ireland Douglas Hyde (1860-1949); painter Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957); explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922); explorer and survivor Tom Crean (1877-1938); painter William Orpen (1878-1931); dramatist Seán O’Casey (1880-1964); tenor John McCormack (1884-1945); dancer and establisher of the Royal Ballet, amongst others, Ninette de Valois (1898-2001); writer Frank O’Connor (1903-1966); two-time Irish Olympic gold medallist and general practitioner Pat O’Callaghan (1906-1991); artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992); satirist Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966) horse trainer Vincent O’Brien (1917-2009); rugby player, humanitarian and consultant y , surgeon in Zambia for nearlyy 40 years, 26-); actor Jack Kyle (1926-); Peter ); poet O’Toole (1932); terature and Nobel Literature Seamus laureate Heaney (1939-)..

In business and the reating economy, creating nd all employment and that hopefully goes ut the with it, stands out patriarchal Arthur 1725Guinness (1725cions 1803) and scions thur such as Arthur ness Edward Guinness (1840-1915), Edward Cecil 47Guinness (1847pert 1927) and Rupert ecil Edward Cecil ess Lee Guinness (1874-1967). st, Last, not least, ly but still badly breviated, are the scientists: Robert Boyle (1627-1691) of Boyle’s

rd Shaw a n r e B e g r G eo

Ernest Wa lt

Law and father of modern chemistry; Francis Beaufort (17741857), creator of the wind-foce scale; Nicholas Callan (1799-1864), invention of the induction coil and the world’s first transformer; William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) reformulated Newtonian mechanics into Hamiltonian mechanics, discovered quaternions which eventually put men on the moon and satellites into space, and much more besides; George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), important contributions to fluid dynamics, mathematical physics, breakthrough on role of haemoglobin in carrying oxygen in blood, stalwart of the Royal Society, and much more besides…; John Tyndall (1820-1893), answered why the sky is blue and was the first to propose the greenhouse effect; Lord Kelvin (18241907), coining the term “kinetic energy” and so much more; George Johnstone Stoney (1826-1911) coined the electron; physicist George Fitzgerald (1851-1901); engineer and inventor of the world’s first effective steam turbine Charles Parsons (1854-1931); Thomas McLoughlin (1896-1971), engineer and proponent of Ardnacrushna HE dam; Ernest Walton (1903-1995) Nobel physics laureate for “atom-smashing”, enough said; John Stewart Bell (1928-1990), originator of Bell’s Theorem; Harry Ferguson (18841960), modern agricultural tractor; Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943-), discovered pulsars, one of the great astronomical discoveries of the 20th century.

Unlike Ryan Tubridy inevitably will have in that Late Late Show, there probably isn’t one for everyone in the p y, though, g , there is audience. Hopefully, still something to take away and think about in the meantime.

on

RTÉ’S TOP 40 IN ALHABETICAL ORDER Bono Dr Noel Browne Michael Collins James Conolly Éamon De Valera Joe Dolan Ronnie Drew Colin Farrell Garret Fitzgerald Stephen Gately Bob Geldof Pádraig Harrington Charles Haughey Séamus Heaney John Hume James Joyce John B. Keane Roy Keane Ronan Keating Séan Lemass

Jack Lynch Phil Lynott Paul McGrath Christy Moore Liam Neeson Daniel O’Connell Daniel O’Donnell Brian O’Driscoll Michael O’Leary John O’Shea Sonia O’Sullivan Charles Stewart Parnell Patrick H. Pearse Christy Ring Mary Robinson Adi Roche Wolfe Tone Louis Walsh Oscar Wilde WB Yeats

10

BUSINESS & CAREERS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

An interview with Bertie Ahern, man of the people Alex Hamilton drops into the famous Drumcondra office of the former Taoiseach to sample some of Bertie’s famous charm and banter.

Alex Hamilton Staff Writer AFTER RESIGNING as party leader in early 2008, Bertie Ahern has gone underground, appearing only for the occasional Dáil vote. For years, he was the single most important figure in Leinster House, helping to shape policy and set direction for Ireland.

His time in office has divided opinion sharply; some believe that he helped to create the mess we are in today, while others laud him for his role in Northern Ireland and the introduction of social partnership.

I arrive at the famous St. Luke’s in Drumcondra more than a little nervous. There are countless photos of Ahern in the lobby; a framed letter from Bill Clinton thanking him for a present and another with Bono and the U2 crew. His secretary tells me in no uncertain terms that he is a “pet”: I am slightly more wary given his reputation for waffling.

I am met by a firm handshake, and a beaming smile that immediately puts me at ease. Undeniable charm no doubt but I have many difficult questions to ask. It is strange to think that just over two years ago this man would have been globetrotting and now here he is in his small office in Drumcondra. Does he miss being Taoiseach? “I do and I don’t.

I was going to finish up at the end of the decade anyway, and I probably would have finished last Christmas if I didn’t get in to all the other nonsense. I was getting to a stage where after 30 years of it, it was time to move on.”

But amid the challenges of today, surely his experience would have counted for something. “I would have liked to have been there during the recession, because all my experience and my background with the currency crisis.....I reckon I could have had a lot to offer. But that was at the beginning of 2008, and the lads have settled down and I think they’re handling it well.”

His keenness for all things politics began at an early age, around the dinner table and debating in school. “At home people were always talking about sport and politics......I was the youngest so I was there listening to the others, debating and fighting over things. You grew up being very conscious that there was a president and a political system.”

His passion for politics is clear: “If there are two things you can do in life, you can sit on the stool and talk about it, or you can actually do something about it.

And the only way you can do something about it in the democratic society is be involved and active in politics.”

Mr. Ahern began his career campaigning for Fianna Fáil in the mid and late 1960s, but at that time sport was his passion, playing Gaelic football and hurling, and for the Home Farm as left full, perhaps helping to fuel the passion with which he now writes his famous sports column.

However, politics was soon to take over, and Mr. Ahern was then elected to the Dail in 1977, and so began his close relationship with Charlie Haughey.

What was it like working with the man? “For me it was good. Charlie was a very efficient worker. Charlie came

“Charlie came in and the hours he spent were action. He was demanding, and he was not in to listening to people for an hour talking bullshit” in and the hours he spent were action.

He was demanding, and he was not in to listening to people for an hour talking bullshit...a telephone call was very much to the point, and there were no ‘howyas’ or ‘how’s the weather’”. It is clear that Mr. Ahern admires some of his qualities, notably his ability to analyse problems. “He was very sharp with legislation, and he could pick up on something. He could read something once, and he had it. He was very good at asking the key questions.”

Stark differences are evident between the two men and Ahern points to his use of charm as a contrast to Haughey’s abruptness. “I would never have been as direct as him.....I think that is where people (either) liked him or disliked him. I would not be like that. I probably learned that is not a great thing to do, as you do alienate a whole lot of people. I would have always been more consensus-minded.

I certainly would not have had the same style as Haughey.” Perhaps this helped developed his skills around the negotiation table.

During the chaos that was much of the 1980s, with several elections, many were whispering about Haughey’s irregular finances and it eventually emerged about political donations in the early 1990s. Did Mr. Ahern’s respect for him change? “Well I couldn’t understand that, and why anyone would need that amount of money. I

mean what would you do with it?

It caused us a lot of grief in the party and a lot of anxiety. It didn’t take my respect away from him as a good guy and as a good politician, but it was certainly something I found hard to understand.”

Indeed it was under Haughey’s government in 1987 where Mr. Ahern had his first ministerial experience; first as Minister of Labour, and then as Minister of Finance from 1991 to 1994.

He recalls it with great nostalgia and is clearly proud of his record. “You learnt a huge amount... putting together the first Programme for National Recovery, and then the second one Programme for Economy and Social Progress... I learnt how to deal with the employers, the farmers, the unions. I learnt how to negotiate very well.”

1994 brought about a change in the Irish political landscape, and Fianna Fáil found themselves in opposition.

Mr. Ahern was the likely candidate for leadership, and he was elected to head of the party in 1994. However their time in opposition was short-lived, as Fianna Fáil formed a new government with the PD’s and a number of independents in 1997, with Mr. Ahern becoming Taoiseach.

1998 was a huge test for the new Taoiseach, with negotiations in the Northern Ireland peace process coming to a head. He is clearly proud of his contribution: “It is 12 years ago this week, and when you look back now, Northern Ireland is a very safe place now. It is doing well, and there is good employment up there. The people and parties are working together, and there is a lot of North-South participation.

The ultimate thing about the Good Friday Agreement was to end the

when I ask him about his proudest achievements, he points to both his role in Northern Ireland “my most important achievement because it has saved people’s lives” legacy of bitterness and violence, to build a peaceful future, and to get the executive and assembly working

together.”

While the events of 1998 highlighted Mr. Ahern’s skills as a politician, many would argue that those early years as Taoiseach also sowed the seeds for the property bubble and culture of extravagance which has afflicted this country. What does he say to the accusation that his government should have saved more? “When I was Minister of Finance the debt to GDP ratio was at 100%. We got that down to 10%, which was historically very low.

And McCreevy and myself [put] 1% of GDP in to the pension fund. If we hadn’t have done that, the mess would have been far bigger, and I think, and I feel strongly about this, we have not been given enough credit in the national media for those two things.”

Indeed, when I ask him about his proudest achievements, he points to both his role in Northern Ireland - “my most important achievement because it has saved people’s lives”- and his building up of the economy since 1987.

It is clear that he is unwavering in his belief that Ireland’s economy has progressed significantly since Fianna Fáil took over, despite the severe economic recession.

On the subject of his regrets, he is not very forthcoming, but does point to the health service: “For the money that we put in to health service... and we put in an extra 100,000 people... I would have wished I could have done more on that. For the money and the resources that we were putting in, it should be better. I would have liked to have seen it through.” But many commentators have questioned why it took so long for any meaningful progress. “It was just very difficult. You had so many vested interests that you had to try to deal with.”

Turning to education, we talk now of fees and his advice for graduates. What is his opinion on the whole issue and is he in favour of reintroducing fees. “We were not in favour of the abolition of fees.

What I wanted to do was create a better means-tested system. I still think that.”

So why didn’t he change it when he was in government? “Listen, it was popular.

Now what we have done since is bring in the various maintenance charges. To bring in full commercial fees? It is not

possible b e c a u s e people couldn’t afford it.”

The Mahon tribunal cannot help but crop up, and I can see some anger, or perhaps it is resentment, about what he has experienced under the glaring eyes of the public. “I don’t think it has overshadowed [my reputation] but it has certainly damaged it. They were meant to be investigating one thing, and I think they could have investigated the one thing without investigating 99 things. They just kept at it and at it and at it.”

On the whole, Mr. Ahern does lament that it ever happened: “If I ever thought that I was going to end up [like that], I wouldn’t have taken a stamp, even though people gave it to me with no agenda. There was nothing wrong, and they did it for the best motives.

They knew it was a period where I was hard-strapped but if you knew if there was going to be all this, you would never have got in to it.” Finally I ask him for his opinion about the problems with Irish politics. He rejects the notion that our system is too adversarial, saying that others countries are just like us.

Instead he points to reform; “I do think our system should be reformed, but I have no confidence that it will be. I am in favour of single seat constituencies in the country. I think that if you had 120 seats in the Dail with single seat constituencies, the constituents would get far better service, the politicians would get better resources, and you would have a stronger committee system.”

Are we a nation of moaners and begrudgers, given his experience as a politician on the frontline constantly being criticised? “We certainly have more begrudgers in this country per head of population [than anywhere else]. We have a great thing in this country of helping a guy up and then knock him when he is up. We like witch hunts.” Did he ever get angry as a politician due to this? “Sometimes you just get fed up, but I don’t think you get angry. It is just life... my attitude is to go off to a football match or have a pint. I don’t get myself wound up.”

With that, the interview comes to a close and I am left to ponder Bertie’s legacy. He seems proud of his record and defensive in the face of criticism, but on the other hand there is a certain remoteness or detachment about him; you can’t help but feel there are many layers to the man, many of which we will never know.

FORTNIGHT IN FIGURES

-10%

150

0.3%

1,922,400

35% – 40%

The fall in house prices predicted this year by economists according to a recent Friends First survey.

Property values have fallen 50 per cent since 2007.

The number of jobs Ebay is to set to create as it moves to expand its Dublin operations. This brings to over 1,600 the number of people the firm employs at its Blanchardstown offices.

Quarter-on-quarter growth in the third quarter last year, technically implying that Ireland came out of recession in July-September.

However, using GNP, output declined by 1.4% on a quarterly basis.

Persons in employment in the third quarter of 2009, a record annual decrease of 184,700 or 8.8%, according to the latest QNHS.

The percentage the Sunday Business Post reported that Bank of Ireland will face a discount on its first batch of loans.

BUSINESS & CAREERS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

11

The psychology of advertising Lisa Keenan Deputy Business & Careers FOR THE better part of a century advertising has been the elephant in the room for economics. The industry is by far the most striking illustration of the inadequacies which plague economic theory, yet its true nature has been largely ignored by the discipline. And no wonder. Nothing does more damage to the rational economic man assumption than supposedly rational consumers developing emotional attachments to commodities. The fact of the matter is that both economics and advertising work off views of human beings which are caricatures – the former believes earnestly in Man’s capacity for Reason, the latter in his capacity for boundless desire.

The history of advertising reveals just how diametrically opposed its underlying assumptions are to those of the field of economics. Adam Curtis’ brilliant documentary, the "Century of the Self", traces the murky origins of the industry. Modern advertising as we know it represents a complete break with the straightforward ads of the turn of the century. Instead of trying to sell a product on the basis of its innate characteristics, advertising now began to link people’s unconscious desires with mass-produced commodities. The man at the centre of this revolution was Sigmund Freud’s American nephew, Edward Bernays, and he borrowed heavily from his uncle’s work. Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda, would later do the same.

Although Bernays was initially involved in political propaganda he quickly turned to advertising and set up as the first ever Public Relations guru an the 1920s. His first major coup was breaking the taboo around women smoking, at the request of the American Tobacco Company. Bernays consulted A. A. Brill, one of the first psychoanalysts in the US, and he concluded that cigarettes were a symbol of male sexual power; women could be persuaded to smoke if they were made to believe that in doing so they would liberate themselves.

Bernays put this insight to good use by persuading a group of debutants to light up at the New York Easter parade; he then told members of the press that the women were suffragettes and that they

planned to light up ‘torches of freedom’.

The plan was a success and the rest, as they say, is history. Smoking cigarettes did not make women any freer but it made them feel liberated; Bernays had succeeded in linking a product to an emotional desire.

Although advertising has become much more sophisticated over the past few decades, it still borrows heavily from the initial insights introduced by Edward Bernays. Not only did he create product placement in movies but he also created PR for politicians when he used movie stars to make the President appear more glamorous. Political parties today have been heavily influenced by this with New Labour in particular jumping on the PR bandwagon (the appointment

the reason that advertising works is that its adepts are experts in appealing to our irrational side; they’ve had decades of practice. of Sir Alan Sugar, now Lord Sugar, as an advisor to Gordon Brown was less due to his business acumen than to the fact that he is a reality TV star). PR is also the single most useful tool which companies can turn to when attempting to cultivate the image of their brand.

The problem with the diffusion of these techniques is that we become desensitized to them and advertisers have to constantly refine and develop their methods in order for us to keep noticing their product. This results in the encroachment of advertising on the space that we inhabit, both public and private, and means that we seldom enjoy a respite from the hoards of brands vying for our attention. If we were the purely rational beings that economic theory assumes us to be, this would not be a problem: it would be simply a matter of ignoring the latest attempt by Coke to sell its product, urging us to "do our thing," or the ridiculously catchy music from the ad for Addidas featuring David Beckham relaxing at what looks like the coolest house party ever. Unfortunately,

the reason that advertising works is that its adepts are experts in appealing to our irrational side; they’ve had decades of practice and employ multi-million dollar budgets as well as huge teams of employees in order to achieve their aims. These resources have spawned such brainwaves as viral advertising (this is commonly used when promoting films) and shock tactics (Benetton’s highly controversial ad campaign featuring death row inmates is one notable example) in order to make a certain brand stand out.

Alissa Quart’s book, Branded, describes the various underhanded techniques employed by marketers to gather information on their "demographic" in order to make their ad campaigns more effective is sobering reading; all the more so because the demographic in question is made up of teens and pre-teens. The use of "trendspotters" and teen consultants by the industry is an awkward reminder of the lengths companies will go to in order to be get the competitive edge.

Although advertising purports to be all about giving the consumer choice, it is a funny kind of choice on offer: the dice is loaded in the favour of those who can win the hearts and minds of the buyer – no matter what techniques they employ to do so. Hyper-differentiation of commodities is the key factor here.

The consumer must be made to feel that a certain product is the one for them because it can give him or her something that no other product can. Studies which have revealed participants’ inability to identify leading brands of cola from supermarket own-brands illustrate this point. The reality of whether products are actually different is irrelevant, what matters is that they are differentiated in the mind of the consumer.

Of course, the holy grail of the advertising industry is the casting off of the product and the promotion of the brand as an entity in its own right.

Naomi Klein notes that this is the way that advertising is going as campaigns become more and more abstract (Calvin Klein ads are notable for their distinct lack of the clothing line which they are supposed to promote) and the brand becomes decoupled from the products that bear its mark. I think that perfume and aftershave ads come very close to this state. They enable advertisers to

dispense with the charade of trying to sell a product to us and instead give them scope to simply present the lifestyle they want their brand to communicate.

They don’t have to pretend that the product is healthy, good value, or useful. Buying perfume and aftershave is what it is: pointless, expensive and an exercise in conspicuous consumption.

However, for many people, picking up a bottle of the latest perfume by a star or a famous fashion house gives them the opportunity to experience a glamour which would otherwise be out of their reach. Indeed, the names of the perfumes refer more to different facets of the brand than to their fragrance (Opium by YSL, Glam Princess by Vera Wang, The One by D&G). And foremost in these ad campaigns is desire – for the brand, for the lifestyle, for the impossibly beautiful models staring down the lens of the camera.

Although it is true that advertisers

engage in the manipulation of our unconscious desires in order to flog their products, it is a mistake to assume that they enjoy this privilege unchallenged.

Every so often an ad campaign is produced that is so ridiculous that some one calls them on it and, chastened, the company has to withdraw it and start again. BP’s "beyond petroleum" ad campaign is one notable example of this. Advertisers were apparently unaware of the fact that they were giving the impression that BP were about to "go green." When it was revealed that the campaign was just so much empty rhetoric, it was quietly dropped by the company due to criticism. Brands also come under attack from those who engage in grassroots "culture jamming", the practice of using advertisers’ output (magazine ads, billboards etc) to talk back to them. Guerrilla artists parody advertisements under the cover of darkness and in the morning companies’

The lady is not for turning Alan McQuaid takes a look at the political rhetoric developing in Germany and the potential impact for the Eurozone as a whole.

Alan McQuaid Chief Economist, Bloxham ANGELA MERKEL’S vocal stand against aid for Greece has won her points at home in Germany, but is also exposing her to charges of deepening Greece’s debt woes and raising the chance it will ultimately need to use the bailout funds agreed by Eurozone leaders this week.

European officials and economists who agree with the German Chancellor’s fundamental position that Greece must clean up its finances alone and be given aid only as a last resort - say Merkel has crossed a line with some recent public statements.

Her recent calls for a change in EU rules to allow the expulsion of euro members clearly undermined a nascent rebound in investor confidence built on Greece’s new austerity package and its successful 10-year bond sale in early March. While one can fully understand where Merkel is coming from in maintaining fiscal stability in Euroland, the timing of her comments have left a lot to be desired, and certainly appear to have done more harm than good. Whether this is a deliberate ploy on her part, only she

knows.

Merkel has many reasons for resisting the notion of aid to Eurozone countries.

Her advisers believe financial support for Greece from Eurozone partners, regardless of how it is packaged, could violate the bloc’s no-bailout clause and face challenges in Germany’s highest court, which has shown a euro-sceptic streak in the past. Berlin fears moving too rapidly on aid could also discourage other euro members from getting their finances in order, haunting the bloc with moral hazard issues for years to come.

Germany’s hard line stance appears to have resulted in concessions from its euro partners on a strengthening of the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, including tighter surveillance of Euroland economies and onerous new penalties for violators of bloc budget rules. But officials from Germany’s Eurozone partners say some of Merkel’s public pronouncements reflect a tonedeafness towards the markets that was also evident during the outbreak of the global financial crisis in late 2008.

In times of crisis, investor confidence is inevitably delicate. Merkel has sometimes appeared oblivious to

this, and keener to ram home her uncompromising message than tone it down to avoid stoking uncertainty over Greece’s fate.

Criticism of her handling of the crisis has been loudest from officials in Eurozone governments who see political calculation behind her tough rhetoric. Some EU officials believe Merkel’s tough stance has being shaped primarily by the looming state election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state and a bellwether for national politics.

If Merkel’s ally loses control of the state in the May 9 vote, her majority in the upper house of parliament will be lost, hampering her ability to push through legislation. Agreeing a bailout for Greece before the poll might hurt her chances because the German public is deeply opposed to aid, but the nature of the agreement should help to allay public concern.

The problem is that once investors

start fearing a country might be expelled from the euro bloc, they will sell that sovereign’s bonds. You can then call this "speculation", a "conspiracy" or "reducing risk exposure", but the end result will be tremendous market pressure that will push the country in question even closer to the brink.

Merkel has a history of putting domestic political considerations before international obligations. In the run-up to last year’s federal election

Merkel has a history of putting domestic political considerations before international obligations. she resisted US pressure to boost Afghan troop numbers and take inmates from Guantanamo Bay. A year ago, Merkel also led opposition to an aid package for eastern European

countries hit by the economic crisis.

But, the bottom line is that the Berlin Republic is more inward looking and less committed to being in the vanguard of European integration than the Bonn Republic was. There is also a generational change vis-à-vis the strong pro-European consensus of previous generations. Being instinctively proEuropean is now old-fashioned.

There is the whole issue too of the relationship between Germany and France. Behind the dispute about whether and how to help Greece, the most blatant violator of the EU’s fiscal rules, lies an unresolved difference between founders Germany and France about the nature and purpose of the euro.

The French see the crisis as demonstrating the need for a European economic government that would coordinate industrial and budget policies better, and help rebalance Germany’s export-oriented economy towards greater domestic consumption.

Somehow, it is hard to see Berlin seeing it that way, which all points to this Greek debt drama eventually ending in tears for nearly all concerned despite last week’s showing of EU solidarity.

attempts to worm their way into our unconscious is turned on its head: the skinny model is begging for a meal and the poster advertising cigarettes now features a toddler just dying for a smoke.

The practice is not new (Klein traces its origins back to the 1930s) but adbusting gains purchase when citizens feel that they are suffocating under the weight of the advertisers’ output. It doesn’t have to involve graffiti and breaking the law: absolutely everybody can be an ad buster. Next time you’re watching TV, stuck on the Luas with brands everywhere you look, or just flipping through a magazine, pick an ad and analyse it to death. Ask yourself if you really believe that buying this new brand of yoghurt will make you a healthier, happier, more spontaneous individual?

Think of it as culture jamming on a psychological level. Public space may be fast disappearing but our heads are our own. Let’s keep it that way.

TOP 10 REASONS TO STUDY ECONOMICS 1. Economists are armed and dangerous: “Watch out for our invisible hands.”

2. Economists can supply it on demand.

3. When you call 1-900-LUVECON and get Kandi Keynes, you will have something to talk about.

4. You get to say “trickle down” with a straight face.

5. Mick Jagger and Arnold Schwarzenegger both studied economics and look how they turned out.

6. When you are in the unemployment line, at least you will know why you are there.

7. If you rearrange the letters in “ECONOMICS”, you get “COMIC NOSE”.

8. Although ethics teaches that virtue is its own reward, in economics we get taught that reward is its own virtue.

9. When you get drunk, you can tell everyone that you are just researching the law of diminishing marginal utility.

10. Economists do it with models.

12

BUSINESS & CAREERS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

Winners and losers of the global recession ≠The last number of months have been turbulent for the business world, with ups and downs, forecasts and predictions, and, of course, winners and losers of the long recession. Here, we pick our top 10 winners in white and bottom 10 blue losers, and look at how fortune has favoured them.

IKEA

THE IRISH ECONOMY:

RYANAIR

‘OLD RELIABLES’

WHEN THE Dublin store opened its doors on July 27 2009 many felt we had finally achieved home improvement Nirvana. At a time when rival firms are experiencing difficulties IKEA has been going from strength to strength. The firm succeeds due to its innovative low cost, low price strategy. And Ingvar Kamprad, its founder and the world’s fifth richest person, is setting his sights on the Asian market. The retailer has managed to use the shift in consumer expectations that the downturn has created in order to increase its market share. Serbia, Ukraine, Thailand and Bulgaria are set to start flying the distinctive blue and yellow flag some time this year.

IN SEPTEMBER 2008, the Irish government announced that the economy had slipped into a recession for the first time since the 1980s. Things went from bad to worse as the banking system revealed itself to be rotten, unemployment rose, house prices fell and the Government moved to introduce dramatic cuts in its budget. Although the ESRI has forecast an end to the recession mid-way through the year, Ireland has become less of a ‘shining light’ for Europe, as it was once described

by The Economist, and more of an embarrassing cousin who went off the deep end and is now being viewed with askance by the rest of the family at gettogethers.

LOVE HIM or hate him Ryanair’s CEO, Mr. Michael O’Leary, seems to have expansion in times of recession all sewn up. The airline now gets over 73 million passengers a year from A to B, making it the largest airline in Europe. For the first six months of its financial year to the end of September 2009, Ryanair reported a net profit of €387 million and a 15% rise in passenger volumes compare with the pr previous year. The no-frills airline’s success is due in no small measure to its ability to slap on ancillary charges wherever it can.

Controversial advertising is what makes this firm stand out from its competitors.

With Ryanair hoping to expand into the trans-Atlantic market, it is only a matter of time before it corners the US market.

THE GLOBAL recession saw the demise of many firms which were loved by millions. We still mourn the loss of Zaavi (UK and Ireland), Habitat and Hughes & Hughes. Most distressing of all has been the loss of Woolworths Group Plc, set up in 1909, which went into liquidation in early 2009 resulting in 27,000 job losses. Images of the closing-down sales in a store that was as much a part of British culture as the Queen or red post-boxes brought home to millions the reality that this recession is no respecter of status.

PRINTED MEDIA

BUDGET MULTIPLES

ALTHOUGH THE decline of printed media is not the fault of the global recession, it has hurried the process up. Newspapers have long been struggling to compete with twenty-four hour news stations and the internet and now bookshops are finding themselves under threat too. The Observer finds itself marginalised while resources are allocated to developing Apps and improving the Guardian’s website. Murdoch’s papers, most notably The Times, have also been feeling the strain. Bookshops are also feeling the heat from the economic climate and from the new wave of e-Readers.

THE GLOBAL recession has seen the rise of the discount supermarket retailer. The Aldi group encompasses 8,210 supermarkets while its rival Lidl has a firm hold in 20 countries worldwide. Both have plans to expand in the future and they look set to continue to enjoy huge increases in sales revenue.

Their success is due to their low cost strategy which many chains are now trying to emulate. Although this strategy has resulted in the kind of criticism that Wal-Mart has been subject to for years, everything seems to be in place for their continued expansion.

T THE DISINTEGRATION of the ffamous producer of hand-cut crystal came as a blow to those who were emplo employed there as well as the Irish economy as a wh whole.

Long considered an Irish success story, even the in the dark days of the 1980s, the firm began to experience difficulties when Americans reduced their demand due to a weakening dollar. Despite workers holding an unofficial sit-in, the plant at Kilbarry was closed at the start of 2009. In the end a compromise was reached with its new private equity owners: the manufacturing side of thing has been dramatically scaled back (the new facility will employ only 80-90 full-time staff). The visitor centre is set to open in June of this year.

THE NUMBER one condom brand in the world, Durex is sold in over 150 countries.

SL International, Its parent company, SSL which also owns such household brands as mp of Scholl and Full Marks, has reported a jump 59% of its profits in the first half of 2009. The e rise in condom sales suggests that people ht in. are rediscovering the joys of a cheap night pled The expansion of Durex’s Play range coupled hat with the launch of new products suggestss tthat he revenues are set to grow for the firm for the ex foreseeable future. Prepare to see a ‘Durex n index’ take over from the ‘lipstick index’ ass an indicator of economic health.

UNILEVER THE MANUFACTURING giant is showing that despite its already dominant market position this is no time for firms to be complacent. Although the company posted a fall in sales of 4.8% last month, net income still handily beat estimates. Unilever remains firmly in the winners’ category for its innovative response to the current crisis. The appointment of new CEO Paul Polman marks a significant change: he plans to cut down bureaucracy and to make the decision-making process more rapid. Price ccuts of 11% across 70% of its bran shows how the firm is now brands in in-step with what consumers want.

EMPLOYMENT ALTHOUGH THIS is an issue that all Western countries are currently trying to deal with, one of the most dramatic falls in employment since 2007 has been here in Ireland. Unemployment currently stands at 12.6% and although this represents a fall of 0.1% on the previous month there is no cause for celebration. There are signs that a ‘brain drain’ is underway and Richard Bruton, fine Gael’s spokesman for Finance, opined that Ireland’s ‘brightest and best’ had left the country. Fears have also been sparked that even if things do pick up for the economy, the recovery could p prove to be a jobless one.

MCDONALD’S WHEN TIMES get tough, customers apparently head to McDonald’s. And the fast food giant is lovin’ it. Global sales for the corporation rose by 4.8% in February, year-on-year. This result saw its share price climb to $64.19, a rise of 0.8%. And the chain looks set to continue to exploit cash-strapped consumers’ move away from luxury goods; Kenneth Chan, the company’s Chief Executive in China, has announced plans to open as many as 175 outlets in the st be country this year alone. It must said that the firm’s success is as mer much due to evolving consumer o preferences as its response to the changing context.

HOMEOWNERS: THE FALL in house prices has been one of the key aspects of the recession which has hit t. members of the general public the hardest.

Although certain countries do not share a passion for homeownership, those who do are feeling the effects of the reduction in asset prices. In Ireland, the latest Permanentt TSB/ES TSB/ESRI housing index has recorded a decline of 31.5% from their peak:luckily nowher nowhere near the fall of 80% predic predicted by eco economist Mo Morgan Kel in Kelly 200 2009.

IINVESTMENT BANKERS’ BONUSES

CANADA C

WATERFORD CRYSTAL W

ICELAND

DUREX

PADDY POWER:

IT HAS never been so difficult to be an investment banker. Not only does nearly everybody in the entire world blame them for the crisis, but now their remuneration h has become another casualty in global recession. It’s a race to the bottom as investment banks try to see who can cut bonuses the most. Deutsche Bank has ccut its bonuses by 60% but UBS is in the lead with an 80% reduction – which would be paid entirely in deferred shares. Although some countries have refused to follow the trend and in fact increased their employee compensation (RBS in the UK raised total employee compensation by 73% last year) it looks as though this wave of penance will continue this year.

ONE OF the few winners out of the global recession, Canada has managed the unlikely feat of having a short, shallow dip in GDP before a return to growth some 10 months after it first entered a recession. Output shrank in the last quarter of 2008 but by July 2009 the Bank of Canada was forecasting growth of 1.3% that quarter.

Indeed, data has just been released showing that the country achieved annualised economic growth of 5% in the fourth quarter of last year. Although policymakers are cautious, the economy does seem to be going from strength to strength, with the housing market in particular showing signs of a usst good recovery. Canada’s southern neighbour must be green with envy.

ONE OF the most surprising casualties of the financial crisis, up until 2008 it was considered a safe place to invest. Unfortunately, it transpired that the banking system was over-extended on a massive scale and shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers its three major banks found themselves in receivership. What followed was a property and stock market crash, a drying up of credit from ody’s worst abroad, and – everybody’s nightmare – a visit from the st IMF. The Economist cites it as the biggest economic crisis every suffered by a country, relative to the size of its economy.

SHARES IN the bookmaker rose by 102% d from February to November 2009 compared with an increase of only 15% and 14% respectively for bookies Ladbrokes and William Hill. It has also acquired Australia’s largest bookmaker, Sportsbet, and opened 32 new shops across the UK and Ireland.

B Bet volumes and active customers have b both increased and, in Ireland, its market sshare in Ireland has risen from 26 tto 32%. These results are llargely due to Paddy P Power’s determination tto embrace the internet a as a future source of g growth.

WOMEN

GREECE

ECONOMISTS EC

MACROECONOMISTS:

ALTHOUGH THE gender pay-gap continues to be an issue, there are signs that women may be having the last laugh in the recession. It has been reported by USA Today that men are more likely than women to lose jo in this recession. In the USA, their jobs 2 since 2007 the jobless rate for men ris from 4.4 to 7.2% while has risen fo women has climbed to 5.9 that for 4 from 4.3%.

Whatever the reason, women might be forgiven for a little smugnes particularly in light of the smugness– fact that certain conservative pundits ha e been bee trying to place the blame for have the current situation squarely on the shoulders of working women. Better luck next time, boys.

IF THE situation in Iceland was a shock, the revelation of Greece’s economic woes was a bit more comprehensible. Public debt currentlyy stands at 113% of GDP. The rest of the EU is understandably upse at this threat to the upset s stability of the euro, as are the Greek people who w have to endure these will cuts. The only enjoyable aspect of the whole situation was watching the farce of European leaders pretending to be shocked that an EU member would ever even consider massaging its figures...

AFTER OVER a decade of what macroeconomists AF te termed the ‘great moderation’, during which m macroeconomists tried to explain why they managed to get everything right, life has suddenly become interesting for economists again. Finger-pointing and complicated mathematical models are two weapons in an economist’s arsenal which can now be employed without compunction as they clamour to explain why everyone missed what they had been predicting all along. Old joke: what’s the definition of the natural rate of unemployment? An “acceptable” level of unemployment whereby the economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job. The data generated by this latest crash is going to keep economists in work for decades to come.

WHILE MACROECONOMISTS are falling over themselves in excitement trying to find a reasonable explanation for what went wrong and how to fix it, it seems fair to say that their image has been tarnished by their failure to see this one coming. After much back-slapping and self-congratulation during the early 2000s about how they had finally ‘tamed the business cycle’, it became clear that the business cycle had just been taking a prolonged nap. Oliver Blanchard published a paper entitled ‘The State of Macroeconomics’ concluded that everything was a-okay...less than two months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of financial meltdown.

BUSINESS & CAREERS

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

13

A man with tireless ambition Alex Hamilton sits down with one of Ireland’s great entrepreneurs to discuss his path to success and the failures he had to bounce back from.

Alex Hamilton Staff Writer WHEN YOU think about Ireland’s high profile entrepreneurs and businessmen, names such as Dennis O’Brien, Bernard McNamara, Sean Quinn and Liam Carroll may spring to mind. However, while not catching media headlines as often, it is Dermot Desmond who stands head and shoulders above the rest. Known in the business world as ‘the man with the Midas touch’, many envy his success in building successful companies, whatever the economic backdrop.

He has been the pioneer behind companies such as NCB, International Investment and Underwriting, Sporting Emporium and BETDAQ amongst many others. He also part-owns the famous Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados, and is the largest shareholder in Celtic FC. However, perhaps the most impressive item on his CV is that he conceived the notion of the IFSC. Even more astonishing is that the above is a mere sample of the range of businesses Mr Desmond has been involved in. So how does he balance everything? He is unequivocal in his response: “I don’t balance anything.

I say to people that I basically have attention deficit disorder. I have to keep my attention on many different things, as I find that if I was to be involved in one business that monotony would creep in to my management approach.

By stretching myself in many different businesses I feel I am more vibrant and focused.”

He adds that he sees himself not as a manager but rather a director and mentor, providing guidance when needed.

His life now is a far cry from the Macroom of 1950 where he was born.

Six years later the family moved to Dublin (he is quick to remind me that he is still a Cork man with a Dublin accent) and settled in Beaumont.

From an early age he developed an interest in business and finance and

in school he developed “some minor leadership qualities . However, he was not naïve about the broader economic climate of the time; “When you’re growing up, there is always a fear of ‘can I make it, or can I get a job where I can flourish’.”

That fear would soon dissolve as Citibank offered him a job fresh out of school at the age of 18. Mr Desmond does not seem to regret the lost opportunity of experiencing a university life, and looks back at his time with the bank with much fondness: “It was a great opportunity, and it was a great learning curve.”

However such a roset i n t e d recollection of his time at the investment giant was later clarified: “It was also a period of long hours due to a bank strike, so I did miss out on some other opportunities.”

However in his late twenties the security of a bank job evaporated after a failed personal attempt to acquire a textile company led to his decision to resign and, with a young family, Mr Desmond found himself on the dole.

“It was a difficult time and you lose your confidence. Your plan didn’t materialise, and you end up in the dole queue with people from a l l

walks of life.” So why didn’t he try to get his job back? “Well I felt it was always easy to take the safe option, and I felt I should try to expand myself.”

The subsequent

period led to varied consulting work and time in the World Bank, before he finally started his own company NCB money brokers - in 1981. However this was not his first entrepreneurial foray: “I brought roller skates, jet spray machines and slush puppies in to Ireland, so I was always hustling.

I didn’t want to be idle. That was great experience because you learned about retailers, personalities, people breaking their word and the challenges that are in business per se.”

Amid the neverending upheaval of the 1970s and 1980s, and with a family in tow, there w a s pressure to succeed, and of course doubters to prove wrong.

Was he afraid of failure?

“I was afraid of failing, but I was prepared to go on and recognise that there is a learning curve and that all success is not based on continuous results.

It is important

to learn from mistakes, and about yourself, and from that you will know honestly what you can achieve and what you can’t.”

The 1980s also saw the acquisition of Shane Ross’ stock-broking firm to give NCB a full service to its clients, while also venturing in to the education industry with Financial Coursewear and later with Intuition Publishing.

This was not an easy life. A typical work day for the young entrepreneur

When you make a difference and you can see that someone has a better standard of living, or that there is a better hospital service then that is making a real impact. would be at least 12 hours. How can anyone strike the perfect balance? Mr Desmond’s response is passionate: “There was no balance. You work hard, and you work a lot of hours. A lot of businesspeople are very selfish because they are only thinking about what they can achieve. And you have to have that selfishness.” Was he selfish?

“I majored in selfishness because it was a necessary thing to do, as I was expanding businesses and that took time away from my family. It takes a great person to keep equilibrium.”

Our conversation now turns to the IFSC, the brainchild of Mr. Desmond.

In 1985, he explained to the then Minister of Finance,

Ruairi Quinn, that the future, in his eyes, would be in technology and finance due to rising globalisation and more centralised banks. A feasibility study was initiated which validated the concept, but the government chose to ignore it.

However all was not lost. “I was then asked to meet Charlie Haughey in New York, where I explained some of my frustrations. I was then invited to be part of an economic think-tank.

Soon after, Charlie rang me and said he was going to run with my idea in his manifesto.” And the rest is, as they say, history.

Mr Desmond is clearly proud of his impact with the IFSC; “When you make a difference and you can see that someone has a better standard of living, or that there is a better hospital service then that is making a real impact. You have to leave the world in a better way than when you came in to it.” With this rhetoric, one would surely think that public service would have been an option. “Absolutely not. I will give my views on the country and I will contribute if I feel I can, but at the same time you have to remember I am a nonresident in Ireland.”

He left in 1994 because of the media interest in his relationship with Mr. Haughey, but there were also lingering feelings about certain characteristics of Irish people: “I feel that we take too much pleasure out of the demise of our fellow man, especially for being a Christian country. There is too much envy of success; we don’t respect each other enough.”

Before we part, I ask him for his advice for young people. On this he is clear. “Believe in yourself, know yourself, and don’t be in a rush to get your ultimate career. Prepare to learn.

If you are unhappy be brave enough to change, and if you are happy learn how to improve and hold on to the happiness with both hands, and don’t take it as something that comes without effort.

And just enjoy work, and finally live life trying to be kind.”

Rethink macroeconomics but leave the inflation target alone Owen McLaughlin takes a look at the state of macroeconomics following the ‘great recession’ and the new ideas that are starting to emerge.

Owen McLaughlin Staff Writer AS THEY bid farewell to the first decade of the new millennium, many economists had good reasons for feeling wistful.

It had been a good few years – a good few decades, in fact – to be an economic theorist, especially in macroeconomics and especially in the US. The previous 25 years had witnessed a consistent overall pattern of growth through most of the developed world, while inflation, an enormous problem in the 1970s, was slowly and surely reduced. Most economies had had their ups and downs, of course, but even these fluctuations seemed to be growing less and less extreme and more and more predictable, particularly in the US. Economists even coined a term for this phenomenon, the Great Moderation: a steady decline in economic volatility, signalling that the business cycle had been tamed. The global economy seemed to be ticking over, and a historically remarkable degree of consensus existed as to how to keep it that way.

Most economists were still confident that whatever they had been doing at the macro-level for the past 20 years, they had broadly been doing it right. As recently late as late 2008, Olivier Blanchard, a macroeconomist then Professor of Economics at MIT, concluded in a paper entitled ‘The State of Macroeconomics’ that “the state of macro is good.”

But then, of course, things went wrong. Arguably things had begun to go wrong years before Mr. Blanchard’s now-infamous paper, but his timing was exceptionally bad: he had the particular misfortune to release it less than two months before the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank, which sent shockwaves throughout the

financial world and proved to be the watershed of the international financial crisis. As the Great Moderation gave way to the Great Recession - a one in a hundred year event for some observers - governments and central banks scrambled to prevent a collapse in the international banking system and a recession turning into a depression. In the process, economists, at the macrolevel not least, have been engaging in an unprecedented degree of selfexamination and critical analysis, trying to reflect on what mistakes were made and what lessons can be learned for the

One of the most controversial results in recent weeks has been a paper edited

by Mr. Blanchard ... frankly deconstructing elements of the monetary policy on which it has long relied, and questioning some very established tenets of economic orthodoxy. future. One of the most controversial results in recent weeks has been a paper edited by Mr. Blanchard, now chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. The paper, entitled ‘Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy’, is a remarkable change for Mr. Blanchard in particular and the IMF in general, frankly deconstructing elements of

the monetary policy on which it has long relied, and questioning some very established tenets of economic orthodoxy.

The paper’s most eyebrow-raising suggestion, and one which is has generated significant controversy in the financial media, is that inflation targets are too low, and should be raised from their traditional 2% to 4%. This may not sound exciting, but it represents an extraordinary challenge to a pillar of economic dogma which has stood for decades, all the more extraordinary for coming from the IMF, historically among its fiercest proponents. Inflation has been the macroeconomists’ bête noire for decades, suffocating developed economies in the 1970s and still a blight of many developing ones. Aggressive pursuit of a low and, above all, stable rate of inflation through influencing interest rates has become the overriding goal of most central bankers, and that low rate has become identified with a benchmark of 2%.

Why is the IMF, to many the bastion of economic orthodoxy, challenging its own received wisdom? Blanchard’s argument is that central banks had to loosen monetary policy aggressively in response to the Great Recession (the ECB cut rates from 4.25% to 1%, for example) but faced a significant problem: interest rates of zero or near zero were still too high. To kick-start economic activity, central banks were forced to adopt other forms of monetary easing such as buying corporate or government bonds and paying for them by printing money. His conclusion is that central banks need more leeway to cut rates in a crisis and that would be achieved by setting interest rates higher under normal circumstances. To achieve this he advocates a 4% inflation target instead of the traditional 2%,

as that would imply a rise in inflation expectations. This would allow the central banks much greater room to ease monetary policy in the event of a serious downturn.

The idea has scarcely been well-received by central bankers. JeanClaude Trichet, president of the ECB, described it as leading to “the worst possible position for us”, and ultimately as “plain wrong”. Mr Trichet’s response is understandable enough if one has spent one’s public life as a central banker trying to anchor inflation expectations around 2%. Expectations play a significant, fundamental role in determining inflation: if everyone in the economy - firms, workers, consumers- expects inflation to stay low their behaviour will contribute to that outcome. This is not achieved overnight, and in shifting the target the risk is that nently expectations are permanently unanchored, making it more rget, difficult to achieve any target, be it 2% or 4%. The target may n, of also be shifted higher again, ding course, further compounding nty. the expectations uncertainty. sts Inflation also carries costs ers (which is why policy makers % try to keep it low) and a 4% ng rate would mean a doubling 8 of the price level every 18 years which is likely to causee some economic disruption,, n particularly for those on fixed incomes.

Mr. Blanchard’s intent, to challenge conventional wisdom and demonstrate, in his own words, that the IMF is able to think, is a commendable one. His paper is a conversation rather than a statement of policy, and contains

both astute observations and worthwhile initiatives.

But his primary suggestion is a risky one, which risks throwing away one of the more successful macroeconomic policies of recent decades. He makes a strong case for how a more inflation-tolerant policy might have helped in the past few years in some ways, but there is anotherr just as strong for the costss y. and dangers of such a policy. ult Inflation targeting is a difficult an balance, and one which can ce prove difficult to regain once n,” lost. “If you flirt with inflation,” man observed one senior German ying g banker, “you end up marrying it.”

14

WORLD REVIEW

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

The oil battle continues between Iran and US

Joshua Roberts Staff Writer THE TROUBLED Middle Eastern state of Iran has once again become the focus of intense media and political speculation after its Minister for Oil, General Mohammad Rouyanian, announced the need for extensions in the country’s fuel rationing programme.

The announcement is significant, and has been well received in the west, because it signals to leaders in the region and the wider world that the sanctions imposed on Iran as punishment for its nuclear ambitions appear to be working.

Iran, known formerly as Persia until 1935, is the world’s second highest exporter of oil and natural gas, but owing to domestic inefficiency, is forced to import one third of its consumer petroleum (around 150,000 barrels per day). The decision of several major oil exporters such as Vittol, Glencore and Trafigura to suspend trade with Tehran has squeezed the supply of consumer petroleum to such an extent that the government was forced to reduce the quota of subsidised petrol by 25%. Under the current system of rationing each vehicle is currently allowed a quota of 80 litres of fuel at 10 cents a litre (with any amount after that priced at 40 cents a litre) – when the new laws are imposed the subsidised ration will be reduced to 60 litres. Quite understandably the people of Iran, who have grown used

to and are dependent on cheap petrol as a way of life, are outraged by the government’s decision. What is less easy to comprehend is why the oil exporters made their decisions in the first place.

Why would they purposefully choose to shun one of their best customers?

The answer to this lies almost entirely in the pressure applied to Iran’s suppliers by the US government, who continue to accuse Iran of having nuclear weapons aspirations. Indeed, in recent months US foreign Secretary Hilary Clinton as well as President Barack Obama have led an intense ‘behind the scenes’ campaign to persuade big corporations to turn away from Iran.

The focus of the American government, which has described oil as Iran’s economic ‘Achilles heel’, has not only been on persuading suppliers of oil to walk-away from Iran, but also on the insurers of oil shipments, including Llloyds of London. The idea being that, in light of the increased risk of trading without insurance, exporters will cease to do business with Iran. It has paid off- an executive from Vittol (by far the world’s biggest oil exporter) said last week; “the political and public relations problems more than outweigh the business rewards”.

Whilst the news pleased western leaders, some commentators have questioned the morality of the action and accused the US of bullying innocent Iranians instead of directly targeting the

government. Others, meanwhile, have begun questioning the true motivation behind the American hostility: does Iran really want to develop nuclear weapons or is the US using their uranium enrichment program as an excuse for another Iraqstyle, resource-led invasion?

It is certainly true to say that if the Iranian state and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were to come

Oil is the greatest weapon for punishing dissidence. The secret campaign led by the US has been hugely successful in dissuading major corporations from dealing with Iran. into ownership of nuclear weapons, the world would be a much more dangerous place. “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury,” is a recent quote attributable to Mr. Ahmadinejad. It is also true to question why, if Iran’s nuclear program is for purely peaceful energy generation, they would repeatedly reject IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections.

However, in the wake of the failure to find WMD in Iraq, it could be argued that questioning the credibility of US intelligence is equally justified: “The world is right to be sceptical of the CIA,” one insider told the BBC. So where does that leave us? Given that, as we have mentioned, Mr. Ahmadinejad is unlikely to be a careful and responsible owner of a nuclear weapon, it is surely desirable to prevent him getting any. Ensuring this inevitably means sanctions, and whilst targeting innocent Iranians by pushing up the price of filling up their car isn’t ideal, it really is one of the only options Iran has plenty of allies in the region and elsewhere who are only too willing to continue trading other key imports such as wheat, sugar and rice.

The reduction in Iran’s petroleum supply, the resulting lowering of subsidies and the public upheaval which has resulted will without doubt be damaging for the government. Nevertheless, it is unlikely to prove painful enough to force Mr. Ahmadinejad back to the negotiating table or to force his nuclear scientists to hang-up their lab goggles for good.

What it does mean, however, is that the US powers of persuasion and coercion appear to the rest of the world to be unquestionable and far reaching.

Whilst Barack Obama has yet to land the killer slam in the great game of political tennis between Iran and the US, the ball is well and truly in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s side of the court.

Obama’s healthy triumph over Republicans Alison Spillane Staff Writer

Former King, Gyanendra Bir Bakram Shah is calling for his reinstatement as monarch of Nepal.

Return of the Nepalese king Manus Lenihan Staff Writer TWO YEARS after Nepal’s monarchy was abolished, the country’s last king is calling for a referendum on his reinstatement. The reign of King Gyanendra Bir Bakram Shah was a period for the history books; it saw the ravages of Nepal’s civil war, the ceasefire, and finally, the election victory of the Maoist former rebels. King Gyanendra’s accession to the throne in 2001 followed a massacre in the royal palace. Crown Prince Dipendra apparently shot most of the royal family before turning the gun on himself. The Prince was crowned while under a coma, and reigned for three days before passing away. The crown passed to his uncle Gyanendra.

Gyanendra’s downfall was as spectacular as his accession to the throne, but definitely not as surprising.

With the Maoist guerrillas in control of the countryside and calling for strikes in the cities, Gyanendra took drastic action in 2005. He sacked the Prime Minister, dissolved the government, assumed personal direct control, had all telephone and internet services cut and even stationed armed troops in news rooms. Many politicians, journalists, trade unionists, activists and community leaders were imprisoned.

This attempt to destroy the Maoists had the opposite effect. For nineteen days, mass street protesters braved a curfew, tear gas and live ammunition.

The government and the Maoists united to oppose the King. In April 2006, he was forced to restore power to the government. Gyanendra was progressively stripped of his power and finally, in 2008, he was demoted to the rank of a private citizen of the new Federal Republic of Nepal, the same

year that the Maoists won the elections by a landslide.

On the 24th March this year the former king called for a referendum on the monarchy, arguing that the institution had had “its ups and downs” before. While the stoning of the king by an angry crowd in 2007 is an event unprecedented in the history of Nepal’s monarchy, such actions are likely to be an expression of the widespread and passionate hatred of Gyanendra. Many believe that he was behind the massacre that led to his coronation; all of King Birenda’s nuclear family were gunned down, and none of Gyanendra’s.

The former king insists that the institution of monarchy is at issue and not the individual monarch - rather conveniently for the hated Gyanendra.

This raises the question of whether he would support the installation of someone other than himself. However,

with a new constitution to be drafted

by May and a vision of a new beginning for a peaceful Nepal, it is likely that the government has other matters on its mind.

THE GURKHAS » The Gurkhas are legendary fighters who have served in the British army since 1815 when a peace agreement was clinched by the British East India Company after it suffered heavy casualties during an invasion of Nepal. » Each year, thousands of young Nepalis apply for about 230 places in the Gurkha brigade of the British army.

ON MARCH 23rd last, President Barack Obama signed into law his controversial healthcare bill after it was narrowly passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Likely to be one of the most significant events of his presidency, the bill, while extending coverage to an additional 32 million Americans, fails to disentangle the country’s healthcare system from the profit-driven insurance companies.

The most significant development in health policy since Lyndon Johnson’s Social Security Act of 1965, the bill makes healthcare more affordable for the less well-off sectors of society by providing subsidies, predominantly in the form of tax credits and an expansion of the state-funded Medicaid for the poor.

Moreover, it prevents health insurance companies from denying coverage to people, as has been the practice in the past, particularly towards those with pre-existing conditions and long-term illnesses such as diabetes.

However, the bill also makes health insurance compulsory for American citizens by 2014. Some maintain that this will still allow the insurance companies to call the shots in terms of premium but the counter-argument is that the insurers no longer have the right to a cut-off point on the amount of coverage

they provide to their clients – this is likely to reduce medical bankruptcy, which is currently the reason behind roughly half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States.

Also included in the reforms are a tax on the wealthy and those paying health insurance through their employer may see an increase in cost.The issue has divided the US media, with papers such as the New York Times lamenting the fact that it was possible to pass such an important piece of legislation without a single Republican vote and The Washington Times describing the apparent victory as political suicide for the Democrats.

Whilst focusing on the positive aspects of the bill, the Los Angeles Times did not skim over the controversy surrounding it, commenting: “Rarely has such a good thing for Americans been perceived by so many as a threat to their livelihood and liberty.” The San Francisco Chronicle criticized Republican attempts to discredit the bill by playing on public fears that Obama’s reforms are the beginning of a socialist overhaul of the country, referring no doubt to Republican Party chairman Michael Steele who, when asked if Obama’s healthcare plan represented socialism, simply replied, “Yes. Next question.” The press can agree on one thing however– the healthcare debate is far from over.

”...I’m not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill ‘Armageddon’. Armageddon! The end of freedom as we know it...”

EDITORIAL

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

TRINITY NEWS Issue 12, Volume 56 Wednesday, 7 April 2010 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2 www.trinitynews.ie

THE FAILED SEMESTER EXPERIMENT As the academic year draws to a close, we can say without doubt that the introduction of semesters to the University these past few months has been an unmitigated disaster. Whether that is due to an inherent problem with the year structure in question or a complete failure on the part of every academic department to properly implement the changes is difficult to say, though the insufficient administrative support has surely made matters worse.

As every undergraduate will know, the three terms have been altered to two teaching semesters of twelve weeks each. There has been no Easter break, and the naming of two weeks of exam revision devoid of lectures as “Trinity term” is a laughable attempt to retain some semblance of tradition. The few short weeks ahead of us are not a term in a meaningful sense at all.

The result of these changes has been the compression of three terms of academic work into two semesters. This has resulted, somehow, in the same amount of assessment work for many courses being likewise compressed into a shorter space of time – in many cases assignments or essays normally due in Trinity term have been unceremoniously squashed into the timetable of Hilary term, as if school administrators only noticed the lack of available time in February. Perhaps it was indeed planned that way; if so, we can only criticise those who made these plans in the strongest possible manner.

The increased workload in the same period of time has led to difficulties for students in keeping on top of their academic commitments, particularly in the case of sophister students, whose work this year is crucial to the class of their degree, but have had little to no guidance or assistance in making the change from their accustomed trimester experience.

Yet the damage of this appalling implementation does not end with the academic circle. The extra-curricular activities, so vital to student life, cannot help but be impacted by this increased stress.

We do not speak hypothetically here: this publication is the result of the hard work of hundreds of volunteer staff throughout the year, and the new year structure has seen staff working to deadlines become increasingly stressed as they juggle all commitments from college life. The experience is undoubtedly similar across all college societies and clubs.

Semesterisation has been the subject of debate for many years, and it is almost certainly too late to reverse the implementation.

This does not, however, take away from the fact that this past year was appallingly managed by many schools. This is unacceptable, and cannot continue. Junior Sophisters have never known and almost certainly will never experience the old term structure, and college need only wait three years before those with memories of a better system graduate and leave the university. We encourage those with the power to affect change to ensure that semesters are properly planned and implemented from the outset next year, and to not simply hold out until no students remain with the experience to object.

TRINITY NEWS VOLUME 56 This year, Trinity News published 12 issues: on September 22, October 6, October 20, November 3, November 17, December 1, January 26, February 9, February 23 (the Trinity Ball Guide), March 9, March 23, and April 6.

In approximate figures, the main broadsheet paper contained 606,890 words, an average of 55,173 words per issue. TN2, our culture and entertainment supplement, contained a total of 260,364 words, averaging 21,697 per issue. In total, then, Trinity News has had an output of 867,254 words – more than that of the King James Bible.

Over 40 volunteer editorial staff worked on this volume of the paper, with hundreds of contributors submitting content, for which we can only be extremely grateful. In particular, the work of administrative, copy and business staff who do not get their bylines printed must be mentioned.

We are indebted to our predecessors for the reputation of this paper, and can only hope that in our columns this year we have maintained an approximate standard that our readers have come to expect. Most of all, we hope that we are passing to future volumes the same standards, or greater, than those we were ourselves presented with.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

15

LETTERS TO THE Editor should be sent to letters@trinitynews.ie or to Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. The Editor reserves the right to edit submissions for style and length.

Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Trinity News, its staff or its Editor.

letters@trinitynews.ie

Unfair claims about fairtrade SirIn response to Mr. Jonathan Wyse’s article “Fairtrade for some, poverty for others” (23 March 2010), I feel the need to question several of his accusations against Fairtrade.

He criticizes Fairtrade for keeping prices “artifically high”. Could he please explain how lowering prices, i.e. lowering farmers’ incomes, would actually benefit them? He claims “the co-operatives are often corrupt”. Could he please substantiate this, or prove that small

businesses in the same economy would not be?

He claims that only 5% of the price goes back to the producer country. What percentage goes back with non-Fairtrade products: 1%, 2%?

Central free-market assumptions such as perfect market information, perfect access to markets and credit and the ability to switch output in response to market changes simply don’t apply to farming in developing countries.

He also ignores the elephant in the room: the EU and US tariffs that trap such farmers in

subsistence agriculture, are the single greatest market distortion in the world and make Fairtrade necessary in the first place. Mr. Wyse urges us to support development charities; virtually all of them support Fairtrade, as should we.

Sincerely, Gerard Hynes M.Litt., School of English

Protection of college staff Sir– In her letter to you under the heading ‘By Way of reply’, published in Trinity News on 23 March 2010, Anne FitzGerald, Secretary to the College, writes “to put on record that allegations being made by Mr Zejak ... are inaccurate and unfounded” and that “[t]he College ... reserves the right to take any additional action to protect the reputation of the College and its officers”.

Indeed, it is the duty of the Secretary to the College, acting in the College’s behalf, to protect the reputation of all members of the College, and not least the reputation of the Fellows of

the College, from inaccurate and unfounded allegations. But quis custodiet custodes? On 7 October 2002 the then Senior Dean, Professor Cyril Smyth, suspended me from all my teaching duties and banned me from the Arts Building on the basis of an “inaccurate and unfounded allegation” of physical intimidation and harassment.

The College was subsequently unable to supply any evidence whatsoever in support of this unfounded allegation in the High Court and Supreme Court in 2002-2003 or in the Disciplinary Panel of 2003 or in the Disciplinary

Panel of 2008 (in seventeen sessions). I now ask the Secretary of the College to confirm to Trinity News that the College has been unable to supply any evidence in support of the allegation against me of physical intimidation and harassment. Consequently I ask the College formally to withdraw the allegation and to apologise to me for it.

Very best wishes, Gerald Morgan FTCD (1993-2002)

The College Chapel full of suplice-clad students and dons, one of a series of drawings of life in Trinity College by Bryan de Grineau published in the Illustrated London News in November 1949.

Sartorial observations OLD TRINITY

And gone is the immemorial reference to the doffing of caps to the Provost and Fellows. A longer comparison would no doubt uncover many other ruptures with our past, despite the document’s demonstrably false claim that the college is “proud of its history and traditions”.

THE 2010 Statutes, recently adopted, participate in the modern march towards blandness. In the new document, academic garb is presented as little more than fancy dress for Commencements day, an unfortunate hangover from the unenlightened past. Gone is the ancient instruction that all will wear a cap and gown while performing academic duties; now these are worn only “on ceremonial and other appropriate formal occasions”.

But the miserable egalitarianists of the new millennium are just the heirs of the destructive ideologies of the 1960s, the decade at the end of which this university began the demolition of its own traditions. Any remnant of old Trinity which survives today does so as occasional nods to tradition in the Phil, the Boat Club and a few other institutions, often in the face of the sneers of those who think they know better.

One cannot accuse the 1966 Statutes of being a revolutionary document. The structure is largely the same as that of the 1926 Statutes, with minor changes. But a quick glance at this year’s version brings one immediately to a different conclusion. Showing inexcusable ignorance of the English language, the new document attempts to change the college’s name by omitting the necessary comma.

BUT THE 1966 Statutes did dismantle one of the college’s sartorial traditions. Still included is the instruction that one must have a cap and gown and wear them – but dropped is the obligation to wear a surplice at services in the Chapel. The older rule states that “white surplices, instead of gowns, shall be worn by those attending at services in the College Chapel on Sundays and feast days, with the hoods proper to their respective degrees.”

A surplice is a white tunic worn over the clothes. In Trinity, surplices were in the Anglican style, with open sleeves and reaching nearly to the ground.

The surplice requirement was introduced in the 17th century as an anti-Puritan measure.

In 1613, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote that the king had been informed that Trinity’s Provost and Fellows would not wear surplices, and he commanded them to dress correctly, or be removed from their positions. Twenty years later, this tendency had not yet been stamped out, and two men were briefly deprived of their Fellowships for refusing to wear surplices.

In October 1929, the Irish Times’s Trinity College Notes joked about the source of these garments. “Nobody,” he wrote, “has ever been known to buy one, and departing graduates find it impossible to dispose of them, even as gifts. Everyone possesses a surplice; yet no one can remember how he acquired it.”

Chapelgoers have the great 1960s to thank for their liberation from this cotton form of

by PETER HENRY

oppression! Nothing, of course, prevents one from wearing a surplice to the Sunday Eucharist – but who wants to take anachronism that far?

ANOTHER OLD form of garb met its demise in that infamous decade. A regular reader will remember the opening lines of some 19thcentury Trinity verses previously quoted on this page: “’Tis the place, and all around it, as of old the porters loll / Velvet-capp’d and gaiter’d, guarding the Examination Hall.”

This porters’ uniform survived well into the last century. The 1958 college promotional video Building for Books observes that “the porters in their 18th-century uniforms are fixed points in an ever-changing scene”.

A piece in Trinity News marked the beginning of the uniform’s end. “The junior porters,” said the February 1969 article, “are complaining about their uniform. They want something more ‘up-to-date’. Their present uniform dates from Elizabethan times when the porters also had to deal with the horses.”

“Particularly disliked,” continued the unnamed student, “is the black velvet riding hat, but ‘the lack of pockets and the heat in summer are also very annoying.’”

The Trinity News reporter may have been over-ambitious with “Elizabethan” – the video’s 18th-century is probably more accurate.

The Board was unable to co-operate with the demand for a change in the summer weather, but it wasn’t long before the traditional clothes were gone for good.

These days the so-called “security guards” are gloriously arrayed like military police expecting a riot – hardly less ridiculous than the respectable older uniform. pehenry@tcd.ie

16

OPINION

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

By the numbers: the lotto Cathal Wogan Staff Writer TWICE A week for as long as I can remember, my mum has done the Lotto.

I always took it for granted; surely everybody does the Lotto, why wouldn’t they? Some time during my adolescence I did some maths and, shocked by my calculations, I realised that it shouldn’t just be accepted. “Fool’s Tax” I called it, a tax that only fools would buy into.

I’m not sure if I coined that phrase but I certainly took it up with gusto as only a teenage genius like myself could.

“Mum, you’re so stupid! Why are you wasting your money on the Fool’s Tax? Yeah mum, it’s a tax on the foolishness of people like you!” She was so impressed that her young son had mastered the factorial button on his calculator that she completely missed the fact that her son was also a total wanker. So, without further ado, here are the numbers.

1 in 8,145,060 YOU HAVE a very slim chance of being on the money with your panel of six numbers. Admittedly, to do the Lotto you have to do two panels, which will half the above odds and cost you €3.

Only €3 for a shot at a couple of million?

Wow! But wait, those odds are fairly long. If I saw a horse at 4,000,000/1, I

would not put a cent on it. That would be the equivalent of backing an asthmatic snail in a race against a field of Grade 1 stallions.

“But there’s no harm in putting a few quid on it, is there? What if the unlikely actually happens?” Yes, there is harm in it. You’re going to lose your few quid.

The person who religiously does the lotto is the exact same as the person who puts a few quid on the asthmatic snail racing against Sea the Stars and Istabraq. €412 THIS IS the minimum amount my mum has spent on the Lotto over the last year.

That isn’t taking into consideration the extra she might shell out for what might be called “big jackpots”, the ones where you’d have to eat cocaine sandwiches every afternoon just to make a dint in the disgusting pile of cash up for grabs.

She does two panels for both draws every week. If you include Lotto Plus, that means it is €8 per week. This is a no nonsense ritual, the idea being that buying €8 worth of raffle tickets every week ad nauseum will procure her a large amount of money at some point in the future. It’s a long shot; remember the snail?

So it has been established that, as the teenage Cathal told his mum so

sensitively, “Doing the Lotto is for stupid people, it’s a Fool’s Tax!” I racked my brains, played with my calculator, tried to figure out why people were doing the Lotto. I wondered why my mum and so many others insisted on giving their money away like it was worth nothing. €8.65 and €196 I DON’T know if these numbers will immediately strike Trinity students. I really hope they are familiar to some or the unshakeably annoying stereotype of the irresponsible bourgeois protestant

“But there’s no harm in putting a few quid on it, is there? What if the unlikely actually happens?” Yes, there is harm in it. You’re going to lose your few quid.“ is being given some foundation. The first number, €8.65, is the minimum rate of pay per hour in Ireland at the moment. The second number, €196,

onal is the maximum claimable personal jobseeker’s allowance (the dole) per en. week, before increases for children.

The truth, I have come to observe,, is um that these numbers are why my mum and half the country do the Lotto. life f There was a long period of my li e t en where I had a wonderful Bray accent ar and my family weren’t as comfortablyy ffar W from the breadline as we are now. We ts. might even have straddled it at points. ngNot that we’re so far from our workingclass past now mind you, but we’re not struggling. As an aside, I wish I still und had my accent. Unfortunately I found usly I had to give it up to be taken seriously academically within these walls, to at a avoid the ridiculous disinterest that ions “common” accent and its connotations ity’s will elicit from the majority of Trinity’s distinguished staff. d on But for years my parents focused mic maintaining a family, despite economic ies restraints, just as thousands of families ger, did before the years of the Celtic Tiger, se, through the boom, and are, of course, ted trying to do now. Young, uneducated aged people, single parents, middle-aged people cut adrift and others with no hope whatsoever with regards to financial sufficiency have to struggle through their vulnerability.

For so many people, €8.65 and €196 are key numbers. If the guy at the back

of the dole q u e u e spends €10 of his weekly fiscal fix on the lotto it is because he really dreams of somewhere outside of the speck of space on the world’s map that he occupies; he dreams of a better life for

his mum, his girlfriend and his daughter.

The Lotto isn’t Fool’s Tax; it’s a hope. It’s a dream ticket for those most lowly and those who live in the mundane void above that.

A n d that really shows what the Lotto is a t its most sickening.

It is a tax on the needs and dreams of the proletariat. It is a tax on the aspiration to be financially sufficient from a depth. Surely in a fair society, a government would aspire to at least someway fulfill those dreams.

Government should be concerned specifically with the needs and wellbeing of those less fortunate in society, rather than allowing (well, imposing) what is effectively a tax on the vulnerability of the situation of its most desperate citizens, taking the money of those who can only dream of a little more.

HEAD TO HEAD: THE RIGHT TO STRIKE

“

“A BAN MUST BE CONSIDERED” themselves.

The right to strike is important as it is the logical extension of two rights that we consider absolutely essential in our modern western society – the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of assembly. These two rights are hugely significant.

They are vital as without them we cannot have a democratic system. Without them we cannot stand up and defend violations of our basic rights and human dignity. Without them we are living in George Orwell’s 1984. Striking is not ferociously popular but that is partially why it is so important that the right to do it be upheld. Just because it may not be popular to say something does not mean that it absolutely should not be said.

The fact that arguments to ban striking tend to argue that “striking hurts Ireland’s credibility on international markets” and make us “less attractive for American multinationals” is deeply worrying. These should not be our fundamental priorities as a nation.

Personally, if I had to choose between an Ireland being a place where basic rights and freedoms are upheld whatever the cost and an Ireland that is the largest exporter of Viagra products to the Greater European Market, I would choose the former.

I find it shocking that the latter is even being considered as preferable to being a nation that is true to its ideals. Economic growth comes and goes whatever one does – whatever is done either way.

While it is possible to change it to some extent no one can get rid of the cycle of boom and bust in the long run and it is foolish to say that they can. What goes beyond foolish and into dangerous is saying that you can magically solve all of Ireland’s problems by removing fundamental rights.

That is why this sort of policy is dangerous both for what it actually does – damages our democracy – and claims to do but cannot deliver.

THE ECONOMIC recession in Ireland has been accompanied by political turmoil, insecurity, swelling dole queues and significant upheaval within the public sector. The considerable disruption caused by the public sector’s attempt to express its grievances with the Government has sparked a debate as to whether a ban on civil service strikes should be imposed. Given the vital need for a properly functioning civil service and the negative impact the work-torule and other forms of strike action are having on Irish society, the necessity of such a ban must be considered.

The civil service, by its nature, provides essential services to Irish citizens, the denial of which often involves the violation of fundamental rights as guaranteed under our Constitution, such as in the case of the Passport Office strikes which infringed upon the constitutional right to travel of numerous citizens.

Public sector industrial action has included strikes within the health service, closure of social welfare offices and ultimately has entailed the reduction and removal of essential services to Irish citizens, including the most vulnerable in our society and those worst affected by the economic downturn.

A ban on civil service striking is necessitated by a number of reasons, including: the high level of job security enjoyed by the public sector which has facilitated the recent industrial action; the essential role it plays in the day to day running of the country; and the negative impact and infringement on the rights of citizens caused by its methods of industrial action.

Ultimately the public sector needs to be

mill activity. But the reality is yoga has been “cool” for some people for thousands of years. It’s a practice which goes as far back as 3000BC and it’s believed by archaeologists that a wide range of yoga activities were known to the people of pre-Aryan India. India is the Mecca of yoga lovers. It’s a place where the activity can be embraced in the beautiful surroundings of tropical rainforests and wide open skies. On a trip to India two years ago I found myself visiting one of the capitals of yoga, the town of Rishakesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. I couldn’t help being drawn to the smell of incense, the ringing of bells, and the general relaxation you experience when surrounded by temples and singing voices. But what has this long description of yoga got to do with this columnist’s society space?

After Christmas, one of my numerous New Year’s resolutions was to finally join the Yoga Society here on campus and start attending classes. When I was 15 and in transition year my mum had suggested putting some of the huge amount of free time I had to good use and start yoga classes. Yoga was something I associated with my parents growing up but never took part in. It was normal for me to walk in to the living room and find my dad doing a headstand or my mum meditating in an armchair. So when my mum made the suggestion, this young fifteen-year-old decided to find out what all the fuss was about. That poor teacher I first went to had no idea what to think when I arrived in that class, with seven girlfriends in tow, to learn the basics

of this ancient practice. Yoga for us at the time meant constant giggling and serious lack of concentration.

When we finished the course my friends were no longer interested and so my yoga career disappeared.

Flash forward seven years and you have a 22-yearold final year student, who is facing into three months of constant assignments and a lot of stress to go with it. By chance, I had become very good friends this year with the head of the Yoga Society and by listening to her talk about the classes on campus and also an incredible ashram she took part in in New York, I realised that yoga was the way to de-stress my life of exam worries. As chance would have it, a few days after I made this decision some friends mentioned that they were going to start classes in Bikram Yoga outside college. Now, for those of you who don’t know what Bikram Yoga is, picture the scene: about 50 people in a room doing yoga with the doors shut tightly. Sounds pretty normal, right? Now turn up the heat in the room to about 40 degrees and you’ve got Bikram Yoga.

That’s right; Bikram Yoga is “relaxation” while sweating out all the impurities of your body in sweltering heat. I did one class, nearly fainted and called it a day.

And so my attention finally turned to our own personal yoga classes here on campus. The first time I went I took my sister with me for some family support.

I figured we have the same genes, and in my mind this meant the same flexibility or lack thereof, so I felt she would be a good companion. On arriving at the small room upstairs in the atrium I was struck by the smell

DAVID BARRETT

VERY FEW people like trade unions these days.

And why should they? Trade unions by striking make the lives of everyone else miserable around them. By striking they disrupt services that you are paying for. On a macroeconomic level by striking they make the country less productive and less likely to receive the foreign direct investment that is so critical. Furthermore, with the effective collapse of Social Partnership, strikes should be getting exponentially more common. Since they are bad and more likely to happen than they were before they should be banned, right? Wrong.

For the reason why the right to strike is so important we need to look back in time to the Victorians. The Victorian industrial society placed a very high priority on the values of free capitalist enterprise and that a rising industrial tide would make all of society more prosperous.

But what was actually happening was that the massive profits that were emerging from these industries were not being put back in any real way into the wages of the workers.

More militant trade unions and strikes changed that dynamic. On the one hand the workers could get given the better wages or conditions that they demanded or at the very least the employer would have to consider the demands being put before them and would have to reject them publically – and if they do that they would have to be very sure that public opinion would be on their side. Whether or not that is helpful to the employers is immaterial – what matters is that it benefitted the workers

SOCIETY DIARY SORCHA POLLAK NAMASTE TO YOGA LIFE IN THE past decade yoga has become a huge part of popular culture. With public figures such as Madonna, Jennifer Anniston and Meg Ryan taking to it at the end of the nineties, yoga became the ultimate way of achieving that body you always dreamed of while in the process calming the mind and soul. Vogue, Elle, Glamour, all the big fashion magazines began to sport covers with beautiful people stretching their legs back into the air in what looked like impossible positions.

It was the new “it” sport, the one you should do if you wanted to fit in with the popular circles in the capitals of the world. I mean, could one live in New York and not have an interest in yoga?

However, my mum always maintains that she did yoga before it was cool, because, let’s face it, yoga classes in 1970s Ireland weren’t the most run-of-the

“BASIC RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS UPHELD” LOUISE FITZGERALD

made face the realities of the economic situation in Ireland. Many of the demands which they are making simply cannot be accommodated given the terrible condition of state finances and any attempts to do so would ultimately have a negative effect on greater society as it would require the removal of funds from areas in which they are urgently needed.

Although progress was made with the pay deal reached by trade union leaders and Government earlier in the week, the risk of further and more intense industrial action remains if the deal is rejected by union members.

When you take into consideration the huge impact the recession has had on the private sector the pay cuts seem relatively benign, particularly when you take into account the other benefits enjoyed by many workers in the public sector. Given the difficult economic times in which we live, members of the public sector who are undertaking industrial ought to realise how fortunate they are to still have a job unlike many of their fellow citizens.

Indeed the public sector strikes have been perceived as downright offensive to many of the thousands of people in Ireland who have lost their job. Not only have the strikes led to the denial of essential services, but also to increased discontent, resentment and frustration within Irish society. The problems faced by Ireland won’t be solved but only compounded by such actions which contribute to the hardships and grievances faced by members of the public.

Thus a ban on civil service strikes is essential to ensure fundamental human rights of Irish citizens are protected and to prevent action that will promote divisions within Irish society.

Ultimately such a ban will encourage the civil service to demonstrate solidarity with fellow citizens through the provision of essential services, promote cooperation and help the citizens of Ireland to present a united front in the face of economic hardship and work together on the road to economic recovery and a brighter future for Ireland.

”

of incense wafting down the corridor. I was hooked immediately. Since my time in India I have become a girl obsessed with all things incense and so my sense of smell told me this was the place to be. As the class began and I lay down on my mat for the introductory relaxation, I knew that coming to class had been a good idea. A few weeks later I moved to a different class which was slightly more challenging and shocked myself by discovering that I could still bend down and touch my toes, do headstands and was even able to pull myself up into a bridge.

I have been taking the classes once a week now for three months and am completely hooked. The Yoga Society has created an environment, in the normal surroundings of the atrium, of peace and serenity, exactly what a stressed-out and tired brain needs at the end of the day. In fact, I could kick myself for not having started these classes on campus sooner. I know I sound like a yoga obsessive but this is probably the society which has had the greatest long-term benefit for me. Yoga is something I will continue to do for many years to come. In fact, what better way to finish these columns after a year of writing them, than saying that because of Yoga Soc I’m leaving Trinity College a calmer person (or at least I’d like to believe that).

Maybe someone should remind me of that calm serenity as I walk into my finals. Deep-breathing, clear the mind…I suppose it makes sense that I’ve fallen into the yoga habit. I mean my mum did do it before it was “cool”.

OPINION

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

17

IN PROFILE: CAMERON STEWART

A random kind of guy Bruff O’Reilly Staff Writer CAMERON STEWART is one of Ireland’s youngest entrepreneurs, having started his own business at the tender age of 18, in 2008. Foregoing the usual university experience and instead focusing on creating something of his own, Stewart’s clothing business, Ark° (Acts of Random Kindness) is in its second year of operation. It is slowly growing into both a financially successful venture, as well as a venerable social movement.

Stewart, whilst still in secondary school, started out importing clothes from Asia via eBay, and reselling them in Ireland at a profit. Having learnt a fair amount about the basics of business, Stewart then made the rare decision to create his own brand, and start his

“‘We are more [than a company]...I can’t help but come back to three words that define what we’re trying to get people to do: change your world’” own business right out of secondary school. But Stewart, having spent four days hiking the Wicklow Mountains and pondering over the realities of the business world, decided that his venture should adopt a more socially conscious approach: “I basically wanted to create a business that genuinely pursued a

social vision through its business,” he said in a recent interview.

And so Stewart went about creating a brand – Ark° – that would aim to be as much a philosophy of life as it was a trademark, and that would set it apart from the average company. Having already worked with clothing, Stewart chose the tried and trusted t-shirt as the first vehicle for his social experiment.

Now expanded to a wide range of different apparel, the premise remains the same: it’s to perform one “Act of Random Kindness” every time the clothing is worn. An Act of Random Kindness, as told by Stewart, could be any of variety of things: buying someone you don’t know a coffee, flashing a smile at someone you don’t know, or simply giving up your bus seat. It’s about extending yourself to someone else, and appreciating the community you live in. There’s no catch; no strings attached.

Ark° operates entirely as a nonprofit, where all proceeds are reinvested into the business, and all employees are given just a modest wage. With a snazzy website (www.arkHQ.com) and a growing Facebook fangroup, Ark° is quickly gaining an online presence and is utilising the internet to grow its brand. Ark° has also made itself readily visible around Trinity, where various Ark° challenges have been plastered to walls and the inside of bathroom-stall doors. The challenges are almost always simple and easy to execute. Their Facebook page shows a host of experiments in “Arking”: leaving pre-bought sweets in vending machines for strangers to find with happy notes attached; handing out scratch cards to deserving strangers (Brown Thomas’s

top-hat man for instance); and buying a complete stranger a cup of coffee, to

“Stewart is hopeful that his business is on the verge of something big: ‘I feel we’re at a tipping point, where we need just one big thing to get us over the edge.’” name a few. Admirably, Stewart’s first “Ark” was to empty his bank account in order to buy Christmas presents for the homeless in Belfast.

The current base of operations, located on Merrion Square, has about three full-time employees who are constantly trying to think up of ways of improving Ark°, and coming up with new ideas to expand the brand. Stewart is hopeful that his business is on the verge of something big: “I feel we’re at a tipping point, where we need just one big thing to get us over the edge.” Stewart plans for the clothing aspect to be just one part of the business, and hopes to invest whatever money is lying around into various charitable and educational endeavours as well. Already executed projects involved helping a family in the West of Ireland bring their turf home from the bog, handing out buns for Dubliners, and even helping to repaint an orphanage in Zambia. All of these point towards a great beginning. Ark° has even given €10,000 of an advertising

fund they won in a start-up competition to launch a donation campaign for Haven’s Haiti Earthquake appeal.

“Arking” someone might provide a moment of cheer, but there remains a fair amount of doubt over whether or not it actually leads to real change in people’s lives. The idea can seem somewhat nebulous – without clear goals or direction. Stewart defended his business and philosophy in an Irish Times article last year, stating: “We are more a movement than a company so we don’t believe in vacuous mottos that define our brand. However, I can’t help but come back to three words that define what we’re trying to get people to do: change your world.” Ultimately, the success of Ark° will be measured by its growth as both a business and as a movement, and it is still far too early to draw a conclusion on either of those fronts. The nature of the business leaves itself up to a lot of practical criticism, but perhaps it is what is needed in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Ark° is anything but “rat-racy”, and provides something of a model of business that isn’t entirely driven by profit motive. With money oozing out of the country, goodwill towards men could conceivably clog some of the pours left behind.

This is a woman’s world!

Affirmative action and the feminisation of the family are perpetuating the battle of the sexes over filiality and children fears Gary Cannon.

Gary Gannon Staff Writer OK, THERE is no easy way to say this so I’m just going to come right out and say it: feminism is really starting to bore me... Calm down, put down your bras and step away from the acid! It’s not that I am some sick enthusiast of inequalities between the sexes or the disenfranchisement of women; quite the opposite in fact. Like most others, I look back in awe at the achievements of earlier women’s movements; the bravery of Emmeline Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes who fought back against chattel marriage and secured women’s suffrage. Now, they really had a cause for which to fight. You couldn’t help but be in pure admiration for the work of Nell McCafferty and her kin who fought so valiantly in the fight for contraception in Ireland, giving woman complete authority over THEIR bodies for the first time. That was a cause for which to fight; so too the unimaginably brave female souls who to this day campaign against and face up to the gruesome realities of female genital mutilation and shame killings that scourge women in predominantly nonwestern societies. This is a disgusting affliction on the plight of these women and it needs to be fought and it needs to be stopped.

But what of the modern Irish feminist; what concerns them? What demon of male patriarchy needs to be banished in the name of a more thorough female emancipation? Well, if the front page of the previous issue of Trinity News gives us any indication of future nagging to come, it is that there aren’t enough female politicians in Dáil Éireann. Well, why is this, one must ask? There is no legislation which prevents women from entering political office; the trend is in the other direction if the ever-awkward Enda Kenny has his way with his recent proposal of the most unnecessary implementation of affirmative action in the history of the State. Enda Kenny’s proposition to quota the number of women candidates in the next election to at least 20% was rejected, and most vocally so by Fine Gael’s own Lucinda Creighton, but not on the grounds that

it was a rather trivial pursuit to begin with, but rather because the ladies of Fine Gael felt that the measures did not go far enough. It’s often said that women themselves are the finest architects of glass ceilings and after listening to the complaints of Fine Gael TDs Lucinda Creighton and Catherine Byrne and Senator Fidelma Healy Eames against the motion to ensure at least 20% female contestation in the next general election, it is with these sentiments that I am inclined to agree. After centuries of campaigning to be treated as equals, Lucinda Creighton has once more adorned the position of the incapable female; requesting special privileges in regards to childcare, long working hours and the treatment of women in politics. I apologise if this seems insensitive, but is that woman for real? Is she that tied up in herself that she doesn’t comprehend that these are concerns which don’t only inflict themselves upon women? When a man rises at the crack of dawn, grabs his toolbox or briefcase and heads to work before his family awakes returning only to kiss them on the head and wish them sweet dreams, does his pain of separation and anxiety as to what aspect

“Thatcher is often accused of reaching the highest levels of office because she delegated the rearing of her children to others, but isn’t this, the exact same sacrifice which men have been expected to make since the dawn of time...” of his children’s growth he is missing out on today not measure up to that of a woman’s? Miss Blackheart herself, Margaret Thatcher is often accused of reaching the highest levels of office

because she delegated the rearing of her children to others, but isn’t this the exact same sacrifice which men have been expected to make since the dawn of time; and make no bones about it, it is an enormous sacrifice for most.

Sylvia Plath once wrote of women:

“...the complaints of the modern Irish feminist are with regard to issues which have just as detrimental an impact on men as they do on women.”

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

The article in the last issue of Trinity News entitled “The Way Forward for Feminism” captured this criticism of the modern feminist make-up perfectly.

It had one major flaw that to any male reader would have stood out like a pink elephant; the complaints of the modern Irish feminist are with regard to issues which have just as detrimental an impact on men as they do on women. Don’t believe me? Well allow me to juxtapose the issues which were most closely looked at in the article in question and understood to have had a directly negative impact solely upon women.

“The cuts to child benefit in the 2010 budget are, according to the National Women’s Council of Ireland, playing out disastrously across the female spectrum, with many Irish women now struggling more than ever to pay childcare.” “THE FEMALE SPECTRUM”...“MANY IRISH WOMEN” STRUGGLING TO PAY CHILCARE?! Are these same concerns no longer issues of the FAMILY itself? Yes there are single mothers and these ladies need all the assistance and support society can offer but please don’t forget that so too are there single fathers whose worries need to be addressed in the same manner. I ask you: is the relegation of the role of men in modern families the sentence

contemporary man must pay for the real oppression felt by our foremothers; are we being condemned because of the sins of those who went before us?

The article went on; it spoke very poignantly of the fact that each year thousands of Irish women travel to England and further afield, risking their health in the process, in order to have an abortion because in Ireland no government has yet been brave enough to alleviate their plight. It made no mention of the thousands of young men who each year travel alongside these brave women, resenting their gender; wishing to god they could trade places and feeling the same heavy burden of “Are we doing the right thing?” The article discussed the interviews taken by the Women’s Council of Ireland with women who had previously travelled to have a termination. Understandably what came through most was the anger at the inexcusable obstacles placed in the way of girls and women faced with making sensible and mature decisions about their pregnancies. The article gave no mention to the anger and sadness of the boys and men who were perhaps not even granted the chance to make that decision; it’s rarely spoken of, but men have feelings too. In a situation as sensitive as abortion, it is not only the female who suffers; men should no longer have to feel guilty about not having wombs.

God, evolution, nature or whatever other celestial power that was on duty that day deemed the male of the species not worthy to carry life into this world; they did not however dictate that in regards to any decision on the child’s future, the man’s role was purely subordinate to the mother.

The purpose of this article is not to mock, undermine or belittle the problems

facing today’s women; it is merely an acknowledgement of the very often unspoken grievances of today’s man who cannot call upon a “Man’s Council”; who haven’t got the luxury of a Man’s Weekly to express our tribulations. It is a nod to those who attempt to voice their concerns and are told to “Be a Man”, or to “Grow a Pair”. Society never imposed a corset on men and expected us to fill it to the benefit of bust and detriment of back: yes that is true. But it has imposed expectations and models of what we are supposed to live up to, which weigh heavily and will squeeze as tightly as any corset. Despite what the modern feminist may tell you or like to believe, there is actually no “meeting of the man” where we all get together fortnightly to discuss how best to impose our will on women. The vast majority of men really don’t care either way; you want to be a strong successful independent woman?

Brilliant.

A housewife?

That’s fine

too. A sexually liberated femme fatale?

Even better; but don’t impose the same type of unnecessary sanctions on men that women fought against for so long, don’t undermine the role of a father.

Pain does not distinguish between the sexes: how do you measure the pain of a father, forced to dress up in a superhero costume, climb to an enormous height to unfold a banner in an attempt to gain some recognition for his cause, so we can first laugh and then try to witness the deeper message, so his children will know that he fought for them. Today’s feminists appear hell-bent on insuring that the battle of the sexes will be an eternal battle, but children should never be used as a weapon.

Feminism was supposed to, and indeed did succeed in ensuring the equal position of women in society; well Western society at least. Feminism today is too concerned with undoing this work in pursuing discriminatory privileges which undermine equality.

Feminism’s final and real triumph will come when it is no longer relevant as a concept.

18

OPINION

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

ROUND UP SHANE QUINN

PLANNING PERMISSION APPROVALS FALL IN DONEGAL IT APPEARS that the fall in the property market is hitting Donegal hard with the number of planning permissions granted in the county dropping by 50%.

Figures released last week by the Central Statistics Office show there were 289 fewer planning permissions granted by Donegal County Council in the final quarter of last year, compared to the same period in 2008. In the last three months of 2009, Donegal County Council granted 295 planning permissions, compared to 584 in the last quarter of 2008.

When the figures are analysed more carefully, the extent of the fall-off in the housing market is revealed. There were 114 permissions granted for new dwellings in the last three months of last year, compared to 324 in 2008. That is a fall of 65%. 113 extensions were approved during the same period in 2009, compared to 157 in 2008, a drop of 28%.

There was also a significant drop in the number of retail, commercial and industrial premises given permission, with 55 last year compared to 85 in 2008, a drop of 35%.

Although the negative impact of such a drop in the number of houses being built in the county is the main concern of the local population, perhaps this is a good opportunity for the planning authorities to correct the immense environmental and social damage caused by one-off housing.

CONSEIL D’ÉTAT ADVISES AGAINST BAN ON VEILS THE TOP administrative body in France, the Conseil d’État (State Council) has said that a total ban on Islamic veils could contravene the European Convention on Human Rights. It also advised that the ban may very well be unconstitutional, though that will ultimately be for the Conseil Constitutionnel (Constitutional Council) to decide.

The body also said, however, that a ban on the veil in public places such as schools and hospitals may be justifiable for security reasons, to combat fraud and to meet the needs of certain public services.

President Sarkozy has said more than once that the face-covering veil is not welcome in France, and that he wants a law restricting it. A member of France’s lower legislative body, L’Assemblée Nationale (National Assembly), has indicated that the advice of the Conseil d’État could be ignored.

The body’s opinion is likely to throw a spanner in the works for the Government. It is required to advise on any major piece of legislation and although its opinion isn’t binding, the Conseil Constitutionnel may be asked to advise on the constitutionality of the ban before its promulgation – a ruling which is binding. Constitutional reform in 2008 enables the Conseil Constitutionnel to re-examine the law for provisions which contravene the Constitution even after the law has been passed through the parliament.

France has a strong culture of secularism but let’s hope that the freedom of the individual prevails in this instance!

TORIES TOO YOUNG? THOUGH THE Conservative Party is ahead of Labour in every poll, its lead is not yet adequate to ensure a comfortable parliamentary majority after this year's general election. Many reasons have been proffered, such as Labour's reasonable handling of the recession to date, the old Tory stigmas and the reluctance of the British voter to "rock the boat".

The most interesting reason, however, has to be that of The Daily Telegraph columnist, Michael Deacon. In The Daily Telegraph last week, Deacon claimed that the Tory front-bench may be just "too young" to gain the confidence of the British pubic.

It seems an almost ludicrous proposition when we constantly hear people hammer on about the irrelevance of politics to the youth of the country.

Similarly, one of the many criticisms of Senator John McCain in the last Presidential election was that he was just too old. I mean, if Obama could make it at 47, why is Cameron too young at 44?

And let's not forget that JFK was 43 when elected President of the United States.

UNFIT TO TRAVEL EASYJET MAY face legal action after its cabin crew on a flight from Paris to Nice ordered a wheelchair-bound lady off the plane because she was travelling alone. Marie-Patricia Hoarau, 39, was told she could not fly because she posed a "safety risk". EasyJet said that its policy was that disabled passengers must travel with an able-bodied person so that in the event of an emergency evacuation the disabled person could be evacuated as quickly as other passengers.

Sex, art and children James Kelly Staff Writer SOMETHING INTERESTING is going on in Japan. Ok, fair enough, something interesting is always going on in Japan so I should be a little bit more specific.

Japanese culture is in equal parts weird and wonderful to our Western eyes and having studied the language for two years for my Leaving Cert, I can testify that it does not begin to become more normal the more into it you delve. But the issue that has come to light recently is very dark and a controversial issue in Japan itself.

Recently, a court in the United States convicted a man of having in his possession manga depicting scenes of underage sex and what, in the court’s eyes, amounted to child pornography.

This man is now on the sex offenders list. A major debate has been sparked by this issue with advocates for both sides of the argument.

For the uninitiated, a manga is basically a Japanese comic book, and an anime a Japanese cartoon. The vast majority of our generational cohorts have been exposed to these mediums with Pokémon and the Studio Ghibli movies, such as Spirited Away, being the prime examples. But, as with most forms of entertainment, there is a much darker side to manga and anime than Pikachu would have you believe.

The idea of “virtual porn”, involving manga, anime and even video games is much more widespread in Japan than in the West and because these depictions of underage sex or child pornography are only illustrations, they escape many of the laws against child pornography.

Media outlets have bemoaned the lack of policing in this area of child pornography, but it is a much trickier situation than it first appears. How can you tell for sure a certain character is underage? What about artistic license?

Some have asked does this “virtual porn” even constitute child pornography because there are no actual children used or harmed? How can the police act effectively in this situation?

When no children are actually being harmed, does this issue just turn into a case of safeguarding our adult sensibilities against those whose fantasies the majority of us cannot comprehend? Those arguing for the ban of this “virtual porn” tell us that people who read these manga will turn into or

Those arguing for the ban of this ‘virtual porn’ tell us that people who read these manga will turn into or already are paedophiles and rapists. already are paedophiles and rapists, yet I am not so sure that it’s a convincing argument. Just because someone watches a TV show like Dexter doesn’t mean they are going to turn into a serial killer. I understand the circumstances are different but it seems to be moral policing more than anything. If they want “virtual porn” of this kind banned they need to come up with a more coherent argument.

There are other darker, strange undercurrents in Japanese culture which are unique to it. Specifically I am speaking about the rise of “compensated dating” (援助交際 enjokōsai) in the late 80s and early 90s, which amounts to junior high girls, some as young as 14, working as escorts to middle-aged businessmen. These encounters mainly

take the form of the young women escorting the men, many of whom are married with children, to dinner. And while it is not the case that all or even the majority of these escorts lead to sex, many do. Not to sound sensationalist, but surely this practice amounts to nothing less than child prostitution?

The media only exposed the practice in the mid-90s and the group who took the most heat for the “compensated dating” were the girls themselves, with many people viewing their exploitation of their “innocence” to buy designer brands as disgraceful. In real terms, very few girls engaged in this dating, maybe 8%, but it has posed a serious problem to Japanese lawmakers and its police force as it was difficult to catch these liaisons.

Why, some argue, do people care about illustrations of child pornography when the much more serious issue of child prostitution is still a problem?

It is ironic that Shintaro Ishihara, Mayor of Tokyo, who is the driving force behind the movement to outlaw these types of manga/anime, made his name in the 60s writing novels which contained scenes of underage sex.

What Ishihara recently proposed was a ban on the depiction of underage sex in all forms of medium to protect “nonexistent minors”. This in itself raises some serious questions about if such a law were to be passed, where would the buck stop? Tale of the Genji, one of the oldest written stories still in existence contains aspects of underage sex.

Should that be exempt? Even Western works could possibly come under fire.

Just look, for example, at Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, which in essence boils down to two teenagers engaging in underage sex. I realise of course that there is a world of difference between these classic works and some random manga depicting a 15-year-old being raped, but they could all potentially come under a ban.

Japanese anime Dance in the Vampire Bund ࢨ ࣛࢡ ࢌࣛ ࢞ ࣜ ࢉࣛࢹࢌࢊࢸࣛࢱ) features a vampire protaganist witht he body of a nine-year-old girl, often portrayed nude. This has led English-language license holder Funimation to announce it will censor certain scenes in its translated version for Western markets.

Shintaro Ishihara himself has not had the best track record in tolerance.

Just recently he referred publicly to homosexuality as “abnormal”. Adding to this his comments on foreigners living in Japan; the French; elderly women; and his denial of the Nanjing Massacre; Mister Ishihara may not have too many supporters.

We must ask ourselves this question: is this just a case of Western values trying to make sense of something that is quintessentially non-Western? It is certainly a disturbing and disquieting case, but I am not sure if it is as evil as some are making it out to be. It could just be the case that we are looking at the issue with our own values without taking into account the inherently unique culture of Japan and Japanese sexuality. Without any harm actually being done to children, I wonder if we are not just sticking our noses where it doesn’t belong. Are all the readers of these types of manga sexual deviants?

Are there higher percentages of child abusers among the readers? These are interesting questions that need to be looked at. One could argue that these manga illustrations could be a good thing, sating desires that people would fulfil in other ways in their absence.

Maybe these illustrations are, in some twisted way, protecting children from would-be rapists and paedophiles.

The debate about whether these illustrations constitute child pornography, while certainly interesting, is a very uncomfortable one. It seems to be a very Japanese-centric issue and there are fierce advocates on both sides. But, to give my own two cents, I certainly do not agree with it, but as long as it is not harming any children and the more serious issue of child prostitution is still prominent, nothing will nor probably should be done about these illustrations.

Religion: worse than any drug Sarah Clarkin Staff Writer KARL MARX once described religion as the opium of the people, but arguably this did not go far enough in describing just how disdainful a fixation religion is. From the manic-driven Religious Right, to the inexcusable Catholic Church, isn’t it time that we denizens of the twenty-first centuryy surmounted our religious infatuations oncee and for all in favour of a truly inclusive society, without unnecessary codes and practices designed to exclude infidels who refuse or are unable to concur? es To look at any of the world’s major issues us today is to see some sort of militant religious group preventing a collective action. Even basic facts, such as evolution, are disputed in favour of nonsense premises, such as creationism or the newest variance in the field of the fanatical: the intelligent design theory. Take global warming for instance; g the Christian right are resolutely unwilling to accept empirical evidence that suggests the ice-caps are melting, that there is a n rather large hole in the ozone layer, or even that the extreme weather conditions the world has experienced of late are our fault..

Yet the main problems with religion aree not the barmy theories they concoct, it’s the veneer of respectability they place on their so-called findings: they’re smarter than to make an attempt at rubbishing scientific claims so instead they present an alternative approach; the creation of a sub-division of climatology that fiercely

d denies the plain truth that rising CO2 eemissions are causing global warming.

W gst When confronted with a consensus amongst tthe scientists of the world, affirming that tthe people of the United States are taking tthe lead in destabilizing the environment o on which we depend, the response of the U US Republican Party, breeding ground of tthe Christian Right, has been to accept thee b nd brown envelopes from petrol companies and tthe likes, and subsequently to censor the eevidence, delete the graphs and attack the sscientists promoting it. ns Another major no-no amongst Christians w worldwide is sex before marriage, not tto mention the unfortunate arrival of b babies before the affirmation of sacred vvows. I think we can all agree that teenage p pregnancy is an undesirable phenomenon,, b but surely an adequate sex education w would reduce the numbers of children h having children? Instead the religious, w with icons such as the bumbling pitbull in llipstick, Sarah Palin, continue to champion n ““abstinence-only” approaches for sex ed, a memo not even her daughter Bristol had d ttime to read.

Not only does this “abstinence-only” m message promote an unrealistic view of thee w n of world, one that leads to the condemnation tthose who don’t fit the Christian ideals, butt iit is also highly dangerous. It was reported d b by the Washington Post in 2005 that, ““although young people who sign a virginity ty p y, pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, m marry at younger ages and have fewer ssexual partners, they are also less likely to

u condoms and more likely to experiment nt use w oral and anal sex”. Their findings were re with b based on research from Yale and Columbiaa U Universities, though no doubt the religiouss w provide us with some alternative will r reading.

And there are more statistics you w would find difficult to contest, perhaps in r e. relation to the issue of premature marriage.

Social changes have undoubtedly e extended the period of adolescence so thatt it i now longer than ever before; this, coupled ed is w Paul’s admonitions that “it is better to o with m g marry than to burn”, has led to an alarming t trend where far too many of the numerouss d devout are married before they reach an a of emotional maturity, often just after age g graduation from their Christian college, w before they know what they want in a well r relationship or what they can bring to it. Iss i really a case for incredulous wonder thatt it t divorce rate for Christians is roughly the he the s es same as for those who don’t hold themselves t the Bible’s supposedly higher standards?? to Without a doubt, our communal m memories and perceptions of a backward I Ireland, unable to shake the shackles of a antiquity and flourish with the modernity it o only began enjoying in the late nineties, aree s shaped by a cruel and repressive Catholic C Church who did everything in its power t prohibit progression of Irish society. to A Allowed by the State to run industrial s schools and Magdalen laundries, they p perpetuated the perception of themselves a charitable institutions so the question off as w state funding was being given to them m why a not families, which would have allowed d and

c children to stay with their mothers and f fathers was never questioned.

Any real hope of change was shot down b religion; the Church also controlled by h hospitals as well as schools, and when Noel B Browne attempted to introduce the Mother a Child Scheme, which would have and p provided free maternity care for mothers a free healthcare for children up to the and a of sixteen, Dr. McQuaid used scare age t tactics to convince the general population a even Browne’s own party that such and a measure would pave the way for birth c control and abortion. (God forbid!)

So, the high infant mortality rates were a allowed to rise and many Irish children w went without healthcare. Blaise Pascal o once commented that “men never do evil s completely and cheerfully as when they so d it from religious conviction”. Religion do p provides vestments and habits, an air of s superiority and a veneer of righteousness, u tting condemnations and hypocritical unfi d disapproval, for people who are just like you o I: flawed. or The only reasonable manner in which I Ireland as a country can get away from the a abuse it feebly allowed to flourish is to stop t trying to save an institution that is corrupt f from the very top, right down to the toes of t those silly shoes that nuns wear.

Morals can exist without religion and, f from the looks of it, we would be better o determining what’s right and wrong off o ourselves, minus the input of the abusers, t deniers and the dust-busters. the

OPINION

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

19

An inhuman Catholic Church Neil Warner Staff Writer IF ONLY there was such a thing as an enraged anti-Catholic mob. Such is the extent to which the Catholic Church has historically abused its power in Ireland and elsewhere that it would not be an overreaction. Sadly, in spite of the presentation of the recent abuse scandal made by Eamonn Hynes in the last issue, this has not been the case. All that has happened is that, for the first time in its history, the Church has actually faced the shock of being somewhat accountable for its actions.

This is all the more difficult since it has so very much to account for.

First let us consider the specific case of the responsibility of Cardinal Brady and the Pope to the recent scandals. Mr. Hynes gives the analogy of a company director in the case of a construction accident, noting that “seeking vengeance against those higher up in the hierarchy is futile and counterproductive in the process of grieving”. On the contrary; if the death of the worker is the consequence of negligence by the company director

then he should rightly be prosecuted for manslaughter. If he is not, but in fact continues to rise in his profession, the family of the worker would rightly be infuriated.

So it was in the case of Sean Brady, Joseph Ratzinger and countless other members of the Church establishment.

It is additionally not a farce to say that Brendan Smyth was able to abuse many more children because of Fr. Brady’s omission. This is simply, and sadly, the case. If Sean Brady or indeed anyone in the Church had had the bravery to act then Fr. Smyth would have been caught and would not have been continuously enabled by the church in his abuse of children. Of course Fr. Brady did not purposely wish for more children to be abused. That is not the point. The point is that he lacked the strength or clear-thinking to escape the mindset of an institution that had become rotten to the core and that had lost all sense of moral direction. I am sure that Fr. Brady was not deliberately malicious; but he did not have the strength to stand up against what, even in the morally vacuous atmosphere of the institution of that period, should have been clear

to him as very wrong. If the Catholic Church is to have any claim to be beyond this disgraceful past then it must shed any individuals who are associated with complicity in it; for this reason both Brady and Ratzinger need to go.

The suggestion that the church is simply human and made mistakes is also absolutely absurd. This was not a mistake. This was a systematic coverup and protection of evil and a failure; for the sake of power, money, prestige and plain bloody-mindedness; to make even the least attempt to care for the vulnerable. It is not a “mistake’ to wilfully allow the lives of thousands of people to be blighted on a consistent basis. We are indeed all human, as Mr. Hynes says. This means we should all have a basic conception of right and wrong and be able, at least, to try to act according to that conception. By this measure, then, the Church does not even deserve the dignity of being called human.

We should also note that there are numerous institutions in society in whose hands the care of children has been placed. Most have failed on some level. However the particular

extremity of the tolerance of evil that took place in the Catholic Church must say something about the unusual level of corruption and venality which it accommodates. This brings me on to Mr. Hynes’ defence of the Church

“The Church also does not so much ‘motivate and inspire’ as blinker and oppress. Religions in general are based on many false premises and delusions...” itself: what it has allegedly contributed to the world and its juxtaposition with the evils of the modern world. A remarkable naïvety comes through in this passage. To begin, he credits it with the conversion of millions of people in Africa; I doubt that people across Africa who have contracted AIDS through absence of contraception would agree

with him that this is necessarily a good thing. The Church also does not so much “motivate and inspire” as blinker and oppress. Religions in general are based on many false premises and delusions, but most of them, it is true, do at least provide people with a certain amount of hope and spirituality. The tradition of Catholicism, on the contrary, has been to suck as much of the goodness as it possibly can out of religion and leave all the rules. This is why people in the Catholic Church are not allowed to make their own interpretation of the Bible (in other words think for themselves) and why the extent to which a deceased may be referenced in a funeral is officially limited. The Church does not follow in the footsteps of Christ (there is much in Church rules these days that does not actually comes from Jesus) so much as indignantly stick to centuries-old prejudices and refuse persistently to come to terms with the modern world.

It is an institution that, at its height, became so desiccated of its humanity that it refused to allow unbaptised babies or suicide victims be buried on consecrated ground.

As for the evils of the modern world

that have apparently replaced the Church’s values: consumerism, violence, rape, murder and a social underclass; these are in fact things which are in many respects closely associated with the Church; it sanctified the existence of horrendous poverty around the world for centuries on the grounds that it was the will of God, and forbade people to stand up for themselves on the grounds that St. Paul had forbidden resistance to one’s rulers. As for consumerism, it is one of the richest organisations in the world. Popes and bishops have a long tradition of living in fabulous luxury.

It has long worked hard to squeeze as much profit as it could from its position of power, from the sale of indulgence to the conversion of industrial schools into factories. As far as rape and violence are concerned; his citation of this in an article that defends the Catholic Church in its covering-up of sexual and physical abuse is rather ironic. Additionally rape and murder rates have declined in the modern world; they were far higher when the Church was in its heyday; and rates of violent crimes are higher in religious states in America than in nonreligious one, as is teenage pregnancy.

Students in insanity This week’s hottest fashion gossip–ha!

Daniel Reilly takes Students in Solidarity to task for the unrealistic goals of the self-styled “progressive student network” Daniel Reilly Contributing Writer SO NOW we have a new “progressive student network” being set up in College styling itself “Students in Solidarity (SIS)” The comrades in this new unelected faction appear to regard themselves as the provisional wing of the SU. They say they “hope to join in and expand upon SU campaigns to fight fees and cutbacks and to defend students’ rights within college”.

And they will be co-operating with other colleges to “help further progressive ideas such as social equality, rights for workers, gay marriage, gender equality, combating poverty and [promoting] genuinely free education, within Irish society at large”.

What a melange of feel good tosh!

There’s something in this for everybody. The SIS, (who dares whinges), want to – *sigh* – scrap registration fees and fees of for parttime and post-grad students, scrap commencement fees, get more grants for students, extend the grant system to reflect the cost of living and massive investment in public education from pre-school to third-level.

And so say all of us! In fact why not pay all students €30,000 a year in wages plus expenses and dispense free beer in the Pav. But guess what folks? There is a recession on. And the idea that students and their families will not have to share the pain is at best wrong-headed, at worst unconscionable arrogance.

Students in Solidarity seem to think that the very notion of having to pay for even a fraction of our education is unthinkable.

They seem unaware that we are already spared from paying full tuition

fees which can range from €5,000 to €10,000 a year depending on your academic discipline.

Paying €1,500 a year, though it does hurt, is actually not a bad deal. Not that I advocate an increase in fee, but in these turbulent times the SIS policy of “extending and increasing the grant system to reflect cost of living” is pie in the sky stuff. Marxism for dummies.

All the research shows that those with a university education command, on average, bigger wages in later life, and, as they say, nothing in life is free.

We are here by choice. Nobody marched us through the front gates of Trinity.

And in fact most of their manifesto reads like an amalgamation of those the far-loony-left of Labour Youth and Ógra Sinn Féin issued at the height of the boom.

SIS also believes that education should be funded “through central progressive taxation on the rich and the corporations”.

The only thing that’s missing from this policy is the insertion of the words “fat-cat bourgeoisie”.

One is immediately reminded of a line from the movie Team America: World Police, in which several leading uber-liberal Hollywood celebrities rant against “The Man”, arguing: “The corporations sit there in their...in their corporation buildings, and...and, and see, they’re all corporation-y...and they make money.”

The word “progressive” in areas such as taxation is just a cover-word from the liberal left for “extortion”.

Just watch the corporations flee if their admittedly generous tax breaks are cut.

Just watch the dole queues lengthen.

The presence of “The Man” in the form of corporations like Intel and Pfizer is the price we have to pay for being a non-manufacturing island economy on the backside of Europe

ces with precious little natural resources ble except the fact that we speak passable gh English and have a reasonably high standard of education. mic Higher taxes stifle economic ed, innovation and will drive the educated, nd. achieving middle-classes out of Ireland. nd Property developers, the banks and Fianna Fáil’s economic policy all me deserve their fair share of the blame nal for this recession, but multinational loy corporations like Intel employ ave thousands of Irish people and have ry, invested millions in this country, obs giving some of us long-term jobs and reasonable financial stability. he Finally the SIS say: “No to the commercialisation of education – business involvement in education will hat result in the scrapping of subjects that ies aren’t seen as ’profitable’ to companies nd and will distort research in science and medicine.” out More wrongheaded, ill-thought-out ed? tosh. What does this country need? hat Sadly, (for me), not historians. What ore it does need are more scientists, more engineers and more research that will ngenable us to come up with better longmy, term ways of reviving this economy, ble instead of the cheap unsustainable rty wealth generated by the property bubble. en The Provost himself has often he spoken of the lack of funding the nd University receives from the State, and ses since many of these “Evil” businesses hold the purse strings for many of these research programs, it would be rly foolhardy to shun them, particularly when the State is making cutbacks in S’s these areas. In a perfect world the SIS’s policies might make sense. rld But sadly this is not a perfect world ss, and to think that the middle-class, ity privileged institution that is university education is immune from that is insane.

C Cathal Wogan S Staff Writer T THERE IS no worth in fashion jjournalism. You can argue against tthe worth of any strain of journalism, p particularly arts and culture journalism.

O Of course, some points may be perfectly vvalid. Crucially though, genuine aarguments can be made the other way, jjustifying the practice of the brand of jjournalism in question in almost every ccase. Not to leave you in any suspense aabout my opinions, the stand-out eexception is (as I might previously have g given away) fashion journalism.

I once did an interview to be a film jjournalist with a small-time regional n newspaper. It fell on a despicable T Tuesday morning. I walked into their sshack of an office as wet as a common ““indie chick” (common terminology, n not mine) at a Kings of Leon concert w without any of the body heat. They then ttold me that their kettle had broken.

D Disastrous. Utterly demoralised before tthe questions had even begun, I sat my ssopping breeches upon a hard wooden cchair across from a man who I, at that m moment, firmly believed was the most tterrifying and intimidating shortarse to h have ever graced my eyes. It was awful.

As you might have guessed, I didn’t g get that job. My views on film were sslightly different to the views that the sscary man held. That isn’t important tthough. What is important is one of tthe questions he asked me. Indeed, it iis the only remotely relevent piece of iinformation that I can give you from my aawfully wet interview anecdote. “What d do you think is the importance of, and p point in, good film journalism?”

I would be quite happy to write until aall ink runs dry about the merits of good film journalism. I’m not going to on this o occasion. Film journalism does not need d defence at this juncture but, when the vvalidity of the endeavour is challenged, I will happily respond. No, what I would

suggest is that we continue our perusal of the worth of fashion journalism.

Here is a thought. If that job had been a different one, how would I have answered? If that had been a job as a fashion journalist, what would I have said? I can imagine the situation. The little scary man would have dropped his glasses slightly further down his nose, leant over his table slightly and, in a squeeky voice that didn’t merit any of the fear that I felt, asked me a question that I couldn’t answer with a straight face. “What do you think is the importance of, and point in, good fashion journalism?”

In the interest of my own credibility, I try to play Devil’s Advocate to all of my own arguments before I say them out loud. For better or worse, I cannot come up with any honest benefits coming from fashion journalism, especially in student publications. If Jean-Paul Sartre were to read fashion columns as they appear today he would immediately curl up in a ball and die, moaning in the terrible agony induced by the truths of his own prophetic observation. The Look ruled fifty years ago and it rules today. We, as Trinity students, can see how our student population indulges in their own collective mauvais foi. We can see ever so clearly how the individual is defined by how others see them or, more accurately, how they feel others see them. While this is unavoidable for many, to facilitate and promote it is, for me, a deplorable act.

I can imagine the retorts from the fashion hacks: encouragement of individualism, self-expression through fashion, advice for people who need fashion advice. Rubbish. I don’t buy it.

When faced with the truth, only willing ignorance towards the cons can lead to faith in the hollow pros of the existence of fashion journalism. The most basic arguments against it are the most valid I find.

To put it in the simplest way

possible: how morally sound is it to say whether what one person wears is good or bad, cool or uncool, hot or not? It isn’t morally sound at all. The counter argument to that most basic of notions is that I, as a novice film hack, might judge what film is good or bad, thus making similarly questionable judgements about taste. Well, just like music, literature, food, travel and the like, film is not, for the most part, seen to be an intrinsic part of someone; nor is it deemed to be an outward show of who they are. The opposite is true of fashion writers, particularly those of the student group, who work from the general rule of thumb that fashion is a part of someone that should represent the aforementioned tastes, projecting a type. Indeed, fashion stands in for personal culture in the eyes of these pen-wielding dangers.

Furthermore, when film, music, food etc. are subject to critical analysis, it is generally with an interest in making that art better rather than making those who partake in that art better; a noble approach I think. It might never work. Film may never change for as long as I am writing about it. This bottom-up outlook is null and void in fashion journalism. Fashion itself is not for changing, it is collective taste and the individual themselves that must change.

It is unfortunate that fashion journalism is what it is, and, subsequently, is so harmful in comparison to the other topics covered in our publications. It saddens me when I have to accept that it takes up useful space every day, every week and every month in media that may otherwise be worthwhile.

If fashion journalism were to be confined to fashion journals then that would be fine. I don’t want censorship; I would just like fashion writing to be identified for the hollow rubbish that it is, with no worth at all to a progressive humanity.

20

SCIENCE

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

IN BRIEF

College’s new community garden Anthea Lacchia Staff Writer THIS YEAR, Green Week took place from 22nd to 26th February. It was a triumph. The grey limestone and granite blocks that make up so much of campus were given a green tinge, thanks to events such as a green fair, a seed sowing workshop, and the “junk2funk” fashion show.

But, as any environmental enthusiast, leaves in his hair and mud on his shoes, will tell you, environment related feelgood moments are not limited to one week a year.

College has recently accepted a proposal brought forward by the Environment Society to set up a community garden within the grounds managed by the university.

The Environment Society itself is one of college’s youngest societies, having received official college recognition in February 2008. It is Trinity’s only student environmental group and it seeks to promote a more sustainable campus. The garden is its latest achievement.

Located just beside Trinity’s Botanic Gardens, in the grounds of Trinity Hall, Rathmines, the garden is open to all members of the T.C.D. Environment Society as well as any prospective members. It is a place that seeks to promote food security, where people can grow their own preferred plants and experiment with different growing techniques, while learning about organic farming methods. The produce will be distributed amongst the people who work in the garden. A couple of hours work will be rewarded with the freedom to pick up whatever one wishes from the generous soil. Active participants are already planning their summer menus.

A marked spirit of community is central to the ethos that surrounds

community gardens the world over, and a sense of ownership and control is also critical to the success of the garden.

Anyone who has kept some seeds from the Green Week seed workshop is welcome to bring them to the garden and grow them there. Up to now, earthchurning and weed-removing have been the main events taking place in the garden. It is a miniature Eden in the making.

Sowing the first seeds has been delayed for a long time by the freezing winter conditions, but it is now underway. Welcome are all fruits and vegetables, all bees and butterflies, but banned are all chemical pesticides and herbicides. The area reserved for the garden is 10m x 10m in size but what it lacks in space it makes up for in variety of produce.

The delicacies that have the honour of being the first to be planted into the soil of the garden are rocket and potatoes.

July will hopefully be the month that sees the potatoes sprout back up again.

Successively leeks, turnips, lettuce, cabbage and an apple tree have all been planted. Paths are currently being made out of abandoned blocks of concrete found around the gardens.

The future shape of our very own secret garden depends entirely on the input and wishes of the people involved: ideas include a raised bed, a pond, wind chimes on a tree, a bench and even a hammock. Raised beds are particularly suited to gardens with limited space and have a variety of benefits, such as extending the planting season, reducing the need to use poor native soil and keeping evil weeds at bay, if designed properly.

Ideas for Trinity’s garden can be taken by observing Dublin’s other community garden, located in the Dolphin’s Barn area. This garden was created to address the lack of green

JOHN ENGLE NEUROSCIENCE

MORAL COMPASS

An abundance of produce will soon be yielded up from the new college community garden in Trinity Hall.

spaces in the city, as well as to link people and bring together a community with a set of shared goals. Like Trinity Hall’s infant garden, it is a space for like-minded people to come together on a regular basis.

What about the bigger picture? Can community gardens make a difference to our planet? Often people find that they do their best thinking, crouched down, planting seeds or while digging up stubborn roots. Sometimes physical exercise can serve to foster abstract ideas. Perhaps this is how some of the people involved in setting up Dolphin’s Barn community garden thought of a far reaching objective: to eventually create an unbroken green space though Dublin City, encompassing the Botanic Gardens, Phoenix Park and the two canals. It is a tremendously ambitious proposal.

Other community gardens can be found in Cork, Belfast and indeed it is increasingly becoming a worldwide phenomenon. All of them strive to improve the urban experience.

Community gardens provide access to fresh produce, while stimulating a sense of connection to the environment.

Having worked in the gardens from the start, when it consisted of a mountain of very tall weeds and a labyrinth of entangled roots, I can personally guarantee that the sense of satisfaction one gets after a few hours’ work provides reason alone to take part.

Anyone interested in participating in this exciting project can contact the Environment Society at environment@ csc.tcd.ie. Otherwise, simply come along to the gardens on a Saturday, from 12pm to 3pm, and take a look. The Luas or 128 bus from Nassau Street will get you there. Bring a packed lunch and enthusiasm, gardening gloves and other tools will be provided.

Whether it’s tomatoes, cabbage, strawberries, colourful tulips, or simply a tranquil place to read a book, there is something for everyone to be gained out of the garden.

Innovative novelty alarm clocks a real wind-up in the morning Alannah NicPhaidin Contributing Writer

WITH THE rapidly approaching spectre of exams hanging over students’ heads, the incentive to attend those ever inconvenient early morning Monday, has steadily risen. But figuring a way to get out of bed in the morning often remains elusive to many a tired student. Some of the greatest engineers in the world have put their minds to this ubiquitous problem, and have developed a number of innovative solutions.

One of these, Clocky, is essentially an alarm clock on wheels.

This ingenious device will noisily roll off your night-stand onto the floor and continue rolling, quite noisily, until it is turned off. However, if, like the rest of the student population, your room is probably not the best area to try to find a moving gadget that makes obnoxious noises. Clocky will, in all probability, get lost under a pile of unwashed clothes or other less savory places. The noise, not unlike R2-D2 undergoing enhanced interrogation techniques, will continue to roll and make noises until you get up and find it, or leave for class and hope the battery dies before you get home.

Another unconventional alarm clock is the so-called Sonic Boom Alarm Clock. Using it at its maximum setting might only be possible if you are willing to emigrate to the Sahara Desert. Such drastic action would be necessary to prevent waking the neighbours. This alarm maxes out at 113 decibels - for those of you in the English department that is 100 decibels louder than a jackhammer. This torture device is not for the heart-attack prone, pregnant, or those who have neighbours who possess a weapon of any kind.

More complex in its application, the Sfera alarm clock, takes some installing.

It looks like a ball that hangs down over the sleeper’s head. To hit the snooze button you tap it. When you tap it, it retracts a bit toward the ceiling. To tap it again you have you raise yourself higher to reach it, and so on until you are

NEUROSCIENTISTS AT the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated that people’s ability to make moral judgments can be influenced by disrupting signals to a specific region of the brain. The researchers, whose work is now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the region of the brain called the right temporo-parietal junction is highly influential when individuals make judgments regarding the intentions of others. This region’s activity was disrupted in test subjects simply by applying non-invasive electrodes to the scalp that induced a magnetic field. It was found that subjects were unable to make moral judgments requiring knowledge of others’ intentions, such as a failed murder attempt.

It is extremely startling and somewhat disconcerting that moral judgments, considered by most neuroscientists and moralists alike to be of a high order of cognitive function, can be so easily disrupted and altered by so innocuous a means.

The research may well have major implications in how scientists explain morality on the neurological level.

TECHNOLOGY

SUPER-SMALL SUPERCONDUCTOR RESEARCHERS AT Ohio University have discovered the smallest ever superconductor.

The newly observed superconductor, which takes the form of a sheet of a mere four pairs of molecules, is less than a single nanometer wide. The research, published in Nature Nanotechnology, offers substantial practical uses and implications for the future of nanotechnology. It provides the first evidence that molecular superconducting wires could be artificially fabricated for use in nanoscale energy production and electronics. Currently, a major barrier to the production of nanotechnologies is the fact that present metallic conductors are used in construction of the devices that can overheat and melt. The newly discovered superconductors could well find application in making nanoscale technologies a practical reality.

MEDICINE

POTENTIAL ALZHEIMER’S BREAKTHROUGH THE EFFECTS of Alzheimer’s disease have been reversed in fruit flies by researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The flies were genetically engineered so that their brains produced a protein _-amyloid closely associated with the memory loss brought on by Alzheimer’s disease. The flies were demonstrated to mirror the disease, as it appears in humans in many ways, such as manifesting agedependent memory loss, build-ups of plaques and _-amyloid, and neurodegeneration. By injecting drugs that blocked the cellular signaling activity of these degenerative proteins, the researchers were able to successfully reverse the memory loss in the flies. This research has immense potential for application in reversing these harmful proteins in humans and thus potentially providing an effective treatment for preventing and even reversing the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

Traditional alarm clocks may be rendered obsolete by such new innovative in wake-up technology as the bone-shaking hydraulic alarm clock.

up. One imagines users will eventually either hit their heads on it or rip it out of the ceiling.

And, for all those slightly sadistic roommates out there, or poor mothers who are at their wits end because you live at home and they still can’t get you out of bed, the sonic alarm clock is a great investment, if only for entertainment value. It looks like a real grenade, and it is activated like one too. You pull the pin, throw the main bit into the room and wait ten seconds. The resulting boom is guaranteed to instantly awaken any unfortunate victim. If that wasn’t enough entertainment to start your day, they have to get the pin back from you to turn it off.

The flying alarm clock does exactly what it says on the tin. When the alarm goes off, the top piece (essentially an arming pin) flies off. Stopping the alarm

requires getting up, retrieving the elusive piece and and placing said piece back in the clock. This alarm is similar to Clocky, but slightly more difficult to disarm in that the piece that flies away isn’t the alarming piece. This is frustrating, especially if it launches itself off to some hard-to-reach forgotten corner of a bedroom. Presumably, reomoving the batteries would become a preferred option.

For those bed addicts out there who need to be in some way vertical to stay awake, the Carpet Alarm Clock is just what the doctor ordered. Turning it off requires stepping on it. There is one obvious design flaw: if you throw that physics book, or any other relatively heavy, useless object on it from the safe confines of your warm comfortable bed, the same desirable effect is achieved.

Finally, for the heaviest of sleepers;

those who have successfully dismantled and defeated all other exotic alarms, is ia clock that is not for the faint of heart or head. This is the hydraulic alarm clock. It is computer operated and functions by lifting (literally) one half of the bed into the air and then violently dropping it to the floor…repeatedly.

This continues until you fall out of bed in a heap. Not even Rip van Winkle could stay aslumber in such a situation.

The varied and imaginative wonders of technology never cease to amaze, even when applied to the seemingly straightforward task of getting onesself out of bed in the morning. Surely as people continue to become more adept at hitting the snooze button, so too will researchers come up with ever more inventive and clever mechanisms for waking those slumber addicts up.

THE END OF BIRD FLU THE DISCOVERY of an influenza detector gene in ducks may provide a means of protecting humans from any potential outbreaks of the virulent bird flu. Researchers from the University of Alberta have identified the retinoic acid inducible gene present in duck species to be a virus detector gene that contains the flu virus and renders it harmless to the host. The researchers experimented by transferring the gene into chicken specimens, successfully rendering them similarly immune to the effects of influenza. This research could have major implications in protecting human populations from the risk of the deadly bird flu.

Introducing the protective detector gene into the poultry industry to create flu-resistant chickens could well limit any potential chances of outbreak.

TRAVEL

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

21

Will the sun continue to rise on Spanish bullfighting?

Jonathan Cauchi Staff Writer THERE ARE few sports that have the ability to captivate the attention of spectators with such daring displays of bravado as bullfighting. And while the sport is an iconic Spanish tradition, it has often attracted criticism centering on brutality allegations. This concern has recently been demonstrated by the parliament of Catalan that voted to ban the sport and the associated running of the bulls in its territory. Even though the real bullfighting bastions of Madrid and Andalusia remain, there are those that say that this signals the death rattle for the bullfighting past time.

The strong polarization between the supporters and critics of the sport reflects my own internal dilemma about the event. I always had a vague interest and have considered going to the San Fermin festival in Pamplona for the bullfighting and the running of the bulls festivities for a number of years. While the origin of this interest is unclear, one distinct event that sharpened my curiosity was reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. In the novel, Hemingway describes an evenly matched mêlée between a matador and his adversary within the corrida (bullfighting ring).

The matador goads the animal closer and closer to him as it charges past repeatedly, until he can feel the air disturbed when the horns whip past his torso – a dangerous facade designed to thrill the audience and build anticipation for when the matador’s sword lands the killing blow. The matador’s bravery in the face of great personal risk, his serene countenance and comfortable grace is the real attraction to the sport, not the spectacle of the bull’s death The skeptical side of me is concerned that I’m just susceptible to the charms of a romantic tradition, that beneath the lustre and displays of bravado there is some truth to the claims that the festivities are simply a blood-festooned mockery of what Hemingway floridly describes. I’ve been turning over these conflicting points of view in the hopes of coming to a resolution about whether to make the visit to Pamplona or not.

My first concern is whether the bullfighting represented in my inspirational text is actually reflective of what I can expect to find at San Fermin.

The current incarnation of bullfighting within its major Spanish strongholds is apparently congruent with the bullfighting Hemingway described less than a hundred years ago. But the bullfighting isn’t the only attraction to the festival these days; it isn’t even the main attraction for most.

The running of bulls (encierro) was originally in place to drive the bulls into the corrida but has evolved over the years as a means of young males to display their machismo and their dedication to bullfighting. Hemingway writes about participants in the encierro with such palpable fervor for bullfighting that they are said to have aficion – the passion. Other observers may enjoy the spectacle; cheer with the rest of the crowd when the bulls are released from their pens and rush towards the awaiting arena, but they aren’t aficionado. The image of the diehard fan, swathed around the waist in the iconic red sash, a hair in front of a rampaging behemoth, risking life and

Bravado or cowardice? Such scenes may become hard to come by, even in Pamplona. Photo

by David Winnie

The skeptical side of me is concerned... that beneath the luster and displays of bravado there is some truth to the claims that the festivities are simply just a blood-festooned mockery. limb, just for the opportunity to be a part of an event they have such love for strikes a glorious chord within me.

Maybe this image is romanticized but part of me can’t help but be stirred by it.

Something that runs contrary to my image of the encierro is the feeling I have that the running of the bulls, once an hors d’oeuvres to the bullfighting festivities and an opportunity for courtship display, is now a glorified rodeo populated by adrenaline addicts who have scrawled Pamplona on their bucket list. It seems to me that the original intention of the event was to induce excitement for the coming bullfights in the passionate supporters of the sport. And while the nature of this spectacle has always attracted the curious, the running is no longer just a prelude but rather an event on par with the actual bullfighting. Not that there is something wrong with the running playing a larger role; sports naturally evolve over time. But when it doesn’t retain the dignity of its previous incarnation, when drunken hooligans swell the ranks of the participants, can it be said to be an improvement?

To add to my growing list of reservations about a trip to Pamplona

are my concerns of personal safety.

Most of my deliberation so far has been academic and hasn’t focused on the very real possibility of being gored or trampled – potentially fatally. There is a scene described in The Sun Also Rises involving the protagonist and a waiter working at a café near the bullfighting arena. In it, the waiter expounds his disgust over the death of a man gored during the bull running and then expresses his incredulity that anyone would risk their lives for the pleasure of evading ‘brute animals’. Even though this description simplifies and dismisses the genuine joy the willing participants have for the event, the accuracy of the statement is difficult to contest.

My concerns have thus far centred on whether I believe the bullfighting and encierro will represent the images I have come to love from literature, and have not taken into consideration the treatment of animals by the tradition. Claims of animal cruelty and accusations of barbarity - an assertion that a large contingent of Spanish citizens agrees with - are the most often cited reason for people avoiding bullfighting festivals. The loss of such a worthy and powerful animal is a

lamentable part of the tradition, a fact that the matador recognizes by his walk in tribute to the bull’s sacrifice around the corrida and by Hemingway in some of his other works on bullfighting. This aspect is naturally upsetting to people with modern sentiments concerning the treatment of animals.

Bullfighting has earned its reputation as a blood sport for a reason and part of me considers this aspect to be distasteful. However, I believe the outcry against the bloodshed during the festivities should be tempered. It is hypocritical to denounce it on the basis of killing when a vast number of carnivores benefit from the methods of the abattoir. Every piece of the bull carcass is used following the bullfights.

The bull is removed from the ring, butchered, and the meat is sold at markets and restaurants in proximity to the bullfighting arena.

Other parts of the bull are also used in the manufacture of leather goods and other products. This is hardly a claim that can be made in sport hunting which doesn’t seem to attract the same publicity. Of course, it’s not really the use of the animal’s remains that bother people about bullfighting, it’s the supposed

horrors they endure for the sake of human entertainment. And while I can’t speak expertly on the humane methods used in slaughterhouses, this is something that still gives me pause.

The parliamentary ruling in Catalan suggests that the longevity of bullfighting in Spain may be called into question. If the trend continues, bullfighting and the running may be on the way out. While I think that this is unlikely in the near future, it would be a shame if I missed out on a potentially great experience of something I long admired just because I had vague misgivings about it. And even though the cruelty has always been there, just perceived differently by spectators, I still have concerns. I’ve resolved that the only reasonable way to determine if there is something to this romantic feeling I have about the bullfighting tradition is to actually head to Pamplona and see it for myself. Observing can be a compromise with the door open for participation if I find the same beauty that The Sun Also Rises so brilliantly conveyed. So I will purchase my ticket to Pamplona, endeavouring to find out if Hemingway was right.

BLOODLESS ALTERNATIVES IN SPAIN LA RIOJA- BATALLA DEL VINO THIS SMALL autonomous community in northern Spain is widely regarded as the country’s premier wine region, attracting hundreds of oenophiles every year, who come to sample the region’s viniculture.

But if, like me, you’re less of a wine buff and more of a diet-coke-and-straw, straight-outta-the-bottle kind of boozer, then the town of Haro in La Rioja is one place where you won’t be venerated for your lack vino-knowledge.

Every year on June 29th the streets of this innocuous hamlet run red during the ‘Batalla del Vino’ (battle of wine), an entirely sanguine celebration in honour of the patron saint San Pedro.

The day begins at 7am with a horseback procession through the town to the cliffs of Bilibio, where the bloodless battle begins. The tradition stems from an old dispute over the ownership of the mountains between Haro and the neighbouring village of Mirando de Ebro,

and continues today as a friendly wine toss between locals from both areas.

Water pistols, buckets, and a sulphate machine that sprays thousands of litres of wine, are used to stain the mountains and the traditional white dres of the combatants crimson in this friendly fight.

VALENCIA- LA TOMATINA A SIMILAR blood-red battle takes place in Buñol, Valencia every year on the last Wenesday of August (this year the 26th). This time, however, tomatoes are the weapon of choice. More that 100 metric tons of the fruit are thrown by the warring crowds on the streets of the small town. La Tomatina, as it is g festival in Valencia, called, is a week long ing with the celebration of the coinciding wo patron saints. Music, parades, towns two g and fireworks take place each dancing minating in a paella-cooking day, culminating contest on the Tuesday night to fortify the warriorss for the renowned tomato-hurling

“batalla” on Wednesday morning.

PAMPLONA- RUNNING OF THE NUDES BEGUN BY a group of 25 PETA protestors in July 2005, this event has fast become an annual event in the area. The traditional San Fermin festival or ‘running of the bulls’, begins at 8am on July 7th, with bulls running between the Santa Domingo where the animals are kept, and the bullring where the fights take place, every morning until July 14th. Two days before the beginning of this controversial event, however, animal rights activists from all over the world gather in the area and run this famed half mile course; naked, save for red scarves and p plastic horns. PETA funds a street party following the streaking sprint, where partakers can get to know eachother more intimately...if that is possible.

Sian Barry

There will be blood

Travel editor Jimmy Lee takes a look at a few blood sports that used to drive the masses mad for guts and glory.

FOR CENTURIES, nay, for millennia, people have travelled in droves to witness barbaric blood sports.

Blood sports are forms of entertainment or sport that are cruel and often unusual in nature to animals.

Thankfully, with efforts from animal rights groups and a shift in moral conscience, many of these obscenities have been removed from our everyday.

Many would argue that we have shifted our focus to equally as barbaric blood sports (see Mixed Martial Arts/ Ultimate Fighting Championship), or have simply shifted these once socially acceptable tourist traps from out of the spotlight of the mainstream.

ROMAN EMPIRE

GLADIATOR GAMES GLADIATOR GAMES reached their peak during the 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE and continued on, even after Christianity entered the foray, well into the 5th century CE. Gladiators were often slaves, and were usually pitted against the local wildlife.

EUROPE

FOX TOSSING IN THE 17th-18th century, the tossing of Foxes and other woodland creatures was all the rage. In one of the more notable tossing contests took place in Dresden in 1648, where 647 foxes, 533 hares, 34 badgers and 21 wildcats were tossed and killed. The animals would, at times, be dressed as caricatures of well known personas.

CHINA

CRICKET FIGHTING DURING THE Tang Dynasty (7th-10th century) cricket fighting became a popular pastime and continues today through the Association for Cricket Fighting in Beijing.

The most beloved prized crickets are celebrated as athletes, and have funeral services.

Sometimes, they are even alotted one new female cricket to “celebrate”.

ENGLAND

COCK THROWING THIS UGLY blood sport involved the tying of a rooster to a pole, and throwing special sticks at it until the bird crowed its last. Before Pancake Tuesday, cock throwing was the tradition for pre-Ash Wednesday festivities. It is also known as, cock-shying, throwing at cocks, whipping the cock, or thrashing the cock.

PHILIPPINES

SPIDER FIGHTING UNLIKE POGS, Spider fighting is no fad. Popular among rural Filipino children, this blood sport may be a precursor to a serious gambling addiction, as some matches can win 100 pesos. Illegal Derbies can win you up to 30,000 pesos (400 euros). A spider fighting contest is held in Japan every year.

IRELAND

HARE COURSING BANNED IN the UK since 2005, hare coursing involves the chasing down of a hare by greyhounds or sighthounds. Some argue its legitimacy by noting its assistance in conservation of the hare population and its tradition of testing the dogs’ hunting abilities. Most, however, see it for what it is: a regulated, judged, and competitive bloodsport.

Due to social pressures, Irish hare coursing competitions (which attract up to 10,000 spectators a year in Co. Tipperary alone) mandate that the dogs be muzzled.

22

SPORT

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

90 minutes in 2084 A short story by Alan Kearns looks at a dark potenital future for the beautiful game.

Alan Kearns Contributing Writer

The coat must have been from when he was much younger because it was far too big for him now. The shoulders were level with his sunken cheeks, giving the impression that every time he moved his head he was slowly wriggling out of a life-jacket in the middle of the sea. “I will get the police and tell them what you said if you don’t take it back at…”

“No ya won’t!” he interrupted in a thick Dublin accent. His cider-coloured eyes were glowing at me in defiance.

“If you were on good terms with the Gards you wouldn’t be here in the first place, now would ya?” I tried to think of something clever to say to prove that he hadn’t out-smarted me but I was distracted by the medals which hung

IT WAS a normal Saturday in Dublin. The grey clouds hung overhead with their faces scrunched in anger, threatening to spit like skinhead hooligans in a terrace.

Fearing the rain but more so the police I quickly broke from the sombre marching line of football fans and ducked into the darkness of a nearby alley. I tried to conceal myself as best as I could while anxiously observing the grim faces of those who continued to file past my hideaway. No one looked. I hadn’t been seen. I was safe.

Although I was relieved that I didn’t catch anyone’s attention, I was somewhat disappointed that no-one turned so I could confirm whether I was mistaken in my observation that a miasma of misery seemed hang about their bowed heads. The profile of every stranger resembled a dreary woodcut that had been peppered with soot. Why were they so sad? Arsenal beat KFC FC 1-0.

The sudden clatter of bins and panicked scurrying of rats and whizzing of mice shook me from my musings. I ventured down the grimy brick throat of the alley searching for the cause of the cacophony. Beneath a disused fire escape I found a man sitting and gently sobbing to himself. “Is this what its come to?” I didn’t answer his question.

Instead I began to back away noticing that he wasn’t wearing his Arsenal jersey on a Saturday, I reasoned that he was either wanted by the police or mad. He must have heard my footsteps because he spoke to me again without raising his head which was covered by an old tatty tri-cornered sea-captains hat. “It all started with him…Bendtner murdered football!” The malice that sounded in his voice nearly rivalled the disbelief and horror that shook me from hearing such a hideous slur against my hero, against everyone’s hero, against the greatest footballer of all time– Sir Nicolas Bendtner.

“Blasphemy!” I cried, “How dare you, take that back at once!” The old man laughed bitterly and lifted his head at an angle as if his ancient neck couldn’t cope beneath his massive black hat that slid to the back of his head, exposing blotched brown sun spots and sporadic strands of invisible grey hair. I waited for him to repent yet he sat silently with his frail hairless legs poking out before me from beneath his mammoth black trench-coat that stretched to his knees.

coughed violently from either fury or bewilderment, I couldn’t tell which.

Eventually he calmed himself and shot to his feet with astonishing speed. He stabbed me repeatedly in the chest with his bony finger “I’ll open your fucking eyes, ya daft gobshite!” His tiny figure sped several paces towards the black abyss at the bottom of the alley until he realised I wasn’t following him. “Come on!” he shouted before disappearing into darkness.

Whether I followed him through curiosity or fear I don’t know. All I am certain of is that it wasn’t through logic. The old man, who told me his name was “The Admiral”, brought me to the basement of an abandoned council house. The room was occupied with three men sitting in a random assortment of chairs, which were laid out in two rows of six as if a screening was taking place. They were gazing at a football match on an old TV. The picture was terribly grainy, a far cry from HHHD. I felt nervous. The room was littered with smelly yellow-leaf newspapers and dog-eared magazines. A cloud of stale air hung around our heads which themselves nearly touched the ceiling.

The walls were plastered with posters of strange men– Pelé, Van Basten, Zidane, Ronaldo, Messi, Wilshere– their names meant nothing to me.

I began to fear I was in some perverse men’s club. The man who was nearest the TV was wearing the inner lining cap of a soiled wig and had women’s make-up painted on his pointed face.

I became faint as he spread his legs open before the TV and moaned while gently massaging the stiff breasts of his hard-coned brassiere. There was a terrible sense of weight in the room and as I took a deep breath of warm air I felt my knees begin to buckle. The Admiral must have perceived that I was uncomfortable as he rested his dolllike hand on my shoulder. “Don’t mind Ashley, he’s just a Chelsea man.” Even though his words did little to reassure me, he insisted “Watch the TV.” I squinted and focused on the tiny monitor and suddenly the picture burst with colour and became clear as if the TV had an epiphany. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was some kind of angel floating with the ball at his feet. Dribbling seamlessly through midfielders, the touch, the control, the pace, the strength, the technique. All flawless– and then it must have been from at least 35 yards he shot, and like an arrow it flew through the air as if it

The walls were plastered with posters of strange men, Pelé, Van Basten, Zidane, Ronaldo, Messi, Wilshere, their names meant nothing to me. from his breast pocket.

“Did you fight in the war?” I asked timidly. A wry smile broke across the old-mans face. “I guess you could said say that, I played for Bohs for six years… before they shut the league down that is.” “What’s Bohs?” I inquired.

“Bohemians were a football team in the Airtricity league…but you probably never heard of them have ya?” I could feel the sadness in his voice and for some strange reason wanted desperately to be able to tell him that I did know who they were, but I couldn’t. I remained silent.

“That’s what I thought” he uttered in disappointment.

The old man looked to the mouth of the alley and watched the hordes of dejected football fans who were still filing past us. They had red scarves tied around their necks and were wrapped in flags like straight-jackets. “Who’s your favourite footballer sonny?” he asked. “Nicolas Bendtner of coarse!” A flush of anger reddened the old mans pale face “But that clown’s been dead for nearly 17 years!” For some reason I wasn’t offended when he insulted him, I just precociously responded “So, he was the best of all time, look at the stats.”

The old man’s little head shook and he

SPORTS ROUNDUP

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

20/03/10

Pl 14 14 15 14 14 15

W 9 8 8 7 3 2

Navan

D 3 3 2 2 0 2

L 2 3 5 5 1 11

0–7

GF 27 46 62 32 24 20

GA 12 19 27 41 55 57

GD 15 27 35 -9 -31 -37

Pts 30 27 26 23 9 8

Dublin University

Team Lansdowne Bruff D.L.S.P Terenure Bective Rangers Old Wesley Belfast Harlequins Thomond Malone Corinthians UCD Clonakilty Dublin University Old Crescent Highfield Greystones

the Congo. The parents of the children told the court how Wenger came to the village and lured the children from the streets into the back of a van with a magical flute that hypnotised anyone who heard it. They didn’t know what happened to their sons until they accidentally saw them on the TV playing for Arsenal.

That’s when Dunphy copped it. It was the Flute! Bendtner was using it, calling up journalists in the middle of the night and brain-washing them. He then had it played through the loudspeakers on match-day and convinced the fans to elect him chairman and when that happened it all went wrong.

Dunphy tried to publish an article in the paper exposing him but it was refused.

He was found dead two days later. The police said it was a cocaine overdose but by that stage Bendtner owned the police. Dunphy had only told two other people the news.

One was a man named Johnny Giles who he fled to Mexico but was murdered a few weeks later, he was found with an ice-pick in his eye…the newspapers

MEN’S SOCCER

SAT MAJOR 1C P 13 13 14 13 14 13 13 14 13 13 13 14 14 13 14 14

W 13 9 8 8 7 7 7 6 6 7 6 5 5 4 3 2

D 0 2 1 0 1 0 0 2 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0

27/03/10

Dublin University

11 – 19

10/04/10

Dublin University

v

L 0 2 5 5 6 7 6 6 6 6 6 8 9 9 10 12

F 406 270 280 260 240 251 231 266 250 180 287 201 241 215 159 136

A 152 199 219 206 215 260 195 251 237 243 251 259 264 299 256 367

TB 8 3 3 2 0 3 2 3 2 1 3 2 2 1 0 0

LB 0 1 2 3 5 3 3 2 2 1 0 5 6 3 4 2

Pts 60 44 39 37 35 34 33 33 30 30 29 29 28 20 18 10

* Bray

Glenanne

P 17 14 18 19 17 16 13 17 18 11 15 15 0

W 10 9 9 9 9 7 6 4 4 3 2 1 0

D 4 5 5 5 3 2 0 5 3 4 6 2 0

L 3 0 4 5 5 7 7 8 11 4 7 12 0

Belfast Harlequins

Pl 16 15 16 16 16 17 18 18 16 16

W 14 13 12 8 6 4 4 4 3 2

2–0

DIVISION 1

WOMEN’S RUGBY D 1 1 2 4 3 3 2 2 4 2

L 1 1 2 4 7 10 12 12 9 12

GF 42 47 44 36 19 18 7 16 22 13

GA 9 12 16 26 21 42 31 50 32 25

GD 33 35 28 10 -2 -24 -24 -34 -10 -12

26/09 - Registration infringement (1 points deducted)

20/03/10

Team Postal United Dublin University FC St Patrick’s CYFC Sacred Heart FC Alpine Express Newbridge Town Ballyfermot United Larkview Boys Swords Celtic Portmarnock FC Templeogue United St. James’s Athletic Fairview CYM

LADIES SQUASH

LEINSTER DIVISION 1 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Old Wesley

LADIES HOCKEY

Team Hermes Railway Union Loreto UCD Old Alexandra Glenanne Trinity College Corinthian Pembroke Wanderers Bray

said it was an accident.” The second was Liam Brady who had worked with Bendtner in the Arsenal youth academy.

He himself had hailed him as a future star but after learning the truth of what he had helped to create he couldn’t take it and while sitting in the dressing room wearing his old kit he put a pistol in his mouth. Eventually using the power of Wenger’s flute he became head of FIFA, had all other leagues shut down, forced football fans across the world to watch Arsenal and spent the rest of his life ensuring that after his death he was remembered as the greatest footballer of all time.”

The old man leaned back letting his words float between us, poisoning my ears. Lies, it had to be lies that was the only logical explanation. Then again it explained so much, why we were all so miserable watching the matches.

Somewhere deep down we must have realised that this wasn’t football but a perversion, a shame, a disgrace!

“We have to do something!” I cried.

The Admiral raised his eyes to the heavens but was denied inspiration by the low dank ceiling that separated our worlds. “There’s nothing to be done.” he said as if reading his own the epitaph.

“Bendtner’s son is now in charge of things and he “cleanses” the league of promising talent, keeping the standard mediocre for fear that anyone should threaten his father’s legacy. The time to speak out was in the 09/10 season, but for whatever reason the people remained blind. They should have recognised that Bendtner’s performances heaped more discredit on Arsenal football club then when Graham Stack was accused of rape. No-one will speak out now… can’t blame them, would it be worth their life?”

I wanted to roar that “we could speak out!” but I didn’t. Instead we both silently letting the idea of being a martyr for football enter and leave our minds, for in reality we were both cowards. The truth hadn’t liberated me but rather it was crippling and frightening. Will football be this bad forever more? All I could think to say was a quote of Bendtner’s I had heard when I was younger in the hope that whether through gallows humour or pity it would prevent the romantic thought of being footballs saviour from dying in our conscious.

“Football’s not a matter of life and death… it’s more important than that.”

At that the old man burst into wild fits of mad tear-eyed laughter… but never told me why.

Dunphy had only told two other people the news. One was a man named Johnny Giles who he fled to Mexico but was murdered a few weeks later, he was found with an ice-pick in his eye

AIL DIVISION 2

LEINSTER DIVISION 2 Team Weston Avoca Dublin University Suttonians Bray Navan

acclaim. Everyone seemed to forget the Arsenal didn’t play any of the top six in their final eight fixtures and that Bendtner had scored against nobodies.

Yet the journalists and the fans hailed him as a genius! He continued to play and score shitty goals. His power of magically brain-washing critics began to draw some suspicion.

An Irish broadcaster called Dunphy was the first to recognise it. He left, spent years travelling across Europe on a mule he called Dolan trying to unearth Bendtner’s secret. Meanwhile the lanky bastard became the first premierleague player-manager when Wenger was imprisoned after being caught red-handed smuggling children out of

MEN’S RUGBY

MEN’S HOCKEY

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

would never stop– straight into the top right corner, perfection.

I was breathless, I was speechless, I had never seen anything like it before.

“Who was that?” I whispered in awe.

“That my friend, Is Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima.” I turned to the poster of him on the wall but he was no longer a strange man. He looked like one of the saints in the stained-class windows of the church before they were all replaced with images of Bendtner. “How come I have never heard of him before?” I asked with astonishment. “I will explain all.” replied the old man in a sullen tone.

We sat in a corner of the room. The old man took off his hat and held it before his chest as if he was delivering terrible news. “What I tell you, you can’t tell anybody because it could get you killed, ya hear?!” I felt the question was rhetorical yet after a few moments of silence I realised that he did indeed want an answer so I nodded my head obligingly before he continued. “In the 2009/2010 English premier league season, that’s what they called the Durex league back then, Nicolas Bendtner made his breakthrough with Arsenal.

Now he had appeared in the past couple of seasons yet it wasn’t till Arsenal’s best striker at the time, a little Dutch lad, called Van Persie got injured that Bendtner got regular game-time.

And he was shite! he missed chance after chance and was an utter shambles but just managed to score the odd tap-in or open goal to avoid criticism.

The crafty Dane soon realised that most of the sports journalists were hacks and could only rate a player on stats. After one match against Burnley Bendtner was hounded as a fraud for cocking up four absolute sitters yet he scored a shoddy hat-trick the following game drastically improving his goal ratio.”

At this point I interrupted. The Admiral’s argument was flawed.

“Shoddy hat-trick? That was Bendtner’s legendary first hat-trick in Europe, one of the greatest hat-tricks of all time they say!” The Admiral sniffed “Did you see any of the goals? No you didn’t because all the tapes of Bendtner’s goals were destroyed ...but I saw that hat-trick; two were tap-ins and the third was a bloody penalty!”

“The truth is that all of Bendtner’s goals were crappy little tip-ins or open goals or free-headers and that didn’t bother anyone at first, a goal is a goal.

But Arsenal went on to win the league that year and Bendtner got all the

Trinity College

Pts 43 40 38 28 21 15 14 14 13 7

ALL IRELAND DIVISION 2N

*

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Team Old Belvedere Portlaoise RFC City of Derry Cill Dara RFC Belfast Harlequins Malahide RFC Cavan Dublin University Carrickfergus

P 8 8 7 8 8 8 7 8 8

W 7 6 6 5 3 3 1 1 1

D 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 1

L 1 2 1 3 4 5 4 7 6

F 231 234 138 97 56 64 20 20 15

A 45 35 41 89 128 88 164 82 203

TB 3 5 3 3 1 1 0 0 0

LB 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 0

Pts 32 29 28 24 14 12 8 3 3

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Team

P

Pts

Trinity A Total Fitness MH A Mt Pleasant A Westwood B Old Belvedere A BYE

8 8 8 8 8 0

90 79 78 29 14 0

F 51 32 41 33 32 34 19 27 25 22 31 19 0

A 27 13 24 26 28 40 23 33 42 21 41 48 0

Pts 34 32 32 32 30 23 18 17 15 13 12 5 0

SPORT

TRINITY NEWS April 7, 2010

23

THE COMMENTARY BOX

Former world champion Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari for the first time at Valencia earlier this year. Photo: F1photos.org

THE FIA NEEDS TO BRING ITSELF, AND FORMULA 1, UP TO SPEED MUCH HAS been made of the 2010 Formula 1 season. Driver pairings unseen since the glory days of Prost and Senna and the return of the legendary Michael Schumacer has created a height of anticipation that the opening race in Bahrain failed to match with spectacle. Although it could be argued that the following two races in Austrialia and Malaysia have shown excitement and full blooded racing, the reality is that rain played a role in creating unpredictable situations. In truth F1 has been suffering from a rot in the last decade, brought about by the sports’ ability to push the boundaries of engineering.

Over the last decade the level of aerodynamic grip (the grip created by air flowing over the car) has been developed exponentially leading to cars relying less on the more mundane grip gained from tyre rubber on tarmac. This in turn prevents cars from following each other closely on track as the wake of a car disrupts the grip of a car following. The Bahrainian grand prix was the perfect example of this as faster cars were unable to pass slower ones and reducing the race to nothing more than an expensive parade of fast cars. In 2008 the FIA (F1’s governing body) set up a taskforce to think of ways to decrease aerodynamic grip. This group implemented several ideas for the 2009 season which would increase overtaking.

These rule changes have categorically failed due to an innovation by the current constructors champions Brawn GP now known as Mercedes GP. The FIA failed to uphold its own rule changes and allowed the development of the now infamous “double diffuser” which increases the aerodynamic grip of the car as well as creating the problematic turbulent air behind the car. The double diffuser is now banned for the 2011 season but this is one year too late. This year every team has their own version of a double diffuser and racing has suffered.

The FIA are now struggling to deliver closer racing and this year the regulations were changed once again in an effort to increase competition.

Teams now qualify on the least amount of fuel possible and refuelling during the race itself is banned. On the evidence the Bahrainian grand prix has given us, this has done little to improve the spectacle. The teams meet this week to discuss a solution to the problem but the blame lies with the FIA and their recently appointed president Jean Todt, who have not acted in time to fix the mistakes made last year. After all the teams are here to innovate and pioneer– it is the FIA’s job to govern.

Negative as it may sound this season has still managed to throw up a blinder of a race in Melbourne. Under weather usually reserved for the high speed corners of Silverstone rather than the sunny streets of Albert Park, Jenson Button romped to victory after an astute strategic choice gave him an advantage over his rivals. Of course the excitement of this race is somewhat artificial, created by the changing track conditions. So how can the same excitement be generated on a dry track? The FIA must encourage the teams to do what they do best and allow them to develop cars that are efficient in the dirty air created by other cars. Maybe then the new Malaysian-backed Lotus team can return to the prominence the famous name had in the 1960’s.

Of course there is still much to savour until the season ends in November. Most savoury among them is the number of potentially volatile driver pairings. Hamilton versus Button, Alonso versus Massa, Rosberg versus Schumacher. Only one driver can win in these pairings and rest assured that grapes will sour and classic television will be shot. Already Alonso has complained about his teammate holding him up in Austrailia, not to mention Hamilton’s outburst to his team when he realised they had him on the wrong strategy.

Unfortunately the flaws of F1 do not stem from the drivers themselves, and until the wrongs are righted by the FIA we will have to make do with the drama off the track rather than on it.

Patrick Kelly

Life in the fast lane: a frantic season lies ahead James Hussey Staff Writer NOW THAT Cheltenham has finished, it’s time to focus on the real racing. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Formula 1 is back, arduous high octane racing, as breathtakingly fast as ever. This year represents a pinnacle for the fastest show on Earth, a star-studded cast of drivers, four new teams, rule and track changes to ensure more exciting overtaking, and of course, the return of the greatest, Michael Schumacher.

In recent years, the sport has undergone some serious change and suffered divisive controversies, pushing it to the precipice of credibility and leading others to question its status in the sporting world. I am not here to dwell on the controversy however, Formula 1 is on the road to a full recovery (excuse the pun) and looks to be coming through its turbulent times. A mixture of huge investment, commercial and sponsorship

allure and a fierce rivalry between some truly great drivers all add to the F1 experience.

With four ex-champions in the field, the world of motorsport waits with bated breath as the season gains momentum and the competition intensifies.

If you missed the first three races, it’s not too late to start watching. The old powers of Ferrari and McLaren have awoken from last year’s dormancy and look to be on course to fight out a very interesting year. It is Ferrari’s 60th anniversary as participants and their newly commissioned F60 looks set to beat all-comers. They have discarded last year’s developmental KERS braking system which destroyed their chances of success and Felipe Massa seems to be back on form after sustaining a horrific eye injury in the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix. With Fernando Alonso, the charismatic yet enigmatic Spaniard, onboard, Ferrari has boosted their chances exponentially and silverware is very much a possibility for the Prancing Horse.

The most prominent of Ferrari’s early rivals appears to be the all-British driving team at McLaren-reigning champion Jenson Button and 2008 champion Lewis Hamilton.

This combustible partnership will do one of two things, win championships or end in acrimonious dispute. The much maligned Button had great luck in winning last year but not to detract from his achievement, his skill level seems to be growing all the time.

Hamilton on the other hand is incredibly talented, aggressive and most importantly, very, very fast. One could imagine him being put into a Fiat Punto and still giving his all around Suzuka or Hockenheim!

With only one mention so far, I feel as if I am neglecting a man as synonymous with cars as Mr. T is with air travel. The legendary MSC will once again be seen emblazoned on Grand Prix pit walls across the world, awaiting the Mercedes silver arrow of the greatest of them all, the one and only Michael Schumacher.

His season so far has been distinctly average

in relation to his past glories but this man, while at a wheel and with an accelerator pedal under his right foot can never be ruled out. On recent evidence, what is needed is for the car to tune up properly to racing pitch.

The Ross Brawn-led Mercedes team predict this will take about six races, until then Schumey must chomp at the bit and watch the other constructors’ cars go faster than him. Interestingly, the 6th race is in Monaco, a serious circuit that needs a fast driver at the wheel of a honed car. (I couldn’t possibly predict his sixth career win in the principality, could I?) What awaits us all is a fascinating season.

The classic tracks of Monza, Imola and Silverstone are all to come and who would bet against this being the most frantic, exciting championship in the sport’s history? If only the BBC could mute Jonathan Legard’s inane commentary every once in a while, life in the fast lane may be the perfect blend for sporting fans this year.

On your bike to be fit and fast Tom Lennox Contributing Writer WHY CYCLE? In very simple terms it’s good for you, good for your pocket, and good for the world.

How to persuade people to start pedalling, who are currently non-cyclists, is the question.

Fundamentally an individual’s perception of cycling and their expectations of how they might be perceived can affect their decision to cycle or not.

Thus cycling can be positively marketed by those who wish to promote it and conversely others might wish to portray it in a negative way.

Let us focus on the positives as cycling is and will continue to be one of the most sustainable transport systems in any urban/ suburban environments where journeys of up to 10 kilometres can be taken with a minimum amount of effort.

Regular cycling (at least 20 miles per week) reduces the risk of heart disease to less than half of that for non-cyclists who take no exercise. Not only are there enormous benefits to the individual but to society as a whole as it will contribute greatly to tackling the obesity problem peculiar to the western world. In addition it will have an economic impact as money can saved in the treatment of cardiovascular or obesity related health issues.

During rush hour cycling is about twice as fast as making that journey by car.

Furthermore, journey times are much more predictable and this is undoubtedly a priority for most people.

As traffic congestion decreases there are economic and environmental benefits to the other essential motorised road users.

Financially speaking cycling makes lots of sense.

Bicycles do not require insurance, licensing/ road taxation, MOT

and expensive servicing. A good bike will last for years, possibly decades if regularly maintained. Parking is rarely a problem as they can be parked in most places– with a lock of course. So there can be a considerable saving on parking fees.

20 bikes occupy the same space taken up by one car and the amount of energy and materials required to make a bike is only a fraction of that required to manufacture a car.

Bicycles make little noise and their pollution

In terms of accidents cars kill and maim thousands of people every year– bicycles do not.

levels are zero. In terms of accidents cars kill and maim thousands of people every year– bicycles do not.

In practical terms what can be done to increase the number of cyclists on the road? The

provision of motor-traffic free paths such as in the Netherlands would undoubtedly help and the proper maintenance of the existing cycle lanes as well as the full enforcement of the law surrounding cycle lanes and their use. Cycle training measures would help too. Not only would such schemes build confidence in the students (of all ages), but it would also make it more likely that parents would allow their children to cycle to school. Moreover, this training may also be offered in an attempt to overcome cultural unfamiliarity with cycling i.e. among female migrants from developing countries.

As in other areas of life cyclists may form support bodies or associations with the aim of promoting and developing cycling as daily regular form of transport. These associations can lobby various political institutions at local, regional, national and European level to support or oppose measures that may impact on cycling.

Short term hire scheme, sometimes free, will play a role too. In Copenhagen, Cordoba, Vienna, Lyon, Paris, London, and m o s t recently Dublin such schemes have been put in place.

Finally, modern technology is helping to change attitudes towards cycling.

Easy running thick tires and

additional springs allow cycling over kerbs as well and electric powered cycles for the disabled and elderly will help in this way too.

The car has had perhaps the biggest social and environmental impact of any type of transport since its advent in the late nineteenth century. We should not forget that the bicycle predates the car by some distance and the following illustrates this point.

In July 1880 H Blackwell and CA Harmon of the Canonbury Bicycle Club travelled from Cornwall to Caithness in thirteen days. Their journey, on “ordinaries” (the correct term for “penny-farthings”), took was a staggering 858 miles. Undoubtedly they were encouraged by the recent opening of the John O’Groats Hotel. Other cyclists followed the pioneering Blackwell and Harmon on quicker, safer, and lighter machines. Exactly a century later Richard Poole completed the Land’s End to John O’Groats distance, the incipient “end-toend” event, in a few minutes under forty eight hours in a record breaking non-stop spin.

The number of participants in these events was relatively few but significantly they were among the earliest sporting events to be used intensively for sports marketing. These highly competitive events were not the sole domain of male athletes. By the mid 1950s Eileen Sheridan had set a series of records in the place-to-place categories which had evolved in the interim. She also cycled an amazing 100 miles between London and Norwich in an electrifying four hours sixteen minutes and one second. Subsequently, she established a record for 1,000 miles in a truly incredible time of three days and one hour. As the 50s gave way to the 60s the use of the bicycle as an every day vehicle declined as cars became much more affordable and were seen as socially more acceptable.

While not everyone will be a Poole or a Sheridan or more famously a Lance Armstrong, Mark Beaumont (record breaking round the world cyclist) or a Wendy Houvenaghel (regular medallist world track cycling from County Derry) there is every reason to be a regular cyclist in these economically stringent health conscious times.

SPORT

FORMULA 1:

GET WATCHING, P23

LADIES’ BOAT CLUB

The colours race between Trinity and UCD on the Liffey in early March, where Trinity emerged victorious after a catatstrophic missed stroke by UCD’s team.

Trinity victorious in boating colours Caitlin Condon DULBC DULBC HAD an encouraging start to their season at Lagan Head of the River where the senior eight took home the prize of Fastest Women’s Crew. Early on, the focus centered on the Colours race where the adjustment from endurance head racing to shorter regatta-style racing so early in the season posed a challenge for the crew. However, the girls were eager to confront UCD on the traditional 2.3km Colours course from O’Connell Bridge to James’ Gate Brewery. DULBC seniors had not won on this course in seven years—they knew they had something to prove.

Colours provided the novices with their first taste of side by side racing.

Although the Sally Moorehad Trophy may not have been retained this year, as the season progresses this promising novice crew will soon be able to utilize their strength as they gain more racing experience. This year also marked the first time that a second women’s novice crew had the opportunity to face off against UCD in Colours. This development is a reflection of the growing popularity of women’s rowing in Ireland. The “Goonette” crew had an impressive win over UCD beating them by several lengths of open water.

The senior crew was comprised of Sarah Dolan (stroke), Iseult Finn, Susannah Cass, Caoimhe ProudMurphy, Rebecca Deasy, Siofra Bennet, Niamh Murphy, Caitlin Condon (bow), and coxed by captain Rachel Nazarin.

Although it was a young crew, it did not lack in experience; six of the girls raced in Colours the previous year where they had recaptured the Corcoran Cup after an interminable UCD winning streak.

The senior women’s race began in the midst of controversy. Two key UCD rowers had allegedly enrolled in part-time, 12-week, “Adult Education” courses so as to be able to produce copies of UCD student cards to the race organizers as proof of enrollment. They would not eligible to row in University Championships under the same credentials, but consent was waived.

Be that as it may, on the starting blocks everything was irrelevant but the race at hand.

Although DULBC led off the start, the powerful UCD crew rapidly gained

RUNNING

and then sustained a boat length lead over DULBC. However, throughout the multiple bends and bridges marking the course, DULBC stayed with UCD and did not let them stretch their lead into open water. DULBC was calm and collected throughout the entire race; they never doubted that they were going to win. Within the last 400m, DULBC made a powerful push and closed in on UCD. As DULBC came up even, UCD cracked under the pressure, and in a dramatic fashion their rower in 3-seat caught a crab (missed a stroke), which dragged the UCD boat to a standstill. By the time the UCD crew had recomposed, DULBC had passed the finish line.

Trinity’s win proved that they had the physical endurance and mental stamina to withstand the pressure of such an

important race. As Liam Gorman of the Irish Times wrote: “Trinity’s women stole the show with a dramatic demonstration of how patience and persistence can yield big rewards.”

However, the crew did not have time to rest on their laurels as the Senior and Inter eights flew to London five days later to race in the Women’s Eights Head of the River Race. This race is rowed over the grueling 7.2km reverse Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race course. The Inter 8’s performance stands as a testament to DULBC’s depth as they finished an impressive 87 out of 300 crews after only being able to practice once in their final line up.

Due to injuries, the crew led by Rachael O’Byrne O’Reilly (stroke), Naomi O’Sullivan, Sinead Rodger, Catherine

MENS RUGBY

Trinity and DIT Old Wesley take the points take team titles in in penultimate confined colleges season game Niamh O’Boyle (Trinity) and Gerard Butler (IT Tallaght) take individual victories Gerry Brady Contributing Writer THE FIRST ever confined colleges championship was held on an up and down course on Camaderry, overlooking the lakes of Glendalough.

A course that had been almost bone dry on St. Patrick’s Day had softened, with the overnight rain, turning the boggy last 800 metres to the summit into a squelchy challenge. The yielding ground tilted the balance towards orienteering and mountain running shoes, and towards descenders for what was an almost continuous four kilometres long descent.

Eoin Pierce (DIT) led the race from the start closely followed by Colm Hill (DIT) and Eoin Brady (UCD). When the runners emerged onto the never-ending grass ridge climb, Pierce had a slender lead over Gerard Butler (ITT). Chasing in third and fourth were Diarmuid Collins (NUIG) and Colm Hill. In the ladies race Niamh O’Boyle (TCD) was well clear and around ninth overall.

Ciara Largey (Queens) and Rosalind Hussey (TCD) were second and third, and having a good debut mountain race in fourth position was Helen Gibbs (GMIT).

Approaching the summit, Butler and Collins eased past Pierce who was struggling in road running shoes. Colm Hill followed on the descent to move into the bronze medal position. Stephen Cleary, the defending champion, was having his usual flying descent to move into a clear fifth. The ladies held their positions on the descent with Niamh O’Boyle finishing in ninth place overall and Ciara Largey and Rosalind Hussey taking the silver and bronze medals.

DIT won the men’s team race with Colm Hill, Eoin Pierce and Mark Conway (in his debut mountain race) scoring a total of 15 points. NUIG on 21 points were runners-up and UCD on 29 were third team. All three DIT runners as well the first two men had run the Colleges cross-country championships last week.

Trinity with 9 points had a good

win in the women’s race with Niamh O’Boyle, Rosalind Hussey and Mirjam Allik comprising the team - Niamh and Rosalind had both ran for TCD in the cross-country last weekend. A large contingent of runners from the Cadets College saw them lift the silver medals and GMIT with two runners were third team. The new format of a confined colleges race resulted in record entries including many new colleges. In all, runners from nine different colleges participated with record numbers of fionishers in both the men’s (30) and women’s (10) races. Competitors are encouraged to give the Committee some feedback through the forum on the race and on recommendations for 2011.

Thanks to the volunteers who made the race possible, the Wicklow National Park for permission to use the route, and especially to those completing their first ever mountain race - the sore quadriceps should be forgotten by Wednesday and the memories should remain.

SCORE

TRINITY OLD WESLEY

11 19

TRINITY ENTERTAINED Old Wesley for the first time in years on Saturday March 27 at College Park in this Division Two AIBL game. This was Trinity’s first game in three weeks (an off season in France) and the home team looked rusty to say the least during the entire game.

Trinity started brightly with the forwards dominating the set piece and the backs running the ball through the phases, but continuous unforced errors stopped any real progress against what seemed a disinterested Old Wesley team in the first period. The students gift-wrapped two kickable penalties and got one themselves when out half Dave Joyce nailed a kick from 35 metres out. Trinity created the only real try scoring opportunities in the first half but errors were a consistent problem throughout the game.

In the second half, with the breeze, things looked good for the home team to show their superiority and press their

advantages home in front of a large crowd. This they did not do as errors continued to mount up. Added to this two of Trinity team were sin-binned at different times. With all the mistakes and turnovers Old Wesley began to gain some momentum. They were then allowed to score two of the softest tries seen in College Park for many a season to give them a deserved 19-3 lead.

To their credit Trinity came back with outstanding freshman flanker Dominic Gallagher, the best player on the pitch by a long way with his high work rate and all action game, leading the way. James O’Donoghue kicked a penalty on his first XV debut, Irish U19s Dominic Gallagher scored a sensational individual try when he beat several defenders to score by the posts. The conversion was rushed and missed– which summed up the game for the students as this would have put them back in the game with a few minutes to go.

Trinity have one game remaining against Belfast Harlequins this weekend at College Park, they must look to develop their game, cut out the mistakes and return to their best form of two months ago.

Taaffe, Blaire Mulvey, Rebecca Dowling (bow) and Claire Acton (cox) were left two rowers short. Thankfully, DULBC veterans Breda Horan and Annelies Pletsers were willing to step in as exceptional substitutes. The senior crew finished 40th and improved on their performance from last year’s Head of the River by 20 seconds.

DULBC are presently busy preparing for University Championships on April 10, where they hope to retain the Bank of Ireland trophy for fastest women’s Irish university crew and the Kat Miller trophy for the fastest senior women’s crew.

DULBC would also like to extend a warms thanks to Trinity Trust & Association for their valued generosity and support.

MATCH STATS SCORE

TRINITY OLD WESLEY

11 19

TEAM

15 JAMES O’DONOGHUE 14 TIM MCCOY 13 CONOR COLCLOUGH 12 RICHARD BRADY 11 COLIN MURPHY 10 DAVE JOYCE 9 MICK MCLOUGHLIN 1 TRISTAN GOODBODY 2 MARK MURDOCK 3 JAMES GETHINGS 4 SCOTT LAVALLA 5 PIERCE BYRNE 6 ALAN MATHEWS 7 DOMINIC GALLAGHER 8 BRIAN COYLE SUBS

ANDY WALLACE SAM BELL CRAIG TELFORD MAX WATERS