Issue 176

OMID DJALILI

ANDY MURRAY

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

THE SCENE

P24

P13

>CULTURE

>SPORT

ISSUE 176

NUS SMALL-BUDGET PUBLICATION OF THE YEAR 2006

>FEATURES

www.yorkvision.co.uk

Tuesday January 30, 2007

YORK RAPE VICTIM:

The student sexually assaulted by Clive Manyou tells Vision about her experiences and explains what drove her to face down her attacker in court I felt like I was on trial Everything made me so angry I knew I had to speak out EXCLUSIVE

BY LUCY TAYLOR The York student at the centre of the rape trial which saw a popular campus figure sentenced to six years in prison has spoken out about her ordeal.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, spoke to Vision about the experiences that led to the conviction of Clive Manyou, also a York student, in York Crown Court last week.

“My life has changed in every way possible,” she said. “Seeing the court case through was immensely difficult and more than anything I think I didn’t want it to be true; I didn’t want it to have happened, I just wanted to pretend everything was okay.

“But regardless of the outcome of the trial, I knew I had to bring it to justice.

Rape is such a difficult issue and it has to be addressed more than it is now. So many cases go unreported.”

Manyou was convicted of the rape and sexual assault of the girl as she slept in her college accommodation in June last year. His name will remain on the sex offenders' register for life.

The 36-year-old mature student was well-known on campus as part of Battle of the Bands finalists Mitus, and played at Planet V and Woodstock events at the university even after his arrest. His profile featured in the 2006-7 university prospectus to attract future students to his degree.

Manyou knew the victim socially and had been out with her and a group of friends in Ziggys on the night of the assault. Yesterday the victim spoke of her “anger” at the crime and urged other girls in the same situation to speak out against their attackers.

[Photo posed by model]

MY STORY FULL STORY PAGES 4-5

2NEWS

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

your week

VISION AT A GLANCE We revealGOOD our campaign WEEK P2 to save our porters

Vision unmasks the horP3 rific "wifebeater" social

MED SCHOOL STUDENT DEAD AFTER A COLLISION ON A BUSY DUAL CARRIAGEWAY

STUDENT KILLED

BY LORRY

>ROBERT MORTON, A HULL YORK MEDICAL STUDENT, DIES IN ROAD ACCIDENT

CROKER: 24 HOUR PORTERING MUST STAY

organised by the university Hockey Club

P4-5

Derwent is set to become the uni's first catered college.

A full round-up of all the

P6 major stories and talking

points of last week's JCRC elections.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK Hockey President Andy Hook shows no remorse after his club's wifebeater social:

"

BY BRYONY BYRNE

The girls themselves enjoyed their Wednesday night out both before and after meeting their ‘wifebeaters’ and would be happy to reinforce this opinion if necessary.

"

GOOD WEEK bad week GOOD WEEK derwent dave

He wasn't afraid to stand up to top admin officials Keith Lilly and Ken Batten over the porters crisis and ask the challengeing questions that everyone wanted answers too.

bad WEEK andy hook University Hockey president Hook showed little remorse after his club's "wifebeater" social. Time to resign Hook?

the number cruncher 11o

Pounds a month is the amount that Goodricke will lose on the removal of the pool table

50

Number of flash mobbers that put on their dancing shoes in the library

17

The age at which you can enter campus events

1

Frog found in student's pub lunch

BY LIZZY DALE The tragic loss of York Medical student Robert Morton came as a shock to fellow York students this week.

The sudden death occurred in the small hours of last Tuesday, where he was involved in a road traffic accident, whilst on a night out in Hull with friends. Robert was crossing the Clive Sullivan Way – a busy and dangerous dual carriage way – when he was hit by an oncoming lorry. An inquest has been opened into his death.

As a ‘founding student’ of the Hull-York Medical School, Robert

was undertaking his fourth year.

An email sent out to all HYMS students from Professor Ian Greer, said ‘We are shocked and deeply distressed at Bob’s loss. We have expressed our condolences to his family on behalf of HYMS.’ The HYMS department has also offered help and support to all staff and student mourners. A medical student who lived with him on a placement comments; ‘The news was such a shock, especially as so many people knew him, its so awful.’

Roberts’s funeral is due to take place this Friday.

YUSU have launched a campus-wide campaign to “save the porters” after college social spaces were closed last week in the latest development of the university staffing crisis.

President Rich Croker urged students to read posters and sign the petitions in every Porter’s Lodge to protest at the lack of security staff.

“The purpose of the campaign is to show the university how highly the porters are valued by students at the university and what an integral part they play in college life,” said Croker. “Whilst we accept that the university have got themselves into a crisis we do not want this to become a precursor to a removal of portering permanently.”

Last week Derwent, Vanbrugh and Wentworth Porter’s Lodges were closed due to staff shortages, after 14 members of the portering staff resigned their positions in the first term of this year, apparently in protest at new contracts and working conditions proposed by university Admin.

Now Goodricke JCR has been divided to create extra space for mail and parcels behind the Porter’s Lodge, which under the new plan serves students from Goodricke, James and Wentworth colleges.

The decision to build a temporary wall in the JCR is the result of a compromise made to keep the Porter’s Lodge in Goodricke instead of the Physics building.

However, due to an oversight, this plan was not possible since the wall is a supporting one. Nonetheless, the construction went ahead and, as a result, Goodricke have lost a third of their JCR. “It is very difficult to communicate to a business-run university the importance of welfare issues,” said Ben Wardle, Goodricke Chair.

However, the installation of the wall has caused Goodricke to lose one of their two pool tables, from which they make a large proportion of their money. Ben Wardle estimates that the college will lose: “in the region of £110 a month from the loss of the pool table.”

The removal of the pool table also affects college sport, since the Pool club requires two tables for their tournaments, and Goodricke is one of the only colleges with this facility.

The new campaign is backed by an underground student campaign of graffiti art on walls and paving slabs around campus. The fist motifs in white spray paint carry the slogan: “Fight for Porter’s Rights”.

The current staffing arrangement is scheduled to last until after the Easter vacation.

YORK VISION Tuesday January 30, 2007

Ben Matthews Laurie Allsopp Mark Griffin Katie Jacobs Managing Editor: Theresa Dolan Head of IT: Nick Evans News Editors: Lucy Taylor Adam Thorn Deputy News: Lizzy Dale Jess Wong Comment Editor: Sophie Wright Deputy: Richard Byrne-Smith Editor: Deputy Editors:

Cartoonist: John Sharp Features Editor: Iain Withers Deputy Features: Claudia Stern Lifestyle Editors: Charlotte Chung Carla Dobson Style Editor: Kat Boyd Deputy Style: Sarah Howe Food and Drink: Rob Gallagher Travel Editor: Beth Rudge Deputy Travel: Mike Edwards Sports Editor: Darius Austin Deputy Sports: Lauren Cockbill

Proof Readers:

Photo Editor: Deputy Photo: Social Sec:

Alex Richman Kate Mason Deborah Mason Veronique Ward Tom Hole Matthew Grum Charlotte Chung

Call us: 01904 433720 www.yorkvision.co.uk

Opinions expressed in Vision are not necessarily those of the Editors, Senior Editorial Team, membership or advertisers. Every effort is made to ensure all articles are as factually correct as possible at the time of going to press, given the information available.

Copyright Vision Newspapers, 2006.

Vision is printed by York & County Press.

NEWS

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

INCREDIBLE PICTURES REVEAL HOW SPORTS SOC SPENT LAST THURSDAY NIGHT

WIFE BEATER

HOCKEY CLUB'S SICK

SOCIAL

BY ADAM THORN The University hockey club held a vile “wife beater” themed social last Thursday which saw members of the men’s team wear sick stained t-shirts and the girls dress as housewives.

President Andy Hook told Vision: "Obviously, none of the female hockey players are actually our wives, and, more importantly, there was no ‘beating’".

He added: "The girls themselves enjoyed their Wednesday night out both before and after meeting their ‘wifebeaters’ and would be happy to reinforce this opinion if necessary."

The event comes at the same time as a high profile campaign to raise awareness of domestic violence is launched on campus.

YUSU welfare officer Amy Foxton told Vision: “the Union is against any trivialization of such issues…It is naive to think that domestic violence is not experienced by students

and any attempt to make light of the subject is offensive and inappropriate.”

The event was held in two parts with the male team, led by President Andy Hook (pictured right), going for a curry with full curly wig and sick stained vest costume, and the girls going for a “housewives” party.

President Hook told Vision that the theme is a regular one.

"It originated as a social on which hockey club members were only allowed to drink ‘Stella Artois’, known worldwide as ‘Wifebeater’, whilst wearing only a ‘wifebeater’ vest, rather than any reference to physical violence," Hook added.

Currently YUSU women’s officers are running a provocative domestic violence awareness campaign. Speaking about the campaign Foxton said: “The women’s officers have worked to raise awarenesss about this subject by putting posters up in porters lodges across campus, with flowers that represent the

women who have died from domestic violence since the beginning of the year.”

Former YUSU women's officer Grace Fletcher-Hall added: "Of course this was a joke on the part of the hockey club but it is a joke in the worst possible taste.

"I fail to see how anyone could possibly find it funny to mock the people who experience some of the worst suffering in our society. What next? A Homeless social? An Asylum Seekers social? A People With Cancer social?"

The news comes after Goodricke’s JCRC sports reps were forced to step in and stop a similar event being organised by some of the college’s sports team.

Around a quarter of women experience domestic violence during their lifetime. Charity women’s aid claim that less than half of all incidents are reported to the Police, but receive one domestic violence call every minute in the UK.

York flash mobbers made a spectacle in the J.B Morrell Library last Friday when a herd of students congregated for a silent disco.

Infamously known for causing scenes of outrageousness, the

After a few minutes, the silent disco stopped and people silently walked away, leaving onlookers in shock. One librarian said: “For once students look happy to be in the library.”

The silent disco was the third staged act by the York flash mobbing crew. Last term saw the worshipping of Central Hall in

BY ANNA BEVAN

RAG’s 10 beneficiaries for 2006/7 were invited to give speeches at a presentation evening held in their honour earlier this month.

The event was a chance for the student-led committee to meet and greet the various charities they have been raising money for. It also enabled them to learn more about the specific nature of their causes.

RAG president Kate Jeffreys, said it was an opportunity for the fundraising society to “think about the deeper meaning behind the fun”, and find out exactly how the beneficiaries profit from the money they raise.

"Waiter there's a

FROG

in my meal"

BY LUCY TAYLOR

FOUL: HOCKEY PRESIDENT ANDY HOOK'S COSTUME

FLASHMOB HITS THE LIBRARY obscure clan of around 50 students awkwardly formed opposite lending services and up to the key texts area at around 12.50pm.

At 1pm sharp, the mobmaster in charge, thought to be the founder of the cult group, shouted the prearranged signal, waving to another, which set tons of students dancing around in a haphazard fashion.

RAG AWARDS NIGHT

The small gathering, which was held at Kennedy’s café bar in York, gave the group members a direct insight into how important their work is, in raising both money and awareness.

As well as giving financial support, the charity speakers stressed the importance of elevating the profile of their aid organisations.

Since many of them have recently had their funding cut, such as ‘The Encephalitis Society’, they have become solely reliant upon donations from RAG. Of the 10 beneficiaries invited, six were able to attend and welcomed the opportunity to give the congregation an in depth account of exactly how crucial RAG is to their success.

Photo by Lizzy Dale

BY LIZZY DALE

3

the Vanbrugh Dining Hall and a Ready-Steady-Cook battle on Coney Street in York City Centre.

A History of Art student, who wishes to remain anonymous, commented after the incident at the library: “It was obvious by people standing around beforehand. These flash mobbers should make it more original.”

S t u d e n t s enjoying a meal in a popular local pub were shocked to find the remains of a frog in the salad accompanying a plate of chicken goujons.

“I noticed something a bit funny in my salad, but I was talking and laughing with my friends, so I pushed it to one side,” said one of the diners, a third-year English student.

“Then when my plate was clear I looked a bit closer and realized what it was. It was a couple of inches long and pale green.

It was almost fully grown with legs but still with the long tail of a tadpole. It was split down the middle and with a small blue vein pushing through the gap. It was rank. It was definitely a frog.”

The students complained to staff and the plate was taken away. “The management offered us a new meal, which obviously I didn’t want, and then they gave us some vouchers as compensation.

They asked me to keep it quiet.

They wouldn’t let me take a photo.

“I won’t be going back.”

4NEWS

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

student THE STUDENT WHO WAS RAPED BY HER press

Hannibal on the loose A Newcastle student had his ear bitten off in a vicious mugging.

The savage attack saw the victim’s cartilage of his left ear being ripped away. After stealing his money and mobile phone, the two thugs demanded more, punching and throwing the student against a wall then bearing their nashers and feasting on the students ear!

One Student....

Sold!

An Australian student Nicael Holt has sold his life on eBay for AU$7500. Surprisingly the package includes a ‘broken relationship with a former girlfriend, the rights to his name, phone number and all of his belongings, as well as a fourweek training course in becoming Holt.’ The 24-year-old philosophy student plans to go ahead with the sale through eBay. The student also hopes to make a documentary about the auction.

Student hit by train She looks like a right cow Scientists faced uproar by local religious figures as proposals to fuse cow eggs with human DNA was launched. Newcastle University scientists plan to go ahead with the stem cell research despite the movement against it, as this research will help in curing many serious diseases such as Parkinsons.

Fancy a SHAG? SHAG-week launched by Lancashire SU- sprung into action with their Welfare Officer flaunting his stuff around the campus dressed as a giant latex condom. Ironically, Shag- stands for- Sexual Health and Guidance- an initiative aimed to get the numbers of disease ridden Lancashire students down!

RAPE VICTIM SPEAKS OUT ABOUT HER ORDEAL Manyou heading to court: Photo by Tom Hole A female student raped and sexually assaulted as she slept in her college bedroom has spoken exclusively to Vision about her experience and urged other girls in the same situation to step forward and report their attackers.

“There were so many points after the assault when I thought, ‘I can’t go through with this’” she said.

“There’s still a feeling of shame attached to rape and I think that’s why so many go unreported."

“Social ideas of rape are so false – so

There’s still a feeling of shame attached to rape many people are misled into this idea that victims never know their rapist, that rape is something that happens down a dark alley in the middle of the night. Consequently, when victims do know the man that attacked them, people tend to blame the victims themselves.

“Actually, over 70% of victims know their attacker, and a large number of those consider them as a friend.”

The English and Related Literature student had just completed his first year when he was suspended from his studies after being formally charged with rape by police in August.

His victim returned home to her parents immediately after the attack and felt unable to return to York to continue her degree.

“I’ve left York University because of what happened,” she said. “The

whole process of seeing the trial come to court is so long and tough.

“I’m not trying to be a martyr or to make myself a heroine. But I think, both on a personal level and in the wider scheme of things, it’s so important to step forward if you’ve been raped.

“The police have been criticised for the way they’ve handled rape in the past but they couldn’t have been more supportive – they were there for me all through the process.”

Last week, the court heard how Manyou had “manipulated” his way into her bedroom in the early hours of the morning after a night out in Ziggys with a group of their friends ended in the college kitchen.

The girl was left alone with the offender and he persuaded her to let him stay the night on her floor. The jury heard that he waited until she was asleep to climb into her bed and sexually assault her.

The judge Recorder Gary Burrell QC told Manyou: “She didn’t want you to sleep in that room. She trusted you when you promised to sleep

It’s so important to step forward if you’ve been raped.

RAPIST CLIVE MANYOU POSES FOR A PHOTO ON HIS WEBCAM fully clothed on the floor.

“You waited until she was asleep and got into her bed to assault her when she was asleep and therefore vulnerable. After the first assault you waited until she was asleep

>STORY CONTINUED PAGE 5

again.”

Manyou had claimed in his defence that the female student had attempted to assault him, and told the jury: “I am standing trial for something I did not do.”

Judge Burrell QC told him: “You blatantly tried to lie your way out of this situation, making up wholly unfounded allegations against the 19-year-old student.

>VISION COMMENT PAGE 8

NEWS

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30th, 2007

FELLOW UNDERGRADUATE SPEAKS OUT

"MY LIFE HAS CHANGED IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE WAY. SEEING THE COURT CASE THROUGH WAS IMMENSELY DIFFICULT AND MORE THAN ANYTHING, I DIDN'T WANT IT TO BE TRUE." > CONTINUES “As a result, this young girl’s university career was ruined. What should have been an enriching and learning experience that she was entitled to expect was completely spoiled by your sexual attack on her.”

Everything made me so angry - the way they attacked my personlaity, all the lies The victim told Vision how angry she felt to be questioned in court about the case.

“It was incredibly tough giving evidence in court and I had to be very strong on the stand. I certainly felt as if it was me on trial; I was questioned for over three hours.

“Afterwards, it was my personal choice to sit through the trial and

listen to everything that was said. I didn’t have to be there, but I felt like I needed to see it through. It was always tense in the courtroom, and it wore me out completely.

“Initially everything made me so angry – the way they attacked my personality, all the lies. But at the end of the day, I knew what I was doing was right.”

A university spokesman said: “It is a matter of great regret that a member of the University should have been convicted of a criminal offence. Clive Manyou will now be dealt with according to the University’s disciplinary procedures.”

Manyou will now serve three years in prison before being released on licence.

The female student is trying to decide whether or not to return to York next year to continue her degree.

“I’m trying to leave all my options open,” she said. “A lot of the anger goes after the conviction. I didn’t think that would be the case, but it is.

“I’m not interested in bad-

mouthing Clive. I worked hard to go through the court case and I feel I went about that in the right way. His life is not relevant to me any more.

She added: “What happened has hit my confidence in some ways, but I think overall it’s made me a lot stronger as a person. I’ve been so

I can rebuild my life without the same barriers holding me back lucky, all my friends and family have been brilliant all the way through, they’ve been 100% behind me.

“I now feel I can rebuild my life without the same barriers holding me back. I think, more than anything, I’m just glad it’s all over.

“My life has been on hold for so long.”

5

CHANGING BY DEGREES The University Teaching Committee have proposed changes to the structure of degree modules and classification that, if implemented, would permanently change the face of study at York.

30- and 40- credit modules in all degrees would be scrapped under the proposals, and students in all courses would be exempt from assessment in the first year of their course.

The document was initially circulated to Board of Studies representatives during a two-week consultation window before Christmas, but this time has since been extended.

LIBRARY TOUR PODCASTS L i b r a r y staff are looking for new ways to market themselves to the 21st century generation, with trials of audio and video podcasts explaining the library system and even virtual library tours, which would be available to download to a mobile phone.

A library spokesman stated that the current method of offering library tours in person is "not cost effective" and said: "Nothing has been decided yet, but we are looking into these other options."

FUSION AUCTION OFF SPORTS PLAYERS The University's top footballers were auctioned off to the highest bidder at Vanbrugh's Planet V event on Friday - andraised just £30.

Club President Simon Oatridge and other members of the football 1st team were bought by a group of female students to clean

Manyou driven to his cell: Photo by Tom Hole

6NEWS

OUR MAN ON THE INSIDE TELLS YOU

the confession box

WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON AT YUSU

College's secret stripper TOP college politicians and sportsmembers decided to hire a professional STRIPPER at their Christmas party. Sources close to the senior members described the young lady as a: "minger". Ouch!

Media mogul plans JCRC chaining

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

HES ROAD'S WARNING LETTERS > ANONYMOUS LETTERS SENT TO STUDENTS

A SENIOR media representative planned to chain himself to Alcuin JCRC. The plans got so advanced that YUSU President RICH CROKER had to talk the student out of it.

GORDON BENNETT! Vanbrugh JCRC chair Ryan Bennett dressed up in drag three nights in a row last week. Ryan was appearing in the pantomine "Robbin Hood" which ran from Thursday until Saturday.

Moore sugar needed for AU Roses sweetener Who is going to be playing the ROSES BALL? We've uncovered a split at the top over which band would play. While Maximo Park were the favourites for most of the crew, ultra-cool AU Pres. TOM MOORE favoured saccharine girlgroup Sugababes.

Photo by Laurie Allsopp

BY BEN MATTHEWS A recent spate of burglaries in the student area of Heslington Road has seen anonymous letters distrubuted by worried residents alerting them to increased cirme.

They ask for more patrols in the area and add to calls for a Neighbourhood Watch scheme to be setup in the area.

At least 6 houses have been burgled in the past month, some of those belonging to students. Items amounting to a worth of over £1000 were stolen in just two minutes from a house in Wellington Street,.

This prompted one victim to post notes through every letterbox in the area warning of the dangers

of leaving front doors unlocked and to keep a look out for any solitary males acting suspiciously in the area.

Vision spoke to the victim, a member of staff from the North Yorkshire Police, who said that she was expecting the arrival of guests and left her front door open. The burglar was watching from across the street and the upstairs bedroom light acted as signal that the ground floor of the house was empty.

He stole over £1000 worth of possessions including an Ipod, a mobile phone and jewelry. The man was then discovered and chased but escaped on foot. Many of the stolen items were found dumped in a garden nearby.

The night before the incident, a suspicious character was seen out-

DRINKING LICENCE CONFUSION >VISION INVESTIGATION REVEALS FLAWS IN DRINKING LICENCE

side a house in the same street, apparently trying to force entry into the house, until they were scared of by an aware neighbour who lived directly opposite the house in question.

As many houses in the area have front doors that open directly onto the street, it is easy for any criminals to discretely test whether a front door or car door is unlocked.

This is exactly what happened when John Armstrong, a student at the university who lives on Lawrence Street, woke up to find a man in his bedroom holding a torch.

Awaking in a state of alarm, Mr. Armstrong shouted “What the f**k are you doing?” and the burglar ran off, slamming the door behind him. The front door of the house, which leads directly onto the street,

had been left unlocked. The burglar didn’t get a chance to steal anything, and the victim said that he was not scared, but “angry more than anything”.

Mr. Armstrong, a postgraduate student studying for a master’s degree in science, said that “For some people it might have been terrifying, but I was ok.” He received 3 visits from the police - one that night, one the next morning to dust for fingerprints, and one later on as part of an ongoing investigation into burglaries in the area.

Mr. Armstrong also received a call from the Victim Support unit of the North Yorkshire Police, and advises anyone to lock their doors to stop similar incidents happening again. For more information or advice, contact 0845 60 60. 247.

GOODRICKE'S SUPER SENATE Photo by Dave Martin

BY RICHARD BYRNE-SMITH

Photo by Adam Thorn

BY ADAM QUIGLEY The university’s licence to sell alcohol could be put in jeopardy by allowing under 18’s to consume alcohol at campus events, says the City of York Council.

This follows the university’s policy of allowing 17 year old students to be admitted to bars and other venues serving alcohol, under the proviso that they do not drink.

However, one underage student told Vision how easily she found it to get served at a campus event by simply “blending in” with the crowd. “It’s really easy to get served”, she said.

“The bar staff on campus never ask for ID.” A Licensing Assistant at the Council told Vision that: “If there is an underage sale, it is the personal licence holder that could lose their licence.” When asked if the university’s licence to sell alcohol could be

jeopardised by selling to underage customers, she replied, “Yes. The licence could be put up for review.”

The university’s policy is designed to allow Scottish students who join the university at 17 to attend campus events with their friends, and to allow students to ‘sign in’ a younger brother or sister for instance if they too wanted to attend the event. However the Council warned that: “It doesn’t mean because they’re on the university campus that they’re going to be over 18 and therefore old enough to drink.”

Rory Shanks, YUSU Ents Officer, conceded that YUSU had “no specific policy” on how to prevent the few 16 and 17 year olds at a campus event from receiving alcohol.

He added: “The best way to deal with this will be dictated by the local situation that differs from venue to venue and event to event. The head Doorsafe on the evening is

more than qualified to determine the best way to prevent such occurrences should any 16 or 17 year olds arrive at the event.”

Conversely, the university spokesman, David Garner said that YUSU did in fact have a policy, stating that: “Doorsafe actually mark 17-year-olds’ hand with a cross”.

The spokesman added that any under age person seen consuming alcoholic drink at an event would be asked to leave.

The Council added that: “Appropriate measures need to be in place to ID people. If Trading Standards find under 18’s being served, the bar staff face a fine as well as the personal licence holder. It is down to the bar staff to check.”

“If there are any underage there, bar staff should be vigilant of people buying 3 bottles for instance, to ensure its not being passed to their underage friends.”

Newly elected Goodricke JCRC chair, Ben Wardle, has continued the college’s reputation for controversy with the creation of a new JCRC ‘executive committee’.

Wardle has sparked criticism for taking the unprecedented move of creating the new committee without JCRC agreement. Goodricke’s constitution permits “any number of sub-committees”, allowing Wardle to create the two-tier system without any constitutional amendment.

The new ‘sub-committee’, intended to be similar to YUSU’s exec, will be used to discuss and debate important topical issues in more depth than the time restraints of a normal JCRC meeting allow.

He added: “Last year, meetings would go on for up to two and a half hours, and it was just boring,” said Wardle. “With the largest JCRC on campus, this new sub-committee means we don’t have to waste time in JCRC meetings.”

Made up of between 10 and 15 people, the committee, which will meet three times a term, includes the Chair, Vice Chairs, Treasurer and Secretary as permanent members, but also includes other positions depending on pressing issues, such as welfare officers regarding

the current portering situation. .

“It’s not a policy making committee, and anything we discuss is not cemented. We debate things and then pass ideas on to the main body for voting.”

There are concerns that the new system has the potential to make the JCRC “more cliquey” with certain members feeling “left out and put out”.

“Often it’s just the same people who talk in JCRC meetings. This new committee allows quieter members to feel more comfortable in a smaller group,” he said. However, aside from the permanent and invited positions, any other member of the JCRC is only allowed to attend the meeting once a term.

“It’s not supposed to be a secret group meeting in a dark smoky basement to discuss classified information. We send the minutes out to everyone on the JCRC,” said Wardle.

When asked about time restraints, Wardle again reiterated the new committee’s intention to “improve efficiency” by “delivering the effectiveness of a small committee, while maintaining the best things about a big committee”.

“The last thing I want is for attendance to drop. It’s only ad hoc. It has the potential to work well, but it can be removed if it doesn’t.”

YORK VISION

COMMENT

7

COMMENT

V

Tuesday January 30, 2007

LETTERS>COMMENT>COLUMNS

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Cheat!

!!

In ref rism e ju cle ‘C rence to th Why s st does no heats e arti - ished hould they t exist. your la in Yo fo r surpr st issue, I w k’ in they ju r doing sombe punised to a s w n o rong? st don’t re ething t overse find o ali It u a up ov s students t that sity shou hink the unse is ld sto e iver ing, a p caugh r half of make W n p d enali sta t an ov plagiarisin those th e want to krt educatin se a n g g self, I rseas stude . As rig t what we’r ow for sur . ht. To e doin e nt my f i n d g o that t versit i m g s e a a t ltin ny h y bound does not m e uni- realis g in troubleof us are in a a is acc ries betwee ke the fault! I g it, and it’swithout e n n wha t universi my opinionot our not an ptable and ty is what n th ywher p le i t e s ely to enoug blame comh. Ma e near clea . r ny of nese f m A r cultur iends come y Chi- H non, alifax e whe re eve from a Colleg they ry re e fact – ad is cons thing the id idered ea of plagia -

tact the Daily an agony aunt service (con to stress that we are not g solutions). But erin -alt life h suc Firstly, Vision would like for hie ice: our very own Saviour Sop anything, so here is our adv Mirror's 'Dear Miriam', or l man our hand to pretty much rea a turn to can n we ntio k atte thin r to you like we do the cinema, go out, and turn at . on) ling g ogg p goin g Sto ! thin P!! ear GRI GET A the cauliflower e height and a lot less of e too traumatic, you littl a just ves (preferably with a little mor pro er dst yourself off the Bon me, from Alternatively, if weaning ilable, so my sources tell selection of gold bikinis (ava e hes, just wid clot a r se you er cha pur und ays one alw ring could ) and make a habit of wea s orth olw Wo as es stor such quality in case...

Vision completely ag rees that it is unfair you are being pe nalised for something you do not see as wrong. Though courses often explai n the consequences of this form of acade mi their handbooks, we c misconduct in ful assertion that the un ly support your iversity needs to be much clearer in outlining what actually constitutes pla garism, and that it needs to ensure all students know how to avoid it.

CROSSWORD ACROSS >>>>>>>> DOWN >>>>>>>>> 1 Mute (8) 5 Musical gathering (4) 8 Ice to skate on (4) 9 Chinese port (8) 10 Malevolent (7) 12 Fragment (5) 13 Outpost (6) 15 Snoozing (6) 17 Ward off (5) 18 A form of upper body exercise (5,2) 22 Nickname of Northampton Town Football Club (8) 23 Great Asian desert (4) 25 Important persons (8)

1 Deify (7) 2 Leases (5) 3 Artist’s place their canvases here (5) 4 Compound of alkali and oil (4) 6 Perform successfully (7) 7 Move and steer (5) 11 Visionary (5) 12 To stick (5) 14 Having the capacity (7) 16 June flowers (7) 17 Boulders (5) 19 Adjust (5) 20 Reel (5) 21 Enthusiastic (4)

Vision would like to apologise for misinterpreting James Flinders’s letter “Get your (Hali)facts right” in our last issue (December 12th 2006). We have since been informed that the letter was not a criticism of the article in question, but rather was providing additional information suggesting that Halifax had in fact been campaigning for YUSU’s adoption of an ethical merchandise motion for some time.

In the letters page of Issue 174, it was alleged that Nouse had recently accepted a sum of money from Vision in order to ‘stave off bankruptcy’, as the letter said, under which was written ‘Vision couldn’t agree more with this’. Vision feels that the comments were made in a valid context, but understand that they could have been read in such a way as to suggest untrue facts. For clarification purposes, Vision have never made a financial donation to Nouse, and the letter was actually referring to the fact that last year Nouse received more funding than Vision.

8COMMENT

>COMMENT NUS SMALL BUDGET PUBLICATION OF THE YEAR 2006

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

The wifebeater social: Showing upper class snobbery at its worse

NEWS EDITOR

Courage in Conviction

Y

ork’s rape case is unusual. Not in the appalling nature of the crime, nor in the devastation it has caused, but in the fact that the perpetrator has actually been convicted. Less than six percent of reported cases see this result.

Allegations of rape are notoriously difficult to prove, both legally and emotionally. In June last year, the BBC’s Rape on Trial highlighted some of the difficulties faced by victims of rape in a ‘culture of scepticism’. As York’s case only too clearly shows, it was the victim rather than the perpetrator who was often put on trial. The stigma and trauma of rape, too, can hinder the speed at which victims report the crime, reducing the chance of obtaining the medical and forensic evidence usually so essential in achieving a conviction.

In the York case, the victim’s sensible attitude and strength in both reporting the crime and giving evidence in court meant that justice could be done. She is a model to us all.

Fine for YUSU, not for Goodricke

Y

USU is a large organisation, and requires a split committee to make decisions quickly and effectively. However, Goodricke JCRC covers around one tenth of YUSU's student population and, as the past has shown, works perfectly well with the traditional single-tier JCRC. Ben Wardle should be careful that his new super committee does not lead to friction within the JCRC; people want to become involved, and this new level of bureaucracy will only heighten feelings of inadequacy among those members not selected to join Wardle's new 'elite'. What's more, by taking the dictatorial move of creating the committee without JCRC approval, Wardle should not expect to have automatic support from those committee members who may come to believe they are unnecessary bodies in a hierarchical system. Members of the college, who essentially have ultimate power, should ensure that Wardle's new 'exec' is held to account.

Sort out underage mess

W

e were all underage once; getting in without being ID'd was what we lived for. However, the university needs to sort out its muddled policy on underage drinkers before we're all punished for its own incompetance. It is cruel to single out those unlucky few seventeen year-olds, but it is what must be done to prevent legal chaos. It is all too easy for bar staff to assume that everyone they are serving in a university bar is overage, however they need to made aware that this innocent assumption is far from the truth. It is shocking that the university's ineptitude is placing bar staff in a position where they could face fines.

I had a pretty close friend at school, let’s call him Sam. Now Sam had the perfect family life.

His mum was a nurse working for the local NHS hospital while his dad was a pretty rich executive at a big computer company. They had three nice cars, a big house with a big garden and went to church every week. They were then, the archetypal upper middle class family. That’s not to hold anything against them though – Sam was one of my best mates at school.

I remember one day though, during registration I think, Sam was sitting and talking to me and my mates when something extraordinary happened. He just, well, burst out crying. I can tell you that in an all boys school (and especially the rough one I went too) that’s not the thing you do.

Then he began to tell us why.

The night before his Dad, coming home pissed, went to the kitchen and got a large knife from the cupboard, ran into the kitchen and, in front of Sam, grabbed his mum in a rage and threatened to kill her.

For a boy that had enjoyed the perfect upbringing that is a lot to take in.

I don’t know exactly what happened exactly after that, Sam cried a bit more and I didn’t think it was right to ask any more ques-

tions about that moment. What I found out later was that his mum, scared to death, fled the house and took her kids with her and they stayed at a friend’s house for a few weeks. It was domestic violence on a horrific scale.

“Wife beating” isn’t a joke. It happens more than most people in this university would ever imagine and I’ve no doubt has happened to many people reading this now. But the real problem is that it is often thought of as something that is done by working classes – like they’re some kind of simple chav animals that are completely clueless.

"The fact that they only apologised for upsetting people (and not for the act itself) shows ignorance on a mounmental scale"

they are.

While I was reporting the story the club gave me a statement in which they effectively said that their social had nothing to do with domestic violence. Oh no – in fact (to use their own words) was something that: “originated as a social on which hockey club members were only allowed to drink ‘Stella Artois’, known worldwide as ‘Wifebeater’, whilst wearing only a ‘wifebeater’ vest, rather than any reference to physical violence.”

Yes, I’m sure that the fact that they wore sick stained vests with curly wigs had nothing to do with domestic violence. Pathetic isn’t it?

I never meant this column to be a personal attack at anyone with the hockey club. But the fact that they only apologised for upsetting people (and not for the act itself) shows ignorance on a monumental scale. Perhaps they should think a bit more about someone other than themselves in future.

news@vision.york.ac.uk The fact that our university hockey team see fit to trivialise the matter shows how completely stupid and arrogant all of them are. They clearly think this is not the sort of thing that would happen to your average middle class hockey player. It shows how ignorant

People are different: Get over it

DEPUTY COMMENT EDITOR So, I hear, it’s now trendy to be politically incorrect. Jeremy Clarkson lovers everywhere are rejoicing with stick-it-to-the-man style orgies of gay jokes and ‘it’s your fault you’re fat’ rants. Self-expression is the buzzword. ‘We’re not homophobes’ they say, ‘we just have a sense of humour’. I’m all for it. In fact, I have to be a little careful with my love of saying things I really shouldn’t: my housemates are becoming increasingly concerned that, after attempting to defend paedophilia (the thoughts not the actions, mind), I may actually be a paedophile. It’s a tricky subject, but, thinking about this more, it’s actually quite a politically correct thing to do. Of course, child abuse in any form is absolutely abhorrent, but why aren’t PC-lovers defending these people’s freedom of thought and right to ‘be who they are’? I can’t see it catching on. Anyway, I am beginning to digress.

Where I am trying to pull this towards (somehow) is the point that university Students’ Unions up and down the country absolutely love political correctness; none more so than our own. Freshers arrive at university to be greeted by welfare officers throwing condoms in their face and shoving them in every available orifice. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that sav-

Adam THORN

Richard BYRNESMITH

ing us all from wild unprotected sex almost defines university welfare; go to the YUSU welfare webpage and you are greeted with an arty closeup picture of, guess what, some condoms. I don’t know about you, but I like to think that getting into this university means that I am sort of

clever, i.e. I know that condoms stop you getting HIV and impregnating some unlucky single-mother-to-be.

I've been put off University welfare since I last consulted them (my friend had hurt herself), and received advice close to ‘I don’t know’.

Of course, getting rid of university welfare would be a complete travesty, but I sometimes wonder if we are doing this welfare thing the right way. Is welfare selflessly ‘helping

us’ because students are quite simply promiscuous, stupid and incapable of using a condom machine?

Perhaps. Does 'looking after us' just give them a warm fuzzy, politically correct feeling inside? Maybe.

Does cynicism ooze from my pores?

Definitely.

Another point: the union’s so called ‘liberation positions’. That’s the LGBT, Womens, Racial Equality and Disability Officers apparently. Now, again, I have no problem with the idea per se, but perhaps these positions have a counter effect.

Maybe homosexuals being continually told that they are ‘normal’ and women that they are ‘just as good as men’ misses the point.

How can people integrate healthily into university life while constantly aware that they are something so ‘special’ that they deserve their own union representative?

Couldn’t we just have an ‘equality officer’ and be done with it?

People come in all forms: it’s what makes life interesting, and I think we should just embrace this without tarring all students with a big politically correct dymo, labelling everything in sight.

deputy.comment@vision.york.ac.uk

YORK VISION

Swamped

>COLUMNS

Katie JACOBS

DEPUTY EDITOR

here exist certain unspoken T rules among students, sort of like the Ten Commandments, only

scribbled down during a particularly boring lecture rather than being carved into stones and carried down mountains. These include, ‘Thou shalt not get up before midday unless thou hast a seminar, and even then thou dost not have to be properly awake”; “Thou shalt clean the house from top to bottom rather than write that very important essay”; and crucially, “Thou shalt recognise the holy trinity of Neighbours, The Simpsons and Hollyoaks and never interrupt anyone between 5:35 and 7pm on a weekday”. This final commandment was broken the other day when, quite unannounced, three First Years rang our doorbell and asked to look around the house.

As we stared at them in confusion, cups of tea in hand, it dawned on me that, yes, in 6 months I will have to move out of this house, I do have an awful lot of work to do, and that there is a rather noxious swamp in the backyard that would put any sane person off signing a contract for 48 Farndale Street.

Dissertation deadlines meant that the house was in a more reasonable state than usual, apart from the aforementioned swamp-yard (complete with broken washing machine, chest of drawers and comedy traffic cone - it’s an ironic statement) and the fact that none of the lights on the top floor have working bulbs as Nancy, the only one tall enough to actually change a bulb, is too scared of accidental electrocution (frighteningly plausi-

ble in this house) to do it. After the lovely freshers left (and we really should stop eyeing them so lasciviously, as if we could suck the youth out of them with the power of the mind alone), Nancy pondered, “Are we meant to be selling the house, or actually telling the truth?”. It’s a difficult line to tread, images of the landlord forcing us to live here

"Are to be house, telling

we meant selling the or actually the truth?"

another year after our degrees finish and not allowing us to enter the real world should he fail to let it to anyone else spring to mind.

Although put like that, it’s rather appealing. I’m starting to feel a bit like an estate agent, trying to hide or justify the swamp whilst not giving the impression that the 5 of us are total eejits for not getting it sorted out sooner, and vainly struggling to convince people that having to wear wellingtons to take out the bins just makes a normally dull household task that bit more exciting. I have since learnt that the justification of, “Well, at least the slugs don’t come in any more because they can’t swim…unless they discover how to build tiny rafts, and they probably won’t be able to do that,” is not traditional estate agent patter. Must try harder.

Although it may seem that I am

wallowing in my own general rubbishness, I do actually have a point.

It is the time of year when housing is the subject on most people’s minds, and in my infinite wisdom I would like to offer a few words of advice. Firstly, don’t panic, panicking is what causes you to sign a contract for a house with no living room/central heating/beds, there are many more houses than you think and many will still be available as late as next term. Secondly, remember student houses are never going to be palaces, and you get what you pay for. We pay a staggeringly low £50 a week, thus we all bar one have single rooms, and one of them is so small as to be technically a cupboard, but we can afford to get pissed more. Finally, make sure you like your housemates, a small factor but one that is ultimately going to make the most difference wherever you end up, if you can laugh about the state of the once pristine kitch-

en 24 hours after moving in then you’re onto a winner.

As for me, this story has a happy ending: the swamp has now gone.

The minute the landlord realised it might put potential residents off living here he sorted it out (never mind the fact that we’ve been asking him to do it for a month). In a strange way I miss it, the hilarity, the hysteria every Sunday night as one us donned protective clothing to take the rubbish out; and as one of the freshers suggested, we could have tried cultivating it, like some sort of urban wetland. Oh well, at least we should soon have the visiting slugs again to keep our spirits up…

deputy.editor@vision.york.ac.uk

[Katie's backyard, yesterday]

Fancy (dress) that!

EDITOR

Ben MATTHEWS ne of the greatest experiO ences that any student can have whilst they are at univer-

sity is the unparalleled joy of going on a fancy dress social.

Whether it is golf, army, playboy bunny, toga parties, pantomime, cowboys and Indians, vicars and tarts, or even superheroes, everyone who joins in is bound to have a top night of mischievous hilarity. The dressing-up socials are always the busiest and the most fun for several reasons. Firstly, it’s a chance for the members of that club or society to bond with each other in an unparalleled way through the medium of costume silliness. Secondly, it’s a chance for everybody to forget the daily routine of university life and even forget who they are for one night, assuming the identity of someone completely different. In the immortal words of Lou Reed, they can think they are “someone else, someone cool, yeah” (lyrics from ‘Perfect Day’ by

9 Ruth MACLEAN COMMENT

Tuesday January 30, 2007

the by).

But even if you’re not dressing-up for a social and are just out like any other night, it’s still worth spotting those in costumes just for the sheer pleasure that they give you, sights that you wouldn’t dream of seeing in a million years. In just one night in Ziggy’s, I spotted five playboy bunnies, four Rugby players in drag, three army soldiers, two fat Elvis’, and a partridge in a pear tree (as part of the rowing club’s ‘nativity’ social).

Speaking of which, I may have rubbed my eyes in drunken disbelief when I spotted Mary and Joseph leaning Baby Jesus over the bar in order to suck a beer tap dry.

One social that always draws in a big crowd is the Top Gun social that the Men’s Football club put on every year. As Winston Churchill may or may not have quoted, “Never in the field of human costume was so tight clothing worn by so many men to the pleasure of few.”

Admittedly it is a pretty easy costume to put together – a tight white t-shirt, jeans, dog tags and aviator sunglasses (Val Kilmer style flat-top haircut optional).

But when you get over 20 men piling into a club dressed exactly the same it is quite a sight, and hearing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” sung out of tune and a an ear-piercing level is a treat not to be missed. Though don’t ask me where the nakedness at the end of the evening came from.

It’s also far too easy to assume that all these costumes magically appear over night. As

it so happens, lots of hard work and dedication go into creating these fabulous, outrageous and sometimes quite monstrous designs. On a recent ‘superheroes’ social, my friend planned to go dressed as Banana Man and reportedly spent the whole night before the social dying his white underwear a suitable yellow in a bid for genuine authenticity. And another member of that social topped that effort by dressing as Captain Planet, even going the whole hog by painting any exposed skin with blue body paint. Needless to say he had a rather drunken night and ended up staining half of his house with the smears of blue paint.

But every die-hard costume designer knows that Boyes is the shop to go to for all your costume designing needs, no matter how strange and unusual. I’ve been dragged around the textile section of the shop many a time by people who are desperate to get their costume just right, and normally they are pretty successful in finding the bits and pieces they need – the tinkling brass bells for a Noddy hat, dog tags for an army social, or a feather for an Indian’s headdress.

Sometimes, though, people get the wrong idea of the spirit of dressing up. Not only is there the controversial ‘WifeBeater’ social that the Hockey club recently held, but

I’ve heard of suicide bomber costumes complete with sausages acting as dynamite tied, and I saw someone dressed as Hitler get chucked out of a campus event so quickly it made the swastikas drawn onto his armband spin.

I salute the great tradition of dressing-up socials, if it’s done in the right manner, and don’t be surprised if you see me in Boyes buying some leopardprint material and a fake club for a Fred Flinstone costume. editor@vision.york.ac.uk

[Ben, on the pull last night]

Death: a postuniversity option uenos Aires houses one of the B Top Three Best Places Ever (according to God, or someone).

La Recoleta is a mausoleum for posh people: everyone who’s anyone gets buried there, or if they’re particularly important their coffin isn’t hidden away underground but displayed behind the elaborate bars, rosaries and Virgin Mary statues of their small death-house. Once you’ve bought your family tomb, which people have been doing for a few hundred years, all your afterlife anxieties are alleviated, as no one can ever take it off you. Thus, Evita (Eva Peron, not Madonna: don’t worry, ‘Malawian orphan’ isn’t a synonym of ‘plague’) has a lovely sombre marble affair right next door to a sepulchre stalwart, who’s been there so long his urn is upturned and his various Jesuses are falling off. No doubt he is also the victim of contempt from thousands of would-be neighbours who, despite having had their names down on the extensive waiting list since conception, would still be superlucky to get a council vault in the cat-infested Tang Hall of La Recoleta, Evita being the Minster/ Ziggy’s (delete as your pretensions dictate).

Three lessons are battling to be learned here. One, conveniently, is for the first and second years of this world, and relates to housing: have you got somewhere, other than the Archbishop’s doorway, to live in October 2007 yet? No? Quick, panic. Lesson Two is actually a sneaky tip for third years troubled by the prospect of, say, sixty-odd years of unplanned time ahead, and the need to explain a life-strategy to their parents. Fix an end point: book yourself in at your local cemetery. A dash macabre, perhaps, but at least you’re going somewhere. And your mother will be too distraught to nag. Of course, the only reason I’m giving away valuable advice like this for the small price of a cup of tea and some cake (which you all now owe me, ha! Deliver to 11, Foss Islands Road, please), is that I don’t need it myself. I have plenty of convincing propaganda with which to dupe my loving family.

For example: everyone at Radio 4 will have one or both of their vocal cords cut, according to how badly they sing on my new television extravaganza, Extreme Pop Idol. Result: they’ll need new presenters, which is where my own chiming cords come in. Onto the third lesson, then, which admittedly isn’t as deviously delightful as the last, and will take some explaining. Rumours abound of a society swapper who may soon be coming to an indie soc/ NoUse/ polo social near you. “But you’re 26, and you’re fat and ugly and really annoying,” was acquaintance Annie’s not-quite-vocalised response to his recent advances.

The italicised implication is that having 26 years to your name is, for certain young ladies in York, roughly equivalent to being fat, ugly and really annoying. The lesson being, if you’re 26, try to stay out of the glare of York high society, the equivalent of being dead next door to Eva Peron.

10 FEATURES

YORK VISION

FEATURES

V

Tuesday January 30, 2007

showbiz

Anyone who idolises them is not fit to mix with other human beings

IF YOUR FACE FITS Claudia Stern investigates whether Facebook profiles are a liability in the job market

T

he CSI-generation knows that profiling is the only way to catch a killer, but should we be worried about who is profiling us? In the online world your profile on Facebook or MySpace is a tool being used by everybody to catch their next friend, boyfriend or even next employee. You probably think you're sharing your life with just your friends, but a spate of reports suggests that the information is being tapped into by a wider audience and that may well include your next boss.

The benefits of these sites for the casual stalker cannot be denied. Social stalking has become compulsory and Facebook

is a prime way to watch the everyday goings on of other peoples’ lives. A friend of mine appears to have substituted checking a certain guy’s wall for an actual relationship and given their encounter was little more than a one night stand, what better way to become intimate with the person she avoids in real life, in fact, it seems the less you like someone, the more you want to find out about them. Another friend of mine watches every move of an ex-flatmate who she fell out with.

Did she put on an ounce? Has she split up with her boyfriend?

Are there any other signs that she is not as successful as she

Your CV isn't the only thing your interviewers might be looking at

MOVE IN P16 Vision's guide to location, location, location

wants to be? In both cases, the friends remain nameless because that is the power of this socialising activity: anonymity. You can be as social as you like as you watch beady eyed the scurryings of a friend or better someone you don’t like alone at your computer.

So everybody is watching you.

If you are paranoid anyway you perhaps should stop reading, but for the more laid back among us should it matter what we present in our profiles? I don’t care whether someone’s checking if I am single or what I have been up to in my photos (and I always look drunk in mine) but when I go to work I do want people to think of

Photo by Mathew Grum

me as professional. Fay Mayer is a Recruitment Consultant and a former employer of mine. I asked her what she might be able to learn from my profile. Fay very kindly did not criticise me too much, though she said that I am obviously not as serious as I seem at work, and said that she would be able to work out when I had had big nights out (so no sickies for me). She also mused that you could find out some pretty embarrassing secrets if you were not careful. Although she had not heard of firms such as hers using the site, she thought that it might raise some issues for potential employers. From interviewing her, my general impression was that discretion was key. For example, you don’t want to discuss your drug-taking activities given that random drugs testing is used by some employers and if you wouldn’t discuss the more gory details of your sex lives around a water cooler, you might not want to make a note of it.

Claire Rees, from the university's Careers Service echoed these thoughts. "I am not aware of employers in the UK using Facebook to try and find out more about applicants," she said. "Students, however, should be aware that, once in employment both their colleagues and their managers could access their Facebook and other similar websites. The profile which you create as a student may not always be the one which you necessarily want on open access when you start your career!"

Of course, ethically speaking, a potential employer can very quickly find out things that your carefully filled out Equal Opportunities Form has hidden from them. Facebook asks you to reveal age, nationality, sexual orientation and relationship status but so what, you may ask. These are not things that you are hiding if you have put them online and they are not things to be ashamed of. They are however, a way in which you can be judged. It makes the whole equal opportunities idea a laughable process but then

PAP ATTACK

The News of the World on 'celebrity' and our very own paps on campus

CENTRES

once you are employed, and we are presuming and hoping that an employer has not used their background check to disqualify your employment, this information will be freely available to anyone that you wish to tell. The question then becomes, if they are not using it to un-equal opportunities, what are the men in suits really doing on there?

Apart from those things that an employer might be worried about, to recap: drugs, public romps, general criminality and taking sickies (well, duh), are they really going to learn anything that makes you less employable? It turns out that the very things that my crazy friends are doing could well be what an employer is looking for. Your CV may say that you are ‘fun, enthusiastic’ or regularly attend ‘the Dance Society’ but your online profile will show them that you didn’t make it up. I spoke to the personnel department of a major banking corporation who, in the spirit of Facebook profilers, will remain anonymous and who almost went as far as admitting that they use the site. They spoke in general terms. "I am not sure that an employer would look for anything specific like nationality…it could give you a general sense of an employees sociability…You want to know they don’t spend all their time sitting at home watching TV." When I suggested that Facebook was not really the most sociable activity, she said, "The kind of person that puts themselves out there…’"; a sentence that we will never know the end of as I think she suspected I was trying to trip her up. But it is telling nonetheless. It turns out that the very function of the site ‘social networking’ may well be its importance for an employer too. They want you to be gregarious; they want you to have a life.

So go on, show them just how popular are, network to your hearts content. Oh and if anyone is worried that they do not look sociable enough feel free to ‘friend’ me when you finish reading the article. (Name’s at the top).

MODERN TOSS

CONTAINS

FOUL

LANGUAGE

We chat to the outrageous cult cartoonists

P12

YORK VISION

FEATURES

Tuesday January 30, 2007

MIND YOUR MANNERS

Can Holly Brockwell live by the rules? Lady Troubridge's 1930s tome 'Etiquette and Entertaining' and the modern DeBrett's 'Etiquette for Girls' keep her on her toes

V

V

heavy tome which aims to stop readers “allowing etiquette to become a sort of bogy in their lives which they are frightened of offending”.

The use of the word “bogy” there is quite surprising, but not nearly as surprising as realising that when she talks about the “gay ‘nineties” she’s referring to the eighteen nineties. Gay indeed.

Lady Troubridge says she doesn’t want people “worrying themselves into fiddle-strings” about etiquette, and claims apparently seriously that 1930s etiquette is very informal. How reassuring.

Read on, however, and you’ll find that this really isn’t the case. For example, she says that you absolutely must have calling cards with your name and address on to give out, and a lady is to give two of her husband’s cards and one of her own to a married couple, two of each to sisters living together, one of each to a widow or single woman… simple, eh? Oh, and don’t forget to deliver them to the hall table, between the hours of three and five in the afternoon, and turn down the corner of the card to show you called in person. Yikes.

MSN, anyone?

On the subject of 21st birthdays (a subject which plagues us third-years no end financially), Lady Troubridge appears somewhat more relaxed, or so it seems initially. She has no problem with coming-of-age parties, which can include such fun as “getting a little band or someone to play dance music” (fairly sure she’s not talking about the BeatFreakz) or, if you can’t afford that, “dancing to the wireless”. However, and here’s where it gets a bit scary again, if you’re married and turning 21,

alcohol. God forbid this ever happens to you).

Dining wise, there are absolutely loads of rules and gems of wisdom in the manuals, so here’s a rundown: cutlery-wise, start from the outside and work inwards, and

Having seen how bad things used to be, modern manners should seem far less daunting

V

Believe me, feeling as if you're about to French kiss your boyfriend's mum is very disturbing

you can have a party but not a 21st party. No speeches, no mention of your age, no wishes for the future, no congratulations on “coming-ofage”. You are already grown-up, apparently, and it’d just be downright rude to expect to celebrate your 21st as if it meant anything.

But you knew that, right?

The book also contains a healthy dose of 1930s sexism, including the advice: “girls are not supposed to be orators” - if only Jade Goody would heed this and shut up. There are also surprisingly numerous references to Masonic events, for reasons unclear. It’s a rather disconcerting book, and having seen how bad things used to be, modern manners should seem far less daunting, so back to the present we go.

When shaking hands, DeBrett’s “Etiquette for Girls” (Fleur Britten) advises wiping clammy mitts discreetly, and shaking firmly and confidently, using the elbow as the “hinge” rather than the wrist.

Bone-crushing is for small-penised men, two-handed shakes are for creeps and handshakes with no actual shaking are for dead people.

Shake as you’d like to be shaken, I say.

As for cheek kissing, DeBrett’s advises scanning the other person for cues of an incoming kiss, and also for evidence of a second kiss.

Failing to show your intentions to kiss a second time or pick up on theirs can result in an awful moment where you’re face to face as if about to actually snog, hovering uncertainly, all grace gone. This happened to me once, and believe me, feeling as if you’re about to French kiss your boyfriend’s mum is very disturbing. Make your intentions clear or fear the wrath of the almost-snog.

Conversationally, the scariest situations are those of talking to strangers and superiors. DeBrett’s advocates avoiding “How are you?” with people you barely know, because they might turn out to be boring windbags, or worse, self-pitiers (“I’m not good. My eyelashes hurt, I’ve just been diagnosed with leprosy and there were complications to my lugholeplasty - let me tell you all about it…”), and this is an invitation for them to demonstrate. At parties, Henry Russell’s “Etiquette” suggests asking how they know the host (although if you were introduced, DeBrett’s holds that the introducer should tell you how the introducee relates to everyone - “This is Joe, he’s Leanne’s boyfriend and Danny’s housemate”, for instance, which would make this question irrelevant), or introducing a current affair to discuss.

Topics to avoid include the weather, money, anything controversial or involving political correctness, and bitching about people. How boring.

When picking a restaurant, DeBrett’s advises you to consider your companion’s budget unless you’re paying, but warns that paying for both or all of you too often is “horribly flash”. Both books warn against borrowing from friends unless desperate, and of course you should always pay them back. DeBrett’s says to only lend what you’re willing to lose, and to always help out a friend who ends up marooned without money (especially if said money is required because the friend is becoming sober in Ziggy’s and needs more

V

E

tiquette is a strange thing.

Born out of long-dead people’s feelings about what should and shouldn’t be “proper”, it seems to fill people with either the terror of doing the wrong thing or the pompous pride of knowing the rules inside out. These days, it’s often foregone altogether because it seems old-fashioned and inapplicable to modern situations. However, depending on what circles you’ll be moving in, you’re almost certain to need to know some of the rules at some point in your life, so read on.

We’ll begin with some etiquette history so you can see how far we’ve come, and appreciate the demise of most of the rules.

“Etiquette and Entertaining”, by one Lady Troubridge, is a fairly

when you’ve finished, put your cutlery in the “six thirty” position.

During dessert, either use both spoon and fork or just fork, never just spoon (apparently that’s too childlike). Peas should be pressed onto the back of your fork with your knife, rather than scooped up. Spit pips and other unpalatable

things discreetly into a napkin and place them on the side of the plate.

Don’t cut the nose (pointy end bit) off cheese, because it’s the best bit, and if you take it you will look like a selfish git. Don’t dunk biscuits in polite company. Cut up apples and bananas with a knife, but use fingers for an orange (this is disappointing - oranges are sticky and messy and if ever there was a call for cutlery with fruit, this was it).

Only leave the table if you’re desperate. At certain very formal dinners in legal circles, you may not leave the table at all, and wannabe lawyers have been known to wet themselves rather than fall foul of this rule. Never click, whistle or clap for the waiter. Tip for good service, but don’t go mad working out percentages. Err on the side of generosity if it’s deserved. Always split the bill equally in groups and decide this before you order, otherwise you’ll start an irritating “I didn’t have a starter” vs. “Andy had a cocktail” vs. “I am a tight-fisted knob” war.

There is much more to discover in the world of etiquette, much of it common sense but equally much of it arbitrary and affected.

Having explored this tip of the iceberg, don’t worry too much about proprietry, because even if you do make a faux pas, you will be far less disgraced than any tactless bastard who picks you up on it.

Cutlery issues - the preserve of the well-mannered Photo by Tom Hole

11

HES ROAD HORRORS Heslington Road, the main student thoroughfare of York, is home to more drama than the average episode of Eastenders.

Fact. We’ve got our own Vic, the grocers and more attempted armed robberies than you’d find anywhere in the streets of Johannesburg or the Bronx of New York. It’s a dangerous wilderness out there, and Vision is here to expose it.

Delicious rumours at the end of last term suggested that after storming out of the UK Snooker Championships in the

Barbican, snooker’s hot head Ronnie O’Sullivan ended up at none other than the Hes Road’s Vic. Those unaware that Hes Rd plays host to this perennial distraction of the old, may not have been aware that Ronnie’s walkout 4-1 down in his quarter final with Stephen Hendry, cost punters, and potentially the game, thousands of pounds.

The man behind the bar at the Vic thought Ronnie had gone the other way down Hes Road, to the 'Woolpack'.

From one insubstantial conjecture to the next? Perhaps not.

This week a Hes Road resident came to us with photographic evidence of the existence of socalled ‘Rubbish Skittles’. The pastime, laughed about down the back streets of Hes Rd as the ‘reason’ for increased levels of bin crime and commotion late at night, may now have moved one step closer to sobering plausibility.

“I was staggering home from Ziggy’s,” the second year physics student claims, “and came across this staggered arrangement of wheelie-bins in the middle of the road. Despite my stupour it struck me that the bins were placed like skittles. I fired off this image and shuffled away.”

The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, stresses, “I don’t want to be next. When a car hits an arrangement of wheelie bins, rubbish will, inexorably, hit the pavements.” Vision can make no further comment on whether the dynamics and physics of the game are in themselves fundamentally rubbish.

Of alarm only to city yuppies last term, a gaggle(?) of peacocks diced with death on Hes Road. Some, who clearly were more used to watching E4 than the physicality of nature ran after the birds. A kind of brilliant natural white light flooded the street, instilling upon its residents a moment of transcending karma the likes of which hasn't been repeated since. More karma and rubbish soon.

Seen any horrifying happenings down Heslington Road?

We want to hear from you! hesroadhorrors@hotmail.co.uk

12 FEATURES

YORK VISION

DOWN RIGHT RUDE

Tuesday January 30, 2007

Provocative ... Mr. Tourette attempts to stimulate the airline industry

Iain Withers has a frank exchange with the creators of the cult cartoon Modern Toss INTERVIEW :

Y

ou’d expect Jon Link and Mick Bunnage to be cynical buggers. Their cult cartoon and subsequent Channel Four series, Modern Toss, is akin to a slap in the face, followed by several doses of nihilistic, crude humour.

Deciding whether or not one goes to IKEA must be remarkably easy from Jon and Mick’s perspective.

Cast your eye over to the other corner of the double page cartoon and a small figure sitting in an armchair watching TV simply decrees, ‘fuck IKEA’.

Such is the ‘spirit’ of Modern Toss. It’s a world where astronauts snipe over trivialities when placing their flag on the moon. Where characters respond to being bored

You're always on the edge of it being horrible or just right at work with requests to go home.

And where Mr. Tourette, ‘master signwriter’, responds to well-meaning business requests with outrageously inappropriate advertising slogans - ‘Nazi sex tourists’ for airlines, ‘Spunk drinking festivals’ for church fetes.

As Jon and Mick pass the mobile between them in a North London pub, it strikes me as remarkable how similar their voices are. Mick wrestles himself away from the clinking of glasses and out into the street and sneers at me in a way not at all dissimilar from his writing and drawing partner.

His voice is not harsh, just snide; it sounds like he has his bottom lip constantly turned up.

He explains that the experience of producing a successful Modern Toss book and TV series has made them, if anything, far more cynical than they were before.

"When we started it was an outlet for our cynicism, to help get it out of our systems a bit. But rather than being cathartic it ends up making it worse!”

I laugh; Mick laughs, only more

manically. Jon and Mick’s sense of humour never strays too far from the gallows. “You see Modern Toss cartoons everywhere you go, every time you meet someone. You get people coming up to you who sort of know what you do and they say ‘oh you know I was stuck in a f'ing taxi for two hours, it would make a great Modern Toss cartoon’ and it probably would, you know, it probably would! If you walk around in London for about half an hour you’ll get a whole book’s worth of Modern Toss cartoons.”

The bitterness at the heart of their cartoons stems from their days in journalism. The two met at Loaded magazine in the mid 90s.

“We used to sit in the same room and ended up having to talk to each other,” Jon explains. Whilst they were there they started putting their first Modern Toss cartoons on to the web. “It was almost like a bit of therapy for helping us get over the fact that our careers were falling apart and we weren’t gonna have a job soon. That was the strength of it I think.”

“After about a year we decided to commit it to a comic. Everything changed after the comic; people tended to take us a bit more seriously. We got a book deal out of that and then Channel Four got interested. So, a steady stream of things one after the other.”

I imagine their successes have given them ample opportunity to laud it over their weary hack friends still in journalism. Jon laughs, “They’re all really fucking miserable now. They’re still doing book reviews and getting paid 20 quid for them. Good luck to them.”

The Modern Toss TV series was quite an unconventional animal, bringing Jon and Mick’s crude drawings to live action sequences.

‘Alan’, for instance - a miserable middle-aged man who has trouble with family situations - to all intents and purposes just looks like a black inkblot with an omnipresent frown.

This blob interacts with the actors and actresses playing his family, only to respond to their small talk by dragging large trees through their homes or blowing up their cars. Jon says that they spent a lot of time testing the animation aspects of the show “to get the level of ‘shitness’ just right” for characters such as Alan.

Does Jon see Modern Toss’s rise as symptomatic of that of a

Jon and Mick's grumpy ad man, Mr. Tourette cult? “Yeh definitely. Who knows where it might end up.” I suggest that two of its more subversive characters, the ‘master signwriter’ Mr. Tourette, and Prince Edward, Royal Entrepreneur, who tries to make money out of the waste and access he has to his royal parents, should go into business together.

Mick thinks it’s an excellent idea. “I don’t think they’d make any money though,” he laughs. “It’s a good idea, I like it.

Perhaps we should do that.”

I’m chuffed. Jon and Mick, after all, seem to have inappropriate humour down to a fine art.

Two years ago they were deemed the fourth funniest men in Britain

by Esquire magazine. “We thought that was a mistake,” he laughs.

Whilst Esquire's opinions on such things are probably not gospel, I still thought they were ahead of the Christmas pack of copycat celebrations of all-things rude.

Jon interrupts me, “well yeh, I mean it’s a really fucking fine line which you tread when you do the sort of stuff that we do. You’re always on the edge of it being fucking horrible or just right. I can see how it could go wrong.”

Does he ever think they go too far? “We’ve never had anything

pulled. Even with Channel Four it was only a couple of things and that was only to do with legal stuff and people’s names.”

Their upward trajectory impresses, with another Channel Four series planned. Some people may be flabbergasted. "How can this be cutting edge comedy", you may ask, "my mother always told me that swearing was the lowest form of wit?!"

For characters such as Mr. Tourette, swearing patters through the cartoon like punctuation marks.

Despite this, Mick insists that their cartoons are not all about swearing.

“For us the swearing is incidental.

Its just part of the timing of the jokes. We put the swearing in but it's more decoration than anything else. People latch on to it and think that it's what we’re about, but it isn’t really, we’re just more about a sort of bluntness.”

This bluntness seems to be part of the appeal. In the face of the dissatisfying nuances of everyday life, Modern Toss responds by stripping something down and sticking two fingers up at it. The images propelled at you are not indicative of your default reactions to things such as advertising, work or customer services. It appeals

to what is unsaid - in the face of the glum pretensions of the media cover on SARS, for instance, you wouldn’t normally find yourself saying, “no, I like it, I think it’s good”. Its relentlessly, refreshingly inappropriate.

Jon and Mick don't particularly see their cartoons as subversive.

Their cartoons may be included in the Tate Modern gift shop, but their attitudes suggest they see their cartoons as fairly sporadic and irrelevant. Is their slogan ‘the stink of excellence in a modern world gone tits up’ meaningless?

“I don’t know. We thought we better come up with some sort of slogan for it so we just came up with that. It don’t mean anything, it's rubbish. Like everything else.”

Again Mick’s words echo down the line as if he's standing amidst the last throes of civilization.

He tells me that “very few” don’t "get it". “Old people really love it, they sort of get a bit grumpy and it’s a great outlet.”

As he reenters the pub it strikes me that the dissatisfaction they both exude, standing amongst the traffic and ‘Modern Toss’ of London, isn’t really that remarkable. Maybe they’re both just old before their time.

FEATURES

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

13

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION So, you've not got a house sorted for next year?

Don't panic! Vision is here to sift through the urban myths and horror stories to provide you with the definitive guide to student housing areas in York.

heworth

acomb If you've ever gazed at the shiny front of the Number 4, seen the words, "Acomb Shops" and wondered to yourself, "Where is this mysterious place, this Acomb of which you speak?", then you're not alone. Acomb is so far from campus as to take an hour on foot, often over an hour by bus and 45 minutes by car due to traffic. Therefore anyone doing Hes Rd residents are generally quite smug, and a science subject should discount it immediately, unless with good reason. But let's look at the downthe idea of getting up at 6am everyday appeals, and you sides first. If you move on to the only residencan forget about doing anything spontaneous, it is virtutial street you've been down in your first year, ally impossible to meet anyone "in ten", unless they too surely your knowledge of Greater York will live in Acomb. On the upside, the charity shops are top remain (pathetically) flatlining throughout notch and the house prices considerably cheaper, but as your time here? For the lazy amongst us, who upside's go, it's not really much of one. KJ can take or leave geographical knowledge and would rather People Came To Them this may not bother you. Facilities are well known.

Zaf's is a very decent Indian option, Efe's less decent. The local is the Victoria which has a few decent guest ales. Spar of course is convenient if not cheap. A negative is cost with rent usually over £60 a week. IW

Despite being about half an hour by foot from the university, quiet Heworth does have its advantages, with its leafy streets and drastically lower chav population than neighbouring Tang Hall. Although low on students, it's ideal for those wanting a quiet life. For Real Ale fans, The Walnut Tree on Heworth Village does a good quality pint.

The largest open space is the Monk Stray, which almost reaches Monk’s Cross. It's a good place for lounging around, and popular with dog walkers. Heworth also has a couple of convenience stores and off-licences, including its very own Costcutter. ME

TANG HALL

Tang Hall's reputation preceeds it. Home to many of York's friendly and not so friendly chavs, it is also one of the largest student areas, so the chances are your friends will never be too far away. It's close to town and, depending on which side you live in, not too far from university. Also nearby is the Coop, Tang Hall's social epicentre, where kids are keen to annoy passers-by with impromptu water fights. There are lots of takeaways (the Chinese is particularly good) and a pharmacy, so you won't have to venture out too far if you're the hibernating type. Another advantage is that the houses are often bigKB ger and more modern, often with gardens.

heslington road

fulford Fulford is often unfairly maligned as being miles from town, miles from campus, miles, in fact, from anywhere. Mention it to most people and you can see the pity in their eyes. They, however, are wrong; where would you rather live, among some of the finest pubs York has to offer, or in the ghetto of Tang Hall? The time it takes to get to campus is at most half an hour on foot, and you can walk through proper army barracks, risking life and limb everyday. As for getting to town, you can either walk by the river (scenic, but often flooded, and I don’t advise swimming), or catch a bus. Local amenities include Jackson’s, Iceland, Aldi and Fantasy World The obvious downside to living in Southbank is the fancy dress shop, a must for any self respecting student. And distance from the university. It's at least a half an hour the aforementioned pubs: try The Wellington for novelty walk, but if you have a bike and are willing to risk the value (it’s literally in a terraced house), The Plough or The Skedergate roundabout, you should be OK. You are also Saddle Inn for pub quizzes complete with free food, and The likely to have to put up with non-student neighbours, Bay Horse for an excellent Sunday roast. After all, according who do not often react well to parties or noise. But to the Facebook group: ‘Living in Fulford is for Winners’, and even these problems are easy to overcome when you 95 members can’t be wrong.

KJ consider the advantages: a ten minute walk to town, two Wetherspoons as your locals and an abundance of local shops. On Bishopthorpe Road there is a Sainsburys, a greengrocers, a gorgeous deli and the odd combination of off licence/video shop. Takeaways are also plentiful: you can't stumble home without passing Dominoes, KFC, CD the fish and chip shop or York Spice Indian.

southbank

BE HOUSE SAVVY Sam Marsden, Student Welfare Adviser, sighs a little as she tells me that students are too "naive" when it comes to sorting out their housing. "For too many of you a lanlord could say anything and you'd believe them!" she says.

So how to be house savvy?

"Make sure you're well informed and look at houses with your eyes wide open. When you go to look at houses you have to think of yourselves as ‘shopping’ for a very expensive item: you are going to be paying almost £3,000 to live in the house you choose. Do some planning before hand and work out what you want, for example: do you want a sitting room, and a bedroom

each; do you want telephone lines in each of the bedrooms."

Sam advises that you don't rush in. As she points out, the university accomodation list doesn't even get printed until 1st February. She explains that the list is important. Landlords can only advertise here if their property meets mandatory Code of Practice standards such as up-to-date gas safety. If some or all of a landlord's properties are absent it may mean that their properties do not meet these standards.

"Internally check for damp and mould. These are huge problems in some houses and demand to know if they are going to be sorted if

there are signs of either. Check if the windows and carpets are in good condition and whether the cooking facilities are adequate for your number."

Contracts are what often trip students up, but you can stumble even before this stage. Sam warns that you should be wary of paying money before you've signed anything, such as Reservation Fees.

These shouldn't be neccessary and "you want to know you can get your money back!"

Sam Marsden as well as other student advisers will host a talk on Friday in Central Hall, 1pm2pm for all those who want advice and information in searching for

private sector accomodation year. next You can book appointments with Sam at the Accomodation Office.

uni

hull road

BADGER HILL So called because of its many side streets and cul-de-scas, but perhaps it would be more suited a name such a 'Rabbit's Warren'.

Popular with students as many of the houses are family homes with double-glazing, plush carpets, and garages full of the landlord's old furniture. A great position for uni, as it is only a 10-minute walk to campus. It is a bit of a mission to town from Badger Hill, but the area is well serviced by the bus route along the Hull Road. BM

Heslington Road residents may claim to live in the best location for student housing, but Hull Road poses a serious challenge. Ideally located for campus, it has benefited from the recent opening of Somerfield. It's not a very big supermarket, so you may still want to bulk-buy from Asda or Tesco, but it is handy if you've run out of loo roll, are in need of some alcoholic beverages or have simply neglected to buy anything for dinner. For post-Toffs munchies, Chubbies is on hand for kebabs, burgers and the like. Similarly, the so-called 'Ben and Jerry's run' to Pizza Hut only takes a couple of minutes, and Blockbuster is right next door if you're planning a quiet night in. The more conscientious among you may wish to work off the afore-mentioned alcohol/kebabs/ice-cream, in which case Next Generation Gym is nearby.

However, you'll need a healthy bank balance, as the membership fee is in the region of £40 per month.

A cheaper alternative for keeping fit is to walk into town every so often, which takes between 20 and 30 minutes. Otherwise, take the number 10 bus.

EB

14 FEATURES

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

SHOWBIZ EDITOR

What does NOTW Showbiz Editor Rav Singh make of 'celebrity'?

We've sent the paparazzi on to campus in a parody of the focus you put on 'celebrity' on a weekly basis.

What does 'celebrity' mean to you guys?

A celebrity is someone who is famous for doing something or sleeping with another celebrity.

SPO

Is your life glitzy?

Showbiz life can be glitzy. We go to all the parties and mix with all the celebs but that’s just one side of it. The other is late nights, pressures to break stories, getting calls throughout the night. LA for example is 8 hours behind, so I get a lot of calls in the early hours.

Do you think the furore over Celebrity BB last week shows that we really shouldn’t idolise ‘celebs’?

I think what happened in the house was disgusting. The culprits have/will lose lucrative contracts because of it.

Anyone who idolises them is a s bad as them and not fit to mix with other human beings.

Of the paps you’ve come across, what qualities do you think make a good pap?

A good quality pap is someone with solid info so they can get exclusive pictures. They can make a lot of money by doing this as opposed to try and sell a picture 20 paps have.

s u g n o m a s r e E t D s I i l W TIME WARP Z ON

TheK

NATI

YOR parliament pint There's definitely a resemblance between Ed Duncan-Smith and his famous father Ian, the former leader of the Conservative Party, but perhaps this is where the similarities end. On his Facebook profile, Ed lists his political views as 'Other'.

evenin' guv'nor Ross blood certainly runs full through Adam Ross's veins. The son of Nick Ross, stalwart presenter of Crimewatch, is pictured here taking his father's war on crime to campus. Good on you son!

If you're with David Peachey and it feels like he's stopped time, then there's a chance he probably has.

Or at least, he used to. The children's TV star played Bernard from Bernard's Watch, a character that was able to stop time and do invariably good deeds using his stopclock. Now at Sheffield University the child star seems to be enjoying the bottle.

love rat Monica Lewinsky graduated from the London School of Economics in December. Famous for her affair with Bill Clinton whilst a White House intern, she left with a masters degree in social psychology.

blair boys Nick Blair is currently at Lady Margaret College in Oxford. The gossip forum 'Oxgoss' is full of outraged posters complaining of local press snaps of Nicky.

student

“When people say to me: wo rather be thought of as a man or a great boss? My a always the same, to me, they mutually exclusive.”

David Brent – The Office

Student Celebrities are ever It's not just the big names like c Finley Chalmers or SU preside Croker - it's JCRC Chairs, spo tains and even your college ne editor. Today, much like David everyone wants to be famous, t role, a position – to be a somebo David Brent was a man w blessed with no real social q he wasn’t funny, he wasn’t w he certainly wasn’t clever. But the whole point of The Office (

FEATURES

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

15

We send the Vision paparazzi after communications officer Colin Hindson for an intrusive look at life at the top of YUSU

D E T OT

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ADAM THORN

genius of Ricky Gervais) was to paint a world where being a celebrity was everything. The reason it worked was we watched a man lower himself to all sorts of lows in a bid to become a someone – by playing up to the cameras.

And being a student celebrity on campus, can be much like that. Whilst our crop of student politicians show much promise, there is no denying that in the past – many of our so-called student celebs seemed more interested in being famous and being a somebody than actually carrying out their roles.

But the student celeb culture really exploded on campus with the arrival of Facebook. Here, for the first time we actually have a means of measuring popularity and seeing what everyone gets up to in their spare time. Looking

through somebody’s photos is not that different to flicking through a copy of heat. Forget Brad Pitt's split with Jennifer Anniston, you can have (via your “newsfeed”) the latest gossip on who your sports rep's sleeping with, or some dodgy photos of your friends looking wasted at last night's party. It's creating a world where everyone can be a celebrity – something that even a year ago would have seamed unbelievable.

“You always get the odd person who doesn’t appreciate what you’re doing, shouts silly things.”

“What sort of things?”

“You beardy twat. Pug-nosed gimp.

Lard Boy-and I go: ‘Yeah what have you ever done on telly? nothing, so don’t...’.

Absolutely fabulous.”

a wante d man

MOBBED Principal Paps - Mark Fountain, Michael Brunsden, Contributors - Iain Withers, Emma Barrow

inside view #3 Octopush

inside report inclusive/cliquey active/sedate

SLEEPING AROUND

Tuesday January 30, 2007

Can our daring Fairfaxer uncover the mysteries of Alcuin and survive Cell Block C, all in the space of a week? Sian Rowe sleeps over in York's undergraduate colleges.

S

pread around quaint James College courts, there is a stereotypical image as viewed from the goldfish bowl kitchens. The scene of wealthy Tory boys playing poker, quaffing ale and then peeing it away in their fantastic en suites is very well to do. One might say it glows like the retina destroying light bulbs the facilities managers seem to have invested in.

Then, like the scab that seems to come free with every fantastically beautiful yet inappropriate pair of shoes, comes Ghetto James. One shower between 10 replaces Ensuite – and this can be opened from the outside – while the room furniture leaves a lot to be desired. With ‘Cardboard boxes for pretty much everything’, the bedside table is an endangered species and curtains are fashioned from material left over from the war. It just lay in wait for York University to desire reams of ‘something capturing the essence of vomit’.

Maybe James College has more than the curtains left over frpm the war, as a trip to Derwent’s infamous madhouse is well and truly squashed by some kind of death lurgie. Last spotted laughing at snivelling students from the

less a means of concussion, more a nightly experience.

Still, feeling fragile from what has come to be known in fresher circles as THE illness I am pleased not to be attacked on the long and rumoured dangerous voyage to Halifax. Which is a bonus.

All rumours aside, (ares there really lepers? A bit like a Council estate? Should you watch your wallet?) Halifax is a tempting and mysterious prospect. What a nice surprise on entering a couple of its houses to find the radio blaring, a shockingly social atmosphere and a fair few intriguing stains.

While the stains may indeed be down to some dubious cleaning; "I think I had a rugby player in my room last year, mud on boots, y’know" the sociable house party is one thing the residents seem keen to confirm could not easily be wiped away.

In St. Lawrence court the kitchen is the traditional home hub while constant switching between houses makes for varied characters.

Don’t be surprised if when visiting a Halifax house you’re confronted by an over-friendly bloke delivering pizza (again) or half the nightly ‘housemates’ jumping up and leaving. In Halifax the neighbours

Goodricke impress Sian with their drinking and falling skills window seat in the Charles XII the illness means investigative journalism takes a back seat to shivering back to health.

So, confined to bed in Langwith, it’s an opportunity to really appreciate what facilities are on offer in the place sometimes known as ‘home’. While knowing that many rooms in the vicinity are indeed of mammoth proportions it can't help but feel a little small.

Trust me, you could lose entire football teams, coaching staff and assorted WAGs in others.

The kitchens in some of the blocks are also unexpectedly enviable. Langwithians are not non existent they’re just chortling to themselves about their secretly ace kitchens in between self deprecating bouts of humour and prancing about in yellow. Yet some of the room planning is awful.

Bookshelves placed dangerously above the bed lead to fears of half the literary canon being dumped on one's head while falling onto the bedside table when inebriated is

WILL invade, and it's all the better for it.

After the fairly docile Halifax experience Goodricke offers a sharp shock to the system. It is the lairy lad of the colleges. A night in Gallery seems a must, where two of the group (male) grind to victory in a socks ‘n’ boxers lap dance competition and downing drinks is a prerequisite not a championed skill. Worshipping well and truly at the church of ‘strawpedo’, sample conversation: “We’ve run out of drink!”

“Do you want this?”

“We love you.”

“Let’s strawpedo it!”, Living in a breezeblock labyrinth complete with high school style toilets doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone. Either that or it’s a major case of drinking through the pain.

Goodricke Cell Block C doesn’t even need to be just about atmosphere and laughs – of which plenty are had when the wheelie bin antics kick off. The accommodation

isn’t THAT bad. Yes, the walls aren’t aesthetically pleasing, but neither are the shiny plasterboards of other colleges. They don’t even, like Langwith and older James, seem to have a major heating issue.

Accommodated in a Goodricke bed – surprise contender for comfiest bed of the tour- the illness has

Langwithians are not non existent, they're secretly chortling about their ace kitchens

V

I hate Octopush. I feel that is an essential emotion to express before delivering ‘the scoop’ on this club. My opinion may be influenced by the fact that I went after a particularly stressful day, which included considering housing options for next year and sitting through the tripe that was ‘Miss Potter’, but nonetheless, I can safely say that I do not intend to go back. Ever. For those of you wondering what the hell ‘Octopush’ might actually be, (and I won’t blame you for that, as I was pretty unprepared) it is essentially underwater hockey. There is a puck, jovially known as a squid, and two opposing teams. Each member of the team has a push stick which is about 11 centimetres long. The two teams start the game at opposite ends of the pool and on the shout of ‘Go’ the forward from each team swims as fast as possible to the puck, and attempts to push it with the stick to the goal at the opposite end of the pool, through passing it to other players and avoiding the fairly violent attacks of the opposition. All of this is performed whilst wearing full snorkelling gear, mask, snorkel and (insanely uncomfortable) flippers. If you are thinking about joining this game you MUST BE ABLE TO SNORKEL, a skill which, unfortunately, I seem to have left behind on a beach somewhere after a childhood holiday. Another thing to remember is that it is surprisingly violent. Everyone is desperate for a go at the puck, and as you have to push it through the water, it can obviously get pretty congested, resulting in many stray flippers and pushsticks. You will also swallow roughly half a swimming pool.

A day later, I can still taste the chlorine…

All that negativity aside, it is a remarkably social club, and the members could not have been more welcoming.

Your first session is free, and the facilities are really nice.

The club uses Bootham pool which is very clean (important I think), so if you are keen on swimming but bored of doing lengths, it might well be right up your street. Predominantly a post-graduate club, it was set up by a girl who had played at Durham, and on joining York was devastated to discover the lack of an Octopush club, so rather resourcefully set up her own.

Whilst finding the experience of playing the game traumatic, it is a credit to the club that I still enjoyed myself. Had I not had key texts to plough through I would definitely have gone on to the pub with the others, something I suspect is a regular occurrence. HW

YORK VISION

V

16 FEATURES

cleared up and fuzzy dance induced sleep is had by all.

Vanburgh college is one of the most perplexing. Yes, some of its members have squashed themselves into the bit between Costcutter and the lake but nowadays they’re the explorers of the university. While some have chosen to take a better life over on the Alcuin side of things – hello to the Valcuins – the bigger and older mystery of Fairfax House seems far too enticing to pass up.

Is it haunted? Is it inhabited by dwarfish drunkards? Do they even have running water? The questions are indeed endless.

Shown various kinds of accommodation ‘the romance and the filth’ would be a fair assessment.

While some rooms are generously proportioned, include ivy draped circular windows and storage to spare, my accommodation for the night is somewhat more crowded.

These are belongings that the room doesn’t really allow. Small, square and difficult to negotiate after a trip to Evil Eye, the redeeming ‘feature windows’ only serve to rattle incessantly. An interrupted yet cosy sleep ensues.

After recharging with yet more Lemsip hits, and some real

sleep, the jolly about campus can finally continue. Taking up residence in the brand new blocks of Alcuin certainly has its perks.

Following wine sipping in a local establishment it’s a beautiful thing to spend the cold Yorkshire night in a room where central heating is not provided in the form of chucking on another blanket.

Travelodge chic is taken to such new levels that it's almost a shock that a sofa bed and complimentary coffee facilities don’t suddenly appear from underneath a pile of dirty washing. Escorted to bed via piggyback –darling they just don’t DO walking in Alcuin– it’s almost disappointing to find that the rumours are true. Alcuin is posh. There are lifts, enough plugs on one desk to power the whole of Derwent C Block and even the en suites have enough room to house a couple of rogue Vanburgh students for a week.

Finally it’s the end of the tour and time to take another attempt at tackling Derwent. Again the anecdotes are true. Derwent IS college spirit. Sedated by the weekly pizza binge and bar quiz their anything they can do we can do better attitude is impressive stuff.

Someone you met in Goodricke has swum across the lake? We can do that. A Lap dance? When? In our boxer shorts? We’ll do more. Eager doesn’t even begin to describe. The tales of nude debauchery are the only thing that suggests an eager Derwenter would ever take off their favourite DCUK merchandise.

From waking up to find a seminar group busying away opposite to getting a bit lost on a 5am toilet trip a toasty welcome, even for a Langwithian is, found in the slime green veneered halls. Just don’t mention college sport.

So what has been learnt from risking my central nervous system?

One thing is clear. York University has variety. So whether you’re planning the escape into private sector or considering moving back to be closer to the action, there won’t be another time like living in amongst it. Be it being serenaded by your housemates in the early hours or getting into punch-ups at midnight, college life is essentially what you make of it. So muster up your college mates, get around and do something different, because lets face it…

THE AWARDS 'Best Sleep': Goodricke 'Services to Kitchen Drinking': Halifax The 'Jeeves Would Be Proud' Award: Alcuin 'Surprisingly Spacious': Langwith 'College of Two Halves': James The 'You love your college? Really?' Award: Derwent

YORK VISION

LIFESTYLE

17

LIFESTYLE

V

Tuesday January 30, 2007

>FOOD

>STYLE

>DRINK

>TRAVEL

P MP MY BIKE !

Vision has taken on the crazy challenge of pimping something every issue. For our first miracle transformation we just could not resist Daniel Webster's joke of a bike and did the charitable thing: getting it pimped at Fulford Cycles...

Help me, Vision!

BEFORE:

‘Original’ bike: Asahi mountain bike - and turning this lump of junk into a 'bike' sure is a 'mountainous' task

Condition: Looks like it's been dragged through the university's lake, with enough mud on it to make a rugby pitch jealous Rustier than Chris Evans' hair More scratched than that CD lying on your bedroom floor A rear tyre that's flatter than road kill Gears and brakes very badly adjusted No saddle - makes for very uncomfortable riding Damaged seatpost - making for even more uncomfort able riding

Approximate value: About £10 - and that's only for the scrap metal

Work carried out and parts fitted*: Resprayed, flame decals and branding decals added Replaced fork with RockShox Boxxer downhill suspension fork Replaced wheels with custom handbuilt wheels consisting of Hope Bulb hubs and Mavic 719 rims Replaced seatpost and fitted Massi ProRace saddle Replaced front brake with Hope Mono M4 hydrau lic disc brake system Replaced rear brake with Magura hydraulic rim brake system Replaced chainset with RaceFace DH chainset Replaced gear system with SRAM X0 derailleur and SRAM X0 gear shifter – replaced gear cable.

Replaced handlebar with northroad bar (fitted up-side down!), added auxillary bar with four Smart Polaris LED headlights

The end result: Looks good enough to wow all the 'honeys' but rides worse than a donkey on Scarborough beach

* The improvements to the bike makes it unsuitable for off-road riding.

P19 Style goes underneath your clothes

P20

P22

AND...

£3000

Time taken: Stripping and cleaning original – 30 minutes Respray – 30 minutes, plus overnight for the paint to dry Rebuild – 3 hours

mini It's a adve nture !

re a t a Wh r plans you r after n? fo uatio d gra

AFTER:

Approximate value of ‘pimped’ bike:

P18

You can find all your bicycle-pimping needs at Fulford Cycles, 98 Main Street Fulford or call 01904 620349 to speak to one fo the friendly and happy-to-help chaps personally.

Fulford Cycles even offers a 10% discount for students!

Food and Drink goes veg crazy

18 LIFESTYLE

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

Mad about Motors

Andy Wells has his own 'Mini adventure' test driving the new 2007 Mini Cooper 1.6.

B

MW have recently released the newest incarnation of the Mini. The iconic little car has been a success for BMW since its release in 2001. People always argue whether there is a necessity to improve on success, but the Bavarian motor manufacturer has given it a go.

At first glance, it doesn’t look as though the Mini has changed much. But when put side by side with its predecessor it becomes easier to see the differences. The new Mini is bigger. It becomes obvious at this point that the Mini is not quite so mini. With a raised bonnet, chunki e r

front grille and firmer rear end it’s easy to see the Mini has been working out. Inside, the retro central speedo has grown to nearly twice its size. The extra bulk makes the car much safer for occupants and pedestrians alike. Standard safety features include anti-skid brakes, traction control and a tyre pressure indicator.

Many people say that you’re paying for the badge, but the new Mini oozes quality from the chunky leather steering to the quality of plastics and metals used.

It’s easy to see that Mini has BMW

genes. However, the volume and search knobs for the radio feel a bit fiddly and are not in intuitive positions resulting in changing the radio station when you meant to turn up the volume.

In the driving seat you get the feeling that you’re piloting something much larger; this adds to the feeling of safety. The car feels solid. From the moment the starter button is pushed the engine growls excitedly into action. On the move the Mini feels like a big go-kart, with steering so direct and responsive the driver is scared to cough or sneeze. Like many rivals the Mini has active steering, which unlike the Corsa tested in the last issue feels progressive and well weighted.

Limited body roll and stiff, sporty suspension add to the go-kart feeling and the ride is very well balanced between handling and comfort. On the move the initial growl of the engine encourages the driver to rev a little more to hear the fabulous exhaust note. The responsive gokart handling gives the feeling of control and enables the driver to fling the car into roundabouts and

Society Stunner

Name: Henry Smith College: Alcuin Year: 2nd Society: Men's Football Could your Society Stunner sizzle in Vision?

Send any photos to life@vision.york.ac.uk

corners with a great deal of faith. The whole package allows for a thoroughly engaging drive.

As with the previous model, the Mini is powered by a 1.6 litre engine. Tuned to 120bhp the car is able to accelerate from 0-60 in 9.1secs.

This is quick when compared to rival superminis.

Power is fed through a 6speed gearbox. The ‘box has a precise and well engineered feel though does feel slightly notchy and heavy, adding to the sporty feel but very different when compared with the light and easy action of most rivals.

However the big problem with the 2007 Mini is practicality.

Despite its external dimensions, which are similar to its rivals, the Mini only has four seats, the boot size is laughable and it’s only available with three doors. But then again who wants to ruin the styling with another set of doors? But fitting more than a weekend's worth of luggage or even weekly shopping for one is very difficult. This limits the overall flexibility of the car.

Bavaria’s Mini is also an expensive proposition, especially with the Cooper range starting from £12995 without air-conditioning.

Standard equipment includes a single CD, auxiliary audio connection – for those with an iPod – and electric windows. When compared with ri-

vals a l though they may b e more practical or better equipped for the budget, no other can match the speed, quality or agility offered within this price bracket. The good news is that later this year the Cooper model will joined by the Mini One later this spring which will cost under £12,000, have an even more economical petrol engine and will be offered as a diesel. Minis make financial sense when you consider resale value. Currently you would be hard pressed to find a three year old used Mini for less than £8,000. This means that unlike many other cars, over the first three years the car retains over 60% of its original value, all very well and good of course if you can afford the initial price.

The Mini is the pinnacle in the supermini sector for style, quality and fun. It’s not a practical proposition, it’s a car sized go-kart that will put a smile on your face and let you enjoy the humdrum of everyday driving, for those who perhaps value style and are prepared to sacrifice space.

Tuesday November 14, 2006

YORK VISION

LIFESTYLE

>STY E Tuesday January 30, 2007

Wonder Woman underwear set

WONDERWEAR!

$24.99 Available from www.webundies.com

Style Bible

19

This week Vicky has an eighties moment with the five best footless tights

Sarah Howe shows us that it is what’s underneath that counts…

N

ow the festive season has been and gone, and a whole new year is upon us, it is easy to start denying ourselves things.

We tell ourselves to stop eating junk food, stop smoking, stop leaving work until the last minute, etc. But why do all of these resolutions begin with a stop? Why can’t we start doing things instead? I propose that we stop the stop and start the start, and that we should begin this in the most self indulgent manner possible: underwear! Unless you have a boyfriend or girlfriend who bought you a sexy stocking filler, my guess would be that very few people received any underwear from Santa.

I was lucky enough to receive some, but it was from my grandmother: fif-

ty pence a pair from Bulgaria, with elastic climbing up to my shoulders. It was a tough call, but I have decided not to include them within this article, as they fell more into the category of ‘under-scare’.

Frankly Darling (available at Topshop) have a matching set that costs just £35 and unites its pretty pink frills, candy colour and polka dots with a balcony fit bra and thong: for the sexy but sweet ladies. Mary Green's set of knickers, available at Gash, are well worth every penny as they are not only astounding quality but combine sexy fabrics with fun colours. Anybody out there who craves order will love these, as will anybody who finds it hard to remember which day it is. Then again, per-

Klein’s? They are classic choice but that doesn’t make them boring. Just ideal. And last but not least, the fantastically retro briefs are available at www.figleaves.com (named as DT Blue Blood). They are available in any colour, but this blue really seems to encourage that vintage, and almost cartoon, vibe. Just be careful that flares and platform boots aren’t the next step! My belated present to you then, is finding the best selection out there at the moment for both men and women, and these are some of my personal favourites.

haps that could cause more confusion. Oh well, who cares what day it is when you’re wearing underwear this awesome? Then we have Agent Provocateur: need I say any more? A label and status rolled into one. And often it’s harder to get stylish bras in larger sizes, but Marks and Spencers befriends the bigger busted ladies with its Per Una lingerie. This bra is available in sizes DD-G. If you are wanting to dress to impress, this camisole's sexy translucent material creates a teasing effect. Use it wisely. Now for the boys: why should girls be the only ones to enjoy polka dots? Topman proves that the joy is unisex with its fabulous boxers.

Would any underwear article be complete without a pair of Calvin

It looks like footless tights are here to stay and if you want to jump on the fashion band wagon but are a bit wary of making too big a statement, these lacy leggings £6 from Topshop are perfect: feminine and sophisticated.

Topshop Bra £25 The fashion powers that be are advising us that animal print is also back for good this season.

These footlights tights £8 from Dorothy Perkins are a great variation and whilst such a bold fashion statement may put some off, they are a great way of bringing an outfit up to date without going over budget

Camisole £20 Topshop

Topshop Thong £6 Figleaves £12

Thong £10

Gash £95 Per UnaBra £12 Agent Provocateur Bra £65 Per Una Knickers £12

Calvin Klein £18

£5 Topman

HIGH RISE LIVING

Agent Provocateur Thong £35 (also available in briefs)

There are hardly words for these wacky tights £9 from Topshop.

Whilst you may be limited with what you can wear them with, they are great for that statement outfit and will certainly by a talking point.

By Laura Tempest

H

emlines are on the rise, and despite the apparent reluctance of the temperature to follow suit, tiny is still big. Spring/summer ‘07 collections showcased short, shorter and shorter skirts, and while borderline indecent lengths are best left to the runway, wearing a mini (and wearing it well) is easier than it looks. The current weather situation makes covering up under a mini skirt a sensible option – tights, leggings and boots are chic and warm, but now is the time to prep your pins for warmer days. Nothing beats a tan to elongate (Johnson’s Holiday Skin anyone?) but toning up and moisturising work wonders, not only for your legs but for your confidence. As your hemline gets higher, make sure your neckline does the same – team a

mini skirt with a demure top and remember the ‘one or the other rule’ – if your legs are on show, your chest shouldn’t be. Denim is hardly original and best avoided – cut-off, too short and you’re entering Daisy Duke territory, but if you can’t resist, the high street has plenty of classier alternatives. Play up to the strong, feisty statement a micro mini makes, and choose a bold colour and unusual shape (bright blue pelmet skirt at Topshop for £22) or turn it on its head and go for classic shapes and neutral tones. Wear your mini with heels for added confidence – sky-high wedges for instant ‘legs for days’, or sassy peep toes for chic glamour, but be careful with pointed shoes and stilettos, which can look aggressive. Flats work well if you faint at the thought of heels; think

ballet pumps in sweet, sugary colours, but unless you’re 13 and on the way to your first gig, stay well away from the converse and mini skirt combination.

Topshop £32

Warehouse £25 Topshop £22

Balenciaga is leading the way this season with metallic leggings and whilst R2-D2 may not be everyone’s style icon, these footless tights add a glitzy touch. Team with a skirt on a chilly night out in York if you’re not feeling brave enough to brace the evening bare-legged.

Bold colours are a must for spring and Dorothy Perkins has lots of affordable footless tights and leggings. These bright red ones £4, will certainly banish your winter blues and bring a splash of colour to any outfit. Just be careful you don't look like an extra from Flashdance!

20 LIFESTYLE

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

Climbing The Career Ladder

Worried about what to do after graduation? Don't want to be stuck in a humdrum job? Charlotte Chung and Carla Dobson speak to four students with ambition and the knowledge to get where they want...

The Journalist

The Politician

Julia Heath 2nd Year Social Policy and Crime Alcuin College

Daniel Ashby 2nd Year Politics and Philosophy Alcuin College

Have you always wanted to be a journalist?

No, I always wanted to live a creative life, I used to be good at art. My parents told me I should become a professional cartoonist.

When did you decide to become a journalist?

No, I can’t be bothered to hound people like the papparazzi do. I probably would wait outside someone’s door though to ask them questions.

What are the biggest risks you have taken for the sake of a good story?

I think growing up in Cape Town made me become aware of social issues at a relatively young age. I decided to go back on my gap year, and got an internship with a regional tabloid. That was the changing point.

I had to go into khayelitsha in Cape Town to cover a murder story, which is a fairly dangerous township. I had a translator, so it wasn’t too bad, but some locals didn’t want me there. When my lift didn’t pitch I started to crap myself. In the end the Argus sent an armed escort to get me out!

People have a very negative view of journalists. Do you think it’s fair?

How are you pursuing your career through uni?

I think people’s opinion of journalists has been affected by the papparazzi and red top reporters, who are among the most cut-throat. It’s probably not fair to brand all writers like this. That doesn’t bother me though. What bothers me is when people tell me that the method in which journalists get stories is immoral. How do they think you find out bad news?

I’ve racked up some editorial experience on Vision, which has been a great experience. This year I’m just trying to learn how to write better through study and courses. York is a great way to make some basic connections, but it’s always difficult to get people to remember you. I’ve joined “The Yorker” as well, and if it’s as big as everyone says it will be then I think I will take a lot from it.

Do you fit this profile?

When did your interest in politics first arise?

I've always had a conservative upbringing, my dad stood for the local council, although that does not mean that I didn't explore different political views for myself. Since coming to York i've become an active member of the Conservative club, recently becoming its leader. Obviously this has encouraged my involvement with politics!

What attracted you to a career in politics?

The fact that it's so broad based, you can either have an affiliation to a party or focus on political research.

Although you have to be politically neutral for that so I may have already burned my bridge!

What have you done throughout your time at university to help you secure a job?

I've been advised by York alumni to get as much work experience with MPs as possible and I've got two

The Filmmaker

When I leave York I’m looking to get into the National School of Film and Television in London to do an MA in either Fiction Direction or Cinematography. It’s the sort of job that if you’re not 100% committed to then you’d be better off looking for another career. ...and what are you doing at university to help you get there?

Yeah, York has a great Filmmaking Society (www.yorkfilm.co.uk – *ahem* plug *ahem*) with a lot of very talented people involved. I joined the society in 2005 and since then have realised the possibilities open to anyone with the determination and guts to put themselves out there and give it a shot. I learnt this from working on Human Residue (www.residue-movie. co.uk – getting good at this) a feature film shot on campus last summer. The producers, then students at York, decided that they wanted to make a horror feature and just went out and did it. They ended up getting lottery grants and other production houses involved as backers and now we’ve wrapped shooting interest is rising further. From this I’ve created Firefly Independent Film Productions to take a shot

at making another feature in York this summer. The working title is Ex Cathedra so look out for it in the future.

How competitive is trying to crack into the film making industry?

Definitely, the film school I want to go to only has less than 10 places for the course I want to get onto and over 300 applicants.

Trying to go straight into the industry is just as difficult, if not harder. It really does rely a lot on who you know; although you can only go so far on that, once you’re in you have the talent to back it up. The key to the industry is networking. Get yourself out there, don’t be shy and make people remember you.

Favourite director?

My favourite director as a spectator is definitely Kevin Smith. He is a genius of his genre and creates films with a lot more depth than most people give him credit for. A lot of people love films like Jay and Silent Bob for the gross out comedy but when put in perspective of Dogma, Clerks and Chasing Amy, you start to realise that Kevin Smith is so much more.

Have you ever considered further study after university?

There are suitable masters courses available, for example here at York there is the Political Research masters. But to be honest I don't think they are necessary, it's more about who you know and what skills and experience you can offer.

Are there any other career options you would like to pursue?

There are things more related to my degree, the police, governemt agencies of the police the civil service or the crown prosecution service are all interesting options.

The P.R Agent

Liam Wright 3rd Year English and Philosphy Halifax College

How are you pursuing film making after you leave uni?

placements set up for over the summer; one with my local M.P in Leicestershire for two weeks and one in London with the European council.

At York as well as being Chair of the Conservative society I'm also standing in the Heslington Local Council election to try and raise the profile of Conservatives within York. I also attend local meetings and help out on campaign days.

Lizzy Dale 3rd Year English Language and Linguistics Alcuin College

Originally I wanted to be a journalist and did work experience stints at the Loughbrough and Lincolnshire Echoes. In my gap year I also worked for a magazine and on an Austrailian newspaer. But ultimately I didn't like the cold calling necessary for a job in a newsroom.

though you can't go into P.R straight from university, you need a background in it. That is why over the summer I took part in four different placement schemes to gain some experience. The placements were really difficult to get though, especially my internship at Lexis PR. I'm planning on a gap year next year but have applied for deferred jobs with Weber- Shandwick and Saatchi.

What was it that attracted you to P.R?

Any advice for people looking to go into P.R?

It combined many of the qualities of journalism, creativity, dealing with the media and a friendly working environment. The relationship between the client, their brand and you as the P.R agent is also something which really appeals to me. Like all jobs there are aspects of it which appear mundane but it is something which takes a lot of personal investment.

Maintain contacts, I've sent the companies I did work experience with thank you and Christmas cards, and as I said before work experience is crucial, so get as much as you can!

What are your plans for after university, are you going to do an M.A?

www.careers.ed.ac.uk

Have you always had an interest in P.R and advertising?

No, I think it is unnecessary, al-

Haven't made any plans for after graduation? Visit; www.prospects .ac.uk

www.grad.ac.uk

YORK VISION

LIFESTYLE

Tuesday January 30, 2007

>TRA EL Travel Log Rebecca Wall gets drunk in Venice

INDULGE IN INDIA

Juha Rudanko queue jumps the Taj Mahal

I

S

omehow I’d always imagined myself arriving in Venice by gondola, like the protagonist in “Death in Venice”, slowly gliding up to San Marco, and then down the Grand Canal. In none of my little fantasies did I ever envisage myself arriving by the cheap Ryanair flight, climbing onto a crammed bus buzzing with the sound of crying, tired children. Nor did I see myself lugging my suitcase onto the vaporetto at 10 pm, desperately hoping that the baroque church that I stopped at was the right one. The wonderful, terrible thing about La Serenissima is that no matter where you are in the city, you feel that you’ve already seen it before in a painting, film, or music video.

Thankfully, I was soon whisked off to our hotel (with a window opening onto a canal, I could still hear lapping water as I drifted off to sleep for days after I’d returned home.) No matter how beautiful Venice is by day, I shall always infinitely prefer it by night.

Before I arrived, I’d readied myself

to be disappointed by everything; surely it can’t be as beautiful as it looks in books? It is.

I wandered through the back streets of the Rialto district, desperately seeking an open bar.

Somehow we found ourselves at the bridge itself, where we met a lone American swinging his legs over the edge and clutching a pint glass.

After laughing at our attempts to speak Italian, he took us along to a tiny Chinese bar, where we preceded to get very drunk on continental spirit measures, later I arm wrestled an Australian (I won. He bought me Jack Daniels. Very sporting) and somehow managed to knock over at least six glasses before finally being prised away from the tables and out of the door by the proprietors.

Perhaps I should mention that another reason why everything feels as though you’ve seen it before in Venice is that in attempting to find your way through the back streets you will inevitably find yourself walking in circles, passing through the same square at least three times and finding yet another dead end at a canal without a bridge.

Admittedly, our navigational skills were perhaps somewhat affected, but with the help of some equally drunk Italians we did end up home by dawn, and somehow,in Venice, getting lost just starts to feel like you’ve slipped through the looking glass, and it’s all a great adventure.

21

t is difficult to say why exactly you like a place; why sometimes even the irritations of a travel destination become charming eccentricities which you sorely miss when you are back home. Some places just are like that. As I was speeding along in the tiny taxi from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport to my hotel in the Tibetan refugee quarter of Majnu-Ka-Tilla, I already knew that I liked India. Maybe it was the brightly coloured trucks or the incessant blowing of horns even at that ungodly hour, but something told me that at the end of my three weeks, I would be hankering to come back.

Delhi is the ultimate city for the history buff. Depending on the account, there have been either seven or twenty one cities built on the site of present day Delhi. It seems that every empire has had a stab at ruling Delhi - most recently the British, and before them the Mughals. But no one has been able to keep the city for more than a couple of centuries.

Delhi has been invaded, besieged, plundered, razed to the ground.

But it has always survived.

On my second day in

cows, pedestrians, goats, motorcycles and cars all vied for space on the chronically congested thoroughfare. My driver told me this was the real Delhi, the Delhi of the locals. There was certainly no lack of locals. I do not think I have ever seen so many people crammed into such a small space. Thankfully though, the tourist hordes of New Delhi were nowhere to be seen.

The rickshaw driver dropped me off at Shah Jahan’s magnificent mosque, the Jama Masjid. Unfortunately it was too late for non-Muslims to enter. So I just wandered through the bazaars of Shahjanabad. Wandering through the chaos of people and animals and gaping at the shops selling everything imaginable was an experience in itself. As I walked away from the Jama Masjid, the sun was setting. Suddenly the call to prayer sounded from the mosque loudspeakers: “Allahu Akbar!” It was like entering another reality.

The one thing about India you notice immediately is how all the tourists stand out. I have never been anywhere else where the foreigner looks as out of place as In-

"Reaching the Taj Mahal produces quite a shock. The queue is massive!"

Delhi, I decided to visit some of the historical sites in Old Delhi, which encompasses the parts if the city built in the early seventeenth century by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Shahjanabad, as it was then known, is distinguished especially by the vast Red Fort, the huge mosque Jama Masjid and the bustling main street, Chandi Chowk.

The Fort remains immensely impressive, but it is difficult to imagine what it was like in its heyday. The sound and light show that they have every night at the Fort faithfully relates the facts of its history from Shah Jahan’s time to the present, but does not add much to the atmosphere. It is a bit difficult to appreciate the historical significance of the building given that one of the busiest motorways in Delhi runs right by it.

For some authentic modern-day Delhi atmosphere, I took a cycle rickshaw down the Chadni Chowk. This was definitely the most chaotic street I had ever been on. Rickshaws,

dia. And I have never seen so many travel guidebooks. Every single tourist (myself included) seemed to be clutching a copy of Lonely Planet India. The combined effect is that you tend to adopt a hypocritical attitude of superiority towards other tourists. For some reason, the mere sight of another guidebook begins to irritate. You say to yourself: he looks so out of place!

There was plenty of scope for such irritation on the train to Jaipur. It seems that every tourist wants to go to Rajasthan. So did me and my friend who had joined me by this stage. Wanting to be different, we decided to walk to our hotel once we arrived in Jaipur.

India is a bit like America in that no one walks. We were told that even the poorest have bicycles.

Walking is always the very last option. Combine this with the fact that the Indian rickshaw driver is not very good at taking ‘no’ as an answer, and it becomes understandable that we were harassed the whole way to the hotel. We persevered and, thanks to my friend’s superior map-reading skills, made it to the hotel on foot.

W e found

[ The Red Fort ]

[ The Taj Mahal ] Jaipur to be extremely busy and very touristy. Crossing the streets was an even bigger problem than in Delhi. In Delhi you mostly have to deal with cars and rickshaws.

But Jaipur was full of motorcycles which most definitely will not stop for you. It was also full of Westerners clinging to their Lonely Planets and congregating in the Starbucksesque coffeeshops. Of course, we needed our caffeine as well.

The highlight of Jaipur was the observatory built by Jaipur’s ruler Jai Singh in 1728.

I was expecting an observatory to be indoors. Instead, Jantar Mantar, as it is called, is a park.

This beautiful place highlights India’s obsession with astrology.

Every paper still has a horoscope page, and astrologers are consulted to determine the best date for a wedding.

To complete our tour of the ‘golden triangle’ of North India, we decided to visit Agra. Agra

Fortunately, a local man led us to another entrance where the queue was only about fifty meters long. Of course, we had to pay for the privilege. Two hundred rupees, or around three pounds, for taking us to the other entrance. It was certainly worth it.

And so was the Taj. It is extremely touristy and packed with people, but I loved the Taj Mahal. Everyone knows what it looks like, but the effect is much stronger when you are actually there.

Like any great work of art, the Taj Mahal transcends the particular to represent the universal. It was built in honour of Shah Jahan’s dead wife, and captures something universal about romantic love. It made me wonder about what kind of culture is able to produce a work of art like this. Why is it that certain historical epochs - Renaissance Italy, say, or Mughal India in this case - can produce works which are of universal value?

Yet not all my experi-

"No matter how much time you had you would not be able to understand this country" was once the capital of the Mughal Empire, but is now known almost exclusively for the Taj Mahal. It is a cliché, but I wanted to see the Taj. If Jaipur was touristy, Agra was touristy to the power of ten. Again we decided to walk, and were followed the whole way to the Taj Mahal. “You going Taj? Five rupees no problem!”

Agra itself was not particularly pleasant, but like everyone else, we were there for the Taj Mahal. We reached it without problem on foot despite the protestations of the rickshaw drivers.

Reaching the Taj Mahal produces a shock. The queue is massive! As with most Indian tourist sights, most of the tourists were Indian. And as always, there were a lot of them. The main queue was several hundred meters long.

ences were positive. The constant harassment by rickshaw drivers and people selling anything from key rings to horse whips could be stressful. It can be uncomfortable to constantly be stared at. And my female travel companion got plenty of unwanted attention from Indian men.

As I noted, it is difficult to know what exactly makes you fall in love with another country.

But perhaps it is not about specific things you see or experience. In my case, I think it was more the constant sense of wonder. And even more, the sense that you were always just scratching the surface. No matter how much time you had, you would not be able to understand this country. So, just as I expected on my first night in Delhi, I am hankering to go back.

To scratch the surface a bit more

22 LIFESTYLE

YORK VISION

> FOOD&DR R the Vis Hot lision t

LIVING ON THE VEG

It's all about the fruit, falafel and flapjacks when Ben Poore converts to veganism...

“

Insanity” was suggested by some. “Recklessness” by others. Judging by most reactions Food and Drink's lowdown you would think I was going to on what's hot and what's go on Celebrity Big Brother rathnot in our fair city er than trying to eat vegan for a week. With complete faith in my bloody-mindedness I laughed What's got us salivating own off my detractors, whilst simultaexcessively this month... neously noting that I wouldn’t be able to eat any of the pub snacks • Marmite: - it's excellent for preg- spread in front of me when the time came. If they were expecting the nant women real McCoy then it would certainly and hangovers, mean I had to forego said crisps. a p p a r e n t l y.

I had decided to cut out all meat, Were pretty dairy, gluten where possible and sure mainly to show preference for organic the latter and GM free produce, something applies to that our local Spar didn’t cater for, our readers. somewhat dauntingly. In order to join the other 345,000 vegans in this country I would have to start from scratch when filling the cupboard.

• Pack lunch - cheap and perBefore I could eat as a vegan for a week, I had to shop as one and sonalised like a shop some serious research into my sandwich can never be. options was required. www.viva.

Add 10p space invadorg.uk proved to be an excellent ers for a proper resource for recipe ideas and genprimary shcool eral nutritional information, while nostalgia fest. www.ootw.co.uk offered a wide selection of soy dairy substitutes, vegan sausages, sauces, snacks, rice, beans, even organic vegan gin and a delicatessen offering vegan • Dusk - 2 for 1 anything is carrot cake! However, the cost of a always a good thing. So are relatively small shopping trip for cocktails. You do the maths. vegan essentials is prohibitive for students, coming to £24 for the varessentials of a week of vegan...and what's turning our ied ism. stomachs On the first morning I breakfast-

• Mayonnaise - does Hellmans sponsor campus lunches? It's surely the only explanation for drowning a perfectly decent sandwich filling with something that a cat could have sicked up.

• Vudu - sometimes it's fun to be a proper grown up, but not when it involves £3 pints.

• YourShop meal deal - it's a meal (sort of), but it sure ain't a deal.

!

Give it a gota ble ge ve ed st Roa salad: of ur vegetables

Cut up yo izzle balsamic inchoice and dr em. After 25 m vinegar over then at gas mark 5, utes in the ov matoes and garlic t add cherry to cheese and roas and herb softminutes. Serve in for 5 more as a snack, or pitta bread for a main with pasta lthy and meal. Hea us! delicio

NK

Tuesday January 30, 2007

ed on organic, gluten free muesli accompanied by soy milk and a cup of lapsang souchong tea pilfered from my girlfriend. The tea is excellent, but the muesli is a little disappointing, tasting principally, as a friend put it, of ‘dry’. For lunch I head to Costcutters on campus, where I get a strawberry flavoured soy milk drink, a vegan apple and raisin flapjack and a three bean salad. No feelings of illness or meat lust set in. Dinner consists of vegetarian sausages and falafels with brown basmati rice. The falafels are terrible, a lot like chewing a pillow, but everything else is quite palatable, and I feel quite full and well fed.

On Tuesday morning the addition of banana and golden syrup (no honey allowed of course) to the muesli improve the situation considerably, and even the soya milk seems less sickeningly sweet. Later, however, I make a drunken error.

Returning from a night out and deciding that a veggie burger is perfectly acceptable, I fail to note that it is cooked in the fat of dead animals (not soya or sunflower cooking oil) and that it contains egg. In the morning, with my soy yoghurt and raisins, I decide that I was exercising extremely pragmatic veganism.

Whilst vegetarian sausages, mushroom burgers and tofu all provide a decent meat substitute, cutting out eggs and milk proves particularly difficult. It only becomes apparent how many animal products we use when one has to check

the ingredients on everything for eggs, milk or butter. Costcutter offers soy milk and butter and the Fairtrade shelves offer dairy free chocolate, ginger nuts and pasta sauces (although at nearly £3 for a small jar, it is somewhat unreasonable). The range is small, but seems to vary a good deal.

By Thursday I feel decidedly hungry and a little ill. How can this be? I’ve been eating lots of nuts, raisins, and dried things all week as snacks. And lots of fresh fruit, especially kiwis and mango.

To survive on a vegan diet requires extremely careful planning and plenty of invention in the kitchen, or it would be very easy to get trapped in an endless cycle of vegetarian sausages.

For a snack I have the vegan equivalent of a pot noodle, ‘Tru-Free’, which sells itself as a ‘Potato and Vegetable Quick Snack’. It is called Tru-Free as it is wheat, egg, gluten and dairy free.

Unfortunately it is also flavour free.

However, it is better and healthier than one of Pot Noodle’s snacks of death.

In a moment of weakness on Friday which neither I nor my editors are proud of, I eat some Doritos offered to me. They are completely, totally delicious. This escalates to me eating a hot dog, onions and

mustard post pub, which proves equally as delicious. Feelings of weakness and disgust greet me in the morning with my peanut butter on toast.

As the end approached, I realised living as a vegan probably wasn’t for me, but there are doubtless other students who have decided otherwise. However, being a student and a vegan doesn’t just call for willpower; the cost and availability of vegan products are doubtless pricing this lifestyle choice out of reach of those who aren’t comfortable using animal products.

SOYA FANCY A MEAL OUT? Sam Spencer finds out what delights our fair city has to offer the vegetarian diner The UK has always struggled with food. One might call it ‘gastronomically challenged’ or just plain lazy, but whilst we have all suffered as a result, it seems that vegetarians have suffered more than others.

Even with the vast improvements in the nation’s culinary know-how that have been made in recent years, vegetarians remain largely neglected, inevitably having to make do with a couple of unimaginative offerings, dumped, somewhat despairingly, into the dankest, darkest corner of the menu.

In order to escape

this unenviable predicament there is another option – restaurants that cater solely for the vegetarian palate. Whilst larger cities are obviously better serviced, what of York, home of good wholesome Yorkshire grub and Efe’s, where meat comes as standard?

‘El Piano’, which my sources inform me translates roughly as ‘the Piano’, is a quirky, vibrantly-coloured establishment, specialising in vegetarian, vegan and glutenfree cuisine. A veritable institution - at least amongst those in the know – El Piano has gained praise from far and wide including a host of national newspapers, whilst having also produced a critically acclaimed cookbook.

Food can be bought ‘through the window’ at the restaurant’s Wrapido takeaway counter, or eaten inside surrounded by the assorted, inter national bric-a-brac that adorns the ceilings and walls,

and all of which can be bought by the customer. Items are served tapas-style (i.e. in numerous little bowls) although the menu draws influence from a vast array of different countries, allowing your stomach to travel the world as you gradually get sozzled on the cheap tequila shots on offer. Furthermore, this little ray of sunlight illuminates the seemingly interminable grey skies of York until midnight from Monday to Saturday, surely a far better post-pub stop off than some grimy street-vendor offering botulism in a bun.

Within close proximity, just down Swinegate, is Vanilla Black, possibly York’s classiest restaurant for those of a non-carnivorous variety. Some may call it small, others intimate, but with seating for only 30 it is a necessity to book in the evenings. A much better option, especially if the welfare of your overdraft is a major consideration, is lunchtime, when meals cost little more than £7. Either way, both the lunch and evening menus can boast items such as Smoked Cheese and Sweet Red Onion Bread and Butter Pudding or Pan Fried Haloumi and Black Olive Custard, amongst their inventive repertoires. Although perhaps not the sort of place an average student would frequent regu-

larly, Vanilla Black would certainly be one of the best restaurants, vegetarian or not, for a special occasion.

Finally, there is the Blake Head Cafe on Mickelgate. Lying inconspicuously between those bars that students will be all too familiar with, this cafe offers a surprisingly relaxed and peaceful location for a hearty lunch. While the menu isn't huge and doesn't offer anything particularly unusual (read sandwhiches, soup and quiche), each dish is accompanied with an enormous, rather exotic salad that is enough to fill any appetite. At about £6 per dish, this isn't an overly cheap lunch, but is definitely a good alternative to the usual Subway.

Whether one concurs with Morrisey’s warbling cry of “meat is murder”, merely does not like the taste, or perhaps fancies a change, in York it is not an impossible task to eat vegetarian, and eat well. Whilst an endless stream of un-atmospheric, identikit restaurants continues to flood the high street and bore those who for whatever reason do not wish to eat meat, there remain a few independent and highly innovative eateries that buck this unwholesome trend. Hopefully, you’ll never have to settle for soup and side-salad again.

23 RUBBISH:SKETCH

Dinsdag, 30 Januari, 2006

THE SKETCH

DALEK CLAIMS FIRST CASUALTY VISION EXCLUSIVE

by Phil Space A student was hospitalised last night in what has been described as "the most vicious alien assault in years".

The second year Management student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was walking home after a heavy night at his girlfriend's residence when the attacker ran over his foot.

NoUse's favourite student-hating dalek is believed to be to blame.

The editor of the much-loved campus tome, Willie Stroker, said he was "not suprised" that the metallic monster had struck, suggesting that "it's literally out of control".

"From the moment the Dalek story landed on our desk, we knew that we were wacky enough to mention it on every single page of our lighthearted student publication" he said. "It's an important student issue that we can handle really well".

Talking about the incident, the student said: "The shadowy figure approached me saying all kinds of horrible things like 'I don't like students' and 'you are a drunk, noisy tosser'. Then it

lunged at me, running over my foot in the process".

It is believed the student, who remains in a critical condition, will never be able to play footsie effectively again.

Vision can exclusively reveal that the student, who wants to be a Manager when he grows up, plans to press charges. However, police have yet to find the dastardly dalek.

Regarding the lack of results, the traumatised student said that it was "like being slapped in the face by a big salmon."

When approached for a comment on the assualt, university authorities stated: "We don't care. We stopped giving a shit about students years ago."

Meanwhile, YOU:SUE Academic and Welfare Officer Aimee Foxtonian said that students should see this as a "call to arms", suggesting that the only solution was "retaliation".

"We must build our own daleks in preparation for war.

I think that the suggestion by local residents that students are in any way annoying is just preposterous. We are pillars of society."

The debate continues.

Draaaawing out the truth...

Sports

p U d n u o

R

An Overview of London’s 2006 no-lympics Yes, as NoUse’s clever correspondent Si Not-Likely pointed out, York did play a very active role in London’s imaginary 2006 Olympics. Monopoly money from York City Council contributed significantly to funding what was described as ‘the biggest sporting non-event in history’.

Sp

tted

• Richard 'Ginge' Davis in Toffs inviting a first year to "come back to see his tiger".

• A bouncer at the Goodricke seventies event overheard telling his mate: "I love my power. It makes me feel like god".

• VC Brian 'pull your socks up' Cantor dancing provocatively at the opening of the new Mickelgate pole-dancing club, Bohemia.

with Dan Druff Here, wrongball, faultathlons, and heavy-weighttypoerroring, topped the bill of a sportingly imaginative games programme. Plans for the next no-lympics are to be announced

by Des Pond, from space (where he will be wearing a rather splendid new rugby kit), on November 23 2007.

• Vision's esteemed ex-editor Dan Ashby dressed as a hobbit at a Lord of the Ring's Convention at the NEC. • Andreas 'The Last Word' Masoura from NoUse getting rat-arsed with our undercover investigator and admitting that he wished he wrote with the sparkling wit and clever satire found in The Sketch.

• A rare sighting of an anonymous member of the rugby team not wearing an item of rugby clothing.

VISION'S PHOTO CASEBOO K STORMY WATERS: Deborah has been Gary's loyal girlfriend for 2 weeks.

But is her washing-up in vain, as Gary's cheating eyes move elsewhere?...

I want them all do ne by the time I am back from the Goodric ke beater sports so wifecial!

You're so demanding!

I hope I am still satisfying him...

Campus Lookalike

facebuk Crokey's Biggest Gayest Orgy Yet

Meanwhile...

Colin Hindson

Information

When are g you goin to leave ng that bori ?

Deborah

Mike Skinner

Event Info

Name: Tagline: Host: Type:

Crokey's Biggest Gayest Orgy Yet Come and have some fun!

YOU:SUE's Supreme President Party - Erotic Party

Time and Place

Start Time: End Time:

Thursday February 1st, 9:00pm Friday February 2nd, 8:00am

Description After NoUse's horrid investigation uncovered the original 'Big Gay Orgy', we want to defend our sexual freedom by holding a bigger, gayer orgy of unfathomable proportions.

Bring your friends, but remember, no LGBT Officers allowed!

Don't worry: If NoUse try it on again, we will use our handy dictatorial campus-paper censorship to power them into submission! (dominatrix style!)

 Are you a company in need of a few extra hands?

Soon Miranda.

Be patient.

I want them both .

What am I going to do?

Do you tire of pesky proletarian workers?

If so, then we have the answer for you!!!

The University of Yorkie is holding a student sale on Thursday 1st February in our highly successful Roger Cack Centre. We are selling students to fund our wonderful, beautiful, lovely new Heslington East campus.

Offers from arms companies preferred!

NEXT ISSUE: Miranda's demands become increasingly forceful, whilst Deborah's friend recommends getting the YOU:SUE Women's Officers on Gary's case. How will he get himself out of this one?

24 SPORT

YORK VISION

Tuesday January 30, 2007

The atmosphere in Centre Court is electric. On one side of the net, Andy Murray, the feisty Scot on the verge of the greatest win of his career.

On the other, Andy Roddick, the confident American and number three seed.

After an awesome display of tennis, Murray is presented with his second match point against the two time Wimbledon finalist.

Roddick’s forehand goes long, the crowd erupts and the nineteen year old British number one is into the last sixteen of Wimbledon 2006.

Unsurprisingly, Murray’s dismissal of Roddick, on the prestigious grass of SW19, is one of his best achievements in a fledgling career. Over the last two years, Murray has improved his record with success after success. I asked what had been his greatest career moment so far.

"Either winning my first ATP tour title in San Jose, winning a doubles match for Great Britain in my Davis Cup debut v Israel when I was seventeen, or reaching the last sixteen at Wimbledon 2006, beating Andy Roddick in the third round."

Another string to add to his already accomplished bow was his victory over world number one Roger Federer, one of the all-time greats. Beating Federer in straight sets at the Cincinnati Masters last August, Murray was only the second, and last, man to beat Federer in 2006 after Rafael Nadal. Six months on and Murray finds himself at number sixteen in the world; not far from his goal: "I am aiming for the top ten in the world in the next two to three years," admits Andy.

He is certainly on the right track. Since Brad Gilbert (who coached Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick to world number one) became his coach last summer, Murray has been working hard on his game and is now starting to reap the benefits. Last week only by the relentless tenacity of Rafael Nadal eventually put Murray out of the Australian Open. In a thrilling match, Murray showed that he could match Nadal’s pace, vary play with his sheer artistry, and moreover that his body could last

SPORTS SHORTS Knights suffer narrow Castleford defeat York City Knights went down 1816 to a young Castleford Tigers side in Friday night's friendly. The team was composed of their Academy players, but York also fielded a younger side, leaving out many regular first-team players.

York were heading for victory until the 79th minute, when a late converted Castleford score gave them the narrow win.

Rudolph signing causes controversy Yorkshire's recent signing of Jacques Rudolph has caused outrage amongst the Professional Cricketer's Association due to arguments over the Kolpak ruling.

Rudolph has pledged his future to Yorkshire and will not return to the international scene for South Africa.

However, Rudolph has commented that he would like to play for South Africa at the end of his three years with Yorkshire, undermining the terms of the agreement.

> Vision's Lauren Cockbill talks to the next great hope of British tennis as Andy Murray looks to take his game to another level.

HERE TO STAY

V

V

And who better to be his fitness mentor but five time Olympic champion Michael Johnson, a neighbour of Gilbert’s. Under Johnson’s

best tennis.

Being under the constant stare of the British press can take its toll, so how does Murray feel about the celebrity aspect of what he does and the difficulties it presents?

Nobody has been able to persuade me to wear a kilt yet!

V

I hate being mis-quoted or having things I say taken out of context

eye, Murray worked on his speed and endurance by completing 200m sprint intervals.

By all accounts the conditioning is paying dividends. Prior to his clash with Nadal, Murray was yet to drop a set at the Open and his loss to the Spaniard was not due to fatigue, rather to Nadal’s resilience.

This time last year, Murray bowed out of the Australian Open in the first round to Argentina’s Juan Ignacio Chela. This year he won his first round match 6-0 6-0 6-1 (equaling the largest victory at the Australian Open which began in1968) and then sought his revenge on Chela in the third round, defeating him in straight sets.

Legend of the game Bjorn Borg has no doubts about Murray’s potential; bluntly stating that he thinks he might be the next world no.1. Borg attributes Murray’s ability to do great things to the combination of his game and his McEnroe-esque volatility.

It is Murray’s McEnroe-like, feisty attitude on court that, despite having caused him some warnings from the umpire’s chair, marks his competitive spirit. He may shout out in disgust at a poor shot or a bad line call but equally he will roar when he is fired up and playing his

V

the distance of five grueling sets.

His fitness has been under scrutiny ever since his Queen’s Club debut in 2005. Just two points away from victory against Thomas Johansson, Murray was sprawled on the floor in agony due to cramp. Compared to such players as Nadal, Roddick and Federer, he was not in their league. Nevertheless, under the guidance of Gilbert, Murray has been putting in the hours on the running track.

"Sometimes it’s difficult but mostly it’s fine. I hate being misquoted or having things I say taken out of context in the press."

During the football World Cup last summer, Murray was quoted as saying he hoped anyone but England would win the World Cup, and that he would wear the shirt of whatever team England were playing against. Murray went on to state that it was a comment said in jest to a reporter who, prior to coming on

air, had been mocking the Scottish national team.

Scotland and football, then, are two things for which Murray shares a passion: "I am very patriotic but nobody has been able to persuade me to wear a kilt yet!"

Kilt or no kilt, Andy Murray makes Scotland proud, but does Scotland do enough to support its sporting talent?

"I think it probably depends on what sport you play. Some sports are better supported than others.

Team sports tend to get much better support than individual sports.

To produce more world class sports people you need to invest heavily in world class coaching, quality competition and accessible training facilities."

As far as football is concerned, Murray is apparently just as skilled, so why did he opt for tennis?

"I like the individuality of tennis matches. It’s just you and your opponent out there."

So there it is: the fight. Andy Murray, the ‘urban kid’, who loves the man on man aspect of tennis. It is this cutting edge to Murray’s persona that is seeing him rise to new heights; intimidation is not something he suffers.

wicked WHISPERS Which campus publication was left red-faced as not one, but two gaffes marred their latest issue? After being conned with a not-so-elaborate cosmic hoax by a mischievous club, the unwitting party suffered an error in an unmissable location. Many students will be shocked to learn they have missed an event that was scheduled for 5 years from now.

York improvise to improve pitch The bad weather over the last few weeks has taken its toll on York City's pitch, but now the club has turned to more unorthodox methods to cope with the elements.

The team has borrowed some equipment from York Golf Club that allows them to punch holes into the soil and then break up the compacted soil beneath the surface. York hope that it will provide an adequate temporary solution to cope with a saturated playingarea.

Golf slip further behind leaders

York University Golf Club fell further behind leaders Leeds Metropolitan after their BUSA fixture last Wednesday.

Leeds inflicted a 4.5-1.5 defeat on York, who now sit third in the league, 12 points behind Leeds.

York now have a crunch game against bottom side Sheffield Hallam to avoid finishing last.

YORK VISION

SPORT

Tuesday January 30, 2007

York's heavyweight colleges are set to battle it out for the Deloitte Championship.

Vision brings you ringside seats to 2007's big fight:

X A F I L A H S V E K C I R D O GO

BY LAURIE ALLSOPP Goodricke the experienced champion, Halifax the upstart contender. Round one of the fight saw nothing between the two - but can either college achieve a knock-out this time round?

With some fascinating fixtures to come over the next few weeks, absolutely anything could happen.

Goodricke topped the tables in Badminton, Pool, Tennis and Netball 1sts, while Halifax led in Squash, Football 2nds, Hockey and Darts.

But a 5-2 reverse to Goodricke was the only reason Halifax didn't finish first in pool last term, and the green-and-blacks kept their noses ahead in Netball 1st when a last minute goal gave them and 1211 win over their rivals.

Netball was Goodricke's greatest success story over the autumn.

Despite being beset by injuries last term, the performances of Anna Bevan and captain Kate Brickell helped maintain an unbeaten record, which they carried on this term with a 14-2 win over Langwith.

“We are proud of our strength in depth,” said Goodricke Sports Rep Katie Cooper-Johnson.

“Although we have had our fair share of injuries, we strongly attempt to avoid putting first team players in the seconds like some colleges do.”

This term's Netball showdown came last weekend but, as has so often been the case, there was nothing between the two colleges as the match finished 14-14.

Hockey, under the captaincy of Tim Day, has undoubtedly been Halifax's strongest suit, again their only loss last term being at the hands of Goodricke.

Both colleges have marked areas for improvement over the spring.

"We have highlighted Badminton, Football and Volleyball for improvement," said Halifax Sports

Conference

Virgin

> Vision's Adam Thorn pays a visit to KitKat Crescent for the first time Modern stars have it easy nowadays, with their multimillion pound contracts, model girlfriends and designer clothes.

They’re more likely to offer you the latest installments of their autobiographies than show some actual sporting skill. But take them down to

25

ONE HAND ON THE TROPHY > Unbeaten Men's Tennis look to wrap up promotion

BY LAUREN COCKBILL Men’s tennis first team are close to smelling the sweet scent of success, as just one more win will seal their promotion.

A tussle for the ball as Goodricke work their way to a 4-1 win over Halifax last December. Photo: Tom Hole.

Rep Nikki Hayden.

Football and Volleyball are the only sports which haven't seen either college in the top two.

And this is something of a surprise, as Goodricke stormed the Football leagues last year.

After finishing behind Langwith and Derwent last term, Goodricke have started the new year in style with a crushing win over Wentworth.

Goals from Dominic O'Shea, Eddie Silson, Colin High and Richard Remington (2) gave the college a 5-0 win.

Halifax couldn't equal their result, as they had a shot cleared off the line while going down 2-1 to autumn champions Langwith.

One-day tournaments this term will take place in Swimming, Womens' Football and Rugby Sevens in weeks seven, eight and nine.

"We believe we are a strong one day tournament college and look foward to the events this term, especially the swimming," said Goodricke's Jack Kennedy.

"We have a great platform to build on after the winter term.”

Fighting talk from the cham-

the Kit Kat crescent and they wouldn’t last a second.

Going to the home of York City FC is like going back in time 40 years. No men in posh suits, no overpaid agents and no overpriced season tickets.

Just a group of people going down for a good time a bit of brilliant football banter. Its how the game should be.

The first thing you notice is the location. Its set right amongst the old terrace houses which tower over the ground.

You push your way through the turn styles and shuffle your way to the stands. And they’re proper terraces too – you stand, not sit. You’re jammed in their with only the strong Yorkshire accents booming around you.

It’s brilliant.

The game themselves are great – and was shocked by the quality of the football. It’s not all that far off the championship and my thought of fat blokes hoofing the ball up the pitch proved unfounded.

Proper shots, proper crosses

but with crunching tackles that show the fans they actually care. Mind you, they wouldn’t dare get on the wrong side of them.

And it’s the banter of fans that made for me. Whether it was booing the announcement of their 8 year old mascot, or

pions. Events like the Swimming Gala are worth a lot of points, and when the Championship is this close, picking up the odd point here and there can be crucial to the final outcome.

It could be the fixtures the colleges have against each other that decide things. Halifax versus Goodricke could decide several leagues - if last term is anything to go by then this will certainly be the case.

Maybe the next few weeks can show which college can knock the other onto the canvas.

singing “what’s that coming over the hill, is it a monster” when the physio came on – York fans are some of the wittiest in the country.

And for £8 for a student ticket you really can’t argue. Executive boxes – I'd rather freeze on the terraces.

The Minstermen take to the pitch. Photo: Matt Grum.

The team of Chris Willis, Cameron Downey (captain), Dan Schofield and Guy Baxendale displayed some awesome tennis last Wednesday to upset their Durham opponents.

The match was always going to be difficult; Durham are just one place behind York in the league. However from the beginning York stamped their authority on the match, winning both the doubles points.

At number one position, Chris Willis had a tough encounter. His opponent made good use of his height advantage, making his serve difficult to break. The match went the distance, but unfortunately for York, Durham edged the win 5-7 6-3 6-4.

Willis’ loss threw the contest wide open, yet it just seemed to spur the York men on further. Guy Baxendale, on his first team debut, faced another battle. Playing against an opponent who was playing his best tennis of the season, the Durham number four won the first set comfortably, 6-2.

Nevertheless, Baxendale ceased to give up, his fighting spirit earning him the second set, 7-6. The third set saw the York man motor into the lead. He maintained the momentum and consequently won the match; undoubtedly the epic of the tie. The final score being 2-6 7-6 6-2.

BUSA Northern Men's 3B

P W D L Pts 1York 1st 7 7 0 0 21 2 Durham 3rd 7 6 0 1 18 3 Bradford 1st 7 4 1 2 13 4 Teesside 1st 7 4 1 2 13 5 York 2nd 8 4 0 4 12 6 S'land 1st 6 2 1 3 10* 7 Leeds Met. 3rd 5 3 0 2 6* 8 Hull 1st 6 1 2 3 5 9 Teesside 2nd 8 0 1 7 1 10 S'land 2nd 7 0 0 7 0 * = walk-over points deducted/awarded

Whilst the matches at number one and four positions had been tight, Cameron Downey and Dan Schofield, at numbers two and three respectively, took care of business for York.

Both players won in straight sets, confirming York’s victory.

With such a performance in mind, the prospect of tennis at a higher level is looming nearer. How will the York men cope with the faster and harder tennis division two demands?

"As the only undefeated team left at York, we have dominated the league this year, dropping only 5 from 70 points available so far. I think we can be confident of at least a mid table finish; especially as none of the regular first team are leaving at the end of this year." Downey is certainly optimistic for next year so how positive is he for success at this year’s Roses?

"Last year will be a tough act to follow as the tennis club on the whole gained 10 out of the 14 points available. The men’s first team were the only team to lose, but there is a strong squad work ethic this year and despite Lancaster being at the top of the league above us, we are going in confident."

This Wednesday the York men play Hull at home where they will be eager to get that final win to see them into division two.

26 SPORT

S Darius N AUSTIN

YORK VISION

FOOTBALL: CENTRAL LANCASHIRE 1 YORK 2

Tuesday January 30, 2007

COMEBACK KINGS

sport@vision.york.ac.uk

of Sunday morning masterclass

As I dragged myself out of bed at half past eight on a Sunday morning, I couldn’t help but think about my reasons for this madness.

YORK 1s t

ST

UCLAN 1 3 9 3 7 13 0 0

SHOTS ON TARGET SHOTS OFF TARGET OFFSIDES CORNERS FOULS YELLOW CARDS RED CARDS

BY DOMINIC O'SHEA The York 1st XI were looking to start the second half of the season in much the same way as they ended the first part of their campaign, and they did so with a vital win at Central Lancashire.

With two defining fixtures approaching in the BUSA league, the 1sts needed to hit the ground running after the Christmas break. In the opening twenty minutes of this eagerly anticipated game they did what they have done so well all season: they were quick to get into the game and cause the opposition problems right from the outset.

Unfortunately they couldn’t convert this pressure into goals, coming closest when Dominic O’Shea hit the crossbar from close range after a good break down the right wing from Pardeep Singh. York looked strong and assured at the back, with Johnny McWilliams and Ben Matthews forming a solid back four unit with Ian McKellow and Sean Evans,

8 11 5 6 6 0 0

> UYAFC come from behind to record NUAFL win

which meant Central Lancashire rarely had a sight at goal. York went in 0-0 at the break knowing they had had the better of the first half but were willing to be patient, knowing the goals would come.

Even with this optimism heading into the second half, it was Central Lancashire who took the lead.

Poor clearances from the back allowed Lancs to switch play and a well struck shot gave goalkeeper Sean Henderson little chance. But to York's credit, their heads did not drop and they bounced back almost instantly.

After forcing a corner through good build up play their chance came. The corner was initially cleared but Ben Matthews delivered the ball back into the box, where Dan Brown’s determined surge resulted in a chance for O’Shea to pounce from close range to bring the scores level.

York then sensed that they had a foothold on the game, their tails were up and straight from Central Lancashire’s kick off they had them

pinned back in their own third of the pitch. A York throw in came to the feet of Simon Oatridge, just back from injury, who instinctively turned and curled a shot into the bottom left hand corner of the goal to put York into what was a deserved lead.

NUAFL Division One

P W 1 Sheffield 1st 5 4 2 Leeds Met. 1st 6 3 3 Liverpool 1st 6 3 4 UCLan 1st 6 3 5 Hull 1st 5 3 6 Durham 1st 5 2 7 York 1st 4 2 8 Leeds 1st 3 2 9 Manchester 1st 6 2 10 Bradford 1st 7 2 11 Keele 1st 6 0 12 Newcastle 1st 5 0 * Awaiting updated results

L Pts 0 13 2 10 3 9 3 9 2 9 1 8 0 8 0 7 3 7 5 6 3 3 4 1

With plenty of the second half to play York could have looked to hold onto the lead, but even though Central Lancashire were pressing on, York still created openings on the counter attack.

THETACTICSBOARD Key: Movement of player

D 1 1 0 0 0 2 2 1 1 0 3 1

Ian McKellow was inches from his first goal of the season when he struck sweetly from thirty yards with Henry Smith also coming close from distance. Then some quick passing and the pace of John Searle allowed O’Shea to shoot from the edge of the box, only for the keeper to tip it away at full stretch. However, these efforts failed to kill off the game and York had to rely on stern defending throughout the team to make sure they didn’t concede and took home all three points.

This was an important win for York and it truly epitomised their season so far; starting strong, creating chances and tight at the back, but conceding through lack of concentration has been a chink in their armour.

Despite that they have the team spirit and grit to turn games around like they have on numerous occasions this season. The next two weeks see York 1sts play their final two BUSA games, and sitting at the top of the league they have their fate in their own hands.

oatridge strike claims all three points for york

Movement of ball

Singh

Singh

Singh O'Shea

Oatridge

Brown

Evans

O'Shea

Fig 1: Sean Evans takes a throw-in in line with the penalty box, finding Simon Oatridge

O'Shea Oatridge

Oatridge

Searle

Searle

Brown

Searle

Brown

Fig 2: O'Shea and Singh make runs towards goal but are closely tracked by their markers as Oatridge moves inside

Photo: Laurie Allsopp

Are even Roger Federer’s skills good enough for an early Sunday rise? After all, the match seemed to be a foregone conclusion, with Federer’s semi-final performance against Andy Roddick about as close to perfection as tennis can get.

However, as the final unfolded, there seemed to be a sense around the arena that Fernando Gonzalez, Federer’s Chilean opponent, had something special about him.

When Gonzalez broke Federer’s serve to lead 5-4 after a decidedly average attempt at an approach shot from the Swiss, there was a genuine air of excitement that the man who had probably been written off by 95% of the audience might just be able to do this. When Federer broke back and proceeded to take the tie-break 7-2, that atmosphere rapidly vanished.

Soon Federer had assumed that air of invincibility that characterises his performances these days.

One twenty-four shot rally left Gonzalez gasping for breath while Federer strolled about at the other end of the court, his expression seeming to say “What? Are you tired after THAT?” Despite some game battling from Gonzalez, that sense of inevitability was hanging heavy over his head. Mid-way through the third, he looked like a man who had been through five sets.

Minutes later, I was watching Federer serve for his tenth grand slam with three match points. An inch-perfect backhand shot up the line to Gonzalez’s right, and the Chilean just stared at it as Federer fell to the floor, finally showing his emotion now the title was his.

Two weeks of brilliance had been capped off with an increasingly inspired final performance from the world number. one.

So why isn’t this dominance boring or frustrating? Many examples spring to mind: Manchester United made themselves plenty of enemies in the 1990s by repeatedly winning the Premiership and Michael Schumacher's dominance over Formula One was despised by most fans.

It is a testament to Federer’s ability that his dominance is greeted with the utmost enjoyment from the fans. Unlike other people or teams who have dominated, he does not simply fire down big serves, nor does is he seen as controlling the game with boring tactics or having the best equipment. Federer's wins are entirely about his sheer genius.

There is a consistently awe-inspiring quality to Federer and an ease in his play and attitude that makes it impossible for any tennis fan to not like him. A good contest is vital to any sport, but sometimes it’s just as good to sit back, relax and watch it being played at the height of perfection, even if it does mean getting up early on a Sunday. I can’t think of a better reason.

Fig 3: Oatridge quickly turns and curls the ball into the bottom corner to send York into the lead

YORK VISION

SPORT

Tuesday January 30, 2007.

RUGBY UNION: HUDDERSFIELD 13 YORK 13

BY ALEX CORP “You boys were robbed”: accurate but comfortless words from the Huddersfield coach minutes after his side had snatched an improbable draw to share the points with a crestfallen York.

The White Rose’s tight five provided the platform for their early dominance, supported by gritty defence from their back-row. Direct from kick-off, pressure at the breakdown and efficient set-piece ball for York kept the home side hemmed in their own 22.

With clearance kicks getting more hurried and less productive, it wasn’t long before York were hammering at the Huddersfield try-line, as Paul Goodall, the stand-in skipper, was denied what looked a legitimate try after the referee deemed him not to have grounded the ball.

DAYLIGHT ROBBERY

BUSA Northern Men's 2B P W D L Pts 1 Leeds Met. 2nd 8 8 0 0 24 2 Leeds 2nd 10 8 0 2 24 3 Durham 3rd 10 6 0 4 18 4 H'field 1st 10 5 2 3 17 5 Teeside 1st 10 4 0 6 12 6 York 1st 10 3 2 5 11 7 YSJ 1st 9 2 0 7 6 8 Sunderland 1st 9 0 0 9 0 * = walk-over points deducted/awarded

It proved immaterial, as just four phases after the resulting scrum debutant number eight Andy Barnett crashed over to open the scoring. York looked well worth their 7-0 lead once winger Seb Hurst had coolly slotted the conversion.

Two minutes later and they had even more reward for their imperious start when Tom Benbow picked the ball up midway inside his own half and danced through the flailing Huddersfield defence, searing his way over in the corner for a stunning solo try. York 12-0 up and cruising.

With a constant supply of quick, clean first-phase ball the York backs were threatening to run riot, hindered only by the shocking condition of the pitch and some belligerent Huddersfield tackling.

But with an intelligent kicking display by fly-half Rob Milne with excellent pressure on the followups, Huddersfield remained pinned in their own half for much of the opening quarter.

Such was York’s set piece dominance, with five scrums stolen

> York crushed by late leveller against the head and countless loose lineouts thieved by the dominant Joe Peach, Huddersfield ended up fielding a total of five front-row forwards in various combinations and switched throwing duties three times in a desperate attempt to secure some ball.

However, the sight of the influential Danny Stacey hobbling off the field midway through the first half, victim of the groundsman’s prolonged sabbatical, proved a turning point, as without his pace and vision York lost their fluency.

Huddersfield gradually gained a foothold in the game as the ball found its way with increasing frequency to their big ball carriers.

But still conceding turnover after

turnover at the set piece, the home team could not capitalise.

York nearly extended their lead moments before the whistle; Peach adjudged, again harshly, to have been held up as he drove on from less than a metre out after another long spell of York pressure.

It was York’s turn to feel the heat at the start of the second half with Huddersfield’s tackling and ball carrying becoming increasingly ferocious, but the visitors refused to be intimidated, the outstanding Patrick Lawther in particular responding in kind.

Huddersfield’s pressure finally told with just under twenty minutes remaining. York’s discipline deserted them, and they were pun-

BETTINGVISION

BY ALEX RICHMAN By the time you read this your student loan for the Spring should be in your bank account and, hopefully, you haven’t already blown it all on frivolities like accommodation and food.

Luckily for you, Vision is here to stop all of that governmentapproved cash from burning a hole in your artfully-distressed denim pocket, and instead help you turn it into the kind of epic sum that could tempt David Beckham to play for your college team.

If the past few weeks are any indication, the first step towards sporting success is to not be English. With the Six Nations fast approaching, the bookies are looking to Ireland as the favourites, but remember that France are gearing up for a World Cup assault on their own turf. This is an ideal platform to build a challenge for the summer, and so back les bleus at 9/4 (Ladbrokes).

The French are also priced 9/4

to be the last side to concede a try, and when their first match is against Italy this looks even more appetising. The second favourites are England, whose first match is against Scotland , second-favourites for the wooden spoon. If you’re desperate for an England-related bet, back Cueto and co at 11/4 (SportingOdds).

To continue the theme of hopeless English sides, let us draw a weary eye to the world of international cricket. As England crumble into disrepair just in time for what will be yet another gloomy World Cup, Australia are in the ascendancy and although 1/8 is the best price you can find for them winning the upcoming Commonwealth series (SkyBet), try backing Brett Lee to be the top wicket-taker. With McGrath and Warne out of the international picture all eyes will be on the pacy bowler, so at 6/1 back him to rise to the challenge (PaddyPower).

With months to go before the next major tennis or golf competition, we must look to

ished for their flurry of infringements when they finally ran out of bodies and conceded a close range try in the corner.

Just three minutes from time, Huddersfield’s deliberate wheel of a York scrum was rewarded rather than penalised, and a single phase later their winger grounded under the posts. The long-range conversion was a galling anticlimax to York’s valiant performance.

Nonetheless, Paul Goodall maintained there were many positives to be taken from the game: “It was great to see the tight five dominate up front again.

"It was a shame we couldn’t keep the scoreboard ticking over in the second half."

27

New college cricket league moves indoors

BY Dave Cookson

It used to be just another method of wasting time with housemates in the corridors.

However, indoor cricket is about to be introduced as the latest college sport. Aside from the obvious change of scenery there are numerous differences from the original rules of one of the country’s oldest and best loved sports.

The game has been specially designed to ensure the highest level of participation possible. There are just six players per team and everyone (excluding the wicketkeepers) has to bowl. Each innings lasts a short but frantic 10 overs, with every bowler (again, wicketkeepers aside) allotted 2 of them.

This version may also challenge the claim that cricket is a batsman’s game, as once a score of 25 is reached batters will have to retire.

This rule should see an end to those days were you were (wrongfully, of course) put in the tail end of the line-up and didn’t get to bat.

Along with the requirement for bowling, this should see the end of dull games where some people are just ‘making up the numbers’.

The introduction of the sport is by no means a brand new idea for the A.U. as vice-president Nick Hassey explained: “The idea for an indoor cricket league actually came up last Spring when we were trying to decide on the oneday tournaments for that term.

It was mentioned that footballers had a one day tournament in the Summer when they didn’t have a league, but cricketers only had the league in the Summer and didn’t get to play for the rest of the year.”

The idea was soon shelved due to time restraints but Hassey revived the idea upon election and has now run with it. Indoor cricket will be run as a league rather than a tournament, as the vice-president explained. Half of the colleges will play their games on Mondays, with the other half playing on Fridays.

This term will also see the return of two old sports: an intercollege swimming gala and a full contact rugby sevens tournament.

THE FASTEST WAY TO BLOW YOUR STUDENT LOAN KNOWN TO MAN

Michael's 5/2 to get his shooting boots back on before the end of the year

snooker for the extra excitement in February. Thankfully, we continue this month’s motif with the Malta Cup as last year’s competition made history as the first ranking snooker event without any Englishmen in the last eight. O’Sullivan is the favourite after a storming success at the Masters (7/2 Totesport), but despite his emotional reaction to that demolition the defeated finalist (and York University favourite) Ding Junhui breezed past the likes of Stephen Hendry on his way, and looks backable at 6/1 (Coral).

The Champions' League knockout stages begin in a few weeks, and one particular tie looks like a sure thing. To take our attention back across the Channel, Lyon are a staggering 37/19 to beat Roma.

Consider that this is the side that seems to routinely beat Real Madrid and is about to break the record for consecutive league titles in the five major European leagues, before further considering that the two-legged tie concludes with Lyon at home. Then empty your wallet.

Elsewhere, the best odds to be had

look like Liverpool's 9/4 (Skybet) against Barcelona. Although Barca are joint favourites for the trophy at 7/2, their current intermittent form combined with Rafa Benitez's European tactical genius and Spanish football knowledge has all the ingredients for an upset.

Finally, we’ll finish with an intriguing special. You may recall a small, chirpy striker called Michael Owen. After signing for Newcastle, Owen repaid their faith in his injury-prone body by getting seriously injured. However, by the summer Owen should be up and running and SportingOdds are offering a price of 5/2 that Owen will score 10 Premiership goals by the end of the calendar year.

Currently there are six strikers with 10 or more goals in the Premiership, including those prolific marksmen Kevin Doyle and Benni McCarthy, and it’s unlikely that, given his past experiences, Owen will opt for a big move abroad.

For those of you with slightly longer attention spans, this could be one to keep an eye on.

Tuesday January 30, 2007

Issue 176

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: ANDY MURRAY

P24

NEW BLOW Photo: Joe Beaver

FOR VARSITY

BY LAURIE ALLSOPP York's Varsity tournament took another hit this week, after it emerged that Rugby will be pulled from the day's schedule.

Now in its third year, the competition has been beleagured by setbacks throughout its short history, and the recheduling of Rugby is a major blow to the event's prestige.

UYRUFC have decided not to play on February 14th, concentrating instead on a rescheduled BUSA fixture against Leeds 2nd.

BUSA games against York St John will count for Varsity points instead.

Club President Danny Stacey explained the decision to cancel the game: "There's been a few substantial changes, as both York St John and York Uni 1st teams have decided to use the forthcoming BUSA match as a double header owing to a tight fixture list this season."

The change came about after a major fixture backlog was built up by the Rugby club.

"BUSA re-organised their leagues this year to give university rugby clubs more games", said AU President Tom Moore.

"Basically, they went too far the other way. The BUSA season should finish a week before

Varsity, but the Rugby club still have games to fit in."

Tournament Secretary Nigel Proctor echoed Moore's views.

"The situation is unfortunate, but unavoidable," he said.

However, Football Club President Simon Oatridge told Vision that UYAFC wouldn't do the same as the Rugby club.

"Cancelled fixtures have been a major problem for us this term," he said. "We've got games up until week nine, and we had to cancel a match to play Varsity.

"But we wouldn't look to play the Varsity match on any other occasion, although what the Rugby club do is ultimately up to them."

Varsity faced a similar situation last year when waterlogged pitches meant that Football fixtures were called off.

But with crowds for the previous two tournaments barely higher than the average BUSA game, the decision, however necessary, cannot come at a worse time for Varsity.

The first two years of competition have suggested that York students simply do not care about the tournament, and the Rugby club's decision to move their Varsity fixture can do nothing but confirm this.

Varsity may have moved away from the problems of its formative years, in which the Football and Rugby 1sts games descended into violence, but it clearly has a long way to go yet before it gains the same pull on York's attention as Roses.

> Rugby games cancelled owing to fixture congestion > AU call situation "unavoidable" but questions are raised over the event's worth again.